The Awakening (The Hyperscape Project Book 1)

by Donald Swan

  “Sounds like a giant safe door unlocking,” Nick commented.

  “That’s what I was counting on.” Arya stepped back with a smile, confident that they would soon be in the secret Royal Vault.

  Another set of gears began to grind somewhere outside the metal walls.

  “That seems like a good sign. The door should open any moment.” She readied herself to go through the door as soon as it opened. “This has to be the door to the vault, right guys?”

  A creak in the ceiling made her glance up. “Frek!” she screamed. The ceiling was slowly lowering, moving terrifyingly closer with each second.

  “Holy—“ Nick instinctively pointed his gun at the ceiling.

  “Like that’s going to be any freking help at all!” Arya shouted at him.

  Karg raised his four arms up and pressed them firmly against the metal that was marching down on them. His muscles flexed as he tried to slow the encroaching ceiling. The strain was abundantly clear in his clinched jaw. Karg’s face tightened more as a bead of sweat rolled from his forehead. “Don’t know how long…I…can…do…this,” he whimpered, his legs trembling from the effort.

  “Yeah, well, buddy, big guy, it’s not working anyway,” Nick said as he frantically looked around the room for an off switch.

  He glanced over at Arya. She was busy punching symbols on the panel. Nick hadn’t even noticed the grid of symbols before. He moved to take a closer look. The symbols appeared to be a keypad, and the millions of machines in his head confirmed it. The translated values appeared before his eyes. Numbers. A glance above the keypad revealed a symbol that defied translation. To the right of that was a short line, followed by a dot, followed by three more short lines.

  “Do you know what these mean?” Nick asked, pointing to the row of symbols.

  Arya was still frantically punching different key combinations. Each time she punched a sequence an error buzzer sounded. “No idea. I suspect it is something that is only revealed to highest members of the Royal Court. I’ve never seen them before.”

  One glance at Karg let Nick know they were in a losing battle. No matter how hard Karg strained, he couldn’t slow the ceiling’s relentless march downward. His muscles quivered under the enormous force.

  “Buddy, you don’t look so good,” Nick mused.

  “No sket!” Karg roared then collapsed to the floor.

  Nick figured their weapons were probably useless, but what the hell. He ran to the other door and fired two rounds at the seam. The blasts ricocheted off the door and whizzed around the room, causing everyone to duck to avoid getting killed by the bolts of plasma.

  “Will you knock that off!” Arya yelled as she furiously worked to figure out what code would possibly open the door, or at least stop the ceiling, which was now a third of the way to the floor. “Nick! Get your arsk over here and help me figure this out!”

  Nick jumped to his feet and ran over to her in a semi-hunch. The ceiling was creeping lower and would soon block the access panel, cutting off any chance they had of saving themselves.

  “Okay, four lines and a dot. It looks like maybe the answer fits in these spaces. Like something-point-something-something-something. This dot could be a decimal point.” Nick studied the symbol directly to the left of the dashes. A circle with another symbol inside it. “Looks like Japanese to me. No, never mind, that wouldn’t make sense.”

  “Hurry up!” Arya frantically screamed.

  “Yeah, yeah!” he yelled back. “I got that part! You don’t have to remind me!”

  He stared at the odd symbol for a moment then tilted his head to look at it from a different angle. He wiped some of the dust off with his fingers, and badah-boom! The symbol suddenly made sense. “Pi!” he screeched. “It’s goddamn pi!”

  “What?! You’re hungry at a time like this?” Arya stared at him as if he’d gone loony.

  “No, not that pie. Pi. Only it’s shown here upside down.” He pointed to the symbol within the circle. “It’s one of the most important mathematical constants. The relation of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. But why would this panel have a symbol from Earth mathematics? Unless….”

  They both looked at one another and simultaneously yelled. “The prophecy!”

  Nick placed his thumb and index finger firmly on the symbol and twisted. “It looks like this may—” Click. The circle began to turn. Nick twisted it all the way around until the symbol was right side up, and then it stopped with another click. “There, now the symbol is right side up.”

  They both looked up. Nothing had happened. The ceiling continued its relentless march, inching down frightfully close to their heads. They were running out of time.

