The Pleione People - copyright (c) 2003 by Steven Sharpe
Chapter 1
"Coming into laser range in 30 seconds."
"Hold our fire. We can get this one from close in. They aren't going anywhere. Slow us to 0.1c."
The six figures on the small bridge of the ship watched the viewer closely to the point that their instruments were being neglected. Not that it mattered. This hit was a disabled water transport: her drive blown, dead in space. She had been broadcasting an SOS for two days. It would be two more days before the closest aid would be able to reach her, and by then she would be blown to scrap. The bridge crew could afford to relax a bit and enjoy the show.
Not that there was any sign of her yet visually on the screen. The unmarked ship had Jumped to within a light hour of her location and was now closing in at sublight speed. The blue shifted images of the stars were rapidly returning to their normal colours as the ship slowed from relativistic speed. The location of their target was indicated by a red blip in the centre.
"Keep decelerating to 10K, close to 3K kilometres," said the bearded male who was evidently the captain.
"All weapons ready, capacitor charging," said another man from before a nearby control panel, "Making our final deceleration on thrusters. We should be able to make a full range Jump in ten minutes."
"We're getting a visual, now," said a third voice.
"Full magnification," said the captain.
The image on the screen wavered and blurred, before steadying to show a small oblong object in the centre of the field.
"3500 kilometres," said the mate.
"That's a mighty funny looking tanker, if you ask me..." said the man running the viewer.
"I'll say," agreed the captain, and for once in his life he hesitated, as he leaned forward in his seat as if to take a better look. Then, the realization dawned on him.
"It's a trap! Jump, dammit, Jump!"
But it was too late. As he spoke the other ship's hull seemed to twinkle, and then the screen was bathed in a lethal ruby glow.
The bridge of the Royal Pleionese Navy cruiser Segin was electric with excitement. After days of lying motionless in space and broadcasting a phony SOS, the mystery raider had taken their bait. The wait had been long, tedious and frustrating; but then suddenly the destroyer had Jumped into view and rapidly closed. They had held their fire until the last minute - to the time when the enemy had to be able to see that they were not a disabled tanker - and then they had opened up with everything. Almost - but not quite - simultaneously, the target had suddenly accelerated, then vanished from their sight.
"She Jumped," said First Officer Harr, manning the sensors.
"Damage report?" asked Captain Yan, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice. He had been commander of the Segin for all of the three years since her commissioning, but this was the first time he had ever ordered her to fire her guns in anger.
"All decks report no damage," said Chase, the communications officer.
"Great. Harr, play back the encounter."
The image on the main viewer changed, to show a replay - in slow motion - of the just concluded encounter. The excited murmuring of the bridge crew members died down, as everyone watched.
"Just as Central Field intelligence suspected, she's Chermain," commented the Captain, taking in the sleek lines of the unmarked ship as it approached.
"One of their newest destroyers," Harr said, as they reached the point in the replay where the Segin opened fire. The hull of the enemy was suddenly raked by at least three laser hits. Many people on the bridge cheered at the sight. The Chermain were a brutal empire, and had few friends.
"Considerable hull damage," said Harr, when it was relatively quiet again, "Missile launcher disabled, several turrets destroyed, some atmosphere loss and probable heavy interior damage."
"But she still retained Jump capability."
"Yes, sir."
"Captain, I managed to get a fix on their trajectory just as they Jumped," said Navigator Trax.
"And...?"
"Out into unexplored space, along the vector which they had been following when we opened fire."
"A blind Jump, then. We must have given them quite a surprise. How far do you think they could have gone, Harr?"
"That class of destroyer is thought to have a maximum Jump range of about 13 light years," the first officer replied, "But it is doubtful whether she was ready for a full range Jump when we hit her."
"Anything along their trajectory within 13 light years, Trax?"
The navigator consulted his readouts for a moment.
"Several stars lie within the cone of error for its trajectory," he said at last, "Several type M dwarfs and a type G dwarf."
"Anything special about them?"
Another pause, before Harr spoke up from his computer console.
"Up until about 30 years ago there was a strong source of frequency modulated radio waves in this region. The nature of the activity indicated a technological civilization. The type G star was suspected of being the source."
