10,000 Dawns: The Gendar Conspiracy

We have a special treat for all of you today, a cut story from our "A 10,000 Dawns Christmas" project that has been finished and brought to life! It's a prequel to my novella "White Canvas", and features a character many of you folks asked to come back from "Rachel Survived"... ;). Like White Canvas and Rachel Survived, it's a licensed crossover, pulling characters and settings from the universes of Doctor Who and Faction Paradox.

We also have a new updated ebook of the "A 10,000 Dawns Christmas" project for all of you to enjoy! So Christmas in...March? I guess? Well, either way, I hope you enjoy it. -Jim

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The Gendar Conspiracy
By James Wylder

Featuring characters and ideas created by Simon Bucher-Jones and Jacob Black
For Anarchic

Vo’lach Prime, a long time ago.

It’s rocketing down through the atmosphere, the resistance making a bright glow against it’s front. It looks like you could make a wish on it, if you were standing down below. Which the Sergeant-Instructor was, though he’d long ago given up on wishes. Ten feet from the ground, the object stops. It cools, the light drizzle hissing off it as it stabilizes, and then there is another wonder. The figure appears tiny, a speck, then grows to the size of a toy, then a full grown woman. She dusts off her dark blue robes, and waves at the Sergeant-Instructor, only her mouth visible from under her beak-pointed hood. He has no time for wonders either.
“Are you the Arbiter of Knives, of the Firmament?” He yells, the wind isn’t particularly conductive to chatter, but his orders were to meet the Emissary of the Firmament on neutral ground, and Vo’lach Prime is about as neutral as it gets today.
“I am, Sergeant-Instructor? Of the--” there’s a gust of wind, and the end of the sentence is cut off, but he knows what she meant. He gestures for her to follow, and they head for the offending site.
The Vo’lach he met with are already there, huddling around the pit. There are two corpses in it. The Vo’lach make room, their six-foot wide frames bustling aside, lightning reflecting off their shiny colorful fur as they shuffle.
“It’s one of yours,” he says evenly.
The Firmament slides down into the pit, and examines the bodies, the orb she rode in on shining a light down onto them, “Well one is, anyway, sort of. They’re a member of the Knights of Sky, who splintered from--”
“They’re from your universes,” he spat back, “you know there’s not supposed to be any interference in our affairs.” He couldn’t believe he was having to lecture this backwater representative. The 10,000 Dawns were the most blighted piece of inter-universal real estate he could imagine. And yet, they kept getting in everyone’s business.
She looked back up at him, then to the Vo’lach, “There were three more of them I see. I’m assuming they took something?”
“Stole,” he corrected.
One of the Vo’lach quivered, “A relic we received from Gendar, supposedly, an ancient urn.”
She frowned, and snapped her fingers. The orb seemed to shrink and absorb the body.
“Well, what do you want me to do?”
“You’re duty-bound to come with me to Gendar, and see if we can find the thieves.”
She sighed, “If that’s my diplomatic duty, then sure. Could you give me a hand--” he walked away towards his ship, and heard the zing as the orb zipped right next to him, and she dropped out again, “I don’t know where Gendar is, I’m not from here you know.”
“Then follow close behind.”


