Goddess of the Galacticide Episode 42 - Bury the Dead

Episode 42

Vriifaach Deegb’s worst fear came true.

The Briir bottle stirred on the post-distiller, his feet put up on the auto-adjusting lounge chair and the daily news projection from the Assembly world turning the living room into the Assembly chamber plaza. A ring at the front door. Old and dissonant, the chime announced the unannounced: surprise company, the bane of peace in this galaxy.

His wife entered the living room. “Vrii. There you are. You have visitors.”

“It’s Zmaam-day.”

His wife looked at the post-distiller, its whirring noise winding down after Vriifaach had turned it off.

“It doesn’t look like you were planning to acknowledge Zmaam.”

“On the contrary, it’s her day, and she’s probably working overtime with all those prayers coming her way. She and I were going to have a sip of calming distillate.”

“That’s blasphemy.”

He sighed. “Who’s at the door?”

“Two lovely young women. They claim to be the Shaajis of Aloo Dash and the daughter of Kel Chaada.”

“Right. Of course! I assume the ghost of Mnazkash the Subjugator dropped them off.”

His wife didn’t smile. She seemed serious about her statements, but how could she be?

“You know what’s blasphemy? Interrupting a man’s quiet evening with outlandish claims. Especially since Kel Chaada, EsChiip’s most famous son, was just declared dead today.”

“Hello”, said a child’s voice.

The girl standing in the wide door frame of the Deegb family’s home looked exactly like in the news reports. Reports about the religious leader of Aloo Dash canceling several of her public appearances because of health concerns. The girl in Vriifaach’s house looked quite healthy.

“Vriishany!” A young woman appeared behind the girl. “I’m so sorry. She doesn’t understand the concept of private property yet. She’s not been outside her own home for a while and assumes all buildings are hers to explore.”

“Don’t you worry, my little shugreekfe,” Vriifaach heard his wife say. “Make yourselves at home. I’ll leave you in the hands of my husband, maybe not a capable host, but a talented lawyer. Vrii, these ladies have business to discuss.”

Vriifaach stared after his wife, leaving him with the visitors, having called the Shaajis of Aloo Dash ‘sweetheart’.

He didn’t have any Briir yet, but he felt lightheaded. “Please, take a seat, my—” He shook his head. “What is the plural of Shaajis?”

“Call me Linuka. We need your legal expertise.”

Vriifaach sat down. “I represented Kel Chaada before a military tribunal, which used to be my specialty.” The younger girl wiggled her legs and stared at him as if awaiting a story of daring solar sailor legends. “I don’t know if I can help you.”

“You are the only lawyer we know,” said the young Shaajis.

Vriifaach gave her a smile. “Well, I was hoping you came here because I was the best.”

His wife rolled her eyes when re-joining the group, carrying select sweet and salty juices. “Two drinks for the lovely ladies, and one for the funny lawyer.”

Linuka chuckled. “Sorry, Master Deegb, I would have phrased it differently, but Vriishany has a close relationship to the unfiltered truth. And that’s why I want her to join the Assembly.”

Vriifaach almost dropped the drink his wife had handed him. “The Assembly? You must know that you cannot simply—“ The Shaajis gone missing. Kel Chaada’s daughter sought him out the moment they declared her father dead. “I see. The young lady is to fill your father’s Assembly seat, which is now vacant.”

“The problem is,” said Linuka, “that she is not a citizen of EsChii. How can we work around this?”

Vriifaach almost let himself slump back in his cushioned seat, then remembered the wiggly girl was indeed his head of state, too. He cleared his throat. “The news reports earlier stated Kel Chaada was still an E EsChii; local contributors mentioned it proudly several times. But even as a family member she cannot simply inherit your father’s citizenship.”

Linuka Omga glanced at the young Shaajis. “She would need to be my father’s child?”

“I am her aunt,” said the girl. “But people would think it strange if they saw us on our adventure. We are sisters now.”

Linuka touched Vriishany’s face gently. “My drink is too salty. I should have picked a sweeter one, like you. Could you find the nice lady and ask her for one, please?”

The girl jumped up. “Sure. You could have mine, but I drank too fast.” She skipped into the hallway. A moment of truth was coming.

