* * * * *
By the time Alessia returned to Sesylendae, the entire crew had been relocated to the smaller ship. She joined them on the observation deck, making sure that they were all aboard. Then, with cold tears stinging her eyes, she gazed across Sesylendae’s observation window to the surface of Selesta.
She had never seen Selesta leave without her.
That sight alone would have been enough to strike her to the heart, but now the ship held her daughter in it, a daughter she might never come to know. The sensor-shield failed to cover the disengaging vessels, exposing them both for nearly ten minutes, until the circuitry could reroute itself. Then, when they were safely past the separation, Selesta’s thrusters engaged, glowing like a distant star.
The ship shot away; she watched Selesta slip away as though it was the last life boat of a sinking ship leaving her behind.
Then suddenly, the Sesylendae adjusted course, sending her tumbling to the floor. As the ship’s artificial gravity adjusted, she got up and hurried to the bridge, where Kesney searched his console, his fingers flying adeptly over the access panels.
“A status report, please,” she called, swallowing the lump in her throat, then came to stand behind Kesney.
“The flagship from Orian missed us,” Kesney said. “It looks as if they were planning on taking us out in one shot.”
“Good maneuvering, whoever saved us just now.” Alessia said woodenly.
“Actually, luck may have had more to do with it,” Kesney admitted, not knowing what had happened to Selerael or why Alessia was so unhappy, when she claimed to have sent Selesta away for everyone’s protection. “We were engaging the main engines, and the blast just missed us.” He explained.
“Wait a minute,” Efim interrupted. “The Orian flagship is changing trajectory. I think... they’re going to fire on Tiasenne!”
“Calm down,” Ulyanitsa urged him.
“But they’re just sitting out there,” Kesney said after a moment. “They’ve got all the time in the world, so why are they waiting?”
“Because he doesn’t want to destroy Tiasenne,” Alessia said. She sensed that as much as he despised its people, Sargon was consumed by the idea of conquering, not destroying, Tiasenne, the world which had condemned his people, even though he now had the ability to find a new home. He wanted the Tiasennians to know who had conquered them; he wanted to prolong their suffering so that he could savor it. And, if any chance arose, to take over the planet for himself. Orian was soon to be unlivable.
“Sargon, what are you planning?” She thought to herself. If only she knew.
She left the thoughts unfinished, and glanced at the video monitor. The monitor sifted through hundreds of images relayed from the surface of Tiasenne. After several minutes, one in particular caught her attention.
“Stop,” she called. “Back two,” she told it, and the image of a young man in a Orian uniform ran to catch up to a handful of Orian pilots that had survived their planes crashing. They were near the Tiasennian Headquarters building.
In a moment, an explosion shook the ground, dropping the soldiers. Many never got back on their feet. As the young man Alessia had been watching staggered a few steps, she saw that the old wound across his abdomen had been rent anew. A steady stream of dark blood dripped through his fingers, running down his uniform. In the distance, the Tiasennian comet fighters could be seen swarming in preparation for another assault on the intruders in defense of their home.
In the monitor room, a flashing yellow alarm beacon signaled the movement of the Orian flagship. The visual display showed it preparing to fire its main laser batteries at the troublesome area far below.
The young man wandering alone on the rubble-lined street staggered, weak from loss of blood. Another figure was coming towards him; Ristalv Vaikyur had survived the destruction of the Command Center, Kesney saw with some relief. He thought Vaikyur appeared worn-out. Vaikyur cradled one injured, ineffectual arm with the other, but grit kept him going. Eiron, on the other hand, looked like he was in far more danger. The blood flowing from his old injury pooled on the ground.
Kesney swallowed his own pain and turned to see how Alessia was taking the situation. There was a look on her face he could not and did not want to describe. She knew it was over.
Kesney turned away from her, and saw that Vaikyur had reached Eiron. Somehow, he managed to sling Eiron over his shoulder, and hurried to get him to safety. He couldn’t have been too soon. Vaikyur had gone no more than fifty steps, stopping in the sheltering doorway of the Aerospace Museum, when beacons of laser light began to rain on the city below.
Alessia watched mutely, sensing that Eiron’s hold on life was fading. His mind was breaking free of the artificial reality Sargon had superimposed. Even from the distance, she could feel his pain, see the racing memories that were an infinite joy to him, and the desperate sadness that soon they all would be over.
“Alessia, where is she?” Eiron croaked, as Vaikyur tried to support his head.
“Don’t try to move, Eiron, dear boy.” Vaikyur said gently. “That’s an order, now. Hold on. Help is coming,” he insisted, but even Vaikyur didn’t believe it.
