by H. T. Kofruk
Not even one generation earlier, the Pacific Federation had had a harsh lesson of what confronting the Chinese could turn out to be. With China’s vastly greater military capabilities, the Pacific was holding on to a thread for survival. Pacific capitals went up in flames as did their wormhole stations. That explained Pacific reservations for going to war with China and the Orthodox.
“Why are we attacking the Russians anyway? It’s the chinks we want, isn’t it” asked the round, soft-fleshed Admiral Jenkins.
The tall and wiry Admiral Schwartz looked at the plump Jenkins with disdain. “The Orthodox is China’s dog. We must put down the bitch before it starts growling or biting.”
The thirty admirals were seated in red mahogany and leather chairs around a great, round oaken table. A fire was burning in the fireplace and a white crucifix was attached to the brick wall above it. To the right was a picture of the current pope, and to the left a picture of Saint Andrew Palini, the father of the One God Church and author of the Pure Bible.
“Yes, the rabid Russian dog needs to be put to rest. And then the chinks are alone while we can still set our slant-eyed yellow dog on them” said Admiral van Hoorne through his thick white moustache. “You all know your orders. It is essential that each one of you respect the reporting intervals so we know where you are and if you’re still alive” he continued. “As soon as you’re done with your targets, you’ll be wormholed to another that is still resisting.”
“Will we be required to board the stations, sir?” asked the simple-minded and battle-hungry Admiral Perrin, his thick arms folded at his hefty chest.
“This is a hit-and-run mission, although the hit in this case will involve nuclear weapons” responded van Hoorne. “You are to completely destroy the designated targets and get away as soon as the job is done. Close combat is strictly forbidden.”
“May I ask the source of the intelligence for this mission, sir?” asked Rick, knowing that it may cause resentment. The other admirals rolled their eyes at the Mexican, save van Hoorne.
“We have very few monitors in Chinese Territory, but our sources are to be deemed reliable.” This was a typical response. After all, Atlantic intelligence gathering techniques were far behind those of the Chinese Empire or the Pacific Federation.
“If I may, sir, that sounds to me like this whole mission is based on Pacific intelligence” said Rick.
Van Hoorne did not reply immediately. He obviously didn’t appreciate the challenge from Rick but he was among the few in the room who valued the extensive combat experience the elderly admiral had under his belt.
“I will not deny what you’re saying,” he started “but the Pacific intelligence has been cross-checked with ours and third party sources”, third party mostly meaning cross-frontier smugglers. “The reliability of the intelligence is not your concern. Yours is the success of the mission on hand.”
Rick merely nodded his head. But what if the intelligence costs us the mission…and our lives?
The meeting was soon adjourned after the heavily encrypted mission data was sent electronically to all the motherships. The mahogany furniture-strewn room soon melted away to reveal his ship’s conference projector room. It was a shame; he liked that old-fashioned room with the heavy wooden furniture. Perhaps he would build something similar if he ever got settled on Earth.
It seemed a heavy stone had settled in his chest, just beneath his heart and above his stomach. The stone was bound to prevent him from sleeping or enjoying his food. As it always did, the Atlantic Alliance was about to rush into another crusade. Hadn’t the Mediterranean War or the Mineral Wars taught his colleagues anything?
The basic premise of the attack rested on the element of surprise. There had never been a colonial war fought on this scale with several hundred ships engaged at the same time. The Continental Empires would surely not expect this type of response. But before they knew what was happening, their wormhole and mineral mining capacities would be temporarily so crippled that they would only have the option to negotiate. The Oceanic Alliance would be able to negotiate from a position of strength, demanding to inspect Chinese facilities. The destruction of all alien breeding facilities would be their ultimate goal, as well as concessions in terms of both territory and mining rights.
But there was something. The nonchalant attitude of the Chinese against some very heavy and severe accusations was unsettling. It almost seemed that they were expecting the Atlantic to attack, as if they had a hidden card in their loose silk sleeves. He would soon see if the stone in his chest was figment of his imagination or a real source of anxiety.
Chapter 24: Way Forward
‘Damien, Daniel. It’s been six years since the Lord blessed us with you. I’m sorry that I can’t be there to give you your presents in person but I hope one day, you’ll understand. A day doesn’t pass that I don’t think about you and your mother. In a few years, maybe I’ll be able to meet you more often in person rather than through holographs and dreams. I love you and wait impatiently for your next message. Happy birthday, my sons.’ – Chief Warrant Officer Lawrence Stoll (MIA), last holograph message to family, year 2917.
Chief Warrant Officer Stoll was a man to be reckoned with. His tall, broad-shouldered yet lean physique usually towered a head over most people. Even some high ranking officers found his piercing black eyes unsettling. And somehow, despite his overalls being filthy at the end of his shifts, his dark hair was always impeccably neat. His team had his loyalty and the pilots his trust. Sometimes, new pilots fresh out of the Air Force Academy would try and assert their higher rank; the more experienced ones knew better.
A training exercise had just finished and the Tiger Shark fighters were being landed on the deck, with him and his team waiting for the landing to be completed so as to begin their work. But today was not just any other working day. It was six years ago that day when he was blessed with the birth of his twin sons, Daniel and Damien. He had managed to send a message across but couldn’t be sure if they had received it yet.
