Reformation (10 page)

“And the Novi only have five active crewmembers
there,” Kuanti interrupted.  “By weight of numbers we will win the technology race.”

Goron’s
mood brightened with the naiveté of Kuanti’s statement.  “Do you have any idea how many beings inhabit this planet?  Nearly a billion, so if the Novi ever succeed in uniting these creatures in a common goal again, our advantaged position evaporates in the blink of an eye.”

“That is on you, Goron.  We are all forty million miles away on another planet at the moment
; it is on you to disrupt their efforts.”

“What do you think I’ve been doing the last
three thousand years?  No matter how many humans I can manipulate through their blind obedience to faith or riches, it’s not enough.  More drastic measures are now required.”

“What do you have in mind,” Kuanti asked.

“Tell me, did you have the forethought to preserve the biological specimens housed in the weapons hold?”  Goron knew the affirmative answer already and felt a strong flicker of recognition from the collective as he continued.  “Of even more importance, can you manage the math to deliver one of those solid fuel rockets of yours to Earth?”

“Before being banned
, the weapon rendered entire planets lifeless,” Kuanti cautioned. “You sure you want to sniff down that path?”

Goron let his sinister side shine through the collective in all its glory.  “These humans are stronger than most.  Enough will survive to still be useful to us in the future.  Yet enough will die to stop the Novi from accomplishing much of anything before you finally get your tails over here.”

Poe looked ahead
and saw his cart was falling behind the rest of the caravan.  To correct the matter, he gave his horses a quick crack of the whip which sped the team of nags along.  Traveling west and east between the Mediterranean and Far East was dangerous enough.  He didn’t need to add the peril of making the journey alone rather than among the safety of numbers a caravan provided from bandits.

The pair of horses had served Poe well for the last two yea
rs, but nonstop travel to the Mediterranean and back was starting to show in their pace.  He resolved at that moment to fetch what price he could for them once he reached Dunhuang and buy a new pair using some of the proceeds from selling his cargo.

He looked ahead of the lead wagon and spotted the familiar square gate house of the
Yumen Pass.  With the great wall extending hundreds of miles in either direction, this was the place all travelers heading east or west met.  Over the years it had become known as the Jade Gate.  Not because the doors were made of the highly valued material, but because so much of it passed through the gate for trade.  It served as the ideal choke point for the Chinese Emperor to extract taxes from the immensely rich trade route.  

The taxes were high, but not quite oppressive.  Even with the
fees, Poe figured another three or four years spent on the Silk Road and he could retire.  He wouldn’t quite live like a prince, but at this point anything beat sleeping on the ground, eating mystery stew and feeling the gritty dirt and dung kicked up by horses pulling the wagons between his teeth.  Ah yes, retirement would be grand.

Out of nowhere an explosion high overhead shook the very ground and sent an ear piercing shockwave through the air.  Poe covered his ears and careened his neck to the side
for a look.  He nearly wet himself at the sight of a broad streak of fire scorching the sky overhead.  The devilish trail traveled from west to east at blinding speed.  In a matter of seconds the flaming center passed overhead and nearly out of view over the eastern horizon.

Before any of the travelers could even think, let alone ask ‘what
in blazes was that,’ a blinding white light lit up the western skyline like a second sun.  When the light finally dimmed and Poe’s vision returned, he saw a towering pillar of smoke rising towards the heavens with a top like a mushroom fanning out on high. 

Moments later a terrorizing roar and hot wind laced with green smoke rushed
over the landscape and past the travelers.  It was as if the gates of hell opened up to release its most fearsome demon upon the earth.  Poe felt his wagon teeter up on two wheels as the fierce winds billowed past.  He dove onto the tarp covering the back and flung his entire body over the side to provide as much counterweight as possible to keep the wagon from tipping. 

