Despite the absorptive powers of the seat Hugo Jones felt sweat trickle down his temples while he struggled to keep his arms horizontal. His muscles felt like they were being torn by the weights dragging down his wrists but he had to persevere. The slightest weakening would pull his arms against the stingers; and the howls around him stressed the horror of that. Cruel, slow seconds crept by till finally a beep announced the end of the exercise. Groaning, Hugo lowered his arms. His whole body ached, which was not surprising, because the muscle exercise had been unusually severe this time. He wondered why, but shook the thought at once. That was a lesson he had learned long ago: to survive as a Damned One, you were to ask nothing and think as little as possible.
He felt the tremor of the metabolic tube in his abdomen while moisture was being pumped into his body to make up for the perspiration lost. The faint sense of hunger he had experienced also disappeared gradually, giving way to physical well-being.
The main lights went out and the screens on the wall across the narrow corridor brightened. Another Galactic war movie. Hugo grimaced. Why couldn't it be a sitcom for a change? He hadn't laughed in years.
He had no idea how long he had been in his seat. Terrestrial years at least. He called it a seat but in fact it was a complete survival unit. Every Damned One was placed in his or her own seat on the planet of condemnation and would not leave it before reaching the site of punishment. Nobody knew where that was or what the punishment meant. That was the worst. To be fettered to a seat for years, utterly unaware of the fate awaiting you. Artificially fed and lulled to sleep, occupied by the screen and exercised by that hellish structure that forced you to strain every muscle to avoid the stinger. One headlong fall into hell. He marveled that he had not gone whooping mad a long time ago. But perhaps he had. How could he tell?
Suddenly the screen went blank. This surprised Hugo. It had never happened before. A moment later the straps tying him to the seat were tightened. The seat turned, so that he faced the length of the corridor. He grew uneasy. What was going on? He stared at the back of the seat in front of him. In all those years he had never seen or spoken with the man in it. That was forbidden and disobedience meant pain and if pain did not help an anesthetic needle in your vocal cords ensured silence. Hugo only knew that it was a man by the small animal sounds of pain and fear and discomfort that he had uttered throughout the years.
The seats started to move forward, slowly. They made soft, scraping sounds as they slid through the corridor. Hugo drew a very deep breath. Was this to be the end? Were they approaching their doom? Before and behind he heard whimpering and sobbing. He grinned disdainfully. They were scared, the weaklings. He was not. Fear had become a stranger to him. He only felt anger, as always, but now it was whetted by his keen awareness of being helpless. Someone started to scream. The yells turned into howls of pain and broke off suddenly.
Hugo swallowed. The grin stuck to his mouth like glue. He still could not fully grasp being here. This punishment was only for the most brutal of criminals. He did not count himself among them, however great his crime had been. His stomach played up, on the verge of turning, but the tube twitched and a sedative was injected into his system. His nausea disappeared. But not his anger. He did not care a damn about having to die, but not like this, not like a fattened pig.
Right then he remembered nights, long ago, long before his life had foundered, lying content in bed, behind the soft and warm body of his first wife, everything secure and cosy and carefree. In those nights, when life had seemed perfect, weird and chilling thoughts had sometimes entered his mind. A sudden awareness that outside his safe grotto there was a universe full of blood-smeared dungeons, gallows groaning under their loads, mass graves filled with stacks of corpses still shivering with life while the bulldozers moved in. Sick, inconceivable thoughts they had been. But now it was just as inconceivable that somewhere men like him were cuddling up to their women, whispering words of lust and tenderness.
How had it ever come to this? His record read genocide. Mass murder. He drew a scornful smile. Mass murder. All he had done was drop a flask of bacteria. A flick of the wrist. It had seemed so easy at the time. Infect a pure colony, let the disease work its havoc for a year and go back to fill your pockets. But when his mates and he returned, all they found was a sleepfog and a rude awakening in the cells of an intergalactic police ship.
The row of seats moved steadily on, in and out of corridors, like a conveyor belt in a slaughterhouse. Occasionally someone in the row lost his nerve, burst into screaming and was speedily silenced.
The trip seemed endless, through narrow corridors and large, twilit halls. They must have left the ship a long time ago. But for what?
