The BridgeBook IV; Epilogue: Into the Shadows of the Starsby euhal allen |
Table of Contents Part 2 appears in this issue. |
Chapter 2: Building Anewconclusion |
Knowing that she could not get away, she answered in the Frawn tongue, hoping that they would have a hard time with the language. She almost fainted when the words came back in almost perfect Frawn, saying, “We knew not that the lost ones were yet alive. We welcome you and give you the good things of our souls.”
“The good things of your souls would be too great a gift for us poor ones. We accept your welcome.
“You speak our tongue and know our customs. How can this be? The home world lives not, does it?”
“We speak the tongue of the Frawn, for some us are Frawn. The home world died in fire. Our people were fleeing the evil ones even as they reached our home world. Another world we found and friends we found who destroyed the evil ones. You were lost and thought dead.”
“This invading fleet is from your friends?”
“Our fleet does not invade. We seek to explore and gain knowledge. We are in great number because there are those who are dangerous.”
“Look, Zhelin!”
Zhelin turned and saw the local fleet break formation and return to their duties while the great fleet also broke formation and began to land on an arid planet somewhat closer to the inner system, but far enough out to assure the people of the system that they would do no harm.
Soon information teams from both sides were exchanging words, goods, and laughter. It was very different from the memory that had haunted Zhelin earlier. The strangers spoke of a great civilization of many peoples and assured them that, unless attacked, no one in that civilization would seek the harm of any other people.
Recording it all, Zhelin contacted the strange fleet’s commander and requested permission to launch an information drone to her people. It was immediately granted by the words, “Your launch of an information drone is fine with us, but hadn’t you better ask the locals if their permission is granted? It is their system, you know.”
Gaining that permission was accomplished as easily from the locals, and the drone was soon off to their people waiting anxiously at home. Within days a drone came back with questions to be answered.
Zhelin, after showing them media clips of the Black Fleet and the battles with it, asked them about it. She was told that the exploratory fleet had never run into a great Black Fleet, but they sounded as if they were not threatening as of yet. But, they questioned back, “Why had the Frawn attacked them in the first place?”
Zhelin answered that her people has learned a long time ago that those who visited in number brought weapons and death.
The next question brought a different reaction. Showing the battle with the people the Frawn had so recently defeated, there was an instant and violent reaction.
“You destroyed these people?”
“Most of them. There are a small number still in a somewhat useless system near ours. We are watching them watch us. Our first concern was with the Black Fleet. That is, until we realized that they were not the threat we thought them to be. Why?”
A Frawn officer of the explorers answered, “We would see this system they hide in. We would come to know who these people are. You must take us to them. We have questions for them.”
Zhelin said, “I shall send a drone to my people to see if your fleet would be welcome at our home. This I must do since we are not hospitable to strangers.”
“We will give you an information capsule for your drone, if you wish. It will explain much to your leaders. It is up to you, though.”
“I will include your capsule if you can have it ready in a half hour.”
* * *
Dhrazji couldn’t leave it alone. He kept up his research in the stolen minutes that should have been used for things more in line with the official goals of the leaders. But he couldn’t. He delved and he pried and the more he did the more afraid he became of the things he was finding. Then the final pieces fell into place and he knew that what he had feared was true.
Sunk into despair, he stopped the other things he had been doing. Just stopped. Friends, who missed him at work or class, came around but he wouldn’t open his door to them. He did not show up at the commissary for his meals and only nibbled on the snacks that he could order through the room delivery system. Soon he stopped even doing that.
What did he do? He wrote. Words seemed to flow off of his pen as he wrote the old-fashioned way, on sheets of paper. To write on his com unit would be to have it stored in the main memories, available to those who had authority. He could not allow that. If what he wrote was to be of service to his people he had to get it done and get it out in a manner that they could not preview.
Then, finished, and before he called the one friend he trusted to help, he lay back, rested, and fell into the sleep his tortured body demanded. He never woke up.
The room use units, no longer detecting any life within, called for a cleaning crew and it was they who found him and his mad work, work that was soon in the hands of the very people he had wanted to keep it from.
Dhrazji had done his research well, and his writing was absolutely convincing. Dhrazji, recognized now for the genius he was, was given an honorable burial and his work was made known to the people. The leaders, recognizing the mistake they had made in censoring his project, now sought to find a way to implement the one thing he recommended: escape!
It was just possible. The Frawn were not watching the system as closely as they had been — their attention occupied by a spy ship they had sent out earlier — and the lull in their attention just might make it possible to escape again into the shadows before the Frawn decided that the Skeltz were worth the effort to pursue.
The time was almost perfect. The Frawn planet, in the nearest system, was almost into its annual dip in relation to the Skeltz’ system. The Frawn planet had gone behind its sun, and that meant that relays would have to be used to receive information from their satellites in the Skeltz’ system. The satellites that had all been tampered with to show no change for a period of several days. Reception from relays was always a bit lower in quality, and that might allow the tampering to go unnoticed.
If things worked right. The population was alerted. The enemy planet was almost behind its sun. The Skeltz ships were on standby, and every station was manned. The time was down to seventeen hours when the long range sensors started showing the peculiar signature of the Black Fleet headed into the system.
