Ascendant Saga Collection: Sci-Fi Fantasy Techno Thriller Brandon Ellis (ebook reader for comics txt) 📖

The colonel gazed out the window into deep space.

“In a way, it’s a load off our backs to have their satellite down for a while. We don’t have to hurry through everything like we did when TECS IV was taking pictures daily. We’ve had more time to assemble glyphs and study them. There’s a series over here I…”

Jaxx tapped the computer screen and gave a soft whistle to get Shaughnessy’s attention back to his question.

Shaughnessy pushed his glasses farther up his nose, squinting. “Yeah, that’s what we think is a landing pad. It’s a big glyph, extending across the entire pad. There are a couple more pads on Callisto with the same hieroglyph.”

Wings, or what might be glyphs of feathers, surrounded a six-pointed star etched in the middle of the landing pad. Carved inside the star were Atlantean symbols; an arch, a bird, and a bird inside a doorway, an ancient eye off to the left of that bird, along with three planets, which to Jaxx were clearly Earth, Mars, and Jupiter. Next to Earth sat another smaller star with more hieroglyphs inside, also surrounded by feathers. Identical, albeit smaller stars, surrounded by feathers were spaced out directly between Earth and Mars, the third star right next to Mars’ magnetosphere. Three more identical hieroglyphs were positioned similarly between Mars and Jupiter, in the same type of configuration and distance.

Jaxx frowned. He knew what he looked at. He dropped his hands to his side, sighing. He didn’t know if it was a good idea to tell anyone. He’d only seen this once before, but on a pyramid-shaped granite piece found somewhere near the Great Pyramid of Giza and now tucked safely inside a museum that no one visited. Even if someone had stumbled into that museum, to get out of the heat and press of the Bazaar, and accidentally come upon that granite piece, they’d see no explanation of what it was, except the name, 'The King’s Sarcophagus'.

He pressed his finger on the screen, touching the glyph with the bird inside the doorway. “That’s not a doorway, by the way. That’s probably what’s screwing you up.”

Shaughnessy squeezed his shoulders together. “Yeah… yeah. I… uh… didn’t even know it was a doorway, actually. I was just shooting for the moon with that, trying to impress Slade.”

“Don’t let him know you’re faking anything. He’ll shoot you on the spot.”

Shaughnessy yanked his ear, clearly uncomfortable. He looked everywhere but at Jaxx. “I helped build the TECS IV satellite. I at least have that as some leverage, if I ever need it.”

Jaxx nodded. Leverage would get Shaughnessy only so far with Slade. “Anyway, the hieroglyph of this doorway isn’t actually a doorway. It’s a hieroglyph of the sarcophagus in the Great Pyramid’s King’s chamber.” He studied it a second longer. “Usually, you see a person depicted inside the sarcophagus glyph. This, on the other hand, has a bird. A bird symbolizes flight.”

He heard the note again, deep inside his chest. It was getting louder, more insistent. He closed his eyes in an attempt to ward off the spins. A word rose from the pit of his stomach. A word he’d thought about, dreamt about, written about, and taken hours and hours of ridicule for.

Portal.

Jaxx broke out in a sweat. “Any computer with sophistication beyond these computers? One that can quickly map and detect vortex energy?”

“The Lectern,” said Shaughnessy.

“Where’s that?”

“There are two. One on the bridge and one in the Admiral’s Quarters. I could ask Slade to let us use his for a moment.”

Jaxx dismissed the idea. “No, no.” He didn’t want Slade to know that these were portals; ways to move from one galaxy to another, in nanoseconds. Or from one location in the Solar System to another location. Again, in a nanosecond. If anything, he wanted to delete the glyphs off the entire ship’s network, so Slade couldn’t get to Callisto any sooner. The guy was willing to take the entire United States government and all her top scientists, along with their families, to what was essentially the wild west. In space. Without confirming whether the 'wild west' had breathable air.

If there was a glitch or something wrong with any calculation or formula that went with the glyphs, and Jaxx didn’t know about it, he didn’t want Slade to blindly lead the ship into a star portal disaster, perhaps crashing them straight into an asteroid belt, or worse yet, a black hole.

Another thread wound around his worries. It was a worry for the Beings on Callisto. There had been no reports of sentient life on Jupiter’s moon, but Jaxx was certain that Callisto was inhabited. Quietly, carefully, deliberately inhabited.

By humans. More specifically; Atlanteans.

Jaxx sat at his station, pulling up another glyph. He needed to find the calculations and the right star-set that told him how to activate and use these star portals. And then he’d have to get into the Admiral Quarters…without Slade’s permission.

Again, the note that entered his body and activated some latent learning system inside him, boomed through his brain thanks to his pineal gland. Maybe the gland acted as some type of extrasensory antenna, able to pick up waves made for geniuses.

He looked back at the glyphs on his screen. He’d always had a knack for decoding them, but they were no longer symbols requiring translation. They were a language he understood, fluently. And, boom. There it was, the next image on the pyramid—an instructional ideogram. A snake, a DNA strand, a right triangle, and two knives, which meant frequency. Then, a backwards 'L', a lower case 'j' with an oval dotting the 'j', and a slanted equal sign, all meaning numbers; 5, 100, 8.

If Jaxx was correct, and he’d bet his right hand he was, the moment before entering the star portal, the radio comm line frequency in a ship had to be dialed to 51008.

The ops door opened and a man in fatigues hurried inside. “Colonel Slade Roberson.”

Slade turned. “What it