On the moon Deimos. Rone refugee settlement.

There was a point in the distant past of Earth’s history, when it had been debated if Blacks or Natives were even human. Before universal consensus had been reached, missionaries were sent to convert them, to bring them Christ. Now was no different.

Natan had a swig of beer, letting the bitter liquid sit in his mouth a moment as he looked off to the horizon where Mars spun ideally; the red planet always looked sleepy to him in a way Earth did not. Perhaps it was because he knew what chaos was going on across the picturesque surface of emerald and turquoise.

Earth had encountered intelligent extraterrestrial life some hundred years ago, but contact was limited at first, progress slow. Other goldilocks planets were far away from Earth. The discovery of Source, the blue drug on Siddim, had pushed the Mega-Corps to back space exploration and tech. Mite technology had thrust Earth into the biggest technological revolution in its history.

Interstellar communication advanced too. That’s when Earth picked up the distress signal from Rone, a planet orbiting the star Ruelle. A genocide was occurring there, one race wiping out another, fighting for supremacy of the limited water sources. Earth wasn’t much better, war-torn and dry, broke and hostile, except for the smallest of exceptions.

So, the refugees of Rone were settled on Mars’ smallest moon, Deimos, and behind them, missionaries were sent.

They’d been there ten years when Natan arrived.

The priest who’d been stationed there before him gave him two pieces of advice: don’t burn incense, and don’t drink the liquor.

Natan had done both, the later being the most unpleasant of the two experiences. Whatever spirit they’d brought with them from Rone was the most potent stuff he’d ever tasted, and he’d been well acquainted with liquore of all sorts. The former, he discovered, was simple—they didn’t have smoke on Rone.

They didn’t speak English well enough for Natan to understand how they cooked on Rone without smoke, or how they had advanced as far as they did without fire, but eventually they became accustomed to the incense and in his third year on Deimos he introduced them to the campfire.

After another swig, Natan put his beer down in the dusty soil by his chair and watched as the Rone children sang Latin hymns around the yellow and orange fire, their elders constantly panicking and pulling them farther from the flames, only to have them creep back again minutes later. The children born on Deimos shared none of their parents' fears of fire and smoke.

They were more humanoid than Natan had imagined, despite the pictures he’d seen on Earth. They had the same basic features as humans, but with wide jaws and mouths and no hair. Their skin was dark gray and always damp, like the nose of a dog. Their shoulders were forward, as if always slouching, and their arms were longer than a mans in proportion to their bodies. They had extremely similar genitalia though inter species intercourse was strictly forbidden, not that the issue had come up. Deimos wasn’t exactly a vacation destination. Only professionals came to see the Rone, professionals and priests.

The Rone were peaceful and lived simple lives, seemingly content on their new planet, far from the home they once knew, living under a different star. They wore loose pants that tied at the waist and t-shirts—clothes given to them by humans. Whatever they had worn on their own planet had not been brought with them or at least had never been replenished. Natan imagined their cultural fashions would have been very different, but the Rone didn’t seem to miss them.

Teal, one of the Rone women, stopped in front of Natan’s chair and offered him a blue crystalline bottle. He smiled and shook his head.

“No, thank you.”

No matter how many times I refuse, they offer it to me again.

Natan wrote the observation down in his notebook. Keeping track of their cultural differences would help him communicate and understand them. At least from a human’s perception, they had no religion. They didn’t seem to understand Catholicism, though some had begun sitting while he said mass, their eyes wide and full of interest, looking for the meaning behind his words and gestures which to them must have seemed...alien.

One child in particular enjoyed watching him and could recite the mass word for word which was a particularly impressive feat as his English was very poor, but he struggled not at all with the Latin. The same child had asked Natan one day as he lit the incense, why Catholics liked smoke so much. Natan had laughed at the observation—to an outsider he supposed it might look like the Church had a love affair with smoke.

“Smoke is symbolic,” he’d explained. “It’s representative of a great many things. Sacrifice, for instance, but it’s used for lots of different reasons. Communication, for example. When the College of Cardinals is choosing a new Pope, they’ll burn black smoke if they haven’t decided, and white smoke when the Pope is finally chosen. Sometimes this can take days, weeks even.”

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The concept had taken nearly as long to explain to the child, but with great perseverance and greater patience, Natan had managed it to some extent. He showed the Rone pictures of the Pope and of cardinals and bishops, but that didn’t stop them from calling him Pope from time to time. He knew they did so out of ignorance and not as a means to flatter him or venerate him, but it still made him uncomfortable.

He looked to the horizon again. He’d seen a shadow there earlier, a pastel shape against the evening skyline. It left a tail in the sky behind it: a ship traveling to Deimos. He’d kept an eye on it throughout the day, but now it was gone from view. That meant it had arrived, likely landed at the shuttle base about an hour ago. Many people came to Deimos: scientists, linguists, psychologists—the Rone refuges were of unimaginable excitement and interest to such scholars—but few ever came at dusk.

