Imperator

by Timothy Ellis

  George and Grace confirmed their orders, and the hollos dropped.

  I closed my eyes, and concentrated on both girls.

  “Amanda, Aleesha. I need you on the ship coming to get you as fast as you can. We have another mission to do.”

  “Been expecting it, Jon” thought Amanda.

  “Waiting for the shuttle,” added Aleesha.

  “Stay on different ships.”

  “Duh!” they thought together.

  I let the connection lapse.

  “Get me the four stars,” I said to Jane, and a few moments later, their hollos popped up.

  I looked from Bigglesworth to Jedburgh, to Harriman, and finally Wellington.

  “I’m leaving on a mission only I can do. I’m taking Chaos and Mayhem with me. And the twins. James, you have the overall command in my absence. Consider yourself Imperator pro-tem. And don’t argue. The four of you can run this war on your own if need be, and you James are senior, so you get the brevet fifth star.”

  They all tried to ask where I was going and why, but I cut them off.

  “There’s a reason Kali gave me the power she did. It comes with responsibility. I fucked up, and it needs fixing. What, isn’t your concern. You know what you need to do. I trust you to do it.”

  “How long will you be away?” asked James.

  “I don’t know. However long it is, deal with what needs dealing with.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  He saluted, the others followed, and I was forced to return it. The hollos vanished, and I turned to find Aline behind me, with her team behind her.

  “So where are we going?” she asked.

  I ignored her, and looked at her team instead.

  “Time to get off people. As soon as we get to Haven, Jane will shuttle you over. You get some time off while Aline and I go do this thing.”

  “No,” said Groves. “We took on the job of having your back, no matter where said back went. This is no different.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Is this a suicide mission, Jon?” asked Aline.

  “Could be.”

  The lot of them grinned at me.

  Forty Seven

  The fate of the universe came down to twelve people, four AI’s, two higher beings, and a cat.

  And that was because I couldn’t get six of them to leave.

  Except it wasn’t twelve people after all. It was twelve plus the rest of the alpha team, so eighteen people.

  The three ships rendezvoused over Gold Coast. The Excalibur pilot had cycled his ship through BigMother, and launched again before we left. I’d reached Haven first, and decided not to wait, telling George and Grace to follow us on.

  We shuttled down to my island for a BBQ late dinner. Which is when I found the rest of the team had gone with each twin. Even Annabelle was with George, and she was supposed to be in command of an invasion force.

  She cut my protest off, informing me she’d been ordered to come by Vonda, who’d taken command of her division personally. The rest of them had all passed their commands onto their seconds. I knew damned well Vonda had done no such thing as ordering Annabelle, but instead had just bowed to the inevitable. For the rest, it was a matter of training their next in commands, by putting them in command unexpectedly. Or that was the official version anyway.

  All very rational. And all a load of horse hockey. Predictably, it was BA who spelled it out.

  “Damnit Jon! We’re the ALPHA TEAM. We go in the shit end, and we go in together.”

  “But…”

  “No buts, Jon,” said Alana.

  “We know you think this is a suicide mission,” said Alison.

  “You don’t even know what the mission is yet!” I countered.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Agatha, quietly.

  “We all go,” said Abigail, “or no-one goes.”

  “We told you that the last time you tried to pull a stunt like this on your own,” said Annabelle.

  And they had. The fact we’d almost died seemed to have been forgotten. Would have died had it not been for an intervention to prevent us dying. I didn’t think there’d be any intervention this time.

  I sighed, walked off, and sat in the sand a good way down the beach from them. Aline came and sat next to me, putting her head on my shoulder, and with Angel flopped down in front of me, we watched the sunset.

  When I rose, I found all of them in two rows behind us.

  I told them what needed to be done.

  I told them how dangerous it was.

  Amanda finally spoke.

  “They already knew that, Jon.”

  I raised eyebrows at her, but it was obvious from the faces of THE team, even if Aline’s team hadn't known.

  “We were standing behind you,” said Aleesha.

  “Where?”

  “Back in 1969,” said Amanda. “You and Thirteen were sitting in front of the table of nebulae avatars, and we were standing behind you.”

  “The whole time?”

  “Yes,” said Aleesha.

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “We thought you knew,” said Amanda.

  I shook my head.

  “Well, that explains that,” said Alison.

  I looked around at them all, old friends, and new ones. And sighed again. Someone obvious was missing.

  “You may as well stop hiding, Thirteen.”

  There was a pause, during which I thought I’d guessed wrong, and he appeared behind everyone. The surprise was, he was carrying Max, who he placed on the ground. Max looked confused at being on sand, with a lot of strange people around, until he saw Angel, and ran over to her. The two of them started licking each other.

  “I figured you’d be calling on me.”

  “We’ll need One as well.”

  “She knows. Kali made that very obvious.”

  “Do we need Kali?” asked Amanda.

  “No. I’d have to give Kali her sceptre back. And that would be fatal.”

  Thirteen looked a bit shocked.

