Erica Olafson Adventures of the Tigershark Vol 7 Chapter 14 Kilkam
- 4 years ago
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The Dragon stood in his cargo bay and his eyes glowed as his pirates dumped loads of Iridium and other highly valuable goods only to return to get more. He cursed himself for not remembering the right planet. He was so sure he had been here before and now he could not remember any details. He was so certain the suit told him these coordinates. Of course, he had not kept any files on the coordinates but his suit knew where it was and now it was silent and did not respond to anything. All there was were ghosts. Taking over his men and defying all shields and weapon fire went right through them but then the green things left and attacked the Silver Streak.
He had not wasted this opportunity and left in a hurry leaving several men behind.
This armada of primitives loaded with treasures was a sheer stroke of luck. Enough to fill the holds of all ships and return very wealthy.
Then the alarms went off and he hurried to the I.S.T. waiting for the next car. Cursing the slowness of the system and yelled. “Computronic get me the Bridge!”
He stomped into the I.S.T. car and dialed for the Bridge. Zwenacdri, the Kermac and his second in Command responded to his inquiry about the alarms.
“There is a Union ship, Dragon.”
He made on his bridge and felt weak and sick for a moment as he plunged in his seat.
“What are you talking about? There are no Union ships out here.”
But then he saw the ship on his main screen had centered on.
He had spent many years in the Union Navy. He had seen or knew about every Union Ship class, what he saw on his screen somehow looked Union but like nothing, he had ever seen before.
No ISAH pods, the shape was all wrong and not Uni standard. But the extended Exo load Cannon on top of the hull he recognized instantly. The ship was almost black not Union white or gray, but it had the name USS Tigershark written along its sides, and the Union flag painted on the sides. That strange ship also was surrounded by a barely visible purplish cocoon, TransDim shields.
The Togar scanner operator gnarled in his guttural cat voice. “This ship replaced the Silver Streak. One moment the Silver Streak was there, and the next moment this thing. It has an official Union transponder signature and is under full TransDim Shields.”
Again he felt dizzy and his throat felt dry and thick. As he looked down, he noticed his hands had the same brown spots he had seen on the aliens from the primitive ships. He needed to think about that later.
“Where did the Silver Streak go?”
“I can’t find her within scanner range.”
The Kermac looking over his console. “They just hailed us all and demanded immediate surrender. No word from the others yet.”
Swybar was confused but he was a Union officer once. “Call the Jammer, the Hontu and the Bloody Mary. If we combine our fire and concentrate it, we might crack those shields. That ship is no Match for the four of us.”
The Togar said. “They wait on your signal. I have relayed target coordinates so we hit the same spot.” “Give that Union scum hell, Fire!”
Shaka immediately took action and went into evasive maneuvers. All four Pirate ships fired at the same time. Especially the Jammer and the Dragon peppered us with several Faster than Light High Energy beams.
Har-Hi said. “That response was somewhat expected. Primary shields at 90%, secondary shields not affected. No Damage no Casualties.”
“Mao target all enemy ships drives and take them out, then pull their teeth.”
The Translocator rotary guns spat small Anti matter loads at the point of explosion. The destructive explosive force was instantly transferred past shields and armor directly into the Engine rooms of three ships. The shields flickered and went out on the Hontu and a gaping hole in her aft section was the result of several anti matter explosions micro seconds before.
The Bloody Mary lost her gun turrets and was rocked by a secondary explosion as the enegies of her drive pods turned them into clouds of twisted metal.
The Jammer didn’t fare much better as the propulsion enticers were instantly transformed into glowing twisted metal.
The most damage was done to the Red Dragon. As her shields prevented Translocator locks inside, Mao had fired all of our 12 Quark-Gluon Plasma casters. The QGPs The quark–gluon plasma or quark soup was a phase of quantum chromodynamics which existed at extremely high temperature and density.
The ability to carry force and reach temperatures of 5.5 trillion degrees Celcius was realized as a weapon potential back in 4500 and was steadily developed by Terran engineers into a unique Terran weapon. No matter, not even Neutronium was able to withstand these kinds of temperatures, delivered with a hefty kinetic impact.
The shields of the Dragon collapsed and the QGp pulses perforated the experimental ship’s hull.
Her secondary hull was ripped to shreds and opened to the vacuum of space.
“Elfi hail them all.”
She nodded giving me a thumbs up gesture and I said.”I am Captain Olafson of the United Stars Starship Tigershark. You are all identified and known pirates. Standing warrants permit immediate destruction. You have five seconds to completely surrender. No additional calls will be made.”
