The Imperialists: The Complete Trilogy

by H. T. Kofruk

  "Stay away, dig yourself into mud if you can" he said before throwing the thing into the flowing sap with one final cry of exertion.

  Heera had no intention of looking away from her lover's final moment but the sudden pink light blinded her. A high pitched screech made her feel as if her ears were bleeding. It was all over within seconds.

  Chapter 31: The Beginning

  ‘I never personally knew the man. He was of the One God cult whom I had sworn to destroy as a knight. Some have the nerve to criticize his final honorable sacrifice as his last act of genocide. After having read his work after the war, I can see what a torn being he was between hope for the future and fear of the past. I can deeply sympathize with such emotions. It also showed me that each and every human is capable of change for the better.’ – Paul Camileri, interview with press, year 2935

  The landing vessel was one of the first space-faring ships created by the Ewani, mostly a copy of Renden technology but with some original Ewani design elements such as the antennae-like sensors at the front of the ship. Five years had passed since the last time she was on this planet. Much had changed, for the better she hoped.

  It was the Ewani, with Renden assistance of course, who were now responsible for this sector of the Yinhexi. No one believed that the current system was foolproof, with the Grand Council of the leaders of twenty intelligent species, selected based on their population, technological capacity, location within the Yinhexi and willingness to act as 'keepers of the peace', gathering every five standard years or whenever an emergency session was convened. Rendens, still by far the most powerful race, were not part of the Grand Council, since any active attempt to influence other worlds was deemed 'imperialistic'. Their role was perhaps more important and powerful; to act on the demands of races 'governed' by the Council if their rights and liberties were under threat. Few Earth-born Rendens retained the stomach for butting into extra-terrestrial affaires; Earth was undergoing painful changes of its own.

  On that fateful day five years ago, when the Nikruk ships in the orbit of the Renden home planet suddenly had stopped firing, it had taken a good few minutes for the United Terra fleet to realize that they were no longer under threat. Only twenty ships survived that momentous battle though thousands of crewmembers of destroyed ships had managed to flee in escape pods. Nikruk ships idly floated through the vacuum of space while some started to give in to Earth’s gravity. It all looked as if the orbit of Earth had become a graveyard of warships. Later internal exploration of the ships revealed hundreds of thousands of dead aliens, though one ship held a still-live individual of the mythical ‘leadership caste’ who called himself Shi’ran. Despite life-support, the highly intelligent, multilingual alien perished shortly afterwards without giving much information.

  Similar phenomena were discovered in multiple locations around the Yinhexi, not least around the Nikruk home-planet where the last fleet bearing the Chinese dragon insignia had been almost totally destroyed. New discoveries of defunct Nikruk breeding and manufacturing facilities were still being made, a testament to the resourcefulness, intelligence and raw-power wielded by the ‘Mother’.

  Bongani smiled broadly at her from across the aisle, the ring-finger of his left hand now home to a gold-and-silver band. He had officially married David two years ago and adopted three orphans; Earth was full of them. He was perhaps the most famous hero from the war, and his smuggler past was quickly forgotten, a potential liability for his campaign to become Governor-Chief of Afrika, one of the nine Governor-Chief positions in the newly formed United Terra Committee. Each Governor-Chief would hold the position of United Terra President for a year before ceding it to the next in line.

  Qin had already won the first democratic election in China in centuries for the same position. Although professing to be a strict, non-nonsense military man, it seemed he couldn’t resist bullying tactics during his campaign, using his vast ex-military, ex-intelligence network to implicitly threaten his opponents. It was almost no wonder he won by a landslide. Heera was glad he was too busy as governor-chief-elect to come along with her.

  She was also glad, however, that Han Fann had come along. The Han name still had a lot of prestige and he unofficially became a cultural ambassador for what was formerly the New Han Empire, though he was officially the chairman of the Han Enterprises company, the holding company of the various businesses owned by the Han family. He mostly spent his time writing memoirs and giving speeches, leaving the management of the company to more ‘competent’ men and women. It was during one of his speeches at a university near Heera’s home town of Busan that the two had met, almost by accident and fallen in love. It had almost seemed that their respective paths across thousands of light-years and some of the most fateful events in Renden history made it difficult for them to connect with other people.

  Heera hadn’t really known him in the Jibaru System but as she got to know him, she was still intrigued to find out what he had been doing when she had been, for example, in a comatose condition on the planet of the Hummers. But she also felt that he knew how such experiences had changed them, the perspective they had given them.

