Santori couldn’t help but be surprised at the executive’s knowledge of the past. “Your understanding of history is impressive, Director. Yes, you’re quite right. Our traditional religions have never truly died out, they have merely taken on a new form.”
“Humans adapt to anything. Expose them to a new, dominant religion, and they will add some of their own into the mix.”
“Precisely,” Santori said while pointing up at the newly painted frescoes in the domed ceiling. “The tombs of the holy men once called saints were removed when this temple was refurbished, yet as you can see, much of the stylistic designs from that ancient era still remain.”
Erich looked up. “Yes, I’ve always had a fondness for Italian Renaissance architecture. I love the gothic archways and the baroque design of their columns and walls. Both the old and new religions speak to me through their places of worship.”
“If I may ask, Director, do you consider the antecessors to be divine?”
It took Erich a few minutes to answer him. “If by divine you mean superior? Then I guess the answer is yes. I have been to the artifact world of the crystalweavers, and the scant traces of their technology is … quite impressive. Even our best researchers have been stumped as to how to replicate such wondrous devices as they’ve built.”
Santori pursed his lips. “I was referring to godhood. Do you believe the antecessors ought to be worshipped?”
“Let me counter that with another question. Our current state of technology has allowed us to settle distant worlds across the length of a fair portion of the galaxy,” Erich said. “If the builders of this ancient temple encountered us with our present-day tech, would they not worship us as gods too?”
“You bring up a good point,” Santori said. “But it seems we have been unable to make a great leap forward to equal the technology of the antecessors, despite our numerous attempts to decipher their relics and tech for almost three hundred years. What does that tell you?”
Erich shrugged. “I don’t know, but I can’t be certain just because of a belief. I need facts and figures.”
Santori chuckled. “Ah, that is the crux of religion. It is all based on a belief of hope. We are convinced the antecessors will return to judge us all one day, and they will only reward those who have shown true faith in them.”
Erich remained skeptical. “You honestly believe that these … extinct races will somehow return? We have found no fossilized remains, just scattered relics on dead worlds. Many people aren’t even sure if these hypothetical races existed—some researchers have theorized we just found stories of mythological gods from long-dead alien species.”
“I believe it in the bottom of my heart,” the grand cleric said. “The ancient legends we have deciphered on different planets all foretell of their return; it’s just a matter of time.”
Hassan had been standing quietly beside Erich, but now he made a low cough.
Erich shook the cleric’s hand once again. “I’m sorry to have to cut off this interesting discussion, but I’m afraid I must go. Let us speak again soon.”
Santori gave them a friendly wave as the pair turned and walked away. “A pleasant day to you, Director. May the antecessors watch over you.”
Erich frowned while sitting in the vehicle’s backseat as he used his smartcom device to read the virtual report. “So the Memnon was defeated and all hands lost?”
Hassan was sitting beside him as the AI-controlled air car flew over the Alps and headed towards the Swiss Region. He shook his head. “There were about thirty surviving crewmembers. The Tamaishi picked them up after her engines were repaired.”
“And what of Subject Zero?”
“She was apparently abducted by the pirates, but they spared the lives of the rest.”
Erich leaned back on the plush leather seat and grimaced. It had to be an inside job. “We have a traitor within my inner circle. How else could those blasted pirates have known about Subject Zero?”
Hassan nodded. “I’m afraid you’re right, Director.”
Erich glanced at him. There was a combination of hatred and frustration in his steely blue eyes. “Start an investigation and do it quietly. Leave no stone unturned. If there was a breach in the network then I need to know. Find me this traitor.”
“I’ll get onto it right away, Director.”
The car stopped in front of the Concordance Embassy. Erich signaled the AI controller to open the passenger-side door, and it did. He stepped out of the vehicle before stooping over to talk to his assistant once more. “Wait for me here.”
Hassan’s eyes opened wide. “You’re going in there alone, Director? I can call your bodyguards and they’ll be here within minutes to accompany you.”
Erich shook his head. “No need. I can handle things.”
Ignoring his subordinate’s concerns, he walked up the marble steps until he got close to the personal checkpoint. Two Concordance warriors wearing their bio-suits glanced at him briefly before they waved him through the main entrance.
Putting on his nostril filters, Erich continued down a series of corridors; the atmospheric composition in the rooms began to alter slightly as he got further inside the building. The added chlorine gas in the air irritated his lungs, but the filters made it somewhat bearable. Cyber-optical implants in his eyes immediately shifted to shield mode to prevent inflammation, but he still squinted instinctively while his senses were being exposed to a now alien air.
After the Great Schism, the other half of the galaxy formed their own political and governmental body and named it the Bios Concordance, or simply the Concordance for short. Many of the survivors who bore the brunt of the Singularity Wars rightfully blamed the massive destruction on the sentient machines who started it, and banned their existence from their borders. In contrast, the Union granted the surviving synthetics full rights as citizens, with treaties to control their replication in order to prevent organic sentients from being overwhelmed by an endless number of true artificial intelligences.
