Maia and the Xifarian Conspiracy (The Lightbound Saga Book 1)

by S. G. Basu

  “Miss Maia,” the master peered at her name tag as she took hesitant steps forward, “it seems like you shall show us the path to enlightenment.”

  “But, I don’t . . . know . . . h-how,” Maia mumbled, her gaze fixed on her feet.

  “Precisely,” was his simple reply.

  Maia did not have much hope of getting off the hook. She needed a miracle to be able to keep the monstrosity afloat. If she failed, a report would definitely reach Master Kehorkjin as well as her mentor. That was not an option; she could not endure yet another lecture from Miir explaining how worthless she was, and she did not particularly like the idea of drawing her team into a chiding session with Master Kehorkjin either.

  Slowly, she hoisted herself on the seat. It was hard enough to sit steadily on the machine even while it was stationary, and Maia wondered how she would hang on to the Cylopede while it was in motion. The crowd around her watched with interest; her teammates looked anxious, many seemed thoroughly entertained, and some were debating among themselves as to how long she would last on the Pede.

  “If you are ready, I will raise the Pede,” said the master.

  Maia nodded as she tightly grabbed the rungs that stuck out on both sides of the console. The machine took off with a lurch. The faces below her grew progressively smaller as the craft continued rising, until it stopped about midway between the ceiling and the floor. Maia inhaled deeply, savoring the brief pause. The very next moment, the contraption fell like a stone sinking in water.

  Sitting on the Pede was not an issue if she could ignore the weightlessness, the rush of the air, the boulders hurtling through her stomach, and most importantly, the fear of a humiliating landing on the floor. Even knowing that they might not work, Maia quickly ran her fingers over some of the buttons on the console and pulled the steering stick.

  Nothing changed, except that while twisting her body forward to reach the console and balancing herself on the narrow seat, she slipped and fell headfirst into the transparent front of the Cylopede. Before she could steady herself, she felt the craft slow down a little.

  Maia’s brain whirred and among the frenzy of thoughts, an idea stood out—that maybe the slowdown was due to her falling forward. With very little time to spare and the ground approaching fast, she decided to try it again. Holding herself as securely as possible, she cautiously leaned forward toward the console. Like magic, the craft slowed down again.

  Maia’s heart did a happy somersault. Sluggish as it had become, the Pede was still nowhere close to stopping, and there was only one thing left to do. Gripping the edges of the Cylopede tightly, Maia stood up on the narrow platform and slanted her body forward, over the console, until her forehead touched the curved window. The Pede went slower and slower until it came to a halt, midair, not far from the floor of the hangar. It was only then that Maia felt the cold sweat that had formed on her palms.

  She had a vague sense of the motors starting below her. The Pede descended gently to the shiny floor, and someone helped her down from her seat as the craft came to a rest. She heard the indistinct applause and felt the pats on her back as she made her way back to her cheering teammates.

  “And that was an excellent demonstration of understanding a craft that carries you,” Master Demissie’s voice sounded very distant. “Amid the panic of a freefall, this young lady tried to understand the dynamics of the machine, and she did it right.

  “Now, it’s your turn. As soon as they bring out a few more Pedes, you will try them out. Of course, you will not be raised as high, and the motors will be running, so there is no need to put on those scared faces.”

  Maia watched the master’s tall figure approach as she stood against the wall, still waiting for her heartbeat to slow down to normal.

  “Outstanding demonstration, Maia,” he said very softly, bending down to look into her eyes. “I do not see this kind of performance very often. I have to admit, you did not make the best first impression on me, and I did not expect you to do so well.”

  Maia stood smiling to herself even after the master left to attend to the pandemonium that had begun to erupt around the hangar. She spent a few more moments relishing her success before trying to locate her teammates. Kusha and Dani had walked off to try out one of the Pedes, while on another side Nafi stood with her arms crossed, foot tapping, glaring at Ren who was busy chatting with a group of boys.

  Maia stepped forward to investigate. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  Nafi’s face contorted in disgust. “That despicable boy is never up to any good.” She waved her finger furiously in the direction of Ren and his cronies. “He was . . . betting.”