* * *

Gendar was the 17th most interesting archaeological site in it’s home universe. This doesn’t sound too impressive, until you remember that 17th out of a couple trillion is actually a pretty good score. At that point, it’s all the kids who somehow have higher-than-perfect grade point averages competing for who gets to get in the group photo at the end of the year. And sure, Gendar is in the third row off to the left, but it made the picture.
Why Gendar is so interesting, is that there should be no life on Gendar. Completely inhospitable to life, bombarded constantly with radiation from it’s three suns, and coated entirely in sand with no water, Gendar has somehow developed life that is completely native to the planet, while being boringly indistinct from life anywhere else in the universe. Fossil records show that this life developed on Gendar, while every moment of those creature’s existences should have been impossible. That a sapient species who happened to look exactly like ordinary people who happened to have their hair and eyes dyed purple had also developed there, completely independently, was the final straw that drove many an archaeologist into a seething rage. At least fourteen Universities’ archaeology departments had banned discussion on Gendar entirely, and another twenty-eight had declared that they didn’t believe it was real.
This didn’t stop them from vising the planet, however. All across Gendar, roving gangs of archaeologists, anthropologists, and other scientists roamed the deserts, trying to find the secrets to the planet’s existence. There were three main schools of thought: 1. Gendar had a perfectly reasonable explanation for it’s seeming nonsense, and through patience and hard work it can be revealed! 2. Gendar is not real, has never been real, and the real question is how is the illusion of it being real so good, and how can it be uncovered and unmasked. And 3., Aliens.
Drezen Hael was part of the second group, and had been searching the planet for the last three months trying to find proof of it’s non-existence. However, after paying for a few too many over priced bottles of water from the locals to cope with the extreme heat, he was beginning to have suspicions it was real and the whole thing was a tourist trap. He kept these thoughts from the group however, as his funding from the “Gender Is Fake Trust” (nicely acronymed as GIFT) revolved around sticking to the goals of their society, so he rationalized the water as some sort of paid DLC in a massive interactive hologram for the time being. He had just began to work out how the hologram could take the cash he’d brought with him and not just his credit card info, when the man who would kill him approached.
His long blue robes billowed in the wind, it had a beaked hood and the edges were all lined in a fine patterned cloth. One one arm was a messy looking gauntlet, cobbled together to hold crystals in varying sizes over it’s surface. The man didn’t say hello.
“Hello!” Drezen said, “You don’t look like a local, so I’m guessing you’re from another archaeological dig? This site is ours, mind you. We have a permit from the planetary governor--”
Closer, he could see the man was bleeding.
“Do...do you need help? We have a lot of doctors here, but no one who is that kind of doctor, if you catch my drift...” he gave an awkward chuckle. The man stopped, and pulling a hand from where it was supporting the bloody wound on his chest, banged on his gauntlet. “Goddamn thing,” he said. Then looked up at Drezen. His face was bloody too. “You, you’re from this universe right?”
This wasn’t a normal question, even for a space archaeologist. This left Drezen with two possible conclusions to continue from: 1. This man was from another universe. 2. This man was crazy. Upon further thought, he added 3. This man is a bad script in the holographic simulation of Gendar, but he only listed that contractually. “Yes, uh, are you?” the rest of the dig was getting curious, and were beginning to mill slowly towards the visitor.
The man thought for a moment, and then, seemingly coming to resolution, surged forward and grabbed Drezen’s chest with his gauntleted hand. One of the crystals on it glowed, and Drezen frantically tried to pull away from the man’s grip as he felt his life draining from his body. The wound began closing on the man, and started opening up on his own body. The wear and tear of the desert faded from the man, his complexion bolstered, his muscled surged, and Drezen’s corpse dropped to the ground, drained dry as the rest of his team fled. The man looked ahead, and saw his destination. It was easy to see, it was as tall as the sky.
The statue of the goddess.
Where he’d find everything he’d sacrificed for.
With renewed strength, he continued his walk.


