After bidding Arabaki to hide with instructions not to let anyone into the ship, I waited for the airlock port to fully pressurise. The light on the hatch door turned green and unlocked.
I stepped over the creaking hatch and walked towards the deep emerald doors of the Imperator ship. The doors slid open to reveal the unwelcome but necessary sight of Senator Zhuyin and the stony faced Commander behind her.
*Click*
The hatch door auto locked, much to my relief. I didn't trust anyone, not even the Nuwans.
Still, political ties came in useful, like the Nuwan authorities waiving Tengshe system's parking fee as long as I met with Senator Zhuyin, who never failed to appear each time I came.
Rubbing shoulders with the powerful brought on benefits. And benefits are necessary for survival in the Great Swirl Galaxy.
All the accompanying officers stood at attention in their full formal military uniforms with gloves, contrasting against my casual bronze leather suit and scuffed military boots.
Nuwans always wore long sleeves, gloves and long pants in front of other species to conceal their reptilian skin on the extremities. The gloves concealed their black, claw-like fingernails.
Still, the dead giveaway of the Nuwans are those slit pupils in their amber reptilian eyes.
Our faces and bodies resembled the dominant humanoid species in the Great Swirl galaxy.
The Nuwans shared the same evolutionary ancestry as my species, even though they split from us over ten millennia ago in another galaxy.
Their species kept some of the original features, such as their reptilian eyes and reptilian scaled extremities. Same number of fingers and toes on our hands and feet. Evolution played a cruel joke.
My species evolved into a different humanoid form, discarding the reptilian characteristics, including the claw-like fingernails.
Unlike the Nuwans, my kind delved into eugenics and cybernetic technology and we chose the spacefaring lifestyle, rather than staying on a planet. That might account for the divergent evolutionary differences between the Nuwans and us.
Yet we maintained a strong allegiance to each other for old time's sake.
I gave her a stiff bow as per old Kamuy military etiquette.
"Please don't," she hurriedly said as I eyed the long line of officers standing stoically along the corridor. "No formalities required for my great grandfather's saviour."
I cleared my throat politely. Zhuyin's great grandfather was part of the Nuwan reinforcements under my command during a war, which I wished to forget.
"How's old Rong's health?" I asked while we both started walking down the long but grandly decorated hallway of the Imperator towards the usual meeting room.
"He is here," she replied. "Wanted to see you before he goes."
"Goes?"
"He is dying," she sighed as I kept silent.
I forgot how old he was. Six hundred galactic cycles is a very long life for a Nuwan. Eight hundred galactic cycles is the record for the oldest Nuwan, some hermit in their system.
The moment the Kamuy cyberneticists implanted me with the atomite system, I ceased to age.
The atomites cheated death on my behalf, but there's an enormous price to pay.
Running out of atomites caused instant death, but replacing them will turn me into a machine. Each time my body sustained irreparable damage to the biological part, the atomites will replace them with artificial atomite structures.
Both choices came with a foreseeable yet equal unappealing ending.
Zhuyin is younger than me but I looked like a Kamuy teenager standing next to her. I will never experience degenerative changes to the biological body, and almost immortal, unless I lost the ability to create more atomites.
"I was wondering if you can do me a favor," she paused half way.
I could easily guess what she wanted. "You want samples from me to study the cybernetic technology on old Rong?"
Senator Zhuyin bit her lip and nodded slightly. If I refuse, then the desperation of a loving great grand daughter would make it difficult for me to leave until old Rong expired.
"I trust you brought a cyberneticist along?"
"A team of the top researchers, but you know… we can't beat the Kamuy cybernetic technology."
"I will allow them to run scans on me and take a sample of my blood. Unless you prefer to be where the fireworks are going off…," I trailed off and looked around the ship, admiring the lavish decor of intricate carvings on the ceiling and the diamond chandelier above.
Senator Zhuyin turned pale at my veiled threat, well aware that her impressive Imperator ship will go up in a blinding bright glory of metallic smithereens.
The infamous Kamuy self destructive 'take-em-all-down-with-you' sequence stemmed from the need to protect our technology from ever being used against us.
The Great Swirl Council created the galactic legend out of our self destructive sequence.
Eons ago, they bought three Kamuy corpses from the Iktomin Conglomerate. The Iktomins didn't dare to fiddle with our dead. In their cunning wisdom, they let the Great Swirl Council dissect our dead first.
