The Father Unbound

by Frank Kennedy

  “Interesting notion. We fully anticipate massive retreat to the hills. Fortunately, we will have a simultaneous strafing run against their flanks. One final word, gentlemen: We estimate more than forty thousand casualties, and most of them will be burned alive. These beautiful plains you worship will become a burial ground tomorrow. I recommend you not allow civilians to leave the city for quite some time. Maj. Hand will be in touch later tonight.”

  With that, Cabrise swirled about and left with his second-in-command by his side.

  “Despicable lot,” he told her. “Too cowardly to clean up their own mess, and we as convenient butchers. Hmmph. Major, I need you to contact the fire team. Tell them to prepare the orbital array. Pre-target Messenger positions.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Are the other Carriers continuing to track fugitive elements of the Messengers? The ones who broke off from the northern thrust?”

  “Yes, sir. Awaiting your orders.”

  “Excellent. Upgrade the fleet to Battle Status Green and send a directive to prepare slews for use against every accessible enemy target on every continent. I will order a general strike once the Messengers advance. Oh, and one other thing: Tell Chef Poussard to prepare the biggest, bloodiest steak in his stocks. I will expect it on my table when I return.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Cabrise snapped his fingers. “One other matter. If Sir Ephraim Hollander sets foot in the fleet again, I expect to be notified at once. I allowed that cudfrucking politician to talk us out of intervention nine years ago. Now we’re left to do what we could have ended before the clay-diggers killed two million of their own kind. I intend to show that bastard to an airlock.”

  As they approached the battle Scram, Maj. Hand smiled. “Undoubtedly deserving, sir. However, there are some Sanctum reps who would remind you that brontinium production over the past nine years has far exceeded any previous window.”

  Cabrise turned to his No. 2. “Major, if I am need of cheery statistics, I will make a formal request. Understood?”

  She laughed under her breath. “Yes, Admiral.”

  They flew off into the night, delivered their orders to the fleet, and enjoyed a fine dinner. The next morning, their people joined the Hiebim Civil War and laid waste to the final battlefield. The Scrams appeared over Messalina, passed above the retreating Patriots, and laid down a barrage of firebombs that immediately incinerated the front of the Messengers’ vanguard and created a wall of flame rendering a view of the capital impossible.

  * * *

  Hadeed ordered his Tumbler and the units ahead of him to alter course, splitting their paths. Half raced along the river, while the rest veered west. The objective was to push through the remaining Patriot resistance and rush around the outer edge of the firewall. Hadeed knew the strategy was pointless, but he vowed to give his troops reason to press on. He could not allow them to surrender, much as he himself had done in the years since Abraham died and especially in the days following Omar’s assassination.

  Thus, when hell descended around him and clouds of fire cascaded upon the plains, Hadeed did not hear the agonized screams of his warriors. He knew only of death and the moment of horrifying pain that would precede it. This pain would remind him of all his failures, all the dreams sorely misplaced and hopelessly naïve, and all the possibilities for happiness he never achieved. Then, thankfully, he would join the fools who believed in him and turn to dust.

  Ovoid energy slews fell from orbit like rain and incinerated men and women beyond identification. The slews smashed into the ground and erupted like the tops of volcanoes, spewing forth a lava-like plasma fifty meters in diameter. Battle Scrams fired upon the Messengers’ remaining aerial force and brought down those Scrams in twisted, metallic heaps.

  Hadeed’s Tumbler smashed into an energy slew just as it impacted the plains. The force of the blast threw the forward compartments of the Tumbler high into the air. The long, twisting, six-wheel vehicle seemed to rear up on its hind tires for an instant then blew apart. Hadeed had no sense of time as the concussion threw him backward into the river. He felt nothing as he smacked the water and thought he was already dead, about to drift to the bottom. Indeed, bodies and severed limbs floated around him. Yet death did not take him. The firestorm seemed to consume the oxygen, and he struggled to breathe even as he fought his way back to shore, determined to find another way to die. Before he could climb all the way to shore, however, his body gave in. He lost consciousness.

