“That’s ridiculous,” Valnor declared. “I served the Motherland proudly during the Great Patriotic War and at Comrade Stalin’s pleasure I serve her still.”
“You are the hero of the war and carry great favor with the army. You even led the Victory Day parade in place of General Secretary Stalin,” the round-faced politician went on.
“At Comrade Stalin’s request so that he might preside over the parade from the platform,” Valnor countered looking at Stalin with pleading eyes. “Tell him, Joseph.”
“You stole my victory parade to enhance your stature with the men,” Stalin accused without managing to meet Valnor’s fiery stare. “You sealed your own fate by trying to usurp my place.”
“Joseph, I am just an exhausted old general who wants to retire in anonymity and enjoy a few years of solitude before my time is up in this life,” Valnor offered as a last ditch effort.
Stalin finally met Valnor’s eyes to say, “At this moment, your time is up, old friend.”
Further words on the matter were not necessary. Stalin needed Valnor to be gone and it would be so. In a few moments, the four guards would usher Valnor out of the room and into a back alley. There they would shoot him in the head to eliminate Stalin’s only potential rival for power. Before that happened, Valnor wanted just one thing.
Valnor straightened his posture to deliver his final request. “If my death serves a greater good for the Motherland, I am honored to make that sacrifice. Before I do, I would make one last request; I think I’ve earned it.”
In response, Stalin leaned back in his chair, relit his pipe, and drew a deep breath. Valnor was going away without a fight and that made him happy. “Then make it.”
“I need you to acknowledge what I’ve done in my lifetime for the Motherland. I need to know that my life made a difference for others.”
Stalin leaned forward again in his chair and his eyes flashed with surprise and admiration. He rose to his feet and offered a salute as he granted Valnor’s final request. “The Motherland and the Party will never forget the actions of the finest Soviet commander in the Great Patriotic War. Your name will forever be engraved in the honorary steles placed at the battlefields; particularly the great one here at Moscow. The name of Comrade Zhukov, as a symbol of victory, will never be apart from this battlefield or this place.”
“Thank you,” Valnor said with a bow, and let those be his last words. He followed his guarded escort into the back alley and received his sentence for performing his duties well enough to threaten Stalin’s possession of power.
Chapter 53: Judgment Day
Hastelloy was the first to help Valnor climb out of the Nexus regeneration chamber. “Up you go now. This is no time to be lying down on the job.”
After Valnor’s feet touched the cold metal floor, he brushed aside Hastelloy’s touch. “I hate these first few minutes while all the nerve endings make their connections again. The air in here feels like an arctic wind, and your hands feel like you set them on fire before touching me.”
“These should help,” Gallono said tossing a folded pair of pants and a shirt at Valnor’s chest. “Besides, you look ridiculous standing there performing your Statue of David impression.”
Valnor let loose a heavy sigh and shook his head in disappointment, “That ruthless little bastard. After I pried his foundering nation away from the jaws of death, he gives the order to have me shot in a back alley like some common street criminal. That is how he repaid my service and loyalty. He didn’t even flinch. It was as if he were ordering dinner off a menu.”
“People always remain true to their nature,” Gallono replied while Valnor pulled the soft cotton shirt over his head and began working on his pants. “Just ask Tomal over there,” he said pointing to the far side of the room. “Try as he may, nature always calls him back to be the attention starved, greedy little maggot that he truly is deep down inside.”
Valnor’s eyes followed the pointing hand to find Tomal seated in a chair behind a row of prison bars spanning the entire ten foot width of the thirty-foot long chamber. “The captivity bars are new. Is he going to remain imprisoned the rest of our time on this planet so he can’t cause any more unnecessary death and destruction?”
“That is for the four of us to decide,” Tonwen grunted as he shoved the room’s only table up against the set of bars and placed four chairs around it. Hastelloy, Gallono, Tonwen, and Valnor all took their places at the table with Tomal seated at the end with the set of bars separating him from the others.
“We all know what transpired over the last few years,” Hastelloy began, but had his words cut off.
“Yes, we are all well aware that my leadership in Germany led to the development of rockets capable of reaching Mars to destroy the Alpha’s colony. I saved all your lives, along with those twenty million souls trapped inside the Nexus, as well as an entire planet of people. I saved the day and every one of you knows it,” Tomal insisted and proceeded to beat his right palm against the bars in front of him. “Now let me out of here so I can work on finally getting a message sent back to Novus.”
“Tonwen’s bomb designs and my securing fissile materials to build them played a role in our final victory as well,” Hastelloy pointed out. “That makes you only half right in your claim of being our savior.”
“That fact, along with all the good you’ve done for our mission on this planet, makes this a particularly tortured decision for me,” Hastelloy said in a quiet voice struggling to maintain emotional control.
Tomal jumped on his opening. “That’s right. I destroyed the original Alpha ship when it tried to space fold back to Alpha territory.”
