here is chapter 16 of HelgeK's novella, which provides the so dsired background information to the X Universe. Translated by forum members and re-written by SteveMill it is now waiting for final review and publication in print. As yet no dat has been confirmed, so I will just keep posting
Enjoy!
----------------
Chapter 16
It seems certain that jump gates were not distributed randomly across the galaxy. There are obviously different routes, which link uninhabited and inhabited star systems; however these networks are not interconnected.
According to this the Winterblossom is on a route, along which only uninhabited systems are reachable. That seems to me the only logical reason for the complete absence of alien life forms.
Cpt. René Farnham,
Logbook of the Winterblossom
It was crazy, completely crazy! Elena had repeatedly checked the result; however she approached the data, the result remained in principle the same.
"Please give me the correlation map again, Marc." She watched on a projection display how the two three-dimensional cubic maps of the universe merged. The light spots on the right side were blue and showed all stars that had ever been observed from the earth. Those on the left side shone red and represented all stars that were known to the Community of Planets.
Each displayed cube was about hundred light-years diameter with the terrestrial sun in the centre. They rotated and moved together. Marc highlighted the matching, merged star data points in green. These were the stars known to both the Earth and the Community. The onboard computer began to draw red and blue lines. The blue lines marked the solar systems connected by star gates known to humanity during the colonial age, the red corresponded to the routes, which were used by the ships of the Community.
The connections did not match! The earth spaceships had used completely different routes to visit other stars than the spaceships of the Community of Planets use today. There was only one linked solar system that connected the Earth and the Community; only one system that had been traversed by both Captain Farnham and other terrestrial space travel pioneers and the Teladi and the other aliens of this region of the universe.
She knew this solar system as Alpha Centauri, a name redolent with history. To the Teladi however it was simply, Company Pride.
Elena leaned back and studied the projection for a while, a million thoughts racing through her brain. At the edge of her vision her computer winked for attention, an electronic message, but she could not tear her attention away long enough to read it.
"It must be a mistake," she said, more to herself than to Marc. For the most incredible fact was not that none of the star routes matched. No, even more incredible was the fact that six hundred years ago in the system Alpha Centauri/Company Pride there had been two more jump gates as well as the one to Earth. And according to the map they still existed, they just led to different systems now!
Alpha Centauri had been the interstellar crossroads in Farnham's day. All ships from the Earth travelled first to there through the Earth gate, then jumped through one of the two other gates. At that time there had been no connection to any of the inhabited solar systems now linked. In turn there was no connection today to systems that had been inhabited at that time by humanity.
From the historical texts, in particular from the log of the Winterblossom, Elena knew that Farnham had at that time already assumed that the star gates were not randomly spread across the galaxy, but formed carefully planned routes. He had concluded that there were separate networks connecting uninhabited worlds and inhabited world islands. And never the twain shall meet.
Elena now had the proof that Farnham was right - the star gates were not distributed randomly and there were actually different routes - however he had not gone far enough. The star gates were very old, that was quite obvious. But someone seemed to be manipulating them to create or interrupt connections in accordance with an unknown plan.
Perhaps, Elena considered, humanity had developed the jump gate technology much faster than anticipated and foiled the plans of the Ancients, as the unknown designers were known as in these parts. And they had felt obliged make changes.
"Like rats in a maze," she murmured. The Ancients let humanity and other species run in a predefined labyrinth of star gates. But for what reason?
Her pondering was interrupted by the computer insistently drawing her attention to the waiting message with a strobing flash of the signal light. "Alright, alright already, show me!"
The display screen flashed up an automated notification from the Trading Station, advising Elena her permit to stay expired in one Quazura, after which an excess penalty would be charged. Less than one hour, she quickly translated. A Sezura corresponded to about 1.7 terrestrial seconds, ninety-six of these units built a Mizura, ninety-six Mizuras was a Stazura, seven Stazuras made a Tazura.
Although this time scheme had been originally introduced by the Teladi into the Community, the saurians made themselves an exception: for an inexplicable reason they divided the Stazura asymmetrically into four Quazuras of twenty-two Mizuras each and one Inzura, which was eight Mizuras. It gave her a headache.
But the most interesting thing about the time scheme was the syllable "Zura" in the names of the time units. This syllable was the name of a Teladi planet, whose location was lost in time to the reptiles. With the aid of the merged charts however, she had calculated its likely position in a matter of minutes, or Mizuras, she corrected herself. That could be a valuable piece of information.
