The Fall of the Rule
Synopsis The Fall of the Rule is a story with an ensemble cast of characters living in two distinct periods of time.
The past story revolves around the fall of the Empire, whose ruling class maintains order through passive, sleep-based telepathic abilities. The Ruling class has no idea their government has been infiltrated at the highest levels by an ancient enemy. The fall is brought about intentionally by the Empress, though the destruction of her people is the last thing she wants. A prisoner in her own mind, she would stop the fall if she was actually in control of her actions.
The collapse of the Empire shapes the present story. That story revolves around a telepathically gifted young woman named Rhenia and takes place more than a century after the downfall of the Empire. Rhenia’s adoptive father has taken great pains to keep the true nature of her abilities secret. She is more than just a telepath with passive power. She can actively control her mental abilities, something that was as forbidden in the old Empire as it is on her home planet. In order to protect her, Rhenia’s father sends her away on a mission to a distant world. As the story progresses, Rhenia comes to know danger her father seeks to protect her from. The Empire fell but it never died. The hidden enemy who brought it to its knees hunts her. Her liberty and her very freedom of thought are in danger.
1 || Traitors
Produc’Cha Imperial Year 904 (138 years after the Fall)
The Third Timeline
The Planet Quatelldron
As recorded by Rhenia Cambrige Inefir
Say what you will about my adoptive father, but don’t call him evil. He wasn’t. He wasn’t a bad man, though he could be cold. He found himself in the difficult position of being a leader on a world hell-bent on conquest. He didn’t want a galaxy of slaves. He didn’t create the problem, but instead came into the story late. People were going to die. Any resistance ensured that. It is true that my father’s machinations caused deaths, but I’d say he’s responsible for saving many more lives. I think the Carians and K’Toc would agree with me. Without him the Outer Command would have destroyed their fleets and bombarded their worlds. I’ve heard that some people doubt that, especially where Alpha Car is concerned. The Carians are human, they tell me. They too were created by the Old Masters. Produc’Cha, Quatelldron, Meli, Carians, we’re all of the same origins. Those people will tell you that only the Pitirinate were in danger. I can tell you those people are wrong. I saw that much in Nariaesi’s dreams. The Command feared the Carians as much as they wanted to conquer the non-telepathic humans of the Pitirinate Republic.
My adoptive father did what he did not for personal gain or power. He made his plans because he loved his world and wanted it to be free. He wanted me to be safe. He didn’t want me to have to fight. He didn’t want me to be a weapon. He knew what I was from the beginning and he certainly knew the threats both I and Quatelldron faced. You might call his actions a necessary evil. I’ll disagree with you. That’s why I agreed to write this, even when my adoptive father refused to participate.
When I agreed to help my husband Kel write down the history of the Collective War and the Fall of the Empire, I lobbied we start our narrative with the story of my adoption. His plan was to put it all down in chronological order, but due to the nature of this history I don’t think that is the best approach. We could have written this any number of ways, and certainly my adoption isn’t the beginning. Because of who Nariaesi was and because of who I became in her absence, I think my adoption was a pivotal moment. The day Diant Cambrige adopted me was the day his life changed. It was the day Quatelldron and all of the Dark Quadrant changed. The narrative of this history was fundamentally altered because of it.
Dad (I’m not going to keep calling him my adoptive father) recounted this particular story for me, eventually. It took some prodding, but I can be convincing and I really wanted to know. It didn’t blackmail him, not again. I only did that the one time. I’m not ashamed of having threatened my father once upon a time. He was always played hardball and he taught me everything he knew. Convincing Dad to let me have a chance with Kel was a much more difficult thing than getting him to tell me this little part of the story. He doesn’t like to talk about his role in the war, but that’s nothing compared to how he felt about me dating a Carian.
After some tea, bargaining, and a little bit of begging, I got Dad to talk. I already knew my adoption occurred in the year 904 PCIY. It was the details that I wanted from him. Back then he was freshly returned from his second major diplomatic assignment and had just turned 30 years old. He’d spent the previous three years as part of the Quatelldronian diplomatic mission on Nektoc. Considering how much the Quats and the K’Toc hated each other, why we even attempted an embassy on Nektoc back then is beyond me. I was surprised to learn that the embassy my Dad was part of wasn’t the first attempt by Quatelldron to set up a relationship with the K’Toc, but it proved to be a dramatic failure (and also a success, but no one on Quatelldron besides my father really knew so at the time), though not at first. All told the first three years were actually very successful. A dialog of sorts had been established between the head Quatelldronian diplomat and the K’Toc Segmentation. Dad thinks the whole thing was a ruse to let the Outer Command spy on the K’Toc, but if nothing else it did give him a chance to make some connections.
