Earth's Last Angel (2 page)

‘Mmm…We are going to follow the story of a few key individuals and see how things pan out for them. First a short review. Back in the beginning of their development of civilization, of course, they found or made gods to worship. Eventually the old gods were killed off along with a huge slice of the population in the “war of the gods”, as it became known, cities are destroyed and new cities built on the ruins of the old.

‘Creator worship now takes the place of the old gods, three main faiths demand that they are each the right religion approved by God. They are quite willing to slaughter each other, plus all nonbelievers, heretics, and infidels that get in their way. These are tortured then murdered. Their murders are explained away as atonement sacrifices for the souls of the dead.

‘So-called Holy books are now written to justify this abomination, as well as war and all manner of disgusting filth and oppression of the people, especially the females. This is now justified in the name of their creator Azeebar. To top it all off, they venerate the instrument of torture and death, ‘the Lance.”' They hang this horrific symbol on a gold neck chain and wear it as a symbol of their faith and also as a charm to protect them from evil!'

‘Hell that's a bit heavy pops! Are you sure all this actually happened?' I ask, a bit shaken.

‘I ask you one single question, son. Have I ever lied to you?' his clear, piercing gray eyes boring into mine.

‘No…,' I answer sheepishly.

‘Then listen closely as I introduce you to the main players…'

‘In the beginning The Word was, and The Word was with God, and The Word was a God.'

The sun sparkles off these words, embossed in gold thread under three golden crocodiles facing each other, standing upright in a semi-circle. The symbol of the ‘Most Holy Righteous Empire' is emblazoned on the scarlet cloak that hangs from the shoulders of one of the most evil Mazubans ever to walk planet Thera.

The one who now dares to call himself ‘The Word'

He stands only 102 centimeters tall, long, thin spider-like limbs hang from his equally thin torso. His raven black neck frill stands erect, quivering, pulsing to scarlet red then back to raven black. His facial features are scarred and hidden by a black veil. His cruel eyes are dark, foreboding, menacing. His wrist frills also stand erect and quiver, his long, slender hands are almost feminine, with bony fingers resembling claws. His shoulders are hunched over, as if carrying the weight of all the blood that he has spilled. Chalky-white skin with thin blood-red lips complete the personification of this evil, diabolical monster.

He stands high on the execution platform, looking down on the three prisoners below on skull rock, secured to the three giant golden crocs. He is like a repugnant, ravenous vulture, his head bobbing up and down as a smug, evil sneer crosses his face.

The Sky Lion, in the form of a Mazuban, is secured to the central Croc, the other two prisoners are positioned one at
his right and one at his left. They are spread out, standing upright in an X shape, each of their feet fettered to the spread legs of the giant golden croc behind them, their wrists also fettered by chains emanating from the spread arms of the croc. These are pulled tight to keep the prisoners at full stretch. Under each naked prisoner the point of the lance is positioned to pierce their anal passage, thrusting up through their body, piercing vital organs and traveling through the throat to exit the mouth. As the lance is released to shoot upwards, the foot clamps are released, allowing the lance to impale the prisoners high off the ground, ensuring a horrible slow death.

The prisoners are able to see each other; they have endured eternal weeks of unspeakable torture and abuse at the hands of the tormentors. Their battered, broken bodies stink of burnt flesh and festering, weeping wounds.

They embrace their imminent death with a sense of relief.

‘The Word' raises his arms skywards, screaming in a high pitch hellish voice.

‘Impale the false angel and the children of the necromancer filth! Impale them! Impale them!'

Sheona guides Prospecting Vessel PV 6098 into landing position on asteroid number -SF 2986-12926-5628-00788, a distance of two week's flight (3,563,982 kilometers) from Sky Jewel, the asteroid capital city, which is now home to more than 1 million people. Slowly the large vessel eases its way down onto the surface using the auto land sequence. Rocks and debris spray out from under the thrusters mounted high up inside each of the six feet of the vessel as she gently touches down. The six legs fold at the center elbow, lowering the body of the massive craft to just one meter off the surface of the asteroid.

