by Yronwode
“Enough,” the Pontifex snapped. “Dear Acolyte, favor us with the Compendium of the Prophet Ariat, Chapter 33, verses 9-10.”
The scribe recited from memory, “Sixty roundings past the leaving of the false prophets, fell to the world of sorrow two mighty star-birds. And least among them was the dark man. Him shall you raise up to the highest heights, for he is chosen of God, and will preserve the Chosen people against the calamity.” The Pontifex spoke in her ancient, but certain, voice. “We are sixty years past the time when the Kariad left this world, and they left it a world of sorrow, and you have arrived.”
“Who, me?” Eddie asked. “That prophecy could refer to anybody.”
“What do you call the spaceships that brought you?”
“Aves,” Eddie Roebuck answered.
“What does that word mean?”
“Bird,” he said, “but that’s a total coincidence.”
“Your skin is dark, are you the least among your people?”
“Well, not least least…”
The Pontifex ignored him. “Continue, dear acolyte, with Ariat, Chapter 35, Verse 26…”
“The old mare passes, the Chosen One comes…”
“Not very flattering to be called an old mare,” the Pontifex cackled. “But, so be it.
The prophecy is fulfilled. When I die, you shall become Pontifex of Yronwode.” Zilla
Nights on Yronwode were long. The planet took nearly 40 standard hours to make a single rotation. Keeler did not sleep through the long night, instead, after a quick nap in the quarters provided to him, he requested to be returned to Zilla and, after some discussion, the Midians agreed to take him. His intent was to return to Pegasus and return with some assistants to begin studying the Midian Archives. He also wanted to clear his head a little and think about how to proceed with this mission.
He was curious about the Xirong. While he had no intention of interfering in planetary politics, it nagged at him that he was only getting the Midian side of the conflict. Surely, there had to be more than he was being told.
In the east, the first gray light of the pre-dawn of Yronwode’s long day, was brightening the horizon as Keeler exited the Midian military transport. He was surprised how cold, and how crystal clear, the early morning air was, even here, near the sea.
Also, how eerily quiet the city was following the attack of the night before. Palm trees ruffled in the morning breeze. Keeler wondered if they came from Earth.
The Midians had covered the ship in netting to protect it from missile attack, and his eyes had adjusted just enough to make out its shape as it sat upon its landing pads.
The canopy glowed dimly beneath the net. Inside, Blade Toto was going through the pre-flight checklist.
David Alkema met him at the hatch. “Good morning, Commander. The ship is prepared for your return. Planetology Specialist Stratos is waiting inside to accompany you, and I adjusted the seats in the main cabin the way you like them, with extra support for your lumbar.”
“Thank you,” Keeler told him. “I only expect to be gone a few hours at the most.
If Pegasus has left orbit, I’ll simply transmit a request for additional teams, then return directly here.” He paused. “Or maybe pop down and visit the Xirong.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?” Alkema asked. “The Midians said the Xirong are not much more than savages.”
“The Midians said a lot of things,” Keeler huffed, dismissively. “Will you be returning to Pegasus with me?”
“Do you want me to return to Pegasus with you?” Alkema asked him.
“Neg,” Keeler decided. “There’s a lot to do down here. Begin working on an exchange, technology assistance for information.”
“I will do that,” Alkema assured him.
“We especially want to know if they know which star systems are inhabited.”
“I asked about that last night,” Alkema told him, with disappointment. “I was told they don’t have any data on other star systems. It was forbidden, basically to limit the possibility of prisoners escaping.”
“Porpoise hork!” Keeler spat.
“Sir?” Alkema asked.
“Sorry, I just sense the Midians don’t like to share their knowledge with anyone,” Keeler answered him. “These Midians remind me too much of Republickers, arrogant, superior … no sense of humor. Political!”
The last word as meant as an epithet. “There is a dense atmosphere of politics on this planet,” Alkema agreed.
“I would tend to agree with the noted Sapphirean historian Pollux Wangchunger, who defined politics as ‘the management of necessary evil,’” Keeler said. “Except for the ‘necessary’ part. Tell me, how many listening devices did you find in your room?”
