Chronicles of the Aeons War, page 98
part #3 of The Omniverse Series
They performed careful rotations of the ships once the Backbones had been rebuilt and returned to their respective fleets. The Caliburn took temporary command of the Grandmaster’s Starfleet, as the Ouroboros likewise took temporary command of Yeung Acshah’s Starfleet in Home Sector. Benedict had elected to remain on Midian with the majority of Fleet Command to discuss the new strategies they would need to employ even as the Zohor remained hidden and guarded deep within the space under their control. There was no doubt the Zohor were building up a massive fleet. There was no doubt they would come out of their fortified and heavily, aggressively defended space only when they were ready to inflict damage against their enemy from Midian.
“In the history of the League’s time in the Aeons War,” the Sentinel once explained to the War Council, “No one was ever able to discover as much about the Zohor; no one was able to ever strike so deep into the heart of Zohor space…and never was such a vital facility as the Primary Weapons Design Node ever taken out.”
And so, consulting Gabrielle and the special archives aboard the Ouroboros, the Grandmaster, the Handmaid and their War Council prepared for the coming madness, prepared for the Zohor onslaught.
“You know My Brothers and Sisters are looking for Me,” Gabrielle said to Grandmaster Benedict one day, “You know they bring legions with them; ready to fight for Me and ready to take part in the Aeons War. You know this because you remember it. So why, then, have you not said anything to the Council?”
“I have told the Council that eventually the Jibrail El-Ahur will come looking for You,” Benedict replied, “I just haven’t told them the specifics.”
“For a man who wishes to change the future you don’t seem very eager to do so.”
Benedict was getting impatient. He’d come to consult Gabrielle on a strike by Zohor forces on an El-Ahur monitoring beacon. The El-Ahur had laid a trap around the beacon, immediately deploying Observation Instances to record the coming battle. The Zohor tactics had changed: they were more erratic, more violent and Benedict needed to know what this signified, what they could do if faced with an all-out onslaught. Instead the Broken Hope seemed intent on bickering.
“I’m here to ensure the future plays out the best way possible. If you could still see the Path, you’d know why I can’t call on the Jibrail until they themselves come to us.”
“Why?”
“Because the people aren’t ready for them. Because they likely won’t be ready when the Jibrail actually get here. It’s still too soon after we lost Your Mother –”
“It’s been years!” Gabrielle snapped impatiently, lashing in the tank.
“Yes; and they still speak of Her Loss, and Her Madness. They speak of Her fearfully, because the prophecies say She will manifest, but none of them, not even the fucking Nai’Marak’s prophecy knows when She’ll return; only that She will be an uncontrollable, destructive force. They call Her the Shekhina Siva now. And they are more afraid of Her than they are of You. What do You think would happen if the Jibrail came now, before the people of Midian have had a chance to prove to themselves that they aren’t lost and broken? We need significant victories of our own before we’ll be ready to meet and welcome the Jibrail El-Ahur to our world.”
“You don’t know what will happen if you summon the Jibrail early.”
“No, I don’t. Do You?”
Another angry lash from the tank, “You know I can’t See as well as I used to.”
“And until You can See well again – and You will – I prefer to rely on what I do know and on what I can do.”
“And what do you want from Me?”
“The latest Zohor attack, in Ori Tau Beta; I’ve uplinked the data to You already. Their behaviour’s changed. I need to know why their tactics have become so unpredictable.”
“Don’t you understand? It’s because you’ve become so good at predicting them, Grandmaster. They’ve evolved chaotic fractal tactical strategy in response to your tactical use of time travel Observation and Combat Instances.”
“Even mapping the battle arena as thoroughly as we do before engaging in actual combat, the Zohor stand a greater chance of triggering a causal breakdown.”
“And you need to know how to defend against it,”
“Why else would I be here?”
The voice modulators from Gabrielle’s tank gave a burst of mirthless laughter.
“Why, indeed?” she asked.
“Well?”
“Uncertainty is a part of nature, on nano, micro, mega and meta scales. Tactical time travel violates Uncertainty. The Zohor are serving nature by reintroducing uncertainty to the mix.”
“And how do I take it back out?”
“It should be obvious to you: The last Observation Instance should not travel backwards to become the first Combat Instance; the last Combat Instance should travel backwards to become the first Observation Instance. Only the ships that have survived to the end of the combat will bear witness to the combat. They therefore ensure their own permanence in the theatre of war.”
“And then every ship that’s not broadcasting as an OI knows they’re dead,”
“So you use fewer ships and more instances in the Observation phase of operations; draw lots for the ships on OI duty from the survivors of CI duty; uncertainty returns: no one can be sure if they’ll live or die.”
