Planetrise and Moonfall Ch. 04-06

'Impressive,' Lilian admits, 'So this is what you have done over the last twenty years with your Treasury?'

'Mostly,' I reply, 'but count that as twenty-three years, my sister Sholona was essential to the project. And not only our Treasury was used, but other noble families contributed towards it. Of course not many of the original investors will benefit in the end, but once we have freed the galaxy of the rebel warlords and dictatorships, who knows who we will find in hiding or surviving like me from continuous incarceration?'

There is a bump, as we connect with the larger ship.

'I think we should make our way to the airlock.' I say, 'now, Lilian, are you all right with us doing that?'

'Yes, of course, what it is happening here is beyond my wildest dreams, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your undoubted contribution to all this, but, Brother, this only delays my revenge until we have used these assets to restore order, it doesn't affect it. But who knows, maybe neither of us will survive the battles to come.'

'Who knows?' I reply, unsmiling, then turning to Selene. 'Are you with us Selene, or do we need to restrain you if you retain your loyalty to your bosses?'

'I have only known the Republic in my short life and my period of service in its name. I have always known that it is rotten to the core, but it is what we have and I have no means of knowing if what you are aiming to restore will be better, I am sure that it would have to be very bad indeed to be worse. Tell me, will your new Empire be better than what we have now?'

"It will be fairer, I can assure you. There will be peace between worlds and if I survive and have anything to do with the new constitution I will ensure that the Merciant model is favoured above all others. But, I have been away from here for twenty years, and I do not know what constitutional changes have been made or have met with better favour in my absence. My main concern now is catching up with my family, seeing my wife and son for the first time in twenty-three terranyears and seeing my daughter for the very first time.'

'I thought your family were ... Ah, so they were not lost in an accident?' Selene looked at Lilian, who also had her eyebrows arched at this news, 'They made their way here?'

'No, I brought them here, twenty-three years ago and last came here with no time to see them twenty years ago when I brought Lilian's severely wounded mother here.'

'My mother, here?' Lilian asks. 'You are sure she did not die at your hands on Como Prime?'

'No, she was badly wounded there and I had to jump here with minimal delay and only had time to shoot her escape pod and its life support including Pippa down to the moon surface. I hope she survived that serious wound, but I had no time to delay as I had to return while the wormholes that Pippa had created were still open for my journey back to Como Prime. And it has been twenty years since then.'

Lilian runs towards the airlock. I wave Selene through the door before me. I offer to return to her the badge, but she declines.

'I don't think I am going to need it again,' she says. 'You really are full of surprises Ivan, I apologise for my deceit, but I was investigating whatever crime you and your accomplices were intending to perform. My bosses guessed that the treasury would be full of precious metals, jewels and classic waxarts, but this? Never.'

'As I now believe you are also full of surprises.'

'What about you and I, your wife...'

'My wife and family comes first in everything, Selene. My marriage has been on hold for twenty years, but that hold is now at an end. If it means anything, Selene, other than being raped a few times in those early few penal months, you have been my only partner and I am grateful to you for allowing me to become ... more human again.'

'And I am grateful that you interceded on my behalf before Lilian threw that last knife. Thank you.'

'I don't think she would've done, otherwise there would have been no discernible time between Skeech dying and yourself stopping that last knife.'

'I know. I had assumed that she would kill me or not without a second thought either way, and had no means of deciding which way she would go.'

'And I thought that once the three males were impaled, that she would more than likely let the galley slave go,' I admit, 'but I had no clue that you were an agent.'

'The agency had tabs on Lilian for some time and alarm bells rang when she revealed to the authorities that she was offered smuggled goods by Kevlin, and then tried to keep secret that she had paid a lawyer to get him off with a fine. She was not to know that her lawyer was one of our informants. Then you showed up and I was sent in to get close to all of you and let my department know. Fortunately, it all happened so quick I never got a message off.'

'Mylon would never have sent it. She is now in communication with Pippa, and Pippa is babbling about not being alone again, other than all her clones who are in every one of these vessels and all want to exchange greetings with Mylon!'

I wonder if zulons ever get headaches.

