Chronicles of the Aeons War, page 58
part #3 of The Omniverse Series
“I did not want this!”
The Shekhina Mehdi’s shout was no louder than any Human might yell, but the very air seemed to reverberate as if following a thunderclap. Decker Marius sat in a cell in the highest levels of the Peace and Security installation of New Rome. The Queen of Light and Sorrow stood on the other side of the bars with Grigori Myrym, the Grandmaster and Marshall Thrask. The latter two Allison had brought to the Sinai by shifting them from Olympus.
“Your actions could have unleashed another war! By the time I was aware of what you were doing, by the time I could get there it was too late! And once I was there I was part of the event; you robbed Me even of the ability to go reverse fate! I gave them AMNESTY!” The Queen’s voice this time did shake the air, “I said no more innocent blood was to be spilled!”
“Marietti was guilty!” Decker shouted back, suddenly angrier at his Queen than he could have imagined himself ever feeling, “I didn’t spill innocent blood! I killed a murderer!”
“You committed murder – an assassination, given Marietti’s position in the Sinai – and now you will die for it.” Allison retorted, “I can’t save you from this fate; in the interests of peace, I must let them carry out trial and sentence against you. You assassinated the leader of the Cloister of the Erelim, in his offices, in the Erelim embassy in New Rome.”
“And he helped plan the murder of hundreds.”
“Haven’t enough died?” Allison implored, “Does one more death undo those hundreds, those thousands? His death almost inevitably means your death as well; do you feel no remorse for the crime you’ve committed?”
“My only regret is that I couldn’t do the same to the rest of the conspirators, your precious Pomeroy Zaiola included.”
The Grandmaster bristled at this. Decker could tell that the man wanted to say something but held himself.
“Even as I’ve left your fate to the hands of the Abrahamics for the sake of the peace,” Allison said, “I now have to make my way back to Terra Nova to quell those who would make war for your freedom. You have done so much more harm than you can comprehend.”
“And now I’m going to die for it.” Decker said. Though his attitude was cavalier, Allison could sense his fear, just teetering on the edge of outright terror.
“I will Remember you in My Dreams when you have died.”
“Cold comfort.”
“Then you shouldn’t have fired a single fucking shot!” The Shekhina Mehdi said, with sudden, violent anger before She vanished. Her disappearance was so abrupt that only the Grandmaster was unsurprised. Marshall Thrask approached Baxter’s cell.
“Under Abrahamic Law you’re allowed defence council and even the right to claim mitigation for the event.” he said, “You might succeed in getting your sentence reduced but of course there’s no guarantee.”
Decker leaned against the back wall of his narrow cell, looking strangely smaller to Grigori’s eyes in the grey and orange striped prisoner’s uniform than he ever had in the vestments of the Suphia El-Ahur.
“They won’t reduce the sentence,” he sighed, “Even the Shekhina knows the truth of it; and I suspect the Grandmaster does as well.”
“Some things can be changed, Marius,” Benedict said, “I don’t know if this is one of them…”
“Don’t hold false hope out to me. What if I openly confess?”
Thrask shrugged, “You’ll forego the trial and be sentenced immediately. Abrahamic justice is swift; if sentenced to death you’ll be executed within three days of the decree being handed down.”
“No,” Grigori exclaimed, nearly sobbing.
“It’s the only thing that will guarantee peace, after what happened.” The Grandmaster replied, gently. She stared accusingly at this stranger; this interloper and foreigner both from a time long past and a time yet to come.
“Fuck peace,” she said, “They struck us, Marius struck back! What he did was justice!”
“What he did was vengeance,” the Grandmaster said, turning to face the hero of the Suphia El-Ahur now locked in a cage, “And believe it or not Commander Decker, that’s an emotion I know all too well. I wish there was something to be done but the Queen is right. The Peace between Terra Nova and the Sinai has always been uncertain and unsteady. The Queen will plead for clemency on your behalf, but…”
Decker grunted and turned away from the bars of his cell, facing the corner above the cot where he would be sleeping until brought before court.
“Go,” he said at length, “There’s nothing any of you can do for me now; The Shekhina Mehdi is right. I sealed my own fate. I just wish I could have done more than blow that one bastard’s head apart.”
