The Battle of Twinne Yashtoor: 12,000 Years ago

Chronicles of Xanctu

Synopsis

Previously in ‘Chronicles of Xanctu’

The lone shuttlecraft navigated between a score of frozen Uxot out-fighters with an authority that was surreal. It skimmed the last fighter in slow motion, passing close enough to float to. Quano of Terrakia stared out of the shuttlecraft’s tinted port but could not determine if the fighter was abandoned or not. It did not matter. Its mothership was also disabled by whatever power outage had affected the entire Twinne Yashtoor system. But the combatants of this space battle would receive no timely assistance. There were no habitable planets, and all the system’s habitats and orbitals had long since been destroyed. Any who still survived were the breathing dead. The system was cursed with rare minerals in the icy rings of its three gas giants. It was a system for hardened miners, or somewhere you could hide and nobody would bother trying to find you. With two dying suns and numerous dead planets, it was a depressing place. Somewhere he’d likely die—-if he wasn’t already dead.

"I feel …you.."

With a gentle tug, the shuttle swung into a slow curve, its nose coming around and the forward viewport showing him the remains of a yellow-hulled medical unit. Innards exposed, outer skin blistered open, the twisted housing of showed the remains of a destroyed launcher of some kind. Illuminated by the shuttle’s orange lights, limbless, headless troopers of every specie spun trails of fluids outside. Looking away from the carnage he closed his feline eyes, his broad face clouded with despair. The images wouldn’t quit. The main viewport had cracked open. Their navigator, Ina, sucked screaming past him, her arms reaching out to him, the terror in her eyes still real.

Sweat ran down his broad, blue-black forehead, fear and discomfort real enough to convince him that he was alive. Even with eyes squeezed tightly shut, the image wouldn’t go away. The destroyer, ‘Hammer of Urabi’, had been in service for two hundred and nine solars. It had carried a crew of three hundred and eight. The heavy weapons deck had taken the first strike, but in the end it hadn’t made any difference. Breached by a succession of antimatter torpedoes, they’d never had a chance. The ship had just folded in on itself. He couldn’t guess at the deaths suffered by the others, but his last memory was of being on the bridge—-before being sucked out of the breached front port into a bright blue light.

Red lights flickered over the stench of burning insulation and fouled gear.

"Where the hell is backup Quano? For shards sake, shut that up…"

"Commander we've been breached, I…"

Someone was screaming as the front viewport shattered in a red-time whoop of escaping air as their spinning bodies got sucked through the gaping port into the blue light. None of them would survive, not for long—-and he was one of them.

Unclenching his fists, Quano stared down at his hands in the ambient light. They appeared almost transparent, his bones and veins visible as if seen through a body scanner. He closed his eyes and tried to remember the light, but the effort led to a blurring of mental focus; a dimming of consciousness—-at the edge a pulse of blue light—-comforting for some reason.

Distracted by a pull to the right, he looked away from the viewport. The autopilot chattered politely to itself, taking instructions from an unknown controller in a language he didn’t recognise. “Who are you? Where the frak am I? How did I get here? Am I dead?”, he yelled at it, but the shuttle didn’t answer his outburst. Instead, it did another slow turn and left the silent, spinning, graveyard behind. He sobbed quietly to himself, unable to relive the horror he’d just been through, or find any logic to his situation. From what he could observe of the pilot’s console, life-support and power were fully operational, apparently unaffected by the shut-down. It hadn’t just been an EMP power-out. The battle of Twinne Yashtoor had been frozen in mid combat by the same unknown third-party that now controlled the shuttle. He didn’t even know how he knew this. But if he was still alive, he owed his life to their intervention. To his knowledge, no known weapon existed that could immobilize an entire star system. The shuttle's overheads flickered red, as if agreeing with him, or reminding him that he was on borrowed time. He had no sense of how much time had elapsed since he’d been ejected into space. His suit would’ve given him a cycle of life-support, if he’d still been wearing it. No matter. Eventually, the deep would take them all, humanoids and reptoids alike.

His brow creased and his lips compressed as he stared into the bloody void. The war with the Uxot Alliance of reptoid planets was a conflict that had the dubious distinction of being the longest war ever waged over the greatest distances in recorded memory. And all because of a dispute over mineral rights in this very system, a hundred solars ago. “Fucking space dust”, he raged out load, then shivered violently, wondering if he wasn’t just one of the inert, spinning bodies outside.

The shuttle did a slow inside curl with the same implacably constant acceleration, swiftly leaving the silent, spinning, graveyard behind. He closed his eyes, trying to remember what had happened on the bridge before he’d regained consciousness on this shuttle. For an instant, the memory of the blue light was a voice in his head.

“You'll make it if you don't panic”.

