Winter's Galaxy

by F. E. Arliss

  It was in those dreams that the answer came to her. After discussing it with the Queen, Winter went into a deep meditative state, connected by touch to Tate, General Freux, and Queen Altum Juls. For the last three days she had been trying to ‘dream’ the Chrysalis to her. She had no idea if it was working because she was completely unaware of time and space.

  Using several of the techniques that Dolores Kelty had taught her, Winter quieted her mind, slowed her body’s metabolism, grouped their collective psychic energies into a mass of coiling power and sent it out in a stream of pinpointed consciousness broadcasting the image of the Chrysalis she’d seen in her dream fragments.

  Tate sat beside her, often supporting her drooping body as the effort drained her strength. Her mites took turns holding her and feeding her through a straw to keep her hydrated and nourished, as did the others’ faithful mites.

  On the morning of the fourth cycle, Winter came out of her trance. “It’s here!” She muttered, thrusting her hands down to try and lift herself to her feet. “It’s here!”

  Instantly the Talio came to roaring life as he informed everyone that Winter said, ‘It’s here’.

  Queen Altum Juls ordered full transparency of Talio’s hull.

  “Can he do that?” Freux asked her, concern lacing his whirring voice.

  “I believe so. I guess we’ll find out,” his wife answered him gravely.

  Within thirty seconds, Talio had managed to change his heavily armored shell into a transparent, film-like skin. His crew gaped as the galaxy spun around them.

  Winter burst out again, “It’s here!” Her eyes riveted on a pale smudge on the very periphery of the sensor’s range. “It’s here,” she repeated, and as though mesmerized, walked to the foremost wall of the bridge and lay both palms upon the transparent skin.

  Minutes passed and the smudge drew nearer and larger. After several hours it was upon them. No one spoke. Chrysalis turned out to be a gargantuan worm-like being. Its white skin glowed from within as light pulsed and thrummed inside it. Winter was completely mesmerized. Tate had tried to rush forward to her, but the Queen held him firmly back. Shaking her head at him, she said, “It’s all up to her now. Leave her be.”

  Tate shook his head vigorously, “No!” Struggling to break free, his commotion disturbed Winter’s trance.

  Turning to him, she said, “Let him go. It is ok. He may join me. I don’t know if we will be back,” she added, then returned to her position touching the wall. Tate approached her and slowly slid both long arms around her shoulders from the side, holding her tightly. In an instant, both were gone.

  “What the hell?” General Kor burst out.

  “I believe she’s blinked them into the being,” Queen Altum Juls stated with far more confidence than she was actually feeling. “They are one with the Chrysalis.”

  “To what end?” demanded General Freux, eyeing his wife with a steely glare. “To what end?” he repeated.

  “I believe, darling, that she is communicating our desire to close the void,” Altum Juls answered him, strain obvious in her voice. “I simply can not think of any other reason. We must simply wait.”

  They waited. And waited. Another four days passed. On the fifth day, the Chrysalis turned towards the void and touching the ever-expanding hole with one end of its blob-like length, began to form what looked like the jaws of a Great White shark. Lightning like bursts began to rock the atmosphere around the void. Chrysalis’ fantastically-wide jaws locked down on one edge of the creeping darkness, then remained unmoving as the void began to buck and shudder as though in pain.

  Gradually the void elongated and narrowed as the Chrysalis drew its writhing length into its enormous maw. Talio had to compensate for the slowing of the void’s draw as its disappearance into Chyrsalis’ yawning mouth slowed its gravitational pull on the galaxy it had intended to swallow.

  At long last, the writhing void was devoured. A glowing Chrysalis sat pulsing contentedly, as the mouth it has used to suck the parallel universe’s portal disappeared back into the slug-like blob of its being. As Chrysalis turned to leave, Queen Altum Juls pushed out an enormous burst of energy with the message, “Return them to us!”

  The energy wave rolled over Chrysalis and without even pausing, the limp forms of Winter and Tate appeared just inside the bulkhead from which they’d disappeared. Crew members rushed to revive them. They were alive!

  “Thank you!” Altum Juls sent across the ever widening space between Chrysalis and herself.

  “Self is enough,” came the faint reply. “Each is enough.” The smudge disappeared into the distance.

  Winter and Tate were carried through to Winter’s quarters and placed gently on the shelf bed. Tendrils wrapped them in thick swathes of vines and cradled them carefully. Talio reported that they were stable and unharmed, but appeared in some sort of deep sleep.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Self Vs. Selfishness

  Winter woke slowly. Tate was already gone from the room, though both her mites were there to help her rise and shower. Heading to the mess for a meal, Winter tried to fathom what she’d learned. How to explain it would be the hard part.

  She slung herself into one of the deep moss-covered, couch-like benches and sighed. Seeing Tate enter and spring towards her, she hurriedly set down her drink and braced for impact. Sure enough, he slung his now, strongly-muscled frame onto the bench and practically swallowed her in his enthusiastic embrace. “I feel great!” he crowed. “What about you?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I feel good too,” Winter said. “Mostly I feel sort of dazed and a little unsure of how to explain what we saw.”

