The Imperialists: The Complete Trilogy

by H. T. Kofruk

  Paul slightly resented how he had been ignored. Since his injury, Grimly seemed to consider Elena the highest commanding officer. Did he see Paul’s deformation as a source of incapacity or was he just trying to alleviate the stress of leadership in his tender condition? He liked to think it was the latter.

  “Farah” said Elena as she knelt down to the girl’s height. “Thanks so much for relaying the message from Grandpa Grimly. I need to work for a bit now. Do you think you can go and play with some of the other children?”

  Farah stuck out her lips. “There’s no one my age. Everyone’s big.”

  To Paul’s surprise, it was the giant figure of Grimly that stepped forward. “Do you want to go and see if there’s any chocolate in the dining facility with Grandpa Grimly?” he said. Paul had never seen the old soldier smile so broadly.

  Farah shook her head. “I want some cookies” she said with a stubborn expression.

  “Well, I’m almost sure I saw old Chef Jamsey kneading some cookie dough. Wait, I think I can smell some warm cookies in the oven right now.”

  “You’re lying” said Farah but she now had a smile on her lips.

  “One thing you need to know about Grandpa Grimly, young lady, is that he never lies.” The famous Celestial Guard scooped the young girl in his arms to her delight and took her away. He turned and winked as he walked by.

  Paul and Elena both stood speechless for a moment before bursting into laughter. “Children bring the best out of everyone” said Elena.

  Not me, it seems.

  “Okay let’s play this message” said Paul. He touched the holograph with his hand and a barely audible male voice started to speak.

  ‘For he built the earth in seven days landing among us sinners on whose souls rest Cyril’ it said. The same unintelligible phrase was repeated twice more before it melted into static.

  “What does that mean?” said Elena.

  Paul shrugged his one good shoulder. “I’m more concerned about who sent it. Do you think it could be some nutty preacher trying to spread the gospel to give hope?”

  “Well he’d have to be some bad preacher. Assuming ‘he’ is God, he never landed on Earth after building it. And who’s Cyril?” Elena gave a touch to the holograph to display some information. It was clearly indicated that the origins of the message was extra-terrestrial. “Do you think the Nikruk are trying to mess with us?”

  “I’m not so sure. This must be coded. I wish we had a code specialist among us.”

  The door of the bridge opened to reveal Grimly with a smug expression on his face. “Well, have you two cracked it?”

  “What about Farah?” said Elena.

  “She’s eating cookies. Chef James will take care of her.”

  “This message is unintelligible, sergeant major” said Paul.

  The old soldier maintained a smug air. “That depends whether you can see what he’s trying to say. Did I ever tell you that I was a code specialist before signing up for the Celestial Guards?” Neither of them said anything. “The ‘for’ at the beginning is the number four, not the word.”

  “That still makes no sense” said Paul beginning to lose his patience.

  Grimly touched the holograph to show it in text format. “They put it there for a reason. It’s one of the basics of codification. Every code needs a key but in our case, we don’t have a key to unlock any message. So they put it inside the message. The number four is the key and it means that every fourth word is to be taken into account.”

  Paul stared at the message. “Earth…landing…on…Cyril?”

  “They’re planning an offensive” gasped Elena.

  “But when?” said Paul.

  “I’m assuming Cyril is not only a name, but also coincides with a day. I can’t put any date on it but I remember that Catholics had specific days for saints.”

  Paul looked at Grimly with a dumbfounded expression. He had had no idea of how clever the old soldier had been. “It’s June twenty-seventh. They want us to assist them in any way for a massive attack on that day.”

  “They know that there are Catholics on Earth and have used it as an advantage” said Grimly.

  “How so?” said Paul.

  “After the Catholics left Earth, the One God Church did a major purge of any Catholic-related information on the Web-Com. It was still one of the main functions of the Church Intelligence Bureau. That means it will be very hard to pinpoint the meaning of Cyril without actually being Catholic. Even if the Nikruk can somehow access any Web-Com databases, they’ll be hard-pressed to give any meaning to it. Thank God you guys are here.”

