Moving Earth

by Dean C. Moore

  “You haven’t slowed down that much in your old age, Sacrin.”

  He chuckled in her head, secretly delighted by the sudden turn of affairs, while quieting an inner sadness whenever he realized that his wife would outlive him many times over. Someone else would inherit her by their side when he was gone. Someone no doubt not nearly as deserving. Or so he said to himself so he could pity her and not himself.

  They were barely halfway down the regal runway of the spherical space station spinning like a top, amid wraparound metal-glass windows to the stars, and she looked as if halfway into her pregnancy.

  “My wife is with child!” Sacrin announced. “This is a day of celebration. Please join us in rejoicing.”

  The gasps and whispers throughout the crowd were replaced by clapping and cheers. But no one took a step closer. The Creams might have had their deadliness bred out of them, but with child, they would be at their most powerful psychically. And with that tongue of Farsi’s, she could still remove anyone’s head in the room. How deadly did you have to be exactly with psychic abilities more enhanced than ever? Before anyone could think to reach for a knife in this timeline, she would have seen them coming in another, and taken off their heads. Surely there was no one foolish enough in here to try. The legends of the Creams filled more pages than holy books on most worlds referencing the gods.

  “How long before the child can inform me?” Sacrin whispered in Farsi’s head. His voice sounded like a hissing pit viper even to him. He couldn’t help drooling over the possibilities of snaking around his enemies even now with the ultimate superweapon in hand.

  “The child is already waiting to advise you. He didn’t want to pop into your head unannounced for fear of scaring you.”

  “Nonsense. It’s a drunken bacchanal in there. Always room for one more reveler.” He was referring to his demon-haunted mind, filled with fears of who might catch on to his plans to do them in before he could, and turn the tables on him. If it weren’t for his wife he’d have retired from the business of overseeing a galactic empire long ago. It was a young man’s game where the next-generation on line was always craftier, more ruthless, more willing to do what it took to reach his level, and more empowered to do so with technology Sacrin refused to embrace. If it weren’t for his wife keeping those knives away from his back, he would have gone mad long ago, or would have perished from the actual knife rather than the imagined one.

  “Hello, Sacrin. A pleasure to meet you.” The child’s voice resonated in his head like Tibetan bells, clearing away the ghosts in one resonant pass of each syllable. Tibetan bells… bacchanals… Curse his wife for filling his head with this Earth lore poppycock! He could barely keep his worst nightmares sorted from reality as it was.

  So, our child is a boy! All the better. Now I won’t have to pass the reigns to some sycophant who surely is already wishing me dead. Or imagine my child in lesbian congress with her mother. The time would come for the child to mate with her, after Sacrin was long gone. Maybe Sacrin was just getting too old and too bigoted for this job. The ones who made any alien race and any set of customs wear on them as comfortably as their own won this game; everyone else was living on borrowed time. So, he knew better, and he still couldn’t help himself.

  “What is it you have to tell me, young one, that can’t wait until the party is over?”

  “My mother told you the Hirrari would turn on you before the full moon of our world. You should have listened. Now they have an armada surrounding this space station. They plan to take it out.”

  “They wouldn’t dare! Not and risk souring relations with so many worlds.” Sacrin smiled at the Hirrari representatives, holding their gaze a moment longer than he had the others, and giving them a respectful nod to boot.

  “Those relations can be patched as soon as the Cream is out of the way. She is the superweapon they fear most. Without her…”

  “They will assume it’s open season on one another. Let the smartest one rise to the top and push me aside.” Sacrin felt his blood pressure spike. “What will we do?”

  “I’ve already rectified the problem,” the child said. “I informed Mother of our situation. She has sent her Starhawks to take care of matters.”

  The wrap around windows about the circular chamber with a view to the stars showed the Hirrari ships, forced to decloak by an initial phaser shot from the Starhawks.

  But it was the Starhawks, materializing just a fraction of a second before that had drawn the initial gasps, those in attendance misunderstanding the true nature of the attack.