“Find her.” Eiron said softly. Eiron knew he was dying, yes—there was nothing to stop it. He was afraid, but he knew his fear meant nothing. He wanted the one thing that mattered to him to be remembered—his love for Alessia was to be his memorial. “Tell her—I loved her. I never meant to forget that. Good-bye, grandfather.”
Vaikyur nodded, for once letting the emotion through to his face. Eiron saw his pain and gave him a strained smile. Vaikyur had so much more to say, but there wasn’t time.
Kesney couldn’t hear Eiron’s final words, or the unanswered questions and muted grief of Vaikyur as he held on to the lifeless body of his grandson. But he did hear Alessia’s cry, a small despairing sound that was not loud, yet it echoed with a chilling power over Sesylendae’s bridge. This small, despairing cry touched him deeply.
Suddenly, Kesney realized that she was weeping. Kesney got up to comfort her. She appeared merely a vulnerable young woman, and for once she seemed utterly lost and forlorn. Taking her shoulder, Kesney drew her to him and let the cold tears fall against his chest.
Meanwhile, the image in the monitor changed, bringing the surface of Orian before them. A bright swath of fire erupted and spread, dying into an ominous silence in space as the crust and surface mantle shattered from internal pressures. Geysers of boiling magma gushed into the atmosphere with such force that showers of radioactive meteors escaped the surface gravity, raining into space and some onto Tiasenne. As Kesney tried to calm Alessia, Sesylendae was buffeted by the asteroid missiles.
“How is the field holding?” Alessia said, looking up—recovering, or at least remembering what had yet to be done for the good of Tiasenne’s equally suffering population, yet she seemed weaker by magnitudes, so much weaker in his arms. Kesney released her and returned to his station, still feeling the cold dampness of her tears on his chest.
“The electromagnetic field is deflecting some of the asteroids,” Efim said. “Tiasenne’s orbit appears stable.”
“The Orian flagship is leaving!” Ulyanitsa said suddenly.
“What?” Kesney and the others reacted in one voice.
Alessia stared at the image in the monitor, struggling to comprehend, Kesney thought, or else all too familiar with what the Orian ship’s departure meant.
“Where is he going?!” Alessia cried, realizing then what Ornenkai had miscalculated. Of course, she thought. Sargon had tried to destroy their ship earlier because he didn’t know that she was on board Sesylendae. He thought she was trying to escape him, and he wasn’t going to let her or Selesta get away, to let her find reinforcements to use against him!
Now there was nothing she could do to bring him back. Would he ever discover that she had remained behind on Sesylendae? She wondered, watching the monitor as Enlil disappeared with alarming speed. She knew Enlil
was following Selesta, following Selesta to a class L2ij humanoid planet in galaxy group seven, to Kiel3, the last paradise once claimed but untouched by the Seynorynaelian Empire, a small blue-white world revolving around a yellow star.
The planet Hinev’s immortals had almost decided to make their own long ago, rebelling against their mission instruction. The planet she now knew she would never see again.
But on Tiasenne, the worst had yet to come. As the monitor’s image shifted, high seas rose and washed away the fringes of Inen, and the long extinct Mount Jarus erupted, spitting more poison into the beautiful deep blue skies of Tiasenne.
Kesney watched the chaos on his home world, the friendly face no longer round-eyed but steel hard. His jaw set in determination, not in grim acceptance. His ideals were still there, a foundation of hope for a new world, but stripped to bare essentials, to the things that really mattered most. As he thought of what had to be done to rebuild his home, he felt somehow that Eiron’s death had put a new responsibility of leadership upon his shoulders, one he would not turn away from.
I’ll find you, Vaikyur, he vowed. Together, we will rebuild this world, through the long winter to come.
As they stood together on the bridge, the beautiful bluish-white star Rigell rose over Tiasenne’s horizon on the other side of Inen, turning the superheated air into a hazy debris-filled cloud encompassing all, solidifying the new reality to a handful of survivors who had awakened to a nightmare world, a world that had narrowly escaped apocalyptic fire. But Kesney knew that back in Inen, where the sun was setting, Vaikyur would be gathering those survivors together, Tiasennian and Orian alike.
With hidden difficulty, Alessia ordered Sesylendae to the surface, to the place where Selesta had landed so long ago on the fields outside the capital; realizing that she could not follow the two great ships on their journey across the stars, she decided to commit herself to the planet below and to the reconstruction that had to be done.
She knew she couldn’t avert the coming future, but her thoughts nevertheless went out to Selesta.
If Sargon finds the singularity and can learn to control it, what will he do? she wonderered as the stars faded into the blue light of the planet below. And what can Ornenkai do? He can’t leave Selesta. Selesta, his creation, is now his eternal tomb.
Remember your promise, Ornenkai. You promised to return Selerael to me, Alessia thought, tried to make herself believe that he could, that he would keep his vow.
But an age would pass before his return.
Glossary of Military and Political Terms