Announcement

**Mr. President** · September 23, 2001, 03:39

Paradise Lost

I am Thrall Commander Sator Hunnaro, Brother of the Order of Warrior's Harmony and third in command of the Usurper administration on Manifold Six. My story is long, but I will make it as concise as I possibly can.

On the landmass known on Santanni as the Western Continent was a town called Fractal Power. It was built four hundred years ago during the Second Expansion of our Empire. That is where I was born. I remember every minute I spent there, though it was so long ago. I can recall one time when I hiked into the Red Hills, through groves of stingflower trees in full bloom. I remember the clear skies and the running water, the Twin Suns shining down upon my childhood. Fractal Power was such a quiet town. There was nothing but contentment. My family was third-generation; we had no friends who had ever left that place.

But paradises are born to be lost, and nothing in this universe lasts forever. From far off we heard of the maturation of the Manifold Experiments, and of the great dispute coming. Like a storm cloud it hovered on the horizon, until one day it erupted into the chaos of the Succession Wars.

Still we were not affected, though, and foolishly we thought we would remain so. Even as Santanni prepared for war I could not see what was coming. The first hint of the impending changes was when Fractal Power's citizenry began to become cold and detached. I had given little thought to which of the factions (there were more than just the Caretakers and the Usurpers in those days. The Chaos, Starfarer, and Hunter factions were among the first to emerge. Even now we are not certain that all members of the Firebrand faction have been accounted for) I supported. But others had. Friends who followed the Starfarers no longer spoke to friends associated with the Caretakers. Before long communal violence rocked even my sleepy town. Dozens died in street fighting that raged for days at a time. The governor deployed the army on the streets, but to little effect: his soldiers were just as divided as his citizens.

One day the governor was shot dead by an assailant believed to be a Chaos. That was their aim: to disband the Empire and use the Manifolds to return the galaxy to a primordial state. Humans would have seen them as something like the Cult of Planet. Anarchy reigned following his death. Representatives of the various militias appeared on Santanni, recruiting for the coming war. The Empire began to collapse. The Star Children conquered the Homeworld. My family boarded the last transport ship to leave Santanni as the Imperial Army withdrew from colonies on the periphery.

Our destination was to have been Manifold Four, where the Imperial army still held out. But we were ambushed by a Chaos battle cruiser and crash-landed on a desolate planet. Stranded there for five years, barely able to resonate in the thin atmosphere, with no food and no light reaching us from a tiny black star, my parents and sister succumbed. Two hundred boarded the ship in Fractal Power; twelve were rescued by a Usurper scout vessel.

That is how I became a Usurper. Filled with the despair of an exile and the empty fury of a war orphan, I donned our red armor for the first time at an asteroidal base near Cygnus. Looking back, I see that it was the action of a desperate, lonely young Progenitor. All that was in my mind was vengeance, the total destruction of those responsible for the deaths of my family and friends. Those days I walked in a red cloud of rage, not even knowing who my enemies were. I was hot-blooded and reckless. In ambushes I was the first to leap upon our enemies, often tearing into their soft necks with my tusks. I was dangerous; but there was so much anger in the camp that no-one noticed. Later I began to moderate my behavior, after I was nearly killed in a spacewalk battle. Tarhro, another officer in my troop and my senior by two years, took me under his wing. From him I learned the tricks of the guerilla warrior, how to hide in shadows, how to dampen one's resonance to avoid being tracked, how to kill a male with a string and a stick.

Those were the days when the war was angry, before the factions settled into the grind of long-term conflict between even opponents. The Chaos seized Manifold Four from the Imperial Army and, in a fit of insanity, opened its N-Space Gateways. Those are the same instruments behind our exploitation of N-Space Compression; if not controlled, the deadly effects slice open other universes, and devastation can spread across light-years. Manifold Four was less than three parsecs from Santanni. That is how my beloved home vanished forever under a torrent of anti-energy and dark strings. Far away I woke up in the night as my homeworld died. I knew in that instant that Fractal Power was lost, the trees and the flowers, the sky and the mountains, the water where I swam as a child, the street corners where my friends and I had met so many times.

I felt now utterly lost and alone. In many ways I still do. But there was the war, and everyone's main concern was to stay alive. In the days to come, as all factions committed the most horrendous acts upon other Progenitors, our minds and hearts would become numb. The war songs were louder than our mental cries of anguish; but those cries would never be silent. Every time I paused in the carnage, the yearning to return to what I still considered my normal life threatened to reduce me to a wreck. Though we sang over and over again that we were conquerors, that we were invincible, I have no doubt that there was not a single Usurper in my company that was not longing to be a thousand light-years away, sipping hot gamomith in front of a watchvid.

**Mr. President** · October 4, 2001, 07:08

Hm, I seem to have let this thread vanish for a time. How lax of me. Anyway, this is the third part of Sator's story. Hope it's not too awful.
***
The Burning Question

Where was the Sixth Manifold?

In forty years of war all sides failed to find it. I must have seen a thousand enemy soldiers and civilians tortured to death before they gave it up.

Because the simple truth was that no-one knew. The last Manifold to be created, it had become the command center for the Experiment millions of years ago. But the Imperial Science Society grew bored of waiting for its maturation, which stretched eons beyond the expected period. The Manifolds' creators checked on them less and less, until maintenance almost ceased. At that point the Sixth Manifold was abandoned, its location forgotten.

Then the Experiment came on a sudden to its critical point, forcing the Manifolds back into our consciousnesses. And thence sprang the Succession War.

All of us were taught at our initial indoctrination that the Sixth Manifold was the critical weapon in our war. By pursuing the Planetary Flowering, our inherent abilities would be multiplied a thousandfold, our strength increased exponentially, and none would stand before us.

But so much of the administration of the Manifold Experiment had been forgotten or become myth in the three million years since the command center was evacuated.

One of those details was that the Manifold, secreted in a distant corner of the galaxy, had an automatic beacon that would be activated when it detected the awakening of the Experiment. This beacon would send a message to the homeworld, informing the Emperor and his assistants that the time of Flowering was at hand.

