Cosmic Savior: (A Space Opera Adventure) (Interstellar Gunrunner Book 3), page 15
My vision was wavering by this point, but I knew it wasn’t a hallucination. Somehow, impossibly, Umzuma was keeping the ship perfectly vertical beneath us. What this means, for reference purposes, is that Chitta Mini not only expected us to leap a few thousand meters down into a moving target—he expected us to slam down against the rear wall of the staging bay. If this suit didn’t hold up under the strain, or if even one hundredth of one degree was off, Tusky and I would be turned into fleshy red stains—assuming we didn’t simply miss and rocket through the void, that is.
“Gotta jump!” Chitta Mini said. “That ship’s a sittin’ duck!”
Even as my toes curled in my boots from oxygen starvation, I hesitated. “This is bonkers. There’s no atmosphere in that thing.”
“Sure there is! Umzuma said your girlfriend added a stasis field!”
“She did what?”
“C’mon, I calculated this thing down to a tee! You’ve got this. We’ve got this.”
Tusky waddled up beside me, repeatedly looking between me and the harrowing drop below.
With no other option, and certainly no words to comfort him, I took the leap.
There must’ve been an embedded accelerator somewhere in that chute, because the drop didn’t last the twenty or so seconds I anticipated. Instead, I saw only flashes of black, white, and ion blue. There was hardly any time to even feel afraid—especially since I’d lost most of the sensation in my body, and tunnel vision was creeping in.
Then I plunged into Stream Dancer’s gravity field. I shut my eyes as my numb body spun and somersaulted, entirely out of my control. The world slowed to a standstill. Blood shuttled up to my skull, my feet flung away like ragdolls, and… impact. I felt it like a thunderclap up through the soles of my boots, yet there was no pain.
Until my back struck the floor, that is.
With eyes still closed and a vast, all-consuming blackness sweeping over me, all I sensed was a lukewarm current streaming over my lips. Air. Freedom.
My lungs sucked in a reflexive breath. Then my chest heaved out, and pins and needles exploded throughout my body. Almost of their own volition, my eyelids snapped apart. I was alive. Breathing. Against all odds, I’d made it.
Staring back at me were the grimy, jaundice-yellow lights of the staging bay ceiling. A feeling of sublime peace came over me as I lay there, shakily breathing, tears running down—
Tusky slammed feet-first into the same panel I’d hit. Had I not been on the verge of a coma, I’d have been startled. The enormous sloth came in like a screaming rocket. Then, predictably, his body followed the same course mine had. I was too weak to scramble aside as his bulk flopped down atop me, squirmed, and rolled onto the floor.
A strange, murky length of time passed—time gets hazy at death’s door—until, eventually, I heard the clatter of footsteps. A lot of them.
“Told you it’d work!” Chitta Mini exclaimed.
Silhouettes crowded in around me, some shining lights in my eyes, others probing at my neck and chest. Distantly, I sensed my body being extricated from the HIIA’s gloopy prison. My breathing steadied. Voices swam through the drum of my heartbeat.
“… me, Bodhi?” Ruena, I realized. Ruena was here. “Bodhi, look at me. Look up.”
I did—or tried to. Locating a helmeted, four-eyed alien is not easy when you are surrounded by throngs of helmeted individuals who all appear to have four eyes. But when I spotted a helmet containing an apparent eight eyes, I knew I had the right one.
“That’s it,” Ruena said. She glanced over at Tusky, who was surrounded by an equal amount of helping hands, then back at me. Her eyes grew scornful. “That has got to be the dumbest thing you’ve ever done.”
“I didn’t do it,” I whispered.
“What are you talking about? Umzuma got your transmission, then took us here.”
“It wasn’t from me,” I managed, struggling to fish Chitta Mini out of my pocket in spite of the medical devices bleeping all around me. Ruena’s future-glimpsing eyes went wide before I’d even revealed the squirming thing. “Meet the mastermind.”
It took my wobbling vision a moment, however, to grasp that Ruena’s reaction wasn’t due to my new friend. In fact, she didn’t seem to give a damn about that. Her gaze, instead, had been drawn to something happening beyond the staging bay’s field.
