Chapter IX

IX

Later

“Evidently, the planet is in a general state of chaos. Weapons are distributed unevenly throughout, and a number of warlords control the majority of the surface. There is no real hierarchy. And beneath the chaos, these rebels have been able to establish a POW camp, and Philbrooke possesses a laboratory.”

Later

“Play Markus and me the raindrop prelude, if you will Alexei.” Sean requested as we set off.

“The Chopin piece, you mean?”

“Yes.”

I was happy to acquiesce.

Markus knew most about what was happening, but he’d barely managed to adumbrate his plan by the time we’d arrived at the planet. Markus was completely recuperated, so we aligned our descent with the correct surface coordinates, landed, and followed his lead. It was a brisk night, and mildly cloudy. The land rose and fell in gentle slopes throughout the area. We were only five kilometers from the site of the main prison camp.

We moved like wraiths through the fields of rye. A gentle breeze made the grains tremble under the harvest moon. To the east, the clouds Over the rise we moved. There was frost on the stalks of the plants. A military camp lay below us. It looked like any other rebel camp, but it was not so unexceptional.

Later… or not… Somewhere? I’ll just stick it here for now. I guess I do want a real space battle somewhere.

Up we soared, through the stratosphere, the mesosphere, the thermosphere, and still farther. The Ad Astra and Laureola stayed together, still accelerating. Both ships activated their shields to full capacity and began deploying fighters. The other five branched off to deal with the numerous rebel forces closing in on us.

The second movement, dark, sinister, brooding, tragic, and yet hopeful and determined, of Beethoven’s seventh symphony boomed throughout the ANS Ad Astra.

The commodore was again almighty. “Scramble the fighters! Focus them on neutralizing enemy fighters. Laureola, intercept those two Execronians on the right.” The massive warship moved to destroy two incoming Execronian attack ships.

“Captain, move us toward Ortiz’s ship. Organize our fighters into groups. Focus them on dense target areas. Begin firing plasma torpedoes. Clear out the straggling enemy fighters. Single out the more isolated ones with our particle beams.”

“Sir, there’re three skirmishers coming toward us from different directions.”

“Don’t bother the fighters. Blast them with the normal three-wave attack.” At once a barrage of plasma torpedoes sailed forth from our hulls toward the three targets, smashing into their shields. A second, reduced wave was fired, accompanied by beam weapons at two thirds power, and then, finally, the beams at full power, unaccompanied by the torpedoes. The ships were obliterated, but some power had been diverted from our shields.

The second movement ended and the bright third movement began.

“Not this. Jump to something else,” Sean commanded.

“Bruckner!” I suggested. “Symphony no. 8, IV.”

At once the twenty three minute finale of the composer’s “Apocalyptic” symphony began.

The music was fitting. We were now in the middle of a swirling chaos. The ship was continually being buffeted by debris from destroyed fighters and skirmishers. It had destroyed one attack ship and was on the verge of finishing off the other. The rest of our division was out of sight. Torpedoes raced silently toward us. Fighters traded bursts of particle beams. We had only slightly lessened the energy expended on acceleration. Our speed was approaching a hundredth of the speed of light, absurd for combat. We were gaining on Ortiz, but were certainly outgunned.

“Laureola [captain name here], clear your way toward us! Prepare to open fire on the enemy command ship. Richter! Michelson! How close are you?”

“Doing my best dodging these fighters,” Michelson responded. His tiny craft, equipped with beam weapons only slightly better than those of a normal computer controlled fighter, was travelling even faster than us, darting around fighters that would be a thousand kilometers away and then, in under half a second, upon him.

“Twenty thousand kilometers and gaining,” Richter reported.

Later

“John! From whence in the blazes did you come? I never thought I’d see you again.”

“I came from Sentrolia, and if at one time it was in blazes, then the flames have since frozen.”

Claudio’s eyes fell for a moment to the floor.

“I’m delighted to see you.” He was a brilliant liar. “Oh, but allow me to make the necessary introductions. You already know Alexei, there. That man to his right is Commodore Sean Charles Kent, his direct superior. I guess you saw his ships on Piaculus. As I understand it, he was arrested shortly after you left, but later received a pardon. That fellow on his left is Specialist Peter Markus Richter. Of course you know who he is, but I don’t think you’ve met.”

Richter’s gaze was stony while Sean’s was relaxed. Both were calm in their own way. It seemed I felt a little more uneasy than they.

“Well, we’ve much catching up to do, and surely you’ll be curious about the prisoners. We’ll explain everything to each other momentarily. First you’ll want a rest.”

Ortiz began leading Michelson out of the room. John paused and looked back at us.

“There’s something unattended.”

Claudio began to turn inquisitively when his body was instantly slammed into the floor. From across the room, Sean’s gravity sword flew next to Markus and worked its way into his hands.

Markus was clearly surprised by this, but used the sword as well as he could to release himself from his restraints. This endeavor met with success, and he then freed Sean, passing the sword to him. The commodore wasted no time releasing me.

“I’m no good with that thing. Get me a real weapon!” Richter yelled to John.

Sean smiled, gave the sword a twirl, and advanced toward Claudio, who had since regained his footing. John was looking for a beam weapon for Richter. Ortiz’s eyes moved back and forth between his former cohort and his former prisoners. His face seethed with an uncontrolled wrath. Michelson next was slammed into the wall with almost lethal force. An instant later, Kent’s stroke was descending upon the villain. The beam of light indicating the location of the invisible blade became oddly distorted, but nevertheless sliced straight through our enemy. He was unaffected.