Some Mizuras had elapsed since the message came in so she needed to be gone. But the question was, to where? The information Ferd had gleaned on sightings of unknown spacecraft had been sparse. The only recent piece of data spoke of an "important anomaly of three-dimensionality," apparently meaning a quantum singularity. Exciting for physicists, so-so for her. But, she reasoned, if Brennan were somewhere here in the Community sectors, he would find the sector Alpha Centauri/Company Pride sooner or later too. The X was not equipped with the detailed star maps of the Getsu Fune but given the system's historical significance, he'd know it when he saw it and he'd probably try and locate the old Earth star gate. It was pretty thin speculation, she knew, but it was all she had to go on.
"Let's go to Alpha Centauri, Marc," she ordered. Surprisingly, the computer recognized the command and began processing departure procedures. Elena carefully stowed the old guitar, which had once belonged to Franc de Vries, in a compartment, fastened the pilot seat belt and watched as Marc deftly piloted the Getsu Fune out of the station, guided by the station's control system.
As before she was surprised at the heavy local traffic and several times she had to fight the urge to grab the controls. Marc skilfully evaded all approaching space craft and soon they were several thousand kilometres from the station, where space traffic was light and the chance of a collision negligible.
"Initiating jump sequence," Marc informed her. Elena was scared to half to death when she heard the rumbling throb of the force fields the singularity machine generated from deep in the body of her ship.
"Abort jump sequence!" she shouted as the singularity engine rumbled to life. She repeated the order, slowly and distinctly so as not to give the computer any room for misunderstanding. She thought it lucky her unorthodox arrival had not attracted undue attention and she was anxious to keep it that way. Marc confirmed understanding and the rumbling tide of noise from the cargo bay ebbed away.
It took her only few minutes to program Marc the "official" course through the well-known star gates. She had to cross three Teladi sectors - and she would dock with each large station as she came across them.
*
Elena grinned. Selling the coordinates of the planet Ianamus Zura to a Teladi had been like offering genuine bananas to a primate, which had only been able to dream about them its whole life. The saurian's snout went pale and it stared at her open-mouthed, before its jaw snapped shut. After much stuttered fizzling to itself it offered her five credits!
Elena let her expression speak for itself. They settled on five thousand, which she transferred immediately to her brand-new credit card. She would have loved to know what significance this planet had for the hard bargaining Saurian, but the Teladi did not want to answer her questions and she did not have the time to argue.
Elena had become slowly acquainted with the alien species of the Community in general, especially with the Teladi, and with the rules of conduct governing it. She had begun to ask cautious questions regarding the X-Shuttle. Nobody knew anything about it; the subject, which absorbed everyone's attention, was the new border disputes with a race called the "Xenon".
Elena inferred from the news, the race was a species of self-replicating machines. It was no great surprise to her, because the Xenon could be nothing other than the Terraformers and the thought cramped her guts in a cold, anxious fist of primal fear. The Terraformers - who knows what might happen if these border disputes escalated to an all-out war?
The thought made her shudder.
She took a seat in the cafeteria with a solitary Teladi trader, purchasing a set of Nividium scrapers in order to pump him for information about conflicts with the machine race.
"The first and only Nividium set in the universe," the saurian stated confidently. Elena had no idea what the Teladi did with such equipment and whether it was important which material it was made of but on the next station they attracted a lot of interest and she sold the resplendent silver combs for a pleasing profit despite it being a waste of time, considering her real mission.
With the Space Equipment Dock Eiland dwindling to a glittering star point Elena took back the controls from Marc. Traffic in this system was thin, the Gravidar showing just a couple of dozen craft, all bent on their own business. Just one contact, at the extreme edge of scanner range, seemed strange.
"Marc, can you give me a visual of object 7674-3?"
"Affirmative", the computer answered and locked on with an external camera, but at that distance the target remained a ghostly smear of light, without definition, even at maximum magnification. And 'ghost' seemed the right term to Elena. The way it stayed on the edge of Gravidar range, disappearing and reappearing sporadically as it matched her course and speed changes, gave her a haunted feeling. She thought of it as 'The Shadow' but naming it did nothing to quell her unease.
She took some comfort from the suspicion that whatever it was, it seemed to think she couldn't see it.
