BairnGefa
The Akashic Expedition
Book Four of the Carina Series
__________
By
Ruairí Cinéad Ducantlin
BairnGefa
Copyright © 2019 by Ruairí Cinéad Ducantlin
All rights reserved. No part of this publication is available to be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, without the prior written permission of the author.
Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction and provided exclusively for entertainment purposes. Which means the author made it all up with the hope of entertaining you, the reader. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and/or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Preface
Prologue
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Part Two
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Part Three
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Part Four
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Thank you!
My Friends Are Blue
Chapter One
Carina Series
Character Profiles
Crew Manifests & Planet Profiles
About the Author
Contact Ruairí
Books by Ruairí
Preface
“Knowledge is of no value
unless you put it into practice.”
Anton Chekhov
ᛌᚯᛚᛒ ᛐᚼᛂᛌ ᚡᚯᚱ ᛆ ᛍᛚᚤ ᛑᚯ ᛚᛂᚡᛌ ᛘᛆᚿᛂᚿ᛫᛫᛫
ᛏᚺᛖ ᛞᚫᛣᛊ ᛏᚺᚫᛏ ᛁ ᚲᛖᛖᛈ ᛗᛣ ᚷᚱᚫᛏᛁᛏᚢᛞᛖ ᚺᛁᚷᚺᛖᚱ ᛏᚺᚫᛜ ᛗᛣ ᛖxᛈᛖᛍᛏᚫᛏᛁᛟᛜᛊ ᚹᛖᛚᛚ ᛁ ᚺᚫᛒ ᚱᛖᚫᛚᛚᛣ ᚷᛟᛟᛞ ᛞᚫᛣᛊ᛫᛫᛫ ᚱᚫᛣ ᚹᛣᛚᛁᛖ ᚺᚢᛒᛒᚫᚱᛞ᛫᛫᛫
ᛓᚮeᛣᚮᚿd ᛐᚽe ᚽᚮᛕe. ᛓᚮeᛣᚮᚿd ᛐᚽe ᚠᛆᛁᛐᚽ. ᛐᚽeᚱe ᛁᛌ ᛙᚮᚱe ᛁᚿ ᛐᚽe ᛓᚮeᛣᚮᚿd. ᛁᚿ ᛐᚽe ᛓᚮeᛣᚮᚿd ᛁᛌ wᚽeᚱe ᛐᚽe ᚮveᚱᛚᚮᚱdᛌ dweᛚᛚ, ᚽᛁdᛁᚿg ᚠᚱᚮᛙ ᛐᚽe ᚱᛁgᚽᛐeᚮᚢᛌ. ᛚᛁve weᛚᛚ ᛆᚿd ᚮᛕeᚿ ᛣᚮᚢᚱ ᛙᛁᚿd ᛌᚮ ᛐᚽᛆᛐ ᛣᚮᚢ ᛍᛆᚿ ᛓᚮe ᛙᚮᚱe ᛁᚿ ᛐᚽe ᛓᚮeᛣᚮᚿd.᛫᛫᛫
ᛍᚮᚱᛒ ᛅᚾd ᛏᚼe ᛍᚮᛏeᚱᛁe ᛅᚱe ᚠᚮᚢᚾd ᛁᚾ ᛏᚼe ᛒeᛣᚮᚾd. ᛏᚮ ᚠᛁᚾd ᛏᚼe ᛕᛅᛏᚼ ᛏᚮ ᛏᚼe ᛒeᛣᚮᚾd, ᛅᚾd ᛘᚮᚱe, ᛋeeᚴ ᚼᛅᚱᛘᚮᚾᛣ ᛁᚾ ᛅᛚᛚ ᛏᚼᛁᚾgᛋ. ᛁᚾ ᛏᚼe ᛒeᛣᚮᚾd, ᛋeeᚴ ᛍᚮᚱᛒ ᛅᚾd ᛏᚼe ᛍᚮᛏeᚱᛁe. ᚼeed weᛚᛚ ᛏᚼeᛁᚱ gᚢᛁdᛅᚾᛍe ᛅᚾd ᛣᚮᚢ wᛁᛚᛚ ᛒeᛍᚮᛘe ᛘᚮᚱe.᛫᛫᛫
Deciphering the encryption above is not required to enjoy the narrative herein. Within this book are all the components needed to translate the cryptic. There is, on my website, a decryption page for those interested in a shortcut.
