by F. E. Arliss
The blackened interior showed that the large furnace had been fired by something resembling coal. Large crates of it were stacked to one side in ceiling-height barred storage units. A massive metal door hung open where the coal-like substance had been shoveled in. Heapes of ashes still covered the floor of the enormous furnace. It seemed such an ‘out of the ordinary’ thing for the cleanliness and perfection ordered race. Jack guessed trash was still trash and had to be got rid of somehow.
Ruby had concentrated on exploring the smaller details of how they’d lived and scrolled the archives once Jack managed to unlock them. The days had flown by. Finding the weapons cache and enormous war barracks had them all wondering what had become of the people themselves? There didn’t appear to be any bodies, except those that had been hanging in the dungeon. Jack had buried those poor beings the very next day. So where were the rest of them?
As Jack and Violet stood on the outside landing pad watching Sarge take the first ‘test’ flight in one of the small Jun fighters they’d finally figured out how to operate, Ruby stumbled into the bay. Collapsing to the floor, she held out one hand to Violet, while trying to support herself with the other.
“Sarge, get back here! Good work with the flight, but Ruby’s got trouble. Return!” Jack barked in the comms, then ran to help Violet get Ruby to her feet. Within minutes they were all back aboard Bat and secured in the tiny galley, hot drinks in hand. Ruby slumped against Violet on the small sofa, her eyes slightly glazed and murmuring to herself. Violet rocked her gently back and forth.
“Can you tell us what happened?” Violet asked gently. “Did you find something in the archives? Did something else happen?”
Finally, Ruby looked up at them. “This was a horrible horrible race of people,” she whispered, tears welling in her eyes. “I found the reason for the incinerator. What was the most horrible use for an incinerator in Earth’s history?” she sighed out the question, her voice almost inaudible.
“Death camps. World War II,” Jack said firmly, a look of horror starting to break across his face. “Oh my Mother, help us! They were burning people alive!”
Ruby nodded, still unable to actually say the words. “They felt they had reached the pinnacle of perfection with genetic engineering and technology. They were judge, jury and executioner for all manner of races. Then suddenly, the DNA they’d created at such cost began to fail. Some of the elders got sick. They’d lived centuries, sure they would never die. Such an imperfection, illness and death,” Ruby sneered, her fingers gripping Violet’s own with such strength that Violet was losing sensation in her hand.
The silence that had fallen over the room was heavy and dense with tension. “They all just walked into the furnace. It’s where they sentenced those who were imperfect. They had done that for millennia to their own people and to other races. Now they were all doomed. Every last one of them walked into the fire of their own volition,” Ruby’s voice cracked and gave out.
“So they were hoping that if a race came who could open the gates in turn with the proper words, it would be another perfect species?” Violet queried disbelievingly.
“I don’t know,” Ruby whispered wearily. “I don’t know what they hoped. It seems they decided to leave their perfect kingdom just as it was. Their finally act of reaching the pinnacle of perfection. Though nothing could remove the incinerator. They completely forgot about the beings in the dungeon. Not worthy of thought,” she added bitterly.
Jack stood briskly. “Let’s get you two girls to bed. Sarge and I will take care of passing this information along. Tomorrow is soon enough to process this further. Off ya go!” he said, pulling Violet, then Ruby, to their feet. Passing them gently off to the Idolum mite, Lug, he and Sarge looked at each other, then poured themselves another stiff Deltanian brandy.
“They thought this place was a stronghold against imperfection,” Sarge whirred slowly, enunciating his speech carefully around his jagged teeth. “Yet the very people who have re-awakened it are the imperfect of their species. The Nest of Behr is an outcast warrior clan. The Bat was sent on a supposedly impossible mission as a punishment for upsetting the establishment. Violet and Ruby are the Paradox. We are, as a group, the epitome of imperfect perfection.”
Jack raised his glass to Sarge, clinked it loudly and proclaimed, “All hail imperfection.”
“Imperfection!” Sarge acknowledged firmly. Both men drained their glasses in one long swallow, slammed them down on the table with resounding thuds and broke out in gut roaring laughter.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Exhaustion
Ruby’s horror at the devastating information she’d discovered caused her to thrash and turn in the night. Even her Idolum nest-bed could not calm her. By morning she was ill and shaking. Trupe was called urgently from the battle cruiser and hauling her urgently into his arms had cradled her close as she wept. Harley hovered nearby, clearly offering his comfort as well.