My father was Quatelldron’s second man on Nektoc, a mid-level member of the Diplomatic Corps. I’ve tried to imagine how he fitted in on Nektoc but I’ve never been able to. Dad isn’t very tall, well under six feet, so I guess he must have looked particularly short next to even the shortest of the K’Toc. Though not tall, my father is a very good looking man. He’s always kept his hair well-trimmed and it was black back then. His smooth features stand out in the company of humans. With the height issue he must have looked quiet string to our rough leather-faced alien friends.
Dad’s superior was a man named Ellias Denfor. He was tall where Dad was short. His face had dried skin from too much time outside in Quatelldron’s harsh sunlight. I guess he was generally competent but also had a very quiet alcohol problem. Most of the staff on Nektoc didn’t know about it, but Dad certainly did. If you know Diant Cambrige at all you know he doesn’t usually surround himself by people like Denfor. Denfor had issues and he didn’t belong in an off-world posting, especially not one as sensitive as Nektoc. My Dad has always wanted people working with him who were at the top of their game. Dad said Denfor could barely make himself presentable for company, much less get any real diplomacy done. Unfortunately the man had connections that kept him in his position. Dad never was able to determine if Denfor was an agent of the Outer Command, but he told me that if the man was it was just as well he died when the K’Toc attacked the embassy. Denfor’s actions lead to a heating of relations that the Command did not want. Dad is sure they would have eliminated Denfor for doing so.
Denfor wasn’t the only one who died at the embassy. Most of the staff were killed during the K’Toc raid. Denfor was holding a card game at the embassy that day with some of his cronies and some K’Toc dignitaries. K’Toc have a fascination with games of chance and they enjoy playing with humans because they find our reactions interesting. I don’t know how else to say it. Interesting or exciting or unpredictable. I don’t know. I know card games helped break the ice between the Carians and the K’Toc and Denfor had adopted the Carian practice of gaming with the K’Toc to help strengthen ties between Quatelldron and Nektoc. He’d held a number of private little events frequently. During that last game Denfor somehow managed to anger a highly ranked K’Toc who was playing.
If you’ve ever seen a K’Toc angry, I hope you were smart enough to run away. They are tall and they are strong. Their double pupils tend to turn a bit red when they are heated up and they flex their hands in a way that make the spikes on their knuckles click together. I’ve seen first hand what the Outer Command’s vanguard did with Nariaesi in command at Pitirinon, and I find that less scary than an angry K’Toc. How Denfor managed to kill one defies description.
There was no way to cover up what happened. The K’Toc was high enough up in the Segmentation to have his own security detail. What’s more, those who rise to the high ranks of the Segmentation are somewhat revered by their people, especially those in their extended family. He had followers with him. Dad says he was the head of one of their major groups of families, probably one of the top two or three K’Toc alive. One of the most important K’Toc in the Segmentation died at our embassy at the hands of our head diplomat. This occurred in front of witnesses after Denfor accused of the K’Toc of cheating. Though almost certainly inebriated, he managed to draw a weapon he wasn’t supposed to have at a party and shoot his guest in the head. The death enraged the K’Toc.
Dad was a few kilometers away at the time. He and the few staffers who weren’t present were the only members of the diplomatic mission to survive the K’Toc mob that descended on our embassy. He’d used his time well there and had friends who were willing to hide him. Those individuals quietly helped Dad to negotiate an exit from Nektoc. He and the few other survivors were gone before the fires in the Embassy were completely burned out and long before the K’Toc figured out that they hadn’t killed every member of its staff.
Three days later Dad was back home on Quatelldron. A week passed as he settled in and monitored the fallout. A day before my adoption he was called to meet with the Quatelldronian Ambassador, Tomas Jelior. Ambassador was the title of the leader of the entire Quatelldronian Mandate. Though not completely his own master, the Ambassador wielded considerable power over number of worlds. That power was originally granted by the old Imperial Charter when the Empire was formed. During those early years, it was clear that not all the Mornelectis-strain telepaths wanted to be part of the Empire’s new telepathic Rule. The Treaty of Courteise, named for the first Emperor, gave Quatelldron independence from the Rule. The Treaty prevented what would have been a costly civil war that Emperor Courteise didn’t want while he was busy trying to consolidate power. The Ambassador was technically answerable to the Empire, but Imperial policy was to leave Quatelldron alone as long as it kept quiet. The Ambassador was meant to be both leader and liaison back to the Imperial capital on the planet Produc’Cha. It was hardly ever the latter, but the title Ambassador was kept even after the Empire fell eight centuries later.
