The Sirens' Last Lament
Page 8
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The Black Sun Temple immediately claimed responsibility for the atomic detonation that splintered and destroyed the Starship Diana. Earth had piled its finest treasures upon that starship. Earth had filled the Diana’s decks with the last of its great artists. Upon the Starship Diana, we had assembled the finest things our history and craft had ever created. We wanted to return the sirens’ song with our own splendor; and instead, we repaid that melody with fire.
An agent of that dark temple had infiltrated the Diana. Perhaps a wig of synthetic hair or a twill hat had concealed the black sun tattooed upon the crown of that temple’s bald saboteur. Perhaps the saboteur had hid his bomb inside a hallow cello. Somehow, the Black Sun Temple lashed out against what the rest of our world cherished. Somehow, the Black Sun Temple lashed out against the sirens’ song the rest of us judged to have been so beautiful.
The sirens beamed a different song into our homes following the death the Starship Diana delivered to their brethren. The sirens shrieked their new songs. All of us who believed the sirens’ voices to be wondrous shook in fear as we listened to those creatures’ discordant notes wail upon our ears. The sirens’ music turned dark and foreboding. We listened to those sirens lament, and we heard those aliens cry out for justice. None of us knew the extent of the sirens’ power. Could the sirens destroy us all in a blink? What super weapon could the sirens turn against us in revenge for those our violence took away?
We had built the Starship Diana as a gift. Instead, the Black Sun Temple turned it into a weapon. We had hoped to establish great art academies with the sirens, schools where we might develop the next generation’s great poets and painters. Instead, we built military academies that built the soldiers we needed to wage war against the vile Black Sun Temple. We created space marshals to pursue those cultists into the stars when we had hoped to instruct musicians. A wink of an eye, and an atomic burst of destruction, was all that was required to vaporize our dreams.
Often at night, as I toss and turn upon my cot while Jupiter looms outside our penitentiary. I wonder if I might have been a sculptor instead of a soldier had it not been for the Black Sun Temple.
But it only hurts to wonder what might have been. I am a solider now. No matter our injuries, we all remain soldiers on Ganymede. All of us have our duty. We execute those whose crowns sport the black sun. We pray the blood will return to the next generation that opportunity to build a second starship far more grand than even the Diana. We hope that our killing might give whatever children follow us the chance to once more invite the sirens into an elegant concert hall. We hope our death gives those who follow us another moment to play music with the sirens.
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