Chapter 1: Allan makes Contact

~~ July - Week 28 ~~

Captain Allan Ubobo was in his old transporter searching for a comms channel the others may be using.

Rumours had reached him that new people were living on Jahnville on the east coast. They were near where Wizard Jahn had transported his people to this planet. The rumours included a machine that went up into the sky and came back to the ground several hours later. This had to be a transporter.

He assumed that the company had finally sent a ship. He didn’t know why they went to another continent before contacting him. This had him confused at first. He then wondered if they thought his crew had perished since no ship or probes remained in orbit.

The rumours also said about a hundred big people had come. That they were working with the new Faerie Queen, who owed that valley. The new people had claimed all the land to the Little Blossom Desert. There was talk of the new people having built the Faerie folk wondrous homes in the forest, and they promised to protect them.

The most disturbing rumour was that two of the big people were wizards. The new High Lord was a beautiful red-haired lady called Lee, and her cousin Kyle was the Gold Wizard. Also, both the new High Lord and Kyle’s wife were pregnant. The faeries had even hinted that the children would also be strong in the powers.

‘It has to be Kyle and Lee,’ Allan thought as he rubbed the emerald stud in the top of his right ear and under the fold. ‘I didn’t know they were related! They don’t look alike at all.’

The descriptions he had heard definitely reminded him of the couple who hadn’t come on the GJ10 Expedition. He wasn’t that surprised that they had arrived on the new ship. They had been keen enough the first time until he frightened Lee off.

He did wonder how they had found Jahn’s and Rah’s wizard boxes and what they did to open them. ‘Blast them,’ he thought. He was a believer that the boxes did have power. His Gran had been a believer in magic, and he’d seen things that couldn’t be otherwise explained.

He had spent two years trying to open the magical box that he had found near the old city on Antalia. His patience, however, had run out and he had used a plasma cutter on the box. When he got the lid open, he found all the silver objects had melted, and the crystal ball had cracked.

He had slammed the lid shut in frustration, and the bloody box had sealed closed again. It then reformed itself and looked like he had never touched it. Wizard Wii had told him not to try opening the box as the box chose its new owner. Not willing to believe him, he had used brute force and paid the price.

Richie, with the help of Wizard Wii, had translated the books from the book box. They had read like diaries and lists of dos’ and don’ts’, but none of the spells were readable. Wizard Wii had told him the spells were on the other page, but he had never been able to get them to show for him. Allan never had any luck either.

Prince Aeron de Kay on Davinia had accessed a Wizard’s Box two years before. It was the reason he had gotten desperate to open the one he had. The Davinian’s still frightened the Antalian’s. While he knew that he wanted the powers to ensure his rule, he had used the excuse that it was to protect his people.

So, with Lee and Kyle claiming two of the boxes that only left one unclaimed. He would need to find the box, which had belonged to Wizard Que. He hadn’t worried about it before because it was thought to be in one of the bombed sites. He didn’t know if he could open it, but he preferred it was accounted for.

He had been visiting the transporter regularly over the last couple of weeks, but the new ship wasn’t using any of the com channels his ship had used. He had searched randomly through the different frequencies trying to find the ones they used on the spaceship.

On this day, he had tried a new set of frequencies and was listening to the coms when he heard a call come through.

“Terry here, who’s driving the truck today?”

“Qu here Terry, I am.”

“Hey Qu, we will be down in five.”

“K’, we will be there to meet you.”

“Terry out.”

Allan listened longer but heard no more. He decided the channel was reserved for the platform trucks that serviced the transporter. This made sense to him. It wasn’t a general-purpose channel. He recorded the frequency and set up a log to monitor it. He then tried a new frequency.

This time he heard someone call for Lee, and then he got gobbledygook and then silence. ‘Must be interference of some sort,’ he thought. He listened for a while longer. He worked out he was on a more general frequency as people often initiated a call then went to another channel.

For some reason, they didn’t use their personal com system. They were using a multi-channel set-up. It was like the old CB Radio’s his Gran had told him about when he was a kid. So, he set up a new log for this channel. For a while, he trolled some other frequencies.

He identified several channels as popular alternatives. Then he struck lucky when one group cut in over another and were sent to Channel 6. He quickly dialled through the other close frequencies and found the voices of the people who had moved. He recorded the channel number against that frequency.

Now all he needed was someone to talk to from the company. He came back that night and at about 23:00 U-hours, set up encryption for Channel 6 and then he said on the open channel, “Pop-eye to Six, Pop-eye to Six.”

He then switched to Channel 6 and waited. He was rewarded a minute later.

“Is that you Olive?”

“Hash, two-three at five-six,” he said.

“Confirmed, Hash, four-five at five-six,” the voice returned.

“Confirmed,” he answered delighted he had made contact.

