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

by Anne Spackman

  His mental barrier worked. Adam reached his mother’s side. The man was coming towards them now, slowly, as though certain of victory.

  Adam felt a wave of indignation and defiance in the face of that arrogant assurance. He wasn’t going to let that creature win. He didn’t care what it wanted, what it had come here to do. He wouldn’t let his mother down, now when he could save her! Adam lifted his mother gently, hurrying from the power that leeched into his thoughts, trying to control him. He quickly put Selerael in the shuttle and shut the outer doors, then glanced nervously out the viewport to see if they had been followed.

  But the man in the distance hadn’t moved.

  Why, why was he not moving?

  Adam powered the shuttle and took off, watched from the surface.

  He saved her. The stunned figure thought. But who was she, who looked so much like Alessia? And how could he have been immune to my attack? Are they, too, from Seynorynael? Were they asleep on Selesta all this time? And if so, why hadn’t Alessia known about them when she visited him in Destria so long ago?

  What could it all mean, and where was Alessia?!

  Chapter Nineteen

  I’m getting tired of saying good-bye, and tired of funerals, Adam thought angrily, shifting tirelessly in his chair on the bridge as he remembered his most recent friend, Seleka Zhdanov, his greatest friend Cameron Zhdanov’s great-granddaughter. Seleka had died only two weeks ago, after contracting an unknown illness on a planetary excursion several years before, a long, lingering illness that no one, not even Selerael, had been able to cure.

  “I wish I could go back to my quarters.”

  But no matter where Adam went on the ship these days, the image of Seleka’s bright green eyes seemed to follow him. Could she really be gone? She, who had been half-Enorian and half Earthling, whom he had come to care so much about despite the risks inherent in caring for any one not tied to his unnaturally long life, despite the fact that caring for her could only have brought her pain.

  Adam hadn’t though himself capable of love, much less such sincere platonic love for a woman. Could it have been more? He kept wondering. Perhaps it was a good thing that she had died so young; their world wasn’t a place for one as innocent and good as she had been.

  No! he rejected the thought almost as soon as it had formed. Someone so good should never have died so young, though this too often seemed to happen in life. How else was the rest of humanity to be bettered by their example?

  Had her Enorian constitution contributed in some way to her death? He often wondered. The lost Enorians hadn’t had any antibodies when they arrived, but their descendants had been living on board Selesta now for nearly two hundred years, long enough for their race to learn to fight off human diseases.

  Struck by a sudden realization, Adam looked over to his mother, who sat like a statue in the Captain’s chair.

  How many more faces, inexorable demons, haunted her?

  He, who always embraced knowledge, who craved answers to all mysteries, found he didn’t want to know.

  As Adam sat in thought, without warning, Selesta suddenly jumped through the throat of a wormhole.

  A wormhole gate—now?? His last thoughts formed as all sense of reality failed.

  Adam had been through many such wormhole jumps. In the years since Selesta had left the Earth, the ship had traveled through thousands of wormholes that swisscheesed the galaxies and territories within the galaxy supercluster that contained the Goeur Empire. However, in the last two hundred years they hadn’t come across any of the interstellar short-cuts that had been rampant near the Goeur Empire and its territorial worlds. None of the living crew, aside from him and his mother, had experienced wormhole sub-space travel.

  “Wow, what’s going on now?” he wondered.

  The crew hadn’t detected the wormhole, a dark pinpoint in the sky that suddenly enlarged to form a dark, flat, rectangular face in the backdrop of stars. Gaps appeared in the stars that spread into bands of light, multiplied as if by a prism. The lights multiplied and spread, patterns repeated again and again, and the dark sky was swallowed by the blueshifted light of gravitational lensing. Then the ship hit the bright collage of colors.

  Some of the Earthling crew within the sleek vessel shook off the after effects as they emerged into real space again. They had been left with a sudden queasiness and that peculiar mental glitch that characterized subspace travel, the inability to recall their last thought. Only one passenger on board retained thought and awareness inside the wormhole gates.

