INTERGALACTIC

INTERGALACTIC

CHAPTER FIVE

The High Council’s courtyard gleamed beneath a dome of crystalline glass, where galaxies spun like living murals across the ceiling. The stars themselves seemed to bear witness.

Victor Rassimov — the Maker — stood alone in the circle of judgment. His robe, dark satin embroidered with threads of starlight, caught the glow of the cosmos above. The silver crown upon his brow bore the sigil of Science and God: twin serpents twined around a sphere of light. To the common citizen, he was the mind that built miracles. To the Council, he was a danger — a visionary unchained.

A murmur rippled through the amphitheater as Cornelius rose from his throne of black glass. His voice rang out, cold and ceremonial.
“Victor Rassimov, you stand accused of treason against the Intergalactic Federation of Light.”

The Maker bowed his head for a heartbeat. When he looked up, there was sorrow in his eyes — and defiance.
“I have committed no crime,” he said, voice unsteady but alive. “Only truth, and truth frightens those who live by illusion.”

“Heresy!” shouted a councilor, his robe flashing crimson. “You defy the laws that gave you life!”

“I am no heretic!” Victor’s words cracked like thunder. “I serve the Federation’s true vision — not this rotted shell built on deception and fear!”

Gasps rippled through the council tiers. The air grew heavy, charged with restrained violence.

Cornelius’s face hardened. “You admit it then? That you continued your forbidden project on Pluto — the War Machine?”

The Maker smiled faintly, a wounded genius cornered by lesser minds. “My work was not a weapon,” he said softly. “It was a dawn. A living engine meant to breathe life where suns have died. You call it a War Machine because you cannot imagine creation without destruction.”

General Stricker slammed his metallic fist against the armrest. “Lies! We have recordings — detonations, radiation surges, sonic waves across Pluto’s crust. You tested it!”

“That is not true,” Victor said, though his voice trembled. “I tested light — not death.”

“Silence!” barked Xonar, the Martian-hybrid judge, his crimson pupils pulsing. “You speak only to condemn yourself.”

Victor’s composure cracked. He stepped forward, eyes burning with feverish light. “You think I am your enemy, but I have seen the shadow on the horizon. The Kryss Empire grows stronger because you made them so! You fed them power in secret treaties and now call it destiny.”

Cornelius’s jaw tightened. “Enough.”

“No,” Victor growled, “you will hear me!” He jabbed a trembling finger at the dais. “Earth is habitable again! Emma Hammington, the so-called princess of Earth, is a clone! The Federation you swear to defend is a facade — a lie built to blind the colonies!”

The council chamber erupted in chaos. Judges whispered, guards moved closer, and holograms flickered erratically from the surge of psychic tension.

“Lies!” Xonar hissed. “This is the madness of exile!”

Victor’s voice rose like a storm breaking glass. “Did you not see her memory loss? She cannot recall her childhood, her lineage, her parents’ deaths — all symptoms of replication decay! You built her as a symbol of purity, and you cannot bear to see the seams of your deceit!”

“Enough!” shouted General Stricker. “Your blasphemy ends here.”

Victor’s voice dropped to a near whisper, but it carried through the hall like a prayer:
“The thousand-year war has already begun. And when your shining fleets burn, you will remember my words.”

“Guards!” Xonar commanded.

Armored soldiers entered the courtyard. Their rifles hummed with ready plasma. As they seized him, Victor lifted his gaze toward the stars above the glass dome — toward the faint blue marble of Earth glimmering beyond.

“You can silence me,” he said, his voice breaking with weary conviction, “but you cannot silence the truth.”

They dragged him away, his words echoing through the marble corridors long after his body was gone.
“The prophecy has come true… and the war is already here!”

---

Gigi Munroe stood in the back shadows of the hall, her heart pounding. The Maker’s words cut into her like blades of light.

Emma Hammington… a clone?
Earth, habitable?
A traitor among the Council?

