SWNOVELS Chapter Fourth Chant
Home is where you live, not the other way around
“Officer Khail, sir! We’re here.”
“Stop the engines and call the Generals immediately. Tohr, track the Sniffer.”
“Yes, sir…”
Frontier of the not yet seized Solar System. Dark space, the center of Milky Way Sector East 23. Huge gas planets, emptied wasteland planets. The closer to the Sun, the smaller and more stable planets appear. Only one habitable planet out of ten other planets rounding the star.
“Sir, we have recent info from Chief Dhamm. He’s on his way. He’ll be here with hyper transmission engines in about 2 minutes.” Tohr sat on Commander’s chair and gave Khail a single sheet of paper. “Looks like your governing, sir.”
He smiled like never before.
“Don’t make me change the next two minutes into personal horror, Qe. You know why I got the leadership not you.”
“Temporary leadership…”
“Whatever. You’ve seen records of Andromeda Rebellion. I don’t want my old self to return.” Khail grabbed Qe’s uniform and tossed him out of the bridge with one pull. “And neither do you.”
“Yar e yar (my oh my – in Tohr’s home planet language) chill it, officer… The Generals are waiting. I’m off for now, your turn to entertain them.” He closed the doors still smiling.
A huge screen appeared before Khail. He stood firm and recited:
“This is Officer Khail Abben, temporarily in charge of TherraN-1 mission. Status report: We’ve reached Frontier of SS-East23, and await for Chief Dhamm’s team to return. All machines are working flawlessly since the communication loss in worm-tunnel.”
“And what about Chief Akh Dhamm’s team's side mission?” a shadowed woman asked Khail, who was looking at the other Generals.
“His ship is on the way back, the team is predicted to return in less than two minutes.”
“Perfect. Continue as planned when Chief Dhamm returns and let us know when you land on Therra,” said the tall, chubby figure of a general on the left.
“Roger.”
The fat general and the lady general are the ones that usually speak; the other three only watch, and one of them is not even on the screen… But that’s just how they are. Only families and HG are allowed to talk to them right now, but it looks like the unspoken rule might change soon.
“Sir!” One of soldiers ran through the doors. “The Sniffer is back.”
“Idiot, throw them the detent, moron. Their ship is too small to grab on by itself.”
“Y-ye’sir!”
Soon after that, Khail got a new command to prepare the guest room, something to eat, and come with best translator we have. That’s a stupid command, since Khail was the best translator we have. After a few minutes, the room was clear and set with food on the table and only Khail inside. Doors opened and Meg entered the room with a worried expression on her face.
“Alone?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah, what’s going on? What happened? What were those ships?”
“Not now,” she whispered, and left the room.
A moment later, I entered the room with Meh and the mysterious kid sleeping in his metal ‘coffin’. Khail, surprised at first, stood up as if burned. It took him seconds to figure out what’s in the metal. I gave Meh a signal to release the kid from the box, and Meg to close the door. Mah was waiting on the other side. The kid sat on the bed, and with half-opened eyes started to mumble again.
“K-klaija… Klaija kau ikilo ai.” The boy repeated same phrase all the time.
“Khail, do you recognize this language?”
“Affirmative, sir. This is definitely the mother language of Technomians, scientific race of humanoids. Very intelligent and exploratory. We lost contact with them even before the Andromeda Rebellion started. Their system is in the other Galaxy. They’re the only ones able to travel through Galaxy Passage safely…”
“Technomians, huh? How on hell did the Technomian kid end up on an abandoned ship in a vast space then?”
“I’ll try to ask him… Klakuj lakil, killij uliu koi ul?”
“Loiu kijal kilal akkilo iuki uoulo aikul oiul.”
“What did he say?”
“He said ‘All my family died on the ship waiting for the return’ or something… This dialect is very difficult.”
“Then maybe we’ll leave him with you. Tell him we’re friends now, give him something to drink and eat, and ask about what happened there.”
“Okay.”
As we were about to leave the room, the kid jumped off the bed, hugged Meg, crying and repeating klaija.
