Farnham's Legend: The beginning of the X-Universe saga (X Games Book 1)

by Helge T. Kautz

  For several minutes she went through the ship's pre-flight check procedure; item by item, and eventually finished it with satisfaction. It showed the Getsu Fune had suffered no detectable structural damage while in transit through the singularity; in fact it was in such good shape it could have just rolled off the production line.

  Elena updated the logbook and after completing the entries, glanced pensively at the empty co-pilot's seat. The USC, loathe as ever to lose pilots, had judged her to be sufficiently qualified to carry out the rescue mission single-handedly. If she found Kyle, he would, despite his higher rank, take the role of co-pilot for the return flight. Her orders were to destroy the X and to return only with the Getsu Fune. To Elena's left there was another empty seat, for a mission specialist or astrogator, which had no flight controls.

  She reminded herself again that her overriding objective must be to obtain information on the whereabouts of Kyle, however fascinating the station might be. His arrival in this region of the universe could not possibly have gone unnoticed. Unlike the almost "energy-silent" jump of her ship, the X must have emerged here in an explosion of Cherenkov and other radiation types, while propagating a huge gravitational wave. If he had survived the accident the people and aliens of these sectors would have taken care of him, whatever that might mean. So why not approach the governments officially? Elena reserved this option for a later date; for the time being she was content that, for whatever reason, she was being taken for a "Goner" and this enabled her to collect information unchallenged before having to decide on a course of action.

  Elena clambered out of the pilot seat and set off down the between-decks which, as well as giving access to the freight bay, also held the airlock. She briefly considered arming herself but decided against it. So far no one had been in any way hostile and there was no point provoking anyone by waving a gun around. Spacesuit, light pressure suit, mask? Based on the atmospheric composition outside, there was no need, but was she ready to step outside and face the unknowns of an extraterrestrial civilisation? Would they continue to take her for a "Goner"? She doubted it; her uniform alone would inevitably attract attention.

  She considered removing or hiding the USC symbol on her sleeve so as not to arouse further curious questions. But if there were a reception committee waiting to arrest her and dismantle her spaceship it wouldn't matter a jot either way. Elena slipped into a grey-blue pilot's jacket with the fake fur collar she found in the equipment locker. It didn't sport the USC logo and would cover up the one on her overalls well enough. That would have to do.

  She took a deep breath. The feeling in the pit of her stomach was roughly the same as for her first days-long deep-sea free dive. Her breathing reflex had been stopped, all the cavities in her body – including her lungs and skull – had been filled with pressure-equalising fluid and her bloodstream aerated by nano-symbionts which not only extracted oxygen from sea-water and aerated her blood directly, but also altered the biochemistry of her skin and eyes to protect against damage. A further strain had accelerated the burning up of nutrients to prevent hypothermia and for the whole four-day excursion, Elena had an insatiable appetite and in that short time had stuffed herself with more food than she would have had in two weeks on land. Free diving was more or less pointless and was frowned upon by professional divers like Gisbert. It was more a kind of extreme sport and a challenge, whose fascination Elena had been unable to resist. She remembered all too clearly the terrifying feeling of no longer being able to breath but still being alive. It had been described to her precisely beforehand, and she had been clear that she would be in no immediate danger, having learnt about it during her training. Nevertheless, the thought of the imminent changes to her body and, above all, the minutely described experience of stopping breathing had really got to her.

  The stone that now lay in her stomach was not entirely of this nature, but it had similar qualities and was as severe. Back then, she had braced herself and faced up to the challenge, like so many other times before and since.

  Elena pressed the button.

  The inner and outer airlocks opened simultaneously, with a faint hiss leaving her gazing into the crystal tunnel kissing the airlock. It ascended vertically and for a moment she wondered what she was supposed to do next. There was neither ladder nor stairs, so climbing upwards wasn't it. But then she noticed a small platform just centimetres above the ground, almost transparent and bobbing slightly as if to draw her attention. Very unobtrusive, she thought. She took one undaunted step forwards and the platform ascended automatically. The last thing she heard from her ship was Marc closing the airlock behind her. Through the clear walls of the tunnel she watched the ground fall precipitously away. Some of the ships were three or four times as tall as the Getsu Fune, others hovered at a finger's breadth above the ground. Attached to all of them were transparent gangways that led upward to an area that was still above Elena's field of vision. At an altitude of approximately fifty meters she realised that the glass tunnels attached to the larger vessels didn't go straight up like hers, but went horizontally outwards instead or sloped diagonally, terracing slightly.

