Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One (36 page)

“We knew your
grandmother.”  The elderly woman shook his hand.  Her dark hair was peppered
with grey, as were her dark wings.  The old woman's skin was wrinkled and
paper-thin with age.  

“It was tragic,” the
elderly man's hands trembled with age.  “What Zuriel did to her … ouch!”

The elderly woman
elbowed her mate in the ribs. 

“I never knew them,”
Lucifer said.  “They both died before I was born.” 

His mother had never
told him
why
his ancestors had been cast off of this planet.  Perhaps
she'd not known herself?  He only knew the Seraphim considered it shameful to
not follow your mate into the dreamtime when they died.  Should he ask the
elderly couple what had really happened?  No.  It only rubbed salt in the old
wound of his mother abandoning
him
for a mate who had abandoned
her
as soon as he'd impregnated her.  He remembered her sadness…

“The genocide was not
your fault,” the man's voice was wispy and thin.  “We never dreamed pirates
would come all the way out here.  This planet was chosen because its only
resource was its people and its fertile soil.  Without people to till it, it's
worthless.”

Lucifer noted the
hollow circles beneath the old man's eyes.  He was dying.  The anger he felt
towards his mother dissolved. 

“Soon we'll reunite
with our children and grandchildren,” the woman took her husband's hand.  “We
don't wish to be a part of the material realm anymore.”

“I can feel them
waiting for us,” the man's eyes looked right through Lucifer as though he were
staring someplace far beyond.  “Just but on the other side.” 

Lucifer's wings
trembled.  Those were the exact same words his mother had whispered with her
dying breath.  He looked away so the couple wouldn't see his eyes were too
bright and shiny for someone as above-the-fray as the Alliance Prime Minister. 
The elderly Seraphim man had one foot in the dreamtime.  It wouldn't be long
before whatever ailment was eating away at him killed him.

“Come, dear,” the
woman said.  “We have an appointment to keep.”

Lucifer watched them
shuffle into the fading sunlight.  The frail wife helped the even frailer
husband along, the last remnants of a species that was now extinct.  Just as
the
rest
of the hybrids were about to go extinct.

His comms pin had been
blinking all afternoon.  Zepar.  Trying to get him off to some diplomatic
mission with an emissary of the Tokoloshe Kingdom.  Screw Zepar!  Keying in a
different comms frequency, he called the commander of his diplomatic carrier.

“Colonel Marbas,”
Lucifer said.  “Tell Zepar I'm spending the night down here on the planet.”

“Zepar has been
frantic to get hold of you, Sir,” Colonel Marbas said.  “He was furious when we
told him you ordered us not to provide transport down to the planet.”

“I don't answer to
Zepar,” Lucifer said.  “I'll be back in the morning.  You're
not
to
transport him anywhere.  Got that?”  He cut Marbas off before he could give him
an argument.

A few reporters lit
candles and lay flowers along the long, black wall before getting into their
shuttle craft and departing.  There were no accommodations on this planet.  No
hotels.  No restaurants.  No stores to get food.  No people.  Just the
overgrown skeletons of burned out houses, clustered into little communities
where people had once lived and worked together in close-knit family units and
empty fields.

For once in his
overly-busy, overly-scheduled life, Lucifer was alone with his thoughts. 
Sitting on the ground with his back against the cold, black granite memorial,
he encircled himself in his wings and contemplated the impending demise of his
own species.

“Is this spot taken?”
a voice rumbled.

Looking up, he saw a
middle-aged Leonid male.  Lieutenant-General Valepor, out of uniform and
dressed as a civilian.  His golden leonine eyes reflected the scant glow of the
moonlight.

“It's an empty
planet.”  Lucifer didn't feel like company, but it was inappropriate to
object.  This was a public memorial.  He adjusted his wings so that the general
could sit.

Valepor sat down and
didn't speak, his tail twitching thoughtfully.  They both stared out at the
darkness, alone in their thoughts.

“Mine was the first
Alliance ship to arrive at the scene,” Valepor finally said.  “We didn't even
know this planet was here until we received a distress call."  A low growl
rumbled in the Leonid commander's throat.  "I've seen a lot of terrible
things in my lifetime, but this was the worst.  They slaughtered every living
sentient creature and burned the buildings to the ground.  Most of the bodies
were so badly burned we were never able to identify them.”

“Was there any
indication of a reason?” Lucifer asked.  He knew there wasn’t, but sometimes
things didn't make it into the official report.

“This was not about
resources,” Valepor said.  “Somebody wanted to make an example of these
people.  Shay’tan only butchers those who piss him off and subjugates the
rest.  This was not his style.”

“The sole eyewitness
said it was Sata’an soldiers,” Lucifer said.

“That’s what the three
dead lizard-soldiers were wearing that he killed,” Valepor said.  “But the
uniforms were the old style.  Out of date.  It took us forever to get the kid
to even speak.  He almost took out half a squadron with that sword he was
carrying when we tried to remove his mother’s body.  The sword was bigger than
he was, but he was determined to protect her.”

“Mikhail.”  Resentment
clenched at his gut at the mere mention of the boy's name.  Another one of his
father's pet projects!  After the 51-Pegasi-4 genocide, Hashem had returned
from the ascended realms and started managing his empire again.  Only Hashem
was no longer interested in Lucifer because his mother had rejected him!  Now
he wanted Jophiel!  And to run a million genetic tests on the first
full-blooded Seraphim to come off of 51-Pegasi-4 not because he was defective,
but because the kid had nowhere else to go and was too young to tell the
Emperor ‘no.’

