by S. L. Dunn
Gravitas stared quietly out over the spires of Sejeroreich.
“And so we arrive at today,” Master Tolland said. “A day that I, and deep down I believe you as well, always knew was coming. You are too powerful to be suppressed by the strength of any hand, and filled with too much integrity to allow indifference to shrivel your willpower. This is the day when my brilliant and powerful student—the pride of my life—has committed himself to his first self-determining action. And yet, having acted upon these convictions I have instilled in his core since he was a child, my student now seems to feel regret, regret of an independent choice made out of free thought. And this, you see, confuses me.”
“My regret is that I did not cast my Imperial armor to the dirt of Orion and die defending those slaughtered Yabu against my brothers in arms,” Gravitas murmured. “It is not a mistake I will make again. I am flying to the center of Sejeroreich and challenging the emperor to a duel to the death.”
“And tell me,” Master Tolland said. “Once he is dead, will you take the Blood Ring for yourself and proclaim your own beliefs as right and true? Will you appoint yourself judge, jury and executioner—or perhaps simply emperor?”
“You know that’s not what I want,” Gravitas said.
“Of course it isn’t. What you want is for the people’s values to change, but that cannot happen through the will of one man.”
Gravitas stared down at the cheering masses and knew Master Tolland was right. “Fire cannot stop fire.”
Master Tolland nodded. “One of the first lessons I taught you.”
Running his fingers across the coarse fabric of the crimson cloak, Gravitas smirked sadly.
“Time’s up, Nerol!” the deep voice of General Hoff called out. Gravitas lifted his gaze from the window and saw the general along with the ranks of Royal Guards walking down the hallway toward him and Master Tolland. “Your father arrived to the roof hangar with a ship. Time for you to go.”
“And who will force me to the roof?” Gravitas asked, insulted by the general’s tone. He folded the crimson cloak loosely around his left arm. “You are ordering me around, general, yet I could kill you where you stand—all of you.”
“Shall I call for reinforcements? We can do it that way too, if a scene is what you want. It’s all up to you, Nerol.”
“Do not do this, Gravitas.” Master Tolland placed a pleading hand against his chest. “You have followed my advice all your life. I beg you to follow it for just a little longer. There is still a path for you, though you cannot yet see it.”
“Well? What will it be?” General Hoff said, his hand poised over the alarm. “Which will you embrace, exile or death?”
Gravitas looked to Master Tolland, and seeing the hopeful sureness in his teacher’s expression, he allowed his tense shoulders to relax. “Show me to the roof, general.”
“Very good. We’ll take the stairs so no one sees you.” General Hoff and the Royal Guards sauntered forward and guided Gravitas beyond a doorway and into a narrow stairway leading up to the roof. Up and up they trudged through the many floors of the upper palace. Gravitas did not know what to think. He felt numb and hopeless, a pawn of his teacher and a titan rendered useless through philosophy and reflection.
“I think you should return to Orion, Nerol,” General Hoff spoke as they rounded the steps. There was a smear of mockery to his tone. “I heard our soldiers saw to it that Lord General Bronson Vikkor’s final orders were followed through with such determination that not a single one of those Yabu escaped our fires. Every last one of them burned. You should go back to see their corpses and the resource extraction rigs at work.”
Gravitas said nothing. They reached the top of the stairway and stood before the closed door. General Hoff turned and looked down at him. “Where did you get that cloak?”
“It belonged to a child.” Gravitas said. “If you try to take it from me, if you even touch it, it will cost you your life.”
General Hoff seemed to think his words were amusing. “Put it on. I don’t want your face to be seen.”
The general and a few Royal Guards chuckled in amusement at the cloak and pushed open the heavy door to the hangar as Gravitas draped the fabric over his head. A warm summer wind blew against them as they stepped out onto the roof of the palace. Dwarfing all of the surrounding skyscrapers, the palace roof severed the very clouds that were cast in the violet light of the setting sun. Waiting at the docking bay in the center of the roof, Pral Nerol was standing alongside his ship, the Traverser I.
