The Imperialists: The Complete Trilogy

by H. T. Kofruk

  “Go ahead, captain.”

  The shiny, bald head of Bongani appeared. Though the two were friends, Bongani was now nominally Terry’s superior and thus, Terry had to convey the fruitlessness of the mission. He was about to say something but Bongani cut him off.

  “That stupid cunt, Fann, has done it finally. He’s disobeyed two dozen orders and went on a joyride into the Carulio System with one of our most advanced ships.”

  “When did he leave?”

  “Two hours ago. But that idiot somehow made it back to us in once piece with the unbelievable claim that he downed five enemy ships before making a break for it. He must think we’re some kind of inbred idiots.”

  Terry sighed from relief. He respected Fann a lot and considered him a hot-headed yet trustworthy and loyal friend. “I’ll kill him.”

  “You leave that to me, my friend. Before you tell me of your disastrous diplomatic mission, I have something to tell you.”

  Terry wondered whether Bongani already knew of his failure or it was just sarcasm. The former smuggler had been very sceptical of the mission from the beginning and perhaps he had foreseen failure. “What is it?” he asked with anticipation.

  “Heera is on board the station.”

  He suddenly felt light-headed as if he had received a head blow in the sparring ring. Even her name seemed like a mystical fantasy, a part of his life that had disappeared in blue fire. To his embarrassment he suddenly felt like vomiting and rushed out of the room.

  “Pussy” remarked Bongani.

  Chapter 17: The Perfect Target

  ‘Morality and faith go hand in hand, at least in the beginning. In our original barbaric state, what basis can be given to act in the interest of others, to protect the poor and right the wrongs of our world than the imaginary rewards and punishments given out by the Supreme Being?’ - Terry Southend, , year 2916

  In the past two years, he had grown from a hatchling to a young adult Nikruk at a much faster pace than his mindless servants. His mental ability had grown even more rapidly and he knew that if her were to combine his mind with those of his nine siblings, they could probably overthrow Mother and take control of all the Nikruk. All they really needed was her sap in order to keep reproducing and maintain a good-sized population.

  He knew he had been tampered with before hatching due to his inexplicable loathing of his siblings. Every now and again their minds would touch to share information and each time he barely suppressed his urge to hurl curses at them. Yet he found them all intelligent with very similar capacities and personalities as him. Mother had most probably known of their combined ability and had taken measures to prevent any alliance between them; that was the only explanation.

  Could he ever overcome the hateful sensation long enough to devise a plan with them? He was sure there was a way. Perhaps the other, less powerful Mother had the answer. He had felt her presence for a while now, at least a few months, like a small scratch on the impregnable wall that was his Mother. Her power was miniscule but it was annoying just the same like when one of his metallic nails would break off. What was she and why did Mother allow her to exist?

  Despite his secret resentment of tyrannical Mother, it almost seemed that she embodied a whole advanced industrialised society. The rate in which she processed all the Renden data that she could find was impressive; in two years, she had gone through data that took the Rendens more than a thousand years to accumulate. She was able to transform that data into useful information and gave orders accordingly.

  Mother had created three casts of Nikruk; the leaders such as Shi’ran himself, the warriors and the workers. This was a direct copy of the super-societies created by ants or bees but with much more sophistication. Warriors born and bred to fight in space were different from those who fought on a planet. Workers also varied in shape and size according to their function. Each and every Nikruk was born with all the knowledge and skills to perform his task with the utmost precision and efficiency.

  Her ability to produce sap had increased exponentially. No longer did she reside within the single tree planted by the foolish Rendens, but seeds of the same tree had been sent to other planets where they were beginning to transform the new host world to be suitable for reproduction and prosperity. Eighty trees on more than two dozen worlds now housed Mother and that number was forever growing. She would dominate the known galaxy and her chosen children, the Nikruk, would flourish as a result.

