Chapter 6

Maitunan Breakfast. An Empire’s Toll.

Marta sits with Calim and Noke in a bright colored control room that makes its best effort to look like a living room. Calim is heating the second coffee pot of the day.

‘I need it to stay awake’ he says. ‘Or else I get sleepy.’

‘If you didn’t drink so much coffee you could go to sleep sooner at night’ says Noke.

‘Maybe you could do something lighter?’ Marta plays with her fingers with the data disk she stole from the base. ‘Tea?’

Both Meitunans make faces of disgust.

‘We can’t drink that, its toxic for Meitunans’.

‘Not to talk about the taste. Puah’.

Noke is writing in her notebook.

‘So, how are you able to melt materials and do the stuff you showed to me?’ asks Marta. ‘Did you learn magic as kids?’

‘Its not much “bending” as it is “decomposing”, or disentanglement’, Calim explains. ‘I don’t think it is magic. We don’t learn it, we just start doing it during puberty. But we must grow in Meituna to get the best of our abilities. So, the planet must have something to do with it. When Meitunans grow up far from home, they get weaker powers. That’s why we need to protect our planet. I told you the Indirian Monarchy tries to enslave our kind, just imagine what would they do if they conquered the planet. That’s why commercial activity is so important for us. Our market is strong and allows us to have powerful allies that keep us protected for now. Maybe you could visit the place. Nice planet. It has lots of books. We the Meitunans love to read. And Noke here is a great writer.’

‘Aww’ Noke blushes and turns to Marta. ‘Why would you want to go to the Free Counties in the first place? Its not like they are as bad as the Indirian, but they have boring people and only care about money.’

‘My dad worked for the Prince not long ago’, says Marta with a dreamy voice. ‘He told me he is a kind and caring person, and one to be trusted. If he gets this data, he can become a powerful ally against the Indirian Monarchy. Now that my dad is dead I don’t care so much if the canal erases my city, but if no one does nothing the whole galaxy also will end up erased. No one knows how much ether there is outside the universe because we can’t even see it. The Indirian Hypothesis says that only a slim layer of ether surrounds it, and that rerouting it with the canal will be like draining a bathtub. The universe will get full of ether and disappear from the inside, while expanding outwards for eternity.’

‘Why would someone want this?’

‘My dad said that when you grow so much, either you embrace desperate measures to keep doing it or you fall apart crushed by your own weight. It happened to the Pian Empire thousands of years ago. An empire so big, they couldn’t afford to keep their frontiers in check. A plague and a massive food shortage were all it takes for it to dissolve. For the Indirian Monarchy, there isn’t any difference between falling apart and erasing the universe. So, they take the risk whatever the odds.’

Marta looks down. The air has gotten gloomy. They all know one more thing they can’t bring themselves to discuss. The reason everyone talks about the Indirian Monarchy and not of any king in particular: relativity. When an empire spawns through light years, it is hard to assess how much in the past are you reacting to events. And who is the king? The king is the only person in the universe that lives in the present. The others are trapped in the past, reacting to events set in motion by the will of the king. Who are you fighting against? Maybe the attack you are recieving was ordered a century ago. Maybe you fight back against a king’s granddaughter, now in the throne…

‘Let’s go to the aircraft and strip it bear’, Calim says. ‘We would escape from this desert and take you to the Free Counties, whatever it takes. Right, Noke?’

Noke waves from the sofa and shows them her notebook. A branch tree resembling an algorithm, drawn in black pen. Marta stares at it with surprise, thinking she was just authoring more chapters of her lewd fiction.

‘So, while you where chatting and getting sad I made a plan for this to work. We can get to it this same afternoon. We’ll be out of here by dawn.’

‘This doesn’t look easy, Noke’ Calim frowns.

‘Well, part of it’s actual rocket science. What do you think, kid?’

Marta tries to hide a smile between ears. She remembers how the face of the military engineer-in-chief changes, turns all red, whenever he gets angry.

‘Cornelos will get pretty upset.’