by Paul Tassi
Two children sprinted by, skipping over the cobblestone with little regard for pedestrian traffic. Erik’s twins, Noah knew, just by the backs of their heads. In fact, six of the children here were Erik’s, from four different Earthborn girls.
No wonder he fled, Noah said, but perhaps that wasn’t fair. Few had endured as much as Erik, and he would allow his brother some time to sail the stars if that’s what would help heal him.
This was all Noah needed.
“Daddy!” came a voice behind him. Little Kyoto was nearly three now, named after a city from his mother’s home country. In his hand was that of the unsteady year-and-a-half-old Halden, named for a city in Norway, where Noah had been born amid ash and flame. They were his only two, and they were enough. Kyoto was dark-haired like his mother, but as tall as Noah had been at that age. Conversely, Halden was blond but tiny. Both were worryingly interested in the practice weapons around the arena, however, and Noah had caught them attacking rocks with sword-like twigs on more than one occasion, giggling wildly to themselves.
“They found you,” said Sakai, drawing up behind them. Her once-voluminous hair had been cut short, and her tan skin had darkened further in the sun.
“They did,” he said, smiling.
It had been a long journey for the pair of them to find common ground again, but with two shared children in their lives, they were trying to settle back into an old rhythm. But Noah knew she still hurt, and she had to know that he did as well. Kyra didn’t consume his mind anymore, but still, rarely a day passed where he didn’t think of her at least once. If he escaped dwelling on her during the day, she’d almost always appear in his dreams.
He was letting go, slowly. But he wasn’t sure what would ever truly heal that wound.
“Are you still headed to the mountain?” Sakai asked, eyeing the path ahead.
“I’ll be quick,” Noah said.
“I want to come!” Kyoto said. Halden just giggled.
“When you’re older,” Noah said. “It’s very windy with lots of sharp rocks.”
“I’m not afraid,” Kyoto said matter-of-factly. Halden mimicked his brother’s sternness by crossing his arms.
“I know,” Noah said.
“I’m gonna be a Guardian someday,” the boy said.
“Or a very talented silvercoat,” Sakai interjected.
“No, a Guardian!” Kyoto pouted. “Like gramma Asha.”
“You can be anything,” Noah said, putting his hand on his tiny shoulder. Sakai rolled her eyes, and led them away. She turned back and a quick smile escaped her lips.
The mountain was not all that dangerous, in truth. It lacked the steep slope of the rock that had held the White Spire back on Sora, and was more just a rather large hill. Still, it was where Noah went to think. And pray.
But there are no gods, he constantly told himself. Even so, he routinely sat down on a makeshift prayer stone and spoke to them all the same. Perhaps it was tradition, or perhaps he didn’t mind praying to dead ancestors instead of actual gods. Sometimes he imagined he could speak to Tannon again. Or Celton. Or her. Sometimes he swore they spoke back.
When he arrived this time, he was surprised to find his stone already occupied. Malorious Auran sat on the smooth rock, his legs not folded in prayer, but hanging over the edge, his hands on his knees. He looked winded.
“I apologize,” he said, “for defacing your stone, but even a small mountain is enormous for a man of my years.”
Noah strode forward and embraced him heartily, the old man of skin and bones wrapped in Noah’s towering, muscled form.
“No worries,” he said, pulling back. “When did you arrive?”
“A short while ago. Young Quezon informed me you were heading to this location, so I figured I would meet you rather than chase you all over town.”
Auran sat down and glanced at his travel pack, which sat on the other side of the stone. It was rough and brown and the top was open to the air. Noah suddenly hoped Auran had brought lunch, but the man made no moves toward it.
“Will you be staying?” Noah asked.
“For a spell,” Auran said. “I hope you do not mind.”
“Of course not,” Noah said, grateful to have someone to help organize their little band of humans. Earth was not theirs alone, of course; a whole planet devoted to little more than a hundred would be wasteful. In other habitable parts of the planet, Soran and Xalan colonies were already springing up. Some were even mixed communities. But for now, because of their sparse numbers, the humans were kept isolated. Dangerous genetic incompatibility made a human/Soran settlement unwise at this point.
“Why were you looking for me specifically?” Noah said, catching Auran looking toward his sack again.
“I cannot see an old friend?” Auran said, laughing. “But in truth I need to discuss something. Someone.”
Noah knew.
“Kyra.”
“I am sure you still feel her absence strongly, as do I.”
Noah could only nod.
“Some may think me something of a monster, creating a clone in that way. An echo of the young Corinthia.”
“It’s just genetic refinement,” Noah said. “She was her own person.”
“That she was,” Auran agreed. “But the work I did on them both, it seems even I didn’t understand the full extent of it.”
“What do you mean?” Noah asked.
“I spent years refining those genes, each strand of DNA. I weeded out every possible defect, every abnormality. Both children were as genetically flawless as any Sora had ever known. That resulted in unmatched beauty, effortless charm, and a brilliant mind. Born leaders, both of them.”
Noah needed no convincing of that.
“But … that was not all they were capable of, it seems,” Auran said. “And Kyra will influence the entire course of mankind, even in death.”
