The Ocean Beyond by Pete A O'Donnell

Author:Pete A O'Donnell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: young adult, science fiction, empire, space opera, found family, alien contact, alien worlds, adventure, ya, ya sci-fi, sci-fi
Publisher: Pete A O'Donnell
Published: 2021-10-26T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23

Amita nodded to the guards as she exited the Tamerlane chambers. Over the past couple weeks, they’d gotten used to her leaving in the middle of the night. They never asked her where she was going or what she was doing. She assumed they were reporting it back to Maeven, but that didn’t matter. As long as the princess stayed quiet, not telling the monks or Alex and Ben.

Amita didn’t want the boys giving her a hard time, saying it was too dangerous or trying to stop her. She had agreed with Alex’s decision to take Maeven’s offer. It’d been smart, moving in with the Tamerlanes. They needed allies, the more powerful the better, but Amita suspected he had ulterior motives. Alex seemed all too content to slide into a life here, playing house with a princess. It annoyed Amita, almost as much as the way he’d taken on this sort of dad vibe, trying to protect her and Ben. Amita had a dad and he was back on Earth.

Then there was Ben. He followed whatever interested him in the moment and currently that was Tara. He followed her around like a puppy dog. Not to mention, the ghosts and the execution seemed to have freaked him out. To Amita those things only added to her desire to get home, back to her parents, but also to understand this place.

There were secrets on Nalanda Station, things the monks didn’t want to know. They choose ignorance on a daily basis, treating this place like it was electricity, too dangerous to touch. Amita couldn’t accept their limitations, not while there were still problems to solve.

During the night cycle, when the monks weren’t around, was the best time for exploring. Andavarri’s warning about the ghost didn’t frighten her. She wandered through the main halls and classrooms, finding observation bays with heavy glass windows and libraries of folded manuscripts written in alien languages. There were logs stored in a data base that only the monks were supposed to know about. It tracked visits by the Aesir throughout the system, naming those who their gods had destroyed. The monks logged the murders of the nobles as if keeping a score card. Occasionally there’d be a note, wondering about why some duke or chieftain had been struck down.

Amita forced her way into locked rooms. Apparently, the monks thought the fear of the Aesir was enough that they could get away with using simple locks. It didn’t take much for Amita to pick them, using tools she’d borrowed from maintenance. She managed to wake human and alien machines, pulling up displays that hadn’t been touched in years and trying to decode entries that’d become corrupted with age. She read about the early explorers of the void space and those who’d been foolish enough to touch down on Einherjar, the dead world. Things like the ghosts, horrible creatures, some solid and some more ethereal had swarmed over the explorers, dragging every living person away, never to be seen again.

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