Chapter 8
Chapter 8
But you said in your heart,
I'll ascend to heaven;
I'll raise my throne above the stars of God,
And I'll sit on the mount of assembly
In the recesses of the north.
I'll ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I'll make myself like the Most High.
.
Isaiah 14:13-14
.
Galactic Standard Date: 152,323.02 AE
Haven-3: Alliance Hall of Parliament
Prime Minister Lucifer
LUCIFER
Haven-3 was the third planet in an artificially crafted solar system of one natural sun and two smaller artificial ones so the sun never set in the Alliance capital. Fairy tale spires twisted gracefully towards the sky, sleek, modern buildings of glass and steel and composite plastic so strong, not even an earthquake could shake them from their pillars. From her spaceport, traffic ebbed and flowed to every planet and solar system in the galaxy. At its center stood a massive building, round, so that no delegate ever sat closer to the empty throne than any other.
A tall, serpentine creature which vaguely resembled a dragon ascended the steps, leaning heavily upon his cane. The Speaker of the Commons was a Mu'aqqibat
[28]
dragon, not a
real
dragon, like Shay'tan was, but one of the species which preceded the formation of the Alliance. He stopped in front of the podium and fished out his spectacles before taking out his gavel.
"The Prime Minister will now address Parliament," he said in a formal voice.
Lucifer ascended the central platform, his niveous white wings draped artfully behind his back like the Eternal Emperor's mantle. Balcony after balcony cascaded upwards towards the dome; each delegate representing a homeworld in an empire which spanned almost half the galaxy. The delegates were as varied as the worlds they represented: mammals, insectoids, amphibians and other life forms. Each species had a homeworld where they'd evolved naturally under the protection of the Eternal Emperor until they'd achieved a level of sentience sufficient to earn membership in the Galactic Alliance. Each species had a voice to assert their rights; every species except for one…
His...
The delegates chattered, cutting deals as elected officials were wont to do.
"Didn't we already vote on this deal?" a delegate asked.
The Emperor vetoed it," the delegate next to him replied. "Stabbed his own son in the back."
"I'm not about to override the Eternal Emperor!" the first one said.
"Why not?" the second delegate said. "The sonofabitch abandoned us for two hundred years, and
now
he shows up and wants to be our god?"
Lucifer pressed his lips together, waiting for the General Assembly to quiet down.
The cacophony continued; a feeding frenzy of back-room deals; this vote for that one; cast your vote for this pet project and I'll release your bill from committee. Lucifer closed his eyes and focused on the flow of self-interest which, due to the gift of empathy bestowed upon him by a half-Seraphim mother, allowed him to visualize the delegate's desires.
Enhanced Angelic senses registered the sybaritic tickle of expensive aftershave, aged brandy, and the lingering scent of
todóg
.
[29]
The acoustics were such that the slightest whisper carried across the chamber. His eerie platinum eyes scanned the coliseum; perceptive, cynical, reflective as he put a name to the strongest of those desires and noted the places he might bring persuasion to bear. At last he signaled the Speaker to begin the show.
"In the name of the Eternal Emperor—" the tall, serpent-like Speaker pounded his gavel "—I hereby call this joint session of Parliament to order!"
The delegates stared down from their lofty balconies. Once already he'd passed this measure by the slenderest of margins. It had ignited such a firestorm that the Eternal Emperor
himself
had intervened to slap it down with a rare imperial veto.
Determination stiffened Lucifer's spine as he ruffled his snow white feathers. He turned his good side towards the cameras which broadcast these proceedings to every television network in the Alliance.
"Today I come to you not as the adopted son of the Eternal Emperor," Lucifer said, "a man who by virtue of an accident of fortune had a voice bestowed upon him because my father appointed
me
to represent your interests—" he lowered his wings into a gesture of humility "—but as an Angelic, a species whose only purpose is to lay down our lives to protect
you,
the naturally evolved races."
He moved to position himself before an enormous, golden Leonid
[30]
and an even burlier bay Centauri
[31]
who he'd appointed to stand guard just at the edge of the stage. He turned back to face the cameras which panned like greedy vulture's beaks to follow him, cognizant of the fact their refractive lenses would make it appear the two hybrids stood directly behind him.
"For as long as the Alliance has existed—" Lucifer spoke into the cameras "—the Emperor has relied upon the stick of military might to keep the Sata'an Empire in check."
He gestured towards the lion-man and half-horse-human hybrid.