Natan had a foreboding feeling this visitor had come for him.

When one of the Dust Bunnies appeared on the road it stirred up a large cloud of gray dust in its wake, blurring the horizon of twinkling stars. Natan rose and walked to meet the new arrival.

As he got closer to the vehicle, a small four-seater shaped like a bus with no roof and massive wheels, he spied the occupants and realized his premonitions had been correct.

“Archbishop Marc,” Natan said as the large man, who occupied two seats in his sparkling white Strife suit, pried himself from the Dust Bunny. “It’s an honor for you to visit our tiny settlement.”

“I haven’t come for the Rone,” Marc said. His deep voice had a weight to it Natan had somehow forgotten. Some of the Rone children ran over and stared up at the Archbishops’ face. One attempted to pull off his gauntlet. Marc looked down at them, crinkling his brown.

“It’s your skin,” Natan said, indicating the other man’s dark complexion. “They have little variety on Rone. You should have seen them the first time they met a red-head.”

Marc sighed and removed his gauntlet, letting the children touch his hand. One splayed his fingers wide and held his tiny palm flush against Marc’s. The Archbishop’s hand dwarfed the alien’s. Then the child put Marc’s hand over her face, totally covering it. The other children giggled and jumped up and down as if this were the greatest entertainment they’d yet to encounter.

With the disposition of an old retriever letting a puppy bite and tug at it’s ears, Marc allowed the children to continue, not smiling but also not appearing perturbed with their antics. Eventually, his hand still in the clutches of the gaggle of Rone youth, he looked back to Natan. “Pope Raphael is dead.”

Natan’s stomach sank, that foreboding from before returning. “How?”

Marc raised a brow. “Assassinated, like the ones before him.”

Natan crossed himself, the children immediately imitating the gesture as they always did, and giggling louder.

“A crossbow, if you can believe that.”

“A...crossbow?” Natan asked, a horrid scene of blood pooling on the stones of St. Peter’s Square, a massive bolt sticking from Pope Raphael’s chest played unpermitted in Natan’s imagination.

“When will they choose his successor?” Natan asked.

“It’s already done.”

“Already done?” Natan stared wide at the Archbishop. “I didn’t even know he was dead and they’ve already held the conclave? I know Deimos is remote but I get news. Certainly news of that caliber.”

“No one knows he’s dead,” Marc said. “No one who doesn’t need to know. The assassin was caught and killed, likely a failed mission in the eyes of his benefactors. So far the truth hasn’t gotten out.”

“But why not?”

“The life expectancy of Popes has greatly declined, Natan. We needed a new method of protecting them.”

“Keeping their identity a perpetual secret?”

“You laugh, but it has been discussed.” Marc replaced his gauntlet after the children, quickly losing interest, returned to the campfire. “No, we are sending the new Pope to Nova Roma.”

“A flock is lost without it’s shepherd.”

“It will have a shepherd, he will just be far away. Distant is better than dead.”

Natan nodded. “Why have you come here to tell me this? I know in seminary we said we’d stay close but I didn’t realize that bond covered even space travel.”

The big man smiled. “Your friendship, Natan, covers a trip to Hell and back if need be.” The smile was fleeting. Marc sighed, his shoulders looking like they barred a heavier burden than just the weight of his suit.

“The conclave chose you, Natan.”

Natan’s heart sank to the pit of his stomach as a flood of nausea washed over him.

“Typically, Popes are chosen from cardinals, but perhaps it is time for a change,” Marc said. “Things have not been going well of late, and I for one look forward to you leading the Church.”

Natan nodded, his mind somewhere else, feeling like it was leaving his body entirely. He had flashbacks to his first time stepping into an anti-gravity chamber. His feet leaving the ground, up becoming down, down becoming up.

He looked back at the fire, watching as two children danced, hand in hand around the flames. One wore a blue shirt with a Blue Jays logo while the other depicted an anime character Natan wasn’t familiar with. Their shapes bounced and blurred, shaky silhouettes before the fire. Natan felt faint.

“I know this must come as a shock to you, Natan,” Marc’s tone had grown soft, as if he were comforting a child. Natan certainly felt like a child. “But we don’t have time to linger. Collect your things. We return to Earth immediately. You’ll be coronated and then sent to Nova Roma.”

Natan nodded without turning back to the Archbishop. The campfire was just beginning to dwindle, plumes of black smoke trailing up to the starlit sky. He allowed his eyes to stray, to be hypnotized in that way only fluttering flames can achieve.

“Will they even burn the white smoke?” he asked.

There was silence and when Natan turned to see if the Archbishop had heard him he was looking off into the distance, his eyes beads of dark charcoal. “I don’t know,” he said softly. “Would there be any point?"