Chapter 1: Wolf and the Cat Constrained

The starship Lupus Rising had entered the uninhabited system located in the middle of the Second Star Cluster in order to attempt repairs on a malfunctioning star drive. That he had managed to make it to this system at all was something of a miracle, Eric Wolf knew. He hoped for a continuation of this good fortune as he looked for a planet to set down on. He had traveled much farther into Dizyntk space than he had intended, or than his operating permit from the Imperium allowed. This was due to the malfunction that he hoped to fix, but he was not sure if the Dizyntk authorities would understand that or not. He also had no real desire to find out. Hopefully he could land, fix the ship, take off and then get back to where he was supposed to be before anyone found out.

Eric had lived with the Dizyntk for three years. In that time he had learned their language and a good bit about their society. He had been an assistant pilot aboard the transport that brought him to the Imperium. It was because of his piloting skills that he had decided to acquire a private courier ship of his own as soon as he could. He had finally gotten the Lupus Rising just six months ago. It was an older ship and needed work, but that made it affordable. This was the first time that anything serious had gone wrong with it however.

"Terrestrial type planet detected." the ship's main computer said in its soft feminine voice. The voice could be programmed to sound a variety of ways, but Eric found this one pleasing.

"Class of planet?" Eric asked the computer.

"Insufficient information for certainty at this distance, however initial scans suggest Dizyn class atmosphere." the computer responded.

Eric found this to be very worrisome. He knew that he was in the large tract of space in the middle of the triangle formed by the Ashal-Kendant/ Elishen/ Kalantk systems. According to all his charts there were no inhabitable systems here. Gas giants, ice balls and airless rocky planets were all that orbited any of the stars in this sector. At least that was all that was supposed to be here. He knew that there was no chance that an inhabitable planet could have been overlooked this deep in Dizyntk space. That meant that the Dizyntk knew it was here and had decided to leave it off the charts for some reason.

He could not think of why they would want to do that. He was pretty sure he did not want to find out but this decision was taken out of his hands. The only other planets in the system were two massive gas giants. The remainder of the scans showed only small asteroids. With his star drive not functioning properly he did not dare get too close to the gas giants. This ruled out any of the moons orbiting them. He reluctantly set course for the mystery planet. He also had nowhere else to go until the drive was fixed.

"I guess that means I'm going to find out why they've hidden this planet." he muttered to himself unhappily. "I just hope that the reason doesn't kill me."

It took Eric two days to reach the planet and he did so just in time. As he passed over the small moon orbiting it, his ship's star drive gave out completely. Fortunately he was close enough that the ship's conventional engines could get him to the planet in another two days. It was annoying but it gave him time to closely examine the planet as his ship approached.

The ship's sensors and computer had already told him that the planet was at the outer edge of the system's habitable zone. Therefore most of the planet was locked in ice the entire year. The planet's equatorial zone, however, was quite capable of supporting human or, of course, Dizyntk life. This zone was mostly ocean, although there were several small island chains dotted around it. The islands in question were tiny ones, no larger than 3 or 4 km² for the most part. As he had come into orbit, he did find one that was considerably larger than these. Located right on the equator, this island was about 350 km².

The entire time he was approaching the planet, he had been on the lookout for ships, satellites, space stations, anything at all that would be protecting the planet and take measures against him for being here. There was nothing. This made any reasons for the apparent hiding of the system all the stranger. This just made him even more worried. Granted, the planet was not completely habitable but it was still not on the official Dizyntk space charts and that was VERY strange for any planet with a breathable atmosphere regardless of its overall habitability.

As he was pondering the overall weirdness of the situation, the computer chimed in with another piece of odd data.

"Energy signature consistent with a Dizyntk power generator detected on the large equatorial island." it informed him.

"Communications?" he queried.

"I have attempted hailing on all known Dizyntk frequencies. There has been no reply." the computer responded.

"Son of a bitch." Eric muttered under his breath. He was even less happy about this new development, and he was quite unhappy before. He then took a deep breath and began to take the ship down towards the island. Happy or not, he knew that he had to land someplace to effect repairs and this strange planet was the only game in town.

The Lupus slid gently through the atmosphere and raced quickly towards the island where the power signature had emanated from. As they approached the island, Eric could see that it was covered with a lush forest. His sensors told him that the temperature on the island was 18° C.

"That's probably summer temps for the place." He thought to himself with a slight chuckle.

His cameras showed a clearing on a plateau on the north end of the island large enough to land his ship and so he did exactly that. After the vessel came to rest, Eric just sat in his seat for a couple of minutes. He was still waiting for the other shoe to drop. There had to be a reason this planet had been left off all official maps and Eric knew that it could not be a good reason. He took another very deep breath and got up to start trying to repair his ship.

