SODIUM:6 Defiance (6 page)

We set our next destination to be Alnilam, the center star of Orion's belt. As we accelerated on our way to Alnilam one of the team, science officer Chaz Humphrey, made mention of the age of the stars we had been visiting. They were each only eight to ten million years old. Hardly enough time for a habitable planet to coalesce, cool and spring forth with life. He reasoned that each of the planets we had visited had been moved from elsewhere, or heavily terraformed with the indigenous life introduced afterward.

It was an interesting insight that the other team members had not picked up on. I wondered if the mountain site at DaCuban held the key as to how these worlds had come about. It was easy to see the progress of life on Earth through fossil records, but that had taken place over the course of the last billion years, three billion years after the Earth was first formed. These planets were out of place amongst such young stars. We logged the idea as a point of discussion for the scientists back home.

When we arrived at Alnilam it was again a system teeming with activity. There were no planets in orbit around the young blue super-giant star. But there was a space station like none we had seen before. It's long rectangular shape was dotted with ports and thousands of docked ships. As we observed we took note that each ship had a transponder and the transponders were coded to six unique frequencies.

After mapping traffic as it arrived and departed we soon had directions to 14 nearby star systems. The next month was spent traveling to each to gather information. The six unique transponder codes were tied to seven species within the star systems we had observed.

Harris had been feverishly working to unravel the alien languages. He soon had a set of common terms used by all and was able to build translator modules for each distinct language. I continued to be impressed by his work.

They identified themselves as the Kooze Collective. The seven species were divided into six governed zones. The Hark were the dominant species and were identified as one of the good species we had found on the right hand door on DaCuban. They were the first of the three symbols from the right bottom row.

The Hark had an appearance that resembled a giant sloth. They had brown fur and large bellies. Their hands were not clawed as a sloth's, but had three fingers and an opposable thumb. Their slow walk turned their large belly from side to side as they moved along. Again we studied their behavior through televised signals. The Hark occupied two star systems with four habitable planets and appeared to be a friendly people.

The next species was the Bellians. They were the final symbol on the right hand door at DaCuban. The Bellians had a bright green scaly skin with a white underbelly. They were bipeds and sported a short tail. From the signals we had intercepted they seemed like an industrious species, moving about quickly and heavily involved in trade; a species whose dealings with others seemed to be on friendly terms.

The five remaining species were identified as members of the archway 36 from DaCuban. Each had a unique appearance, culture and behavior, but each seemingly got along well with the others. Two of the five species shared both a government and planet.

When the languages had all been interpreted and each species studied and logged we were given the order to make contact. Harris and Miller soon had a channel open to traffic controllers of the great station. After discussions with several individuals of ever increasing rank, a heavy cruiser was sent to escort us to the station.

We pulled into an open port and set down at dock BEL1244. A Bellian Ambassador was the first to greet us. We were escorted to a large conference room with windows that looked out upon the traffic coming to and leaving from the station. It was a busy place.

Ambassador Creeger gave a standard welcome speech, but with its delivery I could tell it had not been used very often. In our discussions he revealed that we were the first travelers to visit the Alnilam region in more than five centuries. The previous guests had come limping along in a tattered starship.

The Karant were a people on the run. Their planet had been attacked and all their citizens killed. The starship Bella and its 156 passengers were all that remained. Their planet had been destroyed by a CME coming from their sun shortly after a mysterious ship had arrived. The Bella had been returning from a mining colony when the attack happened. They had taken heavy damage from a particle beam strike just as they reached light speed. They returned to their system two months later only to find that their people were no more.

I asked if we could see an image of the Karant, they were soon identified as the remaining species from the bottom of the right door. The Karant exchanged technology with the Kooze collective in return for repairs to their ship, and for supplies. They departed for a destination unknown shortly thereafter. The last known trajectory of the Karant ship was heading for dead space. Creeger noted that it had been a big story when he was but a child.

Creeger was our escort and was thrilled when we invited him on the Saxon for our travels to the other planets. He was the first Kooze to have ever flown at 1,000 times the speed of light. He was extremely impressed by the minimum of our technology we had decided to reveal, and was particularly fond of our BGS suits. The next two months were spent touring the Kooze systems and establishing relations with the government of each species. Again, it was an anthropologists dream.

We had soon moved on from the Kooze system on our continued exploration mission. Our next stop was the Trapezium. Again, it was a system of young stars which would not normally support life. Upon our arrival it was determined that there were no habitable planets, but there was a cluster of five large stations that were held together with a series of tubes.

The five stations each had a different appearance. The largest of them was green and had the look of hundreds of bubbles that had formed together. What appeared to be gun-ports lined each of the docks where freighters and transports came and went in a continuous stream. Several large cruiser class military ships were parked just off its main transportation hub as an obvious deterrent to attackers.

The next station to its right was a pristine white. The rounded modular sections that comprised the station were topped with spires that protruded deep into space. Again, traffic moved about and was guarded by more military craft.

The third station was a dull gray and its construction was a series of tubes that were bound together similar to an old style pack of hot dogs. Tubular dull Gray military ships were camped out on its exterior.

The final two stations were similar in appearance with boxy structures built upon boxy structures. Some wore paint while others displayed the look of stainless steel. Hundreds of much smaller destroyer sized craft were parked in rows in a semi-circle going out from the final two stations. Large tube shaped connections bound each station to the next.

