My Sweet Satan

by Peter Cawdron

  “And we need to know what we're dealing with,” Anastasia said, pleading with Chuck. “Please, Honey. Tell us what you know.”

  For his part, Chuck seemed to soften at the sound of Anastasia's voice. He breathed deeply. That he couldn't look her in the eye was obvious, but he couldn't ignore her either.

  “Please,” Mei added. Again, the contrast of the women's soft voices seemed to settle the yelling.

  Slowly, Chuck turned to face them. Jasmine could see the steely resolve in his eyes. He was clinging to some vestige of normalcy. He clearly believed deeply in what he was doing.

  “Don't do this to me, Ana,” he replied. “You know this is not a democracy. I am in command. I alone. And in my view, we should not abort. The mission is still viable.”

  “Bullshit!” Mike cried. “This is why they didn't wake you. They knew you wouldn't have the guts to pull out.”

  Mike turned toward the women, gesturing at Chuck as he added, “Captain America here is going to get us all killed.”

  Chuck raised his hand to silence Mike, wanting to be heard.

  “Final authority rests with the commander. You all know that. You all accepted that before you signed on for this mission.”

  “Chuck,” Anastasia pleaded. “We need to understand why they want us to abort. If our lives are at stake, we have a right to know.”

  “She's right,” Nadir said. His deep voice was like oil on water, stilling the turbulent seas. “NASA wouldn't have changed the flight plan without good reason. If we are to support your decision to continue when Mission Control would have us abort, we need to understand your reasoning. We need to understand why you disagree with Houston.”

  Chuck clenched his lips. His nostrils flared slightly. He didn't like this, and yet he couldn't make eye contact with anyone. Instead, his eyes went down to the computer tablet in his hand. He may have been the mission commander, but he looked like a man for whom the universe was spiraling out of control. Where before, Chuck had looked confident in his authority, now he looked dejected.

  “They should have let you sleep,” Mike said, but his words weren't harsh. He seemed disappointed, no, resigned to his fate, thought Jasmine. Mike added, “It would have been kinder to let you sleep.”

  Less than a minute ago, Mike had been yelling at Chuck, with veins bulging on the side of his neck, now his voice was soft. He sounded weary.

  “Just play the message,” Mike said, looking Chuck in the eyes. Both he and Chuck looked exhausted. They were carrying a burden neither wanted to shoulder, Jasmine thought. There was a hint of resignation in those few words, as though Mike felt a weight of defeat when he should have felt victorious. For Jasmine, Mike's change in attitude was eerie, an ominous harbinger of what was to come.

  No one spoke.

  Slowly, Chuck raised the tablet and stared at the screen. He flicked and gestured on the glassy surface with his fingers, skimming through a number of files before speaking in a deadpan voice, saying, “Jason, route my audio through the command deck.”

  “Done.”

  A finger poised over the diamond-glass display. Chuck seemed to be steeling himself for what was coming.

  Jasmine breathed deeply. She couldn't imagine a message that could cause such consternation. Mike knew, she could see that in his sunken features. Somehow, he'd learned about the message, but even he wouldn't say what he knew. He'd stated his intention. He wanted the crew to hear the message for themselves, and he agreed with the initial decision to abort.

  Chuck's finger rested softly on the touch screen and a woman's voice spoke from all around them as Jason used his speakers to transmit the audio.

  “Nine months into your flight, as you passed Jupiter, one of the technicians in Houston managed to revive the Iliad. Most of her circuits were fried, but he managed to restart the main antenna and began downloading data from the initial scan. At the same time, perhaps in response to that act, Bestla became active again. The moon began transmitting a garbled message, repeating the message once every sidereal day. Most of the message is unintelligible, but one portion is all too clear.”

  The voice stopped and an eerie sound filled the command deck.

  Jasmine felt her skin crawl. A bloodcurdling howl preceded anything that even remotely resembled words, but the tone was irregular, changing pitch and intensity every few seconds. The noise was scratchy. Static broke at points. It sounded almost like several tracks recorded over each other, chopping and changing. There was too much background noise, and Jasmine struggled to distinguish anything intelligible. It was like listening to a whisper in a noisy bar.

