Brother Bug
When the nukes start dropping, galactic peace depends upon the brothers of St. Centestrius Abbey.
By Hank Shore
The yew sapling was dying and Father Samuel didn’t know why.
He had planted it on the crown of the hill overshadowed by the massive fortress that comprised the Order of St. Centestrius Abbey. Perhaps it had been a selfish act, a guilty reminder of Earth and home, a sign of weakness in failing to trust God with everything. But now, the young tree was dying and it filled him with sadness.
He poured the cup of water at the base of the tree, looked around once more at the sere and forbidding landscape of the planet Philisia that surrounded him, and started back for the Abbey.
The walk to the entrance of the Fortress was long–itsat on what amounted to a miniature plateau, most likely artificial, guarding the southern outcrop of the Ruined Continent, as the Philistians liked to call it. The Philistians had not been forthcoming about the history of the struggle that had scorched the northern landmass. They had simply noted in the initial interview with the Order that the Fortress had survived, that it would serve as a suitable Abbey, and that all else was irrelevant.
An earth tremor interrupted his rumination when he was halfway down the embankment. It was quick but intense, an upheaval of the ground that never failed to startle him, owing to the very real risk of falling or loosened rocks. The unquiet earth was just another legacy of this strange land, though never much of a nuisance in the Abbey. Brother Thomas had suggested that the structure’s artificial plateau might be some sort of shock-absorbing system, but Father Thomas found the idea to be absurd. The size alone staggered him.
By the time Samuel reached the road that led to the massive opening of the Fortress, the sun was about to set. He stared at the wizened reddish globe as it began to sink towards the horizon and shivered slightly. It would be cold tonight. There were no clouds in the sky, nothing to prevent the heat of the land from escaping into the depths of space spread out above him. He wondered if that might be the problem with the yew tree–an inability to cope with this alien land and the hardships it offered. He sighed and entered the main gate.
He had barely cleared the portcullis when the first nuke struck.
n intense flash of light somewhere off to the left caused the titanium walls of the portcullis to smoke, and a moment later the shockwave hit. It must have been a near miss.
Samuel had hardly turned when a wave of dust and heat propelled him into the tunnel like being slapped by a gigantic hand. He landed on the decking, aware of nothing but pain and a slow fading into nothingness.
Consciousness returned slowly. At first, Samuel was merely aware of pain, the dull, pervading ache that his body seemed to have become. For the longest time, all he could do was lie against the titanium wall of the portcullis, staring through the lead glass seals that had dropped into place and narrowly missed crushing him like an insect.
There was a sound and a certain smell that attracted his attention and Father Samuel froze when he saw the creature emerge from the Abbey’s first junction. Samuel had never been afraid of bugs, but what he saw could have pushed him in that direction. The creature was large and multi-jointed, perched on a succession of legs that grasped the stanchions of the Abbey’s walls to regard him coldly through a host of multi-faceted eyes. Samuel wondered if he could actually see his reflections in them.
The thing was armed, sporting a blast cannon that was pointed somewhere in the vicinity of Samuel’s head. The creature’s antennae twitched this way and that, sampling the air as it slowly moved towards the monk.
The blast cannon fell to the titanium floor with a clang and the creature rushed forward, a staccato clicking filling the air before it lifted the abbot into the air.
“Father Samuel, you’re alive! God be praised! Tkk! Tkk! Who’s attacking us? Is it the Lutherans?” The Mantidarian’s rasping clicks seemed meaningless, but its translation voder had a pleasant-sounding male voice that sometimes reminded Samuel of one of the old movie stars.
“What are you talking about?” Samuel asked. He still felt queasy and a little sick.
The Mantidarian set him down and pointed wordlessly towards the portcullis with one of his smaller arms. Samuel felt a chill. The lead glass walls were thick, but he could make out the image of dust, fire and the shimmer of radiation that lay beyond. The air seemed to glow against the distant hills, even as another flash, distant and lurid, turned the entire scene into a negative. There was a roar that made even the Fortress tremble. He looked away, blinking, cognizant of how close he had been to becoming a radioactive cinder.
“I don’t think it’s the Lutherans, Brother Pssst-clik!” Samuel replied, though he had no idea who might be attacking them.
“I came looking for you after the first blast, Father,” Pssst-clik replied. “Tkk, tkk, chkkk! We shouldn’t really be here. You’re a mammal, and well,” Pssst-clik shrugged, difficult for a Mantidarian, “radiation doesn’t affect my kind like it does yours. You might get sick.”
Samuel nodded and got to his feet, though not without pain. The Mantidarian brother offered to carry him, but he politely refused. The pain was beginning to recede, and besides, Pssst-clik didn’t want to leave the blast cannon behind. He felt better when they rounded several corners and the glow of the Philistian hellscape receded.
“I don’t understand. If the Lutherans aren’t responsible for the attack, then who is?” Pssst-clik asked. For some reason, Pssst-clik had a paranoid fear of other denominations.
“I’m not sure,” Samuel answered. He remembered his meeting with the Philistians an hour ago. Another blast rocked the Abbey and sent them staggering against the wall. “We should be dead,” Samuel said as much to himself as to Pssst-clik! “And yet, we aren’t. Why?”
“I’m not a technical person, Father, but Brother Thomas is. Chak! Perhaps he would know.” The Mantidarian’s antennae swept this way and that and his color had turned into a sullen shade of gray. It didn’t take a genius to realize that the brother was afraid, terrified even by the constant grumbling of giants outside the Abbey walls.
“Then let’s go find him,” Samuel said, “and I know exactly where he is.”
