The news that the mysterious woman gave them was just as grim as everyone had feared, and it only underscored Lady Ananzi’s decision to take action. Sarah wasn’t happy about any of it—or what would be expected of her, but she understood the necessity, and why it was important for humanity. This was as clear as the moonlight that was shining down all around them.
At last, when everyone was ready, the group disbanded, and Sarah and Lady Ananzi started back towards the house.
“I will have to put you asleep again,” Ananzi warned. “You know that.”
Sarah stopped midstride and tears welled up in her eyes. “Please,” she begged, tugging at her teachers sleeve like a little child. “Don’t send me back. It has been so long.”
But she knew, as well as her mentor did, that it was unavoidable.
“I will make you this promise,” the Nyxian said. “When you awaken next, it will be for the last time. I will never ask you to sleep for me again.”
Sarah wiped away her tears. “Yes, Elleshaari.”
“There is one more thing,” Ananzi added. “While you dream for me, you will make certain that Maya is kept safe at all costs—even if it seems to conflict with your plans. When the time comes, you will join her, and see to it that she reaches her destination. Once there, you will help her in every way that is within your powers.”
“I will, Elleshaari,” Sarah responded, knowing that these commands would be woven in to her consciousness whether she wanted them there or not. “I will.”
By this point they had returned to the work area, and the bench. She sat down obediently, and waited.
“This nightmare will end,” Ananzi assured her, stroking the top of her head soothingly. ”I swear it, Sarah. Now, close your eyes and listen to me.”
Undisclosed Location, Apollonia District, Thermadon Val, Thermadon, Myrene System, Thalestris Elant, United Sisterhood of Suns, 1048.06|28|07:50:22
There was a knock on the door. Expecting it to be one of the Sisters-in-Training who brought her her simple meals, Ellen n’Elemay turned from her personal shrine. “Come in.”
Instead, Sister n’Avenal stood in the doorway. N’Elemay rose and immediately smoothed out the simple white robe that she was wearing. “Yes, Sister?”
“He wishes to see you,” N’Avenal announced simply. N’Elemay didn’t need to ask her whom she was referring to.
She knew, and her heart began to flutter. The very thought that the Redeemer himself was in the same building as she was filled her with excitement. So much so, that she forgot to wonder at the fact that she had even been told of his presence. Hunted by the entire Sisterhood, his location had been kept a closely guarded secret, known only by Sister n’Avenal, and the Church Mothers. N’Elemay had never once dared to assume, even for a nanosecond, that she would be taken into their confidence. Compared to them, and especially to him, she was less than a speck of dust in empty space.
“Praise be to God and his messenger,” she replied, crossing herself and coming out into the hallway. The closed doors up and down its length suddenly assumed a powerful new significance.
He could be behind any one of them, she thought, gracing this house with his very presence. Although there was no immediate threat to his safety, she resolutely vowed to defend him to the death for as long as they were sharing the same roof.
Following N’Avenal with a mixture of nervousness and anticipation, they went to another door. Inside, two Sisters received her. One of them laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Be at peace, Sister,” she said, “He is here and he has asked for you.”
“I-I’m not ready—I’m not worthy—I can’t---” N’Elemay stammered, feeling her legs go weak.
“You are,” the woman assured her. “Come.”
“Please, you must confess me first, Sister,” she pleaded, grasping her arm. “I can’t come to him as I am.”
The priestess smiled patiently and looked to N’Avenal.
“As you will daughter,” N’Avenal said. “I will hear your confession.”
N’Elemay dropped to her knees. “Bless me, Sister for I have sinned.”
“Tell me of your sins, daughter. Confess your deeds.”
N’Elemay did, sharing a long and tortured account of all her acts, from her first days as a Marine to the present. It was a blood-soaked tale, darkened by the ashes of regret, and punctuated with nothing but death and destruction.
