After Moses: Wormwood

by Michael F Kane

  The fighting in the basin was momentarily forgotten.

  GEBRE’ELWA SET HER scopes on Kyoto and zoomed in as far as they could, expecting to see ruin and destruction. And then her jaw dropped open. “The factory stands!” she shouted. Perhaps the sacrifices already made would not be in vain. Her bridge crew turned to stare at her.

  “How’s that possible?” Tamru asked. “We all saw the weapon fire.”

  Matthew Cole’s voice rang across the bridge. “I’ll have to apologize for the deception, but I was sworn to secrecy. I met Pope Willems a couple of months ago, and he agreed that one of the Vatican’s treasures would be better put to use guarding the Kyoto factory. Svallin’s Mantle, one of Moses’ miracles, has been safely hidden there for weeks.” Her crew began to whisper frantically to each other. “Unfortunately, I don’t think it will stop another shot like that.”

  “Then there’s still time,” ‘Elwa whispered.

  “We have a short window,” Captain Dominguez said. “A thumper array that large is going to need a massive bank of capacitors. It’s going to take a few minutes to cycle and fire again.”

  “Which means we have one last chance,” Matthew said. “And this time, we can’t miss.”

  The Arizona politician cleared his throat. “So if anyone has any ideas on how to make that happen, now is the time.”

  ‘Elwa looked around the bridge of her ship. At the faces of her beloved crew. This was who she was fighting for. And for her family. She quietly called up emergency protocols on her display and authorized an abandon ship order. Red lights began to flash and sirens wailed through the Queen of Sheba. Her bridge crew looked at her with questioning eyes.

  She cleared her throat. “I know how we can deliver the payload.”

  ALEXANDER LOGAN COULDN’T understand what he was looking at. The factory stood, untouched and unharmed. It was impossible. After everything he’d worked for. “Fire again!” he shouted.

  “It will take at least ten minutes for the capacitors to recharge, sir.”

  “Then set it to automatically fire as soon as they’re ready.”

  “Yes, sir. It’s... It’s done. The weapon will fire as soon as it’s cycled.”

  Logan wheeled on the two women. “What do you know about this? How did Cole do this?”

  Ms. Naude shook her head. “I’m as surprised as you are.” The other woman, the quiet one, just shrugged.

  This was a disruption but correctable. In ten minutes, they would fire again, and this time the Kyoto factory would fall.

  His comm crackled to life. “Sir! We’re being overrun in the corridor!”

  He could hear gunfire over the background noise of the command center.

  He stared at the comm as a snaking tendril of fear began to creep into his mind. They had lost the one the women had called Whitaker, though that wasn’t his name. But given the extent of his injuries over the last week, there was no way he could cause that much trouble. This was something else. “What is going on?” he shouted at the comm.

  But there was no answer.

  And then he knew.

  The only one that could get past the security was Stein. Stein, who had irons in all the fires, in all the departments of the Arizonan government. Who’d bribed and threatened key contractors in the Department of Defense to create backdoor keys for the Phobos Platform. The first, he had handed over to Logan months ago, the very one they had used to shut down all internal security and gain full access to the central system. The other could be broadcast to bypass external security.

  Stein had claimed he was having trouble acquiring that second key. When their relationship soured, Logan had found a different way onto the Phobos Platform. Clearly, the agent had been lying. And now, because they’d already used the first key, they couldn’t even lock the doors and seal him out of the control room.

  “Damon Stein is here,” he announced, a sudden feeling of calm washing over him. Perhaps because the end was already written on the wall in meter deep letters. “Guard the door.” He walked over to the women and gestured for them to stand. “I’m afraid I owe you both an apology. I promised that you would live, and I can no longer guarantee that.” He stepped behind them and unlocked their cuffs. “If you would take my recommendation, you will go find a corner to play dead in.”

  Ms. Naude gave him a withering glare. “Did you set loose an animal you couldn’t control?”

  “That is an appropriate metaphor, yes.”

