Full-Throttle Ahrottl - Chapter 9

Jump back to Full-Throttle Ahrottl Chapter 8

                Ahrottl smelled humans, old meals, and dust.  The smell of the ship.  She opened her eyes.

                She was lying on the beanbag in the bridge, arms splayed out, and a blanket over her.  Maria sat in one of the control chairs, watching a couple of live feed holos intently.  Mother Superior, hovering as always over the control panel, cleared her throat.

                “Ahrottl appears to be awake.”  She said.

                “Yes, yes she does.”  Ahrottl grumbled as she stretched and shook herself out.  She rolled off the edge as Maria rose to help her.

                “No, I’m okay.”  She said.  Maria’s face was tear-stained and her eyes were producing fresh moisture now.  She dropped to her knees and wrapped her long, gangly arms around her.  Ahrottl nuzzled under her chin.  “At least, I feel okay.”

                “We were so worried.  You … you seemed to just shutdown, go catatonic.  Then you started making strange noises… do you remember any of that?”

                Ahrottl closed her eyes and thought about it.  She fought the urge to Still.  “Yeah, I do.  Did you record what I said?”

                Maria frowned.  “What do you mean?”

                Ahrottl took a step back, still keeping contact but looking into Maria’s dark brown eyes.  “Right before I blacked out.  Something…  something made me speak.  Seriously, as in something forced my mouth to move and words to come out.”

                Maria shook her head, not comprehending.  “Gerry tried to get you to uncurl for a while, and then you started screaming and making noises – Mother Superior assured us that it wasn’t your language – and then you went limp.”

                “Wait, you didn’t understand that?”

                “No… should I have?”

                Ahrottl shook her head, staring through the port towards the grey, floating hulk.  “Where’s Algernon?” She asked.

                Maria nodded towards the station.  “He decided to go back and explore.  Clear up the bo… the things that upset you and see what he could find.”

                “NO!”  Ahrottl romped past Maria, at full speed, to the control board.  “Algernon, can you here me?  Get out of there!”

                “Yeah, I can hear you, Throttle.”  His head appeared, floating in space near Mother Superior.  She hated how humans often projected images of their heads alone when communicating through media like this; it made her think of decapitation.  “How’re you doing?”

                “Algernon, there’s something really wrong with that place.  Like, really, really wrong.  Neither you nor Maria understood it but something … told me.  Something spoke through me back there.  Like a, oh, I don’t know, a ghost or something.”  She looked around at Maria who just looked concerned and Mother Superior who had raised one eyebrow haughtily.

                “What?  What are you talking about?”

                Ahrottl sighed.  “Play back the noises I made before I went unconscious.”

                Mother Superior raised her other eyebrow.

                Ahrottl’s whiskers twirled in frustration.  “Please play them back, Mother Superior.”

                Mother Superior nodded slightly.  “Very well.”  She said.  An image of Ahrottl’s face, eyes bugged, her jaw and face moving jerkily as she spoke appeared beside Algernon’s head.  Ahrottl realized that she understood all of the words that she was saying, though she’d had no prior experience with the language.  Then something clicked in her mind.

                “Listen to it.  Listen carefully.”  Her eyes darted back and forth, watching the reactions of the two humans and their artificial intelligence.  Both Maria and Algernon’s eye widened simultaneously.

                “It’s the language from the recordings!  But how are you speaking it?”

                Ahrottl shook her head.  “I don’t know, but I have a couple of theories.  I do understand it, though.  At least, the part I said.  Here, try replaying one of the earlier messages that we heard.  Please”

                They all listened carefully to the message that played when the probe had failed to gain access before.  Ahrottl said, “Shoowul – formal plural second person.  ‘Sta – definite article.  Fush – leave, depart.”  She bounced in place, writhing in excitement.  “I don’t understand all of It, but I’ve got something that we can build off of at least.  I understand a few words.  “Misk – in the original message it meant “warn”.  Oomisk might mean warning.  Could you play it again?”

                “Wait, wait, Ahrottl, what was the original message?  What did you say, if you understood it.”

                Her bouncing and writhing stopped.  She swayed gently.  “Oh, right, you hadn’t heard.  ‘Leave this place.  It is diseased, not with a disease of poison or parasite but with a malady of perception and cognition.  Cling to your ignorance and stay and share our fate or leave and warn the others.  If this spreads all Raleli are doomed.  Quarantine and flee.’”

                She looked around again.

                “The name ‘Raleli’ does not match any information that I have access to.”  Mother Superior said after a long moment.

                Maria glanced at Ahrottl and then at her AI.  “What… what could make this happen?  What, was it like a psychic recorded message?”

                “I have very little information on psi, I’m afraid.  Much of it is either historical or related to theological musings.  Reviewing potential links…”  She was quiet for a moment.  Both the humans seemed to be holding their breaths.

                “The Awakener first  contact with a member of the Collective seems to be relevant.  There was a Zig terraforming outpost on a planet inhabited by a renegade Awakener sect, which spread infectious mental diseases psychically to the Zig colonists.  Many Zig are infected to this day.”

                “’… a malady of perception and cognition.’” Ahrottl quoted herself.

                “And they do look like Vessels.”  Algernon added, looking down at something.  Ahrottl glanced at the live feed holo coming from his suit.  Lying on the floor beneath him was a desiccated corpse, human-like but leaner and more angular, with more joints, dressed in a simple tunic and pants, its jaws pulled back in a rictus.

                “I think Ahrottl is right, hon.  I think that you should get out of there.  We’ll try something else.”

                Algernon frowned and shook his head.  “No, I don’t think that that’s necessary.  I haven’t felt anything strange since I came down here.  I certainly haven’t gone loopy at all.   We still need to figure out how to get back, don’t we?”

                “It was insidious, though, Gerry.  I didn’t know what was happening until I started to spiral out of control.”  Ahrottl insisted.

                “Look, Throttle, I can handle myself here.  I understand that you’re a pretty emotional creature, most of your species is.  Humans, though, we’re good at keeping ourselves centered, keeping a solid head on our shoulders.  We don’t…”

                “Frenzy like Taratumm?”  Ahrottl cut him off.  “Run and hide like Vislin?  Listen to what you’re saying, Algernon.”

                “Hey, I’m just pointing out facts.  We’re capable of being detached and level.  Hrotata are excitable creatures.  You’ve said so yourself.”

                Ahrottl was swaying very slowly, her eyes wide, her gaze darting back and forth between the two humans.  “Are you even listening to what you’re saying?”

