The Legend of Earth

reaching Eilsion, and you know what it is like to traverse the Discourse.”

“Enjoy,” Adam spit out.

“We shall endeavor. And Krylorif, please seek medical attention. You sound as if you may have an affliction of the Juirean Junk, like so many of us.” The Kracori laughed through the speakers and then Jym signified that the link had been cut.

“Juirean Junk, huh,” Sherri said. “Is that anything like Montezuma’s Revenge?”

“Miss Valentine, you seem fixated on bowel movements tonight,” Tobias said with a smile. “Something you’re not telling us?”

“Stay frosty, people,” Adam said. “That was just the first hurdle. You can bet that on the surface they know we shouldn’t have left, and pretty soon they’ll notice that all their prisoners have disappeared. They’ll put two and two together, and then a simple phone call to their ships in orbit and we’re running for our lives.”

“So what’s new?” Riyad said with his patented grin. “That seems to be a one of our favorite past times.”

Chapter 23

Once away from the planet Kaylor initiated a full gravity well and six hours later they were leaving the Juirean stellar system. The space around them was full of all kinds of spacecraft, but very few with the gravity signatures of Klin ships. The vast majority were Juireans, or other species, still fleeing the area after the Kracori invasion. There were literally thousands of them, and the mass of gravity signatures helped to mask that of Adam’s ship from the pursuers he was sure had been alerted.

After seven hours — and easily a dozen or more attempts by the surface to contact the ship — the team began to relax, believing they had actually gotten away clean. They tried to celebrate as best they could, but then were hit with the reminder that if they couldn’t reach the fleet in time, their homeworld would be turned into a radioactive wasteland.

As she had done on too many occasions in the past, Sherri found the ship’s sickbay and patched Adam up as best she could. She didn’t think his ribs were broken, just badly bruised. Either way, it really hurt for him to breathe. There were medicines onboard, but none of those onboard could read Kracori to know what they were for, so they didn’t risk it.

Once he was bandaged up, Adam returned to the bridge. “So Jym, how soon can we attempt to make contact?”

“It’s not as simple as that,” the tiny alien stated. “We are in a Klin-designed ship — ”

“As is the fleet,” Adam interjected.

“That will help,” Jym conceded, “but we have no idea what frequencies they may be monitoring and what relays might be compatible with Klin wormhole technology.”

“What did he just say?” John Tindal asked from a seat at the other side of the bridge. Although the Petty Officer First Class had been traipsing through space for over a year, he had never bothered to inquire into the technology that made communication over light years even possible. As long as it worked, he was happy not knowing. But wormhole technology, that was something new.

Adam ignored him. “Can we send out a broad spectrum broadcast, or send the same thing out over multiple frequencies?

“Yes we can. If you make a recording, I can have it sent out over a million frequencies if you wish. There is still no guarantee that any of them would be picked up and relayed throughout the network. And if any were, they would be in the open and able to be heard by anyone.”

“Good point, Jym. Then I will have to send it in a code of some kind, but not so much that it would be lost to anyone on the fleet who might be listening.”

He thought for a moment, and then the answer became obvious. We’re Humans. Not too many people out here know anything about us.

“Okay, Jym, start recording.” Jym pressed a few buttons and then signaled for Adam to start. “Team Leader to Commander SEAL Team Six. Team Leader to Commander SEAL Team Six. This is A.C., please respond on this frequency. Urgent — I repeat urgent — message to follow. Please respond ST6 Commander.” He nodded for Jym to cut the recording.

“Send that out on as many frequencies as you can in the direction you believe the fleet will be located. Loop it; keep it going until we hear something back.”

“The message will go out, Adam. Whether anyone will be listening within your fleet is an unknown.”

Adam sneered. “I always love your positive attitude, Jym. It always brightens my day.”

Chapter 24

Jonnif Vinn was still struggling to overcome the effects of the sedatives he had been administered the night before. In light of the morning’s devastating news, it was imperative that he do so — and do so quickly.

“How could Kaddof have allowed this to happen?” he said to his aide Mininof walking beside him. “It should have been apparent to him right away that something was not right.”

“We all heard the launches, Jonnif, including yourself,” Mininof countered.

“Yes, but I was not myself. I have very little recollection of the activities of the last night.”

“In defense of Kaddof, he did raise the alarm and attempted to contact the ship. When that was unsuccessful he spoke with Krylorif who informed him the other ship was on a reconnaissance mission.”

“Which was untrue,” Jonnif growled. “And by the time the deception was discovered, the ship was already in a well and merged with the hundreds of other ships fleeing the Cluster. Why wasn’t Adam Cain killed in the arena?”

“You left orders not to, my Ludif, and you were not available to amend those orders.”

“So this is all my fault?”

Mininof did not reply immediately. He waited until he had gathered his thoughts before responding. “It was simply an unfortunate set of circumstances, Jonnif, impossible to have been foreseen.”

“I doubt if the Ludif Council will see it as such.”

Ludif Council, Jonnif thought. What a ridiculous term: Ludif.

Being more-traveled than most Kracori, Jonnif was in the unique position to see the Kracori in a more comparative light. He also knew all Kracori were Ludifs; it was what made them Kracori in the first place.

Ludif was the term used for the mythical gene that made the Kracori the superior creatures upon their homeworld of Eilsion, the one thing that made them different from the animals in the trees. It was loosely translated into meaning the god-gene, and for thousands of years the Kracori did consider themselves as Gods upon their world.

With Eilsion buried deep within a brilliant nebulae comprised of hundreds of stars, the Kracori had gazed up at the fiery swath of red and green with no false illusion that they were the only creatures in the universe — just the most superior. And when they turned their telescopes to their sister world of Olypon, located only slightly more distant from the birth star of Kyrils, they saw a world of vast blue oceans and land of brown and green.

In the early years the Kracori imagined all kind of creatures evolving on Olypon, from deadly threats to benevolent Ludif-like beings in their own right. But when the first Kracori landed upon the surface they found it to be a much younger world than Eilsion, and therefore had lacked the time required for development of any life forms higher than grasses, fishes and small reptiles.