The Blake Equation- Discovery

by David Savieri

  Something had hit them!

  Startled, Hayden woke and Kel, hurriedly leaving the room, threw the tape onto his bunk where he picked it up groggily and, realising what it was for, began to unravel it. Kel rushed back out past the robot sentry and returned to the cockpit to check the instrumentation which, according to them, read as though there was nothing out there.

  No other ships, no meteors. Nothing.

  Still, to be safe, she flicked on the shuttle’s shields. Noticing that they’d lost power and were now weaker than they should’ve been, she knew they’d only be able to deflect small debris or at best a few laser cannon blasts. While she checked their heading to make sure it hadn’t altered, an annoying beeping emitted from the dashboard and Kel’s heart sank as she made out the unmistakable blip of an energy torpedo on screen that was heading directly toward them! Momentarily she glimpsed something larger behind the projectile but it disappeared. It was then she realised that the second Sepian ship had continued to pursue them and she quickly manipulated the controls so that the little shuttle dove away from the approaching missile. Kel heard a groan and turned to see that Hayden had joined her, the bandage-tape was just visible beneath his top. ‘Sit down. Hang on!’ she ordered. Without hesitation her passenger did as he was told and sat in the co-pilot’s chair. He asked her what was happening.

  ‘Feel better? Hope so?’ Kel asked genuinely but quickly. ‘Our Sepian friends - well, they had friends.’

  ‘No friends of mine,’ Hayden grimaced resolutely.

  ‘Or mine!’ Kel declared under her breath as she pulled and pushed on the controls sending the shuttle this way and that to avoid the missile that had locked on to them like glue.

  ‘Decoy! Release a decoy!’ She ordered hastily. Hayden looked at the multitudes of lights and switches and buttons spread over the dashboard and saw writings similar to those on Salar-One but had no idea what any of them meant.

  ‘How do I do that?’ he asked desperately and Kel pointed to a yellow backlit symbol right in front of Hayden’s seat that looked like a sun with three stripes running from the top of it.

  ‘Push it!’ She urged as the bleeping from the sensor quickened as if it were an electronic heartbeat heading toward a digital coronary. Hayden pressed the button, heard a faint whooshing sound then moments later saw a flash from the port side of the cockpit as the torpedo exploded.

  ‘Flare,’ Kel exhaled. ‘They will not give up easily. Hope we have more. ’

  Hayden decided that then would be a good time to strap himself into his seat. What have I gotten myself into? he thought.

  ‘They have surprised us,’ Kel explained. ‘They are masked.’

  ‘Masked?’

  ‘They make us believe their ship is not there,’ she answered.

  ‘But it is.’

  ‘Yes, but it is not on sensors.’

  ‘Great, what hope have we got against an enemy we can’t see?’

  ‘Better than you think.’ Kel watched the main sensor intently. ‘They cannot fire when masked.’ She wiped her hand on her opposite sleeve to rid it of perspiration and gain a stronger grip on the control stick. ‘We can use that to make more distance from them,’

  Hayden caught on. To fire, the Sepian ship had to be de-masked. It was an ambush tactic. Now all they had to do was outrun their pursuer which Hayden hoped would be as easily done as said.

  ‘When the shuttle slowed, Sepians were behind and fired. We must out-move them,’ Kel explained as she throttled forward and Hayden was pressed backward in his seat.

  ‘Are you going to do that light-speed thingy?’

  ‘Hyper-speed? No. We are too close to our destination. We will out run them. We will be safe.’

  Hayden’s brief and, up until a day and a half ago, relatively boring life flashed before him. ‘And we’re running to where? ’

  ‘Kuhl-Agev I said.’

  ‘Where’s that?’ He asked, scanning the immensity framed in the deck’s forward view screen and finding it hard to believe anyone could find anything in the vast, mostly emptiness before them.

