Goddess of the Galacticide Episode 40 - A Reality Was Chosen

Episode 40

The rain had stopped, but the mission still felt doomed.

Linuka Omga’s gaze followed the disappearing streaks of water on the Sentinel craft’s cockpit window. The cloud layer above the capital city broke, revealing the starlit palace below.

Linuka had envisioned this mission well-prepared, well-rehearsed, with contingency plans. The attack on the last diin colony had all that, and still nearly turned into a disaster when the fighting started. Cha Dzeeny had been adamant about keeping Linuka off the platform on the improvised assault shuttle. The small unit craft she was riding on carried palace guard transponders and would not be targeted by air defenses if an alarm was triggered.

Despite his assurances, Cha Dzeeny had doubts about mission success, and most certainly instructed his former fellow guards to break formation and to get her back to the Chéé at the first sign of trouble.

We need your focus, Shaajis; he had pleaded. The exposed platform is too noisy, too windy, and too distractive. He wasn’t wrong, but it forced her to ride with strangers. The royal guards Cha Dzeeny had recruited were even more reverend than the marines. This group had kneeled before her, like they had for her late mother, customary after Sya Omga fulfilled the Shaaj jetsem and ascended to godlike status. Revered Shaajis this, revered Shaajis that. Linuka didn’t trust them, not like the marines who readied for the ground assault a few ship-length away, braving the chilling air on the shuttle’s open platform.

She should be more grateful to these men and women of the guard, agreeing to not only provide intel for their plan but assign two of their own craft to make their formation look more legitimate. Linuka asked for a lot of faith in her designs and plans, but struggled to give it.

“Revered Shaajis,” said the pilot, “we are approaching the landing zone. We passed the no-fly zone challenges; no alert triggered.”

She clenched her fist. No time to beat herself up about lack of faith. She nodded gently. “Thank you.” She forgot the callsign of the pilot. “Very much.”

Focus! This mission felt like taking the worst out of the Tẽlchi canyon drop and faking their way into the Levy Fleet, but without the preparation. Her abilities had supported these assaults, augmented the marines’ training and abilities. Here, everything relied on her way of bending the multiverse.

Linuka inhaled sharply, hissing, lungs almost bursting. The slow release dulled her senses, made way for the vague suggestions of alternate worlds coming into focus, branching before her mind, tricking her eyes into seeing what else could be.

The plans Cha Dzeeny brought, Linuka’s childhood memories, her tutors’ tales of the palace, all coming together into a picture with distorted depth, the human mind’s shortcut to perceiving time as a place. The framing of the picture was fuzzy, confusing, flashing, in motion, the myriad of fringe realities vying for her attention. The center was clear, and personal: Vriishany Omga.

Linuka had met the girl only once; she held her hand, their world lines touched and tangled. Vriishany would be Linuka’s projector for a reality of a smooth operation, an easy victory, an effortless freeing of her last kin.

Vriishany observed their four craft approaching with surprising clarity. She had to be in a windowed room facing the water gardens. Her emotions ran from calm to panicked, but all of her were there.

“She’s… in… ”

Speaking out loud into the one reality took effort.

“Water Garden Hall.”

“Yes, revered Shaajis,” said the pilot. “Updated landing zone, Water Gardens, hall entrance.”

Some conversation followed: callsigns, orders, but Linuka’s mind got swept away once more.

She focused on a calm Vriishany. None of the calm Vriishanys ventured outside. They have to storm the hall to get to her. Most Vriishanys got ordered to follow someone. Got ordered to their secure quarters. The voices differed. Some composed and short. Others were pleading and tense. We should go to your secure quarters, my Shaajis. There it was. The aloofness, the superiority unused to challenge, the unplanned. Vrra Pommee, Assembly Member.

If he got the Shaajis into the access tunnel system in the adjacent realities, they’d have to access the fringes, where uncontrolled weirdness blurred predictable outcomes. Linuka picked a hesitant Vrra Pommee, concerned about the approaching ships, confused by hearing no alarms, distracted by the inaction of the Assembly-staffed guards in the gardens. A Vrra Pommee believing he was in a reality where the Garden Hall used to be a free-standing building, not connected to the main palace. There were no doors for this Vrra Pommee to send Vriishany through. This Assembly Member had an unfamiliar sensation crawling up his esophagus: dread.

