Solbidyum Wars Saga 9: At What Price

by Dale Musser

  “What about you and the crew of the NEW ORLEANS?” I asked.

  “He’s only mentioned us briefly, saying he will provide richly for anyone who supplies information as to our whereabouts. But for the most part he seems unconcerned about us right now.”

  “What about Wabussie? Did he make it?”

  “Not as far as we know. Reidecor said he tried to locate him on the Capitol Station but was unable to do so. No mention of him as been made by Ming and none of the Federation officers I’ve spoken with have heard a word about him. However, Halfredies managed to make it. He’s with Reide and he’s hoping to use his FOI agents, who are still actively planted in the Federation territories that Ming has captured, as spies that can form the foundation for a resistance movement.”

  “Marranalis, I need you to do me a favor,” I thought.

  “Anything, Tibby. You only need to ask.”

  “Some time ago Kala and I set up a will with the help of Weccies Chief Banker Norcar and his team of estate barristers. Norcar is listed as the Will Administrator and I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve listed you as the Signatory on all actions. It’s all spelled out, but I forgot one issue that I need to you handle for me. Contact Felenna and tell her there is no longer any need for her to defend Alle Bamma, at least not in the same way that she has been. I made a promise to the natives to protect them, but I don’t believe Ming will go after that world anymore. So instruct Kerabac and her to meet and work out a plan to split those defensive resources, so some of them can be diverted to the assistance and defense of the refugees on Earth. Then later, if needed, they can build up the defenses by purchasing new ships and armaments. There’s more than enough money in my accounts at Weccies to cover whatever they may need at both Alle Bamma and Earth. So long as Ming survives, it won’t be safe for any of them to go back to the old Federation territories. Hopefully Ming won’t be around much longer, but until he’s gone and the Brotherhood presence has dissolved, help the Earth colony set up trade with worlds outside of Ming’s sphere of interest, worlds where they can get the materials they need to thrive where they are.”

  “Tibby, you’ll survive this somehow. I know you will. None of this will be necessary,” Marranalis’s thoughts came back to me, and somehow I could feel the distress behind his words.

  “I don’t think so, Marranalis. Not this time. But we’ll be taking Ming with us,” I said and then I outlined the plan A’Lappe had in mind – at least as much as we had figured out.

  I finished my instructions by saying, “You and the remaining members of the Federation Military need to be prepared to move quickly. Once Ming is gone, his minions will be in a state of confusion and will either surrender or they will be so disorganized that their defeat will be quick and easy. I have great confidence in you, Marranalis. With most of the top leaders in the Senate safe on Earth, you should be able to return the Federation back to some semblance of what it once was soon after Ming is dead. So, whether we succeed or don’t succeed… well… now you know what to do.”

  “Tibby, you can’t. The Federation needs you,” Marranalis protested.

  “What the Federation needs is to be rid of Ming and the Brotherhood. After that, the Federation has no need for me. Believe me, Marranalis, this is the only way and best way to end this all. Besides, A’Lappe tells me I probably don’t have much longer before my nerve rejection gets the best of me. My only regret is that A’Lappe and Kala will die with me. If I can find a way to save them, I will.” I wondered if Marranalis could feel the grief that gripped these last thoughts the way I could feel his pain.

  “But back to Jenira and Andy… you mentioned something about him helping her…?”

  “Yes, it was a very strange thing,” responded Marranalis. “You’ll recall that it was Andy who saved her life on Goo’Waddle when Tanden was killed. Well, since then, Jenira has always had great respect for Andy. She admires him as much as she does you and Kalana. He talked to her at some length about life and death as she has always seen it and that to her life means having purpose. So, since she is still alive, it means she still has purpose. Well, somehow Andy’s reasoning made sense to Jenira. It was as though some kind of memory was prompted and she began shouting ‘Kenan Natoo! Kenan Natoo!’ as if the phrase suddenly held a new meaning for her. She told Andy it had to do with insights given to her by the native shaman at Alle Bamma in her youth… something about her true name and true purpose being one in the same… Kenan Natoo, Protector of Children. She had always thought it meant her purpose was to protect Lunnie and Reide, and now that they were grown, she thought her purpose was complete and she was supposed to help defeat the Brotherhood and then finish out her life in peace and love with Padaran. When that scenario collapsed, she came undone. But now, she said, she understood the full meaning of the shaman’s words. Almost immediately she became more responsive to the doctor’s treatments, she began eating, and now she’s showing more resolve than ever. She wants to get to Earth as quickly as possible to help Lunnie and the Women with Swords care for the orphans and raise them to be strong protectors in their own right.”

  Marranalis and I continued to communicate a while longer, going over details of how best to protect Earth and set up safe buffers for trade with outer worlds that would minimize the risks of detection by the Brotherhood. When we finished, I found Kala staring at me from the next console chair.

  “Well? What’s happening?”

  I related all that I had learned from Marranalis and told her that Reide was in the process of building a permanent DSC unit to be used from the refugee base on Earth. She was elated to hear that Jenira had come out of her shock and had found a new meaning for her life in her commitment to the orphans.

