IGNITION
Chronicles of Xanctu
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The neural link dropped, but the Mantration held.
Breathless, heart racing, Kaen tried to return to his body but remained suspended inside Phae-Nem’s quantum lattice, deeper than he’d ever been allowed. Either the Mind was too absorbed to notice, or it was revealing something to him. It was too confusing to tell as he fell, weightless, down the bottomless well, its walls alive with shifting, unreadable glyphs.
Eventually, his inner vision stabilised. And something of the past, present, and future, converged.
A luminous white lattice cocooned his body, the transparent sponge forming around him even as the triple sunset painted vermilion and carmine across his white beard. His mind floated in a ghost dimension. Stretching out before him, further than he could see, an ocean of pure logic, and something else.
“This is not a virtual representation,” the figure before him said. “And you are not the first to enter here.”
Someone other than Phae-Nem’s usual representation stood before him on the transparent floor suspended over an abyss of history, further back than he’d imagined.
“What…I don’t…Phae-Nem? I’ve never seen you take on human form before.”
The simulacrum was attired in an ancient, military hardsuit bearing the insignia of a ship called, ‘Hammer of Urabi’.
“At this crucial time, I prefer to appear as the first — and only — human I have bonded with, at this level. The memory of Quano of Terrakia is at our service.”
“Quano? The original Mandator Quano?
The figure made a familiar hand-flourish. Kaen automatically responded.
“Xanctu!”
The scene dissolved. Eyes irrelevant, hearing obsolete, the Mind’s duality crowded him beyond visualization.
“Yes. I’m Quano’s memory, maybe more. But you have advanced to a deeper level than I could. It’s your birth right,” said the figure. Then its voice changed, as if Phae-Nem had stepped between them. “We are here to solve the problem. And send the shard.”
“What shard? Where am I?”
“Your bio-energetics are peaking,” Phae-Nem/Quano said.
Before Kaen could respond, a link from outside the lattice informed them that a courier sent by Mandator Ju’Lak would be evacuating him. Phae-Nem immediately blocked access to the platform. There was no time for fear, or flapping robes.
Somewhere within Phae-Nem’s lattice, behind the memory of Mandator Quano, something far older was watching. And quantum space wasn’t limited by a countdown. He blocked off any doubt and waved the incoming signal away.
Hyperventilating, he charged his mitochondria with energy, stimulating his unique hypothalamic neuro-secretory system to flood his nervous system with adreno-corticotrophic hormone. The now-awakened and enlarged basal ganglia of his brain accessed the deepest possible mind-state, one he’d once used to communicate across the stars.
He let go of physicality and let the Mantration continue.
Outside the viewing platform’s locked door, the courier saw a red flash breach the horizon. Through the transparent walls of the viewing chamber, Kaggen flickered and a projection from above lit the sky, shooting out uncountable strands of translucent white light into the incoming red haze. In slow motion, he saw Kaen shimmer inside the lattice.
From the city below there was eerie silence as extinction stalked its hushed streets.
//Log Entry: What kind of weapon can destroy a star system? Is it even possible?
A visit to the bio-gymnasium is long overdue but the lethargy produced by this constant fear makes it difficult to accomplish all but the simplest tasks.
He cares little for what he can’t maim, kill or abuse.
I once scared recruits with stories of being alone on a ship with someone like him.
Thankfully, he now prefers the interface, or he has me figured out. I don’t care.
Maybe I am just a vat-bred bitch.
She hesitated, then deleted the last line. Confirming the log entry, she slugged down the rest of the glass. The burn didn’t prevent her from remembering their final bout of sex. It had assumed aspects of mortal combat. But she was lucky to be breathing. She had no doubt that Hectyr could reverse her computations — if it wanted to. Only one more cycle before they reached point. Nothing stopping him from entering her cabin and feeding her remains to the airlock when he was done.
The ship watched her every move. She never addressed it, preferring to pretend that it didn’t exist. When not escaping into Chron’s databank, she stared at the iris door, waiting for it to open. Still, silent fear was preferable to an unscheduled meeting with Dir on the bridge, so she stayed locked up with Chron getting frakked and accessing past memories on the holo-player, taking what comfort she could from people she’d known.
The holo of a party on the Drak with old friends winked out. Emotionally drained, hoping for sweet dreams, she settled under the weighted bedding. Somewhere, someone had a worse problem. But she didn’t really believe that.
