As the Archipelago of Swamp Orchids altered course to reach the calculated position of the cockpit module, the plans of the Paranid had begun to show.
“They’re retreating in an orderly fashion and only a guard of three are being left behind!” Nopileos realized in amazement. She wouldn’t have expected something like that.
“A black tazura for Three-Dimensionality,” Kalmanckalsaltt announced calmly. “Sometimes I consider myself lucky to only have two eyes.”
Momentarily speechless, and with pupils dilated in surprise, Nopileos stared at Kalmanckalsaltt. Didn’t Paranid basically speak in the majestic plural? Or did he not realize what he just said? But she didn’t get to think about it further because outside in space the separated cockpit slowly pared itself from the darkness.
As before with the damaged pirate ship, Ebosirireos now also jockeyed the comparatively tiny cockpit module into the hangar. As the artificial gravity was carefully reactivated, the severely damaged module sank down slowly to the metal floor, where after a few gyroscopic movements, it came to rest. Nopileos with the claws on her feet tingling, to reestablish atmosphere in the hangar. She was tremendously unburdened that nothing had happened to Ninu, but what about Elena? The Archipelago was already on its way back to the Delta Gate, which was lined by Paranid spacecraft that formed a triangle.
The bulkhead at the rear end of the cockpit module opened creaking and with difficulty; a thin, white mist hissed from the opening and vanished immediately. Finally, the blue-haired Argon appeared in the doorway. She glanced around, waved to Nopileos, and jumped down the quarter of a length between the cockpit and hangar floor. After her came…
“Ninu! Tshhhhh!” Nopileos waddled to the Goner as fast as her legs could take her. “Is everything okay? Are you all right, sister?”
Ninu Gardna gasped, “Good Earth—Nopileos! Man, you’re alive! I’m fine, but where’s Elena?’
“I’m fine, too!” sounded a young voice. Ion Battler stumbled as he jumped out of the doorway and nearly collided with the Teladi.
“Young Guardian survives the explosion of his spaceship unharmed, but breaks all his bones leaving the wreck,” was the comment from the blue-haired Argon as two men and one woman climbed out of the cockpit module. Ion flashed an embarrassed grin and turned red.
“Then you are Siobhan Norman” Nopileos inquired. Behind her, Uchan, Kalmanckalsaltt, and Ebosirireos entered the hangar. While the navigations commander showed clear signs of nervousness, neither the Split nor the Paranid revealed any unusual emotions: Uchan’s lips were drawn low, while Kalmanckalsaltt looked aside in a gesture meant to demonstrate disregard.
“As much as I’ve ever been, anyway. Here we have Commander Borman, Major Seldon, Dr. Folkna—Ninu and Ion obviously already know you,” Siobhan answered. It all seemed like a bizarre dream: the strange ship, the two-eyed Paranid, the rouged-up Teladi—impossible to make sense of! “Not that I’m ungrateful,” she added,” but I’m looking forward to the bill!”
“Bill? What bill? We… tshh!” Suddenly, Nopileos knew what she had to answer—it stood in her mind with the same clarity as though someone had projected it across the sky in huge, glowing letters: “We’re not charging! We’re a… a non-profit organization!” Now it was out.
Only seldom did Siobhan ever lose her voice—in general, a sarcastic remark came to her in any sort of tricky situation. Not so this time. The Teladi’s response amazed her so much that for sezuras she wasn’t capable of responding in any way at all.
Then she burst out in peals of laughter.
Chapter 49
I needed forty years to find out that I still love her! I can well imagine that this sounds pretty crazy for you out there. After all: other people are born, marry, have children, and die within that time frame! But I want to tell you something: on her hundredth birthday I will surprise her!
Deidre Norman,
ArgoNet::GenTalk, 5/544 Edition
There was a tiny sound that repeated about every two sezuras. It always remained the same: a click or clack so soft that it rose just above the threshold of perception. Together with a distant, whispering noise, it formed a strangely familiar settings for the otherwise almost perfect silence.
