Spacer Tales
The Alien Monks
S J MacDonald
Published by S J MacDonald
Copyright 2011 S J MacDonald
Acknowledgement
Thanks to Pen for patient listening and proofreading beyond the call of friendship.
____________________
The Alien Monks
The five little men walked into Kluskey’s bar in single file. They were fine boned and as athletic as gymnasts. They were all wearing expensive business suits with their pale hair cut into fashionable geometric crops. Large amber eyes surveyed the world with solemn curiosity.
A taller dark haired man came in, accompanying them with something of the air of a shepherd. It was mid-morning at Kluskey’s and the place was quiet. The crew of a container ship were having an early lunch while their ship was being fumigated by Interstellar Pathogen Control. A handful of Fleet crew were having drinks in one of the booths. There was the usual daytime group of retired spacers making their drinks last and watching the constantly changing information on the Wall. One of the many things recorded on the giant infoscreen was the arrival of a large private yacht which had come into port the previous day. It was called the Mayfly and carried the logo of Sunburst Charter Yachts.
All the spacers knew what that meant. Sunburst was a cover for the League Diplomatic Corps’ discreet transport services, often used for VIPs who didn’t want the hassle of travelling on liners. They were also sometimes used for exodiplomacy. Every spacer in that bar knew that the dark haired man in the unobtrusive suit was actually a Diplomatic Corps Special Attache. Like many exodiplomacy attaches, Shipmaster Milo Jones was an officer on secondment from the Fleet.
The raptor class destroyer Hawk was also currently paying an unscheduled courtesy visit to the Neuwald System. They’d arrived a couple of days before the yacht and were due to leave a day or two after it departed. If the Diplomatic Corps had put a notice on the Wall announcing that they were escorting alien visitors through the system, it could not have been more obvious to the spacer community.
Hardly anyone else in the system would know, though. The majority of groundhogs were blissfully unaware that aliens were visiting their worlds. Only spacers, civil authorities and conspiracy theorists knew the truth.
‘Mr Kluskey.’ Skipper Jones came forward with a smile and shook hands with the owner of the bar. Tam Kluskey was tall and shaggy haired, with a friendly grin and intelligent eyes. He seemed to be behind the bar pretty much all of the time, day and night. Regulars joked that he slept under the counter when things were quiet. ‘Milo Jones,’ the diplomat introduced himself. ‘Thank you for allowing us to visit.’
‘Tam,’ Tam responded, and smiled at him and at the five small figures who’d now formed a row standing in front of the bar. They were looking around, as fascinated as if they’d never seen anything like it before. ‘Welcome to Kluskey’s.’
‘Thank you.’ The nearest of the visitors stepped forward and started to hold out his hand, then hesitated, turning his head to speak to Milo Jones. ‘Are we businessmen from Alip or a street theatre group?’ he enquired.
‘You can just be yourselves here.’ The diplomat assured them, as all five looked at him with the same question. ‘That’s what places like Kluskey’s are for. Spacers can meet here and talk freely about things that are not discussed in mainstream society.’
The five visitors looked around the bar and all switched on beaming smiles. The reaction to them was interesting. The Hawk’s shoreleavers rather obviously knew them already and weren’t the slightest bit surprised. The crew of the container ship Tannil Logistics 39 and the few others in the bar fell silent and gazed at the aliens until they looked around. Then people remembered their manners and conversations hastily resumed.
‘We are visitors from the planet Gide,’ The man nearest the bar informed Tam, holding out his hand again. His handshake was crisp, with unexpected strength in his arm, though it was rather like shaking hands with a robot. ‘I am Shantaitha Charindathai Takanda.’
One by one, the other four shook hands too and introduced themselves. They all had similar names, all beginning with ‘Shantaitha’ which was evidently some form of title.
‘We are here to visit our friend Chatichai Karanda,’ Shantaitha Takanda explained. ‘He is exploring possibilities with some people called The Fourth.’
Tam grinned. Spacers tended to break into grins whenever the Fourth Fleet Irregulars were mentioned, a reaction quickly followed by animated conversation and laughter. Gossip about the Fourth’s latest exploits was a staple of spacer conversation. There were many mysteries about them, many things even spacers couldn’t find out. It was well known that they were active in exodiplomacy, though, with several non-human crew known to be serving with them. It was suspected, too, that they might even be crossing the Firewall.
The Firewall was a vast barrier around human space, a curved plane which encompassed at least two spiral arms of the galaxy. Any ship attempting to cross it was immediately turned around, its crew briefly rendered unconscious but otherwise unharmed. There was never any record on the ship’s logs of any other vessel being present. Humanity had got the message and generally stayed clear of the barrier. It was known, though, that there were great and ancient civilisations beyond it, advanced far beyond the understanding of humanity. Some of them were making tentative movements towards contact, though, sending ambassadors and explorers into human space. Sometimes they ended up with the Fourth, since the Fourth had the expertise and facilities to look after them.
‘Yes, I’ve heard of Chati Karanda,’ Tam told them, at which they looked pleased. ‘The Fourth never come through Neuwald,’ Tam explained, with a note of some regret at that since he would have loved to stand every one of them a beer, ‘but we get to hear a lot about them.’ Stories about Chati Karanda had been doing the rounds for the last couple of years. He had apparently just turned up at the Fourth’s base on Therik and been accepted as a volunteer. He was a cadet in their on-board Academy, said to be training to become an engineering officer. He was also said to be a master of some kind of martial art, far beyond the ability of any human. ‘They’re on the Cherque station, I believe.’
The five visitors nodded simultaneously.
‘It is an area of conflict.’
‘The Marfikians are attacking your ships.’
‘We may be fired upon.’
‘There is physical danger.’
‘We have been advised.’
They spoke, one after the other, as if that was a statement they had made many times, perhaps in assuring their human hosts that they understood the risks and were prepared to take them.
‘An offer was made to bring Chatichai Karanda to a place where we might meet in safety,’ Shantaitha Takanda explained, ‘but we wish to see where he is and what he is doing.’
‘We put our names on a paper to say that if we are hurt or killed, our people will not blame yours,’ one of the others observed, and all five of them broke into broad smiles, as if this was a joke they found endlessly amusing. Tam grinned too, as if sharing their amusement at human bureaucracy, but nodded acknowledgement to the diplomat escorting them.
‘Quite a trek out there,’ he observed. Alien visitors normally came into human space via the nearest secret base to the world they wanted to visit. All border worlds had such secret deep space stations with facilities for visitors and diplomatic ships to bring them into port. To have come into Neuwald the way they did, the Gideans must have come into human space on the far side of the League from the mining world of Cherque. ‘It would have been a lot quicker for you to come in at Novamas.’
/>
‘So we were informed,’ Shantaitha Takanda confirmed, ‘but we are happy to make the journey through your space. We wish to experience human worlds and culture on the way.’
‘We have experienced Cestus, Flancer and Therik,’ one of the others informed Tam. He understood at once that that meant that they were not even travelling straight across the League but zig-zagging via planets of interest. At that rate their journey might take them a year or more.
‘Not Chartsey?’ he queried, a little surprised since their route had bypassed the capital world.
‘No, we did not wish to go to Chartsey,’ another of the visitors explained, with the simple comment, ‘we have seen pictures of it.’
Many of the spacers burst out laughing at that. Chartsey was not a world many spacers enjoyed visiting. The system was so massively overcrowded that it could take hours even to be processed to a parking orbit. Leisure