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51: The Administrator
Space was cold. But not as cold as the sudden loneliness that had overtaken Masterson during the three days that he and the crew of Hadar had been traveling thus far.
They'd gone a good distance from Gamilon, but were still too far within their homeworld's sphere of influence to halt their journey.
"To the outer perimeter" was where he'd been bidden, and though he dreaded what it would mean for him to go that far away from Desslok for an interminable amount of time, he had to trust that this was the best place for him to be right now.
There was nothing he could do – no way for him to countermand the Leader's order, so here he would stay, and listen for any indication that he needed to return.
The thought had occurred to him, especially over the past day, that his best information source would most likely be Queen Starsha. He had considered his father and mother, but they would no doubt be under strict watch – now that Masterson had made his sentiments about Desslok's decision known.
He sat down in the single chair in his tiny quarters and stared out at the stars. He'd turned the lights off in the room, so the only illumination came from the brilliant stars outside the ship.
The constellations this far away from his planet were unfamiliar to him, not that he'd expected any less. But there was something about them that made him stop. Though the images in the stars were different, they were still very similar to those he was used to seeing in the night sky above the palace.
Kochav Melech still shone brightly towards the North and the Great Lion and Lamb shone towards the East and West. The most prevalent southern constellation wasn't visible to him as his ship was traveling East at the moment and his quarters faced the Great Star.
There was one thing about this journey that he appreciated. Though they left a world in turmoil, the ship's crew seemed to be quite at peace. Though much of that Masterson attributed to the fact that most of the crew were also followers of Mashiach – others who had made some sort of protest against the Leader's course of action.
There were many here whom Masterson did not know, but there were a handful that he did; among them was David Lysis. The young man had proven that the past nine years had sobered him, probably more so than any of the others who had gone through the rebellion against Deun – any except Desslok that is.
"Sir." the comm channel suddenly came alive.
"Yes?" Masterson replied with the hint of a sigh in his voice.
"We're nearing Gritosia."
"Thank you, Lieutenant Fallon." Talan replied. "Please let me know when we've reached our destination. Until then, the crew is to continue the current shift rotation.
"Understood, Sir. I'll let you know as soon as we arrive." the channel crackled the tiniest bit, signaling that Fallon had made his exit from the conversation.
"Adonai... I do not know why You've sent me out here... away from my home, my family... the one I've been charged to protect...But I know that... whatever reasons you have... they are far greater than I can ever imagine..."
Masterson let his thoughts wander, thinking about the patrol routes he would be in charge of keeping for the foreseeable future.
"You lost her? Please tell me you did not just say that you lost a twenty-year old young woman on a frozen wasteland of a planet." Aurelia screeched angrily into the face of the Bolar captain who had been assigned the task of delivering the newly dubbed "Princess Mariposa" to the Sentinels on Phantom.
"We – we dropped her off, "he stuttered, "B – but when we returned l – later she was... gone."
"Did you track her?" Aurelia growled.
"We tried, but the snow was too thick, Malha."
"What about the device I gave you? The temporal tracer."
"We tried that as well, but... the temporal print has been... erased." he said, beginning to shake with fear, anticipating his punishment for his failure, "we know she went into the woods, but there the tracks disappear."
"Were there any other tracks with hers?" Aurelia hissed, troubled at this unexpected turn of events. Mariposa should have been in the custody of the Sentinels long before now. Someone was messing with her plans, and she didn't like it one bit. She knew that it could have been a mere coincidence, but the possibility that this was, Diana forbid it, a move of the Enemy... that, as much as she wanted to deny it, frightened her.
"No, Malha," the captain cowered.
"So you expect me to believe that a girl who doesn't know where she is or how to get to shelter, just left that escape pod and ran away into a snow storm?" Aurelia's voice became more strained as she continued speaking. "That is utterly stupid! She had to have had a reason for leaving!"
"P – perhaps she thought that it was d – dangerous to stay?" the captain offered in an attempt to appease the Malha.
Aurelia let out a harsh laugh, "The only danger Mariposa is in is from herself and that cursed Adonai."
"Yes – yes, of course, Malha." the captain nodded in agreement, carefully keeping his gaze averted from Aurelia's face.
"Now go back out there and find her." the woman growled at the captain.
"Yes – yes, of course, Malha. We will devote all of our resources to finding her." the Bolar bowed low and began to back away from Aurelia.
"You are dismissed, captain." Aurelia hissed when she noticed the man slinking off; then she added to herself, "And if you don't find her, you'll be dismissed permanently."
"Wow..." Constance breathed as she followed the white fox through a labyrinth of multicolored crystal. "This is amazing... where are we?"
