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The Last Shadow and the Space Augur

“Zacxus! Ditch the voltstones!”

Zacxus whirled around to glare at Jektan.

“What’re you nuts? That’s everything we got! We can’t show up to port empty handed.”

“Better to show up empty handed than to not show up at all! We have to make it past this mother of a solar storm and we need to give our thrusters a fighting man’s shot. I’ve never witnessed a storm like this before. It came out of nowhere and it’s ripping our freighter apart!” Jektan bellowed above the horrific whining of the overtaxed plasteel hull.

Bolts popped free from overpressure all around the spacefarers, who ducked and dodged the projectiles as best they could. The ship groaned and creaked as photons crashed upon the external hull on either side. Rival electromagnetic fields fought to rend the space vessel in twain as they completed their loops from their respective twin stars. Captain Jektan had flown the Needle’s Eye pass, that well-known and oft traveled path between the twin stars of Qayin and Havel, many times—but never during one solar storm, let alone two. None of the charts had called for any unusual fusion activity this cycle from either star but for some reason the twin giants were especially vengeful today. His crew had been given no warning from the ship’s early detection instruments. The twins were raging with no scientific explanation and no advanced warning.

“Did you salty space dogs make your sacrifices before we set off from Yoppa-6?” Jektan screamed above the din of twisting metal.

“Cap, we’re all prayed up as always! Each to his own—just like you asked before we shot out the solar sails.” Zacxus shouted back down the hall.

“What about our tremulous tag along?”

“No clue, sir. Haven’t seen him since he boarded.”

“Send Dolfones to go check on him, then come up here and help me with nav! If we don’t steer our way clear of at least one of the flares we’re gonna be ripped into a thousand bits.”

Zacxus grabbed an overhead rail and wedged himself into a corner, activating his grav boots. Reaching down from the rail, he powered up a mechanism on his wrist and with a series of swipes and clicks he jotted out the message to Dolfones. He long pressed a green glowing button at the distal end of the contraption and v-shaped flyer emerged out of it, hovered for a second, then shot off down the opposite end of the corridor from Captain Jektan’s bellows.

Upon reaching. Dolfones, the V flyer projected a hologram read out of the contents of Jektan’s realayed order concerning “the tag along”:

The captain accepted a passage when we stopped off at Yoppa-6. The passage hired us to take him to the Shishtar system. Cap says go check on him. Make sure he’s prayed up. -Zacxus

Dolfones reluctantly unbuckled himself from his wall mount, slung on his standard issue backpack jets and scampered towards the plasma generated stairs case which would take him to the central inner hull—better to take the stairs in a storm than to use any mechanized lifts.

Upon reaching the central inner hull, Dolfones knocked twice for curtesy but immediately entered; he figured the occupant wouldn’t be able to distinguish his knocks from the cacophony of the storm hammering away on the ship anyways.

“Hey buddy, I hope you’re decent. Captain sent me to check on you—”

Dolfones was taken aback. The lights were out. He reached for the switch and when the luminators came on he started even more.

“Asleep!? Hey! Wake up, guy! Are you deaf? You don’t hear the cosmos pulling us apart at the seams?”

A small bearded man in a white cotton sleeping gown slowly opened two bleary eyes.

“Huh? What’s all this now?” the man rasped.

“Wake up! We’re caught in the midst of two solar storms! It’s completely unprecedented and we’re probably all going to die. And you’re literally sleeping through it!” the irate Dolfones screamed in excoriation.

“If we’re all going to die, why wake me up for it? Was it too much to let me go in peace?”

The sleepy man made a good point but his dejected sense of apathy was too much for Dolfones to stomach.

“Who are you that you get to just lay there in the face of imminent destruction? Why aren’t you offering your services?”

“I am Evod, an augur of the Grand IS, the Triangulator. What services would you like me to offer?” the sleepy man jested.

“Well, Evod, that all depends on what the blasted Gehenna an ‘augur’ is.”

“An augur practices augury. I read the signs of the times. I study nature and interpret omens. I also hear directly from the Grand IS and relay His messages. I don’t fix ships being destroyed by solar storms.” Evod said with an air ire.

“You read omens from nature!?! What the netherworld are you thinking? Read the megastorm and tell us what we need to do to appease the twin-suns that are shredding our vessel!”

“I don’t need to read the megastorm. It is enough that you’ve told me there is one and that it’s unprecedented. I know what this is about and I know how to fix it” Evod said with a cold, low affect.

No sooner had Evod slung his dull maroon tunic over his shoulders than Dolfones slapped a dolly manacle, which were meant to be used for towing large parcels in low gravity, on the augur’s chest.

