XM591 and X’ander
–The Age of Death,
The Seventh World, Post Exodus 565–
A pair of thin, translucent panels hovered in front of the diminutive, humanoid figure. The panels glowed with an array of flashing lights (mostly red), illuminating the being’s face, which was covered in grease, sweat and a bitter scowl. The being’s fingers were equally filthy, leaving dark smudges as they danced upon the screens. With one desperate combination of inputs after another, he tried to eliminate the red sensors. But despite his best attempts, his frustration only amplified, for no matter how many he extinguished, more were ignited; the red lights spreading across the pair of screens like a raging inferno.
“Damn you, Argos!” came a gruff curse from the small being. “You’ve taken me through half the God-forsaken universe, now all I’m asking is that you get me down to that damned planet,” he demanded, knowing full well Argos was unable to answer – in his haste to divert power to the gravity-thrust generators he had inadvertently fried the system’s communication circuitry. Given enough time, he could reroute Argos’ com panel and patch into a replacement monitor, but at the moment, all of his time was devoted to battling the many system failures that continued to flare up.
He may have possessed the title of “Captain in Transit”, but he knew damn well the ship was commanded by another being – the sentient computer known as Argos. And for reasons unknown to him, that being refused to drop out of the orbit of what was obviously a lush and living world.
With a violent slap, he swiped away the warning sensors from his monitors, summoning instead, seven rows of alien glyphs and symbols -- the core programming language of Argos. The only way to truly control of the ship would be to overwrite Argos. An act which bordered on murder, depending on one’s understanding of artificial intelligence.
But it had to be done. He was too close to fail. Nor could he bare to spend another day in the confines of the ship – especially when freedom was close enough to see.
Through the view-portal, his gem-like eyes took in the world below; the sparkling blue waters and drifting effervescent clouds of white. A vast, red-tinged mountain chain crossed the land like a fresh wound. The planet shone in the otherwise empty surroundings of space, making it almost hard to believe it wasn’t merely a ghostly mirage.
The entire journey to the living world had gone much the same -- Argos fighting him the entire way. He wasn’t sure if the ancient computer brain had finally malfunctioned and gone insane, or – quite possibly – Argos was trying to keep him from the planet. But why? For all he knew this was the last living planet in the known universe. To land there was the culmination of their entire mission. And the data had never been clearer: “Makiian Virus – 0%.”
Then what in the dead hell was Argos’ problem?
Luckily, up until this point, he had been able to maintain course trajectory and speed.
To actually find a star 97,000 light years away was a near mathematical impossibility. Yes, he could see its light (clear as day), but the light he saw was that of a star now 97,000 years older. What he saw was an ancient light, not an actual star. To find the star’s current location meant calculating the gravitational current of the star and a million neighboring celestial bodies. For the past 97,000 years the star has been dancing through the universe, moving at speeds near a billion kilometers/standard day. Determining its current and actual location basically amounted to complex mathematical guesswork. Though Rafe was considered intelligent, even among the Delphinians, such equations were far beyond even him. Few humanoid races had ever mastered such mathematics. The rest used machines.
That’s where Argos came in. The computer mind could pin-point stars with an accuracy that bordered on prescience.
As for the problem of maintaining speed; considering all gravitationally tethered matter (otherwise known as the universe) had a radius of around 30 billion light years, his journey of 97,000 light years was minor in comparison. But without a functioning gravitational drive, a distance of 97,000 light years would take, at best . . . 97,000 standard years. Even with every last captain fulfilling their position, it would be tens of thousands of years before Argos reached the planet, if ever it did.
Millennium upon millennium of technological advancements had been made to space travel and still, no one had ever overcome the light barrier. Many, however, did find ways to cheat it. The Rift was one such instance, and was also, by far, the simplest and most expedient method of interstellar travel ever. The more archaic forerunner to the Rift, the grav drive, was another example, and arguably the most popular and efficient form of travel for its time.