“And remember, I was the one who managed to find Goron’s relic,” Tomal added. “I put that rabid dog down; me. I’ve done more on this planet than the four of you put together.”
“I’ll say. You devised the plan and ultimately gave the order to exterminate millions of innocent people,” Valnor fired back with a deep sense of betrayal and hatred behind his words. “Your work camps starved nearly twenty million Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian civilians: old men, women, and young children. You even killed handicapped or mentally retarded German citizens because they got in your way.”
“That doesn’t even include the seven million innocents you sent to the gas chambers and furnace rooms because they committed the unforgiveable crime of being Jews!” Hastelloy shouted.
“Not to mention you murdered your six children, your wife, and then committed suicide by your own hand,” Valnor accused.
“So have you and you,” Tomal countered pointing first to Hastelloy and then to Gallono. “You can’t hold that over my head. Whatever you do to me you must also do to yourselves for that crime.”
Gallono sprung to his feet and lunged across the table reaching with his right hand through the bars. He succeeded in wrapping his fingers around Tomal’s throat, and began to squeeze with all the enmity he bore the man. “You left me no choice but to disgrace myself, you grubby little parasite. You threatened my wife and son. You left me no choice and now I am going to put an end to you for forcing that upon me.”
It took all the combined strength Hastelloy, Tonwen and Valnor could muster to pry Gallono away. The commander cried out in anguished anger as Tomal’s throat slipped out of his grasp.
Once free, Tomal gasped for air in between violent coughs. Tomal’s struggle to breathe must have given Gallono some measure of satisfaction, because he took his seat once more without much of a fuss.
“Your crimes against your own body, our mission, your fellow crewmen, and the sanctity of life in general are well known to all of us,” Hastelloy declared.
“As are yours,” Tomal countered. “You killed yourself to alter form, remember. And how many of these innocent humans have died because of your schemes? Unleashing the floods in China alone accounts for more deaths than the work and extermination camps. You are every bit the war criminal that you accuse me of being.”
“My admit
tedly distasteful actions were always done to safeguard our mission and the greater good of this planet,” Hastelloy fired back. “Tell me, how did murdering millions of people inside concentration camps benefit our mission, or anybody’s greater good?”
For once Tomal appeared to be at a complete loss for words to justify himself. He struggled for several moments to form the right phrase, but then as if a switch had been thrown, he deflated into his chair and admitted in a meek voice, “In my mind I thought the Jews were all working for you. I convinced myself you were trying to take over this planet and that I needed to eliminate your soldiers being used in that effort.”
Tomal writhed around in his chair as if fire ants were eating him as he clasped the sides of his head with his hands. “This…thing…this darkness inside my mind. Sometimes I can do nothing about it except obey its instructions. I can’t control it. All the thoughts and impulses I detest most about myself come out without censorship or restraint. It’s…don’t you see? It’s not my fault. It’s the darkness of this disease.”
“Darkness doesn’t even begin to describe the evil you perpetrated. When a dog, even a loyal and useful one turns rabid, there is no choice but to put it down,” Valnor concluded.
“I agree,” Hastelloy added. “Gallono?”
“Oh yes. A thousand times yes; I agree.”
“Tonwen?” Hastelloy asked. “It needs to be unanimous.”
The stoic man of science, who carried with him a deep spiritual faith ever since witnessing the crucifixion of his friend Jesus, closed his eyes and breathed a heavy sigh filled with regret. Slowly his eyes opened to focus on Tomal to say, “Your crimes are too grave to forgive, even for me. I agree.”
“No!” Tomal shouted in disbelief. “No, you can’t do this. It’s not my fault.”
“Turn off the Nexus collection chamber,” Hastelloy ordered Gallono. The commander walked over to the Nexus, pressed a few buttons on the control panel and gave a subtle nod.
“No, no!” Tomal repeated over and over, each repetition growing more desperate as Hastelloy paced over to a storage locker and retrieved a wave pistol.
Tomal’s panic attack reached a lucid interval that allowed him to address Hastelloy with a relatively calm voice. “You, of all people, have no right to pass judgment over me. You are as amoral of a man as I’ve ever encountered. Someday this decision will come back to haunt you.”
“Of that, I have no doubt,” Hastelloy answered pulling the trigger and reducing Tomal’s body to a thin layer of ash resting on the chair he had occupied. Tomal was no more; the rabid dog was put down, and Hastelloy wept bitterly as a result.
Chapter 54: We Choose To Go To The Moon
“Can I interest you in a friendly game of chess while we wait?” Tonwen asked his captain. Before answering, Hastelloy looked around the metallic confines of the Nexus chamber within the Sphinx. Gallono was working to set up the next monthly scan pulse to accompany the full moon through a new broadcast location. Valnor busied himself with monitoring television broadcasts in the United States. He concluded there was nothing requiring his immediate attention besides Tonwen.
