Seren- Legends of the Galaxy

by P H Campbell

  "The entity didn't like being compelled, and Miralenda's understanding of the entity was well enough refined over the years for her to never abuse the relationship she had with it.

  "But Magentians were very long-lived, and the shorter-lived Electrians were very jealous of that," Seren continued. "Social behavior back then was primitive according to most standards, especially after a couple of centuries. The two societies generally stayed away from each other. Animosity grew. Eventually, the Electrians tried to get the secret of immortality by killing Magentians, believing that if they did that, they'd gain the ability to live forever.

  "Then, one day, Miralenda's favorite child, the son of her closest lover, was murdered right before her eyes, and torn apart by a mob of Electrians intent on killing every Magentian they could find to become immortal, too. It wasn't the first time she'd witnessed such a thing, but it was enough to break her mind and spirit. For a moment, too horrific to fully comprehend, she went insane, and unleashed all of her rage and sorrow and regret through her connection with the entity.

  "In an eye-blink of time, she split the continent in two, cast the Electrians to the northern side, and raised up a wall of mountains to separate the two peoples forever."

  "Okay, okay, okay," Cinder held up her hand, chuckling. "I was willing to buy some of this right up to that point. But one person splitting a continent into two halves and raising mountains in seconds?" She shook her head. "That's a bit too mythical for my bullshit meter."

  "Show her," Sasha suggested, handing Seren her pad.

  Seren looked at the pad, knowing what Sasha meant.

  "I fucking hate that video," Seren said in Common, but pulled up the file and explained in English, "We got this video from the Wethersfield's computers, taken from the satellite they left in orbit around my planet when they arrived."

  She pulled up the holo-projector so everyone could see it. "What you see is the continent of my planet, as it was five hundred years after they arrived. Their satellite made these recordings after the radiation surge of the entity's arrival. Recordings made before then were erased by the entity's arrival We'll fast forward a few hundred years."

  The clouds drifted over the face of the planet, and the planet went from visible to infrared to visible, depending on whether it was day or night, but little else changed. Seren paused at a certain day mark.

  "This is the day when what our world's legends call 'The Sundering' happened."

  Seren started up the projection, going frame by frame each captured about a minute apart.

  The holo first seemed little changed from frame to frame, then a frighteningly brilliant flash occurred, originating at the mid western side of the continent, near the ocean. The flash appeared to be thousands of miles wide. Seren paused the image there.

  "That was Miralenda, unleashing the power the entity had. What comes afterward is what that power did, according to her will."

  She continued the slow advance of each image. The next frame, the flash spread across the whole continent. The next frame, one could see a new canyon appear in the west. It glowed red with magma, but wasn't very wide. The frame after that, the canyon was a visibly deep rift halfway across the width of the continent. The frame after that, the rift extended across the entire continent, and vast clouds were forming on the western side as the sea rushed in.

  Then, the scene turned from one of horror, to one of shocking proportions. The rift began to sprout gigantic mountains, some carrying lava, some spewing it, rising from the magma below to shoot into the sky at blinding speed. Within the next few frames, the changes were unbelievable. The continents had literally split apart, moving north, and south, and a narrow strip of mountainous lands had appeared.

  "We now call the mountainous regions the Borderlands," Seren told them. "It's almost entirely mountain, with some flat spaces here and there. It has enormous caverns below, underground, which is a good thing because the wars that followed would have killed most Borderlandians if the caverns weren't there to shelter them.

  "Oh, and it only it took ten minutes, or so, for the Sundering to happen," she concluded. "That's the power Miralenda had."

  The group sat stunned, then Seren turned off the holo.

  "Fuck me sideways and call me a cum bucket," Cinder remarked, the shock clear on her face. "That's unbelievable."

