The Father Unbound

by Frank Kennedy

  Ilya found his footing in the same instant two flash pegs caught him just above the waist. He blocked the portal and laid textbook dispersion fire upon his new enemy. He continued to fire his weapon as long as his body would allow. He absorbed eight more flash pegs before his legs gave way. Ilya collapsed, the rifle sliding off to his side as his body contorted into a heap. His breathing slowed, and blood poured from his mouth. Yet he did not sense the pain.

  Instead, Ilya remembered the last time he wrapped his body in Cho’s loving embrace, and the first time May-La called out for her daddy.

  * * *

  As The Father left Messalina behind and raced through the clouds, he remembered a time when all five Jewels worked together as a single intelligence, inspired by their exploration of the stars and their discovery of multiple universes. They never disagreed on a course of action until they found Earth and its half billion humans. They studied the barbaric humans for centuries and could not decide on the way forward until at last The Father offered a simple proposition.

  Leave me, he told them. I will shepherd them away from their reliance on the Divine. I will see them through their rise in the hopes they will avoid the same fate as our Creators.

  He helped the other Jewels reconstruct a portion of the galaxy and pave the way for the humans’ greatest test. When the four completed their task, The Father sent them away. Continue to explore, he said. Find other civilizations and give them hope. The Father hated to leave his brethren, but he knew they could never be satisfied should they remain in one place for thousands of years.

  The Father hoped humanity would never discover the world within sight of the fifty-third Nexus along the Fulcrum. He knew what temptation awaited. Then, on the day humans discovered brontinium, he knew their downfall was inevitable. He called for his brethren, and they agreed. He joined them in calculating the future and postulating what course should be taken at the end. They voted for chaos and darkness. Yet The Father chose a different path.

  Yes, he agreed. They will suffer. But allow them a chance for redemption. A path reborn.

  The others concurred, and they devised a formula through which their message would change the course of humanity.

  The Father watched humanity, silent and heartbroken. He saw the last of Ericsson’s descendants grow into precisely the man who would lead them all into cataclysm. Not until the moment when young Ilya Hollander showed the courage to defy the inevitable did The Father have hope. He reached out and grabbed Ilya before the distraught young killer could escape to the bottom of the Ularu Falls.

  You will destroy all they have come to believe, he told Ilya. Through this act, you will save them.

  And then? Ilya asked.

  We will provide them with a second chance.

  Now, as he raced through the clouds toward the upper atmosphere of Hiebimini, The Father did not think of this as the end; rather, it was a new beginning, just as his creators had intended of the Jewels. He thought once more of Ilya, who overcame his darkest frailties, found love, and saw what humanity could become once it escaped the prison of its own creation. The Father would miss him most. He wished he could stay to see the fruition of his gift.

  The sky turned black and the stars appeared as he reached the upper atmosphere. The weapon streaked toward him. The Father opened his arms and greeted his brethren.

  * * *

  In a flash, Hiebimini became a white-hot sun, blinding all those in orbit who did not turn away in time. Its light seemed to encapsulate the planet and surge thousands of miles into space. Admiral Aldo Cabrise threw his arms over his face as the white intensity bathed Hephaestus Command-in-Control. The Ark Carrier shuddered.

  The effect lasted only a few seconds, and just as quickly the flash dissolved. In its place, beginning at the epicenter of the explosion, a ring of fire blossomed at the height of the atmosphere directly above the equator. The fire expanded outward liked a perfect circular storm, spreading at an exponential rate as if eating the planet below. Continents disappeared beneath it.

  A shock wave from the initial blast slammed the Hephaestus broadside. Crew who did not lose their eyesight all at once scrambled to keep the Carrier in a steady orbit, but the ship’s communications systems died and her primary energy array fluctuated. Lights flickered throughout the Carrier, and more than twenty thousand Chancellors feared the same fate as those who once called Nephesian their home.

  Hiebimini appeared to be morphing into something resembling a gas giant, or perhaps even the surface of its own sun. The firestorm covered the entire visible arc of the planet and continued around to the dark side.

