The Hidden Sage and The Star Chariot - Chapter 1 - Farewell and Again

Synopsis: The Elders will tell you the stories and lore. Of our ancestors, their deeds, and of the foes of yore. They will praise to you the chariot, and how it flew to the stars. How it stole the sun's light and slew the night’s roar.

The Shamans will tell you the tales of their wisdom. Their wars on schism, and the unlettered world of ours before. Perhaps they will sing you the songs, of what our clans' ancient customs tore. Poems of how our ancestors took what the discs had offered them, the Manna and the mundane, and made it more.

The kings will tell you of the follies, the sins, and the anecdotes of all our ancestors' wrongs. They will curse to you their names, the Ender of Fate and the Ruined Song. How they had dug up the hearts of the discs, euchred its relics, and blasphemed its prophecies, with oracles withdrawn.

But they will only tell you the legends, recount the myths, and sing the allegories washed ashore.

The Elders, the Shamans, and the kings can only retell what the storytellers of their own time had voiced. What they have read in books or heard in the minstrels' songs they adore.

They don't know what really happened. They were never there.

They can't tell you how our ancestors slew the angels from the sky, and sent them back to where they belonged. How they poisoned our minds, and made our people slothful and feeble, with the reforms they had undergone.

But I can.

I can tell you how the Ender of Fate severed destiny's strings, weakened them, and weaved them to our feeble flesh and souls.

I can tell you how the Ruined song razed the heavens with her blood-stained melody, and reshaped our hell into utopia, with the deaths she deplored.

Because I was there. I can tell you the truth, with my virtue strong. 

Chapter Start:

The energy shields of the monolithic hybrid-vessel ‘Gigantomachy’ on the orbit of Enceladus fluctuated with intense light once more as the continuous barrage of lasers, coil guns, and gravitational missiles hit it with the rage of an angry meteor shower. It was as if the gods themselves had woken up from slumber to smite to the giant from the heavens.

The stealth combat jets from the Sanctums, Corporates, and Evidents flew in between the debris of what was left of the Collective's now destroyed protection fleet. They made for good cover against the counter barrage of plasma rays and laser shots from Gigantomachy.

The jets made full use of the slow target's various disadvantages as they swivelled around for another round of endless bombardment.

"How much longer do you need?"

In the tactical control room of the giant vessel, an aged woman who looked to be around 50 years old --far younger than her actual age-- spoke into the commline module, her hands showing just the hint of a tremble as another of her laser shots missed a fighter from the Corporates.

'… hells.'

The only other person in the solitary 2-kilometer diameter vessel spoke back to her, "5… no 10 minutes. The octa-core annihilator is still calibrating… But almost! Please try to hang on."

The woman's expression did not show any hints of the trepidation she was feeling, "Copy that. However, I don't think the shield can hold on that much longer and-"

*QUAKE!!*

Another violent quake occurred, sending the whole vessel and the shield trembling like static on an old television screen.

"Are you okay?" The woman asked her partner, who was in a place far more precarious than hers.

"….Ugh, maybe. I think I have a fracture somewhere. I hit the Alpha Logic. Let me check if that did any more damage."

A few seconds later, the status report came showing everything to be working in order. The woman released the breath she did not know she was holding.

Both the man on the other side of the commline and the hyper computer were more important than her considering what they were attempting to do. However, fate had put her in a position where she had to protect both of them. Though she seemed to be spectacularly failing at the task.

Almost none of her shots hit the enemy, and she was too inexperienced to calibrate the shield in real-time for maximum protection. There had been other people better than her.

But they now lay dead with the debris floating around the E-ring of Saturn.

The woman tasted blood on her tongue and a chill wind on her back, even though she knew that was an illusion. Her Exo gear was doing a far better job being a protector, and the airflow system of the vessel was yet stable.

'There must've been a mole.' She pondered. The enemy had selected the perfect time to attack. By design, the Gigantomachy was not an attack vessel. The weapons installed were all still experimental. Even the research modules were so since the spherical space station was meant to primarily be used for the research of sciences.

By protocol, only she and the scientist were even allowed on board the vessel. The heavy firepower was left to the protection fleet.

The synchronization of Enceladus’s orbit with Dione’s, the resultant surge of interference in the E-ring --which was the very thing they had been using to hide this operation so far-- and combat crafts with the best stealth humanity had yet seen made the tripartite ambush look like three adults punching and kicking a pre-schooler, which was the Collective fleet.

'They were fine people… They could have handled this better.'

