Memoirs of a Timelord (18 page)

       I was surprised to see the Boss sitting at the end of my bed.  I hardly ever slept these days, but with Aldoo looking like Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing, there were a lotta other reasons to still have a mattress.  It beats Nintendo any day of the week.

       There was a look in DorLek's eyes that tipped me off that he was a little nervous.  

       "You have no other classes today.  You will need the time to recover from today's memory." He held up a finger, at the same time I could feel thru the Guf that he had a nightmare to impart to me.  Waiting for my approval, as called for by DuNai custom, he hesitated until I gave a nod.  Then like a flood I got it, all of it.  So much that I was awash in fragments of horror and abuse.  It was the conquest of Vladistar.  I'd studied it just a few weeks ago, Fenn was the instructor.  While he had told the side of the victors, today's MoTi lesson was lived through the eyes of the losers.  The entire sequence had been snatched directly from their minds in the seconds leading up to their deaths.  

       I know I screamed out loud.  If it had not been for my Onkx, I would have stroked out right there on the floor.  As bad as my own death had been, these were worse by several magnitudes.  The heroes of General Fenn's version of the conflict were in reality a merciless bunch who raped and murdered wantonly, even after the Fehedra had surrendered unconditionally.  Women were forced to watch their children murdered before being gang raped and mutilated alive.  Schools and hospitals were the first targets of the vaunted Ashekii.  They poisoned the earth, incinerated the suburbs with compression beams, and made sport of hunting their victims.  Over and over again I can see the gang running me down with a pack of dogs, or being gut shot for amusement, or burned alive.  The memories seemed to go on for days.  It was like being hit by a truck.  I never even noticed that the Boss had left and Aldoo was there with me now.  When we locked eyes, I could feel the Guf telling me he too had witnessed the carnage at Vladistar.  The voices whispered about his pain as he curled up on the mattress beside me.  Another three minutes and Veena appeared in the doorway, wobbly on her feet.  Darting forward, she climbed into the middle as tears streaked out of her perfect blue eyes.  

       Even after all of those images, the complete experience of having been there, I just couldn't get past the overt efforts the Ashekki took to be cruel.  They went out of their way to inflict pain and terror on all Fehedra, young and old.  They had the planet, there was no need to murder an entire city, or to take such glee in it.  I was sick with the images that I had witnessed.  It was something that you cannot look away from, no matter how hard you try.  All I could do was lay there clutching Aldoo and Veena as I struggled to process what I had learned.  

       

       We advanced up from the T1 Falcon to Zubin Daggars as our skills improved.  We had a few fatal wrecks along the way, but Aldoo is okay now.  Fenn and Hartmann didn't believe in simulators so every training flight your ass was on the line.  Sure, you could be recovered, but it hurt to be incinerated three times a day.

       We were still getting history lessons of famous battles and campaigns from the General, always told from the victor's perspective.  Sometimes he lectured, other times he gave us MoTi from his own experiences.  Those were some crazy memories.  Fenn survived by being a fucking madman in the air.  On the ground he was a little more reserved, but still dangerous.  For a Cro-Magnon, the guy truly did have a divine understanding of all things that were war.  He was a brilliant strategist in the air, on the ground, and at sea.  If you absolutely, positively needed a planet destroyed overnight, call Fenn-ex.  

       So when we found out that our final project was to wipe out the Royal DrethSul Guard, we were more than a little shaken.  Of all the bad-asses the General had taught us about, these guys were airborne Spartans.  We had studied their battles and doctrine and they were easily the greatest fighter pilots in all of the Galaxy.  For more than a century these guys owned the Delta quadrant.  Their techniques of interactive combat were taught in academies for millennia after their demise.  How were we supposed to kill these guys?  

       With advanced technology, that's how.  

       "Seems a little like cheating." I spoke without thinking.  Immediately General Fenn was in my face.  

       "As if you would last ten seconds under the crush of their boot." He eyed me warily.  Fenn was known to treat us apprentices the worst.  He treated the others badly too, but he was worse to the Editors.