***
“We have a saying among the Brotherhood, Ambassador: ‘At least we’re not working for the Nightspawn.’” The meeting at the holographic dais had become interminable and Samuel had blurted out the saying after the Ambassador’s thirteenth talking point regarding the Order’s work performance. Father Samuel knew that his knowledge of the Philistians was scarce, but he thought that the mild attempt at humor would have produced some kind of reaction with the Ambassador. Greel’s holographic image just sat there along with his entourage, as still as boulders as he digested Samuel’s latest words.
“Are you unhappy here, Father Samuel?” Greel asked.
“Oh, no, nothing of the sort,” Samuel replied with a smile. “We’re very grateful for the opportunity to help your people obtain a virtual presence in the Compendia Galactica.” It had been almost a year since the Brotherhood had taken the scanning project; God knew that they’d managed to stay on schedule despite the paucity of brothers working on the Archives and the constant micromanagement of the Philistians. For some reason, it was never enough. He couldn’t understand the need for this particular meeting or its urgency. He stifled a yawn. There was a slight buzzing and he blessed God for it.
“Excuse me, Ambassador Greel,” he said, trying not to be rude. The Philistians were rather touchy regarding protocol.
Samuel grabbed his cross and tapped the button on the back, not without a modicum of distaste.
“This is Samuel, go ahead,” he said. It was the Order’s wish that all brothers of a group be in constant communication, and since everyone wore a substantial piece of jewelry on the front of their cassocks, well, some genius back at Headquarters had thought it a stroke of inspiration, the joining of the practical with the spiritual. Samuel couldn’t help but sense a certain sacrilege in the choice, especially when he was forced to feed batteries into the back of his cross. It just wasn’t right.
“Father, this is Brother Hur.” The man’s voice, querulous as always, grated on Samuel’s senses. “Brother Thomas is still up in the command center and refuses to come down to help with the work, something about a ‘battle node’ that he’s discovered. I can’t process these paper records by myself. You need to talk to him.”
“It’ll have to wait,” Samuel replied. “I’m in the middle of a meeting with the Philistians.”
“Well, of course. But you really need to talk to him. Hur out.”
***
Samuel had a suspicion of mechanical devices, but he managed to swallow his discomfort as the elevator swallowed them and whisked them to the command center before his stomach could return to its rightful place.
For some reason, the metal chamber of the command center danced with light and motion, split by the occasional rumbling detonation beyond the walls. There was a man in the center of the room conducting a hurried monologue to no one.
“Brother Thomas,” Father Samuel said and stopped when the monk whirled around as if he’d been slapped. Thomas was a short fireplug of a man, his face weathered and wrinkled from his years as an engineman in the Terran Navy. His face glistened with spent tears.
“Father Samuel, I’m so sorry,” Thomas quavered. “There was nothing I could do. Isaiah and Peter… they came up to take a break on the observation deck. By the time we had a warning about the first nuke, the Abbey’s shield had already snapped on. They were trapped, couldn’t get back in...”
Before he could answer, Samuel noticed the observation deck. There was a rippling coruscation that lay over the doorway like a skin. It moved occasionally, a gossamer membrane that vibrated to the caress of an unseen wind. The things that lay on the parapet couldn’t have been, shouldn’t have been human, but the gorge rising in Samuel’s throat told him that they were. An Abbreviated Service for the Burial of the Dead passed through his lips almost without thought.
“I was trying to show the brothers the node,” Thomas rambled, “but they weren’t very interested. They decided to step outside to enjoy the view and two minutes later Fortress sounded the alert and snapped on the shield.”
“Fortress?” Samuel asked.
“Sir!” An enormous holographic face coalesced into the center of the room. It was roughly triangular, a rotating shield with bulbous black eyes perched at the apex and a mouth slit in the center. The presence of the image was startling, enough to set off a chorus of buzzes and clicks from the Mantidarian that the voder couldn’t translate–most likely profanity.
“Fortress, this is Commander Samuel,” Thomas said.
“Commander?” Samuel asked as he glanced sideways at Thomas.
“Fortress wanted to know who was in charge of the Ab…, of the defense station,” Thomas said with a shrug. “I told him.”
“Present and accounted for, sir,” the image intoned. It had stopped rotating and had fixed Samuel with a searchlight stare. There was another explosion, this one quite close. The membrane covering the slit port went dead black and Samuel’s skin crawled at the thought of the energies raging just a few meters away.
“I’ve not seen you before,” Samuel said, relying on his experience dealing with novices.
“I am the guardian of this defense station, sir,” the image replied. “I was in residual mode until Brother Thomas reawakened my higher functions yesterday. Fortunate, considering that this base is currently under attack.”
“In my experience there’s nothing that I would attribute to fortune,” Samuel replied. He had no desire to argue metaphysics or discuss theology with a machine. AI always made him uncomfortable. Perhaps it was the nagging realization that what floated before him was a product of the creature rather than the Creator.
“Of course, sir. I was merely pointing out this station’s capabilities for repelling such an assault. A lesser fortress would have succumbed to firepower of this magnitude.”
“Do you know who’s attacking us?” Samuel asked.
“My information is limited, Commander. Sensor frequencies are being jammed at present. The nuclear resonance signatures are comparable to previous attacks. Whoever they are, they’re quite persistent.”
“When was the last attack carried out?” Thomas asked.
“Approximately three thousand, four hundred and twenty years ago.” There was a brief pause as Fortress’ image froze. “Excuse me, commander, but there is a high priority laser modulation being routed to this facility. I believe that the call’s for you. Shall I open a channel?”
“Uh, please,” Samuel replied.
Fortress’s image winked out, to be replaced by the familiar image of Ambassador Greel. The alien looked somewhat surprised to see him.
“Father Samuel, are you alright? What’s going on? Seismic sensors on the Ruined Continent are off the scale.”
“We seem to be under attack, Ambassador,” Samuel replied. For some reason, he felt like yelling, though he knew the Ambassador could hear him.
“An attack? From whom!?”
