Krikos: The Vertical Horizon

by Rishabh Dubey

  Could anyone have ever imagined that our college’s famous pariah would go on to become the greatest name in the history of science? Well, maybe. But one thing I could never begin to understand was Flex’s nonchalance to the fact that Stillites were opposed to science. He rather worshipped science. He was always tempted to eradicate irrationality from the minds of the general public (the only time he socialised with anyone …. yes ... an egotist bastard). I used to think that he was probably a new kind of Stillite.

  But I was illuminated when I asked Flex this question on Jupiter that “Bro ... What’s all this to you?”

  “Elucidate ‘all this’ “, he replied.

  “All this …. Development …. Science … civilization … what’s all this to you?” I conferred.

  He gave a very intriguing answer – “When Galacta accidentally lead to the creation of the humans, she also gave them the kamikaze tool to compensate for the mistake. It was Science.”

  I remember, because of a special something, that it was the 17th of Aurora 392 E.E. . . . His statements were easily ignored because they didn’t mean much to those who didn’t care about him … that was... almost everybody. But the activities of that day I remember exactly, because of my mental scrutiny of his special sayings. And this one was very special. Flex didn’t write in his notebooks on a daily basis. He would rather choose specific days. And the day, in which he said these words to me, he did write in his book.

  It was 399 E.E., one of those days when I dared to read his book again. As usual, I opened a random page. At the top of the page, the date was written (an unusual encounter in the book). It had the same date in the Eutopium Calendar on which Flex had said those words to me. It seemed as if he wanted me to go back in my memory to that day. After the date, it was the title “Galacta Cantos Volume III “. I had finally understood that he had intentions to record his directions in the Cantos. So, I read on –

  GALACTA CANTOS VOLUME III: The Tears of Eternity.

  Across the valleys of the old,

  Lies what the sol clusters may unfold.

  Of lost worth of time,

  The faint divulgence of prime.

  The lost segments shall gather,

  All in the name of her.

  The acute rivers shall stand alone,

  The blind oceans shall be gone.

  When the rain stops to fall

  And the sun halts to rise.

  The holes in the memory shall be one

  For it has all begun.

  The word is now heard.

  The song is now sung.

  What we see now,

  Is what we saw then.

  We fall out of the clouds.

  We fall out of the sky.

  We face our holy fate,

  In her name, we shall cry.

  We rise again to the land.

  The tears of the sea and sand,

  Leads us back to the marvels.

  The winds curve and the land freckles.

  Kronos shall choose the one who was able,

  For none is an ace, and none is a rebel.

  The end of destiny,

  The morrow of fate.

  Rise the heroes of the Slate.

  Forged in the fires of hell,

  For the blades, they tell;

  A tale of the birth of the one,

  Whom fate commands to kill the Krydon.

  The skies are now dark,

  The rivers no more blue.

  Fate commands no more.

  She tells us what to do.

  Time has now stopped,

  For we shall now divide.

  We shall not see the dawn till they all die.

  Across the valleys of the old,

  Lies what the sol clusters may unfold.

  The Tears of Eternity.

  The Tears of Eternity.

  Into The Dimension:

  Episode 9-

  Sabotage.

  V

  erdo Hoko, the old Librarian, sat in the corner of his Library against the Master Computer. He had been trying to get classified information anonymously. He had been attempting to hack into the official streams and inputs for the same. After several hours of typing and 55 Phransuels waited by Mrew, the grim on his face mutated into a smile. But not a prolonged one since the smile was suddenly washed away by a heavier grim. His eyes widened, and he shouted out loud – “This is more than I can digest. How can they not tell us this? How can they not tell them this?”

  ♦♦♦

  Ability… The mother of invention… When the tides turn against you, then, it is an ability which saves you. So, it is often confused with ‘necessity’. Yes, the need for that ability compelled the subsequent action(invention). Still… not all are able to face the tide and live to tell the tale. Those with the ability to do so survive. Thus, incessant amounts of desperation might not force an ability out of the one who is not ‘able’ to start with.

  Ability to forgive, ability to kill, the ability to bear a deep wound… All these come pretty handy during desperate times. But time edged the box office queue behind the hypothetical observer to rejoice the very show of the discrete yet discreet abilities of the Krikos’ Elites.

  Krawn sat in his resting chamber and counted the passing time. Time to deliver that is. He counted it down to the very second. And then it came. Mira had not yet recovered. Still, it was time. He moved out to the field to find all his comrades and all the villagers standing to face him as if awaiting him. The weapons had been collected and distributed to the rebels. Krawn and Rush were to lead the rebel parties since they were very well-versed in human behaviour. The objective was not to destroy the Irinks/Colonists but to enable the Epilionians to escape their blockade. All of them got ready for war. The plan was to raid the nearby royalist airfield and attack using their Spacecrafts. They all moved towards the field in a guerrilla warfare formation. They found the Spacecraft columns completely sealed with almost minimal security. Krawn introspected his plan for a second, but overcame his ambiguities and ordered an all-out raze of any royalist/colonist visible. They all did so. A very heavy strike was made on the visible enemy. And then the airfield was successfully captured. The Columns were opened to find only remorse. There were no aircrafts within them except for one old carrier. Krawn came running in – “What is happening here?”

