Hunting Cari (First Wave) (2 page)

Somewhere
outside the Milky Way

Commander Scaden Torenson stood on
the bridge of his ship, Adaria, trying very hard to hide his boredom. He
stifled another yawn and stretched his six feet, eleven inch, three hundred and
twenty pound frame. Crystal blue eyes scanned the sensor readings, hoping for
something, anything exciting to happen. He raked his hand through his shoulder
length blonde hair, in frustration. Nothing. Not even an asteroid.

This quadrant of space was so
quiet. No planet’s with sentient life, none of their Valendran outposts to
resupply or visit. Not even a minor skirmish with the Relians. He had no idea
why this area was still on the ancient routes, but he hoped to change that when
they got back from this voyage.

At four hundred and twenty seven
years old, he was the youngest commander of the Valendran Fleet. And if the
next sixty years of his tour were going to be as boring as the first forty,
he’d lose his mind. This route was much better suited to one of the older commanders.
He was far too young and in his physical prime for this kind of inactivity. And
he planned to make sure the council was aware of his opinion when he returned.

He turned as the bridge door
opened, and watched his First Commander, and best friend come onto the bridge.
“Tell me I didn’t sleep through any excitement," Gracus Adrastor said
walking to stand next to Scaden. Always happy, he loved to tease his commander
and friend. And judging by the look on Scaden’s face, he knew he’d succeeded in
needling him. “I will go ahead and assume your shift of the bridge was
uneventful?” Gracus stated with a grin.

When Scaden growled at him, he
realized just how frustrated his friend was. Scaden only growled when he was
ready to blow a fuse or really needed to vent. “How about we meet in the
sparring room after my bridge shift?” Gracus reluctantly offered. Scaden’s face
immediately brightened at the offer. Clapping Gracus on the back he accepted
and left the bridge, to get some rest before meeting his friend in the sparring
room later.

Turning to the field of stars
flying past on the view screen, Gracus hoped that something would come up that
would put a stop to the endless boredom that was affecting them all. And save
him from yet another body beating in the sparring room at the hands of his
Scaden. At six foot ten and three hundred pounds, he was physically well
matched to Scaden, but was far from him in skill, and usually ended up in the
MedLab getting patched up. Which was never fun either.

Deciding not to spend the next
twelve hours pacing the bridge, he sat down at one of the control stations and
set to work entertaining himself.

*****

Scaden was in the middle of a
fantastic dream. He was in a hand to hand battle with two Relians. At least, he
was in the middle of the dream, until he realized someone was not only pounding
on the door to his quarters, but Gracus was screaming at him over the comm
system to get to the bridge.

“Report!” He yelled through the
comm, jumping out of bed. Running around his room getting dressed, he swore
that if this was another of Gracus’s jokes, he was really going to hurt him in
the sparring room this time.

“Scaden, I found something very
unusual that I really think you need to see.” Gracus replied sounding serious.

“Gracus, I am warning you now, if
this is a joke….” He let the threat hang, hoping that if this was a joke, it
would warn his friend to end it.

“This isn’t a joke, my friend. Just
get up here and I’ll show you.”

“On my way.” Scaden sighed heading
out the door to his quarters. Whoever had been pounding on it was smart enough
to have left.

Gracus was still in front of the
control station when Scaden arrived on the bridge. “What’s going on?” He
immediately demanded, walking up behind Gracus. He scanned the screen of the
control station, trying to see whatever it was that had Gracus’ complete
attention, but information was flying across the screen far too quickly for him
to grasp what the emergency was. Gracus turned to look at him, excitement
clearly in his expression.

“I was scanning random frequencies
to see if there was anything interesting in the area that hadn’t previously
been noted, or that might denote recent activity, and I found a distress
beacon. One activated in the last ten to fifteen years and originating from the
third planet from the sun in this galaxy,” Gracus stated pointing to first the
planet, then the galaxy.

“Can you understand the language
used? What they are saying? I thought there was nothing noted for that galaxy?”
Scaden asked, obviously curious now.

“That’s why I woke you Scaden. The
frequency is encrypted. Nothing I have ever seen before. I had the computer
trying to figure out what race it could have come from, and it got an answer!”
Gracus said with rising excitement. As Scaden waited for his friend to
continue, Gracus said the last thing he ever expected to hear.