Auran was starting to sound delirious.
“Keeper, what are you saying?”
Auran stood up from the stone and walked over to the sack on the ground. From it, he pulled a sleeping infant. Little more than a newborn. He cradled it in his arms and brought it over to Noah.
His insides froze, then melted all at once.
“This can’t be—”
“After Kyra died,” he said, putting a papery hand behind the infant’s head. “I scanned her body and was stunned to learn she was with child. I immediately preserved the temperature in her core, and raced to extract the embryo onboard the SDI vessel where we were stationed. I told no one, and built a makeshift tank for a child I assumed would die shortly, no doubt born of human and Soran union,” he said, eyeing Noah knowingly. “She did not.”
“What are you saying?” Noah said, barely able to speak.
“In perfecting Soran DNA to create Kyra, it seems I inadvertently solved the riddle of our two species’ incompatible biology, even before I knew of your existence. Whatever in evolution had driven us apart over a hundred thousand years or more, I had somehow mended. The child lived, and all my data said her mother would have as well, had she not met with a cruel end first.”
Kyra’s child. His child. He couldn’t—
“I wanted to be sure of her continued survival, which is why I have withheld the little one from you until now. But I can assure you, she will grow to be strong and healthy. The first of a new people, both Soran and human.”
Noah was speechless. The child had woken, and blinked big, beautiful blue eyes at him. Wisps of white-blond hair rested on her forehead.
“She is the first, but will not be the last. I have isolated the rogue mutation causing incompatibility between subspecies. I can develop a cure. I can unite all humans and Sorans and Oni and whomever else we find out there in the stars. We can be one people, one race. We can be Exos,” he said, eyes twinkling. Only a few knew that secret, and it seemed Auran was among them.
“The only tragedy is that even new life cannot defeat death,” he continued. “But I hope you take some solace
in your daughter, and will raise her to remember her mother fondly. From what I have seen of both you and Sakai, I know she will be loved.”
The child smiled. Noah felt tears streaming down his face.
“She will,” he said, his voice wavering.
Auran smiled, and handed Noah his daughter. He stood up from the stone as Noah dropped to a knee, barely able to support himself as he was shaking from the revelation.
“What shall you name her?” Auran said. “Another Earth city?”
Noah looked into the endless blue eyes below him.
“Elyria,” he said, his voice breaking. “Her name is Elyria.”
—
Lucas dreamed of planets burning.
He could hear the billions screaming. Smell the smoke rising out of forests, see cities crumbling into ash and ruin.
He was powerless to stop it, only a witness to the extinction. Night after night. And always there the figure was, floating in space above the blazing worlds. The galactic eyes, the jagged voice. The Archon.
“The Az’ghal will return. You know the destruction I have wrought; imagine when the army arrives.
“They will come in a million years. In ten thousand. In a hundred. They will come tomorrow.
“They will exterminate New Exos. They will tear through this galaxy like a raging storm. Nothing will remain. Your children. Their children. Every descendant of every line. Extinguished.
“Live with that knowledge, if you can. May your every waking moment be filled with dread for the horror that is to come.”
Lucas woke in a panic, as he always did. And Asha bolted up to soothe him, as she always did.
“Someday it’ll stop,” she said, propping herself upright in the sheets.
Lucas slowly caught his breath and wiped his brow.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“Then make sure your days are filled with only pleasant things,” she said, her lips parting into a smile. She kissed him and flung the sheet away from her, revealing bronze skin on the white linen, and the Archon’s warning fled from his mind. He lost himself in her. She brought him back at Rhylos. She brought him back now as well, every day. He was cured, Alpha said, but still he never quite felt like himself. The strength and speed were gone. His mind was his own, except for the dreams. No more Circle, if it ever existed at all. No more madness, if that was the explanation instead. But still, he’d been touched by both the darkness of the Archon and the light of the Exos, and he could feel both raging inside him. Only she could quell the storm. When he looked into her eyes, and she gave him that smile, he was Lucas again. The best version of himself.
And that’s who he needed to be today.
He suddenly glanced at the time readout.
“Shit, we’re late!” he said, bolting out of bed. Asha was in less of a hurry, and lazily stretched out in the tangled sheets in a way that made Lucas want to climb back in with her for another hour. But they couldn’t. Even she realized that eventually and slid out of bed and sauntered over to the outfit that had been laid out for her. A sleek jade dress that made her eyes shine more brightly than ever. For Lucas, it was a tailored suit blending Soran and Earth garments. He felt naked without a weapon, but it was obvious that would send the wrong message.
“Thirty minutes to arrival,” the captain said over the ship’s intercom. The blue-green of the space-time tunnel still drifted outside their room’s viewscreen. They were arriving in a luxury liner, not a warship, though Lucas wondered if that would always be the case.
The map had stayed with him. The swirling galaxy was forever etched in his mind, even after he transformed back from Shadow to human. All the numbers, all the coordinates. Every Exos settlement across the galaxy. And so the search began.
There were only disappointments in the beginning.
The first world had been devastated by the impact of a comet, and whatever civilization once lived there was obliterated fifty thousand years ago.
