Across the Stars: Book Three of Seeds of a Fallen Empire

by Anne Spackman

  “Take me with you, Adam,” the young woman begged.

  “What would your grandfather say, Miralah?” Adam asked in his best avuncular tone, trying not to smile. The young Kamian girl had just passed the traditional rite of adulthood, and already she wanted to plunge headlong into trouble. She had always been able to find it before, only now there was no one to stop her from causing it.

  “Come on, I’ve never been on the surface of a planet.” Miralah said, dejected. “Not Sakar, not Corsavadh—”

  “I understand, Miralah,” Adam said. “If Urdahn agrees, then I’ll see what I can do.”

  Miralah’s bright dark eyes lit up with excitement.

  “I’ll just go ask him now. I’ll hurry. Don’t leave without me!” she called, her voice fading as she ran down the corridor towards her family’s quarters.

  Fourteen years had already passed since Selesta stopped in the skies above Sakar5, and only the youngest generation of Sakarans and Kamians had grown under Earth customs. Only the youngest generation had learned to co-exist with each other.

  Adam and the other explorers of the scout team had encountered the first group of Sakarans willing to return to Selesta on that exploration; Adam had since come to believe that they were a strange band, those Sakarans, but he could no longer imagine life without having them around—or for that matter, their former enemies, the Kamians, who had joined the ship after a stop near the Kamian capital nearly forty-four years prior to the Sakaran landing.

  As odd as the Kamians seemed to the races already living on board the ship, the bipedal, four-limbed aliens of Sakar were by far the strangest group of non-humanoid bipeds the Earthlings had met thus far.

  Very strange, indeed.

  The Sakarans stood nine feet tall. Most of the crew heard them coming, and frequently the Sakarans made discontented noises whenever they forgot to mind the lower ceilings of the crew corridors. The Sakarans had thick but short tan “fur” and broad, flat noses; wearing the ancient Seynorynaelian uniforms was out of the question for them.

  The Sakarans’ wide-set pair of stereoscopic eyes were of one solid blue-green color, without pupils, irises, or whites, which proved useful in denying what they were actually looking at whenever it suited them; their ears had three small holes, two on the sides and one in the back of their head, which made them acute listeners, so that the rest of the crew was obliged to be more careful in their wording or lower their voices when they did not want something repeated.

  Two ball and socket joints attached around a hinged joint in the Sakaran arms allowed them a range of movement unseen in humanoid evolution. Some of the Sakaran children did tricks for the other children; their strange physical movement delighted the others, and Adam had heard jealous exclamations lamenting that all creatures were not put-together with such interesting capacities and possible configurations.

  Sakarans could even do handstands and walk on their hands.

  The Sakaran eight-digit hands were surprisingly dexterous, but the vestigial toes had fused together to form the foot, making footwear unnecessary. Their long legs were powerfully muscled, allowing the Sakar creatures to jump great heights and distances, though they were poor runners, which didn’t seem to matter much on board Selesta, except when the children held races in the Seynorynaelian forest. On those occasions, the Sakaran children merely leapt to the tops of the trees or over the river, proving that being Sakaran had its advantages.

  Despite their inhuman appearance, the Sakarans were highly intelligent, and Sakaran history dated back two hundred and fifty thousand years to the time of the Great Light, but nothing was known prior to that period, nor much about the earliest years of Sakaran life.

  Recently, however, groups of colonists from the nearby Kamian Federation had come to Sakar, having exhausted their own resources. The population of Kamia and its colonies had grown so numerous that the land could no longer support them. Sakar, with its cool climate but vast, rich beauty and hospitable atmosphere had drawn them across the Gerdor Nebula on an eighty year journey, a journey to take the planet from the peaceful Sakarans.

  However, Adam’s friend Urdahn had disagreed with his Kamian people. He did not believe, as Kamian philosophy maintained, that they were superiors to every other form of life, that they had the right to take the lands of another. Urdahn had warned the Earth crew of the threat to Sakar ever since he joined them on Selesta, forty-three Earth years before the Selesta reached the Sakaran system.