Argos possessed such a drive. And in order to cover such vast distances faster than should be logically possible, the grav drive surrounded the vessel in a powerful antigravitational field -- essentially turning the ship into a mini, inverted black hole. Space-time was warped for the passenger. And time, being relative, thus flowed differently within the field. For Rafe, the passenger, the universe outside his view portal was frozen, the people statues. And for those beyond his vessel, he was invisible, moving well beyond the speed of their perceptible light.
The only down side, other than that it wasn’t instantaneous, was that this method of travel complicated the traveler’s relationship to standard time. For Rafe, he had been moving so fast, and for so long, he had lived near two decades of life; meanwhile, the universe beyond Argos had aged at a snail’s pace. Usually, hiber-sleep compensated for the difference by putting the traveler in a death-like state that halted the effects of aging until the destination was reached. But Rafe didn’t have that luxury. Part of his duty as acting Captain was to maintain the hiber-sleep of his shipmates, to suffer the passage of time so that the others could remain asleep and unchanged. That was the agreement he had made with his people, their ‘pact’. Each of their lives would pass in order for those who remain to travel further and deeper into the universe. And hopefully, before all their lives had passed, at least one of them would stumble upon a living world.
After the passing of seventy-five of his predecessors, Rafe had finally done it. He had found a living world.
Now, if only he could convince the ship to land there.
It wasn’t until he entered the star-system and began preparing for his descent that his major problems began and Argos locked him out of all of the ship’s functions. No matter how hard he prodded, the stubborn computer refused to budge. After a great deal of digital trickery, he managed to hack into navigation and engineering. But the moment he did so, Argos stalled him with a flurry of mechanical failures, overwhelming his monitors and making it impossible to accomplish the simplest task.
He felt it was his duty as Captain in Transit to reach the planet. Unfortunately, there was only one way to make that happen. He would essentially have to ‘kill’ the one being that had been his companion over the last twenty years. Not only that, he risked the lives of all of those on board the ship – the lives of those he had sworn to protect. Many times he asked himself, what would be the greater risk? To turn back to deep space, where they would all likely die before sensing another planet even remotely alive? Or disable Argos, drop the ship into the planet’s atmosphere and attempt a manual landing?
Neither choice was a good one. The decision would have been a lot tougher for Rafe, had the planet’s beauty not been so beckoning, or Argos’ silver walls not so confining. For him there was really only one choice, and it was worth the risk, and the loss of Argos’ life (if it could even be considered as such). He further justified his actions by reminding himself that Argos was only a machine; a collection of parts and pieces that merely imitated a living being. He was fairly certain that, no matter how sophisticated the mechanisms, a soul wasn’t listed among them.
“I’m sorry, Argos,” he said, his voice filled with real sympathy. As much as Argos confounded and frustrated him all these years, their exchanges had actually been a lifesaver. Without Argos taking the brunt of his rage and frustration, the man would have gone mad a long time ago. And all the while, Argos took his abuse stoically, never once taking offense, or replying in kind.
Because he’s a machine, you damn fool. Beyond the parameters of his programming, he doesn’t give a dead about you or anything else.
“But i’m going down there. With or without your help.”
. . . a damn machine.
He had planned for this before -- during one of his many days of bored solitude. Having virtually fixed the ship from bow to stern, it occurred to him that eventually the mind of Argos would enter the same state of dilapidation as the rest of the vessel. Should the mind of Argos fail, in order to save the mission he would have to bypass him – manually pilot the ship. He even went so far as to develop a program, one that would sever Argos’ mind from his body. It was a complex sequence of symbols. To enter them into the very matrix of Argos would require absolute precision and speed. Once Argos knew what he was up to . . .
. . . he would finally find out what happens when the ancient computer is pissed off.
But his hands were quick and agile. He knew he could enter them fast enough, and if he did, Argos would never see it coming.
He fed it into the system . . .
He was quick and precise, yet he still only made it halfway through.