Gravitas walked to his father, his long cloak flapping and his profile casting a mysterious silhouette against the vanishing sun. “I thought you weren’t coming,” Gravitas said, crashing into his father’s shoulder. “I thought you were going to believe the lies they’re spreading.”
Pral Nerol squeezed Gravitas against his chest as the Royal Guards circled around the Traverser I. “Of course not.”
Master Tolland followed behind Gravitas, his gaze held eastward to the darkening horizon. “He is to be exiled by sundown, Pral. We must be succinct in our discussion. What’s done is done, for we do not have the time to discuss it. You have chosen a path, Gravitas, and now we need to make a plan for that path’s future. Is the Traverser I prepared to depart?”
“Yes, the ship’s in fine order,” Pral said, still holding his son.
“Good. Then the most important decision now must be made. Where should the boy go?”
“I will return to Orion and destroy the extraction teams there,” Gravitas said, his voice grim and assured.
“It’s true that you could return to Orion and combat the Epsilon presence there until you die of exhaustion. But it would not bring back the locals who perished, or restore the resources that have already been withdrawn from the planet. And once you are out of the way, the Epsilon will begin their extractions once more.” Master Tolland sighed apprehensively. “Ultimately, you would never bring redemption to Orion or its people.”
“It’s what I want to do.”
“A wasted sacrifice is the brash desire of a young man,” Pral Nerol said. “You are far more valuable alive than dead, Gravitas. Tolland, there is a place better suited for him than Orion.”
Master Tolland and Pral exchanged a long uneasy look, as if each in turn was ruminating over a great internal conflict. Gravitas noticed the severity of their expressions and turned from one to the other. “I don’t understand. Where?”
“I think it is a fairly clear choice. I did the calculations on my way here—the Traverser I can make the journey,” Pral said, his voice solemn and imploring. “He could flourish there.”
Gravitas shook his head, the hood of the cloak billowing against his cheek. “Where?”
“I’m not sure.” Master Tolland looked out over Sejeroreich for some time. He ran a hand across his gray beard in contemplation. After a long moment, he turned to look at Gravitas, though he spoke to Pral. “I thought we had decided on immaculate preservation.”
“Has this very specific dilemma not proven his convictions?” Pral asked. “The atrocities Gravitas witnessed on Orion, and the choices he made in the face of them demonstrate his awareness of the fragilities we each swore to protect. The actions he made on Orion speak louder than any promise he could possibly give to us now.”
“Yes. Yes, I agree.” Master Tolland nodded at last. “Gravitas has proven himself. He will go.”
“Filgaia,” Pral said with a measure of reverence Gravitas had never heard in his father’s voice.
“Filgaia?” Gravitas asked with bewilderment.
“I will provide you with no preconception of the planet, and I will leave it up to you to form your own perspectives of the place.” Pral Nerol placed an encouraging hand on Gravitas’s shoulder. “You have decided your course, and now you must embrace its consequences. I am proud of you beyond words. We are placing great trust in you, Gravitas. Do not let us down.”
“Some things are more important than race or faction, Gr
avitas,” Master Tolland said as they led him to the Traverser I, its engines roaring. “Principles are one of them. Principles transcend both time and place, and they will keep us united despite our distance.”
“It’s all over,” Gravitas murmured, stepping torpidly into the threshold of the Traverser I. He looked the part of the refugee, the crimson cloak concealing the glint of his stained Imperial Armor underneath. He turned back and looked at Master Tolland and his father. General Alegant Hoff and the dozen Royal Guards stood around the ship like statues, and beyond, the lights of Sejeroreich twinkled against the approaching dusk.
“Your past is over,” Pral Nerol said sadly. “But your future remains to be seen. I know you’ll make me proud, Gravitas.”