After a few harrowing minutes
the hot winds died down, and stillness settled over the landscape once more.  When the tipping wagon finally settled back onto four wheels, Poe let go and had a look around.  Only a handful of carts out of hundreds remained upright.  Those that were toppled had their valuable contents spilled across the open grasslands.  The lucky ones could simply set their carts upright, reload and continue.  Most toppled carts would need repairs to broken wheels and axles.  The truly unlucky ones were traders who carried fine powdery spices instead of heavy jade.  These now impoverished traders had their cargo spread to the four winds never to be seen or tasted again.

Poe’s heart went out to the poor bastards, but he had his own interests to look after.  Soon as word got out
that a trade caravan was stranded, the bandits would be drawn to the location like flies to dung.  He pacified his inner guilt by helping set an undamaged wagon upright, but then was on his way with the two dozen wagons still capable of travel.  The city of Dunhuang was only eighty miles away.  Poe had no intention of remaining in the open once the flies began buzzing around.

Twenty hours
later, just after sunup, Poe and his miniature caravan reached the gates of Dunhuang.  The pressed pace of the journey was hard on his aging horses, but also on him; ever since the hot winds Poe had felt a sore throat and stiffness in his joints.  To make matters worse, hard black sacs that were painful to the touch had developed under his armpits.

As Poe
led his wagon through the torch lit streets he heard all the townspeople talking about the pillar of smoke that occurred earlier.  Explanations ranged from a piece of the sky falling to some sort of super weapon of a foreign power to god smiting the Earth with his wrath.  As the morning sun rose higher into the sky, Poe began hearing screams of lamentations coming from various houses.  As the stories went, people who went to sleep feeling sick the night before simply never woke up.

By the time Poe reached the commerce district he was feeling positively horrible.  Amid bouts of cold sweats
, he hastily sold his goods for the first price offered and made a straight path to the nearest apothecary to hopefully tend to his illness.  Poe’s heart sank when he saw dozens of dead bodies with bulging black sacs under their armpits and on their inner thighs lining the streets.  At that moment Poe realized his imminent retirement was close at hand rather than several years off.

Hastelloy sat across
the table from his opponent under a shaded tree outside his Egyptian home.  He watched the youngster’s eyes dart across the chess board taking in all the possibilities.  He had the boy’s rook in jeopardy and the youth was so eager to launch his attack that he failed to protect the valuable piece.  Hastelloy captured the rook with his knight, but then his eight year old adversary did something entirely unexpected. 

The youngster plowed his queen into a wall of pawns protecting Hastelloy’s king.  His only recourse was to capture with the king leaving it exposed.  The boy moved his bishop into check
ing position which drew the king further into the open.  Next the youngster moved his remaining rook over to deliver yet another check to bring Hastelloy’s king even closer to peril.  With one final stroke of brilliance, the eight year old moved his knight back to deliver checkmate. 

The game was over.  For the first time in
memory Hastelloy’s king was cornered with nowhere to go.  He stared in silence with elbows resting on the table and hands clasped under his chin.  His opponent had the strategic vision to sacrifice his rook and queen, the two strongest pieces on the board, to launch a brilliant attack which snapped Hastelloy’s winning streak of well over a million games.

How could a youth who only learned the game a few years
prior have beaten him?  Hastelloy sighed softly realizing that his question also delivered an answer.  He underestimated his opponent, relaxed his guard ever so slightly and was finally bested by a weaker opponent.

Hastelloy looked out from his introspection to see his young adversary’s face radiant with pride.  Everyone in the village knew full well Hastelloy did not relax his level of play for anyone.  Young or old, wise or dim
, the opponent was shown no quarter; how else could they learn to play properly? 

To his credit
, the boy refrained from boasting with a triumphant shout or victory dance.  Instead, the youth extended an open hand across the table.  Hastelloy met the offered appendage with a stiff handshake.  “Well played, Ashwin.  Very, very well played.”

“Thank you
, Master Hastelloy.”

His competitive nature was about to insist upon a grudge match
, but the village chieftain’s approach altered Hastelloy’s intent.  “Run along now, it appears a rematch will have to wait for another day.”

