The Battle for Kukra City Star Map Draftsman II: Fate of the Galaxy

In Earth’s ancient centuries there had been many wise people, and one of them had said that two souls live inside every person, one good and one evil, and what a person turns out to be depends on which of the two souls he chooses to feed. But if you looked at those words from where Jonathan stood, he would only believe that even if two souls lived inside one person, one of them stood for weakness and the other for charging bravely ahead. From the moment he had started the war on Visadio Planet to now, as he had his subordinates spread word across the Orion Arm that Kukra City was going to abandon all these civilizations and run, he didn’t know whether he had any chance of ruling a Milky Way already at the end of its life. But none of that mattered to him. At the very least, it was worth a try.

By the time Dawn returned to Planet Gorov, even the two princes of the Strath Federation had taken their people and left. They were advancing on Kukra City, determined to take it no matter what. Even though Hamilton explained again and again that starting a war would only make the Shepherds abandon them sooner, when only one last straw was left to clutch at, most people would surely choose to stake everything on it. In the empty laboratory, Dawn sighed: life in most civilizations, even without a weapon as powerful as power itself to rule with, could still be ruled through crisis. If the Shepherds’ technology were in the hands of one person—Jonathan, for example—then he would certainly be capable of ruling the Milky Way, maybe even the entire universe. Only that would be worthy of his ambition. At this thought—“Jonathan?” Dawn suddenly jumped up from his chair. He hurriedly gathered everyone together and declared, “It has to be Jonathan stirring up trouble.” He shared with everyone the news he had heard from the Old Lady: Kukra City was the last chance for life in the Orion Arm, so no matter what, Kukra City absolutely could not be destroyed, or be held in Jonathan’s hands alone.

“From what you’ve said, I don’t think you have any grounds for this,” Hamilton said coldly, looking at Dawn after hearing his analysis.

“Sir, the only thing I can think of right now is that Jonathan wants to start a war. Other than him, I can’t think of anyone who would, for no reason at all, stir up so many people to go and take Kukra City,” Dawn said, looking at Hamilton impatiently.

“That’s your prejudice. You know perfectly well that if Kukra City really is the most accurate super Star Bridge, then anyone at all would want to go and seize it. With so many people besieging Kukra City for so long, someone was always going to lose patience and make the first move. How does that have anything to do with Jonathan?”

“Sir, what’s the point of arguing about this with me? Do we really have to argue about this at a critical moment like this?” Dawn’s voice gradually rose.

“Fine, there’s no need to argue about it. Then let me ask you: if Kukra City is the only ‘station,’” Hamilton said, drawing a circle in the air, and went on with a slightly scornful look on his face: “then what are we doing? All the people in this laboratory, all these years of effort, and Sakya—what does his whole life count for?”

“Sir, no one denies the laboratory’s contributions, and…”

“Enough.” Hamilton cut him off loudly. “Get this straight: I don’t need your approval. What I’ve done doesn’t need you to hang the word ‘contribution’ on it. Even if you are the Star Map Draftsman appointed by the Datheon, with special privileges, you still have no right to pass judgment on our efforts. We did it for everyone in the Orion Arm. Not like you—everything you do, you only think about your son, that fragile Level Zero civilization of yours, and this woman,” Hamilton raised his hand and pointed at Sandra, jabbing hard in her direction, and continued loudly: “You only do things for them. You say you’re the Star Map Draftsman, the Star Map Draftsman of the Orion Arm,” Hamilton grew more and more agitated as he spoke, and he strode quickly toward Dawn, shouting as he closed in on him, “then you should be thinking about everyone in the Orion Arm, not doing what you’re doing now, taking your personal grudges and your personal ambitions and telling me what I should and shouldn’t do. I’m telling you, if your only motive is to protect the two people you care about, then please, leave.”

When he had finished, Hamilton walked out of the laboratory, and some people followed him out. Only a scattered few were left, at a loss for what to do. They stood frozen in the room, looking first at Sakya, then at Dawn.

“What’s gotten into the old man? How can he talk like that?” Sakya walked over beside Dawn, patted him on the shoulder and went on: “Why do I get the feeling he’s the one with personal grudges?”