  But the ultimate truth was that he was bored. Mother had taken away the intellectual ability of the vast majority of her offspring, and he hated those who did share it. That was perhaps the reason that he liked to talk so much whenever he met another intelligent being, such as the unfortunate Zaram. He regretted having to kill her but the Carulions and the Tzak were deemed too great a threat.

  Warriors and workers barely talked and only had limited vocabulary anyhow. He may as well talk to a Renden computer-generated holograph than with one of his own kin. One of the workers brought him an energizing drink made of a white fungus from their home planet. He drank it deeply and it soon soothed his enormous hunger and thirst. Food was becoming a problem for the Earth campaign since none of the food on the Renden home planet was as nourishing and energy-rich as their main staples and most of it was poisonous to the Nikruk. Shi’ran had learnt through Earth’s history of warfare the importance of supply lines; in many conflicts, they were the direct cause of failure for an invading army from Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s failed invasion of the Korean dynasty of Joseon to Napoleon’s foolish venture into Russia.

  He looked at the blank expression on the worker’s face, its yellow eyes staring into space. He wanted to hit it just to get some kind of reaction. No one would stop him if he decided to kill the soulless beast. The warriors on the bridge of the Renden mothership were mostly smaller than those designed to roam the surface of planets so as to better fit the Renden ergonomics but they were no less deadly if the situation required it. None of them would lift a finger if he chose to choke them all to death. Could a life-form that did not fight for survival be considered alive?

  He suddenly saw purple in his vision, a sign that Mother was trying to talk to them. He closed his eyes and the world faded. He found himself in a swirling world of grey and purple. The eye of the purple hurricane was punctuated by grey clouds and bright pink lightning; he was in Mother’s neural network.

  The smoky form of his siblings materialised and then solidified as if they were physically present. He felt the hatred and disgust rising in his mind and chest as if it would fill him and then spill over. Their expressions didn’t hide their reciprocity. A fist fight would have been useless in this virtual space but he felt the urge to approach them one by one and kill them but for the daunting presence of Mother.

  Shi’ran could feel Mother’s frustration. “You are abusing the free will that I granted you” boomed her multi-toned voice. Shi’ran didn’t know how he felt its loudness when he wasn’t actually hearing anything in the physical sense. “The Renden home planet is still full of Rendens. I have given you all you need to carry out a simple feat.”

  None of his siblings dared answer. Shi’ran knew that even Mother was aware of how difficult eradicating all Rendens on Earth would be. Even with the surge in the number of Nikruk warriors, there had been over twelve billion of them at the start! The Nikruk on and around Earth barely numbered five million. So why had she summoned them?

  “We will stop advancing on the ground and begin a new orbit-based war. We have superiority in number of ships and will use them from space to bring the Renden species to extinction.”

  “But Mother,” Shi’ran heard himself speak. “Even with more ships, did you not see what one of their ships did to our fleet in the Carulio System?” The others looked at him as if astonished to hear him speak up against Mother.

  The hurricane grew louder and more violent while pink lightning struck closer to where they stood. Dark grey clouds swirled ominously above them
more and more rapidly. “Fool!” she screeched. “We will wipe out all life with Death Beam. Nothing will survive.”

  The suggestion astonished Shi’ran though he couldn’t read the same reaction from any of his siblings. Pre-emptively destroying a threat was one thing but killing life from a whole world was another. But he had already challenged her once and knew that she wouldn’t suffer another.

  “Shi’ran has done an immaculate job of neutralising the Carulions and the Tzak. You will be the leader of the final campaign against all life on Earth.”

  Shi’ran felt both pride and anxiety when he heard this. The neural projections of his litter brothers did nothing to hide the scorn and jealousy in their yellow eyes. “I will do your wish, Mother” he said.

  He couldn’t help feeling that Mother had given him both a way to prove his true worth and a death sentence. Had she sensed the mild treachery in his heart? His litter brothers would resent him even more and would think of ways to undermine him. Should he fail, Mother wouldn’t hesitate to kill him and give the task to another. Did she want him to fail? Perhaps she was just creating a reason to destroy him before he became too smart or powerful.

