Onslaught (Rise of the Empire Book 6) (14 page)

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As they were escorted back to their shuttle, Anessa paused and turned to look at Adrian. He stood behind her, watching her intently. Garaam noticed her pausing and used just a bit of Sha.

“Anessa?”
Garaam asked.

“Go on, I’ll be right there,”
Anessa said.

She stepped forward and stopped in front of Adrian. He was looking up at her, and again Anessa was struck at just how different they were. She was larger than him; he almost looked like a child compared to her. And yet anyone looking at him could see the presence that he had; his eyes held depths that spoke of a long life. She had hated him once, looked down on him as an insignificant pebble standing in her way. However, gradually, as she’d spent more and more time with him, that had changed. She no longer hated him, not even now when he had killed so many of her people. She respected him. She knew that he had done only what her people had forced him to do.

Something drew her to him. There was a sense of power around him, unlike anyone she had ever met. But it wasn’t just that she felt herself attracted to him in a physical way, it was more. His mind, his skills, all of those appealed to her. He was someone that was always driven to become stronger, someone who demanded respect by his very presence. Who, like her, possessed great power. In his heart, he was a warrior that only cared about a worthy challenge, just like her. If he were a Shara Daim, she would have involved herself with him by now. But he was not, and their people were at war.

Adrian quirked his eyebrow at her, a gesture that made her smile again. She put her hand on his face affectionately, not being able to help herself. “Goodbye, Adrian,” she said, and turned around, leaving him behind, feeling his eyes on her back as she stepped onto the shuttle.

Chapter Twenty

Three months later — December — Veritas

Adrian sat in his quarters on board the Veritas as he waited for his ship to enter the trans-lane on its way to Sanctuary. Sora and Akash were lying at his feet sleeping, and Axull Darr was floating in the center of the room above a table. It had been three months since the Shara Daim forces had left the system in a hurry; something about the fact that the Shara Daim were aging had upset the other Dai Sha. Adrian didn’t know why, but at least according to what Axull Darr had overheard, not all Shara Daim believed blindly in their Elders, which was a good thing for the Empire. Unrest and division among the Shara Daim could only give the Empire more time to build fleets. No matter what he had led Anessa to believe, the power he had brought to Sol was almost the entirety of what the Empire had. All Shara Daim had to do was to split their large force and attack multiple systems at the same time and the Empire couldn’t win.

Those last words from Anessa still kept him awake, which was an achievement, as he generally didn’t sleep for more than two or three hours a day. There had been something in her eyes when she’d looked at him, an echo of how he himself felt. But her words at the end had told him that she understood the same thing that he did. Their people were at war, and the next time they saw each other, they might be forced to fight against each other again. And this time he wouldn’t be able to hold back.

His gamble had paid off; he knew that destroying an entire Legion had shown them that the Empire could fight them on equal ground. It broke the illusion that they couldn’t be beaten. Adrian was only sorry that he’d had to do it by killing so many. He knew that the relations between the Shara Daim and the Empire would suffer for it, but what he had gained was time, which was more important. Already the Fleet’s shipyards across the Empire were working tirelessly to build ships, and Warpath’s Forge was close to doubling its construction rate.

Now he only hoped that Anessa could change her people. Before she’d left, Adrian had given her some of the data copied from the sphere so that she could have proof that the Shara Daim version of history was severely edited. If she managed to convince enough of her people, they might be able to change; if not, they would either descend into a civil war or outright split. Both were options that worked well for the Empire. If they still wanted war, the Empire would give it to them.

Adrian now had room to breathe, and pursue other projects while he waited to see what happened with the Shara Daim. The thing he was most looking forward to was a breakthrough in genetics that would now allow Seo-yun to give him more of the upgrades for his Sha, and he now had time to leave for Sanctuary. He left Gotu in charge of Olympus Mons, with Aileen going back to Tarabat, and five fleets were still in Sol under Johanna’s command.

Adrian looked at Axull Darr, debating whether to ask him a question that had been on his mind for a long time. He knew that Seo-yun had tried to ask him the same thing but Axull Darr wouldn’t speak of it. Finally, he decided that he could lose nothing by asking.

“You told us once that you created us to fix the mistake you made, but you never told us what that mistake is,” Adrian said.

