Eric Olafson, Midshipman 14

Part 14: INTERLUDE: FIRST SON OF DARKNESS

For all his connections and all his psionic powers, for all his influence and knowledge, the First Son of Darkness was just a tool, another game piece in a cosmic game. Despite his blindness caused by a sense of unequaled self-importance, he was quite intelligent and was aware of this, but he had plans to elevate him above being just a game piece. The key to his quest for Godhood was knowledge. Here on Netlor, a planet in Free-space he planned to gain more.

Long before the rise of the Union, almost 12,000 years ago, before the first appearance of the Y’All. When the Ult were still the most aggressive and savage civilization in this part of the Galaxy. Before the Saran started their civil war that led to them to be split into the Saran and Pan Saran empires, a Saresii ship landed on this planet to refuel and discovered on a desert valley of the only continent, the 500 meter tall statue of a stylized humanoid figure. The figure was bare of any details, it had two stretched out arms and stood on straight legs spread apart. The head of the figure was a perfect circle with five equal sized segments, dividing the circle like a pie. Each segment colored differently. There was red, blue, white, green and yellow. All made of a transparent material.

The statue stood in a hexagonal frame upon a raised platform. The material it all was made of appeared to be metal but it defied all scanning and all analysis methods. It apparently was indestructible, all efforts to take a sample were unsuccessful.

The planet itself was unremarkable at first, but after closer examination it turned out that this world had no orbital tilt and circled around a yellow sun at a perfectly spherical orbit. Even the sun, at first observation just another common as dust yellow Main Sequence star, turned out to be an enigma, it was among the oldest stars and should have burned out long ago, turned into a brown dwarf perhaps, it had not even turned into a Red giant. Yellow Stars were young stars; this sun defied all commonly accepted solar physics. No Solar flares, no sun spots. It was a perfect stable star.

This fact was of another significance associated to the statue. Eight thousand meters behind the statue was a mountain range and one of the rugged mountains had a hole in it. Twice a day the sun would perfectly align with that hole and send a beam of sunlight aimed exactly at the color segmented circle. A circle of colored light appeared on the smooth metal surface before the statue.

There was nothing else, no inscriptions. The Ruins found after an excavation around the alien monument turned out to be of a much less advanced civilization that set up a city around that statue a few million years ago and vanished or died out.

The Y’All came and the planet and the discovery was more or less forgotten in the galaxy wide turmoil, but it was not forgotten completely. A religious sect formed with member of all spacefaring civilizations back then and the Church of the Golden whispering Spirit of the Universe exists even today. It was much more prominent than the First Sons Church of Darkness, but still far below the numbers or significance of the 2000 major religious movements.

Union Scholars claimed to have been able to analyze the material and the Kermac were certain it was of Uni Origin. The planet was in Free -space and by Treaty none of the Big Four could claim the planet as theirs. It was declared a site of worship and accessible to all.

Each of the Big Four maintained small permanent research sites on the planet, but big digs were by the same treaty only allowed if all four participated and agreed something that would never happen.

A town had sprung up not far from the Alien Monument and near the crumbled ruins. It was home mostly to souvenir dealers, small hotels and temples of a several sects and churches, most prominent of course the Church of the Golden Whispering Spirit.

Pilgrims would don golden flowing robes, flock to the statue and then bathe naked in the circle of light when it occurred. Believers claimed curative and healing effects, mind opening and spiritual experiences, yet to this day there was not a single scientific backed case that would verify these claims.

The trip to this world was fairly safe, despite the fact it was Free-space and pirate infested. Civilian travel agencies paid protection fees and used civilian armed convoys. Of course once in a while a ship of pilgrims was attacked and seized by pirates anyway, but the syndicates raking in the protection fees, made sure it did not happen too often and punished the Freelancers.

The First Son of Darkness did not make the trip very often, despite the fact that he had excellent connections to the Worm and to some of the Pirates and the Syndicate of this sector of space. He did not bathe in the light like the fools of the Golden Spirit. It would have been ridiculous anyway, he the Son of Darkness bathing in light.

There was not much in terms of public transportation, here on Netlor. A red throat Shiss operated a Taxi service consisting of a dozen Arti-Grav floaters from the local Space port to the ruins and the statue. He did not want to draw any attention to where he was going, so he walked. The climate of the planet and the weather never changed, thanks to its perfect orbit and zero declination and it was always hot and dry. He knew little of the rest of the world or if it had any indigenous life forms, such details were not important. Thankfully the distance to his destination was only three klicks. He could have levitated himself or even teleported there, but that could have been noticed. There always were Kermac and Saresii around. Netlor was not only a destination for pilgrims, but it was in Free-space and unlike Sin 4 or many of the others, quite orderly and peaceful. The rouge and crime element was not tolerated by the Syndicates and the Temples. Nestor also was a place of much clandestine meetings. When spies were exchanged, when the Big Four had something to discuss that did not reach the official channels, they came here. That also meant that there were agents of pretty much everyone around keeping an eye on each other. He had agents of his own here.

The town did not have an actual name. It was synonym with the planet. The buildings were made of shipping containers; local rock and dirt, there were even quite a few tents. He reached his destination, three boulders. A concrete roof had been poured over it and the gaps between the rocks, closed with bricks and mortar. He knocked at the Syntho Wood door.

Not waiting for an answer he opened the unlocked door and went. There on a simple table sat an old man, mostly but not entirely human from what he could see.

“I came to see the catacombs.”

The old man wore a faded, rough looking poncho and dust colored simple fabric pants. He had human proportions, but his pupils were slit like those of a Shiss and is exposed skin had a fine snake skin texture.” Go then, Larthop. Go and talk to the dead.” The Old man had used his old Saresii name. A name he did not even think about it anymore. He did not wonder how the old man knew, he had been sitting here just like that, the first time the expelled Saresii had come, over ninety years ago and he had said the same thing.

The First Son of Darkness who once long ago answered to the name Larthop, placed a few Rad shield coated Polo coins onto the table and the old man pulled on a rope next to him, opening a trap door and revealing a flight of stairs leading down. Weak orang light from candle burning lantern illuminated the hole. Larthop raised the hem of his gold colored cloak, not to stumble on those steep and narrow steps and descended.