Читать книгу Star Map - Fabienne Gschwind - Страница 13

But it was not only a shock for humans to encounter aliens, it was also a traumatic experience for the Squeltrems.

For 4000 years, the Chrismaxes had been doing space travel and except for a few ruins they had never encountered an alien culture.

Morchen had called for an emergency meeting. At least everyone had calmed down that it was not an alien invasion and at least the humans had been very peaceful so far. Now it was time to plan how to proceed.

The three top levels of leadership that led the Squeltrem all had to take medication to help them suppress their extreme need for sleep, so they could discuss the situation further.

This Alien Crisis Meeting was quite different for a change. Usually, there was a lot of bickering because the Squeltrems were deeply divided on a domestic level.

Morchen was considered by all to be the commander, but he had not designated anyone as his successor in case something happened. This went against all traditions and disturbed the stability of the association since exactly three people rightly considered themselves legitimate successors: Prial, Squlaira, and Mantichal.

Thus, all leadership meetings were marked by the dispute between these three individuals and their followers. Morchen did not seem to mind this, he let everyone argue without interference and indiscriminately supported one or another person or opinion. In recent years, however, the angry arguments have given way to small skirmishes and side-swipes, a paralysis held the Squeltrem, people argued out of habit rather than conviction.

The Squeltrem was indeed a trade association of sorts, as Joe rightly suspected, but not an association that operated legally. The Squeltrem was a criminal organization. From smuggling of all kinds, drug trafficking, kidnapping, extortion, and theft or looting. The Squeltrem were nothing more than mafia organized space pirates.

Like humans, where piracy evolved with seafaring, space pirates were active in space travel from the beginning.

Sometimes individual associations, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker. They were almost completely wiped out almost 1500 years ago, in the great robot-AI-war. This was a gigantic battle in which the extremely advanced robots and the superior self-learning AI had turned against the Chrismaxian Empire. The trauma and fear of intelligent systems or robots had remained to this day and had left a strong mark on Chrismaxian society.

But back to the Squeltrem. About 600 years ago, an ancestor of Morchen had accomplished the feat of uniting all the pirate associations. Suddenly, the pirate army was strong enough to raid astro-colonies or even target planets.

The heyday lasted until almost 100 years ago. The Squeltrems were feared throughout the empire. Astrocolonies surrendered at the sight of them, and even police or soldiers fled when a swarm of Squeltrem ships crashed into a planet and tore apart a city.

But the Squeltrem rested too much on their laurels, while the Chrismaxian Empire put everything into research to develop better sensors and subspace technology. By the time the Squeltrem realized they could no longer sneak into subspace undetected, it was too late. The Squeltrem's research division was hastily increased, famous scientists were kidnapped, and spies were smuggled into universities and research institutes. But the Squeltrem failed to match the Empire's concentrated research and development. Some of their attacks were thwarted early on because subspace mines invisible to them had been laid. The imperial army attacked Squeltrem moon bases or mined asteroids.

Some Squeltrem ship formations were completely wiped out.

This was the time when Morchen took over. Despite the losses, the Squeltrems initially won enough battles and conducted successful raids. They made their first breakthroughs in sensor technology. They were confident that the Squeltrems would gain the upper hand.

This was also the time when Prial, Mantichal, and Squlaira positioned themselves as successors and began their power struggles.

But to no avail, nearly 10 years of daily defeats and few successes followed.

By the time the humans came aboard, the Squeltrem had lost half of its original power. Most of them were frozen in hopelessness. All members born in Squeltrem society would be imprisoned for life if captured.

There were no executions in the Chrismaxian Empire because it was against religion, but they simply locked the prisoners in small cells and never let them out. And Chrismaxes lived a very long time, so they easily had 150 years of boredom ahead of them.

So, the Squeltrem bobbed along. Squlaira, Prial, Mantichal fought like old married couples out of habit, and Morchen spent most of his time thinking about how to get out of the Squeltrem and go on living somewhere with a false identity.

But the arrival of the aliens gave hope. Did they have some technology onboard that would give the Squeltrem back its dominance?

One was not convinced, but at least it was a small glimmer of hope.

And so, the Squeltrems gathered all the information they had about the aliens and discussed how best to get them to cooperate. To this end, the few very gifted empaths were quickly brought in and loitered around the Abhysal, trying to capture the emotions of the humans. All affirmed that they had sensed no danger. The ETs had been nervous and anxious, but nothing unusual given their situation.

Finally, after many hours, they concluded and the strategy was set on how to deal with them. Morchen decided to play the usual game with the prisoners: offer them a good life in the Squeltrem in exchange for their technological knowledge. The special trick was that they should also be helped to return to their space sector.

After all, the Squeltrems were always on the path of least resistance, and slaves and other prisoners were always offered freedom in return for unresisting labor. It was the perfect way to get free labor.

The crew of Abhysal had no idea about any of this.

After a refreshment break, everyone gathered in the dining room, due to the effect of liquizy they were not really hungry, but everybody was in for a small treat anyway. The cooking robot had prepared a light meal, and everyone served themselves while Kiki offered an overview of everything she had found out. For example, she had analyzed subspace technology and was convinced that the Squeltrem were unable to dive in meso-subspace with their starships. They could only dive in surface water with difficulty. They also did not appear to have sophisticated sensors. "Navigating in the nebula with just a compass and map," Kiki summarized.

In turn, they had subspace propulsion and an entirely new way of generating power.

"What I find most amazing is that they were so human..." said Lex.

Jay looked up and asked, "what makes you think that?"

"Well, I think if aliens showed up, our space fleet would be a lot meaner to them. Tie them up or lock them up and interrogate them!"

"Well, I also think our first encounter went very well...While we're on the subject: Can someone explain to me how their timing works? Not that we're going to be late for our first appointment," Nemo asked in between.

For a while, the crew tried to figure it all out but then gave up.

Finally, Kiki took over the explanations.

The day was called a cycle and lasted about 31 earths hours and was divided into four shifts of 10 parts each. The crew decided to keep their usual notion of minutes, hours, days, months and weeks, to avoid great confusion. Luckily the chrismaxian months were roughly 35 earth days and the chrismaxian week about nine earth days, so it was not too off.

Or as Nemo said: "Pff… Do not think too much about the details, it is all about the same..."

Essentially, a Chrismaxe got up at the beginning of a shift, then had a chrismaxian hour to get ready and go to work. The work lasted seven hours, and at the end, they had another two hours of free time before an insurmountable need to rest overcame them and the Chrismaxes fell into an almost comatose sleep that lasted three shifts. This repeated four times, then on the fifth day, there was a weekend that was simply a free shift.

In human time units, the Chrismaxes slept almost 21 hours and worked a little less than seven hours.

"Kiki, can you reprogram my clock? It's best we get used to it right away. Otherwise, we'll get a headache from the change..."

Joe got her notebook and started writing down all the information she knew about the Chrismaxes. "This is just as I've always dreamed. We finally met Alien. Isn't that wonderful?" she cheered, refocusing on her work. Lex shuffled her feet nervously. "not wonderful at all, what if they destroy the Abhysal or kill us or dismantle us or something..." she grumbled and then went to her AI chair to discuss everything with Kiki.

Jay got another chocolate ice cream and asked Nemo, "Nemo, do you have some time? I need a new suit..."

He pointed to the uniform he was still wearing. "The same one, but in super light summer fabrics..."