Actually the ship's automated systems would do the repairs. The main reason that it had been necessary to land was that to take the star drive offline for repairs meant completely powering down the ship. The computer and the small auto-repair bots had battery power good for two weeks. Every other system, however, would be down. Theoretically one could do the repairs in space, life support also had a two week backup supply, but it was much safer to do when landed. After an hour, the computer gave him the estimated time for repairs. It would take eight days to complete.

There was really nothing for Eric to do while the repairs were underway, so he decided to go check out the power source the sensors had detected earlier. It lay two kilometers to the north and it was the only clue Eric had as to what was going on with this planet. He strapped on a sidearm, a canteen and a machete and started walking. As he got to the edge of the clearing, he could see what was left of a paved path. It was overgrown and crumbling, obviously it had not been maintained in some years, but it was definitely there. This only added to the knowledge that the Dizyntk knew the planet existed. As Eric looked at the deteriorated pavement of the footpath, he thought, "At least they used to know it existed."

This was a possibility that had not occurred to him. What if the Dizyntk had simply lost track of the system and had forgotten about it. It seemed unlikely to Eric that this would happen but he supposed that stranger things had occurred. He proceeded down the path, only occasionally having to use the machete to clear some of the overgrowth, and eventually reached a much smaller clearing than the one he left. The clearing lay at the top of a cliff overlooking the ocean that stretched away to the horizon in front of him. It was a beautiful site and he would have happily looked at it for a while longer had not the other thing in the clearing caught his attention. The walkway turned to his left through the clearing and proceeded to a small temple. It was smaller than any of the temples that Eric had seen on Elishen or Trellken, but it was unmistakably a Temple of the Goddess of Dizyn. It was in fairly good shape, although it was covered with vines on one side. It almost seemed out of place, as if it had been transported here from someplace else. It gave Eric the willies. It was then that he heard and saw a small round maintenance robot slowly cutting the grass around the building.

"So that is what some of the power is for." Eric said to himself. "But what is the rest for?"

He knew that powering a few robotic maintenance devices would not require even a tenth of the power that the sensors had indicated. He slowly approached the Temple with his hands held out in front of him so as to show anyone watching that he meant no harm. He was still very confused about everything. The absence of the planet from the star maps, the obvious evidence that the Dizyntk knew about the planet, or at least they used to, and the complete lack of any response to his being here. He half expected the mowing bot to be a disguised security bot that would challenge or attack him as he approached. It did neither. It just continued to slowly manicure the lawn in what appeared to be a 50 meter perimeter around the temple.

"I guess now I know how Alice felt." He muttered to himself as he reached the door of the temple. He took hold of the handle and pushed down. The door was unlocked and opened easily.

The interior of the temple was laid out in a manner similar to other Dizyntk Temples Eric had visited in the three years that he had lived on the planet Elishen. There was a layer of dust on the floor and all the furnishings and fixtures which suggested that nobody had been in the building in quite some time. In one corner of the main room he saw a vacuum bot that had apparently stopped functioning years before. He slowly walked through the temple looking for any signs of habitation. He found nothing until he reached the back of the building in a room just off of the kitchen.

There were two things of interest in the room. When Eric opened the door, he immediately saw the control station for the maintenance bots as well as a control panel for other systems. It appeared to be turned off so Eric went to activate it. As he did so, he noticed the second feature; a door set into the far wall of the small room. It was a security door by the looks of it. Eric walked to it and felt all around for a handle or opening switch and was unsurprised that he did not find one. Security doors, in addition to being heavy and thick, were rarely operable by any means other than a remote switch. He walked back to the console and found a covered lever marked "Containment Facility Entrance". He had not seen anything in the entire temple the even remotely resembled a "containment facility". That only left whatever was behind the security door.

"Containment for what?" Eric quietly said to himself.

Eric's curiosity was now getting the better of him. It was even obscuring his previous trepidation and so, without even really thinking about it, he lifted the hinged cover pulled the lever down. A muffled grinding sound ensued that he readily identified as heavy bolts sliding down into the floor. The instant the grinding sound stopped, the door slid slowly to the right into a recess in the wall. Right behind the door he could just see the top of another security door just like it. Once again the grinding of heavy bolts that locked the door in place dropping into the floor could be heard. He got up quickly to go to the entrance and watch. This door slid to the left when it opened but yet another door was behind it. Their ended up being six doors in total down the length of the corridor. Eric's jaw had dropped open as soon as had seen the third and he was unable to recover until several seconds after the last door opened. These were heavy tungsten/iridium alloy security doors, each about 20 cm thick. Nothing short of a battle cruiser's main batteries or a heavy missile could punch through even one of them. The most secure facilities he had ever heard about used two. Yet somewhere at the end of the downward sloping corridor revealed by the opening of the doors was something that the Dizyntk felt needed six of the damned things to contain. Eric's trepidation was back in full measure.