Without any AI to help them in their technological advancements, the leaders and citizens of the Concordance relied on mastering the genome to unlock the vast potential of genetic engineering. In time, their technologies ran along parallel lines to match those of the Union’s, but with distinct differences. The Concordance believed one must alter one’s own biology through genome modification in order to adapt to the hazards of space and other worlds.
In time, the growing differences between both factions eventually erupted into open conflict. A series of wars for territory followed, each struggle more destructive than the previous one. The last war had happened over fifty years before, and the wholesale devastation convinced both sides the next one would be far too costly to wage. Since then, an uneasy peace had prevailed, with both sides shoring up their border defenses and fleets, just in case the unimaginable happened again.
Erich continued walking, hardly being disturbed by embassy personnel as he took the elevator up to the second level. Making his way along a high-ceilinged corridor, he turned and finally stopped in front of a set of double doors. Tapping his smartcom device, he sent a coded signal into the interior.
The large doors quickly swung open, revealing a vaulted, high-ceilinged chamber. As he walked through, he noticed two human attendants standing near the alcoves behind the doorway, each wearing nothing but a simple servant’s uniform.
One of the men gestured at him to proceed. Erich couldn’t help but notice the man’s emaciated appearance and bloodshot eyes. The visible lump behind the attendant’s lower neck was an obvious sign of symbiosis.
Erich nodded before turning around and walking towards the center of the chamber. Every human member of the Concordance he had ever met had a symbiote attached at the neck to their spinal column. The Concordance propagandists always proclaimed the symbiotes would only attach themselves to willing volunteers, but Erich always scoffed at such a naive notion. It was a fact that slavery was legal in the Concordance, and many huma
ns living on their borders were forcefully serving as unwilling hosts for the symbiotes.
The moment he made it to the center of the room, a doorway at the opposite end opened up and a crimson-colored alien who stood nearly three meters tall began shuffling towards him. Erich kept his hands by his sides, willfully suppressing the urge to run away. He wasn’t quite sure why meeting an xtid always made him uneasy, surmising that perhaps humans always had an inbred fear of large beings which resembled a monstrous fusion of worms and spiders.
Ambassador Hjktk was typical of his species. His acorn-shaped abdomen was surrounded by four segmented legs arranged like a quad pod. Hjktk’s long, cylindrical torso stretched upwards, like an upright blood sausage, and each of his four hanging arms ended in padded hands with multiple wire-like tendrils. The ambassador’s head tapered into a forward-facing wrinkled spout, with a starfish-shaped mouth and a set of four pinheaded eyes resembling shiny red buttons sewn on a coat along its sides.
Erich stood his ground as the Concordance ambassador stopped less than two meters in front of him. He knew the xtid were dangerous carnivores back in their mysterious homeworld, and it was prudent to stand at a respectable distance, lest their predatory instincts take over. He made a slight bow as a token of respect. “Ambassador Hjktk, thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”
Hjktk swiveled his head at the servitors, gesturing with a wire-like hand to dismiss the pair. The two men walked through the open doorway before dutifully closing it behind them. The ambassador then turned his attention back to Erich. “A pleasant greeting to you, Director von Steyr. I hope our atmospheric accommodations do not make you too uncomfortable. You see, my homeworld has a concentration of chlorine in its atmosphere, and I find the air on your planet to be somewhat … lacking.”
Erich gave a manful shrug, hoping his stoicism would add to his courage. “I have cybernetic implants and nose filters. I’ll be fine as long as I don’t spend too much time in here.”
“Then we shall be as prompt as possible,” the ambassador said, his peculiar accent combined with clicks and wheezes coming from his star-shaped mouth. Despite Comm-5 being the universal language for all races within the range of audible standards, many local dialects began to evolve from it, each one bringing its own distinct characterizations. The xtid vernacular in particular had added clicking sounds in place of a few consonants.
“Yes, let’s be frank,” Erich said. “The package was intercepted.”
“Oh? That is most unfortunate.”
Erich’s anger began to overcome his unease. “By the Nepenthe, the most notorious pirate ship in the galaxy, no less.”
“Did you not make a personal guarantee to me, saying there was no chance of anything like this ever happening?”
Erich grimaced. “I had a goddamned heavy cruiser set up for an escort, and she still failed. How was I to know the Nepenthe would even be in that sector, unless the pirates themselves knew about the game we were playing?”
Hjktk tilted his head up and made a multitude of clicking sounds, indicating laughter. “I am sorry, but I always find mirth every time you humans call what we do a game.”
“You may be laughing, but I’m not.”
Hjktk’s four eyes locked onto his. “If we are to continue with metaphors, then this would only mean there are strangers within your hive.”
“I’m working on it,” Erich said. “But what of your hive? I gave you the course itinerary for the transport. For all I know, the spy could be from your own swarm.”
The ambassador tilted his long torso back and forth, like a blood-colored coat rack swaying in the wind. “That is impossible. No xtid would ever betray another for a different species.”
“I would suggest you start your own inquiries anyway,” Erich said. “You have symbiotes in every nook and cranny of this embassy.”
