Epic of Aravinda 1: The Truth Beyond the Sky

by Andrew M. Crusoe

  Zahn looked down below the bench again, which appeared to be resting on nothing more than a faint dusting of stars.

  “However,” Navika said, “the gate is radiating a faint gravity wave from the center of the ring. It’s possible this wave could contain information. Analyzing. Oh, how elegant.”

  “Have you found a signal, Navika?” Zahn said.

  “A rather universal one, in fact. The gravity wave is creating a pattern of pulses that appear to be cycling through prime numbers. I would hypothesize that this gate network was explicitly designed to be relatively easy to learn how to use.”

  “Wow, so my guess was correct,” Zahn said. “They wanted us to use them. Whoever ‘they’ were.”

  “Indeed, evidence suggests that whoever built these gates wanted others to use them. The question is: for what purpose?”

  Oonak paused and massaged his chin.

  “Navika,” Oonak continued. “Do you think you can communicate with it?”

  “I can generate similar gravity pulses, yes. What would you like me to send?”

  “Well, if my hypothesis is correct, these gates are arranged in a hierarchy. So our next step is to go up one level in that hierarchy. Navika, transmit 3.3.2, 71.11.00, 000.”

  After a few moments, Navika spoke again.

  “What happened was intriguing, but you may not like it.”

  “Did the gate ignore you?” Zahn said.

  “Oh no, far from it. The gate quite definitely received my message, but it transmitted back something I don’t quite understand. It sent a harmonic signal that was discordant, almost like an instrument being played out of key. Do you have any further commands?”

  “Yes, Navika. Try sending the address of the gate we just left. Send the address that would lead us back to Avani, and see how it responds.”

  “All right,” Navika said. “I have scans of the cavern, but I’d like to confirm. The address you request me to transmit is 3.3.2, 71.11.23, 003. Is that correct?”

  “Exactly correct, Navika. Proceed.”

  As he awaited the results of Navika’s message, seconds seemed like minutes to Zahn, and silence hung heavy in the air.

  “I wish you both could have heard what I just heard,” Navika finally said.

  “What do you mean ‘hear’? I thought you were sensing gravity pulses. Isn’t sound impossible without air?” Zahn said.

  “Avanian, that would depend on what you consider sound. Sound is merely vibration. Sound only requires a medium such as liquid or gas. It can even travel through stone. I am well aware there is no sound in space that you can hear. However, I process sensory information in ways that are beyond your understanding, and I heard these gravity waves.”

  “Navika, please call our guest by his name. He is part of our expedition now.”

  “As you wish.”

  Zahn looked out toward the edge of the ring again and the stars beyond.

  “I apologize, Navika. I didn’t mean to question the way you hear and see. I’m just trying to understand. So what was the response to our message?”

  “A most exquisite harmony, Zahn. I am certain it was a musical chord of some type, but relayed as a gravity wave. The chord itself seemed alive.”

  “A living chord? Sounds like a resounding yes in the language of music, if you ask me.”

  “I wonder if the set of two-digit numbers all go together,” Oonak said.

  “You mean, they could be different from the first set of single-digit numbers?”

  “Very likely. Navika, try 3.3.2, 00.00.00, 000. If my hypothesis is correct, we will be taken to a node gate.”

  This time they didn’t have to wait for long. After a few seconds, Navika spoke.

  “The response was not negative this time. However, it wasn’t like the signal I got when we put in Avani’s address, either. It started as one chord which then changed key again and again.”

  Zahn looked down to the center of the ring, which was far below them now, but saw nothing.

  “So why isn’t a vortex opening up?”

  “That is a good question, Zahn. Navika, has it indicated any discordance at all?”

  “Negative,” Navika said. “It seems our current knowledge of the gates is insufficient.”

  After all this, Zahn was beginning to wonder if their entire quest would stop here, just because they couldn’t solve the riddle of how to use this gate.

