Limitless power! How can a single being wield power for millennia and not end up being corrupted by it?
Ellandra was my friend, to an extent I never thought I’ll befriend someone born under a different star. Always true to her word, always there for us, always … human in the most spiritual sense of the word. Was she the living proof that I was wrong, that a Dominion queen, one wielding Chaos to boot, can still remain true to herself, can still stay a fundamentally decent being? Yet, she was also a mass murderess by her own words, a force of destruction at a scale never encountered in human history. Oh, the enemy were all monsters she said, but the victors were the ones writing the history, weren’t they? In the end, the queens endured and the samun and hundreds of other races perished, not around anymore to challenge the Haillar lore.
And then it was Liz!
I recognised her from the moment the Chaos Queen entered the terrace door, and nothing can convince me otherwise, for I’ve seen that stunning face before a long time ago, in my college days.
I was together with Liz for a summer trip to Paris, and she had pestered me for an entire week to describe in detail the woman of my heart. At the time I took it as a tease, Liz being Liz, but now I wonder if it wasn’t her way for us to come closer to each other, to start exploring our feelings. I never realised …
At the end of the week, she had spent a few hours and a small fortune working with a street artist to have this fictional character painted. The image of an exotic woman, Liz’s interpretation of my epitome of feminine beauty. My bonded soul, she said. She gave me the painting as a birthday present, and I still have it on my desk back in Cambridge.
Elizabeth’s face was this very painting came to life, as impossible at this may be. The Chaos Queen could profess ignorance ‘til the end of time, for how could I ever disregard the evidence in front of my own eyes? No, Liz was not gone, at least not in her entirety. She had somehow become this alien queen, or the alien queen had become her. Somehow, Elizabeth was the meld between Liz and Ellandra, for I could see my friend in her small gestures, small tics I knew all too well. ‘A rose by any other name…’
Oh Gods, was I becoming mad? Was everything only a figment of my imagination?
✽✽✽
That night I fell asleep at dawn, waking up a couple of hours later at the sound of voices outside my door.
“Is he inside? Did the queen let him back, or did she throw him into the dungeons for his insolence?”
“He’s inside, Christine”, responded my flatmate Hank Mertens, if flatmate applies to someone sharing with you a set of staterooms. “I checked on him earlier on, and he was sound asleep. She probably kept him awake long into the night.”
I could well imagine Mertens’ roguish grin when making this comment. On Aldeea he and Borodin dubbed Ellandra my ‘girlfriend’ after my fierce defence of her in the face of Nolan’s accusations, and the silly jokes had only ended after the chaos queen’s death. Now the innuendo was back, no doubt fuelled by Elizabeth’s looks and my late-night talk with her.
I was a hundred per cent sure that if I don’t come out soon Christine will lose her patience and pull me out of bed. To avoid an embarrassing scene, I mumbled loud enough to be heard from the other side of the door.
“I’m awake! I’ll be with you in a few moments.”
Two minutes later, when I opened the door, I was surprised to come across not only Mertens and Christine, but the entire human contingent camped in our parlour, patiently waiting for me to show up. I could understand Koslowski and Christine, they were both eager to learn more about Elizabeth, if only for different reasons. I wouldn’t have expected Charles Swanson to quietly wait in my antechamber, nor the usually reserved Dr Fiorelli.
“Morning Peter”, started Koslowski. “Sorry to bother you so early on, but we all expected you’ll be back in a matter of minutes, so everybody worried when you failed to show up. The Haillar attendants made themselves scarce, and we had no way to know what happened with you.”
Though the words made some sense, Koslowsky’s concern for my wellbeing stroke me as insincere. I didn’t believe for a second that after our warm welcome yesterday he or anybody else thought that I got kidnapped by the queen. Yet I was pretty sure he was concerned about any potentially sensitive information I might have inadvertently provided to our host.
