Nopileos: A novel from the X-Universe: (X4: Foundations Edition 2018) (X Series)

by Helge T. Kautz

  Well, here she was, sitting in a practically empty military shuttle with the destination of Cloudbase, the most godforsaken sector inside the influence of the Argon Federation that one could imagine. There was literally nothing worth talking about here, with the exception of an enormous space station that orbited the sun of this star system, far out, there, where it was cold, empty, and lonesome. The information that the Goner maintained their own station here, which they called their temple, had come as a surprised to Siobhan. She had never heard of it before. That the Gonor refused to be referred to as a “sect” and instead preferred the term “community of knowledge” was also new to her. Truly astonishing, if not shocking, though, was the so-called reparations resolution: the government of Argon Prime admitted to having concealed certain historical facts for hundreds of jazuras. In particular, the actual existence of the planet called Earth, from which not only all Argons originated, but also the mechanical species called the Xenon. Nathan R. Gunne, the great Argonian folk hero from the first stazura, was actually an earthborn, as was his long-lived companion, Joan Mitchell, who in common practice was revered with the name Hydra.

  Siobhan’s hands unconsciously stroked the book that lay in her lap. Its title was The Hydra and the Hero: What Joan and Nathan had to say to each other. It was well over two hundred jazuras old, and quite valuable; Ruuf, knowing her weakness for real books from historic times, had given it to her. He was certain she would like it, and had been right with his assumption. She loved it, had already read it twice from beginning to end in the past three tazuras, had downright devoured it, also to soothe the the turmoil in her mind.

  Siobhan’s thoughts were interrupted by a loudspeaker voice that advised her that the shuttle would dock at the Goner space station in a few mizuras. The Argon winced and hurriedly stashed the book in the narrow briefcase that she had brought as her only carry-on. She tried to catch a glimpse of the temple, but outside there was still nothing to see but distant nebulae and unfamiliar constellations that traced a slow semicircle around the shuttle. Apparently the autopilot now turned the nose of the spaceship after the completion of the deceleration process, back toward the direction of flight, as required by the docking procedures of the modern landing carousel.

  “Well, now I’m really curious,” said the woman who sat on the other side of the corridor by the window. Right at the beginning of the flight, she introduced herself as Commander Ditta Borman. She was a compact, wiry, and enterprising bundle of energy all in one, with short, blond, matchstick-length hair and an energetic, round face. She and Siobhan were the only passengers on board the shuttle. “Only a few wozuras ago, I would have sworn that the Goner are utterly crazy. Now I’m not so sure who the crazy ones are!”

  “Certainly not you and me!” Siobhan said, and laughed softly. “Or are we?”

  “Come on, we’re not! Even though it would explain a lot, of course.” Now Ditta Borman chuckled as well. “For example, why the command staff from my agency maintains a facility here. That doesn’t make any sense at all!”

  Siobhan shrugged. “We’re in for a surprise.” She had already experienced and done many things in her long life that had seemed absurd at first glance. She looked outside, where the shuttle was lining up with a landing bridge, which the spacecraft latched onto with an imperceptible jolt. Before the bridge pulled the ship into the station’s landing carousel, Siobhan caught a glimpse of a washed out projection in the form of a blue ball that flickered against the dark background of an enormous space installation. Without warning, the lights switched on blindingly bright, and made Siobhan blink.

  “Damn,” Ditta Borman swore. “Typical Navy.” She giggled and got up. “All right. Let’s go then.”

  A few moments later, she and Siobhan looked around the landing area of the temple, the unexpected simplicity of which left them both somewhat disappointed. Somehow, one might expect that the technical and structural furnishings of a space temple would clearly differ from the other stations! But that wasn’t the way it was: the arrival hall flashed clean, barren, and functional, just as one found everywhere in the Community of Planets. At the entrance to the walkway, the two woman came across a small, chattering group comprised of various peoples. They seemed like a private travel group, but that was hardly possible. After all, the ship was an Argonian military shuttle! Not all members of the group were allowed to enter the ferry without inspection. Only Argons and Borons came on board unhindered, some Teladi were sent through an improvised customs area. A single Split, who didn’t seem to fit in with the others, made a furious gesture as they sent it through a scanner arch, but he eventually gave in and stepped onto the walkway, snorting.

