faithful

Faith rushes Templar peacekeepers to embattled eta guilds in the south

2007-08-13T11:08:00.000-07:00

[begin transmission]

Faith has relocated its Garrison-at-Fields-of-Jigo and stepped up its offensive against anti-eta combatants attacking guild interests in the south, sending hundreds of additional Knights Templar to the province of Ulsu, where fighting in recent days left at least 25 apprenticed to Guild Textilus Group dead.

A similar number of militants from the anti-eta linked Llyr and Moro Dothn Kindred were killed in two fierce gunbattles after an ambush on a Guild Textilus Group supply convoy on Jolo Island, in the same province.

Apostolic Prefect alphaArroyo Ruth Helena ordered the relocation of the Fields-of-Jigo Templar base to Boanga, a city in near Ulsu. The cardinal tribuni and several senior primus have been dispatched there to coordinate what is being described as a massive military operation against the combatants. Disgruntled familial gangs, who have taken to violent protest against Guild Brotherhood and House eta operations seen as complicit in the etaSade scandal, have paralyzed the region.

Two battalions will be pulled out from the central and northern Arcadia, where they have been fighting Kindred criminal guerrillas, and deployed to Ulsu, said a Faithful Templar spokesman.

[end transmission]

Eta electorate refuse to unseat Matriarch

2007-08-12T11:17:00.000-07:00

[begin transmission]

House eta Electorate of Governesses has unanimously vetoed a summons for a Vote of No Confidence by lower households, effectively affirming the sovereignty of the Matriarch. The act assures that the Matriarch will not be forced to abdicate following revelations of corruption, murder and criminal misconduct involving the First Husband, senior House eta authorities and Guilds under their influence.

The Matriarch continues to deny any knowledge or direct involvement in First Husband Edmund etaSade's alleged role in the illegal human labor trafficking conspiracy that has rocked Aideena. The Parliamentary investigation ordered by Faith has yet to uncover evidence contradicting the Matriarch's position.

The lack of evidence has not healed the division the scandal has caused between lower and higher eta Households. Nor has it shielded the Matriarch from severe criticism by the other Great Houses, most vocally House omega and House rho.

Lower eta households, whose poorer clans were largely the victims of the conspiracy, hold that abdication by the Matriarch is necessary to diffuse tribal retaliation, or Sh'Karee, and further harm to the reputation of House eta. In the wake of the conspiracy's disclosure, anti-eta sentiment was fueled street violence and vandalism toward House eta property and Guild operations in several eta domains.

The Electorate's veto is widely condemned by lower household matriarchs as indicative of the Matriarch's failing to assume responsibility for her court's conduct and a further conspiracy to protect wealthier matrons and their families likely complicit in etaSade's crimes.

[end transmission]

Tribal militants in Xuanchi attacked twice in one day

2007-08-12T11:00:00.000-07:00

[begin transmission]

Nu-Zeta tribal militants attacked a zeta stronghold in southern Xuanchi Province for the second time in one day and the third time this week, Faith said.

Templar forces search for improvised explosive material and nu-zetaXuanci members in Garmah village in Xuanchi Minor in a recent operation.

It warned the ambushes could "possibly be a rehearsal for a much bigger attack, possibly an attempt to completely overrun the citadel."

Zeta and Rho coalition privates at Mag Tuir-ahed in neighboring Ikundar province fought off the attackers the day before. Several nu-zeta militants were killed, and two insurgents were wounded, taken into custody and turn over to Faith authorities.

Earlier, another attack at Citadel-at-Xuanchi led to fighting that killed four militants.

On Tuesday, 75 fighters ambushed the same outpost from three directions. Almost a third of them were killed when troops and U.S. warplanes repelled the attack.

[end transmission]

Faithful

2007-08-05T08:40:00.000-07:00

CHAPTER ONE/PROLOGUE: The day all of Creation shuttered…

"Hear us! We transcend the corporeal. Prepare for our coming," some other voice heralded through Angela.

The Well of Souls fell silent. The great temple trembled.

The sky over Court-at-Columbia grew dark and stormy, blotting out the mother planet Gaia. The clouds frenzied into a fearsome hurricane angered with thunderous lightening. From the eye of the storm, Heaven vomited.

Transformed and torpid, He tumbled earthward.
[read]

CHAPTER TWO: The Agreement

The air snapped suddenly.

A startling ghostly pressure swept through the three Templar and out in the all directions. Enormous black feathered wings swept on either side of them and spread apart like a great hand with long flat fingers. A massive muscled frame dwarfed the men.

"We are prepared," came a deep reverberating voice. "We have been promised an audience at your government in exchange for Our cooperation." [read]

CHAPTER THREE: Nadsar

Nadsar felt his stomach uncoil. Hope flushed through him, quieting every pain and surprising him that he could still aspire to the feeling. Every suppress emotion erupted in a breath.

"My mother...they won’t allow her to go to the hospital," he choked out between gasps for air. "The treatments...no good...They know we’re talked! They’re after me!" [read]

CHAPTER FOUR: Horus

Horus knew within himself was the capacity to be a good person. He knew he could do justice to the House of omega and the del clans. He knew he could win the love of family and a just woman -- or man. But no, not this day, and not with the duty he had been commanded to perform. [read]

CHAPTER FIVE: The Reading

Certain she had made an error, Rachel Angela performed the reading over again. And again and again.

She watched the algorithms arrange themselves on the virtual display. Each time they aligned into a distinct unmistakable pattern. The pattern formulated an inescapable conclusion. An improbable conclusion. [read]

CHAPTER SIX: Daria

Horus nodded sadly, "He keeps repeating sh’karee."

"Then, give him what he wants,” said Daria. "See to it that the boy finds his way inside The Parliamentary. Make sure he is armed."

The young male stifled a gasp. "You’ll be sending an innocent to his death," Horus reproached her. [read]

CHAPTER SEVEN: Sebastian

The Archangel reared up its head suddenly.

As if struck by a new and unexpected awareness, He looked over his shoulder at Paul Sebastian. The Divinity’s gaze pierced the Templar in a way that made xiDuang feel rudely exposed. Inexplicably he sensed the meta-terrestrial knew his thoughts in that very moment: his frustration with his current assignment and his contempt for the meta-terrestrial and Michael Constantine. [read]

CHAPTER EIGHT: Constantine

Paul Sebastian added, rather too quickly, "The Divinity’s presence here endangers The Parliamentary and the peace. The last thing we want is to panic a crowd this large. We should return to base before His presence's discovered and we really have a situation."

Constantine whispered delicately, "I’m not sure we can move Him now without someone noticing—especially with the increased media trained on the building."

Paul Sebastian bristled. "I knew this was a bad idea," he exhaled. [read]

CHAPTER NINE: Seneca

Seneca stared across the colonnade of the Acropolis at the thousands who gathered in answer to her call. She surveyed the camp of journalists hungrily working the spectacle. She took in the Templar policing the swarm.

She succeeded in galvanizing world attention on her fast on the steps of The Parliamentary and the vote inside to enact labor rights reforms. Instead of feeling triumphant, Seneca felt terror. [read]

CHAPER TEN: The Parliamentary

"Divinity, what is the alarm?" asked Michael Constantine. "Please, let us get you away from all these people."

The Archangel shook, as awakening from a peculiar daydream. Seeing Constantine and Sebastian, His brightly glowing grey eyes suddenly registered recognition and His demeanor transformed before them. The press of people surrounding them seemed to startle and unnerve the meta-terrestrial.

"My Faithful, someone here is intent on murder," He said. [read]

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Perfect

Valentine’s avatar modulated unsatisfied, "You talk of protecting the credibility of Faith, Cardinal Mother. Do we honor our covenant with the Houses and the Guild or do we tempt embarrassment?"

"Brother," she answered, not hiding her empathetic frustration. "I can not believe our Guardian Ancestors would have us choose either path.”

Paul Sebastian railed silently. [read]

CHAPTER TWELVE: Pronaos

"Step aside," ordered xi Duang.

For a moment, the Privates remained defiant, but then their armor quickly gave way and they broke formation.

Sebastian spied Nadsar shutter relief and then a sly exchange of looks among eta closest to the boy. In a breath’s exhalation, the pronaos rang with a distinct pwa-toosh.

The air reeked suddenly of burnt flesh. [read]

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Edmund

His brush with morality quickly circulated the chamber.

The Guild Consul appraised unflattering stares on the faces of the other Parliamentarians. They studied him with more righteous indignation than concern for a colleague and alarm that the security of world government had been breached. [read]

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: The Keep

In his periphery, Constantine caught black wings stretch out. He felt a force, some invisible immense pressure, sweep from behind him and pass through his body and outward. In the same moment, the volley of weapons’ fire ruptured in an explosive dance against a transparent wall, coming within arms length of tauValez, close enough to startle him backward. The air perceivably warbled. [read]

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Space Climber

The traversal rocked violently.

The seat beneath the Consul jolted several times. His bones rattled and the hairs on his body stood on-end as the cabin filled with static electricity. Warning alarms suddenly bellowed, emergency lighting toggled to life and the space climber stalled.

"Someone's out there--outside!" [read]

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Sh'karee

The Archangel bore down on them from the shadowed upper landing, His towering winged figure silhouetted and threatening against the chamber’s Gaia-saturated light. The grey electric glow of His eyes leveled the omega matriarch with an imperious look that would be too contemptible of an Aideenan male to attempt upon a woman.

It excited Seneca. She suspected the alien knew that. [read]

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Fifth Pentad

"Pleasure me," she instructed Horus.

This he labored with mechanical uninspired obedience.

When done, as her affiance uneasily slept, Daria turned into herself, as only a woman could. She journeyed to that place beyond physical awareness, where women may stand outside of nature. [read]

Conclude

17. Fifth Pentad

2007-07-14T12:40:00.000-07:00

Seneca celebrated with her supporters and the media in the colonnade outside the Parliamentary well into the day’s final pentad.

The labor rights legislation she toiled long and hard for passage by world government swept into law, at last. But, the day’s tragic and horrific revelations, rendered at the hands of her co-author, made victory hollow.

The Parliamentary stayed violence by unanimously rejecting of the amendments Consul Edmund etaSade had sought to impose. However, she feared that in adopting the original reform package, the Parliamentary only temporarily evaded the anger and incrimination of the Aideenan people. Once the public understood the extent of House eta’s crimes, blood in the streets seemed inevitable.

The day’s historic lawmaking validated omegaMarat Seneca and her People’s Advocacy. It meant she wheeled real influence to push for the things she wanted. However, in the aftermath etaSade’s betrayal of the public’s trust, Seneca loathed that now the things she wanted would have to take a backseat to other demands.

The circumstances pleased her sister Daria. The day yielded satisfying and unexpected surprises and she too celebrated.

She managed to unseat a consul of the Guild Brotherhood. She planned to betray him to authorities all along, whether or not he succeeded in undermined his own legislation, as she’d forced him to attempt.

The younger omegaMarat delighted in the rippling effects her handiwork wrought.

A powerful House shook to its core. The world government unhinged, visibly before the entire planet, and the immutable Faith compromised. Sweetest of all, failing to elevate herself as highly on the world stage as she’d targeted, her beloved sister Seneca emerged overshadowed by a scandal. Sade's folly proved to0 devastating to bend to her sister's force of personality. Every corner of Aideena suffered the day’s damage.

"Pleasure me," she instructed Horus.

This he labored with mechanical uninspired obedience.

When done, as her affiance uneasily slept, Daria turned into herself, as only a woman could. She journeyed to that place beyond physical awareness, where women may stand outside of nature.

Daria contemplated the day’s events. The unexpected intervention of the meta-terrestrial called The Archangel disturbed her. She wondered why He’d come to Aideena and what possible threat to her designs He presented. She set her imagination to how such a creature might be used to her advantage.

"Do not concern yourself with that impotent Host," came a cold and haunting voice into Daria’s thoughts. "It is outside itself. I shall devise the means to destroy it and its race very soon now."

The presence came to her like an old familiar friend.

Daria moved toward it. She passed through and into the darkness anyone else would have responsibly ran from.

THE END OF BOOK ONE: SH'KAREE

RETURN SOON FOR BOOK TWO: THE CASANDRA PRINCIPLE

16. Sh'Karee

2007-07-14T12:04:00.000-07:00

High above the vast public baths of the Acropolitan Thermae, Faith’s secret chambers darkened with the rapid approach of the final pentad in the 45-hour day. Paul Sebastian and Michael Constantine’s red uniforms contrasted against the glowing gaseous disk of Planet Gaia in Court-at-Columbia’s evening sky.

The regard between the men shrouded darkly, too.

"Parliamentary passed the reforms," Reverend Constable Paul Sebastian xiDuang proclaimed. He twisted a face when the news elicited little interest on Constantine’s uncharacteristically stony face.

The Archangel listened, although He took care to appear preoccupied elsewhere.

As had become His custom while sequestered, The Archangel perched atop ancient masonry like a sculpted gargoyle of perfect balance and intensity. His favored spot protected a small shaft that extended hundreds of meters through rock and architecture to vents and ducks latticing the bath works below. The chatter of oblivious Thermae bathers, a hundred choruses playing at once, rose to whisper in His acutely tuned ears.

Still, He allowed His focus to eavesdrop on the two Templar soldier-priests who retreated to the battlements outside. His senses observed a curious exchange of tension brewing between His chaperones.

In defiance of the other’s silence, Sebastian began again, "They wasted little time in dismissing etaSade’s amendments. After the other delegates heard what he was up to, no one wanted to back the new measures he tried imposing. Anyway, he wasn’t around to defend them."

He continued, "There’s no telling how high in the Guild and House eta this human trafficking ring goes. Faith and Parliamentary will probably be sorting it out for years. Funny, don’t you think, etaSade woke today a saint and savior and he’ll sleep tonight Aideena’s greatest villain."

Constantine flinched, as though pained, and turned himself away from the senior Templar.

