The Father Unbound

by Frank Kennedy

  Neheran Jerious made contact with Gen. Benazir Asiah, whose face would be the last he would ever see.

  “Hello, Jerious,” the general said. “You are prepared?”

  “With all my heart,” the disciple replied. “Hadeed is counting on me.”

  “Yes he is, Jerious. Although your mother is no longer here to see this, I am sure she would be immensely proud.”

  “Yes, General. I think she would. You make sure the Chancellors pay for what they did to her and my sister. They’ll all burn. Yes?”

  “They will, Jerious.”

  The boy who was stolen from his clan of nomads more than three and a half years ago, and whose family was then slaughtered by vengeful peacekeepers, turned his attention away for an instant, double-checking the control board of his Scram.

  “Sir, will you remember me?”

  “For this, Jerious, we will sing about you for generations.”

  Jerious did not cry, although his eyes welled. “Time for me to go now. I’ll dream about Hadeed. May the future be bright.”

  Jerious piloted the Scram over the entrance, remembered the flight accident a year earlier that burned away part of his face, and vowed to finish this job correctly. He descended into the green mist. The journey seemed to take forever. Just as the mist cleared, he saw his final target. The central hub of the drills was directly ahead. He held the detonator tight in his right fist and released all the pain of a short, troubled life. He pressed the detonator at the instant of impact.

  The giant shaft flashed a brilliant, blinding white light that lasted no more than two seconds before it went dark. Its eternal, sickly-green fog vanished. The electrified shaft exploded into the heavens, millions of bolts of jagged lightning pouring forth from the planet, up through the clouds and into the stratosphere. All the brontinium within was electrified, and the vein would be worthless for decades.

  Far above and on the opposite side of Hiebimini, the Nephesian was losing her life. Orbital stabilizers were failing, pressure on the hull plating was increasing, and the entire city was in flames. No one was left in charge. Harkem Azir saw the devastation and ran from it like everyone else, but his only available direction was the one he was already focused upon: Engineering. He did not waste time, and no one got in his way. Any smart Chancellor was rushing for the escape pods.

  His place – as he had always known – was inside the central fusion reactor of the great engine core. Azir made his way to the engineering control and stared through the view port, stunned at the amazing technological feat before him. The reactor system was easily half a kilometer high and twice as wide. The network of conduits and hydraulics intertwined into what he could only call a perfect geometry. He called up a CV control glyph and studied the location of the core itself. Azir smiled and said his goodbyes to all the friends he would never see again.

  Across the continents visible below, chaos continued; the initial shock was setting in. Structures bombed, bodies strewn, Matriarchs assassinated, and peacekeepers electrocuted. The global stream shouted conflicting reports of the devastation, and Sanctums requested immediate security reinforcements. Hiebimini awoke with the cries of grief, anger, and of unexpected triumph. But none of this compared to what all of them saw over the next few minutes.

  Fingers pointed toward the eastern sky, halfway above the horizon, where what was once a tiny star in the evening against so many now became something new. It flared into life and blossomed into an explosive flower some would call a supernova. But for those who understood, who knew what was supposed to be in that part of the sky at that time of day, the supernova was the end of history. They knew it was the Nephesian.

  Hadeed could wait until much later to hear the details of his success. He allowed Gen. Fergus to quietly absorb the reports via CV. Meanwhile, Hadeed finished the history lesson for his boys just as his Scram landed atop the yellow mesa that was the sight of his Passage of Summit. Everyone aboard looked around awkwardly, waiting for Hadeed.

  He sighed. “There is to be no celebration today. Understood? We have a long struggle ahead of us. Now then, let us go outside and see for ourselves.”

  The brisk wind atop the mesa cut the heat. Hadeed waited until everyone was outside before he dared to look skyward. What he saw reminded him so much of his dreams that he almost asked for reassurance that the reality was here at last.

