“Let me guess,” said Lee. “You had no defensive prowess to speak of and that’s when the aliens you spoke of earlier showed up on your doorstep.”
Reiser and Noll went silent, and Lee could plainly see he’d struck a very sensitive nerve.
“Yes… The Great War, as it’s called in our history,” said the doctor. “To this day, we still don’t know who they were, or why they came. In our texts, they’re simply referred to as ‘The Beyonders’ and they invaded utterly without warning and completely unprovoked. The assault began early one morning while most were still asleep, and it started with the strategic orbital bombing of 16 of our major cities. Much of that time period in our recorded history was lost in the devastation, but by our estimates some 6.2 million men, women, and children were killed in the first 72 hours alone, and that’s before the first pair of enemy boots ever set foot on the ground. For the first year, our people just focused on staying alive. The Beyonders took no prisoners, so if you were discovered, you were simply shot on sight, and our weapons at the time were no match for their technology. Therefore, the only recourse we had was to run.”
“So how did you survive?” Lee asked, like the others, completely immersed in the story.
“Initially,” said Reiser, “we hid out in rural areas—forests, caves, swamps… anywhere with cover, really—and stayed out of sight. At that time, there was really no way of fighting them. Their soldiers were covered from head to toe in a strange sort of battle armor that our weapons, which were never designed to kill, simply couldn’t penetrate. If you were caught, you were dead—plain and simple. The first two years were spent that way—running, hiding, and helping whoever you could along the way—but predominantly just trying to stay as far out of the cities as you could.”
“What was left of them, anyway,” Noll muttered, his face somber.
“What changed?” Danny asked.
Reiser shifted in his chair. “In that third year, as the first groups of what would later become the Resistance began to form, one of our patrols happened across the body of one of their soldiers. He’d apparently been killed in a rock slide, and for whatever reason, his unit had been unable to retrieve the corpse. After the better part of a day of digging, our people pulled it free of the rubble, and even though most of his tech had been crushed, they managed to salvage just enough of his armor and weaponry to begin dissecting it for weaknesses.”
“I take it they found some,” Mac guessed.
“Yes,” said the doctor. “Six months later, a trio of refugee scientists perfected Aura’s first lethal weapon against the Beyonders… a rifle, and with it finally came our people’s ability to defend themselves. Early on, the Auran retaliation began with small skirmishes and tactical strikes, whereby raiding parties would attack sporadically—in the woods or under cover of night—killing as many Beyonder troops as they could, and when possible, establishing underground supply lines to other resistance cells that grew in number by the day as word of our successes began to circulate.”
“Guerrilla warfare,” Lee noted.
“Exactly,” Reiser acknowledged. “In any case, over the next five years we managed to beat back much of their occupation and retake a number of critical areas, though the tide of the war was ultimately turned in The Battle of Retaun, which fell under the command of a young and extremely ambitious general named Clayton Zier.”
“If I’m not mistaken, Retaun is the Auran capital city, is it not?” Hamish asked, leaning forward to rest his hands on the table.
“That’s correct,” said Reiser, “and needless to say, it was a major victory for our people, both morally and strategically. By the time we’d destroyed the Beyonder outpost there and reclaimed the city, a team of engineers was nearing the final development stages on a massively destructive weapon that we hoped would end the war, once and for all.”
“WMDs,” Link muttered, tossing his fork onto the plate in front of him. “Yeah, we’ve got those too.”
“Perhaps, Mr. Baxter, but nothing like this,” Reiser said darkly. “This particular device was capable of rendering a planet’s atmosphere all but uninhabitable for supporting life, a notion that went against everything our society thought it stood for. But as you know, when one faces his own extinction, desperate times call for drastic measures.”
“It was literally us or them,” Noll declared. “I personally have no problem with what happened. My grandfather was an acting sergeant on the strike team that led the first wave at Retaun and I’ve heard those stories since I was old enough to understand what they meant. That bomb saved our people—end of story. We don’t have to be proud of it, but we did what we had to.”
“So you sent the bomb, then?” asked Hamish.
“Indeed,” Reiser went on. “We retrofitted a Beyonder supply ship well enough for one of our own to pilot and hacked the central data core to find what we believed were the coordinates to their homeworld. Once the final preparations for deployment were completed, the bomb was loaded and the mission was launched with one simple directive: Detonate at all costs.”
Lee ran a hand over his forehead as the others stirred, similarly troubled, next to him.
“I’m guessing it worked?” said Mac, drawing another soulful pause from Reiser.
“We can only assume so,” he said. “All we know is that we calculated a 36-hour timetable for the ship to arrive at its target, and 42 hours later, the Beyonder forces were leaving our planet as fast as their soldiers could board their ships.”
“Why do you suppose they left?” Lee asked, now beginning to understand the significance of the phoenix at the center of the PGC and Auran military crests. “Not to sound incredibly insensitive, but you’d think that after havin’ their home destroyed, they’d spend every wakin’ moment after that lookin’ for payback against your people.”
