The Opening (The Universal Portals Book 1)

by J. Blanes

  Kotar recalled those events, learned by heart during his infancy, as he walked the immense Hall of Honor, full of war memorabilia and especially dedicated to Tu’ul and Kaar, the Father. Tukma history, learned only once in their lives, should never be forgotten, as his teachers repeatedly told him. Anyone who dared to do so would be banished to the mines and relegated to oblivion, the same fate as the history he had forgotten. Kotar was well aware of this, and he always used his scarce spare time to refresh his memory of those events, especially those about Kaar, the Father, his hero.

  Kaar’s origins were still a mystery. Nobody had ever heard of him before his meteoric rise to fame. In no time, he achieved the impossible, taking control of one faction and making it stronger than the others. He did so by methodically finding and executing enemy spies and reforming the faction’s weapon factories to not only build weapons but also to investigate and develop technologies that enhanced the fragile Tukma body by means of mechanical implants. He also reformed the military system, establishing a new code of conduct that praised the strong and brave, eliminating the Taal’s obsolete system and implementing a promotion structure based solely on merit. All his ideas were radical and revolutionary at the time, and he confronted a fanatic opposition inside his own faction that was crushed as soon as Kaar heard about it. The new mechanical implants transformed the Tukma into authentic living war machines, the code of conduct eradicated the weak elements inside the faction, and the promotion system rewarded any action that resulted in a victory for them. The result was impressive: triumph after triumph until all remaining factions surrendered and acknowledged him as their only leader. Kaar spared the Tukma from the other factions but executed all their leaders and descendants, a masterstroke that gained him the popular favor at the same time that he eliminated all future competitors.

  Once in absolute power, Kaar established another set of reforms. First, he divided the population into the elite and the civil servants. The elite were the military and the civil servants everybody else. To enter the military, a series of difficult tests was designed and enforced on all individuals. Only the best of them were accepted into the military elite, and the best candidates among them entered the exclusive officer program, where they further developed their skills and abilities until they took the officer’s test. In the end, they were accepted as officers only if they achieved a better score than the average score from the active officers. This way, the new officers would always improve the existing average, steadily enhancing the quality of the officers’ layer. Once in the military, officer or not, promotion was achieved strictly by merit alone. The civil servants, the ones who didn’t pass the first test, were condemned for life to work for the elite, losing any privileges and, ironically, becoming their slaves.

  A second reform, more critical and with an impact that no one could predict at that time, made mandatory the use of mechanical implants for everybody, including civil servants. The Tukma were born in a laboratory, with their pathetic bodies protected in specially designed capsules during their first solar cycles and then allowed to roam inside the buildings, studying and preparing for their tests until they reached a maturity level that allowed them to accept the implants. Most civilizations had opted for the natural, biological implants, wearing and growing them since early age, but the Tukma took another approach. Kaar chose to design and use mechanical implants, but instead of wearing and growing with them, the Tukma were put inside them. Once they reached the appropriate age, the Tukma were immersed in a capsule full of serum, big enough to let them grow, and placed in the middle section of a metallic, mechanical armor three times as bigger as they were. Then, their bodies were surgically connected to the armor –which was controlled by their minds– before being sealed inside for the rest of their lives. From then on, they would live and grow submerged in the serum, and would never leave it again. It was the Military Birth, or Civil Servant Birth, during which either the military were given a name and rank and sent to their posts or the civil servants were sent to whatever destination was decided for them.

  The metallic armor provided not only protection against the environment, infectious diseases, and all kinds of factors but it also provided weapons, superstrength and speed, a sophisticated recycling system, and every nutrient the Tukma would need, including a never-ending supply of water and oxygen. What it didn’t provide was direct contact with the exterior, effectively killing the feelings of touch and smell forever. Only radio-wave communication, speech, hearing, and sight were implemented as means of contact with the exterior.

  Speech and hearing, once regarded as obsolete and absurdly slow, were the preferred methods of communication by Kaar, the Father, and considered fashionable by the officers nowadays, who still used them for communicating directly within the higher ranks. Immersed in the serum, a Tukma could not speak, so his voice was recorded before entering the armor and synthesized by it when the Tukma wanted to speak. The sounds from the environment, speech included, were enhanced, analyzed, and transmitted directly into the Tukma’s brain. Sight was considered special, as the speed of light allowed for a great level of information in a short time, and the metallic armor greatly enhanced it, allowing for perfect vision at great distances.

  The armor allowed the Tukma to survive under almost any conditions, with the side effect that their life span skyrocketed from tens of solar cycles to tens of thousands. To avoid rebellions by the civil servants or anyone contrary to the regime, every action a Tukma performed was recorded by his armor and analyzed by a small group of trusted officers. Anyone who showed even the remotest sign of treason was immediately terminated.

