Sullivan Saga 3: Sullivan's Watch

by Michael K. Rose

  “Things are escalating, Rick, but there’s a chance all this can be brought to an end. For that to happen I need you in the mix; you’re the only one I can trust.”

  “How can I stop it?”

  Allen’s eyes tightened in pain.

  “Frank? What’s going on?”

  “My power is fading, Rick. The other entities are trying to pull me back.”

  “Fight, Frank!”

  “I am.” Allen winced again. “But I have to tell you, when you go to Earth, be sure that Kate….”

  Allen screamed in agony.

  “Frank!” Sullivan yelled. He reached his hand out, but it passed through the fading mist where his friend had just been standing. “Frank, where are you?”

  Kate stepped up behind Sullivan and put her arms around him. “He’s gone.”

  Sullivan closed his eyes and lowered his head. “What was he going to say about you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He said, ‘be sure that Kate….’ Be sure that you what?”

  “Be sure that I’m safe?”

  Sullivan shook his head. “You are safe here, as far as we can tell.”

  “Maybe he wants me to go with you?”

  “No. If I’m going into the middle of a war, I can’t be worrying about you the whole time.” He took a deep breath. “I’ll leave tomorrow. Hopefully, Frank will be able to get back to us before then.”

  Kate nodded. She tugged at his arm and turned him toward her. “It will be fine, Rick. I’ll be fine.”

  “It must have been important. What if the entities are trying to get to you?”

  “I’ll be careful. And Frank will be looking out for me, I’m sure of it.”

  “He can’t look after both of us at the same time.”

  “Maybe he can. Frank is beyond physical limits now. And he’s strong, Rick, stronger that either of us realized.”

  Sullivan broke their embrace and turned back to the spot where Frank had materialized. He could still feel the chill in the air. “Why did it get cold? It didn’t happen every time when Liz showed up, so I thought it was something she did on purpose, something to intimidate us.”

  “Maybe Frank did it for the same reason Liz did: it was a warning. It was to get our attention.”

  Sullivan smiled. “Guess he had one look at us and decided we needed a cold shower, huh?”

  Kate laughed. “I suppose so. And since we do only have one day left….”

  Sullivan turned back to her and put his hands on her hips.

  “When did you fall in love with me?” she asked, helping him remove his shirt.

  “You know, I think I loved you from the moment I first saw you in that cell back on Abilene.”

  “I must have looked horrible.”

  Sullivan laughed. “Yes, you did. If you had been a man, I would have opened the cell door and left you to your own devices. But when I saw you there, looking so small and helpless, I knew I couldn’t leave you. I knew you needed me. And in that moment, you got into my heart.”

  “And now you’re stuck with me.”

  “I’d be nothing without you.” Sullivan smiled and leaned in for a kiss.

  Kate broke the kiss. “Then I was right. You will come back to me, Rick. There’s just no other option.”

  3

  BROTHER PETER KNELT down beside his bed and clasped his hands together. He glanced over the words on the pages in the open book in front of him. He took a deep breath and began quietly reading to himself.

  “After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day. And Job spake, and said, ‘Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, ‘There is a man child conceived.’ Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it. Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it. As for that night, let darkness seize upon it; let it not be joined unto the days of the year, let it not come into the number of the months. Lo, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein.”

  Brother Peter lowered his head and rested his cheek against the cool pages of the book. He felt a tear form at the corner of his eye but wiped it quickly away before it could stain the pages.

  He raised his head and stared at the wall of his cell where it met the ceiling. From somewhere else in the prison he heard a cell door open with a soft click. One of his fellow inmates was most likely going to see a visitor.

  Peter had received only one visitor since he’d been incarcerated. Father Curtis had made the trip from America to Italy. He’d quietly prayed with Peter for a while, then, lifting his head, fixed Peter in the eyes and asked, “Why?”

  Peter sighed. “I know that what I’ve done is a horrible thing, Father. But I cannot explain it. I can’t tell you why I did it, even how I did it. I remember nothing.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “I remember talking with Pope Pius a few moments before he went to the window. The next thing I knew, I was being thrown to the ground and dragged out of the Pope’s study.”

  Father Curtis shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Brother Peter, I’m sure you’ve heard about what’s been going on in the world… you get the news?”

  “Of course.”

  “Your vision—our vision—does not seem to be as unique as we thought it was. All over the world people are seeing things. Not just Christ, but Allah, Krishna, Buddha… people are seeing whichever gods or holy figures they believe in.” Curtis reached across the table to take Brother Peter’s hands but withdrew them after a stern look from the prison guard. “I suppose I should just say it. I no longer believe our vision was truly of Christ. I believe there is some other force at work here.”

  “You mean a malicious force?”

  “Yes.”

  Peter took a deep breath and let it out. “I had considered that myself. I held no animosity toward Pius. He had been nothing but kind to me. I can think of no other reason for me to do that except… I was being influenced.”

  “And if that is the case,” said Curtis, “all these visions, visions too many of the faithful are putting their belief in, must also be the work of Satan.”

