The Imperialists: The Complete Trilogy

by H. T. Kofruk

  A sobbing sound emanated from the main room where the fighting had taken place. Heera entered to see the fat man kneeling in front of Mamá Luna’s body, tears wetting his bushy moustache. When she approached him, he stared up at her with unrecognizing eyes, pleading for sympathy. He wanted her to feel the sadness that filled him. It was a curious thing in such a large, hulking man.

  She didn’t know what to do. Should she try to comfort him? Should she kill him? Would he be bent on vengeance and hunt her through the galaxy?

  Bin’ja approached him and laid his huge clawed hand on his shoulder. The effect was instant and the fat man stopped his sobbing. Bin’ja then knelt down, put one hand under Mamá Luna’s waist and the other under her head and lifted her gently off the bloody floor. He then took her body to a large table next to which he had already stacked several others and laid her gently down. The fat man followed him solemnly, showing complete trust that the strange alien would be gentle with her corpse.

  Heera watched the scene distastefully. The smell of blood made her wrinkle her nose. She looked at the stack of bloody bodies, some without heads or arms, and then at the two beings staring down at Mamá Luna as if waiting for something. The whole thing was absurd; these people tried to kill them!

  The sound of coughing brought everyone out of whatever thoughts they were engaged in. Heera looked for the source of the sound and found it not twenty feet from where she stood. One of Mamá Luna’s henchmen, a young man of about twenty five with dark skin and a robust build, had suddenly gained consciousness. She didn’t know whether to approach him or not and decided to stand where she was. What could she do?

  Before long, Bin’ja was kneeling beside him. The initial sight of the alien made the young man cough even harder with wide eyes. When Bin’ja instead just knelt silently while holding his head, the young man gained his calm. But then he saw what had happened to his body; each time he breathed, more of his intestines squirmed out of the massive hole in his lower abdomen.

  “Meu deus!” he gasped. “Meu deus!”

  An unwholesome gurgling sound came from his throat followed by dark, bubbly blood. Unable or unwilling to understand that he was dying, he continued to make muffled shouts as if they would prolong his life. Tears started to form in his eyes when the unbearable pain told him that he would soon join the bodies of his colleagues.

  Heera found herself also kneeling next to him opposite Bin’ja. The medical doctor in her, a self that she had buried deep inside for the past few years, started to emerge. The pain and fear he was going through suddenly felt real to her, as if someone had repainted the dying man from a ruthless thug to a person fighting the uncertainties of death. She took out a small medical kit from her belt and fished out a pain-relief tab, making a soothing shushing sound while she did so.

  The pain-relief tab worked immediately and he was at least released from the intense pain. The fear still entrapped him, however, and he continued to beg for mercy in between bouts of coughs. Heera’s limited knowledge of Portuguese didn’t allow her to understand his mumblings but she caught the words ‘mama’; he was begging for his mother.

  The mumblings gradually got weaker as strength and life left him. To her surprise, she felt hot tears coming down her cheeks, wetting the caked blood. She grasped his hand and he looked up at her. “Mama” he said with his last breath.

  Shame overwhelmed her. She hadn’t even known the young man but had assumed he had deserved to die since he was in the company of mobsters. If she hadn’t come looking for a ship, perhaps he would have grown old, decided to live an honest life and fathered children. Who was she to pass judgement? She couldn’t bear the lifeless eyes of the young man, still looking up at her thinking she was his mother. She could bear even less Bin’ja’s forgiving eyes.

  With two fingers, she gently drew down the eyelids of the dead man, more to stop his stare than to give him peace in death. She then got up and ran outside. Once in the alleyway, she retched up the meagre contents of her stomach. When she felt Bin’ja’s presence behind her, she flung herself at him and buried her head in his armoured chest. The alien gently put his large arms around her and made a low, soothing rumbling sound.

  Las Ratas Negras had eight ships in possession, used mostly for smuggling drugs, food and weapons. Three of them had light-speed capabilities, two of which were almost frigates in size. Heera decided to take the smaller, dolphin-class transport vessel. The ship was in a large civilian hangar that also housed ships from rival groups. The fat man, fearing for his life even though she had no intention of killing him, had given her the security clearance codes as well as the mutation sequence of the code-bacteria that would unlock the containment curtain that surrounded the ship. Though this seemed an extreme measure in a hangar that was monitored by the military, the rivalry between the gangs had more than often ended in sabotage and bombings.

  The ship was in good condition and half-packed with smuggled medical supplies, probably ingredients for some sophisticated drugs. It had two fission reactors and two more for backup. It was larger than the ship she had flown from the Hummers’ planet but less well furnished so she had to waste another couple hours to go to buy supplies. She had no idea how many months she would spend on the ship and decided to take nothing for granted.

  Bin’ja was getting restless to leave. The constant cloudy skies were to his disliking. Heera had discovered that the millennia of symbiosis his species had shared with the Great Trees had given him the ability to perform a mild form of photosynthesis. Heera wondered why she had never thought about this possibility, especially when some of his DNA was of plant origin. That answered one of the questions she had about his extremely high metabolism yet relatively small amount of food ingestion. Perhaps like coral polyps on Earth, he housed tiny algae in his thick skin? She would have loved to taken a sample to study but felt that he would resent being treated like a science project.

