Realizing the fact for himself, the guard spun around and grabbed Simon by the arm and wrenched him away from his two children. “You will carry it for him.”
“I can’t leave my boys,” Simon protested.
A sharp slap to the face and a quick draw of the sword let Simon know the guard was not making a request. Resigned to the situation, Simon picked up the two hundred pound cross and draped it over his shoulder. He allowed most of the weight to remain on the ground as he dragged it along, but the quarter mile journey up a steep hill was going to take every ounce of strength he had.
Simon paused in front of his two boys, who were so frozen in shock they looked to be etched out of stone. “Stay right here until I return.” Then Simon walked on, dragging his burden with him. All the way up the hillside until he was allowed to lay the cross flat on the ground.
The guard tossed Simon aside and threw the convict down on top of the cross. Any normal man with a sense of self-preservation would have fought against what they were trying to do to him, but this man didn’t move a muscle. Either from exhaustion or shock, the man just laid there staring at Simon.
Simon wanted to look away. He didn’t want to watch the man die, but he owed it to him. He voted for his death and now it was his duty to see it done.
Please look away from me Simon tried to convey with his eyes, but the man ignored the message. When the nails were driven into his hands and feet the man’s body cried out in pain, but the soul behind those eyes never wavered. He was completely at peace. The man accepted his fate as a sacrifice so that many could be saved.
When the soldiers lifted up the cross with the condemned man upon it and planted it in the ground, Simon finally summoned the will to look away and walk back to his boys. As he moved along the path he noted the journey was much easier with the oppressive weight of his burden lifted off his shoulders by the man dying on the cross for his benefit.
**********
Tonwen sat hunched against a large rock in view of the place of the skull and the three crosses holding three dying men aloft. He took a long drink from the skin of wine he purchased for the occasion. Perhaps the meaning of his existence or possibly redemption was at the bottom of the alcohol filled pouch.
The noon sun was high in the sky and beating down on him without mercy. He might have complained about the discomfort of leaning against a hot rock on a scorching hot day, but he only need look up at his friend on the cross to see the true definition of suffering.
The cowardice he showed at the high priest’s palace when asked if he knew Jesus haunted Tonwen. He did it to remain free and available to release Jesus from his imprisonment when the opportunity presented itself, but it never did. Tonwen dishonored himself for nothing. That was the emotional side of his turmoil.
Possibly even more vexing was Jesus’ prediction of the events. Tonwen was a man of science. He didn’t believe in divine knowledge of the future. He believed in the laws of probability. What was the probability Tonwen would have occasion to deny knowing Jesus three times in one evening? What was the probability a rooster would crow just after the third occurrence? Come to think of it, how did Jesus heal that man’s severed ear without the assistance of Tonwen’s medical gels or coax the food replicator to feed thousands rather than dozens?
All his pondering abruptly ended as he heard a voice cry out from the top of that dreadful hill.
“It … is … finished,” a haggard voice cried out with the last ounce of strength the owner possessed, and then fell silent.
The silence muted the world around it: Bugs chirping, birds singing, the wind blowing, people talking, it all observed as moment of silence. Tonwen about jumped out of his skin when even the sunlight ceased to shine. He looked up and saw the sun’s rays doused from the sky by the moon passing in front of it.
As the moon crossed the solar body it turned blood red, as though a painter spilled a canister of crimson upon it. Tonwen knew the discoloration resulted from the sun’s rays being refracted by the earth’s atmosphere and reflecting onto the moon. The phenomena was a common occurrence during a lunar eclipse but what were the odds of this rare celestial event happening right when Jesus cried out with his last breath Tonwen thought?
Chapter 57: Mutual Destruction
Mark’s head felt like a heavyweight champion used it for speed bag practice. The impulse to fall over and pass out on the floor nearly overtook him. Fighting through the mental fog he managed to pull his head out from between his legs and open his eyes. He saw nothing but a blinding array of white; even through his closed eyelids and legs, his optical nerves were still overloaded by the flashbang grenade.
Every instinct insisted he not move until his vision returned, but the clock was ticking. Though Mark was in rough shape, his unprepared captors were now completely incapacitated, but that advantage was diminishing by the second.
Mark struggled to his feet and tried shuffling forward, but his world spun out of control. Any sense of direction and spatial awareness left the instant his hand let go of the chair’s backrest. He needed something to provide a stable frame of reference: a chair, a wall, anything except the floor. Mark lurched in the direction he thought was left and after two steps crashed head first into a row of storage lockers. Were these the ones on the left or right side of the room he mentally asked himself? Left equaled freedom, right meant game over.
His vision was returning and he knew his captor’s sight was only seconds behind his own in the recovery process. Mark fumbled to his left along the row of lockers his head so expertly discovered. His hand reached the end and Mark hastily counted doors as he moved back to his right side. One . . . two . . . three . . . four, four was the magic number.
Mark’s eyes tried to focus on a blurry chrome object he knew to be the locker’s opening handle. He slid the lever up with his left hand, opened the door and frantically felt around the top shelf with his right hand. His stomach grew sickeningly tight as the probing hand felt nothing but cold metal shelving. If this was indeed the same locker Alfred retrieved his hand gun from, there should have been others. Then it happened – his hand brushed against a warm handle. He instinctively closed his grip and slipped his finger comfortably into the trigger housing.