"As if," Elena murmured, she was happy to have any technological edge, but not so happy with her limited options. Continue on her way, keeping an eye on the thing; evade or confront? Given the ancient engines of the Getsu Fune she dismissed the second option as purely hypothetical and she wasn't ready yet to jeopardise her mission by risking a combat situation developing.
"Hobson's Choice then." Continue as per her original plan but under observation and try to turn the situation to her advantage. A quick course change and a burst of speed might enable her to get a silhouette that would at least tell her what species, maybe even what ship class the Shadow was. But that would tip it off that she had spotted it. Reducing relative speed in empty space would also look suspicious and if she docked it would just park itself on the edge of sensor range.
She grimaced in frustration, there was a plan there, on the tip of her brain's tongue but she couldn't quite coax it into the open. And how had her shadow picked on her anyway? Everyone took her for a Goner or Argon and her ship did not seem to attract any undue attention. Had she been too pushy, or had it been a mistake to tie her ship into any station control systems?
Control systems, message drones.... that instinctively felt to be an avenue worth exploring. "If I only... Marc, we took photographs of all ships inside and around the stations. Please give me an overview of the different types."
Marc opened a large display screen over the main console and showed approximately three-dozen vehicles. Elena had certainly seen more than only these few ships in the last days, but most vehicles followed the aesthetic peculiarities of their designers and did not differ markedly from each other. There were even a few battered old freighters, at first glance almost identical to her ship.
Despite their diverse designs, the ships of different species shared many characteristics, suggesting an extensive technology exchange between them, at least in the non-military sphere. Only the wildly extravagant Boron designs exhibited any real individuality.
There were a few custom designs though, one in particular, a thin silver yacht with a streamlined finish, rated at least one "Wow" when she first saw it. Another looked like a large, green-silver egg with too powerful engines and a transparent cockpit canopy. Did she attract the attention of the commander of one of these ships whilst docked at a trading station or equipment docks - so much that they were bent on finding out more about her?
Elena looked at the smorgasbord of the space ships and ground her teeth for a short moment. Damn! Failings in others she could tolerate - however her own shortcomings annoyed her immensely!
'Think woman, think.'
Perhaps she should send Ferd a message drone, tell him her whole story and get his help? But as much as she liked him she could not ignore the possibility that her "shadow" was the friendly information broker. Of everyone she had met so far, Ferd had the most reason to suspect she held profitable secrets. Even were he not her "shadow" the possibility still existed that someone would intercept her message drone.
"Marc, can message drones be intercepted?"
"Affirmative, however only within the first seven seconds after launch or with a complex special device. Military message drones cannot be intercepted at all."
There she had it! What would happen if she equipped one of the mini spaceships she'd purchased with a camera and let it orbit the Shadow a few times and then return?
"Marc, is there a camera onboard, which is not mission critical and can be installed in a message drone?"
"Affirmative. Camera i-7.2 is non-mission critical. Judging from its dimensions, it is possible to install this camera into a message drone."
"What functionality does it have?"
"Full spectrum visual recording."
Within an hour Elena had removed the monitoring camera. Installing it was another matter because although the mini spaceship bore a close resemblance to terrestrial technology, it was subtly different in several ways. It took seven hours of hard concentration and only Marc's announcement that they were about to make the transition to Company Pride/Alpha Centauri drew her attention away long enough to notice the flickering blue of the jump through a view-port.
Forty minutes after the space jump she was ready. There was no time for a detailed function test; her "shadow" would soon come through the jump gate and she needed to get the timing precisely right. If she did, the drone should be able to come at the target from behind the gate at a speed that should preclude detection.
The drone was surprisingly easy to program, it might have been a simple spaceship but its navigational abilities were exceptional. "If only the designers had thought to install a camera in the first place," she muttered.
On her instruction Marc slid the message drone onto the improvised launcher and deployed it. The small but powerful M/AM engines ignited, propelling the tiny projectile to a speed beyond the ability of her Gravidar to detect its mass. It simply disappeared from the display and now she could only hope that it would make a safe return. That would take about two hours.
The drone returned in two hours on the very dot, docking with an audible clang in the docking lock as it surrendered to the ship's artificial gravity field. By that time she was already on final approach to Trading Station Profit Central and she waited until they had docked before reviewing the drone's data, leaving Marc to handle registration and pay what she had learned was the customary bribe to avoid having to report in person to the Station Supervisor.
