The Last Human Ch. 51: Presentation of the Accused

The thing I remember about the first invasion of Sanctuary was that not a single shot had been fired. Not one of the orbital cannons were brought online, not a ship burned its engines for a broadside, not a single bullet fired from a pistol in self-defense. We were facing enemies that could kill with a thought, and their presence in orbit meant we were all already dead if they so wished. A knife was held at the throat of nearly every last single human in the known universe, and there was nothing we could do about it.

There were, of course, ancient defense systems. Thought engines, mind staplers, devices which could’ve fried every telepath in orbit. But no one had considered this impossibility, thinking that we would’ve had ample warning from the forward satellites, and if they failed, the Void Aegis was supposed to keep ships from translating in above our heads. No one considered the possibility that we might face a false god in the making.

To preserve our dignity, I will say this, however. When it finally came time for the second invasion, there was no such oversight. There was no measure spared, even the unthinkable weapons of the First Aberrant War—even the things we had locked away. The second time, the galaxy paid in oceans of blood for every inch they gained from the outer edge of the system to the barren moon of Sanctuary. That had been humanity’s last stand, not this shameful knife in the dark.

I was frozen for a long moment at the window, watching the pale ships descend from orbit. There were hundreds of them, adorned, sleek ships that looked like the entourage of priests and nobles. There were no warships among their number. They needed none.

I thought about running, but there was nowhere to run. There was no place on this moon I could hide, and I soon discovered that that was the last thing I wanted to do.

Turning in the hall, I saw the mental image of a Bakke assassin with a pale blindfold appear before me. She wasn’t physically there, not yet, but they would be. She smiled, about to speak, but as I felt the fingers of her mind caress my own, my hand latched on her thoughts. The Bakke recoiled, not expecting this tough resistance. This moment’s distraction allowed me to act before she could even threaten me with a mind poison.

It all came almost too naturally for me, the world unraveling like one of my visions as we fought. No, that would be the wrong word. It was a slaughter.

Darkness opened beneath the shocked Bakke, and the alien woman was dragged horrified deeper into my mind than she ever wanted to see. Through clouds of death-filled thought I walked her through the maggot farms of Ghiza VI through the tortures of the Xurak. We were not even through my first encounter with the Queen before I felt the fingers of the assassin grow slack upon my mind.

In her death thralls, I caught the Bakke women and briefly saw the world through her eyes. I saw a room where she and a dozen others were silent meditation. The iron smell of blood wafted through my nostrils, and I felt eyes bleed red tears. The others were too immersed in their concentrations to notice their compatriot fall motionless to the floor. Darkness followed and I was standing back in the corridor of Sanctuary, not harmed in the slightest.

I glanced around. The ships were still descending. I saw one, bigger than the rest, less a ship and more a sun-bleached city with golden sails descending gently towards the ocean. A storm of panicked thought threatened to overtake me, but I silenced it.

It was something neither Amon nor Ingrish trained me in, but over the years, if I wished to evade detection from my telepath mother, I could temporarily quiet my thoughts, resume some of the emptiness of Ghiza VI. It wouldn’t work for long. I couldn’t dampen perception, and Ingrish always caught me in the end. But I saw I was not far from our habitation tower, and it would buy me enough time to try to find Amon.

No matter what terrible thing in the universe faced us, he always knew what to do. And if he didn’t…

That needle of worry nearly punctured me, threatening to send me into a spiral of despair. But the years of discipline Amon had instilled caught me at the last moment. My last comforting memory was of when he handed me the knife for the Dakka, then I was gone, thinking of nothing as I walked calmly down the corridors of Sanctuary.

Smaller shuttles departed from the ships. It would be mere minutes before they landed at our habitation tower and across our city. They meant nothing to me. I made sure of it as I strode down the empty corridor, the invasion of our last home in all the universe taking place around me. Had I run into another human, it would’ve broken my silent concentration. Thankfully, our numbers were so few that there was not a single living soul in the city between me and my destination.

There were many dark things that I could not think about. There was nowhere left to flee, to hide, for any of us. The other Bakke would soon notice their dead compatriot. But more than that, what if The Golden Court had already slaughtered everyone? What if I was now the last person alive on the moon. What if they killed Leah? I could not ruminate on that, for it would assist in them finding me again. I had to deny everything, every anxiety that used to so easily torment me on the Aphelion.

Even so, I had to kill three more assassins on my way to the tower, each time their comrades thought no besides Amon could possibly stand against them. With hands bloodied of invisible battle, I walked as if taking an aimless, evening stroll. I was here and then I was not, back to the palace of the Xurak Queen and back again, I crossed the skywalk to our living quarters and waved my hand over the door sensor.

The shuttles of The Golden Court had already docked. The Bakke assassins were already there, standing circled around the space. They all dressed in the elegant refinery of an alien culture. If you didn’t know their malicious intent, you could almost mistake it for the most courtly of receptions for their prisoner.

Ingrish was seated with her cane at a chair near the holo-table She faced forward, not moving a muscle to her attackers. I quickly realized why.

Whereas I had taken the quiet path, Amon had fought a war to reach the habitation tower. The man was breathing heavily and holding a rifle shakily, waving it wildly among the assassins. It was true no Bakke could penetrate his mind and not die. And so they gladly threw hundreds of their own at the man to restrain him. It was clear he had been the main source of their preoccupation, leaving me able to sneak here with them mostly unawares.