The movement chilled Sebastian. He calculated that the younger Faithful deserved his foul mood, a good thickening of his skin for being undisciplined and naïve and light colored. He relished that the blond finally shut up.

But, then, Sebastian suddenly, inexplicably, felt he needed Constantine to speak. An indiscernible feeling disquieted him about Reverend Constable tau Valez’ silence.

"The eta boy that was killed got what he wanted after all: Sh’karee," xiDuang mused aloud, abandoning his conceit and measuring his words.

"Imagine what Sade and his conspirators might have gotten away with hadn’t he attempted it. There’s no better case for justifiable revenge upon a clansman who’s brought dishonored on one’s House and ancestors, if you ask me. By Creation, consider the situation he found himself. How many people these days would have had the courage to invoke Sh’karee and act on it?"

Michael Constantine suddenly whipped around. Face reddening, the anger in his eyes turned to burning rage and scalded Paul Sebastian with a smoldering incrimination. He lunged forward and, just as xiDuang’s martial instincts pinned him on the ground, warning siren trumpeted.

"Security breach, sector beta. Security breach, sector beta," an automated voice announced.

The two Faithful reacted, instantly reaching for their pulsons and Discipliners, and racing for the shielded anterior staircase. They descended only a few steps when, onto the landing below, a lone shapely figure emerged from the shadows, her way barred by a thin traveling energy barrier.

"Matron Seneca!" tauValez vocalized his shock.

"Halt!" said Paul Sebastian, equally stunned. "How the Hell did you break our protocols?"

Steady, as though accustomed to having pulsons leveled at her, omegaMarat Seneca eased a sly smile, "As a matriarch of House omega I am not without my resources, even within Faith, Disciple Paul."

Hurried bootsteps behind the matron announced the arrival of more Templar to the rear. Recognizing the personage before him, and with a nod from Sebastian, Faithful John Gregory alphaOsloe stood down the alarm.

"This area is prohibited, by order of Faith," xiDuang harped. “Retreat now or I’ll arrest you where you stand."

"I'll see The Archangel," Seneca answered, undeterred.

"Impossible," Sebastian countered. "Retreat now!"

"I’ll have my audience with His Divinity, and I won’t leave without it."

Constantine leaned in with his pulson. "You may petition the Prefect, Matron Seneca,” he cautioned. “For now, our orders require us to remove you by force should we have cause."

Then, thunder rolled, "We’ll hear her."

The Archangel bore down on them from the shadowed upper landing, His towering winged figure silhouetted and threatening against the chamber’s Gaia-saturated light. The grey electric glow of His eyes leveled the omega matriarch with an imperious look that would be too contemptible of an Aideenan male to attempt upon a woman.

It excited Seneca. She suspected the alien knew that.

Before Sebastian could managed a protest, The Archangel swept down a reproachful force upon the Templar and his fellows, the slightest psychic twinge rude enough to make plain his resolve, and He asserted aloud, "She may speak."

Seneca raised her stance confidently. "Why are you here, Divinity?" she asked candidly.

Neither startled nor amused, The Archangel stared back at omegaMarat in silence, void of empathy and motionless.

"I suspect your unwillingness to respond is not because you wish to seem indignant, but that you simply do not know the answer," brazened Seneca after a moment. "Tell me, do you still hear the Celestial Collective? Is their ever-present chorus of thought still so completely immersed within your own consciousness that you can only express yourself in the ‘we’?"

The Archangel remained mute; only staring, just staring.

"I believe the Celestial Collective are as still in your head as you are here. No more willing to explain themselves to you as they have been mum to Aideena-kind since we first mistook them for angels," Seneca continued.

"You are guilty of some horribly transgression, something so reprehensible that it demanded exile, here, in this man-woman form. Normally the past, present and future are interchangeable to you, but now whatever future or past you are aware of must seem like a dream growing more and more distant with each day you’re among us. Along with it, the reason for your excommunication grows further from your reach, and whatever redemption the Collective might have require of you, too."

Seneca paused and listened for The Archangel's rebuttal. Again, He offered none.

The omega matriarch’s gaze narrowed on the metaterrestial’s immovable shrouded frame and she contemplated aloud, “How utterly alone you must be. Frightened. Friendless.”

"It doesn’t have to be," Seneca fired. "You’re actions today prove it. The Celestial Collective is resign to be mere observers in world, but you have the capacity to act. It’s within your power now to behave according to your conscious."

In her excitement, Seneca advanced forward and the security barrier automatically closed toward her. She had the presence of mind to draw back, making the barrier retreat, avoiding direct contact and its disabling neuro-sensory effects.

She pleaded, "You are not alone. You are part of the world, part of Aideena. You are an actor in its future. By choosing to engage, you shape your own future out of the present and you make it possible for everyone you touch to have a stake in the future they create also. I urge you, don’t sit on the sidelines. Do what’s within your conscious to influence. Whether your actions produce charity and hope or something else, you cannot simply observe and live safe and above it all. You must choose."

The Archangel's eyes flared, suddenly. He turned and showed omegaMarat his winged back. Seneca sunk, summarily dismissed and uncertain she’d succeeded in driving her point. Before she could recover and start again, Michael Constantine waved his pulson.

"Your audience with Divinity’s done, Matron Seneca," tauValez commanded. "Go, please. Now."

Seneca returned a piercing glare. She held her ground for a long moment, sizing up the young Faithful. Then suddenly, she softened. “You’ve seen it, too, Disciple Michael,” she discerned aptly. "You’ve experienced that thing that asks us why we are here."

Seneca turned and then paused, regarding Michael Constantine again, "The Goddess entrusted Aideena to the Faithful to prepare the way to Salvation. But, even the Faithful must choose whether they will be actors in the world or bystanders. Just like Him, you’re asking yourself that question right now."

The House omega matriarch withdrew down the staircase under escort of John Gregory and the other Templar. Sebastian and Constantine holstered their weapons and ascended toward chambers.

Wearily, xiDuang rasped, "Now you know why I no longer ask questions."

Michael Constantine slammed his forearm into the Templar’s chest and pushed himself hard against his superior. "You are a coward, Sebastian."

The senior Reverend Constable angrily grabbed the younger Faithful by his breast-coat and spun him around. The Michael reacted instinctively, clasped the other’s grip and shifted his weight, and prevented himself from being thrown.

The expert counter surprised Paul Sebastian. His scornful expression melted and he grabbed Michael Constantine by the strut of the neck and pressed his lips hard upon the young man’s mouth. He held him there.

Sebastian whispered softly, "You are young, tauValez."

"Shall that be our excuse? I am young and you’ve seen it all?"

"The truth is the world is not always what we wish it to be. This uniform and our oath remind us who we are and what we’re here to do."

Sebastian’s dark eyes held his younger self and in those watered spheres Constantine saw the familiar memory that beckon him back to an event in every Templar’s experience that all shared. In the temple yard, standing shoulder to shouldered, the newly ordained shouted in unison, "I am Faithful."

"What are you?"

Reverend Constable tauValez straightened and answered loudly and proudly, "I am Faithful."

"What are you?"

"I am the Goddess' emissary. I am Her fist that strikes and Her open hand that lifts up."

"Damned be the enemies of the Faithful."

The Archangel listened, although He took care to appear preoccupied elsewhere.

TO BE CONCLUDED

15. Space Climber

2007-06-12T18:38:00.000-07:00

Parliamentary Templar escorted delegates back into the assembly celia.

When Paul Christian iotaToa welcomed the return of Aideena’s governing body, Consul Edmund etaSade was not among the matriarchs and their fraternal counterparts.

EtaSade availed himself of the interval between escort rounds to escape.

The Consul, his House eta liaison, and two of his most trusted senior pages stole to the underground security corridor that connected the main Parliamentary building to
neighboring government offices, where each House and Guild held their embassies. They bypassed the media and omegaMarat Sisters with their plebeian throngs massed in the Acropolis’ colonnade above.

The Templar Crime Unit distracted the corridor’s Faithful sentries, who busied tending for transport the corpse of a murdered eta teen. The Consul slipped aboard the Parliamentary’s private rail and crossed beneath the river to Port Authority and its space climber. The traversal offered the promise he desired, to convey his party to the geosynchronous Orbita Planetia station and Free Townships beyond.

EtaSade boarded the space climber, taking care to avoid being recognized by other passengers. As its plasma tether powered for another routine ascent, Edmund mused on his good fortune. His luck in evading Templar security only proved that his Guardian Ancestors still favored him. The climber rose and he thought of his matron-wife; how his exile might afford her plausible deniability and protect her from scandal, and how he might still remain First among his matriarch’s husbands.

Then, the traversal rocked violently.

The seat beneath the Consul jolted several times. His bones rattled and the hairs on his body stood on-end as the cabin filled with static electricity. Warning alarms suddenly bellowed, emergency lighting toggled to life and the space climber stalled.

"What kind of storm is this?" unhinged one of the pages. He sat closest to the small
view-port in the party’s seating area. "Clear skies there just a moment ago, clear skies, I tell you!"

"Someone's out there--outside," announced the other page.

Consul etaSade strained against the traversal’s fierce shaking to turn his head to see. The view-port revealed the vicious tempest outside. The space climber dropped, the storm forcing it to retreat back to Port Authority, but not before Edmund surveyed a winged apparition suspended in mid-air amid whiplashing lightening and angry ensnaring clouds.

---------

Someone stirred Edmund awake.

The Consul had rested his eyes just for moment, just to summon a breath of peace. A hand or object roused him urgently and he opened his eyes, knowing he'd regret it.

Bearing down on the Consul, "Edmund etaSade, you are remanded into the custody of Faith," informed Matthew Valentine alphaCervantes, Reverend Prefect Apostolic, commandant of the Garrison-at-Court-at-Columbia. Templar soldier-priests closed on other side of the Prefect, squaring their pulsons menacingly at the former Guild Boss.

"You dare not," protested etaSade, scarcely believing his own audaciousness. "I am Guild Brotherhood Consul for House eta and First Husband to the Matriarch herself. I will not be subjected to your authority or anyone else."

"Consul," leveled Cervantes diplomatically. "What you are is implicated in a conspiracy to traffic in human labor and profiting from the forced conscription of impovished clans from your own lands to work illegally and surreptitiously elsewhere."

"Where’s your evidence, sir? I categorically deny these slanderous allegations. Everyone knows I’ve devoted my career to bettering our labor brethren."

"Within the Gaia-hour, my office and every media outlet on the planet received evidence detailing racketeering, forced abductions, torture, murder, and bribery consigned by you, senior member of House eta and more than a dozen Guild Bosses. Until this alleged evidence is sorted, you may consider yourself a guest of Faith and consigned to the protection of the Order of Knights Templar. May the Goddess and your Ancestors have mercy on
your soul."

Consul etaSade felt a pain shoot from his chest and down his arm. In his weakness, he managed to issue a single word, a word Cervantes shuttered at the utterance.

As though brandishing an accusation, Edmund called out, "Medusa!"

TO BE CONTINUED

14. The Keep

2007-06-12T18:00:00.000-07:00

Michael Constantine raced along the banks of the River Vitae.

He cut through the traffic of speeding aircycles and aero-crafts, swept under and over extension bridges, sailed between hydro-transports, and strafed the spiraled natural rock formations that speared Columbia’s rivers and lagoons and which generations of peoples sculpted into commercial and residential wonders. He ripped along the mega-metropolis' high ridges and deep canyons, carved into, gardened, terraced and tiered with human urban development both ancient and contemporary.

The young Templar Faithful could barely move.

He strained against an invisible force to even turn his head, to take in the sights rushing around him or spy his vector ahead and see where he was being taken. He thundered helplessly through the air, high above Court-at-Columbia’s sprawl, the wind bombarding his back, while suspended and invisibly tethered beneath The Archangel.

They slowed and descended. Michael Constantine welcomed solid ground, as he had never thought possible. The flight left him both exhilarated and ill. He forced down the conflict and re-oriented his senses to his new surroundings. Ruined fortifications chiseled out the limestone walls deep within the lip of a cave rose from the river’s banks and greeted the soldier-priest and alien Divinity.

Constantine did not know where he was, but he knew what it was. The Archangel brought him to one of the many centuries-old fortress keeps that littered Court-at-Columbia. The keep was likely a stronghold against the marauding clans. Rival Houses once fought to claim the prized real estate that eventually grew to be the world-capital.

Over time, keeps transformed into urban centers. This one fell to the river contamination and heavy industrial pollution that ravaged many of the more poorly modernized fortifications at mid-millennium. Apparently, the city never reclaimed it. Faith’s environmental warning buoy still waded the surf, which meant the locale remained a biohazard and uninhabitable, as well as forbidden.

The Archangel’s reason for whisking them to the abandoned settlement eluded Constantine. He turned to ask, but the winged companion had already begun marching toward a crumbling path toward the keep’s darkened interior. The Templar Faithful chased after.

The keep recessed deep into the limestone cave. Ruined vacated structures gave way to narrow winding catacombs. With his pai beeping insistent warnings, Constantine worried his riot armor's bio-filters might not protect him from contaminates.

"Why are we here?" he questioned The Archangel. "What does this place have to do with the eta boy?"

"It is what we saw," the alien answered, using His customary royal "we".

"You read his thoughts? You really can do that?"

"We accessed the electrical discharges simulating the synapses storing memories."

"This conclave's unsafe and shut down for centuries. What possibly connection could that boy or etaSade have?"

The Archangel paused his gate just long enough to render, "That we desire to know. The images in the human cub’s mind mean nothing to us. They perplex us, as do the emotions that bind them. You, my Faithful, you will explain them."

Then, Constantine saw it.

A light faintly glowed ahead. He and the Divinity advanced only a few meters further, emerged through a collapsed rampart and onto a nest of compartments surrounding a man-made hallow in the cave. What once might have been the keep’s central multi-tiered residence ring, now revealed a wrecked scattering of lantern- and torch-lit shelters.

