Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One (21 page)

“You …
tasimak
,”
Ninsianna pointed to his wing.  She wished him to spread his broken wing so she
could examine it.

“S
ciathán
… wing,” Mikhail translated. 

He suppressed a sigh
of pleasure as she massaged the area below the break.  It itched like mad!  He
could see she was fascinated with his wings by the way they caught her
attention every time he moved, but she masked her curiosity behind the clinical
mask of a healer as she bound the makeshift splint back into place.  Her
species could exercise emotional self-restraint when necessary just like his
could.  They were just less inclined to do so.

“Thank you.”  He noted
the way her irises turned a brighter shade of gold whenever he made eye
contact.  He'd seen such golden eyes someplace before; someone besides her
father, who shared the unusual coloring, but he couldn't remember where.

“You …
degisim
giysi
… now.”  She handed him the rest of his dry, clean clothing and
pointed towards his ship.  “Then … sleep.  You … hurt.”

“Yes, Sir,” Mikhail
said, ready to obey.  Dry clothing.  And a nap.  Just what the bossy doctor
ordered.  It wasn’t even mid-afternoon, but he was exhausted.  He was out as
soon as his head hit the pillow.

~ * ~ * ~
* ~ * ~

Galactic Standard Date:  152,323.02

Haven-1

Prime Minister Lucifer

Lucifer

Although most mortals
assumed the Eternal Emperor could wave his hands and cause molecules to
rearrange themselves into fantastical creations, immortality only granted
ascended beings a modicum of control over the elements of nature, and an
imperfect
control at that.  Most 'old gods' got stuff done the same way any other
mortal in the universe did, by rolling up their sleeves and getting to work. 

Work
to Lucifer's adopted father meant splicing genetic
enhancements onto existing species using the scientific vehicle of recombinant
DNA.  Immortality meant you could work on your obsession long enough,
unhindered by death, to eventually work out a solution.  Through trial and
error, most old gods eventually mastered the art of manipulating the rules of
physics to manifest certain end results in their minds without resorting to
mechanical means.  She-who-is had grown
so
powerful that she
could
use
her mind to manifest whatever sparked her interest, within the laws of physics
which were much more malleable than most cultures understood, but immortality,
by itself, did not grant omnipotence. 

It was why the Emperor
hadn't been able to wave his hands and make his army's inbreeding problem
simply go away.  No matter
what
method the Emperor used to inseminate
their species, whether natural breeding, cloning, artificial insemination or a
certain amount of hand-waving ascended hocus-pocus, hybrid gametes simply
refused to combine in meiosis and cause an embryo to grow.

Lucifer nodded to the
two Cherubim guards who shadowed his adoptive father whenever he was
incorporeal form and waited for them to give him entrance, not to the throne
room, where only those who knew the Emperor well understood he was loathe to
inhabit, but into the cutting edge genetics laboratory which had been grafted
onto the Eternal Palace as that's where Hashem spent most of his time.

 “Father?”  Lucifer
called to the very ordinary-looking man bent over an ordinary-looking
stainless-steel laboratory table.  “I came as soon as I could.”

“Lucifer.”  The
Eternal Emperor Hashem didn't even glance up from his latest genetics
experiment to greet his so-called adopted son.  “Glad you could make it.”  He
continued fertilizing leathery eggs the size of softballs, ignoring Lucifer
until he finished.

Lucifer suppressed his
annoyance.  For the past 225 years, the mantle of responsibility had fallen to
him
. 
Between Shay’tan and the normal political intrigues which threatened
all
democratic institutions, Lucifer had to forever outwit his opponents to keep
his father on his lofty throne.  When Hashem kept him waiting, he couldn't
attend to any of the
other
bazillion things he had on his already
ridiculously overscheduled plate. 

“What are you working
on, father?”  Lucifer tried to engage his father in conversation.  He didn't
know what was worse.  The two hundred years Hashem had vanished into the ethers
after his mother had willed herself to die?  Or the fragile, doddering old fool
who had only reluctantly returned after the 51-Pegasi-4 genocide had wiped out
the entire sub-species of Seraphim Angelics?

“Miniature water
dragons.”  Hashem barely acknowledged Lucifer’s presence.  “They're going
extinct.  I'm trying to splice in a genetic adaptation so they'll survive.”

“-
We-
are going
extinct, Father.”  Lucifer's wings twitched with exasperation.  “When are you
going to give
us
a genetic adaptation to survive?”

Hashem looked up as
though noticing Lucifer for the first time, his golden eyes glowing with the
eerie, internal luminescence all ascended beings possessed.  The Emperor could
assume any form he wished, but the form he preferred was that of a wingless human
male … the root stock he'd used to create the hybrid races.  It was rumored
that he'd once been human himself.  Or one of their pre-human ancestors.

“I lost the root
stock.”  Hashem's face was etched with sadness.  “And then pirates wiped out
the Seraphim seed stock that still possessed some of their original DNA. 
Without that, I don't know how to replicate my experiment.”

“Godsdammit,
father!!!”  Lucifer slammed his fist upon the stainless steel laboratory
table.  “Why in Shay’tan’s name do you keep putzing around with these
insignificant creatures when the armies who defend you are dying?”  He picked
up the warning glare from the two Cherubim guards.  He moderated his tone to
the appropriate respect an elected official should have for their Emperor and
God.

“You’re all so close
to completion,” Hashem muttered like a senile old man.  “All you need is a few
thousand more years to evolve and you'll be complete.  The Seraphim were
close.  They were so close.”

