Before he closed the backpack again and slung it over his arm, he took a quick look at the remaining contents: there was a piezo tent, a medium-sized water condenser, a semi-mechanical multi-function tool, a 200-pack of protein wontons, a flashlight, a pocket lighter, an omnifrequency radio, a box of weatherproof signal bugs, and an unadorned orange-blue polymer purse in which he discovered two narrow sleeves, each containing twenty-two Teladian banknotes that were worth a forty-three credits. For the first time in many stazuras, Nopileos’s scaly fin straightened up in the Teladian equivalent of a smile. Bundles of twenty-two notes each were colloquially called nest eggs, but outside the “Preliminary Credit History” course with head teacher Wohalimis in the Breeding Complex back on Platinum Ball, he had never seen anything like it. He hissed in amusement as he turned the antiquated currency over and over in his pointed claws. That was just like the planners of his people! Who else would fall for the grandiose idea of adding a purse with two nest eggs in odd bills to an emergency pack! For all that was good and right—crash site over here, Split over there—a certain comical note could not be denied! But they were like that, his people.
He checked once more whether the waterproof backpack was really sealed, and took a fleeting glance up. The smoke from the crash was now completely gone, but he had noted its direction. Across the lake, up and down the other bank, and then through the middle of the jungle—probably more than one stazura long, maybe even two or three! Nopileos prepared himself internally for a strenuous march as he let himself slip almost silently into the water, and without any splashing.
Chapter 2
Earth was so far away, farther away than the stars.
Elena Kho,
Memories
“A magnificent sleigh, isn’t it, Major Kho?” Ban Danna called out, laughing, as Elena Kho entered the spacious hangar. The ceiling of the assembly hangar, which extended over Level Zero of the Goner space station was low, and the glaring artificial light plunged everything into harsh contrasts and double shadows. A few technicians in strange-colored overalls and coats scurried around, calling up test data from terminals and threw Elena fleeting, moderately curious glances. The ship, which was called a “sleigh” by the gaunt intelligence agent, stood in the middle of the decoupling airlock, which could open from below to release ships directly into space. “Magnificent” was the dented M4/Buster-class military transport, which was anything but. Elena furrowed her brow in doubt, placed her chin between her thumb and forefinger, and stood still in front of the tiny spaceship, making a show of appraising it. Of course, she already knew fighters of this kind. They were cheap, expendable, and were being gradually phased out by the Argonian military.
“Well? Come on!” Danna said with a grin, and went over to Elena with an outstretched hand.
Elena grinned back. “Hello, Danna-san! Yes, I’m rather impressed: beauty and features married together in this masterpiece of engineering, in all possible dimensions. And even a couple impossible ones!”
Danna snorted and held his stomach as Elena walked around the decoupling tunnel and examined the ship from all sides. It was a whole lot smaller than her USC Getsu Fune, but similarly bulky. From the various performance data, it should be on par with the older Earth ship—other than lacking a jumpdrive. Elena stopped to watch the work of the small maintenance robots, which sprayed the name she had given her new ship with calm, precise strokes on her flanks: AP Nikkonofune, “Sunshine Ship.” She was tempted to have the ship painted in a gradient spanning from dark red to bright yellow to honor her name. But they were expected on Hewa in just one wozura and she wanted to leave this evening. There was no time.
“But seriously, Elena. There was no guarantee that the government would give you a ship. After all, you could have traveled to Hewa with Senator Steen-Hilmarson and the diplomatic corps.”
“But not to Seizewell, where I have to go after the conference on Hewa. Your government is chasing me into the CEO’s claws. What do you say about that, Ban?”
“Ha, listen. Just be on the lookout. That old, haggling lizard is smarter than you’d think for a Teladi.”
“So I’ve heard. Nopileos told me about CEO Isemados.” Elena’s expression turned sad as she thought of Nopileos. The lovable Teladi’s courageous deeds on Nif-Nakh had saved the lives of not just her, but Brennan and many others, too—but had lost his own.
Ban Danna noticed Elena’s shift in mood with bewilderment. Up to now he had only known her in good spirits. That her grief shown through almost made him a little embarrassed. In an attempt to cheer her up, he asked, “Do you know what Senator Gunnar said when your colleague Kyle Brennan also asked for an M4?”
Elena shook her head.
“He said ‘just draw one.’”
“No way!” Elena was already smiling again. Kyle Brennan was not just her former boss, but her best friend, too. So it didn’t surprise her in the least that he sometimes overreached his extraordinary position with the Argon. A little pushback couldn’t hurt him—in the strictest sense, he needed it like a plant needed light.
“Yes, those were his exact words! Brennan was really taken aback—that I can say!”
“I can imagine. So he won’t get a ship?”
“Well of course! The AP Telstar. She has about twelve jazuras under her belt. Noah Gaffelt sweet-talked her, and finally wore her down. But the good Senator wasn’t very happy. She’s really worried about that old boat. Do me a favor, Elena?”
“I’ll gladly do anything in my power. What’s the favor?”
“Bring your M4 back in one piece,” Danna said with a wink, “otherwise the honorable senators will make my life miserable, and I’ll have to go without dessert for a wozura!”