* * *


“Well, it’s certainly big,” the Arbiter of Knives said.
“It’s one of the most remarkable feats of engineering in this universe, built using technology that should have been incapable of it’s construction,” Littlejohn replied.
“So, you’re one of those crazy people who think that humans couldn’t have built the pyramids and stuff?” she probed.
“No, they’re just racists. Any idiot who has even a mild sense of people who look different than them having skills can tell the pyramids are obviously built by humans. What I mean is that this statue’s construction doesn’t line up with the archaeological records here at all. Nothing does. There’s not way life developed here, but it did.”
Knives looked at him, her lips pursed and bunching up at the corners.
“What?”
“So, time travelers?”
“We’d know if it was time travelers?”
She scrunched her eyes up, and held both hand up, “Would you?”
He kept walking.
At this time of day, the statue was filthy with tourists. All mulling about, taking pictures and holograms and molecular scans of themselves and any thing that could or would be interesting. Of course, a lot of them weren’t here for the sights to enjoy them, they were trying to glean secrets to prove whether or not the planet was real or some sort of elaborate hoax.
“And over here,” a tour guide said, “you can see the elaborate relief drawings of the Goddess, the God, and that other one, who--” a tourist lept forward, molecular scanner in hand, held out like a ray-gun, and a flat triangle of light scrolled over the engraving.
“It’s period...” she said dejectedly.
“Yes it is,” the tour guide sighed, “now, if you look at the details--”
Littlejohn didn’t need to flash any information, the staff seemed to know who he was, and he and Knives were directed through the throng by a woman in a grey poncho and goggles, her purple hair in a long braid.
“Sorry for the tourists,” she said as they reached the door, “it’s always like this. At least no one tried to deface anything today.”
Littlejohn gave a faint smile, Knives shrugged.
“We’re here about the urn you gifted to Vo’lach prime.”
The woman blinked, “Oh! Oh yes, I’d nearly forgotten, that was ages ago wasn’t it?” She winked, “But I suppose not a big deal for you.”
It was Littlejohn’s turn to shrug, “Do you know if there was any special significance to the urn?”
The woman gave a stuttering laugh, “Uh, let’s go to my office! That’s a cool place. Do you like offices?”
“No,” Knives said.
“Great! Well, we’re going anyway, uh...”


Once inside, things were a lot nicer. Modern lighting seemed to have been part of the original plan of the building, either that or there had been some odd architectural quirk that had meant all of it could be fitted in without looking out of place. Their guide led them to a cozy office, with wood paneling halfway up the wall, and the upper half and ceiling painted to look like the sky, where she promptly flipped a picture on the desk over as they entered. “Not every day we get visitors from two such noble groups as your own…I know Littlejohn, of course, but I don’t know you I’m afraid?” She pulled up her goggles, revealing her purple eyes, and slid into the desk. Behind her was a portrait of a quartet of musicians playing string instruments. Littlejohn and Knives slid into chairs in front of her.
“I’m the Arbiter of Knives,” she answered.
“I’m Virtuoso, I’m in charge of the Historic Preservation Society.”
“Again? I thought you’d retired?” Littlejohn asked.
She laughed awkwardly, “Whaaaat? Um…” she shuffled some papers on her desk, “Yeah, they brought me back, after the incident where that empire of cyborg thingies tried to conquer us they decided they needed my experience again.”
“...For the Historic Preservation Society,” Knives deadpanned.
“That’s the name of the planetary government here,” Littlejohn clarified.
“So, the urn,” Knives said, impatiently.
“Yeah, uh, so that urn. I gave it to the Vo’lach cause we’re pals!”
“And?” Littlejohn turned his palm up.
“...Uh, turns out it’s actually a secret key to a sealed off area of the temple statue thing!”
Littlejohn stared her down.
“Which I didn’t know.”
Continued eye contact.
“Maybe I knew!”
An eyebrow raised.
“I knew okay! I just wanted it off the planet,” she spun around in her chair, “It’s not as easy running a planet as it looks okay. It was an eyesore, for one, and for two it worried me.”
“So you put the Vo’lach in danger.”
Her smile slowly pulled into an overly wide view of her teeth.
“You’re not going to...investigate me, right?”
Littlejohn pursed his lips.
Virtuoso probably would have said something else unintentionally incriminating, but it was at that point that the man reached the statue of the goddess, and people began dying.

