One Minute to Midnight (27 page)

"Sir, we’ve located a massive attack fleet
coming toward Nebulon. What are your orders? I have given the
command to ready our fleet destroyers for battle. Do you wish to
attack?"

Teldar stared through his telescope at the
armada of ships heading their way. More ships than he could count
in an endless sea of steel craft armed for battle among the
stars.

"They'll be here soon, Goran, and they have
nothing left to lose." Teldar said.

Romio, Goran's science advisor, suddenly
materialized in the form of a nine-inch tall hologram on the table.
He had a long brown beard, intricate tattoos on his arms, and hoop
earrings in each ear.

"We can save ourselves from the discomfort of
total war if we use the space-time warp gate." Romio
said.

"Go on. How will it work? We don't have much
time." Goran said.

"The moon circling the small blue green planet
Earth is barren, and could be terra-formed for our escape. All we
have to do is send some of my construction nanobots back in time
one hundred years, and then have them build our fortress into the
moon. The moon fortress would be ready for your escape in about
thirty minutes."

"Ha ha! Yes, do it Romio! Delian, announce a
planetary evacuation to the Earth moon in one hour."

Romio bowed and his transmission ended. Delian
disappeared from Goran's dinner room and prepared to announce the
evacuation. Within minutes, ships were airborne and evacuating
Nebulon. Romio went to his lab and gathered together a crate of
nanobots programmed for planetary construction. The laboratory
looked like something out of an HG Wells novel, with blinking
lights, flexible tubing oozing with vitreous fluids running through
them, and test tubes with bubbling liquids of varied colors. Cages
filled with living creatures from many different planets, the
remnants of past genetic experimentation, also lined the walls.
Romio, short on time and under pressure, ran past them with the
crate in his arms. The crate was approximately four feet wide and
four feet tall, weighing almost nothing to the eleven-foot tall
giant, but what it contained would build a miracle.

"You should just fit, my friend!" Romio said
to himself.

Romio laid the box down on a counter next to
his computer screen and brought up an image of the moon orbiting
earth. He tapped a few keys to open a computer program that would
interface with the transport device. Five feet from his computer,
an electromagnetic buzz began to emanate from a medium-sized green
box with a windowless door on the front of it. The box was
supported by four titanium legs and was connected to a series of
magnetic quantum power generators. Romio lifted the crate, opened
the metal door, and placed it inside the dark opening, closing it
once the crate was inside. He walked back over to the computer to
check the power output, and once it was sufficient he pressed the
Enter key. Romio then zoomed in on the moon, watching with awe as
it was transformed from a barren wasteland into a city covered with
massive glass domes built to hold in the oxygen being produced from
somewhere far below the moon's surface. During the nanobot
transport he felt an odd tugging on his body as they were sent back
in time, as if his soul was being split in two by the quantum time
distortion. Then he saw himself appear inside one of the domes as
he looked down on the moon, only he was dressed in another style of
robe, and he appeared to be much older. Too busy trying to flee his
planet, he stored that image in the back of his mind.

"It worked!" Romio yelled to the caged
animals. "We have to get out of here!" He ran back up to where
Goran was finishing his meal.

"I never thought I'd see the day when
we
would run from a fight." Goran
said. He was uncharacteristically sullen.

“
Live to fight another day, sire.
We did blow up their planet after all. It would be naïve not to
expect some sort of retribution.” Teldar said. His light tone was
lost on Goran who was now beside himself.

“
If I had known their largest
fleet was not on the planet I would have waited.” Goran mumbled
like a petulant child. Teldar stopped short of saying it should
never have happened in the first place. Goran was unpredictable,
even in a good mood, so he thought it would not be worth the
risk.

The first shots from the Tiamatian war ships
rained down upon the Nebulonian city of Talayes, leveling it and
decimating her people in minutes. This time there would be no
peaceful offering, or apologies of behalf of a grateful planet.
With sudden ferocity, something large slammed into the ground just
outside Goran's fortress. He ran to the window to see countless
drill headed machines emerging from an egg shaped ship and
beginning to burrow beneath the surface. Goran, Teldar, and Romio
began to run to the escape craft just as every video screen came
alive with the tear-streaked face of a blond man in a robe. Goran
recognized him as Enki, leader of planet Tiamat.

"Goran, you and your people will be destroyed
before the day is over. My machines are burrowing into the core of
your planet and are placing atomic explosives that will then
detonate and shear your planet in half. This will be happening all
over your worthless orb, Nebulon. No quarter will be given for any
of you attempting to leave the surface, and if we detect any ships
departing your planet we will blow them up." Enki
finished.

The screen flashed to a massive battle in the
stars. Goran could see streaks of fire blazing across the skyline
from his castle window as the Nebulonians and Tiamatians fought
each other in the sky. Goran contemplated all of the things that
had gone wrong since his daughter was killed, and hated himself for
how far it had gone. He knew that Nebulon had depended on the
Saturn weapon as a show of force, while Goran and his officers
allowed their skills in battle to deteriorate over the years. Goran
had been asleep at the wheel for decades, and now that he awakened
a nest of angry hornets, he only hoped they would have enough time
to escape before his forces were overwhelmed by the humans seeking
retribution. When Romio finished his task, the knowledge that there
was a safe haven on Earth’s moon populated his consciousness like a
foggy memory coming alive in his mind. All memory that the moon
city had not been there a moment ago faded from Goran’s mind; he
believed it had always been there, and he knew that was where they
would make their escape.

“
Teldar, we’ll use the transport
gate to move our people to the moon. I fear that my foolishness may
have doomed us."

"There is hope, but we must move fast." Teldar
said. He and Goran raced to the lab where an escape tunnel opened
in the wall.

