The Pellegrine - Aurelia 5 - Attack and Sabotage

Date: 21 September 2674, Monday

When Iris reached Jorg, she saw the woman challenging Jorg. Iris knew that Jorg was not a match for the woman. Beside Jorg was Rocky, one of the magi security officers. She saw Brin lying motionless on the ground. They were at one of the outer docks of the relay station.

“Give up Jorg. You know you don’t stand a chance, even with your two friends. A pity that the third is out cold on the ground.”

“Melissa Brandt,” Jorg said, “How did you become so evil? Magi are supposed to be helping humans not killing them!”

“Humans are weak! Protecting they who want to bring harm upon themselves? What good will it do to us magi? It was to protect these weak creatures that my youngest sister died on Uranus. Was her death justified?”

“I don’t understand your reason, Melissa. You sabotage a cruise ship? To what end?” Jorg asked. “There weren’t that many people on the ship and what do you hope to achieve? There must be something more. If you wish to obliterate us, at least you should tell us the reason for our dying.”

Melissa cackled. Iris did not like that sound. Jorg hated it even more because it meant that Melissa was not longer in control of her senses.

“Enough talk puny magi. Be prepared to die!” The impostor put his hand on Melissa’s shoulder, using the phyiscal contact to augment her strength. Physical contact is more effective than psychic contact.

*Brace yourself, Melissa is level seventeen and the impostor is level thirteen. I don’t know if I can counter their combined powers,* Jorg informed Iris and Rocky.

They were expecting a psychic lash from Melissa, instead they heard metal heading in their direction. Melissa had dismantled parts of a nearby storage tower and hurled it at them. Jorg reacted quickly to the situation. Three huge pieces of the control tower were moving directly at them. Iris and Rocky knew that Melissa could lash out psychically at them and so had to leave Jorg to deflect the mental pieces as they maintained a barrier against psychic attacks.

Jorg focused his mind on the largest piece and used it to deflect the other two pieces towards Melissa, hoping to distract her. He did but not before noticing that there was another mass of metal coming their way. Melissa managed to deflect the two large pieces back to Jorg. Then Jorg realised that Melissa must have been manipulating magnetic fields around them. At level eighteen, Melissa had the capability to manipulate electromagnetic energy. Melissa was not bearing the metal pieces like he was. Jorg realised that what he was doing was precisely what Melissa had hoped for. He placed the three pieces on the ground, forming a physical barrier between the magi and the coming metal pieces.

*Rocky, hold on to the three pieces. Iris, supplement the physical barrier with a psychical one,* Jorg commanded. He had expended a lot of psychic energy in dealing with the three large metal pieces. He had to prepare himself for any extra psychic attacks Melissa might try.

The three managed to ward off the attack without physical injury. They were mentally tired, though.

“Not bad, Jorg! I hear that gay magi are more powerful than the straight ones. Maybe it’s because you receive so many blowjobs … Ha ha ha ha ha …” Melissa turned to her companion and said, “Get the ship’s engines started. We’ll leave after I launch another attack. Their strength’s almost gone. I can sense it.”

The imposter disappeared. At the same time, Kean appeared.

“Another one? … oh yes, the protege. Are your jaws aching? … Ha ha ha ha ha …” continued Melissa, projecting what transpired moments before.

Kean picked up her projected thoughts and shook his head in disgust.

“Give yourselves up, Melissa. The council won’t like it too much to know you’ve caused the deaths of four magi,” said Jorg.

“The council won’t know a thing. Even if they do, I don’t care. None of them are a match for me.”

“Then you won’t mind if we nullify you, then,” a voice came from behind Melissa. She turned to see three members of the council standing behind her. Behind them were seven other magi. These other magi were trainers of the Rescue Corps.

Melissa screamed as she felt her powers being taken from her. She was weeping when the process was finished. She looked up at the magi in anger and turned and glared at Jorg.

“You think you’ve won, haven’t you? Well think again. I’m not going to let you get anything out of me!” Within ten seconds, she convulsed and lay curled up on the floor. They also found the accomplice in a similar state.

“This is messy!” commented Tsui, one of the councillors.

“We need to move fast, then,” Jorg said. “Iris, I think we need to bring the three human soldiers back here. We need to prepare this place for the humans.”

“No, Jorg. You’ve got to get back with your crew. We’ll take care of matters here,” said Nkime, another councillor. “It’d be difficult to explain the sudden disappearance of four members of the crew, especially Kean and Rocky.”

¤ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ¤

“What do you mean you’ve not detected anything?!” asked Major Rai excitedly.

“The sensors haven’t indicated any people anywhere.”

Suddenly another soldier shouted, “Sir! I’m detecting a strong microwave signal …” There was an explosion. The same soldier reported, “Sir, the explosion’s at storage area Delta.”

“Get our people there!”

“Yes sir!” A soldier started to call out, “Search Teams Alpha and Beta. Explosion at storage area Delta. Zeroth Priority! On the Double!”

¤ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ¤

The Captain of the Pellegrine was summoned to the office of the station commandant. It was two hours after the explosion on the storage area.

“Captain,” said Major Rai to Jorg, “I’m sorry but we’ll have to impound the ship until noon Wednesday for the investigations and inquiry.”

