Of course, it wasn’t as if she had a choice. Malkus was the supreme ruler of the entire Zalkat Union. Aidulac was a mere scientist working on a world as distant from the Homeworld as it was possible to be and still fall within the Union’s borders. She had spent her life working in relative obscurity, developing new technologies, figuring out new ways to use existing technologies, and trying to stay out of the way of other people. Aidulac had always preferred solitude. Once something was finished, she sold the patent to someone else who would develop it and make it available to the general public.
She had set up shop on a small planetoid in a star system that she couldn’t even remember the name of now. In the intervening millennia the sun had gone nova, the planetoid long since consumed by the star’s death throes, but back then it was just another dying stellar body that nobody cared about except as a scientific curiosity.
Which was how Aidulac liked it.
The only company she had were robot servants, who only spoke when spoken to, the occasional supply ship that would stop by, and the agents she employed to auction off the rights to anything she invented that might have practical mass-market use. Even then, she limited the contact as much as she could. She was only truly happy when she sat in her lab, trying to unlock the secrets of the universe. Since the universe was miserly with those secrets, the challenge had never lost its luster.
Then the strange ship arrived.
It had all the necessary authorization codes to enter orbit without being shot out of the sky by her automated defenses, which meant that they had been able to bribe that information out of one of her agents. At that moment, she sent out messages informing all her agents that their contracts were terminated, effective immediately, and she made a note to begin searching for new ones the next day.
The ship identified itself as the flagship of Malkus the Mighty. Aidulac was skeptical, obviously, but Malkus’s flagship was identifiable through a variety of unique and secure identifiers—most of which were based on Aidulac’s own designs.
“Very well,” she told the obsequious young man who contacted her. “I will grant The Mighty One an audience.”
That left the young man nonplussed, but he signed off, and within minutes, Malkus had shifted down to the surface—specifically, to the atrium where Aidulac received her few visitors.
She had seen images of The Mighty One, of course—they were impossible to avoid—and she had expected the reality to be disappointing. After all, it was extremely easy to make oneself better looking, more charismatic, and larger than life on a viewing surface, but, in Aidulac’s experience, few accomplished it in real life.
Malkus, however, was one of those few. He stood half a head taller than Aidulac—who was unusually tall herself—and had a bearing that could only be described as regal. Even though the atrium had directed lighting that emphasized the potted plants and sculptures that she had placed to make the room more relaxing, it seemed that every light in the room shone on him.
She knew the rituals of her people. She bowed from the waist and said, “Mighty One.”
When he spoke, it was in honeyed tones that practically begged to have every word hung on to in the hopes of gaining great pearls of wisdom.
“I am told that you were granting me an audience. I rather thought it was the other way around.” The smile that accompanied this statement took the threatening edge off his words, though Aidulac now noted that his four bodyguards—whose presence she hadn’t even registered—had moved their hands to their rather large (if still holstered) sidearms.
“It is you who came to me, Mighty One.”
He laughed, then, a relaxing, pleasant sound. The bodyguards’hands went back to their sides. “Quite correct, quite correct. You are Aidulac of the Girons, yes?”
“It has been some time since I identified myself as belonging to the Girons, Mighty One, but yes, that is I.”
“Excellent. I am told that you are the greatest inventor of our age.”
She shrugged. “Perhaps.”
“I hope so,” he said with another smile. “I would hate to think that I was lied to. In any event, Aidulac of the Girons, I am the greatest leader of our age. It seems only fitting that we work together.”
With those words, Aidulac knew that her life would irrevocably change. People in the scientific community knew of her, of course, and some did indeed revere her to a degree she found frankly embarrassing. But she had shunned public acclaim because it got in the way of her work.
Now, however, she had come to the attention of not just the public but the leader of them all. Her days of solitude, she thought, were over.
She was both absolutely right and completely wrong.
“How, Mighty One?” she asked, resigned to the inevitable.
“It will take some time. Will you dine with me aboard my flagship, so I may detail my plan?”
The question was a formality. To decline would be as good as telling one of the bodyguards to shoot her down where she stood. She agreed.
Soon, she had shifted to the flagship. She had not changed her clothes, as all she owned to wear were single-piece jumpsuits that were functional and easy to put protective gear on over when she needed it. The Mighty One allowed the breach of protocol.
They did not speak of his plan during dinner, which was a feast unparalleled with anything in Aidulac’s experience. She had lived most of her adult life on a steady diet of processed food, brought regularly by the supply ships and stored until they were eaten. The Mighty One, however, dined on fresh game, vegetables, and drinks that had obviously been prepared specifically for this meal. Aidulac had no idea how it was transported on the ship, but considering the huge amount of space wasted on the vessel—which was a hundred times larger than actually necessary to serve its function—Aidulac was sure that they managed to find somewhere to store live animals, grow plants, and harvest flavored liquids. She herself had pioneered the technology for ship-based hydroponics gardens, though she never imagined anything that could produce such bright yellow clamdas. They ate at a large table made from actual tree pulp, using utensils of the finest tin.
