Extinction

by Korza, Jay

  The president thought on that for moment before asking, “Then why don’t you just ask them to stop? Take control of them and tell them that the Coalition is your ally and we mean you no harm. We could use an asset such as them for the security of our galaxy. They could be used for peace instead of destruction.”

  “There are two reasons that I cannot do that.” The empress paused. “As you can tell from what we’ve already told you and the information I’ve downloaded into your databases, my ancestors were extremely paranoid. Part of the doctrine that the warriors live by is the protection of the empire at all costs. It has been encoded into them that if you’re are not Nortes or a warrior, then you are a slave. If you are none of the three, then you are an enemy who must be killed. My ancestors did not want to coexist with any other species in the galaxy. If an emperor gave an order to stop conquering the galaxy and live in peace with other races, the warriors wouldn’t be able to do it. The warriors would consider the order an attempt to hurt the other members of the royal family by subjecting them to the danger of living with non-slaves. They would then kill the emperor to save the rest of the royal family and the Empire.

  “That is why Emperor T’Leh did what he did. He knew that if he ordered a withdrawal from conquering, that he would be killed by his own protectors. He also knew that if he had used the virus developed to kill the warriors across his entire empire, that he would be overthrown by the majority of his subjects and the Nortes who ran the military. Once his protectors were dead, there would be no stopping those who wanted the power of the throne. The Nortes had grown too accustomed to ruling the galaxy and not having to work for themselves to live any other way and they would not allow any emperor to take that away from them. He believed that even if the warriors were dead, the Nortes would follow anyone ruling the empire as long as their usual way of life continued.”

  “So what did he think would happen after he quarantined this sector? Would he allow his empire to just shrivel up and die? What of his other subjects?” The president tried not to sound too disturbed as he asked his questions.

  Hugany sipped her water and took a bite from the food she had been given earlier. “Once the order was given that no one was to leave the current empire, he knew that his warriors would not allow anyone to do so. The warriors took care of almost everything. They oversaw the slaves, protected our borders, and kept peace within the cities. Although the slaves provided almost all of the manual labor within the empire, most Nortes did not come in direct contact with them. This was again due to paranoia. Although the general population did not desire to live without slaves, there were always some who had a conscience and wanted to end the slavery. It was thought that if Nortes were given broad access to the slaves that some might be able to set up resistance cells and eventually overthrow the warriors and the empire. The slaves did outnumber the warriors and Nortes population dramatically and so it was a valid concern.

  “Almost every Nortes lived like a king. They did not have to work, think, or do anything if they did not want to. They could read, philosophize, invent, play, travel, do anything they wanted. There were hundreds of conquered worlds to visit and so many other things to do. It was utopia, but only for the Nortes and no one else. They did not want to change and so they had to be forced to do so.

  “The warriors only live about fifty years if they do not die sooner in battle. The idea was that in sixty to seventy years, every last warrior would be dead. Without anyone to create more, they would become extinct. When they were dead, there would be no one to keep control of the slaves. The Nortes wouldn’t know how to control them because they were never taught how and obviously didn’t have the strength in numbers to make the slaves do anything if they didn’t want to. Then, the Nortes who wanted peace and to live in coexistence would rise up and take control to change things for the better. With no warriors to stop them, they would have little resistance.”

  The secretary of state looked up from the tablet he was reading. “Wasn’t he putting a lot of faith into the slaves and the anti-slavery Nortes to change an entire empire? After all, the slaves are prewired for slavery and it would be hard to change that. Even with the warriors gone, they would be predisposed to following orders and would fall into line no matter who was cracking the whip, even if it were a timid Nortes. And what of your Nortes officers in the military? Didn’t they run things and oversee the warriors? Couldn’t they just take control?”

  “First”, the empress began, “The Nortes officers would, in fact, be able to control the warriors and maintain order at first. But the plan counted on the fact that the warriors had a very short life-span and soon the officers would have no one left to control. They would lose their muscle and their might; their numbers would be too small to maintain order on their own. Also, the Emperor left behind as few Nortes officers as possible to make their task of controlling the downfall even more difficult.”

  Then the empress touched a control on her pad to bring information on everyone else’s pad. It showed a picture of two Nortes males and one female. “Secondly, there was another component to the plan that was integral to its success. During T’Leh’s time in school, he became friends with D’Nerth and P’Tong. D’Nerth was a very beautiful woman and P’Tong was her husband. They had wed very early but were more in love than T’Leh had ever seen. All three became inseparable friends. T’Leh could not have loved them more if they were family.

  “D’Nerth and P’Tong were members of the underground movement that sought to overthrow the current Nortes way of life. Eventually they told T’Leh of their secret and found that he felt the same way. T’Leh, of course, could never join the underground. He would eventually be discovered and killed and that would, of course, compromise the movement.