  Nephesian was beginning to fall through the atmosphere. She was in hundreds of millions of pieces, and her remains cascaded across the sky like comets. Smaller pieces were like shooting stars, and they quickly burned up in the atmosphere. But the larger chunks descended in a shower of flames. Occasionally, the debris hit the sunlight perfectly and twinkled.

  “I almost dared not to believe,” Gen. Fergus said.

  “It’s a new age, Hadeed,” Andrew McClatchen said. “I never thought I could find beauty in what I’m seeing now. But this was necessary. I understand that, Hadeed. A new age.”

  Hadeed and Damon shared a knowing glance. Their jaws were firm. Damon looked away and started toward the edge of the mesa to stare down upon the home of his clan. Hadeed turned to the former peacekeeper.

  “Yes, Andrew. A new age. Many necessities.” His eye caught Willem briefly, and the general positioned himself behind Andrew. “Have you found truth in your time with me?”

  “Of course, Honor, as I’ve told you often. Your word is the truth.”

  Hadeed grimaced. “And therein lies our dilemma, Andrew. My word says that we shall cleanse our world of all Chancellors.”

  He stood silent and waited for a flicker of recognition. Abraham and Omar also faced Andrew. Only when Abraham reached beneath his cloak and revealed a plasma pistol did Andrew flinch.

  “Honor, what … but what are you …?”

  Hadeed tried to maintain a gentle tone. “Andrew, you have seen my truth, and I have no doubt you would fight valiantly for our crusade. But you can never escape a fundamental reality. You are a Chancellor by birth, and you always will be.”

  “No, Honor. You’re wrong. I mean, yes, my birth … but my heart and mind are completely yours.”

  Abraham stepped closer, and Willem ordered Andrew to his knees. Andrew complied.

  Hadeed continued. “I cannot conduct a war with a disciple who will never be fully trusted by his comrades. You have given us much, and we will always owe a debt. However, I made a promise to my son. This is the first day of our war. I always keep my promises.”

  Hadeed laid a hand on Abraham’s shoulder. The boy looked up with steeled eyes. Hadeed nodded then turned his back on them both. He did not listen to the peacekeeper’s pleas for mercy as he made his way toward Damon.

  The first shot cracked across the mesa shortly before a body smacked the hard, yellow surface. Another shot followed.

  He and Damon stood beside each other in silence for almost a minute as they surveyed the scene below. The Polemicus complex looked almost exactly as Hadeed remembered it. In this case, however, there was one striking change. A plume of black smoke arose from the haepong field where Hadeed first met Miriam and later taught Polemicus boys how to play.

  “I thought we agreed,” Damon said timidly. “They would be protected for now.”

  “My apologies. Polemicus has been too strong, too well-connected. Those Matriarchs destroyed Miriam’s army and her work. They were scheduled to attend a festival at the stadium; the opening of haepong season. They were much too exposed to ignore them. Our cell acted.”

  “I do understand, Honor. But we owe so much to Polemicus.”

  Hadeed studied the sheer walls of the mesa and tried to remember exactly where he climbed up twenty-two years ago.

  “No, Damon. We owe Miriam. For her wisdom, weapons caches, and her finances. Speaking of which, the accounts have been closed, correct? All funds have been liquidated?”

  “Yes, Honor. There are no assets the Chancellors could freeze.”

  A cold shiver ran through Hadeed. He held his hands together to keep them fro
m shaking.

  “This is your work, Damon. Not mine.”

  “Honor?”

  He wanted to close his eyes and pretend this was over. Instead, Hadeed turned to his aide and held back his tears.

  “The money. The weapons. The technology. You made it all possible. Your financial genius.” Damon tried to deflect the compliment, but Hadeed stopped him. “You couldn’t have done this on your own, Damon.” He placed a hand on each of Damon’s shoulders and came to within a few inches, their beards intersecting. “You were fifteen, neither old enough nor skilled enough to hide the money within the Sanctum bureaucracy and keep it hidden for so long, yet you knew everything.”

  “Honor, what are you suggesting?”

