He was too much of a pragmatist to idealize the failed Seraphim quest to create Utopia. It had failed, miserably, ending in their own extinction. But now, more than ever, he understood the impulse which had driven them to turn their backs on both empires.
“Nobody protected this world." He looked out at the smattering of military uniforms. Hybrids, like him, who recognized a lot more than a few million civilians had died that day. “They insisted they were a peaceful planet and didn't need protecting. All they wanted was to stay out of the intrigues of the other empires. They were above it, and they viewed our little dramas with disgust.”
It was a rhetorical question, really. If somebody were to ever hand him a planet, far from the influence of Shay'tan and his father, what would he do differently? Defend them? How? His biological father had tried to build a Third Empire and been crushed between the other two, uniting Hashem and Shay'tan in rare agreement to hit the rebel base with a planet-killer. It was an act of genocide which had come back to bite the Emperor in the backside when his mother had reacted to his biological father's death by willing herself to die.
Hide? Until the Seraphim had been slaughtered, it had been impossible to even find the Seraphim homeworld. But now everyone in the galaxy knew where pirates had destroyed them. Gone. The Seraphim who were his ancestors were gone. Extinct. Just as, unable to reproduce, his bloodline was now going extinct. He was the last of his kind.
“They wanted to be left alone," Lucifer's voice was almost a whisper. "So we left them alone. -I- left them alone. It was within my power while my father was away to station warships in this sector to protect them, but I didn't." He stared at the empty green fields that were being reclaimed as forest. "I would like to say it was because we respected their wishes. But truth be told, we thought they had nothing to offer us. No resources. No trade. They were a completely self-enclosed world who wanted nothing to do with us, and we wanted nothing to do with them in return.”
Lucifer closed his eyes and caught his breath. He could almost feel the screams of the dying as he spoke. Zepar had told him horror stories about the genetic weakness the Seraphim had deliberately bred into their sub-species, ensuring their entire population would be tied to one another spiritually so that harm to one member would be harm to them all. Nobody had ever dreamed someone would intentionally use that defect to destroy them. He remembered his own mother's sadness even though she'd never stepped foot upon this world.
“My mother's people came from this world." He looked down at his empty hands. Hands which lacked the cue cards he usually relied upon when making speeches. Today's speech was coming straight from his heart. He decided, just for once, to speak the truth his father didn't want told. “As a species, the Seraphim were so close to genetic perfection they were expected to ascend to take the place of the Wheles.”
Guilt assailed his consciousness. Why had he left the Seraphim sub-species alone instead of enticing them back into the Alliance? Why had he allowed his anger at this species, whose foolish romantic notions had cost him the life of his mother, to cloud his judgment? He'd refused to seek diplomatic ties with this world after Hashem had disappeared and eleven million people had paid with their lives.
“Perhaps that's why they were all killed?" Lucifer bowed his head. He had no more words to describe his sense of loss, both for the Seraphim, and for his own species. “I would like to observe a moment of silence.”
The ceremony broke up as soon as he was finished. A few reporters asked questions, but the media circus which usually dogged his every step was as conspicuously absent today as the people who should have been living here and were not. Nobody cared. Just as his father didn't care that the hybrids were dying out.
An elderly couple, well into their 900th year, sobbed in the background, their black-brown wings and dark hair betraying them as two of the few surviving full-blooded Seraphim who had been off-world when it had happened. They shakily made their way over to where he stood giving a quote to a junior reporter awe-struck the Prime Minister had made an unexpected appearance. The couple didn't approach him the way a citizen normally did the Alliance's highest elected official, but with that strange ease of equality he could remember his mother practiced even though she'd never stepped foot upon the Seraphim homeworld.
“We knew your grandmother." The elderly woman shook his hand. Her dark hair was peppered with grey, as were her dark wings. The old woman's skin was wrinkled and paper-thin with age.
“It was tragic,” the elderly man's hands trembled with age. “What Zuriel did to her … ouch!”