  In the military, any weakness was also severely punished. The death for treason was especially cruel and painful. First, a Tukma’s armor was remotely locked with a kill switch that rendered it useless, and the Tukma individual who lived inside was forcefully taken out of it. That was cruel in itself, because after many solar cycles inside the armor, even contact with warm air was excruciatingly painful. Then, naked and unprotected, the Tukma individual was brought outside the buildings and forced to endure the high temperatures until he succumbed to a horrible death. It was the Traitor’s Death, perhaps the only thing a Tukma feared deep inside.

  Kotar was looking through a window at the clearer victim of the war, their home planet. As the war industries had grown, their environmental impact also increased, something that no Tukma would ever care about. At the end of the wars, the planet was not only devastated, and all its beauty and resources gone, but also an unstoppable greenhouse effect was put in motion, quickly increasing temperatures to unbearable levels and transforming the blue sky into the familiar red that still endured. Thanks to the protection of their armor implants and their buildings, the Tukma could live relatively well, but it was a stroke of luck that really propelled them to become the powerful and dreaded civilization they were now. An extraordinary piece of technology was found on a remote, almost inaccessible mountain chain on their planet. It belonged to the civilization that had invaded and enslaved them during the Dark Period, and it showed the steps to build an interstellar portal. This information changed everything for the Tukma. It allowed them to build portals and become the invaders instead of the victims, but above all, it allowed them to settle on whatever virgin planets they pleased.

  Kaar wasted no time in implementing a strategy for invading, conquering, and settling into new worlds, inhabited or not. The Tukma used their military technology, far more advanced than that of most civilizations, to defeat any opposition. The war technologies and fighting skills they had developed during their long civil wars were put into practice against other civilizations. Nobody could stop them, and one after another, they conquered and enslaved every civilization they encountered, sometimes destroying them completely, just for fun or to make an example of them. Their fame spread to all corners of the galaxy, and rumors about their invincibility instilled fear in every civilization in the galaxy.


  In the end, a coalition formed by the most powerful civilizations put an end to their heroic quest with a Pyrrhic victory. Kaar, always a shrewd diplomat, quickly grasped the coalition’s position and met with them to offer a pact. The coalition would let the Tukma perform any actions they deemed necessary in a defined sector of the galaxy, without any interference on their part. In return, the Tukma would confine themselves to that sector alone, leaving the rest of the galaxy in peace. The coalition had no choice; another encounter with the Tukma would be catastrophic, and the Tukma had been considerate enough to leave the coalition worlds outside the designated sector. In other words, Kaar told them that he would spare their worlds and only attack other smaller civilizations in exchange for letting him do whatever he pleased with them. The treaty was signed and had never been broken since.

  The Tukma were now living in several star systems, but Kaar never abandoned his home planet. The highest ranks of the officer’s elite never left their original base, and the tests and the officer program were still carried out on this planet. Every Tukma had to travel at least once in his life there to take the tests. The Traitor’s Death was also executed there.

  It was around that time that Kaar vanished as mysteriously as he had appeared, never to be seen again. He was replaced by Preto’or, his most trusted and intelligent general, and the current leader of the Tukma. Some believed that he’d usurped the position by killing Kaar in a swift coup d’état, an action applauded by many Tukma, who viewed him as a natural leader. If Kaar had not been clever or strong enough to defend himself, he was not worthy of the position anyway. Kotar didn’t believe Kaar, the Father, was weak, but he didn’t care about it either.

  Preto’or soon established himself as a brighter, braver, and more aggressive ruler than Kaar, increasing the pace of the Tukma’s invasions and offering even less mercy to opposing civilizations. His new plans to overthrow the coalition and became sole rulers of the galaxy were in everybody’s minds. He had also set his sights on stealing the technology for making intergalactic portals, which would open the way for the Tukma to the occupation of the entire universe.

  Kotar had been summoned by Preto’or. Nobody under the highest officer ranks was ever summoned in front of Preto’or, and he wondered why he had called him. He was stationed as a military analyst in an insignificant post at the sector’s border when he received the order to immediately present himself in the main headquarters. He was not scared—a Tukma never feared anything—but the Traitor’s Death was the only plausible reason he found for being transported to the main headquarters. Then, a bigger shock shook his bones when they informed him on his arrival, by speech no less, that Preto’or wanted to see him in person. In other words, he had been summoned, a rare honor for an officer and an impossibility for a small-rank warrior like himself. Why?

  His armor legs slowly compressed the Hall of Honor’s floor tiling while Kotar was waiting to be called inside the main chamber. He thought about the armor legs, only two of them, not three like a newborn Tukma, and only two arms with no tail, unlike the useful four Tukma arms and the long tail. It was an oddity that he’d never understood, walking straight, very hard to get used to, even with the armor, but one that every Tukma grew used to in time. The third leg was only missed when support was needed to prevent the armor from falling backward, the natural use for their third leg in their natural bodies. With the agility and strength that the armor provided, falling backward was not a frequent occurrence, except when one Tukma pushed another on purpose, just for the fun of it—seeing another Tukma to fall backward was one of the funniest things a Tukma could ever witness. But only two arms, depriving the armor of the ability to do more things at once, was something no one got used to, ever, even after a thousand solar cycles. It was unnatural, impractical, and ugly. What was Kaar, the Father, thinking when he designed it?

