Bane of the Dead (Seraphim Revival Book 1) Read online

  Seth spread his wings and descended towards Imayirot. He cruised through the orbital swarms, weapon platforms shooting by in quick flashes of dark armor.

  Two seraph squadrons followed.

  “A lot of these platforms look old,” Jared said. “Really old.”

  “That’s correct, Pilot Daykin,” Quennin said. “Imayirot’s defenses have been erected piece by piece over thousands of years. Both Aktenai and Grendeni contribute to the orbital swarm, strengthening it, modernizing it. As you can see, it is completely inert right now. However, both factions can activate it should this world ever be threatened. No matter the differences between us and our Fallen brothers and sisters, Imayirot is something we will always come together for.”

  Seth approached a towering spire that showed no signs of decay. A dome sat atop its apex, ringed with dozens of docking bays. Seth picked one designed for seraphs and dropped into place. His feet touched the cold metal.

  Clamps secured him at the shoulders. A pressurized tunnel extended from the dome and sealed against his chest armor. Breathable air flooded the chamber.

  Seth pushed the seraph’s senses away. He remembered his own limbs, his own eyes. He flexed his fingers and took a deep breath within the seraph’s cockpit, once again nothing more than a human being. The cockpit walls spread out. He pushed himself out of the pilot alcove and exited the seraph.

  Other seraphs began to dock. Quennin landed to his right, Tevyr to his left.

  Through his neural link, his i-suit confirmed that the air was safe. Seth took off his helmet and tossed it into the cockpit. He strode through the tunnel, entered the dome, and looked around. The interior was as empty and lifeless as the planet.

  Quennin exited her own tunnel and walked over.

  “You have that face again,” she said.

  “Which one?”

  “The I’m-going-to-talk-to-Tevyr face.”

  “Hmm. Maybe.”

  Tevyr jogged out of his tunnel. Already other pilots were entering the concourse and gathering at the center. He hurried over to join them.

  “Tevyr,” Seth said. “A moment of your time.”

  His son stumbled to a halt.

  Seth stopped in front of him, hands clasped behind his back. “Care to explain yourself?”

  “I’m not sure I understand, Father.”

  “I think you know what I mean,” Seth said. “There was no need to engage the frigate so closely. Is your cannon not focused properly?”

  “No, Father.”

  “Then why get in that close?”

  Tevyr opened his mouth and began to form words, but quickly clapped his jaw shut. He bowed his head and said, “I have no excuse. I was trying to show off.”

  “For Pilot Nezrii?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “I see.” Seth let that last syllable hang ominously in the air, then finally said, “Perhaps something less foolhardy next time.”

  “I will certainly keep that in mind, Father.”

  “Now go. We will join you shortly.”

  “Yes, Father. Mother.” Tevyr bowed deeply to both pilots, then jogged over to the others.

  “It wasn’t that bad,” Quennin said when he was out of earshot. “And he did ask first.”

  “Our son is brash, but I can feel the beginnings of a great pilot within him,” Seth said. “We need to make sure he achieves that.”

  “If you restrict him too much, it may stifle the growth of his talent.”

  “I suppose you do have a point there.”

  “Besides,” Quennin put her arm around Seth’s waist and leaned close, “I remember you doing similar things to impress me.”

  “Maybe, but I wasn’t as stupid about it.”

  Quennin laughed quietly. “Oh, is that how you remember it?”

  ***

  Tevyr joined Jared and the other pilots.

  “Whew! I was worried there for a moment,” he said.

  “So, we’re heading to the core of the planet?” Jared asked.

  “Yeah,” Tevyr said.

  “And what’ll we find there?”

  “The Last Death.”

  “Creepy.” Jared brushed sandy blond locks out of his face and craned his neck. Fragments of a broken shell orbited high overhead. Their inner surfaces could have been mirrors that had experienced eons of micrometeorite impacts. A thin web-like support structure poked out of the edges.

  “And I thought Aktenzek was weird,” Jared said.

  “Hey now,” Tevyr said. “That’s my home you’re talking about.”

