The Dawn of Day - 8. Chapter 8 - The Dawn of Day

A long written exchange followed. Eric was exhausted when the Aryaka took him back to the cargo room. Dave and Brandon jumped to their feet when he entered.

“The situation has changed,” Eric started.

“Space pirates,” Dave said after Eric finished his report. “I wonder what happened to their ship. Did it crash or is take-off impossible because of a malfunction? Or did others throw them out and steal their ship?”

“I don’t care who they are and what they did and how they got stranded on the planet,” Brandon said. “We better do what they want. I’m fully convinced they’ll throw us out into space if we don’t show our willingness to co-operate. What do you think, Eric? Can we trust them?”

“Hard to say,” Eric replied. “Our survival depends on co-operation, but they need us, too. They spent time and effort on developing a translation tool. They’re in a predicament obviously. They could have long thrown us out into space, but they didn’t. We could try to regain control of the ship, but they won’t risk losing the ship lightly, trust me.”

They talked it over and finally agreed to co-operate with the aliens. Eric rose to his feet and knocked three times at the door. The door was unlocked and slid open. Shesha waved his hand at the men and pointed down the corridor. They were free to move to their rooms in the sleeping area. The men plodded down the hallway. Vasuki and Shesha followed them but did not enter the room.

“I sure need a shower,” Dave said, stripping his suit and underwear off. He threw the clothes into a waste tube and went into the adjoining bathroom. The others followed him. They stood in the shower. The smell of soap had never been so good.

They went to the lounge area finally and sat down at a table. The Aryaka sat down on the other side. The two crews studied each other. Nahusha took the tablet from the table.

Balancing scales, he typed.

The men stared at him. Shesha seized the tablet.

We believe that everything you do comes back to you one way or the other. Good and bad. Scales are balanced in the end.

Eric nodded and typed.

Give and take. Corrective justice.

A written exchanged followed. The Aryaka introduced themselves and their plan. The Aryaka crew wanted to get hold of a sophisticated ship in order to return to their home space hub in the galactic center. The Aryaka on the planet Kunjara were supposed to help them with the ship and the humans were supposed to divert attention from the three Aryaka upon arrival at the Kunjara spaceport. The plan sounded reasonable and simple.

They went into the cockpit. The Aryaka sat down in the seats at the front console. Nahusha took Eric’s seat and thus made clear who commanded the ship. The humans sat down on emergency seats in the back of the cockpit. Dave studied the displays and screens on the console but soon understood that the systems had been massively altered. Vasuki watched him with a cold stare.

A feeling of rage seized Eric, who felt downgraded, but the emotion ebbed away when he focused back on the facts. Both crews were stranded in space. They had met on a foreign planet. The Aryaka captain had only done the appropriate and seized a ship to get off the planet. Eric knew he would have done the same in a hopeless situation. The Aryaka were an advanced species and the alien captain was an experienced commander, regardless his motives and his possibly dubious past. The Aryaka captain was taking his crew back home, a task Eric had yet to achieve. He changed his attitude. He could learn from the alien commander. Every new understanding would enhance their chance for a successful return to Earth. Eric grabbed a manual checklist from the console. He studied the displays and the lights on the console and tried to figure out which system parts had been changed, shut down or improved.

Nahusha watched Eric and noticed the change of attitude. The human captain had not yet given up, albeit the chance of getting back home was practically zero. It deserved a little respect. Nahusha spoke to Shesha. Shesha rose from his chair. Nahusha made a gesture with his hand and invited Eric to sit down in the co-pilot’s seat. Eric, surprised, rose to his feet slowly. He sat down and studied the screen with the flight course.

“No deviance from the projected course,” he said.

Nahusha didn’t understand the words but grasped the meaning. He gave a nod.

“How long until drop-back point?” he asked.

“38 hours, 27 minutes, onboard-clock time,” Vasuki replied.

“Hell, still a long way to go,” Nahusha said, leaning back in his chair.

Eric resumed studying the checklist and Dave eyed Vasuki suspiciously. Brandon handed the translation tablet to Shesha. They were engaged in a written exchange of facts and views.

The Aryaka instructed the men during the warp flight. The humans learned the essentials of the landing procedure and a few facts about their destination Kunjara.

The USS Explorer finally reached the drop-out point. The tension in the cockpit was growing. The ship entered real space and continued its flight to Kunjara in conventional flight mode and at a reduced speed. The Child, the rudimentary copy of the Dragon computer, dimmed the light in the cockpit, turned off the lights in other parts of the ship and shut down all non-essential systems. Shesha had prepared them for it.

The Child established a communication line to the spaceport by projecting virtual copies of itself through space-time, each copy on a straight line to Kunjara and each copy slightly ahead of time compared to the predecessor copy. The time differences were minimal. The Child had improved the ship’s systems and had configured new systems, too. It was based on the ship’s conventional computer, because the ship from Earth had no built-in quantum functions. The new system was nonetheless a superior system, far more advanced than any computer built on Earth. The Child was simulating a quantum computer, but unlike a quantum computer that projected copies of the entire system through space-time, the Child projected only the communication system. It was a fragile construction and needed a lot of energy, but it worked out fairly well. Kunjara spaceport answered their query from the edge of the star system with almost no time delay.

“Excellent,” Nahusha said with a content look. “Vasuki, announce the ship and ask for updated maps of the system.”