“Eight.”
Keeler grunted and walked into his ship. “You must have missed some. I found twelve.”
Transcript to Listening Devices Planted in the Room of Commander Keeler.
[Sounds of grunting, followed by a flushing noise]
Keeler: [Speaking into some sort of Communication Device]
Alkema!
[Inaudible Voice Responding on Communication Device]
Keeler: There’s no Sonic Anus Cleaner in my Euphemism.
[Inaudible Voice Responding on Communication Device]
Keeler: I’m supposed to do what?
[Inaudible Voice Responding on Communication Device]
Keeler: Is that even sanitary? Hey, send Toto over here. I need his help on something.
[Inaudible Voice Responding on Communication Device]
Keeler: No, I think I can figure out how to use the paper myself. Just find out what room he’s in and send him over.
[8 minutes, 20 seconds of silence punctuated by sounds of running water and bodily noises.]
[Doorbell]
Keeler: “Ah Toto, Good evening. You look marvelous.” Toto: “You wanted [unintelligible] from me, captain.” Keeler: Za, have you see the inside of my closet?
Toto: Neg, sir.
Keeler: It’s fascinating. Here, let me show you, but first let me turn on the shower and then turn up the music on this…
[One minute, twenty seconds of conversation drowned out by music and running water.]
[Music and running water sounds stop.]
Toto: Sir, I have always wanted to ask, what is the source of your legendary sexual prowess?
Keeler: I drink at least a glass of wine a day, accompanied by lots of fresh meat and vegetables… served on the bare breasts of a nubile Panrovian whore.
Toto: That’s very interesting. Do you have any stories that illustrate your legendary escapades?
Keeler: While on a sex-spree in a Panrovian whorehouse, I used a live stalking cat as a condom. The bodycount was fourteen Panrovian whores and one Jutland stalking cat. In Panrovia, they still refer to this as “The Night of the Sodomizing Cougar-Man.”
I called it, last Windsday.
Toto: You have so much to teach me, sir.
Keeler: Even just now, at the reception, that one Midian woman, the one with the dark hair and the fabulous yoo-hoos. She followed me into the men’s euphemism before we went to my room.
What she wanted to do made even me blush.
Zilla
Zilla rose into the sky just after dawn and bore Northwest over the peninsula of Midian, rising higher into the morning sky.
On her main deck, Keeler sat across from Planetology Specialist Anton Stratos.
“Kind of funny, isn’t it?” Keeler asked. “The first world we come to in the Orion Sector is a penal colony.”
“I wonder if it’s the only one,” Stratos mused. “In theory, one planet should be sufficient to hold the entire criminal class of several thousand colonies. But there are also the factors of distance, and the number of suitable worlds available for colonization.”
“I think there were others, but this was the big one. What are your impressions of the Midians?” Keeler asked.
“They seem civilized,” St
ratos answered. “Rather harsh, but if the Xirong are as bad as they claim, who could blame them.”
“The Midians blame their ills on the Xirong, and I bet the Xirong blame their ills on the Midians,” Keeler growled. “I found the history lesson they gave us to be self-serving. I’d like to hear the Xirong side of the story.”
“I’m sure we’ll have a chance for that,” Stratos said.
Keeler settled back into his seat. “What intrigues me more are the Kariad. I’m a little uncomfortable that there’s someone else bopping around the galaxy making contact.”
“Another potential adversary?” Stratos suggested.
“You see, that’s why I disbanded Diplomatic Corps,” Keeler said. “Too damb impractical. They would have said, ‘Oh, the Kariad. Another friend we haven’t met.’ It’s nice to have people who actually take a practical perspective on these matters.”
“Are they an enemy?” Stratos asked.
“They didn’t attack the Midians,” Keeler admitted, as though giving them partial credit.
“They seem to have been trying to help them.”
