Nopileos: A novel from the X-Universe: (X4: Foundations Edition 2018) (X Series)

by Helge T. Kautz

  The sector was teeming with spaceships. “The Paranid beat us to it,” Commander Borman yelled over the murmur of voices. “They’re here, the whole damn fleet!”

  The view from the cockpit alone gave an idea of how many warships the Paranid had sent: a seemingly endless chain of white dots with fiery tales spread over the entire sky, and each of these points represented a ship. The nearest of the warships was only a tenth of a light-sezura away, the one at the farthest distance already an entire light-sezura. On the gravidar, you could clearly see that the Paranid fleet was moving toward the Delta jumpgate. The first battleships would reach it in less than one inzura, and they began to change formation as they prepared for the upcoming transit. Every three ships joined together to form a long triangle, a deadly spearhead on its way to its victim.

  “They’re forming combat formations,” Seldon realized. In the meantime, it had become almost completely still in the cockpit, only the machines hummed far below in the belly of the ship. “There’s an alien craft in the vicinity of the Delta Gate that can’t be categorized by the computer, and it looks like the Paranids are attacking him.”

  “Alien ship? Some of the Kha'ak?” Zakk Folkna asked anxiously, but Seldon shook his head.

  “Definitely not. The mass signature looks nothing like anything I’ve ever encountered.”

  “That must be Nola Hi and Elena Kho,” Siobhan said. No matter what kind of ship it was, that the spacecraft paused right there at exactly this point in time was a sure sign that it could only be the Boron expedition to the Delta Gate! “The jump gate is still active, in both directions—the jump unit can detect its singularity.”

  “That’s not the only thing that can be detected here. Namely, the Paranid definitely detected us,” Ditta Borman shouted in alarm. She pointed at the gravidar. The three Paranid craft that were closest to the AP Providence turned around at the moment and gave a deceleration thrust.

  A video field sprang up. The face of a Three-eye appeared. “This is Lord Captain Ulmanckessolnn speaking. This star system is restricted territory of the Godrealm of the Paranid. It is demanded that You remove Your unholy ship immediately.”

  Ditta Borman tensed up. She didn’t have to consult with Siobhan to know what the answer to this outrageous claim was. “This star system is her majesty’s territory of the Boron Queendom. We have permission to cross it. Which cannot be said for you.”

  Lord Captain Ulmanckessolnn puffed himself up with the menacing gestures of the Paranid. “The realm of the unholy queens of Boron has forfeited Its right to this star system through Its geometrical incapacitation. This is Your last chance, unholy Two-eye, realize it, because you will meet with the punishment of Xaar otherwise!” The video field went out.

  “Defense shields up,” Borman demanded laconically. The optical sensors could now resolve details of the three approaching Paranid ships, whose weapon turrets were pointed at the AP Providence.

  “No, no shields, the energy is too valuable. We’re waiting for the Paranids to open fire, and if they do we’ll jump from here directly to the Delta Gate. Siobhan was more aware than ever before of the imminent threat of the gate shutdown. There were far too many unknowns in this calculation, but they nevertheless had to go for broke. There was no other way out.

  “I understand. Well, then this is from now on a combat mission, and I’m taking over command. All civilians leave the cockpit immediately. You, too, Dr. Folkna. Dr. Norman, not you. What is the charging status of the converter?”

  “Three quarters; two mizuras and seventeen sezuras.”

  Siobhan nodded grimly to the pilot. Commander Borman seemed like a different person. So far she had done her job with a simple, professional coolness. Now something else had appeared. Siobhan realized, bewildered, that it was nothing other than lust for battle. She wouldn’t have expected that.

  “Not so we misunderstand each other, Doctor,” Borman said, after the bulkhead closed behind the three civilians. “I consider Dr. Folkna to be phenomenally competent. But if it should come to a space battle, I’d like to know he’s not in my vicinity.”

  “We cannot afford a fight, Commander, please keep that in mind.”

  “But of course. Don’t worry,” the pilot replied, smiling.

