Gethsemane Read online

  Chapter 01

  104 Days have passed since the Pathfinder Ship Pegasus left the Fallon System.

  Aves Zilla – “In nine days time, this entire planet will become a molten sphere of fiery hot magma,” said Tactical Lieutenant Commander David Alkema.

  Commander William Keeler pondered the enormity of what he had just heard. He could not help but feel a note of sadness about the destruction of this planet. As the shadow of his Aves flashed over its indigo seas and golden sands, he determined it was one of the most beautiful planets Pegasus had visited in all its journeys.

  Finally, he breathed a heavy sigh and rendered his decision. “All right, shore-leave is limited to one week for everybody. No exceptions!”

  “Excellent command decision, sir,” Alkema assured him.

  “That’s why they made me Commander,” he reached under his seat and opened the cabinet he had recently had installed on Zilla, which he had designated his Supreme Executive Commander Hands-Off This Means You Aves. In the custom-designed cabinet was a selection of brown liquids in glass bottles. He selected a fermented grain blend from the Hardscape of Aurora colony and poured a glass for himself and his Executive Officer.

  Keeler raised his glass. “To doomed planets.”

  Alkema returned the gesture. “To doomed planets.”

  Keeler downed his shot and spared a glance at the ground monitor as he poured another one. “Of course, all planets are doomed, in the long run.” Their Aves passed over an archipelago of tall, tiny islands that rose high over the sea like a row of pillars.

  “You’re certain there’s nothing we can do?” Keeler asked him.

  “The rogue planet is too large, too close, and moving too fast. Even if we pulverized it with Nemesis warheads, the debris would still pound the planet to bits.” Alkema seemed disappointed that, for once, he would be unable to pull a miracle out of his pants. His reputation as wunderkind was fading. He had begun his tenure on Pegasus as an underage officer, rising through the ranks by cleverly getting his ship out of one predicament after another. Now, in his mid-twenties, he seemed older, even a little tired, a little puffy around the edges of his eyes. The black curls of his hair seemed to have lost some of their luster.

  Keeler attributed all of this to Alkema’s four kids and “fish-mongering wench of a wife.” The Commander himself had never had children, and was increasingly grateful for it as he observed the effects of family life on his young Executive Officer.

  “What if we opened a hyperspace portal in front of it?” Keeler suggested, and as he did so, realized he had suggested this before, when Alkema had first explained to him the planet’s predicament.

  “That only works in science fiction, sir. We don’t have the power to open a portal that big,” Alkema explained, for the second time. He offered a promise, “I’m going to keep working on it, sir.”

  Keeler took this news as an occasion to drink again. “Maybe if we had gone directly here instead of Crotoan, we would have had time to figure out something.” The Croatoan sytem, to which Pegasus had headed directly after leaving the Fallon system, had proved to be a small dusty system of four barren, beaten up planets huddled around a cool, red star swathed in a cloud of interstellar debris and a massive asteroid field.

  “I don’t know that it would have made any difference,” Alkema said.

  “True, but I will always wonder if we could have saved the planet if we hadn’t wasted three weeks in that hellhole of a star-system,” Keeler said.

  “There was also that… Thing,” Alkema reminded Keeler.

  “We agreed we would never discuss the Thing again,” Keeler snapped at Alkema.

  “We agreed that would be best,” Alkema conceded.

  “I hated that… Thing,” Keeler went on.

  “We all did, sir,” Alkema replied.

  The Aves passed over a coastline, where the sea was presided over by tall eroded cliffs that rose imperiously like the sandstone columns of a crumbling temple. Commander Keeler touched the control panel on the side of his custom leather Supreme Executive Commander massage chair and projected hologram images of the some of the planet’s abandoned cities. Their probes had found over sixty large cities and hundreds of smaller ones all across the planet.

  “There were at least 300 million people living on this planet no more than a few local years ago,” Keeler announced, feeling the need to state once again their mission objective.