  Between the two high archways that lead to the interior of the station, Siobhan spotted two blue-gray-uniformed Argons who were carrying long-range energy weapons and suspiciously watching over the events inside the landing area. Siobhan knew almost nothing about the Goner and their customs; however, that they tolerated soldiers in their temple—their sanctuary—seemed strange to her. “Your people?” She pointed in the direction of the gunmen with her chin.

  “Military police,” Ditta Borman replied curtly, as if that one word explained everything. Siobhan wanted to follow up with a question, but didn’t get a chance, because at that moment the bent figure of Dr. Vondran detached from a cluster of people near the archways. He was accompanied by a young woman with long, blond hair and a clever-looking boy of at most seven jazuras.

  “Siobhan, I’m glad you’re here!”

  “Don’t expect too much from it, Ruuf,” she answered.

  “Why, no. You know I’m a realist. Commander Borman, I presume?”

  The woman nodded while Dr. Vondran continued. “Commander-san, I’ve been asked to let you know that your colleague Major Seldon will arrive with Colonel Danna on the next shuttle.”

  “Colonel Ban Danna from the Intelligence Service? That is… yes, sir!” Ditta Borman clicked her heels together. If Ban Danna, Deputy Chief of the Military Intelligence Service, was involved, it could only be a matter of highest importance!

  Dr. Vondran introduced the pretty woman with the blond hair in his company as Ninu Gardna, assistant to Noah Gaffelt, the Supreme Guardian. Siobhan couldn’t do anything with this title, and asked about it.

  “We Gonor also call ourselves the Guardians of the Truth. You can imagine why,” Ninu Gardna explained with a charming smile. “The Supreme Guardian is our leader.”

  “The spiritual leader of your religion, so to speak?” Siobhan asked.

  Ninu shook her head. “No, completely and utterly secular. It is a widespread misconception that our beliefs are a spiritual matter, a religion. It is not. As Goner you are free to believe in Yahweh, or, for all I care, in the holy Three-Dimensionality, as long as you simply acknowledge the historical facts about the Earth and our ancestry.”

  “But you could still say that the entire Argon government unanimously changed the denomination in favor of the Gonor with the adoption of the reparations resolution?”

  “Ladies, we do not want to go that far,” Dr. Vondran interrupted with a narrow smile on his lips that reminded Siobhan for the first time of the intelligent grin of the young Ruuf Vondran from over forty jazuras ago. “First of all we will bring you to your quarters. Once Colonel Danna arrives, there’s a first, informal meeting. Follow me.”

  “Hey!” the boy called in between as the old scientist turned around. “You forgot me! I’m Ion Battler, Ninu’s brother.”

  “Don’t be so cheeky,” Ninu chided at her half-brother with a smile. “Nobody is forgetting you.”

  “Hello, Ion!” So you’re a guardian, too, eh?” Ditta Borman asked the boy. He nodded eagerly.

  “Yeah!”

  “That come with a costume?”

  Ion gave a lopsided grin, but didn’t know what to say to that. He liked the compact soldier immediately. How he felt about Dr. Norma, however, the blue-haired scientist, he wasn’t quite so sure. She nodded at him briefly,
but otherwise didn’t seem to pay any attention to him. But he was just a boy, and she was an adult woman… a beautiful one, besides.

  “So let’s go. I think we’re just standing in the way here,” Ditta Borman said.

  Exactly two stazuras later, the next shuttle arrived. Siobhan had just ordered a glass of ordano juice from the food dispenser in her cabin when she received Colonel Danna’s call for the first meeting. She downed the juice in one gulp, wiped her lips with the back of her hand, and immediately made her way to the conference room. She would come clean with them, she had decided. Most other people would probably have gotten nervous at the thought, but not Siobhan. Something in her compensated for every stirring of developing unrest with a certain malicious anticipation of the expressions of the scientists and government officials when they learned the truth about the oh-so-famous Dr. Siobhan Inja Norman…

  Ban Danna’s expression was blank and clearly indicated that the intelligence service agent, who had just been promoted to the rank of Colonel, was at a loss for words. The other participants of the meeting, Dr. Vondran, Senator Gunnar, and the astrophysicist Dr. Zakk Folkna, also starred at Siobhan as though she were a ghost. Only Lar Asaneus, the scientist sent by the Queendom of Boron, as well as Guardian Gaffelt signaled the beginning understanding of what Siobhan had just disclosed to them.

