1. FIRST FOOTSTEP
Space was ablaze with hellish brilliance as the death throes of a billion voices choked in flame.
Orange, blue, red and green danced like a kaleidoscope opera as the planet’s atmosphere began to evaporate. Time held its breath as the land shivered, cracked and began to dissolve under great waves of vivid green lightning as the air sizzled with energy. The planet was breaking up, black infernos blasting glacial chunks into space in halos of fire, whole continents shimmering into ash beneath the onslaught.
The stars trembled in horror as the entire eco-structure was swallowed in oceans of lava and fire which began shaving all life from the crumbling surface of Xereba in unrelenting spasms.
The land screamed and shattered, every person and animal caught in tidal firewalls that reduced the burning seas to superheated steam.
Within minutes an eternity of evolution died in the molten rubble that surged forward from beneath the surface in great unfeeling geysers devouring everything they touched. Already, bubbling wreaths of red hot molten asteroids were forming, tumbling end over end in brimstone flame through space, a tapestry of tombstones marking the end for Xereba.
Amid the cacophony of destruction a lone space station hung limply in space, as if too shocked to move. Shards of planetary debris bounced harmlessly across its shields in little spots of colour like oil on water, the mere tip of the iceberg.
This was the Juggernaught, the Xereban military’s greatest achievement.
It was the first of a fleet that would never be built, created to stave off any potential invaders. Xereba had faced an invasion once before but the quick thinking of one military leader had averted the disaster, saving the people from being reduced to a life of slavery from a reptilian race called the Swarchek. Like a bulldog the Juggernaught defiantly faced the devastation head on, its hull laden with sensors and weapons, most of which were implanted in its shape, hidden from the naked eye; its manta shape reinforced with a self sustaining skin that gave it an organic look.
Inside the vast curved craft was a stunned silence to match deepest space. The moment the energy waves had begun rippling across the planet, every alarm had triggered, sending the quick thinking technicians and soldiers, on seeing their home’s death throes, into battle stations.
They had been trained well by General Solos and had acted swiftly. The energies killing their world disrupted the teleport system and so, praying to the winds of hopeful fate, they focused the beams on the surface and randomly scooped up whoever they could, from wherever they could. They could not control it, their hope urging the beams to scoop at least some of their loved ones aboard.
Tears burned their eyes as person after person materialized on board, shaken, nervous and lost. Others screamed like their very souls had been ripped from them, desperate hands reaching for loved ones that were no longer there. Out of eight billion citizens only 1,243 were saved. The Juggernaught, once the first best defense of all Xereba, was now the last cradle of hope for the Xereban people.
Survivors were materializing all over the station but Solos, in his devious military brilliance, had cleverly made the vehicle two fold. He had stood in its command centre, six months before, beaming proudly as his image was projected across the planet.
“The Juggernaught not only acts as a multipurpose station to house over four thousand troops but it is capable of space flight. After all, what use is a space station that can’t move when attacked or indeed needed to manoeuver in order to fight back?” Some said paranoia made Solos think of every possible outcome regardless of the expense. They were right.
The survivors were numbed into silence; unsure of what had happened, scarcely able to believe what they were seeing on the holographic screen that rotated in mid air above their heads as the dozens of computers seemed to fall strangely silent. Some ducked as huge boulders of debris flew past, flames jeering at them like demons. They all had been going about their daily lives before being scooped here.
Too traumatized to think, they could only stare about them at strangers’ faces, desperate for a family member or a friendly face. But all they could see was their own desolate grief reflected in each others features.
One woman, Neera, had been teaching a class of thirty children, all bright and eager for the future. She had felt the ground tremble, the air gasp in a pinprick of complete silence before the fires came; unable to move, she watched as tornados of flame consumed her class as she was carried off by the teleport beams, useless hands reaching desperately at ash. She sat weeping, cradling her head in her hands as the looks on the childrens' faces played before her; those innocent wide eyed babies who never even understood what was happening.
The shaken crew could only mumble empty words of comfort to the distressed. No one knew what had happened. It was as if the universe had opened its dark side and smashed their planet from under them for fun. Even the Xereban philosophy of everything happens for a reason seemed a sad excuse now under this mind wrenching loss.
Colossal jade bolts of lightning raked the planet; ripping into its heart and pulling it apart piece by piece in unfeeling rage. Aftershocks rocked the Juggernaught as Xereba’s agony intensified, vomiting its innards up as the waves shredded it mercilessly. The teleport was failing, its beams scattered by the planetary explosions as the deck began to buck unsteadily.
