The Mirage on the Brink of Oblivion (The Epic of Aravinda Book 3)

by Andrew M. Crusoe

  “Ouch!”

  He looked around, wondering what time it was. Only a sliver of moonlight filtered through the crystalline latticework that made up the opposite wall.

  “Darn hammocks,” he grumbled as he pulled himself to his feet and looked down to the silvery loop around his wrist.

  To his delight, his wristcomm illuminated a short message from his ship, and a wide grin formed across Yantrik’s face.

  He wasted no time. He donned his graphite jumpsuit and crept down the hall. It was still a few hours from sunrise, and as quietly as he could manage, he slipped on his boots and eased open the door.

  He jogged down the path, enjoying the chill morning air on his face, and within minutes he was sitting within his small fighter, safely cloaked within the thick azure forest that surrounded it.

  With a mere touch of his thumb to the control surface, the ship’s consoles flared to life, filling the cabin with a panoply of blinking yellow and green lights. He sat down in the command chair, and a holographic display flashed up in the middle space between his face and the viewport ahead.

  After days of waiting, his ship had successfully decrypted three of the secure channels he’d detected on the island. What had begun as a fierce search to find out where the Confederation had sent his daughter had transformed into a broader curiosity about what this hatchling world was hiding. In most cases, he would have left it alone, but curiosity got the best of him when his ship detected that over half of all communications were encrypted using what appeared to be rotating encryption keys.

  This piqued the old engineer’s interest, and he instructed his fighter to begin a brute-force encryption breaking routine. The nimble vessel contained the fastest processors he’d ever come by while living on the outpost, and being a quarantined world, the island’s computing power couldn’t possibly hope to withstand his time-tested Tavisi chipsets.

  A flood of data washed over him, and he studied the output with keen eyes. His ship had received and stored hundreds of small data chunks from the transmissions. At first, the ship didn’t know what to make of the decrypted data, and Yantrik set it to work on analyzing the data for obvious audio and video signal patterns.

  The ship hummed as it worked, making quick chirps as it found potential matches, and after a few minutes it became obvious that there wasn’t merely one kind of data within the signal. As the ship chewed through the data-blocks one by one, a wealth of textual, audio, and even a few image files filled a new subdirectory on the ship’s data storage. Yantrik opened a dozen of the text files at once and frowned to see that they were written in the curving alphabet of the Ashraya Islands, a gallimaufry of graceful shapes he couldn’t understand in the least.

  After all this, he almost felt like laughing. His ship had cracked the hidden pattern of their encryption because it was based on the universal language of mathematics, but now that he was actually staring at the raw, decrypted data, no amount of brute force processing could teach him to read the Avani language. Sure, he could run a frequency analysis on the words and try to guess at the syntax, but the meaning would never be entirely clear unless an Avanian taught him.

  Yantrik lamented that the historical element of language was outside the bounds of pure math, and he dreamed of a tongue based on the purity of that universal language.

  He snapped himself out of his reverie.

  “I’m not out of this yet.”

  He ran what he guessed was image data through the ship’s signal analyzer and waited, his gaze drifting up to the dawn light that was creeping through the viewport ahead. After a few minutes, the ship chirped again, reporting that it only found two holo-images within the data cluster. He opened both at once.

  One appeared to be a map, showing a holographic diagram of an underground complex below Ashraya City. One of the rooms at a lower level was highlighted with a cyan outline.

  The other image made Yantrik freeze in place. Captured in stark relief was a lovely photo of one of the outer planets, a ruddy gas giant. This alone would have been of only minor curiosity if not for the dark shapes silhouetted before it: a massive, black orb surrounded by hundreds of small, angular shadows, like shards of shattered obsidian rock. Encoded within this file were other frames, and Yantrik realized that this data was part of a video. After a few more seconds, his ship decoded the rest of the frames and played them in sequence.