  “It’s not my fault your home is weird. Have you been here before?”

  “Nope. It’s my first pilgrimage, too.”

  “Quiet,” Yonu whispered. “They’re coming.”

  Seth and Quennin walked over. The EN pilots stood rigidly at attention. The Aktenai pilots bowed.

  Jared pointed up. “Sirs, what’s with the debris in orbit?”

  “They’re remnants of an attempt to save this world,” Quennin said. “Imayirot, once called Ittenrashik, was the first world the Aktenai colonized after being exiled to this universe. This is where the Grendeni and Aktenai separated and where the Bane committed its greatest atrocity.”

  Quennin’s mentioning of the Bane hushed the crowd. Aktenai pilots bowed their heads in quiet remembrance. EN pilots glanced at one another with suddenly worried expressions.

  “The Bane did this?” Jared said. “A single creature destroyed this entire world?”

  “That’s right.” Quennin gestured towards a group of clear discs cut into the dome’s floor. “Come on. You are all pilots. It is your privilege to see this place with your own eyes.”

  The pilots walked onto one of the discs, which was wide enough for all of them to stand on comfortably. A guardrail rose from the edge and stopped at waist height.

  Quennin moved to the center of the group.

  “Ittenrashik, when our ancestors found it, was very similar to Earth,” she said. “A lush planet with vast oceans and wild landmasses teeming with life. Here they began to build a civilization. It wasn’t easy, but they had the leadership of the Original Eleven to guide them through any hardship.”

  Quennin linked a command to the disc, which then dropped down with great speed.

  “Whoa!” Jared grabbed the railing.

  Gravity remained normal despite the acceleration. The spire walls were transparent from the inside, affording a view of Imayirot as they descended.

  “Keep it together, Jared,” Tevyr whispered.

  “Sorry, but we’re really high up.”

  “You’re a seraph pilot. How can you be afraid of heights?”

  Seth cleared his throat. The banter ended.

  “Life was difficult but not impossible,” Quennin said. “And a way home had been sent with them in the form of the Gate. The Gate was theirs to use once the Bane had been killed and theirs to guard against the Bane. But, of course, the Gate also represented the Bane’s path back to the Homeland, and so it was hidden.

  “When the Bane finally attacked, there was no way our ancestors could harm it. How can you damage something frozen in time, something that cannot be changed? This terrible monster turned people, buildings, and even entire cities into dust in seconds, letting them feel millennia in the blink of an eye. The Bane demanded access to the Gate, but the Aktenai refused. And so, the Bane went on a rampage.”

  The disc descended towards the black surface of Imayirot. A large cracked dome came into view at the base of the spire.

  “Where is the Gate now?” Jared asked.

  “Safe,” Seth said. “The Original Eleven know where it is hidden. That is enough for us to know.”

  “After being denied the Gate,” Quennin said, “the Bane entered into a furious rage and committed the unthinkable. It pushed this entire planet into an axis of accelerated time. To Aktenai not on the planet, including the Original Eleven, the moment was barely measurable. To Ittenrashik and its inhabitants, that moment was an eternity.
”

  The disc entered a domed city, gray and utterly lifeless. Dim lights from the spire revealed long stretches of rubble surrounding skeletal structures. Some buildings stood tall but decayed. Others had fallen over or leaned into their neighbors.

  “Being pushed into another time axis had a side effect,” Quennin said. “While the planet’s inhabitants were still alive and capable of surviving, the planet slowly grew colder. The rest of the universe was at a standstill in their eyes. There was no sun, no stars in the sky above Ittenrashik. Only a joyless black film, a barrier that could not be crossed and that absorbed every morsel of heat and radiation that touched it. Ittenrashik grew colder, and the inhabitants fought to survive.”

  Tevyr nudged Jared. “That’s what the shell fragments in orbit were for.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  Quennin nodded. “One of many attempts. At first there were domes like this one. Simple encapsulations to preserve thermal energy. Grander attempts were made later to prevent heat loss. Heat was also produced in a variety of methods, prolonging the inevitable. Over eons, they consumed the oceans for fusible hydrogen, leaving nothing but empty pits on the surface.

