“We’ve been thinking of a reverse psychological move to prod the Zellhigh into removing the implants themselves prior to our invasion. This would save us resources as well as resistance, even after we stop the gas supply to the air.”
“How,” Lain put one hand on her hip, “can you possibly achieve something so grand and intense?”
“If we could make the powers that be think we have a way to manipulate the inserts into receiving a message that changes the narrative inside their minds, then the believers may want to interrupt that process, especially if the message we plan to send is that Rueel their spiritual leader is a fraud. We can sprinkle it with even more deception. Perhaps make it look as if Rueel has been accumulating wealth that should have been distributed among the citizens of Zellhigh. That he is planning on leaving Zellhigh with that wealth before the Triolux invade the planet.”
“How can you do that?”
“By having Commander Chi seemingly appear to have escaped from us and send a message to Zellhigh.”
Lain said, “That sounds like something they’ll see through.”
Tee said, “Yes, that’s why we’ve been brainstorming to come up with a way to form a believable message to them. And we think we have.”
Chapter 17
Commander Chi entered his old spacecraft and stopped short as soon as he passed through the entrance portal. He was overcome with the emotion of losing his ship to the enemy. He was faced with the person he was when he controlled the ship and the man he was now. The scales had been removed from his eyes and he didn’t like the idea that he’d been so easily manipulated by an insert in his brain and chemicals that penetrated all his cells from the gas. He was upset and also determined to free his people. All these thoughts swirled inside him as he marched erect and with purpose to the communication switch next to the captain’s chair.
He sat down and pressed his palm into the metal crevice. It awoke with a blue light and Commander Chi spoke in a quiet, controlled voice. All around him was darkness as he knew they may be able to watch him as well as listen. “This is Chi; I’ve evaded the stinking animals and slipped into my ship. We were overwhelmed and they had superior weapons and somebody overdosed the men with the gas. They were sluggish and disoriented. Now they have killed most of us and still hold many captive. They found inserts and are scheming to send a signal to Zellhigh that will change the characteristics of the device. The altered parameters will be destructive to all on Zellhigh. As soon as I found this out I was determined to find a way to send you this information. It is….”
At that moment lights shone into the cabin of the ship and lasers fired on the commander. It was a well-orchestrated preplanned attack that the commander and Tee had rehearsed. The commander was immediately silenced as he fell from his chair. His hand slipped from the crevice. The blue light faded into darkness. Once that happened the commander straightened himself and he and Tee exchanged a knowing glance. They had done all they could.
Zellhigh
Rueel, the master of ceremonies, Adim’s personal spokesman here on the terra firma, read the transmission from Chi and fell into a meandering march in his grand and spacious living quarters. His hands touched his possessions as he walked in circles, buried in thought so deep he wasn’t conscious of what his hands were doing. It was a subconscious move to show the threat to separate him from all he owned. He had many wives but lived separate from them. He called them to his chambers when he felt the need for their company, which was not often and always brief.
What Rueel relished was power. He was at the top of the heap. He murdered the witnesses of his humble beginnings. He was a freelance trader who seized the opportunity to own the only copy of the Book of Adim. His unique interpretation of it and his manic personality, coupled with his charisma and charm, had served him well. Then a chemist came along and helped him with his unique vision. A neurological surgeon with the help of some of his acquaintances moved aggressively to manipulate a surging population. Now it was all threatened.
At the bottom of his soul, in a flat place he avoided with darkness and fear, a truth resided, because he knew a day of reckoning was coming. He’d felt its impending march toward him for a long time. All good things must come to an end. He assumed it would be from one of the other elite that would move to remove him. Never did he see it from a foreign planet, especially from a passive planet known for its kindness, patience and desire to move the entire universe into a cosmos of human improvement. What a bunch of soft bellied, peace loving naïve idiots the Triolux Northerners were. It’s human nature to define the social stratus of those around us; we need a pecking order, one that judges intelligence, looks and breeding.
Without the ability to see your path to fortune and guided only by a desire to help his fellow man, a human will lose the individuality that makes each of them different. They will become a society of clones. “Open us up and we’ll all look the same. What nonsense these feet kissing morons from Triolux North spill. What a destructive sermon they shout. Help at all cost, bend over and pick up your fellow man when the herds trod on the fallen. Step on them, I say.” Rueel tossed a fist into the air of his empty chamber. “They are the weak and their exploitation is how we define our leaders. Not by weakness do we pick our leaders, but by strength.”
Rueel summoned his engineers and surgeons and anyone of any discipline that could possibly understand what the Triolux could do to alter the inserts. He felt the fingernail in between his teeth and he ripped it. The tear dug into the soft meat of his fingertip. He flinched and saw the blood as it began to flow and drip. He summoned his newest and youngest wife. He would need to abuse her to free himself from the stress that was building inside him. This was his right. He was the man. She was the inferior of the sexes and he was Rueel, the closest of any human to Adim. She would accept whatever he did to her. It was the least she could do to please the master.
