When Aiben reached the black marble steps of the Cybermancer Citadel, he climbed them two at a time. Lesser apprentices, the silence in their minds reflected as fear on their faces, were already pulling on the large ornamental chains used to close the heavy wooden and steel doors of the main entrance. Aiben slid sideways between them. They clapped shut like the jaws of a hungry beast. By entering the Citadel, Aiben disrobed his identity as a starship mechanic and clothed himself in the guise of a cybermancer apprentice, a halath.
The great hall was already full of people who hoped they had chosen a safe haven from the bedlam to come, but their faces said they knew otherwise. The stunning ink-stained tapestries, the sculpted beauty of wooden pillars, and the intricate frescos on the ceiling were just backdrop to the pandemonium. Swaths of colorful silk fluttered through the crowd as the traditional robes of Roonagor’s city dwellers took on twirling flight.
Aiben sieved his way through the main hall; a forest of fabric caressed his face. He secreted himself into the vast subterranean catacombs that lay hidden beneath the stronghold. His eyes adjusted to the dim corridors as Nanomechs clinging to his optic nerves allowed him to see in the infrared spectrum. Achanei could be anywhere, but he knew that even in such disquiet, his teacher would be in his personal meditation chamber focusing his thoughts. Aiben would find Oand-ib first. He wound his way deeper through a maze of mile-long passages at a dead run until he reached the concealed room.
“Hegirith!” Aiben called out. He used the formal address for teacher in the cybermancer’s dialect of guildish. He stormed through the door without knocking and stumbled on the threshold. Dust from the top of the doorway shook onto his head. Aiben inhaled the cloud, which forced out a cough.
There in the middle of the bare chamber sat the man whom Aiben knew as his teacher and surrogate father, Hegirith Oand-ib. He was a member of the Hegirith’hi Shez, masters of the Cybermancer Guild. Nanoscopic familiars of carbon, silicon, and energy sustained the minds and bodies of the men and women who belonged to this seasoned group of people. Mastering this blending of body and machine was the ideal path Aiben had been learning to travel since coming to the Citadel.
Oand-ib wore his customary dilapidated leather smock and pants that were a mish-mash of earthen tones. A maroon robe writhed around him like living liquid. Aiben knew the nanomechs that saturated its fibers could transform it into pliant but impregnable armor in mere seconds. Oand-ib’s hair contained the usual chaotic jumble of small ornate sticks and beads he twisted into its roots as he meditated. His wrinkled face was an apple that someone had cooked too long in an oven and sprinkled with brown splotches of sugary syrup. He was kind, but carried with him a serious strictness for his students.
Oand-ib opened his eyes and looked up from the meditative pose into the frantic gaze of the halath.
“Aiben?”
“An attack force. The Zenzani…” Aiben gasped for air from his hurried pace through the catacombs. He wasn’t accustomed to speaking aloud with Oand-ib.
“I know about the Zenzani. Their ships are almost as loud as you are.” For a few brief seconds, faint flashes of color reflected in his teacher’s eyes. Oand-ib had already activated his ocular nanomechs and established a link to one of the cybermancer’s observation satellites. They were painting a picture of the situation for him directly onto the lenses of his eyes. “They’ve passed Roonagor and are heading for the capital. We’ll be all right for now. Go ahead and sit down, Aiben.” Oand-ib gestured to one of the wooden cheeba chairs in the dim chamber.
“But Hegirith,” Aiben continued between gulps, “What are we going to do? What’s happened to the hypernet?”
“Breathe first,” Oand-ib smiled. “If you’re going to run like that, and then try to talk, use the nanomechs to increase your oxygen. Now, after you breathe, please sit down.”
“There must have been a hundred ships. Some of them looked a little battered too. Was there a battle up there?” Aiben rolled his eyes towards space. “Can you…”
“Would you please sit down, Aiben!”
Oand-ib’s sharpness sliced off Aiben’s further utterance. He felt compelled to sit as dizzy tingles at the back of his mind blossomed to cover his entire head.