I had Elfi cut the transmission.
Har-Hi interrupted. “Captain there is a fleet of twenty unknown alien space ships approaching fast. Tech level seven, at least.”
Still, in Tactical View I saw them too. “Twenty ships in shape very similar to the primitive rocket ships. Long cylindrical, with cone shaped bows, but with smaller Drive Pods, powerful looking shields and studded with weapon towers. Each about 800 meters long.
“Elfi hail them and start first contact procedures.”
“I am on it, Captain. They established similar procedures and it won’t take long.”
After about five minutes Shea nodded. “Communications possible now.”
I waited for Elfi’s signal indicating open comm channels.
“This is the United Stars Ship Tigershark. I am Captain Olafson and we are engaged in bringing Pirate criminals to justice.”
An ape like being appeared, it looked brutish, covered with brown fur, pronounced eye brows and a very ape like maw exposing sharp incisors. He wore a brown leather like uniform with copper colored metal shoulder pads.
“I am ‘The A’ of this Strike force. You will address me as ‘A the Mighty’and lower your gaze. You are in our space, this is the Dominion of the Furze. Do not aide or contact the outcasts in any way. Those pirates you are hunting already made contact and are doomed. Have you made any attempts to contact the Cursed?”
“If you mean the fleet of cone shaped ships, no. Should you mean the criminal element, they are doomed, perhaps curse we are done talking to them.”
“Then you may live. Now leave this space as it is now ours. The Cursed Outcasts cannot be allowed to reach any other civilization. They carry a disease that caused wars and mayhem.”
“How far does your sphere of influence reach?”
“As far as we want it. And where ever I am.”
“We might be able to assist and see if there is a way we can help.”
“If you remain you will be destroyed. No help no contact.”
Mao said with a sigh.”Can you believe it, there is yet another fleet of ships approaching. Also with activated weapons and shields, at least TL 7.”
The other ships dropping out of Quasi in an arrow head attack formation, were elegant almost birdlike and white.
There were thirty six of them and all of the same size, about 800 meters each as well.
They interrupted the conversation by hailing us all. The being appearing on our viewers was beautiful and had the grace and characteristics of a Terran swan. It was white, thin and was covered in long feathers. The only item of clothing or equipment was a wide golden sash across his body.
“We are the Down, stand down brutish Furze. Your own kind seeks help and we will not deny it. Mercy and compassion must be rendered. You know well, we will not hesitate to defend those who are helpless.”
Mao said. “Both sides energizing weapons.”´
The ape like beings responded. “We will not fight over this scum, you may have them. But be assured all contact to the Down ends today and we will shoot at any Down ship we see in our sphere of influence.” With this, the twenty ships of the Furze reversed course and left. The Dawn now addressed us. “We heard your exchange with the Furze. We will not allow you to commence violence and disperse your law. Those who you call pirates might just have been misguided by the Furze to attack these poor sick outcasts.
We will invite you all to a nearby planet of ours. You avoided destruction by offering help to the afflicted, that shows you understand the concept of mercy. Now you must proof it to us.”
“Let me get this straight, you Down want us to help these sick ones?”
“No we require and if neccessary force you to help. You offered it first. By our holy laws, you are now required to do so and we will only interfere if you do not, if you flee or if you fail to help.”
“You are forcing us to help?”
“Indeed. I see our communication works well.”
I cut them off. “Tactical analysis?”
Mao responded. “We can destroy seventy percent of their force but sustain battle damage from the remaining 30 percent before we can destroy the rest. And that is only an estimate since we do not know all their weapon capability. If we add Suits shields and cloaking ability to the equation we will be able to emerge victoriously and escape at any time.”
“I don’t want to start a shooting war and open fire first. We openly identified ourselves as Union and chances are they are known by the Golden of this region. This is the first contact and who knows if they have allies or a bigger fleet. They can reach Union space just as we can reach theirs.”
Fivcheer, sitting at a multi task console in the Command and Control part of the bridge, raised his hand and said. “Their understanding and definition of morals and ethics are complicated and appear to be the base of their entire culture and religious believes.”
Elfi said.”The Red Dragon is hailing the Down.”
“Put it on.”
“Mighty Down I am Red Dragon and it is true we are pirates and we have attacked the afflicted Furze but we are infected ourselves and show the same symptoms of the disease. We too need your help.”
“And whoever asks for help due to pain, suffering or disease shall receive it. You must also follow us.”
