Three Square Meals Ch. 080

"You're right, I'd love to hear whatever you can reveal about Progenitors," she said, giving him a grateful nod.

Ularean gestured towards the nine chairs. "Please be seated and we shall begin. We have arranged for refreshments should any of you be thirsty."

There were cylindrical goblets perched on slender tables at the side of each chair and John took the central seat opposite Ularean, then gladly took a sip from the glass, the dusty air having made him feel quite parched. The girls sat down too, as did Ularean and Talari, a momentary silence descending on the group with no one sure where to begin.

"You may consider us an open book, JohnBlake," Ularean finally said, his words reinforced by nods from the rest of the High Council. "Ask us whatever you wish, we will answer honestly and to the best of our ability."

"Thank you, Ularean," John said, smiling at him in gratitude. He leaned forward in anticipation and continued, "If it's alright with you, let's start with the Legacy. You obviously rebuilt a wrecked Progenitor vessel, but where the hell did you find it?"

"Our ancestors recovered the remains of the Progenitor vessel nearly nine-thousand years ago," Ularean explained. "It had been destroyed in a cataclysmic battle."

None of the Ashanath High Council moved, but a holographic map suddenly appeared in the centre of the room. It was an empire map and clearly showed the existing boundaries of the various empires in this section of the galaxy. A red hexagon began to blink towards the top of the map, very close to the border between the Terran Federation and the Trankaran Republic.

"That's the Zeta-Pegasus system," Alyssa said thoughtfully. She sat bolt upright in her chair and gasped, "Wait! You found the Legacy in the Niryean Rift?!"

"That is correct. It was discovered on the outer reaches of the system," Ularean replied with a slight nod.

Dana glanced at Rachel in confusion, but her girlfriend gave her an equally blank look in return, so the redhead asked, "Err, what's the Near-Ian Rift?"

John grinned at her and said, "I can't believe you've never heard of the Niryean Rift! The place is legendary amongst spacers!"

She pointed to herself and replied, "Asteroid-orphan out on the Rim, remember? I've never even heard of it!"

"Shipping's been going missing there for centuries, Sparks," John explained, giving her an apologetic smile. "The system is densely packed with rich asteroid belts and it sometimes draws in miners bold or crazy enough to try mining there. Sometimes they come back rich men, sometimes they don't..."

"With no wreckage ever found... It's as though their ships disappeared without a trace!" Alyssa elaborated in a theatrically spooky voice. She abruptly went quiet, lost in her thoughts.

John turned to look at her curiously and asked, "What's on your mind, beautiful?"

Alyssa smiled at him, before she glancing at the Senior Councillor and asked politely, "Ularean, can you zoom into the Zeta-Pegasus system and mark where you discovered the Legacy, please."

Ularean didn't reply, but without making so much as a twitch, the map zoomed in to the Zeta-Pegasus system. The star at its centre was a blue giant, casting its cool light over the multitude of asteroid belts in the system. The patterns of the dense asteroid belts were strange, forming looping spirals quite unlike any that John had seen before. On the extreme outer edge of the system, a red hexagonal mark appeared, highlighting where the Legacy had been found.

"Holy shit..." Alyssa cursed under her breath. Leaping from her chair - an impressive feat in four inch heels - she waved excitedly at the map, spinning her slender hand in a counter-clockwise motion. "Can you wind this back, Ularean?"

He tilted his head slightly to one side, looking at her intently as he said, "I must apologise, Alyssa, I'm not entirely certain what you mean. Could you elaborate, please?"

"No problem, I wasn't being clear," she said, giving him an apologetic smile. "If you can, I'd like you to project how this system would look ten thousand years ago. Rotate the asteroid belts back counter-clockwise, taking into account the drift that would occur from the different lengths in orbital paths from the star."

"It might take a minute or two to process the calculations and model our predictions..." he replied, issuing the appropriate telepathic orders to begin work immediately.

"That's fine," she said with a quick nod, before walking closer to the map to take a closer look.

John watched her in bemusement, wondering exactly what she'd seen that had got her so excited. In just over a minute the Ashanath's calculations were complete and the image in the map began to revolve backwards. It started off slowly, but he gradually increased the speed, sending the asteroid belts spinning around the sun like hands on a clock face. As Ularean wound back the centuries, the asteroid belts began to straighten out, forming long neat lines rather than the swirls that had been there before.