“The Mother says I must go to the highest peak on this planet. It is above the clouds. There I will find a Temple, abandoned in the mists of time as the Mother was asked to leave this place by the Jun. Her acceptance of imperfection had no place here. The Temple remains, serviced by Maidens to the Mother. If I can attain the peak, I may be healed of the horrors I struggle to accept,” Ruby said all this in gasping breaths, struggling to lift her head but finding its weight too much to bear.
“I will take you there,” Trupe promised fiercely, rocking her gently.
“You may only take me to the edge of the cloud base. I must make the rest of the way on my own. It will be a difficult last journey for me, as I fear my horror has sapped my strength of will,” she whispered. “Let’s go soon, please,” she added, trying desperately to hug Trupe back, but finding her arms leaden.
“We will go at once. For the next two hours you will lie in you bed and receive nutrients and a mind block. This reprieve will allow you enough strength to complete your journey,” Trupe ordered briskly, his whirring voice showing none of his gut-wrenching worry.
“Come, Harley! Let us prepare for our journey,” Trupe stated firmly to the giant dino-dog at their side. The huge animal sprang towards the doors and lead the way back to Ruby’s quarters.
As Ruby settled into an induced coma-like state, Trupe flew into action. Packing the supplies they’d need, he had a small hovercraft ready within the two-hour window he’d given Ruby. Waking her from the coma, he was relieved to see that she appeared much stronger and an aura of calm determination had settled over her.
“Let’s go, Trupe. If anyplace needs the aid of the Mother and the re-emergence of a Temple, it is this Mother forsaken place,” Ruby said adamantly, settling back into her seat, she left the rest to Trupe and settled into a meditation.
Trupe had already plotted a course for the highest peak on the planet and as the small hovercraft swooped towards it, he could see that the summit was indeed above the cloud line. It would have been so easy to just sit Ruby down in the Temple by way of the hovercraft. That was not the way of the Mother. Ruby, as her Daughter, had to find her own way above the cloud cover. Trupe supposed it was symbolic of finding a way through the despair, or some such metaphoric thing. Idolum did not have such fancies, though they did respect the Mother and her power.
Hugging Trupe and a pacing Harley goodbye, Ruby took her first steps into the moist oppression of the cloud-base. Scrabbling over the rocks and lichen towards the top of the mountain, she lost track of time. Several times she stopped to rest, drink from the thermos Trupe had strapped to her side and eat one of the dreadful nutrient bars he’d insisted she carry.
Night fell. Her feet and legs ached. Her hands were raw and bleeding. Crawling into a deep crevasse, she wrapped the thin insulating bivvy-sack around her and tried to sleep. Thank Mother for Trupe.
Dawn broke and Ruby drank the last of her water, ate another dry, tasteless nutrient bar and stretched her sore body. Her wounds had stopped oozing blood during the night, but over the n
ext few hours as she stumbled and fell, they opened again. This had all been so much easier when she hadn’t known the depths of sentient depravity. Her soul had been light then. She’d simply thought about being there and then she had been.
Now, as the horrors she’d uncovered weighed on her mind, she struggled to even have the strength to crawl onwards. Strange how she had never realized that knowledge could be so heavy. The grief of Daniel’s death had been more of a fog, something difficult to navigate through, but if one could just fasten on a point of contact, it was possible to trudge onward.
This type of knowledge was heavy. Like an enormous lead mantle that she had to carry. Please Mother, let me make it to you, Ruby pled in her mind. Help me!
Seconds later, a final desperate shove of her aching legs, punched her through the cloud cover. Above her she could see the thick, time-worn stone base of the temple. Gasping for air, she clawed wildly for a finger-grip on the ancient stone. Crying now, she scrambled upwards, mad with a desperate hope.
Heaving her aching body over the lip of the Temple base, Ruby glimpsed for a split-second the now familiar sight of the Mother’s sanctuary. She must have fainted, for when she woke again, she was floating nude in the warm waters of the Temple pool. A maiden wisped to and fro lighting the long-cold Temple torches. Slowly, with a great rending sound, the small waterfall at the edge of the pool began to flow. At first it was just a tiny trickle, then it strengthened and became a steady, calming stream. Another great grinding sound issued a plume of dust into the air as a gash to the side of the pool slid open revealing a narrow spiral stair that curved down into the depths of the mountain.
A maiden had guided Ruby gently under the newly gushing waterfall and once she was clean, had dabbed ointments on her wounds. As the maiden oiled the rest of Ruby’s skin, she could see that most of it was now covered in the beginnings of purple and black mottled bruises. Just like her soul, Ruby thought. Bruised, discolored with knowledge. Tired.
Slipping a clean white gown over Ruby’s head, the maiden guided her to the edge of the dark dust covered stairs and gently urged her downwards. The silk of ancient dust felt soft on Ruby’s bare feet. The calm air allowed the dust to settle quickly again, leaving no visible footprints behind.