The other voice spoke again, “Who do I have?”

“You first,” Allan answered.

Essco was ecstatic. He nearly fell off his chair when he heard the call sign. He had been ratting he brain trying to think of a way to contact Allan for weeks. He must have learned of their arrival at last.

“Professor William Essco,” he said.

“Professor, how are you? Long-time no see.”

“Agreed Allan, I must apologise for not contacting you sooner. Things didn’t go quite to plan.” Essco replied, recognising Allan’s voice by the Australian twang.

“So, what went wrong?”

“Tychy, this planet’s sister was where we were going first, so I had to intervene. Unfortunately, this didn’t work exactly as anticipated. I have been trying to get them to come and visit you for weeks,” he concluded.

“Back up, what sister planet?”

“Oh yes, very interesting development. Tychy is a planet that they think was once in a similar orbit to our Mars. However, they think a supernova spike blew up the next outer planet near it. The bombarding of the planet they call Tychy caused it to be pushed into an orbit that is one-eighty degrees opposite to Utopia’s. Didn’t you see it on your scans?”

“No, all our scans had Utopia in the middle of the picture. So why go there, wouldn’t it be dead?”

“Oh no, the opposite is true. It has lower gravity than here just under Earth’s, being a little smaller. It has seas, plant growth and a breathable atmosphere. It even has a small moon, so it has softer weather than here. While hotter at the equator, the temperate zones would be very nice to live in and we detected heaps of mineral deposits.”

Allan shook his head in disbelief. If they had gone there, they probably would have completed the mission and gone back to Earth rich people. The company wouldn’t have to worry about a population being in place, and he would have been set up for life. Fate can play some weird tricks on a bloke, sometimes.

He thought about what he had. While he missed some things from Earth, like his kids, he had made a good life here for himself in the last three years. Plus, here he was a Queens Consort and rich, that was hard to beat.

“If you’re in a company ship, how come you aren’t in charge?” Allan asked Essco.

“Well, the costs to build the ship as quickly as they did were prohibitive. The company had to get help. So, it ended up becoming a UNSEC exploratory mission. I ended up with a ship filled with bloody scientists and an Australian SOER team of twelve led by a Captain Sean Watson.”

“He and that infuriating bitch, Lee Gillian, her cousin Kyle Vella and Professor Philip Goldsmith are running the show these days. Lee and Kyle stopped the ship from breaking up when that idiot Ben Layard had the bloody engines come on after we swapped the jump programs. But I at least got us here,” Essco said.

Allan sat and digested all that Essco had said. It sounds like the idiot fucked up royally. Changing jump programs like that was a recipe for disaster. He was amazed the ship survived. “Why did they land on Jahnville and not Antalia?” he asked.

“Politics,” Essco answered with a huff. “The scientists were worried about causing issues between the Northern and Southern Continents. Since they worked out there had been a war between the two some time ago. So, they elected to initially set up on Jahnville since it’s practically empty.”

“They plan to send delegations to the other continents once were settled. But they are taking their sweet fucking time about it. Watson rescued this Faerie Queen. Apparently, she owns the valley we are in. So, they got her permission to set the domes up here. It was an attempt to cover their arses legally. As far as they understood the politics of this world,” Essco concluded.

Allan was amazed. They were correct as far as the local politics went. The humans couldn’t get in trouble with illegal occupancy having been invited to settle by the legal owner. He could only conclude that many of the rumours were true.

He had checked out the area on his old maps of Jahnville. It was a very beautiful and wide valley with several smaller valleys as you moved to the west. Allan had also gotten a good mix of strong mineral signatures in the mountains and valleys in that area when they passed over it. He even remembered detecting oil reserves.

The surrounding grasslands could support large herds. Even the small desert ensured others couldn’t try setting up beside them. The valley itself with those resources would support a large-sized city for a very long time. That valley was also an excellent place to build a port for trade with Queland and even Davinia, which wasn’t to his advantage.

It was a brilliant choice of locations for them to set up a foothold in. That Valley was also one of the areas he had thought might have the de Ray Crystals. He had learnt that they needed volcanic emissions to grow. But he wasn’t sure if they were there or not as he never got a definitive reading that he could lockdown.

He wondered if Kyle knew that he now owned Rahia Island and all the other islands since by the Laws of Utopia, they belonged to the Gold Wizard. Wizard Wii had told him that Wizard Rah had been happy to claim all the islands.

Allan also realised that the continent of Jahnville belonged to Lee if it was true that she was the new High Lord or Platinum Wizard. He chuckled to himself. Legally, her claiming land on Jahnville was a moot point, but he didn’t tell Essco any of this.

He did wonder what Essco knew about Wizards. “Hey, Essco, I’ve heard a rumour about wizards being on Jahnville?”