Outside the connecting airlock, Lilian and her mother Gillian are embracing, their tears of meeting again after so many years apart, when Lil had been still a child, was too much for them both. Gillian was looking very good for her age, I think. Behind the couple I see my mother's smiling face, too, standing next to my sister Sholana, and I start to move towards them, but Jeneve shakes both her hands held in front of her and points me over to her left.

There I see a woman standing with a small boy next to her and a baby in her arms.

At first I am uncertain, because the scene is almost exactly one I had long ago imagined when I last visited this moon twenty years ago, an image of my wife and children, still so young that they must've been in stasis since I was last here.

Impossible, I think. Ever since mankind first began exploring other planets within its home system, suspending life was necessary to explore even the neighbouring planets, but the meeting up with the ancient alien race of zulon and our subsequent partnership together, and with it the key to creating wormholes, all research into the area of stasis had ceased as being unnecessary. However unlikely, it seems this mirage of loveliness was my young family frozen in time. I run towards them.

'Velda?' I ask, 'is this really you?'

'It is my husband, it is,' she says, tears already steaming down her cheeks, 'Welcome home to your family, my darling.'

Before I can even embrace them to my bosom, I look at my dear wife, someone I haven't seen in twenty-three years. Her beautiful face has hardly changed a moment in those years.

When I faked our accident, half a galaxy away from this point here, Velda was twenty terranyears, and my son Ivan II was just two then; and my expected daughter wasn't even born.

I look at my son, Ivan, clearly only a couple of years or so older than he was twenty-three terranyears ago, who shrinks away from the gaze of an old, strange and rough-looking man, and tries to hide behind his mother's i-rad suit. I smile at his natural reaction to me, and turn my gaze to the baby sleeping peacefully in Velda's arms. Wow, what a beautiful baby in repose she was, her face relaxed in sleep, her face also slightly squeezed up as if she sensed the light here was stronger than where she had come from and didn't quite want her sleep interrupted yet. She had not an inkling that her father was so near after such a long absence.

I look up and stare into Velda's blue eyes, still as crystal clear, just as I always remember them, although now glistening with the wetness of joy and outputting of emotion.

I almost croak the words, 'How?' when perhaps I really mean why?

'You and your father assembled the finest minds you could from Como Prime and its tributary planets and moons, here in this place, my dear husband. You, who was so open to always include your bride in everything, from our wedding night until we parted when you had to go to the Academy, you gave me the means to channel some of your life's work. Don't forget, my dear Ivan, that you made me aware that one of the conditions of our arranged marriage was for our new family to own and exclusively use this place you called Treasury and the surrounding worthless triple-sun system was all a part of my dowry.'

'I know my sweetheart, but that was before I got to know how sweet a person you were and fell in love with you. That is why you became a full partner in this project. I know at the beginning you and your greedy father were duped, but once I realised how pure you were, it was important that you were educated enough to cope with this enormous task.'

'I know. But you did tell me very early on in our first few months together how you and Pynom had discovered this place in your youth and decided that a base here, hidden from the eyes of the galaxy, in the full glare of its triple sun, and the apparent impossibility of navigating through it to this treasured interior, could be the salvation of the Empire.'

'I did, and I was too late to save it, but I hope it will be restored and improved.'

'So do we all, Ivan. Anyway, while you were away at the Academy, playing the role of a normal horny young student —'

'I am sorry my love, but —'

'We had all this out before my love and I forgave you then and I forgive you again now, I know how you must've needed some loving after this long, virtually half your lifetime and almost all of my lifetime apart. It was all right for me, I had the babies and I made sure that I was asleep for most of what has been over twenty-one terranyears.'

'But honey —'

'But honey, nothing. You're forgiven. Forgiven everything. Our tablet is clean. We all need to get on with our lives, together. All right?'

'Yes, my sweet. So, you took the experts that I had gathered to save or restore the Empire, and used them for your own selfish ends, huh?' I smile.

'Not all of them.' She defends her actions. 'While you were at the Academy, I helped your father and his secret War Council to find and persuade the scientists and technicians we needed to work the dozen or so years to create this clone army of F2a troops and grow the battleships, carrier ships and destroyers needed. While doing this, I identified and felt I needed a group who were looking into the medical benefits of stasis.'