“Nothing happened, we only talked for hours,” I said, adding immediately to alleviate Navy’s officer’s fears: “Mainly Ellandra responding to my questions.”
“No talk about Earth.”
“None whatsoever.”
While Koslowski took a step back, it was Christine’s turn to step in. Over the last few weeks, our crewmate’s friendship for Ellandra had developed in a frantic obsession with the Haillar queen. It was as if her close encounter with death on Aldeea had changed her into someone different. As if she had morphed somehow from the calm, analytical person I used to know into a woman driven by an almost fanatical desire to learn everything she could about our hosts. It couldn’t be just academic interest, as none of us expected to return to Earth and publish our findings. It wasn’t just curiosity either, at least not only. It was something akin to a personal creed, a strange devotion that was becoming hard to understand and frankly worried me to a certain degree.
“Tell us everything, Peter! Did she talk to you about their origins, their extraordinary abilities? Their history, the early days of their Dominion? The nature of the queens, their system of government?”
“We covered some of this, and more. Some of it’s incredible, some utterly disturbing.”
I spent the next couple of hours responding to their questions, sharing my admiration for the Haillar and my fears. I never mentioned anything about Liz though, that was a secret that was mine to keep.
“The question is, what does all this mean for Earth?” concluded Koslowski. “What would it be to become part of this Dominion, or even be allied with them? Do we even want this? Being under their protection is indeed a clear plus, but do we really need it? After all, we are under no immediate threat, and until now we fared just fine by ourselves.”
“Up until now we were confined in our own solar system, a bit of a backwater at the edge of the Orion Arm. If indeed the galaxy is teeming with life and we’ll continue to explore it, how long do you think we have until we come across the Scourge or some other hostile species? Will we be prepared to face them by ourselves, with the four or five hulls UNSA can put together?”
Matteo Fiorelli was always reserved, almost shy. The only time I’ve seen him assertive was when talking about his beloved space research, and not even then he had been as fired up as today.
“They’ll never accept us as equal partners,” argued the officer.
“Oh, give me a break,” burst Mertens. “Do you believe, even for a second, that we are on equal footing with the Dominion, with the Haillar.”
Yet it came to me that from all I’d seen and heard everybody seemed to be on equal footing in this strange alliance, military power aside. It wasn’t just Elizabeth, I’ve seen it in the streets, and the kalan all but confirmed it despite openly coveting the Haillar fleet’s secrets.
“We are jumping the gun here,” intervened Charles. “The way I see it, we have two decisions in front of us: returning on Earth and joining the Dominion in some form or another. The second one is not ours to make, only the first.”
“If we return to Earth with Haillar support, we’ll join the Dominion, Charles. The Chaos Queen seems set to see it happen. I have no doubt about this.”
I had to set this straight, as Elizabeth had made no secret of it. She saw defending Earth as her duty, her entire clan’s duty, following their welcome message and our acceptance. The fact that we didn’t quite understand what we accepted didn’t seem to faze her at all. It was precisely the type of paternalist attitude that made me have mixed feeling about her, about their entire political system. On the other hand, she had all reasons to be confident in her ability to defen
d us, and objectively speaking Earth was at the mercy of the Scourge or any other space brigand we might encounter, were they to come against us.
“We are on a fact-finding mission, and our job is to gather as much verified information as we can and return to Aldeea”, concluded the Navy officer. “All of us can share their views, but ultimately bringing the Haillar to Earth is Captain Holt’s decision, as it’s clearly a military matter and not a civilian one.”
A fair comment, yet I had the feeling that in the long run the Chaos Queen wasn’t prepared to take no for an answer.
✽✽✽
The entire morning we were left to our own devices, and most of us used the time to record personal observations in our digital diaries. In addition to the cascade of revelations regarding the Haillar society, we had a milliard of small details to add, classify and document.
