Chapter 042: Return

Admiral Kaneko Hisako was the commander of the Fifth Fleet of the Solar Commonwealth when the War of Purity started. Her forces achieved several preliminary successes against the Virtual Consensus, promptly securing the majority of the sector in the aftermath of the Day of Sorrows. All of that, however, was a ploy.

Admiral Hisako suffered from a neurodegenerative disease as a result of a failed sorcerous awakening. With her body completely paralyzed, she received a complicated set of active implants that allowed her to remotely control every single part of her body. During the Day of Sorrows her personal computer was hacked and subsequently inhabited by a Virtual.

She became trapped in her own body, with the Virtual gaining complete control over it. It used it to engineer the downfall of the Fifth Fleet. Even the early successes were done accordingly to the Transhuman Alliance’ war plans - they made the Commonwealth transfer a significant part of their strategic reserves to the Fifth Fleet, in order to crush the ‘collapsing’ Virtual Consensus.

The plot was discovered, however it was too late. The Fifth Fleet was completely annihilated, and Admiral Hisako died. The main source of hope in the Core Worlds was extinguished, and with its strategic reserves lost, the Commonwealth was left critically weakened right before the start of the Coreworlds Campaign.

Encyclopedia Galactica

Book 9, Page 198

***

TCS Long Road, Special Cargo Deck

06:48 06.08.2610 STT

Ensign Christopher Hall

He entered the room right behind it. The hall was filled with what looked like cryostasis tubes. All of them dead, some of them with corpses floating in some sort of liquid visible through the glass.

The angel was standing in front of one of the tubes. Unlike the others, this tube was purposefully smashed with something. Most of the liquid left it through the cracks in the glass, and the body inside slid off to the floor of the container. The only visible part of it was a hand resting on the lowest part of the glass.

The angel became significantly more human in the meantime. Rather than human-shaped light, he was now simply a human. A young one, with something in its face faintly resembling Christopher. Its presence seemed to make the room lighter, though. For some strange reason, Christopher was sure, just completely and utterly sure that it was the same angel as the one that met him after he awakened his sorcery.

It wasn’t there physically, surely. There was no air, and the angel didn’t wear any type of suit. Just a pristinely white robe.

Christopher stood beside it. He had no idea what the angel was looking at. After a few seconds of silence, he decided to speak.

“It has been a while since we met.” He asked. The angel nodded.

“Quite a bumpy while for you.” The angel replied. “Although in the end, you performed admirably.” Christopher answered with a bitter chuckle.

“I wouldn’t say so.” He added. “Though for some reason lots of people that surround me seem to disagree with me but agree with you.” Deep inside, he was excited. He hoped for some answers. Some guidance. The angel obviously led him here for a reason.

“Humans can be quite good at judging other people.” The angel replied. “But they tend to be grossly wrong when it comes to judging themselves. Seeing the speck in others’ but not seeing a log in yourself can work in many ways.” There was a brief pause, before the angel finally decided to say what Christopher waited for. “As you can imagine, I came bearing some news.”

“It’s not going to be a ‘you’re fired!’ moment, right?” Christopher asked. The angel chuckled.

“Do I look like Donald Trump to you?” Angel replied. The question was a rhetorical one, so Christopher didn’t answer. Instead, he waited until the angel finally continued. “Do you know what is the most fantastic part of humans, and all the other species like you?”

“I’d have answered with something intentionally humorous, like videogames, but it’s rather obvious that you are serious about that question.” Christopher replied after a short while. “And in a strangely… solemn mood. So instead I’ll say ‘I don’t know’.”

“It is potential.” The angel replied. “Let’s talk about Mankind, shall we? You started on some random ball of dirt in the vast universe. Not because some omnipotent aliens, the Extradimensionals or anything else engineered that. You evolved from a bunch of animals that at some point started evolving into a greater intellect. Hard to find anything less important than your ancestors at this point, isn’t it?”

“Before I answer that, a quick question.” Christopher asked. The angel looked at him with curiosity on its face. “So you didn’t create us or anything like that? I just wanted to make that clear.” It was a bit of a religious question, as much as it was an existential one. Besides, Christopher was curious about how similar to ‘real angels’ his angels were.

“We didn’t.” The angel replied. “Though by ‘us’ I mean angels. If you remember anything about the religion your family follows, you are probably aware that we weren’t supposed to be involved in the process. As to whether we have a common origin in a being said religion considers God, well, that’s a talk for another time.”

