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

by Anne Spackman

  They lived on the surface many long years, helping to rebuild the shattered cities and restore the environment; Kesney and his wife never left again. After a century, Tiasenne had almost fully recovered from the Great Upheaval, but many centuries passed before her civilization began to progress beyond its former glory.

  In the early years, Alessia had enjoyed living on the healing planet; she felt at home in the freedom of her new life. She watched Kesney’s children grow to maturity, wondering where on her journey to Kiel3 Selerael might be. Klimyata’s children had called Alessia their aunt, but they could not fill the void in her heart Selerael’s departure had created. And while Kesney and Vaikyure lived, Eiron’s memory lived. Eighty years healed the surface, and in their own process of healing, already the survivors of Tiasenne tried to forget much of their turbulent past. Only one great glowing moon remained to remind them of Orian. Eiron Vaikyur-Erlenkov and heroes of the former days became shadows of the past, and then completely died away.

  After Kesney died, Alessia lost nearly all interest in the present. A few of his children and descendants of the old Baidarka mission scientists returned with her to Sesylendae. After three generations, only a handful of Kesney’s line remained with her. Yet every so often, she had been drawn again to the cliffs above the Northwestern Sea which had survived the Orian attack and asteroid rain. A cave buried in the cliff side eluded time, preserving the footprints of a man who had once lingered there before unknowingly leaving his love behind. From there, Alessia wandered down into the cavern deep in the planet’s crust to the ancient memorial.

  A thousand years after the Great Upheaval, she had known it was to be her last visit. The surface world now encroached upon her private sanctuary; the hum of passenger transports between the new colony and Tiasenne broke the silence every few minutes in the chambers above. Without the artificial light Selesta had once cast above them, the trees in the subterranean caverns had long ago perished, and the graves on the small artificial hill had known no warming light.

  Alessia almost took the still from the grave marked “Korten”. Casting the illumination lamp upon it, she stared long moments at the woman and child smiling in its small confines. She fingered the picture in her hands, but finally returned it to the metallic plaque where it had lain.

  Alessia returned to Sesylendae and never left it again.

  * * * * *

  Steps sounded outside the door. On the other side of the observation bay, Alessia tore her eyes reluctantly away from the stars that jealously held the answers to the unknown, and she waited as the door opened.

  Sargon’s spaceship Enlil had returned. Alessia had searched for it through the wide observation window, but the great ship was still ten thousand kilometers away, dead in space.

  Sargon has finally realized where I am, where I have always been, she had been thinking indifferently before the intruder approached.

  So why hadn’t he come yet? She had no energy to fight him, to fight anyone, anymore.

  Sesylendae had no great weapons to challenge him, and its electromagnetic and anti-gravitational shields had weakened over the years without Selesta’s power to recharge them. Alessia was open and defenseless now, but still he hadn’t come.

  When she heard the steps approaching, she was sure Sargon had come to confront her at last.

  Then a shadow emerged from her far-distant past and stepped into the light.

  “Ornenkai!” she whispered in complete surprise, her eye unavoidably fixed on the figure poised in the doorway.

  “Yes, Alessia, I have returned. As I promised,” Ornenkai replied, in long unheard Seynorynaelian music. There was now no trace of the hollow echo of the Selesta’s computer, and yet for the first time she recognized that the voices were one and the same. His voice was one of the most mellifluous she had ever heard, even for Seynorynaelians; it was a voice meant for poetry and singing, not meant to be the dark herald of the Seynorynaelian Empire.

  His intelligent eyes were intense and steady, his hair a shock of short curls; he was attractive by any standard, and his limbs still had the appearance of strength. However, the youthful image was shattered by the expression in his ancient eyes, eyes that had known the horrors of a thousand lifetimes and processed them into the soul. Yet the eyes ran over her with a new vigor, reveling in the sight of her as seen through real humanoid eyes for the first time. At long last, the aged eyes said, as though Ornenkai had anticipated the moment of this meeting for a significant portion of his own prolonged existence.

