“Yes, Adam,” she said, admiring her son’s perception. “Yes, I suppose it is.”
* * * * *
A few days later, transports arrived in Sesylendae's vicinity. Selesta had received Selerael's message to send out the Stargazer and other small vessels to retrieve those Tiasennians that would join the crew. Word reached them from Orian, from a man called Mirotos, known among his people as the newest Garen, what the crew understood as some hereditary title.
The Garen had become temporary commander of his people with the death of the Great Leader. His signal announced the Orians’ willingness to leave the system with Selesta and follow the Zariqua Enassa's daughter to a new world where they could begin to learn to live peacefully together. Unlike the Tiasennian refugees, the Orians felt little remorse leaving the Rigell system–their home world Orian had been lost ages ago.
A week passed, and finally Selerael and the others made ready to lead the vessels into Selesta's twenty-odd cargo bays. Sesylendae prepared to re-dock onto the surface of Selesta where it had once remained throughout the Seynorynaelian explorer missions. Selerael and the others from the Selesta had spent the week there, getting to know Alessia's small crew and devising a means of coordinating the disparate cultures and languages of the many races on board. The main problem at hand had been solved by Sorbin.
Sorbin had always been interested in the ancient history of the Rigell system and had studied the dimensions of Selesta and Enlil as recorded in the Sesylendae's computers.
Predictably, Sargon had constructed his vessel to resemble the Selesta in both size and structure, but that wasn’t all. Computer schematics showed that if the Enlil were brought underneath the Selesta, the two ships could be held together within Selesta's electromagnetic field, allowing the Selesta's anti-gravitational field to encompass both ships, thus compensating for Enlil's inferior engines. Apparently the Great Leader had given some thought to designing his ship so that it might be possible to do so, with the salvation of his people on his mind.
At the same time, the arrival of more than two million Tiasennians cramped living conditions on board. However, the technicians prepared new rooms and wings for their occupation, rooms which, according to Selerael and Adam, had remained sealed for generations until they returned from Sesylendae.
Selerael knew why they had been able to gain access to the sealed sections at long last. The entity she now knew had been Ornenkai, that had surrounded her since childhood, comforted and even once frightened her, that breathed life into the metallic structure of the ship, had disappeared.
They found thousands of objects belonging to Hinev’s explorers through the long-closed chambers. Works of great scientific innovation, art, pictures and holo-stills, terrestrial transport explorers, supplies, and provisions, a production site that manufactured food materials for the meal selection units, and hundreds of operations for life aboard the ship as it had been. With these objects, more cargo bays housing alien museums that Hinev’s explorers had kept after their debriefings and several more spaces holding botanical preserves and non-lyra forests still thrived, functioning according to a system code imprinted before the fall of the Seynorynaelian Empire.
From these areas, space was created to house many of the Tiasennian refugees, a number of which were transferred to Enlil.
Though much organization remained to be done, the inhabitants of the new Selesta were hasty to depart in search of a new planet, away from the threat of the nearby lai-nen system. Toriso and some of the other specialists and scientists asked Selerael if they should return to one of the worlds Selesta had encountered on its recent journey to Rigell. But most recognized that attempting to colonize an inhabited planet could present problems with the local population.
Selesta had not taken them to many of the uninhabited worlds that now appeared on the computer star charts. With the new maps and ship log open, it became clear that this particular galaxy held more non-humanoid lifeforms than humanoid, and few inhabitable worlds.
However, the galaxy group near the center of the supercluster that had held the Goeur and most of the humanoid variants they had come across showed an incomparably high proportion of humanoid life and inhabitable planetoids.
It had also been home to the planet Seynorynael.
Without a better plan, the consensus was to return in that direction, in hopes of finding a world similar to Tiasenne. However, shortly after the engines were engaged, the computer registered a pre-set flight plan, programmed into the computer after the ship achieved orbit above Tiasenne.
Ornenkai’s gift to them. Where would it lead?
Selerael decided to find out, putting her faith in Ornenkai, now that she knew he had been trying to redeem himself for all the evil that he had done.
Adam had gone for an outing in the Seynorynaelian forest when he sensed the tachiyon engines engage.
Child of the Zariqua Enassa, who brought us from Enor long ago, the trees whispered to him, swaying in the wind. Our journey across time is almost at an end.
“What?” Adam called to them. “No! No, I don't want you to go,” he said, thinking back on his friend Faulkner, the only other human being he knew who had been able to hear the lyra trees.
We must return soon.
“Why? Why do you have to go now?” He demanded, not even certain why the thought distressed him. Perhaps it was because the lyra had guided him his entire life; perhaps it was because as long as they were safe, here, he felt their power like an invisible shield that protected him out in the world.
Instead, Ornenkai’s words echoed in Adam’s mind, the words he had overheard when the great entity departed the ship and became human for the last time.
It is not my destiny to see the end of the Empire–it is Selerael's. She is the one, the one I saw in the arboretum that day, the one who created the time-loop. Tiasenne will thrive in the future–but mine, ours, hers ceases to be outside the circle of time.