  “Sir… we only have one old carrier with no defences.” Muster replied.

  “What? What about the other columns?” Krawn asked.

  “No nothing Sir.” Muster replied.

  Suddenly a loud call-out was heard from the entrance to the airfield. Castino was seen rushing in- “Krawn. The village… It is under attack. The royalists. It is them.”

  “Move back all of you… we got to move back…” Krawn shouted.

  On their way back Muster asked Krawn- “Sir, we may need that carrier.”

  “Ok… you and Witty go get it,” Krawn replied.

  Muster and Prabarus ran towards the airfield again. They found Castino standing close to the Carrier.

  “Hey… Ambassador… over here. Why were you not with them?”

  “Oh, I am not the war kind. I am a diplomatic representative. And I wanted to take a glance at what we have here.”

  “This is an open Airfield Sir. It is dangerous to be here.” Muster said as he turned around to see that the Sky was turning dark because of the Shadow of a Destroyer.

  The Colonists had now entered the battle.

  “What the…. We must return now,” Muster said. As soon as he turned around again, he heard a loud gunshot and was recoiled down to the ground. Prabarus didn’t understand what was happening. He looked at Castino who stood with a gun in his hand pointing towards Muster. Castino turned to Prabarus and took a shot at him as well. Prabarus dodged and hid behind the Column rear. He heard loud thrusts and then saw the carrier take off from the airfield. Back at the village, there was utter chaos and destructio
n. As such the royalists had been raiding houses, the destroyer started firing at the Village. Krawn reconciled himself and tried to overcome the ground forces. He and Rush, being two of the best human combatants in the entire history of the endless Universe, were very much successful in doing so. But later, they found that it was not a very healthy move since the destroyer could have now openly used ballistics against them. After a few minutes of shelling through the anti-air towers, came in Prabarus carrying Muster. He kept him down in front of Krawn and told him the whole thing. Krawn stood shocked at the centre of the Village field “First Gart, then Muster… He doesn’t have a pulse rating…The scanner… His life force is almost diminished… No… I led you all to destruction”. He looked around himself and saw thousands dying. He ran towards Mira’s tent and took a breath of relief to find that she and Ram were safe. He came back outside and looked up at the sky with a faint last hope and spoke out very loudly- “It is time… My calculations can’t be wrong. Where are they? Where are you VIN?” He ran to the tent where Muster had been taken. Prabarus stood there all numb. Krawn asked him, and he replied with a simple nod of his head. Muster had died. The rarest of sights was to witness the omniscient superbeing called ‘Krawn Xanethius’ turn pale in restless and anxious panic. The cap had now been breached. The young crew had only heard the stories of an untrained and much younger Krawn going Berserk. But, the surrounding turbulence demanded deliverance. His face presumed a stable façade and he gently walked outside. He activated the Gladius’ core and released the limiter on the pulse-reactor. He pointed his sabre at the Destroyer’s primary guns and moved his sword in a definite pattern and held that posture for a couple of seconds. He then silently murmured the terms “Reign of White”. Immediately after, a blinding white-coloured shock impulse was released which destroyed the front ballistics of the Destroyer. The atmosphere reticently calmed down to a melancholic silence, yet emergent as if awaiting a Universal Eternal Tap to stop the misery which rebuked Protagonism. Then the Destroyer’s ducts opened with a fleet of Fighter Spacecrafts flying in towards the village. Krawn called in everybody and said – “Muster… is dead. Who killed him? Well, not them… Not the Colonists… Not the enemy… Not back then…One of ours… The man I trusted. Castino Gorvez… It is all about us… All about us now… No one is coming… It is Sabotage.”

  As soon as he said this, another bright glaring light was seen in the sky.

  ♦♦♦

  The Krydon crew had been dispatched to their respective battle positions. They were nearing the Planet and ready to come out of the Hexkon Thrust jump number four. The Visi Computer spoke up-

  “Nearing Destination.”

  “Well, we’d first take their eyes,” the young and bold voice of Kridious spoke through the central ship Microphone.

  The Visi Screen dictated robotically-

  “Live on the Grid. Coming out of jump in 10 seconds.”

  “9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1…0.”

  And a loud bump brought them out of their jump into the Annaeax system. Anaton immediately released the Light flare to make a camouflaged entrance using the Helios’ glare. The Krydon closed into the Space Station up to the point where they were in ballistic range, and as soon as it came out of the bright zone created by the flares, it started firing. There was no return fire. But VIN did not order to seize fire. He continued destroying his enemy’s stronghold. Anaton received the location of an identifiable beacon. The one of Krawn. VIN ordered to barge in through the blockade into the planet’s atmosphere, and from there to the location specified on the Visi Module. The Krydon broke through and penetrated with very fast pace. About a few minutes later, they witnessed a large destroyer hovering over the beacon’s location. Kurt asked what to do about it. And VIN replied in his infamous dark-whimsical manner- “I was born to record deaths, wasn’t I?” The front plasma rays were used to break the destroyer into two. Then the remnants were destroyed using trailing ballistics. Hex and Fusa also destroyed the small Spacecrafts leaving the destroyer through their respective Defence gun strongholds. After completely destroying every trace of the enemy around the village, the Krydon landed in an isolated airfield near it. The entrance opened, and a large ball of smoke was seen; it encapsulated various colours representing the diverse moods of the numerous skills aboard the Krydon. The smoke was broken by twelve dark and conspicuous shadows. Emerging from the fateful darkness of hope was the shadow of the great Xanethius himself- Krdious.

