“If it is, we are more than able of destroying it” another man added.
Sabre could not help but laugh at the ridiculousness of such a suggested feat. The sound of his reaction drew the attention of the entire Auditorium who waited eagerly for an explanation.
“No, it isn’t,” he said sternly, all sign of humour wiped from his tone and his face. “Besides that, you cannot pull that over our heads. We are more than aware of your military campaigns against those races, which were at the least…unfortunate.”
He allowed the revelation that the Guardians knew about the Gothican Empire’s history to sink in before continuing with his next point.
“The Prophecy is not law, written in stone to predict everything flawlessly. Even fate is subject to change by the whims of free will and the nature of the world. Have all the predictions your race has made come to fruition completely as intended?”
The Senators challenging him sat down, defeated by the wisdom of his words.
“What you say is familiar politics to my ears, legionnaire, but you must understand… we cannot know who you are for certain from one action and we would be foolish to trust your word alone, given the way the Prophecy portrays this Great Enemy you speak of; the Phantoms” the Governor answered, his point reflected in the nodding heads of the surrounding senators. “The nature of the man we believed an ally is enough to convince us, as you intended, that our foe is capable of misleading us. You could be another group of them more willing than the last to do whatever it takes to blind us to your true affiliation”.
Sabre was in disbelief. Were these humans really worth their allegiance as Vermillion had insisted if they wouldn’t believe them now? Even with his misgivings, the commander chose to persist. He owed his long gone Queen that much. “Then let me show you what I intended to when I began to approach your device before,” he said. “Let me give you the proof you must see. Once I have shown you, it is down to your own hearts to believe it or not”.
THE GOVERNOR THOUGHT about the suggestion, these simple words that the legionnaire had given and the uncovering of the aptly-named Corrupt in the Senate’s midst. He considered that this was an opportunity to discover the truth of the Prophecy that they may never be granted again so…diplomatically.
“Very well, come forward,” he allowed.
Sabre nodded, left his legionnaires behind him and approached the dais slowly, careful not to alarm the Senators closest to him. He could feel the electricity in the air as the doubters and the believers both anticipated vindication in their own way.
Climbing the steps to the raised platform, he caught the Governor’s eye, holding it briefly before reaching the device. He familiarised himself with it in moments, his technological prowess so refined and adaptable that he appeared to know the workings of it as if from years of experience.
He pressed a few buttons and adjusted some settings, making the image projecting from the device spread out to all the corners of the room. It allowed a depth of detail far greater than normally required by the Senators. The picture shimmered briefly as its focus changed and suddenly a view of Gothica in space appeared, the planet surrounded by trade fleets from across the Empire. There were precious few orbital defences and military ships were sparse, the majority of them away in the fringes of the Empire keeping territories secure from other races or trying to establish new ones.
Sabre knew that the appearance of the dark planet had called for a mobilisation of military power in the Frontier, but he was still surprised by the way the Governor had left the home planet of the human race so undefended.
He seemed happy with what he was showing the audience and when it seemed that he was going to do nothing more, the Governor smiled at him awkwardly.
“What are you showing us, exactly?” he asked.
“Our full presence here and our power,” Sabre replied nonchalantly, not a hint of condescension in his voice.
The Senate began to laugh, first in confusion but then in ridicule as they saw nothing in the way of what Sabre claimed. Apart from their own trade ships, there was nothing to be seen in the cold black of space. At least, not in this sector.
Before the Governor could rebuke him, Sabre took his right hand and squeezed the concealed device on the left of his chest and spoke into it.
“Valerian,” he started, watching as the Senators realised he was speaking to someone none of them could see. “Let slip our cloaks.”
In spectacular serial fashion, the might of the Black Guardians was revealed as vessel after vessel suddenly blinked into reality. It was a wondrous sight to behold the unravelling of a space fleet so vast and organised that none of the human ships had collided with their shrouded forms. The Senate were speechless; the demonstration of dozens of huge ships orbiting Gothica was so overwhelming that for the second time that night, the Senate had little to say in reply.
THE STUNNED SILENCE was abated by the dumbfounded exasperation of a senator in his middle years. “How is this possible?” he muttered, the acoustics of the Auditorium serving against him by raising the volume of his voice beyond his intention.
“We are capable of many things,” Sabre replied.
As if that answer were a cue, another display of supremacy left the human men stupefied. All across the room, in seemingly empty seats, legionnaires appeared as they mirrored the uncloaking of the fleet. At first, awe stirred the Senate into inaction, but the Governor brought them back again like a parent reigning in the fascination of their children.
“This…is an incredible show,” he said, gesturing to both the unveiling of the legionnaires’ fleet and of themselves. “I doubt we will ever know how you managed to infiltrate us to such an unprecedented level, but you have shown us nothing of your allegiance; only your cunning and power.”
