by Sean Robins
“How did I die?” he asked.
Mushgaana’s oldest brother, Prince Darlaan, taunted him. “Our supposedly undefeatable commander of the fleet died in a dogfight with a filthy huma—”
Maada cut him off by slamming his fist on the table. “It is a lie!”
“Sadly, no,” said Mushgaana. “I just read their minds. Apparently, thanks to the Akakie propaganda machine, everybody in the universe now knows you were killed by the commander of their fleet, who was flying a golden space fighter.”
A memory flickered in the back of Maada’s mind, and then he remembered it was not actually his, but the original Maada’s. “It is not possible,” he growled. “I fought him once. It took me less than a minute to get the upper hand, and when his friends came to his rescue, he flew away in a straight line, running for his life.”
“So you were killed by an incompetent coward.” Darlaan smirked. “Well done, General.”
His brothers laughed.
Maada started to get up, taken over by fury. Going against the three brothers with their immense telepathic powers was suicide, but he did not care. He was a cheap copy anyway.
Mushgaana, shaking his head, grabbed his arm.
The king entered. Maada rose to his feet, and so did everyone else. The king sat at the head of the conference table and told Mushgaana, “I did not expect to see you back here ever again.”
Mushgaana sat down. “Under the circumstances, I cannot say I am happy to be back, Father.”
“So, what happened on Earth?” asked the king.
Mushgaana looked surprised. “You do not know?”
“No. You went completely dark. No messages. No communication. Nothing. All we know is the humans took their planet back with some help from the Akakies, and a human—who everyone now calls the Kingslayer—killed General Maada.”
Maada’s face grew hot. He was not sure if it was from anger or shame.
“The Akakie government has informed us that they have captured more than half a million of our people, and they are willing to negotiate a POW exchange,” continued the king. “Moreover, in the past few weeks, a combined Akakie-human fleet has taken back four of our planets, starting with Alora.”
Maada could not hold his tongue. “And you have done nothing to stop them?”
“I was waiting for our greatest military leader to come back to us,” answered the king, looking at Maada. “It took our fleet only a few weeks to find the cylinder carrying your consciousness and transmitting its contents here, but we had no idea it would take our scientists such a long time to make the Duplicator work.”
Yeah, I am a duplicate now. Do remind me, thought Maada sourly.
“On that note,” continued the king, “the two of you cannot get yourselves killed again, thinking we will bring you back every time. The Duplicator’s raw material and power source are both depleted now, after several failed attempts to get it to work properly. Our people estimate it can be used only once or twice more, and I intend to keep that for myself. I have already sacrificed immortality for you.”
“He probably needed guinea pigs to find out how the machine worked anyway,” Mushgaana said sarcastically deep inside Maada’s mind. The general kicked him hard from under the table. The last thing they needed right now was the king reading his mind and finding out his son was mocking him.
“We have reverse-engineered the Akakie space fighters we captured when we conquered Alora,” said the king, “so now we have a new fleet. Twenty thousand Deathbringers, much faster and more maneuverable than the original model, and with better firepower. You will love them. Moreover, we have also improved our SFD range using the Akakies’. Now the new fleet can be in Kanoor in less than a week, which frankly is what we should have done from the beginning.”
Mushgaana sat up straight and stared at his brothers, who looked so nonchalant that it was obvious they were faking it.
“So here is the plan: the two of you are going straight to Kanoor and—”
Darlaan jumped to his feet. “Father! You cannot possibly put this incompetent idiot in charge of the fleet again. Is it not bad enough that he has already lost an entire armada? He must be put on trial for being criminally inept.”
Maada’s familiar anger rose in his chest, and for the first time, he felt more like his old self. He ignored Darlaan and addressed the king. “Your Highness, you know I am loyal to the Crown, but there is no reason for me to sit here and be insulted by”—he raised his voice, contempt dripping from every single word—“this loser who has never done anything of note in his entire life.”
“Well said,” Mushgaana commented approvingly.
Darlaan’s face turned red.
All of a sudden an excruciating pain engulfed Maada’s brain, but it thankfully lasted less than a second.
Darlaan gasped, clutched his own throat, apparently unable to breathe, and fell to his knees.
“Sorry, Father,” Mushgaana said calmly, “but he was trying to melt the general’s brain.”
At the same time, Maada received a telepathic message from the prince. “I cannot hold all three of them, General.”
Maada moved even before that message completely registered in his brain. He slid over the table and slammed into Polvaar, who had just started to get up, sending him flying out of his seat and onto the floor. The general sat on his chest and, in one fluid motion, pushed his sidearm on Polvaar’s forehead with his right hand while his left upholstered the prince’s own gun and pointed it at Montaari. They both froze.
