Schemes of the Unknown Unknown Ch. 17

The respite Isaac was enjoying lasted only a few months. It was long enough, of course, for him and his comrades to become complacent. They settled into a routine of hymn and prayer interspersed by guard duty, but as time went by the urgency of their quest to seize command of the Godless space ship receded as did their attentiveness when on guard duty. It truly seemed that life had settled down. There were few lone crusaders or small bands that passed by these days and they appeared to be seeking villas that weren't already occupied. Few appeared to have the belly for a fight.

When the inevitable assault took place it was from the same Catholics who had seized the villa from which Isaac and his comrades were earlier evicted: the one in which Isaac's otherwise pleasant memories were forever marred by his recollection of David's descent into Sodom. It seemed that the savage Catholic crusaders were now intent not so much on finding a new home but on expanding the territory they already possessed.

When they appeared they did so not sneakily and in the dark as before but openly and brazenly. This time there were not only a dozen or so Catholics who, despite their nakedness, could now be distinguished by huge red tattoos of the sign of the cross painfully etched into their chests. With them were many others not so tattooed whose heads and beards had been freshly shaved. They were distinguishable by the collar worn around the necks and the cords around the legs. They many times outnumbered the Catholic crusaders but were evidently slaves rather than equals. Perhaps they were Muslims. Perhaps they were Buddhists. Perhaps they were even of a Presbyterian persuasion. But in the state of bald nakedness to which they had been reduced it wasn't possible to know.

It was these slaves, not the Catholics, who descended on Isaac's villa. They were superior in number but motivated only by fear of their masters who showed no mercy to those who failed to do their bidding. This Isaac could see for sure as he lay prostrate on the villa roof and scanned the upwardly curving horizon. One slave made an attempt to run not towards the villa that housed Isaac and his comrades but in a different direction. At first, it seemed that his attempt to escape would succeed as he ran shouting"Allāhu Akbar!"The Catholics made no attempt to stop him although they shouted loudly in his direction in Latin. Then two Catholics that had been hidden behind trees emerged from the shadows and caught the renegade. And they then dealt with him bloodily and efficiently. Isaac remarked again on the Catholics' lack of true justice by the swift manner in which the slave was slaughtered. No time was wasted on torture, humiliation or prayer. They bundled on top of him and killed him with no fuss at all

Isaac looked about him with fear. The Catholics' slaves were fast approaching the villa and alerted Isaac's comrades as they did do. They continued to shout in Latin which heathen tongue Isaac didn't understand at all. It was likely the slaves no more knew what they were chanting than did Isaac."Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum,"chanted some of them."Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto,"chanted some of the others. Isaac guessed that it must be a prayer to the Pope who was known to be the Catholic's God. That was nonsense, of course. The Pope lived on Earth in a city called Rome. He couldn't be the Lord God, all omnipotent and all omniscient. It just didn't make sense. And, in any case, God spoke English. He wouldn't speak Latin or any other language that would otherwise be dead for many thousands of years.

Isaac steeled himself for the oncoming assault. He could see that his chances of survival were slim. He might manage to kill two or three slaves before they overpowered him, but there was no likelihood that he could escape as easily this time as he had before.

However, death when it came was not in the form that Isaac was expecting. It wasn't in the form that the Catholic aggressors had expected either. Isaac might have reflected on Chapter 30, Verse 30, of The Book of the Prophet Isaiah:"And the LORD shall cause his glorious voice to be heard, and shall shew the lighting down of his arm, with the indignation of his anger, and with the flame of a devouring fire, with scattering, and tempest, and hailstones."

There was fire, there was lightning and there most certainly was a tempest accompanied by a huge thunderous roar.

In the confusion, no one could possibly make sense of the sequence of events. The sound of external impact was extraordinarily loud and in itself would have damned all the Holy Crusaders to a life of deafness. There was also a rushing wind, but it was directed not hither and thither but in one direction only and with unchallengeable force. If Isaac hadn't been pulled off the roof of the villa or, more to the point, pulled off the villa along with the roof, he might have looked ahead and upwards to where the tempest was taking him and the precious pressurised atmosphere.

And this was quite simply into deep space.

At the point of impact there was flame and fury, but in the vacuum of space this was manifest more as the conflagration of the rapidly escaping atmosphere rather than the steady flame of a terrestrial blaze.

So ferocious was the force from the escaping air that nothing could withstand its blast. Death came in various ways. Some crusaders were simply dashed against the first obstacle in their path and crushed to a bloody mess. Any who had avoided the direct impact of the storm by being indoors would die a painful but brief death as the air pressure dramatically dropped and their tongue became swollen, their eyes popped out of their skull and their lungs exploded. Not one Holy Crusader stood even the smallest chance of survival.

Death came to Isaac when he was sucked through the vast hole created by the external explosion. The proximate cause was a combination of the impact of many flying objects and the lack of breathable air, but his body was already limp and lifeless as it shot out into empty dark space through the hundred metre breach in the Intrepid's hull.

And then along with all the other debris within the Intrepid's reach, his corpse was gathered by the waste-collecting pods to be recycled by the space ship's antimatter engines.