by Cher Hollis
“You have offered, my friend, and they have repeatedly refused. Instead, spending all their time with the Esa. It is not good. Take them back, Vytor. Take them back to Duvall, before it’s too late.”
“It has been offered, Ramon. The Variant male called Korpal tells me he speaks for all of them when he says they wish to stay here with their new friends the Esa.”
“Then, Circle brother, you must be bold and force them to return. Those Variants were incarcerated on Duvall because some of their crimes were so insidious even the people of Earth could no longer accept their presence. They must go back!”
Vytor continued to show sickly green tinges with obvious concern. They both knew it was becoming a well-known fact that increased numbers of Esa had refused the Makkars Talis. Instead, they were viewing females to receive Talis, in an area Korpal had set up for that purpose.
“I must have an agreement by all the Makkars on this, Ramon. But I can see you are right. I will consult with my brothers and gain a consensus.”
Ramon tried to stifle an unwelcome yawn, and then he realized he was physically and mentally drained from previous events. “Good, I know it will prove to be a wise move, Vytor.”
“Ramon, the human confines of your body must be weakened after the greatness of bonding; you will rest while I seek our agreement.”
“Sleep would be welcome, Circle brother,” Ramon said, with another yawn.
Only a few hours later, Ramon was forced awake by a resounding clash of chaotic thoughts that pushed painfully into his mind. The frenzy of it made him feel as if a drum were being pounded between his temples.
Sitting, Ramon clutched his head with confusion; his mind was jumbled with the commotion of agitated telepathic thoughts. He shook his head, and tried to find a single coherent thread in the mess, until he was able to clear his mind to one single thought.
The Makkars were desperately trying to call the Esa back.
Ramon rushed to stand, so he could find Vytor. He was confused, as he tried to grasp the meaning of the words “Call the Esa back.”
Then he learned, while he searched for Vytor, to separate the Makkars thoughts in his head. It soon became clear that the Esa were breaking their masters’ hold, and Vytor was bearing the blame, because Vytor had brought Ramon to the Makkars home world. That fate had also brought along the Variants, and more importantly, it had brought the women.
Ramon could hear Vytor’s desperate telepathic command as he tried to call the Esa back and Ramon joined all the Makkars as they tried to help Vytor’s efforts.
“There are not enough Circles left to burn through this tide of Esa excitement!” Vytor emitted in defeat.
Ramon felt all the Makkars bewildered thoughts. Never had there been a time when the Esa warriors refused their creators. Ramon and all the Makkars, through their telepathic senses, could see the hordes of Esa gathering their ships and supplies as they moved out in mass.
“We must use as many Circle Generations as we can!” Vytor sent forth, and he also sent a plea for Ramon to hurry. Ramon knew there weren’t many completed Circle Generations left.
Multiple thoughts had dashed randomly through the Makkars, until they’d become one combined question.
“Should we emit Talis?”
Ramon had been told that one completed Circle Generation could give over one million Esa Talis. That by bringing those same Esa to the summit of Talis, they could propel the Esa into Talis Fire, which achieved an intoxicant so sought after by each individual Esa, any one of them would easily give their life in battle to experience the stimulation.
“There are not enough full Circles left!” the combined telepathic cry careened through all Makkars.
Every Makkar realized their efforts would be hopeless if they tried to amass so much Talis at once. Quickly, they agreed to transmit a warning.
Their united command rang into the minds of their once chattel Esa, and it threatened, “Return at once or never again receive Talis from any Makkar, starting now and forever!”
Some Esa responded, but sadly not enough—
Ramon had finally reached Vytor’s side and he took up position close to the circumference of his Circle Generation, which was gathered inside an immense energy dome.
Ramon opened his mouth to shout an exclamation, but he was cut short by a sudden explosion to the dome. The effect of the blast rocked Ramon, as all of the Makkars shot backward, while they flashed wildly. Ramon quickly avoided falling, only to be flung down by another explosion, which was centered on the ground in the middle of the dome and in the center of the circle of Makkars.
