Galactic Troopers

by Ian Woodhead

  Three more staff blasts echoed down the hole. He raced through the hole they’d made. He knew without conscious thought that the altered Gizanti had already found their own route into the inner sanctum.

  It took him just seconds to reach their exit hole. He climbed through the melted plasti-steel wall and found himself standing inside the God-Emperor’s revered Inner Sanctum. Even with these dire circumstances, the Chaplain still felt uncomfortable being in here without the express permission from the Revered Holy Order. Even approaching this area without permission generally meant instant death from the soldiers guarding this place.

  He tried to shake away the guilt that came from the feeling of trespassing, like any of that mattered anymore. There wasn’t anybody in the huge room, nobody alive anyway. The remains of two soldiers lay in front of the barricaded doors. Just like the others, the horrific damage from those staff weapons had fused them into the walls. The Chaplain turned away and said a silent prayer before tentatively moving away from the melted hole.

  The remaining soldiers and the pursuing aliens must be somewhere else inside this place, yet he heard no more sounds of battling. The Chaplain wasn’t sure whether this was a good thing. He sighed before examining this holiest of holy places. Due to his status, his knowledge of the palace stopped outside those doors. He had never been in here before, nor did he know the layout of this area of the palace or how large it was.

  He wanted to leave this room and look for the others, but the images on the walls stopped him from going anywhere. The Chaplain approached the largest painting in the room. It was twice his height and depicted some battle between Terran shock troops and an alien force that he didn’t recognise. Judging from the archaic uniforms and the primitive projectile weapons the Terran soldiers carried, this scene must have happened thousands of years ago.

  Who were they? The aliens were half the size of the Terran soldiers, bipedal, with a long prehensile tail and covered in something with looked like a cross between fur and feathers. They certainly didn’t look in any way aggressive. He remembered the tales told to him when he was a child about the horrors of the first expansion. His teachers told the class that once the great founders had perfected the ability to travel to the nearest star systems, the intelligent aliens they first encountered during this first expansion were all monsters. Each one more terrible than the next. They described creatures which made the Gizanti look like the cute, mammal-like creatures displayed in this painting.

  The brutality displayed in the painting was just appalling. For a start, none of the aliens carried any kind of recognisable weapon. The Chaplain moved onto the next painting. In this, the Terran uniforms were a different design, plus the troops now carried crude-looking energy weapons. This battle happened possibility hundreds of years later, but the scene still followed the same vile pattern. In the painting, Terran dropships filled the crimson sky, their bay doors already open. Their cargo, elite squads of shock troops, were already on the ground, running across the rough terrain and cutting down anything in their path.

  The aliens in this painting were reptilian in appearance. Apart from their bulk, which was significantly more than the Terran soldiers, they displayed absolutely no aggressive characteristics. They were plant eaters, even the Chaplain could tell that and yet, this didn’t seem to matter. The Terran soldiers were still turning these terrified beasts into huge piles of blackened meat.

  He stepped away from the appalling horror shown in these two and the many more paintings hung around this room. He felt ashamed to belong to the same species. What made his shame even worse was he knew these images were actually celebrating the genocide of all these creatures. His God-Emperor, the so-called immortal, wise, and benevolent ruler of their empire was nothing more than a tinpot dictator.

  The thoughts which were running through his mind right now went against everything that he had believed in. He kept his gaze fixed to the floor and carefully walked over to the one official open doorway. As he stepped through into a large empty room, the Chaplain’s mind began to suggest that perhaps what he had just witnessed did not actually happen. Perhaps they were part of a propaganda piece, designed to test a subject’s faith. If that was the case, then he had failed.

  He walked across the polished wooden floor, still fighting with his thoughts over the images that he had seen. If they were true, then it could help to explain what was going on right now in the Empire; that another unknown alien civilisation had been watching the Terran’s despicable treatment of its fellow sentient creatures and decided to teach them a lesson they would never forget, to turn the tables on the so-called Terran Empire.

  There was no way of knowing whether any of what he’d just seen was true. The only thing he should be concentrating on was his job, to ensure the safety of the God-Emperor. Nothing else mattered.

  The sound of human voices drew him towards the only visible way out of the room. The Chaplain might not have been into these hallowed halls until now, but something deep inside now informed him that he had reached the end of his journey. He held the weapon in front of him and ran through the doorway.

  He entered a surprisingly small chamber, the walls totally covered in hundreds of alien hides. The thick, stench of decay coming from the hides made the Chaplain want to throw up. He took another step into the room and finally saw the true face of the beloved God-Emperor. Right in front of him were three sleep-pods, arranged around a central pillar. Only one of the sleep-pods was occupied. The Chaplain looked inside to find the wizened face of a man who should had died thousands of years ago staring back at him.

  There were no signs of the other humans or the altered Gizanti.