“Because you can do nothing as you are now,” Axull Darr said.

“But what harm can there be for us to know if we can’t do anything about it?” Adrian asked.

“You are young and rash; my people were old and far wiser than you, and still we made a mistake. I do not want you to fall into temptation and start experimenting with the same things we did. Already you are too close for my comfort.”

Adrian frowned. “We are? Why not tell us then so that we know what to avoid?”

“I…It is not that simple, the temptation is great, and already your knowledge is approaching the level where you can abuse it,” Axull Darr said.

“You have seen the history of Earth; we know about temptation and the price of succumbing to it,” Adrian said.

“Yes, and it is the one thing that gives me hope that you might not follow my people’s footsteps. You are not like us. We didn’t have any obstacles; we pushed sciences in all directions unopposed, never thinking about the consequences because we had never suffered because of them,” Axull Darr said.

“So why not trust us?” Adrian asked.

Axull Darr remained silent for a while. “Perhaps you are right, perhaps I see too much of myself in you. Very well. I will tell you the story about what we did.”

Adrian leaned forward attentively as Axull Darr started to speak.

“You know that my people were dying. We didn’t know why, but we believed that it had to do with the Sha and our use of it. To understand why we thought that, you need to understand what the Sha truly is,” Axull Darr said, his blank eyes somehow focusing on Adrian. “And that is hard to explain to someone like you who doesn’t have billions of years’ worth of knowledge; your people don’t even have terms for most of what my people knew. Imagine a force that binds the entire Universe together, something that makes it all real, that keeps it from falling apart. What allows stars to exist, and what allows for gravity, and all the other things that exist in the Universe, the background on which the Universe resides. That is the Sha. The mind is a vessel that allows a being to influence that force. And like anything in the Universe, it requires energy to be used. Most lifeforms evolve the interface that allows control of the Sha naturally, each slightly different. Your friends there, for example.” Axull Darr pointed at the sleeping forms of Akash and Sora.

“They have evolved a way to feel and influence emotions, to bend this force just a little to achieve that. We evolved it naturally as well, and we added to it, pushing our abilities further artificially. And for several billions of years, everything was fine—until we started dying. We didn’t age, much like your people don’t, but suddenly our bodies started to deteriorate; bonds that held our body fell apart and we died. For a long time, we couldn’t find the cause, and nothing we did could help us. Then there were only eight of us left, and we were desperate. We didn’t want to die, so we tried to find a cure. One of our suspicions was that we had somehow grown dependent on the Sha, but that our bodies and minds couldn’t process enough of it. We had different ideas and projects, and three of my closest friends ran one of our more promising ones. They made a base in a system at the edge of the galaxy, and there they created a completely new lifeform using both our technology and the Sha, something we had never done before. The life wasn’t intelligent. It was an organism that could evolve rapidly; we thought that if we introduce our DNA into it, it might evolve and cure whatever it was that was ailing us. Show us how to allow our bodies more access to the Sha.” Axull Darr paused, his face dropping.

“But life was never meant to evolve so fast. It takes millions, billions of years for the Universe to create life. And when we did it in a matter of a couple of years, it turned out wrong. Our DNA gave it access to the Sha and a sort of primal intelligence. It got loose, infecting the three that had created it, merging its DNA with theirs. DNA that had evolved far beyond what we’d designed it to be. The three became something else; the infusion of the artificial life cured them, making them a new lifeform, one with the experiences and knowledge of what they once were. They were more evolved, smarter, stronger with the Sha, and driven to consume and grow more. Our goal of resurrecting our people was corrupted in their minds, and they used that life that we created as a blueprint to create a servant race of highly intelligent beings that answered only to them. This race they created used life and matter as fuel to reproduce, to build a kind of hybrid biological and technological ships and weapons under the guidance of the three. Before we realized what was happening, the three had dismantled the system they were in and built an army and fleets of ships. The rest of us weren’t all there; we had different projects all over the galaxy, and by the time we noticed what was happening, it was too late. The three had left that system and found an intelligent race that lived in a system nearby. They killed them all, using their biological matter to grow their army even more and to build more ships,” Axull Darr said, and grew quiet.

Adrian swallowed, hard. “What happened then? Did you try to stop them?” he asked.

