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

by Helge T. Kautz

While Nola Hi, thanks to his environmental suit, was able to move evenly and elegantly in free fall, the use of the maneuvering system was much more difficult for Elena. Her breath came in heavy pants against the much too close visor of the space helmet, where it didn’t condense into a fine mist, but into tiny, clear drops that were immediately reabsorbed by the life support system and recycled. Elena paused and turned her head left against the resistance of the neck collar. The approaching coalition fleet was still there, already recognizable to the naked eye as a cloud of white dots. The ships glittered in the cold sunlight like a swarm of silver mosquitoes, and a multi-tongued, transparent, blue tail of fire ran ahead of them.

  Ran ahead of them! The fleet was already decelerating so that the individual ships could cross through the jumpgate one after another in small groups, as was consistent with standard procedure with large groups. That meant, Elena realized with icy horror, that the first combat ships would be at their location in less than a stazura.

  “Nola—” she started.

  “Hairy one, I am already working in a way that is as fast as I am capable,” the Boron interrupted sharply. The scientific ethicist was hovering steadily ahead. He hardly conveyed the impression of particular haste, and certainly did not seem to to be taking measurement and examinations. Elena pressed her lips together and said nothing. Despite the lack of gravity, her brain insisted that the inside of the outrigger on which she followed the Boron toward the hoop was “down,” paradoxically contradicting her sense of balance. The center of the jump gate was thus “ahead.” The shadows of the two lonely figures, generated by the dinghy’s floodlights, stretched out to meet the sea of distant stars that stared unblinkingly through the gate.

  After some time, Nola Hi paused. “Here—and here,” he piped. Elena lowered her magnetic boots onto the outrigger and halted her movement with a short maneuvering thrust.

  “Here?” she echoed in unbelief. The were somewhere around the foremost third of the outrigger, and the material at their feet looked just the same as it did in the area behind them: large, dark gray plates alternated with medium and light gray; but there was no visible jointing or other features. Also, the material didn’t appear to have been struck by any micrometeorites over the eons, as it was completely smooth, almost brand new.

  “Hai, here,” the scientific ethicist emphasized in his very un-Boron style. He dropped the box of tools on the outrigger—amazingly it stayed there straight away—and took out a device whose function didn’t reveal itself to Elena from a mere glance. If the Boron planned to open the outrigger’s floor panels, then he was first going to have to figure out how to do it. The several square-meter-long sheets of gray, seemingly featureless material in any case had no joints, restraints, or even bolts. That was of course not surprising. For a long time, on Earth, it had also been preferable to use composite material grown through nanotechnology and monolithic construction for anything that wasn’t intended to be opened after production. But within the Community of Planets, this technology, like all nanoscience, was still in its infancy.

  “Wait here, in at this spot, and do not follow me, Ele Na.” The scientific ethicist floated forward centimeter by centimeter until he crossed the dividing line to the next, brighter plate, then stopped again, emitting a frenzied stream of bubbling clicks.

  “Everything okay?” Elena made sure. The Boron assured her that it was, and returned to stow the unidentifiable device in the box.”

  “These planetbound saurians and lizards, Teladi from Ianamus Zura, are shrewd, clever, and prudent toolmakers,” he cheeped as he took out another, no less puzzling object from the box. “They surpass their sisters in the Community of Planets in almost all matters, it appears and seems to me.”

  Elena shrugged her shoulders and said nothing. In the meantime, the mosquito swarms of the coalition fleet had come a good deal closer. She could clearly see the group was beginning to form a long line, and on that imaginary vector the individual ships lined up neatly like pearls on a string in groups of three. Surely the operations commanders of the coalition fleet had already located the Archipelago of Swamp Orchids in their holding position, perhaps even the dinghy stopped in front of the gate. Clearly no one had expected difficulties. Why would they? Nobody, whether Paranid or Split, could count on the fact that a jumpgate was to be deactivated! If anything, they might expect military resistance to the provocative violation of Boron territory at best, Elena reflected, as more and more points of light found their places in the string of pearls and shut down their engines. But there was no such resistance. Kingdom End had placed all its eggs in one basket with the success of this one endeavor: on the bringing down of the Delta Gate.