  When he awoke, he had no sense of time. He climbed ashore and stumbled aimlessly amid these flames of defeat. He hardly understood he was alive, that this nightmare through which he walked was not an illusion. His right hand was badly burned, and he tasted his own warm blood. His instinct told him to put one foot in front of the other, but he had no direction, no purpose. Only when a hand grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him about did Hadeed reassemble his thoughts.

  First Gen. Fergus Willem stood tall, shoulders erect, and stared at Hadeed through his one remaining eye. “We can still win this,” Willem said. “I’ve set a new strategy in motion. The odds may be against us, but we are not defeated.”

  Hadeed saw insanity in Willem’s eye, a deep and blind loyalty that could look past even this humiliating finish. Hadeed wondered what miracle allowed them to survive this long.

  “Save yourself,” he told Willem. “Start again. Leave me.”

  Horror replaced passion as Willem took a step back. “Honor, you don’t know what you’re saying. There can be no peace for the Collectorate.”

  Secondary explosions from downed Scrams shook the ground once more, and they struggled to stand. Hadeed knew his time was past, that nothing would remain of him except dust. Perhaps, to a few, he might live on as a martyr. Perhaps Willem would be one of those few.

  “No peace,” he told Willem. “But the war is over. Leave while you have the chance.”

  Willem insisted Hadeed come along; they could flee the destruction without being noticed. Hadeed would not budge. Whatever logic remained said he could not possibly hope to reach the blue hills, some eight kilometers to the east. However, Willem started across the wasteland of fire, smoke, wreckage, and incinerated bodies. He was not thirty meters from Hadeed when he turned for the last time and raised his right arm to wave. That’s when Hadeed heard the familiar hum of a peacekeeper Battle Scram above.

  A yellow flicker cut through the Hiebim sky, dancing like a spark through the gloom. The flicker arrived as an energy slew, and it surrounded Willem with an angelic glow in the micro-second before it consumed him. Willem’s mouth fell open, his eye melted, and his body twisted into flame. Hadeed fell upon his knees and waited for the same, inevitable fate. He looked north to Messalina, far beyond the devastation, and he saw the spire atop the Ashkinar Continental Enclave glowing bright green.

  Yet death never came. Rather, he heard the descent of peacekeepers from the sky, just as he did forty years earlier on a hot, dusty day outside the Agriculture Ministry in Asra. When he looked up, he saw a gantlet of crimson-armored soldiers encircling him, their weapons extended. He wondered whether they knew who he was, whether they carried the hot blood of vengeance for the man who killed so many of their ranks on Declaration Day. He did not shy away, holding his head high as he awaited the blasts from their rifles. One soldier fired, and Hadeed felt a millisecond’s heat in his belly before darkness fell.

  Yet death did not come. Instead, he stood in the center of the circles of light. He hoped these twelve eyes would provide him peace at last.

  * * *

  At that moment, far beyond Hiebimini’s orbit, the Nexus opened and a small cruiser appeared. It carried the flag of a corporate sponsor from Salvadora, but this old vessel ran an intercolonial circuit which carried it across the breadth of the Collectorate. It catered mostly to ethnics or to young peacekeepers on shore leave, all those who could not afford comfortable travel between systems. In a small cabin amidships, two passengers who originated on In
donesia Prime looked through their portal and spied the distant blob that would soon appear with considerable detail.

  “Another two hours,” Ilya Hollander said. “We’ll have a good look at her then.”

  Cho Suu-Kwan cuddled with Ilya as they lay down on a couch with torn padding.

  “Then we make these very good two hours,” she said, kissing him. “I don’t want to know what happens next.”

  “I understand,” he said, resisting tears. “I am going to miss you so much.”

  “Then don’t go. We stay on Carrier, wait for next cruiser, and go right back home.”

  “You know I have to do this. The time is at hand.”

  Ilya begged her to stay on Indo Prime. He said she would not be able to see the journey through to the end and believed the long trip would turn into an endless and agonizing good-bye. Yet she refused, saying she did not care. Every day with him was an extra day. Cho proved him right, and he could not remember a minute of this trip that was less than glorious. Their passion and their love could find no bounds. Only when the captain warned the passengers to prepare for Nexus entry did the reality set in.

