The Blake Equation- Discovery

by David Savieri

  An ocean planet.

  The force that held him eased and he floated, gazing at the blue world below him and it was very beautiful but for the darkening on its horizon. His gaze was drawn to an area in the centre of the giant ocean where faintly he could see a green glow emanating from the depths until it was so bright he had to shield his eyes. After a few moments, sensing the light had dimmed, he lowered his arms from his face only to be startled by the materialized image of a being before him then as quickly as it appeared it was gone. Hayden felt his blood run cold. It was the phantom from the desert of his dreams. As this image disappeared before him, he was left with the image of the once sparkling blue planet now boiling with black rolling storm clouds. The green light had been extinguished. Hayden was filled with anger. He wanted to stop the dark desperately. He wanted to fly to the planet and sweep it away and send it back to where it came and dissolve whatever evil had issued it.

  He wanted to protect that beautiful place, wherever it was.

  He felt something, a vibration, a dim roar that was getting louder.

  Hayden shook - then startled, he woke.

  Sitting above him at the table was his uncle and he was wide awake, fully dressed and watching Hayden forlornly, one elbow leaning on the table, his hand on his cheek, the other on his lap. ‘You alright? You felt that?’ He asked softly.

  Hayden wasn’t quite sure he was awake.

  ‘What happened? Felt what? What’s wrong? W-what time is it?’ He asked drowsily.

  Jonah stared him directly in the eye and muttered something inaudibly as if he was wrestling with a thought. Then when he spoke again he was very serious. ‘Hayden - I have to tell you something and that thing is really something. I know you are absolutely not going to believe me and if I know you like I know you, which I know I do - you certainly won’t believe unless I can offer you proof,’ he paused at the gathering bewilderment and concern on his nephew’s tired face. ‘You must trust in me that I can indeed offer you the proof.’

  A bead of sweat appeared on his uncle’s brow and Hayden’s mood changed, he felt soured by the tone in his voice and the look on his face. He said nothing and listened. ‘You’re my family and you mean more to me than anything.’

  Hayden dropped his gaze to the floor as he could sense that something uncomfortable was about to be said. He loved his uncle dearly but like most boys, he didn’t like soppy stuff but he listened.

  Reaching down and putting his forefinger under his nephew’s chin Jonah gently raised Hayden’s face so that they were eye to eye. ‘My dear boy, I must tell you something that is so unbelievable and in fact so fantastic you will think that I have gone completely mad but you must believe me as you know I do not lie.’

  Hayden knew that and felt scared because of it. Jonah looked about the room as if he was expecting someone to hear him. ‘You, Hayden, are a very special boy. I’m not talking like normal family special - to my sister and me. I mean more special than even you or most people could ever imagine.’ Again his eyes flicked about the room before settling back onto his nephew’s still very confused face. ‘You are - and there is no easy way to say this and, believe me, I’ve waited your entire life to tell you -’

  Hayden’s eyes widened with anticipation.

  ‘You are.’

  ‘I’m what?’

  ‘You are.’

  Hayden willed his uncle to finish that sentence.

  ‘You come from an old and esteemed family.’

  His nephew’s left eyebrow, as it did often, rose inquisitively.

  ‘Very old and very esteemed indeed,’ Jonah impressed.

  ‘You and Mum? What do you mean?’

  ‘To put it bluntly-’

  Hayden frowned.

  ‘My nephew, you are of regal lineage.’

  Hayden cleared his throat and looked at Jonah as he stifled a laugh. He’d have thought he was joking if his uncle’s creaseless face hadn’t stated otherwise.

  ‘That’s not all, my boy. Not only are you truly of royal blood but through your veins flows a blood like no other.’

  ‘I’m - a - a VAMPIRE!’ Hayden mocked.

  It was unlike his uncle to speak of such silliness. He wanted to laugh at his little joke but his goofy grin again was met by his uncle’s unflinchingly serious face and he swallowed coarsely.

  ‘Hayden. This is why I have brought you up here.’

  His nephew was now beginning to feel more than a little uncomfortable.