  “The inhabitants made many brave attempts to combat the problems. However, entropy was always present, and the years went on for an eternity. The people of Ittenrashik began to break apart. Despite this, many banded together to build the mirror shell, hoping to enclose the entire planet. Others retreated towards the core. Each day saw the planet grow colder. Nothing could halt the remorseless advance of entropy.”

  Lights from the disc’s edge illuminated a vast open shaft leading into Imayirot’s subterranean depths. They descended rapidly through immense shafts that intersected one subterranean city after another. Some of those cities stretched on for hundreds of kilometers, their grand chambers filled with the cold remnants of dead societies.

  “Wars eventually broke out,” Quennin said. “How could they not? They fought over energy, food, air, and other resources. The planet’s oceans shrank, and the atmosphere froze. Survivors headed towards the core as heat became more and more precious, hoping to use the planet as a buffer.”

  The disc passed city after city, sometimes heading at diagonals, but always moving towards the planet’s core.

  “How long did this go on?” Jared asked.

  “Anyone?” Seth asked.

  Yonu stepped forward.

  “Pilot Nezrii,” Seth said.

  “Ittenrashik was pushed into the accelerated time axis for twenty million years,” Yonu said. “The inhabitants only lasted a fraction of that time.”

  “Correct,” Seth said.

  Yonu raised an eyebrow at Tevyr.

  “What?” Tevyr whispered. “I could have answered that too.”

  “Sure you could have,” Yonu whispered.

  “Ah. We’re almost there,” Quennin said.

  “Where?” Jared asked.

  “The Last Death,” Quennin said.

  The disc passed through a slender, roughly-cut shaft. It opened up into a small sphere much more primitive than the earlier cities. This close to the core, gravity was almost nonexistent, and the living space appeared adapted for that. The walls were lined with a honeycomb of rooms, machinery…

  And bodies.

  Thousands and thousands of bodies, all dried up and mummified.

  “Super creepy,” Jared said.

  “Would anyone care to explain?” Seth asked.

  Yonu stepped forward again.

  “Anyone besides Pilot Nezrii? No? Go ahead then.”

  “The water in their bodies was extracted for fusible hydrogen,” Yonu said.

  “Correct.”

  The disc settled against an enclosed walkway and stopped. The clear tunnel led to one of many dissimilar compartments in the sphere’s honeycomb. Pilots followed Quennin into a small room and gathered behind her.

  Quennin pointed to two corpses, both clothed in insulated pressure suits. One was a small child. The other was a headless body with a small device in one hand.

  “The last two people on Ittenrashik to die,” Quennin said. “The first was the child shortly after her birth, too weak to live. The second was the mother, killing herself after losing the child.”

  The EN pilots crowded against the railing, taking turns gawking and pointing at the corpses. All of the Aktenai pilots kept their distance.

  “The Bane did all of this,” Quennin said. “It inflicted incalculable pain and suffering on our ancestors. When it finally released this world, the Bane was near death. Torturing an entire planet stretched even its limits. The monster fled into the depths of space, leaving this dead world behind. Ittenrashik had become Imayirot.”

  “And one creature did all of this?” Jared whispered.

  “Yeah, I know,” Tevyr said.

  “Scary.”

  “The Bane cannot be permitted to exist,” Seth said. “This is our Great Mission, the mission to which all Aktenai are dedicated, the mission the Grendeni abandoned long ago. And though our Earther allies may not believe in our Great Mission, your belief is not required. The Bane is real. The Great Mission is real, and one day we will be called upon to face that monster again. Let us continue to fight side by side. Let us continue to strengthen our Alliance. For together, we shall face and defeat any foe.”

  Chapter 5

  Fallen

  Assistant Administrator Dominic Haeger breathed in the fresh air from the delicatessen’s balcony, two hundred stories high. Though he could take on almost any human male’s appearance, he had not used the ability since returning to the Grendeni twenty years ago. With his handsome, likable face and blond ponytail, old “comrades” in the EN SpecOps would still recognize him.

