Sword of the Gods II: Prince of Tyre

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Galactic Standard Date: 152,323.09 AE

Zulu Sector: Command Carrier ‘Light Emerging’

Angelic Air Force

Brigadier-General Raphael Israfa

RAPHAEL

Colonel Raphael Israfa was a commander in the Angelic Air Force 480th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing. Like most Angelics he was blonde-haired, blue-eyed, with a fair complexion, tall, handsome, and finely formed. Unlike the others, his feathers were a rich, buff gold. A dimple marred his otherwise perfectly engineered Angelic features, and on the underside of his wings ran stripes of a richer, reddish-gold, markings no shipboard Angelic had possessed for thousands of years.

The ship Raphael commanded was the Light Emerging, a newer addition to the Alliance Air Force, smaller and sleeker than the command carriers built during the Emperor's absence, but she was also fast, bristling with weapons and firepower. It had been a year since Supreme Commander-General Jophiel had gifted him the ship as a consolation prize before banishing him to the most remote sector of the galaxy. That 'new ship smell' had faded the longer they lingered in the Uncharted Territories, but there was still a newness about the Light Emerging, giving the impression that she, and everyone on board her, was still a little green around the gills.

The ship's bridge shimmered as heat waves caused the light to refract. A vortex of golden-white particles appeared in the center, coalescing first into a miniature sun, and then expanded outwards until it assumed a vaguely humanoid shape.

“Sir?” Major Glicki's green heart-shaped head tilted as she pointed towards the visual disturbance. “There, Sir… What is that?” Like most insectoid species, Glicki's compound eyes enabled her to perceive subtle changes in the light long before an Angelic soldier could.

Raphael shot his Mantoid second-in-command a victorious grin. Given the message they had just relayed, he'd expected nothing less. He smoothed his feathers to make himself presentable before pushing the broadcast button of the ship's intercom.

“Attention all crew … report to the main cargo bay for inspection. Dress blues if you have time, if not, straighten up as best as you can. The Eternal Emperor is on the deck.”

The crew stood stupefied at his unbelievable words. Most had never seen the old god who ruled their half of the galaxy, much less had him appear on a ship stationed in a remote spiral arm. All Hades broke loose as the light became recognizably humanoid.

“Backs straight!” Lieutenant Sachiel marched up and down the bridge crew, white wings pressed tightly against his back. “Get that line into formation! Straighten out that uniform, airman!”

Raphael strode over to stand a respectful distance as the Eternal Emperor finished materializing into the material realm. He wore his preferred visage of an older, wingless Angelic wearing a simple white robe, his unruly white hair and bushy eyebrows sticking out in different directions. Raphael waited until he could see the Emperor’s golden eyes before tucking his wings into a tight 'dress wings' formation to deliver a crisp salute.

“At ease…” the Emperor nodded to the crew standing at stiff attention along both sides of the bridge. “As you were…”

“Your Majesty! I take it you got the message?” Raphael tried not to grin like a cat that had just swallowed a nice, fat bird. Seven months ago, Angelic Special Forces Colonel Mikhail Mannuki'ili had disappeared while shadowing a suspicious cargo vessel from the Sata'an Empire. Raphael had searched for his friend long past the time everyone else had given him up for dead … and now … they had a lead. A great, big whopper of a lead.

Mikhail had found the Holy Grail!!!

“Show me, please,” the Emperor said. “I wish to see her with my own eyes…”

“Major Gliki,” Raphael's blue eyes sparkled with pride at his friend's tenacity. “Please replay the message.”

Glicki moved her armored limbs over the communications console, causing a twelve-foot-high image of the missing Colonel to appear on a video screen which took up one whole wall. All eyes were not on Mikhail, who was himself an oddity by virtue of his dark hair and black-brown wings, but the swarthy young woman who stood at his side, lips turned upwards in an enigmatic smile.

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“The message cut off,” Raphael said. “It was an extremely weak signal. If we’d been a few light years in either direction, we wouldn't have received it at all."

"Can you isolate his position?"

"The coordinates are incomplete, Sir, but with the partial vectors we estimate we’re looking at this portion of Zulu sector.” Raphael pointed to a display screen showing all possible positions within the Orion-Cygnus spur of the Milky Way galaxy.

“That’s still a vast area,” the Emperor looked troubled. “It will be difficult to launch a search without alerting Shay’tan we're onto his latest conquest.”

“We’ve been analyzing the video for clues, Sir,” Raphael said. “Major Gliki … if you please?”

His second-in-command touched the console. Mantoid physiology enabled her to interpret many screens of intelligence data simultaneously. She used a computer-generated arrow to point to items of interest on the twelve-foot-high display screen.

“As you can see," Glicki briefed the Emperor, "this young woman appears as you do, Sir. A humanoid without wings."

With a few taps of her armored fingers, Glicki manipulated the screen to display measurements. "She is smaller than an Angelic female by 20%," Glicki changed the adjacent screen to display an Angelic who had been dead for tens of thousands of years, "and bears genetic features their race used to possess, but have been lost over time."