  “Betting?” Maia gawked.

  “Yes.”

  “On me?”

  “Of course. What better way to make some quick money?”

  As Maia looked on wide-eyed, Ren completed collecting his funds and walked over to the two girls. On seeing Maia, he grinned sheepishly.

  “You were betting on me?” Maia asked, “While I was hanging up there in thin air?”

  Ren shrugged and grinned again. “What’s wrong with that?” he asked, receiving a disapproving silence. “I did put my money on you not crashing. And, girl, you sure made me proud.”

  “Ren!” Maia threw her arms in the air in frustration as Nafi rolled her eyes.

  “Well, serves those idiots right, losing their money for not believing in you.” Ren made a face at his gambling buddies and then ran off to join Kusha and Dani.

  “Wonderful friends I have,” Maia sighed, and Nafi gave her another telling glance before following Ren.

  After a long day of flying, with more screaming and falling than actual flying, Maia could barely drag herself back from the hangar to her room that evening. They were all exhausted. In addition to scraping their arms and legs, banging their heads against walls and consoles, and being shouted at by the Flight Master, they also got into fights among themselves.

  Nafi was sure that she could have achieved a perfect balance had it not been for Kusha who slipped from his machine and tipped hers over. Not only did Kusha dismiss her claims, but he also had the nerve to allege that it was actually Nafi who had lost control and veered too close to him, causing the whole fiasco. Kusha seemed to be in the middle of all trouble—he shared with Dani some tips to balance the craft, which did not work as he had claimed they would. In the process of trying them out, Dani fell. Then, as people around her snickered, she cried.

  That evening, over a mostly silent dinner, Ren ventured to explain that Dani was so used to being perfect at everything, the trauma of not being so good at something might have had a profound effect on her mental health. At that comment, Dani walked away from the table with more tears trickling down her face.

  29: The Chrysocolla Key

  No one was looking forward to the subsequent Flight Training sessions, but they did come and go smoother than the first. Flight Master Demissie seemed to grow more helpful with each passing meeting, and most people started to handle the Pedes better. In a couple of weeks, tempers within Core 21 had cooled down considerably, and there was a semblance of a friendly conversation at the dining table once again.

  “We have a mentor meet in two days,” Ren said at breakfast one morning.

  “The final challenges are coming up soon, and maybe Miir will discuss them,” Kusha added.

  “And maybe we’ll get to do some planning for it,” Dani said hopefully.

  “I’m very worried,” Nafi fidgeted. “We should have started these discussions already. We need to get a head start on the other teams if we want to come out on top.”

  The day was dreary, full of struggles with Cartography charts and coordinates, and dealing with crashing crafts and sinking spirits. For the sake of further understanding the nuances of various spacecraft, Master Demissie had asked everyone to construct miniature models and use them to test the Cartography charts they had created. The Master Kehorkjin supervised that exercise and kept a strict tally of all part
s borrowed from the Basics room. Accidents involving the machines were carefully assessed, and each repair came at the cost of serious lectures and unsympathetic feedback sessions.

  Nafi complained of nutrition issues, specifically the lack of freshly cooked food.

  “All this junk I‘m eating is turning my brain into mush,” she scowled and tapped her feet at the ruins of her airship that had just died in an agonizing crash.

  Dani was gifted in Cartography, her trajectories and paths flawless and always the best. Maia and Ren created simulations for decent landings, losing at most a wheel or two. Kusha, on the other hand, quoted Miir at every session.

  “As our wise mentor once said, ‘focus on winning as a group,’” he announced, raising his arms in the air like a seer sharing a divine vision with his disciples. “As long as we have an expert cartographer like Dani among us, it doesn’t make much sense for me to lose sleep over a few plots and charts and risk crashing crafts.”

  “Enlighten us, Kusha . . . what might your area of expertise be?” Nafi asked. “If I remember correctly, you don’t seem to be an expert at anything.”

  Kusha scowled in response. He spent the rest of the day working on some charts on a workstation farthest from Nafi.

