“How do we know this will work?”
Icthyos’s voices ricocheted through my skull: WE DON’T.
It was an insane plan, with impossibly slim chances.
Doctor Zhang and I were in the Alien’s chamber. She had already said goodbye to Icthyos, and now it was my turn… but I couldn’t let the moment go. Over the last week, the Alien had begun to speak again. He had asked me so many questions, about what it was like to be a human. What it was like to be surrounded by people you cared about, and to work alongside them, instead - instead of plotting how you were going to stab them in the back.
“Cooperation is a beautiful thing.” I said to him, “I’m sorry you never got to experience it with us.”
WRONG.
I AM EXPERIENCING IT RIGHT NOW. AND IT IS MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN I COULD HAVE EVER IMAGINED.
We had grown close, in those final days. I wished it didn’t have to be this way, but when we asked Icthyos, he leaped at the opportunity to help. To be the *bait.*
I AM DOING THIS… FOR US.
“Good luck, Icthyos. I’ll see you on the other side.”
ON THE OTHER SIDE, HUMAN, Icthyos echoed.
The Sarcophagus ignited in a firestorm of light. I had to wipe my eyes, and it wasn’t all from the excess illumination. As the blazing Sarcophagus began to crack open, Doctor Zhang pulled on my arm.
Doctor Zhang said. “It’s time to go, Colonel. The light from the Alien’s ascension will-”
“-will become hot enough to melt steel.” I said to her, “Yes, I finally read your briefings. *All* of them.”
She flashed me a look. It was the closest I had ever seen her come to smiling.
Sweat pricked my brow, and I instinctively turned away from the light. We hurried out of the Chamber, as the Alien began a process that nobody would ever see in full. We had encased the exterior of the chamber in dozens of layers of heat resistant metal, so the light wouldn’t burn through and melt the Ship… but just in case it wasn’t one-hundred percent effective, Zhang and I didn’t stop hurrying until we reached the Elevators.
Anyway, we had our own part to play.
It was time to meet God.
The Ship’s pilots had been instructed to follow the Alien’s signals across the universes. When at last Icthyos made his ascension - ripping through the void between universes - we followed his signal.
Before Zhang and I made it halfway to the War Council, the speakers crackled to life:
“All hands. Prepare for jump.”
----------------------------------------
Nobody sat at the mahogany table. Not while the fate of all humanity hung in the balance. I leaned heavily on my cane and watched the Portal open before us.
Icthyos had explained the Enslaver God to us, but his words had failed to give us a sense of scale.
That vast pillar of light was as wide as a thousand suns and brighter still. This God was not infinite. But when you can’t see where God ends, and the Universe begins… it feels pretty damn close.
Icthyos was supposed to be distracting God, talking to him, luring God in with the false promise of new technology.
But instead, Icthyos was floating in space - a dozen lances of light pierced through his pathetic body. The mighty tendrils of God were squeezing Icthyos so hard, you could see the liquid life oozing out of him. Even from this astronomical distance, I could hear Icthyos’s screaming in pain.
“No! Let him go!” I shouted. It was a stupid, meaningless thing to say. Here was I, one small human out of billions, why should God listen to my voice?
But then, I had a feeling. And judging by the shift in the room, everyone else felt it too.
We were being watched.
A voice like the sound of a hundred thundering hooves shook my mind. “HAVE YOU COME TO BEG FOR MERCY?”
“Can it hear us?” Kuzminov asked.
And God’s word responded in all of our minds: “YES.”
Kuzminov started to speak, but I cut him off by slapping my cane on the table.
“You, God! We can do this one of two ways. All you have to do is stop what you’re doing. You must release our Alien friend, and release all of his kind. This is the easy way. Do you understand?”
The response was so vicious and so violent, I thought the Universe itself was splitting open:
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“GAZE UPON MY GRANDEUR, WORMS. SEE THAT YOUR END IS HERE!”
The Ship shook. Crates and boxes of equipment crashed to the floor all around the Warehouse. Somehow, the mahogany table started to splinter, and the only reason I kept my feet was because of the cane.
Something warm was dripping down my face.
“Do it!” the Russian hissed from the floor. His nose was bleeding, too. “Stop wasting time!”
“Alright then,” I said, wiping the blood off my face, “Guess we’ll do this the hard way.”
I nodded at Kangongo.
“Battle stations!” She roared. “Doctor Zhang, summon the portal!”
Zhang was already slamming her fist on the button. A beam of light ejected from our ship and pierced into the Pillar of Light. We had no idea if it would work, but our theory was that the Enslaver God was made of nothing more than an enormous amount of basic matter.
It was an excellent theory.
Where the beam touched, matter turned into wisps of steam. A black pit began to form on the Pillar of Light, burrowing hundreds of kilometers in seconds. Doctor Zhang pressed another button, and the space near the God began to shimmer and change, transforming into a black void.
