Star Glory (Empire Series Book 1) Page 11

  The lieutenant stepped forward. “What can you tell us about the Empire of Eternity? Are there other star-traveling people like you? Are there people who steal from this Empire? And do any other peoples possess weapons with the reach of the Empire ship weapons?” Morales looked aside to the nine of us, then back. “We know little of this Empire, other than how deadly and predatory it is.”

  Hatsepsit gestured to Madamedura. Who reached up and grabbed a cluster of yellow fruit balls. She tossed them to her sister, who caught them easily, holding them all against her long reddish-brown chest fur. “I will share what we know. But it will take some while.” Hatsepsit tossed a fruit ball to Cassie, who caught it even as she looked surprised. The big Mother tossed fruit balls to each of us. “Eat of this sweet fruit. It will provide energy while we visit.”

  “Thank you,” Cassie said after taking a bite of the yellow fruit ball. “Tastes like an orange. And smells better.” She switched off the Orion Arm holo and lowered her tablet.

  Hatsepsit moved to sit under a tree located in the middle of her bridge. We all followed her, taking seats on the metal floor or on the soil beneath the tree. “Yes, there are other peoples who sent out life ships like ours before their home worlds were destroyed.” The orang-being pointed her red tablet at Cassie’s tablet. “The locations of five such peoples who we met while traveling up this Orion Arm are now known to you.” She lowered the tablet, her brown eyes big and bright. “And yes, there are beings in single starships who raid Empire outposts and then flee into gray space before Empire fighting ships arrive. Three locations where we met such people are included in the knowledge I shared just now. One of the locations is the site of a comet base where these raiders repaired the fusion pulse engine of one of our life ships.” She took a deep breath. “As for the weapons and speed of the Empire fighter ships, we have learned that a few people in the Empire possess ships able to move as quickly as Empire ships. And some people even possess the deadly black beams that turn a ship into a small skyglow. Both can be found at the raider base. But no one understands how Empire ships can hide from detection. Like you we have devices that detect the invisible emissions sent out by power blocks and dark space engines. We are unable to detect Empire ships until they drop their concealment. By that time they are always within striking range. Which is why we and other traveling outcasts stay beyond any star’s magnetic sphere, the better to disappear into grayness when a crowd of Empire fighter ships suddenly appears.”

  “So you have no way to detect the arrival of Empire ships?” called Hilary Chang.

  “We cannot detect their presence. But their arrival outside a star system is possible.” The big orang gestured to her sister. “Mother Madamedura is a specialist in the study of invisible radiations. She and other specialists on our other life ships watch for the sudden arrival of . . . of what you call gravitons. The particles that give weight to all substance.” The orang took a big bite out of her fruit, munched it several times and swallowed. “We have noticed that while such particles arrive from all directions of space, when a ship is about to exit from gray space there is a surge of these gravitons. If your specialist people watch their devices closely, they will note the direction and rough distance at which an incoming ship will appear out of the grayness.” Hatsepsit looked to Cassie. “Mother-To-Be Murphy, watching our graviton devices is how we knew of your arrival, even before you left the gray space. We saw you arrive at the other side of this system. Then we saw a closer surge of gravitons, which told us you had detected our power emissions and chosen to arrive here. We were ready to flee if you had been an Empire starship or a people allied with the Empire.”

  Cassie looked to Chang. “Tactical, you got that? Watching for this graviton surge will be vital to the captain, no matter what star he takes us to next.”

  “Would your Mother-To-Be Chang wish to see our records of these graviton surges?” Hatsepsit said in a low rumble.

  “She would,” Cassie said.

  Hatsepsit gestured to Madamedura. “Take her to your study cup. Show her what we detect.”

  The big orang stood up. “Will you join me?” she said, looking to Chang.

  “I will join you.” Chang waved to the rest of us, then followed the red-furred Mother to a nearby cup seat that stood below a bulkhead vidscreen.

  Cassandra looked over to Oksana. “Intelligence, check those star locations for people like these Melanchon. And note which star holds this pirate base.”

