Among Bright Stars... (16 page)

“Oh, so like Sharr!” Shalimar laughed.

“Don’t be sad aunty.” Shikar said as if
knowing what lingered on Shalimar's thoughts.

Uncertain, the Kajra Re began to ask. “Sad,
I –“

“Krada, like us all is recurrent.”

Both Nadia, and Shalimar looked at Shikar
awed. He had taken on a profound demeanor.

“Is it possible… Nadia,” Shalimar wondered.
“Have Krada and Shikar merged?”

The Queen took her friend’s arm, explained.
“There are no hard rules for this sort of thing. Falcanian
DataStreams tend to travel down clannish lines, or next nearest
correlation. Often they go to where they are most needed.” And she
threw a glance in the direction of her son. “Shikar recently had
contact with a Vorchar, it took him to Vraxis. It’s reasonable to
assume they merged. Like the Tahru say:
We are all
recurrent.
”

[Vorkrür: City Center, Tariksar
Chaikhana]

“She’s a beauty.” Sharr Khan said, casually
reclined at a low table.

Noorani let out a laugh. “Indeed Majesty,
Jamilla’s most alluring.”

Across the table, Talik poured a cup of tea
for himself, and puffed on his pipe. Wolfishly he glanced at his
brother. Smoke rings, which smelled of lavender hung over the table
began to collect all around the one-eyed Prussian.

“I am told that one of your wives,” Darius
began with great enthusiasm toward this prospect. “Arshira, is like
myself, a child of Project Morningstar.”

“She is at that.” Sharr affirmed.

The Tyrant of Aslan grinned, sipped from his
sweet smoky tea, the famous Falcanian Imperial Blend. “I cannot
wait to meet her then!” His expression serious. “My history, shall
we say has been colored by Al-Qaeda.” Thoughtfully Darius added. “I
am very interested in meeting others like myself, products of
genetic engineering.”

“Then you shall soon have your chance.”
Talik informed. “I believe Sharr’s asked Temujin Sardur to join us
for tea.”

“I had heard he ran a gang of marauders,
which pirated off Burma’s coastline.” Darius sounded surprised.
“You recruited him?”

“A few months back, one of my Drakorian
Guard units apprehended Temujin, and his
Golden Horde
. I
offered Sardur a deal: Join us, or be executed for marauding
shipping lanes. Let's say, such a choice was very easy for him”
Sharr Khan’s blue-gray eyes reflected light from an oil lamp.
“Serving the Falcanian cause seemed by far more profitable, and to
his liking.” Breaking off a piece of istolji, unleavened potato
bread, Sharr Khan smothered ghee and chutney on the staple. He
washed the sweet bread down with a gulp of his own tea.

On a tafkashi, the large steel plate at the
table’s center, meant to be enjoyed in a communal fashion chunks of
lamb, all its various cuts, including the organ meats, along with
crispy sprakzir-pig, and a nutty cheese had been arranged beside
slices of tomato sprinkled with olive oil, and a dash of cilantro
for accompaniment. A very Falcanian communal meal.

“My Lord!” The Mongolian Morningstar,
Temujin Sardur entered the Chaikhana, rested a hand on his
ceremonial Kraris, and waited with a tri-claw shod foot on the edge
of the dais, where the Imperial table was set into an alcove.

“Welcome! Join us Temujin.” Sharr Khan
motioned for his newest recruit to sit.

Sharr Khan offered his newest Drakorian
Guard tea from a golden samovar that sat in the center of the
table, and food from the tafkashi piled high with meat. “This is
Darius Noorani, 12
^th
Imam.” He raised his teacup.
“Absolute ruler of the Caliphate of Aslan.”

“It’s an honor to meet another
Morningstar.”

“You’re a Drakorian?” Darius asked, somewhat
surprised. Sharr Khan placed a great deal of trust in this
Morningstar. Entrusted him with his personal safety, by making him
a member of the Drakorian Guard. Once more, a bold move on Sharr
Khan's behalf that greatly impressed the Caliph.

“Hunter-Seekers,” explained Temujin Sardur.
“A special unit, formed to apply the tip of the spear against our
enemies.” He said, and inhaled the smoky scent of his tea, a sense
of deep contemplation on his face. “In a manner of speaking, we are
brothers.” Slowly Temujin opened his eyes. “It appears our very
existence is owed to Maharani T’Kara, and her parents. Which is one
of the reasons I so readily serve the Falcanian cause.”

