Page 120 - The Chronicles Ser2 (6-10)

The Gardonna Axilla logs were a rich source of detailed information. They even explained
the ships existence. Apparently the remains of the vessel were purchased by a wealthy member of
an Atalaman household. She had been restored to her full glory by him and re-commissioned as a
private cruiser. The owner had used it for pleasure a number of times before handing it over for the
use of an exploration mission to help colonise worlds for the Congress; the Leader of that expedition
being a member of one of the ruling houses. It was also noted that the ship had been outfitted with
long range sensory scanners and other then state of the art equipment. Among these
“extraordinary” additions was a prototype field generator. Glock and Lennie found this on their
second sortie of the ship.
“It looks like it’s meant to envelope the ship in a force field, probably phasing, but the emitters
weren’t fitted to the hull. One of the engineers found them stowed in a crate in the hold” Lennie
said to Jonas when he returned back to the Hellion.
“Odd, they probably thought they wouldn’t need them until they set up base somewhere.” Jonas
responded. Lorna was deep in thought, she had been studying the entries on the fauna they’d found
in space near a moon.
“They seem to have encountered some strange life forms as they came close to The Veil. They were
similar in appearance to Space Whales; but smaller and aggressive. They regularly had to dissuade
the creatures from feeding from their drive nacelles energy feeds. These creatures drained energy
rather than consume dust and gasses. Sort of Space Leeches if you like.” She said without looking up
from her pad.
“The Ilkar have seen similar creatures hovering around dying or old Behemoths. They steer clear of
Space Whales though. They probably don’t like the taste” Jonas chuckled. Lorna glowered at him and
he turned away. The two modified speeders were ready to launch. A Mechanoid pilot had been
rigged up with the Neuro Inductive Monitors and the Human pilot likewise. Pre-flight checks of all
the monitoring equipment were showing no signs of any trouble. The modified shielding showed up
well in test and looked to have every possibility to behave as expected.

Mortimer had been busy with translations of the signals that seemed to originate deeper
into The Veil than the signal in Atalaman. They were almost song-like, but the cadences were way
too strange.
“If that’s a language it must rank as one of the most bizarre. I’ve heard just about every tongue in
the Unity, but that’s unlike any, even the Unat and Osir vocals have something standard about them,
but this…” he was talking with one of the female Coms officers, Lucy, “There used to be a sea living
mammal on old Earth called a Dolphin. Some of those clicks and whistles are reminiscent of the
sounds those creatures made” he added.
“There is a race of reptilians in the old Markab sector that have a language that is similar, try using
the trading Archives for a translation matrix. The Achenazi have traded with them for a long time,
they might have created one” Lucy commented and opened the link to the nearest Hive-Net relay.
There was indeed a matrix available, Mortimer applied it to the ships translator bank and ran the
signals again. To both their astonishment, they got a partial translation, some sounds didn’t translate
and remained in their original state. What did translate read more like a crazy shopping list or
inventory.
“That’s screwy; some of these materials are obviously for mining, others just don’t make sense. It’s
hopeless; we need more examples of the language for the translator to compile a proper vocabulary.
But you were right it does seem as if the languages are related. I wonder…”
“Perhaps a tighter reigning in of the transmissions location would help. I could ask Jason to trace the
source using Hasbid’s filter” Lucy suggested but Mortimer was on a roll. His mind was turning over
possibilities.
“Didn’t that race say their language was given to them by “Star Gods”? See if you can get me a link
to the Sonoran Trust Archivist Bella Utrecht on Casarist Prime. She spent some time on a Unat vessel
that did surveys in the Markab sector before the Dark Empire was formed. She may have some of
the Unat matrices from that era in her personal archive. I once dated her great granddaughter, I had