  All the hatchlings of eternity have gone before us, he thought.

  Recalling Kavi’s strange words from their meeting just a few days before was strangely comforting.

  “Wait a second, didn’t you say these gates are tuned to only respond to the life that lives near them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, we’re still in my home star system, so it’s possible it needs to know that one of us is from Avani. Why not try broadcasting my DNA to the gate itself? Maybe that’s why the last gate worked. I cut my finger!”

  “Broadcast your genetic code to the gate? Intriguing idea. Navika, can you translate genetic material into a signal that this gate is likely to understand?”

  “Unknown, Oonak. But I can certainly reduce the genetic signal into a string of numbers and broadcast that to the gate. However, even if I broadcast it at extreme speed, an entire genome could take a while to transmit.”

  “Then do not send the entire genome. Start at the beginning, and if it responds, stop transmitting.” Oonak turned to Zahn. “Do you have a sample we can use?”

  “Here. This should work,” Zahn said and gave Oonak a single blonde hair from the top of his head.

  Oonak placed the single hair onto a panel that popped out of the armrest of his chair. Zahn watched as the panel flashed brightly for a second, and then the single hair was gone.

  “Decoding…”

  Zahn was about to ask how the hair had disappeared so quickly when Navika spoke again.

  “Transmitting.”

  After a few seconds, a bright light grew within the ring.

  “Excellent work, Zahn! Navika, position us one klick away from the center of the ring. I would rather not get taken in unexpectedly like last time.”

  In a few seconds time, they had gained some distance from the growing point of light at the center of the gate. As before, the space in the middle of the ring spiraled in on itself, except that this time thousands of stars were behind the vortex, creating the illusion that they were circling a massive drain. This gate was also much bigger than the first, and when Zahn studied it closely he noticed that the surface of the ring itself had lit up in perfect geometric patterns, just as the previous gate had.

  “Oonak, I am receiving a repeating signal. It appears to be repeating the signal of the address we just entered. I would surmise that this is an indication we can now proceed through the gate.”

  Indeed, the bright point at the center of the gate stopped growing, and the space around it continued to swirl in a strange way as if starlight itself weren’t sure what to make of it. Zahn looked over to his right and gazed at Kuvela-Dipa once more. He wondered if it might be the last time he would ever see it.

  “Proceed,” Oonak said, and Navika moved closer and closer to the bright center of the vortex. Soon, it completely filled their view, and in an instant, they were gone.

  CHAPTER 12

  WELCOME TO NOWHERE

  Once again, Navika and everyone within hurtled through a corridor of pure light. Zahn tried to make out more details of the thread-like strands of light in the distance. Yet time itself seemed to flow differently in the corridor, and they were back in the darkness of space before he could even begin to count them.

  At first, they only saw darkness. After a few seconds, their eyes adjusted, and the darkness gradually revealed itself to be a field of stars around them once again.

  Zahn looked around. The constellations around him were breathtaking, but they were also completely foreign to him.

  “According to my star maps, we are now over 2,000 light-years from Av
ani,” Navika said.

  “Are there any planets nearby?”

  “None detected, and all of the nearest stars are well over ten light-years distant.”

  “Indeed, we are deep within the Ocean of Space now, Zahn,” Oonak said. “It appears we are in an area between star clusters.”

  Zahn looked above him and noticed that they were drifting from the center of a ring-shaped gate just as they had with the first gate, now over 2,000 light-years away. Had they really travelled that far? Zahn tried to digest this fact, but had trouble wrapping his mind around it, even though he had experienced it for himself.

  “Oon, how is it possible we’ve gone so far so quickly? This violates all established rules of physics.”

  “There is much your world has to learn, Zahn. These gates seem to work by tearing a hole into spacetime and allowing us to slip, if only temporarily, into timespace.”

  “Timespace. Is that where those corridors of light are? The ones that we saw,” Zahn said.