Elena let herself be carried away by this peaceful calm like a gull on a summer wind over the sea, without self-doubt, without fear, and without thought. Of the two individuals who live in each person’s head—the narrator and the listener—only the listener was awake; the narrator was fast asleep. Time did not exist in Elena’s world, she drifted timelessly on the waves of mere being. The voice that suddenly entered her universe of peace could not be her own.
“She’s asleep!”
There was a presence. Someone. Still uncommented on by her inner narrator, she felt something in herself move, steering in a certain direction. Another perception now joined the tiny, rhythmic click: there was a dark red glow of light that spread pleasantly and warmly inside her. The accompaniment—the presence-- disappeared with a loud noise that brought her inner narrator almost instantly back to alertness, and thus back to life.
“Danna!” she murmured. Did I say that? Was that my voice?
With consciousness, physical sensation also returned. Her right index finger throbbed painfully; much worse, however, was the dull strain that radiated from her skull into her spine. What happened? Where am I?
Carefully she moved; she noticed that she lay on a comfortable, soft surface and was covered with a quilt. She blinked and raised her eyelids. The room she was in was tiny and narrow, and it lay in almost complete darkness. Only from the wall by her feet was there a slight shimmer, like from a video wall that had been switched to night lighting. “Light,” she mumbled. She had a terribly dry mouth. In addition, her stomach growled.
As the light slowly faded and her eyes gradually adjusted to the buzzing brightness, she was surprised to see where she was. She rose to her elbows and heaved her body up. There was no doubt about it: this was the small sleeping compartment between the cargo hold and cockpit of the AP Nikkonofune, and she lay in the top bunk of the bunk bed! But how was that possible? Had she simply dreamed all that? “Dreamed? But… dreamed what?” she whispered slowly as she cautiously swung out of the bunk and felt for the rungs of the ladder with her bare toes. Then the images came shooting at her, snapshots of everything that had happened: Hewa. The CEO. #efaa. Nif-Nakh. Pirates. Ianamus Zura. Menelaus’s Paradise.
The Delta Gate…
“Niji—I’m hungry,” she said into the room. Looking down, she saw a pair of lemon-yellow pajamas with the emblem of the Argon Federation on the sleeve. Someone had bandaged her index finger expertly. On Earth, one could have had the bone and tissue regrown together within a few hours, but here… Elena shrugged her shoulders. “Niji!” she repeated when the computer didn’t want to answer even after a few sezuras. Again, no reaction.
Elena opened the bulkhead and stepped into the narrow passageway to the cockpit, where she nearly stumbled over the training equipment that was folded out from the wall. She stooped and punched a switch that silently retracted the gym and let it sink into the wall.
The door to the cockpit stood open. First, Elena’s gaze went out into outer space through the panoramic window. Far off between the stars hovered a jumpgate, timeless and somehow comforting. “Oh god!” she exclaimed. Only now did she notice the two huge, black cylinders that were much closer than the jumpgate. They slowly rotated around their longitudinal axes and remained a few hundred lengths apart in the position of a mighty T.
“Ele Na!”
“Lin!”
Above the pilot’s seat, a creature floated in the pale environmental suit that smoothly turned around and swam toward her. She knew immediately that it was Nola Hi, but she only had eyes for the tall, wiry man who peeled away from the pilot’s seat so quickly that he nearly fell over. Elena lacked the words. Only when strong arms embraced her and she was clapped on her back with enthusiasm did she overcome her astonishment.
“Kyle? I’m still dreaming, right? What are you doing here?”
“That’s a pretty long story… and so incredible that you’ll probably call me crazy.” Brennan alternately held her on outstretched arms to look at her with gleaming eyes, then pulled her back toward her, patting her on the back again. Elena let this happen for a while, then she freed herself playfully from the embrace of her best friend and former supervisor.
“Then this isn’t the AP Nikkonofune.”