  From the balcony, Dominic gazed across the vast habitat cylinder within the Grendeni schism Righteous Anger. All around him, buildings of the northcity reached up towards the central axis of the schism’s enclosed cylinder. Nothing so crude as rotation provided gravity in the habitat, and the northcity buildings could reach up and almost touch the very center of the schism.

  Further north, the buildings rose until they finally met, sealing off the habitat cylinder from the northern factories and space docks. Dominic thought it resembled a giant geode, one made of metal and glass instead of crystal.

  A cylindrical landscape stretched out before him, capped at the opposite end by the southcity. The interior simulated life on a planet in ways similar to the habitat discs within the fortress planet Aktenzek. Lakes, beaches, villas, gentle grassy hills, and emerald forests filled the schism with lushness and visual splendor. A long axial tube ran through the center, generating daylight.

  The Righteous Anger, like all other schisms, glided gracefully through the voids between star systems, hidden from the Aktenai and anyone else who would dare harm them. The Grendeni were a nomadic people, constantly on the move, and schisms were their vessels. No single person knew the location of every schism, and no accurate census of the Grendeni had been produced in thousands of years.

  Administrator Gurgella sat at the balcony’s only table, devouring the last of the meat lathered in a tangy brown sauce. This short, bald, and rather ugly man commanded the Righteous Anger. The right breast of his green jacket bore the gold sigils of his rank.

  “You should really try some of this.” Gurgella munched sloppily on the avian meat.

  “I am not hungry, administrator,” Dominic said, though he knew the bones to be brittle and quite tasty.

  “Come now. Even freaks like you have to eat.”

  Dominic said nothing, but thought: You do realize I could rip you in two, you bloated, worthless bureaucrat.

  “Come, Dominic.” Gurgella wiped at his mouth and hands with a napkin. “You are avoiding the issue.”

  “The archangels are not ready. I have made my opinion clear on this. It doesn’t matter how many times you ask me. I will not change my mind.”

  Gurgella set the soiled napkin down on his empty plate. “I understand
your position, Dominic, but I am receiving considerable pressure from the Executives.”

  A green-liveried servant came to his side, his platter ready with steaming rolled towels.

  Gurgella selected one and unfurled it with a snap of his wrist. “The Executives want the archangels deployed as soon as possible.”

  “Where have I heard that before?” Dominic muttered.

  “Excuse me?”

  “They aren’t ready!”

  Gurgella shook his head. “I understand the desire to perfect your weapons, but we have already invested considerable time and resources into this project. The Executives are eager for payoff.”

  “And they’ll have it, but I need more time.”

  “Time is something we do not have, Dominic,” Gurgella said. “Every moment sees Aktenzek strengthening its seraph squadrons. Every battle sees those accursed machines tearing through our fleets. The Executives haven’t launched a meaningful offensive in years, and we lost every major battle before that. Is any of this getting through that thick head of yours?”

  “It doesn’t change any of the facts. We should not deploy them.”

  “Come now, Dominic. We’ve produced hundreds of archangels in this schism alone.”

  “Yes, we have the archangels. But the pilots, administrator. The pilots are not ready. There are reasons why the breeders keep calling them berserkers.”

  “They seem stable enough.”

  “They’re borderline psychotic!”

  “As long as they’re psychopaths that kill seraphs, I see no problems.”

  “You simply won’t listen.”

  Gurgella stood up and tossed his towel onto the table. He tugged his jacket down, pulling out the creases. “The Executives will not wait years while you tinker with your breeding programs. Now, let’s have a look at the latest batch.”

  “Of course, administrator.” Dominic picked his jacket off the railing and pulled it over his white tunic. He was still buttoning it up when he followed Gurgella out of the delicatessen.

  “Unless the pilots truly cannot perform, I see no reason not to deploy the archangels.”

  “Administrator, the—”

  “I’ve heard enough of your excuses. Frankly, I’m sick of them.”