  “We’re landing in five minutes” informed the Ewani pilot in his strange language.

  Fann grasped her hand, knowing the swell of emotion that was bound to arrive soon. It hit her when the hatch of the ship opened to reveal a sunny day and the mangled remains of the Great Tree. She almost fell sideways but refused to cry.

  A four year old boy with mouse-brown hair looked up at his mother. “Are you okay, mum?” he said in Korean.

  Heera looked down at her son with eyes glazed with tears and remarked how much he resembled his father. She smiled and nodded before scooping him up in her arms kissing him.

  Another ship had landed after theirs and Heera spied a couple walking solemnly out. She recognized Paul Camileri and his wife, Elena, though they had never been formally introduced. Paul was a good friend of Bongani’s, who never neglected to mention how Paul had saved his life during the Battle of Earth by launching nuclear missiles from the sea. She remembered having heard about him building a house on an island on a lake somewhere in England and acting as a sort of priest for those who came for his blessings.

  Inexplicable warmth filled her mind and she knew that Bin’ja was nearby. Behind the Catholic couple, she spied a transparent life-support device hovering out as it was pushed by a medical droid. With her son, who she had chosen to name Terry, or Tae-ri to her parents, she walked slowly towards the glass cylinder, nodding her greetings to Paul and Elena as she passed them by. The dam of her will could no longer hold back the torrent of tears on seeing the withered, diminished figure of Bin'ja.

  Though they had only met once since the events five years ago, their minds had stayed connected and she could feel his loneliness however much he tried to cover it up. She couldn't fathom what it could be like being the very last of a kind. The grief he was feeling was not as virulent as what she had felt on losing Terry or discovering the deaths of members of her family upon her return to Earth. But it was far more wistful and enduring, like a soft ache of the heart that wouldn’t subside.

  But today, despite his obviously horrendous health, his eyes were bright gold with hope. He rumbled weakly on seeing her. It frustrated her that he would not see what was about to happen. She would lose him forever, leaving a cold empty hole in her heart where he had been. He would live on, however, and watch over her in his new neural-virtual form.

  She walked next to the cylinder with little Terry staring curiously at the last Nikruk. Some of the giant branches of the tree had already fallen to the dry ground, resembling dark boulders. The empty canopy let through a vast amount of light and everyone was soon uncomfortably sweating from the heat.

  The pink of the new leaves was visible from afar but their size could only be appreciated from proximity. The younger tree almost looked as if it was stepping out of the trunk of the dead giant. The slanting trunk, already almost ten metre
s in diameter, had commensurately widened the hole into which the older Terry had thrown the small seed of the Mother which Bin'ja had unknowingly preserved in his chest since his birth. The Neanderthal 'cousins' had introduced a viral agent into it so that it would act as a death-pill to the warped second Mother. It had not only immediately killed the tree, but also all the trees linked to the second Mother planted in various unknown locations in the Yinhexi.

  A portion of the bark of the younger tree started to tremble and finally broke off as if it knew who had come. The medical droid opened the glass cylinder and unhooked the life-support tubes and wires from Bin'ja's body. Paul, Bongani and Fann helped the alien, still big and weighty for human standards despite his ill-health, and led him right below the tree. With a grunt, the old Nikruk knelt underneath the hole in the cracked bark.

  Heera silently shook from crying. She had lost so much at this exact spot, not least the love of her life and father of her son. His final act of penance for his past had culminated in the deaths of millions of bio-engineered Nikruk, but also the survival of millions, perhaps even billions of humans. Rendens still had an important role to play in the post-imperialist galactic order, that of peacekeeper and assister to the billions of intelligent beings who had suffered under their rule.

  The hole in the dark trunk bubbled before releasing a string of the Holy Sap, the blood of Mother. Bin'ja opened his mouth, waiting for the poison of life to take him to the place beyond death from which he would act as a guiding fatherly voice to the first natural-born Nikruk in decades.

  Heera resisted the selfish urge to push him away from the poisonous sap, to keep his warmth in her heart just a little bit longer. He closed his yellow eyes when the transparent pink liquid entered his mouth, only to flip them open one final time. He sighed pleasurably before his body, face, even his eyes became hard, brown, and rigid.

  The connection was just as suddenly extinguished from Heera's mind but instead of anguish, she felt a warm calm. Just as Terry had given her the most important thing in her life before dying, his likeness to love and care for, Bin'ja had given her a final warmth of the heart.