  “Wait” said Elena. “Today is the fourteenth of June. We have less than two weeks to prepare anything.”

  Paul’s eyes gleamed. The uncertainty, danger and overwhelming importance of the historic battle in a few days gave him new hope and strength. He would try and build a new world, a new home for Elena and himself or die trying.

  Chapter 25: The Planet

  ‘Three races, billions of individuals, each one a beacon of dreams, emotions and possibilities. I have had a hand in their extinction and that will one day be my downfall.’ - Terry Southend, personal memoir, year 2915

  The five member team boarded an Orca transport vessel four days after receiving the mysterious message from the unknown planet. Anton had taken care of most of the logistics of the operation. Terry didn’t know whether taking weapons was a good idea; it could be construed as a threat to whoever was trying to help them, if indeed that was what they were doing. But in the end, he decided it would be better to have them and not need them than vice versa. If their ‘hosts’ knew Rendens well enough, they would expect nothing less. And besides, if their technology was as advanced as it appeared, the finest Renden weapons would be close to useless against them.

  He looked up at the towering figure of Bin’ja. Heera had convinced him to take the alien with them since it would at least get him off the station. He had agreed less sceptically than he had appeared. Bin’ja was a key element in defeating this Mother, he felt. The giant had aged and scarred substantially since their last encounter on board Bongani’s smuggling ship, an event which seemed a lifetime ago. But his yellow eyes seemed to burn even brighter than before.

  The pilot, a Filipina named Sara Mendoza, looked back at them from the cockpit. “Strap yourselves down please. We’re leaving in two minutes.”

  The rear pressure hatch of the vessel started to close. Terry held his breath; he was about to plunge once more into the unknown. Being at the lower end of the technology spectrum was something completely new to Rendens. Bongani, David and Fann stood looking into the ship at its occupants. Terry put on a smile, hoping none of his nervousness would show. Before the hatch completely closed, he saw Bongani flash his white teeth in a broad smile and raise his fist in the air in the classic Atlantic Alliance Marine Corps style.

  “Per Spatium, Per Terras” he mumbled as he automatically performed the same gesture.

  He strapped himself next to Heera who looked uncomfortable. “I hate wormhole travel” she said.

  Bin’ja made a soft rumbling sound that made Anton, who was strapped in the adjacent seat, look slightly nervous. Heera seemed to know that it was more of a reassuring token and smiled.

  The Orca started to rise slowly before moving forward. Terry felt the acceleration as it sped towards one of the station exit ports. As soon as the vessel was outside, a bright green light leaked into its interior.

  “Good luck, my friend” said Bongani through the Web-Com.

  “You too, Bongani. I’ll see you a in few days” he said as bravely as he could.

  The ship disappeared at light speed through the green vortex in time-space, into another part of the universe.

  “Damn” said Major Sara Mendoza.

  “What’s wrong, major?” asked Terry.

  “It’s the location, sir. The computer says that we’re two days away from where we should be.”

  Terry knew that pinpoi
nting the exact location to open a wormhole was always tricky with planets, stars and black holes constantly moving around. Two days of light speed was virtually nothing in the vastness of the universe but he still felt that they were losing precious time. If the senders of the message had a quick way to end this war, it could spare many hundreds of thousands of lives, perhaps even millions.

  “Terry” said Bin’ja to his surprise.

  “Yes?” he answered slightly nervously.

  “You are brave.”

  “Tha…thank you.”

  “You must remain so.”

  He had no idea what the alien was talking about. Looking at Heera’s expression, he knew she didn’t either. Anton wore an expression of utter confusion.

  “Without you, Mother will die” said the alien again. “You are the chosen one.”

  Terry felt uncomfortable with Bin’ja’s prophesising. “Chosen for what?”

  “To save her. You will save our race.”