  “What do we do?”

  Curtis smiled. “Even though I believe our vision was not genuine, I do believe the Second Coming is upon us. I believe the forces of Hell are striking the first blow by trying to scare and confuse us all.” Curtis raised his hand and wiped his eyes. “So the thing we do, Brother Peter, is pray. We pray and we stay strong.”

  AFTER FATHER CURTIS’S visit, Peter had prayed nearly constantly for several days. But as his time in prison wore on, he began to feel betrayed. He’d been officially denounced by the Cenobian Brotherhood—Father Curtis has sent him a short note apologizing and saying it had not been his wish—and even God seemed absent to him.

  It was then that he had turned to the Book of Job and carefully read it over and over again. The sufferings Job faced were certainly more severe than his own, but Peter could not help but feel that he was being tested. But for what? He had not yet lost his faith. Like Job, would he have to do so and curse God before the nightmare would end?

  As Peter sat in prison, the tendrils of chaos twitched and stretched across the Earth, consuming the faithful and the unfaithful alike. The visions of Christ, of Allah, of Krishna, of Buddha, had reopened old wounds that humanity had thought healed for a hundred years. Worse, the deities of the world were not only making themselves known in visions but also in words. They were encouraging action against infidels. They were speaking as the gods of two thousand years ago, not as the enlightened gods humanity had, with great effort, shaped them into. Religious attendance had soared and so had acts of religious violence.

  At what point, thought Peter, would the individuals committing these acts open their eyes and see who was behind it all? At what point would the real enemy be fingered and destroyed by the righteous?

  Peter lowered his eyes back to the
Bible and flipped to the end of the book, to Revelation. He knew that salvation would never come for some. He knew that some would take up arms and fight alongside Satan. Whatever the reason they believed they were doing it, they would fight against God.

  Peter knew that he should be looking forward to the Second Coming, but he felt only sorrow. It would cause so much misery. So many innocent people would suffer; even if they were ultimately welcomed into Heaven, they would suffer, they would lose loved ones, they would feel the anguish and fear of watching their lives crumble around them.

  Peter didn’t know why it had to be this way. Why did God, all-powerful as he was, choose for an end ruled by pestilence, war, famine and death? Why not simply throw open the gates of Heaven and welcome the return of all his children, imperfect though they might be?

  Peter climbed up on his bed and cradled the Bible in his arms. As strong as he believed his faith to be, there were so many things he did not understand. He knew that he could never know the mind of God, but it all seemed so unnecessary.

  Peter heard footsteps in the corridor and opened his eyes. A pair of guards stopped outside his cell and leered in at him. One of them began rolling a large ball of phlegm around in his throat. Peter pulled his bed sheet over his head. He knew what was coming. Many of the prison guards were Catholic. If being spat upon was the worst they did to him today, Peter would consider himself lucky.

  The guard released his projectile, and Peter felt it land wetly on his exposed arm. He waited for the guards to walk away, laughing, before shaking the phlegm into the sink and washing the residue off.

  “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” Peter said quietly. He immediately regretted comparing himself to Christ and prayed for forgiveness, but even though he tried to deny it, he felt persecuted all the same. He was hardly Job, and he was certainly not Jesus, but Brother Peter was being persecuted for something that, to his mind, had not been his fault. He knew Satan had, in the instant he’d pushed Pius out the window, taken control of his body. And God had allowed it to happen. But was Satan being used by God just as Peter had been used by Satan? Peter knew that it could be for some higher purpose. The death of the Pope could have set in motion events that would bring salvation to an even greater number of people.

  But why did it have to be Peter who did the deed? Because it had to be someone, he thought. If it had not been Judas who had betrayed Jesus, it would have been someone else. If not for that betrayal, Jesus would not have been able to sacrifice himself to wash away the sins of all mankind. And if Pope Pius needed to die, someone had to do it. Someone had to make a sacrifice for the greater glory of God.

  Why me? Well, why not me? Peter tried to console himself with the thought that he had been chosen because of the strength of his faith, because God could count on him. It was little consolation.

  As he lay on his bed, wallowing in fear, confusion and self-pity, Peter said one final prayer for understanding before drifting off to sleep. He did not really believe he would receive the answer he was hoping for, but he was not yet ready to give up. He was not yet at the point of cursing God. Not yet… but he knew he was much closer than he wanted to admit.

  4

  WHEN ADMIRAL LONG walked into the conference room aboard the Vigilant, he glanced at the assembled crewmen. There were several who were not from his senior staff, but he knew who they were.

  He nodded at the man nearest to him. “Your name?”

  “Ensign Crane, sir.”

  “I received your report, Ensign. I read through it, but if you don’t mind, I want to hear everything again in your own words. Something new might occur to you in the retelling. What happened on Mars?”

  Ensign Crane nodded. “Well, sir, I can only speak for what I saw, but from what I’ve been able to gather, it was the same for all the other rescue teams.”

  Long glanced down at the tablet in front of him. “These… creatures?”

