The search for Kalid/3

Azur
Soon after Leone and Aristark had informed Ketar about their planned trip to Flammis in search of Kalid, Ketar began to prepare for their arrival on Azur.

It had not been hard for Ketar to find Flammis in the archives of the Spaceship Guild. As head of the Galactic Antiquist Party, Ketar had nearly complete access to even the most ancient and secret records of the Spaceship Guild. The Antiquist Party was the political wing of the Spaceship Guild: the Spaceship Guild had originally created the Antiquist Party as a tool for taking control of the political processes on various worlds so as to assure that the economic interests of the Spaceship Guild were protected. However, when the Empire had formed it became important to have a larger organization, so the Galactic Antiquist Party was organized as an umbrella organization that could represent all of the local planetary Antiquist Party organizations. Now, a hundred years later, the Galactic Antiquist Party had grown powerful enough to dominate over the Spaceship Guild. In fact, Ketar now controlled most of the wealth of the Spaceship Guild and he directed that wealth towards his political goal of liberating Azur from the Empire.

Starting over 250 years previously there had been a feud between the Spaceship Guild and some renegade members of the Haldus Order. That struggle had stretched over 67 years during which it had grown increasingly violent. Finally the Spaceship Guild had penetrated some of the mystery of the Haldus Order. In particular, the Spaceship Guild first found and then destroyed the Haldus Order colony on Flammis and warned that if the feud did not end, the entire Haldus Order would be exterminated. That strategy and warning had worked, and the Haldus Order finally restrained its own renegade faction.

The Haldus Order was barely mentioned in Spaceship Guild records from the past century. However, Ketar knew from personal experience that even large and important organizations could operate within the Empire and yet escape the attention of the Spaceship Guild's intelligence agents. Thus, it was easy for Ketar to imagine that even after the Spaceship Guild had turned Flammis into a Green Planet, Haldus Order forces had eventually returned to Flammis and they probably now had a secret base on that world...a base where Kalid might now be hiding from Set. Yes, Ketar felt sure that Leone would find Kalid on Flammis and so he made preparations to give them a warm welcome upon their arrival at Azur.

Ketar had estimated how long it would take for Leone to go from Sakkara to Flammis and then on to Azure. Ketar had now become worried....news from Leone was overdue. Ketar's calculations suggested that Leone should have reported on events at Flammis no later than the previous day. Ketar tried to imagine that maybe Leone and Aristark were very busy at Flammis and had no time to communicate. Of course, there might have been some unexpected trouble. Hyperspatial communications equipment was notoriously fragile, and it was possible that Leone had not been able to communicate with Azur because his Thot spaceship's hyperspatial signal encoding systems were damaged.

The difficulty of communication with and between spaceships was one of Ketar's greatest frustrations. Ketar was trying to build up a fleet of spaceships which could be used to liberate Azur from the Empire, but coordinating and keeping secret such a fleet was not easy. Hyperspatial communication depended on large stationary receiver arrays that collected and decoded arriving messages. Every star system in the Empire had such an array, but that did nothing to solve the problem of getting signals successfully transmitted to isolated spaceships that were moving freely through interstellar space.

Ketar suspected that the Empire had a monitoring station near Flammis, but his spies who operated within the Empire's sprawling bureaucracy had not yet reported any apparent interest from the Empire in recent events at Flammis. It was even possible that the Empire's monitoring station near Flammis was no longer functioning correctly.

Ketar made an effort to stop worrying about unseen events at Flammis and he tried to stay focused on what he could control. For Ketar, sitting on the Imperial Throne of Azur as Planetary Governor meant the privilege of operating at the center of the planetary data web. He was able to coordinate all plans and preparations for Kalid's welcome through his computerized command center and his special shell access to every node of the global network. From the command center, Ketar sent orders to his servants and watched, using all available means including 3D remote cameras, and made sure that everything was proceeding according to his desires.

Of course, none of his servants knew they were being watched, so it was an interesting way to supervise operations. On several occasions the monitoring system had proved useful and had allowed Ketar to stop growing rebellions before they had a chance to build strength. Traitors had been quickly identified and executed and they never even knew who the "rat" was. Usually there was none; it was just that Ketar had exposed their plans by monitoring the huge network of interconnected data nodes and cameras. Ketar personally watched people from his inner circle very closely, but most of the outer levels of the government had to be monitored with the aid of automation and scans for key words that might signal disloyalty. The other segment of the population that received extra monitoring was the major "opposition party", the Rugo. Most political trouble makers naturally collected within the ranks of the Rugo, so it was often possible to identify and crush new political movements simply by occasionally checking on the activities of the leaders of the Rugo Party.

