Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One (89 page)

“Ninsianna?” She felt
Mikhail take her hand.  “Are you still in there?  Honey … come back.  Please…”

“You'll only have
point zero two three seconds to send your data burst before you run out of
power.”  Whatever old god had decided to gift her with his knowledge spoke directly
through her.  “You'll need to record your message and compress it into an
encoded data stream no larger than one point two three gigabytes of data or it
will fail.”

“I computed one point
seven two gigabytes,” Mikhail said.

“Your computations are
wrong.”

“Ninsianna … please
thank whoever is helping us and come back,” Mikhail put his arm around her
shoulder and led her inside the ship.  “The antenna is all set.  Let’s record
our message, but I would rather have
you
here when I do it than somebody
I don't know.”

“Jophiel is the white
queen.  She named the baby Uriel.  Raphael is the father.  He is the other
white knight.  You didn't tell me that she asked you to father one of her
offspring.  She-who-is was very upset when you refused.  Hashem told them they
may marry.  The white queen is torn.  The Alliance will fracture.”

Ninsianna rattled off
meaningless facts as though she were one of these com-pu-ter-minds Mikhail
explained had once run his ship, devoid of all human emotion.

“Ninsianna,” he put
his hand on her cheek in the gesture she often used to communicate with
him
when
he needed physical contact.  “Come back.  You said you would always come back
to me.”

Ninsianna let go of
the stream of consciousness she'd been following and followed his voice.

“Hey,” she registered
his look of concern.  “Why so glum?”

“You scare me when you
do that.”  His expression was serious.  His expression was
always
serious,
but it was more serious than usual.

“Do what?” She knew
what
she knew while she was in the stream-of-consciousness of She-who-is, but
the moment she came back into the real world, everything started to fade.  Papa
said there used to be an entire temple devoted to listening to the
last
chosen
priestess of She-who-is.  People would come from miles around just to listen. 
She wished somebody would do that for
her.

“You never remember
what you say while you’re in there,” Mikhail said.  “You were quoting the
quantum theory behind the dreamtime.”

“The what?” She didn't
have any idea what he said.  “You’ve got a message to record.  Let’s do it,
okay?”

“According to your
friend,” he said, “I have to record a shorter message.  I won’t have time to
formally introduce you.  Will you stand at my side while I record it?  Raphael
can figure it out any missing information from the image.”

“What friend?”

“Never mind,” he
kissed her cheek.  “I'll record it and use that machine over there to make the
message smaller.  Then we'll send it out and hope for the best.  Either way, at
least I can say I tried to complete my mission.  If they never come for me, I'm
perfectly okay with that.”  He wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top
of her head.  She knew part of him hoped they would never come for him, but a
larger part felt duty-bound to finish whatever mission he'd started.  It was
what made him who he was.

“Where do I stand?” 
She'd never been part of a message before.  Would it hurt?  She moved in closer
to his side.

“Right where you
belong.”  He aimed the camera to show the cracked hull of his ship.  Placing
his bow and arrows and a spear within view of the camera, he grinned like a cat
that had just swallowed a big, fat robin.  Every aspect of his physiology, his
arm possessively thrown around her shoulders, the way he tugged her close just
before he hit the ‘record’ button, all shouted
‘mine!’

“Ready?  Three … two …
one … Raphael … my ship is toast … the Sata’an have set up a base on an M-class
planet at these coordinates ... Zulu three zero one eight five two nine … meet
Ninsianna, my wife … end transmission.”

“Now what?”  That was
painless.

“I'm running it
through the data compression sequence right now,” he said.  “And … it’s
ready.   Ninsianna … is that asteroid out of the path so I can send the
transmission?”

“The what?”

“Can you go to that
‘other place’ just for a second and tell me when it's okay to hit this button?”
Mikhail was not a superstitious person, but even
he'd
been forced to
acknowledge that her visions were highly accurate.

Ninsianna shifted
focus back down into the thread and immediately recalled the information she'd
stored there.  “Not … yet … not … yet … wait … w-a-i-t … NOW!”

Mikhail hit the
button.  A small hum went through the ship as he channeled the subspace message
from the console, down the wire, and outside to the antenna.  A few
milliseconds before he'd computed the magic would run out, the lights shut off
and the hum stopped.  The entity in the dreamtime had been correct.  His
computations had been off.

“The magic lanterns
are gone…” Ninsianna said mournfully.  She'd liked the magic lights.

“We'll just have to
think of
other
things to do in the dark,” Mikhail gave her a most
uncharacteristic grin.  He pulled her close, signaling a desire to engage in
his
new
favorite activity to perform in the dark.  She'd brought tallow
lamps to light their way.

“Do you think we could
feel our way back to the sleeping quarters?” she asked.  “I'm suddenly very
sleepy.  I told Mama we might not be back tonight.  They won't be worried about
us.” 