Using the dim glow ahead as her guide, Ruby trailed her hand along the ancient walls as she gradually descended into the mountain. How she hoped Uma was here. Finding the landing still half in gloom, Ruby was comforted as the wall torches began to spring to life on their own. Relief flooded her system. The Mother was near.
Uma glided from the gloom. “Darling daughter, welcome home,” her Mother’s voice floated calmingly over her mind. Strong, slender arms wrapped around her seeming to encompass her in fully. It was always strange how the slender form of her Mother seemed to morph into a gigantic comforting presence as soon as she entered her arms.
Guiding Ruby gently to a low couch, now visible as the torches flared, the Mother said, “Tell me everything, my Daughter. Tell me everything.”
By the time Ruby had finished her account of things that had happened since her last visit with the Mother on Unity, heat from the cavern ahead of them was beginning to billow into the room. “Come Daughter, the fires of the Temple have been lit. The planet’s essence has awoken from its slumber. Give it your grief. It in turn will nurture you,” the Mother whispered gently against Ruby’s forehead. “Go now and release your burdens.”
Ruby slipped from her tunic, aided by a wisp of a maiden. Laying her weary body down upon the worn stone above the rampaging fire of the revived Temple, she slowly released her burdens. The horrors of the Jun oozed from every pore as a stinking, sizzling stream of black tar. Jagged glass-like shards poured from her mind. It was a long while before the flow slowed and trickled to a halt. Enjoying a last billow of healing heat against her face, Ruby levered herself up and allowed the maidens to support her up another slender crevasse to the top of the mountain.
Lowered into the warmth of a thermal stream, Ruby let the last of the expelled anguish be washed from her. She could smell the sacred oils being prepared and knew she would soon be anointed with healing balms and laid in the sun of this new world to rejuvenate. This was just the ritual. It was the Mother who had healed her. The ritual just let the sentient mind accept its balm. Jun was awake. Evil would be chased away. The Mother was here. Ruby was whole again. Changed forever by the knowledge she had learned, but whole.
Chapter Twenty-five
Fibonacci
It hadn’t taken Ruby long to start calling the Jun planet, the Fibonacci planet. It was like the perfect chaos theory conundrum for this planet of beauty and plenty where a rigidly structured race had ignored the entire idea that a species couldn’t control the natural world.
Half of the Nest of Behr had come to help the expedition. In a short meeting everything had fallen together. The Nest of Behr would keep Beira as a base of operation from which to sell their mercenary services. The rest would relocate here. It would be like Queen Altum Juls and her secret home base of Geboren. People would probably eventually find out, but it would take years, maybe centuries if they were careful.
Jack, Violet, Capp and Ben had all agreed to stay and become part of the Nest of Behr. They didn’t owe the Intergalactic Guard anything. They’d be proclaimed traitors and none of them cared. Better that the girls stay together with their strength as the Paradox of Maodun. No one knew how they’d do apart and neither girl wanted to find out.
Sarge let Violet melt the entire death furnace into an enormous lump of misshapen purple-gray marble. Ruby designed a giant pedestal for it that was set at the outermost gates with the inscription…’Let none enter here who believe they are not flawed’.
Jack had hacked up a large piece of phlegm, hawked it onto the ground and said, “Well, I reckon that precludes most of them Vanguardians.”
Lieutenant Trupe, now on the surface since they’d figured out how to access the minefield array, cackled and added, “And half the rest of the universal population!”
“To imperfect perfection!” Violet yelled. A large chorus of ‘Aye, ayes!’ rang out. It felt good to be home. It felt good to have a family. Ruby hugged her, then Jack added his arms. Then Trupe and Sarge added their gangly appendages. Soon they were all surrounded by an enormous net of Idolum arms.
“What’s this called?” Trupe asked Ruby.
“Group hug,” she replied, laughing.
The End
Please, please, please leave a review if you enjoyed this book!
I am so grateful for all my readers. Help me keep the galaxy running by reviewing! Thank you all my Daughters and Sons! Love, Out.
To read about Winter’s story, ‘Winter’s Galaxy’, click on this link: https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B07JNQV7RQ&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_uWokCbY1HRW1Z
To read the beginning of the Alien Alliance, Book One series, ‘Renegade Redhead’ and learn about Sasha Kelty’s magic:
https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B076YJS5M7&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_OXokCbYCNBNVT
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Book Three is ‘The Chronicles of Clyde: Unafiliated’
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Book Four is ‘The Chronicles of Clyde: Ghost Ship’
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