  He drew his pistol and crossed to the furthest side of the room from the door. To his relief, the women did as he suggested and laid face down by the wall nearest the entrance. Probably so they could try to escape. The odds of anyone in the room making it off of Phobos alive were nearing zero at this point anyway. Let them make a valiant attempt.

  The door opened.

  Chapter 16: Mere Humanity

  We live in a universe of consequence. This is among the hardest of truths for us to accept, for it demands that we take account for our actions. Cause and effect we can accept, and in fact, we learn at a very young age. When we cried as babes, our mothers fed us. But we do not learn consequence, for consequence involves a moral reckoning. We did not once consider that our mothers could have done with ten more minutes of rest. We only knew of ourselves.

  That is the moral horizon that we must come to terms with. Our story is not the only one being written. There are others who must bear our actions too. And there is a chance they will not be pleased.

  That is consequence.

  The greatest tragedy of all is that virtue can lead to consequence as surely as vice. We’re not promised a fair trial, and even the noblest deed may be rewarded with violence.

  Col. Margaret Lanney

  Arizona, Career Military Officer

  Died 61 AM

  THE DOOR OPENED AND a canister rolled in, belching out thick white smoke.

  “Hold your fire,” Logan shouted at his men. “Don’t give away your position until you have a clean shot.” The only sound was the soft hiss of the smoke. His heart hammered in his ears as he waited for Stein to make his move. He’d have to come through the narrow doorway, and Logan’s men would catch him in a crossfire.

  Then an object bounced into the room. Time crawled to a stop as Logan realized what it was.

  A grenade.

  “Hit the deck!” someone yelled a fraction of a second before a deafening explosion shattered the air around them. The concussive force hit Logan like a battering ram, blowing him off his feet. He slammed into the deck and struggled to find the breath that had been forced from his lungs. His side and chest burned with fire.

  Forcing his sluggish limbs to work, he propped himself up and tried to focus his eyes. He could barely hear the gunfire over the ring in his ears. Three men advanced through the fog. At least some of his men must have made it to cover because one of the intruders was cut down by gunfire. Logan slipped and fell face-first to the deck, grinding his teeth at the pain in his side.

  Damn Stein. That he would catch up to him here in the hour of triumph. If only Cole had killed him months ago when he had first set him on Stein’s trail. But he’d played it too subtle. A beer with the mechanic in Warszawa was supposed to have started the ball rolling. He’d thought that leading Cole straight to Arizona’s corruption would put Stein on the run, but the timing had been wrong. The kid who actually took the job was too slow in finding the culprits. Then Cole had been shot a few days later. Damn them all. Everything had been so close to perfect. But now it was all coming apart.

  His world had been falling apart for years. Ever since Alisa was murdered.

  The gunfire went quiet.

  One side or the other had won. Logan rolled over and propped his back against the workstation, eyes closed. He was too afraid to open them. He clutched at his side, where sticky blood oozed from a deep wound. It wasn’t the only one, either.

  “Look who I’ve found.”

  The voice he’d hoped to never hear again.

 
; “Pitting Cole against me was clever. It was almost enough to save your sorry life. But you both underestimated me. Time and again. And now the payment comes due.”

  Logan opened his eyes, knowing that it was better to face his death than turn from it like a coward. Stein looked worse than he’d ever seen him, clothes torn and dirty. Logan grinned and spit blood at Stein. Around the room, his men were dead, but since Stein was also by himself, it had been close. It had come down to the nearest point of balance and tipped in the wrong direction, and now it was just the two of them. Only Logan wasn’t the one with the gun. Stein pointed it at his head, and a cruel smile spread across his face.

  “Goodbye Logan. And good riddance.”

  Logan’s courage failed, there at the bitter end when all his kingdoms crumbled, and he closed his eyes as a gunshot pierced the air.

  GEBRE’ELWA CLASPED her hands behind her back. “That evacuation order isn’t a suggestion,” she told her bridge crew. “Move.” Most of them began to obey and ran toward the Queen’s escape shuttles.

