The Silence of Zegandaria by Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov, Atanas Marinov (book recommendations website txt) 📕

They decided they didn't have much time and insisted on acting on their own without direct confirmation from High Command.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO: THE HAUMEA

With the entire force stationed on Cerberus, Erdemon Bonks set out to seek fierce justice, but what was his surprise when he found nothing. Haumea was deader than Charon, too.  Then he saw Jervond Om San behind him. He was laughing at him.

- "Who are you?," asked Brutus. "Don't convince me that you've come this far for nothing, the whole story is getting too messed up, and you, all of you..."

Jervond glared at him, and Bonks tentatively began to step towards him. Suddenly, blood started gushing out of his mouth.

- "Didn't you realise that those demonic computer viruses bugging your brain were destroyed long ago!," he hissed. "Didn't he ask himself about that? We searched the entire surface of Zegandaria but found nothing, we even released King Zonkurvan's bionic ants - all the same. If they still exist, they have surely been moved!"

Erdemon Bonks began to feel his world spinning and would fall. He was not alone. With him were... He looked around - he was completely alone.

- "All my soldiers," he waved his arms desperately. "Where are they? Is this a sham too?"

His eyes were the eyes of a dead man! Of a hopelessly doomed patient! The suffering written on his face was more than obvious.

- They were a holographic copy, or let me put it this way. The same is true of Earth by the way, Earth Senators think they rule over billions of souls, when in fact it's hardly more than a million or two plus the populations of all the displacements built on distant and alien worlds like Mars, Haumea and Cerberus! I've figured out the secret of modified viruses, they are made so that once your consciousness is in the new reality of spacetime, it will never be in the old one again, but in the transition ...

- "So you've done it all!," shouted Bonks outside himself. "But why?"

Of all the possible realities, I had to find one in which I could truly exist. Enbright's soul haunted me, as only he guessed what I was doing. But without a body to connect with, he couldn't be competition, but ...

- "And the Light creatures? Are they fictional too?," roared Bonks. "Did Rufus lie to me too!"

- "What Light creatures?," Jervond wondered. "These creatures are a figment of your sick imagination!"

And then he felt a tap on his shoulder-a subtle sensation. He didn't want to turn around. The pat was more insistent and earnest, but it was so ethereal it was as if it came from some other life, or from a long-gone memory of it.

He turned and saw them - the Bright Creatures were looking at him impassively, and he froze as if spellbound. Now they were facing him in their true ethereal form - different even from what Rufus saw himself.

- "You've come a long way, Jervond," they turned to him. "You fooled almost everyone, but you can't fool the forces of Light. Though radiant, their faces were shrouded in a darkness that seemed to speak of some universal void."

- The spirit of Enbright haunted you, Jervond, but you did not comprehend that nothing ended with that battle aboard the Voargis, so bloody and so ruthless! Nor with the fact that Ervanan King Zonkurvan entrusted you with the command of his ships and elevated you to Lieutenant-Governor, an honor you could not even dream of! By the way, you used cloned copies of demonic computer viruses to rule over everyone else for so long. Almost imperceptibly. You - the child of Hell, created in the sick head of Doctor Gad 'D Ann. You were perfect for it and played your part successfully. Rufus Ebendhaus preserved the originals of the viruses even at the cost of his own life, because he clearly realized how dangerous they were. And let's face it - they've been lying broken for a long time, buried deep in the bowels of the Earth, and nothing can recover them.

- "But how is that possible?," asked Gervond, in a trance of horror. "Am I so great a predator? Am I a demon or some evil spirit?"

- "We wouldn't exactly use those names," called the two Light Creatures, "but you sensed our presence even then, and hid so cleverly that no one suspected, though everyone knew, or at least suspected, what kind of person you really were."

- "You mean to say that because of me the Ervanans cannot exist in the new reality?," tried Jervond to make sense of them.

- And not only them! Your every action was limiting or excluding someone from the list, if we can even call it that, depriving them of the right to exist in the new reality!" they said strangely.

Blood dripped from Erdemon Bonx's mouth and nose, and no damn it, Jervond hadn't lied there was no one else around him. It was the two of them, captives of the demonic illusion of a perfect and ideal world that subsequently degenerated and crumbled with every closer look.

- "You forget about Eberald Eziner, though!," tried Jervond, slyly. "He was the true executioner and the insatiable blood-sucker, eager to cause grief and suffering!"

- At least he had an excuse for doing his job, Gervond, and we gave him a chance to repent. That little girl he saw was us. Is not the soul of a child best suited for that?

- "And Von Blask?," asked Gervond again. "He was killed by Rento."