Maada heard Mushgaana’s voice from behind, addressing his two brothers. “I know what you are thinking. You think you can kill him before he pulls the trigger. But this is General Maada, a man of unparalleled determination and sheer will, and I bet he can blow your brains out before you can harm him. So, the question you have to ask yourself is this: are you ready to die if I am right and you are wrong?”
Maada looked into Polvaar’s eyes, and much to his satisfaction, saw them full of fear. Prince Polvaar, the king’s second-oldest son, and one of the most powerful men in the Xortaag kingdom, was scared of him, clone or not.
That is more like it.
The king smirked. “Mushgaana, let go of your brother before you choke him to death. General, you too”—his tone became more menacing—“and Darlaan, you had better remember who the king is around here. If you question me again, we might end up having to clean up your brain from the carpet.”
Darlaan took a deep breath and used the table as support to draw himself to his feet. Maada stood up, holstered his sidearm, threw the other gun away, and told him, “Your Highness, with all due respect, I will kill you the next time you enter my mind.”
“I am not going to stand here and be insulted by a commoner,” said Darlaan. He stormed out of the conference hall. Polvaar and Montaari followed him.
“Never a dull moment with you two around,” said the king. “By the way, it is good you did not kill Polvaar, General. He has requested to join the fleet as a fighter pilot. He will be flying under your command in our next campaign.”
Mushgaana chuckled. “What? That spoiled brat wants to fight? How come?”
The king shrugged. “I think he has gotten tired of ‘not doing anything of note with his life’ as the general put it, and he wants to find a way to cover himself in glory. He is a good pilot after all, albeit inexperienced.”
“There is something that worries me, Father. Did you notice that when you mentioned we should have attacked Kanoor instead of Earth, my brothers’ minds went blank?”
The king raised an eyebrow. “No. All three?”
Mushgaana nodded.
Maada did not understand what they were talking about. “What does it mean?”
Mushgaana explained, “We can read each other’s minds, but only if the other person allows it. We can either hide our thoughts or, given time, even plant some false thoughts and memories in our mind to deceive the other person. The fact that my three brothers guarded their thoughts
at the same time means they are hiding a secret, and whatever it is, it is related to our invasion of Earth.”
“Not necessarily,” said the king. “I hide my thoughts from you and your brothers all the time. I do not feel comfortable with you roaming freely in my mind.”
Join the club.
Mushgaana shook his head. “No. They are sharing a secret, and I for one really want to know what it is.”
Maada stood up. “It looks like we have a campaign to plan. If you will excuse us, Your Highness?”
“Speaking of the campaign, we cannot use Voice of God on Kanoor,” said the king.
“Why not?” asked Maada.
“The Akakies have their own mind-control machine, which they apparently use for education and learning. They used it to inoculate their population against Voice of God.”
“So that is why it did not work on the humans who attacked us on Earth,” said Mushgaana. “What are we going to do then?”
Maada’s eyes flashed. “I know just the thing.”
Maada entered the living room of his house. The room was big, not too empty, and functionally decorated. The furniture was covered by white sheets, and there was dust everywhere. He had not been home for many years. Then he remembered he had never been here. This was the other Maada’s home. The loser who had apparently got himself killed fighting a human.
You really have to get over it, he told himself.
Maada searched a drawer and found a notebook and a pen. He pulled out a chair and sat by the dining table, staring at the notebook. He was lost in thoughts for a few minutes; then he picked up the pen and started writing.
Since his very first command (all those years ago when he was a young man), Maada would lock himself in a room after each military campaign and write condolence letters to the families who had lost loved ones under his watch. It might have lasted hours, even days, but he had hoped receiving a handwritten letter from the commander of the fleet might help ease their pain. Moreover, this was the only time he allowed himself to mourn the brothers and sisters in arms he had lost, before he started planning the next campaign.
How was he supposed to do it this time though? Five hundred thousand Xortaags had perished on Earth, and there was no way to find out who had died and who was captured. And that was not counting the twenty million colonists who had been massacred as the result of his failure. That was his responsibility too, even though when that happened Maada himself was technically dead.
After a few minutes, he put the pen down and looked at the letter he had written. It read, To the families of all the brave men and woman I got killed on Earth: I am so, so sorry.
But deep down, he knew he did not deserve forgiveness, only punishment.
The general had not been unfamiliar with pain. He had watched a lot of his friends and relatives die, some due to starvation, some due to pollution, when he was a child growing up on their dying planet. While he had never tasted defeat in a military campaign, he had lost thousands of people, and each loss had bitten off a piece of his heart. But the agony that wrapped itself around his soul was unbearable. He tried to push back against pain, to regain control, but it was no use. Mental anguish lanced through his head with such force that he felt his brain was about to collapse onto itself, and he had to bite his lips to stop himself from crying out.
Twenty million people!
His mission in life, the driving force that had pushed him since childhood, had always been saving his people, but now that he had the blood of so many Xortaags on his hands, he could not help but wonder if he had done more harm than good. He thought about grabbing his sidearm, putting the barrel under his chin and blowing his brain out, anything to stop this torment. That was a comforting image, but if he killed himself, who would take revenge on the Akakies and the humans?
