by Paul G White
He paid for his fuel and treats and tipped the attendant extremely generously, emptying his pockets into the bemused youth’s cupped hands. He used the washroom to make himself presentable, straightened the badge on his grey deliveryman’s overall and then climbed into the cab and fired up the engine. Moments later he was matching the speed of the traffic and savouring the delightful taste of the first of the chocolate bars. An hour later, he turned off the highway at Georgeville and headed south along a dirt road into the Maya Mountains. Two-thirds of the ‘condemned man’s last request’ had been consumed and the final portion lay unwrapped in the dashboard tray awaiting his pleasure.
Craithie was enjoying a feeling of utter peace; he analysed a mental dateline of his actions since that hideous day when Carter (Craithie refused to think of him as Dr Carter, even in the most private of moments such as this) had informed him of the existence of the alien spaceship. Every event clicked into place in his memory, until he reached the television debate, at which point Craithie recalled the feeling of Carter’s flesh against his knuckles and let out a whoop of delight. The truck swerved on the narrow dirt track and Craithie fought to regain control – of both the truck and himself. No point in coming this far and then piling into a tree through a lapse in concentration.
Ten more kilometres to go and he joined a wider road; still not paved, but more serviceable. “Must have built this track since I was last here,” Craithie grunted. “Sparing no expense to make life easier for the alien hordes and their human whores.”
He heard the assonance in his ruminations and giggled inanely. “Hordes of whores!” he chanted repeatedly, and had to wrench the wheel over once again to avoid running off the road. The near disaster forced him to sober up. “Must be on a sugar high from the chocolate,” he cursed. And retrieving the uneaten chocolate bar from the dashboard tray, he disgustedly hurled it out of the window into the undergrowth. “Keep your mind on the job at hand,” he growled. “No compromises! No mistakes!”
Five kilometres further along, Craithie pulled off the road, got out of the cab and raised the bonnet of the truck. As he leaned into the engine compartment to prime the detonator, he heard the rumble of a vehicle travelling in the direction of the site. Craithie kept his head buried in the engine compartment, and when the vehicle eased to a halt alongside and the driver called, “Need any help, amigo?” he waved a meaty hand and muttered, “Thanks, amigo, everything is fine. I’ll soon be on my way.”
The gears engaged and the heavy vehicle lumbered on its way, leaving a relieved Craithie to wipe the perspiration from his craggy brow. He took a deep draught from a two-litre plastic water bottle and sighed. This had been an easy run up to this point. Why did fate have to introduce wild cards into the equation at the last minute? Perhaps he would never know. Smiling to himself at the knowledge that there was so little time to debate the question anyhow, he fired up the engine, engaged first gear and eased into the middle of the road. “Let’s do it!” he growled.
The engine roared and the tyres grumbled on the dusty road surface as he depressed the accelerator and steadily increased his speed. Craithie had no idea what the vehicle’s top speed would prove to be, but he knew it would be well in excess of a hundred kilometres per hour. Such a speed would render the laden vehicle unstoppable by anything smaller than a tank, and he was certain that the military at the site possessed nothing that size. The largest vehicles he had previously encountered in the hands of the military had been the huskies.
The needle moved slowly around the speedometer until it trembled on a hundred and ten. The engine was howling and Craithie felt the steering wheel juddering in his powerful hands.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Hela’s voice rang out sharply in Sha’lee, followed instantly by an English translation. “Captain, you should be aware that a substantial amount of explosive matter is approaching the site at high speed along the roadway. May I have your permission to destroy it?”
Lessil was instantly alert. “How far away is the threat?”
“Two kilometres, Captain, and I estimate that at its present speed, the vehicle will be upon us in fifty-five seconds.” Hela began, unnecessarily, to count down, “Fifty-four, fifty-three, fif—”
“Is the vehicle self-propelled?” Lessil demanded.
“No, Captain, there is a human in control. Captain, I estimate the potential for damage to be considerable. May I have your permission to destroy it?”
