The large half-Oponi knelt only a stone’s throw away from Nea on the ground of polished black marble. Next to her were a group of officers, in dark blue uniforms. The blond woman who Nea had seen before now descended the steps of a low couple of stairs, where a huge and splendid throne rose. Two young girls, dressed in plain white, accompanied her. They wore red pillows on their arms. On one glittered an elaborate diadem, on the other lay a short commander’s hand of polished wood, with golden rings embedded. The blond woman took the glittering hoop and put it on the hair of the warrior, which was woven with golden ribbons. Then she looked over the head of the heroine and stared directly at Nea. For a moment, she felt as if her heart would freeze when their eyes met. Her opposite was like her perfect twin. At the same time the world dissolved again. The expanse of the hangar, with its huge number of ships and the endless rows of troops, shrank together. It continued to shrink until it returned again to the small proportions of the chamber in which the mysterious sphinx was sitting.
With Nea still trying to process the experience, she did not notice the change, but the deep shadows began to grow around her. The room retreated into the night and daylight faded rapidly. Nea turned around and realized that the round window was shrinking behind her, like an iris that began to narrow. In a few seconds the opening would have completely disappeared. Suddenly, Nea was back in reality. Clear in her senses. She locked the helmet, closed the visor, and shot like a rocket towards the closing hole.
Chapter 8
Ogo, who was connected to the ship’s systems, registered a movement about eight thousand meters in the distance. It was an object of the size of a human being and headed away in a straight line from the world-jumper. Now he could again feel Nea’s emotions and her biodata came in, registered by the ship’s sensors. When Nea had entered the Fayroo, it seemed to Ogo as if she had disappeared into oblivion. Quickly he signal ed with a stare so Nova’s engines would go after the girl, to her rescue.
She left behind a silver strip that traced her whirling flight, which meant that a propulsion nozzle of her rocket unit was damaged. Caused by the one-sided thrust, Nea turned wildly around her own axis. Apparently, she was unable to complete her uncontrolled flight.
Ogo had trouble following his organic friend. He brought the Nova close to Nea, until the young woman, like a small rotating asteroid, rode beside the entrance hatch. He opened the lock, catching Nea by giving the ship a side move, and locked the hatch again.
It was only logical that Nea was thrown around the room. That her rocket bag was going to pieces and all her limbs were sprawled was a fact Ogo accepted. He knew that living creatures could be very tough. In any case, Nea always affirmed the superiority of people against any machine. It was only fair to give her enough opportunities to prove these claims. And judging from the biodata he received, there was nothing but a few harmless bruises she may have to suffer.
Nea could not move without suffering significant pain. Everywhere she had bruises and sprains. It was a real torture to pull off the space suit and slip into her pilot combination. She limped angrily to the bridge.
Ogo had put the ship back in position and finished the preparations for the gateway as Nea sank beside him in her chair. At first she wanted to pour out all her anger at her mechanical companion, but now all she could do was shake as she gazed at the gleaming gold ring. Mysteriously and quietly, the Fayroo shone in the black sky, as if it were nothing more than a harmless curiosity from a distant past. Gloomy and still, as if it had sunk back again into its sleep, which had already lasted for several millennia. Waiting and listening was probably the better description. The ancient power that lived in the Fayroo was certainly not asleep right now. For sure, the Kiray was still filled with strange intentions and mysterious, dark thoughts and was very active.
She could not make up her mind to leave the system immediately. Somehow, she did not like the fact that there was no visible reaction from the gate yet. Actually, it would have been more logical if it had sent out a swarm of guards to take her ship apart. Instead, everything remained quiet. She would have liked to use the hyper-drive and avoid any contact with the Fayroo, especially to the Kiray. But this system was far away from any civilized planet. And the next inhabited world was a full five days away, even for the Nova and its powerful machine. It was a sparsely populated planet at a technically underdeveloped level. The journey was too risky. Even if they made it, even slight damage to the ship could mean being stranded for months or even years at the edge of the known universe. Nea did not want to risk it.