The accusation no man dared speak in the Emperor's presence passed from eye to eye and settled in the room like a bad odor. Inbreeding. Angelics possessed wings, but those wings came at a terrible price.

Glicki moved the arrow to point to the unknown female's long, dark hair. A color graph and numbers appeared in a sidebar, analyses of the differences between her features and those of the other hybrids.

"Her hair is even darker than Colonel Mannuki'ili, whose features are dark even for a Seraphim.” Glicki glanced at Raphael, whose buff-gold wings were also darker than the average Angelic, and gave him a tilted antennae, a running joke between them.

“What other clues can you tell me?” the Emperor asked.

“The woman is wearing crude, homespun clothing and a necklace carved from animal bone,” Glicki said. “If you look at the console behind them, you’ll see a bow and arrows, as well as a spear. The arrow heads appear to be flint, not metal."

"We surmise the planet is pre-technological," Raphael pointed upwards at the screen. "It would explain why we never detected an energy signature. If we had, we would have investigated it.”

The Emperor ran his fingers through his already-messy hair, making it stick up even more. Raphael was struck by how much the emperor and god who had created him fit the popularized image of a mad scientist.

“I lost an ark-ship in Victor sector during the exodus from Nibiru," the Emperor said. "We’d assumed it had gone down, no survivors, but we never found where it had crashed. Zulu Sector is a long way from its last known position, but it's possible it made it this far?"

Nibiru? Raphael glanced at the stone-tipped spear leaning within Mikhail's reach. It was hard to reconcile the Stone Age weapons with the advanced civilization rumor said had spawned the Eternal Emperor.

"If they were originally a technological society," Raphael asked, "why didn't they try to contact us?"

"This isn't the first time a civilization has been thrown back into a stone age," the Emperor said. "Especially during a calamity such as the asteroid which took out Nibiru! Look how long it took Mikhail to get out a message!"

The Emperor scratched his chin, deep in thought. "If the ark ship was beyond repair, it would have been abandoned and its technology forgotten within a few generations. The first few probably did try to get out a message, but look how weak Mikhail's signal was? If you hadn't been here searching for him, we'd have no idea he was still alive.”

“See that crack in the hull?" Glicki pointed with the arrow. "That's not a natural angle for that class of ship's monitor to make a recording. We can assume he knew his transmission window was brief and he compressed as many clues as possible into a short data burst.”

“Was there any other significant detail anyone noticed?” the Emperor glanced around the room at the awe-struck enlisted men. “Speak up … I don’t bite.”

“Sir,” Raphael said, “just an odd detail?”

“Speak freely.”

“Mikhail has his arm around this woman and he is smiling,” Raphael said. “If you knew him…”

“I do know him,” the Emperor nodded. “You're right.”

“Sir?” Lieutenant Sachiel was the ship's security officer. Like most enlisted men, he had met the reclusive Special Forces officer many times, but unlike Raphael had never gotten to know him. “I don’t understand.”

“Mikhail never smiles,” Raphael pointed up at his friend's enormous grin, hardly able to believe it himself.

“He is very serious,” the Emperor said. “My Cherubim master-of-arms trained him. I have never seen the slightest hint of mirth, which is not surprising given his family history.”

"Mikhail is the sole survivor of the 51-Pegasi-4 genocide." Glicki was also friends with Mikhail, having gone through Alliance Basic Training with the both of them. Her gossamer under-wings gave an ominous 'whir.'

An instinctive shudder rippled through Raphael's feathers. Twenty-five years ago, pirates had raided the remote Seraphim homeworld and slaughtered every man, woman and child. Nine-year-old Mikhail had survived by pulling a sword from his dying mother's body and used it to smite her murderers. Mikhail refused to speak of his horrific past, but to this day he carried that sword as a chilling, silent reminder.

“Mikhail would never embrace a female of any race in such an intimate gesture unless she had significant meaning to him,” Raphael said. “He’s got curious notions.”

“Mikhail is a full-blooded Seraphim,” the Emperor's eyes sparkled with interest. “I think it would be safe to guess he tried to convey additional information that got cut short.”

“Sir?” a young Spiderid private said, the curlicurae on his eight legs quivering at his boldness in interrupting the Eternal Emperor. “Another detail, Sir?"

“Speak up, son,” the Emperor smiled to reassure the young insectoid soldier.

“The woman has golden eyes like you do.” The Spiderid pointed to his own compound eyes to indicate he had picked up on color cues too subtle for humanoid eyes. “I have never seen anyone with that eye color except for you, your Majesty.”

They all squinted at the screen while Major Gliki honed in on the detail, enlarged it, and ran the video through a series of enhancement programs to verify what the Spiderid had detected.

“So she does!" There was a hint of awe in the old god's voice. “She's a pre-ascended being! This young woman has been touched by the hand of She-who-is.”

“Another god, Sir?” Raphael asked.

The Emperor scrutinized the screen, taking in every detail.

