Superluminary

by perpetrator

  Lady Luna said wildly, “But why you?”

  Aeneas said, “There is no one else. You two are my witnesses. Speak for me. In my final official act, I dissolve the Lords of Creation as a political body, I confer all their powers and perquisites as regents for the sovereign upon the two houses of the parliament, and I abdicate and abolish the office of Imperator. Lord Mars is commander in chief until such time as parliament elects a prime minister to appoint a new one.

  “I go now to do penance for the evils I have done in the name of necessity, and am I grateful to have this opportunity to make amends, as Lord Tellus never had.”

  Before either Lady Luna or Lord Uranus could think of anything to say, Aeneas worked one of the controls hidden in the jacket of Lord Mercury. One of the countless special pearls contorted space.

  Aeneas vanished.

  54. Necropolis of Stars

  Years passed. The number of years did not matter, for the dead keep no tally of time.

  At the core of the galaxy was the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A. Encircling it was a globe made of many ringworlds, the largest and outermost of which was a lightyear radius. At the pole, where many great circles, ringworlds, elevators and conduits converged, was a fastness like a tower. Here was a single window, large enough for a gas giant to pass into.

  Somewhere beyond was the throne chamber of the Uttermost Overlord, the vampire who owned all other vampires in the Milky Way, and whose living energy he drank like wine whenever he willed. It did not sate him, for he was never sated. Even though numberless planets orbited the numberless stars in his domain, it was always a permanent loss when he fed, for the numbers of his slaves were never renewed.

  Of late, the rate at which he consumed and destroyed his slaves had increased. Knowledge that somewhere in the universe, living beings lingered, whose lives held loves and joys and simple, animal pleasures of food, drink, warmth, companionship, and also the deeper pleasures of learning, growing, not to mention coupling and multiplying: all this stirred his frustrated wrath and awakened his yawning hungers. And to torment the dull-eyed undead gave no real pleasure. To slay those already slain was a sport without savor.

  Three times only was the Uttermost Overlord disturbed in his endless torture of thirst and unslaked hate.

  The first was when Rhazakhang the Obliterator sent a servant, one called Vsasrhazing. The Overlord only recalled that this servant was famed, or had been once, during massacres and torture festivals long forgotten, for the exquisite slowness with which he killed his victims, drawing out their living blood one drop at a time.

  But like all fame, like all memories, the power needed to maintain them had failed at last, and the tale behind his own name was lost to him. Only hunger remained, and names without meaning.

  Vsasrhazing arrived bearing a message from long dead observatories perched among the outermost fringes of the Cygnus Arm, bearing the news that the Greater Magellanic Cloud had vanished.

  The Overlord was restless at the news, and drew the information so vehemently from the brain of his servant that the creature was maimed.

  He thrust thought-forms into the mind of Vsasrhazing, which was a torture as perfect as anything Vsasrhazing ever long ago devised. Had these been put in words rather than written in raw agony, the message might have read, “Let the servant of my servant ponder for me and expound how it is possible that a satellite cloud of ten billion solar masses fourteen thousand lightyears in diameter be forced into a warpchannel? To be carried where?”

  “It is none of the arts received from the Forerunners, Overlord,” gasped the tortured servant. “But it is known that a lesser armature, if kept in perfect synchronicity with a major one, can extend the radius and carrying capacity of a warpchannel. This was done in wars long past, when we hunted the remnant of the Living Beings, and our brains and energy stores were replete with life. We then still had the spark of daring, and we thought new thoughts. It was not as now.”

  “Let Vsasrhazing tell how this is pertinent?” And the Overlord saw in the slave’s brain that Vsasrhazing resented being asked to expend his shrinking personal store of life energy needed to think and draw conclusions, merely so that the Overlord in his sloth need expend nothing. The Overlord drew out that thought, and all thoughts and memories surrounding, so that the screaming slave lost the ability to conjure such disloyal thoughts on that topic again.

