Death of Innocence 
(The Nanosecond War)
 
 Copyright 2000 - 2001 by silli_artie at hotmail dot com 
 
This work may not be reposted or redistributed without the prior express written permission of 
the author. 
 
A work of fiction, meant for adults.  Read something else if you are not an adult, or are offended 
by stories with sexual content.  Then again, if all you're looking for is in-out, in-out, in-out, you 
should probably read something else.  I welcome constructive comments.  Enjoy.

	This is not a happy tale.  It is a tale of the death of innocence, of the day when Man 
learned he was not alone.  It is also the tale of Celeste and Adam.

	That they should meet was inevitable.  Both were children of Great Captains: Celeste, 
daughter and only child of Catherine of the Southern Cross, Captain of the Great Ship 
Fallingwater, and her husband David; Adam, the son of Captain Fred and the Siren Joy.

	That each should become great Captains was no surprise.  Both were born to the Void.

	Wondrous stories are told of these children -- children who had made so many Great 
Jumps beneath the stars in their first year of life, children who wore Polycrystal crowns 
flickering with life and light before they could walk.

	It is said that Celeste's earliest companions were the Other, those mystic beings living 
between the edges of space.  Some say that she witnessed her mother daydreaming of a planet 
visited some decades before, and to please her mother, Celeste took the ship there, in one jump.  
She was five at the time.

	And Adam, the only male child born to a Siren -- so great was Joy's love and devotion to 
Captain Fred -- some say that the Great Jump from the planet Wotan, a jump directly from the 
planet's surface, was not made by Captain Fred, but by his six year old son Adam, responding to 
his parent's unspoken desire to leave that overindustrialized world as soon as possible.

	Adam and Celeste met on the planet Canticle, both enrolled at the great University there, 
following custom and the desires of their parents to study for a twenty.  They met, as they were 
destined to meet, and were never apart.  While they never formally wed, all knew them to be 
husband and wife.

	She grew to be a beautiful woman, curved and owlish in her appearance, her light 
chocolate skin a combination of her father's paleness and her mother's rich ebony, tall and with 
the grace and command one would expect of the daughter of a Great Leader and Great Captain.

	And he -- it was he who either helped settle, or rekindled the debate among scholars as to 
the nonhuman genetic component of the Sirens.  Many had argued the component was the 
millennia extinct sea otter -- from that line the Sirens took their short fur, webbed feet, and gills.  
But to see Adam as a child of forty -- ah, the mystery component was surely feline, a leopard.  
His grace, his strength, his ferocity -- these were overshadowed only by his love of Celeste.

	To look into their eyes was to look into the Void, into vastness and strength 
unfathomable.  To see them holding hands was to see that strength tempered by love.  To see 
them helping others was to see strength and love guided by compassion, and the understanding 
that their gifts were to be used to help others.

	In the custom of their age, they spent their first twenty years with their parents, then the 
next twenty at study.  Then they embarked on their wanderjahr.

	Great Ships and Great Captains converged on Canticle.  Just as Celeste and Adam never 
formally wed, yet were known to all as man and wife, they never formally joined the Spacer's 
Guild -- they were born to it.

	The Great Ships and Great Captains converged, as did the leaders of the Guild.  The 
Guild presented Celeste and Adam with a small ship.

	Some ceremonies are older than time.  Man has christened ships through days 
immemorial.  Celeste and Adam accepted the gift of the Guild and its combined members with 
joy, and with surprising sadness.  They colored their craft pea green, and christened it by 
breaking the traditional container of water from Manhome over its bow.

	We have no holos of this ceremony, only secondhand accounts.  To the surprise of some 
attending, Celeste and Adam had looks of fear and sorrow on their faces.  With voices full of 
emotion, they raised the flask, and said together, "We christen thee 'Promise,' and we ..."

	What they meant to say only they know.  They broke the flask over the bow, and broke 
into tears, holding each other.  Some of the Great Captains also cried -- Celeste's mother, 
Catherine; Adam's father, Fred; Dita, and others.  Sometimes the Gift which makes the Great 
Captains does not bring happiness.

	The Guild Master raised his glass, and pronounced the ceremonial toasts.  Celeste and (stolen from silli artie at hotmail dot com) 
Adam exchanged embraces with friends and parents, and bid their leave.