Constantine steeled himself against nausea. The space reeked of human waste and stagnant water. The foul air’s toxicity burned tauValez’ eyes. In disbelief, he spied movement against the flickering light. Terrified, amazed stares peered out the dilapidated recesses. Wrenched and filth-riden, women, men and children spilled tentatively and malevolently into the stained luminance.

Constantine recognized many ceremonial markers and ritual fetishes displayed. "By Creation, they are House eta,” he choked out the observation. "There must be dozens of people living here."

"Hundreds," corrected The Archangel.

Michael Constantine never witnessed a more depraved sight. Even the social outcasts Juda-Hon in the city’s Ghetto Capricus lived better.

Far more astonishing and nightmarish to the young Faithful was the apparent lack of interest which the surroundings inspired in his winged companion. The Archangel betrayed not a flicker of empathy on his hard impassive face and in those grey glowing eyes. Rather, He turned away dismissively and His attention fixed upon an opening in the hollow where the invading river banked.

Constantine felt a hand catch his arm. He swiveled unbalanced into the tortured gaze of a slight woman.

"My Faithful, my Faithful," she pleaded. "They’ve taken our lady. It’s not too late to bring her back."

"Who’s taken her?"

"Those of our clan who brought us here to work, with their promises and lies," came another voice. A one-legged man limped out of the dark toward them. His stump looked recently injured and unprofessionally attended. "They hold and beat my matron-wife to keep us in line. They take our elder daughters to force my wife from exposing this fraud and turning to her sisters back home. We dared not risked a word, not to anyone, not even to the Faithful here."

"She needs a doctor!" the woman shrilled, overwhelmed by the disclosure she kept to herself so long. "They wouldn’t even give her that. They just came and got her, not even a Gaia-hour ago, and destroyed their watch-station."

The woman shoved the soldier-priest with the weight of her body in the direction of the river, pointing insistently.

Ahead on the path, Constantine saw The Archangel's silhouetted already rapidly descending toward the target and bolted after. Infected by the word he’d heard and growing rage smarting a fire within, Constantine barreled blindly and absorbed down uneven broken steps and overtook the Divinity. As he and the Archangel grew nearer, Constantine could see that the opening to the river anchored a pier, which docked a barge.

Further ahead, six dark cloaked figures speed toward the transport. Between them, they struggled to carry a long weighted bag.

"Stop! On command of Faith," shouted Michael Constantine, rushing pass The Archangel and drawing his pulson.

The procession turned. Seeing the Templar and Divinity, the six dropped the bag and scrambled for the cover of the keep's fallen vestige strewed about or dashed for the barge and its scurrying crew.

Suddenly, lights flared with familiar snaps of sound. Constantine broke his advance and braced as he found himself exposed to weapons’ fire. Charges strafed and exploded the ground in front of him. He took aim and fell one of the six who had attacked. Another of the assailants avenged a return salvo.

In his periphery, Constantine caught black wings stretch out. He felt a force, some invisible immense pressure, sweep from behind him and pass through his body and outward. In the same moment, the volley of weapons’ fire ruptured in an explosive dance against a transparent wall, coming within arms length of tauValez, close enough to startle him backward. The air perceivably warbled.

The Divinity brushed aside His human companion. He gestured, cupping His hands to His chest and pushing forward. Michael Constantine watched the air reverberate in a straight line, lift up the assailants and fling them with a force that thundered. The energized air continued to travel, careening into the barge, and up-siding the vessel while tossing overboard its crew and anyone in its wake.

Constantine stared, refusing to believe the scene before him. The assailants rolled feebly on the ground unable to right themselves and the crew swam for whatever would kept them from drowning.

Sirens suddenly erupted and roared, echoing alarm off the keep and the cave’s walls. Flashing red and yellow lights flooded around tauValez. Troops of armored Templar appeared up the path above, along with curious eta from the keep. Templar on aircycles blockaded any possible exit by river.

The sight of his fellow soldier-priests shook Constantine from momentary paralysis. He raced for the fallen black bag. Peeling it open, he uncovered a bloodied and battered woman slumbered in death’s embrace.

"Do we know her identity?" someone asked.

Constantine looked up. Sebastian xiDuang stared down at him, leading the troop of Templar now descending upon the battlefield. It occurred suddenly to tauValez that his pai enabled the Templar to track him and rally reinforcements.

"Check her bio-chip," ordered the senior Templar, bothered at the necessity of reminding his partner of standard protocols.

"She is our lady," said the woman from the keep, having pushed her way through the enclosing crowd. Her face cried, but she had no tears.

"She is my matron-wife," anguished the one-legged man bracing himself on the keep woman’s shoulder. He knelt by the body and studied the corpse with pained reproach.

"Where are you, Nadsar? Where are you, son?" he said finally, not to Constantine, not anyone. “You should be here with your mother."

Constantine felt a hand tap his shoulder. Sebastian signaled him to rise and tauValez came off his knees and stood. The younger soldier-priest’s face fixed a distant tortured mask. Any moment he might wrench.

“Creation isn't suppose to let things like this happen," Constantine insisted, struggling with the words.

Sebastian rendered a scolding stare as someone more accomplished at being dispassionate in his duties and leveled in a lecturing tone, "We don't yet know what this is."

Constantine slumped, wounded. Slowly he started for the path back up the keep. Sebastian stopped him. "Where's Divinity?" he queried.

Startled,tauValez surveyed the surroundings. The Archangel was nowhere. He’d vanished.

TO BE CONTINUED

2007-06-11T19:37:00.000-07:00

13. Edmund

2007-05-06T13:56:00.000-07:00

His deputies liberated a chaise for him to recline upon. They waft Diazepam incense under his nose and brought him a soothing liquor to drink. But Edmund etaSade could not arrest his body of nervous shutters.

"I am a hero to my people," he muttered aloud absently. "Have I not rescued desperate millions from poverty? Brought jobs to the jobless? Have I not found a way when others have abandoned hope?"

The Guild Consul replayed over and over again the terrible horror. He and the other members of his party queued for their turn to be escorted into chambers secured for Parliamentary delegates. He saw the young eta boy step toward him out the corner of his eye. He did not know him, had not noticed him before, and dismissed him as a page for Groupo Textilis Guild or another constituency.

The taeson he pulled from beneath his clothing barely registered at first, Edmund recollected. The murderous intent only jarred him aware when those around the boy descended on him and in the struggle the taeson fired. EtaSade felt a rippling hot gust roar pass his head like an invisible thunderbolt. After that, events blur.

“That boy was from the tenement, wasn’t he," etaSade kept repeating. "He was eta and wanted to kill his clansman. After all I’ve done, the ingratitude! I am a hero to my people!"

Edmund struggled to push Nadsar and the firing taeson from his mind. Familiar eta Guild brothers encircled him like a castle moat. His private guards were curiously absent. House eta matrons hung close, whispering among themselves and visibly panicked.

His brush with morality quickly circulated the chamber.

The Guild Consul appraised unflattering stares on the faces of the other Parliamentarians. They studied him with more righteous indignation than concern for a colleague and alarm that the security of world government had been breached.

Vultures! The contemptible lot of them relished seeing him taken down! He--a man--darned wheel popularity and power above their collective and they resented it as much as desired to share in his favor, Edmund imagined.

A deputy rushed the rampart of Guildsmen protecting the Consul. The eta boy died, he announced. Edmund, elated at the news, leapt to his feet. But then, the deputy told him about The Archangel. Suddenly weakened, etaSade grabbed the nearest body for balance.

"What did He do to the boy?"

"Nothing. He just looked at him."

"Into his eyes?"

The well-manicured aide nodded, bewildered at the Consul’s panicked interest.

Edmund’s color reddened.

He huddled House eta matrons and his Guild brothers close, mindful of the other House and Guild Parliamentarians nearby. "Get me a transport off-world within the hour! I don’t care what kind or whom you have to pay!" he fumed.

The matrons looked at one and another. The eldest protested, "You think our matriarch, your wife, will just let you abandon the Parliamentary? At this hour? What, to frolic on a Free Township? Are you insane?"

"Damn the Parliamentary! Our matriarch would not want House eta scandaled before the whole world! Transfer my accounts to a Township and if you have an ounce of intelligence, you’d escape now just the same."

"What do mean, you insolent little man? The spay is dead now. What has House eta to fear from this abominable woman-skinned man-thing?"

"We’re exposed! It’ll all be exposed! Leave everything and get me off-world! Now!"

TO BE CONTINUED

12. Pronaos

2007-05-06T12:52:00.000-07:00

Barricaded behind an entourage of deputies, under escort of a Templar detail, Consul etaSade sped passed the Reverend Cardinal Mother zetaPetriss Katrina and Templar Faithful Paul Sebastian.

Harrowed faces ushered etaSade away, into chambers sequestering other Parliamentary delegates. Physically, the former Guild Boss appeared unharmed. However, the rotund politician’s colorless expression betrayed mortal terror and confusion.

At the other end of the great hall, Parliamentary Templar surrounded an entangled knot of excited arms, legs and heads. Paul Sebastian extended his Discipliner and used the charged baton to threaten a path through.

At the center eta Privates—bodyguards to their officials at world government--tumbled against the crowd and Templar trying to manage the melee. The Privates trapped a teenaged boy beneath their numbers, boots and fists pummeling the hapless prey. Nadsar suffered bloodied on the unforgiving marble floor.

Unholstering his pulson, Paul Sebastian revved the sidearm over his head and fired. The discharge made a brilliant, under-charged and harmless flare. The polarizing shock of light arrested the brawling hostiles.

"Let him up," demanded xi Duang.

Weakly, Nadsar raised himself as best his could. Immediately, the eta Privates closed around him, blocking the boy from reach of Parliamentary Templar.

One eta Guild deputy reared up to the defense of his House compatriots. “Had this boy been a better shot he might have killed our Consul," he blustered at an ever-increasing volume, calculated to play at political indignation and sway the favor of those gathered. "This was an assault upon all Guilds and the House of the eta. He should be remanded into the custody of the eta."

"Brother," challenged the Reverend Cardinal Mother in no certain terms. “You have no diplomatic authority outside your embassage. This is clearly the jurisdiction of Faith. Step down or I’ll have you arrested and anyone else who interferes."

No sooner said, the Parliamentary Templar formed ranks aside Paul Sebastian with Discipliners extended. The crowd shrunk far back. Suddenly, the eta found themselves without a favoring audience, alone on stage and naked beneath the spotlight.

"Step aside," ordered xi Duang.

For a moment, the Privates remained defiant, but then their armor quickly gave way and they broke formation. Sebastian spied Nadsar shutter relief and then a sly exchange of looks among eta closest to the boy. In a breath’s exhalation, the pronaos rang with a distinct pwa-toosh. The air reeked suddenly of burnt flesh.

The Templar rushed forward as one eta Private threw away a taeson derringer and put up her hands. "I thought I saw something in his hand,” she feigned innocence. “Swear, he had another weapon."

All eyes locked unto the boy Nadsar.

A single tear escaped the horrified realization in his wetted blank gaze. A thumbnail-sized burn smouldered the center of Nadsar’s chest and grew and grew until it become as large as a fist.

“Sh’karee!” he cried with wisps of smoke threading phantoms through trembling lips. Then, his legs gave out and he crumpled.

The sound of his own body colliding with hard marble deafened and protracted in Nadsar’s ears. He stared up at the pronaos’ many-storied, ornately vaulted ceiling, unable to move or feel or breathe. He sensed people closing on top of him and he strained to look for his mother among the faces fighting for space in his line of vision. But, he did not find her.

Then, enormous black velvet-feathered wings brushed them back. A pair of pulsating grey spheres transfixed him and he stared into warmed welcoming pools more beautiful and transporting than anything he’d imagined.

Having appeared from nowhere, The Archangel lowered Himself beside the wounded teenaged assassin and bent close. For seemingly long pained minutes, He gazed into the young eta's eyes.

The few dozen gathered in the pronaos stood by silently, both awed and terrified, and bewildered as to what they were witnessing. Oracle psi Sadawa Rachel Angela and the Reverend Cardinal Mother prayed. Privately, Templar Paul Sebastian angered and minded the eta that brought this tragedy upon what should have been a great day for all Aideena.

Michael Constantine slipped beside xiDuang. The younger Faithful tauValez had followed after the Divinity when a mysterious new awareness drew the meta-terrestrial from their Altar Room sequesterium. He could not be more fascinated by the mystery unfolding in from him and moved by what he saw as majesty.

Then, the boy expired.

The Archangel stood like a shot.

His darkened incriminating glare sweep across the expectant and fearful eta and repelled those gathered around the scene. Only Paul Sebastian xiDuang did not shrink.

Fellow Templar Michael Constantine tauValez stepped forward. The Archangel grabbed him under either arm and pulled close the young Faithful. "You must come with me," he demanded of the stunned soldier-priest.

Constantine felt himself lift into the air. Sebastian reached for tauValez’s belt and stayed his ascent. The Archangel cut him a reproachful glare, filled with hidden urgency. But xiDuang did not back away. "Hold," the Templar said. "Keep an open channel, brother."

Michael Constantine nodded, understanding his partner was not about to abandon him to the Divinity. Suddenly, for the first time, the young Faithful felt a sinking terrible fear tingling at his core--that there was something menacing about the Celestial Collective exile after all. Sebastian released him and tauValez watched the other fall away.

The crowd let out a collective harrowed gasp as the dark entity and his captive Templar vanished through the ceiling as though specters. The rev of a pulson cut short the moment of awe.

Paul Sebastian leveled his sidearm at the eta. “Take them,” he barked to the Parliamentary Templar. Red and black uniforms drew their weapons and closed on the Privates.

Paul Sebastian menaced a smile. “By the authority of Faith, before thy Ancestors and Creation, I remand thee into custody,” he recited with relish. "Thou hast violated the laws of Holy Union. Thou hast the right to confession. Thou hast the right to judgment before a court of Faith and thy House..."

