The Song of Sqia'lon Seven [Complete]

The Song of Sqia'lon Seven

The planet Sqia'lon was like many others in the unexplored galactic arm. It had first been cataloged by the Petharne'ac Concilium in the year 4207 U – Standard. The Petharne'ac race was renowned for its mapping of the inner spiral using the clear deep waters of their planet as liquid lenses for gigantic telescopes. Although they had never ventured off of Petharn into the vastness of space due to their fragile bodies, they had been the first race to communicate across the void with other intelligent beings and were considered to be the founders-in-absentia of the Union of Life.

Named after it's Petharne'ac discoverer, Amriq-tac Sqia'lon, the planet was well within the habitable region of its solar system with a surface divided roughly fifty-fifty between freshwater and land.

The crew of the earth vessel, Sun Searcher entered orbit around Sqia'lon and began mapping the various moons and rocks in orbit. There were Nineteen in all, and other than the two large moons, Sqia-lon One and Two respectively, the remaining bits of space detritus where small and of little interest.

What was of interest, immense interest, was Sqia'lon itself. The planet was inhabited, and not just by one-celled organisms or clumps of algae.

***

"Holy flappin' shithawks!" crowed Tom 'Trigger' McCabe. He tossed his ancient, leather cowboy hat up in the air and whooped, slapping his thigh in a 'giddy-up' bucking horse manner that the rest of the crew still did not really understand.

Stephanie Holland floated over to his station, retrieving his hat deftly as it flew by. She was smiling, for now, but as captain and leader of the mission, she was ready to reprimand the big spacer at a moments notice.

"What have you got, Thomas." She asked.

Some of the joy drained from his face and he looked at her petulantly. When he did this, he looked like a small child in a grown-up costume and Stephanie did not approve.

"Shoot cap, I told ya, call me Trigger, all my friends do..."

She smiled and ignored the request. "Come on Tom, what's got you so... riled up?" She dropped in the slang at the end for his sake and he smiled crookedly at her.

He spun the screen in front of him around so that she could see. They had dropped a ground mapping satellite upon arrival in orbit and now Stephanie was looking at their first close up images of the planet's surface.

She drew in a breath and clutched her hands to her chest in amazement, crushing McCabe's hat in the process.

"Careful Cap!" he squawked and pulled the hat from her grasp.

Stephanie did not notice, she was staring at the screen her eyes wide and her heart beating like a hammer in her chest.

Buildings, no not just buildings, skyscrapers and vehicles... my God, she thought, they have vehicles! Ground cars in pastel hues whizzed along white topped roadways. The city they were looking at was built in the midst of a giant mountain range and the streets and highways flowed over and through immense cliffs and valleys. Some of the buildings seemed to span enormous crevasses and roads were built right on top of them, using them as bridges and byways. Beings... aw heck... people milled around the buildings wearing mostly yellow and green clothing, although here and there were individuals who wore nothing at all. Their skin was purplish and the hi-definition camera feed left nothing to the imagination. They were so... well so human-looking it was uncanny.

"Jeeee-zus!" cried Trigger. "Look at the long-pointy titties on that one!"

Stephanie shot him a dirty look and he raised both hands in surrender.