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30: The Guardian
The darkness lay thick, black, and cold around him. He had a rough idea of which direction he was going, but there was no way to be absolutely sure now that his communicator was fried. Raymond had barely escaped the zealots who'd ambushed him and his companions outside the door to Deun's communications bunker. Evron had just managed to lob a grenade in through the door when he was shot down, not long after Kivel's death.
Raymond had had just enough time to watch the core blow before sprinting out of that death trap and calling Eliora and his wife, summarily losing his communicator to enemy fire.
He'd scooped up the mangled thing before he fled, because, even though the device was broken, the information it contained would be invaluable to whoever found and repaired it. He fingered the dead computer, wishing that he had the tools to do the repair himself right now, so that he could let his wife and friends know that he'd escaped.
But since he did not have said tools, he would have to wait.
Smoke still trailed behind him as he trekked through the darkness. He should have been heading out towards the light, but instead, the farther he went, the darker it seemed to become.
He couldn't shake the feeling that he wasn't alone, and as he continued, his skin crawled and he knew in his soul that there was something evil here – something more than just zealot troops.
A few moments passed silently. The only sounds were his own quiet breath and muffled footsteps, until, as he passed an offshoot from the passage he was currently traversing, he heard a faint sound coming from somewhere much farther down the second passage – a muffled mumbling.
Looking back the way he'd come to make sure he'd shaken his pursuers, he peered into the inky blackness from whence he'd emerged and then on into the darkness of the side-passage. Seeing and hearing nothing else in either direction, he turned and headed towards the voices. The farther he went, the louder and more distinct the sound became. The mumbling he'd heard transformed into voices, but after a while it became apparent that wasn't just voices. It was chanting, and in the same foreign tongue he'd heard the zealots in the palace use weeks ago.
As had happened before, he could only make out a few words here and there that made any sense to him, but the tone and dark aura emanating from the area made clear the intentions of whoever was doing the chanting, and more than once Raymond thought seriously about turning around and simply finding his way out, just like he'd planned to do, but something drove him onward and he obeyed, taking step after step down the dark hallway.
He soon came upon an imposing door. He could hear the chanting coming from behind it, then he looked up and saw the mark of the zealots inscribed above the door – the roaring head of a bear.
While he stood before the door, Raymond suddenly heard the chanting stop. A dead quiet settled over the place. Then, suddenly footsteps approached the door from inside the room beyond.
Raymond darted out of sight, concealing himself behind something large that he couldn't quite see clearly in the darkness.
He peeked back into the hall he had vacated just in time to see the door open.
Light spilled out into the hall and at first, Raymond couldn't see anything in the seemingly blinding radiance, but his eyes adjusted and he watched as someone emerged from the room.
The person – a woman he thought – came through the portal, looked down the hallway in the opposite direction, then looked towards Raymond, and though she gave no indication that she'd seen him, the Admiral felt another shiver prickle down his spine.
He still couldn't see the woman's face clearly. Her features were hidden in darkness by the bright light that was emanating out of the room from whence she'd come.
Then she turned to look at someone or something back inside the room and her visage suddenly became crystal clear in Raymond's vision.
His heart nearly stopped when he recognized the face of an enemy he had long thought dead.
"There has to be some way to find out for sure though." Naomi said, now a bit calmer that Eliora had reassured her of Raymond's talent for getting out of difficult situations.
"Somehow I doubt the zealots are going to volunteer that little piece of information as readily as we'd like." Eliora said, looking disdainfully at the still-unconscious Beshar.
Suddenly, Naomi remembered something and her face lit up, "At least... not knowingly."
Eliora looked at the other woman, puzzled as Naomi began to riffle through the contents of the single bag she'd brought along on this little adventure. Within ten seconds she had what she'd been looking for and triumphantly pulled out her communicator, holding it up for Eliora to see.
"Um..." the woman tried not to laugh, "Naomi, that's very nice, but what is it going to do for us that we haven't already done? Do you have more friends to call to our aid?"
"No – no –" Naomi shook her head, feeling a bit embarrassed at how silly she must look. "It's nothing like that. Three months ago, when Raymond first tried to disable Deun's communications block, he ended up overhearing a conversation that took place among a group of zealots in the palace."
Eliora nodded, "And?"
"And he recorded it." Naomi indicated the communicator. "He couldn't understand what they were saying, so he saved it for later, hoping that I'd be able to cobble something together that would translate what they were saying into something we could understand." Naomi sighed, "I only wish I'd been able to sit down and finish it before now."
"You never finished the translation?" Eliora asked, surprised.
"There was never an opportunity. And Raymond never asked about it again so it slipped my mind..." Naomi said softly as she looked down at her communication device.
"Well, what's stopping you now?" Eliora asked, "Go and finish it. Perhaps there's something there that might help us."
Naomi nodded, letting the guilt she felt slide away as she cracked open the translation matrix she'd been entrenched in so many weeks ago.
It was a number of hours before the work was finished, during which time Beshar awoke and was dragged by Eliora back into the rear of the ship and sealed in the storage area so that he would not overhear or influence the reconstruction of the zealot conversation.
Finally it was finished.