Reiser shrugged. “That question has been raised and debated more times than can be counted in the years since that decision. All we can surmise is that they knew we were a science-oriented society when they attacked, and if we could develop a weapon powerful enough to wipe out their homeworld then, in their minds, there was no end to what we were capable of by that point.”
“They sure as hell weren’t questioning our resolve, that’s for sure,” Noll muttered, chomping on a piece of ice.
Sitting back in his chair, Lee thumbed the edge of his napkin as he took in the details of Reiser’s grand, historical tale.
“So how does this lead to Alystier?” he asked.
“After the Beyonder exodus,” Reiser continued, “a massive reconstruction process was launched across the planet. In the years that followed, our people raced to rebuild not only their cities and infrastructure, but their lives in general. Once our global information network was back online, billions of people worldwide began the exhaustive search to track down loved ones and family members lost in the war. However, through it all, two undeniable truths were forever made crystal-clear to us: One, we were not alone in the universe, and two, not everyone values peace the way we do.”
Fully cognizant of the Alystierian culture’s emphasis on military power, and knowing full well how the devastating events of war could force even the most devout of societies to re-examine their principles, Lee could already predict where this was going.
“Let me guess,” he said. “Everybody agreed that your world needed a military to defend itself when needed, but what place does such a force have in your society, and moreover, how much power should it wield?”
“Your studies serve you well, Dr. Summerston,” Reiser applauded. “By the end of reconstruction, as our government moved back into the newly rebuilt capital, two distinct political parties had formed. The first was referred to as ‘Traditionalists.’ They fervently believed that while a military was obviously necessary for defense, it should be used for nothing else, and therefore, its power should be limited. In short, they believed that the only way to truly restore our cultural heritage was a strong and immediate return to th
e founding principles that had guided our way of life for nearly a millennium prior to the invasion. The second party, dubbed ‘Imperialists,’ was a group of military radicals—mostly soldiers and the occasional cell members left over from the war—who believed that not only should Aura’s top priority be to construct a massive military force, but it also needed to make sweeping changes to our Constitution that would effectively make this new armed force the very backbone of our civilization.”
“Not to be a tool, Doc, but can you really blame them?” Link piped up. “So they wanted to construct a big, honkin’ military? So what? With respect, you people had just gotten your asses kicked, almost to the point of extinction. It’s kinda only natural to wanna carry the biggest stick in the valley after something like that, ya know?”
“You misunderstand my meaning, Mr. Baxter,” Reiser elaborated. “When I say they wanted to make sweeping changes to our Constitution, I mean they wanted to change the very essence of what our people stood for. To give you an idea of what I mean, under their proposed agenda, every able-bodied Auran citizen would be required by law to serve a minimum of one five-year tour in the new military. If they failed to comply, they would be denied a number of fundamental freedoms, such as the right to vote in political elections, the right to own land, and even the basic human right to have children.”
“Whoa, jump back!” Mac blurted aloud. “So if you didn’t serve in the military, you couldn’t have kids?” She scoffed in disgust. “What the hell was that all about?”
Reiser sipped his water. “According to IP doctrine, the fear was that an anti-military household would only breed more hostility against the government by producing more citizens who refused to fight. Therefore, such a family had to formally request governmental authorization should they wish to conceive, and should they do so without the proper legal consent, the pregnancy would be terminated immediately.”
“So fall in line or else…” Mac growled under her breath.
“Essentially, yes,” said the doctor. “Furthermore, one of their policies called for the complete overhaul of the Auran education system, whereby public schools were converted into military academies where programs such as science and literature were all but non-existent, in favor of programs designed to prepare our children for active service upon graduation.”
“How much traction was this Imperialist Party able to gain?” Lee inquired. “I mean, what you’re talking about is a complete departure from everything Auran society stood for, so it couldn’t have been met with that much favor, right?”
“Far more than most would’ve thought,” Reiser admitted. “Mr. Baxter hit on something earlier, and that was that people were frightened. By the end of the war, tens of millions of lives had been lost and as you pointed out, we had no way of truly knowing whether or not our world was still at risk. So even as much as they might’ve disagreed with the IP’s agenda a decade earlier, the fact was that many of our people just wanted security; and rest assured, the Imperialists knew that and played to it heavily through political positioning and propaganda.”
Noll gave an audible grunt across the table. “None of it would’ve ever taken root without Zier,” he gritted. “Clayton was the key.”
“Wait a second, the Retaun guy?” Lee asked in surprise.
“The very same one,” Reiser acknowledged. “He was the original chairman of the IP and the perfect face to deliver their message. Everyone, military and civilian, knew who he was, and they respected him without question because of his successes in battle. From the time he was given command, he never lost a campaign during the war. So when he said ‘Believe in me, and I will keep your families safe at night,’ people listened.”
“Yeah, because families were obviously a top priority for these guys,” Mac grumbled, twirling a napkin around her finger.
