Ava, page 22
part #1 of Secrets of the Ship Series
“Look,” he said, pressing again on the video to pause it, “that thing in the sky, does it look familiar to anyone else?”
Ava drew near, “nope, not seen anything like it.”
“Ellie? Caesar? One of you should recognise it.”
The pair stepped up and squinted at the image. Ellie looked away, shrugging, but Caesar glanced towards Feelo, his eyes wide. “Basilisk,” he whispered.
“Basilisk,” Feelo repeated, nodding. The object in the video was a station that sat above the planet and was visible from the surface, a miracle of Human invention. To date, it was the biggest station constructed and was meant to be the galactic hub of trade and commerce.
“So, is this where I think it is?” asked Caesar.
“Maybe,” Feelo replied, “let’s not jump to any conclusions just yet.”
He restarted the video. The distant rumbling grew louder as bolts of charged energy thundered through the clouds and poured like deadly raindrops towards the cities below. The view panned around and showed a small village before pausing on a monument that sat at the centre of the wooden buildings.
“That!” shouted Ava. “That’s a temple, right?”
“It sure looks like it,” Feelo replied.
The temple’s dome, made from a pearlescent material, refracted a burning light from the multiple energy bolts that thundered towards it. The village seemed to be constructed around the building, but large scaffolding climbed up one of its sides to its peak.
The video was short lived. Snow which coated everything was blown off into a fine dust which swept across the arctic landscape, obscuring the video. Screaming and the unmistakable rumble of the energy bolts came through clear, however, and within a few seconds a bright red flash lit up the snow cloud as the temple exploded outwards. A man turned the camera towards him, his ageing face and greying hair spoke of his experience. Tears coated his eyes and a solemn glumness constructed his features. “Not like this,” he whispered, alone, “there was so much more to…” With that, his face glowed a bright red before the feed was cut and a telling ‘no signal’ was displayed instead.
“Was that temple…” Feelo choked on his words, hiding his true emotion, “was it destroyed?”
“It sounds like it,” said Caesar being far more pragmatic about the video, “I was always told that the Basilisk station and its colonies were destroyed by ONE, but the Old Nations don’t have that kind of firepower.”
“Who else could it be then?” Ellie’s bottom lip wobbled.
“The Vanth,” Ava snarled. “It has to be.”
“It sure seems like it,” added Feelo. There was a heavy silence which burdened the team as they took in the lives and families lost in that attack. But, cynically or not, he had another worry on his mind. “So, what does this mean for us?”
“In what way?” Caesar asked.
“In this way,” Feelo held his arms out wide, signalling towards the temple. “We just watched one of these get destroyed and we’re meant to find all twelve – Right?”
“Right…?” Ava raised an eyebrow, “so it’s all over? There’s nothing more we can do?” she walked back and forth in anger, running a hand through her scalp of hair. “Why didn’t they tell us about this before… Before sending us on this stupid mission!? My life was simple on Aeos, it wasn’t glamorous, but it was easy! Now we’ve travelled across colonised space, and beyond, for what exactly? A fantasy that’s amounted to nothing!?”
“So, what do you suggest?” asked Feelo, “we can’t just down tools and head our separate ways, we’re in too deep.”
“Of course, we can! We don’t owe the Tarchon a damn thing. This is a war we have no part of, a war that is so far outside our scope of expertise that it isn’t even funny, the Vanth could come along and obliterate us in a matter of weeks and yet we keep prodding the hornet’s nest and hoping we don’t get stung too bad. Well, guess what? They’re coming and this will be the end of us all.”
Feelo held her angry glare. “A bit dramatic, but it was a solid performance.” Ava shook her head and went to walk away, but Feelo’s words stopped her. “Think about it, those were Human houses around that temple, they were studying it for a reason. You know what that means?”
“- That we’re not the only ones to know about these…” said Ellie.