  They had two years to prepare for this final leg; two years since Ilya came to understand his purpose and why no one else in the universe could finish the task. Cho left their daughter, May-La, in the care of Cho’s closest cousin. You’ll go back to her, Ilya told Cho soon after departure, and you’ll tell her what happened on Hiebimini. She’ll never forget me.

  Ilya wrapped Cho close and looked up to the portal. The face of Henrik Ericsson, The Father, stared back. “Are you ready for this?” The Father asked.

  “Yes,” Ilya said. “Is there any chance I may come back?”

  “The path ends here.”

  Ilya was at peace. He recited the last four stanzas of the Jewels’ “Final Accord,” fully aware of what each prophecy meant, and how all those before him had misunderstood.

  “And from the three-winged beast is delivered the gifts of expeditious annihilation and the undiscovered path toward renewal. The fallen know only the window through which they see, but the lasting blood is drawn from fire and braced in twelve eyes. They are the five encased for the one, appearing through the arrogant rift of the soul, in geometry unpredicted. From this gift is found final truth, the path reborn.”

  The Father sighed. “The road has been a long one,” he said. “I often wondered whether we would reach the end together.”

  “I was meant for this,” Ilya whispered. “I will go before them and show them the truth.”

  “Yes, you will,” The Father said. “In geometry unpredicted.”

  THIRTY FOUR

  THE TWELVE EYES

  SEVEN DAYS AFTER THE WAR ENDED, Hadeed still had not eaten. He conceded to his jailers’ demands that he at least drink water. He curled up in a corner of his dusty cell and waited for the inevitable. No one interrogated him; he had expected torture, but the peacekeepers released him into the custody of Patriot generals, who supervised his internment in a secure cell beneath the Ashkinar Continental Enclave. His jailers offered scant details of what would happen next. They said he would be hauled before a public tribunal and given a chance to defend himself, but they had no idea of a timetable. Hadeed did not understand how death passed him by once again.

  He struggled to wake as his jailer called his name and nudged him on the shoulder. His atrophying body did not respond well to sudden movements, each muscle having been locked into one pose for a week. Yet the jailer said Hadeed’s “counsel” had arrived, and he needed to prepare for the tribunal. Hadeed vaguely recalled mention of how he could request someone to speak for him; failing that, a member of the public could step forward in his defense. Once Hadeed opened his eyes and beheld the prodigious man standing in the center of his cell, he knew just how much of a joke this tribunal had become.

  The visitor was eight feet tall, his golden hair well-coiffed, cascading over his shoulders and down his back. He sported a dense beard. He wore a ceremonial robe not unlike those of Arabis tradition, except the garment was layered in shades of orange and brown. He wore a jewel-encrusted insignia of a crab over his chest. Hadeed focused on the obvious.

  “A Chancellor?” He moaned. “Speak for me? This is how they mock me.”

  The visitor smiled through his beard. “I gave up that title many years ago, Hadeed. I do not represent the Collectorate in any capacity. My name is Ignatius Horne, and I intend to be with you at the end.”

  Hadeed felt the strength to laugh. “You people tortured me all my life. Turned me into a monster. An experiment? Cud!” He looked down. “Leave.”

  “Hiebim law is clear, Hadeed. Even the condemned is entitled to representation. No Hiebim has come forward; they believe they will be killed if they do, and they are correct. I do not have the same concerns. You will need me tomorrow.”

  Hadeed tensed. “Tomorrow?”

  “Yes. Your appearance in the Hall of Sun has been scheduled.”

  “I will speak for myself. Better to die that way than be mocked by Chancellor scum.”

  Ilya pulled over a seat bench and sat close to Hadeed. “You and I are the same man,” he said, causing Hadeed to laugh. “We have killed many people who did not deserve their fate. We have spread tears across worlds and wallowed in our own. We have fueled ourselves on rage and justified all the misery we have inflicted. We know we are human only because we found a way to love, and we know what the loss of the objects of our love can do to us. Our ability to love is our redemption, but it is not an escape from our evil. We cannot run fast enough or far enough to remove the blood from our hands. We were always meant to be here together. Every path intersects eventually.”

