In order to enter the Republican Palace, the crew arranges to be hired as
carnival performers. The final plan is an elaborate scheme of sheer lunacy.
Meliar plays a sharpshooter, Schriever the Sword Master. Kress acts on a
comedy team with Merlmer, who doubles as the trainer for K'yrth's
dreaded "Quagaar" monster. Ramirez rounds out the company as manager.
They arrive at the Republican homeworld in stock freighter carrying
K'yrth's fighter.
After a stunning display of athletic prowess, and a brilliant two alien
rendition of "Who's on First," the Quagaar breaks free from his cage. Just
then, the sonic grenades in the shooting targets also go off. Meliar also
accidentally drops several of the glass balls he was juggling, which
releases the knockout gas they just happened to have within them.
Meanwhile, the crew (previously immunized and earplugged) break out the
weapons from the bottom of the Quagaar's cage, and retrieve (daughter).
The President, mysteriously immune to the grenades and gas, manages to
escape to his suit of Combat Armor. The Eye of Wisdom, remotely
activated, arrives at the palace and literally blows the front doors off.
The crew race into the ship and blast into orbit, narrowly avoid Khoreen
pursuit.
Back at the Empire, Schriever and (daughter) are married. The crew are
given official ranks within the Imperial Fleet. Ramirez completes his
investigation of the Klarg Star's artificial intelligence: it was an Iraari AI
reprogrammed by the Kaa. It would remain dormant, until the ship received
a specific signal from a nearby Kaa vessel. At that point, the AI would activate,
and kill off the entire crew, either by nerve gas, or by blowing the living
quarters open to space. Imperial Bomb squads remove both the gas and the
explosives. Kress, having seen "2001," orders the AI be downloaded to a
separate mainframe, which is then less then surgically isolated from any
output device except an old tele-type printer. The crew activate it, and
question it at length, but it remembers nothing, and was horrified at the
code it would have executed. Merlmer nicknames it Rx-373b, and Kress
eventually downloads information about current history/politics for it to
peruse.
The crew also meet a Professor of Archeology, Anthony. Prof. Anthony claims to have discovered a Precursor Star Base in a nebula in inter-Alliance space. The crew agree to take him to revisit it.
Continue to Episode 6, back to Episode 4, or return to the Main List.