Origin: Eternity's End

by Uneeb Qureshi

  Nearly a few minutes passed before another probe entered their vicinity, this time summoning both Commanders back to the communications room. This message was even more urgent.

  “Spare any fleet you can and send them to Earth immediately, halt any further advances until ordered otherwise.”

  They both looked at each other for a moment, confused at first. They investigated the probe and realized what was happening. The Eri fleet they had routed earlier had evaded detection and appeared in Federation territory; they were enroute to Earth, the Legion’s ancient protectorate world.

  At the moment, there was only one Immortal battle cruiser in Earth’s vicinity. Though it could hold on its own versus the small Eri fleet in space it would not be able to supply enough troops for both a land and space war. Solb’s closest battleship was also en-route but it was just about as far from Earth as their fleet was. They questioned the feasibility of who would be left in command.

  “Uh, uh dawg!” Lee said excitedly. “We’re doing this together.”

  Like the other commanders he had watched the videos that Sheppard sent his fellow commanders in his exile, the evolution of languages and cultures since his time had been phenomenal.

  I just like hip-hop. He told himself.

  They both stood up and gazed outside the thick fiberglass view portal out into space. Upon sizing the numbers of their fleet they both looked at one another and agreed.

  A triumphant return to Earth.

  Back on Earth, Monica stood over Mekias as he lay in the bed. His skin grew cold and ashen. She held his hand to her cheek and tried to keep it warm.

  Sheppard, at the behest of the FBI, decided to take the two of them with him to complete the remainder of his mission. They returned to space much the same way they had landed, in an obscure and isolated station in the middle of the ocean.

  Krontos was on the bed across from him in the craft’s rear with a medic attending to his immediate injuries.

  “Leet heals, Lisp! Leet heals!” She bound his chest exceptionally tighter much to his dismay. Patting Krontos on the shoulder the medic turned to Mekias’, she was monitoring his condition closely. The infirmary’s AI was designed to act similarly to the ship’s main navigational computer. It reported all cultures and internal tests.

  “Who are you?” Monica asked.

  “Oh I’m sorry, my name is Lispara. I’m one of the Ghost combat medics, and I’ll be watching your friend on return to our battleship.” They shook hands. Her long curly raven hair flowed over her polished field armor. Almost all of their suits were identical.

  “It’s nice to meet you.” Monica watched the medic converse with the AI in the ancient immortal dialect. After all was said and done she put down the charts and proceeded to exit the room, Monica stopped her in front of his bed and whispered.

  “He’s going to be okay right?”

  The medic looked at her warily, “His captors injected him with an extremely potent enzyme, it’s attacking his RNA and DNA. He’s suffering from what looks like anemia…essentially struggling to replicate his cells…We’re doing what we can but I have to talk to the Commander first…”

  Monica nodded her head hesitantly. She tried to keep warm herself. Space was colder than she thought it would be. She lay on the bench at the side of the room and decided to get some sleep, only time would tell where she would end up.

  The abrupt stop at the hidden vessel behind the moon awoke her hours later. Krontos and Mekias were no longer in the room. She rushed out the door and toward the cockpit but it was empty as well. Technicians rushed aboard the vessel and guided her outside.

  She was alone again in the same freighter she met Jo on. She trekked through the tunnels and causeways that lined the cavernous depths of the ship making her way to the grand hall. She was slowly getting used to the place.

  For a moment she wanted to break down in tears in the middle of the crowds. Everything she felt she was doing the past few days was hopeless. A hand rested warmly on her shoulders, it was Commander Sheppard.

  “You’re quite the spirited one, walking off the ship like that.”

  She turned to him in anger. “Where did you take him?”

  Onlookers were worried at her attitude at first, but he assured her, “He’s fine, follow me. We’re transferring to another craft.”

  She followed him, the crowds made way for their commander nodding their heads slightly in honor of his presence. He motioned them all at ease, he was long past the days of formality with his people, but his character and legend preceded him.

  “They revere me you know, because they think I am the greatest of them. In truth I was only the first, and hardly the greatest.” He said to Monica, she ignored him. “In my haste since return I have put you and your friend in quite a lot of danger, and I believe it is time for you and him to leave the world you once knew behind... Should you wish to return to your old life I recommend you stay aboard here until the events that unfold the next few days finish… But I leave both of you this choice. I will now honor the request for both of you to become immortal wards of our people. You need not serve in our military like our people normally do nor would you be bound to the same rules, but I would have you among our people.”

  She was speechless, was this the right time he was speaking of?

  “But,” he interjected, “Before you answer that I request that you and Mekias come with me to Denosc Dene. There we will help your friend and show you more of our world.” He said with a warm smile at her. “And your final initiation to becoming an immortal will be there.”

  She was at a loss for words but nodded. She did wish to see the rest of the so-called immortal dominion or Federation, whatever they had called it. Sheppard barked orders to a pilot nearby, he was ready to take off. He turned around and guided Monica to another much more slender craft on the aft of the ship. She saw Mekias secured on the side of the craft, still unconscious in the bed.

  “Did you even ask for his permission?” She asked Sheppard.

  “If you agreed to come this far, I was sure that he would too.”

