Chapter 1230 — Listening to Voices Beyond the Light-Years
Blade of Dawn · Page 4 of 4
"Mm," Pythia nodded and swam toward the corridor. This was the royal quarter of Antavien, the entire district enclosed within the deepwater barrier, the seawater of the homeland filling every corridor and every room. To go out, one had no choice but to swim, an arrangement most convenient and comfortable for the sirens. "And the sweep of the surrounding sky?"
"Nothing much," Rosalia said, shaking her head. "Only a few scattered, very faint low-frequency calls. Ordinary signals carried on light waves or quasar-like pulses. They may have been drifting through this stretch of space for tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of years, circling endlessly within the cage formed by the star system, while the civilizations that sent them died out long ago."
"...Even if they had not died out, there is nothing we could do," Pythia sighed. "We can only listen, not transmit. It is an insoluble problem... Any word on the resonant crystal?"
"Regrettably, Master Hathaway says she is at her wit's end as well. The resonant crystal was damaged far too thoroughly, and this planet lacks the key materials needed to recast it. The Cecil people's energy technology and rune lore, though useful to us, offer no help in repairing the superluminal communications array. We also tried several natural materials recently excavated from the deep sea, and none of them met the requirements..."
"Very well. Such things cannot be rushed," Pythia said, nodding gently. "Just let the deep-sea witches do what they can."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
On the golden sands of the Ios Continent, where the Antavien had run aground, a communications tower of intricate construction stood on the aft deck of the colossal colony starship. The base of the tower gaped wide open, exposing its delicate internal components and the system lights glimmering faintly deep within certain structures. The "deep-sea witches"—the technicians—hurried to and fro within and around the tower, checking the receiver modules only recently repaired and adjusting the still-unstable core systems.
Above the tower, several communications modules that had resumed operation floated aloft, upheld by invisible force fields and rotating slowly around the tower's shaft. Their streamlined alloy structures pointed high into the sky, and in the morning sunlight their metal casings were washed in a blaze of gold and crimson.
Pythia came out onto the deck and gazed at the sirens bustling about the tower, and at the naga—newcomers to this area of late—following the deep-sea witches and learning the craft of mechanical maintenance. Then her eyes came to rest on the tower itself, and a faint sigh escaped her lips.