The Imperialists: The Complete Trilogy

by H. T. Kofruk

  Nabil signalled to him to put his back against his, so none of them would be attacked from behind. The two men circled, looking carefully at movements of sand and listening carefully for any more sounds. Just leaving the scene was out of the question; they had to kill it to prevent it from sending any more recordings to the enemy command.

  Nabil suddenly fired his gun into the sand, his pulses drilling deep, smouldering holes. Paul knew what he was trying to do; telling the alien to come out now or risk being killed by a random pulse. A few seconds passed and this time, Paul drew his sidearm and fired another series of shots into the ground. The two men then stood back to back again, waiting for something to emerge.

  The alien had been much closer to them than either had thought. It had been not twenty feet from where they stood probably recording and sending their conversation to its Renden masters. When it emerged, it did so at such a speed and force, that both soldiers were momentarily blinded from the exploding sand. It let out a deafening shriek that almost froze Paul’s blood. Nabil let out a volley of shots from his upheld rifle to the general direction of the alien. The thermal vision overlay in Paul’s visor showed a blur of heat that bounced away. Paul bound after it and Nabil followed.

  Brown liquid in the red sand indicated that the alien was at least grazed by the tirade of high powered pulses and let them know where the alien was heading. Even with their amplifiers working at full speed, it didn’t seem as if they were closing the gap. Paul would have loved nothing more than to launch heat-seeking rockets but was wary of doing so in such a historic place. Killing one alien, however deadly, couldn’t justify destroying one of the few remaining Renden heritages.

  They followed the alien into a narrow ravine of pink stone illuminated by the morning sun. The blurry brown shape jumped and clung to the wall. Loth to use his destructive pulse weapon in such a historic place, Nabil held up his right arm and ejected the geratinium blades embedded in his wrist greaves. The ejection was almost silent but the three blades travelled in succession at ten times the speed of sound. The first two disappeared into the stone; the third did so after slicing off the alien’s blurry hand.

  A cry of pain echoed in the ravine and the brown blur fell heavily to the ground. Paul leapt into the air with Lordswroth humming in his two-handed clasp. In the two seconds in the air, he saw the face of the alien in detail. The alien gasping in pain on the desert floor looked almost innocent. It didn’t seem to be carrying any weapons and everything on the two belts crossed over its torso looked to be communications gear or sensor devices though he couldn’t be sure.

  He was soon reminded that he couldn’t be overly cautious with this alien. His blade sliced deeply into the sandstone but the alien had disappeared into a blur once again. Nabil sped by, this time releasing two homing darts that contained nerve agents from the launcher on his rifle. Though the darts would almost certainly find their target, he doubted whether they would penetrate the alien’s thick armour and whether they would actually affect him even if they were able to release the agents into his blood stream.

  The information in Paul’s visor indicated that the alien was showing no signs of slowing down despite being hit by both darts. It was, however, losing blood from two wounds now and it had to slow down sooner or later.

  The terrain suddenly changed and they were out of the ravine. The open landscape made it easier for them to locate the injured alien. Nabil sent out a volley with his pulse rifle. The heat signature in their visors zigzagged rapidly as if to dodge the pulse fire before speeding onward. It was almost as if it had known that Nabil was going to fire his weapon. Paul was even more surprised when a red light flickered in his visor telling him that a projectile was approaching him. The fist –sized rock, presumably launched by the alien, missed his head by an inch.

  After two more minutes of pursuit, the chasers stood in front of the imposing Al Dier, a large, beautiful structure carved into a bed of pink rock. The single large gateway seemed to suck in the morning rays of the sun.

  “He came to die at the Monastery” said Nabil flatly. Paul noticed that he wasn’t even out of breath after the intense chase.

  A single groan from the dark interior confirmed what Nabil said. The monument was facing east and the early morning sunlight hit it almost perpendicularly. If the alien’s eyesight was in any way similar to humans’, the direction of light would give the two chasers an advantage if it chose to rush out. Paul faced a dilemma; should they go in and try to face a waiting and prepared alien; or should they wait for it to venture back outside, not knowing if or when it would do so?