“We don’t know! Fortress has managed to repel the bombardment to this point, but I’m not sure how long we can hold out. The machinery is rather old.”
“I heard that!” came Fortress’s voice from an unknown speaker.
Greel looked off to the side and spoke a sentence or two to an invisible aide. He nodded at the reply. “It seems to be coming from the northern portion of the Ruined Continent,” replied the big alien. “Aid is being dispatched. We have a flotilla of suborbital transports prepping for launch as we speak. We can be in your vicinity within the hour. If you can hold out until then, we should be able to affect a rescue. Are you sure that you have no idea who’s behind this attack?”
“You have my word, Ambassador,” Samuel replied. “We aren’t in the habit of cultivating enemies.”
The Ambassador continued to speak for several minutes, a soliloquy that Samuel felt he’d heard before, the patois of a born politician. He knew that the alien was trying to infuse them with a sense of hope, but he felt curiously forlorn when the Philistian finally signed off.
He turned to face Thomas and Pssst-clik. The expressions on their faces told him all.
“That’s it? ’Be brave, my brothers?’” Thomas said. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“He does seem to be something of a stuffed shirt,” Samuel replied. “Fortress, are you still there?”
“Yes, Commander.” The holographic face returned, looking for all the world like a metal shield with eyeballs on the edges.
“Obviously, you were monitoring our conversation.” Samuel said. “Do you think that you can withstand this assault until help arrives?”
“The chances of survival are good. This defense station has withstood fifteen separate blasts of varying mega-tonnage, plus an odd assortment of anti-personnel weapons designed to destroy living tissue. Fortunately, the surface shield and hermetic sealing of the fortress have repelled the various gases and nano-dusts used. There are a number of approaching projectiles in flight. They are targeted and will be dealt with when they are within range. The destruction of the surrounding countryside is considerable. I doubt that you will want to remain here once the attack has been beaten back.”
Samuel was about to answer when his attention was diverted. The elevator had disgorged another brother, someone that he’d never expected to see so far from the Archives.
“Brother Hur?” Samuel asked. “What are you doing here?” It was easy to tell that Brother Hur was upset. His normally florid face had achieved a greater shade of crimson and his portly figure shook with an ill-concealed rage. The already tense atmosphere of the command center went up a notch.
“Am I the only person who works around here?” he rasped. “Peter and Isaiah are experts at the coffee break, Thomas can’t get away from his hobby center, which leaves me to do all the work! The paper stores in the secret chamber aren’t going to move or translate themselves, you know. And now I find you up here, Father Samuel, with Brother Bug shooting the breeze with… what the hell is this?”
Brother Hur noticed the holographic face of Fortress for the first time. At that moment, there was a roar and a flash of light as another nuke, possibly a direct hit, blossomed outside. When Father Samuel regained his composure, Hur’s rage had drained away, replaced by the startled realization that he’d been missing something significant while buried in the Archives.
***
“I’m sorry, Ambassador Greel,” Samuel said as he keyed off his cross. “Two of the brothers don’t get along. Brother Thomas is somewhat technically minded and the Abbey is a vast treasure trove of wonders. Brother Hur is our resident paper expert.”
“I see,” Greel replied. “Fortunate that you have a specialist in light of your discovery.” The hologram that sat before Father Samuel on the granite dais in the shadow of the Fortress displayed a group of tall, heavy-set creatures that was marginally humanoid, but handsome in their own fashion. And xenophobic, he thought. All of the business between the Philistians and the Order had been conducted remotely. The scanning ad had been listed in the Compendia Galactica, the contract had been signed over subspace, even the specialized equipment and the domestic stores had been waiting for them beside the Fortress in a robot transport with strict instructions not to venture beyond its property or even certain portions of the Fortress itself. Irritating, for certain, but times had been hard and even a monastery had to eat. That plus the extra benefit of staying free of charge in the abandoned fortress that housed the Archives had put Samuel in a forgiving mood.
“Yes, the paper cache that I mentioned in my last report was found quite by accident. We used to work with the material exclusively. It’s how my order got its start in the monasteries of Europe.”
“I would assume it to be quite old.” The Ambassador shifted his rather ponderous weight this way and that as if he might be uncomfortable.
“Well, I’m not an expert; you’d have to check with Brother Hur. I’ve rarely seen him so excited. The paper predates the digital period of your world. I’d say that Philistia has a great treasure in its possession.”
“I’m sure that you’re correct, Father Samuel,” the Ambassador replied, “and I have more than enough confidence that you and your brothers will be able to consolidate your latest find into the digital matrix.”
The alien’s words struck Samuel like a fist.
“Surely you don’t propose to digitize this latest cache in the same manner as the other types of media?” Samuel asked, aghast.
“Well, of course, why not?” The great alien’s face registered puzzlement that anyone could see.
“The records… don’t you see… are priceless,” Father Samuel stammered. “This is different from the electronic media and the 3D artifacts that we’ve scanned and destroyed as per your instructions. You have a trove of historical documentation, valuable in its own right. I can understand your desire to be rid of the various forms of media after we’ve scanned and uploaded it, but to scan these documents and then disintegrate them would be… criminal.”
He had acquiesced to the demands of the Philistians after accepting the job, but the requirement to destroy all types of media after digitization struck him as foolish. The combination scanner/disintegrators the Philistians had supplied them brooked no second chances and he knew his brothers well enough to realize that mistakes were common and frequent.
Greel chuckled.
“You humans are all the same, always fascinated by the ancient and the arcane. It’s one of the quaintest aspects of your species. Please be aware that we do have a contract with your order and we’d hate to have to complain to your Headquarters.”
The rest of Greel’s statement was as condescending as it was jovial, a combination that never failed to irritate Samuel to the extreme. He sighed and turned from the dais, assigning two penances to himself for good measure.