One of the unpleasant
side effects of too much travel in the dreamtime was how heavy everything felt
once she came back.  It felt as though she were forcing her body to move
through water, her mind to see through a heavy fog, whenever she came back from
a shamanic journey.  She missed the heady buzz she experienced whenever she
tapped into the stream-of-consciousness of She-who-is.  But not for Mikhail and
the threat to her people, she would just assume let go of the heavy shell which
weighed her down like an anchor and join her beloved goddess as her grandfather
had once done when had finished existing here.

“It's not sleep I had
in mind, my love,” Mikhail nuzzled his cheek against hers before playfully
nipping her neck.  “It's now autumn.  We shall have to think of an activity to
warm up the bed before we can crawl into it.”

He looked as though an
enormous burden had just been lifted from his shoulders.  His spirit light no
longer reached for the stars, but were now firmly centered on the earth.  She
could
see
him let go of the mission which had eaten at him the entire time
she'd known him.  Mission … accomplished.  Cupping his hands underneath her
behind, he picked her up and carried her into the sleeping quarters for her
requested ‘sleep.’

~ * ~ * ~
* ~ * ~

Galactic Standard Date:  152,323.09 AE

Earth:  Sata’an Forward Operating Base

Lieutenant Kasib

Lt.
Kasib

Lieutenant Kasib's
claws trembled as he knocked on the door to his commanding officer's office. 
General Hudhafah stood as he always did these days, poking pins into an
evolving map of the planet.  Each day they logged new territory, new resources,
and new tribes that either needed to be wooed with promises of the
good
things
Sata'anic rule would bring, or troublemakers exterminated so the rest of their
populace could be brought under Sata'anic control.

 “Sir,” Kasib said,
“one of our ships in orbit just registered a brief data burst emanating from
the planet.”  Kasib's tail twitched with worry.

“Where did it
originate?” General Hudhafah hissed.  His shoulders bunched as his dorsal ridge
reared in anger, an old-school general ready to plunge into battle to defend
against any threat.

“The area called
Mesopotamia,” Kasib's tongue darted out to nervously taste the air.  “It didn't
last long enough to isolate the source.  It's a large area, like hunting a
needle in a pile of straw.”

“Was the message long
enough to convey significant data?” Hudhafah asked.  His gold-green serpentine
eyes narrowed into slits.

“No, sir,” Kasib
said.  “It cut off before complete coordinates could be relayed.  The signal
was extremely weak.  The nearest known Alliance ship is on the border with
Tango sector.  It's unlikely the message got through.”

“Good,” Hudhafah
exhaled.  “The last thing we need is a command carrier full of hybrids showing
up to investigate."  The general pointed to a cluster of pins on the map. 
"Isn’t that the same area we’ve been getting rumors of someone organizing
tribes to fight our allies?”

“Yes, Sir,” Kasib
said.  “We've been unable to locate the remains of his ship.  It must have been
completely destroyed.  Do you think whoever he was survived the crash.”

General Hudhafah
picked up another pen, a red one this time signaling potential enemy forces,
and absent-mindedly jabbed himself in the finger with it, not hard enough to
draw blood. 

“When dealing with
hybrids,” Hudhafah said, “It's necessary to imagine the unimaginable.  There's
a reason we have been unable to overthrow the Eternal Emperor even though we
outnumber Alliance forces six to one.  The hybrids are tough bastards.  Don't
ever underestimate them.”

“Yes, Sir,” Kasib
said.  "Should we send in our forces to hunt him down?"

Hudhafah stared at the
tiny black pins clustered around the Sata'an Forward Operating Base and the
even smaller cluster that shuttled back and forth between the
SRN Jamaran
in
orbit and the planet.  Few. 
Too
few…

“What was the bounty
we put on the ringleader's life of that tribe near where the data-burst
emanated from.” Hudhafah asked.

“A bag of paint
sparkles, Sir,” Kasib said.  “They call it ‘gold’.”

“Quadruple that
reward.”  Hudhafah's fangs showed through his self-pleased smirk.  “Just in
case it
is
an Angelic.  Let’s watch the humans kill the only creature
who can prevent us from annexing their planet.”

“Shay’tan be
praised.”  Kasib gestured to his head, his snout and his heart in a universal
gesture of worship of Shay'tan, their benevolent Emperor and god.

~ * ~ * ~
* ~ * ~

September – 3,390 BC

Earth:  Crash Site

Ninsianna

So comfy… 

Ninsianna resisted
waking up, languishing in the dreamy warmth of her husband's firm torso and
soft wings.

“Good morning,
sleepyhead,” he said.  The smirk he always had as he watched her resist the
morning blossomed into a full-blown smile.  “At the rate you’re going, we’re
going to be late getting back.”

“But it’s so nice and
warm here!” she whimpered, luxuriating in his warm feathers.  “I don't want to
leave!”