Sentries, he called, and the swarm of aliens surrounded Selerael. Take her to a holding cell.
Meanwhile, Selerael’s gaze had wandered to the center of the courtyard in the adjacent gardens. A small tree grew there bathed in the light.
Like the ones in the Seynorynaelian forest.
The tree had glittering silvery-golden undersides that shone where the light fell upon the leaves, but the top of the leaves had become a mesh of pale green stirring in the wind. The silvery bark of the tree offset the olive and brown hues in the garden. Selerael heard a whisper from the direction of the garden path, but a sentry that had taken hold of her arm distracted her, obscuring the words.
She chose not to fight them. She had a plan.
* * * * *
Ten minutes later, the sentries stopped her before the holding cell.
Sleep, her mind flooded the area with sentient waves. The sentries dropped to the floor in seconds, their subconscious now prey to her suggestion. Selerael got away, left the sentries sleeping, and, after she had picked her way over the drowsing bodies, she hurried to find a way out of the city. The people of Goeur could only be free if the tiersche units were stopped.
* * * * *
Selerael’s ship found the larger transport shuttle moments before it prepared to return to Selesta. Adam did not ask her how she had managed to return to them, but he was relieved to see her.
“There’s no time to explain, that can wait til later.” She had told him.
As the Earth shuttles sped away from the planet, it became clear that a large fleet of tiersche units were amassing near the Emperor’s city. The swarm of craft were visible from the Selesta’s air space, nearly two hundred thousand miles away.
“Our Earth fighters can’t withstand those units,” Adam heard Cameron protest against his mother’s request to engage the enemy as they entered the Great Bay. Her brief explanation about the conditions of the lower class Goeur citizens and the other territories’ inhabitants had evinced their pity, but Cameron understood the crew’s limitations. The Earth fighters were not equipped to handle a large scale assault force, nor were they as technologically advanced as the Goeur units.
“I know,” Selerael thought as well. What could she do?
Selerael stood quietly a moment as a wave of frustration passed over her. She thought of all of her companions lost on alien worlds because of the inferiority of their Earth fighters. Despite her power and abilities, she had been able to do nothing to help them. One by one they had lost planes they could not salvage. But even when they could collect the metal fragments to build new ships, the lives that had been sacrificed could never be replaced.
Adam felt his mother’s bitterness and turned to look at her, to offer his sympathy. But then he became aware of another spectator around them—an entity she knew and resented, an entity she attempted to ignore.
The presence that watched her had been moved to pity. Adam heard it call to her, but moments passed before she finally allowed herself to listen.
Take the power of our world. The words resolved in Selerael’s mind. It is the only force they fear. They will know it on sight. If you wish to free the people of this galaxy this much, then so be it. Revive the symbols of Seynorynael’s emissaries. Wake the Valerian fighters!
After a moment, an ominous rumble shook the Great Bay. Around the assembly of humans, a thousand bright lights erupted as the engines of the blue star’s fighters stirred to life.
“Holy cremoly,” said one of the Earth technicians in the Great Bay as the long-dormant alien space fighters came to life.
A face appeared from Selerael’s past in her mind’s eye, a man who held her in his lap and taught her to fly, long before she had ever made the journey to the planet called Earth. Grasping the bittersweet memory that had been returned to her, she turned suddenly to Cameron.
“We’ll use the Valerian fighters.” She said, her hollow voice echoing through the Great Bay. “The Goeur Emperor wouldn’t believe that the Seynorynaelian Empire had returned. Maybe now he will.”
“But it hasn’t. How can we—” Cameron began to protest.
“Assemble the pilots.” Selerael cut him off, and he turned away to make the announcement. “We’ll make him think it has!”
Selerael closed her eyes and concentrated on the memory of her flight lesson, projecting the thoughts and feelings throughout the ship. Adam stopped, and felt the entire crew paralyzed as waves of foreign memories passed through them.
Slowly, the flight crews assembled in the Great Bay. Cameron and the others said nothing, observing Selerael’s face to anticipate her next movement. Adam regarded his mother with admiration. Little by little she fought to regain the past, who she was, against the unreachable entity that had carried them across the galaxies against their will. And now the others stood poised to inherit the legacy of Seynorynael’s explorers.
The Earth crew rushed to the fighters at her command, some tentatively, others excited by the opportunity. The cockpits of a vanished civilization transformed the pilots in a way that a childhood on board Selesta never had—all they had known before had been the doings and discoveries of their grandparents and great-grandparents. Now it was their turn to make history.
Now, subject to Selerael’s telepathic commands, they knew how to fly the Valerian fighters, and fly them they would.
* * * * *
The Goeur Emperor was likely surprised by the return of the Empire’s fighters to his planet.
For an eternity of an hour the Valerian fighters waged an arduous battle against the tiersche units. The other alien transport ships moved a respectable distance from the planet to allow the fleet room to maneuver and to watch the conflict but mostly to avoid being a part of it. The Goeur fleet surrounded Selesta and fired upon her, using a gravity wave weapon that threatened to disrupt her electromagnetic shield. Then when the firing ceased, the shields deactivated briefly and a thousand Valerian fighters emerged from the Great Bay, decimating three tiersche units in their path.