  Diaries of Flex:

  Episode 10-

  Change.

  T

  here are many who believe in fate. I reckon that there are many rational minds which do. But there are very few who accept their fate. I, being a sceptic rationalist, kneel down when it comes to the power of fate. Fate brings in the happiness of triumphs. Fate also glooms our aura with the often failures. But we never know when fate would hit. It is because of a simple reason. Fate itself is a mere puppet to a more transcendental universal fate of fates. This endless cycle leads to an idiosyncratic power (let’s call it Prio) that tends to control each fate. This makes it impossible to speculate one’s future without any knowledge of the classical sciences of advanced psychology and psychohistory as propounded by the Mythical Legend of Hari Seldon.

  Flex was one of the few who never complained about the happenings of life around him. He was a sore moaner when it came to the things he had control over. But otherwise, he always accepted both the good and the bad and welcomed them equally. But such wasn’t the case when he died. We knew somebody had to die amongst the 17 of us … but he knew that it was to be him. There was no constraint, no opinion amongst any of us. He hadn’t entirely understood the Prio, but he had understood how it worked. So, he chose it. He chose to die for us. He chose his fate... and nobody in the whole wide world could do a damn thing about it. That was vintage Flex. Even dying, he inadvertently successfully refuted the complete understanding of fate I had … and I stand pretty biased. This is not what I am supposed to tell you. I want to tell you about our last moments on the humungous system of Jupiter. The one which was our destination … The one which became his destiny.

  Day 397 of arrival on Jupiter. Month of Hituma, Day 18

  Planetary Base Report –

  Weather – Stormy and Unstable.

  Gravity – Supporters working and under full-time surveillance.

  Residence Status- Secured.

  Infirmary Status – Clean.

  Armoury Status - Stock Available.

  Mission Completion – 72%

  The anti-radiation towers had been erected. One artificial Gravitational Stabilisation Chamber had been established with an effective radius of 280 kilometres. The genetically engineered Rock-algae and saplings were ready to be implanted on the endless volatile and virtual plain. But the only remaining thing was to start the thermo-nuclear fusion reactor to power the central energy distribution chamber. The power from the pre-installed Mini-Reactor on the Rasorve-117 Ship we had brought was almost close to as less as the safety level, that is the amount required to go back to the earth.

  It was a harsh day full of pending work. No matter how further we went on our scale … it was still incomplete. I was calibrating the central chambers to quit extracting power from the Ship’s Reactor and to do so from the main reactor. Our nuclear physicist was completing the construction of the reactor with the Chief Engineer. Some others were helping out to stabilise the conditioning device which seemed a little faulty due to the unexpected meteor storm. Everyone seemed busy doing what was required of them … except for the “should have been the morale booster of the group” that was the leader ... G. Capt. Dr Flex. He found writing in his notebook way more important than creating history. As soon as I came to know about that, I went to approach him regarding his indifference to the critical importance of our mission. Although his behaviour seems to be incontrovertible from where I stand today, back then... it was quite an irritant. So, I went around through
the whole station... and after exerting prolonged efforts to finding him... I spotted him sitting behind the reactor chambers and writing in his book.

  “Hey, mate … what are you writing there huh? “, I spoke in an informal dialect to divert his serious attention.

  But after having to wait a full 30 seconds without a reply or a nod, I inquired again, “Could you please enlighten me on why are you here again?”

  “The conditioning’s bad in the resting chamber “, he replied (Galacta... oh Galacta).

  “No I mean here, on Jupiter “, I expanded.

  “Why…. Why are you here?” he looked at me and spoke up in confusion.

  “I mean ... wasn’t there anything you are supposed to do? …. And I emphasise on SUPPOSED.”

  He got up and left the corridor through the back exit without replying to my question. It would have seemed rude if we were not accustomed to it. But the probable oblivion of our mission due to his ignorance approached my vision, and I stopped him.

  “This is it … I am not submitting to your bloody idiotism this time ... You’ve crossed the barriers Flex … Listen to me. Listen,” I shouted and confronted him while running in his pursuit.

  “You are not getting away with this adolescent behaviour this time … give me that book ... give it to me NOW!”, I almost screamed at the crescendo of my voice.

  He slowly turned around, stared into my eyes, gave me a faint smile and said, “Did you just say ‘SIR’? “

  I had been instigated to a rather high level to almost become physical at that moment … and I went on to grab the book… but a hand came in between, “Not your time yet, Sabrink.”