“Magnificent isn’t it,” Novice Wesley Vadair pulled his blond hair back into a ponytail. Three days of beard growth stubbled his long angular face. His eyes squinted in an involuntary muscle spasm, but no one ever commented on his facial tick.
“What is, sir?” Novices were little more than glorified civilians, but he had mission command.
“The view. The potential. You can practically feel it on your skin. Well, I suppose you can’t.” He slapped my back in an all too familiar way, not that I felt it within the suit. He meant to convey a camaraderie we didn’t share. “Professional hazard, I suppose.”
He was already tap-dancing on my last nerve. “Is this your first colony plant?”
“That obvious?”
“If I could detect excitement levels, your readings would redline.”
“Good. Excitement is contagious.” Novice Vidair began walking, waving an invitation to join him.
“Then it’s a blessing I’m in this suit, sir.”
“I welcome your cynicism. I’ll win you over, you’ll see. I’m going to do things differently than other colonies. My dad was a planter, I grew up in a colony like this, so it’s in my blood.”
“Familial hazard, I suppose.”
“See? We’re going to get along great, you’ll see. This colony won’t be burdened with dogma. It will be more about community . . .”
The novice went on to describe his vision, sprinkling it with all of the popular jargon and buzzwords of the day. Community. Conversations. Authenticity. But I knew this story would end the way it always did.
My parents were the vanguard of “indigenous leaders” novices aimed to raise up. They were killed in their colony. I forgave their murderers. At their funeral, I mouthed my prayer over and over. “They know not what they did.”
Other indigenous leaders took me in and raised me. Then I witnessed how such colonies worked from the other side. Coming into our neighborhood, planters demanded that we act like them, speak like us, until there was little left of us, in order to receive their gospel. Eventually their colony plants dotted the land like grave markers.
I joined the Service of the Order on my sixteenth birthday.
“What do you think?” the novice drew me back to full attention.
“Permission to speak freely?”
“Always.”
“I’ve heard it before. If you didn’t believe that, you wouldn’t be a planter. But planting is what it always is.”
“What is that?” the novice asked.
“A wealthy culture sending out well-intentioned missionaries using the gospel to impose themselves on indigenous cultures to create satellites of themselves.”
“You make us sound like . . . cultural bullies.”
“It’s a push or be pushed universe, sir.”
“And what’s your role in this process?”
“I’m your pusher.”
I followed Novice Vidair from the settlement into the valley. He spouted the right words, but I had the evidence of history. My own history. Once in the Service, the Order selected me for Jesuit Training School, officer candidacy. I faced grueling studies in advanced mathematics, Latin (because all alien cultures need to be fluent in languages long dead on Terra), stellar cartography, astrobiology, logistics, strategy, game theory, and tactics. Part of me suspected the reason they took such a special interest in me was because I was reclaimed, a story of redemption they could point to. I was that rescued urchin from the streets with a tragic story. They could pat themselves on their backs for having saved me from the fate of my people. My parents.
“They know not what they did.”
The valley was a potential utopia, but I knew that our leaders back home saw only desirable natural resources and a strategically positioned planet. The gas giant CFBDSIR2149 absorbed most of the radiation emitted by the solar system’s star, lowering the amount of UV radiation, so fewer mutations followed. It slowed evolution, leaving fixed gene patterns. Life took the hand it was dealt and would be required to play for a long time. Whatever life forms that dominated here were frozen mid-step on the evolutionary ladder, easy kings of the food chain, but the transplanted flora and fauna displaced native species with ease.
“We’re almost there,” Novice Vidair said. “You can see me in action.”
“Sir?”
“What do you know of this planet?”
“It’s the moon of CFBDSIR2149 of the AB Doradus Moving Group. The planet itself is a gas giant,” I said.
“Yes, yes, a rogue planet ejected from its system, cradled by its neighbor. But what understanding do you have of life on Melancholia.”
“I . . .”
“Look over there. We call them Species A.”
A group of natives milled about a cave entrance. Long simian arms rippled with burly musculature. Thick brows ridged deep, inset eyes. A hulking brute stopped and sniffed about, his protruding jaw set and resolute as if he’d had a bad day out hunting. Picking up a stone, he hurled it in our direction. We didn’t budge. Satisfied, he joined the group of other males guarding the entrance.
“Aren’t they magnificent?” He spoke of them the way I spoke of my cat back home.
Despite their primitive appearance, they were more human than I felt. Stripped of my culture and my people, not much of me remained. I wore the emptiness that came with a life of obligation and duty without passion and meaning. My neural pathways had been re-routed to accommodate the cap. I could sync up with a computer in order to download information, language matrixes, and action protocols in an instant. My physiognomy recalibrated with each tour of duty, slowing my aging process and knitting tired muscles back together. I hated and resented the Order as much as I loved and needed it. The Order gave me life and purpose. The Service left me without scars, physical ones, that is.
“Do they . . . speak?” I asked. “It doesn’t appear that they have reached the level of development necessary to grasp the intricacies of the gospel.”