  Before Hadeed could tear into this pompous Chancellor, he lit upon the young man’s deep blue eyes. They were not distant and arrogant like those of peacekeepers or Sanctum bureaucrats. He saw tenderness and sincerity, almost like that of a boy in need of approval.

  “Who are you?” He asked. “Why are you here? You’re not dressed like the others.”

  “I promise to answer those questions and many more tomorrow.”

  “You have to do better than that.”

  “Yes,” Ilya said then bowed his head for a moment of silence. Hadeed prepared to call for the jailer, but Ilya spoke without lifting his head. “Each of the twelve lights is spaced equally along a circle, and they shine on a common spot, as if on a stage. This is the place where truth can be found.” Hadeed swallowed hard as Ilya continued. “At first, it comes to us in a dream, and we can’t see all the details, but we know it’s real. We’re being taken there. We know this because he says so. He has always been there, waiting for us. He has the answers to the questions. All the answers.”

  Hadeed’s dreams, paintings, and cave etchings washed over him in a flash. He pushed against the wall and lifted himself up until he was looking down at Ilya.

  “Who are you?”

  “The dreams first appear when death is close.” Ilya looked up. “Abraham.” Hadeed found his energy returning, and he prepared to attack a man who could easily kill him in battle. Ilya continued. “He was your greatest regret because he could have been so much more. Omar was your favorite because he was the man you always wished you could be. Hadeed, I know who killed Omar. The same person will be coming for you.”

  “No,” Hadeed stammered. “No. This is … Chancellor trick. An illusion. I’m being tortured right now. Under your influence … somehow. You can’t possibly know.”

  “Yes, Hadeed, I can. As I said, our paths were always meant to join here. We share a common past. The beginning and the ending.” Suddenly, Ilya’s voice changed. It became older, deeper, harder. “Symmetry, Hadeed.”

  Hadeed blinked, felt his heart skip, then reached out and grabbed the shoulders of an ancient man whose features were hidden behind wrinkles and blotches. Horror chilled his blood.

  “What …? What are you?”

  “They call me The Father, and I have always been with you.
See the truth, Hadeed.”

  A jolt of energy surged through Hadeed as if at the height of sexual ecstasy, and he trembled. His vision blurred, and the man in his cell disappeared. So did the cell. He crossed the clay plains and sandy deserts of his world and saw his true father, Trayem Azir. He saw Asra at its prime, and then the grandfather he never knew. Two-year-olds of earlier generations were laid into the hot springs for Assignment. Instantly, they grew and learned, became elders themselves. Hadeed journeyed with them and saw their ancestors in images that blurred around the edge of his vision. He heard their voices, as boy and girl, man and woman. They touched each other in a way only blood ancestors could. He saw them travel across Hiebimini in caravans and return to Messalina and beyond, to the great colony ship that brought them here. Each previous generation swirled by with greater speed, and the world around them became less defined, but he knew he was on Earth. He saw his ancestors in horrible conflict, a series of massacres in the night.

  The unsettling visions chased him back in time to a sudden stop along a plateau overlooking a valley where a great army camped. He felt weary of war and dreaded the next day’s bloodshed. Yet his men seemed prepared to fight and die for their cause, to fight for him, Gen. Ahmed Tyrol of the Tunisian Alliance. Suddenly, men of different clothes and advanced armaments arrived. These Europeans carried the weapons of magicians, and their leader offered a way out of their never-ending struggle. He was a bold man who called himself Frederic, and he promised to eradicate the Tunisian’s enemies.

  “You will truly know peace in your time,” Frederic promised. “General, I see the exhaustion and sorrow of war in your wrinkles. You want all this to be over, to return to your tribe and live a quiet, peaceful existence. I rather believe it is your greatest desire. Yes?”

  A weight fell from Ahmed. “It is,” he told Frederic. “What is it you would have us do?”