  ‘Near,’ Kel replied curtly moments before the sensor blipped again. Hayden readied his finger on the flare button and waited for his new captain’s command. He imagined the cruel gelatinous skinned Sepians for a chilling moment. Who knew what they may have done had Kel not facilitated their escape? Who knew what they’d do if they caught them now? Not that it seemed that was their plan. The beeping became more rapid and beads of sweat formed itchy droplets on Hayden’s brow as he waited tortuously for Kel’s knowing command. The torpedo must have been very close as the separate beeps had become a continuous tone before Kel directed Hayden to again press the button. For one chilling moment they both thought that no flare had jettisoned but thankfully another explosion, this time just off the starboard bow flared, making the ship rock slightly from the shockwave.

  ‘Too close! ’ Hayden gasped.

  ‘Our shield’s almost gone,’ Kel revealed as she calmly checked the ship’s systems, flicking switches, light scrolling across her face from a monitor set into the dashboard.

  ‘Can we make it to, umm?’ Hayden forgot the name of the planet.

  ‘We will,’ the little pilot answered surely.

  ‘What if on that planet they think we’re Sepian? You know, because of this ship.’

  ‘They will not.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘This ship, it is a common transport on many planets. We will be safe on Kuhl-Agev. Its people do not like Sepians and the Sepians know it very well.’

  ‘Can’t we just mask like them and disappear?’ Hayden hoped.

  ‘We cannot,’ Kel answered as she pressed forward on the control stick again. The stars in the view screen blurred momentarily from the acceleration and sent them hurtling toward a faint dark emerald orb in the distance.

  Kuhl-Agev.

  Kel knew they would be safe there and Hayden had to trust her.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  What spread around them was the most magnificent crystal clear vista Hayden had ever seen. They were in the Devonian system proper now and Kel had expertly pointed out Kuhl-Agev and far beyond it a blue dot, her home planet and that of the Sepians - Devonia. According to Kel’s brief description; the Devonian solar system consisted of four inhabited planets and three suns. Devonia was largest with Kuhl-Agev next, followed by the smaller outer worlds of Kerulon, then Onon. As they passed by three small moons each larger than the other, Hayden could make out the first real alien planet he would visit in remarkable detail.

  Kuhl-Agev was beautiful and, very familiar. He concentrated on why it seemed so. ‘I know this place,’ he muttered under his breath but Kel was preoccupied and hadn’t heard him.

  It was no mistake. The shadow that crept across the sunset behind it was the visual clue that triggered the memory. This was the planet from the first of his dreams. Nervously he searched the horizon and with relief found no ominous all enveloping storms.

  ‘Did you say... ?’

  ‘...Nothing,’ Hayden fibbed.

  Though she’d saved his life and he’d been through more danger with her in a very short time than he’d been through with anyone else, he still wasn’t about to tell her that he’d dreamt of this place he’d never been.

  *

  Looking at Kuhl-Agev as it approached, he wondered as to what could want to destroy such a beautiful place, and something was going to happen to this planet and that other planet he’d dreamt of. He couldn’t explain it even to himself, but he was sure.

  Kel was busy observing the dashboard before her. The dark but inviting atmosphere of the planet below was nearing and she applied herself considerably to the task of preparing for their descent.

  ‘Sepians are gone,’ she stated with unerring confidence.

  ‘How do you know?’

  Kel pointed out to a series of small shiny black metallic satellites positioned strategically across the horizon. ‘They do not allow Sepian
ships to enter Kuhlian airspace.’

  ‘How would those things stop them?’ he asked, looking at the seemingly harmless spheres.

  ‘Destroy them.’ Kel answered as concisely as he expected.

  Hayden looked at her with some trepidation.

  ‘Then what’s stopping them from doing that to this Sepian ship?!’

  ‘Sentry Satellites read bio-signals in all ships that pass in or out of Kuhlian airspace. A Sepian signature - they will stop it.’

  ‘And you say that this shuttle is not Sepian?’ Hayden clarified, worried again.

  ‘Used by Sepians not Sepian. I did say before, this model is used on many worlds. Sentry-Sats detect Sepian signal so unless you are Sepian, you have not a worry.’