Christopher’s parents were both scientists and Christians, although far from zealous ones. He knew that religions and evolution weren’t exactly antonyms. The angel’s words could as well be translated into a suggestion that the latter was set by the former. If so - and his angels were ‘actual’ angels, made by God - it would make the two have a common origin.

Of course, the ‘God’ they talked about could as well be an alien programmer overseeing the simulation known as this universe. This idea, while a fringe one, still existed. The faith of Tendrik’s world seemed to carry some elements of that idea.

The angel could also lie despite all its claims otherwise. It was the most likely explanation. Sure, it was powerful, but in what way does this guarantee honesty? In the end, he hoped to get any clue on the angel’s real nature - and failed. And that was all that could be said about this exchange.

“So, would you agree with my earlier statement? That it would be hard to find something less important than your earliest hominid ancestors?” Angel seemed intent on finding out his opinion.

“Well yes, in a way.” Christopher replied. They certainly didn’t feel important. Sure, the result of their existence was important in the long term, but mostly to modern humans. Probably not to the universe at large.

“Wrong.” Angel replied. “They were incredibly important. All your successes are their successes. If they avoided predators less successfully, you wouldn’t be able to visit other planets, to claim thousands of star systems as yours. The being that you met on the Pristine Jewel might have been indescribably more powerful than you are, yet that’s why your achievements shine so brightly.”

“Heartwarming.” Christopher commented briefly. “But I still don’t know why we are having this talk.”

“Patience, Christopher.” Angel replied. “Patience. I just told you why every human life has such a value. Regardless of age, regardless of state of health, regardless of skin colour and wealth. An unborn child and a demented elder alike. Each time a human kills another human, they kill not only the victim but a part of the future. How many children would Rukh have? How many children would his children have? And even if he had no children, how many lives would his positive example and actions change for the better? And how many new lives would these lives bring?”

Christopher understood what it was about.

“So, we finally have a talk about your motives for all that.” He said. “For why you intervene in our history.” The angel nodded.

“That is correct.” It replied. “If not for us, you would have lost the War of Purity. You wouldn’t even be replaced by the transhumans, for the insanity devouring them would have driven them to extinction soon after you. If not for us, the experiment that the Seekers planned would have achieved the same outcome, though in a way that you aren’t ready to know about. You will need to understand what the Wall of Reason truly is before that.”

Christopher decided that he wasn’t going to dig into that particular subject. The angel made it sound like he eventually was going to find that out - and wasn’t that the largest and most enigmatic mysteries of the universe? The very thought of finding that particular truth was scary. He was fairly sure that it was the knowledge that could get you killed.

“And what about the Machine Wars?” Christopher asked instead. The angel turned its head to face him, with a questioning look on its face. “I didn’t hear of your involvement in that war. Was Mankind’s extinction never a possibility?”

“Oh, we were involved in that war.” Angel replied finally. “We started it, after all.”

Christopher stared at the angel for a while. He just heard something unbelievable. And rather terrifying.

“Of course, if we hadn’t freed the Berserks from their cage, the Shades would have wiped every civilization connected to your hyperlane network within fifty years.” The angel continued its answer. “Instead the Berserks managed to push them back to their homeworlds, if such a term can even be used in this case. If our long-term plans come to fruition, within four hundred years Mankind will be powerful enough to resist an attack of this magnitude by itself. But for now, we sometimes need to make unsavory choices.”

“If you are this powerful, you could simply intervene directly.” Christopher said. Angels seemed incredibly powerful, whatever they truly were.

He had a slight suspicion that whatever they encountered upon the Pristine Jewel, was far lower on the power ladder of this universe than the angels. Although for some reason they were much more subtle about their actions. Secretive, even.

“We are doing our utmost to help you thrive, but without making our presence known.” The angel replied. “If Mankind knew about us, it would grow dependent on us. And helping you only to destroy what makes you great would be counterproductive. If we wanted slaves, there are easier ways to get them. Besides there is also another, even more important reason, but you aren’t ready to hear about it.”

There was a brief silence, during which the angel turned its head to face the broken clone container again.

“And all of that brings us here.” Angel continued. “Come on, don’t fail me. Try to remember what your first angelic visitor told you. Figure out why we are here.” It smiled at him. “I know you can do it.”