  “I will check their data,” Okie said, pulling back her tablet from its closeness to Cassie’s tablet. “This pirate base sounds promising if it can do ship repairs.”

  Cassie looked back to the boss orang. “Mother Hatsepsit, thank you for this information. And the news about the Empire weapons and ship speed. We lost two fellow ships from the deadliness of the Empire weapons. Do you have any weapons which might harm an Empire ship? And if so, would you share that knowledge with us?”

  The big orang nodded slowly, then lifted her lips in a smile. “Your gift of these world locations is worth anything we possess. I would give you one of our ships if I could. But I cannot. Instead, our Father Woktaken now gives your Father O’Connor knowledge of how to move quickly through gray space.” She gestured to one of the big females who were part of her family. “Mother Niktaktong is a manager of our weapons. Like you we possess weapons which shoot out deadly beams of light. We also possess a weapon that expels hard invisible radiation. You call these particles gamma rays. The Mother will take your specialists to see these weapons.”

  “Thank you,” Morales said quickly, then looked to her side. “Major Owanju, PO Watson, go with this Mother Niktaktong. Learn what you can. Get the specs for these weapons.” The Farm boss looked back to the orang leader. “Mother Hatsepsit, we appreciate your willingness to share weapons knowledge. While we do not know how to produce the black beams that turn a ship into a small star, our coherent laser weapons have a reach shorter than Empire beams. Do you know how the Empire shoots farther than our weapons?”

  Hatsepsit took another yellow fruit ball from one of her family Mothers. “We do not know that. The reach of our light beam weapons is far shorter than Empire beams. And since our life ships cannot move faster through real space than Empire ships, we avoid visiting the planets of any star system. But the leaders of the raider base may know more. They offered us weapons but we wished only to have our engine repaired.”

  I watched as Bill left with the major and Mother Niktaktong. They headed for an arch door in a distant wall, passed through it and disappeared from sight. Which left seven of us. What else was going to happen? More importantly, were there other Melanchon devices which would be useful to the Star Glory and the captain?

  “Mother Hatsepsit,” Morales said, leaning forward. “I love these yellow fruit balls! I hope your people have enjoyed our cartons of apples, oranges, pomegranates, mangos, grapes and strawberries that we brought over.”

  The boss Mother smiled big, lifting her big brown lips high to expose her white teeth. Which like human teeth were a mix of front canines and rear molars. Though the molars appeared bigger than any human molar. Which made sense in view of how linked to trees and tree fruits these people were. While they might eat insects and eggs like the orangutans of Earth, it was clear they loved their tree fruits. That gave me an idea.

  “Lieutenant Morales, perhaps Mother Hatsepsit would like to receive seeds from our apple and orange trees, if you have any in storage?”

  The Spaniard lifted her black eyebrows in surprise, then gave another of her big engaging smiles. “Yes!” She looked back to the boss orang. “Mother Hatsepsit, among our trees on my Farm Deck there are fruit trees. They grow there and also inside our Forest Room. I have seeds of such trees in cold storage. Would you like some of our fruit tree seeds? To grow Earth fruit trees on your life ships?”

  “Yes, yes!” smacked Hatsepsit as she leaned forward eagerly. “Variety in food is much desired by our people, especially our young ones,
” she said, her wide shoulders hunching together. “We will trade you seeds of our Mother Trees. Their yellow fruit grows in all seasons. We have other fruit trees and bushes. We will trade those seeds to you, Mother Morales. Do you have room to add new trees to your Farm Deck?”

  “We do!” Morales said excitedly. “Thank you! I’m sure our Mess Hall cooks will enjoy these yellow balls, once we grow a few trees to an age at which they fruit. And if you have berry bushes like our raspberries, that will diversify our meals! After we return to our ship, I will have one of my Farm people come back with a container of seeds. She can receive your seeds then.”

  “This is all fascinating,” murmured Evelyn from where she had sat silent during the discussions. The Irish woman looked to Gladys. “Lieutenant Morales, perhaps these Melanchon would like to see our forest giants. Do you have imagery of redwoods? And the sequoia trees?”