  “Wait! Okay, I got it now. The dashes and the decimal…it’s the value of pi!” Nick took his finger and pressed the buttons as he spoke. “Three-point-one-four-one.”

  A series of clunks emanated from deep within the structure, echoing around what was left of the diminishing room. Then silence. All three of them looked up. The ceiling had stopped just inches from the top of the panel.

  “Great God Awmighty!” Nick shrieked. “I thought I was gonna be a squooshed pancake!” He plopped down on the floor and rolled around for a moment, reveling in the fact that he was still alive. They were all still alive. He took a deep breath and smiled.

  Another clunk and Nick stopped smiling. His gaze panned around the room. “What now?” he said in a low voice.

  Suddenly, the door in front of him slid open. “Quick!” he yelled, motioning for Arya to go through. “Karg, come on! Let’s get the hell out of here!”

  Nick ducked through the four feet thick doorway into the next chamber, with Karg squeezing through right behind him. Arya was already marveling over shelves full of artifacts and manuscripts that lined the walls of the chamber. She threw her head back and released a scream of joy that reminded Nick of a large cat’s roar.

  “We did it!” she exclaimed. “The Royal Archives! It’s the most magnificent thing I have ever seen. I’ve dreamed of being inside the Royal Vault since I was a child. There’s enough in here to keep me busy for the rest of my life. Thousands of years of Arisian history.” She held out her arms and spun like a graceful ballet dancer as she took in the sight of it all.

  Nick smiled. It was good to see something bringing joy to her life. She had seen so much tragedy. So much bloodshed. He turned to look at the marvels that were never meant for his eyes to see. Cases full of objects filled the shelves in front of him. Jeweled crowns, royal scepters, all sorts of beautiful things. Down the row, books that looked hundreds, maybe thousands of years old were stored on shelves from floor to ceiling. What secrets could possibly be contained in their pages? He could only wonder.

  As he panned around the room, a familiar object drew his attention. Inside a glass case in the middle of the room, cradled by a special pedestal, Nick’s hyperspace probe sat like a museum display. The charred I.S.A. patch lay at the base of the probe, mounted right above the Arisian words The Prophecy of ISA. The sight of it made him feel his own mortality, right down to his bones. There was no denying it any longer. His probe and the patch on his arm had indeed ended up two thousand years in the past. Just thinking about it made his head spin.

  But what if…? Nick yanked at the patch on his arm. The Velcro let go with a loud shook! He held his patch up to the charred one in the display and compared the two. There were no discernible differences between them. He slid the strap of the heavy pack off his shoulder and dropped the bag down onto the floor with a thud. Rummaging through the bag, he managed to find a lighter of sorts. The small device was apparently designed to start a fire, not in the same way as a good old lighter from home, but it would work fine for what he had in mind. He pulled a knife from the backpack and proceeded to hold it over the flame of the lighter until it got good and hot. Quickly picking up his patch, he pierced it with the hot knife. The synthetic fibers melted away, leaving an oblong hole about three quarters of an inch long. Once agai
n, he held the patch up to the one on display. If at some point his patch was going to travel back in time, then this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to study this peculiar type of paradox. If he damaged his patch, the one in the case would have to miraculously change also.

  He looked at the patch in the case. Nothing. No change like there should be, theoretically, anyway.

  “Nuts!” he muttered, disappointed that there was no change in the patch from the past.

  “What?” Arya asked from across the room.

  Nick stood there, shoulders slumped, eyes on the patch in the display. “It should have worked. I don’t understand.”

  Arya came to stand beside him. “What should have worked?”

  Nick was so engrossed in the failure of his experiment that he was surprised to find Arya standing next to him. He flinched at the sound of her voice so close then glanced in her direction. “If my patch traveled into the past, then this hole I just made has to show up in the one in this case. But it didn’t.” Nick rubbed the back of his head and continued to gaze at the patch in the case.

  Arya stared at the hole in the patch. “Unless you journey back to a time before you made the hole and cause the you from that time period to travel back two thousand years into the past.”

  Nick sighed as he slumped a little more. “You had to go and say that. Now I’m more confused than ever.”