Gisile’s Mother
Her daughter had fought and died trying to save her planet and now the prisoners were free and her daughter was dead. The girl’s mother’s brain was in a fever. Her sorrow for the loss of her husband and son coupled with the capture of her daughter caused her distraught mind to dance in the ballroom of the dead and hear the voices of the departed. “Revenge’ - this word filled the air and entered into the deep recesses of her brain. Her laser gun shone like a beacon. Large men from Zellhigh, their muscles bulging, their eyes filled with hate, played across her vision. She sat in the dark room of her now - reduced living quarters with only the company of her memories.
She had survivor’s guilt, a major contributor to Post Traumatic Stress disorder. A recent report was documented by the destruction of the planet Vaterian by the Zellhigh. Survivors reported having ruminating thoughts of failed action on their part in the near - genocide as the Vaterians defended themselves to the death. These intrusive thoughts caused sleep disturbance and deprivation and this in turn marched these poor victims into suicide. This was the only path they saw for their own escape.
Gisile’s mother saw a different path. She was now dancing in the darkness with the sweet spirit of revenge and it brought with it a feeling of relief. She would no longer be plagued with a series of reoccurring images of her failure to act, even though the truth was she had been being held down by a group of mad eyed rapists. The idea of slaughtering these animals from Zellhigh, now looked upon by some as victims themselves, slammed her with an overwhelming feeling of righting a terrible wrong. With this act she would once again become whole.
Everyone knew where they were. They were corralled like animals in the abandoned factory outside of town. In the early morning hours when the twin moons were over the horizon and the sun had yet to break, Sarahana Diver moved in the shadows of the buildings and trees with her laser gun fixed to her wet palm. Her determined eyes said it all. She would kill until she was the last one standing or dead. It was no longer a choice. It was a command from the dead voices that rattled around inside her brain. It was
her husband, son and daughter’s voice that no longer whispered their desires but shouted their demands. “We need blood!”
Her footfalls were nearly silent as she moved in the dark splotchy patches of spilled ink blackness. Her head was held high as she searched for her prey. In the distance she saw the mammoth building rise like a mountain against the star filled sky. She felt its dense presence and hoped that finding the sleeping animals would be easy. She would search them out if they ran. Her determination was so strong and her jaw so tight that she realized she was grinding her teeth and so she relaxed her jaw and paused.
With the building now looming over her she breathed deeply and slowly. She relaxed her grip on the gun and let air out of her mouth. She must remain calm and strong and carry out this mission with precision. A door to her left was framed by a spill of light that illuminated a hall on the other side. With a flinch, knowing an alarm could sound, she pulled on the handle and the door opened. She stepped inside and detected a faint odor. It was of food having been consumed and men’s feet and the sad emptiness of leftover conversations. It was the smell of yesterday and last night and the dead dreams of foreigners that came to pillage only to find themselves captured by the betrayal of one of their own.
How tragic for them. She smiled, thinking that their end was near. She formed a smirk in anticipation. Everything about this crowd filled her nostrils with desperation. They had come to her planet drugged and manipulated. Their failure was so complete that not one of them was able to retreat and now there was mumbled indifference out on the balconies and in the hall. “They were manipulated, drugged and pushed by a brain insert.” Forgiveness was beginning to squirm into the hearts of the Triolux. This sickened Sarahana. Reason had two sides, both sharp. And so she slowed, in the dim hall, to move with stealth.
In a great room she saw her victims in six neat and tidy rows of beds. They were snoring softly and in all manner of positions, some on their sides while others lay on their backs and still others sprawled with their arms out and their legs back. She saw how best to kill them all. She stood at the end of the first row and aimed the small beam of light, white as dried bone, and watched the needle thin light start at the closest beast, reaching distance with her hand, she clinched her fist. She would like to throttle this one but knew that would be a game she would not win. He was on his side. The light cut the man and the bed in half and dropped it to the floor. She raised the gun and cut into the next man and so on down the first row. The smell of their internal organs cooked and charred filled the air. The noise of the beds sliding onto the floor was muffled. The sound was loud but not a bang and the other men only stirred. No one rose and shouted a warning. She had now moved to the next row of beds.
On she went, like a machine, detached and fixed on a programmed chore. By the last row the men were up and running. Some shouted as she raked the light from left to right, severing their bodies, the men watching their lower half fall right as their heads and arms fell left. Some lived with their organs cauterized just so. Their eyes were wild as their arms flailed and they tried to crawl for cover. She hovered over them, assessed in amazement their will to live and then she decapitated them in a silent, slushy way.
Sarahana walked the room. The first shafts of sunlight now stabbed into the slits and crevices of the windows. The air was iron rich and humid with blood. There were sounds, gurgling, gas and air escaping noises that came her way from random parts of the room. She walked from one destroyed body to the other. She stepped in the pools of blood and left foot prints for the Triolux forensic teams to assess. She sat on a window ledge and watched as the sun filled the sky. She placed the laser next to her temple and squeezed the trigger. The gun thudded on the sill and then clanged when it hit the floor. It would be two days before the carnage was discovered.