Axull Darr nodded. “Of course. We had ships still, powerful ships, but there were only five of us left. There was nothing we could do against armies and fleets that had the same technology we did, more advanced even, as it was augmented with biotech that we had never really used. The three had perfected it. We went to younger races and asked for help, uplifting several of them to fight our war. We did what we could. The armies and ships of the three relied on biological matter for food and fuel, so we destroyed planets, vaporized entire star systems, but we only slowed them down. The races we uplifted were losing; every soldier that fell was food for our enemy. In the end, we were forced to build machine armies to fight our enemy, but we knew that they couldn’t defeat them; they had no Sha and were at a disadvantage, as every enemy soldier could use it. Eventually, four of my people decided that it was a lost cause; they wanted to change the parameters of the AIs fighting the enemy from destruction to containment. I disagreed with the methods they wanted to use to enforce it and split from them.”

“What did they want to do? How did they contain them?” Adrian asked.

“The enemy grew by feeding on biological matter, on life. They denied them that. They purged all life for ten thousand lightyears in all directions around the enemy, denying them the fuel they needed to grow. That did not stop their growth—there was still materials for them to use—but it did slow it down considerably, allowing the machine armies a chance of slowing their advances through the galaxy significantly. The AIs were programmed to never allow any life inside that ten-thousand-lightyear border. Each time the enemy pushed the machines back, the machines would expand the border, even if there was intelligent life in their way.”

“They were wiping out entire civilizations?” Adrian asked.

“Yes. I argued against it, but others ignored me. They believed that they couldn’t risk that the enemy grew any larger. I left, and created you.”

“You wanted us to fight them? When even you couldn’t, with all your technology?” Adrian asked incredulously.

“I might not have agreed with their plan, but it did give me time to attempt my own. Your three races have our legacy, but you weren’t born in a time when there was no life in the galaxy. You have known struggle, conflict, war. You are much better suited to fight this threat than a group of dying scientists. We were never warriors; already you have adapted technologies we developed to military use, something we never did.”

“But why not find a warlike race and give them the technology, give them time to prepare to fight?” Adrian asked.

“When you are as old as I was, you learn to look far into the future. I couldn’t risk giving technology to someone who would abuse it afterwards in case they won. I chose to trust in my children rather than a race that was young and had no connection to me. The few we uplifted to fight the enemy initially were not as advanced evolutionary as we were; they had very little capabilities with the Sha. And in any case, it would take much more than a single race to defeat them now,” Axull Darr said. “You need to grow, find allies, and raise them with you. Only a united galaxy can stand a chance against them.”

Adrian looked at him in understanding. “You want us to rule the galaxy, just like the Shara Daim believe. You want us to unite it under our leadership.”

“Yes. It is the only way.”

“So the Shara Daim are right; they, or rather we, are destined to rule the galaxy.” Adrian chuckled, “When they heard the beacon, you—their you—must’ve told them that, but when they lost the sphere, the message must’ve been corrupted. They started believing that all other life was insignificant.”

“It is possible. All three of us who inhabit the spheres, are unique, we can think and make decisions by ourselves. I don’t know why he would’ve told them so soon, before they were ready, but there might be something that we are unaware of. Something that made him decide to tell them.”

“How do we even know that this enemy is still out there? Perhaps the others figured out a way to stop them,” Adrian said.

Axull Darr shook his head sadly. “No, they are still out there. The proof was in the ship you recovered on Earth long ago.”

“The Union ship?” Adrian asked.

“Yes. From its data, you learned that the Union was attacked by an incredibly advanced enemy that they had no chance of winning against. I reviewed the data and confirmed that the enemy was the machines my people created. They were pushing the border, eradicating life within it. That means that the enemy has pushed at least forty thousand lightyears from the area they inhabited before I split.”

“That was a long time ago…how much do you think they could’ve pushed since then?” Adrian asked.

“That is a progress of millions of years; the time that passed since the Union was attacked till now is insignificant in comparison. I doubt that the enemy has pushed much further. And you are on a completely opposite side of the galaxy; you have plenty of time before you encounter the machines or the enemy. I planned it like that; I put you as far away as I could to give you time to grow,” Axull Darr answered.

Adrian sighed in relief, then looked at Axull Darr. “You said that your people started dying because you needed more Sha. Did Axull Darr continue searching for the cure?”