"But it's not active anymore?"
"Occasional bursts, but nothing continuous like before."
"Most early technological civilizations go through a 'noisy' radio stage in their history, before developing less wasteful methods of communication, such as cable or lasers," said the science officer, Traka.
"But could their current level of technological "noise" be used to disguise the Chermain ship's EM signature?"
"It would help," said Harr.
"Here's the plan," Yan said, rising from the commander's chair and looking intently at the star field showing on the viewer. He was not a big or imposing man, but he had Presence. "We are proceeding into uncharted space after the Chermain. Standard charting rules apply. That is, a one light year Jump, followed by a full sensor scan at sublight velocity. If the way is clear, then we make another Jump, and so on. Our destination is that yellow dwarf. Understood?"
"Aye, sir," said Harr.
"Then execute."
January 14, 2071, 0800 hours. Robbie Lewis strapped herself into the rocket pod and began the prelaunch check. It was a simple vessel, heavily shielded for operations in the strong magnetic fields found in the neighbourhood of Jupiter, but really little more than a rocket engine with a seat attached. Or so she viewed it. Nevertheless, one could not just hop aboard and go flying out into the cosmos...there were set procedures to follow.
Lewis was a Flyer. Her job was to maintain communications between the main base on Ganymede in the Jupiter subsystem and the half dozen small scientific outposts and satellites located either in free orbit about the giant planet or on some of the other moons. Often this entailed rendezvousing with a malfunctioning satellite and making repairs, carrying emergency supplies to the three geologists manning the outpost on Io, or merely bringing the mail to the two women who ran the hydrogen loading station in close orbit.
Lewis loved her job.
Today she was flying out to Io, to investigate a probable electronics malfunction. The party stationed there were complaining that their telemetry link to Ganymede had suddenly become prone to dropouts and heavy static interference. In addition, the equipment they normally used to monitor changes in Jupiter's magnetic field caused by the passage of Io through it had gone out of sync; behaving as if a very large mass of metal had suddenly appeared close by the moon. Lewis suspected a problem with the shielding on the small fusion generator which powered their facility. It was the only common link between the radio transmitter and the field sensors.
The pod was ready. Extra tanks of liquid hydrogen and oxygen had been mounted on the underbelly, and a freight canister containing the specialized tools she would need had been bolted behind the lifesystem. Last to go aboard before the turret was closed over her head was a small sack of mail and odd supplies as requested by the geologists.
The pod was a strange looking little vessel. Actually, Lewis' view as it as a rocket engine with a seat attached was not all that far from the truth. Its cabin was rudimentary: but a seat with a control panel in front of it. The lifesystem was also bare bones, to the point where she had to wear a space suit while aboard the craft, though it was connected by an umbilical cord to the ship. The cabin was heavily shielded with steel and lead as a protection against the harsh trans-Jovian environment. With the turret closed she could see directly outside only through a tiny closeable slit in its front, and then safely just for brief periods. The rest of the time she flew by instruments and video monitors. On the outside of the pod were two remote manipulator arms; distant descendants of the type originally developed for the first reusable space shuttles of nearly a century past. In addition were strapped fuel tanks, supply cases, sensors, and thruster rockets. At the stern was the main rocket engine, powered by the combustion of hydrogen and oxygen.
"Cleared for takeoff, Robbie," came the voice of Jaye Simms, the flight controller for Ganymede, through her helmet speakers. The air lock doors for the hangar which contained her pod were open, revealing the stark terrain of the moon with the black sky above, littered with stars.
"Starting liftoff sequence," replied Lewis, signalling her on board computer to begin.
Now the fun begins, she thought. With a sudden jerk the catapult fired, launching the pod out through the open doorway. As soon as she cleared it the thrusters lit up, and the ship was airborne. With its weak gravitation, it did not take a lot of energy to fly on Ganymede. Then the main engine fired, and the pod headed skywards. The moon's barren surface dropped away, and Lewis found herself looking at the stars of the Pleiades on the video monitor. After a moment they swung out of view, the main engine shut down, and the onboard computer announced that orbit had been achieved.
