“I don`t know Karson, but for it to happen soon after that botched attack by those bloody useless androids leaves me wondering whether we caused it, and I would also like to know where that space armada came from, and just how much of it will be space worthy. If we hadn`t been damaged quite so badly I would have demanded answers now, but with our ship in this condition we will just have to watch what happens.”
Kruger sat quiet for a few seconds as he went over all that had happened, before deciding on a plan of action. He then turned to his first officer.
“Karson, will you launch two of our micro spy satellites to keep geostationary orbits above the planet, one is to be above the fleet of ships that crashed down upon the planet and the other over the science complex. Then at least we will know just what is going on down there and can then act accordingly, when our power is finally returned to us.” Kruger ordered.
“What happens next is that Earth will send out a fleet to find out what the hell is happening, and the corporation will be very angry should that mean that they miss their chance at snatching the Time Machine.” Karson lamented.
Karson modelled himself on his captain whom he admired more than anyone else. However, he was not yet as hard shelled as Kruger was. Karson, twenty eight years of age, thought he needed only a little more time under his captain before he could look for his own command, maybe the Indefatigable, Kruger was showing the strain of all his years in space, thought Karson, and soon the corporation would be looking for younger blood. Kruger interrupted the thoughts of his ambitious first officer.
“There will be plenty of time after it all dies down Number One, plenty of time.”
Kruger should have known that when things start to go wrong there is never enough time, especially after a time storm. He had been in space for thirty of his fifty years, and was battle toughened after years of working for the corporation. His conscience had all but been eroded away with each atrocity carried out by the Indefatigable. Once he had been a bright eyed idealist, but with each promotion came more money, and this paid for his ideals. He knew all of this and was finally admitting to himself that all was not well with his life, this would be his last such action, he would have enough to retire on, somewhere quiet where he was unknown.
“Helmsman, take us into a stationary orbit behind the fourth planet of this system, with just our nose showing so that we can both see and hear what is happening down on that planet.”
**********
At the science complex the Time Platform was now sitting quietly inside of the Laboratory and thankfully, Jameson thought, looking no worse for wear. This was thanks to its power regulator that had released all the excess energy it received from the fusion reactor into space, and had been the reason why so much had been snared by the magnetic field that had been generated. The scientists finally had a moment to relax. Brian and Tracy Goddard had contacted the school of Orion to check that their two children were unhurt, and on being told that they and the other children were fine, could finally put their arms around one another and thank god that they had come through this thing physically ok. Jameson and the others within the complex all contacted their families to ensure that none had been crushed by the falling space debris, and to reassure their loved ones that they were all ok, all ok except for Adrian Powers.
Jameson`s parents lived in New Eden itself, and had not realised the danger that had been all around them as they stood looking at the heavenly show above them, as the time storm had raged around the planet. Nor did they know about the android attack, hardly anybody in New Eden did. His wife of ten years had been with his parents when he had rushed over to his parents` house, and so he was able to assure her that everything was ok now, the android attack which he quickly told her about was over, and they wouldn`t be coming back for more of Bragg`s hospitality. Sarah, his wife had laughed and replied that she wouldn`t like to receive it either, at last Jameson thought, a moment to relax, to laugh with his wife, to live again. Richard and Sarah Jameson had two sons, Paul aged nine and Simon aged seven, both would demand to know every gory detail over dinner, thankfully they were safe in their school while everything had come apart.
As the scientists got themselves together Bishop John Sinclair burst into the control room. Having seen Powers body still lying in the corridor he asked urgently after the health of the other members of the complex.
“Yes John” Jameson reassured him having returned to the complex. “The rest of us are fine, it was only poor Adrian Powers who died, and that as a result of my ordering him to turn the electrical power off at the main electrical control unit.” Jameson was suffering ever growing feelings of guilt because of Powers death.
“It was not your fault Richard.” Tracy Goddard said gently, trying to offer some kind of comfort and support to her friend. “You were not to know the unit had been damaged during the fight between those things and the marines.”
“I know Tracy, but it is such a waste of a young life.”
“Where on earth did they come from,” Sinclair asked of no one in particular. “And what did they want here.”
They discussed these questions and others for some time, but without coming to an answer. John Sinclair though, thought back to Altera and prayed that what had happened there would not repeat itself on Orion.
Colonel Bragg then entered the room again with his remaining marines waiting in the corridor.
“I`ve removed the bodies of my dead marines to the church, Bishop, the walking wounded are recovering in the town`s medical centre with Doctor Springer and his wife looking after them. My men outside in the corridor will take Powers` body over to the church as well, for your care Bishop.
“Thank you Charles.” Sinclair said. “I know that Richard and the others here would appreciate your men taking care of him.”
The scientists added their thanks to Sinclair`s, and Jameson`s face turned a deathly shade of white as he heard the talk about young Adrian Powers. He had come through it all virtually unscathed, while one of his orders had caused the death of one so young; his conscience was tearing him apart and would continue to do so until his dying day.
