Chapter 10-A
Ship Time: Monday, September 12, 2264 – Mission Day 321
Local Time: September 2, 10,190 A.G.
Reverend Mother Dominica Sanchez stood back and admired her handiwork. Before her, a young man writhed against the ropes that bound him to a chair.
"You will tell me what I want to know," she said to him.
He glared at her in return. If I talk she will read me faster and use the Voice on me, he thought to himself.
It had taken a few days for her to track down the young man after both had left the Vatican Library the day the strangers came. There were only two taxi companies in Rome. She visited the dispatch desks for both and, after reading the personalities of the dispatchers, used the Voice to obtain the destination of the young man, Sandor Barton.
Then she went to the Guild Shipping office. Again, she used her Bene Gesseret skills to obtain the information she wanted. He had dropped off a letter to be sent to his home world on the next Heighliner. The letter was already at the space port loaded into a cargo container. She was also able to obtain the shipping information from the easily manipulated clerk including Barton's local address.
Early the next morning, Reverend Mother Sanchez stood before Barton's apartment door. She was not wearing her typical robes, but instead clothes similar to what the other students in Rome wore. It didn't take her long to defeat the mechanical lock and to quietly enter the door. She made her way to his sleeping area where she found an empty bed and an empty, open drawer in his bureau.
It would have been too easy to find him here, she thought as she began to search for any clue to where he might have gone. Then she noticed that the apartment had a telephone. She quickly removed any traces of her presence and left the apartment.
After more investigative work, this time at the telephone exchange, she was able to obtain a copy of Barton's phone records. Human operators staffed the facility as automatic switching devices were outlawed after the Jihad. Thankfully, the list of people Barton had called was small.
"I want to know what you wrote on that note to the strangers," she demanded.
Again, Sandor struggled against his bonds, and glared angrily at his captor.
Smack
Sanchez slapped Barton loudly across the face.
Using the telephone records, she had tracked Barton down to a hotel room near the spaceport. In the early hours of the next morning, she was again at a locked door, which she opened with little trouble. After entering the room, she quietly set up a portable Cone of Silence. Then, she dragged the sleeping man out of his bed and quickly tied him into a chair.
"You will tell me what I want to know," she repeated this time using the Voice.
"Never," he growled back trying to shake the influence her voice was having on him out of his mind.
Smack
Again, she slapped him, this time with more force. A fleck of blood appeared in the corner of his mouth.
Sandor shook his head trying to recover from the blow. Now, Sanchez had read him enough to use the full voice on him.
"What is your name," she asked.
"Sandor Barton," he replied automatically before he could stop himself.
"Who do you think the strangers are?"
"They are outsiders or people from the distant past," he said bending to the inevitable, his ability to resist her questioning gone.
"What did you write on the note to them?"
"I warned them that you Bene Gesserets, the Emperor, the Guild, and the Tlielaxu will take advantage of them and that only Duke Leto can help them."
Duke Leto has earned the respect of too many within the empire, she thought.
"What did you write on the letter you dropped off at the Guild shipping office?"
"I warned my family that I would be having trouble with you Bene Gesserets, the Emperor, and the Guild."
The Heighliner will be arriving sometime today, she thought. There is no way I can stop that letter from being sent. I have what I wanted to know, so there is no reason to kill him.
Using the power of the Voice and other Bene Gesseret skills, Sanchez implanted a hypnotic control into his mind which would prevent him from recalling the events from the time the strangers arrived in the library to a few minutes from now. She then used a little sleeping drug to knock him out. After untying him, she placed him back into his bed and quietly left the apartment. Time to contact the Sisterhood, she thought.
0
Guild Navigator Anton entered his predictive trance as he peered into both the near future and into space. He was the pilot of a Guild Heighliner and his task was to ensure the space way between Richese and Terra was clear of obstacles. In his inner vision he saw that there was a ship orbiting Terra, but he could not determine the details of the ship clearly. There is no other ship scheduled to be at Terra right now, he thought. I'll find out when we get there. He then concentrated his inner sight on other parts of the orbital space above Terra and saw that they and the space lanes there were clear. He then manually entered the coordinates for the jump into his console and activated the Holtzman drive.
0
Lieutenant Melissa O'Donnell slowly walked down the sandy beach on the island of Tahiti while holding the hand of her lover, Lieutenant Commander Vincent Schwartz. Though, they shared the same pale skin tone, hers with freckles, and blue eyes, her raven black hair contrasted strongly with Schwartz' light blond hair. No words were spoken as the two slowly made their way to a secluded spot away from the rest of the crewmen taking advantage of the two day shore leave the Captain authorized.
I'm pregnant, she told herself. How am I going to tell him? She had become Vincent's latest lover three months ago shortly after the Polo passed through the wormhole. Once she had found out that it would be twenty years before they could return to the Federation she had gone off her birth control. She was twenty-three years old and to wait until returning to the Federation would mean she would never have children of her own.
A beeping sound suddenly came from Schwartz communicator.
"Schwartz here," her companion said after activating the device and turning up the volume so both could hear who was calling.
"All shore leaves are cancelled immediately," Lieutenant Palmer announced from her station on the bridge of the Polo. "We are initiating an emergency recall, standby for transport."
"I wonder what's going on," she asked while letting go of Schwartz' hand and taking one-step to the side away from him.
"We'll find out when we get aboard. We're ready for transport."