The ship dropped out of orbit. The screens went black. There was an ear-splitting scream as the engine fell out of rhythm, grinding against the containment field as it tipped from its magnetic axis. The next thing Rafeal knew, he was on the ship’s ceiling, his body crushing under the pressure. Even the emergency lights failed to respond. The only light came from the view-portal, which was now filled with white, fluffy clouds.
“What have I done?” he managed to voice as his chest began caving in.
Argos . . .
He thought he knew everything about the ship; every nook and cranny was more recognizable than the features of his own face, the inner workings of its systems more familiar than those of his own flesh and blood. As consciousness slipped from his grasp, he realized that after all his years aboard the ship he knew nothing of Argos.
There would be no manual landing – not after what he had done. He would make it to the planet, but only as a fiery ball of plummeting metal. He understood his mistake . . . the ship’s reaction could mean only one thing -- Argos was truly alive.
And he had just cut off his head . . .
∞
X’ander basked in the solitude. He needed the quiet to think, to remember – and there was so much to remember. Unfortunately, most of his memories were bad ones. But even so, X’ander was never one to shy away from sadness or horror. No, he had been numbed to such things a long, long time ago.
His days in the vast desert wasteland beyond the Outlands were spent much the same; in the daytime it was peaceful reflection, in the night – quiet brooding. While not lost in memories of the past he liked to watch the wind alter the desert dunes. Every so often, to clear his head, he enjoyed a sunset stroll through the sands – there was just something about the burning red horizon that stirred his soul. Perhaps it was the coming of the night that truly excited him, and the promise of death that came with the ensuing bitter cold. Even when the sun faded to black, he would wander on, lost in the wasteland, hoping to fall victim to the night with the dying sun his last vision of light.
But dawn always came before death, and X’ander would make his way back, back to his ‘home’; a cave barely tall enough to stand in, nestled in a lone outcropping of rock.
This was all he needed from life. In the desert he was left alone. In the desert there was peace. There was no need to ask for more.
Ages ago, he had given up on the Seventh World and its so-called ‘defenders’; the pathetic army of the Triad of Races. He knew the Plague would eventually find this world and when it did, the defenders would be slaughtered. X’ander wouldn’t be among them. When he died, he wanted to be alone, in his home, with a mind full of memories.
Only rarely were the memories not enough. Only rarely did he find the need to clear his head, to watch as the sand and the sky became one in a glowing red haze.
This was one such night.
On this night, X’ander felt uneasy . . . restless. Something was amiss in the world, something profound and terrible enough to disrupt his peace even here, beyond the Gorian Chain. Once more he was taken by the urge to walk the desert night. But this time it wasn’t to clear his head of memories, but from the impending sense of doom.
Normally he travelled west – straight towards the setting sun. But on this night he left his home with no thought of direction, destination, or even returning. On this night, X’ander traveled deeper into the wastelands than ever before. When the sun finally left, the darkness became absolute. Even with his keen elven sight, he stumbled about, as clumsy as a stub-legged rock dwarf. The Brother Moons arose, and his footing became clear, but still his movements were awkward, his usual grace absent. The cold had left his flesh dead to the touch, his arms and legs leaden and stiff.
High above the Brother Moons shone brightly. Harbos, the greater of the two neared its zenith, filling the heavens with its aura of white. He paused for a moment, his breath filling the air with a frosty mist. He pulled the woolen cowl up from his neck, draping it over his head, which was bare to the elements being utterly devoid of hair. His eyes of grey and white peeked out from the cowl, searching the vastness of space for the memory of another life, another home. A memory so ancient he could barely recall it – the creatures, the colors, the Graelic. In his mind they were all dead, all shades of black.
He couldn’t help but note that the stars never seemed so sparkle so bright amidst the bleak emptiness of space. Or maybe, he just forgot what they looked like, being unable to recall the last time he bothered to look up. Even the constellations were all foreign to him; a disarray of pin-point lights. Their patterns so meaningless to an immortal; so rarely did X’ander look upon them, that when he did, he saw an entirely different sky.