  Urdahn hadn’t betrayed his own people, but he was disgusted by their attitides of racial superiority against the Sakaran race.

  “Good old Urdahn, I bet he’s going to take some convincing for Miralah to be allowed to come.” Adam thought.

  Adam remembered when he had first met Urdahn. Adam had separated from the others in the scout party in the Kamian capital on the planet Kamia and found Urdahn near the Federation’s Operations Center. A high official of the Kamian government, Urdahn had secretly opposed its position. His true sentiments had remained undetected for several years, but he had tired of playing the hypocrite. Urdahn had planned a confession, fully aware of what the consequences would have been. Exile would have been the kindest of all possible punishments, but Urdahn had been willing to face it. Yet Adam had intervened. He had followed the man to his dwelling and called to him, with the intent of inviting him to join Selesta’s crew.

  He had been as silent as a shadow.

  The cloak wrapped around Adam’s face and body had disguised him. The scout crews routinely used cloaks to escape detection. Thus Urdahn would not believe Adam’s story at first, for Adam had spoken to him in his own language. Urdahn had demanded proof that Adam was a traveler from another world. However, Adam’s uncovered face, his pale skin and blue eyes sufficed to convince the Kamian.

  Adam, like his mother, was a telepath and had many of her powers, though he wasn’t as strongly gifted as she.

  Urdahn had never seen anyone like Adam. Ancient texts of his people had claimed that other humanoid species did exist in the universe, but Urdahn had never seen any one prove that to him first hand.

  Urdahn had agreed to join the Earth crew, but reluctantly at first. When he arrived at Selesta, he was struck by all of its wonders, in particular the Seynorynaelian forest. Though the crew had hopes of learning more about the ancient galactic Seynorynaelian Empire from Urdahn, Kamian history only mentioned three ancient, perhaps mythical dynasties before the period of upheaval—a dark time of war and disease: the Hanar or “high ones”, the Lid-une or “second life” and ji-hugh-no or “the great that encompasses-all”.

  Most of the knowledge of the earlier days had died out in the millennia of civilization’s decline. When Kamian culture had finally begun to progress again, clues of a former glory had surfaced, evidence that Kamians had once traveled beyond their own world. Using the traces of technology that they had found, the Kamians had then found nearby systems of similar and dissimilar humanoids still in relative stages of upheaval. Declaring themselves “the superior race” the Kamians had used their technology to found a Federation, with their own world at the center of the new learning and trade.

  They were, in part, a bit like Seynorynael in their attitudes.

  The way Urdahn had once described the arrangement sounded as though the Kamians had raped the resources of the other worlds. The planet Kamia had then sent Kamian colonists to take control of the other worlds’ culture once the Kamian population flourished beyond Kamia’s ability to sustain them. As he explained it, the superior Kamian population had not intention of checking itself, while other races were limited to only one offspring per pair.

  Urdahn had hoped Selesta could reach Sakar before the peaceful Sakarans were decimated, but by the time the ship arrived, only a handful of Sakaran natives remained hidden in the gigantic trees far from the old cities. The Kamians had butchered more than two billion Sakarans when they arrived.

  Nearly the entire Sakaran race had been destroyed.

  The
Sakarans, though an intelligent race which had developed thriving population centers and created an untold number of scientific innovations, had never prepared themselves to defend their planet. Hunger or want had never existed on Sakar, and the Sakarans did not understand that someone might want to take their bounty from them.

  Selesta extended a welcome to the few thousand survivors of Sakar, but only a hundred and nine would agree to leave their home world. The others remained after Selesta’s departure, subject to an unknown fate, perhaps to be hunted down one by one until none remained.

  Adam had shed tears the day they left.

  * * * * *

  Specialist Darka, a young Sakaran “female”, greeted Adam in something approaching English as he entered the bridge.