“She’s a clone,” said Linuka.

What? “I thought she was cryo stored at some point before being brought to term. She is quite young, like she had been preserved for a generation. Why would she be a clone?”

Linuka sighed. “The original Vriishany Omga wasn’t stillborn, nor did Vnaas remove her from succession because she was female. These are the official lies. She was aborted because she had severe genetic defects and my loving grandfather didn’t want to be bothered by an imperfect successor. Some crazy Krrugze Darrtuzke mystics saved and stored her body to save the continuity of the ancestral bloodline. Later, they created a clone free of genetic abnormalities, and the Assembly presented her as the true Shaajis.”

Vriifaach shook his head. The Shaajis of Aloo Dash is an embryonic derivative? Did the living room feel too hot?

“Would you like a Briir? I need a drink.”

He turned the post-distiller back on.

“Lady Omga, I don’t ask about personal reasons, like why would you push for your replacement of questionable ethical background to become even more powerful, so I’ll leave you with the bleak legal assessment: In order for Vriishany Omga to have any chance to benefit from Kel Chaada’s Assembly vacancy, she would have to be an EsChii citizen. To inherit citizenship, she needs to be his legal child.”

“How does this help? He’s too dead to adopt her.”

“No, he cannot,” said Vriifaach. “But you can.”

Linuka Omga looked at the Briir bottle, as if re-considering his offer. “I’m listening.”

“In the olden days of the Reclamation, pretty much everything was legal about human cloning. Survivors who had spent generations on flimsy solar sails were riddled with health issues caused by cosmic radiation. So-called contingent biological reserves, or contingency clones, were common for replacement surgeries.”

Linuka shuddered.

“The post-Galacticide was a wild time, Lady Omga. EsChiip appears civilized now, but it was considered the frontier just three generations ago. Many frontier laws are still written in the Nominate charter. Including the cloned-kin law.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Many people took pity on their medical backups, especially once they saw them, and didn’t want these perfect versions of themselves being cut up for parts. The cloned-kin law gave the contingency clones a path to full personhood by way of adoption into the family.”

“I want a family,” said Vriishany Omga, approaching to hold a tall drinking container into Linuka’s face. “Here is your drink. It is sweet this time. People in the palace were mostly nice. But they were not family.”

“No, they weren’t, Vriishany,” said Linuka. “We’re just talking about how to make you my real sister.”

“Oh, that is exciting! Real sisters! How are we going to do that?”

Vriifaach forgot to ask Linuka Omga one crucial question while he had the opportunity: did Vriishany Omga know she was a modified construct?

“Yes, we believe we found a solution. You’re special, my… Shaajis. And there is a law that can make special people family.”

Linuka threw him a grateful smile.

“There remains one problem,” said Vriifaach. “While this would make the young lady eligible for Kel Chaada’s seat, it doesn’t guarantee it. The adoption would make her only as eligible as any other Wel Edge Regency citizen. The planet Prral, and its Honored Ground ruins, make the political entity eligible to send someone to the Assembly. But it doesn’t have to be Vriishany. A family relationship to the discoverer of the Honored ruins might be a factor in the eye of the public, but not a binding constraint for the government.”

Linuka pondered. “This cloned-kin law is an old law, you said? Does the Regency recognize other archaic laws?”

“If there had been no compelling reason to change it, yes. Some of the laws might pre-date the Galacticide.”

The older Omga girl smiled. “Then my family needs to become citizens of Prral.”

That made no sense. “Prral, Lady Omga? The world is an unincorporated territory of the Regency. There is no citizenship to be had. It would have to be colonized first.”

“How do you colonize a planet?” asked Vriishany.

Linuka laid her arm around her future sister. “The same way humans have always known that a new world is theirs. By burying their dead.”

Click here for next episode

---

Copyright © 2026 Bert Oliver Boehmer. All rights reserved. No part of this serialized novel may be reproduced, reposted, or distributed in any form without the prior written permission of the author. The creation of any derivative works (including translations, adaptations, or other transformations) is likewise prohibited without permission. The use of any portion of this material for training or developing artificial intelligence or other machine learning models is strictly forbidden.