“That’s it! We’re out of time!” bellowed a thick set man. The inertial dampers were straining to keep them upright as the explosions carried bigger chunks of rubble towards them. Bracing his stocky frame, he leaped forward and ignited the Juggernaught’s mammoth engines. They roared defiantly at the dying world as it swung left, shuddering as it moved, riding out the plumes of fire like a frenzied phoenix. The survivors clung desperately to anything to keep them safe against the shaking, terrified screams lost in the shrieking air as the engines fought to gain momentum.
Dargan gripped the flight controls as he willed the engines to full power, trying not to look at the disaster before him as a hundred faces of friends now lost screamed in his mind. Choking back tears, he narrowed his eyes and tightened his mouth as he made a silent vow never to forget them.
“I know these engines like the back of my hand! “he shouted over the crescendo, trying to look confident as sweat soaked his body.
Where they were heading he didn’t know nor care; as long as they put distance between themselves and the inferno that was once their home. He’d been the chief engineer on the Juggernaught since its very conception so he knew what these engines could take.
There were days they almost talked to him in a language only he and they understood. He had no family, been married to his work, a loner most of his life but his heart was hurting at the thought of all those who never stood a chance; of all the lost tomorrows and promises never kept.
Today was a day where everyone was steeped in anguish.
He glanced about him at the fearful sweaty faces looking to him for salvation. He could see they fully expected that any moment the Juggernaught would split apart and merciless fire would consume them all. But he refused to let that happen; something or someone had to survive to tell the tale and find justice for everyone. All eyes looked to the screen as Xereba broke apart as its core exploded, blasting countless tons of rock into space in an ocean of blood red infernos.
The Juggernaught’s manta ray glowed red and orange as hungry flame licked at it like wolves as it carried away the survivors whose futures were as black as the space that bore them. Lost in their souls as well as life, they could only see solitude and death; destined to waste away in this metal tomb.
Except for one man.
He lay immobile on the floor, being attended to by a nurse called Vela, a broad woman who jumped right in to help the wounded to avoid watching her home burn. Somehow that kept her focused, being able to do something rather than stand by helplessly. She had been on duty in the Tancara medical centre before an explosion tore it in two. Gently, she wiped the sweat from her blond fringe and sat back on her hunkers, putting her blackened jacket under the man’s head. She tried to block out the buffeting as she stared at him, slightly unnerved.
His skin was like ancient parchment and his veins bulged out of his face. His hair, white with fear, mounted a strong face with sapphire eyes that stared widely but not moving. She could see broken veins on his nose and cheeks almost like the after effects of decompression. Trauma, she knew but from what? And what was he staring at? Vela shivered as she felt him look through her to focus on somewhere else .he seemed very young to have such white hair. What has he lost compared to us to be in this state? she wondered smoothing his hair.
Whatever it was, she hoped she would never see it.
He was alone.
No sound echoed here. No movement. Even his own heart was silent to him. Tar blackness stuck his feet to the ground; yet there was no ground.
Like the first actor on in a play, Varran gradually became aware of faint shimmering lights in front of a black curtain. The curtain rose and reality shot through him in a myriad of colour that swayed and twirled and formed planets, suns, solar systems even entire galaxies.
The universe exploded all around him, running like oil in the rain, solar winds shrieking in his mind like over excited children. He held his hands over his ears until the wind settled into a sound almost like a choir, a choir whose voices were so beautiful and moving it made the universe’s heart beat faster.
Reality spread out before him in vivid shades, solidifying where he was standing on the heavens, far above time and space.
The universe in all its gregarious glory was a tapestry, with everything connected together in thought and mind. It was imbued with waterfall colors and nova wonder mixed with towers of elegance. Varran could barely contain his delight.
He laughed, stars trickling through his tingling fingers, light playing every fibre of his being.
Never had he felt such tranquility, such clarity of mind. He could feel other races talking to him, beings he’d never imagined. He could see reality interacting with time and thought; dimensions existing alongside others in some fragile ballet.
Suns bellowed merrily as they nurtured worlds teeming with all kinds of life that moons and stars mothered in rest, sharing their dreams, pulling the blankets over them while they slumbered. Varran could see one being’s dreams become another’s reality, minds touching across the wastes of space.
From such things music and verse were born, lifted from a universal harmony that myriads sang but none could ever fully comprehend.
The universe was a choir of ideas, vibrant with life that sang a song that ran for eternity. It touched Varran in a way he had never thought possible, reaching to his very core, opening his mind to limitless possibilities. His work became clear, the temporal equations and quirks in quantum mechanics rushing to him like long lost friends and the universe opened to him like some great honeycomb where each galaxy, each planet, each creature connected and functioned as a whole entity. He chuckled at how simple life was.