The startled Evod peered down to see a red light shining from the center of the metal carapace of the device which had wrapped around his sternum and ribcage to secure itself at his spine. It was an exceptionally tight, cold, and bitter grip. He noticed the thick metal cable protruding out from somewhere at the bottom of the contraption which trailed off into the hand of the manic mariner who had so violently woken him from his dreamless slumber.

Just then the red light blinked bright green and Dolfones shot off out of the hull and made a quick right turn as he exited the hatch. The cable snapped into rigid tautness and Evod was wrenched forward with the strength of Samson and was towed with ever increasing speed down the groaning corridors by the jetpack propelled space mariner.

The brief voyage across the stretch of the vessel was over as abruptly as it had begun and before he knew it, Evod was being ushered into the presence of captain Jektan.

“This guy knows, captain! He knows how to save us! He talks with the gods. He can read their thoughts off the events of nature! He’s an Augur!” Dolfones blurted, almost frothing at the mouth.

“What? Is this true, uh, what was the name again? Columba?” Jektan asked, not hiding his embarrassment and urgency.

“It’s Evod.”

“Evod, of course. Now, you know why this storm has been hurled against us? You interpret the hand of the gods?”

“I do not. I know of only one God, the Grand IS, the Triangulator. It is the actions of His hand which I may sometimes interpret in so-called ‘natural’ events. And occasionally, He has revealed their interpretations to me through direct noological information download, also called illumination, or through direct dialogical interchange” Evod smugly retorted.

“Okay fine. So, you can talk with him. What does your God want? Why has He brought this rah-ah upon us? While Dolfones went to question you concerning your prayer status and standing with whichever god you’ve taken for your own, Zacxus and I threw the name of every crew member into our Lot Corp answer ball. We included a slip we titled ‘passenger’ to represent you, since I was unable to recall your moniker. Upon shaking the ball, we asked which of us is to blame for our troubles. Each and every time we consulted it, the ball passed out the ‘passenger’ slip... indicating you. What do you make of this?” Jektan asked in full sincerity.

“The Grand IS frowns upon such divinations. He does not like His self-aware signet rings to pretend they can force His hand in giving a decision. Nor does He like the idea of being represented by a trinket made by human hands. Though in this case, I do believe your toy has spoken truth. I am to blame for the rah-ah.”

Jektan stood amazed. “H-how? Why? Why would you bring this evil upon my house? This vessel is all I have. This crew is my true family. What have you done to the gods, or the heavens, of this god of yours?”

“It is not the gods who have enflamed the twins against us and there’s nothing for an impersonal cosmos to begrudge of anyone. For there is only one deity, not a sub but a supra-personal being: The Grand IS, Whose AM is eternally present everywhere. The Great Triangulator, who set forth words as the foundation of reality and taught them to our very own ancestors. Who breathed out the starry host with the same breath He blew into our forefather’s lungs. That’s the one who has commissioned me to speak peace to a people I hate, the Niynvitees. You won’t find a viler lump of subhuman filth this side of the quasar belt. There is not a people less deserving of divine mercy than those is Niynveya. I will not relay his message to them, I will not speak peace and steadfast love to those monsters. I refused the IS and fled from His presence. In which case, He must have commissioned this super solar storm to get me.”

Jektan grabbed Evod by the thick lapels of his robe, and with the ferocity of a recently caged tiger, screamed, “You stiff-necked fool! You’ve doomed us all for the sake of your hardhearted vendetta?”

Then, taking a moment to collect himself, Jektan continued his interrogation, “why would you include us in your feckless flight from He whom you claim to be eternally present everywhere? How did you expect to escape for that kind of all-presence? What must we do to appease him? What act of propitiation will he receive?”

“Jettison me out the airlock” the augur stated matter-of-factly.

Again, Jektan started and stood stupefied.

“Surely not! I’ve never lost a single passenger in all my years or transport. I will not start today with a prophet of what could be the pan-creator above all. Would that not incur even more fury?”

“It’s what you must do. I am the reason for your trouble. I will not cause you anymore. Turn from the deities of your fathers and those of your women. Turn to the Grand IS and he will have mercy on you. I know that He is a merciful deity, slow to wrath, full of grace, compassion, and steadfast lovingkindness—for that is the very reason I have fled, if you’ll recall. I did not want to be the vessel to extend His mercy and love to my enemies. But I know He will not hold my fate against you. You must move quickly, however, before your ship is utterly destroyed. Jettison me now, and let the Grand IS do what seems good to him.”