  ‘You brought me all the way up Jagged Peak to find the source of the earth tremors?’ Other than his mother, his uncle was the smartest, most sincere, loyal and loving person he’d ever known in his life.

  ‘No. I’ve brought you up here as I need to tell you something tremendously important. I need to reveal to you, Hayden, that you are not of this place -’ he paused, a pained expression on his face as if fighting to stop his beating heart leaping out of his mouth. He continued with an uneasy expression but spoke calmly and firmly.

  ‘I need to tell you now, Hayden, that you are in fact not of this...’ He paused and his eyes flitted about the cabin again, coming to rest on the front door.

  ‘Not of this what?’ Hayden urged, pulling on his uncle’s sleeve to regain his attention.

  ‘My dear nephew, you are not of this Earth. You are a member of the Royal House of Greythorn and you are destined for another life.’ It took a few moments for what he’d said to sink in and then Hayden could not believe that he’d just heard him say it. ‘I knew you wouldn’t believe me,’ Jonah said certainly, seeing his nephew’s obvious disbelief. ‘Again, that is precisely why we are here.’ Hayden started to pull his legs out from the sleeping bag. They’d tangled in the bottom and he pushed and kicked and got himself into a state. Jonah knelt to the floor and looked unflinchingly into his nephew’s eyes again. ‘You must believe me! I’ll prove it. You’ll see.’

  Had his uncle gone nuts? It was all he could think of when Jonah rose and stood by the mantel. The two stared at each other for a little while in total silence until Hayden broke from his uncle’s gaze. The fire was now just a low mound of red embers and he watched as the heat pulsated and rippled across the coals, burning the last of the fuel. Suddenly an ember popped and broke the quiet.

  ‘Oh come on, Unc!’

  He was silenced.

  ‘I will prove it! I have proof.’

  Hayden sat upright, half in his bedding. ‘Hayden, have I ever in all your life come out with anything as seemingly outrageous as this?’

  Seemingly? Hayden thought but said nothing, he really couldn’t.

  Jonah reached out across the mantel and in the dimming light tightly grasped the candle stick to the left, its candle had burned down and out a while before. ‘Stand back.’

  Hayden didn’t know what he could mean exactly but he shuffled across the floor away from him. Jonah pulled the brass trinket forward and back, forward and back, side to side twice then let go.

  Nothing happened.

  Hayden had crept out of his sleeping bag and was leaning against the small table feeling more than ready to go back to sleep.

  Suddenly a loud and unpleasant scraping sound filled the shack and he looked madly about to see where it was coming from? Then, mouth agape, he watched as the fireplace and hearth pivoted away from him and a gaping hole was left in the stone floor!

  He looked at his uncle then back at the dark yaw that had appeared before them in that seemingly innocent little hut. He edged closer and looked over the rim and unbelievably, saw steps spiraling downward.

  Events had definitely taken a mysterious turn in favor of his uncle’s claim but a secret passage did not make him an alien.

  ‘Where do they lead?’ Hayden asked, trying to keep his composure as he pulled his trousers and top back on with blinding speed.

  ‘Follow me and I’ll show you.’

  Hayden finished dressing and Jonah grabbed their packs and bedding from the hut then ushered his nephew onto the stairs. He made a
final check and when they’d walked down five of the thick wide rough granite steps, his uncle pulled a lever and the fireplace swung back to its original position just above their heads.

  It was if they hadn’t even been there.

  Jonah, in the lead, flicked on his torch then dropped the swag mattresses and sleeping bags in the darkness as they continued downward.

  ‘You’re leaving them here?’ Hayden queried.

  ‘We won’t need them.’

  They both moved downward.

  *

  The descent into what turned out to be a very long, and excepting the dim torch light, nearly pitch black tunnel, seemed to go on forever. The journey was mostly silent apart from Hayden asking occasionally who had built it and why?

  ‘We did.’

  ‘Who’s we?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  They’d reached the bottom and to what appeared to Hayden as a dead-end. ‘Hold this,’ Jonah said, handing his nephew the little torch. ‘Shine it here,’ he said abruptly, pointing to the solid stone in front of them. ‘See that fissure, that narrow crack?’