Oh, how they would pay! He would lead their new fleet to Kanoor, and to Earth right after that. He would kill them. He would kill them all.
But that would be far away in the future. He needed to do something about his pain now, or his heart would stop beating sooner than later.
He remembered Mushgaana had told him he looked “younger and sort of innocent” without his scars.
A long time ago, Mushgaana had given him a dagger to commemorate the fiftieth planet they had conquered together. He had said the blade was made of a special alloy that would not go blunt in a few millennia. Maada found the dagger in his bedroom and checked the blade. Still sharp. Good.
He went to the bathroom and examined his face in the mirror, trying to remember where the scars had been. He pushed the tip of the blade under his left eye, ground his teeth, and started cutting downwards. Dark purple blood poured out of the wound, and the mind-numbing agony pushed his mental anguish away. Maada enjoyed the relief the physical pain brought him. For just one second.
An invisible monster clawed at his heart as soon as he stopped cutting up his face.
Maada chose a new spot on his face and started digging another scar.
“Have you got a minute, Father?” asked Prince Polvaar.
The king was reading something on his PDD in his chamber. “What is it?” he said absentmindedly.
“The fleet leaves for Kanoor tomorrow. I have just come to say goodbye.”
The king did not even look up from the PDD. “Make me proud, Son.”
Polvaar pressed his lips together, his shoulders slumping. What did you expect?
“I will, Father,” he whispered, but he was not sure the king even heard him.
3
Voltex
Standard Galactic Year: 5260
(Earth Year: 3167)
Fartaz rushed down Mount Darkas as fast as he could hover. He had not seen his mate and their seventeen younglings for what felt like ages to him because he had been busy working on a research facility on top of the mountain. This was the drawback of being “the brightest mind of his generation” as everybody called him these days: he was involved in several projects, each with the possibility of changing the future of Voltex forever. Well, he was planning to forget all about that tonight and spend time with his family.
It was a warm, beautiful day, with Voltex’s suns shining down on him. He made a turn, and Pandar came to view. Voltex’s biggest and most populous city with almost thirty billion inhabitants, Pandar was a commerce center not only for the planet but the whole solar system. He stopped for a second to admire Pandar’s magnificence. There were huge, black sky-towers in an exact grid pattern, spread in every direction as far as he could perceive, with millions of Volts, the organic part of the city, hovering among them. It was the end of the school day and many parents were busy picking up their children. Not the best time to arrive home.
Fartaz took a deep breath and let happiness swell within him.
Home.
He had plenty of reasons to be grateful. Still a young Volt, he already had several critical discoveries and inventions under his belt, which had contributed to his planet’s technological and economic success. More importantly, his mate adored him, and his younglings loved him. What else could a Volt possibly want from life?
The only issue that bothered him was the fact that the war with the carbon-based aliens was not going very well. The Volts had never felt the need to spend too much time on developing weaponry. They were peaceful people, and their numerical advantage had always meant there was no need for advanced weapons, until now. The carbon-based creatures had spaceships and energy weapons the Volts had not encountered before. Still, the Volt warriors, called the Vox, outnumbered the enemy a hundred to one, and their courage and commitment compensated for their lack of weaponry. He should know; four of his siblings were highly decorated Voxes. Moreover, the Volts had already sent a delegation, suing for peace. Not all aliens could possibly be silicon-hungry monsters, could they? Between the humans, the Akakies, the Xortaags, the Talgoinians, the Vanaari, and the rest of them, someone had to listen to reason.
Humans! He chuckled. What kind of stupid people call
ed themselves human? Still, he could not help wondering how much they could learn from each other once this needless war ended.
Fartaz had just started hovering again when the ground shook violently. Caught by complete surprise, he was thrown backward and went tumbling onto the road. He rolled over, looked at the city, and froze. His brain could not name what he was looking at. He had never seen anything like that in his life, except…
Except for some old photos related to the carbon-based aliens’ history.
A nuclear mushroom cloud, right where Pandar used to be. From a weapon that had supposedly been obsolete for centuries.
And then the shockwave hit him. He was thrown to the ground again and rolled uncontrollably. All around, the plants covering the mountain disintegrated, but Fartaz’s shell was too thick to break, even though several painful cracks appeared on it.
When Fartaz finally stopped rolling, he just sat there on the ground, unable to hover, unable to breathe, unable to think, and knew with deathly certainty that everything he once held dear in his life was gone.
“They are all dead,” said Fartaz’s brother, Shartan, sitting next to him.
Fartaz did not recognize his own voice when he started talking. In fact, it was not him at all. He had died with his family. This other individual talking with logical detachment was someone else. “I thought nuclear weapons were considered obsolete.”