Ogo connected the power supply to the hyper-drive engines and forced Nea to make a choice.
“Give me some more time,” she muttered. “I’m not a robot.”
Ogo sent her the picture of a snail, crawling across a leaf. “So much for organic superiority. I make decisions within nanoseconds.”
“Let me think!” Nea was annoyed.
She knew she had not seriously considered her journey into this abandoned system. The situation was more serious than she wanted to admit to Ogo. But Nea did not want to say goodbye so quietly and secretly, by disappearing through hyperspace. She started the sublight engines and moved the Nova forward. Meanwhile the robot entered the target coordinates and wanted to send them to the gate via the so-called prayer transmitter. In this way, even a robotic vessel could use a gate, which usually gets its information from an organic brain. But Nea held him back.
“Wait!”, she said, closing her eyes. She did not touch the aureanum plate on the console, which was normally necessary to contact the Kiray. “I will try something.”
She focus ed on the gate. Targeted all her thinking on it. In an inexplicable way, she thought she could establish contact with it without using any auxiliaries. After all, she knew that this was possible for some pilots. Nea had never tried it that way. She kept her mind fixed on the Fay and it finally elicited a reaction. It was as if a thick fog was suddenly cleared by a strong gust of wind. This moment lasted only briefly, then the mist tightened again.
“Sculpa Trax,” Nea breathed the words out more than saying them. “Home.”
Nea feared that they would simply be ignored or sent to a point far out of the galaxy. In any case, she had serious doubts about an unproblematic passage.
Ogo pushed the joystick forward and the Nova accelerated. Majestic and sublime, the gigantic ring grew to its frightening size. Something terrible could happen at any moment. Nea clawed her fingers in the armrest of her chair.
However, as many times before, the familiar feeling of being stretched into infinity captured Nea. When the tunnel opened and the Nova was dragged into it as by an invisible, powerful hand, Nea released her breath.
But just when she thought that nothing would happen, the cockpit suddenly trembled. The windows began to clink like glasses in the cupboard during an earthquake, and the plastic linings of the pilot’s carcass creaked. A voice that seemed to come from all directions, deep, full and yet very feminine, made Nea shiver. The color of her face changed. Words were bored into her head, making her skull swing like a bell.
“Never do this again!” The voice of the Kiray boomed angrily.
Nea was completely frozen and did not dare move. Her whole body was tense. Slowly, she looked at Ogo, who, as usual, followed his routine work and had obviously noticed nothing unusual. A few moments later he turned his head toward her.
“Some of your biodata have gone up,” he said. “Are there reasons to be worried?”
Nea stared at the bright streaks that glowed in front of the Nova’s window, the hypnotic color play of that mysterious dimension between the portals.
“I hope we get home safely,” she said dismayed.
But the Nova remained undisturbed, until after twenty-one hours the ship materialized in the normal space of the Sculpa Trax System . One of the nine gates, the Scutra System, had spit out the Nova. Now the ship was placed in the endless column of spacecraft that entered the port-world system from all part
s of the galaxy. Nea looked at the Fayroo from which they had just come through the rear optics monitor. Large and impressive, it stayed in front of the stars. Unlike the old Fay, in which Nea had her dangerous journey, this one was full of life and strength. Nea could feel the power of the giant golden ring. Never before had she been so aware of it as now.
Nea maneuvered the Nova out from the convoy of spaceships, whose endless stream spilled out of the gate and aimed at the inner planet of Scutra.
“What you’re doing is against the orders of traffic regulation,” Ogo warned in a monotonous voice.
“I do not care,” Nea replied. “The distance between me and a Fay cannot be big enough.” Satisfied, she watched how fast the big shining ring on the rear monitor shrank. “And do not worry,” Nea said, as if to herself. “I will not disturb any of you guys in your dreams again.”
Scavengers: Dark Dreams Page 4