Nopileos frowned and pretended to think very hard. Of course, he knew exactly where Sissandras left his AutoBroker. "Tsssssssshhhh. Yes, I think I saw it in the control room of the Pride of the Ceo," he replied hesitantly after a while. Why did his Egg-Brother miss his AutoBroker now and not earlier? After all they had returned two Tazuras ago. Most importantly, why did he miss it at all? His program ran just as well on the main hatchery cluster computer.
"Is it switched on and connected to the network?"
"Of course." Nopileos had decided to answer his Egg-Brother's questions truthfully. However, Sissandras did not ask any more, he just looked very concerned.
Before Nopileos had a chance to ask what was the matter his Egg-Brother opened the door and entered the classroom. All the students had taken their seats and were examining the projections on the bench tops while the teacher explained the displayed graphs.
Lecturer Wohalimis interrupted his monologue and stared at the two brothers who hurried quietly through the room to their seats.
"Now look there!" Wohalimis shouted, "Colleagues Isemados Sibasomos Nopileos and Sissandras IV! What an honour that you decided to take part in this class after all!"
A low fizzling became audible and a few scale crests rose.
Sissandras wore a look so remorseful it was difficult for Nopileos to stifle snorting. "There was a small inconsistency in our project report that had to be discussed", Sissandras explained shyly.
"Colleague Sissandras", Wohalimis responded with flaring nostrils, "I certainly did not expect witless excuses from you. Be careful, I hope you will not be following the bad example of your Egg-Brother."
Sissandras waved his ears assiduously in acknowledgement. "Never, Sir!" he said firmly.
"Well, sit down then. Now to you …" Wohalimis turned towards Nopileos. "If I may appeal to your sense of responsibility, colleague. You are the most talented student of the institute yet still I observe questionable attitudes towards the goals of the Teladi Corporation. Would you please use your abilities to be a bit more profitable!" The lecturer felt like using harsh words but restrained himself.
"Sir, I really take the goals of the Corporation very seriously!" Nopileos affirmed solemnly. From the corner of his eye he noticed Hegebalios' dubious expression before he quickly turned his eyes down, twirling his right ear between his fingers.
"Alright, Nopileos, sit down."
Nopileos obeyed and nudged his brother with his elbow while taking the place next to him. "You are learning quickly, brother!" he whispered. Sissandras attempted to crush him with is gaze but remained silent.
Meanwhile lecturer Wohalimis continued his explanations. "Sirs, all of you will be aware of the significance of this information. Nividium production has always been, although profitable, a small branch of ore processing industry due to very limited resources. Now the picture has changed - in the near future we can expect scale scrapers and even squawk cubes to be made of Nividium!"
The class whispered excitedly as Wohalimis continued.
Nopileos, anticipating boredom had begun opening a few class-irrelevant texts on his screen, listening to the lecture with only half an ear until the mention of the word 'Nividium'. Seems my rumour has made it through to the class, he thought satisfied. No wonder everybody was excited and Sissandras missed his AutoBroker right now!
"The curious thing is that the Profiteroid has not been discovered by an independent prospector but by an automatic explorer of the PROFIT COMMUNITY of the TELADI NIVIDIUM INDUSTRY - PTNI. Overnight it has become the monopoly supplier to the whole known universe. Now imagine what that means for the shares of this company!"
Nopileos sat motionless on his bench; feeling like somebody had poured a barrel of egg yolk all over him. The lecturer continued obliviously with his talk but in Nopileos' ears his voice receded into the distance to the very edge of his attention. He just squinted at his Egg-Brother. Sissandras' forehead scale had changed to an unhealthy pale yellowish colour, a clear sign that he felt very uneasy. But why? He couldn't possibly know that Nopileos had ordered the AutoBroker to research the Nividium industry just before they had left the Boron spiral.
"And that is why there is no Nividium share left available on the market", he heard Wohalimis say, "neither those of PTNI nor any other company."
