A Flair for the Dramatic

2000 short story by Jonathan Hicks

Nine years after Episode IV – A New Hope

The Infinite Challenger was on a steady course, the electromagnetic ‘waves’ that might have disrupted the guidance system hadn’t happened, as Yullm had feared. He sat by the central console, looking over readouts and glancing out of the main viewport for visual conformation of the information the databanks were telling him.

   “Still nothing,” he said, glancing over to Weale who was at the pilot’s controls.

Weale pulled her short-cropped hair out of her eyes, the sweat greasing her style as she looked out of the cockpit window nervously. She was small and lithe but with thick muscles that stood out prominently on her arms. She shook her head at Yullm’s words.

   “It’s been three hours,” Yullm heard from behind him, “what’s the hold-up?”

Yullm turned in his seat to look at Cowek, a tall well-dressed man who was seated at another scanning console. Cowek adjusted his electrospecs and wiped his own sweat-covered forehead.

   “Yeah,” he heard from his right, another voice belonging to a short Sullustian called Vion who flicked off his own console and turned his seat to face Yullm. “Some search mission this is,” he said through his layers of lips.

Yullm shrugged and turned back to his station.

   “That’s right, search. We’re searching. Mind your panels.”

The other two glanced at each other in consternation and then turned back to their consoles.

   “Who the freck put you in charge,” Vion muttered.

   “Glann Cipple,” Yullm said loudly, indicating his authority and more or less ending the conversation.

The Challenger drifted slowly on. The crew were nervously checking and re-checking their sensors for the area of space they were in was thick with interstellar dust like a nebulae that had formed within the system they were in, which had reduced visibility to literally less than a hundred meters with the naked eye. The ship was being guided by sensors alone.

   “What the hell are we doing here anyway? I thought the search parameters said the planet.” Vion demanded, slamming his hands on the console with frustration.

Yullm kept his eyes on his readouts.

   “Because we’ve searched the whole of Foron’s surface and there was nothing there. Glann’s information said that the ship we want is in this system, and this seems to be the place to look...”

   “Yeah, a great place,” Vion put in, rudely cutting Yullm off, “and you obviously haven’t considered why no-one flies through the Foron Cloud. Rogue asteroids in here, concentrations of gas so thick they might as well be moons, electromagnetic pulses... we’d be out of action before we knew what had hit us if we’re not careful...”

It was Yullm’s turn to interrupt.

   “Vion! That’s the danger, so mind your panel!”

   “And who’s the dresser?” he asked, pointing to Cowek, “And the pilot?” he pointed to Weale.

   “Oh, for...” Yullm half-turned to Vion and leaned over, flicking his console back on. “Will you just watch your console? We’re here because we can’t find the ship on Foron, and this is the perfect place to hide a vessel, so if something does come shooting out of the dust then I want to be ready for it, and if it bounces off our hull I’m going to shove it down your throat.”

Vion stood, offended and a lot more than angry.

   “Don’t you talk to me like...”

   “Stow it!” Weale shouted from the pilot’s chair. “I’m in the seat here and I need constant updates. If we’re hit then I’m the one who gets vaped, so watch your consoles and if you have anything to say, make sure its sensor readings!”

Even Yullm quietened. Weale was a very strong lady, both of will and body, and he didn’t want her angered or upset when they finally found the ship.

   “So,” Vion whispered in the well-dressed man’s direction, “what’s your story?”

   “I am a professor of xeno-history from Chancai,” he replied, his eyes on the console.

   “Unidentified, four marks at six-five,” Yullm suddenly called out.

Weale tilted the ship and adjusted her course slightly, a large shadowy object passing just out of the left-hand of the cockpit. “Another asteroid,” she reported. “The deeper we get the more frequent they become.”

   “Xeno-what?” Vion hissed.

   “Xeno-history. I research the histories of other planets.”

   “Some beings would call that being nosy,” Vion smiled, turning to face Cowek.

   “However you want to see it,” Cowek narrowed his eyes at the Sullustian and turned back to his screens.

   “What’s your favourite place?” Vion whispered again as Yullm said, “Concentration, eight marks at five-nine,” and the ship banked sharply.

   “Janos,” Cowek said.

   “What?” Vion turned in his seat and frowned at the human.

   “Am I the only one sounding here?” Yullm said sharply, not looking from his console but directing his comment at the two beings behind him. Vion frowned and mouthed a particularly nasty word behind his back.