With a grunt and a groan, I rolled my head in that direction.
Far in the distance, thousands and thousands of kilometers away from our fleeing ship, was the hive-world and its frenetic battle. Only, it wasn’t the hive-world anymore. It was warped somehow, its very form stretched and striated like clay. At the heart of this melty scene was a glimmering white light. Everything—including orbital platforms, Hegemony flagships, and Kruthara’s tentacle-clad legion—was flowing toward it, into it. The closer things got to that core of light, the more they slowed to form a static vignette.
A miniature singularity.
In the weeks to follow, I would learn that the inustrazans had triggered this legendary weapon to prevent their hard-won knowledge (and the secrets of Gnosis) from being uploaded into Kruthara’s mind. It was a last-ditch ploy embedded in the center of the giga-structure, a fail-safe designed to obliterate anything and anyone brazen enough to overrun their people. Whether this was the chitta’s decision or that of Tanu Halnok may never be known. What I am certain of, however, is that this space-time-warping implosion was the only thing that saved us—and, subsequently, the universe. Thus, I cannot, and will not, disparage their end.
Those of you who have visited the Sphere of Eternal Sacrifice in person can attest to the dreadful presence of this place. Witnessing its birth was a moment I shall never forget, no matter how much I might try. Perhaps this is because its birth never truly ended. For us outside observers, safely beyond the singularity’s event horizon, the hive-world and its attackers have hardly moved an inch. They will remain frozen this way until the last quarks of our universe dissolve into the ether.
I can only hope that those within its grasp died in an instant.
Eleven
There is an indescribable silence that follows any instance of mass annihilation. I doubt it has to do with grief—after all, beings die in the tens of millions every day in this wild cosmos, and in our own case, the inustrazans were hard to shed tears over. Instead, I’d posit that this silence is a collective realization that each person who bears witness to death will also meet the same end. Selfish? Yes. But such is the nature of a sentient being. And when a sentient being sees countless lives reduced to a bowl of quantum soup in the blink of an eye, it’s only natural to have their bubble of normal, delusional safety popped.
This slap-in-the-face silence was the type that hung over the meeting module. It was deep in the bones of Chaska, Ruena, and the handful of insurgent sub-commanders sitting in the chairs around me. Everybody appeared paralyzed, stewing in the quiet.
Well, almost everybody.
“Now that was a getaway,” Chitta Mini said through the room’s speaker system. He drifted contentedly in one of Tusky’s brine-filled containment canisters, perched atop our shared table like a grotesque centerpiece. “Did you guys see that blast? Helluva thing.”
Chaska regarded me with a withering stare. “You have a lot of explaining to do.”
I threw my hands up. “Me? He’s the one responsible.”
“Damn straight,” Chitta Mini said. “I’ll take a round of applause anytime.”
Now it was Chitta Mini’s turn to get Chaska’s soul-stealing gaze. Not that he could see it, I figured. His only means of sensory input were a series of crude instruments Tusky had hooked up to the canister’s brine. Tusky likely would’ve been proud of our ad-hoc arrangement had he not been in a triage module, recovering from that near-death experience.
“We just lost one of our most capable allies in this fight,” Chaska said quietly. “You’d better have a damn good reason for being aboard this ship.”
“To be fair, he is a superintelligence,” I piped up.
“A sliver of one,” Chaska said, still glaring at his canister. She paced around the room with arms folded and brows knitted. “So how’d you get here? Threaten Bodhi? Sweet-talk him?”
Chitta Mini sighed. “Mutual aid, Miss…?”
“Just Chaska. Don’t call me ‘miss.’”
“Got it, Just Chaska. So, anyway, as I was sayin’… I can help you fine folks out. Just like you’re helpin’ me out by flying me away from… well, you know.”
“Help us with what, exactly?”
“Same thing you came to the ’strazans for? Translating that little book of yours.”
Chaska gave me a questioning look.
“He can read memories,” I explained. “Not with my permission, I’ll have you know.”
“And what do you want for your ‘services’?” Chaska asked Chitta Mini.
