Guardians of the Emirate - Hail Mary
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drewkittyGuardians of the Emirate - Hail Mary
[Followers of the GWOT series - this is _very_ different.]
A richly appointed palace. Fanatically loyal staff willing to satisfy any whim on command. The delicacies of a world at one's beck and call.
These were poor compensation, the Emir thought acidly as his valets and maids dressed him for the day.
The previous day's briefing haunted him in his thoughts and in his nightmares.
He had prayed, long into the night.
As was Allah's want, no answer was given.
Ninety and nine of each hundred souls in the Emirate gave no thought to the larger galaxy.
It was of course common knowledge that the Emirate had been settled from ancient Terra.
The World Wars, the fall of the American-Roman empire, the Devastation and the Evacuation.
The fragment of ruined Mecca brought on the last colony ship.
A Muslim colony, in obedience to God and his Prophet. Peaceful evacuees, Christian and Jew. Wanting only to be left alone to enjoy their world in peace.
But the Christians had grown strange, and restive, in the last three generations.
The Jews ... were worried, as Jews always did. But they had kept tentative contacts with the larger universe.
Revelations.
That the Christian revolts were caused. Encouraged. By off planet elements.
That two vast star spanning empires, styling themselves the Republic and the ARC, were fighting each other in wars where planets counted for little and casualties were calculated by zones.
The ARC had attacked the peaceful spacefaring colony of Ayer's Rock. Killed most of the inhabitants. Put the rest into lifeboats and flung them at the Emirate, on trajectories that suggested bombardment. Hoping the Emirate would use them for target practice.
It had not gone quite that way. The survivors were now encamped and cared for.
The Republic had shattered the distant but friendly planet of New Brunswick. Disregarded treaties and peaceful nature alike, investing the planet in waves of wasteful bombardment and massacre for the joy of killing.
Perhaps it was the ARC behind the Wiccan insurgency. Perhaps it was the Republic. Perhaps, and this could be true, it was both at once.
The word they had was through an unlikely happenstance, a dreaded ARC infiltration agent, who owed a New Brunswick Army officer a life favor, and saw him deposited among the lifeboat refugees from Ayer's Rock.
The ARC were spacedwellers. The use they had for planets was none. But they would destroy the space infrastructure of anyone who annoyed them.
The Republic lived anyplace a Senator could lord it over their slaves, but preferred habitable biospheres. They didn't always stay that way, after generations of Republic rule.
His experts - Admiral Saiid of the Emirate Navy chief among them - allowed less than a year before ARC or Republic would stumble across the Emirate, like a drunk in the dark. And then kick it to death, irritated.
The choices were few. Perhaps none.
But it was not the first time the Peoples of the Book had faced nightmare and annihilation.
The Emir had many, many titles. A full recitation would take over an hour.
Chief among them was "Protector of the Faithful."
There were options. Few and weak.
The Admiral wanted to massively expand the Emirate Navy, in the hopes of deterrence. It was a mad hope. They were one planet, and fallen behind in technology. The only result would be death fighting, and not long delayed.
The civil defense - the Guardians and the fire-rescue and the Red Crescent - could only imagine bunkers, shelters, ways to hide the population. They were kidding themselves, and merely building targets.
The Jews were trying to buy or borrow or build a starship, any way they could. They had many millenia to hone their instincts, and their instincts screamed to run. Yet they were loyal, and would not abandon the Emirate because the Emirate had not abandoned them, despite the tensions of ancient Terra and the disputes of theology. If they had two ships, they would send one away to run and the other would stay to share the fate of the Emirate. Two had twice the odds of one.
There was another way. It was one of many reasons the Emir had unlimited access to all the knowledge that they had taken with them from Terra, and much that had been gathered since, from all across the wide human universe.
A trade fleet. He could neither outgun nor outrun the enemy empires. So he needed information. The way to gather information was to go get it.
The Jews had also given him an idea.
###
"Al-Haydin, to the Operations Deck."
She rubbed her face. Unlike nearly all of her fellow Guardians, who treated her like a sister, she did not need to shave.
She in turn treated them like brothers. Usually. Unless a kick to the groin was needful.
The sleep she had not been getting fogged her judgments.
She had no rank above that of Guardian. But a Guardian was a mighty blade in the Emir's hands.
She had three taskings, two more than was prudent.
