Across the Stars: Book Three of Seeds of a Fallen Empire

by Anne Spackman

  You can probably perceive that they would have difficulties when another human and alien wished to become attached, for it seems love can grow between two people of any race who are alike in soul. Changing the human genes would only serve as a temporary solution, as you and I know. Nor will you be surprised to learn that after several months, Selerael helped the Earth creature Knightwood find the means of combining human and type R32ak alien genes artificially. You did the same, did you not, all of Hinev’s explorers, so that newcomers could be absorbed into Seynorynaelian society?

  The humans Knightwood and Zhdanov made attempts to learn what scraps of the Orian and Tiasennian languages Selerael remembers. The one called Knightwood even announced the birth of her second child to me, a boy child called Alastair, as though telling me the child’s name would protect the child in some way.

  Here I have wandered far from the news which I do not know how to break. Yet break it I must, for you will learn of it soon enough when Selerael and I return to you. Six Kiel3 years after I took the Earthlings from their home, Selerael proved once again that Hinev could be wrong: she had a child.

  Selerael produced a human child, her only child in these many years. I do not know if you will ever happen to see him, this pale-skinned youth with fair hair so much like Eiron’s. The child is however, almost a replica of his Earth father in form, so much that you might not recognize him as your grandchild. There is much of Selerael in his eyes, though they are dark, like the surface of a sea on the eve of a storm. Only the faintest blue aura surrounds him, undetectable by the humans. But as a young child, he could hear me.

  They call him Adam, and he grew to maturity sooner than an Earth child—just like Selerael did when she was young. I can only suppose that there is a trace of Hinev’s serum in him. Thankfully he began to age more slowly near the onset of adulthood, though by twenty-six Kiel3 years, he remained much the same as he had been at sixteen. He seems hardly ever to age. As yet, I cannot determine how much effect Hinev’s serum will have upon him, if indeed he will undergo the metamorphosis.

  If only you could have been here, Alessia, to see Adam’s youth! I grow more attached to these Earth creatures day by day. The boy Adam was a rascal, as I suspect his father once must have been, for he knew exactly how to deal with him. Adam’s enthusiasm for scientific study is only rivaled by his friends Elena and Alastair, children of Knightwood and Zhdanov, my most avid observers.

  As for my intruder—the would-be experiment in folly, the creature whose identity I know as Faulkner? In his brief moments of mental clarity between relapses, this Earth scientist would often accompanied the boy Adam to the Seynorynaelian forest. I can only suppose that he remembers little of the time I kept him here. Strangely, Faulkner appeared to adore the child Adam for no reason I could understand.

  Yet I fear Faulkner was still at times haunted by the strange visions he received in the Seynorynaelian forest, visions not entirely of my doing. He spent many long hours alone in the forest and in the holo-room. I fear he never did quite recover.

  Years later, after having lived a tortured existence, the man once called Faulkner ended his own life. Having heard his intentions in her mind, Selerael tried to stop him but arrived too late. Faulkner went to the forest to die. There was nothing I could do to prevent him—I didn’t realize until later how strange it is that I would have tried to stop him now. Selerael herself arrived after it was too late.

  Young Adam had already taken Faulkner’s body to the river to bury him there. Strangely enough, it seemed to me that the boy alone of all on board understood Faulkner. I watched as he laid the scientist’s head gently on the forest floor among the fallen lyra leaves. Why did that sight move me so, Alessia?—yet should it have? Why should the short lives of such humans be any of my concern?

  Their lives are indeed short. With time, the transition between the many cultural groups on board seems to be diminishing. The alien language is now being taught, along with two major Kiel3 languages. The children learn about their Earth from the holo-monitor and their parent’s memories, but they do not really understand any other life than Selesta. Having no loyalty to the Earth, a few of them have already remained behind on other worlds, but others, unable to endure the wide open terrain of a planetary surface, refuse to even join the scout teams.

  It grieves me to know that the generation I have watched since they left their Earth will never know the answers to the questions they have raised these many years. As time passes, they relinquish control of the ship to a younger generation who reflect their sentiments but can never really feel them.