  “Where did they all go?”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out, sir… I hope.” Alkema replied. “Even if they had space travel, it would be extremely hard to evacuate a population of that size. I’m not even sure Sapphire could do it.”

  “Oh, sure we could. We’d all just go over to Republic and ask if we could crash on their couch for a while.” He shut off the hologram displays and gulped his drink.

  “What do you think it was like, when they first learned their world was going to be destroyed?” Alkema asked.

  “Uncertainty at first,” Keeler replied. “Those who raised the danger would have been dismissed as alarmists and doomsayers. Then, as the prediction was confirmed, some would panic, others would try to figure out what, if anything, to do. There would have been a rash of suicides, an economic and social collapse, possibly. Some brave souls would get mind-numbingly intoxicated and remain in that condition until the final moment of doom.”

  The voice of Blade Toto came through from the flight deck on their COM Links.

  “Altitude is now 2,000 meters and speed is subsonic. We’ll be on the ground in about fourteen minutes. Strap yourselves in, if that’s what you have a mind to do.” On the horizon, their destination loomed. In the planet’s high latitudes, in the center of a vast plain, a huge shape had been built. It was as large as a major city, and it consisted of a circle, surrounded by four sets of lines radiating outward from four perpendicular points.

  “It’s called a Ziga,” Keeler said. “And it was a sun symbol in one of Old Earth’s primitive cultures.”

  “Every city on the planet is dead,” Alkema double checked the sensor readings. “But that ‘Ziga’ is putting out as much energy as Pegasus’s gravity engines.” He literally licked his lips then, as though in anticipation of finding out what all that energy was being used for.

  “It’s possible they built some sort of fleet there to evacuate some fraction of their population,” Keeler suggested. “That would explain some of the planet’s missing colonists, at least.”

  “It would be interesting if they also evacuated to Fallon colony, and met up with the refugees from Hellfire,” Alkema suggested.

  “Probably not as interesting as you would expect,” Keeler replied.

  Alkema zoomed the projection in on a spot 10 kilometers south of the giant structure.

  Here a vast aerospace port had been constructed, and a city-sized complex of large buildings surrounded it. Their landing coordinates were at the edge of the aerospace port.

  Zilla and its accompanying ship, Phoenix, slowed and descended as they approached the vast aerospace port. They settled down onto the tarmac, kicking up dust devils beneath their landing thrusters.

  A few minutes later, their forward hatches opened and the landing crews stepped out to taste the air of this new planet. Even this far north, well above 60 degrees of latitude, the air was warm and dry. Gethsemane orbited an F-class sun, which gave its sky a golden hue and kept the planet warm as the deserts of Nef.

  The Aves looked sleek and small compared with the other aerocraft that lined the sides of the runways. They looked like they could carry 1,000 passengers each, Keeler guessed.

  Their fuselages were oblong, with eight large engines clustered in two pods of four and nestled between double sets of wings. Each plane had the same
blue and white characters stenciled on their polished metal skin.

  “Lingotron’s getting it,” Alkema told him, as though reading his mind. “The form is somewhat unusual, combining aspects of the ancient Anglish and Mandar symbology.

  There was similar text discovered in the logs of the cargo ship we encountered. It reads,

  ‘P-E-R-A: Planetary Evacuation and Resettlement Authority.’ And then there’s a code number for the individual aircraft.”

  “Remarkable,” Keeler said. “This must be some kind of launch facility.”

  “Maybe the Ziga is a kind of launch accelerator,” Alkema suggested. He could picture how it could work in his mind; if the ships were built here and launched on some kind of accelerator, they could reach a high rate of speed without burning fuel, which could be saved for decelerating when they reached their destination.

  General Kitaen approached from the Aves Phoenix, with a squad of six warfighters tailing him. Kitaen scared the crap out of Commander Keeler, which Keeler supposed was a good thing for his chief of security. A single stripe of blue-black warpaint graced his left cheekbone. The dusky sun glinted off his shaved head. “Commander, we detect a large group of people approaching from the group of buildings to the northeast.”

  “Are they armed?” Keeler asked, although he knew from experience they would be armed. They were always armed.