  Hayden quite obviously wasn’t so his mind was put at ease somewhat though he wondered, however, while watching the Sentry-Sat net, about what his family and friends were doing. Surely they’d organised a search party? Surely they worried?

  They would be worried and he knew that they would be sending help he hoped. So much had happened over the last hours he felt guilty he hadn’t thought of his family more often.

  If he was as important as people said he was, someone had to be searching for him.

  *

  They had entered the atmosphere in a blaze of fire. The friction of the air grated against the shuttle’s hull as the planet’s surface neared. ‘Do you know where to go?’ Hayden asked noting that it was late evening and things were getting dimmer by the second.

  ‘Many times I have been here.’

  ‘Then where are we headed exactly?’

  ‘Tika, it lies below that.’

  Kel pointed to a vast forest looming toward them in the near darkness below.

  ‘I can hardly see a thing.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Why good? ’

  ‘Tika is a hidden city.’

  A loud beep was heard and an orange light lit above the main view screen. A chill ran up Hayden’s spine as he thought briefly that it was the alarm and that the Sepian ship or something else was still after them. Kel looked up at it casually and flicked a switch causing another light beside it, this time green, to illuminate.

  ‘Hidden city? Why is it hidden?’

  She looked at Hayden bemusedly, realising with some shock that obviously this Earth place he was from was not familiar with the history of wider universal events. ‘The great galactic war,’ she answered and in doing so, felt decidedly strange actually having to.

  Hayden’s throat felt suddenly coarse and his eyes flitted futilely out of the cockpit window as if they were to suddenly discover an armada of battleships and fighters zigzagging through the sky.

  They didn’t.

  ‘There’s a war?’ He gulped.

  ‘Was.’

  He was delighted to hear her use the past-tense.

  ‘With who?

  ‘The Rone.’

  ‘Rone?’

  ‘Beastly creatures of much cruelty.’

  ‘Like Sepians?’

  ‘Much worse, according to legends.’

  ‘According to legends?’ Hayden gulped again. ‘Then let’s hope we don’t meet any of them.’

  Kel looked out the window. ‘We won’t meet them,’ she said confidently.

  ‘How can you be so sure? ’

  ‘War with Rone took place many generations ago,’ she paused to concentrate on a small monitor. ‘Rone were destroyed.’

  ‘Well that is a relief,’ Hayden phewed. ‘Is that what the space-net-thingy is for then? ’

  ‘Kuhlians are very protective of their home and are always alert. The war with Rone was their need for sentry-sats. After war they reprogrammed to forbid the Sepian race.’

  ‘Why the Sepians?’ Hayden asked, despite the obvious.

  ‘No one likes Sepian race but Sepian race. Horrible creatures that during wartime showed loyalty to none but used all.’ Kel was about to spit onto the floor in disgust. ‘Distrustful slime.’

  ‘So these Kuhlians are better safe than sorry.’

  Of two things Hayden was glad. The first being that the war he’d just learned about was over and the second was that Kel was on familiar terms with their very near-future hosts.

  He looked out across the horizon of Kuhl-Agev.

  No storms, he thought. Good.

  The immense forest below them was very close and Hayden admired Kel’s skill as she expertly guided the shuttle in the dark.

  ‘How do you even know where you’re going?’

  ‘Not up to me,’ she replied with a smile. ‘Not been me for a time.’ Kel unbuckled her harness and Hayden followed suit. ‘They do it.’ She pointed at the floor in reference to the Kuhlians somewhere in a hidden city in the forest below and she let go of the control module. ‘See, no hands,’ she said, laughing softly, the sound of which being a pleasant surprise to him.

  She must feel safe now, he thought. ‘How far do we go like this then?’ He asked just before the question was answered for him with a small jolt as the retro rockets fired and they began to descend vertically. The cockpit became even darker as unnecessary systems shut down and he could see themselves being enveloped by the darkness of the forest canopy and the clear late evening star speckled sky disappearing above them.

  Hayden’s curiosity begged for him to press his nose against the window and through the darkness try to see what was out there.