He gasped, buckling over, the stars falling from his hands.
A deep chill ripped at him, resonating through the universe, causing beings to look to the skies for answers. It gripped his soul, twisting it, forcing Varran to his knees. The stars shimmered where he fell, his eyes glancing heavenward. A shiver on the horizon caught his attention. It was like watching heat bounce off a desert road. It rippled and swarmed toward Varran with frightening speed. A deathly stillness consumed him as time froze.
The shimmer expanded and moved, rolling onward faster and faster. He saw Xereba crumble as entire worlds shook to dust in the dark cloud’s wake, lost in a red swell.
Dark, brooding, determined, it clawed light from the stars, sucked life from a thousand worlds and still it came ever closer. It ripped souls like paper, devoured the slightest whisper of butterfly wings, the laughter of children everywhere.
Like the firewalls that took Xereba, so this thing was relentless. Not caring what it destroyed; no room for compassion. It seethed up and around Varran like a demon wind, his heart turning to ice, his blood to flames. He saw its void face as it surged around and through him, tearing his flesh from his bones, hope from his heart. Life fell like melting fat on a fire.
Varran had heard of pure evil but here it was now facing him hatefully, consuming everything, bending it to its will. It wanted to devour all life, dominate and control, allowing for no survivors. It wouldn’t stop until it had crushed love, hope and compassion. Reality itself turned to ash, fluttering down to be cruelly stomped on. This was the future, Varran realized, this was what was coming. Xereba had only been the first to fall. It saw him, knew him and charged right at him.
With a cry he shot upright, sweat sticking his body to the sheets. Vela jumped back with a scream. Varran saw her grey blue eyes, wide and alarmed. He felt strange, hot yet cold. Glancing round at the unfamiliar room, he stared at Vela, recognizing the jade nurse’s uniform. His mind threw a hundred thoughts around at once. He knew it wasn’t a hospital but he also knew exactly where he was, having been involved in the initial construction of the Juggernaught. It brought back only bitter memories.
With a gasp of anguish, he realized what had happened as the memory of his vision came flooding back like a bad nightmare. Tears welled in his eyes as he wished desperately it really had been all a nightmare but every fibre of his being knew what had happened before anyone had even told him. He could see the fear in Vela’s round face as she fretted over what to do.
She gently placed a comforting hand on his shoulder as she sat on the edge of the bed.
“It’s alright,” she said softly. “We brought you to one of the soldier’s quarters. There’s nobody here that hasn’t lost somebody.” Her tone calmed him somewhat even though his heart was pounding in his chest. Varran wiped his eyes and looked at her. He saw his reflection in the mirror on the wall behind the nurse, his jaw dropping at the sight of his skin and shock of white hair. The horror in his face gave Vela a chill down her spine. She felt her scalp crawl. His eyes were those of a man who had stared into his worst nightmare and survived.
“You don’t understand,” he croaked, his left hand shaking slightly as he touched his hair disbelievingly. “I know what happened.”
Vela stared at him, suddenly frightened. Her voice dropped to an almost inaudible whisper. Her low level empathic abilities echoed like a distance church bell in her mind, a bell tolling for the dead.
“What do you mean?” Her question hid a hundred others that sprang into her mind but was afraid to articulate. Varran glared at the nurse, tears forming again in sapphire eyes. He suddenly seemed so frail.
“It was me.”
The Xerebans gathered in one of the thirteen hangar bays in an expectant murmur. Not all of them, of course, so Dargan and a couple of technicians had rigged the intercom system to broadcast across the Juggernaught. Rumours that the man responsible for their families’ deaths had quickly spread and the air was thick with muted anger and hatred. The crowd squeezed into every inch of available space to hear the announcement.
Amid the fighter craft they gathered, barely registering the slick hammerhead ships all around them; docked in their individual bays by long metallic clamps.
The Daggers, as they were nicknamed by the military had similar technology to the Juggernaught and were the fastest ships in the Xereban arsenal. Developed by an engineer by the name of Treplos, again under General Solos’ supervision, they were over 3 meters long, their charcoal shells colored by red piping tapering to either end of the front weapon ports. Their hulls were laced with sensors and micro circuitry that instantly analyzed everything around them and transmitted data directly back to the Juggernaught’s main computers without the pilot having to do it.
Whoever was behind the controls of these ships had only one purpose; attack and destroy. Delicate to look at, one would imagine they might break in half but they were sturdy ships layered with reinforced armor plating and multi reactive shields.
