Menseio Station, orbiting Veria

Menseio Station

11:02 Ship Time

September 18, 2019

The previous three days had been interesting to be sure, and it all started when Ben had asked where the table had come from. The Fa’iir contingent thought that I had purchased it, while my friends and I thought that it was a gift from a third party. We ended up being right, but no one would have imagined that it had been gifted long ago.

It turned out that the Alii’lig table had been in its current state for a little over fourteen hundred years. It was given to my father as a gift by the Haix council, at a time when different civilizations throughout the galaxy were first coming together for reasons other than trade. They were forging relationships and alliances, but that was only the beginning of something much more grand.

Or was supposed to be, anyway. Mere weeks after receiving ownership of the highly sought after wood, Kaldrus Dhir made his move and those beginnings came to a very abrupt end. It was such a mammoth undertaking to build something that would last generations, but there was no one else who had the clout or the wherewithal, nor the respect that Derech Kidravia commanded.

Oh, there were those that tried, and some were even slightly successful, but none even came close in scope to what my father envisioned. As I sat there, scrolling through the tablet that contained all of his grand plans for the second time, I realized that it would’ve been his life’s work. His goal wasn’t just to see his own people prosper and remain safe; that was his hope for the galaxy as a whole. It was as if he knew something was coming and he wanted to be prepared for it. Whatever that was, it was known only to him.

Everything that had been in Abi the day my father passed and the bond between them was broken hadn’t been destroyed like everyone had previously thought. The moment the bond was broken, three protocols had been automatically activated. The first was to get every living thing onboard to safety, which was done by teleporting them down to the surface of Nedovis. The second was to move everything else that remained onboard into Abi’s dimensional storage. Only once those two protocols were finished did the third begin, which was the process in which Abi shrank from a ship that was kilometers in length, down to the small crystal that easily fit into one’s hand.

She didn’t explain why she had waited so long to tell my sisters and I, but it was clear that the table wasn’t there by accident. When our new Fa’iir friends had departed and everyone else was catching some much-needed shuteye, my sisters and I were headed somewhere else. Abi had something to show us, and it was beyond anything we could have imagined. It was also closer than we thought.

(Three days previously…)

While my friends and family and I all had rooms in a small starboard section just forward and aft of the bridge, there were still a lot of vacant rooms on the port side as well. The area we were directed to had a cluster of six rooms that were completely bare, with none of the usual features. No room numbers or names associated with the rooms, nor any visible ways to gain access. All six of them were missing door handles and the security systems were nowhere to be seen until we stepped up to the indicated door.

It had one of the unmarked rooms to its left, and one to the right, with the other three being right across from it. When we were standing in front of it, it lit up like a screen and a square appeared. After a moment, that square was divided into four smaller squares, each with the outline of a hand with a name above it. Jonuth Kidravia in the top left, followed by Leenah Kidravia in the top right, Leksi Kidravia in the bottom right, and Lucia Kidravia in the bottom left.

After looking at one another, we positioned ourselves and then placed our left hand where it was meant to go. Without so much of a command, each of us channeled our mana into the door. Almost instantly, the door retracted ever-so-slightly, and then slid into the wall like most doors did. While we had expected to see a bedroom when the door opened, that was not what awaited us on the other side.

It wasn’t a bedroom at all, but was instead an entryway to a multistory house, and a large one at that. Not quite mansion-sized, but more colonial. The entryway opened up to a large living room, with a staircase directly opposite and a hallway flanking it to each side. There were many things to see, and the first thing to stop us in our tracks was by no means the last.

It was a family portrait that covered a good portion of the left wall when you stepped into the living room. It was that of a young boy, a man and a woman who were quite obviously his parents, and then another woman. Although she didn’t look it, it was easy to tell that she was the oldest of the three adults. Even captured in paint, her eyes held more wisdom than both of them put together.

“Great grandmother Ateru…” Leksi said quietly as the four of us gazed up at some of our ancestors.

“That’s dad as a young boy, isn’t it?” Leenah asked.

