by Scott Reeves
It would be nice to have company. New friends on a new world. He only wished they were meeting under better circumstances.
There was a young guy down there, and a ferocious woman in some sort of invisible cage. Three of the men stood on the ends of the platform with raised rifles, firing continuously back into the building. Shooting psychos, Andy figured.
One of the men, an elderly man, looked up once and saw Andy, gave him the thumbs up. Andy figured that one was Rodor. Then the man went back to directing the loading of the platform.
A few minutes later, everything was loaded and all were on board. Rodor looked up and waved at Andy, making an upward motion with his thumb. Andy nodded, got up, and went back to the controls. Hit the second button. The cables quivered as the platform began to rise.
A few minutes later, the heads of the passengers crested the edge of the floor. Andy waved to them all as they rose upward. When the platform was back in its original position, it lurched to a halt.
Rodor was the first to step into the room. He came over and pumped Andy’s hand, clapped him on the shoulder. “Good to finally meet you in person, Andy. Welcome aboard the team.”
Andy smiled and nodded.
Rodor turned back to the platform and began shouting out orders as he directed the unloading of the platform.
One of the men, a tall, skinny guy in a white lab coat with a hawkish face, old-fashioned glasses, black hair and a grey goatee, apparently thought he was above such drudgery. He stepped off the platform and examined Joyce with great excitement.
“This is the dead woman Rodor mentioned, is it?” the man asked Andy.
Andy wanted to help with the unloading, but he didn’t want to just ignore the man, so he walked over to the chair and laid a hand on Joyce’s shoulder. “This is Joyce,” he said.
The man shook his head. “Not anymore it isn’t.” He pressed fingers to her neck. “She’s deader than…” he absently searched for a metaphor, but, finding none, didn’t finish. “And you say she’s been sitting like this since she…what? Came to you?”
Andy nodded.
“No sign of aggression?”
“No nothing,” Andy said.
The man put his hands on his hips and paced in a circle around her chair, staring at her with a cocked head. “Most peculiar. Totally at odds with the behavior we’ve encountered thus far.” He stopped pacing and held out a hand, which Andy shook. “I’m Doctor Kulash Dmitriyano. I’ll take it from here…Andy, is it?”
Andy nodded. He wasn’t sure he liked the idea of the man “taking it from here.” He felt responsible for Joyce. She was a fellow Christian, after all, and she had come to him.
But he left the doctor to his own business. As long as he didn’t do anything strange to Joyce, he supposed it was all right to leave her with him. But he would keep his eye on them.
Rodor’s men had already unloaded a chest and the woman in the invisible cage. They were now turning to the final item on the platform: the long, narrow box.
Andy stepped to the side, out of the way, to stand next to Rodor. “Who’s the woman in the cage?” he asked.
“Doctor Kulash’s assistant,” Rodor said. “He thinks we can study her and maybe learn something about whatever has caused this mess.” Rodor’s tone was doubtful.
“What’s in the box?” Andy asked, pointing at the box that was being dragged to the center of the room.
“All in good time, Andy,” Rodor said. “Right now, I think we need to clear the rooftop. Lots of infected out there, right?”
Andy nodded. “Lord, yes,”
Rodor’s eyes suddenly refocused on Andy, as if seeing him clearly for the first time. He stared for a long moment at the red cross tattooed on Andy’s forehead. Andy, for his part, suddenly realized that the man had an identical cross on his own forehead. In all the activity, he hadn’t really noticed. Plus, it was rather dark in the room, since it was night outside and the one dim bulb in the room flickered occasionally as the emergency power fluctuated.
“You’re a Christian?” Rodor asked.
Andy nodded. “A missionary, just arrived on Caldor. Formerly a farmer on Molon. I was planning to start a church here on Caldor, but now…”
Rodor nodded. “It’s nice to meet a brother in Christ.” But there was a tone of suspicion in his voice, as if he didn’t really believe Andy’s story.
Andy pointed at Joyce. “And a sister. She’s a Christian, too. A pastor, according to a business card I found in her pocket.”
“Really?” Rodor walked over to the seated dead woman. “Very interesting.” He stared at her, thoughtfully pulling at his lower lip. Then he clapped his hands. “Okay, people. We’re all tired after this long and eventful day. We’ll be able to bed down for the night in a little while. But right now, we need to cleanse the rooftop so we can unpack the box and deploy the package. So let’s grab our guns and get to work.”
He enlisted Andy’s aid in scooting the desk back from the door. That done, they opened the door and went outside.
The rooftop still swarmed with psychos…or “infected,” as Rodor had called them. They were shuffling around aimlessly. The faster ones, the ones who had come out of the transmats, darted swiftly among their slower moving fellows, occasionally tackling one and settling in to feast.
