Story:The Words of Antocula

The Words of Antocula is set during the time of the Republic of the Omni when the discovery of Novarckas was fairly recent.

Chapter 1: Heist
In a dark room filled with metallic crates stood a humanoid creature clad in armor and a gas mask with yellow glowing eyes. He held an unusual device, scanning each crate. Every step he took was dead silent as sonic black hole generators attached to his feet deafened all noise. Inside Hanvel’s helmet, he could not even hear his own breath, or even his own thoughts aloud in his head. The sound of total silence never ceased to be disturbing, and he could never get over how unnerving it was. Worst of all, he could not even listen to his music.

Shuffling about, he spotted a levitating bot with a single eyeball that could rotate. It would emit a low humming had he not been in his sonic black holes. The eyeball bot looked about, not sensing anything as Hanvel crept by. These security bots were sensitive to sound, but of course, they had design flaws. The engineers of Omni society had a lot of difficulty with lateral thinking, and it took more than a genius to figure out the flaws, but to Hanvel, they were obvious. Why build these bots this way? Why not give them 360 vision? Why make them sensitive to sound when sonic black hole technology existed? Perhaps this was an older model from a few cycles ago.

Hanvel soon came to a sliding door sealed shut by a control panel. Another old technology, more than several dozen cycles old. Had the republic’s funding for security systems slipped? Hanvel took out his handheld device, tapped a few buttons and let the decrypter do its work. It sent out a series signals, reading the panel’s encoding and copying it. Then, it ran a series of tests to discover the exploitable flaw, and it found it, all within the spawn of a few seconds.

The door opened, revealing a large spacious, spherical room with a narrow walkway leading to a large, blue holographical globular object in the middle with several terminals at its base. A database of government secrets. Perfect. Eagerly, he ran up to it.

Hanvel removed his gas mask, revealing his scaly face. Like all Omni, he had a single head-tail, an appendage that sensed changes in atmosphere and air pressure. A sort of weather predictor more or less. But future predictions was what he was after. Word of some kind of ancient Oracle from a long dead civilization that could predict the future with near 100% accuracy. That was his goal.

He sifted through the countless files on the terminal, searching for everything he could on this so-called Oracle. Most of what he found were just historical documents and information released to the public about Novarckas, the Dyson sphere created by the same beings that also made the Oracle. Surely, the Oracle must be there, but where? Novarckas was an enormous place - it was built around a red dwarf so it was far larger than any gas giant.

Then, he found it. A fuzzy image of a moon named 362 Pythein. It was blue and white, covered in ice and snow and very distant from the Dyson sphere which it orbited. It was tagged with a few short texts relating to the Oracle, but nothing too specific. But Hanvel decided to log the coordinates of the moon on his device. That info was classified - the republic withheld detailed planetary information regarding the Novarckas system, but now, it was his.

But as he turned around, he found a bot staring right at him. How careless. He should have turned off his sonic black hole generators much sooner so that he could hear it coming from behind, but how could he have known? The chamber flashed red accompanied by a siren. Quickly, Hanvel put his mask back on.

Dozens of bots swarmed at him. He was surrounded, but Hanvel was still smarter. He dashed for the door from which he came in and found himself back in the room with all the crates. He could not go back the way he came in, so instead he looked for an airlock. Where was it? Where was it? Ah, over there.

Hanvel stood in front of the airlock. He messed about with his device and set up some unusual, emergency settings. Then, he reached for red lever, but before he could pull it, he heard the click of cocking plasma guns.

“Freeze!” It was a group of three security guards clad in armor and a plexi-glass helmet. “Drop your weapons!”

Hanvel raised his arms to the air and dropped his device. “Okay, okay. You got me.” But the device continued its work unbeknownst the guards. After a short while, the device let off a few beeps. “Oh, can I get that? I think my mom’s calling me.”

“Hands in the air!” The device continued to beep. It was probably not his mother as Omni never met their parents, but it was definitely someone. But then, a short time after, the red lever pulled itself down on its own, no doubt triggered by the device. The doors behind him opened revealing the vaccuum of space which sucked him out along with the device. The guards’ emergency magnetic boots kicked in so they stayed where they were.

“So long, fools!” Hanvel shouted even though they could not hear him. It still made him confident. Using his rocket boots, he swam around catching his device before it could float away further. Then, he turned around to look at the facility from which he came: Against a starry backdrop was a large, spinning circular ring-shaped space station connected to the oceanic planet below via space elevator. That planet was the Omni homeworld: Kollha.

Chapter 2: Return to Base
Hanvel used his rocket boots to direct himself over to the long metallic cord tethered to the planet’s surface. The space elevator. It allowed transport of goods to and from the planet to avoid the need to waste fuel for ships that would constantly leave and enter the atmosphere. He eyed a disc-shaped structure rapidly rising along the tether, approaching the space station. That would be his ride, so he propelled himself over. Once the disc stopped, he attached himself to the outside of it with magnets and waited. Then, the disc moved downward towards the planet again while Hanvel hitched a ride.

The way down was nauseating as the disc travelled faster and faster, letting what little gravity there was do the work. And very soon, it got hot. Very hot. Hanvel’s suit kept him safe though, but even so, he felt as if he felt like burnt fish on a grill. But as the disc descended lower and lower, he could finally see the features on the planet: a city built over the ocean with long, silver walkways connecting forests of towering, silver skyscrapers. While still far above the ocean’s surface, Hanvel jumped off letting his rocket boots guide himself down. The exhilarating adrenaline rush from flying through the deep, blue sky never got old.

As Hanvel let himself fall freely, he used his device to locate his base: an aircraft carrier floating in the middle of the ocean, not too far from the city itself. Guiding himself down, he landed on the deck. There were several alien workers who were startled, but nonetheless, kept about their business just assuming that he was skydiving for fun like he always did. The republic had already started allying with other spacefaring species in hopes of building some sense of galactic government.

Upon landing, his device rung again. The same caller as before. This time, he answered it, flipping it open. The viewscreen it revealed showed a goblin-like creature rambling in another language.

“I’m gonna pay soon,” Hanvel said. “Just give me a few more standard weeks.”

“Bah! We need money now! Or we have head!” The goblin continued to ramble, and then Hanvel just shut off his device, ignoring him.

Hanvel headed back to his room below deck. Inside were some large lava lamps and a large, cushiony chair, all of which he permanently borrowed in the same manner he just acquired the coordinates to 362 Pythein. He leaped up in the air and landed on his chair, relaxing and listening to his music. But his relaxation was soon interrupted when his roommate from across the hall came in: Zanio mol Kamien. A strange, four-legged armored creature with pink tentacles on his nose. He didn’t look Hanvel directly in the eye as his species was blind, only capable of “sight” by feeling vibrations. And Hanvel’s music. It was hardly any different from an earthquake for the creature.

“Hanvel! Turn that down!” Zanio stomped about shouting in his native tongue, but Hanvel had a universal translator on hand. After several attempts to get his attention, Hanvel finally turned down the music.

“Oh c’mon. You’re not going to believe what I did today. I just had the greatest skydiving trip of my life.”

If Zanio could raise an eyebrow, he would have. “Is that all?”

“Skydiving. Like a pro. All the way from orbit.”

Zanio listened acutely. Able to feel even the changes of heart rate and breathing of any species, he could detect if someone was lying or not. “You’re not telling me everything. What...did you do?”

-more to come