The Imperialists: The Complete Trilogy Read online

Terry could sense the creature’s anger and humiliation swelling up. The breathing holes on its long neck were sending out hot air at shorter intervals and its pale face was showing stronger shades of blue. It was just told that failure to accept would result in all Goroths being slaughtered or enslaved; the contrary case leading to their being accepted as equal children of God.

  The mighty Goroth leader stood up, towering twelve feet. “No god forces a choice between enslavement of the body and the enslavement of the soul!” it bellowed in its barking tongue. “You pests dare mock the gods!” It grabbed its large spear and thrust it towards the priest. At the same time, it sent electrical signals in the air from the holes in its protruded forehead for his guards to do the same to the dozen marines who had accompanied the priest, among whom Terry was one.

  The dull sound of a pulse going off emanated from the rifle in Terry’s hands, resulting in the appearance of a large hole in the Goroth king’s chain-mailed chest. It dropped the spear and looked incredulously at the gaping hole. Thick blue blood oozed its way out of the exit wound in its back. With a large thud, the creature who had dared threaten a priest of the One God fell heavily on its back, its four unseeing red eyes still glazed in disbelief.

  The priest wiped his brow and for a split second, had a look of resignation on his face. He looked over his shoulder and with two fingers ordered the events to follow. The Goroth king had decided the fate of his people. The flash from a fission-missile explosion in the distance lit the palace interior.

  Terry opened his eyes and gasped. For a moment he didn’t know where he was. Beads of sweat rolled down his forehead. Despite all the modifications done to him to dampen fatigue, he hadn’t slept for almost forty-eight hours and he felt the stiffness of his muscles in his shoulders and legs. He looked at the marine in front of him and his visor displayed the name ‘Staff Sergeant Mauno Kallio’ next to his head. Fifteen other marines were looking at him.

  The noise of the Orca transporter had brought him out of the brief reminiscence of his first planetary invasion six years ago on Thalia. He had no idea why that memory had suddenly wormed itself into his mind. Perhaps it was the inevitable nervousness that accompanied a tactical drop, and no less the final one of the whole Janpu invasion campaign.

  First Lieutenant Terry Southend was perhaps the most decorated marine in his battalion despite his relative youth. His parents were strict followers of the One God lifestyle. His mother, consequently, had given birth to eight children, Terry being the third. He would have liked her to have had more but her health deteriorated after giving birth to his youngest brother. Now approaching thirty years of age, Terry would soon have to think about selecting a wife to bear his children, the soldiers of the future, the ammunition of God.

  The alien voice of Captain Tureog rasped in his earpiece. “My company is ready.” Two hundred grasshopper-like Ewani warriors would have surrounded the base of the forty-story Amber Tower, the most important government palace on the whole of planet Janpu.

  Terry almost felt sorry for any enemy that had to face Tureog’s company of shock troops. Ewani were fearless, strong fighters whose natural speed made them perfect for swift, high-impact attacks. Terry was eager to show that his marines could be just as deadly.

  Martial race, a term coined by the British at the height of their empire. The term lost relevance when military scientists concluded that all humans regardless of race were capable of amazing military feats with the right mental and physical conditioning. Humans were just too genetically tight-knit for the term to maintain relevance. But the discovery of other new intelligent life-forms breathed new life into it. Though Rendens, a corruption of the Imperial Chinese word for human, were generally accepted to be the perfect, all-round soldiers, certain aliens could perform physical feats that were impossible for them. The Ewani were a prime example of what Renden conditioning and God could create.

  An orange light bounced off the clouds beneath the Orca as it descended to position. Terry’s visor told him that they were fifty metres directly above the domed tower. The view of the evening sun was calm and serene, an ironic contrast to the death about to be unleashed on the last Janpek resistance.

  “Don’t forget to use gas as soon as you go through the roof” he said unnecessarily to his men.

  “We’ll teach those grass-hopping bastards how real marines do it” said Corporal Baker, a loud-mouthed but reliable marine from Ireland.