Liasion between the more different survivors of Ayer's Rock and those caring for them. This required frequent trips to their encampment and endless explanations of why Muslim custom did not serve egalitarian spacefolk.
Expertise in the exotic and alien cultures. She had started in counter terror, a Wiccan and Satan student with her own faith devout and supreme. Then desperate need had led to desperate study, of the Rock and Republic and ARC and half a hundred other human cultures, space and ground alike.
Last but not least, the continued prosecution of that counter-terrorism, with a foreign intelligence component where foreign meant other worlds. Her hope, to identify and take into living custody a Republic or ARC agent.
So what could the Operations Deck have for her now? Another riot in the camp? Another flash report of a hundred pages to read in minutes? Or perhaps a lead on a agent whose weapons could liquify her or dissolve bone, because she would be at the front of the stack to take them alive at any cost. As she had in fact done before, against lesser foes.
She reported.
The benefit of a reputation was that someone put coffee into her hand, and she drank gratefully.
"It is an order of the Illustrious Emir. You are to meet with him for the noon meal."
Her mind blanked. She had no time. Did she even have a dress uniform left? And time to don it? She had no maid or valet to dress her.
"As you are, combat rules apply."
She blinked this time with her eyes.
"Combat rules?"
"Go now and swiftly."
###
The flight was an hour. She spent it reading.
The flight was met by the Emir's strongmen - the only strongmen trusted with power weapons, on the planet entire.
She was a Guardian. She carried power weapons as part of her uniform.
No one suggested that she disarm, just as no one suggested that she bare her breasts and don a veil and join the hareem either.
Not that some thought such would be her only proper place.
Swiftly scanned, to make sure she carried no exotic poison or virus or nano.
Then a waiting area, in which she was discreetly served tiny tumblers of thick coffee while continuing her reading.
A chamberlain bowed her into a discreet apartment.
A table covered with tablets and actual printed papers.
The Emir, seated, while she was standing.
She of course knew his face. Picking it out was a test in Guardian Academy.
Her powers came from him directly. The Eyes on her collar were His.
He had, personally, authorized her for unlimited information access. That was something only the Emir could authorize.
But they had yet to meet, before this moment.
He waved her a hand. Permission to sit. The way in which he waved, she knew from her fragmentary training in Court protocol, was a dismissal of genuflection as well.
This was combat rules.
Seeing it chilled her soul.
It was as if instead of her praying to Allah, the Great God was instead praying to her. A reversal of all that should be.
She sat.
"How may I serve..."
"No time. Al-Haydin. It is all a horror. I know you are fully briefed. Today I am as well. And I have a question for you and I to work out, in the hour we have over biscuit and tea.
"What is it that we are to do, to save Our People?"
###
The wall was a smart wall, of course, in the Emir's private quarters. She made of it a whiteboard.
They were using an ancient technique. Brainstorming.
Between the two of them, master and servant, they could freely conspire.
Number one in their minds was the survival of the Emirate's people.
On the world. In local space. Migratory, new colony ships and flight.
Unthinkable contingencies were explored. Submission. Surrender. Self destruction and concealment of survivors under the ruins.
Alliance with the Republic. Who would never make of the Emir a Senator. Perhaps a playtoy of one.
Alliance with the ARC. As unlikely as a sheep making peace with a wolf any way but from the inside.
There was no third power. And no way to leverage between them.
That they knew of.
"We must take every path," she dared to say. "Those who cannot leave, stay and we protect them best we can. Those who can, go, with the seeds of a new Emirate among them. That means the Prince. Peace with wolves or with those who admire them. Do we have people so brave or so desperate?"
The Emir frowned.
"The Republic knows Christians. It is a tolerated faith. We are not."
No, they decided wordlessly. They would put the fate of their People, even a subset, in the hands of the alien empires, except by peacefully staying behind and suffering what the conquered always must suffer in every age.
"A trade fleet it shall be," the Emir commanded. "Go and find us our miracle. Or tell of our fates. Take the Prince. Guard his life as you would guard me."
She almost complained. But she had to say it.
"Why me, sir?"
She almost scared herself with the lese majeste of not addressing him by title.
"The Prince is a young man. Easily besotted. You can control him without ensnaring him. I know you would not marry him, and if you did it would be for the Emirate not for power. Or for pleasure."
"We are truly desperate," she said for them both.