The tiny brain floated about in vague excitement. “Bodhi knows my price. Let’s just say I’m a sucker for the small things. Like ice cream.”
The insurgent sub-commanders looked at one another in puzzlement, but Chaska’s face only soured further.
“Let me get this straight,” she said. “You want to help us… for food?”
“Yeah?”
“Why should we trust you at all?”
“You mean, aside from trusting me enough to rescue you and your crew? And exempting that I’m the only one capable of reading the book?”
“Yes,” she said flatly.
Chitta Mini constricted, then puffed out. “Well, for starters, let’s talk about the fact that I saved your sorry asses from any further trouble by neutralizing the Hegemony tracker in Bodhi’s brain.”
All eyes spun toward me.
Again, I threw up both hands. “Hey! It’s not like I knew. Nor did I ask for the damn thing!”
“Bodhi,” Ruena said slowly, “does that mean what I think it does?”
“You’ll have to be more specific.”
“The strike on Chaska’s base… and that latest attack… You caused that?”
“I didn’t cause anything! The Hegemony did. All I did was, well, inadvertently lure them to us.”
Chaska leaned against a bulkhead, studying Chitta Mini’s canister with cryptic eyes. “And you’re certain that you disabled that tracker.”
“Yeah?” he replied. “Why, you think I’m playin’ for the other team or something?”
“I don’t know what to think right now,” she said.
“Oh, c’mon. If I didn’t shut that thing down, I’d be risking my own ass out here. Well, not my ass. I don’t have one. But you know what I mean.”
Chaska nodded. “Good. Because if you weren’t sure, we’d have to smash Bodhi’s head. And then you.”
“Well, then, it’s a real good thing I’m sure.”
“Yes,” I said, quite certain Chaska hadn’t been speaking hyperbolically, “it certainly is.”
Ruena stood up and released a tense breath. “I’d say it’s time we give our new stowaway a chance to help us.”
The sub-commanders all looked to Chaska, who in turn retrieved the book-holding satchel from a nearby cubby. Until now, I hadn’t even realized they’d taken that particular piece of leverage away from me.
She pulled out Diman’s journal, moved to our table, and flipped to the relevant page. Then she propped the book up in front of Chitta Mini’s visual scanner.
“Oooh,” Chitta Mini said, “this is… new. Where’d you find this?”
Chaska stepped back with a hard expression. “Doesn’t matter. Just tell us what it says.”
“You want the full spiel or the gist of it?”
“Everything.”
“Alrighty. One the-whole-damn-thing special comin’ right up.” Chitta Mini huffed, then, adopting an imperious tone that made me jumped in my seat, began the translation. “This is the one and true word of the Great Maker, Engineer and Architect of All That Is, Preserver of the Eternal Way, Illuminator of the Vast Darkness—”
“Skip the honorifics,” Chaska interjected.
Chitta Mini gave another impatient huff. “As you command… This wisdom is delivered to the highest beings, a sacred treatise on the expulsion and ultimate eradication of That Which Should Not Be. Thus we have heard that the Great Maker is aware of, and determined to end, the threat that sleeps under the bones of all sentient beings. The Great Maker, in his infinite glory and forethought, has prepared this instruction in the service of victory.
“That Which Should Not Be is unfathomable in its terrors, endless in its legions, and unassailable in its conquest. Only the instruments of the Great Maker may expunge its presence from this world and all worlds beyond it.
“Go, sentient ones, to that which cannot be penetrated through the manipulation of time and space—the immaculate realm of the Untraversed. Go, sentient ones, to the font of wisdom in which the Great Maker is forever dreaming. Go, sentient ones, to the gateway of gnosis that will liberate all beings from this undying fear. Go, sentient beings, and take up the arms of your savior.
“Delay not in your journey, sentient ones, for if you have read these words, the age of the Great Maker has come to its foretold end. With the cessation of the Great Maker comes the cessation of wisdom and the disappearance of all devices that might annihilate That Which Should Not Be. But hold the sacrifice of the Great Maker in your mind, sentient one, for you have found the doorway to prophecy. Venture toward the source. Enter his eternal domain with surrender. Become the empty vessel into which he may bestow his knowledge.