                Gerry sighed.  “I know what I’m saying, Throttle.  I think you should probably go get something to eat, maybe take a shower, and settle down before we speak anymore.  We don’t need to continue this conversation.”  He turned his eyes towards Maria, who looked a bit surprised herself.  “I’ve found twelve more bodies.  I’ve passed what looks like it might have been a decontamination unit, with a desk to the side and a pair of…”

                Ahrottl turned and wandered away, almost stumbling.  She had never heard Gerry speak that way to anyone before.  Was he being affected by some sort of psychic plague?  Was he just under a lot of stress?  She numbly made her way to the kitchen and unfroze some cheese and sat nibbling at it and sipping a bottle of water, her mind spinning in place.

                Hrotata empathy was considered legendary around other species.  If you’ve spent a bit of time with a Hrotata, so it was believed, you couldn’t lie to them.  Ahrottl was keenly aware that she was not the most socially capable member of her kind; far from it.  Writers and other artists that did not perform publicly were always considered a bit emotionally stunted in Hrotata society, as though they needed filters between themselves and their audiences.  Ahrottl had no grasp on what was going on in Gerry’s head, and though Maria was clearly concerned she had a lot of confidence in her spouse.

                Was he going mad?  Were they all?  Away from contact with others, prospects of getting home growing dim, and a huge, floating bloodbath being their only hope of survival or information on how to find a way home.

                She couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to it than that.  She had felt something move her mouth and body for her.  She had felt it in her mind – enough to be able to recognize the words that it had used later.  She had no real experience with psi, but she knew that something from outside of her had reached in and affected a change in her.  If it wasn’t psi, than what was it?

                If they lost Gerry to this, then what?  Down one member of the crew, and Maria’s mate no less.  She’d follow him in there if she had to, and if she did there would be no telling if she would make it back.  Ahrottl would be left alone, floating in a ship with two artificial intelligences.  She had frequently wished that Mother Superior had a body that she could bite in agitation, but Timmy wasn’t terrible company, even if he was a little naïve and unsure of himself.

                That was an idea.  “Timmy?”  She said.  “Can you hear me?”

                “Yes Miss Ahrottl.  Are you all right?” Timmy’s tremulous voice came over the kitchen speaker.

                She wiggled.  “Better now.  While Maria and Algernon are busy would you mind helping me with something?”

                “What is it, ma’am?”  He asked.

                “Help me compile and correlate the linguistic information that we have so far.  Have all of the letters, numbers, and voice recordings that we have available.  If Gerry finds anything new, beam it in here as well.  We need to figure out what we can of this language, and quick.”  This was something she could do, something that she knew how to do.  Archaeological forensics was not her specialty.  Language was.  “Let’s get cracking.”

Full-Throttle Ahrottl Chapter Links Page

Full-Throttle Ahrottl - Chapter 8

Jump back to Full-Throttle Ahrottl Chapter 7       


                All was dark, and something touched her.

                She started violently then curled up even more tightly, nose to tail like an infant.  The blackness behind her eyes consumed everything and the only sound that she could hear was breathing.

                Slowly, though, she became aware of other noises.  Though they were muffled by her protective suit, she heard a voice repeating her name.  “Ahrottl?  Ahrottl, can you hear me?  Please tell me that you can hear me.”

                Gerry, she thought.  Images of a tall, angular alien creature with a sickening lack of fur on its pallid skin and a huge mop of it on top of its head, a study in color contrasts, dark and light.  Thick, rubbery pinkish-red lips underneath a bizarre triangular nose (they have hairs inside their noses but almost no where on the outside) beneath a pair of binocular eyes, the most familiar thing about this “face”.

                The images, by themselves, without emotional context, were disturbing.  It felt like part of her, the part of her that felt was cut off from the part that made images, and that in and of itself was extremely unsettling.

                Alone with aliens, nothing around, the Red Key’s curse… her thoughts flowed in a circle, a wheel that she was unable to stop, a cycle she was unable to interrupt.  The vast loneliness, the unimaginably huge distances between her and another of her kind, and the mocking, gory image that she had been subjected to all conspired to keep her Stilled, and not just as a deliberate sign of displeasure, not consciously, but Stilled to the depths of her, moving in such a quick, tight circle that she seemed not to be moving at all.

                “Ahrottl!  Ahrottl!  Wake up!”

                She grew aware of a sense of detachment.  As these thoughts cycled at a vicious pace, she could see them, separately.  A part of her was watching the frantic pace of madness overtaking her with a detached curiosity, and heard the voice outside her suit with remarkable clarity.

                “I don’t know, she won’t move, she’s not responding!  She’s breathing but she’s just curled up into a ball!  What do I do?”  More muffled voices.  The detached part of her guessed idly at the tones without being certain which was which or what they were saying.

                What will they do? Detached-Ahrottl wondered.  What will they do with me?  Will they just space me?  I’m just using resources, precious resources, the resources that Maria didn’t want me to use… they’ll space me.  I’m sure of it.

                Panicked-Ahrottl seemed to hear this and the visions of the empty, cold vastness drew even further outwards.  Her body tightened even more; Detached-Ahrottl could feel control of bowels and other voluntary functions beginning to slip.

                “Ahrottl, listen, it’s Gerry, Algernon, please listen to me.  I’m here.  Maria is joining us.  We’re going to do this together.  We should never have sent you out alone.  It was unfair of us to expect that of you.”

                See what you’re doing?  His wife sent him out, and now she’s coming herself.  You forced her to risk her mate, and now her own body, a mated female with status and a ship.  It’s bad enough that she had to send her husband after you, but now you’re putting a potential Mother at risk with your selfishness.  If they space you that’s the least you deserve! Detached-Ahrottl reasoned.  At least, it seemed very reasonable to her.  Images of Maria, another alien shape flashed through her mind.  Even more hairless, but at least not as angular as her husband, and another female, another potential Matriarch.

                Don’t fool yourself, Ahrottl.  You’re no potential Matriarch.  You write novels and make a poor sum at that.  Sure, you have fans.  Sure, people enjoy your work, but what do you have to show for it?  Plenty of males would love to play with you for the novelty of it but none of them are going to want to stay and build a family with an author of all things.  No, Ahrottl.  Your job is an unstable one, your lifestyle an unstable one, you have no den, you have no close family, you have no way to feed your children, if you even had any.  Even if you weren’t lost at the other end of reality from every Hrotata that ever lived, and about to die there, it’s not like you have a legacy other than masturbatory pleasure fantasies about people who never existed outside of your own mind.