The Valerian fighters were unmatchable. The only problem was that the Earth pilots were less capable in them than perhaps their original pilots had been.
The Goeur pilots hesitated as though they recognized the Valerian fighter planes converging upon them. They alone of the Imperial peoples would, coming from the hierarchy that inhabited the city centers, where ancient drawings and sculptures recreated the grey-skinned intruder’s assault ships and the garrison that had been left to rule for thousands of years under a forgotten alien Empire.
Taught to fear nothing from childhood, except perhaps the ancient Empire of the grey-skins, many of the tiersche pilots panicked for the first time at the sight of the Valerian fighters. Their only fear, that this old alien Empire might reduce their status to something resembling the enslaved workers of their own race, seized control of them and disoriented them. Some tried to flee right away, weaving among their own units for protection and searching for an opening among the enemy planes to retreat to the planet below.
As a result, a few of the tiersche units collided into one another and exploded into silent space. Others waited unmoving, watching frozen as the enemy planes whizzed among them with impossible speed and agility, raining destructive fire among those who attacked.
An order from their Emperor revived them, and they formed an attack formation, a spear designed to divide and weaken an enemy. But the Valerian fighters employed their own strategy, converging upon the center of the spear from both sides, attacking the lead tiersche unit at the rear and incinerating those around him.
Twenty minutes into the battle, Selerael sensed that the remaining tiersche pilots wanted to surrender, but they held out nonetheless, believing the Selesta’s purpose was to conquer them.
Listen to me, people of the Goeur Empire, Selerael sent her thoughts to them across space.
We will spare your lives, if you agree to our conditions. From this moment on, the Goeur Empire is dissolved, and your people shall be free to live and
work as they wish. The Empire territories will be free to trade in the Federation commercial center as sovereign nations. No longer will your tiersche units be permitted to seek out and conquer new civilizations. They will become an instrument of defense only, and its pilots merely citizens of Goeur, not its overlords. If you defy our directive, we will return to this world to control it, and then we will be less generous in our terms.
Selerael projected a false image conjured from her imagination, a recreation of estimates on the power of Selesta’s main battery—in her thoughts, a ray of anti-matter sheathed by a detached ring of pure gamma radiation struck the planet, neutralizing more than half of its mass instantly, incinerating the rest in the wash of radiation.
Minutes passed, and the tiersche units waited unmoving for a transmission from their Emperor. Finally a message reached Selesta’s bridge. Unable to translate the words, the bridge Radar Specialist Chen directed the transmission to Selerael and Adam.
“He wants to know if he will remain in charge of this new Federation.” Adam explained to the other pilots over the holo-fields in the Valerian fighters. The generated image of his mother appeared beside several of the others in his holo-field who were receiving his signal. For a moment, Adam marveled at the perfect quality of the hologram, that the images of those he spoke to could appear combined in the one field as tiny creatures that seemed real enough to touch.
“If we get rid of him, who’s to say another won’t attempt to become the next Emperor?” Pilot specialist Moore interrupted. “At least this guy has the credentials—the others will follow if he surrenders.”
Selerael nodded. “You’re right. I’ll go to the surface to deliver our terms for his continued leadership. Meanwhile, the rest of you can return to the ship.”
“You’re going alone?” Adam asked.
“They can’t be allowed to discover that we aren’t representatives of the Seynorynaelian Empire. Don’t worry.” She added, “I can take care of myself.”
“Why do I get the feeling you’ve got something else in mind?” He wondered aloud once the transmission signal had terminated.
Because I know my mother, he laughed to himself.
* * * * *
Selerael returned two days later, flying escort to a small flotilla of simple cargo ships. Adam waited for her in the Great Bay. Selerael disembarked from the fighter, moved to the first of the ships that had accompanied her, and waited outside the outer hatch.
“What’s going on?” Adam followed her. You didn’t, mother. He sighed and watched her affectionately.
Selerael smiled at him, a mischievous twinkle in her eye.
You brought all of them?
All of the ones who could no longer bear to remain on Goeur.
“What’s all of this?” Cameron Zhdanov asked, having rushed across the Great Bay to meet them. His scientific team was still busy trying to figure out all of the functions in one of the Valerian fighters that they had rigged with wires and sensors; Cameron’s old colleague, Kjetil Thorsen, took over in Cameron’s absence.
The hatch opened, and a group of wide-eyed Goeur workers moved forward into the light of the Great Bay, stepping tentatively from the shuttle as Selerael extended her hand to help them one by one.
“They wanted our protection,” Selerael answered. “I met with the Emperor for several hours to establish the guidelines for his new Federation, that he should stand for re-election in two tidat—about seven months by the Earth calendar. By that time he has to have convinced the population that his leadership is in their best interest. We discussed legal guidelines for his Federation, the establishment of a free trade center, and then I met with representatives from the other territories already on Goeur—”
“What’s to stop them from reverting to their former ways?” Cameron asked, skeptical.