With the first explosion flattening their lab when the prized scientists of the Great Swirl Council dissected a Kamuy corpse, one would think they learnt something. Nope, only after the third explosion, the Great Swirl Council blanket banned any invasive procedures on a Kamuy, dead or alive.
Not that it matters now.
I followed Senator Zhuyin into the meeting room where an aged Nuwan sat on a specialised hover chair with medical equipment stacked on a pole, accompanied by a standing entourage of staff.
"General," the wrinkled old Nuwan rasped as he flashed a very gummy smile at me. "You... still... look... the same."
No shit, the passing time and age didn't do old Rong justice. Seemed only like yesterday, this Nuwan was a tall healthy Commander of a Patrol Ship. I still remembered him with a full set of teeth, which is missing now.
He struggled to string a sentence in a breath while Senator Zhuyin gesturing to a staff. I cringed at the moment the staff pulled out a medication filled syringe to stab him in the chest, while Senator Zhuyin and I sat down on the lavish armchairs around a large but low square table.
"Ahhh… much better," Rong rasped as his amber reptilian eyes studied me for a moment.
"Don't call me general or I will address you as Imperium Chancellor," I replied.
An Imperium Chancellor ranked higher than a senator in the complex political hierarchy of the Nuwan Imperium. Any Nuwan who rode on an Imperator ship is not to be trifled with. Ever.
"Hah. Two of us oldies are war buddies… what's rank between us? Fine, I will call you… Genja."
Rong turned to Senator Zhuyin, "you always wanted to know about those shadows…"
She nodded obediently.
"Genja is here and knows more. Show him the relic."
I pointed to myself, mystified by his insistence. "Me?"
Rong nodded. "It's in your old language. None of us can decipher it completely."
Senator Zhuyin snapped her fingers at one of the staff, who took out a wrapped package and placed it in front of me.
"I'm no linguist," I replied, staring at the package.
"Open it," Rong gestured. "It's hard to run into a Kamuy for reasons you know well. But we just received news that the Inti system has vanished around 1 rotation of our Capital planet ago. Entire civilisation wiped out. Survivors are those who left Inti to work in other systems. No traces but nebula clouds."
I blinked at the news. My nightmare happened just before the reported time of the event which occurred in the Inti system. Was it a premonition?
"They sent a subspace planetary distress call," Senator Zhuyin recalled. "When our ships arrived together with the others, the entire system turned into a large nebula cloud."
"Same case with yours," Rong said. "Except we witnessed the shadows and escaped those things to tell the tale."
I huffed at those painful memories of how the Nuwan reinforcements, their nearby patrol ships, reached in time to see our system being destroyed. That was how Rong and I met a very, very long time ago.
The Kamuy mother-ship, an artificial planet named Amatsubune, and my former home, with eight million lives aboard, sent a last signal of its escape.
I, then a fleet general, commanded his group out of the destruction and led them away. Fighting on was fruitless after Amatsubune left.
I witnessed so many meaningless suicidal runs of desperate pilots in their Kamuy war cruisers against the shadows in the aftermath.
For a brief moment, the voices of my brethren in the past yelling the war slogan echoed in my head and that ensuing deafening silence. I took a deep breath to stay calm.
Eight million lives aboard and one big ship, the size of the smallest planet, disappeared into thin air. I spent over five hundred galactic cycles looking for it, but to no avail.
"And what has this package got anything to do with what you're saying?" I looked at the package.
"It's from our rare collections library. When I heard about the Inti system, I ordered the historians to look up the historical Kamuy collections… and found this… I only recognised the words for shadows and death."
I took another deep breath and unwrapped the package with trepidation. My optical implants started analysing the flat circular device with the unmistakable inscriptions of an archaic Kamuy language and dirt still stuck on it.
A green tracer beam shot out from the optical implant in my eye to scan the object, confirming my suspicions that the item didn't belong in the Great Swirl galaxy. If an element is present in the Great Swirl galaxy, my optical implant won't do overtime to analyse it.
"W-what —"
"Cybernetic scanner," I cut the Nuwan scientist off. "Inside my eye. Fun brainy stuff. Won't hurt the relic."
The Nuwans, including Senator Zhuyin and Rong, murmured among themselves.
[Isotope Analysis: initiated]
[Identification: alloy mix unique to Amanogawan ferrous sand ore and quartzite present with impurities]
[Probability: 96% Amanogawan origin]
The green tracer beam vanished after the completing its task.
"Amanogawa…" I muttered and looked at the confusion on their faces.