  If they even managed to deactivate the gate in time! With growing uneasiness, Elena watched the Boron, who had returned to the other floor plate and apparently made adjustments to the new device. There was not a lot she could do. The involuntary inactivity made her nervous and antsy.

  “This is Uchan t’Scct,” suddenly crashed through the silence of space in her helmet and into her thoughts. A small, transparent image of the Split appeared on the upper-left side of her visor. “The Three-eye’s fleet will reach the gate’s event horizon in an inzura.”

  An inzura? Elena starred unseeing through the image of the Split for sezuras, until she suddenly managed the conversion into Earth time units. An inzura was about twenty-two minutes. So soon? She felt the blood drain from her face. “Understood,” she answered briskly. The Split made a gesture with both hands, and as his image faded, she caught a glimpse of Nopileos, who at that moment stepped behind Uchan and looked over the Split’s shoulder.

  Clacking sounds directed Elena’s attention back to the scientific ethicist. A dull glow penetrated evenly across the entire floorboard Nola Hi was studying. As Elena became aware of the menacing, low-pitched buzzing transmitted to her by the ground contact of her boots, a deep, black, rectangular patch spread open in the floor panel. It was covered by a dull glow; it started in the middle and soon reached the edges of the plate. A large, four-by-four meter opening in the shape of a square opened up near the feet of the extremely astonished astronaut. Even as Elena made a surprised sound, Nola Hi placed a bright, glowing point of light in the space above him. The light was enough to reveal the innards of the outrigger. As Elena stepped closer to the opening, the deep drone suddenly died. The sudden silence brought with it a much more threatening feeling than the sound before.

  “That—that’s it?” she asked.

  “In their great, unsurpassed wisdom, they bring to a standstill what can not stand still, subjectify what is objective, generate colors that have never been seen by a being’s eyes.”

  “I… with that?” She looked down at the simple, tightly wound coils that wrapped around a multitude of parallel rods or tubes similar to those of a particle accelerator. Every few centimeters around the edges of the coils, spherical and square components repeated at regular intervals, and dull shining probes entered the well-regulated order of the coils. Whether this structure ran unchanged from the far end of the dimensional anchor to the ring of the jumpgate itself could not be seen.

  “To be honest, I don’t understand it. Bring to a standstill what cannot stand still, colors that no eye has seen? Nola?”

  The scientific ethicist had long since descended into the opening and was examining the exposed machinery, taking painful care not to touch anything with her tentacles. “Oh dear, venerated, aesthetic star warrior Ele Na,” she cheeped, “that is certainly and is determinedly only due to inadequacy of my words, which break down in the face of the unfathomable. Please hand me the toolbox and give it to me.” Elena responded to the request of the scientist, who immediately began to make incomprehensible gestures using strange tools. “I wish and will that you possessed tasters, to know the purple, to feel the equatorially warm uselessness of words in the presence of the wordless. The size and truthfulness of…”—so it went on for a while. Evidently the Boron had found his way back to hi
s usual, chatty self. Elena wished he would shut up again, as a glance toward the coalition fleet told her that that all the many ships had completed their alignment maneuvers. Details emerged without difficulty: every three ships moved towards the jumpgate in the formation of a long drawn out isosceles triangle, eighty-one triplets on a string of pearls extending across the greater part of a light-sezura. What would happen, Elena thought, if the gate activated itself while they were still here? Because she didn’t quite believe that the Boron had switched off the machinery in time. There were just a few minutes remaining before the gate transit.

  “Only Paranid ships, without exception!” she realized breathlessly after a few more moments. No coalition, only Three-eyes on their own! Had the new Patriarch withdrawn his involvement in the undertaking on short notice? Probably.

  The ships rapidly grew larger, to enormous dimensions, and they came right up to them. Of course, they had to if they wanted to pass through the jumpgate! The sight was oppressive, and for the first time in a very long time, Elena felt genuine, instinctive animal fear of death. “Nola Hi!” she screamed. “Nola!”