“It doesn’t seem to have worked out,” Keeler told him. “Which just goes to show you…”
He was interrupted by some massive force blasting the ship from behind. The Aves cartwheeled forward. Only the rapid deployment of emergency restraints kept Keeler and Stratos from getting pitched to the foredeck.
“Sir,” came the calm voice of Blade Toto from the command deck. “We are under attack. You might want to…”
Before he could finish, another blast knocked the side of the ship.
Keeler fought the g-forces to touch the COM Link on his sleeve. “What the Hell is going on?”
Flight Lieutenant Toto answered him. “We’re being attacked by a dragon, Commander.”
“We’re being what by a what?” Keeler shouted.
Toto transferred his Head-Up display to the main cabin. A tactical display on the inner canopy showed the beast behind them; a snarling black winged reptile, whose scales shined like polished obsidian, whose eyes blazed red like hot coals, and who spat streams of yellow fire that blazed and ate away at Zilla’s aft shield.
“Deploy aft water cannon!” Keeler ordered.
“Two things,” Toto reported calmly. “First, we don’t have an aft water cannon, and second, that’s not fire. It’s some kind of plasma. We can’t survive many more hits.” His voice was perfectly calm, like he was explaining the difference between real cheese and artificial cheese product. At the same time, he was taking Zilla through a desperate series of barrel rolls trying to shake the dragon.
“Shields are gone,” Toto reported.
“Crud,” said Keeler, just as the dragon unleashed a massive blast of fire-plasma against the port wingblade. The wingblade exploded, and Zilla became a shooting star, smoke and flame trailing its downward parabola as it dove toward the surface of the planet.
CHAPTER: 05
Yronwode – Xiyyon - Emissarial Complex of the Starcross Eddie Roebuck picked up his jaw from the floor and addressed the Pontifex.
“Whoa!” he stammered. “Hold off! You don’t want me as your pontifex. I’ve already broken at least fifteen of the seventeen commandments.”
“There are 21 commandments in the Starcross faith,” the Pontifex informed it.
“Well, that just makes it worse!” Eddie told her. “Besides, I don’t want to be Pontifex.”
“You have no choice,” the Pontifex told him, her ancient voice firm with conviction bred of decades of unquestioned supreme authority. “The Allbeing has chosen you, and I have merely informed you of His choice. The Pontifex announces his successor and then dies. So it is written, so shall it always be.”
“What if I refuse?” Eddie protested. “What if I opened up the doors to the chapel, let fly with a stream of obscenities, and then … did something on the sacred altar you’d have to clean up with a mop and some heavy duty disinfectant.” Pontifex Solace No. 23 was unperturbed. “Then, we would clean the altar with sacred vinegar and you would still be Pontifex. You would not be the first. Pontifex Adamant No. 3 refused his calling and starved himself to death. Pontifex Pious No. 10
refused to wear the papal robes and walked around naked for the nine years of his eminence. Pious the Naked, they called him. And don’t get me started on Fearless No.
2.”
Eddie got a pensive expression on his face, which obviously must have hurt.
But it did help him come up with something. “Well, what’s it pay, then?”
“Pay?” the Pontifex was shocked at first, then chuckled. “Pay? There is no pay.”
“That’s going to be a problem, then,” Eddie told her.
“What do you need with pay, when the church will provide for you all that you need?” the Pontifex persisted.
“I need more than most people,” Roebuck said.
“Then the church shall provide you whatever you want. When you are Pontifex, all will be provided for you, always. You will want for nothing.”
“What if I want a bed shaped like a transport pod?”
“You shall have it!”
“What if I want a transport pod shaped like a bed!”
The Pontifex chuckled a bit, but assured him. “It shall be done.”
“What if I want to eat my lunch off the bare breasts of a teenaged girl?” The Pontifex, to his surprise, did not seem taken aback. “If that is what you wish, you shall have it, but with the power you’ll be given…”
“What kind of a religion is this?” Eddie cried out. He may not have been overly familiar with religious practices on Sapphire, but he knew enough to know that eating lunch on the breasts of underage girls was something most of them frowned upon.