A gripping sound snapped the air, and then it turned into an immense rumble as the ground in front of Ramon sucked inward, to create an oval shaped crater. It was at least a meter deep and ten meters wide. Ramon’s first confused thoughts were that an accretion blast had to have created the crater.
His thinking was confirmed when he saw twenty or more gray-haired Variants as they marched down into the indentation. They moved directly toward him, each one carrying an Earth defense military IR rifle. Ramon had seen the Esa looting those types of weapons from Duvall Station.
He knew the IR’s to be highly sophisticated military rifles that used accretion lasers, which radiated a black hole effect and imploded anything from a pinhead to a full-size transport, depending on the setting.
The five Makkars in his Circle, who had reared further backward at the second explosion, hovered in obvious dismay as shown by their flashing matrixes.
One Variant man in the center of the antagonists was laughing in a violent manner as he strode forward. Then the tall Variant stopped in front of Ramon, like a menacing enemy, as Ramon looked up at him from his ignoble position sprawled on the ground.
“Korpal!” Ramon shouted, and he put a name to the ominous face of the man who towered over him.
“Take him,” Korpal commanded, and he pointed a bronze-barreled I-pistol toward Ramon.
The Variants on either side of Korpal shouldered their weapons as they stalked to Ramon, and then they roughly hauled him to his feet. Korpal stepped forward and pointed his IP to the left side of Ramon’s chest.
Korpal was tall and his Variant-gray hair fell to broad shoulders, while his dark eyes were shrewd and calculating. He’d fashioned himself as a mock copy of the Esa, by wearing a wide collection of weaponry that was strapped to his commanding frame.
“What is the meaning of this, Korpal? What have you done?” Ramon exclaimed.
“Taken advantage of an opportunity, you malodorous scum,” Korpal spat through a sneer.
“The Esa leaving is your doing?” Ramon asked, as he struggled to break the hold of his captors.
“If I’d known the vile and race-enslaving Dr. De La Fluenta was so close to me all those long years I was enslaved at Duvall Station, I can promise you, you would have been dead by now,” Korpal snapped. “But once again luck is on my side. It’s quite lucky, wouldn’t you say, doctor … that I wasn’t allowed to kill you before now?”
“Kill me? But why, Korpal? I barely know your name,” Ramon exclaimed.
“Doctor, you wound me! You, who are like a father to me ... in fact, a father to all Variants! Don’t you agree, comrades?” Korpal swept his arms and encompassed all the Variants by his side, who nodded with savage grins. “He is our one and only father, isn’t he?”
“What absurdity is this, Korpal?” Ramon exclaimed. “Explain yourself … What childish games are you playing which are going to lead to apocalyptic and dangerous ends?”
“Of course, father, never let it be said that your sons kept you in the dark,” Korpal said, with a malicious twisting of his mouth. “As you can see, I now control all of the Esa, and I’ve decided that they will go forward and conquer Earth! With your help, of course.” The fanatical glint in Korpal’s eyes grew brighter. “We have started here, and we will take our warriors to Earth’s very shores. We will conquer Earth, so that all of your Variant sons and daughters can attain thei
r rightful position as Variant Lords of Earth!”
“Conquer Earth? Are you insane? No never mind, I can clearly see you are,” Ramon exclaimed.
“It’s not insanity, father. Once I discovered the powerful lure of female Talis, it was really quite simple. There are nearly one-half billion of the fiercest warriors the galaxy has ever seen, who want nothing more than to fight, destroy, and conquer. All I have to do is point them in the right direction.”
“The Esa will never leave the Makkars!” Ramon shouted.
“And they call you a genius, you miscreant little man,” Korpal spat. “They would, they could, and pointless to say, they are!”
“Korpal, you are giving the Esa promises you will never be able to keep! Stop this insanity before they realize it and turn on you and all who follow you,” Ramon said, in a desperate attempt at dissuading the madness.
