by H. T. Kofruk
They had to run the last hour due to the dangerously high water level that left only a small path on which to walk along. Yulin counted at least twenty forks in the tunnels and she was almost convinced Wanag was guessing. But it turned out that he was more than just a loud-mouth when he finally led them out of the infernal tunnels. The tunnel exit was only large enough for one person and with all their equipment and shorter limbs, the two Rendens took the longest amidst the sneers and chuckles of their Ewani guides. As soon as he got out, Zhon took off his pack and revealed a terrain scanner that was powerful enough to map the surrounding twenty-mile radius.
“That looks like Reag” he said pointing to a city ten miles to the north.
Yulin finally took off her mask and breathed in the non-filtered air. Unlike the wet and humid eastern continent, the west was temperate and relatively dry. The air was cool and smelled of a hundred different indigenous plants. She looked back at the tunnel exit and saw the wavy distortion in the air created by the gas rising out. Dead animals were lying nearby, probably from inhaling the gases.
It was evening and the sky was a deep blue to the east. The western sky was a lighter shade of blue punctuated by pink and white clouds. To the north, almost in the exact direction that Reag laid, the two moons of Onut, known as Thiralag and Thini on the eastern continent, were orbiting each other while orbiting their mother planet. Wanag had told them the story behind them back on Hareog Kinto, the young Ewani’s home village where the two Chinese Rendens had come across him.
‘Thiralag was the son of Zantalo, her only son after she mated with the Sun God’ he had said, using Onut’s name in one of the many eastern dialects. ‘He was originally a giant mountain, the tallest on our world. Thini was a lone goddess in the sky when she first saw Thiralag and fell in love with him. Each night, when the rays of the Sun God were on the other side of Zantalo, pulling her attention away from her son, Thini wooed him with her beautiful white skin and fire.’ Yulin recalled having read somewhere that one of the two moons was still tectonically active, and volcanic eruptions were sometimes visible from Onut.
‘Thiralag was a loyal son but soon fell in love with the pale beauty in the sky. After many years, he could no longer stand it and broke away from his mother to be with Thini.’ Wanag had been slightly drunk on banto, a local drink made from a trance-inducing plant. Yulin had been surprised by his sudden eloquence and poetic side.
‘When he separated from Zantalo, his mother became sick and almost died. The Sun God, seeing his love suffering because of their son, put a curse on the lovers. They would always be close but never be able to touch. Thiralag would never be able to return to his mother’s bosom. You can see Thiralag turning to his mother and then back to his lover while Thini never turns her face.’
Yulin had known that of the two moons, Thiralag did indeed share the same geological components as Onut while Thini was probably a small planet that got stuck in Onut’s orbit as it passed by. Perhaps these were more than mere myths and stories.
“We will rest a few more minutes, then make for Reag once the night is dark” said Wanag bossily. The remark brought Yulin out of her thoughts and she shifted her gaze to the map that Zhon had conjured.
It was dark when the group arrived at the outskirts of the capital and the two moons had hidden themselves. Yulin could clearly see the Renden influence in the city planning and construction. In many ways, Reag was similar to many of the major cities on Earth with its unnecessarily tall buildings, maglev highways and abundant lights. She could also see a stark contrast to the cities on the Eastern Continent which were almost medieval in comparison. Many still lacked proper sewage or waste management systems and, hence, reeked of Ewani and animal excrement.
The twenty young Ewani were enthusiastic but no soldiers. She had to take charge for their plan to work. She turned on her amplifier suit and ran stealthily through the darkest streets with the others following. According to the map, the Web-com transmitter was near the southern fringe of the city. They ran along the deserted banks of a stream that had cut deeply into the ground, the low elevation giving them cover. The Ewani didn’t have amplifiers and were having trouble keeping up with her, despite their impressive physical abilities.
The transmitter was housed in a fifteen-story cylindrical building that had a hollow centre. The Web-Com waves were sent to a satellite in orbit that would relay it to receiving stations around the world, creating an invisible web of information. In Reag, the actual transmitter was fifty feet underground to take advantage of the underground rivers to cool it. All Yulin needed was to be within two hundred feet of it to hitch-hike on the signal and send a message around the world.
