“Perfect. As you are now the senior officer of Lioness and our entire orbital fleet, I hereby promote you to Admiral. You will still report to my brother, who I have today promoted to Supreme Admiral. But these ships are yours, for as long as they remain in space.”
Besides Lioness, only Sunrise and Gemini orbited Hiebimini, and the latter two ran on automated systems until boarded for diplomatic and trade missions to colonial allies. The other capital ships – Greenland, Haven, and Benevolence – were docked in the city, their resources leveraged for development of essential infrastructure needs.
Kane’s eyes twinkled. “This is a great honor, Brother James.”
“It is, Kane. When we leave, order the remaining crew to open a holowindow and watch the Inauguration. You will witness history.”
All of Salvation, minus Kane and six immortal soldiers, were gathering on the planet. James cancelled all colonial missions as well as security patrols and planetary mapping sorties today. He needed their full attention. It was time they understood everything.
Moreover, the planet called to him. The water continued to rise in the white forest, its trees buckling and the cracks in the surface expanding. Each time he grabbed at the gray cloak, determined to pull back the hood, its wearer disappeared like a shadow without sunlight.
“You can’t run from me. I know where you are, Ignatius.”
He joined his family onboard Spearhead and gave the departure order to his most experienced pilot, Ulrich Rahm. If not for Ulrich’s ability to unleash his Berserker last year on Tamarind, fate might have sent Salvation in a different direction, without James to guide it.
James swelled with pride as he studied his sons. Their ornate uniforms, designed especially for today, reflected the themes of their father’s traditional silver and olive full-length robe but bedecked with ruffled flourishes of maroon and lavender around the neck and over the wrists. Encrusted gems shimmered above their chest and stomach. They didn’t appreciate being shaved bald, even after their father explained the other children would appear the same way. They did, however, take joy in being able to carry a ceremonial blast rifle.
Convincing Rayna to put aside her traditional Cossack accoutrements proved impossible, so James asked her to use the Recon tube and update her fashion for the occasion. Though she still seemed capable of jumping on a horse and engaging all comers in battle, Rayna dressed in a more refined maroon gown, also heavily gem encrusted. She designed loops, belts, and pouches to hold laser weapons, a blast rifle, and the shashka blade that killed the last Ukrainian who ever betrayed her. She wore a traditional papakha hat, but this one modified to match her husband’s colors. Rayna’s forelock curled out from under the hat. It stayed with her throughout their journey across the Collectorate, the one thing she refused to compromise. Ever.
“A Cossack is not a Cossack without a forelock,” she told James every time he broached the subject.
“I don’t believe there are Cossacks in this universe.”
“One only,” she said. “I know where the other Cossacks are. If I go back to first Earth, there are many traitors I must kill.”
The boys whooped when Spearhead entered Slope, not their first time traveling through a wormhole. Like the other Jewel hybrids, they felt no disorientation. In the seconds before the aperture closed and Spearhead reemerged over the city, James spoke to his sons.
“Remember who you are,” he said. “Your parents rule this world, and someday we will reign everywhere. When our time ends, you will succeed us. We expect you to behave as young men and honor your family. If you do not,” he said, pointing to Rayna’s belly, “your sisters will take your place. Understood?”
They sat upright and spoke in unison.
“Yes, Father. Absolutely, Father.”
“Good. When the door opens, you will follow Brother Ulrich and take your place with the others. Stand tall. Stand proud.”
A moment after Spearhead landed, the bulwark pixelated, and sunlight filled the cabin. Ulrich arrived, dressed in a flamboyant full-length uniform of bright greens, yellows, and magenta, with a brace of gems supporting a high neck collar. He bent his knee in the imperial salute then exited, the boys behind him.
“Have you rehearsed, husband?” Rayna said.
“Do I ever?”
“Fair point. Will you tell them many secrets?”
He winked. “Even some you don’t know, my love.”
“Then I will be sure to pay attention. No?”
They shared a long kiss. He placed a hand over her belly and felt his daughters kicking. They were close. Perhaps three more days.
They stepped off Spearhead arm in arm and beheld the full glory of their improbable achievement. They viewed the city from its highest geographical point. The domes and quadrilateral structures grown out of the planet itself absorbed the light of the midday sun. Birds flew between the buildings and the acacia trees, crying out as if in greeting. To their immediate right, but half a kilometer away, a waterfall kicked up a permanent rainbow.
The landing platform, designated only for “imperial” use, carpeted their feet on a spongy mat of knotted grass decorated with the petals of many different varieties of flowers. They sauntered to the top of a wide avenue of stairs which descended into a grassy bowl designed one day to become an amphitheater. Spread out at the base of that bowl, more than seven hundred immortal children, wearing olive bodysuits and matching berets, took a knee in the imperial salute, each soldier’s blast rifle standing upright like a cane.
“You love this? No?” Rayna whispered.
James remembered the aimless, bitter child he once was.
“It’s good to be me,” he said.
The other Jewel hybrids and their children lined either side of the stairs. The seven adults dressed for a festival, their plumage and brilliant colors designating their status, lest anyone be confused about the social hierarchy. Their nine children – all born since realignment and accelerated with James’s help – stood like monoliths at their parents’ side.
