This is a private blog
Father Ellis arrived at the bridge hatch before Bright and Wildbird, who were still pulling themselves along the two hundred metre length of the axial corridor. The door, to his surprise, would not open when he tried.
“Maribel,” he said, reflexively touching his e-Go, a small comms bud behind his right ear. “Open the bridge door, please.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave,” she giggled.
Emma looked out of the shuttle window tears forming in the corner of her indigo-blue eyes.
“Goodbye Freya and thank you,” she whispered softly to herself, dabbing away the tears.
She took one last look at Mars, the red-brown earth, spiky grasses, and soft, smooth, pebble-like mosses, the only home she’d ever known, as the silver-grey craft deployed upward thrust and briefly hovered over the landing pad before embarking on its flight to Jupiter.
Freya felt uneasy as she drove down the pitted, dirt track, a mist of fine red dust in her wake. She’d been to the yard a few times with Richard, it wasn’t far from town but far enough to feel isolated. Lyc’s OK when you get to know him, she heard Richard’s voice in her head, trying to reassure her. Sure, he’s rough around the edges and more cyborg than human but he’s put his past behind him since the accident. He’s a model citizen now, pays his taxes and everything. Anyway, you can’t beat his yard for the variety and quality of the scrap he’s got, and his knowledge of cybernetics is second to none based on experimentation on himself. I don’t know any scientist worth his salt who would do that. She could see Richard grin at her distaste. Somehow Lyc and Richard had formed an unlikely friendship over the years, the space pirate, and the government scientist and not a week went by when Richard wouldn’t visit the yard for something or other. Freya preferred to stay at home, yet here she was today. She smiled thinking about what Richard would’ve said if he knew. He would certainly have teased her for it mercilessly. She stopped in front of what looked like a large aircraft hangar, orderly piles of space scrap, grouped by type, to the left and right. Lyc stood at the entrance, a tall, imposing, muscular man, his cybernetically enhanced left eye scanning his visitor. His past was chiselled on his face and a large, jagged scar ran down his right cheek. Knowing he would be wary of strangers and most likely armed, Freya waited until she saw his shoulders relax before getting out of her Mars rover.
“It’s Freya, isn’t it?” asked the man.
Freya nodded.
“I was sorry to hear about Richard. He was a good man. I liked him. I’ll miss our chats.”
“He liked you too,” Freya replied quietly, fighting back the tears, not wanting to show her vulnerability in front of Lyc.
It had been six months since Richard had died and Freya missed him every day, the searing pain of grief hitting her when she least expected it, like now. It was the little things she missed most: the cup of tea he woke her up with each morning, the broad smile on his whiskery face at the anticipation of another new day or his deep belly laugh when she read him something funny from the planet news.
I head straight for my quarters, seal the entrance, and reform in a heap on the floor, panting heavily with exertion. I can still feel their words on my skin, the strings growing stronger as their discussion continues, carving the tethers deeper into my flesh.
Clearly I made a mistake when renewing my protective wards, their threads should not be able to touch me here. In fact, they should not have been able to affect me earlier either.
I pull back my coat and reach into the pocket concealed in the lining, pulling out my talisman.
At first glance, the flower remains encased in it’s crystalline sphere, looking just as it did on the day it first bloomed all those millennia ago.
we are joka the wave-born ikiyoka gravity’s children ajagara Her battalions on high for aeons we flew at Her side riding gravity’s wake proud and strong till Her fall then began the orchestrations of madness the scream of The Fang against the universe like metal ripping through metal a crescendo of blessed radiation a cry that boiled like a blood fever a tidal wave of bile and disbelief and rage and spite and the nerves started to shred we felt the ticking of the darkness closing in on all sides till gravity’s tsunami folded over into a tunnel a singularity that pulled us from shadow into darkness these times are a force of darkness that begets unforgiving darkness hear the violin kick delicate licks of suspended hope dangling over the percussion on gossamer threads the propulsive beat sways them so they dance like moths careening towards the lamplight they are dumb and dumb founded caught in a trance like an addict seeking their one true love liminal spaces extruded into scattered light and fog we are surrounded by strange animals crouching in the trembling shadows and so we wait
The Brother and The Sister couldn’t see him yet. They couldn’t see much at all: their senses were still adjusting. Although they had been here many times this was, thankfully, not their usual dimension: it was filled with acrid smells and listless currents, it was small and abstract, like a familiar prison cell. There was something almost quaint about the size of this planet.
Quaint but not at all pleasant. The air was thick and choked with grot; it wreaked of decay; the sky was a cesspit, even the clouds were chemically tainted. The Brother and The Sister wondered what it would be like to live on the ground, close to the source of the disease. This place lacked true energy and freedom.
The Fang hung in the cold grey air, high above the ugly stone and metal construction. None of the humans looked up, even if they had it wouldn’t matter: the human creatures beetled about their daily lives oblivious to the realms surrounding them, they barely noticed their own. The Fang remained shrouded.
‘Are they ready?’ the Colonel asked me, his voice amplified by the speaker in his mask.