  When the platform slid to a halt Elena looked around. The landing area was similar to a gigantic tube, approximately one or two hundred meters in diameter, and some fifty or sixty meters high. The "tube's" light-green metal wall shaded into complete transparency on it's upper three meters, giving a clear view of a broad aisle encircling the whole landing area in a ring, enabling anyone to peer down on the ships below. At this point, Elena's gangway curved smoothly from vertical to almost horizontal, heading for the aisle that was only a few steps away. Elena looked up to the ceiling just a couple of meters above, but she couldn't make out the mechanism that held and moved the glass tunnels. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, a writer named Clark had written several hundred years before, but Elena was the child of a technologically advanced civilisation herself. It was only her scientific curiosity speaking and there were more important things to worry about!

  She walked down the clear gangway, hardly believing her eyes. The aisle ahead was somewhat crowded -- not only by humans quite obviously belonging to her own species - but also by those saurians she knew from her brief contact with the space traffic-controller, as well as with a couple of other amazing creatures! An air of unreality hung over the proceedings but there were plenty of familiar things one wouldn't have expected in an exotic place like this, so Elena didn't feel entirely lost. She would find her way around, she thought to herself, and after all, aliens were just people with a skin problem! She smiled at her own oversimplification. It wasn't that simple, of course, but it helped her to begin sorting her new impressions into some well-known categories until she knew enough to file everything in the right place. The transparent door opened and she stepped outside onto the encircling aisle. She noticed a couple of casual glances from passing humans but the aliens ignored her completely. All in all she didn't seem to be drawing too much attention. The door hissed shut behind her.

  Elena had to stoop to read the lettering on a small display panel on a black column next to the tunnel exit. The right height for a child, she thought, or for the saurians who – as she saw now – weren't much over one and a half metres tall.

  Landing bay: D-7/6

  Vessel: Getsu Fune

  Type: AP?/Legacy

  Service protocol: nik/v7.1

  Origin: Argon Prime

  Destination: Cloudbase SE

  Crew: 1 x Goner

  Freight: unknown

  Sojourns approved until: 546:773:204:164.999

  Authorization: z9.1726/AKM-I

  Harbour dues: ref. listing 4, § 9, 2

  Status: [please see port authority]

  Some of the entries mystified Elena. For instance, from where did they take the information about origin and destination? Marc most definitely had not transferred that to the station - the old onboard-computer simply didn't have the capabilities to make thin
gs up! So, perhaps these were standard assumptions. Then there was the entry restricting her stay on the station: she had to find out what kind of time system it used, if she didn't want to run into trouble! Most likely Marc received some sort of time synch signal from the station that would clarify this.

  "Port Dues" sounded a bit ominous given she lacked any local currency and explaining that would involve giving away her true identity and she wasn't ready for that. Elena decided to go see the Port authority as requested by the "status" entry on the display panel. If she could find it, that is.

  She looked around and discovered visual information everywhere, on the one hand strange and incomprehensible combinations of Latin letters, on the other, readily decipherable markings in Japanese. This whole civilization had very obviously been strongly influenced by those long-lost Earth colonies. Lettering, language, and usage of the metric system - it was hard not to notice!

  The Port authorities' office was well signposted, naturally – one simply had to follow the arrow, which led Elena counter clockwise around the aisle. But oh, how many new and astonishing things were there to be discovered! The dominant species here were saurians and humans; but there were a smattering of other beings, some of which had a yellowish skin and long, white beards, and others, taller than any man, slender and bony, with three eyes, and clad in long, wide tunics.