"To achieve this end, he created four species of genetically engineered super-soldiers: the Angelic Air Force, Leonid Multi-Purpose Fighters, the Centauri Cavalry, and the Merfolk Navy."
[32]
He made eye contact with the delegates he'd tagged earlier as impressionable, the ones who stared down from their lofty perches like the ascended beings who forever dabbled in the affairs of mortals. Sunlight streamed down from the atrium like an omen from She-Who-Is, creating a brilliant golden halo around his white-blonde hair and framing the perfection of his too-symmetrical features, reminding the delegates he was the adopted son of their emperor and god.
"For 150,000 years, our military superiority has kept an uneasy balance between the Sata'anic Empire and our own Galactic Alliance," he continued. "But now a new threat has dawned against our Alliance. Not the external threat of Shay’tan, but one of our own making."
He paused to make eye contact with a delegate to his left, and then to his right, before turning back to face the cameras. He lowered his voice as if he revealed a secret, just low enough to force the delegates to all lean forward to hear.
"The armies that defend us, ladies and gentlemen, are a dying species."
A gasp rippled through the assembly, to hear him speak their shame before the cameras, making it official, making their weakness
real
. The perpetual cacophony of self-interest began anew:
"My constituents were angry I voted to outsource our jobs."
"Who cares if the hybrids die?"
"What does that have to do with -me-?"
A feisty young Spiderid
[33]
Lord stood up, a freshman delegate who had not yet learned that when there were cameras present, it was always prudent to exercise restraint.
"YOUR race is dying!" the Spiderid shouted. "Our race is doing just fine!" He turned to the delegates on either side of him as they chortled back a snigger. "So tell Shay'tan he can take his trade deal and shove it up his scaly tail!"
The discord grew chaotic as Parliament twittered like magpies coveting a shiny golden trinket. Such forthrightness on the record was a political blunder, but the freshman lord voiced a sentiment which many not-so-secretly shared.
Lucifer's silver eyes bored into the Spiderid's compound ones as he brought both hands to his heart and allowed his expression to soften.
"Yes," Lucifer said gently. "
My
race is dying. My race, that protected
your
race until it evolved enough to join this Alliance, is dying."
He drew his hand into a fist and stared at it, as though he were making a decision. In the pause, the cameras shifted, zooming inwards, zooming outwards, placing the dispute between himself and the sentiment the Spiderid lord had dared voice into the public eye of a centillion television viewers.
"My race, which kicked Shay’tan off of
your
planet when he tried to annex it, and you came running to
us
for help, is DYING!"
He raised his voice into a shout as he shook his fist at the mouthy Spiderid lord.
"And now that millennia of constant warfare has reduced our numbers
so low
that we now have more pieces of equipment than hybrids in existence to
man
that equipment, my race is coming to
your
race to beg for help so we don't all go extinct!"
He slammed his fist onto the podium, his eerie silver eyes flashing in fury. The Spiderid delegate squirmed in his seat while the others who only moments before sniggered now glared at the young lord, publicly distancing themselves from the foolish upstart. Lucifer gave the mouthy Spiderid a smile that did not reach his eyes.
"It is
good
that the Spiderid species is thriving," Lucifer said. "It means the hybrids didn't sacrifice their lives in vain."
He stared up at the delegates perched upon their balconies like vultures.
"When the Emperor created us," he said, "he declared our sole purpose was to serve the naturally evolved species. We were denied Alliance citizenship because you feared we might abuse the genetic enhancements he grafted onto our DNA."
He gestured towards an empty seat, left ceremonially empty to commemorate a planet no longer with the Alliance.
"Once upon a time, the source race which spawned our species still walked among us. Because they saw us as their children, they made sure we hybrids didn't languish without a voice."
"But then, 74,000 years ago, an asteroid hit Nibiru.
[34]
And just like that—" he snapped his fingers "—all of humanity was destroyed."
He gave his deceased progenitors a moment of silence.
"When humans went extinct, they took with them the closest thing we hybrids had to a homeworld. They took away our voice. And they took with them the genetic diversity we needed to survive."
He spread his arms in the T-like posture of a victim strapped to a Tokoloshe
[35]
feeding pole. His wings drooped as though they were too heavy for him to lift. He bowed his head, a martyr offering himself as a sacrifice for the greater good.
"As the Alliance expanded, the galaxy looked to
us
to police their problems. So you took our species
off
of your homeworlds and put us into ships in space. "Then you declared hybrids have to serve 500 years in the military, not just 20 like the volunteers, because if we don't get killed in battle, we can live that long."
