All Novel Sweet
63
“I have never met or seen a Tik but I have heard my masters talk of them. The Allsa Komanae do not allow Tik the leave the Cargo Gate terminal on Allsa One… except back through the Gates to the outer network of course. The coordinates of the home world are a secret. No Tik has ever ‘found it’. Only the pilots of the ships know how to find it.” Eve explained with a sad expression as she saw how distressed he was becoming.
“So… no way off the planet except on one of the ships. Has anyone tried to seize one of the ships?” Jack asked but he had a sinking feeling he knew what the answer would be.
“Your collar will incapacitate you automatically if you aren’t authorized to be at the spaceport.”
“Well that sucks.” Jack flopped back on the bed and scowled. His chances for escape seemed to be slim to none. He’d have to rely on being rescued. He knew his friends the Altarians would turn over every stone until they found him. He’d just have to stay alive until they did.
Eve was watching his face closely when he sat back up and turned his eyes back to her. He knew what she needed to hear. He sighed. “Ok, escape is out. Survival it is,” he said and her face lit up with a relieved smile.
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“What do we do all day?” he asked.
“That will depend on what our master wants us to do. My previous masters had me run errands. Deliver sensitive messages, pick up packages, and some administrative work. This was after I was retired from the games. I don’t know what a Prime will need from us. I hope I can be productive for her.” Eve looked a little worried.
“Do we get time to ourselves? Time to exercise?” Jack asked as he looked at his slippers. He thought longingly of the new running shoes he’d purchased.
“There is a gym for maintaining our health.” Eve said.
“I prefer to run. Distance running. Outside. Is that going to be possible?” Jack asked.
She gave him a sad expression and shook her head. He just nodded and frowned.
His stomach took that moment to remind him it hadn’t seen food in some time.
“That I can do something about,” Eve said as she stood and walked to a recessed slot in the wall. She examined the settings on the dispenser. She walked back to him with an apologetic smile. “Actually I’ll need you to stand in front of the dispenser. Your bio profile hasn’t been recorded in the machine so it hasn’t been calibrated for your diet yet.”
She helped him stand and lent him a shoulder to lean on as they walked back to the machine. The pain in his legs wasn’t too bad. She’d done an awesome job of massaging them.
He stood before the dispenser and let it scan his body. The beam made him feel a little queasy but soon it was over and a tube of green paste and a tube of red paste were dropped into the machine’s cavity. He pulled them out.
“What’s this?” he asked holding the tubes up.
“Food,” Eve replied curiously.
“Nutrient paste. This is nutrient paste. It’s not food.” Jack was pissed but he was also hungry so he tore the cap off of the red tube and squeezed out a drop to taste it. “Well… that’s an unpleasant flavor. I’ll just assume it’s giving my body what it needs and bear with it, right?” Eve nodded nervously as she could see he was upset. He finished the red tube and moved on to the green. It tasted worse but he finished it too.
“So insufficient clothing, no running for exercise, crappy food, and I’m to treat my new masters like gods. I’m learning my new role quickly.”
Eve was still looking at him nervously.
The door chimed and three Allsa Komanae entered. He looked to the one in the center. It lifted something and Jack’s brain just had time to register it might be a weapon when his body felt like it was being lit up like a Christmas tree. He just had time to think ‘Fucking assholes!’ then blackness.
>>>>
Major Cha’Risa Ash was fuming. She’d already passed through her rage phase. The remaining members of her team waited patiently for her simmering anger to crystalize into decisive forward momentum. In the seven years they’d been together the team had grown accustomed to each other’s idiosyncrasies.
They were reeling from the loss of their friend and colleague Ray Sharif who’d been their comm tech specialist and might still be their savior if they could get to his private data cache.
Unfortunately it was hidden on Earth and they were currently on Altaria. They could go to Earth but the moment they stepped through a Gate they’d be arrested for treason.
Once the Minister of Earth Security Council Ruan Steyn filed charges of treason against them they found their access to Earth’s network was blocked. Their accounts were frozen. They needed to get back to Earth to locate Ray’s personal data vault and find out if he’d been able to trace the abduction money from the LA Gate Terminus to its source. Ray had been a tech genius. Once he had the beginnings of a thread, in this case the smuggling ring at the terminus, tracking its connections wouldn’t have been too challenging for him. He’d been murdered at the terminus but Mr. Steyn claimed he had Ray’s report. He sent a copy of it to the Altarian Minister of Security, Hellna, who shared it with the team. The Major and Nann immediately identified the report as a counterfeit since Ray’s digital signature was missing from the file. Ruan claimed this wasn’t proof of anything as he suggested that Ray had been under attack and might have forgotten to add it. The Major’s argument that Ray would never have filed a report without a signature regardless of the circumstances wasn’t accepted. Ruan filed charges against the team the following day when they didn’t voluntarily surrender themselves.