“She encoded a subconscious pain center into their minds.” Adam answered, with a glow of one privy to conspiracy. “If they fail to fulfill their promises for action, unconsciously or deliberately, the pain center will overwhelm them until they amend their behavior and fix the damage. My guess is that all of the potential leaders were similarly encoded—without their knowledge of course.” He looked to his mother for confirmation, and she winked at him.
“And I paid a visit to the larger tiersche centers.” Selerael continued, turning back to Cameron. “We broadcast a signal across the planet liberating them—production levels will fall considerably, but there are plenty of units left to ensure the planet’s proper defense.”
“What about these people?” Cameron asked, gesturing towards the assembly growing larger by the moment.
“Some of the Goeur people didn’t believe that the Empire could be dismantled. These are four thousand of the workers that suffered the most under the Goeur directive. There are also thirteen thousand prisoners and territorial slaves from Goeur here in the last two ships. I promised them that they could come with us.”
Cameron Zhdanov’s mouth dropped open. “That will nearly double the present crew,” he protested. “How can you tell what problems will arise from bringing these people aboard?” he asked. “Can the ship even support forty thousand?”
Adam eyed the other world aliens that disembarked from the second and third ships. An assembly of tan-skinned, amber eyed humanoids, and pale skinned, dark-haired humanoids with amethyst eyes began to fill the Great Bay. But the final ship caught his attention. The passengers that disembarked were human as he knew them, with varying skin tones from pale pink to dark brown. He did not recognize their raiment or the scraps of language he heard as one of them passed near him. But they looked more like an Earthling than he.
“There are supplies in each of the ships,” Selerael continued, answering Cameron’s question. “Enough to last until we augment the present hydrogardens for increased vegetable stores. And we have a few of the alien variety in those canisters. They’ll need to be taken through decontamination and housed separately in case they affect any of our plant strains. We can experiment by putting a few together later. But to answer your question, there should be enough food and medical supplies to sustain everyone.
“Some of these people are highly skilled in industrial production, agriculture, the manufacture of chemicals, textiles, metallic alloys, consumer products and luxury items—they may even prove useful to us. And they’re willing to learn our language and culture. You know, they were never considered Goeur citizens. You can’t wonder why they have no love for their society—a society that didn’t value them as human beings. But their technology surpasses that of Earth—their chemical engineers may even teach you a thing or two, Cameron.”
“You have to admit that aliens have assimilated themselves among us already—” Adam added, fully aware in the moment he spoke that only his mother knew what it truly was to be any from the Earth, and she was an alien!
“Yes, we understand the point, Adam. But will the crew object?” Cameron Zhdanov wondered.
“I hope not,” Adam laughed.
Chapter Eighteen
The Selesta must have stopped only briefly, Sargon was at last beginning to believe it. He had traveled to the surface of a yellow-star world in search of the scout team that his ship had detected from outside the system. By the time Enlil had noticed the shuttle’s presence, it must have gone and returned. There was no sign of Selesta, but he had assumed the ship’s anti-detection shields were holding.
They must have already found the wormhole, he thought to himself, mulling thoughtfully over a mug of what the locals in this settlement called suargh. After taking pains to disguise himself and throwing on some old rags to resemble garb worn in an early civilization, he had arrived too late.
It had been too easy for them this time.
The humanoids of the planet Balear had not yet invented a telescope with which to observe the stars, much less any means of detecting the approach of an alien spaceship.
Sargon sat a while longer in the country of Balka’s equivalent of a taver
n. The human creatures of this planet reminded him of the creatures of Kiel3, though they stood a bit shorter, had a wider forehead, and a smaller chin. Still, they had taken no special notice of him, and he was content to sit and absorb the simplicity of their lives.
Gradually he became aware of an argument taking place near him. He turned his head towards the noise and spied a large man standing aggressively over another man, brandishing a fist. Sargon concentrated on the brainwaves saturating the air and absorbed an elementary understanding of the language and history of Balka before turning his attention back to the argument.
The larger man had no grievance—he did not like the other man’s looks and demeanor. He had lost fifty finari that morning in a game and sought an object upon which to vent his frustration. The weaker man who sought refreshment after a long journey from the countryside would put up little resistance.
Sargon felt the blow that struck the smaller man across the cheek, knocking him from his chair. The larger man began to laugh and bellow insults in a deep, throaty voice. Then the smaller man thought of his family and of the delivery of foods he had to make to the man who owned their parcel of land. If he did not make the delivery by that evening, his family would lose their home.
Stopping in the tavern, he had hoped only for a simple meal to sustain him after two long days of travel. He had no energy to fight. And if the larger man struck him again, he was not sure he would be able to rise.
The larger man reached a hand out and grabbed the front of the smaller man’s shirt, raising a meaty fist to his face. He let out a gleeful laugh, enjoying the smaller man’s torment as he cringed and feebly attempted to pull himself away.
Sargon eyed the small man.
From the depths of Sargon’s being, where the oldest core of his former self remained, he felt a wave of indignant fury rising. He sent a quick flash of controlling sentient waves at the larger man’s fist, suspending it there when the man would have chosen to strike. The larger man let go of the smaller man in confusion, pulling at his fist with his other hand, but it remained stuck in mid-air.