Determination stiffened Lucifer's spine as he ruffled his feathers to appear more imposing. He turned his good side towards the cameras which broadcast these proceedings to every television network in the Alliance.
"Today I come to you not as the adopted son of the Eternal Emperor," Lucifer said, "a man who by virtue of an accident of fortune had a voice bestowed upon him because my father appointed me to represent your interests." He lowered his wings into a gesture of humility. "But as an Angelic, a species whose only purpose is to lay down our lives to protect you, the naturally evolved races."
He moved to position himself before an enormous, golden Leonid and an even burlier Centauri who he'd appointed to stand guard just at the edge of the stage. He turned back to face the cameras which panned like greedy vulture's beaks to follow him, cognizant of the fact their refractive lenses would make it appear the two hybrids stood directly behind him.
“For as long as the Alliance has existed” Lucifer spoke into the cameras, “the Emperor has relied upon the stick of military might to keep the Sata'an Empire in check." He gestured towards the lion-man and half-horse-human hybrid. "To achieve this end, he created four species of genetically engineered super-soldiers to protect the races who make this Alliance their home. For 150,000 years, our military superiority has kept an uneasy balance between the Sata'anic Empire and our own Galactic Alliance.”
He made eye contact with the delegates he'd tagged earlier as impressionable, the ones who stared down from their lofty perches like the ascended beings who forever dabbled in the affairs of mortals. Sunlight streamed down from the atrium like an omen from She-who-is, creating a brilliant golden halo around his white-blonde hair and framing the perfection of his too-symmetrical features, reminding the delegates he was the adopted son of their emperor and god.
“But now a new threat has dawned against our Alliance." Lucifer said. "Not the external threat of Shay’tan, but one of our own making." He paused to make eye contact with a delegate to his left, and then to his right, before turning back to face the cameras. He lowered his voice as if he revealed a secret, just low enough to force the delegates to all lean forward to hear.
"The armies that defend us, ladies and gentlemen, are a dying species."
A gasp rippled through the general assembly to hear him speak their shame before the cameras, making it official, making their weakness real. The perpetual cacophony of self-interest began anew: 'My constituents were angry I voted to outsource our jobs.' 'Who cares if the hybrids die?' 'What does that have to do with -me-?'
A feisty young Spiderid Lord stood up, a freshman delegate, one who had not yet learned that when there were cameras present, it was always prudent to exercise restraint.
“YOUR race is dying!” the Spiderid shouted. “Our race is doing just fine!" He turned to the delegates on either side of him as they chortled back a snigger, his sharp chelicerae broadening into an expression of glee. "Tell Shay'tan he can take his trade deal and shove it up his scaly tail!"
The discord grew chaotic as Parliament twittered like magpies coveting a shiny golden trinket. Such forthrightness on the record was a political blunder, but the freshman lord voiced a sentiment which many not-so-secretly shared.
Lucifer's eerie silver eyes bored into the Spiderid's compound ones as he brought both hands to his heart and allowed his expression to soften.
“Yes," Lucifer said gently. “My race is dying. My race, that protected your race until it evolved enough to join this Alliance, is dying."
He drew his hand into a fist and stared at it, as though he were making a decision. In the pause, the cameras shifted, zooming inwards, zooming outwards, placing the dispute between himself and the sentiment the Spiderid lord had dared voice into the public eye of billions of television viewers.
"My race, who kicked Shay’tan off of your planet when he tried to annex it, and you came running to us for help, is dying!" He raised his voice into a shout as he shook his fist at the mouthy Spiderid lord, "and now that millennia of constant warfare has reduced our numbers so low that we now have more pieces of equipment than hybrids in existence to man that equipment, my race is coming to your race to beg for help so we don't all go extinct!”
He slammed his fist onto the podium, his eerie silver eyes flashing in fury. The Spiderid delegate squirmed in his seat while the others who only moments before sniggered now glared at the young lord, publicly distancing themselves from the foolish upstart. Lucifer gave the mouthy Spiderid a smile that did not reach his eyes.
