The Six-Eyed Beast
Copyright© 2025 by BenLepp
Chapter 20: The Universe is Big Enough
January 25th, 2279
Down in the Diral’s lair, Basil was finally able to observe the first signs of a hierarchy among the Diral, as their guards kept their minimal movements up, pointing their weapons along the line of officers leaning against the wall, slowly standing more and more upright, everyone getting ready to pounce. The Diral closer to the viewscreen and control panels, however, were frozen in conversation. Which made sense, as Basil had seen that only those actively sending information froze, information received passively just reached them at whatever they were doing, just as had happened to him at the stream. His interrogator was there, too – recognizable by a larger scrap on his armor thrown over his thick round shoulder, either having no meaning or being some sign of rank insignia.
Although he could not see it, he could hear intense activity further down in the tunnels of the Diral base, they were getting ready to move out, heavy clunks signaling their machinery was on the move. Which made no sense, as they could simply use their teleporters, unless this technology had some limitations – maybe in energy – which now would make sense, as Basil imagined it might be advanced trickery against physics to pull objects from one location to another ‒ against all known rules.
A heavy, thudding impact rocked the cavern, smaller rocks and a lot of dust coming down from the ceiling in waves, harmlessly bouncing off the Diral’s armor but hitting Mellir on the head, the human side of his head. He swore at the ceiling, but overall, it seemed to have woken him up a little, Mender now checking his skull and whispering something at him. Nocks was still covering her head and Doctor Boddins was already starting his diagnosis of her implants, although unable to do anything at this very moment.
There was only one explanation for the shock that came at them through the crust. The Rubicon had used her weapons in anger for the first time. Well, it was at least her first warning shot. Which meant she wasn’t under Diral control anymore, but also meant Basil was wondering under whose control the ship was, it was definitely not one of Nocks’ remote tricks.
Ahhhh, that’s where Perlas is. They missed him, haha. Better luck next time.
And now he knew why they were there. The Diral were going to negotiate with Perlas, who conveniently appeared on the viewscreen, likely having hailed the base.
- I am Lieutenant-Commander WB Perlas. The warship Rubicon is under my full control and I am aiming 35 torpedoes at your base. Release my crew and we will leave. Attack and we both go down. You will not obtain this ship.
Good speech, Perlas. Short and threatening.
The impact had silenced the activities in the tunnels below, which now picked up again, sounding a bit more improvised, with more metallic collisions happening, as if someone was getting weapons or other equipment ready, just a bit quicker now that they were under threat from above. Basil knew the Diral had arrived on a ship but the fact that the Rubicon – inferior in technology – was still hovering above them gave his theory that the Diral had dismantled the ship they had arrived on to hide on this planet more credence. It would explain the ill-fitting doorways, isolated technology and general lack of equipment, they might even have crashed on the planet, salvaging whatever was left. The interrogator now looked at the giant spider on the viewscreen above him, Perlas staring back with his many eyes, only some of them twitching nervously.
- Release the ship or we will silence your crew.
- I demand to talk to the captain or the highest-ranking officer still alive.
Wow, Perlas. Vote of confidence.
- We will silence one of your units now.
- If you do that, I will silence the lower half of your base.
- Your crew is there.
- Thank you for the information, haha.
The Diral froze, obviously yelling at each other in their shared circle for giving away crucial information to the enemy. Whatever their history and culture was, they were not used to stand-offs, likely never having developed Western movies. Basil nodded knowingly to himself when he thought the Splintered might have chosen them as a target for this exact reason, looking a bit unhinged from Nock’s point of view. The Diral were an advanced race, likely had seen centuries of peace and cooperation, just like the League when the Oopids attacked. Easy prey for a prepared opponent.
- I demand to talk to the captain or the highest-ranking officer still alive. For all I know, my crew is already dead and I have nothing to lose. You have thirty seconds.
Basil was praying the Diral had already converted the fleet’s time measures into Diral units. But the Diral were not helpless, as the viewscreen now showed. Several flashes appeared outside the Rubicon’s shields, revealing small cubes ‒ teleported in ‒ now dropping down through the rusty mist and exploding against the shields in violent explosions, shattering the shields immediately and rocking the heavy vessel in the sky. It was like Basil’s favorite old movie where humans had thrown bombs into the water hunting a ship underwater with explosions, unnerving some sweaty Germans. The Rubicon shook and swerved sideways, the engines already under strain fighting the immense pull of the planet’s gravity on the superheavy ship. For a few seconds, it looked like the ship was going down, before it stabilized and moved back into its threatening position, tilted down at the planet, aiming at the base. The explosions had been effective against the shields, but not the hull, which was easily able to withstand widespread pressure. There were two weapons the Rubicon had to look out for: Piercing beams and accurate shots against the engines or weapons, none of which the Diral apparently had ready.
Basil’s pride of his ship was short-lived, though. Half of the armed guards immediately disappeared in flashes and made it clear to Basil that they hadn’t actually wanted to destroy the ship, just deactivate the shields which were apparently hindering the teleport in some way. It was over. Perlas was likely being shot at already, his legs flying away in different directions.
Valiant, Perlas, little buddy. Valiant.
However, the valiant Perlas now appeared onscreen again, the ship’s air around him showing signs of smoke and some worrying sparks coming from the ceiling.
- I have eight hostages now. Next time any of you appear on my ship, the computer is set to open fire no matter what. It’s time to negotiate in earnest, wouldn’t you agree?
Now, both the Rubicon’s officers as well as the Diral froze in shock. As the shock wore off, the officers felt ecstatic that their helplessness had ended – they still had no idea how this was going to go, but multiple paths opened in their imagination. Mellir put the metal shiv he had pulled out of his artificial leg back into the hidden compartment. The Diral woke of from their freeze and pointed their weapons nervously at the five officers until the interrogator looked at Basil.