“No, it’s the AP Telstar, my rickety M4/Buster,” Brennan confirmed. “I just happened to be in the area—”
A stream of loud clicks interrupted the astronaut from Earth in the middle of his sentence. Nola Hi pushed forward, his secondary tentacles swarming excitedly behind the milky membrane of his suit. “The great, funny, hairy human and aesthetic son of Earth Brennan from the sector of the blue planet loves to joke, to spread facetious amusement, to open a humorous and suitable outlet for his insecurity and to prepare himself, respectively!” Nola Hi hovered so close to Elena that the faces of the two dissimilar beings were only a hand’s breadth apart and at the same height.
Brennan cleared his throat. “Granted, I found myself together with the Telstar on board an ancient Terraformer ship called #deff about two weeks ago. For all I know, it was no coincidence.”
“Slowly, slowly, Kyle. So #deff is the second CPU ship. And it held onto you?”
“In the beginning, I was terrified, you can believe me. But I learned a lot from it. You’ve got to be hungry, Lin?”
Even though her stomach demanded food loudly, she shook her head. A dull fear had taken over her. “Where is the Archipelago of Swamp Orchids? Where is Nopileos?”
“Oh Ele Na, brave and aesthetic star warrior, the funny, scaly cheapskate and lizard descendant Isemados Sibasomos Nopileos VI dwells on the other side of the world portal, in sector Menelaus’s Paradise, the outermost outpost of the Queendom.”
“When I collected you in the vicinity of the jumpgate, I thought you were both dead,” Brennan explained. “The space-time distortion during #efaa’s transit was gigantic and tugged you through the event horizon. It was really exceptionally risky to scramble around the gate at that point. Or should I say, tired of life?”
Without another word, Elena forced past Brennan and Nola Hi into the cockpit and dropped into the pilot’s seat. With a determined expression, she checked the gravidar and data displays over and over again for a mizura. Apart from three planets, two jumpgates, the two CPU ships, and the AP Telstar itself,the sector was completely empty. Eventually, she asked the onboard computer with consternation for the name of the sector and let herself—already knowing what the computer would not answer—sink back into the pilot’s chair.
“The name of this sector is Refuge One,” the onboard computer said.
After a while, she felt Kyle settle down in the copilot’s chair to her right, but she didn’t look over at him, instead she starred out at the two Terraformer ships and the useless jumpgate. Their mission was successful, apart from a tiny, little flaw. The Terraformers were now here in the retreat, and the Paranids were still over there, in the territory of the Community of Planets. The local jumpgate was no longer connected to the Delta Gate in Menelaus’s Paradise, otherwise the absence of the Paranid fleet could not be explained. The Boron plan and worked out! But why was she here—and why Brennan? How could they get back to the territory of the Community now? Were they basically stranded? Again?
Why no! There was still the partial jump ship, the AP Providence! It could also use a deactivated jumpgate as its remote destination! It had to have escaped the shelling of the Paranids using the jump drive! “They’ll pick us up here, Kyle,” Elena said with renewed confidence, looking at Brennan from the side. “Soon. You’ll see!”
He nodded slowly. “Nola Hi told me about it. It’s probably just a matter of time.”
“Yes—and yes!” the Boron clicked enthusiastically.
Elena let herself sink more deeply into the pilot’s chair and set her bare feet on the edge of the console. The jumpgate was exactly between her two big toes. Everything would be explained. Soon she would see Nopileos again. She and Nola Hi—and the entire Community!—had been lucky again. No, it was more than luck—it bordered on a miracle! “I’m not quite certain how everything fits together,” she said, glancing back and forth between Brennan and the Boron.
“But I do know one thing: we’re not stranded this time. The cavalry is already on its way here to pick us up! Right?”
THE END
Afterword and Acknowledgments
If you could make money by inventing quotations, I’d now be sitting on a pile of gold!
☺☺☺☺☺
Again and again, I hear the question of how such a novel actually comes into being. “Where do you get all the ideas?” I’m asked, and sometimes, “What are you smoking?” The latter is simple to clear up—I don’t smoke at all, I’m just always like this. The answer to the questions about the origin of ideas and the creation of a novel is not as easy to summon; you could just as well ask about the creation of an egg: “Oh, well, you just cackle a bit and suddenly it’s there!” Except that in the case of the present novel, the cackle lasted a good three years—of course, not continuously, I would like to add proactively…
Maybe we can get closer to the answer if we poke around in the dust of history.