“Except me,”
“Lamenting a fate you are unable to change is futile, Grandmaster. I thought that if anything, you’d have learned that by now.”
Benedict held Her gaze. “Have you?” he asked, darkly.
♦♦♦
When Pomeroy Zaiola woke up it was still late at night. Not truly dark – never truly dark with the purple and green light of Heruba’s atmosphere glowing down on them. But, dark enough to sleep. She was used to waking up alone. Benedict Jack didn’t sleep more than a few hours every few days. He never seemed to have need for it. She found him tonight sitting on her balcony, overlooking the south-eastern ridge of the Abrahamic Quarter’s tiers in the city of Olympus.
The stone had been tiled over in an old Abrahamic style, and he sat on the smooth curve of the balcony staring across and down the tiers of the mountain city: a nightscape of shadow and dim light from windows or outdoor lamps shining down into the impenetrable gloom of the foothills of the valley below Olympus. He glanced her way, and Zaiola took one look at his eyes and approached, putting her hands to the side of his neck.
“You’re afraid.”
“Wouldn’t you be?” he rasped, fighting the tears burning his eyes red.
“I thought you said there was hope; that you might beat this!”
“I might…but it doesn’t mean I will. I have information…provided to me by my past-future selves from previous loops of my timeline from end to beginning of the Aeons War…but even they don’t know with certainty whether I’ll succeed or join them as digital ghosts. I’m afraid, Zai, because I don’t want to die; not without seeing this war end, not without seeing us safe and prosperous. Not without living to a very old age with you.”
She sat next to him, her face close to his. His eyes shone, wet with terror.
“You don’t cry?” she asked, gently, trying to recall if she’d ever seen him shed tears.
“I can’t remember the last time I cried,” he said. “I guess it must have been when Meg Bloom talked me into letting her commit suicide.”
“She didn’t commit suicide, Jack; she sacrificed her life so that we might all live. The black hole that formed when she destroyed the Zohor swarm hunting the Old Ship is a sacred place to us. Without her, we would not have survived. Without her, most of us would never have been born. She is one of the most important people in our history, secular and religious.”
“Yeah; so am I,” Benedict sighed, leaning back where the balcony stone met the outside wall, “The problem with being Venerated it that it so often ends with your martyrdom.”
She clutched his wrist and forearm, “You told me there was hope. Has something changed your mind? Why are you so afraid, suddenly? Why are you so sure you’re doomed?”
He pulled his hand from hers and let it drop lifelessly to his side, “I just look out at the time ahead of me. I know it may be as much as a few decades, maybe more, not counting Combat Instance-Time. But despite all that might lay ahead, happiness, joy…I know that this will all come to an end. Abruptly and with surety. I look ahead and I see the end of my time: a massive Zohor offensive that I have to put myself on the front lines for us to win, an offensive where I die on those front lines. And I wonder, whatever I do between now and then, how can it matter when, if I’d never been born, if I’d died or followed a different set of choices, someone else would be doing these things here and now instead of me. Some other person would be Grandmaster. And I would not be the one burdened with this fucking destiny.”
“You don’t know that you’ll die,” Zaiola insisted, “You yourself said the Bloom’s Point Sentinel has been working on the problem since you came back; since before you came back, even!”
“And our field of options keeps narrowing,” Benedict sighed, “The more scenarios we run, the less options that there seem to be. Christ, the Ghost and the Sentinel can’t even give me fucking specifics; all they do is make vague statements and ask me broad questions, like somehow that helps. I don’t know whether to hold out any hope, anymore.”
“You can’t give up!”
He took her hand in his, looking into her face, “I’ll never give up on Midian or fighting for her people. But I’m an El-Ahur; I’ve always been military. I don’t want to, but I will give up my life to the cause of the people I serve; willingly if not gladly.”
“I don’t want to lose you,” she sobbed, wrapping her arms around him, nearly toppling them both from the balcony.
“I don’t want to lose me, either,” he choked, “But I’m afraid of what’s coming; more afraid than I thought I would be, and I don’t know what to do.”
“You have to get back to Bloom’s Point; the Sentinel’s the only one who can help you, now.”
“I can’t leave Midian right now; we’re planning the coming war! I’m needed here.”
“You’re needed alive and you need to be able to properly function! As distracted and worried as you are, let’s face it, Jack: you need more than a dope patch on the side of your neck to do your duty by the War Council.”
He opened his mouth to speak. Zaiola pointed a finger at him, “And you know better than to keep arguing with me about this, Future-Boy.”