  Selerael cursed under her breath when the world around her suddenly transformed. She had gotten better at transforming her own mass into energy to evade the strange effect subspace travel had upon objects. As pure energy, the distortions did not affect her.

  It’s going to be a long trip, she thought tiredly. A moment later, she was no longer aware of her physical body, of muscle, bone, or sinew. She had no physical form in this dimension, only a shadow of no substance. She was nothing but energy now, a transformed entity whose every former cell, sentient and united, understood the meaning of thoughts without giving voice to any. Dissipating her own sentient energy across the ship, she was able to perceive the movement of every other particle on board. Dimly she understood that this wormhole had fallen into disrepair; the tachiyon drive had initiated a higher level of acceleration than usual, and in response the engine sphere created a frenzied beacon of energetic negative pressure waves.

  As reality returned, she came back to herself on the bridge.

  The alarm siren sounded several minutes later, before any of the crew had a chance to regain their bearings.

  On the bridge, the specialists assembled and checked the status of all of Selesta’s guidance systems.

  “Present location?” Selerael demanded.

  “Two hundred thousand kilometers from a small Earth-class planet.” Specialist Toriso told them.

  A holographic image appeared from the overhead viewscreen, depicting a small world with swaths of white swirling clouds across the surface, blue and green patches peeking through far below.

  It can’t be— Selerael felt as though her heart had jumped into her throat.

  The image of that planet had dredged her soul, found and contacted her hidden vulnerability.

  “The Enlil grazed us in the wormhole,” Specialist Derica suddenly called out. “They’re behind us now. I’m picking up gravitational waves, massive spatial fluctuations in the vicinity of the first planet’s orbital path. They’re traveling so quickly that they’ll overtake us in less than a minute—”

  “What about our gravitational cloak and particle shield?” Adam asked.

  “Engaged, sir,” Derica nodded.

  “Good. Then take us into an orbit around the planet, if you can,” Adam directed, sensing his mother’s distraction. Her eyes were riveted upon the image in the holofield.

  “There’s a small spaceship already in orbit around the planet and several smaller space stations from the looks of it. I’ll see if I can take us in on a higher orbit.” Giran offered, and turned to Selerael for approval. She would guide them—she had been their pillar of strength generation after generation, even before his own grandfather had joined Selesta’s crew.

  But behind him, Selerael suddenly burst into tears. Giran had never seen her shed a tear in all of his life.

  ‘It’s Tiasenne!” she said with a cry. “Where I was born!”

  “Captain?” Giran turned around, giving a start as Selerael collapsed to her knees, the blood draining from his face. The others on the bridge had also stopped, regarding her, paralyzed by her unprecendented behavior.

  “Stop!” Selerael screamed, shaking her head, but she could not fight the force of the memories from this planet.

  This planet—dear God, she knew this planet—Tiasenne! She had seen it long ago, the same image she had studied from high above on that day when she ran around the vegetation, and Yorzei’s elder sister Klimyata pulled her away�
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  She was remembering it all!

  —not long afterward she had slept, and visions of fire descended in her dreams. In those dreams there was always the synthesized, reedy voice, only now she understood the words it had spoken to her, the words that had haunted her all her life—

  I have long known how special you are, what your special destiny must be...

  * * * * *

  Selerael looked up, the surface of her eyes now calm.

  She stood. The movement was deliberate, swift, elapsing within a second.

  Her face was calm, but inside, she was glad she had lost against the power of this world. The forgotten part of her soul buried all these years had risen to the surface of her mind, rising to the surface like an ancient treasure hidden for many years in the depths, undisturbed and forgotten, now very real.

