The Book of Ominiue: Starborn

by D. M. Barnham

  ‘He watches the native animals a lot; I think he’s trying to find evidence.’

  ‘It’s because he’s bloody crazy,’ Danto said. The general gave him a dark look and he instantly fell quiet under the silent command.

  Hanniver ignored him and addressed his concerns to the general, ‘There’s odd behaviour from him, not Starborn anyway, but there’s nothing I can add to any of reports already made, or what the robots have already recorded. It could be his partial Star Born Victim status mingled with his unusually high level of intelligence. I honestly don’t know.’

  ‘Who can,’ the general spun his seat around a bit as he pondered. ‘He’s intelligent, and that intelligence is of immense benefit to us, but I do share Dan’s fear, there’s something off and I do have sleepless nights wondering what he’s truly capable of; for us or against us. But I’m still not convinced if he’s able to disobey a command; from us or the Astronauts.’

  ‘What about native influences?’ Williams looked at both Hanniver and the general.

  ‘He could be influenced by the lionmen. He trusts them, but if they weren’t trustworthy he wouldn’t bother. He purely reacts to how they behave.’

  ‘So he does hold opinions?’ the general wanted to confirm.

  Hanniver thought about the question carefully, ‘Yes,’ he finally added. Williams looked like he was trying to hold himself back, wanting to add his thoughts but knowing he would only incur the general’s wrath and probably create one of his infamous bad tempers.

  ‘We must remember,’ Hanniver stressed, ‘that he’s not reported as a full Starborn and he has basic rights until a trial can determine his status.’ The general sighed in acknowledgement. He knew this very well and was the main reason he held back.

  ‘We should just trial him now,’ Williams cut in.

  ‘Except none of us are exactly impartial, are we?’ the general snapped without needing to.

  ‘Ten years is a long time to wait. Whether we condemn him, or even worse; free him after judging him invalid here and now,’ Hanniver added. The general nodded in agreement.

  ‘You sympathise with him?’ The air-vice marshal asked, but for the first time it was a genuine question and not an accusation or passing putdown.

  ‘To a degree I do,’ The Brigadier admitted. ‘I worry about his time, especially if he does regain his emotions, any subjectification could destroy him; he may become fragile from actions imposed beforehand. We can’t know what will happen.’

  ‘I think about that too.’ The general added. ‘It would be a waste to confine him.’

  ‘And I say we’re better off safe than sorry,’ Williams pointed out. The general reluctantly agreed, though the issue always returned to native worship and the fact that they must maintain healthy relations no matter what.

  The general then sat up straight again and his tone somewhat more active, ‘Alright then, I have lots of work to do, especially if we’re to spend the next few days in Karmon.’ Hanniver stood up and saluted his superior, and turned to leave. Williams remained seated and the Brigadier glanced suspiciously back at him before closing the door behind him.

  When Williams heard the Brigadiers footsteps fade he turned his attention back to the general who had pulled out a computer and began to write on it, ‘He likes the Starborn.’

  ‘He is uncommitted.’ The general corrected without looking up from the screen.

  ‘Still, he’s blind to the threat.’

  ‘The Brigadier was employed for this mission as a mediator. It’s his job to get along with everyone. There’s no surprise that he’s a sympathiser for the half Starborn!’

  The air-vice marshal then responded, ‘Regardless, we should keep an eye on Forrester.’

  The general banged his electronic-pen upon the table. His gaze darkened, ‘We have cameras and droids practically everywhere, and his position and activities are monitored through his wristcom. He can’t take a piss without us knowing! What more do you want?’ Danto raised his hands in peace but the general’s mood was too far gone so the officer rose from his seat. He saluted the old man and left.

  ***

  ‘Argh!’ Kíe’arathorne called in frustration as the incorrect message flashed on his screen. ‘Your time system is very unorthodox,’ he cried out in aggravation. There was a murmur of agreement from the other students in the room. ‘Why is one day divided to twenty-four hours and one hour to sixty minutes? It’s very odd way to divide time. Do you not use your moon to track the hour?’

