Chapter 5

The Celestialite community was celebrating unashamedly. It wasn't everyday that the God you worshipped manifested himself in such an unequivocal way. The members of the tribe had lived their lives according to David's holy book and had devoted themselves to God. They had listened as David had preached to them, telling them the stories of God's miracles and how the tribe had been led to the promised land they called their home.

They had faith and were devoted to God, but to have had such a tangible demonstration that he existed was something that none of them had ever expected. Even those who had harboured secret doubts were now fervent believers and this day would be forever celebrated in their calendar as a special holy day.

David was standing before them now, preparing to deliver a lesson. He wanted to lead his tribe, God's tribe, in an especial act of worship and re-inforce just how fortunate they were to have God watching over them.

"My fellow children in God, let us join together in worship by offering thanks to the Lord for delivering us from harm once more. Join me in the words we all know so well:

Lord we give thanks everyday that you are with us
That you have delivered us from evil, hurt, need and want.
We remember how you have succoured the people of your tribe
How you have comforted us, sheltered us, blessed us through our children.
We devote ourselves to you in our lives
We live by the lessons you have taught us
And we trust in you in all things.
Your power helps us smite those who would deny you,
Those who would seek to put you down
And those who do not follow your path to righteousness.
Lord, yours is the glory of creation
Of the day and the night,
Of the sun, moon and stars.
We offer ourselves to do your bidding
Now and always.
Amen.

"How blessed are we?" asked David.

"We are blessed in the eyes of God!" replied the congregation.

"How blessed are we to have such a God to watch over us? To protect is in hour of need? To pluck our enemies from the very ground and make them quake in his presence?

"My children, you have heard me relate the stories that have tried to impress upon you how all-powerful, how awesome, how worthy of our praise and worship the Lord our God is.

"Today you don't need my stories any more! Today you have witnessed for yourselves the power of the Lord. Today you have seen the proof that the Celestialites are the chosen of God, we are his people!"

"HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH! The assembled Celestialites cried.

"Today also confirmed another lesson. Our love of weapons and all the practice that we put in on defending ourselves and this land God gave us is clearly no accident. God must have set us on this path so that we would be strong and continue to grow in the face of our enemies and unbelievers.

"God is great and he is also merciful. How easily could he have ended the lives of those who came here today with evil in their hearts? Instead he gave a simple demonstration of his strength and harmed no one in doing so. You will remember that the first thing he did was remove the wounded man to safety? Truly the sign of a benevolent God and we must learn from him and his actions.

"We will keep this day holy for ever more but we will also write down the lessons we have been given so that future generations might learn them too. God has shown us the way. The Celestialites will be strong and well prepared, but we will also be merciful, not cruel and heartless.

"Now, join me in singing praise to the Lord!"

High above the planet, the WS Reaper maintained its orbit effortlessly and Kadesh was thinking about working with the AI to carry out routine scans of the resources available on the surface below.

His ship wasn't far off being at capacity and it was possible that one more planet harvested could mean it was time to set course for Woden and some well earned rest and recreation!

"Incoming message received from fleet command," announced the AI, surprising him.

Kadesh looked up at the communication screen.

"That's impossible, how could fleet have received and responded to my signal so quickly? It should have taken years," he commented.

"Not one, but two Woden ships have crossed our breadtrail and boosted the signal," replied the AI.

Kadesh laughed at his good fortune. The breadtrail was notoriously slow as a means of communication, but the speed of a message could be boosted by the equipment on board any other Woden craft if they happened to cross the path of where the WS Reaper had been. That was highly unusual and to have had two other ships cross his back trail was nothing short of a minor miracle. Still, he wasn't going to question his good luck.

"Display the communication," he ordered the AI.

"Confirmed."

The message appeared on the communication screen and Kadesh began to read it.

Woden attacked by army from the planet Zytol. Resources stretched and every effort must be made to harvest raw materials for the war effort. Continue with harvest of planet p73197, but remove the life forms to avoid contamination. Make best speed back to Woden. Your cargo is in demand. Ends.

Kadesh was stunned. The people of Woden were a peace loving race and the message was therefore a shock for two reasons.

That his planet had been (was being?) attacked was the first major shock. The use of terms like 'war effort' was something he had never expected to see in connection with Woden in his lifetime.

The suggestion that he should 'remove' the people on this planet was also extraordinary. The situation on Woden had to be extremely bad for someone to contemplate taking innocent lives like this simply to get their hands on some raw materials.

The order was so unexpected, bordering on being barbaric even, that Kadesh thought about sending a reply asking for it to be confirmed. Fleet surely couldn't be asking him to kill over five hundred people, could they?

"If Woden really is at war, it's possible that any delay in carrying out my orders could land me in serious trouble," he thought to himself.

"AI, confirm that this message is authentic and tell me what security classification it carries."

"The message is definitely from fleet command and it carries a class five security level."

"Class five? You must be mistaken, security only goes up to class four, there is no class five," Kadesh responded.

"Negative, a new level of security has been introduced due to the war currently being fought. All intergalactic communications are now subject to class five security," the AI informed him.

