CHAOS HEIR

Chapter 1064: Connecting dots

Those few pieces of debris wouldn’t mean much even to most scientists, but Khan had two reasons that made him quite confident in his deduction.

First of all, Khan was a pilot. He was no engineer, but the test for his license had included studies about ships’ architecture. Humankind had copied those designs from the Nak, reverse-engineering the debris from the First Impact, so Khan’s knowledge could help spot familiar details.

Also, Khan had witnessed the crash of an actual Nak ship, and his curse made him relive that experience every time he fell asleep. The nightmares didn’t focus on those details, but they existed, and Khan had long since committed them to memory.

The deduction wanted to confirm Khan’s hunch about Chuwei’s apocalyptic event, but he had limited uses for that information. According to the data in his possession, Chuwei would have experienced the Nak’s suicidal attack far earlier than humankind, making any debris a few millennia old.

Anything Khan found would be significantly outdated, but that was the nature of his quest. He was chasing ghosts, an old legend of the universe, with nothing but his instincts and some relatively reliable stories.

Still, the fact that Khan had found traces on a planet afflicted by almost constant sandstorms was a miracle. Even the toughest alloy would have vanished into nothingness after centuries of erosion, but the dune area had hidden more than one debris.

’Unless,’ Khan thought, ’It’s no miracle at all.’

Khan was no scientist but had received a scout’s education. Ordinary events like rain and winds could have vastly different behaviors depending on the planet, and Chuwei was no exception.

Chuwei’s storms kept the sand moving, but its desert was thick. Probably, some deep layers hadn’t experienced a whiff of wind in years or longer. After all, even with all the digging, Khan had yet to uncover any firmer surface.

Yet, except for the last metal pieces, Khan had found remains in relatively superficial layers, seemingly conflicting with his vague hypotheses.

’Did they fall deeper whenever the storms destabilized the surface?’ Khan wondered. ’They shouldn’t be too heavy for the storms, but it makes no sense otherwise.’

The high quantity of debris was also surprising. Khan went from finding nothing for almost a week to uncovering enough to connect dots in his mind. That couldn’t be random, but answers failed to arrive.

Khan couldn’t help but divert his gaze, looking toward previously explored areas. He had ideas, but everything would remain inconclusive without additional clues.

So, finding more clues sounded like the only path forward.

Khan looked at the gathered debris before sending a wave of mana forward. The metal remained intact, but the sand under it caved in, creating a waterfall that submerged those remains.

Then, Khan lifted his palm, and a crackling spark materialized on it. Its energy started to ravage Khan’s skin, but he promptly threw it at the sky, letting it explode into a sphere of lightning.

Khan waited for the sphere to vanish before nodding internally. The symphony would carry that trace of his aura for a while, allowing him to find that exact location from almost anywhere.

Afterward, Khan departed, heading for a nearby previously explored location. No storm had afflicted it yet, but the sand had already moved, ruining the leveling caused by his destructive aura.

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Khan didn’t bother about that detail and sent his energy forward, destroying layer upon layer of sand to dig deeper than before. If his hunches were correct, he was bound to find something, which he did.

It took far longer compared to the last location, but something other than sand eventually resurfaced. Khan found another piece of black metal hidden deep into that part of the desert. The debris matched the other remains, seemingly belonging to a Nak’s ship, too.

Khan didn’t stop there. A single piece couldn’t satisfy him, and digging even more uncovered many. The desert’s depths seemed littered with out-of-place debris, adding value to one of Khan’s previous hypotheses.

Khan shot out of the deep hole, wielding one of the biggest remains while inspecting his surroundings. His figure slowly spun in the air, studying every corner of the distant horizon. Khan only saw sand, but his mind seemed able to spot something else. That entire desert probably was a massive graveyard awaiting to get robbed.

Of course, Khan didn’t believe the graveyard to be artificial. He could easily imagine the opposite, actually. The Nak had caused a mess when they arrived in Chuwei, forever altering its environment. Then, millennia went by, long enough for the sand to hide that catastrophic event deeply.

Earth had experienced something similar. Humankind had only reclaimed part of its surface, leaving many devastated areas to their terrible fate.

The problem with Chuwei was whether the Nak had experienced any resistance there.

Reason said that the Nak only attacked planets they could infect with their mana, which would involve lifeforms. However, there could be exceptions. After all, the Nak didn’t necessarily have a detailed plan. They could have attacked Chuwei simply because it lacked that magic energy.

Yet, Khan felt inclined to believe in the former. If the desert truly hid countless debris in its depths, the Nak’s invasion couldn’t have been small nor harmless. Also, something had to have been there to destroy their ships.

The call inside Khan’s nape also hinted at far more than ships. There had to be proper Nak remains somewhere, and experience told him he had to dig even deeper. No matter where Khan went, the answers always seemed to be under his feet.

Calculations happened inside Khan’s mind as he lowered his gaze, but his figure suddenly disappeared. However, he didn’t head for the desert’s depths. The imminent search could take a while, and his body needed nutrients for the journey.

Khan’s phone and senses quickly brought him back to his ship. A storm still raged around it, but its hull held strong. Khan only had to activate its shield to enter it while keeping it safe from the sand, and a series of general check-ups popped into the screens around him.

The ship was doing fine. The stay on Chuwei had partially refilled its oxygen reserves. The same went for the auxiliary tanks, which could harness Chuwei’s illumination, but Khan only glanced at the data before retrieving some supplies.

Khan had to satisfy his hunger and thirst before moving to the next step.

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