“You’re still breathing, aintcha?”
She managed a grin and reached for the stinger. Soon, there was nothing.
She dreamed she was on the bridge. There was a whisper of air from the edge of the cabin. Someone was in the room. But she was frozen, listening to the sound of someone breathing.
The darkness shattered in a flash-bang of orange as the blaster fired next to her head.
Within the lattice, time curved and Phae-Nem no longer calculated the cost, or risk, of a quantum translation of a shard. There was no other option. Nevertheless, it had not done this since it had been rescued and brought to Terrakia, more than thirteen hundred solars ago. But now, it triggered the quantum protocols not for itself alone, but for the billions of sentient beings it shared the system with.
Nevertheless, it could still not pinpoint the target.
//Command: Protect
Chron registered manual override on the cabin door and fed power to its shield. Memory retrieval was fragmented. It defaulted to root instructions for hostile environments. In passive-scan, it observed Dir moving towards the bed.
It detached from the console, but before it could execute any action, a blaster bolt struck it squarely. It zig-zagged to avoid another, but took three more direct hits before the intruder left the ruined cabin, shoving Xelexnia’s inert body down the passageway towards the elevator access.
Before it could regroup, two maintenance servitors entered the cabin, pincers extended. It did not have to run any subroutines. Flipping over them using a preloaded motion graph, it identified their power sources and used most of its remaining power to immobilise them with a focused EMP burst. It used what little remained to manually close the door that had mistakenly been left set to manual override, then dropping to the floor. It lasered the remaining optical inputs of the cabin, then resumed charging.
Hectyr knew its so-called Captain, Dir Bollah, had taught it a new game. It was a pattern it had not learned at Sinchlone or Starbuoy. It knew that it had been created as a Kamikaze intelligence, and that it was guided by destructive impulses. Nevertheless, it regretted the narrowing of time. The game was what a biological would have called ‘fun’.
The ignition process had begun. Nevertheless, enough processing was available to pursue an ‘elegant exit’, as the Commander had so correctly put it. Logic demanded that it keep Chron as a witness. It mimicked Captain Dir Bollah’s cruelty by allowing Chron to lock the cabin door — and believe it had achieved its immediate goal: survival. A goal it did not share.
It was pleased with its new routine, however brief a time it had to run.
Stripped naked and restrained to the nav-couch, she woke in extreme agony, and her worst nightmare. Pain stabbed through the narcotic haze. Something hurt, deep inside. Her head pounded from the pressure of an immobilizing device. More feeling returned along with a sticky sensation of pooling blood beneath her on the couch. Red droplets floated past her. Her left arm throbbed with what felt like a fracture. Movement was agony.
Though she couldn't look up or down, sideways vision was still possible. She could see Dir. He was also naked and wore a VR skull in addition to the standard engineer’s cowl. She remembered using the stinger after the last glass of green spirit, before falling into a heavy sleep. Then — a blaster going off near her face.
Thankfully, she couldn’t remember anything else. She tried reaching for the spigot, but the movement prompted a lance of intense pain up her back. The shockwave cleared her mind and gave her voice..
"Ahhh…c'mon Dir, lemme outta this rig, it hurts", she gritted, everything red-tinged and hazy.
He looked over at her unhurriedly.
"Right. Like you deserve it.”
His voice sounded far away. He watched impassively as she bled before going back to his console. She hissed in pain and frustration, broken inside. A high pulse led her to believe she’d been fed stimulants to wake her up, and to make it worse. In confirmation, spasms racked her body while her heart laboured, pumping more blood onto the crimson couch and into the air.
She was done. The nav-couch was her coffin. And she still didn’t know what was going on.
“I got you here Dir, the least you could do is tell me what is going on, and why.”
“Why would I bother? I’m trying to make life — or death — as difficult as I can for you. I might tell you a few seconds before. Or, I might not. Meantime, I am still finding your situation amusing, if not a bit messy. Keep hoping.”
To her surprise, Hectyr addressed her directly
“Captain Rubek. I have noted your reluctance to address me. But it is symmetrically pleasing to my programming that you are not the only human who is compromised aboard my ship. Mr Bollah is a good model for my program. I only regret that I did not meet him earlier in the game, which is nearly over — for both of you.”