  Hayden could see the small crack exactly at his head height in the rock no wider than his nose and no longer than his hand.

  ‘Look into it then stand back. ’

  ‘With the torch?’ Hayden asked, shining the beam onto his uncle’s face. Jonah squinted the raised his arm to his eyes.

  ‘Just look into that gap.’

  Hesitantly, Hayden did as was asked and he was again surprised when after a few seconds the wall in front of them moved noisily away sideways.

  ‘Iris scans,’ Jonah revealed when the scraping noise stopped.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  Hayden was perplexed. If it was a trick, it was certainly a very elaborate trick -and for what purpose?

  When they had passed through the newly formed doorway and walked through the continuing darkness for several more metres, Hayden found himself facing another dead-end. He looked at his uncle again with bewilderment. ‘Where to now?’

  ‘Wait a moment. Just keep looking ahead.’

  Jonah then asked for the torch back and clipped it, still alight, to his belt. After a few seconds, Hayden felt something tickle the skin of his face like tiny soft pins. After a few moments the wall in front of them noisily slid aside as the other had. Stepping forward, Hayden found himself standing in a spacious but dank tunnel of solid rock dimly lit by a few flickering light globes. It appeared that they were in a mine shaft in the depths of Jagged Peak. He wasn’t aware of any tunnels in the mountain? ‘What was that prickly feeling?’

  ‘DNA sensor.’

  He looked at his uncle in amazement. Secret passages and doors? DNA sensors? What next? Hayden began to seriously question what was going on. Most importantly who he was, or more correctly, who he might be? He was being convinced by the second that the truth could be weighting heavily toward his uncle.

  The little torch, still attached to Jonah’s belt made a small circle of light dart over the smooth dark surface of the cave as he walked. Hayden wondered if it was a mine, why where the walls so smooth? He had no idea that anything like this existed on their mountain. He bumped into his uncle who was standing in front of another seemingly dead end. This time it was not a rough hewn wall but very smooth and shiny like the rest of the tunnel. Jonah turned off the light so that they stood in total darkness. Hayden felt those soft pin pricks again on his face then nothing but silence and darkness for several seconds. From the gloom, a female voice spoke.

  ‘Welcome-something, something,’ it said, the last words being drowned out to Hayden by his pounding heart.

  In the seconds it took for whatever was to happen next, Hayden could hear his uncle’s words circling in his mind. His beloved uncle, the man who pretty much taught him everything he knew. The man who had been in his life all his life had just told him that he was, and this was so difficult for Hayden to get his intelligent head around “ Not of this Earth.” Could he comprehend what that really meant? Hayden mouthed the word and just couldn’t believe it despite where he found himself.

  Alien.

  It was just as he said it that a clunking sound emanated from around them and light suddenly shone out onto their feet as the smooth wall in front of them lifted into the ceiling. He was utterly amazed and struck silent by the vision that was revealed.

  The image would remain with him forever -

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Hayden stood alongside his uncle, dwarfed in a massive well lit cavern. Beyond them, Hayden was amazed to see that there was a group of fifty or so people facing them. All dressed in what looked like grey uniforms, standing motionless in four neat rows, heads bowed and arms across their chests. He was just about to turn to his uncle and ask who they were when his attention was stolen by several lights hung from the cavern ceiling that began to glow more brightly. His jaw dropped when he realised what the increasing light revealed and he blinked then blinked then blinked again. ‘That’s a - that - this - incredible!’ Hayden garbled, his jaw still agape and looking in sheer awe ahead at a massive spaceship!

  Jonah looked at him, smiled and nodded a knowing nod.

  Hayden couldn’t understand what was happening? His eyes unblinking, his mind numb with questions. His uncle was relieved that Hayden now knew at least part of the truth but was unsure how he would take the rest of it as it came. He felt sad too that he knew that his nephew’s relatively happy-go-lucky life as he’d known it, was now over almost completely.

  Jonah placed his hand comfortingly onto Hayden’s shoulder.

  Trying to absorb the impossible sight before him Hayden’s knees felt weak as it was very obviously the most incredible thing he could have ever hoped to have seen. His mind absolutely raced with questions, so much so he thought he would burst.