Then, for the first time in years, he saw people, walking, hurriedly, all in uniform, soldiers and nurses. Hugo's first sight of them almost moved him. He wanted to grin, wave, exchange a look of understanding. But nobody paid any attention to the row of seats moving by. He tightened his jaw. Butcher's meat. That was all they were. And even if they had all committed crimes of the very worst kind, they were still human beings. No sentient soul deserved this kind of treatment.
The seats reached a broad white passage, with numerous doors on both sides. Hugo saw the seats ahead turn right or left and disappear behind a door one by one. He could not see whether there was any marking on the doors because of the side panels on the seat. His heartbeat quickened. It would not be long now. He clenched his fists. Not like this. Not like this! His anger became stifling. He strained for breath. If only he could do something. He tugged at the straps but it was useless. The seat in front of him swung to the left. His moved a little farther and swung to the right. The white door slid aside and he advanced into a fierce white light so blinding that he had to close his eyes. He tensed, expecting the final blow. An eruption of pain. But it did not come. The lights went down and he was in a small, soberly furnished room. Facing him in an easy chair, sat a small, dapper woman, in a white leather uniform, legs crossed, a data pad on her lap. Her face was beautiful, with sharp lines and an icy expression. Her honeyblonde hair had been brushed in an absurd wave across her skull.
"Hugo Jones?"
His mouth was so dry that he could not speak. He nodded. The woman moved her fingers across the data pad and studied the results.
"Genocide," she mumbled to herself. "Typical act. Severe psychopathic traits. Emotional starvation. Weak sense of standards. Erotic frustration. Marginal case."
She looked up. Her eyes were uncannily large, pale blue orbs that hardly left any room for the whites. The pupils were jetblack specks.
"Any illusions left, Jones? Or do you just want to lie down and die?"
Completely in control again, Hugo grinned contemptuously at the absurd question.
"Of course not," he snapped.
"That's not such a matter of course," said the woman, staring at him without a blink. "Most of those who have spent a few years in the seats, are only too happy to die. But you still want to extend life?"
"Like hell I do,"
"What's your attitude towards your crime?"
"I regret it," he said quickly. A strange, confusing sensation stirred inside him. Hope.
"That's just talk. Try again."
Feverishly Hugo searched his mind for the answer that might be expected of him.
"I did not realize what I was doing," he said.
"According to my information you and your accomplices caused the deaths of 17,553 colonists. The planet was declared inaccessible for two hundred years. Quite a feat. Would you say that you have amends to make?"
"Sure I do."
"You're lying through your teeth," she said. "But that's all right. I think we've got something here. I'll advise my superiors to give you a try." She caressed the data pad and the straps binding him to the seat snapped loose. The needle of the metabolic tube was withdrawn.
"You will stay well clear of me," said the woman. "Or you'll just be a heap of ashes." She waved vaguely at a kind of camera that was suspended from the ceiling, a burner, aimed at Hugo.
He nodded.
"Pay attention now," said the woman. She swung her chair round and touched the data pad. The lights went out and one of the walls of the room moved aside, offering a view of a breathtaking void. A sheet of black velvet.
"You are looking out of the known universe. Beyond lies the primordial cosmos. Everything out there already existed before the Big Bang. Things unspeakable and unimaginable. Awesome powers that can probably blot us out at one swoop if they tried. But our fortune is that the Outsiders, as we call them, are very cautious. They explore with the shyness of a deer. They only act when they believe they are completely certain of success. We take advantage of that. We give criminals like you a little mental modification and then shoot them into space to serve as lures. That gives us a chance to test the reactions of the Outsiders."
Hugo grew weak as he gazed into the boundless darkness and thought of being surrendered to those so‑called Outsiders.
"Can I ask a question?" he said.
"That's unusual, but go ahead."
"What's this mental modification?"
"Some brain functions are neutralized. The Outsiders appear able to fathom the contents of any biological brain. This means that the memory of a single human being would enable them to get a very good picture of our civilization. That is why all lures have their memories either completely removed or modified surgically in such a way that a distorted image of the system is created. In short, during their probes the Outsiders only encounter babbling amnesiacs or lunatics."