  The grey and purple world faded away and he found himself back in the bland company of his brothers of diminished intelligence. He sighed slowly as if being in the company of Mother had drained him of all energy. He decided that his actions would commence immediately and he ordered his warriors to leave only a token force in the Carulio System and head for Earth to begin his new campaign.

  ***

  The Nikruk had attempted to land on British soil twice more in the last three months. The first had been another sea-based landing but instead of the daunting white cliffs so close to France, the enemy had landed on the sandy beaches near a city called Hastings using the cover of a naturally occurring hurricane that had swept in from the Atlantic. Sergeant Major Grimly told Paul afterwards about a historic battle fought there nearly two thousand years ago between the English Saxons and the French-speaking Normans. No foreign enemy had ever succeeded in invading Britain since and Paul had kept that record unchanged.

  The second had been thwarted but only with the sacrifice of nearly half his forces. The enemy had used an ancient undersea tunnel linking the two bodies of land. The tunnel hadn’t been used for centuries and nobody had known of its existence for sure. To natives of the British Isles, the tunnel was something of a legend. Paul guessed it hadn’t completely collapsed but instead been filled with soft debris from centuries of neglect, a relatively easy path for the tunnelling aliens. They had spilt out of the tunnel behind the Renden lines of defence by the tens of thousands. How they had found their path to near-victory was still a mystery.

  Major Florian Abasi, the famed Black Berserker from the suburbs of Addis Ababa, had been found after the intense battle with a ten inch hole in his chest. Paul prayed to God for forgiveness for feeling relief when he found that Sir Elena Miribu had only suffered minor injuries. Her blade, Sacred Justice, had been found twenty yards from her unconscious body, still vibrating from the rich blood of the invading aliens.

  For the last two months, however, everything had been unnaturally quiet. No enemy movements had been spotted and Europe seemed almost Nikruk-free. Hidden communities emerged from everywhere to contemplate the devastation of the last four years. Some cheered that they had persevered and the aliens had given up.

  Paul wasn’t convinced at all. Despite the apparent lack of alien presence on land, there was still the communication bubble on most of Britain and all of continental Europe, blocking most attempts to contact any Renden forces in orbit or deep space. The cliché expression ‘quiet before the storm’ sprang into mind.

  What kind of offensive were the Nikruk preparing? Paul could only guess that it would be a major orbital attack to take out their defences before deploying ground soldiers. That would explain the disappearance of alien ground troops. In that case, all of their artillery, anti-air and anti-orbital defences needed to be hidden and protected but ready enough to repel any following ground attack. In a flat country such as southern England, this was problematic.

  He regretted having let the One God Pope leave with his submersible and retinue of hundreds of well-armed men. With such a diminished force, every man would count in what Paul was sure would be a decisive battle. Even with full armour, the casualty rate for every encounter with the aliens was roughly three to one. Non-armoured civilians were basically cattle waiting to be slaughtered. Paul was reminded each time that Rendens were no longer the supreme soldiers of the universe.

  Sir Elena had recently discovered hundreds of ancient tanks in the museums of London, the newest one almost five hundred years old. She had suggested upgrading them with newer weapons and manning them with unarmoured civilians. But Paul knew well why the tank was obsolete in the age of armoured infantry; one armoured man had enough fire-power to easily take out a tank but was a far smaller and faster target. The old, lumbering colossuses were close to useless against the Nikruk.

  The weather had been warm and wet for the past few days but there was finally a break in the clouds. Strong morning sunlight beat down on the grassland ten miles south of London. The great city had been vacated a year into the war and now only a gleaming shell remained. Paul took advantage of the giant underground facilities built near the city to shelter vital artillery and other large weapons. And since he was almost convinced that any future attack would not come from the sea, a more central command-and-control centre seemed appropriate.

  When the sirens started to sound, he instinctively looked up at the sky for any signs of an aerial attack. He only saw bright sunlight and clear blue.

