Ava, page 11
part #1 of Secrets of the Ship Series
“What do you see?” Feelo asked, his hand poised over his weapon.
A heavy-set woman stepped out from the crowd one hand inside her long robe. She eyed his satchel and slowly approached. “What’cha find in there, boy?” she asked, “’ole Cass was hiding a’lotta good stuff down in that basement of ‘ers.”
Meco’s growls grew louder, the mechanical actuation of its limbs as they powered was a comforting sound; it was ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. “Nothing for you,” Feelo replied. “There are no pictures. I’m not sure you’d understand it.”
She laughed. “Good’un. But you’re really going to mock me of all people?”
Feelo looked at his crew and shrugged “I don’t know you and in case you haven’t noticed its five versus one, I don’t see this ending well for you, miss.”
She chuckled to herself and with a whistle that reverberated loudly off the tall buildings, seven bandits stepped out from the shadows drawing their energy weapons. The signature red glow of their charged capacitors refracted off the oily puddles underfoot. Meco’s growls grew louder as it moved in front of the team.
“So, you’ve got some friends then,” said Ava over Feelo’s shoulder, “they look a bit scraggly to me.”
“These are Peawarni,” onlookers scattered, “the most highly skilled mercenaries that money can…” she was cut off as Caesar flicked the pistol from his holster and unloaded six quick rounds towards the trained thugs. Bolts of burning energy tore towards them, striking one in the chest, sending him crashing to the ground with a guttural roar. Stone exploded into the air, ripped from buildings as his misplaced shots made the mercs dive for cover.
“Come on!” shouted Caesar. “Let’s go!”
Feelo grabbed Ellie’s arm and pulled her forwards. They weaved through the mercenaries who still struggled to their feet. The main road had cleared of people; they now stood off to the side, pressed up against the buildings watching as the team rushed past.
The air crackled around the team as bolts of energy lashed past. Feelo placed an arm behind his neck in some misguided idea it would stop a bullet of pure energy, but it made him feel better, and that was all that mattered sometimes.
As they rounded the corner, Ava slid to a stop and drew her weapon. “What are you doing! ” yelled Feelo. “Come on, we’ve gotta go!”
“Just a sec.” Her breathing slowed and her body relaxed. She aimed down the weapon’s sight and poked her tongue out from the side of her mouth before firing. Feelo couldn’t hold back his chuckle, but the visceral crack that came from her stylised revolver put him in his place as it sounded like an artillery shell leaving its bore. The round blew a large smoking hole into the ground throwing their pursuers into the air.
They took the opportunity to run. Feelo sprinted beside Ava who seemed to enjoy herself more than she should. “You look like you’re having fun,” he said between laboured breaths. “What was that tongue stuff all about?”
She gave him a glare that let him know he should shut up and continue moving before she tripped him and left him for the wolves.
Screaming erupted from the civilian crowd that ambled between shops. They scattered like a herd of gazelle, taking shelter inside bars and behind benches, getting out the way of the ear-splitting rounds that zipped down the open road.
Feelo ducked his head as every round flew by. He wanted to return fire but knew it was too risky with so many people around. Slowly, he grew out of breath and his movements grew laboured. He wasn’t as fit as Ava or as lightweight as Ellie, but Caesar’s struggles, the struggles of one’s joints approaching forty, made him feel a little better about himself.
Skidding around the corner offered a moment of respite from the gunfire. Feelo didn’t let up, even if his muscles felt like they had been injected with milk and his legs were weighed down with slabs of iron. The flashing neon sign in the distance offered a beckoning call for the entire team, a flame of hope to latch on to.
But, from nowhere, Caesar let out a bloodcurdling roar and tripped forwards, crashing to the ground.
“Caesar!” yelled Feelo, coming to a stop. Caesar winced in pain, holding the open wound on the back of his calf. “Come on, we can’t stay here.” Feelo put an arm under his shoulder and pulled him to his feet, escorting the injured man towards safety.
