Chronicles of the Aeons War, page 10
part #3 of The Omniverse Series
♦♦♦
They were shown images of the aftermath. Three hundred and twelve thousand men and women of the Phenex El-Ahur confirmed dead. The Zohor fleet hadn’t even been slowed at the Anuket Blockade, ploughing through the ships, blowing them apart. Anuket Station had narrowly avoided total destruction by a Zohor mass driver before the enemy fleet continued on. Rescue operations launched from Anuket Station after the Zohor fleet had gone found few survivors among the wreckage. Only hours later Thalia station reported the first attack: sensors were tracking a Zohor mass driver slowing and changing course. Twenty seconds later Thalia Station was lost.
“You and the whole of Midian will be able to see the results later tonight when Thalia rises,” Thrask Kuno told them, “There is a visible cloud of debris expanding from the moon, already forming itself into a cloud of particulates surrounding the moon. The mass driver had already fired by the time Thalia Station tracked them. The Blockade will be engaging the advance Zohor ships before morning. Fleetmistress Kaplan is overseeing the preparations to evacuate Anuket Station and the survivors of the Anuket Blockade as we speak. We hope to rendezvous with you all in the next few days. May the Queen Keep and Remember us all.”
♦♦♦
Yeung Acshah had thought the alien stars overhead the night before had been frightening. Just before midnight when Thalia rolled into view over the mountains in the south a hushed panic fell over the world. It looked as though there were a fire on the far side of the moon; a burning haze crowned the moon like a halo and clouds of dust reached out from behind its face as if to grasp Thalia in the talon of a mighty beast. It was all over the news, Acshah learned as she switched on her cartouche and put in her lenses. Her brothers and sisters were already talking about it both online and with each other. Acshah dressed quickly and headed downstairs to the common room, unable to bear this nightmare alone. Something had struck the far side of Thalia; a meteorite, perhaps; they didn’t know. Astronomers in New Rome and in the Western city of Acoma were already training their many telescopes and space-searching instruments out beyond Thalia’s orbit, hoping to see where the strike had come from, trying to understand why they hadn’t detected whatever had hit their moon, sooner. Theories abounded: the stars from the night before were comets or meteors; or the impact with Thalia had been the vanguard of the Forgotten Enemy, the Zohor had come as prophesized to destroy them. Each new theory seemed as likely as the next; sensible or outlandish it was all unbelievable and unbelievably real. When she got downstairs, Yeung found Gray Michael out on the balcony with Yeung Katherine. Thalia still seemed to be burning, blowing hot embers up into its orbit. Clouds curled from the moon’s far side. There had never been clouds seen on Thalia, before. But there was something else in the sky with burning Thalia, now: The strange constellation of new stars was back. Acshah watched in disbelief and horror as the stars converged on one another, seeming to dance in the luminous black sky.
“We heard a report on the news,” Katherine told her, “At first we didn’t want to believe it.”
“What? What’s happening?”
“The astronomers,” Michael replied, “They’ve only just learned what...those...are: They say that two great fleets are locked in combat out beyond Heruba’s orbit; they say they’re at war with one another.”
“That’s impossible,” Acshah said, but her words lost conviction as she stared at the burning moon and the whorling stars.
“It’s the El-Ahur!” Katherine said with unsettling fervour, “They have returned and are at war with the Ancient Enemy!”
Even Michael seemed unwilling to believe her. “We can’t know who – or what – they are. There are many things not yet come to pass in the Prophecies; it could be aliens we’ve never known of; it could be —”
“The El-Ahur were born among us,” Katherine insisted excitedly, “They came from the future to rescue the Old Ship and guide our grandparents here. They left us to train with the Queen and they are destined to return!”
“Why do you sound so happy about it?” Acshah demanded angrily, “Don’t you remember what the Rai’Ha wrote about the return of the El-Ahur? Don’t you?”
Michael was startled when she pivoted and pointed at him.
“You remember, Venerable Brother, come on! You taught it to me when I was ten; I had nightmares for a fucking month,” Acshah closed her eyes and recited: “‘And the time would come when the El-Ahur will return. They will come to wake the Sleeping Queen and rescue the Children of the Lost Ones from the coming of the Aeons War. The stars shall dance and weep and fire burn across the Land of the Queen’s Children. All the people of the New Land will suffer in the burning until the Queen of Light and Sorrow wakes and returns to Her Temple.’ Did you forget the part about the fire burning across the Land, Kath? Imagine whatever hit the moon hitting us. Can you? Because right now, that’s exactly what you’re talking about. That’s a little too fucking horrible for me!” Acshah turned away from them, frightened and disgusted that they couldn’t see, wouldn’t see what their rapturous prophecies predicted. “Whatever they are I’m afraid,” She said, “This is all more than I ever wanted to live to see.” She went back inside feeling far too vulnerable out on the terrace looking at the nightmare sky.
