The Last Immortal : Book One of Seeds of a Fallen Empire

by Anne Spackman

  * * * * *

  The next morning, the disappearance of the colossal ship which had become such a permanent feature on the horizon east of Inen caused a panic for those who feared that it had been destroyed by Orian. Only after Enessa, the director of Inen’s largest Uranian Observatory, informed me of the uproar did it occur to me that the Tiasennian civilians had somehow come to view my ship as their stalwart sentinel against Orian and that its disappearance would cause such a disturbance.

  Orashean released an announcement that afternoon claiming that the ship had been sent to repel the colonization attempt of a radical Orian political group. All lies, of course. But everyone cheered Orashean’s action, delighted that he’d decided to take a heroic stand.

  Orashean couldn’t have been farther from the truth. After I had recovered from Sargon’s untimely communiqué, my friends and I had gathered together in Enessa’s apartment. I told them I planned to leave Inen in order to hide Selesta, and those who had been in hiding in Inen agreed to come with me. Shortly afterward, we took a local transport out to the fringes of Inen during the sleep period and progressed on foot the rest of the way to Selesta.

  Under the cover of a heavy electrical storm, we engaged the ship’s anti-radar device, took her up with highly charged, dense electromagnetic wings, using atmospheric oxygen and our fusion generators for fuel, and plunged her deep in the watery depths of the nearby Northwestern Sea.

  Using precise lasers we bored a hole into the sandstone at the base of the continental shelf and carried Selesta several nariars under the shelf until she lay buried in ancient rock layers far beneath the cliffs.

  We laughed when I heard that Fer-innyera Orashean and his men had been confounded and had tried for months to figure out how we had escaped and where our destination had been. They picked up a stream of suspicious radio signals when Enessa and a few others sent coded messages across the planet, but the Tiasennian government was unable to break the Seynorynaelian coded language that we used.

  According to Enessa, rumors began to circulate in the command circles that I had deserted Tiasenne and some even claiming that I would betray Tiasenne to Orian because of my affection for their Great Leader. Orashean and his advisory staff denied the rumors, assuring the military that I had been sent away until any problems escalated. At such a time I would be duly recalled. In short, the situation was well under control.

  Five uneventful years passed, except for news of increasing Orian discontent. At the height of his popularity, Orashean had no intention of mentioning to his people the matter of the decreased shipments of food to Orian. Instead, he wrote off the discontent as the feeble complaints of an impotent world bent on causing trouble and inflicting as much misery on its sharing, considerate neighbor as it liked to believe it was suffering itself.

  Five uneventful years passed, until the assassination of Fer-innyera Orashean. The assassin was never caught, but I guessed who might have been responsible. Because shortly after Orashean’s death, an Orian colonization vessel appeared in the skies of Tiasenne. The Tiasennian government, embroiled in internal strife, could not agree upon a response and remained deadlocked as the Orian ship approached the other side of the Northwestern Sea, near the city of Umber, with the clear intention of discharging its refugees.

  The people of Umber retaliated when their central government would not. The Tiasennian army, still a force to be reckoned with, sent out a local arsenal of fighters against the refugee ship and when the Orian refugees refused to turn around, the ship was shot down, and the escaping Orian refugees held in confinement in Umber.

  Some time later, they mysteriously disappeared from political prison. Dasan Mira and I brought some of them to Ochnar and some to Kestor, where civilian activities still went unmonitored by the local governments.

  Perhaps Sargon thought that the Tiasennian government had executed the Orians attempting to settle on Tiasenne; perhaps that was why he didn’t send more settlers to Tiasenne. Even if the Tiasennian government were in turmoil, the Tiasennian army was still as efficient a power as ever, and just as opposed as they ever were to what they regarded as Orian attempts to seize Tiasennian territory. In the two years that followed, word of a power struggle behind the scenes among the Tiasennian High Command’s senior officers filtered through to the general public.

  At this time, my few friends remaining in Inen escaped unnoticed and came to live with us in Selesta. Enessa and the others brought details concerning the recent power struggle. The military had grown weary of the power vacuum and had nominated one of its own, an experienced and likable officer with political connections. One of his grandfathers had been Theodalix Alton, Secretary of Orashean’s old Council; the other had been Fer-innyera Mourier, whose reputation and accomplishments had recently been re-instated now that historians were looking back upon his regime more objectively. Mourier’s chief detester had been Orashean, and he was now gone.

  The only problem with the appointment was the young officer’s age; at twenty-eight, Baxver Alton was the youngest Fer-innyera ever to take office. Some of the old council shook their heads and wondered what the government was coming to. Yet the fact that Fer-innyera Alton remained suspicious and watchful of Orian met with their approval. And apparently, Fer-innyera Alton had good reason to distrust Orian. As a boy, his father had been killed by an Orian extremist who had failed in an attempt to assasinate Fer-innyera Mourier.

