What happens behind those doors? What kind of unsavory, unethical, or terrifying research goes on here in secret, under the auspices of the Imperator?
Despite my fear I look cautiously, straining to see what’s inside, every time another room opens as we pass by. . . .
Director Tiofon finally stops before one of the doors and points to a wall plaque which depicts a curious pictograph. The image is a long upright oval with four circles inside, resembling a pea pod with four peas. On top of the oval, just outside it, is a fifth smaller circle connected to the oval with a short vertical line.
“This symbol, right here, you will find frequently—all around here,” Tiofon says. “It is the symbol of the ship, and its ancient name is Vimana.”
“Wait a minute . . .” I mumble.
Everyone looks at me.
“That word, I’ve heard it before—something out of Indian myth? Isn’t ‘vimana’ supposed to be a weird flying machine from a Hindu epic, either Ramayana or Mahabharata?”
I am met by vacant expressions. Even Aeson watches me with unfamiliarity.
And then Director Tiofon says politely, “My Imperial Lady, apologies, but I’m not well versed in your Earth mythology. However, it’s quite possible it references something even more ancient, such as our own Atlantean roots. The Vimana was the main Atlantean vessel of the group that escaped Earth in the distant past.”
“Indeed. It was the Imperial vessel carrying divine members of the Kassiopei Dynasty,” the First Priest Shirahtet adds.
And now we’re standing inside it. . . .
I listen in wonder.
“Fascinating that you’ve heard this term before, and very useful,” Aeson says to me with encouragement. “Let us know if there’s anything else that comes to you.”
“I’m glad I’m here,” I say. “Although—I wish I knew more about that particular mythology.”
Wish Dad was here, he’d know. . . .
“As I was saying,” Director Tiofon resumes, “the Vimana symbol appears throughout the ship, and it happens to indicate certain shipboard areas, such as connecting corridors and stairwells. This door designates a passage that will take us to the center of the ship and its main stairwell between levels and decks.”
He opens the door with the same key card, revealing a narrow dark corridor. The moment we enter, faint lights come to life, blooming from the surface of the walls near the floor so that we can see the lower panels and the floor beneath. The light source is the walls themselves, no sconces or spheres of any kind.
The corridor stretches before us into a point of darkness. It is interspersed with other equally dim corridors and other doors along the way. As we walk, motion sensors must be activating the lights on the walls directly before us because they flicker awake with a feeble yellow glow.
A few moments later we emerge into a wide area about fifty feet (or just over fifteen meters) in diameter that contains a circular pit—a void of darkness, above and below. Eight corridors converge upon it from all directions, and one of them is ours.
A safety railing barrier circles the pit along a narrow ledge. The railing has multiple latched gates allowing access to metal rung stairs that lead both up and down to other levels. The rung stairs are installed on the divider walls between each of the eight corridors—walls that serve as structural supports all the way up and down this vertical shaft. An additional spiral staircase, wide enough for two people, winds close to the perimeter of the pit. The staircase is accessible by a short walkway from our level.
In the middle of that spiral is circular empty space. The whole thing reminds me of a silo or great upright tube.
“I’ve never been here before,” Aeson remarks with a frown, then steps toward the safety barrier.
“From here we can access the entire ship,” Shirahtet says to Aeson as he leans to look over the railing—while I keep slightly back, recalling my old fear of heights.
“Well, unfortunately not all of it,” Director Tiofon adds. “Approximately one hundred and fifty levels below—which is halfway down the ship—the connecting passage between Blue Habitat and Green Habitat has caved in and the surrounding structure is too unstable to force it open. At present we cannot access the Green Habitat or the Yellow Habitat on the very bottom of the ship without risking further damage.”
I suddenly remember the Imperator mentioning how the lower levels of the ark-ship were unreachable, and all their tantalizing secrets with them.
“Let us go down,” Shirahtet says, “as far as we may, to the bottom of Blue Habitat, Khe Deck One, Level One. All of the levels above that have been generally explored and catalogued, even though some findings are inconclusive, full of gaps, and our interpretations of artifacts and data might be faulty. At least we—the priests of Kassiopei and our acolytes—have done our best to examine all of it over the eons. But that last known level, the damaged one—it still holds many secrets.”
“Is that spiral staircase still functional? Or must we climb down the rung stairs?” Aeson asks Shirahtet and Director Tiofon with a meaningful glance at me. I imagine he must be concerned for my safety.
“Aeson,” I say gently. “I was in the Games.”
In that moment Rurim Kiv chuckles lightly.
But Aeson is not in the mood for amusement, and his expression remains serious.
“Both the staircase and the rung stairs are safe to use,” Igara Cvutu speaks up. “I’ve used them myself, as recently as two days ago. I prefer the staircase. It takes me only half an hour to reach the bottom via the spiraling staircase, with a few rest stops, and I am not in the best of shape.”
“There is another quicker alternative. A hovering freight elevator platform was used to move bulk items across levels, right through the center portion here,” Shirahtet says, pointing to the void in the middle of the pit. “It is still undamaged, and fortunately remains on our side of things—the accessible upper portion of the ship’s stairwell hub.”
