LINKS
____________
The Christa Affair
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Jashi, Rang, Toko and Roi stood facing their four captives across the empty room. It was the same room where they, along with Karli, had been overcome by the psychotic effects of the pleasure stimulator during their first foray into the city. The interior was deactivated and the captured Raiders had been confined there without any comforts since their intercepted entrance into the city seven days earlier.
The Raiders were Bardarani. Their home-world, Bardara-Twelve, was a heavy-gravity planet -- slightly more than half again that of Summit -- and though more-or-less humanoid, the average stood only about five and a half feet tall and nearly half as wide. The well-muscled torso ended in short, powerful legs and a graceful tail. Their skin was thick -- almost scaly -- to protect them from the heat and radiation of their sun, and their eyes had a second, transparent lid.
Though not members of the Federation, the Bardarani held Favored-World status, with full trading rights. They were prolific traders, and the \Klondike\ had made planetfall on their world more than once; those Jashi had dealt with on such occasions had always been quite sociable.
The leader of the Raiders spoke in a gravelly voice, his tail twitching in anger, "I demand that we be given food and water!" His Federation Basic was flawless.
"Fuck you, swamp-slime!" retorted Jashi bitterly. "You'll be fed when you tell me what I want to know."
"Com p'w-itzss!" Jashi recognized the Bardarani expression of contempt -- roughly equivalent to the expletive he himself had just employed.
This was going nowhere fast. The captives had twice been subjected to maximum doses of the pleasure stimulator -- the last time for over an hour -- but it had had no apparent effect, and according to information in the ship's computer, Bardarani could go for weeks without food or water with no serious difficulty. Jashi was growing weary of waiting for them to break.
He looked at his brother; Rang shrugged. It wasn't to their liking -- Mowii and Suu had voted against it -- but the majority had reluctantly voted yes; they \had\ to have information. Jashi raised the L'sa'rian wand in his hand and pointed it at the Raider Captain.
The Bardarani's eyes widened slightly as he retracted the transparent lid; the tip of his tail twitched nervously, once, but he made no sound. Jashi wondered if he recognized the weapon. Slowly the muzzle of the wand swung away from the leader to the one standing next to him, and Jashi pressed the activation stud. The beam reached out to surround him, bathing him in a purple glow; both the beam and the Raider vanished as Jashi release the stud.
"Gon tov'tz!?" The leader no longer looked nonchalant. His eyes widened further as they darted from Jashi's to the weapon and back again; his nostrils flared slightly.
"I don't know \where\ he went, but you're about to join him!" The wand swung back to cover the Raider Captain.
"I am called Relwofnod. I am Master of the ship now resting on the surface above you. Release us, and I give you my word we will leave and molest you no further."
Jashi thought of Karli; the knot in his stomach was unbearable. "I just hope someone else in this menagerie has the info we need," he muttered. He shrugged and pressed the activation stud again; the remaining two Bardarani became a veritable fountain of information.
*********
The Bardaran ship was one of almost a hundred Raiders operating out of Sanctuary. They were a motley bunch, made up of ships from a dozen worlds, crewed by criminal misfits and fugitives from nearly every inhabited planet in the galaxy. In return for safe haven on Sanctuary, sixty percent of their booty went into Licti's coffers.
The now-nonexistent Captain Relwofnod had been tipped to Katya's voyage by Licti himself, and promised her ship and its entire cargo as a bonus if she was delivered to him undamaged. Licti had immediately recanted when the nature of the cargo was discovered, leaving the Raiders with only the Sphere and an ancient Uzosi document the Princess had referred to as the Book of Forbidden Knowledge; these had been given to Relwofnod by Katya in return for his promise to put her down on Uzos-Three -- a promise never intended to be kept. Licti was unaware of the existence of the Sphere, the Book, or the other cities within the dead, frozen world.
The Raider ship and her crew had returned to L'sa'ria on their own, unbeknownst to Licti, to raid the remaining functioning city -- the one in which they now found themselves held prisoner. They had no knowledge of Katya's current whereabouts, or of the connection -- if any -- between Licti and the present disheveled state of affairs in the galaxy; they could only speculate as to the reason behind the kidnapping.
They professed to know nothing of what the cargo holds of the Princess' yacht had contained. When Jashi pressed the question, their answer was "weapons, many weapons", but only the Captain had seen any of the loot. They had boarded the yacht only once -- just before going hyper for the return trip to Sanctuary -- and the Captain had made a side-trip to the aft cargo hold while his henchmen transferred the Princess and her servant to the Raider ship and murdered her crew, jettisoning the bodies into space. He had brought back a souvenir -- a particle-beam hand-weapon like the one the \Klondike's\ crew had used for target practice in the open country just outside the city.
By the time the interrogation was finished, Jashi was convinced they had held nothing back. These were simply Raiders -- interstellar pirates -- nothing more; they weren't even aware of the fantastic nature of the spherical L'sa'rian ship they had captured.
*********
*********
"That's about it," said Rang, crossing the anteroom of their quarters to the refreshment console. He poured himself a mug of coffee before he continued. "Licti has Princess Katya, the L'sa'rian ship, the transport technology, super-optic particle-beam weapons, and gods-only-know what else. I don't think there's any doubt that he's behind the disappearance of Christa, and probably also behind the Estarani popping up all over the galaxy. The Estarani attack against us on Ultazari would seem to indicate a common link -- the L'sa'rian ship, grasshoppers, weapons that caused hyperspace interference, and the only known deposit of I-26 in the galaxy since we lost Christa. They all tie together... Somehow."