  “I’m not confused,” Tate said matter-of-factly. “That was the “Mother’ that Dolores Kelty is always on about. You know it. I know it.”

  “Perhaps,” Winter replied thoughtfully. “Is that what you told them?” she asked, flicking a small finger towards the other crew piling in through the open door.

  “Yep. Pretty much,” Tate replied easily. “Yep. Pretty much. Dolores is going to be so stoked,” he added with a bone-crushing squeeze and a huge grin. His excitement clearly visible.

  Queen Altum Juls gingerly lowered herself down opposite the pair and, once everyone else was settled, turned back to Winter and said, “Well? Tate tells us that Chrysalis was the ‘Mother’. What do you think?”

  “I think Chrysalis is some very wise and very powerful being,” Winter began cautiously. Tate opened his mouth to comment, but was silenced by one wave of the Queen’s imperiously thrust out finger.

  “The being helped us because we needed it and asked for its help. It didn’t have to help us. It helped us because we could not do this alone. Which is almost contrary to what it wants us to learn,” she continued slowly.

  “It wants us to learn that our self is enough. We don’t need anything more. We can not be better people through taking, or adding, or expanding our empire. We are enough as we are,” Winter said quietly. “Selfishness is thinking that we aren’t enough as we are, that we must be better in some way. That thinking robs us of joy. Joy is the point.”

  “Chrysalis pitied the void because it searched endlessly for its lost parts, when it fact, it could have been an entire universe all its own. Instead, it destroyed galaxies searching for parts of itself that were meant to be other universes nurturing life and creation,” Winter continued, her hands laying out the idea with large sweeping gestures. “I don’t know if I’m explaining this well, but that is the point. Continual searching for ‘more’ or ‘other’ or ‘the rest’ of us, robs us of joy in the current time, the now.”

  “The void was to have been another universe. Instead it became a world destroyer because it could not find its purpose where it found itself. Man, that is just hard to wrap my mind around,” Winter finished dazedly.

  Queen Altum Juls looked at Winter steadily. “What was this being’s application of that theory to us?”

  “I don’t know,” Winter answered with a small smi
le. “It seems to me that it’s a question for each of us personally. And then for each organization in regards to power. What is the power we acquire for? If we are enough as we are, is the power we acquire in life to better ourselves, or protect ourselves? If we are enough as we are, then it has to be the latter.” Slumping, she buried her face in Tate’s shoulder. “I can’t think about it anymore. Please take me to my quarters,” she murmured into his shoulder. Tate rose, grasped her easily in his long arms and carried her from the room.

  The Queen stood up. “We must return to Beira. They are the first planet on the Arachnian fleet’s escape route. We must protect them. How we do that, will be the question,” she said firmly, then strode from the room in search of the bridge. The room slowly emptied, each individual lost in thought about the message Chrysalis had sent and what it meant to them.

  Within days the Talio had surpassed even the fastest of the retreating Arachnian ships. They arrived back at Beira in plenty of time to take up a defensive position. A week later the first of the Arachnian ships broke through to Beira’s position.

  Queen Altum Juls simply stopped them with a wave of one huge hand, encapsulating them in a energy barrier. She waited patiently for the rest of the flotilla to appear, doing the same for every group of ships that dropped from warp onto Beira’s doorstep. When all the ships that the sensors had accounted for finally arrived, she broadcast her message of peace.

  Within minutes several of the warships, in apparent frustration at lack of a better target, began firing on each other. After repeated attempts to stop the firing, the barrage of cannons gradually died off. Half the vessels that had been saved from the homeworld were in pieces.

  Heaving an enormous sigh, Queen Altum Juls set about explaining the situation to the remaining ships. Two of the remaining vessels appeared to have at least part of the royal family aboard. They soon began to communicate in their unusually aggressive manner. The Queen quickly squashed that attitude by moving their ship, in randomly sweeping gestures, all around the planet as a child would move their toys.

  This mighty show of power stopped the bickering in an unprecedented agreement of cooperation. After explaining to the royal family that they owed their lives to the Alliance for having stopped the void from consuming all of their galaxy, Queen Altum Juls went onto explain that they had a galaxy that remained theirs. As Arachnians, she was surprised that they had fled, abandoning their own galaxy in order to allow others to poach it. It had rich seas, mineral deposits, clean water, and vast land for development. The water alone was worth a fortune, she continued. Surely, other species would see this galaxy as a potential goldmine.

  The Arachnian royal family agreed that they must return to protect the remaining galaxy from predatory species. Queen Altum Juls made it clear that they must not try to populate or seed other galaxies that were under the protection of the Alliance. In addition, the Arachnians now owed the Alliance an enormous favor. Queen Altum Juls had no idea how beneficial that would be in time.

  General Behr’s nest was hyper vigilant over the following months. Though the odd report came in with rumors of the higher classes of Arachnians feeding on the lower orders in order to lessen the population strain on their remaining planets. Of course, because they’d decimated their mammalian population by proceeding with the ill conceived plan to hatch all their hives at once and flee the galaxy, they would pay the price in the slow rebuilding of their worlds. The Alliance sent the a shipment of the Galarian ‘nutrient frames’ and that helped them stabilize their population.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Power

  The encounter with Chrysalis had drained Winter’s emotional reservoirs. Asking the Queen’s permission, Winter and Tate and their crew retreated to their headquarters on the icy outpost near Geboren. Winter spent months in silence, only speaking occasionally to Tate. He left her to it, knowing that what he believed to be true, was having a greater impact on Winter than he could understand.