                After all, Detached-Ahrottl thought, why else would you be out on a mining operation with humans?  We both know why – you do poorly enough with your own kind that you seek out aliens to fill your need for companionship.  You know that your prospects of creating a den and a legacy are null, so you run off to have adventures like an adolescent male!  You probably would have been happier as a male, able to go and fight and play and seek and explore without any concern about serious matters like education, finance, or the future of your species and the Great Family.  The Mother-gifts are wasted on you, and your organs will shrivel before you have a chance to use them for their true purpose – that is, they would have, if you were even going to live that long.

                Somehow Panicked-Ahrottl spun even faster internally with each cold, detached insult.  Detached-Ahrottl had ceased to pay attention to the outside, crouched over the frightened animal spinning in circles inside her own head, taunting.  Detached-Ahrottl ceased to feel so detached.  A kind of hateful satisfaction flooded her as she tortured herself, and Detached-Ahrottl spread her shoulders and stretched and yawned, shedding her old coat for a red-and-black one, becoming Tormenting-Ahrottl.

                Yes, little creature, keep running.  Keep in circles.  That’s all you’ve ever known to do, isn’t it?  You don’t like something, so you run from it like a male instead of facing it and defending your turf.  You run, but then you run into something else you don’t like and you run again.  You keep running, bouncing from place to place, and now you’re running out of places to run and hide.  There are no good options now.  There’s no place that you can run to that is made for you, no comfy den and you don’t have the strength or the ovaries to create your own.  That’s why you’re spinning like a moon; you don’t know how to sit down and deal with discomfort.

                Panicked-Ahrottl began to mewl as she ran, letting out peals of agony.  Tormenting-Ahrottl was vaguely aware of the sound the human outside, saying something about her making noises.  She refocused on her prey.

                They won’t help you, they can’t help you.  Their Mother is as afraid as you are, little one.  There is no den, no home, no warmth, no bonding.  They scratch your head and let you sit beside them and on them as they would a pet or a favored animal, and you know that it’s only because you let them taste your nectar.  They think of you as a useful tool, like their artificial intelligences.  They think of you as an animal that they send out to do their dirty work for them.  When you show that you’re useless – as you already have, by breaking here – they’ll probably end your life in mercy, unless they keep you around to eat after supplies run low.  After all, they are aliens, and not scavengers. Humans like their meat fresh.

                Tormentor-Ahrottl cocked her head, listening, and smiled in satisfaction.  They’re talking about opening your helmet now.  No, it’s not out of concern, though it might be masked with that.  They’re talking about opening your helmet because you’re an expendable animal to them.  They want to see if the air will kill them, so they’re going to try it on you first.  Just like they did by sending you in to the predator’s den first, to see if there were any scraps to be had.

                Just stop.  Just give up.  Stop running, creature, scared little male kit.  The only Mother than can help you now is Death, and she awaits you eagerly.  If you want to be altruistic about it, you’re helping those poor humans by giving up your pointless life.

                Fool.  She kicked herself.

                Fake, pauper.  She spat on herself.

                Professional liar.  She turned her back on herself.

                Honorless homwrecker, trying to steal a good woman’s mate.

                Within her she felt something welling up.  The spinning of Panicked-Ahrottl was reaching a fevered pitch.  Like a wheel with a burr, she began to trip up at one point, and the shaking began to rasp and get more and more violent.

                Useless, shiftless, pointless, meat.  Tormentor-Ahrottl dropped that one on Panicked-Ahrottl, spitting it at her over her shoulder.

                Panicked-Ahrottl exploded with a shriek of confusion and rage.  The scream ripped through all of Ahrottl’s parts, beginning as high and keening but continuing and growing low and ragged as it faded.  No longer tense, her body fell limp and for a moment there was blissful silence within and without.

                Then her head snapped back, and her eyes opened wide.  She knew these things because she could feel, but she could not see.  All that was in front of her was a field of white, endless white light.  Her jaw began to work without her permission, and words came out of it that did not originate in her at all.

                “Leave this place.  It is diseased, not with a disease of poison or parasite but with a malady of perception and cognition.  Cling to your ignorance and stay and share our fate or leave and warn the others.  If this spreads all Raleli are doomed.  Quarantine and flee.”

                Then the pure white light faded again to quiet, comfortable darkness.

Jump forward to Full-Throttle Ahrottl Chapter 9

Full-Throttle Ahrottl Chapter Links Page

Full-Throttle Ahrottl - Chapter 7

Jump back to Full-Throttle Ahrottl Chapter 6

                “What’s the Red Key?”  Maria asked.

                “A Hrotata legend…” Mother Superior began.  Ahrottl cut her off viciously.

                “NOT a legend.”  She swallowed, still Stilled, unable to tear her eyes away from the bodies lying in front of her.  “History.  My great-to-the-twenty-fourth grandmother knew Vettreg.  My great-to-the twenty-second uncle’s cousin was there when they found the tomb opened.”

                “Well,”  Mother Superior replied crisply.  “my sources identify it as a legend.  I’ve certainly not seen any pictures of it.”

                “Of course not.  You’re a history enthusiast, right?  You’ve specialized in the history of the Grrahthatt nation?  YOU’RE FROM HROTATA PRIME?  Of course you are.”  Ahrottl sneered.  “After all, if there’s no picture of it, it doesn’t exist, right?  That’s human thinking for you!”

                Gerry protested, “Hey, Throttle…”

                “The Red Key was real.”  Ahrottl heaved a sigh and resisted the urge to curl up into a ball.

                “Shaharrtl came to the city of Tahr with a wagon full of equipment and a dream, to open up the tomb of the Great Matriarch Tahr-eeka, the Matriarch who supposedly founded Tahr in ages past.  He didn’t share the dream, of course - he didn’t want to get executed.  He stayed and watched the locals and looked for someone, someone who would be desperate enough to help him in a sacrilegious and perilous venture.

                “That’s how he met Vettreg.  Vettreg was a good-for-nothing, a layabout and a drinker.  Vettreg was the husband of Srrash, who had married him for his beauty when he was young, but could not divorce him as they had had kits and it was illegal in Tahr to divorce a male that had produced young.  Likewise, she couldn’t attract any other mates due to the reputation hit she had taken since marrying him.  So, Shaharrtl went to Srrash and made her a deal: if she ordered Vettreg to go with him and help him, he would let her keep half of the loot from the venture.  If, for some reason Vettreg failed to return, she would be free to re-marry.  Either way, her situation could only improve.  Srrash agreed.”

