Dark Matter

by S. W. Ahmed

  Marc closed his eyes. He just couldn’t bear the sight of this individual.

  Without a word, Wazilban moved on to inspect both Sibular and Zorina. Then he turned to face the crowd of Aftarans. Standing in front of the stone column, he placed a coin-like object on the silvery surface and whisked his hand over it. Both the coin and the surface of the column immediately lit up in a golden color. Seconds later, large, brightly lit golden letters appeared in the air above the column, clearly visible for everyone in the audience to see. From what Marc could tell, it looked like some kind of verse, and it was written in the same character set and style as the inscriptions on the walls. Everybody in the audience immediately bowed their heads in front of the floating verse.

  Wazilban read aloud from the text, in a mysterious, chanting tone. The words, translated into English by Sibular’s translator, caused Marc to gulp with fear:

  Those who wage war against the righteous

  Shall ultimately conquer naught but their own fortunes.

  Nowhere shall they find solace for their crimes,

  And never shall they escape the justice they are due.

  The verse faded away after Wazilban had finished. Then he addressed the audience directly in his loud, booming voice. “My dear fellow Aftarans, may the Creator protect you from harm.”

  “And you!” the crowd replied loudly in unison.

  “I stand before you here today as I often do. But today I serve neither as your humbly appointed leader, nor as your spiritual guide. Nay, today I stand here as an impartial judge to try these three alien conspirators. For the magnitude of the crime they have committed deserves no less than the attention of the highest office in the Dominion.”

  His words echoed across the large hall, its well designed acoustics easily carrying his loud voice to the farthest corners. The audience was dead silent, listening to him intently.

  Wazilban went on. “The crime they have committed knows no equal, except perhaps the treachery of Autamrin and his followers. Fortunately the grace of the Almighty Creator has once again saved us, and brought these transgressors to justice before they could inflict any harm on us.

  “These three individuals conspired to infiltrate our beloved Dominion from enemy space, with caches of powerful, deadly weapons and detailed plans. And detailed plans for what, I ask you? To attack us, to overthrow me and the rest of the Aftaran leadership. To overthrow us who all of you chose as your leaders, and to replace us with enemies of the Dominion. Enemies who hate us and our way of life, who believe neither in the Creator nor in the ways of the righteous, who speak nothing but blasphemy and commit nothing but sacrilege.

  “The sins of terrorist infidels such as these know no bounds, and surely the Creator shall deal with them appropriately at the appointed time. It would normally not be our duty to judge them, nor would it be our duty to enforce the path of righteousness upon them. Indeed, we have always abided strictly by the principle of ‘live and let live’. We have done nothing to them. But these terrorists chose to declare war on us. On us Aftarans, the only ones who follow the righteous ways the Creator has laid down for all mortals. In so doing, they have declared war on the Creator. There is only one word to describe such individuals.” He pointed a menacing finger at the prisoners and raised his voice. “They are heretics! Heretics in the eyes of the Creator!”

  The audience, silent up till now, began cheering and booing at the same time – cheering at Lord Wazilban and booing at the prisoners.

  Marc heard Zorina gasp in shock, and out of the corner of his eye saw her wildly flapping her ears. Indeed, he couldn’t believe his own ears. What in the blue blazes was Wazilban talking about? What conspiracy? What heresy? And who was Autamrin? What kind of “impartial judge” was Wazilban anyway, directly accusing them of these crimes before even showing any evidence?

  “Lord Wazilban, this appears to be a mistake,” Sibular said. “We are no conspirators or enemies of the Dominion. I am a Mendoken space travel engineer, these are my companions, and we merely seek safe refuge to the Mendoken Repub…”

  “Silence!” one of Wazilban’s bodyguards bellowed. “You shall only speak when ordered to speak!”

  The audience’s jeering now turned into a deafening roar. They obviously seemed to agree.

  “Come now, all present, we must be fair!” Wazilban said, raising his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “This is an impartial trial, and these individuals, no matter how horrible their crimes, must be allowed the opportunity to defend themselves. We are believers, after all, and must not stoop to the level of morality and justice of these infidels.”