  “Together the three friends planned for decades how they could force the separation from the empire and make the change happen. The resistance cells were trained and prepared for the day when the warriors would no longer exist. They had covert connections to the slaves and built resistance cells within their ranks. When the warriors were gone, the resistance would rise up and take over the empire and abolish slavery and force the other Nortes to accept all races as equals.

  “Without warriors, the slaves would have control of the shipyards, the factories, the weapons, transportation, every key element within the empire. All they would need was guidance and support from the better-educated and well-placed Nortes. The slaves were never allowed to interact with other slave races or learn their languages, so they would need sympathetic Nortes to help bridge these gaps and help them to work together towards their common goal.

  “The reason they decided to separate the empire and fake the plague was key to the plan. During such a massive forward movement through the galaxy, the emperor would have all of his key military staff present with him. Usually his military staff was spread throughout the empire, controlling outposts and other military installations. The warriors could be trusted to maintain peace in the empire while the bulk of the forces began the biggest colonization movement the empire had ever undertaken.

  “Although Nortes citizens lived throughout the empire, only the ones trained in the military and key to conquering new worlds would be in the first wave to colonize this sector.”

  The president had so many questions that it was difficult for him to pay close attention to every detail Hugany was saying. “I still don’t understand why he separated the empire. Why not just use the virus to kill the warriors in the empire and then rise up with the workers?”

  The empress had learned this entire story by the time she was six and had passed it on to her son, who was already eight. She continued, “In order to allow the Nortes resistance to infiltrate key areas and build resistance cells within the slave community, they needed to have certain people removed from the equation. If there was only a skeleton crew of warriors and Nortes soldiers running things in the empire, it would be much easier for them to perform their task.

  “If the Nortes v
irus was released on the key military officials, then it would be seen as the coup attempt that it really was. They needed a plausible explanation for the warriors and military staff to be eliminated that would not be questioned.”

  “And an unknown virus in an unknown portion of the galaxy was the key.” Dr. Bates looked at the assembled panel. “No one from the empire would be able to say it wasn’t real because they wouldn’t have access to any raw data. And because the warriors wouldn’t allow anyone from the empire to travel to the new colonies, it would be taken at face value as fact. They would have no other choice.”

  “Exactly.” Hugany refilled her glass of water. “Once the separation was made, the warriors in the new colonies would be killed with the virus. The Nortes in charge of conquering new worlds would also be killed with a virus. The only people to survive would be the emperor, his loyal staff, a few hundred thousand Nortes colonists and low-level military personnel, and, of course, the slaves.

  “Everyone would be told that although they were lucky enough not to die from the virus, they were all still carriers of the disease and therefore could never return to the empire. T’Leh would then allow the colonies to start to fall apart on their own. Without the warriors to maintain the slaves and perform their other duties, there just weren’t enough Nortes to keep everything running. T’Leh would then address his new empire and decree that slavery must be abolished for the sake of the colonies. Only by uniting with the slaves and working together could they survive.

  “Nortes colonists were generally made up of military personnel, farmers, builders, technical staff, and other people who generally liked to work. They lived to explore and build new cities and worlds for their people. They weren’t common among the Nortes and were even shunned by the majority because they actually liked to get their hands dirty and work for a living. Because of their way of life and their general beliefs, it wasn’t very hard at all for T’Leh to sell them the idea of unity and working together. Most of them didn’t believe in slavery to begin with. They felt that slavery just weakened their society by allowing people to become complacent and lose skills and knowledge through laziness. The current dilemma that they were facing just seemed to prove their point.

  “They had already charted several worlds on which to relocate their people. Each species was given a choice as to where they wanted to live and start their lives over. Many decided to live in a system near what is now the Detrill home world. The first worlds we occupied were chosen strictly for their military value, so we had no use for them after the unification. They were abandoned and all of their secrets buried. We moved into the sectors we now live in and built our communities. We have enjoyed a thousand years of peace and unity with our former slaves.”

  “Until now.” The president let out a sigh and continued, “Whatever happened to the rest of the empire?”

  “We don’t know; all communication was severed with them. T’Leh had sporadic communication with the empire over the next year. He led them to believe that everyone was dying and eventually that he, too, had died.

  “Once the warriors in the empire died of natural aging and the resistance freed the slaves, the colonies and the empire were supposed to unite. T’Leh never received word from his resistance leaders and he feared the worse, that the plan went completely wrong. He felt that alerting the empire to the deception would just bring war into this sector. So we have lived in silence ever since.”