With trepidation Nopileos opened the data file displayed on all the other students' desks. There it was, written in grey on blue - a huge asteroid consisting of more than 85% Nividium had been discovered and officially registered. So the rumour he had absorbed and re-distributed so carelessly was not a rumour after all!
And … Nopileos closed his eyes, opened them again, and blinked a couple of times, but the information on the display remained unchanged. Just prior to the discovery of the Profiteroid an agent had bought every single available Nividium share.
The license number of the agent was that of Sissandras' AutoBroker.
CHAPTER 7
They're out there. They're waiting for us.
Nathan Ridley Gunne
Logbook of the Dragonfyre
"Just X and nothing else? Come on Elena, own up, that was your idea wasn't it?"
"Never, I swear!" A restrained giggle came over the comm-link, adding even more fuel to Kyle's already blazingly high spirits.
"Yeah, right," he replied, grinning like the proverbial Cheshire Cat. He cared for her a great deal, he loved her enthusiasm and he loved her single-minded focus. They had much in common, including a shared sense of humour. She was though, Kyle had to admit, a lot more organised than him. They'd known each other since she was barely out of her gangling teens, almost nine years ago. They had lost touch for a while, before being unexpectedly re-united as the crew of a two-seat interplanetary patrol ship. Those four years, times of danger and hardship, had laid the foundation of an unbreakable friendship. In his more wistful moments Kyle missed those times.
"T minus 15 minutes and counting." The voice of the mission computer broke the silence that had fallen after his last words.
Kyle had been sitting in the X-Shuttle's redesigned, but none too spacious cockpit for over two hours now and the light pressure suit was beginning to get uncomfortable. To take his mind off it he remembered the simulator flights he'd taken fifteen years previously to qualify to fly this type of vessel; a rolling, twisting pretzel of orbiting rings he had to fly through, all against the clock. He could do it almost in his sleep. This mission though, would be very different. The X possessed not only the revolutionary jump-drive but also an enhanced M/AM drive, making it accelerate several times faster than its civilian counter-parts.
"Hey Billy." Elena called over the comm, knowing the term would not help matters. "Your adrenaline levels are rising."
"That's because I was thinking of you, Lin." He dissembled smoothly. She did not reply, but he could picture her smile and her flashing eyes. It was these little exchanges that fuelled the persistent rumours, that he and Elena had engaged in a surreptitious affair.
A couple of times they had been close – awfully close. Only once they had slept with each other, after marooning on a remote celestial body with no apparent chance of rescue. They had needed each other to cling to while facing their certain deaths; and eventually, the mutual attraction had taken over. After they had been found and rescued, against all odds, none of them had ever dared to bring this up again. Not once. It was something both regretted at different times but in the end each valued their friendship too much to gamble it away on the vagaries of the human heart. It did not stop them from gleaning amusement from the rumours they occasionally chose to feed.
"T minus 10 minutes." The computer intoned before commencing the final, pre-launch checklist. Kyle dutifully confirmed that the status of each of his on-board systems matched those shown on the Mission Control read-outs.
At T minus 5 minutes Kyle activated the M/AM Drive and watched the giant mass of the mothership slide away, the central section rotating sedately around its own axis to simulate a gravity field. As the h
uge ship faded into the background of the grey moon, the vibrations of the Quantum Synchrotron, deep in the bowels of the shuttle, increased as it siphoned energy from the M/AM engine to charge the jump-drive.
"All systems normal" the on-board computer reported, simultaneously sending a complete status report to Mission Control.
"T minus four minutes." The mission computer now counting down the remaining time at sixty-second intervals.
The vibrations intensified, slightly out of sync with the inertial dampeners. It was a known characteristic of this type of shuttle and Kyle ignored it.
At T minus one minute the space ahead of the shuttle began to shimmer and generate static bursts, blue and white, that coalesced into an emerging whirlpool effect that slowly expanded to fill his field of view. Despite the filters, white noise grew in his headset. Kyle crossed his fingers in silent faith that the magnetic deflectors would hold. Deflectors that were preventing the unimaginable energies generated by the singularity drive from turning him and his ship into a second sun. An event that would have given Elena sunburn, even way down in the Milano Mission Control Centre.
