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Wolf's Daughter - Ch. VI


Pakkrat

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Wolf's Daughter - Ch. VI
by Pakkrat

VI. Caius Hellstrom, immediately following the chase encounter with Wolfsdottir, Magister Magna Pakkratius and the yet-unnamed Jenquai Explorer accomplice, dispatched elements of Sentinel ships to each of the known wormhole wefts. These locations were the most stable artificial wormhole arrival points in human space. Having seen his prey disappear before his eyes thanks to the hated Jenquai psionics melded with their strange technology, Hellstrom decided to dedicate some of his assets to cover each weft until Sabine Order property was recovered. There was no SolSec restriction to staking out each of the wefts and he dared anyone to protest. There was only one weft left he had trouble sending craft to cover, Maeldun's Weft over the Jenquai homeworld, Kailaasa.

It was there that the Magister focused the attention of his remaining forces. The chase was on and Caius knew that the odds were good that the trio of wanted culprits would seek egress as far from the Progen-dominated sectors. With a Jenquai Explorer in the lead, the Magister was betting on Jenquai space. He would chase the three to the frontier to complete his mission if it called for such. This was his mission, his moment to shine before Magna Vinda. No Jenquai Explorer would be match enough for the Sabine Order Sentinels.

The brazen of the trio to defy a Sentinel checkpoint in Altair III, then the escape from Detention Center Onorom under the ignorant Centuriata, was enough to make Hellstrom sick with anger. He wanted the head of Wolfsdottir and the treasonous Magister Magna Pakkratius. He would lay the Doctor's head on the hangar deck of NET-7 SOL, the Saturn space station for newscorp to warn them never to become involved in Sabine business again. Finally, Hellstrom meant to write a report to deny the future Call Forward of Pakkratius' genome. Loyalty to the Republic must make example of this renegade Sentinel.

* * *

Joo Li meditated en route through Beta Hydri solar system, through the Sirius quadrifons gates to Capella. Her emotions had come loose and she meant to gather them under control. Her plan had been flawless and would have worked in minutes as the Folding Chain shunted the AWOL Wolfsdottir back to Jenquai Space. Now this would take more direct and forceful action. The girl's ship would have to be incapacitated and her emergency life support pod tractor beamed from the ship. Meditation complete, Julie had her goal adjusted and her means planned. The Sha'ha'dem and the white Sentinel helping Wolfsdottir would require incapacitation swift and sweet.

The Ken'shao now knew that the Sabine Order would soon begin to penetrate Jenquai space. She also was being denied her own wormhole service by the Sha'ha'dem, who publicly wanted nothing to do with this affair despite the involvement of one of their own. Grandmaster Vitaes, she now learned his identity, was behaving on his own recognizance or so they claimed. The Explorers had denied, wisely, docking privileges at Paren Station over Kailaasa. Though the Sabine Order were chasing Wolfsdottir, they must have had different reasons for wanting her. Julie had to guess that they were trying to prevent the Shinwa Defenders from seeking war reparations and potentially regaining the loyalty of the exiled Mordana. Such reunion of Shinwa and the dangerous Followers of Mordane would tip the balance of military might in human space. She decided that the Progen feared such a new gathering of Jenquai might.

No longer would the Progen be able to strut around Jenquai stations with such bravado. No, they would be the ones to walk on eggshells and carefully about the Jenquai. Even the Terrans would kow-tow to do business with the combined technologies of the reunited Jenquai. Who knows? Maybe even the Cenovar Warlock Engineers and Artificers might return from their self exile. Julie felt she might be the one to make this happen with this one mission's completion.

Entering Yokan sector, Ken'shao Joo Li took the safeties off her Defender craft's weapons.

* * *

Though they had lost precious lead from the forces chasing them, Pakkratius was grateful for the chance to rest and put down the stressors of the previous days. He could see the reasons for such a hunt coming from the Sabine Order and from the Shinwa Defenders. Each had something to gain or recover. It was the First Charge of the Sabine Order and the nature of the Reclaimers to recover the genetic materials belonging to the Progen Republic. With such a strange and yet humane meld of Progen and Jenquai genes, there was much to be learned from gleaning this new genome from Wolfsdottir. It would only cost her her life.

