The Mandate of Heaven (3 page)

“I thought that you would never ask,” he smirked, taking a step closer.  “Although it does make me wonder if you are wearing anything underneath.”

“That's for me to know and you to find out,” she replied with a cheeky smile, taking a step forward of her own, although hers could only best be described as a hesitant shuffle, until the two of them were almost touching. Her hands, the only part of her not tightly knotted, coming to rest on his chest.  “Then we can discuss your very improper—”

For the second time that night, she halted mid-sentence.  A look of surprise and shock on her face, but this time it wasn’t wrapped up in fear, but pain.  She fell forward into his arms, his hands immediately encircling her waist to catch her.  Shocked at her sudden behaviour, horrified when one of his hands came back smeared in blood.  Meanwhile a red spot started to form on the pristine white sheet, at chest height, the red dot rapidly growing larger, and larger.

Alex looked up from the pained expression on her face, behind her, towards the darkened corner of her room.  While still dark and the moonlight casting more shadows than illumination, he could clearly spot the outline of a man, pistol still raised, pointing directly at them.

Time seemed to slow down, to stop, the scene seared into his consciousness, as if it had been etched with diamond.  He took in everything.  The outline of the man, the uniform of one of High-Lord Hadley’s guards, eyes glittering like broken shards of ice.  The pistol was a black metallic object firmly held in his hands, the barrel unnaturally elongated by the bulbous silencer attached to the front of it.  As their eyes met across the length of the room, a smirk tugged at the other man’s lips, as he once again raised the pistol, his finger tightening on the trigger.

The frozen scene shattered into a million pieces of glass and Alex heard a roaring in his ears, something expanding in the pit of his stomach, spreading throughout his body, like an angry dragon unfurling from a long forgotten slumber.  For the longest time Alex had thought that all of his emotions, his feelings, had been consumed in the darkness of that six-by-eight cell that they had left him to rot in, but he had been mistaken.

A fury like he had rarely known took hold of him and the next thing that he knew the assassin was falling to his knees, his pistol long discarded, forgotten by his feet.  His hands went to his neck, or what was left of it, after the blast of energy speared him from across the room, slashing across his throat, ripping it open.

Alex blinked, observing the scene and the fusion pistol now in his hand.  Unsure if it was the weapon that had killed the man or simply the intensity of his own rage.  Shouts of alarm and lights started to shine throughout the residence, alerting him to the fact that the altercation had not gone by unnoticed.  Still, all that was forgotten by a whimper of pain from Jessica, still cradled in his arms.

He turned his attention back to her, noticing that her face had already turned a deathly shade of white and, without realising, he was supporting her full weight.  Were it not for him, she would have long since crumpled to the floor.  Quickly returning the pistol to his side, now with two hands free he scooped her up into his arms and, with a few long strides, they were once again at the foot of her bed.  He gently lowered her back down onto it, in the same place where he had first come to observe her.

He did not need to take a second look at the wound to know that it was fatal, the round obviously designed to fragment on impact.  It had torn a massive entry wound in her back and little remained of her chest, but a ragged, torn, wound.  Without knowing it, she had unconsciously saved his life, but at the cost of her own.

He tore his gaze away from her own, looking up towards the entrance to the bedroom.  He could hear the sound of heavy footsteps, boots, many of them and fast approaching.  He had to leave, immediately.

“Please, don’t leave me,” the pitifully weak voice rooted him to the spot, almost as if reading his mind.  “I don’t want to die alone.”

His horrified gaze was drawn back to her equally terrified one.  Alex opened his mouth to reassure her that help was on its way and that she would be perfectly fine.  The words died in his throat.  She wouldn’t be fine and they both knew it.  He could not lie to her and tell her otherwise.  Therefore, ignoring the rapidly approaching danger, he simply nodded, falling to his knees, so he could be closer to her.  Their faces were inches apart, hers resting on the bed, but still her eyes stared into his, wide, unblinking.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, the despair easily recognisable in his voice.  “I never meant for any harm to come to you.”

“Why? Why did you come?” she asked with difficulty, her eyes searching his, as if they could find the answer to the question by themselves.

“Because I wanted to see you in person, to touch you.  To reassure myself that you were real,” he trailed off, not knowing how to put into words a thousand different thoughts and feelings that he felt.

But some of those must have been visible in his eyes, as she coughed, whispering, “Couldn’t you have just made an appointment?”

“I think your diary was full,” Alex joked, but it fell flat.

“Who are you?” she murmured, her eyes drifting closed for the last time.

