Empress Evangeline

“Evangeline?”

“Yes, she can keep the name, Tokarov. We are Overlords, not monsters.”

“Can I see her?”

“Why would you ask such a ridiculous question?”

“The child, she's alright?”

"With all you, and we have invested in this offspring, why would you question it? It thrives, the first Human/Sabinarath hybrid. It feeds, grows, the other Overlords are impressed. This hybrid might be able to populate New Eden successfully. We have located a fertile planet, yet, there is one final obstacle."

“What? What do you mean?”

“You must rekindle your warrior spirit. Killing a god is a small thing in comparison. You must defeat an entire interstellar species.”

“How?” Tokarov's heart lurched into his throat.

“Your training will be key, Xenoscythe is not done with you human. You will see.” The steely grit in the voice of the Overlord forced Tokarov to grip his curly dark locks in his hands.

* * *

Tokarov inserted the breathing tubes in his nostrils and took off in a steady jog back into the tunnels of Xenoscythe. The mold glowed gold and green, reflecting on the cave walls in the light of his headlamp as it swayed back and forth. His breathing formed a rhythmic pounding with his boots as the smooth floor yawned on. The instruction terminal was a mile from the surface. Sweat beaded on his forehead and dripped into his eyes, as he loped, his heart thudding in his chest.

The terminal looked like a giant mirror on the wall.

"Welcome Tokarov," the Overlord's voice boomed, echoing off the rock. "Beta Galaxy. The beings there repulsed our attempt to harvest their planets. Our galaxies are on a collision course. The center of Beta Galaxy is anchored by a supermassive black hole. Its event horizon is the size of the Xenoscythe and will swallow our entire planetary system. We must destroy it."

“A whole galaxy! How?”

“We have a dreadnaught ship named the Halcyion. It is the size of a planetoid and equipped with intergalactic weapons. You will be trained. We know you are a warrior, what experience do you have as a pilot?”

“Back on Earth, I flew fighters. When the aliens attacked, I flew dozens of missions into the teeth of their armada. Our weapons were crude by comparison, but I recorded 49 kills.” Tokarov shifted his feet, reaching back to memories that felt light years away.

“The Halcyion is a very complex spacecraft, your training will take months.”

“When do we start?”

“Now. A portal will open next to this terminal, follow it and wait for instructions.”

The cave wall next to the screen sizzled and popped, the rock pixelating, and dissolving into a passageway. The burst of fresh air blasted over Tokarov. Ripping out his breathing tubes, he huffed a giant breath and sighed, shivers of relief washing over him. Walking through the portal tore away his anxiety. He felt the weight of the birth of Evangeline, and the death of the Sabinarath lift from him. He was a natural-born fighter and finally had a new mission.

* * *

Having never seen an Overlord, Tokarov marveled at them. They shuffled around the room, their bulbous heads, the size of watermelons, anchored with giant inky almond eyes. All wearing the same silver shimmering robes, they moved in unison, connected. He could feel their psionics probing his mind, relaxing him with gentle thoughts. He wanted to speak, yet it seemed primitive in their company.

Their thoughts guided him to an adjacent room. A giant dais rose from the center of the cylindrical room. There were joystick handles on each armrest. It wasn't exactly a cockpit, but the jets he flew back on Earth were dinosaurs compared to the Halcyion.

He climbed the few stairs and spun, sitting in the pilot chair. The material looked like stone, yet wrapped around his legs like silky pillows. Picking what looked like a headset from one of the handles, he buckled it onto his skull. A brilliant flash took away his sight. Blinking, Tokarov felt panic gripping him. The Overlord's thoughts settled in his subconscious, calming him. Everything around him was dark. He suddenly realized he was seeing with his mind, and gripped the controls with both hands.

The first fighter appeared like an infinitesimal spec. Targeting cross hairs appeared and moved with his head. He wasn't sure if it was moving until it roared past him like a bullet. The pulse laser it fired hammered into him, causing his seat to shudder, the sound waves heaved through his chest. Within seconds, dozens of fighters were swarming him like angry wasps. Laser blasts cracked and zipped in all directions. His finger felt the trigger for his cannon, and resolve washed over him. The memories of the horde bombarding the cities, erasing the humans from the universe surged in his mind's eye. Pinned open, his eyeballs watered as he returned fire, leaning forward he felt the ship move.