“It’s ours! And from almost two
thousand years ago! That’s how long it’s been since we used that encrypted
frequency. I checked and re-checked it and its right. I couldn’t believe what I
was seeing so I had the computer check and look at the history of this
quadrant. I was thinking maybe one of our ships might have left something in
that galaxy that might be emitting the signal. Let me show you what I found.”

He turned back to the screen, and
his fingers flew across the panel until an official fleet report came on a
nearby screen. Pointing at the screen, Gracus continued, not realizing that
every person on the bridge was now surrounding him, hanging on his every word,
including Scaden.

“Almost two thousand years ago, we
discovered that this world,” Gracus began, pointing to the planet again. “Was
inhabited. They were an extremely young race of humanoids, which were not only
sentient, but also had begun to develop language, social and building skills.”
Not hearing anything from Scaden, he turned to see if he was still paying
attention. Not only was Scaden staring intently at the screens, but it looked
like half the ship had come on the bridge and was staring as well. He was
surprised since he never heard anyone else come on the bridge.

Turning back around, he continued,
“The Council decided that the planet met the criteria for an outpost. And we
set one up here.” He pointed to the fourth planet from the sun. “Things seemed
to go according to normal protocol for about thirty-seven years. Until we
received a distress transmission that the outpost was under heavy attack by the
Relians. Then it was silent. The council sent out two ships to determine the
damage, casualties and what assistance might be needed. By the time they
arrived, they only found this.”

Gracus pulled up another screen
showing a barren planet. Obvious pieces of their technology, metals and crafts
littered the brown, dirt like surface. Panning the images to other areas of the
planet, they could see several pyramid structures and a ‘face’. The latter
caused grunts and growls of anger among the assembled crew.

Scaden stared at the images on the
screen. Like the rest of his men, he knew exactly what they were. The pyramids
were used by the Relians to rape a planet of its resources by utilizing certain
energy frequencies to the resources to it, and the face was an image of their
king. It was used to claim the planet and warn anyone who came near that the
planet was now owned by them. There was no sign the Relians had stayed on the
planet in the footage from the initial report. What happened to their people?
“Continue.” He told Gracus, wanting to find out the rest of the information.

“They found no signs of the Relians
or our outpost crew. Landing teams looked on the surface and found the remains
of some of the crew, but many were unaccounted for. It looked as if all of our
ships there had been destroyed, and it was assumed that the rest of our people
had been captured since we could not account for all the bodies.”

“It was the heaviest loss we’ve
ever sustained at an outpost. It hit everyone very hard. Several of the council
members lost family on that outpost. They kept the ships in the area for years
hoping to catch another distress signal, but none were ever sent. They even
sent search parties to every planet in this galaxy and neighboring ones hoping
that maybe some of our people could escape and were hiding out elsewhere. But
no one was ever found.”

“They eventually decided that since
it was too far away from any other outpost or reinforcements in the event of
another attack, that they would not rebuild the outpost, but would monitor the
planet periodically for development. Now the subsequent reports,” Gracus
continued, pulling up more reports on the screens, “Showed that the inhabitants
seemed to be progressing well. They were developing basic technology and
evolving, with the normal cultural skirmishes most societies go through.”

“The last report was around two
hundred years ago and it was all normal development items reported. Now for the
interesting part. We stopped using that encrypted frequency around two thousand
years ago. But we still randomly scanned for it in this quadrant for almost a
thousand years after the destruction of the outpost in the hopes that we would
find survivors somewhere. Nothing was ever found… until now. And even more
interesting is where it is originating from. Here.” he concluded pointing at
the third planet from the sun.

The room was completely silent while
everyone seemed to try to process the information and the possibilities of what
it might mean. After several minutes, Scaden broke the silence, “My immediate
thoughts are that the Relians kept some of the equipment from the outpost, fled
to the other planet and have finally broken the encryption and are luring us
into a trap. Or somehow a piece of equipment ended up on the planet and one of
the inhabitants accidentally set it off. Anyone else?” He asked of the
assembled crew, valuing the opinion of the intelligent and diverse men around
him.

“Sir, if there were prisoners, they
may have found the equipment, or somehow gotten to the equipment and were able
to activate the beacon. They could have been waiting to be rescued all this
time.” A MedLab tech in the back of the room stated.

