The Mirage on the Brink of Oblivion (The Epic of Aravinda Book 3) (12 page)

Asha bowed to her. “With great gratitude, your Majesty.”

In silent disbelief, Jyana watched as Asha glided back over to where Zahn was sitting, and they both appeared almost as surprised as she was.

“My dear citizens, Servants of the Mirage, we are facing a challenging time, but I know that if each of us remember that we are part of a cohesive whole and work together with this in mind, victory
will
be inevitable. Thank you for standing in audience for the recognition of these bearers of light. You are all dismissed.”

And with that, the Empress spun around, her red-orange hair flowing in a graceful curve, and walked back down to the other end of the platform. In a blink, she vanished from their sight, leaving them in the darkness of night.

“Something is going on with them,” Jyana said. “I can feel it.”

“Take it easy,” Torin said. “They’re neophytes. They’ve only been here for, what, a few days? You overestimate them, Jyana. The Empress will deal with them soon enough.”

Jyana frowned. “Perhaps that’s what concerns me.”

CHAPTER
23

INTO THE LABYRINTH

Darshana inhaled sharply as Yantrik tightened the strange device around her waist.

He looked up to her with sympathetic eyes. “Too tight? Sorry about that. Like I said, it’s a makeshift design. Let me see if I can adjust it.”

With care, he removed the device and took it back over to the dining room table.

Vivek, who was sitting at one end, shook his head. “This is too risky. If this contraption malfunctions when she’s in the room, who knows what they’re going to do to her!”

“Shh!” Yantrik sat down and adjusted the device. “She’s going to be fine.” He held it up to Darshana before fastening the belt around her waist once more, carefully centering a bronze square below her navel.

“That should do it.” Yantrik stood up. “Keeping the emitter centered should be the most comfortable orientation, but you can experiment to find what’s most comfortable to you, of course.”

Darshana pulled on the belt and breathed deeply. “It’s fine. But how long will it last?”

“Well, a single cloak cell from a fighter isn’t designed to run alone, so I had to tweak it a bit. I’d say you should have cloak for at least all night.”

She nodded. “That’ll work.”

Vivek stood up and set his hand on his beloved’s shoulder. “Are you sure about this, dear? What if they catch you and realize who you are? They’ll interrogate you.”

Darshana pursed her lips. “It’s the only way, my love. I know that complex like the veins of my hands. I’ll come back safe.”

“Just be careful,” he whispered.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, picking up a small daypack and putting it on. “Okay, let’s test it.”

Darshana pressed a small button atop the bronze square at the center of her waist and faded away like a cloud of smoke in the breeze.

Yantrik nodded. “It’ll do.”

Vivek only blinked in surprise.

The old engineer walked around Darshana, admiring the sight of his handiwork, or rather, the utter absence of sight, except for a ghostly distortion toward the floor.

He grumbled. “I’m seeing a slight wavering toward your feet. Could you try rotating the central dial a bit?”

The wavering shape grew larger, appearing as tall as a person.

“No, no,” Yantrik said. “The other direction.”

Within moments, the shape faded away until not a single trace was visible.

He nodded. “Good. You’ll do fine. Oh, and don’t forget this.” He handed her a small white card. “If the documents I decoded are recent, this should get you into the underground complex.”

“Thanks, Yantrik,” Darshana said, taking it. “I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

Yantrik felt Darshana embrace him, though he could see nothing. He looked down to the floor and chuckled. He’d never been hugged by someone he couldn’t see.

…

Later that evening, Darshana found herself walking along one of the large outer rings of Ashraya City. To raise as little suspicion as possible, Yantrik and Vivek had dropped her off in the nearby forest on the edge of the city. Now she only had to reach one of the service elevators located in most of the underground subway stations. She remembered there being a small station on the 13th ring and had them drop her there, where there would be the least chance of discovery.

Air traffic was minimal, and despite being a residential area filled with round, multilevel homes, the street was oddly quiet.

As Darshana passed a lighted column, she checked to see if she cast a shadow at all. She squinted but could find no trace. Yantrik’s contraption was working beautifully. At least she didn’t have to worry about that.

She walked faster, toward an intersection ahead. An airboat zoomed by her on the right, gliding a few meters above the street, and she felt grateful that the pods no longer had to ride over the land. At the corner, she found a narrow stairwell heading below street level and followed its lighted handrails as they curved down to one of the smallest subway stations she’d ever seen.

