The Last Resort

‘Revenge is a dish best served cold,’ or so they always said—whoever ‘they’ were. Right now, as the old aphorism passed through his mind, he smirked vaguely under the tinted visor of his breath mask. The cliché was appropriate in an ironic, cruel sort of way. If he’d had time to come to terms with events, he might’ve been able to appreciate it more. But this was a hasty decision, made in desperation, and he still hadn’t accepted it beyond what it was necessary. Mostly he was operating on the last remaining dregs of willpower he had left.

Besides, this wasn’t really about revenge. This was just strategy. More than that, it was a necessity.

Most of the fleet was quietly drifting through the vacuum of space as particles and unidentifiable debris. The flagship’s shields had protected it from the fallout of their destruction but at the cost of most its energy reserves—which negated the conventional plans for escape.

It’s never easy to admit defeat. So, he wasn’t going to. He was just going to put himself on pause for a while. The war was lost, but he’d outlive it. At some time in the future, when conditions were more ideal, he’d have another go at it.

The cryo-chamber was basically a coffin. According to G-01, it had enough power to last in a stasis mode for hundreds of years. He figured that would be enough time.

The android stood next to him as he finished manually entering the new settings into the machine. G-01, lucky enough to be a non-living construct, remained impassive as their window of time closed. Though it was designed to mimic the human shape, it was uncannily a machine, with only a basic humanoid frame, and no ability to make expressions. G-01 lacked even a proper head beyond the protection required for its central computer—just a simple cylindrical casing, insulated and covered in titanium, with a few nodes for observation and recording. Not that it mattered—they didn’t have passions but calculated everything without distraction or bias.

“There is only one operational unit left in the Alphabet Guard series,” G-01 said, indicating itself. “So, if I am disabled or taken, then the probability of a successful execution of your plan will decrease to essentially zero.”

“My chance of survival right now is essentially zero,” he said, “so anything is an improvement.” Finishing with the cryo-chamber’s settings display, he turned to the android, more out of human habit than anything else. “I leave the specifics of my relocation up to your superior logical abilities.”

He opened the door to the cryo-chamber; found himself hesitating. The only one to see his reaction was a robot, but he forced himself into the coffin-like interior before embarrassing himself further, and before he lost all his nerve.

“I will keep you safe, sir,” G-01 said, “to the best of my abilities.” Without any sentiment, it closed the case. The lid sealed hermetically, locking him inside, and in the absence of an active observer, he lost composure—breath huffing, rocking inside the casket. He’d planned for all this—G-01 was ordered to ignore any second thoughts he might have and ignore any pleading that might be noticed. He’d never have been able to go through with this on his own. He realized that now. The terror was too real. It was in his DNA. It screamed to be let out of this casket.

He was almost relieved when G-01 began to input the instructions for the cryo-process. G-01 hadn’t ever operated a cryo-chamber before, but it wasn’t complicated once all the relevant information had been uploaded into its CPU. The first step was to induce a hibernation state. After that, it would decrease his heartrate to zero. He’d be blissfully, blessedly asleep by then, in a deep and primal sleep, and he wouldn’t feel his body die.

Then G-01 would activate the freezing process once his heartbeat stopped; right before oxygen deprivation could damage his brain.

Cryo-chambers were largely outlawed outside of acutely specific medical procedures, given that it was still technically illegal to stop the heartbeat of a fellow living person. Only specially licensed medical personnel could determine whether a deceased body had a realistic chance of resuscitation, or if it was in the best interest of a patient to accelerate cardiac arrest and then put it to “sleep.” Usually, a lot of tedious paperwork, lawyers, and in extreme cases, the occasional release form, was involved. It had been determined early after the perfection of the cryo-process that one individual couldn’t use the machine on another, as it would require one to “kill” another, even if the intention was to put them in stasis before the brain died and revive them later. The opportunities for abuse were too multitudinous.

He’d paid a lot of money to several unscrupulous people for the few chambers he’d acquired. Even then, the intention hadn’t been to use one himself. Cryo-chambers were for sneaking spies, assassins, and other agents into places, where another was waiting and could reactivate them. Security teams and enemies couldn’t detect lifeforms if life were technically not present.

Now, cryo-stasis was his only option. The fleet was wreckage, the moons bombarded, and the fallout of the debris and energy would tear through the solar system causing more damage. There wasn’t time to alert each civilization in the system, either. Even with the standard pre-planned contingency measures, millions were going to die.

They’d called his bluff. He’d assumed the system’s remaining forces wouldn’t fight on such a large scale, not with so many valuable worlds at stake. Apparently, they were willing to kill just about everyone rather than surrender.

He was feeling drowsy. G-01 was putting him down. It was almost over. One way or another, he was going to die.

Once cryo-stasis was successfully achieved, G-01 would launch the chamber into space, and accompany it with the boosters they’d scavenged. It would be the robot’s job to discreetly blend them in with the floating debris and gradually find a safe place to go.

And he would remain in a state of semi-death for potentially hundreds of years. G-01 would revive him when conditions were right, and he’d have an entirely new era to recover in. All his enemies, though, would be dead, and the current conflict resolved.

And if a few cheated death like him, he still had the advantage of surviving in secret.

Human beings are mysterious creatures, he thought. They colonized hostile planetary bodies, lassoed the energies of suns to fuel their creations, and invented ways to subvert the strictest principle physics of the universe. Yet they always clashed instead of combining their resources, instead of unifying against mutual enemies and other threats. All he’d wanted to do was achieve that unity. It was the only way to give humanity a fighting chance. Out in the nigh-infinite expanse lurked things—living things, and undefinable things; dangers only hinted at by discovery and the warnings of scientists and philosophers. Nothing less than hegemony would beat those forces.

A heaviness overtook him, clouding his thoughts, suppressing even the fear that lingered. It was like going to sleep—perfect sleep—

Hopefully, when he woke up again—if he woke up—humanity would be more enlightened.

-End-