  To Jasmine's mind, there was the wailing of an animal in distress. No, she thought, more indistinct, like the howl of a coming storm rushing through the leaves of a tree. There was something spooky and unnatural about the noise that cried out in danger.

  “Aaaaaaaa Sssssssss Oooooo... Here's sss to my sweet Satan.”

  Chuck paused the audio.

  The sudden silence was stunning, followed by a single word spoken softly by one of the crew members on the Copernicus.

  “Fuck!”

  Jasmine wasn't sure who swore, but she agreed.

  The words she'd heard in those few seconds were not uttered by anything even remotely close to human vocal chords. There was a lisp, and a focus on the hiss of the s in here's, sweet and Satan. It was almost as though these words had been whispered by the serpent in Eden.

  “Don't stop now,” Mike said gently. He sounded sad. “Play the whole thing. They need to hear all of it.”

  Chuck was tight-lipped. He jogged the audio, rewinding a little and playing the message again.

  “Here's sss to my sweet Satan... I... I want to live and die for you, my glorious Satan!”

  “Jesus!” Mei cried as Chuck paused the message again.

  “Oh, no,” Mike said in a voice resigned to defeat. “No, I don't think you're going to find Jesus down there on Bestla.”

  “What the hell is this?” Anastasia asked. “What in God's name does it mean?”

  Mike spoke again, saying, “Nobody knows, but the Good Lord doesn’t have a blessed thing to do with this.”

  For the first time since Jasmine had come out of suspended animation, Mike seemed calm. He seemed to be the only person that knew what was going on, and she found that shift in his demeanor alarming. He sighed, apparently relieved of the burden of being the only one that knew this terrifying message.

  Nadir said, “Religious connotations and jokes aside, I take it NASA sees this as a genuine threat to the mission?”

  Chuck remained tightlipped. He nodded and hit play on the audio again and the demonic voice cut out, replaced by the woman from Mission Control.

  “Based on our previous experience with the Iliad and the content of this message, it is the opinion of the flight operations team that the alien entity poses a threat to you and your crew. Specialists within NASA, ESA, Roskosmos, CNSA and ISRO have all been consulted and are in agreement with the decision, but ultimately, as the lead agency, the decision to abort remains with NASA Mission Control.

  “Mission Control has taken steps to isolate the Copernicus from any immediate danger by conducting an unscheduled burn to accelerate you into a new orbit, one that avoids a direct flyby of Bestla.

  “Initially, Flight Director Marsh determined not to wake the entire crew, but he was overruled two weeks later by NASA administrator Hamilton, following a Senate Inquiry into the message and our collective response to Bestla. Hamilton cited the need for an independent assessment from the Copernicus.

  “The consensus from here on the ground is that Bestla should be isolated until such time as we can conduct a multi-faceted, coordinated approach. There’s simply too much riding on First Contact with potentially hostile beings. As far as we understand the message at this point, Bestla represents a significant danger for both the Copernicus and Earth itself. Wisdom demands prudence. The stakes at this card table are simply too high.

  “Our recom
mendation remains to conduct a contingency abort, preferably with a direct return. Mars is out of reach, but we're uploading flight plans for a slingshot past Jupiter, so you have several options available to you. The final decision is yours. We await your confirmation of this broadcast and your decision. End of message.”

  Like Mike, Chuck seemed unusually subdued. His shoulders slouched and his head hung low, which in a weightless environment required a deliberate effort on his part. He had to have been consciously feeling like a heel.

  “And you still want to go to Bestla?” Anastasia said. “After hearing that, you still want to go there? What is wrong with you?”

  “With all due respect,” Nadir interjected, his voice again providing a sense of gravitas. “Having heard the transmission, I have to agree with Commander Davies. It's too early to draw any definite conclusions, but I see more reasons to proceed than to withdraw.”

  “What?” Mei said, turning to her husband. “Nadir, are you mad?”