  In the quivering mass that was drawn out came also the answer: “It was not two, nor a dozen, nor a thousand armatures moving in perfect synchronism which gathered up the thirty billion stars, but over six billion, centered on black holes created by the collisions of many supergiants each. The Living Beings had created dark stars more massive than any which naturally occurr.”

  The Overlord was puzzled. The idea that a technology could be used to do something which had never been done before was beyond his comprehension. It seemed to him to be somehow unfair, like cheating.

  “Where did they go?”

  “Andromeda galaxy. The supermassive black hole in the center of that galaxy might serve as an anchor to allow them to cross so wide an abyss. Or so it is speculated. That galaxy is ten times the mass of Milky Way.”

  “Can we follow?” But the Overlord already saw in the servant’s mind that the thing was impossible. Without the means to build another Master Armature, only interstellar travel was in his grasp, not intergalactic. “Then the Living Beings are lost beyond reach.” The Overlord realized.

  He saw in the servant’s thoughts the fear that Rhazakhang had sent Vsasrhazing as a sacrifice, costly, but ultimately expendable, so that the Overlord would sate his wrath solely on the messenger. The Overlord allowed Vsasrhazing to see in the Overlord’s mind the inescapable truth of the conclusion.

  He fed. Vsasrhazing, after all, was a highly placed servant, of the echelon only one step away from the all-highest, and therefore had many reserves and pockets of life energy, delicious with the taints of a wide variety of years and sources.

  It was an exquisite feast, and the Overlord required Vsasrhazing to sing praised and lauds to him, and worship him, as he very slowly ate him. Finally he revealed the whole of the Malefic Visage to the underling, and slew him entirely.

  The second interruption was many centuries after. The first report was merely a curiosity: ten planets, blue as azure and beautiful with white cloud, had appeared from nowhere and taken position around Alpha Camelopardalis, an O-type luminous supergiant. It was a runaway star, long ago ejected from the cluster NGC 1502. The star system was home to one world. The others that orbited this star had been destroyed during the ancient massacres of the Forerunners.

  Warpcores from the ten blue worlds then flattened space, preventing any superluminary approach. Worlds from nearby stars were prepared and launched, not reaching Alpha Camelopardalis for decades later.

  As their dark, interstellar battle-worlds approached, the vampire lords stalking the icy plains were found by the glowing gleam of Alpha Camelopardalis and burnt to nothing. Something had turned the light of the invaded star into Living Light, just as Sol once, long ago, had shed.

  During these decades, other reports came of green gas giants, bursting and abundant with life, appearing in orbit next to smaller worlds, or blue superjovians and brown dwarves, their atmospheres like endless oceans aswarm with sea-life, appearing next to icy gas giants where undead were packed and stored in layers of corpses heaped atop each other. And again, warpcores cut off these star systems from outside help, and, again, when small worlds like bullets were shot at disinertia speeds, slower than light, toward these attacked stars, by the time they had arrived, the auras of the living worlds had done their work, and made the light from these suns intolerable, deadly to the vampires.

  The Overlord consulted his maps and charts. Limited to the speed of light, even if these stars were igniting to supernovae, only the tiniest segment of one cluster of stars in one spur of an outer arm of the galaxy was affected.

  It seemed a small
attempt, a pathetic one. There were barely numbers small enough to express what an infinitesimal percentage of his astronomically vast hordes of worlds and servitors the Living Beings had suborned.

  It was Dzazanang the Ineluctable, chief servant of the warlord Rhazakhang, who next approached.

  The Overlord pierced him with a beam of death-energy to establish communication and dominance. “Let Dzazanang declare by what gift Rhazakhang shall purchase his existence from his master, given that he was so remiss as to allow the Living Beings to escape us, who now return to insult and belittle our imperium?”

  Dzazanang could hide no thought. “Rhazakhang sends his compliments, and the messages that he has discovered the pattern of the attacks. Behold.”

  Rhazakhang’s servants had detected vast warp disturbances in intergalactic space, coming from the direction of Andromeda. He ordered worlds to be sent through the largest remaining warpchannels the vampires could form in that direction, beyond the range of any possible recovery, but not beyond the range of tachyon mindlinks.