“Set up the game,” Hastelloy answered. Tonwen went to retrieve the original chess set Valnor carved out of leftover granite stones used to build the Great Pyramid four thousand years earlier from a nearby storage locker. Tonwen arranged the white pieces in front of himself, leaving Hastelloy to command the dark.
“While I have your undivided attention, can I hear your thoughts on where we now stand with these humans and their fractured Neo Scale development path?” Tonwen innocently asked.
Over the last ten years since the NSA turned on him and Tonwen to recover the Alpha craft in Roswell, New Mexico, Hastelloy had managed to dodge this discussion. The four remaining crewmembers of the Lazarus kept to themselves near the Nexus chamber. With the Alpha threat now eliminated, Hastelloy was content to monitor rather than participate in world events. He watched Tonwen open the game by moving his king’s pawn forward two spaces, and decided it was time to address the festering need to have this conversation.
“I think it is a pointless debate considering we had no choice in the matter. Either we revealed ourselves to President Truman to enlist his nation’s help, or the Alpha would’ve conquered this planet and destroyed the Nexus. At least the solution I came up with revealed our existence to only one man,” Hastelloy answered as he countered Tonwen’s opening move.
“One agency,” Tonwen corrected as the two took turns moving their pieces around the board. “One extremely powerful, covert agency dedicated to hunting us down; an agency which, by the way, also now operates above even presidential authority.”
“We can manage that situation without much difficulty,” Hastelloy declared. “We know who they are after all. They, on the other hand lack even the foggiest clue who we are or where we reside.”
“Perhaps, but just like when Captain Diaz and his crew made first contact with the Alpha, these beings are now aware of what is possible. It is worse than that,” Tonwen amended. “Diaz left the Alpha home world without sharing any untimely advancements. We have now imparted upon these humans specific knowledge on spaceflight, complex metal alloys, the concept of computers, and thermonuclear weapons.”
“None of that even addresses the fact that the Americans successfully recovered a crashed Alpha escape pod along with four alien bodies,” Tonwen went on. “By definition, this planet is now a Neo Scale developmental time bomb just waiting to go off.”
Before delivering his verbal response, Hastelloy gave the chessboard a careful review to confirm his expectation. They had each played sixteen moves, and Tonwen was sticking rigidly to the ideal ‘book moves’ of the Ruy Lopez opening.
When Hastelloy played Gallono, he could count on a free-flying game from the commander because he was too impatient to study and memorize the ideal chess opening sequences. Tonwen was just the opposite. The science officer would follow a memorized line all the way to the end game of king versus king if he could. Hastelloy was not about to let him though.
“Your assertion requires a person to believe that there is but one developmental pace and path for a civilized society; the Neo Scale’s path,” Hastelloy said as he did the unthinkable and captured Tonwen’s knight with his far more valuable rook. “I happen to have trouble holding such a vast collection of beings, hundreds of billions of people over a civilizations existence, to such a rigid and predetermined path of development. Real life is too unpredictable, and personalities too varied for that.”
Tonwen eagerly took Hastelloy’s rook out of the game and commented back with confidence, “Venturing from the ideal path results in disaster, like in this game for you now.”
Three more game moves progressed in silence until Hastelloy unleashed an attack, which resulted in a reciprocal knight for rook exchange, rendering the game even once more with a king, queen, and three pawns per side. “The situation can be brought back into balance with proper planning and execution.”
“It was a risky gambit,” Tonwen objected as he was forced to look at the game board with renewed focus before making his next move.
“Yes it was,” Hastelloy conceded as he stormed forward with his three pawns and ultimately sacrificed his queen to win the game. “By the book this game should have been a draw, but I was here to turn it toward my favor, even though one of those moves was not by the book.”
Hastelloy went on, “That is exactly why our situation here on Earth is different than Captain Diaz and his crew making first contact with the Alpha. After just fifty years, they left that world alone on a Neo Scale trajectory that had been warped. Whereas we are still here on Earth managing things so that the Neo Scale comes back into balance,” Hastelloy concluded with a good sportsmanlike handshake offered across the table.
Tonwen sat there in stunned silence contemplating the captain’s words. He let out a rare laugh and grasped Hastelloy’s outstretched hand. “Now be honest, you have had that series of game
moves worked out to go along with that little lesson for a while now. Have you not?”
“I’ve been known to plan ahead from time to time,” Hastelloy responded with a cheeky grin.
“Well played, sir. The only flaw I see in your thought process is that you are always so willing to sacrifice your queen in order to win the game.”
“It’s always for the greater good,” Hastelloy answered and was prepared to elaborate further, but Valnor cut him short.
“Captain, the President’s speech is about to begin.”
With that, all four men huddled around the flexible display screen rolled out across the table. On it stood the youthful President Kennedy at a podium, beginning his address to an audience filling every seat of a university football stadium.
“We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a state noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.
Despite the striking fact that most of the great scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation’s own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole. Despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension.
No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man’s recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter.
Origins: The Reich Page 33