  Jasmine was quiet. She didn't feel qualified to offer an opinion, but she agreed with Mei in her surprise at Nadir's position, and she noted Nadir referred to Chuck by his formal title. He was drawing on the commander's authority to reinforce his position. That seemed to indicate some depth of thinking on Nadir's part, but Jasmine wasn't prepared to offer him any support on that basis alone.

  “Not mad. Not crazy,” Nadir replied in his quiet, soft spoken, rhythmic voice. “Resolute.”

  “I don't get you,” Mike said. “You actually want to go there? To Bestla? What part of I want to live and die for you, Satan, did you not understand?”

  "We don't even know that's what they said," Nadir replied. "The voice is indistinct. It could as easily have been, to live and fly with you, or to live in the sky with you, which I think is far more plausible."

  "To Die," Anastasia said, settling the argument.

  Nadir laughed. Jasmine was astonished. He smiled, looking up at her.

  “Don't you see,” Nadir said. “Regardless of what has been said, this is what we wanted—confirmation of intelligence. And now we have it, not perhaps as we would have liked, but it is there. No natural phenomenon could have produced this. We are communing with an off-world intelligence. That much is indisputable.”

  “What we have here,” Mike cried, “is confirmation that there's an interstellar psychotic killer out there on Bestla. All we've confirmed is hostile intent!”

  “So what do we do?” Nadir asked, throwing his arms up in a gesture of exasperation. “Do we turn and run with our tail between our legs? What then? What happens when we get back to Earth or to Mars or wherever? What have we accomplished? What have we learned? How much better are we equipped to deal with this threat, if that's what it is? We're scientists. Who better to understand this exotic alien species than us?”

  No one replied.

  “We have a duty,” Chuck said solemnly. “First Contact was never going to be easy.”

  “Easy?” Anastasia cried. “Ease of interaction is not being called in question here, it’s who we’re communicating with that concerns me.”

  “This isn’t the Dark Ages,” Chuck replied. “We’ve moved past the Salem witch trials.”

  “Tell that to the folks on Bestla,” Anastasia countered.

  “Don't tell me you believe in Satan?” Nadir said. “You can't tell me you believe in some mythical creature that condemns souls to burn in hell?”

  Mei spoke up, again quoting the message, “To live and die for you, Satan. Is that really the kind of intelligence you want to commune with? Is it, Nadir? Do you think they'll sit on a couch and answer questions politely for you?”

  “Jazz,” Nadir said. “You're the xenobiologist. Tell them. Tell them that this is not what we think it is. It can't be. Somehow, we've misunderstood the message. We're in contact with an intelligent being from beyond our solar system, one that’s vastly more advanced at a technological level. There's bound to be some kind of disconnect.”

  “Disconnect!” Anastasia cried. “I wouldn't call a suicidal death pact a disconnect. For all we know right now, we're dealing with the interstellar equivalent of a Kamikaze pilot. Hell, waking this thing could be the worst mistake in the 3.8 billion year history of life on Earth!”

  “Jazz, please?” Nadir implored.

  Physically, Jazz was floating beside the other two women. Mentally, she felt an allegiance to them. They cared for her. Even if she agreed with Nadir, she couldn't go against them. She needed them. And at this point, she felt she agreed more with them than with Nadir and Chuck. Science was driven by curiosity, but discretion was always the better part of valor. Whatever excitement Jasmine had coming into the command sphere had evaporated with those alien words.

  “I—I'm sorry.”

  “Can you imagine the hysteria this is causing back on Earth?” Mei asked.

  “I’ve seen some of the news reports,” Mike replied, finally revealing what he knew. “It’s not just those that are deeply religious that are troubled. This thing has sparked considerable debate in the scientific community as well as in political and religious circles. At what point, have we reached too far? At what point should we leave well enough alone?

  “Hollywood has spent decades molding public opinion with movies that play on the fear of the unknown, on the fear of oppression and death from the skies. To be alien is to be feared.

  “Worst of all—nobody knows. The finest minds on the planet don’t have any answers, and that scares your average joe more than anything else.”