“It is good that the Spiderid species is thriving," Lucifer said. "It means the hybrids didn't sacrifice their lives in vain."
He stared up at the delegates perched upon their balconies like vultures in a tree, species which had all benefitted from the protection provided by his species and their three sister-races of half-human, half-animal hybrids: Angelics, Merfolk, Centauri and Leonids.
"For 150,000 years our species has protected your species," Lucifer said, "but systematically been denied the benefits of citizenship that every other sentient species in this Alliance enjoys. Your armies have been denied the right to vote or voice dissent because, under the law, we are all considered manufactured people."
He curled forward one beautiful white wing, the wing which meant he could never have a voice as anything other than the Emperor's mouthpiece because that wing had not evolved naturally.
"In the beginning," he said, "hybrids were excluded because people feared what would happen if we abused the genetic enhancements grafted onto our DNA, so when the Emperor created us, he declared our only purpose was to serve you."
The grumble of dissent came not, this time, from the newer sentient races such as the young Spiderid lord who had stuck his palps into his maw, but the ancient races that had been in existence longer than there had been an Alliance. Their base of power depended upon maintaining a slave army. There were too many business interests involved, too much money, all tied up in the military-industrial complex. Lucifer was too savvy to fight a losing battle. He had deliberately narrowed the issue to a single battle he could win. He held out his hand as though he offered something precious.
"We are here today," Lucifer said, "because Shay'tan has come bearing an peace offering. One which, if accepted, might stave off the pending extinction of the hybrid armies who defend you. Before we, as my Spiderid brother so aptly put it, 'tell Shay'tan to go stick his trade deal up his scaly tail,' we need to look at all of the costs and benefits of that trade deal. Including the cost of replacing our dying armies."
The grumbling from the ancient races died down. If he put the plight of his species in terms of currency and political gain, and not just the tragedy unfolding before their eyes, they would sell out the Emperor in a heartbeat. But the old moneyed interests were vastly outnumbered … he had seen to that when he'd manufactured excuses to hasten the incorporation of newer sentient races into the Alliance. Before he appealed to them to grant a two-thirds override, he must first win them over, the newer sentient races which were inclined to care.
He looked up at the species he had personally shepherded towards inclusion, not mammals like the older races, but insectoids, amphibians, and even a form of bacteria that only became sentient as a hive mind. These species remembered a time before the Alliance had come to free them. These delegates would support him, but only if he guaranteed it would not decimate their chance for re-election.
He turned to stare into the cameras, the ones which broadcast his speech to the masses seated in their living rooms.
"Once upon a time," Lucifer said, "the root race which spawned our species still walked amongst us. Because they saw us as their children, they watched out for us. But 74,000 years ago, an asteroid hit Nibiru, and just like that," he snapped his fingers, "all of humanity was destroyed."
He gave his deceased progenitors a moment of silence.
"The Emperor tried to reseed the few survivors into colonies on other homeworlds," Lucifer said, "but each of th
ose colonies withered on the vine because humans had evolved beyond their baser impulses; without those instincts, they lacked the willpower to survive.
He reached up to the newer sentient races seated in the nosebleed seats despite the fact their species were more populous.
"When humans went extinct," Lucifer said, "they took with them the closest thing with them we hybrids had to a homeworld."
He spread his arms in the T-like posture of a victim strapped to a Tokoloshe feeding pole. His wings drooped as though too heavy to lift and he bowed his head, a martyr offering himself as a sacrifice for the greater good. He held the pose and milked it until it made them squirm.
“This lack of a voice was not a problem," Lucifer said, "when hybrids walked amongst the races the Emperor hoped to shepherd towards inclusion. A hybrid base meant Shay'tan would not dare attack. The newer sentient races got to know the hybrids that protected them, and in return they made sure our species didn't languish without a voice."
