Copyright (c) 2016 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.
KEEPER
and the
KEEPER
and the
BONE
PLANET WITCH
By
R. Peterson
First
Officer Jeff Bland slammed his fist into the navigation control-bath sending
rainbow-colored beams of light flying across the bridge of the ship. The stars
streaming past both sides of the transparent control deck immediately slowed,
and then came to a stop. “These coordinates are all wrong,” Jeff shouted. “With
these new miscalculations we’ll miss Eentun 46 by at least sixty-three light
years.”
“I’m
sorry,” Teuth stammered. “I don’t understand what’s happening!” The ship’s
navigator was a land-adapted cephalopod
and his voice sounded like bubbles exploding under water. “The course-plotting array
checks-out. We’re getting interference from something.”
Jeff
shook his head in frustration and decided to locate a systems engineer. When he
turned, a leathery whip-like appendage wrapped around his leg. He began to howl
as tiny stinging suckers from a creature fastened onto the skin just above his
ankle. “Kli-touch!” he screamed.
“What the hell are Kli-touch worms doing
on the bridge of a star ship?” He succeeded in kicking the blood-sucker from
his leg and the creature flapped across the floor of the Centurion control room.
The Manta-like Creature divided into one-hundred forty-four separate segments
before it vanished, with a slimy whoosh,
into an air duct.
“A
Mobula species! That explains the interference,” Teuth said gleefully. “Their radiation-omitting
tails act like disruption antennas!”
“Your
disruption antennas must have been
mixed-in with that load of Venob eels
that we delivered to the governor’s private zoo on Mateuse 17!” Jeff pulled up his pant leg to check for damage. “I hope
that thing wasn’t infected with anything.” He looked around the room and
scowled. “These things breed like Lansu rats!
Watch out! There may be more than one. Where’s Leika? She should be up here controlling
this mess!”
Teuth
brought up a crew roster display on the ship’s navigation screen. “It looks
like our Organic Science Officer is
off-duty today,” he said, “… stricken with an unknown infirmity.”
“Leika
sick?” Jeff gasped. “Now I’ve heard
it all!” His eyes swept the control room in all directions. “You better wake the captain from his
Cryogenic nap and get a pest-control team up here before someone gets attacked
again.” He removed a hand-held laser from his utility belt, activated it, and
crept around the room searching for more parasites. “Like the song says … once bitten, twice shy, babe!”
Teuth
gave him a smug look. “Actually, I think you were … stung!”
“It’s
an old Earth expression … Rock and Roll … you wouldn’t
understand,” Jeff said.
-------2-------
Jeff
beamed onto the medical level, then immediately took a step backwards, stunned
at the sight before him. A much too-pale and lifeless Leika floated motionless
in a transparent chamber filled with embryonic fluid. An elaborately carved diamond
vase filled with Palatian orchids, Venuese flowers and with an attached note,
sat on a table next to the chamber. “Those are from Keeper … those impractical
herbs are her favorite.” Len Gyógyító,
the ship’s chief medical officer said. “Our captain is right now trying to
track down the source of the contagion.”
Gyógyító shook his fish-like head. “We’ve done all we can for her here.
Her vital signs keep deteriorating despite all our efforts.”
“Will
she die?” Jeff asked bluntly, though his mind still reeled in shock. He was often
at odds with the Porositie species and her annoying way of sexually controlling
men, but he had grown fond of having her around.
Gyógyító’s
large eyes drooped. “There are experimental treatments available on Mateuse 17,
but we don’t know enough about her specific malady or the poison to know if any
of them would work.”
“Even at reverse light speed that
would take more than a thousand hours to travel there … she doesn’t have that
much time does she?”
“Less than twenty hours,” Gyógyító
said sadly. “But our diagnostic computer has been known to malfunction.”
Keeper
beamed onto the medical level. He hovered next to Gyógyító. “Has there been any
change?”
The
doctor shook his fish-like head. “Only a slow and relentless deterioration of her
life systems.”
Keeper
grimaced, and then said quite casually, “We’re not going to Mateuse 17, we’re
going to Obosatatium.”
