The Cagliostro Chronicles II: Conflagration (6 page)

“Wait
, Mark,” Red interrupted.

“What?” Mark was now riveted to the view screen.
              Dan brought both his hands down on the towering behemoth’s own red furred hands, with such shattering force that the creature instantly dropped him. Howling, the monster rubbed its wrists as it backed up.

Dan shouted, “You ain’t goin’ nowhere
, you crazy lookin’ ape. Now you’ve gone and pissed me off.”

The ape continued to back pedal but Dan was immediately upon it
. This time he grabbed its leg and heaved upward, tossing the creature off its feet, to the astonishment of the natives who were now cheering Dan on.

The great ape brought its hands up and slammed them down toward Dan’s head. Dan instantly ducked beneath them and leaped again, balled up both his fists together
, and swung for all he was worth from right to left in mid-air. The blow connected with a loud crack to the ape’s jaw that reverberated throughout the dense woodland. The ape-thing fell over, poleaxed and unconscious. The ground shook with its fall.

“Watch them now
,” Mark cautioned to Eddie and Red.

The natives swarmed all over Dan, patting him on the back and cheering.

“Lori, is the translation program getting any of what they are saying? Is it able to latch on yet?”

“Just now
, Sir. They’re saying…’God-killer’. Yes that’s it, ‘God-killer’ over and over.”

“Is that thing really dead?” Eddie queried.

“Naaah, it’s out cold, that’s it.” Red looked at the ships sensor display and confirmed, “According to the sensors its unconscious.”

Mark smiled.
“Good. Let’s go meet our new best friends, but before we do let’s bring their companions out to them as a measure of good faith.”

“I’ll have a security crew
bring them up right away Mark,” Red announced.

Mark nodded.
“Good, have them meet us out there. We’ll await their signal that they’re on their way.”

“You got it
, Boss,” Red acknowledged.

***

Five minutes later Mark, Red and two security men with hand blasters exited the ship on the entryway ramp with the five natives who had tried to sneak onto the ship in front of them.

The former captives chattered incessantly with their
cohorts while Dan walked back up the ramp toward his companions.

“How’s it looking
, Danny?”

Dan turned back toward the group of natives
and spoke. “They seem ta be lovin’ me for takin’ that thing down. It musta been a grade ‘A’ pain to them.”

“Have they been talking?”

“Yeah, Mark they have, but I got no clue what they’re sayin’. Hopefully the translation program can do its job now.”

“Let’s give it a shot
.” Mark tapped his sleeve and a hologram image of a control panel sprang up. He tapped the virtual keys and typed a few commands. He finished off with a sequence that collapsed the holographic control panel. An instant later the alien’s voices were being translated by the tech suits the crew wore and the ship’s powerful computer systems.

“
Hhhmmm, we should be able ta communicate with ‘em now,” Dan announced.

“
Should be, Dan. By the way, none the worse for the wear against Kong over there, right?” Mark nodded toward the unconscious ape-like giant.

“Naaah
, Mark, I’m fine.” Dan smiled and flexed his right bicep.

Red grimaced.
“I still don’t trust them.”

Mark slapped him on the shou
lder as he walked down the ramp. “That’s what I pay you for, big man.”

The group moved back toward the natives who
seemed to grow less wary of them with each second.

“Hello
,” Mark began. “We are travelers from far away. We mean you no harm. We simply need time to repair our ship which was damaged on the way here.”

The leader of the pack of natives looked at him quizzically as the suit
’s tech replayed everything Mark said in his own language.

“Ship?”
The native asked. “The great silver bird is a ship? What does ‘ship’ mean?”

Mark and the others looked back and forth before Mark sighed and began to explain
. “I built this vessel or ship. It is like a boat that sails among the stars.” He waved his hand at the sky.

The leader o
r Chieftain nodded in agreement. “We… know of such things. Others have come and now live in the mountain of fire. We thought you were like them. That is why…we attacked you. They have…done us much…harm. They have…taken many of us as workers. Those taken have not…returned.”

The crew of the
Cagliostro
looked at one another.

“What did this ‘others’ look like?”

“Some have purple flesh, others yellow. Some make our minds scream in pain without saying a word.”

Dan turned toward Mark.
“That’s all Agalum.”

“I know
, Danny,” Mark returned his gaze to the chieftain. “Where are your people now? How many are still free?”

“Only small amount left.
Perhaps five hundred more than is what is here.” The translator program concluded an instant behind what he had said.

“How many were taken?” Red queried.

The chief looked to them and replied slowly, “Thousands.”

“What’d we stumble onto?” Dan asked. The command crew, less Ariel, were seated around the table in the command conference room.

“We’ll have to find out. I have to assume it’s some kind of forward base in the making at least, if not completed
,” Mark replied.

“It makes sense
,” Red offered. “The atmosphere’s breathable and the indigenous population is no threat. Hell, a single guy with a rechargeable hand blaster and a force field or an armored suit could conquer this whole planet.”

“Yeah
, these people ain’t exactly a threat to the Agalum,” Eddie agreed.

Ma
rk nodded in agreement, “No, but they make great slave labor.”

“For wha
tever they’re building here,” Red added.

“
I guess that answers the question of where those two extra ships came from that joined the attack on us before we crashed here.” Eddie added.

