The Cagliostro Chronicles II: Conflagration (4 page)

Everyone watched silently while the natives
hacked at, and eventually killed the creature and then stripped its carcass in minutes.

“Something’s not right here
,” Mark commented in a low voice.

“What?” Eddie asked.

“Think about it. They had no fear of us at all. They pounded on our force shields, but withdrew in fear at that thing’s coming.”

“Well maybe it was because they didn’t know what we were?” Eddie offered.

“No. They attacked with a small army. There was a hundred men there. The ship’s sensors confirmed that. I have a sneaking suspicion they thought they recognized us.” Mark
continued
.

“
That don’t sound good. We’ve never been here before.”

“No
, Eddie, we haven’t. But maybe someone else with a shiny metal ship was.”

“Sometimes
, Mark,” Red commented, “you scare me.” He shook his head and stared at the screens on his console.

“What, you disagree?”

“No, it’s not that. Your logic is usually flawless and this is no exception. I can’t argue with you at all. You’re probably right. These guys saw a shiny ship hidden here and attacked it. What do you think made them search us out?”

“What else?
The King Kong wannabe. He ran from us. Think about that. They had to know something deadly was down this way, but what would make an ape run like that? It was either something that was an unknown that they wanted to investigate, or something that drove off the ape before.”

“Like another ship
,” Eddie chimed in.

“Yeah, that’s about right,
Eddie,” Mark affirmed.

A familiar voice intruded upon their conver
sation from the inter-ship comm. “Mark? This is Troiano. I need you in medical immediately.”

Mark looked at Eddie and Red
, then got up and walked toward the maglovator. “Red, you’re in charge here until I get back. If those pests outside start becoming a problem again or if ‘Mighty Joe Stupid’ returns, let me know.”

“Will do
, Mark. Go take care of Ari.”

Mark nodded without looking back while the maglovator door hummed closed behind him.

He ran down the hall toward the medical bay and tapped his sleeve once again. “Dan, status?” Instantly the communications array forwarded his call to Dan Sledge who was working on the main engines with a crew.

“Still
workin’ on it, Bossman. Things are coming along but it’s slow goin’.”

“Are we able to get off the ground if we had to right now?”

“Oh yeah, Mark, that’s not a problem, but we’ll never be able to make hyper-warp. We’re workin’ to rectify that situation though.”

“Any idea how much longer?”

“Could be hours, could be a week. The machine shop and electronics lab are makin’ replacement parts as fast as possible, but if we need any raw materials, we’ll have to go out and dig ‘em up.”

Mark sighed resignedly
. “All right, Dan. Let me know what I can do.”

“Will do Mark.
Sledge out.”

Mark turned a corner and entered the medical lab as the conversation
ended.

Dr. Troiano,
a small attractive woman with long brown hair, stood tapping her foot with her arms crossed as she looked at Ariel, who was lying on a gurney. Troiano was a pretty woman with a sort of impish quality about her when she relaxed and smiled. She was not smiling. She looked down her nose above the glasses she wore and stared at Mark.

“Your girlfriend is not ta
king this very seriously and her situation is anything
but
not serious.”

“Whoa, Ann, what are you talking about? Take a step backward and fill me in.”

“Ariel here has bleeding on the brain. If this is not taken care of immediately she could be in big trouble, Captain Johnson
.”

Mark knew the severity of the situation immediately. Troiano never called him ‘Captain Johnson’ unless things were deadly serious.

“What does she need? Surgery?”

“No one is cutting my head open!” Ariel shouted.

Mark walked over to Ariel and put his hands on her shoulders. “Relax, Ari. Let Ann talk. Go ahead, Doctor.”

“Thank you
, Captain Johnson,” Ann Troiano replied, “No, she does not need surgery, yet. She has to lay off using her special powers at least for a few days. Whatever she used her telepathy on must have had a much different brain than she did. Not more advanced or more intelligent, but more raw or primitive.  She stressed out her brain trying to reach this thing. What was it?”

Mark looked at Ariel, who motioned with her hand that he should go ahead and tell Troiano.

Mark sighed again and screwed the corner of his mouth up. “It was a sort of ape or gorilla. It was about a hundred feet high, and its head had a V-shape to it.”

Tro
iano threw her hands in the air and looked at the ceiling in angry surprise “Are you kidding me? She wanted to talk psychically with this thing? Hey here’s an idea, in the future, blow a hole in its chest if it’s attacking us.” She turned toward Ari. “You better take this seriously. You may have one hell of a gift there, but if you do not watch it and tread carefully from now on, you could end up either dead or without your gift permanently.”

Ariel looked at the floor and
answered in a voice slightly above a whisper. “I think that happened already.”

“What? What are you talking about?” Mark asked anxiously.

Ariel locked eyes with him and continued, “I-I can’t hear anyone’s thoughts at all. I always had the ability to hear people’s thoughts all the time, not really listen in, but I always psychically heard this background noise, a sort of dull murmur that I learned how to tune out. I can’t hear it in my head anymore.”

“Since when?”
Mark asked cautiously.

“
It started when I almost fell on the ramp coming back on the ship. I still heard your mental ‘voice’ on the command deck but everything has gradually gone quiet in my mind. For the first time in my life I can’t hear others thoughts. Mark, it was almost an empathic feeling I would get. But now it’s all gone. I feel so…alone.” She looked up into his eyes, questing for answers.

Mark hugged her
and let her rest her head on his shoulder.