"Stop!" Alyssa suddenly blurted out. "That's a bit too much, wind it forward now for four seconds at the same pace."

Ularean did as he was bid, moving the asteroid belts forward now, clockwise around the blue star.

"Freeze!" the blonde exclaimed, before turning around to beam at John in delight. "I knew it!"

John slowly rose to his feet and approached the map, gazing at the Zeta-Pegasus system. All the asteroid belts were laid out in rigid lines now, all pointing directly towards a single point of focus to the lower right of the map. The streams of rock swept away from seven distinct points around the map, all at different orbital paths around the star.

"They were all planets," he marvelled, glancing at Alyssa in amazement.

Dana nodded and blurted out, "Yeah! Until something blasted the shit out of them and wasted the entire fucking system!"

"How remarkable," Ularean murmured, gazing at the map in awe. Several members of the High Council rose from their seats and were now staring intently at the image.

"What kind of weapon could do that?!" Calara whispered, giving John a look of consternation.

Shaking her head, Alyssa replied in a sombre voice, "I don't think a weapon did this. Or at least not a conventional one." She glanced at Dana, nodding as she added, "Yeah, that's what I was thinking too."

"Can you share with the rest of the class?" Rachel asked, nudging Dana with a playful elbow.

"It's just a guess, but it all fits," the redhead said, tapping her chin thoughtfully. She shared a look with Alyssa before continuing, "Mael'nerak must have sabotaged his wormhole generator, or at least done something to disrupt the fabric of space-time. The force from the explosion destroyed the planets in Zeta-Pegasus, leaving behind asteroid belts in their place."

"The remains of his ship must have been carried out here by the blastwave," Alyssa explained, tracing the path from the centre of the explosion to the point where the Ashanath had discovered the Legacy. "It would explain why that area of space is so unstable, with miners getting sucked into randomly spawning wormholes and then vanishing."

Tashana looked strangely ambivalent as she murmured, "At least we know what happened to Mael'nerak now. He sacrificed himself to defeat the other Progenitor and must have destroyed the rest of their fleets in the process. That's why he was never able to return to Valada."

"It looks that way," John agreed, nodding slowly as he considered Alyssa's hypothesis.

"The system was the site of a vast starship graveyard," Ularean clarified, his eerie voice sending shivers up John's spine. "I have read the records and the Legacy was the only partly salvageable vessel, every other ship was smashed beyond any hope of recovery. Our ancestors gathered what they could of the derelict Progenitor vessel and towed it back to Ashana."

"I wonder why the Maliri never found it?" John pondered curiously, watching as the High Councillors returned to their seats.

"From the war maps we saw in Valada's video archive, Zeta-Pegasus was deep amongst the systems that the other Progenitor had conquered," Alyssa said thoughtfully. "Maybe it was too deep in enemy territory?"

Shaking his head, John replied, "The other Progenitor's invasion had been halted, presumably by his death. If Mael'nerak destroyed the bulk of his opponent's fleet as well, there would've been nothing to stop the Maliri from recovering the wreck."

Tashana glanced his way and said confidently, "The Maliri only had a handful of ships left after the war as Mael'nerak took his fleets of Thralls with him. In the recording, Valada said that she recalled all her people and then rebuilt their fleets. When they sealed themselves off from the Ashanath and the Trankarans, what used to be Mael'nerak's territory contracted to the space where the Regency exists today."

"Why didn't the Trankarans find the Legacy?" John wondered, looking at the map. "Zeta-Pegasus looks like it's right near the border with the Republic. This was thousands of years before the Terran Federation existed, so the Trankarans should have stumbled across it long before the Ashanath got there."

Ularean had been waiting patiently while they discussed this amongst themselves. When John posed that question, the Senior Councillor spoke up once again in his whispering voice, "The wreck lay dormant for over a thousand years, before my ancestors extended the borders of the Ashanath Collective sufficiently far to encompass Zeta-Pegasus. The Trankarans possess a quite different mindset to Terrans. You are both a mostly benign people, but the Trankarans are much more conservative and reserved in their outlook and not inclined towards aggressive expansionism."