  Paul signalled that he would shoot a stun grenade into the interior, after which they would both enter and kill the alien. Nabil nodded. Paul’s visor created a three dimensional image of the interior and pinpointed where the lone alien was crouching in a corner. He aimed his launcher so that the grenade would bounce off an interior pillar and detonate right in front of the alien, momentarily blinding, deafening and paralyzing it. He aimed carefully with the help of the automated guidance of his suit.

  The blast that followed didn’t come from the stun grenade but from an explosion of sand behind the two soldiers. Paul was paralyzed from the unexpected abrupt sound and only managed to turn his head to see the source. Nabil had his head down, a trained-to-instinct response to such sounds. Paul dropped his launcher and drew Lordswroth again. Everything happened too quickly for any kind of effective response.

  A large hand protruded from Nabil’s chest, pushing out pieces of bone, flesh, amplifying actuators and his heart. The second alien that had appeared from the ground behind Nabil lifted him up with his arm still through his chest. Paul couldn’t see his face due to the matte sand-coloured visor and was glad. With a violent toss of its penetrating arm, the alien threw Nabil thirty feet away on the hard, sandstone ground.

  Paul was already racing towards the alien with his sword in mid-morph to metallic whip. He brought down the whip in a savage arc that cut deeply into the sandstone but not into the alien which had become a blur. Paul had predicted this, however, and the long whip bounced back up like an angry, determined snake. The razor-sharp strand of living metal caught the alien by the ankle. I’ve got you!

  Using the full power of his amplifiers and digging his heels deep into the ground, he grabbed the whip with two hands and brought the entangled whip down as hard as he could. A loud thud brought up a cloud of fine sand. He gave Lordsworth the order to morph back into a sword. As the long whip disentangled and shrunk back to a sword, a severed alien leg emerged from the dust cloud and fell onto the ground.

  Instead of going for the downed alien, the Grey Knight picked up the grenade launcher that he had dropped earlier and fired the stun grenade into the Monastery, resulting in a bright flash and a noise that was inaudible but yet deafening. He had done so just in time and the handless alien found itself partially blind and deaf as it exited the structure. Paul didn’t lose time to see whether the stun grenade had worked and he immediately ran towards the alien with a battle chant coming from his mouth. He had already experienced these aliens’ sixth sense when it came to dodging blows and took no chances. He brought down Lordswroth in a wide diagonal arc that would limit the alien’s options of avoiding the knight’s blade.

  He was dismayed that the hyper-vibrating geratinium blade didn’t cut clean through the alien but was instead lodged in the middle of its torso after having cut through its shoulder and upper chest. He looked at the alien’s face for a second time and realized that transparent brown tears were flowing from its golden eyes. Could these aliens feel fear? Did they fear death? He pried the blade out and the alien crumpled to the floor.

  The dust still hadn’t settled where the second alien had fallen. His thermal overlay showed that the alien was digging back into the ground. The flow of heat from its amputated leg indicated that it was losing a lot of blood. Paul had no idea whether these aliens were capable of surviving such wounds without treatment, whether they could regro
w amputated limbs like lizards or whether the liquid being absorbed in the sand was indeed blood. All he knew was that he could take no chances. He drew his sidearm and fired a volley of shots into the tunnel created by the alien. A groan came back. Much more heat emanated from the body, only to be absorbed by the cold sand. Saying a prayer under his breath, he launched an incinerator grenade into the tunnel. His visor told him within seconds that the alien was dead.

  He dropped his weapons and ran to Nabil. The soldier was lying face down, his blood caking the sand around him. Paul turned him on his back and immediately saw that his heart, still dangling from several veins, had been crushed. Sand had entered the large hole connecting his chest and back and it had mixed in with the flesh and blood. He pulled off the sand-coloured helmet to reveal the stubbled face of Colonel Abdul-Hadi, only to be surprised that his expression wasn’t shocked or pained in any way. His large, hazel eyes were closed under his bushy eyebrows, as were his lips. In the split-second that it took for the hole to appear in his chest and his realizing what was happening, Nabil had accepted death serenely. That was the only explanation Paul could give of the peaceful expression.