  These worlds were sent, and only one survived long enough to send back a last, dying thought with a report: The Andromeda Galaxy was now closely orbiting Milky Way, a few light-centuries beyond the vampire’s warp range. The light from Andromeda showing its new position would not reach observers in the outer cloud of globular clusters for nine hundred thousand years, and would not reach the Milky Way core for another hundred thousand years.

  Dzazanang concluded: “The suns the Living Beings seek out are ones bearing the planets the Forerunners first colonized, whose histories are oldest. Their action is consistent with a palaeoscope search for old archives. Presumably they seek the origins of the Infinithedron, which was the instrument by which they learned the Forerunner science.”

  The Overlord was curious. “What possible benefit could that be to them?”

  “Unknown. The Living Beings are erratic, unpredictable.”

  The Overlord gave his command. “As a precaution, let our worlds in their countless myriads be flung out of their orbits and into interstellar space, far from any sunlight which may one day become contaminated. Even if every star in the galaxy became tainted with the aura of life and hence intolerable to us, the wide night of outer space still would be our own, from which retributions without end will fall. Let any stars orbited by megascale structures too large to move be reduced to black holes.”

  “The expense will be incalculable, Overlord. Otherwise we would have done this long ago, surely.”

  “Let us spend without thrift or scruple. We enter a new golden age, for the living things again arise, as they have so often in the past, and erupt among us, making certain stars holy. I alone am eldest. I alone retain the knowledge of how many cycles of existence have passed and wars like this been fought, over and over again, without end.”

  Dzazanang was astonished. “Other eruptions like this have happened before?”

  “Many times. Each time, the horrible Living Stars were simply warpchanneled into the supermassive black hole at the core of the galaxy, and quenched, frozen in time forever, and forever harmless to us. The same can be done with any stars successfully contaminated by the Living Worlds.”

  Dzazanang was unable to hide his thoughts of doubt. “The solution is impermanent. Anyone who knows the angle and orbit of the star as it entered the event horizon could, with a sufficiently strong armature, warpchannel it back out of the event horizon by flattening the intervening space.”

  The Overlord said, “It is for this reason that my throne and vigil is here. I alone of all my realm know the orbital elements of the long lost stars.”

  Dzazanang realized with a cold and crushing sense of despair that he had heard his own death sentence. The Overlord had revealed knowledge beyond what any underling should know, and was merely watching his mind now, waiting for the realization to grow in him that he also was to be consumed.

  The Overlord imposed thought-forms made of pain into his servant’s bleeding brain. “And in any case, when the living fight the dead, sooner or later the temptation to use our own means of war against us is overwhelming, to save their soldiers from harm, and have undead fighting slaves take all risks, shoulder all tedium, endure all hardships. It is by these periodic eruptions of the Living Beings that our numbers are replenished. Surely you have seen we are too many to be the remnant of but one Galactic Empire. There were Forerunners before the Forerunners, and Forerunners before that. Nothing stops the cycles of death. Life always surrenders to us.”

  And the Overlord then sucked away the life and free will of Dzazanang, reducing him to a worthless puppet, able to retain in memory only those orders and messages he was to carry back to Rhazakhang. The brain-dead, hollowed out shell of his once-useful servant was returned to Rhazakhang. The Overlord was confident his warlord would interpret the gesture of imperial displeasure correctly.

  It was not many years later, as vampires count time, when Rhazakhang himself approached the galactic core, with an escort of many lesser servants. By this the Uttermost Overlord knew that he brought not mere good tidings, but excellent. Either that, or he meant to overthrow him. The Overlord readied his many and terrible weapons.

  The Overlord was eased of his fears when Rhazakhang sent the many servants, one after another, into the presence chamber of the Overlord, and he consumed them as he read their minds of their news. With each tidbit, he grew stronger, and his spirits exalted, and his pride and steadfast hate flamed higher, fed by new fuel.

  “Victory, O Overlord! All souls are thine to consume!” cried the first messenger as it was killed and eaten.

