Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One (12 page)

A boy!  Inside his
nightmare a boy filled with a dark force was kept at bay by a slender eggshell
of blue light.  Emptiness!  It spilled forth from his heart like blood. 
She-who-is instructed her how to wipe the accursed child from Mikhail's memory
so he would be plagued with nightmares no more. 

Ninsianna then placed
her hand over the place where the shaft had pierced his breast and sang songs
of beauty, of happy times to come with she and her people.  His hand moved to
cover hers where it rested above his heart. 

"Ní
hamháin,"
he whispered. 
Not alone
.  She could sense he wanted this more than anything
in the world.  The child trying to force his way through the block She-who-is
had put on his memories faded and receded behind that blue eggshell of light
she sensed protected him.

Mikhail settled down. 
His breathing deepened into the rhythm of a  restful sleep.  Once she'd
reassured herself the spell would hold, she kissed his cheek and went back to
her side of the chamber.  Problem … gone. 

Exceptionally proud of
herself for exorcising her very first demon, Ninsianna fell back asleep.

~ * ~ * ~
* ~ * ~

Galactic Standard Date:  152,323 AE

Command Carrier:  '
Light Emerging'

Border between Zulu and Tango sector

Colonel Raphael Israfa

Raphael

The
Light Emerging
was
smaller and sleeker than other command carriers in the Angelic Air Force, built
for stealth and intelligence gathering.  Colonel Raphael Israfa was her
commander, and also the de facto leader of the 42
^nd
Intelligence
Division.  It was
his
job to figure out what the old dragon was up to in
that sector, or that's the excuse their Supreme Commander had given for
banishing him to the uncharted territories.  With nothing better to occupy his
time, Raphael had spent the past nine months tracking a pattern of suspicious
shipping activity.

“Where did Mikhail's
distress call originate from? Raphael asked his second-in-command, a Mantoid by
the name of Major Glicki.

“All we received was a
truncated data burst, Sir,” Glicki touched a voice modulation box which helped
her enunciate word-sounds the insectoid races otherwise struggled to
articulate.  “I didn't receive enough data to triangulate the signal.” 

 “Narrow down the
search parameters,” Raphael frowned.  "This is my best friend who's just
gone missing!" 

With golden hair, blue
eyes, and buff-gold feathers the color of a phoenix, what set Raphael apart was
not just his golden plumage which, in a species prone to inbreeding, even the
slightest variation from white was a cause for celebration, but the rare dimple
which marred his otherwise perfectly engineered Angelic features.  That dimple
flashed now, but it was not because he smiled, but because he grimaced.  When
Mikhail had gone to the ground two weeks ago, he'd been running his scout-ship
black-ops.  He could be anywhere in the galaxy right now. 
Anywhere!

“According to
Mikhail's last report, he tracked a Sata'anic merchant vessel somewhere up into
the Orion-Cygnus spur.”  Glicki's green, heart-shaped head tilted to regard him
with her compound eyes.  “Other than that, we have no way to narrow down his
location.  The signal was extremely degraded.” 

Both stared at the
vast map of the spinning galaxy displayed upon the secondary command screen
. 
The Orion-Cygnus spur was the dead remnant of a dead galaxy swallowed up by
the Milky Way so far in the past even Emperor Shay'tan hadn't been around then
to see it happen.

“Damantia!” Raphael
displayed his red-gold under feathers.  “Even if we launch an armada, it will
take a hundred years to search that spiral arm.  It's almost completely
uncharted!” 

“Two hundred
twenty-seven years, Sir,” Glicki tapped her command module as she calculated
the odds.  “Based upon the number of known stars, that’s how long it would take
to search all habitable planets, not including asteroids and moons.  Unless
Mikhail rigs a homing beacon, we shall never find him.”

“Play me the distress
call again,” Raphael asked.  His golden eyebrows came together in worry.

Glicki slid her prayer-like
tibia slid across the console which served as the
Light Emerging's
nerve
center with its dozens of communication feeds.   With the click of an armored
fingertip, the audio signal was boosted in power, run through a series of data
sequencers to enhance the auditory quality, and played loudly enough for the
entire bridge to hear. 

---“Raphael … I’ve
been hit!  Shay’tan has found the godsdamned Holy Grail!!!  This planet is
crawling with enough Sata’an to…”--- 

“I'm afraid that’s all
we received,” Glicki said.  “I boosted the signal and traced the source as best
as I can.”

 “Do you think he
survived?” Raphael's wings drooped over the back of his commander's chair. 
Being a naturally upbeat personality, it was unusual for him to be so visibly
distressed.

“Mikhail is tough as
hell, Sir,” Glicki reassured him.  “Shay’tan's too cheap to terraform an entire
planet.  If it's crawling with Sata'an, we can assume the world is marginally
habitable.”  Glicki flared her hard exoskeleton wings and fluttered her softer,
gossamer under-wings to make a light ‘whirring’ noise, the Mantoid equivalent
of a nervous sigh.  Colonel Mannuki’ili was
her
friend as well.