  The security clearance codes seemed to work amid flutters in her stomach. The local Atlantic Alliance military was more or less cut off from the rest since a few months into the war. The relatively low strategic importance of New Washington was probably postponing an attack. The military was getting more and more corrupt, as a result. It was very possible that the security clearance codes only worked because Mamá Luna had already paid them off.

  She almost held her breath until the ship, named Salvador, exited orbit after which light speed could be used. Exhilaration filled her once space turned into a blur of stars and New Washington disappeared into a speck within seconds. They were finally free!

  She recalled a conversation she had had with an Andrewsian monk on a small mining outpost. He had talked about a new trans-government entity called United Terra that was fighting back against the Nikruk. He had even heard of Terry Southend and knew of some of his political theories. This news had shocked Heera; he was no longer a soldier acting on orders but a true thinker with influence. She was both happy for him but, at the same time, feared that he had perhaps changed too drastically. What if he had forgotten completely about her?

  Shaking these thoughts from her mind, she plotted a nine month course to the Carulio System where the interim government of United Terra was known to operate; she didn’t dare approach a wormhole station with Bin’ja aboard. She adjusted the computer-generated route to stay at least fifteen astronomical units clear of any military installation. Hopefully within nine months, she would be able to see him.

  Chapter 7: Tharoa

  ‘I am thirty six years old today, still young for Renden standards. I look back and see such a tumultuous life that could, I say this with humility, fit into the life of a crooked backed, toothless old man. If I were to undergo the ultimate judgment today, what would my obituary say? That Terry Southend was a mass-murderer, a genocidal zealot? I foolishly hope that my legacy will be better known for the philosophical backbone of a peaceful future, but I hope for too much.’ - Terry Southend, personal memoir, year 2918.

  Zaram had t
rained extensively in the art of colour pigment manipulation, something that took years for any Carulion to master. The colour pigments on her face were closely linked with her emotions; blue meant anger, green meant deference, yellow meant pride. Rarely, perhaps twice in her life, the pigments had turned purple, a colour signifying love. The first time had been when she met her husband, Tem. He was large for a male but was still a claw shorter than her. Unlike their female counterparts, male Carulions did not have a large, right-hand claw but instead two tiny hands of equal size. That made them fit for manufacture, but not for fighting.

  The second time her face turned purple was at the birth of Teram, her beautiful daughter. She had carried the heavy fertilized egg-sack on her lower abdomen for more than a year when one day, it simply burst open and her squealing baby fell on the floor. Her shell had been soft as it would remain for three years during which she grew at an astonishing rate.

  Her second had been a male, Senem, to whom she had never shown her purple pigments. He was a relatively successful weapon maker. Teram had been her life, an extension of her being. A little bit of herself died when she lost her.

  The transport vessel landed at the Joint Administration Sector, a combined military base on Tharoa, the small moon shared by the Carulions and the Tzak. Zaram was helped out by two young soldiers, both of them glowing green in deference. They were, after all, meeting one of the most powerful military leaders in Carulio. Gravity was only a quarter of that of Carulio and the horizon was ridiculously curved. The base was facing Tzakbaht at this time of day, and the yellow mass of sand the Tzak called home glared down at her. Near the yellow horizon above her head, away from the sun, she could see the edge of the huge body of water the Tzak called Bahtpahin. The air seemed cooler and more humid near the lake.

  The landing zone was full of both blue Carulion ships and golden Tzak vessels. There were also a few large ships with both colours, mostly symbolic structures to show the alliance between the two former-enemies.

  She made a low, throaty rasp, a sound that could be construed as a chuckle, upon seeing the great two-coloured ships at the far end of the transparent domed hangar. For her, they represented a farce, a symbol of a non-existent friendship that only made the ancient conflict silent but no less deadly.

  Lost in her thoughts, she hadn’t realized that she had entered the interior complex. Pairs of guard stood at regular intervals in the dark hallway, always a Carulion and a Tzak staring at each other with indifference or hostility from opposite walls. One thing both races shared was the disregard for decoration. The walls of the base were thick and made with the hardiest materials from both planets but they lacked any adornment. She had heard that on Tzakbaht, the only kind of décor permitted were the ubiquitous pictures of the Tzak chief-shaman, their spiritual leader.

  The air in the base felt too dry and warm for her liking. Building an installation to meet the comforts of two very different races was not a simple task, that she had to admit. But the result was uncomfortable and even disconcerting to both. Most Carulions, herself included, found the rooms and hallways too large compared to the cosy abodes they were used to. Her Tzak counterpart often complained that he was becoming claustrophobic in the stuffy base.

  She came to a large, heavy door coloured in the usual blue and gold but with the additional symbol of the alliance; three interlocked circles of which the central one was white and considerably smaller than the blue and gold ones on either side. Two ceremonially dressed soldiers stood at either side, the Carulion in Queensguard dark blue armour with a shiny silver breastplate and the Tzak in his gleaming gold scale armour and matching gold cloak. As the door opened, she stared down at the Tzak, surely chosen for the role for his height in the face of the larger Carulion guard.