  “Hell no, you don’t want to do that. Why do you think there’s a black hole at the center of the galaxy?”

  “Kali did that?” asked Annabelle.

  “Not intentionally. But yes. I’ve heard stories of whole galaxies being destroyed because she tried to do something herself. It’s why she has a mortal carry the damned thing for her. Even when they do momentous things with it, they don’t tend to rip the guts out of the galaxy in the process.”

  “She’s done that before?” I asked.

  “Apparently. Not recently though. But going back a half dozen billion years, and yes, I’m told there were some fireworks. No-one quite knows how many billion trillion beings had a bad day that last time. But hey, nothing was lost. It just took a while to form stars again.”

  “And the black hole?”

  “The way I’ve heard it put, pile driver to crack a nut, sort of thing. Or maybe using a nuke to level a house. You get the idea anyway. Kali doesn’t do anything small. Which is why she uses people like you.”

  “So there have been others?”

  “Countless. Across countless galaxies. But most of them merely hold onto the thing, and it gives them a personal boost without anyone realizing it. You’re something different. You and Thorn.”

  “Where is Thorn? Do you know?”

  “No. But you’ll find out in due course.”

  “Assuming we survive this.”

  “There is that, of course.”

  “I assume we need these?” said Amanda, and I looked to find her and Aleesha holding their swagger sticks.

  Thirteen looked amazed.

  “That isn’t supposed to be possible.”

  “What isn’t?” asked Aleesha.

  “Those.”

  “Why not?” asked Alison.

  “It was dangerous enough having two iterations of the sceptre so close when Jon and Thorn were together. But three of them? Kali must be losing it.”

  Lau
ghter sounded from behind him, and One appeared.

  “Get a grip, Thirteen. Those are not the sceptre. Only Jon has that. And the other iteration of it, is far, far away.”

  “Then what are they?” asked Amanda.

  “You could call them a splinter of the mind’s eye. But then, Thirteen would call that being overly dramatic.”

  “Clear,” said BA. “Like mud.”

  “Good,” laughed One. “Think of it this way. If the sceptre was a tree trunk, those sticks you’re holding would be branches stripped away from it while forging a staff.”

  “So they’re all part of the same base power?” I asked.

  “So I’m told. But enough of this pointless discussion. What is your plan?”

  I told them.

  Forty Eight

  I didn’t let anyone see my doubts.

  The Imperator wasn’t allowed to have any doubts. But I did. And I knew my doubts might kill us. Especially given what Thirteen had said.

  There were three main options.

  Plan A was to do what I’d done to the planet Trixone. Except with the Darkness, there was no guarantee making the planet uninhabitable would actually kill them all off. And going in there was an invitation for them to take us, and set off what we wanted to prevent.

  Plan B was more major, which was to make the sun go supernova. And I now knew I could do that without needing to be in the sun itself. It would slag the whole system, but even then it might not kill all the Darkness.

  Plan C was much more likely to succeed, but it involved collapsing the sun into a black hole, which would then suck in the rest of the system. Nothing should survive of the system itself, and in time, the surrounding systems would be gone as well.

  But the risk was major to the spine. A large enough black hole to ensure all the Darkness were gone for good, would eventually start sucking in the spine as well, in both directions. In the human direction, there were two whole sectors which could be within the black hole’s reach. And on the other side, I had no idea what life might be destroyed as well.

  I’d considered all of them. I debated them, warrior side versus spiritual side, survival versus oblivion, their right to exist versus everyone else’s right to exist.

  And make no mistake, I was aware of what this was.

  Destroying three Trixone planets was casualties in a time of war, on the order of a war crime.

  Destroying the Darkness system, saving the galaxy, and indeed the universe, was something we had a word for.

  Genocide.

  I was already damned to hell for my actions in this war. If I did this, I’d be damned for all eternity, at the same time being hailed as a savior.

  But sometimes you should just listen to that inner voice, the one which is the true you, and the one which expresses what you truly are.

  And what I was, was a spiritual person.

  So.

  Plan D.

  And this was where the doubts came in. I wasn’t at all sure I, we, could do it.

  If we could do it, I wasn’t at all sure we’d survive it.

  And even if we survived it, there wasn’t a chance in hell we’d make it home.

  Forty Nine

  The rift opened in the Pestilence system.

  Chaos and Mayhem followed BigMother through. The alpha team had split themselves up to both ships, so each ship had five people on it, with BigMother having eight. Maybe I should have said humans instead of people. Thirteen and One were standing on my bridge, with both Angel and Max sitting together on my console. Max had a confused look. Angel was licking him in an effort to keep him calm.

  It was over eighteen months since we’d last been here, and this time we had no doubts about our shields. The system itself was lethal if exposed for long enough, but we were in no danger. Yet.

  The jump point to the Death system was in front of us. It was also no threat to us with our current shielding, but lethal wasn’t an adequate word to describe it. Anything at all interrupting shields in there would be instantly fatal. But fortunately, we weren’t going in.