  I couldn’t help but wonder if Alton would be a better Fer-innyera than Orashean. There was no way to predict the future, but Alton seemed to be a studious, scholarly man of little political ambition, who was likely to become a puppet of the military that had chosen him.

  The thing I was most worried about was that Sargon would try another attempt at forced colonization and provoke a war that could only have one outcome: the complete annihilation of both planets. The Tiasennian military would have no qualms about using their nuclear arsenal against Orian in an attack that could destroy the surface of Orian and threaten the survival of Tiasenne, whose climate and weather systems would almost certainly be catastrophically affected by any violent volcanic activity on Orian.

  Sargon could only wait so long, though. The time was approaching when nothing would be able to live on Orian.

  However, from the Orian refugees I had learned one important fact: under Sargon’s leadership, Orian had become truly self-sufficient. Food was rationed but enough was provided to keep every citizen from starving, and the violent philver virus had been eradicated through RNA engineering. The Orians were prospering in spite of the impending doom of their planet. Under Sargon’s strong and effective leadership, they no longer needed Tiasennian aid. The only thing they needed was Tiasennian land.

  And they could wait for it if necessary; but not for long.

  Meanwhile, Sargon wasn’t foolish enough to do anything that might force my hand against him or force me to side with Tiasenne. I felt certain that deep down, he knew I wouldn’t let the Orian race perish; he knew, for I had told him, that the Orians were almost entirely Seynorynaelian. I had not come halfway across the Great Cluster to find the last of my people only to let them perish.

  If I admitted it to myself, I had withdrawn from the world out of selfish reasons.

  Like Hinev before me, I couldn’t face my own creation. Confronting Sargon could end in disaster. If he could face me again, would he make a threat with terms and demands I couldn’t refuse? Would he threaten to eliminate all of Tiasenne if I didn’t agree to join him and create more immortals for him? I wouldn’t let him have that chance!

  Still, more immortals could mean a threat to his power.

  Yet what if, in my absence, Sargon were to become a threat to Tiasenne’s survival, even to the survival of his own people? I couldn’t bear the reponsibility of risking so many lives by putting them at the mercy of a man out of control, a man I had made immortal. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t run away and let him conquer Tiasenne and risk his one day murdering untold number
s of the Tiasennian people.

  Apparently abandoning the attempts at colonization, Sargon developed an attack strategy against Tiasenne intended to terrorize the Tiasennian civilians. Did he intend for them to rise up against their military government for failing to protect them, or did he think that his bombs would reveal where I had taken Selesta? I never knew, but his method of waging warfare seemed ineffective.

  Time was his element of surprise. He could keep the Tiasennians ever on guard, expending far more energy than the Orians, who would only have to send a few ships now and again to keep the threat alive. Terror strike tactics. What else could he do that would not endanger the land itself? But surely, he enjoyed terrorizing Tiasenne.

  As for Tiasenne, their only assault against Orian was a disaster. Shortly after his appointment, Alton launched a sqaudron of Skyhawk space cruisers against Orian in retaliation for their attacks; however, all contact was lost with the fleet when they reached Orian, and none ever returned. Alton decided not to repeat the assault and turned to an aggressively defensive stand that has remained Tiasennian military policy ever since.

  Despite my fears of what Sargon might do, it wasn’t easy for me to wait for the Tiasennians to offer the Orians asylum rather than just forcing them to accept them as colonists.

  Despite my reasons, Selesta’s computer never understood why I remained in Rigell’s system. It just didn’t understand that I couldn’t leave for Kiel3 with Orian, and Tiasenne, in such utter chaos and danger. Who else would be able to prevent mutual destruction if the great war leaders decided to destroy each other?

  Shortly after we had hidden Selesta deep in the earth, we burned a passage through the rock from the ship to the region behind the cliff face. We hollowed out chambers near the surface so that we could pick up radio communications from our informant in Inen. When our informant fell sick and died, we were effectively cut off from the world above. The scientists who had helped to man the listening post retreated into Selesta. I, however, made a passage into the rear of a narrow crevice on the cliff face, and through this I made secret visits to the surface.

  On occasion, I would see or hear Orian and Tiasennian planes flying over the cliffs, so I knew that the conflict continued.

  I was in the main chamber when I first heard a plane crashing above. I made my way to the surface and waited a few moments to make certain that there were no companion planes above, no rescue mission, and quickly made my way to the smoking wreckage which was about half a nariar from the cliff face. There were no survivors, and I left the wreck exactly as I had found it. Over the next three years, the level of airborne activity over the cliff area intensified, and there were frequent clashes between Orian and Tiasennian planes. Over a dozen were either shot down or had crashed along the cliffs during this time. Most of these were Tiasennian.