The steel door of the craft hissed shut. It was done.
The first lonely nights aboard his father’s craft in the cold emptiness of space were the worst of his life. No person to console him or listen to his voice, and only his dark thoughts to dwell upon. Gravitas knew that the Yabu people would be driven to extinction, their innocence and boundless potential erased from the pages of history. A fragile chance for the glory of civilization dashed by the brutality of life. Millions of years of delicate and miraculous growth snuffed out by the fleeting order of the Lord General: an obtuse and uneducated man bestowed at birth with perverse and unnatural power.
Gravitas realized his people had become the technologically cold-blooded Zergos they had once struggled so desperately against. Where once they were victim, in time the Primus had become the very evil that had sought their ruin.
Was that the inevitability of all intelligent life, of all societies, to strangle out all less capable than themselves?
All of his beliefs and hopes were swallowed up by depression and despair. Gravitas desired with all his heart to turn the Traverser I back to Anthem and assault the Imperial Palace and all of Sejeroreich with his torturous hate. All of it, all of the grandeur of his people had been built with blood and misery. He envisioned toppling the columns of the palace and striking down the members of the War Council and Emperor Faris himself, all the while screaming that he was punishing them for the Yabu. For the Primus. The Primus race that could have been. The Primus race as it existed before the taint of Sejero blood and the profound scar of their near apocalypse so long ago. But Gravitas knew there would be no returning to Anthem. He was marked now as the bloodthirsty one, the enemy.
A reality where cruelty and indifference flourished, and the innocent shriveled away did not seem a reality worth living. Then, it was as though the very cosmos reached out and placed a reassuring hand on the tormented young man’s shoulder. Gravitas’s salvation came in the form of the first transmission from the planet Filgaia.
The humans.
When the list of received transmissions from Filgaia began to pile up, the language matrix started identifying and assembling languages. Gravitas put on the headphones and began learning all of the foreign tongues.
Gravitas spent the remaining days and nights fanatically learning everything about the human race. He read about the civilization’s history, cultures, sciences, arts, religions, and anything he was able to translate. The humans seemed like such a multifaceted and conflicted people. One thing was clear to him. The human race was still striving. They were still motivated to learn more, still determined to be more.
That was something the Primus had given up on a long time ago.
Gravitas was immersed in researching the humans when the Traverser I began to decelerate as it neared its destination.
Filgaia appeared no larger than a glowing dot, barely discernible among the stars in the encompassing blackness. But the celestial wonder grew larger and larger beyond the glass of the command bridge. Soon Gravitas was forced to squint from the brilliance as the gleaming and enormous globe filled the entire command bridge window. He gazed out at sprawling emerald continents, vast yellow deserts, snaking mountain ranges, oceans and seas glimmering in hues of brilliant blue beneath clouds of impregnable white. Against the expanse of endless nothingness, Filgaia danced in the radiance of its sun and the verdant dignity of its life. Gravitas embraced the majesty of being as Filgaia struggled stalwart and undimmed against the infinite cold of space. Both the sanctity and the resilience of this persistency shook him, and the splendor of the planet and its vitality left him speechless.
In that moment he understood why Master Tolland and his father had never spoken of Filgaia to a living soul. It was far too precious to endanger, and too beautiful to jeopardize. Here was a developed planet that had never been tainted at the hands of an overly voracious power. The flourishing lands he now looked upon had never been forced to host an all-encompassing war. The human race had never awoken to the screams of a cindering dawn and a reckoning cataclysm.
It was a new chance.
Gravitas could not help but feel a deep sense of hope and inspiration while taking in the young planet, and at the same time a pang of sadness at the fate of his own. He reached across his seat and picked up the crimson cloak, quietly holding it as he looked upon Filgaia.
Orion—a planet even younger than this place—was being sucked dry of its resources. The caustic runoff and pollution caused by the extraction process would be left to fester like clutter cast aside by a misbehaved child, the dead Yabu left to rot in the spots where they had fallen, carrion to time alone.