"Truly, as we have in our history never been. Admiral Saiid will have his Navy. You shall have a ship in it. The Captain, the most skilled survivor of Ayer's Rock. We need a spacefarer who thinks like one. The Prince shall have his separate yacht, a mighty warship. You shall be his bolt hole and his refuge, should all start to fail."
"Because no Islamic captain would take my orders," she said bitterly.
"That is but one reason of the many. Star One, Emir, special authorization. Guardian Chaya Al-Haydin to have unlimited Emirate authority. Her voice is as Mine. To be logged and programmed, Our Will Be Done."
Jesu Christo, she almost said aloud.
It was as if she were the Princess, with that Word spoken.
And so she might be. Or have to be. Or make hard decision in orbit about a world in flames.
Star One acknowledged and signed off. Those who served directly the Will of the Emir were notoriously closed mouthed. Rumor would not leak at first.
But it would.
By then, the fleet would have left.
Or doom would have arrived.
He reached out and grasped her hand across the table.
An old man's hand, but strong with will and with destiny.
"You have your entire life served my People. You read the report on New Brunswick?"
It had given her nightmares for weeks.
Because she had no trouble at all imagining it happening.
Bombardment ships, lavish ordinance. Power armor troops. The sorting. The useless, culled. The useful, worked to death. The attractive ... also used.
"Do not let this happen to my People. If they must it is to die, you must deliver them safely into Allah's Hands."
She was not being asked to die for the Emirate which was to say for Allah. That she had accepted.
Guardians are asked for the toughest tasks.
She was not being asked to kill terrorists, or rebels, or even mere infidels.
She was being asked to kill God's Own so as to spare them.
That was the reason for the Emirate Authority.
They could deprive the Republic of the joy of bombarding an alien world, by doing it to themselves first.
Could she do such a horrid thing?
She took out her soul and examined it, as she had done during vigils and study and deep despair.
The choice - Republic investment or hitting their own cities with effect weapons?
It was a bitter thing.
She could.
"Now for the hard part, my Daughter."
The Emir had the right. He was Father to all his People.
"Can you do the thing. And live. And save the Prince. And go to a new world, and tell what lies you must for the remnants of our People to survive?"
That required thought.
Push the button, and die with her People.
Hard.
Push the button, kill her millions, and live a lie to the end of her life, that a remnant might endure? Hunted like beasts but by men worse than beasts?
Harder.
She swallowed.
"I will do what it is that must be done."
The Emir nodded firmly and released her hand.
"Go. Things will move swiftly now. A last thought. You must also take some Jews and some Christos with. They will be essential."
She started to bow, remembered combat rules, and saluted then fled.
A single tear dripped from the corner of His eye as he watched her go on his orders.
###
"And for so doing this shall be your warrant," she read again, from her hospital bed.
It was lawful. A free world could grant a naval commission to anyone it chose. Even an alien. Even a refugee.
She was a desperate woman from a dead colony. Ayer's Rock was particles and all she had loved were dead. The lucky ones, by fusion ordinance. The unlucky, aboard ... she rejected the thought.
The Emirate was dying, and knew it was dying, and dared to fight. That took courage.
She in turn dared to call to verify her orders.
"This is Admiral Saiid. Yes. I will not be accompanying the Trade Fleet. But each Captain has certain special instructions. Your first. A Guardian will be assigned to you. With great discretion, you shall do as the Guardian orders, even above the orders of the Commodore and of even the Most Gracious and Pruissant Prince. Second. Guard the Prince at all costs. Any cost. Your vessel is the fastest frigate we have. Board him and run. Even out of this galaxy if needs must."
Theoretically possible... but a three hundred year trip, with only the endlessness of Between, to the next closest.
"Nominal crew of a Sword class frigate is 300 souls. We shall crew with 150 souls and you shall embark 50 of your own, 50 of ours, 50 of the Christos and special delegations of a few others. Train them as you can. But the mix shall be male and female and more female than male. No children. But no methods of timing either. Plan for children. Plan for generation voyage. Every corner packed with rations and with parts."
She shuddered.
There was a legend of a ship doomed to wander the cosmos, manned by neither dead nor living, the Flying Dutchman, not that anyone knew what a Dutch was.
"As you command," she acknowledged.
If that way it went, she would living represent the end of Ayers Rock at the end of the damned thing.