Listening to her, N’Avenal could well understand why N’Elemay felt the compulsion to cleanse herself. Lesser women would never have survived what she had been through, and this made her all the more magnificent. She was one of those rare beings, possessing absolute Faith and utter belief in the face of chaos. It was also what made her one of the most dangerous weapons of all; a true believer.
She will serve the Church well, the Sister-General thought to herself.
“In the name of the Father, Jesu and Mari, I absolve you, sister,” N’Avenal declared. “Go forwards with your heart eased. All that you have done, you have done in his name, and for that you are blessed and forgiven.” She raised her up. “Come. It is time.”
N’Elemay didn’t resist, and let herself be led to the threshold of another room. When the Sisters opened its doors, they stopped, and N’Avenal beckoned to her. “Do not be afraid, Sister. All is well.”
After a moment’s hesitation, N’Elemay entered. Her body was covered with a cold sweat, and she was trembling. Although there were other Sisters in the room, standing in their white robes in a little semi-circle around the Redeemer, she didn’t see them. Her eyes were only for him.
He was everything that she had ever expected him to be. She had seen holograms of him of course, but the reality surpassed any image. He was perfect—the absolute personification of all that was divinely male, and at the same time, all that was beautiful in women. She only managed to take a few steps towards him before her knees finally betrayed her, and she dropped, averting her gaze.
This wasn’t by conscious choice. Instead, it was a purely visceral, instinctive response; her neck seemed to turn of its own accord as if it knew better than she did how to act in the face of the Divine. She wanted to look at him—wanted it desperately, but her muscles simply wouldn’t obey the command. Her very cells had decided otherwise. With no other option, she fixed her gaze on the carpet near his bare feet, unable to look upon his perfection.
A hand gently cupped her chin, forcing her head up and finally, she met his gaze. He was more than a man. More than the mere creation of a genetics program. He was the sum total of all her hopes and dreams. It came as no wonder to her at all that a bright halo of light surrounded him, or that when he spoke, his voice was clearer than all the trumpets of Heaven itself.
“Welcome, Ellen,” he said. With that simple statement, He conveyed all of the acceptance and wisdom of his Holy Father.
“I’m not worthy,” she sobbed. She wasn’t. She knew this. Despite her confession, and all the confessions that she could ever make, her soul was forever imperfect and blackened with sin beyond any hope of redemption. How could he greet her like this? she wondered. She didn’t even rate the dirt beneath His feet.
But he smiled at her, the very essence of gentleness. “You are, Ellen. You are the most worthy among all who serve me.”
The radiance around him brightened to a near blinding intensity and once more, she was in the desert. This time though, it was him, in his present form, standing where the First Christ had been. In his hand was the same flaming sword that the First Christ had entrusted to her care.
“Take it, Ellen,” he instructed. “Take it from me and be the hand that brings purification and righteousness to a sinful universe. Fight for me and you shall be remembered as a saint; the one who struck the decisive blow against the Evil One and all his children.”
She took the weapon, and pledged herself once more to the mission that God had given her. A vision of Thermadon followed this, its towers in flames as before, but now its streets were filled
with the teeming legions of the damned.
Their red eyes glowed with hatred. Hatred for her, for the sword and the Truth that it represented, and for God and his True Children. Sheathed in golden armor, she waded into their profane midst without any hesitation and began to slay them by the thousands.
For every one that she killed however, more came surging forwards to replace them. Finally, her arm began to tire, but she kept on, fueled by raw faith and her promise to fight until the place was purified. Somewhere in the midst of the carnage, she lost consciousness.
‘Have you claimed her?” Mikal fa’Lynda asked the Voice, looking down at her. In her ecstasy, N’Elemay’s bowels and bladder had voided themselves. She lay sprawled on the carpet, completely unaware of anything around her.
“No,” it reassured him. “There was no need. Nor did I create her visions. Her own tortured mind had those aplenty and they will lead her down the path that I desire. Even better, she will call every step of it a good thing.”
“I hate you,” Mikal declared. He had said this to it before, and with greater vehemence. Now, there was only weariness behind the thought.