“Your concern touches me, father, if only you could have used that same caring when you gave birth to the Variant race, and therefore bound us into slavery, and sentenced all Variants into abhorrent bigotry for the rest of our existence—” Korpal paused with a savage and disgusted look crossing his lean features, before he continued, “—or until all natural born men can be exterminated, thereby freeing us forever from our lives lived under unjustified prejudice.”
“It’s lunacy! Complete lunacy!” Ramon shouted. “You don’t have the intelligence strategies to put a small nick into Earth’s defenses, even if you had one billion Esa!” Ramon’s declaration held a lot more bravado than he really felt.
Korpal moved closer and leaned into Ramon, then he evilly whispered, “Do you know how much I despise and curse your existence? To find you alive, like this, has given renewed hope to my battered soul. Because now I can have my deserved revenge, so complete; it will finally purge me of your abominable presence over my entire existence.”
Then Korpal stepped back, and with his voice loud enough for all to hear, he declared, “You, Dr. De La Fluenta, will be our genius, our strategy, and our victorious tactician. You will plan the strategy to take us to a magnificent victory over Earth’s natural born humans! You are coming with me now, as the Esa follow me into battle. You will give us some small redemption for your crimes against the Variant race, by helping us, your children, to conquer Earth in the way I know only you are capable. And thereby freeing the Variants, which you chose to enslave by your very existence.”
Ramon was completely shocked by the malignancy Korpal showed toward him. He’d known there were militant Variants filled with hatred and bitterness over the injustices they believed he’d committed against them. But he’d never come face to face with one, to experience how deeply imbedded the Variants contempt for him really was.
Unnerved by the realization, he decided bitterness had turned Korpal beyond all hope of reason. Ramon also realized the consequences of what was about to happen, and the billions of lives that stood in the balance.
He could not fold.
“Shoot me now, Korpal! Because I will never be persuaded to help you conquer Earth!” Ramon shouted, and he realized his chances of dying were high.
Without hesitation, Korpal swung his weapon toward the floating entity of Vytor. “Should we see what it takes to spill Makkar blood, father?”
Ramon paled as he struggled between his captors, and then he shouted, “The Esa will kill you if you harm a Makkar!”
Korpal’s snarled laughter sounded. “I see no Esa here, do you?”
Ramon watched in horror as Korpal’s finger hovered over the trigger.
Ramon’s resolve dissolved, and he blurted, “No, stop!” In defeat, he angrily said, “I will surrender to this lunacy for now. But know this, Korpal, I will never be made to help you or anyone conquer Earth. Never!”
Korpal’s lips drew into a hard line. “We will see what the father does when he is presented with the slow and painful torture of his own daughter!”
Ramon doubled over in anguish, and the full cluster of his Circle Generation responded to his pain as they flooded the area around him with bursts of brilliant green colors.
“Ela Cassandra,” Ramon gasped, with premonitions of horror too strong to break.
“Yes, Ramon. We will see. Now move!” Korpal shouted, and he forcefully shoved Ramon from his Circle Generation and from the Makkars planet.
Legions of Esa had defected. They followed the promises of Korpal and left their masters the Makkars. They followed Korpal to search for new battles and to have more chances to gain the demanded Talis markers they had lacked without war.
In the midst of their exodus, a message had been intercepted. It had been sent by the Makkars to warn Earth, and it said,
“Beware! Esa legions move to conquer Earth! Variants hold De La Fluenta by force. De La Fluenta’s child must not be taken. We are ready to redeem our race! We wait your return signal.”
The central core of Esa warriors, who directed all Esa, allowed the message of warning to pass through.
One particular Esa of that force; an alien of towering presence and certain command, vowed,
“New battles with the humans of Earth will bring the Esa many ways to gain Talis!”
Event Two: Balice (Alien Nexus)
Vytor had been thrown into turmoil and confusion by the sudden and unexplained kidnapping of Ramon.
He cried with a shattering mind and shrieking mental voice. “The Circle is destroyed. Not again!”