  ‘We do,’ their teacher, Kaylan replied. Kíe’arathorne began to pick up the various accents of the Earthmen. This teacher had what he thought the most difficult accent to understand. They called her a Southern New Zealander. She had pointed her Island out when they first began lessons and she also pointed out other major nations within their union including Shayne’s. All their variations amused him: their skin colours and facial features, their accents and varying body structures. If he knew more about the places beyond Dífrun he would be aware of the amount of difference a race of people could have, Earth genetic variation was mild compared to most worlds as their traits were gradually merging together but they still seemed extreme to the students sitting in that room.

  ‘But we use it to divide a year into months and not a day into moon hours.’

  Kíe’arathorne paused while he was writing on the tablet; he looked up at his teacher with his face contorted in confusion. They all had the earpieces while a computer translated. The journeyman was ahead of most of his classmates and could understand most of what she said without the droids help but still the earpiece helped when he was taken off guard; as he was now.

  ‘That doesn’t make sense!’ he finally said after trying to picture the moon as a method for measuring the time of the year. His only theory lay between the position of the moon and sun relative to each other but that was not effective enough for him. Mapping the stars at night would provide better time keepers.

  ‘That’s because our moon isn’t like yours. Our moon moves across the sky like the Sun does.’ At this Kíe’arathorne’s eyes widened and the other students all reacted with sounds of amazement.

  ‘You lie!’ a Kíbaroth Lionman accidently called out. She then looked down at her table with some level of embarrassment at her outburst, but Kíe’arathorne shared her sentiment. He could not imagine the moon moving in the sky and his initial thoughts were the same.

  ‘It’s true,’ Kaylan looked at the shocked students with mild amusement. ‘I can show you. Our months are roughly calculated by the time it takes for the moon to move through all phases. On your planet that time covers a single day because your moon has a special orbit, but our moon moves around our planet, like Casader moves around the Sun,’ Kaylan then picked up a couple of balls from a draw full of visual aid-props. She held the larger blue one up for them to see, and moved a small red one around it; both balls had a single dot drawn onto them and as she demonstrated their orbits she had both dots always facing each other.

  ‘Yaulma moves like this, following the dot of the planet, Iraquis,’ she spun the ball a few times, she had to twist her hands around to complete an orbit but they got the point. She was grateful they had a decent understanding of Kepler Orbits. ‘For you the moon orbits once a day, but our moon is more like this,’ and she rotated the blue ball in her hand while red ball lagged behind, shown by the dots moving away from each other ‘For us the moon takes around 28 days to rotate one orbit. If you measured the position of the moon at the same time each day you will notice it’s in a different position in the sky, and so it moves across the sky much like the Sun does but a little slower.’ She then placed the ball on the table and opened up a file on the computer. The students watched as the computer projected a movie on the back screen, showing sped-up movements of the Sun and Moon across the Earth. The image then went to other planets, some with more than one moon, some with no moons and even one colonised world that had a beautiful view of a gas giant in its sky.’

&
nbsp; ‘What is that!?’ one of the southern humans asked in amazement.

  ‘This is the planet Jovaridian. One of the very first Jovian planets within the habitable zone and a liveable satellite, and the planet you are looking at is a gas giant; several hundred times larger than this planet.’ The western Empire could not claim the first Jovian world, both the Chinese Federation and the Arab Empires discovered colonisable Jovian satellites well before them. ‘In this instance, it’s not us who has the moon, we are the moon.’

  ‘Do you have cities on the Joe-evian world as well?’ a male southerner tried to say.

  ‘We would go down if we could, but there’s no rocky surface,’ she stomped her foot on the ground to emphasis the ground. ‘That is one big sky until it reaches an ocean of Hydrogen so dense that you’d pop. You wouldn’t even make it that far; you’d be fried by all the radiation caught up in its magnetic field. No, it makes for nothing other than a pretty picture — and some extra-long nights as the gas-worlds pass between the moon and the sun.’