“I insist you accept me as your defence council,” Thrask said, “We can appeal for leniency for the sake of the very peace they would execute you for.”
“I refuse,” Decker said, “By Suphia Law I broke our covenants. I broke the Queen’s Law; I’m no longer El-Ahur. You can insist on nothing. We know it won’t make a bit of difference in the end what you say or do, anyway; after all this is his history.” Decker gestured accusingly toward the Grandmaster.
“As you say,” Marshall Thrask sighed.
The Marshall left with the Grandmaster. Grigori remained.
“Chief?”
Decker turned; she was sobbing.
“What is it, Myrym?”
“This isn’t fair; this shouldn’t happen. What you did was an act of madness; a passionate attack.”
“And I have to pay for what I did,”
“No,” she sobbed again, “You’ve been my teacher, my commander, my colleague…my friend! I can’t bear to lose you! I was in that room; you drew first...before I could...it could have just as easily been me that…”
“But it wasn’t.”
“Marius…”
He came to the bars, reached through and laced his fingers with hers as she wept openly.
“What I did was an act of rage, an act of wilful disobedience of the Queen’s Law as well as Abrahamic law. If I was ever a good teacher to you, ever a good leader…ever your friend, then I must teach, I must lead once more, one last time, and show that the El-Ahur face the consequences of their actions. I must stand up for what I did against those to whom I did it.”
“There must be something we can do; we can break you out, stage your death…”
“Myrym…”
“No! No! This is wrong!”
“It’s my own doing,” he sighed, “Now, go. Please. There’s no need for you to be here. I’m your master, your Chief no longer. You’re the Chief, now.” He turned away. She shouted then sobbed his name a few times, but Decker was unmoved. At last she left. A few moments later Decker lay down on his cot, staring at the enforced concrete ceiling, wondering what it would be like to die. He’d read many medical reports, religious accounts and even the testimony of those who had been near to death before being brought back. He was terrified; panicked. His outward shell of calm was the result of his years of training as El-Ahur. He could remain visibly, physically calm and leave the turmoil inside; but he wondered how he would be when they pronounced sentence and when it came time to carry that sentence out. Worst of all was being caged, locked in this place with no sense of time…no sense of anything other than isolation and the impending judgment to come and no means to run away or hide.
♦♦♦
The Shekhina returned alone to the Sinai. Marshall Thrask and the newly-confirmed-by-Thrask Chief Grigori Myrym left with the Grandmaster on a shuttle directly for the Ouroboros.
“I wish you were coming aboard under happier circumstances,” the Grandmaster said, “The Ouroboros is probably the second-most impressive starship I’ve served aboard; the first, no matter how much more advanced that the ‘Boros is, will always be the Old Ship.”
The Marshall grunted noncommittally; Grigori said nothing. The Grandmaster opted to be silent after that. They watched the pitted, rust-red ovoid grow larger as they cleared Midian’s atmosphere and headed along the starboard side of the vessel, towards a waiting docking bay.
Despite her misery, despite the Marshall’s dark mood, both Grigori and Thrask were impressed when they debarked aboard the Ouroboros. The docking bay was like nothing they’d ever seen; vast, open, bustling with activity. The corridors beyond, as the Grandmaster led them to the lift bank and from there to the Command Deck, had been outfitted for Human need but these accommodations had been obviously overlaid upon an alien architecture unlike any they’d seen before. There was an organic symmetry that suggested the ship was alive, or at least the result of some natural process. The aboard ship bustle made it obvious that it was fully crewed; the faces they saw all seemed to be Midianite or of Midianite descent; many had cybernetic enhancements. Grigori couldn’t keep from staring; the devices looked out of place extending from the flesh. It was unreal and the only thing grounding her was her lament for Decker.
When they stepped onto the Command Deck it was no longer possible for them to contain their awe. The Grandmaster watched their reactions knowingly, recalling his own early days aboard this ship. Thrask and Grigori were surprised again when, upon climbing up the short ramp to the Bridge Deck that the Bridge separated and rose into the air over the crew pit.
