Portal Wars 1: Gehenna Dawn

by Jay Allan

  Throughout history, men have fought for uncounted reasons. For land, for money, for hegemony over their neighbors. They have fought for religion, to avenge insults, to impose belief systems…or to resist such being forced upon them. Wars have been waged to preserve or eliminate slavery, to escape the yoke of political masters…or to impose such rule upon others. Men have fought against those they branded inferiors…and struggled against those who called themselves their betters.

  The drum has beaten the call to war throughout history, rallying men and women to fight for the Cause…to accept the inevitable pain and suffering of war. To sacrifice sons and daughters to the slaughter. To see cities burn and millions die in confusion, agony, and despair. All for the Cause.

  Since the dawn of recorded history, the flags have waved and the crowds have cheered. The soldiers have marched…they have marched to fight for the Cause.

  What did most of them get back from those who called them to war? Famine, disease, shortages, despair. Burned cities and broken dreams. A flag-draped coffin in place of a live son or daughter. Words, endless, professionally-written platitudes, offered by the masters in justification of the slaughter.

  How often was the Cause truly just, worth the pain and death and horror of war? How many of those billions, who took to the streets for 5,000 years and cheered and sang and rallied for the Cause…how many of them really understood? What percentage took the time to consider the facts, the situation…to question what they were told and ultimately decide for themselves if the Cause was true and righteous? How many mindlessly believed the words of their masters, giving their all to a cause they didn’t even comprehend? A Cause that wasn’t worthy of their sacrifice?

  What if the Cause is false, corrupt…a fraud created simply to urge men to fight? What if it serves nothing more than the base purposes of the leaders, buying them power with the blood of the people? What does the reasonable man, the just man, do if he discovers the Cause is false? Is there any retribution, any action, any violence unjustified in punishing those responsible? Could any horror that the oppressed and manipulated victims visit upon their former masters be unjustified. Does righteous vengeance become the new Cause?

  Taylor was staring straight up. He was in a room, though that was about all he could tell. He could see the light in the ceiling, but it was hazy, distant. Everything else was a confused blur. He tried to think, to remember where he was, how he’d gotten there.

  His head ached…his whole body throbbed with soreness. He felt like he’d been turned inside out and then back again. He tried to lift his head, but the room started spinning. He caught himself, choked back the vomit he felt starting to rising.

  “Colonel Taylor, I want to welcome you.” The voice was coming from the side, somewhere he couldn’t see. It was English, but there was something odd about it, something he couldn’t place. It was an accent he’d never heard, but there was more than just that. “Please do not try to rise yet. I am afraid we were forced to use a neural stun beam in order to facilitate bringing you here.” There was a short pause. “I am afraid the effects can be rather disorienting…especially on your species.”

  I’m a prisoner, Jake thought. The Machines…no, the Tegeri…have captured me. He was scared, overwhelmed. His grim lack of concern for himself was gone, replaced by a gaping fear of the unknown. I am laid bare, defenseless before my enemy, he thought. It was one thing to accept the inevitability of death, and quite another to stare into the face of the unknown, to deal with utter helplessness.

  “What…are…you…going…to…do…with…me?” It was hard to speak, but Jake forced out the words, slowly, hoarsely.

  “Nothing, Colonel Taylor. Or at least I intend no harm to you. I merely wish to converse with you.”

  He speaks my language; he knows my name, Jake thought…did I speak when I was unconscious? What did I tell him?

  “Allow me to introduce myself, Colonel.” The voice was moving, coming closer. “I am T’arza. At least that is my appellation closest to what you would call a name.” He was moving around, positioning himself in front of Taylor. “May I call you Jake?”

  “Call me whatever you want.” Taylor’s voice was becoming stronger, clearer. “I’m your prisoner.”

  He could feel the movement, his captor coming closer. It wasn’t a Machine moving toward him, he could tell that much. But it wasn’t human either. Taylor had never been this close to one of the Tegeri. He felt the urge to lunge, to attack his enemy. Here was one of the leaders, the masterminds who’d ordered the attacks on the human colonies…the ones who started 40 years of bloody war. He was a meter away from one of the worst, most depraved monsters a man had ever faced…and he had no strength, no chance to avenge the thousands of dead.

  “You are certainly not my prisoner, Jake. At least not in a conventional sense.” The being moved into Jake’s view. He – it? – was taller than a man, with paler skin and longer, thinner appendages. It was humanoid, certainly, different from a man only in superficial aspects.

  “It is true that you are confined here, however that is a temporary situation. I only wish to communicate with you for a time…to provide you with information. Then you will be released.” T’arza paused, observing Taylor’s reactions. “And I assure you that I have no intention of harming you.”

  “Am I supposed to believe that?” Taylor’s voice was angry, his suspicion obvious. He pulled himself up, facing his captor. His stomach did a flop, but he was able to control the nausea. “You clearly know who I am. You targeted me for some reason.” Taylor’s mind was still fuzzy, but he was beginning to put things together. “The intercept…” Taylor’s expression betrayed his incredulity. “You staged the entire thing…lured us into this attack.” The shock was clear in his voice. “Just to capture me?” Taylor could feel the room beginning to spin. He groaned and fell back.

