CHAPTER 13
Tal dropped the pistol. He clasped both hands together, tried to still his trembling fingers. It wasn’t remorse. Only a euphoria so powerful his very being felt undone. He laughed aloud for joy, inhaled several deep breaths of pure, refreshing air.
There was a groan from the floor. Tal looked down. Romano was beginning to stir, his eyes flickering behind closed lids still trapping him in a dream. What might his paradise be? It didn’t matter—it would soon be his forever.
Tal turned to his other companions in the room. Before his eyes, they changed, their alien features smoothing away into ones fully human. No, more than human. Nymphs and dryads, names out of Homer, Virgil, clothed in living flesh. One of them came toward him. Hebe. Cupbearer of the gods, goddess of youth herself.
“The Bliss is still yours.” Her voice was music. “But others can share it.”
Her right hand rose above her head, the finger pointed toward the oculus.
“Call them here. Their place is prepared.”
—
“Sir, it’s been hours. The scanners aren’t finding anything.”
Barak was unmoved. “What about the probes?”
Galen’s expression was weary. “No change, Sir. We’ve—wait.” The lieutenant frowned, looked down at his terminal. His face suddenly became awed. “Sir… I’m picking up an incoming message. From the surface. Source unknown. Audio only.”
“Send it to the bridge.” Barak tapped his own terminal. Cleared his throat. “This is Captain Barak, ERS Arnon, Eridani Republic. State your identity and intentions.”
“Captain.” A familiar voice answered over the channel. “This is Doctor Tal.”
Barak and Leoben exchanged a look with raised eyebrows. Barak turned back to his terminal. “Doctor? Where are you? What happened? Where is your team?”
“Captain…” Tal’s voice took a breath over the channel, suppressed something that might have been laughter. “You have to see it. Feel it. It’s beyond anything you can imagine.”
“Put Lieutenant Kuan on the channel.”
There was no response. Only the sound of heavy, rasping breaths.
“That’s an order, Doctor.”
“He is...he can’t… it doesn’t matter. Can’t you see that, Captain? Nothing matters. This is the answer to everything. Everything!”
The last word was almost a scream. Barak and Leoben both looked into each other’s face. Then Barak spoke. “Mr. Calydon?”
“We’ve just now picked up Lieutenant Kuan’s signature on the scanners.” A pause. “He’s dead, Sir. So is Sergeant Traskin. Romano’s still alive but unconscious.”
Barak spoke into the channel again. “I’m sure you can hear, Doctor Tal. You have one final chance to tell us what happened.”
The laughter was small at first. Then it grew louder, manic, echoed through the bridge, through the skulls of everyone within it.
“Paradise happened.” The laughter finally ceased. Tal giggled. “Bliss, Heaven, Nirvana, Shangri-La, Elsyium. They’re all here, Captain. Waiting for all of you. Come.”
Barak reached out a hand and killed the connection. “Mr. Calydon?”
“It fits the pattern, Sir. Almost perfectly.”
Barak breathed in. He remembered Nabu’s face. What he had seen in the man’s eyes at the end. Heard in his voice.
“Activate Protocol Zero.”
A hush fell over the bridge. The weapons officer swallowed and turned in Barak’s direction. “Please confirm that, Sir.”
Barak reached inside his uniform and extracted the key on its necklace. He saw Leoben do the same. “Confirmed. Activate Protocol Zero.”
The weapons officer swallowed again, nodded, turned back to his holo-screen, rapidly entering numbers. Barak and Leoben both rose from their seats as a terminal rose in the center of the bridge. Barak activated his recorder.
“Let the record show,” he said. “That based upon the assessment of myself and qualified officers from the relevant departments, we have identified an imminent existential threat to our ship, our crew, and all human life. Further investigation is futile. With the authority invested in me as an officer of the Eridani Republic Navy, I am invoking Protocol Zero, our final contingency allowing for absolute destruction of a planetary body in the event of an imminent existential threat to the human species. This is Captain Barak of ERS Arnon, Eridani Republic Navy, speaking with the concurrence of my First Officer, Commander Leoben. Do you concur with this decision, Commander?”
“This is Commander Leoben, ERS Arnon, Eridani Republic Navy.” Leoben spoke into his own recorder, his eyes hardened in steel. “Let the record show that I concur with the decision of Captain Barak, ERS Arnon, Eridani Republic Navy to activate Protocol Zero, our final contingency allowing for the absolute destruction of a planetary body in the event of an imminent existential threat to the human species.”