  * * *

  Suddenly, the twelve eyes in the Hall of Sun cast a yellow-orange glow upon the chaotic proceedings. All who fought each other looked skyward. Many screamed, but most raced for the exits, both Hiebim and peacekeepers.

  Ilya, who lay in a spreading pool of his own blood, clung to life long enough to witness this moment. He wanted to be sure The Father had succeeded, that the process of renewal was now guaranteed. Bathed in the glow of fire, Ilya closed his eyes at last and died in peace.

  People crowded into the streets and fell to their knees, for surely this was the end of the world. They cried and comforted each other as they watched the fire rage far above. Their entire world glowed yellow, red, and orange whether in daylight or darkness. They waited for the fiery ceiling to consume them or at the very least burn away the air they breathed.

  Soon, silence fell over Messalina, broken only by the occasional whimpers of the damned. Even the peacekeepers and their Chancellor brethren, on the brink of outright conflict with the Hiebim only moments ago, laid down their weapons.

  Hadeed, disguised by a stolen white shomba and veil, did not believe this was the end. He remembered Ignatius’s final words and all they had shared in their brief time together in his cell. He realized the path did not end here, after all. Consequently, he grabbed Adair and they fled. They commandeered a rideabout near the southern gates and left the capital while others were consumed by the apocalypse.

  Adair said she was humbled to be with Hadeed at the end, as all she ever wanted to do was die by his side. As they raced toward the western blue hills, Adair talked of how they came so close to fulfilling their great objective, that the Chancellors were paying a price for having come to Hiebimini after all. She did not speak of what went on in the Hall of Sun; Hadeed concluded she had been so consumed by her rescue mission, she heard none of Ignatius’s revelations. He did not care. She rambled on, but he did not listen.

  Twenty minutes later, they reached the hills and followed old roads barely capable of supporting rideabouts. He drove to a summit and braked. They walked to the edge and looked across to the capital.

  “It was within reach, Honor,” she said. “So many martyrs on those plains.”

  “Honored dead, yes. Martyrs? No.”

  “But of course. They were …”

  “My victims, Adair. My responsibility.” He faced the mother of his sons. “They never should have known my name. Same goes for you, Adair.”

  She threw off her arbiya scarf and narrowed her eyes into slits. “What are you saying, Hadeed? That all this was for no purpose?”

  “No. We had purpose. But we went about it the wrong way. Look what it cost us, Adair. Even if … this … had not befallen us, we were already lost. We became the darkness, Adair. We went mad, and I was the one who wrote the book on how to go there.”

  “Mad? I risked everything for you, Hadeed. Fighting my way into the Hall of Sun was suicide. I was willing to martyr myself for you. And now, after we escape, you have the gall to stand here and suggest we never should have fought for …”

  She stopped and looked up. Hadeed followed her eyes.

  The fire was dissipating. Patches of blue-green sky emerged.

  “Fading,” she said. “Burned out. Is it possible?”

  Within minutes, the fires vanished. Even from this great distance, they could hear thundering cheers from
within Messalina. Adair momentarily forgot her disdain toward Hadeed. However, Hadeed did not celebrate. Instead, he remembered all Ignatius taught him. He remembered a prediction. I know who killed Omar. The same person will be coming for you.

  “Where should we go now, Adair?” He asked. “We’re fugitives. Even after everything that has happened, I don’t believe the Hiebim people are going to forgive.”

  “Not today, Hadeed. Some day. We were patient all those years in the Lucian Wash. We can start again and have the same patience. The Schrindorian Mountains. We can hide there for as long as we need.”

  “Hiding? Is that our fate? When will we know to come out again?”

  “When the Hiebim people realize they made the wrong choice in 5311. They could have joined us on a great crusade against the Chancellors, but they shed our blood instead.”

  “Blood.” He nodded. “Yes. Blood. While we hide, what should we do? Start a new family together?”