  “Yes. You can think of timespace as a realm parallel to spacetime, an inversion. Here in spacetime, we have three dimensions of space and one of time, correct?”

  “Yes…”

  “In timespace, the reverse is true, and the rules of physics that affect us here in spacetime do not apply. Different rules apply, though an explanation of those is beyond your understanding. Beyond the understanding of many.” For a moment Oonak seemed lost in thought.

  After a few seconds, Navika broke the silence.

  “What address would you like to broadcast next, Oonak?”

  “First of all, please orient us about one klick in front of the gate as you did last time. From what we have seen, I’m nearly certain that these gates are arranged in a hierarchy, and I suspect a higher-level node serves this node. I suggest we request node 3.3.0. What do you think, Zahn?”

  “I think that’s a good idea. Let’s do it.”

  “Transmitting…” Navika said. “Interesting. It’s sending back a positive signal even though I didn’t transmit any genetic code.”

  “Why would it need my DNA now? We’re so far from my world, I wouldn’t be surprised if this gate worked for anyone who knew how to use it.”

  “Or anything,” Oonak added, and he winked at Zahn.

  As before, they waited until the vortex stabilized, flew into the swirling mass, and were amazed at the shimmering corridors beyond. Yet soon after, Zahn questioned their choice when, upon reentering space, they flew right into a literal swarm of trouble.

  CHAPTER 13

  INTO THE FIRE

  When they emerged from the vortex, Oonak had scarcely any time at all to react to the shots that were fired at them from above. In a flash, Oonak spun the ship around just a few fractions of a second after they had emerged from the gate and somehow managed to evade their fire. For a moment, Zahn thought he saw giant insects perched on the edges of the gate’s ring. As they jumped off and headed toward them, he saw their narrow, menacing shapes. They seemed more biological than metal.

  “Zahn, hold tight! Marauders!”

  An instant later, the entire cabin around them became covered in the red grid Zahn had seen back on the South Pole as Navika enabled the cloak and Oonak returned fire. Huge bolts of purple light hit a few of the ships, but it wasn’t enough. Whenever Oonak fired, the cloak faltered for a fraction of a second, giving away their position.

  Zahn found it strange that he couldn’t hear their weapons impact onto the marauder ships, but he reminded himself that this was impossible since there was no medium in which sound could travel through between them and their attackers.

  Another wave of fire.

  Oonak looked worried now. They were clearly outnumbered.

  “Oon, can we go faster? They’re gaining on us!”

  Navika spoke for him, so he could remain focused.

  “Oonak is pushing my systems as far as they will go, Zahn. With my timespace drive offline, this is my maximum velocity,” Navika said.

  Zahn had to admit to himself that, without any point of reference, he had absolutely no idea how fast they were going. After all, he could only see the ships and the stars.

  “Do not worry, Zahn,” Oonak said. “We will find a way to survive this. I’m sending out a distress call, and I have detected an asteroid field nearby. It is possible, however unlikely, that someone is living within it.”

  Even as Navika sped away from the gate, more and more of the small, insect-like ships surrounded them in a frenzied swarm. Each of them had what looked like tiny metal heads and arms, and Zahn wondered if they captured ships or consumed them piece by piece.

  As Oonak skillfully evaded most of their fire, Zahn felt horrible that there was no way to help him. He could only look on, impressed at how Oonak avoided firing unnecessary shots so he wouldn’t give their position away more than necessary.

  Above them, below them, and to all sides, dozens of ships fired in wide spreads. Oonak continued to evade most of the fire, but the ships formed a sphere around them that slowly got smaller and smaller as it followed them.

  There was no way out.

  As the sphere got smaller, the ships made more direct hits, and it became harder for Oonak to evade their fire. Each time one of their plasma bolts hit the ship, Zahn winced, as though Navika’s ivory skin were his own.