They had been intended as the second line of defense of Xereba after the Juggernaught itself which would act as a mothership but now lay like relics in a museum, for there was no home to defend.
The noise of the crowd hovered in the air like a wasp’s nest as people took to sitting or standing wherever there was a space. Vela had appealed for calm having approached Major Santos with the information about the man with the white hair and piercing sapphire eyes.
It had been thanks to the Major’s fast thinking that the survivors were here at all as he was the one that began the teleport process when another engineer came apart with fear. A tall fair haired man with shaped sideburns, he had listened to Varran’s story. His dark eyes regarded the man coolly and when Varran had finished his story the Major simply stood up and stalked out of the room.
His grave tones resounded over the intercom system telling as many people as possible to assemble in hangar bay 4 for a meeting; those that couldn’t fit in, were to stay near the public address system. Everyone needed to hear this man’s story.
The Major smoothed out his navy jumpsuit with sweating hands, turned to Varran and said,” Wash up. You’re going to tell them what you just told me.”
Varran glanced nervously at Vela but she looked at the floor. An awkward silence hung between them. Varran briefly took in the cold beige walls of the Major’s office with its images of various Xereban military ships and its proud flag depicting the blue and red multi crested symbol of the Xereban race draped proudly on the back wall. It was a picture of Xereba held amid two hands against a white background, one race, and one future together. Varran rose from his black swivel seat and leaned against a tall grey metal cabinet in the corner. He buried his face in his arms and sighed deeply.
He met their demanding gazes head held high but nervously brushed hair back across his head. It felt like old straw against his flesh. Fleetingly, Varran realized he didn’t like having white hair. It made him look too scary and these people were scared enough. A few hours ago it had been dark brown and a memory of having to go for a haircut flashed in his mind. He saw his barber’s face but shook it from his mind.
He stood nervously at the podium before the makeshift microphone, his eyes darting over the crowd watching him. He dragged his gaze over them all, catching Vela’s face in the crowd. He never even attempted a reassuring smile. Vela had said nothing, revealed nothing and that initial reaction made Varran even more nervous.
Their faces were glazed with sadness, anger and regret, the events of the last day hard to accept. The vision swam before him as he took a breath that hurt his chest. He felt weak, his hands trembling slightly. His experience had left him as brittle as an autumn leaf.
No-one spoke as all eyes turned on him
Aware Major Santos was standing to the back of him, his gun ready for anything, Varran broke the silence.
“My name is Varran and I am…was a scientist for the government. My field was temporal mechanics, quantum physics, chiefly among other fields.” He paused, seeing this meant nothing to a lot of them.
“Time travel.” He caught the ripple of surprise.
“Xereba aged to death, literally as a result of my work.” A horrified mutter brewed up like warm winds before a storm but Santos stepped forward, his tall form in neat commanding uniform causing them to fall silent.
He had always been a stickler for order and he would be damned if they were going to fall apart now. His hand drifted to his sidearm warningly. He spotted what he feared may be trouble makers near the back. He pursed his lips and drew himself to his full height, eyeing them stonily.
“We will have order until you hear him out!” roared the Major.
Nodding gratefully at him, but getting no response back, Varran looked back at the
settling crowd. He paused, letting the events fall into his mind in a recountable order.
He told of how he had made a breakthrough in particle acceleration and discovered how to focus and redirect tachyon and gravitational fields to bend time and send; initially, objects into the past.
His first attempt had seen a clock revert by mere seconds but it was enough to push the boundaries further. That had been two years ago. But unfortunately, the success had been brought to the attention of General Solos, someone the Major had been familiar with and who had shared no great love of each other.
But Santos got the job done and Solos had placed him in charge of the construction of the Juggernaught despite their personal issues. Solos’ argument to the Xereban world government was that what better way to protect themselves from invasion than to have the ability to go back in time and erase your enemies before they became a threat.
The Swarchek incident had heightened tensions among the ruling bodies that had no desire to see a repeat of that thwarted invasion. It had made them believe they had become complacent as a whole to outside influence and measures were put in place almost instantly.
Varran argued, having been under the notion that his work was to be used solely for archaeology and historical observation, that he believed their taking control of his time machinery would replace one enemy with another.
His analogy was that you could cure one disease but nature brings about another, possibly more dangerous than its predecessor. Solos had been the most powerful military figure in Xereban history, his status boosted by having thwarted the invasion by the Swarchek, who would have stripped the entire planet of all its resources until they were exhausted and that included the populace. If it hadn’t been for General Solos’ timely actions the Xerebans would have been virtually eradicated by now.