  Eventually I found a survivor. Derisar had been flying alone over northern Inen and had been intercepted by Orian Hyperion terrorist planes and driven to the Northwestern Sea before he had been shot down. He was unconscious when I pulled him out of the wreckage. I called Dasan on the Selesta, and together we carried Derisar back to Selesta.

  This posed a great dilemma for us; while we were morally obligated to tend to Derisar’s injuries, we knew that if he recovered we could never permit him to leave. His return to Inen would raise questions that were better unasked. As he recuperated, we found out from him that Orian had intensified its campaign of terrorist flights and bombings and had added space fighter patrols over some desolate areas, such as our cliffs. We went to great pains to explain the true history of the conflict to him. Derisar had never heard of the Hollin-Morzenko treaty and was completely unaware that Tiasenne had provoked the interplanetary conflict by violating it.

  However, our obvious sincerity and the evidence we shared with him were convincing, and before he was even fit enough to return home, Derisar told us that he felt he should remain with us. He well understood that if he returned to Inen so long after his crash that there would be an investigation which might lead to the discovery of Selesta. Derisar knew that his wife and daughter would assume that he had been killed and that his decision meant that he might never see them again, but that was a sacrifice he felt he must make. We were never forced to tell him that we could not allow his return in any case.

  The increased Orian attention in the area surrounding point aico-seven had been noted by the Tiasennian military and the matter had been raised in the council meeting with Fer-innyera Alton and his ministers. Alton decided that in order to avoid alerting the Orians to an investigation, an unobtrusive but painstaking search of the area by a highly trained and trustworthy individual was the best approach. So it was that Dvari Ristlav Vaikyur spent the next several months alone and unarmed except for his sidearm, wandering through the blasted scrub lands, searching every gully and crevice, checking stone by stone, bush by bush looking for what he did not know, anything unusual—out of place in this wasted area.

  And so, mid-afternoon on a scorching summer’s day, Vaikyur edged himself along a narrow ledge on the cliff-face to examine a narrow crevice and found the hidden entrance to our main reconnaissance chamber. I was there alone when he stumbled in, listening to the endless and almost meaningless radio and vidigital chatter from the government controlled information station in Inen, trying to glean some useful information about events.

  Vaikyur’s eyes were as big and round as moons for one brief moment as he took in the sight—the surveillance equipment and me sitting there operating it. He reacted swiftly and pulled out his sidearm and pointed it straight at me. He questioned me about the Tiasennian disappearances and the Orian activities in the area, and I could tell from his wording and his demeanor that his impression was that he had found an Orian spy at home in her roost.

  He had no way of knowing that I, an immortal with telekinetic powers, had no fear of him or his weapon. However, I let him believe that I was threatened and answered all of his questions, but in such as manner as to lead him to ask further questions, questions that allowed me to paint in his mind a picture of the true history of events and of the conflict between the two brotherly planets. We talked for many hours, and I could discern in this young man an idealist who believed emphatically in truth, integrity, and justice. I could see his mental struggle as he came to realize the truth of my words and that he had been deceived in the cause he had been dedicated to. When he finally laid aside his weapon and wept silent tears, I knew that this was a man I could trust. I spoke gently to him and invited him to visit the Selesta.

  My colleagues accepted Vaikyur wholeheartedly, and we all agreed that in his case, no threat would be posed by his return to Inen—in fact, we only saw advantages. As a secret messenger reporting directly to Alton, Vaikyur had access to Alton that could be invaluable. We agreed that Vaikyur would return to the surface and continue his “search” for a reasonable time then report back to Alton in Inen.

  Vaikyur was certain that he could convince Alton that since he had found nothing of consequence in the entire point aico-seven area, the best approach would be to declare it an exclusion, or Classified Zone, but to maintain a constant watch over it for which he, Vaikyur, would be personally responsible. No one would question such a declaration.

  Several such Classified Zones had already been declared in areas where radiation levels were dangerously high. The military enforced the Classified Zones, and so long as the military itself was forbidden access, the whereabouts of Selesta would remain a secret. And only a Fer-innyera could alter the exclusion status of a Classified Zone. Vaikyur would do what he could to diffuse the hostilities between Orian and Tiasenne, but we all knew that it was a dangerous game he was about to play, and he would have to be extremely careful.

  I have no doubt that Sargon believes that I will use Selesta against him. He seems incapable of understanding what I have told him, or of caring. He appears to enjoy tormenting the Tiasennians with his terror attacks, but I believe these are principally a feint to co
ver his search for Selesta which he wishes to wrest from me, and perhaps the technology to immortalize his own people, if he should dare.

  Fifty-three years have passed since Vaikyur left us, and since then we have had no direct contact with the outside world. We would be honored, Eiron, if you will meet with us on board the starship Selesta, which is an archaic word in Seynorynaelian that means—