  Dear Uncle Kesney, Selerael thought, recalling days in her early childhood, her life on Selesta far beneath the surface of Tiasenne. Her “second father” Kesney and his fiery wife Klimyata—they were no longer shadows from another existence but alive to her again. All the days she had known them, and—her mother! The woman she had seen on board, but little remembered, but for a fleeting image—

  —an image before she became Erin Mathieson—

  Alessia, who haunted her dreams, whispering of memories, beloved memories every child has of its mother when there is nothing and no one else in all the world—

  Singing an ancient song to soothe her to sleep...

  Had she forgotten them all just to shield herself from the agony of separation? No. Ornenkai, the voice she had heard in her nightmares—he had taken her away from them, and he had effaced her memories of them because to him memories apparently held no value.

  There was no mistaking that Alessia was here, near the planet before her. Hinev’s serum pulsing through her veins told her so, but she already knew. Yet her mother hadn’t sent any signal to indicate she also knew her daughter had returned. How could her mother know she was here? Selesta had raised its anti-gravitational wave detection barrier, making the ship virtually invisible.

  “Mother,” Selerael said, her throat tight. She was still angry at Ornenkai that she had ever forgotten her. “Mother, I’m coming!” she vowed.

  “The Enlil has just altered its course to rendezvous with the small ship orbiting the planet.” Derica ventured, facing her console. The others, still scrutinizing their leader for a sign that might explain her unusual behavior, turned back to their stations.

  “Mother—are you going to be all right?” Adam asked, instinctively coming towards her; he had forgotten about himself as he asked it. Suddenly remembering his own existence and present movement, he stopped.

  “Take us in behind the Enlil and prepare a scout party.” Selerael said.

  “We’re boarding the alien craft?” Toriso queried, his brow ridges drawing together.

  “Yes. That smaller ship there is the flagship my mother stayed upon.”

  “You heard her,” Adam ordered, his words confident, his mind usually so indifferently curious about the future, as though he were but a spectator of the reality around him, now actively intrigued. “We’re going in, so get ready.”

  “This is the moment we’ve waited for, Adam.” Selerael’s voice rang with a tone of finality.

  “I know, mother,” he replied gravely. “I know.”

  * * * * *

  In the depths of Selesta, among the dark corridors and chambers housing the collection of specimens from ancient exploration ventures, a corpse stirred to life from an unmarked coffin.

  The creature within the unmarked, dome-covered capsule opened its eyes. Pale light created by the system switches and panels on each wall allowed them to focus upon the ceiling high above, where sheer alloy reflected a sea of capsules below. It was little to begin with, a small room barely visible, but the sight through those eyes brought infinite joy.

  The creature stretched its fingers, savoring the extension of its being as impulses reached the physical matter, enjoying the feeling of the muscular tissues contracting as they received the electromagnetic impulses from its brain.

  He reached up and pushed open the capsule, releasing a sibilant hiss of hazy vapors into the cold, stale air.

  “Illuminate,” he called out in an ancient language. The computer terminals in the wall responded to the sound of his voice, could detect his commands unspoken. No longer immune to requests, the computer obeyed, flooding the room with light, and opened the door as the creature’s mind turned to thoughts of finding the Great Bay.

  * * * * *

  Another morning dawned on the land below. Alessia watched the sun Rigell slowly rising over the Tiasennian horizon with complete detachment. Time passed unending, here in Sesylendae. She felt no pain, no cold, no heat, and yet these would have been the very things that reminded her she was alive. At the same time, she could not die. Hinev’s immortality serum pulsed through her veins, had saturated every cell of her body like an elixir, or a poison, that was keeping her alive.

  She had not visited the surface in over a hundred years. Transports arrived from the Tiasennian Colonial Directive council sporadically, usually every few years, and representatives from the scientific colonies on the fringes of the Rigell system visited twice a decade. Scientists all the way from Rigell 11 only made the journey once every hundred years or so, if they bothered to at all.

  It wasn’t that the Tiasennians lacked the technology which might allow more frequent visits; their own space fleet traveled the distance in the blink of an eye. The Tiasennian people simply had no need of their ancient benefactor any more. They could learn no more from her—rather, they had learned all she was willing to offer.