  The kid was not given to overstatement. ‘Surrounded’ didn’t quite do their situation justice. That siege perimeter was several ships thick.

  The next phaser blasts from the Starhawks ignited the ships.

  They exploded like supernovae the guests in attendance were lucky enough to have a front row seat to. “Lucky” because Dead Zone tech space stations apparently could ride through a supernovae—at least ones on this scale.

  The Starhawks were outnumbered ten ships to one. It didn’t matter.

  They flew like birds of prey around birds that looked like prey relative to them. And the smaller fighter jets that they’d released had already taken out any weapons solutions on those Hirrari ships the instant their shields were down.

  It was already over.

  The Starhawks were withdrawing.

  “Who the hell is in command of those Starhawks?” Sacrin blared inside his own head.

  “Alpha Unit,” his unborn child replied deadpan.

  “Techa, if this is how battles are to be fought moving forward, maybe I can put off my retirement a few more years. My nervous system can ride out the skirmishes without giving me a heart attack.”

  Sacrin took a breath. “You did well, child.”

  “Thank you, father.”

  “What shall I call you?”

  “Phoenix. I rise from the ashes of others’ failed coups.”

  Sacrin laughed inside his head.

  “Will you ever sound, you know, like a child?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry, father. We Umbrage are born ready for war. I can fake it if you like.”

  Sacrin took a deep breath, counting his blessings. It was a small price to pay for the strategic advantage his wife had just given him. “Maybe sometimes, just for me, you can,” Sacrin said. “Are you brash, like your father?”

  “No. I am strictly a defensive weapon.”

  “Pity.”

  “On the contrary. You would not want to use me against my father. He has people looking over his shoulder you do not want to mess with.”

  “The ones who planted the moon artifact?”

  Silence greeted Sacrin.

  “This party that’s playing him like a moon fiddle… do their interests truly align with Leon’s, or ours, for that matter?”

  More silence.

  So, his son could be every bit as diplomatic as his mother when forced. That much should not have taken Sacrin by surprise, since the child was a hybrid of both bloodlines.

  Sacrin ran the calculus in his head and decided the boy might be an even bigger boon to Sacrin’s diplomacy in his current form than as an offensive weapon. The diplomats would know in time, if not already, depending on how thorough their race’s legends about the Creams, that the boy was a harbinger of peace, an insurance against anyone’s treachery when entering into negotiations with Sacrin’s galaxy. It would keep everyone honest.

  Sacrin had forgotten to maintain his plastic smile for the crowd. But his muscles had hardened into cement holding the fake smile this long, so it hardly mattered. He figured it was time to address the masses.

  “I hope you enjoyed the light show,” Sacrin announced. “I know I did.” He glared straight at the Hirrari delegation. “You’ll forgive the hostilities this close to our place of negotiations. But, as I’m sure you now realize, I hardly initiated them. The Hirrari meant to kill us all just to get to my wife, Farsi. A woman, mind you, who has never greeted
any of you with anything but kindness and good will. The child, still in her womb, notified Mother, the Nautilus’s supersentience, who assisted us in dealing with the treachery.”

  The crowd had returned to their gasping and whispering, their eyes boring holes into Farsi’s womb.

  Sacrin and Farsi had continued their promenade the entire time. There was no need to turn around to address the crowd with their voices and their faces projected on the big screens all about them for all to see.

  The big screens were a mixed blessing.

  Farsi had just unleashed, in quick succession, her garroting tongue on no less than three dignitaries from entirely different galactic federations inside the chamber. The crowd had jumped back each time, making an opening around the headless bodies that had yet to succumb to gravity, and each time revealing Farsi’s attackers’ treachery, the dagger or the phaser in hand, before the heads finished rolling to the floor, soon followed by the crumpling bodies.

