Harrick and the HST materialised in the courtyard of The University. The troopers immediately dove to the sides and brandished their weapons to cover the area around them. Harrick and Hendon crouched with Clinton following a few seconds later, a little embarrassed at his delay.
Hendon threw a small silver ball into the air and pressed a button on his communicator and grunted in satisfaction.
Clinton looked up at the floating ball and said, “Is that the Silencer 2000 Drone?”
Hendon shook his head in agreement and grinned, “None of their cameras will work now. ‘Fzzzt’ is all they will hear and see.”
As if in confirmation, there was spark near the top of the headless fountain ornament and a small metal object fell with a splash into the water in the broken base. Clinton fished it out and observed a small camera and microphone combination device, now all blackened from some sort of overheating of the electronics. “I’m getting one of those,” thought Clinton.
“We have the site secured, sir,” said Hendon quietly to Harrick.
No shots were fired and the sounds of local birds and wildlife commenced a short while later. Remaining crouched, Harrick directed his Red Team to the building entrance, flanked by the destroyed main doors and he sent Blue Team to the main gate entrance a few hundred metres away. Hendon, Clinton and himself crouched behind the central fountain as protection as they surveyed the area.
“No signals or sign of the Dirtlings,” Hendon reported, while continuing to scan the area.
“It’s been over a week,” said Clinton, “Why isn’t this place crawling with Dirtlings? Isn’t this a public building of some sort?”
Harrick looked at the damage that remained unrepaired after the hunt and considered the options. “It seems as if the local authorities have kept the area secure. Perhaps we are expected?”
Hendon pointed to a large red envelope placed in the arms of the statue in the middle of the fountain. Some water dribbled over the edges of the central column and the head of the angel adorning the fountain lay a few metres away, broken on the roadway. Clinton reached over and grabbed the envelope, turning it over as he handed it to Harrick, “I think this is meant for us,” he said.
“Why do you think that, Clinton?” asked Harrick, but after using his communicator to translate the writing on the front of the envelope said, “Ah. ‘FOP’ They must know we are from the Federation of Planets. How clever of them.”
“How did you read this without your communicator, Clinton,” said Harrick as he looked at the writing on the envelope and then at Clinton.
“I was very good at languages at school, so I have been examining the transmissions from Dirt over the last week or so, especially after Hendon showed me the original report,” answered Clinton.
“Hmm. Few study languages in these days of universal translators. I see you are still working at being prepared,” said Harrick as he opened the envelope.
“Yes, Sir,” said Clinton smiling a little in embarrassment.
Harrick opened the envelope and read the contents. He gestured for Hendon and Clinton to come closer and said, “They wish to make a deal. Heron and Byron are apparently safe and secure. They want to meet us and return them.”
Hendon nodded his head in disagreement. “No?” asked Harrick.
“No, Sir,” said Hendon, “We need to negotiate from a position of power or strength. Doing so on their terms would not match the real positions here. The Dirtlings have to realise how the power levels are not equal.”
“Agreed,” Harrick said, gesturing with his hand to the wide Dirtling world, “But how are we to find them?”
As if on cue, Harrick’s communicator dinged.
“Right on time,” said Harrick, “I figured if I posed the question our mysterious friend would get in touch.”
A pigeon flew towards them and Hendon held it in the centre of his sights, withholding his fire.
It landed in front of Harrick and looked up at him. It then stared at Hendon who targeted his gun elsewhere. The pigeon had a little helmet on its head with a small camera and sensing gear attached.
“Hello!” said Kurt, “We’ve been waiting for you. Do you want to get out of the open and approach the woods over here? That will be a better place to meet.”
They looked at the area indicated by Kurt and saw X Bear silently standing there.
“I am sure he wasn’t there before, Sir,” whispered Clinton.
“I know. He just likes showing off. Let’s go to see him,” said Harrick as he stood and went to meet X Bear, with Hendon and Clinton following.
Red Team contacted Harrick to let him know the buildings were clear and they left to meet up with them at the edge of the trees.
****
“So, when do you think you’ll be rescued?” asked Father Pacioli, sitting at a table with Heron and Byron, “It’s been a week now.”
Heron looked much better. His wound had left a large red mark, but he was a much healthier shade of blue. Byron was eating some toast spread with a black topping, sighing in appreciation.
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“Is there nothing else you can tell us?” asked Major Tierney who sat beside them, “Padre tells me you discovered Earth.”
“Yes,” said Heron, “As we told your investigators earlier, we discovered Dirt - sorry, Earth - and reported it back to the Imperial Exploration Service. You should have been marked as ‘Off Limits’ which meant the Federation would have monitored you until you had achieved a suitable level to join the Federation.”
“But the first thing we knew was your Federation popping down and hunting everything and blowing things up!” said the Major, hiding his frustration. ARRG had conducted many sessions with Heron and Byron all week. Initially it was in desperation, waiting for the rescue mission, but the sessions became more leisurely as no mission materialised. The questioning had been mostly fruitless as after the information deluge from the communicator, Heron and Byron had little to add.
“It wasn’t me!” said Byron defensively.
“You did come down with guns and weapons to, what was it, ‘Come of a little hunt’,” said Father softly.
Byron looked away embarrassed and Heron answered, “Yes. That is true, but as we said, that’s not the whole story.”
“Then tell us how you coming on a hunt is not the same as everyone else coming on a hunt,” said Major Tierney, leaning backward in his chair.