Barak and Leoben inserted their keys together. Turned them in a single motion. A blinking red light filled the entire bridge. A computerized voice echoed around them. “Systems arming.”
The weapons officer spoke without turning around this time. “We’re tapping into the gravitic drive now, Sir. Power level at 40 percent.”
“Open the channel back up.” Barak waited. Then spoke. “Dr. Tal? Are you still there?”
“Captain?” Tal’s voice came back over the connection. There were still faint giggles under his breath. “Did you hear me? Everything is prepared. They’ve told me. Come.”
“Power level at 70 percent.”
“I doubt very much that you are even lucid enough at this point to comprehend what I’m telling you,” Barak said. “But I must inform you that as of now, I am terminating the expedition to Calypsa 4b. You are hereby ordered to gather all survivors and await extraction by shuttle.”
“Power level at 80 percent.”
“Ordered…ordered…” Tal was seemingly playing with the words. “Always the career Navy man. Just like the rest of you blind, primitivistic idiots.”
“Power level at 90 percent.”
“Are you refusing my orders, Doctor?”
“It doesn’t matter. If you won’t come to us… we can always come to you.”
The weapons officer turned around. “Power level at 100 percent, Sir. On your command.”
“Let the record show,” Barak spoke into his recorder again. “That the Science Officer has disobeyed a direct order of his commanding officer in the face of an emergency situation. He is hereby to be regarded as responsible for his own fate.”
Tal’s voice suddenly became coherent again. “Captain? Captain!”
“Good-bye, Doctor.”
Barak killed the connection for the last time. Closed his eyes. Steeled himself. Opened them.
“Fire.”
—
Inside the dome, Tal stared dumbfounded at the speaker device that had suddenly gone silent. A sickening realization spread within his bowels.
No…
“I am the way into the city of woe. I am the way into eternal pain.”
Tal looked down. Romano’s eyes were open, glazed and unfocused with a waking dream as his lips kept moving.
“I am the way to go among the lost. Justice caused my high architect to move, Divine omnipotence created me, The highest wisdom, and the primal love.”
Tal backed away, his eyes locked the private’s face. The words kept coming.
“Before me there were no created things, But those that last forever—as do I.”
The eyes suddenly came into focus. Tal saw them look straight at him.
“Abandon all hope, you who enter here.”
Tal looked up. Somewhere far overhead, Arnon was arming its ultimate weapon. Seven phase beams, each carrying the full destructive power of a gravitic reactor. It could destroy a star. Its target was a moon.
Before his eyes, the twilight sky transformed to fire. Tal had no time to scream as it vaporized his body.
—-
Barak’s eyes were fixed upon the holo-screen, his ears only faintly recording the murmured oaths and prayers floating off the lips around him.
There were several seconds of turbulence as the first pieces of debris impacted their shielding. Then the storm passed, leaving them free to gaze upon the now-empty space that once held a planet’s satellite. Calypsa 4b was gone, along with all its secrets—and whatever spirits lingered with them.
Leoben turned in his chair. The First Officer’s voice was thick. “It’s done, Sir.”
Barak closed his eyes and bowed his head. “Amen. Helmsman. Set course for home. It’s time for us to leave this place.”
“Aye, Sir.”
EPILOGUE
There were few words spoken afterwards. The silence followed them through the void of hyperspace. The crew dealt with the events as had their forebears throughout the ages, settling back into the familiar routines of ship life. At long last, Arnon was going home. With its prize in tow. There had been a short memorial service for those left behind. Their families would mourn without remains. Such was a spacer’s burden.
Barak was now spending a well-earned moment of privacy in his quarters. The rest of the crew had strict orders not to disturb him. He had filed his report to Fleet Command hours ago. It contained a full explanation of his actions, complete with the justifications thereof. But men were not his only judges. He began again the custom he maintained at the end of every voyage.
The prayer shawl rested over his head and shoulders behind the phylactery. The lit menorah cast a comforting glow in the darkened room. He always preferred to study Torah by candlelight.
The scroll lay open across his desk beside a stylus and parchment. He ran a finger over the page, tracing the Hebrew passage:
And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their images with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place.
Barak picked up the stylus, closing his eyes in silent meditation. A minute later, he opened them again and began his midrash.
Our commitment to free inquiry conditions us to see every loss of history as a loss to the human race. We forget that some things were destroyed for a reason. And in seeking Promised Lands among the stars, we shall find idols as well as fruits.
