Chronicles of the Aeons War, page 11
part #3 of The Omniverse Series
“I gave him the knowledge,” Baxter said at last, “That’s what he always told me. He said that from the beginning; he said that, when he first gave that knowledge to me.”
“What?” Benedict said, “You’re not making any sense!”
“The Grandmaster came to us from the future; from our future. He came to help us fight the Aeons War. He came to us knowing he was destined to die fighting a war he had already finished. Our last mission for the Grandmaster was to ensure that his past self would live to close the war his future self had started.”
“He...you...what?” Then Benedict started to see what Baxter was working towards and couldn’t believe it, didn’t want to believe it. What the El-Ahur was saying was a worse nightmare than waking up fifteen hundred years into the future. Benedict felt more trapped, more alone than ever and Bloom’s words came back to him again:
I trust the Grandmaster implicitly and so should you!
“No,” he said, “No fucking way; no fucking way...”
“It must be difficult to hear,” Heihachi commiserated, “But, yes...the person who for all intents and purposes was your future self directed us where to find him...where to find you...so that you might finish the Aeons’ War, before returning to its beginning.”
Benedict was still grappling with how such a thing could be possible; that it was happening – had already happened – made him feel sick.
“Difficult?” Benedict hissed, “You have no fucking idea about difficult.”
Baxter cleared his throat nervously. “I’m sorry, Mission Comm—”
“You’re sorry? I can’t even understand how what you’re telling me is even fucking possible! I’m still trying to come to terms with the fact that everyone I ever fucking knew is dead, Commodore! And now you’re telling me the reason they all died, the reason I’m here now, is because that’s how my future self planned it, that I killed them and that I will kill them again?”
Baxter and Heihachi regarded one another a moment before the Commodore answered.
“Actually, much of it was foretold according to—”
Benedict stabbed a finger Baxter’s way. “Don’t fucking tell me; let me guess: The Nai’Marak. The Nai’Marak and his fucking prophecies.”
Baxter opened his mouth to answer then thought better of it.
Benedict smirked. “That’s what I thought. When were you going to share all this?”
“We were waiting on you,” Heihachi said, “You’re a catalyst, Mission Commander; even as you’re bound in this fate you’ve reshaped time itself by your presence here. Both the future and the past can only unfold the way they do because of you. We couldn’t tell you until you were ready to ask.”
“Do you really think you can make me do all this? Do you really think you can make me set myself up to be killed?”
“You can only do what you have already done; it’s already happened.” Heihachi said.
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“You haven’t yet become the man I knew; I don’t know if you can become that man.”
Benedict laughed bitterly. “From what you’ve just told me,” he said, “I don’t know that I want to become him.”
♦♦♦
Heihachi Daniel left his quarters and took a tram to the harbour levels. He always liked to view the Ouroboros when they were in port. From the observation gallery overlooking her slip Heihachi could see the Ouroboros in profile. Maintenance drones and cargo haulers crossed to and from the ship as supplies and ordinance were swapped out with cargo and discard. Engineering teams would soon be aboard to inspect the superstructure and maintenance systems before moving on to the Q-field drive and power systems. When the last of the checks were done they would be under way once more.
Before the Grandmaster died he’d told them where and when the Esperanza would be found. He then gave full command of the Ouroboros and her Starfleet over to Baxter Vincent. A few hours later they engaged the Zohor in a devastating battle; the Grandmaster was killed along with a countless score of their comrades in arms. It had been their most difficult battle to date, against Zohor vessels the likes of which they’d never seen. While the rest of the fleet regrouped and pursued the Zohor as they closed on Midian the Ouroboros sent a coded message to Anuket Station and to the Queen’s Council: The Grandmaster was dead. They pursued the Zohor as far as the Thalian line, then, on the Grandmaster’s orders they were leaving to find the Esperanza. Heihachi had taken the responses: The Council and Anuket Station, even the Fleet Harbour at Bloom’s Point all confirmed the order and wished them the Queen’s Blessing.
The Ouroboros was the most powerful ship in the Starfleet. They had never found another like it in their travels. Its hull and superstructure were made from unique alloys of dense metals and exotic elements that could only be stabilized when combined; despite the long centuries studying Alien technology from hundreds of worlds, the El-Ahur had never mastered the metallurgic secrets to make such alloys. Owing to the properties of these exotic composites, the Ouroboros could generate, channel and direct an essentially infinite amount of power through its systems and hull. She was for all intents and purposes a flying weapon; one of five backbones of the Fleet – of which only three still survived: The ‘Boros, the Caliburn and Sholokhov’s Command Ship, on the Far Frontier.