Much from that era had blurred in Aidulac’s mind with the passage of ninety thousand years, including the specifics of the conversation during the meal. Aidulac was sure that The Mighty One spoke at great length about his own accomplishments, or perhaps about the food, or maybe his family’s history—the only thing she knew for sure was that it was ultimately inconsequential. After the final course was served, he said, “And now, to business. I wish you to create four Instruments of Power. I do not know how they may be created, but I wish them to allow me absolute control over all my subjects. I wish them to be portable and responsive only to me.”
Aidulac waited for more details. “What are the specifications of these Instruments, Mighty One?”
Again, he laughed. “How should I know? If I knew how to construct such items, Aidulac of the Girons, I would not need you. The Instruments must grant me power.”
“What kind of power?”
“Absolute power.”
“Your pardon, Mighty One, but I’m afraid I will need instructions a tad more specific than that.”
Malkus gazed upon Aidulac from across the table. He seemed to be studying her the way Aidulac herself would have studied a one-celled organism or a piece of plant life in her laboratory.
“Very well,” he finally said, and Aidulac found herself letting out a breath she hadn’t even realized she was holding. “I wish to have power over the elements. Power over the mind. Power over life and death. And most of all, the power to overcome my enemies.”
For quite some time, she continued to ask questions. However, Malkus never got any more specific than that.
Finally, she said, “Mighty One, I am but a single person. I cannot possibly—”
Malkus laughed, then. “I do not expect you to achieve this by yourself. While it is true that you have accomplished many great things, you are, as you point out, but a sing
le person. I have already assembled some of the finest minds in the Union. What they require is someone to direct them, to lead them, to mold them—and thus allow them to see my vision through to fruition. That someone, Aidulac of the Girons, is you.”
When the meal ended, Aidulac was permitted to shift back to the planet to sleep.
By the time she woke up, all of her equipment had been packed by her own robots, which had been instructed by Executive Order—the one way that a robot could be overridden by its rightful owner, an override that was required to go into every robot constructed within the Union’s borders. Aidulac had done so to secure hers (erroneously, as it turned out) in the knowledge that it would never be used, but not wanting to find herself subject to an inspection and failing it. As with all of The Mighty One’s laws, those who enforced them took them very seriously, and surprise inspections from The Robotics Authority were not unheard of.
Aidulac would never see the planetoid again.
She no longer remembered how long she and her team—which, as promised, included most of the finest minds in the Zalkat Union, including many with whom Aidulac had studied or corresponded, many more whom she had never heard of—spent laboring over the Instruments. All she remembered was that it consumed her very existence—and that Malkus spared no expense on their behalf.
Eventually, at a time when several outer worlds were fomenting rebellion and The Mighty One’s armies were stretched thin to keep order, Aidulac presented him with his Instruments. She had prepared a properly ostentatious speech to make the presentation, having learned how much The Mighty One liked his spectacles.
“You asked me, Mighty One,” she said when she approached him in his Place of Governing, “to give you power over the elements, power over the mind, power over life and death, and power to overcome your enemies.” She indicated the simple black boxes, which she had adorned with Malkus’s name. “Behold, the Instruments of Malkus. With this one,” she said, pointing at the first of them, “you may control the weather on any world with a natural atmosphere, and control the environment of any place with an artificial atmosphere—power over the elements. With this,” she continued, pointing to the second, “you may manipulate the thoughts of any sentient being within its range—power over the mind.” She moved on to the third one. “With this, you may infect up to five hundred living beings with a virus that will kill them by making their hearts explode—power over life and death. And finally, with this,” she pointed to the last of them, “you have a weapon of tremendous power that can disintegrate matter in less than an instant—power to overcome any enemy.”
Malkus did not laugh. But he did smile.
For ninety thousand years, Aidulac remembered that smile.
Aidulac had hoped that Malkus would not use the Instruments, had hoped that the threat of their existence would be enough. But no one understood the power behind a simple black box without a demonstration.
And Malkus the Mighty was only too happy to provide such a demonstration.
The rebellions were all put down by having their ships disintegrated, their hideouts wiped out by hurricanes, their soldiers killed by the virus, and their leaders confessing to their crimes and repenting while under mental manipulation. The borders of the Union expanded by solar system after solar system, as Malkus used his Instruments to gain more and more territory.
Aidulac had hoped that her own obligations would end, and she and her team would be permitted to go back to their own work—work that might help the people of the Union rather than its leader. How many inventions had fallen by the wayside, how many more secrets of the universe might they all have pried loose had they not wasted so much time giving The Mighty One his toys of conquest?
But Malkus was not done with them. He wanted immortality.
They developed a genetic therapy that would prevent Malkus from aging. Then The Mighty One made sure all evidence that it ever existed was destroyed.
That evidence extended to the people who created it.
One by one, the members of Aidulac’s team were killed.