* * *


There was a line. He tried to keep his patience. Certainly, he could wait. He’d waited longer. But the desert had sucked away his patience, and the betrayal he’d suffered had put him on a knife’s edge. They’d gone into this together, and now she and Artillo had thought they could remove the excess members of their conspiracy. And, well, they had, nearly. But he knew where they’d be going next. Gendar was always the next stop. And it was a goddamn tourist trap.
“These shirts are cheaper than the gift shop, get em before it’s too late! Supplies are limited! You want one sir?”
He didn’t. He tried to avoid the man’s gaze. He tried to keep his temper under control. These idiots. These idiots! His hand shook, the gauntlet rattled. He had to keep control. The vendor held the shirt up to him. On the shirt was a close up of the face of the Statue of the Goddess.
He looked at that face.
He knew that face.
And his temper broke.
He didn’t really remember what he did, getting through to the door. Streams of red danced around him as he pulled on life, strung it out and cut life from bodies, carving a path to the door, and then blasting it down with a shot of white light from his gauntlet.
He stepped into the temple, and charged through anyone in his way.
He knew where he was going. And it was probably too late.


* * *


“Ma’am! An attacker has entered the temple!” a guard yelled, throwing the door to the office open. Virtuoso sprung out of her chair, and her guests followed as they ran out, following the guard as he briefed them on the casualties, and Virtuoso yelled orders into a communicator.
“Where are we going?” Littlejohn yelled.
“Where the urn goes!” she replied.
The urn was there when they arrived, placed into an indentation into a relief, which had swung open to reveal a small storage space containing a small pile of papers, and one paper taped to the back of the space that said “Sorry!” with a smiley face drawn under it. Holding one piece of paper was a man in a long cloak, a gauntlet on one hand. He was shaking with anger.
“I know what you’re here for,” he said, “but I have to ask you read this before you do anything.”
Knives gingerly took the paper from his outstretched hand, and she and Littlejohn read:






The Goddess shook her empty glass at one of her thousand servants, and it was promptly refilled, and given a new little umbrella.
“It’s going pretty well, isn’t it?” The God said, lounging back in his designer shorts. She’d finally gotten him to stop wearing a suit while they were sunbathing after a hundred years, but she could tell he was itching to put one back on when they got inside. He’d becoming such a fop since his last body died, and he became a boy again.
“It really is, I think they really have captured your likeness,” Virtuoso replied, and continued sketching the construction.
The statue was the size of a skyscraper, and was being constructed far enough away from the metropolis they’d built here that no one would obscure the view. It was, in fact, the spitting image of The Goddess, who adjusted her sunglasses to gaze at it.
“I was hoping they could get my nose looking a little better, I never really liked this nose,” she slid back in her lounge chair with a sigh, and one of her servants carefully steadied her glass so it wouldn’t drip.
“Well, I’ve about seen enough for today. How about we get a nap in?”
“My goddess,” their High Priest said with a cough, “will you be skipping tonight’s veneration?”
The Goddess let out a long moan, “No, I’ll let everyone adore me.” Being a goddess was such a slog sometimes.
“Thank you, Goddess of Gendar. May you--”
She stopped paying attention and pulled out a notebook, she was here for a reason after all. The whole goddess thing was just her day job.