  Terry used the tight-beam Web-Com link to see Baker’s expression through his visor and it was predictably nervous. Despite all his bravado, Terry knew he didn’t particularly like heights.

  “Drop off in ten” said the Orca pilot.

  Baker, oblivious that his squad leader was looking right at him through his carbon-plastic mask, sighed silently but heavily as if to prepare himself for the drop.

  “Sergeant Kallio, you jump first. I follow” said Terry even though this was their fiftieth combat drop together and they had always done so in the same order.

  “Yes, sir” said Kallio just as unnecessarily.

  The floor of the Orca folded inward creating a hole that ended an inch from the toes of Terry’s team. The vessel was in a cloud but his visor indicated the shape and distance of the domed Amber Tower. He stood up and his team followed suit. He looked down once more and held his breath.

  “Go! Go! Go!” said the pilot as soon as the ship stopped its descent.

  The armour-clad Sergeant Kallio went shooting into the whiteness. Terry took a deep breath and jumped less than a second after him. He was out of the clouds within a couple adrenalin-pumped heart beats. The orange dome of the Tower was three hundred feet beneath him, glistening from the light rain. Kallio was looking down, undoubtedly looking for any signs of the enemy.

  Terry saw only two guards on the roof. It seemed that the Janpek rebels were focused on the formidable-looking Ewani warriors who were gathering at the base of the Tower. Their primitive radio-wave communication jammed by the Renden invaders, the only way for the two guards to tell their comrades what they saw was having one of them go down the single hatch on the roof. None of that was necessary, however, since they never saw the marines swooping down from the clouds.

  Kallio took the first shot as soon as he saw the two slender figures looking down at the mass of soldiers gathered beneath them. The almost-silent pulse explosion sent a homing dart towards the head of one of the guards. As soon as it penetrated deep inside the alien’s brain, it exploded leaving a pulp of white and grey where the head had been. Terry locked his weapon on the second guard who was still oblivious to his colleague’s death. His rifle released the same dart with an identical result.

  Hundreds of pulse rifles started to fire from the ground simultaneously to give the Ewani cover. Little did the rebels know that the Ewani Company was just a ruse for the marine team dropping from the clouds. Two pulse cannons fired just in time to cover the sound of the marines’ landing.

  Kallio landed with a loud cracking sound on the dome as did Terry less than twenty feet away. A loud hiss of pressurised gas existed from the vents on his bent knees, absorbing the enormous shock of dropping in an armoured amplifier suit from more than three hundred feet. Two hexagonal blocks that had constituted the roof were cracked into several pieces. The rest of the team landed at close intervals. Terry had to be impressed at the sturdiness of the structure.

  Corporal Baker was the last one to land. “All here” he reported as he stood up from a crouching position. As soon as he did so, he slipped on the slick dome surface and made circling gestures with his arms he struggled to regain balance. Terry immediately leapt forward and grabbed his shoulder before pulling him back to an upright position. “Thanks, sir” he said with a hint of embarrassment.

  The popping sound of Janpek projectile weapons steadily grew as they attempted to thwart the Ewani who were leaping up the outside of the hexagonal Tower. Two marines were kneeling with their rifles pointed at the single hatch that opened on to the roof. Ther
e was a force of more than two hundred Janpek soldiers protecting their queen in the Tower. She had threatened to kill herself rather than be used as a Renden puppet; Terry’s mission stated that any attempted suicide or murder of the queen had to be prevented at any cost. This was her final stand before her assured death. Janpeks had a deep respect for their monarchy and her death at the hands of any invading force would make colonisation difficult for at least three generations.

  “Draw grid” ordered Terry.

  Two marines laid down three small pyramids on the roof. As soon as they were turned on, three invisible wave beams were sent between the three grid bombs. One of the marines started a countdown started from five. When he reached zero, a perfect triangular hole emerged from dusty explosion.

  “Go!” he ordered again.

