Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One (70 page)

The mother tasted the
air with her forked tongue and walked in, claws splayed for balance upon the
ground.  She was a creature who had evolved in a dry environment.  She
recognized her eggs and studied the babies.  Giving them a sniff, she accepted
them, uttering a reptilian bark to call her babies to her side.  At the same
time, the last remaining egg began to shudder as a tiny claw picked its way
through the shell.

“Oh … I see it now!”
Jophiel whispered, amazed at the subtlety of the Emperor’s tinkering.  “They
have webbed feet and their skin is just a little different.  These babies can
survive a wetter environment!”

“Yes,” the Emperor
said as he watched the last egg hatch.  “And they're smarter, too.  Gemini-28
has been experiencing climate change.  The sea levels are rising.  Soon, there
won't be much dry land left to walk upon.  These babies will survive a marshy
environment.”

“Here’s the last one!”
Jophiel whispered.  “C’mon, little guy…”

The last baby hatched,
but its evolution from desert to swamp creature was more extreme.  Whereas the
others had just the hint of webbed feet and aquatic skin, the last one’s
aquatic features were more pronounced.  The feet were fully webbed, the skin
soft like a frogs, and the tail had a paddle to propel it through the water. 
The head was streamlined so it could swim with less resistance, but longer to
fit a larger brain pan.  The mother gourock hissed and swatted it with her
tail, rejecting it.  The baby gourock curled up into a ball and whimpered.

“And those are the consequences
of tinkering with the work of She-who-is.”  The Emperor picked up the little
lizard and put it into a separate cage.  Millions of such cages lined the walls
of the Emperor’s laboratory, a testament to the consequences of his constant
tinkering. 

“Poor little guy.” 
Jophiel pulled Uriel closer.  “His mama didn't want him.”

“I used to think I
could just create life and it would be good,” the Emperor said.  “But the older
I get, the more I realize
everyone
needs a family.”  He looked Jophiel
in the eye.  “She-who-is has just reminded me of that fact.  So what are we
going to do to rectify this problem?”

“I would like to
tender my resignation, Sir,” Jophiel said.  “With the baby taking up so much of
my time, I don't see how I can defend your Alliance
and
take care of
Uriel.”

The Emperor pondered
her request. 

“Jophie,” he said. 
“You're my most trusted advisor.  Without you, I'm afraid the Alliance would
collapse.  Without a strong military deterrent, Shay’tan will invade this
sector and enslave millions.”

“But, Sir,” she
protested.  “It's only been two weeks and already hybrids are refusing to give
up their babies.  They say they want to raise their own offspring because I'm
doing it.  Please … discharge me as a traitor and condemn my actions.  Your empire
depends upon it!”

“That's something
Shay’tan would do,” the Emperor sighed.  “He scapegoats another when it's
he
who makes a mistake.  This is
my
mistake, and I'll bear the consequences
of it.”

“But, Sir!”

“But, nothing,” he
said.  “Resignation denied.  I'm assigning a full-time Delphinium nanny to help
you care for Uriel on your command carrier.   I have assembled a team of
experts to figure out how I can let Alliance hybrids have more access to their
offspring without jeopardizing the stability of the fleet.  You're my first
test subject.”

“Oh?”  Jophiel was not
sure what to say.  “Test subject?”

“I'm also recommending
you promote that wonderfully efficient personal assistant of yours, Captain
Klik'rr, to Major,” he said.  “And assign him a half dozen assistants to take
up the slack.  It's about time we started promoting the newer sentient races
into the upper ranks of the military.  Don't you agree?”

“Th-thank you, your
eminence!”  What he'd just handed her was better than her wildest dreams.

“Now let me see that
fine son of yours.”

Over the next hour,
Hashem played with Uriel and picked Jophiel’s brain for ideas about how to
allow the hybrid races, who were the legs his empire stood upon, to have their
cake and eat it too.  At some point, one of the Emperor’s lab technicians came
in to take the Mama and baby lizards back to Gemini-28 and release them into
the general population. 

The conversation
turned back to the Emperor’s favorite subject, tinkering with the DNA which
made up life.  The new genetic traits he'd just instilled in the gourocks would
be dominant.  Within several generations, most gourocks would inherit the
adaptation which would allow them to survive their changing climate.  All but
the poor little guy who'd been rejected.  If his own mother rejected him, it
was unlikely any mate would accept him, either.  Sending him back to the
homeworld to die was pointless. 

As she went to leave,
the Emperor gave her a gift.

“Here … he won’t be
happy here alone.”  He handed her the cage.  “Everybody needs a family to
belong to.  Maybe Uriel will enjoy having a water dragon for a pet?”

~ * ~ * ~
* ~ * ~

July - 3,390 BC

Earth:  Village of Assur

Colonel Mikhail Mannuki’ili

Mikhail

Mikhail paced down the
six-deep line of warriors, sizing up his new recruits.  Some stood proud and
tall, men who could take down a boar with a single spear and wore their swagger
as though it were a fringed wool kilt.  Others appeared ill at ease, here because
the Chief had ordered every man capable of picking up a spear to spend two
hours each afternoon learning combat skills.  Most clustered into groups: 
warriors, merchants, craftsmen and goat herders.  He scrutinized each clique
for clues about whether or not the groupings would prove useful, or needed to
be broken up during training. 