Jeff
could barely believe his ears. “You’re not seriously considering going into
that awful place, are you?”
Obosatatium was a galaxy void of all light.
Billions of blind planets, many
supporting strange and often horrible life forms, rotated around a massive
central-core of dark matter.
“Teuth has isolated the source of
Leika’s illness,” Keeper said. “It’s a type of Numinous energy coming from Obscorité 9, one of the exoskeleton worlds on the outer ring.”
“Numinous?”
What’s that?”
“Aren’t
you familiar with Earth’s Pendle Witch
Trials in 1612?”
“That was before-my-time.”
“Dozens of humans were judged in Britain
for using it against others. More than ten were found guilty … and burned alive.”
“But that was all nonsense wasn’t
it? Those poor people were innocent!”
“Not all of them,” Keeper shuddered.
“Numinous energy, curses, hexes … some things have the capability to reach
across the universe and do what no other power can.”
“You mean Leika is dying because
some murderous witch, on a planet with
absolutely no light, cast a spell on
her?”
“Yes,” Keeper said. “Get the crew
ready. “We leave for the Bone Planet
in three minutes.”
-------3-------
There
was an unimaginable feeling of emptiness when the Centurion materialized out of
reverse light speed inside the Obscorité system. “How depressing,” Jeff Bland
said when he climbed out of his travel chamber. Obscorité 9 loomed before them
a dim silhouette against the blackness of space. “It takes a massive amount of
energy just to get this place to show up on our sensors,” Teuth said. “You’ll
have to use Flerovium lights and switch
them to maximum power just to see anything on the planet’s surface.
“Any
readings on this dark world’s life forms?” Keeper was charging a powerful photon
sword, rather than the standard laser stun-gun the captain of a starship that
collects animal specimens for interplanetary zoos usually uses.
“Dark
Matter is hard to detect, the life it supports even harder,” Teuth said. “But
we’re getting both plant and animal readings in the same area that the Numinous
energy effecting Leika is coming from. Your surface readings will give us
better results”
“Any
clue as to what might be down there?” Jeff was following Keeper’s lead and
arming himself heavily.
“Only
one Obscorité 9 specimen was ever brought back alive,” Teuth said, “and it died
shortly after arriving on Mateuse 17.” Teuth shuddered causing the
sucker-attached tentacles protruding from his octopus-like body to perform a
kind of aquatic dance. “It was a hideous thing, a cross between a Loonian fang-spider and a Jupiter Snake;
both carry venom with no known antidotes.”
“That
makes me feel better … thank you,” Jeff grumbled as he and Keeper boarded a
shuttle craft.
-------4-------
The first attempt at leaving the
shuttlecraft failed and Keeper and Jeff had to go back inside and bombard the Flerovium lights with Thorium radiation
to get the power levels they needed; it was still blacker than black on the
planet surface. They could only make out dim shapes when they were very close.
With no light
for guidance, the surface appeared to be a massive forest of twisted trees,
shrubs and vines growing in haphazard directions. “How does a planet without
light support life?” Jeff said when they exited the shuttle craft. “Where do
these plants get their energy?”
“They must utilize a type of photosynthetic
energy from the dark matter this galaxy is orbiting.” Keeper reasoned. “Life
here probably began with normal seeds drifting on the solar wind for eons of
years. A few ended up here and after a billion or so adaptions, they began to
grow.”
“That
sounds impossible,” Jeff said as they walked along what looked like a path toward
a swampy area filled with dark inky liquid.
“All
across the universe one thing, one constant, remains unchanged,” Keeper said. “Life
will find a way.”
“And
so will death,” Jeff warned. Something massive crashed through the growth, heading
directly toward them. Keeper and Jeff both slashed at the darkness with their
photon swords. A screeching howl came from the black, along with the receding
thumping of multiple legs, leaving behind a horrible stench. “I don’t know if
what I smell was me … or that thing,” Jeff quipped. After a minute of cautious silence,
they moved ahead, but whatever had tried to attack them was now gone.