“Not yet, I think,” the Emperor said. "If her mind had already reached that level of evolution, one of us would have picked up on her thoughts the same way one of you would have detected the data transmissions of a fully technological culture."

He reached up to touch the young woman displayed on the video screen, his expression softening as though she reminded of someone he had once known. “Soon, though, I think. Look at her eyes! Whoever this woman is, she is on the cusp of evolving into something more. And vulnerable! We must find her before she falls into the wrong hands.”

By 'wrong hands' Raphael assumed he meant Emperor Shay'tan.

Turning to Raphael, the Emperor gave him the crisp salute of an officer to a subordinate and said, “Brigadier-General Israfa … allow me to inspect your crew.” More softly, he added, “they'll be disappointed if I leave without inspecting them after you made them all line up, now, won’t they?”

“Yes, Sir,” Raphael's dimple deepened into a full-blown grin, “but your Majesty, I am only a colonel.”

“Not anymore,” the Emperor said loudly enough for everyone on the bridge to hear. “I am making a field promotion right now. If I send you head-to-head against the Sata’an Empire, I will give you the rank to do it.”

“Thank you, Sir!” Raphael saluted. He led the way as though he was an excited private second-class, off of the bridge and down the hallway to the elevator that led into the bowels of his ship.

“Besides,” the Emperor said as they made their way to the cargo bay, “we both know the only reason Jophiel hasn't promoted you to Brigadier-General yet is because she doesn’t like to appear to be playing favorites. You don’t put a mere colonel in charge of a command carrier."

"Sir?" Raphael gave a noncommittal answer. His relationship with the Alliance's highest ranking military commander … and mother of his only child … was complicated due to the Emperor's strict anti-fraternization laws. So long as soldiers served in the military, for hybrids an obligatory five hundred years, they were forbidden to form permanent relations except to sire offspring to fill their ranks.

"Has she said yes yet?”

Raphael grinned. After their son Uriel had nearly died, the Emperor had given Raphael special dispensation to seek his highest-ranking military commander's hand in marriage rather than risk allowing Jophiel to resign.

“Not yet, Your Majesty,” Raphael said. “But I ask every chance I get. She fears it will undermine morale if she is granted preferential treatment.”

“Keep asking,” the Emperor said. “She'll say yes eventually.”

Oh, gods! Raphael certainly hoped so! The distance she had put between them to stiffen her resolve gnawed at his heart like a voracious animal! He escorted the Emperor through the command carrier's labyrinthian corridors. As they went, soldiers from every manner of species lined up at attention to catch a glimpse of the Emperor as he passed, a sight many would never see a second time.

Raphael's mind turned to what purpose Shay'tan might have for setting up a base on the planet Mikhail had discovered.

"Besides preventing us from solving the hybrid inbreeding problem," Raphael asked, 'what other plans might Shay'tan have for the human homeworld?"

The Emperor's bushy eyebrows furrowed in thought, plotting, no doubt, Shay'tan's next few moves. As they walked, Raphael's underfeathers stood up in their follicles, an instinctive response to the power which accompanied proximity to the Eternal Emperor. Lights glowed brighter and everything took on the clean scent of ozone. His feet made no sound as he trod upon the deck, a sharp contrast to the soft thud of Raphael's combat boots, indicating the Emperor was not completely here in corporeal form. They paused just before entering the crowded flight deck.

"One never knows what the old dragon has up his sleeve," the Emperor said. "But whatever it is, you can be certain it involves making me look like a fool."

Raphael feigned interest in one golden primary feather to avoid flashing a tell-tale grin. The Emperor's chess game against Shay'tan was legendary.

"You must find the human homeworld before Shay'tan sends reinforcements," the Emperor said. "Mikhail is a formidable soldier, but he lacks the training to shape these people into an army capable of fending off annexation by the Sata'an Empire."

A chuckle escaped Raphael's throat. 'The Emperor's Personal Attack Dog' had no tolerance for dealing with politics or other people's egos. Despite the many involuntary promotions the Emperor had tried to shower upon him, the reclusive Seraphim had studiously avoided accepting command of anything larger than an elite Special Forces unit.

"What's so funny, Brigadier-General Israfa?"

"I'm sorry, your Majesty," Raphael laughed. "I meant no disrespect. I just pictured Mikhail leading a group of spear-chucking humans against one of Shay'tan's battle cruisers." He pantomimed throwing a primitive weapon. "It would be like asking a rock to herd a school of fish through the desert."

For emphasis, Raphael donned his best friend's trademark unreadable expression, the one Mikhail wore whenever he was thrown into a social situation.

It was a laughing old god who strode into the hanger bay to inspect his men, the rediscovery of humans and thought of the reticent Seraphim being shoved kicking-and-screaming into a command position buoying Hashem's already jubilant mood. The last thing Mikhail wanted was to be 'promoted' and forced to put up with the kinds of political manure Supreme Commander-General Jophiel did on a daily basis!

Mikhail would rather battle Shay'tan himself than be subjected to that kind of living hell!