Hugo could not believe his ears.
"But that's monstrous," he said, clammy with revulsion.
"Right," said the woman. "That's why it's good to have monsters like you. And it works like a charm. Based on information obtained from our lures, the Outsiders have already undertaken several attacks that were so clumsy that we could beat them off easily. In sort, they don't understand the first thing about us and that is why they do not dare to mount a full‑scale attack."
"But why are you telling me this, if you're gonna blot out my mind anyway?"
"I have other plans for you. We are detecting some reluctance among the Outsiders. They're not biting anymore, so to speak. That may mean that they have decided to leave us alone, but it might also mean that they intend to surprise us. That is why we want to draw them out. We are switching to the attack. But the lures cannot do that alone, so we need a pilot who knows what he is doing. You may become that pilot."
A wave of joy passed through Hugo. Saved! After all those hopeless years. He was certain he would find a way to escape once he was allowed to leave with a ship. He found it hard to hide his glee.
"You need not harbor any illusions, though," said the woman. "We are leaving nothing to chance. Everything will be programmed in such a manner that you either do exactly what we want or..... die."
Hugo nodded meekly, but inside he was almost crowing with pleasure. He was an expert in self‑destruction systems. He did not fear these goons. Freedom dawned.
His first hope was quickly dashed. Little was left to chance indeed. He was even given a synthetic back-up memory.
"Taken from the brain of a guinea person on a Holocene planet," said the surgeon. "Of course it would have been much easier to take the brain itself, but the Ethical Laws forbid that. Thanks to this specially prepared memory the Outsiders will get a picture of our world as it was in prehistoric times. It is triggered by any abnormal influence on the brain. Your biological memory will be destroyed at the same time. It will only hurt briefly. Otherwise you won't notice a thing. You'll just think you are a prehistoric man. A Cro‑Magnon Man." The surgeon chuckled. "Who knows? Perhaps you'll like it."
Hugo clenched his fists so violently that his nails dug into the flesh of his palms. Murder most foul, but also most discreet. Fiendish. He shrugged his shoulder, not wanting to give the surgeon the satisfaction of seeing his dismay.
His trainee year had been completed. Hugo was ready to take the spacecraft into primordial space. He spent his last hours alone, behind the window of his luxurious cell, with his legs on a table, cigar in mouth, glass in hand, looking out at his floating coffin. The ship was dozens of kilometers outside the atmosphere but it was so big that it hung like an enormous rectangular moon in the evening sky, snowy white.
Hugo was in a somber mood. He no longer believed in the possibility of escape. They really appeared to have thought of everything. For five years he was to scour the outer cosmos. If he survived that, he could return and would be free. The chance of this happening was ridiculously small. But it was still better than nothing.
He took a sip. This wasn't going to work. He felt it and the knowledge that sooner or later he would no longer be himself made him reminisce, which did little to improve his mood.
Devoid of kindness, his youth as the son of an embittered colonist on a barren planet. His young days spent in the stifling atmosphere of the hothouse, always tampering with machines that were too old to work properly. Lying awake every night to listen fearfully to the rows of his parents. His drunken father, his fanatically religious mother. Most terrible by far the riot of their rare intercourse. Dad snorting like a pig, mom shouting psalms at the top of her voice. And everywhere the rustbrown sand that seeped in through walls and floors, like blood.
Shunned by all at school. The boys fearful of his strength and silent anger, the girls shuddering at his somber, brooding looks, both unnerved by his strange palomino coloration: bronze skin, ash-blonde hair.
Having returned home one afternoon, a little later than usual, he found his mother laid out on the kitchen floor, her hands devoutly folded around the handle of a knife sticking in her chest. A trail of black stars in the sand led to the barn. Without going to look Hugo had known that his father was swinging from a beam there. He remained in the kitchen doorway for several minutes before turning, with a ghastly grin, to make the 5‑kilometer walk back to town and enlist with the space marines.
He had relished combat and the admiration of his mates whenever he gambled his life, taunting every apparition of death and always winning. It made him feel good to slay enemies. To look down on a lifeless opponent brought a brief stillness to the anger that otherwise raged inside him, relentless like a howling gale that drowned out everything else. He could never shake the feeling that life should not be the way his had always been.
