by T. R. Harris
The Human Chronicles
Book Three
The War of Pawns
By T.R. Harris
Copyright 2012 by T.R. Harris
Kindle Edition
All rights reserved, without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanically, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, or associated with, or sponsored by, the trademark owners.
ISBN: 978-0-9858849-2-5
Email: [email protected]
Website: TheHumanChronicles.com
Adam Cain is an alien with an attitude.
His story continues…
Chapter One
Humans.
Damn, Humans!
Senior Overlord Yan’wal Ra Melk closed the file on his computer and rose from his desk. He moved to the spacious grooming station in his stateroom aboard the Class-7 starship UN-444 and splashed some water on his face, before calling up a strong intoxicant beverage from the dietary module.
Once his mind had cleared, the Overlord returned to his desk to mentally digest the information he’d just received. What he had learned did not please him, not in the least.
It was the autopsy report on the creatures recovered at the battle of Zylim-4, including the bodies of the two dead Klin. Since no one in The Expansion had seen a Klin in the flesh for nearly 4,000 years – even a dead one – the information was of mild interest to the rapt historian within the Overlord. The significance of this discovery was still working its way through his consciousness. What impact it would have on The Expansion remained to be seen, but undoubtedly, it would be major.
Unless, of course, it was overshadowed by the revelations in the second part of the report he had just read…
This concerned the other race of beings who had been involved in the Zylim-4 battle, that of the creatures called ‘Humans.’ Although the Klin autopsy had not produced any real surprises – after all, Klin were probably the oldest known race in the Alliance – the report on the Humans had left Yan’wal with a feeling of foreboding of which he was very unfamiliar.
As the report related, the Humans were Primes, as were 80-percent of the known superior races in the galaxy, yet there were features within their anatomy which set them apart from most of the others. First of all, the bodies displayed a remarkably dense bone structure and muscle mass, accompanied by a thick, tenacious skin that formed an almost impervious barrier against the elements. In addition, the report surmised that the Humans came from a heavy-gravity world, yet in Yan’wal’s brief experience with the creatures, they did not display any of the slothfulness that was generally associated with heavy-worlders.
In fact, these Humans appeared to possess a sophisticated range of coordination, quickness, cunning, and even uncanny intelligence, traits he had never before experienced in creatures with such a planetary heritage. Combined with the fact that physically they were virtually indestructible, Yan’wal had cause to furrow his wide brow even more when he considered the possible scenarios of the coming clash with the Humans upon their home ground.
Even as he sat in his stateroom, the Overlord knew incredible forces were massing around him for an assault upon the Human homeworld – a planet called Earth. The actual battle would come months in the future, yet the planning and execution for the attack would come from him and his senior military staff. In normal circumstances, Yan’wal would have considered such a responsibility an honor, yet the events over the past few weeks had shaken his confidence to a level that both infuriated, and perplexed, the Senior Overlord.
First there had been the space battle off the planet Dimloe, where his entire fleet had nearly been destroyed in the first encounter with the Humans. Even though the conflict had resulted in a Juirean victory, Yan’wal was inclined to accept Fleet Commander Siegor’s assessment that the battle had, indeed, been lost – until the Humans deliberately threw the outcome in favor of the Juireans. Why they would do this was just another of the enigmas surrounding this barbaric race.
Next was the ground battle on the mining world of Zylim-4. At its conclusion, Yan’wal counted 432 of his most-skilled Juirean Guard among the dead, with only 63 of the Humans as casualties. It was the single-largest loss of Juirean life in a ground battle since the Limon-Polesess Uprising over a thousand years before. In the 17 ground battles that had taken place during that conflict, a little over 1,000 of the Guard had been killed – and that was against an entire planet. Now Yan’wal had experienced nearly half as many casualties in a single battle, and against only a handful of untrained and ill-equipped Humans.
In the aftermath of these two encounters, Yan’wal had participated in dozens of conferences with The Council, and he had not sensed any blame for these events being directed solely at him. The Council was more pragmatic; all they wanted was a resolution to the current crisis.
Yet Yan’wal still placed much of the blame for the losses squarely on his own shoulders. Although he acknowledged that the Humans had been an unknown entity at the time of the battles, he had consistently underestimated them. He knew now it had been his Juirean arrogance that had not allowed him to believe that the Humans were nothing more than an annoyance, and that it was the Klin who were the true threat to The Expansion.
In light of his knowledge of history, he did his best to forgive himself, but it did not come easy. After all, Yan’wal Ra Melk was a Juirean, and one of the highest ranking officials in the government. And as everyone knew, Juireans claimed the title of undisputed rulers of the known galaxy…
Chapter Two
The planet Axlus – the ancestral name for the planet Juir – was located in a dense stellar cluster on the opposite side of the Galactic Core from The Fringe. Through a night ablaze with stars and nebulae, darkness never fully fell on the planet, and from the moment the first two pieces of curved glass were placed in a line together and aimed at the skies, the natives of Axlus had known they were not alone in the universe.