Dad still remembers his trip to the government center clearly. It was a cloudy day, a somewhat unusual occurrence on Quatelldron. Quat is a temperate world, though it tends to be a bit on the warm side. Clouds are usually the harbinger of very heavy rains and they are only seen a few times each year. My father took them as an ill omen. He already knew the incident on Nektoc was a disaster. The K’Toc were arming for war. As the ranking surviving officer of our embassy he expected to take the blame. If he had been simply removed from service and jailed he would have considered himself lucky.
My father sat quietly as Ambassador Jelior detailed the situation. The K’Toc fleet was mobilizing along the border. Several Quat commercial ships near the border had been reported missing in the last two days. So far Quatelldron had not responded at all. The Ambassador didn’t want a war with the K’Toc, or so he told my father. The real truth of the matter was that the Ambassador’s masters weren’t ready to deal with the K’Toc yet.
The K’Toc are one of the few alien species humanity has encountered in the Alaxal galaxy or elsewhere. The Origin probably have a catalog of them, but we only know of a few. The K’Toc are humanoid, though lizard-like with bony chests and rough leathery skin that ranges from orange hues to green. Their chests are similar to the human backbone, a large set of bones running down the front of their torso. They have flat faces without noses and breath through slits in their cheeks. Their oxygen requirements are higher than ours, meaning when you meet one on a human world they are often wearing a breathing apparatus of some sort. They are also masters of the MindLink, a combination of their telepathy and artificialintelligence. They don’t use it to share minds the way many human telepaths do. Instead, they use it to make incredibly efficient machines and to communicate with them.
The MindLink made the K’Toc a threat to Quatelldron. They were known to be able to disrupt enemy tech from a distance and were rumored to be able to take over enemy ships outright. The best of their MindLinkers could cut through computer security systems in minutes or seconds. We had some defenses against the MindLink and our navy was both larger and more advanced. The temporal drive was a particular advantage, giving us speed over interstellar distances the K’Toc couldn’t come close to. That said, the Ambassador knew victory against Nektoc was not guaranteed. Jelior believed the K’Toc would cross into Quatelldronian territory and attack within a month, maybe sooner.
Ambassador Jelior was facing a war he and his masters didn’t want to fight. He was already sending troops and ships to the Quatelldron-Nektoc border, because whether or not he wanted a war, Quatelldron had to be protected. He needed a solution to stop that war and he’d decided my father was the man to supply it. To his surprise, Dad was commended by Ambassador Jelior for managing to talk his way off K’Toc. Jelior was impressed with my father’s quick thinking and ability to make use of assets. In spite of Denfor’s inability to do more than host card games, my father had forged real connections with a race of aliens we barely shared a common language with. He’d managed to not only escape but to save several other people from our embassy when the K’Toc were out for any Quatelldronian blood they could find.
Instead of punishing my father, Jelior thought to make use of his talents. He tasked my father with using his connections on Nektoc to avoid a war. With that task came a promotion to the upper echelons of the government. Jelior offered Dad a senior position on his staff, answering only to the Ambassador himself. My father told me he never would have taken the job if he’d known at the time what the Outer Command was and what they were planning on using Quatelldron to do. He didn’t learn about them until the following day and by then he had other concerns. Just as well for me, I think.
I was adopted the day after Dad took that job from the Ambassador. Dad was in his apartment, the little one in the City of Ages that Kel and I bought from him after we got married. He was in the little living room, staring at its rough-textured walls while considering how to bring the Carians into the middle of the war he was trying to stop. Dad’s first major assignment had been on Alpha Car. He had good relationships with several Carians and thought they could help broker a peace where K’Tocs and Quatelldronians might not be able to even be in the same room together. The Carian Domain was pretty small at the time, but in the Dark Quadrant they were one of the strongest human governments. They had close ties with both Quatelldron and the K’Toc.
