The Lion Score
By Jacob Malewitz
By Jacob Malewitz
What does man do when war is all around him, but the tragedy
is he can do nothing?
As Captain Eliot looked, he saw the expanse of the galaxy
within reach. It wasn’t so. It couldn’t be so. Mankind acted, he acted. Mankind
made war, he made war. But all this destruction! It destroyed a man before he
died, made him live a nightmare. For the true nightmares are those tales which,
when begun, don’t allow you to close your eyes.
What was destroyed? Only places … lives. Working on the mad
ways of the beasts, Captain Eliot looked down at the wasteland that once was
the Terran League. How? In all this destruction, all this end game, all that
mattered to him, for those few fleeting moments sitting at the bridge, was
pushing the right button. Want has no place on a bridge. Captain Eliot looked
back to the destruction. They had been warned, humanity, to stop, that the
beasts would come. There were signs. You heard the screams over the messaging
networks; it appeared that was their way of communicating. What was, what was
the true nightmare, turned out to be seeing the monster of children’s dreams
come live. Only the future could hold so much.
You never saw them—the
nightmares—before they were upon you. First, you saw a shadow. Second, you see
a movement. And then you die. It didn’t happen that way at first; these beasts
seemed to adapt. Lost in a haze, he hit the button, realizing his desire for a
good cup of coffee and some music loud enough to drown out the world.
“Captain?”
His eyes
opened. “Yes?”
“You
ready?” The question and answer game continued. Eliot sensed in these men, the
crew of The Lion Score, something different—perhaps a desire for survival. He
had sat on this bridge for what seemed like a millennia; it was, in fact, a century.
“Are they
still coming?” He said, looking down at the wrist watch, the last of his
physical riches, because the rest were burned up. Except his colt. And his
trust double barrel shotgun. A hunter. What he liked about this watch showed
what he liked about his crew: they were always working.
“They are
coming, sir.” He had almost forgotten her name, that of this new civilian
military. They called her Second Archon Kristie and the one beneath her third;
it wasn’t fitting for Captain Eliot, nor was being called a Sky Leader
important.
“I can
sense it.”
“Shall we
open fire?”
“Has it
worked yet?”
“The war
continues, Sky—Captain.”
“How close
are we?
“The
wormhole,” she hit a button and it appeared on screen. “There are too many,”
she said, realizing the force that a wormhole attracted. Everyone wanted out of
this galaxy. There was a tough choice ahead, along the way to something new and
less evil, including who to feed and how much to feed, who to rest and who to
work a triple shift.
“These
ships,” he said, putting his hand to his head. “They all have the fleet’s
idea.”
“Sir, the
wormhole expanding with them.”
“Why?”
“If we had
a special scientist, maybe.”
“I see.
Continue course. I want those sons of bitches off all our backs.”
“We won’t
find ourselves in the same place. This wormhole is different, I think.”
“Speak
freely, Archon.”
She grinned
at the captain’s use of the new military code. “It’s expanding, therefore the
continuum will push them to different parts.”
Suddenly a
ringing started throughout the ship. The Second Archon put up the rear of the
ship, and of course there were a few beast ships. Except they weren’t quite
ships; they were living vessels acting for death.
“The beast
with no name.”
She looked
back at Eliot, who seemed interested more in their looks than anything.
“Captain? I believe they’ve boarded
us, but we can hit the wormhole in 30.”
“Do it.” He
put his hand on the old colt one, which his ancestry had used on Old Earth, the
home of the Terran League. The shapeless beasts … Who were they in front
of a six shooter? “You may be fast,” he
whispered, “but this is even faster.” He rolled the bullet around in his hand,
looking up just as the wormhole took them in.
Something is wrong. Something always was wrong.
The fall of the galaxy was close. The first stage had been
the fall of man and man-like species. The fall of other worlds would follow,
yet there were other even darker places. Humanity was dangerous, sure, but
there were other species who could kill twenty armed humans with one sole
fighter. It happened. They first showed up, with their spiked bodies and quick
shadows, only weeks ago earth time. With them came nothing but blackness, the
only light you could see was the death of a star. Efficient killers, each of
the beasts could take out small colonies. Old Earth, however, was a different
story. If the men on colonies like Mars were tough to kill, the men on earth
were even tougher. They died by the millions, but they just kept fighting.