Lessil had been presented with a terrible choice: one human life against the Comora. At this delicate stage in the Sha’lee interaction with the human race, he had no wish to cause ill feeling by ending a human life, even if it were necessary in order to save many others. He was confident the Comora’s shield would prevent wholesale damage to the structure of the ship but the open site was unprotected. “Hela, I need an estimate of potential damage to the area around the Comora.”
“There will be many casualties, Captain. Many humans will die. Twenty seconds—”
Still Lessil held back, as the sound of the approaching truck resounded around the site.
*
The four soldiers beside the roadway at the entrance to the site heard the sound of the approaching truck when it was a kilometre away and immediately began to manoeuvre their heavy machine guns into position to cover any potential threat. They soon realised it was taking too long, as a five-ton truck bellowed around the curve between ranks of jungle growth and headed straight towards them. One of the soldiers managed to put a shot through the windscreen as he leapt aside, but it was too high. The truck barrelled onwards over the rim of the vast bowl and headed at increasing pace downslope, straight at the dark shape of the Comora.
*
John Craithie was at peace. His mind was calm. His whole being, it seemed, had been destined for this confrontation with the devil’s spawn from another star, and nothing could alter the pathway he had chosen to take. Behind and beneath him was a combination of high explosive and diesel fuel, which would shortly put an end to the alien threat to all faiths on Earth. The truck careered around a wide curve at maximum speed, and then he was bearing down on four soldiers manning two machine guns. With the acuteness of perception often accorded to people in life-threatening situations, Craithie saw that the heavy weapons were still skewed away from his path, and he laughed joyously at his good fortune. A single bullet passed through his windscreen with a loud crack, but it zinged more than thirty centimetres above his head, through the back of the cab, and high into the furniture now piled haphazardly in the back of the truck. In mere seconds he was through the guards and over the rim of the vast bowl, at the bottom of which lay the alien starship.
Craithie breasted the slope, heading directly for the centre of the ship’s outer rim. To his right, he saw a huge crowd of people seated on the slope bordering the spaceship, but they were well out of his intended path. Craithie maintained his direction, scattering small groups of onlookers as he careered towards certain destruction. He knew he must avoid colliding with anyone, human or alien, for at this speed, any such impact was certain to detonate his cargo prematurely. Swerving from side to side to avoid bystanders, he headed remorselessly towards the ship.
But something was badly amiss. As he drew nearer, the ship rose higher and higher on massive leg pillars, until he was passing beneath it with the ship’s belly many metres overhead. His mind reeled; the ship was so immense that he had not reckoned on passing beneath it. His intention had been to crash his vehicle into the side of the vessel, a tactic he belatedly realised could never have worked.
He saw a broad shaft of bright yellow light spilling from an opening in the ship’s belly and adjusted his direction as much as his inertia would allow without the careering truck rolling over. A broad ramp extended from the underside of the ship to the ground, like a grotesque tongue from the gaping maw of a black, alien monster, and Craithie judged that he was headed straight for it. How fitting, he thought, that God had provided a direct means of delive
ring a fatal blow into the belly of Satan himself.
He closed his eyes and held tightly to the wheel as he rushed towards oblivion at more than a hundred kilometres per hour.
*
Lessil had finally given Hela her orders: she must wait until the vehicle was as far beneath the belly of the Comora as possible before destroying it. If she failed, the ship’s shield would protect her, but at least there would be the maximum distance between the resulting explosion and the rest of the humans gathered on the slope of the excavation. In addition, the AI would be able to shape the shield to enclose some of the lateral blast.
Hela waited. The truck was careering forward at great speed, but she had modelled the scenario many different ways and in every one the potent energy of the disruptor beam had nullified the threat. In Hela’s earliest interaction with the humans, she had destroyed artefacts she had identified as weapons, with no physical consequences to the bearers. This, however, was an entirely different situation, where she must factor in speed and inertia when calculating the strength of her response. The explosives, apart from their mass and inertia, when coupled with the weight of the vehicle, were of no more consequence than a piece of rock of the same mass, travelling at the same velocity. But she must time her response to perfection, otherwise there was likely to be substantial collateral damage.