“Exactly,” Feelo pointed towards her, “so we know they’re hiding something, or at least know more than they’ve let on, who’s to say the governments aren’t acquiring information from all twelve behind the scenes?”
“But they’d need the orb,” Ava turned back, suddenly invested, “they can’t just rock up to a temple and expect it to obey.”
“Maybe so, but their tech is better than ours, I’m sure they could find a way around the security measures.”
She thought for a second before shaking her head. “No, there’s too much of this tied to us for someone else to just do it. Your weird speed, my fighting, that image of ‘me’ we saw here, the envoy Narei. All of them point to us playing a bigger part in this story than ‘the people who turned up late to the party.’”
“Again, I think you’re right, but what part are we playing now? Why are these things happening to us? There’s a lot of unknowns still. It’s just questions on top of questions.” The team fell silent, taking in all that had been said, but Feelo tapped his fingers on the console, thinking what to say and how to spin it all to them. “We’ve got to carry on,” he said sombrely, “we’re down to eleven active temples in the Milky Way, two of which we’ve activated, so there’s nine left but we need ten. The Tarchon surely have a contingency for this sort of thing, they wouldn’t just build twelve temples, leave them exposed, and just hope that the Vanth didn’t find them.”
Ava shrugged. “You’re probably right, but how much longer do we do this for?”
“For as long as it takes.”
She flashed a coy smile. “You’re a determined one, I’ll give you that.”
“When I set my sights on something, I’ll stop at nothing to get what I want,” he kept his eyes locked with hers as they shared a fleeting moment of understanding.
“Well, there’s not much left for us here, then,” Caesar said, barging in, “we should get back to the Ixion.”
“You’re right,” admitted Feelo, stuffing the orb back into his satchel, come on, let’s get to the ship, plug this in and see where it leads us.”
* * *
Feelo put his feet up on the console and allowed his mind to wander as the engines built their charge. But footsteps crashing against the metal grating outside and snapped him back to reality. “Fee…” Ava panted. She stood in the doorway, barely holding onto its frame. Her forehead glistened from the sweat which poured from her hairline and her jade eyes sparkled, lit by some unknown force. “The bees, they’re back…”
“The bees?” he thought for a moment, but when the realisation kicked in he jumped up in his chair and pushed the engines to the maximum. “We need to get out of here NOW.”
The noise of the engines filled the ship. Caesar rushed towards the bridge and poked his head around the door. “What’s the rush?” he asked.
“They’re here, they’ve found us.”
“They as in they – the Vanth?”
“Yeah, they…” Feelo hesitated as blaring alarms wailed across the city.
“Fee, we’ve gotta go!” yelled Ava. Her eyes darted across the skyline, waiting for the inevitable. Then, just as she suspected, the sullen night-time clouds were cut in two by a burning ball of plasma lancing towards the ground. The weapons fire let off twisting sparks of flaming hot gases which ignited small pockets of atmosphere. Distant screams erupted across the city creating an orchestra of the damned and told a story of their fate.
Feelo tried to keep calm and lifted the Ixion from its landing pad. Everyone had the same idea and tried to flee the city before things got worse. The airspace around the port turned chaotic. Shuttles bumped and scrapped against larger gunships and small freighters with one losing their propulsion causing them to drop from the air like a crane had let them go.
But for Feelo a confusing malaise assaulted his mind. His senses dulled, and his thoughts felt as if they had to push through a mental fog to be seen. His vision blurred, and the outside chaos melted into an abstract oil painting.
“Ava…” he croaked, turning to see her slumped in the chair and unresponsive. “Caesar,” he said weakly, “Ellie… Help…” His vision darkened and the tight grip around his mind grew harder to spring. Dissonant whispers assaulted him from every direction, he couldn’t make out what they said, but there was more than one voice, thousands, even. Alarmingly he felt a cold sharp pain across his forehead, but the fog dissipated. His senses returned in time to see Ellie placing a band around Ava’s head, to which she snapped back to reality.
“Holy crap, what was that?!” Feelo said, rubbing his eyes.