He brought the object down in front of his face and confirmed with his now fully functioning eyes what he already knew; freedom was his. Mark turned to face the room and leveled the weapon at Alfred who lay across the table of his work station with his hand hovering just above the data entry pad.
“If you shoot, my dead hand will land on this pad and execute the command to bring the moon down on us all,” Alfred cried out in distress.
Mark adjusted his aim to bring the vibrant blue orb of the Nexus device into his crosshairs. “If you move your hand even an inch I incinerate your precious machine.”
Alfred remained frozen for a set of anxious heartbeats and then casually reached back with his free leg to pull his chair back underneath him and carefully took a seat. All the while keeping his steady right hand held inches above Earth’s Armageddon trigger. “Hmm, can you feel that? The power we both command at this moment. You hold the lives of twenty million in your hand, and I control the fate of the entire world in mine. It’s enough to make lesser men feel a bit nervous don’t you think?”
“Indeed. This is where people usually panic and make careless mistakes like not searching a body for hidden weapons.” Mark noted. “As far as mistakes go, that’s as amateur hour as they come Alfred. Admit it; you’re completely out of your league here.”
“This isn’t the first time I have held complete control over mankind’s fate,” Alfred countered. He tilted his head slightly toward his absolutely unmoving hand held over the data pad. “Tell me, do I look like the pressure is getting to me?”
Out of the corner of his eye Mark spotted Alfred’s partner silently sneaking along the room’s perimeter toward the weapons locker. “Not even close old man. Why don’t you keep on moving to the cage door and releas
e my friends?”
The man did nothing as he looked to his partner for instruction. “Right now,” Mark commanded, “My trigger finger is getting a little nervous here.”
A subtle nod from Alfred gave the man leave to comply. A few moments later Frank and the two archeologists were free from the cage and ready to tear their captors to shreds.
Frank grabbed the old man on both sides of his shirt collar and tossed him into the imprisonment cell. “Now let’s see how you like being cooped up in a cage.”
“Don’t press your luck,” Alfred declared. “You three may leave as long as you take the weapon currently pointed at the Nexus away with you. Final resolution of our standoff will have to wait for another day.”
Mark didn’t even bother giving the matter any thought. No one would win this current game. “Agreed. Open the outer door so my men outside can leave, those three will follow, and I will be the last one out.”
The sound of the outer door opening let Mark know the bargain had been struck. As planned, the soldiers made their way back to the tunnel followed by Frank and the pair of archeologists. On his way backing out of the chamber Mark kept careful aim on the Nexus. When he began descending down the ramp he saw the Sphinx chamber door start to close and Alfred hollered through the opening. “You fought me to a draw this time Agent Mark. Your job performance is definitely improving.”
“It is certainly a favorable trend. Now would it be cliché for me to promise that I’ll be back,” Mark asked rhetorically before the chamber door sealed shut once more.
Chapter 58: Once More Unto the Breach
“Let me make sure I have this all straight,” Dr. Holmes said to his patient. “Gallono and Tonwen are incommunicado for thirty years in Israel doing their own thing. Tomal is in open rebellion against your leadership, and Valnor is now acting as your superior by virtue of his more prominent place in society.”
“Well, when you say it like that, it sounds a bit dysfunctional,” Hastelloy mused.
The patient’s story today had a common theme– loss of control. This was particularly odd considering Hastelloy was supposed to be the commanding officer of these well trained and disciplined men. Jeffrey had many friends and family members who served in the armed forces at some point in their lives. They were all over disciplined to a fault, so Dr. Holmes couldn’t imagine any military unit functioning the way Hastelloy’s men were. Jeffrey knew he needed to press for the meaning behind this state of chaos the patient was projecting into his delusion.
“Is there any other way to see it?” Dr. Holmes asked rhetorically. “It doesn’t sound like any way to run a military unit.”
Hastelloy let the insult to his organizational skills slide right past. He leaned forward in his chair to make yet another emphatic point. “Have you ever had your wife’s family stay in your house for an extended period of time?”
Here we go again, Jeffrey thought. As usual the patient sidestepped the issue, but these little mental detours usually had a way of getting back on point, so Jeffrey played along.
“Yes indeed,” Jeffrey finally answered with a pained look. “Every year her parents and sister’s family spend the week between Christmas and New Year with us,”
“By your expression I can tell it isn’t all fun and games the entire time. Why not?”
“I’m not quite sure. I like her side of the family well enough so we get along just fine, but somehow by the end of the week everyone winds up getting on each other’s nerves.”
“Go on Doctor, get specific,” Hastelloy prompted.
“Who’s the patient here anyway,” Jeffrey joked before continuing. “If I had to put it into words, I’d say I get tired of everyone being in my face all the time. Having a medium sized house filled with that many people for a week with virtually nothing to do invariably culminates in a blowup. I think what shreds my last nerve is always having to do what everyone else wants; that lack of autonomy to do my own thing eventually sets me off.”
