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55: The General
Elisa's depression was getting worse by the hour. Everything she looked at seemed to remind her of her son – her child whose life had been so brutally ended. It had gotten so bad that Dommel didn't know how to try to console her anymore. And now, with David's assignment to the Hadar along with Masterson, and Dara, Garen, and Constance's departure, she was feeling the loss even more. Everyone who had had extensive contact with the boy was now gone as well – except for Juji and Zimring. The former of which could not speak to recount to the woman the tales of fun and happiness that the bird and boy had shared, and the latter was now occupied as one of the advisors to the Leader.
For all intents and purposes, Elisa and Dommel Lysis were now painfully, and thoroughly alone.
Dommel sat on an old chair in the corner of their bedroom, his head in his hands as he listened to Elisa's shallow breathing. She was finally asleep again. After many hours of crying, angry outbursts, and bitter words, she had finally escaped reality again… for a time.
He couldn't bring himself to tell his wife that it was time to let the child go. There was still time for them to have another son or daughter, or more than one. After all, their race did not age as quickly as they once had thanks to developing genetic technology. But Elisa had refused to go anywhere near him these past weeks. He had been relegated to the safe haven of their quarters' living area. In truth, this was the closest he had been to her in several days.
Right now, time was a mess of shallow thoughts and actions, meaning nothing to either of them. Everything was dim and gray. The world outside their home was irrelevant to them. Everything they needed was delivered to their door. No one disturbed them, and no one called on them. In some ways it was a relief, and in some ways, it was maddening.
With nothing to do and no purpose to fulfill, life seemed only to get drearier and drearier.
The silence suddenly felt too heavy for Dommel to bear any longer, and so, for the first time in a long time, he got up out of his chair, stepped out of the bedroom and kept on walking through the living quarters and over to the door.
He stared at the thing, thinking about the palace halls that lay beyond. Full, or empty, he had no idea. He had lost track of the palace traffic patterns. Come to think of it, he had no idea what time it was. Keeping the windows shaded at all times kept things more anonymous than they already were.
He checked his handheld only to discover that it was the middle of the night. Ah well, all the better he supposed. No one would bother him.
He looked again at the door, took a deep breath, and stepped out into the hall.
The door hissed shut behind him. He looked one way, and then the other before deciding to go left, towards the stairs that led down to the level below – more living quarters – but at least it contained a garden island. A place a number of the palace folk took time to visit. With the growing tsarebetim scars outside, there were now few places where the environment did not stink of rot, or seem to bubble with the sulfurous substance.
Dommel took one slow step after another, head down, hands stuffed in his pockets. Every once in a while he looked up, just to make sure he wouldn't run into anything on his way.
The way was dark; the lights that illuminated the halls were patchy. The electrical systems weren't exactly all they should be as the palace's very foundation had been shifting due to those cursed tsarebetim. One or two had appeared near the palace and were slowly eating their way through the crust of the planet, causing the building – and indeed the entire capitol – to sink further down into the earth.
There was even talk of excavating down beneath the palace, around the existing tsarebetim and transplanting the palace and the rest of the town that hadn't been eaten away by the toxins, down below the surface and placing protective shields over the area so that the toxins wouldn't destroy even more of the place.
Dommel shook his head as he walked. How had things come to this? Gamilon was falling apart, from the foundation upwards. Time was not on their side, so how could he, dejected as he was, let his home perish this way? How could he let his only son's death mean nothing?
Those questions rang through him and he realized that it was high time he did something to make a difference in this fight – this war against Gamilon's disease. Then he remembered what, in his despair, he had forgotten. There was a plan in play, a way to ensure that, though this world would die, her people would not, though he did not know much about it.
"So the dead rises."
The voice nearly made Dommel jump out of his shoes. He stopped and waited. A second later he felt a hand grip his shoulder.
"Sire." He said, looking over at the man who had appeared, seemingly from nowhere.
"I see you have found the solitude of these halls as companionable as I have." Desslok said, letting his hand fall back to his side. "What brings you away from Elisa this late, my friend?"
Dommel looked away, fixing his gaze back on the floor in front of him and taking the Leader's cue, started walking again. "It is… a long and … difficult ordeal…" Dommel replied, his voice low, "I would… rather not discuss it, if you would mind."
The Leader nodded, "I see." Then after a brief pause he continued, "It is most fortunate that I have found you. There is a matter I wish to discuss, one that is of the utmost importance to the coming conflict between our world and Erats. But, let us continue on to your destination first." Desslok said his voice tainted with a tone that Dommel had never heard there before, and that made him the slightest bit wary, but he agreed and the two men continued, quickening the pace a bit.
Finally, they reached the patch of green in the center of floor seventy-three. Dommel stopped just on the border of the thriving grass, but the Leader showed no such hesitation. Instead he continued on into the trees, his footsteps falling with confidence on a well-worn path that Dommel had never seen another person use.