  He lifted his own visor. To his surprise, his own tears fell on Nabil’s face. He was crying at the death of someone who had been his mortal enemy just a few months ago. He then realized that he had not lost an ally, but a true friend.

  Chapter 20: Mistrust

  ‘Man is the first creation of God capable of Empathy. This is not a gift but a responsibility for the future master of God’s creations. The master must be able to empathize with his followers, just as a farmer must empathize with his cattle, a priest with his flock and a mother with her children. This lone quality elevates Man, entreating him with the freedom to roam the universe with the responsibility of its well-being.’ – Saint Andrew Palini, foreword to the Pure Bible.

  The tension ran high on the wormhole station. It was in the air during meal times, in the recreation area, during strategy meeting, even in the botanical area. The final reparation of the wormhole creator brought a welcome relief to all personnel, all except the eight hundred Ewani warriors. After the blunder that had left a dozen Ewani dead, a sense of mistrust between the two species permeated throughout the installation. Commander Walker had initially wanted to put all Ewani soldiers on standby after confiscating their weapons. Admiral Hernandez hadn’t agreed, however, and had wisely chosen to placate them. After all, disarming an Ewani warrior was considered an extremely shameful event, and one that could result in a mutiny. The remainder of the 507th Sarramman Marine Medical Corps, which consisted of three hundred enlisted alien marines on both naval vessels, and the fifty or so Caasi sailors from the ships’ Engineer Corps were also put on close surveillance though neither of them were in combat roles or had martial race designations.

  Terry was annoyed at the sudden mistrust between the fleet’s Renden and alien members. The tactical team had committed an unforgiveable blunder that would have ramifications for their relationship with other intelligent aliens. The Atlantic Alliance needed all the assistance it could get from the non-Renden colonial subjects; massacring non-armed members of its own military hierarchy most certainly wouldn’t help.

  The question suddenly hit him during the final preparations for the jump to the Carulio System; why would non-Renden member planets of the Alliance ever help? Some of them had commercial interests that were very much bound to their Renden colonial masters. Others had become ardent followers of the One God. Most didn’t rebel out of fear. And if Earth’s history was any good indicator, even commercial interest and religious homogeneity only went so far if the master was considered an outsider. Prosperity and faith were no guarantee for loyalty, especially if the oppressor was an alien!

  He remembered a lesson at the Academy on Renden history. The Lhasa Connection, the radicalised later version of the Tibetan Independence Movement, had started to employ terrorist methods in the mid twenty-first century, and managed to kill the Chinese-installed Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lama and several high level Chinese Communist Party officials. To the Chinese of the era, such actions were incomprehensible; why would Tibetans terrorize Han Chinese when their income levels were already higher than their own? Wasn’t the special autonomous status of Tibet enough? What could they hope to achieve by instilling fear in the Chinese masses, especially when China was in economic and political turmoil? Many felt betrayed by their Tibetan ‘brethren’.

  The truth was that economic prosperity fuelled Tibetan hatred of their perceived oppressors, especially when the Communist Party started actively meddling in the reincarnation process of the holy Lamas. After the collapse of the Communist Party and the gradual reintroduction of the monarchy, the newly confident China avenged the thousands of Chinese citizens, soldiers and Party members who died at the hands of the Lhasa Connection ‘terrorists’. The whole of Tibet was bombarded, major Buddhist temples were razed and monasteries were emptied. The initial reason for the creation of the Shadows was to target prominent Tibetan Buddhists abroad who had been suspected of financing the terrorist organization. By the twenty third century, Tibetan Buddhism had been wiped out along with countless temples and shrines.

