They Answered The Call

Allana, the capital city of Eleania

Ten days after the Battle of the Jaleeni System, 2174 A.D.

Nimto tugged at his ambassadorial sash one last time and looked down to make sure there were no creases and that it was in the right place. The Republic Pathfinder shuttle ten meters in front of him was in the last stages of deploying the automated staircase, and he saw President Lopez waiting at the hatch for it to fully deploy before descending.

She waved at him, and he returned the human gesture and proceeded to walk towards the stairs that had finally finished assembling. President Lopez started down the steps, and Nimto waited for her to step onto the ground before walking the last five paces to stand in front of her. He bowed his head and addressed the president of the Republic in his most officious tone.

“On behalf of the Eleani Sovereignty, I welcome you to our world. What is ours is yours, Madame President.” President Lopez smiled and stepped closer to him, speaking in a low voice. “Please call me Mea, Nimto. It is just us here. I would like a few moments of normal conversation before the meetings begin, and everyone insists on using formal titles. I find it exhausting and ponderous.”

Nimto smiled and gestured towards the Capitol building in the distance. “We can walk there if you wish; the lari blossoms are in bloom this time of the year, and the scent is wonderful.” She beamed at him and encircled one of her arms in his. “That sounds wonderful, Nimto; I would enjoy that very much after breathing the recycled air on the ship for days.”

They proceeded to walk together, Nimto being careful to match her walking pace as he guided them towards a stone path that passed through two rows of lari blossom trees that were a riot of red and purple flowers. The scent became stronger as they got closer to the beginning of the stone walking path, and President Lopez breathed deeply and looked at him with an appreciative smile on her face.

“That smells wonderful, Nimto. Tell me, how is Alixa doing? I have heard reports from my military advisors that they have been extremely pleased with the results of the Eleani cadets thus far and consider the exchange program a complete success.”

Nimto smiled widely at the mention of his manling as he replied. “His letters are the highlight of our days when they arrive, and he seems to be doing well. He has a best friend, and he speaks very highly of the human cadets he is training with. They have accepted him and the other Eleani cadets with open arms, and he is thriving despite the difficult training and being away from home for so long.”

“I am very happy to hear that, Nimto. I know it wasn’t easy for you and your mate to deal with his absence and allow him to be trained in Republic ways. Thank you for allowing him to go; it is important that our continued integration continues to proceed as well as it has.” She stopped to pull a lari flower off a low-hanging branch and brought it to her nose, inhaling deeply before carefully placing it inside one of her chest pockets.

They resumed walking slowly, and Nimto decided that this was the perfect time to ask the question that has been weighing heavily on his mind and the minds of most of the high-ranking government officials ever since the Republic fleet arrived and saved them from being wiped out by the Insectoid fleet. The sacrifice of the entire Republic fleet in defense of the Jaleeni increased the desire to know tenfold. Why? Why are they doing this?

Nimto had to know. He stopped walking and faced President Lopez. “Mea, there is something that I and many others in the government need to know. Please don’t think that by asking this, we are questioning the intentions of the Republic or of humanity in any way. We are forever indebted to you for what you did and for coming to our aid when no one else would. We would just like to know why. Why did the Republic come to our defense? Why did your entire fleet sacrifice itself to save the Jaleeni?

President Lopez listened to him, and she was looking down at the fallen lari petals that covered the stone walkway as he finished asking his question. After almost a minute of looking down, she lifted her head and looked him in the eyes.

“Nimto, I understand why you need to know, and I will answer truthfully and to the best of my ability. You do not understand the horrors we went through during our last war. There was a point in time when the worst aspects of our species achieved supremacy. There used to be a balance between good and evil in our world, and that balance was always threatened but maintained. One good person could fight ten evil people and win because their cause was just and morally right.”

She took a deep breath and furrowed her brows as she continued speaking. “The problem with good people is that they attribute their virtues to those who do not have them, and sometimes they let evil people do the things they do because it is happening to someone else and not them. Good people follow the rules and give the benefit of the doubt to those who do not deserve it.

They give them chances, make excuses as to why, or try to come up with humane methods of punishment and rehabilitation. This does not work for the evil and the weak-minded who follow them because of promises of money and full bellies.