  Still no sign of the Orian threat has appeared since the day the alien pilot Iriken Zirnenka left, and though the young ones have trained to defend themselves as their parents did, they do not understand the danger. They do not understand the horror of the recent war.

  Where is Sargon, I ask myself. And when is it that he will finally find us again?

  * * * * *

  Running steps sounded down the long corridor as Erin hurried to Colonel Kansier’s room. Alastair Zhdanov’s signal had finally come, though Erin was not ill-prepared for it. The crew had known for some time now that Colonel Kansier was dying. Scott Dimitriev stood by the Colonel’s bedside when Erin arrived. The video-monitor around them had filled the room with a holographic representation of the night-time sky near Kent, England. Sixty-three years had passed since the Selesta had left the Earth, and the Colonel had only recently celebrated his 112th birthday; he was still young by Earth standards, where the average life expectancy had approached two hundred years. It was clear that too many years of command had robbed Kansier of life’s vigor. When illness had come, he had not the strength to fight it for long.

  “Ahh, you’re here,” the young Zhdanov said as Erin arrived.

  Kansier had married one of the alien arrivals on board, but his wife had died sixteen years before of an alien ailment.

  “How’s the Captain doing?” Erin asked, as Kansier lay breathing very quietly.

  “The Captain is doing fine,” Kansier said with a hint of his old sparkle, then coughed, slowly drawing himself up.

  “Colonel,” Scott protested. “You shouldn’t be moving—”

  “Yes yes,” Kansier conceded. “I know that.” He waved aside Scott’s attempts at easing him back down. “There isn’t anything you can do, son,” he said quietly.

  Scott stopped. There was nothing he could say to tell Kansier how much those words had affected him. “Sir—”

  “There’s something I have to tell Erin,” Kansier said, meeting Scott’s somber eyes with a steady, earnest gaze.

  “I know you’ll take command of Selesta, Erin.” Kansier managed, turning to Erin, feeling pain washing through him. “This was meant to be your ship, that I have long known. When I am gone, it will be.”

  “Kansier—”

  “Perhaps you can discover the reasons why Earth was entangled in all of this.” Kansier continued, now fighting. His lashes began to droop, and he succumbed to fatigue, leaning back on the bed. “Please grant me one favor,” he coughed, trying to meet her eyes.

  “A favor?” she echoed.

  The same youthful face met his gaze, as if she had stepped from the past. No matter how much that didn’t change, each time he saw her, that fact managed to surprise him, as much as he had grown used to being surprised. Yet while some might have felt moments of jealousy towards her, he harbored none. He would not want to be left alone among strangers with only memories, to have to rebuild a new life with every generation. He would not want to have to make so many farewells.

  “Anything, Captain.”

  “Good,” Kansier said. He knew he didn’t have long; he felt comforted in no small way to believe that all they had done would be passed along to the future faithfully, that someone would remain to guide and protect the children of Earth on their long journey.

  “Yes, sir—anything in my power,” Erin whispered, holding back any outward sign of her own grief.
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  “Take care of the new generations as best you can—but also, she that they never forget the Earth we came from.” Kansier sighed and leaned back against the pillow. “I would have liked to return to the Earth,” he said, looking up at the ceiling. “How I miss her, the feel of her sun, the taste of her air...”

  “The sound of the ocean waves,” Scott said, when Kansier began to lose speech.

  “Yes...” Kansier said.

  Kansier’s face lit into a smile as he was granted perfect memories of his boyhood home, his friends, his family... His recollections of the breathtaking waves that crashed against the high cliffs near the nautical academy where he had lived as a youth came back in full glory. He felt the spindrift on the rising wind and drank the sea air as the cool cloudy evening settled upon the land.

  He disappeared during the thoughts, fading into the oblivion of death and beyond it, back into the tapestry of light, or what some call heaven.

  Chapter Seventeen

  She clung to the body. Tears fell onto his serene still face, running down his cheeks over which she lingered, unable to let go.