The elderly woman elbowed her mate in the ribs.
“I never knew them,” Lucifer said. “They both died before I was born."
His mother had never told him why his ancestors had been cast off of this planet. Perhaps she'd not known herself? He only knew the Seraphim considered it shameful to not follow your mate into the dreamtime when they died. Should he ask the elderly couple what had really happened? No. It only rubbed salt in the old wound of his mother abandoning him for a mate who had abandoned her as soon as he'd impregnated her. He remembered her sadness…
“The genocide was not your fault,” the man's voice was wispy and thin. “We never dreamed pirates would come all the way out here. This planet was chosen because its only resource was its fertile soil. Without people to till it, it's worthless.”
Lucifer noted the hollow circles beneath the old man's eyes. He was dying. The anger he felt towards his mother dissolved.
“Soon we'll reunite with our children and grandchildren,” the woman took her husband's hand. “We don't wish to be a part of the material realm anymore.”
“I can feel them waiting for us,” the man's eyes looked right through Lucifer as though he were staring someplace far beyond. “Just but on the other side."
Lucifer's wings trembled. Those were the exact same words his mother had whispered with her dying breath. He looked away so the couple wouldn't see his eyes were too bright and shiny for someone as above-the-fray as the Alliance Prime Minister. The elderly Seraphim man had one foot in the dreamtime. It wouldn't be long before whatever ailment was eating away at him killed him.
“Come, dear,” the woman said. “We have an appointment to keep.”
Lucifer watched them shuffle into the fading sunlight. The frail wife helped the even frailer husband along, the last remnants of a species that was now extinct. Just as the rest of the hybrids were about to go extinct.
His comms pin had been blinking all afternoon. Zepar. Trying to get him off to some diplomatic mission with an emissary of the Tokoloshe Kingdom. Screw Zepar! Keying in a different comms frequency, he called the commander of his diplomatic carrier.
“Colonel Marbas,” Lucifer said. “Tell Zepar I'm spending the night down here on the planet.”
“Zepar has been frantic to get hold of you, Sir,” Colonel Marbas said. “He was furious when we told him you ordered us not to provide transport down to the planet.”
“I don't answer to Zepar,” Lucifer said. “I'll be back in the morning. You're not to transport him anywhere. Got that?" He cut Marbas off before he could give him an argument.
A few reporters lit candles and lay flowers along the long, black wall before getting into their shuttle craft and departing. There were no accommodations on this planet. No hotels. No restaurants. No stores to get food. No people. Just the overgrown skeletons of burned out houses, clustered into little communities where people had once lived and worked together in close-knit family units and empty fields.
For once in his overly-busy, overly-scheduled life, Lucifer was alone with his thoughts. Sitting on the ground with his back against the cold, black granite memorial, he encircled himself in his wings and contemplated the impending demise of his own species.
“Is this spot taken?” a voice rumbled.
Looking up, he saw a middle-aged Leonid male. Lieutenant-General Valepor, out of uniform and dressed as a civilian. His golden leonine eyes reflected the sc
ant glow of the moonlight.
“It's an empty planet." Lucifer didn't feel like company, but it was inappropriate to object. This was a public memorial. He adjusted his wings so that the general could sit.
Valepor sat down and didn't speak, his tail twitching thoughtfully. They both stared out at the darkness, alone in their thoughts.
“Mine was the first Alliance ship to arrive at the scene,” Valepor finally said. “We didn't even know this planet was here until we received a distress call." A low growl rumbled in the Leonid commander's throat. "I've seen a lot of terrible things in my lifetime, but this was the worst. They slaughtered every living sentient creature and burned the buildings to the ground. Most of the bodies were so badly burned we were never able to identify them.”
“Was there any indication of a reason?” Lucifer asked. He knew there wasn’t, but sometimes things didn't make it into the official report.