Heron looked at Byron who looked back and shook his head slightly. Heron agreed and said, “Padre and Major, I just checked with Byron and he agrees with me, that we should let you know some background. We were part of a mission to get first hand experience of what is involved in a hunt. As you know, we did not shoot at any of you dirtlings - sorry, Humans - we just had a look around, maybe killed some animals you call rats and after getting injured by our fellow hunters, were captured by you.”
Major Tierney sat up and said, “Mission?”
“Yes,” piped in Byron, whispering in a secret spy like manner he had seen on the Tri-D shows,“a secret mission to help stop these hunts. I thought you Dirtlings were cool.”
“Cool?” asked Father Pacioli, amused at the phrase.
Byron grinned, “Yeah. I watched your transmissions. Cool!” and finished with two of his thumbs up.
Major Tierney laughed and looking at Padre said, “Happy Days. If they judged us based on television broadcasts, I could understand why we failed.”
“Oh, no,” corrected Heron, “The transmissions themselves were neutral in the decision. In fact, some of them have leaked into Federation unofficial culture - not the official news, but youth culture - and some of your phrases are catching on. ‘Cool’, ‘Whatever’ and others. It is interesting to see these odd phrases spread underneath the official information networks. Anyway, the official reason is the standard tests we applied showed a fail.”
Byron interjected, “Not all of them.”
Heron qualified, “No. The tests we conducted showed an almost complete fail. That was because we did not understand your culture and selected poor test subjects. But we still recommended ‘Off Limits’. Someone…”
Byron muttered sadly, “Probably Nelson,”
“Changed our official report and it showed a full fail. Then it looks like there was some corruption at the top of the IES and before we realised it you were sold off to Hunting Tours Incorporated as a Hunter Planet,” Heron finished.
“But we don’t agree with the classification,” said Father Pacioli.
“We certainly don’t,” added Major Tierney with a stern frown.
“We noticed that. But there’s nothing you can do,” said Heron, “Hunting Tours Incorporated is a large corporation and well connected to the Imperial Court. Dirt looks like it will be a great income source for them.”
“How do we get you back to those that gave you this mission. You can just tell them we would like to appeal the classification,” said Father Pacioli.
“It doesn’t work that way,” said Heron, “We’re not important. An NC planet has no right to appeal or even communicate as they are deemed ‘Non Compatible’. That means it isn’t possible to be NC and persons. A logical contradiction.”
“Even if reality is obviously different to the classification?” said the Major.
Father answered, “They ignored the evidence of the International Space Station and the casualties caused to the hunters by an NC population should have made it obvious too.”
“Yes. They just destroyed the evidence of the ISS,” growled the Major, “Lucky the astronauts got out just in time.”
There was a moment of silence. They had all seen the events of the ISS rescue on their large monitors. Heron and Byron had been in the viewing room and were surprised at the presence of the cruiser.
“You don’t have to worry about handing us back,” said Byron.
“Why not?” asked the Major.
“Our friend will rescue us,” said Byron confidently, lowering his head conspiratorially, “Shouldn’t be long now.”
Major Tierney grinned, “I doubt that. You’re in the middle of our secure base. We left a message for your FOP friends and we’ll have a discussion with them first.”
“We’ll see,” said Heron confidently.
Father looked at the Major and said, “Let’s leave it for now. You two have a break. We’ll chat some more tomorrow.”
Heron and Byron were escorted out to their reasonably comfortable room. Some builders and carpenters had been employed in the first twenty four hours of their capture to make custom furniture and gear that suited the weird multi armed and legged physicality of the aliens, and some doctors and dieticians had examined their food supplies. They sampled many different food items to see what worked. Interestingly, Byron had noticed one of the workers eating a sandwich and asked for a bite. The builder said, “Sure, mate. I’ve got one spare. It’s a Vegemite sandwich.”
“Vegemite,” said Byron rolling the word around in his mouth then taking a small bite. He then took a larger bite and then quickly finished off the first half of the sandwich. Heron saw Byron’s expression, reached over and took the other half of the sandwich and had a bite.
The builder looked at the aliens and said, “Is it all right, mate?”
Heron answered, “This is amazing. Sweet and slightly alcoholic. A bit like a popular beverage we call ‘Fizzy’. Is this a rare treat?”
The Builder looked in his lunch box and took out his real last sandwich. His wife had packed extra knowing he would be working late. The builder handed over his sandwich and said, “Here’s my last one today. I’ll get you more tomorrow if you like.”
Byron grabbed the sandwich in appreciation and reluctantly gave half to Heron. They both nodded so the Dirtling would understand they wanted more.
****
The Major and Father Pacioli sat together in the interview room for a while after the aliens had left.
Finally, the Major said, “Padre. What do we do now? The aliens were helpful in giving us more background information and we now know it is not the whole Federation of Planets that hates us. Most don’t care and those that do want to hunt us. I don’t know what’s worse, being hated or being ignored.”
“Looking back, I think our desire to catch some aliens was not well thought through. The aliens we captured knew nothing about any of their gear. I mean, if I was captured and some aliens asked how my phone worked, or how I made my shoes, I would have to shrug and look stupid. But they have been very useful in helping us understand where we are placed. In ‘uncared’ territory.”
The Major nodded and said, “We have to get them back home. Their military teams - Heron called them the ‘Hunter Safety Team’ - will be coming. Those soldiers are very professional. I would rather not fight them.”
“Perhaps we can wait for their friend? Heron and Byron were pretty confident he would be here soon,” Father said.
“I’ll believe that when I see it. Our security here is very tight,” said the Major, as he stood up to stretch his legs and looked out the window.
“Greetings,” said a voice, “We mean you no harm.”
****