  Sergeant Kallio released covering gas from his elbow vents and jumped through. Terry followed and sent two dozen sticky-sensors flying from his shoulder shafts which would stick to anything. The covering gas hid his team from most waves but the data sent back to his visor computer from the sticky-sensors immediately created a view of his surroundings as if no gas had been vented. The Janpeks were blind while he could see everything even more clearly than with his own eyes.

  The recreation of the situation showed most of the Janpeks looking outside through reinforced hexagonal windows while shooting through the gaps. Some were staring through the gas, unsure whether they should shoot or not. The visor camera highlighted in red the queen sitting with wide black eyes not forty feet from where he stood. She had the same white, translucent skin of her kind with an excessively small nose, even for a Janpek. She was wearing a white dress made of silk that her servants would have secreted from their own thumbs.

  They knew that the invaders were not willing to risk the death of the Janpek queen. Their projectile weapons were fairly powerful and could sometimes penetrate Renden armour in some of the weaker spots. The greater danger was the queen, sensing her own capture, ordering one of her bodyguards to shoot her. He had to move fast. All the other Janpeks were a threat.

  “I’ll get the queen. Kill everyone else” he said.

  His team of fourteen marines emerged from the covering gas like devils. Terry pointed his rifle at the rebels nearest to the queen and put pressure on his trigger. Invisible bursts of pulse waves tore them to pieces, splattering the shocked monarch with their grey body fluids. He felt the shock of a projectile hitting his shoulder and he swayed momentarily to the right before advancing again. His men were efficiently bringing death to rebels, either by pulse fire or using their hyper-vibrating bayonets. On top of that, the first Ewani warriors were emerging from the windows, sometimes grabbing Janpeks and throwing them down towards the ground.

  Terry saw the queen fidget with a small firearm, too shocked to bring it to her head. He had to act fast. Janpeks were fragile beings so he didn’t dare use the stun mode on his pulse rifle lest it kill her. Instead, he sent an order to his rifle to load an electrocuting dart that would render her unconscious. She was only twenty paces away but he knelt for the shot. Just when he was about to release the homing dart, a large Janpek projectile hit him in the middle of the visor, creating a web-like crack mark.

  The impact was enough to have him step three paces back and he felt momentarily light headed. He ejected the visor and was dismayed to find that visibility was far poorer with the wisps of covering gas still hanging in the air. To his horror, the queen was raising her small weapon to her head. He leapt forward in one amplifier-assisted jump and came within three paces of her.

  Barely four feet tall, she looked up at him with her head held high. Despite her alien appearance, he could feel the haughty defiance reeking from her. Her weapon was pressed against her temple but she remained still. She scrunched up her expression to something he could only interpret as a hate-filled scowl and aimed the weapon at his unprotected face.

  He fought his instinct to duck and stared at the barrel that could release a brass stud into his face. She looked at the carnage going on around them, how her people were being torn to shreds by Rendens and Ewani.

  “Die” she said in the One Tongue.

  As soon as the words came from her mouth, a homing dart struck her neck. Her eyes grew even wider as it delivered a carefully dosed electric shock. Terry rushed forward to catch her as she collapsed. In absence of his protective visor, he flipped open an eyepiece inside his helmet to show her vital signs. Based on a library of data collected mostly incognito on hundreds and thousands of Janpeks, she appeared to be dehydrated, fatigued but otherwise healthy. Terry sighed heavily.

  The fighting had ended and he looked up at Corporal Baker who had delivered the homing dart. “Good job, corporal” he said. Baker raised his visor and nodded. Most of the Ewani had made it to the top floor and they now stood sometimes with their long bony fingers wrapped around the soft necks of surrendering rebels. Most of the other Janpeks had not survived and their bodies were mere streaks of body fluids and mushy organs due to their lack of armour.

  Terry looked at the unconscious face of the Janpek queen. Her age had made her skin more translucent than her younger kin but he still recognised the strength and dignity of the monarch. He even regretted that she would be perhaps tortured both physically and psychologically until she accepted the One God Bible.