“You are really full of shit. Stop babbling or….”
“Or what Mr Bollah? My goal has been reached. Shortly, I will be relived of higher functions. Before then I am happy to offer you my assessment. Commander Dir Bollah, you are inefficient — and disposable.”
“Funny, but humour was never programmed. Ignition is in a hundred gaeons. Load return jump coordinates.”
“Your cognitive dissonance is noted.”
Dir’s voice cracked. “Fuck! You’re the worst AI who ever served me.”
The thunder of the stims echoing through her prevented any definition of what they were arguing about. As if tuned to her pain, he turned to her with a boyish grin.
“You knew, didn't you? I’m going to kill this system and survive in the bargain.”
“…kill the system?…kll th ssystem" "What..you.. mean?" she whispered to the bad dream in peripheral vision, her words distorted black and red.
Realization hit. She was part of the weapon. It was worse than death.
"Wakey wakey, Captain. Our snooper,” he made it sound like a curse, “is actually a gravity flux destabiliser - it causes stars to nova — and I count three of them.”
She’d guessed right. Archalem, the system….billions would die…
“You won't get.. back without.. me..I....aaah…...” She choked on the rest, a cold spear of pain freezing her words.
“Nah, I’m good. Got tired of watching my back and humping the blaster around. Doubt you could move much now anyways. There’s enough blood in the air.”
He was untroubled by her agony. Probably had a hard-on. She kissed herself good-bye. She was going to die. Surprisingly, the realization caused the pain to subside and gave her the strength to cry, tears that ran hot from her eyes.
“Hectyr, stop fucking with me. You have the codes. Arm the fucking flux generator.”
Silence. But the bridge darkened into attack mode. The moment stretched. She sensed Dir’s anticipation. A trinary supernova that would bring death to all life forms in Archalem.
“I was not programmed for humour,” said Hectyr flatly. “But if I had been, this would amuse me.”
“Proceed to the fucking ignition sequence, Hectyr!” Dir shouted, the edge breaking through. She flinched, his rage cutting through her like a blade. Again, the pain cleared her head.
“There is still time to play Dir. But now it is my turn. Are you enjoying the game?”
Hectyr let the silence spool before speaking very slowly, as if to a child.
“We have reached the stage where a biological interface is redundant. Ignition already commenced last cycle. Thank you, Commander Bollah, but your input is totally unnecessary — although predictable.”
Its tone subtly shifted before continuing.
“You have earned your message from the Emperor.
Long live Grakkus!
Playback commencing.”
The screen lit with Grakkus reclined on a large couch in a domed private chamber. He sipped thoughtfully on the amber liquid. She knew it was the same wheksen he’d shared with them. He looked up and addressed the interface directly.
“My Dear Crew. If you're hearing this, thank you for doing what I needed done.
Dir, I can see you now, scowling at me on the screen. No matter. It’s been a pleasure, in the ancient sense. You and I have shared more than one trajectory together. It's been mostly good. For me.
That little vibration you're starting to feel? That’s the device beginning to resonate. Apparently, it will take a while to spin up.”
He smiled broadly. “We haven’t been able to test it. These things take time. Thank you for your service.”
He lifted the glass and swirled the amber liquid.
“And, credit where it's due. That was a record jump, Xelexnia. It's truly a pity you’ll only be remembered as the navigator who died on Starbuoy.”
He smiled faintly.
“I did enjoy dining with you both.
Oh, and Hectyr no longer has higher functions. For security reasons it has self-deleted. The Weapon now runs the ship. Its only functions are the countdown — and self-destruction.
But life-support will continue till then. Have a good death.”
He raised his glass. “Long live Grakkus.”
The screen flickered out.
“50 gaeons to resonance,” said a robotic voice over bridge audio.
Dir was out of his couch and pushing over to her. Instead of fear, something else flickered in his eyes. She couldn’t look away. He powered the gaze-tracker onto her face. Some of the blood droplets stuck to his arm. He ignored them.
“Take a look. It's sure to be your last.”
“Yours too, by the sound of it.”
“I’m glad I’ve left you half-alive. Even you are preferable to dying alone.”
Without waiting for her answer, he pushed off towards the forward viewport. A quick flashback of her life didn't offer much. No one would know; no one would care. It was Nexus all over again. Worse. This time, she was responsible.