  The first triplet of Paranid warships thundered silently, filling the sky, plunging into the middle of Elena’s face, shattering them…

  No! She lived! Only when the second, third, and forth triplets fell through the center of the stargate just a few dozen meters above her head did Elena realize that she was still screaming. She fell silent. The thunder of the battleships existed only in her head, reached her hearing only through her optic nerves. The titanic, deadly spacecraft whose formations swept just above her filled her senses to the limit of perceptual capacity until the neural pathways leaked together.

  But she lived! Panting, she turned and forced herself to raise her head.

  The spacecraft fell through the stargate.

  They simply fell through, no blue energy vortex, nothing!

  It didn’t activate!

  The stream of triple formations didn’t break, time after time groups of three ships crossed over the midpoint of the stargate as if it were nothing more than a giant, inanimate hoop in space that had no particular use for them.

  “You… you did it! Nola Hi!” She couldn’t believe it, the Boron had actually managed to disable the gate!

  “Yes—and yes!” Nola Hi clicked cheerfully. At that moment below the scientific ethicist, the floor panel grew shut, flaring up briefly and then reappearing in the same untouched gray that made it indistinguishable from the thousands of other floor slabs.

  “Now hurry back to the dinghy,” Elena shouted. The first units of the Paranid fleet were fanning their formation after the futile gate passage and giving reverse thrust. They were fast, but by no means fast enough to be battle-ready and moving from their location with adequate speed. The Archipelago had certainly been spotted by the Paranids, Elena didn’t doubt it for a moment. The Three-eyes would have questions.

  Chapter 44

  Only those who possess three eyes can truly grasp the concept of Three-Dimensionality. Only those who truly grasp the concept of Three-Dimensionality are holy.

  Paranid Bashra,

  First and Second Axioms of Xaar

  It simply stood there and looked at Ninu with its ice-cold, compound eyes. Actually, it didn’t stand—it crawled. Its leathery wings, interspersed with dark, branching veins, pushed the body of the creature off the ground and supported it. The hind section ran out in a broad, bony extension which, together with the two bony ends that protruded from the folds of the wings, formed a kind of tripod. The body was divided into two stocky sections like an insect; from the middle waist, two thin arms grew out, multi-jointed and opening into three sharp, alien fingers, which clasped several metal objects. It was only half the size of a Teladi, and its face was more alien and frightening than even that of a Paranid: black-green eyes looked out from thousands of facets under a scaly, bulging skull with scattered spiky bristles. Only slightly below the eyes was the projection of a beak—which was enormous in proportion with the creature’s body size—which put the impression of an insectoid into perspective.

  For a few sezuras, Ninu stood with her mouth open and her arms spread wide in the hallway to her cabin. A Kha'ak? Here? When the creature with rustling wings like a sick pteranodon crawled toward her, the Goner uttered a bloodcurdling scream, stumbled backward through the door frame, and hit the closer with great force. On the opposite side of the narrow corridor, the door to the men’s quarters opened. Zakk and Ion stormed out.

  “Ninu! What’s wrong?”

  “There’s a Kha'ak… in my cabin!” the Goner stuttered and pointed at the door. Ion stepped forward and tried to press the opener, but she held him back. “Don’t—I think it has a weapon! We have to call in Siobhan. Come with us.” She ran off; Zakk and the boy followed her with worried faces. Ninu’s hands trembled with disgust and fear as she headed toward the control center. The sight of the Kha'ak had come as a great shock to her. However the creature had come aboard, it looked terribly dangerous and disgusting to her, like an abomination against nature. The central bulkhead hissed. Breathlessly she told Siobhan and the pilot what she had just seen, while Zakk, who was visibly uncomfortable under the pilot’s disapproving glances, constantly looked back in the corridor.

  “How should a Kha'ak get into the ship? We really have other worries now.” She pointed to the cockpit window, where the approaching starships were becoming visible to the naked eye. Weapons turrets showed menacingly against the black of space; they could open fire at any moment.

  Siobhan only looked up for an instant and immediately returned to her console. If a Kha'ak actually made it into the ship, then the others had to take care of it. The next jump could not be a failure, not for anything in the world. Nothing else counted now.

