Galactic Standard Date: 152,323.02
Haven-1
Prime Minister Lucifer
Lucifer
Lucifer nodded to the two Cherubim guards who shadowed his adoptive father whenever the Eternal Emperor Hashem was in corporeal form. He waited for them to give him entrance, not to the throne room, where only those who knew the Emperor well understood he was loathe to inhabit, but into the cutting edge genetics laboratory which had been grafted onto the Eternal Palace.
Although most mortals assumed the Emperor could wave his hands and cause molecules to rearrange themselves into fantastical creations, immortality only granted ascended beings a modicum of control over the elements of nature, and an imperfect control at that. Most 'old gods' got stuff done the same way any other mortal in the universe did, by rolling up their sleeves and getting to work.
Work to Lucifer's adopted father meant splicing genetic enhancements onto existing species using the scientific vehicle of recombinant DNA. Immortality meant you could work on your obsession long enough, unhindered by death, to eventually work out a solution. Through trial and error, most old gods eventually mastered the art of manipulating the rules of physics which were much more malleable than most cultures understood. She-who-is had grown so powerful that she could use her mind to manifest whatever sparked her interest; but immortality, by itself, did not grant omnipotence.
It was why the Emperor hadn't been able to wave his hands and make his army's inbreeding problem simply go away. No matter what method the Emperor used, whether natural breeding, cloning, artificial insemination or a certain amount of hand-waving ascended hocus-pocus, hybrid gametes combined artificially in meiosis simply failed to cause an embryo to grow.
“Father?" Lucifer called to the very ordinary-looking man bent over an ordinary-looking stainless-steel laboratory table. “I came as soon as I could.”
“Lucifer." The Eternal Emperor Hashem didn't even glance up. “Glad you could make it." The Emperor could assume any form he wished, but the form he preferred was that of a wingless human male. He continued fertilizing leathery eggs the size of softballs, ignoring Lucifer until he finished.
Lucifer suppressed his annoyance. For the past 225 years, the mantle of responsibility had fallen to him. Between Shay’tan and the normal political intrigues which threatened all democratic institutions, Lucifer had to forever outwit his opponents to keep his father on his lofty throne. When Hashem kept him waiting, he couldn't attend to any of the other bazillion things he had on his already ridiculously overscheduled plate.
“What are you working on, father?"
“Miniature water dragons." Hashem barely acknowledged his presence. “They're going extinct. I'm trying to splice in a genetic adaptation so they'll survive.”
“-We- are going extinct, Father." Lucifer's wings twitched with exasperation. “When are you going to give us a genetic adaptation to survive?”
Hashem looked up as though noticing Lucifer for the first time, his golden eyes glowing with the eerie, internal luminescence all ascended beings possessed. Lucifer didn't know what was worse. The two hundred years Hashem had vanished into the ethers after his mother had willed herself to die? Or the fragile, doddering old fool who had only reluctantly returned after the 51-Pegasi-4 genocide had wiped out the entire sub-species of Seraphim Angelics?
“I lost the root stock." Hashem's face was etched with sadness. “And then pirates wiped out the Seraphim control group that still possessed some of their original DNA. Without that, I don't know how to replicate my experiment.”
“Godsdammit, father!!!" Lucifer slammed his fist upon the stainless steel laboratory table. “Why in Shay’tan’s name do you keep putzing around with these insignificant creatures when the armies who defend you are dying?" He picked up the warning glare from the two Cherubim guards. He moderated his tone to the appropriate respect an elected official should have for their Emperor and God.
“You’re all so close to completion,” Hashem muttered like a senile old man. “All you need is a few thousand more years to evolve and you'll be complete. The Seraphim were close. They were so close.”
“Close to what?” Lucifer asked.
“Your mother was almost complete." Hashem turned back to his experiment. “I could have finished her.”
“My mother is DEAD!!!” Lucifer shouted. He waved off the Cherubim guards when they took a clanking step forward. “And my entire species is dying. When will you get your head out of the ascended realms and deal with what is happening down here? We won't be around in a few thousand years!”
“I lost the root race." Hashem's demeanor shifted from that of an absent-minded professor to the hellfire-and-brimstone old god who had once battled Shay’tan. The doddering old fool was gone, replaced by the god who couldn't die … the one who viewed Lucifer as a failed experiment. He spoke with the clinical detachment of a scientist making a presentation before a conference of biologists about a colony of bacteria he'd been running clinical trials on.