“It is the one sure faith as described by Brian Kingman from his translation of the Fifth Holy Testament of Taramayara, the Unwritten Word.” Pontifex Solace No. 23
lay back against her pillows. “You will come to know it, Eddie Roebuck. The spirit will reside within you and you will know the truth of all things.
Eddie was about to protest again, but he was overcome with a feeling that he should just… not. For a moment, she reminded him of his grandmother back in New Halifax, and he was saddened by the knowledge that two or three hundred years had passed on Sapphire and she was long since dead.
Solace summoned the young man in the fez. “Have someone draw the Archonex Meek, and inform him of these events. Prepare the way for Mr. Roebuck’s installation as my successor. Then, prepare my grave. For soon, this vehicle shall soon come to a full and complete stop, and my soul will be free to join the Allbeing in Multi-dimensional Perfection.
“In the meantime, Mr Roebuck,” she smiled, and there was a bright glint in her eye. “You must be prepared to take on the mantle of Pontifex. I have no doubt you shall be found worthy.
Yronwode – The Road to Xiyyon
Not much later, that morning, as the sun rose into the sky, Trajan Lear and Matthew Driver rode a tram into the hills outside the city of Xenthe toward Xiyyon.
The pink-yellow light of the morning tinted the ten and twenty story apartment blocks that ringed the outskirts of Xenthe. Each building was sheathed in plates of polished stone forming a shield that could close against the heat of the sun and attacks like the one the previous night. To Trajan Lear, they looked like the old fashioned public utility kiosks? set up in the plazas of Republic cities where Republickers in centuries past would go to settle their accounts with the City’s taxation, registration, water, power, communication, medical, entertainment, and atmospheric accounts.
Soon, the towering apartment blocks gave way to more commercial structures, which were lower and squarer and had colorful stylish logos on the outside walls.
These extended for many kilometers beyond the inner suburban ring, and were in turn ringed by sprawling developments of smaller apartment blocks.
When these ended, they caught a glimpse of the raw, unimproved land in which the Midians had bu
ilt their cities. The soil was a desolate tan-gray that looked like lunar soil. The hills around the city had eroded into khaki-colored loafs of stone.
“Where do you grow your food,” Trajan Lear asked their guide. Beyond the outer suburbs in most Republicker cities was a ring of hydroponic farms that supplied most of their sustenance.
Their guide, a young man by the name of Noah Good, answered the question.
“There are farms and orchards located further south on the continent, on the far side of Lake Abraham. We also import some food from the Xirong, but not a lot. This small peninsula actually produces 45% of the planet’s food. Since we only have two per cent of the planet’s population, we export most of it. Mainly to the northern tribes on the polar continent.”
The train passed through a tunnel cut through the hills and they exited into a valley. The apartment blocks were smaller here, four or five stories, arranged in patterns with shops and plazas in the middle. Near the middle of the valley were several large structures; unmistakably churches and temples.
“The Temple of the Saints is on the far side of the city, in the Otherwise Holy Valley of Xiyyon,” Noah Good told them. “So, we’ll be passing right through Xiyyon. Only the Brianists are allowed to have temples there.”
Before they reached Xiyyon Center, they passed a large rectangular building of about six stories in height, plainly square, built of pale sandstone, with rows of dull square windows, perfectly aligned. The utilitarian structure, looking less like a building than a box a building might come in, was set in the middle of a bare concrete plaza.
Noah Good saw that it had caught their eye. “That is the Kariad Center,” he explained, with a kind of shrug. “Some of our population have embraced the Kariad belief system, and they built the center.”
Lear and Alkema found this somewhat surprising considering the hostility most of the Midians they had met held for the Kariad. “What do the Kariad believe?” Driver asked.
Again, Noah Good shrugged. “Nothing. They believe that the universe was a random accident, that there is nothing else beyond it, and that human are just biological entities whose existence begins at birth and ends at physical death. Some people call that building The Temple About Nothing.” His voice was sincere and good natured, betraying no contempt or skepticism at the Kariad belief system.