***
“I just can’t believe that you’d be unaware we were under attack,” Father Samuel said as the trio descended to the Archives in the elevator. Brother Hur’s astonishment in the command center had been comical, but his recovery regarding the rain of nukes falling on them had been swift. When Hur told Samuel that something in the Archives demanded his immediate attention, it made little sense for them to remain in the control center. They left: Samuel, Pssst-clik, and Hur with the promise from Thomas that he’d remain in contact.
“I’ve been busy translating, Father,” Hur grunted. “I thought we were just going through another earthquake cycle. You do realize that the Ruined Continent sits atop a dormant super-volcano. Earth tremors shouldn’t be that unusual.”
“Yes, you’ve told me before,” Father Samuel replied, trying to remain pleasant.
“That makes sense, Father,” Brother Pssst-clik replied. The bombardment had been reduced to a sullen grumbling as the elevator descended deeper into the Abbey.
“Nice little pistol you have there, Brother Bug,” Hur said as he viewed the Mantidarian’s blast cannon. “Where did you pick that up?”
“I found it in one of the lower corridors, and please don’t call me that,” Pssst-clik replied. The Mantidarian had achieved a defensive posture without even being aware of it.
“And what if I don’t?” Hur asked.
“Queen Natherax commanded us never to eat another human being after the fiasco of the First Expedition. It would mean death, but I might make an exception.”
“I’ve got another windshield joke if you care to listen…”
“Enough!” Samuel snapped. “Think what this bickering does to your souls. You said you had something to show me, something important. Well, what is it?”
The elevator had come to a halt, its doors opening onto the Archives. What had once been a munitions storage depot had been transformed, the transport racks now laden with the artifacts and ephemera of an entire culture. There were numerous digitization stations scattered here and there, all of them occupied by busy monks, except for two. They walked past Isaiah’s and Peter’s stations and Samuel felt a hand grip his heart. The trio walked past these, going deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of woven plastic and steel conduits. They came to a stop at a place that Samuel found all too familiar, a secret panel that had burst during the early days of their work, releasing a cascade of sheets into the corridor. There was a table that groaned under the weight of reams of paper. Brother Hur carefully picked up a weathered, brownish sheet and gazed at it.
“Most of this stuff has been an insult to my training and to my intelligence,” he grumbled. “Bills of lading and manifests, standard InterGalac 30, hardly worth the effort of turning them into bits.” The monk placed the sheet on top of a pile of paper with a gentleness that belied his contempt.
“Most of it,” Samuel said. “Obviously, there’s something that’s piqued your interest.”
“Yes,” Hur answered, looking uncomfortable, the first time that Samuel could remember such an expression on the man’s face. He picked up a dull sheet of reddish-orange metal, something like copper or bronze that bore a series of marks that appeared to have been hastily punched into the surface. “I was going through a pile near the rupture when I came across this.”
“What is it?” Pssst-clik! asked.
“Unnerving,” Brother Hur replied with a grimace. “The language is InterGalac 4, I mean, this is really old stuff dating approximately three or four galactic revolutions past. There must have been some kind of stasis circuit in the secret compartment or even the metal would have turned to dust, forget the paper. This is what I managed to translate:
‘They are coming. Contact with the other defense stations has been lost. We have sustained significant casualties after a sustained bombardment. Most of us are dead. Fortress seals remain intact, but it is only a matter of time before radiation or something manages to penetrate the barriers. I have set defense controls to residual once there are no more life signs registered within the walls. Hopefully, the enemy will consider the station to be a dead hulk and leave it alone.
‘There is no one left–they have wiped us out. It is possible that they will not try to enter the fortress if they detect no lifesigns, but I can take no chances. I will hide this and the other evidence and hope that it is discovered by a sympathetic being. May someone find this record and give witness to the crime against an entire people.’”
Father Samuel crossed himself out of long habit. The message of despair weighed upon him, even as the fortress shook from another blast somewhere outside. He imagined the metal plate lying in the darkness all those eons, suddenly coming to light just as they faced their own trial by fire. He found it difficult to accept the discovery as a coincidence.
“Do you think it was written by a former inhabitant of the Ruined Continent?” Samuel asked. “The Philistians have admitted as much to having a violent history and the lifelessness attests to it. This could have been inscribed by one of the losers.”
“I’m a paper expert, Father Samuel, not a historian.”
“Here it comes,” Pssst-clik whispered.
“However, I’ve studied some ancient languages for entertainment,” Hur said, throwing a dirty look in Pssst-clik’s direction, “InterGalac being among them. The word that our unknown writer uses for ‘people’ could also be translated as ‘species’ if you wanted to get picky. We may not be witnesses to a war as much as a genocide.”
“There’s nothing else on the plate?”
“No, Father. Whoever wrote the message must have placed it in the secret chamber, sealed it and went to their fate, hoping that the location of the cavity would someday come to light.” Hur held the plate gingerly, and not without a little fear. “There’s something hasty about the way the characters were set down. Obviously, the writer didn’t have a great deal of time.”
Samuel was about to add something when his cross beeped and he answered it. It was Thomas, and he wasn’t happy.
“I don’t think that the Philistians are going to get here in time, Father. Fortress has picked up a new batch of signals and they’re coming in fast. Whatever they are, they’re big,” Thomas’s voice cracked. “Fortress isn’t sure that he can repel them.”
“If the command center is in danger, I order you to seek a more fortified position,” Samuel said.
“Yes, Father.” Thomas was sullen, as if he’d been insulted somehow.
Samuel keyed off, meeting the stares of the two other people in the Archives with as brave a face as possible. He knew what was expected of him. He just wondered if Pssst-clik and Hur knew this as well.
“What can we do?” Hur asked.
“The most important thing.”
***
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” Brother Pssst-clik said. For privacy’s sake, they had moved to another alcove of the Archives choked with the tangled detritus of the Philistian civilization. “It’s been over a week since my last confession.”