  He had seen such vessels before, and to his horror, the shadows slid past the ruddy giant in only a few frames, warping its swirling black and red storms in the process. Although it was difficult to be sure of the interval of time between the frames without more data, it didn’t matter. He knew what it meant.

  He checked his alignment, and the ship informed him that it couldn’t get a clear reading on the planet yet. Despite all of his advanced equipment, his ship still couldn’t scan a distant planet if it wasn’t currently in the visible sky. He’d have to wait until that evening, when the gas giant would once again appear in the sky above.

  Yantrik opened the text documents again and was once again frustrated by his inability to read them. The wristcomm was a modern miracle, forming a bridge between minds that transcended speech so seamlessly that he often forgot that it was working at all. Still, it was no help in understanding written languages. There was no avoiding it; he would have to ask Vivek or Darshana to interpret the text.

  He heard a slight knocking sound, and his eyes shot over to the left side of his holo-display, where the proximity sensor displayed its data. Sure enough, a middle-aged man with ash-blond hair was just outside his ship. But to his surprise, Darshana was also with him, and Yantrik smiled, happy to see that she was feeling better.

  “Well,” he muttered to himself. “I don’t know what you both want, but your timing is impeccable.”

  Yantrik stood up and walked over to a pad on the wall, pressing his hand to it. The door rolled open, letting in a flood of bluish light that filtered through the forest canopy above. Just one step down, Vivek stood holding a bowl filled with dozens of green, jiggling cubes of jelly, and Darshana stood beside him.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Vivek said. “We didn’t see you around all morning.”

  “We thought you might be in here,” Darshana added. “I know it’s been tough with Asha and Zahn being gone. You try to hide it, but I see how you worry for them.”

  “We worry too,” Vivek said. “But that never solved anything. We need to stay positive, especially in these trying times.”

  Yantrik stared at them, expressionless.

  A light sparked behind Darshana’s eyes. “We tried your recipe! It was tricky, but we hope you like it.”

  Vivek offered the bowl to him. “We thought it might cheer you up.”

  The old engineer studied the jelly cubes, picked one up, and popped it into his mouth. The taste was vaguely minty, but the consistency was good. He swallowed it and smiled.

  “Thank you, my friends. I appreciate the gesture. Unfortunately, I’m afraid I’ve discovered something that confirms our worst fears.”

  Concern filled Darshana’s dark green eyes. “What do you mean? Have you received a message from Zahn?”

  “No.” Yantrik took a deep breath. “My ship has been working to decrypt some of this island’s comm channels for the past few days. I realize that may concern you, but I believed it to be the best course of action given the lack of information we have.” Yantrik raised his hand. “I should warn you that what I’ve found is unsettling, but this new knowledge will help us make a more informed decision moving forward.”

  Vivek’s expression darkened. “Cut to the chase, Yantrik. What’s going on?”

  Yantrik’s expression tightened. “Follow me inside.”

  He led them into the small fighter and showed them everything he had found. At first, Darshana was disturbed that he’d broken their encryption so quickly, but when she saw the images of the approaching Vakragha ships, silhouetted by the ruddy gas giant, her priorities shifted.

  �
��I plan on doing a scan of my own, but I have to wait until the planet rises in the night sky later this evening. Then we can confirm what we’re seeing. Now take a look at this.”

  Yantrik showed Vivek and Darshana some of the documents he’d retrieved, and Darshana became engrossed in reading everything he’d collected. As they read the documents aloud, the wristcomm translated their words telepathically for Yantrik, at last giving him confirmation of what all of the covert communication was about.

  As he’d suspected, many of the transmissions were originating from the Ashraya Observatory, which explained Darshana’s interest. After twelve years off the planet, she relished in this new opportunity to see what the observatory had become.

  But when Yantrik opened another one of the official documents, Darshana’s eyes widened as they danced across the crisp text of the holo-display.

  “What is it?” Yantrik said. “What does it say?”

  “I have to go,” Darshana whispered.

  Yantrik frowned. “Where?”