She waited until the truck was a millisecond from striking the Comora’s shield, and then fired a five metre-wide cone of virulent disruptor energy downwards for a hundredth of a second. Craithie and the leading five metres of the truck disassembled in the first nanosecond, and the inertia of the rest of the vehicle carried it into the beam. All that remained was a sparkle of mist in the bright yellow light shining from the belly of the Comora – and a cleanly-cut five-metre circular hole more than fifty metres deep where the disruptor beam had destroyed the rocky strata beneath the immense starship.
*
The roar of a vehicle’s engine was overlaid by a single rifle shot, which echoed over the tops of the trees. Both Izzy Longman’s cameras panned around to the roadway just in time to capture footage of Craithie’s final act of desperation. Most of the other television news teams had fixed their cameras on the area between the dignitaries and the Comora. Longman’s cameramen recorded Craithie’s lurching progress downslope as bystanders scattered out of the way of the hurtling truck. Longman pointed a finger at the older of the two cameramen and spread his hand in the accepted gesture – wait here. He made a circular motion with his hand to indicate ‘keep recording’ and then gestured to the younger cameraman to follow the speeding truck as fast as his legs would carry him. At least twenty newspaper photographers followed in his wake, clicking their shutters furiously.
Showing a good turn of speed, despite the weight of the equipment, the young man raced downslope in an attempt to document Craithie’s progress. He had barely managed to frame the vehicle in his viewfinder as it reached the ramp beneath the centre point of the Comora, when it disappeared – vanishing as emphatically as if it had never existed. He zoomed in on the ramp to the maximum and saw the air shimmering over a perfectly round patch of deep shadow.
Longman ran pell-mell in pursuit of the truck, and the older cameraman followed at a steady walking pace, documenting their progress. All those who had witnessed the truck’s dramatic entry into the site converged on the area around the Comora’s ramp, and soon there was a small crowd staring into the apparently bottomless, perfectly-formed shaft.
Mike Carter and Hal Kleineman appeared at the top of the ramp and Carter ordered everyone to retreat to safety. Once he was comfortable with everyone’s distance from the danger he called out, “Did anyone see who was driving?”
Hal Kleineman replied, “Hela will have got it all on camera, but I’ll bet it was our friend, Craithie or one of his crazy followers.”
Brad Allen, Izzy Longman’s cameraman, arrived at that moment slightly out of breath. “I think it was that Craithie guy,” he huffed. “But he went past me at a hell of a lick, so I might be wrong.”
“Anyone else recognise the driver?”
Jim Edson, one of the site carpenters offered, “I got a good look at him, Dr Carter. It was definitely Dr Craithie, I recognised him from the news. Why would he do such a thing?”
Kleineman grunted disdainfully, “Because he was nuts, that’s why. He just never seemed to get the fact that the Sha’lee are intelligent beings and have a right to be here. When they visited the Earth, it was just a raw planet, filled with dinosaurs and sea creatures, with the odd mammal thrown in for good measure. Where he got the idea that they were, in his words, ‘the devil’s spawn’ beats me. If you ask me, the world’s a better place without such bigots.”
A voice said, “You’ll get no argument from anybody on that score.”
The events had been caught on camera, but Izzy Longman suspected he wouldn’t be able to use them in his documentary. It’s a hell of a thing when a life, however obnoxious that person might have been, is snuffed out along with a five ton truck in the blink of an eye. God help the human race, he thought, if we ever get hold of such technology without learning restraint.
“Jim,” Carter called, “can I have a word?”
“Sure, Dr Carter.” Jim Edson stepped over. “You want me to arrange for a safety barrier around the hole?”
“If you would, Jim. Get the other carpenters to help you and if anyone objects, tell ’em it’s my orders.”
Edson grinned. “No problem. The last thing we need is for someone to wander into it. They might meet Mr Craithie at the bottom.”
Shaking his head at the gallows humour, Carter headed with Kleineman towards the transporter, whilst behind them, the ship’s ramp melted into the belly of the Comora. A bright pool of light illuminated the cavity: Hela was ensuring that no one would fail to see the danger through poor lighting conditions.
