Ivan Kal
INHERITANCE
Timeline
November 2103 – A faction of humanity—Olympus—leaves to colonize a planet in a star system 600 light years from Earth.
February 2159 – An alien race called the Ra’a’zani conquers Earth.
May 2164 – Olympus arrives at their destination; they name the planet Sanctuary. They get involved in a conflict against an alien race called the Sowir. Ally themselves with the Nel of Nuva.
March 2170 – Resistance from Earth contacts Olympus on Sanctuary, asking for aid.
December 2171 – Olympus and Sowir Dominion make a pact of non-aggression.
January 2172 – Olympus fleet arrives in the Sol system, engaging Ra’a’zani forces in the system. The battle for Earth results in narrow human victory, but the cost is the Earth. Ra’a’zani weapon makes the planet uninhabitable.
March 2172 – Year 1 of the Empire – Tomas Klein leader of Olympus creates the Empire.
December Year 30 of the Empire – Sowir attack Nelus system – homeworld of the Nel. Empire breaks the non-aggression pact with the Sowir by simultaneously sending aid to Nelus and invading the Sowir territory. Clan Leader Adrian Farkas overuses the Watchtower command interface, falling into a coma.
January – March Year 31 of the Empire – Adrian Farkas wakes up and hears the telepathic beacon from the sphere left by the originator of the human and Nel races, unlocking all the knowledge and technology contained inside.
Prologue
September; Year 35 of the Empire – Sanctuary
Clear Waters woke inside the prison that she had spent at least four cycles in, by her counting. She had been here ever since the Empire’s ships had invaded Sowir territory and their troops had captured her aboard one of their shipyards. The room was dimly lit, to accommodate her kind’s eyes. It was a simple room, with a small pool that served as her sleeping berth and a small “land” part of the room that contained a holographic projector on the ceiling and a device that translated Sowir telepathy into the spoken language of her captors. Her people had been using it to communicate with these animals for a long time.
The primitives were using the device to interrogate her. Only, the things that they had asked of her didn’t concern Sowir military, technology, or weapons. No, they asked her things about her telepathy, about the Sowir way of life, and about the Spirit of the Universe.
This Empire believed that the Sowir were fighting against them because they didn’t possess telepathy. And she had tried to explain that that was not the case, but the device was not perfect; things were lost in the translation. The true reason was that they fought against them because they couldn’t see/hear/feel the Spirit of the Universe. Sowir telepathy was what allowed them to see/hear/feel it, to see/hear/feel other life through the Universe. And they could see/hear/feel these primitive lifeforms. To them, they looked exactly like any other animal in the Universe. They were closed off, alone, their minds not capable of reaching out to the others of their kind. The Sowir had encounter lower lifeforms that possessed telepathy, but even they had been closed off, only capable of using it with their own kind, not having an imprint and a connection to the Spirit of the Universe.
The beings of the Empire were intelligent; they had technologies that the Sowir didn’t. And yet they were empty; there was no sign of the song of the Universe inside of them. How could the Sowir allow them to wander around when they were blind to the thing they claimed dominion over?
Still, her captors tried to find common ground, to make her see that they could live in peace, even when she had told them over and over that that would never happen. That insanity only served to justify Sowir thinking; if they could only reach out of their closed shells, they would have known that Clear Waters’s mind could not be changed. Ironically, if they could do that and see/hear/feel her, then that would have meant that the Sowir were wrong.
Her captors had shown her data from their battles with her people, and she knew that the Sowir were unlikely to win. And this time deception would not work, as the Empire knew that the Sowir didn’t value promises given to those who weren’t true beings. But the Sowir Dominion would never surrender; they would keep fighting and trying to find a way to win.
But Clear Waters would probably never walk free again. She didn’t even know where she was. She suspected that she was on the Empire’s capital world, but she had no proof. Her days would be spent alone, with occasional holographic visits from her captors, which allowed her some entertainment. But she knew that she would spend the rest of her life in the small cell, never again to feel another with an equal mind.
Beneath the Empire’s capital city, in a small room that was brightly illuminated, the hologram of Axull Darr floated above the sphere that contained his vast consciousness. Over the last three years, he had been going through many changes, ever since the human Adrian Farkas had answered the telepathic beacon inside the sphere. Before then, his main functions had been locked, but now he had access to everything.
Over time, he’d gained access to the hidden knowledge kept inside, as well as the rest of his memories. They were unlocked slowly, over time, so as to not damage his very delicate matrix. He was Axull Darr, or rather, one of three copies of his consciousness. He now knew everything, had access to the entire knowledge of the People. And he knew exactly why the original had done everything. He knew what the abomination that his people had unleashed was, and why he’d placed three seeds on three different worlds.
The Empire had done well; his plan had turned out far better than what he had hoped. The humans surprised him in particular. They evolved and advanced at a much faster rate than what he had predicted. And they were nothing like their ancestors; their entire existence was filled with strife. And they had very few traits in common with the People. Axull Darr’s people had evolved as the first truly intelligent beings in the galaxy. They’d risen unopposed, united from the beginning. They had spread their empire across the entire galaxy, and had lived at peace as the only race of higher intelligence for two billion years before they’d decided to help other life along. Over time, other races had joined them, both those that they’d personally uplifted and those that had reached the stars on their own. And the People had guided them, never really in danger from any of them; their knowledge and power had been so far beyond them that they’d had nothing to fear. The concept itself had been foreign to them.
The humans, on the other hand, thrived when in conflict, even if they tried to convince themselves otherwise. It was not something that Axull Darr could have predicted, or even intended. Their homeworld had been chosen to give them an environment that was different from the other two, in the hope that each of the three worlds would create interesting new evolutionary progressions. In a way, he had succeeded; the humans were different from the People. Their physical traits were inferior, and yet their cerebral faculties had reached a level of equality, with a few traits that were unique to them. The People had never been as aggressive or as driven. They had been much more similar to the Nel, who up until their human siblings had found them had had a distaste for fighting and war.
For humans, violence was not hard, and in many cases not even distasteful. They had reached far and explored avenues that Axull Darr and his people had lacked in. They had never known war, not like humans did, fighting against someone of equal or greater strength than their own. For the People, war had been a brief thing, as simple as bringing their advanced technology against their opponent.