  “Most likely,” Kitaen affirmed, and he nodded to his adjutant, a tall thin Sapphirean female, whose face was plain but whose knockers were almost perfectly formed snow globes of joy. Warfighter Shield gave a command and six warfighters in black tactical gear clicked their pulse weapons to active defense mode.

  Sixteen soldiers in gray uniforms and black battle-helmets came marching across the tarmac toward the Pegasus crew. The lead man, who had close-cropped white hair, a stern face marred by a long scar on one side, and an eyepatch the same color as his trim uniform, stopped his squad and demanded. “Who are you people?” Keeler thumped his chest. “Me, William Keeler, Commander of the Pathfinder Ship Pegasus. This is one of my officers, Lt. Cmdr. Dave Alkema. The tall fellow with the bare pectorals is Lt. Commander Kitaen. And these are other people. We come in peace… and such-like.”

  “I am Thall,” the man announced.

  “You’re also handthome,” Keeler lied.

  “Are you the Kariad?” the man asked, narrowing his eyes. Except for blossoms of burst red capillaries at the tip of his nose, the man’s skin was pale and white.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Keeler replied, wiggling his eyebrows.

  “Are you from the Kariad?” the man demanded again.

  Keeler answered him this time. “Technically… neg, we are not of the Kariad, but we know of them.”

  “Why have you come here?” Thall demanded.

  “We’re selling cookies and magazines to win scholarships to space camp,” Keeler answered. “We wondered if we could have a moment to…” Alkema (per their prior arrangement) cut him off, “We are explorers… and we noticed your planet is in a spot of trouble. It’s going to collide with another planet in nine days.”

  “We are aware of that,” Thall informed him.

  “Oh,” Keeler gave him a big bright smile. “So, um, do you need any help clearing out the place. We’ve got a nice big spaceship in orbit.”

  “We have already made arrangements to evacuate the planet,” the man answered.

  “That’s good,” Keeler said. “May I ask what arrangements those would be?” Thall gestured for Keeler to be silent. He put the other hand to his earpiece. After some seconds he said, “Yes, Madame President. I will bring the visitors to you. (Break) … Yes, immediately Madame President.”

  Thall addressed them. “The President wants to see you. Walk this way.”

  “If I could walk that way…” Keeler began, then decided not to go with it. He followed Thall toward the main building, just as a trio of large, wheeled land vehicles came from around the side. These were also labeled “PERA.”

  Keeler turned to Kitaen. “I don’t think we all need to go. Just me, the kid, you, and a few armed men… and her.” He pointed to Warfighter Shield.

  Kitaen agreed and ordered some of his men to remain with the ships. The other landing teams were loaded onto the vehicles and driven across the base to a large ugly building from whose front the Ziga was visible on the horizon.

  Kitaen’s warfighters waited in front of the building while Keeler, Kitaen, and Alkema were led inside and down a long reception hall to a kind of conference room at the end.

  Where they sat and waited, and waited, and waited for well over an hour, until the leader of the planet deigned to see them.

  Thall announced her arrival. “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the People’s Quorum of Gethsemane, her eminence, Hildegard Kahn.” She entered imperiously. Kahn was a shortish woman, with a mop of blond hair gone platinum. She was not notably fat, but her hips were disproportionately wide. She wore an unflattering yellow and black pantsuit that made her look like some kind of bumblebee.

  Keeler began to stand up. “Don’t stand up,” Kahn ordered him sharply. “Just tell me what you’re doing here… Commander Keeler, is it?”

  Keeler nodded and withdrew the hand he had been preparing to offer. “Our ship was in the stellar neighborhood and we thought we would drop in. We detected a large planetoid on a collision course with your world, and we thought we might … possibly…

  help you in some way.”

  She cackled. That was the only way to describe the insincere, dismissive laughter that erupted from her. “No assistance is necessary. The Kariad warned us of the impending disaster thirty years ago. We took steps to deal with the crisis.”