Elena hooked the drone's memory store to the Getsu Fune data interface and rewound the video record at high speed. Lots of empty space, stars and multi-hued nebulae and if Marc had not frozen the frame she would have missed the target. She examined the image with new respect for the camera designers. To pick up an image at that speed it must have shutter speeds measured in nano-seconds and be capable of picking out single photons.
It was the green-silver egg with the distinct engines Marc had recorded.
"Marc, we have this ship in our data base - where did we first meet it?"
The computer specified on-board time, star system and the name of the station, in whose docking bay he had photographed the "shadow" for the first time. It was the second station they had docked at and it was the same ship, no doubt about that - identical finishing and hieroglyphics - Teladi hieroglyphics.
"Do we have further information on this... this egg?"
"To which egg do you refer? Requesting explanation."
"I mean the ship, the ship we're referring to just about all the time!"
"Negative."
Elena magnified the image in stages, the high-resolution permitting layer after layer of detail to unfold until she could clearly identify a solitary Teladi squatting in the command seat under the transparent ship canopy.
Well, a merchant Saurian! Elena felt that she should have guessed one of that avaricious species would have sensed secrets in her activities and smelled potential profits. The realisation took the edge off her tension. Teladi, even in her short time here, she knew, were always keen to put a lot of vacuum between themselves and trouble. They would use weapons only as a last resort and this ship did not exactly seem to be brimming with them. She could handle this.
"Okay Marc, let's get going. Immediate launch." The computer paid the advanced launch slot penalty and minutes later the Getsu Fune slipped from the station hub. Elena watched the Gravidar intently as the majestic space wheel faded into the distance. They had docked for less than fifteen minutes and no doubt her shadow would be surprised to see them again so soon. She planned to take advantage of that surprise.
The egg-shaped craft showed up almost immediately - holding station just a few thousand kilometres away.
"Gotcha!" Elena thought and gunned the Getsu Fune engines. It took nearly half a minute before her shadow realised she was on an intercept trajectory and began ponderously pivoting on thrusters to an escape vector.
"Stupid saurian. Silly manoeuvre!" Elena said grinning to herself. The Teladi could have outrun her if he had not tried to turn his ship. If he'd gone full thrust straight away he could have burned straight past her and she'd never have caught up.
The Getsu Fune ate the distance between them and as it closed the alien ship flickered momentarily, its energy shields surging to full power. "Impressive." Elena conceded, reading their signature. Conventional lasers would barely scratch them and if she didn't act quickly the Teladi could still escape despite his bad tactical decision.
She fired a warning shot across his bow as the Fune swept over the egg, calculating the Teladi would not gamble a long profit grubbing life on his shields. The yellow flare of the shot still glowed on her retina as Marc put the incoming video transmission on screen. The rapidity of the contact surprised her; the reptile must have had his claws on the comm. system before she'd even fired.
The video displayed what appeared to be very young Teladi with yellowish pupils and pale forehead scale. He was gesticulating wildly.
"Hello, hello dear colleague! Please, do not shoot at my beautiful ship or I will be compelled to take counter measures!"
Elena stifled a smile. The poor saurian was clearly scared out of whatever wits it once possessed. His whole demeanour suggested he'd never been in a fight before and so the threatened counter measures were most likely a bluff.
Elena, cut the engines and fired the reverse thrusters, bringing the ship to a halt and put on her most friendly face.
"Hello, my friend. If you could be so kind as to close down your engines before we lose contact, just so we'll have time to talk."
"I'm sorry, but I am on a important mission on behalf of the Ceo that brooks no delay!"
"That mission is certainly not to run away but to keep an eye on me, isn't it colleague? You've been following me for a long time!"
The young Teladi stared wordlessly for a few seconds.
"Tshhhhhh! Got me!" he conceded haplessly. "Complying with your request." He fiddled with off-screen controls and his ship decelerated to a stop.
"Marvellous. Thank you very much! See, perhaps we can reach an agreement, which can both draw profit from?"
"Dear Mister Colleague, you may think that..." began the Teladi.
"Madame Colleague", Elena interrupted. "My name is Elena. I am a Goner."
"Oh... Excuse me!" The Teladi snatched at one of his ears and bashfully twirled it between his claws. "My name is Nopileos. Brother Elena, it may appear unusual to you, but profit is not what I seek."