The second contained only husks of stone castles and ivory palaces, filled with the bones of the dead who had been wiped out by a worldwide plague in ages past.
The third was nothing but craters and radiation. The Xalans hadn’t attacked them. Instead, they’d wiped themselves out through internal wars, and nothing remained but death and insects.
But the fourth was Nahiva.
It was nearly as big as Earth, not untouched by war, famine, or disease, but not destroyed by them either. Lucas had felt tears in his eyes when the scouting information from long-range scans showed the first pictures of the blue-and-green world. The images were magnified and sprawling cities came into view. Spiderwebs of life, criss-crossing the surface of the planet. Gray and solemn in the day, alive with light at night. They survived. They thrived.
Lucas soon realized Nahiva was what Earth almost became, had it endured just a little longer. Its people, the Hota, a new name to add alongside Soran, human, and Oni, were proud of their recent push into space. They’d set up bases on both of their moons, and it had been a global event when their latest long-range craft had touched down on their neighboring, dusty planet for the first time. Lucas watched the world cheer as their spacewalker made a footprint in the black sands.
They still had vehicles with wheels. They had only started dabbling in genetic modification, preventing birth defects and choosing eye color. They were a long way from null cores, but they were a bright people. Lucas loved the Hota even before he met them. And now he would get the chance.
It took some time for Soran linguists to decipher the many tongues of the planet, but once they did, the broadcasts began.
“We are here.”
“We are like you.”
“We want to meet you.”
“We have knowledge to share.”
“We come in peace.”
The initial panic on Nahiva turned into celebration in the weeks and months that followed first contact. Arrangements were made. Ambassadors were chosen. It was nearly unanimous who Sora wanted to send as the two lead emissaries.
“You ready for this?” Lucas asked Asha as he zipped her into her dress.
“Are you?” she replied, turning toward him.
“We’ve done this before,” he said. “Kind of.”
“This is different,” she said.
Lucas stared out the viewscreen. He would smile and nod and talk about space travel and other planets full of humans and all their cultural differences. But eventually they would have to know. They would all have to know.
Finding the others, all the others, wasn’t just about peaceful harmony, the way the Exos intended. They had to sow the seeds to raise an army a hundred planets strong.
“They will come in a million years. In ten thousand. In a hundred. They will come tomorrow,” the Archon’s voice rang in his head.
When they did come, could ten planets hold back the Az’ghal? Could a hundred? Whatever the case, they had to be united. They had to share all their knowledge, bring every civilization out of the dark ages. If Toruk could go from tribal chieftain to starship captain in ten years, anything was possible. The Hota seemed more than willing to learn. They would be a good first step, but Lucas feared the second, and the third, and all the ones after that. Who knew what sort of worlds they would find out there? And always, the Az’ghal loomed.
Still, Lucas had to be satisfied with what had been won. His body and mind were his again. His family was safe, and growing. Earth was healing, Sora was rebuilding, Xala was a free nation. There was a whole galaxy to explore. So many lost civilizations to find and connect. Nahiva was just the beginning. For the first time in perhaps his entire life, Lucas finally had hope. For his family, for his people. It was the dawn of the most important age of human history, and he was on its blinding edge.
The ship finally slowed to a crawl, the haze giving way to stars again, now rearranged in unfamiliar patterns. They moved through the ship as it drew closer to the planet, past all the other dignitaries, scientists, and affable
public figures who would meet with the Hota in the coming days, weeks, and years. Lucas squeezed Asha’s hand as they made their way to the landing bay. He wished his children and Alpha were there, but they had their own concerns. At least he had her. She was more than enough. Asha had once been the face of the Great War. Now she would be the face of this new peace.
“They’ve assembled in the docking area below,” said a Soran aide holding a scroll filled with crawling data streams. “And it’s all being broadcast back to Sora.”
“God, I hate cameras,” Lucas said, eyeing the tiny swirling robots around them.
“No pressure,” Asha said with a smile. She turned to glance out the window of the bay and put her hand to her mouth.
“My god,” she said breathlessly. “It’s like we’re coming home again.”
Lucas saw what she meant. Nahiva’s skyscrapers were stone and metal and glass. Not the towering platinum monstrosities of the hugely advanced Sora, but closer in scale to the cities of Earth. Cars drove on actual paved roads like tiny insects below. Jets that couldn’t leave orbit zoomed past them as they descended. It was all incredibly surreal. The architecture was unique, the vehicles were stylized strangely, and the continents were different shapes, but it felt like Earth all the same. A civilization on the verge of greatness.
A swell of movement on the ground was visible as they got lower, and Lucas realized it was people, gathered by the millions to watch the spaceship descend. To watch the aliens come. Lucas remembered the hovering Xalan craft over New York. Never again, he thought, remembering the violence that followed. We come in peace.
The metal landing pads of the ship made contact with concrete, and the doors opened slowly. The light of a foreign sun found them, and the roar of the crowd was defeating. Nobles in long robes smiled kindly at them, waiting patiently for them to emerge. The Hota. More humans. More family.
Lucas looked at Asha one more time, and the two stepped forward into the future.