Kreon gave it no thought.
He had but one task to accomplish right now; after that, the mob might as well take him.
Smoke billowed up as Sera’s pyre flared brighter. He’d brought her up here, to the highest rooftop of the Temple Mount — so that at least she’d have a view.
It was ridiculous, really. Such sentimentality was not normally a part of his make up. But the blows he’d been dealt recently had hit home mercilessly, relentlessly…
And he was cracking under the pressure.
He could feel it; all the power, all the belief, all the determination that went into his facade — it was being crushed like an eggshell.
It was simply too much.
He’d dedicated his entire life to the Wardens. He’d fought and killed, learned and schemed, and passed judgement on more souls than almost anyone alive. No sacrifice had been too great; he’d lost his wife, his daughter, and most of what made him human in the endless struggle. All for them. All for their sacred cause; To protect humanity. From itself… and from everything else. Yet now, the Wardens were facing extinction. Civil war had torn them apart, killing his few remaining allies, and leaving the cradle of humanity — the precious homeworld Earth — open to attack from all quarters.
Three-hundred years…
He’d devoted much of that career collecting and securing the most dangerous artefacts in the galaxy. Now they were scattered to the solar wind, blown out of the Folly’s docking bays to mingle with a million pieces of frozen wreckage somewhere near the orbit of Saturn.
And in all that time, he’d loved precisely one person. Now she lay in front of him, her funeral pyre burning bright against the deepening sky.
It was a staggering trifecta of loss. To compound it, his daughter Àurea was about to embark on an interminable task, the re-establishment of government across all of Lemurian space — whilst he was headed deep into enemy territory, to fight a battle he had no possibility of winning.
He wasn’t even sure he wanted to win. Not anymore.
When he’d begun chasing the monsters they’d been an archaeological curiosity. Now, impossibly, they were poised to wipe out all life in the galaxy. There was no way to stop them, no way to fight them. He’d never even seen one.
But they were consuming entire planets as though they were entrées.
What could one man, even a Warden of the First Circle, do against that?
There was barely any of the First Circle left.
It felt alarmingly like the end. Everything he’d ever cared for, or worked towards… one by one, they were all being stripped from him. Would he have the courage to continue without them?
Was there any point in trying?
If the universe was working this hard to ruin him, perhaps he should take the hint.
Death was inevitable.
Why fight it?
What could he possibly stand to achieve?
The sound from the door had become a screech. Tools were being used on the metal; only seconds remained. Àurea moved closer, looking grim. Even now, she didn’t put an arm around him; their relationship had never been like that. They were both too disciplined, too independent. Maybe that was why they struggled with each other.
Her father’s daughter, and her mother’s. My strength, and Sera’s ferocity.
It made for an explosive combination.
He could have been the one to initiate contact, but he didn’t. Instead, he stared into the flames that obscured Sera’s mangled body.
And wished they could trade places.
“We have to go.” Àurea’s voice sounded small, but resolute. She was caught here, between the girl she’d been and the warrior she’d become. Kreon could sense that, much like him, she dreaded moving past this moment.
“Our victory,” he said instead. With one hand, he indicated the chaos swirling below them. From this vantage point he could see the city burning; crowds of looters had broken into the surrounding buildings, destroying as they went. Bodies lay in the streets, killed in the fighting or simply trampled by the seething mass of humanity that roiled through the city like a fever burning in its veins. Explosions blossomed, claiming yet more lives; it was hard to imagine there would be anything left by morning. “I do not believe it is worth the price we paid.”
Àurea hissed at him, her frustration boiling over. “Be that as it may, we have to get off this rooftop now. If we are forced to kill innocent civilians to escape, we become no better than the tyrants we brought down.”
“Go,” Kreon told her. “I will defend your mother. My morals are more flexible than yours.”
“She’s dead,” Àurea snapped. “What more protection does she need?” She grabbed hold of his arm, trying to pull him away. It availed her nothing, of course; Kreon’s humanity had been amongst the first casualties of this job. He was far too heavy to be moved.
With a shriek of tearing metal, the door gave way. Kreon felt Àurea tense beside him, and he turned to face the threat. Men and women in ragged clothes ran out, each wielding some form of blunt instrument. Kreon’s fingers twitched towards his rifle, but he would never be able to shoot these people. Likewise, he left his grav-staff securely fastened to his back. It was a brutal weapon, capable of inflicting horrendous damage; he would not bludgeon anyone to a gruesome death while Sera burned not three feet away.
“Father!” Àurea cried. She looked desperate; she’d seen his lack of interest, had realised that he intended to offer no resistance to the mob. Grabbing his arm again, she shook it. “Father, please!”
The group had been edging forward slowly, not sure what they’d stumbled across. But their numbers were growing, as more poorly-dressed citizens piled out through the doorway.
Kreon had the sudden, crazy thought that he could fling himself onto Sera’s pyre, to burn beside her and let the galaxy be damned. He didn’t fear the pain; he’d lived in constant agony every minute for more years than he could remember. But Àurea…
Such an end would be hardest on her.