He stood at the entrance of the corridor. He looked down its ten degree slope and could see, thanks to lights that had come on when the doors had opened, that it extended about a hundred meters. He took another deep breath, drew his sidearm from its holster and proceeded to walk carefully down the sloping hallway.

"Well, Alice, time to see what's down the rabbit hole." he muttered to himself as he started down.

As he approached the bottom, he could hear the soft hum of electronics operating along with the background thrum of some type of pumps. He reached the bottom and stood there for a minute to take it all in. The room was about six meters deep and the same across. It had large numbers of pipes and power lines all across the ceiling as well as the back wall. There was a small control console standing just a meter or so in front of him. In the very center of the room was the object that was seemingly the point of the room's, and presumably the entire temple's, existence. It was a large metal cylinder that was two meters long and one in diameter and it sat on a support that held it a meter off the ground. In addition, it seemed that all of the numerous tubes and power lines were attached to the cylinder. Try as he might Eric could not figure out what he was looking at as he walked up to the control console.

He merely touched the console and all of the displays lit up. He could not make any sense of the readings he was looking at. As he scanned the console he saw switch marked "Suspension Unit Cover Open/Close" and a covered red button marked "Suspension Unit Deactivation". He flipped the switch marked Open/Close and the top two-thirds of the cylinder slid upwards revealing the transparent tube enclosed by the metal. It was filled with a clear viscous looking liquid and suspended in the middle of it all was a female Dizyntk with numerous wires and tubes attached to her body. Eric suddenly realized what he was looking at. It was a suspended animation device. The readouts were the Dizyntk's vital signs but they were slowed down so much that he had not recognized this at first. He looked back at the monitors and was able to figure out which one was the heart monitor. Her heart rate was about one beat every two minutes. In effect she was still aging but at only one/one hundredth the normal rate. He also saw when the last time the console had been accessed; 122 cyankas previously. She had aged only a little more than a cyanka during the 122 she had been in there.

This explained the power supply situation. Eric knew that all known suspension techniques required a large amount of power; which was the main reason that starships did not use them. His ship's power generator would only be able to keep one or perhaps two people in suspension and only if the star drive was not used. His fascination over his discovery had temporarily led him to forget one important thing but this had come back to him. The facts lined themselves up in his brain; an uncharted planet in the middle of Dizyntk settled space with only this building on it and SIX heavy security doors between this room and the outside. All of it to hold one Dizyntk female that was being kept in suspension to boot. He searched carefully around the room and, sure enough, there were no other doors. This room was it, the sole raison d'être for this place. Eric returned to the console and just stared at the cylinder and the Dizyntk inside it.

"Just how dangerous could one Dizyntk possibly be?" he wondered aloud to himself.

He had considered deactivating the unit and taking her out when he first saw her, but now he was having reservations. Having lived with the Dizyntk for three years he was aware of the incontrovertible fact that the Dizyntk were, as a whole, not prone to irrational fears. If a group of them had gone to all this effort to contain this one Dizyntk then they probably had a pretty damn good reason. Perhaps he should not be too hasty in deactivating the suspension unit. That being decided, Eric decided to see if he could find anything about why the Dizyntk was being held here.

"I have eight days to kill after all." he thought to himself, "What else do I have to do?"

It took Eric two days to painstakingly go over everything in every room in the temple. In the end he had found that the temple had been constructed by the Nebula Order, an Order from Kalantk according to the documents he found. He had never heard of the Nebula Order but that was unsurprising. There were probably a couple dozen religious orders in existence at any given time among the Dizyntk. In general any humans that were living in Dizyntk territory, or indeed a majority of Dizyntk for that matter, were aware of only four of them. These four were the Star, Silver, Ivory and Jade orders. Together they contained 65% of the priestesses in the Imperium and their members could be found on every world the Dizyntk occupied. They were known collectively as the Major Orders. The other twenty or so were the Minor Orders and few, if any, existed on more than one or two worlds. Even on these worlds it was not unusual for most Dizyntk there to be unfamiliar with them. But that was all that Eric found. He could find nothing that referred to the Dizyntk being held below. Apparently if you didn't know, you didn't need to know.