*QUAKE!! *QUAKE!!*

Another round of shaking, this time more intense, shook the woman out of her recollection. Around her, many holographic security prompts were floating in mid-air, accompanied by soft pings and red flashing light. The shield barely had 5% integrity left, and a missile had somehow gotten through and hit the western part of the station.

'We don't have any time!' She thought as her hands clenched around the triggers. 'I would rather…no, it doesn't matter in any case.'

3 minutes had passed since she last checked on her partner's. But she won't be able to hold on for another 7 minutes. So she…

*********

In the central part of Gigantomachy, an old man of about 70 years stumbled. He was struggling to hold on to the bridge railing suspended beside the giant octa-core annihilator, even though genetic modification before birth gave him the body and strength of someone two-thirds his age.

Unlike his partner, though, he didn't have the luxury of an Exo gear’s protection.

The interference from the radiation released by the annihilator was too much for delicate electronics. Moreover, the element that got swiftly converted into pure energy inside the annihilation chambers was a theoretical element they had found in the plumes of Enceladus. Everything about it was unknown. Only the most general-purpose, nonelectronic forms of radiation protection could survive here.

"Finally," The old man muttered, blood dripping down from his right eye and nostrils, "I was right…"

He ignored his injuries as he stared at the data shown on his tablet. The device was old, with old-fashioned circuitry and chips, just like everything else in the room.

"Ouch, that hurts." The old man finally seemed to notice his injuries. Yet the twinkle in his eyes was that of a healthy young teen. A laugh inevitably escaped from his mouth, which turned into coughing soon. He supported his body on the bridge, and his left hand clenched the harness holding him steady.

Yet his eyes never left the continuous prompts of data.

He had not felt this alive in decades. All this time, he had been avoiding the world, living away like a hermit. He had vowed to never again be used, never again let his inventions be used while he was left wallowing in fear and rejection.

The money from the single-core hydro annihilator had been worth it. He could live off that for a thousand lifetimes and then some.

'Was it 35 years? No, it was 38; it was the millennium shift of 3000 that I first met her.' He mused. He had lived life like trudging along with mud until then. He thrived in materialism, his spirit was strong, but his faith was broken.

Meeting her had made that so much worse. Fear and anger, quarrels and blames, and everything hostile in human relationships seemed to sprout out like grass after a spring rain in his life. Followed by the gentle healing of time, friendship, acceptance, and comfort.

'I thought life and humans were worthless. Then she showed me there is still worth in humans; it's only the two of us who are worthless.' He smiled. 'Yet here I am, feeling disappointed that we are going to die today.'

The notifications on the tablet screen stoped. The final results were shown. 'Yes! Just as I theorized…'

The world thought he was a genius -he scoffed- for inventing the hydro-annihilator 43 years ago. Nobody knew that it was just one piece of the theoretical puzzle he crafted. At least not until she almost begged him to share it with the Collective. A new power source that can provide 64 times the energy from 8 times less the fuel. All they had to do was diversify it.

Now, it was complete, with the final piece from this foreign water world on the rings of Saturn.

The old man frowned, 'No… not just the collective.' He thought of the people attacking their very lives right now, 'Apparently, everyone knew. Hahaha.'

"Well, no need to always think about the negative in life. I still have work to do!" With that said, the old man pulled himself up from his crouching position.

The theory was proven true, and the instruments performed to their capabilities. But it would be all for naught if the results perished with them.

The Alpha logic and transmitter would need enough juice to fuel a signal powerful enough to break the jamming barrier put up by the enemies and send the results home.

He had already settled his assets in the event of his demise. It was his will, written after he was persuaded by her to pioneer this mission. Now, he simply had to repay back the last of humanity he believed in, with the work of his life!

'God help me if this is not possible.' The old man slowly made his way to the Octa-core annihilator’s control panel again. He noticed the connection to the Alpha Logic heating up an unnatural blue. That was to be expected, as the power source was literally jury-rigged to the hyper computer.

Both machines were overclocking on all parameters. However, it was still not fast enough. Telling by the frequency of the quakes, the shield was almost broken, and so was the Gigantomachy.

His eyes glossed over the connection and then the progress bar on his tab. 'There has to be something!'

The old man's brain was the third thing that was overclocking. 'Maybe divert the power of the backup source? No, Not strong enough. How about I store all of the data inside a secure probe? Or the one that collected the theoretical element from Enceladus? No, the chances are too small that the enemy will ignore or miss that. They came prepared and know what we are doing. Can Alpha logic be more efficient in the encryption? What else, what else…'

A beep from the commline woke him up from his reverie, followed by another quake. There was a crunch on the roof of the hall he was in, with debris starting to fall. 'Just 4 more minutes!'