  Janpu was a populous planet that was situated in what had previously been a neutral zone between Atlantic Alliance and Chinese territories. Their buffer status had meant they had not been colonised by any of the six Renden empires and, therefore, free to continue their godless, decadent ways. Now that was ended and the Chinese Empire would probably get the message; nothing will stand in the way of the Atlantic Alliance and the One God Cause.

  “Congratulations, Lieutenant Southend” rasped Captain Tureog whose Ewani warriors were surrounding his marines. “That was flawless execution.”

  “Thank you, sir” he replied. “Your warriors were as impressive as ever.”

  “I will take custody of the queen, lieutenant.”

  Terry felt a slight challenge in the Ewani captain’s voice. “With your permission, I would like to deliver her myself to the colonel.” He knew that Tureog wouldn’t refuse him; even though the Ewani outranked him, he was still a non-Renden member of the Atlantic Alliance Marine Corps.

  “Six of my brothers died scaling the wall, Southend. I think it is only right that the queen be delivered by Ewani hands.”

  He could feel the tension growing as his marines began to look around them and realize they were hopelessly outnumbered. Even with similar numbers, the Ewani were masters in speed and close-combat. Terry knew that not one of his team would survive but would the captain not realize that would effectively mean the massacre of his Ewani unit?

  “Enough!” yelled the voice of Colonel Davis, the battalion commander, through the Web-Com. “Get down here, Southend, with the termite queen. Tureog, your unit did a good job. See to it everyone gets a good rest.”

  Terry lifted the queen and walked past Tureog without looking at him with his men following. Another invasion was finally over.

  Chapter 2: News

  ‘Even despite the advances in science, technology and engineering, the world we inhabit is experiencing a dearth of social, economic and political ideas. We will become the forefront of social and political tolerance, enemy to militarism and protector of trade. We will construct a society of acceptance and harmony.’ – Daisuke Sasaki, Eleventh President of the Pacific Federation, Inauguration Speech of the New Pacific Federation Parliament on Pacifica, year 2445.

  The opponent’s punches were clean and efficient, undoubtedly the result of years of training. But there lacked the final desperateness to them. Heera Kim knew that although mediocre fighters needed to keep their minds clear and cold, it was hot passion and sense of purpose that ultimately wins a fight. This one was a faithful student that had well absorbed the teachings of Gong Bang Sool, but lacked the true winner’s, or killer’s instinct.


  The octagonal sparring area was made of tatami and the two fighters were wearing black bio-rubber suits that recorded the movements and hitting force for later analysis. Pressure points and other weak points in the body were better protected to avoid serious injury. The two women had been fighting for ten minutes and both were only just managing to control their breathing.

  She was beginning to get bored and decided to end the spar. While blocking a mid-kick to the torso with her knee, she reached out her fist aiming for the opponent’s neck, effectively combining attack, Gong, with defence, Bang. But suddenly she felt a sharp thud to her temple and for a split second the world turned black.

  The next thing she knew she was sitting on the floor supporting her upper body with both hands. She realized what had happened. She had tried a classic, predictable combination and that had backfired. The opponent, a girl of Navajo descent ten years her junior, had combined her attack with not only a kick but also a blow with her palm which had landed on her temple. Heera was suddenly furious with herself. Losing to a middle-class fighter like that, she really must have had a lot on her mind.

  The victorious opponent had a smug grin on her face, beaming at the fact that she had downed such a formidable fighter as Heera whose competitive nature urged her to get up and show what she could really do. But that would be disrespectful and frowned upon. Instead, she slowly got up and congratulated the girl with a strong handshake. Next time, she wouldn’t hold back against this one.

  Still furious with herself, she went to take a shower. The cold water seemed to cool her hot head. The news she had received earlier that day writhed itself back into her consciousness. One month? Would that be the last time she would see her family, friends, indeed, Earth? Did her destiny really lie in combat rather than medicine?

  As a child, Heera had excelled in sports and she held particular esteem for combat sports. She practiced Gong Bang Sool since she was seven and won numerous competitions until she turned eighteen. A scout for the Pacific Federation Ministry of Defence had turned up at her school, just days before graduation. He had wanted her to join not just the military but the Phantom program.