On the third day, Eric was reviewing the control consoles while trying to decide if he should take the Dizyntk out of the tube or leave her there. Specifically he was going over the diagnostic reports. This was what would end up deciding things for him. He was still mulling things over in his head when he got to a series of reports starting twenty cyankas earlier. There were, apparently, defense systems located on the Island that should have targeted and fired on the Lupus when it tried to land without a clearance code. There were also a slew of automated upkeep devices on the island. That report from twenty cyankas ago reported a problem with the power generator. Its output was dropping; slowly, steadily, but it was dropping. The automated controls had standing orders to preserve the life of the "containment subject" before any other considerations. It had, therefore, begun to shut down systems in order of their power consumption. The security systems went first, then the various maintenance bots in descending order of use. The mower bot he had seen earlier was, in fact, the last of those bots still running. This was mostly because it had a solar charge backup built into it. The last part of the report was a countdown to the estimated time the generator had left before the life support systems to the suspension chamber would go offline. It currently said that there were 2 cyans left before that happened. The cyan was the Dizyntk month and was about 34 days long. Eric considered this for a moment and decided that he had to let her out.

He walked down to the containment facility and looked carefully at the female Dizyntk inside the tube. She did not look particularly dangerous. If anything she looked downright normal for a Dizyntk. She had long blonde hair that was feathered out around her in the viscous fluid she was suspended in. Her body fur was the same color with just the barest hint of a slightly darker blonde swirled in. The ears on the top of her head, the 61 cm (2 foot) long tail and her height of about 148 cm (4' 10") were pretty average for a Dizyntk. If anything she was just a tad shorter than average. He did know one thing though; in two cyans she would be dead. He knew he could get to a Dizyntk world in time for someone else to come back and decide whether or not to let her out, if they believed him. If he did that and nobody came back then her death would be on his conscience. That was something he did not want. He had lived with the Dizyntk since that day when the refugee ship he had been on, along with five other Baker Class transports had been allowed to land on the Dizyntk world of Elishen. He had come to like the Dizyntk in that time. He had several Dizyntk friends, including a couple of Dizyntk females that were more than just friends on occasion. With those thoughts running through his head, he flipped up the cover over the deactivation button and pushed the red button.

There was suddenly an alarm sounding as well as lights flashing slowly on and off. A Dizyntk voice came over the speakers. "Warning. Warning. Deactivation has been requested. Security doors have not been sealed. Push deactivation button again to confirm." Eric pushed the button again. "Deactivation confirmed. Beginning deactivation of suspension unit."

The liquid in the suspension tank began to drain away; as it did so, the Dizyntk inside gently descended to the bottom of the tank. As soon as all the liquid had been drained, the transparent top slid away. The intercom voice returned. "Beginning resuscitation procedures."

While this was happening something was nagging at the back of Eric's mind. He knew he was forgetting something, overlooking something obvious. While he was trying to think about this, the Dizyntk's body arched as the system hit her with a jolt of electricity. All he could do was stand there and watch. There was nothing at al he could do to help. His medical knowledge was minimal at best. But watching her like this took his mind completely off what he had been trying to remember. Her heart began to beat at a normal rate. The system removed the breathing and feeding tubes. She began to cough and breathe. Eric whipped off his jacket as he approached her. He intended to wrap her in it and carry her upstairs to the bed in the living quarters of the Temple that he had been using the past two days. Just as he finished wrapping the coat around her however, her eyes flew open and she looked at him in confusion for a second. Right as he began to say something she shrieked and tried to push him away. That was when Eric remembered the obvious thing that he had overlooked. If she had been here for 120+ cyankas, then she would have no idea what a human even was.

He felt and heard her growl and saw the intense silver flecking in her sapphire eyes begin to sparkle and glow with what looked like lightning running between the flecks. Suddenly he felt something slam into his body and throw him across the room where he hit the wall. He hit pretty hard and fell to the ground, ass first luckily. He was woozy and his body hurt all over. He was still conscious but only barely. His vision cleared just in time to see her sit up. She looked down at the jacket he had wrapped around her. She then looked over at him.

"What are you!? Why do you have a coat with writing in Dizyntilin!?" she asked while shakily trying to stand. Eric was having a hard time talking and his vision was blurring again. He reached his hand to the back of his head and it felt warm and wet. His vision cleared momentarily as the Dizyntk screamed at him. "ANSWER ME!!"

There was suddenly something like an explosion right next to him. He slumped down the wall and looked back up at it. Right next to where he had been sitting there was a hole, a meter in diameter and just as deep, punched into the wall and surrounding rock. His vision blurred again and this time began to darken. He had wondered how dangerous one Dizyntk could be. All he could think before he lost consciousness was, "Ask a stupid question..."