“Sir, I think,” Dawn said—he felt quite miserable inside, and he looked up at Sakya and spoke weakly: “Mr. Hamilton is right. I’m the Star Map Draftsman of the Orion Arm, so I should be thinking of the Orion Arm’s civilizations, and not only of myself and my responsibilities as a father and a husband.”

Hearing Dawn say this, Sakya didn’t say anything more. He clenched his fist, shook it in front of his chest, then relaxed it. Once his round, chubby fingers had opened, he patted Dawn on the shoulder, and then he walked out of the laboratory.

“Dawn,” Sandra said, patting him from behind. She came around in front of him, cupped his face in her hands and went on: “I know you’re a responsible man, a man who puts the bigger picture first. You always have been; you’ve never changed. I also know there’s only one soul inside you—the good one, nothing else. What you’ve been doing all along isn’t just protecting Stacean and me, it’s protecting the whole Orion Arm. If that weren’t so, you would never have made the secret of the Sane ship public to everyone, right? Don’t listen to them. They’re judging you from their own point of view too, and they’re wrong. Pull yourself together. Let’s go to Kukra City. I trust your instincts—it must be Jonathan trying to start a war. Otherwise, with him in charge of Kukra City’s security, if he weren’t letting things slide, the people waiting outside would never want to try their luck against Kukra City’s guns. Am I right?”

Dawn sniffed and let out a long breath. Then he pulled Sandra into his arms and buried his nose in her neck, breathing her in greedily. Inside Sandra’s skin there must have lived a whole, complete spring: from the moment the swallows appeared at the mountain pass, the peach blossoms opened in big, broad petals and turned pink, and the bees, their wings loaded with nectar, vanished into the deep blue sky trailing waves of delicate fragrance—and that fragrance was just like the scent on Sandra’s neck now.

“You’re my only lighthouse.” Dawn let go of Sandra, kissed her on the forehead, and, holding her hand firmly, walked out.

After everything that had happened, the people in the laboratory had lost confidence, and some had already begun to leave. They planned to spend the last of their time with the people who mattered most to them, or to go to certain places that mattered, and to say the things they hadn’t had time to say before—to get it all done before Kukra City fell. The departing ships went from a busy handful to a large-scale exodus. Even with Sakya pleading with them earnestly, no one was willing to stay the way they once had. Perhaps, back then, apart from the hope of survival that Hamilton and Sakya had built up for everyone, most people had also had some ambition to leave their own wisdom behind in an event this momentous. Now the situation was perfectly clear. Sakya urged Dawn not to tell everyone all the information. As long as he didn’t say it, no one would know what Jonathan’s mother had said, and that way at least the laboratory could keep working to find a way to escape. But Dawn no longer wanted to do these things that only a small minority felt were to their advantage. He apologized to old Mr. Sakya, and he also told Hamilton what he thought, even though Hamilton didn’t give him a friendly look from beginning to end. The situation now was no longer one that Sakya could hold together just by saying so. He went back to the laboratory and sat down at the table again to carry on with his checking calculations, even though he knew that none of it had any meaning anymore. The boundary of the universe that he had spent his whole life pursuing was nothing more than a fence casually set up by a higher-level civilization, following no special law, and with no thought for anyone’s feelings.

When Dawn and Sandra reached Kukra City, the fighting was already over. Fragments of ships destroyed by the defensive guns drifted every which way, and the bodies that no one had cleared away had long since frozen into ice sculptures. After seeing so many end-of-the-world wars, a scene like this no longer surprised anyone. War, after all, whatever its size, was a game that didn’t end until someone died; otherwise no one would be willing to stop. As Dawn flew the Sane ship through the broken ships, the place looked very much like an exhibition hall of Orion Arm civilizations. Technologies from across the ages lay dissected here. Anyone lucky enough to survive this war could see ships from ancient times driven by nuclear power, and fossil-fuel shuttle boats that needed an accelerant just to start. The weapons of every kind also recorded the history of violence in the course of civilizations’ development. It was hard to imagine what kind of civilization could rise without needing weapons. Sandra checked the weapons on her body again. She tied up her hair and tried on the helmet Dawn had prepared for her. No matter how she adjusted the angle, she still wasn’t used to it. She took the helmet off and weighed it in her hands, back and forth, and still couldn’t find a reason to wear it. She looked over at Dawn and pursed her lips; she didn’t want to wear the helmet. Dawn smiled and gave her a glare, and she stuffed herself back into it, sulky face and all.