  Sesylendae remained a lone sentinel hovering above the mother world, though it seemed always to be in the way; long ago the decision had been made to allow it to stay there, in deference to the enigmatic creature that continued to linger inside, impossibly. The Tiasennians did not believe their benefactor was human, however she appeared. Only a handful of Tiasennians remained with her, though many had left her secret sanctuary, beginning as far back in time as the Great Upheaval, when the surface volcanoes of Tiasenne’s twin planet had erupted, reshaping its now volatile and unlivable surface.

  For over ten thousand years she had watched the civilization grow beyond the confines of Tiasenne—the most recent colony at Halicos3 made the grand total of terrestrial and space station colonies an even two hundred, something of a milestone; there had been a territory-wide celebration to mark the occasion.

  In short, though, the colonials didn’t know who she was; nevertheless, they didn’t mind ignoring her. History named the creature as Tiasenne’s savior—they were all taught to appreciate her for that. However, she was clearly not one of them. No Tiasennian lived beyond a natural lifespan, even as evolution lengthened their lives.

  The scientists returned to maintain ties with her, to make the traditional journey and meet the curiosity, the living relic. Enticing away the children of Alessia’s supporters also made the trips worthwhile. Each new deserter brought information to revolutionize technology and push progress ahead exponentially. Despite the march of time, there were those who remained faithful to her, generation after generation. Some scientists may have considered this display of devotion to be foolish; at the same time, they acknowledged that without Alessia’s loyal retainers, there could be no more deserters.

  However, recently, the scientists had more than quadrupled their investigative trips to the Sesylendae.

  Alessia knew why; she had been waiting for this to happen, though she had expected it to happen sooner.

  After ten thousand years of independence, the Tiasennian Empire had received transmissions from space, from a nearby system beyond the great Dark Nebula. An unknown spaceship had traveled around the dark region and broadcasted signals to the outer Tiasennian colonies. Whether or not the transmission was intended for the colonies or for another race of unknown aliens, or if
the message contained a welcome or a warning the Tiasennian scientists did not know. The great minds of Tiasenne couldn’t decipher it.

  Then a recent explorer probe sent by Tiasennian Headquarters towards the area had severed contact, presumably because it had been destroyed. As soon as this logical deduction was made, the Tiasennians swiftly turned to their living relic for an answer. They turned to her for protection once more, and answers.

  Who were these aliens? Alessia had told them, long ago, but their ancestors had ignored the Dark Nebula, as though it protected them from the space beyond, the space it obscured. And most of all they had ignored it because the space surveyors considered the Dark Nebula an unprofitable territory.

  Alessia advised her latest visitors to find the original, ancient star chart she had given their ancestors; the Tiasennian scientists finally located it in their archives.

  There, clearly marked, was the vast expanse of territory that had once belonged to the lai-nen Empire. Within the amorphous, three-dimensional territory they found their own star, Rigell.

  Rigell had once belonged to the lai-nen; the lai-nen who would certainly come back to reclaim it.

  The scientists asked Alessia if she would come to the surface to make a report on what she knew of the lai-nen; she, in turn, told them that if they wanted any answers, they would have to come to her ship to get them.

  And she wasn’t going to change her mind.

  They continued to press her; what ludicracy was this?!

  She knew they would never understand.

  She was tired of them dancing around her, treating her as an oracle. Tired of so much she could never explain to them.

  Granted, she hadn’t always felt this way about them, or so staunchly about avoiding contact with Tiasenne as it was now. Shortly after the Great Upheaval, when the surface of the twin planet Orian had exploded, showering Tiasenne with asteroids and vaporizing a large part of the Great Eastern Ocean and Southwestern Sea, Alessia, Deras Kesney and Klimyata, and many of Selesta’s former refugees had returned to Tiasenne, just outside Inen. There, they had met Ristalv Vaikyure and organized and implemented a restoration program for the survivors on Tiasenne.