  "The aftermath of that event killed off a lot of the survivors of it," Seren continued. "It reduced the two sides to ruins, and everyone had to start over again, with the Electrians being stuck in the north pretty much with no tools or means of making them. They had to live like primitives for centuries before they rediscovered writing and technology. For about eight thousand years, both sides recovered. The Magentians recovered first because they started using the entity to compel it to help. Probably not involuntarily at first, but as time went on, the lessons teaching that one should be friends with the entity instead of a slave driver were no longer followed, and most Magentians entirely lost the ability to 'hear', for lack of a better word, what the entity was 'feeling'."

  "You don't hear feelings," Torian pointed out.

  "You did with the entity, if you could hear it at all," Seren contradicted. "The differences in concepts made detailed understanding very difficult. The entity seemed to know better what the people were saying than the people knew what the entity was saying."

  "That makes sense, sort of," Cinder agreed.

  "Electrian birth rates being higher than Magentian, they had more population pressure to go out and explore," Seren went on. "About a thousand years ago, a group of Electrians ran across a group of Magentians, and a fight erupted. That was the beginning of a war that would last, over a thousand years, with each side fighting to a stalemate every time.

  "In the meantime, us Borderlandians came around," Ronik mentioned. "Seems the pure breeds didn't always breed pure. So they sent their impure kids to the borders and let them figure it out. Some survived, and then helped the others who were kicked out. The Borderlandians weren't welcome in the lands of their original parents, so they stayed in the lands between the two. As the fighting got worse, and since it was always done in the Borderlands, we moved mostly underground."

  "A thousand years of war?" Torian asked.

  "It wasn't so bad for the Magentians and Electrians," Seren pointed out. "Neither side ever really reached each other. But it was pure misery for the Borderlandians. As the weapons became more powerful, and the defenses equally powerful, the munitions and spells landed on the Borderlands. Even under ground, the caverns could collapse, and falling rocks were a daily hazard. They usually killed you, but sometimes they only debilitated you."

  "I'm mindful of that aspect of Borderlandian life," Morlendrus said. "I was almost killed in a rockfall during one of the conflicts."

  "You're Magentian, right?" Cinder asked. "Why were you in the Borderlands?"

  "I was a spy," Morlendrus admitted. "The first time I saw Seren, I was barely conscious and being left for dead while she and her master worked on keeping those who would probably survive alive."

  "I was around eleven standard at the time," Seren confessed. "Majel was the one who called him a red tag and we went on to find people who would probably survive."

  "Magic kept me alive," Morlendrus added. "I barely had enough magic to do anything important, but healing was something I could do, and when I was conscious, I did what I could."

  "Once we'd cleared out th' likely ta survive," Majel added in Common, "we went out and found his carcass bein' th' only one still breathin'. So we dragged him in and nursed him back ta health."

  "Seren makes for an excellent nursemaid," Morlendrus winked.

  "She's also a good barmaid," Majel added.

  "Don't forget a very efficient bouncer," Ronik reminded them.

  "But now, I'm just a problem solver," Seren shrugged.

  "Okay, I think that sort of fills in the past," Torian agreed. "But your past, specifically, isn't exactly clear in all of this. And, pardon my
ears, but it sounds like this is something you experienced, and didn't just read about in a book. No one gets that emotional over telling people about a planet's myth."

  "Written historical records don't exist from most of that time," Seren pointed out. "But we have the video, and myths, and archaeological evidence that support the narrative, so the gaps are mostly filled in."

  "In your planet's past, but not yours," Torian volleyed the ball back to Seren. "What's your story?"

  "I don't really like talking about myself like that," Seren admitted. "I'm more of a "what can I do next?" rather than a "this is what I did" sort of person."

  "Would you let others relay what they've seen you do?" Morlendrus asked. "You can clarify things if we get it wrong."

  Seren was reluctant to agree to that unilaterally. But at the same time, she didn't want to let speculation go down paths that didn't exist.

  "Okay, I'll make a deal," Seren agreed. "I'll talk about my past if Dr. Treah and Cinder talk about theirs, first. Cards on the table. Face up. No secrets. If I'm going to tell you all about my past, we should all know about each other's too."