  “Bin’ja, you never said anything about this” said Heera. “I thought the true Mother was dead.”

  He made another rumbling sound. “Weak, but not dead.”

  “Then where is she?” said Heera. “You said all her trees were burnt or destroyed.”

  The large alien pointed to his chest.

  “She’s…inside you?” said Terry. Bin’ja nodded. “How is that possible?”

  “It was what I was born for. I was made to burden Her. She made my mind and soul unbreakable.”

  Terry thought he understood. “You mean she foresaw all this and created you differently so that you could carry her?” Bin’ja nodded again. Terry hesitated a moment. “Can I…can I see her?”

  Heera opened her mouth. “Terry, you can’t ask him to…” Before she got to finish her sentence, Bin’ja was already scraping at his armoured chest. “Bin’ja don’t. You’re still not fully…”

  The tiny chink in his chest was enough to flood the interior with a beautiful pink light. The sensation was much stronger this time with soothing whispers of hope tickling Terry’s ears. The unmistakable sound of a heart beating slowly but steadily filled the area, making everyone feel like small children on their mother’s bosom. A calm like he had never felt before filled his mind. He felt as if he was naked in a warm, perfumed pool that was washing away all the grit and grime of his past and leaving nothing but happiness.

  When the light disappeared, he felt his eyes warm with tears. He quickly rubbed them away with his sleeve before seeing Heera and Anton do the same. “Thank you” he said to Bin’ja who responded with a higher-pitched, pleasant rumble as if he was saying ‘you’re welcome’.

  The experience put everyone in a calm but happy mood. Sara put the ship on auto-pilot and joined the passengers. They ate and chatted contentedly while the ship weaved between asteroids and planets to their destination. They were able to witness an icy comet whizzing by, leaving a streak of dust as it flew the same route as it had for millions of years, an exceedingly lucky experience for everyone on board even in the space age.

  The atmosphere changed quickly when a pink holograph appeared. It reminded them of the criticality of their mission and the vast technological superiority of whoever they were attempting to meet. Without any input from any of them, the holograph morphed into a hooded figure.

  “Welcome, brothers and sisters” said the figure in a high-pitched male voice.

  Anton had been sleeping in the lower deck and he came up rubbing his eyes. “What the…?”

  Terry stood up straight as he addressed the holograph. “My name is Colonel Terry Southend, United Terra Marine Corps. Identify yourself.”

  “Always going back to your military formalism, Mister Southend” said the figure. “I know more about you than you can imagine; your need to be part of something greater to avoid feeling irrelevant. That is why you choose so stubbornly to identify yourself by your military title. That is why you fought so fanatically for your god, even though you were never truly faithful.”

  Though the words stung, Terry had to admit their truthfulness. “Who are you?”

  “That will be seen, Mister Southend. Excuse me if I choose to address you by your non-military title, your type’s yearning to kill gives me a headache. I have taken control of your vessel and will bring it to a safe place on my home world. Do not touch any of your weapons and if you get caught, don’t struggle. You will only make it worse.”

  With that the figure disappeared. “I’ve been over-ridden” said Sara.

  At the port side of the ship, the exceedingly pink glow of a planet twice the size of Earth became visible through the portholes. The pink light looked organic but Terry knew it had to be synthetic. Bin’ja started to get restless as if he could feel a hundred different assaults on his senses.

  “Why did he say ‘if you get caught’?” said Anton. “Caught by who?”

  Everybody was too tense to attempt an answer.

  As they got closer to the planet, they could see that the pink light was a sort of force field that completely surrounded it. A large asteroid belt was only a few thousand kilometres away and they could imagine the force field burning off giant meteors large enough to kill off all life on Earth many times over. To their dismay, the ship was headed directly towards the seemingly impregnable shield.

  “I hope the guy’s got good timing” said Anton as the planet-sized wall approached.

