The Man Who Broke the Moon

by Michael James Ploof

  “Is that...” Killian Weber licked his lips, staring reverently at the thousands of red laser beams. “Is that a Nano-hull?”

  “Indeed,” said the admiral. “But it is only one of many layers. Pal…”

  Pal nodded, and the thousands of small nanobots shifted back, and others emerged from behind them. They all lit up with blue light, and together, created an energy shield around the craft.

  “Redemption can withstand multiple nuclear blasts,” said the admiral.

  Again, the balls shifted, and Redemption transformed into an opaque arrow, before finally shimmering into a mirage like heat waves upon a Texas highway.

  “Invisibility?” said Kaito, enamored, and still pressing his face to the glass.

  “Not only to the eye,” said Pal 2000, “but to scanners as well.”

  “You sure seem to be preparing for battle,” Killian Webber noted.

  “We are preparing for every possibility,” said the admiral.

  “Sir,” said Jason. “How exactly does the propulsion system work? How long will the trip take?”

  “It will be instantaneous.”

  Everyone shared a glance.

  “Instantaneous?” said Kaito. “But, that’s impossible.”

  “I assure you that it is not.”

  “You’ve tested this technology?” Jason asked.

  “Not with people aboard,” said the admiral.

  “How do you know we can even survive?”

  “We don’t, but the monkeys came back in one piece, and I imagine you will too. Of course, we only sent them a few miles, but the experiment was a success.”

  “Great, another suicide mission,” said Mae.

  “Who cares?” said Kaito, shaking with excitement. “We’re going to go down in history as the first humans to achieve interstellar travel. This is huge!”

  “Or we’ll go down as the first humans to die trying,” said Killian.

  “We’ve already gone down in history,” said Jason. “I’m doing this for me.”

  Charlie turned to him with concern in her eyes. “You’re going along with this?”

  He was surprised, for she had always talked about traveling to the stars.

  “I know this will be a tough decision for some of you,” said the admiral. “That is why I am giving you twenty-four hours to think it over.”

  “Who needs twenty-four hours?” said Kaito. “I’m in!”

  “I am in as well,” said Pal 2000.

  When Jason offered him a disdainful scowl, the robot gave him a thumbs-up.

  “I’m with the captain,” said Erik.

  “Thanks, Andal,” said Jason. “But we’re not at war. You need to think of your wife, your kids. I don’t want any of you going on this mission unless you are absolutely dedicated. Not to me, but to the mission. We could die before we even reach the alien planet, and you all need to consider that fact carefully.”

  “I’m still in,” said Pal 2000.

  “Hey, Pal, do you know what STFU stands for?”

  “No, sir. Does it mean Start the Fun Up?”

  Jason shook his head and looked at the admiral. “Really? You thought bad jokes would make me like him more?”

  The admiral shrugged. “I thought you liked bad jokes. You tell so many of them.”

  “Oh shit, Cap, you got burned,” said Kaito.

  “Thanks, Kaito,” said Jason. He turned from the window. “I’ve seen enough. Now where the hell do you get a drink around here?”

  Chapter 8

  A Coin Flip

  The admiral had a bottle of eighteen-year-old Makers Whiskey in his office, so naturally, Jason joined him for a drink. He sat across from the older man, staring at the picture of the admiral’s deceased son, Thomas.

  Jason felt the old guilt swell, and he squeezed his eyes against the memories of what had happened.

  “You all right?” the admiral asked.

  “Yeah, Mark. I’m all right. Just thinking about the mission. It is all pretty surreal right now.”

  The admiral raised his glass to that, and the two men drank.

  “I wish I were going with you, but I traded the helm for a desk a long time ago.” When he said it, the admiral glanced at the picture of Thomas.

  They had never spoken about what had happened in Korea, and Jason had always wondered why. Of course, the admiral, then a general, had heard the dissertation, but shouldn’t he have asked Jason personally?

