NEBULAR Collection 3 - Morgotradon: Episodes 12 - 16 Read online

  »This is Triton Commander Nok Daralamai speaking. We do not accept your identification! Stop your flight or our ships will open fire!«

  »Whowhow … not so fast,« replied Arkroid. »Why so hostile? Is this how you greet space travelers?«

  Nok frowned.

  »We don’t know your ship and I don’t know how you could know anything about a man named Toiber Arkroid. Since you seem to understand me perfectly, I’m ordering you again to stop!«

  Muted background laughter sounded on the other end. Then somebody cleared his throat and a different voice addressed the commander.

  »This is specialist Lai Pi. That you, Nok? It’s good to hear from you. We know each other from Earth. Vasina of Atlantika is also with me – and three additional passengers. We have a surprise for you.«

  Nok Daralamai was still not convinced.

  »We noticed that the Hawks are charging their weapon systems … you’ve read from your scanners how powerful and fast our ship is … ask yourself, Nok, if we were an enemy, why would we waste our time and not fly directly to Earth instead,« Pi continued.

  »This is Toiber Arkroid again, Commander; we’re going to interrupt our flight and land on Triton!«

  »Why this sudden change of plans?« she asked skeptically.

  »Did you obtain a Tachyon Portal during our absence? The Techno-Ferry just informed us about the platform in the Neptune orbit. The portal wasn’t there when we left the solar system. I suggest that we exchange some information before we continue our flight to Earth. We have a lot to talk about,« Arkroid suggested.

  Nok Daralamai relaxed.

  »That’s a good idea, Arkroid. Believe me, you’re not the only one with news! The Hawks will escort you to Triton Base. Don’t fly too fast or I’ll change my mind. I want to have your ship on my scanners – all the time during your approach! Is that clear?«

  »Understood, Commander!« Arkroid replied. »By the way: we have an extra-terrestrial visitor on board. Be prepared …«

  »I’ll try my best, Arkroid,« she responded chuckling, throwing a side glance at Sworge, while terminating the comm-link.

  I hope you’re also prepared …

  Fascinating

  They were facing each other inside the great reception hall. Nok Daralamai had greeted Maya Ivanova relieved before she welcomed Arkroid, Pi and Fosset. Vasina acted reserved as she saw the Shwakan-like being who had accompanied Daralamai. Her hand was resting on her sword handle.

  Arkroid watched the slightly tense welcoming ceremony for a moment before he began, »It’s good to be home! May I introduce Paafnas, a neuro-analyzer from Pleunat. Paafnas can understand us very well without a translation device, only one of his impressive abilities,« he presented Paafnas.

  Nok Daralamai nodded slightly at Paafnas.

  »Welcome to the Solar Union Territory, Paafnas. I’m Nok Daralamai,« she greeted him.

  While Maya Ivanova winked at Paafnas, the alien nervously licked over his large eyeballs.

  »Thank you for this warm welcome,« he replied softly.

  Paafnas approached Nok and shook her hand, according to Human custom.

  Nok was quite surprised and returned the handshake cautiously.

  Then she turned around and pointed at Sworge, who was waiting in the background.

  »This is Sworge,« she introduced him. »He and his fellow Trox were stranded on the platform.«

  »A Trox!« Vasina hissed, earning a scornful glance from Arkroid.

  Sworge, unaffected by Vasina’s outburst, acknowledged her.

  »Yes, we’re Trox; we arrived via the Tachyon Portal only to be stranded when the portal lost contact with the other side. Nok was so kind as to grant us asylum. She made sure we received much-needed supplies after the Dualytes took the Trox-Altar. We were under the influence of the Original Spark, unable to free ourselves from its emissions.«

  »Dualytes?« Arkroid raised his eyebrows.

  »That’s one thing we need to talk about,« Nok acknowledged. »However, there’s more alarming news. There’s a Dark Brotherhood agitator among us. That’s the reason, I wanted to talk to you before you reach Earth. We suspected Samuel McCord at first, as soon as he returned from Neptune …«

  »… McCord?« Fosset interrupted, surprised. »He’s alive?«

  Arkroid laid a calming hand on Fosset’s shoulder.