He told me how he was thinking along those lines when a knock at the door had interrupted his thoughts. He’d been startled and had knocked over a stack of datapads sitting next to him on the couch. He’d not been one to entertain much and checked his door’s security camera before opening it. He saw me there for the first time, a baby wrapped in a blanket held by an old man. The older individual’s skin was olive and very wrinkled. He was bald except for silver eye brows and gray eyes that suggested a strong Produc’Cha heritage. That last detail made my Dad especially nervous. Quatelldron was a world with a Produc’Cha heritage, but since the Telepathic Plague of 820, gray eyes were very rare. They’d gone away as a by-product of the removal of telepathy from the Quatelldronian gene pool.
He grabbed his old energy pistol from the wooden table in front of his couch. He’d dumped it there when he’d returned from Nektoc and hadn’t picked it up since. He told me there’d been a moment on Nektoc when the mob was close to where he and his people were hiding. He’d thought he was going to have to use the thing then. He hadn’t, but besides that occasion he’d never had need to draw it. He picked it up before going to the door. I don’t think he’d kill a man holding a baby, but my father is the sort of man who considers all of his options.
He almost called planetary security outright, but decided that would be an overreaction. Instead, he opened the door and the old man pushed past him before my Dad could say anything. His visitor shut the door hard, body-blocking my father out of his way while keeping a firm grip on me. He pulled out a device that looked like a small round gray disk with a palm-sized display screen. At the time Dad didn’t know what it was, though he found out a few minutes later it was using the apartment’s security systems to deplete the charge on his weapon.
Dad did notice something of importance as the man was pulling the device out of the pocket of his brown leather jacket. There was what looked like a charred hole on the left side of the jacket. The charring looked recent, though my Dad could hardly stoop down to investigate it without being completely obvious about it. Besides, he didn’t really know the significance of it until much later. Suffice it to say that if the blast that caused that hole had found its mark, things would be different. As it was, we learned later that it was the detail that lead to Indel figuring out my identity. Dad was really more focused at the time on the man and the baby. He told me that he somehow knew instantly that he’d seen a picture of the man at some point. Though the man introduced himself as Serinjin Aelisi, Dad was sure it wasn’t his real name. It was that feeling that he knew the man that pointed to the lie. The name didn’t match the face in a way that he was sure the man’s real name would have. In time Dad followed his intuition while investigating and figured out who he really was, but not on that day.
Diant Cambrige, a man who forgets nothing, tells me much of the conversation that followed is a blur to him now. Whether the impact of the events of that day were that profound, or he’s just lying, I don’t know. He doesn’t lie often, calling it a shelter for those without proper preparation. Take from that what you will. Dad did learn the man wasn’t Quatelldronian and he learned the man had used security codes to get onto Quatelldron. Quatelldron has always been restrictive to off-worlders, so Aelisi’s admission was noteworthy and suspicious. Off-worlders weren’t allowed, almost without exception, and my father was a loyal man. Aelisi’s admission, codes or not, set my Dad into action.
Even as Dad raised his pistol to threaten his guest, Aelisi ignored him and sat down on my father’s couch. Dad tells me he still remembers the relaxed smile as he told my father he was wasting his time with the gun. It was a few seconds later he learned Aelisi had taken control of the apartment’s security system and disarmed Dad’s weapon. No one would be calling planetary security. Aelisi told him to put the gun down and my Dad did so.
Forcing my father to listen with politeness and technological superiority, Aelisi then spun the tale as to how he had come to bring a baby to him and how and why Diant Cambrige, a career-ladder climbing government man with no family or interest in one was going to adopt a daughter. He explained to my father’s confusion that the security codes he used to get onto Quatelldron were given to him by my father, something my father was sure he hadn’t done. The man handed him a datapad locked with one of his own personal encryption schemes, something Dad never shared with anyone. He told my father to unlock it and read. Though skeptical, Dad did so.
The pad included a letter from Diant Cambrige to himself, with certain details about his recent work that only he knew. That letter was dangerous, as it revealed certain things about Dad’s contacts on Nektoc that he didn’t want known and wouldn’t have written down. It piqued his interest enough to read the datapad’s second, much longer letter. Dad tells me he still clearly remembers the shock of seeing the name of the author of that letter. I understand that much. I felt similar as an adult when Pila shared with me the other letter written on that datapad by the same author.
After reading the second letter, Diant Cambrige learned the power of the Mandate wasn’t really in the Ambassador’s hands at all. He learned of the existence of the Outer Command and he learned what it’s mission was. He learned we were all in danger and that the future was being stage-managed by them. He learned who...and what it was his visitor was holding.