                “Wow, what a bitch.”  Gerry said, surprised.

                “She was a bit cold-hearted, wasn’t she?”  Ahrottl agreed.  “She sent Vettreg out to help Shaharrtl without even telling him where they were going.  Vettreg had no choice but to agree, although he sorely hated labor.  Refusing a direct order from his wife could have netted him no end of punishment which was, I am sorry to say, perfectly legal at the time.

                “So Shaharrtl and Vettreg went out of town, trailing over the dusty hills, to the old edifice, the ancient tomb of the founder of Tahr.  It was unguarded, even though everyone knew that she had been buried with much of the material wealth that she had accumulated.  She had a Vislin architect design her tomb and fill it with the most diabolical and cunning sorts of traps.”

                “It’s always weird to be reminded that other sapients evolved on the same planet with you.”  Maria murmured.

                Ahrottl chose not to acknowledge this, and continued, in full storyteller mode.  “When they arrived, Shaharrtl knew that the front door was not the place that they wanted to enter, as it was the last place trapped.  He had been studying this tomb for a long time, and had even made consultations with other Vislin architects, all of whom agreed: if the tomb did have a safe way in, it would not be the front, especially as the front doors and chambers were the last portion of the tomb that were finalized, and the last place that the original architect had exited from.  His crew had not left with him, mind you – no-one else was to know about the construction or know the secrets of the tomb.

                “No, there had to be a back door that the architect and his crew had entered through so that they could make their way through and complete and set the final traps before leaving.  The back door might be trapped, but not nearly so grievously as the front.  Shaharrtl had found an outcropping of rock on a nearby hill that he was convinced hid the entrance, so he gave poor Vettreg a shovel and bade him to start digging.

                “For a whole day and a night Vettreg did the most exhausting work of his life, carving into the thick soil with the blade of the spade and prying it loose for Shahrrtl.  It was back-breaking labor, the sort of work that a Taratumm would have done without effort or a thought – but Shahrrtl didn’t have a Taratumm handy, just poor Vettreg.  Vettreg shook for lack of drink and hallucinated, and at night was forced to sleep away from Shahrrtl – forced to sleep alone when another Hrotata was but meters away from him!”

                She paused for effect here but no one responded.  No gasps.  The severity of that was lost on this particular audience.  She continued.

                “Finally, he found the entrance, a square stone doorway.  He spent the next day in a harness, pulling on ropes for Shahrrtl, trying to dislodge the door.  Finally, he managed to get it open, into the cold, empty darkness beneath the hill.  After sniffing to try and detect fumes, Shahrrtl handed him a torch and bade him go first.

                “Vettreg, exhausted but without any choice, ventured in first, and thus began a long journey through harrowing tricks and traps left behind by the coldly ingenious Vislin engineer.  He dodged swinging pendulum blades, held his breath through poisoned gas, rolled beneath collapsing stone, and hopped from crumbling platform to platform, always first and opening the way for Shahrrtl.

                “They finally reached the Matriarch’s tomb, and Vettreg thought that for sure, it was worth what he had put up with to get there.  Jewelry of silver and platinum and gold, ivory from a dozen creatures, and works of arts that made even the hard-hearted Shahrrtl weep and dance to see.  They bundled up as much as they could safely carry without being slowed down, the most valuable pieces that they could find, and hoped that they could make it out the front gate safely.

                “Now, Vettreg was a simple fellow and had been underfed and felt very under-appreciated, so when, searching through the magnificent golden vases, he found some very well-preserved jerky and fish sauce, he gobbled it down straightaway.  It’s important to note that, and that Shahrrtl did not say anything to him at the time.

                “Again, they went through a battery of deadly traps, though these ones did not damage the tomb behind them.  At last they came to the central chamber where, sitting around a jug and with empty mugs in their hands, were the mummified bodies of the laborers, all twenty-two of them, poisoned.  Carved lightly on the inside of the door was a message for them.  It didn’t name them, certainly, but it was a message for them nonetheless.  Do you know what it read?”

                “Repent?”  Suggested Mother Superior.

                “Fooled you!”  Gerry said.

                “No.”  Ahrottl twirled her whiskers mysteriously and shook her head.  “No.  It read, ‘I hope that you were able to find the Red Key.’

                “Immediately, they panicked, because the massive stone doors were locked with a very complex mechanism requiring a very specific implement to open.  They cast around, searching the bodies of the workers, and went back through the mostly-disarmed traps to the tomb, searching there.  Treasures they found a-plenty, but not a single key, nothing that would fit the lock, or the mechanism.

                “That didn’t stop them from trying anything that they thought might fit in the keyhole.  Scepters, wands, platinum toothpicks, and even fingerbones from the poor dead laborers.  Nothing worked.

                “’I think that we might be able to remove the mechanism if we worked together, Shahrrtl.  If we both braced against those gears and tried to spring them we might be able to pop the lock out.  It’d be hard to move the doors after but we have rope and a harness.  We could do it.’  However, Shahrrtl was looking at him strangely.

                “’Are you sure that you didn’t find the key, Vettreg?’ Shahrrtl asked him.  ‘What was it you swallowed back there?’

                “’Why, some fish jerky and old sauce, nothing but that.  Why?’

                “’Because it makes too much sense.  You think yourself clever, don’t you?’

                “’No.’ Vettreg replied, quite honestly.

                “’No, you really think you are.  Swallow the key, hide it, and then try to have me kill myself on a spring or a trap.  Well, I’ll have none of that.  Vomit up that key!’  Shahrrtl roared at him.

                “They argued back and forth, and eventually, fought.  They rolled back and forth across the floor of the tomb, cracking mummies and breaking their mugs, tearing at each other.  Finally they ended up lodged against the front door.  Shahrattl had taken a ceremonial dagger of the finest Thrathumm ivory, trying  to disembowel Vettreg while Vettreg clawed desperately at Shahrattl’s throat, trying to get him to stop. 

“Then, to both of their surprise, the mechanism began to work.  Blood from their many wounds had splashed upwards and all around, and most importantly, into the vertical keyhole for the doors, set in the floor before them.  The doors moved open with a mighty groan, slowly and ponderously, as Shahrattl’s life came pumping out his throat and Vettreg’s faded slightly more slowly.

“Some travelers,  merchants from Tahr who were heading to the nearby town of Uthrril heard the sound and headed off-road to see what was causing it, and found the two of them splayed across the door, that terrible door opened by the Red Key, Shahrattl already dead and Vettreg very close to, and he relayed their tale.  Among those merchants were my great-to-the-twenty-second uncle Rresk’s cousin, Turrtkee, and he heard the tale as it came from Vettreg’s lips, and they saw, they all saw, the gate that had been opened by the Red Key.”