Please, read on, let the imagery fall over you while you consider the implications of universal harmony coupled with the ability to access the entirety of all known knowledge. Or not. It is, as always, your choice. The story continues now.
Prologue
ᛕᚱᚮᛚᚮgᚢ
“No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.”
Robin Williams
The crew of the Jaguar was delighted to be heading home. Giddy to be heading to Earth, to the Sol star system. Officially catalogued with the Core Registration Alliance, the Jaguar is classified as a scout and exploration vessel. In reality, the Jaguar is a modified fourth-generation attack fighter. Affectionately called The Jenny, the Jaguar is a battlecruiser.
It had been a little over a year since the crew had been in the Sol system and on Earth, an extraordinary year for the crew of the Jaguar. They had learned a significant amount in the preceding months. New information about the galaxy and its inhabitants. An ever-expanding litany of galactic history. Expansive data regarding the galaxy’s sentient beings and their technologies. Most importantly, the crew of the Jenny, the Coterie, had procured data indicating Earth’s human history was older and far more complex than commonly accepted.
Above all, the Coterie was ecstatic they were no longer fighting a prolonged running battle for survival.
Small, fast, and powerful, the Jaguar is the most potently armed interstellar ship in the galaxy. The hybrid striker-fighter, small-cargo hauler was dinged up and in need of repair. The crew planned stops at K’an for information and at Plentari for repairs before continuing onward to the Sol system.
In the year of adventure from Sol to Zerain and back, the Coterie had learned to fight and fight well. The Coterie also learned there were three methods of faster-than-light, FTL, travel. Four methods if you counted the ability to communicate across intersatellite distances in near real time via two specialized devices. One device initiated the communication request, the second device accepted the connection request, and the result was the creation of a micro-wormhole. The micro-wormhole is an FTL point-to-point communications link.
There were three known FTL methods used for transporting interstellar spaceships and their contents. Human contents or otherwise.
The first FTL method is available to all interstellar-capable spacecraft. It is known as the slipstream. The Jaguar is capable of tapping its onboard antimatter pile to create and enter a slipstream. The time needed to traverse interstellar distances in the FTL slipstream is measured in days, weeks, or months depending on the distance between the entrance to and exit from the slipstream.
The second, speedier FTL method is achieved using the hyper-tunnels. Created several millennia ago, the hyper-tunnels are a network of stable FTL passageways between star systems. The Coterie has acquired one of the highly coveted maps of the hyper-tunnel network.
When it enters the slipstream, the Jaguar merges into a dark matter tunnel. The same is true with the hyper-tunnels. The difference between the normal slipstream and a hyper-tunnel is twofold. First, time is distorted in the dark matter realm. Within the slipstream, time functions at a close to constant velocity. Time variance in the slipstream does affect the life-forms traversing the dark matter. The effect of time distortion is muted in the slipstream. Second, the hyper-tunnels have fixed endpoints. The entry and exit points of a hyper-tunnel are permanently positioned in relative space, which had an advantage. Entering the dark matter realm of a hyper-tunnel at a higher velocity will shorten the time required
to traverse the hyper-tunnel.
The quantum math required to calculate the hyper-tunnel velocity is one step short of magic and voodoo. Landry, the Jaguar’s onboard artificial intelligence, is capable of performing the quantum calculations. Landry is also responsible for posting the status clocks that represent either the time until the Jaguar enters into an FTL pathway or the estimated time for emergence from an FTL pathway.
Physicists used the letter c to denote the speed of light in empty space. Entering a hyper-tunnel at point-four c, .4c, would shorten the transit time by up to sixty percent. Another interesting aspect of the hyper-tunnels is their ability to create an infinite number of pathways. It is an attribute of the dark matter realm that each ship entering a hyper-tunnel creates its own lane within the tunnel. The quantum data analysis from the data pods acquired on Zerain was interesting. Physicists from across the galaxy and a millennium’s worth of analysis agreed on one point.