His agony produced pandemonium, and then it spilled outward, to seize all of the Makkars with his hysteria.
Vytor was inconsolable and he frightened the other Makkars—never had there been such an individual rampage of emotions among their race. It forced all the Makkars to take actions that had never been considered.
They slammed shut their telepathic mental links to Vytor’s mind and energy. They closed him off with painful confusion—his agony was too traumatic to bear.
“He had gotten too close to the human,” some advised. Others offered, “He had begun to carry the independent thought of humans.”
The whole event was soul wrenching for them, but they all agreed they could not survive the strength of Vytor’s new independent emotions. Each one of them fervently hoped it would only last for a short while.
Vytor hardly noticed that his race, his family, had severed their links to him. He was too overwrought to notice the deathly silence and his emotions were too chaotic to hear the absence of their telepathic thoughts.
He had put all his hopes for the Makkars future into Ramon and the dream to rebuild the Circles. He had never considered anything would come and steal his dreams away. In mere hours, he’d been to the pinnacle of his goal, only to have Korpal destroy it.
He was shocked by the actions and overwhelmed by its lasting meaning to him.
It had started out as the tiniest of hopes, while building a solid friendship across space. Ramon would be the first to show whether humans could be the answer to making the broken Circles whole once again. It was a vicious coil, because once a Makkar joined one Circle Generation he could never join another, and no individual Makkar could procreate without a full Circle Generation surrounding him.
Vytor was the oldest among the Makkars. He had lived beyond eternity by mere human calculations, but still there was a limit to all existence in the universe. The time for his ability to conceive life was swiftly approaching its end, and he would become the only living Makkar in their history not to experience the beauty of birth.
Bringing forth life was the ultimate existence for a Makkar; it was his God and his act of spirituality.
It was the closest a Makkar ever came to individualism.
The Makkars refusal to kill, even in the face of death, came from their devout reverence for the act of bringing forth life. The Makkar race saw it as their consecration—their spiritual ecstasy.
Vytor, alone, faced the devastation as he felt his essence shattering into a million crazed pieces.
Dr. Ramon De La Fluenta wondered how m
uch one man’s daughter had to suffer. Since Korpal had viciously spoken his daughter Ela Cassandra’s name during the forceful insurgence against the Makkars, Ramon had felt overpowering guilt. With all the catastrophic events in motion around him, that one left him stunned. For once in his life he’d thought of his daughter Cassie first, when he knew that he’d never done it before. And, he realized that she would never think him capable of it.
The shame that had gnawed at him for years dug deeper. What an abhorrent father he was—he didn’t deserve the name. Once again, he would put her life in danger. How would he ever choose between his daughter and the entire population of Earth? Especially those people of Earth that had scorned him, used him, and imprisoned him.
But the present crashed through his desperate thoughts as the guards, which had been pushing him through the cavernous insides of an alien vessel, abruptly stopped from moving him forward, and instead they shoved him onto the deck.
Ramon hauled his battered body upright, to hear the sound of something clicking on the metal decking. His gaze lifted to see the figure of a shapely woman with snow-white hair as she swayed toward him, and her heels clicked with each enticing step.
It seemed as if all the recent dangerous events he’d been through tilted significantly as he looked at her. There was no doubt in his mind she was a Variant—a sex goddess Variant, because she glowed with sexuality.
Quickly, he calculated his options, and then he did the only thing he could think of and he adjusted his perspective. He had to try to find a way out of the disaster he’d been kidnapped into, so he decided, to manage that, he needed to become a chameleon. As his gaze followed the woman, he calculated his odds and decided that he still had some small amount of charm left in his old age. It was rusty, but he would try to oil it very quickly.
Twenty minutes later, Balice walked beside Dr. Ramon De La Fluenta who was the creator of her race.
“His full name is Korpal Lord,” Balice whispered, as she leaned like a conspirator closer to Ramon’s ear. “He was sentenced for militant activities, to Duvall Station, for the term of life. Can you imagine?”