“Great,” Aeson says. “Call it. We have no time to waste climbing stairs.”
Shirahtet sings the keying command and, a few minutes later, a thick, round, orichalcum-treated platform comes sailing up from the lower levels of the pit through the center of the spiral staircase and stops before us. It is just wide enough in diameter to accommodate all of us, including the Imperial guards, if we all stand reasonably close together.
Hijep Tiofon unlatches the closest railing gate, extends a walkway plank, and steps onto it to cross the void toward the elevator platform.
Aeson looks at me with consideration, then takes my hand in his possessive, warm grip, and together we traverse the void.
Chapter 39
We ride the platform elevator down the central shaft of the ship, moving past endless levels and decks, each marked by hubs of eight corridors. Most of them are pitch black, and only a few passages are dimly lit where someone must be working on that level. As we approach, sensors turn on faint illumination that has no apparent light source, a feeble glow coming awake inside the walls. It’s just barely enough to illuminate our way. Occasional wall markings sail past us—numbers and pictographs etched in relief on charcoal-grey surfaces.
Suddenly, we’re submerged in a twilight world of metal and shadows.
A quarter of the way down—after level seventy-five, according to Hijep Tiofon—the elevator enters a portion of the shaft that has no corridors. It’s just walls inside a tube, with rung stairs and the spiraling staircase continuing downward around us. Here, the encircling walls light up evenly, and without the darkened corridors, this entire area appears brighter. The illumination casts a yellowish glow over everyone’s faces, deepening the shadows.
“We’re now inside the connecting tube between Habitats,” Director Tiofon explains. “The Habitats can be sealed off independently, and this connecting shaft can be undocked from both ends. But it’s been permanently docked for as long as we remember.”
“Remind me, how many Habitats and levels in all?”
Director Bennu asks.
Aeson continues to hold my hand, keeping me close to him and away from the edges of the platform, since the elevator has no safety barrier—even though we’re surrounded by a wall of guards.
“Four Habitats,” Director Tiofon replies. “Each one is a self-contained sphere with nine decks and seventy-five levels. As already mentioned, we only explored the upper two—Red and Blue. As far as Habitat structure—the upper hemisphere is designated as Ra levels, and the lower hemisphere is Khe levels, with the widest level in the middle designated as Main Deck. There are four additional decks above and four below the Main Deck. Each deck has ten levels, except for the roomier inner decks—they have only seven levels each and taller ceilings.”
Director Tiofon pauses. “By the way—the level count begins on top with Level One, down to Level 37 near the halfway point. Then comes Main Deck spanning the equator, then another Level 37, with numbers decreasing all the way down to Level One again on the very bottom. In general, bigger numbers are at the widest, middle section of each Habitat. The smallest, outermost levels on either end are always Level One.”
A minute later we emerge from the tube into the second Habitat, called Blue, and once again hubs of corridors appear at intervals as we descend. At last we reach the bottom and the elevator stops.
There’s nowhere to go.
The platform is hovering over a dark area filled with metal rubble—twisted panels and broken rungs and remains of the spiral staircase—indicating the end of the explored portion of the ancient ship.
A corridor hub greets us. Except, three of the eight corridors are also filled with debris, with partially dented walls, and the remaining five don’t look particularly reliable either, with caving and dented floor and ceiling panels at the entrances.
“It looks worse than it is.” Igara Cvutu steps onto the closest undamaged plankway with a familiarity born of practice.
In support of her claim, the wall lights in the vicinity start to bloom, and the corridor nearest to her is illuminated.
“Please follow me,” Igara says, glancing back at us, and proceeds into the corridor.
“This is a good place to begin,” Director Tiofon says, moving after her. “Watch your heads, please, otherwise, quite safe.”
Rurim Kiv does not say a word but hops lightly from the platform onto the hub floor, bypassing the plankway and the rubble. He stands, looking around at the walls.
We all follow.
The radius corridor is another straight line, just as the one near the surface that we originally took to reach this shaft from the top of the ship. Except, this one is much shorter—we’re on Level One, the smallest bottom slice of the circle.
“A little more, this way,” Shirahtet says, pointing to the end of the line and a door. “We’re going to see some very old living quarters full of priceless items of historical value.”
My heart speeds up with an urgent feeling which I cannot quite describe. Aeson squeezes my hand as I glance at him, just as we approach the door leading to the main perimeter corridor.
Director Tiofon uses his key card to open it, and we emerge in a curving outer corridor, with walls immediately blooming with faint illumination upon our arrival. There are no sconce lights here; the ones on top of the ship where we first entered must have been much later additions.
Shirahtet takes us in the right direction and we follow. Three closed doors later, he stops before an open chamber that has no doors, and instead seems to have several panels—the equivalent of one wall—removed. It resembles a recessed niche with missing panels, a kind of large, walk-in storage closet.
The chamber is full of long metal boxes and chests of all shapes and sizes, some stacked on top of each other, others on top of tables and built-in wall shelves. Every one of these storage units is marked with unfamiliar symbols, pictographs, numbers. Some of the containers have visible latches and locks, while most others appear seamless on all sides.