Alex blinked.  Who was he?  He seemed to have spent his entire life asking himself that question, but none of the answers seemed to fit.  In all honesty he didn’t know.  So he answered with the only truthful reply that he could.  “Alex.  My name is Alex.”

“Thank you for the kiss.  Alex,” she whispered with her dying breath and was then still.

Alex could only stare, uncomprehendingly, at her eyes that gazed back at him vacant and empty.  Never again would they sparkle with delight, her eyelashes fluttering closed in ecstasy the way they had when he had first kissed her. Reaching out for the last time, he delicately touched her lips with his finger, still swollen from their earlier kisses.  “I won’t forget you. I’ll remember you every day, for as long as I live.  That way you’ll live on, through me,” he promised her.  However, heavy footsteps behind him made him swing round, while quickly rising to his feet, and looked into the astonished twin pair of eyes belonging to two soldiers who stared back at him.

It only took them both a moment to recover from the shock, taking in the damning scene with a swift glance.  Lady Jessica, dead, lying in a pool of her own blood.  Another guard, slumped on the floor, similarly dead.  With this armed stranger, blood on his hands, cloaked in black standing over both their bodies.  As one they scrambled for the pistols at their side, bringing them both to aim on the assassin standing a few feet in front of them.

“This isn’t my doing,” Alex explained swiftly, raising both of his hands above his head, when faced by the business end of two deadly looking pistols.  “I can explain,” he started, taking a step towards the pair.  However, after taking in the scene with a swift glance, the two men had already reached their own conclusions.  It was the step forward that was Alex’s final mistake, as both men instinctively pulled the triggers.

The echo of the combined gunshots was deafening in the enclosed room, not that Alex cared, as the first round took him in the shoulder, spinning him around, a burning pain spreading from his shoulder, silencing any other words that he might have spoken.  At least the impact of the first saved his life, for it caused the second, aimed at his head, to miss.

He stumbled backwards a couple of steps, instinctively reaching for his own pistol, but faltered.  Did he really want any more deaths on his conscience tonight?  Wasn’t one already enough?  The momentary hesitation was enough to prove fatal, as the two guards didn’t waver, instead simply taking aim once again, both firing for a second time.

This time neither failed to miss, the almost simultaneous impacts catapulting him backwards, knocking him through the open balcony doors and over the balustrade.  For the second time that night he found himself falling, falling, but this time with nothing to break his fall.

A scream was torn from his lips, as once again the darkness reached out to take hold of him, but this time, never to let go.

A great darkness swept over the Imperium, as one-by-one the lights were extinguished, until none remained.  The people cried out for a hero, but none was ever forthcoming.  They had all long since packed their bags and left, or perhaps they just never existed?

—From the journal of
Lord Alexander Greystone
,

Arcturus, Sirius System, 2544

My earliest memories were of sitting in my father’s library, in one of his high-backed, worn, leather chairs listening to the crackle of the fire, feeling its warmth lull me gently to sleep.  That fire was always burning brightly, even at the height of summer, but I was too young to understand that some chills went soul-deep and could never be banished.  I used to sit there, watching my father, seated as always behind his desk, scratching away with a pen into his leather bound journal.  For many years I thought this was synonymous with family, just the two of us, alone, in that room with the comfortable silence resting between us.

I never knew my mother.

I think for many years I didn’t even know what a mother was.  It was just my father and I.  He meant the world to me, my sun and my moon, the centre of my universe.  I vaguely recall another, older woman, but one day she simply vanished and I never saw her again.  I asked my father about her once, but he simply brushed aside the question, explaining that she couldn’t visit any more.  It wasn’t until I was older that I found out that she had died, passing away in her sleep one night.  Maybe that was why my father never mentioned my mother?  Doing this would have involved a long, and complex, discussion about life—and death.  Perhaps that was just too much for him to cope with, already having experienced so much grief in his life, now left to raise a young boy, alone.  While our home was never filled with joy or laughter, I remember feeling safe and loved.  Warmed, both by the fire and my father’s constant, reassuring, presence.  The knowledge that no matter what happened he would always be there for me, to support me, certain that he would never allow any harm to befall me.

As I got older and started attending the local school, I met others and heard them describe their families, only then did I begin to understand just how different mine was.  For one thing I quickly began to notice a distance between the other children and me.  While they would be friends with me and talk to me, there was always a barrier between us that I couldn’t overcome.  For a long time, I thought that it was because of me.  It wasn’t me of course, but my father.

Lord Alexander Greystone.