  Philip Diocolis, Prime Chaplin of the third Imperial Order, opened his eyes and looked straight at the dark red pulsating bulkhead directly above him. It took him a couple of moments for his senses to come back fully. He was in his sleeping quarters on the Gizanti ship. The Chaplain shook away what remained of that vision or dream and sat up. This didn’t feel right. Why wasn’t he in one of the sleep suppression beds? Wait, never mind that, his last waking memory was this living ship growing over his feet!

  Was that a dream as well?

  “You seem preoccupied, Chaplain. Is this a bed time? If you want, I could come back once you are fully rested.”

  He gripped the sides of the bed to stop himself from falling onto the floor. Oh not her, not now. The Chaplain sprung to attention and attempted to look sombre in the presence of the Empire’s High Priestess. “Apologies. I was not expecting you.”

  “Yes, so I see.” Her holo walked to the front of his bed. “There has been a change to your orders. You are to take this obscene space vehicle to the Augustus shipyards. Once arrived, you are instructed to destroy the facility.”

  He nodded. This confirmed that the God-Emperor and Cole had shared the vision of the altered mechs laying waste to the area around the palace. What about the vision he’d just shared, with those Gizanti laying waste to the palace itself?

  “Once you have ensured that nothing in those shipyards is capable of threatening the Imperial home-world, you are to serve sentence on the minor heretic before returning home.”

  The High Priestess then gave him a smile that could have broken the hearts of the thousands of teenage boys who followed the woman on her personal vid channel. It almost made her shocking words sound perfectly acceptable.

  “You have done well, Philip. Expect to be rewarded for your bravery and dedication to the Empire. Perhaps even a position within the Revered Holy Order? Relax, Philip, you have done better than we expected.”

  He bowed, not entirely sure what he had done to receive such a revered gift. “Glory be to the Empire and our revered Emperor,” he said. “May his reign last for another…” The holo vanished before he could complete the traditional acknowledgement.

  What was he supposed to do now? How could he possibly order the men to execute the so-called minor heretic? The picture of his God-Emperor lying in that sleep-p
od ran through his mind. He had pledged his unswerving devotion to the God, meaning that he had no other choice to carry out his order, no matter how he felt.

  The door to his private quarters slid open. Philip bit his bottom lip and rested his hand over the butt of his private blaster. If the visitor turned out to be Cole, then he would kill him where he stood and worry about his damned soul some other time.

  “You looked a little troubled,” remarked the Gizanti. “May I enter?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t. In fact, the very thought of company repels me.”

  The large alien took no notice of the Chaplain’s reply and walked into the room anyway. He ground his teeth in annoyance; obviously, this creature believed it was his right to go anywhere on this obscene blasphemous container of alien filth without asking permission.

  Cladinus approached the monitor in front of the Chaplain and waved his large hand in front of the screen. “I have something to show you, Chaplain. Something which might persuade you from acting out an instruction that could have serious repercussions.”

  The picture of a light blue sky filled the monitor screen. The image panned across the horizon. Philip leaned forward, growing more and more excited at the sight of the single large moon sitting above a distant mountain range. He saw another smaller moon before the camera stopped in front of a group of impossibly tall, thin plants. “I don’t understand why you are showing me the images of some planet, Gizanti.”

  “Do you not recognise it?”

  He shook his head. “No, should I?”

  “Granted, when your species owned it, there was only the one large moon. Once we claimed possession, my ancestors removed a smaller moon from one of the other planets in the star system and placed it into orbit to help simulate our true home.”

  “Are you telling me that this is old Earth?” He leaned forward and silently groaned when he saw the minor heretic come into view. This had to be very recent, which made his next question of how old these images were. He watched him and the camera wearer, who he assumed to be the large alien, travel across the unfamiliar landscape. The study of old Earth, its geography, flora and fauna, the ancient civilisations, and the history were all an intrinsic part of the church teachings. Given time, the Chaplain hoped to discover whether this was one of the alien’s deceptions, and if that proved to be the case, then it would be his sworn duty to punish the Gizanti for high blasphemy.

  It would be difficult to work out if the Gizanti was telling the truth. Those mountain ranges could be anywhere on the planet’s continents. Guessing from the flora and fauna work not work either as it was clear that the aliens had introduced species not indigenous to Earth. He resorted to the only method remaining. The Chaplain asked, “Whereabouts is this?”

  “I believe that this part of the planet was once called the United States of America.”

  He nodded, still not really believing the alien. “Are there any humans left on the planet?”

  “No, the little remaining number fled before the deadline ended.”

  “What deadline? Our forefathers left the old planet during the first of the great expansion. Everybody knows that.”

  “Is that what they told you? I supposed these were the same teachers who reassured you that during this first expansion, every alien species you annihilated were twelve-foot, armour-plated monsters who fed about the flesh of your young children?”

  Embarrassed, the Chaplain turned back towards the monitor and focussed on their progress through the caverns. The green light picked out a number of irregularities which made him suspect that they were not in any natural formation. For a start, he was sure there was some form of faded writing, half-visible under all that creeper-like vegetation. Also, a number of times, the ‘rock’ looked a little too straight, suggesting that perhaps they could be travelling through a man-made construction.