Mother was summoned to the Temple not long after Thalia rose over the horizon. The Handmaid was needed in this time of emergency; the Queen’s Council took precedence even over the Handmaid’s husband’s funeral.
“I’ll be there tomorrow,” she promised her children, gathered together before she left, “But after what we’ve all seen in the sky tonight...the Council must meet. I am needed at Temple. All of us may soon be needed at Temple or elsewhere; our calling requires as much. Tomorrow will be hard for us all. I urge you all to go to bed, to get sleep.”
Of course Acshah couldn’t sleep; how could she? Between the tumult of confused emotions she felt now that Father was dead, the fear and uncertainty following the explosion or collision on Thalia and the nightmarish, dancing constellations, rest was impossible. Even logging onto the Grid to divert herself did no good; the explosion and the supposed fleets at war was all anyone was talking about. Comm traffic was so heavy it was impossible for her to reach Kal, in New Bangalore. Even when she could find something online to distract herself, she was always and again drawn back outside onto her balcony to look at the sky and chart the progress of the burning moon and the dancing stars overhead. They didn’t belong. They couldn’t be there; they shouldn’t be there. Nightmares didn’t belong in the waking word; she couldn’t flee this. Despite years of refuting the prophecies of the Nai’Marak and the teachings of the Rai’Ha, she knew with a horrified certainty that they were real, that they were now coming true. She was terrified of what was to come; she was devastated that it was to begin with her Father’s funeral.
FOUR
THE HAZARDS OF FATE
Bloom’s Point was a small city, growing out and down from the roof of the vast spherical chamber that sheltered the bulk of the Phenex El-Ahur Starfleet. The harbour between the bulkhead walls and the city core was deep enough to have its own horizon. Thousands of ships sailed to and from the coralesque formations of the port citadel at the heart of the colossal bay. There were millions of people here, Benedict understood: for more than a thousand years the El-Ahur had lived their lives in service to Midian, had been fruitful and multiplied. Yet countless generations must never have even set foot on her soil. Benedict was confounded by their dedication, their devotion to a world that some of them had never even seen. The decade he’d spent on Midian he’d grown to hate the tumbling planetoid. It had fuelled his determination to leave, to return to the Hub...and he had failed. He had failed and everyone he’d ever known or loved was dead. Dead and gone for over a thousand years; Benedict didn’t even know how to begin to grieve.
He had been given limited access to Bloom’s Point; specifically Benedict was restricted to the residential section where they’d billeted him. It was better than being locked in his quarters as he had been aboard the Ouroboros. He needed to wander; to keep himself from dwelling on everything he had survived and all he had lost. One of the side effects of the profound Healing Allison McQuire had so long ago performed on him was an inability to sleep more than a few hours, and then only every few days. From his apartments he could walk to a common garden park overlooking the harbour and its lower levels.
Statuary decorated the broad corridors of the residential sector and the park plaza. Though many of the statues were of figures he didn’t recognize it still gutted Benedict when he saw faces of those he did: Nadia Castaneda, Mulumba Kalenga, Matt Decker, Alina...and the Colonel, of course: Margaret Bloom.
Benedict walked past their effigies; past stone ghosts of friends and colleagues lost to him, separated by a gulf fifteen hundred years wide. Beyond the great transparent bulkhead at the far end of the plaza the Ouroboros was moored. Benedict looked out towards the mighty ship for the first time and with a sudden upswell of grief and anger he realized just why the term El-Ahur and the name of Baxter Vincent’s ship had been so familiar to him: the Ouroboros was the same vessel that had rescued and helped repair the Old Ship after the Zohor attack. He remembered how they’d just shown up out of nowhere, the crippled Old Ship adrift and dying. The El-Ahur had sent their leader, the Grandmaster aboard in some sort of mechanical isolation suit. And when they’d gone Colonel Margaret Bloom, Benedict’s oldest friend and commanding officer ordered him to return to the Hub while she left on a suicide mission to stop the Zohor from finding their sanctuary on Midian.
“Jack, there’s nothing you can say or do to talk me out of this,” Bloom had told him, “The El-Ahur, Jack? They came from the future. They told me you have to undertake this mission.”
“How can you trust them to have been telling the truth?” he’d implored her.
She didn’t answer at first. “I can’t tell you that,” she said at last, “But I can tell you that I have the utmost faith in you and the rest of this crew.”
He’d persisted, refusing to accept her reasoning, begging her to let him take her place, at last reproaching her: “You’re letting an unknown alien talk you into killing yourself.”
“Yes!” Bloom had said, angrily, “Jack, listen to me when I tell you: I trust the Grandmaster implicitly and what’s more, so should you!”