The Ewani didn’t notice but Zhon had taken another route and was now running at full speed to the centre of the city. His suit was well camouflaged with environment-detecting capabilities but he was still wary of detection and stuck to less populated parts of the city.
Suddenly, he heard a shout. He didn’t even look back and continued at over a hundred miles per hour. He saw his silhouette on the ground in front of him and realized he was being chased by Ewani security forces holding lights. A map of the city in his visor indicated that he was three minutes away from his destination. A pulse just missed him.
The Reag Tower was a symbol of Kal dominance on Ewani and their lasting friendship with the Rendens. An effigy of Jesus, arms spread out in peace, adorned the top of the white, conical tower. It was over a hundred years old, the oldest monument in the city and had been built by the Rendens after both parties had signed a protectorate agreement. The Thag Ewani despised it since the beginning of the Renden era on Onut marked the start of their irrelevance.
When Zhon arrived at the base of the tower, he stopped and turned with his hands up. His right hand, however, reached to the pack he was wearing on his back and flipped a switch.
A message appeared on the visor of Yulin’s helmet which read ‘Armed’. She had no time. Though the technology and the software used in the Web-Com transmitter was fifty years out-of-date to Renden standards, the virus still took longer than she had planned to infiltrate the network. She waited impatiently until the words ‘Transmit Ready’ appeared on the screen of the state-of-the-art Web-Com synchroniser she had carried. Quickly she pointed a tiny camera at Wanag and then gave the signal for him to begin.
“I am Wanag of the glorious Thag Ewani” he stuttered in the Kal-Ewani dialect. He paused, trying to regain his calm. “I am here to judge the Kal for their crimes against our noble race. I am here to judge you for bringing down the status of the Ewani as slaves for the Renden infestation.” Yulin was glad to hear him calm himself. She couldn’t blame him for being nervous and flustered; he was a young inexperienced idiot who was about to make history.
“You have brought this disgraceful fate on our world and chose allegiance to these aliens rather than togetherness with your eastern brethren. You live in gleaming Renden-built towers while we starve and die. You kill your kind while licking the feet of your masters.
But history tells us that we are the superior civilization. The history of the eastern continent stretches millennia back compared to your pitiful western culture. We gave you our culture, our philosophy, our technology. And you repay us with enslavement?”
Yulin could feel the speech getting out of hand. The holograph of the young Thag-Ewani’s speech was forcefully displayed to all the Ewani who had connection to the Web-Com. But he was becoming more impassioned and bolder as he spoke. She signalled to him to cut it short.
“We will judge without pity, western scoundrels” he finally said, acknowledging Yulin’s desperate hand gestures.
After cutting the transmission, she shot Wanag and three of his companions before sending the ‘detonate’ signal to the backpack on Zhon’s back. The pack didn’t explode, however, but sent a frequency wave to the ground so strong that all the blood vessels in Zhon’s body burst, leaving a mush of blood and flesh inside his suit. The pack found the frequen
cy of the ground on which Reag stood and modified the frequency of its own wave to match it.
The amplified waves created a trembling on the ground. Soon cracks were emerging on the smooth surface of the tower. As the trembling increased, the statue of Jesus on the tower tumbled to the ground, cracking into a thousand pieces.
Yulin ran as fast as she could from the epicentre of the earthquake she had just started. Wanag’s other companions were chasing her but within seconds, she saw them disappear as the ground gave way. She didn’t know if her leg joints could take the rapid movements imposed on them by the amplifier suit. Her visor told her that she was two kilometres away from the minimum safe distance. The greatest city on Onut was fast becoming a large bowl, disappearing in a cloud of trembles and dust.
When she reached the minimum safe distance, she lifted the flap on her wrist and injected her thigh with another anti-fatigue agent as she watched a million Kal-Ewani being buried alive with their beloved city. If this didn’t start a civil war, she didn’t know what would.