“This was not about resources,” Valepor said. “Somebody wanted to make an example of these people. Shay’tan only butchers those who piss him off and subjugates the rest. This was not his style.”
“The sole eyewitness said it was Sata’an soldiers,” Lucifer said.
“That’s what the three dead lizard-soldiers were wearing that he killed,” Valepor said. “But the uniforms were the old style. Out of date. It took us forever to get the kid to even speak. He almost took out half a squadron with that sword he was carrying when we tried to remove him from his mother’s body. The sword was bigger than he was, but he was determined to protect her.”
“Mikhail." Resentment clenched at his gut at the mere mention of the boy's name. Another one of his father's pet projects! After the 51-Pegasi-4 genocide, Hashem had returned from the ascended realms and started managing his empire again. Only Hashem was no longer interested in Lucifer because his mother had rejected him! Now he wanted Jophiel! And to run a million genetic tests on the first full-blooded Seraphim to come off of 51-Pegasi-4 not because he was defective, but because the kid had nowhere else to go and was too young to tell the Emperor ‘no.’
“I'm still stationed in the sector,” Valepor said. “It seemed right to come today. It's disappointing that so few did. ”
“My Chief of Staff was spitting fire,” Lucifer admitted. “No PR value in coming to a dead planet. He's still under the illusion my father’s breeding program will save the day.”
“Bullshit,” Valepor said softly. “It hasn’t worked for us. I've managed to sire one pair of cubs during all my years of trying. Most of the poor guys now can’t even do that. We are going the way of the Wheles.”
“We'll be right behind you,” Lucifer said. “I've pleaded with Hashem to pay attention, but he says he doesn't know how to fix us. He's already put in an order for all new equipment manufactured for your carriers to fit Spiderid physiology.”
“I don't mind the bugs,” Valepor said with a shrug. “They pull their weight. I just don't like the fact that this is a problem we can't fight! It's not our nature to go down without a battle.”
“The Seraphim didn't fight their killers?” Lucifer asked. “Why? Why would they just lie down and allow themselves to be exterminated?”
“They even slaughtered the Sata’anic civilians." Valepor pointed to a segment of the black granite wall which contained Sata'anic names. “Shay’tan keeps the females confined to the Hades cluster, so once they defect, they have no hope of ever starting a family. Many were adopted into Seraphim families as farm labor. I found a lizard person curled around a Seraphim child, trying to use his body as a shield to save her. They killed him. And then they killed the little girl. But not one of them fought back. Not even the non-Seraphim. Only the boy fought back and survived.”
“Utopia is great in theory,” Lucifer said. “But in real life, there are too many people waiting to reach out and take it from you so they can make a fast buck." He thoughtfully twirled a snowy white feather, a nervous habit he had picked up from his mother. "Like me. I'm as greedy as any of them.”
“And yet you're the only one who came here today,” Valepor said.
Silence stretched out between them. Yes. Why had he come?
“Our races are dying,” Lucifer said. “When we go, we’re going to drag the Alliance with us. It seemed the most appropriate place to spend the afternoon.”
They sat in silence until the general's comms pin chirped. His transport had arrived. They shook hands and parted ways, leaving Lucifer alone with the ghosts which haunted this world. He dreamt of them. Fitful dreams of Seraphim whose mates refused to follow them into the dreamtime and a dark, evil thing which devoured everything in its path.
The next morning, he found the elderly Seraphim couple beneath the spreading branches of a great tree. A headstone commemorated the graves of a family of related individuals. The couple had lain down together on a blanket, curled up in each other’s arms, and died. Lucifer called his ship and ordered them to send a crew to bury them exactly where they'd willed themselves to die. He didn't report it to the official authorities. That would necessitate an autopsy, an inquiry, and the couple being buried in separate coffins someplace other than with the family they'd obviously come here to rejoin. Separating them seemed … wrong. It gave him conflicting emotions that he really didn't want to deal with right now.