  The audience’s roaring and jeering continued. Evidently they did want to stoop to that level of morality and justice, whatever level that was.

  “I call forth the primary witnesses in this case!” Wazilban announced.

  The door to the side of the hall opened, and in walked Captain Thorab and his High Officer Rulshanim. A platform floated in behind them, carrying all kinds of paraphernalia that Marc couldn’t identify.

  “I should have guessed,” Marc thought. The same two Aftarans he had never trusted were now going to provide false testimony about him and his friends to the court. As disturbing as this new development was, he actually felt intrigued to see what kind of evidence they would come up with.

  Thorab and Rulshanim climbed up to the altar, and bowed in front of Wazilban.

  “This is Captain Thorab, one of the best Gyra-class captains in the Dominion,” Wazilban said, addressing the audience. “And this is his High Officer Rulshanim. Both have selflessly served our people for years.” He then turned to Thorab. “Captain Thorab, do you recognize these three individuals?”

  “I do, my Lord. This is Sibular Gaulen, a Mendoken. This is Marc Zemin, of the species known as ‘Humans’ from a planet inside the MendokenRepublic. And this here is Zorina, once the Chief Imperial Defender of the Volonan Empire, and the one and only sister of Empress Adrelina.”

  The audience gasped in amazement at the mention of Zorina’s identity.

  “You see, my fellow Aftarans?” Wazilban said. “The ideal makings of a terrorist conspiracy! Our belligerent neighbor, the Volonan Empire, in collaboration with our archenemy the Phyrax, sent their top military defense specialist into the Dominion. Her assignment? To analyze our defenses and verify our vulnerabilties, so that the Volona and Phyrax could together follow with a full-scale invasion of our beloved Dominion. And how did she attempt to disguise her mission? By traveling with this Mendoken and his Human friend, to make it look like she is a friend of our Mendoken allies. Such craftiness, such twisted treachery – it sickens both my body and soul to even think of it!”

  “This is outrageous!” Zorina yelled, violently flapping her ears. “These are all barefaced lies, I assure you! I…”

  “Silence! How dare you call our righteous leader a liar!” That was the same bodyguard who had earlier silenced Sibular.

  The crowd roared again. Marc felt certain that if they were allowed to, they would probably start throwing things at him and his friends.

  “These are indeed the conspirators we caught crossing over from the Volonan Empire,” Thorab said. “And I have plenty of evidence to verify your statements, Lord Wazilban.”

  Captain Thorab proceeded to give a detailed account of how Marc, Sibular and Zorina had infiltrated the Dominion aboard a small but heavily armed Volonan spy ship. Luckily they had been intercepted by Thorab’s fleet before making it very far into the Dominion. After deadly exchanges of fire and heroic maneuvers on the part of Thorab’s crewmen, the enemy ship had finally been rendered immobile and its crew captured. A subsequent search of the enemy ship by Thorab’s crew had revealed not only stashes of highly sophisticated weapons, but also detailed plans of the Aftaran defenses and of a massive Volonan conspiracy to invade and take over the Aftaran Dominion by force. The Phyrax were repeatedly mentioned by name in the plans as an important ally in the conspiracy.

  As Thorab recounted this
fantastic story, he and Rulshanim displayed several items from the floating platform that had accompanied them into the hall, items that had supposedly been found on the enemy ship. There were fancy looking weapons Marc had never seen before, as well as small devices that projected large 3D screens in the hall for everyone to see. The screens showed intricate details of the Volonan invasion plans, with full-blown diagrams of attack patterns and vulnerabilities to be searched for in the Aftaran defense systems. The names of different Phyrax and Volonan military leaders were also listed in the plans.

  There was so much detail, and the information so well presented, that Marc himself almost began to have doubts about Zorina’s true intentions for coming with him and Sibular. But one glance at his friend caused him to brush away any suspicion. Zorina looked totally puzzled, and at the same time horrified beyond belief. In any case, there was no way she could have packed all those weapons and plans onto that tiny contraption of a ship they had traveled on. Nor would she ever have had the time or privacy to load all that stuff on board – Sibular had almost never left the ship during its construction back on the planet Nopelio.