  “That my heart is breaking. I think I have known almost from the beginning. But I held out hope. I am never wrong, you see.” Tears spilled. “We have been too fortunate. In nineteen years, we have had nothing but success on a planet surrounded by twenty-four Ark Carriers. How could we have fooled them so completely? And Phalyotrax. The formula just happened to be in Miriam’s files, and we just happened to stumble upon it long after we began our quest. With our limited resources, we were able to crack the mystery of their body armor. We couldn’t have been the first to try, but we were far from the most likely to succeed.” The cold shiver intensified, and Hadeed felt queasy. “They never came for me after I failed to kill Hollander. Sometimes I felt as if …” He didn’t want to say the words. He gritted his teeth and deepened his voice. “Why? Why, Damon? I have to know.”

  Damon’s tears fell as rivers. “Please, Honor. I … Hadeed … I have always been yours. I have never betrayed you.”

  “No,” he whispered. “No, Damon. No. Not today. Not to me.”

  The aide struggled for words through his sobs. He could not look his liege in the eyes.

  “I was protecting my clan,” he said in broken words. “He took me away. Told me what was going to happen. I was planted as her aide. I didn’t know when or how it would occur … until I learned why you were going to the Carrier. The deal … Honor, she had lost favor with the elders. They thought she was overstepping. They knew she was colluding with him. She wasn’t going to survive anyway. That day, I got a message. I was told to wait for you at the uplift station. Stay with you always. I was given access to the accounts. He said they would never interfere, and there would be no reprisals against Polemicus. Honor, they would have destroyed our clan forever.”

  Hadeed took a long, deep breath. “Nineteen years …”

  “I beg you, Honor. I have always loved you and our crusade. They gave me the tools for our vengeance, and I used them. And here we are. We brought down Nephesian.”

  “With their help …”

  “Yes, Honor. Yes. Don’t you see? He wanted this to happen. All of this.”

  Hadeed backed away. “Why? For what possible reason?”

  Damon cried like a small child. “I don’t know …”

  Hadeed thought of those early months when he and Damon traveled alone, the only eyes who could see behind the veil. He thought of the starry nights they spent talking by an open fire, unburdening themselves of their pain and grief. He envisioned this day and how all Hiebim would celebrate. Now, Hadeed wanted to fall to his feet in grief and pain once again.

  He pulled Damon into a hug with one hand and reached into a side pocket with the other.

  “Go home, Damon,” he whispered.

  They looked into each other’s eyes one last time. Suddenly, Damon heaved. His mouth fell open, and blood trickled out. Hadeed let go of the spelling blade embedded in Damon’s heart and watched the body of his closest, oldest friend fall backward over the ledge.

  He closed his eyes and wiped his tears.

  Moments later, a voice brought Hadeed back from his darkness.

  “Father?” Abraham asked from the spot where he executed his first Chancellor. “Shouldn’t we go now?”

  Hadeed stiffened his shoulders, forced his best, most reassuring smile, and turned about.

  “Yes, Abraham.” He nodded to his top general then took another look at the amazing fireworks in the Hiebim sky. “We have a war to fight.”

  TWENTY FIVE

  DISCORDANT

  Ark Carrier Hephaestus

  Standard Day 101, SY 5311

  “SO MANY STARS, AND NONE OF THEM OURS.”

  Sir Ephraim studied space beyond Hiebimini through the viewport of a private lounge. He found himself entranced by the breadth of a galaxy humans did not bother to explore after discovering enough worlds to satisfy their appetite. He could not help but think the Collectorate had become remarkably small in the past day.

  How mighty was the empire? How invincible and how permanent? And just like that, they see the truth. One lowly clay-digger has shown them a new reality. They will never forget the day, and they will always relive the moment when the Nephesian was lost. But they will never learn from it either.

  “Such is the fate of the intransigent,” he whispered after a puff from his pipe.