Ahrottl gave a shuddering sigh and managed to squeeze her eyes shut.  Alone.  In space.  So far away from any solid world that she knew that she might as well be in another universe.  Her only friends aliens and their strange computer programs.  In an abattoir floating in the ether, filled with dead creatures.

Confronted by the Gates of the Red Key, for lying across the outer door of the airlock that had just opened were two of the humanoid figures, so like Vessels or humans, locked in place where they had died.  One had blades affixed to the back of its hand by what looked like a molded plastic grip, three ugly, sharp, curved blades like the talons of a beast, stained brown with rusty hemoglobin-bearing fluid.  That one’s stomach was open, and a twisted mass of viscera floated, slightly free, from its open abdominal cavity.  The other lay sprawled back against the wall, bearing a knife that looked like it had been made for cutting meat and had indeed succeeded in its purpose, its head thrown back on a neck so savagely torn it was hard to tell where it began or ended.

The inside of the lock was rust brown, every surface covered with spray but for a spot or two that just served to highlight the completeness of this vile and violent aspersion.  Small lumps of dried circulatory fluid floated in the air of the locks, casually, blood droplets that hung in mid-spray, long since dried.

The silence was deafening, the emptiness so vast, the world she knew so distant, and yet here, in this nothing, she was being confronted by an image from her own ancestor’s past, a hideous tableau that she knew intimately, stories of which had kept her awake as a kit.

“The Red Key…” she murmured as she floated, curled into a ball, eyes closed, the only world she acknowledged being the one inside her own head.  “The Red Key…”

Jump forward to Full-Throttle Ahrottl Chapter 8

Full-Throttle Ahrottl Chapter Links Page

Full-Throttle Ahrottl - Chapter 6

Jump back to Full-Throttle Ahrottl Chapter 5              


                Ahrottl’s breath came quick, her heart beating a steady but rapid pace, as the outer airlock door opened.

                In front of her was a vast expanse of grey metal, hovering in the void, and between her and it was nothing but space.  Empty space, but for particles and energies that were outside her range of perception.  Empty space, but for the ghosts of the crew of that colossal station that she imagined waving to her, calling her forward.

                “Securing the line.”  She said, and reached around the outside of the cabin door, briefly dizzy from the scale of what she was witnessing.  She closed her eyes, and felt with her suited paw for the loop beside the airlock door, and hooked the end of her line through it, snapping it shut.  She opened her eyes and tensed her body, ancient processes in her hindbrain gauging the distance and angle between her and the open docking bay ahead of her.  Her hips wiggled as she crouched, and sprang forward.

                She flew, not feeling the velocity as she might in an environment with gravity and air, but watching the universe slide by her silently.  She felt a bubble rising up from deep inside of her, pushing past her rips and into her throat, and she let out a wild, chittering scream of exhilaration, wonder, and terror.  She slid effortlessly through space, the motor attached to her suit feeding out line in time with her velocity.

                The closed doors of the docking bay were approaching rapidly.  Floating in dead space with no gravity, turning effectively would have been impossible.  Reluctantly she fired a small jet on the back of her suit, slowing her approach.  Her kind was acrobatic and loved to play in low gravity or gravity-free environments but she knew that if she did not slow down at all she could easily get injured; she might be weightless but her mass had not changed at all.  She held her forepaws forwards as she landed against the docking bay door.

                Ahrottl glanced around, seeing something that looked suspiciously like a handhold close by, on the frame of the gate.  She reoriented herself and let a small blast of her jet carry her towards it, grabbing at it quickly before she slid past.  She reached back and grasped her line in one hand, then tied it to the handhold, tethering her to both this station and the mining ship.  Feeling a bit more secure, she nosed her comm back on.

                “Is the pickup working?”

                “Yup!”  Came Gerry’s voice.  “We can see you, and see through your helmet.  Is everything all right?”

                “As all right as it can be.  How are you doing on opening that outer lock?”

                “We’ve found what appears to be a control panel on the inside of the lock.  We’re attempting to compare it to the other panel that we found.”  Mother Superior said in her crisp tones.  “Your time might be best used examining the outside and seeing if you can’t find the same.”

                Aware that her face was visible to the rest of the crew, Ahrottl merely whirled her whiskers instead of screwing up her face and mimicking Mother Superior.  She began to look around for other handholds.

                The outer lock seemed to be lined with them, at about two meters apart, each roughly a meter from the frame.  Others grips were placed even further out, roughly a meter and a half past the first row, and seemed to have even more space between them.  Ahrottl moved gingerly, heading “up” (the direction that her head was currently oriented), rung by rung, looking for some sort of manual control or more lettering.

                An irregularity in the surface caught her eye; she moved to examine it.  A square seam in the surface of the ship, perhaps ten centimeters on a side, was depressed into the hull within easy reach of one of the rungs.  “What do you think?”

                Non-committal noises came over the comm.  Ahrottl shrugged and pressed against the plate gently with her suited paw.

                The panel turned dead black against the grey background and images popped into view.  A series of colored circles, each highlighted with a symbol, connected by white lines in an arrayed pattern.  Ahrottl nibbled on her lip while looking them over.  The symbols familiar ones from previous experience with the alien alphabet, and they had a different quality; angular where the others curved and flowed, blocky where the others seemed to have some nuance.

                “What do you think?”  She asked of the crew.

                “Your guess is as good as mine.”  Maria said.  “Probably better.”

                She looked it over and contemplated it.  The circles ranged in color from primary hues to mixtures, a few of them similar shades, and there were twenty two of them in all.  The arrangement was roughly oval.

                “Maybe it’s a numbering system.”  Timmy suggested brightly.  “They may have been generated by a different culture, or created to look deliberately different from the rest of their script to avoid confusion.

                “So this might be a number pad?  Hmmm.”  Ahrottl scanned it again.  “None of the symbols are the same?  A base twenty two number system?  That seems…”

“Unlikely, given that they resemble the Vessels, which resemble the humans and Zig.  Most species seem to have number systems primarily based on their number of available digits for counting, with the exception of the Mauraug who use a base six and the Zig who use a binary system now, but did not start with one.”

Ahrottl twirled her whiskers and banged on the docking bay door in frustration.  “Come on!”

Mother Superior’s voice came over the communicator, “There seems to be a change.”