  ‘So. Now you know, boy,’ Jonah smiled.

  Hayden closed his eyes and shook his head slowly in recognition of just what it was he was looking at and he also knew how terrible it must have been for his uncle to keep such a secret for so long.

  ‘Mother?’

  Jonah’s hand gripped his shoulder more tightly.

  Stepping forward from under his uncle’s arm, he watched bewildered as the attending people appeared to be saluting him.

  The massive copper-coloured ship was a wonderment. It was at least fifty or sixty metres long and at its highest point, a conical protrusion atop its elongated flaring dorsal like tail, at least twenty. He traced its lines carefully back and forth, over and over again.

  It had a nose cone that widened into a cylindrical fuselage with small indentations and bulbous extrusions, their use known only to whoever designed and built it. Large rocket boosters flared out the back looking a bit like those used on the old NASA space shuttles.

  Whatever fuel it used to generate the enormous power it would take to propel it to whatever speeds it needed, to get to wherever it needed to get to, he just couldn’t know. The ship’s tarnished skin looked old with greenish shadows and great streaks along its flanks that reflected brown and blue against the glow from the lights hung above from the cavern ceiling.

  It felt as if he were on a movie set, and he was entirely expecting a director to yell cut, but no one did. ‘You know, I knew it!’ Hayden exclaimed excitedly.

  ‘Knew what?’ His uncle asked, glad to hear Hayden’s voice.

  ‘That Earth wasn’t alone. I mean, they say that there are many more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all the beaches in all the world so it seemed more impossible to me that we could be alone than otherwise.’

  Jonah smiled broadly and taking a deep breath he dipped his head slightly. ‘Well,’ he said exhaling. ‘Hold that thought because you really have no idea.’

  Hayden began to walk toward the ship accompanied by his uncle.

  The lines of people watched him as he approached. Some smiled but Hayden didn’t really notice as he was just too enamored by the vessel looming behi
nd them. It was huge. A spaceship! From what he could surmise, a real spaceship in Jagged Peak! It was simply too impossible and Hayden just couldn’t bring himself to fully believe it.

  A man, tall and lanky dressed in the grey uniform approached. Wearing a cap like that of a nineteenth century steam-train driver but a little more ornate, his shoulders covered in what looked like brown leather sleeves that extended over his chest dotted with brassy rivets. As the man neared, Hayden stood up straight. This was going to be the first alien he’d ever met. The pale skinned man stood before them, took off his hat and placed it neatly under his left arm. Hayden looked into his eyes and after a few moments of searching, realised who it was. ‘Mr. Rankin!?’

  The young student tried to formulate a greeting but couldn’t find the words. Mr. Rankin with his face cleanly shaven, eloquently placed his right arm across his chest and bowing slightly as all else in the cavern were, looked to Hayden then to Jonah.

  ‘All is in readiness, General. The captain would like to speak to you on board.’

  ‘Very well, Ambassador,’ Jonah answered as if it were the most normal thing to say to his nephew’s science teacher. He paused when he saw Hayden’s confusion. ‘Tell him that we will all be aboard very shortly.’ Hayden watched as Ambassador Rankin smiled at them both in turn then winked at him, bowed again then swiveled on his heel and walked back to do whatever it was he had to do.

  ‘You’re being forced to take in all of this so rapidly,’ his uncle stated firmly but then his voice softened. ‘That I do not envy. You must understand that there is an immensely important reason for our secrecy. All will be revealed to you when the others arrive.’

  ‘Others?’

  Doing his best to listen as his uncle continued, it was no use. That spaceship in front of him diverted his attention entirely. It was something that he’d dreamed of since he was very small. He was studying the great metallic transport when an alarm sounded suddenly and a number of red lights flashed across the cavern walls. The four lines of people broke up and moved in an orderly fashion toward the bow of the ship. After the third siren, a deep rumble was heard from the booster rockets and a powerful blast of fire shot from them. The ground trembled just as it had that morning. It was obvious to him now and his mind reeled when it hit him just how his life to that point had been a complete farce.