During the six years, he had managed to spend barely six months with his twin sons. The way his own flesh looked at him whenever he was able to go home was like a heavy weight on his chest. He knew that their monthly messages to him were forced and staged by their mother, herself more and more distant as the years progressed. His own messages to his family were awkward, products of his innate difficulty in expressing his feelings. But he hoped despite all that they knew he held them dearest in his heart, that he would rather die a long painful death than let anything happen to them.
Images of his family were swimming in his head and he hadn’t even noticed a pilot was talking to him. As the pilot’s face refocused, he courteously asked him to repeat what he had just said. The officer opened his mouth but before any sound could exit, he suddenly disappeared into a blazing black hole. Stoll soon found himself being sucked into it at speeds that made him dizzy.
In less than a second, he was outside in the cold vacuum. He opened his eyes to see a large hole in the hull of the destroyer where he had worked, exposing the guts of the ship. Hundreds of other people were being hurled into space around him, either dead or dying. He saw one of the members of his team floating nearby, impaled by a jagged piece of metal. Blood was spraying into the air at unnatural speed. The squadron leader flew past him, perhaps already dead, with both eyes removed from their sockets held only by thin threads of flesh to the head. Another missile struck the ship, the force of the silent blast sending him further into space.
The cold was intense and he could feel it quickly entering his organs and bones. The difference in pressure was causing the thin blood vessels in his eyes to pop, leaving tiny red spheres in the nothingness. He could feel his skin and organs trying to do the same. He knew he had less than thirty seconds before he would bloat and freeze to death.
With his freezing fumbling hands, he reached for the locket on his neck. He grew desperate as his attempts to open it continued to lead to failure.
Finally, with a push, his frozen thumb broke off but he managed to open the square, golden locket. Above was his favourite picture of his wife, smiling one of those smiles for which he had fallen. Below was a picture of his two boys when they were four. They both had his dark eyes and their mother’s lighter hair. Daniel was smiling with his mouth wide open and Damien was looking elsewhere. Before his brain bloated and froze, he wished them another happy birthday.
***
On board the Leviathan, Saj’ra watched intently the holographs of the four Renden vessels slowly disintegrated with the multiple nuclear missiles that struck them out of nowhere. Men and machine parts alike were burning and then freezing in the cold vacuum. Curiously enough, he could feel no remorse or pity for the dying souls. In fact, he felt a sense of satisfaction of vengeance as they roasted and froze. It was almost a shame that the ones immediately vaporized by the blast hadn’t felt any pain.
The satisfaction was queer and alien, but it felt good all the same. He knew from the expression on Bin’ja’s face that he was not feeling the same emotions. The leader’s face was frowning in contempt of the cowardly way they attacked the Renden station. There were also traces of regret and shame.
But Saj’ra knew better, he knew that the Rendens would go to even more lengths to ensure victory. Adopting their crafty and devious ways was the only way the Nikruk stood a chance to enact their revenge. They had to sow fear in their enemies and predict their every move, not give in to every slight feeling of remorse and regret. Perhaps he should be leader instead of Bin’ja?
In ten minutes they would arrive at the station. Their sudden light-speed arrival would be another shock to the Renden defenders.
“To the docks” ordered Bin’ja.
There were already two hundred and fifty or so armed Nikruk warriors in the landing docks where the boarding pods would be ignited. Saj’ra and Bin’ruk stood to either side of Bin’ja when they arrived. The leader’s arrival signalled the boarding. Though each pod was designed for ten humans, they would only comfortably hold five or six Nikruk.
The ship started slowing down as it approached the wormhole station. Missiles and laser fire rained from the station defences. The Leviathan fired back from its own arsenal carefully so as not to damage the wormhole generator or the fusion generator that fed it. The smooth white exterior of the ship was soon pock-marked by the laser fire but most of the enemy missiles were intercepted.
Suddenly, hundreds of drones, with vastly greater artificial intelligence than homing missiles, emerged from the station. This was technology that the Nikruk had yet to encounter. Most carried small laser weapons, many carried missiles, and some carried nuclear missiles. The Leviathan’s defences couldn’t cope with the complicated and random patterns in which the drones flew, releasing missiles and laser bolts at closer range before being destroyed. The Leviathan’s own artificial intelligence flipped and turned the ship so that the least surface was exposed to the direction with the heaviest attack. But soon it was clear that it wouldn’t be able to cope.
Bin’ja knew he only had a tiny window of a few seconds to launch the pods. He smiled at the irony of the situation; they would potentially get a wormhole station but most probably lose their ship. But he had no choice, if he didn’t launch the pods, they would most certainly lose both. He sealed the door to his pod which he shared with four other Nikruk. Through the ship communications he yelled his last command to the four on the bridge who would almost definitely perish with the ship. “Fire all pods!” I am sorry my brothers…
Two hundred pods shot out of the side of the Leviathan although most of them were empty. Many of the drones now changed their attack target and made for the pods. Scores of pods were destroyed by drones and fire from the station.