Ashwin
vacated the chair and bounded off to tell all his friends the incredible news leaving the chair open for the chieftain to sit down.  “Did I just see what I thought I saw?  The ruthless, unbeatable master
finally
lost a chess match.  Now be honest, did you throw the game to bolster the confidence of your brightest student?”

Hastelloy glared at the bearded man letting him know the idea of throwing a match was more insulting to him than the defeat itself.  He allowed the look to soften before asking, “
How does the harvest look this year?”

The chieftain drew a deep breath to puff his chest up with pride.  “Plentiful, but that is not why I am here.  A messenger just arrived with a letter he insisted was most urgent.”

Hastelloy took the folded piece of paper sealed with the wax imprint of Tonwen.  “Thank you.  Make sure the carts are covered and ready.  We leave for market in the morning,” Hastelloy ordered and then dismissed the village chieftain with a sideways shrug of his head.

Alone once more, Hastelloy looked down at the chessboard.  Had all the years spent in the tiny farming village protecting the Nexus really dulled his abilities to the point he could lose to a child?  He quickly pushed the thought aside as he opened the letter.

Entire villages all across the Mediterranean coastline are dying from some sort of plague.  It has
all the markings of the Alpha Yersinia Pestis bioweapon.  I am headed to Florence to join Valnor.  Please send word to the others and come as quickly as possible.

-Tonwen

Hastelloy sprang to his feet and ran after the departing chieftain. Sprinting past the bearded man on his way to a horse Hastelloy hollered back, “I’m needed in Italy.  I leave the village in your capable hands.”

Hastelloy rode alone
on horseback through the streets of Florence, Italy.  He would have preferred a quicker gate, but it seemed his mount stumbled every other stride upon the paved street that was in desperate need for repair. 

What a difference a few hundred years made
, he thought as his horse nearly lost its footing once more.  The stones, once perfectly fitted with Roman precision, now jutted and cratered at random intervals making the urban street nearly impassable. 

A crumbling infrastructure wasn’t the only change.  The last time he was in Florence, even with chaos brewing just to the south in
the city of Rome, it bustled with life and energy.  Now the streets were completely empty, the grand theater and public gardens overgrown and crumbling from neglect.  The partially finished skeleton of the Basilica di Santa Maria stood as if a monument to the city’s fallen stature.

The ambitious cathedral had been under construction for a hundred years now.  Hastelloy was no architectural expert, but by the look of things it would be at least a few hundred
years more before completion. 

Hastelloy both admired and pitied the multigenerational project.  The dedication was commendable, but the designer intended to cap the massive structure with a dome twice
the size of any other in existence.  The engineering knowledge to accomplish such a feat existed a thousand years ago in Rome as evidenced by the Pantheon and its grand dome, but no longer.  Hastelloy feared the cathedral would long stand as a monument to his failure to protect mankind from Goron’s meddling.

Rather than risk rendering his horse lame by traveling down the city’s decrepit center, Hastelloy chose a side street paved in dirt.  Twenty yards ahead he observed a p
easant struggling to haul a two-wheeled cart behind him.  A rancid aroma wedged somewhere between spoiled meat and sour milk caused Hastelloy to cough and gag.  The cargo hold of the wagon was covered with a tarp, but he did not need to see the contents to know what the man carried.  

  Hastelloy brought his horse to a full stop and watched the
peasant set his cart down in front of a house sporting a red stripe across the front door.  He unfurled the cargo hold and then delivered two stiff knocks at the door.  It opened, the man went in, and a few moments later he emerged carrying a dead woman with pitch black lesions on her neck, armpits and thighs.  He placed the deceased in the wagon, pulled the cover back over the six bodies he carried and moved on to the next marked doorway.

The putrid smell of death only worsened as Hastelloy made his way
deeper toward the city center.  Hastelloy only saw light from windows or smoke escaping from chimneys in one out of every five houses.  By that evidence, he estimated the plague had already claimed a majority of the city’s inhabitants.  The lucky few blessed with superior immune systems were left to manage a ghost town littered with diseased corpses.  The once proud metropolis was unable to function with such losses, and the rest of Europe found itself in a similar way.