  As if reading Jason’s mind, the admiral got up with a faint groan and moved to the bookcase to the right of his desk and reached for Thomas’s picture. Jason looked through the window at the other side of the horseshoe-shaped space station, not wanting to meet the man’s eyes.

  “I know you carry a lot of guilt,” said the admiral.

  Jason wracked his mind for a response. He had imagined this conversation a thousand times, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember what his best defense might have been. No, he couldn’t try to defend himself, he had to apologize—he should have done so a long time ago.

  “Admiral…”

  “You did what you had to do,” said the admiral, putting the picture back. “You had to take out Luna 1. You had no other choice.”

  “Sir?” said Jason. He was thrown by the change of topic, or rather, the change of what he thought had been the topic.

  “You did what you had to do. You saved us all.”

  “Thank you, sir, but that does not change the fact that my crew and I killed millions.”

  “If you had not acted, many times more Terrans would have died. I know the public has not been kind to you, and it is a shame. You and your crew are heroes, Jake. You deserve this mission. You deserve to be the first.”

  “Sir, how does the alien technology work?”

  The admiral poured them both more whiskey over their melting ice and sat back down. “I’ve seen it close up,” he said, eyes wide and distant as he stared at the amber liquid. “It’s like ...it’s like a living ember. Its glow never stops. It seems like such a small thing, but its power is that of a dying star. We don’t know how it works. All we know is that it does work.”

  Jason realized he was white-knuckling the armrests. He let out a pent-up breath.

  “This ...ember,” he said quietly. “It was found in the crashed ship?”

  “Part of it was. We had to put it back together ...give it a host.”

  “A host, sir?”

  The admiral blinked, looking momentarily confused. He looked at Jason. Were his eyes teary? It was hard to tell. The admiral had always had sad, hound dog eyes that were often bloodshot.

  No, not always. It hadn’t been so when Thomas was alive...

  The death of his son should have broken the man. Instead, it had catapulted him to the top of the ranks. Rumors were that the admiral never slept, and along with his wife, a famous scientist, worked one hundred hours a week, taking off only Sunday morning.

  “Not a host. Pardon me, but I think I have had too much whiskey. The ember needed a ship, and that ship you have seen. It took us years to figure out how to merge the tech, and there was a breakthrough a few years back that opened it all wide before us. Now, we need only to type in the coordinates into the ship’s computer, and Redemption will bring us anywhere, instantly, as fast as thought.”

  “That’s incredible, sir.”

  The admiral nodded and turned in his swivel chair to stare out at the stars beyond. “Can you imagine, Jake? With this technology, we can get food to the starving. Warmth to the cold. Medicine to the sick. This is going to change the world.”

  Jason imagined it; instantaneous travel, teleportation. It would change the world ...forever.

  “Sir, do you think the aliens are hostile? What do we really know about them?”

  “The probe had weapons, and so we cannot assume they are peaceful. It seems they’ve been watching us for a long time, yet, they haven’t attacked.”

  “Maybe we don’t have anything they need,” said Jason.
<
br />   “Perhaps. Or they are waiting until we are weak.”

  “Couldn’t they have just attacked a hundred years ago? Or two hundred years ago? If their intentions are conquest, why wait until we are militarily capable?”

  “Smarter people than you and me have been debating the same things for years,” said the admiral. “And since we have no definite answer, we will prepare accordingly. You have two directives, Captain. In the case the aliens are peaceful, you will try to establish a dialogue.”

  “And if they’re violent?”

  “Then you will snuff out the threat immediately.”

  “Snuff out? You think that because I nuked Luna 1, I have no problem wiping out an entire alien civilization?”

  “We’re not monsters, Jake. And we don’t think you are either. But if they attack, then you are to release a nuclear EMP into their sun.”

  “Disable them,” said Jason.

  “Exactly. No one dies, and the threat is neutralized. We cannot get into a long, drawn-out war with an alien race.”

  “What if they intercept the nuke before it reaches their sun?”