“There was a battle, yes.” Oand-ib’s eyes vacillated with ribbons of color once again. “It’s over now. Nothing but wreckage…” he cocked his head to one side, and then added, “and a ship so large that it’s blocking out most of what I can see.”
“The Ma’acht Vor?”
Aiben hoped he was wrong. Everyone in the Seven Guilds knew the name of that evil flagship. They had seen it a hundred times, depicted in various holocasts swooping down on another unlucky planet. It was a raptor caught up in the vengeful fury of the Zenzani.
“Yes.”
Aiben swallowed hard. “The hypernet, what happened to it?”
“It would appear the hyperportal is offline and has disconnected us. The cause, no doubt, corresponds with the appearance of the Ma’acht Vor.”
There was silence between them for a moment as the meaning of Oand-ib’s words made itself clear to Aiben.
“I’m glad you’re here.” There was a twinge of hoarseness in the old teacher’s voice. “There’s something we need to talk about before it’s too late.”
Aiben squirmed in the uncomfortable chair. The frayed weave of the coarse cheeba branches pierced through his shirt and vest to claw at his back. Their sting drove him to speak once more. “But you know what’s been said about Magron Orcris. Now that we’ve been cut off from the hypernet…”
“I know what’s been said, but right now, we need to talk about your future, halath.” Oand-ib snapped his fingers so loud that it forced Aiben to sit up straight in the cheeba chair. The loose branches dug deeper into his back and he winced in pain.
“You want to talk about my future at a time like this?” Aiben’s eyes were wide, his head shaking. “I don’t mean any disrespect, Hegirith, but I’m sure we can wait under the circumstances to talk about my future.”
“Iniri, now is exactly the right time to talk.” Oand-ib had addressed Aiben with the word for son. This was Oand-ib’s way of signifying to him that the conversation was now more than just between teacher and pupil.
There were times during Aiben’s life that he had bit his tongue and took on the challenges of his teacher. Since Nairom had left, however, it was different when they spoke as father and son. Conflict churned up in the pit of Aiben’s stomach. Which voice should he speak with? Would it be the pupil seeking his teacher’s approval or the son seeking his father’s comfort? There shouldn’t have been any difference between the two roles, but Aiben’s mixed up emotions wouldn’t let him see them as one in the same anymore.
“It’s the right time to talk about what, Hegirith?” Instead of anab, or father, Aiben called him teacher and ushered in the voice of conflict. “More lectures on how I need to improve my techniques before I can become a full cybermancer? We don’t have time for that now!”
Oand-ib blew out a disapproving puff of air through rounded nostrils. He shuffled over beside Aiben and dropped into the cheeba chair next to him. The small spears of the weave reached out to dig into his back. He didn’t pull away. Instead, he ignored the pain it would have induced.
“Why do we speak Haman, iniri?” Oand-ib bent the conversation. “It’s an old dead language after all. Dead like the Haman themselves.”
“Huh?” Aiben wrinkled his eyebrows. “We don’t really speak it. It’s just a few words, names of cybermancer techniques, rituals, and things like that. They’re just a part of our dialect of guildish, aren’t they?”
“Anab and iniri are those related to cybermancer techniques then?”
“No, but we’ve always called each other that. Why?” They spoke many other words to each other as well that were strange in sound to common guildish, but closer in phonetic composition to the Haman words that were part of the cybermancer training. He had never realized this before, or
even thought much about it. Confused at the conversational tangent, Aiben searched the round rumpled face of the ancient teacher for an answer. The calmness residing there made him explode.
“I don’t understand what this has to do with anything, anab! We’re under attack!”
“One thing I’ve never been able to teach you, iniri, much to my embarrassment with the Hegirith’hi Shez, is patience. Your skill with the nanomechs might save you at other times but not when long-suffering is required. Please be willing to listen. This is more important than you realize.”
Aiben got up but Oand-ib’s strong hand on his arm stayed him. The surprising grip of bony knuckles almost bruised his skin. His head tingled again. Oand-ib pushed him back down, he was too stunned to resist further. The teacher continued like nothing had happened.
