A Just Farewell (3 page)

General Harrison refrained from immediately
responding and instead poured himself a fresh glass of ice water
from the pitcher set upon his desk positioned in front of the
assembled governors of all fifty-one space stations. Every governor
was in attendance to consider the appropriate response to the
tribes’ latest act of terror; none could ignore the gravity of the
tribes’ most recent attack. General Harrison anticipated reluctance
to accept his proposal, for he had felt that reluctance himself
when the engineers and scientists in the defense sector had
introduced him to their ultimate answer to finally free themselves
of the savage tribes’ menace. His years in his uniform gave him a
familiarity with violence none of those governors seated in front
of him could appreciate, but General Harrison wouldn’t fault any of
those governors for balking in shock at the proposal. Given time,
General Harrison felt confident all those governors would accept
that proposal just as he had - only General Harrison worried the
castles lacked the time needed for each governor to accept the
ultimate answer’s wisdom.

General Harrison’s fingers danced atop his
digital notepad to rewind the horrific video of those five rockets
exploding in the night soon after they lifted towards the sanctuary
of the castles. Each rocket had held close to a thousand civilians,
and all of them were gone, victims of the tribal suicide bombers
who had infiltrated among the passengers. The tribes had struck
their worst blow yet, and General Harrison knew that each governor
realized how the threat of savage tribes lifted closer and closer
to their sanctuary space stations orbiting the ancient planet they
all once called home.

“Five-thousand, three-hundred and sixty-two
civilians and crewmen perished along with those rockets,
gentlemen,” General Harrison calmly spoke. “They accomplished it
all with only a handful of warriors. I’m afraid the tribes leave us
no room for any kind of mercy.”

“And you think unleashing our castles’ laser
cannons on them wouldn’t do any good?” Governor Spencer repeated
his question.

“I believe it would be a waste of resources
at a time when we need to marshal our energies to support, protect
and expand our off-world settlement programs,” the general
responded. “The tribes know how to avoid the brunt of our guns.
Their tunnels burrow very deep, and they run very far away from the
reach of our orbiting space stations. We might burn out a tribe or
two, but it would come at a cost to our power reserves that I
strongly believe would be better invested into the efforts of the
colony worlds. However, no tribe would survive the execution of the
ultimate answer.”

The governors mumbled and nodded towards one
another. General Harrison watched their pens scribble across their
digital notepads. He watched their office assistants hurry across
the political aisles to confer with the office assistants of other
governors. He was winning them, but was he winning them quickly
enough?

The general cleared his throat. “How long
have we feared this moment when the tribes would realize their
ambition to deliver their bombs and their death beyond the confines
of the planet? The tribes have infiltrated our rockets. What
might’ve happened if those madmen waited to arrive at our castles
before detonating their explosives? I shouldn’t need to remind
anyone about how fragile our positions are here in orbit, about
what might happen the moment there’s any kind of breach in these
stations to expose us to the cold and killing vacuum of space.

“What happens when those tribes infiltrate
one of our great starliners and ride it out to the Martian
colonies? Or what happens when the tribes stowaway on one of the
light-jumping freighters bound for the planet Regis? Then all the
ancient fears, hatreds and gods have spilled into the heavens,
leaving none of us any better off than we were before we braved our
first steps into the stars. We’ve invested far too much to discover
and reach peaceful worlds unblemished by superstition and bigotry.
I haven’t fought and bled against the tribes for my entire life
just so I can watch our dream for the heavens slip away thanks to
those zealots.”

Governor Praxis leaned forward so that the
microphone better captured his voice. “But, General Harrison,
there’s no turning back, whatsoever, should we approve of your
proposal. Once we press that button, it’s all gone. All of it, as
incredible as that is to imagine. Are you saying that we have no
other options?”

General Harrison’s voice didn’t waver.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

Governor Aldrich’s microphone buzzed.
“General, I hope you understand why we feel the enormity of your
proposal requires unanimous approval before your ultimate answer
can be implemented. Are you willing to accept that?”

“I am, on the condition that the governors
take two votes on the matter.”

Another murmur of governors rolled through
the chamber, and the general recognized the moment for the first
vote was at hand as he watched governors hurry across the aisles to
confer directly with their peers. Governance between the space
stations was always an ugly mess of anarchy for most of the time,
because it in the end best represented the will of the people who
had braved a rocket ride to reach the castles’ sanctuary. He loved
to watch all the mumbling disarray, and he missed many a night’s
sleep for worrying that the system of government possessed by those
castles wouldn’t survive the clutches of the savage zealots and
their clerics who wasted old Earth. His nightmares screamed to him
that the unforgiving laws of the clerics was the natural way of the
evolutionary and cruel chain of survival. He loved the confusion
that surrounded him as the governors discussed the merits of his
ultimate answer, but he feared any kind of debate would not survive
the moment the clerics reached up from their underground shelters
to sweep the castles and starships out of the stars.

Governor Praxis spoke after all his
colleagues returned to their seats. “We’d like to go ahead with the
vote now, General, unless you have any objections.”

“I’ve nothing else to offer,” General
Harrison nodded.

General Harrison turned his attention to the
large monitor that tallied the anonymous votes cast by the
governors. He didn’t expect to win all fifty-one votes on that
first round, and the general held a strategy on how he would
proceed following the initial tally. He hoped, however, that the
first round of voting would show him how close he was to receiving
approval for the ultimate answer. He was unsure if winning a
unanimous vote on such a terrible proposal was even possible. How
far would he go to defend those castles orbiting the remains of a
dying planet? Would he fight the governors themselves? Would he
overthrow the government he loved, to institute his ultimate
answer? General Harrison felt his stomach sour as he watched the
votes click on the large monitor.