We parked and observed for five days until Harris had enough of the language decoded that we could attempt to communicate. Fifteen minutes later an ambassador was offering a greeting as a military commander asked questions of our business. We were explorers, who came with the purpose of establishing relations.

Ambassador Shizen of the Remmik was standing with his aid when we stepped out of the Saxon. His long spindly gray fingers extended in a welcoming gesture. I returned a wave as I looked around the space-dock. Two other ships were unloading cargo while one boarded passengers. The Remmik station was the white one with spires. The modular buildings that lined the floor of the port were similar to the external architecture of the station.

The Remmik were the keeper of faiths for Bolin Station. Nine species of beings made up the five stations that had joined together 4,244 Earth years before, during the Bolin Adjournment. Except for the Remmik, their histories had been broken with no known planet of origin. They each had existed on their station for thousands of years, drifting through space from parts unknown before joining with the Remmik.

The Freg had been the first to arrive and when the two stations combined the Bolin calendar was set at the year zero. They were followed by explorers from the Girris and Delwins whose station joined 322 years later after a lengthy maneuver. The Berbas, Mellonians and Joggs joined in 1277 followed by the Rhus and Teagree in 1589. All nine species adorned the archway at DaCuban.

The stars surrounding Bolin Station had been plagued with pirates for centuries causing each station to struggle to exist at times. With their resources and fleets joined they eradicated the pirate threat and had lived in peace for thousands of years. The Berbas were adept at science and the Delwins at engineering. But neither species excelled at theory leaving the conglomerate of stations with very little evolution from the time of the Adjournment.

During the 4,244 years since, the people of Bolin station had not reported an interaction with any other species. The Remmik had been forced into the stars as their red sun expanded during its natural death cycle. Their more than 7,000 years of history on their home world had been recorded and was a point of study for every Remmik youth. The three dominant religions from their planet were now the dominant beliefs on Bolin Station.

Ambassador Shezen shuttled us from station to station for meetings with the politicos of each station's government. The laws of each station differed in many subtle ways and it was the responsibility of the traveler to know the laws of the station they were on. Crime rates were low and the citizens of each station went about the mundane tasks of life with a somewhat positive attitude.

The shopkeeper would rise in the morning to meet with his suppliers. Once a week he or she would travel to other businesses with requests to stock goods that were in demand or to push for lower prices on those that weren't. They would go home to their families at the end of the Bolin day and spend the time in front of a two-dimensional display where they watched station news or entertainment.

A career in the Bolin Station military was about as dull and boring of an existence as one could have. Military incidents were few and far between, many centuries would pass with no activity. The highlight of a career in the Corps was the annual war game where the ships were divided into two factions of equal size. But the Remmik ships and weapons were superior, so their side always came away victorious. For most, they were happy to participate, regardless of the predetermined outcome.

I asked the ambassador where they drew their supplies from. He responded that they had 16 mining colonies on distant planets bringing back the natural resources they required. None of those planets were habitable and with no life to support, they had been deemed free from claim and worthy of mining.

Other than mining there were no other known outposts or colonies in their traveled space. The drive systems, as well as the weapons and the shields of their ships, were far behind our technologies. At just below the speed of light it would take them lifetimes to get anywhere meaningful. They were content with where they were.

After a month of discussions with the ambassador and the other politicians we were ordered to head to Rigel before coming home. It was another two month journey and the team spent the time going over the technologies that came from Bolin Station.

Even though they were far behind on interstellar travel they did have a few technologies that they were willing to trade. We offered the plans for a BGS (minus its Sodium skin and fusion power) in exchange for sensor technology and a few choice methods for the recycling of materials. Those methods, although simple and low tech, could be used to cut Earth's demand for raw materials by nearly a sixth.

On the trip to Rigel our team was hard at work with the engineers at home in an attempt to make use of the new sensor technology that had been traded for. Within weeks it had been applied to our long-wave sensors giving an impressive boost to their sensitivity. As we closed on the Rigel system we scanned the nearby stars and were surprised by the number of ships that had been detected.

More than 13,000 craft were shown moving about in the Rigel system, mostly small transports. The main activity seemed to be centered on a planet orbiting a dwarf main-sequence star. It had a luminosity of only one quarter that of the Sun and the planet was in close orbit around it. Seven space ports were in stationary orbit around the planet and another five were detected scattered amongst the other planets in the system.

The second planet in the system was a rocky world and mining ships were detected landing and lifting off from its surface. The next two planets in the system were gas giants with four moons each. The final planet appeared to be similar in size and distance to our planet Neptune. We parked at one-eighth light years distance. Harris began dissecting the signals emanating from the system while we began our observations.

Starship activity was soon detected in a neighboring system and was added to our list to observe. Harris continued to hone his translation skills and had a nearly full language module complete within three days of our arrival. We soon learned the names of the two planets in the system and its sun. Auris was the planet in close orbit to the star which was called Doonlou. The second planet was known as Benis and the others in the system as Grell, Jermus and Suu.

Auris was an ocean world and the species that populated it were called the Roache. The Roache were identified as the center species on the bottom row of the left door at DaCuban. The planet had one major continent with the majority of its land mass covered with one enormous city. Several smaller floating cities adorned its oceans.

The Roache were shiny black insectoids about a meter in length. As far as appearances went, they were a mix between an ant and a beetle. From the intercepted video streams they could be seen as an industrious species that lacked in the lighter side of the social scene. No laughter, no imaginative outlets, everything seemed geared towards work. Other than the Frekkin it appeared to be a common trait among the species that held position on the left door at DaCuban.