"… We're done; the shield has less than 2.5% integrity left. 1 minute at max maybe, and it’s gone." A cold, icy voice said from the other side. Only he, who spent almost 4 decades years in that voice's company, could notice the underlying unwillingness.

"I see… So this is it, then? For us, and everything…" He knew the feeling well; he was wallowing in it too right now.

"For us? Yes, I suppose. But there is still one last thing we could try for the transmission."

"What?" The old man perked up at that.

"The original hydro annihilator. Divert the power to the- "

"Absolutely not! It is powering the shield.” He hadn’t even deigned to consider this before. It was no better than suicide.

“The shield is useless after 1 minute. Dying a minute earlier or later doesn’t matter if we are to die anyway. Answer me, is the power enough to transmit the package.”

“…Yes.” She was right, he knew.

“Then that’s that. It’s the only choice left.” Her icy voice was no more, and a hint of gentle warmth leaked out. “You’re a smart man. You know we have to do this, don’t you?”

“… This isn’t fair. I take back what I said back then. Humans are shitty; we’re not the problem.”

“Maybe you’re right.” She chuckled, “I will disable the shield after the next volley. It will give us a short window of time where they re-adjust their armaments. You know what to do. And…”

She paused, and all he could hear for the next few seconds were static. “You there?”

“Yes. I was just thinking. You… Don’t you have anything to say to me? This may be your last chance.” She laughed.

But he didn’t find it funny.

“… I don’t…” His hands clenched tight, the nails biting into the fiber gloves—the pain giving him a second of respite to gather his thoughts.

He, of course, understood what she meant. What she wanted to hear, and what she didn’t. “I don’t think you will like it, even if I had something to say.”

“Understood.” There was another quake. The volley had arrived and passed as soon as it came. “It’s time. Are you ready?”

The old man wasn’t ready. Life was finally worth living. The last time when he invented the hydro annihilator, it was his own stupidity and the evil of humanity that ruined the experience. This time it would have been different. He had his best friend by his side and other people he trusted back home. This time… “I’m ready. Do it.”

“Farewell, my friend.”

“Godspeed,” he replied.

A few moments later, he was done redirecting the power. The Alpha Logic showed an excellent ‘100%’ on its only tiny screen. A cartoon anthropomorphic robotic child, modelled after the device, danced on the lower-left corner. Signalling a task completed.

But the old man had not the mind to chuckle at it like he had done so many times before. It only reminded if of the cheerful young lad who designed the character: the lad who was now but dust in space.

“I don’t want to die. Is that selfish? You all died, so why should we get to live.” He said to no one. The commline had long gone off.

He looked at the Octa-core annihilator. The old man had no kids. He liked kids, and in a way, this power source was his child.

His mind crafted its theory like a parent’s guidance; he had to protect it from those who meant it harm. He calmed it down when throwing a tantrum and had to be strict when it would not listen to his words. The culmination of all fathers’ work and love in life led to their children. Even if sometimes it was naughty and did something it wasn’t supposed to do.

Like right now.

“Wait!” The old man snapped out of his reverie. The connecting line was glowing a multicolored but predominantly violet light. “What the flip!”

That wasn’t part of the plan! There should be no multicolored light emission going on here, at this critical juncture.

“Something’s wrong… Something’s wrong; something is wrong!” He started checking the contraption for faults anyhow he could while screaming into the commline, but the silence was all he got as a response.

He found nothing he could fix. According to the logs, after the transmission of the packet finished, energy started flowing backwards from the Alpha logic to the octa-core annihilator.

He started to slowly back up, but the rocking wasn’t helping. Neither was the sweat that now uncomfortably dripped along his forehead, covering his vision.

It was the heat. It was rising uncontrollably. Hell, even the radiation protection suit should be useless with the amount in the hall right now.

The chamber with the theoretical element was burning up. The whole contraption was losing cohesiveness.

“This is why you need more testing before using a hyper-unstable power source to power a goddamn space station!”

Before his very eyes, the Alpha Logic burst into ionic light and entered the power source. It didn’t stop there, however, as the light seeped into each and every surface of that hall and beyond, including himself.

The last thing he saw, felt, was a million tons of matter turning into pure energy and information; and bursting out in all directions like a supernova.

*********

“-ods-e-d” The voice from the other side was interrupted by interference, now that the shield wasn’t holding it back.

The woman had a blank look on her face. ‘He never blames anyone, that fool.’ But she did. She blamed her own naivety, incompetence, and dreams of second chances more than anything.