The whistling of the transporter sounded on the beach as the two figures dissolved into sparkles of light. As soon as the two materialized in the transporter room, they quickly stepped down from the pad as the technician began to beam other members of the crew up from the surface.
0
Ship Time: Monday, September 12, 2264 – Mission Day 321
Local Time: September 2, 10,190 A.G.
U.S.S. Marco Polo
"Commander Schwartz to the bridge," Palmer announced over the ship's intercom.
"I have to go," he said as he gave O'Donnell a quick kiss and jogged out of the transporter room heading for the nearest turbo lift. A minute later Schwartz was on the bridge. His first glance at the main view screen spoke volumes, it showed a gigantic cylinder. A portal was open on the curved side of the cylinder and smaller winged craft were exiting and started their descent towards the surface. Then he looked over and saw Commander Giacconi looking into his scanner hood.
"Are we at alert," Schwartz asked while relieving the engineering technician manning the engineering station.
"Not yet," Captain Garibaldi replied.
"The ship is four hundred eleven kilometers ahead of us in low circular orbit," Lieutenant Hansen announced. "They evidently arrived with sufficient velocity to maintain orbit."
"The ship matches the encyclopedia data for a standard Heighliner class transport," Giacconi said. "The smaller craft are cargo shuttles which the scanner shows are transporting industrial goods to the surface."
"Is all the crew now onboard," Garibaldi asked.
"Yes, sir," Palmer replied.
"Were you able to scan the operation of their drive?"
"No sir," he replied. "The scanners only picked up a highly concentrated tachyon burst from where the ship appeared. There was no subspace indication at all, amazing."
"Maintain full electromagnetic silence," Garibaldi ordered. "Use the subspace scanners and get an interior layout of that ship."
Guild Heighliner
"I have a visual on the unknown ship," a Guild technician told the Navigator. The technician sent the image to the Solido projector where a three dimensional image appeared. The Heighliner's control room was divided by a glass barrier. The technicians worked on one side with a normal atmosphere while the Navigator worked on the other surrounded by the orange Spice gas. They all stared with bewilderment at the strangely shaped vessel on the projector.
"The alien ship is not like any Guild or house ship I am aware of," a third technician commented. "Nor is it like any ship in our records from pre-Guild times."
"I was aware that an alien ship would be over Terra before we folded space," the Navigator announced. "I could not see anything else about the ship clearly."
The Navigator's sense of logic, ingrained after many years of studying mathematics and astronomy, kicked in. "There are only three possibilities for the alien ship: they are truly aliens, they are humans from outside the Empire, or they are humans from the distant past that have been traveling at high sub-light speed for many years."
"There are no alien intelligences," another technician commented. "Or at least none identified in over twenty thousand years of spaceflight."
"That option has the lowest probability," the Navigator replied. "Of the other two options, their being from outside the Empire has the highest probability of being true since the design of their ship is so unusual. We will not know for sure until we try to contact them. Use the ship to ship transmitter and send them the Primes."
U.S.S. Marco Polo
"Captain, I'm getting a signal from the Heighliner," Palmer announced while manipulating her communication board. "It's an amplitude modulated, microwave transmission in the kilowatt range."
"Put it on the speakers," Garibaldi ordered.
A series of beeps began to be heard across the bridge. First one beep was heard with a two second delay, then two beeps, then three, then five, then seven, then eleven before starting over. All the bridge crewmembers immediately understood the message; they were receiving the first six prime numbers, an almost universal introductory signal.
"That's enough, Lieutenant," Garibaldi said. "Have you been monitoring their communications with the ground?"
"Yes, sir," she replied. "They are solely voice transmissions on the microwave band; no data or encrypted signals at all."
"Use their communication protocols, this recent signal, tie in the universal translator with the language used on the surface, and open a channel to their ship."
Palmer worked her board for a moment configuring the ships transmitter. "Ready to transmit, Captain," she announced.
Garibaldi pressed his signal button the arm of his chair. "Guild Heighliner, this is the Starship Marco Polo. Please respond."
Guild Heighliner
There were shocked looks from all the technicians in the ship's control room as they heard the response from the Polo.
"They speak Galach," a technician commented. "That must mean that they are outsiders."
"If they are outsiders then how did they travel here," another technician asked. "Interstellar travel without the Spice is unsafe." As if to make his point the environmental control system blew some fresh orange spice gas into the Navigator's control room.
"Perhaps they have come up with some other means of navigation."
These people are outsiders, the Navigator thought. They need to be brought into the Great Convention. Competition with the Guild cannot be allowed. The Guild monopoly needs to be maintained so that the balance of power can be maintained and humanity's survival assured. If they have come up with a new form of interstellar travel then that technology needs to be suppressed. Yet, that same technology can free the Guild from dependence on the Spice. The Navigator looked down at his Spice mutated body with a feeling of regret. He knew that he was forever addicted to the Spice. To try to withdraw from the addiction meant death. We must find out what method of interstellar travel they use and if they use the Spice for navigation. We need to report whatever we find out to the High Master of the Guild.
"Open a voice channel to the outsider ship," the Navigator ordered.
"Channel open," a technician reported. The Navigator floated over to the microphone the communications technician held ready.
"Welcome to the Empire, Outsiders," he said. "There are many things that we need to discuss. We invite you to send a delegation aboard our ship to discuss your presence in the Empire and what you intend to do while you are here."