The flight programme for a trip to Io was permanently stored in the computer's memory. Activating it, she checked with Ganymede control again. Receiving clearance to continue, she sat silently waiting for the computer to reignite the main engine.
The Jupiter Base was the newest and probably last human outpost to be founded. Less than three years old, it was staffed by a crew of ten females and two males. Women were generally favoured for space exploration because of their smaller size and lower mass, as well as their usually higher level of manual dexterity. These people were stationed on three outposts in the Jovian subsystem: three on Io, two on the hydrogen loading station in low Jupiter orbit, and seven more at the main base on Ganymede. Their purpose for being here: scientific research and exploration of the Jovian subsystem. Hopefully this would eventually lead to full scale economic development and colonial status such as that enjoyed for some years by the L5 stations in Earth orbit and recently bestowed upon the mining base on Luna. But that would be far off in the future. Even Mars - first landed upon by Terrans in 2031 and permanently inhabited for 21 years - was still considered a mere outpost. And, if the recent news reports coming out of Terra were true, then Lewis doubted if it would ever happen. It was looking more and more likely that the Jupiter Base would be abandoned and its personnel recalled home.
Home...to Earth.
Home...to a place she hoped to never see again.
If the stories coming out of Terra were true, Lewis and most of the others staffing the Jupiter Base would prefer to be left out here to their fate.
Even now, the Base was virtually self supporting in foodstuffs, and already an exporter of energy in the form of liquid hydrogen. Their small machine and electronics fabricating shops were able to repair and manufacture much of the equipment they needed to survive. What were missing were the raw materials: ores, oils, silica. Not that the Jupiter subsystem lacked them; rather, the Base lacked the equipment to procure them.
Lewis' reverie was interrupted by the reignition of the main engine. This time it stayed on for a longer interval, blasting the pod out of Ganymede's grasp and into Jupiter orbit; to take her down low over the cloud tops and back out again, to a rendezvous with Io and a malfunctioning fusion generator.
The long hours passed. Lewis monitored the pod's progress from the instrument panel, and reviewed the repair manual for the pile on Io. She slept, ate, and talked to both the Ganymede outpost and the one on Io on the radio. The transmissions from the latter, she noticed, were degrading in quality steadily. Once, late on the first day of her flight, for less than a minute, at the pod's point of closest approach to the Jovian cloud tops, she rotated the vessel, opened the slit in the turret, and gazed down into the seething cauldron of the giant planet's atmosphere. She did this on every flight which called for a close pass.
Then, she was receding from Jupiter. Over the planet's limb rose her target: yellow-orange and malignant looking, though still remote. Even from this range she could spot several volcanic plumes rising from the surface, as seen in her monitor.
More time passed. She ate breakfast. The pod rotated so that she was flying stern first, and the main engine fired for a long time. She was closing on Io. Lewis called the outpost again on the surface, and was answered by undulating blasts of static.
Strange, she thought, and not for the first time on this trip. If it were caused by that generator then it should not be affecting her up here.
Nearing orbit. The final insertion was near. Everything normal, but for the static. The engine fired again, and the pod slipped into a low orbit, stern first.
Lewis tried the outpost again. More static, louder this time. She checked the on-board magnetometer, and her eyes widened. The reading was nearly off the scale. She checked the orientation of the field. It was strongest in the direction opposite to that of Io's orbital motion.
What was out there? she wondered to herself half jokingly, as she activated the pod's radar. The monitor showed a three dimensional view of the surroundings, along with a sweeping half circle indicating the motion of the radar beam. Io lit up nearly half the screen; and then, there was something else...
Trailing along in the moon's ionic wake was a large blip.
Lewis was too shocked to even gasp. She had flown out to Io virtually once a month for the last two and a half years and had never noticed anything out there before.
Radio. "Lewis to Io, come in." More static. If they could not pick her up from low orbit then there would be no way that Ganymede could from the far side of the system. She swung her monitor camera around and scanned the area of the blip visually. Was that something? Lewis knew her constellations, and now she saw that Leo had acquired a new star. It was faint, but it was not supposed to be there.
