Excerpt:
"A fan of golden rays lights up the sunset, red and scarcely silent, disturbed only by the vision of a meteor descending from the heavens until reaching the height of the bay; its inevitable passage stirs a general sense of alarm that can be felt throughout the expanse. Birds scatter and fly to hide in the cliffs; others, crouched beneath the rocks, watch as the fiery tail grows longer, tracing an arc that collapses into the turquoise ocean.
The impact is mute, freed of doubts and reasons; within seconds, a furious mushroom cloud rises from the waters, slicing them diametrically with nothing and no one able to interrupt its path through the foamy mantle. The nearby coast silently endures the blows of its devastating power.
The plume dissolves, but leaves behind a tall and arcane figure, resembling a totem, anchored in the middle of the coast, which the sun, backlighting it, turns into a phantasmagorical shadow. It measures at least thirty meters in height; its configuration is fearsome and regal.
The titan rises toward the center of the vault; it spins on its axis, again and again. With measured timing, it descends the way it came and remains there, motionless, among the waves. Without confusion, it begins its slow march toward the beach.
With each step it takes, the waters churn and form turbulent spirals that transform into a high wall beneath its feet. When it reaches the shore, a human consciousness is revealed upon its face: indeed, it is one of the first human beings who would evolve into a virtual and mechanical entity in pursuit of legendary Promethean immortality; in other words, a being the epic chants describe as a primordial robot. It removes a box from a hidden compartment. It is a survival capsule. It lays it on the sand and opens it. A Gaian lies inside. He is the young Darian Janov.
“Wake up,” urges the metallic cyclops with a thunderous voice. “There is little time left.”
The Gaian seems dead; his face, clear and charismatic, at last wrinkles and his stomach heaves with force; he comes back to life. His aura exudes restraint and patience, but also firmness and determination.
“Ruwa…” he articulates, drowsy, breathing deeply; he possesses an auditory device that enables him to clearly hear the colossus’s voice. “The moment has come, hasn’t it?”
The giant nods and contemplates the fragility of his companion: he understands that within it lies his strength. “He possesses no physical capacity for hand-to-hand combat, but his intelligence and common sense ultimately compensate for any of his shortcomings.”
He raises his gaze, and what he sees troubles him: The sky begins to fill with hundreds of storm clouds, from whose shadows protrude laser cannons. They are gravitational warships belonging to the Twelfth Kybernes Legion of the Argernan Army, murderous glory of Emperor Killary III. It is led by the decorated General Hakan Grandou, a man fond of the hollow quill he uses to chronicle himself battling in heroic and adventurous events; he seeks, above all, through long, tedious, and unreadable narratives, to convince the Court and high officials of his incomparability as a paradigmatic strategist. So far, things have gone well for him, but he has begun to strain the emperor’s goodwill.
He has come to complete his mission and to inflict a penalty. He pursues with zeal what he considers his greatest prize—supreme embodiment of the ambitions that will consecrate him in the Argernan annals—the capture of the leader of the Galactic Resistance, Darian Janov, and of the primordial robot, Ruwa, who not long ago had escaped him after an epic battle fought in the center of the galaxy.
Haughty and vain, he descends in a small frigate detached from a mothership destroyer; he retains a certain respect for the fugitives; he positions the ship between the beach and his legion. A door lifts and from the depths emerges the vigorous cybernetic entity of the general. His luminous arm stands out, also famed for shattering with a single shot the greatest enemies of the Argernan people, while he delivers a well-worn harangue that turns vain intellectualism into something practical and effective.
“The winners will make of the losers whatever they wish. The greatest philosophers of bellum justify this procedure by invoking the right of conquest; yet I, for the love of divine justice and palatine greatness, disagree. I strive, if the enemy is even greater than myself, first to remedy matters with dialogue, chains, and the dungeon; lastly, if words grow short and emotion grows long, I relieve their unworthy suffering with the application of a painless death.”
He often embellishes his literary style with a mix of romanticism and barbarity when speaking of the affairs of war:
“In the crafts of conflagration, as in those of love, the course of events is always subject to the most trivial causes. Thus, let us not be so reckless as to dare tempt fate, and instead let fools remain convinced that what matters is the plan and the theory. Sometimes glory does not understand waits nor formalities, as the prehistoric commander Comporilliov well understood when he attacked the Relvetics who refused to fight because the moon had not yet reached fullness.”
With a tempered, slightly sardonic voice, his imposing appearance contradicts his charming personality. For a warrior like him, Darian Janov is an insignificant being. But he bears no such feelings toward Ruwa; he fears him for his warlike might. Thus, with careful words, perhaps to soften the heart of his enemy, he addresses his now prisoners:
“My adversaries, receive from the Empire and from General Hakan Grandou a warm salutation.”
He receives, almost rudely, an indifferent reply. Janov’s sharp expression makes him reconsider his words; Ruwa remains absorbed, silent, without this causing the general any anguish.
“I am pleased to state,” he continues with his exordium, “that in all my military career I have never had the honor of facing rivals so formidable. You have fought without fear, which is worthy, if we take into account your natural inferiority and my intrepid attributes. I must confess that I was not prepared to face you, and that such carelessness nearly cost me half my legions. It will not happen again. At last I have captured you.”