“Now who sounds elitist? I’m sure they have some sort of proto-language. If we can teach the gospel to children, we can reach these noble savages. We have an opportunity here, a people in the early stages of their development. With our help, their culture, yes, their entire civilization can be made in God’s image. We will avoid the mistakes of the past.”
*
The colony buzzed with excitement at the caravan’s approach. Taking point, I escorted Novice Vidair. Fraught with possible misunderstandings, first contact protocols were the most dangerous part of the mission. Novices were trained to be opening and welcoming, but service members were trained to watch for and deal with threats. My parents had paid the ultimate price for the short-sightedness and arrogance of novices.
A delegation of four rode beasts similar to hairless horses. Three of them were armed with spears, with daggers tucked into sashes girding them. The last of them wore a tunic of animal skin. This aliens’ musculature was smoother, closer to resembling ours. In my experience, the more a life form mirrored ours, the more nervous I became. Violence was our way, no matter where we found ourselves in the universe. My rifle, displayed but trained at the ground, showed that we had teeth. It helped establish trust as they knew what they were dealing with. Novice Vidair all but applauded with joy at their approach. With every step forward, the novice nipped at my heels. I placed my open hand in the center of his chest to scoot him behind me.
“Greetings,” the head of the processional said. “I am Majorae Ha’Asoon.”
As he dismounted, I processed the sounds through my linguistics database. My cap thrummed while reading and deciphering the intent of his words. I relayed the message’s content.
“I gathered as much. ‘Hello’ is ‘hello’ on any world.” The novice smirked at me with dismissive disdain.
“‘Hello’ is only ‘hello’ if not followed by weapon fire.” My cap continued to process their language. Given enough of a sample with my psi impressions monitoring the emotional intent of their words, th
e cap sped up, relaying translation in near-real time. I conveyed the greeting on behalf of the novice.
Majorae Ha’Asoon turned his back to me to address Novice Vidair directly. “On behalf of the Revisio, we welcome you. You are not of . . . here.”
“We are of a far off planet called Earth,” Novice Vidair said with the tone of a parent telling their child a fairy tale.
“You, too, can travel the stars?”
“We detected no signs that you had such technology.” The novice glanced towards me to confirm. I nodded.
“We don’t require vessels to travel. We are star stuff. Flotsom carried in the void,” Majorae Ha’Asoon said.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
Majorae Ha’Asoon kept his back to me. “Yet you recognize us?”
“You look like the natives, the ones we have called Species A. Except . . .” Novice Vidair said.
“Different. We, like you, are from another world. We, unlike you, have a natural claim to the Derthalen, as we have called them.”
“What claim?” I asked. The steel of my tone caused Majorae Ha’Asoon to shift to his side, keeping me within his peripheral gaze and making a smaller target of himself. His guards moved in predatory lurches. I swung my rifle to my side.
“The right of first. We are children of the blue planet.”
“We detected no life on CFBDSIR2149,” Novice Vidair said.
“Perhaps not life as you measure it. We are . . . what would you call us? A virus?”
“You look pretty big for a virus,” I said. My cap continued to whir, locked in a processing loop, as if under a cyber attack of some sort.
“Floating unicellular things. I suspect as you would measure it, each strain you would consider an individual.”
“Some sort of communal intelligence,” Novice Wesley Vidair said with that too-excited glee of his. “Fascinating.”
“This virus business, I still don’t understand,” I said.
Majorae Ha’Asoon sighed. “It’s simple. We were carried here on the backs of asteroids. The Derthalen made for natural hosts. Understandable since we are from the same star stuff. Once we take over, we mutate and spread. Each generation of the virus is a mutant strain of the last. The course of the infection has physical side effects, too.”
“I noticed. You appear smaller,” I said.
“No, you don’t understand. They . . . we have evolved.” Majorae Ha’Asoon gestured to his men. “Look around you. We’re not running around naked as beasts. Our form allows us a certain resonance with the minds of others.”
My cap tingled again. The Revisio’s “resonance” functioned as a low level kind of telepathy. Each of them had the equivalent of my cap, though theirs operated naturally. Communicating with each other, gleaning information from us, interfering with my cap, it explained why they were so familiar with our ways. It also made them more of a threat.
“This is utterly fascinating. We’ve suspected and explored that potential in our own kind. There is so much we could learn from one another,” Novice Vidair said.
“We had hoped you were a peaceful party,” Majorae Ha’Asoon said.
“We are, I assure you.”
“You are well armed for peace.” Majorae Ha’Asoon cast a sideways glance at me.
“Experience has taught us to be cautious when exploring new worlds and contacting new peoples. Not all missions end . . . diplomatically.”
I thought of my parents.
It was an Easter Sunday service. A group of “seekers” entered to learn more about the Scriptures. Seeker were my parents’ favorite kind of people to talk to as they were open, questioning, and thinkers. But the seekers were actually members of the tarik, a group of faithful believers from a competing sect, armed with an array of weapons: guns, break knives, ropes, and towels. Towels. Because they planned for a lot of blood. No one told me what happened, only that my parents were killed in the line of duty. But the full truth resided in the reports which I had access to once I joined the Service of the Order. The tarik read from the Scriptures before the assault began. They tied my parents’ hands and feet to the chairs.