“The wonders I’ve seen from this Bridge…you can’t imagine,” Grandmaster Benedict said, almost wearily as they rose into their command position, “A star collapsing to a fraction its original size before exploding…an entire nebula burning, on fire for millions of light-years…Millions of Zohor ships obliterated in a single blast…” The Grandmaster lapsed into contemplative silence for a moment, then turned to look at his guests with a reluctant smile, “We’ll have you both back in Olympus within an hour.”
Grigori had spent her entire life on Midian, having only made one pilgrimage to Thalia centuries before. The military transport she’d flown aboard had been nothing but utilitarian; stacked seats with no viewports, no artificial gravity and an ion propulsion engine that cut the flight time between Midian and its moon down to a matter of hours. She had never seen space in all the grandeur presented on the Ouroboros’ Command Deck. Massive screens formed a dome around the wide gantry surrounding the crew pit; the views seemed to look out onto space unobstructed by screen or transparent viewing window. They could see Midian’s southern pole ahead, gargantuan Heruba spinning evenly compared to its moon’s tumbling, baseball-stitch axial rotation. From this perspective, Heruba’s storms were almost perfectly even bands of color: purples, greens, blues; constantly undershot with continent-wide lightning blasts far beneath the violent upper atmosphere. The luminous monstrosity seemed nightmarish from here, even for someone who had grown up with the supermassive gas giant reigning in the nighttime sky.
“Helm, make our heading for stationary orbit over the Umbra and Olympus,” the Grandmaster said, looking back at his guests, “The Queen’s requested you be returned to your bases of operations; Chief Grigori, I’ve been advised your previous request to return to Rescue and Recovery Operations has been approved. Marshall Thrask, I’ll be joining you in the War Room under the Council Building; we have much to prepare for in advance of what is to come.”
♦♦♦
There were protests all over Midian. In Landing and Olympus demonstrations were held calling Decker Marius a hero to the people amid demands for his release. In the Sinai outraged followers of Abraham’s Three Faiths bellowed for his immediate execution without trial. Others called for war with Terra Nova; Even the Christian sects, who most revered the sanctity of Life of the Three Faiths, were demanding blood vengeance against the one who had so mercilessly killed one of the Sinai’s most important figures.
Pomeroy Zaiola would have been one of those leading the protests in New Rome if it weren’t for her being on a transport for Twilight’s End, heading into the far, cold, dark South to begin her training as Erelim in earnest. She travelled alone in a single pod on a tramway line that led due south beyond the last reaches of Heket’s light and into the eternal dusk of the Far South. No one had seen her off; her family had shut her out of their lives the moment she’d returned to the Sinai with the Queen. She wept as the pod made its way south, though it was for her former master, the man who was to have trained her in the ways of the Erelim. Zaiola vowed she would never again trust the El-Ahur or submit to their Queen. If she could, Zaiola decided, she would find a way to destroy them, Zohor be damned. If the El-Ahur were to be the saviours of Midian, they had proven themselves unworthy of the task.
♦♦♦
In the Landing Reconstruction Zone Grigori assembled the members of Decker’s old team that now fell under her command. Though their mission was to aid in the reconstruction, the newly-appointed Chief had another mission in mind. They set up a safe house in one of the ruined structures that had partially survived the Zohor blast, not far from their operations camp.
“Decker named me Chief,” Grigori told the small assembly; fewer than she’d have liked, “I intend to return to New Rome and free him – by any means necessary. He retaliated against a confessed conspirator of the Temple Attack. If the Abrahamics had any sense of justice, they’d have let him go. We’ve come this far in our war against the Zohor without the help of the Old God – why should we need the help of the Abrahamics now? I can only ask for volunteers, because what I propose will be mutiny against our Marshalls’ and Chieftains’ decrees. Who will stand with me?”
She smiled – the first time since Decker had been arrested; to the last every one of them raised their hand to volunteer.
“Then let’s begin planning.”
♦♦♦
The surviving three Fleetmasters of the Phenex El-Ahur and the Marshalls of the Suphia gathered together with the Council of Midian in the war room that Benedict had once, in their future, fled after having had some choice words for Fleetmistress Kaplan. Then as now Benedict could discern no hint of her true age; like all Firstborn and the younger Second and Third Generation El-Ahur Kaplan had a flawless, smooth face that belied her true age. Beneath the scars of his own war-torn visage, he considered that he didn’t look more than fifty years (by the old counting); that was less than a fraction of as many years as he’d actually lived. Only the Mysteries knew how much longer he had left.