“What’s going to happen to the crew and passengers? Surely the station isn’t planning to house all of them?”

“Except for the crew needed to move the ship out, we’ll transport everyone back to Uranus via military transport.”

“What about the personal effects?”

“We’ve accounted for everyone from the ship records. Immigration wouldn’t be a problem.”

“I understand. Am I to prepare the crew?”

“Yes. Lieutenant Reys would be in charge of the transport. You’d have to clear the crew needed to move the ship out with him.”

“My boss wouldn’t be happy, we’ve lost quite a bit because of the delay and the military can’t release any information for us to claim insurance,” remarked Jorg shaking his head.

Major Rai cleared his throat. “With respect to the recompensation …”

“Yes?” asked Jorg.

“I’ve received a communique from higher up. The military would foot the bill for the tests. We’ll be sending someone to do the security tests. You’ll start a week from today. Professor Robinson could be replaced if you so wish.”

“Thank you but I think Professor Robinson would want to finish this work. He’s going to be Titan Tours’ consultant for further endeavours.”

Major Rai looked at Jorg apologetically and said, “I’m sorry if I seemed a little too uncooperative …”

“I understand, Major. System security is at stake here. If word got round that someone managed to impersonate a General, more problems would occur. You’ve my word that I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

“Thanks, Captain Brown. Off the record, the military is greatly embarrassed over the event. Whoever engineered this was highly professional. I won’t be surprised if large amounts of military spending would be for finding out what happened and making sure that it doesn’t happen again.”

Jorg nodded in understanding. “Do you have any idea why the Pellegrine was chosen as a target?”

“This is just my personal opinion, of course. Even I don’t have clearance to such information but I think it has to do with Professor Robinson. He’s the only connection that makes sense. Both Professor Robinson and General Evers served in the Alpha Centauri program. If someone had kidnapped General Evers, it wouldn’t be too far fetched to assume the kidnapping of the professor as well. Perhaps it is to extract information from the both of them.”

Jorg nodded again but said nothing. He stood up and shook the Major’s hand. “Thank you Major. You’ve been very accomodating and kind. I won’t ever forget the kind manner in which you’ve handled this situation. I know that my crew has a high regard for your command.”

Major Rai stood up as well. He was unaccustomed to receive praise in this manner. “All in the line of duty, Captain, I assure you … and one more thing, Captain,” said Major Rai.

“Yes.”

“You’re expected to be at the inquiry on Tuesday at 0800 hrs.”

“Yes sir.”

Jorg stood up and gave the commandant a salute.

“At ease, Captain,” said the commandant, returning the salute. “I’m sorry that the maiden voyage of the Pellegrine had to end like that.”

“I know sir,” replied Jorg and he left.

The following was the post-story comment that I had added in my original story in 2002. I had made a dedication to my readers and I felt that I should reproduce an edited version of the dedication and the reason for the dedication.

After the last story [they are now Magi at Work Chapters 6, 7 and 8], I wrote that I had decided to stop the story due to a lack of response. After I posted the story, I had 18 letters. Most of them asked me not to stop the series as I had said I would. A few said that it was really up to me but didn’t indicate what they preferred. I’ve tried to reply to every single letter and if you’ve mailed me recently and haven’t received a reply, please be patient, but if I don’t reply after a few weeks, I probably didn’t receive your mail. One of my friends who mailed me (I consider all who mail me friends!) did a calculation for me to show the probable number of readers I had based on the number of letters I had received. Modesty prevents me from quoting that number. Furthermore, the result was an optimistically (and probably grossly) inflated number.

I guess I should explain my actions. Writing in the Science Fiction/Fantasy genre is difficult for me. I had to spend more time writing and checking to make sure that there is a congruency in all the facts. I began to wonder if I was better off writing stories on a similar vein to 15 Hartford [under “beginnings” section (dated Mar 3 2002) in Nifty]. After decided to stop the series, I tried to transfer many of my ideas from this series to another genre and found that it didn’t fit in properly. I was getting very frustrated and that brought on depressive thoughts. I didn’t want to leave everything hanging in the air without a proper conclusion and so I got all the ideas I had on paper (literally) and condensed them into another three stories, of which this story was supposed to be part the second.

Your letters convinced me that I should carry on writing and that I should go back to the original plan of a longer more developed series. One letter actually had “The Pellegrine - There’s nothing like an ultimatum …” as the subject. So, I thank all those who have written to me for their confidence in me. For those of you who should write, there’s still time :-)

It was a struggle to move back the story-line to the original idea. I hope to live up to a friend who wrote: “I sincerely hope you’ll continue with the series as originally planned and hopefully leave us with a happy end or at least end it on a happy note.” This story is dedicated to him and all you who had written. Thanks for your continued support.

Soul Lark

This re-write of The Pellegrine not only tries to go back to the intention of the original ideas but expands and explains many of the small little loopholes that I had left hanging. This time, I’m not going to let a small thing like ‘no response from readers’ get me down. I am going to express myself as I should. Of course, I won’t mind letters of encouragement and friendly correction. I’m light years from being the perfect writer. My thanks to James and David for helping me with my writing. We’ve lost contact since my computer chose to die on me (together with all email addresses) at the end of 2003. If you’re reading this, David or/and James, please mail me.