"I've never worked that fast in my life." Naomi breathed. "Their language is... odd to say the least and I don't know the precise mechanics of it – it's not a tongue I'm familiar with, but some of the vocabulary seems to be similar to our own, so that helps at least. I just pray that the matrix translates it correctly."
"Naomi, you've done fine." Eliora patted the other woman kindly on the shoulder. "Now, let's see what our little friends were talking about, shall we."
Naomi nodded and nervously started playing back the translated words – broadcasting the original audio, but displaying a translated text in the air so that it could be read and matched up with nonverbal cues, such as tone of voice that otherwise wouldn't be possible to put together.
The translation was rough in some places, but understandable enough for them to glean the facts.
"We have our orders." the one who sounded as though he was in charge said.
"The commander has spoken then?" a second voice asked.
"Yes, the decree has finally been made." the first one repeated.
"So what are we doing now?" a third, bored-sounding voice jumped in, joined by a chorus of affirmations from the rest of the group.
"For now, we wait. When the time comes to do away with the Isanin here in the palace, we must strike and strike quickly. They are the only ones who can repel the iblisler. Without them, the rest are unprotected." the head man said, earning silence from all but one of the group – the one who'd sounded bored earlier.
"Oh, a good plan..." he sounded sarcastic this time.
"It is what we have been ordered to do." the head of the group said with an threatening undertone, "Our superior knows what they are doing."
"So when do we get to start?" asked the second man who'd spoken earlier. He sounded most eager to start the blood-letting.
"When the Malha orders it."
At this, Naomi stopped the playback. She and Eliora stared at each other in alarm.
"The 'Isanin.'" Naomi said. "That's us. That's every Christian in the palace."
"And the 'iblisler' can only be the shêdim." Eliora replied.
"But that's not nearly the worst of it." whispered Naomi, not daring to speak the awful truth any louder.
Eliora nodded gravely, "She's back... Just as I thought..." she took a deep breath before uttering the dreaded words, "Aurelia Guardiana is alive."
On Iscandar things were looking a bit brighter. The message from Naomi Talan saying that the communications block was now gone was joyous news for them all. It meant that, though they were still quarantined on their own planet, that they could at least reach out to the outside world to search for a possible cure to what was killing them.
It also gave those with no time left a final chance to contact family members who had been off-world at the time and thus escaped Iscandar's horrible fate.
As the remaining Iscandari young people continued to deteriorate, they still hoped for a solution to their situation, and through it all, they looked to Astra and Starsha to help find that solution.
One morning, a few days after the message from Naomi came through, Starsha went looking for her sister and found her exactly where she'd expected her to be, in the palace gardens.
Astra looked up from the stretch of flowers she was staring at when she heard footsteps coming through the grass towards her.
"Ah Starsha." she greeted. "What brings you here? I thought you were speaking with a panel of scientists today."
Starsha stopped beside her sister and sighed heavily, gazing at the yellow wildflowers for several seconds before answering, "I was... I presented all of amah's research to them... and something that... I found..."
"Wait – you found something?" Astra perked up at this, "What was it? Will it help? Why –"
"It was restricted information from the Interface." Starsha blurted out, sending her twin into a stunned silence.
After a moment, Astra began cautiously, "The Interface? You mean that network the Historians use to access information?"
"Yes." Starsha said. "That. Only it's not just an information network. It contains personal records as well – from those who have died. All of their journals, personal logs, research notes, everything is there – though only certain people it seems are allowed to access it."
"So... what did you find?" Astra repeated her earlier inquiry.
Starsha sighed again. "It – it's – I didn't know what I'd found at first." she began, "There are some things that, even the Historians are not allowed to access unless... they're of royal descent..."
"Yes." Astra prompted, "Go on."
"Well... when Lazarus... died... she left the role of Historian to... me." Starsha looked at her sister, afraid of what she would see, but to her surprise, there was no jealousy in Astra's face.
The older girl laughed quietly, "I knew you'd be something interesting one day." she said. "So what did you find that Lazarus with all her experience lurking around in the records couldn't uncover?"
"I found a journal entry." Starsha paused, an odd feeling in her gut, "About how grandmother Ilya came to be a part of the royal house."
"Oh yes, the story of how Queen Janina took her in." Astra nodded.
"Yes, but there's something about that story that we never knew before... Yes, Queen Janina adopted Grandmother Ilya without knowing her lineage, but have you ever heard the name of the one who brought our grandmother to the queen in the first place?"
"No," Astra shook her head, "I can't say that I have."
"Her name was Frincha." Starsha replied, "And she was a geneticist who was... involved in some... illegal genetic activities at one point... including one she performed on our grandmother."
"What kind of 'illegal genetic activities'?" Astra narrowed her eyes a bit, unsure of what to think of this new discovery.
"Prolonging life – and making the trait inheritable."
Astra's eyebrows rose in mild surprise, "A number of geneticists have tried that – both on and off of Iscandar. No one's ever recorded any success with it – plus, as you've said, it's illegal here."
"Astra, there's more."
The older girl stopped talking and bade her sister continue.