Spying on the entire planet was a big job. Unfortunately, Ketar could not risk telling anyone about his use of this surveillance technology. If people knew about his spying system they would try to abolish it as an illegal anti-privacy system. The people of Azur, a world famous for the "freedom" of its people, would only tolerate a limited amount of government control over their lives...that was a powerful social force that even the Empire had not been able to change. Of course, in the many decades since the Empire had conquered Azur, freedom was nothing more than a motto; in reality, privacy and freedom had not been respected by any of the Imperial Governors. The secret to being able to keep on using the spy network technology was being discrete, not over-using it and hiding it from public attention...a formula that had worked for a hundred years.

Now the task at hand was for Ketar to get as much as possible for Azur out of the secretive Haldus Order. Ketar's trick of feeding false intelligence to Sakkara had efficiently revealed the identity of the leader of Haldus Order. By making it appear that Set was more dangerous than he actually was, Sybil had gone looking for help and protection from the Sakkaran government...and out had popped Kalid's name.

Now it was just a matter of revealing Kalid's secrets. Ketar suspected that this could be accomplished by flattering an old fool. At the same time it should be possible to keep playing Set and Kalid off against each other. Yes, flattery... Ketar did not personally have much to do in order to prepare for the arrival of the Wise One... Ketar possessed hundreds of servants who would efficiently handle this job for him. As an Imperial Governor, Ketar had an entire well-staffed department that was devoted to the logistics and organization of staged celebratory events, usually for the glorification of the Imperium, but that apparatus could easily be used to turn the visit of Kalid to Azur into a great show of friendship and hero worship. Still, Ketar enjoyed planning the details of such events, like ordering food, renting dancers, hiring orchestras, among others. Ketar really liked that kind of thing, and now he even dreamed that he would live to see the grandest of celebrations on Azur: the day when Ketar himself would be celebrated as the liberator of Azur. For a moment, Ketar imagined himself in the future, making a triumphal march... Nevertheless, now was not a good time to enter the daydream realm, he should plan the next step, a necessary step on the road to utimate glory.

Ketar had been born to reign. He came from an important family whose members had always been involved in Azur politics. However, nobody outside the family knew this. Ketar's family had long practiced polygyny. The family patriarchs had many wives kept in secret and most of their children had different last names so that nobody outside of the family would know their real identity. From the time of the earliest settlements on Azur it was forbidden for more than one member of a family to enter politics, a rule that extended up to the forth grade of consanguinity. This law had been created in order to prevent familial oligarchies and the possible establishment of hereditary monarchies. But Ketar's family had been responsible for that law and for Ketar and others who secretly shared his blood line, that law was something to be ignored since its purpose was really just to keep other families from gaining political power. In this way, Ketar's family had controlled Azur's government for over two hundred years and nobody outside the family knew that a dynasty secretly reigned.

Of course, when the Empire had taken control of Azur the situation had gotten slightly more complex, but after a couple of assassinations of the earliest Imperial Governors, control of Azur had been successfully returned to Ketar's family. Of course, Imperial meddling in the affairs of Azur and the drain of taxes sucked from Azur and sent to the Emperor were unacceptable....not to mention the deaths of millions of freedom fighters who had resisted the establishment of the Empire. For the past hundred years Ketar's family had planned and organized and built towards a future day when it would be possible to throw off the odious grip of the Emperor and once again take complete control of Azur. And now, Ketar knew it was time to walk the next step; that was why he needed Kalid.

Yes, everything was falling into place! Ketar had spent most of his life thinking that another generation would have to pass before Azur could finally be liberated from the Imperial shackles, but all had changed in just the past year. Seemingly from nowhere the Futurist Party of Sakkara had risen in power and become a distraction for the Empire. Suddenly, to counter Set's Futurist Party forces, the Empire needed modern war ships to replace the old hulks in its out-of-date fleet. Who better to supply what the Empire needed than Ketar? Now Ketar's fleet could operate openly under Imperial Sanction, but Ketar retained the loyalty of the crews, not the Emperor.

And then, there was the utter surprise of telepathy! At first, Ketar had dismissed the rumors and reports from his spys...really, it was absurd...telepathic powers? But the rumors did not go away. Finally, as crazy as it seemed, telepathic ability became the only way to account for Set's sudden rise in power. At first Ketar had imagined that Set was some kind of mutant, a one-of-a-kind freak with telepathic powers. But it had not been that simple. Ketar had feared that set would use his mental powers to trace back to the root cause of the destruction of the space elevators on Sakkara. If Set actually had telepathic ability, what could possibly stop him from learning the truth? However, at that point, Set's forces had gone crazy: they went off in strange directions rather than go directly after those who were responsible for the space elevators disaster. At first Ketar had been baffled by Set, but eventually Ketar's extended spy network had resolved the mystery.

