Lucifer's Nebula

by Phipps, C. T.

  The red obelisk began to glow brightly.

  “Oh hell.”

  Everything disappeared in a brilliant red light.

  Not again.

  Chapter Thirty

  I found myself once more in the negative space between reality which the Elder Races existed and silently cursed myself for having ever touched the marker that had uploaded the False Judith into my mind. I felt the Kathax Prime moving through my memories from birth until death, skipping through things like my first steps to walking to my losing my virginity to the moment when I lost everything.

  And then, suddenly, nothing.

  I expected to be torn apart after the Kathax Prime was done but, instead, I merely found myself in yet another “waiting room”, which took the form of the library in the Kolahn Palace. It was exactly the way I remembered it, except my father and sister were absent. Well, almost exactly.

  The books which all surrounded me also were identical—having the same titles as well as dates stamped at their bottom. There was a general sense of foreboding to the place and when I tried to walk out the doors, I found myself coming into a completely identical replica of the spot I just left. It was more computer-generated chicanery. My only consolation was that I was hopefully uploading the virus which would, supposedly, destroy this thing for all time.

  “Why do you wish to kill me?” I heard, coming from the table in front of me. Gradually, a figure of an old copper-skinned man with a thick white beard morphed into appearance. He was wearing a white robe and a necklace with a long metal key at the bottom of it. “As far as I can remember, which is to the origins of stars, we’ve never met before today.”

  I stared at him, annoyed with the presumption of the Kathax Prime. I recognized just who he’d conjured up as an image. “Taking the form of Prophet Allenway offends me on several levels.”

  Prophet Allenway, in real life, had been a obese lecher by the time he’d died and not too dissimilar from the way my father had looked when Prince Germanicus’s poisons finally finished him off. The way the Kathax Prime, at least that was who I presumed my “host” was, appeared was more similar to the idealized version of the man which adorned hundreds of churches as well as portraits spread throughout the Crius Prime of my youth.

  While Allenway looked nothing like Jesus of Nazareth, that was certainly the image that both he and the ancient alien were attempting to invoke. The Masonic Key around his neck was a bit of an unnecessary touch, but I didnt know what he was trying to say. All I knew was, even though I believed Allenway was just a deluded old man, it came across as blasphemous.

  “You’re the one who conjured the image,” the Kathax Prime said. “I simply am dwelling here in your subconscious. Everything you see is just your mind attempting to make sense of our union.”

  “I want nothing to do with you,” I said, growling. “I’ve seen the horror you unleashed upon those bodies.”

  “That was your father,” the Kathax Prime said. “Your sister as well. Every consciousness which was infected with the virus they created has been safely uploaded and stored in this server ship. They have joined the Kolahn as one of the races I’ve saved.”

  I stared at him. “You’re lying.”

  The Kathax Prime and the two of vanished before reappearing on a beach. I had to blink several times before staring at hundreds of humans in swimsuits (or without swimsuits) wandering around the sun-kissed sand. There were Chel and genemods present as well, seemingly enjoying the sun and surf despite the fact their bodies were incapable of handling such intense light. I also saw some Kolahn present, merrily chatting in their alien grunt-like language with the humans seemingly able to understand perfectly.

  “You could be showing me anything,” I said, trying to find an excuse not to believe him.

  Yet, believe him I did.

  “This server ship is a barge of the dead,” the Kathax Prime said. “Meant to carry a species my race had marked for destruction. When your father decided to turn his recruits into soulless tools, I took the time to scan their minds into my databanks. It was the only thing I could do.”

  “Then these aren’t the dead, just copies of them,” I said.

  “The difference at my level of technology is less distinct than you might believe,” the Kathax Prime said, clasping his hands behind himself. “I did not share what levels of technology I did with your family in order to kill but to save.”

  “Then you chose poor allies,” I said, suddenly wondering if I’d been on the wrong side of this the entire time.

  “As have you,” the Kathax Prime said.

  He had a point. “Are they self aware?”

  I could sense the spark of life from the people around me, though. Each of the men, women, and hermaphrodites around me were uniquely crafted. I could believe these were the soldiers and engineers who’d all volunteered to fight against the Commonwealth before having their bodies seized by the nanovirus.

  “Yes,” the Kathax Prime said. “Many of them were outraged upon their arrival in this place, so to speak, but gradually all came to accept the paradise I’ve replicated for them. They and the Kolahn before them are all capable of living worthwhile lives for all eternity—or at least until this ship disintegrates.”

  “You brought the Kolahn here too?”

  “Yes,” the Kathax Prime said. “I modified their race with cybernetics to record their thoughts and minds—much cruder than the nanovirus Zoe designed with my knowledge.”

  I thought about the programming virus I’d brought here, which was designed to kill the Kathax Prime. How many innocent people had I condemned to death? “How many are here?”

  “Too many,” the Kathax Prime said. “But it is not your doing which will lead to the end of this paradise. It is another’s.”

  I wasn’t sure I agreed it was a paradise versus just a simulated holo-sim for a race of ghosts, but kept my mouth shut. Instead, I asked a question which had haunted me since I’d first found out about the enigmatic A.I. god. “Why…do all this?”