Elena stared doubtfully at Nopileos, forgetting to point out that he should address a "Madame" as "Sister" not "Brother." She'd never heard a Teladi using such an intimate form of address, or state a lack of interest in profit. There was something strange about this one.
"Nopileos, perhaps we can meet in person and talk in detail?"
The Teladi waggled his ears - the Teladian sign for "Yes", as Elena had recently learned. "Oh, that would certainly not be wrong! But am I safe in your presence, colleague?"
Elena could not hold a smile back any longer. It was just the question she'd expect any Teladi to ask.
"Really! Do I look very dangerous?"
"Less dangerous than a Split, but by far not as harmless as a Boron." The scale crest on his head rippled. "Nevertheless you fired at my ship!"
"Not at, but in front of. That's a very important distinction to keep in mind. And I could hardly have penetrated your splendid shields!"
"Oh, that is probably true... Brother Yayandas adored them as well. But one can never know!"
Elena laughed with pleasure; the young Teladi was so refreshingly different!
"If it is all right with you, I will come to you over there. Unarmed, in peace and in the name of all mankind." An historical allusion the extra-terrestrial would probably not understand.
"Brother Elena, it will be enough, if you came in your own name. Without the peace however I would not like to meet. I look forward to meeting you in person!"
Elena grinned and agreed.
It took a few minutes to match speed and velocity. The Getsu Fune was not equipped with a docking device but Nopileos' luxury yacht naturally had the best available and once the respective computers exchanged protocols the two ships joined together.
Elena rose from the pilot seat and stretched. She'd spent half a day sitting and her complaining body craved exercise. Unfortunately the obsolete spaceship had very few of the mods and none of the cons modern Earth ships sported, including a gymnasium.
"Marc, let me know immediately, if any object approaches within ten minutes of the Getsu."
"Affirmative."
She jogged to the airlock and double-checked the atmosphere and pressure beyond the heavy door. Satisfied, she opened the inner hatch, stepped into the chamber, sealed it and cracked the outer lock.
The young Teladi stood ready to greet her in the subdued red light of the spherical interlink chamber.
"Hello, I am Isemados Sibasomos Nopileos. I am pleased to be allowed to make your acquaintance, brother!"
Teladi were generally not very tall, but this one was several centimetres shorter than the others of his species that Elena had come in contact with, but judging by his yellow pupils he was young enough for another growth spurt.
"The pleasure is all mine, Nopileos. My name is Elena Kho, Goner on the way to Cloudbase."
She had an impulse to shake hands but remembered that the saurians did not have a special greeting ritual. Nopileos however stretched the right claw in expectation of the human gesture, but took it immediately back again, when he noticed that Elena did not return it. He sketched a bow instead. Elena had the feeling the young Teladi was a little disconcerted, almost intimidated; but her experiences with the merchant Saurians were too sparse to be sure about that judgement.
"Welcome on board the Nyana's Fortune, Brother Elena Kho, Goner from the depths of the universe. You truly make no threatening impression on me! Please do step inside."
"Thank you."
Elena stepped forward. She had to duck a little in order not to bang her head against the low ceiling - an unmistakable indication that this ship had been built exclusively by and for the smaller saurian creatures.
The lock chamber of the alien ship was a sphere with a flattened floor and the deep red light seemed to pulse to the rhythm of a bass background hum. Behind Elena the outer hatch hissed shut and she expected one behind the Teladi to open but she could see no outline of an airlock in the smooth curved walls of the docking sphere. The fact barely registered when the door behind her slid open again.
"What...?" She turned abruptly, expecting to see the airlock of her own ship. Instead she looked into a spacious semi-circular chamber of the Nyana's Fortune.
"Impressive." she said. "I didn't feel any movement."
"Yes, isn't it? Spherical board transporters are a Teladian development. We expect to draw large profit thereby!"
Elena did not mention his stated disinterest in profit; instead she followed Nopileos, finding the chamber was in fact completely spherical, with a transparent dome for a ceiling that came down to her shoulder level.
The panoramic view of the stars was breathtaking.
In the centre of the room was an elevator tube and from her recall of the message drone video this space functioned as the control centre.
"This is my humble empire," proclaimed Nopileos, not without noticeable pride. "If you wish, I will gladly show you the ship. But I would like to visit yours later also!"
Elena nodded. "Of course, that's fine. And I am very curious to see more of your ship. It seems to be very luxurious!"