  »I expect that the commander is going to tell us that he now works for the other side,« he suspected.

  Nok Daralamai led the group to an adjacent, large conference room.

  »Believe me, Arkroid, we have to hurry. We need to synchronize our actions. I’m afraid the situation is even more serious than it appears.«

  A large conference table was located in the room’s center, surrounded by leather seats with comm-terminals in front of them. A full-sized holo projector was suspended from the four meter high ceiling, allowing life-size projections onto the middle of conference table.

  »Have a seat … anywhere you like,« she invited her guests.

  After everybody was seated, Nok began her presentation. It was mostly improvised, but nobody seemed to notice.

  »Sam McCord is definitely working for the other side. Since his return, he’s spearheaded all kinds of actions directed against the Solar Union. By the way, Mr. Fosset, he inherited your wealth and the company.«

  »What are you talking about!« Fosset exploded. »I’m not dead yet!«

  Nok just shrugged in response.

  »You don’t believe that McCord is the actual agitator, if I understand you correctly, Commander?« Arkroid concluded.

  »Exactly, Toiber … may I call you Toiber?« she acknowledged.

  Arkroid nodded with a smile.

  »By all means … uh … Nok?« he countered.

  She smiled and displayed her flawless white teeth.

  »Touché … uh … where was I? … Yes, McCord is just a decoy who is supposed to deflect our attention from the real agitator. While we’re trying to limit the damages McCord is causing, the agitator is pursuing his plans in the background.«

  Nok Daralamai briefly looked at her well-manicured hands before she continued, »It is not always easy to distinguish between friend and foe. This also applies to the picture we have about the Dark Brotherhood. We may have to change our perspectives there, too.«

  »We have received a very concrete picture of them,« Vasina interrupted. »We’ve just been on a world which was under their control. We encountered one of their agents. His name is Morgotradon!«

  She mentioned the name Morgotradon, the former Progonaut Fleet commander, with utter disgust.

  »He maltreated, tortured and manipulated countless intelligent beings and misused the Tachyon Portal network for his dark business. He had McCord sent back to Earth!«

  »That might all be true, Vasina of Atlantika, but the Dualytes were only helpful and even polite, despite their superiority. They freed the Trox from the dangerous emissions of the Trox Altar and left the system without harming anybody once they’d retrieved the Original Spark. They claimed to work on behalf of the Brotherhood, yet they rescued one of my men from space and could have taken this base by just snapping a finger … but they didn’t!«

  »Hmm … we’ve seen that inhabitants of neighboring solar systems have been manipulated. We were able to unmask an agitator who was living among the Techno-Clerics, the ones who later gave us the Techno-Ferry as a reward and a sign of trust,« Pi put in.

  »I suggest that we exchange all our pertinent information so we’re on the same frequency!« Nok interrupted the up-flaring discussion. »Allow me to present you with what we were able to learn and later, we’ll look at the data from your expedition. Okay with you?«

  Everybody agreed to her suggestion.

  Several hours of presentations followed, assisted by the Techno-Ferry who supplemented some information. It had streamlined Morgotradon’s history and cleaned up some events. Coip-Pertyl and the Vega System as well as the central portal world on which Maya
Ivanova and Paafnas had lived as prisoners, ended the presentations. Nok had also invited Navis Joos to the meeting. He was delighted to see Maya Ivanova. He added some information to Nok’s presentations about the Dualytes. His experience onboard the Dualyte mother ship was especially revealing.

  »We can now assume with certainty that the Trox Altar and the Original Spark are one and the same. The Trox stole these sparks and the Dualytes are on their way throughout the galaxy collecting them again,« Pi summarized.

  »Hmm … yes, but we also have to consider the time factor!« Vasina added. »The Trox were already under the sparks’ influence during my time!«

  »Are you trying to say that the Dualytes have been collecting the sparks for that long already?« Joos asked surprised.