A couple of the other crew members murmured in surprise.  Ahrottl, blind to what they were viewing, asked,  “Well?  What is it?”

“There’s a sequence forming on the panel by the door.  It looks like a series of symbols – similar to the ones that you’re seeing.  Maybe it’s the entry code?” Maria suggested.

“It’s better than guessing.  Can you relay the image to me?”

“I’ll take care of it, ma’am.”  Timmy provided helpfully.  Soon enough there was a small holo of the inner panel floating in the helmet of her suit; she manipulated it with her tongue and nose until she could see it clearly.  The symbols did seem to match, and it looked like a sequence, a pathway from one end of the oval to the other.

“Now I just have to hope that I’m going in the right direction.”  Ahrottl said, and began pressing the glowing circles in sequence.  They each dimmed after she touched them, and when she reached the end, the oval faded, leaving behind a blinking message in the script.

“Any change?”  She asked, and then saw the miniature holo sent by the probe shift its vantage point rapidly, looking as though it was careening.  “It appears that the pressure has dropped again.”  Timmy said, as Ahrottl saw the massive docking bay doors slide silently open.

“Well… that worked.”  Ahrottl said, wonderingly, and swung herself around the edge of the frame of the doors and began to propel herself inwards.  She floated past the ship, trying not to give in to her curiosity and look in to the port, and brought herself straight to the inner airlock.  “I’m going to unhook now – the outer doors probably won’t close with the line still in them, and if they do, I’ll still be tethered either way.”  She unclipped herself and watched silently as the line floated away, at first lazily and then snapping to as the mechanism on the mining vessel began to reel it in.

She licked her lips nervously and looked at the floating probe beside her – a grey cylinder, wider at the center than at the ends, with antennae and manipulator arms extending from either end – and then turned her attention to the door and its panel.  The sequence that had been there before was gone, and was replaced by the previous image that they encountered.  She pressed the light blue button, gripping on to the handhold beside the inner airlock as she did so.  As predicted, she shook a bit as pressure returned to the chamber.

                Ahrottl let out a long breath and said, “All right.  Now I’m going to try and open this thing manually.”

                Recalling the sequence that the probe had touched that had caused the repetitive message to play before, she began tapping buttons on the panel.  This time, a different message appeared, and she could hear faintly through her suit a different message being played.

                The airlock slid open effortlessly to a gruesome tableau.  “The Red Key…” Ahrottl murmured in her native tongue, and fell back on her rump, dizzy and stilled, while the crew shouted their concern and confusion for her over her suit’s comm.  “The Red Key…”

Jump forward to Full-Throttle Ahrottl Chapter 7

Full-Throttle Ahrottl Chapter Links Page

Full Throttle Ahrottl - Chapter 5

               The system search had been a dud.  After spending close to a week surveying the planets and their many moons, the crew had come to the conclusion that there was nothing that they could discover among them, at least not safely.

                One of the gas giants had a series of a couple of dozen moons, one of which was large enough to support regular life, and indeed, it had a passable oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere.  There were what might have been structures on its surface, long eroded and gone into disrepair – or might have been old hills, hollow and pockmarked.  Despite the atmosphere, the radiation levels on the moon would have been downright deadly to any of the crew, and they didn’t have any atmospheric probes handy.

                The rest of the worlds were quiet, and free of any detectable life-forms.  Given that the ship was not well equipped to land and take-off from anywhere with appreciable gravity, more direct exploration was not in the cards.  Thus they had returned to the outer reaches of the system, hovering near the spiky ball of a hyperspace gate and the strange, oblong structure that they were all referring to as a space station.

                Ahrottl and Gerry were pouring over the records that the drone had produced of the station.  The structure was one and a half cubic kilometers in volume, rectangular and blocky, and made of what appeared to be a nickel-iron alloy.  The probe had discovered large spaces on one side that suggested docking bays, and several darkened circular panels that might be ports.  Visible light would not penetrate them – at first – suggesting shutters.

                The remarkable thing, however, what had them excited, was that after making a few passes around the station, the probe had noted power output in the form of visible lights.  Reviewing the holo records, the crew had originally noted whitish lighting flooding the docking bays, and some of the circular panels on the outside of the structure.

                Ahrottl manipulated the image of the glowing panel, wiggling her whiskers in frustration.  It looked like there was the ghost of an image inside of it.  “I swear, Gerry, I think they’re windows.”

                Gerry nodded.  “At first I thought that they might be guides or warning lights, but I can see what you mean.  Tommy, can you bring the probe around to one of them?”

                “Yes sir.  It will take a few minutes.”  Tommy replied.  They continued to turn the images that they had every which way, examining them idly while they waited.

                “So what do you think?”  Ahrottl asked.

                Gerry shrugged and pushed his glasses up his nose.   “I still don’t think we should go inside, if we find a way in.  Sending the probe in would be safer.”

                “Would you let an alien probe into your space station?”

                “Would you let a bunch of aliens into your space station?”  Gerry retorted.  “I wouldn’t, unless we’d established some kind of communication.  We’re receiving no signals from it yet, at least none that we’ve been able to identify.  It looks like the lights are on, but nobody’s home.”

                They watched as the probe scanned the surface, occasionally coming across strings of the unfamiliar script.  “What if they don’t try to contact us?”  Ahrottl asked.

                “Then we try and have the AIs contact them.  Failing that, we send a probe inside, if we can.  Then…”

                “The probe has arrived at one of the windows.”  Timmy pointed out.  Given the image that was now showing, no one was questioning his use of the term.

                The circular port seemed to be roughly two meters in diameter, and a soft whitish-yellow light was being emitted from within it.  Ahrottl and Gerry could see clearly inside – what appeared to be beige, tiled ceramic floor, and what could only be high-legged and high-backed couches.

                “I don’t think that we’re going to be hearing from them.”  Gerry said in a raspy voice.  He took a shuddering sigh, and Ahrottl stilled at what he was pointing out.

                As the perspective of the image shifted, she could see figures splayed out across the floor.  None directly beside the window, but further in, where she could make out what was probably the juncture of a corridor.  Bodies, almost certainly.  Two long arms, two long legs, trunk, and a head.  To Ahrottl they looked like…

                “Humans?  Are those humans?”  She asked in wonder.

                Gerry squinted.  “No, they can’t be.  It doesn’t make sense.”

                “But it does look like humans.”

                The door of the bridge slid open.  Maria, shaking sleep from her eyes, stumbled out.  “What’s this?  Ohhhhhh…”  Her gaze followed theirs to the images on the holo from the probe.  “They look like Vessels.”