His voice rose in anger.
"But it didn't end there!" he shouted. "When hybrid birthrates dropped even further, you pulled our females off of your planets and made
them
start fighting, as well!"
He whirled to face the ancient races that had been in existence longer than there had been an Alliance, his wings flared like a raptor. Their base of power depended upon maintaining a slave army.
"And then six hundred years ago you told us it was forbidden to form relations for any reason except to begat offspring to perpetuate the glory of the Alliance!" he shouted. "Or even sire offspring with the same partner twice! Because we've become so inbred that genetic diversity is now an issue!"
He flapped his wings. His beautiful, white wings that meant his species could never have a voice because those wings had not evolved naturally onto his back.
"All because the genetic modifications the Emperor gave us to maintain these—" he yanked out a snowy white feather "—these wings. And the other genetic modifications which enslave our species to serve the rest of you are a
recessive gene!"
He threw the feather into the air. A ray of sunlight caught it from the atrium above as though She-Who-Is herself wished to say,
'see!'
The feather floated down in silence. Only the shuffling of feet and an occasional cough broke the silence in the great hall as the feather hit the ground.
"These improvements—" Lucifer flapped his wings "—require so much selective breeding to maintain that we've INBRED OURSELVES INTO EXTINCTION!"
He stepped over to an Electrophori
[36]
delegate and stared down the conservative religious leader from an ancient world of sentient eels which loathed all hybrids as 'manufactured abominations.'
"
You
can get married?" Lucifer shouted at him. "But
we
can’t? Because you need us to make lots of babies who have
these
for your enemies to shoot at without the inconvenience of voting rights?"
Lucifer flapped his wings again. The wind they made blew the delegate's paperwork off of his desk.
"What are we? Animals you breed for slaughter?"
A blue jolt of electricity lit up that section of the chamber as the Electrophori's deadly tail sparked with fanatical indignation. The delegates on either side of the eel hissed at him in disapproval. Several delegates whispered ‘hypocrite' just loud enough to be picked up by the cameras.
Lucifer slammed his fist down upon the railing. "Even Shay’tan doesn’t do that to his own citizens!"
He whirled to face the cameras.
"And now…" Lucifer's voice choked up as a lump rose into his throat. "Now, the moment a hybrid baby is born, before his umbilical cord is even cut, a representative from the Emperor’s youth training academy is there to whisk him away from his mother, whether or not she agrees."
Tears rolled down his cheeks.
"Babies. We indoctrinate babies less than a minute old to defend you because we can't afford to have their parents take a few years off to raise their offspring."
His white wings drooped, trembling with emotion. He turned, eyes shut, away from the cameras and tried to quell the raw emotion which threatened to overtake him. The hall was so quiet you could have heard a pin-feather drop. He coughed and rubbed his cheek, determined not to let them see him weep. His legislative aide rushed out with a glass of water. Lucifer gulped down the liquid and composed his features back into the mask of a professional politician.
"We give all these great speeches about free will—" Lucifer's voice sounded weary "—but from the moment a hybrid takes their first breath, we brainwash them into believing their only purpose is to die supporting the Emperor. And now we can't even give you that anymore, for our species has lost the ability to reproduce."
Total silence reigned in Parliament. A nervous cough broke the air. Lucifer made eye contact with key delegates from the old block that would otherwise oppose him and watched them squirm. Money. It all came down to money. He'd just laid out a moral justification the younger delegates could take back to their constituents and justify voting for the override. Now he needed to spell things out in terms the older delegates cared about.
"Only consider this question, ladies and gentlemen," he said. "If the hybrids die out and are no longer here to protect you, then who will? Who will protect the Alliance when all of the hybrids are gone?"
He let the question hang before them like a bad odor before reciting a famous Alliance slogan.
"As the hybrid races that defend us go, so shall the Alliance."
In the back of his subconscious, his inner voice whispered:
'Guilt. Guilt. Guilt.'
'Fear.'
'Just like a well-crafted television commercial.'
He could practically
hear
violins playing in the background as that small, sarcastic voice which had whispered to his subconscious for as long as he could remember whispered to ram this veto override through Parliament and overrule his immortal father's objections. It was time to end the stranglehold the eternal bickering between the two ascended emperor-gods had upon the citizens of
both
empires. It whispered to save his species. It whispered to save
himself.
"Never-ending war is not the answer." Lucifer held out his hand. "I am here to offer a better way to achieve peace."