“Sir Khail?” asked Meg “What does this klaija mean?”
“If I’m not mistaken, he called you 'sister'…"
“Meg, you and Khail get as much information from the kid as you can. We move to Therra immediately. I’ll let the Generals know what’s going on after I get my questions answered.” I gave Khail scans of writings on the bridge of abandoned ship. “You can translate it for me meanwhile, right?”
I left the three of them in the empty room. I sent the Omd brothers to rest and made a request they not tell anyone what they saw here. In a few minutes, the ship slowly moved and passed SS-E23 frontier heading towards the future of our race. Towards Therra.
(end of part 1)
part 2:
“Welcome on Therra” said Khail and Tohr simultaneously.
Green lands and pure blue oceans. Planet Therra. Our new home.
“Boys,” I smiled to them, but Meg looked at me with rage in her eyes, “and girls, we’re home. Khail, scan for any sign of civilization. Qe, contact me with the Generals and Rokki. I have plenty to tell them…”
“I hope you bring me good news, Kelliuk.” A bored shadowed character sitting on a throne looked up at the small ex-king of Technomians.
“Y-yes, sir. We rebuilt the connector and we’re ready to test the portal. Would you like to see it, sir?”
“Indeed.” The Commander of Tai-mu stood up and entered the well lit corridor. “Show me results of your work.”
“There is just one small problem with the connection of our Galaxy and Milky Way, sir.”
“I’m listening.”
“There’s the problem with time flow differences.”
“What do you mean?” The interested Commander slowed.
“Well… To put it simply… One year here is equal to 25 years out there. And it was two years ago since we last time traveled there.”
“So how many years have passed there?”
“Almost 50 years, sir. Probably only the oldest of MWS would remember us.”
“How much could they increase their power?”
“If our calculations are correct, sir, they should still control only seven elements… But none of them is unstoppable. And, if the 2000-years genius hasn’t been born yet, your army and our technology are more than enough to finish them quickly.”
“So you do have a good news after all.”
Commander and Kelliuk entered a huge hangar with rectangular shaped construction at the exit. Beam of green light shot out in the sky creating a pentagramic violet hole sucking air inside it. Few ships entered the hole, and soon after, the hole disappeared. Then, something went wrong; the hole opened again and almost all ships returned, except one.
The device started to make annoying buzzing noise. Commander and Kelliuk went to talk to the crew of the ships.
“Captain, report what happened.” Commander ran towards the ships.
“Sorry, Commander, but the Captain you wanted to talk to is dead.” A young pilot took of his helmet.
“Tell me everything.”
“Looks like they had some rebellion going on and we were sent right in the middle of it. And one ship didn’t reenter the Passage. I think it was your sister’s ship, sir. They stayed till the end to cover us and didn’t make it in time. I’m sorry, sir.”
“M-my sister’s ship? KELLIUK!” Furious red eyes shined bright from below the mask when Commander hit Kelliuk in the face sending him fly 20 feet back
“You insolent bastard! Who’s order was it to send my sister on the test drive through the Passage?! Speak at once or I swear you’ll beg for death after I’m done with you!”
“C-cool down, sir.” The young pilot caught Commander’s hand above his head. “I know who’s order. Your father’s, sir. It was General Callyps, himself, who sent her with us.”
“Kelliuk. When the portal can be reopened?”
“Sorry, sir, but if I can see correctly, whole device went down, and fixing it acquires a lot of time…”
“HOW LONG?!”
“A year, or two… Maybe…”
“Is there anything we could do to hurry this up?”
“Sorry, sir, but no. The recalibration of device itself took us 3 months of calculating… Nothing can be done now.”
“I want results, ASAP. I’m leaving Tech-nom System for now. Let me know when you fix this bloody machine.”
“Yes sir”
The young Commander left the hangar and entered his throne room. He took off his official cloths and put on his old training set. He left the mask on the throne and covered his face with a hood and a scarf. Later on, his ship has been seen leaving the atmosphere of Tech-nom IV.
“Father… Why?” Commander switched to autopilot mode. “Why her, not me?... Why Raida?”