It was a portal to our home universe, completely consumed by the Plague.
It was a portal to hell.
Tentacles, as thick as stars and as long as galaxies, shot out of the void portal. They were black and covered in open-sores that oozed organic matter. Each tentacle was covered in those Plague monstrosities: millions of jaws and teeth and claws and wings jittering with excitement.
The Tentacles were so eager, so hungry for matter, that they even slashed at each other, wrestling and wrapping mindlessly around themselves.
“YOU DARE USE MY OWN TOOLS AGAINST ME?” The God being was laughing like mad. “FOOLS. I AM THE MASTER OF THIS BLESSED PLAGUE.”
More tendrils of light erupted from the Pillar. They lanced towards our portal - but even God was careful not to touch it. Instead, God’s tendrils circled around the portal, beginning a complex pattern that would close it shut.
Compared to the Pillar of Light, the Plague’s massive tentacles looked pathetically small… but on Earth, we knew this: even the smallest viper can carry the deadliest venom. Tentacles grasped at the Pillar of God, and where the Plague touched, they turned the Pillar black.
Yet God seemed unbothered. God produced more tendrils of light and spun them around the blackened parts of itself. God was not healing the Plague away, but merely cutting the dead parts off.
Kangongo screamed, “Do it now!”
“I AM UNSTOPPABLE.” God roared with furious laughter, “I AM FOREVER.”
The timing was perfect. As soon as the God Pillar spoke, it’s tendrils caught on an invisible web where even the light itself froze in place.
Icthyos’s invention was tiny, next to the cosmic scale of the God Pillar. But his invention was truly new, and neither God nor any being had never seen technology that could stop time. A thousand invisible strands were stretched across the void, sticking to the God Pillar so that it could not pull its tendrils away from the Plague portal.
Our power was rapidly draining. All the lights in the Ship and even the engines themselves were flickering. The web would only last a few more minutes, but that was all the Plague needed.
More tentacles ripped forth from the portal. While several of the Tentacles were also caught in the web… most of them were not. They slipped through the strands, seeking the brightest, most brilliant source of energy in this universe.
They slammed into the Pillar of Light.
And where they touched, they grew. And where they grew, the Pillar of Light began to darken.
It roared in terror. It stretched and writhed, pulling itself away from the Plague… but it could not break free from itself. Tentacles writhed and wrapped around the Pillar, squeezing into it and spreading this black corruption.
The universe began to tremble and shake.
GO! I heard Icthyos’s voice in my mind, though it was weak. GO, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.
God had retracted his lances from the Alien, but Icthyos was a crumpled thing, broken and dying and floating alone in the universe.
“Kuzminov,” I said. “Bring us to bear. Get us to that Alien.”
“*Da,* Colonel. No Alien left behind.”
Our Ship, which was only the size of the Moon, ducked and weaved across the endless space of a dying universe, with the plague raining down all around us. And all the while, God was being devoured from the inside out.
We scooped up Icthyos, and a pained sigh escaped my lips as I saw how his body had been brutalized. Then, we opened one last portal, before disappearing into another universe.
The portal closed behind us, the screams of a dying God echoing in our wake.
EPILOGUE
For years, we had been starved of the stars. We had watched all the night sky slip into darkness.
But in this universe, you could bathe in the light.
The whole sky glistened with billions of brilliant jewels. Lights of every conceivable color. Many of the galaxies refused to stay still; there were bands of stars that drifted slowly across the sky, some marching in bands across the sky, others making slow, swirling arcs.
Even if I live another hundred years, I still don’t think I’ll understand how all this beauty is possible.
Sonya went on to lead the change for all Humanity, helping to craft the new government that would stretch across the Stars. I always said she deserved more than to be stuck in that Ship. And now, it’s almost impossible to get a meeting with her these days.
But she still makes time for me. “Her Mentor,” she calls me, though I think she honors me too highly.
Kangongo, Kuzminov, and Burren I get together once a week, for drinks under the night sky. Sometimes even the good Doctor Zhang shows up, when she can tear herself away from all her new discoveries. There’s so much to talk about, but we almost always end up talking about old times. What we had left behind on Earth.
They’re the only people who don’t think I’m strange for wanting to sleep outside.
I always sleep outside now. I put a fire on, and crawl into my sleeping bag, and curl up next to Icthyos’s monument. And I count the stars until I fall asleep.
It’s not a claustrophobia thing, though sometimes being under a roof does make me feel trapped.
No, it’s about the night sky. You don’t know what a good thing the stars are until you’ve seen them all go dark.
Sometimes, I pretend Icthyos is still here. I’ll pretend I can still hear his voice, in my head. And I’ll tell him stories about humans who are really good at working together. Those were his favorite.
I also talk to the stars themselves. I know. I know I sound mad. But I like to thank them all, one by one. Just for existing.
THE END.