11. Prefect

2007-03-31T16:56:00.000-07:00

Parliamentary Templar rushed the Altar Room and, for their own security, ordered Rachel Angela and her sister clairvoyants to vacant. They were to be corralled in rooms off the pronaos.

Once sufficiently evolved, an oracular reading could not be suspended without dire consequences. The reading summoned for the day’s session of The Parliamentary continued to cascade increasingly alarming algorithmic patterns. Protocol demanded the program be allowed to work its course.

While the other oracles of the Faithful were hurried out a side entrance, psiSadewa Rachel Angela remained to secure the oracular program she’d began unto a portable interface. That way, she’d be able to monitor remotely.

As the Reverend Sister locked the final commands she shuttered to see the paneled doors that opened unto the assembly chamber's orchestra floor draw apart and The Archangel led into the room by a young Templar disciple of Michael. Through the opened doors she spied a Templar disciple of Paul and her matron the Reverend Cardinal Mother zetaPetriss Katrina. They conversed with a holo-image, the avatar of a Faithful male in apostolic dress.

Surveying his new surroundings from across the Altar Room, the Archangel turned and his pulsating gray eyes locked onto the sister oracle.

Rachel Angela went numb.

Her thoughts stampeded with the memory of her commencement months before. The Celestial Collective subrogated her and through her heralded the Divinity’s exile to Aideena. The sensations of that moment rushed back—losing control of body while her own will was swept aside, yet still occupying her mind while also sensing she was elsewhere, everywhere—and for a moment she swore it happened again.

Coming back to herself and returning The Archangel’s mesmerizing stare, Rachel Angela vaguely perceived that she knew the meta-terrestrial. Harboring an emotion like the remnants of a fading dream, she felt as though they shared a common intimate experience. What she grasped, however inarticulate, terrified her. He terrified her. He embodied an awesome cataclysmic threat to Aideena, to Creation itself.

He stared back as though he recognized her and understood the source of her fear.

Parliamentary Templar came to collect Rachel Angela. She gathered the configured portable interface and let them take her away, never stopping to break the Archangel’s gaze until she was out the room.

"Your orders where clear. The Divinity was not to interact with anyone, under any circumstances. The Parliamentary was never to know He was there," berated the avatar whose simmering image invited one to step into an entirely different space, an office overlooking the Acropolis with The Parliamentary’s distinctive architecture rising in the distance. “Brother xiDuang, I expected better."

Sebastian, disciple of Paul, inflated himself larger at attention. “I accept full responsibility, your Honor," he dutifully acquiesced. "I let the situation get out of my control.

"As we all knew might be the case. Yet, we agreed anyway to permit Divinity to observe The Parliamentary," spoke up the silvered haired woman standing next to the Templar.

Bowing his head properly, the disciplined Templar added, "For my dishonor I deliver myself freely unto the judgment of the Faithful. Before The Goddess and my Ancestors, I am surrendered."

"Divinity is unpredictable. Your Reverend Sergeant, Prefect, handled Him as well as anyone. It’s done. We’ll all suffer the penitence. Let us focus on how to regain the day’s footing," the Reverend Cardinal Mother summarily pardoned and dismissed Sebastian’s attempt at self-sacrifice.

Paul Sebastian xiDuang heard his partner Michael Constantine seal the paneled doors to the Altar Room, signaling he and The Archangel were safely isolated within. He decided to save a sigh of relief until they were all sequestered far from The Parliamentary.

"What evident is there that our security’s compromised?" asked the holo-image of Matthew Valentine alpha Cervantes judiciously. As Reverend Prefect Apostolic, Cervantes commanded the Garrison-at-Court-at-Columbia and held charge over all the city’s Templar. "Can you corroborate there is an assassin or other criminal element inside The Parliamentary?"

"No, Your Honor," Paul Sebastian answered. "The premises are now locked down. No one enters or leaves. On the Cardinal Mother’s authority, I’ve ordered a room-to-room search. We are holding everyone in the vestibule outside and double checking credentials."

Mathew Valentine strained a scowl. "The thing is I don’t doubt that among the rival matrons and guildsmen who are either delegates, privates, or staffers that there isn’t a couple dozen ready to stab, shoot or strangle someone in The Parliamentary," he assessed. "We’re dealing with a volatile group here on any given day. Today being what it is, the fact Divinity senses murderous thoughts is not exactly a revelation! By Creation, this is The Parliamentary, not the provinces. No one dare violate its neutrality. It’s inconceivable!"

"Our immediate concern is securing the Assembly and resuming parliamentary proceedings. I want your Templar as quickly as possible to segregate the delegates from their entourages so they may return to session and finish their work," petitioned zetaPetriss.

"I have already instructed the Captain of the Guard, Your Grace," nodded Valentine. "As a precaution, we’re expelling all but essential personnel who are properly credentialed and voting delegates. Damn the complaints. But still, I want it on the record that I protest resumption of Parliamentary. Under the circumstances, we should shut down entirely, sent everyone home and regain total control of the situation before trying to continue the vote."

"I represent the Seraphim in this matter, Prefect, and we are not prepared to concede that today’s session is a failure," Cardinal Mother reproached with measured diplomacy.

"Half the media congress is sitting at our doorstep. The Sisters omegaMarat have organized thousands of demonstrators and millions more are watching. We dare not suggest there is the slightest risk of danger. The Twelve Houses and the Guild Brotherhood must feel secure that their delegates are above harm at the Parliamentary. And Aideena must see the Parliamentary as free from violence or the threat of terrorism. That Faith is in control. Or we risk sending a message to every criminal coven wishing to tax us and any militant resolved to use violence to address a grievance."

Mathew Valentine drew in a bitter strained breath. "What if we don’t provide adequate security now and there were an incident?" he reasoned. "It would legitimize the Twelve Houses reinstating private militias. Instead of a limited security force of privates, they would again build armies. Old rivalries would not be settled in courts of law, but on the streets of our cities. Aideena would become a blood-sea."

Petriss nodded thoughtfully. "I share your apprehension, Prefect," she agreed without conceding.

Valentine’s avatar modulated unsatisfied, "You talk of protecting the credibility of Faith, Cardinal Mother. Do we honor our covenant with the Houses and the Guild or do we tempt embarrassment?"

"Brother," she answered, not hiding her empathetic frustration. "I can not believe our Guardian Ancestors would have us choose either path."

Paul Sebastian railed silently.

He found the sparring between his politic superiors dreadfully civil and he struggled to understand what it had to do with him. He prayed that he’d never advance high enough to suffer such intellectualizing over every decision.

Give him an order he can execute, by Creation, thought xiDuang, and don’t bother him with the why and what-for.

He imagined that Constantine, were he present, would be impertinent enough to argue his opinion with the Prefect and Cardinal Mother. But Cervantes and Petriss best have the patience of a Gaia winter should they expected him to weigh in so.

Then Katrina cautioned the disclosure, "The truth be told, there will be tragedy this day, my Brothers. The Sisterhood has foreseen it. The path was set long before The Parliamentary convened. What shape it may take has yet to be revealed and no action we three may determine will avert the inevitable."

The Cardinal Mother paused to weigh the chilled expressions on the faces of the men. She suspected that she miscalculated in holding the information from them this long, but like them, she too had her orders.

"It falls to Faith—to us here—to ensure the integrity of this institution and ensure it delivers the reforms promised," she resumed "We must control what we can. We must give Aideena some hope when the darkness descends."

Valentine resided to acceptance quickly, "I have extra Templar assigned to Parliamentary. I have Templar around the demonstrators. I have Templar around the media. Brother xiDuang, you‘ll remain with Divinity and monitor his moods for anything that may advantage us. Upon my ancestors, we Templar will answer any eventuality."

It was then a roar erupted from one of the vomitories.

Rachel Angela and Templar bolted into the Assembly, swept by a collective panic.

"There’s shooting," the young clairvoyant gasped. “Someone's tried to assassinate Consul etaSade." ”Said Paul Sebastian absently, "My ancestors be damned..."

TO BE CONTINUED

2007-03-26T20:04:00.000-07:00

10. The Parliamentary

2007-03-26T19:49:00.000-07:00

Every detail had been orchestrated.

The Parliamentary would convene and read through the proposed legislation reforming labor rights. After a Gaia-hour or two indulging the delegates' inevitable political posturing, the Assembly would then ratify the package.

To add historical urgency, omegaMarat Seneca would accept sanction and step down as House omega’s chief designate. She’d be permitted to stage one of her fiery reactionary vigils in the peristyle of the Acropolis. No one would know she was the reforms’ actual principle author.

Consul Edmund etaSade would ride his reputation as a trusted Fellow in the Guild Brotherhood and the dependable ally of the powerful eta Matriarchy. He would take all the credit and, as far as the peoples of Aideena were concerned, be prosperity’s hero. As champion of the male suffragetry, etaSade would be awarded control of The Parliamentary’s largest coalition of Guild political parties, elevating House eta from economic decline to a house to be reckoned with once again.

For some mystifying reason, the eta delegate decided to step outside his designated role.

As Faith’s moderating official, Reverend Cardinal Paul Christian iotaTao could only sit and listen as etaSade picked apart everything that had been accomplished. The secret meetings between himself, the activist omegaMarat Seneca, and the former Guild-Boss; the long hours of carefully constructing a reform package to satisfy Faith, the matriarchy of the Houses and fraternity of the Guild Brotherhood; all evaporated—as if they never happened at all. The Old Gentleman of The Parliamentary experienced something new in his forty-year career as Faith’s master mediator and grand manipulator. The Reverend Cardinal was thoroughly dumb struck.

Then suddenly a dark cold veil descended...

An expansive black flurry of feathers landed with delicate precision on the center podium. Immediate hysteria ensued.

Panicked delegates bolted, diving for cover. Courtly matrons and Guild-brothers leapt over desks and stampeded over one another. Then, everyone just stopped.

Perhaps it was the beauty of the creature that had descended upon them. Or perhaps it was the fear and anticipation of what might happen next. Whatever the reason, the congress’ flight reflex suspended momentarily. No one seemed to breath. All eyes locked spellbound on the podium and no one dare move a muscle. The silence of the Parliamentary formed an almost anathematizing vacuum.

The wings parted and revealed beautiful dark skin that obscenely shelled a classically Herculean figure of perfect maleness. Its angular face carved a sinister intense mask. The Archangel's scowl scanned the great cella, searching its tiers of desks and gallery above.

He looked one way, and then the other. As Parliamentary-stationed Templar erupted into the vomitory, sidearm pulsons drawn, and cautiously assumed flanking positions, the intruder took no interest. He stood there, looking for something.

Slowly, the delegates began to move. Shuffling and hushed voices broke the silence. Their frozen panic turned to intrigue.

Reverend Cardinal Paul Christian iotaTao banged his gavel. He appealed for order and calm. He asked the assembly to resume their seats and the Templar to holster their weapons. They cautiously complied.

The Old Gentlemen rose authoritatively. "Divinity honors us with His presence," iotaTao addressed The Archangel. "This august body receives you. How may we serve?"

Paul Christian waited. The Archangel did not answer. He did not sway from inspecting the room with a troubled stare. He did not seem aware of the Reverend Cardinal at all.

The Faithful elder cleared his throat and spoke louder, "Divinity, you are in the company of a Templar detail, aren’t you? I suggest we collect them and retire to the Altar Room. This august body can then continue its proceedings and you may observe in more appropriate surroundings. Allow me to escort you."

As if homing in on a beacon, the meta-terrestrial sprinted down one of the vomitories, overrunning Parliamentary Templar, and out the assembly cella. Delegates followed after, instantly scrambling for the exits. The Reverend Cardinal hammered his gavel and ordered the congress back to their seats.

This time, no one heeded.

Select media, Parliamentary staffers and the Faithful, and dignitaries congregated within the large lounging vestibule outside the assembly cella. The area waded deep with auxiliary officials of all sorts both supporting various House and Guild representatives and those merely wishing to be nearby while The Parliamentary held it auspicious session. The Archangel burst onto the pronaos, trailed by delegates, and ignited pandemonium.

He plowed through the panicked crowd, searching and examining their numbers as though they were inanimate objects to be inspected for defect and discarded.

Templar Faithful Paul Sebastian and Michael Constantine came into pronaos, sweated and out of breath from their rapid descend.

"Clear the Hall! Keep these people back," Paul Sebastian shouted to Parliamentary-stationed Templar as he and tauValez pushed through the confused swarm.

Sebastian and Constantine cautioned upon The Archangel. He scanned from one person to the next, oblivious to his Templar detail’s arrival.

"Divinity, what is the alarm?” asked Michael Constantine. “Please, let us get you away from all these people."

The Archangel shook, as awakening from a peculiar daydream. Seeing Constantine and Sebastian, His brightly glowing grey eyes suddenly registered recognition and His demeanor transformed before them. The press of people surrounding them seemed to startle and unnerve the meta-terrestrial.

"My Faithful, someone here is intent on murder," He said.

The two Templar looked at one another, shaken.

"Who is going to be murdered?" Paul Sebastian spoke up.

"As yet unknown, my xiDuang" He answered.

"Who are you reading, Divinity," Michael Constantine queried.

The Archangel strained a look around, scanning the faces closing in. He shook His head, defeated.

"Such rage...so much vengeance!" He channeled and then with deadly certainly The Archangel said, “He is close, very close."Said Paul Sebastian absently, "My ancestors be damned..."

TO BE CONTINUED

2007-03-26T19:42:00.000-07:00

9. Seneca

2007-03-26T18:37:00.000-07:00

In one conclave of the House iota, an angry mob stormed a water purification plant and devastated the mechanics. The sick and dying suffered doubly when criminal profiteers attacked disaster relief teams and ransomed their members. Elsewhere, Kappa fanatics seized control of a port authority. The ten-day standoff that ensued with Faith and their Knights Templar ended in murdered hostages.

To many Aideenans, especially in the capital Court-at-Columbia, such tragedies are the daily fodder of media reports, but to omegaMarat Seneca they meant much more.