  Vivek turned to her. “Darling, you can’t. They’ll interrogate and scan you. Everyone thought you were dead.”

  She turned to meet his gaze. “I have to. The memo was sent today, and I’m the only one here who might be able to bypass their security procedures. I could do it, even though it’s been a while. They wouldn’t ever know I was there, and even if they did, Master Nirupak would understand. He always favored me.”

  “You can’t be serious about this,” Vivek shook his head.

  “About what? What does it say?” Yantrik repeated. “What’s going on?”

  She turned to him. “There will be an emergency council meeting tonight in the Confluence Hall. Most of the high-ranking officials will be there.”

  “And what if they capture you before you can explain?” Vivek said, his tone rising. “It’s too risky.”

  Darshana winced at him. “Darling, only a select few are being allowed to participate in the discussion, and the outcome of the council meeting tonight could affect the entire course of our history. I have to be there. If I can reach Master Nirupak, perhaps we can save our world, even if the Confederation cannot help us.”

  Vivek slumped, and Yantrik guessed that when she got into this mood, it was pointless to argue with her.

  “Then I’m coming too,” Yantrik said.

  “No.” Darshana’s gaze burned with determination. “It’s better if I go alone. No one here knows the underground complex better than I do. Don’t debate me on this, Yantrik. I have to go alone. I can feel it.”

  Yantrik held his hands up in surrender. “All right, all right. But there must be something we can do to help you.”

  “Zahn told me you gave him three cloaking chips once. I could use something like that to help me get in undetected.”

  The engineer smirked, his eyes glinting in the morning light.

  “I think I have just the trick.”

  CHAPTER 18

  THE PERFECT TRIANGLE

  Asha and Zahn followed Manu’s hooded figure down an ever-spiraling incline that corkscrewed deep into the mountain.

  As they followed the incline downward, Asha wondered if it was physical or etheric. The curving surface shimmered along the edges of the stone, but wouldn’t this tunnel have to be physically hollow to avoid the darkness she experienced in the boulders earlier? Was there any way to see through a solid physical object if you were inside of it?

  The hooded man stopped, and Asha looked around, seeing only two paths leading in opposite directions.

  “So, where is the chamber?” she asked.

  Manu raised a finger and spoke in hushed tones. “Beyond this wall is a hidden chamber. Soon, we will discuss the issue at hand. I have covered the room inside with a shroud of secrecy, an energetic barrier which will prevent any kind of thought-form from passing through.”

  The hooded man pressed three fingers onto the wall, and the outline of another square door appeared, glowing in a ghostly blue. Manu tapped his fingers onto the wall in a sequence of finger strokes that Asha couldn’t even begin to memorize, and the door dissolved away, revealing a wide room with chairs and bizarre structures that reminded her of the sunset suite they stayed in when they’d first arrived.

  “Please, sit.” Manu gestured to some round chairs floating in the air before turning around and touching the wall beside the opening. The door reconstituted, leaving them sealed inside.

  While Zahn glided over to one of the chairs, Asha approached Manu and once again tried to discern his features. “Why can’t we see your face? Why do you wear a hood?”

  He tilted his head down to her, revealing a black void where his face should have been, and Asha let out an involuntary gasp.

  “It is part of my duty. As a member of the Royal Guard, I am bound by my oath to wear this veil. I’m sorry, but no one can see my face, at least, not as long as I hold my present role.” His voice took on a weight it hadn’t had before. “And I have worked long and hard to earn my present position.”

  Zahn looked up to the man’s white hood and the void beyond. “It’s okay, Manu. We understand.”

  Asha furrowed her eyebrows and looked around the room. “So, did the Empress station you here? Why don’t you live down in the city?”

  Manu walked over to the end of the room, and Asha noticed for the first time that, unlike the other walls which were covered in strange, curving forms, this wall was completely bare.