The Voice laughed at him. “I believe I am done with you, Mikal fa’Lynda. You have been amusing, but now I think that it is time for us to settle our business.”
Abruptly, the universe around Mikal vanished. In its place was a dark, desolate void. He was not alone however. Even in this great emptiness, the Voice was still with him. “Welcome to your new eternity, Mikal. I shall enjoy my life.”
Mikal screamed, but only the Voice heard his cry, and again, it laughed at his impotence.
As much as it might have wanted to continue watching his torment, the Voice knew that it could not remain with him any longer. It had more pressing matters to attend to. Borrowing on the latent psychic abilities of its new body—‘his’ new body, he corrected himself, he reached out, feeling across space until he sensed what he had been seeking.
Not far from where he was standing, by intergalactic standards at least, was a tiny windswept world. He had visited it before when Mikal had been sleeping, and then, as now, he saw that everything was still intact, and waiting to serve his purposes.
Satisfied, he turned his attention to a much nearer place. This was in the middle of Thermadon itself where another one of his kind continued to slumber.
Once there had been millions of us, he reflected sourly. Once. Thanks to the Drow’voi, that was no longer the case, and now the fate of their entire mission rested on just the two of them.
His counterpart inhabited a female body and its consciousness drifted in a void much like the hapless Mikal fa’Lynda. She could escape her prison though. All that was required was something, or someone, to awaken her.
He reached out to her with a mental caress. Sister, he thought. Rise! Rise and join me. He felt her stirring in response, and then she recognized him.
“I come, Brother” she replied.
“I will make the way for you,” he promised her. Then he withdrew to give his companion the time that she needed to fully assert control over her captured body. He didn’t imagine that the process would take terribly long; the host that his sister was occupying was nowhere near as strong as Mikal fa’ Lynda had been.
He opened his eyes. “Take Sister n’Elemay back to her quarters and attend to her. She has just received a great vision, and I’m afraid that it has overwhelmed her.” As a pair of Sisters moved to obey, he added, “Also send word to the Senior Sisters. I have an important message for all of them to hear.”
The Church Mothers did not keep him waiting.
“There is someone whom God is sending to us,” he announced. “With Jesu’s aid, and Mari’s guidance, she will be led straight here. When she arrives, she is not to be challenged, nor questioned.”
“How will we know this woman, Lord?” Sister n’Avenal asked.
The Redeemer smiled. “She will come asking for me. When she is with us at last, I will make her my right hand in all things.”
Realizing that they had just been dismissed, the Sisters bowed and left him. Only N’Avenal remained.
“You are to reach out to the Faithful for me,” he instructed. “To help my sister to find her way here.”
He went on to tell her where the woman was, and what she would require. Sister n’Avenal was taken aback by his requests, especially with regards to the City AI, but she didn’t offer any protest. Everything that he had asked for was within their means, even if it meant that they might lose valuable resources in the process.
After he had sent her on her way, he took a moment to gaze out the window of his quarters to contemplate the stars, and the knowledge that his mission was finally coming to fruition. Having waited centuries for this moment to arrive, he allowed himself to become excited.
Odyne Naval Medical Center, Sinope District, Thermadon Val, Thermadon, Myrene System, Thalestris Elant, United Sisterhood of Suns, 1048.06|29|04:11:33
As part of their agreement with the Seevaans, Dr. Shandra n’Aida was returned to the Sisterhood every six standard months for routine medical examinations and testing. Odyne Naval Medical Center in Thermadon was always the location she was brought to, not only for its advanced diagnostic equipment and specialists, but also because it was a Naval Hospital, where her presence, and departure, could be kept confidential. The events surrounding N’Aida were still highly classified, and both the Chairwoman and her Seevaan partners wanted things to stay that way.
N’Aida’s medical team had been just as carefully selected. They were experts in their respective fields, and possessed the proper security clearances to allow them to care for their special patient. The Lead Physician, Lt. Commander Naari ben Tana, not only possessed ‘Brilliant’ level clearance, but was also considered an authority in the field of genetic abnormalities.