  A door opened, and a radio communication ordered Kotar to proceed to the main chamber. He obeyed immediately. Minutes later he arrived in the main chamber, where he found Preto’or surrounded by his most trusted advisors and personal guards—not that he needed them, Kotar thought. Preto’or was loved by every Tukma, and no one would ever hurt their leader, but even if someone decided to try, Preto’or was famous for his strength and cunning, possessing the best military tests scores ever, able to defeat easily any Tukma. In addition, as if this were not enough, when he gained his position as their leader, he demanded bigger and stronger armor, only for himself, and the Tukma scientists delivered. Kotar had never seen Preto’or before, but he had no trouble in spotting him in the middle of the chamber, standing out from the others, imposing in his big armor. Kotar felt proud of his leader.

  “Preto’or,” Kotar saluted him, staying perfectly straight, as bowing or any other form of salutation was considered weak. Saying his name was the proper form of saluting the leader.

  “Warrior,” Preto’or saluted him back. His voice was modulated, deep and grave. The military saluted each other by mentioning their ranks.

  “Warrior, come closer,” Preto’or ordered Kotar as he moved slightly aside.

  Kotar wasted no time in approaching him; at least Preto’or didn’t seem angry with him. Then, he saw him, Pok, the main officer at the post where he was stationed, and the admiral of the border fleet. He had not seen him before because he was standing behind Preto’or. What was he doing here? A few alarms rang in his mind; this was not good.

  “Admiral,” Kotar saluted the admiral.

  “Warrior,” the admiral replied.

  After the proper salutations, Preto’or spoke first. “I summoned you here because I’ve been informed that there have been some recent disturbances in the portal net in a remote sector of the galaxy—is that right, Admiral?”

  Kotar started to understand where this interrogation was headed, and it was worse than he’d imagined. His post was responsible for detecting, analyzing, and informing about disturbances in the portal net, that is, any event related to a portal that occurred anywhere in the galaxy. There had recently been one such event in an almost-unknown sector. Kotar had informed the admiral about it, but the admiral had dismissed it as a simple glitch in the net, a false positive that sometimes occurred when a sensor activated by mistake, interpreting another event, like a supernova explosion, as a portal one.

  “Only a glitch,” the admiral answered Preto’or. “Nothing that would require bothering you.”

  Kotar would normally agree with him, if it had been only one event. But shortly after the first event, a second one occurred. He had informed the admiral about it, insisting that two events were not a coincidence, but the admiral had dismissed him again, threatening him with insubordination if he dared to bother him again.

  “I see,” Preto’or said. “It seems that I have been not informed correctly, then. What do you think, Warrior?”

  Everybody in the chamber was surprised, Kotar more than the others, at this direct question from a leader directed at a simple warrior. He knew that all of this was just a farce, an excuse for mocking him, but it was pointless to lie, as every conversation he’d ever had with the admiral had already been recorded.

  “I do not agree,” he said firmly. A murmur of astonishment echoed across the room.

  “How do you dare?” the admiral shouted at him in anger.

  “Let him explain,” Preto’or stopped him. “I want to know what he has to say.”

  Everybody was stunned. In a normal situation, an insubordination like this would have ended in instant termination, but Preto’or seemed to be amused by this situation, and no one dared to interrupt or contradict him.

  “One event may be attributed to a spurious, unrelated event. But, as I informed the admiral, there were two. It is extremely unlikely that two false positives were detected in the same sector in a short period of time.” Kotar felt nervous, and he blamed himself for such a weakness. If he came out of this alive, he would have to work hard on th
at.

  “Interesting,” Preto’or mumbled. “And what did the admiral do with this information?”

  “He dismissed it as another glitch and threatened me with insubordination and a harsh punishment if I ever talked about it again,” Kotar informed him.

  Preto’or seemed to ponder about what he had heard. Then, he looked at the admiral. “You were worried about my time, weren’t you, Admiral?”

  “Of course, it’s my main priority not to bother you with useless information,” the admiral replied proudly.

  “Have you anything else to say, Warrior?” Preto’or asked.

  “Yes,” Kotar answered defiantly.

  Preto’or’s guards had had enough of this insubordination, and two of them grabbed Kotar from behind and immobilized him, until Preto’or quickly stopped them.

  “Release him, now!” he ordered them. “I want to know what he has to say.”

  The guards didn’t hesitate and released him quickly. They knew that Preto’or never repeated an order. Either you obeyed him fast, or you were dead the next second.

  “Speak, Warrior,” Preto’or ordered Kotar.

  “There’s something else you should know about,” Kotar remarked. “After I told the admiral about the events, I investigated the history of that sector. I found that the portals in that particular sector were built by the Pakma some solar cycles ago, apparently to carry on an experiment with a primitive species. That and the two recent events cannot be a coincidence, and I’m sure they’re related, although I cannot understand why the Pakma would go back there again to experiment on such a primitive, boring species.”