  Good-bye, my love, she wanted to tell him, but she couldn’t seem to. Beside her, Adam Dimitriev still clutched his father’s hand, but no life remained in it.

  Time was cruel now, passing so slowly in the moments since he had gone. She did not wish to let time win, but there was nothing she could do. Scott Dimitriev was gone.

  Yet her memories of him lingered on, defying time, for now. She sighed, but without ease. His eyes were so still—closed forever, never to look upon her again.

  She was sobbing now, hard.

  Scott, the one whom she had always loved, ever since her early childhood on Earth, now so far away—Scott, the one with whom she had lived so many full years of precious memories—was gone. What would she do without him? Even though she had always known this moment would come, she had never wanted to believe it until now.

  What lay ahead of her now? She did not want to know, if she had to face it all alone.

  “I can’t let go,” she thought.

  Scott’s beloved, familiar voice played in her mind when a signal sounded at the door, and a medical officer appeared to take care of the body. She would never hear that voice again. Nevertheless, she felt she could almost hear him telling her not to fear, not to worry, that he would always be near her and part of her, but she did not know if that was his voice or her own. She knew he would have wanted her to remember the good things, not to cling to despair and grief. Her grief was selfish, she knew, but she didn’t care.

  The officer at the door said something, but Erin could not turn around. She had spent the last two months in this room, at her husband’s side. Scott Dimitriev had grown weaker in his old age and finally died at the age of one hundred and eighty-seven.

  With him vanished the last member of the Earth-born crew. She had already said good-bye to Zhdanov, Knightwood, Ho-ling, Nathalie, Erik, Einar, Hans, Nikolai—all of the Blue Stripes Sky Hawks and the bridge crew, and many of their children.

  “Good-bye, my darling,” Erin whispered at last, sensing that she had to pull herself together for Adam. Scott would have wanted it that way. But the pain welled within her chest so strongly that she felt her lungs had to fight for air. She wanted to go with him, wished to God she could. But she wasn’t human—and never would be. She didn’t know why fate had made her and what her destiny was to be. Whatever it was, she would have to find it alone.

  With Scott Dimitriev, Erin Mathieson as she was, had also died.

  * * * * *

  Selerael stood in the doorway of the room where she had laid Scott to rest, where she would never rest beside him. Beside him lay the bodies of her old comrades, encased in some of the preservation capsules Selesta specialist Alastair Knightwood-Zhdanov had devised.

  When this journey is over, I’ll bring you home with me, my dear one, Selerael vowed. If I can’t return you to the Earth you loved, I swear we’ll build a new home someday, where you can sleep forever, away from the stars, under the golden light of the sun.

  Suddenly Selerael felt a strong hand on her arm, and turned to her son. There was no expression on his face, though his teeth were clenched.

  Quiet tears slid down Adam’s strong young face as he hugged her tightly.

  * * * * *

  Only days after the funeral, Selerael was on her way to visit her son in the newly installed botanical museum when a message from the bridge interrupted her in one of the upper level corridors outside her quarters. Communications Specialist Serafin’s voice boomed over the Earth intercom.

  Selerael listened objectively. Since the funeral, she had been conscious of herself only as a shadow of what she had been, a living shadow that walked, breathed, and existed from one day to the next, that went through the usual monotonous motions of life because she had no other choice. When she heard her own heartbeat and the sound of her breath, she knew she was alive, but her voice, when she heard herself speak, seemed as though it belonged to a stranger.

  Selerael was helpless, as all living creatures are, and for the first time in her life, she was aware of it. The questions, the silence, the chaos and bittersweet of existence had never hit her, and never before had she felt more helpless; she wasn’t in the mood for any new tribulations, yet she understood that she couldn’t dwell on her own unhappiness if that meant putting the lives of the crew at risk.

  “Captain, the wormhole has brought us about six days from a white star system.” Serafin said.

  “Very good.” Selerael managed.