“What do you wish to confess?” Samuel asked.
“Are you familiar with the history of my people?” Pssst-clik asked.
“Only the basic history. The Mantidarians were the first alien culture contacted by humanity. Why?”
“I suppose we were almost the last, as well, after what happened. You have to understand that human beings closely resembled a biped that lived in the jungles of Mantidaria and we fed upon them when the opportunity presented itself. Captain Fornax and his expedition had the misfortune of being in the wrong place and the wrong time when they landed in the palace complex.”
“And that was…?”
“Dinner time,” Pssst-clik replied. “By the time the royal guard had discovered Fornax’s ship, it was too late.”
Samuel said nothing. Pssst-clik gave a rasping series of clicks that was translated as a sigh.
“It’s difficult to tell an off-worlder how we felt. We had violated the Rule of Hospitality; we had eaten guests. When Queen Natherax gave the order for us to commit mass suicide, well, you know that Mantidarians aren’t as individual as humans. We complied with her command.”
“And then the Augustinian Expedition made contact,” Father Samuel said. “And the surviving members of your race converted to Christianity en masse.”
“When Father Josephus told us the story of our Blessed Lord who sacrificed Himself and even gave his Body and Blood–” Pssst-clik splayed his forearms in an almost human gesture “–nobody had ever done anything like that in Mantidarian history. We became acquainted with sacrifice for the first time.”
“Some people say that the Mantidarians converted out of fear,” Father Samuel said. “The Terran Navy was en route on a punitive mission before Josephus convinced it to stand down. Most of my people like to think that the Terran Navy was the reason you converted.”
The staccato buzz was translated as a dry chuckle. “I don’t wish to insult you, Father Samuel, but we are a very old race and very powerful. Fortunately, most of my people consider the Terran Sphere to be, well, adorable. We find your naivete to be refreshing when compared to such races as the Tenmouth, the Tilaxi–even the NightSpawn, may they forever eat dung.” There was a pause. “Sorry, Father. There were other reasons that we converted. As Queen Natherax said: ‘Humans are delicious, just not worth the guilt.’”
“We still haven’t dealt with the issue of sin, Brother Pssst-clik,” Father Samuel said, as gently as possible.
“I’ve had… thoughts, Father. I’ve engaged in fantasies that discredit me as a Christian. I’ve fantasized about eating the brethren, even,” at this the Mantidarian trembled, “some of the less palatable ones.”
“Brother Hur?”
“Especially Brother Hur, though not without some form of tenderizer.”
“Did you think of eating me?” Father Samuel asked.
“Yes, even you,” the voice from the voder was as dry and quiet as the rubbing of wheat stalks together. “That is why I confess these things as sin. You’re my abbot, but you’re also my friend.” Samuel felt a coldness in his head from the thoughts. The idea of such a powerful being as the Mantidarian holding its natural instincts in check by the power of love and spiritual discipline appalled him for some reason. Perhaps it was the thought of how tenuous those barriers might be. He took a deep breath.
“You have fought and that is good. Your sin is venial. Say two rosaries and consider your fasting exercises to be broken.”
“Father?” Pssst-clik stammered.
“I’m afraid that the writers of The Spiritual Tests couldn’t have foreseen the unique, ah, problems that brothers from other civilizations had to face, especially when natural processes were involved. We can’t have you eating your companions or your superiors. Make certain that you eat three square meals a day. In nomine Patris, et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, I absolve you. Go in peace.”
Samuel wasn’t looking forward to the next confession and Brother Hur didn’t disappoint him. Pssst-clik scuttled off to find something to eat and Hur rounded the corner almost immediately, as if the man might have been within earshot. Samuel said nothing.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been almost a month since my last confession.”
“What do you wish to confess?”
“I have been living a lie since I arrived on this planet and it is beginning to bother me. I’m a great deal more intelligent than I’ve let on and that has put you and the rest of the Order at risk.”
“I don’t understand,” Samuel replied.
“I’m not just a paper expert. Paper is just one of my hobbies,” Hur said with a sigh. The man seemed genuinely contrite. “In truth, I’m a Professor of Extinct Civilizations formerly of the Institute for Exo-Forensic Research. Or at least the satellite campus on Tau. Never got along with the bastards at the Terran campus. Sorry. In truth, I’m not even Catholic.”
“What made you join us?” Samuel asked, curious in spite of himself. He had never thought of Brother Hur as true monkish material, more of a candidate for the Foreign Legion, but one didn’t question God’s secret strategies. The fact that the man had chosen to flee to the Order was indicative of something deeper than even Hur might care to admit.
“Embezzlement,” Hur said, shrugging his shoulders. “I faked the accomplishments of my section and made off with the grant money when it was deposited. I wanted to do some specialty research and not be regarded as a laughingstock. Nobody would have given me a cent if I’d made my true intentions known.”
“You must have been truly desperate if you felt compelled to steal. What did you want to work on?”
“NightSpawn artifacts.”
Father Samuel recoiled a little but caught himself.
The NightSpawn were an abomination, a race that had made a bid for domination during the Galac 4 period and only the combined might of the civilizations existing at the time had stopped them. The scars of the conflict, the remains of dead and decimated civilizations existed to the present–Galac 30. Certain discrepancies in the Solar system were seen with new vision. The ruins on Mars and the altering of the Venusian ecosphere had been sobering discoveries, especially when such events were viewed as results of the NightSpawn war eons before. It was hard to believe that such a terrible race had made landfall on Earth. It was even harder to believe that, somehow, life on Earth had survived.
“The sin of theft is egregious,” Samuel said. “I can assign a penance, but there remains the issue of the funds. Compensation to the Institute will most likely be required. For that reason…”
“You don’t understand, Father,” Hur interrupted. “I’m not sorry for stealing the money. In less than an hour, it won’t matter. I’m sorry for withholding vital information. I had my suspicions, but neglected to tell you.”