  Perhaps the strangest creature, however, was a multi-limbed being inside a light pressure suit, not much taller than about one hundred and thirty centimetres. Its environment suit's helmet was entirely filled with a bubble-saturated liquid through which she glimpsed huge cornea-protected eyes, and a light-blue trunk. A picture of that unusual, organic ship standing next to the Getsu Fune sprang to her mind - she knew instinctively that this little guy was its owner. The alien didn't look the least bit dangerous, in fact, it looked harmless and friendly enough as it stared at Elena with large, shimmering eyes, giving her the funny feeling it could see inside of her. It wrinkled its nose and let its eyes linger on her until she had passed it and left it behind. Elena felt goose bumps form on her arms. Those eyes!

  The width of the aisle between the continuous glass walls was at least ten meters. The outer wall had many openings, doors and lifts, for example, but also a couple of stores and even a pub named "Moneypit". Directly next to it was a souvenir shop, whose window magically drew Elena's attention to it. A weird, ugly morphing toy mounted on a dark-green socket was squirming through numerous shades of colour. Here, Elena discovered for the first time, were writings that didn't derive from Latin letters. Engraved into the morphing toy's socket were part rounded, part jagged hieroglyphs that might denote the title of the object, or perhaps its creator. Right next to the wriggling sculpture stood an item that made Elena stare, this time open-mouthed for real. It was a guitar!

  "I don't believe it!" On an impulse she entered the shop; inside, one of the saurians scuffled towards her. His scales were large and dark green, and his eyes a deep red. He wasn't wearing clothing; but then again, there wasn't anything on him that needed to be hidden.

  "How can I help you, colleague?" he said using the commercial language. His accent was ever so slight, and if Elena had not seen who was talking, she would have imagined a slightly lisping merchant from Earth. "Are you interested in the sculpture by any chance?"

  Elena shook her head. "No, I…"

  "It's for sale at an impressively low price for a piece of art of that class!"

  "Indeed. Actually, I wanted…"

  "Just 9.7k credits! A unique piece of a Teladian artist. And you do know that there are not too many Teladian artists, don't you?"

  "Well, it's beautiful, but I don't have the money to buy such a quality item", Elena said carefully. Actually, she found the winding sculpture that looked more like plasticine than anything else, quite appalling. But naturally there was no need to upset the saurian – the Teladi, as she now knew – with her true opinion.

  "Well, you as an Argon at least know that noble art has its price! Isn't there anything else with which I can help you?"

  "I'm interested in the guitar." Elena answered. Once more she had gathered another piece of important information: the Teladi thought her to be an Argon, and not a Goner. She thought of the info display next to the Getsu Fune's landing bay that denoted "Argon Prime" as her purported destination. Moreover, the currency was named simply "credits", and Teladi didn't have many artists. If she was honest, Elena thought, the saurians didn't look much like they were overtly creative anyway. But naturally that might just be a prejudice on her part.

  The merchant peered at her quizzically. "The gi…, but yes, of course! The Argon artwork in the shop window! Would you like to have a closer look?"

  "I'd like that. It's not an artwork, by the way."

  "It isn't?" the Teladi asked while he scuffled to the shop window to remove the guitar. "Then what else is it?"

  "Wait a moment, I'll show you", Elena said, taking the guitar from the Teladi. It was made of wood, and obviously very old. She turned the instrument around and discovered a faded writing on the backside of its neck: "Frank de Vries, USCSS Dragonfyre."

  "Oh my god!", she whispered. The USCSS Dragonfyre had been the Earth fleet's flagship. Many centuries before, the Dragonfyre had ended the battle against the deadly Terraformers by luring them through Earth's jump-gate, which was destroyed behind them. It was the very ship that had been commanded by Nathan R. Gunne.

  Elena's thoughts raced. A number of things became clear to her now. The large Earth flotilla that had been declared forever lost hadn't been destroyed in the dimensionless vortices between jump-gates like it was commonly believed. Instead, it had appeared here, in this sector! Also, the many hundred crewmen and women of the Earth fleet had not been killed by the Terraformers either; they had managed to set up a flourishing civilization and had even managed to find the extraterrestrials that neither Captain René Farnham nor anyone else after him had ever been able to discover!

  The momentousness of these discoveries almost made Elena dizzy.

  CHAPTER 25

  I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

  Isaac Asimov

  "Entering system Thuruk's Beard," said Valerie.