“I’m not sure,” Ellie replied, checking their vitals. “I just remember that Tarchon lady mentioning these bands. I had stored them away, just in case, but now seemed an appropriate time to test them out.”
Feelo wiped his brow, checking out the window to see other ships still racing past the Ixion and making their escape. “Well, that was damn good thinking. Remind me to give you a pay rise later.”
“I’ll pay her myself if we make it out of this,” replied Ava.
“There’s that optimism we all know and love.”
He caught his reflection in the window and saw the thin metallic band around his forehead. Every instinct he had told him to tear it off and throw it away, but it worked, however stupid it looked. He pulled the ship about and roared towards the upper atmosphere, escaping the carnage that befell the burning city. The plasma which erupted across the sky was counted with high-powered energy beams which screamed towards the ‘unknown’ enemy who circled the planet like an attack dog.
The Ixion passed through the atmosphere and emerged out into space, but the sight that greeted them stunned the watching crew. A single Vanth ship laid waste to anything that opposed it. Streams of boiling plasma erupted from a broadside of cannons towards civilian and military ships which popped like carnival fireworks. He knew thousands must have died already to a foe that they not only didn’t know existed but one that he and his crew had most likely brought to the planet.
“We did this…” he said, “this is our fault.”
Ava turned towards him, unable to form complete words as she tried to speak. “I… We…” she lowered her head, unable to come to terms which what he said.
Disgusted at himself, he turned the ship away and engaged the slip-drive to anywhere but there. They had a higher calling, at least in his mind, and it wasn’t worth sticking around to be killed or captured by the very beings that they fought in secret. So, with a spine-rattling vibration and a flash of blue energy, they were away and fleeing at immense speeds to see another day…
17
DAWN STAR
An hour had passed since they fled the now war-torn world. The events played over and over in Feelo’s mind. Could we have done more? He asked himself, was it our fault? Did we lead them there? The answer he came up with was a resounding ‘yes’ on all fronts, it was an answer that ate away at him, unsettling his thoughts.
Fortunately, a gentle rasping at his door broke him from the deep doubt which crept across his conscious. “What is it?” he asked, having to push every word out past his lips.
“I need you in medical,” Ellie whispered. “I want to check your vital signs and perform a full body scan.”
“I’m fine. I feel fine. I look fine. I sound fine. I don’t need a check-up.”
“… Said the patient right before the blood clot was fatal.”
He couldn’t stifle the small laugh which burst past his lips, the reply was so out of left field for Ellie that it caught him off guard and made him drop it. “Fine, I’ll do your stupid tests.”
The doors to medical hissed open revealing Ellie examining Ava through an open gown. Feelo stepped in, felt his cheeks flush, and quickly averted his gaze to inspect an interesting speck of dirt on the wall.
“I’m not naked you pervert,” Ava said as Ellie hovered above her, “although it is kinda awkward. Couldn’t you have done him later?”
Ellie smiled. “I wanted you both here and away from the rest of the ship.”
“So, you wanted to quarantine us?” said Feelo, still facing the wall.
“No!” Ellie acted offended that he would even suggest the idea, “but… You two are unique cases and I want to see what happened back there.”
He turned back, glancing towards Ava before locking eyes with Ellie and pronouncing where his gaze was with wide eyes. “Did you not feel that then?”
“Neither me nor Caesar did.”
“Really? Now that is interesting.”
“Hence why you’re here,” she beamed. “Now, come and lie here so I can examine you both at the same time.” He stepped into the room and sat on the edge of the medical bed, ready to lay back. “Robe off, Fee.”
“But…” he replied, nodding sideways towards Ava.
“Don’t be so daft,” Ellie waved his concerns away, “it’s nothing we haven’t seen before, right?”
Feelo shrugged and Ava remained quiet. “Fine, but only this one time.”