At T minus 30 seconds, with green lights across the board, the drive went "hot". The point of no return, where the drive would tear a hole in the space-time continuum, come what may. The voice of Mission Control was distorted now, barely comprehensible, and the vibrations intensifying. Kyle offered a prayer of thanks to the designer of the compression tissue of his flight-suit that prevented his insides from liquefying. The whirlpool had now become a wild vortex, dancing with light and shadow, a hurricane storm of static in his ears as energy discharges streamed over the hull.
At T minus 9 seconds a single red light lit up in Mission Control and the cockpit.
"Mission Control," Kyle croaked, trying to control the sudden burst of fear. "We have a problem."
The reply was unintelligible through the static and his pressure suit suddenly inflated as automatic protection against the threat of vacuum, implicit for any emergency in space.
WARNING: QUANTUM FLUX OUT OF BOUND. DESTINATION PROBABILITY LOCK LOST. ABORT MISSION.
The words flashed onto his HUD. He knew what they meant. The statistical laws of quantum mechanics had played a dirty trick with probability, and his ship would emerge somewhere other than the planned target. Unable to disengage the singularity engine, only one option remained, emergency separation. Kyle strained against the rigidity of the inflated pressure suit to reach the red emergency switch.
He hit it at T minus 3, the computer barely audible above the raging storm.
The explosion that separated the drive kicked him hard in the back. Almost unconscious, half blinded by pain and powerless to intervene, he watched as the drive was pushed past the cockpit on the momentum of the blast, which also propelled the X-Shuttle the last few metres towards the event horizon of the singularity, where the drive now loomed, frozen in time. He knew he was screaming, screaming at the top of his voice, but he could hear nothing above the static feedback and the vibrations tearing his ship apart.
One last, deafening screech, a blinding white flash, and one final, murderous jolt sent his consciousness falling into blackness and the shuttle tumbling into the unknown.
CHAPTER 8
We don't know what paradise is like, but probably it's blue-magenta, flecked with pink. But even if it's green and red-check we should make the most of it.
Boron saying
Sissandras just sat there squatting, silently, with his mouth slightly opened, inhaling and exhaling air with a subtle fizzling noise. He stared at Nopileos with widened eyes, lacking appropriate words. Any kind of words; Sissandras just didn't know anymore what to say to his egg-brother. After the rest of the lesson, which he had attended in a trance-like daze, Nopileos had silently pulled him by the claw to the roof of the hatchery to his secret place, a spot with a breathtaking view of the ocean. It was a place where he could drink in the serenity, undisturbed by the other egg-pupils who lacked the sense of adventure to push a writing desk from the class to the hall and clamber up to the forbidden roof through the skylight just to see what's there. No right-thinking Teladi would develop a crazy notion like that.
Nopileos looked at Sissandras expectantly, his egg-brother preferred to remain silent. Nopileos had told him the whole story, the rumour of the Profiteroid gleaned from a drunken pirate on a previous adventure, the tampering with his AutoBroker, everything. The program that Sissandras had developed for the device was no doubt ingenious, for it seemed to have anticipated every scenario and utilised every information source it could access to learn about the Nividium business. It had even discerned the existence of the asteroid from fragments of clues a whole tazura before even the PTNI – it might even have played an active part in the discovery! It had certainly displayed enough initiative to garner enough credits through trades to corner the market in Nividium shares. The impact on the stock exchanges was devastating.
"Look," Nopileos said finally, "nobody knows that ID license is your AutoBroker."
Sissandras still said nothing but as they both watched the sea his forehead scales began to regain a little of their normal healthy, green sheen and some of his spirit flowed back into his slumped posture. "Nopileos, brother, colleague," he spoke finally, his ears twitching. "Insanity and genius are said to inhabit adjacent caves, but you are living proof they live claw to claw. I couldn't have conceived this in an egg-dream!"