  Kyle checked the Gravidar. The sector had three jump-gates, one of them was connected to a Teladi-controlled region, another led to an unknown enemy sector, the third provided a route to the Split Family Chin system he'd just left.

  Meanwhile, Valerie had enlightened herself with the coordinates and names of all the suns, planets, moons and other objects in the Commonwealth of Planets, as well as all political boundaries and territorial areas. The data transfer from the freighter Boron Rapture shone like a bright shaft of sunlight into the darkness of Kyle's ignorance. While he still did not know exactly where his position was in relation to Earth, or how he might return without the jump-drive or a jump-gate, he was now, like a goldfish exploring a new bowl, beginning to get an overview of this region of space. The information also began to flesh out this Commonwealth of Planets in his mind, and he was reassured to recognize certain familiar patterns.

  Also, Kyle's normal positive disposition had reasserted itself. He knew now his life wasn't in direct danger, even though there were certain people and groups he should steer clear of.

  "Captain, the gate is activating, a Split Destroyer-class vessel is coming through."

  "Thank you Valerie." He had already expected this. It had only been a question of time as to when those fanatic aliens with the yellow leathery skin would follow him.

  The jump-gate flashed once, then three more times in quicker succession until five destroyers swarmed, all well within weapons range. Again the X's advanced M/AM drive proved to be superior to the drives of all the spacecraft in use around here. The X put clear, safe space between them so quickly that Kyle simply dismissed them from his mind, knowing they wanted his ship intact and him alive, and hence would not dare to fire missiles.

  It wasn't until now that Kyle f
ound an opportunity to look at the system with his own eyes. The sun was a few AU away but couldn't be seen from Kyle's vantage point, primarily because it was occluded by a dirty-brown gas giant. It seethed in silence at 1 o'clock relative position to his ship. Kyle know it would wander into the line of sight between both jump-gates within the next 30 minutes, offering him a chance to view it with greater ease. Valerie said its name was "Gho-Czman", a word from the Split language, but she couldn't offer a translation.

  The jump-gate leading to Company Pride, which was apparently the Lizard's primary sector, floated in a high geostationary orbit around the gas giant. As Kyle watched, it began to flicker. Three ships, Boron he judged from their extraordinarily impractical-looking design, entered the sector. They were approaching with a velocity so high they would overhaul the X should they choose to do so, but Kyle wasn't worried. Of all the species in this region of space, the peaceful aquatics were the least likely to want him spread-eagled on a dissection table. Indeed they were heading for the ever more distant Split.

  Soon the Split received reinforcements. With less velocity but greater acceleration, two more destroyers came through the Teladi jump-gate, firing at the Boron ships with all available weapons.

  Kyle's decision had long since been made. He would continue to accelerate and cut through Xenon space at all cost. Only this way would it be possible to get through to Argon territory, just as Hilo Mo, the Captain of the now-destroyed freighter Boron Rapture had recommended a while ago:

  "Oh great, jolly, hairy stranger, who is so similar to the Argon! Hila Mo of the freighter Boron Rapture here. It is really extraordinarily important for you that you prick up your large, jolly, hairy ears well and listen to us, and that your clever, friendly, metallic friend Valerie conscientiously records all data that we convey. We do not know how many moments keep us from paradise so we will keep it as short as possible. Great, jolly, hairy stranger from distant planet Earth be aware that all the people from this realm want to get at your funny looking, amazingly advanced space ship and will do everything possible to capture it. Only we, the Queendom of Boron, will not participate in this reprehensible, dastardly and unethical hunt. We implore you to take the direct route via full thrust from your remarkable, powerful engines into the territory of the Argon. Even if the large, funny, very odd Argon show unbridled interest in your ship and in your person, they still belong to the same species as you and they maintain a constitutional state, which will grant you political asylum and will guarantee your safety. At this instant we have sent an appropriate message to the Argon Prime Government as well as to our divine, exquisite and beautiful Queen in Kingdom End. Expect to get help from every Boron you encounter, you great, funny, bewildered Earthling. The energetic shields of our poor, old, sorely afflicted…"