In-Humanoids: book one-The New Arrivals
Posted: 2004-02-24 01:54am
CHAPTER ONE...FALLING STAR:
The high vaulted ceramonial chamber was filled with the low, rumbling funeral drums. The slaves carried the body of C'ata's father into the centre of the room, doused it with ceramonial oils, and put a touch to it. The corpse, covered by a black veil, began to disappear as the sicking smell of burt flesh filled the nostrils of every man, woman and child in the room.
Still, observers filed by the burning corpse. Reptilian men and women, most covered in brilaint gold an damber scales, others ranging from hulking warriors, more like walking dinosaurs than men, to his father's slave engineers, small, gray skinned creatures. Nobles filed by as well, their gleaming silver and gold armor worked and etched with the details of their House history, their skin a dark green striped randomly with amber. C'ata was the last to walk by. Unlike the others, his father's slaves and warriors, his six wives in their black veils, and his nobles, equal in C'eian law, the young C'ata didnt weep.
Instead, a wicked, toothy, contented grin creased across his snub-nosed reptilian muzzle. A slender, clawed hand touched his shoulder. It belonged to a young female, an attractive one too, gold and amber skinned, with a sharp wedge-shaped muzzle framed by a mass of golden hair that rested against her shoulders. "You shouldnt be so pleased. At least not in public, my love." she said, grinning.
"I'm God Emperor now. I can do what i please. Gather the Imperial Knights, T'ika. And tell them to stop whining."
"As you command, Emperor."
T'ahas, Grand Master of Knights under the old Emperor, was among the dozen or so noblemen and women gathered in the personal quarters of the new C'eian Emperor. He could aready see where this new regime was going.
Besides having every vissage of the last regime obliterated, including obital bombing temples built by his father, C'ata had the nerve to allow that whore lover of his, T'ika, into the Imperial throne room! It was bad enough to destroy his father's memory, it was another story to mate with a commoner's daughter and give her free range of the C'eian's most holy places. And there she was, sitting in the throne, legs crossed and with a smug grin on her face. She knew who was in charge...and she happened to be fucking him.
"Where's your lover, whore?" he hissed. The other knights took this moment to look inocent when T'ika glared down at him. She drew a breathe to respond, but was stopped by a familiar voice. "He's right here, T'ahas. So watch your mouth."
T'ika smiled smugly.
"Now, allow me to explain how i've found the answer to our food problem and our population explosion." he said with hsi costumary lack of preamble. He raised his claws, clapping hard. A holo-imager blinked on; threads of light forged an image of a blue and white orb that hove above the throne. It was a planet, beautiful, with amber and lush greens interwoven into it's form. It looked in many ways like C'eia had millennia ago, before the Great Crash, but instead of one massive continent there were many smaller ones, and thousands of tiny dots, islands, covering the globe. T'ahas sighed deep; to think that the endless cityscape that was C'eia once looked that pristine...
"This is a simulation...of our world?" a noblewoman asked.
"No, this is a planet in a system not far distant from our holdings. The aboriginal culture who inhabt this world call it Earth. Aside from variant continent shifts, it's identical to our own. It's the thrid planet from it star, a mostly oxygen atmosphere, carbon based life...just like home. More over...the indiginous sapients are numerous...if a few million die, it wont be a great loss to their kind. And they could feed many."
"You're talking about eating them?" T'ahas said, stunned, "Their sentient creatures, C'ata, you cant..."
"A G'ashti is sentient. A sand-ripper is sentient. More importantly we're sentient and we're starving! Or more to the point the commoners are starving, and they'll soon question why you and i eat meat and they choke down protein pills when they outnumber us a thousand to one!"
There was a long silence.
"Then we're in agreement." C'ata said smugly.
"What exactly do you propose we do? Invade?"
"Not outright no. They arent an advanced people, not by our standards, but it would still take many ships. Many armies. They do have nuclear weapons after all. What i was thinking is something more subtile. Fifty years ago my father conquered the Echoes by de-terraforming their world. It took twenty yeras. This world, so similar to C'eia, will take no more than twelve. One ship, one army, and one Warp Gate...and we can have a new world and a new source of food in a mere twelve years. Maybe less. That is what i propose."
One week later...Venusian orbit.
A flash of light darted across space, tearing a bloody wound in the fabric of space/time. The slender, spire-shaped C'eian battlecarrier drifetd out of 4-dimensional space, it's vast gravity sail, a disk a full fifty miles around, pulled the hundred mile long vessel through space. It hung above the sterile landscape of Venus, motionless, but only for a moment; the glare of ion drives ignited, and the enlogated teardrop shapes of C'eian troopships were birthed forth from the battlecarrier's hangars, pushed through space on contrails of blue-white.
Holographic cloaking engaged as they neared the moon. To the human eye they were all but invisible. The only evidence of their arrival was a momentary 'skip' of one ship across the atmosphere, sending a chunk of antanae hurtling towards the Earth as a burning ember.
Kira Mannion sat, again, in jail. She wasnt sure if her mother would bail her out this time, and she didnt care; she clocked that smug hick Mercer when he tried to break up the protest and she was damn glad she did. His weapons killed millions, in Serbia and the Middle East, and his hack'n'burn mentality had leveled whole forests. Sitting in this cell, draped in an orange jupsuit, if she spent the rest of her life in jail she'd still be glad she broke his nose.
She brushed her dark brown hair, almost black in's hue, back from her face, an attractive, gently rounded face, with piercing blue-white eyes, her thin lips bearing a contented half-smile, and as she did she tried to remember a time when her life was simpler...it was difficult to say the least. "Mannion, up." the thickset guard barked, opening the cell door, "Your sister made bail."