       "I never said that.  I just said it was unsportsmanlike to take them this way.  It is dishonorable.  They deserve a fair fight." I sputtered out the words while looking at his belt buckle.  The guy was a brick wall, and I was five foot nothing in my current skin.  Fenn crapped bigger than me.

       He seemed to take in what I said with a pause.  No yelling or stabbing, just a grunt and a nod as he moved away.  In my head there were voices whispering me things about how he really felt.  I was glad for the Guf's hints because Fenn had a poker face like the Sphinx.  I would never have guessed that he agreed with me.

       The deal was that the regional Timelord, who was actually an apprentice named Bara, had requested our mission as part of his Doctoral thesis.  It had been his determination that the Guf needed a little more warrior spirit to firm it up, but the Zul were just three years away from attacking from across the abyss.  With superior technology the Zul catch the Sul resting on their laurels and essentially wipe them out on the first wave.  In the original timeline that would mean the Zul prosper and grow exponentially until they are dumping trillions of souls into the Guf every year.  If that happened then the Guf would take on more of a Zul flavor [barbarian] versus the Sul ideals [pure warrior].  A Guf should only have a small dose of barbarian, but warrior is a 45% goal.  We are building a God here, and it needs to have a big brass pair of cajones, yet be stable enough that it's not an axe murderer.  Hence the limited use of barbarian souls. 

       So we needed to inflict an injury that was so startling as to wake an entire civilization from the comforts of peace.  We had to scare the shit outta 'em, that's what we had to do.  And how to better do that then to wipe out their very best, and to do it with casual ease.  Our ships were retarded considerably from what they could really do, but still several times better than an actual Zul fighter of that era.   We wanted to send a very strong message; the Zulthan Empire was coming and we were hungry.  We had to kill the Elite Guard or the entire Sul race would be wiped out.   

       We caught the Royal DrethSul Guard hiding in a debris field during a combat patrol.  These guys were sneaky; they would each grab a few dozen rocks with their shields, then nudge them up to a transit speed.  Once they got going the whole squadron looked like nothing more than a buncha fast rocks.  They were good, barely visible in the clutter.  When we attacked them, they only responded with a quarter of the flight, waiting until we were closer before simultaneously flanking us on three other sides.  It was beautiful to watch.  Had it not been for our impenetrable shielding, the whole experience would not have been nearly so educational; they bounced us hard!  I was hit three times before I even had a target lock.  

       I was flying as wingman for General Fenn, just doing what I could to stay with him.  The guy he was fighting had a gold leaf on his wing, turned out later to be Abac Tenum, the commander of the DrethSul.  He was incredible, even with a mainframe for a brain I was having trouble keeping my eyes on the pair.  I didn't even know these ships would do some of those maneuvers.  Finally our prey stopped the yanking & banking and lit his engines up as if he were trying to run. At first I took this as victory, until I realized it was just a rope-a-dope move.  Just when we were starting to gain on him, I began taking hits from behind.  I was just spinning around to deal with the threat when Abec Tenum spun a 180 and smacked Fenn right in the face with a shock torpedo.  I was getting peppered by two more of his guys before I finally put a fish into one of them.

       "Let loose the dogs of war!" I heard Fenn yell into the microphone gleefully.  It was the happiest I'd ever seen him.  It was here, in the chaos of war that he felt the most at home.  It was his arena, and there was no place he would rather be.

       "Damn!" I blanched as a shockwave knocked my ship sideways like I'd been bitch-slapped.  Even after studying them at length, I was blown away by how good these guys were.  So damned aggressive!  No way we could have taken these guys without advanced technology.  I had multi-homing munitions and smart plasma cannons and I was having trouble taking these guys out. But finally we whittled their numbers down, leaving the last two survivors to escape for home.  It was SOP for these guys to record all sensor readings and telemetry from other fighters, so I knew they would have more than a ghost story to take back to the fleet.  The gun camera footage would convince even the gentlest dove to become a hawk.  The Sul needed to know that the enemy fleet already enroute was impervious to their best weapons.  They had nothing for the Zul.