His first marriage had been a mystery to him. He had not loved, had not known how or even dared to try, important though she had been to him. Before her he had only cared about animals, in secret, all too briefly, till his father found out and killed them. The only creature he had known for a little longer had been Spartakus, his chameleon spider, invisible to strange eyes in the top of his attic room, at the verge of a web of finely spun glass. Ah, Spartakus, so beautiful, so patient, so explosive. The only love in his youth, source of his last, copious tears, when one gusty winter's day it suddenly dropped from its web, shriveled.
His first wife had been called Emmy‑Lou. She deceived him in the end. Red‑bodied. Hugo had laughed homerically at first but, snapping out of it, battered the couple so badly that it got him three years' hard labor and dishonorable discharge from the forces.
After that he went downhill fast. Women. Liquor. Mercenary work. Crime. But above all: the anger. The chill and swelter of ire. Not like this. Anything, Cruel God, anything but this. Always a sense of being in the wrong place, at the wrong time, doing the wrong things. It enraged him, made him need to hurt anyone who gave the slightest occasion, leading to prison cells and labor camps, and finally complete indifference. A deep-frozen soul.
The Nemesis was the latest spacecraft carrier of the extragalactic class. Hundreds of man‑years had gone into perfecting its armament and range. It offered room to two hundred fully automated space fighters that possessed such an abundance of fire power that they could cut their way through a meteorite swarm by their guns alone. In addition there were thousands of missiles, bombs and guns aboard, while the carrier contained a fully automated ammunition factory to make up for any losses.
"With this jewel you can lay waste an entire galaxy," said General Oban happily, while he maneuvered the shuttle to the dizzying hulk of the carrier.
Hugo did not react. He felt sick. Perhaps he should have stopped trying long ago. It never worked out anyhow.
Still, he spent the first month in a whirl of enjoyment. The ship went its automatic way, while he wallowed in the facilities installed for him. An inexhaustible supply of three‑dimensional movies, exquisite food and drinks and courtesan robots. But boredom followed fast. After that first month communication with the base became harder. Magnetic hurricanes infested the periphery of the galaxy, destabilizing nearly all electronic equipment while they raged. A few weeks later he could no longer be bothered to attempt any direct contact.
Alone in darkness. All alone. He had always thought of himself as a loner, but only now, roaming through the lethal silence of the ship's vaults and catacombs, did he realize exactly what it meant to be alone.
Without much conviction he started his investigation of the safety systems that had to prevent him from abusing the ship. Their design was as simple as it was effective. Any order that he gave the navigational computer was compared with the objective of the mission. Any deviation had to be explained. If the explanation was not compatible with the flight plan the order was simply not executed. In addition robots followed him day and night. They kept him out of certain spaces.
He soon realized that in the given circumstances there was nothing he could do. So he decided to wait for the encounter with the Outsiders. If the ship sustained enough damage, new possibilities might arise.
After four monotonous months a shower of meteorites drilled so many holes in the ship's skin that his guardians had to convert to repair robots to save the ship, which gave him some freedom of movement.
His first goal was the lure quarters. He hankered after human company. Later he often wished he had never gone there.
When the door moved aside, a cacophony of voices beat about his ears like a flock of startled birds. In front of him, in dismal gloom, rows of seats extended beyond the line of sight. The wretches in them were physically healthy, it was true, well‑fed and cared for, but mentally they roamed the deepest regions of hell. Faces so distorted by sorrow and pain that they were no longer human.
Struck dumb with horror Hugo shuffled between the rows. Eyes swollen shut with weeping, voices hoarse with lamenting. Everywhere the blank stares of the mindless. Hugo had been hardened. He had seen much but this was way beyond everything. With a lump in his throat he stopped and looked about at the boundless misery. How could anyone think this up? What right of existence had a society built on this?
He wished ardently that he possessed the means to put these wretches out of their misery. But he had none.
When he came to a bearded man, a giant of a fellow, who dangled head down in his seat, wracked by sobs and whimpering with grief, Hugo could take it no longer. He went up to the man, placed his hands on his throat and pressed till the man whimpered no more.