That’s the sort of stuff which, it seemed, Captain Eliot was. He understood the
significance of his name: the old Eliot name was home to more than generals and efficient warriors. A
man, long ago, wrote of a wasteland. Yet even this Eliot could never have
imaged the end of mankind. This short tale, however, doesn’t begin or end, in a
sense, but does go toward the middle of the survivors. These men and women
fought … died.
###
Eliot
looked down the barrel of a shotgun, aimed right toward an old fashioned
killer. It wouldn’t take you down with a laser pistol or with some nerve agent,
nor would it kill you by starving you or playing with your head. In some ways,
it did play with your head, but the beast with no name killed with talons and
blades shoved into its body. It was built to destroy.
Looking
down the barrel, he saw nothing but blackness, the perfect spot for the shadows
to hide. “There have been stories,” he said, pointing the barrel toward a small
piece of light, “where men make choices,” and he fired. It ricocheted off the
metal, causing something to scream, something to bleed. His eyes opened up.
“Kill!” One of his men said, raising his arms into the air. “He killed that
mother—“ and though it bled, it was still very much alive. The head came off
clean. Eliot pulled back, sending off one more shot. For a moment, he thought
he saw the beast, a glimpse of the thing ending mankind’s journey forward. For
a moment, he saw … something.
“Pull back,
slowly,” he said into his com. “Very slowly.” It made some kind of noise, this
beast, and it made his skin tingle. He heard the echo through the ship. A
warning. When it wants more, it takes more.
“Sir,” the
Second Archon said, putting her arm there. “We can handle this.”
“That’s
what they all said.”
“Who?”
“The
others. The ones who we left to die on Mars, and on the moons of Jupiter, or
back on the simple backwater planet of Story 1, deep in the Sphere
Confederation. They always thought they could handle one. It lays more, see, I
can tell it really,” he stopped. He sensed pieces of this throughout his life.
Madness. It came and went; he kept madness secret.
“Ok. Give
me one more minute.”
“Your place
is on the bridge.”
“We are
dieing down here.”
He saw the
movement, anticipated the reaction of turning on a metal curve, and just a
blink away from him, for the moment, he saw the eyes. That’s where he aimed.
The shot went right through something dark, which bled yellow, which died just
the same as a lion or a hyena. You had to hunt them to beat them.
The pieces
of its head fell to the floor, then vanished. Eliot had yet to see the entire
body. “Those eyes,” he said, putting his shotgun on the ground.
“Sir, you
just killed—“
“I know
what I did!” He walked away.
Hours
passed as he walked back and forth along the deck, waiting for something else
to show up. He made damn sure no one else took this security duty. It’s eyes …
made him remember bad things. A man a century in a half old had many memories.
He remembered the springs over the New Mars SETI buildings; he recalled learning
in class that murder was wrong, learning sometimes there was no choice; he
remembered the first time a computer talked back to him.
Just up a
few feet was a small monitor. They had developed these “gadgets,” as he liked
to call them, on Mars. For some reason it was easier to build computers there.
“Computers with brains,” he said, “not much bigger than yours, really.”
“Talking to
the beast won’t show it to you.”
“Shutup
computer.”
“I am a
synthetic being, Sky—“
“Just shut
the hell up!” He stopped. “I’m sorry.”
“Apologies
unnecessary. What happened?”
“I forgot
you were out.”
“I was.”
“Screwing
another PC.”
“Ha … ha.
They gave me a better understanding of your lingo, said it would “'improve
performance.'”
“That’s
just what you need.”
“Stop.”
He looked
back. “They bleed.” They do, the AI said. “So we can kill them.” We can, it
replied. “But you already knew that … right?” There was no answer as he walked
back to the bridge.
“Sir, we are alone.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what
else?”
“We are in
unknown .. space. The beasts haven’t followed.”
“Don’t be
so sure, Archon.”
“Yes, sir.”
He looked
down, pointing to the planet just beneath them. “How close did we come?”