       According to the history books, our gambit worked.  The Sul mobilized on a scale unprecedented.  Their industrial machine was thrown into high gear as the R&D guys figured out ways to defeat Zul shields, match Zul speeds, and shield themselves against Zul weapons.  The Military complex pored over those telemetry records, studying every detail of our attack before devising training programs to update their pilots.  All of this while the political machine used an ocean of propaganda to convey their warnings.  These were a people who knew they were facing extinction, and they were not willing to go gentle into that night.  When the Zul finally arrived, they found their technological advantage mooted and null.  Sul historical references all point to it being a complete rout.  Having witnessed the battles, I'd say that was an understatement.  They tore into the Zul fleet with the ferocity of a lion.  

       Finally graduation day came.  Fen and Hartmann were old school so we had a ceremony, complete with a formation, a review by our Commander, and all that military jazz.  At least when you're morphic you don't have to spit shine your boots or fuss with a uniform.  They're just part of your skin.

       Moving down the line, Hartmann would hold the tray of wings to be awarded while Fenn pinned them on.  Once they were in place, the General would strike the wings with a fist, driving the pins down into the student and puncturing the skin.  Blood wings they called 'em.  As primitive as it sounds, I was damned proud to get mine.  

       After he pins on your wings, the General shakes the graduate's hand before moving on.  I stopped him there as I handed him a matter buffer.

       "A present for you Sir." I beamed, knowing what was inside of the little silver stick of gum.  

       "What does it contain?" He asked skeptically as he watched the light reflect off of the perfect surface of the buffer.

       "It was not honorable what we did to them.  We cheated." I shook my head slowly to show my dissatisfaction. 

       "You haff the DrethSul in there?" Hartmann asked with a clipped German accent.

       "And their ships." I nodded with the barest hint of a smile.  "I thought you might like a few more instructors, mebbe a scrimmage team, y'know?"

       Fenn and Hartmann exchanged poker faces, but the Guf was telling me they were both very excited on the inside, like kids on Christmas morning.

       "I believe I would enjoy a rematch on more even footing." Fenn admitted as his hands caressed the smooth surface of the buffer.  Right then he reminded me of an oversized Sméagol, lusting for the ring.      

       "Somm fresssh faces would be nice too." Hartmann agreed.  No doubt all of these years of living and working with Fenn had been difficult for the fighter pilot.  The General was prolly a pain in the ass to be around for any length of time.

       "How did you do it?" Fenn was suddenly curious.

       "Actually you helped harvest them." A grin broke across my face, "I modified the weapons on your ships so every time we hit one we were just pulling them into a buffer and leaving behind a copy to be destroyed for effect."

       "And their ships too?" He seemed surprised at how thorough I had been.

       "And they have already been processed for integration." I added the cherry on top.  Like anyone harvested, they had been sent to Brother Bara's Orientation center.  You just couldn't pop these guys outta storage without debriefing them or it'd be messy.  Think about it; the last thing they know they were being murdered by an invading species.  These guys woke up swinging fists.  When you are harvested after your own death, there needs to be someone there to guide you into this new world, explain stuff.  A place to transition into this new existence, to get used to the idea of being dead.  Essentially, the men and women inside of that data buffer had been indoctrinated into their new world and were ready for duty.

       "Just point and click whenever you're ready." I assured him, knowing he would do it ten minutes after we were gone.  He had the look of a child with a new toy.  Because buffers are restricted technology, I had built this one so it would only release its contents before vaporizing itself.  Timelords do not let non-editors possess buffers, lest they find themselves trapped inside of one.

       And so ended another phase of my training.  I walked out of there with five confirmed kills against the best of the best, graduated with honors, and made a powerful friend in the process.  I was just starting to think I had a handle on this apprentice thing when the Boss threw the next obstacle at me: Clovis Mene.