The irony was not lost on anyone but whatever differences they had, Varran had to hand it to Solos. His argument swayed the government (for Xereba there was only one culture, made up of many different colours, who abided by one ruling body) and Varran and his work were quarantined and placed under military supervision in a secure location.
General Solos’ accomplishments helped bury his more disturbing character traits and actions. Varran hated him but more especially the government for being too weak to stand against Solon and prevent his work from being twisted into a new weapon.
So with the help of a few friends, Varran was forced to head underground and continue his work. He hoped that by completing his experiments without any interference, he could prove the true value of his findings by sending himself forward through time to garner the proof that military confiscation of his work would, ultimately, lead to a terrible fate for all Xereba.
Left alone and in the right hands Varran’s time travel experiments would only lead to untold benefits for all of Xereba. But it was not to be.
Somehow Solos had found Varran’s secret lab and in one fatal act of fate, had raided it at the precise moment Varran was about to embark on his final experiment, the voyage of one man through time itself.
As he spoke, Varran could see the honeycomb chamber with its multitude of cables linking him to the tachyon field generator and the comforting hum as the machinery powered up. He could see the fretful gaze of his lover Faleena, a fellow scientist. He reassured her with a confident smile as he placed his palm on the reflective panels.
His heart raced, the adrenalin pumping, as the hum pitched to a whine and the first pull of the time fields took him. There was a flurry of explosions as all around Varran, millions of tiny lights surrounded him, working at his molecules and began sucking him into time. But the explosions were the gunfire of charging soldiers that fired at anyone in the room.
Varran saw his colleagues fall and Faleena scream as black garbed men stormed the room. Stray gunfire struck the tachyon chamber, damaging it and shattered the safety parameters. The machinery flared out of control as the full force of the time field surged through the equipment and outwards in an eruption of jade fire. Varran was frozen in that moment and could not move to save his lover or any of the others as somehow he was projected to the dark future that had turned his hair white and damned him and the other survivors to this tragic existence. The great waves of jade energy spread out exponentially, bursting forth and consuming the entire planet.
The ravaging power had aged Xereba to death. The sight of the soldiers reduced to old age and beyond, crumbling to dust before his very eyes in seconds made Varran pause. He bowed his head as the terrible images played before him. He started as Santos placed a comforting hand on his in an unexpected show of support. Varran managed a faint smile of gratitude before continuing.
Varran recalled his vision. That was his only word for it. Maybe calling it that made a terrifying future like that less concrete, that there may be a chance to change it. He wasn’t sure himself but like all Xerebans he believed that everything happened for a reason, no matter how tragic, and that the path would not become clear until events had played themselves out either within months or maybe even until your twilight years. Only then could you connect the dots and see why certain things happened and how they shaped one’s life and circumstances, no matter how harrowing things had been at the time.
The reason for what had happened today would not be made clear for some time but they all knew there must be a reason; they had to have faith it would unfold someday.
“I lost my soul mate today and I don’t know how to go on but I will,” Varran declared. “I will do it for her and for all those we have lost. I refuse to die aboard this station.” He held the troubled gazes before him and glanced briefly at the major. His face betrayed nothing but his eyes told everything.
“So, what do we do?” he boomed. “I’m not sure, but there was one thing I saw and in my heart I know it will play a pivotal role in all this.” He told them of the other part of his vision. As the universe fell, he saw one planet that stood like a beacon in chaos. The third planet in a system of nine.
Blue green swathed in white. It stood majestically against the darkness, defiance boiling from it and Varran knew this was where they had to find. He never professed to be perfect but Varran knew himself to be a good man. And he would stand up to the challenge. He would find that world and fight so no one else suffered Xereba’s fate.
Problem was, he had no idea what he had to stop or how to stop it but he would watch, vigilant for any sign of cruelty or destruction; any cesspit that threatened to rise up and unleash its horrors upon the galaxy. He would wait and do his utmost to stop that future from happening. They all must. And he kmew that that world he’d seen, the one that he felt sure was a lifeline for them that held the key to their salvation.
Surely fate would help them find it soon. In that, he had to believe.
In the meantime the survivors adapted to their new home and worked together to ensure their survival. Helped partly by Santos’ display of trust, they in turn trusted Varran as he embellished their beliefs.
Old arguments and finger pointing were irrelevant now. They used some of the military equipment, stripped it down so Varran could rebuild his equipment and increase their options. It had been a bitter surprise for Varran that Solos had used his initial work and had incorporated it into the Juggernaught's systems.