It wasn’t just the title, or the imposing residence that I grew up in, but the almost mythical aura that had built up around my father over the years.  For a start, nobody was exactly sure what my father looked like, as he hadn’t been seen in public for almost twenty-five years.  Those that did remember him did so with a certain degree of apprehension—and fear.  For the story had long persisted that he had once killed five men with lightning bolts.  I, of course, dismissed this as absurd.  My father was an imposing man but he could no more throw lightning than I.  As for him ever killing anybody, I similarly rejected this.  My father was a quiet, introspective man, who preferred the solitude of his own company and would never hurt anybody.

Events later in my life would disprove many of these assumptions, but I am getting ahead of myself.

The other thing that set me apart from the other children was my education.  Not the reading, writing or basic arithmetic that we learnt during lessons, but the ones I received outside school—from my father.  They started off simply as bedtime stories in my father’s library, surrounded by his books, seated around that blazing fire.  He would read to me until I fell asleep in his arms, but what he was actually doing was giving me an education that went far beyond most.

For I learnt about history and events from other distant worlds.

He educated me about the Imperium, the various High-Lords and occasionally Ladies, that ruled it, but not as it was taught in school.  There they taught us these people were Gods that walked among us, nurtured us and guided us.  Instead I learnt the truth, that they were nothing of the sort, but just men and women, like you and I.

Heresy.

He would often read me stories about our distant home world, Earth, before the great exodus.  Describing the planet and the massive starships that carried us from there, almost four centuries earlier.  He showed me pictures of both from his library, ancient books that perhaps had been carried on one of those very vessels?  For every picture of such ships gliding through the heavens, he showed me many more of Earth, with such strange plants and creatures.  Many of them made me laugh, as they seemed such fantastical things.  Animals with necks so long that they could reach tall trees and another with a nose long enough that it could consume food and water from the very ground.

I once asked my father why we would have ever left such a wondrous place, as it sounded so different from our current home.  At this question his expression turned grim and he described an Earth that was groaning under the weight of overpopulation, widespread famine and pollution, lacking even the most basic of resources, as most had long since been depleted.  Eventually it became far more cost effective to mine these on other planets within the System. Firstly, the rare precious metals that underpinned much of our modern technology, then later, with the adoption of fusion power, the raw isotopes that fuelled those reactors.

The situation on Earth however continued to deteriorate, to the point that many were happy to escape to artificial colonies. First on the Moon and then later the inner planets.  Even more desperate communities, those persecuted for their religious or political beliefs, took the ultimate decision of joining colony ships heading out of the System, for many life-bearing planets had been discovered decades earlier by remote observation.  These were all multi-generational ships, as the nearest systems were dozens of light-years distant and it took decades of acceleration to even approach the speed of light and just as long to decelerate.

Most were lost.

The limiting factor being the speed of light, that universal speed limit that stubbornly refused to yield.  In the end it took a brilliant young physicist to turn the problem on its head, to come up with a solution.  For if the speed of light was a universal physical constant, then they just needed to find a different universe!  Building on research conducted early in the twenty-first century by his great-grandfather, Miguel Alcubierre, he built the first working Alcubierre drive.  This involved generating a dimensional bubble of the thirteenth dimension, long having been predicted by string theory, this dimension was unique, a mirror of our own, but consisting of negative mass.   This resulted in an energy-density field lower than that of the surrounding space, causing space in front of the drive to contract and space behind it to expand, resulting in faster-than-light travel.

With a working prototype, but unable to take it to the next level, Alcubierre approached Edward Hadley, a pioneer in early, deep space, propulsion.  The proposal was idealistic—a joint venture to develop the drive, for the betterment of humanity.

Edward Hadley, CEO of Hadley Industries was a visionary and immediately recognised the awesome potential for the new drive.  The answer to over-population and the lack of resources; humanity could now escape to the stars!  He quickly agreed to the proposal by Alcubierre and soon a working production engine was developed, proving beyond any doubt that the technology worked.

Hadley then murdered Alcubierre, forever ensuring that the invention remained his secret, alone.

Hadley Industries proceeded to market and sell the only faster-than-light engine, to any and all that could afford one.  For Hadley was a visionary and had clearly seen the potential—for vast profits.  With the first batch of Alcubierre drives retailing at a little over one billion dollars, per engine, they were far beyond the reach of ordinary individuals. Indeed all the first batch were purchased by multi-national companies.  What then followed was something akin to the American gold rush of the late nineteen-century, with a frantic scramble to acquire the nearest planets, either rich in mineral resources or with a habitable atmosphere.