His last memory of them was when he first arrived on this ‘Seventh World’. He remembered leaving the Rift, and the hellish Sanctuary behind. Not only did he find it strange to call this new world home, but the mere fact that he was still alive was outright laughable. While his fellow survivors stumbled around like mindless ‘dead brains’, X’ander looked up to the heavens – the endless, lifeless heavens -- and roared with laughter.
Surely, it was all a joke . . .
He remembered wondering why none of the others saw the humor in it.
And they thought I was the emotionless one, he pondered.
As he gazed at the multitude of stars, he struggled to make sense of them. Some people connected them like a child’s game; drawing lines from one to the next until the semblance of an image formed, transforming the celestial bodies into something familiar and simple. Something they could relate to in their mundane lives.
I suppose those could form a dagger, he thought, connecting the dots of a cluster of stars. Perhaps those as well . . .
Suddenly, the night sky was nothing but blades of various shapes and sizes. Now he remembered why he ignored the sky, he could go on forever making such arbitrary connections, but in the end, the patterns were utterly subjective and therefore meaningless.
If he so desired, he could undoubtedly find the twisted image of the Graelic hidden in the twinkling lights. But what would it matter? Having spent a great deal of time traveling space, he knew the stars held a deeper meaning.
And a deeper beauty.
So brilliant . . . he thought, wondering if this would be the last sky he would ever see – the sense of doom mounted in the east, in the heart of the Gorian.
Maybe he should have looked more often. All his years on this world he had spent looking back, never once did he think to look up, to see the past so clearly written in the ancient light of all those stars. Maybe he avoided the sight of them because he couldn’t bear to see it, his home-world. He reveled in the memories of it. But knowing that somewhere among the countless drifting stars Ki'minsyllessil remained, and that it was now just a dead and lifeless planet was enough to drive him mad. That the beautiful world in which he was born was now just a rock, a pebble, a grain of sand in the wasteland that was the universe.
Only a miracle would bring it back . . . restore it to the bastion of life it once was.
But X’ander no longer believed in miracles. He had witnessed to much disappointment to maintain hope . . .
Father . . . (the cruelest joke of all).
The stars were so bright.
And from a distance . . .
So beautiful . . .
They almost seemed alive. He would have sworn he saw them move – one of them, anyways.
His mind was failing him. With the dull wits remaining to him, he realized he had been in the elements too long. The cold was taking its toll. Numbly, X’ander accepted that this time he wouldn’t make it back to his home. No. He would never see his home again.
“Ki'minsyllessil,” he mumbled, reaching out to the moving star, the brightest one in all of the heavens.
Whether some illusion of his mind or blessing of the Maker, it came to him, growing brighter, more beautiful than he could have thought possible. It was as if he pulled it from the heavens with his out flung arms.
In its wake, a fiery tail etched into the night.
It came closer, basking X’ander in a warm light. Night became day . . . and he no longer felt cold.
Ki'minsyllessil had come to him.
It was a miracle.
∞
–The Age of Death,
The Seventh World
Second War of Lock Core, Post Exodus 586–
It had been so long since he'd last seen Argos, he’d almost forgotten the way. From the Archenon it was three day hike back to his ship -- three days if he traveled with little rest, stopping only briefly to ease his cramped muscles and fill his empty stomach. He managed the first day with relative ease, crossing the Widow River through the Frons. The twin towns were abandoned on either side of the river. As to be expected, few bodies remained to tell the tale of the battle. When the living died, they eventually stood up and walked away. When the dead met their end, it was usually in a pile of ash and silver fire.
He left the Frons and their falling wooden towers behind -- the last remnants of the civilized world. It was into the wilderness that he went and then beyond – the Dead Sands. A blistering sun by day, and frozen tundra by night with virtually no shelter to speak of. A place where no one would dare to dwell – no one sane that is. But X’ander was unlike any other. How he survived out there, all alone and for so long seemed impossible. It made Rafe’s own period of solitude aboard Argos seem like a brief vacation.