  Siobhan pressed her lips together, but said nothing. This answer could have also come from her; she knew exactly what Borman was thinking at that moment.

  The Alpha Gate sinking into space behind the ship flashed. On the gravidar, a blip with a massive mass signature and fuzzy, blurred contours appeared. Several smaller dots followed in quick succession.

  “What—what is that? Borman, what is that?”

  “If it wasn’t so fast, I’d say that it’s a carrier, maybe the Paranid command ship, but its velocity is way too high! Look at that! It can just…”

  “Yes-yes, you’re right! It’s the CPU ship along with an escort!” Siobhan pressed her lips together. Four more mizuras until the converters were ready for use. “Time grows short. What are the Paranids doing, Commander?”

  “The rear formations are breaking up, individual ships are veering off. The front formations are holding their course to the Delta Gate.” Borman snorted. “One of the Paranid ships are keeping us in their sights—these beasts can’t be distracted by anything in the world!”

  “Time is growing short,” Siobhan repeated. “Very short.”

  Chapter 43

  In principle, the Three-eyes are more dangerous than the Xenon. The only thing that keeps them from flattening the Community is the delusional compulsion at all times and above anything else to keep face—as ugly as that might also be.

  Colonel Ban Danna

  The hot phase of star explosions usually only took a few stazuras, or at worst, some tazuras. A star begins to expand and throws the greater portion of its substance into space until it is only a shadow of its former self. After such a cosmic catastrophe, a pulsar can be found in the center of the nova, a neutron star that turns on its rotational axis with shocking speed. Not so here. Black Hole Sun still existed, but the star shined only weakly and erratically. Nola Hi suspected that the final collapse could be expected within a few hundred or thousand jazuras, as a repeated nova, which would finally devastate this sector of space. All in all, this was the most unusual supernova that anyone had ever heard of.

  “If it weren’t completely impossible,” Elena murmured, “I would assume that someone had intentionally tried to destroy the star.”

  Nopileos looked at her with wide eyes.

  Three tazuras later on ship’s time, the Archipelago of Swamp Orchids had already reached the star system called Menelaus’s Paradise thanks to the ship’s powerful engines. There had been no further incidents so far, possibly due to the fact that spacecraft traffic gradually faded as the ship advanced into the still largely unexplored New Sectors.

  Nola Hi hovered next to Elena, Nopileos, and Ebosirireos, who watched in captivation the gravidar, flight control system, and the surrounding space through the cockpit window. Uchan had withdrawn into the background next to his partner Kalmanckalsaltt to avoid tantrums in the presence of Nola Hi as much as possible. The two-eyed Paranid reminded Elena more than ever of an oversized insect. He still stood in the same pose in exactly the same place he had retreated to at the beginning of the voyage three tazuras ago, whether still or again eluded her knowledge. Every time she retired to her cabin to sleep, Kalmanckalsaltt still stood there. When she returned to the control center after several stazuras, he had apparently not moved a finger’s breadth. Some species of insects on Earth could remain motionless for days, months, often even years. The fact that this was the case for even intelligent life forms like the Paranid seemed to Elena particularly alien, even a little downright scary.

  On the Gravidar, the journey’s destination appeared as a distant, weak point: the Delta jumpgate, which led further into the sectors declared a Xenon refuge, and was to be deactivated on behalf of the Queendom of Boron’s government. Nola Hi ha
d tried to introduce Elena to the details of the Ancient Ones’ jump technology, with dubious success. During the tazuras the scientific ethicist had spent aboard the abandoned slave ship, he had been able to study at length the concepts that had been retrieved from the Nyana’s Fortune’s onboard computer. At first he was surprised when Elena could no longer follow him after a certain point. Then he realized: the star warrior had great difficulty understanding how he could study the material without actually having the information of the Ancient Ones at hand. And yet it was so simple: the memory prints that had mixed with the breathing fluid in his swan-skin stated almost every aspect of the information he had already sought out. Every Boron spent his life in a veritable lake of his own and foreign memories. Even the slightest traces of RNA were detected and interpreted by the sensitive lamellar receptors. Not for nothing was it said that every Boron knew everything at any time, even when other members of his species had acquired it.