That was not much to live for. But perhaps enough.
[Followers of the GWOT series - this is _very_ different.]
A richly appointed palace. Fanatically loyal staff willing to satisfy any whim on command. The delicacies of a world at one's beck and call.
These were poor compensation, the Emir thought acidly as his valets and maids dressed him for the day.
The previous day's briefing haunted him in his thoughts and in his nightmares.
He had prayed, long into the night.
As was Allah's want, no answer was given.
Ninety and nine of each hundred souls in the Emirate gave no thought to the larger galaxy.
It was of course common knowledge that the Emirate had been settled from ancient Terra.
The World Wars, the fall of the American-Roman empire, the Devastation and the Evacuation.
The fragment of ruined Mecca brought on the last colony ship.
A Muslim colony, in obedience to God and his Prophet. Peaceful evacuees, Christian and Jew. Wanting only to be left alone to enjoy their world in peace.
But the Christians had grown strange, and restive, in the last three generations.
The Jews ... were worried, as Jews always did. But they had kept tentative contacts with the larger universe.
Revelations.
That the Christian revolts were caused. Encouraged. By off planet elements.
That two vast star spanning empires, styling themselves the Republic and the ARC, were fighting each other in wars where planets counted for little and casualties were calculated by zones.
The ARC had attacked the peaceful spacefaring colony of Ayer's Rock. Killed most of the inhabitants. Put the rest into lifeboats and flung them at the Emirate, on trajectories that suggested bombardment. Hoping the Emirate would use them for target practice.
It had not gone quite that way. The survivors were now encamped and cared for.
The Republic had shattered the distant but friendly planet of New Brunswick. Disregarded treaties and peaceful nature alike, investing the planet in waves of wasteful bombardment and massacre for the joy of killing.
Perhaps it was the ARC behind the Wiccan insurgency. Perhaps it was the Republic. Perhaps, and this could be true, it was both at once.
The word they had was through an unlikely happenstance, a dreaded ARC infiltration agent, who owed a New Brunswick Army officer a life favor, and saw him deposited among the lifeboat refugees from Ayer's Rock.
The ARC were spacedwellers. The use they had for planets was none. But they would destroy the space infrastructure of anyone who annoyed them.
The Republic lived anyplace a Senator could lord it over their slaves, but preferred habitable biospheres. They didn't always stay that way, after generations of Republic rule.
His experts - Admiral Saiid of the Emirate Navy chief among them - allowed less than a year before ARC or Republic would stumble across the Emirate, like a drunk in the dark. And then kick it to death, irritated.
The choices were few. Perhaps none.
But it was not the first time the Peoples of the Book had faced nightmare and annihilation.
The Emir had many, many titles. A full recitation would take over an hour.
Chief among them was "Protector of the Faithful."
There were options. Few and weak.
The Admiral wanted to massively expand the Emirate Navy, in the hopes of deterrence. It was a mad hope. They were one planet, and fallen behind in technology. The only result would be death fighting, and not long delayed.
The civil defense - the Guardians and the fire-rescue and the Red Crescent - could only imagine bunkers, shelters, ways to hide the population. They were kidding themselves, and merely building targets.
The Jews were trying to buy or borrow or build a starship, any way they could. They had many millenia to hone their instincts, and their instincts screamed to run. Yet they were loyal, and would not abandon the Emirate because the Emirate had not abandoned them, despite the tensions of ancient Terra and the disputes of theology. If they had two ships, they would send one away to run and the other would stay to share the fate of the Emirate. Two had twice the odds of one.
There was another way. It was one of many reasons the Emir had unlimited access to all the knowledge that they had taken with them from Terra, and much that had been gathered since, from all across the wide human universe.
A trade fleet. He could neither outgun nor outrun the enemy empires. So he needed information. The way to gather information was to go get it.
The Jews had also given him an idea.
###
"Al-Haydin, to the Operations Deck."
She rubbed her face. Unlike nearly all of her fellow Guardians, who treated her like a sister, she did not need to shave.
She in turn treated them like brothers. Usually. Unless a kick to the groin was needful.
The sleep she had not been getting fogged her judgments.
She had no rank above that of Guardian. But a Guardian was a mighty blade in the Emir's hands.
She had three taskings, two more than was prudent.