  “Talk to me” he said into his mouthpiece.

  His young assistant, Captain Vincent de Paul, replied. “We’re seeing signs of ships in orbit positioning themselves above Europe, sir.”

  This had to be the attack he was expecting. Would the aliens use fission-missiles and mega-class laser canons? “Get everybody underground. Seal all portals. No one comes out until I give the command.”

  Civilian families were mixed up with military personnel on the vast grass fields. Everyone had been enjoying the rare glimpse of sunlight but most probably the clear sky was the main rationale behind the timing of the attack. The serene scene suddenly broke out into a flurry of panicked movement as thousands of civilians rushed towards the portals for the relative safety of the deep underground bunkers.

  Within fifteen minutes, Paul saw the first giant mothership emerge shimmering like a mirage. It was a giant grey log of Orthodox design. He shuddered to think that the same ship might have launched dozens of nuclear missiles at his homeland of Constantine. After ensuring that everyone had entered the bunker, he sealed the giant, geratinium-reinforced portal gates and hurried on the last gravity lift that would take him half a mile underground.

  The fusion generator was only at twenty per cent of its full power but it was more than enough to keep all life-sustaining equipment active. The entire facility was designed for ten thousand people and nineteen more of the same design circled the city of London. But in this facility alone, more than forty thousand people were crammed in, three quarters of them civilians. Most of them stood huddled on the central aero-platform, originally made to store hundreds of fighters and transport vessels that had long since been destroyed in battle.

  Paul kept in contact with the other facilities. Three more ships had been spotted above southern England but none of them had started to attack. What were they waiting for? He knew that timing was crucial; after the initial orbital attack, he had to get his forces and all their heavy weaponry up to surface as quickly as possible to destroy any attempting landing vessels. He just hoped the orbital bombing wouldn’t last too long knowing that each explosion would cause troop morale to drop bit by bit. He had no idea how the thousands of civilians would react to a long, continued bombing campaign but then realised that even they had been battle-hardened after more than four years o
f war.

  The expected explosions didn’t happen, however. After almost an hour of anxious waiting, the holographs of the enemy ships still hadn’t opened their missile shafts. There was no sign of laser cannons charging, either. Paul got a faint glimmer of hope that perhaps these ships were on their side, that friendly Renden forces had managed to break through the thick, suffocating line of Nikruk-commanded ships.

  An ominous vibrating sound pushed the hope from his heart. He had no idea where the sound came from but it just seemed to fill the interior of the enormous bunker. The sound grew louder amid rising murmurs of angst.

  It seemed that a vibrating distortion in the air cut through the bunker. Paul wasn’t sure at first whether he had seen correctly but his vision was confirmed when he saw half the people on the aero-platform suddenly fall down haplessly. Another distortion killed the rest.

  He quickly realised that this had to be a new weapon. Did the Nikruk have scientists? How could they have developed and deployed such a weapon in so short a time? It was clear that whatever this weapon was, it couldn’t be hindered by hundreds of feet of earth nor from armour. It left no physical destruction in its path but victims simply ceased to live. It was a weapon from a nightmare and he had provided the enemy with the perfect target.

  Chapter 18: Closure

  ‘Faith, God, the belief in an after-life; their need becomes apparent when giving meaning to a seemingly meaningless existence. How can we rationalise the death of a loved one? To imagine that her body will rot and become infested with maggots and worms and nothing but a memory will remain makes loss difficult to bear. I want to believe that her soul will ascend to a better place, somewhere pain and suffering do not exist.’ - Terry Southend, personal memoir, year 2915

  Heera waited patiently in her small room. She hadn’t slept a wink the previous night and shivers went down her spine whenever she thought about what was about to happen; she was going to finally meet the man she had sought out over years and light years. Her initial disappointment at not being able to see Terry right away had been heavy, but it had given way to relief. Despite everything, she realized that she hadn’t really been ready to be shoved in front of him.