“Can you hear ‘em?” said Caesar through gritted teeth. Just for a second Feelo caught the cheers of their pursuers, happy to have maimed one of the crew. “Just let me at ‘em, all I need is a few minutes and they’ll all be gone.”
“I’m sure they would big man.”
The pair hobbled together; the flashing beacon of their safety drawing ever closer. Energy explosions had become a distant nuisance with Feelo’s attention focussed on getting Caesar to a taxi. He powered on through the pain and shortness of breath. Ava noticed this and circled back, taking the other half of Caesar’s weight on her shoulders.
“You should lose a few pounds,” she said taking some of Caesar’s weight.
“Pounds!?” yelled Feelo, ducking as another bolt cut through the air, “more like a couple of kilograms.”
“You two should respect your elders,” winced Caesar.
“Even when they don’t respect themselves?” laughed Feelo to which he received a jab of an elbow into his ribcage.
They rushed into the taxi depot. People looked on with equal amounts of concern and nonchalance at the bleeding and blood-soaked crew. The thugs followed close behind, screaming and wailing towards them like a pack of wild, rabid animals that had their prey cornered.
Feelo dug deep, pulling from every reserve stock of energy he had and dragged Caesar to the nearest Taxi before swinging its door open and dropping the man into its seat. “Get in! We don’t have time!” he yelled.
The rest of the crew squeezed in, making sure not to touch Caesar. “Go!” Ava shouted to the driver, “go now! Go anywhere!”
The pulse drives under the vehicle thwumped online as they manipulated their local gravity and brought the car to a hover. An energy bolt lit up the windows as it ricocheted off the heavy plating throwing the taxi to one side. Panicked, the driver pulled into a near vertical climb until he reached the light traffic lanes above the city.
Feelo let out a long breath and relaxed back into the seat. “Phew. Well, that was fun.”
“Fun!?” the driver bellowed, “I just got shot at! I’ve got kids not much younger than you!”
Feelo felt uncomfortable. “I’m… Sorry. We’ll pay for the repairs to your car, I promise, and I’ll throw in a little extra for your… inconvenience.”
The driver shifted about in his seat. “Good, that’s the least I deserve. I didn’t ask to get stuck in the middle of this crap.”
Feelo smiled apologetically and opened the satchel of documents they had risked their lives for. Thousands of pages tucked into folders were ready to be explored. Ava leant over to pull out a random sheet, but he pulled the bag away, “not yet, they might be in a certain order, we just don’t know.”
“Oh, come on,” she rolled her eyes, “I just wanted a quick look, that’s all.”
“Soon.”
They skated through the maze of skyscrapers before arriving at their shuttle port. The Taxi came to a soft landing just outside and Feelo tipped the man heavily, receiving not much more than a shrug of acceptance before the man took another fare and drove away.
The Ixion sat waiting; its name illuminated by the bright spotlights of the landing pad. Ellie jogged ahead of the limping group and activated its rear entrance.
“Get him to the med bay,” Ellie said with a calm authority she only showed when working, “we need to get that wound cleaned up and looked at, it could get infected.”
Caesar sat on the edge of the medical bed as Elie rolled over a chair and cut the boot from his charred flesh. Feelo had to look away at that point, the weeping, burnt skin made him dry heave every time he looked at it. Instead, he made his excuses and left to find Ava.
She sat at a table staring at the files. Ideas rushed through her mind of aliens, time-warping ships, and beings made entirely from crystal. But the slamming of a cupboard door snapped her back to reality. “You made me jump you idiot,” she growled.
“Sorry,” Feelo held back his chuckle before handing her a fresh drink. She hadn’t been much of warm drink enthusiast but being around others who were she had quickly adapted. “So…”
Ava looked at him from over her cup, sipping at the lemon-infused liquid with a raised eyebrow. “So…” she said after putting the glass down, “that was wild, right?”
“Right!?” said Feelo excitedly. “Bar Bahama. The Vanth. Those… People? I’m gonna sleep well tonight, I’ll tell you that much.”
