The Mandate of Heaven (6 page)

A fusion pistol.

Built by Professor Alcubierre personally, only a few existed, all used exclusively by the High-Lords—the personal weapons of the Gods.  Following the hand firmly grasping the pistol, I looked up, fully expecting to see one of those High-Lords standing before me, but instead found something far, far, worse.

The disappointed face of my father.

“Let me guess, you went looking for a late night snack and got lost?” he uttered wretchedly.

*****

“How did you know where I was?” I asked curiously several minutes later, after my father had directed me to a small room in the ship, where I found a table and several chairs.  Ignoring my question, he pushed me down into one of the vacant seats, before taking a seat of his own, on the opposing side of the table.  At least he had finally put away the pistol that he had been pointing at me, so I was fairly certain that he wasn’t going to shoot me, at least not yet.

Giving me a frosty glare, instead of answering my question, he tossed something onto the table.  It clattered onto the desk, the sudden
crack
making me jump in contrast to the still of the ship.  Lowering my gaze to the object sitting on the table, I hesitantly picked it up, instantly recognising it as the
picture
that was sitting on his desk. This time, instead of the image of the unknown woman, it was displaying a schematic of the ship; with two profusely blinking red dots, the two of us, I assumed.  I closed my eyes cursing my stupidity.  Obviously the remote was from the ship and had immediately notified my father when I had stepped aboard.

“You don’t seem surprised,” he mused, out loud.  “Hence I assume that you already know about the remote?”

“Yes, but I didn’t know about the
Celeste
, I thought that it was the remote for a Superluminal Transmitter.  That’s what I was looking for.”

“The
Celeste?”
he asked confused.

“The name of the ship.”

“
Céleste
,” my father replied, rolling the name on his tongue.  “So the Professor named it after his late wife, I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“The Professor?” I replied, my turn to be confused.

“Professor Henry Alcubierre,” he clarified.

I could only stare at him.  If he’d told me that he was actually a High-Lord in disguise, I would have been less surprised.  “You know Professor Alcubierre?” I gasped.

“I
knew
him.”

“He’s dead?”

“I certainly hope so,” my father replied absently, lost in the past.  “After all it was me that buried him.”

*****

I trudged after my father in silence, as he refused to elaborate after making that startling announcement.  I couldn’t get my head round it, that my father knew one of the greatest minds of the past few hundred years, or the fact that he had buried him.

I didn’t realise how long it had been, before I looked up from the overgrown trail that my father had been following and noticed the darkness starting to recede.  Dawn was fast approaching.  My father meanwhile had come to a halt and I gathered that we must have arrived at our intended destination.  He stepped around a large grey mausoleum, not giving it a second glance, but I instantly recognised it as the tomb of my father’s predecessor, Lord Greystone.  He passed a couple more gravestones, before stopping in front of one set slightly back from the rest.  This plot seemed to be better tended than the rest, with the grass cut back and few weeds or moss in sight.  I realised that someone, my father I assumed, must have been maintaining this one.  My eyes came to rest on the gravestone and as the sun slowly peeked above the horizon it cast its first rays upon the headstone, illuminating the dedication on it, and my mouth dropped open in amazement.

Professor Henry Alcubierre, 2446 – 2509,

Husband, and beloved, of Céleste Alcubierre,

“Your only limit is your imagination.”

“You did this?” I gasped, unable to believe that Alcubierre had been buried here all this time and I had never known.  “How?” but I don’t think my father heard me as instead he was touching the headstone, his face raised to the first rays of the morning sun, his eyes closed and as those rays hit his face, I could see the glisten of tears on his eyelashes and for the first time wondered just what sort of relationship he’d had with Henry Alcubierre.

For a long time my father was silent and I wondered if he’d even heard my question, when he started to speak.  Slowly, hesitantly at first, but before long he was recounting their first meeting.

*****

The notebook crashed onto the table with a jarring impact and Alex had to keep a tight grip on his glass, to stop the contents spilling across the desk.  With papers spread everywhere, this would have been of significant detriment to the Professor and his work.  Not that Alex thought that the man particularly cared, as the Professor stumbled to his feet, pacing backwards and forwards, cursing in frustration.

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” he grumbled, waving his hands about wildly.  With his wrinkled face, piercing grey eyes and long, shoulder length silver hair, he was the epitome of the mad professor.

Having spent an inordinate amount of time with the man over the last few months, Alex was more than used to his mercurial moods. Taking the remains of his half-eaten sandwich between his lips to free both of his hands, he spun the notebook around flipping it to the last page, running his eyes over the jumbled numbers and letters.

They were complete gibberish.  As if a five-year old had gone mad, writing upside down, right to left, bottom to top.  The way the Professor was ranting and raving, most people would have had the man carted off to the nearest asylum for the insane.  Still Alex wasn’t most people, having spent the past few months closely observing the man, he had eventually deciphered his personal cypher.  It really was quite ingenious.  It only took him a few minutes to spot the mistake and, spinning the book back around to face the Professor, Alex took the remnants of the sandwich from his mouth and with his remaining free hand stabbed at the spot in the book.

“There!” Alex declared loudly, to be overheard by the Professor.  “You raised it to the fourth power, not the fifth,” he declared confidently, interrupting the Professor mid-flow.

“What?” the man barked, looking at Alex in surprise. “What do you know about multi-dimensional superstring theory?”

“I read it in a book once,” Alex shrugged nonchalantly.

“A book?” Henry Alcubierre snorted in disdain.  “And just where did you find such a book?”

“You’d be amazed at what you can find in dusty rooms, while having a clear-out.”

“And who may I ask wrote such a book?” Henry sniffed.  “I’ve yet to find one that wasn’t just science-fiction, or a complete fantasy.”