“Be seated,” the Handmaid said. The assembly obliged and tactical information was relayed to their cortical implants and lenses. They were looking at a map of the Twin Systems’ shared hourglass-shaped heliosphere. The Queen’s Barrier was shown as a rippling, flowing ovoid surrounding the two stars just beyond heliopause.
“We now have confirmation that the Queen’s Barrier holds as She said that it would,” Yeung Elysz said, “A Zohor swarm passed through the sector and directly across the membrane of the Barrier and immediately emerged on the other side; so long as it holds we are safe within.”
“Precisely how long has the Shekhina Mehdi promised the barrier will hold?” Fleetmistress Kaplan asked, coolly.
“When last I had opportunity to speak to the Queen,” the Handmaid replied, “She said it would hold as long as it was needed.”
The Fleetmistress didn’t look impressed, “That’s not exactly very specific, is it?”
“Specific enough,” the Grandmaster spoke up, “The field around the Twin Systems will hold so long as the Zohor remain a threat to this world,” He didn’t add his foreknowledge: that when they found the Hope, or what was left of Her, the Queen would go mad; that the Barrier would collapse when She vanished in a screaming fury that still gave him nightmares.
“How sure are you of this?” Kaplan challenged him.
“Because I remember when the Barrier finally came down,” he said, bluntly. Benedict’s answer and tone of voice left no room for further questions.
“On to other matters then,” the Handmaid said, uncertainly, “The Queen commands that we hold to Her Order of Peace with the Sinai and Southlands; the Suphia are ordered to investigate potential reprisal attacks and monitor known anti-Abrahamic groups, as well as those advocacies protesting for the release of Decker Marius from New Rome’s custody. Peace must prevail, no matter New Rome’s judgment against him.”
“The Queen’s wishes on this don’t make sense,” Thrask said, angrily, “She expects us and the people of Terra Nova to remain calm while they execute one of our own for assassinating a murderer!”
The Shekhina Mehdi’s shout was no louder than any Human might yell, but the very air seemed to reverberate as if following a thunderclap. Decker Marius sat in a cell in the highest levels of the Peace and Security installation of New Rome. The Queen of Light and Sorrow stood on the other side of the bars with Grigori Myrym, the Grandmaster and Marshall Thrask. The latter two Allison had brought to the Sinai by shifting them from Olympus.
“Your actions could have unleashed another war! By the time I was aware of what you were doing, by the time I could get there it was too late! And once I was there I was part of the event; you robbed Me even of the ability to go reverse fate! I gave them AMNESTY!” The Queen’s voice this time did shake the air, “I said no more innocent blood was to be spilled!”
“Marietti was guilty!” Decker shouted back, suddenly angrier at his Queen than he could have imagined himself ever feeling, “I didn’t spill innocent blood! I killed a murderer!”
“You committed murder – an assassination, given Marietti’s position in the Sinai – and now you will die for it.” Allison retorted, “I can’t save you from this fate; in the interests of peace, I must let them carry out trial and sentence against you. You assassinated the leader of the Cloister of the Erelim, in his offices, in the Erelim embassy in New Rome.”
“And he helped plan the murder of hundreds.”
“Haven’t enough died?” Allison implored, “Does one more death undo those hundreds, those thousands? His death almost inevitably means your death as well; do you feel no remorse for the crime you’ve committed?”
“My only regret is that I couldn’t do the same to the rest of the conspirators, your precious Pomeroy Zaiola included.”
The Grandmaster bristled at this. Decker could tell that the man wanted to say something but held himself.
“Even as I’ve left your fate to the hands of the Abrahamics for the sake of the peace,” Allison said, “I now have to make my way back to Terra Nova to quell those who would make war for your freedom. You have done so much more harm than you can comprehend.”
“And now I’m going to die for it.” Decker said. Though his attitude was cavalier, Allison could sense his fear, just teetering on the edge of outright terror.
“I will Remember you in My Dreams when you have died.”
“Cold comfort.”