For a moment I stood immobile in stupefaction. I realized what had happened. Claudio’s control of gravity allowed him to interfere with the gravity sword’s blade, which also used gravity. Still, his advantage was a limited one. He only had so much control over the force, and would probably be unable to defend himself from two simultaneous attacks. In the meantime, occupying him with our swords would be the best defense from further attacks of his. I scrambled for my own sword.

I hardly noticed Ortiz jump back from Sean, removing himself from the threat of immediate attack. Suddenly, my head was in excruciating pain. I shrieked in anguish. Then, it ended. Sean was attacking Claudio again. Claudio had been trying to crush my skull!

I wondered momentarily why I had been the victim rather than the more immediate threat, but soon realized that Ortiz had been a few steps ahead. Kent’s attack had been more instinctual than anything else, but after my scream registered in his mind, he turned toward me. That was when Ortiz tried to break his back. I caught my friend and braced him, most likely saving him from paralysis. At that point, I found my own sword in my hand, courtesy of the nearly immobilized Michelson. I quickly nodded my thanks. It had occurred to Markus how little help he was in the current situation, and he had left to search for a weapon, something that shouldn’t have been very hard to find.

It was clear that allowing Claudio the initiative would be fatal. He had to be on defense every moment.

“Michelson, keep attacking him. Keep him blocking.”

“I’ll try, but he’s better with this technology than I am, and with you jumping around like that, it’d be easy for me to hit someone else.”

I ignored him. He had to do what he had to do. Sean and I did our best, but an opportunity to injure our adversary remained elusive, and he was moving toward the exit of the room.

Later

The grain stalks rubbed gently against our legs as we walked through the field. Our shadows lengthened as the warm light of sunset faded around us. Sean was humming the friendly Augustonian Anthem, adapted from the second movement of Beethoven’s fifth symphony. Eventually, the darkening ground around us merged with our shadows, and the straw ceased to glow.

Later

The planet rose in the window of the ship. It was a beautiful sight. Sean had Dvorak’s String Quartet no. 12 playing. We were home.

Later

Kent went off on a forty-five minute stroll through the woods. He set out fifteen minutes before sunset, so for those fifteen minutes and for a few afterward the sky would be painted by the last, most brilliant light of day. It was an astonishingly clear late summer day. I say this not meaning that the sky was clear, but rather that the day one of those on which one’s mind is clear and free as it basks in nature’s glory.

Sean was listening to a recording of Beethoven’s violin concerto in which I was the conductor. Kent probably would have done a better job than me with the piece, but he had the more important position of soloist. He had declared to me many times that it was the most beautiful and most moving pieces ever composed. In those forty-five minutes, he relived his life. Memories were accented by music, which was accented by his surroundings. The winds of the orchestra merged with the winds through the trees.

Everything was in that music. The concerto was called the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D Major. There was the promise and anticipation of youth in the opening. There was the joy of young life, and then it fell away to the cold loneliness of isolation. For the price of solitude – the price he had come to enjoy paying – Sean purchased the euphoria that defined him at his greatest. He could look up into the sky and see the galaxy for the stars. The euphoria was wonder. This feeling was attained a few times during the first movement. First, he looked around him, and saw an Olympus in every mountain peak; a Lethe in ever river. The joy had slipped away to sadness, and from the stillness had grown the beautiful. I fail miserably in my attempt to convey with words this quality which is no less than divine. The wonder, like all that is beautiful, all that is gold, faded slowly from the music. As it faded, though, the music grew in volume and grandeur. It assumed an august greatness. He looked up at the clouds, gorgeously colored by the descending star. They rolled across the sky. They were majestic; they were titanic; they were marvelous. Their dynamic shapes and awesome colors exuded power. And then the music faded again away to quiet. Now, under the veil of darkness and a canopy of cold, glimmering stars, he was taken back to the first battle he had fought on Piaculus, during the rise of the sun in his rescue effort. Instead of a repetition of the cycle, the movement transitioned then to the cadenza, which was relatively long, required great virtuosity, and was moving in its own solitude. I am sure that it had even more meaning to him because it was his own performance. He was listening to the expression of his own emotions in the cadenza.

The first movement ended and the second began. The second movement was similar to the slower parts of the first. It made one feel a sort of sweet sadness. It was calm, reflective, and introspective. Most slow middle movements have this in common. Most slow middle movements are beautiful. Not all of them are so uniquely beautiful. The special quality Beethoven succeeded in putting into some of his works such as this could be, in my opinion, best described as a touch of nostalgia, excepting the even more unique movement preceding this one, which is entirely individual and raises the listener to heights completely unattainable otherwise. The nostalgia can be heard in the phrasing here and there. Three simple notes played by the soloist are all that are needed to recall anyone’s halcyon days. When listening to the music, one relives the most wonderful feelings and times that he or she has ever experienced.

And then the second movement too found an end, and the third movement began. The third movement lived wholly in the present, and rejoiced in the present for what it was. At some points the joy was unrestrained; at others, enchantingly realistic, as if the listener were laying in the shade of a tree on a mostly clear summer day, breathing the sweet air, savoring the cool breeze, and exploring new worlds in the water and dust suspended overhead. There was neither nostalgia nor anticipation; only fulfillment. But the music changed. In the section to which Sean began to listen, one finds oneself enthralled, within the fantasy spawned by the music, by the smell of a flower, so sweet, but also full of longing. The listener rises from his or her seat on the trunk of the tree to seek out the origin of the scent. The music seems almost sad again, with such bitter-sweet longing. The breeze seems colder, but the joy of the trail through the meadow slowly overrides this. Eventually, the music begins skipping along again, and this is so accurate a description as to be only barely a metaphor.

To all this Sean listened as he walked through the forest he loved so well.