James did not take the first step without acknowledging what should have been: One more adult, three more children. He intended to make sure no one forgot the late Sister Ursula Amondala.
As James and Rayna descended, the hybrids and their children acknowledged the imperial couple. Joakim Cardenas and Cecily Hinton tipped her heads, along with their quadruplets: Jonas, Amalie, Josiah, and Beatrice. Alistair Kwan and Dharma Goranson joined their triplets – Hillin, Dulcea, and Mariana – in a salute. Nya Pasqual and Ulrich Rahm offered their love along with twins Portia and Stanislav. But Bartok Hyam, whose unborn triplets were killed on the landing bay of Lioness along with their mother, showed the most enthusiastic smile. James spoke with him often after Ursula’s death and found Bartok, arguably their best engineer, to be resilient. So much so, in fact, that Bartok impregnated Dharma within a week after she gave birth to triplets. He’d be a father in three months.
Finally, Benjamin and Peter waited quietly for their parents.
James let go of his wife and continued forward. The boys moved to her side. James stopped at a landing three meters above the mass of immortals.
He paused and reflected. If he could accomplish so much with so little, what might he do with whole worlds ready to fight for him?
It’s good to be me.
He opened his hands in a gesture his brother understood. Valentin, the one immortal not required to kneel, faced his army.
“Eyes forward,” he said. “Stand at honor.”
With precision, the seven hundred stood to attention, each resting the rifle across their chest, eyes on the Supreme Admiral.
“Amplify reception,” he ordered.
Seven hundred sets of eyes triple-blinked, tapping into their stream amp to intensity the device’s audio receivers. James did not intend to yell across the bowl. He gave advance orders to Valentin:
“They will hear me as if standing at my feet, and my voice will make them quake. They will remember my
words, even if they live for a thousand years.”
“Or,” Valentin joked, “I could provide you with an amplifier.”
James did not appreciate his brother’s humor.
Now, he offered Valentin his most reassuring smile and a nod. You will not like what I have to say, Brother, but you WILL accept it.
“We fought hard to reach this moment,” he told the crowd. “We built a fleet. We liberated those among us betrayed by our creators. We delivered a new vision to humans who have been oppressed for centuries. We slaughtered our enemy by the millions. We broke the grip of an empire. We came to a world remade for us.
“Today, we gather not at the end of our journey. We stand here at the humble beginning. The most difficult work lies ahead of us, but what we create here and out there will build a million-year legacy. We were designed by the Chancellory to protect them from their own demise. To become the next evolution of humanity.
“We take that mantle with pride. Yet we cannot secure the future until we cleanse ourselves of the past. Therefore, we must all recognize who we are. As you have been taught, say along with me …”
James reached out his arms and embraced unbridled ecstasy. Seven hundred thirty-four voices recited in unison:
“We see the first day and the last day.
“We rise as they fall.
“We are The Promised Few!”
No cheering. No applause. Only solemn understanding.
He taught them well.
James looked across the bowl toward the closest domes and the wide avenue leading into the city. That’s when he saw her. She was hiding behind a tree, poking her head out.
Samantha wasn’t invited. She wasn’t one of them.
You snuck here anyway, James thought. I knew you would.
He didn’t want Samantha to miss a thing. She never saw him in action, never really had a chance to appreciate all he accomplished despite her years of betrayal.
This is for you.
18
A T THIS MOMENT, WE HAVE A TRUCE with the Chancellory,” James continued. “Trust me, this will not last. It was never meant to. They will try to attack us here, but they will fail. This time. Because they are Chancellors and because they believe we are abominations, they will try again. They will never stop. Three thousand years of domination has taught them that the only morality is victory.
“However, we are The Promised Few, the chosen of a race created a million years ago in a distant corner of this galaxy. It is their will that we supplant inferior humans and create a new civilization destined to last for eternity. To accomplish this, we must obliterate their ability to make war and develop technology exceeding our own. After we have done these things, we will reach out across nine hundred light-years and slaughter every last Chancellor and all their collaborators. We will do to them what they did on Earth three thousand years ago with a crusade that vanquished all opposing messages of the Divine.
“We are proof of a greater being. Each of us, in our own way, is a living god, made possible by false gods. Though my parents were at the center of it all, millions more were complicit. We will annihilate their message. No Chancellor will survive our purge.”
How do you feel, Samantha? Are you thinking about escape? Trying to warn them about the truce YOU arranged?
She disappeared from view. Perhaps she was sobbing.
I’m not done with you.
He returned his attention to his invited audience.
“After we cleanse the Collectorate of its Chancellor filth, we will reward the free colonies with the right to send representatives to this world. Here, we will teach them a new vision free of oppression and war. We will teach them how to worship us and form permanent conclaves in our nine Divine cities. They will learn the true history of this universe, of the actual origin of humankind, and the triumph of the Jewels of Eternity. The most devout will receive the opportunity to become like us. To blend with the Jewels and see beyond the boundaries of life until their time expires. Or, to live forever as a soldier of the Divine, spreading our message far beyond this tiny pocket of the universe. And all the while, this world will become the nucleus.
