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

It was too cumbersome - and though I considered myself a victor, I couldn't really call myself one.

In front of me, the indicators on the control panel began to go crazy - the hologram infograms and other gauges simply went off due to some mysterious interference. And then the whole ship sank into darkness! Dark and impenetrable!

The unknown Ervanian hissed in my ear:

- "You thought you would slip away, but deep down you feel that this is your end. You have no one left. But I'm offering you a very lucrative and interesting bargain - if you want to accept, if you don't - your choice. Soon this ship won't have enough power to take you where you really want to go! By your reckless actions, you have trapped yourself. Don't you understand, Earthman, the universe is indifferent to our own survival and would hardly be moved if one of our civilizations disappeared!"

For the initiated, I'll just say that telepathic communication requires a special level of soul energy that is very specific.

- I'm not an Earthling, you fool! I am a descendant of Seraija Gul San himself, the greatest warrior of Zegandaria! And we have never stood in the way of your own survival for the simple reason that we had no make-giving among ourselves!

I knew that experiments had been done in the past to navigate a labyrinth, using the most precise kind of telepathy to do so. And it had all gone completely successfully.

"I have not heard that name! Seraija Gul San! Sounds quite manly and valiant! In my opinion, that name cannot be the name of a scoundrel! But sometimes anyone can lie! So you're not an Earthling!"

The voice was now openly hesitant, obviously weighing how to deal with me, and he wasn't sure what exactly would happen to him if he trusted me. There was a brutally long silence that was so long it could have deafened you!

"Look, your girlfriend had to die because you killed one of ours. And that moral choice makes me hesitate. After all, I took a life, which makes me think I may have violated my moral principles. But on the other hand, there is something that seriously bothers me. How you managed to get rid of our telepathic influence and how you dealt with Sikur, who is a very, very tough fighter!"

I didn't know if that sounded like praise or if it heralded a calm before the storm, but somewhere in there I sensed that the stranger was about to tell me some special and perhaps somewhat sad secret.

- "Look, stranger," he turned to me, "there are the widest variety of cosmic energies and degrees of consciousness development in the universe..."

- "Don't tell me something I don't know!", I snapped at him, "Let me ask you something directly, too - what is your ultimate goal of development, or more precisely, what exactly do you want from us, or from earthlings. Perhaps you would have gotten a lot more if you had just tried to understand, destroy or conquer them!"

A murderous laugh rang out then - I hadn't even heard the like. It was neither frightening nor sinister, neither hilarious nor cheerful! But it filled every fiber of my body with chills and doubt, telling me that I didn't really know what it meant to live!

- "Let me ask you something too, young man!" the voice began unintentioNaly, in the most impassioned tone, "You have experienced so many emotions in your journey thus far, survived against all and everything, and yet you have not found an answer to the most important question of all - to what is your own survival due! And perhaps you expect me to give it to you! ... No, I'm not reading your mind, if you have such a feeling, I'm just reporting the obvious..."

I thought seriously. And if any vague semblance of anger had tried to work its way into my chest, it died instantly and unquestioningly. The statement was so absurdly simple that there was nothing to answer it. I felt bloody stupid. But then ... the answer flashed before my eyes in a much clearer way, crystallizing as if out of nowhere.

- "You want me to help you get to Nanjagar before the humans, don't you?", I thought.

- "That's right, Earthman!," the voice replied to me with a little annoyance, but in all seriousness.

I felt disgusted that he kept calling me the same thing, but I decided to try to win his favour. This creature could be of use to me.

I wasn't entirely sure exactly how advanced the earthlings were, but the disdain with which he treated them spoke volumes. Ah, perhaps in the vast expanse of space not much distinction was made and any foreign civilization was declared barbaric.

I glanced around through the chevron portholes of the impressive Voargis ship - we were just leaving the confines of the Kuiper Belt and the bleak outer reaches of the solar system.

I watched the universe with the eyes of a cosmic child who seemed to be just being born. The hibernation into which we had been brought on Charon only confirmed my fears. We hadn't seen anything and to us Charon was the whole world - so in a generation or two the memory of the buried computer demon viruses would be gone from our minds and no one would go looking for them.