“See?” he yelled.
Knives and Littlejohn looked up from the paper, met each other’s gaze, and shrugged.
“It’s even in her handwriting! She wrote that! About herself!”
“Um,” Knives said, “who?”
“THE GODDESS OF GENDAR!”
“She enjoys a nice drink with umbrella personally I find that relateable.”
“She’s a CON ARTIST you absolute imbecile. This whole planet is a billion year con-job!”
Virtuoso coughed, “Clearly, you’re uh, losing your mind and--”
“You’re NAMED IN THE DAMN DOCUMENT!” he said, an accusatory finger pointing at Virtuoso.
Virtuoso waved both hands frantically, “No look, look, if hypothetically a friend built a whole planet up somebody had to stay there and run it or the socioeconomic--”
“SHUT UP! She’s already left. Her and Artillo,” he clenched a fist, and started chuckling to himself, “it’s too late then, I suppose.”
“It is,” Knives replied, “you’ve murdered people, let alone your unlawful interference in this universe’s business. You’re coming back with me. In the name of the First and Final Firmament, I demand you turn yourself in.”
He looked at Littlejohn, “I meant it’s too late for something else. Our larger plan. And for that, well, I’m not actually sorry, but you have my sympathy.”
Littlejohn shook his head, “Enough, are you turning yourself in or not?”
“Do you know what happens to us Firmament when we die, Sergeant-Instructor?”
“You live again, like my people.”
“Not quite. If I die here, this far from home, by the time I make it back my soul, if you would call it that, will lose all memories. I’ll be reborn a blank slate. A white c…well, you get the picture.” He didn’t meet anyone’s gaze, “So I guess this is where it ends for me.”
He swung the gauntlet out, and a blast of white light sent his foes scattering, but as Knives lept out of the way, she clung to the wall with her feet, and ran along it like it was the floor. She drew long crystal knife from her sleeve.
A second white blast came, and turned the wall ahead of Knives to rubble, dropping her back to the proper floor.
Littlejohn walked forward, no fear in his eyes, no agility in his step. Slowly and surely. White blasts came at him, but they seemed to be timed wrong, blazing past his cheeks in perfect near misses. The man screamed, and grabbed him, and sucked the life from him, and his eyes surged with red lines.

He fell to the floor, cold and wet. Skin covered his eyes, it had to be cut away so he could see, at least on the first body...but this was so long ago. So very long ago.
“So this is how you were born, out a simple cloning tank? I heard the 10,000 Dawns were backwaters, but I expected something nicer than this?”
“What the hell is inside you?” he coughed.
“You didn’t guess? Time.”


He let go, and stumbled back, still coughing up fluid from the birthing tank, Virtuoso and Littlejohn staring at him. He got his composure back, straightened his back, and a quick slash went along his chest. He looked down at the cut, it wasn’t fatal, up at the Arbiter of Knives, and snatched at the hand holding the knife, and sucked at her life.
And he fell to the floor, bleeding from everywhere.
“You didn’t think about what’s inside me, did you? I’m the Arbiter of Knives. Put it together.”
He didn’t say anything else before he passed on.
Littlejohn checked his pockets, and then looked at the papers, “A lot of historical records…a few notes about some sort of heist but no details...no ideas where they could have gone next from here I’m afraid.”
Virtuoso ran a hand over her hair, “I need to go see to the medical needs of the guests, and then the damage he did to the temple wall...will you excuse me?”
Littlejohn gestured, and she scampered off. “Weird, but she does her job well.
Knives nodded. “She’s absolutely a Firmament, you know. I can get ready to extradite her immediately.”
Littlejohn laughed, loud and hard, “Of course Virtuoso is. She has the worst poker face I’ve ever seen. I don’t really mind her being her, so I’ve let it slide.” He looked at Knives, and nodded, “Looks like we’re all done here.”
Knives looked down at the body, “I’ll bring him back to the Firmament. I’m sorry the trail went cold.”
“These things tend to come back around. I’ll let you know if anything comes from it all.”
Knives didn’t expect there’d be much. How serious could this whole plot be anyway? “I’ll see you around then, Littlejohn.”
“I’ll let you know if I need some cutlery.”
She smirked, and grabbing the body, vanished into a crystal orb. It zoomed through the temple, out the doors and past the medical crews, up into the sky, and ever so briefly became a star.


* * *

The Firmament, later

He fell to the floor, cold and wet. It was dark.
“You’re alright, I just haven’t cut your eyes open yet. Don’t struggle. I’m the Arbiter of Resurrection, and welcome to life. Now come on, we’ve got to get you up there’s paperwork to fill out.”
He wasn’t sure, after all he had only just come into the world, but as he was helped off the ground he couldn’t help but feel like he’d been here before.