Instructions for worshiping the stars and our Almighty Fathers who art in the heavens:
1.All matter that constitutes life originated from the elements forged within the hearts of stars.
2.Thou shalt honor the stars through every stage of their heavenly cycle.
3.Thou shalt keep the star of one’s nursing at the center of your worship.
4.Neither matter nor energy may be created or destroyed, only altered.
5.Thou shalt recognize the inherent spiritual immortality of indestructible matter.
6.Any body in the universe attracts any other particle with a force that is proportional to the product of the masses of the two particles and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
7.Thou shalt come to terms with cosmic insignificance.
Those who do not follow these directives are damned for their souls to be lost to the dust and dark matter between constellations.
Beyond the smogged veil of greenhouse gasses in the planet’s upper atmosphere, the sun raged upon all who dared to bask in its light.
Lucic Trimbell stepped off his transport onto the platform of what should have been a private starport. At once, he realized the Venusian State did a worse job at suppressing media coverage of his arrival than he could have dreaded.
The Danilovan press—if the tabloids and society columns that clambered for his comments could even be called that—was notoriously vicious. Still, he was shocked when someone grappled with his precautionary visor and lead suit, his cursing reactions amplified by the microphones being shoved under his face.
The predators scattered like cockroaches at the sound of two loud cracks ringing out across the sky. The Terran general turned to the individual who had fired the gun and was glad to be rescued by a fat, sun-spotted man with round spectacles. The noise itself was an artificial supplement to the quiet phasers, but it got the threat across. The stranger urged him to come along, sweeping him away from the hungry journalists toward another small, waiting shuttle.
“My thanks,” Trimbell tried to smile, though he realized quickly that the action would not mean much through the gas mask. The Venusian’s only response was a gruff noise of courtesy before the General was told to fasten his buckles and straps. The monorail metal beetle was fired forward with an awful rattling, the acceleration pushing him against the faux leather seat. This was far from the diplomatic courtesy he had been expecting, but he quickly rationalized that it would not draw excess attention.
The sparkling capital city moved under and over them with speed enough to have made the Terran sick if his body were not so adeptly trained for the resulting G-forces. Danilova City was an amalgamation of tenements, basilicas, and rolling highways, all of which were suspended in the sky above the noxious surface of the greenhouse planet. Even still, the filtered air through Trimbell’s mask seemed too thick and warm to breathe comfortably, and the red-hot sky blazed through the carbon-glass windows of the transport vehicle in defiance of its interior air conditioning. He raised a square silk handkerchief to blot at his sweat-beaded forehead. Through tinted eyeglasses, he squinted at that angry golden giant taunting him from the heavens, gilded and glistening with the very danger that had brought him to this planet in the first place.
“Where are we going?” Trimbell inquired as he watched the silhouette of the Terran embassy disappear in the blink of an eye. His escort, who had still not spoken much of anything to him, considered his ability to answer the question before he elected to do so.
“Somewhere private,” he said rather cryptically, though before Trimbell could demand further information, the transport shuddered to a halt, lurching him forward against his seat straps. The Terran started to think he was being jolted around on purpose, but the spectacled man stood up with ease, shouting at the pilot in a demanding Venusian tongue to open the transport door.
He was not lying about their destination. Trimbell stepped out toward a privately reserved suite and thought to hesitate at the entrance. It lasted a moment before he disregarded it, the door opening from the other side. The air was mercifully cooler within the quarters, and the moment the threshold sealed back behind him, he checked the scanner at his wrist before determining it safe to unfasten his gas mask.
There was another man in the room. Finally, the one Trimbell had been expecting to see. Ambassador Musa Voske stood straight-backed in the center of the square chamber, which the general felt obligated to observe properly before even acknowledging the Venusian dignitary. Seamless metal walls, two plastic chairs bolted to the floor, and a dove-gray carpet that indented beneath his boots.
Voske was taller than him by a few inches and was blessed with well-balanced features that made his face naturally easy to look at. His burnished gold hair had been combed back and set with petroleum gel, and his rich brown skin seemed to radiate in a way that would have suggested youth, if not betrayed by the hard lines of wisdom and stress around his amber eyes. He could not hide the fact that he was every bit as exhausted as his counterpart, but he was damned to try.
“General,” Voske’s easy smile did not have its desired effect–the Terran thought he might crawl out of his skin with trepidation if he were not so experienced in maintaining his nerve.
“Your Excellency,” Trimbell returned.
“May I get you a drink?” He was already pouring two glasses of something amber and opaque, and Trimbell thought better of refusing it. Venusians were notoriously duplicitous, choosing to solve their intergalactic issues with diplomacy over war in almost every instance, but this one went out of his way to be particularly charming, as if this truly was a state visit.
