Tempest on Tau Ceti: The Battle for Power by H. S. Rivney

Author:H. S. Rivney [Rivney, H. S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Holly S. Rivney
Published: 2021-08-22T22:00:00+00:00

Message received, aye, Captain, will monitor from orbit and document all transmissions. Anticipate contact from you in 12 hours. Watson out.

“We should get going. We don’t have all day.” He closed the monitor and picked up a hand sized laser weapon, shoved it in the waistband of his trousers, and then draped his tunic over the grip. A green light strobed on the main console and an alarm buzzer tolled in unison. “I don’t believe it.” He stepped back to the console and pressed a few buttons.

“What is it?”

“I’ll be damned,” he mumbled. Change of plans. “Maybe some answers. You better head home.”

“I want to go with you!” Jackson shook his head and started off. The boy followed him.

“You could get hurt. Go home, Jaakub.”

“I can help!” He felt a tug of war coming and didn’t have the time to waste. He knew how to outsmart an alien holding a rifle but not a small child with puppy eyes.

“Come on, it’s not too far.”

“Where are we going?”

“I’ll tell you on the way.”

They traveled on foot through dense grass and shrubs for two kilometers. A tree they passed had orange, pear shaped objects growing on it, but Jaakub assured him they were not something edible. Jaakub shimmied up a different tree covered in oblong purple fruits. He selected a few, threw them down, then slid back down. It wasn’t sweet; the tree’s wild genome didn’t waste its energy putting sugar into the seed coating.

He ate it anyway and the two of them stopped to chuck the hard fruit stones toward a crick in a splash contest. Tom made sure his throw undershot the water after Jaakub’s landed dead center with a loud sploop. Tom wondered what other support the child would have growing up without his father. Quinaal had been an only child, he remembered, but perhaps Kellaam had a brother or brother-in-law to step in. This last bit of play before Jaakub had to face his future seemed more than worth the few minutes it took off his task.

Tau Ceti began to cast long shadows from the trees, then a mountain top obscured its light just a bit.

“When I was your age, people on my planet didn’t have the ability to go this deep into space either. But about thirty years ago we made a breakthrough. But it still takes several weeks to get back to my star, my planet. It takes light twelve years to get there.”

“Why did you come here?”

“Well, the electricity plant,” he explained. “I was here, before you were born, and it wasn’t here. I have to find out why.” They walked in silence for a while. A hundred meters further and Jackson could make out a rounded structure that appeared to be made of pewter. It was larger than the transport shuttle, and well hidden in a grove of trees, but obviously not of this world.

“There it is,” he said, bending down behind a thick bush. The shuttle wasn’t crashed. It had set down vertically,

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