CHAPTER FORTY
September 22nd 2029, 12.45 pm
John Craithie’s second failed attempt to destroy the Comora and the Sha’lee survivors, had delayed lift-off by one hour. The multi-national and multi-faith assembly had remained at a heightened level of tension and anticipation since Craithie had lost his life so emphatically. As far as most people had been aware, Craithie’s campaign of hate had lost its impetus following the disappearance of its driving force. No one knew the whereabouts of the taciturn Scot, and few cared. But Craithie’s sudden appearance at the site, on a suicide mission to destroy the spaceship along with many innocent bystanders, had proved just how insane he was.
There were murmurs of surprise when the Comora’s ramp deployed, spilling more bright light into the five-metre wide pit, in which the sub-atomic residue of Craithie and his truck had finally settled. Figures descended the ramp and headed towards the gathered dignitaries. The crowd could see that there was a mixture of humans and Sha’lee, although some might have been mistaken in believing there were more than eighteen of the tiny aliens. As they drew near, a few of the smaller figures were identifiable as human children. This was, for some, the first indication that children had been amongst the crew of the vast spaceship on the expedition to destroy the asteroid, Apophis. Many of the dignitaries were astonished – some were not. Some had followed the news of the destruction of Apophis in great detail, but others had allowed a degree of detail to pass them by, in the knowledge that they would be briefed by their staff if anything was particularly noteworthy.
Captain Lessil led out his crew with his officers, Hollifal and Cray beside him. Phil Makeman stood behind the ship’s captain with his new bride, Ellie Merrill-Makeman on his left arm and Shenna the Sha’lee Astronomer on the other. Mike Carter stood beside them with Margaret his new bride on his left arm and Axolin the Comms Operative on his right. Behind them all, with the children and Sha’lee positioned at the front of the rows so that they would not be hidden by the taller adult humans, the remainder of the original one-hundred and fourteen crew were assembled.
Lessil stepped onto a dais and
began to speak, his voice projected to all areas by means of Hela’s magic. He allowed his gaze to wander all around the seated dignitaries and then began, “We Sha’lee came to your planet before the advent of human beings, when many strange giant creatures roamed the land, flew in your skies or swam in your oceans. We decided . . . I, as Captain of the Comora, decided that it would be impossible to settle here without the wholesale slaughter of virtually all of those creatures. Such an act of barbarity would have been utterly impossible for any Sha’lee to commit, so I decided that we must move on. But first, I thought it wise to let my crew feel the soil beneath their feet and undertake a catalogueing of species, in order to lessen their disappointment at having to abandon such a fertile and promising planet without having had time to breathe its clean air.
“It proved to be an unwise decision, because the asteroid ended the lives of most of my crew and buried our starship and all hopes of rescue. I was badly injured in the disaster and my surviving officers and crew decided to hibernate until rescue came from our homeworld, Sha’lee’an. But rescue never came – until humans discovered our ship buried deep beneath their soil. With great care, they disinterred the Comora, and it is questionable who were more surprised – the Sha’lee or the humans – when we finally met.
“We Sha’lee had travelled across space for millennia, searching for intelligent beings like us, but none of the countless expeditions had been even remotely successful. We discovered a planet, which was at an even more primal stage than your Earth of sixty-five million years ago; so we left it alone in the hope that intelligence would finally develop there. Until we awoke from hibernation on your Earth, we had never encountered another intelligent species, and we will always be grateful to humans for rescuing us, and for the kindness they have shown since Astronomer Shenna first awoke.”
Lessil coughed lightly to clear his throat and continued, “For the kindness shown to us by the human race – and by our friends at this site in particular – I have a gift. This is the gift of Sha’lee starship technology.” He beckoned and Engineer Rellic stepped forward holding a small device like a laptop. “This is a recording of all the technology necessary to build a starship exactly like the Comora. I am assured the power pack on the device will last for many years, sufficient for your scientists and engineers to gain all the knowledge they require. Nothing has been omitted, but you will need to learn new materials technology in order to replicate the various Sha’lee alloys and composites. You will find the necessary information for that within this device.”