Seneca witnessed firsthand the unrest in the villages and townships of Aideena. She negotiated down the desperate transformed into militant insurgents. She watched hidden demolitions shred children in markets and parkways. She visited morgues with their stacks of rotting carcasses, victims of escalating riots between rival clans.

The good and elevated peoples of Court-at-Columbia had thus far been spared the violence and terror that are a daily specter in Aideena’s provinces. Despite the overcrowding and the clan rivalry, life had always been somehow better, more civil, in the planet’s capital.

Seneca stared across the colonnade of the Acropolis at the thousands who gathered in answer to her call. She surveyed the camp of journalists hungrily working the spectacle. She took in the Templar policing the swarm.

She succeeded in galvanizing world attention on her fast on the steps of The Parliamentary and the vote inside to enact labor rights reforms. Instead of feeling triumphant, Seneca felt terror.

The Parliamentary promised the people a swift and decisive adoption of new legislation, granting tradesmen and their matriarchs the freedom to cross familial boundaries in pursuit of better employment and richer business opportunities. However, nothing even remotely resembling that action had come to pass. Instead, the world government assembly droned on with increasingly ridiculous deliberations.

With each trumpet of the temple crier as the Gaia-hours passed, Seneca saw the patience of her more radical supporters eroding. She knew she was staring down a mob one step away from a riot.

The past several Gaia-months, Seneca worked tirelessly to avoid what she now saw menacing toward her. She rallied the dissident familial factions within the Twelve Great Houses behind her People’s Advocacy and its agenda to bring about peaceful social reform. She calmed smoldering populist anger by promising that The Parliamentary was at last ready to deal directly with the grievances underlying violent clashes across Aideena.

Secretly, omegaMarat Seneca conspired with Edmund etaSade, the chairman of the authoring committee and High Consul to Parliamentary’s largest Guild coalition. Meeting with Faith authorities, they surreptitiously drafted a reform package that satisfied both a suspicious restless public and a self-serving bureaucracy. They carefully worked out every detail for more than a year. Very publicly, Seneca gave up her House omega seat in Parliamentary as part of the deal, to appease her resentful omega sisterhood and assure their favored votes. She carefully manipulated events to delivery what each party wanted most.

Now, just when the world government was sure to ratify their efforts, etaSade maliciously and inexplicably introduced measures that profoundly undermined all their hard work.

With delay after delay in Parliamentary, Seneca’s hopes were unraveling. All she could do was watch and wait—like the thousands of others in the colomnade and the millions more networked across the planet and beyond. Seneca knew that to avert the frustration simmering before her from erupting into bloodshed that the Parliamentary must act as promised.

Then, Seneca saw it.

A wave of new alertness washed through the policing Knights Templar. Media crews were suddenly on the move. Groups of the journalists with their technology in tow dashed toward the government building grounds.

Seneca watched Templar descend on the crowd. Red and black armored uniforms corralled around the demonstrators and press people. A hornets’ nest of excitement broke across the mass of on-lookers. They rushed like locust toward the barricades below the peristyle and toward The Parliamentary. The Templar marshaled, armed with Discipliners, extending energized batons, and forced them backward.

Seneca turned for cover as one of her sister’s affiants rush toward her. He threw himself in front of her as shield.

Horus held a pai. She knew he was in communication with the omega delegates inside The Parliamentary. He’d been mediating her instructions to confederates since he’d arrived.

Horus’ face twisted with confusion and consequence. He struggled to hear the com-link over the surrounding hysteria.

"Tell me The Parliamentary is voting," Seneca insisted.

He darkened reproachfully. Seneca read that he wished he could tell her what she wanted to hear. Instead, “The Assembly’s panicked,” he answered. "There’s been a disruption."

Seneca took his arm firmly, "Tell me."

"The meta-terrestrial, the Fallen Divinity,” he said as he strained to understand what his counterpart in The Parliamentary was reporting, “He’s attacked the delegation!"

Immediately, Seneca let go.

For a moment her mind went blank. She found herself staring past the young man, past the rushing crowds, toward the great building above the colonnade.

With her mind’s eye, Seneca imagined a torrid of forces conspiring against her. She imagined a vote that would never come to pass. She imagined a desperate people succumb to rage and driven to mayhem, to arson, to looting, and to murder.

A woman stepped into her line of vision. She crossed toward her slowly, non-plus by the ensuing mayhem. She smiled reassuringly. Somehow, deep down inside, Seneca felt that smile meant something other than it seemed.

She stared into her sister Daria’s smile and Seneca’s terror turned to horror.

TO BE CONTINUED

8. Constantine

2007-02-16T12:24:00.000-08:00

Michael Constantine stared down the view-port into The Parliamentary in-session below. Only a sliver of the Assembly Congress was viewable, but staring into the view-port helped him hear the voices rising through the opening. He become aware, almost absently, that The Archangel was no longer attentive to the politics below.

The Archangel fixed on Paul Sebastian’s flawless Beefeater pose across the narrow darkened confine. Then, almost dismissively, the Divinity turned back to the view-port and The Parliamentary proceedings below.

The moment struck Michael Constantine as odd.

Staring into the Archangel’s angled face, tauValez could not read the Divinity and could not look upon Him without becoming absorbed in every curve and contour. While others saw the meta-terrestrial’s perfect maleness and dark feminine skin as unnerving and otherworldly, Michael Constantine savored as uncommonly beautiful and compelling.

In His fall from Grace, The Archangel manifested far from the luminous, virtually colorless, and form-defying apparition the Celestial Collective reported to be. The espresso-ed hairless epidermis veined taut over The Archangel’s defined and corded musculature with a sheen that suspended the light around it. Deep grooved pectorals accented His thickly developed exposed torso. The abdominals cascaded in hard valleys and rises toward a narrowing waist. The enormous black wings, scales of hard shale over the scalp, neck, and forearms, and the oiled black hide He wrapped himself in, at will, completed a sight to be marveled.

Sensing something troublesome and unsaid, Constantine pulled away and went to Paul Sebastian. He discerned the more senior Templar was unnerved.

"Things are growing very ugly out there," xiDuang offered as a greeting. The way he said it suggested to Michael Constantine that his partner hid his true mind.

Paul Sebastian added, rather too quickly, "The Divinity’s presence here endangers The Parliamentary and the peace. The last thing we want is to panic a crowd this large. We should return to base before His presence's discovered and we really have a situation."

"I’ve been monitoring SPR, too,” Constantine whispered delicately. "I’m not sure we can move Him now without someone noticing—especially with the increased media trained on the building."

"The deliberations have yet concluded, my Faithful," came The Archangel reverberating voice from across the space, startling his two chaperones. The entity had not moved a muscle, but nevertheless the Templar felt he was standing at their shoulder. "We were assured this observance and we remain anonymous. We desire to witness its resolution."

Paul Sebastian bristled. "I knew this was a bad idea," he exhaled.

“The vote was expected hours ago,” Constantine mused aloud. "Reverend Cardinal Paul Christian just announced that Faith will keep Parliamentary in-session until there is one. At this rate, Consul etaSade may not win enough votes to push through his amendments before morning. Or who knows, it may take days."

"Oh, joy!"

"What I don’t understand is why Sade is holding up a vote this important and trying to tack on a few amendments everyone agreed were off-the-table,” the young Templar continued unburdening his thoughts. “House eta fought to get new labor rights legislation through Committee and end the bloodshed in the provinces. This reform is Sade’s great peace offering and now he’s on the pulpit undermining his own sweat and tears, and his House’s credibility."

The Archangel chimed in from His perch, again seeming centimeters away rather than several strides. "The Consul’s physiology is most peculiar. It is not at all consistent with the context of his speeches or the actions of his Guild-brothers and House eta supporters. Blood pressure, heart rate, and variants in his local electromagnetic field -- they all suggest he is intent on deception. Yes, he is confident in his deception."

"Why create all this division if it only forces the reform package back into Committee?" asked Constantine with frustrated anger obvious in his voice. "That’ll kill it and the world will have another Clan War on its hands."

Paul Sebastian’s chest lifted with a deep in-take of breath. The thought of a Clan War made him as unsettled as any Aideenan.

"A vote for reform with etaSade’s amendments makes the whole measure ineffective,” the senior Templar shared aloud before he could edit himself and refrain from joining the conversation. “Everyone would know Sade’s responsible. The most it’ll do is end his career and embarrass House eta. In Committee, the legislation dies and the public hold all of Parliamentary accountable. It’ll tear apart The Houses and the Guilds across Aideena."

"Sade’s insane to want that," harped Constantine, looking infuriated by xiDuang’s assessment.

Paul Sebastian found his own lapse in restrain, in engaging with his junior partner, pleasing and a surprise. He knew Constantine came from privileged stock with more smarts than your typical blond bogart. Unlike the younger Faithful, Sebastian received a Templar education growing up at Temple-at-Corinth and little more. On the other hand, Constantine was a product of Temple-at-Attica, whose graduates almost never serve as Templar, educated instead for higher authority within Faith. However, Sebastian’s simple schooling did not make him dim and he just proved it.

Sebastian bristled against tauValez’s ease with affect. The boy responded to everything, it seemed to him. A proper Templar checked his emotions, especially in the presence of those outside the Company. By Creation, he’d show the boy how a Templar behaves, and with no kindness about it!

It was then that a terrifying thought occurred to Faithful Paul Sebastian. "Can you imagine the sjyt that’ll drop once people learn Divinity observed Parliamentary. They’ll blame Faith. They’ll say we brought a bad omen on the vote!"

No sooner did the words leave Sebastian lips than the ruinous prospect laid bare before Constantine. Chilled to the core, he said, "We’ve got to get him away from here, now, before this blows in our face."

"Curious," The Archangel observed calmly and casually, as if he had not heard the younger Faithful. "Your leadership professes to uphold the principles of honesty, integrity and service to the common welfare. However, they resort to deception, misinformation and subterfuge to satisfy their own self-interest. Even to the extent of abandoning the greater good. Yes, Reverend Constables, you Aideena-kind are most curious."

Perhaps, He did hear Constantine.

Paul Sebastian signed, "You’ve been educating him again."

"Just trying to learn a thing or two," tauValez snapped back. "We’ve never had direct contact with the Celestial Collective like this. All the secrets of Creation—"

"Faith Inquisitors talk to Divinity, not Templar. Our duty is to sequester, not carry on, above our station, and prod and poke around in His head," Sebastian cut in, bearing himself superiorly. “You would know that if you could exercise an thimble of proper decorum."

Michael Constantine held himself. He wondered why the seasoned Templar expended so much energy carrying himself hard and formal and distant. It seemed quite obvious to him that beneath the exterior Paul Sebastian presented hid an entirely different character. Perhaps his true face was softer on some level or more hostile, but it was not stone.

Michael Constantine turned, dismissing xiDuang, and addressed The Archangel, "Divinity, with no intended offense, I must insist we now withdraw. I think it unwise and harmful to stay longer."

"Oh, now that’s He's discovered how corrupt politicians can be, you agree we’re done here," Paul Sebastian sneered.

Constantine stifled an obscenity. Instead, he presented his back more fully to his partner and stepped toward the meta-terrestrial. “Archangel, please withdraw with us.”

The entity did not move, but His voice rose clearly. "We perceive no offense, tauValez," He said. “We will withdraw. But first, explain to me why you and xiDuang insist on struggling against one another. You are attracted to one another and resist it at the same time. The contradiction is perplexing. We must understand."

Michael Constantine went numb. He swore he shuddered. He heard Paul Sebastian release a long strained groan behind him.

Constantine managed to clear his suddenly dry throat and whimper the words, "What do you mean by attracted?"

"This is why I do what I’m told and no longer ask questions," Sebastian announced hostilely.

Said the Archangel, "The truth, Reverend Constable Paul Sebastian xiDuang, would be more accurate."

Suddenly, wings unfolded. Long feathered membranes fanned out like elongated black fingers reached to ensnare prey. The Archangel towered before the two Templar, gazing at them with quietly inquisitive glowing eyes. The soldier-priests fell back a step, unbalanced by the meta-terrestrial’s sudden effortless transportation and humbling stature.

"It’s not that you don’t ask questions, it’s that you are not interested in the answers, is it not?"

For a long moment, the voices from below echoed louder, or so it seemed to the Templar. Then before Paul Sebastian could open his mouth to defend himself, he heard Michael Constantine say, "Divinity, Aideenan emotions are infinitely complex. I’m sure whatever you read off my brother and I may be confusing."

The meta-terrestrial frowned.

"Great," Sebastian snarled. "You’re both impertinent and annoying."

"I’m trying to help him understand Aideena-kind," Constantine lashed back. "He’s unfamiliar with emotion and individuality."

"By Creation, tauValez, since when have the Celestial Collective seen us as anything more than another collection of molecules?"

The Archangel lips motioned to speak. He stopped. He reared His head. He looked back over his shoulder at the view-port. Then, suddenly, he whipped around and faced the opening.

The Templar strained to see around The Archangel’s bulk and wings. They discerned no change. The tenor of delegates’ voices from below remained as contentious now as any other time and far from endangered.

The Archangel turned back to Sebastian and Constantine. A peculiar far away expression darkened his face. He visually struggled to dismiss something invading and evading his senses.

"We find ourselves compelled to understand Aideena-kind as you are compelled to sort us," the Divinity said, slowly, distracted. “We confess we are not ourselves, we are not Collective… So curious...We…I…desire to understand --"

The Archangel grimaced. He seemed almost pained. In a flash, he turned again to the view-port.

Instinctively, the two Templar’s sidearm hands dropped to their pulson Peacekeepers. Paul Sebastian and Michael Constantine shot looks at one another; tense, readied, and measured looks.

"Divinity, what is your alarm?" asked tauValez.

In one swift weightless movement, The Archangel went from complete stillness to wings unfurled, enveloping Him, lifting off His feet and descending. The Archangel passed through the solid floor and into The Parliamentary’s Assembly Congress.

The two Templar audibly gasped in unison. Delegates’ voices erupted into a horrifying roar from below.

