by Jay Allan
“I will do what I can, Tyler. It is not my decision…not solely my decision.” He would have to convince Akella. He might just manage to order a retreat if she was coming, and his daughter with her. If pulling back also meant leaving the two of them—and his other children—behind, he knew that would be too much for him. He didn’t like the idea of taking advantage of his status, of getting those close to him off the planet, when billons would be left behind. But he would do it. He wasn’t proud of it, but he knew he would. The evacuation, if such a small enterprise could be so labeled, would be centered on the very highest of the elite. Only the Council, and the highest ranked Masters could even know the fleet was withdrawing.
He nursed a thought, considered for a moment if it might be possible to exclude the more troublesome members of the Council. Chronos knew abandoning the capital would be a weight around his neck, a pain in his soul from which he would never recover. But he wouldn’t shed a tear about leaving Thantor behind. Number Two was trouble…and he would continue to be just that if he survived.
Akella wouldn’t consider it, though. He was sure of that. The Hegemony’s highest-ranked Master was honest to a fault, and she possessed a seeming naivety that clashed with her unquestionable intellectual ability. He was far from sure he could get her to leave at all, but he was dead certain she wouldn’t even consider it unless the rest of the Council withdrew as well, those who opposed her no less than those on her side.
Chronos admired that way of thinking, in a theoretical sense…but he also pitied it as divorced from reality. Still, however he felt, he couldn’t deny that was Akella’s mindset. If he was going to get her to leave, he would have to ensure the entire Council escaped.
He turned toward the communications station and stared silently for a moment. Then he took a single deep breath.
“I need a direct line to Number One. Now.”
* * *
“Bring the children down to the spaceport. Our ship is waiting there. I’ve got to attend to some business before I go, but I’ll meet you.” Akella’s voice wavered as she spoke. It was no surprise, at least not to her. She was consumed with self-loathing. She was Number One, the Hegemony’s leader, the most genetically-perfect human being known…and she was about to abandon her people and run to save her own life.
That was an over-simplification, she knew, and at least somewhat unfair. She’d steadfastly refused to leave, resisted all Chronos’s efforts to convince her…until uttered a single phrase. “Three hundred billion.” The population of the Hegemony, the vast sea of humanity beyond those on Calpharon…all of whom were doomed to servitude and oppression if the battle ended at the capital. And Chronos wouldn’t leave, wouldn’t pull back the fleet, unless she came as well.
“Yes, Number One. I will see that Ajia and Ragus reach the ship.” Cassis was Ajia’s governess, but she also watched after Ragus, Akella’s older son, the product of her union with Thantor. She’d never liked the Master rated just beneath her, but she’d agreed to the mating anyway. Hegemony law was clear, and while she wasn’t expressly required to conceive a child with the Master ranked next below her, it had seemed the most honest interpretation of her duty. She regretted it now, at least on some levels. Thantor had shown his true colors since Ragus’s birth, and he;d exposed himself as her rival, if not an outright enemy. But the son they had produced showed all signs of high intelligence and capability, and her premier duty was to give birth to the next generation of Masters.
And she loved her son, despite the fact that she was beginning to hate his father.
“Will you be coming soon, Number One? There is not much time.” Cassis sounded genuinely worried which, Akella realized, she was. The governess was of the Arbeiter class, though highly rated in that grouping, but Akella had become very fond of her. The two had developed a friendly relationship, and Akella had told Cassis a hundred times to use her name and not her title. But amid the fear and tension of the pending withdrawal, the governess had reverted to formality.
“I will be there in time, Cassis. Until I arrive, see to the children. Get to the ship as quickly as possible. There has been no announcement, but too many people know already, and I doubt the secrecy can be contained much longer. There is no way of knowing what will happen in the streets when the word spreads.”
Cassis nodded. “Yes, Number One. I will see to it.”
“Go now.” Akella leaned down and kissed Ajia, and then she did the same to Ragus. “Go,” she repeated, and she turned away, pretending to be looking for something on her desk, but mostly trying to hide the pain on her face from the children.
The evacuation had been kept secret for far longer than she’d imagined possible, but as much as that was helpful and useful, it also cut at her insides. She hated herself for what she was doing, and she struggled to pull her mind away from the billons being left behind. She’d begun to privately question the hierarchy of the Hegemony, the rigid rank structure that segregated people onto career paths, placed floors under them, and ceilings above them. But she didn’t have to tread so far as revolutionary thought like that to fuel her raging guilt. More than ten million Masters were being left behind as well as the billions of lower-ranked citizens. That was a lot of prime DNA, entire genetic lines that would be lost…in addition to the incalculable human suffering.
She turned and walked toward the door. She had to speak to her closest aides. She was bringing much of her household staff with her. More corruption, men and women who would escape whatever fate awaited Calpharon, not based on their genetics, but on their closeness to Akella.