  “What no one could take, snatch, and steal away from me is my tasteful, factual memories and thoughts. But my implements, tools, and instruments remain aboard the unlucky, poor, beautiful ship FL Raindragon and are lost forever.”

  Elena didn’t know what had happened to the FL Raindragon after she was boarded. If the ship hadn’t been blown up, then it might still exist. But that didn’t help them here and now, of course. “Surely there are tools aboard the Archipelago, too. Maybe they’re enough for our purpose?”

  Nola Hi wrinkled her trunk in doubt, causing the elasticated skin of the environmental suit to draw back a few centimeters. “That is definitely possible and can be, aesthetic Ele Na, but we will have to inflict far more violence on the sublime and majestic world portal, the gate of the universe, than would be the case and would be necessary with my instruments and tools.”

  Elena shrugged. “I’m afraid we can’t change that anymore.”

  “No, negative,” the Boron piped dejectedly.

  “Chin up, Nola Hi. If you can actually shut down the gate, that will rescue Eve 2092 from the coalition fleet,” Elena said. The towering CPU ship of the Terraformers had long since reached the refuge—long before the Paranids, of whom there was no trace far and wide! “In addition,” she continued, “at the same time we’ll be saving the Community of Planets from further assaults by the Xenon. That’s still worth it, right?”

  “Yes—and yes!” answered the scientific ethicist, already a little more confidently. Her secondary tentacles shimmered vaguely behind the milky material of the suit. “The presence cloud will polarize our feelers in many colors!”

  Elena was left with no time to think about this enigmatic remark from the Boron, because an alarm signal brayed out. The Archipelago had advanced somewhat more than a stazura into the star system and would reach the Delta Gate in a quazura, without coming within even an astronomical unit of any of the system’s twelve planets. The Alpha Gate that lay behind them through which the Teladi clam ship had entered, flashed blue. Another starship materialized. As the visual enhancement zoomed deeper and deeper into the dark night of the universe, the energies flickered again, then again, and many more times. It was only after the gravidar had announced a total of two hundred and forty-three new blips in this previously uninhabited star system that the jumpgate singularity’s bluish energy storms subsided.

  Elena was pale in the face. “We should hurry. That is the strike force of the coalition.”

  Sezuras later, the first resolutions of detail confirmed her conclusion. Row by row, Split and Paranid craft fell into the system, slower than the Archipelago with its powerful engines; nevertheless, the fleet would reach the Delta Gate in no more than three stazuras.

  “And then, good night,” Elena muttered. “Nopileos—ask Ebosirireos if he can tease out anything more from this machine.”

  The navigations commander didn’t seem to know how to assess the threat of the coalition fleet, so it took incredibly long for Nopileos to convince him to continue increasing acceleration and initiate the reverse burn later.

  Another twenty-six mizuras later, the breaking engines finally reached their blue tongues of flame out to the outriggers of the the rapidly approaching Delta Gate. The instruments that Nola Hi had borrowed from the hangar master of the Archipelago seemed adequate, if not perfect. The Boron was confident that it could manipulate the gate’s machinery accordingly. Elena, wrapped in an old, uncomfortable Split spacesuit taken from the damaged barge, nodded reassuringly to the scientific ethicist at her side. Nola Hi clamped flapping tentacles beyond the controls of the dinghy, with which she would translate the movement of the ship with the gate in a few moments. At first, Nola Hi wanted to transfer control of the ship to Elena, too deeply sat the memory of the incident on Port Thornton in his limbs. But Elena insisted that the Boron control the flight, because only he knew the exact angle needed to approach the gate without triggering the jump mechanism.

  “I could, am capable, it would be imaginable that… you’re not afraid and worried to fly with me, Ele Na?”

  Elena shook her head and smiled. “Why, no.”

  “Then you are less afraid of my flying skills and flying abilities than I, myself.”