  Sacrin could almost feel the blood pressure rising in the room. “Please, everyone,” he said, extending his arms placatingly. “No need for alarm. Many of those assassins would happily have killed you to get to me, my wife, or our unborn child. Perhaps I should explain for those of you who do not have lore covering the Umbrage Creams. Their children cannot be used as weapons of war, only as weapons of peace. They are defensive in nature, and will never make the first move, or initiate any hostilities, for any reason, ever. They, however, are very difficult to get around for those of you who wish harm to anyone in our galaxy or in the federation of galaxies we are allied with. They are an insurance policy, protecting the alliance, no more.”

  Almost begrudgingly, the ice in the room melted, pockets of applause spread until they filled the room.

  “Perhaps this too goes without saying,” Sacrin added, “as you’ve all just seen the videos, but my wife, while pregnant…Well, I don’t have to tell you how protective mothers can be.”

  There were laughs and nervous giggles, and harrumphs for those who had merely dialed down their outrage to a lower simmer, at least until they could get safely out of the room and decide how they really felt about these latest developments.

  “Now, please, everyone, as we are the last to arrive, and have held up the party long enough, it’s high time you all made yourselves the center of attention,” Sacrin said. “I declare this party officially started.”

  The inter-races band rose up out of the floor in the middle of everyone and started playing on their instruments something that presumably passed as music on at least some worlds represented here. Sacrin couldn’t even tell if all those strange humanoids in the band were from the same planet. There was a time when he would never have condoned such ignorance in himself, but certain concessions had to be made for age.

  Columns of light, connecting the ceiling to the floor, manifested out of nowhere. Those weren’t light beams. They were telepads.

  Sonny and his numerous clones were arriving. The crowd exploded with delight and cheer and applause as if the real guest of honor had finally arrived. They were all drooling over the possibility of what shady dealings they could all implicate themselves in through him, leader of The Shadow Warriors, feared perhaps even more than Leon’s various Special Forces units. Leon, at least, played by the rules. For these dignitaries, Sonny was the one who spoke their language.

  Sacrin wondered briefly why the Summit’s AI hadn’t dematerialized the dead bodies; if nothing else they were hurdles to dance around. But this was Sonny’s place. He likely felt assuaged by their presence. No doubt a lot of oligarchs would agree.

  Sacrin was ready to greet one of the Sonny clones himself. Sacrin had a proposal to put to Sonny that he suspected Sonny would like very much. Sacrin’s idea was to replace every one of those oligarchs looking to profit at his and the Collage Galaxy’s expense with a Shadow Warrior. They might be every bit as shady, but at least they wouldn’t cross Leon, and Sacrin’s son would have the mind power to keep an eye on them the way Leon would not. That would make Sacrin, by way of his son, the real glue holding together this rapidly-growing transgalactic civilization with the Gypsy Galaxy as its hub, and not Sonny, who currently held that title. Leon might well think he was enough to check Sonny, but somehow Sacrin doubted it. But Leon’s children, by way of the Creams, could. And so the very moment Sacrin offered Sonny more power than he could possibly imagine, he would actually be taking all of Sonny’s power away from him.

  “It’s not a bad idea, husband,” Farsi intoned in Sacrin’s head.

  “Yeah, dad. Good one,” his son echoed, using more of a child’s voice this time.

  “Maybe the old man still has a few worthwhile notions left in him,” Sacrin mused at his own expense.

  The three of them laughed in each other’s heads.

  ONE HUNDRED TWELVE

  ABOARD SACRIN’S AND FARSI’S PALACE SHIP

  The night following the ball and Farsi’s insemination, she laid down beside her husband in bed to dream of the future. But her mind was stabbed repeatedly like a pin cushion instead with nightmare scenarios unfolding.

  ***

  INSIDE THE MIND OF THE CREAM UMBRAGE, FARSI,

  DOING HER TIMELINE PARSING

  The Macoon were finally making their move against the Premonox Galaxy.

  It was long overdue.

  Like the planet Argassia, where the galactic oligarchs resided, the other humanoid inhabited worlds of Premonox were dominated by a seafaring race that had evolved from the oceans, where they still felt most at home. Because they had been born to the ocean depths, they could fight underwater better than any other race in The Collectors’ Menagerie. Except perhaps for the Macoon.