  He took a step forward, wincing just slightly, but he kept going, disregarding any pain. She was there before him now. What else mattered but reaching her at last, his final goal? He told himself this; nonetheless, every step towards her clearly brought physical agony. Knives of pain stabbed through his every limb, and aching, throbbing pain washed through his muscles and joints; a hundred thousand years of suspended animation had left his original physical body weak and crippled beyond repair.

  Yes, he had found the way back into his own, original, physical body. He had re-channeled his spirit back into the body he had been born into that he had preserved for more than 60,000 years.

  The being that had come home to its own body knew that the moment of its expiration approached. Ornenkai knew his original body was dying in suspension for some time, and he did at last wish to die. No more clones, no more machine bodies. There was no way to prevent the death of his original body any longer, and he was fully, painfully aware of it never more than at that moment.

  “Alessia, you have to know why I have come back,” he surmised. Yet his meaning almost bypassed her; a fine crease formed between her brows. She had not heard her native tongue, nor heard it spoken so beautifully, in more than an aeon. “I fear I am a far less worthy being than you know.” Ornenkai continued, scarcely moving. “I cannot deal with my own failure. I have failed myself, and I have failed you, Alessia. I feel it is time I accepted my punishment. I began an evil long ago, and I cannot undo it, Alessia. I have wasted an eternity trying to atone, but the universe is indeed fair—it will not let me atone. Yet I am no longer afraid of facing my conscience. But I would ask your forgiveness now, Alessia. It is the last thing I need, the only thing I beg you to grant me. Perhaps when I meet Death, she will be kinder to me if you plead my case for me. Perhaps I will not face an eternity of punishment.”

  Alessia stared thunderstruck, listening to Ornenkai in wonder. The harder reality was trying to equate the creature before her with the Elder she had known since her childhood. This—this youth was Ornenkai?! Alessia had never before seen Ornenkai the way he must have been—she had never seen or registered him as a human being! The physical body that faced her had visited the Enorian Havens with Marankeil. Not long afterward, his body had been buried beneath Ariyalsynai in the vaults at the Council Terminus, when Ornenkai became a machine man, or mechanized unit. Marankeil and Ornenkai, Emperor and Vice-Emperor, had channeled their souls into mechanized units, and had lived for millennia as machines. Ornenkai’s original body had then been moved sometime aboard Selesta without any of the explorers’ knowledge.

  “No,” she protested blindly, stepping back.

  Ornenkai stepped nearer, faltering, and raised a hand out before him. She almost went over to him then, just to stop him from moving through the pain she saw him suffering. Then she recognized his uniform.

  No, a Martial Force officer, leader of the earliest Seynorynaelian legions Ornenkai would get no pity from her! she thought, hardening her heart, turning away from him, turning aside from that abandoned, loathed emblem and its eight-point star insignia. Had that ancient league not ruined her life? Hadn’t Ornenkai done enough to destroy her? Why should she forgive him for anything!

  After a moment, though, involuntarily it seemed, she began to relent. Why had he come? She truly didn’t know. And how had he reclaimed his original body after all of these years?

  “How did you manage it, Ornenkai?” she asked him, casting aside the thi
n patina of complacent pride she always raised in defiance of him; she was far too curious to learn the answers she couldn’t deduce for herself, all too aware that she had not been this curious in more than ten thousand years. “However did you shed your mechanical shell? However were you able to return to your humble human origins? Your original human body was supposed to have been lost aeons ago.”

  “Search for the answer,” he told her, putting up no resistance to her telepathic power. He embraced her presence in his thoughts. Yes, more than anything, it would please him that she wanted to know his secrets, that at last she would understand them.

  He had never gotten rid of his original body, not even when the other Elders did. Hinev had once told him that he could return to it if he wished, so he had kept it. Before he channeled his mind and memories into Selesta’s computer, he had put it on board the ship. There he had waited all those years, his body lying dormant; later he had seen to it that the Seynorynaelian survivor Miran Difano, who had loyally remained on board without her knowledge, moved his body into the memorial room, among Hinev’s explorers who had so recently died.

