The song filled him as his wife's spirit merged with his, desperate, weeping, pleading with him not to die. The small, brown bird fluttered down from the branches and drew his eye to a broken seed, the remnant of a universe that was no more. As the bird's song turned mournful, he understood he looked at a remnant of Ki's devoured children. The remnant had embedded itself into the Milky Way galaxy, into a small, broken spiral arm which had, itself, become embedded here at some point in the past when two great galaxies had collided.
'Her planet lies somewhere within the uncharted territories.'
He realized he'd been looking in the wrong direction, but it didn't matter, for in this place he was no longer separate from her, but their spirits had intertwined as a single, loving whole. Mated pair. So long as they were together, whether this lifetime or the next, it did not matter, for not even death could separate them for long. The song blew the branches of the tree, and down from the leaves danced happy little seedlings, the soul-sparks of creatures not yet been born. They giggled, happy little stars, and danced around Sarvenaz's head just like a crown of light.
It was the fruit. The fruit of the Eternal Tree.
She touched his face and the soul-sparks danced from her to him.
"I can see it," he whispered. "I can see Eternity. All this time I wished to give to you its' fruit, when all along it was you who offered it to me."
Sarvenaz kissed him.
"I see only you, my Husband," she said. "You are the only thing which matters, the song which fills my heart."
The song subsided, but it did not go away, filling his heart with a sense of joy. At some point during the night he broke the bindings of his traction and rolled to cover her with a charred wing, yearning to get closer to her, yearning to feel the sensation of her flesh pressed against his. And when he awoke to the familiar tap-tap-tap of their daughter kicking against his hand, which he was in the habit of splaying across Sarvenaz's belly as she slept, he realized he was in much less pain.
Sarvenaz rolled towards him, opened her eyes and smiled. Her fingers moved up to trace the sword-scar which had always defined him, across his eyelid, down his cheek, and disappeared into his jaw. She kissed his mouth, and then removed the bandages which were no longer necessary except for in a few places where the scabs had not yet fallen off to reveal the soft, pink scar tissue growing underneath.
"How?" she stared at his healing injuries with wonder.
"We are a mated pair, mo ghrá," Abaddon said. "And when two spirits love each other as much as I love you, not even death can keep us apart for long."
~ * ~ * ~
Chapter 62
Galactic Standard Date: 152,323.12 AE
Zulu Sector: Light Emerging
Brigadier-General Raphael Israfa
Raphael
Brigadier-General Raphael Israfa copped his best approximation of Mikhail's 'I think you're a turd, but I'm too cool to let you know it, so I'll turn my face into a stone wall' expression as he stared down, or more precisely up at the two feuding battle cruiser captains and tried to act more intimidating than he really felt. He wondered how long these men would consider him too wet behind the ears to get a grip on the egos of two competing ship's captains, both out to win the same recognition. As an intelligence officer, Raphael's expertise had always been to get people to talk to him, not to make them shut up and take their lumps, but ever since the Eternal Emperor had put him in command of this armada and its mission to find Earth, he’d had been learning a whole lot of new skills.
"Did I, or did I not, order you to position the Emperor's Chariot in a trajectory that was twelve light-years from the Eye of the Leonid?"
The Centauri captain towered over Raphael by a good two meters. The half-equine/half-human super-soldier had been genetically engineered to surpass even the Cherubim’s intimidating height and stature, and as a fledgling commander, many of the more battle-seasoned captains still considered Raphael to be an FNG (f-ing new guy). He was a burly stallion, with the typical chestnut coat and skin that all Centauri had inherited ever since their genetic diversity had become homogenized, and like most Centauri in the fleet, the Emperor's Chariot captain had been promoted to the rank of captain not due to his infinite grey matter, but because of he was fearless in the face of death.
Raphael suppressed the urge to shout and reminded himself the two ship's captains were acting up because they were bored…
"We thought we heard radio waves," the Centauri captain said.