We are not merely fragments of Enor. We are the inheritors of its doomed legacy.
* * * * *
The ship jumped in and out of hyperspace, maneuvering around large stellar obstructions and resetting its path. After a long period of deceptive quiet, all of the alert systems on board activated at once, sending shrieking sirens throughout the ship.
Selesta had just plummeted at maximum speed towards the pole of a rotating black hole. Before the crew could react, Selesta passed the event horizon, beyond which not even light might escape.
There was no going back.
They were all going to die.
The black hole would erase them from the universe without even a trace.
The impending darkness, horror, crept over Selerael as she stood on the bridge, watching the light and refracted colors swallowed by the dark exotic matter before them.
In a moment, their bodies would be destroyed by that force, before Selesta ever reached the black hole itself.
Then, out of nowhere, she felt a silent scream welling inside her, but this scream was power. Raw power. Power she had never known she possessed, that she had never known how to harness.
Her mind, struggling somewhere to conquer fear and accept what it perceived was about to happen to them all, separated from her; she ceased to pay it any further attention.
Already frightened and despairing cries could be heard over the ship as the crew felt themselves being compressed by the black hole's power.
Selerael was no longer with them. She was alone with the cosmic string, aware of it and nothing else.
She reached the engine sphere, having gone nowhere. She was everywhere at the same time in this place, aware of all that occurred and yet she was detached from all she observed at the same time.
A sound echoed within the depths of the ship near the main engine, where the centipede hole rending device, the cosmic string that had ripped holes in space-ti
me to propel the ship through subspace, had responded to the tremendous pressure and forces of the space near the black hole.
Already their surroundings had taken on a surreal quality–time and space seemed to merge, but those within continued to feel the force of the black hole ring singularity and were terrified.
Mass to energy, Adam heard the words in his mind, but where were they coming from? It seemed as though some energy around him was trying to warn him, trying to save him, trying to tell him what he had to do in order to survive certain doom.
He sensed that energy around him; it belonged to his mother. At last he understood.
Selerael was going to turn them all into energy with her. Her entity had flooded the twin ships with fully-sentient waves, persuading all mass within and of the two ships to join her, to become one with the energy as the ship neared the black hole. Synchronizing with the singularity in the ship, the descendant of the last colonizer of Enor had awakened the full power of the Enorian singularity and the power in herself.
As the living mass converted to sentient energy, Adam felt the presence of several other sentient beings with him. Who? Who were they, these sentient creatures trapped in this world between life and death, between mass and energy?
The flow of their energy rushed excitedly past him as if preparing to leave the ship once it had passed into the ring singularity and the gateway between universes and time. As they passed him, his heart was filled with such primal joy that he forgot his fear. He had been forgiven, and now, now he could return to the land beyond; his soul restored, he could now return to the tapestry of light.
Meanwhile, within the event horizon, the density and force of Selesta exceeded the small black hole, allowing the cosmic string attached to the tachiyon engine to catapult them through the ring singularity and back through subspace to an orbit around the event horizon, accelerating into an elliptical orbit that slingshotted the ship from the event horizon and away from the black hole.
Eternity had passed in the black hole and no time at all. Passing that eternity, the ship emerged from a small white hole in space, a white hole which was a past singularity of the black hole, a black hole moving backward in time. Once they emerged from the white hole and into forward time once more, the white hole that had been their salvation instantly became a black hole once again.
Away from the black hole, the ship decelerated, solidifying back in forward time, back into real space, mass once again. In that moment, Selerael released her hold upon the energy contained within the ship and allowed the humanoids and creatures within to resume their native forms, to take shape as material beings once again.
She found herself standing on the bridge.
No, it hadn’t been a dream, she realized, for the space field around them belonged to another galaxy.
The bridge crew stared about themselves in incredulity, wondering where they were and how they had suddenly arrived in this unknown area, wondering how they were still alive, when their last thoughts had been of the approaching darkness...
Yet a new galaxy now greeted them with its unfamiliar envelope of bright, dense lights, seeming to observe them disinterestedly.
“Selerael–” Derica began, pointing.
One of the closer stars grew brighter as Selesta skirted it; it had the blinding glare of a blue star. Then, as the light dissipated, they found themselves ready to impact the beautiful blue-white world that had sneaked up on them while the tried to get their bearings.
“Where are we?” Toriso shouted as they neared the planet. Two small moons were passing over the surface, one at the edge of the port view, the other not far away to their right. The planet before them bore an unmistakable resemblance to Seynorynael.
There was no time to dwell on it. Selesta was plummeting into the ionosphere.
* * * * *
Selesta's crash split Enlil and Selesta apart. Sesylendae broke off, skidding in a ridge of soil. The pair of larger ships had come in on their sides and landed with Selesta's Great Bay doors in the air. The artificial gravity on board fought to maintain its control, but the power reserves had dwindled. Some of the interior functions were still operational, but the ships were in their death throes.
