Warning: English is not my first language, so please be kind…
The explosion, very near, deafened me, and the violent air compression threw me on the ground. This probably saved my life, because mortal incandescent metal splinters hissed over my head, where a second earlier my erected body had been. Inside of me, I screamed in rage: damned enemies, using such a cruel weapon against unarmed civilians! Which hell had vomited that scum in our galaxy?
I stayed there, lying on the ground, for some moments more, trying to move. Finally I managed to get up and left as quickly as possible on my shaking legs. My breasts hurt because of the brutal impact with the ground, but I forced myself to ignore the pain and went on stumbling: I had to find a shelter, if I stayed there in the middle of the street I would not survive for long.
It had been a sudden attack, by surprise, typical of the enemies' war stile: they were deceitful beings, sly and with no honour, ready for every trick and cowardice just to damage us. Even to attack a pacific hospital planet like mine, which as a medical centre, following all the war conventions, benefited of immunity. We would never ever attack a hospital planet of the enemy! But they had no sense of honour, and civilisation meant to them only technological knowledge. Fortunately they were not better in this field as the Galactic League, to which my world belonged, but a pacific society like ours had many difficulties to manage that war, during which the enemy created constantly new and worse mass destruction weapons. And we were in those conditions for two generations!
A hissing noise, backward high in the sky, made my blood run cold: it was the noise of an enemy space fighter, which I recognized because I heard it far too many times at the frontline, in the time I was on duty in the field as a physician. A fighter ready to drop its bombs on me or, at the very least, to machine-gun me! They really had no consideration of defenceless civilians… I had no way out!
In that very moment, out of the corner of my eye I saw that the door of the building to my right was ajar. With a desperate jerk, I began to run and literally dived through the crack, opening wide the door with my left shoulder and rolling immediately away from the threshold. Barely in time: a double spray of lethal laser-beams drew a black and smoking furrow in the street asphalt, exactly where I was just the second before. I threw all the curses I knew at the enemy pilot, who meanwhile, indifferent to the fear and the anger, mine and of the millions of my fellow citizens, continued his destruction job on streets, buildings and monuments of Zindar, my town.
I looked around where I had ended up: it was the entryway of a block with many apartments. I couldn't see a single living soul and I concluded that the residents had fled somewhere, probably in the basement, like I would have done hadn't I've been so far from home and with my car broken down in the middle of the street.
From the explosions which were fading in the distance, I understood that the attack was moving away from Zindar, and I breathed relieved. Fifteen minutes later they gave the ceased alarm signal, so I dared to venture again in the street.
It wasn't a nice sight.
On the asphalt there were the black traces left by lasers, and glass splinters of windows that had been shattered, here and there pieces of ledges had fallen down cracking the concrete of the pavements. Somewhere near I heard a mournful lament and the cry of a baby: somebody had been killed. Considering that this quarter had been attacked by only a single enemy fighter! I tried to figure out how the centre of the town would be reduced, where the assault had concentrated the most, and I shivered: it had to be a nightmare. I thought relieved that I lived in the outskirts.
Again, I felt a surge of rage: what gave those diabolic beings the right to destroy my town, to kill my people, to devastate my world?! We were not that crooked…!
I was so lucky to find, not far away, an intact automatic taxi that brought me home, and during the way I thought about the origin of that absurd war.
Fifty years ago, during one of the usual expansion waves of the Galactic League, we arrived in an area where we picked up their radio and television signals. The idea to meet a new intelligent species, after many centuries from the last time, excited us greatly: already the diplomats anticipated the possibility to pacifically incorporate – as it always had been – a new nation, the traders to open new markets, the scientists of every level to study new notions that could have been discovered or developed by the new race, the intellectuals to exchange humanistic and technologic studies, in other words there was a great fervour of electrifying expectations and curiosity. New civilizations had always brought their best in the Galactic League, and the Galactic League had always given its best to the new civilizations. Retrospectively, now we could say that we should have instead stopped our enthusiasm from the beginning: the broadcasting we were receiving was full of violence, hate and competitiveness just as an end to itself and taken to the extreme, and that should have warned us. On the contrary, because we were a whole of absolutely pacific civilizations, we didn't understand at all. Hence, at the First Contact, which we had prepared following a well-tested protocol due to millennia of experience, we were totally unprepared to the reaction they had: they didn't let us even end the greeting message, which had been developed on universal mathematical symbols, and attacked us immediately. The diplomatic spaceship, completely devoid of weapons, was almost destroyed and the occupants decimated. The few who survived rushed to bring the feral news of the aggression to the capital of the Galactic League, mercilessly pursued by the enemy, who didn't want to reason and continued to attack, causing immense damage to persons and things on half the planet before our people could organize a counterattack and, in an extreme action of which we never thought to be able, destroyed the enemy spacecraft.
