replied. That was the last name I thought I would hear from her lips. What could she mean ‘I knew him by that name’ - Lore was uncommon and nowhere in the database could I remember there being another one.
“Nice to see you again Sev, I’m glad I could be of service,” a scrambled voice came from the giant but it was unmistakably his. The yellow giant took a knee so as not to look quite as intimidating during our meeting.
“What happened to you,” I said wanting badly to believe that his was truly my old friend. I had so many questions running through my head. The Lore I knew had given his life on Parcae blasting a hole in the side and falling into the darkness of space. His last words had been a warning about this very battle. The Lore I knew was a paladin, a member of First Descent and one of the best soldiers I ever served with. He had given his life to save myself and my team from certain death.
“Why did Aira call you Lore?” I said with just enough anger and distrust in my voice. I felt offended but I couldn’t get past the notion that if anyone could survive it would be him, he was a cyborg and who knows what kind of augments and implants he might have had that could have kept him alive. Maybe like Addax he could survive in the vacuum of space.
“Let me explain,” Aira said stepping in for the yellow giant. “Your mission to Parcae wasn’t the only one in play. The Aelita has run tandem black ops missions side by side with everything you have ever done. When Lore did what he did we were on the other side of the station fighting a small force of Skrav drones. We kept that information hidden from you because that whole thing was ‘need-to-know’. When we finished dealing with the Skrav we tracked down Lore’s body cold and nearly but not all dead. He had just enough brain activity and life left we took him back with us that we placed him in the ‘Valkyrie project’.” “What is that?” I asked. Aira continued as if she knew the questions I had and she had practiced giving this lesson to me over and over, “ most cyborgs are implanted with a tether. It allows them to communicate with their cybernetic parts. I have one, Lore has one, the monitor on Errikus had several… every cyborg or cybernetic organism you have ever met has one fitted with one the moment they became one with their machine. This made Lore the perfect candidate. We took away his dismembered limbs and tore out his eyes. We fitted him with a new body and allowed him to become one of us. Like myself he is no longer the same Lore that you knew though he still has small bits and pieces of memory. Think of him more as a guardian or auton if it makes you feel better.”
It seemed cold. Lore was one of the few that had spoken about sacrificing himself for the greater good, if anything I’m not sure this was something he would really want or if it was something he would be happy about - the chance to be reborn and fight again after death. I guess if he was saving lives he would say yes to the cause. He seemed to have no problem with it now.
Aira smiled.
It almost seemed like she was about to laugh. Perhaps she was mocking me. The last thing I would want is to come back again and again and fight in this endless war. “How many are in the Valkyrie program?” I asked wondering if this fate waited everyone. “Too many to name, all are cyborgs or volunteers. This is one of the reasons we don’t show ourselves on the Erebus. Some of us have died several times only to be brought back in bodies similar to their own. You have your secrets and we have ours all that matters is that we lead the charge and we do what we do giving our very best,” she said a small hint of pride in her voice.
“Is he still human?” I asked.
“Is a ‘user’ human?” she asked in return.
“You have an ability that no other human has that allows you to see into time all because of some alien element; you are augmented by nature, metahuman, mutant, demigod, seer there are many names for what you are onboard the Aelita but just as you are changed from what it means to be human so too is Lore,” she said in a condescending way.
“You were a user too though when you were young, they tested both our DNA as children and we were a match so what does that make you?” I said.
“I wasn’t trying to make it sound like being different was a bad thing, I may have been a positive match but the nexus never worked when I touched it. I was punished for that. My own father disowned me for a time until I managed to prove I was worth something more then being a piece of meat,” she said looking downward towards her cybernetic hand.
“I had no idea, I’m sorry,” I couldn’t fathom what must have happened to Aira on the Aelita. Her father always seemed like a cruel man from what I had heard as a child. Far worst then her mother. The only reason she was on Errikus was that her father abandoned her hoping that living on a hostile world would make her strong. He resented that she was a woman. He must have resented her more when she wasn’t a user.
She smiled again.
“You probably think all of this is weird huh?” she said.
“Yeah just a bit,” I said staring at her and the yellow giant.
“Wait till I tell you what they did with Dom.”
Lore
PAST In the last dying days of Earth, before the sun went out there stood an old fragile woman looking on all the vast wondrous things humans had created. From cities that spanned coastlines to the mega-structures and space elevators that tore through the sky into the heavens. Ports and mining colonies built on far off worlds. The Sol System had become a beautiful haven and humanity had become prosperous. She sat still, her face blank, years of wear in her eyes. She was waiting at a space port, one on Ceres, a way station between Mars, the asteroid belt and the moons of Jupiter and Titan. She was waiting on a messenger, a man going by the name of Mace.
Mace was a pirate, a mercenary; he had been a thorn in the peacekeeper organization’s side for years. This woman had a package for him, a special gift she needed smuggled aboard a starship. Smuggling was nothing new for Mace. He lived for the thrill of jobs like this. Which starship didn’t matter to him; there were only three big ones being built to choose from anyway. The Erebus, the Aelita, and the Tritan.