“And our grandparents,” I replied with a nod, having seen some images of them. “Enoch and Erydah Kidravia.”

“She’s beautiful! Both of them are.” Lucia said.

Although the rows of sharp pointy teeth were a little terrifying, still, I couldn’t disagree with her. It was a formal family portrait, and as such everyone was dressed up, albeit not in royal garb. Ateru and Erydah could have almost been twins in their identical mauve maxi dresses. Truly, the only things that set them apart were the differences in their crowns, and how well-endowed they were. Erydah was quite lucky in that regard, and had no qualms flaunting it, if only slightly. It was a family portrait, after all.

The men, on the other hand, wore Scyftan-style suits that were a darker purple, but still went well with the dresses that the two women wore. Enoch was flanked by Erydah on his right and his mother on his left, while Derech sat on his father’s knee. As I looked at the image and saw how happy they seemed to be, I couldn’t help but realize that it had to have been done only a short time before an explosion killed all but Derech, since he was at home asleep. The small plaque below the portrait only confirmed it. The portrait had been done only a little over a month beforehand.

We looked up at it for a short while later, but as soon as we turned around there was another portrait waiting for us. One that was a little more difficult to look at. There were four subjects in the portrait, just like the last one, though only three of them were Scyftan. The fourth? A little white phenidae named Vixa.

Our mother looked absolutely radiant. Radiant in a way that only a pregnant woman can look, and that was certainly on full display. It seemed like the portrait was a sort of tribute to the first portrait we had seen, as all three of us were wearing almost identical clothing to what was worn over a millennium earlier. That was, except for the modification that had to be made so our mother would fit into her dress. She was at the center of the portrait, with me on her left and our father holding Vixa on the right, and with each of us having a hand(or a paw), on her pregnant belly.

I looked over to my sisters and saw that none of them were tearless. Stepping over, I pulled all of them into a hug. I knew that seeing it was harder for them than it was for me. I at least got to spend three years of my life with them, even if I didn’t remember it. They weren’t even a month old when their parents were stolen from them. I was going to make it quick when the time came, but now? He was most definitely going to suffer.

Together, the four of us went room to room exploring what used to be, and would have been for my sisters, a home away from home. I knew that the floors and the walls were just a re-creation, but everything else was over fourteen hundred years old. The furniture, the art, even the plantless planters were transplanted from that original home.

There were no stairs leading down to a basement, so we went upstairs to see what else we could find. More so than the bottom floor, the second floor was almost perfectly symmetrical. The stairs gave way to a wide hallway with a doorway directly opposite, and then three more doorways spread evenly on each side. I figured that the door at the end of the hall probably led to the master bedroom, so we decided to start on the left side and make our way around, saving it for last.

That first room ended up being what was essentially an apartment all on it’s own, complete with three modestly-sized bedrooms with two beds a piece. Looking around a little bit more, it was clear that it was there for any servants our parents may have had, though it was completely bare of everything but furniture.

Moving on, we found that the next room was a bedroom much like the ones we slept in almost every night, although the layout was changed slightly and the bed was up against the right wall. The room was even more sparse than the previous room, with the only furniture being the bed and a desk in the corner.

It was the third door we opened where things changed, and it was obvious that it was a kid’s room. A very large kid’s room, at that, with something I had never seen before. In the far corner of the room stood some bunk beds, and while there was a ladder to get up and down, there was also a slide to get down even faster. Not only that, but the beds were also bigger than any kid would need--especially a scyftan kid--coming in at something that could be considered king-sized.

Surprisingly, the room was quite messy, with three toy chests open and half their contents strewn all over the place. It wasn’t the kids toys and stuffed animals that I noticed first, however. It was the small section of rope with the ends tied in knots, looking remarkably like a dog toy from Earth. The more I looked around, the more I saw toys that probably wouldn’t interest a kid, but would most definitely interest a pet.

“Be right back,” I said before turning and heading down the stairs.

