The Chronicles of Ki
Book 1: In The Beginning
© Copyright 2024 Frank Walters Clark ~ All Rights Reserved
The high doors of the cavernous bay at Mount Parnar stand open, secreted away in vaporshift. The staging area is ready for arrivals and departures.
Inside, bulky towering skyships stand in orderly rows marked with small, nacreous white lights along the stalls and quadrant boundaries. Alongside are squat-bodied gravcars, looming gravhoists, and tall gravlifts.
RLS FelBok stops next to a sleek, shiny-black royal T-8 skyship, and touches a single key on his compad. The ship’s outer door vaporsheens away and he steps inside, motioning JimKas to follow.
The interior is slowly exposed by the vessel’s gradulight system. Bok re-seals the portal, then turns to the single, wide arc of the main control console.
Sitting down in the black, high-back command incline, he activates its e-harness, then tilts back and powers-up the console. His fingers nimbly tap in sector leap sequencing codes.
Bok e-rods selections from the heads-up display. Off in the distance, the remnants of rain clouds melt away under Apsu’s light.
JimKas sits in an incline behind Bok and e- harnesses in. He is awed by the ship’s technological marvels all around him.
“Son. Of. A. Beast!”
“Maintain silence.”
Soft, bell-like tones sound; the compudata finishes coupling their destination to the main gyrogrids. Bok taps the firing pad.
The viewing canopy momentarily opaques, and the sector leap’s ribboning effects are almost instantaneous. When the canopy clears, they are speeding into a flashing slipstream of light and dark ribbons.
Delighted, JimKas gasps, e-harnessed and floating a inch off his seat.
Bok’s face is creased with worry. The report he is about to deliver to his superiors has some serious consequences.
A few minutes later Bok senses the T-7’s compudata silently downshifting out of sector leap. The black, bird-shaped ship circles high and wide above Shine’r, then swoops gracefully in to a three-point landing on a stone slab quadrant near the royal castle’s walls.
Bok’s and Kas’s accreditations have already been verified in-flight by the castle’s primary securlinks. The science officers pass unchallenged by the outer royal guard post and through one of the castle’s vaporshifted doors.
Walking down cool, softly lit lower corridors, they ride the central lift up six floors to Level Two. One floor below the royal apartments, Level Two houses the Royal Council of Twelve’s meeting chambers.
Inside the royal chamber, Bok and Kas stand aside and erect at one wall. Each fidgets, nervously awaits their turn to report.
Bok transmitted a Z-1 high priority signal earlier to his commander, Lord Xib, Nibiru’s Royal Chief Science and Engineering Officer. Now bearing Lord Xib’s seal, the Z-1 guarantees all council members’ presence to hear Bok’s report.
Bok meditates, trying to relax and build his confidence level. Royal presentations are nothing new for him, but they are tense and nerve-wracking in any case.
As with the sector leap, for JimKas this will be the experience of a lifetime. The stories Kas imagines he will be able to tell his children and grandchildren.
About his first amazing sector leap. The grandeur of the royals. Addressing the Royal Council of Twelve.
Anxious council members enter and take seats accorded them by rank. Awaiting the king, their moods darken, and conversations gradually decay to whispers.
A door at chamber’s head end vaporshifts open, and Lord Dalu stands, then bows and proclaims, “Attention to our King! Dal!”
The council stands and responds, saluting, “Dal!” Members turn expectantly, awaiting the king’s entrance, ready to bow.
King Dal and Queen Dal glide in finally, transported on a rigid, railed platform. Covered with a black carpet, it glitters with diamond- patterned, gold- and silver-corded weaves.
They step off and take seats at the head of the table. Formally garbed, they wear the distinctive, ceremonial uniforms of the Royal Annunaki Heroes: Black, feather-like tunics over gold-trimmed white shirts, and black pants gathered about the waist with broad, black belts.
Wearing the black silk uniform of his secretive Black Glove regiments, its red-silk sash across his chest and around his waist, Lord Dalu declares, “Be seated, my Lords and Ladies. Attend to the king’s business.”
In rustles and whispers, the council bows and sits, faces pale slates.
King Dal rises and exclaims, “Lord Xib, call your first contributor.”
Lord Xib rises and bows to the royals, then to council, and says, “At your command, my King!”
Stepping up on the dais and standing to one side, he turns and faces the two anxiety- ridden scientists. “Royal Lead Scientist FelBok,” he says. “Step up and attend to our King.”
Although Bok’s fealty is deeply rooted, his courage is not, and he bows almost to his knees. Then, arms straight at his sides, he takes two stiff steps forward and stops and speaks, “If I may be permitted, my lord?”
Lord Xib winks and smiles at him, then sits down and flings a leg over the arm of his chair. Thumb and finger poised, he points up, then at Bok, and says, “Proceed, lead scientist.”
Bok releases his compad from his belt and turns to the vidplay opposite the king, then keycodes up a screen. On it appears a colorful, three-dimensional vectoring of Nibiru’s uppermost atmospheres.
Simulated above, below, and along its equatorial band are dozens of randomly occurring, elongated slits. Elliptical in shape and colored in shades of red, the slits are animated by the compudata and appear to breath wisps of escaping gases trailing off and disappearing into the blackness of space.
“I would beg your graces’ patience. Royal lead astrophysicist JimKas will present the data for these various vidplays. They are rather involved.”
Head bowed, Bok steps down, relieved and smugly satisfied. Kas, he notes, looks much more nervous than he.
In a cold sweat, JimKas steps up to take Bok’s place at the podium.
* * *
Last to leave and jubilantly dazed, JimKas is surprised and pleased with his royal oratory.
Mind racing, he drifts out of the now-empty chamber and leans against the corridor’s wall.
King Dal’s charge to him is to organize the science and engineering research. A blood-sealed oath to his king and to the Council of Twelve.
Breaking Kas’s reverie, Bok suddenly appears at the end of the corridor, beckoning him. Just as suddenly, he spins and disappears around the corner.
Resigned, Kas boards his leader’s T-7, standing aglow like a black bird under the broad cones of overhead lights. Fascination undiminished, he still can’t forget his orders. This could be a dangerous undertaking, and deadly in its attainment.