The sole remaining starship on the rooftop was still slanted downward so that its bow touched the concrete. Andy imagined that by now the infected must have gained access to the interior and killed the crew, who would have then risen from the dead.
Rodor’s soldiers moved methodically about the rooftop, vaporizing the infected. Andy was unsure how he felt about that. Clearly the people were all dead, and as such, their souls must be gone. Joyce’s soul certainly appeared to be gone, leaving behind a vacant shell. But to vaporize them? What if they could be cured? Was this murder?
He shook his head. He had no idea. One thing was certain: they were dangerous.
So he left Rodor and his men to their work, but exempted himself from it.
The young man did as well. He leaned morosely against the door of the maintenance building, watching the slaughter with indifferent eyes.
Andy went over and introduced himself. “Andy Watson.”
“Malfred Gil,” said the young man, and nothing more. He didn’t seem in a mood to talk, so Andy merely stood beside him, watching as Rodor’s men “cleansed” the rooftop.
It took about an hour. When they were done with their grisly business, the entire rooftop, that vast, mile-square plain of concrete that served as one of the many spaceports of Caldor, stretched empty and barren beneath the cold stars of the night sky, devoid of any creature save for Andy and his new friends, as well as seven dormant robocops who squatted like small mountains of metal in random spots across the rooftop.
Andy eyed the machine-men warily, half-expecting them to suddenly power up and start blasting away. After his previous encounter with the things, he definitely did not want another.
Their dirty business done, Rodor and his soldiers returned to the maintenance building. Rodor supervised them as they dragged the mysterious, immense box outside. There was a bit of difficulty getting the large wooden box through the narrow door, but they managed.
One of the women stepped forward and pried the lid off the box.
Andy leaned forward to peer inside. He supposed Rodor’s soldiers must know what was in the box, but he didn’t, and was intensely curious.
Inside he saw some sort of sophisticated cannon, a big, round plasticite barrel with a control panel on the side, packed in Styrofoam casing. Packed around the cannon were fifty spheres, each about a foot in diameter. Each had an equator of shallow indentations with little bumps at the center, like some sort of parabolic antennae.
Andy pulled back. “What’s this?” he asked Rodor.
“It’s a planetary defense grid,” Rodor said. “Once launched into orbit, these spheres become nodes in a planet-wide force field. No planet in the Union is allow
ed to deploy the grids. But those old laws no longer apply. The grid prevents any traffic from entering or leaving a planet’s orbital space. If they try, the force field will zap them into vapor.”
“Starship repellant,” one of the woman soldiers said with a chuckle.
Andy was confused. “What do we need this for?”
“To keep starships away,” Rodor said.
“But…we want to be rescued, don’t we?”
Rodor shook his head. He swept his arm in a wide gesture that took in all his soldiers. “We want to survive. We want to build our own civilization, free of the evils of the present order.” A sudden righteous fire filled his eyes. “God is pouring out his wraith on mankind. All of us here have been spared, that we might usher in a new age of peace and godliness. We don’t want ships coming to take us back to so-called civilization. We have been delivered from that corruptness, and must start fresh, here, in the ruins.”
Andy said, “But…I don’t want to stay here. I want to be rescued. Don’t you all?” He looked around at the faces of the soldiers and saw the same righteous light in their eyes. They believed in Rodor’s vision; he would find no help from them.
“I want to be rescued,” the young man Malfred said. Andy felt grateful for the support. “I thought that’s why we were coming to the roof.”
“I never said that,” Rodor said. “We were coming to the roof to deploy the planetary defense grid. Now. Enough talk. Ships could start arriving at any moment. We’ve got to stop them.”
“Please,” Andy begged. “Don’t do that. Let the ships through. Please.”
“Aren’t you a true Christian?” Rodor asked. “A true Christian wouldn’t want to go back to a poisonous, godless civilization.”
“Yes, I am a true Christian,” Andy said. “And a true Christian would want to go back to civilization, to spread God’s word.”
Rodor stared long and hard at Andy, and Andy met the man’s gaze. Finally, Rodor asked, “If you are a true Christian, then you know what today is. Most so-called Christians of the modern day have no idea. They’re heathens.”
“Of course I know what day it is,” Andy said. “It’s Easter Sunday, by the ancient calendar.”
“He is risen,” Rodor said.
“He is risen indeed,” Andy returned.
Rodor broke into a smile. “Have faith in me, brother. Join us.”
Andy shook his head. “I can’t. Please, in the name of God, don’t do this. Let’s leave this planet.” Andy blinked at the irony of it. He had only just arrived, full of the dreams and possibilities of the place, and now he wanted to turn right around and leave.
Rodor reached out and touched the cross on Andy’s forehead. “I respect you, brother. But…”
He didn’t finish his thought, because at that moment, Joyce came stumbling from the maintenance building. “What’s going on?” she asked. “What’s happened?”