And he couldn’t leave her.
Not yet.
“Eleanor.” He spoke into the comm-chip on the lapel of his battered trench coat. “Some assistance, if you please.”
The assassin’s comm signal came back immediately; hardly surprising, given that she was sitting in the shuttle on the next pad over.
“I can’t land over there,” she cautioned, “not without squashing some pedestrians.” The shuttle rose into the air with a roar of engines, causing half the crowd to turn and hurl insults at it.
“Then please collect us on the way down to the plaza.”
He didn’t wait for her confirmation; the brief moment of distraction was all he required. Squatting, he scooped Àurea up into his arms, cradling her like an injured child.
“Wha—?” she cried out in surprise.
And Kreon leaped. The power in his mechanical leg sent them arcing up over Sera’s pyre, the flames flickering harmlessly beneath them. The edge of the landing pad swept past too, his trajectory gauged to clear it, and they were in free-fall.
Wind rushed up at them, a thousand vertical feet of fresh air all that separated them from the plaza below.
But only for a second.
Ella’s shuttle slid in beneath them, and Kreon landed hard enough to dent the hull. His often-abused leg took the brunt of the impact, as it had done on countless occasions before.
One of these days, it would fail. The same could be said for the rest of his artificially-sustained organs; the last person in the galaxy with the knowledge to replace them was long dead.
Kreon was more acutely aware than ever that he was living on borrowed time.
“You could have warned me!” Àurea shouted, as the shuttle swung gently away from the temple. She slid out of his arms, her armoured boots magnetising to the hull.
“Where would be the fun in that?” He forced a tired smile onto his face for her benefit.
“I… I thought for a moment that you were
going to join her.”
Kreon lowered his gaze, afraid that if she looked into his eyes she’d see just how close she’d come to the truth. “Where would be the fun in that,” he murmured.
At a safe distance from the temple, the shuttle slowed to a hover.
They climbed down to the airlock, as opening the main hatch required the ramp to be deployed. Once inside, Kreon made his way to the cockpit to thank Ella for her deft handling of the pick up. As a general rule, he wasn’t too fond of assassins. He’d fought them on occasion, even killed the odd one, not that it was something he advertised. In some ways their ethics mirrored his own; they would do whatever was required to achieve their goal. By law they were bound to avoid collateral damage as far as possible, but they weren’t afraid of breaking some eggs when the mission required it.
Despite his initial misgivings, Ella had proved loyal and extremely resourceful. Her attraction to Tristan was both a blessing and a curse, and ultimately it had sealed her fate; sooner or later the White Priestesses would come for her. Even Tristan’s mother hadn’t been able to hide from them forever, and she’d been granted secret asylum on Earth.
Kreon had a horrible feeling that the next funeral they attended would be Ella’s.
“Excellent timing,” he commended her, bracing himself against the back of the navigator’s seat.
“Glad to be of service milord,” she replied.
“No need for that,” he told her. “You are one of us now. You have proved yourself more than worthy of a position on my crew.”
She glanced back at him. “Am I… really part of the crew?” her eyes sparkled with what he took to be genuine excitement. He sighed. Kids these days. Although by his calculations Ella had been born sometime around the late 1800s in Earth years, she was still barely a third of his age.
“Do not feel pressured into accepting this position,” he cautioned. “The perks are few, and the pay is… there is no pay.”
“That’s fine,” Ella said, waving his concerns aside. “You couldn’t afford me anyway.” And she turned back to the controls.
When he returned to the shuttle’s modest crew compartment, Àurea was strapped into a seat with her head in her hands. A portable monitor next to her was replaying scenes from the ground. Hordes of tiny people flowed like ants around the temple, bringing fire and destruction to each section in turn.
“I didn’t think it would be like this,” she admitted.
“Regime change is rarely tranquil,” Kreon said, taking the seat next to her. “These people have lived under the Church’s oppression their entire lives. Your Ingumend have been fighting constantly, but the ordinary citizens never got a chance to fight. It was inevitable that their frustration would overflow. But the violence will be short-lived. Their anger will expend itself, and they will seek safety and stability in the familiar. It is precisely this effect that opposition leaders use to take control; you must be ready when the time comes, or another faction may beat you to it.”
“We are as ready as anyone can be in all this,” she said. “My network is reporting similar scenes across a hundred worlds. The AIs have locked down every base and building controlled by the Church, including all their weapons and vehicles. We’re lucky, really. Imagine how much worse this would be if that crowd was armed.”
Kreon leaned back in his seat and ran a hand over his scarred scalp. “The result would be the same. Only the mess would be proportionally larger.”
She looked at him then, studying him with her head cocked to one side. “Father? What happened back there?”
He closed his eyes. He wanted to lie to her, to tell her it was merely a moment of madness brought on by grief. The truth was far less palatable… but if anyone deserved the truth, it was his daughter.