  “Outstanding idea,” Morales said, turning to face the Melanchon leader. She lifted her tablet and pointed it to the empty space where the Orion Arm holo had appeared. She touched a rim control. Light beams sprang out. “Mother Hatsepsit, look up on our giant trees! Their bark is as red as your fur. They are among our oldest trees, living far longer than any human. And they grow taller than any other tree on Earth.”

  I watched as a person-high holo took form in front of Hatsepsit. The image solidified into a line of red-barked leviathans whose trunks reached high into the blue sky. I thought I recognized a grove I had seen north of San Francisco, not far from the Oregon border. Or was it of the sequoia trees that grew near Yosemite National Park in central California? I had visited both places with my Mom and my two sisters, just after my graduation from Great Lakes. It had been an amazing trip, giving life and substance to images I had seen only in three-dee holos. Or on my recorder tablet. Which had been silently recording this meeting in the Leaders Chamber of the Melanchon starship. Now, once more, I felt like I was close to the quiet life of a great forest. One from Earth and one from the home world of the Melanchon. It felt good.

  “Ahhhhh,” rumbled low Hatsepsit, staring fixedly at the forest of redwoods with trunks thicker than the reach of five people. “These resemble the ancient bolo trees of our homeworld. They grew larger than the melong tree under which we rest. Would you like to see our inner world? Where the rest of my people live?”

  “Yes,” said Bjorg, who had been thoughtful during the exchanges with Cassie and Morales. “Where is this inner world?”

  “Through the door beyond and then past a vine walkway,” Hatsepsit said, rising to her bare feet.

  She wore no shoes, unlike the tennies we humans wore. But her feet were wide and long, with prehensile toes that could clearly grip a branch or limb. It was another puzzle which I had thought about before and since our arrival on this giant ship. Why were the Melanchon females larger than the males? Why did these orangutan-like beings have families of four females and one male? Where were the children?

  “Follow me. And see the wonder of what our home world once was,” Hatsepsit said, turning and heading for the exit.

  Her two older sisters followed her. As did Yolomokden and Leksatok. Morales took the lead. Oksana, Cassie, Warren, Bjorg, Evelyn and I followed the boss females. What other mysteries did this giant ship hold?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  After a long trip downward, which I guessed was aimed at taking us closer to the ship’s outer hull, Hatsepsit stepped up onto a deck that lay at a right angle to the ramp we’d come down. As I followed the others up and onto this deck, I felt a change in gravity. My feet told me it was still the nine-tenths gee we had felt in the arrival hangar and on the bridge. But my head said different. Before I could ask about what I felt, Hatsepsit touched a black patch on a wall that held the outline of a large arch door. The door was the size of some aircraft hangar doors. The patch turned green. The big door slowly lowered down, coming to a clanking halt on the floor we stood on. Brilliant yellow light made me blink a lot. The smells of the yellow ball fruits hit my nose hard. A whisper of wind came out from the space beyond, sounding both far and near. My sensitive ears heard rumbling conversations from a far distance. Other conversations were closer. Hatsepsit stalked forward through the giant opening. We all followed.

  Giant melong trees rose up before us, their brown bark ridged and showing loose strips here and there. Limbs thicker than my body reached out from the wide trunks of the trees. We all followed those trunks upward. Then upward more. Finally, far, far above us, we saw a bright yellow glow coming from a long tube that ran from the wall behind us out and down the long, open space into which we had stepped. It was this place’s interior sun. Wilder still was what I saw beyond the tube. Beyond it lay groves of melong trees, green grassy fields, blue ponds, tumbling creeks and ridgelines that poked up above the tops of the melong tree groves. But it was all upside down! What I saw was identical to the space we stood in. But looking up past the tube sun we saw the tops of the distant trees, then the landscape in which they were rooted. It felt like one of those old-style circus spin barrels, where people were pushed against the wooden wall of the barrel as it spun. Then the barrel tilted so people were looking down at the ground below, but did not fall. They were stuck to the barrel wall by the force of what my Great Lakes instructors called spingee. Or the artificial gravity created by rapid rotation of an outer hull around a central axis. What I now saw was a gigantic version of that circus spin barrel.

