The Ace of Spades Campaign - Alien Base part 09

Tara's Secret
The further away from sub level two that Tara got, the better she felt. She was lying on one of the square power-sleds with Judith and Rebecca accompanying her. As the elevator reached the submarine pens on the uppermost level, she protested, "Really guys, I feel fine. I can walk from here."
"Are you sure?" Judith asked, not entirely convinced.
Tara immediately stood up and nimbly stepped off the power-sled. She spun round and spread her arms wide.
"See?" she beamed, "I'm fine."
"Hmm," Judith said dubiously, "I'm still going to give you a full medical examination."

They reached the submarine that they had arrived in, which Judith knew had a fully functioning sickbay on board. Now that they could understand the Npurth language, Judith felt confident of being able to operate the alien machines that filled the sickbay.
"It'll probably be better if you remove your spacesuit first," Judith advised Tara.
"Okay, if you insist," Tara replied resignedly.

She stripped off her spacesuit to reveal a blue and grey synthetic weave survey scouts' uniform. Judith instructed her to lie on the examination bed and proceeded to run a series of diagnostic scans on the Auroran humanoid.
"You're perfectly fine," she announced after a few minutes. "Physically, you're in excellent health. I don't know why you felt so weak and tired before. Is there anything you're not telling me?"
"There maybe one thing that might explain it," Tara admitted after a moment's hesitation. "Let me ask you a question."
"By all means," Judith agreed. "Go ahead."
 "Are any of your crew telepaths?" Tara asked.
"Sure," Rebecca replied. "Danica, our Venetian scout is a telepath."
"That explains it," Tara answered with a knowing nod.
"Explains what?" Judith wanted to know.

"I'm an Auroran," Tara said as she stood up and began her explanation. "It is a little known fact but all Aurorans are natural inertials. We have the ability to reflexively neutralise psionic powers, with no conscious effort or will. Although inertialling was not unknown before, we were the first race ever discovered that specialised in it, even to the extent of never producing psionic individuals, just anti-psionic inertials. Most Aurorans are anti-telepaths, as I am. Fully one half of our population are anti-telepaths, the rest can negate either clairsentience, clairvoyance, ergokinesis, telekinesis or teleportation. Each inertial can negate one psionic discipline and only one. However, no one can negate biopsionics or metapsionics, probably because our race never encountered any predator that used these disciplines. You see, many of our planet's wildlife are psionic and over time our race gradually developed inertialism as a defence mechanism against them."
"Fascinating," Rebecca interjected.
"It is," Judith agreed, "but why did you feel so tired and weak?"
"The act of inertialling is mentally draining," Tara explained. "The more time I spend next to a telepath, the more tired I become. I've never met any Venetians before and so I didn't know she was a telepath but I suspected that one of your crew must have been telepathic. I'm sorry, I should have said something sooner."
"That's okay," Judith said with understanding. "I imagine it's not something you feel comfortable talking about with strangers."
"That's very true," Tara admitted. "I'm rather shy and not nearly as outgoing or as boisterous as most of my race are."
"So what are we going to do now?" Rebecca asked.
"Tara and I will stay here," Judith replied. "I want to keep her and Danica away from one another as much as I can. You return to the others. We'll be fine in here. Give me a call if any of you need my help. Now go."
"I will," Rebecca said as she headed out of the room. "Take care."
Alien Base Sub Level 3

The elevator descended to sub level three of the alien base and Storm, Danica, Lynda and Smiley from The Ace of Spades stepped out, accompanied by engineer Johan Hensler of the DSX Timothy scout ship and Chembles, the Pnarm mollusc chemist. On three of the four walls in the elevator room was an open doorway, leading north, east and south. The floor was spotless, free from litter and debris and there were no gun turrets visible.
"We'll go north first," Danica said as she prepared to take point. Lynda sent Smiley scooting ahead of the Venetian. The short, well lit corridor ended in an empty foyer that showed a large double door, about eight yards wide taking up most of the length of the western wall.
The doors were not locked and opened to reveal a huge auditorium, even bigger than the zoo found on the level above. The entire room was strewn about with large pillows, six feet in length and three feet wide. The floor sloped up towards the west, as did the ceiling, thirty feet above them. The entire room felt like it had been tilted fifteen degrees from true. A computer terminal in the centre of the floor by the west wall was situated beneath a gigantic screen that practically covered the entire western wall. It was blank.
"I think we'll explore further," Storm announced. "If need be we can always return here later."
As they were about to leave, Lynda grabbed one of the pillows and added it to the power-sled.
"I'd like to analyse what it's made of when we get back to our ship," she explained.
Maybe the thought of  analysing the strange material of the pillows distracted Lynda or maybe she just got complacent in thinking the base was truly abandoned, but she forgot to send Smiley ahead to reconnoitre and instead, kept him with the party. Either way, it was a mistake. As they were about to enter the elevator room, two, metallic sounding voices cried out at them in the Npurth language.
"HALT! INTRUDER ALERT!"
"IDENTIFY YOURSELVES OR DIE!"

A pair of deadly-looking armed and armoured sentry robots faced them. Obviously the base was not fully abandoned or deserted.
"Oh, shit!" Storm murmured.