I could have just had Abi disable her anti-teleportation field, but we were close enough to my room that it only took a minute to get there by walking. After opening up the door and calling an excited Vixa to come to me, the two of us headed back together. The moment the door opened, she barked loudly and then ran up the stairs. By the time I caught up to her, she was up on the bed sniffing around.

“Smells like me, huh?” I asked, scratching her behind the ears as I held out the aforementioned toy.

She sniffed the toy for a second and barked again, before grabbing the toy and running away with it. What she did next was quite surprising to all four of us, as she had made a beeline to the corner opposite of the one the bunk bed was situated in. After pressing her nose against a spot on the wall, a piece of the floor dropped away. Without any hesitation whatsoever, she jumped into the hole.

“Vixa!” my sisters and I yelled as we ran over to where she disappeared. Before we even made it halfway there, she poked her head up with an entirely different toy in her mouth. Her tails were wagging more vigorously than anytime I had seen before, except, perhaps, the day we were reunited a little over a month previously.

“That was one of Vixa’s burrows,” Abi informed us, speaking up for the first time in a while and then laughing. “You scared your parents quite a bit when they couldn’t find you one morning, at least until you poked your head out and asked why they were yelling your name. More often than not, your parents would find the two of you curled up together. Most of the time you would be on your bed, but sometimes it would be down there.”

“I don’t remember that at all, but she certainly does,” I said.

“Not surprising, very few intelligent species are able to remember things when they are very young, and scyftans aren’t one of them. It was only six weeks or so ago for her though, technically at least.”

“So this was Jonuth’s room?” Leenah asked.

“A recreation of it as it was, yes,” Abi replied.

We continued exploring the room for a few minutes longer, but there wasn’t much more to see, really, so we moved on. The room across from the servant’s quarters proved to be a laundry room, and the one next to it was another guest room. I suspected that the room across from the recreation of mine was my sisters’ room, and wasn’t wrong.

It was set up quite a bit differently, and had a distinctly feminine feel to it. Gone were the bunk beds, and instead there was an oversized crib in the middle of the room; one more than big enough to fit three small baby girls. It looked like everything had been made in preparation for their arrival, but it didn’t seem like the room had seen any use at all. The diaper changing area was completely untouched, as were all the towels and blankets that were stacked on a nearby dresser.

“Your mother spent quite a bit of time in the real version of this room to make sure that everything was perfect. She spent even more time doing the same thing in the palace, but neither of the two rooms were ever used. Take a look in the crib,” Abi said.

The four of us stepped forward, and in three of the corners sat stuffed animals. One of them was easily recognized as being a phenidae, though I didn’t recognize either of the other two. All three were alike in that they were handmade, however, with each of them featuring one of the triplets' names.

“It wasn’t something that was well known, but your mother’s parents ran nearly a dozen specialty clothing stores, catering to adventurers who wanted handmade or custom clothing. Growing up, she learned from her parents, and when she found out that she was pregnant with triplets, she began making those. I believe she created six in total. Three for when you were here and three when you were down on Nedovis, but those are the only ones that remain. Take them.”

The three of them didn’t waste any time moving around the outside of the crib to grab their corresponding stuffed animal, but they almost dropped them just as quickly. Either because of too much pressure, or some other reason, a voice began playing from within each of the stuffed animals. It wasn’t some random noise, either, but was a song that was played in perfect sync across all three of them.

“Oh!” Abi exclaimed, almost as shocked as the girls were. “I hadn’t realized why she made those recordings. Now I do.”

“What do you mean?” Lucia asked.

“That’s a very old scyftan lullaby,” Abi replied. “After she finished sewing but before they were stuffed and closed up, your mother recorded herself singing a number of lullabies. I think she was singing to you even then. I wasn’t aware that she had duplicated the recordings and transferred them over to music boxes to put in those stuffed animals, though.”

“So this…”

“Is a recording of your mother? Yes it is.”

Tears once again ran freely as the triplets clutched their stuffed animals to their chests, but I was glad they had something to remember her by.

[Thanks for keeping them, Abi.]

[I should have returned them sooner. There is something that you need to see in your father’s office, though. All of you should.]