Chapter 1: Filial Piety
‘In serving his parents, a filial son reveres them in daily life; he makes them happy while he nourishes them; he takes anxious care of them in sickness; he shows great sorrow over their death; and he sacrifices to them with solemnity’ – Confucius in conversation with disciple, Zeng,
Prince Fann of the Chinese Imperial Family was strapped tightly into the landing pod. His status dictated that he be flown down to the surface on his personal military landing craft but he had declined. He would much prefer his shuttle to be used to transport valuable weapons and resources to where they were needed in the war that his father, the Emperor of the New Han Empire, had started. Two other men, his bodyguards, were also sitting in the pod that was hurtling at Mach ten through the vacuum.
The pod slowed down as it entered the atmosphere aided by the pulses sent by the landing deck near Huangjing, the capital of the Chinese Empire. When it was five hundred feet away from the deck, a magnetic field was used to slow it down further until it came to a definite stop and hovered above a maglev strip. The landing station had taken significant damage from a Pacific Federation sabotage mission but much of it had since been rebuilt. The pod was taken underground to where the prince’s personal transport unit was waiting.
Six minutes later, Fann was in a secure elevator that took him up to the summit of the Heavenly Tower, to which his father had summoned him. He was still wearing his dirty combat fatigues but he hoped his father would understand since he was actively commanding the entire Chinese Imperial Army in a one-sided yet savage ground war.
When the door of the elevator opened he was shocked to see his elder half-brother, the Crown Prince Xiao, sitting on a silk armchair, talking happily to a serving girl.
When Xiao saw his younger brother, he got up and approached the elevator with arms wide open.
“Fann! It has been too long, younger brother. Or should I say, General Fann?”
Fann didn’t know how to react. Damn you, Father. You want to do this in the middle of a war?
When Xiao finally hugged his taller, broader brother, Fann awkwardly returned the hug. “It is good to see you” he muttered, mentally stabbing himself in the chest for such a lie.
“As I said, Fann, you and I have divine blood in our veins. I am happy to hear you are doing so well in the ground combat on Earth.”
Fann lightly bowed his head. “We have the finest soldiers who are loyal and obedient. It is normal that I gain ground with such troops. And I cannot begin to emphasize the importance of the army you have created.”
The Crown Prince turned and returned to the pair of silk embroidered chairs with confident steps as if he knew Fann would follow. A head shorter than Fann, Xiao walked upright with his narrow shoulders square and his chin out. Even as he sat, he kept his back straight. Fann could see that his elder half-brother had had his clothes especially made for this meeting with their father. He was wearing a black suit with small black dragon motifs stitched into the fabric. The white silk shirt he was wearing underneath the jacket had a long stiff collar. The tie was black save an embroidered ascending golden dragon. What gave it all away was the magnificent silk cloak he had around his shoulders. On close inspection, Fann made out a dragon confronting a tiger, a phoenix and a tortoise sewn into the black silk. All the animals were in yellow, a dangerous amount of yellow, enough to be making a statement.
Fatigue was creeping into Fann’s muscles once he sat down; he hadn’t slept for more than two hours at any given time for the past four weeks. The serving girl came to his side and asked him what he would like to drink. He would have liked a bottle of Maotai alcohol and to pass out for a full day but he instead asked for a cup of strong black coffee. She bowed and shuffled away.
Xiao pretended not to notice Fann glaring at his new cloak. He tut-tutted in his head about his brother’s pitiful attire. Fann was obviously jealous of the Crown Prince’s magnificent presentation.
Fann, in fact, had been glaring at Xiao’s cloak but his head was thinking about the terrain situation on Pacifica. His troops had been able to land on the man-made island that housed the Pacific Federation’s capital, Tai-pyoung, but the Pacific defences were well entrenched. By then, the Pacific had gained enough intelligence on their alien army and had plotted the island with tens of thousands of pulse mines. These had been redesigned to track trembles underground and send devastating pulse waves if they picked a strong enough signal, a simple but effective deterrent to the swift tunnelling capabilities of the Nikruk.
