The war of conquest was as short as it was futile. The planetary inhabitants resisted as best they could, modifying their instrument-carrying rockets to assault the huge invaders above their beautiful planet. Some damage was inflicted on the big ships, which goaded the imperialists into fierce retaliation.
In the forests and glades below the Silfen hurried down their paths to regain the peace and freedom denied to those whose home this was. But even the elfin folk whose life was one of happiness and fey interest in the worlds they passed through were troubled by the horrific violence erupting around them. In penance, they watched.
Ozzie was shown the dark armored starships sending their missiles and kinetic projectiles hurtling down onto the planet below. Explosions ripped through the sleeping clouds, distorting the world’s air. Waves of destruction rolled out. Solid ground rippled like water. Oceans rose in rage. Towns and cities were blasted apart. Aliens died in the tens of thousands in the first few seconds. Ozzie knew them. He felt their death. Their grief. Their fear. Their loss. Their sorrow. Their regret as their homes disintegrated. Their bitterness as their children were torn apart before them. Every one of them was there for him to identify and experience. And the deaths multiplied as the empire’s weapons cast this world into smoking, radioactive oblivion before the starships departed in search of new worlds, worlds easier to subdue.
Ozzie fell back from the globe, curling up into a fetal ball as the tears flooded down his cheeks to stain the dead world’s dry sandy soil.
He wept for hours as the terrible anguish of countless deaths soaked through him. He hated it as he had hated nothing in his life before. Hated what was done. Hated the blind stupidity of the imperialists. Hated the Silfen for standing by and doing nothing. Hated the waste of so much life, so much promise. Hated knowing what a better universe it could have been if only the quiet simple aliens whose world this once was had survived and finally met the gaudy flawed human race as the Commonwealth expanded. Hated that such a meeting of unalike minds would never happen.
Late in the afternoon, when his tears had long since dried up, he stopped his pitiful whimpering lament, and rolled onto his back, blinking up at the cloudless sky. Orion and Tochee gazed down anxiously at him.
“Ozzie,” Orion pleaded, his own face close to tears. “Please don’t cry anymore.”
“It’s hard not to,” he croaked. “I was here. I was with every one of them when they died.” He started to tremble again.
“Ozzie! Ozzie, please!”
He felt Orion’s hand grasp his own, in desperate need of reassurance. A boy lost light-years from home, abandoned by his parents, on an adventure that had become a nightmare for too many months. The frail human touch was what he needed not to fall into that black infinity of horror. And how much of an irony was that, the superindependent Ozzie needing someone?
“Okay,” Ozzie said weakly, and gripped the boy’s hand roughly. “Okay, give me a moment here, dude, yeah.” He tried to sit up, only to find his body barely responding. Tochee’s manipulator flesh slid under him, helping to shift him upright. He looked around at the canyon, almost fearful of what he would see. “Where are the Silfen?”
“I don’t know,” Orion said. “They left ages ago.”
“Huh. Finally got something right. I’d kill the bastards if they’d stayed.”
“Ozzie, what happened? What did you see?”
He put a hand up to his forehead, surprised at how hot the skin was, as if he’d come down with a fever. “I saw what happened to this world. Some aliens arrived in starships and… and nuked it to shit.”
Orion gazed around uncertainly. “Here?”
“Yeah. But a long time ago, I guess.” He looked at the ruined palace city, feeling a fresh wave of sadness.
“Why did they show that to you?”
“I don’t know, man, I really don’t. They thought it was what I wanted, for my song. Song, hell!” A dismissive grunt escaped from his mouth. “I’d say we’ve got some serious translation problems here. Reckon I’m gonna sue someone in the cultural department when we get home for like a trillion dollars. I’m never going to recover from this.” Ozzie stopped, knowing just how true that was. “But then, I guess that’s the whole point. It’s a memory that belongs to the Silfen. They’re the ones who watched it all. And they did nothing.” He scooped up some of the sandy soil, then let it trickle away through his fingers, mesmerized by the drifting grains. “This is for them, it’s their grief, not mine, not the people whose world this used to be. It’s about them. Nobody else knows or cares, not anymore.”
“So what do we do now?”
Ozzie eyed the black globe wearily. “Leave. There’s nothing here for us.”
TWENTY-ONE
Even now, after all these years, Elaine Doi still got a thrill ascending to the rostrum. From the floor of the Senate Hall it looked imposing, a broad raised stage at the front of the seats, with a big curving desk made from centuries-old oak where the First Minister sat directing debates. In reality, when you came up the stairs at the back, the lights shining down from the Hall’s domed roof were so bright you had trouble seeing the last step. The purple carpet was worn and threadbare. The grand desk was despoiled with holes drilled in to accommodate modern arrays, portals, and i-spots.
In the past there had been countless occasions during working sessions when she had to come up here to make a policy statement or read a treasury report. The massed ranks of senators had heckled her mercilessly, their cries of “shame” and “resign” echoing around the Hall, while the reporters in their gallery to the right of the rostrum had grinned like wolves as they recorded her dismay and feeble rejoinders and fluffed lines. Despite all that, she’d been the one they ultimately paid attention to, the one controlling the debate, pushing through her legislation, doing the deals that made government work, not to mention scoring political points off her opponents.
Today, of course, the seven hundred senators in attendance fell into a respectful silence and stood in greeting that was tradition whenever the President got up to address them. They would have shown that much consideration if it had just been her monthly statement of review, but this time she could feel the genuine trepidation running through the Hall. Today they were looking to her to provide leadership.
Her ceremonial escort of Royal Beefeaters saluted sharply and moved away to stand guard at the back of the rostrum. She always thought their splendid scarlet uniforms added a real touch of class to these moments. Although they were technically assigned to the presidency as a courtesy from King William during the founding of the Commonwealth, the executive security office had long since taken over their funding and organization.
“Senators and people of the Commonwealth, please be silent for your Honorable President Elaine Doi who wishes to address you on this day,” the First Minister announced. He bowed to Elaine and returned to stand behind his desk.
“Senators, fellow citizens,” she said. “I thank you for your time. As I am sure you are aware from media reports, our Starflight Agency ships—the Conway, the StAsaph, and the Langharne —have now returned from Dyson Alpha. What their investigations discovered there was unpleasantly close to our worst-case scenarios. Commander Wilson Kime has now confirmed that the Dyson aliens, the Primes as they appear to be called, are indeed hostile in nature. Even more worrying, he discovered that these Primes have turned their considerable industrial prowess to the construction of large wormholes that can reach immense distances across this peaceful galaxy.
“This day we thank and pay tribute to him and his crews for the dangerous flight they undertook on our behalf. To learn what they did under such perilous conditions was a show of tremendous courage, which should give the Primes considerable pause for thought when they come to consider our resolve. However, we should never forget that they received help from a most unexpected source.