Just then the maintenance robot finished up its work on the left flank of the ship and with a soft whir it hovered around the AP Nikkonofune to apply lettering to the other side as well.
Elena snickered softly and turned to the Argon so quickly that her shoulder-length hair flew. “Danna, you old charmer! You really know what to say to a woman. I’ll bet all the saurian girls in the universe are at your feet!”
Danna grinned. “They scratch at my door with their black claws every night and write me elegant letters.” He became serious again. “Elena, whatever you do—come back safe and sound! If the M4 comes back in pieces, I’ll live with the consequences. If you come back in pieces, I’ll be most distressed.”
Elena sighed inwardly. “Danna-san,” she replied with her friendliest smile, “it’s just a little, routine trip to Hewa, Seizewell, and back. In two wozuras I’m right back here.”
“Okay then. When you get back, come up for a cup of silvan tea, all right?”
Elena nodded. “Gladly. I’m looking forward to it!”
The agent turned to go. “And tell that haggling lizard I said hello!”
“Sure thing!” Elena shouted, and waved Danna goodbye.
After the agent left the hangar, Elena spent some time watching the maintenance robot at work, not really noticing the smooth, steady strokes of the machine. Before the robot finished the last stroke, she turned and left the hangar as well. She wanted to find Kyle—she hadn’t run into him for tazuras, almost as if he were deliberately avoiding her. But of course that was nonsense… She had to speak with him immediately. There was no real reason for it, but something inside her insisted. She had an odd feeling.
“There you are!” The door hissed behind Elena. Looking for Brennan in the temple library was the last thing she’d thought of. Brennan was normally a man of action, not books.
The space pilot looked up and leaned back in his chair. His movements had a nervous edge to them that wasn’t usual for him, as if the failed attempt to avoid her after some tazuras had thrown him off balance, or shaken him in a mysterious way. “Hey, Lin,” he said, scratching his chin. “I thought you were already on your way to Hewa.”
Elena pulled up a chair and sat down next to her best friend. “I’m already gone, so to speak. I just
wanted to say goodbye to you.”
“Oh. That sounds almost like goodbye forever.”
“You know? This region of space isn’t exactly an amusement park.” She threw a curious glance at the shimmering data projection he had apparently been brooding over until now. “What’s that—do you really have to draw one now?”
Brennan caught her meaning right away and flashed a weak grin. “Oh dear, so you’ve heard of Gunnar’s stupid decision.”
“Danna’s been telling tales out of school.”
“Well, I could’ve figured.” Brennan shook his head. “No. This right here is something else.”
“Do I have to drag it out of you, or will you let me in on the secret of your own free will?”
Brennan didn’t answer right away. He leaned back, folded his arms across his chest, and cast a look past the edge of the viewscreen, through the large panoramic window that surrounded levels seven through nine of the Goner Temple and allowed an unobstructed view into outer space. The massive holoprojection of Earth, the emblem of the Goner, flickered outside. It no longer appeared to be an image of the blue planet, but more closely resembled a blurred cloud of roughly spherical shape, through which a virtual breeze blew now and again.
“Lin, you were at the old Earth gate, right?” Brennan finally asked. He didn’t wait for Elena’s answer, but got up and strolled to the viewing window.
“Yes, that’s right,” Elena answered, following him with her gaze. “Along with Nopileos. Why?”
“The Goners destroyed it a few hundred years ago and turned it into a memorial site. Sorry, jazuras, of course. Right?”
Elena nodded. “They did,” she rushed to assure him after a few sezuras, as Brennan turned and looked at her questioningly. He seemed to be following a specific train of thought. Elena waited patiently for the next question even though she could already guess it.
“Can you remember exactly what the Goners did with the gate to shut it down? Not blown up, right?”
Elena shook her head and rose to her feet, too, stepping up to the window next to Brennan. “No, they didn’t. I didn’t get a good look at the gate’s mechanisms, but I think that some important components were removed and destroyed.”
Brennan nodded slowly. “Noah Gaffelt showed me a passage from the Book of Truth. In fact, a copy of the log files of an old ship called AP Gunner.”
“Noah Gaffelt. Ah, that’s why.”
“That’s why what?”
She waved it away. “Forget it. So, AP Gunner. Martinus and Nyana Gunne’s ship, if I recall correctly.”
“Right,” Brennan confirmed, “the founders of the Goner. The ship disappeared without a trace over five hundred years ago, a few months or years after a Terraformer raid on the Community of Planets. Jazuras, I mean. The copy is incomplete, but it ends with an entry by Martinus, where he talks about taking the key to Earth away from the Xenon.”
“Hmm. Okay, Kyle, even if this key was an important component of the Earth gate, which I think is unlikely, Martinus knew that the jumpgate’s counterpart in Earth’s solar system was destroyed 200 years earlier to keep the Terraformers away.”
Brennan looked out. There, against the unrelenting black, star-studden background of space, a large, elongated transporter was calculating its landing approach to the station’s docking tunnel. “Maybe he believed that Earth had a new gate that could be tuned into with these components. I’m as skeptical as you are, Lin, but I have to find out at any cost!”