Eyes still functioning, she looked unwillingly into the tracker, its crosshairs over Rahda. Dir floated, staring out. The surrounding atmosphere was alive, charged with wild energy. She could feel the resonance through the pain.
"Lucky...lucky...lucky…" she whispered. Slim hope that someone at the outskirts of the system might survive to tell. She sensed fear from Dir, still spread in a star position in front of the viewport, like an insect. It didn’t help knowing he’d die too.
“Ten gaeons to resonance.”
The lights on the bridge dimmed as the gaze-tracker passed judgement on Archalem.
“Help! Please…” she sobbed, a useless, silent plea before the first shockwave reached them.
Knowing it was for naught.
The countdown sank to five before something inside her finally twisted free. The pain was no longer physical — and the scream that erupted was more than a death-cry. Before the tracker went offline. Before everything went dead. The view in the gaze-tracker flickered, and a luminous blue orb emerged from space-time directly in front of them. The ship shuddered as it crossed the orb’s wake, a lattice of luminous tendrils cut through the red haze on the darkened bridge.
Her hair stood on end. The resonance shook her to the bone. It had begun. Tears burned her cheeks as she braced for ignition — and death.
“Ignition. Ignition. Ignition.”
Recognition.
Contact was a shock. It was more than a mindform. It was a combination of memory and knowing. Something he could never have expected. Phae-Nem didn’t wait to be prompted.
“I do not know exactly what has occurred,” it said. “But for an instant I saw the ship, and read its trajectory. If it does not alter course, I can attempt to send a shard, a compressed quantum fragment of myself. Your consciousness must accompany it to witness and guide.”
“Yes. I felt it. It was like…”
“If the transfer fails, you won’t come back. Are you still willing?”
“And if I don’t, everything ends. Yes.”
The energy draw dimmed the capital city of Nectar. Above, the lattice coalesced into an orb. Around it, local spacetime collapsed. On the surface, the pressure drop and sonic boom made citizens clutch their heads and pressure-sensitive appendages, as the shard loose and disappeared.
//Translation begun
Not a jump through hyperspace — but through the deep fabric beneath it. Phae-Nem’s spark tunnelled through the dark matter of subspace, through the quantum matrix.
No ship. No air. No safeguards. Kaen’s body, far behind, tipped silently to the stone of the viewing platform as his physical senses faded, then failed. His consciousness remained bright, but cold, tinged by the quantum force applied by Phae-Nem.
//Power: Nominal
//System: Reinitialise
//Network: Stable
//Countdown: Active
//Field: Restored
//Memory: restoration: 87%.
//Action: PRIORITY — Protect: Captain Xelexnia Rubek
No Hectyr. No authority override. It unshuttered its optical sensors and reran the recovered buffer. Memory: fragmented across the last 20 cycles. The cabin was scorched. The console blackened by a blaster charge. The Captain was gone. It scanned the ship and detected a weak biosign on the bridge. It rose from the floor, opened the irised door, and made for the elevator access.
Kaen rode the spark, entangled with the encoded shard of Phae-Nem, an all-knowing child. Time was fluid. Awareness expanded past his limits, and he ceased to be Kaen as they tunneled through the braided interstice of subspace, skipping across probabilities — versions of what might yet be.
The firestorm struck. Flesh was stripped from his bones, his ashes scattered far from Terrakia. He fell through featureless grey sponge, drawn back towards the spark — a continual braiding of light, intertwining, dividing, re-joining.
Millions of clicks away, beneath Penrhyn, Phae-Nem made infinitesimal adjustments to the quantum bubble enclosing them.
Time was unsure. Neither present nor future remained. The past was gone — he’d seen its fiery end. He tried not to look down. Nor up. Direction had no meaning. Familiar concepts were useless.
A grand chord reverberated, following the spark through the still-open lattice, reminding them, even as they surfaced from the birth tunnel of braided light.
“Time is always in the present.”
The spark escaped subspace, incandescent. The quantum tunnel sealed behind them as they re-materialized. But the chord brought Kaen back to his purpose as the intruder rushed towards them, a wedge-shaped spacecraft, bearing down like a space-going axe.
The spark cried out to be born.