But the Emperor was dead, and no-one was listening to anything except military communications any more...
***
Many years ago, an young officer named Judaa Marr commanded a space cruiser designated the Bonechewer. It was a new ship, equipped with string disruptors and ten singularity-engine Deathbringer warheads, similar to what on Chiron are known as Planet Busters. We could carry 5,000 troops and 50 Battle Ogres. I was that ship's communications officer, and I remember vividly the day when the breakthrough came.

After all these years the bridge of the Bonechewer is still clear to me. My position was against the back wall, to the right. Marr's command seat was on a raised podium in the center; on his left sat the First Officer, Guttren, and on the right was his Chief Weapons Officer Fryaa Rehana. The navigator was my good friend Dastor, who is now the military commander at Resonance of Swords.

We were patrolling near the homeworld after a Caretaker ambush party destroyed a forward post on an asteroid, when I picked up an anomalous signal. It was of a frequency not used by our communications or those of our enemies. And it did not seem to be natural; for one thing, it was suspiciously similar to Progenitor speech in its amplitude. It also repeated every sixteen minutes.

"Conqueror," I said, "I am detecting an unexplained signal at 65,329 Fren." Fren is a unit of frequency or wavelength, like Hertz.

Conqueror Marr showed no outward reaction at first. "Analyze the signal," he altered.

"At once, Conqueror." My readings suggested that it did not originate within at least twenty parsecs of our location. It was very likely a message, but was distorted beyond comprehension. I reported this to Marr.

By this time the bridge crew's curiosity was aroused, and all eyes were on Marr, waiting for orders. At length he flexed his mandibles. "Send a message to Usurper Command," he resonated. "Inform them of our findings, and request a subspace trace."

"Yes, Conqueror," I altered, and immediately began transponding the communication.

Now, understand that we still did not know what we had found. Usurper Command later informed us as to what general area the signal had originated from, but could not pin it down due to subspace interference. And there were other pressing matters at that time, with the Chaos advancing across the Red Continent on Canopus at an alarming rate.

It was only after someone going through the remnants of the Imperial Library found a reference to the Sixth Manifold in an ancient book. This volume placed it in the same sector as our mysterious signal. Seven vessels, including ours, were dispatched to that distant area to look for it. We had just lost Ophiucus to the Caretakers, and a desperate guerrilla operation to lift the siege of Canopus Landing had failed miserably, but the ships were risked nonetheless. The possible benefits offered by finding Manifold Six were considered worth risking the loss of a half-dozen battle cruisers.

It was a long journey, even by hyperspace. The homeworld is very nearly at the exact opposite end of the galaxy from Human Earth, and more than ten jumps were required to put us in the sector of Manifold Six.

After the sixteenth jump, Dastor, typing furiously at her terminal, resonated urgently, "Conqueror, I have detected the signature of Caretaker vessels less than three light years from our location."

The crew stiffened. A Caretaker battle group could ruin the entire operation. "Contact the other commanders immediately," Marr ordered.

A brief conference followed. Some were in favor of engaging the Caretakers, others suggested retreating. But Marr was unequivocal. "We can do neither," he altered. "If we pull back, they may find the Sixth Manifold. If we fight and lose, we will not be able to prevent them finding it. Therefore I say we lock onto the signal and all attempt to find a different route to it. There are seven of us and only five of them. They cannot follow us all. At least one ship should make it."

Gradually, his words were altered into assent by the other commanders. After several minutes of frantic channel-searching during which we detected the Caretakers locking on to us, we found the signal. Then Dastor put us through maneuvers the likes of which I have not seen since then. One of the largest ships in the fleet, Dastor ran the Bonechewer into spaces that a gravship would have had difficulty negotiating. But a Caretaker vessel shadowed us all the way, ever gaining ground. My heart beat faster when Marr ordered battle stations. Soon after we entered the Manifold's solar system. The suns reminded of Santanni, and I felt a pang. But then I felt something colder:

"I am Conservator Lular H'minee of the Caretaker vessel Ivory Truth! You will surrender immediately and prepare to be boarded!"

Her voice sent chills down my exoskeleton. But Marr was as calm as ever. Lowering his amplitude, he resonated, "Fire rear disruptors."

And the battle was on. We ducked. We weaved. We peppered the Ivory Truth with disruptor fire. And we might even have won. But H'minee, having taken a hit to her left engine, rolled, banked, and halted. Then, as we rushed forward, she rammed us.

A massive hole in its lower deck, the Bonechewer went into a death dive - into the atmosphere. "Call for help!" Marr bellowed, but we knew it was too late. On the orange siren, we ran for the escape pods as the ship collapsed around us and we fell into the clear air of Manifold Six.

**Mr. President** · November 8, 2001, 01:34

Shock! Horror! How will Sator and friends get out of this one? What will they find waiting for them on Alpha Centauri? Will Marr's tactical knowledge improve? And does anyone know where you can get spare parts for Battle Ogres?

***

Marooned

I never liked G-forces. On the Usurper homeworlds, we had space elevators which got around this problem. But we were far from the nearest homeworld, tearing through the Manifold's troposphere, heading closer and closer to our objective - and, ironically, our doom. Ironic poetry is much loved among my people. But we had our minds on other things at that time.

Fire. Then impact. Intellectually, in the split second before I blacked out, I knew it was not very serious as collisions go, but it felt like being hit by an asteroid. Waking, I found myself lying on the floor of the escape pod's bridge. To my left was Dastor. She was upright, bruised but not seriously injured. Hauling myself to my feet, I saw Conqueror Marr sitting up. "I'm fine," he resonated, answering the question I had not yet asked. Quickly regaining his composure, he ordered, "Check on the crew and take inventory. Dastor, you and I will see how much of the computer still works."