The dark matter realms are parallel realities.
The speediest FTL method is via the star-portals. Star-portals were installed by the Overlords a couple of millennia prior to the creation of the hyper-tunnels. Using fixed planetary locations, the star-portals allow almost instantaneous travel between star systems.
A few star-portals remain functional, but most of the star-portals no longer operate. Corb was able to travel from the Mayan temple complex Xunantunich to the planet K’an using one of the few active star-portals.
The planet K’an is where he met the Ch’en people and commenced the odyssey of becoming the Enlightened One.
The star-portals have a curious functional attribute. The less mass entering the star-portal, the faster the transit time. Using the star-portals, a human could travel light-years in seconds. The star-portal connecting Xunantunich with K’an required about ninety seconds of time to transit.
Conversely, the Jaguar requires two weeks when using its self-generated slipstream to reach K’an from Earth.
Interestingly, however, the Jaguar was constructed with a fascinating feature. The center of the main command bridge is a rotating triangular riser. At the points of the triangle were three command chairs. The Triad of Corb, Lucinda, and Janish occupy the command chairs. Any one of the three command chairs could be placed forward and center on the bridge. The command chairs also rotated to face the center of the riser. The Triad, when seated, collectively focused, and facing the center of the riser, is capable of pushing the Jaguar into the dark matter realm of alternate reality. The Jaguar’s crew refers to the exclusive feature as slipping.
Slipping the Jaguar within a star system was what kept the crew alive when they were attacked. While traveling to and from Zerain, the Jaguar had been attacked dozens of times. Slipping the Jaguar from a battle with the Ajawlil to a Lagrange point and a hyper-tunnel entrance had won the day on several occasions.
Ultimately, however, it was something far more powerful that saved the Jaguar and the Coterie.
In the center of the riser was a small impression of several interlocking symbols inside a circle. After much research and heated debate, the Coterie had filled the shallow impressions with platinum. The ancient design of interlocking symbols glowed with intense power when the Triad focused their abilities on the symbols.
The Triad has the ability to create a star-portal endpoint by using the ancient symbols.
Part One
Loss of Innocence
ᛚᚮᛋᛋ ᚮᚠ ᛁᚾᚾᚮᛍᚾᛍ
Chapter One
ᛍᚼᛆᛕᛐeᚱ ᚮᚿ
“Adopt the pace of nature:
her secret is patience.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Time to Emergence: 01:29:08.
“Ragnar, look at this!”
“What now, Cassandra?”
Ragnar and Cassandra were in their quarters, Cassandra coming off shift and Ragnar making ready for his duty rotation on the bridge. Cassandra had found another piece of knowledge that was exciting to her but universally mundane to the rest of the Jaguar’s crew. Unsure of using the star-portal, the Jaguar was traveling in the dark matter hyper-tunnels, headed to K’an and a long discussion with Doctor Tarmenik. Five weeks into a five-month trip, the hyper-tunnels were fast but not fast enough to keep the tedium from setting into the crew’s psyche.
“Ragnar do not be like that. You know this stuff fascinates me. Besides, if I can discover how to use the star-portal, use it safely, we will cut months off this journey. We were lucky to have survived the two times we pushed the Jaguar into a star-portal. From what I have read, we were especially lucky. We will learn to use the star-portal. If we can use the star-portal safely, it will get us home faster.”
“Do you assume the star-portal instructions are in the data from Zerain? You have been looking for weeks. Shouldn’t you talk to Landry about shortening the search?”
“I spoke to Landry. He is helping me. Ragnar, we have not yet loaded and indexed half of the data pods. Landry says, in earth terms, each pod is between six and sixteen petabytes of data.”
“Tell me again how much data that is?”
Pausing for emphasis, Cassandra was disappointed at Ragnar’s question.
“Ragnar, a petabyte is a …”
Seeing his smirk, Cassandra realized her lover was poking fun. Standing directly in front of a seated Ragnar, she silently waited for him to pull on his boots. Without moving, she waited for him to stand up so closely she felt the heat from his body.