“When you oppress the weak and poor of your own world, trampling their freedoms, there are consequences. For the oppressed and the oppressor,” the tarik leader said.
They video recorded their handiwork, which I have never watched despite it being still available in the archives. The power of the stark words in the reports, combined with my imagination, was enough: ritual slicing of orifices, disembowelment, emasculation, decapitation. One hundred thirty-two stab wounds total. You never know what you really believe until those beliefs are tested, in that moment when you put your life on the line for them. My parents believed in a loving and just God. But I forgave the killers. I forgave them.
“If you got business with them,” I leaned forward, letting him see the full bulk of my armament, “you handle it through me.”
“Stand down, lieutenant,” Novice Vidair said. “We’re all about meeting new friends.”
“Yes, heel,” Majorae Ha’Asoon said.
I re-gripped my rifle, doing my level best to resist the urge to cram the butt of it into his . . . its . . . inviting jaw.
“We would welcome a conversation of equals.” Majorae Ha’Asoon made a point of once again turning his back to me.
“Indeed. I look forward to it.”
Majorae Ha’Asoon bowed slightly then hopped on his beast. With a swirl of his hand, he led his men away.
“That went rather well,” Novice Vidair said.
“We need to prepare for an attack,” I said.
“I appreciate your hypervigilance, but that’s not the way to follow up a first contact.”
“Did we not hear the same thing? They are a colony, too. An entrenched one from what I gathered. And we are a threat to them.”
“Lieutenant, nothing of the sort was said. Perhaps we can establish a trade of some sort with them. Crops, maybe. We have much to offer them. And them us.”
“I know a scouting party when I see it. They were taking our measure.” I stared at him full on. “And make no mistake, I have killed enough people in the service of the Order to know how this story ends.”
“Then perhaps all of the blood on your hands has made you paranoid. We serve God’s will.”
That was the problem with many novices. They existed in a bubble of privilege. They were used to people deferring to them simply because of their special calling. People were done no favors by being raised up coddled. It made them soft. People needed to fight off things: germs, people, life. It built you up. If you didn’t . . . I thought of Species A, the Derthalen as the Reviso called them. Not even allowed to name themselves.
“God’s will or not, this expedition will face troubles. My job’s to handle them.”
“You don’t understand, this could be the miracle from God that we were looking for.”
“Excuse me, sir?” I said because “what the hell nonsense did you just spout” would have gotten me court-martialed on the spot.
“You feared that Species A might not be cognizant enough to receive the gospel.”
“A notion you dismissed.”
“Yes, before we learned of Species B. Perhaps we were meant to evangelize Species B in order to bring the message to both them and Species A.”
“But the Revisio are a virus.”
“Exactly. Imagine the gospel spread by viral transmission. It would make our task so much easier and our stay shorter. The Lord’s ways are not our ways. Just like our ways have you obeying the orders given you. My orders.”
The Lord sure could bring out the stupid in some folks.
It all came down to the story we lived by. If the metaphor of that story could be changed, the individual could be changed. An ungodly people deemed less than human. Our people, holders of secret knowledge and power, could trade the Scriptures for land and resources. Evangelism encouraged by way of blaster rifles. My blaster rifle. The people traded
one sin-soaked culture for another; forced to change their language, their names, their gods, their cultures. Suffer a slow death by assimilation. The story always ended the same way.
“Your . . . orders.” My set jaw began a slow grind, like I chewed on something distasteful. I peered down my nose at him. “Allow me to correct any misconceptions you may be laboring under: I’m not here to wipe your nose. I’m not here to diaper your behind. I don’t cook, clean, or sew. You think I sings and dances real good, too? You need to get out of my face and let me do my job.”
Novice Vidair squinted at me. His facial tick intensified when he was angry. “Lieutenant, you are confined to your quarters for a day.”
“I thought I ‘always’ had permission to speak freely.”
“Until you cross the line. I give some people enough rope for them to hang themselves.”
His order probably saved my life.
*
This wasn’t how this was meant to be, but this was the only way it could end.
*
I tracked the trail of the attack party back to a series of looming structures, ominous shapes of deeper shadow in the night. I wasn’t even sure what my mission was anymore. I had ignored my action protocols. I hadn’t signaled the Templar Paton, not with a status update or report. I moved on instinct. I couldn’t call myself investigating the native culture, though the biomech sensors recorded and logged everything. Without knowing if my party was even alive, I couldn’t claim to be on a rescue mission. And if they were dead, the Order wasn’t about vengeance.
The Service, however, was all about God’s judgment.
Flexing my arm and wiggling my toes, I tested each extremity to make sure everything still worked. I craned my neck to each side, popping out the kings, certain that I should just name the knots in my shoulders since they accompanied me for so long. The pain focused me on the task at hand: I had bastards to kill. In Jesus’ name.
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