Said Paul Sebastian absently, "My ancestors be damned..."

TO BE CONTINUED

7. Sebastian

2007-02-16T11:59:00.000-08:00

Templar Faithful Paul Sebastian xiDuang listened intensely to the barrage of com-traffic filtering through his pai. The reports clogging the secured SPR bands painted a darkening and dangerous picture for his fellow Templar marshaled outside The Parliamentary.

Demonstrators overflowed the grounds leading up to the world government building. Word spread swiftly that the vote by the Assembly inside was in jeopardy. Broadcasting on huge holo-projectors along the colonnade, the media seized on emerging deliberations between House and Guild-members speedily unraveling the done deal for new labor rights reform. Their patience taxed and the hope they enjoyed mere hours earlier now faded, the mob’s resolve to gather and fast peacefully began to crack.

Rival House beta and House iota clan-citizens scuffled and were forcibly removed. Among zeta and xi alliances the Faithful swept in and separated agitators before their shouting match escalated into violence.

Only the reasoned appeals of omegaMarat Seneca kept the greater number calm and focused. Staging a steady stream of entertainers and other celebrity orators, she distracted her increasingly restless supporters away from the media’s morose parliamentary play-by-play.

The dispatch staccato ringing his ears paused long enough for Paul Sebastian to divert his attention to his immediate surroundings.

XiDuang stood sentinel inside a narrow architectural vault, the only thing between the entrance to the cavity and the outside world. Across the dark confine, his partner Michael Constantine tauValez huddled by a view-port. The opening spied through the dome suspended many meters above The Parliamentary’s Assembly Congress. To the boy’s right, meta-terrestrial The Archangel perched impossibly but easily on a narrow guardrail, as perfectly balanced and content as a leopard-hawk on tension-wire. The huge black velvet wings leisurely folded against the Divinity’s broad muscled back, stretching nearly to the floor. Hunched over the view-port, His faintly glowing gray eyes danced, captivated by the political spectacle below.

Paul Sebastian winced unconsciously. The sight before him registered immediate inarticulate emotions. All he saw was an abominable alien divinity, offensively with a man’s body and a woman’s mocha skin, and an unmanly-blond Faithful brother, recently commissioned, and bent on pushing his buttons.

The vault’s acoustics added to Sebastian’s ill mood, Voices of delegates in congress below resonated as if listening devices were hidden throughout the assembly. With a tilt of the head to any angle, the hushed whispers and booming arguments in Parliamentary bounced from one side of Sebastian’s skull to the other. The phenomenon certainly explained why Faith had the vault—a spy post—sealed long ago.

The Archangel gravitated to such acoustic anomalies. He spent hours eavesdropping on the incoherent overlapping conversations of bathers and worshippers at Acropolian Thermae and Mosque Magna. The satisfaction the Divinity gained from such experiences eluded xiDuang. Accompanying the meta-terrestrial day in and day out, it took all Sebastian’s much earned discipline to endure.

Under other circumstances, Paul Sebastian would be outside now, patrolling the mob alongside his Templar brethren.

He longed to return to the familiar comfort of the Garrison Company to whom he was customarily assigned. He blamed his present duties on the lingering disgrace he suffered in Bladesport and the near fatal injury to a fellow athlete out of turn.

Shadowing a Divinity-in-exile, hidden away from soldiering among the common folk--Paul Sebastian yearned to regain face performing any other duty. But, too disciplined by Templar training, too defined by obedience to Faith, and too honor-bound to House xi, the uniform wore Paul Sebastian, whether than Sebastian wearing it.

The Archangel reared up its head suddenly.

As if struck by a new and unexpected awareness, He looked over his shoulder at Paul Sebastian. The Divinity’s gaze pierced the Templar in a way that made xiDuang feel rudely exposed. Inexplicably he sensed the meta-terrestrial knew his thoughts in that very moment: his frustration with his current assignment and his contempt for the meta-terrestrial and Michael Constantine.

Inwardly, he shivered.

It was widely believed that the meta-terrestrials of the Celestial Collective could read minds. However, the Divinity exhibited nothing to suggest He could actually extract the precise thought-patterns of another. XiDuang dismissed the belief as common folklore.

Paul Sebastian observed The Archangel demonstrate sensitivity to emotional states. By some extraordinary sensory empathy, He could perceive bio-rhythmic and neuro-metric changes over great distances and with amazing accuracy, although not always understanding them. When eavesdropping on conversations at the baths or temple, He relished pressing his Templar detail into explaining the context of his perceptions, much like a foreign speaker learning the local tongue.

Extrasensory sensitivity belonged to the feminine sex. Not even the most gifted of Aideenan women shared the ability Sebastian observed in The Archangel. To Sebastian, it made His obvious maleness that more unnatural and unseemly. He loathed His company. Each day in His presence made Sebastian feel more and more sullied.

As that rationale too flitted across Sebastian’s thoughts, it seemed also to register in The Archangel’s glare.

And Paul Sebastian couldn’t be more humiliated. He was caught betraying the uniform’s dignity, being less than the perfect Knight Templar.

He was mortified.

TO BE CONTINUED

6. Daria

2007-02-01T14:05:00.000-08:00

Dawn broke over the Acropolis, and in nature’s way Gaia-light gave way to sunlight.

The few hundred brave souls camped in the colonnade outside The Parliamentary shook off a sleepless night. The Guild-brothers and Matrons, accompanied by regiments of husbands, sons and Household indentured males, readied for the day before them; a day of peaceful protest that they had planned for months.

The first hour of morning barely eclipsed the second before hundreds more arrived to join their fast. By Morning Constitution, their numbers swelled to thousands. And still more came.

The Garrison –at-Court-of-Columbia, ordered to alert, reinforced their barricades with more Templar patrols. Adorned in glistening red and black body armor, the priestly soldiers surrounded The Parliamentary grounds on foot and with a ring of aircycles, maintaining their own silent vigil at a discrete distance.

A battery of electronic devices flared, flashed and hummed. The media perched themselves throughout the colonnade like vultures at a feeding. Predictably, they were more interested in the spectacle growing outside Parliamentary than the one underway within.

The Twelve Great Houses and the Guild Brotherhood had come together in The Parliamentary to agree on much-debated labor rights reforms. Many industries and economies across Aideena suffered under outdated trade contracts drawn along familial alliances.

Provinces and districts under obligations to certain Guild fraternities, and the Families that controlled them, found themselves shut out of new markets as innovation and new technologies forever changed the world and fortunes of those in the best position to levy them. In many communities, right-to-labor agreements meant whole clans could not take advantage of emerging market opportunities on their own lands, while foreign interests profited. The irrelevant treaties entered into by their ancestors forbid some clans from taking more prosperous work in neighboring conclaves.

Changing fortunes fueled generations of animosity and rage. Rage ignited into violence and acts of criminality and terrorism not seen on Aideena since the Clan Wars. Those who could manage it escaped off-world, to the Free Townships, where familial obligations were less observed. For the greater majority, though, they bargained, with wavering hope, on the prospect of more equitable legislation from their Matriarchs and Guild-Bosses.

After a long difficult struggle omegaMarat Seneca had succeeded in galvanizing enough public pressure to bring the issue before the Assembly of world government. She transformed her gender-blind People’s Advocacy from care-giving activists into the marshalling voice of the average disenfranchised Aideenan. In doing so, she risked her well-earned popularity as a scholar and statesperson, not to mention considerable family wealth.

Branded an anarchist and traitor by the maternal aristocracy to which she was born, Seneca loomed courageous and fearless in the eyes of millions. The media and supporters painted her as a visionary with insight into a better future and the willingness to do something about it, an image Seneca was determined to deliver.

With the eyes of Aideena watching, and consuls and matrons on the defensive within, Seneca vowed to station herself outside The Parliamentary until the esteemed world body voted to enact reforms. She pledged to refuse food and drink for the duration. And she invited anyone who valued change to join her.

The call went out and they came. By mid-morning Seneca gazed down across a sea of thousands from her tent on the first landing leading to The Parliamentary. Many thousands more were crowding into the colonnade by the minute.

She knew some supporters were only attracted to the spectacle of the day. She did not care. They belonged to her now. With calculated rhetoric, omegaMarat incited them too into fits of chant. They were as an orchestra and she the conductor, and their music was being heard around the planet and across the Heavens.

While Seneca took center-stage, her younger sister wandered amongst the growing tide. Daria always preferred a lower profile than her much more public sibling. Carefully she planted arguments, which the crowds mimicked into shouts. Skillfully, she sowed the sentiments that gave vitality and emotion to her sister’s cause.

Daria stared across the heavy sea of bodies and spied a familiar light-skinned young male pushing his way toward her. He wore the embroidered sarong of The House of omega. They meet. Without a word passing between them, they slipped together beyond the throngs of onlookers, pass the blockage of media and Templar patrols, and beyond the colonnade.

When Daria was secure that they could converse freely, she signaled her permission to speak, extending an illicit caress over the male’s knotted exposed abdomen. He drew close and whispered, "Sade sent Enforcers to eliminate the boy. I got to him first and slipped him inside the Mosque Magna undetected."

The younger omegaMarat allowed a slight smile to stretch her narrow face. "Splendidly done, Horus,” she purred. "By now he realizes that the man he sought for help is the very one behind his misfortune."

Horus nodded sadly, "He keeps repeating sh’karee."

"Then, give him what he wants," said Daria. "See to it that the boy finds his way inside The Parliamentary. Make sure he is armed."

The young male stifled a gasp. "You’ll be sending an innocent to his death,” Horus reproached her. "You have blackmailed eta Matriarchs. They are pressuring their Consul into undermining his own reforms. What more do you need?"

"Those eta bitches are not to be trusted. And Consul etaSade is a man, after all. He’s ambitious and not as easily manipulated as they think."

"How far do you think this cub will get before Templar seize him or etaSade’s Privates find him? What do you think this will accomplish?"

"It doesn’t matter," answered Daria with cold indifference. "As long as it is accomplished publicly."

Horus fell silent. A familiar chill came over him. He looked at the crowds, at the circus of media, and at the silently attentive Templar. He wanted to shout every ugly sin Daria has forced on him.

Then in the distance he saw the news-image of Seneca holo-projected over the colonnade.

Addressing the crowd, the elder omegaMarat struck a magnificently statuesque figure amid the surrounding chaos. Her image glowed with a warmth and brilliance that transfixed him. Horus wanted to bask in that glow until the world fell away…then he remembered what the world had become.

He allowed his gaze to drift back to the dark-skinned woman beside him, whose captivating and chaste beauty was a deception. "Somehow I don’t think your sister would approve," he muttered, deliberate but cautious.

"My sister believes she can change the world by rallying the masses, by shouting loudly... By using the system against itself," said Daria with more than a hint of venom. "I, on the other hand, know that change... Well, shall we say, change is a more disruptive process."

"If Seneca knew the things you’ve done--"

"Who are you bonded to, Horus? My sister or me?” snapped the younger omegaMarat. “Mind your place. You are only a man in this world!"

Horus choked down his anger. He knew that Daria was capable of almost anything. On the honor of his family, he was obligated into obedience. At the same time, however, he understood he was also obligated to protect the world from this monster. He was obligated to protect Seneca from her own sister! Somehow, Horus vowed, he would do just that.

Daria studied her beautiful young man. She recognized defeat when she saw it. "Now, be a good Affiant. Attend to the boy as instructed," she told Horus.

Her steely gaze followed Horus as he walked away and disappeared into the storm of spectators. She knew he hated her. She would not want it any other way. In his hate Horus delivered himself unto her body and soul. Hate made him a nearly perfect instrument for her designs.

Before she was done, Daria wanted the entire universe to hate her.

Next:
Their agreement assured no interference in Parliamentary proceedings, but how does one stop an Heaven's angels from doing what they wish?

5. The Reading

2007-02-01T13:30:00.000-08:00

Certain she had made an error, Rachel Angela performed the reading over again. And again and again.

She watched the algorithms arrange themselves on the virtual display. Each time they aligned into a distinct unmistakable pattern. The pattern formulated an inescapable conclusion. An improbable conclusion.

Seeing her anxiety, the other Reverend Sisters of the Order of the Oracle whispered nervously amongst themselves. Already they were drawing their alliances; calculating whom among them might be most favored to take advantage of Angela’s distress, eyeing for the opportune moment to embarrass her.

Out of the twenty-eight Reverend Sisters assigned to The Parliamentary, the Order singled out Faithful psiSadewa Rachel Angela to deliver the requisite prophetic reading for the legislature’s most politically reaching session of the last several decades, expected to cement the careers of anyone involved.

The entire planet and Free Townships eagerly anticipated ratification of the labor rights reforms before the government. The authority to force Guilds and Houses to renegotiate centuries old division of work contracts and trade agreements tied to familial alliances would end brutal provincial fighting. The economic hardships sowed across sectarian bloodlines may begin to heal. The Oracle who performed the Parliamentary reading would be automatically thrust into the limelight of public and political awareness.

The Reverend Cardinal Mother zetaPetriss handpicked the newly ordained Angela for the prestigious honor. Other Sisters were more senior than Rachel Angela. Some Sisters were better known and more politically connected. Still, as a young seminarian, before earning a commission at Court-at-Columbia, Angela made a considerable impression.

Remarkably intuitive, she possessed a natural gift for the meta-scientific arts. Her easy, agreeable and genuine manner allowed her to be both smart and likable, a combination in short supply within the elitist Order.

Despite her skills and personality, Rachel Angela’s Parliamentary selection was a surprise to everyone, mainly herself. The notoriety she earned at her confirmation ceremony burned fresh in the minds of the Faithful.

Her will and body had been mysteriously taken over by the Divine Celestial Collective, who used Angela to herald the expelling of the Archangel from their ranks. Torn in their views, Angela’s peers remained undecided whether the spectacle was miraculous or damnable. Only just recovered from weeks of hospital care, others feared that Angela was too weak to deliver such an important reading.