Fann had met some of the Nikruk and had been disturbed by the intense nothingness he felt in them. They were soulless shells who could rip an armoured man in half. Xiao’s work on them had been a success in terms of making them deadlier but more hollow. Fann knew instinctively the hollowness was a dangerous trait; an empty bowl could always be filled and depending on the content, it could alleviate thirst or kill.
The Nikruk were all but dead as a race, the trees with which they shared a symbiotic relationship destroyed save a few that were under Chinese control. The sap of the trees, the Nikruk’s blood of life and death, was monopolised by the Chinese forces, giving them complete control over the Nikruk reproductive process.
“How is the conquering of that shithole in the Pacific Ocean going, Fann?” said Xiao, shifting at the sudden discomfort from Fann’s glare.
Fann shook his head as if getting out of a trance. “We are losing many good men all the time. But progress is being made.”
Xiao laughed. “Well, I did give you the finest army in the Yinhexi. If you can’t do it with the Nikruk, then…”
The door that led to the Emperor’s personal quarters creaked open, cutting off what Xiao was about to say. The black wooden door was enamoured with gold, jade and amber patterns of the celestial bodies seen from Earth. A flood of light made the two Imperial brothers squint. Once their eyes adjusted, they saw standing in front of them four black-clad Shadows, the Imperial bodyguards and assassins. Only one of them was not wearing a mask.
“May our young princes live a thousand years” said Colonel Qin, the highest ranking Shadow and faithful servant of the Walking God.
Fann stood and clasped the old assassin’s hand. “Good to see you again, uncle. Where is Father?”
The three Shadows standing behind Colonel Qin made way to reveal the small figure of the most powerful man in the known universe. Emperor Han Ching-diu was in many ways a broken man, filling his own sense of irrelevance with the satisfaction of conquest. The golden dragons sewn into his ceremonial yellow cloak seemed to come alive as the light bounced off the silk and the powerful monarch walked slowly towards his two sons with purposeful steps.
The Han Imperial Cloak had been made almost three hundred years ago with the finest Chinese silk and threads of gold. When not being worn, it was conserved in an air-tight room deep underground along with thousands of other treasures of the New Han Empire. Th
e fact that he had gotten it out for this meeting meant he had something to say.
The two princes bowed deeply side by side. “May you live ten thousand years, Father” they said in unison.
The Emperor passed them by and sat on another magnificent armchair reserved for his use and his use only. The marble floor that separated the chair from his two sons was engraved with jade patterns of plum trees, cranes and bamboo. Once he was seated, he looked up at his sons with emotionless eyes and his mouth drooping downwards. For moments, he said nothing and merely stared at the two young men.
Fann started getting impatient. For all he knew, his men could be dying in the hundreds as he stood there. It wasn’t the first time that he felt that his father was so removed from the terrain, so unaware of the misery and death of his men on the battlefield, that he retained a serene air uncharacteristic of a wartime leader. “Why have you summoned us, Father? I need to get back to the field.”
Xiao was taken aback by the assertiveness shown by Fann in the face of their father. He had only known him as a big but timid boy. What has made him grow so sure of himself?
“Leave us” the Emperor suddenly opened his mouth. The four Shadows and the serving girl who had just turned up with a tray of coffee left the room. “Today, the New Han Empire, founded by your ancestor, the Illustrious Han Gaozu, will have a new future. Our empire is strong but our enemies are lurking in every corner. I, as the Emperor of the New Han people, made a choice almost thirty years ago, one that I must remake. It is my wish that my choice will make our empire even stronger.”
Fann looked at Xiao and saw that his face had turned as white as paper. His hands were in such tight fists that his knuckles were white and his nails were digging into his palms.
“I, on this day, proclaim my heir, the new Crown Prince” continued the Emperor. He lifted his metallic hand, a remnant of an assassination attempt, and gestured to his younger son. “Fann will be the next emperor of the New Han Empire upon my death.”