Aeneas said, “You mean all the vampires died?”
The hypergiant had shrunk to less than half its visible diameter: the armatures surrounding it changed their pitch, and now it shrank to a pinpoint and winked out. With the blinding giant sun gone, and the hollow second sun dissolved into scattered patches, smaller objects filling the warped space were now visible to Aeneas: hundreds of battle worlds, fully equipped, and black suns by the scores, and war Dysons large and small by the dozens. Movement, lights, weapon discharges, or other signs of life there was none at all.
Uranus said, “I take it from the amount of energy just forced into the warpchannel we are in, yes, all the vampires in the system are dead. Whoever is in control of the Master Armature is obviously one of us.”
“One of us?”
“Unless I miss my guess, it is Lord Mars, who also no doubt programmed his ring as you did yours, sire, to send him immediately through a space contortion to a place of his choosing when Lord Mercury finally made his move. He chose to join the militia in battle. He apparently took a copy of Lord Deimos with him, or someone who knows how to work the warpcore. We are now headed toward the Greater Magellanic Cloud, and out of the reach of the space vampires forever.”
Aeneas said, “Not forever.”
Aeneas stepped forward to the skeleton and dust pile that had been Lord Mercury, fished the signet ring of Lady Luna out of the pocket of the collapsed, pearl-covered jacket, turned, knelt, and offered it to her.
She blushed and extended her hand. He placed it on the third finger of her left hand.
She said, “We are first cousins.”
He said, “It is legal on Venus, and the older jurisdictions of Earth. I looked it up. But I fear I am soon to return to private station, so I can only accept you as a wife, not as an empress.”
She said, “I need time to think before I give you my answer. For one thing, you are reckless, and I am still mad at you.”
Aeneas said, “I will give you time to think. Tell the Lords of Creation that by the time we reach the Greater Magellanic Cloud, all those in the militia will have the warpcore secret.”
She blinked. “Tell them? Are you going somewhere?”
Without moving from his knee, Aeneas reached back and picked up the dropped coat of Lord Mercury. “I am going everywhere, and using this very convenient system of backdoors and hidden contortion paths to do it.”
Lord Uranus said, “Don’t be rash! What are you planning?”
Aeneas gestured, and the dropped rings of Lord Mercury and Lord Pluto floated through the air and dropped into his palm. His ring glittered as he used his imperial override commands.
Aeneas stood, “Lord Tellus seems to have restored these rings to the null settings, but left the memories intact. The location where he hid the Infinithedron is recorded here. How he recovered it from planet Pluto, I do not know. I have to carry out the rest of his plans.”
Lady Luna said wildly, “But why you?”
Aeneas said, “There is no one else. You two are my witnesses. Speak for me. In my final official act, I dissolve the Lords of Creation as a political body, I confer all their powers and perquisites as regents for the sovereign upon the two houses of the parliament, and I abdicate and abolish the office of Imperator. Lord Mars is commander in chief until such time as parliament elects a prime minister to appoint a new one.
“I go now to do penance for the evils I have done in the name of necessity; and I am grateful to have this opportunity to make amends, as Lord Tellus never had.”
Before either Lady Luna or Lord Uranus could think of anything to say, Aeneas worked one of the controls hidden in the jacket of Lord Mercury. One of the countless special pearls contorted space.
Aeneas vanished.
Episode 21 Necropolis of Stars
Years passed. The number of years did not matter, for the dead keep no tally of time.
At the core of the galaxy was the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A. Encircling it was a globe made of many ringworlds, the largest and outermost of which was a lightyear radius. At the pole, where many great circles, ringworlds, elevators and conduits converged, was a fastness like a tower. Here was a single window, large enough for a gas giant to pass into.
Somewhere beyond was the throne chamber of the Uttermost Overlord, the vampire who owned all other vampires in the Milky Way, and whose living energy he drank like wine whenever he willed. It did not sate him, for he was never sated. Even though numberless planets orbited the numberless stars in his domain, it was always a permanent loss when he fed, for the numbers of his slaves was never renewed.
Of late, the rate at which he consumed and destroyed his slaves had increased. Knowledge that somewhere in the universe, living beings lingered, whose lives held loves and joys and simple, animal pleasures of food, drink, warmth, companionship, and also the deeper pleasures of learning, growing, not to mention coupling and multiplying: all this stirred his frustrated wrath and awakened his yawning hungers. And to torment the dull-eyed undead gave no real pleasure. To slay those already slain was a sport without savor.
Three times only was the Uttermost Overlord disturbed in his endless torture of thirst and unslaked hate.
The first was when Rhazakhang the Obliterator sent a servant, one called Vsasrhazing. The Overlord only recalled that this servant was famed, or had been once, during massacres and torture festivals long forgotten, for the exquisite slowness with which he killed his victims, drawing out their living blood one drop at a time.
But like all fame, like all memories, the power needed to maintain them had failed at last, and the tale behind his own name was lost to him. Only hunger remained, and names without meaning.
Vsasrhazing arrived bearing a message from long dead observatories perched among the outermost fringes of the Cygnus Arm, bearing the news that the Greater Magellanic Cloud had vanished.