“I am losing hope,” he said quietly. “I was unable to save your mother, and I am unable to save the rest of us. These things we call the Black Ships, Àurea — they’re too ancient, too vast, for us to have any chance of defeating them. At first I hoped to discover more about their nature — to find a weakness I could exploit. But all I have discovered is that every species that has come into contact with them has been extinguished. Most of them seemed to know little more than we do… If the Kharash could not survive, I see little chance that we will fare better.”
She was quiet for a moment, absorbing this. “What will you do?”
“The only thing I can. I will travel into Siszar space and attempt to enlist their aid. Quite what I aim to accomplish remains a mystery to me. In all probability the point is moot; once the Siszar discover that we cannot help them, I fully expect them to tear us apart.”
Àurea gripped his wrist. “Then don’t go! There is work for you here, helping me to rebuild. Lives to save. It could be years before the Black Ships threaten us directly. Centuries, even.”
“I wish I could believe that. But the attacks are increasing in frequency, and have proved impossible to predict. I must do what I can, even though I fear it is futile. These Siszar have been our allies; we would not have survived this long without the Empress’ help. I cannot refuse her plea.”
Àurea was silent for several long seconds. When she spoke, her voice was small. “I believe in you, father. You always find a way.”
Kreon didn’t waste his breath trying to correct her. Her confidence in him was touching, if hopelessly naive.
“You’ll find a way,” she continued, “because saving the galaxy has always been your destiny. No-one is better equipped for such a challenge. You will face this enemy, and you will conquer it. You will make the galaxy safe again — not just for you and me, but for your granddaughter.”
Kreon blinked. Between the endless battles, incarceration, torment, and tragedy, he’d forgotten all about little Ana. The memory of her wrapping her scrawny arms around him brought a measure of warmth into his chest that he hadn’t noticed he was missing. Hadn’t noticed, or hadn’t cared.
And all of a sudden, Sera’s final act made sense. Trading her own life for that of her daughter, this strange Lemurian warrior-woman who’d so recently fallen back into their lives, was a bitter pill for him to swallow. But Sera wasn’t just saving Àurea; she was saving Àurea for Ana. So that the girl would not experience the anguish of loss that had so haunted Sera.
And as he thought about it, the realisation came to him that he would have done the same.
This life had stripped him of everything he valued, but there was still hope.
If not for him, then for his legacy.
My granddaughter…
Even in his mind, the word sounded strange.
He smiled in spite of himself.
***
Docking with the Folly allowed Kreon to evaluate the battle station’s condition.
It was dire.
The amount of damage she’d sustained was horrendous; only the sheer scale of the ship meant there was anything left to come back to. Autonomous repair bots drifted here and there, making spot-welds to seams that were split in a hundred places. Like everything else the Folly had once contained, there were too few of them left to be of much use.
Loader had followed them up from the planet under his own power. Though too far away for Kreon to reach with his paltry Gift, the talos showed up clearly on the shuttle’s sensors, which seemed to register him as some kind of guided missile. Loader must also have been appalled at the damage to the Folly; he veered off to join the external repair crew without comment.
Only one landing bay remained functional. Kreon was used to seeing Wayfinder docked inside it, taking up most of the available deck space. Her absence was yet another blow. He’d been forced to abandon the ship in a far off system, and she was currently making her way back here at best possible speed. The old ship had once belonged to his father; she was one more thing he dearly loved, which he was about to lose. Voluntarily this time, but he felt the pangs of loss all the same.
If Wayfinder didn’t arrive before he left, the chances of him seeing her again
were slim indeed.
Kreon was pacing the bridge when Tris returned from Earth. Askarra alerted him, and he met Àurea and Ella in the docking bay where the Portal was located. His granddaughter Ana was one of the first to come through. She threw herself at her mother with an excited squeal, while he moved to intercept the first of the refugees. He wasn’t prepared for the tackle from behind; Ana crashed into him like a miniature ferrobeast, wrapping her arms around his waist. If he hadn’t been mostly made of metal, she’d have flattened him. He reached back and patted her head awkwardly. She was named for him, he remembered, as well as her grandmother; Anakreon Serafine. She could grow up to be the best of both of them.
Of course, that meant she was destined to be quite a handful.
Tris had evidently made multiple trips trough the Portal, shepherding people that were struggling with their fear. It was an unnatural and unnerving experience, but one that these people would never need to repeat.
Once Kreon pried the child loose from his legs, he made his way over to his apprentice with a single question on his mind. “Where is Kyra?”
“Ah.” Tris looked up at him, clearly concerned about something. “She’s coming. Lukas, too. They’re bringing some, ah, special guests.”
Kreon frowned at the boy. “There were complications?”
“Yes!” Tris brightened. “Two of them, as it happens. Look, here they come now.”
Lukas had just emerged, supporting a scrawny looking man in clothing so filthy Kreon could only hazard a guess at its original colour. Kyra followed a few seconds later, leading a gaunt woman with restraints around her wrists.
Kreon favoured Kyra with a glare. She was the most capable person he’d ever worked with, and after so many years together, he considered her to be that rarest of things: a true friend.
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