  “Hi to you, too,” Adam said, nodded, and then silently drew towards the discussion taking place in the large open area in front of the navigator’s chair. His mother and the others were listening to Cameron Zhdanov, one of the scientists, an olive-skinned man with huge, bright brown eyes and curling hair the color of an oak tree. Cameron’s well-formed face was as craggy as bark and age-worn, with wrinkles of a thousand laughs about his eyes; his raven black eyebrows arched like two feathered bird wings. His nose turned in a slight uptilt, though there was a small bend in it. Despite Cameron’s years, his manner and gait remained energetic.

  “I am here,” Adam announced suddenly, interrupting the conversations. “Reporting for duty.”

  “Good,” said Selerael, and the conversation resumed once more.

  Adam’s eye wandered to his mother’s face, and he marveled again that she was not one of the Earth people. Even she did not know where exactly she had come from or where the Selesta took them. And as long as her origins remained a mystery, that part of his own heritage was closed to him.

  Her mother was Alessia, an alien, and it was assumed she was from Seynoryael. But Selerael’s father remained unknown.

  As a child, Faulkner had been the only companion to understand the pain of Adam’s isolation. Even then Adam knew what his mother was, and that he would never be like her. The process of aging had slowed down immeasurably in him, and as his childhood friends grew and changed, Adam remained the same. He healed quickly but felt pain; he could feel another’s thoughts and speak to them but could not control matter by telekinesis, though he was ten times stronger than ordinary men. Adam hardly seemed to age, but he would grow old in time, and he would die.

  He was no immortal.

  What made things difficult was the younger crew’s firm belief that his life was easier than theirs. Only Faulkner had known the truth. Adam was no power seeker, but he was also a loner, and lived a loner’s life, which didn’t make him trememendously happy.

  Adam had never married. He had imagined himself in love long ago, but she—Erin Ross—had left him to stay on a planet they visited, and had no doubt died long ago. He did not like to think about her—if he ever met someone else, he would know. He had seen his mother’s love for his father and knew that he had never known that before. It made him bitter, but he loved his mother most of all.

  It had been easier to form ties when he was young, with those born around the same time as he and with the children of his mother’s childhood friends. But in time, as they aged and their children and grandchildren had grown to his apparent age, the new generations began to regard him as they did his mother—they deferred to him as a leader, they were awed by his abilities and presence. They had forgotten that he was merely a human being.

  Or am I? he wondered, his gaze still fixed on his mother. He had not inherited her pale grey skin but his father’s face, dark blue eyes, and fair human complexion. However, Adam had always had strange white-blond hair. And violet blood flowed in his veins.

  Still, as difficult as his heritage had been, he loved his mother so very much.

  “...and without a translation of the languages over the radio waves then we cannot assume that this planet is the center of the Empire we’ve been looking for ever since our ancestors left the Earth,” Cameron Zhdanov continued. “The Seynorynaelian Empire, or what have you.”

  “Why would you think it was?” Selerael asked.

  “Yes, well, I didn’t, even though it is a rather advanced civilization, but this could be another Empire altogether which we have encountered here, as you might guess. At least, the people in the transmissions we’ve received are not speaking the same language as that Orian pilot we once contacted, nor are they speaking a dialect of your native language,” Cameron Zhdanov gestured to Adam’s mother, “which we had reason to believe was representative of ancient Seynorynaelian.”

  “By all accounts,” Selerael nodded.

  “If I remember it correctly,” Cameron Zhdanov continued, scratching his forehead with his forefinger, “my grandfather’s notes mention some translations you made for the Elphorans during your incarceration that had not originated in that area of space. I know it has been a long time—but if anyone could—do you by any chance remember any similarities between that language and these?”

  Selerael shook her head. “I’ve never encountered these languages before, and as I’ve told you, without an active mind to provide information, I cannot determine any of the content.”