As I climbed down the ladder to the general crew area, I knew we would have to abandon the pod. The lights were dim, and wires hung from the shattered walls. Hauling open a large steel door, I found a more encouraging sight. Most of the crew were only slightly injured. Moving on to inventory, almost all the food and medical supplies had survived the crash. Less encouraging was the machine storage bay. We had a Battle Ogre Mark One and some construction machinery in working order. The rest was wrecked, most of the mecha-cryogenic bays inoperative. Some power-grade uranium had survived the landing, and we had enough equipment to build a small nuclear reactor - just as well considering the lights were beginning to fail. Weaponry was minimal. I hurriedly climbed back to the bridge.

Marr digested my report briefly. Then he altered, "We will have to abandon in about an hour. Power is about to fail and I don't think structural integrity will be far behind." Silence. Dastor added, "The atmosphere outside is breathable, but we'll need to find additional water once we get out there."

"I'll start unloading the crew and the machines," I volunteered.

An hour later, we observed the escape pods collapse in flames. The survivors of the second pod had reported similar events to ours. Everything that could be salvaged had been, the resources of both sets of escapees pooled, and now the question was: What next? Somewhere out there were the Caretakers.

I suppose I was not surprised when Marr ordered the construction of shelters. It was more that I was not yet willing to admit that we would be on the Manifold for the long term. Part of me still wanted to believe that the other vessels would come soon. Perhaps the thing that most emphasised our situation was when we began building a nuclear reactor. Until then, our source of power had been the reserve batteries of the Battle Ogre. A nuclear reactor, however makeshift, was a permanent investment. We were in this for the long haul.

Months passed, and the rest of the battle group did not find us. We had set up short-range subspace communications, and were scanning the skies constantly for any sign of the Usurper fleet. We assumed them lost or that they had left us behind. That thought depressed the entire colony.

One day someone suggested, "We should build a second base. As long as we are concentrated in one place, we can be wiped out by disaster or invasion. A second colony will give us more resources, and more security."

I liked this idea as soon as I heard it. Not only was there much sense in the male's reasoning, it would lift the spirits of the castaways, turning their minds to a new task. I mentioned this to Marr, who admitted to some hesitation. But the next day he authorized the development of a second base.

Meanwhile, scouts had been combing the area, trying to determine in just what sort of a place we had landed. Our base camp was on the bank of a river, and there turned out to be hilly terrain to the east, and fertile flatlands across to the west. Travelling south, our parties found the sea, and to the north a great flat plateau, its resonance buzzing with energy.

We chose a spot several miles upriver for the site of our second base. There was ample space there for growing food. Marr ordered that engineers begin mining the hills to the east and setting up solar energy collectors on the great northern plateau. Meanwhile, our scientific crews were working overtime to emulate the equipment lost in the crash.

The resonance song from the planet was extremely strong, and unusual. Unlike anything we had ever felt before, its singing was strangely alien to us. The more sensitive of our crew complained of strange dreams, often centered around the fungus that grew everywhere. No-one knew whether it was an original part of the experiment, or had grown later in the period of neglect, but we could feel it pulsing almost like a brain. Its inhabitants were dangerous; three scouts were killed by huge worms that paralyzed them with psychic resonations. We were ordered to shoot native life forms on sight.

One day I walked down to the bank of the river, simply to calm my nerves. The rebuilding effort was beyond intense, and the broad river reminded me of pleasant times, easier days. I was a little surprised to find Conqueror Marr there. I greeted him, and he enquired about my progress (I was in charge of communications, and dealt with exploration and resource-hunting along with a few others), which I briefed him on. He was satisfied. Then he said something that truly took me aback:

"I never dreamed I would be in a position like this. I'm a soldier, not a governor."

I did not know how to respond. I followed Conqueror Marr without question. If he doubted himself, where would that leave his followers? At length I said, "It is said, Conqueror, that our first Emperor was once a warrior."

He altered to show irony. "I am not the Emperor."

But I knew what to say. "You are the Conqueror; and as long as we remain here, you may as well be the Emperor."

Marr was silent for a time. At length he said, "We should name our bases."

Perhaps my faith in him had restored his confidence; I cannot be sure. But it definitely awoke in him the desire to rule, to build a society for himself. "I agree," I altered. "What should we name them, Conqueror?"

We could not think of anything that day. But soon after we christened our original landing site "Courage: To Question", an inspiring slogan drawn from a proverb often quoted among Usurpers. Marr seemed to have a new air of authority about him; for now he was not only ship commander but king as well. A month or so after that, we began construction of our new colony, Warrior's Harmony, at the previously chosen location.

Listening to the colonists report filled us with joy, for they were encountering no major obstacles. Only one thing bothered us, as we gathered around the videophone to converse with the new base's governor, and the shock of it made us all fall silent.

They had spotted alien lifeforms.

Not the Caretakers, but different creatures, a separate species altogether.

**Mr. President** · November 11, 2001, 19:01

Interloper

We crouched behind a rock with the scout party, myself, Conqueror Marr, Dastor, and Fryaa Rehana. Clutching resonance dampers to obscure the signal of our physiological systems, we peered over the top. "There," the scout leader whispered. "Can you see them?"

I lifted my binoculars to my eyes and saw the creatures, five of them. In general shape they were almost like Progenitors, but they looked smaller and heavier. They moved with what we considered little grace, stumbling and slipping over stones and fungus. "What are those things?" Dastor whispered.

"They almost look like us," Marr altered, "except smaller. They don't seem to have antennae or an exoskeleton."

"Could they have evolved here on the Manifold?" I suggested.

Kotra, trained as a xenobiologist, altered in the negative tense. "I don't think so. Look through the psi scope and observe how the fungus reacts to their proximity."

I did so. Whenever one of them went near the large patches, I could see the pink field of the fungus' rudimentary thought processes recoil, almost in distaste. I passed the scope to Dastor, who put into words what we had seen. After Marr had observed the fungal cognition, he ordered, "Back to base."

In the command center at Warrior's Harmony, there was a heated debate over what should be done about the creatures. The evidence suggested that they were interlopers, somehow arrived from offworld. Some refused to accept this. Others advocated extreme solutions.