“Then you shouldn’t have fired a single fucking shot!” The Shekhina Mehdi said, with sudden, violent anger before She vanished. Her disappearance was so abrupt that only the Grandmaster was unsurprised. Marshall Thrask approached Baxter’s cell.
“Under Abrahamic Law you’re allowed defence council and even the right to claim mitigation for the event.” he said, “You might succeed in getting your sentence reduced but of course there’s no guarantee.”
Decker leaned against the back wall of his narrow cell, looking strangely smaller to Grigori’s eyes in the grey and orange striped prisoner’s uniform than he ever had in the vestments of the Suphia El-Ahur.
“They won’t reduce the sentence,” he sighed, “Even the Shekhina knows the truth of it; and I suspect the Grandmaster does as well.”
“Some things can be changed, Marius,” Benedict said, “I don’t know if this is one of them…”
“Don’t hold false hope out to me. What if I openly confess?”
Thrask shrugged, “You’ll forego the trial and be sentenced immediately. Abrahamic justice is swift; if sentenced to death you’ll be executed within three days of the decree being handed down.”
“No,” Grigori exclaimed, nearly sobbing.
“It’s the only thing that will guarantee peace, after what happened.” The Grandmaster replied, gently. She stared accusingly at this stranger; this interloper and foreigner both from a time long past and a time yet to come.
“Fuck peace,” she said, “They struck us, Marius struck back! What he did was justice!”
“What he did was vengeance,” the Grandmaster said, turning to face the hero of the Suphia El-Ahur now locked in a cage, “And believe it or not Commander Decker, that’s an emotion I know all too well. I wish there was something to be done but the Queen is right. The Peace between Terra Nova and the Sinai has always been uncertain and unsteady. The Queen will plead for clemency on your behalf, but…”
Decker grunted and turned away from the bars of his cell, facing the corner above the cot where he would be sleeping until brought before court.
“Go,” he said at length, “There’s nothing any of you can do for me now; The Shekhina Mehdi is right. I sealed my own fate. I just wish I could have done more than blow that one bastard’s head apart.”
“I insist you accept me as your defence council,” Thrask said, “We can appeal for leniency for the sake of the very peace they would execute you for.”
“I refuse,” Decker said, “By Suphia Law I broke our covenants. I broke the Queen’s Law; I’m no longer El-Ahur. You can insist on nothing. We know it won’t make a bit of difference in the end what you say or do, anyway; after all this is his history.” Decker gestured accusingly toward the Grandmaster.
“As you say,” Marshall Thrask sighed.
The Marshall left with the Grandmaster. Grigori remained.
“Chief?”
Decker turned; she was sobbing.
“What is it, Myrym?”
“This isn’t fair; this shouldn’t happen. What you did was an act of madness; a passionate attack.”
“And I have to pay for what I did,”
“No,” she sobbed again, “You’ve been my teacher, my commander, my colleague…my friend! I can’t bear to lose you! I was in that room; you drew first...before I could...it could have just as easily been me that…”
“But it wasn’t.”
“Marius…”
He came to the bars, reached through and laced his fingers with hers as she wept openly.
“What I did was an act of rage, an act of wilful disobedience of the Queen’s Law as well as Abrahamic law. If I was ever a good teacher to you, ever a good leader…ever your friend, then I must teach, I must lead once more, one last time, and show that the El-Ahur face the consequences of their actions. I must stand up for what I did against those to whom I did it.”
“There must be something we can do; we can break you out, stage your death…”
“Myrym…”
“No! No! This is wrong!”
“It’s my own doing,” he sighed, “Now, go. Please. There’s no need for you to be here. I’m your master, your Chief no longer. You’re the Chief, now.” He turned away. She shouted then sobbed his name a few times, but Decker was unmoved. At last she left. A few moments later Decker lay down on his cot, staring at the enforced concrete ceiling, wondering what it would be like to die. He’d read many medical reports, religious accounts and even the testimony of those who had been near to death before being brought back. He was terrified; panicked. His outward shell of calm was the result of his years of training as El-Ahur. He could remain visibly, physically calm and leave the turmoil inside; but he wondered how he would be when they pronounced sentence and when it came time to carry that sentence out. Worst of all was being caged, locked in this place with no sense of time…no sense of anything other than isolation and the impending judgment to come and no means to run away or hide.
