I didn’t hold out much hope for learning the answer to that particular question.
The weapons systems controller sounded a gentle bell to announce that the re-calibration was complete and that the diagnostics hadn’t uncovered any sync errors or anything else.
“Looks like we’re all good on the weapons systems check,” I announced.
“Okay, Jannigan,” the Sean bot said. “Come down to the bridge. There’s something I want to discuss with everyone.”
That sounded serious. I climbed down out of the turret. Everyone was standing except the Sean bot. He gestured at the empty pilot’s seat.
“Sit down, JJ.”
“Isn’t that your seat?”
“Look at me, son. I could literally stand forever and not feel it. Sit down.”
“What is that, bot humor?” I shook my head, but sat down anyway.
“Listen,” the Sean bot said. “We don’t have much time.” He stood up a little straighter.
“Sean, is this the point when you tell us you’ve got everything figured out, and we’re going to get out of this okay?” Ana-Zhi smirked at him.
“I wish, Z,” he said. “Fact is we don’t have a lot of options. There’s really only one that I see, but it involves something incredibly dangerous.”
“Is that a joke?” I said. “I mean, more dangerous than a Mayir warship?”
“Don’t be dramatic, JJ, but yes, this is a lot more dangerous.” He turned to Chiraine. “Young lady, in your studies, did you ever come across something called the Levirion?”
“Levirion? Is that a place?”
“No, it’s a device. From ancient Marimora.”
Chiraine shook her head.
I had heard of Marimora, of course, but it was supposed to be a mythological planetary system that appeared in some of the legends of Lacedon, like three thousand years ago.
“It turns out that the Mayir were very keen on finding the Levirion,” the Sean bot said. “It was right up there with the Kryrk in terms of priority for them.”
“How do you know that?” Ana-Zhi asked.
“I spent two and a half days accessing the Mayir’s computers and data archives.”
I was dumbfounded. “How?”
“I don’t really have time to tell you the whole story, but suffice it to say I hid in a crate full of artifacts that was brought on board the Baeder from Bandala. Then I escaped and holed up between levels nine and ten, in an emergency access shaft strung with data fiber, among other things. Let’s just say that their internal data security leaves something to be desired.”
“You got the Mayir’s archaeological research?” Chiraine asked in a quiet voice, tinged with excitement.
“A big chunk of it.”
“Wait a minute, Sean,” Ana-Zhi said. “Let’s get back to this Leviathan thing.”
“It’s Levirion.”
“Okay, but you haven’t told us what this thing is or even what it looks like—”
The Sean bot cut her off. “It looks like this.” He placed a fist-sized object on the console.
We all moved closer to get a better look.
The object was a small metal pyramid, maybe ten centimeters on a side. Each side of the pyramid had been etched with strange complex symbols carved into the metal. They were all different.
“This is crazy,” Chiraine said, leaning even closer. “Those symbols look like they’re ancient Ordanka.”
“They’re not,” the Sean bot said. “They’re maps.”
“Maps?” Narcissa asked. “To where?”
“The Mayir researchers never got that far. But they did manage to translate a fragment of the Dervock Manuscript which mentions the Levirion.”
Chiraine’s face scrunched up in thought. “Wait,” she said. “The Dervock Manuscript?”
“Yes. Specifically Dervock L77.”
“Holy shit.” All the color drained from Chiraine’s face. “It can’t be…”
“You guys mind letting the rest of us in on what you’re talking about?” Ana-Zhi said.
“I had heard of the Levirion, of course,” the Sean bot said. “And by combing through the Ambit, I found that it was being stored in Bandala. I eventually found it and squirreled it away.”
“So it has been sitting in the Vostok’s hold for the past three days?”
“Correct, son. I didn’t know what the Levirion could do at the time.”
Ana-Zhi snatched the pyramid up from the console. “I’m going to chuck this thing out of an airlock unless someone tells me what exactly it’s supposed to do.”
“I’d be a little more careful with that, Z,” the Sean bot said. “The ancient Marimorans referred to the Levirion as ‘the Hive of Worlds.’ But we’d call it a dark space jump gate.”
“That’s impossible,” I said. Jump gates were colossal mechanized structures the size of space stations. Furthermore they required a massive energy source. You couldn’t put one in something the size of a small grapefruit.
“So, wait, you think that this little thing will get us home?” Ana-Zhi asked.
The Sean bot shook his head. “That’s the problem. Even if we can get this thing to work, it won’t send us home. According to Dervock L77, the Levirion will send us to one of the four locations depicted on the maps on each of its sides.”
“Wait a second.” I pointed to the Levirion. “That thing is a mini jump gate? That sends you to a random location?” I couldn’t get my head around it.
“Not random,” the Sean bot said. “If you were a Marimoran, that is. They probably knew how to control it, so it was akin to our own jump gates, but with more options.”
I still didn’t follow. Our galaxy had hundreds of thousands of paired jump gates connecting certain solar systems. But each gate just linked a point A with a point B. You went in the gate at point A and came out at point B. Simple.
“So this would be a one-way jump?” Narcissa asked.
“That’s my understanding,” the Sean bot said.
“With no way of knowing where we’d end up?”
“Correct.”
“I still can’t understand how something this small would even work,” I said. Normal jump gates were large enough to fly a ship through. Usually at least 250 meters in diameter.
“I would guess it is able to create some sort of spatial displacement field,”