“What do you think he
meant by Holy Grail?”  Raphael pondered the message.  “I can hear the surprise
in his voice, and Mikhail doesn't surprise easily.  If Shay’tan stationed a
substantial military presence around it, it must be valuable.”

“It could mean almost
anything,” Glicki said.  “All we can do is keep doing what we were sent here to
do.  Monitor shipping traffic, communications signals and energy signatures and
hope we can get another scout ship in to track whatever Shay’tan is up to.”

“Nobody is as good at
stalking prey as Mikhail,” Raphael said.  “He can stalk a Leonid stalking a cat
stalking a mouse.  That’s why Jophie sent him in to investigate in the first
place.”

“He was trained by the
Cherubim themselves," Glicki said.  "If he could survive … you
know….”  Glicki didn't finish what she hinted at because the information was
classified and there were other ears about, but Raphael knew what she referred
to. 

“Anybody who could
survive
that
could survive anything," Raphael agreed. 

He thought back to
their journey through the Academy together.  Mikhail had always been a man
possessed by tightly leashed internal demons.  As they'd sparred to hone
fighting skills needed to succeed in the galactic military, his Cherubim
training caused him to fight like a demon made of ice.  Mikhail never showed a
hint of fear.  He just fought … and won … as though he possessed no emotion
whatsoever. 

An illusion Raphael
knew to be
false…

It wasn’t until he'd
made the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel that he'd been granted access to view his
friend's pre-academy history.  Mikhail was the sole survivor of the 51-Pegasi-4
genocide.  The then nine-year-old boy had been found clinging to the bodies of
his parents in the ruins of their home, buried alive for days before a rescue
crew had found him.  The report claimed he'd survived by pulling a Sata’an
sword from his dying mother's body and killing the three pirates who'd murdered
his family. 

Mikhail kept that
sword at his side.  Always.  A silent, chilling reminder of a past he refused
to discuss.

With no one left alive
to care for him, Mikhail had been sent to live with Cherubim monks, a race of
insectoid warriors that prized logic and self-control over one’s emotions.  His
best friend's service record beyond that was redacted, with only Supreme
Commander-General Jophiel and the Emperor himself having a high enough security
clearance to see, but the ferocity Raphael's best friend brought into battle
belied the coldness of his exterior.  Mikhail had simply learned to control his
demons as he unleashed them upon his enemies, not to banish them.

“We'll keep looking
for him, Sir,” Glicki said.  “Shall I put out an informational bulletin to
other ships that we are looking for suspicious shipping activity into this
sector?”

“Please do that,”
Raphael said.  “And put in a request to Major Klik'rr that we are interested in
any intelligence reports that may come in related to the shipment of any goods
that might be used to set up a Sata’an base.  Supreme Commander-General Jophiel
needs to know about this.”

~ * ~ * ~
* ~ * ~

February - 3,390 BC

Earth:  Crash site

Ninsianna

Ninsianna sat
alongside her quiet, watchful patient, sharing a meager lunch of dried meat,
sour berries and water.  Mama had schooled her to never scrutinize a patient
directly, but to gaze sideways through lowered eyelashes, a behavior some
considered flirtatious, but which
she
simply regarded as being polite
enough not to stare.  Mikhail wore an inscrutable expression, quiet, watchful,
and direct, studying everything she did as though it fascinated him.  She was
in the process of watching him
pretend
not to grimace each time he bit
into the sour berries when a sound filtered in from outside the great sky
canoe. 

'Ninsianna?'  She
recognized her father's voice calling her name.  'Ninsianna?  Are you in
there…'

Mikhail was instantly
alert, his hand on the handle of his firestick.

“Who … Papa.” 
Ninsianna put her hand over Mikhail's to reassure him there was no danger. 
“It's okay.  Papa … Immanu.  My father.”

She knew he didn't
understand what she'd just said, but they'd reached an understanding that “who”
meant something along the lines of “I am” or “it is.”  She gestured for him to
remain seated in the tiny room he called a 'galley.'  Studying her face for
signs of fear or distress, he decided to trust her while she went outside to
speak to her father.

“Papa,” Ninsianna was
wary as she exited the sky canoe, fearful Papa had only come to drag her back
to her betrothal.  “Why have you come?”

“Jamin said you were
captured by a demon!”  Papa's eyes were round with fear as he examined the sky
canoe which had fallen from the heavens.  Well-built and muscular, with a shock
of salt-and-pepper hair that jutted out at odd angles, a side-effect of Papa's
frequent, deep thoughts about the whims of the goddess, but not for his
tawny-beige eyes, it would have been difficult to tell that Immanu was
Ninsianna's Papa.

“Jamin is the only
demon!”  Ninsianna's voice dripped scorn.  “I'm fine, no thanks to
him!
 
Or you." 
She was still miffed Papa had tried to force her to marry
Jamin.
  "
Now please leave, because I'll not marry him even if it
means I have to spend the rest of my life banished from the village!”