♦♦♦
The Shekhina returned alone to the Sinai. Marshall Thrask and the newly-confirmed-by-Thrask Chief Grigori Myrym left with the Grandmaster on a shuttle directly for the Ouroboros.
“I wish you were coming aboard under happier circumstances,” the Grandmaster said, “The Ouroboros is probably the second-most impressive starship I’ve served aboard; the first, no matter how much more advanced that the ‘Boros is, will always be the Old Ship.”
The Marshall grunted noncommittally; Grigori said nothing. The Grandmaster opted to be silent after that. They watched the pitted, rust-red ovoid grow larger as they cleared Midian’s atmosphere and headed along the starboard side of the vessel, towards a waiting docking bay.
Despite her misery, despite the Marshall’s dark mood, both Grigori and Thrask were impressed when they debarked aboard the Ouroboros. The docking bay was like nothing they’d ever seen; vast, open, bustling with activity. The corridors beyond, as the Grandmaster led them to the lift bank and from there to the Command Deck, had been outfitted for Human need but these accommodations had been obviously overlaid upon an alien architecture unlike any they’d seen before. There was an organic symmetry that suggested the ship was alive, or at least the result of some natural process. The aboard ship bustle made it obvious that it was fully crewed; the faces they saw all seemed to be Midianite or of Midianite descent; many had cybernetic enhancements. Grigori couldn’t keep from staring; the devices looked out of place extending from the flesh. It was unreal and the only thing grounding her was her lament for Decker.
When they stepped onto the Command Deck it was no longer possible for them to contain their awe. The Grandmaster watched their reactions knowingly, recalling his own early days aboard this ship. Thrask and Grigori were surprised again when, upon climbing up the short ramp to the Bridge Deck that the Bridge separated and rose into the air over the crew pit.
“The wonders I’ve seen from this Bridge…you can’t imagine,” Grandmaster Benedict said, almost wearily as they rose into their command position, “A star collapsing to a fraction its original size before exploding…an entire nebula burning, on fire for millions of light-years…Millions of Zohor ships obliterated in a single blast…” The Grandmaster lapsed into contemplative silence for a moment, then turned to look at his guests with a reluctant smile, “We’ll have you both back in Olympus within an hour.”
Grigori had spent her entire life on Midian, having only made one pilgrimage to Thalia centuries before. The military transport she’d flown aboard had been nothing but utilitarian; stacked seats with no viewports, no artificial gravity and an ion propulsion engine that cut the flight time between Midian and its moon down to a matter of hours. She had never seen space in all the grandeur presented on the Ouroboros’ Command Deck. Massive screens formed a dome around the wide gantry surrounding the crew pit; the views seemed to look out onto space unobstructed by screen or transparent viewing window. They could see Midian’s southern pole ahead, gargantuan Heruba spinning evenly compared to its moon’s tumbling, baseball-stitch axial rotation. From this perspective, Heruba’s storms were almost perfectly even bands of color: purples, greens, blues; constantly undershot with continent-wide lightning blasts far beneath the violent upper atmosphere. The luminous monstrosity seemed nightmarish from here, even for someone who had grown up with the supermassive gas giant reigning in the nighttime sky.
“Helm, make our heading for stationary orbit over the Umbra and Olympus,” the Grandmaster said, looking back at his guests, “The Queen’s requested you be returned to your bases of operations; Chief Grigori, I’ve been advised your previous request to return to Rescue and Recovery Operations has been approved. Marshall Thrask, I’ll be joining you in the War Room under the Council Building; we have much to prepare for in advance of what is to come.”
♦♦♦
There were protests all over Midian. In Landing and Olympus demonstrations were held calling Decker Marius a hero to the people amid demands for his release. In the Sinai outraged followers of Abraham’s Three Faiths bellowed for his immediate execution without trial. Others called for war with Terra Nova; Even the Christian sects, who most revered the sanctity of Life of the Three Faiths, were demanding blood vengeance against the one who had so mercilessly killed one of the Sinai’s most important figures.