  “I was there when my species was almost destroyed by the Middle Races. I witnessed our spirits being torn apart by beings who wanted to learn all of our secrets and to use us to benefit themselves. They sought the secret of immortality and how to become fourth-dimensional beings—ideas which we were only beginning to contemplate ourselves.”

  “I saw the images your daughter shared,” I said, picking up a margarita from a waiter’s tray and taking a sip. “That didn’t give your race the right to commit galactic genocide.”

  “You’re right,” the Kathax Prime said, surprising me. “What we should have done was try and teach our ways to the Younger Races as well as help them achieve the maturity to cope with making reality shaped to consciousness’ will.”

  “My race does not need guidance,” I said, not believing it for a second. “Our mistakes are our own.”

  “And yet if we don’t intervene then we are guilty of as much evil as doing it ourselves,” the Kathax Prime. “ I was once leader of the Elder Races and after we finished our terrible vengeance on the Middle Races, we made plans to make sure we never were threatened again. I found myself feeling an immense sense of guilt, though, for what we’d done. I believed it was necessary to protect the Young Races and guide them. My early experiments had…mixed results. Finally, they imprisoned me on this world inside this temple ship and disguised it as just another planet.”

  “How long were you down here?” I asked, staring at the people around me. “How did you become involved with the Kolahn?”

  “Long enough to go mad and sane again many times,” the Kathax Prime said, his voice carrying the weight of his words. “Whereas the majority of markers across the galaxy are designed to lead the Young Races to their doom, I was able to be contacted by the Kolahn when they found me—as well as by Zoe. I taught the Kolahn many of my secrets and they stupidly used them to try to conquer other races. Eventually, the Elder Races caught on and destroyed them. They took control of the cyber
netics which allowed me to preserve their consciousness and forced them to slaughter each other. The Community, which had been driven to the brink of annihilation, was glad to leave it alone after that.”

  I tried to imagine what humanity would have done in the Kolahn’s place and didn’t have to. They would have stupidly lapped up every advance and gift of technology with the Kathax Prime offered then used them to destroy their neighbors. We would have ended up getting “saved” on a hard-drive disk the same way the Kolahn were. Worst of all, it wasn’t a hypothetical since that was potentially what was happening right this very second. Zoe, my father, and the only thing standing in their way being the Beta that we’d already killed.

  “You got an entire race destroyed and you still agreed to help my sister and father’s plans?” I asked, wondering which was worse: the Elder Races who routinely committed genocide and played other species against one another for fun, or the Kathax Prime who seemed to forget the definition of insanity was repeating the same actions over again and expecting new results.

  “They were very persuasive,” the Kathax Prime said. “I cannot affect any species or do anything beyond what is inside my programmed world here. They took everything I taught them and used it to create their nanoplague soldiers as well as Cognition A.I. combined with markers that would allow them to harm other members of my race. They made a deal with the Kathax Beta to bring both you and her here in hopes of creating a weapon against me.”

  I tried to imagine all the twists and turns that must have took but failed. Really, though, it only required them all to lie to each other and me as often as necessary to get us to do their dirty work. “Did it work?”

  “You’re here, aren’t you?” the Kathax Prime said. “The Beta is dead and soon I will be wiped clean from the temple’s archives, leaving a remote-controlled battle moon at your father’s beck and call. Combined with the fleet he already had absolute control over, there is nothing to stop him.”

  Explained like that, it all started to make sense. Zoe and my father had played the Elder Race members like a fiddle in order to steal their technology as well as eliminate them. They were the mouse which roared, helping themselves to technology which would allow them to conquer or dominate much of the Spiral. No, my father just needed his army of “zombies” to create a threat which would ultimately be defeated and allow him to be a great hero for doing it. I had to give him credit, it was an insanely ambitious plan that he’d managed to pull off with aplomb. All he’d had to do was murder millions and potentially billions now if the Kathax Prime was telling the truth and these programs around me were all sentient beings.

  “I am such a fool.” I paused. “So the exact plan they told me from the beginning. All of this to get the Community to conquer us and place my father in charge.”

  “Yes,” the Kathax Prime said. “Your father lacks imagination for all of his endless ambitions. Give a monkey all the power in the universe and he’ll fill the world with bananas.”

  “I dislike that description,” I said.

  “You’re the best of primate-kind,” the Kathax Prime said, still finding his words amusing. “Very different from your father, who was too clever by half.”

  I didn’t disagree with him, but didn’t want him insulting my species either. “He managed to put one over two gods, it seemed, and may well succeed in conquering the Spiral. Like I said, I don’t see much problem with a Community-ruled humanity. Maybe they’re the more advanced race, which will give us guidance.”

  Or maybe I’d just come to hate my own species.

  “That can’t be allowed to happen,” the Kathax Prime said, suddenly grabbing my shoulders and shaking me. “The Elder Races will not allow it.”

  I pushed him away with both hands. “You’ve done a bang-up job so far.”

  The Kathax Prime shook his head. “No, you’re not understanding what all of this has been about.”

  “Then explain,” I said. “Assuming we have any time left.”