“This, sentient ones, is the only path to preservation.”
And with that, Chitta Mini went silent. Deathly silent.
“So,” I said, leaning back, “it seems the ‘Great Maker’ was rather fond of word salads.”
“You’re one to talk,” Ruena said.
I scoffed. “Listen, all I’m saying is that if I were going to prepare the future ‘sentient ones’ to fight off some ancient alien threat, I’d at least have the decency to communicate like a normal person, not an occult instruction manual.”
“It mentioned weapons,” one of the sub-commanders put in. “Weapons that might kill Kruthara.”
“A round of applause for our astute listener,” I said.
“Bodhi, that’s enough,” Ruena snapped. “If this is real—”
“Yes, if,” Chaska interrupted, breaking her stoic silence. “For all we know, those weapons—and their designs—could’ve been destroyed ages ago.”
I crossed my arms. “A few hours back, you were willing to destroy half a galaxy to figure out what was in that book. Well, now you’ve got it. I think you all owe an apology to me and Chitta Mini.” Everybody blinked at me, puzzled. “What? It’s just a name I thought up.”
“Vugran,” Chaska said, nodding at one of her burly-looking sub-commanders, “I want your cryptology unit to start analyzing the message. Maybe they can work out what it means.”
Chitta Mini burst out laughing. “Why would you need to do that?”
“Do you have something to say?”
“Well, I didn’t before, but seeing as you’re all clueless… maybe you’d like my commentary?”
“Depends what commentary you have to offer.”
“Oh, I dunno, the commentary of a being who was alive when the Maker first went to war with the krutharans?”
I swept a ceremonial hand toward the chitta. “Do go on, Mini.”
“Alright, here’s the scoop,” Chitta Mini said as the others settled back with rapt attention. “So the Maker invented a bunch of super-duper Kruthara-killing weapons back in the first war. Y’know, the one where he conquered the whole krutharan species and stuck Kruthara in a cage. But the Maker was pretty sharp. He knew those damned krutharans would find a way to unleash their god eventually. Everybody still with me?”
“We know all this,” Chaska growled. “Get on with it.”
“Fine, fine… yeesh, you’re a snippy crowd. What’s the rush?” Chitta Mini paused. “Oh, right. Well, anyway, back to the commentary. So the Maker decides to stash the blueprints for his arsenal someplace safe… someplace Kruthara couldn’t ever get to them. Like his tomb, for instance.”
Chaska grunted. “I hope you’re not just speculating about this.”
“Of course not. Us chittas used to talk, y’know. This whole thing was gristle for our rumor mill for a good ten, twenty thousand years. Then we just… stopped caring.”
“If it was just rumors, how do you know?”
“Because the translation just confirmed it! Seriously, people, pay attention. Remember this part? ‘The font of wisdom in which the Great Maker is forever dreaming’? Yeah, spoiler alert—that’s his tomb. He’s got his mind uploaded in that thing.”
At this, everybody plunged into another mic-drop silence. Bewildered gazes met one another for a solid ten seconds. See, this was big news. Bigger than big. Us puny humans, as a species, had lived our entire lives believing the Maker was dead and gone. But if Chitta Mini was telling the truth, the Maker was still here, in some way. Maybe not in body, but in mind. And when you’re a universe-conquering demigod, a mind is all you need to stay relevant.
“You’re making it up,” Chaska whispered.
Chitta Mini chuckled. “Wouldn’t dream of it, sweet cheeks. I’m telling you, the Maker’s mind—which is crammed full of ways to make Kruthara-destroying gadgets—is floating in a tomb out there somewhere.”
“How do you know it still exists? It’s probably been millions of years since it was built.”
“If you knew the Maker, you’d know that millions of years are nothin’ for that guy.”
“Doesn’t mean it hasn’t been raided already.”
“Yeah, well, I know my boss. He wouldn’t have made it that easy.”
Chaska sank down in a seat near me. “Even if you’re telling the truth—which I’m starting to doubt—we’d need to get to that tomb. And I didn’t hear any coordinates in that thing.”