"Come," Desslok said without turning around. "There is no time to waste now that it has all begun."
The older man wondered at the Leader's words for an instant, and then shoved aside the wriggling seed of doubt that had begun to take root in his heart.
Hesitantly he stepped onto that worn path and followed Desslok into the heart of the miniature forest that had been transplanted here. Its highest bow reached ten floors up and the smell of fresh greenery permeated the entire area, infusing the air with a spark of hope that many in the palace were in desperate need of.
Desslok led Lysis through a wandering route that seemed to go on and on, even though Dommel knew that the area only extended the length of the structure's diameter. But finally, they reached a place Dommel had never been. On the occasions that he came here, he hadn't ventured far into the thick of the vegetation, preferring to remain on the outskirts of the area, as did many who came here.
Dommel let his eyes wander around the strange place, taking in the new sights. The trees grew thickly in a ring around this inner circle of dim starlight. The only way in or out seemed to be the way that the Leader had taken them. He looked up and saw that this tree-less circle extended upward as far as the garden itself. And in the midst of the garden there sprang up from the ground a fountain of clear water. It was a humble thing, no more than a tiny spring, in truth, but from it came one of the only pure sources of water left in this part of the world. The light of the stars and moons shone down upon it and made the water glint and sparkle in the night.
Dommel heard an abrupt snap and lanterns ignited around the haven, their orange-red glow making the clearing seem somehow alien.
Dommel turned his gaze towards the Leader and stood up straighter as he realized that Desslok had been waiting for him to lend his attention.
"Sir." Dommel said, apologetically, bowing his head to the Leader.
"No need to grovel, Dommel." Desslok said, raising one eyebrow and smirking in amusement. "In fact, as of this moment, you will bow to no one save myself."
Lysis looked up in shock, the questions in his eyes a mere sampling of the ones that now raged through his mind.
"Do not be alarmed, Dommel. I have found you to be a most exceptional man. One whom I believe I can entrust with a most vital task."
Dommel stared at Desslok as the man continued.
"Tonight you become the head of Gamilon's growing military forces. Tonight your world broadens to boundaries far beyond the reach of the Gamilon-Iscandari Alliance. Tonight, you become a man whose reach extends to Erats itself." Desslok's words echoed through the small space, making Dommel feel as though the world was beginning to collapse on and explode around him at the very same instant.
A thrill ran through him as he suddenly realized that he now had a hand in what could be the most defining moment in the history of Gamilon. He had power he had never sought, but that he now realized was an invaluable tool that he could use to better the lives of everyone that that witch Aurelia had not murdered, or that the tsarebetim had not victimized.
With all the dignity and confidence that he suddenly realized had been restored to him, Dommel bowed before his Leader and said, "Thank you, Sire. I shall not disappoint you. What is your bidding?"
The Leader chuckled, as he always seemed to do nowadays when things went his way, and said, "Prepare every captain in the fleet. Their services will be needed soon. Have them run their pilots ragged, and while they do, take the elite squadron and go to the Erats system. There, according to all of our reports, you will find nine planets, though from listening in on many of their transmissions, they do not consider the ninth planet to technically be a 'planet.'" the Leader rolled his eyes in his typical fashion, "They are most odd, these Eratites." He shook his head, "You are to go to the ninth world, their term for it is 'Pluto.' A detestable combination of syllables, but that is irrelevant at this point. Establish a base of operations there and continue the work we have begun from Balan."
"Sire, I am not aware of the extent of the work on Balan." Dommel offered, "Please excuse my ignorance."
"Already done, my friend." Desslok dismissed the shortcoming and explained, "Balan has been under the leadership of one, General Volgar. His efforts thus far have been adequate and we have been able to increase the frequency of the bombardment that my brother began years ago."
"Bombardment?" Dommel asked.
"My brother, for all of his shortcomings, did know that he had caused irreparable harm to this world, and he sought out a solution. He sent out a number of craft to search for a new home for our people. Though his plans seemed doomed to failure, one day a single craft returned with reports of a world one hundred and forty-eight thousand light years' distant that could support our people quite easily. The records go on to say that it was then that the Balan station was created and a shipment of radioactive material began to be shipped there on a regular basis. Then, a factory was built to accommodate the creation of a most ingenious weapon – meteoroids equipped with a shell that would burn up in Erats' atmosphere, releasing the toxious material it was laden with. The results…?" the Leader pulled out the small device that Dommel had often seen him with during their exile and rebellion.
An image appeared of a world that was clearly morphing from a thing of green beauty into one of orange, dry dust and lifeless deserts. Only a few patches of color remained on the increasingly barren globe.