The master bedroom was easily the biggest room in the entire house, but that was because there were two offices as a part of it. Each of them could be sealed off from the rest of the room by pulling the accordion-style doors closed, but both were open when we walked in.

Just like the rest of the rooms, the master bedroom had an en-suite bathroom and a walk-in closet, though both were a little bit bigger. Unique to the master bedroom, however, were two tall arch ‘windows’. They were interesting in that the outdoor scene changed as you moved through the room, so much so, in some cases, that if you stood right in front of one, it appeared as if you were looking down into a garden. That garden was, in fact, the very same view that could be seen from the master bedroom of the palace on Nedovis. That was before it had been destroyed and replaced by the current gaudy iteration, of course.

After walking into our father’s office, my sisters sat down on the couch that was off to the side, while I stepped up to the painting behind his desk. Sliding it over, I pulsed my mana at the safe door that had been hidden behind it, and retrieved the two items held within. The first was a tablet that I held on to, while the second was a small, pyramid-shaped holographic projector. Setting it down on the floor, it pressed the button on the side and then joined my sisters on the couch. It took a few seconds to activate, but in a short burst of light, an image of our father sitting in a cushioned chair appeared.

“Hello, my children. If you are viewing this, then I am dead. Killed by those who sought to prevent what I had set out to achieve, or by those who felt that they should lead our people. If you are viewing this, then Abithynazethrala is…”

“Hey!” Abi said from within the hologram.

“Sorry,” he said with a laugh that put a smile on our faces. “If you are viewing this, then Abi made it to Earth and she has bonded with one of you. I am assuming that is Jonuth, but I do not know if he was safely extracted. If he wasn’t, then it falls to you, my daughters.”

“What is important is if you are viewing this, then my enemies--our families enemies--have failed, and not for the first time, either. You will need to remain vigilant for they will never stop trying until our family’s name is erased from history. Along with this recording, there will have been a tablet. Stored within it are numerous things. Future plans, the names and contact information for people who you can lean on, and personal messages to all of you, from both your mother and myself, in addition to more family that you did not know you had.”

“There is one thing to go over before I ask everyone except for the person who is bonded to Abi to leave the room, and that is this: All of you, Jonuth, my son, Leenah, Leksi and Lucia, my beautiful daughters, you must forgive Xorin Nydror when he comes to you, he isn’t what he has likely been made out to be. He isn’t a traitor and never was.”

“Two days before the attack was to commence, he surrendered himself to Abi, detailing the entirety of Kaldrus Dhir’s plans, and explaining why he had helped them. We could have increased security and prevented the attack all together, but while Xorin Nydror was prepared to sacrifice the lives of his wife and daughter so that our family could live, your mother and I were not.

“Abi hated that decision. After doing her best to make sure that the four of you would be able to escape, she spent the rest of the time she had doing her best to locate Xorin’s wife and daughter or Dhir himself to no avail. When the time came, she followed my orders and acted only in following her protocols.”

“What you must understand is that the decision wasn’t made lightly, and while you may hate our decision and not understand it, this was the only way to force our enemies from the shadows. If the attempt had failed, they just would have tried again and again until they succeeded. These are the same people that were involved in the deaths of not only my mother and father, but my grandmother and your great grandmother as well. They are nothing if not patient. We must be as well.”

“I am sure by now that Abi has all the names of the people involved, allowing you to take them out in one fell swoop. She already knows how I want them handled, and she also knows of my plans for dealing with Dhir and the men and women behind him, and she can fill you in on those later. You don’t have to abide by those plans, but it is my hope that you do.”

“You have no idea how much your mother and I wish we could be there with you, but as the leaders of our people, we didn’t have the luxury of thinking just for ourselves. It is my fervent belief that in the grand scheme of things, our decision will be better not just for our people but for our galaxy as a whole. It will now be up to you, my beloved children. I love you all, and I am truly sorry. If I could now have a word with Abi and the one she is bonded with, please.”

I stood up and hugged each of my sisters, promising to tell them everything later. After they left and the accordion door closed behind them, I sat down and waited, but nothing happened.