Pomeroy Zaiola would have been one of those leading the protests in New Rome if it weren’t for her being on a transport for Twilight’s End, heading into the far, cold, dark South to begin her training as Erelim in earnest. She travelled alone in a single pod on a tramway line that led due south beyond the last reaches of Heket’s light and into the eternal dusk of the Far South. No one had seen her off; her family had shut her out of their lives the moment she’d returned to the Sinai with the Queen. She wept as the pod made its way south, though it was for her former master, the man who was to have trained her in the ways of the Erelim. Zaiola vowed she would never again trust the El-Ahur or submit to their Queen. If she could, Zaiola decided, she would find a way to destroy them, Zohor be damned. If the El-Ahur were to be the saviours of Midian, they had proven themselves unworthy of the task.
♦♦♦
In the Landing Reconstruction Zone Grigori assembled the members of Decker’s old team that now fell under her command. Though their mission was to aid in the reconstruction, the newly-appointed Chief had another mission in mind. They set up a safe house in one of the ruined structures that had partially survived the Zohor blast, not far from their operations camp.
“Decker named me Chief,” Grigori told the small assembly; fewer than she’d have liked, “I intend to return to New Rome and free him – by any means necessary. He retaliated against a confessed conspirator of the Temple Attack. If the Abrahamics had any sense of justice, they’d have let him go. We’ve come this far in our war against the Zohor without the help of the Old God – why should we need the help of the Abrahamics now? I can only ask for volunteers, because what I propose will be mutiny against our Marshalls’ and Chieftains’ decrees. Who will stand with me?”
She smiled – the first time since Decker had been arrested; to the last every one of them raised their hand to volunteer.
“Then let’s begin planning.”
♦♦♦
The surviving three Fleetmasters of the Phenex El-Ahur and the Marshalls of the Suphia gathered together with the Council of Midian in the war room that Benedict had once, in their future, fled after having had some choice words for Fleetmistress Kaplan. Then as now Benedict could discern no hint of her true age; like all Firstborn and the younger Second and Third Generation El-Ahur Kaplan had a flawless, smooth face that belied her true age. Beneath the scars of his own war-torn visage, he considered that he didn’t look more than fifty years (by the old counting); that was less than a fraction of as many years as he’d actually lived. Only the Mysteries knew how much longer he had left.
“Be seated,” the Handmaid said. The assembly obliged and tactical information was relayed to their cortical implants and lenses. They were looking at a map of the Twin Systems’ shared hourglass-shaped heliosphere. The Queen’s Barrier was shown as a rippling, flowing ovoid surrounding the two stars just beyond heliopause.
“We now have confirmation that the Queen’s Barrier holds as She said that it would,” Yeung Elysz said, “A Zohor swarm passed through the sector and directly across the membrane of the Barrier and immediately emerged on the other side; so long as it holds we are safe within.”
“Precisely how long has the Shekhina Mehdi promised the barrier will hold?” Fleetmistress Kaplan asked, coolly.
“When last I had opportunity to speak to the Queen,” the Handmaid replied, “She said it would hold as long as it was needed.”
The Fleetmistress didn’t look impressed, “That’s not exactly very specific, is it?”
“Specific enough,” the Grandmaster spoke up, “The field around the Twin Systems will hold so long as the Zohor remain a threat to this world,” He didn’t add his foreknowledge: that when they found the Hope, or what was left of Her, the Queen would go mad; that the Barrier would collapse when She vanished in a screaming fury that still gave him nightmares.
“How sure are you of this?” Kaplan challenged him.
“Because I remember when the Barrier finally came down,” he said, bluntly. Benedict’s answer and tone of voice left no room for further questions.
“On to other matters then,” the Handmaid said, uncertainly, “The Queen commands that we hold to Her Order of Peace with the Sinai and Southlands; the Suphia are ordered to investigate potential reprisal attacks and monitor known anti-Abrahamic groups, as well as those advocacies protesting for the release of Decker Marius from New Rome’s custody. Peace must prevail, no matter New Rome’s judgment against him.”
“The Queen’s wishes on this don’t make sense,” Thrask said, angrily, “She expects us and the people of Terra Nova to remain calm while they execute one of our own for assassinating a murderer!”