They cannibalized some of the Daggers for parts while some created horticultural bays in the hangar bays so they could grow food by synthesizing their waste products and stellar matter.
They came across a planet and were able to transfer some of its flora to the Juggernaught for oxygen and food reserves. They could have stayed but it wasn’t what Varran had seen. They had faith the world he had seen was real. If you watched him closely sometimes, you could almost swear he was communing with the universe.
But as Varran, the Major, Vela and many others quickly adapted to their new lives, the pain of losing family was too much for some to bear and within the first eight months, three people had committed suicide. They left letters apologizing for their actions but they could not bear this life, no matter what fate held for them.
Without their families, fate had already dictated their path as far as they were concerned. And to follow one man’s vision of something that may not happen to a place that may not exist was impossible for them to stomach.
They had simply walked out of an airlock, letting space take them.
Varran wept. Vela was there for him but he buried himself in the reconstruction of his tachyon chamber in the Juggernaught’s main command centre, burying his feelings for her. The pain was just too much for him.
Secretly, he wanted Vela to hold him and tell him he was right but the pain of losing Faleena still festered in his heart. If anything happened to Vela, Varran couldn’t afford to be emotionally attached, not right now, when what was left of their people depended solely on him.
As the months dragged by and no sign of the blue planet, Varran was beginning to doubt himself and in his late night debates with the Major he could see his fellows were wondering too. He’d been so sure they would have found it by now. Why else would he have seen it? Why else would the universe have shown it to him?
Driven by instinct or maybe from some fallout from his jump in time, Varran was sure they were on the right path but now after six fraught years, in which he had not only rebuilt his work but expanded on it, he was verging on despondency.
The suicides had diminished him because the rest of the survivors looked to him for guidance, a role that didn’t sit comfortably with him, especially as he was aware there was still an underlying resentment and hate for him from some quarters that, given any other circumstances bar these, would have been voiced and acted upon long ago. He had only science and the belief in what was to be to comfort him; it was all he had, all he could give.
Varran sat alone in the command centre, a large circular room with sleek banks of consoles and computers all sucking in data from the hull’s external sensor grids arced to a central point on the ceiling above which housed the equipment for the hexagonal hologram table that took centre place in the chamber.
Varran’s pale face was lit by yellows and reds as a solid image of the star systems outside played in the air before him rotating in a three dimensional curve. Together Varran and the Major had sent hundreds of modified micro probes out into space disguised as micro meteorites in an effort to locate a star system that matched the one they sought.
As the months dragged on, many were wondering if fate had lead them on a lost cause or had grief made them follow a madman. Varran recalled the people they had lost since the tragedy and his eyes filled with tears. Hope was a ghost in the night and he was beginning to think they should settle on the first uninhabited world they came across and take things from there.
“Computer, begin realignment to search for suitable planet to sustain Xereban life.” His voice was raspy with fatigue. He had refused to acknowledge defeat all this time but it was not fair to put his people through anymore.
No one was allowed to have children because of the limited supplies, even though new relationships were forming all the time as people found reconnection in others. They were dying in this tin can and they knew it. Some children had been saved but they were too few and they were growing up without open fields and fresh air.
If there was any chance of survival, Varran would have to finally admit defeat and let everyone be free from the leash of his vision. If there was a path here, he couldn’t see it but he was ready to step off it.
He stood up with a rueful sigh about to cross to the communications panel to inform the major of his decision when the Juggernaught gave a gut wrenching lurch.
Varran was thrown across the floor before grabbing hold of a chair leg. The craft tilted on its axis as the bellow of engines straining sounded everywhere. The Juggernaught flailed wildly as if hit by a massive shockwave; indeed it would have to be something powerful to make the Juggernaught shake like this. The roar filled Varran’s head as he held on for dear life. He knew they had been in a void between solar systems with no apparent outside influences and he felt helpless once again.
A blazing light filled the room. Shrieking tore the air. The holoscreen dissolved into a billion particles as the Juggernaught was moving too fast for the computers to process any information.
Varran’s heart pounded as he feared this was their end. If that happened, Xereba truly would be dead. He thought of Vela’s unrequited love and deep regret filled him. They had survived against the odds only to die like this. It couldn’t be possible; fate wouldn’t be so cruel, would it?
Suddenly all was still. The Juggernaught straightened out.
The only sound was the background chatter of shaken computers as they fought to make sense of the sudden disruption. It was as if the manta like station was giving a sigh of relief.
His sweaty palms slowly released the leg of the chair as Varran gingerly got to his feet and stared at the holoscreen. It was a mishmash of colours and shapes. Stumbling across to it, he checked for damage and ordered the computer to report on what had just happened.