He walked over to a delegate who represented a colony on the Sata'an/Alliance border; one which had incurred great loss of hybrid life in the eternal battles which were waged between the Eternal Emperor and Shay'tan.
“But as the Alliance expanded,” Lucifer said, “and the galaxy looked to us to police their problems for them, our races were taken off of your worlds and put into ships in space. Each species has benefited from hybrid protection, but because they rarely see us anymore, they forget what it was like before the Emperor created four species of genetically engineered super-soldiers to keep the evolved races safe. "
“Citizens began to take for granted the reason they were being left alone,” Lucifer said. “So long as there was no draft to reach into households and draw any citizen, from any walk of life, into the military to fight Alliance battles, it was of no concern to them. They paid their taxes, and they were kept safe. End of problem."
Lucifer gestured as though throwing a ball into the air.
“To meet the shortfall,” Lucifer said, “we then told hybrids they had to serve 500 years in the military, not just 20 years like the volunteers, because if we don't get killed in battle we can live that long.”
“But it didn't end there!" Lucifer's voice rose. "So when hybrid birthrates dropped even further, we pulled our females off of your planets and made them start fighting, as well!"
He whirled back to face the moneyed interests; the ancient species who'd always blocked inclusion.
"There was no surprise when our birth rate took a plunge into the toilet!" Lucifer said. "You can’t shoot your enemy when you're carrying your toddler!"
He glared at them, white wings flared like a raptor as, just for a moment, he allowed himself to lose his politician's smile and showed them the fury which perpetually raged within.
“And then 600 years ago you told us it was forbidden for us to form relations except to begat offspring to perpetuate the glory of the Emperor,” Lucifer shouted at them. “Or even sire offspring with the same partner twice, because we've become so inbred that now genetic diversity is an issue!"
All because the genetic modifications the Emperor gave us to maintain these…"
He yanked out a snowy white feather with contempt and held it aloft for all to see.
"These … wings. These wings and the other genetic modifications which enslave our species to serve the rest of you are a recessive gene!"
He threw the feather into the air. A ray of sunlight caught if from the atrium far above, as though the goddess herself wished to say see! It floated down amongst the sparkles of dust, only the shuffling of feet and an occasional cough breaking the silence as the feather hit the ground.
"These improvements," Lucifer flapped his wings so the crisp snap echoed throughout Parliament, "require so much selective breeding to maintain so they don't simply disappear from our backs that we have INBRED OURSELVES INTO EXTINCTION!"
He walked over to an Electrophori delegate and stared down a conservative religious leader from an ancient world of sentient eels which loathed all hybrids as 'manufactured abominations.'
“You can get married?” Lucifer shouted at him. “But we can’t? Because you need us to make lots of babies who have these for your enemies to shoot at without the inconvenience of voting rights or families?"
Lucifer flapped his wings again. The wind they made blew the delegate's paperwork off of his desk.
"What are we? Animals you can breed for slaughter?”
A blue jolt of electricity lit up that section of the chamber as the Electrophori's deadly tail sparked with fanatical indignation. The delegates on either side of the eel hissed at him in disapproval. Several delegates whispered ‘hypocrite' just loud enough to be picked up by the cameras.
Lucifer slammed his fist down upon the railing. “Even Shay’tan doesn’t do that to his own citizens!"
He glared at the delegate who bad-mouthed hybrid females for being ‘promiscuous’ when hybrids weren't given any choice.
“And now…" Lucifer's voice choked up as a lump rose into his throat. “Now, the moment a hybrid baby is born, before his umbilical cord is even cut, a representative from the Emperor’s youth training academy is there to whisk him away from his mother, whether or not she agrees.”
The delegates leaned forward in their seats, hanging off the balconies like vultures who had settled into a dead tree, waiting for something to finish dying so they could feast upon the carrion.
“Babies." The sob in Lucifer's voice was audible as tears rolled down his cheeks. “We indoctrinate babies less than a minute old to defend you because we can't afford to have their parents take a few years off to raise their offspring.”