He was just about to turn to flee this netherworld, when his eye caught sight of a young girl. She was watching him attentively. A smiling face, bright and lively. Virgin innocence.
Hugo froze in surprise. A normal human being? Some mistake? He walked up to her.
"Hello," said the girl cheerfully. "You must be new here. I'm very glad to make your acquaintance."
She could not be much older than eighteen. Her red, frizzy hair framed a very pale, very delicate face, with a sprinkling of freckles around her nose. Her eyes were big and wondering, her smile sweet and eager. She was the prettiest girl he had ever seen. Hugo gave a few tugs at the straps tying her to the seat. He had to get her loose. The girl looked down.
"Hey, look at that," she said. "I'm tied up. I can't get out."
"Just wait," said Hugo. "I'll get you loose."
She looked up.
"Hello," she said cheerfully. "You must be new here. I'm very glad to make your acquaintance."
Appalled, Hugo drew back.
The girl's eyes wandered away from him.
"Where am I?" she asked. "This doesn't make any sense at all."
She looked at him again.
"Hello," she said cheerfully. "You must be new here. I'm very glad to make your acquaintance."
With a curse Hugo turned away and ran, as fast as he could.
The months strung together to a year. Hugo went to seed. He neither washed nor shaved anymore. He just lay in his navigation chair and gazed out into the primordial tar, usually stupefied with liquor, and brooded about his wasted life. Occasionally he kicked one of his robots to pieces, but it did not serve any purpose, because one hour later the thing would be reassembled by another robot. Still, it offered him a brief satisfaction.
The Outsiders showed no sign of their existence. Now and then a lure would die. It was ejected automatically. Hugo was always glad to see it happen. Something had changed inside him. His hardness was no longer what it had been. Occasionally he also went to take a look at the girl in seat 324 but carefully avoided her heartrending greeting. His anger did not change, however. It only grew. He dreamt of breaking the safety code one day and turning this fort around to descend like a true Nemesis on his fellow beings and repay them for everything that they had done to him and ‑ oh, miraculous transformation ‑ the others.
After exactly 402 days and 14 hours the Outsiders came. Hugo was lying, true to form, half drunk in his chair and studied the void. Suddenly a nebula developed at 2 o'clock, purple, with expanding tendrils, like a big translucent starfish. At first he thought he was hallucinating. Then he shot bolt upright. Nimbly his fingers pranced across the keyboard. The first twenty soundings were negative. The twenty‑first identified the nebula as a sheet of antimatter. Hugo fired a black grenade and gone was the nebula.
Sinking back with a sense of satisfaction, he had to rise before his back touched the chair. New nebulas, poisonous green this time. Forty‑four soundings had no effect. The tendrils slithered towards him like the arms of an octopus. He launched four lures. They were immediately grasped by the tendrils and pulled away. It smarted Hugo, but he comforted himself with the thought that now at any rate they would be put out of their misery. Or so he hoped.
The third incident came as a complete surprise. Energy shafts suddenly sliced through the ship like knives through butter. Hugo had only just enough time to activate the power shields before the indicator needles reached the critical point and automatic self‑destruction. Once the screens were in position, the danger receded rapidly. He launched forty lures, taking care to skip number 324, not really knowing why.
Dozens of sleepless hours followed. The ship was assaulted from all sides. Meteoric whirlwinds arose, black pits opened their abysmal maws, nuclear explosions splashed their rainbows across the backdrop of primordial black. Hugo came alive. He savored the combat. His fighters gamboled around the carrier like dolphins and led it straight through nightmares of extragalactic monsters. Shaking with laughter Hugo sat at his controls. He would not mind dying now. This was how it should be. Like this. At last. Like a wild cat, spitting and clawing, till the end.
The fight lasted several weeks. Losses became critical. The inboard factory could no longer handle the repairs. Nor did he have any lures left. He even had to sacrifice 324. As a final resort Hugo decided to employ his biological weapons. The Nemesis became a fountain of bacteria and viruses. Swinging round its axis, the ship spewed disease from all barrels.