After leaving the Frons, it was an arduous journey. To reach the desert he had to pass the southern crags of the Gorian; a jagged barrier of sharp, limestone pinnacles that formed the tail of the great mountain chain. Even with his incredible dexterity and physical fitness, the crags got the best of him, leaving him bloodied and battered by the time he completed his descent. Perhaps if he took his time, or traveled further south to find a safer pass, his hands wouldn’t have been covered in fresh cuts, nor would he have suffered the deep gash to the left half of his face; a wound that would most likely become a scar.
But Rafe had a feeling there was little time left in this world. He knew the fall of Shattered Rock was just the beginning. Though the Destroyer had saved the Seventh World for a second time, by all accounts, the man was no longer of this world. Whether he was dead, hiding, or in a drunken stupor somewhere among the stars, it really didn’t matter. Rafe had to find another way to save this world. He was done relying on the Destroyer, the man was far too unpredictable (in both his power, and his personality). Nor was he willing to risk everything on the man a second time – having barely survived the first time. Besides, when it came down to it, Rafe was beginning to wonder if the man’s ‘help’ was actually far more dangerous than the Plague. Chances were, if Rafe saw the man again, instead of thanking him for saving them, he would be driving a dagger into his heart.
And he had just the weapon to do it too.
He wrapped his raw and bloodied palm around the bone handle. Hidden in the black-leather sheath on his left hip was a six inch blood-red blade, its edges sharp and strong enough to carve normal steel as if it were wood. The knife itself was near indestructible, supposedly forged in the fires of a star by some long forgotten race. The blade was given to him by a friend – his one and only friend.
It was X’ander’s prized possession. The elf had a love of daggers, and had gathered an impressive collection over his lengthy lifetime. But the Blood-knife had always been his favorite, and by far his most lethal. Not only could the knife pierce through armor as easily as paper, whatever alloy had been used in its forging was also extremely toxic to flesh – living and dead. A single scratch could cause a chain-reaction of accelerated decay, leaving the victim all but a skeleton in a matter of hours. Few would dare to wield such a weapon and risk such a fate. But X’ander was more than up for the task. Though not as adept with daggers as his friend, being a Delphiniian, Rafe was as agile as any elf – possibly, more so -- and therefore fairly confident he wouldn’t end up cutting himself with its ultra-sharp edge.
As much as he cherished his blades, X’ander had left them all in the ruins of the Archenon. The elf possessed another weapon now, one that made even the blood-knife all but useless . . . one that made even the Destroyer unnecessary. But his friend would pay dearly to wield it. In fact, if he did wield it, they all would pay the price.
I wonder . . . Rafe thought, sliding the blood-knife out just enough to marvel at the gleaming red steel. Would this be enough to actually kill you, Destroyer?
The man seemed to be death itself. Could he die? Was he their one true enemy? The one who would destroy them all?
If they met again, Rafe would try to stop him. First, he would start with the blood-knife. If that didn’t work, he had plenty of other weapons to try.
He patted the black metallic handle holstered on his right hip. It was his weapon of choice, commonly known as a mana-ray. Another relic of the Age of War, the mana-ray utilized the wielder’s life-force to discharge powerful blasts of energy. Created to harness one’s life-force and transform it into a weapon -- as did the Mage-lords, the mana-ray was but one way the races thought to use their technology to make themselves equal to their conquerors. Among the Delphiniians, and many other races, mana was thought to be the energy force that birthed the universe and guided its evolution. They believed that it existed in all things, and if harnessed, could be used to alter matter and the course of future events.
But other than their priests, few actually believed that mana was anything more than a myth. It wasn’t until the rise of the Mage-lords that they realized their mistake, and that it was indeed a very real, and powerful force. The Makii proved its existence, though they called it the Oneness, as did they prove its power, using it to rapidly conquer the universe. The mana-ray was one of many last ditch efforts to replicate that power. Many other bio-weapons were brought into existence near the end of the Age of War. But unfortunately, too few were created, and by the time they were, it was far too late.
