The Silence of Zegandaria by Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov (book recommendations website txt) 📕

- "So people do evolve," asked the military man, puzzled.

- "I will tell you a short story," spoke the sovereign gravely, "as I hope it will be of real use to you in cultivating our new home. The Galactic Signature has encrypted secret information into the human genome, and it is the carrier of the Supreme Intelligence, or at least its original design. This hidden message has been so persistent that it makes me think that it is only our choices and moral selves that have brought us to our various stages of development."

- "So you want me to create something sustainable?," the Admiral tried to elicit confirmation.

- "Exactly, but one that will bring us closer to the Supreme Intelligence that has built everything around us," the monarch calmly replied.

- "But I don't have superpowers," his subordinate replied simply.

- "You don't have to," the overlord interjected, "humans had much weaker technology than ours, too. They had no idea how our ships functioned, yet they broke our battle formation. We could have lured them into the Asteroid Belt, but something happened. The question was what?"

[1] Genes that are linked and regulate so-called remote viewing.

[2] Ordoson - represents the futuristic headquarters of the supreme leader of the Ervanans.

[3] Azun is the Ervanian god of death who guides their souls across the cosmic expanse until they find rest.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE: THE MAGIC OF SLEEP

I left some of the team outside-just in case. Maybe some of Enbright's men wouldn't have taken the sight of the dead Ervanans. Not that it was anything special, and they hadn't seen blood with all the violence they'd used, but the feeling when you happened to set eyes on those lifeless bulges in a place like this could make your skin crawl and terror overwhelm you. And that only increased the risk of accidents!

"They must have come from a different galaxy where there was a lack of happiness! And they wanted to secure additional territory for their population! They wanted to evolve!" thought I, but I didn't give the others a chance to hear my thoughts.

Enbright's men began to carefully loot what little was inside anyway - and it wasn't all that little. Even though the ship was over a hundred and fifty meters long, we weren't able to squeeze into the compartments behind the cockpit, and there was a definite reason for that - the Ervanans used special encrypted passwords in their own language that resembled something between a mumble and a growl.

Charon's icy silence could drive any sane person of sound mind mad, who could clearly see what a hell we were inhabiting.

Eventually, after the brief search, we all crammed inside the ship, except for Beria Klist, who was a bit of a dick - he offered to stand and scald us for a bit while we found a way to make use of our loot.

Aside from the dead pilots we took the uniforms of, there were some complicated gadgets we couldn't use at all.

Klyst was a strange bird - a true adventurer, and I honestly didn't know exactly what motives had gotten a guy like him involved with Enbright's group - maybe there was just no other way to survive on Charon, because that was the only possible explanation. He was too intelligent for the job.

The cosmic winds might blow harder during the long night of Charon, he voiced his concerns.  - And who knows what might come upon us then.

I agreed with his reasoning. But I gave him Emborio Sikur to give him some support in case of surprise. Yes, Charon looked dead, but my feeling was that the death clock was ticking for us as well.

- "We are in the Abyss after all," Sikur added himself. "It is said that there were traces of volcanic activity right here in this area - I mean, it's just a giant crater," he summarized.

This was the second individual on Enbright's own former team who had had the opportunity to replace Zerilia Cox. Incidentally, perhaps, they were both now clearly aware that money was hardly the most valuable booty in circumstances such as these, but of course it was never superfluous - even to Charon.

We left them their weapons - one Bonetier rifle was for Beria, who was obviously excellent with it, and the laser cutter was for Sikur himself.

Naturally we couldn't stay here too long, as our oxygen supply was running low. But I had devised a little stratagem in that regard. I checked and saw that the oxygen bottles of the dead pilots were intact. Apparently these aliens had a similar biological makeup to ours after all! The problem was, how do we connect their oxygen source to our own spacesuits? I wasn't sure if it was going to be a problem, but we had to try because our lives depended on it.

To that end, we set about building a pressurized cockpit by soldering the pilothouse breaches.