So here they sat in a very comfortable lounge in the Altarian Security Ministry headquarters with the two security officers, Gee and Bal, who were with them when their careers went off the rails.
Hellna walked into the lounge with a data comm. “Queen Elissa has supplied me with all of the historical records we have of the Mahrell Drun. These can be verified by the Tik who have their own records as some of them were there at the time and their history is passed down and shared amongst their population.”
The Major turned to her and lifted her comm to accept the data dump. “Thank you.”
“Do you have any idea of how you are going to reach the data cache yet?” Hellna asked.
“There are people I can reach out to. People I trust in high ranking positions but I can’t call them from here,” the Major sighed.
“You are not restricted to Altaria. You may go through the Gates to any planet you wish,” Hellna said, tilting her head curiously.
“We don’t exactly have a lot of experience with other planets. We work exclusively on Earth. I wouldn’t know the first thing about which planets are safe for us to go to considering the hate the Allsa Komanae have for us,” the Major supplied.
“Gee and Bal have offered to assist you in this next phase of the mission. They will take you anywhere you need to go,” the Minister said gesturing to the two security officers who just nodded.
The team looked at the two ebony Altarians. When they’d first met them the trained commandos had written them off because of their dainty size, the seemingly useless gossamer gowns they wore, and their quiet natures. They quickly learned the agents were quick thinking professionals who held their tongues until they had something important to say, wasted no time on unproductive recriminations, and were surprisingly deadly in a firefight. Unlike the uniformly civilized behavior seen in the rest of the Altarian population the quiet agents apparently nurtured some blood lust. This was graphically demonstrated by Bal’s almost gleeful enjoyment of using their organic explosives back on Rehm.
This especially endeared the agents to Leo and Maxim who also liked things that went boom.
“Alright, thank you. Where should we go to find Tik with the required knowledge of the Mahrell Drun to augment the Queen’s report? It also has to be a hospitable world that we can contact Earth from.”
“Chuuruthia,” Gee said. “There are no Allsa Komanae on Chuuruthia. The planet also hosts a Tik enclave as the Tik have one of their Instantiation factories there.”
“Where the Tik are born?” Nann asked curiously.
“Exactly,” Gee answered. “The enclave will likely have some senior Tik who might have direct experience though it was a very long time ago.”
They wasted no further time now that they had the beginnings of a plan. The trip back to the Gate Terminal was quick and the team was glad to see their weapons again.
“Please do a quick inspection as we will need to take them under our gowns once more,” Gee said and Leo and Maxim made disappointed sounds. They took their weapons and skilled fingers ran through their inspection but found the weapons to be in exactly the same condition they’d been in when they surrendered them. With unhappy frowns they handed them over to Bal.
Once Gee had the Major’s and Nann’s weapons stowed they arranged a Gate to Chuuruthia and made their way to the Gate hall.
“I’ve never met a Chuuruthian. What are they like?” Nann asked.
“They are civilized and intelligent. Deeply empathic and highly cultured. A lovely people,” Gee replied.
“Like Altarians then,” the Major said as she confirmed her comm was secured in her pocket. Gee looked at the tall warrior and smiled.
“Thank you for the comparison. One difference is their males are equal to their females in all ways. An exceptional balance! Chuuruthians are highly sought after for their skills as physicians and surgeons and their scientific community is also very well respected on all worlds.”
They approached the mirror surface of the Gate and stepped through. The Major immediately picked up the lovely scent of flowers. She felt herself relaxing and a smile slipped onto her lips. “It certainly smells like a nice planet,” she remarked.
Gee and Bal exchanged the smallest of smiles. The glorious red and yellow flashes of light on the far side of the large Gate chamber was sunlight reflecting from the petals of the Chella Orchid, the official flower of Chuuruthia. The flowers also had a very pleasant scent which had a calming and sometimes mildly euphoric effect.
They approached the customs desk and the humans got their first look at a Chuuruthian.
They were a race of feline aliens which had been described as looking somewhat like Earth’s Caracal cats. Small in stature at 1. 5 metres tall, they had tan fur covered by colorful robes and they wore beautiful earrings in their large pointed ears.
“Welcome to Chuuruthia! May I have your names and purpose of your visit please,” the clerk said.
Leo began to chuckle and that seemed to set Maxim off. Nann looked at the two men like they’d lost their minds but the Major just grinned at them.
“I am Gee and this is Bal. We are representatives of the Altarian Security Ministry. Our companions are Major Cha’Risa Ash, Captain Nann Graf, Corporal Leo Orlov and Corporal Maxim Volkov. They are from Earth’s Security Council Force. Before we get to the reason for our visit I believe the Humans are a little sensitive to the flora.”