John paused a moment and meeting Ularean's black-eyed gaze, he asked quietly, "Why did the Ashanath Collective give away so much territory, Ularean? When humanity first developed space flight, the Ashanath had a huge tech advantage and you could have stopped us in our tracks. I've always wanted to know the reason."

"It was hoped that humanity would mature as the centuries passed and grow out of their need to assert their territorial dominance. As it transpired, that has not come to pass, but we have been content to cede worlds and remain at peace," Ularean explained in his eerie voice.

"Maintaining the peace is an admirable goal, but you've given away three-quarters of your territory!" John exclaimed, shaking his head in confusion.

Ularean paused for a moment, holding a silent telepathic conversation with the rest of the Council, before saying, "We had not colonised those worlds, so to lose them was no great loss. We are kindred peoples, JohnBlake, both created by the same Progenitor Master. It was far more important to maintain a united front with our energetic new neighbours, standing together against more hostile and outwardly malevolent species. The Terran Federation provides a strong buttress against the Kirrix and the Drakkar, who have become a much greater threat in recent years. Without the Federation's continued support, the Ashanath Collective would have eventually fallen."

"So you already knew your people were created by Mael'nerak," John noted, giving the High Councillors a wry smile. "We only recently found out that he created Terrans as an experiment."

"Please accept our apologies for not being forthcoming about our shared lineage when we first met with you," Ularean explained. "The idea of a Progenitor here on Ashana was terrifying. We had no wish to become slaves once again."

"We had to find out about the origins of humanity the hard way," John explained, his tone grim. "Mael'nerak built an AI called Nexus and established it as the caretaker over his experiments on Terra. He set Nexus up with a Quantum Annihilator buried in the moon, just in case he wanted to bring it all to an abrupt end. It seems that Mael'nerak was slain before he finished his experiments."

"Word reached us of your confrontation with the Rogue AI," Ularean confirmed with a brief nod. "When our distant ancestors spread out from Ashana to explore nearby worlds, they immediately recognised humanity as a distantly related species to our own. Please believe me that we had no idea such a threat was looming over Terra. Had my people known, they would have taken steps to eliminate that danger before humanity first travelled amongst the stars."

Leaning forward in his chair, John asked, "Do you know the real reason behind Mael'nerak's experimentation with Terrans?" Or why he created the Ashanath?"

"We do not know the background to your species, but the purpose behind our own creation is known to us," Ularean answered quietly. "Mael'nerak was active amongst the first several generations of the Ashanath, spending centuries living on our homeworld and training my people."

"Training them?" John asked intently. "To do what?"

"He taught them how to harness their psychic potential," Ularean murmured, while the rest of the High Council stared at John with their huge black eyes.

"Do you have any idea why Mael'nerak would create an entire species of psychic creatures?" John asked, quite fascinated at the thought.

"Mael'nerak was quite open with what he wished to accomplish," the Senior Councillor explained. "The Ashanath were created as an experiment in collective psychic consciousness."

"Your telepathic Command Web!" Alyssa exclaimed, eyes widening in surprise.

Ularean turned to her and bowed as he replied, "That is correct, Alyssa. Your presence there made quite the impact, thank you for providing leadership to our fleet while the High Council was incapacitated."

She grinned at him and said, "You can thank Calara for that, I was just passing on her orders."

John stayed silent while Ularean inclined his head in gratitude to the Latina, frowning as he mulled over the Senior Councillor's revelations.

Correctly guessing the reason for John's pensive expression, Ularean said, "As to Mael'nerak's true motives, I am afraid he never shared them with my people. He taught the Ashanath how to form thought-clusters and create Astral sub-planes, but never explained why he did so."

"What about the monoliths you showed us?" Jade asked, her face alight with curiosity. "Is there anything more you can tell us about those now?"

Councillor Talari rose from his chair and replied, "Please accept my most sincere apologies. I am afraid I deceived you regarding the origins of the stone monoliths. When you arrived on Ashana, it was apparent that JohnBlake had not yet subjugated the Maliri, so I-"

"I still haven't and I don't intend to either," John said firmly, glancing towards Irillith and Tashana. "I've allied with the Maliri Matriarchs to stop them murdering each other, but I haven't 'subjugated' them."

Talari bowed to him and said quickly, "I am sorry for my poor turn of phrase. You have already proven on numerous occasions that your motivations are benign; I meant no offense."