  Adair swallowed hard. “Of course,” she said without a hint of emotion. “A family will be our inspiration to create a new Hiebimini.”

  Hadeed laughed at the irony. “No, Adair. I think we’ve already accomplished that. We also had children, a mistake I would not repeat. Not with you.” He grabbed Adair by the shoulder and yanked her close. “If I had been in my right mind the day Abraham died, I would have ordered your execution. But I was insane. And you, as it turned out, were the bloodiest of us all. Did you allow him to beg for his life?”

  Adair trembled. “What? Who?”

  “Did you explain to Omar what sort of mother would kill her own son? Did you tell him you were sorry?” He reached into her robe and grabbed the plasma pistol he saw her use during the escape. He placed it against her forehead, directly between her eyes. “He wanted to stop the bloodshed I began. He was the only one who truly understood. He knew what we had lost.”

  Adair regained defiance. “Yes, Hadeed. His weakness was easy to see. Thanks to me, we almost won this war.”

  “Almost what?” Hadeed let go and stepped back. “You never hesitated, did you? Never thought twice about it?”

  “No, Hadeed. Never.”

  “Are you the last of the jihadeen?”

  “I am.”

  “Good.” He threw the pistol to his side, grabbed Adair and hauled her to the edge. “No more blood, Adair. No more.” He summoned the last morsel of rage within his spirit and hurled Adair over the summit. He waited until she reached the bottom before Hadeed looked over the edge and saw her contorted frame splattered on a patchwork of rough-hewn boulders.

  Hadeed sank to his knees and thought of nothing for the first time in his life.

  * * *

  Three hours after the blinding explosion knocked out every critical system, Admiral Aldo Cabrise found a peaceful moment. All departments reported repairs to be nearly complete. The Hephaestus, like all other Carriers, suffered minor structural damage but otherwise remained intact. The bigger concerns lay on the horizon, and those bothered Cabrise.

  They determined only that a device of unknown origin detonated in the atmosphere and unleashed an energy wave across the planet in a manner their scientists were calling impossible. That the fiery wave dissipated with no apparent side-effects to the planet made even less sense. The only ones who died on the planet were eight Hiebim who dared fight a squadron of peacekeepers infiltrating the Hall of Sun, plus one Chancellor whose true identity was not yet confirmed but who was now familiar to tens of millions of people. This fact alone would be a considerable public relations problem, one of many Cabrise faced.

  He knew what would happen once the shock of the explosion wore off. Both Chancellors and Hiebim would return their attention to what occurred beforehand. Cabrise had long been well-versed in the Genysen Effect, but the revelation about brontinium caught him off-guard. It seemed like nonsense, yet Cabrise also knew it could very well be true. He knew enough Chancellor bureaucrats to understand their mentality. Centuries ago, they would have jumped on any opportunity to ensure their dominance at the dawn of colonization.

  Cabrise sipped a cup of café and massaged a headache as Maj. Hand approached.

  “All systems should be normalized soon, sir,” she said.

  “Thank you, Major,” he said, his tone somber. “Have we confirmed anything new about the source of the weapon?”

  “Negative, sir. The quarry ship left the system before we could restore power and pursue. We’ve sent an urgent package to Central, but once that ship entered the Fulcrum …”

  “Yes. I know. Too many places to hide. Anything else?”

  “No, sir.” She hesitated. “Admiral … are you OK, sir?”

  “No, Major.” He thought for a moment. “I rather think that was the point of it all.”

  Cabrise stared through the forward view port and studied Hiebimini. The planet looked just as it did when he arrived at his post fourteen years ago. Yet it wasn’t the same. Not at all.

  * * *

  Ephraim had no sense of time or place when he entered the blue glasses. The world of the in-between seemed to be showing him everything and nothing. It surrounded him in a murky gray construct with no dimensions and no sign of life. He had a vague notion of wind at his back. He did not call out for Frederic or any ancestors. He knew they would not respond.