“This is a private storage area that has been discovered quite by accident, and relatively recently, only a decade ago,” Shirahtet says, pointing to several long wall panels lying flat on the floor. “The walls caved in, and we found this hidden cavity. My technicians disassembled the rest of the panels very carefully, allowing us full access to this chamber.”
“What is it?” Aeson asks. “What are all these things?”
Shirahtet pauses carefully before answering. “For the most part, we don’t know. We’ve been unable to open the majority of these containers, because they are either seamless in construction—or appear seamless. The ones that appear to have locks have false locks. The few that we managed to open by means of brute force, cutting directly into the metal surface, either self-destructed the contents before our tools finished penetrating them, or were damaged beyond repair. What we were able to retrieve have been old scrolls in some cases—which fell apart into dust or small fragments.”
“Absolutely outrageous. These scrolls are too delicate to withstand such terrible handling,” Antiquities Specialist Cvutu says with reproach. “Your power tools, lasers—and even more shocking, flame torches at some point, from what I hear; brute force indeed—ruined the ancient fabric. On something fragile like that we would use fine brushes, tweezers, compressed air, micro-tools—”
Shirahtet raises one hand to silence her words. “Understood. Individuals who have so brutalized the artifacts over the years have all been removed from duty and their entire tech teams disciplined accordingly. As for the other items found—items that survived our crude methods,” Shirahtet continues, “there were trinkets, household items, personal items belonging to mostly individuals of low rank, and a few truly ancient data storage media devices that we are uncertain how to play.”
“After more than nine thousand years, I don’t expect any data survived,” Director Tiofon says. “But even if it did, I doubt it would’ve been anything important—not on this bottom level of Deck One. All the nobility, all the most important ranking individuals, commanding officers, industry leaders, not to mention the Imperial Family, were housed on Decks Four, maybe Three, but never here. So, let’s not have any undue regrets over that—”
But Director Bennu interrupts him. “How can you say this? The value of genuine ancient tech, on whichever level, is priceless! I don’t care if it’s a poor servant or slave whose storage box we open, it is all vital to our understanding! In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the manual workers—those with real skills that were chosen to accompany the elites—had some amazing data, methods, insight—”
“Yes, yes, all of that is true,” Director Tiofon responds. “My point is, we may be worrying over nothing here, taking up resources to focus on this particular storage area when in fact our time could be better used elsewhere in the ship.”
“So why did you bring us here?” Aeson says. “Unless you think there is something relevant to our search?”
“My Imperial Lord, yes,” Shirahtet says, glancing around the room at the boxes. “Several good reasons to look here. Primarily—what intrigues me are the questions raised. Why resort to such intricate protections on a non-VIP personnel level? Why create such difficulty of access to the contents of these boxes? And why was it all hidden in a walled-off chamber for thousands of years, only to be discovered through a lucky accident? Was it to protect the contents from prying eyes or protect whoever would open them? Furthermore, what kind of advanced storage is this and how did they manage to get the contents inside? And lastly, who? Who is responsible?”
“Have you tried voice commands?” I ask.
Shirahtet turns his dark unblinking eyes to me and I can almost see a twinge of annoyance. “Naturally we have, my Imperial Lady. Every known permutation of voice-lock has been attempted. Indeed, the Imperial Sovereign Himself was the one who brought our attention to this particular area, finding it of considerable interest. The Imperator came down here on more than one occasion. Five years ago, in particular—he spent quite a few hours here, tr
ying various combinations with the Logos voice . . . to no avail.”
“Is that so?” Aeson says thoughtfully. “Why five years ago?”
“I believe your Imperial Father found something of concern here—that is, elsewhere on this relic of a ship,” Shirahtet says. “Which brings me to the second reason why this area is of importance.”
This time the First Priest looks at Rurim Kiv. “There are hidden symbols on some of these containers. Symbols previously unfamiliar to us, never encountered before, not even after hundreds of years of examination of the ship. But they’re exactly like the ones you discovered etched with orichalcum onto the great stones of the Earth pyramid during the Blue Stage of the Games.”
“Fascinating,” Rurim Kiv says. “You might recall, she was the one who discovered them.” And he points at me.
I raise my brows. “Yes, my Team and I stumbled onto them by accident, using the heating command on the stones. But you were the one who actually figured out their pattern and meaning and unlocked the Blue Grail.”
“After looking over everyone’s shoulders and stealing our findings,” Tuar mutters, standing a few steps away with the other guards.
Everyone looks at Tuar, since normally guards never speak unless prompted.
“Oh! This is Tuar Momet,” I say at once. “He was with me—with us—in the Games. He was on my Team . . . Team Lark.”
“Good,” Aeson says. “Another person who has direct experience with those symbols.”
But Rurim Kiv watches Tuar with an unblinking stare. “I did not steal. I merely observed what was there for the taking,” he says with a slight edge. “All your notes, all your data was in the open. Anyone who could see it, did. There are no rules against exercising such an advantage in the Games.”
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