3.02 – The expedition

Living in a rich country on an imperial planet was a two-edged blade. You had everything you could possibly have but on the other hand when you reach middle-age there is nothing more you can do with your life. My wives left me, my sons, grandsons and grand-grandsons were already grown up a long time ago and I was getting freaked out. So… I turned to xeno-archeology. Call me crazy or even idiot, but antiques fascinate me. I wish I could live in the time when books were paper made. Those must have been good times. Having the pleasure to touch the wrinkly paper and to hear the pages turn.

It was obvious that the legendary Book of Mikel captured my interest. This, was nothing more nothing less, than a book of theoretical existence with all the necessary information to start a society from ground zero and was written by a Pleadean. This Mikel guy was the same who created the first humans and for that, carrier of incredible technology. But that wasn’t the only reason that a Book full of secrets which everybody thinks it doesn’t exist can make me rich and famous. If my reader have been in fairly long relativistic flights and living in some moon, then I hope you remember that the Dragons have all disappeared. The last hope of the draconian legacy is an egg that the last Dragon left, and is now hidden by the Alfins. Well, that egg is our only chance to resurrect the Dragon’s royal lineage. That’s where I come in, because to do something of value in this crumbling shades of an Empire that is no more, it takes someone with power of decision and action. Long story short, because my time is also short and I didn’t even get started, I packed my things and departed to Shagorrah.

In my private expedition was going a pilot, last generation automaton. A biologist in second hand that I bought some time ago and with human form, but very useful because it had a xenoglossia upgrade – it spoke a lot of languages I didn’t even started to understand. I also contracted a personal guard – an Alfin – after all, if I would find the book, I wouldn’t have to mind about the money, so I thought. Freelancing Alfins were the costliest mercenaries in the whole history of the Reptilian Empire, and this one wasn’t exception. He was costly in more than one order of meaning.

I was also taking my most trusty partner, my multifunction’s personal device class Sha-9 with an quantum tunneling antenna and also had interface with standard clothing. I could access to any planetary network available in a 200 light-year radius. I could even plug the device to my coat and see the display in the sleeve of my coat. With me there was also my plasma gun and a spare thermal suit. My ship was a GS-322 with serial number TD2-891774, if anyone knows where it is, I would like it returned, she had a certain personal value.

So I went. Departed from the surface, locked onto a low stable orbit and then, we burned to make the orbital transfer to the Gravitic Catapult. We requested a trip to Shagorrah, B star, Tzabashah planet. I prepared, put on the the travel suit and entered the suspended animation sarcophagus. Placed on the air mask and gave order to fall asleep. Looking over to the monitor, the outside camera was pointed to the Catapult’s long cylinder with more or less six kilometers. The small thrusters were firing to align the Catapult with the destination stellar system. My ship was also making its final corrections. The camera retracted and the monitor went black. All dangerous parts of the ship retracted too. The gas that would leave me sleeping filled the sarcophagus. A few meters away from starting the relativistic acceleration, some red lights went up to warn us of the incoming trip, but I was thinking only in one thing: 110 years gone!

The relativistic deceleration went good. Eleven years for us went by in a jiffy, but we weren’t that old. When I got out of the sarcophagus and saw myself in the mirror, noticed in a few skin wrinkles and some darkened scales. The trip back was going to take another eleven years. Doing the math, you could tell that I wouldn’t do another crazy thing like this. Fortunately, this time, there were no problems, no holes nor explosions or even passengers being blasted out.

All was in place and Tzabashah Planet dominated the monitor view. The MagSails were completely open to repel the astral wind coming from Shagorrah star. Like a magnet polarized to repel another, the MagSails permitted that our ship behaved just like a bullet shot through water – in constant deceleration. Without the sails, we would enter the star system on one side and exited through the other side, perhaps at greater speed. The trip was a strange experience, but there were stories of people addicted to letting their old life behind in a blink of an eye. Even today I don’t know if I liked it. I’ve felt different when looking about me. It was an unexplainable feeling of a brutal detachment from everything, even from my own body. Doctors said that a brief psychological dissociation should follow any relativistic flight.

I went to the cockpit where the pilot was sitting. I looked over his shoulder and asked if everything was all right.

“Everything nominal.”

“Will it take too much time until we get the insertion orbit?”

“No. Maybe three orbits or something.” He replied and showed the planned orbit in the computer.

I grunted nodding, but when I got out of the cockpit I started to think why in the world does that automaton answers a question with “or something.” Maybe he thought I was too stupid to understand exact replies. I heard the thrusters fire briefly while I was having fun levitating in the narrow corridors. I entered the lab, but the biologist was directly connected to the instruments by a thick cable in his hand. He was probably analyzing the atmosphere and the soil composition. I decided not to interrupt.

I went then to the living room and there was the Alfin, Tashrranesh was his name. Was sitting upright with his arms crossed. The long and high muzzle and super developed canines identified him as a pure Alfin. A very rare pure-blood. He didn’t looked too present, gave almost no signs of life as I arrived. He was already in his power armor and in his back was strapped the staff with characters written in old drakmosh. It was easy to understand it was an antique weapon. The staff was the traditional weapon of the personal guards of the Dragons and until that moment I had never seen one like that. Tashrranesh carried the staff to everywhere. I sat in front of him and opened a small port over me to draw a fine tube from where I sucked water.

“Well Tash? How was the trip?” I asked while I sucked some more water. He grunted. “You don’t speak much…” to which he grunted again. “The biologist must be photographing the surface to find artificial constructions, so we can land on the right place.”

“Right…” he finally said.

“You don’t look thrilled with our mission.”

“The Book of Mikel does not exist.”

“Ah! I get your problem now.”

“We should protect the egg until it bursts open, not chasing some lizard tale of a ghost book.”

“How much time has passed since the Dragon Exinacessalatraxas left that egg? Four? Five thousand? Nobody even knows if the egg will open.”

“We should protect it. End of discussion.”

“All right Paladin of the Empire.”

“That egg will open and the Dragon bloodline will be restored, as will the Empire be united again under that bloodline and crush the humans once and for all.”

“All right, all right. I got it.”

Time passed slowly and the ship wasn’t big enough for me to be not always stumbling upon Tash. He went from a laconic Alfin to a very pain in the ass Alfin, but right when we were in the middle of a heated discussion about political decentralization, the pilot warned that we should go to our rooms while the ship was entering the atmosphere. The biologist found some artificial constructions, but the good news was that the air was breathable. The bad news was that it was pretty cold.

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