“Yes, I could use one.” He took the glass and indulged in a large sip in sync with his coequal before they both set the drinks down, neither of the glasses to be touched for the remainder of the visit. “Is this place bugged?” He could think of no way it would not be.
“It is, yes,” it was still a more direct answer than he had been expecting. The Terran thought to protest but was promptly handed a blinking box, which he was quick to recognize as a recording device. “It is merely for accountability purposes–I’m sure you understand.” Unappreciative of his dismissiveness, Trimbell narrowed his eyes and demanded–
“Was the purpose of this visit not secrecy?” Voske gave a huff of something like amusement.
“The purpose of this visit, General, was to talk about the issue at hand while circumventing the circus that we would no doubt come up against in a Celestial Summit.”
Trimbell hissed a concession through his teeth, unable to find a fault in that reasoning. If the nations of Sol’s orbit were to convene, the conversation would fracture into a hundred subcommittees before the end of the first hour.
Rather than focus on the destruction and invasion at the Terrestrials’ doorstep, the planets and moons would fall into a discussion of tariffs and trade rights. Never mind striving toward any unilateral cooperation—the unions of Luna had already begun to use the existential threat to further thrash against the reins and bridle that Earth held on them and their manufacturing capabilities, for which the satellite world had become a shackled powerhouse. If only the truth saw the light of day, the solar panel industry would be foaming at the maw, sounding every alarm at their disposal. If a representative from the moon was even allowed at the summit, one Martian dignitary or another would yank the poor soul into a private room to discuss how this would affect their Silk Road moving forward.
That was just the inner Terrestrials, as well–Trimbell shuddered to imagine the amount of political spectacle and ring-kissing that would be put toward trying to earn cooperation from any state past Saturn. Titan might offer funds for research if the Venusians could sweet-talk their oligarchs, but Pluto and Ceres would laugh with their heads to the skies at the thought of aiding the fight against something that originated from the sun. After all, it was too far away to be their problem–were those not the words that had been used by Terrestrials so many times to justify their absence in Outer Ring affairs? Venus and Earth had never cared much for the tribulations and plagues that had devastated the dwarf planets in their history, crushing the colonies there with war and famine before leaving them further stranded at the borders of the Celestial Union.
Better this, then–two representatives with clear agendas, coming together in a private room to determine the fate of humanity in the solar system. Democracy at work, both thought to themselves sardonically.
“Fine,” Trimbell took the recorder eventually, turning over the outdated-looking device in his pale palms, “but I better not hear this over the stations. I run my mouth when I’m trying to get things done, and if you intend to fry me on a hot mic–” Voske held up a hand,
“You assume this will be published, General. You are mistaken,” assured the Venusian, taking a seat across the table from his Terran counterpart. “Believe me, we know the whispers of us. Our planets have not been at war for a century, and yet to you, we remain only spies and diplomats.”
“Have you not been both yourself?” Despite the absurdity of it, Trimbell’s lip tipped into a smile. “I read your dossier. I know what badges you have worn in your history, your Excellency. Nothing personal, just some research. I’m sure you understand.”
“Those occupations require that I be adept at keeping secrets,” he replied gracefully. “That is to say, whatever is said in this room will not be made public unless we agree upon it. If you cannot trust me on that, I am afraid you cannot trust me at all.”
“I don’t need to trust you,” Trimbell reminded him. “I just need to work to find a solution with you, no?”
“I suppose you can look at things that way.”
But the fact of the matter was, they were rapidly running out of time. It had been just over a standard Terran week since the emergence of the threat, which scientists had since dubbed Heliomobas: argon-based life forms that had emerged from a solar flare one morning with a vengeance, scattering across the light waves without any sign of malice or menace, until they made contact with an outpost on Mercury.
The result had been several thousand suffering from a viral plague of acute ultraviolet sickness, regardless of any assumed genetic defenses. The contagion had decimated the capital’s population by the time the other Terrestrials had even been properly alerted of the damage. The orbiting states had been in a frenzied state since, doing their best to stifle any information regarding the sudden violence of the sun itself.
“That all being said,” the general pointed out, “I don’t want to make you out to be a hypocrite, but your government has hardly been transparent with us about what progress you’ve made. You’re closer to the source; surely you have something.”
“Allow me to remedy that—I’ll be the first to inform you that we have successfully captured a batch of live Heliomoba specimens and that they are being contained in a secure lab on the planet’s surface,” the Terran general visibly lit up behind the eyes, but he was hesitant to show more hope than that.