“Now imagine if you spent two thousand years with those same people,” the patient instructed. “No matter how well you got along, or how disciplined everybody was, eventually conflicts would erupt. People would want to do their own thing.”
Jeffrey let loose a hearty laugh. “How did I not see that analogy coming? Now if I translate that to your version of history, the Roman civil war surrounding Julius Caesar was a result of your men needing to get out of the house and blow off some steam?”
“You’re understating the severity of the situation, Doctor,” the patient countered. “While my men did suffer from a bit of cabin fever, the Alpha were in the background stoking the fires of discord, both among my men and Roman society at large. They used their considerable leverage to throw the entire Neo Scale out of balance.
“First, the Social Conscience of the people was off as evidenced by the acceptance of slavery and the brutal entertainment they sought in the gladiator arenas. Second, Leadership Ethics were almost non-existent as corruption, ineffective gridlock, and greedy grabs for power by the ambitious reigned. Third, the Religious pan was completely off kilter with the Alpha revered as gods once again, plus we had the elitist nature of the Hebrew faith to contend with. Only the fourth and final arm of the Neo scale, Technological Development, was in balance at that time.”
Jeffrey got the subtle message. Something in Hastelloy’s life threw the tight control he had on things completely out the window and replaced it with utter chaos. The only escape was to force it all into the make believe world Hastelloy conjured for himself. Dr. Holmes needed to press this control issue harder.
“So Valnor has roused the people of Rome for war once more to put Tomal, Cleopatra and their Alpha manipulator down for good,” Dr. Holmes summarized. “What does he do with his armies?”
Hastelloy sat back in his chair, visibly easing himself back into the comfort of his delusion. “Tomal knew he needed more allies than just the African and eastern provinces to stand against the might of Rome. To fix this he sailed his entire fleet and land army to Greece hoping to curry their favor.”
“And did that work for him?” Jeffrey asked.
“Nope,” Hastelloy responded with a pursed grin. “You see, Tomal made the tactically correct maneuver of keeping his army and navy together in the Ambracian Gulf. The large body of water had but one way in or out that was just one mile wide and three miles long. This offered an imminently defensible position that was enhanced further by the fortifications his army constructed on both sides of the small inlet. They would obliterate any ship that ventured near the coast. Tactically this made sense in the short run, but for the strategic long range planning it was his undoing.
“The position was impregnable and yet with my navy a hundred miles south of that well guarded Gulf I managed to crack the position wide open without firing a shot,” Hastelloy said with a large amount of pride in his voice.
“How’d you do that?” Dr. Holmes asked.
“I captured the Greek city of Methone,” Hastelloy went on. “The city and port were the last to carry support for Cleopatra’s forces on the Greek peninsula. With that, I no longer had any need to run the gauntlet and attack Tomal in the well defended gulf. Once their supplies ran out I knew they would come out and offer battle in open waters. What transpired after that was the largest naval engagement the world had seen in two hundred years, or would see again for another thousand.”
**********
“Do you really think he’ll take to his ships?” Valnor asked Hastelloy as the two of them stood on the deck of their flagship.
“Without a doubt,” Hastelloy pronounced. He did not even bother hiding the excitement and anticipation in his voice.
“Is that really a good thing?” Valnor continued with concern. “We have as many vessels as them, but their ships are easily twice our size. Even if we manage to ram them on a vulnerable side, the sheer mass differential will cause more damage to our ships than theirs.”
“There’s more to naval comba
t than ramming the enemy ship to sink it, even with these primitive vessels,” Hastelloy instructed.
“I still think we should try taking his army with a land assault,” Valnor countered. “At least then we have equal strength.”
“A land battle, even if successful, would still allow their navy to escape and fight another day,” Hastelloy countered. “On the other hand, if we crush their ships, the army will be stranded and forced to surrender. Why fight multiple battles when one will do.”
“But if the odds of that one battle are stacked against us . . ,” Valnor protested.
“The size of our opponent’s ships is his strength, but that can also be a weakness if handled correctly,” Hastelloy interrupted as he saw the first enemy sails appear on the horizon.
The Quinquereme’s Tomal commanded were enormous, measuring 150 feet long and 20 feet wide. As indicated by their name, the ships sported five stacked levels of oars running the entire length of the mammoth ships on both sides. In all, three hundred oars and three sets of sails propelled the vessels forward. The bows of the ships carried an iron ram that would send any of Hastelloy’s ships straight to the bottom, even with a glancing strike.
If all those features were not intimidating enough, catapults armed with grappling irons loomed large on the forward decks. If these iron claws got hold of an enemy ship, the doomed adversary would find itself hauled up next to the Quinquereme and boarded by an overwhelming force of well armed marines.
Over two hundred of the behemoths filled the horizon and bore down on Hastelloy’s fleet of two hundred comparatively tiny Liburian vessels. The ships only had two stacks of oars per side and a single main sail, but were considerably more maneuverable than their counterparts with a streamlined shape built for agility rather than brute force. The only aspect of the ships not constructed for speed were the missile towers erected on the bow to protect the archers as they rained death upon their enemies from an elevated trajectory.
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