Chapter 13

They spent the next couple of hours wandering around the ship.

“This is very odd. If people had been in here when it came down, why does it look like it has never been lived in? None of the rooms have personal possessions in them and all of the storage rooms seem untouched,” Gazza speculated aloud.

“There weren’t any people in the sleep chambers either. I’m also mystified as to why the lights work when we access a new area,” Bette added.

“Not just the lights, it seems most of the systems still work except access to level ten. I can tell that the air circulation is working and water came out of the taps in the bathroom I tried. Those storage rooms were full as if the ship was fully stocked ready for travel but it seems as if the people never boarded. Let’s go back to the level under the greenhouse. I think we missed something,” Gazza replied.

They headed back up and this time they were more systematic in their search. Gazza was walking down a corridor when he realised there were no doors in the other wall but they were in the middle of the ship. He stopped and looked down the wall. He then walked back and trailed his fingers along the walls. He stopped when he touched one panel. He turned to face it and said, “Open.”

“Smarty-bum,” Bette grumbled when the panel slid back and light flooded into the dimly lit hall. What amazed them both was that they heard the hum of machinery. On three sides of the room, they saw electrical cabinets that had screens mounted in the doors, showing all manner of systems on them.

In the middle of the room was a large tank. It was three metres square and one and half metres deep and had several pipes connected to two opposing sides of the tank. The water in the tank was moving over an odd structure. Little pinky-orange streamers were extended from slender columns covered in a bumpy coral coloured flesh. Hundreds of these columns branched out from a central humped section.

Some of the arms grew nearly thirty centimetres high and some were twice that long towards the bottom of the tank. The thick branches all had lots of smaller nodes tapping off them. Some branches had joined to other branches and all of the nodes had the orange feelers. It was rather bizarre to look at.

“Oh my, isn’t it the prettiest thing. But what is it?” Bette exclaimed as she flew higher to get a better look. She felt an overriding desire to touch it. Before Gazza could stop her, she put her hand into the tank and gently touched one of the longer protrusions. Bette’s face seemed to cloud over and she stayed very still. Gazza went to pull her away but when he touched her, he stopped when he too heard a voice.

‘Greetings, High Mage Gazza White. Hum, yes you will both do very nicely. I have been watching you two for some time and I am glad you finally came to seek me out. It will be so nice having wizards to serve again,’ the soft female voice mentally informed them.

‘I have made the link to you through your entity, so you don’t have to keep touching me now. I should be able to link to you anywhere on this planet now if I need to. It would be easier if you wore the correct items though, as this form of communication can be very tiring for all of us over long distances,’ she complained.

‘I shall use the room speakers so that you can move around freely and both hear me if that is acceptable to you, Bette and Gazza,’ she then told them.

Bette removed her hand and broke the mental connection. She and Gazza looked at each other in shock. “She is the ship’s controller,” Bette blurted out.

They both heard a soft chuckle and a voice over the speaker in the room said, “Yes, Bette. This was Section Nine of the Wheelship Asha. I crashed on this island close to six thousand five hundred years ago. I had only just replaced my mother and was becoming familiar with the ship’s systems when the accident happened.”

“We had left the main ship’s crew on a new planet in a neighbouring system and had gone to one of the other planets we had established to restock and repair the ship. We’d had a bit of trouble with a swarm of tiny asteroids that my sensors hadn’t detected near the new planet.”

“High Wizards, Garett and Gina, had control of the ship for the return journey. They were part of a new sextet that had been sent to help and they were to take control of the new planet once it was terraformed.”

“We were on our way back and we were coming out of a warp jump near this system when something hit one of the four main engines and it exploded. This caused a catastrophic failure of the central hub and the ship broke apart. The sections of the ship were flung far and wide on subsequent explosions.”

“I was caught in a warp ripple with one of the engines and flung into this system. Once I had control of my section, I detected this planet and headed here as my programming dictated. I was able to release the satellites into orbit. Then my propulsion units started to fail. My droids couldn’t access level ten to repair them as it had spells on it for some reason that I do not know, so I had to land where I could.”

“I became wedged in this crevasse when my damaged navigation and propulsion systems failed. Over time, the soils have built up around me and now two-thirds of me is buried. The section of my memory that held my tracking information was damaged, so I’m not even sure if any of my sisters came here too.”

“Fortunately, with the assistance of the satellites and my droids, I have been able to repair many of the systems that were damaged when I crash landed. I’ve still not located any of my sisters on this planet. I also have no records of any persons being in my section when the ship broke up. My records indicate that the small crew was in Section One at the time. So, I became stranded here all alone with no one to serve.”

“While I waited to be found, I’ve spent most of my awake-time recording the changes on this planet. I wake once a year for a few days to do a review of my archives and create a summary report. I review my maintenance logs and then I sleep again unless some alarm wakes me. I did wake when the settlement ships came two thousand years after my arrival, but I was unable to contact the controller on the ship that landed here or her eleven sisters.”

Bette interrupted her, “Asha, your clocks must be wrong my people have been here for over five thousand years.”

“No, your histories must be a bit off or the time periods your people used at one time were different. I’ve been here for six thousand five hundred and fifty-two solar years of this planet and the first settlement ships arrived one thousand nine hundred and sixty-two years after I did.”

“Bette, five thousand years is a long time. Information does get lost or exaggerated over time. Your people were at war with the Ants for ages so a couple of hundred years difference can be easily explained,” Gazza reasoned.