He disrobed and threw it across the back of a chair before scrambling to lay back. Ellie approached with a handheld machine. She removed two tiny discs from it and placed it one on his forehead and one on his chest. “Wow…” she proclaimed, which alarmed Feelo, “your heart rate is much higher than your usual baseline.”
He heard Ava sniggering to herself behind the doctor. “I’m nervous, okay! What’s going on here isn’t normal. And also, the war… The journey… The orb… Meco.”
“Uh-huh,” Ava laughed, “the journey is making you nervous.”
“It is!” he protested, trying to turn his mind elsewhere.
Ellie continued her examination. “Your eye, have you damaged it in the past? It’s not something I’ve ever noticed.”
“… What did you notice?”
“There’s some discolouration under the surface, only a thin streak and it’s barely noticeable to the naked eye, but under intense light it… glows.”
Feelo looked over to Ava who had the same thought and glanced towards him. “Don’t know, nothing comes to mind…”
Ellie put both hands on hips and frowned. “I know when you’re lying, mister, I’ve been your doctor for a year, and it’s all been lies.”
“All right, all right,” he sighed, “it happened after Deonara and my… Incident.”
“The incident where you saved Ava from the Vanth?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Ava sat up, “I could have saved myself, he just wanted to play the hero.”
“Yeah, sure you could smarty-pants,” Feelo grinned, “you needed my help and oh God,” he quickly averted his gaze after looking towards her, “can you, like, cover up? It’s not appropriate for a Captain to see his underlings in their skivvies.”
“Underlings?” Ellie and Ava both said with varying amounts of disdain. Ava slammed back against the table in a huff, “one of these days you’re gonna get a smack,” she said.
“You say it like I’m not abused every day by you and Caesar.” Ava rolled her eyes so hard he was sure it would flip the ship. “So, what now?”
“Now,” said Ellie, leaning into Feelo while massaging the sides of his temples and glancing towards a machine, “I want to know why you both needed those headbands and we didn’t.”
“I can’t explain it, but it was like a thick fog had covered my thoughts.”
“Exactly that,” added Ava, “it felt like someone grabbed both sides of my head and squeezed. I don’t remember much more than that, I blacked out and then I saw you standing over me, that’s about it.”
Ellie paced around the room muttering to herself as if her mind worked out loud. “There’s only one connection between you both, it’s not physical nor is it emotional, but you have both shown glimpses of a special aptitude for the… unusual shall we say.”
The pair looked at one another like sheepish animals. “Maybe,” Feelo eventually said, “but what does it all mean? Why us?”
“That I don’t know,” replied Ellie. She leant back against a counter and bit her lip, deep in thought. “I want to put you both on a regiment of full-body medicals, it might help me understand this phenomenon a bit more.”
Feelo sighed. “Sure, whatever you say, Doc.” As Ellie was about to approach and run final scans, Meco’s sharp barks echoed through the halls of the ship.
“Fee!” yelled Caesar, “phone!”
“… He really is like my Dad,” Feelo laughed. “I better go take this, gimme two secs.” He threw on his gown, rushed through the ship and slid into his chair on the bridge aware of the biting cold against his bare skin. “What’s up,” he answered the call.
There was a moment of silence as the signals pinged between deep-space relays that had been set-up for FTL communication. “Captain?” came a woman’s voice, “I’m glad I could get in contact with you, the comms can be so unreliable. From what I hear you’ve been busy.”
Feelo awkwardly waited to be sure that the pause was the end of her sentence and not just a thought gap. “Erm… Sure?” he answered full of suspicion, “we’re all busy out here. But before we get too far down this road of pleasantries – Who am I speaking to?”
“I am Senator Duvelin. There have been reports from Intu that are deeply, deeply concerning, and judging by shared local traffic reports you and your crew were nearby when things turned, shall we say, sour.”
“That’s one way of putting it, but it understates what happened.”
“Yes, well, the TUPOS council, under supervision from the Senate, wish for you all to return to Alpha Sturama for a meeting about this new threat.”