“You’ve a thing in common with Sharr und I,”
from behind his own teacup Talik playfully grinned. “There’s a
story in our family that the Kreis fortune itself had been built by
marauding.” The Shotar’s half-brother permitted himself a belly
laugh.

Sharr groaned, he hated this story, though
Talik rather enjoyed telling it any chance he got. The Shotar took
a hunk of sprakzir-pig and dipped it in tamaki sauce, while his
half-brother went on with the story of the family Kreis.

“Our progenitor,” exclaimed the Prussian
with unvarnished pride as he spoke of his first historically
recorded paternal family member. “Aurik Kreis, known by the name
the ‘Red Ox’ plundered the seas,” Talik mirthfully explained. “With
his ransacked bounty, Aurik managed certain investments via the
Silk Road.” On his pipe Talik puffed, and grinned. “No doubt our
ancestors came into contact even then. Our family business has been
around since long before GenKon Incorporated constructed you
both.”

Afternoon meal complete, Sharr, his brother,
and the two supermen, along with Jamilla not far behind, followed
the Shotar out into Vorkrür City’s bustling center. Drakorian took
up stations around the group. Nearby an abattoir, processed
razorback sprakzir-pigs, and aag into various cuts of meat.
Falcanians didn’t hide the slaughter of their food creatures. From
the farm to the plate, how meat got handled by tradition, remained
open for all to see. At the moment the Shotar watched a group of
young Falcanians tour the slaughterhouse.

“I see you let your children learn early
about death.” Darius admired the honesty of such a system. Just
then, a pig went past and its neck quickly got slashed which caused
a spurt of blood to spill onto the slaughterhouse floor where young
Falcanians were watching.

“Such begins at a young age, the term for it
is atrakshuus.” The Shotar stated. “The ritualized hierarchy of a
Falcanian and his prey.” Sharr Khan clarified. “Like most human
offshoots, we remain omnivores, though we
thrive
upon flesh,
to the point of being almost obligate carnivores. Atrakshuus
teaches at its core one should respect the sacrifice of the animal
and the blood that must be shed for one living thing to survive.
Its goal is honesty, not a moral judgment concerning the
consumption of meat.
All diets
exact a price in
blood, even a Vegan one. Field mice and various creatures die in
the sowing and reaping of grain and vegetables by the thousands.
The only difference is, a Vegan pushes the blood back a step and
does not own up to it. It's an illusion of a bloodless diet. We
seek to
not further ourselves
from the bloodshed in our
food. Children are made aware of this concept early on, and each
Falcanian boy or girl must engage in the atrakshuus by hunting and
preparing a sprakzir-pig when they reach majority age.”

Darius nodded, thought it all refreshing,
and imagined there were some who’d see this atrakshuus to be mere
barbarism, however it rung in his spirit as a true and honest
practice.

They continued to move within the crowd, and
walked the heart of the food market: Game birds, roasted pigs, and
various other fresh meats hung at stalls. Sharr stopped at a kiosk
which displayed aged cheese. The vendor offered him a taste of
anything that struck his fancy. “Good!” Sharr told the vendor while
he enjoyed a piece of cheese that had been soaked in beer and
tasted of hopes and honey. “Please send a wheel of that to the
palace.” Not far from the cheese seller, the Shotar found a goose
farmer who displayed freshly hung geese. Not only were the whole
birds available, but also their finely engorged livers - foie gras
and pâté had been laid out to be sold.

“I knew you’d find the foie gras!”

“Arshira!” Sharr said, somewhat surprised to
run into his wife here in the market. He pulled her to him and
kissed Frederika full on the lips, an action that caused her to
moan.

Beside Arshira eagerly awaited Koori Hol,
the girl once known as Mia.

“Koori how are you?”

“Fine my Lord, glad to have Arshira back.”
In Sharr’s presence the girl still blushed.

“It looks like you two enjoyed the market.”
Observed the Shotar after he noticed the girl’s umpteen bundles of
newly purchased items. “Arshira,” Sharr Khan quickly remembered.
“Let me introduce Darius Noorani.”

“Lovely indeed.” The Morningstar oozed
charm. “You are, without a doubt one of my Morningstar brethren.”
Noorani bowed at the waist, snapped his heels together to salute
Frederika.

[Mars: Hellas Planitia July 3, 2033]

Abandoned now by the Budjah Monks, the domed
outpost had been constructed in the six-kilometer deep impact
crater of Hellas Planitia. The monks long since had fled the Red
Planet in favor of new converts outside the limited borders of
Earth's solar system.