"We are beneath the surface." the little animal replied.
"Well I know that." Constance replied, "But where specifically?" she tried again.
"Near the core the of the world." the fox said.
"But how is that possible?" Constance asked, eyes wide, "We've only been traveling for an hour."
The fox chuckled, "As I said, Phantom has her secrets – some of which you may never have the answers to."
Constance sighed, "Alright, I'll take that for now I suppose."
The fox chuckled again, "More will be explained very soon." he looked up, "Ah! We have arrived."
Constance and her companion came to a halt outside an oddly shaped door. It seemed to melt into the wall. The entire structure looked like a mass of shaped, rainbow gel and it exuded an aura of peace.
"This is a sanctuary... isn't it?" Constance asked, suddenly understanding.
"Indeed." the fox said in a tone that suddenly reminded her of Desslok back on Gamilon. "For those who seek refuge from the Sentinels. Others have come for other reasons as well, and many of them still reside here in Phantom's core, though our existence is... unorthodox most of the time."
"Unorthodox?" Constance asked.
The fox chuckled jovially once more, "You will see very soon, Constance Mariposa. Many of your answers lie just beyond this door."
"Can I go in?" she asked.
"Of course." the fox answered, "Would you prefer to go first, or shall I?"
Mariposa stared at the door for a moment before slowly reaching out and touching the orifice in front of her. It felt spongy, rather odd really, like nothing she had ever touched before.
She pushed a little on the door, but instead of having the door swing open, Constance's hand sank into the wall.
She pulled back instinctively.
"No need to hesitate." the fox said, "See?" he stepped over to the door and stuck his front paw into the wall.
Constance followed suit, slowly sinking her arm in, first up to her wrist, then to her elbow.
The fox stepped through the wall.
Constance took a deep breath, then stepped through as well.
She felt the wall swallow her and for half an instant she felt the panic of not having any oxygen to breathe, but almost instantly that sensation disappeared, replaced by the feeling of pleasantly warm air.
The little fox that had led her here looked at Mariposa and winked, then trotted over to one of many shiny black pods set into the far wall.
"Now, you will have some of your answers, Princess Mariposa, heir to the line of Guardiana."
The little animal disappeared, dissolving as though he were a projection.
Then, the pod he had been standing in front of turned white, then became transparent.
Constance's eyes widened as the front of the pod melted away to reveal a man, clothed in dark garments. His dark brown hair was cut short, and he sported a well-kept beard. His eyes were soft, but seasoned. He had seen many years of struggle, that was obvious, but somehow he seemed... at peace now.
But the most striking feature of all to her was the man's striking blue skin tone.
"W – who are you?" Mariposa asked.
The man smiled gently and replied, "Someone who looked Death in the face... and was rescued from it by the hand of Adonai."
"But he can't do that!" Nathan Chamal, another of the Etzuvim who had returned to Gamilon in the recent years, exclaimed.
"He already has." Masterson replied, his hologram flickering for just as instant, as the connection from Gamilon all the way out to Gritosia's outer perimeter was not the best – at least for now. There were plans to upgrade the network soon, but with Desslok's plans to make the bloody push towards Erats... how soon had yet to be seen. "Erats is in grave danger."
"What can we do about it? A coup is completely out of the question. So what other options do we have?" Nathan asked. "Sabotage? I don't think I could..."
"I know..." Masterson replied sadly, "I don't think I could either..." he sighed, "Have you seen any updated reports on the Erats Conquest?"
"Yes," Nathan echoed Masterson's heavy sigh, "And it is heart-rending to see it... Erats is barren, a desert. It's oceans are drying up, its forests wilting. The world is dying..." Nathan stopped for a moment, looking thoughtful, "And yet... there remains something... an anomaly in the survey reports. There is a tiny circle of Erats' surface that remains untouched by the devastation."
"Where?" Masterson asked, suddenly feeling as though, even now in this dark moment, there was a light filled with hope just within reach.
"Yisrael." Nathan replied, "Yerushalayim, Yisrael."
Astra sat in her place in the palace's garden.
As always, the sunlight beamed in through the filtered glass roof, dancing through the leaves and playing on the grass carpet beneath her feet.
As she sat there, in the exact same spot she had been when she'd realized that Starsha and not her, would be Iscandar's next queen, she felt oddly peaceful. Iscandar was dead, for all intensive purposes; Gamilon was wracked with tsarebetim and its people were beginning to feel the effects of it.
Desslok's solution was one filled with more death – more suffering, but this time the ones who would pay that price would be the innocents of Erats.