Gravitas came to a decision while holding the cloak and beholding the shimmering glory of the world before him. He would be no invader, for good or ill. His presence would go entirely unnoticed by the inhabitants of Filgaia. His life would be one of solitude. A lifetime spent ready to rise in defense of that which deserved it beyond all else. Until his last breath, Gravitas Nerol would be Filgaia’s sentinel—its unseen god and champion.
Years later, Gravitas now thundered across the lofty mountain range, the world below shaking under his inconceivable power. He exploded through the sound barrier between the narrow rows of peaks. His heart soared in the morning air.
With blinding speed Gravitas roared high over the land as peaks gave way to rolling foothills, the frozen ground falling farther away beneath his increasing altitude. He turned upward and ascended elegantly through the clouds and into the upper atmosphere, the crimson cloak whipping against his legs in the wind.
He looked around and carefully examined the surrounding sky. A few days previous, he had seen an airplane plummeting in the distance. It was over such a secluded area that Gravitas had made the decision to risk rescuing it. He had easily caught it on his back, placing it to rest in a field to the south.
Today, however, the open sky belonged to him alone. Gravitas took a few deep controlled breaths as he focused his mind and senses. The frigid air seemed to ebb and crackle from his power. He snapped into action, throwing a shadow punch that echoed across the barren landscape.
His daily training had begun.
Chapter Eleven
Ryan
Ryan pushed open the door to Kristen Jordan’s apartment building and paused before pressing the doorbell to her third-floor studio. The entrance hallway was warm from the sunlight beaming through the glass doorway. Ryan stopped to check his appearance in the dusty mirror nestled between the rows of narrow mailboxes and grid of doorbells. He was wearing a dark gray button-down shirt and jeans. Turning slightly from side to side, he decided the attire looked appropriate—neither dressy nor unkempt. After an encouraging nod to his reflection, he pressed the buzzer to her apartment.
“Ryan?” Kristen’s tinny voice sounded from the ancient speaker.
He pressed the button. “Yeah.”
“Hi, I’ll come right down.”
Ryan turned his attention to some stacks of catalogs that were too big to fit in the mail slots. Kneeling down, he saw one of the stacks—addressed to Kristen Jordan—was comprised mostly of scientific journals, the majority old editions, some dating back to the previous winter. There was a sound of feet descending the stairwell, and the locked d
oor opened.
“Hey there,” Kristen said.
“Hi.” Ryan rose from his haunches. “Just looking at some of your old mail here. I take it these journals don’t interest you?”
“Um, no. Not particularly.” Kristen’s lips turned in a smile. Her hair fell below her narrow shoulders and rested weightlessly against the curves of her chest. “They keep sending them though. Columbia must subscribe their graduate students or something. I certainly never signed up for them.”
“Cool,” Ryan said, returning her smile. During their recent text correspondence, he had been caught up in Kristen’s intellect and forgotten how attractive she was. In a simple faded chambray shirt and shorts, she was remarkably attractive. Kristen pushed her shoulder against the heavy door and let the cool outside air into the balmy atrium as she held it open for him. Ryan buried his hands into his pockets as he walked out to the sidewalk. He noticed a fruity scent, probably her shampoo—her hair was still damp.
“How did your essay go over?” Kristen asked.
“Eh, mostly how I thought it might.”
“So . . . not well?”
“The class pretty much shot down my ideas,” Ryan said. “They’re critical of any perspective that hasn’t been hashed out to them in detail during Professor Hilton’s lectures. You have to love it when people laugh off your views as naive just because it differs from the ones they’ve been taught.”
“I know it.” Kristen reached out a hand and languorously dragged the tips of her fingers across the coarse bricks of an old walk-up. “I’ve found people often disregard views that differ from their own, especially at the highest echelons of education. The more you think you know about something, the more stubborn you tend to be.”