'I know, they were needed for the F2a hybrids, so we could grow them in batches and store them alive but in stasis, while we built up the manufacturing process.'

'And I needed scientists who were researching human stasis. Although they were already using it to hold dying patients until they could reach the right medical facilities or the necessary research into whatever threatened to kill them, I wanted to use it so that if we were apart for a dozen years or more, I could still be young enough to bear us more children, the children we were always meant to have before this civil war got in the way. As it is, we have been apart for so long that, without this, my husband, we would have just these two darlings, and I was greedy for more, my love. I hope you are not angry.'

'Of course not. But how risky was this? I could have lost all three of you.'

'There was no risk in the end, Ivan, my husband, because the thoughts in my head were picked up by Pynom and she told me that in previous relationships with aliens even older than their present partnership with mankind, they had done this stasis before with aliens, so why not with humans? So Pynom worked with the scientists on the subject and together we grew modified sleep pods in which we experimented with others who eventually wanted to reconnect with their loved ones on the outside. Meanwhile, I wanted to give birth to Jeneve II, here and wean her first before putting us all in stasis. By then, many of the research staff who were no longer needed for the manufacture and growth of the New Imperial Fleet, opted for a period of stasis. Your mother also opted for stasis, until the Council woke her up after you dropped off Aunt Gillian without stopping.'

'I had to bring her, the wound she received trying to prevent Sylvan killing me —'

'My old servant Sylvan, that my father used to spy on me? I had forgotten her. Why did she try to kill you?'

'Because Sylvan was an F3 hybrid, like Gillian and my mother, but Gillian triggered too early after her first husband was killed and, with no target identified, realised that she had unconsciously been programmed to help the Rebel revolt. And she rightly assumed that my mother was also one of them. Once they got together and compared notes they both realised that they had been brainwashed and programmed.'

'Ah, and that is what triggered your father and you to build up this secret Empire base?'

'Yes, and when we realised we did not have time to save the Empire, that it would soon fall, that we moved the vulnerable away from danger, that's why we staged the accident that brought you and young Ivan here with my mother Jeneve. Then, with my father being a widower of some standing, he was able to marry Gillian and we hoped to keep Lilian safe, but the Rebels kept Lilian away at school. They must've guessed that Gillian had been turned as they sent Sylvan to kill both my father, Gillian and me, but Gill was able to warn me before Sylvan got to me and I killed her as soon as she entered my quarters. My father was already dead, but Gillian was too badly wounded to leave behind. You had Pynom here, but off the zulon grid. So Pippa brought me here and, after guiding Gillian to the surface in one pod and isolating Pippa in an orbiting pod, I made my way out using her jump pattern and still open wormholes, ensuring that once the last link with the zulons within was broken, I was the only way back in.'

'I was in stasis when Gillian came in, and only woken 21 hours ago when we picked you up on the radar at the edge of the system, so haven't heard anything about what has happened here other than the Fleet is ready to launch.'

'Gillian had been stabbed, badly, which meant she was unable to pilot a craft here, and I was only able to patch her up with first aid to hold her until she got medical aid here. That stasis pod would have been handy if if had been available.'

'It was, Ivan, dear,' my mother says behind me, I turn and embrace her, she continues, 'and Gillian's landing pod was moved to the stasis unit first for emergency stasis until we scanned and assessed the damage and prepped her for the repair work while she was still in stasis, so her internal bleeding was stopped. We now do all medical operations under stasis as normal procedure, it has saved many lives.'

'I was in stasis but when you arrived,' Velda chips in, 'I was revived without any of the side effects recorded in the archives that the old suspended animation subjects used to suffer. In fact, I was only awoken about twenty hours ago when you showed up entering the system, although we sensed that your approach was clumsy, so Gillian, your mother and I were awoken as a precaution.'

'All of you in stasis for all this time? It is really that safe?' I ask of Velda.