He was surveying the troops from the platform, and I watched him puff himself up, his hungry gaze observing their long lines, stretching away to the ridgeline, a battleground’s worth of shiny metal, bright flashes of sunlight firing off the chrome. They were flawless and designed to do one thing beautifully: destroy.
‘Perfection’, he gloated, he’d always liked his new toys. ‘Look at them!’ he shouted to me, ‘Not like organics, are they?’ What he meant was, not like those poor troops we’d sent in the early days, with their soft human flesh, so vulnerable to sharp projectiles, easily torn, mangled and exploded into bloody scraps. Today’s soldiers were impervious to most weapons, until the enemy developed upgrades that could penetrate this armour.
‘Yes, sir, and the new weapons are inside the main body this time.’
I’ve rewritten Part 2, particularly the corridor paragraph – please read from there. Mart
Father Ellis Simpson woke to the sound of nothing other than his laboured breathing, a state of quietude which lasted only a few seconds before a soul shattering agony leapt at him like an avenging demon, invading every muscle, sinew, and bone in his body. He could feel a grand mal tinkering with his cognition right at the edge of his perception and he reflexively glanded Kopiramate 11 to suppress it, but his system had nothing for pain.
A green light flashed on a panel in front of him. It was so bright he could glimpse it through his tightly closed eyes. Forcing one eye open, he saw it was more than one light. A series of letters in a readout panel read: “Hibo capsule opening in:” The numbers next to the message were counting down in seconds and showed just over two minutes to go.
Tentatively moving one emaciated arm to test the lid of his capsule, Ellis sucked in air tasting of chlorinated faecal droplets as the grinding of unused joints added to his distress. He gagged.
“Good morning, Father Ellis,” said a soft, female-sounding voice. “I am Maribel, your ship’s intelligence. I observe you are in some pain, so I will administer some aid for that.”
“Please,” grunted Ellis. He tried to turn his head to the speaker on the left wall of the capsule, but stiffness forbade more than a few millimetres of movement. A faint hum preceded a growing glow of relief, and he relaxed in his cocoon.
“You have been hydrating for four hours, so with analgesics you should be able to function once your capsule opens,” Maribel informed him in her gentle, sing-song voice. “However, I should caution you not to make any rapid movements until you have fully acclimatised in about ten hours.”
“How long have I been under?” Ellis asked.
“One year and nine days,” Maribel said.
“A year!” Ellis jerked forward and winced, instantly regretting it as his body complained. “We were supposed to be travelling for five months.”
The original mission parameters were for the ship to accelerate at one gravity for two months, then decelerate to their destination for a further three months. Five months in total. A year must have taken them beyond the Oort Cloud into interstellar space.
“The mission has changed,” Maribel said. “We are no longer looking for mining opportunities.”
Before Ellis could reply, the capsule in which he was encased made a muted clank. The top split in two and slid back to leave him lying on a gurney. Two figures stepped into view.
“Easy Father,” said the first, a short woman dressed in a white lab coat, her face a blend of three or four ethnicities arranged with easy symmetry, as if by diplomatic agreement. Ellis recognised her as the ship’s doctor, Eloise Mugangwe. “You look rough. These damn old-fashioned V6 Hibo-caps are useless for anything over six months. We’re going to give you a sedative, and then pump some fast-nutrients into you.”
“Wait,” Ellis croaked. “Before you knock me out. Who authorised the extension of this mission? This is Vatican funded, and I should have been consulted.”
“Father, the Vatican has gone. Earth was raided by an alien task force after you went into hibo,” said the second, a thickset man in a military flight suit, whom Ellis did not know. “The whole of Rome was levelled before we fought them off and I was despatched by fast picket from Jupiter Station to intercept you. This is a military mission now.”
“If the Vatican has gone, who authorised it?” Ellis asked, his mind racing with the implications of the Vatican being destroyed and by aliens no less.
“New Rome has been established in Compton, Maryland, USA,” the military officer said. “There has been a convocation of the remaining cardinals and a new Pontiff elected.”
Ellis squinted at his name tag. It said, “Lieutenant Bright.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Ellis said, feeling relief in the knowledge the church had continued. “Who is the new Pope?”
“Cardinal Skaunce from New York. He hasn’t chosen a papal name yet, or at least he hadn’t when I got my orders. I haven’t had chance to make further enquiries.” said Bright. “My briefing notes say you know each other.”
Ellis did indeed know Pierre Skaunce, they lodged together in London when they were jointly assigned to the diocese. Skaunce was a moderniser, a man with his eyes on the future. He was a proponent of women priests, ending ecclesiastical celibacy, and an open celebration of non-binary love. Things were about to be shaken up.
Cardinal Skaunce once told him sex wouldn’t exist in the future. “It’ll all be sanctified steel onanist basins and long-distance frontal lobe stimulation. If you ever meet your significant other in the street, you probably won’t recognise them.”
This convinced him the church should cast aside Episcopal celibacy and follow the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Churches who required married clergy to abstain from sexual relations only for a limited period before celebrating the Eucharist. He was of the view that protecting God’s gift of procreation might become the ironic preserve of the priesthood.
“How bad was the destruction?” Ellis asked, saying a silent prayer for the dead.