Liasion between the more different survivors of Ayer's Rock and those caring for them. This required frequent trips to their encampment and endless explanations of why Muslim custom did not serve egalitarian spacefolk.
Expertise in the exotic and alien cultures. She had started in counter terror, a Wiccan and Satan student with her own faith devout and supreme. Then desperate need had led to desperate study, of the Rock and Republic and ARC and half a hundred other human cultures, space and ground alike.
Last but not least, the continued prosecution of that counter-terrorism, with a foreign intelligence component where foreign meant other worlds. Her hope, to identify and take into living custody a Republic or ARC agent.
So what could the Operations Deck have for her now? Another riot in the camp? Another flash report of a hundred pages to read in minutes? Or perhaps a lead on a agent whose weapons could liquify her or dissolve bone, because she would be at the front of the stack to take them alive at any cost. As she had in fact done before, against lesser foes.
She reported.
The benefit of a reputation was that someone put coffee into her hand, and she drank gratefully.
"It is an order of the Illustrious Emir. You are to meet with him for the noon meal."
Her mind blanked. She had no time. Did she even have a dress uniform left? And time to don it? She had no maid or valet to dress her.
"As you are, combat rules apply."
She blinked this time with her eyes.
"Combat rules?"
"Go now and swiftly."
###
The flight was an hour. She spent it reading.
The flight was met by the Emir's strongmen - the only strongmen trusted with power weapons, on the planet entire.
She was a Guardian. She carried power weapons as part of her uniform.
No one suggested that she disarm, just as no one suggested that she bare her breasts and don a veil and join the hareem either.
Not that some thought such would be her only proper place.
Swiftly scanned, to make sure she carried no exotic poison or virus or nano.
Then a waiting area, in which she was discreetly served tiny tumblers of thick coffee while continuing her reading.
A chamberlain bowed her into a discreet apartment.
A table covered with tablets and actual printed papers.
The Emir, seated, while she was standing.
She of course knew his face. Picking it out was a test in Guardian Academy.
Her powers came from him directly. The Eyes on her collar were His.
He had, personally, authorized her for unlimited information access. That was something only the Emir could authorize.
But they had yet to meet, before this moment.
He waved her a hand. Permission to sit. The way in which he waved, she knew from her fragmentary training in Court protocol, was a dismissal of genuflection as well.
This was combat rules.
Seeing it chilled her soul.
It was as if instead of her praying to Allah, the Great God was instead praying to her. A reversal of all that should be.
She sat.
"How may I serve..."
"No time. Al-Haydin. It is all a horror. I know you are fully briefed. Today I am as well. And I have a question for you and I to work out, in the hour we have over biscuit and tea.
"What is it that we are to do, to save Our People?"
###
The wall was a smart wall, of course, in the Emir's private quarters. She made of it a whiteboard.
They were using an ancient technique. Brainstorming.
Between the two of them, master and servant, they could freely conspire.
Number one in their minds was the survival of the Emirate's people.
On the world. In local space. Migratory, new colony ships and flight.
Unthinkable contingencies were explored. Submission. Surrender. Self destruction and concealment of survivors under the ruins.
Alliance with the Republic. Who would never make of the Emir a Senator. Perhaps a playtoy of one.
Alliance with the ARC. As unlikely as a sheep making peace with a wolf any way but from the inside.
There was no third power. And no way to leverage between them.
That they knew of.
"We must take every path," she dared to say. "Those who cannot leave, stay and we protect them best we can. Those who can, go, with the seeds of a new Emirate among them. That means the Prince. Peace with wolves or with those who admire them. Do we have people so brave or so desperate?"
The Emir frowned.
"The Republic knows Christians. It is a tolerated faith. We are not."
No, they decided wordlessly. They would put the fate of their People, even a subset, in the hands of the alien empires, except by peacefully staying behind and suffering what the conquered always must suffer in every age.
"A trade fleet it shall be," the Emir commanded. "Go and find us our miracle. Or tell of our fates. Take the Prince. Guard his life as you would guard me."
She almost complained. But she had to say it.
"Why me, sir?"
She almost scared herself with the lese majeste of not addressing him by title.
"The Prince is a young man. Easily besotted. You can control him without ensnaring him. I know you would not marry him, and if you did it would be for the Emirate not for power. Or for pleasure."
"We are truly desperate," she said for them both.