Ketar tried to remember how he had become conscious of the Haldus Order. It seemed like he had always known of its existence, but it had always seemed to be of no importance, just another folk tale like Atlantis. Then why was Set suddenly at war with the Haldus Order? And the specific claim reported by Ketar's spys was that Set was killing telepaths of the Haldus Order. Ketar had been surprised to learn that he even had a spy who had penetrated the Haldus Order. It was a stroke of luck for Ketar, but someone in his intelligence service had long ago taken the Haldus Order serious enough to start an investigation and even plant a spy. So, finally, Ketar had accepted the idea that there was a war of telepaths being fought between forces of the Futurist Party and the Haldus Order. Ketar's first impulse had been to support that war and hope that the two parties would destroy each other after distracting the Empire. Ketar had imagined that the Haldus Order was just a group that nurtured and trained telepaths.

But then the landscape had shifted one more time! The more Ketar learned about the Haldus Order the more it became clear that they also had some kind of secret technology. At that point, Ketar knew he could no longer afford to ignore the members of the Haldus Order and hope that Set would exterminate them. No, now it was imperative that he learn what kinds of technology the Haldus Order had. What better way was there to learn these secrets than to befriend the leader of the Order, Kalid?

Of course, Ketar had a few qualms. What if Kalid had fantastic powers and could read Ketar's mind or even take control of his mind? But, no, that could not be. If the Haldus Order had that kind of power they would not meekly hide in odd corners of the galaxy. Ketar felt quite confident that telepathy was just an alternative mode of communication....potentially a very useful mode, one that could allow Ketar to liberate Azur in the near future!

Ketar's plan was to form an alliance with Kalid and establish a working collaboration against Set by which Ketar could have access to Neurocom technology, that was, communication by neuronal means, telepathically. What if Kalid did not want to cooperate? Well, there were other options...the Haldus Order had been frightened into revealing the location of Flammis planet, which seemed to be a key research and development center the newly developed science of telepathy. Yes, if Kalid would not cooperate, Ketar had the power to take what he needed from the Haldus Order.

Still, things would go quicker if Kalid could be made to cooperate. A major challenge facing Ketar was that the science of telepathy obscured by a camouflage, a dressing of esoteric characteristics that had been built up over time within the secretive Haldus Order. Ketar, as leader of another centuries old secret organization, had a good idea of how misdirection could be used to protect important secrets. Katar's spy in the Haldus Order had reported that within the Order it was rumored that Kalid had been born with natural gifts for telepathic communication. One possibility was that secret Haldus Order technology was only an amplifier for innate abilities, a way for artificially extending an existing capacity for telepathic communication. If so, it became an important question: did everyone have telepathic ability or just a special few? Obviously, the answer to this question was a secret, but it seemed like the members of the Haldus Order believed that only a select few had telepathic abilities. Was that belief based on fact or was it misdirection? Working from outside the Order, Ketar's spy tentacles had probed this important question. Ketar's intelligence cells had found some evidence to suggest that there were natural variations in telepathic ability, some people naturally had more "mental power", but it seemed to be the case that a basic level of telepathic ability existed in the brains of animals and all humans. The important conclusion was: the Haldus Order tools for amplifying telepathy could be used by anyone, even Ketar! Although this was not completely sure, Ketar had already bet 100 to 1 that it was. It had to be! It was the only hope for him to complete, in his life time, his plans for liberating Azur.

So, it was no longer enough for Ketar that the Haldus Order use its secret technology in order to defeat Set. Ketar needed Kalid for a nobler purpose, liberating Azur from the grip of the Empire. Ketar wanted to make a favorable impression on Kalid's mind and trick him into sharing Haldus Order secrets. Kalid and the entire Haldus Order existed with a web of mysticism, therefore, Ketar had invited the best esoteric masters, wizards, occult science priests and mystics Azur to welcome Kalid. Ketar's goal was to feel make Kalid feel comfortable, then after that first meeting, just Kalid and Ketar would have a private interview in which Ketar would outline plans plans for cooperation against Set. Defeating Set would appear to be the heart of his plans, but that was not the main goal. If everything was done correctly, Kalid would not guess his real thinking. The main plan, defeating Set, would succeed thanks to a "surprise effect": the unexpected combination of Ketar's fleet of spaceships guided against Set's forces by Kalid and other telepaths of the Haldus Order. At that moment, as Ketar saw it, it could not fail. And most importantly, while Set was being defeated, Ketar would learn the secrets of the Haldus Order. Once Set was eliminated, the usefulness of the Haldus Order would come to an end and Ketar alone would remain standing, ready to turn the force of telepathy against the Empire.