The effect was stupendous. One moment Hugo's view was a kaleidoscope of lugubrious forms and colors, and his ears rang with the beeping and screaming of alarm systems, the next moment the heavens were empty, the cabin mute as death.
Deeply astonished Hugo sat in his chair and looked about. Not a thing in view. As if someone had turned a switch. A few fighters came fluttering back from the void like wounded birds.
It took minutes before Hugo could finally believe what had happened. Then he dropped back with a sigh and fell asleep at once.
The ship thundered on. Apparently its makers had not reckoned with a victory. That was something. Hugo did not dare register that the mission seemed completed. He had a sneaky feeling that he would invite his own doom by doing so. He devoted himself to breaking the safety code. Soon it appeared to be a hopeless task. During combat he had possessed free control of the ship. Now it ran like a train in its tracks again. Not the slightest change of course was accepted by the computer. Moreover he had to be careful with those attempts. If he gave too many wrong orders, the ship would self‑destruct.
One day, after a drunken fall in the catacombs of the ship, he found a ball of crumpled foil behind a heating tube. It was a page from an installation manual for a photogeneric compass. It told him little but set him thinking. He had often wondered about the ship's navigation. How could it keep course in the void? There was nothing to steer by. That compass explained a lot. There were still some known light sources behind him, easily matched with galactic 4D maps to pin-point his location. He instantly saw opportunities. The data were obviously collected in hidden files but now that he knew what to look for, he should be able to find those files and modify the data to gain control of the ship. He rubbed his hands in glee. Freedom dawned.
Sadly, things were not as simple as he had imagined. He did find the data and could modify them at will, but the navigational computer refused to accept them. At first this did not worry him. After all, he had all the time in the universe. But that also changed when the light sources got weaker. Space was empty, but not entirely, containing all kinds of debris, bodies, interferences. The system began to fail. Alarums would go off for no particular reason. His screen flashed red warnings, accusing him of navigational interference, giving him sixty seconds to stop whatever he was doing, which was nothing at all. The system managed to recover, probably by upgrading its reception of the light signals, but this, obviously, could not go on for ever. It made him spend every waking moment in search of delivery.
Finally his relentless delving into all the hidden nooks and crannies of the mainframe led him to a single, corrupted little file that had been programmed to self-destruct but had not. This seemed to be his salvation. It contained data from the Outsiders' attack, and hence the trigger to release the ship from all automatic controls. If he could repair and duplicate it, he could feed the data into the system whenever he wanted and have free control of the ship. This time he got lucky. The corruption was only a minor syntactic omission, repaired with a few keystrokes. Now he only needed to execute the file. He paused, taking a deep breath. The next tap of the key would decide his fate. If it worked, his life would start anew. If not, he might trigger his own death. Clenching his teeth, he hit the key.
Instant, unspectacular success! His monitor changed into a forward view of the universe with a simple HUD superimposed on it, like in a computer game; only this one was for real, giving him complete control of the ship.
Aha! A boisterous laugh sprang from Hugo's throat. He changed course. The total darkness graded into a grayer shade of black and then into the faint glitter of his own, faraway galaxy. His joy was boundless. Drunken ecstasy. He righted himself in his chair.
"This is it, buddyboys!" he roared and threw the main engine switch.
Hugo went berserk. At last he had mastered his fate. At long long last he had found the right way. They would pay. Each and everyone of them. For each smile that had died on his lips before it could beam, for each tear that had dried long before it could reach his eyes, millions would die. He would strip that Christmas tree. Single‑handedly.
`"Doomsday!" he howled and slapped his thighs in anticipation. His only regret was that he had not been able to spare 324.
Barney Brownbread was an insignificant technician on the base. That was also why he had been given the sedative task of monitoring the Nemesis during its flight through nothingness. So it was not surprising that Barney was in the depths of a slumber when the Nemesis' change of course made his screen change color.
Barney did not notice until the coffee lady woke him. He did not believe his eyes. It could not be. Some slight malfunction. Nothing else. So he first drank his coffee at leisure before going to his back‑up screen. When it also displayed the color change, Barney got a little nervous. He alerted his chief, who assured him in fatherly tones that it could only be a malfunction. But half an hour later frantic sirens blasted the whole base awake. There was no denying it: the Nemesis had turned.