"Truly, as we have in our history never been. Admiral Saiid will have his Navy. You shall have a ship in it. The Captain, the most skilled survivor of Ayer's Rock. We need a spacefarer who thinks like one. The Prince shall have his separate yacht, a mighty warship. You shall be his bolt hole and his refuge, should all start to fail."
"Because no Islamic captain would take my orders," she said bitterly.
"That is but one reason of the many. Star One, Emir, special authorization. Guardian Chaya Al-Haydin to have unlimited Emirate authority. Her voice is as Mine. To be logged and programmed, Our Will Be Done."
Jesu Christo, she almost said aloud.
It was as if she were the Princess, with that Word spoken.
And so she might be. Or have to be. Or make hard decision in orbit about a world in flames.
Star One acknowledged and signed off. Those who served directly the Will of the Emir were notoriously closed mouthed. Rumor would not leak at first.
But it would.
By then, the fleet would have left.
Or doom would have arrived.
He reached out and grasped her hand across the table.
An old man's hand, but strong with will and with destiny.
"You have your entire life served my People. You read the report on New Brunswick?"
It had given her nightmares for weeks.
Because she had no trouble at all imagining it happening.
Bombardment ships, lavish ordinance. Power armor troops. The sorting. The useless, culled. The useful, worked to death. The attractive ... also used.
"Do not let this happen to my People. If they must it is to die, you must deliver them safely into Allah's Hands."
She was not being asked to die for the Emirate which was to say for Allah. That she had accepted.
Guardians are asked for the toughest tasks.
She was not being asked to kill terrorists, or rebels, or even mere infidels.
She was being asked to kill God's Own so as to spare them.
That was the reason for the Emirate Authority.
They could deprive the Republic of the joy of bombarding an alien world, by doing it to themselves first.
Could she do such a horrid thing?
She took out her soul and examined it, as she had done during vigils and study and deep despair.
The choice - Republic investment or hitting their own cities with effect weapons?
It was a bitter thing.
She could.
"Now for the hard part, my Daughter."
The Emir had the right. He was Father to all his People.
"Can you do the thing. And live. And save the Prince. And go to a new world, and tell what lies you must for the remnants of our People to survive?"
That required thought.
Push the button, and die with her People.
Hard.
Push the button, kill her millions, and live a lie to the end of her life, that a remnant might endure? Hunted like beasts but by men worse than beasts?
Harder.
She swallowed.
"I will do what it is that must be done."
The Emir nodded firmly and released her hand.
"Go. Things will move swiftly now. A last thought. You must also take some Jews and some Christos with. They will be essential."
She started to bow, remembered combat rules, and saluted then fled.
A single tear dripped from the corner of His eye as he watched her go on his orders.
###
"And for so doing this shall be your warrant," she read again, from her hospital bed.
It was lawful. A free world could grant a naval commission to anyone it chose. Even an alien. Even a refugee.
She was a desperate woman from a dead colony. Ayer's Rock was particles and all she had loved were dead. The lucky ones, by fusion ordinance. The unlucky, aboard ... she rejected the thought.
The Emirate was dying, and knew it was dying, and dared to fight. That took courage.
She in turn dared to call to verify her orders.
"This is Admiral Saiid. Yes. I will not be accompanying the Trade Fleet. But each Captain has certain special instructions. Your first. A Guardian will be assigned to you. With great discretion, you shall do as the Guardian orders, even above the orders of the Commodore and of even the Most Gracious and Pruissant Prince. Second. Guard the Prince at all costs. Any cost. Your vessel is the fastest frigate we have. Board him and run. Even out of this galaxy if needs must."
Theoretically possible... but a three hundred year trip, with only the endlessness of Between, to the next closest.
"Nominal crew of a Sword class frigate is 300 souls. We shall crew with 150 souls and you shall embark 50 of your own, 50 of ours, 50 of the Christos and special delegations of a few others. Train them as you can. But the mix shall be male and female and more female than male. No children. But no methods of timing either. Plan for children. Plan for generation voyage. Every corner packed with rations and with parts."
She shuddered.
There was a legend of a ship doomed to wander the cosmos, manned by neither dead nor living, the Flying Dutchman, not that anyone knew what a Dutch was.
"As you command," she acknowledged.
If that way it went, she would living represent the end of Ayers Rock at the end of the damned thing.
That was not much to live for. But perhaps enough.