  “The effects of the neural stun weapon are temporary, but as you have experienced, they can be quite debilitating until they pass. I have administered a drug to counteract the worst symptoms. However, I am unfamiliar with the specifics of human pharmacology, and I have therefore been conservative regarding dosage. Please refrain from any abrupt movements until your disequilibrium has passed. I do not wish to see you injure yourself.”

  T’arza watched as Taylor tried again to rise, ignoring his request. “I assure you, Jake. No harm will come to you here.” T’arza paused. “My compliments to your deductive capabilities. To answer your previous question, yes, we intentionally allowed your people to intercept the location of this facility.” Another pause. “Your forces are temporarily disordered, and they have pulled back. But we do not have the strength to defeat them here. We have essentially given up our primary planetary base of operations – and all hope of ultimately holding Erastus - to arrange this meeting.” T’arza hesitated yet again, not wanting to overload Taylor. “I trust this lends credence to the importance of what I have to say to you.”

  Taylor opened his mouth, but he couldn’t find any words. Everything T’arza said made perfect sense. Yet Jake couldn’t quite accept it all.

  The Tegeri saw he had Taylor’s attention. “My people did not build the Portals. We call those who did the First Ones, though we know little more about them than you do.” T’arza paused briefly. “We evolved on our own world, as humanity did upon Earth. One day, we discovered a Portal.”

  Taylor was silent, listening to T’arza’s words. He still regarded the alien with anger and fear, though his companion’s conduct and demeanor were so calm, so rational…the intensity of those emotions began to fade.

  “It is obvious, even by cursory visual inspection, that our races share some genetic link. Perhaps those who created the Portals also sowed the seeds of both of our peoples. Or, possibly, there is some other connection between our races, long in the distant past. We cannot know. But in a universe of almost infinite diversity, we are far more alike than not. Shockingly so. Would you not agree?”

  Taylor looked at T’arza
, but he didn’t respond. After a few seconds he nodded silently, grudgingly. It was a minute gesture, barely perceptible, though it did not go unnoticed.

  “There are crucial differences, however. By whatever accidents of time and evolution, my race achieved a state of technological advancement several millennia before yours. Perhaps this was by design of those who came before, or maybe it was nothing more than some infinitesimal difference in our environments. Or simply random variation. Several thousand years is but an instant in the context of the evolution of our species. I do not know the answer. Clearly, my people are more advanced than yours in many ways…yet equally obviously, we are slowing losing the war. Indeed, we have much in common with each other, yet we differ in some ways too.”

  T’arza looked down at Taylor as he spoke. The alien had two eyes, not unlike human ones, but deeper, more three dimensional on close view. “My brethren – the Tegeri, as you call us - are fiercely independent, so much so that we do not fully understand the ways in which humans can form large monolithic groups. Like armies. We cannot defeat you at war, because you are far more suited to sacrificing your individualism and accepting orders without question. Indeed, my people would likely have destroyed each other long ago, however, while we cherish our own freedom, we lack the will to take it from others, to impose our way of thinking on those around us. Thus did we peacefully exist for centuries before your people came through the Portal.”

  T’arza’s tone changed for the first time, as if he was trying to be careful in what he said to avoid offending Taylor. “Your people, on the contrary, are extremely susceptible to suggestion and driven to impose their will on others. Indeed, it is the primary reason we severed contact so long ago. Your people were known to mine long before you ventured to a Portal world. My race spent centuries on your planet, mentoring your ancestors, teaching them.” T’arza spoke hauntingly, as if from personal memory. “We sought nothing in return, but the ancient humans began to regard us as gods, seeking out our favor in their own conflicts. We came to form the basis of many of your ancient religions, though through no effort or desire of our own.”

  T’arza paused. His tone was hard to discern, but Taylor thought he detected something there. Sadness, perhaps.

  “Soon, some among your people began to use us to seek to control others. They waged wars in our names, and exhorted men to murder other men under pretense of appeasing us.”

  Taylor sat quietly and listened. He was skeptical, his mind unwilling to accept what this enemy was telling him. But he couldn’t bring himself to discount what T’arza was saying either. It felt somehow…true.

  “So we left your world, fearing the damage we might cause to your then-primitive forefathers. We resolved to guard the Portals and wait for your people to mature…and to join us.” He stopped speaking for a few seconds, giving Jake a chance to consider what he had been told.

  “Indeed, we needed your race to step through the Portals. My people are a dying race. It has been many centuries since any have been born among us. We have never been able to determine the cause of this…perhaps we were only meant to exist for a certain time…or some ancient research of ours unleashed something terrible upon us. We are long-lived, vastly more so than your kind. Yet humanity shall outlast us.”

  Taylor found himself almost hypnotized, lost in what T’arza was telling him. His fear of the alien was draining away…and his hatred as well, leaving only confusion. The being speaking to him was so rational, so empathic. So different from most of the people Jake knew. His doubts began to crumble.