"We must destroy them," Rehana altered forcefully. "They are alien, and may not be allowed to interfere with our aims."

"They have not yet proved themselves hostile," Dastor countered. "If we attack them we may be drawn into a war, which will be even worse to our mission."

Kotra's mandibles waved indignantly. "You are assuming those... things are sentient! There is no proof of that!"

Marr's amplitude drowned out the argument. "Then let us find some proof. Fryaa, I want your people to catch some of these creatures for study. Kotra, I want a thorough xenobiological investigation. Sator, I need you to see if we can communicate with them.

"They may be vermin; but then again they may be useful to us. If they are sentient, and technological, they can aid us in our struggle against the Caretakers. Even if they are from offworld, we can use them."

We altered assent to the Conqueror's words. Then I said, "Something else has occurred to me, Conqueror. The fungal neural net was reacting very strongly to the presence of those creatures. What if the Manifold is awakening?"

All were silent at that. Kotra said, "It reacts the same way to us now. Before we were only gardeners. We came for maintenance and then left again. The Manifold was left alone most of the time. But now we are here to live. It may not like that. If it wakes... it may try to do something about it."

Rehana seemed uncharacteristically agitated. "Then we will be at the mercy of an entire planet. It is not intelligent enough to reason with..."

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Marr resonated authoritatively. "For now, let us study these interlopers."

***

Standing behind the thick glass plate, I looked at one of the specimens the patrols had captured. It was small and shrivelled, like a Progenitor youngling with more hair and no carapace. A rather horrible specimen, it paced back and forth like a carnivorous beast. Marr stood to my left, and Kotra observed pensively.

The experiment was simple enough. The creature had been starved for several days. Now it had been placed in a sterile room, with several large cubes in it. Food was then placed in a hole near the roof. The reasoning was, if the creature was intelligent, it would use the cubes to climb to the food and eat it.

Only, the specimen was not complying. Every so often, it would turn to the glass and make some incoherent noises. They seemed incapable of alteration, which was why many had already dismissed them as non-sentient; but something about its manner was not quite right for a non-sentient being...

"Is it retarded?" Marr asked.

Kotra thought for a moment. "I don't think so." He paused. "I think... it knows we're watching it."

Of course! That was what was wrong! "Conqueror," I altered, "It's not unintelligent. It's defiant! It's saying, 'I'm not eating for your amusement!' It is intelligent!"

"How can you be so sure?" Marr asked.

After a moment, I said, "I have an idea. If you would follow me?"

Marr, Kotra, and the guards did so. I moved down to another cage, where another interloper was held. Even smaller than the first, this one had about it more curves and longer head hair. Kotra suggested these features might be gender-related. "I'm going in there," I altered. "Alone," I added, as one of the guards moved to follow me. At Marr's quizzical look, I said, "What could it do to me? It's half my size, and I'm armed." An eventual ironic statement - but I'll get to that later.

I opened the cage door and entered cautiously. The creature shrunk away from me, but it seemed to be trying to stand upright, to defy my greater size and power. For a few minutes I stood there, motionless. Then, abruptly, I drew my pistol, armed it, and pointed it directly at the specimen's head.

It screamed and retreated into the corner, where it threw up its hands to protect its face. I looked towards the glass. Though it was a one-way mirror, I had no doubt that Marr and the scientists had observed the creature's reaction. I snapped my pistol's safety catch back on and exited the habitat.

Even Kotra seemed impressed. "It reacted to my weapon," I altered. "There can be no doubt now. They are sentient."

Marr shook his neck approvingly. "Let us return to the command center," he ordered. "There is much to discuss."

As I followed Conqueror Marr back to headquarters, I mused that we had only raised more questions in the lab. What was their purpose? Could we turn them to ours? Could we communicate with them at all?

And if they were sentient, how would they react to the kidnapping of and experimentation on their kin?

***

This chapter of Ballad of a Usurper contains elements from the interlude texts of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri . Those texts are the copyright of Firaxis Games.

**Mr. President** · November 14, 2001, 23:48

Now we're getting into the business end of the story. All my favorite factions are mentioned in this chapter: the Pirates, the Drones, the Spartans; as well as my least favorite faction: the Peacekeepers. It's time to get hostile!

***

Contact

Let me skip ahead somewhat at this point. The first humans we communicated with were from the group spotted near Warrior's Harmony. They unlocked the secret of alteration, though they could only do it with the help of machines; we figured out how to create resonant patterns understandable to them as language. They called themselves Gaians, and claimed as their mission the protection of the Manifold, a phrase that made us shiver in memory of the Caretakers. They professed non-violence, but I could not mistake the intensity and the obsession in their manner. Driven beyond a point, these people would fight, and fight hard.

Deeply interested in our knowledge of the Manifold, they pressed us for more and more information on everything - its ecology, its history, and its operation. We shared what we had, though much of it had passed into the realm of myth. Gradually the Gaians were coaxed into revealing something of their past.

They said they were part of a mission from a nearby planet known as Earth. Our astronomers located its star, and found it to be a normal one, similar in many ways to some Usurper Homeworlds. Yet it had produced lifeforms so different from us. Another puzzle for the xenobiologists. At any rate, the Gaians told us of wars that engulfed their home, like the Succession War, and the flight of refugees to the Manifold - as colonists.

Much agitation was the response to this revelation. Guttren and Rehana were in favor of exterminating the Gaians without mercy, and offering the same to all other humans encountered. Kotra and the biologists wanted to co-exist with them, if only for scientific purposes. I suggested that the humans could be employed to help us find and, if necessary, destroy the Caretakers. As usual, Conqueror Marr had the last word.

"We shall strengthen our own position here on the Manifold," he altered, "and hold it in anticipation of the day when reinforcements shall come. We must make weapons, and forces to defend the Manifold. We shall construct incubators to increase our population of warriors. We shall build towards the day when we can join with the Manifold, or summon our people. And we shall fight to the death to protect our colony, for it is the sole Usurper toehold on this world."