“Doctor, I’m leaving her to you. A
riel, you have to listen to Ann. She knows what’s best. Doctor, put her in one of the private suites here.”

“I already planned that
, Mark.” The fact that Troiano had not called him ‘Captain’ once again did not go unnoticed to Mark Johnson. Immediately he relaxed, a little at least.

“This is my fault
, you know,” Mark spat out. “I ordered Ari to make the ape go. I made her attempt to contact it.”

“Well
, next time you’ll know better, won’t you?” Ann Troiano looked at Mark and softened when she saw the pain in his eyes. “Go get some rest, Mark. You look like hell. We need you operating at one hundred percent as much as we need the ship to. Don’t worry about, Ari. I’ve got her under my watchful eye, and I promise you, she’ll be all right. Now go get some rest, you big galoot.” She gently shoved him out the medical lab’s sliding glass doors.

Mark turned back and nodded to both Troiano and Ariel, then turned and headed back toward the maglovator.

Mark walked in silent contemplation. Ariel meant the world to him, though he rarely told her. The past two years had been a hell of another sort, with the constant back and forth fighting between the Earth and its stripling space fleet and the Agalum race and their many galaxy spanning fleet of vessels.

Earth
was outgunned, but the saving grace of it all was that the Agalum and their allies had all grown fat and lazy over the centuries, more than content in their power. As far as they were concerned no one, no race on any planet, could stand up to them.

Until they somehow discovere
d the Earth over a century ago, what they had seen in mankind was a predator that was not to be underestimated. But they did just that. They underestimated mankind and sought to curtail man’s hunger for exploration of the depths of space. For many years their plan worked.

For over a century the Agalum conspiracy had worke
d surreptitiously to undermine Earth’s space program. Presidents were replaced with shape shifters who did everything they could to destroy the space program. Ships were destroyed and astronauts died under mysterious circumstances. Finally the space program ended up being farmed out to the private sector over the years, and NASA became nothing more than an organization of space traffic controllers.

The accidents continued to happen even with the private companies taking over the space program
, but now there were many companies to watch over by mankind’s secretive opponent
as opposed to one. Their plan had backfired against them. There were too many corporations with too many different ways of doing business in too many different facilities across the globe to keep track of, and to secretly undermine. Men like Mark Johnson came along and began to make strides. Space became accessible, but only to what astronauts and explorers would term as ‘locally’.

The enemy must have settled for this after a time because things seemed to even out. At least until Mark discovered through countless
hours of seemingly eternal testing the way to break down the light speed barrier.

As per usual with Mark Johnson, not only did he break the
faster than light barrier, but he did it in such a way that his ship was the fastest ship anywhere.

‘They waited too long.’
Mark mused silently as he entered the maglovator.
‘They should have been more concerned with updating their own star faring vehicles instead of trying to curtail our efforts.’

A moment later he exited the maglovator and re-entered the command deck, “Status update?” he asked Red Robinski.

“Unchanged, Mark. How’s Ari?”

Eddie turned and looked at Mark also
, wanting to hear how Ariel was doing himself.

Mark cocked his head sideways and shook it slowly. “Not great. She has bleeding on the brain
.”

“What?” Eddie asked, his face belying his shock.

“Troiano says she’ll be okay, she thinks, but she wants her resting for at least several days. The worst part of this is it seems that Ari has already lost her powers. She claims she hasn’t been able to use her abilities since the ape attacked.”

He sat down in his command chair and shook his head side to side slowly, biting his lower lip before continuing, “I can’t believe I made her attack the ape that way
.”

“
You can’t blame yourself Mark. Who could have known?” Red offered.

“I know. Y
ou’re right, Red. But it’s hard not to take the blame for this. It was my blunder, and it may cost her permanently.”

A
mechanized voice blared over the conference room comm, jarring them all from their conversation. “Intruder alert, Intruder alert.”

“What the hell?” Mark jumped from his seat and stared at the view screen
. Most of the natives were gone.

“Where’d they go?” Mark questioned.

“Behind that treeline.” Red replied, pointing at the viewscreen.

Mark spun toward Red, “And what could they have been doing while out of your sight?
”

Red grimaced, his face turning the color of his nickname, “They
dug tunnels.”

“They tunneled beneath us? Who
fell asleep on the job and did not see that?” Mark shouted angrily, “Wake up Robinski. It’s your job to watch out for stuff like this.”

“Intruder alert, intruder alert
,” continued to blare annoyingly over the comm.

“Find the intruders
now!” Mark snapped.

“Got ‘em
,” replied Red sheepishly.

“Coming up the gangplank int
o the ship slowly and carefully five of them.”

“Lori,” Mark turned to a young red head who sat at the comm station where Ariel normally sat, “
turn off that damned alert. Red, show these newcomers our hospitality we reserve for invaders.”

“You got it
, Boss.” Red thumbed a button on his virtual console. The image of the walkway leading to the outside on the gangplank filled with gas. Instantly the invaders dropped to the floor unconscious.

“Red
, get a security team to take them all to cells on the detention level. Obviously relieve them all of their weapons, and post a team on the ramp outside. If anyone else comes out of those holes shoot them.” Mark paused a moment, then added, “But only to stun. Don’t kill them, unless it’s a life threatening situation. Then do whatever you have to.”

Red nodded stoically.
“Understood, Mark.”

“Good.
Let me know when you get them secured. I want to have a talk with our guests when they wake up.”