Despite the Concordance advertising themselves as a unified government of republics, everyone knew the true powers behind the entire faction were the symbiotes and the xtid, and these two races were hardly democratic in nature. Human refugees from the Singularity Wars made up the bulk of the Concordance’s population, but they were almost always controlled by the symbiotes. The xtid were the only species known to be resistant to symbiotic attachment, for their strange physiology was toxic to a symbiote.
“You make a fair point, Director,” Hjktk said. “But this room has been thoroughly searched for spying devices, and the symbiotes under me are loyal to the xtid cause.”
Erich raised an eyebrow. “Really? I thought the symbiotes were loyal only to their own species.”
“You have not spent much time in Concordance space, have you?”
“No, I have not.”
“Symbiotes are a unique race,” Hjktk said. “Though most people in the Union believe they have full control over their hosts, it is not the case. A portion of the host’s original personality and choice of cause does eventually manifest itself, despite the overwhelming dominance of the guest’s symbiosis.”
“But in the end, you must admit the symbiotes would still prevail when it comes to thoughts and deeds.”
“In most cases, yes,” the ambassador said. “But there have been some recorded instances of hosts, both human and others, being able to wrest control over their minds and bodies from the attached symbiotes.”
“But in the end the symbiotes still win, right?”
Hjktk blew air through his mouth, indicating sighing. “Alas, yes. The symbiotes simply dispose of their uncooperative hosts and attach themselves onto another.”
“Hence the reason we call them parasites here.”
More clicking laughter emanated from the ambassador’s mouth. “These parasites, as you would call them, have thoroughly infiltrated your governments and corporations in the Union. The symbiotes have the most efficient intelligence network, for obvious reasons.”
Erich was taken aback. “Absurd. We have many security procedures in place to prevent infiltration by the parasites here.”
“And I tell you there are ways to get around them,” Hjktk said.
Erich frowned. Rumors circulated on the virtual net that symbiotes had infiltrated all the elected officials and secretly controlled the entire Union. He had always dismissed these stories as nothing more than ridiculous rumors, but even the Executive Council was privately worried. Current security protocols needed to be reviewed, including those of his own network. “Very well, I’ll look into it.”
“I noticed your attendance at the Temple of the Mysteries this morning,” Hjktk said, changing the subject. “How did your conversation with the grand cleric go?”
Erich gritted his teeth. The ambassador was clearly toying with him, openly revealing that they knew every single aspect of his life. They’re watching me carefully. “Since you know all about it, why don’t you tell me what we talked about?”
“I’m afraid I was unable to procure the audio recordings,” Hjktk said. “So I must use conjecture. I know you are not a superstitious man, and probably attended the ceremonies for publicity’s sake.”
“Well, that part was obvious,” Erich said. His throat was getting irritated and he needed to leave soon, but he felt he could glean something about his partner’s motivations. “I wanted to ask you something.”
“Please do.”
“In order for me to find out if there was an enemy infiltration either from my side or yours, there must be a cause behind it,” Erich said. “I know the symbiotes would be motivated to stop us if they knew what we were up to, but just now I realized I never quite understood your motives behind all this.”
Hjktk spread two arms out wide. “My motive is for my own race. I have told you this many times already.”
“Yes, you have, but how would the success of this operation suit the xtid? Your race controls half of the Concordance—the more stable half, I should say,” Erich said. “If we recover the asset and pull it off, wouldn’t it weaken the Concordance as a whole?”
“It woul
d for a time, no doubt.”
“And you know what the Union would do if it found out, right?”
“Of course; your faction would probably invade, possibly under the guise of liberating the countless millions of humans ‘enslaved’ by the symbiotes,” Hjktk said.
“It’s not a guise; a lot of people here hate the parasites and want them exterminated,” Erich said. “Nevertheless, your own race could get swept up in it too. Very few humans like the xtid. We still remember the previous wars.”
“We can defend our own borders and homeworld quite adequately,” Hjktk said.
It was Erich’s turn to chuckle. “Considering that no one outside of your own species even knows the location of your homeworld, you bring up a fair point. But still, there has been peace for over half a century—why stir the pot from your end?”
“You are motivated by personal advancement,” the ambassador said. “I am motivated to serve my race. The xtid are destined to be the one true species, the antecessors have told us so.”
Erich couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “So you’re doing this … for religious reasons?”
“What you other races do to seem to understand is the reason for our existence,” Hjktk said.
He had read studies on xtid culture and history before. “That you were the chosen ones? There was an old ethnic group of humans who believed in the same thing back in ancient times too, you know.”
“We are the chosen ones,” Hjktk said. “Every xtid believes we’re the direct descendants of the antecessors—who were xtid themselves. Their ancient lineage carries forth through us, and it is our destiny to rule the galaxy once again, just as we did before.”
Erich finally understood. The xtid viewed their symbiote allies as an eventual rival to be ultimately disposed of, and they sought to undermine the power of their own partners. Traitors and fanatics. We’ll see if you still believe in all this once the Union Star Force breaches your borders, and then lays waste to your homeworld once we pinpoint its location.
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