Elena kept silent and followed Brennan’s gaze, which had slid away from the almost completed docking maneuvers for some sezuras. It hadn’t escaped her that Brennan spoke about him having to find out, not about the two of them. But what was the hurry—why so frantic? Elena knew that Brennan would barely be back on Earth, and after a couple of days he’d be on the move again, driven by his old urge to forever travel through the black vacuum of space. Because if there was one thing he treasured more than anything else, even more than his own life, it was the endless solitude of outer space. On the one hand, she understood him, but on the other she knew that it never made him satisfied. He was always standing in his own way, here just like on Earth.
“Actually, how’s Ninu doing?” Elena asked, following a sudden intuition. She had not seen the blonde Goner in a while.
Brennan turned around a bit too quickly and looked at her in surprise. “She… I think she’s very busy right now. Helping Noah Gaffelt and Lynda North where she can. But I think she’d rather go back to the Aladna Hill. Maybe…”
“You think, you believe, maybe? Tell me, I’ve always had the impression you were a couple, and you loved her?” Elena’s gaze became serious, not quite glaring, but still intense; her almond eyes narrowed into half-moon sickles. She had asked him that question before, some wozuras ago on Argon Prime, but he hadn’t given her an answer. She expected this again, and was surprised when his pained gaze met hers, as though dying and confused.
“I do,” he said softly, “and she knows it.”
“Then stay here, Kyle. Don’t leave her alone. Not again. Think about Annabel. Remember the thing between us back then. Damn it, Ninu deserves that you don’t run out on her!” Elena realized that her voice had become heated.
Brennan didn’t seem particularly surprised by her outburst. “Enough, Elena. Everything is all right. I’m not running out on Ninu, and I also won’t be away for long. Only to the government archive on Gorum. A couple days, tazuras, then I’ll be back here.”
“Then take her with you, for crying out loud!”
“I’d like to, but she’s occupied here,” he said with a strained voice. To Elena, it sounded a bit miserable and a lot helpless.
“Anata ga mikomi no nai yo, Brennan-san! You can’t be helped!” she burst out in a sudden mix of angry disappointment and helplessness. She turned, shaking her head, and left the room. Brennan watched her with an unhappy expression for another few sezura before turning back to the window, placing his left foot on the low railing. His gaze trailed off into space.
The cockpit of the AP Nikkonofune was almost spartanly equipped. It had only the most necessary controls, soberly gleaming metal, and it at no point caught the eye with ledges, foot straps, or additional instrument panels. Now that the Goner space temple was slowly sinking into infinity and the jumpgate was perceptible as an indistinct point in the darkness ahead of her, Elena realized that she had also lost a piece of home with the USC Getsu Fune. The experimental Earth ship might have been antiquated and someone sterile with its beige and white interior, but still one could feel that it was built for humans by humans. The AP Nikkonofune, on the other hand, hinted that throughout all the many decazuras where human and extraterrestrial cultures were mingling in the melting pot of the Community of Planets, alien influences had found their way into form and function. In spite of the sparse cockpit equipment, the designers had successfully arranged a narrow cabin in the small area between the cockpit and the cargo holds. It had two surprisingly comfortable bunk beds stacked on top of each other, as well as a shower room with a sonic shower. Elena felt just as positively about the onboard computer. He featured a much higher Logic Level than Marc, the brain of the USC Getsu Fune, and at the same time was not nearly as headstrong as Valerie, the guardian of Brennan’s ship, who last expressed in an almost pouting voice that you wanted to disassemble “her” ship. Elena had christened the computer Niji, which he dutifully confirmed, and from then on answered to that name without complaint.
Right at that moment, Niji signaled an alert that indicated an incoming transmission. Elena arched an eyebrow as the computer displayed the communication’s parameters on a newly opened viewscreen. They were unusual: the transmission simultaneously came in on over a million parallel frequency bands and was broadcast with a considerable power that totaled a few hundred kilowatts. Niji clearly identified the source as the Goner Temple!
“What kind of signal is this?” inquired Elena. “Can you decode it?”
Niji answer
ed without delay. “It’s not encrypted. It’s transmitting a digital audio signal. Would you like to hear it, Major Kho?”
Elena nodded, and a moment later a child’s voice rang out which she immediately recognized:
My name is Ion Battler, foster son of Norma Gardna, Beholder of the Truth at the Temple. She raised me, cared for me, and loved me, as if I had been her own flesh and blood. These words are dedicated to her memory and I send them out into infinity so that you, the people of the universe, will never forget about her, not today, and not in a million jazuras from now!
“Please record that,” Elena ordered. Ion Battler, the half-brother of Ninu Gardna, was definitely one of the most intelligent kids imaginable. The idea of using this transmission to create a memorial to his recently deceased stepmother that would rush through space forever, moved Elena. So she listened to the young voice with goosebumps, until after a few mizuras her gaze wandered over the gravidar and paused in fright.
Nopileos: A novel from the X-Universe: (X4: Foundations Edition 2018) (X Series) Page 2