What is it? she asked herself. She was getting out of her depth, here. Her first thought was that it might be an approaching iron asteroid on a collision course with the moon. But the radar had detected no motion relative to Io. Should she continue on to the Io outpost? Abort and return to Ganymede for instructions? No. By the time she returned it might be too late.
Lewis was a flyer. They had a reputation of being impulsive to the point of recklessness.
A quick check of her readouts told her that she had sufficient fuel for a rendezvous with the mystery blip and a return to Ganymede. It was a simple task to reprogramme the computer. Five minutes later the engine fired, blasting Lewis out of Io orbit.
The time passed quickly, even though she had only fired the engine long enough to barely achieve Io's escape velocity. With the radio out, Lewis made a long recorded log entry, detailing the events up to this point. On the monitor the star brightened but slowly, taking on a definite blue tinge. Then, it began to lengthen along one axis. An oblong asteroid? Lewis began to record the video as well.
Suddenly she realized that this was no asteroid. It was almost cigar shaped, with smoothed, asymmetric ends. Her heart was thumping, her mind not believing what the monitor was showing. Finally she fired the thrusters again, slowing the pod even further. Then, she opened the slit in the turret and looked with her own eyes.
There, less than two miles away, hanging in space, was the largest space ship which she had ever seen. She instantly knew that this was not built by Terrans: the largest ship that her civilization had built had been the vessel which had transported her and her companions to Jupiter, and this one dwarfed it. It was painted a deep blue, with a rounded nose and a more blunt stern, upon which were mounted strange looking rocket-like nozzles. The smooth lines of the hull were interrupted by many bumps, bulges, slots and turrets. It was a sight of deadly beauty.
And yet even Lewis could tell that the ship was heavily damaged. Its hull was gashed with long, welt like streaks, and some of those bumps and bulges had an asymmetrical look about them which indicated to her that they were deformations caused by internal explosions. As the pod moved closer still to the vessel she saw melted, mangled hull plates, and scorch marks. She wondered what had happened to the ship. The damage resembled that which she had seen on the most recent news transmissions from Earth. Bombings, riots, fires, war. Had this ship been in a battle? If so, Lewis thought, I would not like to meet the people who did this to her.
She also saw windows and portholes in the hull. A few were lit.
An alien ship. She thought about it, as her eyes took in the lines of the hull. Humankind was not alone. There were still others out there.
Oh, sure, she thought, we've been pretty sure that we were not the only life forms spawned by the universe for quite a few years. But everything else up to this point has been inconclusive. For almost a century and a half there had been reports of "flying saucers" and contacts with "space aliens" by people, but nothing that could be verified. Strangely enough, as humanity had become more adept at interplanetary space travel over the last few decades, those reports had become much less commonplace. Then, there had been the numerous SETI projects. Some of them had picked up some intriguing radio signals from the stars, but once again, nothing that could be definitely attributed to intelligent life. But most persuasive of all were the Mars ruins...if ruins they were. Whatever they were, they had once been subjected to some remarkably violent destructive forces which had all but obliterated them. All that remained now were a few stone outlines in a narrow valley, perhaps hinting that once something had been constructed there. Whatever, the naysayers argued, even if they were built by a civilization of some sort, they are incredibly old, and the builders are clearly long gone.
But here - right before her eyes - was a non-human space ship. She wondered what the people inside looked like.
One thing was certain. Going by the appearance of their damaged ship, they needed help.
Lewis was brought out of her reverie by a movement on the hull. She was now barely a mile out from the ship, and the pod was hardly moving. One of the ship's turrets was rotating, bringing a short, blunt tube or rod to bear.
On her.
It couldn't be...?
Lewis reacted. Manual override. Thrusters. Any direction.
The tube twinkled red. And suddenly all hell broke loose.
Under the impetus of the thrusters the pod veered away, but as it did so she glimpsed more of the turrets swinging around. Simultaneously, the hull of the ship exploded outwards, as something cut into it in three places. The ship was under attack - again - and Lewis was right in the middle of it.
Main rocket. Heading anywhere.