"What of the others? Our people are being
slaughtered outside Nebulon. The remaining Nebulonian's will surely
be killed once the explosives go off. Are we going to help them?"
Romio asked.

"No time. We can build again with the people
we have on the moon. We'll call our home New Nebulon!" Goran
said.

Teldar frowned, and followed his new king and
Romio through a tunnel that opened into a small bay with three
oblong craft, about the size of a three-story house
each.

"Why are they black?" Goran asked.

"Each ship is crafted from an experimental
element that is impervious to physical damage, we call it element
one-forty. It takes that form when fashioned in the zero gravity of
space. The ships are also powered by an electrogravitic engine
capable of inter-dimensional time travel." Teldar said.

"You failed to construct a door to this
hangar." Goran said. He was looking around the bay with a furrowed
brow.

"We won't need one, Goran. These ships remain
in the same physical space until the time distortion, and then they
are transported through
the field
to their destination. Ours happens to be the moon of earth,
so I'll program the coordinates." Teldar smirked.
"Let's go!" Goran yelled. The first explosions began to rock the
ground beneath their feet.

"It's happening! The planet is being torn
apart!" Teldar screamed, horrified at the loss of his old
home.

The two giants entered the ship nearest them,
and as the walls began to rattle, small piles of gravel formed on
the floor. As Goran entered the ship, and the door shut behind him,
an explosion from deep underground caused the ceiling to cave
in.

"Now we're trapped in here." Goran said.
Teldar silently contemplated how stupid his king was, but kept his
opinion to himself.

"The skeleton of this ship is indestructible!
Element one-forty is stronger than diamonds." Teldar said. He
pressed a few buttons on a console before he and the ship
vanished.

Teldar and Goran appeared next on the moon,
just as Teldar said they would, and when they exited the craft,
Goran watched with sorrow as his planet, no larger than a speck
now, was ripped apart with a bright flash when all of the bombs
detonated within the core. Teldar was heartbroken in that instant
as he saw Nebulon light up like a firework and expel her contents
into the cosmos. The combined planetary remnants and rubble from
Tiamat and Nebulon formed the asteroid belt that can be seen today,
as well as Saturn's mysterious rings.

"Teldar, we made it!" Goran said. Teldar
remained silent as a tear fell from his right eye.

"Look around you, Goran." Teldar whispered. He
shook his head.

Goran took his eyes from the destruction far
out in space and noticed that he and Teldar were under a large
glass dome. This dome surrounded a city larger than any on Nebulon,
with buildings that were designed with spiral tops reaching far
into the atmosphere freely. These buildings were reminiscent of
those found on Tiamat, alongside more angular pyramidal structures
like the Nebulonians’. Pyramids constructed of marble, and
limestone, with glossy facings that generated so much energy that
Goran could feel waves of positive energy flow through him. His
mood elevated and he began to smile for the first time in years.
Nebulon had fallen into such disrepair in the previous decade that
Goran had forgotten what it meant to be happy, and with his
daughter gone he had lost all hope before.

"Goran, I wish you well, and good fortune when
you are sentenced. But I am no longer a party to your madness."
Romio said.

Romio turned toward Teldar, producing a long
knife from his robe. Romio's gaze burned with intensity, and Teldar
felt frightened and confused. A moment later, Romio stabbed him,
just as another Romio, a copy, walked up to the trio and stood just
out of sight while the scene played out. Romio removed the knife
from Teldar, and a flood of deep maroon flowed like a river out of
his chest. Teldar fell to the ground dead a moment
later.

"What the…!" Goran began.

When the other Romio, the copy, came close
enough to the duo, Goran looked around in shock.

"What is this sorcery? How did you do this?"
Goran felt the threads of his sanity fray as he gazed, dumbfounded
at the impossibility of what lay before him.
Two Romio’s?
And one had killed his trusted
advisor. Goran began to grow angry and panic in his
confusion.
"I'll take it from here. Thank you for your help, Romio." The Romio
copy said.

"My pleasure." The first Romio
replied.

The first Romio's face contorted into a mask
of pain as his body began to stiffen like a board while he looked
upon his other self, facing his own paradox. The second Romio
looked upon his other with sympathy.
"Move west brother, and be free." The Romio copy said.

"How is this possible?" Goran
asked.

The first Romio froze and turned to a pillar
of ash. Then, he crumbled into a pile of swirling grey
dust.

"A paradox cannot exist, and since I was here
in this space-time first, the universal mind allowed me to stay,
while my other returned to the source field." Romio
said.

"But…"
"I know, how, right? You have to understand that we are all astral
projections of our true selves in the field of consciousness. This
body you inhabit, and everything you touch, taste, and smell: none
of it is real. It's all an illusion. I'm surprised you didn't
discover this with the high technology the Nebulonian's possessed.
But then, you were good at only one thing: killing your own
kind."
"I'll kill you for your insolence, Romio, or whatever you are. I am
your king!"

Goran looked around, and realized to his
horror that he had been surrounded by the frowning faces of
Tiamatians and Nebulonians alike.

"Goran, your hatred destroyed the homes and
lives of too many people to count, and now you have to pay. But
thank you for helping us end our petty squabbling and live in peace
with the people of Tiamat. An amazing feat."

"But why, how… are you all living
together?"
"The control mechanism for the Saturn weapon was destroyed when
Nebulon exploded, putting all of us on equal footing, and since
none of us had a home, we all ended up here. We've been here for
almost fifty years, and we’ve set our differences aside. We grew
our new society while living in between the two time structures
until you three arrived here, and now the time stream has been
corrected. I'm sad to report that the nanobots ran their course
some time ago and have all died off, but now that we have your ship
I think we can begin to travel to Earth and rebuild both our
societies on a much more habitable planet."