I
Or Why Matthew Suddenly Realized Blowing 11 Billion People to Smithereens isn’t Might Not Be So Hunky-dory
“He who knows all the answers,” Matthew read from his book, “has not been asked all the questions.” Well, that sounded as profound as any saying he’d come across in his life. Maybe he’d take this book with him when he returned to Nexxon. He was just about to find the line again and continue reading when Fergus poked his head into the room.
“We’re clearing the horizon, Matt.” Fergus finally took him in. “Well, I’ll be damned. You. Are. Reading.”
Matthew snapped the book shut with more force than he intended. “Any trouble?”
“Nope. Smooth sailing so far. We’ll be in and out before they know it.”
Matthew doubted that very much, but he didn’t voice his concerns. They’d been planning this moment for months. Cloaking the cruiser, moving past the sentries without raising any alarms, coming right up to the bastards’ doorstep and blowing them all into kingdom come. If they were successful here, they’d save countless lives. Hell, they could finally get on with their own lives. He might even propose to Al. Take their families out for a night in the Curtain.
If they were successful here, they could end this war today and go home as heroes.
He took a deep breath, steadied his nerves, and grabbed his key. It would take all three of them, his, the captain’s, and his first officer’s, to initiate the launch sequence.
It would not be long now.
Matthew entered the bridge, and looking out the window, he saw it for the first time. He heard voices in the background, some maybe even addressed to him, but the beauty of that sight was enough to drive the air from him, make him block everything else out, render raw his very soul, strip away all his accumulated bravado.
Children of the Beyond they called people like him, proudly and self-importantly, because his ancestors had had the courage to brave the hostile world of the space outside, becoming pariahs of a race who had found the vast horizons of their own home planet too confining.
But now, looking at it, at that strange planet that had birthed his kind, Matthew wondered why anyone would ever grow tired of a place so blue, so green.
He’d seen pictures, of course. He’d read extensively about Earth when growing up on Nexxon. But now, it all came crashing down to him. The amazing cities, the brilliant vistas, the lush rainforests. Suddenly, he wondered why he’d never bothered to travel to this place when he was just a young boy.
To see Paris, rebuilt so many times across the centuries but still housing the Eiffel Tower. To walk the stone-cobbled walkways of Edinburgh, which had retained its medieval façade even after the devastations of the Third and Fourth World Wars. To step on the Plane of Ruin, where one hundred thousand brave souls had held out against the onslaught of the Second Union and painted the fields red in a hundred-mile radius. To board a boat and see what it felt like to sail the never-ending seas.
He might have been able to do it once, but not anymore. Not since the war started. Not since the Coalition launched an offensive against the colonies. And not since he’d lost most of his friends in the Second Battle for Mars.
23 years of brutal warfare, more than 200 million dead, and still the two sides found new, innovative ways to slaughter each other.
He remembered the horrors of the Fifty-three Day Siege, where the Coalition had sent wave after wave of cannon fodder their way, and they’d dealt death and destruction to them with maximum prejudice, killing tens of thousands in a matter of hours. He remembered how it was all a distraction, for a bombing team to swoop in and annihilate their barricades on the last day. When the dust had settled, he and a handful of other survivors had emerged from a battalion of thirty thousand, grimy, bloodied, dust-covered, looking like death itself. He remembered the moment he heard the news about Station D-12 getting nuked, leaving a death toll of 2 million on the colonies’ hand.
All of these dredged up the cold, passive fury of fighting in a war since he was 10 years old, steeling his resolve and allowing him to finally break his gaze from the approaching planet. He would do this thing. He would end the war, once and for all.
It would not be long now.
The captain was arguing with Fergus. It would be a close-cut thing. They’d have to take immediate evasive maneuvers to be able to leave in one piece. In an hour, the entire sector would be swarming with Coalition ships, so it would be difficult to keep the cloaking shield up. Not that any of the crew minded.
All 493 souls aboard the ship were hand-picked for this mission. They knew the odds of returning were slim. That didn’t stop them. They didn’t care.
All had lost family in the war. All still fought their demons every time they looked at a gun. No, this lot would not mind dying, not when they actively wished for it on a good day.
One had to admit, it was a brilliant plan. Implausible, but brilliant. The Intelligence Unit had done its job well. The journey from HQ to here had gone without a hitch. Right now, the Second Fleet was launching a bold offensive against the base on the dark side of the Moon, bold enough that all eyes were fixed on it. That had allowed the cruiser to push past the sentries with the new cloaking technology to slowly, slowly approach Earth.
Carrying 300 of the biggest, most nauseatingly gruesome weapons of mass extermination the devil had ever spurred humanity to make.
The missiles would target key cities and locations all around the planet, blowing them to smithereens. The explosion would kill billions in an instant, the seismic earthquakes leveling everything in every direction for thousands of miles. The very core of the planet might disintegrate, though that was, according to Fergus’ estimates, highly unlikely.