  Once Thorab had finished his testimony, Lord Wazilban addressed the audience again. “And there you have it, my dear fellow Aftarans! All this evidence proves beyond a shadow of doubt the guilt of these three terrorists. They took advantage of our innocent nature, good grace and love of freedom to enter the Dominion. But their intention was evil. They planned to infiltrate our worlds, to prepare the scene for a massive invasion by the enemy. An enemy that would surely leave no single Aftaran alive, that would surely burn to the ground every building and place of worship our ancestors built for us. An enemy that would destroy our civilized way of life and replace it with nothing but dirty decadence and decay. A heathen enemy that believes not in the Creator or the ways of the righteous, but worships its own shortcomings and vices. An enemy that has no morals to speak of and thrives on deceiving others. That, my dear fellow Aftarans, would have been our fate, were it not for the many patriotic, heroic Aftarans like Captain Thorab defending our beloved Dominion!

  “Recall the verse I quoted earlier from the Scripture of War. For enemies such as these, there is no pardon or second chance. Nay, for such heretics, there is only one punishment worthy of their crimes!”

  The audience roared once again, this time much louder than ever before. Most of them were standing now, and many had even removed the veils around their faces. Marc could see their eyes glowing with anger.

  Wazilban turned to the prisoners. “Have you anything to say in your defense?”

  Marc winced, and looked again at Zorina. She seemed too flabbergasted to speak. Sibular was quiet too, probably trying to calculate in his head all the possible scenarios that could have led to such an unbelievable situation.

  Marc realized it was up to him to say something. Hoping that Sibular’s translator would correctly translate his words into the Aftaran language, he began speaking. “We…” He paused and cleared his throat. “We are innocent of all these charges.” He cleared his throat again, trying to make his voice more audible across the large hall. “I don’t know what your motive is for going to such lengths to accuse us of things we haven’t done, but none of this evidence is true. It’s all fabricated.”

  Wazilban laughed, with a deep, croaking sound. His laughter echoed loudly across the hall, and the laughter of the audience soon joined in chorus.

  What was said after that, Marc no longer heard, for the sound of Wazilban’s laughter brought time to a standstill for him. His jaw dropped in astonishment, and he asked himself repeatedly if it could really be true. But it soon became clear to him that there was no mistake – the sound of that laugh was too deeply engrained in his memory. It was, without a doubt, the same laugh he had heard in his visions, the sinister laughter of that evil shadow far away, the one who had laughed nonstop at all the killing and destruction everywhere and at the wiping out of all life in the galaxy.

  Bewildered, he closed his eyes. How could this be? As the questions began creeping into his head, he found himself sinking into a sea of confusion.

  When he finally opened his eyes again, however, what he saw before him suddenly cleared up a lot of the confusion.

  Chapter 28

  The view in front of Marc had changed. It was still the same hall, with the same high ceiling and rows of pillars, the same stone floor and the same walls covered with calligraphy. It was the same altar he was standing on, just behind the stone column. Even the crowd of Aftarans was still there, filling up most of the hall.

  And yet, something clearly had changed. It was Wazilban – he no longer looked the same. Nobody else seemed affected by or even to have noticed this change, not even Sibular or Zorina. They were all still fixated on Wazilban’s stern speech. To Marc, however, the difference was as clear as the cloudless blue sky outside.

  He blinked repeatedly, incredulous at what had just happened. But there was no doubt about it – Wazilban was now a completely different creature. He had grown to about twice his original size, and his upright posture had swooped down to an almost horizontal spine. The head, now pointing slightly downwards at the end of the neck, no longer had any soft, owl-like Aftaran features. Gone were the feathers and the round eyes, gone were the beak and the pointed ears. Instead, the head and face now looked like those of a menacing reptile, with alligator-like eyes and brightly glowing, rubbery green skin. The open snout was long and pointed, displaying wide jaws and shiny, sharp teeth.