  »That’s not impossible!« Arkroid responded quickly. »The four or five sparks on the mother ship are just a drop in the bucket. The Dualyte mission is far grander in size and time span than we could know. What awes me is the time span we keep hearing about – one million years! Events from that long ago are still casting their shadows into our present.«

  »Well … how about the mysterious demise of the Creators, the ones who developed the Techno-Clerics? They were a highly developed civilization with an outstanding cosmic moral code. They created Techno-Center, a perfect world, only to vanish in the star jungle of the galaxy … about a million years ago!« Pi recapitulated.

  »That was about the time when my people were at the height of their civilization, before we were defeated by the Dark Brotherhood!« Vasina added somberly.

  »Then there were the Genorantans, the creators of the Tachyon Portals and the associated network. They vanished even before the Progonauts’ rise to power. They left many artifacts behind, among them the Tachyon Portal we found on the platform. All these events played out in roughly the same time. If we’re talking about a million years, then a thousand or two thousand years are almost negligible,« Arkroid added.

  »That brings us to the mysterious Great Catastrophe, which was supposed to have occurred a couple of thousand years earlier on the other side of the galaxy,« Joos threw into the discussion. »The Dualytes, as well as the MYZEL, mentioned a huge migration of galactic proportions.«

  »Then we mustn’t forget the saying: “The Globusters do not belong here!”« Nok Daralamai added. »The Dualytes mentioned the Matrix Architects, as distinguished from the Globusters; they called our solar system Retreat and not Reserve!«

  »The more I think about it, their description of the Brotherhood was a positive one, opposed to what the expedition members experienced,« Joos replied.

  »Something terrible must have occurred at the other side of the galaxy, and is possibly still going on,« Sworge spoke up. »All the hints and incomplete accounts cannot be dismissed. If my people came from there originally, then it may also be true that the Original Sparks did as well. The Dualytes regarded the sparks as components of a bigger scheme.«

  »Vanished civilizations, a dark enemy who seems to appear good and then evil, a Reserve, which is no such thing and an unknown catastrophe which apparently happened so remotely from here that we can scarcely comprehend it,« Maya Ivanova tried to connect the events, failed and shrugged her shoulders helplessly.

  »It wasn’t that far from where the Progonauts lived,« Vasina rebutted. »Our worlds were close to the galactic center.«

  Pi shook his head.

  »That doesn’t get us anywhere. Let’s talk about the role Humanity is supposed to play in this scheme,« he threw in.

  »Right!« Joos agreed. »The Dualytes called us Protectors, even though the term may have been screwed up by the universal translator. It might not even be their real term for us!«

  »You’re wrong about that,«Vasina replied mutedly, and instantly, everybody’s attention was on her. »There’s …,« she corrected herself and took a deep breath, »there was such a term in my time among Progonauts. The term “Protector” stood for a warrior who only lived for the protection of his ruler. To become a protector, the warrior had to undergo lifelong training and education … like the former leader of my palace guards, Herkales. It’s interesting to note that he didn’t pledge allegiance to the current ruler of the House of Atlantika – but to protect the Jamal-Comb!«

  The eyes of the present conference members were glued to Vasina’s lips. Then she pulled out the other Jamal-Comb.

  »This is the second comb. We found it on Coip-Pertyl,« she continued. »It is possibly the same one which was hidden on the bottom of the oceans for Morgotradon, a million years ago.«

  As Vasina placed both Jamal-Combs side by side, they began to glow with a light-blue hue.

  »Fascinating!« Pi remarked.

  »There were five of them, one for each Progonaut House, according to our history; one for each ruler of each house. During the war, most of them disappeared. At least, until we recovered the two of them in my possession,« Vasina stated with a mysterious undertone.

  »If the Dualytes should fail in their attempt to re-unite all of the Original Sparks, then only the Protectors are standing between life and death! Are the people of Earth meant to be the Protectors, or did the Dualytes mean the Progonauts?« Joos picked up the thread.

  Nok Daralamai paused the meeting for the moment.

  »I can imagine that you’re all probably tired and exhausted,« she addressed Toiber and his crew. »I’ll forward the data to our specialists to feed them to the neuronal computers. Maybe their analysis will shed more light on these events and their history. There’re two urgent problems: the agitator who has begun to undermine our society – we need to find him and take him out of the equation – and then the Globusters and their activities inside the Kuiper Belt. I have deployed the Blue Moon to the Kuiper Belt and to Sedna to obtain better intelligence.«

  Maya Ivanova’s eyes widened.