He lifted his wings from their dejected slump. His demeanor shifted from sorrowful repentant to television preacher peddling absolution to a circus-tent full of sinners. He'd pointed out the ugly reality. Now it was time to sell redemption.
"Over the past decade—" Lucifer's wings gave a hopeful flutter "—border skirmishes in certain sectors are down. The Sata'an Empire has left those sectors alone, not because we patrol them with warships, but because those planets trade with the Sata’an Empire."
Lucifer paced, looking each delegate in the eye. He was selling a solution to an ugly problem that nobody wanted to face. He was a contact team sports coach cheering on his team. He spoke quickly so the opposition wouldn't interrupt him.
"If the Alliance expanded this partnership, everyone would win. We win, the manufacturers win, and the Empire wins. Win-win-win. Everybody’s happy. Everybody’s rich. And nobody will go to war because their economies are too closely tied to risk upsetting the fruit cart."
The Spiderid who had interrupted him earlier heckled him from his balcony. "That’s the rhetoric Shay’tan gave the 51-Pegasi-4 colony! And look what it got them. Shay'tan slaughtered the whole planet!!!
And
the entire race of Seraphim Angelics along with it!"
Lucifer's white wings shuddered with anger and loss.
The Seraphim…
He hid the emotion behind the mask he had built to hide his true self from the world.
"That was 25 years ago." Lucifer spoke solemnly. "It was not Shay’tan’s doing. Hashem himself verified it was pirates acting on their own accord."
"So claims Shay’tan!!!" the Spiderid lord rebutted. "An eyewitness reported soldiers wearing Sata’anic uniforms invaded the planet. Not a disorganized band of pirates."
That small, sarcastic voice whispered into his mind:
'
He is drunk with power at the thought of snatching the vote. You must treat him like the child he is…
'
"So said one frightened 9-year-old boy!"
Lucifer turned his back on the Spiderid and appealed, instead, to the ancient races who were so close to genetic perfection that they identified more closely than any species with his father.
The Mu'aqqibat delegate hit his staff against the floor. Old money. Power. The block of ancient races immediately grew silent. The power brokers would not allow a silly upstart to steal the show. The ripple of silence which moved through the great assembly was unspoken, but it was complete. Lucifer had spelled out the tragedy in terms they cared about … money and power. They would allow him to finish his speech.
"Shay’tan is willing to give peaceful trading companies access to sell products his people need. All he asks in return is that we do the same." He paused to let his words sink in. "Fair is square."
The notion of fundamental fairness was one of the basic underpinnings of Alliance society.
That inner voice whispered:
'They don't -really-care about fairness. Spell it out in the only terms they'll understand. What it will cost them if they -don't-vote for this trade deal…'
"It's either that," Lucifer swept his wings upwards like a raptor swooping in for the kill and gestured towards the cameras as though he was the
Devourer of Children
, "or we need to figure out whose children we'll draft into the military to defend us. Because at the rate the hybrids are dying out, within ten years there won't be enough of us left to defend you anymore."
He pointed at the ancient races.
"It takes six naturally evolved humanoids to fill the shoes of a single hybrid, and those species all have voting rights. So compute
those
numbers when you figure out how much it will cost to reject Shay'tan's peace offering. It's trade agreements or the draft. Your choice."
Lucifer waited until the delegates who'd been blocking his trade proposal made eye contact. The Mu'aqqibat dragon took his staff and thumped it solidly upon the floor. He had won them over.
"I hereby make a motion for Parliament to expand the existing Free Trade agreement to all Alliance territories," Lucifer said. "I move said motion to an immediate vote…"
The young Spiderid lord leaped up.
"Shay’tan conquers newer sentient planets and conscripts their citizens to be his labor force so he can undersell us," the Spiderid shouted. "It's little more than slavery!"
That small sarcastic voice whispered:
'It's convenient how they call what Shay'tan does slavery, but overlook the 500 years of forced military service required of hybrids.'
"What Shay'tan does within the confines of his own empire is irrelevant," Lucifer said aloud. "We are ratifying a trade deal, not submitting to Sata'anic Rule."
The other delegates began to waffle. With his
gift,
Lucifer could hear the delegate's thoughts.
"I'm up for re-election."
"Unemployment is up to 17%."
"Why should I support him when his own father voted against him?"
Lucifer's wings drooped.
'You're losing them,'
his inner voice whispered. '
Promise them something they can bring back to their constituents and say they did the right thing…
'
Lucifer watched the energy in the room shift away from him. As much as he hated his own inner cynic, it was always right.