“I bet.” She locked eyes with him and didn’t say another word. Feelo looked back but soon felt weirded out by her gaze so diverted his eyes anywhere but towards her. “You know, you’re kinda cu…”
She was cut off by a grumbling Caesar who crashed down the hallway, limping as he did, before slumping back into a chair beside Feelo. He reached over and took the Captain’s drink before taking a flask from his pocket and pouring some cheap whiskey into the coffee. “Yeah, it’s okay, Caesar, I made it especially for you, I wasn’t going to drink it or anything…” he said. “But, Ava, what were you saying? I’m kinda what now?”
Ava shook her head, waving away his question. “It’s nothing, don’t worry about it.”
Feelo was ever curious and her incomplete sentence would grind away at him for hours until the next curiosity came calling – And luckily enough for him, they held the biggest documented curiosity the galaxy had ever seen right there on the table.
Ellie joined them and fussed over Caesar as the four of them stared at the satchel, each afraid to uncover the secret it held within. But, as it always had and always would, curiosity got the better of Feelo. He pulled the bag over and unpacked everything in an unorganised, chaotic mess before Ellie arranged it into neat piles.
“Nine folders. Fourteen audio recordings. Four video recordings. How many hundreds or thousands of sheets of information within those folders, too,” Feelo puffed out his cheeks. “This is all a bit much.”
“But this is what we came for,” said Ava, “to find out what that orb was, what that ship was back on Aeos, remember? That… Plagueship.”
“Cassidy also said she sent you specifically to that freighter on Aeos, too, Fee,” said Ellie. “Why?”
“All great questions,” he replied. “She also mentioned that she was being held by the ‘Vanth’ and we need to head to Deonara to find ‘the light that binds.’” He shook his head, unsure if he even believed what he said, unsure if he believed he was even awake. “This is all before we’ve read any of this junk…”
“Well stop dillydallying and let’s have a look,” said Caesar grabbing one of the files.
The documents within were a mess. Handwritten notes and diagrams looked like the ramblings of someone on the verge of a mental break. But, Feelo noticed a keyword crop up time and time again – Vanth. He pulled a couple of pages out and read through them, at least what he could make out from the scrawls. His brow furrowed as the stories became increasingly farfetched. His gaze turned to the expectant eyes each baring down on him.
“So, look here,” Feelo showed a page to the group. “It says that the Vanth are ‘drawn to the technology of an old race that once inhabited the Milky Way.’ What do you think that means? Were there people before us?”
“Maybe,” replied Ava, “it links with this – Look.” She showed them a page, much like any other, but this one had an image of slender, bipedal species scribbled onto it. Underneath it, there was a single word – Tarchon. “Is Cassidy saying that this thing is a Tarchon? What does Tarchon even mean?”
Feelo shrugged. “I’ve not come across it yet, how about you two?”
Ellie frantically sorted through her file and held out what she found. “I saw this earlier, I dismissed it as nothing, but it might be important.”
The page showed a portal with three planets, Deonara scribbled under one planet with ‘Tarchon’ etched above them all. Feelo took the page and examined it before passing it on. “Deonara is where Cassidy told us to go,” he said, “do you think it has something to do with these Tarchon?”
“It’s possible,” said Caesar. “But here, look what I found.” Caesar showed them chat logs that Cassidy had with her informants. They had been transcribed and time stamped automatically. Most of it was nonsense, rumour about backhanded deals between companies and warring gangs which on its day would help authorities, but some lines were highlighted further down, one’s Cassidy wanted to recheck. “It’s someone talking about that crashed freighter on Aeos. She had little interest at first but once the informant said he had never encountered such a ship and the hull was impenetrable. Well, her interest piqued after that.”
“And there it is again – Tarchon,” said Feelo. Someone had scribbled the word in highlighter with a giant question mark beside it pointing towards the chat. “Was that an alien ship I climbed aboard back there?” he dug deep into his memories, thinking back to the strange lettering and design, “it would explain a lot, actually.”