He gave Zepar crap about every single cockamamie political scheme he proposed that day. He'd suffered from migraines for almost as long as he could remember. Mumbling an apology about not feeling well, Lucifer headed down to his personal quarters to sleep it off.
Chapter 42
Late-April – 3,390 BC
Earth: Village of Assur
Colonel Mikhail Mannuki’ili
Mikhail
So far, every attempt to find a marketable trade had met with failure. The goats the Ubaid kept for meat and milk ran away every time Mikhail rustled his wings. He had no idea how to shape pottery, work with wood, or any craftsmanship related to trade. An apprenticeship with the flintknapper had seemed logical as it only stood to reason he'd be able to create weapons, not just use them, but the man had sent him packing after he'd shattered one too many of the precious obsidian. Until he got his ship working, there was only one task he'd proved capable of. Pure, brute, hard physical labor
Every rainy season, the Hiddekel River rose above its banks and deposited mud onto Ubaid fields. The scent of fertile muck filled the air, pungent and sweet in a land with scant rainfall. Shallow floodwaters lapped at the rocks he'd helped Immanu clear as a levy. The trick was to get the seed into the ground as soon as the waters receded so that the wet, moist silt would sprout the crops. It was time to earn his keep.
“You must take the seed and scatter it … like this." Needa grabbed a handful from the basket and scattered it in a practiced motion.
Ninsianna's mother was every bit as beautiful as she was, with the same curvaceous figure, wavy black hair, high cheekbones and gently curved nose that her daughter bore, but unlike Ninsianna, Needa rarely smiled. This was not because she had a sour personality, but a symptom of the constant worries she carried around like a basket of rocks. Other people's illnesses and threats to public health were always on Needa's mind.
It was a heavy responsibility, being the village's only full-fledged healer, one he'd made even more difficult when he'd lured off her only source of reliable help to save his life. It was the reason, he now suspected, that Immanu had been willing to force his dreamy daughter's hand in marriage to the son of the village chief. They needed Ninsianna to stay here in the village, not be lured away by some distant tribe, such as his.
Now that Ninsianna was back, she was busy lightening her mother's load and had little time to spend with him. How had she managed with Ninsianna gone? Immanu might pull advice from the gods out of thin air, but it was Needa's blunt pragmatism which really guided the family … and the larger village.
Now she had a new responsibility to oversee … him. Her new 'son' was proving clueless about how to ply a trade. H
e was determined not to add another burden to his new 'mother's' ridiculously over-scheduled plate. He would pull his own weight, so help him gods, even if it killed him! He grabbed a handful of seed and dumped it with great conviction upon the fertile silt.
“No! You're wasting it!” Needa snapped. “If you plant the seeds too close together, they'll strangle each other out. They are like children! They need room to move and breathe.”
He tried again, replicating Needa's scattering motion. She grunted approval and pointed to the next section of the field. She was a tough task-master, with a poker face that could rival his own, carefully schooled blank expression, but she often broke that expression with an outburst of anger or a rare smile. If he had to think of one word to describe his new ‘mother,’ it would be mercurial.
Her demeanor reminded him of someone he must have known. He could feel the memory lurking just beneath the surface of his mind, but the elusive fragment wouldn't break free. Whoever the person was, his instinctive response to Needa's cajoling was to stand at attention and shout 'yes, sir!' It made him feel right at home.
“You move too slow,” Needa grumbled. “At this rate, we'll still be planting seeds come harvest time.”
Mikhail was not sure what caused the impulse to come over him, but he threw a handful of seed into the air and flapped his wings, creating a wind that scattered the seeds into a wide area.
“Will that do?" He feigned his most deadpan expression.
“That will work,” Needa grunted. “Now get moving. We have a lot more field left to plant.”
Needa's grudging approval meant more to him than the three dozen females who stared owl-eyed at him every time he moved about the village. At last! Something he could do to pull his own weight! With a mighty rustle of feathers, he grabbed another handful from the basket and spread the seeds far and wide.
Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 22