Akara


After some hours, Thot and its occupants re-entered the known universe, from hyperspace. The two counselors removed their knots to the chairs and stood up. Through the windows of the spaceship and using a tridimensional observer they could see Akara's sun. Akara system was the solar system that had a planet where Ketar and his people lived. The sun was called Akara and the planet was the sixth one; his name was Azur. Azur planet had been almost completely terraformed; it was one of the first one to pass through that difficult process. It did not possess any native life so colonization was not troublesome at all. And now it was very small and had a small population too.

Leone observed Akara's 3D model before him, using Thot neural connection. It was a red giant that had absorbed four of eight planets in that system. Leone thought that Akara was a very beautiful star; his favorite color was red... Anyway, the red giant's color was orange. Red was its weak radiation but the real color was orange. He thought that yellow or white for a star was something very regular and boring, maybe a little old-fashioned. He knew he thought that way because he came from a binary system of two white dwarfs; he liked the variety of the universe. Now they were heading, slowly, towards Azur planet. It was paradoxical that this phase of the travel was the longest. Hyperspatial travel through 120 parsecs was a matter of hours, spent in de-materializing and re-materializing... Leone thought that the universal computer worked as a modem, in this case. However, it was usually a matter of weeks to get to the planet, from inside the same star system. That was because, at this stage, they could not use hyperspace anymore, they had to rely on antimatterical engines. This technology received the name of Antimatterics, an overcomplicated or at least far-fetched name, according to Leone. And non-musical either. After two days, approximately, they would be in Azur.

Leone spent his time studying data about that solar system. It was as having two free days to learn something interesting. Although watching the stars was good, doing it after many decades of hard work was not pleasant now. And his brain needed data. He needed to distract from the matter at Flammis; it had spoiled his spirit. Therefore, he searched for it in an encyclopedia who broadcast from several star systems, including Akara. He connected to it and started to find information about the star. Leone read all the key information to discover and distinguish it. He then read where its name came from, when it had become a red giant and how half the planets were eaten by the star. He even read about mystic (and weird) explanations about that fact, which had happened millions of years before. After some time, he got to the inhabited planets section, where he found Azur.

Azur. Planet orbiting around Akara star. Devoid of life in the surface, if it had any, after Akara became a giant red, 5 millions of years ago; Azur received many deadly radiations that altered the atmosphere and made life impossible there.

The new inhabitants of the underground cities, who came from another star systems, constructed a huge main city called Azur, as the planet. They also build many small surrounding cities, communicated to Azur by means of underground highways. From certain points of view, life on the planet did not change much for its inhabitants. The engineers and scientists designed a new system to simulate weather down there. Thus, they could have some surface-like chaotic systems like rain or snow. However, they never simulated their own star. As Azur had always been a planet with several, contradictory political factions, there was a new struggle between those people who were in favor of the artificial weather and those who were against it. There was a ruthless war and after many years of fighting, they were granted independence. The result of the armistice was that both populations could never contact each other in any way; not even the slightest way of commerce or electronic contact in the global information network. Azur planet was divided in 2, at least in the underground. For an external observer, at that time, there was 2 economic and politic blocks or parties that could not contact each other: the 2 worlds in the underground, which went to opposite sides, called Azur and Rugo.

2 days later
At last, the great day came. Ketar ordered their people to calculate the day for Leone's arrival, giving him a day of staying in Flammis. The team informed him that Leone would likely arrive that very day. Thus, if everything had been as expected, his plans would succeed. At that moment, he called a relative of his, who had a key role in the government, to comment the good news. But nothing had prepared him for what was about to pass.

"Sir, I ask permission to speak freely" Orchard, the boss of servants and personal secretary of his majesty, Ketar.

"You may speak" Ketar said, using an impatient tone. His gestures and voice indicated that he had been giving orders during his entire life.

"Sir, we have a problem. There are enemies in our system."

"System? Inside the network? Explain yourself."

"Nnn.. No, inside Ak... Akara system." Orchard said, anxiety and anguish did not let him express himself correctly. He knew he had to have already been aware of current situation and had destroyed the ship. Nevertheless, he had failed.

"Thanks for informing me. You know what you must do." Ketar sentenced.

"We are already doing that. As soon as I knew about this, I gave specific orders to neutralize them and, if possible, to destroy them..."