"Indeed, it is! Come along, brother!"
In the following half hour Nopileos led the pilot from Earth through all the areas and decks of the yacht. Elena was impressed. The Teladian technical designers had truly worked wonders. Each deck possessed different gravity fields, at one place the gravity pointed to the bow, somewhere else to the stern or to outboard. It was an incredibly efficient use of space and because of the ingenious construction of the elevator system you did not even notice that gravity shifts as you moved from deck to deck. You simply stepped into the dark red ball and moments later out into another room without any shaking, jolting or disorientation.
"The Getsu Fune seems to me, if you will pardon the expression, comparatively austere, sister Elena. But the control centre has a sleekness that the Nyana's Fortune is missing. And it is roomy!"
Nopileos rocked back and forth in the co-pilot seat. It wasn't easy for him to fit in a seat designed for humans but once he managed it he found it not so uncomfortable. Well, not as much as it looked.
"Thanks, Nopileos. But I wish I had a beautiful ship like yours at my disposal."
The adolescent Teladi had been practically incandescent with curiosity over her ship and so she gave him the tour right after he'd finished showing off his fine vessel. She'd expected him to be disappointed in the old bucket but quite the opposite. He did not comment on the somewhat basic equipment of the ship but he had questions by the dozen. Every piece of equipment had to be explained, touched, shaken or sniffed.
Somewhere within the whirlwind of curiosity she managed to get across she was a 'sister' not a 'brother' and the Teladi switched his form of address without nictitating an eyelid.
Elena however, found it difficult to formally address Teladi or Boron, but not out of disrespect, they were just so inherently comical and cute! Unlike the Split and the Paranid, which she found so intimidating and aloof that formality was no trouble whatsoever. 'Noble beings. Sir.'
"I am curious, Nopileos," said Elena, "you said profit is not what you look for. What is it then?"
"Actually my mission is to fly to Kingdom End - I mean, I have been invited!" Nopileos answered evasively. She shot him a quizzical look. "So it was not your mission to keep me under observation?"
"No, no... I only saw the Getsu Fune and you in the trading station, and an idea rushed into my mind..."
"Namely?"
Elena put her feet up on the instrument panel and leaned back comfortably in her seat, a position that enabled her to look the Teladi in the face. Nopileos crumpled under her gaze.
"I do not know whether I should tell you," he said meekly.
"You don't want me to pull it from you like teeth from a mule now, do you?"
"Please don't! I don't even have teeth!" replied the Teladi, who apparently didn't know the phrase. "Look, Elena," he took a deep breath, raised his eyes and stared blankly through the cockpit window, "there is a secret I may not tell you anything about, unless my assumption is correct, because then it would be no secret at all for you."
Elena nodded slowly. It sounded obtuse but she knew exactly what he meant. Strictly speaking, they were in the same boat, she unable to tell Nopileos that she came from Earth, looking for Brennan, unless he already knew it. The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that the Teladi already knew.
"Elena, please do not be angry with me, but I have investigated a little using the authority of my grandfather, the Ceo," he said and added "Shame on me!" as he noticed Elena's glance. She shook her head. "Nonsense, I would have done exactly the same in your position. Go ahead!"
Nopileos sighed. Apparently he had taken heart and decided to tell her everything. "I know that the on board computer of the Getsu Fune requested the latest information about unknown spaceships on various occasions."
"Go on."
"Sister Elena, tell me please one thing first: are you really a Goner and come from the Community of Planets?" Nopileos squatted almost motionless in the co-pilot seat and looked at the woman from the Earth with his large, yellow eyes.
Elena was silent for some seconds and gazed at the instrument panel on which her crossed legs comfortably rested. Finally she abruptly sat up, pulled up the pilot seat on its rail close to the command desk and activated a switch on the console. "Marc, show me the Earth on the display, please." The front panel of the spaceship immediately became opaque, flickered a little and within a few seconds they were no longer in the empty space between the Teladi sectors, but floating only a few hundred kilometres above the surface of the blue planet.
"This is my home world - a planet named Earth."
Nopileos squatted with bended legs and open mouth on the much to large co-pilot seat. A silence grew and spread until finally he breathed a long drawn-out breath.
"Tsssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Sometimes I am amazed!"
Elena burst out laughing. "If you are looking for someone to give you a little wake-up slap in the face I'm you're gal!"