"That's okay, sorry to interrupt you," John replied, encouraging him to continue with a smile.

The High Councillor paused for a moment to collect his thoughts then continued his explanation, "The stone monoliths were not taken from the destroyed homeworlds of conquered species, but from the Gaia-classification world that your people call New Eden. The temple where they were discovered was a Thrall recruiting facility and the monoliths described the history of Mael'nerak's various conquests. The surrounding Maliri settlements had been badly damaged by an orbital bombardment, which left the temple partially demolished."

Tashana's violet eyes sparkled with excitement as she exclaimed, "That sounds just like the Thrall facility I found in the Epsilon-Aquarii system!"

"I don't remember ever hearing about ancient alien ruins on New Eden," Rachel murmured, her brow wrinkling in confusion as she glanced at Sakura.

The Asian girl shook her head. "I don't recall anyone mentioning them to me either. If there was anything like that on the planet, it was long-gone by the time my parents settled there."

A second later, Rachel's eyes widened as she suddenly blurted out, "The Ashanath must have destroyed them!"

"That depends on your perspective, but is essentially correct," Talari said in his whispery voice. "When it became clear that humanity was on the cusp of interstellar flight, the ruins on New Eden were carefully excavated then brought back to Ashana seven hundred years ago. We removed all trace of Maliri settlements on the Gaia worlds that were eventually ceded to the Terran Federation."

"Why would you do that?" Tashana asked, frowning in disapproval at the thought of tearing up an archaeological site in such a fashion.

Talari turned to look pointedly at the Maliri twins and replied, "If we had left clues as to the real nature of the Maliri, it would have not ended well for humanity."

John let out a sigh. "Yeah, I see your point."

Tashana's lovely blue face became a mask of confusion as she admitted, "I'm afraid I don't understand. Would you mind explaining, please?"

He smiled at Tashana and Irillith as he replied, "If you hadn't realised already, Maliri women are stunningly beautiful."

"The men are very handsome too!" Alyssa interjected with a playful grin. "Ceraden will have women throwing themselves at him if he ever decides to indulge his curiosity about Terran girls!"

"I'll have to take your word for that," John said with a chuckle. His smile faded as he continued, "When humanity does eventually realise that there's a species of gorgeous blue space elves on their doorstep, things will probably get ugly very quickly. If they find out that the women outnumber the men twenty-to-one, there'll be a flood of men rushing the border."

Irillith shook her head and replied, "What about the 'Warning'? Surely Terrans wouldn't be so foolish as to risk certain death by invading Maliri Space!"

"Slavers, pirates, the desperate, they'd all still take the risk if the reward was high enough for capturing Maliri women. The Maliri would respond by annihilating any ship that trespassed in their territory, which would quickly ratchet up the tensions between the two empires," John explained quietly.

"Maybe it would be better if we didn't attend the award ceremony after all," Tashana suggested, looking alarmed.

"It might be worth thinking twice about it," John was forced to reluctantly agree.

Jade had been listening to the conversation with a pensive expression on her face. She finally looked at Talari and asked mournfully, "Why did the Ashanath give Lenarra to the Terran Federation if you knew humanity would react that way to exotic female aliens? By handing over my planet, you doomed the Nymphs to extinction!"

"That decision was made several centuries ago, long before any of us were born," Ularean replied, although his voice sounded remorseful despite the neutral tones of his voice modulator. "The High Council at the time were intent on appeasing Terran demands and averting any chance of war. I am afraid they did not stop to consider the ramifications for your species."

Jade nodded her understanding, her emerald eyes heavy with grief for her lost Lenarran sisters. Calara was sitting next to her and she reached out to stroke the Nymph's arm sympathetically. Alyssa simply got up and walked over to kneel at Jade's side, then pulled her into a comforting hug.

John gave Jade a concerned look, then turned to ask Ularean, "Can you tell us any more about Nymphs? We know they're another of Mael'nerak's creations, but that's all we've been able to discover so far."

"I wish that I could give you the answers you seek, but I am afraid I do not know," the Senior Councillor replied sorrowfully.

The room went quiet, the silence broken by Alyssa whispering comforting words to Jade. Eventually the Nymph sat back with a sad look on her face, but she gave John a smile and gestured for him to continue. He nodded, then turned back to look at the High Council.