There came a point when an evil government took control of almost half the world, and we did nothing. When the evil government committed genocide, we did nothing. When they sent tens of millions to labor camps and worked them to death, we did nothing. The free societies were at the pinnacle of technological advancement and military capabilities, and they had the population to support a righteous crusade and put an end to the evilest power to ever rise on Earth.

When they should have united and put an end to the darkness that fell over half of their world, they lacked the fortitude to do so. They made excuses about territorial sovereignty and called into question our right to interfere. Large segments of the population were apathetic at best, and a small percentage were unabashed traitors, their weak minds already turned by the propaganda employed by the evil government.

They launched biological and chemical attacks that killed almost half of the free world population, and those who remained to survive responded in kind, and then the war went nuclear. They had to commit terrible crimes against humanity just to protect themselves, and they destroyed their souls doing so.

That was their punishment for allowing the evil to fester and grow when they should have excised it before it tried to conquer the whole world. And when the soldiers came back home after their crusade, they found that the very evil they had just finished fighting had rooted itself in their own communities.

The cowards, the criminals, and the evil held sway in their absence, and the barely functional governments could not or chose not to do anything about it. Victory was more important than expending resources and manpower to police the criminals and the gangs that formed fiefdoms in the power vacuum and took advantage of the weak and defenseless.

All the criminals, the gangs, and the evil people took advantage of the absence of good men and women who would have protected the defenseless had they been there. They weren’t there; they were fighting in the war.

What followed was almost six years of rape, murder, brutalization, and the virtual slavery of millions of citizens by those who succumbed to their worst tendencies when society collapsed and there were no longer consequences.

The will of the strong and brutal was paramount in those six years in most of the places where the government held no sway. The veterans went into a rage at the injustice they saw and the betrayal of the core principles of their society by the very governments that had sent them to fight in the war. They formed vigilante groups, and these hardened soldiers, who had faced the horrors of the worst war to ever be waged in human history, unleashed themselves.

They swiftly brought an end to the injustices heaped upon their families, their friends, and their neighbors. The people who were strong when facing meek, defenseless citizens, found out they were not so strong, and they fell like wheat before the scythe as they were hunted down and killed mercilessly.

After the returning veterans cleansed their villages, towns, and cities, they overthrew their governments and took control. What followed was more war, more death, and more genocide as the new veteran-led governments joined together and launched a concerted effort to bring the whole world under its sway and finally rid itself of the people that have caused so much death, pain, and misery to their fellow humans for so long.

The great purge was brutal and merciless, and it only ended when those who carried it out saw that their own families and friends were terrified of what they had become and realized that they were no longer heroic soldiers but executioners. The souls of the survivors and the very Earth itself had finally had their fill of bloodshed, and it ended.”

“So, you ask me why, Nimto? This is why. Never again will we stand by and watch others be conquered, enslaved, or wiped out of existence. Never again will we make excuses, Nimto. Our souls could not bear it again after what we did to each other all those years ago, and we will carry the burden of what we have done for as long as we exist as a species.

This is why our children are taught from a young age the importance of courage, duty, and sacrifice. They are taught that the days of blurred lines between what is right and what is wrong no longer exist. Those children grew up to become the men and women who fought here and in the Jaleeni system. The only thing more deadly than a human fighting for a cause they believe in is a human fighting to defend others who are worthy of such an effort, like the Eleani and the Jaleeni.”

Nimto had been listening intently as she spoke, and he saw the tears falling from her eyes as she bared the troubled soul of humanity to him. After a few moments, he asked another question that needed to be answered.

“And what about the traitor queen? Is she to be forgiven for what the Insectoids did when they glassed dozens of worlds and murdered almost seven hundred billion souls? My government wants to know why you didn’t destroy her ship. Why are you allowing her to build a Hive? They cannot be trusted.” His anger was palpable, and his breathing became rapid and shallow as he finished asking her his questions.

President Lopez looked at him, staring into his soul the same way she did when she came on the holo screen that fateful day when the Republic responded to their distress call. He averted his eyes, not able to handle the intensity of her gaze.