  “The emergency jump to the desolate sun blew them away, Ms. Gardna-san,” Seldon reinforced the skepticism of his superiors. “And in fact, everything. You must be mistaken.”

  “Why don’t you see for yourself Major? Would that help you?” Ninu snapped furiously. “I know what I saw!”

  Seldon threw a glance over at Ditta Borman. She rolled her eyes so that only he could see it. “Well, Jahn, you look into the matter. Hurry up, the phantoms before us could let loose at any sezura. I need you at the controls.”

  Seldon pushed himself up from the seat. “Very well then. Where exactly did you see this Kha'ak?”

  Ninu described it to him. “You’re not taking a weapon?” she asked after him.

  Seldon slapped his hand on the opener of the central bulkhead when it didn’t open quickly enough. “No guns on board.”

  “Stay here, Ion,” Siobhan called as the boy moved to follow his half-sister and the major.

  “But…”

  “Be quiet and sit!” Siobhan yelled. This was the worst imaginable moment to start discussions with a child! Ion, who had never heard the scientist yell, was intimidated and obeyed.

  The central bulkhead slammed shut.

  Ninu followed the major with an uneasy feeling. The central corridor of the AP Providence led from the control room, past the entrances to maintenance rooms, the galley, a wet room, and the two passenger cabins; behind them it reached the cargo hold, which housed the experimental jump unit. The first thing Seldon noticed when the door opened was a stale, downright foul stench coming from the corridor. Even if the environmental recyclers were flagging or had completely failed, it couldn’t smell so beastly out here. “What is that?” he asked, drawing a loop in the air with his forefinger.

  “Imagination?” Ninu snapped back.

  The major pressed his lips together and said nothing. Shortly thereafter, he reached the passenger cabins; the one on the left side was the one used by Ninu, Siobhan, and Ditta Borman. He wanted to press his hand on the opener, then he noticed something. Seldon dropped to his knees. “Here.” He pointed on the frame; his voice suddenly sounded serious and professional.

  Ninu leaned forward. “I closed it when I came o
ut here two mizuras ago!”

  The door stood about half a finger open. And it wasn’t allowed to happen, technically: either the mechanism closed the door completely or it opened it completely. Half open, or opened a crack wasn’t designed for. That meant… A shiver went through the floor; in the belly of the ship, a sharp shriek worked its way up to to dizzying heights. Ninu flinched, all the blood drained from her face. “What…?”

  “The jump unit.” The noise of the running converters didn’t bother Seldon half as much as the knowledge that the Paranids must have opened fire. “Damn it!”

  He straightened up, quickly shoved his hand into the crack and rashly shoved the door open, though he was careful to keep his body behind cover. Finally, he peered into the room. A penetrating effluvium, half chemical, half foul, pushed into the hallway from the door, which was obviously damaged because it hadn’t fought against its partially opened state. Ninu held her nose and turned away from the source of the stench. “All right, you were right, Gardna-san, and I was wrong. But it’s pretty dead.”

  Ninu took a step forward and peered into her cabin. The Kha'ak lay slumped on the floor, the leathery wings spread out over his segmented body like a dirty shroud. The creature’s skin threw up purulent bubbles in several places, the compound eyes were slowly dissolving, and hundreds of black globules ran down the beak of the Kha'ak like black tears. The multi-limbed arms entwined below the torso at the level of its “chest;” the four pointed fingers held the roots of the opposite wings in the throes of death. A queasy feeling rose in the Goner. “Major, that’s a different one. There’s still another on board.”

  Seldon clicked his tongue. “It’s dead. Maybe it’s not okay with O2. I have to get back to the control center, I—”

  “Are you listening to me? The one from earlier carried weapons and had less fingers!”

  “Yes, damn it! I’m not deaf! Okay, then, you inform Commander Borman, I’ll have a quick look around in the other rooms and at the jump unit. Very quick!” Ninu nodded and ran back to the central bulkhead as Seldon prepared to open the door of the diagonally opposite cabin.