"AI, confirm my understanding of the message. Woden is at war with Zytol and fleet want me to kill and remove the people on this planet before then carrying on with the harvest. Once the harvest is complete I am to make best speed back to Woden with my cargo. Is all of that correct?"

"Affirmative," the AI replied.

Kadesh felt physically sick and his hands were trembling. The suggestion that he should kill people in cold blood was outrageous, it was chilling, it was terrifying.

"Are they out of their minds? AI, what will happen if I don't carry out this order?" he managed to ask.

"The Commander that sent this message clearly foresaw this as a possibility. An upgrade to my programming arrived at the same time as the communication. Failure to carry out orders during a state of war will be classified as desertion. My programming now covers such a situation. You will be restrained and immobilised while I carry out the order. Fleet will try you once we return to Woden and in all likelihood you will be sentenced to death for cowardice.

"The orders also carry a time-stamp. You have three days within which to begin the harvest or I will take control of you and the ship."

The 'voice' of the AI was flat and unemotional and that made its words even more terrifying. Kadesh could see that his options were very limited indeed. Either he followed the orders and tried to live with himself for killing so many people, or he let the AI do it. The only difference was that if he did it he might live. If he left it to the AI he would be executed by the sound of things. What kind of choice was that?

"How would we 'remove' the life forms?" he asked, fearful of the answer.

"A number of ways are possible, but the easiest would be to simply harvest them. If you prepare and isolate a bay and then selectively harvest the life forms and store them away, you could then proceed with the full harvest as normal," the AI informed him.

The image of hundreds of people being dragged from the face of the planet by his ship's tractor beams was too much. Kadesh fell to his knees and vomited violently on the floor of the bridge.

"What a terrible way to die. Sucked up into the atmosphere. Burned to a crisp possibly if the protective field doesn't work. Then the vacuum of space if the heat doesn't kill you. I can't do it, I simply can't do it," he told himself and then heaved once more.

"Have this mess cleaned up, I'm going to my cabin," he croaked as he pulled himself up and staggered from the bridge.

It only took minutes to reach his cabin and the first thing he did was order a stiff drink from the replicator. Kadesh had decided the thing to do was get himself well and truly drunk. Maybe he would wake up and find it was all a bad dream?

"We have to assume that we're under surveillance. The 'voice' told me that it would be watching me from now on, so we need to take that into account," said Adam.

"When are you going to tell me what you want me to do?" asked Thomas. "You've got me really worried about what's out there and I need to know how you're planning to deal with it!"

"That's easy my friend. I wish I'd thought of it before, it would have saved a lot of trouble. But then, I didn't know that Lillian was going to refuse to come home with me."

"What are you talking about?" demanded Thomas.

"You, my friend, have already shown that you can put a satellite into orbit. It shouldn't be too difficult to adjust the rockets you've used for that to carry a warhead. My plan, Thomas, is simply to fire a salvo of missiles at David's camp and blow them all to smithereens! Simple really, isn't it? No risk to our people and no warning for David's!"

"Fuck! You really are a piece of work, aren't you? You'd really fire missiles and kill everyone in David's tribe? Even Lillian? I can't believe we're standing here talking about wiping out a whole community. Remind me never to piss you off!"

"It's either them or us, can't you see that? Lillian has made her choice, she denied me three times so she'll just have to live — or die ha ha — with her choice. How much longer will it be before they're using that powerful weapon to take us out and then steal our children?"

"If you're serious, let me have a look at the surveillance recording of the camp again. That should help me estimate how many missiles would be needed. I'll do some work on how to convert the basic design so that it'll take a warhead. Will you be able to use the replicator to produce enough explosives and propellant?" Thomas asked.

"Don't worry about that, I'll make sure you get what you need."

Ben walked the length of a field that was growing beans. The beauty of Aetherkraal was leeching away the stress of what he had had to do and see at David's community. He knew he would never tire of the paradise that was home to the tribe he had fostered with Sarah.

Sarah had joked about how she was worried about him enjoying acting as 'God', but he knew there was some truth in what she said and he would have to guard against it.

The drones were doing what they needed to and he could hear the noise of children and teenagers riotously enjoying themselves at the swimming pool. He detoured to watch them for a while and there were calls for him to join in the fun.

"Do I look stupid?" he called back.

"Come in, come in, don't be a sissy!"

"At a guess I'd say there were twenty or more of you, I just know that you'd gang up on me! No thanks, I'm happy enough watching you drown each other!" he laughed.

The antics of the youngsters was also good therapy and Ben found himself laughing continuously at what they got up to and what they did to each other.

Something was nagging at the back of his mind however, and he waved as he turned to make his way back towards the big house.

"I should be doing something, I know I should. But what is it? Shit, I know, I should be checking the space craft to find out what's going on up there!" he berated himself.

The last visit had suggested there was little to worry about, as the pilot expected it to take years before his questions were answered by his commanders. Ben was beginning to realise that it was dangerous to make assumptions however, and he had already decided to check in with the WS Reaper on a regular basis.