  “We're a billion miles from Earth,” Chuck began softly. “We're the only ones in a position to do anything about Bestla. We need answers. We need to investigate this phenomenon.”

  “It's not phenomenon,” Anastasia insisted. “Lightning is phenomenon. The aurora borealis is phenomenon. This… This is something else again.”

  “Anna,” Chuck pleaded. “I need you to trust me on this. I need you by my side.”

  “Don't!” Anastasia replied harshly. “Don’t you dare play that card. Not here. Not now.”

  “Do not forget why you are here,” Nadir said sternly. “We have a duty to perform. We have been entrusted with a grave responsibility, one that outweighs any fears we may have for our own personal safety.”

  “Now wait a minute—” Mike began, but Nadir cut him off.

  “We have no choice. We must continue on. To falter at the final hurdle would be to betray the trust of billions.”

  “He's right,” Chuck said. “Whether you like it or not, we are all that is standing in the way of that thing and an entire habitable planet. Humanity is vulnerable. We have two off-world stations on the Moon and Mars, but that's what? Two or three hundred people at most? If Earth were to fall, we'd lose billions. NASA has to know what they're dealing with out here, and if that costs us our lives, so be it. If we learn something about this thing or buy the rest of humanity some time, then we've done our job.”

  “Fuck!” Mike swore.

  “There must be some other way,” Anastasia pleaded.

  “There's no other way,” Nadir replied.

  “The debate is over,” Chuck said. “The decision has been made. We go to Bestla.”

  Mike held onto the navigation desk with one hand and thumped it repeatedly. His fist pounded the metal desk like a gavel in a courtroom, and when he was done there was the resignation of silence and defeat.

  “I'm sorry,” Chuck offered as the crew floated there stunned by the revelation about the nature of this Saturnian moon. As much as he wanted to sound decisive, Jasmine could see his hands shaking. She wasn’t sure if the other crew members noticed, but he quickly hid his hands in his coverall pockets. He too was struggling with the implications of all that had unfolded.

  Jasmine felt a knot form in her throat. Her life was no longer her own. Her life was in the hands of another. The realization of the loss of control caused her to panic. She'd never really had any control over her own life, no one did, but the illusion of control had al
ways been there, at least up until the point she sat on that porch swing on a sweltering hot, humid Atlanta evening. She wanted to undo time, to roll back the clock. For her, barely an hour had passed since she'd watched her father return home from work in his sweaty business shirt. She could still see the smile on his face as he walked past the white picket fence and turned up the footpath leading to the house. Atlanta seemed so close, and yet it was a billion miles away and twenty years distant.

  Jasmine was a long way from home. Her fingers tightened around one of the railings. Mei and Anastasia drifted next to Chuck, talking under their breath, while Nadir was almost completely upside-down relative to everyone else, something Jasmine found disquieting.

  Chuck laid out his intention.

  “We follow the plan. The Copernicus is shielded against any EMP-like threat. She’s not going to end up like the Iliad.”

  “You don’t know that,” Mike protested.

  Chuck ignored him.

  “We go comms dark and fire off the booster satellite to relay information back to Earth. All contact with Bestla is routed from the unmanned probes through the communications satellite. We can still do this. Nothing has changed.”

  Jason whispered from beside Jasmine as Chuck spoke. She could barely hear him above the hum of an air vent.

  “We’re equipped with twenty probes, with everything from surveillance cameras to landers and sample retrievers. They’ll pass information both to us and the signal booster, but the Copernicus won’t emit any radio waves until we’re well clear of Bestla.”

  Jasmine was trying to listen to both voices at once. Jason fell quiet as Chuck continued.

  “The Iliad was fine until it conducted a fly-by that took it within ten kilometers of Bestla. The moon itself is only seven kilometers from end to end, so it's tiny. We will take up our position trailing Bestla by five hundred kilometers and deploy our probes. At that distance, we're no threat. We stick to the plan. We deploy the communications relay, so we have redundancy, with measurements sent directly to Earth and recorded by the Copernicus. And if all goes well, we conduct a fly-by before returning to Earth.”