"Toko said there was a ship-mounted version of the wand powerful enough to take out a starship," reminded Lito. "That would be enough to shift Christa... but how did he spread grasshoppers across millions of light-years? And all at the same time?"
"Transport booths," said Mowii, offering the obvious answer.
"Won't fly." responded Roi. "He'd have to have set up a booth on every planet that was attacked. Not enough time."
"You're right," responded Rang, "unless there's more to the transport technology than what we've discovered. Toko's checking into that now. What I really want to know is how that ship could vanish right before our eyes. And where did the hoppers come from?... I mean, we watched the ship the whole time it was there and nothing ever left it -- no grasshoppers or anything else. Even if the ship was full of them, how did they get out and into the camp?"
"I think I have the answer to all of that." It was Toko, just coming from the Hall of Records; Suu and Jashi entered right behind him, returning from the infirmary. "The L'sa'rian ship has 'instant drive'."
"Say what?" gasped Rang.
"You heard me... Instant drive! It can jump from here to the other side of the galaxy in less time than it takes the \Klondike\ to achieve low planetary orbit! Licti could set up transport booths on a hundred worlds in one day."
Suddenly they were all talking at once. Impatiently Jashi whistled for silence. "Let him finish," he demanded curtly.
"It's an extension of the same technology that allowed them to shift things from one dimension to another," continued Toko, pouring himself and Jashi a mug of coffee. "It was right in front of me all the time, but I just didn't make the connection...
"About the time the sperm deposits were destroyed, the People discovered a dimension in which time and distance, as we know it, don't exist. They could shift to this dimension, 'step' to their destination, and shift back, in only the time it took to set the equipment and perform the shift -- the journey itself was instantaneous.
"They lost several ships perfecting it. It was tricky; if the phase drifted during the performance of the transport maneuver, even slightly, the ship tore itself apart, or so they theorized -- no one ever returned to say for sure.
"When the last child born to the world was almost nine hundred years old, the entire population set out for the Magellanic clouds. Their telemetry back to the recorder in the star-room showed a normal liftoff and, after blasting under conventional drive for six and one-half days, the Flagship Captain's report that all was well and they were preparing to shift... And that's it -- end of record. The ship captured by the Raider at the time of Katya's kidnapping -- the one now in Licti's possession -- is the only one they left behind."
There was silence in the room as the others tried to digest this new revelation. The idea of modifying the \Klondike's\ hyperdrive to do twenty-plus light-years in a day had been mind-boggling; these people knew how to go a hundred or a thousand times that far in an immeasurable instant.
"Unfortunately, it can't be installed in the \Klondike\," continued Toko, before anyone could ask. "The hull of the ship itself -- as well as the spherical shape -- is part of the device. I'm afraid our friend Licti has the only one in captivity."
"Has the Keeper finished modifying the hyperdrive?" asked Jashi.
"Just today, and the wand is installed. There's no way to test it without lifting, though."
"Well, jump planet and test it then," snapped Jashi. "I've gotta get back to Karli!"
"Wait a minute!" protested Toko. "I've got something else to show you before you go. It'll only take a minute."
Reluctantly Jashi turned from the door. He was impatient to get back to the L'sa'rian hospital, where he had kept a constant vigil at Karli's bedside since their return from the surface after picking her up from her crumpled landingcraft. In the seven days since, Karli's condition had remained unchanged. She lay unmoving and unconscious, floating within the strange, soft-green light of the same device that had been used to treat Jashi following their near-fatal adventure in the room-run-amok. The Keeper's prognosis wasn't encouraging, and the others were acutely aware that Jashi was walking a fine line, dangerously near total breakdown.
Toko took a small cylinder from his pocket. At first glance, it appeared to be one of the personal return devices like the one Suu had used to escape her tumbling lifeboat -- like the one that had slipped away from Karli -- but this one had a rotateable ring around one end. He adjusted the ring until he was satisfied, then pressed the stud on the end; instantly he was gone.
"Shit, Toko, I've seen that!" protested Jashi testily, starting for the door. "When he comes back, tell him I'm at the hos..." He broke off in mid-sentence as something blocked his way. "What the...?"
"It's me, Jashi!" It was Toko's voice, from directly in front of him, but there was nothing there. "Uhh..." Jashi reached out tentatively. There \was\ something there -- he could feel it; suddenly Toko materialized before him. Pandemonium broke out in the room as they all began talking at once.
Jashi's worry about Karli was temporarily pushed from his mind by this new discovery. "How? What? Where did you find that?"
"I'm not sure if it's done with one of the multiple dimensions, or if it is the same technology that provides the Optically Manipulated Atmosphere in the theatre -- maybe both. I haven't had time to research it... But it damn sure works! Could come in real handy. Soon as I get time, I'll check to see if it only works optically, or if it provides scanner cloaking too. Probably only optical -- I didn't go anywhere; you just couldn't see me. I think it can be adapted to hide a ship, too."
Before they had time to even partly digest this new revelation and all its possible applications, there was a scream. It came from the open intercom channel to Karli's room in the hospital on the far side of the foyer -- a shrill, piercing scream of abject terror that went on, and on, and on.
CHAPTER THIRTY
This document maintained by JD Fowler --
Material Copyright © 1988 Dennis R.
Triplitt
Site Design Copyright © 2000 lordoftheflies.org
Company