  »Sedna is the largest Globuster base in the system. If they’re still active, then Petrow has no chance in Hell!« she exclaimed.

  »We’re assuming that they’re all in stasis. We have to take some risks to get out of this dead end. I have complete confidence in Commander Petrow. He’s farsighted enough to handle his mission,« Nok replied firmly.

  »Which leaves the agitator,« Arkroid sighed. »It must be somebody high up, somebody who has a replicated brain and is no longer him- or herself. A medical exam could prove that but there’s no guarantee.«

  Arkroid glanced briefly at Paafnas, who had been listening attentively.

  »Hmm … there might be another way …«

  14 - The Matrix Architects

  Written by Thomas Rabenstein

  I need some Zs

  I haven’t slept for twenty-four hours. I’m exhausted, dead tired and desperately in need of a break. I need to stay awake if I don’t want to miss our Pluto fly-by. I’ve been to a lot of places in the Solar System, but not Pluto! A hundred years ago, they still called Pluto a ninth planet, but in 2007, if I have the date right, terrestrial astronomers decided that Pluto wasn’t a planet at all, and degraded it to a “mere” overgrown planetoid. I can’t blame them; they had very limited resources to work with. The declassification was a major scientific shaker back then. Today we know better. We understand Pluto’s de-classification even though it is orbiting our sun with its own satellite, Charon. We know, too, that Pluto wasn’t exactly alone out there. In a sense, Pluto’s orbit is at the gate to the outer ring of our Solar System, a fascinating region that surrounds the system like a thin disk! Thousands of new celestial bodies have been found and catalogued there in the Kuiper Belt! It contains not only asteroids and space rocks but also large planetoids and moon-sized objects. Pluto, Charon, Sedna and the recently destroyed Quaoar are only variations of the same general type, now classified as Kuiper Objects.

  Normally, I would have made a stopover at Pluto to give our scientists an opportunity to further their studies. Despite the fact that Pluto is only a very large planetoid it still possesses three orbiters, wrongly classified as moons �
� well … they’re still moons to my mind. If we’d look hard enough, we’d find even more interesting celestial objects within this small system. Like Sedna and other Kuiper Objects, we never really put enough time and effort into exploring them, because they’re too far from Earth to make mining feasible. Since the Globusters appeared, though, all that has changed. We can’t even rule out that Pluto itself might harbor a Globuster or two!

  Igor Petrow woke up and looked around, irritated with himself. He’d had fallen into a three-minute-long power nap. His command central crew was grinning as they noticed how his head had swung from his left to his right shoulder, even falling to his neck and then sinking to his chest.

  He ignored their grins and smiled broadly.

  »I’m okay, guys … never seen a napping commander, eh? How much longer until Ploodoh?« he asked with a Canadian accent. Although Eastern European, he liked to play his dialect games, as he called it. Much to the amusement of his crew, because he screwed up from time to time and made the intended American accents sound like East Indian English. There were East Indian crew members on board, but they didn’t take offense – they even replied in the same intonation, causing waves of laughter, as they could do it much better than he ever could, surprising him with regional colloquialisms he didn’t understand. Petrow had a great sense of humor, but he was also a very strong-minded commander. His crew knew how far to stretch it. After all, he’d learned the ropes from Maya Ivanova … including her command style!

  »Two hours and twenty-five minutes, Igor!« Natasha Kushenko announced. She, like First Officer Anatoli Nemov and Igor Petrow, had gone through the same Space Academy as Maya Ivanova, her former commander. They all had been assigned together to the Blue Moon when the ship was commissioned.

  Petrow straightened in his commander’s seat and had trouble concentrating for a moment.

  »I want you to deploy some reconnaissance drones. Our current mission doesn’t allow for any research on Pluto and its satellites, but I think we need to determine if there’s any threat here. Deploy different types of drones, and we’ll pick them up on our way home!«