Nova
Chapter 26: Vision
Vash
"Ahhhhh, yes. I see now."
"See what?" Kestrel whispered.
"I see... why he wants to destroy you." The old man's face saddened, "Over..."
"Who? Who wants to destroy me? Over what?" Kestrel insisted.
"Seldokas."
"What's a Seldokas?" I asked.
"Not what. Who." Theo said quietly, "Yes... who."
"For many years now, I've been having fragmented visions. Kestrel, you may return to your seat, " He said in a low voice and I returned to the seat next to Knives.
He began again, "Slowly it all has begun to come together. Now it is complete. Listen now, for I have a tale for you..."
It begins four thousand years ago, on a planet many light years from here.
This planet had a sentient race. The Vriianes.
The Vriianes were in a time of war, the population split in two, fighting over and for something long forgotten.
The two sides, calling themselves the Vriianex, and the Vriisimaki fought mercilessly. Devastating each others lands and people. Cites were destroyed in the blink of an eye. The environment had fallen into a deep and unforgiving radiation winter. The sky was black with smoke for the weapons factories scattered across the war torn planet.
The air was filled with the cries of the weak and the dying.
Then... it happened. One side, the Vriianex had discovered a new, more deadly, more powerful form of weapon. From their bases on both moons they attempted to fire them off and destry to Vriisimaki once and for all.
Unfortunately for the Vriianex, they did not anticipate the exact magnitude of the weapons they had created. Set for a simultaneous launch the missiles reacted violently to the hastily built ignition mechanisms, detonating on the spot.
The sky was filled the sight of the two moons falling to the planet. And for once in almost six millennia, the sounds on the planet were not that of war. For a time all was quiet. For a time all looked to the sky in awe as the brilliant full moons exploded into the atmosphere.
Then it was chaos. The whole of the Vriianes were no longer consumed with fighting and getting revenge. But of surviving.
But... they did not join together in this crisis.
As the moons slowly fell to their dying planet, the two kept to themselves, both fleeing underground rather then have to face the surface that was beginning to burn.
Each began a desperate attempt to build a ship or ships large enough to send what was left of their populations into the safety of space. Neither knew if the other was successful, neither knew if the other had died in the process, neither knew if they would make if themselves. In the end only one survived.
The Vriianex. The ones who had doomed their planet in the first place.
Five years and seven months after the explosion that had taken out the moons, one ship blasted off from under the deep recesses of the planets surface and shot into the darkness of space.
Two thousand years later, the last surviving remnants of the Vriianes floated through space, all asleep in their Cryo-chambers. But the same hasty workmanship of the ignition mechanisms that destroyed their planet was also at work in the poorly built ship.
It started with the leakage of a coolant chamber. The coolant slowly dripped into the lower compartment that held the engine. Then something broke. And everything came to a halt.
The silence in the ship wasn't long lived.
It was soon broken by the sudden alarms blaring in the computer core.
The caretaker of the ship, Seldokas, a Vriianes connected directly via neural interface with the computers woke and began running the diagnostics and auto-repairs on the ship. It was of no use.
The ship which had been passing a binary star system, now no longer able to use it thrusters began a slow and tedious decent towards the second planet of the binary system, a dry inhospitable oxygen rich planet with five moons.
Seldokas did all he was trained to do in a situation like this. He used the back up engines in one final attempt at a controlled landing.
Seldokas tried to direct the ship towards the planet, but again the bad construction of the ship played its hand, and the ship fell to the surface of the fifth moon.
The main power source was destroyed in the fall. All of the Vriianex died instantly. All but one.
Seldokas.
Seldokas' chamber was self contained and self powered by an advanced atomic energy source. This energy source sustained him, and kept him alive.
Very quickly Seldokas' sanity began to wane. His mind was forever awake, never sleeping, always aware. He began to believe that the Vriisimaki and the Vriianex were still alive, and that the Vriisimaki were searching then out in order to destroy them, these beliefs were brought about by visions. Visions of a future very far away. His mind, still connected to what ship systems there still were, began to build an army.
He continued working at a rigorous pace, waiting for the day when the Vriianex of his visions would come. Another thousand years passed, and came they did in the shape and form of thousands of small ships. To us known as SEEDS.
Seldokas was shocked. It was too soon, he still had much to work with on his army.
But no attack ever came. But all of a sudden the ships crashed to the planet, and Seldokas got his first look as these so called 'Vriianex.'
In appearance they were different, and Seldokas took this as some sort of deception. Believing that the Vriianex had changed themselves in order to fool him.
These people on the planet settled, and still Seldokas worked on his army. Again anticipating an attack. And as he worked he studied these people. Watching them through the hundreds if telescopes on the ship, and very quickly learned the simple language.
A little over a hundred years later, Seldokas was suddenly alerted to high energy activity on the planet, he believed it to be a weapon in the testing.
But nothing of like that did he ever see again until almost three decades later when a beam of high energy shot up from the planet and hit the surface of the moon.
The blast the hit the moon was wide but it didn't even come close to the resting place of the Vriianex's ship.
This was the attack, Seldokas believed. This was the attack that he'd been waiting for.
Just a few more adjustments and his army would be complete. Just a little while longer and then they would be destroyed.
It wasn't long after the attack on the fifth moon that he began having more visions, this time instead of events, it was of individual faces of the people on the planet. The one that was most clear to him was that of a female, one with blue hair and gold eyes.
He saw her along with others, but these others were so blurred in his memory that he soon forgot all of them but the female. He saw her seeking him. Seeking him and then destroying him.
For the next two years he scoured the surface of the planet with his telescopes trying to find that face.
That face.
And when he found her, that's when he finally sent out the first of his army.
This army which he named the Saskanocs, the Vriianes word for 'divine avenger', were cyborgs, merely automatons, with the ability to counter the energy that the gold-eyed one posses.
They were created from the bodies of the dead Vriianex. And infused with technology that Seldokas had slowly built over time.
Kestrel
I stared at him as he finished his tale. I didn't know what to say.
Vash was the first to speak up, "So this guy Seldokas has been having visions like you?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Theo shook his head, "I'm not sure. This was not something revealed to me." Theo opened his eyes, stared out sightlessly, and sighed, "I have done my part. Now it is time for me to rest."
None in the room stopped him as the young woman at Theo's side helped him to his feet and led him from the room.
I'm afraid I wrote this chapter at the last minute and I'm all tired out, not to mention I haven't been getting much sleep anyway. So no reviewer responses this time. :)
Thanks to those who did review though.
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