"It will give our besieged hybrid military a chance to replenish their ranks!" he shouted.
He could
feel
the moment the energy shifted back, but his victory rang hollow because death in battle was not the problem, but pure inability to reproduce. But fewer wasted lives would buy the hybrids time, and time was what he desperately sought.
The Spiderid lord shouted a losing challenge.
"If you open Alliance markets to unfettered trade, money will flow into Shay’tan’s coffers. He will use it to build up his military. Our industry will be decimated and our standard of living will be reduced to poverty."
"Oh, shut up!" several delegates hissed at him. "Do you think we want
our
kids to be Hashem's cannon fodder?"
"Shay’tan won’t
have
to defeat us in battle," the Spiderid shouted. "This resolution will allow him to simply bankrupt and buy us!"
Lucifer interrupted before things could get out of hand.
"We have a choice," Lucifer shouted. "Are we going to tell our hybrid soldiers we don't
care
if they go extinct so long as they continue to protect us while doing it? Or will we take charge of this situation and say NO MORE WAR!!!"
He swung his arms upward and gestured towards the cameras the way his immortal father did whenever he summoned lightening.
"Who wants to vote for peace?"
"Ay!!!" the delegates cheered.
"Any opposed?" the Speaker of the Commons asked.
"Nay!" The young Spiderid Lord's voice rang alone.
He was not the only delegate who opposed the measure, just the only one naive enough not to simply abstain.
"The Aye’s have it!" the Speaker of the Commons shouted, banging on his podium with his gavel. "The free trade agreement passes!"
Lucifer bowed, thanking the legislators as they filed out past him, including delegates who had concerns they wanted addressed. He could
feel
the positive energy flowing off of the crowd, making his head buzz with power.
This
was what his father had trained him to do from birth, creating the position of Prime Minister and putting him in charge of the day-to-day politics of running the Alliance. Lucifer snorted with disgust. Hashem wouldn't deign to muddy his godlike consciousness dealing with the lesser affairs of mortals!
The mouthy Spiderid pushed his way through the crowd.
"I need to speak to you!" he said.
That inner voice whispered:
'Get rid of him. If you don't, he'll keep raising his point until people listen.'
Lucifer feigned friendliness.
"What can I do for you?"
He honed his gift to
listen
to what wasn't being said beneath the young Spiderid's voice. Images leaped into his mind. Concerned constituents. Impoverished families.
Lucifer formed an image, and then clapped the young Lord on the back.
"Make an appointment with my Chief of Staff," Lucifer said. "We'll see what we can do about filing an addendum."
Power flowed through his voice, into the gullible young Spiderid Lord's mind.
'The Prime Minister is taking me seriously. If I work with him, he'll elevate me to a position of power.'
The young Spiderid Lord's palps spread wide in a pleased grin.
"Yes, Sir! I'll have a proposal on your desk tomorrow morning."
A dirty-winged Angelic appeared at his side. Average height, with dishwater blue eyes and unremarkable wings, everything about Chief of Staff Zepar communicated obsequiousness except for the cruel sneer which sometimes graced his lips.
"Sire?" Zepar said.
Lucifer stared at the doorway, eager to escape.
"If you'll excuse me," he said to the young Spiderid, "I'll let you and Zepar discuss the particulars."
He forced his way past the cameras, smiling and waving to the cheering throngs. As soon as he got into the chapel, he leaned back against the wall and shut his eyes.
'See? I told you we could do it.'
"Oh! Shut up," he whispered to the small, sarcastic voice. "All we need is time."
He stared up at the statue of the Eternal Emperor which stood behind the empty throne which was theoretically occupied whenever Parliament needed a tie-breaker, but in reality had only been occupied
once
in the last 225 years, two weeks ago when the Emperor had appeared to veto his earlier trade deal.
"Try and veto
that,
father," Lucifer said.
His words rang hollow. Trade deals weren't going to
fix
his species' problem. He needed his father to
be
a father and start caring about the workings of his empire.
His Angelic Chief of Staff followed him into the room. Zepar glanced nervously at the statue of the Eternal Emperor which overlooked them.
"Sire," Zepar asked. "Shall I ask the Party to cut off all funding to that little Spiderid pain in the ass before the next election?"
"Do it," Lucifer sighed. "And see what dirt you can dig up on him, even if you have to make it up. I want negative reports leaked to the media by nightfall."
"Yes, Sire," Zepar clasped his hands together. "Consider it done. Now … your next appointment is at 3:00 p.m. A cadet right out of the academy..."