When Benedict had launched for Midian with the last of the crew of the Old Ship he’d watched it vanish into time warp, already light years distant by the time his eye had registered its absence. Bloom would have probably been dead before Benedict’s evacuation shuttle hit Midian’s atmosphere. He felt as though he’d betrayed her; that he’d abandoned her to her death. And he swore he would do everything he could to fulfil the mission she’d given him.
Except he now realized Bloom’s orders had been based on what the El-Ahur had told her. She’d said they’d come from the future...she’d said they were the ones to tell her about his mission...and they were the ones who’d rescued him when that mission failed.
“Son of a bitch,” Benedict hissed. He looked around, searching the Human touches in the Alien architecture for anything that looked like a comm. panel. Finally, impatiently and angrily, he grabbed a startled El-Ahur by the shoulders.
“The Grandmaster!” he shouted, “Where is he? Where is he?”
“He; you...you don’t understand!” the El-Ahur stammered, escaping Benedict’s grasp. People were starting to gather but Benedict didn’t care. “I want to see the Grandmaster!” Benedict shouted, “I want to see that son of a bitch, now!”
♦♦♦
Baxter Vincent reclined in his office workstation. He sipped coffee and read through status reports on the repair and resupply of the Ouroboros. The information was transmitted through his cortical implant, interpreted by his mind as data displayed before his eyes on the lenses he wore, following him wherever he looked unless he switched them aside. An alert flag appeared in his vision and he gestured with one hand to toggle open the alert screen. Heihachi Daniel appeared in three dimensions in the middle of his field of vision.
“Commodore, there’s been a disturbance.” Heihachi said, “It’s the...it’s Benedict.”
“What happened?”
Heihachi related events: Benedict accosted a passerby, demanding to see the Grandmaster. When that didn’t work he began shouting loudly until a patrol arrived. When they threatened to remove him if he didn’t calm down, Benedict told them to arrest him...before he gave them reason to.
“He’s in holding now?”
“Just arrived.”
Baxter sighed, “I’ll be there shortly; please meet me there.”
Heihachi’s image gave a short bow. “As you say.”
Baxter got up and switched off the neural link. He had been dreading the conversation he was about to have for a long time. He walked down the hall to the transports and took a short ride to the holding area, crossing from one end of the citadel to the other in less than five minutes. Heihachi was already in the warden’s office when Baxter arrived.
“What happened?”
The warden rose. “The prisoner surrendered to the patrol and has been waiting in a cell ever since.”
“I’ll see him,” Baxter said.
“Very well.”
The warden nodded and Baxter and Heihachi followed him down to the cells. Benedict sat on the edge of the bunk in his cell, on the other side of a wall of transparent metal. Benedict looked as though he were holding court, waiting for them to arrive. The warden placed his hand against the transparent wall and it split open, irising from the center until a doorway had formed. Benedict regarded them as Baxter and Heihachi stepped in. Baxter gestured and the warden closed the door and opaqued the wall.
“So, where is he?” Benedict demanded, “Where’s the Grandmaster?”
“The Grandmaster died,” Baxter said, “When you first woke I told you that we had been sent to find you. We were sent by the Grandmaster, Mission Commander. I’m sure you can understand how important it was for us to carry out our leader’s final orders.”
“He set me up,” Benedict hissed, “My commander gave up her life because of him! She died and our crew and passengers were fucking marooned on Midian! I went off into space and the rest of my officers and the woman I loved died! The Grandmaster and probably you too travelled back in time to help the Ship. You fucks set us all up to die!”
“No, Mission Commander,” Baxter said, “What we did was ensure our history occurred as it was meant to.”
“What?”
“We are time travellers Mission Commander; though not quite as you might understand the term. The Old Ship had to be able to reach Midian in order for our people to arise. After the Zohor attack we had to come to your aid or else we would never have been. No one knows what the Grandmaster told Colonel Bloom; there is no record of the conversation. No one knows what the Grandmaster told the Shekhina Mehdi, for the same reason. But whatever it was he told them was necessary to ensure the survival of our ancestors. What Colonel Bloom did, she did of her own free will. What Colonel Bloom did ensured your survival and our birth.”
“And what about the Esperanza?”
“That was not our doing,” Baxter said, “As I said, we don’t know what happened to your ship.”
“But the Grandmaster told you where to find me?”
“Only the Grandmaster knew where you would be found.”
“I don’t believe that he had nothing to do with what happened to my ship.”
“He didn’t,” Heihachi interjected, “The Grandmaster was given the knowledge before he came to us.”
“Given the knowledge? Given the knowledge?” Benedict repeated, “By who? And where did your Grandmaster come from?”
Heihachi balked, looking to Baxter.
“Well?” Benedict demanded.