Teuth’s static-filled voice came over
the communication Z-pak attached to Keeper’s chest. The instrument also
contained a camera and other sensing equipment so those aboard the Centurion
could see what they were seeing … or rather, not seeing. “The
signal that is damaging Leika is four-hundred and nineteen meters forward and to
your left. I’m relaying your guidance co-ordinates now.” There was a
pause and then Teuth’s hesitant voice came again. “This
cannot be right! We obviously have errors with our life form readings. Something
is very wrong with this data.”
“Something
is very wrong down here,” Jeff told him. “At least you can see the mistakes you’re
making.”
“Teuth,
what is the nature of your problem?” Keeper sounded concerned. The signal from
the Centurion began to break-up.
“I
w uld a vi e that ou co e ba k to the
Cen rion im diat ly,” Teuth sounded fearful, very unusual
for his species. “I r pe t, re n t he s ip
im e I t y!” Then the signal
broke up completely. “….Le. .. . is… ……..”
Keeper and Jeff both made adjustments to
their Z-Paks, but the instruments had stopped functioning. “I guess we’ll just
have to go on without him,” Keeper said.
“You take a land-adapted
cephalopod out of water, and they’ll find their own trouble to swim in.” Jeff
tightened the grip on his photon sword.
The trail they
were following was becoming more of a path. Smooth round stones glistened under
the Flerovium lights. More than half of the trees now appeared to be growing
upright. Leafy vegetation hovered over them like dark unmoving bat wings. “Something
looks awful familiar about this place,” Keeper said. “I just can’t place it …
it’s like a disturbing dream I had as a child.”
“More like one
of my nightmares,” Jeff said. The ebony trunks of twisted trees became visible,
along with clumps of what looked like black moss lining the winding trail. A
woven basket lay overturned on the rocks with several apples spilled on the
ground. Farther along, shards of glass from a tinted mirror littered the path.
“We must be
close!” Keeper stopped in his tracks. Both he and Jeff stared forward. A tiny
speck of flickering light glowed in the distance. “That looks like a fire!”
A howl of rage in the distance, caused
millions of leaves and even some large thorny branches to fall from the trees.
Keeper and Jeff were both cut about the head and face.
“I don’t know
what problems Teuth is having up there in orbit,” Jeff said examining his
bloody hand. “But until we find out … I think we better return to the ship.”
“I agree,”
Keeper said. “Whatever’s making that sound can’t be friendly.”
They had just turned
to start back down the trail when a horrible voice grunted from the darkness. “You will follow me!”
Several exoskeleton creatures appeared
from the darkness holding trident shaped spears that felt as hot as branding
irons. Their bony eyeless facial features seemed to glow under the intense Flerovium
light.
“You will keep your illumination device… but you won’t use
these …”
The largest creature pointed his clawed fingers and both photon swords vanished
from their hands.
“We
come to your world in peace and with love in our hearts,” Keeper said. “We only
wish to save one of our own crew-members from destruction.”
“You will speak only with Féltékeny!” A huge fist
knocked Keeper to the ground.
The creatures marched
them relentlessly forward poking the hot spears into their backs. “This just
keeps getting better and better doesn’t it?” Jeff pointed to crudely sharpened poles
that lined both edges of the path. The decapitated heads of numerous slimy creatures,
some almost human in appearance, bled from each jagged point.
“That must be
our Féltékeny up ahead,” Keeper said.
A hunched figure stirring a boiling caldron surrounded by skulls and wearing a shimmering
hooded robe darker than the ground it stood on, looked up as they approached. The
air was filled with the stench of death and rotted meat.
There was only
void under the pointed hood until they were very near. Energy rising from the
heated liquid rose upward in a single beam toward the stars. “We’ve found our
spell,” Keeper muttered.
They were close
enough now to tell the creature was female. Almost
a sexy profile, Jeff thought. In a
space going Goth kind of way. Dark liquid, probably blood, ran down the
sides of the cauldron.
The woman turned and slowly pulled back
the dark hood. Keeper and Jeff were both expecting a wrinkled hag too ugly to
comprehend. What they saw under the Flerovium lights frightened them more.
… It was Leika!
To be continued ….