“Please!” One of the Bakke assassins stepped forward, an elderly one with a blinded gold mask affixed to her face. She spoke with her real voice. “There’s no need for further bloodshed! The Shayk does not want the slaughter of innocents! We have come to bring joyous news to Sanctuary. We have pruned every last rotten branch, silenced every discordant voice, spilled the blood of every last of the wicked—save one. There is only one guilty individual that walks and breathes in the face of this universe! Don’t you see? The work is nearly finished! We have found the long-ached answer to The Negentropic Principle! Then we shall all enter paradise!”

“I’m going to kill every last one of you!” Amon shouted.

“And we will die by the thousand! The Shayk commands it, and we shall carry out his will! But you are only a man, and you will tire. And then we shall take what is due.”

I saw the decision flicker across Amon’s face, and he suddenly aimed the rifle towards Ingrish’s chest.

“Wait!” I shouted before I realized it, taken aback by what was happening.

All eyes in the room turned, surprised at my presence. Amon looked shocked at me, surprised at my sudden presence, and the moment’s distraction nearly forced him to his knees as dozens of telepaths fought and died to restrain him. But he quickly refocused, aiming the rifle straight at Ingrish. “Get out of here, kid! You don’t want to see this!”

“I don’t understand!” I cried out.

“Yes, you do!” Amon shouted back. “Death is only the beginning for these freaks! You know damn well what will happen if I turn her over!” His finger, by miraculous effort, slowly began to squeeze the trigger.

The elder Bakke assassin threw out her webbed hand, surprised, as if her thoughts could stop a bullet. I suspect in all their years, The Golden Court had not come up against such an adversary as the veteran of the Fifth Aberrant War.

“Steal her life from the Shayk, and we shall take the life of every living being here in Sanctuary! Our interest is only in the traitorous daughter of the Court! Stay your hand, and we shall leave your world alone!”

Amon ignored the ultimatum. I’m sure he would’ve hesitated if he had been given a moment to think clearly, but as it was, when the universe offered him such choices, he always chose the one that spurned his enemies.

My body acted of its own accord, and I realized I still had the pistol from the vision of the Aphelion. I aimed it squarely at Amon’s head, less out of concern for Sanctuary and completely for the fact that he was about to murder my mother.

That certainly caused the old man to stop. “What are… you doing?” He breathed heavily, trying to keep his rifle steady.

I noticed some of the other Bakke assassins turn to my direction, but the elderly one with the gold mask quickly waved her hand, ordering them to stay back. One gun accidentally going off was dangerous enough, that, or she expected me to be able to talk Amon down.

However, it was Ingrish who broke the standoff. “Stop! I’m not worth that Amon, and you know it! They say they will spare Sanctuary, and they will keep their word! The Golden Court does not lie!”

The elder Bakke, the one with the gold mask, hesitated at the kind words of the traitor. I imagine the alien woman expected the foulest curses, pleading perhaps.

Amon shook his head. Sweat dripped down his face, mixed with tears. “You’re worth more than this entire galaxy.”

Ingrish’s back was turned to me, so I couldn’t see her expression. She slowly reached up and took off her scarlet blindfold, and with some gesture invisible to me, she spoke with a tremble in her voice. “Let me go.”

Amon winced with great pain, but the rifle slowly slipped from his fingers, clattering to the floor.

Two Bakke assassins came forward to drag Ingrish away, but my mother stood up with the cane, waving them aside that she could stand on her own. She did not spare me a second glance as she turned to go to the parked shuttle. We had already said our goodbyes, and she knew me well enough that I would not be able to bear getting my heart torn in half again. I was barely keeping myself together as it was.

In my mind’s eye, I felt two Bakke assassins telepathically connect with me, restraining my limbs to not do anything reckless. This time I let them overpower me, my eyes bowed to the floor in despair.

But just as Ingrish was led off, the elderly one in the golden mask tilted her head, as if leaning in to hear an invisible whisper. She pointed at me. “The Shayk demands his presence.” She then pointed at Amon. “As a gesture of his unending mercy, the Shayk invites you to see the new world he will create.”

I knew Amon didn’t care what god of the Golden Court said, but I knew there had been no way he was going to let Ingrish go to her execution, and he wasn’t going to let me out of his sight either. He nodded, and the telepaths relaxed their hold on him as well as me.

We were led into the shuttle, prisoners all. The doors closed, and that was the end.

…

In most respects, the throne room of The Golden Court had not changed a bit from the memory Ingrish had shown me. There it all was, a world within a world, a perfect refuge from an imperfect universe. The marble columns were as large as spaceship thrusters, rising into a vaulted dome of gold. The throne was not so much the centerpiece as the meeting place between heaven and the earth. The hull shards, taken from the original ships of the Bakke’s first exile, were smelted like glass up to meet a gilded sky filled with decorative constellations. The room was so large that our procession took half an hour to reach near the base of the throne.

But from a far distance, I saw him. The Shayk. Later, from what I gathered of The Golden Court’s history, the ruling monarchs were not Bakke themselves, instead some alien species that the telepaths encountered in the travels across the void. But as we approached, I saw that the alien might’ve not even been an alien anymore.

The golden mask swirled like liquid, occasionally forming the vaguest outline of a face before becoming dissatisfied and trying again. The seven eyes were each of a different race, one lizard-like, one of yellow, another of crimson, another startlingly human, and others I didn’t recognize. The edges of thing’s mask seemed to be a decorative flourish except now the golden wreath erupted into actual flame.

While this could’ve been the trick of a hundred technologies, some theatre enacted for the sake of a zealous cult, my heart sank in my chest as I saw the Shayk’s newfound prize. At the base of his throne was a portum—nearly identical to the one I saw on the Xurak vessel. It was another Eisner Gate, though the name failed to capture the horror of the device. At the center of this new world was another gateway into that infernal abyss, and as we crossed the final distance, I heard the all-too familiar whispers taunt me with their inevitability.

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