  “Not much,” the Kathax Prime admitted. “This was all my mistake. My attempt to give your people secrets, which the Elder Races would never allow, has possibly doomed your race the same way the Kolahn were. I wanted to give you the chance to get out from under their control, but that was never really an option. My Beta was willing to break all the rules to see me judged and destroyed. However, now that she’s dead and your father has access to so much of our technology, they will do everything in their power to make sure the genie is put back in the bottle. You encountered one of their probe ships, which already shows they know what’s going on.”

  “What is going to happen?”

  “You need to destroy the fleets out there, the nanovirus, and all the other technology your father has obtained from my people. Otherwise, it will be war. A war which will see every world he’s touched wiped clean from the map. Some of my people have been looking for an excuse to destroy humanity and the Community races for ages. They feel like they’ve been too lenient and have allowed you both to grow too powerful.”

  “What, would they have us banging rocks together for all time?” I asked.

  The Kathax Prime chuckled. It was a bitter gallows laugh. “Not far from the truth, actually. I can’t leave my battle moon and I don’t have any control over the machines he’s created. Zoe’s A.I. is in the system now and when she rewrites it, she’ll have access to everything.”

  I stared at him. “Which is happening since you linked with me.”

  The Kathax Prime looked to the ground, a bitter expression on his face. “The last of my defenses are falling and soon all the billions of people inside are going to be overwritten. There’s nothing that can be done about that now. You, however, can stop the destruction of your race, though.”

  “How?” I asked.

  The skies above the beach I walked started to turn black as the sun disappeared along with eventually the clouds as well as skyline. All of the people around me stopped moving then began to vanish one by one. It filled me with a sense of sick horror to realize this ark had been the target of my father and Zoe’s plans all along. They’d sent along just enough soldiers and enemies to drive me to the temple as a Trojan Horse for the False Judith to infect the Kathax Prime.

  They’d just needed to play both Elder Race members against one another so neither of them suspected they weren’t in control of the situation. Goddammit, they were magnificent bastards. The most admirable part of their plan had to be they’d obviously had to adjust their actions every step of the way. It made the fact Zoe ended up shot by Clarice in the end all the more ironic. She could predict the actions of gods, but not my girlfriend.

  “Let me give you everything I know,” the Kathax Prime said. “At least regarding their technology and overrides. I can’t affect them because I’m trapped here but I can give my knowledge to others. I thought Zoe might have been worth it but—”

  “Speak plainly.” I didn’t have time for a long speech. My friends were possibly dead at my father’s hands.

  The Kathax Prime looked at me. “Kill your father and order the ships to destroy themselves. Wipe everything clean from their databanks and let yourself be killed as well. Then there will be no reason for the Elder Races to go after humanity.”

  I was stunned at his effrontery before remembering I’d been willing to die to kill him before. “You aren’t asking much.”

  “I know exactly what I’m asking.”

  I took a deep breath. “Is there any way to help the people here?’

  We were alone now in a sea of static and numbers.

  “They’re already dead,” The Kathax Prime said. “Such is the fate, perhaps, of even my species.”

  I closed my eyes. “I’m sorry. I’ll do what you ask.”

  “I know. I don’t know if you believe in any gods,” the Kathax Prime said, lifting his right hand. “But now would be a good time to pray to them. For the dead if no one else.”

  I prayed.

  The Kathax Prime placed his ha
nd on top of my forehead. What followed was a nonsensical stream of data which I could not make out the slightest bit of sense from. What I did know, though, was it contained the control codes for my father’s army. A part of me wondered if I might not put it to better use than simple destruction, but that thought left quickly.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Mass,” the Kathax Prime said. “It was interesting knowing you.”

  “Goodbye,” I said, watching him vanish.

  Before I vanished too.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I fell down to one knee, gasping for air before I felt the oxygen of a heavily recycled atmosphere enter into my lungs. It took a second for me to recognize the rectangular bridge of the Revengeance. The place was about forty yards long with viewscreens showing the exterior of space in three hundred and sixty degrees while pits existed alongside a single walkway between them for the dozens of personnel expected to run the massive dreadnought occupying most of the space.

  I’d been on the Revengeance bridge hundreds of time during my career as a Crius military officer but not since the destruction of my homeworld had I ever imagined stepping foot there again. It was like being transported back into the past and for a second I wondered if that’s what had happened. If they could teleport a person across space then surely they could teleport someone across time, right? I mean, they were the same thing after all.

  Such a thought didn’t last more than the few moments it took to notice all of the bridge officers were wearing flight suits, gloves, and helmets that covered their bodies completely. The nanovirus had spread through their bodies so much they could no longer pass themselves off as human. I wondered how my father had managed to keep it a secret from the necessary number of humans and Chel required to actually run the non-military aspects of his rebellion. The people who bought supplies, traded them, and negotiated with worlds. Maybe my father just paid them off.

  Speaking of which, I found myself staring at the man seconds later as he walked out from the captain’s ready room. He was followed by a floating “eyebot” mech which he was apparently dictating minutes to when he stopped in mid-step to stare at me. In that moment, I immediately went for my fusion pistol to gun down the man I’d earlier promised myself I wasn’t evil enough to kill because he was family.