  “Is it possible then that someone figured out how to create these warriors and allow the empire to live on?” Dr. Bates didn’t think that even with the information he had in front of him that he and his best scientists could reproduce the warriors. However, the Nortes were obviously much more advanced than the Coalition was.

  The secretary of state spoke up again. “How did T’Leh plan to guarantee that no one created anymore warriors after the current ones had died?”

  Hugany adjusted in her seat and pressed a few buttons on her pad. “You will note on your pads the world known to our ancestors as The Breeding Planet. They called it that because the warriors were created there. Only a handful of Nortes knew where that planet was, and of those, all were either killed in the purging or lived on in the colonies after the unification.

  “The planet has an orbital defense system that is impenetrable by use of force. The gun platforms are self-replicating in case any of them are damaged or destroyed during an attack. It’s not so much the power of the guns that are devastating; it’s the sheer number of them in orbit. It took two hundred years to put all of the defense guns into place. There were entry points within the defense perimeter that ships would approach in order to be scanned. If a living member of the royal family was not on the ship, it would be destroyed. Even if a ship could withstand the destructive force of the guns, they would have to find the cloning labs that are ten kilometers below the surface of the planet. Then they would have to have security codes as well as DNA from a member of the royal family to enter the complex and access any computer terminal once inside. And then you would, of course, need the scientific expertise to use the equipment and create the warriors.

  “A member of the royal family lived at the installation constantly. Every eight hours, that person would have to enter a code into a terminal, have their DNA checked, and perform a retinal scan. If they didn’t, then every Nortes in the complex would be killed by a release of a nerve gas.

  “No slaves or warriors were on the planet surface, only Nortes. Once the warriors were born, they left the planet and were shipped off to whatever assignment they were given. Much like the salmon of your home planet, Mr. President, the warriors were encoded genetically with instructions concerning their birthplace. However, with them it was reversed. Warriors were encoded with an absolute lack of knowledge of where they were created. They could not go anywhere near the breeding planet; if they did, they died. Once they left, they could never return.”

  Dr. Bates was originally hopeful that the cloning labs could be accessed once the threat had passed. The amount of good his scientists could do with this technology was almost unlimited, but it didn’t seem as though that would be happening anytime soon. “Was the facility destroyed? How did they smuggle all of the personnel off the station? Were warriors created on an as-need-basis or were they stored there?”

  Hugany always hated to think of the history of her people; it was so full of deceit and violence. “Each member of the royal family who was not going to accompany T’Leh to the colonies was given a poison. They were each affected at different rates, according to their unique chemistry. When the keeper of the breeding planet installation died, so did every Nortes assigned there. Without P’Ket at the control center of the installation, no other Nortes or member of the royal family could land on the planet except the emperor himself. The paranoia that the Nortes had bred into themselves over millennia would be their own undoing. All of their failsafe protocols were designed so that no one outside the royal family could destroy the empire. They never thought that a member of the family would destroy it themselves from the inside out.

  “As for the warriors left on the planet, they were in a dormant state. Their cloning process wouldn’t be completed until they were needed. When the installation received orders to activate a certain number of warriors, the process was completed and they were shipped off to wherever they were needed.” The empress became obviously upset and her hands began to tremble. She looked at each person in the room individually before she continued. “If someone has found a way to breech all of the safety protocols, there were almost one billion warriors dormant at the time the facility was compromised.”

  “I see”, was all the president could say while he thought about the implication of what Hugany had just told them.

  “Couldn’t we just take you to Extinction? With your help, we could make it past the defense guns to the surface. You are the heir to the throne, so you could access the facility and we could either take control of it or destroy it.” The secretary of s
tate received a nodding of approval from the president and the other aides present.

  “Do you remember when I told you that there were two reasons that I could not take control of the warriors?” Hugany tried to sit up a little bit straighter in her seat. “I never told you the second reason.”

  Chapter 43

  1,000 Years Ago - The Colonies

  T’Leh cradled his son while he stood at D’Bath’s funeral and absently listened to someone speaking of his friend’s greatness. “… and without his dedication to medicine and our people, our children would still be suffering from the Unarian disease that had plagued our world for centuries. He not only kept his people strong but he also furthered the advancement of our warriors. Through his genetic…”

  T’Leh let the rest of the speaker’s words go unheard. He couldn’t help but think of the irony he was listening to. D’Bath had taken a scientifically stagnant empire and fueled its growth once more. Through scientific discoveries, medical breakthroughs, and apprenticeship programs he created, D’Bath had gotten the Nortes interested in science again.

  And now D’Bath’s latest scientific project was leading to the death of fifteen percent of the Nortes population in the colonies. He began to cry as he thought about not only what he was doing to his own people but what he had made his friend do. T’Leh should’ve known what this would do to D’Bath and he should’ve watched him closer. He should have done something more.