                Both Ahrottl and Gerry turned around to her with quizzical looks.  Vessels, in the context off humanoid beings, was the term used for the vat-grown bodies that the Awakeners employed.  Bereft of sentience and self-will, these husks were used as transportation and tools to manipulate the environments of their fungal creators.  They resembled humans and Zig closely with a few key differences.

                “You’re right.  Their knees look like they bend the other way.”  Ahrottl pointed out.

                “Unless someone was trying to hobble them.”  Gerry added.

                “They don’t look decomposed.  Could this have been recent?  What happened in there?”  Maria asked.  “They sure don’t look like they’re sleeping.”

                “Considering dried circulatory fluid on the floor and walls, I’d have to agree.”  Mother Sueprior said primly.  “As to age of the bodies, we won’t be able to tell unless we examine them more closely.”

                Maria shuddered and Gerry grimaced.  Ahrottl stayed stilled, but for her whiskers, which were making furious figure-eights as she thought.  “Could this be an Awakener experiment gone wrong?”

                “Hull metal composition is similar to Awakener make.  There is no other indication of their indigenous technologies, however.  The lighting, for instance, is far brighter than is their preference.”  Mother Superior supplied.

                “Also, the Awakeners aren’t exactly known for resorting to physical violence.  The similarities may be coincidental.”  Maria noted.

                “Maybe.”  Ahrottl was unconvinced, though.  Something was bothering her about the scenario.  “Should we check the other ports?  Maybe we’ll see some activity.”

                “Doubtful.”  Mother Superior said.  “Remember, the lights on the station were off from the time we arrived until when the probe made its first close sweep, approximately four hours after we departed for the inner system.  I would say that it’s likely that we will see similar scenes, or no activity at all, in the other ports.  It is best for us to search and examine, though.  Tommy?  Please move the probe to each of the available ports in turn.”

                The five of them watched, mostly in silence, as other windows offered similar views.  A collective gasp rose as they witnessed one rise into view with a figure leaning against the glass, trails of dried, crusted blood smeared beside it as though it was attempting to claw its way out into the vacuum.  Maria spoke up.

                “I’ve seen enough.  We know… we know something happened.  Shut it off, would you?”  The holo vanished.   All three organics looked at each other.  Maria got up and moved to sit on Gerry’s lap, and Ahrottl scooted over next to the chair, leaning against her knees.

                “What do we do?”  Gerry finally asked, his voice cracking.

                “Try and send a probe in.”  Maria said.

                “What if that doesn't work?”  Ahrottl asked.

                Gerry pursed his lips until they turned white.  “We try the gate.”

                “We have no idea how to use it successfully.  It could have killed you – or all of us – last time.”  Maria said, frowning.

                Gerry shook his head.  “If you want to walk into that-“ he foundered for a word.

                “Abattoir.”  Ahrottl supplied.  Both of them gave her blank looks.  “Slaughterhouse?”

                “Yeah.  If you want to go into that slaughterhouse, be my guest.  That’s too heavy for me.  I just can’t…”  Gerry trailed off.  “Tommy, take the probe around to one of the lit-up docking bays.  Let’s see what happens.”


Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 6
Chapter 7

Full-Throttle Ahrottl - Chapter 5

                “We’re alive!”  Gerry shouted.  Ahrottl was still shaking off the effects of hyperspace – this time she’d seen vast, planet-sized worms writhing around each other, forming words in a language she could just barely comprehend.  Travel through hyperspace never failed to unhinge psyches, including those of Artificial Intelligences, although those suffered more from simple sensory deprivation than the full-scale hallucinations and visions that biological life forms experienced.  Either way, it was an unsettling experience.

                Maria was touching her face and her hair with the tips of her long digits, as though assuring herself that they were still there.  Ahrottl romped over to her and nuzzles her elbow, and then moved over to Gerry and petted his hand, as much for her own benefit as for theirs.  Physical contact was very important to her kind.

                Gerry took a long, shuddering breath.  “Mother Superior, please report.”

                “Our ship seems to be all right, Algernon.  There is no damage or noticeable malfunction.  Our surroundings are unfamiliar.  Tommy and I are attempting to correlate the astronomic data now.  Our immediate surroundings, however, show a device similar to the one that created the gate that we travelled through, which appears to be powering down, and a very large edifice close by.”

                Two holos appeared over the panels.  One showed, as Mother Superior had described, a spiky ball with trails of purple-white energy coruscating across its surface and occasionally leaping between the tips of its spikes.  The other showed a dark, oblong shape.  No light touched it other than interstellar illumination, and no visible light seemed to eminate from it.

                “What is it?”  Ahrottl asked.

                “I think, if I’m not wrong, that it might be a space station.”  Tommy offered cautiously.

                Maria nodded slowly.  “It would make sense that there’d be some kind of station near a gateway like this.  No civilization is going to exist entirely outside of the bounds of a solar system, and the fact that we found the gateway near the edge of one indicates that solar systems were important to its creators.  Otherwise they'd be placed in the middle of the Big Empty, where we’d never have a chance of running in to it.”

                Gerry scratched his nose and chin.  “Mother Superior, could we get some light on the station?”

                Ahrottl spoke up.  “Why don’t we wait a bit, Algernon?  We don’t know what this thing is, and if it’s occupied or not.  Visible lights might be seen as a threat.  For all we know the occupants see with X-rays.  Have we seen any activity near it yet?”

                Mother Superior lifted her chin.  “We’ve been here less than two minutes, and Tommy and I have a lot of examination and calculation to engage in still.  We will give you updates when we feel that we’ve examined the situation sufficiently to explore more.  In the meantime, please ensure that your own needs are taken care of.  Hydrate, eat, and use the facilities.”

                Gerry snorted.  Why are so many AIs so unfriendly?  Ahrottl wondered.  She didn’t want to share the thought aloud for fear of offending them and their human creators, but she had encountered a great many Artificial Intelligences whose behavior, in humans or other civilized species (other than Mauraug she thought bitterly) would be considered outright antisocial.  Surely they could program them to behave in a more congenial manner?

                She followed Maria and Algernon back into the kitchen and rifled around for food, settling on some biscuits and water from the purifier.  She climbed up on the table to be on level with her human companions, a habit which she knew drove Maria to distraction, but she was still too discombobulated to care.  To her, recovering from hyperspace was like recovering from a severe nightmare after having not slept nearly long enough to be refreshed.  She finished her biscuits and went about grooming while the humans sat in silence and drank coffee and ate something that they called egg but smelled like rot and plastic to her.