The feeling came back, he had to kill to survive. The dreadnaught, moving in unison with his body, melded with his mind. A surge of adrenaline pulsed in his veins as the hunter-killer took over. Racing into the darkness, he combed the dark expanse. Like a shark chasing fish, he stalked them down, pounding their hulls with rapid-fire, bursting them into dust.

Minutes stretched like hours, as each perilous second ticked away. A thought popped, with this ship, he could slow down time. Warping the fabric of the space/time continuum, the fighters slowed. The Halcyion ripped through them all until nothing was left but a debris field and smoldering bits of metal floating in space.

The session over, Tokarov unbuckled the chin strap. Removing the device, his vision returned to his eyes. The circular room hadn't changed. His mind felt expanded, he could feel an Overlord looking at him. Glancing over, the creature nodded, turned, and left.

* * *

He chewed in silence. The food was marginally better than the mylar pouches in the caves of Xenoscythe. Never seeing them eat, he realized the Overlords drank the energy from their environment. They had evolved beyond eating, he wondered if they could suck enough energy from another being to kill it. He imagined Evangeline, his child, entrusted to these aliens, or gods, or whatever they were. The loss tugged at his heart. Squeezing out a tear, he sighed, finishing his last bite.

The training cycle was simple. Eat, Train, Sleep. From the caves under Xenoscythe to his training with the Overlords, Tokarov wasn't certain if there were days and nights anymore. Memories of Lora Lei birthing Evangeline and giving up her spirit to the cosmos drifted about, thoughts that oddly the Overlords gave no input. Their purple irises glinting in the glow of the star Aerialis, creased a smile on his face. He imagined his daughter, being the Eve of New Eden, birthing a new race, a new hope for a universe that seemed always at war with itself.

The thoughts intervened, he had a mission to complete if any of his daydreaming would be possible. He had trained on Earth and fought, yet eventually, it was decimated and the Overlords saved him and a few other human stragglers before harvesting the entire solar system. Now he had a chance at redemption. He was again training. The fight would determine the fate of the sliver of DNA that humankind had given the universe. The sum total of his life and every human that came before him depended on winning a single battle, killing an entire interstellar species. Genocide. The weight of the thought pushed him to the room, perched on the dais, donning his headset.

The swarm of fighters appeared at once, hovering like a cloud in the distance, yet none advanced. One by one, they attached themselves to the others. Hundreds coalesced into a mass that looked eerily similar to the Halcyion. He jerked at what sounded like a peal of thunder. A photon of some sort zoomed at the dreadnaught. Shields! He was too late. The round pounded into his ship and threw him from his pilot seat. The impact made him dizzy, eyes watering and ears ringing.

Laser fire was not going to destroy this beast. The Halcyion was equipped with a similar weapon, but using so much power, it couldn't be fired repeatedly, and now his ship was damaged. Tokarov decided to try and escape and gain some distance. The ship could repair itself. Maintenance drones worked quickly to fix the damage. Tokarov shifted forward and the Halcyion shot across the ether of space, the enemy craft taking pursuit. He had never tested the ship's speed. He leaned hard and soon planets, star systems, and nebula whizzed by. The immense speed caused the ship to shudder and groan. The alien craft kept pace. An idea struck him.

Arming the shields, he waited until they were at full power. He could feel the enemy gaining ground. His mind one with the Halcyion, he waited until they were close enough that they had no way to turn. Whipping the Halcyion around in a 180-degree turn, he accelerated with lightning speed at the nose of the enemy ship. The dreadnaught plowed into the other ship, its electric shield causing the enemy fighters to pop like a chain of fireworks. The concussion knocked him unconscious.

When he woke, his headset was askew on his face and the room was lit up. Sitting up in the chair, he felt the eyes of an Overlord on his back. He didn't look and the creature didn't nod.

* * *

The weeks clicked along, and Tokarov's instincts evolved. His speed at dispatching enemies in any configuration improved. He could fight off an entire fleet with very little damage. For the first time, the Overlords spoke to him.

“We are nearing the time for the mission.” The Overlords' voice whispered into the air, unlike the booming voice he heard and felt when they weren't near.

“Am I ready?” Tokarov stood in front of three.

They spoke in unison, with one voice. Each voice was a perfect fifth from the other so the speech sounded somewhat like a piano chord, “You are human. You are well trained. This mission matters more than your life. Are you ready to give up yourself for something greater?”