And so it was. Large incubators, the size of tall buildings, were constructed, and with their aid our population increased swiftly. In less than two years, we built Skymaster Base by the sea. After that Honor: Progenitor was founded high atop the Sunny Mesa (as we had taken to calling the northern plateau), followed by Red Stick in the west and Resonance Of Swords and Godhood's Grasp in the east. In this last city we erected a temple to the Manifold, and to the gods that we would become; for our purpose was clear now. There was only one way forward.

Meanwhile, our engineers built roads and farms, and extracted resources from the land to generate wealth and build weapons of war. At the same time, we faced the monumental task of restoring intellectual function to our booming population. Sociological experts warned that within three generations of landing, all our knowledge would be forgotten. A couple of Library Nodule Artifacts left on the planet from eons past still worked, and supplied us with valuable technological plans and information about the Manifold. But still the young Usurpers' minds stagnated.

We also began to piece together the origins of the Gaians and their species. The colonization mission had fragmented, and now at least four factions vied for control of the human race and its future. Deirdre Skye, the Gaian leader, introduced us to the Peacekeeping Forces, led by a man named Pravin Lal who claimed authority over all the planet, and Morgan Industries, a state named after its founder and dedicated to the generation of wealth. CEO Morgan, as the leader of this second entity called himself, was the more agreeable, and agreed to share his knowledge and his maps. Lal was less co-operative, and Marr sent scouts to quietly seek out the ways of his land, in case it should be necessary to fight him.

We ourselves encountered Colonel Corazon Santiago and her Spartan Federation while exploring the mountains in the east for iron. She had little interest in discourse; we signed a non-aggression pact and heard little out of her afterwards. Every so often we would spot one of her rovers or trucks in the east; her followers seemed by far the best-armed and trained of any humans we had yet encountered.

Dastor supervised the construction of ocean-going ships at Skymaster Base; twelve years after our landing, one of her vessels reached another continent. The crew connected our headquarters to that of a man known as Foreman Domai, who claimed to be locked in a brutal war with a group called the Hive. He begged us for assistance; Marr sent in response a shipload of impact rifles for his men. I and others advised against this course of action, but the Conqueror overruled us, citing the chance to win a friend among the humans.

I was supervising the construction of an electrified fence across the main access route to Peacekeeper lands when the message came through. I was ordered back to base. Hurrying into the command center at Honor: Progenitor, I saw Conqueror Marr and the rest of the governmental staff on the screen of the videophone. "Reporting, Conqueror," I panted.

"Glad you made it, Sator," Marr altered. "I need to show you all a recording I just received from the crew of the Impaler." He pressed a control, and the faces of my colleagues were replaced by a misty ocean scene. The Impaler's cameras picked up a ship moving towards them out of the fog, its design clearly human, with a banner depicting a spiky insignia on waves flying from its bow.

But then the cameras turned, and were trained on another vessel, approaching from an angle to the human one. A flash of light - and the transmission died to be replaced with the videophone images.

I had seen enough, though. The second ship could not have been human, and any doubts would have been erased by the emblem on its mast.

A solid sphere within a thin metallic circle, on which were threaded six green circles, all of different sizes.

The emblem of the Caretakers.

**Mr. President** · November 20, 2001, 20:26

Since this story is getting closer to its end, I want to throw out a piece of advice for its readers (if it still has any). And that advice is: if you liked the Ballad, print this thread when it finishes and save it for posterity. Otherwise, it'll fall off the screen and be lost to mankind forever.

***

War

Usually Marr's Ruling Council felt free to speak their mind, and offer opinions and advice to the Conqueror. But for some reason, we were strangely unimaginative at this one. Perhaps it was the shock of finding the Caretakers again, who we had hoped destroyed. Perhaps fate was simply guiding our thoughts that night.

The plan was to deploy a fleet to the region in which the Caretaker vessel had been sighted, seek out their lands, and invade. It seemed simple enough on paper. But when the fleet arrived after three years and enormous expense (several projects were deferred to manufacture impact rifles and small arms), they reported no movement at all, no sign of either the Caretakers or the mysterious human vessel they saw there. We ordered them to keep looking.

Soon after they engaged the Caretakers. Outnumbered and outgunned, we expected the enemy to go down easily. But they lured the battleships into a shallow cove, where coral and rocks accounted for many of our vessels. Then a hidden force appeared on the land, showering the Usurpers with cannon fire and boulders. Once the armed vessels were taken out, the transports were easy prey for the Caretakers' human allies.

In hindsight, I could see the flaws in our tactics. We had no intelligence on the area, as no scouts had thoroughly explored it. We had no idea of the strength of the Caretakers, or of their allies who called themselves Pirates. We did not even know which parts of the map were land and which were sea.

But Marr would hear none of this. Apoplectic, he ordered the raising of a new army, the commissioning of a new fleet, the launch of a new attack on the hated enemy. And so, after a brief lull, the Succession War began again.

I was ordered to oversee the Peacekeeper border, in case any trouble should come from that front. Intercepting human communications, I could hear them talking about "the alien menace" and "caught in the crossfire", and I warned Marr about the possibility of being literally surrounded by hostiles.

But I had a plan. From those same radio broadcasts I had learned of the rivalry between the Spartans and the Peacekeepers. Figuring that any humans fighting each other would have a hard time fighting us, we sought to play these two factions against each other. After an incident in which Lal's men entered Gaian bases to quell riots, Marr whispered in Santiago's ear that she could be next to find her cities invaded by foreign armies. Meanwhile, we provided the Peacekeepers with falsified intelligence reports that the Spartans were planning to attack them.

Within a year they lunging for each other's throats with a ferocity I had not seen since the Beta Agni campaign. The Spartans fired artillery loaded with nerve gas on Peacekeeping forces. In retaliation, Lal ordered the introduction of a biological agent into Spartan crops. The devastation was beyond imagining, even to comrades hardened by the Succession War. There was much in the humans that was like us, and not all of it good; they could be every bit as cruel, as cunning, as deceitful as Progenitors.