The Overlord was restless at the news, and drew the information so vehemently from the brain of his servant that the creature was maimed.
He thrust thought-forms into the mind of Vsasrhazing, which was a torture as perfect as anything Vsasrhazing ever long ago devised. Had these been put in words rather than written in raw agony, the message might have read, “Let the servant of my servant ponder for me and expound how it is possible that a satellite cloud of ten billion solar masses fourteen thousand light years in diameter be forced into a warpchannel? To be carried where?”
“It is none of the arts received from the Forerunners, Overlord,” gasped the tortured servant. “But it is known that a lesser armature, if kept in perfect synchronicity with a major one, can extend the radius and carrying capacity of a warpchannel. This was done in wars long past, when we hunted the remnant of the Living Beings, and our brains and energy stores were replete with life. We then still had the spark of daring, and we thought new thoughts. It was not as now.”
“Let Vsasrhazing tell how this is pertinent?” And the Overlord saw in the slave’s brain that Vsasrhazing resented being asked to expend his shrinking personal store of life energy needed to think and draw conclusions, merely so that the Overlord in his sloth need expend nothing. The Overlord drew out that thought, and all thoughts and memories surrounding, so that the screaming slave lost the ability to conjure such disloyal thoughts on that topic again.
In the quivering mass that was drawn out came also the answer: “It was not two, nor a dozen, nor a thousand armatures moving in perfect synchronism which gathered up the thirty billion stars, but over six billion, centered on black holes created by the collisions of many supergiants each. The Living Beings had created dark stars more massive than any which naturally occurr.”
The Overlord was puzzled. The idea that a technology could be used to do something which had never been done before was beyond his comprehension. It seemed to him to be somehow unfair, like cheating.
“Where did they go?”
“Andromeda galaxy. The supermassive black hole in the center of that galaxy might se
rve as an anchor to allow them to cross so wide an abyss. Or so it is speculated. That galaxy is ten times the mass of Milky Way.”
“Can we follow?” But the Overlord already saw in the servant’s mind that the thing was impossible. Without the means to build another Master Armature, only interstellar travel was in his grasp, not intergalactic. “Then the Living Beings are lost beyond reach.” The Overlord realized.
He saw in the servant’s thoughts the fear that Rhazakhang had sent Vsasrhazing as a sacrifice, costly, but ultimately expendable, so that the Overlord would sate his wrath solely on the messenger. The Overlord allowed Vsasrhazing to see in the Overlord’s mind the inescapable truth of the conclusion.
He fed. Vsasrhazing, after all, was a highly placed servant, of the echelon only one step away from the all-highest, and therefore had many reserves and pockets life energy, delicious with the taints of a wide variety of years and sources.
It was an exquisite feast, and the Overlord required Vsasrhazing to sing praises and lauds to him, and worship him, as he very slowly ate him. Finally he revealed the whole of the Malefic Visage to the underling, and slew him entirely.
The second interruption was many centuries after. The first report was merely a curiosity: ten planets, blue as azure and beautiful with white cloud, had appeared from nowhere and taken position around Alpha Camelopardalis, an O-type luminous supergiant. It was a runaway star, long ago ejected from the cluster NGC 1502. The star system was home to one world. The others orbited this star had been destroyed duringthe ancient massacres of the Forerunners.
Warpcores from the ten blue worlds then flattened space, preventing any superluminary approach. Worlds from nearby stars were prepared and launched, not reaching Alpha Camelopardalis for decades later.
As their dark, interstellar battle-worlds approached, the vampire lords stalking the icy plains were found by the glowing gleam of Alpha Camelopardalis and burned them to nothing. Something had turned the light of the invaded star into Living Light, just as Sol once, long ago, had shed.
During these decades, other reports came of green gas giants, bursting and abundant with life, appearing in orbit next to smaller worlds, or blue superjovians and brown dwarves, their atmospheres like endless oceans aswarm with sea-life, appearing next to icy gas giants where undead were packed and stored in layers of corpses heaped atop each other. And again, warpcores cut off these star systems from outside help, and, again, when small worlds like bullets were shot at disinertia speeds, slower than light, toward these attacked stars, by the time they had arrived, the aura of the living worlds had done their work, and make the light from these suns intolerable, deadly to the vampires.
The Overlord consulted his maps and charts. Limited to the speed of light, even if these stars were igniting to supernovae, only the tiniest segment of one cluster of stars in one spur of an outer arm of the galaxy was affected.
It seemed a small attempt, a pathetic one. There were barely numbers small enough to express what an infinitesimal percentage of his astronomically vast hordes of worlds and servitors the Living Beings had suborned.
It was Dzazanang the Ineluctable, chief servant of the warlord Rhazakhang, who next approached.
The Overlord pierced him with a beam of death-energy to establish communication and dominance. “Let Dzazanang declare by what gift Rhazakhang shall purchase his existence from his master, given that he was so remiss as to allow the Living Beings to escape us, who now return to insult and belittle our imperium?”
Dzazanang could hide no thought. “Rhazakhang sends his compliments, and the messages that he has discovered the pattern of the attacks. Behold.”