She wasn’t sure if it was the time she’d spent speaking with Tyler Barron, or the intensity with which the ‘inferiors’ on the Rim had resisted Hegemony conquest, but she’d begun to see the hypocrisy that had permeated her people’s society. Pure dedication to genetics was one thing, harsh in some ways, but perhaps defensible. But the Hegemony’s government had as much corruption and dishonesty as the Confederation’s. The ships about to leave Calpharon would carry less than one one-hundreth of one percent of the population, and that small number would include servants and sycophants and others rated well below millions who would remain…all in violation of the Hegemony’s sacred dedication to genetic elevation.
How many bloodlines will be abandoned so I can take my household, or so some other Council member can stash a flock of mistresses aboard?
She was angry with herself, profoundly disappointed, but she tried to push the thoughts away. Chronos wouldn’t withdraw the fleet if she didn’t leave, and if the Hegemony and its allies didn’t preserve at least some of their military strength, the war truly would be over. It was an excuse, perhaps, but if it got her through the next hours…
She walked out into the antechamber of her house, and she nodded to the two guards standing there. She generally detested the trappings of her office, but if word got out, things could get…dangerous. It would be foolish to go out without the security detail, and she just nodded to the two men, a signal for the veteran Kreigeri to follow her.
Protecting me gets them a ticket out of here too…
She had some final duties. She knew she couldn’t really do anything for those who would be left behind, but she had to do what she could.
And she had to leave a message for those who would inherit command in her absence, the Masters left behind to surrender to the Highborn. She dreaded recording that communique.
Then she was going to make sure Chronos’s household was evacuated as well, and most crucially, his other children. There was some duty in that, at least. Chronos was Number Eight, and any interpretation of Hegemony law would mandate the evacuation of his offspring.
But that’s not why she was doing it. Her real reason was contrary to the law, and in utter defiance of Hegemony culture and tradition.
She was doing it because she loved Chronos…whether or not it was forbidden.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Free Trader Pegasus
Somewhere in
the Badlands
Year 323 AC (After the Cataclysm)
“Andi…Andi…”
She could hear a voice, calling her name.
“Andi…I’m sorry to wake you, but…”
And a hand on her shoulder.
Andi awoke with a start. “Vig…” She turned her head as she lifted it from the workstation. The side of her face was numb from being pressed against the hard surface. “I’m sorry…I just closed my eyes for a bit.” She tried to push away the grogginess, with limited immediate success. “What is it? Is everything okay?”
“Everything is fine, Andi. And that ‘bit’ has been eleven hours. I almost tried to get you into your cabin a few times, but you were out. I did manage to get Sy to her bunk. She was more or less sleepwalking with my hand on her back, but all I could manage with you was to make sure you were still breathing and tell everybody else to stay the hell out of here. Not that you’d have heard them if they were all in here playing drums.”
“Eleven hours…” She felt a flood of awareness as Vig’s words set in. She didn’t believe it at first, but a quick series of pains in her neck and back as she tried to straighten up told her just how stiff she was. “Why didn’t you wake me? We have a lot of work to do before we get to Hegemony space.” She wanted to sound annoyed, but she could already tell how much better she felt for the sleep.
“I don’t know, Andi…maybe it’s because the two of you were at it for something like ninety-six hours without a break of more than a few minutes. I know you think you’re indestructible, but you can’t just keep going forever…and if that stuff you’re working on is as important as it sounds, you need to stay sharp, and make sure you get it right.”
Andi wanted to argue, to lament eleven lost hours, but she knew Vig was right. She’d been so determined to find information that might be useful to Tyler and the fleet, and so immersed in the fascinating account of the empire’s later days, she’d lost all track of time. And any sense of just how incoherent she’d become.
“Here’s a suggestion, and it would be an order, if you weren’t the captain and me the long-suffering second in command…go take a nice hot shower, and grab something to eat, a real meal, not just a nutrition bar shoved in your head while you’re reading. That will take an hour, maybe less…and then you’ll be back here, and ready to go for another marathon.”
Andi looked up, again ready to argue. But the words just weren’t there. She was starting to really wake up, and she realized how much the sleep had done for her state of mind…and how much a shower and some fresh clothes would add to that. Still, it was hard to step away. She felt something like a gravitational pull from the workstation, almost an addiction drawing her back to her work. She’d never been an academic, nothing close to one, but the history that had been unfolding before her had her attention riveted.
“Maybe a shower…and a quick bite. But then I have to get back to this.” A pause. “Don’t wake Sy up, though. I’ve got enough translation to do without…”
“I’m awake. Some sleep—and I already had my shower—and I’m ready to go…right after I grab a quick bite. I can’t stay away either. Hell, as tired as I was, I think I dreamed of the old empire.” A pause, and then Sy’s voice turned somber. “Besides, it’s all fascinating, what we’ve uncovered so far, but it’s not tactically very useful. We were all wrong on what the Highborn are. There’s something reassuring that they’re not aliens of some kind…and depressing, too, that we’re fighting our own kind yet again. Or something derived from our own kind. But we still need to find some weaknesses, some ways to defeat them. These people played a role in bringing down the empire—how large we don’t know yet—and they obviously survived the Cataclysm, and prospered after. We need to know more, as quickly as possible.”