The elite warriors had
all been ordered to attend … and obeyed.  All except for Jamin, who was nowhere
to be found. 
This
was a group he would need to break up, their advanced
weapons skills distributed evenly amongst their weaker peers.  But he needed to
wield a democratic hand or resentment would undermine anything he tried to
achieve.  He turned to the man the Chief had assigned to be his liaison.

"Kiarash … are
you ready?"

One of the Chief's two
main 'enforcers' stepped forward.  Wisdom … and more than a few battle scars …
etched the heavily muscled, middle-aged man's face.  Although Jamin had been in
charge of the elite warriors, his leadership had only gone so far as his
father's appointed 'babysitter'
allowed
it to go before alerting the
Chief his son was out of line.  Everything about the man spoke of solidity,
confidence, and quiet competence. 

"Have you given
the matter we discussed earlier any thought?"  Kiarash glanced over to
where the young warriors stood together as a unit, some glowering with
resentment, others filled with curiosity.  In the center stood their de facto
leader now that Jamin had pulled a no-show. 

"You called
that
one correctly," Mikhail frowned.  Just because he'd
anticipated
what
the Chief's son would do didn't mean he was happy about it.  Chief Kiyan wanted
Mikhail to mentor his son, but Kiarash had made his
own
recommendation
in case things played out the way they expected.  Unlike the chief, Kiarash
believed in second, but not third chances.  Mikhail was tired of offering the
olive branch to a man who hated his guts.  He made his decision. 

"Siamek!  Front
and center!"

"Yes?"  The
tall, slender warrior stepped forward, his dark eyes wary, but lacking the
hostility they'd possessed the first time they'd crossed swords at his crashed
ship.  Although not heavily muscled, Siamek was agile and strong.  If Kiarash's
assessment was correct, Siamek could follow a chain of command without losing his
ability to think independently.

"That's 'yes
sir,'" Mikhail corrected.  "If you're going to help lead these men,
you need to set the proper example.  Whenever you address a superior officer,
you need to address them as 'sir.'"

A flash of anger shone
in Siamek's dark eyes, which was replaced by disbelief, and then surprise as
Mikhail's words sank in.  He was being elevated to a position of leadership?

"S-sir," 
The unfamiliar word tumbled off of Siamek's tongue.  He glanced over to
Kiarash, who nodded. Siamek straightened up, his spear held perpendicular to
the ground as he stared straight ahead.

Mikhail turned his
attention back to the assembled men.  A half-dozen women had also answered the
call, including Pareesa, his littlest archer.  They were all Pareesa's age,
clustered together like birds, heads pressed together in whispers as though
they were gathered at the village well.  Pareesa flashed him a proud grin. 
These were
her
recruits, and by the way they'd come wearing shawls
belted high around their waists like kilts, she'd apprised them they would be
getting thrown to the ground.

"These are
unsettled times."  Mikhail walked to stand between the two men he'd chosen
to be his first and second lieutenant.  "I didn't
ask
to be put
into a position of leadership in this tribe, but the fact remains that I come
from an army who knows how to work together so that one soldier's weakness
doesn't become the weakness of his entire unit."

The elite warriors
averted their eyes.  Jamin's moment of hesitation had only been momentary, but
everyone in the village had seen it.  He was lucky Siamek had been competent
enough to follow through on the Chief's orders or he might have ended up with a
Halifian arrow in his back.  He began to pace up and down the line, twenty-five
long, six deep, 152 in all.

"When you train
together as a team, one soldier's strength can inspire every man on his team to
become
more
than what he was before.  I can't lay claim to being an
expert on every aspect of warfare.  In fact, as most of you have probably
heard, if not for the dog tags Ninsianna found wrapped around my neck when she
found me," he tugged the dog tags out of the neckline of his shirt and
held them out for everyone to see, "I probably wouldn't even know my own
name."

Nervous laughter
rippled through the men.

"I don't
remember
a lot of what I was before I came here to your village," Mikhail
said.  "But as you all witnessed during the recent battle, there are
some
things that I just
know.
  I can't tell you why I can remember
some
things,
such as how to pick up a stick and use it as a spear..."

He borrowed Kiarash's
spear and threw it to stick into the side of a far-off goat shed.

"…and yet I can't
remember my own father's name."  He stepped back to stand between his two
lieutenants. 

"There are some
amongst this tribe who would give you a supernatural explanation as to why I'm
able to do these things, but the truth is really quite simple.  What few
memories I
do
have all involve some type of training.  Long, hard,
brutal training amongst men … and women … who were all better fighters than
me."

A murmur went through
the men.  He could tell they found it hard to believe that anyone had ever
bested him.  He allowed himself a rare smile.

"Believe it or
not," Mikhail gave them a sheepish grin.  "Some of my fondest absent
memories involve having my tail feathers handed back to me by the Cherubim
monks.  Again.  And again.  And again."

The noise rippled into
laughter.  Humor.  Unfamiliar territory, but he'd slowly been learning when to
interject small confessions into the conversation to let people know his
natural reticence didn't originate from what Ninsianna called a 'holier than
thou' attitude.  Mikhail began to pace again, not simply because it afforded
him the opportunity to look each man in the eye and gauge his reaction, but
also because it gave him someplace to channel the nervous energy rustling
through his feathers.  Without his memories, he had
no
idea what type of
missions he'd led except for a vague recollection that the designation
'Colonel' on his dog tags meant he
must
have led men at
some
point
in his career.