But it was too late now. ‘I shouldn’t have pressured him…’

All the regret she had could only be buried in her aching chest and her soon-to-be-dead self. She felt a painful buzz in the air, and this time it wasn’t an illusion.

Through the screens, she saw the enemy fighters showing irregular motions. They were scrambling to turn around. They had most certainly noticed the anomaly with the shield. Like a pack of wolves finally realizing their prey had bled out and could no longer move.

She turned her eyes away to another of the holograms. It told her that the remaining power of the shield was successfully redirected, and the transmission module was sending out a continuous stream of data straight through the enemy blockade.

As the transmission bar reached completion, maybe the first genuine smile since this fiasco broke out appeared on her face.

‘Mom.’ She thought, ‘I’m sorry. Your daughter couldn’t achieve anything in life, nothing like you. No family, no accolades… nothing.’

At the final moments of her life, she remembered her long-gone childhood. Her thoughts wandered to a time when she was happier.

She shook her head. ‘No, that’s wrong. I’ve accomplished something. I made a friend I could die with. I am happy. Just a different kind.’

Warmth penetrated her heart as she again thought back on the last few decades of her life, eyes closed and a smile raised. Some might argue and mock her, that it was all meaningless for someone of her stature, but she would disagree with them in a heartbeat.

Her life had been worth it.

If she could live past this, she would do what he was too cowardly to do. Her insecurities be damned. She was too old to be bogged down by needless stress.

Her chest, no, her whole body was becoming warmer and warmer. Light of salvation breached her eyelids.

‘It’s good that he never blamed me. That means I still have a chance. Hesitation will give me nothing but regret. I know what he feels of me; I know what I feel too. I feel’ “Hot!” She screamed.

The woman finally realized that the warmth she was feeling wasn’t the years of repressed emotions of an unsatisfied woman past her prime gushing out in the face of death. It was something else, coming from deep inside the Gigantomachy.

On the flickering holographic screens, she could see the space crafts of all three rival nations escaping from the vicinity in any direction they could, with thousands of communication requests bombarding her terminal.

“Oh, I get it. Good thinking, my friend. Are we self-destruc------” That was the last thing she uttered before a humongous tide of something swallowed her and every material thing in a ten thousand-kilometer radius.

******

In a vast void overlooked by the infinite universes, two souls traveled towards the unknown. Beneath them was a luminous bridge of light, connecting everything to everywhere.

As their cloudy bodies, the color of sunshine, floated forward, an image of a perfectly spherical park superimposed upon their surroundings. The barking of dogs, chirps of birds, the rustling of leaves, and laughter of children echoed everywhere.

One of the souls stopped to look around, slightly deeper in color.

“Have you ever hated me?” Asked the soul. It looked intently at what was happening in the illusory image.

A young mother was chastising a little girl. The girl was crying, her clothes muddy and wet. She was cradling a shivering kitten in her arms, unwilling to let go.

The mother tried and tried; but could not make the girl listen to her advice.

“What is it, all of a sudden?” The other soul replied. It, too, was looking at the image. It saw a man, probably the family's father, hurrying towards them with a towel in one hand and a shopping bag in another. He knelt down beside the girl and gently wiped away all the tears and grime.

He then started speaking to the girl, and the girl soon stopped crying. The soul could not understand what was being said but saw the girl carefully handing the kitten over to her father.

“Just answer me, please.” The first soul requested. Its cloudy body was slowly getting more transparent as the bridge under them gradually neared a cluster of infinite disc-shaped… stars? in the distance.

It saw the scene in the image shift from a park to a cozy home.

The room looked familiar, somehow. As if it belonged there.

That tea table, that small bed, that small model solar system spinning with a gentle glow above the little girl's bed.

The mother quietly pulled up the blanket of stars over the sleeping girl’s body and planted a soft kiss on her forehead. The girl squirmed a little, surprising the mother. But then she went back to breathing a gentle sleep. Relief washed over the mother’s face.

“…Disliked, maybe. For some time. But never hated.” The second soul replied. It went forward a bit towards the illusion. It was showing the study, or was it a garage, maybe? The room was filled to the brim with this and that. The shelves behind were also filled into sloppily stacked books.

The father was covered in dust and soot, building what looked to be a small bed. It was too small to be a bed for a human. Nevertheless, it felt as warm as a fluffy hug on a winter’s night.

“Even though I always blamed you and never saw your goodwill? Even if I always messed up? Even if…it’s my fault, you died?” The first soul sped up, trying to catch the reflection of the mother in the image.