  ‘Want to see out?’ Kel asked with another laugh as she watched with amusement her new friend’s face scrunched against the screen. He half turned to her and nodded with excitement.

  She turned on the exterior flood lights. Hayden looked at her again with some alarm.

  Kel smiled pleasantly. ‘We are safe. No one can find us now.’

  Hayden pressed himself back as close as possible to the window.

  What he saw was incredible. The shuttle’s floodlights were facing downward but no ground could be seen.

  They descended into a massive ravine. Hayden focused harder on the brown rock that made up the steep walls and audibly gasped when he realised that they weren’t descending into a deep stone canyon but were sinking past the trunks of the trees!

  Hayden turned back to Kel, stunned, and she seemed to be enjoying his excitement.

  ‘Very tall, yes?’

  ‘Amazing! They’ve got to be at least ..?’ He tried looking further downward but the design of the shuttle’s nose-cone wouldn’t allow it. ‘These are at least five or six hundred feet tall and I can’t even tell how wide they are!’ Hayden pressed his nose closer to the glass still until it squashed like putty. ‘I mean the largest tree on Earth is General Sherman.’

  ‘On your Earth you have enormous tree general?’ Kel asked with much surprise.

  ‘General Sherman is a California Redwood; a Sequoia - a tree like these but - no, not really like these. Each year it adds enough wood to itself to create a tree one foot in diameter,’ he made an estimation with his hands, ‘and more than a hundred tall - it’s well over two thousand years old.’

  Kel was interested in this boy from Earth. This boy who knew many things but also knew none.

  ‘Two thousand?’ Kel repeated, smiling and Hayden detected levity in her tone.

  ‘Well, that’s old on Earth- well, for most trees anyway, though there are some that are older.’

  ‘This forest has trees that would be over one hundred thousand of our years.’

  The thought of it made Hayden’s mind spin. What history they could tell. A history that would be totally alien to him. The window where his head was pressed had fogged over so he stepped back slightly and wiped it with his sleeve only for it to fog over again before his face returned. Kel sat in her flight chair and watched him. Where was this Earth? She’d never heard of it. How could anyone not know of The Great Galactic War? That was the strangest thing to her. From her earliest memory she was taught it because it was the most important lesson. Taught in every place of learning on every inhabited planet. Such a
war, a war that destroyed whole populations, that decimated worlds could never be forgotten so that it would never be repeated.

  Kel noted how excited her new friend seemed to be as they descended toward the planet.

  Who was this strange new companion who seems to know nothing of the universe?

  Hayden marveled as the colossal tree trunks seemed as one when they finally neared the bottom. Trying for his vision to exceed the ship’s lights he waited and as if he’d wished it, a gentle tone sang from the dashboard.

  ‘Almost there.’ Kel announced.

  ‘Are they used to unannounced guests?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Will they be upset? Will they be angry?’

  ‘No,’ she paused. ‘Might be hungry.’

  Hayden’s mouth dropped but the look on Kel’s face gave her away and again she chuckled lightly, rising from her chair to look out the window herself.

  ‘Not nice, Kel. I’m new to all this,’ he said but she didn’t answer.

  Turning to look out the window again Hayden saw a dark domed structure emerging from the gloom. A beacon blinked and he heard the same gentle tone from the dash.

  ‘Now we are really here,’ Kel said smiling again as she pointed off and away several hundred metres ahead of the beacon. Following the direction of her finger he saw a warm yellow light growing slowly from a thin crack in the ground with edges too precise and regular to be natural. Hayden’s feet were forcibly shifted as the shuttle stopped descending then after a pause moved forward.

  As they approached, the small crack had widened to become a large trap door. Hayden rubbed his painful shoulder under the bandage but couldn’t moan in pain as he wanted to in case Kel thought less of him for it. It meant a lot to him to appear brave in front of her because she was so herself. His wrist felt warm and itched so with his right hand he rotated his watch around to ease the discomfort.

  ‘This Tika is a city under what? Metal?’

  ‘Not metal. Walls of trees and stone around it.’