"We heard them first!" the Leonid captain interrupted him.
"They were in our search grid!" The big stallion crossed his arms across his muscular chest.
"Not if you'd stayed in search pattern you were ordered to stay in!" the Leonid captain growled.
If anything, the Leonids were proving to be an even greater challenge to Raphael's command than the Centauri. At eleven feet tall, including his luxurious reddish-brown mane, the truculent Leonid captain was an even match for the Centauri commander thanks to his white fangs and the sharp, retractable claws which adorned his finger-like paws.
When both ship's captains had ended up on the same habitable planet at the same time, one whose mission it had been to explore it, the other who had jumped the gun to get there first because the planet lay only a one-sixteenth light-year outside of his search-grid, the two had come to blows, right in front of their crews and a tiny settlement of pre-sentient creatures who would no doubt carry forth legends about the day two creatures had come down from the heavens and duked it out in front of them. The Emperor’s Chariot captain had claw marks raking down his flanks, while the Eye of the Leonid captain sported a freshly bandaged ribcage, thanks to a well-placed Centauri hoof.
"You were dawdling!" the Centauri captain snorted. His nostrils flared as though he smelled something bad.
"We found something in the last solar system," the Leonid captain growled. "We were documenting the data, like we were supposed to do, not just rushing from solar system to solar system, trying to be the first ship to lay claim to Earth!"
Raphael decided he’d better put a stop to their bickering before things came to blows a second time. They didn't know about Lucifer's rebellion, or the fact the Alliance had fractured and Jophiel was no longer their Supreme Commander-General, but that didn't mean the long-standing hostilities which had caused that fracture to occur in the first place hadn't followed them into the uncharted territories where, despite complete radio silence, those frustrations still found a way to manifest.
"There will be no laying claim to Earth!" Raphael said. "That planet belongs to the Eternal Emperor and no one else!"
"He just wants to get there first so he can name it after himself," the Leonid captain rumbled deep in his chest. Raphael noted the way the big lion unsheathed his claws, itching to continue the fight.
“You know the rules of the naming conventions." The Centauri captain pawed the deck. “He who gets there first, wins."
The briefing room filled with the musky scent of a Leonid who was about to mark his territory, never a good sign, especially as the Light Emerging was -his- command carrier. Now he understood why Jophiel had always acted like an ice queen. It was time to channel his best impersonation of ‘The Destroyer’ and assume the reins of command.
"There will be no renaming Earth," Raphael's voice rose harshly. "The indigenous people of the planet Mikhail crash-landed on call their homeworld Earth, so that is what we shall call it from now on!"
"Earth?" both captains said at the same time. They looked at one another and chuckled.
"Why name your planet after a handful of cré?" the Centauri captain said, using the direct Galactic Standard translation of the name which approximately meant 'dirt.' "Might as well call it mud-pie..."
"Or silt," the Leonid captain said.
"Or Leonid dung," the Centauri captain poked his nemesis in the shoulder with a guffaw.
"Hoof crud."
"Paw toe-jam."
"That's ENOUGH!!!" Raph
ael bellowed like some great, angry bull. He flared his golden wings like a raptor, trying to make himself appear bigger than he really was. "Do you two think this mission is a joke?"
"No, Sir," both captains said simultaneously. They glanced at one another and sniggered.
Raphael didn't know what was worse. When they fought each other? Or when they decided to gang up on him and undermine his command?
"I realize we've reached that point in a deep-space mission when things begin to drag," Raphael said. "But I set the search grid at exactly twelve light-years apart for a reason. That's the maximum distance our instruments can detect signs of an atmosphere. So while you two were having your little pissing contest, you missed scanning the planets in three different solar systems, each one of those systems which might be Earth and we'd never know it because you two dropped the ball!"
Both men looked down and shuffled, duly chastised. Raphael gave them his best stone-faced expression. He'd been getting a whole lot of practice lately trying on different facial expressions and postures, not one of which felt natural. Leading these men was turning out to be about as easy as training Uriel's pet gorock to 'stay.'