"Good job. But, how do you know they are enemies?"

"Our sensors indicated that the spaceship (it is only one) emitted signals the same way as the fleet we had some trouble some time before. The one possessing special capabilities, different to everything we know about."

"Oh, yes. The technology which was forbidden by the Empire, as soon as they detected it... I remember now. But, do not destroy the ship! I have always told you to ask me before acting, in such delicate matters, at least... So, send a counter-order. I want my troops to neutralize the enemies, not to destroy them. It is completely necessary to capture that spaceship in order to replicate the technology, (even if forbidden, he added to himself). Now go!"

"All right, sir."

His secretary crouched all he could and then he got out from the room, leaving Ketar alone. It is an emergency situation, Ketar thought. Moreover, now that Kalid was going to get to Azur, he needed all guarantees for his life. This new technology had turned to pieces many of his personal guard ships and could have even killed Ketar, if he had not fled, just in time. He never knew who was using that forbidden science; the most probable was that it was Set, his nemesis. But, when that incident had occurred, he was not at war with Set. They both had engaged in war before, now Ketar wanted retaliation for the attack. After a cruel and fast war, they signed a treaty of no aggression and even made a secret pact... but Set never accepted he was the initial aggressor. Ketar wanted to resume the war at all costs after some time, but the Empire intervened and, compared to it, Ketar was just a political leader, he could never compare with the mighty Emperor. Ketar was threatened with jail and a later judgment for "war crimes" (as if war were not a crime) for aggression against Set in times of peace. Besides, Azur would suffer horrible consequences; it would be degraded to Slave planet and Ketar would lose his job as head of the Antiquist Party. Ketar could risk a frontal war against Set, but never against the Empire, so he had to accept the peace.

Ketar decided he had taken the right decision, that time. Now it seemed that aggressions were coming back... He would inform the Empire, after taking the spaceship for his own use, of course, and maybe he could create an accident, in which the spaceship was destroyed... using another spaceship as dummy. The good news was that he could have the exact time to replicate its technology, in case his scientists were really good. And they were, hired from the best formal and not formal education systems in the Galaxy. For the moment, they would have to capture the ship and only then he could invent a strategy. Ketar turned his computer again and asked Orchard an instant report of the situation there, with real time data from the spaceships sent against the enemy. He watched. "Only three ships!" he thought. Orchard was so idiot that he underestimated a type of ship that had tricked an entire fleet. Maybe he would have to remove his secretary from his role, in case that ship could not be captured. Removing meant death, in those circles, although nobody knew it. Ketar observed the screen closely, that ship would have to be his...

He was observing three spaceships making attacking maneuvers around the enemy and they were shooting antimatter projectiles. It was unbelievable that those ships had not already destroyed the enemy ship. But, "how incompetent! what had happened with the counter-order?" Ketar thought, enraged. He read all the text shown on the screen and understood it all. The transmission was not live, they were transmitting from the start of the attack. Now Ketar knew why there were only three ships attacking. After some time, another three entered the battle. As soon as they entered, they seemed to have received the counter-order because they started attacking with destabilizer force fields. These fields had two primary purposes: they damaged the ship propulsion system, not its weapons, and made its crew to pass out. Ketar had no idea how a force field could achieve both things at the same time, but it worked.

Ketar kept on watching... it was a boring situation to watch, normally the spaceship was destroyed at least, but this time they could not make it. It was like watching one of those 3D films of old, where the spaceships even emitted sound in interstellar space! Well, this was real, at least. So now, the six ships had to wait until the enemy surrendered using radio communication or they would have to wait until they completely destroyed the weaponry, in order to take possession of the ship without further trouble. Ketar played with controls, they gave him a 360 degrees view in all 3 axis. He combined the information received from the ships with the detection points set in the near space. Ketar was obsessed with surveillance, it was one of the reasons why he had succeeded as head of the Party and had been elected for all his life, apparently, although very few knew about this; most people thought his job was temporary, that someday he would abandon it, but Ketar would never make it until he had achieved his goals. He moved the controls again using his advanced skills and made a zoom, focusing on the spaceship... he wanted to see who his enemy was. He watched it closely, looking for a logo or identification of some kind. He found an L on prow. How curious, he thought, an L, just as the spaceship from... "What? It cannot be!" That symbol could only mean one thing. Leone's personal spaceship. After that, he found the symbol of the Antiquist Party, there was no doubt. They had ordered the attack to the very ship he was preparing a welcome! But what? Were they all blind? Anyway, Leone did not matter, there were plenty of people like him but Kalid... Kalid was key in his politics game.