  The Macoon and the Premonox peoples typically waged limited warfare with one another as a way of evolving both their races’ underwater fighting tactics.

  It had been a good arrangement for millennia, up until today.

  For whatever reason, the Macoon had chosen today to end the Premonox peoples once and for all. It defied reason, as the limited warfare of the two races bolstered both their efforts to keep other galactic civilizations within The Collectors’ Menagerie out of their galaxies.

  Was it even possible the Macoon could commit genocide on the Premonox peoples without bringing their own race to an end?

  Farsi watched the genocide in progress unfolding in her mind’s eye as clearly as watching any holographic movie. If she wished to sharpen the picture further, she could actually place herself on location, where the action was happening. That was a choice best left for when her political maneuvering might be enough to alter the trajectory of both civilizations. Farsi didn’t get the sense that that would be the case today.

  The Macoon had teleported onto the inhabited Premonox worlds all at once.

  But the Macoon didn’t have teleportation technology.

  Nor did they have mass deployment technology that would allow them to simulcast their assault on any and all humanoid inhabited worlds in the Premonox Galaxy.

  Two impossible circumstances at once could only mean one thing.

  Legacy Tech.

  Somehow, the Macoon had gotten their hands on Legacy Tech belonging to any number of ancient races long evolved beyond anything today’s humanoids had access to.

  The Macoon’s mat ships, one of many classes of vessels in their armada, floated on the ocean surfaces, flexing in the water like barges of plankton, waiting to be nibbled on. As the local sea life did so, they carried the nanites infesting the mat that now infested their bodies, taking them over, turning the Premonox planet’s sea life into the drones, the eyes, ears, and spies of the Macoon. The innocuous sea life which would go unscanned by the Premonox would lead the Macoon to the Premonox fleets’ hiding places. Whatever patch of sea mud they were hiding under, whatever sea cave they were using as a hangar for one or more of their vessels… the Premonox’s every naval resource would be exposed in due time.

  Meanwhile various other classes of Macoon vessels w
ere teleporting into place. The clam ships nestled into coral embankments, into the sedimentary mud on the ocean floor. The sparklers—glowing, living ships disguised as starfish, sea anemones, and the jelly fish of the abyssal depths—the vessels masking themselves as radiant ocean life ranging in size from impossibly small to impossible large were also lying in waiting, for now, drifting harmlessly, swimming with or against the currents, as actual marine life would.

  As much of the upper hand as it appeared the Macoon had presently, Farsi knew it wouldn’t matter. The actual outcome of this fight was a long way from being decided. The Premonox were every bit the match for the Macoon. Even if you could sneak up on the Premonox, as the Macoon were now doing, the Macoon might soon wish they hadn’t.

  Farsi rewound the film in her head to see what had brought the two civilizations to the brink, parsing timelines like only the Cream Umbrage could.

  There.

  The nexus point where numerous timelines converged.

  Farsi looked for the common denominator.

  The Macoon were winning too many of their encounters with the Gypsy Galaxy, coming away from the battles with confidence bolstered, and with tech, either from shattered Starhawks or other captured vessels with technology they could turn against the Premonox, who they’d much rather fight than Leon. Space warfare was a recent accommodation for the Macoon, and little more than a gross necessity, not something they enjoyed.

  Right before Farsi’s eyes, as if merely looking at the timelines changed how they played out, the nexus changed.

  With the unparalleled ability the Cream Umbrage had for seeing through time with their third eye, that chakra of energy spinning at the center of their forehead that was invisible to most, Farsi plunged into the nexus to investigate.

  It didn’t take long to find the source of the timeline changes.

  Skyhawk.

  Mother had allowed another clone of him to be bioprinted.

  The effect was well out of proportion with what any one humanoid figure ought to be able to do.

  He and his Alpha Unit cadets were winning too many skirmishes with the Macoon, in too many timelines, with Skyhawk at the helm.