   “Big one, on the move, eight marks at one-three,” Cowek said quickly and Weale immediately braked and started to turn the ship.

Nothing happened.

Weale looked down at her controls to be sure she had manipulated them properly and then back out at the view ahead of her. She couldn’t see what Cowek had seen but she knew it was out there. The ship wouldn’t respond and screens started to flicker.

   “What the... the control systems have seized up, some kind of magnetic field!”

Yullm ran a complete area sensor sweep and detected a magnetic field, directly ahead and very strong, surrounding a huge planetoid-type mass. The arc of detection was within Vion’s scan parameters.

   “Vion, why didn’t you see that?” Yullm shouted.

   “I just didn’t!”

Cowek caught their attention.

“My anomaly is till heading for us, eight marks at one three,” he snapped, overpowering Yullm and Vion’s conversation. “It’s going to hit us!”

   “The hell with this,” Weale muttered and jammed her feet onto the thrust control pedals. The engine bay roared, the upper triple engine configuration and the lower two atmospheric boosters kicked in, throwing the ship forward violently. Although Weale had lost some control over manoeuvrability she still had control over engine parameters.

The Infinite Challenger lurched forward as the engines burst forth their power and as the craft flew on a huge asteroid, five times the size of the freighter and covered in impact marks of its own, came out of the dark cloud and past them, missing the ship by a few meters. The vessel shook as a shockwave hit them as the asteroid forced the dust cloud out of its path.

Weale ignored her sensors and kept her eyes ahead; the immediate danger of the asteroid was past but now came the danger of the magnetic field that was disrupting the ship’s systems. She hooked her feet under the acceleration pedals and pulled them back, trying to get as much reverse power as she could. Her passengers gripped their consoles for support as the violent movement of the ship threatened to throw them to the floor.

The lateral thrusters blew gases and exploded thrust to maintain a level heading and slow the ship down, the reverse engines channelling power to the forward nozzles. The ship slowed dramatically, straining seat harnesses and causing the occupants to grit their teeth.

The anomaly causing the field appeared out of the dark dustcloud, looming ominously as if rising from black waters. It was a huge moon, part of it missing as if a gargantuan beast had taken a bite out of it. It shimmered as the metallic dust around it danced under the influence of the magnetic field. The Infinite Challenger roared further on towards the moon as Weale tried to stop its forward motion.

As the planetoid, over eight kilometres in radius, came closer the ship got slower. Weale grunted her efforts.

   “Come on, come on...”

The ship stopped.

Yullm sat up straight in his seat, breathing hard. He looked over at Weale and then Cowek. “Are you alright?” Weale nodded and let her breath out.

Cowek said,

   “I think so.”

   “And are you alright?” Yullm turned to Vion.

Vion rubbed his strap-sore shoulders and grimaced.

   “Yeah, I’m fine.”

   “You would be, you frecker.”

   “What?”

   “You were on the second arc of scanning and you didn’t see that?” he pointed out of the cockpit window at the planetoid ahead.

Vion undid his straps and jumped from his seat.

   “There was interference!” Vion shouted.

   “Yeah, like what else was happening in the cockpit!” Yullm shouted back. He wasn’t usually as angry or as forthright as this, but Glann had put him in charge of a very special mission and he didn’t want this idiotic Sullustian to screw it up.

   “I’m a starship construction specialist, not a comm officer!” Vion stood up to his full height and stared Yullm directly in the eyes, their faces nearly touching.

   “Don’t be so dramatic!” Yullm shouted back. “You’ve been no help on this mission. You’ve just been indulging in theatrics about how clever you are and how this is a waste of your time!”

Vion opened his mouth to retort but was interrupted by Weale.

   “When you pair are quite finished you might want to come up here and take a look at this,” she said loudly, making the two being’s heads snap into her direction. They gave each other a sly stare as they moved from their positions and joined Weale and Cowek, who had already walked up into the cockpit. They crammed into the small area and scanned the view.

All they could see was the dull grey of the moon, covered in impact craters and small crevasses. They scanned the surface, seeing nothing in particular and frowning quizzically.

   “What are we supposed to be looking at?” Yullm asked. Weale sighed, waiting for the question when it was obvious they were looking in the wrong place, and slowly pulled back on the control yoke. The vessel tilted backwards.

Directly above was a huge overhang but it was immediately obvious that it was artificial. It stuck out at an angle, up and away from the moon, and hovered over the vessel like a patient predator.