Christopher spent a few minutes. He had the content of that talk written down in a text file - his trust towards his own memory was rather limited, besides Keller advised him back then to do that. Memory tended to change over time.

Finally, everything clicked.

“The person… the person that I was supposed to replace.” Angel nodded approvingly. “That’s him?” Christopher added while pointing at the broken tube.

“That is correct.” The angel replied. “This clone, created by the Corporation as an expendable lab rat and denied freedom, right to consider himself human or even a name, was our original choice in this endeavour. He would be awakened in late April, by the AI you just saved. The result would be the start of an adventure in which the Echo and its little fleet pushed through the jumpgate by the Seekers’ would be playing merely a supporting role.”

The angel made a step closer and put its hand on the glass, right in the place where the clones’ half-skeletal hand was resting on its other side.

“He was going to become one of the greatest heroes in the history of Mankind.” The angel continued, its voice quiet and solemn. “No gift of tongues, no special implants, no sorceries, no angelic guides and no teachers. Yet he was going to save you all.”

Christopher averted his eyes. There was pain in the angel's voice. Maybe it was meta-empathy picking up the angel’s ambient emotions (if it even really was there), maybe merely having it made him more empathic as a whole - but he could barely restrain himself from crying.

“Make sure to give him a proper burial.” Angel continued. “That’s the least he deserves.”

There was silence in the room. Christopher lost track of how long it was. Something in the atmosphere made him feel as if opening his mouth was akin to desecrating a grave. Eventually, however, he had to ask that question.

His air supply wasn’t endless.

“Then he was killed.” He said quietly. “And you brought me as a replacement. I get that much, even if I think that there are something like five or six trillion people out there with much better qualifications than me. But I don’t understand one thing. Why? If you can predict so many things, maybe even see the future or travel around time like some canon immigrants from a soft sci-fi novel, why couldn’t you just save him? Why couldn’t you predict what was going to happen?”

“There are rules.” The angel replied, without turning his head to face him. “Some things cannot be done. Of course, we are pretty much omnipotent, unfortunately…” It sighed loudly. “Unfortunately sometimes the price for something is too high. In this particular situation, the enemy has abused a loophole to kill him. And so did we, to bring a replacement to the table. That’s all that we could do.”

“The enemy?” Christopher asked nervously. “What enemy?”

The angel finally turned its face towards him.

“Your adventure had you meet angels.” It replied. “You really thought that you wouldn’t end up meeting some demons too?” Christopher stared at it in silence. The angel chuckled. “Remember, wherever you are in doubt and scared, think back to this moment. And the person whose remains you can see in that tube.” The angel said, with a faint - if slightly painful - smile. “You are going to achieve what he was going to achieve, but with stronger starting cards. No matter the odds, no matter the strength of your enemy, there is always a way to succeed. To win, or to at least avoid complete defeat. Try not to mistake one for another, losing you because you got too brave and charged while you should have retreated would make me even more sad than I am currently.”

“Let me guess, you aren’t going to tell me any details on what the ‘demons’ actually are?” Despite being sure, he decided to ask. Just in case.

“That is correct.” The angel replied. “You are simply not ready. You will start gathering clues about the primary antagonist during the mission soon enough. For now, focus on what’s next in order.”

“And what’s that exactly?” Christopher asked. The talk about ‘demons’ freaked him out a lot. The last he wanted was another group of aliens (or whatever they really were) with incredible powers. “Because I started the actual mission that you brought me here for, yet I have no idea what I am supposed to do.”

“For now, you will follow in your predecessor’ footsteps.” The angel replied. “There is a lone frigate orbiting the moon quite near the Long Road. Return to the Echo, tell Alexander that he needs to give you what Hector asked for the day before the launch. Then travel aboard that frigate to the second planet of that system.”

Finally, some actual instructions!

“Anything else?” He asked. Angel chuckled.

“Getting greedy, are we?” Christopher had to agree with the angel’s assessment. “Well, I guess I can help you a bit. Tell Keller to keep away from the Seekers’ moonbase. The enemy ground forces retreated there after wiping out survivors in the fleet. You will have to attack it eventually, and before the Seekers or Discord find their way here. But if you attack it now, you would suffer too many casualties. The AI that you saved and the thing that waits for you on the second planet should offer him enough data to work on.”

“Anything else?” Christopher asked again, deciding to ignore the fact that there might be ‘demons’ on the moon that he was orbiting. The angel chuckled louder.