The Mark XII is the latest model prospecting vessel, with all systems fully automated, manual flight mode is an option rarely used now. Sheona just love's piloting the vessel herself, feeling its awesome power through her hands.

Much smaller crews are now possible, Bill and Sheona are the only crew aboard. Back when prospecting first began out on the asteroid belt, crews could number anywhere up to 12 people per vessel. Now with the fully automated on-board systems, crews as small as two are now possible. The Mark XII is a much faster craft, covering the distance to and from their home outpost city of Borazik in a fraction of the time it took the first original models.

Sheona has recently turned 146 years old. Bill is now nearing 147 years old, with just a couple of months to go. Normal lifespans out on the belt have now risen to 160 years. Bill has been talking to Sheona about going back to his birthplace on the little blue planet Thera.

Bill's knee is playing up again as he tries to stand up. This is the fourth reconstruction job, and it's done quite well over the last 12 years. Arthritis and all the other aches and pains are ganging up on him. Once tight, hard muscle has started to sag, his skin too has gone a bit wrinkly. His once luxurious neck and wrist frills have thinned and faded. He struggles into his coveralls, which are a high tech electro muscle suit, it supports his weight and gives him the strength of a 20 year old Mazuban.

‘Can you do this zip up for me Bill, please?' asks Sheona, backing up to Bill with the back of her coveralls still open.

‘Typical female, still can't reach her zipper!' comments Bill cheekily as he zips her up, slapping her playfully on the rear.

‘Well, you males have to be useful for something!' she laughs, as she heads out through the biosphere to the tail section of the prospecting vessel to put on her space suit. Bill joins her, wriggling his space suit on and snapping shut the helmet seal. He then walks over to Sheona and checks hers. She in turn checks his, locking them both.

‘Where does Madam wish to go?' Bill asks with a very fake accent, as they pass through the airlock and down the ramp in their six-wheeled buggy.

Sheona is already engrossed with the hologram of the asteroid, spinning the three dimensional image around to have a good look at it.

‘See this ridge here and this large depression over here,' she says, pointing to the image. ‘Head up the east side of the ridge down to the edge of the depression, and we'll see how deep it is, it could be a good spot.'

Bill smiles at his girl, he can still see the remnants of her tight-skinned pretty face with her delicate feminine neck frill tucked up in the back of her helmet.

‘Watch where you're going, clown!' smirks Sheona, not even looking up from the hologram as Bill swerves to miss a rock.

‘If I were a much younger…'

‘Yeah, yeah, keep your mind on the job, you grubby old goat!' she laughs.

They have been prospecting on their own for just over 40 years, and found some smaller size ice deposits, enough to pay their way and put a down payment on their latest new prospecting vessel. They are specialist ice prospectors, and this asteroid has all the hallmarks of having at least some ice, and perhaps enough room for a small satellite city.

‘Get that newfangled gadget out that the research dudes gave us to test.'

‘OK, pull up and I'll get it out.'

Bill stops the buggy, and Sheona retrieves the handheld ice detector from the storage box at the rear of the buggy. Climbing back in, she straps herself in and turns on the device. Pointing it at the ground, she flicks the activate switch. Nothing, the device is just dead and silent.

‘Mmm…another dud. Oh well,' she says, placing the still switched-on device into the side storage basket, facing the ground.

‘Just close the lid on the basket in case it falls out.'

‘I guess I'd better! The way you drive!' Sheona teases.

After a 40-minute ride around the ridge they come to the edge of the depression, it is massive. The range-finder on the buggy shows it as 56 kilometers across. The edge gently drops down to the depression floor, which looks reasonably flat to drive on. Bill drops a locator beacon at their point of entry, and then they drive out towards the middle. After going just a few kilometers the device in the basket goes berserk! rattling and screeching.

‘What the hell!' exclaims Bill, skidding the buggy to a sudden stop.

‘Sheona jumps out of the buggy, extracting the device from the side basket. She lifts it out of the basket and points it skywards.