A scanner flickered alive, distracting him with a far-view of a giant teardrop craft, girthed with flickering orange lights. Initially too distant to make out any detail, it came up fast until he could clearly see craft’s shifting luminosity through the front viewport. Somehow he knew the colors were not radiated light, but visible resonance of an unknown field technology. He did not know how he knew this. With no warning the blue ship was suddenly menacingly close. He braced for impact, but instead the bulkheads dissolved around him with a diffused glow as the proto-shuttle plunged into the luminous blue ship that resembled a moving droplet of water in zero-G.

There was a standard docking beep from the console but it took him some time to accept that all motion had halted. Lying back in the acceleration couch, which was all that remained of the shuttle, he took a couple of deep breaths. Better breathing inside this capsule—-better than outside, not breathing.

The couch remained comfortably solid under him, while the environment morphed seamlessly into a transparent ovoid pod that was only a pace in any direction. He wriggled in the chair. It adjusted to his demand and helped him to his feet. Legs stiff, he balanced with difficulty. The floor was elastic. Gravity approximately .9 G consistent. The transparent bubble revealed many similar pods around him, but the proto-material did not yield enough transparency to reveal if what he saw was an eternity of reflections or other spacers restrained to a single cell, as he was. They all waved back, or had he waved first? It was impossible to tell. The semi-transparent membrane that enclosed him had a life of its own, a braided transparent membrane outside of which currents of varying hues flowed, like fluids inside a living organism. He reached out and touched it. To his surprise it was elastic and reacted immediately to his touch by dimming the pod’s light.

Holos from the battle displayed at him from every angle. Powerless to look away, he watched as ship after ship was obliterated. Spacers of many different Xenotypes atomized, asphyxiated, burned, frozen, crushed; too many deaths to describe. He witness them all. The carnage came to an abrupt halt, but the lights remained dim and the walls opaque. Exhausted, he returned to the chair and wriggled it into a recliner.

He must’ve lost consciousness. The pod had shrunk even further and did not allow any movement. Whether he'd been drugged or had fallen asleep didn't matter. The process he was part of left no time for anything besides amazement. Through the now-transparent membrane, he made out other pods in the turquoise, sometimes effervescent current, all moving in the same direction. The pod swung up and around in the flow, giving him a brief view of a widening artery, and then a glimpse of some membranous valve closing. The pod drifted upwards in the turquoise flow, it’s pace slowing. Without further warning it extruded him upwards through the floor, depositing him unsteadily on his feet in a large circular chamber surrounded by an equal number of disoriented humanoids—-and reptilians.

In the background, through the largest transparent viewport he'd ever seen, and much closer to a star than he’d thought possible, the dying stars orbited each other exchanging star matter. Not able to speak or move his gaze, Quano stared at the lazy stream of star matter collapsing halfway between the blue and red suns. It fell slowly back into itself in an event that lit the chamber in sparkling rainbows.

From below their feet, glowing coils appeared in the membranous floor. The coils extruded a pod filled with an opaque liquid that formed around the being that stood before them in the centre of the chamber.

“Welcome to Gift Bearer. I am Deep Anchor of the Xenarchon.”

The Xenarchon was neither humanoid nor reptilian, it was amphibian with vestigial arms. The water suit it wore made detailing difficult, but somehow it spoke directly into his head, the words flowing with a series of shifting dreams; a world you could touch the sky; cyan seas full of mating songs; a sun gone old, but not afraid to die. He could not discern in what language it spoke, only that he understood what it was saying.

“We do not have much time.”

The resonance for the word 'time' sent shockwaves through his body, as if someone had just activated a nearby warp drive. There was a rapid gravity shift. In an instant the blue ship was no longer there. Suitless, he hung naked in the void before Twinne Yashtoor’s mating stars. A grand chord resonated through every atom of his being, even the twin suns fading into bizarre insignificance. In the brilliant clarity of the shared moment, as the interdimensional pathway opened, he heard the word ‘Xanctu’.

In an instant, past, present and future intertwined and he saw their shared purpose; to witness and share this moment for all generations to come. Ninety two survivors, humanoid and reptilian alike, mentally bonded. No time to marvel as a thin film of blue static formed around him, and before he could comprehend what was happening, he was returned to the ship. “Gift Bearer is happy. It loves heat and radiation.”

Vision returned in a flash. Quano remained where he stood, facing the pod. Paces away, a Draco fixed red eyes upon him and looked away. For some reason, Quano felt no fear, just sadness. Like him, it did not move. He looked down at his hands. They seemed both far away and very close at the same time. Empty inside, he knew he was not alone in his regret. Were they waiting for someone to speak, or already engaged? Legs weak, Quano sat down and hugged his knees. The floor created a backrest and cushioned him for comfort. The Draco did likewise and shortly all of them had settled. Looking over those seated, he felt a shock of happiness recognizing Sen Heinek, a medic from the Urabi’s escort. Thoughts in his head persisted, a frequency of understanding that produced static discharges behind his eyes.