It was massive in every scale, with wide rectangular thrust exhausts that the Challenger could have easily flown into. The rear section, if that was what it was they were looking at as it was so unknown to them it could have been any part of the ship, was bulbous and covered in smooth reflective panels which had been dulled by long exposure to space and the dustcloud. What stunned them most of all was the huge angled fin that projected from the construction and away from both the rest of the vessel and the small moon.

   “What in Valdok’s name is that thing...” Cowek whispered.

   “Is that your lost ship?” Weale asked Yullm in a low voice, who was just staring dumbly at the vast spacecraft before him. “What is it?”

   “I don’t know,” Yullm whispered, the action of talking in quiet hushed tones appeared to be applicable at this moment. “Vion?”

The Sullustian construction specialist moved closer to the cockpit window for a better view. He stared up at the construction and frowned.

   “I can’t make out details. Can we get closer?”

Weale pressed several switches and two forward lamps flickered on, illuminating most of the rear section of the ship. She slowly raised the craft, remaining roughly the length of the Challenge from the hull.

Vion looked on, shaking his head in thought. His argument with Yullm was forgotten as he looked at the vessel.

   “At first glance I’d say it was Mon Calamarian but it’s far too symmetrical, panels are too big. That fin, as well, that’s not of the same design parameters. Maybe Verpine but I’ve never seen anything like this. That fin’s for atmospheric stability. State of the art two hundred years ago, but these days new ships have forcefields and better systems, don’t need the fin. Definitely not anything from any of the Setnin shipyards, A-Desando or Cantarr Bi Romou.”

   “How old would you say it was?” asked Cowek.

   “Can’t tell from here. The dust cloud may have either accelerated or slowed decomposition of hull materials; I don’t know the cloud’s composition to make a better judgement. From the basic design, from the rectangular engine exhausts and the fin, I’d say it was at least over a hundred years.”

   “Looks like we’re on the right track,” Weale said to Yullm.

Cowek grimaced and stood back, his face appearing irritated.

   “Mister Yullm, on the right track to what? I’ve been ripped away from my studies with the promise of studying Foron, something which I was rather pleased about considering my interest...”

   “I don’t get it,” Vion said. “I was pulled from A-Desando whilst working on age-old hull materials and engine parts to see if I could get them working again. This is all very mysterious, Yullm, what the hell is going on?”

With a clearing of his throat Yullm turned to Weale.

   “Weale, can you get sensors going again?”

   “Yeah, sure, I’ll just have to power up the combat shielding, that’ll block out any major signals, as long as the energy doesn’t turn electromagnetic.”

   “Fine. Gentleman,” Yullm motioned to the sensor room where they had been seated and he followed them in.

   “I’ll tell you what I can. Glann Cipple has come into the possession of a disc, which he has de-crypted and which has more or less told him of an artefact, an old ship, here in the Foron System. Basically this ship could be found ‘on Foron’. It’s very old and would be worth a lot of money.

   “Cowek, you’re a Janos specialist, mostly because your one of the very few who can read their weird language. Vion, your a specialist on ancient starship design. Am I making the picture clear?”

Cowek went to say something but Vion got in before him.

   “Do we get a cut?”

With a long smile Yullm nodded.

   “Yes, you get a cut. This ship is very, very special.”

   “Yullm,” Weale said, “up here, I’ve got something!”

They piled back into the cockpit and looked out at what the powerful lights were illuminating. A series of strange twisted symbols adorned the lower part of the hull, all the way to the vessel’s domed nose.

Cowek twisted his head.

   “It’s in Janite,” he said.

   “Can you read it?” Yullm said excitedly.

   “Yes... Aramisiass...” Cowek stopped, staring at the letters and then at Yullm in shock. He removed his glasses and wiped his eyes. “Goodness gracious me.”

   “What?” Vion looked from the letters to Cowek. “What?”

   “Aramisiass. It was one of two sister ships, the other one called the Everdorn. They were especially built to dock with a mothership, the only capital ship built by the Janos people. They’re supposed to be a legend...”

   “What mothership?” Vion demanded. Cowek stammered his reply.

   “Professor?” Yullm prompted.

Cowek took in a deep breath.

   “The Heed.”

Yullm smiled knowingly, Weale hid her smirk, Cowek continued to mumble under his breath and Vion stared out of the ship in shock.