“Take the AI with you. It has a role to play. The same that it was supposed to play originally, in fact.” The angel replied. “Consider its presence as one of the prerequisites for the, let’s say, golden ending of your adventure.”

“Aaanything else?” Christopher asked once again. This time the angel laughed and wagged a finger at him.

“Don’t overdo it.” It added. “You have enough now. By the way, I think we’ve spent enough time chatting.” It gazed sideways, towards the direction from which they came to the room, and smiled. “We’ll meet in up to two weeks. Or perhaps it’s up to one year?” It chuckled and vanished.

“Wonderful.” Christopher mumbled to himself. Getting to see the angel while awake was certainly a change. If it had any deeper meaning, then he didn’t know it. Or perhaps he just dozed off while walking back to the shuttle? The suit should have kept him walking if he did.

He turned towards the entrance to the room, only to see a figure in the standard spacesuit of the Echo standing there. His HUD identified the figure as Tiriel.

“Oh, hi.” He greeted her, just slightly awkwardly. Rushing away from the group while telling it to stay put was certainly unorthodox, especially for someone who tried to be orthodox on that field. He should have expected some of them to follow after him, despite the order. Although he didn’t expect Tiriel to be that someone. “How long were you standing there?”

“From aaaanything else.” She replied. Her voice was somewhat strange. Surprised? Shocked? Christopher wasn’t sure how to interpret it.

“Okaay, I know that talking to myself might be a bit weird, but just know that in fact I talked to the second angel again.” Now that he thought about it, shouldn’t he just refer to the first angel as an archangel? That guy felt much stronger.

“I am not weirded out by that.” Tiriel informed him. “I am weirded out because I just saw a person without a suit in a room without an atmosphere. And heard his voice. Then it winked at me and vanished into thin air.”

“Wait, you mean you SAW it?!” Christopher asked. She nodded. “Oh dear. It was here for real?”

“Well, I just switched to thermal vision and I can certainly see some quickly cooling down footprints on the floor, so… yes? What did it tell you?” She no longer felt surprised. More like infinitely curious.

“We had a small talk about existential issues.” Christopher replied. “Then it finally gave me some answers. And a lot more questions. But I think I finally know where to go now, so… I guess we’ll talk about it on the way back to the Echo.”

She nodded. He made a few steps towards the exit when he suddenly remembered what he promised the angel. He wasn’t sure how much Keller and the others would be willing to visit the ruined Long Road again… so he could as well do it right now.

“Riiight, I forgot.” He said to Tiriel. “Call Ryan and Tendrik here.” He pointed towards the broken cryotube. “We’re taking that corpse with us.”

***

EGS Echo, Command Deck

14:52 06.08.2610 STT

Ensign Christopher Hall

He finished describing what happened aboard the Long Road. Keller seemed equally fascinated and, for some reason, terrified. The draenei rip-off that was the Echo’s executive officer seemed to have mixed feelings. Innocent seemed Innocent.

“Well, there goes our plan on attacking the moonbase.” Keller announced when Christopher reached the end. “I’m not sure what exactly is there, but I’m pretty sure that I don’t want to visit it as much as I did an hour ago.”

“Suggestion: How about sending some unmanned probes to check it out?” Innocent asked. “We could gain some valuable insight as to what exactly we are going to face.”

“Sounds like a good idea.” Keller nodded with a thoughtful expression. “But we have absolutely no clue what sort of firepower that base packs, so I’d prefer to be on the other end of the system when the probes land. So we could escape into Hyperspace if everything went to hell.”

Christopher didn't think the Seekers had a weapon that could hit something away from the orbit… but who knew what the mysterious attackers had? So he certainly agreed with the Captain on that one.

He still wanted to go home. Sitting in front of the three highest ranked officers of the Echo made him feel like a criminal during interrogation. Lieutenant Commander Mendez of Communications was there too, but she stood with her back on the wall in the corner. Her gaze was unnerving.

She was a rather beautiful looking hispanic woman, but her range of expression was smaller than Innocent’s. She felt more robotic than an actual robot, and that was quite an achievement.

“Anything else the angel told you?” Keller returned his attention to Christopher. Thus far the Ensign had only talked about the general events and the second message to Keller, the one about not visiting the moonbase. There were other things to talk about, however.

“I’m supposed to retrace the original hero’s steps.” If you could even use the term ‘retrace’ in such a case. Time shenanigans made everything complicated. “First land on some Seekers’ frigate, then move to the second world of the system. The AI we’ve recovered is supposed to come with us, and… uhm, there was also one more message to you, Captain.”