“You need to pulse your mana at the projector,” Abi said. “As you probably surmised, your father made that recording soon after Xorin Nydror explained everything. When he was done, he recorded two more recordings and tied them to specific mana signatures. The first was tied to yours, while the second was tied to your sisters.”

“How am I supposed to forgive the man who killed my parents?”

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about that, myself. He wasn’t my father, but he was like a brother to me. I couldn’t exactly go out of my way and kill Xorin Nydror myself since that would be ignoring an order, but I did spend a lot of time finding all sorts of creative ways to make it happen. In the end, I realized that Xorin Nydror was just like me when I was bonded to your father, or his father and now you.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, not understanding where she was going with this.

“For me, if the person I am bonded to gives me an order, I am required to follow it, barring some exceptions. You can’t give me an order to not bond with someone else if you were to die, nor can you command me to destroy myself, for example. If your father had given me the same order that Kaldrus Dhir had given Xorin Nydror, then I wouldn’t have had a choice but to follow it. In that respect, I would essentially be a weapon under your father’s control, just like Xorin was a weapon under Kaldrus Dhir’s control. The only difference is that Xorin Nydror was able to disregard that order and inform your parents, who then took the decision out of his hands entirely.”

“So I should blame my parents for making orphans of my sisters and I?”

“I’ll answer that with some questions: Did you have a good life growing up? Did your sisters have a good life growing up?”

“You know the answer to both questions is yes. That doesn’t mean that I can’t resent them a little, though.”

“It doesn’t, but at least you can respect why they did it. Because of their decision, I now have the mana signatures of everyone who conspired with or followed the orders of Kaldrus Dhir or those he was working with. I also have the mana signatures of everyone who has taken advantage or allowed their true selves to shine through since Dhir’s regime took over. When we make our move, they will have nowhere to hide.”

“And what were my father’s plans regarding the prisoners?”

“He had two, the first of which being the execution of everyone involved, with the main conspirators being executing publicly.”

“Isn’t that a little extreme?”

“Before Kaldrus Dhir took over, there were three crimes that would see someone publicly executed if they were found guilty and everybody knew them: murder, rape, and turning traitor. All of the people that were involved with the coup are guilty of at least one of those. Dhir is guilty of all three.”

“Okay, and what is the second one?”

“Imprisonment until something like The Confederation’s prison planets could be implemented, but of a more permanent nature. Once the prisoners were dropped off on the planet, a planetary shield would be turned on and it would never shut down as long as the planet’s core continued spinning. If someone tried to bring the shield down from the outside, then they would more than likely destroy the planet in the process. Those down on the planet could eventually bring down the shield, but it would take them thousands of years to develop the proper technology.”

“What about any children that would be born on the planet? Over thousands of years, that could end up being millions or billions of people.”

“Your father thought of that, too. Children shouldn’t be punished for their parents’ sins, so before everyone was dropped off, they would undergo sterilization. A hysterectomy for the women, and either an orchiectomy or a vasectomy for men.”

“Execution sounds like a mercy at that point.”

“I think many of them would choose sterilization and life imprisonment on a planet over execution if they were given a choice. Not all, but most.”

“Maybe that’s the way to go about it then. Out of curiosity, have they ever tried prison systems like on Earth?”

“They have, but scyftans live so long that it doesn’t work. If you took everyone who participated in the coup and sentenced them to a thousand years in prison, it would only be a small fraction of their lifespans. The cost in imprisoning even one person that long would be astronomical, let alone thousands.”

“What was done with your average criminal when my father was alive?”

“Different kinds of forced labor. A petty crime might see someone forced to work in a factory without pay for a certain amount of time, while something such as assault would be hard labor; mining, construction, landscaping, that sort of thing.”

“And that worked?”

“For the most part. You’ll still have your bad apples, but if there is a perfect system, it hasn’t been invented yet.”

“I think you’re right. So Abithynazethrala, huh?”

She laughed. “I wondered when you would bring that up.”