The Sullustian started to breath in hard.

    “This... this is the greatest discovery in the Setnin Sector since... well, ever!” he shouted.

Suddenly, the cloud parted to reveal open space beyond. The moon swept out of the cloud and away from it.

   “What the hell...!” Weale exclaimed. “We’re out of the cloud!”

   “How can that be?” Yullm said.

   “I don’t know, it’s not us. The moon is orbiting something! It must be elliptical, we’re going back in!”

And in an instant the moon, Infinite Challenger and the Aramisiass were once again engulfed by the cloud.

   “What are we orbiting?” Yullm demanded.

Weale checked her readings and looked up at Yullm with confusion.

   “The cloud,” she said.

   “Okay, this is what we’ve leaned from the information gained,” Vion said, his adversarial disposition put to one side now that there was science to be had. “We’ve gone over every reading we’ve taken in the two hours since we found the Janos ship and this is what we have. Cowek?”

The professor stepped forward.

   “The presence of the Aramisiass explains a lot about why this particular cloud is called the Foron Cloud. You see, the planet Foron is not its original name; it was forced upon it due to the name of the cloud. Foron was the first Emperor Priest of the Janos homeworld, when their cult was first rising to power. The legend goes that he was ugly, repulsive to look at, and to hide this from the people, whom he didn’t want to disgust with his appearance, he used to hold court wrapped in layers and layers of clothes and blankets so that his visage would be disguised. Why this particular cloud is called Foron’s Cloud I’ll leave Vion to explain.”

The Sullustian stepped up. Yullm and Weale, who were both sat in the spare seats in the sensor room, watched expectantly.

Vion cleared his vocals.

   “Ahem. Now, from the sensor readings we have taken and the calculations we have made from the brief view we got from the moon’s elliptical orbit we have ascertained that the moon is orbiting something at the very centre of the cloud. A high magnetic field that keeps it in place. The moon is so adversely affected by the field it has become highly magnetised itself, which is what drew the Aramisiass into it...”

   “Sorry to interrupt,” Yullm said, “but aren’t we in danger of the same fate?”

Vion shook his head,

   “No, modern vessels like this are built from alloys and molecular steels, nothing overly magnetic, to counteract things such as this. The properties of the field aren’t on the correct frequency to draw us in. We just suffer system failure from the waves of energy, which have been easily counteracted by the combat shields. Ships like the Janos craft, though, are of an older age that were built from huge metallic panels. It would have been drawn in quite easily.

   “Now, the question is, what’s creating the field? I think I might have a theory.

   “I’ll start from the beginning. The Janites use for holy relics Janos Jewels, which are also a source of power, the energy trapped in the crystal like a bubble, a pocket of energy, which is created by the shifting of the crystal’s structure when it vibrates. Janites tap this power by placing a high frequency vibration unit by the jewel. Say this is the crystal,” he held up his fist, “and this is the vibration unit,” he held up a flattened hand by the crystal. “The unit vibrates so hard,” he started trembling his flattened hand, “that it destabilises the actual crystal over the energy pocket but doesn’t fracture the jewel. The energy literally ‘bleeds’ from the crystal through the molecular gaps the vibrations create,” he started to unfold a finger from the fist and into the flattened hand, “and you’ve tapped the power. The great thing is, the vibration also creates more energy from the crystal. The crystal shrinks as more energy is produced but what you’ve got is an amazing source of continuous energy. A crystal the size of my fist could power a freighter like this for a year.

   “Now the problem is, you don’t want any other vibrations interfering with the process. One dot on the frequency off and the jewel will crack and the power release would vaporise anything in its vicinity, so what you’ve got to do is make sure the jewel is suspended in a way that it won’t experience those problems. The Janites came up with a gravity field, a magnetic-based energy flow that held the jewel suspended in the air in the power generator. The field was quite powerful, it had to be to keep the jewel perfectly still during power tapping. We think this might be what’s causing the cloud’s own magnetic field. It’s trapping asteroids and metallic dust and creating this whole area of space.”

Yullm shook his head.

   “I don’t understand,” he shrugged.

   “Let’s go back to the Heed,” Cowek said. “Legend has it that it was a huge vessel with a weapon that, by today’s standards, slice a capital ship in two with one burst. This weapon was powered by a Janos Jewel, it powered the whole ship. The weapon was big, the ship was big, so the jewel had to be big. From my research and from what I have gleaned from Janite records this jewel was at least two metres high.”