  “So we could have been in possession of jump technology since the days of my grandmother,” Danna finally stated flatly. “Do you actually know what that means, Dr. Norman? There wouldn’t have been a Xenon problem for a long time. A long time.”

  “There would be no more Xenon at all, my goodness!” Nan Gunnar interjected. Siobhan looked around and wanted to say something, but the Boron spoke first.

  “The beautiful, blue-haired, aesthete has rightly done, acted, and operated. To wipe out and annihilate the Xenon would be an offense against ethics and a violation of the equality between sapient beings.”

  Noah Gaffelt cleared his throat. His long, white beard rustled on his course cloak as he turned his head to look at Gunnar and Danna. “I likewise think that Dr. Norman has done the right thing. The Xenon have been stealing each of our newly developed technologies so far, and they abuse it for their own purposes. Just think of Paranid data octahedrons, gravidar concealment, and what else I don’t know.”

  “Slave chips,” Zakk Folkna interjected. “Thought control for spaceships, only the other way around. Well thank you very much.”

  “Excuse me? You know about that, Folkna-san?” Senator Gunnar asked sharply. It was only recently that military intelligence had learned that there were certain criminal organizations that wouldn’t hesitate to sell out the entire Community of Planets for profit. The slave chip was one of their newer abominations, and—fortunately--had not seen widespread use.

  “Senator, I ask you.” Folkna grabbed at his chest and held up the security batch attached to his white coat. “Security classification three! What does that tell you?”

  The senator mumbled something incomprehensible and then fell silent.

  “Anyway,” Siobhan said, who had expected a much stronger reaction, “I can translate the NQG invariance into an NQG equality within a few jazuras. This way, Norman’s Law will not lose its validity.”

  “Yes, one will finally be able to use it, instead of sticking it as an axiomatic monolith in a corner where it collects the dust of decazuras,” Folkna snickered. “For that alone you are already deserve the reward of the Polytechnic Institute.”

  “She deserves a war tribunal,” Ban Danna said sourly. Siobhan nodded; that was the kind of reaction she had counted on!

  “And two generations of astrophysicists with her, Colonel.” Vondran chimed in. His position was firm—he would cover for Siobhan. “After all, none of us has managed to resolve the NQG invariance, and that even though astrophysics is after all the third-most important branch of military research.”

  “The point is, however,” Danna said, “how do we know that Dr. Norman is on our side? Why shouldn’t she sprinkle stardust into the eyes of the scientists involved in the project again?”

  “If I wanted that, I wouldn’t be here now, Colonel,” Siobhan said coolly. “Don’t forget that you asked me for this committee, not the other way around. Most astrophysicists today don’t even know that I’m still alive. I could have just as easily stayed home on Argon Prime.” She gave Danna an appraising look. Why such an unintelligent, immature man belonged to the senior staff of the Intelligence Service was unclear to her.

  Danna’s gaze was that of a man who had accidentally swallowed an insect. He didn’t like this blue-haired scientist at all, hadn’t liked her from the start. She was cocky, arrogant, and fake. The senator seemed to think the same, if he interpreted the reactions of his immediate superior correctly. It was just a pity that the scientists were so attached to this blasted Argon!

  “All right, Dr. Norman,” Senator Gunnar said.”Anyone is free to change their mind. And forty jazuras are… well, a reasonable timeframe. If Dr. Vondran, Dr. Folkna, and Lar Asaneus are in agreement, then I welcome you to Project Providence. Right, Danna?”

  Ban Danna gave a start. “What? Well…”

  “Just one more thing, Dr. Norman-san,” the senator continued. “We cannot give you jazuras for the completion of your work. You must understand, we mortals think in less epic time spans.”

  Siobhan pressed her lips together and forced a friendly smile. How she hated this term: mortals! He was so presumptuous and proved that the senator, despite his put-on friendliness, didn’t know the slightest thing about the loss that came with longevity.