  ‘Will we see such a place with our own eyes?’ a female Isradian smiled with the thought of seeing the gas giant.

  Kaylan beamed back as she sat herself on the edge of the table. ‘That and more, those of you who are selected will see more worlds than me, or anyone else on this colony. We’re lucky to see two or three other planets, some will see more afterwards. An ambassador such as yourselves will travel to pretty much all worlds within our federation. You will see skies like this, planets that are mostly water and planets almost completely frozen over, you’ll see cities as far as the eye can see, and travel to the most remarkable civilisations. It is one of the luckiest professions.’ The entire classroom began to talk with excitement, including Kíe’arathorne who now desired more than ever to visit these worlds. He committed then to study even harder so that he would be selected. When the lesson resumed his thoughts drifted to Shayne, he grew annoyed that he did not tell him about the moons, they seemed a strange thing to forget.

  Afterwards when the class was dismissed Kíe’arathorne went to Shayne’s quarters for their private lessons. They allowed him visitor rights so they could continue to teach each other. Kíe’arathorne was at his apartment almost every day after classes, except on the three days he was designated to teach. The lionman came in and sank into the couch in irritation as he dwelled on the worlds of the Earthmen Empires. Shayne made the lionman his preferred Earth beverage of miloffee, while he held a cup of tea for himself.

  ‘Your ability to hide your emotions never ceases to amaze me,’ Shayne joked. Kíe’arathorne looked up at him now more annoyed than before.

  ‘How come you didn’t tell me your moon moved in the sky?’ The journeyman rarely frowned; the look was strange on him. Shayne sat next to him.

  ‘You never asked,’ Shayne replied. They were conversing in English. Since the three weeks at their new home Kíe’arathorne had come a long way but he struggled with the strange rules. He often mixed the two languages when uncertainty crept through. Shayne spoke strictly in English; slowly at first but as Kíe’arathorne came to understand he picked up the pace. He still had a long way to go but he was well ahead of anyone else.

  ‘You assumed I knew?’ the journeyman continued to frown. He said the word assumed in his language.

  ‘No, but you assumed that our moon was stationary. If you’d anticipated variations you wouldn’t be annoyed with me right now.’

  Kíe’arathorne took a sip of the brew and sighed wanting to drop the subject, ‘What is the lesson for today?’ He opened his own wristcom, given to him as an enrolled student.

  ‘More fundamental wave mechanics,’ Shayne replied.

  The lionman groaned, ‘When do we get to the interesting stuff?’

  ‘When you fully understand the boring stuff!’ Shayne retorted in his soft voice and they began their lesson. ‘Besides wave nature is far more interesting then you can imagine, and you will imagine, eventually.’

  Afterwards when they had closed their wristcoms and relaxed Shayne pulled out the golden letter. Kíe’arathorne looked across sleepily, ‘What is that?’

  ‘It’s the invitation for the tournament tomorrow. They have invited you too,’ Shayne answered, the journeyman’s eyes widened. He sat up and took the letter. It did not state his name, but implied his inclusion as a member of the party.

  ‘Can I come?’ he half begged.

  ‘Why wouldn’t you come?’ Shayne casually returned. The lionman became so excited that he struggled to stay still. Shayne took the invitation back off him and looked upon it. He examined characters; with their strokes and fluid motion. The Kérith-Árim “common language” evolved primarily from the Kadalian language, but they both maintained their own writing styles. The common tongues characters ran down the paper like Chinese and Japanese, whereas Kadalian was across the page and the characters were completely different. It was as if an ancient people changed languages but retained their own runes. Shayne did not know many of the characters of Kadalian yet, the few he had managed to learn from the lionman was enough to create the most basic of words, but not nearly enough to read anything. Kíe’arathrone did not have much free time to teach that language as he was the only one granted to learn it. The only time he could study Kadalian was when they were both alone, wandering the township. Shayne was able to learn verbally but there was no chance to study how to write it. At this stage he held a decent enough grasp to see the similarities and differences between the two languages and possibly have a broken conversation but that was all.