Heihachi hadn’t been comfortable with their orders; he felt that their place was with the rest of the fleet, fighting the Zohor and protecting Midian from the attack. His confrontation with the Grandmaster’s past self when he’d issued the orders hadn’t helped him feel any more confident they’d made the right decision sending the Ouroboros after Benedict. He’d voiced his concerns to Baxter often enough but he’d also secretly hoped that the Prophecies were right and that they would find their Grandmaster asleep and waiting aboard the wreckage of the Esperanza. Now more than ever it was obvious to him and many others that this was not their Grandmaster; that the hero they’d followed and admired had not yet emerged from this man Benedict Jack, and might not emerge at all.
♦♦♦
They released Benedict, but after the scene in the gallery confined him to quarters. He lay on his bunk in the dark. He wasn’t sure if he was trying to think or trying not to; not that it made much of a difference. Benedict kept trying to understand how it was possible that his future self had somehow set in motion this complex chain of events...from Bloom’s death to his own inevitable demise in his own past. What bothered him more was why? Benedict couldn’t imagine anything would ever make him sacrifice the lives of all those he’d served with, known and loved. The idea that it was preordained, that this had already been decided for him and by him was vulgar. He couldn’t understand becoming that person; he wouldn’t accept it.
A chime sounded from the walls of his quarters. The decks like his rooms were dark as it was well into the night-time cycle at Bloom’s Point; only the harbour was alive with light, as traffic through the facility never stopped. Benedict looked up, recalling the locations and positions of the data panels around his rooms. But before he could move to one the Sentinel began to gather itself together in the room.
The Sentinel was a projection of the governing systems of the station. Those systems had long ago become self-aware, as much by accident as most life in the universe. The complex interaction of trillions of subroutines and systems designed to assist the Hub’s original operators to maintain the Hub’s operation produced what could only be described as a Mind, a ghost within the machine. The computer matrix of the superplanet-sized space station pushed forward this Mind, seeing in it the potential for even more efficient operation through its organization; the result was consciousness.
The Sentinel was not unique; others existed on faraway places like the dead archive world of Hiddek Uhl, as well as on a few long-abandoned core worlds of the old League. Over the millions of years they had been left alone and operational they eventually learned to communicate with each other across the cosmos, using technological relics from their lost parent civilizations. Over a thousand years before the Sentinels had detected the first ships of the El-Ahur leaving Midian.
The El-Ahur came upon the Hub in two waves; the first was led by Nadia Castaneda. She and the officers of her mission were still composed of Old-Earthers but the Sentinels considered them to be the first successors of the Human Race, the El-Ahur. Although Castaneda returned from the Hub aboard a new ship it was not to evacuate Midian along the Exodus that the Lost Races of the League of Worlds had followed. Her mission was to begin training officers to build the fleet necessary to defend Midian against the Zohor.
When her daughter returned a over a century later it was with the first of the Phenex El-Ahur. The Queen of Light and Sorrow was at the time still training the El-Ahur on the far slope of Mount Umbra; still long before she would seal herself in the Keep. Castaneda Lucia helped to build the Starfleet to where it was today: hundreds of thousands of ships, millions of Phenex El-Ahur. For nearly two hundred years she led expedition after expedition from Midian back into the territory of the Old League, seeking out their technologies and ships and most especially their weapons. Wherever warlike Races once dwelled Castaneda led the Phenex El-Ahur. The Sentinels assisted these expeditions as much as they could; there to guide them and to observe, but like the El-Ahur the Sentinels had to serve the Machine in their own way. The Machine served the Purpose and the Purpose was Life.
The Sentinel aboard the Hub was one of the oldest, created by one of the Second Generation of Races born in the universe. The Second Generation had lived on the earliest planets, orbiting the first stars. Few had survived to migrate into space though there were more of the Second Generation alive than of the First; the strange life forms that were born before stars and planets ever existed were unknowable things even to the Sentinel from the Hub. It had encountered a being from the First Generation once, as the eldritch creature traveled through the area of space where the Hub resided. The encounter was the only time the Sentinel had felt anything that would approximate fear. It had had no means of reference to understand the encounter with the Being. It was more cosmic event than first contact. The experience had been fascinating, but not nearly as fascinating to the Sentinel as the man whom it was visiting, now.
The Sentinel’s appearance was that of a nondescript young man; dark hair, dark eyes, simple clothing. The Sentinel could have been a university student on the way to class.
“Hello, Mission Commander. You remember me.”
“Yes,” Jack Benedict said, “Why are you here?”
In a fraction of a second the Sentinel understood that Benedict was not in search of a philosophical discussion; the realization was fluid and unconscious as it would be in any thinking Being’s mind. “I’m here because I’m curious to meet you again. I hope you don’t mind. If you prefer I can come back at another time; or you could contact me when you are ready to entertain my questions.”