  That evening, a cartographically inspired Ren offered to show the team a different path back to their rooms. No one objected, as they all needed some diversion from the oppressive silence and exchange of indignant looks between Kusha and Nafi.

  “We’ll take the scenic route through the rotunda of the ASDRL,” declared Ren.

  “ASDRL?” Maia raised a questioning eyebrow at the boy.

  “The Advanced Space Defense Research Lab or ASDRL is also housed in this academy,” Ren explained. “Most of it is off limits for security reasons, of course, but the path through the rotunda is open to everyone, and it’s beautiful.”

  “And why have we never been that way before?” asked Nafi.

  “Because, according to you, this is not the time to lose focus.” Ren proceeded with a spot-on imitation of Nafi, “‘We need to concentrate on winning and use every moment to work and plan, not romp around like a bunch of chickens on the loose.’ Remember that?”

  Nafi scoffed and started to say something, but Dani quickly intervened.

  “Let’s go then, shall we?” she said, dragging Ren away.

  They took the suspension staircase to the veranda stretching alongside the Sakoro trees that had bloomed into rows of delicate, fluffy pink-and-white clouds. Here, instead of walking northward into the hanging pathway as they usually did, Ren slipped behind a curtain marked with the familiar Royal Crest. The group followed him into a spacious hallway painted in creamy white, which led up to a huge door opening into a spectacular rotunda. They had entered at the highest floor, and from the western end of the walkway a stone staircase spiraled all the way down to ground level, five stories below. A gigantic chandelier hung from the roof of the expansive stairwell, stretching across at least three floors.

  “It’s beautiful,” Nafi squealed in delight. “Wish I worked here.”

  “Yes, at the office of ‘Hundred Different Ways to Crash a Craft,’” Ren smirked.

  When Kusha chortled at Ren’s comment, Nafi turned back to face him. “Well, at least I try. I don’t squander away my time thinking that someone else in the group will take care of the tasks.”

  “It’s called strategizing. You have a problem with that?” Kusha retorted.

  Maia shook her head. Not again.

  “Guys, guys, calm down,” she intervened, pointing at the rooms along the side of the walkway. “These here are offices—people might be still working. We don’t want to bother them by screaming our heads off, do we?”

  “Mister Strategist here started the whole thing, and you’re asking me to calm down?” shouted Nafi.

  “You both calm down, please,” Maia pleaded. “Let’s go, Ren.”

  Curious names marked the various rooms that lined the walkways: “Bureau of Investigative Robotics,” “Advanced Astronautics Research Organization,” “Society of Planetary Archeology,” among others. They had almost reached the last level when Ren called out.

  “Here’s one more interesting thing,” he said, pointing at the wall where a large area had been encased in glass, “the Awards Wall of the XDA.”

  Behind the glass, the wall was a shiny black. On it, in bold gold letters, were hundreds of names written in a stylized Xifarian script.

  “This is the old script of Ara,” Maia said, looking closely. They had been learning the basic alphabets and numbers for their history sessions with Lady Dae.

  “Yes, it is,” Ren replied. “And this is the list of the top graduates of the academy, the winners of the Token of D’tsani.”

  “What’s that? A trophy?” Dani asked and Ren nodded.

  “It’s so hard to read this,” Nafi grunted noisily. “And the dates too, can’t make any sense out of it.”

  “Our dating system starts from the year of our First Passage. They will be different from the dates you’re used to on Tansi, of course. Let me find a name you can recognize,” Ren said helpfully. “Here . . . look.”

  All of them peered at the name he pointed, and Maia noted it was from about thirty-five years ago.

  “K . . . ke . . . horkjin,” she spelled slowly before she shrieked with excitement. “Master Kehorkjin.”

  “Yes,” Ren chuckled. “He sure is one of the best.”

  “Oh, this is fun,” Nafi declared as she pored over the more recent names. “Let’s see if we know this guy. Meg . . . uh . . . gnus . . .”

  “Oleks Megnuusen,” Ren completed the name for Nafi. “He’s a top aide at the Chancery.”