Eric woke slowly. His head was killing him and he did not really want to open his eyes, but he did anyway. He felt battered and bruised. He guessed he must have hit the wall harder than he thought. He slowly, painfully, sat upright as he wondered where the Dizyntk had gone. He did not have to look far. She was sitting against the opposite wall almost concealed in the shadows of the wiring and tubing there. As he looked at her he saw her eyes start to glow again.

He put up his hands as quickly as he could. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. No need to throw me against another wall. I don't think I'd survive it." He said quickly in Dizyntilin. He put his hand to the back of head to see if he was still bleeding and felt the bandage that had been put there. He smiled at her and said, "Thanks for patching me up."

"What are you?" she asked, much more calmly this time.

"My race is called human. We are from a planet called Earth. That's about, oh about eighty light-cyankas or so from Dizyn. At least that's what I hear." he answered in a light tone of voice.

"How do you speak our language? Why do you have Dizyntk clothes?" she asked. Her voice was steady and neutral as though she was forcing herself to stay calm.

"My people and yours have known of each other for almost fifty cyankas now. Although we have only gotten along for..." He trailed off as he saw that she had her head down and was shaking.

"I take it that I was unconscious for a while." he stated. She merely nodded in reply.

"Long enough for you to read the computer logs for yourself?" he asked, although he already knew the answer.

"Why?" she asked softly. Eric was confused as to what she was asking. "WHY DID THEY LEAVE ME HERE???" she screamed as large pieces of the equipment in the room tore apart and slammed into the walls with such force that they imbedded themselves.

Eric sat very still as the objects seemingly threw themselves around the room. He knew that it had to be this Dizyntk doing it although he did not pretend to know how. There were stories about some Priestesses having mental powers, even a human like himself had lived with the Dizyntk long enough to hear those. The rumored powers were described as affecting someone else's mind though, nothing like what he was witnessing now. As he sat there, he watched as the objects slowed and then dropped. The Dizyntk was now curled in a ball on the floor crying. Eric wanted to try and comfort her, but was unsure if approaching her would be a good idea. He had not been joking when he commented about not surviving another impact with the wall. He decided that some discretion on his part was in order.

"I would like to come over to you, if that's alright with you." He said as he shakily got to his feet and used the wall for support.

The Dizyntk looked up at him through the tears still streaming from her eyes. She merely nodded and tucked her head back down. Eric slowly walked over to her. He walked slowly for two reasons. He did not wish to frighten her and he was still unsure of his balance. As he did so he went over everything he knew about social etiquette among the Dizyntk. The Dizyntk were a matriarchal society. This was understood by most humans who knew anything about the Dizyntk since the Imperial Throne was passed down through the female line. It went deeper than that however. It even extended to social interactions. Males were expected to be polite, conscientious, and sometimes even subservient to females in a social setting. A male was certainly expected to get explicit permission from a female before touching her in any overly friendly manner. This last rule was only applicable to interactions between strangers of course. More to the point, any male who ignored these rules did so at his peril. A female slashing out with her claws at a male who overstepped his bounds was considered acceptable. A male trying to retaliate was considered to be committing assault. Seeing as how Dizyntk females outnumbered their male counterparts by almost two to one, they were perfectly capable of enforcing these social rules.

Normally Eric would not be overly concerned about this. On Elishen, if he made a mistake in this area with a Dizyntk, he would either receive a mild scolding at best since he was a human or a scratched arm or face at worst. He could well imagine what this Dizyntk might do to him given the state of the room now. He sat down at a respectful distance from her. In this instance, since they were complete strangers to each other, that meant outside of arms reach. He lowered his head slightly to her, although he never took his eyes off her. To do so would be to imply that he did not respect her fighting ability and would be considered extremely rude. Whether she actually had any fighting ability was beside the point.

"My name is Eric Wolf. I apologize if I frightened you earlier. I am also concerned that you are distressed. I do not know if I can help you in any way, but I would like to try." He had not spoken this formally to a Dizyntk, male or female, since the first year he was on Elishen. He had learned that in most social settings it was unnecessary. He had decided however that he was taking no chances with this girl.

She raised her head again and looked at him with curiosity. She had been suspicious of how well his race knew hers. But his statement to her was perfectly worded, just like the priestesses would have taught. They would have been quite pleased to hear it recited this way. She had never heard any Dizyntk over the age of 8 or 9 cyankas talk like that however. She almost smiled at the humor of it. She wiped her eyes as her tears receded.