  “What steps did you take, may I ask?” Keeler inquired, more than the usual deference in his voice.

  “At that point in time, I invoked Emergency Powers and took over Executive Authority of the Quorum,” Kahn raised a finger to indicate the importance of the next point. “In secret! Because we did not want to cause widespread panic.”

  “Of course.” Keeler hoped he sounded neutral.

  Kahn went on. “The Kariad instructed us in the construction of the Project we code-named ‘Heaven’s Gate.’” She gestured toward the window, from which the Ziga could be seen on the horizon. “The Gateway was built under conditions of Supreme secrecy.”

  “Right, of course, supreme secrecy,” Keeler repeated.

  “When the Gateway was completed, fifteen years ago, we began the process of planetary evacuation.”

  “Through the gate,” Keeler deduced.

  “Precisely,” Kahn affirmed. “And while it’s quite… extraordinary to receive visitors from other colonies at this late date, we really have no time to meet with you. I suggest you return to your ship.”

  “What does the Gateway do?” Keeler asked. “Where were they evacuated to?”

  “To Heaven,” she answered, scowling at him as though he were stupid.

  “Is that the name of a colony?” Keeler asked.

  She huffed impatiently, “No, the Gateway allows your soul to pass through to the Afterworld, without having to die.”

  This was too much even for a slightly intoxicated Commander Keeler to take. Really?” He challenged her.

  “Yes,” Kahn said, scowling and angry that anyone would disbelieve her.

  “And this isn’t some weird science-fiction plot where you dupe the populace into believing you’re sending them to a better place, when in fact, it turns out to be a mass suicide machine?” Keeler pressed, certain he had seen a plot like this in an old episode of the popular holo-fiction drama, The Scary Zone of Unpredictable Madness.

  “There’s nothing science fiction about it,” Kahn snapped back at him. “Aliens calling themselves the Kariad warned us thirty-two years ago that our planet was going to collide with another, then instructed us in the construction of a meta-dimensional gateway that allows us free passage to the realm of the Afterworld.” Keeler was skeptical.
Pegasus had run across prior worlds visited by the Kariad…

  Yronwode and Fallon, specifically. And wherever the Kariad had visited, catastrophe followed. “Is that what Kariad told you? That this… device… takes you to Heaven?”

  “The Kariad only told us it would take us to another place where we would be safe,” she replied. “We did not know it was Heaven until the first travelers went through.”

  “How do you know it is Heaven?” Keeler asked. He was almost sure this was some kind of scheme, but he did not know what yet.

  “Because those who went through came back and told us what lay on the other side,” she insisted. “And their description matched precisely with our philosophical construct of the ideal Afterworld.”

  Keeler almost fell over at that. “You mean you can make a round trip… to the Afterworld.”

  “Yes,” Kahn insisted, her tone so exasperated that it made Keeler and Alkema think of Goneril Lear… albeit older and with less fashion sense.

  “As a man of faith, I would be curious to know what the Afterworld is like,” Kitaen put in.

  “It is much like Gethsemane,” Kahn replied, the brittle edge of her voice softening, but only a little. “Only much, much … better.”

  “So, the Afterworld you access through this Heaven’s Gate is consistent with your religious conception of the AfterWorld?” Kitaen continued.

  “Yes,” she replied impatiently.

  “And what was your planet’s dominant system of religious expression,” Kitaen continued.

  “NIM,” she answered.

  Kitaen scowled. “NIM? I’m afraid I am unfamiliar with NIM.” Thall interrupted. “Neo-Iestan Mysticism. NIM holds that the Afterworld is an extension of, and shaped by, our consciousness, hence this Afterworld is a product of our collective consciousness, our collective conception of what a perfect world should be. We built the Gateway in the shape of the Zina, the holy symbol of NIM.”

  “It’s pronounced ‘Ziga,’” Keeler interrupted.

  Kahn cut Thall off. “Thall, shut the hell up. It’s enough that I have to see you mound-kickers every day. I’m not going to talk to you, too. Just do your gawddam job and keep your mouth shut.”