“And you’re able to keep them alive?”
“In stasis, but close enough,” spectroscopy signatures were able to indicate their argon composition, but other than that, they could only judge the virus based on its effects. Now, with any luck, they had an actual set of genomes humanity could untangle through further study. “We can study them efficiently without having to worry about them rotting if that’s what you’re referring to.”
“This is excellent news; thank you. Between our two nations, we have the greatest geneticists in the solar system,” Trimbell, though he considered himself a patriot, was far from a blindly proud nationalist. Even so, he hoped to convey a sense of pride regardless, wishing it would flatter his interlocutor.
It was not as if he was exaggerating the facts, either. After all, it had been geneticists who had allowed for the colonization of the solar system, perhaps more than any other branch of science. They had altered the human race in an act of unprecedented evolution, adapting their structures and biology over the generations so that the inhabitants of each world became truly localized to their environment decades ago.
“We both wish to study them,” Voske confirmed, but tilted his head, “Except I must ask what you plan to do with any information we receive once we have discovered all we can about their biology,” Trimbell blinked, the answer striking the concerned general as rather cut and dry.
“Why, we put an end to them, obviously.”
The Venusian looked genuinely sickened by the notion.
“Of course, you would suggest that.” Trimbell pressed his lips into a tight line.
“And of course, you would dare to scoff at it, even with so much on the line.”
He was not entirely surprised by this—the networks were continuing to put out print and polls about the prominent Sabaist sentiment concentrated within the Terrestrials closest to the system’s star. Even so, religious bias was not something he was used to having to take into account over such monumental decisions. Trimbell himself had been raised in a house still somewhat adorned with inherited yet tasteful depictions of crucified boys and their mothers, though the antique decor had never much influenced his and his family’s private relationship with the divine.
“Do we really think it is wise to go headfirst into biological warfare with a radioactive virus?”
“I contend we are already at war, Mr. Voske.”
“I suspect Terra thinks that, yes. Or else why would they have sent a general?” The ambassador sounded heartfelt, disappointed more than anything. Trimbell felt like he was being chided, the very notion of which was absurd and caused him to bristle against the suffocating, lead-lined linen of his tailored suit.
“If we were to stand by idly and let it demolish us as a species, we are not being pacifists; we are being milksops,” Trimbell stated, his frustration evident now, though truthfully the red in his face was just as due to the heat of the room as it was the broiling anger of a man whose time he felt was being wasted. “It shouldn’t matter that you’re Sabaist. Do you think that if you put lamb’s blood over your door, the ultraviolet-radiated Angel of Death will pass over your house?” he thought himself clever for coming up with the allusion on the spot, but Voske wasn’t quite so appreciative of the rhetoric.
“Venus is not a theocracy,” replied the ambassador. “That is why you think we should act secularly on this matter. Rest assured, General, this is not a matter of personal predisposition, nor are we a theocracy—we have become a religious institution completely organically. As of our last census, eighty-one percent of our population identified themselves as Sabaist. We are a government for our people primarily, and the consensus of popular sovereignty is that we refrain from eradicating a race born in the heart of our sun.”
“The public doesn’t know what they should want,” Trimbell spat. “Your city has measures built in for solar flares. For generations, you’ve had your skin modified for enhanced resistance to UV radiation. Plus, to my knowledge, you don’t face that many incidents of people throwing themselves into the sun.”
“Mm, you’re right on all but the last point,” remarked the Venusian. “But this is different from all of those things. Since our scientists were able to collect samples, we have uncovered elements that exist, so far as we know, nowhere else in our universe. Tell me that is not something holy.”
One would expect that as mankind pushed forth the frontier into space, they would lose their religion as a species somewhere along the timeline of revolution. And for a while, that had been the case. But as it turned out, there were always sections of humanity who wanted to find comfort in something greater than themselves, while refusing to neglect the strict rules of science.
Sabaism was sparked as a seamless mesh between the dogmas. When faced with their own overwhelming insignificance, mankind looked out to the stars that had burned and lived and died after eons without a speck of recognition, and they took solace in its incomprehensible enormity up until its explosive end. In their deaths, stars formed the element components necessary for all life, lending the cycles of eruptive nuclear fission and fusion to become humanity’s last remaining creation story. And when one accepted one was alone amongst the matter and the vacuum and the pin-pricked stars scattered through the heavens, that was enough.