The gravity generators, however, had been miraculously unaffected.
The black hole had been hard on both ships, though the sturdier Selesta had fared better than Enlil. At the last moment as they neared the planet, it became clear that the tachiyon engines had failed, though the ships continued at the same speed as when the engines failed. Meeting the friction of the atmosphere, stabilizers and thrusters engaged themselves to slow for re-entry. Selerael exerted as much controlling force as she could to decelerate the ships and augment the interior stabilizers that protected the inhabitants on board, but it was a bumpy ride to the surface.
Crippled by the recent warp through the black hole, Selesta and Enlil plummeted to the land below, skimming to the edge of a lake. Enlil's inhabitants had fled to the interior of the ship. Most of them survived the crash, though the exterior of the ship itself was damaged; the hull plates had begun to rain onto the land below from as high as the ionosphere, the last few plates dropping into the nearby lake seconds before the crash.
“We’re going out,” Selerael said to Sorbin, as Adam appeared on the bridge, his face ashen. Specialist Derica had already established that the atmosphere of the bright world was breathable. “Meanwhile, Derica–”
“Yes?”
“Send someone to check on Enlil’s crew.”
“Will do.”
“Mother, I’m coming with you,” Adam said, standing in the doorway.
“I know.”
* * * * *
Under the bright light of day, arcs of silver cut into the giant lake that swept away to the far-off horizon. On the other side of the fallen Selesta lay a forest, a line of green that diminished over a rise of neighboring hills. A lyra forest.
Selerael’s face was as pale as her son’s.
“You know where we are,” he said.
She nodded.
“Firien.”
As she said it, she became aware of the ocean melody playing on the tides. Overhead, several Ceiras birds wheeled about, circling over the crash.
“Who is that?” One of the scouts cried, pointing, and all eyes followed his arm.
Across the charred plain, at the edge of the forest, a man stood watching them.
The man approached them slowly, allowing them to weigh his intentions. He appeared careful to show that he was not hostile, spreading his arms wide. As he neared them, they saw that he wore a tight fitting silver garment over his body, not unlike the shiny material of their own Seynorynaelian uniforms.
His eyes and hair were glowing silver, his skin translucent white–even the veins in his neck and hands had no color. He was a walking ghost, a creature that had stepped over time and space and into the real world. He stopped short of them and regarded Selerael a moment, an expression of uncertain recognition on his face.
His words, when he spoke, were in the tongue of the ancients.
Selerael and Adam listened, while the others struggled to understand a language that hardly resembled the Tiasennian they knew.
"He’s going to help us?" Sorbin asked as the man listened to him curiously.
"Yes–there are many of his people nearby." Selerael turned to Sorbin. "The others are on their way. They have offered to help strip Selesta and help us build a settlement beyond the scorched plain Selesta created in her crash–over there, in a clearing by the north shore of the lake where the trees end."
The man suddenly spoke to Selerael again.
"What was that?" Toriso asked Selerael in broken Tiasennian, for Sorbin's benefit. Toriso had most likely understood none of the strange man's speech.
Selerael turned her attention to him, with a face that hadn’t yet adjusted
to what the man had said.
"He wanted to know which planet we came from.” She said, her lips tight. “He asked how long was our journey into the end of the universe. He asked for word of the others. They have been waiting millions of years for any word of the other escape ships. But there have been none." She paused.
"So who are they?" Kesney interrupted.
Selerael swallowed. "They are survivors of Enor 97."
* * * * *
"Where do you think we are?" Specialist Derica wondered aloud to the bridge crew, gazing through Selesta's forward viewport at the calm, clear blue-grey waters of a mountain-fed lake. Suddenly, she jumped in her seat. A small group of humanoids wearing furs to protect against the cold had joined the group led by Selerael and her son. "Enlarge," Derica called without thinking, but the computer was still working and responded with a magnified image in the holo-monitor.
The pale grey-skinned humanoids reminded her of the Orians. Only one of them caught her attention; a man clad in silver stood among them, speaking only when the others addressed him. Derica felt the communications Specialist Kirya stumble beside her to get a better view, suddenly animated by the image Derica had enlarged.
"It's–a colonizer!" Kirya—who was Enorian herself—shouted, rasping for breath, her storm grey eyes widening. Derica turned to her, a deep crease forming on her brow.
Kirya’s family had arrived on Selesta among the strange grey-skinned humanoids suspended in time in their long marooned ship's capsules, the Enorian refugees. Only a child when Selerael had found them, she had grown to young adulthood in the intervening years, her past only a blurred memory. Nevertheless, the shock of seeing the silver-haired man brought back a dim recollection.
"What's–a colonizer?" Derica asked.
"A colonizer?" Kirya echoed, struggling to hold on to the ideas that had returned in that brief moment of recognition. "...He reshapes the universe. He–is the genetic pattern of all races. He makes the universe–one."