The Sane ship was parked practically up against the giant ship that was Kukra City. When Dawn and Sandra boarded the hull in a shuttle boat, the damage inside turned out not to be very severe. Passing each grid cell, they could see soldiers holding weapons, keeping crowds of people crouched in the empty halls. Among those people there might be mercenaries with greater fighting power, still hiding weapons that no one had had time to search out. So the guards paid no attention to Dawn and Sandra at all and let them keep walking farther in. When they reached Kukra City’s main command room, the troops accompanying Carlson and Burt had Jonathan surrounded. King Theobald stood a little more than half a step in front of Jonathan, shielding him behind his back, his weapon held up in front of him the whole time. Perhaps because he was gripping it so hard, his knuckles had turned white. Even when Dawn and Sandra came into the room, King Theobald kept staring hard at Burt. There was no doubt about it: of the two princes of the Strath Federation, Burt was the more cunning and cruel, and it made sense to be more on guard against him. Seeing this standoff, Sandra quickly raised her weapon and sighted along everyone in front of her one by one. In the end, she settled the muzzle in Jonathan’s direction. It seemed that in this room, everyone ranked differently on everyone else’s list of who to trust.

“Huh, you came just at the right time,” Burt said, still staring hard at Jonathan, and raised his right hand to point at Dawn.

“So what? You think we’re afraid of you?” King Theobald stepped forward and raised his weapon higher.

“So nothing,” Burt shouted. He thumped his weapon hard on the floor, exactly like an angry old man stamping his walking stick, then walked at an angle some distance toward Carlson, and, staring at Jonathan, said loudly: “You’re the same as you always were. Every war in this Orion Arm has been your masterpiece, hasn’t it? This time it’s you again. I don’t care what you’re trying to do, but if your goal is what I think it is, then let me tell you: nobody walks out of here today.”

“It is, little brother,” Carlson added loudly.

“You two really will only ever be creatures from a low-level civilization,” Jonathan said with a cold laugh.

“What did you say?” Hearing Jonathan say this, Carlson instantly clenched his fists and charged at him.

Seeing this, Burt ran quickly to Carlson’s side, grabbed his arm and then patted it lightly, and only then did Carlson stop.

“You know, Moreth Steader Jonathan, when you say things like that, it really hurts our feelings,” Burt said. He clasped his hands behind his back and walked toward Dawn, shaking his head as he went, then walked back again. With a sigh, he continued: “Belittling us like that—we don’t care. But what about the Star Map Draftsman?” Burt pointed back at Dawn over his shoulder, and before anyone else had time to say anything, he raised his voice and added: “He’s from a Level Zero civilization, lower even than the Strath Federation. What does that matter? He can still become the Star Map Draftsman.”

“Stop trying to sow discord,” Sandra shouted sharply.

“Oh, you want to drag her over to your side, but she isn’t having it,” Jonathan laughed.

“Shut up. You’re no good either,” Sandra said, and she aimed her weapon toward Jonathan again.

“Oh, she’s reached the same judgment we have. You’re a scourge, the scourge of the Orion Arm. Do I even need to drag her over?” Burt sneered.

“So what? I, Jonathan, was born with only one mission: to rule the Milky Way.”

“Oh, give it a rest. You, rule the Milky Way? Why don’t you rule this whole universe bubble while you’re at it?” Carlson said impatiently.

“How do you know I won’t rule this universe bubble?”

“I couldn’t care less. Rule whoever you like. I’m just asking you: why did you egg on the people outside to come and wreck Kukra City?” Carlson shouted sharply.

“Don’t you talk nonsense here. Our Moreth Steader…” King Theobald pointed at Carlson to retort, but Jonathan cut him off.

“It doesn’t matter, King Theobald. Yes, we egged them on. So what?”

Carlson clenched his fists and swung them in Jonathan’s direction. The curses that had jumped to his lips turned into a sigh. In the end he glanced at Dawn, hoping he would say something.

“What do you get out of doing this?” Dawn asked, taking a few steps toward Jonathan.

“Oh, so you’ve deigned to open your mouth. What do I get out of it? Do you think I need to report to you?” Jonathan looked at Dawn coldly.