From that moment on, it had been war between the Galactic League and this cruel race, highly technological but absolutely barbaric, who came from a remote star system on the extreme edge of our galaxy.
Finally I arrived home. I paid the ride with my credit card and crossed the gate. I owned an isolated cottage, out of the city chaos, inheritance of my poor husband who died some years ago in war, and I lived there with my only son, a handsome and good boy who was my pride. Like his father, he was a born engineer and he attended profitably the College of Science. At that time of the day, he wasn't home yet from school, which was located outside Zindar and had therefore avoided the attack we just suffered. This was a great relief for me.
The home computer opened automatically the door as soon as the sensors picked me up on the threshold and recognized me, and I set foot in the lobby.
"Computer, turn on holovision", I ordered, heading immediately toward the living room, "Tune in on running newscast, war bulletins concerning Zindar", I specified. The computer accomplished, submitting me the seventh channel, on which they were broadcasting precisely the news and the first casualty count of the treacherous enemy attack.
The damages were significant, but fortunately there were less casualties than I had feared. Indeed, I had not been called by the hospital where I worked to go back on emergency duty. I recalled bitterly the mourning cry I heard earlier.
The last news unsettled me a bit: an enemy fighter, shot by the flak, had crashed exactly in the area I lived in; it had been reduced to a wreck, but it wasn't unlikely that the pilot could have saved himself by ejecting out of the cockpit.
"Computer, situation of doors and windows", I blurted. Actually, when I spoke to the home computer, I didn't really use my voice, but just vibrations generated with my throat which activated the audio input device of the machine, with a very accurate and personalized codex of tones, timbres, intensity and duration. It was about thirty years that this system was used and who, like me and my son, was born and grown up with this communication method had no difficulty, while elder people very frequently got something wrong, so the computer made all the opposite thing they had thought to order, and the outcome was often very hilarious.
The voice of the computer, a soft male timbre, informed me with the same system that everything was closed and locked down, except for the windows on the terrace at the first floor. I ordered them immediately to be locked down and then I felt more relaxed.
It was almost dinner time and to get diverted from the concern I decided to cook something elaborated. I ordered the ingredients, that soon after were materialized in the teleport machine inside the dedicated corner in the kitchen wall. Seeing the sparkling of the subatomic particles recomposing themselves, after having been broken apart and converted in a photon set, I remembered that just a few days ago the scientists of the Teleport Research Centre of the Galactic League had announced that, after decades of experimentations, they had discovered the way to teleport also living organisms; for the moment it was possible only on planetary distance, but very soon it would be doable also on an interstellar scale. This would revolutionise the space travels, making spaceships obsolete and letting the planets coming closer, because the teleport acted in no time, de facto annulling the effects of time and space. Moreover, it would give us an irresistible weapon against the enemies, because we could teleport complete contingences of troops with all the necessary armaments directly on their home planet and annihilate it, freeing us from a nightmare.
I stopped abruptly, frightened by my own thoughts.
To annihilate a planet, even if it was the enemy's one? What was that war doing to me? What was it doing to us all? We were a pacific society! We had only to defend ourselves, not destroy worlds!
No, we would find another way to use the interstellar teleport to stop the war without exterminating the enemy, forcing him to a treaty with us and to respect it.
Embittered by the ease I came to think about the military application of this new technologic achievement, I prayed that the war could come soon to an end, obviously with our victory. After fifty years, the belligerence status was starting to undermine the deeply pacifist mentality of the people of the Galactic League.
I busied myself with the food. Time went by and I relaxed.
An unusual noise had me turning around hastily, and I let the ladle fall on the floor: on the threshold there was an enemy in spacesuit, with no helmet because we could breathe the same atmosphere… one of the various characteristics that my species and his had in common. In his hand he held a tool that I didn't take much to recognize, despite the odd shape: a laser disintegrator. He aimed it threateningly toward me.
