Sacred Ground

by Richard Ong

conclusion

The living being named Abigail Rosemary Thorpe suddenly opened her eyes and sat up from her reclining position, gasping for air. She clutched at her throat and her hands clawed at the skin-tight fabric covering her skin.

Can you see it, Mommy? Can you see... me?

“Samantha? Oh, Samantha!” the living-called-Abigail cried while staring at it. “Oh please, sweetheart. Come back to Mommy. Mommy will make everything all right again.”

Don’t be sad, Mommy. Please don’t be sad. I don’t feel good when you are sad.

“Oh hush, sweetheart. Hush. Look, I’ll dry my tears for you. See?”

“Abigail! My God, you’re awake!” The living-called-Simon entered the crew compartment of the giant metal spider. “I was so worried about you, baby.”

‘Baby?’ it thought. The living-called-Abigail was clearly an adult version of this species. Its knowledge gatherer had informed it so after talking to the spider’s brain. The living beings called it a computer. The giant metal spider was not a spider at all, according to the knowledge gatherer. It was a container... no, a vessel of some kind. It was built by hundreds of the adult version, and they lived in a place called Sidney. There was so much information to process. It needed time to understand. Ah... ‘baby’ was a word denoting tenderness... love.

“Simon? Simon, I saw Samantha. Samantha was here.” There was a flush on the cheeks of the living-called-Abigail when she mentioned her offspring’s name.

“Oh baby, I was... what? Samantha, you said? Samantha died two years ago. It’s just a dream, honey,” he said, sitting next to her. “It was only a dream. You fell into the pit last night, remember? And you said that you landed on a large piece of what appeared to be an artifact of some sort just before you faded out. Albert and I went down as fast as we could and we found you lying unconscious. You’ve been asleep since then.”

“A dream, you said? Oh, Simon. I thought... I just thought that she was back with us, the way it was before,” her voice broke. “Y-You remember her blue dress with the marigold pattern on each side?”

“Yes. It was her favorite,” the living-called-Simon replied. A smile came to his face. The entity reached out and touched his head with a shadowy tendril and accessed the memory within. The entity felt good and warm at his remembrance.

Suddenly there was a faint beeping noise coming from the computer console. The knowledge gatherer relayed a warning to the entity.

Its presence had been detected by the vessel’s computer.

“That’s strange. Infra-red sensors indicated a sudden rise in thermal convection,” said the living-called-Simon. “Even the Geiger counter went crazy for a while. There appeared to be a momentary spike in beta particles localized in the same region where the thermal currents were detected. There it is again. The localized area appears to be moving... moving... towards you, Abigail.”

“It’s her,” she smiled.

“Her?”

“Samantha, our child. She’s with us, you know. She’s come back,” she whispered.

“Honey,” the living-called-Simon dropped the scanner he was holding on the bed and placed his arms around the living-called-Abigail. “Samantha is dead. I don’t know what made you think that she has returned to us, but whatever it is, I assure you, it’s not her. It simply can’t be her!”

Something changed in the eyes of the living-called-Abigail and she suddenly pushed her husband away from her. The entity nearby was assaulted by a force so strong that it felt different towards the living-called-Simon. He was making her feel sad. It felt pain and something else that it wanted to lash out at her mate.

“You’ve always thought that our child stood in the way of your work. Your work, Simon!” the living-called-Abigail screamed. “It’s always been your work, hasn’t it? I bet when she died, you were relieved to be free of her need for your attention. It’s always about ‘Daddy please help me this; please do this for me...’

“And when she was gone, when our only child was taken from us by that awful accident with the school bus, when she burned along with ten other kids, ten other innocent kids, all you could probably think of was how much more work you would be able to do now that she’s gone. Gone!”

The living-called-Abigail was stunned by a sharp slap on the face. The skin below her nose was cut near the lip, dripping red and white cells down the side of her chin. The living-called-Simon had hurt her. The entity suddenly recoiled from the feedback of the pain and it left its presence from the woman.

“Oh God, Simon. Oh my God. Please believe me. I didn’t mean to say those things,” then she paused as if a thought came over her. “It... it was almost as if a fog came over me and I couldn’t help myself. Oh, please Simon, don’t look at me like that. Say something, please!”

The living-called-Simon stepped back. His eyes bulged looking in the direction above his wife. He wasn’t looking at her anymore. He was looking behind her and then to her right as the entity-now-called-Samantha looked at him with eyes that seemed to burn from inside.

The living-called-Abigail slowly followed her husband’s gaze. Blood from her cut had begun to stain her blue and yellow skin suit. She saw what he saw and the love left her eyes to be replaced by terror.

