The Quarry

[Rage Menelas]

[font=Lucida Sans Unicode]After delivery of the cargo to some type of warehouse at the base of one of the larger towers, Charlie launched and headed toward a smaller one in the distance. About two-thirds of the way up this tower Ryan could see an opening suddenly appear in the smooth surface. Saar'floe slowed and entered, the opening disappearing behind her.

“We are home!” Charlie announced with undisguised enthusiasm.

Maybe you are, Ryan thought, but just smiled and nodded. He followed his boss out of the ship and into a sloping corridor that wound up and around to a penthouse room above the hanger. This chamber was unlike anything Ryan had ever seen depicted on any sci-fi program or movie.

It was of course fashioned from the ubiquitous polished silver but it was of an odd shape. The only thing that came to mind was a bullet; one end was flattened while the other was rounded at the point. There were tall, thin windows on the left and right walls, three each side. To either side of a slightly darker colored walkway that split the room in half were six flat disks on the floor; once again three either side. They were lined up facing the far, rounded end of the room.

“Please, have a seat,” Charlie pleaded, motioning to one of the disks. When Ryan looked dubious, his boss smiled and said, “just try it, Ryan... don't you know by now that all is not as it appears in my world?”

Ryan grinned, shrugged and walked over to one of the disks. It was a shade over two-feet in diameter and so flat that it almost looked painted on the floor. He sat down on it and was immediately levitated about three feet on a cushion of air. He chuckled involuntarily.

“I told you...! Uh, you can stretch out your legs if you please.” Charlie turned his back and went to an area on the left wall beneath the windows. Soon he was back at Ryan's side, handing him a pale rose liquid in a broad silver chalice. He nodded for Ryan to try it. His apprentice complied, feeling immediately happy with the decision to do so. The sweet fragrant liquid coursed through him, warming and reviving him simultaneously. He smiled and nodded.

“Now, I must beg your indulgence while I communicate with the authorities,” Charlie said, turning and walking to the far end, the rounded section of the room.

He waved his hand over the wall there and it disappeared. Now they were in an expanded room, about three times the size of the original. Ryan looked around. Three of the walls; the one directly behind him and those to either side were still as before but now the far wall – from the point at which it made its severe bow outward – had dissolved. Consequently, they were now looking out across a large room toward a single individual sitting before a tilted desk or console of some kind. Charlie began to talk to this person, giving him a string of data that Ryan took as his credentials or licensing information. The person then nodded curtly whereupon the room changed again. Now it was a tall, wide room with an open ceiling. There was a horseshoe-shaped table with three aliens of various races seated there. One was a Charlie-clone, but clothed in a black toga with silver cords strapped across his chest and a cluster of what Ryan took to be feathers over his left breast.

There was another that looked very much like a man cast in bronze, for that was the color of his pigmentation. This fellow had a strangely elongated head and a very small, rather pointed nose. His shoulders were broad to an extreme, probably nearly three-foot in breadth. He was dressed in a dark rust-colored tunic of some hairy material. His dark gray hair covered his scalp in a beard of stubble, which also graced his face. Golden eyes pierced anyone he glanced at like those of an eagle.

The last of the three was quite Terran in appearance. His face was broad, nearly as wide as it was high, with large wide-set eyes – but not bulbous as those of Charlie's people – of a dark color, either black or brown. His bluish-black hair was slicked back across his head. His chin was wide with an extreme cleft and his nose was straight and regal. His skin was the biggest departure from Earth norms, for it was very pale, nearly translucent. Ryan could actually see some of the man's veins. His uniform was the most impressive of the three by far, being a splendid affair of medals and ribbons veritably covering the chest of his dark blue tunic. A high white collar held what Ryan took to be insignia of rank on either lapel.

Now he realized that Charlie was speaking to the three councilmen, explaining his concerns about what they had discovered on Pella'agre. Ryan noticed that conspicuously missing was any mention of his little side adventure with Aerose's tribe.

“I believe that the Szearfetti are attempting to establish a presence in the Pella'agrene System,” he concluded, bowed and folded his hands in front of him.

“Thank you, Master Starflyer Erzo'acteru, we will consider all you have revealed,” said the Charlie-clone and the large room dissolved being once more replaced by the rounded wall.

Charlie turned to Ryan, a puzzled look on his face. “What is it...?” Ryan asked.

“It is odd... but I do not believe they were surprised by my report.”

“Maybe they're already tending to that problem... someone else may have reported it,” he offered.

“No... well, maybe so... but it seemed like something else... They didn't ask me any questions...” he paused for a moment, then got himself a drink and joined his apprentice on the air-seat next to him. Once there, he waved his hand at the far wall and a newscast replaced it, something about the current state of affairs in the sector.