Alien Courage (Rise of the Empress) (4 page)

The Administrator checked his monitor screens and all
the security androids were at their correct stations. All Great Hall training
activities were cancelled. It shouldn’t be long, he thought, but maybe I have
time to do one thing.

The Administrator hurried to his transport hanger.
There were three space craft at his disposal. He chose the fastest, an Echo
Class fighter and summoned his android pilot. In moments they were clear of Ennack’s
atmosphere. After clearance with Ennack’s Planetary Defence they asked if he
required an escort. The Administrator declined and told them he was logged on
as a routine maintenance flight for pilot status requirements.

The flight was short; their destination was the
largest of Ennack’s worker’s moons. A huge Trigeal organised artificial moon
constructed many thousands of years ago. It is the home to tens of millions of
level three citizen workers who commute via shuttles when needed on Ennack - the
Confederacy’s Empirical home of the Emperor, headquarters of Space Command and
associated Armed Forces. Ennack was also the home of Galactic Administration
and Military Training facilities as well as the Trigealian Regiment and various
Religious Temples.

The Administrator always disliked worker’s moons. They
were allowed to degenerate and operate at a common denominator of the lower
spectrum of their population. The Trigeals always intervened when the worker
class were tampered with, either to improve them or degrade them further. They
always remained the same worker class and social order.

The Administrator had to walk further than he would
have liked so he changed out of his uniform and dressed as section leader of a
2B electronics class engineer. It helped him to blend in and prevented his
throat being slit. The address he was going to
led
him down many narrow paths made with metal plates for the ground and ceramic
buildings. Mist and foul smelling vapours enveloped everything. Lighting was
poor due to the illuminators being constantly stripped to obtain the elements,
an ingredient used in illicit drug manufacture. A roving security team, nothing
more than thugs in uniform eyed the Administrator suspiciously but stopped when
one of the team recognised him, their haste to get away brought more unwanted
attention to him. A ring of workers formed around him at a nearby cross way in
the path. Their jeers and expressions made their intentions dangerous. The
Administrator took a small object from his pocket and dropped it on the metal
ground and deftly put on safety glasses similar to those used as a welding
shield. The object ignited in a flash many thousands of times more powerful
than the light emitted from an illuminator. The group of workers screamed in
agony as their retinas absorbed the full impact. They were still screaming in
agony with their hands to their faces as the Administrator calmly walked past.

The Administrator located the door he was seeking. It
was on the first level of a multi level accommodations building. Its ceramic
construction stained from thousands of repair patches over repair patches. He
pressed the door buzzer but it didn’t work. He took his hand out of his pocket
and knocked on the door with the butt of a mini blaster. He knocked again after
no answer, then again.

“Get lost,” a grumpy answer came from behind the door.

“Nothing would give me greater pleasure,” the
Administrator replied.

There was silence, then a latch sounded and a thin sliver
of light getting increasingly wider showed the silhouette of a face peering
through the crack.

“I need to talk to you Rotti,” the Administrator
asked.

“Oh do you now. I haven’t heard your voice for… what
is it now… eighteen no, nineteen new task trainings, six promotions, two level
eight reprimands plus two wives. The last one took everything I had, which come
to think of it wasn’t much after what you did to me.”

“You cannot blame me for your intervention. I
specifically warned you not to buy those things yourself, an android is made
for than sort of thing. Memory erasure can be guaranteed.” The Administrator
replied.

“Yeah, well, where were you when I got caught. I could
have ended up somewhere else than this dump with a little help from you,” Rotti
complained angrily, his hand moving up to slam the door closed.

The Administrator quickly decided he needed to know
the truth because he knew Rotti when he gets angry; he’ll fly into a rage and
nothing gainful will occur and further intervention from someone else will
result. “You were never destined to be intervened here. I was the one who
recommended it.”

“You what!?
My life intervened and another five years to go
before I get the opportunity to beg my way off this lump of artificial crap. I don’t
know what you want but you…”

“You were originally assigned to either Beta E4 or
Earth.” The Administrator interjected and let the information sink in then told
him something he already knew, “you can’t beg your way off those.”

Rotti staggered backwards tripping on a curled carpet
edge in his tiny room. He managed to keep his footing but hit the wall with a
resounding thump and slid down into a sitting position. The Administrator’s
words suddenly making sense and explained the strange way he was shifted from
one holding cell to another. A loud curse came from the adjoining room. Rotti
shouted back a string of obscenities more by habit than by choice but quietened
down to reflect on this new information. He knew Beta E4 was a prison asteroid
which after your intervention time, you were sold off as slaves and Earth,
well, that’s just a one way ticket. No one ever comes back from there.

The Administrator entered the room and closed the door
behind him. He quickly dismissed the filthy untidy room with the awful smell.
He also looked at a man who didn’t care about anything and took a satchel out
of his breast pocket. He threw it to Rotti who failed to catch it but it landed
in his lap. He reached down and opened it. It contained almost a countless number
of credits in Rotti’s opinion. There was more money in that one satchel than he
would earn in a lifetime here. “I cannot get you out of here any earlier but I
can make your life a little easier. However, you must use this,” the
Administrator held out a small vile. “It will erase the last time frame or two
from your memory and will also give you one mighty headache for awhile but an
intervention scan will reveal nothing of our meeting or how you came to have
those credits. You will just have the credits and not know why, gambling
perhaps.”