The Major rushed in the room at that moment, shirtless as he had been shaving and joined Varran at the central dais. Several others followed as the intercom became a chatter of urgent cries.
“Don’t ask because I don’t know yet!” snapped Varran.
“This doesn’t look right,” breathed the Major as the hologram began forming into a solid image again. His long fingers moved delicately across the multicoloured touch sensitive controls. Gradually the image solidified.
Varran blinked, chewing his lower lip. His breathing became shallow as he checked the data in front of him and rechecked it. The Major looked at him sideways, his face a mask of disbelief. Varran met his gaze tearfully as they both looked at the image before them.
It was a system of nine planets; the third a blue, green world swathed in white. The hologram reflected in his tears.
“It’s a miracle,” breathed Santos, shaving foam dripping off his chin. “It’s real!”
To the far left of the hologram was a hexagonal open chamber, raised slightly off the floor with a series of crimson panels in the alcoves overlooking circular panels in the floor.
This was an upgraded version of Varran’s time chamber but now worked as a teleport capable of sending an occupant anywhere on a planet or anytime in history.
The Juggernaught had accrued a massive amount of material from the star systems they had traversed as well as a myriad of strange phenomenon and stellar activity but this was the place they wanted.
News had spread rapidly and within a week, the excited Xerebans had mounted several surveys of the planet they had discovered was called Earth.
Problem was, the Earth was inhabited by humans who looked very like Xerebans; this only served to reinforce Varran’ belief in their path. They would have no trouble blending in.
The mix of humans was diverse and Varran had never seen so many different cultures and ways of life in one species. Some were at different stages of evolution; many seemed on the verge of an industrial revolution while others led simple lives with little or no technology.
It was the year 1894 in Earth calendars.
The Major saw barbarians while Varran saw potential. Humans were on a tightrope; one step would plunge them back into a dark age, the other, enlightenment to the possibilities of the wonders of the universe. They had religions, differently practiced depending on what part of the world you were in but all contained a similar theme of one creator which Varran found delightful.
It was primitive yet potent.
“Think of them as an unopened flower,” Varran argued with the Major.
“But a flower with thorns?” countered the soldier. “Their ways are different to ours, their way of life primitive compared to us. How can we possibly reveal ourselves?”
Varran smiled inanely, an idea forming in his mind.
“What if we don’t?” The Major stared at him, smiling in spite of himself. Crossing his arms, he regarded Varran like some mad scientist. He couldn’t help but be swayed by Varran’s infectious enthusiasm.
Over these last six years he had come to know Varran very well, had seen the mind behind the face and he trusted him completely. Santos grinned broadly.
“Let’s ask the others.”
They held a meeting and decided that their only safe course was to assimilate into human culture (it was after all at a point where public records were hardly detailed). Many cities had outlying villages while others had miles of wilderness. The Xerebans would live on as many different countries as possible.
Language would not be a problem as Xerebans had the ability to translate and speak any language they encountered with hours of hearing it spoken.
Certain Xerebans matched the diverse human coloring and they would get by, by easily bartering their skills both intellectual and physical. No Xerebans could not interfere with human development or rise to positions of power in the governments which were as splintered as the cultures. They could not mate with humans as they had to keep their origins secret for fear of causing massive damage to humankind. Mankind would have to discover the universe for themselves and that there were other creatures out there both good and bad. When they had reached that level of maturity, only then could the Xerebans tell their story.
Varran would stay behind as the keeper of the Juggernaught, continuing with his work and preparing for what may come, which he was now sure was coming. He had let Vela go with a million unspoken words hanging between them. He had no option. He had much to do.
First he would travel Earth, learning about the peoples there and embracing all they had to offer. His love of life burst forth and he travelled alone for over twenty two years.
The Juggernaught lay hidden in the asteroid fields that littered Earth’s system while the others integrated into their new lives.
He found much to love and much to fear but as he saw more, Varran knew this was the way things were meant to be. It was only when he learned that Vela had been killed in a river boat accident did Varran return to the Juggernaught, his heart in tatters once again. He lived alone, continuing his work and becoming more and more isolated.
Of course, the others contacted him regularly and he visited as many as he could but life gradually got in the way and the contact lessened. He comforted himself at their blending in was a bigger task than they anticipated.
Meanwhile the first of the Xereban children were born on Earth and were to grow up knowing of their heritage at 18, the age of understanding. This process had been refined with the help of a geneticist on board who injected every survivor with a gene that would trigger in every future child born and on their eighteenth birthdays ancestral memories would trigger and show them of their past, of Xereba’s destruction and the journey their ancestors took. They would know of Varran and his sacrifice..