“Tell me what?” Samuel asked, exasperated.
“I believe we’re being attacked by a surviving branch of the NightSpawn.”
***
“Attention! Primary shield has been compromised. Enemy troops have penetrated Level 50. Standby to initiate Sterilization Protocol One. All defenders must take cover immediately.”
Fortress’s voice was recognizable, but had become harsh and metronomic. The collapse of the Abbey’s shield followed by a skein of static from Thomas’s cross clued Samuel that the end was probably near. He knew that they were safer in the Archives, the most heavily armored section of the Abbey, but the thought of Thomas in the command center, vulnerable and exposed, gnawed at him. The reaction of the two brothers came as no surprise when he told them what he planned to do.
“It’s suicide,” Hur said.
“The elevator might not be working, Father,” Brother Pssst-clik said. “That’s a long climb even for me.”
“I’ll have to take my chances. He may not even be alive, but I can’t leave someone in my charge alone. Especially…” Samuel shot a glance at Hur, “if the NightSpawn are responsible.”
“Dear God, all this time, we’ve actually been working for the NightSpawn?” Pssst-clik said. Even the voder sounded depressed.
“Most likely, the blips that AI homunculus detected were our ‘rescue’ flotilla. A collection of heavily armed suborbitals firing at the same time might actually be able to bring down the shield, if that’s what happened,” Hur said.
“But what about Ambassador Greel and the meetings we had?” Samuel grated. “I saw him. I talked to him. I mean, they weren’t human, but they certainly didn’t look anything like the race you described.”
“You may have been the victim of a holographic filter or a perceptual generator, Father,” Hur answered. “Such technology exists. Don’t be too hard on yourself. If they are the NightSpawn, we’re dealing with a culture that raised deceit to a high art during its time.”
“Then I need to go. Better early than late,” Samuel replied.
Samuel was mildly surprised when he keyed the elevator, turned around and found Brother Hur alongside Brother Pssst-clik.
“I just want to find out if this thing will actually work,” Pssst-clik said as he waved the blast cannon around.
“I never wanted to die hiding in some God-forsaken hole,” Hur said, his expression betraying a hint of irony. “Besides, to be one of the first living men to see a NightSpawn, even for a few seconds; that would be worth something.”
“An honor I could pass on,” Brother Pssst-clik said.
Any further conversation was interrupted by a sound like a dozen bowling balls bouncing around on the inside of the transit tube. The door slid open with a jerk as the elevator lozenge dropped the final foot to the level of the floor. Apparently, the Abbey’s machinery had suffered from the attack. The trio clambered aboard the elevator with a certain reluctance. When the door closed, Samuel wondered what it would open onto, or if they’d even live to exit. There was a lurch and they felt the pressure of transit, but slowly, not like the previous trip to the command center.
“Just out of curiosity, why are the NightSpawn attacking us?” Pssst-clik asked. “It’s not like we ever posed a threat or even bothered them. Why wait almost a year to kill us? And in such a spectacular fashion?”
“I think we’ve been the unwitting participants in a crime, brother,” Samuel said. “A cover-up. We hardly heard a peek out of the Philistians, er, the NightSpawn until they got wind of the paper cache.”
“And the metal plaque,” Hur interjected.
“Yes. I always thought it strange to digitize the records and destroy them in the same pass. Ambassador Greel was always quick to reassure me that the information was uploaded directly to the nearest node of the Compendia, but like a fool, I never thought to doublecheck his settings. For all I know, we’ve been beaming the information into the remotest depths of space without a receiver anywhere close to the signal. Whoever the Philistians were, God have mercy on their souls, they’re no longer here. They left behind an entire culture’s worth of evidence and we’ve been destroying it like the diligent little copyists that we are.”
“We’ve been erasing the Philistians’ culture?” Brother Pssst-clik asked. “Why not just nuke the archives and be done with it? It’s not like they needed us to do it. It would take too much time.”
“Excuse me, but you’re both wrong. I believe that it might be something more insidious than simple destruction,” Brother Hur responded. “None of the artifacts we’ve uploaded and destroyed are NightSpawn in origin, of that I’m sure. The NightSpawn survivors needed a place to hide after the Galaxy united against them. They chose a primitive world, a technological civilization that had not yet come under the Compendia’s scrutiny. After they, uh, ‘removed’ the original inhabitants of this world, there was still the problem of the Compendia. Sooner or later, they would be called upon to register. If they could voluntarily offer to upload their culture and weave a tight enough fabrication, nobody would investigate.”
“And we’ve been helping them,” Samuel said, trying not to be bitter. His faith had suffered since Hur’s confession–now he wondered if it might be dying.
“No wonder they gave us such good terms,” Pssst-Clik replied. The Mantidarian might have said something else, but he didn’t have time. The elevator reached their destination with a wheeze and a jolt that nearly knocked them to their knees.
When the door slid open, Samuel felt a flash of disorientation followed by the acid twinge of fear. The command center was a shambles, the machinery pulverized by whatever force had sliced through the ceiling and blown a portion of it into the darkling sky. A wind howled through the chamber, a devil’s breath that smelled of sulfur and felt like a stream of powdered glass. The dais that had generated Fortress had cracked and beside it lay a forlorn lump of brownish clothing.
“Thomas!” Samuel shouted.
His words were whisked away by the wind’s roar. Samuel stepped into the maelstrom and felt the abrasive breeze start to peel away the skin around his sandals. For once, he blessed that nameless abbot from the past who’d made their habit a robe. The heavy wool provided some protection, and he threw the hood over his head. He fell to the floor, as much to give the wind less purchase as to the fact that he simply couldn’t stand.