His white wings drooped, trembling with emotion. He turned, eyes shut, away from the cameras and tried to quell the raw emotion which threatened to overtake him. The hall was so quiet you could have heard a pin-feather drop. He coughed and rubbed his cheek, determined not to let them see him weep. His legislative aide rushed out with a glass of water. Lucifer gulped down the liquid and composed his features back into the mask of a professional politician.
“We give all these great speeches about free will,” Lucifer's voice was weary, "but from the moment a hybrid takes their first breath, we brainwash them into believing their only purpose is to die supporting the Emperor. And now we can't even give you that anymore, for our species has grown weary and lost the ability to reproduce.”
Total silence reigned in Parliament. A nervous cough broke the silence. Lucifer made eye contact with key delegates from the old block that would otherwise oppose him and watched them squirm. Money. It all came down to money. He'd just laid out a moral justification the younger delegates could take back to their constituents and justify voting for the override. Now he needed to spell things out in terms the older delegates cared about. Money.
“Only consider this question, ladies and gentlemen," Lucifer said. "If the hybrids die out and are no longer here to protect you, then who will? Who? Who will protect the Alliance when all of the hybrids are gone?"
He let the question hang before them like a bad odor before reciting a famous Alliance slogan. “As the hybrid races that defend us go, so shall the Alliance.”
'Guilt. Guilt. Guilt.'
'Fear.'
'Just like a well-crafted television commercial.'
He could practically hear violins which played in the background as that small, sarcastic voice which had whispered to his subconscious for as long as he could remember began to egg him on. It whispered for him to ram this veto override through Parliament and overrule his immortal father's objections; to end the stranglehold the eternal bickering between the two ascended emperor-gods had upon the citizens of both empires. It whispered for him to save his species.
“Never-ending war is not the answer." Lucifer said. He stood up straighter and held out to them his hand. “I am here today to offer you a better way to achieve peace."
He lifted his wings from their dejected slump. His demeanor shift
ed from sorrowful repentant to television preacher peddling absolution to a circus-tent full of sinners. He'd pointed out the ugly reality. Now it was time to sell redemption.
“Over the past decade,” Lucifer's wings fluttered, "border skirmishes in certain sectors are down. The Sata'an Empire has left those sectors alone, not because we patrol them with warships, but because those planets trade with the Sata’an Empire. Shay’tan’s people desire Alliance goods. They view them as superior to their own.”
Lucifer paced, looking each delegate in the eye. He was selling a solution to an ugly problem that nobody wanted to face. He was a contact team sports coach cheering on his team.
“To appease his people,” he spoke quickly so they wouldn't interrupt him, “Shay’tan allows trading partners to import goods without charging tariffs. If the Alliance expanded this partnership, everyone would win. We win, the manufacturers win, and the Empire wins. Win-win-win. Everybody’s happy. Everybody’s rich. And nobody will go to war because their economies are too closely tied to risk upsetting the fruit cart.”
The Spiderid who had interrupted him earlier heckled him from his balcony. “That’s the rhetoric Shay’tan gave the 51-Pegasi-4 colony! And look what it got them. Shay'tan slaughtered the whole planet!!! And the entire race of Seraphim Angelics along with it!”
Lucifer's white wings shuddered with anger and loss. The Seraphim… He hid the emotion behind a wall, the mask he had built to hide his true self from the world.
“That was 25 years ago." Lucifer spoke solemnly. "It was not Shay’tan’s doing. Hashem himself verified it was pirates acting on their own accord.”
“So claims Shay’tan!!!” the Spiderid lord rebutted, his eight legs gesturing with glee. “From eye witness reports, soldiers wearing Sata’anic uniforms invaded the planet. Not a disorganized band of pirates.”
That small, quiet voice whispered into his mind: 'He is drunk with power at the thought of snatching the vote. You must treat him like the child he is…'
Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 5