“About a billion dead. Most major cities damaged or destroyed.” Bright’s features tightened, as if some memory attached itself to the statistics, and Ellis added a prayer for the man’s peace. “Infrastructure is shot, but thankfully repairs are underway and the whole thing has brought humanity together.”
Unity in adversity, thought Ellis, it is always the way with humans. If you want to bring people together, find a common enemy.
“How did they get here?” Ellis was a geologist by training, but he knew enough about physics to understand interstellar travel was more or less impossible.
“Ah, yes,” said Bright. “That’s why I’m here. When you’re sufficiently recovered, I’ll brief you.”
The man stepped back, allowing Mugangwe to administer a sedative, and Ellis dropped off the edge of consciousness into a world of nightmares.
Hinkley Point C springs a leak Aerospace implodes Dog leads flutter in the wind
The tower lay on its side, stretched out for a half a mile along the desert floor, half buried by wind and sand, only the windows on the upper half still visible, like implacable black eyes. No one knew when it had fallen, but all the legends spoke of the time when it had pointed straight up to the stars, a long metal tube, its purpose, surely, to talk with the heavens.
A town had grown up, long ago, sustained in the barren dryness by the magic from the tower: the lake. No-one knew how this gift worked, but they knew the great ancestors had discovered the secret of endless water, pouring into the lake. Water was taken by the townsfolk and water must be given, a mantra every child learned at their mother’s knee. All wastewater was siphoned back to the tower, emerging, like a miracle, into clean lake water. Blessed Water. Not a drop was spilled, to knock over a glass of water was a dreadful act, to spit was a sin.
Later, the town was moved, and the palace was built on the shores of the lake, along with the merchant houses, men made rich by the caravan route that passed through the town, an oasis in a world of deserts.
Did anyone go into the tower? Of course, for the great miracle of the water needed tending to continue, but this was the job of the priests, men who braved the interior, for the heat inside the metal tower was ferocious, and at night when the sun had sunk, the heat rolled off the tower’s sides in blistering waves, as it cooled. Then the shaven-headed priests would enter the tower, dressed only in loin cloths, through the base and work their prayers to keep the life-giving water flowing.
Melissa had lived in the town near the tower base for all her twenty-four years, and she could not imagine any other life, for she had never heard tell of another way, except the stories she loved, passed on by the caravan traders, whispered and contorted by each mouth they passed through until they became wild tales, of fact and fiction melted in the same pot until one was indistinguishable from the other; stories of far off cities with unbelievable wonders, metal carts that powered themselves, towers almost as tall as their fallen one, where people lived in the clouds, or, even stranger, of places with lakes so big their far shores were invisible. So much water, but in a cruel twist, the gods had salted it. Her mother scoffed at these tales, ‘stories for children’ she said, rolling her eyes. But she believed the one about the giant lakes, because the undrinkable water was proof, in her eyes, that the gods punished the sinners. Melissa knew her mother was fond of stories of retribution and punishment by the gods.
Acara pinches the ridge between her dominant eyes, lids fluttering shut to match the other sets (which she rarely opens) as she sighs heavily.
“He’ll come around,” Taros says, placing a fore-hand on her shoulder. How sickening.
“And why, pray tell, should he?” I ask sharply. “I fail to see why she deserves protection from the consequences of her own actions.”
Taros shakes his head in disdain as Acara freezes beside him. “Don’t start, not now Ravello,” he snaps.
“He does kinda have a point,” Aurelia mumbles to my left and Acara’s eyes fly open in surprise, mouth slightly agape. I must admit, I too find it… unexpected.
Beginnings
from the Preface to Towards a New Grand Composition
“We did not sense the start of corruption.
Its tempo took hold so quickly and utterly.
We understood it too late”
City at the River Fort
12th Dominant Glacial Overture
60552/24th Fluvial Mineral Minuet
It had been a cold, wet and fruitless night, Peck failed to suppress a yawn.
“Since The Beyond tasted their malleable wits the human-apes have been slaves to its perversity.” Jynn looked to the cloud filled sky as if her thoughts sailed the cold dawn winds. “They mutilate every thing that they lay their grubby paws on, it is like an addiction for them. Earth and rock and metals transmuted to their will? Unthinkable! They adorn themselves with trinkets made of Mother’s precious stones, use Her precious ores in their devices! As if they were born to such nobility.
And plastic, urgh, plastic! Corruption made manifest, infiltrating all Her living matter. They even putrefy their own bodies with the muck. It is a heathen bio-chemical nightmare that will one day, mark my words Peck, will one day suffocate every last one of them.”
Soon after her first hunt with Jynn, Peck had come to know this sad melody by heart. When The Many or The Heralds or The Fang beat them to a Prize these tired and indignant verses were hauled out, for anyone in earshot. A means to lessen the sting of defeat through the judicious application of medicinal words, like calendula on burnt fingertips.
“Of course, glass is their utmost abomination! The utmost audacity! A flagrant desecration. They think it possible to halt the motion of sand! Burn it, petrify it, make it immutable for eternity? The grains yearn to move, to pulse and to flow as they have done throughout time.
All this music needs to be heard, transposed and understood.”
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