  The main conference room was mostly in neutral brown save for the white chairs. She noted that it was still empty though it was just moments before the arranged meeting time. She still didn’t know whether untimeliness was a Tzak cultural trait or if they did it out of spite. The two elite warriors flanking her stood to the left side of the doorway, ready for any trouble. She made her way to one side of the table and sat on one of the larger white chairs designed for Carulion body dimensions, putting her enormous right hand claw on the brown table as she waited for her counterpart.

  She was almost at the limit of her patience when the Tzak party finally decided to appear. Tarats entered and walked slowly as if to test her even more before he chose to seat himself directly opposite her. He was dressed in the traditional flowing white robes of his tribe as were both of his bodyguards. A seemingly unarmoured Tzak was a dangerous thing; the folds of their robes concealed many weapons and devices. He grimaced on seeing her, accentuating the scar on the right side of his head that echoed the claw patterns of a Carulion.

  “Greetings, my lady” he said. She knew that ‘lady’ was almost a derogatory term in the ugly Tzak language since the female of their species were uneducated, docile beings who only lived to serve their husbands and make more offspring.

  Her claw turned bright turquoise to express amusement at his pathetic attempt to insult her. “Greetings, Tarats” she replied, purposefully putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable.

  His assistant came round the table and handed her a file made of stone paper. It was written in Northern Tzak with horrendous Carulion translations below each paragraph. She decided to just read what it said in Tzak and found it was a proposal to expulse the Renden squatters from the system.

  “You proposed an emergency session for this?” she asked incredulously.

  He growled at that. “You know as well as I do why they’re here” he said.

  “Because they want sanctuary from war?”

  “Typical Carulion naivety” he laughed. “They’ve been snooping around for our weapons technology. And what do you think they would do if they discovered Death Beam or particle plasma weapons?”

  Zaram’s claw still showed turquoise.

  “You think this is a joke?” he sneered.

  “They’re more afraid of us discovering wormhole technology. If we did, they know they would finally have a serious rival” she said.

  “That’s what I’m proposing. They are weak now. We should take one of their larger ships and have our engineers take it apart.”

  The colour shifted slightly to blue. “And if your engineers managed to find the secret to wormhole travel, would you share it with us?”

  The Tzak made a throaty, barking sound to express amusement. “What else would we do? You know as well as I do that even combined, we are no match for the Rendens. They’re just too populous with much more resources at hand.”

  She could tell that he was lying from the ever so slight vibrations in his voice. Perhaps her daughter had been told such lies before she was killed in an ‘accident’.

  “Of course” she replied in a flat voice. “Both our people together number barely a billion.”

  “And our conservative estimates of Renden population put them at least at five billion.”

  She knew that Tzak estimates were well off the mark, that there numbered at least ten billion of Rendens, all with access to resources that an average Carulion could only dream of. Even if their weapons were more advanced, the Rendens could eradicate both intelligent species inhabiting the Carulio System if they united.

  “I’ll give it to you straight, Tarats” she said, dropping all pretence of diplomacy. “I reject your offer because it would be foolish.”

  The snout of the old Tzak wrinkled into a snarl. “Foolish? We will see who is foolish, Carulion. The Tzak will conduct this operation alone and, hence, take all resulting benefits after success.”

  “You will not succeed” said Zaram.

  Tarats didn’t stay to hear her explanation and walked swiftly towards the heavy door.

  “I said you will not succeed, Tarats, because you will not leave here alive” she said in an emotionless tone.

  He stopped at that. She could hear
him grating his teeth in anger. Both sets of guards looked tense and ready for any fighting. Zaram knew the situation was becoming charged. Even though Carulions were twice as heavy as their counterparts, the Tzak were much faster and more flexible.

  “I am not going to do you any harm, Tarats” she said.

  He turned and looked at her menacingly. “You dare threaten me? I was cutting the shell off your kind before yours even hardened.”

  “Listen” she said simply.

  Everyone in the room stayed silent, listening intently for any sounds out of the ordinary. “What is this game you are playing?” sneered Tarats.

  Zaram signalled for him to keep his silence, a gesture that brought disbelief into his expression. The Carulions sensed the vibrations long before the Tzak, tiny disruptions sent through the rock and metal of the base. When the Tzak finally picked it up, the faint sounds of explosions were also audible.

  Tarats drew a long knife, designed and perfected to cut in between the hard Carulion plate shells, and a particle gun out of his cloak. He pointed the gun at Zaram. “Tell me what’s going on, Carulion.”

  The guards of both races soon had their weapons out and took threatening postures against each other rather than protecting the leaders. Only Zaram was left without a weapon in her hands, though the implants in her right claw could easily be extruded and pointed. Her claw and her plated face all turned turquoise, however. She didn’t even bother to get up.

  “I knew there’d be treachery. I will enjoy killing you, bkra” he said using the derogatory term for Carulions which apparently came from their resemblance to a small water creature on Tzakbaht.