Meaning flowed and severed other thoughts. The liquid surrounding the amphibian’s head foamed when it spoke; “It is foreseen that we could not avoid being your symbolic processors. Such is our tenure.” Quano could not discern what language it spoke, only that he understood what it was saying. At the far end of the chamber, he thought he could make out the bright yellow hair of someone who could have been their navigator, Ina. An impossible wish. Further communication from the Xenarchon severed all other thoughts, the meanings, explanations and validations flowing like a river of shifting dreams.

“We only remain here briefly. We do not have much time.”

Again, the frequency for the word 'time' sent a shockwave through his body. The disembodied voice continued using lesser tones; “Your dimension is crossed with shadow. We help you avoid it—-if this succeeds.”

“To where do you go?”, he asked it, his spoken words empty of sound in the stillness of the chamber. “We go to beyond stars”, it answered, looking into him. Through the suddenly transparent liquid, he saw its prismatic eyes, doorways to another dimension, a Galactic heartbeat that he couldn’t escape. “When do you go?”, interrupted the Draco, speaking loudly in crude basic, its guttural accent and unfathomable expression masking any feelings it may have had. “Time is not linear. We assemble it as needed. I endanger my species, but it is foreseen.”

Quano trembled. The chamber shrank to a micron-thin layer of reality.

“In solars…”, grunted the Draco, apparently unimpressed with the Xenarchon’s obtuse response to his question. Quano grinned. There were hisses and clicks, grunts and smiles at the Draco’s attempted joke. The reptoid was doubtlessly from this Galaxy, or dimension. The Xenarchon was from somewhere else. It made an audible popping noise he took for humour, then it continued without answering the Draco’s question.

“You can aid us by making peace and forming a Council of Nine to govern for a decamillennium, at which time we can return.”

An engraved gold cylinder now stood on the transparent podium that swiftly formed next to the Xenarchon. It waved an appendage and the cylinder unscrewed itself, revealing an orb shaped crystal.

The circle and triangle glyph burned itself into their shared consciousness. Grand chords resonated Xanctu, the frequency of Cosmic evolution.

After a time, he could not tell the duration, the crystal returned to the golden cylinder and focus returned. The Xenarchon continued its silent speech; “All of you in this chamber are original witnesses. The resonance of Xanctu, both here, and out there. It is the essence of Cosmic Law. It must be sought by all sentient life forms, regardless of their biological make-up, or belief structure. The Promise must be kept!”

“Ayehh. The promise must be kept”, said the Draco.

“The Promise must be kept”, he responded.

“There are three such Peace Compacts. The crystals inside them are of extra-galactic origin and cannot be duplicated. When opened they will all yield the experience you have just had, and also contain identical recordings of your personal memories, thoughts and feelings. All your data banks will receive a copy, and also the terms for coexisting in peace. One will be given to the Confederation for safe-keeping, another to the Alliance. The third Peace Compact has been hidden, its location entrusted to an Artificial Intelligence. Its coordinates will only become known if necessary, but we continue to hope that this will never be the case.”

“Ina?”

“Quano?”

“Ina…love you Ina”

“Love you too, Quano.”

“Who the fuck is Quano?. Shards, what’s this? Lucky Quano. Aich’sht…nestmates? Parsecs home….back to Imram…ship go nowhere…. Fight finished. Mate. Why me? Can’t cry….”

“Ina?”

“Ina? I’m here, Quano.”

The creature waved one of its appendages in what appeared to be farewell; “Before I return, and you are all returned to your respective environments, you are cautioned that the Sol system must not be visited. It is currently inhabited by pre-technological humanoid tribes on Earth, the third planet. You will will find the coordinates for the system defense outpost we have constructed in a nearby asteroid field to prevent this from occurring. The Promise that must be kept!”

Without hesitation, Quano, and all assembled, responded; “The Promise must be kept.”

The Xenarchon and Peace Compact were enveloped by a pod. It glittered briefly before being absorbed by a membrane in the floor, then it was gone. The couch enclosed him like it had done before. This time he felt no fear—-alive, with a story to tell!

"Quano?.."

"I am here Ina…”

"I love you... "

He lay back and let her warmth wash over him, hardly noticing his travel through the ship. He was not alone. Quano of Terrakia would never be alone again.

Continue reading ‘Chronicles of Xanctu’

#afrofuturism #afrofuturistic #ancient mysteries #future #fantasy #myth #science fiction #sci-fi #speculative fiction #SpaceOpera

© Return of The White Lady (1994) by Mike Kawitzky

© Xelexnia 2022 - Offworld Productions Pty Ltd

© Chronicles of Xanctu by Mike Kawitzky 2023