'Yes, of course, dear, not all the time, as the Council still sit once a terranmonth, so I wake for a day maybe three or four times a terranyear and catch up with progress reports, meeting with Jeneve and or Gillian, who also similarly vary their stasis patterns.'

'Originally,' Jeneve says, 'I wanted stasis to stay young for my Jolyon's arrival, but your voice message enclosed in Gillian's pod made it clear that Jolyon was dead, slaughtered by that forgotten maid Sylvan and, further, that you had to stay behind to convince the Rebels that there was no treasury, and that you would have to suffer and sacrifice for us all until Lilian tracked you down to claim her inheritance. Why did this took so long, Ivan?'

'It was because Gillian was so badly wounded, and under the Rebel invasion that was taking place at the same time as the assassination, I was sure that she would have been allowed to die. With my father dead, the plan for Gillian to stay on as Rebel assassin and heroine and for me to return here bringing Lilian with me, had to change. Remember, Lilian was not only offworld at Rebel-influenced collage, but she knew nothing of this plot and as she was not at home, her activation would have been meaningless. Lilian had to be sent a message by Gillian to advise her to contact me, but it looks like it never had a chance to be sent through to her. Lilian only started to search for me once her value to the rebel warlords began to waiver in favour of younger blood.'

'I regret you did not stop here, we might have forged a different plan,' Jeneve suggests.

'No, the plan we had and my modification was sound, I just needed to return quickly to Como Prime less I was missed and checked back on any recordings by other zulons of my movements, so I dropped Gillian off without stopping. If I had seen you and the children, my resolve might have left me. By going back and being captured, and with father dead, they had no reason to search offplanet for Treasury and you were all safe.'

'I understand, sweetheart, now I must introduce you to your children.' She turns to the boy, 'Ivan, dear, this is your father, your Daddy.'

I hunch down on my haunches, so I do not look as big or so ugly to my boy, and I hold my arms out to him, 'I'm home, Ivan my son, and I would like to get you to love me again.'

He looks at me with those big eyes, before looking up at his Mummy, who reassures him.

'Daddy loves you, just like your Mummy does, Ivan sweetheart.'

'Daddy? Is that really you? You've lost all your hair'

He comes out from behind his mother's legs and holds out his arms.

'I know,' I say, 'I lost all my hair worrying about you,' and I pick him up and give him a cuddle.

And he starts talking about his sister as if they were asleep only a night ago, and how they have moved into a new apartment and that all his toys are safe there. And all the time we are laughing, his grandmother Jeneve and mother Velda are joining in, and I am introduced to the baby Jeneve II, who refuses to wake up, even after opening one eye briefly in response to all the noise and excitement.

'She's just been fed and is very tired,' Velda explains.

Gillian and Lilian walk over together to see me.

Lilian is sheepish. 'Ivan, I want to apologise, I hated you for so long, for twenty long years... Even though I have admired and loved you with puppy dog affection ever since I first saw you when I was a child.'

I look at Gillian, my aunt, who was also for a while, in order to maintain the illusion that my mother was dead, someone I had regarded as my step-mother for three years. She nods her confirmation that what Lilian says had long been common knowledge. My mother, now I notice, also has that sad confirmation of the conflict within that Lilian has long had to live with, someone she loved deeply through attraction yet hated as the supposed killer of her mother. She must be even more conflicted knowing now that I actually saved her life by bringing her to Treasury.

I pull Lilian into a deep and firm embrace and kiss her gently on the top of her head and forehead. I continue to hold her for a full terranminute before my mother said, 'Ivan we have waited so long and now we are ready to launch the Fleet and you and Lilian are both needed on bridge of the Flagship.'

I release Lilian and kiss both her cheeks. 'Lilian, you will always have a place in my heart. I have loved you as a cousin and as a dear sister. I care for you deeply and will be behind you and support you unto death in your bid to become my Empress.'

She nods and wipes her tears with the back of one hand, still holding onto one of mine with her other. 'I know, Ivan dear brother, and I know that without your support I could not succeed in this campaign that will ultimately restore justice and fair opportunities for all the people of the New Empire. I know that we will surely triumph. But I am sure that others will want you to stand against me, my cousin, my brother.'