Chapter 18
The consensus of the department heads of all the various disciplines that Rueel had gathered was that the Triolux had flipped the commander or simply tricked him. There was no way an implant made to decipher neurological signals with the hard wiring in the central nervous system could be changed by anything other than surgery. The aggressive response that the brain transmits to the thinker, when they have thoughts contrary to a total belief in Adim, is a toxic release of chemicals to the motor neurons that travel a planned pathway by way of myelinated fibers that control the muscles. In other words the brain experiences a sudden mutation that lights up the dual hemispheres and causes an intellectual response that makes the subject unstable. They are wobbled by the sensations that travel down their spine and into their toes.
“So,” Rueel said, “anyone who had doubt experienced an overwhelming feeling that made them think they’re crazy to have such thoughts.”
“Exactly,” replied Dr. Lynmane, the top neurological doctor on the planet.
“And there’s no way a signal of a certain wave or frequency could change the insert’s parameters?”
“No, Rueel, there’s no receptors; there’s nothing on the insert to receive any kind of signal.”
“What about chemicals in the blood?”
The different people assembled in the Adim Temple, underneath the sacred Fountain of Wisdom, looked at each other. A puzzled look came across their faces as they contemplated the question Rueel had posed. It was once again unanimous: “No, chemicals in the blood could not change the directive of the insert.”
“So, they are playing us for the fool.” Rueel tossed the part in his robe from hanging in the front to his back, a brilliant garment with gold threads and the symbols of Adim, the spear, the arrow and the bear. He marched around the conference table with a hand locked in contemplation under his chin. At last he stopped and all eyes came to rest on his. “We must realize we are playing a dangerous game and right now we are losing. They have found us out and are probably probing our defenses as we speak. They are superior to us in technology and inferior to us in personal aggression. We can win, but only on the ground, on this, our planet. We can only defeat these insidious creatures with fighting that is in close quarters where our population is armed to the teeth and properly motivated without being poisoned.”
He raised his hand, the sleeve of his brilliant robe sliding down to the elbow. Juxtaposed next to the portrait of Adim, his hand extended and his hair falling over his collar, he looked the part of the true prophet. “I charge each and every one of you with the preparation of defending our planet against these humanity hugging, mass forgiving parasites. You must think in such a way that their soldiers will be directed in every city and town down corridors of our choosing. They must be manipulated into tunnels and alleys and side streets that we have rigged with explosions. Our best fighters must be held in reserve at every turn to be released when our adversary is worn out and tired.
“There comes a time when each of us must rise to the call. There is a special place in the garden on the other side for those who are selfless and think only of the flock. We have been given this opportunity to show the true spirit of the Zellhigh. We are madmen when pushed. We have the capacity to rout this invasion and prevail. We must plan every scenario, think devious thoughts like these pacifists turned killers might conceive. Go,” he shouted, “get out of here and divide the planet into sections where every inch of it will be covered with a defensive plan. This has come to me from Adim and only he knows the future.”
On Triolux they find the prisoners
It was obvious what happened. Not one of the prisoners survived. Tee surveyed the carnage and a great sadness descended over him. He wasn’t particularly enamored with the men of Zellhigh; their size disturbed him. They weren’t natural and he knew their growth was the result of unnatural stimulus and it went along with everything else about them that seemed like a façade. But he had hope, that thing that makes it seem that a future could be better. And as he saw the pools of blood scabbed and dried on the floor he knew he had been naïve and should have ordered protection for these men. They were without weapons and at the me
rcy of their captors. He took this as a personal oversight. Better them, than the loss of his own people. And one of them had perished after carrying out her destructive plan. How many had died with their finger on their personal laser? Yet, without the distribution of the weapons they could not have defeated the Zellhigh. What a paradox we create when faced with chaos. This is all to be laid at the feet of the believers.
The opposite of chaos is structure. They must cement a plan and carry it out with military precision. The only way to end this tit for tat with Zellhigh is to destroy the false narrative they have imposed upon an unsuspecting population. Throughout history many a dictator and strongman have seized the pulpit and spewed lies the people swallowed. A pointed finger aimed at some impoverished few to be blamed for all the wrongs of the mass. And the people time and again follow that path and when the straw enemy is vanquished they find themselves restless and in the same position they were in before they brought violence to the helpless. In time they turn on their leader.
In the case of Rueel and his tight fisted hold on the masses, not only had he managed to keep tight reins on the populace, but there was no insurgency or murmurs and rumblings of any kind of dissatisfaction. He had quashed all that before it raised its ugly head. He’d done it with technology and stolen his people’s will like a master thief. They never experienced free will so they didn’t realize it had been taken. Sadly he had set the stage for power hungry men in the future. Tee knew this imitation would enslave others in the future. The formula was out and the universe would one day be aware of the mix.
Historians are rarely consulted. They speak in a monotone voice like an accountant and it causes the people to fidget and look for agitation. They want to be a part of some kind of ruckus. They need to be embedded in the action and have a common enemy and this repetition is what the Triolux had fought against and worked hard to point out and move humanity to a much improved posture and abandon the stooped position of repeating bad history. And now a new player has come along and upped the game and that can’t stand. Better to wipe them out and be done with Zellhigh and their fate than have that curse visited upon others.
Ths Sacking of Triolux North Page 12