All Or Nothing (The Earthburst Saga Book 9) by Craig A. Falconer

Author:Craig A. Falconer [Falconer, Craig A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

33

Instinctively, I bring my left hand to my chin and rub it in thought.

I feel like I must be missing something, because I don’t understand how learning about the Ancients’ home world can be of any practical use to us right now.

If my life was a Hollywood movie script searching for a brain-melting twist, Santino would follow up the revelation with a drumroll, and then say something crazy like “they came from Earth.”

As it is, though, I don’t really understand what he expects me to take from this.

“There is enough contextual detail for us to locate the planet,” the young man says. “They describe the size of their planet’s sun and its distance from Bayzen at light speed.”

I’m still scratching my chin. “But how can this help us?” I ask. “It’s not like we can call them for help. We know they left their world because it was dying. That’s why they ended up on Bayzen and Eden. There’s no one there.”

“But there could be signals, Ray!” Santino says, almost yelling. I’d say he’s more excited about the news than exasperated by my non-reaction, but there’s an element of both creeping into his tone. “Aiming our telescopes at Bayzen, which we knew about thanks to the old documents you found on the Beacon, is how we picked up Maya’s signal. That saved the world once. I know we don’t have long, but why can lightning not strike twice?”

I sigh. “Santino, what would it say? If we picked up a signal from this planet, and if we decoded it straight away, what’s the best possible thing it could tell us? They would have had to have recorded it before they left. It would be older than the message on Eden. How could it help?”

At this, his expression falls. He doesn’t say anything.

“Hey, we’ll still look,” I tell him, almost feeling bad for how quickly I’ve shattered his hopes. “It’s always worth looking. We’ll pass this to the Balena, like you said. The astronomers there will be able to identify the star based on its size and distance from Bayzen and they’ll check it out. Our focus has to be on the message from the tomb. Feeding this translation key into the computers so we can figure that one out is our best way forward.”

“We’re on it,” Clyde says. “The planet is another potential lead and I do think it makes sense to look under every single rock, but I agree: this is the priority.”

“Maya no can read words?” Laika suddenly squawks.

“I can,” Maya reports. “In fact, I have just finished translating the message, piece by piece. I would like independent confirmation, so we should share the raw data with our allies and with the system. But I would be happy to tell you my own interpretation. With the help Loobnar provided and the sufficient length and complexity of the language key, there is enough for me to be fairly sure of my accuracy.”

My eyes widen immediately. I glance at Santino and see that his are doing the same.

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