This could cripple the Coalition entirely. The home planet remained their biggest base of operations, and their largest population center. The colonies would, in one fell stroke, exterminate the majority of the Coalition’s population and render void their military might. The surrender of the rest of the space stations would only be a matter of days, then.
Yes, this could end the war, even at the cost of damning every soul on this vessel.
It would not be long now.
“Ten minutes to launch,” the captain suddenly bellowed. “We’ve got the go-ahead from HQ. Strap in, people. This is it.”
Matthew was suddenly yanked out of his reverie, snapping to attention and joining the captain and his foreman at the helm. A cylindrical conduit was built into the center, with three distinct keyholes.
Matthew blew out a sigh and took his own key out. The captain nodded to him. The whole bridge, consisting of twenty something lesser ranking officers, were now looking at the three of them. Fergus was praying under his breath, his eyes glazed over, his brow sweaty. Matthew found that his own hand was shaking as he inched it closer to the keyhole on his side of the conduit. The captain took a look down at his own key comfortably pressing against the shirt on a steel chain. He took it off and stepped forward.
Not long now. Not long now. A few more minutes and it would all be over.
“Shit.”
Everyone looked at the foreman now, who was furiously searching his pockets. “I swear I picked it up this morning before coming here. Shit.”
The captain sighed audibly. “Go and get it, will you?”
The foreman was already running toward his quarters.
And as he cleared the bridge, an uncomfortable silence descended. No one was looking anyone else in the eyes.
Matthew knew that they were now walking a dangerous line. The last 53 days getting here to do this thing had been easy. The prospects of getting here in one piece were enough to keep everybody’s minds off the task at hand. Not that they had many compunctions about it, to begin with. Every man here knew what they’d signed up for, and they’d gladly do it a dozen times over if it meant ending the war, if it meant getting those bastards back for everything they’d done to them over the past two decades.
They deserved this, Matthew repeated over and over in his mind. For the Trojan Skirmishes. For the tragedies of the Asteroid Belt. For Station D-12. For John. And Elias. And Grace. And Rich. And Hannah. And Xavier. None of whom were here anymore. He could fill out an entire book with their names.
But this silence was dangerous. This silence was the hesitation borne out of moral scruples, even for people who had nothing to lose and not a whit of care to give their sworn enemies.
“I wish there was some way to spare the children.”
Matthew looked up. It was Jeremiah who had spoken. The captain’s third, after him.
“What was that?” The captain asked.
Jeremiah swallowed hard before taking his eyes off the floor and looking the captain and Matthew directly in the eye. “I said, I just wish there was some way to spare the children.”
“Oh.” It was all the captain said in response. He was thinking this over too.
Well, Matthew couldn’t let this go on for any longer. “Remember Triton’s Reckoning.” He said through gritted teeth.
That got their attention, all right. And one by one, everyone on the bridge either uttered the catechism or murmured it under their breaths.
“Remember Triton’s Reckoning.”
“Remember Triton’s Reckoning.”
“Remember Triton’s Reckoning.”
The place where the Coalition had ambushed a refugee convoy, killing countless wounded soldiers, elderly men and women, and children.
The foreman was panting by the time he returned to the bridge. “I got it!” He said, out of breath. He was clutching the key in his hand like he’d just found a long-lost family heirloom.
Matthew and the captain once again approached the conduit, and the foreman joined them. The captain hesitated for a moment before the keyhole, but burrowed his eyebrows and pushed it in. The foreman followed suit a second later.
The snapping sound the keys made as they made contact, and the green light that came to life above the controls, were oddly satisfying. Matthew gulped down air, transfixed by the oddity of that sight, the itch it scratched inside his mind. As if he was just switching on his holographic display at home, or just pushing in the key fob to his new car. Except, one took him out for a ride in the dust-covered lanes of Nexxon, and the other obliterated 11 billion people, wiped them from the face of the universe as if they had never existed.
In that moment, he thought back to the time he was watching a documentary of Earth, with Al cuddled up to him on the couch. He remembered her warmth, and the strange feeling of bliss it gave him then. As if all the horrors of war would not touch him as long as he could stay in that moment. As long as he could hold on to that warmth.
And then, he wondered if anybody else down there was also feeling that warmth. He wondered if there were children playing in the streets, because the unique atmosphere of that blue-green planet allowed them to roam its landscape freely, to feel the breeze touch their cheekbones as they danced around, without any protective gear to weigh them down, to case them in.
He knew he was going to kill billions of people, but at that moment, his thoughts strangely went back to the Eiffel Tower. And wouldn’t it be a damn shame if he never got to visit it? If in a few minutes, it got destroyed after centuries of remaining upright, the structure that mesmerized him when he first looked at its photo, the edifice that had remained defiant against tide and time and the many wars that plagued humanity before they took to the stars?
It would not be long now, yet Matthew mustered all his bravery and decided to stay his hand. For the moment, at least.