“If we were the enemy, you would know it by now. The fleet in your skies is but a fraction of the vessels we possess; the others are spread throughout your Empire, intent on making your worlds safe before the coming war. If we meant you any harm, we would have destroyed you by now and we would be long gone. Were we the Great Enemy, we would have annihilated your race entirely. Believe me, Lord Governor, the Phantoms have no desire to waste time playing you, neither do we” Sabre said. He meant the answer to be reassuring, but it served only to terrify his audience.
He saw the effect of his message and chose to continue on a more appropriate tone, speaking to them all as one now. “We are the Black Guardians, Lord Governor and Senate, and we mean only to protect you. Allow us this custodial stance and we will help you through the war that approaches closer each day to the doorstep of every world your race has spread to. Choose to deny us this role and you will surely be destroyed, for the enemy possesses numbers that rivals our strength, but they will show you no allegiance, no offers of peace like we do,” Sabre promised, his voice carrying tones of support, promise and danger all at once.
“This is the moment you all secretly knew would come. This is the day you decide the fate of your species; let us fulfil our purpose and be your protectors, or reject our offerings of safety and face the enemy alone, for ill or better. Decide now and choose the path of your people”.
The room was painstakingly quiet, every man awaiting the response of the Governor who was silently taking in everything the legionnaire had to say.
“I confess…” their leader swallowed, “that what you say is easy on my ears. Yet something remains illogical. Such an offer of protection, even if dictated by a goddess, cannot come without a price. If it did, it could surely mean nothing more than deceit and treachery. What would you ask of us in return, legionnaire?” he finally said.
Sabre was prepared for such a human reply and spoke with sincerity. “The war is still distant; we can fight it on our own if needs must. There are many edges to your Empire and you still defend yourselves from predator races. All we require is a single man from your world,” he answered, letting the seemingly tiny request settle on the Senate’s minds.
Sabre adjusted the projection device for the last time and it displayed the image of a young male. He had a presence that carried over even in the picture, one that suggested years of life experience beyond his physical age.
“Who is he?” the Governor asked, immediately aware that the legionnaires would not be demanding him unless it was of the highest importance.
Sabre felt a rush of pride for the first time in years as he unveiled his perfectly sprung, undeniable entreaty that would allow him his prize.
“Your records will simply detail him as Lupus, nothing more; but to us…he is known as The Lion. The First Apostle of Vermillion”.
Chapter 3
LUPUS BARELY SLEPT that night. His dreams woke him up intermittently with visions of Calla and the future that he imagined with her. When his mind finally calmed, he managed to sleep peacefully for a few hours. Nevertheless, he woke up feeling tired and worn down, as if the pain of Calla’s rejection was affecting him not just mentally, but physically as well.
This was an entirely new experience for him; he was never used to having such disturbed sleep, nor was he ever really ill. He seriously began to wonder if his emotional connection to Calla had a more profound meaning for him than he ever could have realised before now.
It was late morning when he opened his eyes. He had no motivation to leave his bed and seeing as it was the first day of the week-break, he had no intentions of doing anything. Admittedly, he would usually use this time to research the Empire and the Prophecy more; not for his own sake, but rather to understand how much the people of Gothica really knew about it. It was vital for him to appreciate how seriously they took it as well, because he knew its complete fulfilment was going to come true.
This awareness was partly what made him so hesitant in the first place to truly want to connect with Calla. He knew that someday he would have to do what was required of him and truthfully he could not see if there was any way for him and her to exist in the chaos of his future. Yet, she had a way of breaking through those walls of reluctance and uncertainty, those defences of rationality and reason that he constructed to defend himself from the manipulations of his feelings; something that no other person had managed before. Once again he confessed to himself that she seemed to have a control over him that he could not explain.
Determined to use the day to its fullest while he still had the luxury of expendable time in his life, Lupus decided that a run might help to clear his head, so he left the comfort of his covers and changed into his running gear. The white trainers looked as clean and unused as the day he bought them, but this was a testament to their quality and his care of them rather than any disuse, since he ran almost every day. He put on his navy blue shirt and white shorts before his socks and shoes, but he did all this in a calm and precise manner. He tended not to rush anything and treated things delicately, even if they had no sentimental or material worth. If they were just trivial things, like his running clothes, he would still take great care over them.
He had learned the hard way to control his body meticulously. One afternoon, during one of his first runs around the city, he had dropped on the floor of his living room exhausted. With his feet hot from the exercise, he had untied his laces and, he thought, gently kicked the shoe off. What he anticipated to be a soft landing turned into a horrible miscalculation, the trainer having embedded itself in the costly, wide media screen. He may have had the money to buy a dozen more, but that mistake, though no-one was harmed, taught him everything he needed to know about his own underestimated strength.
Lupus left the house around midday, closing the door behind him. He had no need to take any keys because the integrated biometric scanner in the aperture would read his palm, ensuring that only he could ever enter. In truth, there was never really any reason to suspect that anyone would try to burgle him or break in, because despite the massive city in which he lived, with bustling crowds and masses of all classes, there was genuine peace.