The entity-now-called-Samantha walked slowly towards the living-called-Simon. It felt an overwhelming need to hurt him, though it didn’t know why except that it must. It took one step towards the living, then another. It reached out with its shadowy tendrils from its hair and from its arms to place a stranglehold around the neck of the living-called-Simon. His fragile body began to choke for want of air. The color of his skin began to turn into the color of his skin suit.

The living-called-Abigail reached out and touched the entity-now-called-Samantha. Her hands were suddenly drained of heat as the entity leached out the energy from its touch by instinct before it managed to withdraw the tendrils from her arms.

The living-called-Abigail collapsed on the floor, shaking. Frost formed on her lips and throughout the rest of her body. “Pu-please. Please Samantha, my sweetheart. Please do not hurt your father.”

Something screamed inside the entity and the image of Samantha faded when it finally understood what it was. The knowledge gatherer had already absorbed all available data from Lamdru One.

It was a ship from a planet called, Earth. It came to its resting place to strip out the Moon’s natural resources. They were pirates and grave robbers. Their long troubled history was a consequence of their violent nature. If they could not be reasoned with, then the humans must be stopped at any cost.

* * *

Lieutenant Albert Wong had always been a connoisseur for the finer things in life. Energy resource magnate James Willard III had discovered a kindred spirit in this young man and quickly took the aspiring engineer under his wing to shape him into a dangerous ally and weapon. With the promise of wealth secured, Albert’s loyalty made him the billionaire baron’s number one muscle in corporate espionage.

This prospecting mission started out as being no different than any other task he had undertaken for Heliopolis. His job was simple: he would sit on the sidelines as a participant and let Captain Thorpe run the show as he pleased until such time that Heliopolis’ business interests were compromised. Only then would he act on Willard’s behalf to ensure that these business interests were realized by any means necessary.

Ever since he had first been introduced to Captain Simon Thorpe, he thought that the man stank of being an idealist. The captain stood for everything that Albert had never wanted to be. Simon was too high-minded in his own morality, and someone had to chop him down to size sooner or later.

Albert saw the perfect opportunity to do just that when Captain Thorpe decided to scrub the mission. The man had been acting strange ever since his wife regained consciousness from her fall. Lieutenant Abigail Thorpe was no better than her husband. It seemed that something inside her became unhinged after having survived the accident, something about her dead child coming back. That was unfortunate for she was an attractive woman and he had hoped to have his way with her for a bit after the captain was out of the picture. The situation had changed, however, and an unstable woman on board was a liability he could not afford.

In the airless void of the mare outside the protective confines of Lamdru One, Albert turned on the power of his jury-rigged transceiver and slowly adjusted the wavelength of the broadcast. James Willard’s own personal transport from the Copernicus mining base had been in orbit for the last three hours. Only a few trusted handfuls of staff from Heliopolis, including Albert, were privy to Chairman Willard’s itinerary. Prior survey missions pegged Mare Frigoris to be a gold mine, and contingency measures had been meticulously prepared.

There was a burst of static followed by a voice as the encrypted transmission came through. Albert adjusted a dial on his lunar excursion suit’s chest control to synchronize the feed with his communications unit.

“Snowbird Eight, please repeat your message, over,” said Albert. Albert looked at his wrist display and noted that the magnetic flux was gathering in to close his window. He had less than a minute before losing his feed from the shuttle. “Snowbird Eight, please acknowledge.”

“This is Snowbird Eight, we copy you Lieutenant, though we’re not sure for how long. Your signal is weak and fading fast.”

“Dammit, man. Get me Chairman Willard before I lose this signal. Over,” Albert barked on the headset’s microphone.

After several precious, agonizing seconds of waiting, a man with a gruff voice came over the headset speakers.

“This is Willard. What’s your status, Albert?”

“Sir,” — Albert resisted the automatic urge to salute his mentor — “The walk has become too hot. The objective is still quite viable and the find very promising. However, the... canaries are in the way. Suggest that we proceed with the backup plan effective immediately. Please advise, over.”

“Go ahead. Snowbird Eight will arrive at 0800 for cleanup and retrieval.”

The line went dead and Albert smiled as the tension increased on his shoulders. He pulled out a small pistol from his bulky excursion suit’s right leg pocket. It was time to finish off what he had been sent here to do.

* * *

With its awakening, the entity-that-was-once-called-Samantha remembered what it used to be. One part of it, called the knowledge gatherer, had absorbed all the information it could obtain from the ship’s computer and learned everything it could about the living.