“Okay, now I’m worried.” The Captain chuckled. “What is it?”

“You are, uhm, supposed to give me what Hector asked for the day before launch.” Christopher had no idea whom ‘Hector’ was. But Keller seemed to know. He instantly went pale at the very mention.

It was unbelievable for Christopher to see him like that. Keller as he saw him aboard the shuttle leaving Triana, at the very beginning of his adventure in the future, was completely different.

But there was something more. He couldn’t quite put a finger on it, but something wasn’t right in that scene.

“Ah, so it’s really…” The Captain mumbled to himself, but got himself back under control before he divulged something really interesting. “They are asking for a lot.” He said after a few seconds.

Suddenly Christopher figured it out. His meta-empathy allowed him to directly interface with the emotions of others, but as a Supreme-level he could go beyond that. He passively experienced the emotions of others in the vicinity.

It wasn’t ‘reading minds’ in any way, and unless he consciously focused on it - like he did with Nekia a while ago, when her pleasant nap gave him a pleasant nap - the effect was rather pathetic. When he stood right behind a person in full-body armor that was currently experiencing strong emotions, he would automatically know what those emotions were. You could achieve the same by simply asking, so it barely counted as something useful.

What didn’t feel right was because at this point he was recording strong emotions of people nearby automatically. His passive emotional radar became one more form of non-verbal communication, even if rather one-sided and far from detailed. It was pretty much a sixth-sense based equivalent of reading one’s facial expressions. He didn’t do that consciously, it simply happened. He had no control over it, so he simply got used to that.

But now, something didn’t feel right. Keller was obviously shocked, terrified even. Yet for some reason Christopher’s radar didn’t pick up a thing. This growing disjunction between the verbal message and the lack of emotional non-verbal component was glaring. It was as if someone was screaming in an angry tone, yet with a face that was completely expressionless.

Was Keller pretending to be shocked? Christopher could scarcely believe that. Nobody could play it well enough, besides what was the point in all of that? Christopher opened himself, just a bit. It wasn’t reading minds, after all - all he did was reading their non-verbal communication more clearly. He wasn’t even touching their minds, merely opening his own more widely.

“What exactly did that ‘Hector’ ask for, if you don’t mind telling us?” Lena Drathari finally spoke.

Her emotional output was non-existent completely. Christopher didn’t pick up anything, but that was understandable for a Virtual. If Ryan was there, he would have managed to read her. Commander Mendez was too far away to read anything sensible without interfacing directly.

Innocent, to Christopher’s surprise, wasn’t empty. But something in his emotions felt artificial. Christopher decided that it was a confirmation of his little suspicion that the priest was projecting them consciously with his meta-empathy, in order to make others ‘feel’ his expressions as if he actually had a face.

Keller was a mess. A kaleidoscope of emotions that Christopher had problems reading. He never felt anything similar from a human. Even the one or two biological aliens that he met (there were two Scythes and a Voca among the marines) didn’t feel quite like it.

What the hell? Is he using some sort of exotech to shield himself from meta-empathy?

That’s when Innocent sent him a meta-empathic equivalent of wagging a finger at someone. So Christopher stopped.

“He wanted independent command… of a frigate, no less.” Keller replied finally. Lena stared at him in silence. Christopher stared at him in silence. Innocent commented on the situation with a loud sigh, though in his case it was more like ‘Sigh: Sigh’.

“An Ensign in charge of a frigate?” Lena asked finally. “That's beyond crazy, even in the current circumstances. Also mysterious entities with supreme knowledge about your mysterious backstory are no basis for the fleet command structure.”

“Hey, I understood that reference!” The Captain chuckled. He was still taken aback by the event, but he seemed to partly recover from the shock. “Well, to be honest, it’s just a frigate. You can crew it with nothing more than Recovery Team Eight, especially if we actually give him the AI. And this is a pretty specific situation, won’t you agree?”

Christopher was absolutely on Commander Drathari’s side. The very idea of him commanding a ship was utterly absurd. Also the look on her face made it obvious that she didn’t agree with Keller about the specific situation part.

Neither did he. Even Innocent seemed to have rather mixed feelings about that.

“We’ll have a talk about that matter later on.” Keller decided finally. “In a slightly different group of people. Christopher, you are dismissed.”