"We are successful. It will only take a few more months to eradicate the rest of the vegetation, then the Eratites will have only three choices left to them: burrow beneath the surface like moles and prolong their inevitable defeat, die like the pests they are, or surrender to us and become subject to Gamilon. Then we will restore Erats and move the remaining population of Gamilon… and Iscandar… there."
"What if they fight back, Sire?" Dommel asked.
Desslok laughed at this, "Insects fighting back against a giant?" he tsked, "Come now, General. How ridiculous is that?"
Dommel nodded, "I see your point, Sire."
"Crush them, General. Take down anything that might give them hope. When their hope is gone, their wills will be mine." Desslok curled his gloved left hand into a fist and his eyes narrowed to slits. "No one can oppose us, not now. Not when our people are in such dire straits."
"The base will be operational within a month of my arrival, Leader Desslok." Dommel said, "But, if you will permit it, I must take a few days with my wife. We must… sort out something before I go."
"Of course." Desslok nodded and snapped his fingers once more, extinguishing the lights once again and plunging the clearing into darkness, "Oh, and General, once you've… settled things with Elisa, I would like to speak with her as well. There is a task I have for her too. One that I am afraid I should have offered to her much sooner. Perhaps it would have prevented her… current state."
"Sire, there is no one to blame in this except for the Malha and the Usurper. Elisa must move on, there is no one who can convince her of that, but herself. But I thank you for your concern." Dommel followed Desslok through the darkness, back down the path they had used to come here, "Though I am sure that having something to do will help her deal with her grief."
Three days passed and the mood in the Lysis home brightened more than it had since Deror's death. Once Elisa heard about Dommel's appointment, something inside her ignited and she found something to be proud of again. Her husband, the man she loved, had been given one of the highest honors available. He was the General, the one above every other one; the one that everyone else looked to to lead them.
There was something about that that forced Elisa to pay attention to life again. Though she remained steeped in her depression, she now took the time to take trips out of the living space and into the palace halls.
Then, Desslok summoned her.
She walked into the room and looked around, seeing the greenish walls that characterized most of Gamilon structures. Sometimes it seemed sickly to her, but most of the time, it lent a warm touch to the atmosphere, which was the case now.
Walking into the audience chamber felt like nothing Elisa had ever done before. It was a far cry from when she had first met the Leader, all those years ago, in the lounge of her and Dommel's inn out in the foothills.
It wasn't raining this time, and it wasn't dark outside. Dommel wasn't here, and… she wasn't carrying her son… She bit her lip at the reminder of Deror's absence, but kept walking until she came within ten feet of the man who had summoned her here.
"Hello, Elisa." Leader Desslok said, "I hope the day finds you well."
"Thank you, Sire," she nodded, "I am… as well as I can be." She replied then quickly diverted the conversation, "But I am eager to know what you have for me to do."
"Very good." Desslok said, turning around to gaze out the grand, glass window that reached from floor to ceiling and ran halfway around the room, letting in the light of the cloud-covered morning.
Clouds seemed to whisk by the window, almost touching it at times, then there would come a break in the clouds and a wondrous sight would come through, a brilliant blue world, floating so close to Gamilon.
"She is beautiful, is she not." The Leader said when Iscandar appeared.
"Yes, she is…" Elisa said, letting her own eyes wander to the celestial body.
Suddenly Desslok turned back around to face Elisa, "You have the knowledge and patience to impart your specially tailored education to others, am I not correct?"
Elisa nodded slowly, not sure where Desslok was going with this question.
"Would you take my advisory council and instruct them in the ways of diplomatic tact?"
"I would be most happy to do so, Leader Desslok, but my education was etiquette-based, not –"
Desslok held up a silencing hand, "Yes, I know," he said, "But diplomacy without tact – without etiquette – is suicide."
"Sire, if I may ask, what opportunities would the advisory council have to engage in diplomatic communication with other worlds? The Cometines have not returned, the Bolars have virtually disappeared, and Iscandar's Queen speaks directly to you when she must speak with us."
Desslok nodded, "A fair question, but one I am afraid I cannot answer… for now." He turned again to look at Iscandar, but the clouds had covered her again, "When the time comes though, you will know."
Elisa nodded, hesitantly, sensing something deeply troubling going on beneath the surface. "Yes, Sire; whatever you wish."
"Thank you. I will inform the council of their… new educational opportunity."
"So you did not tell her." Desslok said to Dommel just before he boarded his flagship.
"No," he shook his head, "Not yet."
"A wise decision, General; I commend you on it." the Leader replied, his voice low so that he and the General were the only two to hear it.
"Tell her for me, will you?" Dommel asked, matching the Leader's tone.
Desslok nodded, "I will, General, when the time is right."
"Thank you." Dommel replied, then stepped away and boarded the ship that would bear him out to the outer perimeter of the Erats system.