“How is the goon?”
“Good as can be expected, considering the loss of so many of his comrades,” Sister Elizabeth said. “He checked up on you this morning.”
“Ain’t that sweet of the goon?”
“Zephrinus,” the nun said. “That’s his Christian name, you know. He is named after one of our first popes.”
“Goon works for me just fine,” I said with a smile.
She slapped the back of my hand.
“Alright, alright,” I said. “Lieutenant Goon, it is.”
23
Lieutenant Zephrinus Zapatas visited me the next afternoon with his Sub-lieutenant, John Ringo. They were out of their battle-battered armor, wearing black, cross-emblazoned woolen scapulas over simple, long, white linen tunics. Their feet were sandaled.
“Welcome back to the land of the Quick, Don Gaelic of Arkum,” Zapatas said, extending me his hand.
“Good to be back,” I said, shaking the knight’s hand.
“We’re praying it’s for a good long time, sir,” Sub-lieutenant Ringo said, shaking my hand in his turn.
“I could use all the help I can get. Thanks,” I said. “And I’m sorry about your brothers-in-arms, sorry that you lost Krestor Station.”
“Thank you,” they said with slight bows of their heads.
“And... I’m sorry about the torpedoes,” I added. “It was a stupid and dangerous…”
“It’s in the past,” Lieutenant Zapatas said.
“And we managed to escape,” Ringo added.
“Yeah but, at what cost to your Angel pilots?”
“At the same cost they were prepared to pay in defense of Krestor Station,” Zapatas said. “It’s the same price we are all prepared to pay at any time for the glory of the Faith and Empire.[2] So think no more on it.”
Faith and Empire. It was the motto of the Imperial Forces, the war cry of soldiers who preferred death to either surrender or retreat. During my time in the Federation Forces I was taught to regard Imperial soldiers as dangerous fanatics and perhaps they were, but they could no longer be faceless enemies.
“How about you boys? Can you help but not think of it?” I asked the knight. “I was told the whole battle group was destroyed.”
“It was a Cadmean victory for the Federation,” Zapatas said. “They lost the Liberty, the Athens, a dozen corvettes, more than three squadrons of Starwings and, we understand, the Constitution limped her way to Haven after the battle in need of heavy repairs.”
“So what happens now?”
“Our own dreadnaught, the Lex Orandi, is leading First Fleet into the Open Zone. They will rendezvous with Lyonesse in a week,” Zapatas said.
“And I assure you that the Feds will not be crossing any line First Fleet draws,” Ringo added with the bravado of every young, zealous soldier throughout human history.
“I certainly hope not, young man,” I said. “We don’t care for this sort of excitement in the OZ. It’s bad for business.”
“The pirate business?” Zapatas asked.
“It’s not good for any business, goon.”
“Arms manufacturers and runners would disagree with you, but your point is taken all the same,” Zapatas said. “War is a terrible business. It is to be avoided at all cost, save for the price of surrendering to tyranny.”
I conceded his point with a nod.
“But enough about politics and battles,” the knight dismissed the subjects with a wave of his hand. “How are you doing, Gaelic?”
“Better than I deserve, I would say.”
“Let’s not presume on God’s mercy one way or the other,” Zapatas chided me gently. “We should instead be grateful that, by His great mercy, your illness is in remission.”
“Oh, I am grateful, in those fleeting moments when I actually believe I’m on my way to being cured of a heretofore incurable disease.”
“It is an incredible turn of events,” Zapatas said.
“It’s miraculous, really,” Ringo added.
“Tell that to Father Erasmus,” I said.
“Oh, he just doesn’t want to jump the gun,” Zapatas said. “The Church has a process for validating miracles. It’s a rather detailed and painstakingly long process.”
“So I’ve come to understand,” I said. “And I get why it has to be that way. Still, it feels like a miracle to me.”
“No one can fault you for feeling that way,” Ringo said.
“Never believed in miracles.” I said. “But now, it’s got me wondering… well, about a lot of things. Tell me, do you think Esty… Mother Superior Dymphna, do you think she knew? Is that why she insisted I make it off the station?”
Zapatas shook his head. “No, I don’t see how she could have known. And I know for a fact she wasn’t thinking of your failing body when she asked me to make sure you made it off the station. Her only concern was your ailing soul, Gaelic. She wanted you to have as much time as possible to get right with God. The Reverend Mother did not want you to further shorten your time among the living by throwing your life away in some gallant but ultimately futile act.”
My ailing soul.
The words would haunt me for the next couple of days. Estrella had said we were ‘damaged goods,’ her and I, Drake and the rest of the Arkum Commune gang. She insisted that we were wounded long before we began jacking up on bio-enhancers. The nanites like all the other stimulants, the varied intoxicants, the adrenaline rushes and our general lasciviousness, all of it was nothing more than desperate measures to dull the pain of the wounds inflicted on our childhood; wounds, she said, that ‘ail many an adult to the grave.’ Was that what she had hoped to spare me? If not the grave, then the effects of the wounds? Did she believe ‘getting right with God’ would finally quell the pain and still the hunger that would not otherwise be sated?