The second Caretaker campaign force reported gains against our main enemy and the destruction of two Pirate bases. But we were not ready for the next thrust in the war. The attack on our homeland came not from the U.N., not from the Spartans, not from a stealthy Caretaker fleet sailing up the Blue Sky isthmus to Skymaster Base, but from the peace-loving Gaians.

Rule No. 1 of fighting humans: Watch your back. One minute the Gaian explorers were combing the border for native worms. The next they were firing weapons at our guards, Progenitors were falling, and alarms were sounding all across Usurper territory. The Gaian border was the weakest of our land boundaries, and their armies, using Manifold life forms and their terrifying psychic powers, were nearing the practically undefended Red Stick before we could mount a serious counter-attack. But when we did return the favor, we showed little mercy, pushing deep into Gaian territory before Deirdre Skye called a truce.

I did some investigating and found out that the Gaians had been put up to the attack by the Caretakers. Rehana was furious, and renewed his call for the extermination of Skye and her faction. Reluctantly, I agreed with him. In the end, Marr ordered that we should wait for an appropriate opportunity before eradicating the Gaians.

That chance came soon enough. Rule No. 2 of fighting humans: That non-combatant has a bomb tied to his chest. Well, it was actually about a hundred of them in this case, a spectacular display of suicide warfare I had not seen in years. The personnel carriers rolled towards the Gaian capital.

This time it would prove slightly harder to crush Gaian resistance. There were more suicide warriors, and we suffered significant losses before and during the battle for Gaia's Landing. I remember commanding one wing of the invasion force, the left if I'm not mistaken. First artillery pounded the Gaian city, followed by incendiary packages that turned it into an inferno and filled the air with acrid smoke. Then we showered the rubble with fire from impact rifles. As enemy fire died away, I ordered the troops forward. But no sooner had we entered the city than we were fired on from behind. Taking cover, I looked out to see Gaians creeping through the shadows. Using their resonant signatures to guide our fire, we picked them off. It would be the beginning of three days of savage house-to-house fighting.

We are a warlike race, but I was impressed nonetheless by the resolve and the resourcefulness of the Gaian defenders. They even led us through the sewers, trapping our soldiers at some points with fuel-air explosives and other vicious traps. However, there could only be one outcome to this battle. We must have killed every human being in Gaia's Landing. Our troops seized Lady Deirdre herself as she headed for an escape pod.

Do you know what it looks like (and indeed sounds like) when you plug a human being's nerve endings into a 3-Res field and then turn the power up to maximum? I do, now. Her screams were just noise, not even resonant, but I turned away after the first ten seconds.

**Mr. President** · December 2, 2001, 02:57

The Professor and Mary Ann

I will recap the first fifty years of our occupation of Manifold Six. Scientific progress: little. Wealth: none. Casualties of war: several thousand. Enemy losses: undetermined.

Well, I guess life is not a flower garden.

Sifting through the ruins of Gaia's Landing, the Usurper engineers and scientists found surprisingly much of use. Their Gaian counterparts had developed machinery that converted fungus into edible material. Through these we gained access to a valuable source of food. In addition, their knowledge of the Manifold's ecology was surprisingly advanced. Our meteorology, minerology, and native life-defense was helped to no end.

I also found something interesting in the remnants of the command mainframes. It was the communication frequency for another human group. Many, including myself, were bewildered at the sheer numbers of the humans, but nonetheless we contacted the University immediately.

According to another file poached from the Gaian computers, Professor Zakharov was "wholly devoted to the pursuit of knowledge...Appeals to logic or reason likely successful." I cannot confirm the second part of the sentence, but Zakharov, quite literally, almost cracked when Marr offered him access to some of our technology.

The response was incredible. The first reaction of most humans to the sight of Progenitors was to shoot their guns. By contrast, Zakharov ordered that information be traded in a laissez-faire manner, and even sent some of his people to be shown the Battle Ogre (it had survived the Gaian campaign, and still operated. Unfortunately, we had no way of repairing it) and our other mechanical innovations. Of course, we placed severe limits on what they could see.

Over time we managed to extract valuable knowledge from Zakharov and his men, including data on sophisticated superconductors that Rehana suggested could be weaponized, and interesting theories of matter and energy that looked at the situation in a way no Progenitor ever would have. He also provided us with intelligence on the Caretakers' allies, the Pirates.

Apparently they were led by one Captain Ulrik Svensgaard, a survivalist in the mould of Santiago who wished to live on the sea in peace and isolation. We were giving him precious little of that, though. More and more Pirate prisoners were arriving at Skymaster Base; some we put to work in mines and other lowly industry; more were burned in the Temple as offerings to the Manifold.

Let me diverge for a moment. This last practice much angered the Peacekeeping faction, but it is our way. Among Progenitors, and particularly the Usurpers, little mercy is known for defeated enemies. We do not look on our foes as "like us"; if they were like us they would not be the enemy.

At any rate, we assessed that the University's strength was very little. Our plan was simple: Squeeze every last drop of useful knowledge out of the Professor and his cohorts. Then slaughter them without mercy. Cold? Yes. Sensible in the light of our past experiences? Perfectly. Zakharov showed not the slightest hint of "aversion" to war like Deirdre had.

---

About five years after our first contact with the University of Planet, they gifted us the most important discovery since the destruction of the Bonechewer. A memo arrived from Professor Zakharov that his scouts had discovered a mysterious structure in the north of his territory that appeared superficially to be of Progenitor origin. He offered us the chance to investigate with him. Marr and his entourage, including myself, set off immediately.

A researcher named Mary Ann DeWitt led us personally to the site, all the while talking continuously. She was saying something about her nomination for some sort of recognition based on her research of the mysterious structure, about how its scale and design boggled the mind, about the vast contributions to knowledge it would provide.

But I was not listening, because we were in relatively close range to it and I could feel it.