  Arya leaned around the glass case to take a better look at the probe. “At least you found the probe. Why don’t you see what you can find out from the probe’s data while Karg and I figure out how the hetek we’re going to get all of this stuff to the ship?” She patted Nick on his shoulder and walked away, leaving him staring at his patch and mumbling.

  Arya caught up with Karg halfway down the long room. He was studying. Not the objects in the room, but the room itself.

  “Do you notice anything about this room?” he asked as Arya strolled up to him.

  “Haven’t really looked at it, Karg,” she answered.

  “It reminds me of the inside of an Arisian ore freighter, only much cleaner. With the exception of the reinforcements to the walls and the shelving, this looks exactly like the cargo hold of the one I was on as a refugee.”

  She shook her head, her green hair swinging behind her. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen the inside of one.”

  Karg’s brow lowered in thought. He surveyed the ceiling for a long time then moved his gaze to the far end of the room. “I wonder?” Looking ever more intrigued, he ambled off down the aisle of books.

  Curious, Arya followed along behind, trying to figure out what he was up to. At the far end of the long rectangular room, a door came into view. Arya leaned to see around Karg as they neared the end of the room.

  Karg walked up to a panel positioned to the right of the door and pressed a button.

  The door slid open with a familiar zip, revealing exactly what he had expected to find, a corridor with several doors on either side and one at the far end. He glanced around. Nothing looked out of place, nothing threatening. He stepped one foot inside the door and stopped. After the incident with the crushing ceiling, he would be wise to exercise caution. He slowly made his way down the hall, checking doors as he went. Crew quarters, kitchen, all the things he remembered from his stay on an ore freighter. Finally, they reached the end of the hall and the last doorway.

  “Karg, I don’t understand. This looks like a ship, but it’s inside a mountain,” Arya said as she gazed at her surroundings.

  “Exactly.” Karg pushed a button on the wall, and the door responded by sliding open.

  Arya peeked under Karg’s arms at what was beyond the doorway. “It’s a cockpit! This is a ship!”

  She pushed her way past him and into the pilot’s seat. She flipped a switch on the instrument panel, and the opaque windows of the cockpit instantly turned transparent. Arya stared in awe at what lay beyond the forward window. In front of them lay a short tunnel, even taller and wider than the vault room itself. She cocked her head as she looked at the end of the tunnel. It was a solid rock wall. “How the frek did they get this ship in here?”

  “They must have carved out this cavern and built the ship inside.”

  A shout came from the other end of the corridor. “Karg! Arya! Where the hell are you?”

  Arya spun around and saw Nick stumbling into the corridor. He looked even paler than normal.

  “Whew! Wow! You guys scared the crap out of me. Next time tell me before you go walking off like that.” Nick noticed the cockpit Arya sat in. Looking thoroughly perplexed, he stepped inside the room. “Whoa! Talk about a ship in a bottle!” Nick gazed out of the windows at the tunnel.

  Arya smiled as she saw the wonder in Nick’s eyes. Sometimes he was like watching a child in awe of the world around him. It seemed like he was marveling over some new thing every day. How could she not have a warm place in her heart for this odd man-creature?

  “I think we may have found a way to get all of this stuff to the ship. Now if we can just figure out how to get it out of the tunnel.” She turned her attention back to the console. She needed to check the primary systems. Hopefully, everything was intact and fully functional. “Did you find out anything from the probe?”

  Nick pulled his gaze away from the windows and looked down at Arya. “Hmm? Oh, that’s why I was looking for you. I was able to access the data and I know how the patch ended up in the past. It’s not my patch.”

  Arya stopped what she was doing and looked up. “What do you mean it’s not your patch? Whose patch is it then?”

  “I don’t know yet. It’s going to take time to recover the data. Something caused a lot of damage to the probe. I found out that another ship from earth had recovered the probe, but the ship became trapped in a gravity well. The ship was out of control and spinning down into the well. In a last ditch effort, the pilot tried to open a hyperspace window to escape. The velocity and spatial distortions forced the vehicle into the side of the window, where it was destroyed. Before the ship was ripped apart, the probe was thrown clear of the ship. It traveled through the window and into the past. The patch and the probe were probably the only things that your people were able to recover.” Nick’s mouth pulled down at the corners as he lowered his head.