The Aelita itself was supposed to have been named in honor of the old woman’s mother whom had long since passed. In her mind the old woman recalled stories of her youth, her mother joking about how some Russian bureaucrat behind a desk added a T and changed an entire words meaning. Instead of Aelia the feminine version of the ancient Roman name ‘Aelius’ derived from the Greek word ‘Helios’ meaning ‘Sun’ the ship became the Aelita, named for a soviet science fiction film made in 1924, something that has since become little more then a few bytes of data stored inside a biological hard drive lost somewhere on the ship its named for. Aelia never forgot how she felt about the ‘trinity’ that had been created. She despised them. The biggest lie ever told. She despised everything they stood for. Most people believed humanity was preparing for a new age of deep space exploration. Only a few knew the truth, the oncoming storm, the destruction and genocide that was about to take place.
Mace was about to become one of the few.
The old woman handed him a small parcel no larger then an old paperback book. He was instructed not to open it until a certain date.
Knowing he was a scoundrel that couldn’t be trusted the old woman smiled as Mace looked the package up and down. Before he walked away he was already trying to find the best way to peel back the packaging to see what was inside. Immediately after finding a place of seclusion he opened it. Inside was a new identity, a new beginning and a message:
‘Forget what you think is real, the world you know is a lie.’
‘Inside the peacekeepers there is an organization, an old and ancient order known as ‘the Sons of Sol,’ they have been around a very long time dating back to the Templar order, possibly even before. This may sound like science fiction but everything is already arranged. You are living in a world of interstellar colonization and deep space exploration, you should know that there is more. Above Pluto there is a ‘trinity’ of starships. You think you know what they are for but what you have been told i
s a lie. They are not building starships, they are building warships; generational warships. A single captain of one of these ships could live a thousand years and never age a day through stasis and recreation. That won’t be long enough. Not for what I am going to ask you to do. Each warship contains an element, a shard, an alien artifact known as the nexus that allows certain individuals to see into the past, present, and future. I have seen this nexus for myself and I have seen the outcome of what is to happen. My mother too was a seer, a user, a meta give the gift to use the alien artifact and it is through her the future has become aware of our mistake. The details are hard to explain, its as if they have been scattered into so many pieces of a puzzle they are all but lost. Only fragments remain and many of those fragments will become obsolete in what is to come. We have changed too much and the more we change the farther into the darkness we slip away. The soul of humanity itself is turning black, to despair as we continue to tear through the passage of time. I am asking you Mace, kill the captain of one of those ships and take his place. Deliver the information stored in this message to your descendants. If the truth becomes twisted into legend of fiction the so be it, there is no higher power that can judge me and say that I did not try.’
The next day Mace murdered the captain of the Aelita.
The captain of the Aelita was an older man named Sovros-Adel. It didn’t end there. Mace and his mercenary friends murdered the entire bridge crew planning to leave onboard with the Aelita. Mace used his mercenary ship, the ‘Gestalt’ to dispose of the bodies setting them adrift near the eye of Jupiter. It was a fitting end to a man that currently led the ‘Sons of Sol’ and had been known for his cruel treatment of his peers. Mace and his men traveled to Europa. It was there in an under the ground underwater research station he met with a man named Yule aka ‘the face-maker’.
Yule did what he does best utilizing 3D scans Mace and his men had taken of Sovros-Adel and his accompanied crew the face-maker grafted new faces on each and every one of them. Each skin-job cost a fortune but that didn’t matter. Mace and his men decided to put their trust into the old woman’s message. They spent years planning their take over. They used all their resources and then some. By the end of the day Mace was an exact copy of Sovros-Adel from his hair and face down to the fingerprints. Each of the crew were given the same treatment - each a copy of an Aelita officer now dead.
The message the old woman had given Mace didn’t just include information about the ‘trinity’ and its secret mission. It included background files for all of the crew and everything else she had spent her life learning. All of it was easily accessible via a small implant Mace and the others injected into the back of their spine. The implant fed them images that seemed almost like memories. They were untouchable. No one could mistake them for impostors. For the first time in Mace’s life and for a few short years before the time came for the ‘trinity’ to run he had become one of the most powerful men humanity had ever known.
Years passed with Mace and his men moving in and out of stasis. Mace, now fully committed to being Sovros-Adel had become old and tired. So much time in stasis had begun to drive him mad. Humanity slept with no advancement, no new ideas and nothing of any interest to a man who used to call himself a space pirate.
Mace’s bloodline never stopped running. In the hundreds of years since his death humanity began making advancements again. Slowly at first but they were there. Both the Erebus and the Aelita set up several R&D departments deep within their ships. Mace’s wishes became commands. Mace’s bloodline still even makes up much of the Aelita’s command. A ship bred from the blood of mercs and smugglers. A ship robbed out from under the original ‘Sons of Sol’ Only that didn’t matter. The old woman had chosen poorly. Mace was just as cruel as the real Sovros-Adel - if not more.
The data Mace carried eventually became a part of the Aelita itself, a library of information about the Earth filled with ancient knowledge and reports that described various timelines associated with the future. However there was one encoded message that was never read. Something nether Mace nor any of the elders after him had been able to unlock. The message was something Aira eventually uncovered.