“To jumping
into it? It doesn’t work that—“
“No, that
wasn’t what I meant. I will tell you later.”
“So we have
no ships,” he said to himself. A small
crew barely capable of stopping one beast. They come, we die. They don’t, maybe
we don’t die.
“I … commander, I am getting a
star signal. It shot out of the moon.”
“Feed it through.”
“It’s not a
language.”
“It has to
be.”
“It’s
numbers.”
“I see.
Numbers.”
“They are
sending out a three digit number.”
“Are you
sure?”
“No.”
“Tell me
when you are; I need a coffee.”
“No
whiskey, captain.”
“Shutup
computer.”
Walking down,
he had a choice between a small coffee and a smaller coffee. He argued with the
resident culinary chef, who seemed disturbed by a captain wasting water,
ignoring ration. We will find more water, the captain said. Are you sure? Was
the reply. Yes, I am damn sure.
The coffee
came out, hot, burning his tongue. He pulled up a star chart, tapping into
Charles, the name they called the computer AI. “Captain?”
“Charles.”
“I think I
deciphered it.”
“Why wasn’t
I told?”
“Because I
wanted you to know before I told the Second Archon.”
He said
continue, and the computer did. It seemed to be a language written in numbers,
the common first contact with advanced species. The pages began with the number
six, rotating the numbers, but there was always three sixes for every message,
which contained a random scattering of twenty to thirty digits, each on their
own line. Charles thought The Lion Score was in danger.
“Why?”
“They made
a choice to die.”
“Why?”
“I don’t
know. This number, of course, signifies the number of the beast in your
mythology.”
“Did you
just call the Bible mythology?” He laughed. “Continue.”
“The
numbers point to the homeworld of the beasts.”
“Far?”
“Here. In
this system.”
She looked quite like a Captain waiting for a few grey hairs
before turning into one. Eliot liked his second in command; she seemed sure of
herself, more so than even Charles. In this meeting room, alone, where they
formed theories, and asked questions you wouldn’t ask to other members of the
crew. This small command had few officers, and she was all that really
mattered. The crew liked him, hated her; it worked perfectly. The AI Charles
had reluctantly told her just after him, because he made it plain, “She’s with
us or we die.” He said “us” the the AI without thinking, wondering why he
almost called it a person.
Sitting
down, he found the strategy session slow.
“They are
within hours distance of us, captain.”
“So we have
a chance to cut off its head.”
“Are you
saying—“
“It won’t
stop them? Of course it won’t. But I want some damn revenge.”
“We have
thirty on this ship—“
“And a few
nuclear warheads, capable of breaking through and laying waste to a whole
planet.”
He looked
down, his hand clutched. A small bit of blood had trailed off on him, forming a
stain on his shirt cuff; blood from the beast with no name.
“One cannot
hope to see death for when he does …” She stopped, looking right into Eliot’s
eyes. “This is a dangerous card game.”
“I think we
pissed them off somehow; first I want to know why.”
“They are
killers!” She said, surprising him. “They are trying to end us!” The hand
pounded the table, she stood, following the small sun’s light over to the
picture of Richard The Lionheart on the wall. “I am sorry.”
“I like
emotions in a girl,” as he said this, he stood too and went over the picture.
“Do you know he didn’t even speak their language? Richard the Lionheart was
French; a French Knight who took Christianity back to Jerusalem.”
“For a
short time.”
“Saladin
played him.”
“Are we
being played, captain? Who would leave such a message? Why would a wormhole
lead us right back to their home? There are too many variables.”
“We blow it
and ask questions later. True, it could be our last battle.”
“It’s our
duty to survive,” she said, her hands shaking. She grabbed one and held it.
“And to kill.”
The hours
spent flying toward the beast homeworld was eventful. A crewmen thought he saw
a beast, causing an alarm through the ship. Then, when they went to the nuclear
warheads, they found only one, not knowing where the other two were. When the
ship’s engine was cut out, Captain Eliot had it. He threw one of the computer
consoles against the wall and began swearing at Charles in multiple languages.
He cooled.
There was no monster, they found
one warhead, Charles apologized for not being a perfect computer.