  “Tib, don’t you think it’s ironic that Ming left Earth and that now it’s Earth that is providing refuge for so many of those who are fleeing Ming?” Kala asked.

  “Yes, I do. I also fine it interesting that it is my daughter and son who will be rebuilding Earth, my home world. I wonder just how many people they have on Earth now.”

  “Several thousand, I would imagine,” said Kala. “I mean, there were nearly two thousand at our estate alone and the normal daily capacity of the Capitol Station was several thousand.”

  “Yes, but only a fraction of those on the Capitol Station were rescued – mostly the top officials. I doubt there are three thousand people on the Earth at the moment,” I said.

  “Well it only takes two people to repopulate a planet,” said Kala, making light of my concern.

  “Two people with a lot of luck,” I added. “I know. It’s not like they’re really that isolated.”

  About an hour later Ming called wanting to know how much longer it would take to reach the solbidnite. He flew into a rage when A’Lappe told him it would be almost two weeks and then threatened to blow us up on the spot for creating delays. A’Lappe explained that it was due to Ming’s own decisions that we were traveling in the TRITYTE and restricted to GW speeds and leaps that could only be made by sending his patrols ahead to set up Cantolla Gates along our path. Ming ranted until he threw himself into coughing fits, then finally settled down and accepted the fact that it was going to take time. He feared moving us to any other ship where we might escape or find weapons that could be used against him, so he let us continue on as we were. Ming may have been ruler of the universe, but there was no doubt that Ming himself was ruled entirely – day and night – by his own paranoia.

  Not long after Ming disconnected, a flashing light indicated an incoming call on the DSC. Kala donned the headgear and within moments I could tell by her body language it was one of the twins, but which one I wasn’t sure. Kala smiled and sobbed silently as she communicated behind closed eyes. Watching her mixed joy and agony brought me tears of my own. I felt we were being cheated, because we couldn’t spend more time with our children and live a normal life, and the anguish tore through my chest.

  It didn’t seem all that long ago that I had recited an Old Earth re
ligious passage to Kala. “To whom much is given, much will be required.” Certainly I had been given much – far more than I ever wanted or needed. At that moment, I would have gladly given it all back in exchange for time with my family. All the fame, wealth and glory were nothing compared to my Kala and my twins. I never asked for any of it and in the end, the greater part of it had no worth at all.

  There was another famous Old Earth saying attributed to William Shakespeare that Kala had found and read to me on another occasion. “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” I wondered when she found time to read all those literary works from Earth and just how many she’d read. Nevertheless, this saying applied well also. I wasn’t born great and I really hadn’t achieved greatness by my own skills; it was more a case of having greatness thrust upon me and upon my life – again, something I didn’t desire. I think I would have been much happier living with Kala and the twins in a trailer home on the edge of a swamp on Earth than in the opulent homes and surrounded by all the wealth and power I had thrust upon me by circumstance in the Federation.

  I decided to wipe my eyes and sit down next to my dear, loyal friend, A’Lappe, while Kala continued to converse with whichever twin was speaking with her on the DSC.

  “A’Lappe you’ve always been so secretive about your origins and your past. I’d like to know more than the little you’ve shared, if you’re willing to tell me now.”

  A’Lappe looked at me for a moment and sighed. “The place that I called home different from this universe in many ways and yet all too familiar in others. My home is in another dimension, another universe. Some of the laws of physics and chemistry work differently there, but the sum of everything is the same, to put it in non-scientific terms. Oddly enough, people there look more like you than I look here. I was somehow changed when I was thrust into this universe. But we’ve discussed all of that before,” he said.

  “Yes, but what about your life? Did you have a bondmate? Did you have children?”

  “I almost had what you would refer to as a bondmate, at least a woman who would mother my children, if I had produced any. In my universe people don’t reproduce until an age that is quite a bit older than what is considered normal in the Federation. Unions there are often defined by the state, but a couple may petition the state for the right to produce offspring and in most cases those petitions are accepted. The woman I hoped to join with as a mate was named Sildie. She was most beautiful and we enjoyed many things in common. We had applied for the right to produce children just days before the event that transported and trapped me here in this universe. I’ve always hoped that she was able to move on and find someone better than me to become her partner.” He sighed again and for the first time I could feel the depth of his loneliness and loss.

  “Have you ever tried recreating the experiment that trapped you here in hopes of going back?” I asked.

  “Many times. It would have required the power of a solbidyum reactor to open a door between universes again, but I’ve never been able to find all of the elements I need to construct the device in this universe. Even if I did, the odds of my opening a gateway to the right universe are staggering.”

  “The right universe? How many are there?” I asked.

  “Their number is far more than you or I could ever imagine… almost infinite.” Then seemingly for no reason, he started to giggle and when I asked what was so funny, he said, “I was just thinking… if it were you who were to come into my universe, I wonder whether I would be able to smell you.”

  We both laughed at this thought as I said, “I would hope that I’d smell a lot better in that universe than I do in this one.”

