Star Clusters: New Arrivals Read Online Free Page A
Author: Dalo Lorn
until the engineers were forced to retreat. “Uhh, we have--”
“A problem. Yes. There may be some small hope left, though. I have found out where our systems are being manipulated from; if the saboteur can be distracted or incapacitated long enough, I should be able to undo the modifications, restore power and save the ship.”
“What’s the catch?”
“The ‘catch’, as you put it, is that the internal transporters are still offline and the saboteur’s location is deep within the flooded areas of the ship. We are the closest ones; however, neither one of us can reach him.”
“Well, we could create diving stops of sorts - man-sized bubbles along the route, each connected to the ventilation shafts. That might let me get there. After all, you have to stay here and hack into the computer,” he answered Hatos’ unspoken question.
“The bubbles would be just as heavily impacted by the pressure. If you are not fast enough, you may find yourself stranded in the water with no way to escape.”
“You mean like everybody else will if we don’t make this work. Just lead me in the right direction.”
“Very well.”
Within minutes, Lanis was on his way, swimming between the bubbles; it was at this point that he realized that the Tarhedian suit he was wearing was waterproof. Roughly halfway to his destination, he found a corpse floating around - it was the navigator!
He reached another diving stop. “That’s one mystery solved. The navigator’s missing because somebody killed him. Can’t quite make out what it was, but it wasn’t the water.”
“Disturbing, but not entirely unexpected,” Hatos noted as Lanis continued. “The water has almost reached the control room - you must hurry!”
By the time he finally reached his objective, Lanis was more than a little concerned to see the last diving stop had almost receded completely into the ventilation shaft. Taking a deep breath while he still had the chance, he looked around. The first thing he noticed was that while there was a console here that had been used recently, there seemed to be no trace of the saboteur--
“Behind you!” Hatos warned; before the Terran could fully move out of the way, a slightly serrated claw - attached to what seemed to be the right arm of an unharmed navigator - plunged itself into his left shoulder. He quickly grabbed the attacking arm with his right hand, kicking his assailant with both legs as he reached for his pistol.
The attacker - Lanis recognized his claw as Xargan, though he had never seen anything like him before - responded by spontaneously growing several tentacles, most of which wrapped itself around his arms, immobilizing them while another tried to grab the pistol.
Lanis felt a stinging sensation in his legs; his boots released an unusual substance into his bloodstream - a stimulant of some kind. Its effects quickly became apparent when he managed to resist his restraints enough to point the pistol away from him and fire several shots, hitting the Xargan’s body.
The creature shrieked in pain, turning into some kind of featureless organic mass. A few moments later, the lights flickered to life as the ship powered up, but the much needed containment fields were not pushing any air towards him yet as everything around him slowly faded away...
Chapter 2
Conspiracy
The Petrans are a strange race, most easily described as ‘amphibious humanoid dolphins with several blue plates along their backs,’ though - as with the Tarhedians or the Xargans - that description would not be completely accurate; not to mention that it would merely scratch the surface. With bones made from a tough crystalline substance - the same that their back plates are composed of - it was no wonder that the Petrans’ preferred material for making tools (or weapons) had been the bones of their people for a long time, until a period during their equivalent of Earth’s first industrial revolution when a Petran scientist figured out how
“A problem. Yes. There may be some small hope left, though. I have found out where our systems are being manipulated from; if the saboteur can be distracted or incapacitated long enough, I should be able to undo the modifications, restore power and save the ship.”
“What’s the catch?”
“The ‘catch’, as you put it, is that the internal transporters are still offline and the saboteur’s location is deep within the flooded areas of the ship. We are the closest ones; however, neither one of us can reach him.”
“Well, we could create diving stops of sorts - man-sized bubbles along the route, each connected to the ventilation shafts. That might let me get there. After all, you have to stay here and hack into the computer,” he answered Hatos’ unspoken question.
“The bubbles would be just as heavily impacted by the pressure. If you are not fast enough, you may find yourself stranded in the water with no way to escape.”
“You mean like everybody else will if we don’t make this work. Just lead me in the right direction.”
“Very well.”
Within minutes, Lanis was on his way, swimming between the bubbles; it was at this point that he realized that the Tarhedian suit he was wearing was waterproof. Roughly halfway to his destination, he found a corpse floating around - it was the navigator!
He reached another diving stop. “That’s one mystery solved. The navigator’s missing because somebody killed him. Can’t quite make out what it was, but it wasn’t the water.”
“Disturbing, but not entirely unexpected,” Hatos noted as Lanis continued. “The water has almost reached the control room - you must hurry!”
By the time he finally reached his objective, Lanis was more than a little concerned to see the last diving stop had almost receded completely into the ventilation shaft. Taking a deep breath while he still had the chance, he looked around. The first thing he noticed was that while there was a console here that had been used recently, there seemed to be no trace of the saboteur--
“Behind you!” Hatos warned; before the Terran could fully move out of the way, a slightly serrated claw - attached to what seemed to be the right arm of an unharmed navigator - plunged itself into his left shoulder. He quickly grabbed the attacking arm with his right hand, kicking his assailant with both legs as he reached for his pistol.
The attacker - Lanis recognized his claw as Xargan, though he had never seen anything like him before - responded by spontaneously growing several tentacles, most of which wrapped itself around his arms, immobilizing them while another tried to grab the pistol.
Lanis felt a stinging sensation in his legs; his boots released an unusual substance into his bloodstream - a stimulant of some kind. Its effects quickly became apparent when he managed to resist his restraints enough to point the pistol away from him and fire several shots, hitting the Xargan’s body.
The creature shrieked in pain, turning into some kind of featureless organic mass. A few moments later, the lights flickered to life as the ship powered up, but the much needed containment fields were not pushing any air towards him yet as everything around him slowly faded away...
Chapter 2
Conspiracy
The Petrans are a strange race, most easily described as ‘amphibious humanoid dolphins with several blue plates along their backs,’ though - as with the Tarhedians or the Xargans - that description would not be completely accurate; not to mention that it would merely scratch the surface. With bones made from a tough crystalline substance - the same that their back plates are composed of - it was no wonder that the Petrans’ preferred material for making tools (or weapons) had been the bones of their people for a long time, until a period during their equivalent of Earth’s first industrial revolution when a Petran scientist figured out how
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