I found myself re-examining our lives together and my long years apart from her while I recuperated those first few days.
By Sunday I was strong enough to make my way to the ship’s church on my own.
Masses were solemn affairs. The funeral Mass held for those who fell in the battle of Krestor Station was even more so. I went to honor the memory of Estrella of Arkum, my sister and the greatest love of my life. To my chagrin, I even managed to send a small prayer her way, wherever that might be. It was a prayer of thanks for the second chance she had given me. I joined my prayer to those of the congregation who beseeched God’s mercy on all the fallen, including, to my great surprise, the Federation’s dead. At the end of the service, though I understood little of the somber and sonorous liturgy that unfolded before my eyes, I left its black-clad pageantry with a sense of closure.
That evening I bid farewell to Lieutenants Zapatas and Ringo.
The next day, Father Erasmus gave me a clean bill of health.
I told him I would be bunking the rest of the month long trip on the Strumpet.
“Any particular reason why?”
“Never liked hospitals,” I said. “And besides, some folks are looking at me funny.”
“I wouldn’t mind that too much if I were you,” Father Erasmus said. “It’s just a touch of hero worship.”
“Hero? Me? What for? Beating cancer? Because if it wasn’t a miracle then it was just by dumb luck that I beat this thing.”
“Oh, it’s not just your remarkable recovery that impresses them so,” the priest said. “Stories of your battle with the Starwings have made the rounds.”
“I survived that thanks to even dumber luck, father,” I said with a laugh. “I’m nobody’s hero.”
“Your humility is to be commended, Gaelic of Arkum.”
Knowing why I was an object of curiosity to my fellow passengers didn’t make their scrutiny anymore comfortable. I kept to my plan to bunk in my ship, venturing out to the refractory for a bite to eat in the wee hours of the morning when only gaggles of the ship’s Benedectine nuns floated to and from church like clouds in their voluminous and immaculately white habits. I used the down time to prepare
myself for my stay on Earth. I promised Father Erasmus that I would allow his brothers at Saint Gregor Mendel University Hospital to study me for six months. He arranged for room, board and a generous stipend. I tapped into the Oremus’ library and via text, video and audio learned as much as I could about the Empire’s capital world in as short a time as possible.
By the second week, I was feeling well enough to restart an exercise regimen I had abandoned months ago because of chronic fatigue. When the Oremus entered Earth orbit at the end of the fourth week, I was feeling better then I had in years.
Instead of waiting for clearance to fly the Strumpet to the surface, I decided to go to the refectory and get a view of the planet through something bigger than my scope’s monitor.
The refectory was crowded and noisy with excited chatter when I arrived. There were few people at the dining tables. Most were gathered before the giant half-circle window on the bow end of the rectangular room, patiently waiting their turns to step up and gaze upon the wondrous world beneath the Oremus. The window was the bottom half of a circle whose upper half served the ship’s bridge. These large circles of crysteel normally looked like the rose windows which adorned many a church. It was a beautiful sight, as distinctive a sign of the Imperial Missionary Fleet as were their cross-shaped design. The large window was cleared now for an unobstructed view of the Empire’s capital planet.
I had all but decided to turn around and wait the necessary hours before I was allowed to disembark when I noticed Sister Elizabeth standing in the middle of the waiting crowd. I decided to cash in my ‘hero status’ by squeezing as politely as I could through press of bodies to sidle up beside the nun.
“Good afternoon, Sister Elizabeth.”
“Hello Gaelic,” she said, turning her brightest smile on me. “How are you doing?”
“Never felt better,” I said. “But I’m still expecting to wake up and find out it’s all just a dream, a dying man’s last delusion.”
“You’re still having trouble believing it.”
“I am,” I admitted. “The last few days, the last fortnight even, it’s been a dizzying experience.”
“You have gone through a great deal recently.”
“Yes, I have and it’s all left me feeling…”
“Lost?” the nun offered.
“Stranded, sister,” I said. “I feel stranded. Like a man between two lives.”
“Well, that you are.”
“I’ve never faced the future without a plan,” I said. “Hair-brained or otherwise. I feel… unarmed, I guess.”
“I’m sure you’ll come up with a new plan for yourself eventually,” Sister Elizabeth said. “And what better place to plot the course for a new life than on Earth, the source of all known life in the universe?”
The crowd before the windows shifted when a couple of large families left the front row. Sister Elizabeth and I shuffled forward. We caught glimpses of Earth between the limbs of the bodies ahead of us.
“I guess,” I said. “How have you been holding up?”
“I’m fine, thank you for asking,” she answered, flashing me another smile.”A little sad still, of course, but right now; I’m just excited to be back on Earth.”
“So you have been here before?”
“Just once. A year before becoming a novitiate. How about you?”
“This is my first time.”
“Excited?”
“Actually, yes I am,” I said. “It’s odd really. I’ve visited nearly three dozen planets in my time and never felt about any of them what I’m feeling today.”