Those votes appeared very slowly at first,
but they dotted the screen quickly as other governors followed
their braver colleagues who first presented their answer. General
Harrison emitted a sigh of relief into the microphone at the
results, and he hoped the governors would forgive him for his tell
of emotion. Did they expect their general to possess an uncaring
machine’s heart? He would be a very poor commander indeed if he was
composed of metal rather than bone. There was hope expressed on
that monitor of votes. Fifty governors expressed their approval for
the ultimate answer. The general only waited to see how the last
vote fell.

The final mark flashed upon the monitor, and
it was a negative vote against the ultimate answer.

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,” General
Harrison spoke. “I trust all of you still agree to grant me that
second round of voting.”

Governor Aldrich nodded. “We do, General
Harrison. We assume that you’ll want to have that vote sooner
rather than later giving the gravity of our situation.”

“I ask for one month.”

“Then you have it,” agreed Governor Praxis.
“Barring no further calamity in the meanwhile, we will reconvene
one month from now.”

General Harrison gathered his papers as the
governors fled from the hall, likely to douse their trepidation in
whiskey sours and gin and tonics served in the nearest castle bar.
He only needed to secure one vote, and he had the mechanism in
place to achieve it. Everything would come down to a single
governor, and General Harrison didn’t envy the woman or man who
would no doubt now felt the weight of old Earth fall upon his or
her shoulders. He wondered who hesitated to approve of the ultimate
answer, but he didn’t think he would have to wait for very long
before learning the identity of the single governor who denied the
plan’s terrible execution.

General Harrison knew the enormity of it all
would bring that lone, abstaining governor to him.

* * * * *

Chapter 4 – Slender Shoulders Holding the
Weight of the World

Governor Kelly Chen slumped in her seat as
she felt the weight of the world crush upon her slender shoulders.
She had reluctantly run for the governor’s office of the Neo Madrid
space station, agreeing to pursue the title only after her family
and neighbors urged her to bring the pluck and focus she had
displayed while maximizing her station’s yields from its hydroponic
gardens to the chief executive’s office. Kelly had never craved
power, had seldom craved attention or clout. Yet she sat in the
front row of Neo Madrid’s great cinema and opera house all the same
and considered whether or not she could agree to the destruction of
an entire world.

Twenty-four hours ago, she had felt young in
her middle age. Now, she felt old, and she feared looking into a
mirror lest she discovered that her lustrous, black hair had
overnight turned completely gray, or that wrinkles had gripped to
the corners of her eyes and mouth until her skin looked like
crumpled paper. She feared her body chased to keep pace with how
the weight of the world aged her soul.

She had cleared her appointment calendar the
moment she returned from the emergency session of governors held on
the castle of New Paris and instantly retreated into her space
station’s grand opera and cinema house, a majestic work of
architecture that attracted guests from all fifty-one of the
castles orbiting old Earth. Kelly always loved escaping into the
cinema, and she considered the private sessions her title granted
her with the cinema’s large screen the only benefit of her office
she truly enjoyed. Whenever the stresses of her station taxed her,
Kelly found the time to take a private seat in the front row of
that cinema and watch a black and white movie of how Earth had been
before the rise of the zealot savages, to smile at one of the
colorful musicals films that celebrated a lost time. Kelly thought
it incredible that such music and dancing, such romance and love,
once existed on the planet’s surface. She would never have believed
it if the builders responsible for the great castles hadn’t
possessed the wisdom to archive the films that documented such a
time, and watching those movies filled with children playing in
green parks always gave her hope that the influence of the clerics
could one day be eradicated so that the old world of laughter and
mirth could be resurrected from the ashes that currently covered
ancient Earth.

But she knew nothing could ever be recovered
should she give her approval for the ultimate answer. She knew that
the world that smiled upon her from the flickering, silver screen
would never be anything more than a projector’s light the moment
the castles instituted that plan that promised the destruction of
the zealot savages.

Trespassing light flooded into the cinema as
the visitor for whom she waited opened one of the entrances behind
her to enter the dark theater.

“I’m down here, General Harrison,” and Kelly
raised her hand to help the general as his eyes adjusted to the
darkness. “I’ve saved a seat for you down here in the front
row.”

Kelly felt her grip tighten on her seat.
General Harrison had immediately answered her request for a
consultation. He had set off from the military offices housed in
the Black Rock space station the moment she asked to speak with
him, and while the general traveled to reach Neo Madrid, Kelly had
waited in her cherished cinema and done her best to calm her nerves
by focusing her attention on what the world had once been.

“I’m grateful for your invitation to your
castle, Governor Chen.”

General Harrison smiled very softly in his
crisp military uniform, the ribbons from his tours fighting against
the savages on Earth gleaming softly as the ghosts on the movie
screen flickered. Kelly stood from her seat, and she winced at a
dull ache that had settled into her knees, making her wonder if
such discomfort was yet another indication of the years the
decision facing her had overnight thrown upon her petite figure.
The general accepted her hand, and Kelly was surprised by the
warmth of the hand the general offered to her. She had expected the
general’s fingers to feel like stone.

Kelly smiled. “I feel I should be thanking
you, General. You’ve answered my request very quickly.”

“I wish I could’ve arrived sooner,” and the
general waited for Kelly to sit first before he followed, “but each
castle has a security checkpoint now that forces the space tram to
stop at every entrance platform. They put me through a security
scan at every stop. Even my uniform couldn’t slip me past the body
x-rays.”