Andi nodded. “I agree completely.” She twisted around in place, considering for a moment forgoing the shower. But then she stood up. She felt repulsive, and she was growing jealous looking at Sy in her bright and clean clothes.
“I’ll be back in fifteen minutes…” She turned and walked toward her cabin, imagining the feel of hot water cascading down over her.
Maybe twenty…
Ruins of the Andros Estate
Planet Samara
Tirion Vega System
Year 11,703 IR (Imperial Reckoning)
Year 31 BC (Before the Cataclysm) by Confederation Calendar
354 Years Ago
The great shafts of electric blue light rained down from the sky, like manmade bolts of lightning. But the strikes were vastly more powerful than natural electrical discharges. The fire came down from no less than eight imperial battlecruisers positioned in orbit, and they destroyed everything in their path. Structures collapsed, even vaporized and partially transformed into boiling pools of molten metals and stone. Nature’s great creations were far from proof against the fury, and they fell before the onslaught. Mountains crumbled, and vast sections of the sea boiled. Huge stretches of forest—swaths of millions of the great Gray Walnut trees, sought after across the empire and the original foundation of House Andros’s wealth, were reduced to ash.
Samara had been inhabited by humanity since before the empire’s founding, a prosperous, vibrant world, one that had even retained some level of its former energy amid the decline and malaise of the empire. But now it was a graveyard, its cities in ruins, its surface ravaged by beam and blast and fire.
The planet’s population, save for Lord Andros and his closest retainers, had no idea what had provoked such dreadful imperial wrath, what had caused the emperor to unleash such unprecedented power and brutality against this once-beautiful world. Indeed, Andros and his inner circle had been taken by surprise themselves, and they’d barely managed to escape, to take refuge in the secret family shelter, dug deep enough into the planet’s crust to endure even the vast devastation rained down by the imperial fleet.
Ellerax watched silently, as the tragedy unfolded. He stood on a hill, in an uninhabited area away from the bombardment, next to his small vessel. His presence wasn’t, strictly speaking, necessary, but he’d wanted to see what had happened. He had decided it was best that Andros escaped, but the calculation behind that decision had been within a scant few percent of even.
The devastation had been severe, the bombardment’s intensity almost beyond reckoning. Andros and his closest insiders would realize, of course, that the imperial authorities had determined, with considerable certainty, that they were deeply involved in a plot to destabilize the empire, even to kill the emperor himself. There was little doubt about that. The empire didn’t obliterate populated worlds lightly.
The secret police had been suspicious for some time, but they still had no real evidence. There was little doubt someone had warned the empire. One of those involved in the project had talked, someone with deep and extensive knowledge of Obsidian. Only an inside source could have given the imperial authorities enough to justify so deadly a response.
What Andros didn’t know, as he cowered in his secret shelter, what he would never know, was that source had been Ellerax himself. The leader of the Firstborn had gradually taken a larger and more pronounced role in Obsidian, but despite his repeated urgings, Andros had been too cautious to follow all of his suggestions.
That had become intolerable. Ellerax acknowledged Andros’s role in his own existence. It wasn’t gratitude, exactly, but he wasn’t ready to entirely overthrow his patron. And Andros still served a purpose. The nobleman had spent vast portions of his wealth on the program, and he’d just lost more in the bombing of Samara, but he’d proven to be adept at hiding wealth. Ellerax no longer seriously listened to the human’s opinion on important matters, but he recognized Andros’s utility. More than half a meter taller than even the largest humans, it was difficult for Ellerax and his brethren to interact with subtly or secrecy. Though Andros himself had now been branded a traitor, he still had his own people in key positions. That would be useful going forward.
Yes, Andros
still had a place in bringing about the new order of things…but he’d needed to be coaxed, pushed forward into accelerating operations, as Ellerax had long urged. Now, he was exposed, pursued by the secret police, his entire house renegade. There would be no choice except to initiate the final effort without delay.
As long as Andros made it off Samara.
Ellerax was certain his patron would escape. He had ensured it. He had evaluated and analyzed every possibility. First, his leak to the imperial authorities had been wrong in several key areas, including Andro’s location. Samara had been obliterated because it was the center of the Andros holdings, a strike against a house that had been exposed as dangerous rebels. But there were no troopships with the armada above, no vast legions of imperial soldiers set to land, to comb the wreckage, looking for high-ranking survivors.
No, the imperials believed Andros and all his key personnel were on Demania. Indeed, Ellerax had provided what seemed like incontrovertible evidence that this was so.
Demania was no doubt being subjected to the same kind of brutal assault as Samara, one that would almost certainly be followed up with the intensive ground search Samara had been spared. One that would find nothing. The planet was completely uninvolved, with Obsidian, and even with House Andros and its various tentacles. Its population was just over three billion, and there was little doubt at least half of them would perish. To most, that would seem a high price to pay for a diversion, but Ellerax had not even considered it in such terms. It was a useful tool, a way to give Andros the desired escape route, along with the requisite push to accelerate the project. To Ellerax, a billion and a half humans—or ten billion for that matter—was a small price to pay to usher in a new and golden future, one where humanity was led forward by those who now existed expressly for that purpose.