by Greg Curtis
“Prisoner Daryl, you were born to be a Force officer.” Daryl laughed at the absurdity of the idea and while Halco might not have understood it, at least he surely knew it was not meant as a slight against the Force.
“Officer Halco, we both know I would never pass the physical.” It was Halco’s turn to make some strange buzzing sounds of his own, which Daryl was certain was his own version of laughter. Whether it was because he like everyone else knew that Daryl was extremely unfit, even after more than a month of arduous training, or because they also knew that his instructors had repeatedly and publicly promised him that he would become the most physically fit human being in history by the end of the mission even if it killed him, he didn’t know. But he didn’t care either. It was damned funny, and they both nearly fell over laughing.
He was actually looking forward to getting back to his cell, if only because fatigue was starting to set in, but instead Halco led him the other way - towards the captain’s meeting room he guessed. Time for a debrief, or maybe a few new plans. At least for once he figured, he couldn’t possibly be in any more trouble.
How wrong could he be?
Chapter Six.
In the meeting room, Daryl immediately spotted the captain as he’d expected. But unlike the last time, he wasn’t alone.
The room was full. And full not with aliens, members of the great races, though there were some there, but mainly with more of the emerald-eyed humans. Many more. For the first time as he looked around, he started to accept deep inside that some of his wilder though extremely logical theories were correct. That there was, in fact, a race of humans living among the Interstellar Community. After all at least a dozen and a half members of it were staring back at him.
There were both men and women, of all shapes and sizes, and every age in between childhood and retirement. They all had the slightly darkened skin and emerald eyes of his doctor, but above all, they were all human. Some were quite old he noticed. In fact the ones in the front row of those greeting him, all had to be eighty plus. They all wore the Force uniform.
“Doctor Daryl, I’d like you to meet Officer Holbrook.” The captain indicated one of the oldest humans there, a white haired and rather thin man, who despite his age still looked quite spry. But then why else would he still be on a Force battleship and not retired? Especially with four stars on his chest. He was surely close to the captain in rank.
Daryl took his proffered hand and shook it, still somewhat confused. His joyful mood of the last hour was slowly disappearing as his curiosity took over once more. Finally maybe, he was going to get some answers. It took him a few seconds to realise that the captain had addressed him as ‘doctor’ again, rather than prisoner. Was his sentence over?
“I’m pleased to meet you.” It seemed too cool even to Daryl as he said it, but he wasn’t quite sure what else to say. Who are you? Why are you out here? How come no one at home knows of you? Somehow all of those seemed like accusations rather than questions. And for some reason he was nervous. There was something in the air that told him he didn’t really want to hear the explanation for how there could be humans either on the Targ or in the Force. It would bring him pain. Then again maybe that was just the faces in front of him. They didn’t look at all happy to see him.
Officer Holbrook was followed by another dozen names, none of which he was ever likely to remember. But he did notice that all of them were typical human names. Names he heard commonly enough back on Earth. John’s and Mike’s, Mary’s and Jane’s. Traditional human names.
In time the introductions were complete and he was asked to sit down, as did everyone else who could. There were many more people than seats around the table, and half of the newcomers stood behind those seated.
“Two months ago, Doctor, you did something that is expressly forbidden by our charter with your people. You stole information that could alter the balance of power between us, and threaten the stability of our relationship. An act that despite your obvious belief that it helps your people, could have actually led to war which would have harmed them.”
“At the time you chose to blame us, the Force, and the Community, for your actions. Saying that we unfairly hold you back. Something that is partly true. We do limit you, very much. But not unfairly. What your people still don’t choose to do is accept that most of the blame for our strained relationship lies with your own actions.” Daryl looked at the captain, wondering where he was going. For the one thing he couldn’t understand was how his people could have been to blame for their situation. They had carefully obeyed all of the Community’s laws, done all that they asked of them, and complied with every request for over a century. He carefully didn’t say anything though. His protests had got him precisely nowhere so far. And he would no doubt be told.
“Do you know who these people are?” Daryl shook his head, though he shouldn’t have had to. He had asked everybody often enough and been told nothing repeatedly.
“Then may I introduce you to the descendants of New Eden colony.” It was like the opening of a door into his schoolboy days as Daryl remembered his history lessons, and then put it together with the other things he knew about them.
“Shit! Of course! The green eyes. I should have twigged. I knew I’d seen them before! Gene therapy adaptations to New Eden’s sun. I remember it now. An extra defence against overly bright light, it should have let your corneas survive till much later in life without burning out. And the darkened skin. To protect against skin cancer.” It all fitted perfectly, except as he remembered a few seconds later, for one thing.