In the beginning there was my first novel from the X-Universe, Farnham’s Legend, which accompanied the first 20,000 copies of the game X-Tension. Almost immediately after publication in the summer of 2000, I realized that I must have made a mistake: I had actually thought of the pithy Kyle-William Brennan and his beautiful colleague Elena Kho as the main characters in the story. Despite this, the extremely cheerful Teladi youth Nopileos quickly developed into everyone’s favorite! And Nopileos’s fate, of all people, remained in the dark: namely, Farnham’s Legend left the Teladi as he plummeted in his burning spaceship over Nif-Nakh! The range of scolding I got reached from the simple “Why did you do that to him?” to the indignant statement “Nopileos is dead!” all the way to the vague threat: “Woe betide you, if something bad happened to Nopileos…”
It was also no help to assure everyone that Nopileos was fine and not a hair on his head was out of place. (After all,--and ever kid knows that—Teladi have no hair at all!) Ergo, there had to be a sequel, because how else should I prove that Nopileos—naive as ever, cheeky, and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed—continues to be a nuisance in the universe?
There were enough ideas for one: as soon as I wrote the word “END” beneath Farnham’s Legend, I knew roughly what would happen to Nopileos and the others. So I sat down almost immediately and cackled. Slogged away. And suddenly it was there, the story of Nopileos, the Teladi—the story of a lizard on its way to the stars! But it’s also the story of the great and mysterious Community of Planets with all its scintillating, crazy, lovable, nerve-wracking, and sometimes also pretty malicious inhabitants: Argons, Borons, Paranids, Split, Xenon, Kha'ak—and of course the small, furry creature from the Andromeda Galaxy, who always says “It was especially metaphysical today!”
I would like to thank a whole slew of people, without whom this novel would certainly not exist—or at least not in this form:
Bernd Lehahn and the team from Egosoft, who with “X – Beyond the Frontier,” “X-Tension,” and now the brand-new “X2 – The Threat” have created the most interesting and complex space computer games until now; Jürgen Goeldner, Michael Nürnberg, and Ole Mogensen, without whom there would never have been a Farnham’s Legend—and therefore no Nopileos! I would like to heartily thank Jo Löffler and Panini for their continuous commitment, without which this novel wouldn’t have appeared, either. I have Yannick Le Guern to thank for many extraordinary, thought-provoking impulses, some of which have found their way into this book. Sabine Filitz, Christopher Barilich, and Anne Blankenburg were my irreplaceable and merciless, critical test readers, with
out whose attention to detail the novel would have been a different, less worthy of reading one. (I alone am to blame for any possible inconsistencies!) I thank the guys from my band Dragonfyre for their understanding and support during the long weeks of writing and editing; and—last, but not least—I wholeheartedly tank the entire X-Community, who are, with absolute certainty, the friendliest, most interesting—in short, the best—community there is in the entire Internet.
You’re the best, people!
Helge
Krefeld, November 2003
Auch im ArgoNet::
Nopileoshttp://www.nopileos.de/
Helge Kautzhttp://www.helge.de/
Egosofthttp://www.egosoft.de/
Paninihttp://www.panini.de/
Yes—and yes!
Translator's Notes
You get in, and you get out. Nobody came to see the opening act!
As a public speaker, I’ve had to follow some really tough acts. It’s part of the job. Your talk is going to be different from the previous one, so no comparison, right? But it’s still a bit nerve-racking. But you take a deep breath and walk on stage anyway.
Writing is a little like that—you put your thoughts out into the world for people to judge. In comparison, editing is even more fun! You just read a great story, give lots of advice on how it could be better, maybe make a correction or two, but you’re invisible. The author’s voice is there, for better or worse, and your job is to stay out of its way. That’s what I was hired for. But…
Nopileos: A novel from the X-Universe: (X4: Foundations Edition 2018) (X Series) Page 41