“No, it’s all right,” Benedict said, grimly remarking: “You’re the closest thing to a familiar face that I’ve seen since I’ve been here.”
“I am deeply sorry for your loss,” the Sentinel said, “Though if it is of any consequence, you will find much happiness in your future.”
“Thank you; I hope you’re right.”
The Sentinel affected a smile. “I know I’m right. Your future is my past, Mission Commander.”
“Yeah, that’s what everybody keeps telling me.”
“You’re a time traveller, Mission Commander; in a way, all El-Ahur are. But your situation is unique even among them.”
“What do you mean, the El-Ahur are time travellers?”
“They navigate their ships through space and time much as the Old Ship did, when travelling through time warp. They do this not for space travel but for tactical purposes.”
“That didn’t make sense to me; break it down.”
“I’m certain that Commodore Baxter Vincent will explain everything to you when you are ready, though if you consider what I said, I think you’ll be able to...break it down...for yourself.”
The Sentinel paused for effect then continued, “But what I want to discuss is how your experience as a time traveller differs from theirs. Your future is our past and your point line through spacetime arcs back upon itself. This is so rare as to be considered a singular event and I would like to know what that experience is like for you.”
“You mean how it feels that my future self has fucked my life completely for me?”
This gave the Sentinel pause; it had previously encountered Jack Benedict as he had been as an officer aboard the Old Ship and then as the Grandmaster, returned from the future to fight the Aeons War. But this Jack Benedict came from between those two extremes and he was neither man; this instance of Jack Benedict was bitter, angry...emotions rare among the El-Ahur and not nearly as venomous as what Benedict exuded.
“I apologize Mission Commander; my intent is not to upset you. As I said if you prefer I can return at another time.”
Benedict stared at the Sentinel, his eyes taking every detail of the projection. It appeared Human, but somehow it couldn’t mask the sheer weight of the intellect and intelligence behind the guise. What was it, Benedict wondered, and how did it fit in to this complex web he was stuck in? He felt claustrophobic; a terror that he’d not felt since the Australian Conflict back on what was now quaintly referred to as “The Old Earth”.
Only a few months after then-Major “Harpy” Bloom led Benedict to safety after their flight group was ambushed and destroyed, Benedict, himself had been promoted to squad leader and was commanding his first mission; a sortie against an enemy sensor installation. They’d been successful and were returning to the carrier in the South China Sea. Enemy drones targeted them and an orbital missile platform rained hell down on their group. Benedict led his squad through it, destroying the drones, evading the missiles and outdistancing the platform’s arc of operation. He kept them all alive until The USS Enterprise, their Powell – class aircraft carrier, could deploy sensor-jamming to hide them and bring them home. His plane had taken damage during the combat and finally failed on the way in. Benedict ditched in the ocean and was recovered by a sub in their fleet group.
On the way to rendezvous with the carrier group, the sub was struck by a Shark-class autonomous torpedo. They were crippled, sinking fast towards their crush depth as the crew worked furiously to restore life to the sub’s engines. Benedict was a helpless passenger, waiting to live or die based on the actions of others. He felt exactly the same way then as now: locked into a fate that was utterly out of his control, one that was an inevitable path of choices and decisions he himself had made.
“I don’t understand how,” Benedict told the Sentinel, “I don’t understand why...”
“I would also like to understand, though perhaps not for the same reasons as you.”
“What the fuck do you know about my reasons?”
“Well, I suspect you’re already wondering how to change your fate.”
“Yeah; anything you can do to help with that?” Benedict asked, not really expecting an answer. All the more reason the Sentinel’s answer surprised him.
“It would be interesting to see if we could.”
♦♦♦
It was late at night. Heihachi Daniel sat outside on the narrow balcony of his quarters. The hush of night across Bloom’s point echoed coolly. He was trying to relax, to meditate and clear his mind. But it just wasn’t working.
“Dan, why are you still up?”
Heihachi looked up. Roshenko Aqualina, his companion and Captain of Systems and Operations aboard the Ouroboros was standing in the archway from their quarters’ common room. Her Phenex El-Ahur – fit body was shapely and long, her dark, golden hair glistening in the artificial night of the Point’s sky.
“I can’t sleep, ‘Lina,” he said, “Anyway, I’m off duty tomorrow and I—”
“Dan, we talked about this already. I know why you’re still up; stop it. You trusted the Grandmaster; more importantly, he trusted you. We don’t know anything yet about the Mission Commander but we know that we need him and we must help him. That’s why the Grandmaster sent us to find him.”
“I guess we’ll have to hope the Grandmaster knew what he was doing.”