“There are two ways to win other people’s reverence. The first is to have people revere you because of what you do. The second is through violence and war, but rule won that way never lasts. Where I come from, dynasties rose and fell over thousands of years, and whenever power was won through violence, it wasn’t long before an even stronger violence appeared and overthrew the rule that came before. You started the war at Bourlo City, the fighting got that bad, and in the end you still didn’t get what you wanted. Now,” Dawn raised his hand and pointed at the grid cell where the Shepherds were, then went on more gently: “if you keep on fighting and Kukra City is gone, then none of the civilizations in the entire Orion Arm will have a chance to make the Great Migration. Everyone will just have to wait here to die. Then not only will you not win any reverence, you’ll be the enemy of every civilization there is. Why go about it in such an extreme way?” Dawn wanted to get a little closer to Jonathan, so he kept walking toward him.

“Spare me the sermon. The road a ruler has to walk—do you have any experience of it? Your understanding of the universe, your store of knowledge—are they rich?” Jonathan was so angry that his trembling muscles left him unable to go on. As he moved past King Theobald, he took a light weapon from King Theobald’s waist and jabbed it fiercely in Dawn’s direction, his voice suddenly rising: “What makes you qualified to instruct me? You just got lucky and became the Star Map Draftsman. Otherwise, what do you think you’d be? Nothing but a stinking bug from a Level Zero civilization.”

“What right do you have to talk about Dawn like that?” Sandra shot back loudly.

Dawn was at a loss for words. He had nothing to say in his defense; there really was some truth in what Jonathan said. He really wasn’t qualified. But he was qualified to think about matters that concerned Stacean and Sandra, and qualified to think about whether the innocent civilizations of the Orion Arm could take part in the Great Migration. Dawn thought for a moment, then walked toward Jonathan with a smile. Seeing this, Jonathan warily watched Dawn’s right hand and, without meaning to, backed up a little, until he was nearly pressed against King Theobald.

“What are you trying to do?” King Theobald demanded loudly.

“It’s true,” Dawn said, stopping very close to Jonathan—if he took one step to the left, his chest would be practically pressed against King Theobald’s weapon. Dawn smiled and went on: “It’s true, I’m not qualified. You’re right. All I want right now is for us to calm the people outside, put the weapons away, and make sure this super Star Bridge can be used. I promise you that what I’m saying is true. The Old Lady said this is the only…”

“You’ve seen my mother?” Jonathan interrupted Dawn.

Dawn nodded.

“What did she say?” Jonathan narrowed his eyes.

“The Old Lady said Kukra City is the only super Star Bridge that can reach the DeFi Passage. If Kukra City is destroyed, then we really won’t have any chance.”

After Dawn had spoken, Jonathan didn’t say anything. He turned and walked behind King Theobald, glanced at the powerfully built Centaly soldiers, and looked down at the floor. The cold laugh in his mouth grew louder as he lifted his head, until in the end the command room was filled with Jonathan’s almost manic laughter.

When he had finished laughing, Jonathan looked at Dawn grimly and said viciously: “She would rather tell you, an outsider, than tell me what Kukra City is for. Very good. Very good indeed.”

“Haven’t you ever stopped to think why the Old Lady didn’t tell you? If I had someone like you…” Burt sneered, looking at Jonathan, but before he could finish, Jonathan cut him off.

“What, brainless low-level creature, what were you going to say?” Jonathan roared.

Hearing this, Burt was taken aback for a moment. Then he gave a contemptuous laugh, walked back into the ranks of the Strath Federation troops, and pointed in Jonathan’s direction.

“Moreth Steader, you’ve really hurt my feelings. You’re just an orphan nobody wanted, that’s all.”