Under different circumstances, each of these records, be they technologies, artefacts or just panoramic recordings of surreal views would have been a thing of wonder, or maybe the discovery of a lifetime. If we ever make it back to Earth, perhaps some of them would eventually receive the attention they deserved. Right here and now, when faced with the Scourge threat or the queens’ immortality, things like memory crystals, terraces suspended at impossible angles or unusual artefacts such as self-igniting candles were losing their glamour, becoming just background detail.
Said Chaos Queen looked radiant when briefly meeting us later that day, yet I could see something was bothering her. After the long talk last night, I felt familiar enough with her to ask.
“You looked troubled, Elizabeth. Did our presence here on Tao Bellona cause you concerns?”
“No, it’s not about you. A Scourge party is expected to arrive tomorrow, the first of its kind since the start of the war. They come to sow trouble that’s for sure, though I’ve no idea yet what that trouble may be.
That was disturbing news, as in Ellandra’s own words the remedy hiding us from Scourge mind-probing was not supposed to be effective short-range.
“Are you worried they’ll sense us?”
“No, not without mobile station scanners amplifying their power and range. The enemy mind control works with line of sight only and is limited to their leading caste, the everir. The rest of their lot, their foot soldier verlan, have no particular talents in this respect though otherwise they are as vicious as their lords. But without machines to augment their mind waves, not even the everir can project beyond line of sight. You should be safe as long as you stay away from them, and I know for sure I don’t intend to invite those bastards for tea.”
We had to stay hidden, and not just for our safety. Thanks to Liz’s quick thinking and rebellious nature, the Scourge were unaware of humans’ presence on Aldeea, nor did they know of humanity’s existence as a race.
CHAPTER 15 (ELIZABETH)
The Scourge envoys’ rhythmic staccato echoes across the Council Chamber’s floor. Their steps sound ominous to me, like a sarcastic handclap preceding the start of these negotiations.
Three Scourge lords are advancing towards the Council Queens with graceful, yet self-assured steps. Three more, likely low-status bodyguards, had stopped in attendance next to the entrance.
For beings so utterly amoral, the Scourge look surreally serene, beautiful even. I remember a time long ago, a time of my childhood when nurses used to scare Haillar children to bed with tales of the samun and their monstrous servants. Nowadays, the villains look nothing like this, as for the past twenty thousand cycles the face of evil is not at all marred by ugliness. It’s the face of a tall, elegant stranger, a being of unusual beauty with beguiling yet alien features and fascinating eyes.
No, at first glance the Scourge are not ugly at all, but indeed quite the opposite. Until they smile. A scourge lord’s smile is cruel, like the grin of a predator assessing its hopeless prey. A promise of pain and suffering, an expression of glee in anticipation of untold torments.
Face to face with the Council Queens, three Scourge lords stop and smile, saying no words.
I’m following the enemy envoys’ arrival from the comfort of the Dorien grand lounge, together with Reith. None of the queens not currently with the Council are physically present at this initial meeting, though I suspect all of them are watching the proceedings the same way we do. So, in a very real sense, the Scourge ambassadors’ smile is addressed to all of us.
A moment of silence follows as both parties measure each other, while each is waiting for the others to blink first. The Scourge are even taller than humans and almost twice as tall as the Haillar, yet deceptively thin. Faun was well aware of their height and positioned the Council seats on an elevated dais to avoid the envoys staring down at the receiving Queens. The Scourge need to look slightly up instead, though it doesn’t seem to bother them in the least. They watch us and smile.
“Speak!” says the Spirit Queen cutting short the uncomfortable silence.
The emissaries take their time to respond until eventually the rightmost one deigns to introduce himself.
“I am Garvald, First Hand of Jael and ally of Xandor the Unifier.”
Joy, another of Jael’s lot, though apparently a servant rather than a scion! Yet I read an odd undertone in this introduction, one that may reveal an opportunity for us. Garvald has chosen to portray himself as an equal rather than a follower while refusing to honour his overlord by the appellative ‘Son of Jael’. I wonder how solid Xandor’s hold over his lieutenants really was, and how we might further explore this noteworthy angle.