  “I created this place. It’s quieter here, and I find the view to be an inspiration.” Manu sighed. “I would show you, but others could peer inside. For now, I think it best to keep this room secure. As far as I know, the Empress does not know your primary reason for coming here, and we must keep it that way.”

  “Sure.” Asha rotated her chair slightly, turning to Manu. “Please forgive me, but I must ask. How can we be so sure that you are the Manu we seek? For all I know, every fourth citizen here is named Manu.”

  Instead of gliding, Manu walked over to where the chairs were arranged in a circle, and sat down across from her. He leaned back, spreading his hands so that the tip of each finger touched the finger on the opposite hand.

  She imagined that he was narrowing his eyes at her, though she couldn’t see anything within the shadowed void under the white hood.

  “I know what it is you seek,” he finally said. “Indeed, I am the only Mirage citizen currently working with the Confederation.”

  Zahn walked over and sat down next to Asha. “And what do you think we seek, hooded one?”

  “The Breath of Life, the third Chintamani stone that you’ve been tasked to recover.” Manu turned to Zahn. “And the only way to end this war that has spanned so many millennia.”

  No one spoke for some moments, until Asha cleared her throat. “Okay. So you are the Manu we seek. What have you learned about it? Do you know how it works? The mission orders didn’t specify, and we’ve grown curious.”

  He turned back to her, his face a collection of strange shadows so vague that, if she wanted, she could find any shape within them.

  “The Confederation didn’t tell you?” he said. “The stone will show us the locations of the highest pinnacles of the Vakragha command structure: the overlords. And we’ve had a stroke of luck, if you can call it that.” Manu’s voice became hushed. “All royal guards have been notified of a major ceremony taking place tomorrow night, and you two have been invited. The Empress herself will be in attendance to promote the new Chief Ambrosia Director. And afterward she has requested that the Royal Guard provide extra protection outside of her chambers for a private briefing with the new director.” Manu paused to let them process this. “From everything I know about royal procedures, I believe the classified briefing will mention the location of the sacred Chintamani stone. Indeed, if what I suspect is true, its presence may be the only reason the Mirage exists at all.”

  Asha frowned. “That’s it? There’s going to be a secret briefing, and the location of the stone will be miraculo
usly revealed to us? I don’t know, Manu. It sounds like wishful thinking to me.”

  “Please understand,” he spoke in measured sentences, “the Empress lives an incredibly secluded life. She appears only on rare occasions, and the man she is promoting has never had a position of such prestige before. He will be briefed on classified material. There is no question of that. You two will need to infiltrate this secret briefing.”

  Zahn spun around in his chair a few times. “Sounds good, but why do you need us? Couldn’t you spy on them even if we weren’t here?”

  “The danger is too great. Even with a negative energy bubble to hide within, the Empress would still detect me. She creates each cloak for the Royal Guards herself, and would sense one nearby.” Manu turned to Zahn and then back to Asha. “I’ve been following both of your progress across the galaxy for some time. To be honest, the Confederation was surprised at your victory in the Battle of Rodhas, and many across the galaxy seek to recruit you for their own purposes. Thankfully, the Confederation agreed to support this mission first and foremost.”

  Asha felt awkward. “Us? Other commanders actually want to recruit us? We were almost blown to smithereens!”

  Zahn chuckled. “Maybe they think we’re lucky. Never discount luck.”

  “More specifically, you two have demonstrated remarkable courage and adaptability, despite losing one of your close friends. Asha’s healing ability will also be of service should one of us be struck with the Dagger of Kirin, and Zahn, I can already tell that your bravery is up to the task of infiltrating the briefing room.”

  Zahn stopped in mid-spin. “The what?”

  “And,” Manu continued, “with my security clearance and pristine reputation, I can give you both access to locations within the Mirage you could never reach on your own. Don’t you see? Together, we are the perfect triangle.”

  “Thanks,” Zahn said. “I guess so. But what did you say about the briefing room? How am I supposed to get in there without them knowing?”