The air around her seemed to thin. Beyond the dome, Earth hung suspended — fragile and small, like a memory. Her ancestors’ home, the cradle of mankind. Once brilliant, now abandoned after the Cold War’s nuclear blight.

If the Maker spoke truth, then everything the Federation taught her — every creed, every oath — was a lie.

Her commlink vibrated against her ear.
“Munroe,” Cornelius’s voice came through, clipped and urgent. “Report to the War Room immediately.”

She turned and strode through the silver corridors, her reflection trailing in the polished walls. The ship’s hum was steady, ancient — the heartbeat of a civilization pretending to be immortal.

When the doors to the War Room hissed open, Cornelius stood beside the hologram table. The spinning image of Earth bathed the chamber in spectral blue. Cracks of radiation, like wounds, glowed faintly across its continents.

“We’re going back,” he said.

Gigi froze. “To Earth?”

He nodded grimly. “If Rassimov was right, then we’ve been living in a cage of lies. We’ll find out for ourselves. Prepare for descent. Departure at 0800.”

Her throat tightened. “And the radiation?”

“We’ll use full suits,” he replied, eyes never leaving the hologram. “But if the Maker speaks truth… Earth may already be healing.”

---

The starship Vigilant Dawn descended through the void, slicing clouds that had not been touched by light in centuries.

“Approaching Earth’s orbit,” Rodriguez announced, voice hushed as though afraid to wake a ghost.

The planet filled the viewport — oceans dim and heavy with ash, continents scarred by centuries of storms. Lightning crackled across black skies.

The ship broke through the troposphere, shuddering under turbulent winds. The atmosphere’s static howled against the hull. When the clouds parted, the land below stretched barren and endless: rivers turned to bone, forests to dust.

They touched down in a clearing amid the wasteland — a region known from old maps as the Reborn Pangea.

Steam hissed from the landing thrusters as silence reclaimed the air.

Inside, Gigi adjusted her suit. The synthetic fibers tightened across her frame; oxygen hissed softly through her helmet. Her pulse flickered across the readout on her visor.

The hangar doors opened.

Light flooded in — thin, colorless, ancient. The air outside shimmered faintly, as though time itself resisted their return.

She stepped out slowly. Her boots sank into soft dirt. Gravity weighed heavy, unfamiliar, pulling her into the embrace of a world she had never known.

Memories of her mother returned — Commander Lucy Munroe, the soldier who died protecting New Earth from the Kryss Armada. Her mother’s last words echoed faintly in her mind: “Never forget where we came from.”

Now, standing on that very soil, Gigi felt both awe and grief.

She walked toward a grove of twisted trees. Beneath one lay a corpse — or what time had left of it. Pale flesh flaked away like dust; from its skull bloomed a crown of fungus. Nature’s quiet reclamation.

“Preparing oxygen test,” she said into her comm.

“Proceed,” Cornelius replied, his tone taut.

She hesitated, then unlatched her helmet. A hiss of air escaped.

The smell struck first — metallic, earthy, faintly sweet. Not sterile like the moons, but raw, alive.

She inhaled. Her lungs expanded easily. No burning, no pain.

“Oxygen levels… stable,” she whispered. “It’s clean.”

Silence followed — not emptiness, but the hush of a planet listening.

Then, movement. A flicker in her peripheral vision.

Something — or someone — slipped between the shadows of the trees.

Gigi froze. Her visor’s sensors flickered but gave no reading.

Life.

Her heart thudded.

If the Maker was right about Earth… what else had the Federation buried beneath its lies?

The wind stirred the dead leaves at her feet. The world seemed to breathe again, and from the depths of the forest, a sound — a whisper, almost human — drifted through the air.

Gigi took a step forward, her pulse racing, the horizon of truth and danger stretching before her.

The Maker’s words echoed in her mind.
“The thousand-year war has begun.”

And for the first time, she believed him.