“You are correct. We have to also
consider the possibility that we may have survivors, and if we do, I have every
intention of trying to bring them home.” Scaden acknowledged. “I want everyone
to turn their thoughts in to the First Commander. Gracus, assemble a team
immediately, I want the probabilities of each suggestion calculated. Bring me
the list of the highest likely scenarios. The tactical teams and I will try to
determine our best course of action. I won’t endanger this ship or the crew on
what may well be a trap. Everyone is dismissed.”

Scaden watched his crew leave the
bridge, talking excitedly among themselves. When all but the on duty crew
members had left, he lowered himself into the seat next to Gracus. “I want your
every thought about this situation. Don’t hold back. And find out everything
you can on that planet and this solar system. I want as much information as we
can gather. Their language, the capabilities of their technology, any weapons,
anything that might help us figure this out.” Scaden said quietly, not wanting
the rest of the bridge crew to hear.

“Will do. I’ll have the reports
sent to your comm as I get them. When will you be contacting the Council?”
Gracus asked.

Scaden ran his hand through his
hair and huffed out a breath of frustration. “I don’t plan on contacting them
at all until we have some solid information. You said it yourself; there are
Council members who lost family on that outpost. We could get their hopes up
for nothing. I won’t be responsible for forcing them to grieve all over again
if this turns out to be nothing. In fact, I want you to put the ship on a comm
block to Valendra. I don’t want this information getting to anyone at home
until we have some answers. Send the notice to the comm’s now about the block.
I’ll be in the tactical room with my team reviewing what we know and the
updates as we get them.”

Scaden stood and turned to leave
when Gracus put his hand on his arm to stop him. “Scaden, I understand why you
want to keep this quiet for now. But don’t wait too long before you contact the
Council.”

“I understand your concerns my
friend. It’s a good thing I have you here to keep me out of trouble, or to
blame if this ends up a big mess.” Scaden joked as he walked off the bridge.

Chapter Two

Campbell
County, TN

Randor was already regretting his
decision to let Cari go in the store by herself. In twenty two years, he had
never been more than twenty five feet away from her. Even though she’d only
been in the store for fifteen minutes and forty two seconds, every instinct in
him had been screaming at him to go inside and protect her. The rational part
of him knew that she was more than capable of calling for him if she was in
danger, but he still worried. He’d give her fifteen more minutes, and then he
was going in after her.

Unaware that Randor was becoming
upset, Cari was trying her best to concentrate on getting their supplies.
However, she kept finding herself just leisurely looking at everything in the
store. It was the first time she’d ever been able to just look at things. Uncle
Randor was always trying to be seen as little as possible wherever they went so
they rushed through the stores, grabbing only what they needed. She’d never
really had a chance to see everything that was actually in a store like
Wal-Mart.

There were so many different
fragrances just in the air freshener aisle. She was fascinated by them all and
had already put eight different candles, two plug-ins and four bottles of
aerosol cans in her cart. Uncle Randor wouldn’t be too happy about it, but he
would indulge her; she thought with a smile.

“The lavender is much better than
the orange spice.” The voice so close to her ear, startled Cari so badly that
she dropped one of the cans and spun around to face the person who had spoken
to her. He was at least six feet two inches tall, heavily muscled with short
blonde hair and blue eyes. He had bent to pick up the can she had dropped and
held it out to Cari. Looking down at the can in his large hand, she noticed
that he held it in a way to make it almost impossible for her to take it
without touching him.

For some strange reason, the
thought of touching him made her stomach lurch. Although a handsome man, with a
nice smile, there was something about him that repelled her, almost to the
point of making her physically ill.  “Thank you, but I think I have enough
already.” She replied and walked quickly away from him, leaving him holding the
can.

She was grabbing two gallons of
milk when she heard him beside her again. “I’m sorry if I startled you, it was
not my intention. I’m Vince Baker.” He said as he held out his hand to her.
Cari looked around and saw the people in the aisle staring at their exchange
and felt trapped. She knew it would look rude to these people if she didn’t
take his hand, but she dreaded it. Already feeling nauseous from the man’s
proximity to her, she prepared herself for his touch.

“Mary Rogers,” she lied easily and
quickly shook his hand before turning away from him. She willed her stomach not
to heave from the brief contact with him. Although he smiled at her in a
pleasant manner, it seemed contrived and his touch repulsed her.

Her joy at being in the store alone
had quickly evaporated, and she vowed to finish the shopping as fast as
possible. Luckily, the only things left to get on her list were yogurt and
cheese, all close by, and then she could leave. This was one time she was
grateful Uncle Randor insisted that the supply lists were organized by where
the items were located in the store, to minimize the time spent in them.