“We can not, the evil and brutal Union captain from his dictatortial regime disabled and damaged our ships.”
This surprised me and Fivecheer confirmed it. “It is quite true. Whatever inflicts the Outcasts has now spread on all four pirate ships.”
Many more Down ships appeared dropping out of Quasi and begun towing the slow rocket shaped ships and the damaged pirate ships.
A cordon of twelve ships escorded us to a GIII type star and a system with eight planets.
The sizeable fleet went straight for the second planet, apparently a Garden world.
They made us land.
The Planet turned out to be uninhabited. The valley we touched down had tundra like character, framed in the distance by gray, mist shrouded mountains. The vegetation appeared to be grass or lichen like, smooth humps of rock broke the pale green surface here and there.
The rocket shaped space ships of the inflicted Furze were set down in a neat circle all around us. The damaged pirate ships in a little distance with six Down ships settling nearby.
I addressed my crew via Shipwide.
“Just so you know, while I don’t like to be bullied, we are now Union on the outside as well.
I went along to show good will and as long as they don’t shoot we don’t. This is a first contact situation with a new species, it is the declared core value and purpose of our society and fleet to render help when it is needed and make efforts to establish peaceful relations.”
Har-Hi actually sat in his chair for a change said.”I don’t think you find a soul aboard questioning your command decissions. We played pirates but we never ceased to be Union citizens.”
I gave him a smile and said. “We still need to return to Peppermint after that to check on the Seenian depot, that is supposed to be there before we can go home.”
Mao said. “No one really wants to go home. Sure some R&R on a friendly port be nice but the crew morale could not be better.”
“That is good to hear. Now I think it is high time we contact the sick, see what the trouble is and maybe find a solution.”
As we established standard electromagnetic radio wave contact with the other sips, Elfi worked with something she called a UHF Video signal, whatever that was and managed to get a grainy two dimensional image on the main screen.
I almost jumped out of my seat. There on the screen was something like a rotting corpse staring at us. It clearly showed kinship to the Ape like furze but half of his face was swollen the other eaten to the bone, partially covered with blood and puss soaked bandages.
While he spoke his breath rattled labored and only one eye was halfway open, the other was milky white. The being had oozing ulcers all over his partially exposed body and I wondered what kept it alive.
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I knew I should have paid more attention to the Laurin Oghr, especially since I knew about the Bunthik subculture. The only excuse I had was the fact that I was drunk, but then this was no excuse because I should not have left my guard down like that in an environment that was less than familiar to me. I should have suspected the presence of more than one spy. If the situation was as serious as I believed it was, the opposing actors namely this Cam Elf-Na would not give up easily. All this...
The USS Braddock swung into orbit around one of the most mysterious worlds in the entire Universe, Narth Prime. She was the first Non-Narth vessel ever to do that in over a thousand years. Captain Mike Anderson was very aware of that. No active scanning was done. He gave strict orders not to activate any probing rays or scanners other than the passive ones needed for spaceship operations. The planet was as unusual as its inhabitants and reputation. It had no visible surface features from...
Hans due to his size and strength was often seen as a bruiser with tremendous strength but little else. This was not the case since he was with the Olafson gang. He was asked about his opinion about other things. The woman across him was about as opposite as a being could be to a Saturnian, she was a Delicate. While Brana was certainly not a member of the original gang, she like the rest became like family. She had just stepped into his security office and without any hesitation floated...
A muscular being covered with a brown shroud came running our way. It had a nonhuman snout sticking out from under his hood. What was exposed of him was covered with a short gray fur. In his right, he held an elegant looking weapon. It appeared to be an energy beamer of sort, he had fired it twice into the direction he was coming from. Now he turned and with it his weapon and he aimed at me. Lucky for me I was close, unfortunate for him, I had already drawn the Dai blade. I moved fast into...
After I was reunited with my friends and my ship we left Karthanian space and returned to the space dock of Fantlemo Brthail. The Karthanian engineer had returned with us. He told us, that with the First Engineer active, the old Guildmasters would be swept away; and he realized that he no longer wanted to be a Guild leader. He rather returned to Itheamh and helped rebuild it and run his space dock. In order to maintain our cover, he reverted to his alter ego of Fantlemo Brthail and only...
The incident with the dust cloud was now over six weeks ago. Down here in completely unexplored space, it really hit home how big our galaxy really was. Back home in the Upward sector with Hyper Highways and Space trains; with known planets and systems and of course with everyone connected to GalNet space did not feel as empty and vast. We had crossed the gap and now steadily went further down the Coreward sector. Our sensors picked up some space traffic now and then, but in general, this...