“Where the
flying fuck is the other warhead? You just don’t lose shit like that.”
“Your
vernacular changes with each point of anger,” Charles noted.
“Shut the—“
“Captain.”
He put his
hand to his forehead, noting plenty of anger induced sweat had formed. “I am
not going easy on this. We need every nuke. I want to blast them all to hell.”
“We are
getting a message, sir.” He stopped. The command deck never looked so empty.
They were all combing the entire ship looking for the nuke, keeping their eyes
open in case one of the beasts had come.
“Tell me
more.”
“It’s
warhead codes.”
“How the
hell can they just send to us whenever they want? There is nothing out here.
There are no ships—“
“It’s from
within the ship. I think you should see the message.”
“Just tell
me.”
“I really
think you should.”
“So do I,”
Charles said.
They said the beasts came small;
they didn’t come like the legions of Rome or the scourge of the Mongols.
Instead they came as assassins, picking off people, using planned attacks to
gut the heart of society.
There were stories, of before, of a
forgotten tribe of mankind which had fought them. Some said there was a 13th
tribe of Israel; others said the forgotten Dorians of Greece were the ones;
whatever the story, it was just that—only stories. They told of a race of
beings walking among man, an old story truly, but one with power. No one
believed. Then they did. The first wave was only assassins, but the next waves
came with living ships that fed off the dust of destruction, the breaking up of
worlds. They transported doomsday to the Terran League, of a kind no poet could
quite capture, no painter could quite frame. The fall of the galaxy was almost
over.
“Our beast has a name! Ha!” He screamed into the com. Below
the bridge, which was a ramshackle sleeping quarters for officers, shots were
fired.
“Terrorists,
Second Archon?”
“It has to
be.”
“Who would
want to serve something that kills them? I am going down there.”
“Captain!”
“Shut the
hell up, Charles. If my men our dieing down there—“ The sound of the door
opening cut him off, and the sound of a
beast charging in echoed across the entire bridge. “If it’s blood you want,”
and as it shot from spot to spot, taking out computer and slashing, Eliot saw
the Second Archon Kristie charge it, firing with a laser pistol. He tried to
stand, tried to get up and fight, but the decades were wearing on him. It took
her scream to make him rise, her blood to buy him precious seconds. “I don’t
know, anymore.” And he fired a shot. It was too late. Her blood ran. He wept as
he saw what it had made of her. He turned to the heavy breathing of death, the
colt in his right hand, his other hand behind its back. A smile traced itself
across his face. “I die, you go with me.”
But the
beast was gone within a second. Two soldiers burst through the door, their
pulse rifles aimed within. He pointed back. He went to Kristie. “Damnit!” He
hit his com wiping Kristie’s blood off his hands.
“Can you
send it now?”
“Yes,
captain.”
“Shutup,
Charles. Just do it.”
The nukes
went out of the ship, straight on course for planet. I don’t believe, thought Eliot, but I do. I make choices that kill.
“How much
time, Charles?”
“Thirty
seconds, captain.”
His com
buzzed, and he found out the sole mad terrorist had been captured. He looked
away when the nukes hit the planet. “Maybe you weren’t so safe after all,” he
said to no one. The walk down to the brig was riddled with bodies, the wounded
and the doctors trying to help. He
stopped for one, a man who had his head taken off, a bloodied soldier standing
over him, staring, his eyes filled with tears. Stopping wasn’t an option.
The
terrorist looked like something had been attached to his head. “I am the
leader! Ha!”
“Is he mad?”
Eliot asked his storm trooper chief.
“More than
mad, sir. He knows vital information on our ship.”
“Destiny
holds no place for a man named Eliot.”
Eliot punched him square in the
face. “Where is the nuke? Trust me, answering now will bring you a lot less pain.”
“Oh, that easy. It’s in
engineering. Just a decoy. Wanted you to know one thing, is all, I wanted you
to know that man falls when night falls, from now on. Watch the numbers.”
“What do you mean by numbers?”
“Captain?” He looked back to his com
for a second, and when he looked back, the shadow was the last thing he saw.