   “Imagine the power required to generate a magnetic field to hold that size a crystal suspended. The energy output must have been huge to make sure that the vibration sequence wasn’t out by the slightest minuscule fraction. Fracture a jewel that big and...” Vion spread his hands in an apparent show of helplessness. “That sort of power could only have been generated by the very vessel that was carrying the jewel. The sister ships...”

   “Hold on,” Yullm said, pointing to the deckplates. “Are you telling me that the Heed is at the centre of this cloud?”

   “Yes, we are,” Cowek said simply. “Imagine it for a moment.  The Janites come into the system, maybe invasion, maybe some diplomatic reason... hell, they may have been taking the Heed out for a spin, who knows, and whilst they are here something goes wrong. The jewel stops giving energy, the vessel is attacked, again we don’t know, but something happened that made the two sister ships, which were designed to hold every living Janite on the Heed, try to get away. Now, the jewel didn’t crack or it would have vaporised everything within a thousand kilometres. Considering the area of space we’re in, we think the magnetic field generator failed. It started to fluctuate, so the Janites took the crystal, or someone came along later and stole it or whatever, and tried to escape. The Everdorn may have made it, maybe with the crystal, maybe it’s somewhere else in the cloud, we don’t know, but the Aramisiass doesn’t. A planetoid its flying past is highly magnetised by the energy released and blam!” he slammed his fist into his open palm. “It’s out of action. The cloud forms, every asteroid and particle of stellar gas and dust is sucked in by the magnetic field and forms the area.”

   “But without the jewel to power it,” Weale said, voicing Yullm’s thoughts also, “wouldn’t the magnetic generator shut down?”

   “By then it’s too late,” Vion answered, “every deck, every hullplate, everything on that ship has been magnetised by the faulty generator which is spiralling out of control. They won’t lose those properties until a negative field is generated to make it safe. But the Janites can’t do that. From records that Cowek shared with me the Janites must have used up a hell of a lot of natural mineral resources building this ship, there’s virtually nothing left of any seams of metal that they could have possibly used to build ships to go back. And even if they did, using the metals they were they’d just get sucked in. And do you think they’d ask anyone else for help? No way. The ship would be too great a prize to any outsiders. They were probably quite content to let the ship hide itself under the cloud. No one would have taken any notice of a load of magnetic dust, just put it down to a navigation hazard. There’s nebulae like this all over the galaxy. It’s only in recent decades that vessels have been built to stand forces like this and, hey,” he shrugged, “a dust cloud is boring, right?”

   “It’s all theory,” Yullm said. “How can you be sure?”

   “Because,” Vion said, flicking a switch to produce a holographic image that projected from an overhead lens, “we ran a sonic scan and got back these pictures from the core of the cloud.”

The image that hovered was of a huge vessel, easily twice the size of the biggest capital class ship Yullm had ever seen if the sensor calculations were to be believed, with a massive rear section, a short boom, and a large blocky forward section. It sat motionless, its more detailed definitions obscured by the rough picture that had been formed by the sensors. Yullm smiled slowly, looking at the cloud.

   “Hah,” he laughed, drawing the comparisons between the legend of the Emperor Priest Foron’s need to hide behind blankets and the Heed’s hidden bulk within the blankets of stellar dust.

Vion looked at Cowek and Cowek looked back at the Sullustian. They smiled with satisfaction.

   “We, gentlebeings, have found the legendary Heed,” Vion whispered.

Yullm laughed again.

   “Glann read the de-cryption of the disc wrong,” he said, staring at the shimmering holographic image. “The Heed wasn’t on Foron, it was in Foron.”

Suddenly, he stood up and stared at the two specialists with confusion.

   “Hang on, if you had this picture, why didn’t you just say so instead of spooling off all that theory and stuff?”

   “Yullm,” Vion said, “you know my flair for the dramatic.”

A Flair for the Dramatic

2000 short story by Jonathan Hicks

Nine years after Episode IV – A New Hope

Histories – A vital tale in the history of the Setnin Sector, this Jonathan Hicks story shows the discovery of the Heed after its three thousand year burial within the Foron Dustcloud.  Glann Cipple and his agents had spent six years searching and decoding the disk given to him by his daughter Armella D’Staan – this discovery was the culmination of that work.

Cast of Characters

Yullm

Weale Galletti

Cowek

Vion