Ruwa lifts his head and points it toward the splinter of the region of the Great Rift. Janov remains imperturbable, without averting his gaze for even a second, capturing all his attention.
“I am a reasonable man,” he continues. “I have battled in the most violent campaigns against the Gaians and their allies, whom we conquered with almost no effort; I have subdued vast regions of the Milky Way, including those beyond its disk, last refuge of humanity; I have renounced the triumph owed to me and have punished with strength and without complaint the insolence of the insurgents. All in the name of the emperor of Galaxy, Killary III, ‘The Obstinate,’ proclaiming with the ardor of a believer and the fanaticism of a subject the truth of his good news about the union and solidification of a new empire that offers justice, peace, and planets to all its citizens, not just to a privileged few.
“But until now no one had ever presented such opposition, impressing me as you have done. Your capacity to withstand the pains of discouragement and the scorn of failure is a quality difficult to possess and to endure, even more than death itself, and reveals before my eyes the grandeur of your soldierly spirit. You could even consecrate yourselves within the ranks of my space legions. Thus, resentment is far from my thoughts; nor do I seek vengeance. In gratitude for your display of valor, I offer you a second chance to live.”
Ruwa and the young Janov remain silent. The latter receives a wireless message from Ruwa and proceeds to lift his arm, touch a button located in the right pocket of his suit, and emit a signal that disappears into space.
The general, absorbed in his triumphalism, asks himself: What will they decide now that they stand at the edge of death?
Hence he interprets the Gaian’s gesture as a kind of peaceful submission; however, with the skill born of years, mechanically, mistrusting even himself, he orders one of his officers:
“Find out the status of my troops deployed along the orbit of the planet Ciberion.”
The officer replies with a terse report: “No setbacks, my lord.”
Now confident in the gallantry of his army, the general does not wish to delay his old ritual of submission: he extends his hand and displays his splendid iron ring shaped like a phallus, which for him represents the highest creative expression of Nature, a rare and surprising intellectual sharpness on his part, if we consider that most of his body is composed of robotic components. Turning his head to one side, he makes a gesture of offering it to them, convinced that such mercy is worthy of his rank and treatment.
“Kiss it,” he says with a benevolent smile, “and you shall have my mercy.
“Otherwise, long darkness awaits you,” he concludes, consumed by a trace of histrionic pride.
His words disturb no one, which astonishes him; he arches his eyebrows as he broods due to his martial mordacity. He feels obliged to respond with punishments, but his spirit of letters and philosophy restrains him. He is intrigued with great surprise by the serenity of their souls, their iron will to destiny, and above all their warrior skill, which nearly caused him to fall in open space. “Even surrounded and trapped by the most lethal weapons and men, they do not yield in principle, nor did they cower when they faced an army a hundred times larger.”
Now that he has them before him, he tells himself that their end had come at the hands of the Sulmakian order, the feudal order of the Argernan lower nobility, from whom nothing was expected but complaints and lamentations.
Once again he convinces himself that his aphorisms have not failed him. By pure chance, while making an official and tributary visit to the region of the Sagittarius Great Rift, specifically to the planet Ciberion—capital of the Allied Confederation of Sulmaki, occupied during the third wave of the Andromedean invasion of Galaxy, the former empire of Gaia—his Sulmakian nobles had knelt before him, begging with tears and utter distress that he strike against the rebels of the Resistance. They had taken refuge in that cosmic splinter jutting from the galactic arm plane. The fallen nobles argued that this was nothing but a ruse to prepare an assault on the imperial capital located in the milky bulge.
Which translated to the claim that the rebels had not hesitated to recapture confederate planets with the aid of natives, appropriating all their cities and leaving the Argernan aristocracy exposed to the harsh rigor of aboriginal tyranny—an ill omen for an empire that prided itself on being relentless and unbeatable. Their Gaian leader, Darian Janov, they said, was a barbaric, irate, and reckless man, and his despotism could no longer be endured. They also said he was a kind of sorcerer before whom all bold ones fell who dared face him. If Emperor Killary III did not find a prompt solution, the Argernans stationed there would be forced to abandon the confederation in favor of more distant regions.
The general, with good political sense and aware of the debacle, consoled them with forceful reasons, swearing that he would take charge of the problems that so fiercely afflicted them. Eyes on the horizon, he confided that he harbored firm hope of restoring to each one their benefits, authority, and full plenitude of royal rights. This would put an end to so much violence and bring the long-awaited peace.
“A stroke of luck,” he told himself once far from those effeminate envoys. “I have the leaders of the Resistance within arm’s reach. As great general of the veteran legions, this grants me the popular momentum necessary to go as far as the throne of Galaxy itself.”
Seeing the opportunity for gain, he struck against the rebels, laying a trap involving double agents of the confederation army. It was not difficult to lure them. Even Janov himself had shown up to make war, which the general resolved in minutes after an epic battle. Unexpectedly, the Gaian leader changed his mind and found no other escape from defeat than retreat; he abandoned his people, who soon fled amid the chaos... "
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