“Well I have some good news.” Bragg stated. All eyes in the room turned to him. “As far as we can tell there was no damage anywhere in New Eden or the local surrounding areas, miraculously the meteors and other falling debris managed to miss the town and crashed down into the jungle.”
This news had the effect of lifting the sagging spirits of the scientists, but Bragg hadn`t finished yet.
“Unfortunately one piece of bad news is that our satellite was taken out by the meteor storm, and we cannot re-establish contact with the missionaries or the villages around Orion to find out how the rest of the planet faired.”
With these thoughts Bragg left the Laboratory, and the scientists got down to checking strained circuits and repairing damaged hardware.
**********
Later that day Marcia was just finishing making her and her father`s dinner, when her father came home after toiling all day on the farm. Marcia could see that once again he had exhausted himself doing the job suited to a much younger man than Robert Lambert was.
“Are you well Marcia, I got your message, how is your marine?” Lambert did not hold with the romance between his daughter and the marine, he knew that marines moved around a lot and this one would be no different, in a couple of years he would be wooing another young woman on a planet many light years away from Orion.
“He has recovered a little; John is very strong and should soon be up and about again father. Our dinner is ready if you want to wash up, it will be on the table by the time you are done.”
Lambert looked at his daughter busily working away, she was a good girl, and he knew that she shouldn`t have to keep house for him, but in life there are many such tasks that you are called on to do during the short time allotted to you.
Chapter Ten
June 22nd the Year 2494
We Have Company
Morning dawned rather pai
nfully for Tyler and George Masters, as they had slept rather uncomfortably way up in the trees that they had hastily climbed the night before, and although the beast had finally departed, rather put out at missing its dinner, or so it seemed to Tyler, the two of them had not dared to descend to the ground. Now with the sun shining fully on them, and with a fierce thirst, they clambered back down to the ground. Tyler groaned and rubbed his aching body, it was pure relief to be away from his painful bed. Both men looked rather tired after their uncomfortable night up in the tree and their clothes were creased, and in George`s case a little dirty, following his fall on the wet ground as he had turned to try to escape the bear like creature.
“I really am glad to be out of that tree George, we really will have to find another place to sleep tonight, I can`t face another such night.”
Masters groaned in agreement, but his first thoughts were of water, which they found nearby in the form of a spring gushing out of a large hole in a rock. After quenching their thirsts the two men washed as well as they could, but of course neither of them could shave. Their next concern was for food, and this need took them a lot longer to satisfy.
“George, I am starving, didn`t you learn anything about surviving off the land when you were in the forces?”
Masters looked back at Tyler, who was following behind him, and replied rather condescendingly to the question put to him.
“Not a lot Tyler, remember that I was in the RAF not the Commandos, so I was in the air mostly and didn`t have much to do with such unimportant things such as finding my dinner, it was served to me each night in the NAAFI.”
The two walked on with the jungle giving way to scrub and grasses, and it was well after noon, and the time had come and gone for breakfast and lunch, when from up ahead Tyler heard a commotion, raised voices and what sounded like a brief scuffle. Tyler and Masters edged closer, hidden behind the undergrowth that had always surrounded them since their forced landing on this strange planet. From between the leafy branches of a large green bush they looked down at their first group of Heliot troopers.
“It looks as if we have company George, although I am not sure if I like the look of those soldiers.” Tyler said looking down from the low hill at the scene being played out below them.
Tyler and Masters looked down upon six heavily armoured troopers who had accosted two young men, who were obviously not troopers, and were rather annoyed at being treated rather violently.
“Who do the hell do you think you guys are, do you happen to know just who I am?” The taller of the two blond captives asked of the troopers.
For an answer the trooper shoved the taller of the two blond men, and then he said something in a foreign language that neither Tyler, nor Masters could not understand. The two blond men didn`t appear to understand it either. The man in command of the patrol then turned to two of the troopers and obviously instructed them to take their two captives back along the trail while they continued on in the opposite direction. Then the group broke up, with two of the troopers escorting their captives back along the trail, and the remainder of the troopers moving further along the trail in the opposite direction. The two troopers obviously had only contempt for their two prisoners and didn`t bother tying their hands, they just rammed the heavy assault Phaser rifles into the captives` stomachs and gestured with their weapons the direction they wanted them to go. When the two captives delayed due to the Heliot`s treatment of them, the troopers threatened to shoot the two blond men if they didn`t move along the track, a track that curved around the hill that hid Tyler and Masters, and leaving Tyler and Masters looking on bewildered as the rest of the troopers disappeared in the other direction.
“Well George the two civilians spoke English, but as for the soldiers, I have no idea what language they spoke.”
“They seemed to be well protected by their armoured suits, and the weapons they carried were well in advance of anything I have seen on Earth, so they must be from a civilisation that is obviously more advanced than our own Tyler.”