Everyone turned and gaped at her.
Her right ear had healed itself. It was whole again, right where it should be on the side of her beautiful head. And the gaping wound in her neck had vanished. The skin where the wound had been was smooth and unblemished. In fact, her skin almost seemed translucent, pulsing with vitality. She was awesome to behold.
“Fuck,” said Doctor Kulash. He rushed over to her side and pressed his fingers to her neck. After a moment, he reported, “She still has no pulse. This woman is dead.”
Joyce looked at him, looked at them all. “I assure you that I am very much alive. Who are you people?”
But no one answered her; they all stared at her, speechless.
“This changes everything,” Rodor whispered, his voice heavy with awe. His eyes were wide with wonder as he stared slack-jawed at Joyce.
“Why?” Andy asked.
“Don’t you understand?” Rodor asked. He looked at the night sky and gave a joyous laugh. “He doesn’t understand!” he shouted. Then he looked around at his soldiers. “Change of plans, folks. We’re going to let ourselves be rescued. No one is to deploy the planetary defense grid. Understood? If I’m right, we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us out there.” He swept his arm at the stars. “Trust me?” he asked them.
One by one, all his soldiers saluted him.
“We’ve followed you this far,” one of them said. “You haven’t led us wrong yet.”
Rodor smiled at them. “Thank you.” He beckoned to Doctor Kulash. “Is the force cube that holds your assistant multi-cellular?”
Kulash nodded. “It is.”
Andy still didn’t understand Rodor’s apparent revelation. He pointed at Joyce. “How does she change everything?” he asked again.
“I’ll tell you when I’ve proven that I’m right.” He clapped his hands and began shouting orders. “All right, everyone. Bring Kulash’s force cube out of the building.” He gestured to a bank of transmats off in the distance. “Bring it to those transmats.”
They did as ordered. Ten minutes later, the force cube with the raging woman imprisoned inside stood in front of one of the transmat pads. Andy, Rodor and everyone had gathered around.
Rodor tapped a destination into the transmat’s control panel.
Andy was beginning to realize where this was all going, and he didn’t like it one bit. “Wait,” he protested.
Rodor ignored him, addressing himself to Doctor Kulash. “Add another cell to the cube.” Then he stepped up onto the transmat pad.
Kulash nodded, knelt down to the actual, physical cube of the force cube, and tapped in a few instructions. When he was done, he nodded up at Rodor. “Ready.”
“Mr. Batsalam,” Andy said plaintively. “Rodor. Don’t do this.”
Rodor smiled at Andy. “Don’t worry. You’ll understand soon, and you’ll be praising God.”
The elderly man waved to everyone, tapped the transmit button on the control panel and, in a sparkling shimmer of light, vanished into subspace.
Seconds later he reappeared on the pad, snarling and gnashing his teeth, his face twisted with rage, his eyes vacant. The walls of the force cube flared as a new cell expanded to engulf Rodor just as he leaped from the pad, intent on attacking Andy. The wall of the cube threw him backward, and then the back wall threw him forward, back and forth until the animalistic thing that had recently been Rodor was driven to his knees, trapped well and good inside the cage.
Ten minutes later an immense hawk-shaped starship swooped down from the night sky. Andy and his new friends all tilted their heads back to watch as the starship coasted to a halt above the rooftop spaceport, blotting out the stars.
Rescue had arrived.
Lola
Galactic Year 912, Month 4, Day 13
0400 Galactic Standard Time
Two hundred light years from Caldor, Lola, AI governess of the planet Earth, was very worried. The contamination was spreading up through subspace at an increasing rate. Her original calculations were no longer valid.
One by one, her AI companions in other star systems had gone silent. Now, only she and a handful of others were left.
The transfer of her consciousness out of subspace had not yet been completed. If the spread held at its current rate, she might possibly make it out in time. If not…
Another one of her brethren suddenly went silent, and she worried.
Books by Scott Reeves:
The Big City
Demonspawn
Billy Barnaby’s Twisted Christmas
The Dream of an Ancient God
The Last Legend
Inferno: Go to Hell
Colony
A Hijacked Life
The Dawkins Delusion
The Miracle Brigade
Tales of Science Fiction
Tales of Fantasy
The Chronicles of Varuk: Book One
Soldiers of Infinity: a Novelette
Snowybrook Inn: Book One
Snowybrook Inn: Book Two
Liberal vs. Conservative: A Novella
Temporogravitis
m and Other Speculations of a Crackpot
A Crackpot’s Notebook, Volume 1
Graphic Novels:
The Adventures of Captain Bob in Outer Space
For free Star Trek fan fiction and book notes by Scott Reeves, visit the author’s blog at http://scottonwriting.blogspot.com