PsiSadewa Rachel Angela, keenly aware of the critical eyes of her peers and superiors in Faith, bore herself courageously before the Assembly of Delegates earlier that morning. The presence of The Goddess and the Ancestors permeated the Parliamentary. Rachel Angela drank the ambrosiadyne. The ceremonial drug placed her in the proper altered consciousness to channel their energies.

She opened the proceedings with a rousing benediction. She performed the sacramental rites with such grace that delegates were said to have been audible moved. She summoned a reading. The reading had the signature of profound change. Clearly, it was a good day for reform.

Then, the Oracle turned the floor over to the Guildsmen and Matriarchs and retired to the adjacent Altar Room. As deliberations ensued, Rachel Angela and her fellow Reverend Sisters set about monitoring the metaphysical dynamics at work.

The procedure amounted to an expansive reading, building upon the algorithms she calculated before the Assembly that morning. Such procedures were the routine activities the Faithful Reverend Oracles were called upon to conduct daily at Parliamentary.

Rachel Angela performed another reading. And then another. With each new calibration the algorithms aligned into more alarming patterns, and the greater Angela’s anxiety grew.

"I don’t understand," Rachel Angela confessed her frustration. "I did everything properly. These algorithms are not consistent with my initial reading."

The Reverend Cardinal Mother leveled a knowing glare at the virtual display. She seemed neither alarmed nor entirely indifferent to what she saw. “We are witnessing the affects of action on the original timeline,” the elder Oracle offered in a studied judgeless whisper. “Experience is fluid, my child. Experience is constantly influenced and influencing.”

Waving a hand expertly over the display interface controls, Rachel Angela isolated the patterns dancing before her. "This configuration here, this alignment suggests intervention. Not change,” she studied. “But these juxtapositions over here, they terminate. The hierarchy is broken!"

"So they do," the Reverend Cardinal Mother agreed. She was impressed. The young Oracle had been astute enough to see within the complicated layers displayed. She made a surprising leap of association between obscure algorithmic sub-sets. "And what might you conclude from the lattice."

The young Oracle held her breath. She did not want to believe what was right before her. "There can be only one conclusion, Your Grace,” she choked down the foreboding fears germinating within her. “Death. Death will intervene this day."

NEXT:
Meet Daria as plans are placed in motion setting innocence on a dangerous course.

4. Horus

2007-01-18T19:31:00.000-08:00

Horus spotted the Enforcers. Two women and a male adjuvant in traditional face-masks and kurta-churidar circled to entrap the eta youth Nadsar.

Horus del-omegaGaul watched the ballet pensively, sinking back into the darker recesses just inside the entrance to the Acropolian Thermae. His hand reached for the taeson derringer hidden in his jacket.

Seeing the assassins also, Nadsar froze. For a breathless moment, it looked as if the boy might let himself be taken. Then, perhaps by instinct, the etayouth backed into the stream of people diverting into the baths. Horus watched as the boy surrounded himself amongst a group of happily oblivious schoolchildren. He spied the surprise and frustration in the Enforcers’ bearing.

Nadsar casually slipped into the Thermae. The Enforcers pursued. Horus followed, unnoticed.

The Morning Constitutional busied the Acropolian Thermae. Practitioners offered prayer, cleansed the body and then ate a small meal before continuing their day. Rather than brave the mob massing outside, many visitors taking the Constitutional gathered to watch coverage on enormous imagers of the Parliamentary in special session. A major political drama was being staged and the capitol -- not to mention all of Aideena -- was consumed with it.

The traffic swept Nadsar through the dining hall, pass the dressing cubicles and down into the cavernous gymnasiums with their ancient mineral pools. Horus discretely tracked the eta boy and his pursuers.

Sorted circumstance had brought Horus to this present crossroads. Horus’ thoughts raced the details.

He was bonded to a woman whose devious nature had discovered a discrepancy in seemingly unrelated facts. Horus’ special services demanded he travel to Playa Hinom, enclave of the House of eta and one particular former Guild-boss, Consul Edmund etaSade. A trail of deception and bribery led him back to Court-at-Columbia, landing in a part of the mega-metropolis he never knew -- never imagined -- existed.

Horus’ heart went out to the eta youth he trailed. He had seen firsthand what the boy was fighting to escape and it’s chilled even Horus’ jaded sensibilities.

He could be Nadsar. Worst, Nadsar could all too easily become Horus. Horus could easily see Nadsar’s brave reckless qualities transformed, given to the most demeaning and dishonorable of crimes and pressed into service for the vilest purposes.

Horus knew within himself was the capacity to be a good person. He knew he could do justice to the House of omega and the del clans. He knew he could win the love of family and a just woman -- or man. But no, not this day, and not with the duty he had been commanded to perform.

Two of the Enforcers fell behind, losing their way in the schools of bathers and confusing maze of gymnasiums.

Horus spied that Nadsar was searching for an exit while keeping himself around as many people as possible. Horus kept him well in sight. He knew these baths. He had eaten and relaxed in sauna on several occasions at Thermae. Many unsavory plans had been devised in its eternal pools.

Then, Horus anticipated a careless maneuver. Within a few series of turns Nadsar unwittingly sped toward centuries-old catacombs and corridors that dead-ended into chambers flooded now by the Bay.

Horus slipped through a barricade, passed a service tunnel and emerged in a narrow dark passageway on the other side. A heartbeat later, around the corner bolted a slender figure. Horus drew the taeson from its holster and, seeing the weapon, Nadsar startled to an immediate stop.

Eyes locked. The eta boy sunk back. His face washed pale.

Horus leveled the taeson squarely. Nadsar shook and his knees began to buckle. Then, surprisingly, his face flushed with pain and anger. He lunged for Horus.

The taeson fired. A silent flash of green enveloped the passageway.

Nadsar spun in time to see a shadowed woman collapse. Her face-mask cracked as she hit the stone floor and a taeson bounced from her hand. Blood spread from beneath the Enforcer.

Nadsar spun back to Horus. The male, perhaps a few years his senior, lowered his weapon. Nadsar tried to speak but no words would come out.

"The people you think are your friends have betrayed you," said Horus with clear careful urgency. "Trust me if you want to live."

TO BE CONTINUED...

3. Nadsar

2007-01-18T18:16:00.000-08:00

The mag-trolley slid into the main station at the Acropolis. Nadsar spilled out with the crush of other passengers and scurried up to the even more intensely peopled promenades at the Pedestrian Level.

He felt he was drowning in a rough sea of bodies. Dark waves weighed upon him, closing in to suffocate and drag him into the deadly embrace of Enforcers. He could not pick out the assassins in the crowd but he feared they were there nevertheless...ready to descend on him.

Nadsar felt his face swelling from the bruises and cuts the Enforcers had given him. His labored hands hurt, too. The knuckles purpled, knotted and inflamed. He hadn’t soaked and wrapped them in days.

He must be quite a sight, he realized. Surely, the fourteen-year old in soiled worker’s garb stood out amongst the surrounding pedestrians, coiffed and fancied in their Temple-best. Nadsar understood that people see only what they wish to see. Were he female and so obviously abused, he doubted he’d be as invisible.

The indignity and discomfort was useful, Nadsar told himself. He channeled it into his anger. He let it fuel his determination. There was no turning back and too many people needed him to succeed. Nadsar knew that to survive the day only one course of action remained to him.

By providence, the pedestrian traffic’s current carried Nadsar through an expansive atrium. He’d arrived at the Acropolian Thermae.

His thoughts raced: he’d bath in its regenerative ancient springs. He’d clean his wounds. He’d transform into a more presentable emissary for the path he’d set upon. He’d make an offering to his Guardian Ancestors and pray the Goddess’ favor.

A line of Omni-Net obelisks guarded the Thermae’s grand entranceway. With the pai he’d pickpocket on the mag-trolley earlier, Nadsar. Hacked the obelisk’s access port. In moments the kiosk flickered with a familiar face. It was, however, not the face he’d hoped to greet.

"You must let me speak to the Consul," demanded Nadsar. "He must help me!"

The well-manicured official on the viewer leaned forward, distorting the image.

"Consul etaSade is occupied in Parliamentary. I have brought your situation to his attention as I promised. He’s instructed me to act on his behalf," the aide answered in a calm reassuring and personable manner, speaking over Nadsar’s frequent attempts to interrupt. “Frankly, when I told him what you had to say he was appalled. He wanted me to assure you that he personally will see that the people responsible are dealt with."

Nadsar felt his stomach uncoil. Hope flushed through him, quieting every pain and surprising him that he could still aspire to the feeling. Every suppress emotion erupted in a breath.

"My mother...they won’t allow her to go to the hospital," he choked out between gasps for air. "The treatments...no good...They know we’re talked! They’re after me!"

"Try to stay calm, Nadsar," interrupted the image. "I’ve got your coordinates and help will be there shortly. Stay where you are, understand."

Nadsar managed an affirming nod and the kiosk blinked to dark.

Nadsar nearly fell backwards, e exhilarated that his ordeal was close to an end. His provincial matriarch’s faith in her honored Consul was well placed after all and her faith true to the assurance that etaSade would guarantee the well-being of his fellow clans people.

If only he had the weapons and the means, thought Nadsar, he would restore his clan’s honor by his own hand.

A curious beating of the air broke through the dark murderous thoughts swirling the boy’s mind. Aircycles whirl-hummed overhead. A Long fingered shadow spread across Nadsar drawing his gaze skyward.

Spellbound, he watched massive black-feathered wings fan against the curve of the gaseous giant Gaia and swoop across the sky, escorted by two Templar on aircycles. They disappeared behind the silhouette of the Parliamentary, on the far side of the great colonnade that ran the Acropolis.

Nadsar had heard of the mysterious arrival of the Dark Angel. He never dreamt he would actually glimpse Divinity. Court-at-Columbia whispered of ill-omens brought by the outcast of the Celestial Collective. Faith had not made clear the reason for the excommunication. Many speculated retribution from Heaven for His presence on Aideena, or worst, damnation passed onto their descendents for some unknown transgression.

As the Dark Angel’s shadow passed over Nadsar, he too hoped that some poor providence would not befall him as well.

Nadsar scanned the crowd. Pedestrians signed themselves and called to their ancestors for protection. Others just stood and stared blankly.

Suddenly, Nadsar was startled to see a figure, out of place amongst the flow of traffic passing through the atrium en mass to the colonnade. It moved against the crowd. He spotted a second one. Then, a third advanced.

His slender frame shuddered.

Was this the help he had been promised?

The figures moved easily but decisively to encircle him while not alarming the crowd.

Something in the back of his mind told Nadsar they were not his rescuers. Their dress and manner signaled to him that they were Enforcers.

TO BE CONTINUED...

2. The Agreement

2007-01-10T11:51:00.000-08:00

He stood facing southeast. The massive black-feathered wings folded in prayer against his broad muscled ebony back.

The Archangel--as He had become designated--balanced on the outermost edge of the battlement. Motionless. Perfectly erect. A statue against the disk of Aideena’s mother planet in the Gaia-dawn. His piercing silver eyes, pulsing with an eerie light, stared open, however, He seemed somehow absent, asleep.

The Divinity had not moved, even in the slightest, for several hours.

John Gregory alphaOsloe silently studied the meta-terrestrial. He could not conceive how anyone could maintain such perfect rigidity and absolute concentration for so long a time. Not even his own Templar training was so accomplished.

John Gregory was part of the Templar team assigned to sequester the entity mysteriously expelled from the Celestial Collective. He watched The Archangel assume this stance day after day for disturbing lengths of time.

Always southeast. Always perfectly immobile.

The young soldier-priest felt no closer to understanding the purpose behind the ritual. He accepted that it as beyond him.

Discretely, John Gregory detached the pai-reader in his gauntlet, activated its custom scanning program and pointed it toward the Divinity. The device silently scrolled and byte-flashed to life. The Templar had no idea what data the program was designed to gather. He only knew that the scan was unauthorized and that he would lose his knighthood if discovered. He had performed numerous scans in so many weeks without attracting attention. He considered himself lucky. But he was not about to take any unnecessary chances.

Footsteps drew close behind him. John Gregory quickly thumbed off the scan. Turning, his gaze met the approaching bright and eager smile of a fit young man, dressed in the same red uniform and white cleric’s collar of a Knight Templar.

“Morning, Gregory. At it again, is He,” the other greeted and regarded The Archangel. His bright blue eyes then dropped to the pai-reader in the Faithful’s hand.

If only to suppress his panic, John Gregory returned the smile and held out the reader, “Just completing the shift report. He’s all your’s, Michael Constantine.”

Michael Constantine tauValez took the pai, examined it cursory and signed off on the report. “I know I’m late. I hope I haven’t held you up,” he said.

“Are you kidding! With everything going on today, the last thing I want is to be available for crowd control duty.” John Gregory answered, taking the reader and slipping it back into its gauntlet housing. “The next ten hours are mine. I’d just as soon stay here at Thermae. Take in a morning prayer and bath and avoid all the commotion.”

“How can you pass on history-in-the-making! It’s the most important session of Parliamentary we’re likely to see in a generation. Not to mention, the chance to see the omegaMarat Sisters in person!”

John Gregory alphaOsloe smiled, this time genuinely. He knew the rookie Faithful only a short time, but he impressed him.

He did not hold the fact that tauValez was blond and faired skinned against the newcomer. TauValez was very sharp, well-schooled and easy to like. He was as wide-eyed and eager to perform well as any neophyte fresh from Temple, but there was a clarity about him that was rare. John Gregory hoped the harshness of Garrison-at-Court-at-Columbia would not grind down those qualities as it did to so many of his fellow Faithful.

A series of sharp sweeping sounds sliced the air.

The two Faithful nodded to one another knowingly. They peered into the adjacent chamber of the dilapidated fortification, sculpted in the maw of a cavern opening.