  Finally in desperation, he persuaded her to come with him to Giaica and spend time in the Temple of the Mother. Tate would never know what happened there. He wasn’t allowed farther than the sanctuary. Eventually, Winter was ready to return to their mission as emissaries of the Idolum Empire. At Queen Altum Juls’ request, Tate and Winter flew aboard Sister to Geboren to meet with the Queen.

  Sitting quietly in the birthing chamber above the habitat, Winter tried to explain what she’d learned. As Viceroy, she had the ultimate power to judge others. She had meditated long and hard on how the Chrysalis’ lesson of reality, in all its horror, and the ‘vision’ of perfection as we are, could be correlated. How did it relate to justice? It had thrown her world of absolutes into a whirl of gray neutrality.

  After her months in the temple, Winter had finally reached the consciousness of Chrysalis once more. It had reminded her that all light particles stop streaming when the human brain turns away from it. It is the old question of does a tree falling in the woods make a sound if there is no one to hear it. If the human mind does not focus on light, it does not stream.

  Turning to Queen Altum Juls and including Tate in her statement, Winter said, “I believe that Chrysalis was telling me that we can not look away from the light in the universes. We must activate that light. If justice is the Viceroy’s mission, I must go forth and search out the light to add to dark places.”

  “I can not doubt my power or my mission. I am perfect as I am. Where I am now, is where I am supposed to be. Permission to continue the Viceroy’s delegation, my Queen, please,” Winter said firmly. “We must not turn away from bringing the light. It is only we who can see it.”

  “Permission granted, Viceroy Winter,” replied Queen Altum Juls. “My empire is at your service.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  There’s Always One

  Winter and Tate were taking a much needed break back on their icy outpost in the Rayen System. There was nothing like an inhospitable frozen world to make a girl feel protected. Winter loved it here. Tate had found an old stash of animal hides from the archives of lost ‘life givers’ and brought them back with them from Valoria on their last stop there.

  Winter’s quarters were now lined with the skins of ‘life givers’ and besides feeling cozy, the knowledge of their sacrifice and her ability to still honor them by using their hides made her feel safe and secure, surrounded by love.

  She and Tate were inseparable and as their relationship had deepened, so had Winter’s ability to tolerate touch. Winter had finally been able to touch Tate in return without panicking and fleeing from the room. She’d enjoyed it and told him so. This had been an enormous boost to Tate’s ego and he was currently whistling jauntily in the next room, no doubt feeling very macho after this morning’s gentle kissing session had gone very well.

  Winter could only grin. Things were looking up. Maybe she’d be able to have a family of her own after all. The scientists on Gateca were looking into the genetic compatibility of human, Osmir, and Idolum breeding. After a few tweaks of a chemical compound that was found to be inhibiting the growth of combination embryos, a new implant was going to be tried. Queen Altum Juls and General Freux were the first candidates that were trying it. Winter hoped their next birth would be a live one. Everyone was waiting with baited breath.

  In the meantime, the Viceroy’s job was never ending. They’d been allowed this week at home to rest, but a renegade Idolum Premiere - this ego-maniacal cretin called himself a Premiere, not a General - was massing forces in the Calix System so they departed tomorrow for a negotiation with him. His name was Premiere Truego, and most reports described him as emotionally unstable and a flat out raper and pillager of worlds. Winter sighed, It all sounded so fun, right? It was always something.

  It took them four weeks to reach the Calix System, now that both she and Tate could channel large amounts of energy. Sister slid through the galaxies like a knife through butter. It was an exhilarating feeling. Winter could swear she sometimes heard Sister laugh
ing delightly at the effortless glide through the colorfully passing stars.

  The first planet they reached in the Calix System was a world that from afar looked like a peaceful green orb. As the probes searched it unseen from above, it became obvious that what looked quiet from above was actually a seething, roiling battlefield. A species logged within the helmet as Cassarians, a humanoid race with a hard, leathery outer skin and the ability to breath noxious gases inhabited this world. They were flight capable, but not space faring yet.

  It appeared that the Idolum had raided their world repeatedly, taking their population for food, raping their stores of minerals and trade goods, and in general, wreaking havoc and destruction in their wake.

  The Cassarians had given them a good fight, though their weapons were far less sophisticated. Their advantage had been the poison atmosphere of their planet. In battle they aimed first for the Idolum breathing apparatus that allowed the intruders to land and breathe the atmosphere. The Idolum were able to endure the gases exposure to their skin, but not to their lungs.Tearing off the enemy breathers gave the Cassarians an edge and they exploited it wholeheartedly. As a species that found feats of skill and bravery honorable, the Cassarians were good fighters. Tall, strong, and fast, they’d done a good job of putting a dent in Premiere Truego’s forces. For now, the invaders were leaving them in peace.