The facial mimicry of that race was completely unfamiliar to me, therefore I could not know if his expression was hostile, frightened or enraged. Terror gripped my stomach in a freezing grasp: I had fallen prey to the enemy! He must have come in through one of the terrace doors before I had them closed down and now he was there, in my house, alone and frantic and hence ready for anything.
"No move!", he ordered, with the typical shrill and unpleasant voice of his species, and I was surprised to realize he was speaking in galacta, the common speech of the Galactic League. So after all they listened to our broadcasting, and maybe it wasn't true that, as they said, they didn't take prisoners, but killed off everyone they captured. How otherwise could they have learnt our language? Why didn't they pay heed, when we urged them to stop the hostilities to resolve our dispute through diplomacy? How could it be that they didn't understand, or didn't want to accept that we were a pacific society, and that they could share the galaxy with us, that nobody would deprive them from the space to live and expand? That they were not forced to enter the Galactic League and, if they preferred so, they could stay alone and none would bother them?
All this swirled in my mind in an instant. Frozen by terror, I had really no need to be ordered not to move.
"Hunger", said the enemy pilot, "Give food to me."
I glanced at the thick soup that was simmering in the pot: it was almost ready. The meat in the microwave oven would be soon ready, too.
I pointed to the food, not able to utter a single word. The enemy pointed in turn the table and went there to sit down, or better to roost on the chair, because their legs were far much shorter than the ones of my species, even if their overall height was similar.
"Slow", he admonished me. Obediently, I slowly picked up the ladle from the floor, took a bowl, filled it up with the hot soup and brought it to him, keeping moving gingerly. Knowing that our biochemistries were different, I hoped the food would be poisonous for him, but he was no stupid: he put some kind of metal needle in the soup, evidently a detector, connected to an analyser he carried on his wrist.
"Good", he stated and began to eat. I glimpsed nervously at the wall clock: the time my son came home from school was drawing nearer. Too bad that the soup wasn't poisonous for the enemy!
"Drink!", suddenly ordered the alien pilot, startling me. I brought him a glass of water, which like the soup was carefully analyzed before being gulped down.
While time was passing by, my anxiety grew. I couldn't allow my son to enter the house and be taken prisoner by the enemy pilot… somehow I had to prevent his access. Doors and windows were blocked, but this meant only that non authorized persons couldn't come in, so this excluded my son. I must therefore cancel his name from the authorized persons enrolled in the computer, but it wasn't that simple: to avoid an accidental cancellation, the operation was protected with a double access code. Nevertheless I had to try, at any cost.
"Computer", I called in the subvocal language, glancing sidelong the enemy's reactions. He didn't move: evidently he didn't hear.
"Listening", answered the computer, not hearing anyone else than me. This time the enemy heard and jumped; he immediately lifted his laser and aimed it to me. His species was always ready for violence, I remembered, swallowing down the tension lump in my throat.
"What is?!", he asked; his tone sounded between imperious and scared and I didn't like this: a scared person is dangerous, because it can easily lose control.
"Nothing", I answered in galacta, "Normal house management", I lied, "The computer is asking me instructions about the housework."
The enemy pilot seemed to consider suspiciously my explanation, but to my relief he ended up holding it to be true.
"Fine", he said, "Then do."
Again he busied himself with the soup. I got ready to proceed:
"Standard program. Registration memory of persons with access authorization. Cancel. Name..."
I couldn't finish in time: while I was speaking, the entry door opened wide and my son's voice resounded in the lobby:
"Mom, I'm home!"
It happened all in a moment.
I threw a shout:
"Run, run!"
But my son, caught absolutely unprepared, didn't react immediately; the enemy instead, evidently trained to undergo traitorous attacks as well as to launch them, leaped to his feet and threw himself in the lobby. I raced there a second later... and heard my son's cry of pain.
"NOOOOOOOOO!", I howled, out of my mind. Seeing my son on the floor in a haphazard and unnatural position, and pitching into the enemy was all in one. But, again, he was faster and shot in my direction, blindly. He caught me in a leg and the pain blew off my brain in a blinding flash. With a scream I collapsed on the floor in front of him.
"No move!", the alien pilot intimated. I was almost unconscious because of the pain and the leg didn't respond anymore, turned into a blazing firebrand. Unable to think, I began to crawl toward my son.