“I'm still stationed
in the sector,” Valepor said.  “It seemed right to come today.  It's
disappointing that so few did.  ”

“My Chief of Staff was
spitting fire,” Lucifer admitted.  “No PR value in coming to a dead planet. 
He's still under the illusion my father’s breeding program will save the day.”

“Bullshit,” Valepor
said softly.  “It hasn’t worked for
us
.  I've managed to sire one pair
of cubs during all my years of trying.  Most of the poor guys now can’t even do
that.  We are going the way of the Wheles.”

“We'll be right behind
you,” Lucifer said.  “I've pleaded with Hashem to pay attention, but he says he
doesn't know how to fix us.  He's already put in an order for all new equipment
manufactured for your carriers to fit Spiderid physiology.”

“I don't mind the
bugs,” Valepor said with a shrug.  “They pull their weight.  I just don't like
the fact that this is a problem we can't fight!  It's not our nature to go down
without a fight.”

“The Seraphim didn't
fight their killers?” Lucifer asked.  “Why?  Why would they just lie down and
allow themselves to be exterminated?”

“I found a former
Sata’an civilian.”  Valepor pointed to a segment of the black granite wall
which contained Sata'anic names.  “Shay’tan keeps the females confined to the
Hades cluster, so once they defect, they have no hope of ever starting a
family.  Many were adopted into Seraphim families as farm labor.  I found a lizard
person curled around a Seraphim infant trying to use his body as a shield to
save it.  They killed him.  And then they killed the baby.  But not one of them
fought back.  Not even the non-Seraphim.  Only the boy fought back and
survived.”

“Utopia is great in
theory,” Lucifer said.  “But in real life, there are too many people waiting to
reach out and take it from you so they can make a fast buck."  He
thoughtfully twirled a snowy white feather, a nervous habit he publicly
squashed, but had picked up from his mother.  "Like me.  I'm as greedy as
any of them.”

“And yet you're the
only one who came here today,” Valepor said.

Silence stretched out
between them.  Yes.  Why
had
he come?

“Our races are dying,”
Lucifer said.  “When
we
go, we’re going to drag the Alliance with us. 
It seemed the most appropriate place to spend the afternoon.”

They sat in silence
until the general's comms pin chirped.  His transport had arrived.  They shook
hands and parted ways, leaving Lucifer alone with the ghosts which haunted this
world.  He dreamt of them.  Fitful dreams of Seraphim whose mates refused to
follow them into the dreamtime and a dark, evil thing which devoured everything
in its path.

The next morning, he
found the elderly Seraphim couple beneath the spreading branches of a great
tree.  A headstone commemorated the graves of a family of related individuals. 
The couple had lain down together on a blanket, curled up in each other’s arms,
and died.  Lucifer called his ship and ordered them to send a crew to bury them
exactly where they'd willed themselves to die.  He didn't report it to the
official authorities.  That would necessitate an autopsy, an inquiry, and the
couple being buried in separate coffins someplace other than with the family
they'd obviously come here to rejoin.  Separating them seemed … wrong.  It gave
him conflicting emotions that he really didn't want to deal with right now. 

He gave Zepar crap
about every single cockamamie political scheme he proposed that day.  He'd suffered
from migraines for almost as long as he could remember.  Mumbling an apology
about not feeling well, Lucifer headed down to his personal quarters to sleep
it off.

~ * ~ * ~
* ~ * ~

Late-April – 3,390 BC

Earth:  Village of Assur

Colonel Mikhail Mannuki’ili

Mikhail

So far, every attempt
to find a marketable trade had met with failure.  The goats the Ubaid kept for
meat and milk ran away every time he rustled his wings.  He had no idea how to
shape pottery, work with wood, or any craftsmanship related to trade.  An
apprenticeship with the flintknapper had seemed logical as it only stood to
reason he'd be able to
create
weapons, not just
use
them, but the
man had sent him packing after he'd shattered one too many of the precious obsidian. 
Until he got his ship working, there was only one task he'd proved capable of. 
Pure, brute hard physical labor

Every rainy season,
the Hiddekel River rose above its banks and deposited fertile mud onto Ubaid
fields.  The scent of fertile muck filled the air, pungent and sweet in a land
with scant rainfall.  Shallow floodwaters lapped at the rocks he'd helped
Immanu clear as a levy.  The trick was to get the seed into the ground as soon
as the waters receded so that the wet, moist silt would sprout the crops.  It
was time to earn his keep.

“You must take the
seed and scatter it … like this.”  Needa grabbed a handful from the basket and
scattered it in a practiced motion.

Ninsianna's mother was
every bit as beautiful as
she
was, with the same curvaceous figure, wavy
black hair, high cheekbones and gently curved nose that her daughter bore, but
unlike Ninsianna, Needa rarely smiled.  This was not because she was a sour
personality, but a symptom of the constant worries she carried around like a
basket of rocks.  Other people's illnesses and threats to public health were
always on her mind. 

It was a heavy
responsibility, being the village's only full-fledged healer, one he'd made
even
more
difficult when he'd lured off her only source of reliable help
to save his life.  It was the reason, he now suspected, that Immanu had been
willing to force his dreamy daughter's hand in marriage to the son of the
village chief.  They needed Ninsianna to stay here in the village, not be lured
away by some distant tribe, such as
his.