Jektan was filled with dread and trepidation but he heeded the augur’s words nonetheless. He ordered the crew to dress Evod in their finest vacuity suit. He further provided him with an extra portion of oxygen. Then, unable to mask his quavering, Jektan walked Evod to the nearest airlock—the one which had just been refurbished during their recent furlough on Yishreel-777, where they had agreed to freighter him.

Jektan solemnly pressed a button on the wall to open the internal set of airlock doors. Evod stepped into the small grey, dimly illuminated room and looked out the hexagonal portal to the stars on the external airlock door, the ejection door. At which time Jektan long-pressed another button to close the internal doors. The servile doors quickly acquiesced with a whoosh.

Turning back to meet Jektan’s eye, Evod gave an acute nod, accepting his fate with a stolid manliness that Jektan couldn’t help but admire.

His hand moved to the red button. He grit his teeth and pressed the external door release. Evod was instantly wrenched out of the air lock by the great vacuum of space as Jektan and the crew looked on in horror.

Immediately the raging twin celestial bodies ceased their frenzies and the ship was granted a much-needed reprieve from cosmic forces acting on its exterior.

Evod continued to drift further into the deep, dark, expansive void, tumbling on and on.

Zacxus put a knowing hand on his captain’s shoulder as he sought to comfort him, “there, see, Cap? It actually worked. The augur was right. His God was appeased. There was really nothing else for you to do. He brought this on himself, and… well, on all of us too. Praise his Grand IS for relenting.

As he watched Evod disappearing into the Stygian lacuna, Jektan noticed a black-in-black shadow rippling its way up from behind and underneath the cast away and the unwelcomed sense of dread, which had only moments before finally began to subside, rose to a crescendo in his heart.

“There’s a m*$#$@*&$** interstellar aspidochelone!!” Jektan wailed. “Noooo!!! Evod behind you!”

But there was nothing the captain could do. The illusive space beast is seldom encountered but is known by every space mariner as ‘the last shadow’, for it is impossibly black even against the black background of space and can only been seen with the naked eye when just before lunging at its prey, when its silvery fangs flash like corrupted moonbeams.

Just as the rest of the crew turned to look back out the portside windows, the telltale flash of teeth sparked all around the tiny speck which was the ever-drifting Evod. For a brief moment the flash illumined the augur like a radiant halo. Then it was gone, along with the white speck and the blacker-than-black shadow.

“*$&#*$!” cried the captain. Then, almost in a whisper, Jektan began to supplicate, “I’m sorry, Grand IS. Forgive us for the part we’ve played in this. Your augur is in your hands now. Indeed, do what seems good to you but have mercy on his soul”.

Behind the Curtain

If you’d like to find out what happened to the little bearded augur, Evod, then you might consider opening up your Bible to the book of Jonah and giving it a read. But as this is a story from the point of view of the mariners, I must leave you here to discover the true fate of Evod (dove backwards (Jonah means dove)) on your own.

• I wrote this short story after preaching on the book of Jonah. You can find that sermon here:

• Evod worships the ‘Grand IS’ which is a different way of saying the Great I AM in case you missed that. In Exodus 3:13, Moses speaks to God in the un-burning bush (it’s not a burning bush, that’s the whole point, the fire is being produced without consuming the bush, so it’s an un-burning bush) and he asked God, who shall I say sent me? What’s you’re name? To which God replies in verse 3:14 “I AM WHO I AM… say this to the people of Israel, “I AM has sent me to you” (eh yeh a ser eh yeh is actully not the tetragrammaton, YHWH. In verse 3:15, however, God says “say this to the people of Israel, ‘The LORD’ (aka YHWH), the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.” So It looks to me like God is playing off the Hebrew word Hayah, to be, and is saying “here is my name: I AM (eh yeh) you tell the people HE IS (YHWH) has sent me. But this is hotly debated. Anyways, I’m playing off the Great I AM by calling Evod’s God the Grand IS. I learned to do this from Gene Wolfe in the Book of the New Sun where he gives creative names to God like the ‘Pancreator’.

• Voltstones are a reference to the Insectioids Lego sub-theme from 1998.

• Qayin and Havel are twin stars that are raging… the names mean Cain and Abel.

• The Triangulator is a reference to an argument for God that I wrote up based on Donald Davidson’s triangulation argument. I wouldn’t ever expect anyone to get this reference but in case the paper gets accepted in a journal, it would be could to have this referenced in my fiction. The Triangulator is what I usually call God in my fiction as it’s another way to call God triune.

• Yoppa-6 is Joppa

• Yishreel-777 = Israel

• Shishtar = Tarshish

• aspidochelone is a mythical sea beast

• Niynveya = Nineva

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