She began throwing random yogurt
containers into the cart, not caring what she got, just wanting to hurry now.
Feelings she couldn’t seem to define rolled off of the man in waves, making her
more nervous by the second. She had to stop herself from leaving the cart and
running outside to Uncle Randor and safety.

She couldn’t really say she felt
she was in danger, but she was uneasy. And she knew she couldn’t just run to
Uncle Randor. He’d never stop treating her like a child if she did. She needed
this to show him that she could take care of herself for the minor things, like
shopping. That she could at least help out for more than just the household
things that needed to be done.

“You must be new in town. I haven’t
seen you here before. Did you just move here recently?” He asked from behind
her. For some reason, the fact that he kept coming up behind her bothered her a
lot. In fact, it scared her. Her need to get out of there grew much stronger
now. “Just vacation,” she replied, walking away from him for a third time. Why
wouldn’t he leave her alone! She grabbed Uncle Randor's favorite sliced cheese
and headed to the front of the store to check out, hoping he wouldn’t follow
her.

Her arm was yanked roughly back,
spinning her around to face Vince Baker. The overwhelming nausea hit instantly,
and she used her other hand to cover her stomach, hoping she wouldn’t throw up
in the aisle. She looked around and noticed a few people paying attention to
the exchange between them. She had to get out of there! Trying to think through
her near panic she almost screamed at him, “What the hell is wrong with you?
Since when is it ok to grab someone you don’t even know like this? Take your
hand off me NOW!”

Vince Baker looked at her with fury
in his eyes and tightened his grip on her arm until she knew she’d have bruises
from the grip. She bit back a cry of pain, not willing to give him the
satisfaction she somehow knew he would get from hearing it. “You’re hurting me!
Let me go!” She said loudly, noticing the crowd of people around them getting
larger.

“Sir, take your hand of that poor
girl! My wife has already notified security!” An older man said to Vince while
hurrying up to them. Cari flashed the man a grateful smile for intervening. She
guessed him to be in his late 40s. And although shorter than her, he was pretty
stocky. He stared angrily at Vince and again demanded, “I said to take your
hand off of her!”

Two younger men in their mid-20s
joined the growing group, one going on each side of Vince. The bigger one on
the right looked at him and said, “Are you stupid or something? Get your hand
off of the lady.”

Vince increased the bruising grip
on her arm for a second, before finally letting go and stepping away from her,
the look of barely restrained anger on his face promising retribution. What was
wrong with this guy? Was he mentally defective? Why would he attack someone he
didn’t even know like this? Cari wondered in shock, trying to calm herself.

An older woman pulled her gently
away from the men who had surrounded Vince as soon as he had let her go. The
men were using their bodies to herd him farther away from her and towards the
front of the store. He glanced back at her, and the anger and possession in his
eyes caused an involuntary shudder to run through her body. The older woman
noticed and patted her arm.

“It’s alright now honey. Those boys
will get him out of here. I’ll bet you’re ready to check out and get back home
to your Uncle too.” She said gently, walking her toward the check-out lines.
She must have realized Cari didn’t want to talk about it and kept up a steady
stream of chatter about joining her church, her children, grandchildren and the
weather.

She barely heard a word the woman
had said. Her thoughts were on Vince Baker and why he would target her like
that, and in such a public place. He couldn’t possibly know who she was, or who
Uncle Randor was. It just didn’t make any sense. He had to be one of those
random freaks she’d read about and seen on the news… a stalker. She was grateful
they’d only be here another few weeks before moving on. And although she’d
gotten distracted in the store, she had gotten enough supplies to last them
until they left.

Her thoughts in turmoil, Cari
didn’t even realize they were in the parking lot until she saw her uncle
walking towards her. Drawing her attention to the older woman still next to
her, she realized thankfully, that the woman wasn’t speaking of the incident
inside the store. Not wanting her Uncle to know what had happened, she looked to
the woman and quickly said, “Thank you so much for the invitation to your
church. If we happen to still be in town, we will certainly consider
attending.”  She gave the woman a pleasant smile and hurried to meet her Uncle
before the woman could engage him in a conversation that might lead to him
finding out what had happened with Vince Baker.