“I have nothing against your religion,” Trimbell said after a sigh, hands knit tightly in front of him, having to make an effort not to wring them. “If you want to believe the burning balls of gas in our skies are holy, who am I to tell you otherwise? If you’d let your species be wiped out in the process of respecting your deities, that’s your prerogative.” As he said this, he set his briefcase on the short table, throwing the clasps and removing a tablet. From there, he navigated to a folder of images. “But as far as these victims and their living families are concerned, it's just quasi-sentient radiation being spewed out at us. It is nothing to worship.”
His holoscreen lit up with a graphic slideshow display, which Trimbell began to go through for the ambassador’s viewing: bodies laying in tarnished Mercurian hospital cots, bodies discolored and peeling from exposure, welts of pus dilated and bulbous beneath the paper-thin skin of the photograph’s civilians. He lingered on the children, just to see if Voske would look away. He did not.
He began to grind his teeth uncomfortably, the pull of human nature and pity threatening to sway him. Trimbell thought surely the diplomat had seen these pictures before, but he could not be sure.
Finally, the collection ended, and neither man spoke for several drawn-out seconds that they knew were too precious to waste for long.
“Our main focus should be finding a line of communication,” Voske resolved shakily. “A concern has always existed within the scientific community that if we were to encounter an alien species, it would simply be outside of our senses and perception to establish dialogue as if we are beings existing on separate planes of spacetime and reality. Even if this is the case, we must try.”
“And if we try and find out it’s all just reflexes and impulses? Little more than prokaryotic cells that we are lethally allergic to, as a species?” he said, “We cannot afford to be so damn ideological or philosophical about this, not when people have already died. Do you know what I think is holy, Ambassador? The people of Mercury and of our planets, our spouses, and our families and friends. I will not let them die so that some non-sentient, overgrown photons can live with your reverence. Speak to me like you have some semblance of a backbone—speak to me like a diplomat, a pragmatist. What do you think we should do?” All he needed to do was get Voske to put the option on the table for them both, and as the general studied the consideration passing over his trained expression of neutrality, he prayed he had broken through.
“I wonder if we could just give them Mercury, practice appeasement,” he gave little more hint of a smile than a twitch of his chapped brown lip, but Trimbell bore all his clenched teeth in a full, challenging grin. “What? You asked me to respond like a diplomat, did you not?”
“I suppose I did. That’s my fault.”
Musa Voske had been hoping that the joke would make the weight of his legitimate answer easier to bear. He was mistaken, but he said them aloud anyway.
“I think our best path forward is to consolidate the forces of our scientific communities. We study the enemy, develop countermeasures, and handle things with quiet efficiency,” his throat tightened visibly as he put forth his proposal, and Trimbell put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder before the general reminded him that even messiahs of the old faiths had to be sacrificed for humanity’s salvation.
#
THE SELENE POST
01.09.2280.
Despite the multilateral agreement reached by the governments of Venus and Earth to facilitate a mass exodus from Mercury in the wake of the Heliomoba threat, thousands were killed when more of the solar bacteria were ejected from a solar flare this morning. A majority of the 40,000 dead or injured were present as part of a Sabist pilgrimage that deliberately ignored the warnings put forward by the Inner Terrestrial states. This situation is still being monitored.
#
From there, the response was swift. Forty-thousand maimed was a large enough figure to spur the warhawks on Earth, but that was nothing compared to the fire it lit under those planets of the frontier, who had far less excess population to spare. If this onslaught could eliminate sun-hardened Mercurian families by the tens of thousands, then there was to be no debate or pointless hesitation regarding what needed to be done. It was us, or it was them.
And so, the summit of the United Celestials to decide the path to take forward against the Heliomobas was relievingly quick and dirty, concluding with a unanimous vote that would give humanity a proper avenue to show these radiated mites to see what they excelled at best: utterly eradicating things.
The choice was not made entirely without ceremony. Delegations from each summoned planet stood in silent blocks behind their sovereigns, or at least whoever was acting in their stead to cast the vote. By the time of the summit, no one doubted the outcome.
The Terran Chancellor cast her vote firmly in the ‘aye’ pool but did not give the speech many expected she would. Chancellor Barrons was not particularly loquacious, as far as politicians went, but instead was rather dour and well-read. While the position of an overarching sovereign of Earth held very little authority regarding issues on the planet itself, the Chancellor stepped into a new light of power whenever she was pushed forth as Earth’s offering to the other unions of the galactic frontier—to them, she was Mother Earth herself, a facade of unity to fool them into overlooking the ruptured internal affairs and corrupt politics which plagued Terra’s surface.
Her delegates—Trimbell among them—stood like toy soldiers in the magnetically levitated box adjacent to her platform, collectively stone-faced and grounded as ever as she spoke into the bead of the microphone. When the device had been silenced, the general watched her silently mouth the words “Stars help us all”.