  “We waited for your people to come, to take up the mantle as guardians of the Portals. But we saw what was happening on your Earth. Again and again, your people allowed evil, inferior men and women to lead them. They submitted themselves to be ruled by those unfit for such authority. They surrendered their judgment, their self-determination.” T’arza looked at Jake unwaveringly as he spoke. “We began to despair, to fear that humanity would never mature, that we would have none fit to whom we could pass control of the Portals. We debated intervention, but we could not truly grasp the motivating factors of your behavior…nor could we discern any way to prevent it, save using force and imposing our own will on humanity. This is an option that has always been repugnant to us.”

  Taylor pulled himself up, propping his back against the cushions so he could look directly at T’arza as he spoke. The headache was subsiding, and he was becoming more and more focused on what he was hearing.

  “We created the beings you call ‘the Machines’ to replace us, to maintain the structure of our civilization as we dwindled. We had hoped they might become our free-willed successors but, alas, we were never able to achieve what we sought. They are little better than slaves, though it was never our intention to make them as such. We had the technology to create them, but not the knowledge or power to instill in them the spark of true life. We were never able to give them truly independent thought nor make them self-replicating, like a natural species. Every one of them that exists was manufactured. Every attempt at creating a reproductive capability in them has failed.”

  “So the Machines were not purpose built as soldiers?” Taylor finally spoke. His instinct still told him to doubt what T’arza told him, but the alien’s words seemed so genuine, his skepticism was fading.

  “Indeed, no.” T’arza’s tone changed again, sounding as though the very topic was distasteful. “My people are morally repulsed by the idea of creating a race of slave soldiers. The entities you call ‘Machines’ were intended to replace us when the last of us dies out, not to serve us in wars of conquest.” He paused for a few seconds before cautiously continuing. “When the conflict with your people began, we had little choice but to employ them in a defensive role.” T’arza’s expressions were not easily readable, but Jake recognized sadness passing again over the alien’s face. “My people are now far too few to wage a war of this size and duration. We were compelled to manufacture more of the Machines to defend the Portal worlds.

  Taylor sat and listened. Again, the facts supported everything he was being told. The Machines fought competently, nothing more. He had no doubt that T’arza’s race was capable of building better warriors if they so wished…if their ethical constraints would allow it.

  He closed his eyes, trying to organize his thoughts. He couldn’t reconcile this gentle, intelligent alien with the atrocities committed on the first Portal worlds. With the savage race that turned man’s first contact into a bloody crusade. “But why did you attack the first colonies?” Taylor’s voice was strained, tense. “We didn’t come to attack…we came to settle, to explore.” Anger was creeping back into his tone, as the scenes from the early colonies ran through his mind. The Machines, slaughtering men, women…children. Burning down the tiny new villages. “And the Machines killed them…they killed them all.” Taylor was practically screaming as he looked right at T’arza. “Why?” It was a cry of anger and a plea for understanding.

  T’arza’s expression changed again, though Taylor couldn’t read the emotions behind it this time. “I do not know if you are ready to accept the truth, Jake Taylor, but I am about to provide it to you.” He paused. “I fear you will find it…unsettling.”

  “What truth?” Taylor was angry, but confusion was once again supplanting rage.

  “My people are not responsible for the acts that started this war.”

  Taylor was incredulous. “You murdered unarmed civilians! You massacred every human being that set foot on those worlds!” Taylor was shaking. “What did you expect us to do?”

  “We murdered no one.” T’arza spoke calmly. “The entities you call the ‘Machines’ murdered no one.”

  Jake stared back, his mouth open but silent.

  “The events you describe, the horrors inflicted on your initial colonists…that was the work of other humans, Jake, not of my people.”

  Taylor felt a new rush of anger. “That is a lie! I saw it…I saw it all on the videos.”

&nbs
p; “I understand this is a profoundly disturbing revelation for you, Jake, however it is completely factual.” T’arza hesitated, giving Taylor a few seconds to collect himself. “When humans at last came to the world you call New Earth, my people rejoiced. At last, we thought, the humans have found the Portals and come to join us. We had long considered your people, not as our children exactly, but akin to younger siblings. We welcomed your colonists, and we sent emissaries to greet them. We brought gifts, and we sought to share our knowledge of the Portals.”

  T’arza spoke slowly, with reverent respect for what he was saying. “Your colonists welcomed us. We were familiar with humans, and we had little difficulty communicating. Your ancient languages were still familiar to us, and your modern ones were simple to learn.”

  There was definite sadness in the Tegeri’s commentary. It wasn’t so much a tone of voice as an overall demeanor, almost a feeling. But Jake was convinced that the alien was speaking of something he thought of as a terrible tragedy.

  “We spoke with your colonial leaders. As with all human social groupings, there was an obvious and rigid administrative hierarchy in play.”

  Taylor winced slightly, feeling a little defensive hearing T’arza characterize human behavior. He didn’t disagree with anything the Tegeri was saying, but he still didn’t like hearing it.

  T’arza could see that Taylor was uncomfortable. “I do not mean to say anything that may offend you, Jake. I am not judging human behavioral norms, simply describing them.” He looked silently at Taylor.