“Well George those two guys are English, or at least they speak a form of English, and they are in need of some help. Help is what we are certainly in need of, and I think that we are more likely to get it from those two guys rather than your heavily armoured aliens.”
Masters looked across at Tyler anxiously.
“I don`t think we will find many Englishmen here Tyler, I don`t even think we are on Earth, Look at the colour of the sun, it`s redder than ours surely, and look at the flora and fauna, they certainly don`t look Earth like.”
Tyler was also concerned about these points, but hearing a man speaking English confused him even more, for what chances were there that they would have found themselves on a distant planet where the natives spoke English, and anyway how could they have travelled to some other world. Tyler was of course correct in his deductions, but the two men had spoken in English as they had assumed that any strangers would speak the same language as the colonists from Earth. However, the two men spoke a form of English that had changed over the last five hundred years. This was something that Tyler and George Masters had both noticed, but had decided to gloss over, for they knew that they may not like the answer to such a query.
“Whether they are English or not, they will certainly help us if we help them, let`s go George.”
Masters was not at all sure how the two of them could help free the two captives, but he forbore to answer this question for the moment and followed after Tyler. Tyler and Masters kept to a track that paralleled the track below, and Tyler fearing that they would run into more troopers, realised that they would have to act sooner rather than later, and so he forced the pace and was now ahead of the soldiers and their captives. They got their chance to act just after they had come around the next bend, Tyler saw that it offered a better than average chance of success. He quickly told Masters his idea who argued at first about the recklessness of the whole idea.
“Perhaps Tyler, we should leave it to the local authorities to sort out, for we are foreigners here, and we don`t want to get into any trouble considering our position.” Tyler quickly squashed the objections raised by Masters.
“There is no time for that George, and anyway we have no idea just where the authorities are on this planet. No, with or without your help George, I am going to attempt to free those two men.”
Reluctantly Masters agreed to the plan outlined by Tyler, but only due to Tyler`s insistence.
“George, my plan offers a chance of freeing the two captives, and if we are successful we will also succeed in getting some much needed help for the two of us.”
Masters had quickly forgotten his previous thoughts about ensuring the safety of Tyler, and was now fretting about the safety of one George Masters. Even so he realised that Tyler had decided on both of their future actions and that he would have to comply, that or risk everything going wrong and both of them ending up as prisoners of the two alien soldiers.
The plan called for Masters to distract the two troopers giving Tyler the chance to jump them, and then give the two captives the chance to assist them in taking the two troopers out. However, Tyler had never been in the military so knew nothing of fighting, or of any of the many kinds of martial arts he had seen at the cinema.
As the two troopers followed their captives around a sharp bend in the trail, Masters called to them from the hill they had just walked by. As Tyler had hoped both troopers stopped and turned to face Masters, unfortunately for Masters their next action was to aim their Phasers toward the tree that Masters had hastily hid his body behind, and they then fired at it. It did not take the two blond captives long to realise that maybe friends had arrived, they had come to a stop and begun to move back towards the two troopers to see what was happening. Before they had reached the two troopers, and before the two troopers swung around to stop their captives from getting too close to them, Tyler launched his part of the escape attempt. He threw himself down from a tree on the other side of the trail, to lan
d fully upon the two troopers backs which sent them sprawling forward to the ground.
The captive who had argued with the troopers was the first to act, he moved forward and grabbed the trooper that had rammed the Phaser weapon into his stomach, and he being a master at freehand fighting quickly took his revenge. The native put his arm around the trooper`s throat, throttling the large struggling trooper until he finally lapsed into unconsciousness. He then disarmed him and then let the trooper fall unconscious to the ground.
The second native out of respect for his rescuer held back from joining in the fight, and left Tyler to finish off the second Heliot. Now Tyler would have been quite happy to receive some help, but seeing none coming was forced to carry on fighting. At least the second trooper was face down on the ground and partially winded, and with Tyler on top, the chances of Tyler succeeding were slightly better than Masters, who was looking on from atop the hill, supposed, but only just. Tyler had seen enough television to know that you never give a tough looking soldier an even break. The first thing he did on not receiving aid was to ram the Heliot`s head against the hard stony ground. When the afore mentioned trooper took umbrage at this and tried to rise Tyler, much to Masters surprise and the troopers discomfort, rammed his knee hard into the trooper`s back. This action forced the trooper back down and also brought forth a grunt of pain, Tyler followed this action up by putting his arm around the trooper`s neck and pulling the troopers upper body backwards while he screamed at the two natives.
“Well hit him then before he shoots one of us.”
The trooper was already reaching out for his Phaser, and the first native seeing that their rescuer wanted help gave the Heliot a swift kick to the head that almost took off the trooper`s helmet together with his head, and that finished the fight there and then.
The tall blond native took in his rescuers with a quick glance and a smile, and then he was scanning the countryside about them to ensure that no more surprises were coming their way.