Firing woke him up, shots all around him not ringing true, not hitting their
mark. Screaming. His eyes opened into to see the slashed remains of five
officers.
“Charles?” There was no answer.
There was nothing. He stood. The boats of time had no place for him; he had
done his one just deed. The choice was ahead, but the beast had made a choice
too. It let him live. “The numbers … numbers.” He grabbed his head, feeling
many small cuts on his face, the pain reminding him he still lived.
The small ship had lost it’s entire
crew. There was one man on the ship who survived, who didn’t know why. Or maybe
he did. Maybe I do, he thought, maybe I do.
He went past a series of bodies
fitting of the nightmare found in “Paradise Lost” or maybe an end game quite
like T.S. Eliot and his “Wasteland.” There were no kings and queens left. A
fitting for a picture of hell. “What do we do when there is no hell or heaven,”
he asked, pulling up his star charts. “You make one last choice.” He went to
the Second Archon’s station, pulling up a picture of the planet. The blackness
of it worked well with his ideas on the true hell. “You make one last choice,”
he said, smiling. He hid his madness from others, but not from himself. “Taking
you,” when the beast shadow fell over him, the button appeared inoperable.
“Shit, Charles!” And he ducked, noting how this beast decided living was
important too. “It knows,” he whispered, “You know and your afraid. Come on now—If
you wanted me dead I would be. Something tells me—“
“Captain.”
“Charles, thank god.”
When the beast came at him, it did
so slowly, seeming to have found the fear it created within man, spreading.
They say when you’re around something evil long enough, you change. When you’re
around something good long enough …
Eliot
smashed the button ten times. “Charles!”
“Captain.”
“Charles,
do it! Send in the nukes. If we die.”
“Captain.”
“Charles?
What the hell is wrong with you.”
“Captain.”
His eyes
grimaced, the wound on his wrist caused the blood flow to come out. The beast
made a noise. “Is that your laughter. You think this is funny! Well so do I?”
He out the door, not to be followed. True, the bridge was lost, all the crew
was dead, and a tragedy was in place. It didn’t matter to Captain Eliot; he
knew one thing the beast didn’t. He kept hearing Charles over the intercom,
speaking the same word, captain, every ten or twenty seconds. “I don’t know if
you’re speech is impaired, but I need a
favor Charles.”
“Captain.”
“You have
to send the nukes before it kills me, and I have to see.”
“Captain.”
“Damnit,
Charles!”
He ran to
engineering, down the short hallways, a few turns, toward engineering. A ship
like The Lion Score didn’t have separate rooms for engineering and weapons;
everything had been downsized in the new Terran League military.
He put in
the launch codes, arming the nukes. The trajectory punched in, he heard the
sound of an alarm coming on. Something bad happened, but it didn’t matter. He pushed
the button, and as he did, the lights went off through the ship. “I guess so,”
he said, not trying to make sense. He pulled out his colt, looking through the
darkness. His eyes adapted, showing him more and more.
“I was a
super soldier project,” he said, “and that’s where I learned to tie my shoe
laces. I worked at a department store, and that’s where I learned to chew
bubble gum.” A glimmer of light in the darkness; a shot in the dark; a
screaming beast. “And in the mobile infantry, I learned to kick ass.”
Watching the destruction of a planet didn’t do it for Eliot.
Everything disappeared. His ship was dead in the darkness. But that’s quite all right, he said, nodding. For I killed more of them than anyone has yet done. It’s the way. It’s
the way. He closed his eyes for the briefest of moments, and when he opened
them the lights were back on, and a small being was on the deck—a hologram surrounded by numbers.
It looked much like a human, except for the eyes and sharp teeth. It actually
possessed quite human hair, even a small bald spot. It’s eyes were fixed on
him. It showed a picture, of a planet of blue turning into a planet of black;
it looked, to Eliot, much like the planet he had nuked.
“A hominid.” It showed him numbers,
and he realized this creature may have been something, once, long ago. The
beings who created it perhaps. The beings who warned of it, pointing the right
beings in the direction of this homeworld. They forgot the point of the galaxy.
The true nightmare was not when you forgot about time and space. It’s when time
and space closes its eyes on you, forgetting.
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