Hastelloy finally made his way across the ri
ver and came to a crumbling two story structure.  The front door was ajar and clung to the doorframe by a single hinge.  He did not even bother knocking.  He simply nudged the teetering door aside and allowed its thunderous crash to the floor to announce his arrival.

The four men seated around a rectangular table in the center
of the room looked up from their bowls of stew long enough to acknowledge the newcomer was indeed their captain.

Valnor opened his arms slightly and gestured around the room.  “Welcome to my humble abode,” as the broken glass, rotted floor boards and splintered furniture strewn about made quite an impression.  So did a curious doll made from a potato sack with sewn buttons for eyes and a painted smile resting on the mantle above the fireplace
.

“I love what you’ve done with the place,” Hastelloy commented while kicking debris aside on his way to the table.

“I’d have tidied up a bit for the arrival of such a wise and visionary guest, but I’ve been too busy caring for the sick and burying the dead.  All this was caused by the Alpha relic who, despite lacking a body, continues to allude your brilliant schemes to find him,” Valnor responded with nearly tangible anger behind his words.

Hastelloy took the hint and adjusted his tone accordingly.  “What happened here?”

“Everything was just fine up until about three months ago,” Valnor began.  “The cathedral construction was coming along nicely.  Commerce was good, the harvests were plentiful.  Then one day it all just changed.”

Valnor solemnly stared into his stew as he went on.  “It started along the docks.  A shipment of exotic spices and fabrics arrived from the coast.  Some of the flat boat crewmen were already complaining of stiff joints and generally feeling ill.  A few days later it seemed anyone who went to the market district developed black lumps all over and dropped dead inside of a week. 

“Panic ensued and people fled the city like it was an erupting volcano.  The plague followed them though.  It hounded everyone no matter where they went to hide.  The countryside, other towns, it didn’t matter.  The pestilence found them and killed them all.”

Hastelloy realized Valnor was far too close to the situation to give an unbiased report so he turned to his science officer.  “Tonwen, have you had a chance to examine the bodies?  Is it really the
Alpha Yersinia Pestis bioweapon?”

“Without question it is the Alpha weapon,”
came Tonwen’s sterile response.  “It is fortunate these humans have exceptionally strong immune systems to fight off this plague.”

At that moment Valnor looked ready to hurl his empty bowl at Tonwen’s head.  “Nine out of ten people have dropped dead!  How is that good fortune?”

“All three instances of the Alpha using the bioweapon before being banned resulted in complete annihilation,” Tonwen countered.

“Casualty rates are
even lower elsewhere,” Tomal added.  “I came from the  Germanic territories up north and there it is more like one in five has died.  It did get worse the closer I came to the Mediterranean Sea, however.”

“Regardless,” Valnor fired back,
“this is a calamity, and it’s still going on.  All our work over the centuries has been undone in a matter of months.  So many have been lost these humans may never recover as a society.  This would never have happened if you would have let me put the Roman Empire back together.  We could have distributed a vaccine before it ever got this bad.”

Hastelloy put his hand up to halt Valnor’s diatribe. 
“Tonwen.  We have all been vaccinated against this virus.  Can you use our blood to create a vaccine with the tools available?”

“I already have,” Tonwen immediately answered. “Creating the vaccine is not the problem.  It is producing and distributing the cure on a massive scale that is difficult.”

“And expensive,” Gallono added.

“A strong central government is the only way to do it,” Valnor jumped in, eager to push his secular agenda.  “We start with one city state.  Let it be known we have a cure for the plague and offer to share it with those who unite under our banner.  Once the pandemic has passed the central government will be in position to support the arts and science
, and we can get things moving in the right direction again.”