  She said nothing, he was probably right.

  There was another with them, the same medic from the other craft, Lispara, was secured onto her seat waiting patiently for take-off. She was reading a book, Monica could not read the title but it was obviously a funny book to her.

  The craft had just enough room for the three of them including Mekias’ bed—

  She felt an immediate rush as the craft seemed to be propelled into space.

  “We’re doing a wide slingshot around the moon to gain momentum before we enter deeper space.” Sheppard told her.

  Deeper space… it was obviously by the same mechanisms she had been told of earlier, some strange generator that bent space-time. But with her one year of college physics she could remember only one thing, nothing known was faster than light…

  “Commander,” She began, “How exactly do you travel so fast through space?” She was holding on as gravity dug her into the seat.

  “We’re not going faster than light, we’re merely bending the dimension we travel on so that we can ‘jump’ through space as you might say. Think of it as the tortoise and the hare, the hare is a particle of light and it knows it can beat us by a long shot in our physical form because it’s massless…but if we can bend the fabric that both the tortoise and the hare are racing on to create a shortcut, then we can beat the rabbit before it even stops to take a nap.”

  “So you bend space?” She asked.

  “We also inadvertently bend time…” The craft was now nearly a thousand kilometers from the moon before it began to hum very loudly.

  They were being thrown forward by the force of their rocket and could feel something else setting in. She looked at Sheppard and saw him for a brief moment. Everything in the craft became a blur.

  She tried to move but was met with an extremely crushing force on her body. Her world became pure white light, then darkness, then light again
repeatedly. In her mind she felt like she was spinning around in circles. Then suddenly she jerked forward, the tug of gravity was gone but the craft’s sudden deceleration still propelled her.

  Her stomach knotted on itself, she wanted to throw up. Sheppard and Lispara opened their eyes blinking once or twice to recover from the ordeal. They were not as afflicted by the sudden motion.

  Monica held her mouth shut, the reflux happened so suddenly. Tears welled in her eyes and she could hold it no longer, she opened her mouth and vomited. With its momentum and the lack of gravity it flew forward in a globular mass. It travelled straight over Mekias’ body and toward Lispara’s side of the craft.

  Lispara saw the projectile and ducked reflexively. The mass of vomit collapsed on the ship walls and dispersed all over the craft’s hull.

  “Oh my God!” Lispara screamed, as it slowly inched toward her. She tore a vacuum tube from the craft’s wall and immediately collected the vomit into the filtration system, “Disgusting!”

  But before Sheppard could respond he saw Monica pass out. He shrugged toward Lispara, “The first time is always rough…”

  Monica awoke to a strange serenade outside the window. She picked herself up and looked around her. She was sleeping on a bed in a strange room wearing thinly pellucid robes.

  She wore almost nothing underneath. She took the remaining bed sheets and covered herself. A strange bird flew into her window and trotted across the sill. Its beak was longer than any bird she had seen before. Its strange demarcations on its crest and wings made it all the more exotic. A knock was heard at her door moments later scaring the bird away, it was Sheppard.

  Monica replied and bid him enter.

  He stood by the door at first, turning away. She held her sheets close to her as she turned to sit over the side of the bed.

  “I’m sorry if they took your clothes, the nurses had to make sure you were comfortable as your slept.” Sheppard laughed, “Lispara has not seen anyone vomit like you did in a long time… You almost gave her a heart attack.”

  He handed her some opaque, bright clothes emblazoned with his legion’s mark. “I hope these fit, if you need help there are nurses outside, just ask for one.”

  The light outside was extremely bright. It penetrated through the window and warmed the air in her room. She nearly burned her fingers trying to touch the sill.

  “Welcome to Denosc Dene.” Sheppard said on the way out.

  Monica exited her building nearly blind to the world around her. The sun was extremely bright, and in the distance she made out the faint lining of a tall skyline.

  The sky was not as brightly blue as Earth, and the sun did not have its characteristic yellow color either. The atmosphere was also thinner but not absent.

  “I’m sorry if you feel sick, I understand this is all new to you. When you got off our shuttle we had to take you to my apartment and watch you. Most people aren’t used to being on another planet like this.”

  Most people I know aren’t even used to being on another planet.

  “Hence there is substantially less oxygen, about fourteen percent of the air. There was some here when we found this planet but it was not enough to sustain much particular life.” He gave her strange sunglasses to wear, they were yellow in tint.

  “These will make everything seem a little more Earth-like for you.” She donned them and saw colors much more vividly now, “Strange no? When you come to a new world… your whole view of everything changes.”

  She looked up in the sky squinting to see the sun, it was more yellow than before but the sky was still unusually dark.

  “If you’re worried about the sky don’t be, the atmospheric composition here is different and the sun is not really a true yellow.”

  “What was that bird in my room earlier?” Monica asked.

  Sheppard chuckled. “For the thousands of years we’ve been here we’re still strangers to the life here.”

  He shrugged. “We’re still the dominant life-form, and that bird you saw in your room was actually an evolved form of an ancient bird that went extinct on Earth a long time back.” She grew ever curious, “They were brought here when we first discovered this world as a way of making it seem more homely. Some of the flora and fauna here is native. Overall, for about a couple thousand years of eco-proliferation, I think we’re doing well.”