  His suspicions were confirmed when Cole and the alien reached the final chamber. The bright lighting showed the full room in all its glory. Animal pelts covered the wall. The Chaplain turned away from the sight only to find himself staring at another set of three sleep-pods, arranged around a central pillar. He watched, with his mind reeling what this could mean while Cole took a small cube out of the central pillar. He looked straight at the alien. “What does this mean?”

  “The machine is called a Trinity Cradle, Philip. It has the power to expand the consciousness of the occupants. It can give them God-like abilities. Can you possibly conceive of how this one device altered your planet’s future? You went from some minor sentient species with hardly any knowledge of what lay beyond your own star system to becoming an utter scourge amongst the Galactic Expanse with only a couple of millennia. Philip, the device was never designed for one occupant. What was supposed to bring in an era of peace and enlightenment across the Galactic Expanse, instead, gave us terror and genocide.”

  “So the one I saw in my vision was a copy?”

  The alien nodded. “Yes.”

  “What about the pictures of the Terran forces massacring all those aliens? Did that really happen as well?”

  “I’m afraid, that your race is guilty of more counts of genocide than any other species in the past half a million years.”

  “I see,” he replied, although he didn’t. The Chaplain looked closely at the ancient sleep-pod while remembering the one in his vision. He then looked at the Gizanti. “So, this is retribution? Another, more advanced alien species discovered what the Empire had been doing for the last three thousand years and decided to do something about. Okay, that makes sense. What I don’t understand is why they targeted your species as well.”

  The Chaplain had to catch his breath when he felt waves of misery rolling off the alien. “We tried to tell you. My ancestors attempted to put you back on the path to enlightenment, even to the point of threatening to take away your home-world. What we did not understand at the time was that most of your violent species either left for the stars or killed each other. The number of humans on your planet were depressingly low. We gave you an ultimatum, which was ignored, so our ancestors took away your planet, but even that didn’t stop you. By this time, your God-Emperor was already installed in his new home. Then we changed, our own species underwent a transformation and adopted the notion of non-intervention.”

  “I can understand why they changed the story,” he muttered. “We don’t really have a good relationship with aliens with advanced technology.”

  “You don’t have a good relationship with any alien race, my friend.”

  “So what do I do now?”

  “That is your choice. Either obey your God-Emperor’s orders, or follow your heart and do what you think is right.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Her hair should have been a darker brown, and she certainly shouldn’t be so small, but the girl was definitely the same human who had helped to transform his otherwise sedentary life into a complete nightmare. It was strange how easily he could tell them apart now. A few days ago, Walish Din couldn’t even distinguish between genders.

  Maybe it wasn’t that strange after all considering the amount of time he’d been spending with the aliens. The strange part of this situation just had to go to his current frame of mind. Had his emotions taken such a battering that even the sight of so many orange dragons carrying their silver staffs didn’t even cause him to wet himself in terror?

  “Why bother running when there is nowhere to run to?” he heard himself mutter.

  “Oh God, what the hell are you doing here?” screamed the girl. “You should have gone somewhere else. Now they’ll be able to kill the pair of us.”

  The words ‘I’m here to save you’ now sounded utterly ridiculous, but it didn’t stop his stupid mouth from repeating them.

  She dived forward and wrapped her arms around his waist just as four dragons aimed their staff weapons at the pair of them. Walish Din was staring death right in the face and yet he still felt no fear.

  “You’re here to save me?” sh
e announced. “Sure you are.”

  The four orange dragons fired simultaneously. The blasts which he believed would be his last sight hit an invisible wall in front of them. The huge wave of bone-melting heat dispersed around the two people.

  “How did you do that?”

  “I have no idea, but it’s been keeping me alive. At least up to now. So you had better have something special, you furry alien, because I won’t be able to do that again.”

  Walish Din didn’t have a single idea what she was talking about. He just lay on the floor, watching those orange monsters approach while his numb brain insisted that he should be dead right now.

  “Come on!” she screamed. The girl grabbed the front of his jacket and shook him. “Snap out of it. You must be able to do something to help!”

  This one was a little more excitable than the girl who lived in his head. Although she was right. He got onto that spaceship and persuaded the captain to change his course. Could that work again? Walish Din got to his feet and helped the girl up before calmly walked towards the advancing line of orange dragons. Three of them had already aimed their staff weapons at him. As he raised his own arm, Walish Din felt every muscle in his body lock up. The sensation only lasted for a split second, but it was enough to make him stumble.

  The three orange dragons stumbled too. One of them twisted around and fired his staff into the line of the armour-plated monsters right behind him. The blast obliterated five of the creatures, but it didn’t stop them from advancing.

  The other two had somehow regained their balance. Their staff weapons swung around to aim at him again.

  “I’m not going to die like this!” he screamed. “Not on this planet. You are to killing me like you did to my tribe.” Walish Din dug both his feet into the sand. He glared at the remaining monsters before raising both his arms into the air.