	They whispered away, for a year and a day, in a beautiful pea green boat.

	When they reappeared, they wore rings on their fingers, rings the likes of which Man had 
not seen before, rings shining with a life and brilliance which put the Polycrystals of their crowns 
to shame.

	After studying for a second twenty, they left once more, embarking on the life of 
voyagers.  They brought forth twins, a son and a daughter, Peter and Joan, both bearing the silky 
fur of their father and the complexion of their mother, another generation born to the Void.

	Adam and Celeste were born to be great; that everyone knew.  The same was expected of 
their children.

	But greatness can call out for great burdens.

	It is sad-curious that finally in the Third Age of Space Man evolved past his own self-
directed violence.  In the great explorations that had been the First and Second Ages of Space, 
Man found no enemy in the starry Void -- so he brought his own -- himself.  War had twice torn 
the tenuous web of civilization which he had stretched between stars.

	Now in this Third Age, he had learned to live in peace at last.  His inner demons had not 
been conquered, but embraced and forgiven.

	The Invader came.

	They struck first at Pentecost.  Why Pentecost?  We will never know.  The best answer, 
perhaps, is they had to start somewhere.

	The attack on Pentecost left one survivor -- the captain of a singleship who had never 
made a Great Jump.  In her terror she Jumped from orbit around Pentecost straight to Earth, 
Manhome itself, screaming in terror at the attack which had boiled out from under space to 
demolish a defenseless world.

	When men and their ships returned to Pentecost, there was no sign of the Invader.  Nor 
was there any sign of life on the planet, or on its neighboring worlds.

	Adam, Celeste, and their children were vacationing on New Haven.

	The Invader appeared, thousands of ships boiling from beneath space into the outer 
atmosphere of New Haven without warning.  They attacked.

	In the first instant of the attack, tens of millions died.  Even though Adam and Celeste 
were separated from their children by a third of the planet, they felt the loss of their son.

	And in that instant, Celeste raised her hands to the sky, and raised the Weapon used by 
her mother, shouting, "NO!"

	Over half the Invader perished in that instant, felled by the Weapon that is Love under 
Will.  What remained of the Invader faltered and fell back.

	In that instant, Adam saved what was left of his family in the only way he could -- he 
Jumped.  He Jumped the entire planet of New Haven on the force of his Will alone.

	The Invader followed.

	Celeste raised the Weapon again, smiting the Invader, and called on the Other, called in 
the grief and anger that only a mother can feel.

	The Other responded and attacked the Invader, flocking to them and shredding those who 
would cause a friend such anguish.

	Most of the Invader perished.  A few fled.  With part of his Will, Adam followed them.  
He sensed the Universe in which they existed, and he grasped it.  He cordoned it off, squeezed it, 
crushed it, and turned it in upon itself.  With the force of his Will he collapsed that Universe to a 
speck smaller than one of the tears rolling down his face.  With a final wave of grief, he denied 
that speck's very existence.  The Invader was no more.

	Adam carefully returned New Haven to its orbit.  He turned to Celeste, and as they 
sobbed and held each other, they reached out and brought their daughter to them.  Their 
daughter, and some hundreds of millions more, had been saved.  Of their son, and tens of 
millions more, sons and daughters all, there was not a trace.

	After holding each other and crying for a while, their daughter looked up and said, "He's 
gone, Mommy."

	Celeste fell to her knees and hugged her daughter.  Adam went to his knees and held 
them both.

	"We can start again," he whispered to his wife, wiping her tears.

	"They're gone baby, and they won't be back," Celeste told her daughter.

	Adam and Celeste paused and looked at their daughter.  Her eyes were focused 
elsewhere, deep in the Void.  Her small body flickered -- they felt her -- doing something, going 
somewhere, somewhere very far away.  She solidified again, and looked to her parents.

	"I know," she said softly, "He is gone, and they are dead."  Then with sadness far beyond 
her five years, as she looked into the Void once again she whispered, "But there are more..."

FIN  
Rev 5/07/2003

 
Death of Innocence  
By silli_artie at hotmail dot com  
http://www.asstr.org/~artie 

Death of Innocence
 silli_artie at hotmail dot com 	5	http://www.asstr.org/~artie 