"Frincha hid her experimentation. She orchestrated it so that the trait would lie dormant until the third generation of Ilya's children – her great-grandchildren – reached adolescence."
"Wait –" realization suddenly dawned on Astra and she exclaimed in disbelief, "But that – that's us!"
Starsha nodded. "It is... But that wasn't all that Frincha did to hide her work..."
Astra looked concerned now, "What? What did she do, Starsha?"
The younger girl looked at the ground, "She made it so that the trait would only manifest itself if the cells were attacked by some sort of 'outside force.' They had to be triggered to become active."
"Alright, so... I don't understand " Astra said, now more puzzled than alarmed.
Starsha looked back into her sister's eyes and said, "That 'outside force' was Deun's plague."
"You have proof of this...?" Astra whispered, suddenly thrown out of her puzzlement and back into disbelief.
Starsha pulled out her Interface and slipped it on. She held out her left hand as she always did when using the thing and said, "Display my research – recorded in the Interface network over the past few days."
"Searching now. Your results will be displayed momentarily. Please wait." the Interface droned its usual pleasantries.
Within a few seconds all of Starsha and the former Queen Kara's research appeared in a list before the two young women.
"Display the last result." Starsha instructed.
The Interface opened the requested information set and unfolded for Astra the comparison Starsha had done between her own heart cells and the cells of one of the dead.
"Is this proof enough?"
Astra stared at the record, almost not believing what had been laid forth right before her eyes. "Test me." she finally said. "Take a sample from me as well. I want to know if this was an isolated incident."
Starsha nodded, shut off the Interface and took her sister to their mother's former lab. There she ran the same test on Astra as she'd done on herself with exactly the same results. The cells of Astra's internal organs were pristine. Nothing had malformed or deteriorated them at all.
When she'd seen the results, Astra turned to her sister and stated with conviction, "Starsha, you must be the new Queen of Iscandar."
"What?" the younger girl asked, so totally taken aback by the seemingly random statement that she involuntarily sat down in one of the nearby chairs. "But – but – I can't!"
"Yes, you can." Astra said, "You've just proven that you have the fortitude to go on when most people would have quit. You pursued Amah's work, even after she was not around to instruct you, and somehow you discovered the key to what's been happening here. You've uncovered what's killing our people, and perhaps with that knowledge, we can save the ones who are left. You've proven yourself. If you can do everything you just did, then you can rule a planet, sister. I've no doubt of it."
There was silence for a long moment before Starsha stood up and left the lab without replying. Her mind was spinning as she walked back to her quarters.
When she arrived, she flew past Adrianna who, as usual, was hanging on her hook by the window.
"Princess?" The Jeshurunian called after her. But Starsha paid her no mind. She escaped into her bedroom and there she stayed for the better part of the day and long into the night, praying that Yahweh would show her what to do.
One and a half years later
The palace on Iscandar was packed with every still-living young person on the planet. A few of the older ones had managed to survive longer than first expected, and they were officiating the coronation today – Astra and Starsha's sixteenth birthday.
The past year or so had been harder than anything else any of them had ever faced. The princesses and a number of the other young people had been in conference after conference with the leading scientific minds in the galaxy, but none had been able to discover a way to reverse – or even slow or halt the plague that still afflicted them, even with Starsha's discovery of Frincha's work.
But the young people, instead of simply acquiescing to their fate and dying quietly had chosen to go on with their lives – whatever remained of them – and had decided to appoint a new queen.
This day had been long in the making. For a year and a half they had all labored to make it a reality, and now that it had come, they were all overjoyed, despite their impending fate.
The coronation officiant, the oldest living Iscandarian besides Astra and Starsha, whose name was Azariah began the ceremony.
"People of Iscandar." he said as loudly as he could manage, "We are gathered here today to honor a young woman who has done much for us these past two years – ever since this cursed plague began. Today we make our princess our new Queen."
At this a chorus of young voices cheered.
"Come, princess." Azariah gestured for the young men who were standing at the doors to the throne room to open them and let the young woman in.
The great doors slid open, disappearing into the walls on either side of the portal.
In stepped the fair-haired princess, dressed radiantly, her step confident as she came through the center of the great room, approaching the throne her father had so recently occupied.
Her passage was accompanied by much excitement, though the crowd remained quiet in respect for their new ruler, but when she passed her twin sister and Sasha, she stopped and nodded to them. They nodded back and the princess continued on, ascending the low dais and finally kneeling before Azariah.
The young man looked down at the woman he'd known as "princess" all his young life, then, with movements that betrayed his aged state, he raised the queen's crown above the woman's head and slowly, reverently, lowered it onto her brow.
It shimmered and shone in the light of the sunny morning and brightness beamed in from the windows that surrounded the throne room.
The young woman rose, and turned, stepping back to stand beside Azariah.
"People of Iscandar," the young man announced, "I give you Queen Starsha, second of that name, last queen of Iscandar."
The cheers were deafening as Queen Starsha bowed to her people, a sad smile gracing her lovely face.
End Book I
Chapter 30 Inspired by:
- "He Who Would Valiant Be" by John Bunyan and Charles Douglas, arranged by Dwight Gustafson; found on the Soundforth CD "Blessed Assurance"