Aira’s father was a cruel man. It seemed Mace’s bloodline only gave birth to monsters. Her father lived for violence and self-satisfaction torturing Skrav and human alike, species didn’t matter. Onboard the Aelita they called him Zeus. When Aira was born he wanted a son, he had planned to name the son Ares after the god of war. When that didn’t happen he let the mother, a young woman who could barely take care of herself name her. She chose the name Aira meaning ‘pure’ and ‘chaste’ hoping that one day she would be loved by Zeus as a daughter rather then a warrior or object.
Zeus and Balkava had been close allies. It seemed as far as anyone could tell the two plotted together and killed all of the elders forever ending the rule of ‘the Sons of Sol’ and beginning what they called the rule of the ‘New Gods’. The ‘Sons of Sol’ wanted New Eden. They believed it would be a place for humanity to runaway and hide itself from the rest of the hostile universe. They believed it was a place they could ascend into a realm above our own and that somehow this long journey humanity had undertaken was a part of that exodus. Zeus and Balkava saw it as an origin point. To them it was a place to start an empire and end humanity’s dark age. Only through destruction could we aspire. They already had two warships and with a world hidden among the stars they could hide away inside stasis until they had fleets at their command. They were the last two elders and with that alone they had power.
Zeus’s corruption eventually led to his very downfall. When Aira was taken aboard the Aelita she was abused, tormented, and tortured ruthlessly by both the man she had once called father and the crew. The only thing she had was that she was smart and brave. She had always been smart. She was a slave but that didn’t mean she didn’t have access to a computer terminal now and then. Everyone had a small console in their room - it was an easy way of providing communication through the ship. She spend years hacking through the Aelita’s storage system as one of the few things she could do for enjoyment. She found the encrypted message from the past detailing all of the events that transported after reaching Eden. It was a part of the message carried by Mace. The message took her years to hack. Inside she found transcripts depicting future events about her father and Balkava. The rebellions and murders that would occur, the genetic manipulation the duo would perform and eventually the destruction their actions would bring to the fabric of reality. It would be a slow process, a slow burn that would take thousands of years but the destruction would be absolute. New Eden was a weapon, a world capable of solar destruction created by the Lethe.
Aira murdered Zeus in his sleep.
She used a small dagger given to her as a gift by Sev as a child. A weapon from Errikus that she had kept hidden for years; the only
reminder of the life she had once had. The crew and soldiers knew who she was. All of those aboard bowed to her demanding that she take charge and without hesitation she decreed her first order, an embargo against the Erebus
- against Balkava.
PRESENT
- NEW EDEN“So that’s why you never came to help us?” I said listening to a holo Aira had made detailing bits and pieces of her life and what has been happening aboard the Aelita. Some of it was more explicit in detail then I wanted to hear but it was her truth, her story to tell and I had to listen. When the Aelita crashed she and several other abandoned ship in shuttles and escape pods. She took Lore as her bodyguard and several others all of whom were now dead - murdered by both Skrav and Scourge. When the Scourge entered the battle above the orbital it was an accident. They had broken lose from their stasis pods and begun slaughtering men and women still aboard and stealing shuttles. That was when the Aelita set itself on a crash course.
“My next mission is to kill Balkava,” she said. I couldn’t believe what she was saying. Balkava was someone close to me. I was one of the few that sus
pected that she had killed the elders on the Erebus after she herself joined them but there was no proof whatsoever aside from what Aira had claimed to see. The Erebus had been under attack by the antliods for what seemed so long. I needed to stall, there had to be a way both Aira and Balkava could compromise.
“I need to find Hayden, I need your help,” I said.
“He is probably heading towards the Erebus now,” I followed after a moment of silence. I hoped that maybe being united with both myself and Hayden that it was possible the two of us could convince her there was another way. I was wrong.
“We already have him. We found him before you, he was passed out in the snow; he had lost a lot of blood. We are holding him in stasis now. We had hoped to find others but the two of you are the only ones alive we have seen since we made it to the surface.”
I couldn’t believe it. I said nothing else. Finding a compromise would have to wait. We walked together in silence to the makeshift refugee camp made from the dropship Aira and Lore had escaped to Eden in. There he was. Nanites, reverse engineered from the ones discovered on Parcae filled the stasis chamber. They were reprogrammed to heal organic tissue. They were making quick work of Hayden.
The bite on my hand was getting worst. The cold wind and frostbite I had didn’t help with anything either. If there had been another hellbeast tracking us I know Lore could probably take it out but if there was a mature one or anything worst on this world that liked the smell of a wounded warrior we would be done for. I already knew at this point I was near useless in a fight. Aira grabbed her gear and injected me with a syringe. I could feel the nannies going to work inside my hand, my body, running along my ribs repairing fracture tissue and broken bone.
“We can’t take the shuttle anywhere, some of those things, the Wesp or whatever you called them got in while we were out and started eating the cables to the ion drive. Killed them but its too late this bird is never going to fly again,” Aira said. She was hardly thrilled to be stuck like this. She sounded exhausted and I could only wonder if she had gotten any sleep or even if she needed sleep anymore.
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