Nopileos gazed out to sea to cover his embarrassment. It was a wonderful hue of bluish green with a low swell that stretched to the horizon, beckoning him to rush to the beach and swim into the setting sun. Hegebalios and the other pupils would be there though. That thought doused the impulse and besides, there was still a problem to be solved. "We have to turn the thing off," he said, ignoring Sissandras' remark. "Or something even worse could happen. Will the program be satisfied with what it's achieved or will it just go on?"
Sissandras spread his claw webbing. "Don't know, not sure … probably … certainly not."
"Can you deactivate it from here?"
"No, colleague!" Sissandras shouted, "I've disabled that option for security reasons!"
"Tsshhh, in that case we don't have a choice, we must fly to Ceo's Pride and do it manually." The name of the station had not been Nopileos' idea but he had accepted its proposal with silent amusement. The Ceo was their grandfather after all and he respected him still, in a way, and the name had seen apt, even if the Ceo would take no pride in an old Boron station bearing his honoured name, now less than ever. He, Nopileos, had known that from the start, but of course, Sissandras hadn't.
"And how are we to get there?" Sissandras asked. "We are not allowed to use the shuttles for interplanetary journeys during the wozura. Even if we had permission to leave now we could not be back before dawn tomorrow. We would miss four lessons too! Can you imagine what trouble we'd be in?" Sissandras absently sketched geometric shapes into the layer of black sand that coated the roof with his right claw. They looked like baby scales and that touched Nopileos unexpectedly, but Sissandras brushed them away with a sweep of his claw and looked straight into his brother's eyes. "Well?"
Nopileos made a decision.
"Listen, brother. I don't believe that it would be that serious, there's no precedent so they won't know how to react but as we don't want to risk your good reputation here I'll file a flight plan for the third moon and take a shuttle. That's permitted even during the week." Sissandras would certainly agree – oh, that sounded like adventure! A small cloud of depression lifted from him at the thought, and suddenly he was in a high spirit. Once in the shuttle he would change course and head for the station. The staff here would drop themselves on their tails but he'd return the shuttle eventually, just a little bit late, maybe, but hey, so what!
Sissandras wiped his tongue thoughtfully across his nose and squinted. He was Teladi and he really didn't care why someone tried to help him out of an awkward situation without taking advantage – even if it
was his egg-brother. After all he hadn't really caused this chaos! "It's a deal! But be careful and immediately switch off the AutoBroker - no matter what happens! Do you understand?"
"Yes, brother!"
"And stop calling me brother, colleague!"
The head of the institute's vehicle fleet didn't even ask Nopileos the reason for his excursion to the third moon. Some of the largest stockbrokers were based there and many young Teladi from the Hatchery visited just to learn from their egg-seniors or to trade on their positions as junior members of the elite to earn credits from those who could not afford the fees of the more experienced professionals. Nopileos cheerfully signed for the ignition card and took off, heading east into the half-tazura night, towards the third moon.
"Yattá!" He shouted the old Argon expression of joy when the Ceo's Pride station appeared on the gravidar some stazuras later and continued until his lungs threatened to expire. Adventure, the unknown possibilities! He'd missed this feeling so much and anticipation swelled within him as the station confirmed the secret activation code and powered up life support. The shuttle was equipped with an autopilot docking system as standard, but Nopileos disengaged it and plunged his arms into the steering shafts to take manual control as the gigantic rotating spiral of the former Boron Trading Outpost grew. The docking tunnel was at one end of the central axis, where the centrifugal forces generated by the rotating mass were at a minimum and Nopileos headed towards the pulsing green docking lights.
The majestic mountain of synthetic diamond alloy soon filled the forward cockpit, dwarfing the shuttle but making the young Teladi feel like a king as his craft responded adroitly to every twitch of his fingers inside the steering shafts. As the huge docking bay doors split open in welcome, he matched the station rotation with tiny bursts from the attitude thrusters and eased the shuttle slowly towards a docking platform. When big metal docking clamps gently seized the ship and carried it to one of the many empty bays he felt terrific.
Farnham's Legend: The beginning of the X-Universe saga (X Games Book 1) Page 4