Not much had changed in the twelve years she’d been absent. The lev-track, oversight office, and benches were as she’d remembered them. But where was the service elevator?

She walked along the wide wall opposite of the lev-track, but saw nothing.

Great. There are dozens of stations in this city, and I pick the one without a service elevator? What are the odds?

Darshana continued to search and was relieved to find a narrow elevator in the farthest corner of the station.

Whew. That was close. Okay, Darshana. Stay calm.

She pulled out the small white card from her pocket and slid it into the slot beside the elevator door. It chimed, and the door slid back, revealing a cramped, gleaming white room.

Darshana stepped inside and studied the small display embedded in the wall. Instead of touching one of the five levels it displayed, she typed in a number. The door closed, but nothing else happened. She bit her lip and waited.

At last, she felt the elevator move downward, and heaved a sigh of relief.

Okay. Step one complete.

After a few seconds, the embedded display went blank.

That’s odd. Didn’t the displays show the destination? Maybe they changed it.

The elevator slowed down, and once again the door slid back without a sound. Ahead, she saw the familiar stone walls of the underground tunnels and stepped out. A few other people were in this corridor too, and she breathed as quietly as she could. Just because she was rendered invisible didn’t mean she was undetectable. She would have to remember to stay quiet.

Darshana followed the curving corridor to a larger intersection where three similar corridors met. On a nearby wall was a large display, showing off a high resolution map of the main arteries of the tunnel system, spanning the area under the city in perfect concentric circles.

Of course, she didn’t need the map. Darshana could find the Confluence Hall even if she were blindfolded. She’d been there countless times and moved ahead with confidence, gliding past dozens of people in silence.

After navigating another elevator system and several curving ramps to lower levels, she found herself at one of the hall’s ten entrances.

She was in luck. The door was half open.

Okay. I am like the wind. I am weightless.

She sucked in her stomach and tried to slip through the opening without making a sound. But as she made her approach, one of the representatives swooped in from behind her, and she nearly lost her balance to avoid bumping into him.

Yikes! That was too close.

She tried to catch her breath as quietly as possible. Still, the door was opened wider than before, and she slipped inside without a sound.

Arranged in the center of the room were various Ashraya officials, Island Defense officers, and even a few United Island Peace ministers. Then she spotted a familiar face: Master Nirupak, her old friend and director of the Ashraya Observatory. She hadn’t seen Master Nirupak since the day she’d disappeared from her lab, all those years ago.

She blinked. Something was different about him, but she had trouble placing it.

Despite the hall’s grand size, only about a hundred people were here, and she watched as the guards closed each of its ten large doors, sealing them all in.

At last, she heard a low horn reverberate around the expansive room, and as everyone sat down, a feeling of nostalgia filled her, remembering that the low horn was their traditional call to attention. She’d forgotten it and had somehow grown to miss it at the same time.

She sat near the center of the last row to reduce any chances of discovery. Far ahead, one of the ministers stepped up to the central pedestal and spoke.

“On behalf of the United Island ministers, we welcome you to the Confluence Hall with somber tidings on this clear night.” The woman’s voice suggested that she was older than she appeared. “I am Minister Shradha, and I call this emergency meeting into session. As you are all no doubt aware, we haven’t held a meeting like this in quite some time, but unprecedented developments in our skies have necessitated this meeting. As shocking as it may seem, the future of our world could depend on the choices we make over the next few days.”

A platform behind the director rose slightly, and a large hologram appeared in the air behind her. The image that hung in the air was dreadfully familiar: a dark circle that oozed by one of the gas giants. It was similar to the video that Darshana had seen in Yantrik’s ship, only this time the clarity was much greater. She could even see the little shard-like shapes of the Vakragha ships around it.

“Captured by the Ashraya Observatory, the images behind me have been reviewed by every major political leader on this planet with adequate security clearance. I must stress that this information is being closely guarded, and for now is not being shared with the public. We believe that, until we have a clear course of action, this information should be kept secret. I now present Master Nirupak, director of the Ashraya Observatory, to discuss some constructive responses to this unusual, and I believe dire, circumstance.”