“Not every planet is the one, true world,” the nun said.
The crowd shifted again as a young couple and a family of six stepped away to find themselves tables. Sister Elizabeth and I stepped forward to an unobstructed view of Earth, the homeworld of the Holy Terran Empire and the cerulean cradle of all life in the known galaxy.
We looked on in silent and shared reverie.
The upper half of the Italian peninsula was covered by a cloud bank which stretched from Gibraltar to the Hellespont and reached as far north as Scotland. South of the clouds, the Mediterranean, the Levant and a large swath of North Africa were bleeding their colors as the sun slipped behind the Western Hemisphere. Clusters and strings of lights were beginning to twinkle through the quickly dimming twilight as night life came alive in the cities below.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it.” she said.
I nodded. “It sure is. I don’t think I’ve seen a blue quite like it.”
“Me neither,” Sister Elizabeth agreed. “Edan comes close as does Saint Croix and Masada.”
“So does the Federation capital world of Hellas,” I said. “And the League’s Calypso.”
We fell into silent admiration again.
The uniqueness of humanity’s home planet was undeniable. In the more than three thousand years since man stepped off his homeworld, hundreds of thousands of planets had been discovered and not a one of them was found to be habitable or contain life of any kind. The search for extraterrestrial life was a continuous one. The Federation, the Empire, the League, the Union and even the Psion Collective regularly sent out probes in search of alien life. Yet the thousands of years of searching failed to turn up anything more than the complex organic compound, tholin, the byproduct of the stupendous forces that forged stars and planets from the tangled web of cosmic Birkeland currents which marbled the universe. And while the abiotic organic gunk was found nearly everywhere, nowhere in the known galaxy had it been found to be infused with enough of the breath of life to make so much as a microbe.
Earth was truly the one true world in a galaxy of over a thousand terraformed facsimiles. And scattered across those thousand plus worlds were upwards of three dozen distinct humanoid life forms, but all of them were mere subspecies, no more than variations on a theme, engineered human mutations and human-animal hybrids. Other Terran life forms were engineered in myriad ways for varied purposes on multiple planets, but no matter how exotic the genetic tweaking rendered them, at their chromosomal core, they too were Earth creatures.
After several moments, I spoke again. “It occurs to me now that I’ve spent the last month studying up on everything about Earth except its religion.”
“Is that so?” Sister Elizabeth asked without taking her eyes off the planet.
“It is,” I answered, my gaze, equally fixed on Earth. “I could tell you plenty about the planet’s top one hundred corporations, its major industries, imports, exports, geology, climate, resources, the demographic composition of the world’s eighty-eight billion people, guild politics, royal politics and even a little about current Church politics.”
“Impressive,” she said, finally turning her head to look at me.
I kept my eyes on the planet. “But I couldn’t tell you much more about Earth’s major and official religion than I learned on Krestor Station from Esty and you.”
“That’s very interesting,” the nun said.
“It seems I’ve purposely ignored the subject,” I said, finally turning to meet her probing gaze.
“Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know,” I said and turned back to the view of Earth. “All I know is that I suddenly feel ill prepared to make planetfall.”
“I can understand that,” she said, joining me in admiring the world before us. “Earth is not just the capital of the Empire; it is the heart of Christendom.”
“I know.”
The crowd shifted again, but we stayed in place, transfixed and silent for a good long time.
Finally, I turned to the nun again. “So, Sister Elizabeth, what can you tell me about this God-Man of yours, this Jesus the Christ?”
Sister Elizabeth turned bodily to face me. She was smiling. Her eyes glistened. “Well, Don Gaelic of Arkum, the first thing, the most important thing you need to know about our Lord and Savior is that He loves you.”
The End
Afterword
Many a writer have admitted that no book is the creation of just one person, even when a single name fills the author’s slot on the cover.
So it is with this novel.
First and foremost, I would like to thank Georgette Suskie, my editor, dance partner, sister from another mister and greatest of friends. Your advice on the page and inspiration off it is are as invaluable as you are precious to me.
Thanks also to my Beta Readers, Benjamin Cheah, Kate Adams and Thomas Bridgeland for all your time, interest, encouragement and advice.
Thanks also to those who followed the serialization of the novel’s first, rough draft on my blog.
And you, dear reader, I thank you for your investment of treasure and time on my humble little tale. I sincerely hope you have enjoyed it and consider leaving a review on amazon and/or your preferred sites.
If you have enjoyed it, you might want to check out my other novel, The House Of War: Book One Of The Omega Crusade. Both series are set in the same universe, albeit three thousand years apart and are being written in tandem.
For three tales from the intersection of Faith and Imagination, you might want to pick up my short story collection, Choice Words and Other Tales.
And I can always be followed via my blog: carloscarrascowrites.com
Again, Thanks To One And All!
Yours In Christ,
Carlos Carrasco
All Hallow’s Eve 2018
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One Last Flight: Book One Of The Holy Terran Empire Page 22