  Silently Shayne looked at the page; knowing the resentment it would breed, not with the Brigadier Christov Hanniver, it seemed almost impossible to be that man’s enemy, but the other two star-officers. There was no invite for the Prime Minister, perhaps they did not realise he was the leader of the civilian component of the colony. A foreboding feeling slowly grew within him as he dwelled upon the events that might unravel as a result of this letter.

  ***

  The tournament brought a festive atmosphere reminiscent of the council meeting but on a far grander scale. The crowds expressed a sporting excitement, which was well suited to the air vice-marshal’s nature. Tourists flocked from across the land and the national flags of the competitors rose proudly on the two main thoroughfares and around the arena. Betting stations were scattered around the city. People flocked to them and the arena on the opening day was crowded with people trying to gain a seat.

  The UeVarda had since set aside a permanent area in the palace grounds for their transporters to land in. The Earthmen hoverplane landed in their new hoverpad, where the party disembarked. Shayne, Hanniver and the journeyman wore their fur cloaks as was expected. The moment they set foot on the ground several guards moved forward to guide them. Shayne had two Imperial Shytardas assigned to him; they followed him everywhere he went; within and outside the palace, to avoid a repeat of the assassination attempt. Shayne was able to relax in silence for a while in his room, with his guards standing vigilantly outside. The level of activity including all the high ranked guests meant the other Earthmen were required to share rooms. Shayne as the Afra’hama was given his own. This time he was given the honourary suite in the far end of the tower-wing, upon the third floor above the common room. He had a grand view of the lake and when he stepped upon the balcony he could see the tower looming darkly overhead. He had an hour to himself in that room before the guards informed him that they were to make their way to the arena.

  The tournament eliminations ran over two days. The end of the competition would crown a single fighter to challenge the current champion. The first day had the most intense and uncompromising fighting. The arena was broken up into four fighting pits and the training grounds were also opened for lesser tournaments. They had several levels of categories, plus the main event which was held in the arena. The Elió event was an open fight. The two warriors would choose the rules, from arms to armour and they would duel until someone was defeated. It was open to all
races and sexes. Most of the competitors were lionmen; both male and female but there were brave humans who also participated; with the largest representation coming from the Kerwin warrior monks.

  Around the arena rose the seating for the spectators where thousands of cheering people flooded in. The king’s pavilion held the best view. Níurthan sat next to the UeVarda in the Elió Champions Chair. His hood was drawn back, but still covered most of his neck and head. The black bandanna and the metal mask hiding most of his face stood out amongst the royal guests.

  The title Elió was given to the tournament champion and was created by a historic human who began the competition in the days when Kéirth-Árim was ruled by men. It seemed unlikely that a human would hold the seat of champions with the fierce Lion competitors, but the masked monk was famous for his martial arts skill and this was his third year running as champion. The lionmen came to respect him as a fighter and before he became the appointed advisor and Chancellor he was the Order’s main teacher.

  Shayne’s education in Kadalian was coming along nicely. He was still not fluent due to the limited chances he had to learn, but he knew enough to communicate and to divulge the meanings of some of the people’s names. Níurthan meant ‘pale one,’ indicating his light skin. It was not a grand name but he came to Dífrun nameless and the fisherman who found him called him that in his recovery. He kept the name and had the Order convert it into Kadalian when he joined. He would not accept any formal naming, or tell anyone his native name. Shayne even learnt the meaning of his own name, which simply translated as ‘messenger from the stars.’

  Shayne was given a seat next to the Venra, and she welcomed him openly as a close friend and she talked long with him until the king rose from his seat to officially open the tournament. The crowd cheered at seeing him rise; more for the miracle of his health than the beginning of the games themselves. He stood stronger and healthier than he had in over a year, as if no sickness had ever befallen him. His black mane glistened in the sunlight and he had returned to his sword fighting exercises; pride and strength a testament to life returning to normal. He raised his hand in the air with his fist clenched and the people cheered all the more while repeating the gesture.