“You did,” Alex replied unperturbed.  “Or at least your great, great, grand-father, Miguel.”

“Preposterous,” Henry dismissed the possibility out of hand.  “Miguel only ever produced three copies, one remains in High-Lord Hadley’s personal library, closely guarded, the other is in my possession, and the final one is
—
”

“
—
in my library.”

“Even if what you say is true, it’s impossible for you to understand it, it’s written
—
”

“
—
in English.  Yes, I know.”

“And you read English?  A language that ceased to exist over four hundred years ago?”  Henry snorted.

“Yes.”

“Dare I ask how you managed this miraculous feat?”

“Another book,” Alex replied. “Parlez-vous français?” At the confused look from Henry, Alex sighed. “It’s French.  According to the book that I learnt it from, it was the pre-eminent spoken language on Earth at the end of the Twenty First Century.  It seems it was spoken by all the intellectuals of the time.”  Alex shrugged, eyeing the remains of his half-eaten sandwich hungrily as he’d missed breakfast that morning.

“Anyway, it’s totally preposterous,” Henry shook his head in disdain.  “There is no way you could understand this problem and…” his voice trailed off, eyes widening in disbelief as he ran his eyes over the calculation that Alex had pointed out.  Looking up from the book he focused on the man sitting unconcernedly across the table, who had already resumed eating.  “Who are you?” he demanded incredulously.

“Me? Just a soldier, or more specifically an ex-soldier,” Alex said, having finished off his sandwich.  “Although as High-Lord Lee Hyun-Woo is paying me to guard you and this facility, I suppose technically that makes me a mercenary,” he added distastefully.

“No,” Henry disagreed, pointing his finger at Corporal Frank Banks, who was currently inhabiting another reality, literally, as he was caught up in a virtual reality simulation.  From the way he was grinding his hips, grunting, it was obviously not Final Fantasy XXXII.  “That is a mercenary,” Henry exclaimed in disgust.  “So that makes me wonder who you are?”

“Me?  I’m a nobody.”

“In that case where are you from?”

“Nowhere.”

“Everybody comes from somewhere.  Where were you born?”

“Deneb,” came the resigned reply, “near enough.”

“Parents, family?”

“Deceased, or at least my mother is
—
she was a prostitute.  My father?”  Alex looked up thoughtfully for a moment, “Could’ve been anybody.  There were certainly enough men passing through when I grew up, and yes, before you kindly suggest it, that makes me a bastard.”

“In that case,” Henry Alcubierre replied, with a curious glint in his eye, “How is it that I recognise you?”

*****

“Where did he recognise you from?” I asked, totally engrossed in the unfolding story.

“He never could remember,” father sighed.  “Although he swore to me, until the day that he died, that I reminded him of somebody.”

“How long did you spend with the Professor?”

“Several months,” he replied.  “My squad and I were hired to guard him and protect the facility where he worked.  It was a high-tech, secret, research laboratory, so there was very little security but the High-Lord wanted the Professor closely guarded and insisted on daily progress reports.”

“Why?  What was the Professor working on?” I asked, wide-eyed with curiosity.

My father was silent for a long time, as if weighing up just how much to tell me, before whispering quietly to me, almost as if he was afraid that the surrounding trees had ears.  “A weapon.”

I blinked, hardly expecting that answer.  “A weapon?” I echoed incredulously.

My father just nodded.

“And where is this weapon
now
?” I prompted him.

My father looked at me in surprise, as if he couldn’t comprehend the question.  “Well, I have it, of course.  Why do you think I’ve spent the past thirty years here, hiding on the very edge of the Imperium?”

“You have
the
weapon, designed and built by Professor Henry Alcubierre?” I knew I was starting to sound like a broken record, stuck on repeat, but in all honesty, I just didn’t know what else to say.

My father nodded again, but I couldn’t see any laughter in his eyes, nor his lips upturned in a smile.  If this was some sort of joke, he gave no outwardly visible sign.

“Let me see it then,” I insisted and, after a moment’s hesitation, my father turned about-face, heading back the way that we had just come.  Literally. As we then spent the next twenty minutes retracing our steps until, once again, I found myself standing in front of the ship, the
Céleste.

“It's inside the ship?” I asked confused.

“No, that
is
the weapon,” he insisted, motioning towards the ship.

I glanced at it once again, but it remained unchanged, sitting in the middle of the cavern, still, silent and about as threatening as a mouse.  Seriously, I had seen bottle openers that had appeared more menacing.

“Watch carefully,” my father broke the embarrassing silence, activating the remote that he had been carrying with him since he had discovered me earlier.  With a few deft taps on the device, he nodded his head.

I looked round, expecting some sort of massive death ray to suddenly appear, but nothing happened and for a moment I wondered if it hadn’t worked.  It took me a few moments to register what had happened, as it was not immediately obvious.

The ship—had vanished!

“It’s a cloaking device,” I breathed in sudden understanding.  For I had heard differing rumours of such devices over the years, but had never come close to one.  I looked carefully at where the ship had been parked, looking for shadows, trailing edges, reflecting light, anything to indicate that a ship was hidden there, but I couldn’t see a thing.  The ship had completely vanished.  I would swear that we were the only occupants of the room.  “Very impressive,” I conceded.  “What does it use?  Metamaterials?  Optical camouflage or Retro-Reflective projection?”

“No, nothing like that,” my father snorted dismissively. Reaching down to the floor and picking up a small rock, obviously left over from when the cave had been hollowed out, and tossed it to me.  “Throw it at the ship,” he insisted, gesturing to the centre of the cavern where the ship remained hidden.