The only one to escape the executioner’s pistol was Aidulac herself. She had half expected this kind of treachery, and had laid the groundwork for an escape. As an added bonus, she also had the only copy of the genetic therapy for immortality left—and so, when she made her escape from the Homeworld, she also gave herself the therapy. After all, even The Mighty One would be overthrown eventually. When that happened, then, perhaps, she could return to her work.
How naïve she was.
The Mighty One did fall, of course. He had thought himself invulnerable because he was “immortal,” but all that truly meant was that he could not die naturally. The universe’s worst-kept secret was that it was far easier to destroy a thing than to sustain it. His body was devastated, and the Instruments confiscated.
She herself was tracked down and arrested. Aidulac was inextricably associated with The Mighty One as the primary inventor of his Instruments—and also the only one of that team still alive. While Malkus was in power and had a use for her, that meant that her life would always be comfortable and she would be treated with reverence. With Malkus overthrown and her own usefulness at an end, she became an object of disdain at best—an accessory to genocide at worst.
Until the rebellion succeeded, Aidulac had never thought about the cost of her inventions to living beings. For that matter, she had never thought about the benefits of her early ones. She had always viewed it as a scientific puzzle to be worked out, the latest in a series of dialogues with the universe to try and trick it out of another nugget of information.
Members of the rebellion—now the Zalkatian government—took her to some of the worlds that had been ravaged by her inventions. She saw the mass graves of people who’d died by disease or by destructive weather. She saw the cities ravaged by the energy weapon she had invented.
She saw death by her hand.
The rebels had tried to destroy the Instruments, but Aidulac had built them too well. Instead, they spread them to the corners of the Union—but did not inform Aidulac of the location of those corners. Having seen the death they caused, Aidulac understood the rationale, but she would have preferred to take custody of the Instruments herself—she knew that, eventually, she would find a way to destroy them.
But nobody trusted her to do that. Instead, she was put in prison.
What they did not know was the process she had perfected just as the rebellion started to succeed: the ability to convince anyone to do her bidding. It was an ability that would (so she thought) improve with use as her brain took to the genetic changes she had introduced.
It was, therefore, easy to escape her incarceration by simply convincing the guards to free her. She stole a ship called the Sun and made her escape, convincing everyone who followed her to give up the pursuit.
They never found her, but they also stopped looking, as they had problems of their own. The universe hadn’t made it any easier to sustain something than destroy it, and running the Zalkat Union proved a task far beyond the capabilities of those who had removed Malkus from power. Different factions fought amongst themselves, and the Union was plunged into civil war.
Aidulac began her search. The Instruments gave off a distinctive wave pattern. They would not stay hidden forever, and Aidulac herself was immortal. She would wait in solitude.
It was how she had always preferred it.
She set a course to continue her search.
The phasering went off without a hitch.
Orta had watched from a safe distance along with the others as the Federation starship’s powerful weaponry sliced through the atmosphere like a dagger, transforming a section of the moon’s surface from hard rock to dust. Oh, if only I’d had such weapons at my disposal, he thought with envy. The Cardassians would never have stood a chance.
Soon the water was added, a process that was surprisingly loud. Orta had expected to be nearly deafened by the phasers—which were, after all, noisy instrum
ents even in their handheld version, and a Galaxy-class ship’s array was several orders of magnitude more powerful, and fired at a concomitantly greater volume—but the controlled rushing of water had been a massive cacophony as well.
Then the phasering began again. It was a very small-scale version of what humans ethnocentrically referred to as “terraforming,” and remarkably effective. One ship was, in essence, changing the face of the planet—or at least a part of its face. Again, Orta marvelled at the sheer power at work here.
Admittedly, Orta saw many tactical problems with a ship the Odyssey’s size—it presented a huge, easy-to-hit target, and was impossible to hide. But it would have been worth it, Orta thought, to have those weapons.
Once the procedure was finished, which took most of the day, Orta and the others were put to work constructing the dwellings they were to live in. The Federation captain carried on for some time about how if they had followed his plan, that would have been done already, but no one paid attention to him.
Certainly Orta didn’t. He was far too busy depressing himself by thinking about what his life had in store for him. Seeding the fields. Living in a Starfleet-pre-fabricated home. Waiting for crops to grow.
He mentioned this to Tova who only snorted. “And what’s the alternative? Living in a cave, eating whatever we can scavenge, waiting for the Cardassians to find us and bomb us into oblivion? No thank you. At least now we’re accomplishing something.”
Orta said nothing in reply.
“Excuse me?”
Turning, Orta saw an old man holding a welding tool. “Yes?” he prompted.
“You’re Orta, aren’t you?”
It was so ridiculous a question that Orta was tempted to say no just to gauge the old man’s response. Then Orta looked more closely and saw the awe in the man’s face. “Yes, I’m Orta.”
“I thought so. Well, honestly, who else would you be?” The old man chuckled. “I just wanted to meet you—and to say thank you. My daughter worked in the mines at Amrahan. After you liberated that camp, she was free—she joined the Resistance, and fought till the day she died.”
The Brave And The Bold Book One Page 15