The mother was jogging in the morning mist. Sweat dripped down from her forehead as she huffed and puffed, finally returning home after a few rounds around the park.

She took out the keys and opened the front door. She was greeted by a tiny meow which brought a smile to her face. The soul hovered over the kitten, who was now a little larger. The kitten jumped onto the mother’s arms from atop the shoe closet. The mother laughed and cooed at the little creature.

A few moments later, she was sitting in front of a laptop on the sofa. The kitten was nuzzling beside her and chewing on a toy while she typed away on the device.

Apprehension was visible on her face as she kept deleting what she had just written. Whatever she was doing, it wasn’t going well.

“It wasn’t your fault. It was my choice to go there, for my own purposes. It always was. You just thought you were responsible for me, for whatever imaginary sin you had once committed.” The second soul answered in trepidation.

It watched on as the father was yelling inside a large room with a round table in the middle. A meeting, maybe?

His left hand held a stack of paper which he slammed on the table, spittle almost flying from his mouth. But the other participants just shook their heads. The father looked like he had a lump in his throat in defection.

The scene changed, and he was back home sitting on the same sofa that the woman was sitting on previously. The little girl was on his lap, excitedly talking about something while showing him a crayon drawing.

The man nodded along her to show he was paying attention, but his eyes betrayed his mood. They were unfocused and glossed over as he mindlessly started at the television.

The soul could not hear what was being said by the daughter or the television; all it heard was static.

The first soul was silent for a while. It might have been a minute, or it might have been years. The touch of time unfelt while they floated along the bridge.

The scenes around them moved along faster and faster. It showed happy times, sad times, boring times, and exciting times.

As the bridge neared its end, so did the scenes. But they got more precise, and the souls could finally hear what the voices said.

It showed the family of 5, counting the kitten, gathering in the living room watching some program –a new years show—and laughing along.

The little girl was older by a few years, no longer sporting pigtails. But she was still little enough to sit on her father’s lap while clapping along with the presenter on the TV.

The woman held a toddler in her arms, trying to feed him some cereal with a spoon, but the hyperactive baby would have nothing to do with it.

He wobbled up and down in his mother’s arms while giggling, getting the slushy cereal all over his face. The woman hurriedly put the spoon down and took a napkin to wipe all of that off.

The kitten was now a cat. A cute bell in the shape of a fish was hung around its neck. The furry feline kept mewing, rubbing its head on everyone, trying to attract their attention away from whatever they were preoccupied with.

Finally, the first soul said, “Thank… you. You know, I--”

But the souls were no longer there. The one speaking was the woman.

The images had stopped at that exact moment. They had reached the end of the bridge. The illusion was breaking apart.

The man looked around, saying with a smile, “I know. But it doesn’t matter. Not anymore. By the way…”

“…You are very rude. But yes, go on?”

“What do you think all of this is?” The man scratched his head in awkwardness.

“Some hypothetical unreality, maybe? The manifestation of the afterlife or a higher-dimensional space the souls go to, making everything we ever wanted a reality in whichever manner suits our needs?... I don’t really know. Science should be your specialty.” The woman answered in a flat tone. Her hand grasping as the toddler broke apart into nothingness.

“Those are some very vague yet specific guesses. How do you know?” The man asked again, ruffling the little girl’s hair for the very last time. The cat was already gone, only leaving behind the bell.

“Because this is all that I have ever wanted. I realized it before we died. I wish for us to always be together.” Came another flat reply. But the man was caught off-guard at such straight-forwardness.

He turned his face away, yet the tip of his ears reddened, “Can you not say such things at this moment? I’m trying to be serious here. We are possibly experiencing something no sober person has experienced before, okay? It should be a solemn moment, not a date!”

“Isn’t it? But I was serious.” The woman turned her gaze towards the man’s face, searching intently for an answer.

A moment later, when even their bodies began to scatter into plumes revealing two rapidly descending souls towards the cluster of luminous discs, she smiled.

She had found her answer. “Then what about you. What is your wish? What part of the images was it?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t the type to make wishes to shooting stars when I was young. But if I were to guess, then it was probably…” The man, or the second soul, tried to trudge his way through space closer to the first soul. The acceleration was making it harder, and they had almost reached their destination.

“I wish we were both alive again.”

The first soul laughed like a chime and tightly slammed into the second, not letting go.

Like two binary stars releasing infinite light, the souls broke through the veil of unreality. They made their way into a new reality, one different from their original one in infinite and inconceivable ways.

The exact moment they reached their new home, on one of the most giant-sized discs of the cluster, two strange babies were born into a local ruling clan.