  “What’s wrong? That’s good news, right? It wasn’t you,” Arya said reassuringly.

  “Yeah, but chances are I knew the pilot. Probably that gung-ho Spaceforce pilot that the military wanted to use for the mission in the first place. It also means that the probe never made it to Earth. The only good thing is…that the other ship and its technology were destroyed. Maybe Earth will be reluctant to send another one after the first two disappeared. At least there won’t be two hyperspace modules the Mok’tu can chase down.”

  Arya placed her hand on Nick’s arm in an attempt to comfort him. “Maybe we can try again. We do have the probe, after all.”

  Nick nodded in agreement. “Yeah, it needs a lot of work, but I can probably get it flight-ready again. But first….” Nick gazed out the window at the tunnel.

  Arya grinned. “We have to attend to our current dilemma.”

  Karg interrupted. He’d been studying a screen in front of him for some time. “I think I may have something. Look at this. See the metal tracks on the ground stretching from the ship to the end of the tunnel? They actually appear to extend into the rock wall. I was able to scan the surface of the wall and, just like outside, there are crevices, grooves cut all the way around the wall at the edge. At first, I thought it was just remnants from the tunneling process, but the tracks make me think otherwise.”

  “Are you saying what I think you are saying? The wall is actually a door?” Nick questioned.

  Arya whipped her head around to look at the wall again. “Is it?”

  Karg shrugged. “Could be.”

  Nick peered over the instrument panel. “Karg, what’s that down there in front of the ship?”

  Karg used the ship’s scanner to pull up
the area Nick indicated. “It’s…uhhhhh…I don’t know what it is. It’s some sort of sled with two Kessler engines mounted on it. Those engines produce enough thrust to move a—”

  “Mountain!” Nick exclaimed.

  “Yeah, I think you’re right.” Arya searched the console. “I bet there are controls for it here somewhere.” She paused over a small section of controls on the panel then glanced at Karg. He gave her a quick nod. She reached down and pressed the center button.

  Outside the ship, the two engines on the sled came to life. A blue glow illuminated the cavern as a swirl of dust blew over the windows. A low roar vibrated up through the floor, and the sled began to inch forward. Nick could feel the power all the way to his knees.

  Arya watched the readout in front of her. “It’s on automatic. The engines are just above idle.”

  The sled picked up speed, slowly moving toward the end of the tunnel. The team watched intently as it neared the wall. Clunk. The front of the sled bumped the wall and came to a stop, engines still idling. Nick let out the breath he’d been holding. He had expected something more to happen.

  The intensity of the blue glow coming from the engines quickly increased and so did the roar. Dirt blew violently, whipping around the cockpit like a tornado. Through the dirt, the glow of the engines dimmed but remained barely visible.

  “The engine’s thrust is climbing. Eighty thousand ketras,” Arya yelled above the noise.

  “Yeah, I figured that one out on my own,” Nick said sarcastically. “Is it me or is the glow getting farther away?”

  Karg looked back down at his console. He had been so engrossed in watching the spectacle, he’d forgotten about the scanner. “Yes! The wall is moving!”

  As the sled pushed the wall further down the tracks, the vortex of dirt began to calm and they could see the massive block of stone slowly accelerating down the tunnel away from them.

  “Holy smokes!” Nick exclaimed. “This tunnel must lead to the other side of the mountain.”

  The block continued its course away from them, gaining speed as it went. It moved along the rails, gliding through the smoothly cut tunnel, the engines roaring at full power. Suddenly, a shaft of light streamed in from hundreds of feet down the tunnel as the massive stone block flew out of the passageway and crashed to the canyon below. As soon as the sled cleared the opening, the engines shut down and the contraption tumbled down out of view. All three of the team sat with their mouth open. A two hundred foot, solid rock door just blasted out of the side of the mountain, leaving an exit tunnel for the freighter. Sunlight beamed through the settling dirt. In front of them, they could see the peak of a distant mountain range through the billowing mist.