Here the conspirators met.

Kasumi waited in the shadows of an emptied
church, glanced skeptically up at the crucified form of the
Nazarene, outstretched above the altar, bare of all its finery and
accouterments of worship. Odd that the monks should leave the
crucifix behind. Perhaps it had not been an oversight? This
remained sacral ground.

Contemplating her own temporal form, Kasumi
9 feigned a sigh. Its cybernetics surged with life, it’s every
sense fine-tuned: Sight, smell, taste all above human average. In
her previous life she'd served the last American president. In that
existence she had been quite famous, though her detractors likely
would've called her infamous, if not nefarious. When illness
threatened to claim Kasumi 9, over enthusiastic admirers thought to
preserve her intellect for 'the greater good' in this new Synthicon
shell. What they did not realize, the Synthicon's neural storage
medium did not replicate human emotions very well. Sure, it
preserved the raw data, but Synthicons of her variety needed to
claw from out of a pit in order to reclaim any shred of human
desire.

“Gaius Trajan sends a Synthicon to do his
dirty work.”

Kasumi 9 jumped, startled that she could
have been taken by surprise. How had he managed to avoid being
detected by her? Her sensors showed only static. The Falcanian was
but a blob of useless data. It’s as if the Falcanian did not in
reality stand in the room with her, even though a visual impression
could be detected on her ocular nodes. “I have come for the
weapon.”

Urksa grinned. “Of course you have my dear,
and with it, we shall be rid of two problems, Romulus and Sharr.
Gaius Trajan will then become Imperator, and I will rule the
Khanate.”

“I did not think it Falcanian custom to kill
their own kind?” Asked the Synthicon woman.

“Sharr has risked much to no great end, he
fails to see the broader picture. Our destiny is in the stars!”
Declared the follower of D’Har-Ziral, fervent in Kheira’s prophecy,
and the role that his kind would play in the greater universe. The
stars would belong to them, as was their birthright.

“Can you be sure eliminating the Shotar that
his replacement will not carry on in his place?” Logic, despite
having the full range of human emotions, Kasumi 9 found herself a
slave to her binary circuitry. A draw back perhaps of her
cybernetic brain?

“The Dreikatha will put a regent in his
place, Shikar is not yet of his majority. The ensuing war that will
follow, driven by Imperator Gaius Trajan shall cause Sharr’s
successor to look to the stars for our salvation. My Guilthari will
be leading the way. We’ve already put in place plans for the exodus
from this system. There need be only a spark to set the phoenix
aflame!”

Kasumi 9 raised her artificial black brow,
the dragon tattoos on her unclothed shoulders glowed in a reaction
very akin to eroticism at the thought of such conquest. A low “Hmm”
sound however proved to be her only response.

“These are for you.” Urksa motioned and his
armored tail swung.

Three ox-blood colored attack bots hovered
into the room. They resembled the average bucket headed
Thunderstrike battledroid utilized by the Falcanian military.
“These will make it past a security check. They’re programmed to
target Sharr and Romulus. You can lead them by remote.”

Urksa looked on as Kasumi 9 departed the
Budjah base, her small craft lifted upward from the rusted Mars
surface to flip, and rotate in the direction of Earth. His eyes
glowed red and he smiled to himself. Soon the Guilthari would be in
power and Falcania-Prime would be his!

[Queen T'Kara's Dayroom]

“You're welcome, Barnabas.” Nadia thanked
the bucket headed, black and gold colored butlerdroid which put
down her steaming cup of freshly brewed tea. A variant model of the
Falcanian Thunderstrike battledroid, Barnabas hovered beside her
table, where Nadia was reading a report compiled on one of the
Morningstars who they recently made contact with. An important one
to be sure. For its part, the butlerdroid silently glided back a
few paces.

“I don't understand, why you do that. It
could care less about manners.”

Nadia glanced upward from her tablet, and
grinned. “Arshira, glad you're home!” The Queen stood, so that she
could hug her fellow Morningstar, and co-wife, returned at last
from the Alaskan battlefield. “Do what?”

“Treat your butlerdroid as if it were a real
person. They don't even have the wit of a kitten, we use minders
for battledroids on the field because they're no more than dumb
robots.” Arshira noticed her friend cringe. Nadia never liked that
particular word ascribed to the metallic and ceramic automatons, as
she thought it an abuse of the term. True robots were much more,
well much more like Morningstars. “I didn't mean it that way...
”