  "I've done a lot to be ashamed about, but I'm willing to tell folks if the price is right," Cinder allowed. "And that's a fair enough bargain to make."

  The two looked at Treah, who was frowning slightly.

  "Based on what I have seen, if there ever was an audience who might be willing to believe the truth of my background, this one would be it," she finally decided. "Very well, I, too, agree to the bargain."

  "So, who's going first?" Torian asked brightly.

  "Seren's already started on hers," Cinder pointed out.

  "That was a history lesson," Seren winked. "This is different. Why don't you go first?"

  "My back-story might betray another person's back-story," Cinder mentioned.

  "Go ahead and tell them, Mom," Ash urged. "It's not like the UGW is going to come and take us away."

  Given that the Twins were Shade Alliance citizens, and not subject to the UGW laws against constructed organisms, Cinder decided that was probably true.

  "It's fine," Looie added. "You weren't really living until you found us, anyhow."

  "I didn't have much to live for," Cinder confessed. She looked at her audience, seeing the receptiveness in their eyes, and began her narrative.

  "My mother was little more than a child herself, trying to scrape together an existence out beyond the edges of the civilized universe. I killed the man who claimed to be my father when he killed her, and, well, went off into deep space to avoid the UGW. It turns out, their infallible penal system has a lot of flaws when it comes to defending someone else. I found the Shade, which gave me some kind of family. I bounced from system to system, doing what I needed to do to get by.

  "Eventually, I hired out as an assessor for a merc salvage operation, salvaging ships shot to shit during the Fornyth war," she continued. "It was strictly unofficial and highly illegal, since the UGW would eventually come by and pick up the pieces to recycle, but out on the edges, you get what you can.

  "I was good at figuring out what was valuable. The last time I did that, while I was out there, I found something that looked very old. A shuttle, but a chemical rocket shuttle plane from like four or five thousand years earlier. It was pretty messed up, and airless inside, but I found a weak power source, and a tiny stasis chamber someone had cobbled together a hell of a long time ago. And it was still intact and working.

  "But the first officer did a deal with real mercenaries – the ones outside of the UGW and the Shade – and they tried to hijack us, right about the time I was trying to move the really valuable cargo off so I could assess it better…"

  "You wanted to keep it for yourself," Ash reminded her.

  "Only because I didn't trust the first officer and the Captain was a fucking idiot," Cinder replied evenly.

  "Riiiiight," Looie nodded, unconvinced.

  "They know me too well," Cinder said in an aside to the rest.

  "The hijacking?" Seren prompted.

  "Right. That went badly for my side, and then went even worse for other side once I hijacked their ship after they mostly boarded my ship," Cinder replied. "No one else survived, except me, and, well, them two."

  "Only we weren't a them two then," Looie clarified. "We were an it."

  "A cybernetic organism cobbled together using Human and Methonian DNA to create a semi-living device capable of talking to both Humans and Methonians," Cinder explained. "Humans called her Looie, only they thought she was a he."

  "We didn't have any lady parts," Looie explained.

  "We didn't have any parts like that either way," Ash added.

  "Wait just one fucking minute!" Torian interjected. "You two were Looie? The Looie?"

  "There were like, over a dozen made, but we were the first model," Looie confirmed.

  "You do know that according to our history, your donors were the first people ever to fuck an alien species, right?" Torian mentioned.

  "Wow, we have our place in history," Ash grinned.

  "It explains our libido," Looie rolled her eyes.

  "What do you remember of that time?" Torian wondered.

  "Not a whole lot, to be honest," Looie shrugged. "Mostly images. People. Places. Our mom – not Cinder – stuffing us into a stasis pod. Begging to be released. Running out of air. Then Cinder opening the chamber. Most everything after that, too."

  "As fascinating as that may be, this was supposed to be about my past," Cinder reminded them. "You two can sit and talk to Torian about yours later."

  "That works," Ash agreed.

  Cinder nodded and continued on her story, "Once we got to a port, we spent a few months getting her an identity of sorts, and then started taking jobs, mostly having to do with infiltrating AI protected networks."