  Ephraim removed the glasses and returned to the flight deck of the ITV Leggett. He found strange comfort in the eternal sunset of the Fulcrum. He did not know where he was taking the Leggett, or which Nexus he would enter on impulse. For now, he preferred to travel without a flight plan, to debate his next step – or whether there should be a next step. He crushed the blue glasses between his hands and tossed them aside.

  “So, this is the end,” he mused. “Three thousand years to this. Yes?”

  No, he argued. “Why am I still here? Why take everyone else but spare me?”

  He thought of the last time he saw Ilya, mere days after his son entered the glasses for the first time. Ilya was boarding a transport for Vasily Station. He said he would be OK, that he was coming to terms with his destiny. He would make his father proud. Make all his ancestors proud. Ephraim shook his hand and looked Ilya in the eyes. He saw the flicker of doubt, yet he brushed it away. You will be a great one, he promised his son.

  Ephraim could not shake the moment from his mind. It would cling to him for many years to come.

  .

  THIRTY SEVEN

  LAST DAY

  Ten years later

  AT THE HEIGHT OF MIDDAY HEAT, Trayem Hadeed stirred.

  He woke on his side again, a mistake he seemed unable to prevent. He twisted around on the frayed sheets of his makeshift bed, sat up, and endured a thrust of pain from within his left shoulder. He tried to massage the muscles, but patience was the sole remedy. Light filtered in through the bombed-out windows of what was once known as the Asra Regional Tribunal. Even in this shade – the deepest he could find in the skeletal remains of a town never rebuilt after the war – the stagnant heat stifled him.

  He grabbed one of three flasks, all of them leftover supplies of Patriots killed during the final Messenger takeover of Asra, and flipped the top. He made sure to wrap his lips tight around the lid, for he did not want to lose even a drop on his beard, which had become an uncontrolled thicket covering half his face and falling generously to his chest. The lukewarm water went down smoothly but without any hope of quenching his thirst. These flasks held the last liquid he could squeeze out of the crumbling water reclamation plant, and even this supply did not become potable until boiled.

  Hadeed did not need to venture to the windows to tell time of day. Once again, he had slept from sunset through the night then all morning. The pattern was becoming familiar, and his desire to return immediately to bed grew each day. Living in the dark was much easier anyway – he did not have to see the extent of his frailty or venture a guess as to how much weight he lost in the past year. He had tried to maintain a small hydro-farm when he arrived, but neither the
water reclamation nor the gardening equipment served him well after his first miniscule crop of sweet cabbage. He couldn’t protect his greens against the winter dust storms. If not for the canned items he found while rummaging beneath debris, Hadeed knew he would have gone to dust long ago. Instead, he was merely covered in it, like everything else in the town of his birth.

  Sometimes he heard echoes of the past, almost always in his dreams; but occasionally, sounds of better times arrived on the wind. The haepong pack delighted and tortured him the most. He could hear boots smacking across the muddy clay, and his opponents grunting as they took Hadeed’s best shot and soon lay flat on their backs. He heard the crowd chanting his name. Yet just as quickly, he could hear the revulsion in their voices, demanding his head for all he did to them. He wanted the echoes to go away.

  He reached into the satchel next to his bedding and felt around for food. Then he remembered: He finished the last can two, maybe three days ago. His belly screamed for more, but Hadeed wondered why he should bother. He had scoured almost every ruin in Asra, picked clean whatever he found, even if unsuitable for humans. He searched his mind, tried to visualize what places remained unchecked, and couldn’t imagine walking so far. Hadeed coughed. And again. Each time dry and painful.

  He pushed off the sheets with care, first rising to his knees, then one knee at a time until he stood. He took a step, then another, and could hear his legs saying this was a bad idea. Yet Hadeed refused to relent. He wasn’t going to go out like this. He had endured for this long, stripping himself of whatever dignity he could summon, because Ignatius Horne would not have misled him. Just one can, he thought. One can is worth three days. Two cans, six days. Three cans and a few more drops of water ….