“We use those words because they’re a part of who we are. A millennium ago, the followers of two Haman brothers, Tulan and Nograth, fought a war. Conflicting ideals about the morality of their mental abilities motivated each one in a different way. The Nograthi’aak believed in conquering the lesser-advanced races. The Tulani’aak believed in helping them. Eventually, the two sides melded their minds together in a battle, which led to the complete annihilation of both sides.”
Aiben had spent many hours at the Citadel learning the history of the Cybermancer Guild and the galactic arm it inhabited. His head contained information on many things historical, but he knew little more than a cursory account of the Haman. They were an ancient race that had once dominated entire sectors of the galaxy before the Seven Guilds. They had been quite advanced and were responsible for the war that had created the cybermancer technology, which Aiben and Oand-ib carried inside them. Until now, Aiben had never heard of two brothers being the agents of that great historical battle.
Tulani’aak means the followers of Tulan and Nograthi’aak means the followers of Nograth, Aiben reflected. It was a thought that hadn’t sprung from conscious memory. I’ve never heard these two names before, but somehow I know what they mean.
“How do you know about these brothers? How do you know about the…” Aiben rolled the names around in his thoughts and wondered whether he really wanted to speak the strange, yet familiar words, “…the Tulani’aak and the Nograthi’aak?”
“Yes, that’s it.” A slight upturn at the corners of Oand-ib’s mouth made Aiben feel he had just admitted to something his teacher had been waiting to hear. “I know about them because I’m the keeper of that knowledge for the Hegirith’hi Shez. This is why it is clear to me, a thousand years later, that this new power, the Zenzani Protectorate, strives to revive the legacy of the Nograthi’aak. They aim to dominate through our inherited power.”
“I thought Magron Orcris was nothing more than a crazy dictator trying to avenge some war the Zenzani lost centuries ago. Are you saying he’s connected somehow with these Nograthi’aak? But the Haman are all dead and long gone, anab.”
“But their influence lives on, iniri. You and I, the halath’hi here in our Citadel, the other cybermancers throughout the Seven Guilds, we’re all results of the Tulani’aak’s influence. They say Magron is very powerful. The same bloodlust that spread the Nograthi’aak across the galaxy as conquerors and enemies of the Tulani’aak in ancient times infects him. He’s also a cunning leader. Magron has turned many who can control the nanomechs against the Seven Guilds. He’s a master of the molecular robots himself and exerts his will through them on those cybermancers that lack the conviction to stand against him. His reward for those who love peace is violence and death, and for those who love war, he empowers in thralldom. Unless something is done about him, our future will be as grim as the ancient Tulani’aak’s.”
We need to talk about your future. The thought forced its way back into Aiben’s head.
“You said we needed to talk about my future? What does that mean?” Seedlings of fear took root deep inside him. He clenched his teeth, temples bulging; a harsh stab in his arm was the response. Oand-ib scrunched his ancient face into a wrinkly smile. It did nothing to put Aiben at ease.
“Tulan feared what was about to happen to his people. In an attempt to save them, he created a device, im shalal. It means the killing mind. It would eradicate his brother’s mental abilities and release those from his tyranny he had enslaved. Sadly, Tulan was too late. The mind battle had already begun and his people were dying. He entrusted a group of his closest followers with im shalal and sent them fleeing into an unknown region of space. If Nograth survived, only the device would be able to stop him.”
Oand-ib fell silent and let Aiben soak in the pool of hidden meaning. Aiben sucked up the significance like a sponge.
“Are you saying this im shalal is the only thing that will stop Magron Orcris as well?”
“Yes,” replied Oand-ib. His eyes were distant and unfocused, as if he gazed into the past before continuing. “Magron Orcris has become too powerful. He is like shifting sand in a storm. He covers all opposition. On every world he conquers, fellow cybermancers are defeated and murdered if they don’t have a malevolent desire to rule over others. Nothing’s been able to stay his hand.”
“Were Tulan’s followers who escaped ever found? What happened to them and im shalal?”