  The console had ten hollos on it. I looked at Grace, who had Aleesha beside her.

  “Wait here. Aleesha will know when it’s time.”

  “Good luck,” she said.

  The hollos vanished.

  “One?”

  She knew what I was asking, and laid a hand on my shoulder. Spacial awareness flooded into me, the kind only the biggest nebulae in the galaxy could hold in its mind, and without a navmap to use this time, I ‘found’ the same relative position on the other side of the Darkness system, and opened a rift. One let go.

  Mayhem followed BigMother through. We found a system almost identical to Pestilence, which was no surprise, since the entire region was a mass of pulsars, and other equally lethal sun combinations. It was the only reason the Darkness had never escaped through normal space.

  I looked at George.

  “Wait here,” he said. “We know. Good luck.”

  Amanda next to him nodded, and the five hollos vanished.

  Once again, One laid her hand on my shoulder, and my awareness expanded. I took my time, choosing three points in space. I thought two of them to One, and opened a rift to the third. BigMother went through, arriving outside of any system, in interstellar space. One let go again.

  Jane let out a soft exclamation, and a screen popped up. On it was the view towards the Darkness system. I’d never seen anything like it, and given how they were staring at the screen, neither had One or Thirteen either.

  For the first time in my life, I felt like I was looking on something you could describe as totally evil. The colours were indescribable, and in the swirling mass, pulsars strobed on and off. It was easy to believe such an area of space could produce the single worst predator in the universe.

  Jane looked confused.

  “What?” I asked her.

  “This isn’t right.”

  “Why not?”

  “This area of space is visible from Last Hope, and those people spent a lot of time looking at the stars. It was never there.”

  One laughed, and we looked at her.

  “It still isn’t. We’re inside the cloak which hides the whole area. In fact, I don’t think anyone has seen this since the area was locked away originally.”

  Thirteen was looking angry.

  “What’s your problem?” I asked him.

  “I have no memory of this place. And yet, I’ve been to everywhere in this galaxy.”

  “As have all the twelve,” added One. “And yet, none of us have memory of this. I’m probably the only who knew why. At our level anyway.”

  Of course, Kali and her kind knew everything, and saw everything.

  Aline chuckled, and all eyes went to her. She made an effort to stop.

  “Nice to know higher beings are not immune to being messed with like the rest of us.”

  Thirteen looked at One.

  “Kali?”

  “Possibly. She has the power to modify even our memories without us knowing.”

  I decided it was time to get back on track.

  “If we’re done with the scenery, how about we do this thing.”

  Now I was here, I really didn’t want to do this, and knew if it wasn’t done right now, I’d lose the focus needed to be able to do it.

  One looked at Thirteen, he nodded, and they both vanished.

  “Aleesha?”

  “Ready,” she said in my head.

  “Amanda?”

  “Ready.”

  I stood, and called the staff to my hand. As I gathered my intent of what I wanted done, it grew longer in my hand, touching the deck, with the red gem on top growing bigger, with an almost blinding red light coming from it. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Aline shielding her eyes. Both the cats were now encased in their collar’s protective mode suits. And still it glowed brighter.

  “Five seconds,” I said, and felt an acknowledgement from all four of them.

  The
twins were on either end of the jump point network, with the Darkness system in the middle. Me, Amanda, Aleesha. Three.

  BigMother, One, and Thirteen were forming a triangle around the core space. Me, One, Thirteen. Three twice.

  Between the five of us, was the entire area encasing the one system we needed to deal with.

  I counted down in my head. At three, I severed the jump point in front of Mayhem, so there’d be no entrance or exit from the area at all. I didn’t need to do the other end, as it was severed at Last Hope, but I rethought it, and severed Death from Pestilence anyway. Just to be sure.

  At one, I gathered all the power I could, and joined up the three ships using the staff and the sticks, and the two nebulae avatars, as beings of power in their own right.

  “Now.”

  Fifty

  A billion lightyears out into space, a small cluster of stars appeared.

  They began moving in space the same as they had been. But now instead of being part of a galaxy, they were alone.

  My intent had been clear. I wanted them moved to a place where they would never get within any distance travelable by magic means or tech, or ever intercept another galaxy.

  I stood there in space, looking down on the cluster, which now looked a lot less menacing. I was vaguely aware of there being no ship around me, but I’d experienced this out of body awareness before, and it didn’t bother me to be doing it again. I explored every system, finding more than the three I thought should be moved, including the pulsars and other suns with or without systems of their own, removing the remaining jump points, isolating every system from the others.

  The entire cluster which had kept the Darkness contained, had moved, which was the best outcome I could hope for. I’d specified the basic three as a minimum, in case we didn’t have the power to do the whole thing. Apparently we had.

  The Darkness system called to me, and I focused on it. The ugly half spider, half cockroach creatures were aware something had changed in the night sky, but not how it had happened. Their sky was now substantially empty, with only distant galaxies to be seen. I hoped it sparked some fundamental change in them, but didn’t think it would.