- Yes, because he wanted to escape and carry Charon's secret, or rather your own riddle, into safe hands.

- "You mean Rento committed suicide because of me?," gasped Gervond, but his eyes were as glazed as a snake's. "Rento couldn't accept that you tricked him into taking a human life!' the ethereal creatures said sternly. - As you can see, things are very easy to connect even though at first glance they seem quite complicated and confused. On your path you sowed only death and destruction."

- "Whose son am I? Could it be that I am Doctor Gad ‘Di Enn's? Or of Jonathan Sacklin himself?," roared Jervond outside of himself, trying to find a foothold to defend himself against the accusations made.

The bright creatures were silent with grim triumph, but not with deliberate malice or any fatality, but with the impartiality of judges who had an important decision to make!

Erdemon Bonx felt that he was dying, and wished he could speak a word of appeal for help from the Bright Creatures, but only inarticulate sounds came from his lips. His powers were leaving him and he heard a song:

"It is dark and sad on Charon,

Under the ice is hidden a terrible truth,

Once it is revealed, it becomes banal,

but our fate is still the same!"

- "Won't you save me, Light creatures?," With his last strength he tried to gather his thoughts into a death-cry, unaware that they were not so much words as his own thoughts.

- "You were a sellout scum and an exploiter who rejoiced in your commander's suffering!," he heard some semblance of a voice that literally made him shudder.

Something made Erdemon Bonks turn, and with his blurred vision it caught sight of his own battle speeder - there was no sign of the Ervanan ships, neither the ones he had hoped to find nor the ones Jervond had supposedly hidden around.

- "Was it all a demonic illusion?," He groaned.

- "We thought the alien ship simulation would be the perfect reason for Jervond to reveal his true self and come out of his shell," their unearthly voices sounded again.

Erdemon Bonks would have dragged himself like a worm because of the unbearable pain, but the hard surface of icy Haumea was no less dangerous than that of the companion Charon! He fell and simply remained lying there until an explosion caused by his warm spacesuit coming into contact with the methane ice beneath his feet finished him off for good.

Jervond was dying, but there was no one to save him.

- "Was it all an illusion?," he glared furiously. "Didn't even Charon's colony ever exist?"

The colony was completely real, and its destruction was the fault of the Earth Federation, which incidentally was also forced indirectly by you and the people you manipulated to defend themselves and fight back with a direct hit on the hidden threat!

Jervond realized that he was hopelessly doomed and could not justify himself to the Light Creatures. He realized clearly that his time had run out.

- "Perhaps the time was coming for the remedial session," he thought.

Jervond looked at the Light Creatures, and their faces were expressionless. They stood staring at him.

Someone stirred behind him. It wasn't Bonks, who had fallen victim to his own decompression.

Jervond realized it was GH306 who had told him:

- "Here we meet, Jervond, I think you'll answer for genocide of my clone mates, among your other crimes - they weren't a holographic projection. And by the way, if you're thinking what you're thinking, cloned versions of demonic computer viruses can be loaded directly into the quantum matrix and interesting things can happen from there.

- "Where is everyone else?," the criminal tried to keep the conversation going.

- "In different places!," replied GH306 seriously, "but I'd say you created your own reality, which on top of that was pretty convincing! You have to give yourself credit for being a natural talent! Well done!"

And GH306 touched his hands in an imitation of applause that could have made your blood run cold.

- "What will become of the Earth?," continued Gervond.    " Did Rufus die in order to stop me?"

- "Well, as a matter of fact, yes and no," GH306 replied calmly, "Rufus was sick of living with that burden on his shoulders. And he didn't see how colonizing new worlds would contribute too much to a civilization that obviously hadn't reached that level of development yet. I think he made the right decision. As for you..."

A strange feeling came over Jervond - he felt so insignificant.

- "Will there be anyone to condemn me for these outrages?," the heir of Seraija Gul San pondered.

- "That's a good question," said GH306, who was genuinely amused, "well, frankly, I think the best possible solution is for you to not exist in the next version of reality. And there's no logical reason for that. You've fulfilled all your "potential". Rufus's words before he perished were more or less "Why do we need superintelligence when we can do the exact same job with a quantum computer?"

- "So we don't own the Earth," Jervond was surprised.

- "Very accurately put, plus we never were. If you looked at it from another angle, why would we?," replied GH306.

The two stood motionless. And neither uttered another word. Jervond Om San understood that this was truly the end and it was pointless to fight and try to avoid the inevitable!

- "And yet there is hope for you," GH306 replied sadly. "Jessica loved you. Selflessly! That will give you the opportunity for your end to be worthy. What more could you ask under the circumstances?"

The bright creatures