  Her first officer, a man half her age named Abraham, stood his ground. “Ma’am, if you think I’m about to let you do something foolish, then you have sorely misjudged my character.”

  “If you think I’m going to throw my life away when there are alternatives, then you’re the one that’s not thinking clearly.”

  “I’m not leaving without you.”

  She eyed him. “Very well.” She reopened the comm to Lantern Fleet. “As I was saying, I know how we can slip a payload past the satellites. They most likely track targets by infrared, possibly prioritizing smaller targets in the hopes of shooting down incoming torpedoes. To get past them, we simply disguise our torpedoes with a bigger source of heat.”

  “A ship,” Matthew said. “We sacrifice a ship and program the torpedoes to remain close enough that it can’t distinguish between the two.”

  “We’ll use the Qolxad,” Tamru said without delay. “You can even fly it from the Queen with sequence rigging. No one has to go down with the ship.”

  “The Qolxad will never reach Phobos,” ‘Elwa said. “Whatever ship we use will have to fly straight and true to allow the torpedoes to stay close enough. And the Qolxad will be torn to pieces on that kind of flight path.”

  The comms were silent for a moment. “Mom,” Tamru finally said. “You can’t... The Queen is...”

  “She has the tonnage to take a beating. She’ll hold together, and she’ll make it to Phobos.” ‘Elwa smiled grimly. “And she’ll hit hard enough to make up for the lost nuke.” More stunned silence from the comms. “I’ve already issued the evacuation order. Tamru, see to the sequence rigging. You’ll be flying the Queen from the Qolxad. As soon as we’re clear, set up the attack.”

  She turned her comm off. Her decision was final, and there would be no better plans with the resources and time they had. She took a last look around the bridge of her beloved Queen and then turned away, suddenly feeling very tired. Perhaps this was how she was supposed to feel at her age. Maybe this was an indication that at long last, it was time to retire.

  “Ma’am?” Her first officer was at her side, offering her an arm.

  “Abraham,” she said, grateful he had waited on her. “Take me to my shuttle.”

  WHITAKER WATCHED ON the cameras as Stein passed his door and proceeded to the control room.

  “Only two men? My my, you must have fallen on hard times.”

  As soon as he dared, he slid out into the hall, and, with a quick glance in either direction, set off toward the dormitories. If he remembered, it should only be about fifty meters down the corridor on the left. He wove through the barricades, half expecting to come face to face with a hostile at every turn, but the hall was now eerily empty. Nearly everyone on the platform, on all sides, was already dead.

  He reached the tunnel that led to the dorms and saw three fresh bodies at its entrance. Stein had cut down the Abrogationists guarding the survivors as well. Whitaker ran up to the door and pounded on it. “I’m friendly! You have to open up now.” It wasn’t until the words came out of his mouth that he realized how ridiculous they sounded. They had no reason to believe a thing he said.

  “Okay. Let me try again. The real Matthew Cole is about to unleash a nuclear strike on Phobos and blow it to pieces because Abrogationists have seized control of it and are firing on Kyoto. If you want to live, you open this door.” He heard a distant explosion. “Also, there’s a rogue agent from Arizona making a mess of things. Don’t ask. It’s complicated.”

  No answer. He groaned as he tried to remember why he was wasting time on these people. Even with their help they probably didn’t stand a chance at retaking the station. If they were hiding, they were most likely just scared technicians. It meant that Ms. Naude and Mrs. Cole were as good as dead.

  Matthew Cole was not going to be happy about this turn of events, but sometimes life was unfair like that.

  “I’m heading to the hangar,” he said. “I’m tired and injured. Last ride out leaves as soon as the engines are hot.”

  As he turned away, he heard the door slide open behind him.

  YVONNE CURLED IN ON herself when the grenade exploded. She was supposed to be playing dead, and the corpse she was pretending to be shouldn’t move, but it was instinct when she felt hot fragments pepper her skin. Gunfire erupted, and she squeezed her eyes shut against the terror of it all.