“Wait a minute. You can’t be. New Eden was wiped out nearly eighty years ago. Some sort of plague.” Which was why it’d been so hard to remember the green eyes. They existed only in the history books that he hadn’t read since high school.
“Ohh, we were wiped out all right, or nearly so. And I suppose you could call it a plague. A plague of Earth warships with plasma charges.” Worse even than the words, were the emotions behind them as the officer seemed to be accusing him of a crime.
“What?” Daryl wasn’t actually sure he’d heard him correctly. What he was saying was simply impossible.
“No, that’s not right.” He shook his head vigorously wondering how the man could say something so wrong and still sound so sincere.
“It was some sort of bubonic variant, in 2239. One for which there is no cure. I remember studying about it in school. A disease so deadly it wiped out the entire colony in three days. We’ve got transmissions of the results from your last survivors, of the bodies piling up in the streets, covered in blisters, and none left to pick them up. Every schoolboy’s seen them. And New Eden, the entire system’s still off limits as a plague world. No one can go there any more.” It made him uncomfortable telling him that, especially when he was talking to their descendants, who he suddenly realised could themselves be plague carriers. He resisted the impulse to step back.
“There was no disease, Doctor. Only war. War which we never asked for, and which we never had a chance of fighting. Our grandparents were all there, and some are still alive today. They witnessed it all first-hand. They left records. Detailed records. Holo’s of the ships arriving in the night. Six of them, all Earth Fleet. The bombs falling, without warning, without reason. The running, the screaming and the terrible loss of life as they ran for the caves. The caves which gave them shelter.”
“Of over ten thousand colonists on New Eden, less than three thousand survived that night. And if the Earth had had its way, none of them would have survived. But we were saved by one thing, the Force, arriving on one of their routine missions.”
“They caught the tail end of the battle. No, - the massacre. We had no weapons. No way of defending ourselves. No warning. No chance to run. And had they not arrived we would have all perished. But in the end their presence scared off the warships as they fled the system. Of course, the Force if they’d chosen, could have destroyed them. But instead, they let them go. Back to Earth. Back
to their commanders. Back to their families.” There was bitterness in his voice, and Daryl could understand that. If what he said was true. And yet how could it be? It not only contradicted everything he knew, it made no sense.
“We were a peace loving people as you may know. New Eden was settled by the church as part of its support for the Earth’s social structure and its continuing exploration of space. But many of our people wanted revenge for that. Revenge that could not have brought our dead back to life, nor kept our survivors healthy and fed. But revenge is not the way of the Force. Not the way of the Interstellar Community either.”
“What they did give us though, was far more precious in the end, though it took a long time for our people to understand that. They gave us a future.”
“Just under three thousand of our people were transported by them back to the Community’s home world of Haven. At least that’s our name for it. I believe you call it the Interstellar Community Home World, and everyone else calls it Unity. But to us it will always be Haven. There our people were given new lives, new training, and above all else, a future.”
“Now once again there are over ten thousand of our people alive. Well over. And most of us serve the Force in one way or another. The rest work in the Community. After all we are part of them.”
“That’s not possible.” He was absolutely certain of it. His people hadn’t had any form of conflict in over a century. Their weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed when the Community had been met and a treaty agreed to. Yet he was also listening to a room full of survivors or their descendants and trying to reconcile that with what he knew. But he couldn’t, especially when they still had obvious anger in their voices. They were actually accusing him on some level, of this monstrous impossibility. Deep down he had a need to run away, to find a quiet place and somehow forget everything that had been said. None of it was possible, it simply couldn’t be true, but he couldn’t deny them and he knew he couldn’t put their words behind him.
“Do you deny me Doctor? I was there that day, and though I was only six, I remember the nightmare as if it was yesterday. I remember it every night as well, in my dreams. And I remember it every day as I look for my parents and know they are gone. My mother crushed in the remains of our home, my father dead of radiation poisoning.” Daryl looked in his face, in his accusing green eyes, and knew that the man spoke the truth. Something in his very soul crumbled as he understood that. As he understood, finally, that somehow his own people could have done something so monstrous.
Someone must have punched a few buttons, as a display suddenly appeared above the centre of the table. A world. A green world, with massive blue seas and a line of continents strung around the equator like beads in a necklace. He didn’t need to ask. He knew from his long forgotten history classes, that it was New Eden. Considered the most beautiful of the colony worlds. Its loss had been a tragedy of epic proportions to his people.
Then he saw the ships arriving above the world, from another angle. The colonist’s two weather satellites so he was told. Six of them. All Earth Fleet Cruisers. Type 220’s from their age and beaked prows. They were the standard cruiser of their day. Had been for a nearly thirty-year period. Each, from memory had had forty crewmen, and a full complement of laser and maser weapons, as well as some long since discarded torpedoes. But these had something else. Plasma weapons. Something they shouldn’t have. The weapons had been discarded when his people had first made contact with the Community, forty years before that. It was a requirement for joining the Community. But these ships clearly had them.