"Now you go back to that planet and finish your report on the indigenous, pre-sentient population," Raphael ordered the Leonid captain, "so I can report it back to the Eternal Emperor."
The Leonid captain twitched his tail with displeasure.
"And you," he wheeled to face the Centauri, "you will backtrack to Cygnus X and survey those three solar systems so we can make sure we didn't cruise right past Mikhail!"
"But our instruments are useless there thanks to the radio interference of the black hole!" the Centauri commander said. "We'll have to search each planet on foot. It will put me behind the other ships by two days!"
"Then you'd better order every man on your ship to go down with you!" Raphael said. He stretched upwards, wishing fervently the man wasn't nearly twice his height. "Which means, thanks to you, your men will get no shore leave the next time we find a habitable planet!"
Both captains grumbled and strode out of his office, side by side, good-naturedly complaining about him instead of each other for a change. Raphael waited until the door shut, and then grasped the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb. Ow! Not that he'd ever assumed command of a fleet would be easy, but he had a new appreciation for Supreme Commander-General, no, now Private Jophiel.
He pulled out his small, hand-held portable flatscreen and queued up the picture he always carried of Jophiel holding their son.
"How do you do it, Jophie?" he asked, peeking from the haze of his brain-splitting migraine. “How do you deal with all these egos?”
A mechanical voice informed him Colonel Glicki was at the door.
"Enter!" Raphael called.
The door slid open and in strode Glicki, one of his oldest friends and de facto commander of the Light Emerging while he coordinated the movements of the larger search armada.
"Tell me you have some good news?" Raphael asked.
Glicki paused, tilting her heart-shaped green head to indicate such good news was, these days, at best a myth.
"Would you settle for some awful news, Sir?" Glicki asked.
Raphael sighed and ran his fingers through his short, golden hair, grown too long and shaggy from too many responsibilities and not enough time to make a trip down to the ship’s barber.
"Who found it and how bad is it?" Raphael said, already knowing from the concerned hum of Glicki's gossamer under-wings that not only was the news bad, but truly terrible.
"The Alliance Phoenix followed that subspace radio signal they'd reported earlier," Glicki said.
Raphael leaned forward, his heart pounding. Glicki's hard exoskeleton was poised in a posture which indicated concern. Had they found Mikhail, only to discover he'd been killed? For weeks now he'd had a terrible, gut-wrenching feeling every time he thought of his best friend.
"What did they find?"
"Remnants of a Free Marid supply base," Glicki said.
Raphael’s relief was short-lived as the humming of her wings grew louder. Okay, not Earth, but something had her worried.
"And…?" Why did she hesitate? What had they found there?
"They'd been eaten," Glicki whispered. She tilted her green antennae in two different directions, a Mantoid gesture of horror and revulsion. "Not too long ago, by our estimate. Perhaps seven weeks?"
"Eaten?" Raphael felt a sense of dread. "Was it wild animals?"
"The base was on an asteroid," Glicki said. She tapped her flatscreen and then shoved the device into his face, her wings humming the entire time. "Here. This says it all."
Raphael stared at the horrific image on the screen. From the way the creatures had been strapped to a makeshift cross-shaped feeding pole and the large chunks of flesh carved out of their bodies, it left no doubt in his mind who the murderers had been.
"Tokoloshe," Raphael said. "What are they doing all the way out here?"
"Everything we know is from a hand-written journal we found tucked under the base-commander's pillow," Glicki said. "All the data-storage devices on the planet have been destroyed."
She pulled up images of the journal, an idiosyncrasy few technologically advanced cultures indulged in anymore. It was written in an encoded version of the native Marid language, the language all Marid had spoken until Shay'tan had conquered their motherworld, now only spoken by the Free Marid Confederation. Raphael scrolled through page after page of notes about what cargo had filtered through the base, what ship had dropped it off or picked it up, the date and location, and some random notes including musings about disciplinary issues and how sorely he missed his family. It was a professional smuggler's journal, written in a code Raphael could translate because he was an intelligence officer and had been forced to learn the code.