“I won’t care why, and headaches I have most days
anyway,” Rotti said not believing his luck getting so many credits. He fingered
the colourful little discs in the satchel. He suddenly became motionless. “Hey
wait a minute; just what do I have to do?” He asked in a cold and calculating
voice. His eyes now calculating and rose up slowly to look at the
Administrator. The Administrator’s eyes flickered. Rotti then hugged the
satchel of credits and quickly shuffled over to a little wall safe, opened it
and put the satchel in quickly and locked the mechanism.

“No, you don’t have to kill anyone or get involved
with that or any type of negative or terminal intervention. I just need to
discuss with you the affects of nuclear detonation and radiation on sentient
beings or their environment,” The Administrator asked. “Your field of expertise
is nuclear flow resonances and wave characteristics is it not?”

Rotti sat bolt upright. No one had talked to him of
that subject for a long, long time. He was banned from ever practicing in that
field ever again after certain animals with particular mutated organs and
behaviour were traced back to him from the brothel sector on
Galaxis
Five. He always maintained he was set up.

“Sure it is, lot of good it does me here. What do you
want to know?” Rotti asked feeling less suspicious, then he suddenly realised
something. “Oh! So this is ‘field’ nuclear physics is it?” Big difference with
what goes on out there,” Rotti pointed at nothing in particular, “than in the
laboratory so to speak. You need to be more specific.”

“Can’t be anything but general unfortunately, but
let’s say a whole bunch of beings get blown up with a nuclear device on a small
planet. What can happen to them as beings? What are the affects of a nuclear
blast on sentient beings and what effect does a sudden nuclear detonation have
on planetary electronics?” The Administrator asked but he noticed Rotti had a
wicked smile.

“Lots, but is this explosion radium, plutonium, or an
isotope thereof or some other element base? How powerful is it? Is there
gravity in this situation and if so how strong? I’d need to know if there was
or is an atmosphere, how big, what gases, pre existing radiation, carbon
levels, chemical, light, dust analysis data needs to be gathered. I need to
know what level of being. Are they aware of the technology used against them or
are they stupid, if so to what degree of intervention?” Rotti asked and clearly
had more questions. His mind was running with the problem and he for the first
time in a very long time actually started to think.

The Administrator looked around him and spotted a
small metal box. He picked it up and moved close to Rotti. He put the box down
and sat on it. He, for the second time since being in the room checked his arm
console; there were no bugs or recording devices in the near vicinity. “There
is no way to gather those answers but tell me this. Is it possible for two
completely different intelligent beings, one with extremely high ability and
the other… well, at the other end of the scale get confused with
who
they are, or maybe switch personalities or something
like that by a nuclear incident or radiation?”

“I guess it’s possible. The wavelengths of the average
mind in this sector of the universe can be approximated by certain wavelengths
from different sources. For example, some types of radiation or vibration can
be made to make minds respond in certain predicable patterns and from certain
stimuli; hence the beings themselves get affected and act out a predetermined
intervention. It’s similar to the method used by the Trigeals to some extent to
scan for memories but how they control it let alone do it on a scale as large
and as accurate as they do is beyond my understanding. I’d like to be of more
help but simply when you fool with nuclear wavelengths the results can be
wildly unpredictable, especially in the field.” Rotti explained.

“I see,” the Administrator lamented. “It’s got too
many variables. Thank you for your assistance. I do insist you take this now so
I can see you do it, better for both our sakes.” The Administrator cracked the
vile and handed it to Rotti.

“No problems, pity I won’t remember what you did for
me. I owe you my existence, thank you
Drex
,” Rotti
said earnestly and took the vile and dripped the liquid on his tongue. He
really didn’t care if it killed him.

The Administrator hadn’t been called by name for a long
time and felt glad he had helped this man. He was a rogue to have around but an
excellent technician, and always in trouble. He just had to be always right
irrelevant of the authority or consequences.

“Oh,
Drex
....  One
little known thing about nuclear blasts and accelerated frequencies is the
speed and frequency of the initial and secondary detonation… if it closely
approximates the mental wavelength of the being it kills or affects… it can be
magnified and the effect can be felt across vast distances. You know the…
“Rotti was starting to be affected by the drug. “Well, you know… it’s similar
to… like when someone you’re close to is killed or in danger, no matter where
they are, you sort of know something is wrong and your attention sticks on it,
sort of like a link of harmonic frequency. There are some things we just don’t
know why… Wow this is really good stuff!” Rotti’s eyes closed but he continued
trying to speak. “Just how close were these beings…? You know… when a lot of
people die or become unconscious at the same time… it can create a powerful
surge or magnification of mental wavelength, some sort of unconscious effort to
regain consciousness and survive I believe. Been a few studies on it, that’s
why fusion has been banned for weapons of mass death – too primitive and the
altered life gets really screwy both physically and mentally. It totally upsets
the whole genetic line of evolution...
ohhhh
… I think
I’ll go to sleep now…”  Rotti fell sideways to the floor, out cold.

The Administrator pulled a blanket off a sleeping
bench and covered him. “I think you’ve answered my questions.” 

The trip back to Ennack was swift and uneventful. The
first thing the Administrator did was to permanently erase the pilot’s recent
memory. With that completed he went straight to his console in the Great Hall.
There was an Imperial Court android being detained by security at the visitor’s
centre. The Administrator ordered the android through to see him.