"But it simply is impossible!" shouted the master shipbuilder at the emergency meeting that had been called. "It cannot be."
"All right. It cannot, but it happened all the same."
"Now what?"
"Nothing. Wait and see. That ship can't be stopped. Maybe this convict means no harm. Maybe he only wants to return."
"Do you believe that? After everything he has been put through?"
"Not really."
"So?"
"We die, what else?"
"Can't we try to eliminate him?"
"Try? Sure we can always try."
Hugo's elation knew no bounds. Triumph. Total Power. Invincibility. He did not attack the main base at once, but kept the Nemesis in defensive mode and started to vandalize the outer planets. He wanted his prey driven mad with despair before he struck. Let them suffer the exquisite pangs of ever mounting fear as all their attempts failed to stop him and he moved in ever closer for the kill.
He just lolled in his chair, boozing, and watched the clumsy little enemy rockets approach the Nemesis. More than ever his fighters looked like playful dolphins as they circled the intruders and waited till the very last moment to pulverize them.
Cycles of time had passed. The Nemesis still rumbled through the galaxy, laying it waste. But Hugo no longer laughed. Grimly he sat behind his controls. He had cleansed all the outer planets. No stone unturned. No man, woman or child left standing. Like a lone Apocalyptic rider he galloped through space. But ultimately all this did not mean a thing. He felt as miserable as he had in the chair, so many years ago. Worse, even. Devoid of any emotion apart from a dull, relentless aching inside. Nothing mattered anymore. His heart pumped blood. His mind responded to outward stimuli. That was all.
Wrong again. Even revenge had lost its relish. But what then, in the name of Purgatory? Gladly, ecstatically, would he have sacrificed all his power to feel good for one single hour. He was sick and tired of life. He loathed it. Just being alive made him physically sick, to the point of gagging. Sick enough to die. Aye. There was a thought. Death. Oblivion. He was beginning to realize that this was the final chapter, no matter what. There was nothing beyond this. All the things that mattered lay in the past. The future held nothing but agony. Why bother? The more he thought about it, the more he embraced the idea. He could go out in a blaze of glory, pulverizing the planet that had spawned such a cruel species, himself included. The Nemesis had a Kamikaze mode, which made it a nuclear fragmentation bomb that could turn its target into a cluster of lethal mushrooms.
With a snarl he locked the ship into a collision course with Earth, hit the treble buttons to activate Kamikaze mode and sank into his chair. Two hours, 37 minutes left. To his pleasant surprise the deed gave him some cheer. Pale, weak and fleeting, but nevertheless. At long last he was going to be put out of his misery
The monitor on his console suddenly lit up. Giant letters flashed across the screen.
"Please grant us contact. We beg of you. For all our sakes, including yours. Please! Please! Please!"
He shrugged. Why not? He opened the communication channel.
The face, male, middle-aged, carefully groomed, winced at the sight of him, in obvious revulsion, but instantly slid into a bland smile.
"Mr Jones. I'm honored, privileged."
"Who are you?
"I'm Blonk, president of the United Nations of Earth. I represent humanity."
"So?"
"Please spare us. We know what you are doing. It will mean the end of humanity. Not only here but throughout the universe. They all depend on us."
Hugo grinned, took a huge gulp from the bottle and burped.
"Nope," he said, "I can't be bothered."
"But you don’t understand. You're our hero. You saved us from the Outsiders. We shall be happy to forgive you everything else. We have voted you the key to the world. You can have anything you want."
"Anything?"
"Anything!"
"Well, then I want my mom, Spartakus and 324. Think you can arrange that?"
"Sure. Absolutely. If it's humanly possible we'll do it."
"Well now, there's the rub. It ain't humanly possible. They're all dead. Revive them and I'm yours." He hit a key to close the communication channel and the screen went blank.
President Blonk gazed in disbelief at the dead screen.
"It's a nightmare," he said. "One man, dooming us all."
He looked up. The mightiest men in the universe were packed elbow to elbow at the round table. Politicians, soldiers, scientists, technicians, psychologists, thinkers.
"We've still got time," said a field marshal.