He thought of Evangeline, and he thought of the Sabinarath, who had already given her life by giving birth. He stood staring at these beings, feeling the gravity of it all. He didn't want to return to the tunnels of Xenoscythe. He preferred death over wandering the tunnels endlessly, having to constantly fight to survive. “I'm ready.”

“There is one final thing we must tell you. In the Halcyion there will be a weapon that can only be fired once. We could not put one in the simulator for fear of damaging it. It must be fired into the center of Beta Galaxy when you reach the event horizon of the black hole at its center. The weapon is made of anti-matter and has never been tested, but according to our elders, it is the only thing that could possibly destroy it.”

Tokarov had studied physics, he knew the connection that these galactic vacuums had with space and time. What destroying one would unleash was unknowable. It had never been done in the history of time.

“If you are ready, you get one final day of rest before the mission.”

“You can trust me.”

* * *

After eating and showering, the Overlords provided Tokarov with a parting gift. A stretchy, protective carbyn suit, matched with meta boots and a helmet. Dressing, he imagined what other humans would think if they saw him, way out in the depths of outer space, doing the bidding of otherworldly beings. He wondered if they would cheer him on or prefer to be left in the dustbins of history.

The three Overlords addressed him again, “The Halcyion is ready. It is programmed to take you directly to Beta Galaxy. There you will fight.”

A portal opened and they pointed, their three fingers together, missing the thumbs humans worked so long to evolve. Tokarov walked through and confronted his fate. The pilot seat was like the simulator, only slightly smaller. Strapping the helmet to his head, he sat. A head-up display appeared on the helmet visor. A destination clock ticked off the time, three hours to reach the Beta Galaxy.

The dreadnaught Halcyion slowly accelerated on course. Tokarov drifted into thought. He replayed his meeting with the Sabinarath, how she tricked him into making a child. Now the child, his child, Evangeline waited in the care of the Overlords. Whoever these aliens were, he had to defeat them and eliminate them from the universe. He wondered what they looked like, playing over the images of his childhood, reptilian, insectoid, xenomorph. Either way, he was prepared to unleash genocide, not unlike what happened to his species and his home planet of Earth.

His mind melded with the Halcyion. The battle techniques flooded his mind. They had covered every possible angle of attack. Overlords were knowledgeable about the enemy's technology and weaponry. He rehearsed scenarios in his mind, stopping at the deployment of the anti-matter bomb. He wasn't sure he was ready to face that reality.

Beta Galaxy was nearing, Tokarov steeled his nerves. A dot appeared on his display. A recon fighter combed the edge of the galaxy. Cloaking and deploying the shield, Tokarov prepared for his first kill. The tiny ship was blindsided. The Halcyion's laser ripped the hull in half. Watching in awe, the debris field bounced off the shield. That was when he saw the alien's body. He ran over to the dreadnaught's windshield. The body bounced off, leaving a splotch of blood.

“No...it can't be.” He switched to playback the recording. He played it again and again, freezing it right as he could see the alien's eyes. They were blue and green like his. He was a bipedal mammal about six feet tall. He was another human being.

They swarmed, dozens of fighters, the distress beacon from the reconnaissance ship, zeroed the location of the dreadnaught. It's kill or be killed. Tokarov's training took over. He lasered, torpedoed, and smashed the fighters, one after another. With deadly precision, he destroyed entire squadrons. Reaching the interior of Beta Galaxy, the enemy abandoned swarms and coalesced into large ships. Tokarov pounded them with cannons and torpedoes, killing hundreds with a single pull of the trigger.

Then he saw it, the event horizon, pulsing deadly X-rays into space. The hordes were gone, so he busied himself chasing down and murdering the few trying to escape. He looked at the button. It had a cover over it. Flipping up the safety shield he waited for the moment, the boundary where light itself cannot escape the crushing pull of the supermassive black hole. The blinding light made him turn away as he unleashed the anti-matter bomb into the gravity of the celestial giant.

The energy released blew outward like a giant tidal wave of plasma-like energy. The dreadnaught's hull disintegrated under the withering blast. Tokarov opened his eyes. The windshield of the craft was a mass of cracks, yet it held. The pod that held him and the controls spun into the vastness of space, with the rest of the ship obliterated. He had succeeded in his mission, but at what cost?

He imagined the Overlords gently smiling at the victory. He imagined Evangeline nesting in New Eden. Then he had a revelation, Evangeline was only half human. Had he just destroyed the last of his species?

“What have I done?”