  Ephraim was not alone. He stood next to the woman who succeeded him as Prime Regent, Kellene Madlock. He always considered her a lightweight during her tenure in the diplomatic office of the People’s Union, was amazed by her promotion, but later heard impressive reports of the job she was doing. Her family lived aboard the Hephaestus since before her birth, and they were among the few who invested a tiny fraction of their lives in studying Hiebim culture and social structure. She often showed a surprising empathy toward the ethnics, a characteristic that did not play well with the Sanctums or Carrier Command.

  Today, as the shock and dismay settled in across the Carrier fleet, the representatives of Command, all regional Sanctums, and the various Presidiums gathered aboard Hephaestus to debate the next course of action. While most – especially fleet commanders – argued for swift, global military response, others such as Kellene urged caution. She was precisely the ally Ephraim needed. If he could pull these panicked, bickering bureaucrats toward the only response that would benefit his agenda, Ephraim could be done with this world forever.

  “They’re frightened,” Kellene said as they took a break from six hours of contentious debate in a nearby conference room. “In all my life, I’ve never seen such terror in the eyes of men, certainly not Chancellors. I think they’re struggling to deal with the emotion as much as the reality of what has happened.”

  “Yes,” Ephraim said as he continued to puff. “It is the arrogant man who has the furthest to fall. I speak from experience.”

  Kellene laid a hand on his shoulder. “Have you heard nothing definitive about your son?”

  “No. Central Command is considering a killed-in-action designator.”

  “If true, my condolences, Sir Ephraim. I’m sure he would have been among the greats.”

  Ephraim wanted to push the woman away, but he dared not. He could not risk losing her.

  “He’s one man, Kellene. Nothing compared to the twenty-seven thousand we lost on Nephesian. Yes? They are the ones whose sacrifice is driving the emotion of this day. And they are the ones who make my position difficult to maintain.” He turned to her, pipe tucked between his teeth. “You understand the true importance of brontinium. Yes?”

  Her face became ashen, more so than many in the conference room who had not slept since the attacks. Kellene’s eyes remained square with Ephraim’s.

  “I’ve had a few years to come to terms with it, ever since that first report. We cannot compromise the mines.”

  “And a global assault by battalions of peacekeepers …”

  She interrupted him. “Will leave the mines vulnerable to additional sabotage and eventually force a planet-wide occupation. If we show our true hand, we’ll lose the people. Lose them, we lose the mines.”

  Ephraim finished his pipe and beamed. “Excellent, Kellene. If I need assistance during my proposal, you say those exact words.”

  “Would it not be more effective to tell them the truth? If they reali
zed the true value …”

  “They would panic. Word would spread. It always does when too many of the wrong people harbor a secret. Yes? Fear and desperation would become a pandemic across forty worlds. No, Kellene. Best to proceed with care.”

  She vowed to stand with him. Moments later, they returned to the conference room where the other bureaucrats filtered back in. There were no smiles, shoulders were stiff but lacking confidence, and those who had spent much of the past day crying through grief and rage now seemed empty to the point of apathy. This sight amazed Ephraim. He always wondered how his people would take their first defeat. His ultimate conclusion had been that they would accept a setback in stride, certain in their ability to quickly recapture what was lost. He did not anticipate such an outpouring of anger over massive numbers of casualties. His people had always been somewhat mechanical in their deliberations of death; love was a theme in their lives, but it was hardly central. The family unit was an archaic component of the Chancellor culture but only inasmuch as it allowed parents of great esteem to value their own offspring over those of other parents of great esteem. Ephraim had never attended a family memorial and could only remember being invited to one.

  The CV pod at the center of the conference table continued to beam two devastating messages broadcast across the global stream shortly after the attacks. A pair of the oldest Sanctum veterans could not take their eyes off the vids even after having viewed them dozens of times. Ephraim did not see the point in these continued viewings. The voices were designed to stoke anger and call upon the most radical ideologues of the UG to respond. Trayem Hadeed’s piercing eyes were all that could be seen beneath a black shomba and black veil. He spoke with such vitriol that Ephraim could imagine the words being spat into the veil.