‘What are you doing?' exclaims Bill, with a large frown on his face,

The device falls silent.

‘Oh…'

Sheona now points it back at the ground and it explodes into a riot of sound and vibrations.

‘Bill, grab the locator beacons, drop one here then another one when this racket stops. I'll keep walking and see how far across this signal goes for.'

Bill follows Sheona in the buggy for half a kilometer, finally he calls her back to the buggy.

‘Look, I reckon this could be a pretty big deposit if that thing actually does work. This depression showed up as a hollow space on the scanner as we flew over. That's why I said not to land here until we can check it out. So jump in and put it back in the basket and we'll drive across.'

Sheona climbs back aboard the buggy and places the device back into the basket, again pointing to the ground, and closes the lid on it.

‘Good thinking, I was starting to wonder when it was going to stop. My fingers are still numb from its vibrating.'

Bill just raises his eyebrows at her, with a silly grin on his face.

‘Get your mind on the job lad!' she laughs, shoving at him as he drives off.

They drive the entire way across with the signal strength at its maximum, the ice detector screaming all the way until they are about one kilometer short of the far edge of the depression, then the detector falls silent.

‘If this is ice then we've just hit the jackpot!' Bill grins through his visor at Sheona.

‘Let's not count our chickens just yet,' she smiles in return.

Bill drops a locator beacon where the signal stops. Then he drives around the entire edge of the depression in a zigzag pattern, like a sailing yacht tacking into the wind. This allows him to mark the outer edge of the signal with locator beacons. After taking just over seven hours to complete the drive around the depression, Bill calls it a day.

‘I don't know about you, but I'm starving!' he announces

‘OK let's head for home, we'll have a meal and a well-earned rest.'

‘I reckon we drive a star pattern over the depression tomorrow to see if it's a solid signal across the whole thing or just little pockets of signal.'

‘Sounds like a good idea. Then at least we'll know what we're dealing with.'

With a solid meal and a good night's sleep under their belts, Bill and Sheona head out to the depression bright and early the following morning to start their surface survey with the new ice detector. The results are surprising even to Bill and Sheona. If the ice detector actually works, then this depression holds the biggest ice deposit ever found on the asteroid belt!

‘Bill…if this is what I think it could be, we'll have to use our brains a bit here.'

‘What do you mean, love?'

‘Let's not jump to conclusions just yet, let's do some spot drilling and find out what we've got here. Then we can file our report with verified data and not guess-work.'

‘Mmm…you've got a point. You got to admit it's pretty damn exciting, we could be standing on the biggest ice find ever!'

‘Not a bad retirement package then, mate!' she smiles.

Over the next six weeks they drill 300 core sample holes, finding pure ancient ice with no contaminants down to a depth of 500 meters. The rock crust on top of the ice is only 30 meters at its thickest. After only two days drilling Bill and Sheona decide that it would be safe to land the vessel directly on the depression.

‘I think we're nearly done here, Bill, we've got all the data we need to send in our report direct to Sky Jewel. I'll send Borazik a copy as well. They are going to flip out when they see how much ice is in this deposit!

‘We are going to be mega rich!' laughs Bill ‘I'll just finish this last hole then we can call it a day.'

Bill feeds the laser-head drill rod deep into the ground. It passes the 400 meter mark, then 500, then 600. Approaching 700 meters the drill bit detects solid rock and stops drilling, the hollow rod now starts its journey back to the surface, retracting from the tubular hole.

Solid ice core fills its inner tube. As the rod retracts towards the surface, ice squeezes out the end of the hollow rod, just like toothpaste out of a tube, breaking off in long cylinders 300 millimeters thick. These drop onto the ground in a growing pile of ice cylinders.

Bill adjusts the extraction speed on the drill and is monitoring its progress when he notices a cylinder of ice break off the end of the rising ice cylinder. To his amazement, there is a strange blue pulsating light coming from within it. As he rushes over to check it out, he calls out to Sheona.

‘Come over here and check this out!'