The Abyss’ Embrace

By Daniel Lenois

Breathe in, breathe out. Qua-Hedra could almost taste the carbon dioxide escaping his lungs as he exhaled. It had all been so quick.

The last thing he could remember was the jab of the needle into his neck as his sight faded into blackness, his limbs bound to the surgeon’s table, as the laser whirled into life above him, glowing with emerald light. Its scintillating colouring a sole bastion. Its very presence marked the inevitable separation between who he had been, and who he must yet become.

The untold billions of intelligent lifeforms that comprised the seventh sector of Citethra laboured in work gangs to repair, step by step, the destruction wrought by the rebels’ hand. His most ancient ancestors had believed that the greatest means of ensuring stability in a populace to be economical in its nature. But they were wrong. Their weakness had led their planet to ruin; their descendants left desolate, pilgrims without purpose, in the endless chasm of space. It had taken entire generations to finally begin anew. Order, Qua-Hedra reasoned, could only be achieved through production.

His predecessor in the post, Rak-Sola, had failed in his duty. His poor reasoning led him to underestimate the threat before him posed by the rebels. Within only a fortnight, the rebels had taken hold of seven neighbouring districts. The decision of the military governors to terminate the current commander and reassign the position had been swift and decisive.

From childhood, he had been instilled with the principal virtue that the ultimate weapon of one’s destruction was not of the flesh, or the weapon held by one’s foe, but from the soul within. It was fear that turned men to their baser instincts. It was love and hate that in equal measure led to the greatest tactical errors upon the field of battle.

Upon the day of his manhood, his tribe gathered, and the preparatory rituals performed by the elders. His brow was marked by the appropriate glyphs, and the ceremonial beat of the drum, accompanied by the chanting chorus, reached his ears clearly even through the closed doors of the operating room. A momentary impulsive tremble rippled through his muscles, although whether from eagerness or dread, he knew not.

Qua–fa-Etinla, they called it. The abyss’ embrace. The purging of all that would incumber him in days to come. No tears, no fits of rage. Nothing, save for clear, abstracted conformity to purpose alone.

It had taken little enough time to recover, and upon his return to his people, it was then that he had been granted the title of Qua to his name. Sacrifice made toward the increased likelihood of the survival of one’s people was not an error. It was a calculable necessity, and he was now an agent of that very necessity.

He stepped into the command centre and stood, acknowledging with the merest of glances the immediately proffered salutes of his inferiors. Chaos has cast humanity once more into darkness. Order, his order, would see them back into the light.