Dawn had thought that the fact that Jonathan was a child adopted by the old woman, a Datheon emissary, was known only to the Old Lady, Madam Winifred and the old Star Map Draftsman. Hearing Burt say this, it must be something a great many people knew. Before he had time to think about it further, he saw Jonathan snatch the weapon from King Theobald’s hand and, without the slightest hesitation, pour fire in Burt’s direction. In an instant the command room was full of gunfire. The sizzle of skin burning in the blasts mixed with curses in the languages of different civilizations, and Dawn and Sandra were swept apart. He summoned dark matter and formed it into a sphere, first enclosing himself inside it, then gradually making the sphere grow larger, pushing apart the people locked in the brawl and pressing them down onto the floor to stop them firing any more. Dawn steadied his breathing and let the dark matter flow freely through his body. In his mind it could gather, take shape, flow out into the air, and then be shaped by Dawn once again. In the end, the dark matter became sticky tentacles, so that the vast majority of people couldn’t fire again, or curse anyone else. A few simply dropped their weapons and, friend and foe alike, crushed together into a mass and rushed out the door. Jonathan was swept along in the crowd too. Only after the crowd outside the door had scattered could he break free. He pushed his way back in against the swelling dark matter force field. His goal was simple: to shut Burt’s mouth forever. But no matter how he tried, flesh and blood could change nothing in the face of energy, however hard it tried, and he was thrown back time after time.

“To be honest, I’ve always loved seeing you all so… full of life.”

It was a Shepherd. Just as Dawn had nearly everyone under control, a Shepherd walked out of the grid cell that only they could enter. Jonathan recognized him as the Shepherd who had recruited him in the first place. He was the one speaking, and his face still wore the same smile Jonathan had seen the first time they met. At the sight of him, everyone was thrown into confusion for a moment. Even though Dawn had already withdrawn the dark matter’s force, most people stayed in the positions they had been pinned in. Jonathan, on the other hand, hurried toward the Shepherd, very much like a bullied child running to a parent who has come to stand up for him.

“I say,” before Jonathan had a chance to speak, the Shepherd raised his hand first, pointed at Jonathan and said: “We had you do a bit of security work. It was going perfectly well, and now look—you’ve made a complete mess of it. Well, that’s fine too, isn’t it?” The Shepherd turned his head to look at the other Shepherds behind him, then, smiling, walked a little toward Dawn, gave him a thumbs-up, and raised both hands in a gesture of welcome. Seeing this, Dawn put away the dark matter, warily scanned the room all around, walked over in front of Sandra to shield her behind him, and bowed slightly to the Shepherd as a show of goodwill.

“Wow, look at that—our Star Map Draftsman. Very good, very good. Well then, let’s end this farce. Would the Star Map Draftsman, Moreth Steader Jonathan—yes, and those two as well,” the Shepherd pointed at Burt and Carlson and went on, “the two princes of the Strath Federation—please come with me.” Having said that, the Shepherd turned and walked toward the grid cell at the top of Kukra City.

Hearing the Shepherd say this, the few of them were taken aback for a moment; they didn’t know what the Shepherd intended. Dawn thought it over. Given the Shepherds’ abilities, if they wanted to punish anyone, or destroy any people or things they didn’t like the look of, no one could stop them. Since they had called these few of them to follow, it was probably something to do with the Great Migration—something very important. Dawn turned, patted Sandra on the arm, and was the first to follow. Jonathan didn’t want Dawn to be that close to the Shepherd, so he hurried after them too. The two princes of the Strath Federation thought about it for a while. Burt picked up a weapon from the floor that suited his hand better and nodded at Carlson, and Carlson did the same. The two of them held their weapons tightly, and that seemed to give them enough courage to follow. And so they followed the Shepherd into the interior of the Orion Arm’s only super Star Bridge.

When they all walked into this enormous space, the first thing they saw was the planet that had been sucked dry of its star’s energy. It had turned dark brown and hung silently in the lower right of the space. The side facing down was completely dark, while the side facing up had a faint pale glow. That was not its own light; it was the light shining from the huge passage in the distance—more precisely, light from the far end of the huge passage, shining through. When Dawn looked closely, he saw enormous devices lined up ring after ring along the inside of the passage. The devices were set on circular rings, like the support rings inside a culvert. At the end of the passage, black specks of different sizes could be faintly seen moving, a bit like the sight of a few reclusive tadpoles swimming about at the bottom of a hundred-year-old well when you peer down into it. Dawn looked at the few others who had come in with him; seeing a feat of engineering like this, they couldn’t help staring at it, spellbound, too. Dawn didn’t hear any sound of machinery. At least this one wasn’t like the super Star Bridge Hamilton had built—that one was so loud that Dawn had begun to suspect something was wrong with his ears, much like what had happened to him aboard the Dawn ship the first time he flew out of the Solar System.