The Thauran behind the altar thundered with a deep voice.”What is this?” “Itz ze Meeze, stoopiz. Meeze goez now, whenz the Meeze comz backz. Ze girlz Soburz iz bettzer reazy zo goez.” Men drew weapons, none appeared to be of Union origin and aimed it at the Wheeze. One of them said.”I never have seen a creature like that, and I can not identify the hardware it is wearing but it speaks a very garbled version of Union standard.” “Pffz youze triez to doez ze speakiz witz a ringmouz, noz...
I returned to the table where Har-Hi was talking with the former pirate captains and a former Union fleet petty officer, who had dealt with the Worm and now paid the price. “We need to get back to the ship, right away. “Har-Hi didn’t lose a second and got up, tossed a few Iridium coins on the table and was ready to follow me. Lemakr, the Togar said. “What about us, Black Velvet?” “I have all the crew I need and I am in a hurry, figure it out. “I was torn between showing them some sort of...
The disguised Tigershark dropped out of Quasi-Space and as it has become our routine just beyond the utmost Elfi said. “Looks like they had contact with our galaxy before. Communication is now possible. They respond to Squack.” I got up, Har-Hi held my mask. “You should wear it, it is part of your Black Velvet trademark and flair of mystery.” “You think I have that? I mean a flair?” “In spades, Captain and I begin to learn to like this Do suit, complete with mask. It gives me that...
He had been here once before, time of other realms had no meaning here. The ground he stood on, was a polished hard surface of highly reflective properties and stretched into every direction and into infinity. The universe with all its clusters and superstrings reflected in it from the infinite sky above this surface. This was the Plane of Eternity, a place beyond the Omniverse itself. Lumis remembered when he was brought here the first time. Then, he did not listen to the name of Lumis....
This situation reminded me of my first visit to Sin 4. I did not know where I was, brought here against my will. Abducted, stripped of everything I owned. I was once again bare feet, had several blisters and burn wounds. My hair was a mess, at least In didn’t have to go pee. Darn it thinking about it, made realize I actually did. I was still running across that landing field, not knowing where I was going, but I knew I still stuck out like a sore thumb, being the only pin skinned human. The...
I was sitting on the main diagnostic table of our sickbay. Cateria had taken me out of a regen tank just moments ago and was now examining me. “What did you do, Captain? Fight a blast furnace” I could not find the emotions to smile, Tyron’s demise was heavy on my mind. “What I faced was certainly hot enough to melt metal. “Har-Hi was standing outside the privacy bubble and said. “Whatever you guys did, worked the run-away Orlan equipment is inactive and we can no longer detect any random...
The USS Gromsmaro was not a supply transporter and not a unit of the Science Council. She was a full sized, late model Union battleship under the command of Captain Bronbohr, a four meters tall Vvolti. Bronbohr was not the most liked commanding officer in the Union fleet, but there was hardly one more correct or fair. His ship and crew were among the top ten vessels in the entire spatial navy in terms of response to alert times, simulated battle honors, efficiency ratings and so forth. The...
The news of Eric Olafson being on trial had reached Nilfeheim. First noticed by Lars Igvarhein the owner and operator of Nilfeheim Radio. That Eric had become Erica was not widely known, but his legend had grown. Isegrim, Siegfrieda, Exa, and Elenna had traveled to Hogun’s Tavern. The place was packed to standing room only. Hogun had his GalNet terminal active on GalNet One and the system displayed the proceedings on the largest field screen setting possible. Aunt Freydis was assisted by...
The latest development transmitted in the tightly packed guest room of Hogun’s Tavern was greeted with cheers and raised tankards. Gunnar Peerson said. “I guess we only hear now, what a hero our Eric Olafson really is.” “It is the strong arm of an Olafson and the sharp mind of a Ragnarsson paired with the virtues of a true Norse that is at the core of Isegrim’s firstborn that enables such deeds.” Proclaimed another. Isegrim shouted. “Mighty brother Hogun, open barrels and let your kitchen...
Rex Schwartz, now fully aware of his ancient dual personality, known as Invictus Rex had, of course, witnessed the approach and the initial attack of the Tomradi. He was confident, that the latest TransDim shields would hold against anything these aliens could throw at them from surface weapons. The appearance of these huge disc-shaped battleships however caused great concern. He brought along a sizeable army of Seenian Sentmacs. Cloned humans that had been altered to be the perfect...