  The sheer size and proximity of the planet robbed any sense of velocity though Terry was sure they were flying at well over Mach ten. The portholes darkened progressively to counter the effects of the bright light and the terrain of the planet soon became visible. Terry saw an ocean far vaster than anything on Earth towards the system’s sun while the coastline of a single enormous continent was visible on the night side.

  “The sun is too far” remarked Heera.

  Terry looked towards the star that glowed red with age. Even with the filtered portholes, he felt that it was too easy to look right into it.

  “Computer, is this planet within the habitable range for life?” he said. Terry had learnt that the habitable range within a system could vary wildly depending on anything from the planet’s own core heat, its magnetic field strength, tidal energy and its axis. But it did seem that the sunlight from the far away star was feeble compared to that of Earth, or any other habitable planet he had seen for that matter.

  “Based on the solar energy emitted by the sun, the distance of the planet from the sun, and other evident sources of heat and energy, the undocumented planet is twenty thousand kilometres outside the minimum habitable range” answered the female voice of the ship computer.

  The ‘surface’ of the light shield was merely a few kilometres away and it remained as solid as before. Anton, a ground hog who had never left Earth prior to the war, gulped anxiously. He hated flying.

  “Can we scan anything on the surface?” said Heera.

  “No, even our life support system is out of our control” replied Sara.

  “I doubt our sensors could penetrate that giant shield anyhow” said Terry.

  “How is this possible?” remarked Heera. “How were they able to settle on a planet so far from the habitable zone? How are they maintaining a planetary shield of this size and strength?”

  Anton was sweating profusely now. “Well, I hope that they have some amount of control over it” he said as he pointed to the wall of light into which they were about to crash.

  Terry closed his eyes tightly when he thought they were about to impact the wall. While reason told him that allowing them to die by letting their primitive ship to crash was unlikely, stupid and wasteful, the sight of the approach was enough to make him cringe and try a futile attempt to protect himself and Heera with his arms.

  When nothing happened, he opened his eyes to see Heera staring back at him with an amused expression. “We’re through the shield, tough guy” she said.

  Coughing to hide his embarrassment, he saw that a hole just the right size to fit t
he Orca had appeared in the light shield which curiously became almost invisible from the other side. He could just about make out the outline of the shield as the hole closed up. If this bright planetary shield had existed before, how had the Renden explorers missed it with its glaring conspicuousness?

  “You guys have got to see this” said Sara, her voice damp with excitement.

  Heera also gasped at the alien but strangely familiar scene beneath them. They were flying above a forest city on the night side of the planet. Trees, many of them bioluminescent, of a hundred thousand different forms thickly populated the land. Green, pink, blue and orange light from the leaves of trees lit up the surface like the night sky decorated with fireworks.

  What struck Terry was how the trees seemed to grow; they seemed to emulate buildings and monuments from a hundred different planets. They were coming down at a twenty degree angle and as they got closer to the ground, the sheer size of the trees became evident. A particularly large, hulking plant that towered more than twice as high as any other was very thick at the base and progressively became thinner towards the canopy. The giant leaves that resembled palm leaves were bioluminescent with a brilliant orange tone. The overall effect was of a volcano spewing lava, its magnitude making it all the more believable; Terry guessed it was roughly a thousand feet tall. The light given off by the trees made it difficult to see their true colour but the trunks all looked uniformly dark, perhaps even black.

  “A clearing is approaching” informed Sara.

  Sure enough, a giant circle of darkness was soon visible. As they got closer, they realised that the clearing was, in fact, a perfectly circular hole in the ground with a diameter of about half a mile.

  “That looks ominous” remarked Anton. Terry had noticed that Anton tended to state the obvious when he was nervous. “I think our host is about to bring us inside.”

  The vessel curved to the right to begin its spiral descent into the massive hole. Whoever had taken control of their ship didn’t seem to worry about any sense of dizziness that the speed and angle at which the ship flew might provoke. It was almost a relief when the portholes of the ship no longer displayed the beautiful landscape and fell into a silent darkness.