Progenitors communicate by altering the sound or other resonance around them and forming intelligible structures from it. Six Progenitors in a room would produce a pleasant ringing, for lack of a better term, that could be felt some way away.

But now imagine, not six Progenitors, but six Planets - the alteration raw, unformed, unintelligible, but a thousand million times stronger. It almost knocked me out of the rover's seat, and we were still several miles away.

Now it was in visual range. It was huge by anyone's standards, an enormous green complex reaching for the sky. The effect of millions of years of neglect were clearly visible: some walls had fallen, others were filled with holes, and everything was buried under fungus. In some places resonant conduit lines were still visible, huge curves running across the huge faces. Some moved in tight circles, corresponding to the substance of the complex. Others arched high above, following the magnetic field of the planet. Still more led straight off the surface of the Manifold.

Mary Ann DeWitt had led us to the Manifold Nexus.

**Mr. President** · December 11, 2001, 01:07

The Secrets of the Manifolds

"Great Callia," Dastor was breathless, "can you feel that?"

I could feel it indeed. Wave after wave of resonance washed over us, wild and random, pulsing with the power of an entire planet. I could half-see bizarre shapes beyond description, and colors with no names, but with no true form or location to them.

Entering the Nexus, the feeling was amplified. Each of the vast conduits on the walls pulsed with raw energy. We entered what appeared to be the main chamber. On the floor were six circles, well spaced out around the edges of an imaginary oval. In the center was a small raised platform, and what looked like a lectern on that.

Somewhere we had lost Mary Ann DeWitt, but the party was too engrossed in the chamber to truly notice. Conqueror Marr made his way to a fungus-covered side wall, on which was carved in impressive detail life-size scenes from Progenitor history and myth. Dastor followed one of the conduits along the floor and up another wall, her eyes devouring the powerful resonance emanating from the line. I made my way to the central platform.

Standing up on it, I cast my gaze over the lectern. There were symbols on it, and writing, but the ancient language was incomprehensible to me. On the ends were two panels made of dark glass. Acting on instinct, I placed my hands on them, first the left, then the right.

The thrumming of the Manifold's heartbeat dimmed in my ears, and I heard a voice saying, "What would you like to see?"

Startled, I jumped off the platform. "What is it?" Marr said, moving in my direction.

"It . . . it talked to me, Conqueror," I altered.

"Talked to you?" Marr was confused.

"I put my hands on those panels, and I heard a voice."

Pause. "Try it again," Marr altered, slowly.

Cautiously, I climbed back on the platform. What had we found here? Was it friend or foe? I closed my eyes and put my hands on the glass.

"What would you like to see?" the voice said again.

I heard Marr's sharp intake of breath, and from the look on his face it was clear that he had heard it as well. He was standing within the oval in the middle of the chamber. The Conqueror motioned to Dastor to join him there.

After a moment, I resonated, "Show me the First Manifold."

The resonance over one of the circles shimmered and twisted. Then it formed an image of a planet, with red seas and purple clouds. In the air above the circle it hung, at about the height of a Progenitor's head.

"Do you wish to connect to the First Manifold's Nexus?" the voice asked.

As far as we knew, the First Manifold was still held by Caretaker forces. Marr motioned no. I said to the Nexus, "No. Show me instead Manifold Five."

The familiar site of the Fifth Manifold in the Rigel system appeared above a circle behind Conqueror Marr. "Connect me to the Fifth Manifold Nexus," I ordered.

Now I could see, contained within an invisible square where the planet had appeared, a chamber much like the one we were standing in. Two Progenitors moved along a wall, studying the conduits and writing down notes. Could they see us? Only one way to find out.

"Hello?" I shouted, and was surprised at the echoing and distant quality to my voice. "Can you hear me?"

The males in the projection started, and looked about them for the source of the sound. "Can you hear me?" I said again.

Now they were squinting directly out of the image as we saw it. "Yes, we can hear you," one of them said. "Where are you?"

Marr shook his neck, indicating I should continue. "We're on the Sixth Manifold."

Their reaction was incredulous. "The Sixth Manifold?"

"Yes, the Sixth Manifold."

"Truly?" They turned aside for a moment, talking among themselves. "Tell Central Command," one said, and his companion ran out of the room. "Who are you?"

"My name is Thrall Commander Sator Hunarro, under Conqueror Marr, formerly of the Bonechewer."

"The Bonechewer? Wasn't that ship lost with all hands fifty years ago?" the male asked.

So I explained to him the situation, how we had engaged H'minee and her Caretakers in a battle of mutual destruction, how we had landed on the planet and established a toehold, and something of the human wildcards. "Do you still have the telemetry data on our voyage?" I asked.

"I'm not sure," the male replied. His picture was beginning to blur and fade, and I told him so. Quickly he said, "You'll need to make a beacon of some kind. We might be able to find the sector, but without a beacon we won't be able to pinpoint the Manifold's exact location."

I thanked him profusely and lifted my hands, terminating the connection. Stepping down from the dais, I stood with Marr and Dastor in silence as the significance of what we had done began to sink in.

The end of the Succession War was in sight.

**Mr. President** · December 28, 2001, 03:26

Crimson Sunrise

"So. How do you find our take on sea farming, Professor Zakharov?"

The human leaned out over the water, gazing down at the tangled mass of calorie-rich plants at Skymaster Base's aquafarm. Conqueror Marr and myself had taken him there, ostensibly in the interests of open access to technology. He did not even notice how quiet and isolated the area was, and that we had eased him away from his bodyguards.

"Fascinating," Zakharov replied. He turned to me, and I glanced meaningfully towards Marr. "I'm curious about one thing, Sator. How do you deal with the -"

He never finished the sentence. Marr stepped forward, positioning himself behind Zakharov and slightly to the land side. One shot from the Conqueror's laser pistol silenced the Professor forever. His body toppled over the metal railing to hit the water with a loud smacking sound.

We looked down on the human's remains. "Leave him," said Marr. "It'll be a treat for the Sealurks."