  “Negative,” Computer Analyst Davis interjected, as if anticipating a question on his success at procuring a translation. “Now, if we could just access Selesta’s computers, then who knows?” he added and shrugged. The comment was intended to vent frustration rather than be taken as a suggestion for action.

  The crew had long since accepted their limitations, the greatest being their inability to control or access all of the alien systems of Selesta. “This ship has a mind of its own,” he muttered, reiterating a phrase that had become a popular lingo reserved for such occasions.

  “Then it’s settled.” Cameron Zhdanov said, nodding. “The scout party will head down to the surface. Selerael will get her chance to figure out what the situation is like, and we’ll see if we can pick up some supplies. And if we can believe the computer readings, we may find out what our ancestors meant when they said there’s nothing better than “fresh air”. Oh—Adam, again you creep up on me,” he added suddenly, as Adam moved closer to Cameron Zhdanov with speed and silence.

  “What are you planning?” Adam arched an eyebrow.

  “Take a look first,” Cameron explained, gesturing up at the holo-monitor. Several sequences of video transmissions played in the holo-field, recreating images of bleached ivory-skinned humanoids with grey-blue eyes and whitish hair in various hues.

  “You’ll fit right in,” Cameron smiled impishly, and Adam laughed in spite of his previous dark mood. “The rest of us will be wearing a facsimile we’ve generated of the attire from that footage.” Cameron continued. “It will cover our faces for the most part, but we’ll have to keep our presence low-key.”

  “What about—” Adam stopped mid-sentence. A bright light had enveloped Selerael as she suddenly transformed. As the radiance diminished, Adam blinked. His mother had become one of the strange new aliens.

  * * * * *

  In the end, two shuttles headed for the surface.

  Miralah had prevailed upon Urdahn and accompanied the team, badgering the group with questions, attaching herself to Adam, who had an excitable effect upon her. Cameron was almost beginning to regret that he had not joined Selerael, having originally insisted that Adam accompany his mother in the smaller shuttle. Cameron had reasoned that the two of them working together could be sure to scout out the most information. But Adam had disagreed. For safety reasons, he had elected to remain with the science party on the outskirts of the bustling commercial center near the landing site, in order to protect them.

  “Cut our speed a bit, we’re going too fast.” Adam advised a second later. Miralah had quieted a little by the time they disembarked from the shuttle. Cameron had plotted a course on foot to bring them to the production facilities using their scanner readouts of the large city, b
ut on the way they passed by a large agricultural farm.

  Selerael was now heading alone into the heart of the largest city on the shuttle.

  Her shuttle continued after dropping them off to the surface. It sped overhead into the busy city center, filled with a panoply of transport vehicles from at least fifteen different worlds.

  Adam sensed her at all times. Meanwhile, in the rural area, he listened to the soft hum in the air around him, then looked down suddenly at the leaf that had blown across his face in the rising wind.

  “Well, anything yet?” Cameron called to him, helping the others remove the portable scanning and extraction equipment. There were standing outside at the agricultural farm.

  “Mother and I determined in the air that this is the control center of the galaxy,” Adam stuttered, distracted. “There are loads of aliens’s minds we could read once we got into orbit. This, like we learned, is the mother world of the Goeur Empire,” he whispered. “And they don’t take kindly to intruders. Cameron—there’s—”

  Knach-ha jor kai shiell chorshe?! An unspoken voice rang in their thoughts. The team turned towards the sound of footsteps. Ten enforcer-type guards with upraised weapons stood facing them, the one that had addressed them slightly in front of the others.

  “Shit!” Cameron said softly.

  Adam, Cameron thought, staring down the barrel of a short, bright-colored laser gun. Whatever you’re going to do, do it now.

  * * * * *

  The voices below called in silent appeal to her. Selerael tried to ignore them, guiding her shuttle through the air traffic. But a moment later she had turned the shuttle around and dipped low, skirting the roof of a gargantuan construction made of some kind of tinted, unbreakable plastic, a sprawling building wedged among a dozen others.