Page 130 - The Chronicles Ser2 (6-10)

“Yes; the more heads we get together on this the better. We still haven’t had any news from the
speeders yet so we’ll concentrate on the probe and the Gardonna. I’m sure I recognise our Untharan
Captain from somewhere; I just can’t place where” Hart replied. Preparations were made for the
ship-to-ship exchange.

Trok examined the speeders carefully; the Keterians had not tampered with the craft in any
way, so he downloaded the flight logs and ran an analysis. The Technicians were wary of him at first;
until he explained what he was and how his kind had come into being. He even helped them with
the translation of the history files that the Hellion had sent. They were astonished at how much the
rest of the galaxy had advanced. One of the Techs; a young man called Carlio Venetti took a shine to
Trok and the two were soon chatting as though they had been friends all their lives.
“It’s going to take some time for my people to re-integrate into society. We still have a partially
feudal system of government” he said while helping Trok to interface the speeder’s flight recorders
with the Keterian Master Computer Bank.
“Oh; there are still some older style governments out there that are even more structurally harsh.
Take the Bolatii for example; they execute their outgoing politicians so that they can never cause
trouble again. Mind you; their class structure is based around genetically engineering people fit to a
particular role. All those destined to be politicians accept the fact that eventually they will die and be
replaced; it’s the same for the other classes. It’s a highly organized society in which everyone quite
literally has their place.” Trok said, Carlio looked horrified by the idea then realised that Trok was
goading him
“Aha; a machine with a cruel sense of humour, now that truly is amazing” Carlio said and they both
laughed. Misha and Lyris approached. Lyris spoke first.
“We have managed to get our ships antiquated Coms to accept the filtering system you people used
to get the signals through the rift. The Luna Mechia will depart in about an hour; so if you wish we
can take you back with us so you can properly identify yourselves when we establish contact. Our
Engineers still haven’t quite worked out how it was you two managed to penetrate The Wall without
getting killed yet though!” she said
“That’s what I’m hoping to find out from our speeders’ flight recorders logs. It might take some time;
but If we can establish how; it might be possible to retro fit our systems to one of your vessels and a
proper first contact can be made.” Trok replied.
“I’ve been looking over some of the finds the Keterians have made. If a means of beating the barrier
does come about then I think the Unity might want to send an exploration team here. They have a
number of Krall cylinders – unopened. These could contain data crystals; and yes I explained about
them. Odd thing is there’s only the one Glyph; the eight pointed star. That would indicate they are
from the period when they went to total mechanisation of their bodies and ceased using a written
language. We know of course that eventually they evolved into an energy form and have since left to
another Space-Time parallel. That was a hard concept to get across, but eventually they got it. It’s
the other artefacts that have got me puzzled, the glyphs are similar to early Krall, but have a
different grammatical basis. That being mostly metaphors, allegories and similes on the whole. It’s
really difficult to get any sense from the translations. If this communication link-up works we should
get the Hive-Net to work on them.” Misha said adding “two of their scout pilots would like a closer
look at our drive systems; I said that should be OK, you agree?”
“Why not, and Carlio already has a working knowledge of some of the systems. A sort of exchange of
ideas. Yes; make it so. Carlio; can you take care when powering up the circuits in case there has been
some damage we haven’t seen. And make sure nobody stands too close to those Bussard intakes.
The attractional fields had to be greatly enhanced and they tend to pull in all sorts of stuff” Trok
answered and he, Lyris and Misha left heading for the main spaceport.

In the Coms section monitoring for a contact signal from the other side of
the rift; Jason was using a second terminal to scan the Unity Archive-Net for any
reference to the word Kryst. Lorna had asked him to also check with the Unat and
Osir archives. It was something to do while the automatic monitoring continued.