[1] Rigor Mortis - a method that consists in tightening or contraction of body muscles due to chemical changes in their myofibers.

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO: THE ERVANAN

The Ervanan clearly needed a real host body for the simple reason that it took a tremendous amount of energy to communicate with me. This was obviously draining him considerably especially now that the lack of external gravity was changing the whole situation and making me rather unpredictable.

The Ervanan was assessing exactly how much he could trust me as it was a matter of life and death for him and I wasn't about to lose that trump card against a serious opponent!

We were now entering the Cloud of Oort where it was going to get fun. In this dangerous icy world, I began to feel an unsuspected emptiness that had apparently been building up in me all these years.

I had too much to learn from life - after all, I was only thirty-five.

Then, among the asteroids and the endless amount of flying icy debris, we spotted an Earth Federation ship - it wasn't common for Earthmen battleships to hang around here.

"They're headed for Nanjagar, Earthman," the voice continued, with its annoying error. - "And you have to stop them because..."

I didn't know what to reply...

"I'll help you, but stop calling me...," I stammered.

"Okay, the two of us as a team can accomplish more. My body is severely damaged because you compromised the integrity of the cryogenic chamber, and that could be a problem in the future. So do you mind if I possess Jessica Edwater's body for just a little while!"

I got chills from this weird guy - so eager to do what he wanted to do. After a moment, Jessica's hand seemed to move and make a specific symbol that I had to interpret as going to a side compartment. There I found an electronic key for deciphering and deciphering the arcane symbols of the Ervanan script. Now I could go it alone.

Jessica's hand fell numb. Apparently, even the Ervanans couldn't maintain this state of "obsession" for obvious reasons.

- "What do you know about time, Earthlings?," his voice came rather harshly in my mind, "We come from another universe where our existence was utterly impossible. Why don't you grasp that the transcendental continuum itself does not tolerate the unfit! And it's not about hate or anything else!"

The Voargis ship also had huge weapons, such as photon cannons and Visorian nanotubes. This technology might give you an idea of how easily an Ervanan ship could board an alien.

By the way, let me not digress, but pick up where I left off. There were some things to be made clear. Such as how I would maintain communication with the dead Ervanan.

- "My friend," he addressed me in pure Zegandarian, "if you get the ship back to the planet Nanjagar unharmed, you can repay my help! I am perishing - sustaining so much mental energy requires tremendous concentration, and soon my spirit will dissolve into nothingness from whence I shall never return. No, forget that Voruk Abl Ziarn, was your teacher, and transport the weapons in the service of the Earth Federation. They are not to blame for defending themselves!"

Then there was a soft crackle - like a disturbance on a radio frequency. And I never heard another word from my invisible ally.

Sometimes one could get much more serious and great support from one's bitterest enemies. But such is life!

In the secret compartment, besides the futuristic electronic translator switch, I found something that outright shocked me.

I discovered how I could preserve my own consciousness and preserve it in case of my eventual death. This shocked me. But I decided to take advantage of my discovery.

SIXTY-THREE: THE SHIP VOARGIS

The claim that ships in the future would change the balance of power was not necessarily true for the simple reason that I was the only survivor left on board. I had long since left the outermost reaches of the solar system and was on my way to Proxima B, which was in the constellation Centaurus. According to the instructions given to me by Jessica and Voruk Abl Ziarn himself, I was to use the ship's hidden resources to be able to generate power for another quantum teleportation.

Proxima B was generally located at a distance on the order of more than two hundred and sixty-five thousand astronomical units from Earth, which was essentially a hell of a lot by Earth standards. But I was traveling in an Ervanan ship, and I had traveled at least a quarter of that distance, and perhaps even more.

Earth civilization had long since evolved into a type three civilization[1] and was capable of quite a lot, but the Ervanans were far more advanced than that. From what I saw of their ship, it was clear that they possessed the hallmarks of a Type Five civilization, one that was capable of time travel and teleportation, and also of leaving the confines of the known universe.

But the Earthlings did have some of Ertol Gis's developments at their