The War of Pawns (The Human Chronicles -- Book Three)

ISBN: 978-0-9858849-2-5

Email:
[email protected]

Website:
TheHumanChronicles.com

Adam Cain is an alien with an attitude.

His story continues…

Chapter One

Humans.

Damn, Humans!

Senior Overlord Yan’wal Ra Melk closed the file on his computer and rose from his desk. He moved to the spacious grooming station in his stateroom aboard the Class-7 starship
UN-444
and splashed some water on his face, before calling up a strong intoxicant beverage from the dietary module.

Once his mind had cleared, the Overlord returned to his desk to mentally digest the information he’d just received. What he had learned did not please him, not in the least.

It was the autopsy report on the creatures recovered at the battle of Zylim-4, including the bodies of the two dead Klin. Since no one in The Expansion had seen a Klin in the flesh for nearly 4,000 years – even a dead one – the information was of mild interest to the rapt historian within the Overlord. The significance of this discovery was still working its way through his consciousness. What impact it would have on The Expansion remained to be seen, but undoubtedly, it would be major.

Unless, of course, it was overshadowed by the revelations in the second part of the report he had just read…

This concerned the other race of beings who had been involved in the Zylim-4 battle, that of the creatures called ‘Humans.’ Although the
Klin
autopsy had not produced any real surprises – after all, Klin were probably the oldest known race in the Alliance – the report on the
Humans
had left Yan’wal with a feeling of foreboding of which he was very unfamiliar.

As the report related, the Humans were Primes, as were 80-percent of the known superior races in the galaxy, yet there were features within their anatomy which set them apart from most of the others. First of all, the bodies displayed a remarkably dense bone structure and muscle mass, accompanied by a thick, tenacious skin that formed an almost impervious barrier against the elements. In addition, the report surmised that the Humans came from a heavy-gravity world, yet in Yan’wal’s brief experience with the creatures, they did not display any of the slothfulness that was generally associated with heavy-worlders.

In fact, these Humans appeared to possess a sophisticated range of coordination, quickness, cunning, and even uncanny intelligence, traits he had never before experienced in creatures with such a planetary heritage. Combined with the fact that physically they were virtually indestructible, Yan’wal had cause to furrow his wide brow even more when he considered the possible scenarios of the coming clash with the Humans upon their home ground.

Even as he sat in his stateroom, the Overlord knew incredible forces were massing around him for an assault upon the Human homeworld – a planet called Earth. The actual battle would come months in the future, yet the planning and execution for the attack would come from him and his senior military staff. In normal circumstances, Yan’wal would have considered such a responsibility an honor, yet the events over the past few weeks had shaken his confidence to a level that both infuriated, and perplexed, the Senior Overlord.

First there had been the space battle off the planet Dimloe, where his entire fleet had nearly been destroyed in the first encounter with the Humans. Even though the conflict had resulted in a Juirean victory, Yan’wal was inclined to accept Fleet Commander Siegor’s assessment that the battle had, indeed, been lost – until the Humans deliberately threw the outcome in favor of the Juireans. Why they would do this was just another of the enigmas surrounding this barbaric race.

Next was the ground battle on the mining world of Zylim-4. At its conclusion, Yan’wal counted 432 of his most-skilled Juirean Guard among the dead, with only 63 of the Humans as casualties. It was the single-largest loss of Juirean life in a ground battle since the Limon-Polesess Uprising over a thousand years before. In the 17 ground battles that had taken place during that conflict, a little over 1,000 of the Guard had been killed –
and that was against an entire planet
. Now Yan’wal had experienced nearly half as many casualties in a single battle, and against only a handful of untrained and ill-equipped Humans.

In the aftermath of these two encounters, Yan’wal had participated in dozens of conferences with The Council, and he had not sensed any blame for these events being directed solely at him. The Council was more pragmatic; all they wanted was a resolution to the current crisis.

Yet Yan’wal still placed much of the blame for the losses squarely on his own shoulders. Although he acknowledged that the Humans had been an unknown entity at the time of the battles, he had consistently underestimated them. He knew now it had been his Juirean arrogance that had not allowed him to believe that the Humans were nothing more than an annoyance, and that it was the Klin who were the
true
threat to The Expansion.

 
In light of his knowledge of history, he did his best to forgive himself, but it did not come easy. After all, Yan’wal Ra Melk was a Juirean, and one of the highest ranking officials in the government. And as everyone knew, Juireans claimed the title of undisputed rulers of the known galaxy…

Chapter Two

The planet Axlus – the ancestral name for the planet Juir – was located in a dense stellar cluster on the opposite side of the Galactic Core from The Fringe. Through a night ablaze with stars and nebulae, darkness never fully fell on the planet, and from the moment the first two pieces of curved glass were placed in a line together and aimed at the skies, the natives of Axlus had known they were not alone in the universe.

From their earliest recorded history, ancient astronomers and mathematicians plotted the paths of the wandering lights in the sky, and soon discovered a complex array of other planets orbiting the nearby stars. They also realized that their world similarly orbited their own star, just as all the others they tracked. So never in their history did the natives of Axlus consider themselves to be the center of the universe, or their existence unique. And considering the diversity of life upon their own world – in the oceans, on the land, and even among the shapes, sizes and colors of their own kind – they knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that other creatures existed on the neighboring worlds of the cluster.

To them, it was just a matter of time before contact would be made with their brothers among the stars.

Early in their history, electricity had been harnessed, and combinations of certain chemicals and minerals were discovered that, when ignited, could lift primitive rockets from the surface, although none reached very far beyond the outer layer of the planet’s atmosphere. Fossil fuels were discovered and utilized, and the natives of Axlus began to spread across the surface of the planet, to settle in thousands of city-states, who were left more-or-less to themselves over thousands of years.

On the other nearby planets in the cluster, other races were also evolving at the time. These included the Klin, the Oanneans and Bals, and each of these races achieved a certain level of sophistication in their civilizations along various paths. Yet there came a time, when through wave transmitters and primitive rockets, contact was made between them.

The most-technologically advanced of these core races was the Klin. Thoughtful and deliberate, the Klin were exceedingly peaceful and fair-minded. If ever they had warred among themselves, that tendency had been bred out of them thousands of years before. Now the Klin existed simply for the learning, as well as the building of advanced technologies that would allow the other core races in the cluster to finally come together in an Alliance of planets.

All except for the inhabitants of Axlus…

As the decades passed, the Cluster Alliance began to prosper, as trade between the other six civilized worlds grew and knowledge was shared. However, most of the major advances in technology and engineering still came from the Klin, who quickly established themselves as the default leaders of the Alliance. As its leader, it fell upon the Klin to set most of the rules governing the Alliance, a consequence which would have a major impact on their future in the years to come.