  “They won’t.” He didn’t say any more about it and looked down at his hands while Jason searched his eyes.

  “What are the odds they’re hostile, Mark? And how do we know an EMP would affect their technology?”

  “It’s a coin flip,” said the admiral. “Fifty-fifty.” He ignored Jason’s second question.

  “And if the coin lands on its edge? What then, sir?”

  The admiral studied Jason with a hint of irony. “Then you improvise.”

  Chapter 9

  All the Little Lights

  Jason opened the door, which creaked open with a low moan. The bed was flanked by two large bay windows, which were open curtains swaying languidly. Melissa was on the bed. She was naked, one arm stretched out to the edge. Wine had spilled down the side, and a broken glass lay shattered on the floor.

  “Melissa?”

  There was no answer, only silence, stillness.

  He took a step closer, stopping, not wanting to know.

  Another step.

  He looked closer, realizing with dread that it was not wine that had spilled down the side of the bed, but blood.

  Jason turned, his eyes blurred by tears, and the raging fire of anguish devouring his heart.

  On the wall behind him, written in blood, were Melissa’s last words.

  YOU KILLED HER.

  Jason screamed and shot up in bed. The words upon the wall lingered in his mind. Burned into his sight, they now stretched across the curved wall of his quarters.

  YOU KILLED HER.

  The letters bled, and the blood ran like candle wax down the wall, slow and thick.

  Melissa hadn’t been trying to frame Jason for her own murder, she had been accusing him of killing Ember. He had told the military head shrink about the recurring dream, and the doctor had suggested the message was most likely a manifestation of Jason’s guilt.

  The real message Melissa had written in blood read: SHE’S DEAD. And that was true. Ember had been dead for two years before Melissa took her own life.

  It had been a rough two years. With Jason away fighting the Terra-Luna War, Melissa had fallen into severe depression bordering on delirium. Melissa insisted that Ember was still alive, that she had visited her in her sleep. Melissa was admitted to a military psych hospital, and Jason returned to fighting the war.

  “I abandoned her,” he said aloud. He needed to hear the words, needed to accept his guilt.

  He needed to hate himself.

  If he couldn’t blame himself, then who could he blame? Not the doctors. Not the war. They hadn’t forced her to suicide. He had.

  Jason fumbled in his pants pocket for the bottle he had taken from the admiral’s office, twisted off the top, and gulped down the stinging whiskey.

  YOU KILLED HER!

  Jason paced his quarters, trying to calm his breathing, to quiet his mind. He recited the lyrics to “Margaritaville”, but they did nothing to ease his budding panic, his blooming rage. The lunar explosion flashed in his mind...

  He saw the smoldering deck of his battleship as they approached Luna 1, he saw the Terran fleet moving to intercept the asteroid as the moon beam shooting from the top of the base pulled it into a collision course with Earth.

  “Awaiting orders...” came the voice of Killian.

  The crew held their breath as they made their final approach, but command wasn’t answering.

  “Sir?”

  “Hail them again.”

  “Mission control, payload is ready for delivery. What is your command?”

  Jason sighed as the static of the radio played out in the background. He stared ahead at the target, at the moon. Colony Luna. The first of the space colonies to branch from Earth, and the largest. With a population of two million, destroying the colony would be nothing short of genocide. He had killed before. He held little guilt. He was prepared for that. He knew it was him or them. This was different. Women, children, hell, even the dogs and cats on that moon would be killed. Every living thing there would be incinerated. All he had to do was speak a word.

  He looked out the window of his quarters, unable to escape the memory. Outside was mostly dead space, but there was the moon. He could still see the moment as if overlaid. The asteroid being pulled into Earth had been the only thing to spur him to action that day. With radio silence and a projectile the size of Africa headed for the planet, Jason had made the hardest choice of his life.

  “Captain, we only have ten seconds!” came the voice of Killian to his left.

