A Greater Love
Evening - Alchibah Day 981:
“I love you Pam. I can’t say that too many times or make it any clearer. I wish I could, and I wish you could hear me saying it one more time.
I am looking out of the window of the First Inn now and I see the light signatures of eight or ten men, I think they must be men but some of them look odd. The numbers keep changing. It changes every time I look. They are coming partially on the road and also poking up from the riverbank but still they come. I am strangely at peace and this is good because to be in a state of agitation would help nothing. And I am thinking of you.
“Bligh and Fletcher are sending in views from outside the Inn so I will not be surprised from whatever direction the final assault comes.
“I am beyond surprise, and want to say one more time, I love you. I wish we had a voice link now but I can’t seem to get in touch with anyone. I will keep talking into the recorder hoping that it will survive even if I don’t. The colony must survive and I don’t have a clue about what is going on out there now. I just know too many have died already for us to fail.
“You will think I should have left the Inn when the communications went out. Maybe I should have, but they could have turned on again and now it is too late.
“Looking back the only thing I regret is we never had any children. We should have used the tubes as soon as we had the chance.
“I need to say that except for when you said you would marry me, it was the second happiest and proudest moment in my life, when Bart and Janie asked us to be Godparents to their daughter. In a way, I’m doing this for her.
“Whoa! A big explosion west out in the forest. I pray it is us and we are doing some good.
“They’re almost here now. I have Hanna’s pressure cooker filled with water and am going to hide the recorder inside. The data chip is almost indestructible so maybe it will be found. I just told the bots to go north and reach the Stuarts. I am going into the cellar now, and when the door is forced I will explode all the military stores down there and take as many with me as I can.
“I have to go now Pam. I wish we could do it all again. I love you.”
—Editors Note: The data chip this was recorded onto was found two years after the explosion of the First Inn and Karl Nash’s death. It is released by permission of his widow Pamela Nash. A thorough examination of the debris shows conclusively that four humans and one of the Rogons perished with him. He did not die in vain.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
—John 15:13