Slowly, Samuel clawed his way across the deck plating, the wind shrieking and the cries of Pssst-clik and Hur faint in his ears. He had no hope that Thomas was alive, but the man was under his charge.
He was within reach of Thomas’s body when he noticed the foot in his way, a large grayish stump rooted in his path. Slowly, his eyes traveled up the trunk, taking in more and more of the creature that blocked him. It was Ambassador Greel, and yet not Greel. For a second or two, he was confronted by the creature he’d spoken with over the hologram, and then something jittered in his vision and he was faced with a creature out of a nightmare.
Instead of the marginal humanoid shape of the ambassador, a tall lump of grayish fabric stared down at him with its single great eye behind the clear globe of its spacesuit helmet. A hole beneath the eye moved this way and that, fringed by a collection of tentacles that whipped across the face like Medusa. Occasionally, a tentacle would wipe the eye daintily.
It was possible that the creature was speaking to him, but whatever the thing said was lost in the roar of the wind that funneled down the hole in the ceiling like a living thing. The creature stopped speaking and aimed its massive tree trunk of a foot at Samuel’s head.
Samuel was old, but the force of terror itself gave him speed. He rolled, feeling the massive thing whiz past his head like a great, gray club, then the floor heaved him upward as the decking cracked and the monster that had called itself Greel lost its balance and fell.
The NightSpawn lay before him like a small hill. For a brief instant, the force of the wind was abated. He used the opportunity to grab the hem of Thomas’s robe and pull the man’s body towards him. The darkness that lay beyond the hole seemed to shift like a solid thing and Samuel realized that something hovered over the cleft ceiling of the fortress. Stressed metal howled as the suborbital settled over the hole, reducing the wind’s roar to a sullen mutter. A hatch yawned above him and several more creatures sailed through the hole. They came to rest beside their leader, who rose from the deck plating with as much dignity as he could muster.
“I’m sorry, Father Samuel, but I believe that it’s time to let you go,” the suited figure said. Apparently, it had figured out the use of its speaker. The voice was similar to Greel’s, but the inflections were harsher, more garbled.
“I’m afraid that working any further for the NightSpawn would constitute a serious conflict of interest on behalf of my order,” Samuel replied. “You made liars of us.”
The creature laughed and Samuel felt a chill at the sound that took pleasure in all the pain of the Galaxy.
“Yes, I must admit that I had to bite my tongue to keep from chuckling when you first mentioned it at our last meeting. You taxed our perceptual filter to the limit. The idea that such a pathetic group of creatures could take comfort in the fact that they had nothing to do with us was ironic, to say the least. It’s a pity that you won’t have the opportunity to share that joke with the other members of your Order. Your deaths and your work will go unrecorded.”
Greel’s assertion was not something he wished to hear, but it didn’t surprise him. What did surprise him was the lack of fear. He had spent his entire life in the Order acknowledging that death was always present, a player in Life’s drama that might be delayed, but never denied its eventual role. He stared upward at the abomination that towered above him and wondered. It was very possible that this minion of hell before him would be the doorkeeper, the unwitting servant who would throw open the Gates of Paradise for him and the rest of the brothers. He simply had to let the creature know, one way or the other, that its path of evil and ruin would be forever in vain.
“You can’t hide, you know!” Samuel shouted. “Your existence upon this planet is a fact, part of the reality of the universe and as such, constitutes a form of information. It doesn’t matter if you try to conceal it. One way or the other, information will be free.” Samuel grimaced. Not the kind of admonition he’d hoped for. It was like a snippet from Library Science 101. It was a poorly fashioned arrow, but seemed to hit its mark just the same.
“Human,” Greel snarled. “Weak and late upon the scene. When we pour forth from this planet, renewed and strengthened after our long rest, I will count it a privilege to make the Earth one of our first ports of call. But first, let me borrow your skin,” Greel said, reaching down with an enormous claw. “It will make a nice trophy to hang on my cruiser.”
Samuel turned, shielding Thomas’s body with his own. There was a blast of sound and the air above his head moved, suctioned by the passage of something that intersected with the NightSpawn’s arm. It exploded it into a stump. Apparently, Brother Pssst-Clik had managed to fix the blast cannon. The arm fell to the deck plating like a log, writhing and pouring forth a brownish liquid that bubbled and stank. Greel must have been used to losing a limb occasionally. The NightSpawn roared and cinched the fabric of his suit closed, even as he tried to stomp Samuel into a paste.
Samuel skittered away like a crab, dragging Thomas while he dodged the footfalls of the creature. He fell and turned on the sandy flooring, sliding this way and that as the great elephant feet came down. He could feel the floor abrading his flesh, the corrugated pattern imprinting itself into his back and thighs, but he refused to let go of Thomas’s body. He saw Greel raise his foot one more time, saw the pattern on the underside of the suit and wondered what it would feel like. He closed his eyes.
“Stop,” said a small, still voice.
Samuel’s eyes flew open. There was something in the command center, a face that hovered over the cracked dais. It was easy to tell that the AI was not pleased. Greel and the NightSpawn soldiers had lost interest in Samuel.
“You will hurt these people no further,” the synthetic voice intoned.
“And what if I take issue with your demands,” Greel replied. “You are hardly in a position for such. My foot is on your neck. You are beaten.”
“You have defeated yourselves,” Fortress said. “It is only a matter of time before it becomes reality. Leave this place while you still can.”
“I take no orders from a machine,” Greel said as something black and menacing unlimbered itself from a pod on the NightSpawn’s shoulder. The thing swiveled and spat, flickering energy that burrowed into the dais and danced in a cascade of sparks over the AI’s face. If it bothered Fortress, it didn’t seem to show it.
“Very well, your fate is just. Father Samuel, run.”