***

Throughout University territory, Zakharov's people were waking to a crimson sunrise. Usurper special forces were entering the cities and beelining straight for the crucial areas: fuel depots, military bases, governmental facilities, and computer centers. The first two were destroyed with heavy explosives. The latter were entered, with care taken to not damage the mainframes. Their security seals were broken, their contents compressed onto disks to be transported back to headquarters. At the end of the third day, there was nothing left of the University but damaged cities and around a hundred thousand confused and desperate people.

As the colony's communications officer, I had a front row seat on the operation. It was my job to operate the central board and help co-ordinate the attacks. I also overheard the shocked reactions of the other human factions. But they had much more shock yet to come.

Our present for the Peacekeepers was slightly more subtle. Infiltrators slipped chemicals into the rivers and lakes. The death toll was unimaginable. The special forces returned one last time to Peacekeeper lands, to strip their communications equipment and energy grids. We would need a huge amount of power for the project planned.

With the survivors of the Gaian faction, now calling themselves the Cult of Planet, tearing at the Morganites, and the Spartans cowed by the scale of our assault, the time was come for our plan. Using a combination of our own equipment and machinery scavenged from various human sources, we constructed a resonant transducer. It was rather unimpressive; the variety of sources contributing parts ensured that it looked like nothing ever built by Progenitors before.

Its power drain was huge, however. Marr ordered a general energy conservation program across Usurper lands. Meanwhile, the situation deteriorated, even as help rushed (we hoped) through space towards us. The Caretakers began to fight back on their continent. We sent an invasion force to Sparta's outpost of Fort Legion, only to find it empty. Much to our horror, the base was empty because it was booby-trapped. And not with ordinary booby traps either. The army was caught in a nuclear explosion.

We had had no indication that humans were anywhere near a weapon of this type. The potential now existed for our toehold to be completely eradicated, before reinforcements ever came.

"Crush them now," ordered Marr. "We can't wait for the fleet to get here."

He was right. Analysis suggested the Spartans were building more nuclear weapons, and methods to deliver them by aircraft or missile.

***

The Spartan war was not going well. Crouching in a trench outside Sparta Command at Conqueror Marr's side, I was despairing of ever winning defeating not only the Spartans but also the Caretakers. Seventeen years after we landed on H'minee's continent, our last forces left in tatters.

Then it happened.

It was a beautiful sight to the eyes of a castaway.

The atmosphere split and a wave of magnetic energy washed over the Manifold, shaking me to the bone.

Then I saw the shapes of Usurper space cruisers descending through a shimmering haze, towards Courage: To Question.

Other soldiers had seen it too, and they were cheering and dancing, paying little heed to sporadic Spartan fire. My strength expended, I could only shake my neck with grim approval.

The cavalry was here.

**Mr. President** · December 30, 2001, 01:09

Epilogue: Twirling Towards Freedom

For a century Manifold Six has been the sole possession of the Usurpers.

The horror of the Succession War ended forever, I have a chance now to think back on what has been. By anyone's standards I was successful. Conqueror Marr, now Governor Marr, still has my ear. Wealth and power beyond imagining are mine.

But still I wonder what might have been, if that refugee ship from Santanni had not crashed so long ago. What would I have been? In what world could that have happened?

Quantum physics suggests that there are indeed many worlds, that each decision and random event spawns a shadow universe that exists in a different space-time from ours. Perhaps there is indeed such a world somewhere: a world with no Succession War, where the Empire never fell, where Marr and H'minee are police officers or shopkeepers and Fractal Power still lies under Santanni's suns.

But even if there is such a world, I could not live there. I am as much a product of this universe as this universe is a product of me. Just as I would not be Sator Hunnaro if I was a female, I would not be the same Progenitor if my past had been different.

It is academic anyway, for today is the first day of the future. Three hours after mid-day (twenty minutes from now), we are to join with the Manifold.

I don't pretend to understand the process. All I have to do is stand in front of the transponder, and the rest will just . . . happen. Putting on my dress uniform, I feel more than a hint of trepidation. What will happen when I Transcend? No-one has done this before, so there is no information on what lies on the other side. Will I find godhood, or oblivion?

Now we are in the courtyard, and the machine is powering up. A great black monolith it is, its resonance washing over us like a flood. Lights are beginning to flash on its face. The room seems to be spinning.

Suddenly it seems as though I am outside myself. I look down and I am falling to the ground. Strangely, I feel no fear. Upwards I move, until I am miles above Skymaster Base. I can see the surrounding farmlands, criss-crossed by magtubes, like a relief map.

Still higher I rise, until I reach the edges of the Manifold's atmosphere. I look up, and see stars. I look down, and the velvet seas and white clouds shine below me.

Now I am not moving, but something still seems to be changing. There are colors without name, and shapes beyond description. On my right I see the aurora. If I try, I can make out individual particles dancing in the Manifold's upper atmosphere. Beyond that are Planet's two suns. The violent nuclear reactions at their heart cause my being - whatever that is - to vibrate. It is a truly wondrous sensation.

I can't help but think of the humans, now extinct. Where are they now? Are they experiencing something like this? It is beyond my faculties to know.

But I can see something else, something truly incredible. I can see the true nature of time, bane even of Emperors and Conquerors since before memory. Time is not a current in water; we move between moments frozen, and we feel that motion as hours and minutes.

Looking back, I can see all the moments of the universe. I feel the fiery birth of the cosmos, the crash of the Bonechewer, the thrumming of the Manifold Nexus as the University rover carried me towards it. Looking forward, there is an ordered chaos, emptiness with purpose, brimming with potentiality.

I am moving again, feeling the universe around me rewind like a watchvid. There is no space, there is no time, there is nothing outside my field of vision.

Then I see it again.

The light of the two suns is joyful, but that is nothing compared to what I see next.

I rush through puffy white clouds, into clear air and gentle winds. One of the moons is visible, more beautiful than I remembered. The waves lap gently at the land, smoke rises gently from the city of Fractal Power.

. . . free . . .

The End

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Ballad of a Usurper

Ballad of a Usurper

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