  “That’s fascinating,” She replied, “and are all of these people from Earth also?”

  “There are a little over a half a billion immortals on this world, most from other colonies and some who were native to Earth like us. This planet may have been our first terraformed outpost in the cosmos but it certainly wasn’t our last. Though the majority of immortals inhabit stations like the one you were on above Earth. Though there is always a desire for more habitable planets…”

  She looked around her with her new visors and made out fant-astic post-modern structures. The architecture was much like the ones on Earth with many engineering feats such as spirals and slants that made the city look like a feverish dream.

  “Is it always hot here?”

  “This planet is fairly close to its star but it radiates heat well. Just need to get used to it. That’s why you weren’t wearing much in bed.”

  “Oh and here I thought you undressed me Commander.” He was blushing and pretending to be embarrassed.

  “Please, I have standards.” He gestured that he was kidding and motioned her forward into the city.

  The largest of the buildings she could see was at the center of the city. The structure’s roof was a collection of a number of geodesic arcs of metal and glass that seemed to reflect light around it. The entire spectrum of white light rippled around the building. The entire scene was magical. She wanted to reach into the light and grab it but she only dispersed it more.

  “Beautiful isn’t it.” He gazed around and saw the structure, “This is a forum to all of our colonies.”

  Grand pillars erected the entrance and provided ample shade for a number of people conversing and travelling through the maze of shadows. Gossamer banners blew in the light breeze and proudly bore the symbol of their republic, a pentagonal shape with lines protruding from the center. Each line was a different color representing nearly all the major colors of the light spectrum save for orange and indigo.

  “Each line represents the parts of man which embody the parts of light. An idea I had prematurely embedded into the people when I first ruled the Republic.”

  “You used to rule the whole Republic?”

  “I was the first wasn’t I? They believed it entitled me the wisdom to rule all our people …how naïve we all were…” He brushed his hands over the burning hot stone that the pillars were made of. He gazed up at the banner, it filtered light through the fabric illuminating the halls.

  “Is anything happening inside right now?” Before he could answer a small child rushed out of the grand hallway that led into the structure.

  He shrugged. “We shall return here not too long later, the forum is convening on the Legion’s behalf. But I thought you might want to see an old friend.”

  Morgane appeared from the inner cloisters. Her wavy brown hair blew in the light breeze. She had reached Monica and was elated at her arrival.

  “Monica you came, and with uncle Sheppard!” Morgane yelled in the distance, Sheppard kneeled down to catch her. He raised her into the air and swung her around as she held onto his neck.

  “Have you been good and listened to your mother since we last met?” He asked her.

  “Yes Uncle Shep!”

  “Good! I brought your friend,” he pointed to Monica, Morgane let go of his neck and dropped to the ground grabbing Monica’s hand.

  “Monica! Do you want me to give you a tour of the halls?”

  Sheppard interjected, placing both his hands on Monica’s shoulders. “Your friend would love to… but right now I have to take her elsewhere, tell your mother we will be with her shortly.”

  “Yes sir!” She
gave him a crisp salute.

  He returned it with a hearty laugh, “At ease!” She ran back into the dimly lit halls.

  “We must visit Mekias at our home base on this world.” He began, Monica’s eyes grew wide. Mekias! She nearly had forgotten about him since waking up this morning.

  “Yes.” Sheppard said with a chuckle, “He’s at our barracks receiving the utmost care… and it is at that facility where you two will decide your fate.”

  They eventually found a Legion post and entered a vehicle designed much like a small car on Earth. It was smaller but more spacious. It was propelled by a much smaller engine. They were quickly driven to the facility.

  Monica felt proud for what she could. She may have had a great life on Earth but she was now half-way across the galaxy and seeing things few people on Earth would ever see in their life-time.

  At first-glance the people of the planet wore much more vibrantly colored fatigues and armor. The large packs on their back were the same-size but the soldiers seemed slightly more burdened by them.

  “While in space stations we have low-gravity,” Sheppard began, “this planet is about twice as big as Earth and the gravity is slightly heavier…if you hadn’t noticed already.”

  She did feel unusually sluggish, at first she felt like it was medicine wearing off on her.

  “Our legions train here for over two dozen years before spending another decade in advanced low-gravity trainings. By the time they leave here they are ready for almost anything.”

  Those not donning their cumbersome plated armor were rather muscular and firm. The women were especially toned while the men appeared more bulky and big-boned. Not to say none of them are cute, Monica thought.

  Sheppard laid back in his seat and looked up into the sky.

  What is he thinking…? She thought.

  Monica reached a heavily guarded facility guarded by much more disciplined and quiet soldiers. Their jet-black polished armor gleaned brightly in the bright sunlight. Their helmet visors were much more ferocious in appearance, leaving narrowed vision lines for the wearer. Two large vacuum hose-like tubing protruded from the mandibles from underneath their ear making them appear alien or demonic up close. Upon closer inspection she could see they held a large plate in front of their neck, it was most likely for protection if not intimidation.