  “Damn!” yelled Warren, standing with arms widespread as he looked up. “They’re upside down! And it looks like there are people up there!”

  “There are,” Hatsepsit rumbled low and slowly. “Follow the view further down. Inside the spinning shell of our life ship we have recreated the best parts of our home world. We have forests, freshwater ponds, croplands, ridgelines and manufactories where other Melanchon work to build what we need to survive.”

  “It’s an O’Neill cylinder,” Cassie said, her tone wondering. “We are inside a giant tube that spins on its central axis, which is that yellow light tube. The spinning creates spingee. Or centrifugal force. The spingee keeps the soil, water, trees and people firmly glued to the inner lands of this world. Amazing.”

  Cassandra’s words brought to my mind the memory of an O’Neill cylinder that one of my Great Lakes profs had shown us when discussing orbital habitats. Except this Melanchon version had no strips of quartz glass, which would allow in solar light for something in Earth orbit. This life ship cylinder carried its own light inside, in the weightless axis area. That yellow tube shown super bright. Brighter than could be explained by a fluorescent light tube’s gases. Whatever was producing the light glow, it was more powerful than a giant fluorescent tube. I shifted my view, following the long stretch of upside down land, trees and lakes. My memory of the bulkhead vidscreen image with its scale had shown each of these red pencil ships to be ten kilometers long. The distance to the topside had to be a good two kilometers. Which made this giant ship smaller than the five mile width and twenty mile length proposed by Dr. Gerard K. O’Neill. Still, this spinning habitat did what an O’Neill cylinder could not do. It moved through true space on fusion pulse thrusters, then jumped from one star to another using its own Alcubierre stardrive. Truly this life ship was a world unto itself.

  “Where do your people live?” Bjorg said musingly.

  “Half of our million live among the melong forests, which supply food and sleeping locations,” Hatsepsit said. “The other half live in manufactories and enclosures that shelter devices. We Melanchon do enjoy meat, and our enclosures raise the limb-runners we call dokteka. They are the size of my foot or hand.”

  “We too raise small animals for food,” Morales said, reaching out to grip the red-furred shoulder of Hatsepsit. “On my Farm Deck we have guinea pigs, chickens, goats, sheep and pigs. Our human biochemistry requires regular eating of meat proteins, in addition to vegetables and fruits.”

  “Do you humans enjoy spending time in lakes of water?” Hatsepsit said, re
aching up to lay her large hand atop Morales’ left hand.

  “Oh yes! We humans swim a lot,” Morales said. “At the beach where our oceans meet our continents. In lakes. In rivers that flow across our lands. And in artificial lakes we call swimming pools,” Then she laughed brightly. “Bet we dry off faster than you Melanchon!”

  Yolomokden chuffed, which came across as laughter. “For people who resemble hairless Melanchon, of course you will dry quicker than us. But our long fur keeps us warm at nights. You humans must wear dead coverings to keep warm. I do not envy you.”

  “Mother Hatsepsit,” called Warren. “Why do you Melanchon spin your life ship? You have gravity plates on your bridge and in your arrival hangar. Surely you could use such devices to create gravity here. Can’t you?”

  I had wondered the same as my buddy. But I had kept it to myself. However Warren was a Marine corporal. He would of course be curious about power use and why something so artificial as this spingee was being used by these orang-beings. And maybe my friend was wondering at the difficulties involved in taking over a habitat ship that had an inner ecozone which spun like a top. We had yet to encounter any habitat ships run by the religious zealots who had fled EarthGov ten years ago. Presumably those ships had fled uparm, since the Empire people had not encountered other humans. But we might encounter them, when we headed back to Sol. Or if we traveled beyond Sol to an uparm star. While twenty Marines were too few to take over a large habitat ship run by zealots, still, Warren often thought about the combat implications of any place he visited. It was as much a part of his training as my awareness of the rainbow colors generated by the containment fields around our antimatter tubes was part of my training. An AM engineer like me never forgets the essential function of containment magfields, just as no Marine ever forgets about a platoon mate who might cover him in a live fire event.