From their earliest recorded history, ancient astronomers and mathematicians plotted the paths of the wandering lights in the sky, and soon discovered a complex array of other planets orbiting the nearby stars. They also realized that their world similarly orbited their own star, just as all the others they tracked. So never in their history did the natives of Axlus consider themselves to be the center of the universe, or their existence unique. And considering the diversity of life upon their own world – in the oceans, on the land, and even among the shapes, sizes and colors of their own kind – they knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that other creatures existed on the neighboring worlds of the cluster.
To them, it was just a matter of time before contact would be made with their brothers among the stars.
Early in their history, electricity had been harnessed, and combinations of certain chemicals and minerals were discovered that, when ignited, could lift primitive rockets from the surface, although none reached very far beyond the outer layer of the planet’s atmosphere. Fossil fuels were discovered and utilized, and the natives of Axlus began to spread across the surface of the planet, to settle in thous
ands of city-states, who were left more-or-less to themselves over thousands of years.
On the other nearby planets in the cluster, other races were also evolving at the time. These included the Klin, the Oanneans and Bals, and each of these races achieved a certain level of sophistication in their civilizations along various paths. Yet there came a time, when through wave transmitters and primitive rockets, contact was made between them.
The most-technologically advanced of these core races was the Klin. Thoughtful and deliberate, the Klin were exceedingly peaceful and fair-minded. If ever they had warred among themselves, that tendency had been bred out of them thousands of years before. Now the Klin existed simply for the learning, as well as the building of advanced technologies that would allow the other core races in the cluster to finally come together in an Alliance of planets.
All except for the inhabitants of Axlus…
As the decades passed, the Cluster Alliance began to prosper, as trade between the other six civilized worlds grew and knowledge was shared. However, most of the major advances in technology and engineering still came from the Klin, who quickly established themselves as the default leaders of the Alliance. As its leader, it fell upon the Klin to set most of the rules governing the Alliance, a consequence which would have a major impact on their future in the years to come.
As the Alliance began to grow, and other worlds were discovered, the Klin soon ran into a dilemma. The Klin found that all these inhabited worlds had civilizations at nearly every range of development, from stone-age hut builders, to sophisticated and complex societies with thousands of cities spread across their surfaces. An indiscriminate policy of inclusion in the Alliance would have both shocked these lesser-developed societies, as well as diluted the impact of the more advanced races. So the Klin developed a set of criteria that would first have to be met by a society before Membership in the Alliance would be granted. And prime among these requirements was that a planet must first be civilized enough to exist under one central government before membership would be considered.
This arrangement worked well for the other six Member worlds of the cluster, but not so for the natives of Axlus.
At the time, the planet consisted of thousands of independent city-states, each with their own form of government and cultural identity. The greatest of these city-states was Juir, a sprawling metropolis located on a vast alluvial plain between the Southern Ocean and the Kacoran Mountains. Over seventeen-million beings called themselves Juireans, and they existed in an almost constant state of near-fanatical devotion to their city and to its ruling class of heretical leaders.
Near the edge of the Eastern mountains, a vast section of ancient seabed had been uplifted over geologic time to form a low-lying mountain with what appeared to be a sheared off top. This was the Kacoran Plain. The almost-impossibly flat land atop the mountain was a hundred kilometers long and about seventy-five wide, and the natives of Juir used the prominent plateau as a training field for their considerable military forces, as well as for the mass ceremonies their leaders staged to instill awe and loyalty in the population.
And it was atop the Kacoran Plain that the city’s most powerful and sophisticated observatories were placed, their telescopes aimed toward the stars, and the other inhabited worlds of the cluster.
For several hundred years, the powerful telescopes of the Juirean scientists had been able to pick out bright, flickering lights on a few of their neighboring worlds, as the time of year and the season were right. They knew, too, that the lights from their own cities would also be visible to The Others. So when the astronomers began to track tiny mechanical satellites in orbit around their own world, they began to suspect that the moment of First Contact was growing near.
So it came as no shock or surprise to the Juireans when a module, ablaze with chemical exhaust, began its descent from orbit, and headed for the Kacoran Plain of Juir.
At the time of First Contact, Juir was ruled by a fanatical young leader named Malor Ra Unnis, the ninth Unnis to rule the city. With the Unnis family rising to power through the ranks of the military, Malor maintained an almost religious devotion to the discipline and structure that came with wearing the uniform of the Juirean Security Forces. So when his time came to assume the reins of power, Malor began a transformation of Juirean society into something that mirrored the caste structure of the military.