The room fell silent, allowing the dump of information to settle into their minds. Two alien races, the Vanth and Tarchon, had been exposed, that was if these weren’t the scribblings of a mentally corrupt prankster.
“So, back on Aeos, who attacked us?” asked Ava, “we ‘know’ about those two but who was it? Was it a third party?”
“I mean… Cass alluded to the Vanth taking her, so I guess they’re the bad guys here?” said Feelo, “but the truth is we don’t know, it could have been anyone.”
“And this Deonara we’ve been asked to go to, why does it have a crown on that picture?”
“This might help,” said Ellie. “This page talks about Tarchon temples across the Milky Way, it doesn’t say how many there are or what they’re for, but each temple Cassidy thought she had uncovered was marked with a crown.”
“So, there are three temples, and one is on Deonara?” said Feelo.
“At least three,” added Ava.
“There’s also this,” said Ellie, pulling out another page, “I’m not entirely sure what it is, but it sure looks like blueprints to build something.”
It pictured a deconstructed object which had a spherical depression in its centre and an intricate detailing of its innards laid out purposefully. Ava snatched the image and stared at it, her eyes growing wider.
“Are you all right, Ava?” asked Feelo, “you look like you’ve just had your sixteenth coffee of the day.”
“Ye… Yeah, I’m fine. Look,” she rose to her feet, turning away, “great chat and all, but I’ve got to go down to engineering and take a closer look at this.”
She scurried away quicker than they could reply, leaving them all dazed and confused. “Well, at least she’s happy,” shrugged Feelo. “Come on, let’s see what else we can learn.”
10
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
Twenty-four hours had passed. Feelo had taken the Ixion into a low orbit around one of the local moons while Ava worked in engineering.
The documents they had recovered revealed a wealth of information, from possible temple locations to more information about the elusive Vanth and Tarchon. But much of it was gibberish without context. Cassidy had documented everything, and the irrelevant had become entangled with the important facts, leaving it a jumbled mess that only its original creator could decipher.
They hoped the device Ava worked on would provide some clue as to what they were supposed to do next. Cass had instructed Feelo to find ‘Deonara’ but left little indication of where it could be. Hoping to find it blindly wouldn’t take years; it would take millennia. The device had some meagre accompanying information – It interfaced with ships as a data core as well as having a few benefits they couldn’t yet decipher.
From what they could gather, the Vanth were a race drawn to the technology of a race long past – The Tarchon, and the freighter that Feelo had explored had most likely been from the second, unknown species. It left them with far more questions than answers, so hope rode on Ava being able to reconstruct the blueprint.
It wasn’t long into the day before she emerged from engineering and rushed into the common area. She looked gaunt. Her usual olive skin had paled, and her eyes had grown large, symptoms from her uninterrupted work for the last day. She hadn’t slept, eaten, nor had a drink. She was running on fumes as she stood in front of the expectant crew.
“I’ve got it,” she declared, “I interfaced the device with our input ports. All we need to do is plug… this,” she held up a long cable, at its end was a standard Human interface port, “into the main computer and we’ll know more.”
Feelo rose from his seat and walked over, taking the device from her. It didn’t look like much; It was a flat box with a spherical depression at its centre. “Great work. I wonder what’s on there?”
“Who knows?” said Ava, leaning back against the railings, “anything? Everything? I used the handful of crystals that were hidden in one of the folders, so whatever is stored on those should be available.”
“What’re we waiting for?” asked Caesar. “Let’s plug ‘er in.”
They rushed into the cockpit. Feelo took the Captain’s chair while Ava got to her knees and fumbled about under the large central console. With a satisfying click, she climbed out and slumped back into the empty seat beside Feelo and held the other end of the cable, ready to plug it into the device.
“On your orders, Captain,” she said.
“Captain?” he scoffed, “what’s got you being so formal?”
“All right. On your orders, idiot.”
“Better,” Feelo nodded sadly to himself, “just how I like it…”
“Calm down creep,” Ava pushed him in the arm. “Should I God damn plug it in or not?”