Lewis' reactions were fast, but not fast enough. There was a blinding flash from outside, and as the engine kicked in, a greater force seized the pod and hurled it away. Then, something slammed into the pod, setting it spinning out of control, and the engine cut out abruptly.
It took a moment for Lewis to reorient herself, and check her controls. She still had electricity, but the outside camera was dead. Lewis opened the turret slit and left it open. The stars outside were spinning past her at a dizzying rate. She tried the thrusters and got no response. According to her readouts she was out of both hydrogen and helium. At the same time she noticed that the life support system was losing atmosphere.
Forcing herself to be calm, she shut off the ship's lifesystem and switched over to her suit's internal unit. Then, she remembered to activate her SOS beacon. At the same time, she noticed that the static levels were not as high as they had been. Not that it would help her. Her suit would keep her alive for three hours at most. She would be dead long before help from Ganymede could arrive.
She closed her eyes, but in spite of her impending demise, she could not help but wonder at what she had just witnessed. After a few minutes she opened them again, and looked out through the slit. Nothing but the gyrating stars, but then something passed over them, and blocked her view.
What the...?
Enough of this. She could see nothing through that slit. She hit the release lever and the turret seal popped. She pushed it wide open, looked up, and gasped.
There was no sign of the blue vessel, but directly over her head, maybe a quarter of a mile away was a ship which dwarfed the previous one in the same way as that one had dwarfed the largest Terran ship. This one was cigar shaped, light grey, with four large black fins located towards its stern. It too had numbers of turrets surmounted with short tubes, and as she watched she saw that these were also moving, but in this case returning to their rest positions. Upon its hull was painted a large blue oval, and beside it were letters in some alien script. Right above her a pair of enormous doors were sliding open, revealing a large hangar.
She noted immediately that the ship was also rotating with respect to the stars in the same sense that her pod was. Also, that it was slowly descending towards her.
The minutes passed. The gap between her and the mammoth vessel shrank steadily, and there was nothing she could do about it. Once again, she found herself wondering what the creatures inside were like. This time, though, it looked like she was going to find out.
She was almost through the gaping opening in the underside of the ship. From within, dazzling blue lights blazed out, illuminating the pod in a harsh glare. The pod passed into the hanger, and she saw that despite the brilliant lighting on her, the rest of the chamber was in shadow. She got an impression of other vessels parked a short distance away, and a semi-opaque glass wall at the far end with vague forms moving about behind it. Then, she noticed that the doors below her ship were closing again. At the same time, she felt something pulling her and the pod away from the hatchway and over the deck. After she was clear of the now closed hatch, she felt a familiar weight pulling her and the pod gently downward. Gravity - she realized with amazement - on a space ship.
The brilliant lights died, as the pod settled to the deck, leaving the hangar in twilight. Through the body of the pod Lewis felt a slight vibration, transmitted up through the deck plates of the ship. That was all.
Lewis unstrapped herself and stood up in the cockpit of the pod. The force of gravity here was considerably stronger than Ganymede's, but perhaps a little less than Earth's. She was glad that she had kept up her exercise regimen. Then, she became aware of a hissing noise from outside. They were pressurizing the flight deck.
Would she be able to breathe the air?
She jumped out of the pod, landed on the deck, and staggered. She had yet to regain her land legs. The hissing stopped, but she did not open up her suit. Then, a door slid open at the far end of the hangar, by the glass wall, and three people stepped onto the deck. They walked towards her with purpose, stopping some fifteen feet away.
By now, Lewis' eyes had become adjusted to the twilight. On this historic moment, when a Terran finally came face to face with the representatives of an alien race, the Terran in question found herself thinking back to all of the science fiction books, videos and movies which she had seen or read during her life. Those stories had been populated with all manner of bizarre life forms. Reality, it seemed, was much more mundane. The creatures standing in front of her were humans just like her.
One of them stepped forward. He wore a rectangular shaped box of some sort which rested on his chest, held by a chain around his neck.
He spoke, and out of the box came words - in English.
"Greetings, Earthling," he said through the translator, "Take me to your leader."
Lewis looked at him in silence for a long moment.
Then, she began to laugh.