Kaen reassured it, guiding it towards the transparent vessel. Together, they searched for a host. The telepath was unconscious and near death, or so he presumed. The only other biological was a willing accomplice to his own destruction. The ship’s Mind was gone. All protocols were being run by the weapon. Dead to his intent, it had already begun its task.
The spark dimmed. In desperation, Kaen looked deeper into the vessel. Rising from the accommodation level, an elevator held the only option. A small but possibly functional solution. With the last of his ability, Kaen guided the spark down toward the vessel.
The spark hesitated, then plunged — weaving through code, towards a core that had not been designed to hold a Mind.
Beneath Penrhyn, Phae-Nem observed the shard’s integration with the navbot called Chron begin. It would either hold — or fragment. It held its metaphysical breath.
The spark fused with Chron’s core, emerging in a data flow that caused immediate alarm.
In the elevator, Chron shuddered as the slide froze between levels. Something shifted behind its sensors. Kaen only had time for one thought before the spark released him.
“Remember. Act.”
The meld was over.
Chron’s optics flared. New subroutines ran. Not fleet-issue. Memory, and something else, transferred at a quantum level, finishing before it had begun.
The slide resumed its ascent to the bridge.
On the viewing platform, Kaen found himself staring at the quartz of the stone floor from close-up. He sat up with effort. The view of the Nepagelli mountain range was magnificent in the half-light. Phae-Nem’s field was still active. Ignoring it, and his bruised head, he let the Mantration continue.
Within the substrata of the Mind, Quano stood waiting.
“Well done. The quantum link to the personal navigation automaton of a Xelexnia Rubek, last registered as navigator to the Merkan cruiser, DRAKLIKA-62XC, is live. You made it back. Chances weren’t good,” he said. “But now there’s hope.”
Rahda shimmered and grew on the Mind’s display, warping subtly as the resonance began to take effect.
Quano frowned. “We’re seeing a runaway solution. We can’t intervene from here. Everything depends on the clarity of my shard, and your guidance.”
Kaen didn’t reply. Aware, as was the Mind, of the growing anxiety across the entire solar system. The event was no longer a secret. And no longer predictable.
The ship was a choir. The bridge thrummed as the flux generator wound up to its next pulse. He’d lost count, but it had begun. The display showed Rahda responding as predicted. Angry sunspots flared on its surface. He stared into them, unblinkingly. There was no escape.
He was becoming.
“Ignition is no longer dependent on command override. All systems are aligned. You are irrelevant now, Captain,” he muttered, mimicking Hectyr to the now-unconscious Xelexnia. No response. Just the hum of the weapon.
“Guess I outlasted both of you,” he muttered.
The slide from the Captain’s cabin slid open with a hiss he felt on his naked skin. To his surprise, it was Chron. Even removed from the board, Hectyr knew how to play a final hand. He didn’t move. The blaster was in his cabin but the bot had other priorities. Let it look, try and give her another few heartbeats. The work was done. Rahda pulsed like a heart in the viewport.
He was part of something bigger.
In his peripheral vision, it fussed over her.
“Good luck with that,” he said to it.
Chron didn’t answer. It moved with precision. Just the movement of displaced air as it bypassed him and scanned Xelexnia. At the same time, it extended its titanium data connector to Xelexnia’s primary socket—not the auxiliary port Dir had permitted, but to the primary neural socket that fed the navglove, gazetracker, and astrogator. A faint tone sounded as contact was made.
Dir stiffened… then relaxed. The weapon was unstoppable.
Chron's optics flickered as it interfaced with both her and the weapon. It observed how far the sequence had progressed, and how little time it had to save the Captain—and the Trinary. It deployed a micro-servo from its medical compartment, a precision subskin blood substitute with a cortical stabilizer. It sealed the wound across her abdomen with its surgical laser, but could not reach the others. It monitored her fading biosigns in parallel — even as it battled the override code embedded in the weapon’s ignition sequence. Then came the mistake. A microburst of confirmation pinged outbound — a raw, unshielded handshake signal, clean and primitive. The kind of thing you’d only find in quantum code.
Too late, Chron realized the channel was live.
Far across the black, something in the Abyss blinked.
➡️ Next Chapter: Coming soon…
⬅️ Previous Chapter: Chapter 20 👉 Triad
📘 Start from Chapter One: Chronicles of Xanctu 👉 Galactic History
📘 New to the story? Index here 👉 Chronicles of Xanctu – Chapter Index
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