Chapter 6: Kaliment

As old as the Poodle was, it was surprisingly well maintained and the small crew kept it reasonably clean. I was not very comfortable, which was of course partially due to the disguise I wore.

The fine and soft pelt of my costume proved to be quite warm and for some reason they kept the cabin temperature well above the thirties on the C scale. It felt just like sitting in a Nilfeheim sauna wearing a Fangsnapper fur coat. Well maybe not that extreme, but certainly close.

“Cats like it warm.” She seemed to have no problem guessing my thoughts even completely disguised like that.

The Poodle space ship we had boarded, was an antique. This Poodle was at least two hundred years old, but its basic shape looked the same as the latest Poodle model coming of the assembly lines.

Two thirty meters diameter ball shaped spheres connected to each other with a short ten meters diameter cylinder. This elongated cylinder acted as a corridor.

While this odd bar bell shape seemed odd and impractical. It was a different story when the first Poodles were designed and produced over 1500 years ago.

It was one of the very first commercially available space ships and because of this was one of the most famous ship designs in history.

The bow sphere was called the Freight and habitat section and the aft section was the engineering section. The two segments could be separated in an emergency or used as a power station for a new colony.

On top of the first sphere an elongated pointed wedge was placed. It contained the bridge and other command and control functions. Two ISAH pods on each side of the aft sphere completed the outside looks of a Poodle. Terrans said that the ship was ugly as sin and if it stood on its long landing gear it looked just like a groomed Poodle.

The passenger area and living quarters were inside the first sphere and freight, fuel and engineering was in the second sphere.

Due to the shape of the passenger compartment we did not sit in rows as one would in a Union space bus, but the seat rows followed the curve and completed an almost complete circle. The center was occupied by the ships access shaft and two hygiene cells. There was a little bar and currently un staffed small galley.

The set up had room for about hundred passengers, but only perhaps twenty five took the journey with us.

I pretended to be sleepy and curled up on that unyielding passenger seat, luckily made big enough to accommodate the biggest Ohgr. I did that to prevent any conversation with the two Togar males, sitting not too far.

They did keep their distance and I was glad.

My companion said whispering but with an amused tone in her voice.”Looks like the two Toms over there seem to contemplate considering getting mauled and injured for a chance with you.”

Why she found it amusing I did not know.

I found the situation anything but amusing. I muttered, not expecting a response. “It wasn’t me who decided I had to pose as a Togar female in the first place.”

However compared to the recent events and situations, this was not all that hard to endure and we had left that cursed dust ball a few moments ago. Through one of the view ports, I saw the welcome blackness of space and the light of a few stars brilliant and unfiltered by any atmosphere.

Not for the first time did I wonder about my own love of space and then whenever I had to step out into it I was afraid.

My body-guard snapped at the two Togars and said to them. “She has chosen and if you want to cause trouble and disrespect her go right ahead, but know that she is of the Lalhestes.”

Whatever a Lalhestes was it worked, the two males looked for seats as far away as possible and settled down.

I asked. “So where exactly are we going and what is a Lalhestes?”

She leaned closer as my real ears where covered with Bioflex material and my hearing was somewhat impaired and said. “We are on our way to planet Kaliment. It is probably more to your liking as temperatures never exceed ten degrees and usually hover around minus twenty on the C scale. There is no native life on Kaliment other than a selection of primitive amoeba and plankton that floats around in vast quantities in the planets oceans.”

I listened and found that a planet with decent temperatures and oceans could not be all that bad. She kept on telling me. “Kaliment has also an abundance of a rare crystalline form of Magnetite, a mineral absolutely vital to space faring civilizations.”

There I had to correct her, maybe she had spent too long in Freespace. “That stuff isn’t used since Dr. Isah completely redesigned the FTL drive Sarans gave to Earthers 3000 years ago. We don’t even use it in blasters anymore, because it is not very efficient, and unreliable compared to the reliable and 99% more efficient ISAH lattice that can be manufactured to the exact same specifications instead of using a natural rare crystal, that like all natural things never is completely the same.”

She padded my hand. “Yes my Union child indeed. No one in the Union with ready access to ISAH components considers Kalimun, as the Kartanian call it, anything but a nice export mineral. Consider this my Soja. Not every civilization is as obsessed with efficiency as the Terrans. The Sarans used Kalimun for thousands of years and were quite surprised when ships of United Terra out ran their ships only ten years after they given Terra the secret of FTL propulsion. We are in Freespace, and we are now approaching an area that is claimed by both the Kartanian and the Togar. No one outside the Union can simply place an order for ISAH Pods over GalNet and get precise engineered FTL engines a few month later delivered by freighter. The process how the lattice is synthesized, that holds the anti matter containing magnetic fields in precise balance is known only to ISAH Inc, Earth and they managed to guard its secrets even against other Union competitors.”

I swallowed the hidden critique at my ignorance and said. “So this planet we are going to, is not in Freespace anymore?”

She chuckled and since her disguise was quite real she managed to curl the enormous chops of that Oghar maw into a quite frightening grin. “That my Soja is a question that many like to be answered and a situation that simmers slowly to a boiling point that will mean war.”

She shifted her position so she could easier talk to me and said.”We are far from the influence of the Big Four now. Even the Galactic Council borders are over 700 light years from here and are only marked because a quite primitive and completely unimportant Thrall species of the Kermac occupies a few planets in that region. The Shiss, the Nul and of course the Union are even further away. Technically and by the original Freespace treaty this are the outer fringes of that area. Freespace is, as you know an area declared to be free of the influence and interference of the Big Four.”

That I knew, the entire text and the reasons for the Freespace treaty were discussed at length in Galacto-political class and were subject to detailed graded tests. I said. “I had to learn about Freespace and the treaty negotiated by the Blue, but I don’t think I ever heard about this world or the Togar being involved.”

She agreed with a nod. “The Kartanian were among the larger civilizations that signed the Freespace treaty but the Togar did not. They weren’t even asked, back then they were barely known and none of the Big Four considered them even remotely important or relevant at that time.”

She scratched her scaled chin with her long yellow claw like fingernails and continued.

“To get back to the actual subject, no one paid particular interest in this system and the planets in it, until the Togar more or less by accident found that Kaliment had more Kalimun than all their other sources together. Bad part is that, there was a Kartanian survey ship in the system at that time as well and overheard their planet to mother ship conversations. Now both claim that world and both have built a permanent basis that grew into a city, a clearly divided city of course.

Now the Togar are much more numerous and have the far bigger fleet than the Kartanian, but the Kartanians are technologically almost on Union level and have built their entire culture around building space ships. So the Kartanian fear that the Togar catches up on the technology and the Togar are concerned that the Kartanian begin to build war fleets on their own instead of relying on Oghar services to do the fighting for them.”

“Isn’t it dangerous for me to pose as a Togar female then?”

She shook her head. “No it is not, the Kartanian are not ready to light the fuse on this explosive situation by harassing a Togar female. If my intelligence in that situation is correct, the Togar are itching for a fight.”

I shrugged and said. “I don’t think a war between them out here would have any influence on the Union. I say let them fight, but after we returned to Union space.”

“Wars have a tendency to spread, my impatient Soja.”