"Yeah, all of 55 minutes."
"Background?" asked the president. Assistants came running up.
"Mom: killed by father more than forty years ago. Spartakus: a spider killed by father. 324: female lure, sacrificed during encounter with Outsiders."
"Spider?"
"Forget it. What’s this female lure?"
The assistants explained. The president looked around at the pale, frightened faces.
"Any ideas?"
A psychologist rose.
"We could try the girl. Feed him some tale that she may have survived. Gain some time."
"Words alone won't convince him. Can we get a lookalike?"
"In 45 minutes? No way. We could, however, whip up a lifelike computer animation in half an hour."
"Do it."
Hugo switched his monitor to the frontal cameras. The image of the mother planet filled several screens on the walls. Earth in living color: blues and greens and browns swathed in veils of white, a pretty picture after all those years of blackness. Still, it meant nothing to him. It was too late. He had become too old and too decrepit for all the joys that a world could bestow.
Unmoved he watched the sphere grow. He had opened a little timer in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, counting down the minutes to impact. Eleven twenty-five. He wondered whether his feelings would change. Whether he would suddenly undergo a violent moodswing, repent, frantically go through the abort procedure.
"Not very bloody likely," he muttered, grinning to himself.
Three minutes later the screen began to shimmer. The creeps were trying to break in again. He reached for the key to jam all incoming traffic but just as struck it, the pretty, happily smiling face of a young girl flashed before his drunken eyes. He shot upright. 324! O God. A strange, electrifying emotion surged through him. He shuddered and the next moment his skull seemed to crack.
Confusion. One moment he was trotting through the fresh and fragrant dawn of a spacious pinewood, spear loosely in his right hand as he began to gain on the limping deer ahead, the next moment he was slumped in a strangely shaped boulder, in the midst of a tempest raging all around him, thunder rumbling, lightning flashing, the world itself groaning, moaning and trembling beneath him. As brave a warrior as he was, this was too much. Shaking with fright he threw himself on the ground, covering his head with his arms. This had to be the end of all, the doom foretold by sages. Any moment now a thunderbolt would turn him into a black skeleton, as he had once seen happen to an enemy. The netherworld awaited. He cowered on the floor tensing, braced for anything. But nothing changed. Glare, noise and movement all remained the same. This was odd. He had known lightning, thunder and quakes, but none had ever lasted as long as this.
Slowly he regained some courage. Perhaps this was not the end of the world after all. He raised his head. In disbelief he looked round. Nothing he saw made any sense. Odd shapes and wild colors and, maddening, the terrible, incessant drone of the ground itself. What place was this? All he could think of was some kind of cave. At any rate he was not outside. Only now did he notice that he, himself, had also changed. He was wrapped in strange skins, and his body felt weak and powerless. He shivered. Something was horribly wrong. Then it struck him. Witchcraft! Someone had cast an evil spell on him. He had seen it happen to others a few times. They went mad, seeing things that others could not see. All this was not real, but magic. His fear peaked again. There was no escape from bad magic, not without the help of a trusted magician, at any rate. He had to find one, if there was to be any hope for him.
He stood up. Stupefied by the weirdness surrounding him. The impossibly angular shapes, straight lines, the sameness of many little objects like squared gemstones. He took a deep breath. No point in idle lamentations. He had to do something. He looked around for some kind of weapon. His spear had vanished.
Just then, out of nowhere, a voice rang out.
"Alarm Phase Scarlet. Collision imminent. Negate Kamikaze mode to abort."
It meant nothing to him. Mere syllables. He looked around. He saw nobody. Bewildered he stood among all the consoles, the panels and controls. The voice kept repeating itself. He clasped his hands to his ears. His darting eyes chanced on a screen depicting the planet. At last he saw something he recognized. A view of rocks and water. It had to be the mouth of the cave. A way out! With a yelp of joy he ran towards it, clumsily, on unruly legs, but that did not matter; he was stumbling towards freedom. Just before he reached the exit, he ran headlong into an invisible wall. It almost knocked him out. Dazed he sat on the floor. The voice rang out again.
"Kamikaze mode locked. Eight seconds to impact. Eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one….."
Gieten, January 2011