“Just passing through, I’m a little lost.” Chevallier lowered her rifle, convinced that the five-foot ratlike creature posed no threat. “You got a name?”
“Juloo is my name, yes, yes, it is. Yours?”
“Mathilda; Mathilda Chevallier.”
“Excellent, you seek not to take my home away!” Juloo trotted away back into the main halls of the ship waving for Chevallier to follow. “Come, you must be hungry, yes, yes?”
The mention of food reminded Chevallier of her neglected belly and the fact that it’s impossible to eat when you’re stuck in a suit of combat armor and being washed away by a big ass tsunami for twelve hours.
Juloo lead Chevallier through the long halls, past the entrance she forced open and into a dark central chamber. A camp fire glowed brightly while a pot hanging above it boiled. It smelt awful. Vacant cryostasis tubes were the dominant sight within the long chamber, a chamber that easily made up 70 to 80 percent of the ship. This was a colonization ship, no doubt about it. Why else would they require so many cryo tubes?
“We rest in here,” Juloo said as she attended to her soup. The broth had come to a rolling boil. “Thick shielding within the hull protects skin from radiation in here.”
“I take it you know a lot about ships then?”
“Yes, yes! A requirement if one wishes to have passage on a ship from the great merchant fleet of the Qirak.” Juloo dipped an unclean ladle into the pot, and brought it to her lips, a satisfied smirk appeared after her tiny sample of the soup. “This ship may not be spaceworthy, but it is seaworthy.”
“You turned it into a boat?”
“I sail the oceans of this world searching for other ships like this. A great many exist in the system all full of items Poniga and Undine would trade for great profits.”
“Do you know where the wormhole on this planet is?”
“Yes, yes. There is only one, I use it on occasion to trade with the Poniga.”
“I need to head back to it, can you take me there?”
“Maybe,” Juloo said, eying Chevallier’s weapon and equipment.
Right Qirak only care about personal gain and profits, Chevallier thought.
She reached inside of her side storage, hoping that the contents inside hadn’t been swept away into the ocean.
They hadn’t.
A fist full of jewels came out of Chevallier’s container, the same ones that were given to Norauk. But she didn’t need to know that part.
Juloo’s eyes lit up while her ratlike tails wagged. “Oh, yes, this will work!” Juloo’s excited eyes fixed in on the container where Chevallier brought the jewels out of. “You have more, yes, yes?”
“Is this not enough?”
“You know how to use wormhole?”
“Well.” Chevallier bit her lip, she knew where this was going to lead, and she knew that if things were going to go sideways she’d need a way off this planet. “No, I don’t.”
“I can explain, but that’s extra jewels!” Juloo cocked both of her index fingers at the container. “Your armor is low on power, yes, yes?”
Chevallier groaned. “Yes . . .”
“I may be able to recharge its energy cells. But that’s even more jewels.” Chevallier emptied the contents of her storage container. Multicolored spheres and ovals clattered and rolled all over the cold floor. “Yes, yes! This will do,” Juloo said, while leaping to the floor to pick up her payment, her tail wagging intensified briefly then stopped as she looked up and stroked the material of Chevallier’s armor. “You know—”
“I don’t have anything else to give.”
“Jewels are good, but technology is better, Undine and Poniga cannot build them.”
Chevallier hurled her helmet onto the floor next to Juloo, it was damaged anyways and lacked further use now that her oxygen supply was nearly depleted. Juloo lifted the Hammerhead helmet up holding it high above her head, maniacal laughter escaping her mouth.
Chevallier slipped out of her armor as Juloo directed her to a series of crude cables plugged into partially working cryo tubes. Juloo fiddled around with the cables, frantically searching for a way for them to connect to the combat armor’s main batteries. Sparks flared out for ten seconds as contact between the batteries and the cables was made. Chevallier kneeled and checked the status display of her equipment, the recharge icon had flashed.
Chevallier and Juloo sat next to each other at the camp fire, indulging in the soup she had created for their meal. It tasted worse than it smelt, the tiny fish bones floating on top of the brown broth didn’t enhance her enjoyment of the meal. Chevallier took another look at the cryo chamber that Juloo had turned into her personal bedroom, kitchen, and workshop, and winced.
The ship easily held hundreds if not thousands of people, the chamber itself had to have been four stories tall. Juloo alluded that there were other ships like this on the planet and scattered throughout the system, a system that by rights should be on the same level as Lejorania Sanctum or Morutrin Prime, planets that were colonized by the Linl before they joined Radiance. The videos she had been watching also referred to Linl colonies in the system. And it was that realization that caused concern and worry to grow within her head as she double-checked and confirmed that every cryo tube had been opened.
What the hell happened to them? What the hell happened to the Lyonria colonists before them? What the hell is going to happen to the human colony we have planned to build?
Suddenly the Carl Sagan’s expedition into the Sirius while dragging along thousands of colonists looked like a very bad idea.
19 WILLIAMS
Ancient Lyonria Construct, Tropical Rain forest
SA-139, Sirius A system
May 21, 2050, 14:34 SST (Sol Standard Time)
Commander Dominic Williams was relieved to see the Carl Sagan’s medical team led by Dr. Irena Kostelecky storm into the chamber that several hours ago was a battlefield. Behind Kostelecky and her team, was a team of eight fully armed Hammerhead personnel that stood overwatch in front of the wormhole in anticipation of it opening again with more hostile forces on the other side.
The doctor quickly began the task of triaging those on the floor, and then later examined Tolukei who had remained lifeless on the ground since their arrival. With each passing minute, the ancient Lyonria chamber turned into a makeshift medical and military camp, complete with beds and mobile computers.
The intensity of the medical team reduced as they managed to get the situation back under control. Williams took advantage of Kostelecky’s more relaxed attitude and approached her. “Thanks for coming, doc.”
“You guys are really making me earn my pay,” Kostelecky said as she lowered her medical scanner to face him.
“If there’s anything I could do to help.”
“You could start by handing me that flesh regenerator there.” She pointed to a table with various flashing tools on them. Williams picked up and handed her the device and wondered if he’d ever get used to such advanced means of healing wounds. Using modified Radiance medical equipment to heal was still a strange concept to him. “Good, now you can help me further by talking less and letting me focus.”
Kostelecky used the device to treat the injured robed person below them. Not even a ‘thanks’ eh? Williams thought. “I’ll be on my way then.”
“Actually.” Kostelecky pushed the device into one of the many pockets on her white medical coat. “I need to get some of these people back to sickbay; the equipment I have here isn’t going to cut it with some of the badly wounded, including Tolukei.”
“How many people are we talking about?”