“This is the super Star Bridge, the only thing we can do for the Orion Arm,” the Shepherd began. Dawn could hear him. Relieved as he was, when he heard the Shepherd say “the only thing,” he immediately grew tense. “Now it is completely stable,” the Shepherd said, pointing at the passage.

“Thank you, Shepherds, for not abandoning us,” Jonathan said ingratiatingly.

“That’s a bit early to say.” The Shepherd waved a hand behind him, and a ship that looked a lot like the Sane ship flew over. He looked at Dawn and went on: “You can strip off Kukra City’s outer shell. That way it can hold more ships flying in at the same time. We had originally planned to finish migrating the civilizations of the Orion Arm, but from what I’ve seen, you are too warlike. That is not the outcome we wanted to see. There is a federation very close to you that rules a star region as big as the Milky Way, but they are not warlike. Instead, they set out more than a hundred years ago and helped the civilizations along their route to migrate. That is the spirit we want to see in the new universe bubble.”

“But,” Dawn wanted to say something, but the Shepherd raised a hand and cut him off.

“Today the leaders of the Orion Arm’s major federations are all here, except for the Ashton Federation, and the Star Map Draftsman is here too. From here on, it’s up to you yourselves. At the end of this super Star Bridge is the DeFi Passage. I hope you can get your attitudes in order and then meet us over there.” As the Shepherd finished, the ship arrived right in front of them. Before everyone had time to take in what the Shepherd meant, the Shepherds had already boarded the ship, and it rushed into the super Star Bridge, flew through ring after ring, gradually shrank to a point, and finally vanished.

“Look at that, just look at that,” Burt said, pacing back and forth and waving his arms wildly.

“Warlike. Did you hear what the Shepherd said? Warlike. Because we’re warlike, we’ve been abandoned. Look at the fine thing you’ve done—the whole Orion Arm is paying for you alone. What is this, a punishment?” Carlson pointed at Jonathan and demanded loudly.

Jonathan quietly watched the others without making a sound. Dawn was looking all around the space, thinking about how to take off Kukra City’s so-called outer shell. Just then, Jonathan gave a cold laugh, glanced at the Star Bridge once more, then turned and walked quickly outside. At first Dawn didn’t think much of it. By the time he realized what was happening, Jonathan had already disappeared through the exit. Dawn quickly patted Carlson and hurried out. They didn’t even need to guess: Jonathan must have come up with a new scheme, and even if it meant dragging everyone down with him, he wouldn’t care. That was exactly what was so frightening. By the time they caught up with him outside, Jonathan had already gathered most of the people together. He climbed up a fairly high staircase, where the Centaly had already brought him a large amplifier, and he shouted to the people below: “Run for your lives, every one of you. The Shepherds have abandoned us.”

As soon as he finished, the crowd erupted. This only confirmed the rumors from before the fighting. Dawn meant to climb up near Jonathan to stop him from doing anything else that would spin out of control, but Sandra held him back. She pointed at someone standing at the foot of the stairs. It was Hamilton. When he saw Dawn, he immediately turned and slipped into the crowd, hiding himself completely.

“Moreth Steader Jonathan, then what should we do? You’re the only one in the Orion Arm who can make the decisions now!” Someone in the crowd rushed to the front and shouted up at Jonathan on the stairs.

“This lot has completely forgotten about us two brothers,” Carlson said indignantly.

The crowd stirred again. The people at the back, afraid they couldn’t hear, pushed forward. Each person’s small step became a great step for the tide of people, carrying Dawn and the others even closer to Jonathan.

“Good, good,” Jonathan said. He glanced down thoughtfully, rubbed his left arm, took a step forward, and with both hands braced on the stair railing, looked down coldly at the crowd and said: “The Shepherds have abandoned us. Just now, they pulled out of the Orion Arm. There’s nothing left in that grid cell now. All we can do is suffocate to death in this universe, because our Star Map Draftsman did nothing. He didn’t unite the Orion Arm early and prepare for the migration sooner.”

Hearing Jonathan say this left Dawn completely baffled. What did this have to do with him? He had just happened to become the Star Map Draftsman at an unlucky time. All of it had been like solving a riddle—he had only learned things step by step as he went along. When he tried to rush up and explain, he found he had already been hemmed in among the crowd by Centaly soldiers. Clearly, Jonathan wanted to start a new round of war? But a war with whom?