  Didn’t Alessia see that he, Ornenkai, had loved her from the moment he had met her in Hinev’s laboratory? He had become a machine by that time, divided between a small mobile android attachment and the main terminal in the Council Terminus, a machine that had learned the true base value of all that his young, human soul had judged worthy or unworthy. What he had once found worthwhile was revealed only empty pursuit; what he had never cared for revealed itself with wisdom as something unattainable and priceless. Since that revelation, the machine he had become disgusted him at every moment, but still he held on to its promise of eternal life.

  He had been too afraid to return to a mortal life, back then.

  Oh yes, how painfully the beauty of Hinev’s young assistant in both body and mind had reminded him of the humanity he had carelessly forsaken. He had wanted to be with her. She had rekindled his own memories of mortal life and with them, his emotions, emotions that had proved the end of him but had also brought him back to life. The council of Elders’ inhumanity had drawn them into a lifeless existence, an existence of evil deeds and racial genocide; Ornenkai alone had broken free to a reality that was worth living. And had set himself the task of destroying the Empire and atoning for his sins.

  What had he done for the sake of those noble feelings? When at last Hinev had discovered what Marankeil sought to no avail—the ability to transmit his being into another human body—Ornenkai was given the power he needed to have destroyed Kiel and transferred his own mind into Kiel’s body. Nonetheless, in the end, Ornenkai found himself unable to carry out the transferal. He couldn’t steal Kiel’s body. He would sacrifice himself instead to protect the crew.

  To stay with Alessia and to guide her he became instead the sentient soul of Selesta. To do that, he had betrayed his oldest friend, Marankeil.

  Alessia was amazed by this thought, completely surprised by his feelings and beliefs. She had never suspected that Ornenkai loved her in all these years. Ornenkai, the proud Elder, the dilpomat, war leader, scientist and philosopher, the Vice-Emperor of an intergalactic empire that had spanned seven galaxy groups—he had become a part of Selesta because he wanted her to save him from damnation, and because he loved her and wanted to be near her! For such a thing to have happened—it struck her with all the force of a miracle.

  He had loved her all this time? Then how had he taken her daughter from her?

  “Where is Selesta?” she thought, but no one knew what Selesta was, much less where. Alessia couldn’t see the ship, but she knew it was out there now, if Ornenkai had been able to reach her. And that meant— Her heart seemed to leap in her breast.

  At long last... Selerael had returned!

  Ornenkai made a slight noise, drawing her attention back to him.

  Could it be true that Ornenkai had never really betrayed her? she wondered and searched her memory of the secret meetings Marankeil had called her to attend, searched for something to reproach him with, something he had done to betray her while he kept his love a secret, but she found no Ornenkai among the faces that had goaded her while she was at their mercy.

  Ornenkai had never tormented her in her training days. From the early days of Hinev’s experiments on her, the mechanized entity had attempted only friendliness, but because of her own suspicion of the council, she had shied away from him, ignored him. All those years alone on Selesta, he had remained her constant companion, had witnessed the greatest tragedies of her life—the death of Kiel and the other explorers, and the assault on Tiasenne that had killed Eiron.

  Could it be that she had not been alone, as she had thought these many years? Lord above, what a comfort it was to make the discovery, even so late! Ornenkai remembered the old glory of Seynorynael, years before even she had been born. He had witnessed every phase of the rising Empire and the destruction of their home world. He had remained in her life when those she had loved most were lost to her.

  And here he was, this young-old man with a face of an angel, a face that had not yet known, that had thought never to know, crime, guilt, or regret on that day when it was suspended so long ago.

  Ornenkai had come a third of the way across the bay when his knees gave out with a horrible crunching sound. He simply crashed to the ground, without even the strength to soften his fall. Registering a sudden pang in her gut, Alessia cried out, but she found that even now, she still hesitated.