At first, many in the society resisted. Yet Malor was persistent – and relentless. Soon he had consolidated power in his rule as none in the line of Unnis leaders before him, and all through a combination of political tact and influence, as well as bloody and heartless pragmatism.
Malor was very aware of the unique nature of his rule, and when word reached him regarding the fiery object descending from the sky, he naturally attributed the arrival of The Others to the timing of his own rule. Nevertheless, he was still in awe of the significance of this event, and set in motion the plans that had been established many decades before in anticipation of the eventual arrival.
With a massive entourage in tow, Malor ascended the Kacoran Plain and traveled to the location where the alien spacecraft now sat. A grand stage was moved into place, and transmission crews set up cameras that would broadcast this momentous event not only throughout Juir, but to the entire planet of Axlus.
Since no one on the planet had any experience with the arrival of an alien spacecraft, the assembled masses waited patiently for the craft to open on its own. But after several hours, and still no activity, Malor instructed his scientists to approach the craft and attempt entry. And as they did, a tremendous sense of disappointment fell upon the assembled masses, and the planet as a whole.
The craft was unmanned.
But it wasn’t empty. Inside the alien spacecraft, a message was discovered, spoken clearly in the Juirean language. Then in a move that would later have profound repercussions for the entire planet, Malor had the cameras shut off so that the message could be played in private for only him and his most immediate confidants.
The message was a straight-forward invitation to join what was called the Cluster Alliance. As it was explained, the Alliance consisted of six worlds at the time, and as Members, all worlds shared in the benefits of advanced technology, medical discoveries, as well as financial prosperity through mutual trade. As a Member of the Alliance, the planet Axlus would become a brother among the other worlds in the cluster.
To Malor, it was like a dream come true. It would be under his reign that his people would escape the bonds of a single world, travel to other planets, and take their place among the community of civilizations. The name of Malor Ra Unnis would live forever in the annals of Juirean history.
Yet there was one caveat in the invitation: “Your world must be governed by a single authority before membership will be granted,” the voice and image of a creature called a Klin had said.
Staring at the image of the strange, light-skinned alien, Malor could find no ambiguity in the message. From all the locations on the planet to choose from, the alien probe had landed at Juir, and atop their most important military training facility – and at a time when Malor had just solidified his control of the city. To Malor, the message was clear: The Juireans were the Chosen Ones. The Others had cast his people, his city-state, as the rightful rulers of Axlus.
The Others – these creatures called the ‘Klin’ – were telling Malor it was his responsibility – indeed his duty – to unify the entire planet under one rule – his.
It wasn’t long before Malor began the most massive military campaign ever seen on the planet. The Juireans lashed out at all their fellow city-states, killing indiscriminately, and with such viciousness as to be almost genocidal. In the course of seven short years, Malor the Great – as he was now called – had unified the planet Axlus under the one rule required for membership in the Alliance.
To the observers in space, the campaign Malor conducted against his fellow natives was beyond belief. The peaceful Klin, in their naïvet�
�, had miscalculated the meaning the Juireans would take from their message. In their experience, unification meant negotiation, treaties and a coming together for the common good, not genocide on a planetary scale. As the wars on Axlus proceeded, the Members of the Alliance became ever more appalled and disgusted with the Juireans, and their barbarism and savagery. This was not the outcome they had expected.
Eventually, there came a time upon Axlus when Malor the Great felt he had fulfilled the terms for membership set forth by the mysterious Klin. There was nothing left to do now but proclaim the unification, and for The Others to finally make their appearance.
It was called The Proclamation Ceremony, and it took place atop the Kacoran Plain, at the sight of the first landing.
Several million Juireans had gathered atop the plain for the Proclamation, along with billions more from around the planet watching transmissions of the event. Technicians had constructed 100 powerful spotlights around a massive stage, encircling the original Klin spacecraft and aimed into the sky. The brilliance of the event was staggering, and designed to be easily seen from space, including by any observers in orbit around the planet.
So with music playing and gigantic flags waving in the soft breeze, Malor the Great slowly climbed the 100 steps of the stage and took his place before the podium. Then with ceremonial sword held high above his head, Malor’s voice echoed around the planet and into space, as he recited the words that would change his world – and his people – forever:
“I, Malor Ra Unnis, hereby declare this planet united, and proclaim that from now and evermore it will be known as the planet Juir!” A tremendous cheer erupted from the gathered throng that lasted for several minutes before Malor could continue. “We are now united as a planet, and as a culture, and as the supreme ruler of Juir, I hereby demand membership in the Cluster Alliance, as promised at the time of First Contact. Come, land upon the planet Juir. We Juireans (more cheers) are ready to join you!”