"Give me the short version," Raphael said.
"We decoded his last few journal entries," Glicki said. "He resupplied a shuttle which claimed to be from the Prince of Tyre seven weeks ago."
Both of her antennae pointed straight at him.
"The Prince of Tyre?" Raphael blurted out. "That ship went missing…"
He trailed off. He and Glicki both knew darned well when the Alliance Prime Minister had purportedly met his death, along with the entire crew in a border dispute on the Sata'an/Alliance border.
"…eight weeks ago," Glicki finished for him.
Raphael glanced over to a picture he kept hung on his wall of Mikhail, their arms tossed carelessly around one another, covered in mud after winning the three day Iron Man competition. If the Tokoloshe found their way to Earth before he did, that would open a whole new world of problems that would make Sata'anic possession of the planet appear tame.
He calculated the distance in his head, how far they were from the Tokoloshe Kingdom, the distance from the Alliance, and how far they were from the disputed borderlands where Lucifer had purportedly died.
"Impossible," Raphael said. "Even if the Prince of Tyre traveled here with her interstellar warp drives pushed to their limits, there's no way they could have gotten here in seven days."
"Nine," Glicki corrected. "According to the date the base commander wrote in his journal, whoever they rendezvoused with, they met with them nine days after Lucifer was reported dead."
Raphael stared at the images of the handwritten journal. Nine days. It would take two weeks to travel that distance for any known ship except a living needle-ship to make that journey. Whoever had rendezvoused with the Free Marid smugglers, not only had they bamboozled them out of their trade goods, but then they had likely doubled back to kill them.
"What did the Alliance Phoenix do with the bodies," Raphael asked.
"We have no way to get them back to their families without breaking radio silence, Sir," Glicki said. "Given the other developments within the Alliance."
"Yes, you're right," Raphael sighed. "Entomb the bodies within their base and send a priest down to say the death
rituals."
He flipped back to the screen of the dead one more time, his stomach lurching as he stared at their remains. It sure looked like a Tokoloshe ritualistic sacrifice, but some of the details were off, including the fact the bodies had not been completely devoured, only stripped of flesh as though someone wished to inflict as much pain as possible before allowing them to die. Either way, someone had gone through a lot of trouble to implicate the cannibals.
"Could you ask the crew to also leave some sort of memorial?" Raphael added softly. "Gather names of the victims if you can. I'll forward them to the Emperor on the next scheduled needle and let him figure out if he wishes to notify the families."
The Free Marid might be little more than smugglers, but once in a while they also acted as allies. Nobody deserved to die that kind of death.
"It's already done, Sir," Glicki said. "The Alliance Phoenix captain ordered his men to burn the feeding poles as soon as they finish burying the bodies."
"Did you alert the fleet to be on the lookout for ambushes?"
"I did, Sir," Glicki said, "but at only twelve light years apart, I doubt even a dreadnought would risk taking on one of our ships. I've ordered net control to increase check-ins to every half hour."
"What would I do without you?" Raphael asked.
"Shoot your body out the nearest airlock," Glicki said. She whirred her wings in a half-hearted attempt at laughter, but neither of them felt like laughing in light of this latest horrific development.
"Get the bean counters on the supplies lists," Raphael said. He handed her back the flatscreen. "Have them plug whatever rendezvous times, dates and locations the base commander wrote down into our search grid, and also have them analyze the supplies. Perhaps some good can come of this if it helps us narrow our search parameters?"
"Already on it, Sir," Glicki said. "And now … some good news."
Raphael's wings perked up.
"I thought I asked you to give the good news to me first," Raphael said.
"Couldn't you use a little good news after getting that last report?" Glicki asked.
Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 63