“I speak to you on behalf of the People of Jael. My words and Xandor’s words are the same.”
This lofty introduction doesn’t go well with the other two members of the Scourge embassy, especially the tallest of the group, a giant dressed in some kind of battle-armour sporting curved blades above each shoulder, like a pair of evil-looking wings.
“I’m Drud the Fierce, Master of Jael’s Terror and this is Hagan the Fair, my kin.”
The third Scourge’s smile turns into a grimace that oddly looks less repulsive than his previous expression.
“Hagan Far Sight, Master of the Blade, also representing Xandor’s will.”
I turn to Reith with a question.
“Does it seem to you that Drud’s introduction of his kin was more of an insult, and not a very subtle one to boot?”
“Indeed,” my Sister confirms. “Hagan the Fair was likely a nickname, and in the Scourge culture and epithet such as ‘The Fair’ is likely to be derogatory. Those two are probably mobile base lords of equal rank and bitter rivals for sure.”
Garvald honours his two companions with a scathing stare, then turns back towards the three council queens.
“Xandor and the heads of all Jael’s families have met and decided to end our protracted war, once and for all.”
Just like this! The entire Scourge nation suffered a collective crisis of conscience and decided to end a war where they were the sole perpetrators. I wonder how the story goes from here. Should we expect a huge celebration or maybe a dynastic marriage, as some of the Dominion races used to cement newly formed alliances? I hope this Xandor does not plan to woe one of us!
The Scourge warlord, who had paused for a moment to emphasise this monumental proposal, resumed his prepared speech.
“For cycles, your confederation has blocked our access to the galaxy core. Cycle after cycle, our homes in space suffered untoward damage when coming across your kind. This war has to end.”
I’m left speechless and thank the Flame I’m not in the Council room. The way Garvald was framing these talks, we were the aggressors for the last twenty thousand cycles because we didn’t have the decency to roll down and die. On one hand, I’m even more inclined to believe these negotiations are a sham, on the other, I had the awful feeling that according to the Scourge’s twisted minds Garvald’s perspective made perfect sense.
“Xandor and the families have decided to turn their eyes away from the galactic centre, aw
ay from your frontiers, and swing our advance in the opposite direction, along this galactic arm.”
That would have been good news if true, yet I somehow doubt that the Scourge will simply turn tails and go pester someone else, out of the kindness of their black hearts. The envoy doesn’t disappoint me.
“We only have two requirements: you’ll immediately stop your expansion and freeze the current frontier with us, and you’ll provide us safe passage corridors into the neighbouring galactic arms”.
Reith and I take a long look at each other. Even for a fake peace treaty, if this was what the Scourge brought in front of us, their conditions aren’t exactly generous. Indeed, we’ll be left alone, but we’ll be entirely cut out from the galactic arms, leaving them to become Scourge playground. Oh, there is still plenty of room left for our expansion, sideways within a 10,000 light cycles band around the uninhabited galactic core, an agglomeration of massive super-giants surrounding a gigantic black hole. But from the very beginning, our hard-fought frontier with the Scourge will double in size and in time will continue to increase until we are completely surrounded and vulnerable from all sides. It won’t happen in a cycle or a hundred, but it will eventually happen unless the Scourge will turn against us long before that.
The advantage of living for millennia is gaining a long-term perspective. None of the Council queens is oblivious to the trap hidden in the Scourge’s proposal.
“We can’t accept any arrangement that leaves more Dominion worlds vulnerable to your attacks,” responds Favriel in an unemotional tone, though I’m not sure if her composed demeanour has any effect on the Scourge. Nevertheless, her words register, as Drud the giant Scourge releases a snakelike hiss and seems ready to leap forward toward the council queen.
Lightning fast, Garvald extends a hand and blocks his progress. The ship master instantly stops in his tracks.
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