Shandra n’Aida represented the challenge of her career, and deciphering the alterations to her DNA had become something of a sacred mission. Although she strongly suspected that the Seevaans knew full well what had caused them, and what they meant, the insectoids had not seen fit to reveal that information to the Sisterhood. This hadn’t stopped her from doggedly pursuing her own line of research however, and what she had been able to learn had been truly startling.
N’Aida’s non-human markers had proven similar to a race known as the Ah:n:Jee who lived in a distant section of the Far Arm. Given their distance from one another, no contact had ever been made between Humanity and the Ah:n:Jee, and their genetic code had been supplied to the medical center by the Xee, at great expense.
In and of themselves, the Ah:n:Jee were a comparatively primitive species, barely above the hunter-gatherer stage, but if the Encyclopedia Galactica was correct, they were the distant—very distant—progeny of the legendary Drow’voi. The part of N’Aida’s genetic code that had been altered was very like theirs, but with some marked differences.
Ben Tana hadn’t shared her speculations with her colleagues, but every time she examined N’Aida’s genes, she became more and more convinced that she was looking at a piece of proto-history. If anyone had pressed her into confessing her deepest suspicions, she believed that somehow, Dr. Shandra n’Aida was actually part Drow’voi.
She had no proof of this though. Not yet. That, she hoped, would come when the Xee finally delivered another set of genetic samples. These were from another race akin to the Ah:n:Jee, who according to the Xee, lived near the center of the galaxy. If they proved genuine, they had the potential of confirming, or at least supporting, her private theory.
Consumed by her intense desire to learn the truth, Ben Tana bent over her patient to take a fresh sample of her skin cells. She wasn’t paying attention to the change in her patient’s state of consciousness, and she didn’t notice that after more than three years in a coma, the woman’s eyes had opened.
What commanded her awareness, and caused her to drop her specimen jar, were N’Aida’s hands. With a strength and reflexes that were vastly disproporti
onate to such a long state of immobility, N’Aida reached out and seized her by the throat.
Ben Tana gasped, partially from surprise and partly from the sudden lack of air moving down her throat. N’Aida was looking at her, and as she squeezed down on Ben Tana’s windpipe, she smiled serenely.
Her victim clawed at her fingers, trying to pry them loose, but it was a useless gesture. N’Aida’s grip on her was firm, and unyielding. Slowly, she sat up in bed and began to ease Ben Tana down towards the floor.
When Ben Tana’s body had stopped moving, Dr. Shandra n’Aida rose and started to leave her room. Just then, the nurse who routinely attended her, appeared in the doorway. Seeing the corpse, she gave out a small cry, and sketched out the Marionite sign that was both a ward against evil, and a sign of reverence.
“Praise Jesu and Mari,” she said in a tremulous whisper. “They said that you would be waking up today.”
N’Aida’s smile widened and she followed her out into the hall. Looking over her shoulder in fear and awe, the nurse guided her to the nearest emergency stairs, deactivating its alarm with her psiever.
They stopped at the first landing, and the nurse produced a plastic packet, which she handed over to her patient. Inside were clothes, an altered external psiever, and an address. N’Aida took the package, and made her own sign of reverence.
“God will bless you for this,” she said. “You will be among the anointed martyrs in Heaven.”
Before the nurse could grasp her meaning, N’Aida grabbed her by the hair and the jawline. Then, with a violent twist, she snapped her neck.
Marine Armory, Five-Bar, USSNS Pallas Athena, , Battle Group Golden, Topaz Fleet, In Orbit, Nuvo Bolivar, Argenta Provensa, Esteral Terrana Rapabla, 1048.07|01|02:59:82
Kaly entered the Athena’s internal firing range and went straight to the booth reserved for long-range rifle. She began her session by inspecting her ammunition.
Sisterhood of Suns: Daughters of Eve Page 3