Finally seeing her safe, Randor breathed out a sigh of relief.
He’d been panicking for nothing apparently. From what he’d overheard of the
conversation with the woman who had walked out with Cari, she was interested in
trying to get them to attend their church. He knew they wouldn’t; even if they
stayed longer than the few weeks that they had planned. As he reached Cari’s
side and took the cart from her, he noticed her scanning the parking lot and
looking kind of distracted. “Did everything go ok? You run into any problems?”
He asked her suspiciously, quickly evaluating his emotions.

Hearing the concern in her Uncle’s voice, she realized what
she’d been doing. She quickly stopped scanning the parking lot for Vince Baker
and pretended to just be interested in the area in general. Shrugging her
shoulders in an attempt at nonchalance, she replied, “Everything went great.
Although… I did spend a little time just looking at everything and probably
bought a few things I shouldn’t have…” She gave him a beautiful smile and her
best pouty face that she always used on him to try to get out of trouble. As
usual, it worked as she knew it would.

“I’m sure whatever you bought is fine Cari. I know you don’t
often get a chance to indulge in things like other girls your age, so when you
do have an opportunity, I don’t blame you for getting a few things you want. So
what was it this time? Clothes, purses, make-up… wait I know!!! You bought
jewelry!” He teased knowing she’d never been interested in the “normal” female
things that other girls seemed to be interested in. Not that she needed to, she
was truly beautiful without any accessories.

Cari laughed while helping her Uncle load the supplies into the
truck. “Actually I got twenty five tubes of lipstick in every shade they had.”
She tried to tease with a straight face. Randor knew better and just laughed at
her. “For some reason, I don’t see you doing that. But we can see what
treasures you indulged in when we get to the cabin. Let’s get out of here
before the people staring at us decide to come over and ask us to their church…
again,” he said with a grimace.

Darting a quick glance around the people who seemed to be
staring their way, she gave a sigh of relief when she didn’t see Vince Baker
anywhere among them. However, she’d still feel a lot better once they were back
at the cabin. Hopping in the truck, she calmed her nerves so her Uncle wouldn’t
notice and delve into why she’d seemed so nervous.

*****

Scaden was in the Tactical Room surrounded by his team scanning
through the mountains of information that Gracus had already gathered so far.
Apparently, the planet had made some major technological advancement since the
last time there had been a report done. Gracus had been able to hack into the
basic computers of the satellites orbiting the planet and had retrieved most of
the information they were currently looking at.

They had been looking through past and current news around the
planet and reviewing information on the weapons in use, and the military
protocols of the different regions. And Gracus already had the computer’s
working on incorporating the different languages into their translator devices,
so he wouldn’t have to keep converting the information into their own language.

“Sir, from what we can gather right now, the distress signal is
coming from a remote, mountainous area of what is called the United States. And
although we’ve found signs that at one point, the Relians were on the planet,
we haven’t been able to detect a prolonged presence of them anywhere. Which is
strange since the planet is rich in resources that they would be interested in.
And we’ve found no signs that their language is among any of the languages
currently spoken. It looks like they had tried at one time to plunder the
planet, but they just vanished. I’m not sure what to make of it.” Niklosi told
Scaden. It was obvious that he was just as excited at this turn of events as
everyone else.

“I’m not sure what to make of it either. It looks like there had
been more than one civilization on the planet that had seemed to vanish
throughout different points in their history. Aztecs, Anasazi, Mayans… and
that’s just in the regions around the United States. There were many others
throughout their world. I wonder if the inhabitants at some point rose up and
defeated the Relians but had called them by one of the names used for the
vanished civilizations. Considering their budding technology though, I’m not
sure how they would have accomplished such a feat. If they did, they must be
quite a resilient race and stronger than we think. We don’t want to
underestimate them, if we plan on landing a transport on the surface.” Balduen
added with a hint of respect for the planet's inhabitants.

“If we decide to transport, it would be fairly simple to avoid
detection. The biggest problem we’d have is navigating through the
non-functioning satellites they have still orbiting the planet. But even that
wouldn’t be hard to do. It surprises me that they are advanced enough to put
them in orbit, but can’t seem to get rid of them once they are no longer
useful.” Another Tactical Team member said.

Scaden ran a hand through his hair and shook his head at the
strange and conflicting information that they had been reading for the last few
hours. Not much of it made any sense. There was some piece of this puzzle that
they were missing. However, none of them could seem to figure it out. Nothing
about this planet or its inhabitants was even remotely ‘normal’ from the last
report that had been filed to the information they were looking at today. No
race that they had ever encountered had shown such a major difference in so
short of a time.