“This would be the most forward base the Agalum ha
ve built, if it is that,” Mark announced.

“Yeah, It’s only a day from
Earth at full hyper-warp,” Danny agreed.

“If this is a base, we have to either shut it down or get word back to EPIC
,” Red commented.

“The
Earth Protectorate Interstellar Command needs to know about this as soon as possible. This is a launching point for another invasion. They could mass ships here and be in and out of our home system in a day. If they rotated ships both ways it could be a never ending assault from here,” Mark commented and then continued, “I have both Lori Westin and Miss Wallflower rotating shifts on the comm, scanning all frequencies and all bands.”

Dan turned his head slightly and squinted his eyes before asking,
“Why d’ya do that?”

“Do what?”

“Why d’ya call Lilly ‘Miss Wallflower’?”

“Well, it
is
her last name, and to be honest every time I think of her whole name, well, I have a hard time taking her seriously, and she is very good at what she does.”

“Ah Mark sometimes I don’t get you
.”

“What can I say
, Danny? I’m quirky. And to be honest, calling a woman ‘Lilac Wallflower’ or ‘Lilly Wallflower’ just makes me want to smile.”

“Yeah
, I guess her parents had a sense o’ humor.”

“Are you two done yet?” Red
interrupted his face a twisted mask of disapproval.

“What?” Mark asked, smiling slightly.

“What? Really? We’re stuck on this planet and there may be hundreds, or even thousands of Agalum warriors here with us and you two are playing name games.
That’s
what.”

“Look
, Red, sometimes you need a few moments of levity to lighten the mood in a bad situation.”

“I’m not seein’ it
, Mark, especially not now. Things are looking pretty grim to me.”

“Things are always lookin’ grim to you
,” Eddie smirked.

“Maybe that’s because I’m the only one not looking at the world through rose colored glasses
.”

“Okay enough
,” Mark blurted out. “Here’s why I’m not that concerned, Red. Things are not that bad. The ship is being repaired. Even though we may have some time stuck here as of yet, we will get off this planet. Secondly we just befriended the natives, who are even now eating more of the food we provided to them. Thirdly, somehow we lucked out and fell upon a major Agalum base only a day or so from Earth, their most forward base.”

“That we know of
,” Red amended.

“
Yes, that we know of. Though I’m pretty secure in saying it’s probably the closest one, period.”

“Okay I’ll go with that
.”

“
Alright Red, so tell me in your estimation, since you are security, what happened to us out there? How come we were attacked first by a fast attack ship we managed to defeat in a pitched battle and then by reinforcements that just happened to be in the area? The G’Kor class ship is another matter entirely.”

“As far as I’m concerned the whole cluster muck up is just coincidence. That fast attack ship
was probably on patrol in that sector, scanned us and went on the attack because we were relatively close to their base. Or it was returning there and its crew knew it had to stop us.”

“Okay, what about the other ships?”

“The fast attack called for help, those others responded, which would explain why small two man vessels would be out this far in the first place.”

“Because it wasn’t really that far with this hidden base smack dab in the middle of everything
,” Eddie added.

Red nodded.
“That’s right, short stuff. You got it exactly. Those guys were the back up.”

“Fine.
What about the G’Kor though?” Mark pressed.

“What about it? It may not be here for us at all. It could be on a supply run or something. Or it could simply
be passing through.”

“Do you believe that?” Mark inquired.

“Not for an instant, but I had to put it out there because it is a possibility,” Red finished.

Mark nodded.
“Understood.”

“So what do we do about this base?” Eddie asked.

“I don’t know,” Mark replied. “To be honest I’d rather be able to get the hell out of here and back home, and then point the Fifth Fleet out this way to clean that thing off the face of this planet.”

“What’s stopping that from happening?” Eddie queried.

“It depends. I can’t send a signal from here, even a fast encoded one. They’ll find us instantly. One thing we’ve been able to learn is that a lot of their tech has gotten very good of late.”

“Yeah
, they’ve probably been stealin’ our stuff,” grumbled Dan.

“Of that I have no doubt, Danny.
There’ve been lost ships on both sides of this mess. I’m sure, no matter what precautions we’ve taken with self-destruct mechanisms and other anti-tampering devices that they’ve gotten their claws into our stuff.”

“Okay
, so they stole some tech you and the other big wigs developed. What does that do for us in the big picture?” Eddie asked.

“Real easy
, Eddie. There are several ‘fingerprints’ I’ve put into my own tech. Things that could help us if the situation gets dire enough.”

Dan growled,
“But it ain’t anything you wanna rely on unless ya have to, huh?”

“I don’t want to play that hand unless we’re really in dire straits
, Danny. That’s an endgame gambit that we could go far with. We hold that in reserve as long as possible.”

Dr.
Troiano’s voice interrupted over the comm.. “Mark, you better get down here. Something’s up with Ariel. Bring Red with you.”

“On our way
, Doctor.”

Mark exchanged nervous glances with everyone and headed for the maglovator door.

“Maybe we should all come with you,” Danny stated.

“I won’t argue
,” Mark shouted over his shoulder as he ran into the waiting maglovator, followed by the rest of the command crew.

The
y all exited upon the medical deck and ran down the hall toward the glass doors of the medical lab, which slid open at their approach.