  Lar Asaneus looked at Siobhan with large, clear eyes, as though he knew exactly what was going inside her. A single clicking sound left the membrane of his environmental suit and for a fraction of a sezura, a sound like the highest note of a shattering toy xylophone echoed in the conference room.

  Chapter 29

  Profit is the foundation of every social interaction.

  Profit replaces every social interaction!

  Bomandrolas Sisinfinos Niandeles VIII,

  Appendix to the Operational Regulations

  Someone had drilled a hole in Elena’s skull with a dull drill bit, obliquely through the frontal lobes into the middle of the brain stem. Her eyes hurt as though they were being scooped out of the sockets with a spork. Her stomach cramped with nausea which rose bitterly up her esophagus. Despite the darkest night, everything seemed to spin in circles like a carousel, continuously in circles, over and over, faster and faster. Elena inhaled sharply to compensate for a sour, choking sensation in her throat, but it didn’t help. Weakness overpowered her, and it took a few mizuras until she managed to crawl a tiny bit forward on trembling limbs. Struggling for air, she dropped on her stomach. Biting cold bit into her consciousness, sticking her thighs, knees, stomach, chest, forearms, cheek, shoulders with a thousand frosty needles where they lay flat on the floor. Someone had undressed her; she was naked. Whoever had done that obviously wanted to be certain she wasn’t carrying any type of weapon or other devices or tools. She laboriously propped herself up on the palms of her hands. The sharp pain that lanced through her hand throbbingly reminded her of her broken index finger.

  Somehow, Elena managed to get up on her knees. With a sagging shoulder and drooping head, she remained in the same pose for a long time, panting and wheezing like a wounded animal. Slowly, very slowly, the first coherent trains of thought returned that were more than just unconnected tatters. Together with conscious thought, an additional sensation flared up: her entire left side burned dully, as though it were completely made up of contusions, bruises, and aches, from her calves up to her neck.

  Now the other senses were coming back. Someone moaned. Sezuras later she realized it was her own voice. The icy-cold ground under her was made of corrugated, apparently heavily soiled metal. The air smell bad, like the sweat of tortured individuals. Where was she? Still in the same position, Elena tried to apply the meditation techniqu
es she had practiced daily for many years. First, she brought her breath under control, then she managed to push back the whirling of her tattered sense of balance. It worked amazingly well. The piercing, gnawing, hammering headache that made her skull ring like a bell, she ignored as well as she could. Bit by bit, she got the nausea under control. Although the choking sensation in her throat never really went away, she could finally breathe again without being afraid of vomiting at any moment.

  A throaty voice nearby gasped something in a language that sounded like Split.

  “Ghinn?” The effort to elicit intelligible sounds from her vocal cords was worth it: her voice sounded almost normal. A long pause as Elena gingerly walked on her knees in the direction of Ghinn’s voice.

  “The creature will not touch me!” the Split woman hissed as Elena’s hands felt for her. The scraping sounds of bare skin on metal told Elena that Ghinn was also trying to sit up.

  Abruptly, bright light flared up. Elena’s eyelids squeezed together as the brightness stabbed into her eyes and set off large-scale devastation in her head. She pressed her hands flat on her stomach as the nausea threatened to return. After a while, the storm in her body calmed, and she dared to slowly open her eyelids. The light hurt her eyes, but in addition to all the other that assaulted her body, the light hardly made a difference.

  She looked around carefully. The room was only about four by four meters long and maybe two and a half meters high. A clunky-looking double bulkhead with a barred observation port covered with metal glass was closed on the front wall. Actually it wasn’t a room, but a shed, the floors and walls of which were covered with shabby, corrugated metal usually only found as linings for technical equipment. The brown layer that more or less completely covered the metal could have been dried mud or excrement; Elena didn’t want to think about it. Nopileos lay curled up against the back wall, his eyelids shut tight, without stirring. Elena finally straightened up—the movement was answered with a wave of nausea—and stumbled over to Nopileos. The cold of the metal floor and the stinking air now bit through her limbs. It hurt, but it somehow also helped to push the headache and nausea further into the background.