“Nimto, I have communicated with the queen. She came alone, knowing that she would most likely be destroyed, in the hopes of forming a friendship and an alliance with us against the rest of Hives. She may be a former enemy, but I respect her for risking her life the way she did. Look at the state of the galaxy right now, Nimto.” She pointed to the sky above them to emphasize her point as she continued speaking.

“A large portion of the Commonwealth military is in open rebellion; there are twelve billion Jaleeni refugees with no home, and the Insectoids suddenly withdrew to their original borders for unknown reasons, consolidating their remaining forces in their own space where they have the defensive advantage. We are incapable of effectively prosecuting a war right now. The possibility of an alliance with a queen offers us a chance to finally understand the enemy, how they think, and figure out a way to end this war.

The queen also provided me with some insight into why they are so aggressive. They are not from this area of space, Nimto. They came here as refugees from another part of the galaxy, fleeing from a powerful enemy that attacked them without provocation and wiped out over 98% of their queens. They are still terrified of that enemy even after hundreds of years; it is almost as if the horror they went through has become a part of their genetic heritage.”

Nimto was astounded by the revelations President Lopez was sharing with him. The Commonwealth had always assumed that the incidental contact between the Commonwealth and the Insectoid Empire was a natural result of the expansion of two native powers, not that the Insectoids were from somewhere else and came to this region of space as refugees fleeing from extermination.

As he processed the information, he was able to start seeing things from the Insectoid perspective and imagined how the Commonwealth might have responded to the encroachment of the Insectoid Empire if they had been attacked and almost exterminated by another arthropodal species in the past.

He suspected that the Commonwealth would have had the same reaction, especially considering just how dissimilar and alien they were compared to the commonplace mammalian species. Despite himself, he found his curiosity piqued, and he wanted to know more about the enemy that attacked the Insectoids. “Did the queen tell you what happened?” he asked, pressing for more information.

President Lopez nodded and responded. “They were a space-faring species for millennia, and they were alone in their area of space. Their empire spanned over a hundred stars, and their population was more than a hundred trillion. They made first contact with another space-faring species in one of their border systems and attempted to communicate telepathically like they do.”

She paused, as if unsure how to proceed. “From what the queen tells me, the ships that violated their territory left, and they let them go, unsure of what to do. This had never happened before, and they were excited by the prospect of there being another species, despite the aliens inability to communicate telepathically. Less than a lunar month later, an armada of over 100,000 ships invaded their space.”

Nimto gaped, his mouth opening in shock at the number he had just been told. “100,000 ships?” He stammered, “How is that possible?” President Lopez nodded and continued telling the story. “I asked the queen, and she assures me that it is correct, that they numbered over ten to the power of five, in her words.

She said that the ships swarmed over their worlds, dropping antimatter bombs. Within a cycle of the start of the war, the ships had reached their home world, and they bombarded it with asteroids. She said the Hive mother got the idea to use the asteroids on the V’rni from this attack on their home world by the enemy. What remained of their species fled on their ships for over a hundred and thirty cycles before finally settling in this region of space and rebuilding their empire.”

Nimto did not know how to respond to what was just revealed to him. “I had the same response you are having now, Nimto. This is why I am allowing the queen to build a Hive; if that enemy is out there and has been expanding for all this time, then it is no longer a matter of if, but when they will arrive in our region of space.

They chased the Insectoids for years before giving up. They know the direction they fled in. I do not think they will just let them survive after wiping out over a hundred trillion of them. They will come here, and if we are all fighting each other, then we will all die. I need this queen to take over the Insectoid Empire and become Hive Mother. I need the Commonwealth Navy to finish their rebellion and form a new government. I need all our species to be unified and prepared for the coming invasion by the enemy. We either stand together or we cease to exist.”

Nimto looked at President Lopez’s face and saw the determination in her features. He nodded slowly. “I agree. I will make sure my government supports your efforts, and I will get the Xenxin in line as well.”

President Lopez nodded in appreciation and encircled her arm back into his. They continued to walk along the stone path in silence, and Nimto sadly wondered if Alixa would ever know peace in his lifetime again.