“Without the root race, there is nothing I can do to help you. Your only hope is the breeding program. If you increase your genetic diversity through selective breeding, a new strain of Angelic might evolve to take your place.”
Lucifer shuddered. How could a mortal such as himself, whose lifespan was a mere blink of an eye to an ascended being such as his adopted father, hope to make himself heard? He was a plaything, a toy. A tool the Emperor had used to lure his mother, a creature so close to completion that she had approached godhood herself, to stand at his side so he would have somebody besides Shay’tan to talk to as time ground mortal creatures into dust.
In the end, his mother had rejected the Emperor, refusing to drink the elixir he had engineered to complete her DNA. All she'd ever wanted was to follow the mate who'd abandoned the both of them into the grave. The day she had willed herself to die, Hashem had abandoned Lucifer and the Alliance. Lucifer had been carrying the burden ever since.
“What about the Leonids?" Lucifer suppressed the hopelessness he always felt whenever he spoke to his father. “They are down to fewer than 3,500 individuals. We have more Leonid ships than Leonids to man them.”
“The Spiderids will take their place." Hashem spoke as though he were talking about replacing a defective toaster. “Just as the Mantoids filled in the gaps in your ranks. I have ordered the aerospace manufacturers to create a new generation of ships adapted to Spiderid physiology.”
Lucifer shuddered. Replaced. They were being replaced. He'd always known that was the plan, but this was the first time he'd heard the words uttered from the Emperor's own lips.
“I give up!" Lucifer threw his hands into the air. “You’re worse than Shay’tan!" He turned to leave. He got as far as the laboratory door before Hashem called his name. The Cherubim guards stepped to block his exit.
“Lucifer!!!” Hashem ordered. “These trade deals you've been passing in Parliament? You have outsourced too much of our economy to the Sata'an Empire. I want you to rescind the override.”
“Do it yourself,” Lucifer hissed. “For two hundred years I ran your empire while you couldn't even be bothered to show up to sign something. Never once have you thanked me! Never once have you even taken an interest in the impact your one-sided focus on seed worlds has on the older races in this empire. Or the species who defend them!”
“Those who have the means are expected to contribute more,” Hashem said. “Of course older worlds should support emerging ones. If I wanted everybody to fend for themselves, I wouldn't have created you.”
“You can’t keep asking us to pay and pay and pay until they’ve got nothing left to give,” Lucifer said. “For goddess’ sakes!!! Look at your Cherubim guards!!! Jingu is over nine thousand years old and hasn’t been able to produce a new queen!!!"
Lucifer gestured to the ant-like Cherubim guards whose race had once guarded the entire Alliance, but who now numbered mere thousands. The Cherubim only lingered to produce enough guards to guard the Emperor
, a duty which had been prolonged when Angelics began dying out instead of stepping up to the plate to replace them. Only love of the Emperor prevented the Cherubim from casting off the mortal shells they had long since outgrown and escaping into the highest ascended realms.
“That’s enough!” Hashem ordered.
“If you won’t look at me, then look at them!" Lucifer's fists clenched as he tried to make his father see reason. “They've guarded your empire even longer than we have, and they are even closer to extinction. You replace them with us, and now you replace us with godsdamned insects!!! Are we really that expendable?”
“You're not expendable." Hashem's shoulders sagged with defeat. The clinical old god disappeared, replaced by the doddering fool. “I just don't know how to fix you.”
“You're a god!” Lucifer pleaded. “Swallow your pride and ask the goddess to help like you did when you created us in the first place.”
Hashem swallowed. Lucifer knew the last thing his father wanted to do was ask the goddess who ruled the universe for help. He'd only met the Architect of the Universe once, at his birth, when she'd handed him over to Hashem for safekeeping. He was a burden Lucifer now understood his adopted father had never wanted.
“Please, Father …” Lucifer pleaded, his rage sputtering. “You're the only father I have ever known. I don't want to be the last of my kind."
Hashem picked up the pipette he'd been using to fertilize the reptile eggs and resumed whatever it was he'd been doing.
“I lost the root race,” Hashem said with resignation. “There is nothing more I can do for you. I'm sorry.”
He turned his back, engrossed in whatever experiment he was conducting once more. The Eternal Emperor was gone. Replaced by the kindly, absent-minded genius who tinkered with inconsequential experiments in his genetics laboratory instead of dealing with the problems facing mortals.
Chapter 24