Reiser reached for the pitcher to refill his water. “After three long years of intense political bickering, it was finally agreed that the shape of our society in a post-Beyonder world would ultimately be decided by the people themselves, via a comprehensive, global vote. In the end, the Traditionalists won by a pretty convincing margin.”
“I’m gonna step out on a limb here and guess that wasn’t good enough for Zier, though,” Hamish surmised with a thoughtful stare in his glass.
“That’s correct,” said the doctor. “Frustrated by what he perceived as a complete lack of budgetary support for the new military’s construction, as well as the amount of oversight and regulation which would restrict its usage, Zier denounced the final decision as ‘a reprehensible error in judgment, propagated by a handful of aging, feeble-minded bureaucrats hellbent on sacrificing the safety and security of the Auran people for the sake of personal gain and individual power.’ In that very same statement he also announced the IP’s immediate intentions to secede. With the new Auran Space Program well underway by then, a massive deep space reconnaissance program was launched to find a suitable world capable of supporting human life, where they could be free to build the kind of civilization they believed necessary. Two years later, that mission culminated in the discovery of a planet in a neighboring solar system that would ultimately prove to be their final destination. Once the new world was officially deemed viable, an expedition of nearly 85,000 citizens loyal to their cause departed Auran space, and the Alystierian Empire was born.”
“As fate would have it,” Noll said, sitting up straight and firing a smirk at the others, “it was their secession effort that ultimately led us to you people—in a roundabout way, anyway.”
Intrigued, Lee raised an eyebrow. “How do ya figure?”
Noll pursed his lips. “Zier and his people launched a total of 63 probes when they started the search for a new homeworld,” he explained. “Mind you, these probes were a lot less sophisticated than the ones we use now, with a lot shorter range. Most of them couldn’t go much further than three, maybe four systems out in a standard 18-month deployment. Anyway, by the time they left for Alystier, a grand total of 56 of those birds had actually come home. The rest were assumed either lost in transit or outright destroyed… that is, up until two and a half years ago.”
“Somehow one of those probes slipped its primary course directive and drifted into open space,” Reiser elaborated. “For almost 40 years it bounced from galaxy to galaxy and system to system, scanning every planet along the way for human sustainability… just as its mission specified. By our estimates, it passed by Earth sometime in the mid-70s.”
“What brought it home?” Mac asked—visibly astounded, like the others.
“All Auran probes are built with a fail-safe protocol that measures power output relative to distance,” said the doctor. “Once the probe detected that it had just enough power to get home, it disengaged all active search protocols and plotted a course back to Aura.”
“Only when it got there, the Alystierians who’d deployed it were long gone,” Noll added, flashing a hint of a smile. “So we took it upon ourselves to have a look at the data. It took Dr. Reiser here a solid three months to decrypt it, but once we were in, that’s when we learned of your world.”
“Who else knows?” Danny asked, steepling his hands as Reiser sat up straight to reply.
“Outside of this crew, the president, the fleet admiral, and a handful of high-ranking ASC brass… no one.”
“Hold up,” Link snorted. “You mean to tell me that in four decades of searching, your rinky-dink little probe only found one other world with humans on it? That’s it? Just us?”
“Yeah, apparently fate wasn’t in our corner on that one,” Noll said dryly, and Reiser shot him a look.
“Anyway,” the doctor went on. “After the Alystierian secession, we had very limited contact with Zier’s people—an understandable position given the resentment between our two sides. As both worlds began to venture deeper out into the stars, the occasional ship to ship encounter was obviously inevitable, though fortunately neither side had anything to gain from a conflict, so most of
our dealings were short, granted, but civil nonetheless.”
“Translation: We’ve got our yard, you’ve got yars,” said Hamish. “Everybody stay on their own side of the fence, and there’ll be nay an issue.”
Reiser nodded. “Exactly. That shaky peace remained for the better part of 70 years, but… that all changed six years ago when a civilian science team stumbled upon Kendara.”
“The mine, right?” Mac asked.
“That’s correct,” said the doctor.
“What exactly is so important about this thing, anyway?” she continued. “I mean, we started hearing reports about it somewhere around E-19 in the game, but the story never really elaborated on it much, other than to say it had something to do with fuel.”
Reiser removed his glasses, placed them on the table, and rubbed his weary eyes.
“Beyonder technology ran on an unknown, mineral-based fuel source that we’ve since labeled Caldrasite,” he explained, “and by virtue of the fact that most of Auran tech is derived from those original templates, now so does ours. However until very recently, we could never get our technology to fully adapt to it because it’s such an incredibly potent power source. As a result, our scientists were forced to compensate by creating a formula that blended Caldrasite with our conventional fuel, thus deluding it to a point whereby our systems could handle the power boost. The downside to this process is that tech operating on the blend, while still effective, is nowhere nearly as efficient as it could be if it were capable of running off pure Caldrasite. For example, running on the blend this ship is capable of making the journey from Earth to Aura in two weeks. Were it powered on pure Caldrasite, that would be more like three days.”
“Wow, talk about an upgrade,” Mac murmured.
Mako (The Mako Saga: Book 1) Page 24