Samuel needed no prompting. He threw Thomas over his shoulder in a superhuman effort and ran for the elevator. He feared to look back, possibly because Brother Pssst-Clik was waving the blast gun and he was afraid that the brother wasn’t that good of a shot. He could hear a roar of frustration from Greel behind him and a clank of machinery before him as the elevator door began to close. Leave it to Hur to push the Close button too soon. He managed to throw Thomas and himself into the compartment, even as a portion of his robe was sliced off by the door.
Even fainting and in pain, Samuel could tell that something was amiss. He knew they were at the top of the Abbey, there were no floors above him and yet, he felt the familiar sensation of acceleration. There was something else, a muttering in the depths of the Abbey that had nothing to do with the exterior hell that still sounded through the door. Metal fell upon metal with enormous clangs. The muttering grew into a roar as the floor tilted slightly, causing the brothers to slide this way and that. After a moment of confusion, Father Samuel understood.
“You could have told me that the Abbey was a spaceship!” Samuel shouted.
Thomas’s eyes fluttered open. He smiled with cracked lips and said with a surprisingly strong voice: “Sorry. It slipped my mind. I think it’s called Sterilization Protocol I.”
Thomas would die on the way up, but before breathing his last, he whispered one last revelation to his abbot.
***
The Terran Navy found them ten days later. Sensors had reported a substantial twisting in the space-time fabric and it was the Navy’s duty to investigate such an event. They held a Mass for Thomas and then a Mass of Thanksgiving which the Captain of the Aegis agreed to attend.
“First of all, let me offer my condolences on the death of your friend, Father,” Captain Van Neelan said. Several of the brothers had joined them in the mess hall after the second Mass had been performed in a hastily converted rec room. Hur and Pssst-clik had recovered from their injuries, as well as the rest of the members of the Order. The Abbey bulked enormous outside one of the viewports, though Samuel preferred not to watch the thing at the moment.
“Thank you, Captain. Your hospitality and treatment of our injuries have been most kind,” Samuel replied. “Have you managed to conduct a satisfactory investigation of the Fortress, one thorough enough for your superiors?”
“I doubt that,” Van Neelan rasped. “There are too many unanswered questions. Most likely, the report will be kicked upstairs several levels until some admiral decides to shelve the thing.”
“Surely you don’t doubt our depositions?” Hur asked, tactless as always.
“Of course not,” the captain replied. “Your point of origin wasn’t that far away. We nipped over and found a substantial dust ring forming around the star. No planet, but from what you told me…” Van Neelan winced. “I’m not surprised.”
Nor was Samuel. He remembered looking out one of the Abbey’s armored viewports when the planet still hung like a shield before them, a fiery wall with a gaping wound of molten rock that widened with every missile that blazed across the atmosphere towards it. The sight burned into his memory until he could stand it no longer and he turned away.
“Something about the Fortress disturbs you, Captain,” Pssst-clik stated.
“Yes,” Van Neeland answered sourly. He was a fireplug with reddish hair, achingly similar to Thomas. “I’m sorry, Father, but there’s no way in hell that that chunk of iron out there could have possibly done what you claimed!” The man seemed defensive, as if some finely-honed sense of reality had come under attack. “The AI’s circuits fried about the time that the pyramids were under construction, the force shield projector was a petrified ruin, the entire fortress had been gutted long ago!”
“That’s not possible,” Hur replied. “The NightSpawn threw everything they had at us. The bombardment destabilized the magma core beneath the continent.”
“I don’t think you appreciate what was there, or rather what was not there,” Van Neelan gestured. “The Fortress is a piece of junk. And yet,” the man gestured to the assembled monks, looking very unhappy, “here you are, alive and well.”
“Do you believe in God, Captain?” Pssst-clik asked quietly.
“Yes, I do,” Van Neelan replied, “but I can’t put the word ‘miracle’ in my report. You’ve done a great service to the Terran Sphere, hell, to the entire galaxy. You’ve provided us with a crapload of records detailing their latest atrocity, and through forces unknown… you’ve wiped out a tribe of the bastards, or were at least witnesses to their self-immolation.”
Father Samuel had to smile when the captain excused himself and left the members of the Order to their thoughts and their silences. Hur excused himself, and as if that was a cue, the rest of the brothers slowly dribbled away like liquid in a cup. Pssst-clik remained.
“He was a good man, Father,” said the brother.
It pained Samuel to realize that even Pssst-clik failed to read the emotion that now sat heavy on his heart, but it was confirmation that nobody was perfect. He sighed and looked over into the chitinous face whose heart probably held more faith than most humans. “Yes, he was. And he called something into being that saved us all.”
“What was it, Father?”
“Perhaps an angel. Or maybe it was a Philistian manifestation, the real Philistians taking vengeance for their extinction. I don’t know,” Samuel shrugged. “It was a miracle, and we’re alive because of it. Let’s leave it at that.”
“Before he died, he told you something,” Pssst-clik said. “Do you mind if I ask what it was?”
Samuel hesitated at the question. It brought back painful memories. I’m sorry, Father. I tried to save it. I even extended the shields around it, but it burned eventually. Please forgive me.
“He asked for forgiveness,” Samuel replied.
“Ah, his last confession,” the insectoid replied, nodding his triangular head. The answer seemed to satisfy Pssst-clik. He excused himself, allowing Samuel the privacy he’d been craving since their rescue. He picked at his food. The need to pray called out to him, but he resisted for the moment. He knew that eventually the memories would fade and he would be left with the simple gratitude for being alive. However, for the moment, he was weighted by the knowledge of what had happened to the infant yew tree.
Hank Shore is a writer living in Brevard, NC with his wife, Mary, and their Corgi, Riley. He likes Science Fiction and Photography which are forever vying for first attention. At the moment, writing is winning. He uses writing primarily as an excuse for collecting computers and pens. He works at the Bakery in the Ingles supermarket in Brevard.
Read his novels here:
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Great story.