                While they went off to shower she went back to the bridge and played with the hollow of the oblong mass, turning it this way and that.  She saw what looked like little dents or apertures on the ends of it, but the detail was not good enough, the light too dim, and the holo taken from too far away.

                Risking annoying the AIs, she said, “Is this a live feed?”

                Tommy spoke up, briefly.  “Yes, Ahrottl.”

                “So nothing’s been moving around it?”

                “If there was, we’d have alerted the crew to it.”  Mother Superior broke her silence to comment a little harshly.

                Yes, yes, I know that I’m not crew.  Ahrottl shook her head in a very human gesture, and turned her attention to the gateway.  The activity that had surrounded it had quieted down, and it was now floating, quiescent and quiet as the original had been.

                A wave of humid air washed through the room accompanied by the odor of human cleaning products, which they used to wipe away their natural scents as much as possible.  Ahrottl’s theory was that it spoke of an ancestry plagued by predation.  Only their armpits and generative and eliminative organs produced much scent, and even that was cut back heavily by aromatics.  It gave a kind of eerie impression to many Hrotata of a clone-like similarity between humans or a deep-seated shame regarding their personal identities.

                Maria and Algernon came out, freshly scrubbed and looking like they felt much better for it.  Algernon had a wide smile on his face, his hair clinging in stringy strands around his glasses.  He stretched and sat down in his chair, and Maria followed, taking her seat.  Ahrottl scooted back towards her beanbag and curled up, weaving slightly, waiting.

                “Well?”  Gerry said.  “Any news?”

                “Yes sir, Mr. Algernon.  Where would you like to start?”

                “Well, first off, where are we.”

                “We don’t know-“

                Mother Superior interjected sharply.  “Yet.  We don’t know yet.  At least, not in relation to current astronomic charts.  What information we have is relatively sparse.  We are close to, but still between the arms of what may be a spiral galaxy.  It may well be our own, although it is difficult for us to determine at this point.  We need more information for that.

                “We’re on the outskirts of a binary solar system consisting of one red dwarf and one blue dwarf.  We have not been able to locate any planets yet, although given the positioning of the gateway and the ostensible space station it is likely that there are some.  Closer and more long-term observation may be required to locate any planets.

                “At this distance the oblong object appears to be made of metal, likely an iron alloy, and seems to have openings or hatches in it.  Unlike the gateway it is the same temperature as surrounding space and does not appear to share any of the former’s absorptive properties.  No activity or energy usage has been detected on, in, or around it since our arrival, and there are no traces or anomalies to suggest any recent energy usage.  At this point we know very little about it.  Again, closer and more thorough examination would be required.”

                “Thank you for the succinct and comprehensive report, Mother.”  Maria said.  Mother Superior’s avatar smiled, something she did for no one but her human.

                “So what do we do?”  Ahrottl asked.

                “I think we should try and reactivate the device.  Maybe if I get back down there I can see if I can’t figure it out.”  Gerry said.

                Ahrottl stilled briefly, and Maria frowned.  “Maybe so, but we got you out of there just in time last time.  I would rather not risk it unless we have a better idea of what we’re doing.”  Maria said.

                “Never mind that we don’t know if it would take us back to the other gate.  These things might work in a series, or have coordinates.”  Ahrottl pointed out.  “I think we should go examine the station over there.  Even if it’s shut down – and it looks like it is – we may find information we can use on it.”

                Mother Superior nodded.  “I have to agree with the Hrotata on this.  The potential dangers of improperly using the hyperspace gate far outweigh the possibility of us activating it correctly on the first try.  If any information of its usage is archived in the artifact we’re referring to as a ‘station’ it may help to shed some light on the matter.”

                Gerry frowned.  “I’m not remembering; do either of you have any linguistic training?”

                Ahrottl started to speak up and then realized that he was speaking to the AIs, as Mother Superior responded, “No, not specifically.  We each know the base packet of Collective languages and a few dialects, but we have no specific training or programming for the assimilation of new languages.  We will need to work together on this; we have just as much experience as any of you do in this field.

                Ahrottl coughed just a little to get attention.  “I have extensive linguistic training.  I might know fewer languages than your Brins do, but I studied linguistic theory for two years as a part of my education in literature.  I can speak, read, write and compose poetry in at least twelve languages.  I might be able to help here.”  She glared a little at Mother Superior.

                Algernon beamed.  “That’s great!  Why don’t you start looking over the recordings we took of the glyphs on the first hyperspace gate while we start heading over to the station and poking around its exterior.”

                “Actually, I’d like us to take recordings of the markings on this gate too, for comparison.  I have the feeling we only got a small sample of what there was on the first device, but I’d still like to note any differences.  Mind you, this doesn’t mean I’ll be any closer to knowing the meaning of the symbols, but it will help to have a base to work from.  Any information would be helpful at this point.  What we really need is some kind of interactive software, or a picture book.”

                Maria raised her eyebrows.  “A picture book?”

                Ahrottl nodded.  “Yes, whatever whoever wrote in that script used to teach children.  We’re starting from the ground up here.”

                “Allright,”  Algernon said.  “Let’s pull in closer to the gateway to take some readings.  Then we’ll , head over to the station.  I’m just… I’m itching to see that thing.”

                Maria nodded.  “I think we all are, Gerry.  As scary as this is, it’s actually kind of exciting.”

                Ahrottl remained silent, but worried to herself.  The air and water we can keep going indefinitely with recycling and space filtration, but we don’t really have much in the way of food supplies, and hydroponics aren’t going to cut it for very long.  I wonder if we should see if there are any habitable worlds.

                She spoke up.  “Hey, don’t we have probes?”

                “We do, but they’re not really all that long range.  Why?”  Maria asked.

                Ahrottl rolled her whiskers.  “As exciting as this is, we have some practical considerations.  We need to eat, and I remember you pointing out that we were low on food as it was.  Do you think we might want to send a probe to check out the station, and go check the system for habitable planets?”

                They were all quiet for a moment.  Gerry looked like he was about to voice an objection, but finally nodded.  “I guess.  I mean, we know nothing about the biology of the species that created this gate.  For all we know, they could be AIs.”

                Mother Superior chimed in.  “I think that this is the best course of action.  After all, if they are any station defenses active, or hostile occupants, it is far safer to send the probe first.  Also, your biological needs do need to be seen to.  Once we are done surveying the gateway I will launch the probe, and we will make haste to the inner system to begin our inspections.”

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 6

Chapter 7