Wheeling a long ceremonial sword, a tall brawny man, wearing nothing but revealing Templar undergarments, executed a series of delicate balletic movements. The sword whipped and flashed, moving with effortless fluidity, its high-polished blade glinting Gaia-light. His face calm and concentrate, the man flexed his chiseled body, bending and twisting with mechanical precision from years of difficult training.

John Gregory stole a look at the young Constantine. The other’s gaze was transfixed. His eyes watered dreamingly. John Gregory grinned.

“By Creation, he’s damn good,” tauValez exhaled absently.

“Good! Paul Sebastian is perhaps the greatest living Bladesport athlete,” Gregory hooted his amusement “It’s a damn shame he doesn’t compete any longer. The game has never been the same since he gave it up.”

“Figure that? He injures an opponent and retires. After all, Faith cleared him of any fault.”

John Gregory’s stare narrowed, “I understand you’ve been asking around about xiDuang?”

Michael Constantine shrunk back. His eyes lowered evasively. “I am assigned under him. Just trying to get a handle on the guy,” he answered, choosing his words carefully. “There doesn’t seem to be much to learn. He’s kind of a fixture around the Garrison, but no one seems to know him very well.”

“No, with Paul Sebastian you don’t get much,” acknowledged Gregory, reflecting on the three years he worked alongside the veteran Templar with few, if any, off-duty interactions.

The ballet slowed. Paul Sebastian xi Duang came to rest. After a moment he turned and crossed toward the two fellow Templar. He strode in lean measured steps directly to Michael Constantine. “You’re late, tauValez, “ he said flatly, with only the slightest hint of the exertion he had just undergone.

“I was completing research,” the younger Templar answered, more than a little defensive.

“You’re still late. My report will reflect that.”

Michael Constantine keyed his pai and palmed the gauntlet interface. “I found the vault,” he explained. A three-dimensional display flowered over his forearm.

“It’s directly above the Parliamentary assembly chamber, perhaps part of the acoustic superstructure or an old guard station. It’s been barricaded for years. It’s there, just as The Archangel said it would be!”

“My ancestors be damn,” cursed xiDuang, genuinely surprised. He was—perhaps--slightly impressed with Michael Constantine. “It’s a secure location, all right. How in Second Heaven did He know it was there?…”

AlphaOsloe chimed, “This means the Seraphim will have to honor the Divinity’s request. He can observe today’s Parliamentary in anonymity.”

Paul Sebastian twisted a face, “I don’t like it! There’s no telling what might happen if the delegates learn of the Divinity’s presence. Not to mention the hordes of spectators, the media, the omegaMarat Sisters!”

“Yes. But, we promised Him a first-hand view of the Parliamentary if we could secure His presence secretly,” Michael Constantine insisted. “It was part of the agreement for His compliance.”

“No one wants to invite the ill-favor of the Goddess and Creation. Knowledge of His presence would start a panic. Or worse,” Paul Sebastian rebuffed. “Especially today, with tensions so high. The purpose of our assignment is to prevent that!”

“Why the interest in Parliamentary? He’s Divinity, fallen maybe, but still an alien,” mused John Gregory aloud. “Why should it matter to Him?”

“The whole planet’s interested in Parliamentary,” said Constantine. “At least, today.”

“Do you suppose he has a woman’s perception of future events? That he knows something?” asked Gregory.

“His skin may be dark and colored like a woman but he’s obviously male,” scuffed xiDuang. “Still, he was part of the Celestial Collective... perhaps they are more feminine than masculine, after all.”

The air snapped suddenly.

A startling ghostly pressure swept through the three Templar and out in the all directions. Enormous black feathered wings swept on either side of them and spread apart like a great hand with long flat fingers. A massive muscled frame dwarfed the men.

“We are prepared,” came a deep reverberating voice. “We have been promised an audience at your government in exchange for Our cooperation.”

Sebastian braved a step forward. He endeavored to disguise how unsettled he felt to look at this creature so physically male and yet espresso-skinned like a woman. He doubted he would ever get use to something so unnatural. He found he had to force his focus on getting the words out properly, “We’ll leave shortly. We’ve secured a place from which you can observe the Assembly. You are aware our agreement stands? You are not to make your presence known or interact in any way with anyone other than Michael Constantine and myself.”

The Archangel raised an indifferent eyebrow, “We are aware, my Faithful, of a great many things.”

The Divinity turned his head ever so slightly. His glaring silver eyes fell squarely on John Gregory alphaOsloe and held him as if gazing straight into the depths of his soul.

The Templar shuttered.

TO BE CONTINUED...

1. The Day All of Creation Shuddered

2006-12-31T12:48:00.000-08:00

The day all of Creation shuddered…

Like countless generations over millennia the ritual repeated almost daily and that day it replayed itself no differently. Pilgrims descended the worn narrow staircase of stone and rock to the Well of Souls. Approaching the fissure where the cavern walls arched into a vast open chamber, a heavenly awesome choir rose from the depths and enveloped them.

The pilgrims crowded onto the observation platform and marveled at the spectacle. In the hollow of the cavern ten massive metallic drums slowly turned, powered by an invisible kinetic energy whose acoustic vibrations produced a sound best described as angelic. Many pilgrims fell to their knees in exaltation, others succumb to fitful possession. For each, the chorus of song seemed to be singing just to them.

The Faithful who tended the shrine took little notice of the pilgrim swarm, except to ensure order and that the crowd did not exceed capacity. Their priestly duties required almost constant vigil over the delicate electronics used to monitor, record and analyze the otherworldly acoustics and the streams of computerized data they produced.

For centuries, the Faithful attempted to understand the electro-harmonic forces at work in the Well and how the drums rotated without mechanical apparatus and generated and/or amplified the chorus of song which had no nature source. Ever since the harmonics was first discovered by the remote region’s ancient peoples, who mined the cavern’s unique metals, the song had never varied, paused, or failed to inspire in the listener the sense that he or she was in the presence of the Divine.

Common belief held that the chorus was the voice of an angel of the Celestial Collective, mysterious heavenly spirits who acted in the service of The Goddess. As long as the angel sang Creation endured and humankind could know the will of The Goddess.

However, the Faithful’s research revealed no evidence of conventional speech or language. Advanced computing algorithms collected over decades isolated more than three hundred distinct persistent patterns neuro-harmonic in origin. Brainwaves, the resonance of vast minds from some unknown place, filled the Wells of Souls.

Whatever the physical phenomenology, the shrine’s spiritual appeal attracted pilgrims unabated. They come to commune with their ancestors or to confess to The Goddess or revel in the life-secrets that the choir may bestow on the worthy listener.

Immersed in the sweet symphony of a heavenly siren, the pilgrims prayed and made their offerings. The Faithful watched over, while their technology ciphered. That was until the metallic drums, one by one, ground to a standstill.

Then, the Well of Souls, for the first time in human memory, fell silent.

The day all of Creation shuttered…

Rachel Angela heard her name called and could not move. Somehow she found the will to rise, step from behind the partition and walk along the prayer hall’s red carpet to the mimbar. Astride the platform ceremoniously beckoned the six elder women and six elder men who together governed the Faith Apostolic. Her heart pounding in her chest, Angela could not focus on their espresso- and porcelain-flesh toned faces. Her vision would only hold the warm assuring smile of her silver-haired Reverend Cardinal Mother, the elder’s gentle eyes sparkling with pride and pleasure amid the ebony features of her sex.

Angela lowered before Reverend Cardinal Mother zeta Petriss and kissed the hem of her saree. The Reverend Cardinal Mother offered her hand and Rachel Angela kissed her bejewel ring. The Reverend Cardinal Mother then recited the Words before welcoming Angela to her feet again.

“It is my tremendous pleasure to confirm our sister, and my best student. She honors her ancestors and all Faith in graduating First-in-Class this cycle,” beamed zeta Petriss. “Before The Goddess and Creation, in the name of Faith, I convey upon our sister, psi Sadewa Rachel Angela, the Order of the Oracle. May her Inner Eye see only truth and bring us all good fortune.”

Rachel Angela turned and faced the prayer hall. Hundreds of eyes all fixed on her took her breath away. Instead of feeling overcome, she felt transcended and empowered. When presented with a chalice of ambrosiadyne, she took the holy vessel, lifted it confidently to the assembly and drank the sweet nectar, letting its psychochemical properties wash over her freely.

And, suddenly, the great temple trembled.

Rachel Angela felt a presence unlike any other she had experienced—something vast and awesome. She heard screams and the clamor of people panicked, but she was paralyzed and blind.

Then, a light erupted from within her breast. The light had wings; magnificent radiating translucent feathered wings.

“Hear us! We transcend the corporeal. Prepare for our coming,” some other voice heralded through Angela. “We expel to your linear plane that part of ourselves we cannot tolerate. We seek to restore the balance lost to us by imprisonment among you. Take no violence against us and no action that may offend. Prepare, we come, en corporeal and impotent.”

The day all of Creation shuttered…

The Well of Souls fell silent. The great temple trembled.

The sky over Court-at-Columbia grew dark and stormy, blotting out the mother planet Gaia. The clouds frenzied into a fearsome hurricane angered with thunderous lightening. From the eye of the storm, Heaven vomited.

Transformed and torpid, He tumbled earthward.

TO BE CONTINUED...

About Faithful

2006-12-05T20:10:00.000-08:00

Faithful imagines sci-fantasy intrigue set on distant worlds where humans, not unlike ourselves, are drawn into otherworldly adventure. Its multi-character plot centers around two soldier-priests whose prejudices and world-views are challenged when assigned to sequester an exiled alien, and find themselves unwittingly on a collision course with two sisters. One sister is trying to create a new more equitable world-order and the other is secretly bent on undermining the very foundations of their universe.

Premise
Suddenly, inexplicably, Heaven expels one of its angels to the fiercely matriarchal moon-planet Aideena, where genetically the socially dominant women are Black and the second-class male population is Caucasian.

Simply called The Archangel, Aideena’s powerful enigmatic visitor manifests itself not only as a male of divine origin, but as a Black male and a force to be reckoned with.

At a time when the planet’s institutions are already confronting several challenges, societal norms of power and gender identity forged over millennia are thrown into discord. Faith, the religious authority that shares power on Aideena, assigns its soldier-priests, the Knights Templar, to watch over the Divinity and prevent it from further disrupting Aideena’s contentious world-order.

The Archangel is in fact a meta-terrestrial, an otherworldly intelligence from a higher plane of existence, which only appears angelic to Aideena-kind. The reason for its exile remains unknown, even to itself, wiped from its memory. Equally unknown is what The Archangel is capable of and what it might do.

Conflicts
Cast down to a space colonizing, technological advanced world struggling to reconcile these new realities with its ancient tribal traditions and the lingering mystical rituals of its past, The Archangel finds itself drawn to two Templar soldier-priests assigned to sequester it. Only recently arrived from the training academy that raised him, Michael Constantine embraces the call to service and adventure Faith propagandizes, but has little experience of everyday life outside monastic wall. Eager to prove himself and insatiably curious, he makes an unlike junior partner to the much older Paul Sebastian, who’s no stranger to life’s daggers. Valuing discipline and protocol above all, his patience thins at the unpredictable and disdains personal demands that are at odds with his own ideas of his station in life.

Seneca imagines a better world, one of great equitability across the social classes, and, determined to rewrite centuries of tradition, she commits her own considerably wealth and position to the challenge. It’s a good thing she can rely on her younger sister Daria to smooth the feathers she ruffles along the way. But, Daria is not all she seems. To the world dutiful, levelheaded, and respectable, she hides another face bent on wrecking the world. Friends and family become targets and enemies become pawns in an escalating conspiracy to corrupt the incorruptible and usurp the sinful.

Genesis
I lived several years early in life in Berlin, Germany, during the time when the city was occupied and divided. The specter of Cold War tensions stifled hope of a world living in harmony and free of nationalist irrationalities.

Faithful grew out of a fascination with how dramatic the world changed for so many people when the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union dissolved. I began to imagine the challenge of adapting to a new way of life after a generation and a half of oppression. I was alarmed by the resurgence of old prejudices in the West, Eastern Europe and Russia that seemed to belong to a different era.

Originally, Faithful focused on a world in transition; how older traditions are often dangerously irreconcilable with new global-centric realities. The struggles Russia and many former Soviet countries endured in the 1990s, and commutating in the tragic years of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, deeply affected me and fired my imagination.

With the rise of global terrorism, ignored genocide in Africa and conservatism in the United States, irrational prejudices and cultural politics proved to be not the sole domain of developing countries. Enormous economic opportunity and unprecedented wealth in my own country has given credence to exercise the ugliest beliefs and fears about our neighbor. We routinely expose how little progress we’ve made in abandoning our cultural bias about race, gender and class. It seems we’ve only grown more divisive, becoming more clever with glossing over the evidence.

Still, I have witnessed a world emerge where a courageous few have been, and are, empowered to lead change. They have answered the call of social responsibility. In fact, we’ve reared a generation that places social change above other concerns and back it up with action. Certainly, there are the privileged ones who merely adapted a social persona for their own gain. I speak of the individual, often average or everyday by most norms, who finds ways large and small, often at personal risk, to listen and respond only to their conscious for the benefit of those who cannot or will not help themselves.

Today, Faithful intends to look at prejudices/assumptions about gender, race, sex and what-have-you and hopefully explore how ridiculous they are. It’s main focus is to understand the "ah-ha" moment that motivates a person to commit himself to civil action; to cast off his prejudices and dedicate himself or herself to better the life’s of others, even when society condemns it.

I have designs on a five-story arc. I am also trying to visualize the characters with illustration. I am not a real artist, so the artwork is unrefined and rather derivative. I am also evolving a glossary of terms and concepts and a guide to life on Aideena as I go along. Some of it is haphazard, but then I am mainly trying to challenge myself creatively and teach myself graphic and computer techniques that fascinate me.

Through these characters I hope to arrive--for myself--at an understanding as to when the biased assumptions and prejudices we’re taught no longer have their meaning and we become change agents, patriots, revolutionaries for our neighbor’s welfare.