- Tell your unit to surrender.
- Or what?
- We will silence you.
- No, you won’t.
- We will start immediately.
Basil called the bluff, smiling at the unnerved Diral.
- Listen. You’re a peaceful race. You only killed the crew of the station on accident, since your teleporters were not adapted to them. You didn’t attack the shuttle crew unloading something on your planet, you just observed like the civilized people you are. You didn’t even investigate the station, since you would have learned a lot about us from the computers up there – you are clearly not used to having enemies. You took 28 hostages you didn’t need – you could have killed all or most of us immediately ‒ you already had the ship. You even made sure to reduce the power of your stun weapons the second time you shot at us, avoiding serious injuries. You don’t want to silence anyone; your only concern is to get out of here and hide from the Splintered. The only reason you’re entertaining the thought to get rid of us is the fact that we know you’re here, we know who you are and what your capabilities are. And you’ve just made your situation much worse, now we even have some specimens to examine. If you manage to destroy my ship, you’re stranded here and someone else will come looking for us, more carefully now since it’s no longer just a supply station out of contact but a missing warship. If you don’t manage to destroy my ship, my officer up there will report everything – if he hasn’t done so already ‒ and hand over your prisoners to the League, no matter what you do to us down here. I suggest you start working with us. Let me talk to my officer before he perforates this planet, the Axxi tend to do that to planets.
Your best speech yet, Tony. Even a joke at the end.
It was a shame the Diral didn’t have a face or even a mouth, so he could not open anything in disbelief. The lower lifeform had won and finally caught up with their evaluation of the situation. He had been in full control of the issues up until the second boarding of the vessel, having even gathered valuable information on the strange creatures inhabiting this section of space – something they should have started much sooner but hadn’t been interested in, just like a hiker does not need to know about the ants next to the trail. His scanners showed clearly that the small unit above had simply installed their backup shield generators on the bridge – inside the main armor and untouched from their attack - capturing four of their people in-between force fields quickly activating around them. They were even out of contact, since they had also been hit with some kind of impulse, knocking out their containment suits, trapping then like worms in a can. The other four units that had teleported into engineering to be on the safe side found themselves in exactly the same situation, the whole ship seemingly being rigged to trap them. Sending more of his few survivors was not a valid strategy, as they would only be trapped and trigger the computer core of the archaic vessel to fire at their unprotected base, since all their energy went into the two illusion fields denying any passer-by a chance to spot them or the hole in the planet the League left.
If only their ships had not broken apart after the long jump. They were the last of their race, at least as much as they knew. All they had left were a few dozen of their own and whatever they had been able to salvage from the two impact sites. They were barely able to hide much longer under their weak illusion field, running out of resources, energy cores, and frankly, out of options.
- Talk to your unit.
Basil’s comm unit found a ping. He turned to look at the others, and their units were also blinking as they reestablished contact with each other. That meant they had just suppressed the whole bandwidth, not the individual units, and it meant it was over.
- Perlas, stand down. We are negotiating.
- I can’t know it’s really you, Sir. Might be another trick. What’s your password?
- What password?
- Welcome back Sir, haha.
Yet, there was no trust between the Rubicon’s crew and the exhausted Diral until Basil took a gamble and told Perlas to protect himself with shields and deactivate all other shields, allowing the Diral to pull out their disabled people. In exchange, the Diral allowed the crew of the Rubicon to return to the ship, sending the majority of the crew – who had been sitting in the dark waiting for sudden death until the cavern shook, giving them hope – back up to the ship. Korolev and Feterni were immediately brought to medbay, still barely conscious. Only Basil and Nocks remained, but Perlas requested to also come down, wanting to greet the new race. There was some doubt if an Axxi would survive teleportation, so he had to take a shuttle – fortunately, he had only sabotaged one of the two shuttles, as Shuttle 2 was still refusing to move without maintenance. The Rubicon was ordered to return to orbit and start repairs, as the Diral and the three senior officers started figuring out the next moves.
- Perlas ... Did you contact the fleet at all?
- I tried several ways to ping the network, tried using the supply station, tried sending a probe. No luck, even a simplified and concentrated beam gets nowhere near our next comms hub. There are just not enough ships in range to bounce a signal along.
- Good. Means we can figure this out amongst ourselves here. Listen, Diral...
- We are listening.
- We need to get you out of here. What happened to the shuttle they used to drop off the explosive material?
- It flew into the center.
- The sun?
- The sun.
Usually, when talking, Perlas would either be on his raised stations or simply squat on a table, but now he was again just looking at legs talking to each other, of which he had enough. He looped up the cavern wall, almost falling due to the sandy and dusty surfaces and hung himself down from the ceiling on his threads, much to Nocks’ disgust, who stepped back.
- Sorry about your quarters, Lieutenant-Commander Nocks.
- What?
- Anyway, Sir, if I may. We have a healthy number of spares onboard of the Rubicon. 2 shuttles, one in parts, spares for a QES engine, some cloaks, etc. It won’t be easy but the Diral could also deconstruct the supply hub and whatever is on board to fashion a basic vessel. The only real problem is the core; we only have that one D-9. If they manage to get their technology to work with ours somehow, it might just do the trick!
The Diral interrogator had been stomping around the arachnoid now hanging from the ceiling of his command center, mustering the little creature that had blindsided him.
- Give us the data.
Perlas pulled his own supply list as well as the supply list they had downloaded from the supply hub and was now facing the issue of giving the data to the Diral. Ultimately, he simply decided to use the holo projector to stream all data including the diagrams, blueprints, and explosion diagrams into the room in quick succession. The Diral all froze, likely debating the possibilities. Nocks had a question, expecting the Diral to be out for a while.
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