  The astronaut put her hand on the protective-suit-reinforced tentacle of the of the excited Boron. “I’m much more worried about what the coalition fleet will do if the jumpgate doesn’t work anymore.” At the same time she realized that these words would hardly help to calm the fluttering scientist, but Nola Hi reacted more calmly than feared. When a signal announced the launch clearance, he activated the power to the ship and carefully lowered it above the opening lock.

  “There is and exists a flowing word of wisdom and calm in the equatorial streams of Nishala,” Nola Hi piped. Suddenly the Boron seemed like a different person: his feelers and tentacles no longer shuddered, his voice sounded almost normal. Elena only understood with a delay from where Nola Hi obtained this expression.

  “And what would that be?”

  “It says and is,” the scientific ethicist sang as the boat left the hangar and gained momentum, “We don’t know what paradise is like, but probably it’s blue-magenta, flecked with pink. But even if it’s green and red-checked we should make the most of it.”

  Elena chuckled softly to herself. Outside, the jumpgate came closer and grew in height. “That we will.”

  For a few sezuras, silence prevailed, allowing the astronaut a new moments of reflection as she gazed at the hoop of the stargate, whose side-on view grew more and more wide above the colorful dashboard. Only once before had she seen a jumpgate from such a slight distance, but it had been the ancient, damaged Earth from before the Transformer War. This here, however, the relic of a mysterious species that seemed to be from time immemorial, known only as the Ancient Ones, seemed so much more colossal and mighty than the Earth gate that it almost automatically attracted all attention and paralyzed her thoughts in awe. How old could it be? A thousand, a hundred thousand, a million years, jazuras, or older? No one could say with final certainty. Some scientists in the community estimated that some of the gates were “merely” a few thousand jazuras old, while others had existed for eons. But the tremendous monuments that testified to the good will and technical finesse of their architects, resisted any excessively minute analysis of their composition. Passively, but no less effectively, they maintained their positions, withstood anything but the most violent destructive attempts, and always remained timeless, new, and inspiring confidence.

  The two outriggers of the gate pointed “down”—why Nola Hi had decided on this position, Elena didn’t know, but she was sure that there was a good reason. As the Boron, whose secondary tentacles swarmed frantically again, noticeably hesitated Elena got up and stepped into the airlock. A few sezuras later, Nola Hi followed her with a small container that appeared so abysmally black in the darkness of space, as if it wanted suck in all the light and stars. Elena turned at the threshold of the double airlock that was open on both sides. “Where?”

  “The
world portal has a supervisory authority that is inaccessible through our lowly instruments,” the scientific ethicist answered with unusual curtness as Elena checked the maneuvering equipment of her spacesuit. Under no circumstances did she want to drift off into empty space without hope of rescue, out here past any possibility of recovery. “There are seventeen places where the machinery could be brought to a halt, but at the cost of irreparable damage, the Boron continued.

  Elena squinted past the mighty outrigger that loomed just a few meters “below” her like a pillar of heaven against the faint light of the distant sun. In a few moments, when she left the artificial gravity field of the dinghy, her sense of “above” and “below” would radically change. She tried to memorize lines and profiles of the enormous technical architecture. From experience this would mitigate the disorientation when changing to zero gravity.

  “So I have come to the conclusion and realization,” Nola Hi concluded his explanations, “Not to turn off the world portal in its entirety and magnitude, but simply to interrupt one of its two dimensional anchors.”

  “One of these outriggers?”

  “Yes—and yes!”

  “And where?” she deliberately didn’t ask for the ‘how.’

  “There is a position, a location, and a place, that is not marked and labeled, Ele Na.”

  “And we can find this? Generations of researchers have scanned stargates for something like this.”

  “They didn’t know what I now know, tall, aesthetic, hairy star warrior Ele Na. Trust me. Stay close to me and protect me.” With these words, the Boron scientist floated out into space.

  “Chikisho,” Elena cursed. “I’d rather protect a birdcage full of grasshoppers!” She mentally prepared herself for the feeling of perpetual falling and pushed off.