Bin’ja gritted his teeth and prayed to Mother to guide him through this ordeal. He closed his yellow eyes and tried to block out the red light of the pod interior and the sudden tremors. Just as soon as he felt nothing but the beating of his own heart, a much stronger blast was felt through the violent shaking of the pod. He knew that the four brothers who stayed in the Leviathan were now dead with the ship.
Another sudden jolt let him know of their arrival on the station as the pod ripped through the outer wall and into the inner decks. The door of the pod burst open and Bin’ja and his four companions rushed out to be welcomed by pulse fire. One of the four received shots to the body and head and fell, with Bin’ja feeling the terrible pain. He leapt as fast as a shadow on to a wall, his left hand and two feet digging deep to grab on. He jumped again and twisted his body to land on the opposite wall. Heavy fire landed on the spot where had just been. With his right hand, he brandished the pulse rifle and fired towards the light from which it seemed the enemy was shooting. He started running along the wall, jumping at random intervals on the walls, floor or ceiling. A primal feeling filled his thumping heart. The beast within him let out a sharp shriek that deafened Renden and Nikruk alike.
He felt his brothers running and jumping on all fours behind him. He reached a light and smashed it with his fist. A Renden soldier pointed his gun at him but was too slow. Before he could pull the trigger, Bin’ja grabbed his arm and threw him at another soldier, his arm and shoulder bones cracking at the speed and force of the throw. In slow motion, he saw a soldier hold up his rifle to shoot one of his brothers. He jumped and kicked the soldier with both feet with such force that he felt all the soldier’s ribs and spine cracking from the impact.
Soon all the soldiers on this deck were dead and he could feel the struggle of his brothers on different parts of the station. He again ran through the hallway, up stairs and through elevator shafts. Defending Renden soldiers were almost like air; he and his brothers ran through them like sharks through shoals of fish.
The Rendens, in their panic, started shutting the pressure doors one by one along the hallways. But whenever one shut, he would jump up an elevator shaft and claw his way to the next floor. Upon arriving on new level, he saw the backs of twenty or so Renden soldiers pinning down three of his brothers who were taking cover behind some machines. He was joined by three of his brothers who followed him up the shaft and together they ran at the Rendens. With his rifle, he shot two in the back and then jumped, landing on top of a third.
He was about to aim his rifle at a fourth but he suddenly felt a cold, hard object hit him on the back of the head. Reeling from the sudden blow, he managed to turn his head to see what it was and saw a large blue, Renden shaped robot with large metal hands. One of the hands gave way to a long black blade that gave a low humming sound as it vibrated. The robot ran towards him and suddenly Bin’ja was aware that he would die. The blow to his head had momentarily lost him control of his body and he could only look. Suddenly, however, just when the robot was about to stick the blade into his throat, one of his brothers shrieked and tackled the soulless machine from the side. His brother was able to pull the robot’s head off but not without the black blade impaling him. A shot through the head of the impaled but struggling Nikruk from a Renden rifle made him go limp.
By then, Bin’ja had regained control of his body, just in time to dodge a pulse rifle shot that went past his head to hit another Renden soldier. He dived to retrieve the gun that he had dropped from the blow to his head, after which he immediately twisted his body to shoot the soldier who had nearly killed him. But he hit the soldier in the shoulder, the impact sending him flying backwards and toppling him over one his comrades.
Upon looking around and seeing that the other Rendens had been incapacitated, he jumped and landed right in front of the two who had fallen over and quickly kicked away their weapons. Ripping off their visors, he lifted them easily off the floor and looked straight into their eyes.
In his best Renden, he asked “Where is the control room?”
The two creatures seemed not to understand what he was saying until Saj’ra, who arrived at his side, asked them in another Renden tongue.
The final Renden defence was in
the control centre in the top floor of the station. Two dozen Renden soldiers were lined up in defensive positions, waiting for the aliens to enter through the door. But when they did enter, it was not through the door but through walls. The shocked Rendens didn’t even have time to react as within seconds, they were surrounded by scores of large aliens all pointing pulse rifles at them.
Chapter 25: Exploration
‘The presence of religion or ritualized worshipping of the dead is one of the established criteria for determining alien intelligence.’ – Pacific Federation Alien Intelligence Handbook, version 29.1
The four gutted destroyers floated like great whale cadavers. The bloated, frozen bodies of the crew members that had spilled out of the ships like blood and guts were suspended animation. Sometimes, a piece of shrapnel or any other random object would whizz past them, taking off a head or a hand. The station was also severely damaged but the wormhole generator itself seemed queerly intact.
Strangely, there were three large chunks of a smooth white ship that was not an Atlantic destroyer. Judging by the pieces, the ship was originally flat and oval-shaped with a smooth white exterior. It was perhaps the size of a regular destroyer but carried no markings to show to which empire it belonged.
Terry could not believe that a small ship like that was able to take out four destroyers and the wormhole station’s defences. Perhaps the other victors destroyed the Atlantic ships and took off using the wormhole generator. Had an inter-Renden war already begun? Was the Chinese Empire simultaneously attacking all Atlantic systems and major wormhole stations?
“Do you think anyone is alive in the station?” asked David.