  “Yes, sir.” Ensign Crane blinked rapidly several times and looked around the table.

  Long turned to the officer on his other side. “Bring the footage up on the main screen.”

  A 3-D image projected itself upward from the center of the table. Long watched the shaky camera footage from one of the rescue teams. “Is this from your team, Ensign Crane?”

  “No, I don’t believe so, sir.”

  “But this is the best footage we have, sir,” said the man next to him.

  “Very well. Proceed.”

  As Admiral Long watched, a lanky creature with reddish skin loped into frame. A stained white suit clothed its head and torso, and a reflective visor covered its eyes. The creature leapt forward toward the man holding the camera, and the camera fell to the ground. It was kicked or pushed a few times, dizzily shifting the image, but the final shot was of the creature leaning in toward the prone cameraman. It ripped into his throat with its teeth and began eating.

  Long glanced at Ensign Crane. He had turned away. “Ensign, is this the same sort of creature you saw?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And something similar happened to your team?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you see any ships that the aliens could have arrived in? They had to have come from the larger ship somehow.”

  “I didn’t see any, sir.”

  One of his officers spoke up. “Sir, perhaps they possess some sort of teleportation technology. Or they can send biological beings through hyperspace unshielded.”

  Long nodded. “I’ve thought of that.” He looked back at Crane. “Is there anything else you can tell me, Ensign? Anything that will help us understand what happened on Mars?”

  “Yes, sir. It was absolute chaos down there. As soon as we thought we were safe, another one of those things would jump out at us. They were relentless, like they didn’t even care if they lived or died. They just… they just wanted to kill, sir.” Ensign Crane paused and looked down at his hands.

  “Anything else?” Long said, trying to keep his voice reassuring.

  “They’re hard to kill. At one point, I was able to fire my sidearm at one of them. I hit it two or three times squarely in the chest, but it barely even flinched.”

  “The bullets didn’t penetrate?”

  “No, sir. They didn’t even make a hole in the suit it was wearing.”

  “Armor of some kind?” offered one of Long’s officers.

  “Possibly.” Long stood. “Ensign, thank you for your report. And I’m sorry for what you had to see down there. We’ll do everything we can to deal with this.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Crane stood, saluted and was escorted out of the conference room.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Long said, “you’ve all seen this footage. You also know that of the five hundred rescue personnel we sent to Mars, only one hundred and seven returned. They were able to rescue only eight survivors. Out of two million people on Mars, only eight made it out alive.”

  Long cleared his throat and took a sip of water before continuing. “Most of the loss was due to the direct attack from the alien ship. That weapon they have is more powerful than anything we can throw at them. If they attack again, let’s just hope their defense isn’t as formidable as their offense.

  “But that’s if they return. For whatever reason, this alien ship attacked Mars and has now left, either via hyperspace or using some other technology. They sent these grotesque creatures to the surface to mop up, finish off any survivors, but they’ve yet to attack Earth or any other inhabited body in the solar system. Why is that?”

  “Testing our defenses, sir?”

  Long pursed his lips. “That’s my read on it. There’s no way of knowing if they’ve attacked the other inhabited systems or not. We’ll hear from Virdis first, I imagine. They’re the closest, just under two months away via hyperspace. But whatever happens in the other inhabited systems, we must protect Earth at all costs. The Vigilant is only one of three ships of its kind and the only one in this system. If any of the
outposts on the moons of Jupiter or Saturn are attacked, we will not take the bait. We will stay here to protect Earth and remain at full alert. The Oberon and the Izumo will patrol the outer system. The Artemis and the Europa have been recalled to Earth, and they will remain here in orbit with us.”

  “Sir, are the Oberon and the Izumo enough to protect the outlying settlements?”

  Long leaned back in his chair and tented his fingers. “I think we were all stunned by the amount of devastation the alien ship was able to deliver to Mars within such a short period of time. I hate to say it, but I do not believe we can match them ship for ship. The Oberon and the Izumo have orders to draw any attacking ships away from the settlements. I don’t know what they’ll be able to do beyond that. I think our best chance is to keep our three largest ships here so we can outnumber them if they attack Earth. I think that now that they’ve tested our defenses, they won’t bother with stations and outposts of a few thousand people. They’ll go for the big prize.”

  “And what about those red creatures that attacked on the ground?”

  “I’ll be coordinating with General Adams; he’s the highest-ranking officer on the planet right now. But up here, we’ll see the ships before they have a chance to organize a ground attack. We’re the first line of defense, and if we can take care of the enemy ships quickly, we may keep everyone safe on the ground.”

  “Unless they just decide to attack from space, sir.”

  “I’ve thought about that, too. If their goal was simply to destroy us, why did they bother sending their ground forces in? They could have just intensified their fire on the Mars settlements to ensure that there were no survivors.”

  “Recon?”

  “Yes, but for what? Maybe to test our strength biologically? They wanted a look at us up close. They want to know how we’ll be in a fight, not just our ships, but on a man-to-man level. They want to see what kind of weapons we carry.”