Since his arrival in the Seventh World, he had many occasions to successfully test the weapon on various beings – even a few with Mage-blood. During his rise to power in Shattered Rock, he left many charred bodies in his wake; humans, dwarves, and even elves were among them. During the battle for Shattered Rock, he turned countless undead into ash – even the soulless ‘Reapers’ succumbed to the true death after a blast from the mana-ray.
But, as one would expect, wielding such power came with a cost. The Delphiniian priests once lectured that there was a balance to the universe. It was mana that maintained that balance and prevented the universe from crumbling into ungoverned chaos. For every action that occurred in the universe, mana created an equal and opposite reaction. Their scientists realized the truth of it, for in order to transform one’s mana into a killing force, one had to pay with their own life. Rafe had killed many with the weapon, and doubtless, had aged greatly because of its use (the streaks of grey at his temples were but one indication). And though Delphiniians had an increased life-span, it was nothing in comparison to an elf. If he continued to use it, too much and too often, it would quickly age him well beyond his years, eventually killing him.
But what did it matter?
How much time did he have left anyway?
The end was near. Despite the Destroyer’s aid, the battle of Shattered Rock could not be considered a victory. Lock Core would be the final battle. After all, it was from there that the darkness began – the Black Door. Until they faced and defeated what dwelt within it, there would never be victory. All this time, he had been fleeing the Gate. He had traveled the universe for years – Argos, for an untold amount of time – and they had found nothing. There was only one path to take, and no matter how far they traveled, all paths led them back to that destination. The Gate. All this time they had been trying to hide from it, but to be free, to be safe, they had to face it.
As intelligent as his people were, only by eliminating all other options had the path become clear to them. Escape was impossible, for Argos was still a battered lump of useless metal. Nor was there anything to escape to. The best they could achieve was a progression of slow deaths as they scoured the heavens for the slightest glimmer of hope.
Rafe was done hiding, done with his search, done with the ‘pact’. The time had finally come. Time to admit his failure to his people, the subsequent line of ‘Captains in Transit’, and awaken them to the horrors of this world and this war. He would have to face them, tell them how he crashed them here on the Seventh World, and doomed them to die by the Plague. For so long he walked the Stasis Chamber, dreaming of meeting his fellow Delphinians . . .
Gemini . . .
During the rare times when Argos wasn’t falling apart, Rafe would watch her sleep, “GEMINI XM574”. He would fantasize it was just the two of them in the ship, and subsequently fight the urge to awaken her and make it a reality. He knew the ‘pact’ forbid it. He knew it would risk the mission. He even had a hunch Argos would eliminate him the moment he did so – Rafe often wondered what became of his predecessor, and how strictly Argos adhered to the rule of one Captain in Transit at a time. But despite all that, the reason he left her alone was because she was so at peace. He had no right to take that away. To drag her into his prison, his hell that was Argos, in the hopes she would somehow be delighted by it. That she would fall into his arms in love, and together they would drift through the universe in happy bliss.
No. It was just a fantasy – something to keep him sane. He dared not play it out. She deserved better. He meant to give it to her, release her on a living world free of the Plague. Unfortunately, this was all that was left. There were no more living worlds; X’ander had taught him that. The Seventh World was all they had.
The peace of his sleeping people was over. It was his job now to convince them to join the Triad of Races, convince them to fight, and make their final stand here.
I'm sorry, he thought. Sorry to awaken you to this horror.
Not for the first time, he wondered if they were better off left to slumber. To die in their sleep, oblivious to the nightmare the universe had become.
I’m sorry, but we need you.
The Seventh World was his home now. The last home he would ever know, and he had to protect it. He needed his people. They were smart, resourceful and well versed in technology – something this world desperately lacked. Argos yet had a storeroom full of sophisticated weaponry. If they added that to the fight . . . it would at least guarantee it would be a good fight.