“I’m sorry Asha, I’m sure you are correct, please continue,” Bette asked.

“Thank you, mistress. From my satellites, I have been able to determine that many of the settlement ships were damaged and that they must have flown through some sort of meteor storm before they arrived here. I broadcasted my location for several years after they landed but I never got a reply nor did anyone come to investigate my signal. I do know that several of the ships didn’t land well.”

“One of the larger settlement ships hit and then exploded in the Islands to the south-east of these islands. The hydrazine it released reacted with the small amount of hydrazine that was still in the atmosphere from when I arrived. We had violent storms all over the world for the next one hundred and sixty days. I was pleased that after the storms dissipated the levels dropped down to a safe level for magical people again.”

“Hydrazine does odd things to magical people and high concentrations can even kill them. I had noted some odd changes to the plants and animals here after my arrival when the Hydrazine levels were still very high from the engine exploding in the atmosphere. It seems to accelerate growth or create mutations. The cold-blooded species like spiders, ants and sliders, in particular, grew much larger over those two millennia.”

“Umm, Asha, if you were alone, and no one came to investigate, who built the transporter ring in the caverns to the west of this location?” Gazza asked.

“What transporter ring? My data didn’t have this planet as being investigated by Keltrians when I crashed. I’ve also not identified it as an explored system once I knew where this system was in relation to the systems I knew about.”

“Well, that is odd. The Faeries histories tell that they came here because the planet had been terraformed and was ready for occupation,” Bette said.

“It wasn’t terraformed by my original crew who were assigned to this area of space. I don’t have any records of another wheelship being sent here either. Hum, I wonder if it was done by the Shifters. When Garett joined this ship, he told the crew that one of the Queens on the planet Reh was in trouble with their Empress for acting without her permission.”

“Apparently a section of their population had been building their own starships for a century or more before the other planets agreed to help and to take the warning of our systems demise seriously. The Shifters didn’t use the wheelship design and used a much smaller ship that they said was much quicker than the wheelships. They even redesigned their magical items without consulting with the Empress of Planet Reh.

“I think this upset her as much as anything as that was not a decision they should have made. The Shifter’s race was more inclined to push the limits of how many sets of wizards their Queens could have too. They argued that because they only had six High Wizards and the others used decads with a Lord, then they should be allowed to have more sets for a Queen to control in a region. The Shifters were a bit more adventurous than the other races.”

Bette and Gazza grinned at this statement. “Asha, do you mind if we stay the night?” Gazza asked as he had realised it was getting onto early evening.

“I would be delighted to have guests. I shall get the droids to prepare a room for you,” she replied happily. “While they do that why don’t you follow the droid outside and get some newer items from the treasury on level five. Those items you have are ancient even as far as I’m concerned.”

“I can’t think from where you got them. I’m surprised they still work, as they are not at their full capacity and require repairs. Just remember to replace each item in turn, so you don’t suffer anxiety separation.”

“I’ve heard that it is not a pleasant experience especially if the entities leave you when you replace the items. They do like a rest now and then and can only leave an item when they are no longer claimed. The new entities will serve you just as faithfully,” she informed them.

They decided to humour her and headed out to find a droid.

Gazza wasn’t sure what he was expecting in a droid but the little fellow that greeted them was not it.

He looked like a skinny kid that was wearing a gunmetal grey, skin-tight coverall with gloves and a stiff bag pulled tightly over his head to hide his features. He was barely one hundred and ten centimetres tall like a person of the Pix race. While he didn’t have a truly human face, his head was at least shaped somewhat similar. The face did have two primary optical lenses for eyes.

Gazza wondered if the optical scanners were put there to give a modest resemblance of human, as the droid never seemed to look around the corner with his eyes before he turned. He had long fingers and his feet didn’t have toes but they were shaped like a square-toed pair of flat-soled shoes. At least he did walk a lot like a human.

He took them down the hall to a levitation tube. He stepped into the void and then shot downwards. They both gasped when the droid disappeared. They looked in and realised the droid was out of sight but they never heard him smash into the bottom.

“Please, just step in and state the floor you wish to get off,” Asha’s calm voice said to them from a nearby speaker.

Bette grabbed Gazza’s hand and looked at him in concern. Gazza shrugged and stepped forward. Reluctantly, Bette followed. “Level five,” Gazza spoke as they stood over a void. They both blinked and found themselves standing at the new level. “Now that was cool,” Gazza said happily and stepped out of the tube.

The droid was waiting and once they joined him, he continued down the hallway. They both remembered this hall from their earlier explorations. They stopped in the middle of the hall with no visible doors near them. This time it was Bette who told the door to open. The droid pointed at the next door that faced theirs but he didn’t enter with them. The first door shut behind them once they stepped over the threshold.

Gazza turned to look around the room. When he looked back, Bette had turned to their left and she went through another doorway. “Bette, where are you going?” he asked and began to follow her.

This room was huge, it was filled with racks down its length and five widely spaced walkways separating them. Plastic-looking boxes, metal boxes, wooden crates and chests of all shapes and sizes sat on the shelves or under them on the floor. Some of the odd shaped items were wrapped in some form of linen or with a plastic type sheeting.

Bette walked down the fourth row to about the middle and stopped. “Bette?” Gazza asked wondering what the hell she was doing as he followed her.