The room remained
quieter than the abandoned city streets outside for several minutes.  Valnor’s mind was in an entirely wrong place.  The kind of empire building he advocated was not the Novi way.  In fact, it had all the ruthless markings of how the Alpha went about doing things.

Hastelloy slowly unclasped his hands and set them flat on the table before speaking.  “Even if I didn’t find the thought of extorting people’s allegiance in exchange for a cure completely repugnant, there is not
enough time for it.  In just a few short months this city was nearly wiped out, and this is going on all across Europe as we speak.”

Valnor erupted to his feet.  “What would you know about it?  You’ve been insulated from it all living in Egypt.  I’ve been stuck here living this nightmare day in and day out.  This place, this whole continent is a hollow shell
now thanks to you insisting we sit on the sidelines while Goron unleashed his poison across the landscape.”

“You’re out of line, Ensign,” Gallono shouted in defense of his captain.  “There is no way any of us could have known Goron would resort to this.”

“It’s called being prepared,” Valnor countered directing his ire toward Hastelloy once more.  “You used to be prepared for everything no matter how unlikely.  If you can’t manage that any longer, then it’s up to me.”

“Valnor,” Hastelloy said on the way to his feet. 
He reached for his subordinate’s arm, but was too slow. Valnor scooped the doll off the mantle on his way out the door without another word spoken.

“Well at least I’m not the problem child this time around,” Tomal
said quietly to lighten the mood, but he only received stern looks from the rest of the table.  He dropped the self-righteous grin and asked, “Between the four of us then, what’s the plan?”

Hastelloy resisted the urge to chase after Valnor.  There was something more to his rage than just seeing the civilization he guided into a golden age regress.  The anger was personal, but Hastelloy did not have the time to deal with it at the moment.  He reluctantly turned his attention back to the table and shook off the uneasy feeling of self-doubt creeping its way into his mindset.  Valnor was right; he should have seen this coming from Goron and been prepared.  Had he underestimated his enemy?  He set his self-doubt aside to give his orders to the remaining crewmen. 

“We
will use the infrastructure already in place with the Catholic Church to distribute a cure.  By definition public care and outreach is part of their mission, and they already have unparalleled reach and influence throughout Europe,” Hastelloy ordered.

“Not to beat a dead horse here, but aren’t you concerned Goron has his tendrils into the Catholic Church already?” Tomal asked.

“What proof do you have of that?” Hastelloy insisted.

“History is my proof,” Tomal responded.  “Pope Gregory the IX establishing the inquisitions to root out and punish heretics.  Can you seriously tell me
with a straight face that was not Goron using the church to carry out a hit list?”

“Look at the Crusades,” Tomal
went on.  “Popes used religious coercion to send entire generations of Europe’s smartest and bravest to die of battle wounds and disease in a worthless desert in a far off land.”

Hastelloy felt the discussion spiraling out of hand so he put a stop to it.  “Tomal, ever since you broke away from Goron’s manipulation you see an Alpha conspiracy behind everything.”

“Better to be paranoid than surprised,” Tomal countered.

“Priority one is stopping the plague,” Hastelloy insisted.  “Since millions of people are dying every week we need an immediate solution which means the Catholic Church.  Tonwen, you will work to promote the church’s social and financial reach to speed along distribution of the cure.  Tomal
, you will help him.”

Before Tomal could voice further protest Hastelloy added, “While you are at it, try and find more solid proof of Goron holding influence over the church.  You may very well be right and we are helping to make that Alpha relic even stronger, but it is what’s required at
the moment.”

Hastelloy relaxed his stare affixed on Tomal to address the entire table.  “Even when we manage to stop this plague, dark times are coming.  We need to lay the foundation for
a resurgence in technology and culture when the timing is right.  While you two prod the church into helping with that effort, Gallono and I will remain here to keep commerce flowing throughout the region.”

Hastelloy looked around the table and saw each
of the crewmen lost in their own thoughts contemplating the scope and magnitude of their assignments.  “This is why we get paid the big bags of coin, gentlemen, now let’s get to it.”