His mind believed he was trapped. The mind sets one’s reality, not the universe.

Flat cracks. Hypersonic rounds. Fire exchanged. The marine’s fire overwhelmed the unprepared guards in the garden. A wide-open area, hard to defend. The Marines would have no casualties. Another metallic crack. A jolt unbalanced her. The craft had landed. A reality was chosen.

Linuka rose. Back and forth conversation, fuzzy excitement. She unhooked her protective torso, flipped it open and dropped it on the floor. Boots and suit trousers were next. What is she doing? Hushed voices. The side door slid open. We’re ready, revered Shaajis.

Her mother, Sya Omga, wore the legendary Shroud of Shaaj during her triumphant return to Dziilaa Sok and stunned the hundreds of thousands filling the streets with a blinding spectacle. Linuka wore the government-issued sleepwear from the Assembly moon apartment and walked across the embattled palace gardens barefoot.

She’d face the Assembly agent as herself. This was her reality. She made the rules.

She saw the six humans inside the hall before the garden doors slid open. Stale air wafted into Linuka’s face. The pale Assembly Member didn’t care for the outside and kept the child prisoner in a controlled environment.

“Guards, take aim! Not one step closer!”

Vrra Pommee. Ordering royal guards, whose loyalty he never had, whose control he lost passes ago.

Linuka looked at the four guards, the personal detachment to the Shaajis, the last line of defense in all of Aloo Dash.

“Please wait outside.” Her voice sounded cold, alien to herself.

The guards obeyed her without hesitation, shouldering their weapons and marching past the intruder through the door.

Vrra’s emotions radiated like a beacon, his world line ensnared in this reality he could not comprehend. Anger, he wanted to raise his fist in rage. She didn’t let him. In this reality, the Assembly Member would just stand there, paralyzed.

“Yelling is not polite, Assembly Member.” Linuka’s taunt pushed against his will, securing silence while she walked toward him.

She had never met the man, neither here nor in other adjacent realities, but he recognized her face. His bottomless confusion mixed with panic.

“Don’t fight it,” said Linuka. “If a weak mind believes it is trapped and paralyzed, then it is.”

“It’s you!” said Vriishany. “You’re back!” The girl seemed excited and ran toward Linuka, wrapping her in a hug.

The two Omgas’ world lines touched for the second time. New possibilities formed. Linuka had despised the little pretender when the coup had replaced her with a silly young girl, but later she realized her mother’s sister had been an asset for someone’s agenda at any moment from her ill-conceived birth. Just like Linuka, but without a loving father to protect her.

“Yes, I’m back, said Linuka. “Didn’t they tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“About the adventure.” A simple promise for a child. One she could keep—for good or bad.

“No, they told me you were in retirement.”

Linuka Omga looked at Vrra. “Oh, you naughty Assembly Members and your secrets.” Eat some of your condescending nreedz.

“But in this case, I’m glad they didn’t spoil it for you. I was… retired for a while, but only to get better. Now we can finally leave and travel together.”

“An adventure!” The girl beamed. She held up her hand, ready to lead away to new excitement. Then she stopped.

“What’s wrong?” asked Linuka Omga.

“Shouldn’t I be the one taking you on an adventure? I mean, I am your aunt. That’s what they told me. Shouldn’t an aunt take her…”

“Niece.”

“Yes, her niece on an adventure?”

Linuka Omga wrinkled her forehead, then smiled back. “I think you’re right. But people would think it strange if they saw us on our adventure. Most people’s aunts are older than they are themselves. How about we travel as sisters?”

“Sisters,” said Vriishany. “I’d like that.”

She took her hand, and they left for the gardens. Reaching the doorframe, Linuka turned around and gave Vrra an icy stare.

“Give my best to Assembly Member Rrupteemaa and tell him I shall reach out to him soon.”

Goddess of the Galacticide continues on this website with new episodes each Tuesday.

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