Rhazakhang’s servants had detected vast warp disturbances in intergalactic space, coming from the direction of Andromeda. He ordered worlds to be sent through the largest remaining warpchannels the vampires could form in that direction, beyond the range of any possible recovery, but not beyond the range of tachyon mindlinks.
These worlds were sent, and only one survived long enough to send back a last, dying thought with a report: The Andromeda Galaxy was now closely orbiting Milky Way, a few light-centuries beyond the vampire’s warp range. The light from Andromeda showing its new position would not reach observers in the outer cloud of globular clusters for nine hundred thousand years, and would not reach the Milky Way core for another hundred thousand years.
Dzazanang concluded: “The suns the Living Beings seek out are ones bearing the planets the Forerunners first colonized, whose histories are oldest. Their action is consistent with a palaeoscope search for old archives. Presumably they seek the origins of the Infinithedron, which was the instrument by which they learned the Forerunner science.”
The Overlord was curious. “What possible benefit could that be to them?”
“Unknown. The Living Beings are erratic, unpredictable.”
The Overlord gave his command. “As a precaution, let our worlds in their countless myriads be flung out of their orbits and into interstellar space, far from any sunlight which may one day become contaminated. Even if every star in the galaxy became tainted with the aura of life and hence of intolerable to us, the wide night of outer space still would be our own, from which retributions without end will fall. Let any stars orbited by megascale structures too large to move be reduced to black holes.”
“The expense will be incalculable, Overlord. Otherwise we would have done this long ago, surely.”
“Let us spend without thrift or scruple. We enter a new golden age, for the living things again arise, as they have so often in the past, and erupt among us, making certain stars holy. I alone am eldest. I alone retain the knowledge of how many cycles of existence have passed and wars like this been fought, over and over again, without end.”
Dzazanang was astonished. “Other eruptions like this have happened before?”
“Many times. Each time, the horrible Living Stars were simply warpchanneled into the supermassive black hole at the core of the galaxy, and quenched, frozen in time forever, and forever harmless to us. The same can be done with any stars successfully contaminated by the Living Worlds.”
Dzazanang was unable to hide his thoughts of doubt. “The solution is impermanent. Anyone who knows the angle and orbit of the star as it entered the event horizon could, with a sufficiently strong armature, warpchannel it back out of the event horizon by flattening the intervening space.”
The Overlord said, “It is for this reason that my throne and vigil is here. I alone of all my realm know the orbital elements of the long lost stars.”
Dzazanang realized with a cold and crushing sense of despair that he had heard his own death sentence. The Overlord had revealed knowledge beyond what any underling should know, and was merely watching his mind now, waiting for the realization to grow in him that he also was to be consumed.
The Overlord imposed thought-forms made of pain into his servant’s bleeding brain. “And in any case, when the living fight the dead, sooner or later the temptation to use our own means of war against us is overwhelming, to save their soldiers from harm, and have undead fighting slaves take all risks, shoulder all tedium, endure all hardships. It is by these periodic eruptions of the Living Beings that our numbers are replenished. Surely you have seen we are too many to be the remnant of but one Galactic Empire. There were Forerunners before the Forerunners, and Forerunners before that. Nothing stops the cycles of death. Life always surrenders to us.”
And the Overlord then sucked away the life and free will of Dzazanang, reducing him to a worthless puppet, able to retain in memory only those orders and messages he was to carry back to Rhazakhang. The brain-dead, hollowed out shell of his once-useful servant was returned to Rhazakhang. The Overlord was confident his warlord would interpret the gesture of imperial displeasure correctly.
It was not many years later, as vampires count time, when Rhazakhang himself approached the galactic core, with an escort of many lesser servants. By this the Uttermost Overlord knew that he brought not
mere good tidings, but excellent. Either that, or he meant to overthrow him. The Overlord readied his many and terrible weapons.
The Overlord was eased of his fears when Rhazakhang sent the many servants, one after another, into the presence chamber of the Overlord, and he consumed them as he read their minds of their news. With each tidbit, he grew stronger, and his spirits exalted, and his pride and steadfast hate flamed higher, fed by new fuel.
“Victory, O Overlord! All souls are thine to consume!” cried the first messenger as it was killed and eaten.
“Approach and speak!” The Overlord bade the second messenger, whom he also consumed once he heard his message.
The messages were good. Wars had been fought. Intruders from the Andromeda had placed ten thousands of planets about thousands of stars in the Cygnus Arm. In any system where the living dramatically outnumbered the dead, stable stars turned slowly into living stars, slaying all vampires and undead in range. Unstable stars turned more quickly.
Dysons had been dispatched, and surrounded the Living Stars at a safe distance. The Living Stars were conquered in due time and drawn into the supermassive black hole at the core. The living worlds with all their cattle, beasts and plantlife were reduced to dust, the life-energy gathered into the vampires and archvampires.
The third messenger said that the attack was under control, and would soon be halted. The Living Men had longer ranged armatures than the vampires, and were able to place living planets around certain stars in order to infect them, but, being immortal and unwilling to risk their lives, they had been sending worlds filled only with lower beasts. These were now fed to vampires, increasing their strength.