"No move, I say!", barked the enemy, in a mortally menacing tone. I ignored him: what else could he do to me, more than to kill me? In that moment, I didn't care to live any longer, with my son – all I had of most beloved in my life – on the floor, dead, slain.
I reached him and hugged him, annihilated by the physical and spiritual suffering.
"No move!", the enemy shrieked. I almost didn't hear him, because I had sensed a very faint sign of life in my son. I had to save him!, my mind screamed. But how could I do it...? How?!
Despair climaxed and turned into a terrifying calm.
Mixing up the subvocal language to high cries of grief, I disposed my orders with a coldness which later would always amaze me.
"Computer. General cleaning program. Subprogram toxic products. Cancel. Name: Lyoced. Proceed."
"Confirm", the computer said, following the safety instructions.
"Confirmed", I answered.
"Cancellation complete."
"Silence! Silence!", shrieked the enemy, shaking around his laser gun. Let him shoot!, I thought angrily, he would not live enough to enjoy it.
"Subprogram non toxic products. Upload. Name: Lyoced, use disinfestation. Proceed."
"Upload complete", the computer announced, skipping the confirmation procedure, as it wasn't needed because it had been declared a non-toxic product.
"Subprogram disinfestation. Room: lobby. Proceed."
The enemy had had enough of my disobedience and aimed his laser to my head. I closed my eyes for not to see the flash of light that would disintegrate me.
In the meantime, the computer announced:
"Executing."
The lobby doors which looked toward other rooms shut abruptly. The surprise turned the enemy's attention away from me and this saved my life. I re-opened my eyes, breathed in all the air I was able to and held it. Just in time: with a loud hiss, the nozzles concealed in the ceiling puffed out the Lyoced in big whitish clouds which enveloped the enemy, hiding him from my sight. I heard him give off a scream, both of astonishment and of rage, immediately choked by convulsed coughing. Gasping. Panting. Then the enemy collapsed, his eyes jutting from their orbits.
The poison overflowed air burned my eyes, the pain in the leg was unbearable and I could barely hold my breath any longer. Nonetheless, I was able to reach the control panel of the door and opened it manually. I spasmodically breathed in twice, then I crawled inside again; so far I don't know how I managed it, but I was able to drag out my son and I ordered the computer to shut the entry door, trapping the enemy in the lobby: I couldn't know for sure that he was really dead, it was a supposition based on the fact that, if what was not poisonous for me hadn't been for him, so what was deadly for me was deadly also for him.
Then, through the computer terminal in the garden, I called for an ambulance and the police.
They arrived almost simultaneously, in just a few minutes, despite the turmoil that surely was still going on in town, after the enemy attack. The paramedics recognized me and I addressed them to control my son's conditions, which were far more serious than mine. Quick and efficient, they checked him and reassured me: he was actually in acute condition, but he would survive. The relief was so big that I almost fainted.
My leg, too, would heal soon, but needed adequate cure; meanwhile they gave me something for the ache.
Because in an ambulance it was possible to carry only one patient at a time, they hauled away my son first; later they would return to take me, too.
Meanwhile, the police officers asked me to open the entrance door; they would enter to seize the enemy, or his cadaver, and I had to identify him officially. I warned them of the presence of the Lyoced, so the two appointed officers were equipped with gas masks before they got in; soon after they came out with the enemy pilot and laid him on the walkway.
I watched at him, stricken by a repugnance that I hadn't time to feel earlier. If alive he had been ugly, dead he was even obscene: that body without fur and therefore needed to be covered by clothing, and those five fingers thin like worms, and the stocky legs which were only the length of half his total height! There were some species in the Galactic League that looked similar to this one, but they weren't that disgusting.
"It's him", I said. An officer nodded in response:
"I confirm: it's really a male specimen of the human race, hailing from the planet they call Earth."
A representative of the bloodthirsty species that attacked, for no reason, the pacific worlds of the Galactic League. And I had killed him. I was a physician, and my mission was to save lives, not to destroy them. But I wasn't able to feel any guilt, because I acted like I did only because he had almost killed my only son. Otherwise, the deep-rooted pacifist concept of my species, shared with all those which, over the millennia, joined the Galactic League, and my professional ethics, would have prevented me to do it.
"Take him away from my house", I said, turning to the other side.
THE END
(Homage to the short story entitled "Sentry", by Frederic Brown)
Lady Angel