To seek escape now would put them into the very middle of that formidable foe, and they had no doubt as to the outcome of that move. Their only hope was that the Black Fleet would be gone within the ten-day window they had before the Frawn planet emerged again into line of sight. Even then, knowing the end that awaited them if they stayed, they would have to chance escape.
* * *
Away, in another part of the galaxy, on a planet called Harmony, Me’Avi Shapirov announced the discoveries to the gathered representatives of the Galactic Assembly and assured them that they would be kept up to date.
* * *
Zhelin was still in a sort of shock that these strangers could be so like her people and, in fact, include some brothers lost long ago. She found that the feeling of safety that came with this new situation was a luxury that she wished she had known long before. Now, with the assurances that the exploratory fleet would not encroach on the decisions of her people but only wanted to inspect the recently defeated foe’s captured equipment, she found it not hard to press her people to allow the search.
Another unbelievable surprise was in store for Zhelin. The information capsule had given her people solid information about the goals of the strangers’ fleet. Zhelin had received a qualified yes to the strangers’ search, and the alien ships began their journey to the home of the Frawn.
As the ships began to leave the system, what seemed to be a great doorway opened; and as the Charity passed through, Zhelin and her crew found themselves already home. Zhelin almost fainted in shock.
For the people of the Frawn system, thinking they had weeks to prepare for the coming of the strangers, the shock was even greater, for suddenly not only was their own ship back but the sky was full of even more ships, far more than they had expected. They suspected a trap and began to call in their fleet into a defensive position.
However, the foreign ships did not do anything to threaten them but simply took up position at the outer reaches of their system, ready to jump to the system that hid the defeated fugitives from the Frawn. That done, the commander of the Galactic Assembly Fleet — as it had identified itself to the Frawn — offered to put his fleet under Frawn direction for the duration of their stay. Soon, the fright over, the Frawn and the Assembly representatives were hard at work exchanging information.
It was not long before things got a little hot. The information brought by the Assembly people, when mixed with the Frawns’ data, showed beyond a doubt the kind of people that were hiding in the useless system. The Frawn suddenly refused the Galactic Assembly ships entrance to that system. Instead, they insisted that the Assembly fleet stay in the outer reaches of the Frawn system while the Frawn themselves confronted the enemy.
In the middle of the conversations a messenger came in and informed the two groups that the Black Fleet was again in the system in question and seemed to be examining it very carefully, almost too carefully.
The Frawn bristled with anger at the news, but Black Fleet or not, the said they were going to the system and they were going now.
The Galactic fleet, having put themselves under Frawn direction, agreed to the terms and asked if the Frawn fleet would like to use a Door to make the journey faster and more of a surprise to their enemy. The offer was accepted immediately.
The next morning, even as the fleets began their trip towards the great interstellar Door, the Skeltz were warming up their drives, for it seemed as if the Black Fleet was finally beginning to head out of the system. And what seemed right turned out to be true, for the Black Fleet fleet gathered itself together and headed out into interstellar space.
The Skeltz commander gave the order and the ships started their beginning maneuver to position themselves to leave the system when, to their surprise, the Frawn fleet suddenly appeared out of nowhere in a globe that surrounded them.
Behind them were ships of another design, one reminiscent of the ships that the Qwell’Na had used to defeat them in that other war, so long ago. And, behind them, hanging in space like a great circle of shadows, was the Black Fleet. The Skeltz had nowhere to go.
A hail came to them saying, “We of the Frawn people know who you are. You are the Kre-oti, the Qwell’Di. You are the devils that brought death to our people and taught us to kill. But not all of us died, some escaped. Now we are here to return your gifts of death to you. We have learned our lesson well, Qwell’Di. Now you will learn yours.”
The terrible fire of revenge surged in on the Skeltz. Their existence was soon purged from the galaxy, a cancer that could not be allowed to survive and grow.
The deed done, the ships turned to leave, each fleet going in its own direction: the Frawn back to their system, which was now connected by Doors to Galactic Assembly territory; the Galactic Fleet back to its schedule of exploration; and the Black Fleet back on its strange path.
Once out of sensor range the Black Fleet stopped in an out-of-the-way system. Most of the ships shrank down into small, hyperspace-equipped, virtual projectors that then made their way into the holds of the remaining ships.
* * *
As the Galactic Assembly fleet moved out-system to continue its journey, a comm officer called to the Fleet Commander, saying he had something to show him.
“What is it, Sergeant?”
“It is this, Sir. During the battle I spent some time checking out that Black Fleet. Every ship was absolutely like every other. They were perfect. It isn’t right for all those ships to be so perfectly alike.”
“Their technology is different from ours. Maybe that is the way they do things.”
“That’s what I thought, Sir. But then I saw this,” he replied, showing the Commander that one ship was a little different, with something on its bow.
“Can you magnify that picture, Sergeant?”
“Yes, Sir,” he answered as the brought the object in closer. Still, although it looked like some of kind of lettering, it was in a very dark color and still not decipherable.
“Once more, Sergeant.”
The sergeant complied and the Commander, barely able to discern the lettering, burst out laughing.
“Sir, what is so funny, Sir?”
Holding his side from the pain of the laughter, the Commander finally was able to gasp out, “See for yourself, Sergeant.”
Peering, straining a little even, the Sergeant made out, despite the chipped paint, the words Harrigan’s Whelp.
Copyright © 2005 by euhal allen
