Finding Darkness

Chapter 11 First Contact

The next days were filled with boredom for Tamar and glorious peace and quiet for Malachi.

"What are you doing now?" Tamar ran over to Malachi. He was seated on the couch and had his little book spread open on his lap.

"I'm reading. What does it look like?"

"Again, all you ever do is read."

"And all you ever seem to do is fidget. Do you ever sit still?"

"Why does this bother you?" She asked, walking back and forth in front of him.

"No, not really," his head dropped back down to the page he was reading.

"Okay fine." Tamar dropped onto the couch next to him and looked over his shoulder.

"Whatcha reading?"

"My Bible."

"Is that all you ever read?"

"Have you seen any other books around?"

"Point taken. But it's all you've been doing since we got up this morning. What's so important in this book that is all you ever read?" Malachi picked the book off his lap and showed it to Tamar.

"Open the front cover." He told her and handed it to her.

She took it and opened the cover. Inside she saw two names written in a script she'd never seen.

"Read em." Malachi told her.

"Matthew R Prey, and Anthony W Prey. Who are these guys?" She asked, handing the book back to him.

"They were my grandfather and my father. My father gave me this Bible the day I left on my last mission. Now it's the only Bible I have other than my own that I have in my stateroom." He waved the book at Tamar. "This book contains more wisdom than any other book ever written. To follow its ways and to study its teaching can make someone wiser than most can even dream of. But also more unpopular than one ever wishes. But to know what's in here, I have to study it, every day."

"Seems like a lot of work to me." Tamar scoffed.

"Anything worth having always is."

"Oh right, now I remember, you're a christian. There was something about your cult in the data banks I was forced to study. But you're the weirdest christian I've even seen."

"Why's that?" He asked, not looked up from his reading.

"I read that all Christians were pacifists. They all believed that violence of any kind was wrong to the point of allowing themselves to be slaughtered, which was what doomed their religion."

"I have no idea what they were reading, but some of the most violent men in history followed God. Many people, even when I grew up, thought that way, yet there are men all through the bible who had the blood of thousands of people on their hands, by the command of God no less. Many men in all the wars America fought in took their courage from their belief in God. So to me, battle is no more a place where I can honor God than any other."

"And how is that? I thought your bible says thou shall not kill."

"No, it says thou shall not murder, murder and killing are two different things."

"Seems like semantics to me."

"Why do you think I'm here right now, with you?" Malachi asked.

"I've been asking myself that same question for days now."

"Because as a follower of Jesus Christ I'm called to protect those who need it. If that means I have to do violent things, that's the world we live in. I will not let anything happen to you. That is my calling as a man to protect the weaker vessel."