"Thanks, but I can do that for myself," answered Nopileos his scale crest flexing. "Some tazuras ago an unknown spaceship appeared and I asked myself whether someone would look for it. When I saw the Getsu Fune for the first time, I recalled it and began to collect information."
"You assumed correctly, clever saurian! But who else knows?"
"Only me - perhaps also Inanias, my onboard computer."
"No authorities - government, military?"
"I did not inform anybody so far, but I am not completely sure whether Inanias does not report independently to the Ceo. But don't worry - the Ceo is our friend!"
Elena doubted that, but in principle it did not matter - as soon as she found Brennan and had returned with him to Earth, they'd arrange a diplomatic mission to officially establish contact with the governments of the Community. Now, at this moment, she had a more important question. "Where is Kyle now?"
"Kyle?"
"Kyle William Brennan, the pilot of the X, the unknown ship! He is my colleague, my best friend. Something like my egg brother."
Nopileos' scale crest blanched.
"Oh, my poor sister Elena..."
Elena felt an ice chill spread though her limbs.
"What - what has happened?"
Nopileos twirled his right ear between two claws, but took heart again and looked sadly at Elena.
"The unknown ship was destroyed twenty Stazuras ago. Nobody survived."
"God. Kyle," whispered Elena. It was always on the cards that anything could happen to Brennan, but discussing it in mission briefings and staring the cold hard fact in the face were two different things.
"Are you sure, Nopileos?"
"Yes, Elena." answered Nopileos quietly.
"How did it happen?"
"A Paranid escort was accompanying the ship from Priest's Pity to Argon Prime. But the pilot - your egg brother - departed without advance notice from his escort protection. He crossed the next jump gate completely alone and was rammed by a Xenon."
Elena stared speechlessly at the image of Earth rotating in the cockpit window display and then finally summoned the will to turn it off. The cold, empty blackness of space mirrored the spreading numbness consuming her soul.
Kyle had been her friend, the only true one she had ever had, and he had been her role model. A tiny, narrow smile appeared for split second on her lips - and also her greatest cautionary tale. In the nine years they had known each other they had not argued more than once or twice, despite the long weeks and months they had spent together in cramped conditions.
How many times had they come close to crossing the thin line between friendship and love? And how much it had surprised and frightened them both, when they had - just one, glorious, never repeated time.
Later, Kyle got to know Annabel and barely one year later Elena had asked for a transfer from the active patrol service to the X-project, in order to not unintentionally get in their way. But it had been no use; the feelings were still there. Elena thought back to all the countless tricks Kyle had played on her, his inexhaustible supply of cranky jokes, but also to his profound, serious side and all the bloodcurdling experiences they had shared.
"Thank you," she said, surprised that Nopileos had scrambled out of the co-pilot seat and was looking at her with what she knew instinctively was genuine concern. It brought a lump to her throat. She shook her head. All good memories and no bad, she was glad to have known him.
Nopileos came closer to her and put his claw on her hand. His scales were rough but warm, but the gesture seemed much too human for a Teladi.
"Sometimes water comes from the eyes of humans when they are sad, doesn't it?"
Elena nodded, barely trusting herself to speak. "Yes, Nopileos, but not from mine. I am... I am a warrior."
"Tsh. I understand. Will you avenge your egg brother?"
"No, - but I will make sure that his death was not in vain."
The young Teladi looked to Elena with his yellow eyes. "You humans have something from all," he said after a while. "The fanaticism of the Paranid and the unrestrained rage of the Split. Your financial expertise approximates to those of my people and sometimes... yes, sometimes I believe that in your heads circulate Boron endorphins."
Elena felt a chuckle swelling in her aching throat but it came out as a sigh. Even though her original task was finished now, there were still things to take care of before she could return to the Earth.
"Nopileos, somewhere in this sector there is an old, inactive jump gate, which led once to the Earth. I must destroy it, before the Xenon find it and find a way to use it against my home planet. Do you want to help me with this?"
Nopileos, surprised, stepped back. "Rotten egg!"
"Does that mean yes?"
"Yes, sister, it does!" Nopileos declaimed. He would explore ancient secrets together with a warrior from a far galaxy! And destroy, whispered a voice in the back of his head. To destroy something could never result in profit - or maybe sometimes it does?
Well, who cares! He had looked for adventure, and adventure he had found.
I have 3 exams this year tho