After they embraced, renewing their love for each other, Ragnar stopped at the door and twisted with a serious look of consternation.
“Cass, have you thought about what we talked about a few days ago? Are you looking into that data for an answer?”
“Yes, love, I have thought about it. I will continue to search the data and I will speak to Corb privately. Yes, I agree, it is a worry that Landry never did tell us who the Overlords were.”
“Landry, how much longer will it take to complete the loading and indexing of the data pods?”
“Lucinda, the data pods are massive. They contain the entire history of this galaxy. Data covering more than three millennia. Loading the data is the easy part. Indexing the data, making it useful, requires time. The loading process will complete before we reach K’an. The indexing process will require another eighteen rotations.”
“Landry, we are no longer in Zerain. Please use Earth terms when speaking to the crew.”
“Certainly. The indexing will require an additional two weeks, fourteen days, to complete.”
“Thank you.”
Ragnar walked onto the bridge. Smiling, Lucinda jumped up and passed bridge control to Ragnar on her way out.
“Nothing to report. You have the con, Ragnar. Ping me if something comes up.”
Settling into his station, Ragnar hollered at Lucinda’s disappearing backside.
“Nothing changes in a slipstream, a hyper-tunnel, or the star-portal …”
Turning, Ragnar did something unusual for him. He started a conversation with Landry’s avatar.
“Landry, you are an artificial intelligence. You were not created by the K’an. Who created you?”
“The Overlords created my base matrix. The higher-order processing capabilities are augmented subprocesses derived from the Ch’en and Plentari.”
“Plentari?”
“Yes, the Overlords seeded the Plentari and Ch’en, and several other worlds, with the ability to create artificial intelligence. They gave them the ability to create artificially intelligent processors. To create an AI. The Ch’en and Plentari were decades ahead of the others when the Overlords decided to incorporate their technologies into my matrix.”
“Are you unique?”
“Yes. As far as I know, I am the original AI. There are others, but they do not possess the base matrix provided to me from the Overlords.”
NT and Nick arrived on the bridge to join Ragnar for the emergence into normal space.
“Landry, who were the Overlords?”
Landry appeared to ignore Ragnar’s question.
“Nick, the Lagrange points in the system we will enter are one thousand forty light-minutes apart. I have plotted and uploaded the sub-lightspeed navigation for you. I suggest we slipstream the Jaguar and enter the next tunnel at forty percent sub-lightspeed.”
“You are aces, Landry. Emergence in twelve minutes. Three tunnels down, three to go. No ambushes. Boring is good. NT, can the Ch’en fix the holes in our baby?”
“I am not sure, Nick. I will ask the Ch’en, but I suspect repairing or replacing the composite panels will require a skilled repair depot. We will have to stop at Plentari and possibly Kripkeni to repair the Jaguar. If you are worried about my repairs, rest easy. The Magic Fix-It-All Goop has not budged. Every patch is solid. The scorched panels are a bigger worry. We have checked, and we continue to monitor the affected areas, but none of the scorch marks created a dangerously weak spot in the panels.”
“Bloody brilliant stuff, that Magic Fix-It-All Goop.”
“Yes, Nick, it worked well. Ah, Michelle, to what do we owe your pleasant presence?”
“Jeez, NT, what’s up with your vocabulary?”
NT responded as Michelle sat down and strapped in. Along with wearing the protective jumpsuits, the positive habit of strapping in permeated throughout the crew of the Jaguar. Too many battles, and staying alive, in the Zerain system had changed their collective awareness. Any time they sat in their chairs on the bridge, each clasped their safety straps. Loosely clasped, but easily tightened when needed.
NT shrugged as he replied.
“I am a writer. I need to keep my mind fresh with new words and phrases.”
“Bullshit. Lucinda told you to be nicer.”
NT took the barb in stride and focused on his console. He too was fond of reading the new data being uploaded from the Xjaal data pods. Nick laughed before updating the time status.
BairnGefa- The Akashic Expedition Page 1