  The conclusion of the lesson had been this; China didn’t have a compelling enough binding philosophy or religion. If it had had such a thing, Tibet wouldn’t have strived for independence. Many Tibetans had seen what the Chinese of the time couldn’t; rampant capitalism without a strong philosophical or religious foundation was nothing more than materialism. Without a binding set of ethos and values, the two fundamental blocks of capitalism, trust and fairness, went out the window.

  But given their vast cultural, linguistic and genetic differences, would an alien ever accept a Renden as his brother or sister even if they shared a philosophy or religion? Even among Rendens, racism still heavily occurred even within a country, religious organization or extended family. Terry suspected that even the seemingly ‘loyal’ species would jump at a chance to gain independence when the Alliance was at its weakest.

  “Major Southend?” said the gruff voice of Commander Walker.

  “Aye, sir?” Everyone on the bridge was looking at him, waiting for a response.

  “In terms of ship security, are we ready to jump?” said the highlander again.

  Terry realized he had let his mind wonder, something that seemed to be happening with increasing frequency lately. “Everything is in order, sir” he replied as he straightened his shoulders.

  Commander Walker and Admiral Hernandez both looked at Terry as if to verify whether he knew the gravity of the situation. The two ships were attempting something very rarely attempted by any ship from any of the Six Empires. In any true meaning of the word, their mission was suicidal.

  After jumping into the Carulio System, the plan was to initiate contact immediately with the Carulio and Tzak authorities and convey their peaceful intentions. Just in case anything went wrong, the light speed drives of both ships would be kept charged, even if it meant keeping precious energy away from the ships’ energy weapons. A token force would be left at the station with five agreed coordinates where wormholes would be opened at two hour intervals.

  The outline of the plan had been decided and confirmed a week ago; they would seek refuge in the Carulio System and use it as a base for their operations to fight back the Chinese Empire. But only with the gracious permission of their hosts would this be a possibility. It was very conceivable that the two ships would be blown out of space the moment they entered.

  Terry could feel the adrenalin building up on the bridge. All the ship’s active and passive sensors were activated, resulting in a mishmash of colourful holographs hanging in the air. This was the first time he had ever been on the bridge of a navy ship right before deployment. Behind their calm, professional expressions, Terry could see the nervousness in the faces of the bridge crewmembers. Despite the vastly different missions, weapons and scale, he was amused how similar the atmosphere was to the i
nside of a deployment capsule full of marines right before a drop.

  The commander of the Ewani battalion was also on the bridge, his presence being a highly unusual occurrence on a navy warship. Terry guessed he had been invited in order to calm some of the tension. Oddly, Terry was quite relieved that another marine was on the bridge with him at this important strategic moment despite being another species. The Ewani major seemed to think likewise and stared at Terry who nodded back respectfully. The grasshopper-like alien made the rising fist gesture that went along with the Marine Corps motto: Per Spatium, Per Terras.

  A holograph of one of the few soldiers operating the wormhole creator appeared. “Admiral, sir, the countdown for the opening of the wormhole to sector B88401, at two hundred megametres from the planets Carulio and Tzakbat, will begin commence shortly.”

  “Virgin Mary, ready. Commence, major. And make sure you get away if there’s the slightest sign of enemy approach” replied Admiral Hernandez.

  “Red Sea, ready” said the holograph of Captain Dessaint that had just appeared.

  The countdown started and each second seemed to add to the tension. Terry saw the perspiration on the admiral’s jawline, the clenched fist of Commander Walker and the anxious expression of the digital representation of Captain Dessaint. At zero, the characteristic green light from trillions of particles passing through the keumigen lens created a swirling hole in time space. In a flash, the holographic projection of the exterior changed to show something unexpected.

  The Carulio System was much like the holographic recordings previously studied by the crewmembers. The large sun was emanating a bright yellow light that almost drowned out the green light of the wormhole behind them. The revolving system of three planetary objects was seen in the distance. The exit point was closer to a red gas giant named Zamalobat according to the Virgin Mary’s computer. As expected half a dozen weapon locks were detected and red warning messages flashed in the bridge.