  “Ttore Zurke.”

  “Oh, that guy’s famous. A self-made tycoon, he owns most of the transport lines in Zagran.”

  “And—”

  “Don’t we have to get back to our rooms?” Kusha interjected. He still looked grumpy. “Don’t we have assignments to complete?”

  “Last one,” Nafi said. “So . . . Sophia Avaroh?”

  Maia blinked. That name, it sounds familiar . . . too familiar.

  “Huh?”

  “So-phi-ah Av-a-roh,” Nafi said slowly.

  “Never heard that one,” Ren shrugged. “Well, not all of them make it big.”

  It was her mother’s name, a name she did not like hearing, a name she wanted to forget. Yet it always found a way to come back.

  “It’s getting late. Let’s go,” Dani’s reminder made Maia stir.

  I can’t tell them. I can’t tell anyone.

  They were almost out of the rotunda when the strange noise made them jump. It sounded like laughter, turned into a high-pitched sobbing, and back to a crazy laughter again. The group stood at the foot of the staircase, puzzled and alarmed.

  “What was that?” Maia whispered.

  “Is someone hurt?” asked Dani.

  “I think there’s a drunk, delusional nut-job in there somewhere,” commented Nafi.

  “Maybe we should check to see if the delusional nut-job needs any help,” Ren said and stepped forward toward the closed door nearest to them.

  “No,” Nafi almost screamed, shooting an alarmed glance at Ren, and turning back to look beseechingly at Maia. “Whatever that may be, it doesn’t sound normal. Maybe we should just leave.”

  So . . . not everything Dada had said about Sophie was a lie. Sophie was indeed an exemplary student. But that did not . . . no, it did not mean Dada was right about everything else.

  “Oh, come on. There are five of us, and you said it already, he is delusional. How bad can it be?” Ren asked as he pressed his ear against the second door.

  “Nafi is right. We’re unarmed, and he could have something,” Dani argued.

  “I’m with Ren on this one,” Kusha declared. “You girls stay here and watch from a safe distance while we go check it out.”

  “What’s wrong with you today, Kusha?” Maia said, slightly vexed at Kusha
’s sudden impulsiveness. “You’re not going anywhere alone. If we need to find him, we’ll find him together.”

  “Maia, no,” Nafi sounded outraged. “These rooms might be off limits for us. For all we know this might be considered spying. And if we’re caught, not only will they throw us out of the Initiative, they might also throw us in prison. You’re the team leader, stop them.”

  Something else is strange. Sophie had betrayed her people, a move that made possible a Xifarian victory at Miorie. But, Ren had never heard of her. She should have been a hero to the Xifarians and yet she was “one who did not make it big.”

  “Maia,” Nafi was tugging her arm. “Stop them.”

  It was far too late to stop them. The boys were already hunched in front of a door marked “Sweeper’s Closet.” Dani took slow, hesitant steps away from where Maia stood with Nafi, inching closer to the two boys. Maia knew that Dani’s compassionate heart could not withstand the pathetic howling that came from the other side of the door. She was also curious herself to know what made such an awful sound. As she considered her choices, Ren grabbed the handle of the door, took a deep breath, and yanked it open.

  The boys and Dani were the first to walk inside, Maia following, and Nafi trudging behind her. The Sweeper’s Closet, like everything else on Xif, was not just any small closet, but a decent-sized room. Cleaning supplies were arranged in neat stacks along the sides, while brooms and buckets of various sizes and colors hung from the ceiling. The noise came from a heap of clothes that were piled in the middle of the room.

  “It’s a man,” whispered Dani. “Why is he crying?”

  “Ask him,” Nafi said suddenly from the back. When no one moved, she shook her head. “What? After everything you’ve already done, now you’re afraid to talk to him? Hold on, I’ll ask him.”

  Nafi strode up to the heap and sat down next to it. “Sir, why are you . . . what are you doing?”

  The howling stopped abruptly. The pile of clothes shook, and a wizened face emerged from the crumpled mound, beady eyes fixed on Nafi. Then it turned to stare at the other four.