Noomas.
The Proctor was saying:
“If events lead us into an international war, you will be assigned a high command position. We’ll want to utilize your experience with major military conflicts.
“Very soon I’ll be sending you to Kamina. You will have the authority to speak for me.
“Choose several teams. You will be told when to activate these missions. Initially they must seek alliance with factions who sent that Messenger to Adt Dorta. We need connections with the resistance movements developing there.”
The Proctor paused, as he scribbled notes at his desk. Almost as an afterthought, without looking up, he muttered. “Be on your business.”
Thus I had been curtly dismissed.
* * * *
Even though this action had certainly not been unexpected, the Proctor’s brisk manner left no doubt our nation would soon enter a serious conflict. The warrior side of me sprang into instant action, calculating the necessary steps needed to activate mission troops, ready the commanding officers, train and brief staff—all systems within the galactic career-man part of me had the score memorized.
However, another less familiar voice raised its protest within my conscience. If I moved into action as the warrior, that would mean I would be separated from the woman I most dearly loved. Never before had I experienced this strong a desire for a peaceful life bereft of drama. This sedate, sensible persona no longer relished taking risks by taking on uncertain ventures. I now had a wife and a desire to develop community, family, and a home I had never known before. Strange, how these two opposing forces within me arose at this particular time.
I’d faced battles, often in the role of a foot soldier without much emotional attachment, no personal grounding with any woman or family. Detachment made quite a difference.
I felt mixed pride and apprehension over the prospect of a radical change and challenge. War could so easily wipe out any civilization and damage family ties, even when anyone survived. Battle changed men. War brutalized cultures. Nations were violently altered in their status and political position depending on the outcome of the conflicts.
My meeting with the Proctor focused on the serious nature of the coming events. As I left his offices and started towards my own, I found myself lingering in the corridors facing the inner gardens, beyond which were the hangars for private flyers.
Restlessness prevailed. This world which I had so recently adopted was entering into a grave war with an undetermined enemy. As a soldier under the command of a Galactic Federation, I had seen war annihilate total planetary systems. I didn’t want to witness such devastation here on Noomas.
Shaking my head, I tried to put all these jumbled thoughts in some semblance of order.
Perhaps I needed to escape these royal surroundings. Tonight the skies looked particularly calm. So I decided to take a peaceful flight beyond the boundaries of Bel-loniea.
It was a short distance across the gardens to the royal flight hangar. My private grav-disk was parked there, not far from the apartment we occupied in the palace. I experienced a wonderfully freeing sensation when flying over the lovely lands that stretched out in all directions from the walled palace. To the west, beyond the broad expanse of lush farms, lay Bel-loniea’s port from where the ocean expanded past the horizon. Out there was another continent; called Kamina.
I soon found myself flying high above low hanging clouds; the sky far too bright with city lights to see any trace of stars. The practical limits of these flyers kept them below any outer fringes of the atmosphere. They are simple open vessels with no compressed chambers. Not like a spaceship; or like the high-flying planetary liners I’d known in my youth.
The galaxy of my birth was a place of advanced science and with it, came destructive violence on a grand scale. Whole planetary populations could be wiped out.
Life could be wasted without thought; cindered in a mad moment of military or political decision. Living, thinking beings were a product of the universe.
Birth, death and rebirth form the natural cycle of the cosmos.
The limits of our knowledge are bound by the thinly sliced sensory organs granted each species. Perhaps, some day, understanding will arrive through a miraculous union of all consciousness. Until then, all remains enveloped in mystery.
‘New sprouts spring forth from the old,’ the Ji once preached in its metaphysical rhythms of cyclical life.
By comparison to Galactic Federation norms, Noomas was a peaceful haven; a socially primitive mix of modern and ancient technology. Kay-guns held dangerously explosive shells that could blow whatever they hit into atomic dust. Yet the sword played most valiantly in the field of honorable battle, as a cutting tool. This bloody metaphor offered less evolution than its many seers might have wished the masses to believe. Even here, the worshipping of death was used by those who wished to dominate.
The blade cuts a fine line through national boundaries. Violence appears to be the nature of the universe. And this world is not so different: beautiful though it appears through the eyes of a man in love.
Andon was probably right to think of Noomas as a galactic dumping ground. He believed that interstellar ships had come here over the centuries, each bringing various groups of settlers, a mix of farmers, explorers, mercenaries, from all walks of life. And in the mix, penal ships chucked their unwanted cargo on unclaimed worlds such as Noomas, which was not recognized as a constituent of the federation.
I remember him saying to me:
‘It is common for newly developing planets to be hammered by diverse migrations. Religious and political clans and cults escape to new worlds. We don’t know who the original people were on this bit of solar rock. Mutis discourage exploration beyond our borders and I wonder about their motives. I respect them; as they respect me!’
I sifted through these thoughts, not lingering on any in particular. Romos Muti has been a part of my wife’s family for generations. I trust him. The Proctor’s Muti once said:
‘We are not concerned with cosmic concepts. We care little about reaching beyond our own world. The Muti awareness stretches into the past and present and reaches into the future. And even other dimensions.’
At any rate, the universe will eventually swallow its own tail. So life ends up as a meaningless cycle from birth to decay.
Right now I wanted to enjoy the sky and peaceful horizon. The ocean ended the continental landmass but its shores and our city-state’s seaport were too far away to be seen from this low altitude.
I was ready to return home where I would find my love, Youi.
* * * *
The next days filled rapidly with meetings and heavy instructional sessions, spinning the entire palace compound into high gear. Everyone was racing around like mad vipers. Energetic units crammed into every open space forming massive training teams.
Bel-loniea had taken immediate action. The Proctor called upon the wardens from all municipalities to attend a summit at once. The outreach had successfully engaged the majority of nations in the Armada Project. According to the opening debates on the Declaration of Engagement, this process was slowly and surely reaching the rural areas.
Romos had scheduled daily briefings of the Elite Force early each morning. Today we were in our official uniforms waiting near the Proctor’s throne, positioned against the back wall of the meeting hall.
Normally the anteroom served as a staging area for royal audiences. There was ample space behind the partition where over a thousand congregants could be brought to abrupt attention with the blast of a single horn. The throne enclosure had been shut off from the general assembly, which normally stretched out in front of the royal dais.
Less than twenty of us were in attendance; an intense meeting of the inner circle, the trusted Elite. The Proctor had summoned each of us by private invitation with the royal stamp of his signature. To the right of the throne