Andromeda

New Arrival

Chapter Seven

The Fight Begins

Far away from the drift that Hex Mason, newly discovered by his old crewmates to be alive, had taken up residence, The New Armies of Arcanis were making their first move.  As of right now, they were made up only of Nietzscheans and a few Magog.  Arcanis, being the ambitious god that he was, had decided to expand.  First he'd take a large drift of technologically inferior humans.  They would be his wild men, his barbarians.  This drift was not a problem.  They didn't even have enough time to launch a distress call, as the armies swarmed over them like an entire colony of ants converging on a cookie crumb.  Soon, Arcanis had set up a training facility on the drift, and was steadily pumping out techno-barbarians, warriors that had enhanced adrenaline constantly pumped into their bodies through an implant in their back.

The next drift to fall was a drift of programmers and engineers.  They became his researchers, his creators.  A drift that was little more than a stopping ground for mercenaries followed up this drift soon after.  These mercenaries became his techno-Dark Knights, cyborg warriors grafted with all sorts of robotic goodies.  All that was left was a drift of marksman for archers, and Arcanis would have an enormous army capable of strangling the life out of the very universe itself.

And only the haggard crew of the Andromeda, along with a wayward god, could stop him.

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Meanwhile, Hex Mason was helping Dylan carry Harper to his quarters to sleep off his shock.  The rest of the crew followed behind, listening in silence to the conversation between the two men.  No, they corrected themselves. . .one man and one god.  "So I guess you can't tell us what happened on that planet," Dylan questioned.

"Good guess," Hex returned, nodding.

"What if I said I'd kick you off my ship if you didn't tell me?"  Trance wanted to speak out against that, but Rommie grabbed her arm and shook her head.

"My goals no longer require me to be a crewmember on your ship," Hex replied.  "Though I'd much prefer it if I was."

"And what are those goals, Mr. Mas-"

"Dylan. . .you know who I really am.  You might as well call me by my real name."

". . .Silaris.  What are your goals?  You've always been rather mysterious about them."

"My goals have always been to defeat my brother.  When he returned from the dead, I was forced to follow."

"Forced?  By whom?  The. . .god of the underworld?"

"Not quite, Dylan.  Arcanis has always been, and will always be, a great evil.  Had he been allowed to go unchecked, he had the potential to destroy a good deal of the universe."

"So you followed him. . .out of altruism?  I still remember what you said when you were describing the legend. . .well, history, I guess. . .why would you follow him?"

"Like I said back then:  To correct my mistakes."  He paused and the door to Harper's quarters swooshed open.

"Naïveté has never been a mistake, Silaris," Dylan returned.

"It is when I knew what I knew."

"And what did you know?"  At this pointed, the rest of the crew stepped into Harper's quarters to make sure they didn't end up out of hearing distance.

"I knew that none of us, us being the gods, could never be any other alignment besides what father appointed for us.  Therefore, I could never be evil, and Arcanis could never be good.  Yet I still let myself believe him when he said he'd changed his ways.  Mistake."

"Father," Dylan asked.

"Chaos," Silaris replied.

"Your father was Chaos," Trance piped up, shocked.

"Yeah," Silaris returned.  "He didn't get that nasty streak until later, though."

"Chaos has a nasty streak," Beka asked, confused.  "I kinda figured Chaos would be ever-changing."

"He is," Silaris answered.  "Sometimes he's got the nasty streak, sometimes he's the most benevolent being I've ever met.  Kinda like waking up on the right and wrong side of the bed, only less predictable and kicked into hyper drive."

"So wait," Rommie interjected, "you said your goals were to defeat Arcanis.  He's worlds away.  How could you defeat him if you're here?"

"It always comes back to us," Silaris said, his tone intense and serious.  "No matter what we do separately, no matter what we accomplish without seeing one another for years, decades sometimes, it always comes back to us in the end.  We're drawn to each other like the moth is drawn to the flame."

"So," Trance said, hesitating before continuing, "its like a war?"

"Yes.  Our war went on from the moment we were created.  We were each made for war.  I was made to be the warrior for the side of good, and he was made to be the opposite."

"So he's the anti-you," Beka asked.

"Not quite.  We were both created at the same time, so neither one of us is the anti-Silaris or anti-Arcanis."

"Did either of you have any kids, or lovers," Trance asked, sounding pensive.

"He did, yes."

"Did you," she queried.

"No, not me.  I had professed myself to be a solitary individual, because I didn't want any of Arcanis' spies to seduce me.  Gods know they tried."  Trance started to say something, but was cut off as the holographic image of the ship's AI appeared in the room.

"Captain, will we be staying here?"

"Why would we do that," Dylan asked, and Silaris smirked.

"Dylan Hunt, have you forgotten what holiday is coming up," Silaris asked, sounding amused.  It took only a moment for everyone else to realize what exactly Silaris was talking about.

"Christmas," Dylan replied, a slight smile growing on his face.  "I guess we forgot."

"Not like there's been a real desire to be festive around here recently," Beka stated.

"There is now," Trance chimed in as Dylan made plans to stay docked on the drift for a while, Trance smiling and looking affectionately to Silaris.  Oddly enough, he seemed to be avoiding her gaze.