  Was he not a friend? She chastised herself, still able to reason intuitively. Had he not been a friend for so many years? Yes, he had. Despite what he had done, despite all of his mistakes, using the nano-implant to control her and sever her from Selerael, despite what she had vowed so long ago when they parted the last time, a vow never to forgive him, she found herself able to forgive him now.

  The time for regrets and grudges had passed.

  Ornenkai’s face twisted in pain. She saw that he was clutching his chest.

  Her self-composure broke in that moment; it disintegrated utterly like a fragile ship torn to pieces by the fury of a sudden storm. She rushed to his side, her will submitting entirely to the power of human emotion.

  “I hope that was not too painful.” She crooned. Was there anything she could do to save him?! she thought desperately.

  “No, Alessia,” Ornenkai called out weakly, but still with a shadow of the authority his voice had once commanded; he struggled as she tried to hold his arms, his eyes still unreadable but burning with an integrity of spirit that could catch a field on fire. “Don’t cry on my account,” he ordered, reaching up to dry the tear that slid down her cheek. “I never sought your pity before, and I shall not do so now. I’ve far outlived my natural Time. I’ve been waiting for fate to release me from this world for many years, but I couldn’t let myself die without achieving what I thought was our destiny.” He choked on the words, as though he had recognized something ironically; how many years had he denied Fate? Had he not believed in the power of humanity’s freedom of choice and the complete control of the self and of one’s own destiny for years beyond count?

  She smiled at him, her smile like a dream he wouldn’t let go. Did she know she had this power over him? He wondered. He doubted she would ever know.

  “I was wrong all this time, believing in a legend.” He admitted bitterly. “I think I began to realize that on this last journey from Kiel3. I only ever wanted… to have your approval, even more than to destroy the Empire…” his voice trailed off.

  “I know,” Alessia said. “You did what you thought was right. Oh, Ornenkai, dear friend you and I, we would have felled an Empire together, if only I had been stronger. If I forgive you, you must forgive me that I had not the courage to keep to our mission—”

  “A mission I forced upon you, a foolish mission.” He said bitterly.

  “No, don’t defend me, Ornenkai. I could have chosen to follow the mission, or to abandon it utterly, and yet my crime
was that I could not choose at all, for I wanted more than anything to be free from the obligation entirely. Ornenkai, dear Ornenkai, please say that you forgive me.”

  “And then shall we part in peace?” he sighed. “No, not in peace. I do not die quietly, but only because I have struggled long enough. I forgive you. What was there to forgive? I never begrudged you your happiness here, only that I could not share it. And do you forgive me?”

  “Yes, at last, I do,” she nodded. “For all your crimes, you’ve done what you could to atone—”

  “Have I?” his voice sounded lost, as he lay in her arms, helpless as a child, content to lie there forever. She could say this, not knowing what beliefs he had once championed before she ever knew him, not even caring about them.

  “All this time, I was wrong about you, Ornenkai. I’m sorry. I shall miss you. More than you know. I already have, you see, through all the time you have been gone, though I never thought I would.”

  Her kindness, her gentle expression captured his eyes. It was real, this love she possessed. Her love was great and whole. Believing this love existed at last—yes, he gasped, he did believe—this was his blissful reward.

  “Yes,” she assured him, sensing what he needed to hear to be at peace, surprising herself that she meant every word. “No one can fault you for trying to make amends. You sacrificed so much that even I cannot fault you any more. And, Ornenkai, you were not entirely responsible for the Fate of the galaxy, nor is it entirely your fault that our planet’s Empire was born. You did not work alone.”

  “Alessia—”

  “Yes?”

  “I love you.”

  “I know.” She swallowed a lump in her throat.

  He smiled at her, a bare, contented smile, as his body relaxed in her arms.

  “Good-bye... Ornenkai, my friend,” Alessia whispered, and he was gone.

  * * * * *

  After some time, Alessia released the empty body she held tightly against her. As she did so, the world, too, was suddenly nothing but emptiness all around her. She took Ornenkai’s hands and arms and rested them gently at his sides, carefully arranging his posture as best she could to do justice to his memory.