  “Yes, Captain, but the moment we emerged into real space, we began receiving multiple radio wave signals. Estimates show that the fourth planet in this system is the nexus of the waves—the primary producer and receiver.”

  “How far are we from the galactic center?” Selerael asked.

  “Not far.” Serafin replied. “The closest systems are only .3 and .7 light years from the nearest white star, but there are another twenty-one star systems within the next ten light-years.”

  “The ship has engaged its anti-radar,” Radar specialist Chen’s voice interrupted, “but our space radar has picked up three space vessels heading towards the white star’s fourth planet from our direction.”

  “Ships?”

  “Yes, sir. And we’ve located another group of nearby ships converging upon the planet from the fourth quadrant relative to our position. We request your course of action.”

  “All right—I’ll be there in a moment,” Selerael responded into her wrist communicator, patching her signal into the bridge.

  “What do you want us to do until then?” Radar specialist Chen’s voice echoed over the intercom. “You don’t suppose this is Selesta’s final destination?” There was more than a little bit of hope buried in the question.

  “No way of knowing,” Selerael replied. “Just keep monitoring until I get there. I’ll consider a scout team, once we’ve compiled all of the readings on the planet.” Selerael said calmly.

  * * * * *

  No sense being optimistic, Specialist Kuehn chastised himself. In the twenty-three years since he had been born, the Selesta had visited one hundred and three different planets, bringing the total count above four hundred. Why should the hundred and fourth be any different? he asked himself.

  The computerized presence named Ornenkai watching him unseen enjoyed a moment of mirth. Why indeed should any fear the planet Goeur? it would have laughed if it could.

  Adam, come, it called in another section of the ship.

  “Hmmm, think I’ll wait a minute more,” he said out loud to quell his fears. Adam Dimitriev waited for his mother to arrive in the botanical museum. But the voice urged him to join the others on the bridge.

  How strange, the voice thought, this boy can do anything, can learn anything, and yet she doesn’t want him to be in power…

  Adam looked about, as though someone had been calling to him. An unusual thought struck him almost involuntaril
y as he headed to the bridge. Why hadn’t his mother ever asked him to take over a specialist’s duties? he wondered. There was no resentment in the thought, however; while he had no ambition in advancing among the ranks his mother had created to establish an order for the crew positions, he could never see enough to satiate his desire for knowledge, and she never denied him a place in the scout teams.

  If a scout party were formed to visit this new planet, he would without doubt accompany them. These jaunts to other terrestrial civilizations were one of the few pleasures he enjoyed in life. He had been a member of each such expedition in his one hundred and fifty-nine years.

  “I am getting old,” he thought to himself.

  Strange that Adam wasn’t ever afraid of dying during the expeditions. If this trip were to be his last opportunity, he did not care. He still fully intended to go. He was rather fearless in nature, but not foolhardy.

  “No racing!” Adam called as the crew that he passed on his way to the bridge ran past him; they recognized Adam easily, for his appearance had not changed since his twentieth birthday. He did not know all of them, had not involved himself in many activities in recent years. “No running,” someone called, and everyone slowed down.

  More than half of the planets Selesta had directed them to visit had been inhabited by intelligent creatures. Most had been bipedal, the majority humanoid. And with each world, the ship lost a few members of its crew, lured by terrestrial splendor. Adam’s childhood friend, Justin Ross had died at the young age of sixty-one on one of the planets Selesta had visited. Justin’s sister, Erin Ross, had remained on Charnai2 years before. Selesta had taken aboard a total of sixty-three humanoid aliens from six different worlds.

  Another planet could hardly be any different, Adam thought, although he had been wrong before.

  “Adam!” a young woman called in a voice that passed for human from years of imitation. Adam turned around where Miralah, a young Kamian girl, raced to catch up with him in the corridor just outside the main nexus of the crew’s quarters. Though also humanoid, all of the Kamians were of a dark, reddish-brown complexion like rich earth, with large, fiery mahogany eyes and thick, straight black hair that whirled with movement like a heavy cloud.