If only there were a way to halt the destruction that Desslok was inflicting, a way to reverse the damage.
Then she realized that... there was.
"Adonai, grant me the strength to do what must be done..." she prayed "Give us both the strength to do this..."
Dara shook her head to clear away the fog of sleep that had been thrown over her for what felt like forever.
She didn't know how long she'd been asleep, only that it had been longer than a single day and that she was ravenous and parched. She looked around for a supply bag – or at least a source of fresh water.
The jungle world she'd been deposited onto was hot and muggy. Sweat rolled down her neck, arms, and legs, and her clothes were soaked by now.
An annoying buzzing started around her right ear and she swatted at the humming insect. The buzzing stopped for a moment, then started up again as one of the bug's friends took up its companion's never-ending song.
Dara sighed and sat up slowly. Even then, she felt dizzy and disoriented for a long moment before her equilibrium became balanced again and she was able to see the world without it spinning or clouding over.
Her hand slipped off of her stomach and onto the ground beside her as she moved to try to stand. Her hand hit something that wasn't foliage and she looked down to see the supply bag she'd been searching for just a second ago.
Instead of standing up right away, she reached over and opened the bag. She fished through it, taking inventory of its contents: water, some food, a length of cord, a canteen, and some other basics. It was enough to hold her over for a few days, but beyond that she would have to find her own resources.
After looking through her supplies, she struggled to her feet and began a more thorough sweep of the area, trying to find anything that might be useful to her as it appeared that she would be here for much longer than she would like.
Dara headed off towards the west – or at least, she was fairly certain it was west, based on the assumption that this world's sun rose in the east and set in the west, like most other planet's suns did.
Eventually she came to a lazy river, flowing through a less dense part of the jungle. She stopped along its edge and looked deep into the water's depths.
She saw the scratches and bruises on her face and neck. Suddenly she realized how horrible she felt, then it registered in her brain that the area was almost completely quiet. The only sounds were those of the local wildlife. There were no sounds in industry, no trace of a developing civilization anywhere around – no hint of impurities in the air.
Then Dara realized that it was very likely that she was completely alone and isolated on this strange planet.
Desslok tried to sleep, but he was marginally successful at best. Every couple of hours he would wake, unable to return to his haunting sleep. Then he would rise and pace until the repetitive motion sent him back to sleep once again. Then the dreams would return and send him back to wakefulness.
The cycle had continued on night after night, beginning with the night after he had banished his brother.
From then on it had been a never-ending series of images, a combination of past events, current problems, and scenes from his life that he had never seen before – combinations of reality and fantasy; but there was one common thread in all of it – almost every image he saw came to a bloody or deadly end. After a while he had become somewhat used to it, but it was still troubling to view night after night after night... over and over again.
One of the most horrific images had been one he had never actually seen in reality, that of his father writhing in agony after his brother had poisoned him.
The image was always graphic; he saw his father convulsing on the floor of his ship, his eyes rolling back into his head. Blood began to run from his nose, then his mouth. His joints seized and his head slammed against the floor over and over again making his head bleed and leaving a red swath on the floor beneath him.
Then, suddenly, the convulsions ceased and his father lay still, eyes gazing vacantly in a dead stare.
Then the image disappeared, replaced by the death of someone else; sometimes he saw the deaths of some of the rakabim, sometimes his mother's murder, and sometimes, lately, the death of Sasha of Iscandar. Each one was just as troubling as the others, except for two.
These two were the ones that, when they began to appear, he would try unsuccessfully to force himself awake.
The first was the death of Queen Starsha. He saw Iscandar from space, its surface strangely tumultuous, filled with storms, and volcanic activity. Did Iscandar even have volcanoes? Then he saw the woman's face – but she was older, not by much, but at least four or five years.
As he looked into her hazel eyes, Iscandar exploded beneath him and Starsha's face disappeared from the universe as he heard his own voice screaming out an anguished "No!"
Then there was the most disturbing death of all...
The room was dark except for one harsh light, shining onto a man who knelt in the center of the room, his head hung low, his arms suspended above him by chains hanging from the ceiling. The man's shirt was gone and his back was riddled with marks, old scars and new wounds layered on top of each other. The newest ones still bled from his most recent ordeal.
The gashes in the man's back looked red and angry, as though infection was beginning to set in.
Suddenly a door opened in the far wall and a man walked in. The man was always someone different, and always someone Desslok did not recognize, but no matter who he was, he always carried an ugly whip stained with blood, and he always said the same thing, "Masterson Talan, what shall we discuss today?"
And that was when he would always wake up screaming.