“Close to what?”
Lucifer asked. 

“Your mother was
almost complete.”  Hashem turned back to his experiment.  “I could have
finished her.”

“My mother is DEAD!!!”
Lucifer shouted.  He waved off the Cherubim guards when they took a clanking
step forward.  “And my entire species is dying.  When will you get your head
out of the ascended realms and deal with what is happening down here?  We won't
be
around
in a few thousand years!”

“I lost the root
race.”  Hashem's demeanor shifted from that of an absent-minded professor to
the hellfire-and-brimstone old god who had once battled Shay’tan.  The
doddering old fool was gone, replaced by the god who couldn't die … the one who
viewed Lucifer as a failed experiment.  He spoke with the clinical detachment
of a scientist making a presentation before a conference of biologists about a
colony of bacteria he'd been running clinical trials on.   

“Without the root
race, there is nothing I can do to help you.  Your only hope is the breeding
program.  If you increase your genetic diversity through selective breeding, a
new strain of Angelic might evolve to take your place.”

Lucifer shuddered. 
How could a mortal such as himself, whose lifespan was a mere blink of an eye
to an ascended being such as his adopted father, hope to make himself heard? 
He was a plaything, a toy.  A tool the Emperor had used to lure his mother, a
creature so close to completion that she had approached godhood herself, into
becoming his mate so he would have somebody besides Shay’tan to talk to as time
ground mortal creatures into dust.

In the end, his mother
had rejected the Emperor, refusing to drink the elixir he had engineered to
complete her DNA.  All she'd ever wanted was to follow the mate who'd abandoned
the
both
of them into the grave.  The day she had willed herself to die,
Hashem had abandoned Lucifer
and
the Alliance.  Lucifer had been
carrying the burden ever since.

“What about the
Leonids?”  Lucifer suppressed the hopelessness he always felt whenever he spoke
to his father.  “They are down to fewer than 3,500 individuals.  We have more Leonid
ships than Leonids to man them.”

“The Spiderids will
take their place.”  Hashem spoke as though he were talking about replacing a
defective toaster.  “Just as the Mantoids filled in the gaps in
your
ranks.  I have ordered the aerospace manufacturers to create a new generation
of ships adapted to Spiderid physiology.”

Lucifer shuddered. 
Replaced.  They were being replaced.  He'd always known that was the plan, but
this was the first time he'd heard the words uttered from the Emperors’ own
lips.

“I give up!”  Lucifer
threw his hands into the air.  “You’re worse than Shay’tan!”  He turned to
leave.  He got as far as the laboratory door before Hashem called his name. 
The Cherubim guards stepped to block his exit.

“Lucifer!!!” Hashem
ordered.  “These trade deals you've been passing in Parliament?  You have
outsourced too much of our economy to the Sata'an Empire.  The newer sentient
races are losing too many jobs.  I want you to rescind the override.”

“Do it yourself,”
Lucifer hissed.  “For two hundred years I ran your empire while you couldn't
even be bothered to show up to sign something.  Never
once
have you
thanked me!  Never
once
have you even taken an interest in the impact
your one-sided focus on seed worlds has on the older races in this empire.  Or
the species who defend them!”

“Those who have the
means are expected to contribute more,” Hashem said.  “Of
course
older
worlds should support emerging ones.  If I wanted everybody to fend for
themselves, I wouldn't have created
you.
”

“You can’t keep asking
us to pay and pay and pay until they’ve got nothing left to give,” Lucifer
said.  “For goddess’ sakes!!!  Look at your Cherubim guards!!!  Jingu is over
nine thousand years old and hasn’t been able to produce a new queen!!!” 

Lucifer gestured to
the ant-like Cherubim guards whose race had once guarded the entire Alliance,
but who now numbered mere thousands.  The Cherubim only lingered to produce
enough guards to guard the Emperor, a duty which had been prolonged when
Angelics began dying out instead of stepping up to the plate to replace them. 
Only love of the Emperor prevented the Cherubim from casting off the mortal
shells they had long since outgrown and escaping into the highest ascended
realms.

“That’s enough!”
Hashem ordered.

“If you won’t look at
me, then look at them!”  Lucifer's fists clenched as he tried to make his
father see reason.  “They've guarded your empire even longer than
we
have, and they are even closer to extinction.  You replace
them
with us,
and now you replace
us
with godsdamned insects!!!  Are we really that
expendable?”

“You're not
expendable.”  Hashem's shoulders sagged with defeat.  The clinical old god
disappeared, replaced by the doddering fool.  “I just don't know how to fix
you.”

“You're a god!”
Lucifer pleaded.  “Swallow your pride and ask the goddess to help you.  Like
you did when you created us in the first place.”

Hashem swallowed. 
Lucifer knew the
last
thing his father wanted to do was ask the goddess
who ruled the universe for help.  He'd only met the Architect of the Universe
once, at his birth, when she'd handed him over to Hashem for safekeeping.  He
was a burden Lucifer now understood his adopted father had never wanted.

“Please, Father …”
Lucifer pleaded, his rage sputtering.  “You're the only father I have ever
known.  I don't want to be the last of my kind.” 

Hashem picked up the
pipette he'd been using to fertilize the reptile eggs and resumed whatever it
was he'd been doing. 

“I lost the root
race,” Hashem said with resignation.  “There is nothing more I can do for you. 
I'm sorry.”