He also learned my name, Rhenia. His visitor had named me after his mother. I cannot begin to tell you how thankful I am for that. Nariaesi is a terrible name and I do not want to imagine what it would have been like to grow up with it. It was a notorious Produc’Cha penal colony. Who would name someone that?
The man who would raise me, Diant Cambrige, found his world turning upside down. He understood what his visitor wanted him to do with me. I was dangerous and I had to be kept out of sight. Letting the Outer Command find me was out of the question, but the old man felt I was too valuable to be disposed of. I guess I should be thankful for that attitude. It would have been easier to have just killed me. Terrible, but easier. I like him a little less for having considered it, but I guess I can’t blame him for it. There’s no way he would have done it. What made me dangerous also made me valuable. I needed to be kept safe and to be taught. I think the old man intended for Diant Cambrige to raise me to be a fighter, a weapon just as the Outer Command intended. He wanted me pointed at them, though if he did he chose the wrong person to raise me. He misjudged the kind of person my father is. Hand Diant Cambrige a warship in the middle of a battle and he’ll find something much more devious and useful for it than actually fighting.
In any event, the old man told my father that a false birth record was created for me, making me a survivor of the quake that had destroyed much of Qinsuia Province on Albar the prior month. He chose that time for my adoption precisely because Albar made for an easy cover. The entire province was in shambles and the original record files were all gone. Processing forgeries was much simpler because of it. The man had scattered details to make my falsified origin look real and the adoption process had been going on since before my father left Nektoc. My father was sure Jelior wouldn’t go for it. Aelisi said the Ambassador had encouraged government workers to help out with the Albar crisis. There were five thousand dead and plenty of orphaned children. His details were good enough to beat any investigation. Aelisi was willing to bet my father’s life on that. Mine too. Turns out it wasn’t much of a bet. He knew first-hand how the Outer Command operated and he knew Quatelldronian computer systems like he invented them.
My father was scared at the time. He admitted that to me and made me promise not to write it down. He made me beg for this story, so here’s to revenge.
Anyway, Dad told Aelisi that adopting me wasn’t possible. He was important. He had a war to stop. Sure, the Outer Command was scary and its plans for war were abhorrent. Adopting me was akin to treason against them and he wanted no part of it or me. I was wanted by the Outer Command, though they didn’t know I was missing yet. When they found out I was missing they would look for me. They did too, but as I said Aelisi knew how to play their games. He knew how they operated. He’d made sure certain records were altered so I couldn’t be found easily.
Aelisi did his best to intimidate my Dad. That doesn’t work often, but somehow he convinced the immovable Diant Cambrige to play along. He told my Dad that I was intended to be a weapon. To raise me to be something else was inconceivably dangerous, but to not do so was to put a gun to the head of every living person on Quatelldron and beyond. The old man was bringing my father a second chance. That second letter was a result of the collective’s failure, in what we now refer to as the second timeline. He’d read in that second letter what I was capable of, what I could do. Aelisi asked him if he wanted me serving the Outer Command, taking control of the minds of entire planetary populations. It is what I had done for them. He had a chance to keep it from happening again. Aelisi asked him if he wanted Quatelldron to be enslaved and lead by telepathic overlord hell-bent on taking the minds of every man, woman, and child in the galaxy. Quatelldron would be the dark center of that if my father didn’t fight them. I would be the source of that enslavement.
In the end, though he admits it took much convincing, my father took me on. The adoption went smoothly. The Ambassador wasn’t pleased, but my father’s quick resolution of the war situation helped to calm his fears. Aelisi’s leg-work concerning my adoption stood up to a very rigid investigation. Diant Cambrige, a man who loved his world and its people, became a father in name and in a few years he rose to the esteemed position of Ambassador of the Quatelldronian Mandate. In time, he became both a father and a leader not just in name, but in truth.
Hate him if you like, but Diant Cambrige’s love for me made all the difference. He taught me how to think for myself, how to defend myself, and how to make decisions. Without him I would have ended up at the head of the Outer Command’s vanguard of conquest, rather than as a well-educated and happy woman who was thrilled to be married to a Carian husband who might have been the only person in the galaxy capable of handling me. My father gave me a chance to not be a pawn or a weapon. He gave me a chance to live. He gave me a chance at a normal life.