He watched from several other angles as the bomb doors opened, something else that the ships shouldn’t have had, and the plasma weapons rained down on the planet below. Then he watched the tell tale signs of their nature as they entered the atmosphere. Their destructive signatures were easily recognisable from far too many holo shows. Supercharged balls of plasma, which were really just little pieces of a star wrapped in massive magnetic and gravetic fields. Each of course left its traditional trail of black smoke, as it literally incinerated the atmosphere it passed through. Each then made its customary impact on the darkened continent below. A circle of fire that spread outwards at supersonic speed from the impact crater, annihilating anything and everything in its path.
One after the other the bombs flew down to the surface below, more than he would have considered possible. Thirty maybe even forty of the weapons were released. More than he would have thought his people could have had even before signing their treaty with the Interstellar Community. More than a ship could surely hold. It wasn’t just that they were hideous, outlawed weapons. They were horrendously dangerous things to keep around as they tended to spontaneously explode, and the intense magnetic and gravitational fields required to contain them interfered with ship functions. They were also inaccurate, essentially only able to be dropped, not guided.
It was that last that had probably saved the colonists. The closest surely falling no closer than a hundred klicks away. Any closer and no one would have survived, caves or no caves. The shock waves would have shattered their structure, and the fire incinerated everything above and cooked everything below.
As it was the devastation was complete. The entire continent was on fire and impact craters, tiny little dots of white-hot fire, pock marked it.
Finally after what seemed like hours, even though the recording had been sped up as he was told, a Force battleship arrived on the scene. Something surely as large as the Targ, which dwarfed all the cruisers put together. But its size was the least of the things they had to worry about. Its technology was far more dangerous to them.
All six cruisers activated their gravitational drives and vanished from the satellite’s view even as the ship arrived, clearly not wanting to fight, not wanting to be caught, and the ship didn’t follow. It had other priorities, namely the survivors.
Over the following days and weeks he was shown, the Comporg, which meant determination, was joined by other great ships, and together they spent enormous resources first digging out the survivors, and then taking them to the ships for treatment. And they were all in a bad way. Broken and burned, and touched by radiation as well. But as the others had told him, they were survivors of war not disease. And they all had accusing green eyes.
Just over three thousand were pulled from the wreckage that had been their home. But many of them also died in the doctors’ care, too injured even for their advanced medical science to treat. Daryl stared at the wards of green-eyed patients, who filled the hospital ships to their capacity, still not able to believe the evidence of his eyes. Yet as he stared at the green-eyed victims in the holo, he was surrounded by their green-eyed descendants, all of who stared back at him. He couldn’t face them, yet he didn’t know where else to look.
“I’m sorry.” It was all he could think to say yet he had done nothing wrong.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. No one does.” Yet ignorance was no excuse. He knew that. He was human and as such a member of a race that had done great evil, and then lied about it. To themselves. No wonder the great races despised them. He despised himself. If it were possible just then he would have found a hole and buried himself in it. The shame was so terrible.
“That much we believe. We’ve watched the lies your government have put out to their people. An act almost as reprehensible as what was done.” The captain took over and his dry translated tones were a blessing after the accusations of the green eyes.
“After that the Earth was punished for its actions. Punished hard, and in fact is still being punished. As you now surely understand.”
“For the first and greatest law of the Community and the Force, is peace. War is not permitted. Cannot be allowed. No war. Not on the one planet, Nor between worlds, even if they are the same people. We have to assume that any who can contemplate war against their people can contemplate it with others. That any who can use weapons of mass destruction against their own, will use them against o
thers.”
“It was an evil thing your people did that day. Evil and stupid both. They should have known the consequences. They should have known they’d get caught. Even if our cruiser hadn’t been so close. For we maintain a close watch on all new worlds and new races.”
“Your people were close then to ending their probation. Fifty standard years, is the norm as your people were told, and you were doing well. You had everything to gain but you chose to throw it away in this single act of blind hatred. It is something none of the Community, none of the Force can understand. Nor something that we can accept.”
“Immediately after that of course, your people’s probation was cancelled. Probably permanently. The space you were permitted to explore was curtailed, drastically. You had three colonies in existence. The two surviving colonies were allowed to continue, within strictly imposed conditions. They may not grow and no others could be permitted. No advanced technology was permitted to be traded. Under serious penalty. And your people cannot be allowed to join the Community. Probably not for hundreds of years at least, if then. Certainly not before they have accepted responsibility for their acts and at least tried to atone.”