As the only supplier of faster-than-light engines, within a decade Hadley Industries had become the richest corporation on the planet. Meanwhile Edward Hadley, founder and sole proprietor, became the world’s richest man, with a net personal wealth in excess of one trillion.  He was succeeded by his son, the first High-Lord of the Twenty Second Century, but others were soon to follow.

The multi-national companies that initially purchased the Alcubierre drives were soon able to undercut all their competitors, with access to cheap, limitless resources.  Within the next few decades a massive round of consolidation had taken place, with these companies growing rapidly and acquiring any and all competitors.

By the end of the Twenty Third Century, only a few dozen mega-corporations remained in existence.  This was a golden age for humanity—and government coffers.  For the drives brought rapidly falling prices, accelerated growth and tax receipts swelled.  However, this was not to last.

Hadley Industries, for years having been plagued with industrial espionage and an ever-increasing tax bill, were the first to move their entire operation off-planet and the rest soon followed.  Within the first half of the Twenty Fourth Century, corporation tax fell by seventy-five percent and within a decade this was matched by a fall in personal income tax, as the workforce was forced to follow the companies off-planet.  By the end of the Twenty Fourth Century central government had practically ceased to exist, instead replaced by local administrative bodies, run by committees, overseeing local issues only.

In the two hundred years since the invention of the Alcubierre drive, over three hundred planets had been settled, ninety-nine percent of them run by the mega-corporations.  They controlled every aspect of daily life, they made all the significant decisions and, in effect, they became company planets.  It became known as the Imperium, which roughly translates as ‘power to command’ and the mega-corporations had all the power, especially those who owned and ran them.

For many of these companies, long plagued by poor succession planning, had learnt from their Chaebol family-controlled cousins, which bred nepotism and cronyism.  Over the years they had all slowly evolved into multi-generational family dynasties.  The owners of these companies had wealth beyond imagination, income that made the combined gross domestic product of Earth look like loose change.  With little ability to expand to new markets, for each mega-corporation guarded their own markets jealously, pleasure became their number one priority and their appetite for it grew with no bounds.  People, ships and even planets simply became playthings for them; a deadly engagement between two mega-corporations involving several dozen warships wasn’t likely to even rouse the owner from his, or her, slumber.

They became the High-Lords of the Imperium, answerable to nobody, beholden to nothing.  With excessive genetic manipulation over the years, they had extended their lifespan considerably, immune to almost all diseases. For most people they became Gods, and yet even Gods can sometimes stumble and fall.

*****

“Michael!”

I looked up towards the origin of the call, as my name was shouted from the other side of the river.  River was probably an over-exaggeration as it was really nothing more than a fast flowing stream, running parallel to the path that I had been following.  It was a well-trod, dirt path and for good reason.  Having trekked this route, twice per day for the past ten years, I assumed that I had mostly formed it.  “Have you heard the news?” the voice carried on regardless, unaware of my own internal musings.

I recognised the red face and puffing cheeks of my childhood friend.  Even from a young age Nicholas, or Nick as he preferred to be called, had been overweight and age had not been kind to him—that and the cream-puff cakes that he was overly fond of.  With bright blue eyes, a golden mane of hair and a fondness for garish coloured clothing, he had always been popular with the ladies.  The two of us couldn’t have been more different; as compared to the shorter, stockier man, I stood a foot taller, with black hair, brown eyes and darker skin tones.  Probably from all the sun that I received trekking the several kilometres each day from my father’s home to the Capital. In reality it was nothing more than a small town, where I worked in the one and only spaceport.

“What news?” I shouted back with a frown.  I’d spent most of the day buried inside a small planetary shuttle, trying to track down the intermittent power loss to the engine. After ten hours of trying without success, I was hungry, tired and already in a foul mood.

“You mean that you
really
haven’t heard?” Nick exclaimed in delight, as it was extremely rare for him to know something that I didn’t.

“I’m hungry.  I’m tired.  I still have a long trek home.  So why don’t you just cut to the chase and tell me, okay?” I replied, rubbing my forehead tiredly.  Trying hard to supress the irritation in my voice, but failing miserably.

“It’s your fault that you have to walk so far every day.  I’ve been telling you for years now that you should buy an apartment in town.  I don’t understand why you won’t.”

I only just supressed the urge to roll my eyes, as it was a common disagreement between the two of us and one that we had a couple of times a week.  Secretly, I thought that the only reason that Nick kept badgering me about it, was that he had few friends and wanted somebody to accompany him out with the local girls, when they all congregated in the evening, after the few factories and offices had shut.  “You know why.  I won’t leave my father there, alone.”