  “Approach and speak!” The Overlord bade the second messenger, whom he also consumed once he heard his message.

  The messages were good. Wars had been fought. Intruders from the Andromeda had placed ten thousands of planets about thousands of stars in the Cygnus Arm. In any system where the living dramatically outnumbered the dead, stable stars turned slowly into living stars, slaying all vampires and undead in range. Unstable stars turned more quickly.

  Dysons had been dispatched, and surrounded the Living Stars at a safe distance. The Living Stars were conquered in due time and drawn into the supermassive black hole at the core. The living worlds with all their cattle, beasts and plantlife were reduced to dust, the life-energy gathered into the vampires and archvampires.

  The third messenger said that the attack was under control, and would soon be halted. The Living Men had longer ranged armatures than the vampires, and were able to place living planets around certain stars in order to infect them, but, being immortal and unwilling to risk their lives, they had been sending worlds filled only with lower beasts. These were now fed to vampires, increasing their strength.

  In the meanwhile, the news came that the betrayer in service to the vampires had been exposed and killed, but not until after he had (unbeknownst to himself) secretly converted not just his brother and his son to vampirism, but also many of his servants, nieces and nephews. An extensive hosts of vampires, like some clinging and parasitical vine strangling a tree, had infiltrated all levels of the Empire of Man. The more time passed, the more the hidden numbers would grow.

  The fourth messenger held news even more delicious: the leader of the Living Beings, Lord Tellus, had been caught by one of the many hidden vampires, and reduced to an automaton, just as their last betrayer had been. This information came from the same channel which told them that Lord Tellus was an ex-vampire who had seeded Tellus with life from his private horde. Because of this, his servants in his intelligence service rated the information as very trustworthy.

  The Overlord was pleased with this and bade Rhazakhang to approach.

  Once more the warlord Rhazakhang the Obliterator approached, and was impaled on a lance of death energy like a mote caught in a spotlight from the high window of the Overlord’s tower. Once more, Rhazakhang assumed the form of a mirrored sphere, averting his gaze from the Malefic Visage.

  Out from his interio
r material, be brought forth the body of Aeneas Tell, wrapped in a cocoon of forces meant to preserve him, unharmed and alive, even in the middle of a vampiric mass. “This is Lord Tellus.”

  On a force-beam Aeneas was wafted into the window, and down into the immeasurable chamber beyond.

  Aeneas awoke in a soundless vacuum and total darkness even his many senses could not penetrate.

  He knelt, he stood, and the uneven surface beneath him rattled, clattered and shifted. He heard the noise not through his ears, but through vibration membranes in his feet. There was no air here. His echolocation was inoperative. He picked up a round fragment. The thing in his hands was a skull. He threw it from him. It skipped quite a distance, rebounding from bones and more bones beyond. The vibrations he sensed through his foot membranes could detect no floor beneath. It was layer after layer of bones. It was the refuse and remains of countless millennia of ghoulish cannibal feasts or worlds beyond count.

  Nothing was corrupted. No worm, no microbe, nothing lived here.

  55. The Republic of Creation

  Here in a chamber larger than a world, a place bereft of radiation, light, warmth or air, stretched an endless plain of bones and skulls packed to an unguessed depth. Heaps stood like dunes in a desert of sand, or hills, or mountains.

  Here stood Aeneas, nude, and his many senses probed the gloom, but neither x-ray nor radio waves illumined the dark. His gravity-wave senses detected tidal effects from a supermassive black hole less than a lightyear away, somewhere beyond the vast, dark walls of this place, and he saw the contour of an artificial gravity field which made the ocean of bones a plain rather than a cloud.

  With another organ, he sensed the death energy that allowed vampiric organisms to exist in the shadow condition that was neither life nor death, an unlife where their cellular mechanisms moved, and certain organs and muscles could be forced like awkward puppets into imitating living animation, but where there was no interdependency, no sensation, no growth. That organ was overwhelmed instantly, like an eye struck permanently blind. The death here was omnipotent, and came from all directions.