  "We could jack directly to a port and, well, do things in a network that most folks would frown on," Ash interjected.

  "That was always fun, even if it nearly killed us," Looie agreed.

  "It was the only place, really, where we both could be individuals," Ash mentioned. "Looie sort of "woke up" inside our head the more we infiltrated networks."

  "Using them, we did one last job, stealing a Seeder ship," Cinder concluded. "By then, Ash, who was known as Looie at the time, was breaking down, and so, I added some expenses to the contract to get her new bodies. It took a genius Methman named Ritika to figure out how to separate her personalities, integrate their memories and basically put two different, fully functional minds into two bodies from one decaying, mixed DNA brain."

  "After that, Cinder became respectable," Looie wrinkled her nose. "Part of the Council for a few years, then ambassador to the UGW."

  "Yep, a boring life ever since you two bounced out of your stasis chambers and started raping guests," Cinder agreed.

  "It's not rape if they agree to it," Looie defended herself.

  "I think she means before we did him," Ash whispered to her sister in a voice that didn't quite reach the other side of the galaxy.

  "That's pretty much my story," Cinder shrugged. "If it weren't for Ash and Looie, it would have been a lot different, and a lot shorter."

  "And we'd still be trapped in a stasis chamber begging to be let out," Looie sighed.

  "How long were you in that stasis chamber?" Sasha wondered.

  "Forty five hundred years or something like that," Looie replied for them. "It was a piece of shit, but it kept us alive."

  "Sasha and Markov spent more than twelve thousand years in one," Seren told the others. "When her colony ship crashed on my planet, like I said before, the colonists didn't have enough power to revive everyone. So they revived who they could, and used almost the rest of the power to make the things they needed to get to their planned colony site. Only those colonists met the oceanic predators my planet has, which ate most of their ships, and kept the colonists from coming back to revive the rest of them. Sasha was among those left behind."

  "I was re
vived shortly after we arrived," Markov corrected her. "I volunteered to go back into stasis, in case they needed an engineer when they came back to get us. So I was not in stasis as long as the other colonists were."

  "Thanks for clearing that up," Seren winked.

  "I guess this means Seren's next," Cinder suggested.

  Everyone agreed that the time had come.

  Seren had to think about how to explain her life story.

  "My life's been, complicated," Seren began.

  "That's a fookin' understatement," Koreen agreed with a chuckle.

  "I was born in Magentus, Walentia is my birth mother," Seren began…

  "You're her birth mother?" Torian stared. "I thought you two were the same age!"

  "I'm older than I look," Walentia agreed. "But Seren is, indeed, my child."

  "I'll get to that," Seren promised. "But it's complicated to explain, and even harder to believe. For now, I'll go with what I experienced in this body since that's the way I understand it all."

  "This body?" Torian echoed.

  "Quiet or you'll spoil the ending," Seren admonished.

  "Walentia couldn't keep me, for a variety of reasons, mainly because I looked like an Electrian, only I have light eyes and am shaped like a Magentian," Seren explained. "Racial prejudice is a thing on my world, and though we're more tolerant than we were, it'll be there for a while longer.

  "So she took me to the Torsus orphanage and dumped me there, and by doing that saved my life, and probably hers as well.

  "For the next nine years, well, eleven standards, I was the oddball. I was born crippled, needed a staff and leg braces to even walk and Borderlandian society tells folks to fend for themselves and deal with their own problems if there's no war going."

  "We get down-right chummy when a war is on," Ronik mentioned.

  "To explain the wars," Seren added, "Every few cycles, there'd be a battle that lasted for about six quads. In standard, that would be about a month off and two months of fighting, in a cycle that one could almost set a clock to. So we spent about half to two-thirds of our time dodging falling rocks. Sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, sometimes the fighting wasn't right overhead. No one knew where the next salvo would land, so we all had to be on our toes to stay alive. A lot of us didn't manage to do that."