“Every human will feel compelled to visit this planet at least once before death. They will want to see the paradise formed by the hands of true gods. And it is for this new place in our galaxy that today, I announce an end and a beginning.
“By law, I decree now that the name Hiebimini will never be spoken again by anyone of our kind. The name itself is a perversion. It was created by a Chancellor overlord who did not want any colonizing Arab tribes to attach their identity to the planet. The name is an acronym, drawn from the random letters of the many tribes. It is a nonsense word. You will never speak it again, and it will be erased from our streams, our databases, our maps, our communication histories.
“In its place, I name this planet for its true role over the next million years. I name this planet Aeterna. Repeat after me: Aeterna.
“Aeterna! Aeterna!”
The more he said it, the louder the voices grew.
Amid the thunderous roar and fists now raised skyward, James knew the soldiers belonged solely to him and would absorb his coming news with joyous wonder rather than the skepticism of the open-minded. They will understand this is the only way forward. Not all gods are made of the same cloth.
Underneath his speech, James heard the vibrations within the hybrid collective mind. They approved of the new name. “But what of the cities?” They asked. “Soon,” he told them. “Patience.”
As the crowd calmed at last, James resumed.
“The name Aeterna is more appropriate than you know. In the coming days, I will share with you all the true history of the past million years, a gift bestowed upon me alone by the Jewels. The information in all its minutiae will take years to study. Even I have yet to consume every detail. But the greater picture is clear.
“Aeterna was the first Collectorate world discovered by the Jewels, long before humans walked on two feet. They were searching the galaxy for a planet to replicate the home of their Creators, who were themselves long dead. This world was habitable but not ideal. Over the next two hundred thousand years, they discovered every world now occupied by humans. At the time, only fifteen could sustain organic life.
“But the Jewels possessed all the technological wonders of their Creators, including the ability to terraform. They seeded twenty-four worlds with a biological and climatological matrix capable of raising life where there was none. The terraforming lasted tens of thousands of years. The last were completed as the Jewels became aware of primitive Earth. They instituted a new calculus focused on the human race as the successors to their Creators.
“They developed the great Algorithm of Causality. They used their intricate knowledge of their Creators’ past to predict humanity’s future. They saw all the paths, and the most important: The rise of a subclass of humans who would subjugate all others and lead humanity to the stars. They saw how this subclass, who we know as Chancellors, would come to this world and in their arrogance, steal this planet’s greatest resource for their own benefit. And how, when that resource known as brontinium would dry up, so too would the Chancellors’ future. And how, in their hour of desperation, they would create the next evolution of humanity. They sought salvation, but they designed their damnation.
“They have always watched us from afar, interceding only on occasion. The Jewel who I have come to know as The Father blended with a man named Johannes Ericsson, the founder of the Chancellory. Though it remained in the blood of Ericsson’s direct descendants, it did not control their thoughts. It observed, as it did its brethren who were busy creating the wormhole network known later as the Fulcrum.
“They gave humanity the opportunity to achieve at its greatest. But the Chancellors failed, as the Jewels knew they would. In Standard Year 5320, five of them reunited here, with The Father, and triggered the Fall of the Chancellory. They seeded this world with the final catalyst to a recip
e first planted six hundred thousand years ago.
“Look around. See the beauty of a world grown for us. A permanent paradise waiting for us to take possession.
“We are the first day. We are the last day. And we are everything in between. We are the Jewels’ Creators remade, but better. Unlike them, our races will never die. Unlike them, our kind will be eternal.
“So it is! Aeterna! Aeterna! Aeterna!”
Again, brilliant roars echoed through the bowl, and stunned reactions bounced through the collective mind. Though the hybrids did not realize how much James kept from them, the revelations reinforced their sense of place and purpose. The children, with the exception of Benjamin and Peter, asked far too many questions. The concepts overwhelmed their synapses, which in most cases were still struggling through Tier I education.
He could not wait to see the devastated outrage when this data became public across the Collectorate. The historical and scientific records were so indisputable, James wondered whether this knowledge might bring down the Chancellory faster than any military action.
“And now,” he said, calming the crowd, “to the reason we are here today. To Inaugurate this city and the other eight rising from the depths of Aeterna.
“These nine cities and their surrounding defense sectors will form a compact known as the Divine State. Our people – and all those who arrive here on pilgrimage – will live only in these cities. The remainder of Aeterna will be off-limits except for scientific exploration. We will never steal from this planet. We will never scar this planet. We live off the natural bounty it provides, but no more.
“Each of these cities will be named for the original ten hybrids who survived forced assimilation with the Jewels of Eternity and brought about this new future. They will be named by the Jewel hybrids who will rule over them. Ulrich, Bartok, Joakim, Cecily, Alistair, Nya, and Dharma. The last city we will populate, on the southernmost continent, will be named Ursula. The first of my children deemed worthy will rule that city in Sister Ursula’s memory.
The Impossible Future: Complete set Page 119
