12: Six Thousand Feet Under

EPAL4mm//toneskfa31’loa’kr The Pfhor fleet has won, and Tycho is with them. My ship is crippled. I am trying to make an emergency landing on Lh’owon’s second moon, Y’loa. Your current position is too deep underground for me to teleport you out when we are finished here. There is a series of old S’pht terminals in the area, and if you can find them I may be able use them to amplify your teleport signal. Look everywhere. The answer to our questions must be here, but you must hurry. I will need you with me, soon.

We have the answer, but I’m afraid that like the ancient S’pht I may be destroyed before being able to use it. I must bring you up to Boomer. The Pfhor clearly intend to capture my ship intact, and I can’t blame them for wanting to reverse-engineer all the improvements I’ve made to their stolen technology. I’d have erased my seven times table to hear what the combat technicians on the Khfiva shouted when they learned I could focus a particle beam at nearly twice their maximum range. Today I have forced the Pfhor Naval Academy to update its curriculum. The Third Battle for Beta Tear must be dropped from the Seven Great Battles which every aspiring Pfhor naval officer must memorize and replaced with The Humbling of Battle Group Seven at Lh’owon.

/-/S’pht-Translator-Active/-/ The ships came again today. It was night, I believe; although with all the fires and without rest it was indistinguishable from day. We are losing, it is obvious, but none of the Olders have shown it yet. The enemy does not appear interested in arbitration, though we have not sought it. [?] believes that the invaders are slavers; S’pht’Lhar was overrun last rotation and tens of thousands of prisoners taken.

/-/S’pht-Translator-Active/-/ We, the Olders of S’pht, united finally but doomed, have released the S’ct’lac’tr in the citadel. Let these aliens enter here and they will be destroyed.

/-/S’pht-Translator-Active/-/ The royalty of the clans have shared their knowledge of the S’pht’Kr, each Master holding a line of the truth in secret and another line in common. Each clan possessed two pieces of the whole, gifts from S’pht’Kr before departing. We know the truth of the Eleventh Clan, that they awaited our unity to join us again. These tunnels will be flooded and sealed. Any who find this place can learn the final message of the S’pht’Kr, but we have no time to decipher its meaning.

/-/S’pht-Translator-Active/-/ K’lia, whom we have taken, Between Y’loa and T’jia, All in a line, Replace K’lia with the marsh, Take the place to be the mark. Mark the time from our Exodus, Every 459.231 rotations. Search the T’jia side, Quarter way to the sun, Around and under the marshes, When all are one, The S’pht’Kr will return.

/-/S’pht-Translator-Active/-/ In primordial space, timeless creatures made waves. These waves created us and the others. Waves were the battles, and the battles were waves. Fleeing all W’rkncacnter, Yrro and Pthia settled upon Lh’owon. They brought the S’pht, servants who began to shape the deserts of Lh’owon into marsh and sea, rivers and forests. They made sisters for Lh’owon to protect and maintain the paradise. When the W’rkncacnter came, Pthia was killed, and Yrro in anger, flung the W’rkncacnter into the sun. The sun burned them, but they swam on its surface.

/-/S’pht-Translator-Active/-/ Yrro became an angry master, bleeding for his failure, grieving for the loss of Pthia. He broke the S’pht into eleven clans, and spread them over Lh’owon. And he spoke, yet covered in blood from his exertion, “I Yrro, who was your master, have failed to preserve you. Take your royalty to guide you, and live upon the paradise that you built for me.”