  Ten…

  Jason jerked his gaze away from the moon and looked his military officer in the eye. The two shared a look, and Killian nodded once.

  “What is your command?”

  Nine…

  Jason ground his teeth and thought as hard as he could.

  Eight…

  There had to be a better way.

  Seven…

  “Captain, do we stand down?” the voice of Erik Andal to his right, the XO.

  Six… He could hear Kaito praying to himself in the doorway. Even the engineering crew was watching.

  Five…

  The asteroid was being pulled toward Earth. Jason thought of Ember then. All the pain her death had brought him, all the anguish it had brought his wife.

  Four….

  Could he kill millions?

  Three

  He looked at the moon, thinking of Ember, and stood up.

  Two…

  They were all sweating. The room was still. Even the air was apprehensive to move. Jason walked to the weapons panel and pushed the button.

  One…

  “Payload delivered.”

  He saw tears in his reflection before he felt them. He could almost still see the explosion. He remembered how painful it had been to watch. Everyone else looked away, but Jason had fought through the pain. He had to witness the destruction. He thought of every man he had killed and imagined this time doing it to millions of women and children. He imagined what it would be like to immolate them all one by one. That’s what he had done with the press of that button. But if he hadn’t?

  “Captain,” came the voice of Pal 2000 over the intercom. “The next briefing begins in thirty minutes.”

  Jason couldn’t speak, choked up as he was.

  “Captain?”

  “Got it, Pal,” Jason managed to utter.

  “Sir, is something wrong?”

  “Piss off, Pal.”

  “As you wish, sir.”

  Jason sat back in his bed, rubbing his eyes, trying to erase the bloody words on the walls of his imagination. He wanted to go back to sleep and never wake up. He wanted the blissful nothingness to surround him.

  He wanted to forget.

  The soldier in him pulled him out of bed and he dropped to the floor and began pumping out push-ups. He didn’t stop for five minutes, until his arms were shaking, and he
could do no more. With an explosion of breath, he hit the floor, face pressed against cool metal. He lay there, panting, trying to chase away the ghosts of his dreams.

  No matter where you go, there you are. Came the adage in his mind.

  “If you don’t care where you are, then you’re never lost,” he said aloud.

  “Sir, did you say my name?” came the annoying voice of Pal 2000. But this time it issued from outside his door.

  Jason got to his feet, cracked his knuckles, and tapped the button to open the door. It slid to the left with a smooth whoosh, and there stood Pal 2000, his pixelated face greeting Jason with a smile.

  “Ah, there is the sleepyhead,” said Pal affably.

  Jason kicked him in the chest, denting the metal and sending the 125-pound robot slamming into the opposite wall.

  “Enable martial arts training,” said Jason, bringing up his fists.

  “Sir…”

  Jason leapt and spun, laying a perfect roundhouse kid to Pal’s digital head. The robot staggered to the side.

  “Defend yourself!” Jason screamed. He charged in and tackled Pal at the waist, slamming him to the floor with his extra hundred pounds.

  Pal reacted quickly, taking a hold of Jason’s wrists and crossing them in front of him, before pushing Jason off with an explosion of power.

  Jason staggered back and began bouncing on his toes as Pal 2000 arched his back and bucked his legs, popping up into a crouch like a ninja.

  “That’s more like it,” said Jason.

  He swung at Pal with a quick combination, but the robot easily deflected the strikes, backing defensively. Jason pressed him, moving him toward the wall, but Pal 2000 continued to move to the side, leading Jason in circles and blocking every blow. Jason lunged forward with a big boot meant for Pal’s chest, but the robot caught his foot and yanked him forward, before pushing him back hard. Jason was thrown off balance and landed hard on his ass.

  Pal 2000 rushed forward, bending down. “Are you all right, sir?”

  With a growl, Jason kicked out with both feet, slamming his boots into Pal’s pixelated face. Pal staggered back, his screen blinking, and the features changing from surprise to confusion. “Why are you doing this, sir? Have I done something wrong?”