"So, Silaris," Beka continued, noticing what he was doing and wanting to draw Trance's attention away from it very quickly, "what's up with the new you?"

"I was reborn," he replied, giving Beka a grateful glance.  Her return look told him that the two of them would be having a private talk later.  "Well…not exactly.  You see one of the downsides to Arcanis returning to the world of the living was the loss of a piece of himself.  That piece took the form of his youthful body.  He needed to be whole in order to begin his plans, and I was the only one that could make him whole again.  Since we were identical twins before, all he had to do was absorb a skin sample from me, and he would get his body back.  Me getting stuck under those rocks was an absolute godsend – no pun intended – for him.  He cut off a piece of my leg and absorbed it."  By this point, Trance was noticing how he avoided her gaze as well.  So were the rest of the crew, as could be seen by their increasing discomfort.  There was an awkward moment of silence, followed by Dylan and the others meandering away.  Silaris started to follow, but Trance reached out and took a firm hold of his wrist.

"Silaris," Trance stated, "we need to talk."  Silaris looked futilely towards the door.  "We'll go to Sylvanus, and then we'll talk."

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"Why did you keep avoiding my gaze back there," Trance asked as soon as the doors to Hydroponics whirred shut.

"Trance…there's a lot I need to explain."

"That's because there's a lot you didn't tell me," she exploded, rounding on him angrily.  "You're a GOD?!  Where the hell did that come from?  I mean, I always knew you were more than you seemed to be, I could always sense that you were closer to me than to any of them, but…but…."  She sputtered out towards the end and then sighed.  "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I have my reasons," Silaris replied.

"Uh-uh," Trance stated, shaking her head.  "Sorry, I'm the mysterious one here, Silaris, and there's not room for more than one.  So you're going to tell me why you didn't tell me."

"That's a funny sentence," Silaris replied, smirking.

"We already have a joker, here, too," Trance sighed flatly.

"Trance…listen, I'll explain…but you have to know something first."

"What is it?"

"Not all of my kind is dead.  In fact, most are still alive."

"Okay, so what does that mean?"

"We have rules," he continued.  "Rules that are more like laws."

"Where are you going with this," Trance asked.

"The reason I was avoiding your gaze back there…is because I broke a lot of those rules."  He paused for a second, and then added, "Matter of fact, I think I broke almost all of them."

"…What's that mean?"

"I have until Christmas.  After that, I have to go."

"Nuh-uh," Trance stated hastily, "we just got you back, I just got you back, and there's no way you're going anywhere."

"I have to."  He paused again and thought for a second.  "Listen…Arcanis isn't in any trouble, because he's a god of evil and therefore, while he knows the rules, everybody knows and expects him not to follow them.  Me, though…I'm supposed to follow them rigidly, which I used to do, until our planet was destroyed."

"Just…tell me what's going on, okay?"

"After Christmas, I go on trial for breaking these rules.  The judge is the god of neutrality, my other brother."

"So…you'd go to a prison for super powerful ethereal beings?"

"Not quite."

"Then where?"

"Because of the number of rules I've broken over my long, long, long life…I would die and get sealed in Anakra, that's our version of Hell, for…well, eternity, I'd think.  Or at least a millennia or two."

"…You're not going to do the whole, "I broke the rules, now I'll pay for it," thing, are you?"

"Of course not," Silaris replied, chuckling.  "I've been to Anakra.  I reeeaaally don't want to go back."

"So don't show up," Trance offered.

"No can do.  If I don't show, they'll just bring everybody on the ship."  Trance glided over and wrapped her arms around his neck.

"Let them," she purred.  "Then we can send them to Anakra."

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"You see what he plans," a rather familiar voice stated, though all that could be seen was a pool of water in a stone basin.  In the water, Silaris and Trance could be seen on the Hydroponics deck of the Andromeda Ascendant.

"Indeed," replied another, unfamiliar voice, scratchy and beastial.  "The fool seeks to supplant and kill us, one by one, sentencing us to the punishment that he himself deserves."

"He plans nothing," a young, feminine, syrupy voice cooed.  "That Golden skinned warrior…she is a bad influence on him."

"He loves her," returned a somewhat hurt voice belonging to a female that sounded the same age.

"The sun sprite is not the problem," the familiar voice snapped.  "Even if she were, she is not of our blood, and therefore not subject to our punishment."

"As if you were ever subject to the same," a neutral, and also familiar, voice responded.  The other familiar voice tried to debate that, but the neutral voice rode on overtop of that one.  "REGARDLESS of that…he has brought us a good case.  We will take decisive action to be certain that no further plans are made."

"Good.  That is all that I ask.  I will, of course, stay on to be the prosecution."

"We would bar you from leaving whether you did or not," the neutral voice replied.  "After this, we have a long, long talk coming, you and I.  There are matters of rules that I have been meaning to correct for the last millennia or so."

"What of the other…creatures?  That is a large ship," the scratchy voice questioned.

"Should Silaris make a good enough case for his breach of the rules…nothing," the neutral voice stated, matter-of-factly.

"And should he not?"

"They will all die."