Vasuki announced the arrival of a Class XO cargo freighter and requested updated maps of the star system. Class XO was the denotation for a ship that had no advanced hardware and software systems. Class XO ships were rarely seen in the space sectors close to the galactic center. They were more common in the outbound regions of the galaxy where young species developed space flight and traveled to their neighboring systems where they sooner or later encountered other species. Most young species joined the trade communities at that point and soon built more capable spacecraft. Many Class XO ships had a simple gravitational drive that protruded only a weak gravitational beam. The simple warp ships were sometimes off course after drop-back into real space and hence had to update their system’s database by pulling data from an external source. More advanced ships were connected with the central Izanami computer and other major databases during the entire flight.

Kunjara spaceport confirmed and opened a line to the flight information database. The Child started updating the ship’s database. The Aryaka straightened in their seats by the console and stared at the controls and screens. They had donned their helmets to study the information the Child sent to their helmet displays. The Aryaka were in combat mode, frozen in their seats, taking in and connecting bits of information, updating the bigger picture in almost no time. The process would have been even faster with the neural implants, because they would have allowed them to practically merge with the computer and process the data more directly. The implants deactivated, the helmets served as substitutes.

The men watched the alien crew. The Aryaka looked vulnerable in their frozen state, easy to attack and knock down from their seats. Dave rose from his side seat, but Vasuki saw the movement out of the corner of his eye, almost subconsciously. He jerked his head and stared at Dave with a predator stare, a cold cruel look that sent shivers up the man's spine. Eric called Dave back and Dave sat down immediately. The Aryaka weren’t vulnerable in combat mode. They were dangerous, ready to stop everyone with a single blow, anyone who had the nerve to shake them out of their focused state and concentration.

The Child searched the spaceport database. The database contained information about the local star system, about spaceways and flight corridors, the frequency of arrivals and the origins of incoming ships. The Aryaka learned that Kunjara had expanded its trade activities with other trading places and the central hub Izanami. The spaceport and the city, Patha, would be crowded with species from everywhere in space, from adjoining space sectors but also from far-away places in the galaxy. They had to reckon with Izanami presence at the spaceport also. It was not an ideal situation at all. The Aryaka realized that they depended on the humans more than they had thought.

Nahusha snapped out of his concentration. He moved his fingers choppily and licked his lips with his split tongue. The men winced at the sight. Nahusha grabbed the translator tablet, jumped to his feet and commanded Eric to follow him into the lounge area. Vasuki and Shesha came out of their frozen state and turned to Dave and Brandon. The men leaned back against the wall and suppressed the urge to run from the cockpit.

Nahusha and Eric returned to the cockpit a short while later.

“He explained to me what is at stake and he told us to play along,” Eric said to Brandon and Dave, then told them in detail what Nahusha had said.

The ship continued its flight to Kunjara. Kunjara spaceport finally assigned them a flight corridor. They would arrive at the planet in approximately five hours.

The Child sent an image of Kunjara to the front screen. Kunjara was an Earth-like planet, a rocky planet with a gravity similar to Earth’s, a passable temperature and an air they could breathe. The planet was covered by a huge ocean. They saw two continents, close together and bridged by a landmass in the south. The poles were ice-free. The average temperature was much higher than Earth’s, about 32°C. The continents were covered by green vegetation except for the coastlines where most of the cities were built.

The Aryaka prepared the ship for landing. They would do the talk, register the human crew as traders and register themselves as security crew hired on a stop-over from Earth to Kunjara. The stop-over was a minor platform located in a dwarf galaxy with a huge asteroid belt that was mined by the Kalaki species.

The Child had identified Earth in the spaceport database. The space sectors and the planets were all mapped and registered. Earth was registered as planet XO-10874no, a planet in the habitable zone of its star system. It was not recommended for colonization and mining activities. No further explanation was offered. The entry into the database would be changed after the ship had landed on Kunjara. The spaceport computer would register the ship and send the updated information to the central Izanami computer. It was an automatic process. The Aryaka were confident that Izanami wouldn't pay much attention to a registry change sent from an outpost in a spiral arm of the galaxy.

The Child produced a cargo list. The ship carried food, drinks, suits and equipment, the goods destined for the platform in the Kuiper belt. Vasuki sent the cargo list to Kunjara spaceport and declared the cargo bound for the community Dharana, an important Aryaka city, the place where the Elder lived. The city was located in the center of the continent. The spaceport confirmed. Kunjara spaceport asked the usual questions. So far, everything had gone according to plan. Kunjara spaceport finally sent the landing vector.

The USS Explorer descended into the planet’s atmosphere. It was night time on the planet. A band of light illuminated the coastal area, the light coming from the cities built on the coast. A few light specks could be seen on the continent, Aryaka cities in the tropical forest. The ship reduced speed and descended to a lower flight level. Kunjara spaceport cleared the ship for landing.

The USS Explorer began its final descent and touched down on the assigned runway in the spaceport Kunjara. The ship rolled down the runway reserved for Class XO ships and came to a halt. Kunjara spaceport contacted the ship and after a few minutes permitted the crew to leave it.

The Aryaka rose to their feet and proceeded to the hatch. The humans followed them quickly. They left the ship. The air outside was moist and hot. A white light illuminated the landing place and the schemes of buildings could be seen in the distance. The place looked much like a landing place on Earth, but the difference became obvious at once.

A huge ship landed. The disk-shaped vessel hovered down vertically, quietly, without a sound. A chain of lights around the hull indicated the immense size of the ship. The wheel of lights descended majestically to the ground and the giant ship touched down in the distance. Two ships took off, climbed vertically into the air and proceeded towards orbit. The men gazed after the alien ships. Kunjara spaceport was very different from any spaceport on Earth.

The Aryaka moved towards the spaceport hall. The men followed suit. They reached the entrance. A door slid open and they entered a tube.