Another man with long dark hair and a deeply lined face walked up to the minister and bowed. She bowed in return and backed away from the podium.

“Greetings, council,” Nirupak began. “As many of you know, I made it my top priority to settle the ET debate within my term as director, but I never imagined it would come to this. As you have all seen from the recording, we now have irrefutable evidence of intelligent life from beyond our world. Yet after careful analysis, these entities appear aggressive in nature.” He paused, considering sea of faces that filled the hall. “We had hoped that any civilization developed enough to reach our world would have cultivated a peaceful culture, but in this case we believe it wise to be prepared for the worst.”

An older woman sitting ahead of Darshana stood up. “What are you saying, Master Nirupak? What cause do we have to believe they are malicious?”

“Our instruments have detected dozens of vessels around a central black orb. This orb may be relatively small, but its mass is truly colossal.” Nirupak turned around, and the hologram changed to show the entire solar system and a curved red line that weaved around several marked planets. “As the orb passes through our solar system, it distorts the orbits of objects nearby. For most of the planets, the change is small, but it is detectable.” He turned back around to face the audience. “Even stranger, the object appears to be made of no material we know of, and our instruments confirm that its albedo is virtually zero. Absolutely no light is reflected off of its surface. This is an exceedingly rare quality, and my team calculates that a miniature wormhole is the most likely possibility.”

Darshana’s face grew cold as the inevitability of this dawned on her.

Master Nirupak turned to his left where Minister Shradha was sitting, made a slight hand motion, and nodded.

“For our safety,” he continued, “I have asked the minister to confirm that this room is secure, and she assures me that it is impenetrable. I must stress that security is paramount in a situation of this magnitude.” Nirupak drew his fingers through his long black hair. “I value this council’s time, so I will be as concise as I can. We have detected that the object, along with the vessels surrounding it, are on an intersection path with Avani. If the wormhole maintains its current course, there is little we can do to stop such an object.”

The entire room erupted with chatter. Many people raised their voices, and soon, chaos threatened to overtake the room.

Minister Shradha stood up, her voice rising above the chatter. “Please, dear members! Calm yourselves and allow Master Nirupak to finish. You will want to hear what he has to say!”

The room grew hushed.

Now hanging in silence, Darshana got the feeling that few of them had ever heard the minister raise her voice before.

“Thank you,” she said. “Please continue, Master Nirupak.”

He nodded and turned to the stunned audience. “The minister is correct. My fellow council members, I am grateful to say that we have a contingency plan. As difficult as this might be to believe, we have recovered an ancient artifact buried under the South Pole. Earlier this month, the Ashraya Observatory detected an unusual burst of radiation emanating from extreme southern latitudes. We dispatched a crew and discovered significant disturbances in the ice, showing highly anomalous melting patterns. When we followed the disturbances underground, we came upon a machine within a chamber far below the ice.”

A hush once again fell upon the room as Master Nirupak held their attention in a death grip.

“I want to stress that the images I am about to show you are
above
top secret and must never leave this room. And if any of this information leaks into the info-dumps, the perpetrator will be banned from this council for life and found guilty of treason. Do I make myself clear?”

There was a general consensus as people all around Darshana nodded in agreement.

“Good,” he nodded and the hologram behind him changed to show a large upright ring, carved out of a metallic stone. To either side of the ring were two control panels that curved outward, and all of it was set atop a stone pedestal in the middle of an icy cave. The ring looked utterly lifeless.

“So far, we have been unable to activate the machine, but our best scientists are hard at work understanding its control consoles. From our best measurements, we estimate it to be over 500,000 years old. And based on the diagrams and depictions we’ve found engraved on the machine, we believe it to be an interstellar transportation device.”

Master Nirupak paused and surveyed the crowd. They hung on his every word.

“I don’t want to lead you astray, dear council. It is likely that difficult times are ahead of us. We face our most desperate challenge, perhaps the most desperate in our entire history. But my team and I believe there is hope. We are close to activating the device, which will allow us to traverse the light-years in seconds, completely unharmed. We have already done extensive research into deep viewing technology, and we hypothesize this device uses similar principles. The writing on the machine appears to be explicitly designed to be easy to decipher, and my team and I calculate that this machine is the best chance we have of surviving this encounter, should these entities reveal themselves as malicious.”