He had been present for the first child’s birth on Earth. A girl called Tegan (Xereban for shining star).
And in that moment Varran felt hope grow within him. As the years passed, he discovered he wasn’t aging. His white mane was a constant reminder of tragedy and he hated it. Hope was all he cared about as he walked the Australian outback, the sun on his face or stood on the Giant’s Causeway gazing out to sea or simply leaning on a fence watching a herd of cows grazing, their low mooing strangely calming. Earth certainly had some bizarre creatures living on it.
Though he longed for company, Varran closed himself off, a sacrifice he was happy to make. He had dyed his hair brown. With his non aging he couldn’t form lasting relationships or take a lover as he didn’t know if he was just aging at a miniscule rate or if his experiment had left him permanently like this: frozen in one moment in time. So to remind himself of the past he allowed his white hair to return, a constant scar of the past.
Humans had a saying, time flies and Varran certainly agreed with that. It had been over a hundred years since the great grey riveted doors had slid shut behind the last of the Xereban survivors. He had watched mankind grow and develop new technologies, new weapons and struggle with prejudice.
To understand them and to fine tune his time travel equipment, he would send himself back into the past, a few years at a time before the Juggernaught arrived and see how this world and its cultures were formed.
But despite the wars and famine, he saw people stand up to evil and fight for what was right.
He knew Xerebans were fighting too and at least his faith was being justified. With the invention of satellites and giant telescopes, Varran used the Juggernaught’s shield refraction system to generate a temporal field that kept the Juggernaught one second out of normal time to stay unobserved. It rendered the station invisible to Earth radars and deep space probes yet pride had welled in him as he watched man landing on the moon from the safety of a Dagger cockpit.
But for all his developments, man was not ready for the Xereban revelation. They were certainly aware of the possibility of life in the universe as shown by the Mars findings but stories of alien abduction and UFOs were largely dismissed. Varran had never seen any evidence of alien craft skimming Earth and stealing people but even he knew they may have better technology than the Juggernaught.
Though he had sent quite a few prying ships on their way over the years as well as clean some alien messes on various continents.
It may be the pinnacle of Xereban might but it was someone else’s vintage car.
But fate conspired to end his isolation when an alien entity lodged itself in Earth’s past which was affecting the future; a being that had threatened to reveal the Xerebans and dominate Earth for its own purposes.
Three young people, each with their own skills and talents, were thrown together with Varran to defeat this threat. Varran was surprised at their fortitude for such young ones and gradually he accepted their help. He was proud of them for deciding to act with him in fighting any threat to their and Earth’s safety. They were fighting for their loved ones and strangers alike and that inspired him.
Each knew their heritage and the legacy it entailed but each had their own reasons for staying. Years of self imposed solitude melted away as Varran welcomed their company. He felt alive again with a sense of hope and for the first time in a long time, felt they had a real chance of stopping what was to come.
Jacqueline Baker, Jacke for short, was a child psychologist in training who came from Belfast and Varran never failed to be impressed by her fire and determination, while Michael McManus never failed to fall in love with her eyes.
He was the second of the three, hailing originally from South London. He was an orphan whose only relative was a feisty grandmother called Maisy. Mess with her boy and you didn’t get a second chance. Varran couldn’t believe the trivia about movies and television shows that Michael could rhyme off. Tyran wanted him to go on Who
Wants to be a Millionaire but Varran forbade it. He was glad to see them bonding but the constant banter battle between Michael and Tyran baffled him.
If he didn’t know better, he would have thought they disliked each other while Jacke was the calm in the storm.
Tyran Scott was the youngest of them at 18 but she talked non-stop and had a sharp tongue and sharper wit. Michael constantly teased her and each of them tried to get the last word. Tyran was 18 going on 50 in some ways but her knack for mechanical things was astounding. Jacke was teaching her kickboxing, just in case some alien with ideas above its station needed its arse broken or its nuts busted. Varran wasn’t sure what nuts she was referring to, though he knew they were abundant in Brazil and he was quite taken aback when it was explained to him.
“Seems I don’t know as much about human anatomy as I thought,” he said bemused. He had been isolated so long, he had forgotten the subtleties of life and what was called human nature. He watched them, knowing they were Xereban but so human in nature and ideas, there was no difference between the two.
Still, after all these years, he still had much to learn and these three youngsters would help him look onto a world a million miles from him and show Varran what it was to be young again.