  An alarm sounded throughout the ship, and Navika announced that his cloaking field had failed completely. They could now see the ship. Oonak focused all of his effort on taking out the ships one by one, yet there were simply too many of them firing at once. More must have arrived because Zahn could even see two new plasma beams in their midst.

  Except that these crimson beams of light sliced a marauder ship to pieces. And another. And another. Oonak and Zahn were stunned, but they couldn’t see any obvious source to the beams.

  “Zahn, we are receiving an inbound transmission,” Oonak said. “I’m putting it on surround so you can hear it, as well.”

  At first they heard only static, and then the static resolved itself into a woman’s voice. The voice sounded feminine, yet Zahn couldn’t understand any of it. The words sounded more alien than any language he had ever heard before, including Jangalan which was infamous on Avani for being almost impossible for foreigners to correctly pronounce.

  “Oonak, what is she saying? Is there something wrong with the transmission?”

  “The transmission strength is excellent, I assure you,” Navika said. “Perhaps you do not know her language. However—”

  “Intriguing,” Oonak interrupted. “It seems someone out there would rather have us stay alive. We have just received a waypoint that lies deep within the asteroid field.”

  “Okay, but how are we going to get over there without being blasted into the next galaxy?” Zahn said.

  Just as he finished saying this, two crimson beams sliced three more ships into pieces, creating a small gap in the sphere.

  “By following the path,” Oonak said.

  With shots blazing, Navika charged forward and fearlessly plunged through the small gap. Some of the marauders followed them into the asteroid field, but the combination of Navika’s weapons and the crimson beams picked off the closest ones.

  In the distance, Zahn could now faintly see a grey, circular object. Above it was the familiar red symbol that Navika used to mark waypoints, and after a few seconds Zahn saw that it was a moon. The closer they got, the fewer marauders remained, and the more lifeless the surface of the grey moon looked.

  “That’s it?”

  Zahn was unimpressed. Everything on the surface was graphite. There were some craters and a few rolling hills, but not much else.

  “Look at where the waypoint is. There is a circular platform. Clearly unnatural,” Oonak said.

  Zahn looked down to the spot. The circular platform was the same color as the rock, and they were nearly above it now.

  “Navika’s scans indicate there is a hollow space beneath the platform, and these circumstances sug
gest that it is most likely not a trap. In either case, our options are limited.”

  Navika approached the surface, and the moment they touched the platform, it descended into the depths of the moon.

  CHAPTER 14

  A SHADOW IN A DARK HALL

  The sheer immensity of the hollow space left Zahn speechless at first. Stretching off in front of them was a wide hall that faded into darkness with the distance. When the descending platform finally touched the floor, a deep sound reverberated down the massive hall, and in the distance, Zahn thought he heard other sounds, as well.

  Oonak stood up.

  “Are you okay, Zahn?”

  “I’m excited. How are you?”

  “I am well, but I advise caution. We have no idea who rescued us or what their intentions are, so I want you to take this.”

  Zahn looked down at the object Oonak was holding. It was a curious piece of shimmering metal formed into a loop.

  “It is a mental amplifier and interpreter. It will aid you if trouble should befall us. Perhaps even more useful in your case, it will allow you to understand any languages which the Confederation has encountered.”

  “But it looks so simple.”

  “Put it around your wrist. If we become separated and you need help, you can contact me by picturing my face, and then mentally sending me a message. Keep in mind though, its range does not extend beyond this planetary system.”

  Zahn put it on his left wrist, and when he did, it shrunk a bit to fit his wrist better.

  “Do you have any questions?” Oonak said.

  “About a million. This wristband can do all of that? How soon will you receive a message if I send you one? And how does it interpret alien languages? Let me guess, Spacefarer code—”

  Oonak interrupted him.

  “—only allows me to share information that you may need to know for the purposes of our mission. What I can tell you is that it works on a simple principle of thought-form resonance. Consider it as a bridge between two minds; as long as I’m in range I will receive a message instantly.”