  This was the end of her story, here on a God-forsaken moon filled with madmen. It was a long way from growing up on Amalthea, a long way from falling in love with Tomas in a quiet corner of the library at the University of Ganymede. The life she’d lived had turned out to be a bigger adventure than she’d planned. After decades as a doctor, she’d found a new family, become a pilot, and fought the good fight. But in the end, that fight had caught up with her.

  The gunfire came to an abrupt end, and she opened her eyes and tried to make sense of the disaster around her. Smoke lingered in the room, and broken tactical displays sprayed showers of sparks. In all the wreckage and ruin, only one man was left standing.

  Damon Stein with his gun pointed at Logan.

  “Goodbye Logan,” Stein said. “And good riddance.”

  And then a single gunshot tore through the room, and Stein stumbled forward, shot through the chest. The gun fell from his hand as he half turned, confusion on his face. For the last time, his lips curled into a smile. “And they say there’s no justice in the universe.” Then he slumped to the ground and was still.

  Yvonne turned her head to see Elizabeth clutching a weapon scrounged from one of the fallen. She was bruised and battered but stood steady. She threw the gun away and limped to Yvonne.

  “Are you alright?”

  “I’ve been better,” Yvonne said, “But I’ll live.” She sat up and checked herself for injuries. She had multiple small wounds from grenade fragmentation but lying flat on the ground had probably saved them from the worst of that. She took Elizabeth’s hand and stumbled to her feet, then winced and picked a piece of metal out of her arm. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Can we stop the weapon from firing?”

  Yvonne gestured at the sparking monitors. “There’s no way anything in this room is functioning again. What’s done is done.” She hobbled over to where Logan was still leaning against a workstation. “Give me your comm.” He coughed twice and pulled it from his belt, offering it to her without complaint. He’d had a much worse time from the grenades and was bleeding from several severe injuries. She took the comm but tossed it aside with a sigh when she saw it was no better off than its owner.

  “This is our chance,” Elizabeth said. “Maybe the route to the hangar is clear.”

  Yvonne looked at the other bodies, knowing someone would have a functioning comm, but it would take precious time to scavenge. “Grab a weapon and head that way. Carefully. I’ll be just behind you.”

  Elizabeth raised an eyebrow in question.

  “There’s another s
urvivor,” Yvonne said.

  “I see.” Elizabeth stooped to pick up the rifle she’d used to kill Stein and limped toward the corridor.

  “I’m assuming this is a joke,” Logan coughed. “Surely you’re only going to finish me off. Frankly, the universe would thank you.”

  Blood stained his satin vest. He’d been hit hard. She wasn’t sure she could even save him with the medical supplies she kept on the Sparrow. He was a pitiful sight. “Once upon a time,” she said. “I hated someone and almost lost my soul.” She knelt by him.

  “I assure you mine is long gone, and I’m not coming with you.” He laughed bitterly. “Why would I? There’s nothing for me out there. This was the last plan. The final scheme. Whitaker has spent the last year dismantling everything I’ve worked for. Your crew ruined my finances when you took that ship out over Ganymede. I have no more men. Maybe someone else takes up the Abrogationist cause someday. But until then, we’re done. I’ll wait here till the end and hope Phobos fires one last time.”

  She shook her head. “It’s better to live than die,” she said softly.

  “Not when all you have to look forward to is a firing squad.”

  If he was going to be stubborn, then there was nothing she could do about it. She and Elizabeth together couldn’t have hoped to carry him all the way to the hangar, not after the week they’d had. He was going to die here, alone and a fool. But still, there was one thing she still needed to know.

  “Tell me her name.”

  He leaned his head back, but his eyes still tracked her. “Excuse me?”

  “Your fiancé. What was her name?”

  “What does it matter at this point.”

  “It matters more than anything else right now. This way, the last person that spoke to you will remember that your story was a tragedy.”