  Later, after Kala disconnected from the DSC, she said she had been communicating with Reide and that he was on Earth with Lunnie and everyone was okay. The senators were trying to connect with their constituents on their home worlds using the Cantolla Gate communication system, but they were having a lot of problems, since the Brotherhood now controlled most of the communication hubs and most of these gateways had been closed or destroyed. Only by directing signals through Federation ships or planets that were still free from Brotherhood domination was it possible to find a route of communication. Only a fraction of the surviving senators were able to make connections to their home worlds and the news they received was grim.

  In what was once the Earth city of San Paulo, Brazil, Lunnie was able to locate a large, stable building where, with some effort, Reidecor and the rest of the team assigned to protect the government leaders were able to create suitable offices and quarters for Leader Pheosa and the senators so they could begin functioning as a Federation government in exile. Their success would depend totally on the efforts of A’Lappe, Kala and me as we moved deeper into space toward the solbidnite site with the hopes of finding a way to ignite an explosion in the solbidnite field and destroy Ming.

  Days passed and I was able to communicate with both Lunnie and Reidecor. I was pleased when Reide told me that Rory and Cantolla had solved the problem of how to use sonic devices to destroy the pathogens that wiped out human life on so many worlds where the Brotherhood had dropped their canisters of death. By suspending devices below patrol ships that would skim the planets’ and moons’ surfaces while broadcasting the frequencies, they would eventually cleanse the planets so that human life could once again return; that is, if the Brotherhood was ever defeated. Unfortunately, it was too late for the humans that had occupied these worlds, as they had all perished. Only a few Nibarians still survived in quarantine on those planets and, luckily, they would be able to withstand the sonic frequencies and be sanitized soon, so they could return to their homes and resume normal lives.

  The twins surprised me by asking me to relate all that had transpired in the past, going back as far as my original departure from Earth. They said they were repeating my words on their end of the DSC system so a transcription device would record them as written text. They insisted that it was necessary, so future generations would know the history that had preceded the rebirth of their home world of Earth. They said that my story – our story – must be preserved and shared for all time as the founding truth for the restoration of the Federation. It is in response to this request that this document exists. This completes my history to this point and from here on I shall relate events as they happen.

  *****

  It’s been more than a week since I started relating this history. I’m glad I started it immediately, because my memory is beginning to lose its sharpness as the effects of my last treatment wear off. Already I’m starting to notice slight tremors in my hands. A’Lappe informs me that we’re about three days away from our destination. Ming and his accompanying fleet have been right behind us all the way and I’ve noted that he’s stationed fighters to guard each of the Stellar Gates that have been erected along the route to hasten their return once the solbidnite field has been revealed.

  I’ve been wondering just exactly what Ming is going to do to secure the enormous solbidnite field as his own, once he has it. Maybe he hasn’t figured that out himself yet.

  I’ve noted during his periodic calls that his own condition is worsening, as well. He seems to lack the ability to sit up straight now. At least my own condition isn’t that severe at the moment.

  Kala has been wonderful and has shown far more courage and resolve in this ordeal than I would expect from anyone. Her love sustains me, but I deeply regret that she will have to die with me. I’m helpless to do anything about it and my heart is breaking to know that this beautiful woman will be gone from this existence in a few days.

  A’Lappe has also shown tremendous fortitude. Except for some very serious periods when he’s working on the TRITYTE’s power source and GW drive, he seems to be taking everything in stride and appears to have no regrets at all. Nearly every day he sings songs to Kala and me. Some of them are quite funny and they cheer us a lot.

  *****

  A most miraculous
thing happened today. A’Lappe, Kala and I were having a rather intimate conversation about the actions we had planned for the last moments of our lives – what we thought would happen at the moment of the explosion and what, if anything, our existence would be like after death. I had just shared that I didn’t really know and that I’d always more or less assumed that once we died it was all over, but that after the death of Luinella, Kala’s sister, and the… well… dreams I had of her, I’d begun to question those beliefs. I was about to say something more, when from the back of the Control Room I heard, “I’m surprised that you’ve forgotten our conversation, Man Who Speaks for Thumumba!”

  Kala, A’Lappe and I all turned our heads at once to see Thumumba seated in one of the rear seats in the Control Room! He was dressed in a white uniform, not much different in cut from the mercenary suits that Kala and I were wearing.

  “Thumumba!” exclaimed Kala and I in amazement.

  “Didn’t I tell you, Tibby, that when the time came, I would be here for you?”

  “Well… ahh... yes but I never really thought about it,” I stammered.

  “Well, you should have,” he scolded with a gentle smile. “The universe has no intention of letting you die or cease to exist,” he exclaimed. “Nor do I. We need each other and I plan to see to it that none of you ever die, though you must accept that you will cease to exist in your present forms.”

  “I do sort of remember you talking about that before,” I said. “But perhaps you can repeat it for Kala and A’Lappe.”

  Thumumba nodded and began to explain. “Kalana, do you recall when you lived on Desolation the star that was undergoing massive solar flares?”

  “Yes. I recall Alle Bamma’s representative, Regata, telling us the flares had something to do with an entity much like yourself that dwelled within the star, but this being was not yet mature enough to communicate or understand what was going on,” she responded.