It was this state of affairs that Lupus thought about as he began his run through his usual route. It was busier today, but only as a result of his late start. If, like usual, he left at dawn he would have been more or less alone in comparison to the crowds of people around him on the white city streets now.
Although there were very few other runners around at this time, the public gave him no unusual looks like he expected they might. It was this realisation, along with the notion that Cygnus was so crime-free, that made him rethink the nature of Gothica as a whole. He started to ask himself how it was that such a large planet, with billions of people living on it, became such a sanguine place.
Lupus essentially started to teach himself the planet’s history again in his head, recalling it from the textbooks he had studied time after time. Although he had taught himself the topic often enough that he could recite it to anyone, he could never quite believe the way the Empire had come to be. He had to study its origins, trials and wars meticulously every time he thought about the way things were today. After all, it was extremely unusual that such a vast planet would be free from the terrors of civil unrest; the same upheaval that he knew for certain plagued the planets of the outer sectors. In particular, the Frontier was especially troublesome.
As he took his course along a park path running through a ring of rich green trees and cherry blossoms, his ever-critical mind stumbled upon something he had somehow previously overlooked. Whilst his lessons had always shown the resolution of the Colonisation Wars to be the end of crime and the beginning of peace, at least on Gothica, he began to question if that was entirely possible.
He could appreciate that war has a very profound effect upon any race, since Vermillion bestowed upon him not only supernatural abilities but a vast knowledge of the war that brought Her here, yet usually conflict could cause as much unrest as it could unity. The textbooks talked about domestic campaigns of discipline being borne forth from those wars that forged the Empire and political propaganda weaving its way into all levels of education. Before, he could understand why this was necessary; clearly, the dimension-wide fighting posed such a threat of disunity and system collapse that the Senate had to act decisively, which caused them, for a time, to lead by fear and the iron fist. However, the government wasn’t foolhardy enough to believe the public would yield to this forever. Instead of abusing their power with greed, they chose diplomacy and democracy, revealing the golden reward at the culmination of years of suffering and war. This, among a hundred other moves and clever strategies, was how they won the trust of the people at large; it showed that when the time was right, the Senate would do what was necessary to ensure the survival of the people and when things were better, they would spoil the people with freedoms and liberties.
Sadly, some would say, not all the worlds of the Empire believed in the benevolence and generosity of the Senate. Nestled between the Sectors Tempest and Orpheus was cradled a group of planets left abandoned by the Senate during the later stages of the Colonisation Wars. With their armies plucked by Gothica to fight battles on the other side of the Empire against the peoples of the Old Races, these worlds were ransacked of their armies with nothing given in return. When the Colonisation Wars finally ended and that Age had ended, a casualty toll too high to count, what was left of the crushed armies returned home. Not even a year later, these worlds claimed themselves independent from the Empire. Some in the Senate called them traitors, others argued for a diplomatic response, but before a decision could be reached, another conflict began. As a result, the Independent Worlds remained their way until the present day, determined to never again be the playthings of the Gothican Senate who sat in comfort so very far away from their suffering.
Still, despite the way the Senate’s apparent lack of care for any world not in the limits of a sanctioned star sector, it won round its hordes of supporters. Lupus began to think that surely the rule of the Senate could not last indefinitely and without flaw. Yet, there were no reports of crime or unrest and there hadn’t been for decad
es, not on Gothica or any of its neighbouring planets in the Meridian Sector. A creeping suspicion rose in his mind that this was simply not possible; human nature was far too fickle to be kept in such boring, inflexible harmony for too long. Either he was wrong about the Gothicans and the wars ending in the supreme formation of the Gothican Empire, truly and miraculously changed them into a better people, or something more sinister was happening.
Perhaps the Senate were covering up the unrest. After all, they were the most powerful organisation in the entire Empire. Who was to say what they were capable of? Lupus doubted that the public even knew the full extent and cost of gaining, or even holding, the territories that it did. Despite how sinister that would have made the Senate, how despicable and monstrous it would make them, he could not imagine what revealing the truth of the Empire’s foundations would have on the peace that seemed to so calmly settle on the Sector Worlds.
A different conclusion, drawn from the depths of his mind and heart presented itself to Lupus; perhaps the Gothican Empire wasn’t the embodiment of righteousness it so vehemently claimed to be, not because humanity was monstrous, but because it had been manipulated. Maybe there were dark masters in the shadows playing the Senate puppets that everyone only saw in the spotlight. Maybe the enemy that Vermillion chose him to fight was already fighting a war against Gothica.
These thoughts, he realised, would do him no good in his current state of mind. He already had a decay of trust and doubt to cloud his judgement; he could ill afford to lose hope in the goodness of humanity if he were to fight for their protection in the future.
The Deian War: Vermillion's Apostles Page 7