The old cybermancer looked deep into the halath’s eyes. Aiben felt the Hegirith’s razor-edge gaze drill right through his soul. “After a thousand years of searching, it was found two years ago. We couldn’t get to it because the planet where it is, Mora Bentia, is inside Protectorate space. We’ve been plotting its rescue and now we’re ready for you to go and get it.”
“Me? No, not me,” Aiben stuttered. His seed of fear blossomed into panic. He pushed up from the chair again. This time, Oand-ib let him stand. Drops of sweat coagulated on Aiben’s brow. His lips pressed into a thin colorless line.
I don’t want to hear this. Why is this my future?
Oand-ib weaved his fingers between the folds of his robe and into the pocket of his leather smock. He extracted its contents. He held in his hand a small optical crystal that sparkled even in the dim light of the meditation chamber. He pulled himself to his feet and stood facing Aiben.
“I have been involved for some time now with certain sources of information. When Protectorate forces enter or leave a system in their space, they use the master code on this crystal to activate and deactivate the hyperportals for hyperspace travel.”
Aiben didn’t know what his teacher had meant by sources of information, but the solemn tone made it clear he wouldn’t be disclosing those sources either.
“That’s why we can’t connect to the hypernet then?”
“No, it is just offline for now,” Oand-ib shook his head, “but it won’t be long before they lock it down.”
Although the nanomechs themselves provided the interface for telepathic communication, the hyperportals, gates into hyperspace for a starship, were also the nodes in a web that carried thought signals through hyperspace between hosts. It was all leftover Haman technology.
“Even when it is brought back online, we won’t be able to use the hypernet. Only the Protectorate’s cybermancers have access to the code on that crystal to use it.” Oand-ib bounced the crystal several times in his palm as if weighing its importance before he dropped it into Aiben’s hand. The man’s eyes squinted; his cheeks drew up in what may have been pain. Not physical pain, but pain of conscience. “It’s the only copy. I imprinted the code in crystal because it was too important and too risky to transfer mind to mind over the hypernet. Now that the Protectorate has invaded Besti, that’s impossible anyway. We have no other choice now. We won’t be able to get the information to anyone else. Press it into your palm when you are ready to decrypt it.”
The crystal felt cold and smooth on Aiben’s skin. He rolled it between thumb and forefinger and traced its shape with a heightened sense of touch. Its multi-faceted surface intoxicated him with its peculiar glow as it revolved in the dim light.
At that moment, somethi
ng unexpected happened. Oand-ib spoke once again, but ancient vocal cords did not produce the words this time. They were emanations from the Hegirith’s mind. We use those words because they are a part of who we are.
Aiben, taken aback by the sensation, for it was different from normal, tried to reply, but found he still couldn’t link through the hyperportal. He opened his mouth to question, but before he could utter a sound, Oand-ib slid into his mind. It was an ultra-clear current flowing into Aiben’s raging, muddy stream. Aiben’s jaw clicked shut.
Now you will know the truth about yourself.
The Hegirith’s knowledge etched itself into the halath’s memory with the speed of thought Aiben’s mind had a waking dream that felt as genuine as reality itself.
CHAPTER 3
Aiben stood in a chamber full of strange sensations. He wore a gray-green cloak of silky material so soft against his skin that he imagined it to be the breath of an angel. His feet were bare, his toes tickled in the soft weave of a rug whose intricate patterns and eddies of simple hues brought his eyes swirling to its center. Color blotted the four walls surrounding him with incomprehensible splashes of meaning; nevertheless, they conjured up deep emotions from inside him.
It was as if a scene of serene beauty wrapped around him one moment, and another enshrouded him in the midst of a great destructive battle the next. He pushed back the hood of his mantle and craned his neck to see the ceiling vault upward. A stunning chandelier of glass and brass hung overhead, where it glistened like the sun dancing on a black sea.
Suddenly, a circle of ten people shimmered in the center of the room and solidified before Aiben’s eyes. The figures all sat in chairs of ornate wood and pearl whose stains varied from dark to light. They were all wearing the same soft, gray-green cloak as Aiben, their heads covered by hoods. Darkness, black enough to dispel emanations from the chamber’s great cluster of hanging lights, cast their features in shadow.