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—-
WE SEPARATED AND SCOURED the ruins carefully over the next fifteen hours. We studied each room and each corner, side room and even what looked to be latrines for more information about the Cetoplin people. I finally called a halt to the search and ordered Vearse and Stevins back to the ship. Stevins had been poring over his tablet, which he had been using to record other reliefs that we’d come across, as well as documenting every aspect of the ruins as we moved from building to building. I had to admit that even through my doubts, Destota had been right to send him, because he was intelligent, meticulous and ambitious.
As we returned to the ship he stumbled twice, so engrossed in the information recorded on his tablet. I finally put a hand on his arm to steady him and was rewarded with a weary smile which was easy for me to return. He allowed me to guide him back to the ship, and for once I had no issue with babysitting.
“The sun has not set.” He said abruptly. “And yet hours have passed.”
“It’s hard to know what the orbital pattern would be around the parent star.” I replied. But he was right. The sun had not even moved from the overhead position it had been since we arrived. It was very odd, but not unusual for alien worlds, since the world would have been ashen cinders and flowing rivers of lava had the sun never set.
We returned to the ship and sealed ourselves inside, feeling the powerful blast of cool air from the life support systems and we all drank water greedily as Wingell provided bottles for us.
“So?” The disgraced councilor prodded us as we began to remove our combat gear. “Who are they?”
“Extinct.” Stevins declared. “Wiped out, by Gilbaglia.”
“Gilbaglia?” Wingell asked.
“Yes.” I said, shoving my rifle back into the weapon locker. “Stevins found a lot of other information but he needs some time to interpret it.”
“Part of it I don’t need to interpret.” Stevins said, sitting on the bench behind me. “We need to go back to Destota.”
“Why, exactly?” Vearse asked, hanging his combat vest on the open weapon locker. “I mean, we just got started out here.”
“The Cetoplin are our creators.” Stevins announced. “And they’re extinct.”
The stunned silence that smashed through the room was so tense that even the ship itself seemed to be holding its breath. “Repeat that, please?” Wingell asked.
“They’re called the Cetoplin.” Stevins pounded away on his tablet, then flipped it around for all of us to see. “This relief I found in the lower levels of the amphitheater. It describes their visit to earth, and the subsequent issues it raised.”
“Which were?” I asked, pulling off my vest.
“They accidentally seeded earth.” He sighed. “We’re a cosmic accident. We were created by a race who intended to come back and exterminate their mistake.” He scrolled through the reliefs, written in stone and as clear as day. “But they were wiped out by the Gilbaglians.”
I looked at Vearse. “Get us into communication range of the fleet. As fast as we can go.”
He nodded once and jogged towards the cockpit. A moment later the engines powered up and the hatches sealed.
“So, we were right.” Wingell said.
“To an extent, but ultimately, no. There is no God.” Stevins looked at Wingell, heaved a heavy sigh. “There is no God, there is no creator. We are a cosmic accident.”
“Why is that such a bad thing, Stevins?” I demanded. “Cosmic accident or not, we have survived, divided our species, and we’re still here.”
“And losing!” Wingell cried. I was sick of his face. There was no other way to describe it. I turned to him, took two steps and drove my fist into his jaw hard enough to crack the bone.
Stevins raised an eyebrow and pointed the stylus he was holding at Wingell. “That guy gets punched more than anyone else I’ve ever known in my life.”
“That’s what happens when you’re a traitor.” I replied, rubbing my hand. “Stevins, are you going to be all right? I know this is your belief system at play here.”
“Lieutenant, I’m just glad that we have a way to end this war.” He flipped the tablet back around to me again. “This shard was taken from Earth by the Cetoplin around the time of their visit.”
I recognized it as a small piece of stone that I’d seen Destota wear as a charm pendant. “I don’t understand.” I said honestly.
“Lieutenant, that is a piece of the original of the ten commandments, passed down from ‘God’,” He made quotation marks in the air. “To a person called Moses. These commandments,” He turned the tablet again, showing an image of the ancient stone tablets. “Are from this planet, made of no stone found on Earth, and engraved by the human hand.”
“So, the Phelb religion...” I began.
“One of them.” He corrected. “But not the one they currently follow. This is an ancient Earth religion that apparently died out about a thousand years ago. But this is the evidence that the Phelbs are searching for. Proof of their God.”
I was beginning to get confused, but the ship lifted off and rocketed towards space. “So why were we able to find this place to easily?”
“We’ve got the genetic coding, probably, a way to locate home, and I think that somewhere else on the planet would have been the source of that signal ping.” He shrugged. “I’m not entirely certain, we didn’t study enough of the planet to make a full determination of what drew us here. What I do know, however, Lieutenant, is that the Phelbs attacked Gilbaglia because they likely discovered this.” He held up his tablet again, and it showed the Gilbaglians killing Cetoplin, the human creators, the Phelb Gods.
“How would they have known?” I asked, eyebrow raised.
“That’s cute how you do that,” He said. “I like the color of your hair. A lot.” He grinned, his own features flushing slightly. “Anyways, the Phelb Empire has already been here, fairly recently. All the signs are here,” He pointed at an image of a boot print that was not a match to anything the team wore. “They’ve been here, probably just before the Vandorians fought them at Gilbaglia.”
“So why did the Phelbs attack us, if they were after Gilbaglia?” I asked, forgetting his flirtation with the gravity of his words.
“I think that’s pretty obvious.” He sat back against the wall once more and smiled that easygoing smile at me. “Vandor went to help, about the same time I ran to Vandor, and just after Councilor dipshit over there,” He thrust his chin at the prone form of Wingell. “Met with Phelb leaders to convince them he wasn’t completely off his nut. This is all literally a series of unfortunate events.”
I scoffed and shook my head, felt the shuttle rise and lift off towards space. “A series of unfortunate events that made us all homeless.”
“Oh, I doubt we’re still homeless.” He tapped furiously on his tablet for a moment then flipped it around again. “I figured out why the sun doesn’t set.”
I stared at a string of calculations and then raised my brow at him and shook my head. “There’s that eyebrow again.” He grinned. “Lieutenant, we’re only one and a half light years from that black hole and it’s...beyond supermassive.”
“Why didn’t we detect it on the way in?” I asked.
“Good question, and I don’t have an answer.” He shrugged. “Thirty-seven days.” He winked at me. “Destota has probably already taken Vandor and killed half the Phelb Empire.”
I laughed and squeezed his hand. “You’re right though, we need to return immediately. Destota is going to need us to finish them off.”
He smiled, a proper smile, showing teeth. “I can’t wait.”
—-