In order that he might remain on post for the night, or rather for some of the time it would take us to pressurize the cockpit again, we helped him into one of the Ervanan uniforms - it was obvious that they were warm.

Under the spacesuits we wore special isenium suits that protected us from the space radiation and the cold. He slipped the uniform right over them. We built a pressurized cabin of neon panels soldered together for this purpose, and then inserted one of the oxygen ermonadium hoses to provide him with oxygen while he performed the shift thus indicated. After he changed, we unsealed the brazed panels.

Klyst struggled to hold the heavy Bonettian rifle - especially as his spacesuit had no special insulation like ours, and the nights were murderously raw and freezing. There was something that might be of use to us, and then we found an excellent exoskeleton , made of a first-rate neon alloy that was stronger than our Kevlarite by more than three times. We decided to help him put it on and thus increase his physical strength tenfold! Too bad there wasn't a second one, but in a place like this we were also supposed to use the low visibility condition. We had no idea if the Ervanans themselves would ever return to collect the ships and pilots. But from a super evolved race like theirs, that was to be expected!

He had come in to us hoping to be useful, but he stayed long enough and managed to get his bearings on the situation around him.

He didn't care that the uniform had been standing around the body of a dead man a little earlier. This bastard was starting to like me! He was so brutal and cooperative!

Once he was out again, we re-pressurized the cabin and put Sikur inside for safety. He would be needed if someone did attack us and overpowered the outpost. The 231two of them would use the frequencies of our cyclotron synthesizers, which were the most reliable means of communication we had now-for now.

We decided to find out what was in the rear of the ship, which was under the ice at a depth of more than ten meters.

Here I think it is worth noting the tremendous strain we were under, which inevitably affected us. We had replenished ourselves with oxygen for a few more hours, but expected to find more in the interior.

CHAPTER FIFTY: THE ROAD TO NOWHERE

It was clear we couldn't mimic Ervanan speech, but there was special software that modified our voices into sounds that resembled theirs. I'd gotten it again from Rento for a small favor to settle one of the many probations he'd had. The problem was that smugglers of undetermined origin, who didn't officially play for any of the major groups, were being placed in what was known as a quarantine period where they couldn't practice. It usually lasted about two Earth weeks, but sentences were rarely carried out on Earth. Rento was thus caught with a huge amount of ents, which were mainly intended for bribes. Since it was never found out who it was that had given it to him, and no one had the courage to claim it officially for perfectly understandable reasons, the money was returned to him, but the Intergalactic Police had already started tracking him down.

Later, I realized that Rento would not have been able to carry out his activities without the support of one of Earth's senators to provide him with a political umbrella.

And I came out right! In fact, I hated it when that happened! But if it actually did, it meant I knew him a lot less than I thought.

I couldn't help but marvel at the ship's beautiful interiors - everything was clean with maximum functionality.

Deep down I expected the Ervanans to have set some traps, or at least for the ship to have some protection against unwanted visitors like us, and maybe I was right, but so far we hadn't encountered anything troublesome.

No matter how hard we tried, we couldn't get past the neon door that separated us from the ship's secrets. That barrier seemed insurmountable for now.

It was not right to give up just like that, because in my opinion it would have been a total failure of the whole expedition.

We continued with the attempts, hoping to finally have success.

By the way, I wouldn't say I'm claustrophobic or anything, but in practice, being too stuck in one place boded absolutely no good.

I had a feeling this place was going to "take us over". It was damn cool.

So who cared! Sikur was supposed to have our backs, or so I hoped. I had serious concerns that Beria Clistehimself might freeze to death despite the extra precautions we took.

Another unpleasant detail was that we couldn't use explosives in a place like this for obvious reasons.

I felt like my brain was looping, and I didn't like that at all!

Damn why did this have to happen to us since we barely managed to get to that damn place.

Mordor Macula was truly a "dark spot"! But the Ervanan ship was an even scarier thing!

I didn't pretend to know the various alien races, but by the time we got there too much had happened. I have no explanation for how I was left among the few survivors. I didn't worship the god Erduk, nor did I have a head-on encounter with the Invisibles,