♦♦♦
The following morning, as the sun crested the northern summit of the Umbra, Benedict addressed the War Council. “Reluctantly, I must take a leave of absence from this Council,” he said without preamble, “I’ve become far too…preoccupied with other matters to be of any benefit to you. I’ll be taking a private transport to Bloom’s Point, to consult with the Sentinel. It’s my hope that I’ll be able to return to you, soon. The Ouroboros will remain at station at the La Grange between Anuket and Heket; Commodore Baxter Vincent will replace me on this Council until I return. I am not shirking my responsibilities as Grandmaster, but fulfilling them: I have necessary issues to resolve. I cannot do that here, and until I do so, I will be nothing but a detriment to the war effort.”
Benedict offered no opportunity for them to protest, to question, to offer support or ask for clarification. He turned and left the War Room, walking downward and southward, to the spaceport built into the sheer stone cliffs at the base of Olympus Valley. A transport capable of Q-field jumps had already been secured, and Pomeroy met him at the entrance to the spaceport facility, her bag packed and slung across her shoulders.
“You didn’t think I was going to let you go by yourself, did you?” she asked before he could do more than allow an expression to cross his features. She nudged him forward, “This isn’t negotiable, Jack. Let’s go.”
Less than an hour later they’d passed clearance and were aboard the transport. Neither spoke the entire time. Benedict watched the planet recede beneath them as the transport launched and then broke orbit to escape the Heruban sub-system of Heket.
“All passengers stand by for Q-field jump in sixty seconds,” the pilot announced. Benedict watched silently out the viewport as Zaiola watched him. The pilot called out the thirty-second warning to Q-field jump as their transport continued accelerating. Then the pilot counted down from ten. There was a flash of brilliance outside the window and that expanding, collapsing sensation of being everywhere and nowhere at once, and then the pilot announced, “We are now entering Bloom’s Point navigation space, and are in queue for docking. Estimated time to docking and disembarkation is two hours, twenty minutes.”
Their transport, a slender, rounded wedge striped with blue-white luminescent bands leading to its glowing aft section, joined a massive inbound flotilla of ships. Large cruisers sailed by in other traffic channels. Countless ships came and went from Bloom’s point. Their transport was lost among thousands entering or leaving the supermassive space station.
“Thank you for coming,” Benedict said at last. The words broke in his voice, as if it was unused to speaking. She didn’t answer; she didn’t need to. The touch of her hand on his, the lacing of their fingers was enough. She ached for a way to remove his pain from him. But she knew there was little she could do. She feared for his future and theirs, and knew that nothing she did could fully comfort him. But what she could do, she would; as he would for her. And so they sat together in silence until their private shuttle was finally cleared to enter the Point and head to a slip along one of the lower branches of the mighty Harbour Tree.
The Sentinel, wearing what could only be described as an astonished look, met them as they debarked the shuttle.
“I wish you’d have advised me of your arrival,” the Sentinel told them, almost admonishingly, “I could have prepared something more –”
“This was an unplanned event,” Benedict said, “I need your council. We need to talk because if we don’t…I’m not going to make it…I’m…I’m…”
“Your neurochemistry, heart rate, hormonal balance, iris response and perspiration level are just the merest symptoms of your anxiety.” The Sentinel said, “A pod is coming; it’ll take you and Zaiola to your station quarters. There are anti-anxiety patches on board. I highly recommend you avail yourself of them. I’ll meet you at your destination.”
The pod arrived and Zaiola helped the panicked Benedict aboard. She applied a tranquilizer patch to his neck. Zaiola sat down and lay Jack’s head in her lap. A few moments later his breathing stabilized. He sighed, “I want to be more than the calm on the other side of a fucking patch; I can’t do this! I won’t do this!”
“I know,” she whispered, “We’re going to get you out of this, Jack. I promise.”
In her heart, Zaiola was afraid that it wasn’t a promise she could keep.
THIRTY-TWO
STRIKING THE HYDRA
Training the fleet, preparing their weapons’ upgrades and preparing for this struggle took years of real-time; decades of Combat-Instance, Respite and warped time. Even assembling the five Meta-Fleets seemed an eternal process. Slowly, ship by ship and fleet by fleet, the Meta-Fleet grew; veteran instances informed their progenitor instances of the path they would take through the battle and time. The number of instances was astonishing: five thousand instances of each ship; no one in the first Combat Instances liked contemplating that the Respite and Repair Time after combat combined with the combat itself could mean as much as a year per ship Instance. The youngest Combat Instances were awed by how many instances – and therefore how long – this final mission against the Zohor would take. Many were horrified, unsure how they could hope to survive such a thing to its end, and found themselves wondering how long before they died at war. Veterans who’d made it halfway or farther looked back on their past instances with regret and looked at their future instances with a similar fear and dread.