  Wazilban’s robe was also gone, allowing Marc to see the whole body. It was large and muscular, with two short limbs facing the front and a long, heavy tail in the rear. Perhaps the most noticeable thing about the body, apart from its glowing skin, was that it had no legs or feet. It was, in fact, floating in a stationary position in midair, with the support of two wide wings that constantly flapped in a slow, sweeping motion. The motion reminded him of manta rays and how they swam through water.

  The Mendoken also floated above the ground, of course, but they used mechanical anti-gravity mechanisms in the bottom of their armor shells to do so. This creature, whatever type of alien creature it was, was floating through the natural capabilities of its own body. But as graceful as its wing motion was, Marc could find no grace in the alien’s ominous face. It had a constantly angry and scornful expression, as if it was ready to strike at anyone or anything that dared to cross its way.

  His surprise grew when he noticed that Wazilban wasn’t the only one who had changed shape. So had Thorab and Rulshanim, and so had a couple of Wazilban’s bodyguards. Even several Aftarans in the audience had changed shape, all of them strategically dispersed throughout the hall. They were all floating in the air, just like Wazilban. He blinked again, then closed his eyes for several seconds and opened them, hoping this disturbing sight would go away. But it didn’t.

  His attention returned to Wazilban’s voice, just in time to hear the end of the speech.

  “There is no other path for these terrorist conspirators, these infidels, these heretics,” Wazilban was saying. “They have declared war on the righteous and on the Creator, and thus the Creator has declared war on them! It is the will of the Creator that they be executed! Take them away!”

  The crowd roared fiercely in support of Wazilban’s order. The soldiers grabbed the prisoners and hustled them down the steps of the altar. Marc heard Zorina gasp and Sibular protest in his usual composed manner, but it was all to no avail. There seemed to be no way for them to escape. These big soldiers with their powerful weapons had them totally surrounded and were dragging them away. Yet Marc felt a sense of urgency that something had to be done, not just to save his own life and those of his friends, but to warn the Aftaran public that they were being misled. For it had finally dawned on him what was going on.

  These creatures had to be aliens from another civilization. They had infiltrated Aftaran society and had disguised themselves as Aftarans, taking over key positions of importance. If his
visions had any shred of truth to them, their ultimate goal was painfully clear, though what the reasons were he didn’t know.

  The Aftarans were obviously blind to this fact. For sure, nobody else in the hall had noticed how these individuals had suddenly changed shape into different creatures. There was clearly a massive conspiracy at play here, and it seemed that Marc, Sibular and Zorina were convenient scapegoats of this conspiracy. Contrary to the false accusations that the three of them were conspirators, the actual conspirators were the accusers themselves. And the three of them were being rushed to death before they could reveal the true conspiracy.

  The prisoners were led along the main aisle out of the hall, past the hundreds of cheering and booing Aftarans in the audience. Marc looked at some of their faces, and decided it was now or never.

  “Stop!” he suddenly yelled at the audience, trying to make himself heard above all the commotion. “You must listen! We are innocent, we’re not your enemies! Lord Wazilban – he isn’t an Aftaran! Nor are Captain Thorab and Rulshanim. They are aliens! They have somehow infil…”

  That was as far as he got. One of the floating aliens nearby in the audience suddenly leaped into the air and dived straight at him, clasping one of its limbs over his mouth before he could utter another word. He struggled to get the rough-skinned, rubbery hand off his mouth, but the alien, more than twice his size, was far too strong. Sibular and Zorina both tried to rush to his rescue, but were abruptly apprehended by the other Aftaran soldiers.

  Keeping its limb over Marc’s mouth, the alien joined the procession of Aftaran soldiers leading the prisoners out of the hall. “Move faster!” it ordered the soldiers in front with a raspy voice.

  The soldiers complied. To them and to all other Aftarans in the hall, this alien was obviously just appearing as another Aftaran, possibly an Aftaran of high rank whose commands were to be followed without question.