This living was nothing like it once was. Each biological vessel was brimming with unrestrained emotions that it both fed and assaulted the entity in each encounter. Each assault was like an aura that morphed the part that it touched and consumed all reason and control.

One aspect of it recoiled at the malevolence of the living-called-Albert Wong. This living had insatiable appetites: greed, power and lust. The entity’s memory recalled that the civilization of its origin had overcome such urges and learned to balance order against chaos. After a thousand of its own years, the entity’s own living vessel had expired, and the energy released was captured and preserved within the tomb of its final resting place.

The arrival of these other living, far more unstable and primitive than its own, had disturbed its sleep. The entity’s inner balance had also been severely disrupted. It must, therefore, expel these excesses absorbed from the humans before it could resume its rest.

* * *

A shadow moved in front of him and Albert squinted up the metal ring of the ladder leading to an open hatch beneath Lamdru One. His helmet lights glinted off the clawed end of a large, heavy spanner held above the equally suited head of Captain Thorpe. Abigail stood beside his commander.

Albert’s heart stopped when he looked at her eyes through the glass bubble of her own helmet. There was an unmistakable look of hatred in them directed at him. He suddenly felt naked and exposed under that intense scrutiny. In that brief moment, he knew that she was completely aware of his own thoughts towards her.

“I’m afraid we cannot allow you to continue, Lieutenant,” said Captain Thorpe.

Albert raised his pistol up towards the couple. “And what makes you think that you can stop me?” He smiled and started to squeeze the trigger. At this range, there was no way he could miss — one shot on the head of each canary.

I will.

Albert whirled around to look for the source of the tiny unidentified voice through his headset and came face to face with a little girl standing on the surface of the moon wearing nothing more than a thin blue dress. There was a dull crack above his helmet, As it depressurized, he realized what had just happened.

His knees buckled under the sudden dead weight of his suit and he fell on his side. He began to suffocate. Frost had already formed on the rapidly expanding crack of his visor when he caught a glimpse of the spanner that Captain Thorpe held lying on the dusty surface of the mare amidst shards of broken glass.

He felt his head began to swell with the onset of an intense migraine. The trickle from his nose told him that his blood had begun to boil through his pores from the loss of pressure in his suit.

In the last remaining seconds before he drowned in his own blood, Albert Wong saw the little girl bend down and touch him on the head. Her cold hand passed through the shell of his helmet and the pain left his body when he heard her say:

I’m sorry.

* * *

The entity’s work was nearly done. Its shadowy tendrils had already begun to regain some of their color as each length swayed gently to and fro and radiated around the image of Samantha-once-living. Red and blue light rippled across the blackness of one tentacle as it reached out towards the still-remaining-living-called-Simon and Abigail Thorpe.

The entity called Samantha-once-living spoke inside their heads with the gentle tinkling sound of crystals.

Mom. Dad. There is one more thing that I need you to do for me before I go back to sleep.

“Anything, sweetheart,” Abigail said. There was so much love on her face that the entity called Samantha-once-living almost felt regret at what she must ask.

“Just name it, honey,” said her father.

* * *

“This is Snowbird Eight calling Lieutenant Wong, over.” A hiss of faint static answered the call.

“Lieutenant Albert Wong, please respond, over.” Once again, the crew of four including James Willard III, was greeted by the soft hiss of faint static.

“Is it that damn magnetic interference again, Boothe?” asked the gruff voice of a large man in the small crew compartment.

“No sir,” said Willard’s flight engineer. “It seems that whatever caused that swirl over the last eight hours somehow just... vanished.”

“Vanished? Explain yourself, son,” said Willard.

“I can’t, sir,” stammered Boothe. “All we can conclude from the data they sent yesterday to Polaris is that something initially triggered the magnetic storm like... like someone threw a switch.” Sweat dribbled down the flight engineer’s face as he saw that his inadequate explanation simply annoyed Willard even more than before.

“And now I suppose that you’re going to sit there and tell me that this ‘someone’ simply decided to turn the damn thing off?” Willard glared hard at the poor man.

“Sir! Something is happening down there!” shouted one of his pilots.

“What now?”

Before James Willard III, billionaire entrepreneur and nominated “Person of the Year” by Time magazine in 2092, could finish what he was about to say, his eyes melted from their sockets. A sudden flash of white light incinerated his shuttle.

The Mare Frigoris’ once-powdery layer of basalt was suddenly blasted and transformed into a brand new crater when Lamdru One’s fusion engine overloaded.

It was the first recorded nuclear accident on the Moon.

To Challenge 420...