The Shinwa would bring the warchild to SolSec courts and again pressure the Progen Republic to pay war reparations, perhaps even more than that if they recovered Wolfsdottir alive. If the Defenders knew what the Sabine would do to the girl in the Call Forward, they would scream murder of one of their own. She would create such sensation that even the Terrans might become involved.

It was the story of the year and yet Pakkratius felt it wrong to transmit to even his employers at Net-7 News. This was personal, personal to the girl, personal to those immediately involved. Careers were on the line. Reputations of those hunting the companions were being tested. Factions were competing for the cutting edge in this affair. To put this in the public eye seemed only to feed the hungers of all.

With the denial of docking at Paren Station, the Sentinel now knew that there were those who would want nothing of this situation to taint their own public relations. Perhaps it was wise then of the Sha'ha'dem to stay aloof, even with one of their own in jeopardy. Keeping some Factions out of this was the first smart move in this adventure. If the Centuriata had become involved, it could pit Warriors against Defenders over a little girl. The Terrans would be laughing all the way to the bank as sides bristled again for more war.

These thoughts weighted heavily on Pakkratius as the trio left Tokai Saikatsu Station on Dahin Planet the next morning. Following the lead of Grandmaster Vitaes into orbit above the fiery mining world, they took a path across the sector without taking the usual spacelanes navigation bouys. The Sentinel noted that freewarping, flying in a straight line to a sector stargate instead of using nav-paths, was a technique that his younger clone brother had used to avoid detection on his adventure. But with the advanced sensors of the Jenquai technology, Pakkratius had little confidence in the techniques in stealthily crossing the sector undetected. The Grandmaster took them in an odd zig-zag route across the sector. It crossed the sector by passing near to the planetoid moon Hau.

"Look!," said Dot who was in formation with the other two. But she was gazing out her starboard side viewport. Using her Telescopium device she magnified the image and shared her scanner range with the others. "It's beautiful!"

Pakkratius looked at the connected monitor as his ship was furthest away in the formation. It was the most massive specimen of space fauna he'd ever beheld. It had large, luminous wings and glowed from every surface a white light. It was a translucent to transparent creature with two curving antennae. Completely white and greater in size than a capital ship, Pakkratius could see that the life form was gliding about in a massive field of crystalline asteroids. Occasionally the creature would stop and consume a small portion of the crystal and break it into smaller parts as it 'chewed'. Through out the massive form, bolts of electricity flowed from head to fanned tail, wingtip across to wingtip. The Sentinel supposed that the flow of such massive electromagnetics might be analogous to human blood.

The huge abdomen of the creature was distended and the companions could see that this creature was expecting offspring. Being that the angelic creature was transparent yet solid as crystal, tiny and encapsulated versions of smaller, similar creatures rode inside.

"It's a she," said Wolfsdottir.

Vitaes answered with an Explorer's objectivity, "The Sha'ha'dem call them 'voltoi' and this specimen is the largest we have encountered. They are beings that we are beginning to suspect of some limited sentience. They communicate with their electrical bolts to each other and seem to have some semblance of family groups. When they grow to a certain size, they leave for other parts of the system."

"Has anyone ever made successful contact with them?" asked Pakkratius.

"All attempts so far have garnered only high-yield static," explained the Grandmaster. "Their communications are on waveforms on exponential powers beyond our transceivers can give or receive. Thus we get very intense garbled transmissions that are yet translated. And even then they show no pattern to syntax or structure."

Even at warp speeds, the group was able to see the white 'mother' for some time as they passed it and the planetoid moon Hau.

"It would be such a shame if such a magnificent mother Voltoi be *destroyed*," Vitaes suggested more to the entranced Wolfsdottir. Pakkratius noted that Vitaes stressed that last word at the girl. Was he trying to guide the girl from the Kaojin ideology?

The Sabine smiled quietly in his vessel. The trio stopped to let their ships' reactors recharge as freewarping was hard on many power plants. Soon though, they were underway, again by direct free warp, to the sector stargate to Kitara's Veil.
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