"Wonderful." she said, "Is the princess here to greet me?"
"What?"
"Nothing, dont think too hard, Barney. I can already hear the gears grinding."
Kira walked gingerly past the various pigs as they went about their work. Enforcers, her colorful term for policemen, had to be number three on her list of hated professions, with Coporates and Republicans being numbers one and two respectively.
Her sister, Kylie, stood waiting in the loby, signing the last few papers to get her released. Kylie was eighteen, a full two years younger than Kira, and yet between her youthful features, not unlike Kira's, and her prepie atire she looked all of thirteen. If a thirteen-year-old were trying to look like an eighteen year old republican that is.
"You dont look happy to see me, princess."
"Dont...dont call me that, Kira."
"Yes your highness."
Kylie threw her arms up in anguish. She took the time to appologize to the cops before storming out, Kira in tow. As soon as they were outside, she exploded.
"Why the hell do you always have to make an ass of yourself? Dont you know how this looks, dont you know how mom and dad..."
"Mom? Fuck her. And dad's a klansman!"
"He is not, dont tell people that, god! What is it with you, you act like anyone with money is satan and mom and dad are Nazis!" Kira leaned in close, her blue-white eyes meeting those of Kylie, "If the shoe fits, princess. Now give me a break, i'm tired, i'm hungry, and dont need this from you too."
Kylie shook her head. "What happened to you. You used to love your family until you started with this eco shit and went all hippie on us."
"It's called a moment of clarity, i call it realizing what kind of shit i was up to my chin in for the first seventeen years of my life! Maybe someday you will too."
Par the course, Kira stormed off in the general direction of home. "Do you need me to drive you home." Kylie said, breaking long seconds of silence. "I'll walk, thanks." Kira snapped.
A tiny red streak shot across the sky. A falling star. In times long past they were considered a sign of great importance, be it for good or ill. This shooting star was a severed sensor antanae burning up in our atmosphere, not the star stuff seen by civilizations past to fall from the heavens. But it was no less an omen.
Generations later, after the full truth of the C'aian invasion was revealed, the name Kira Mannion would be known across the world. The girl who led the Human Resistance, who fought tooth and nail to save mankind with nothing more than nerve and a few stolen guns. The woman whose name would be spoken in the same circles as Joan of Arc, who would lead a rebel army against an invasion from beyond our galaxy.
But first, she who would lead mankind, would be chrsitened by the falling bolt of red-orange steel streaking across the sky.
The high vaulted ceramonial chamber was filled with the low, rumbling funeral drums. The slaves carried the body of C'ata's father into the centre of the room, doused it with ceramonial oils, and put a touch to it. The corpse, covered by a black veil, began to disappear as the sicking smell of burt flesh filled the nostrils of every man, woman and child in the room.
Still, observers filed by the burning corpse. Reptilian men and women, most covered in brilaint gold an damber scales, others ranging from hulking warriors, more like walking dinosaurs than men, to his father's slave engineers, small, gray skinned creatures. Nobles filed by as well, their gleaming silver and gold armor worked and etched with the details of their House history, their skin a dark green striped randomly with amber. C'ata was the last to walk by. Unlike the others, his father's slaves and warriors, his six wives in their black veils, and his nobles, equal in C'eian law, the young C'ata didnt weep.
Instead, a wicked, toothy, contented grin creased across his snub-nosed reptilian muzzle. A slender, clawed hand touched his shoulder. It belonged to a young female, an attractive one too, gold and amber skinned, with a sharp wedge-shaped muzzle framed by a mass of golden hair that rested against her shoulders. "You shouldnt be so pleased. At least not in public, my love." she said, grinning.
"I'm God Emperor now. I can do what i please. Gather the Imperial Knights, T'ika. And tell them to stop whining."
"As you command, Emperor."
T'ahas, Grand Master of Knights under the old Emperor, was among the dozen or so noblemen and women gathered in the personal quarters of the new C'eian Emperor. He could aready see where this new regime was going.
Besides having every vissage of the last regime obliterated, including obital bombing temples built by his father, C'ata had the nerve to allow that whore lover of his, T'ika, into the Imperial throne room! It was bad enough to destroy his father's memory, it was another story to mate with a commoner's daughter and give her free range of the C'eian's most holy places. And there she was, sitting in the throne, legs crossed and with a smug grin on her face. She knew who was in charge...and she happened to be fucking him.
"Where's your lover, whore?" he hissed. The other knights took this moment to look inocent when T'ika glared down at him. She drew a breathe to respond, but was stopped by a familiar voice. "He's right here, T'ahas. So watch your mouth."
T'ika smiled smugly.
"Now, allow me to explain how i've found the answer to our food problem and our population explosion." he said with hsi costumary lack of preamble. He raised his claws, clapping hard. A holo-imager blinked on; threads of light forged an image of a blue and white orb that hove above the throne. It was a planet, beautiful, with amber and lush greens interwoven into it's form. It looked in many ways like C'eia had millennia ago, before the Great Crash, but instead of one massive continent there were many smaller ones, and thousands of tiny dots, islands, covering the globe. T'ahas sighed deep; to think that the endless cityscape that was C'eia once looked that pristine...
"This is a simulation...of our world?" a noblewoman asked.
"No, this is a planet in a system not far distant from our holdings. The aboriginal culture who inhabt this world call it Earth. Aside from variant continent shifts, it's identical to our own. It's the thrid planet from it star, a mostly oxygen atmosphere, carbon based life...just like home. More over...the indiginous sapients are numerous...if a few million die, it wont be a great loss to their kind. And they could feed many."
"You're talking about eating them?" T'ahas said, stunned, "Their sentient creatures, C'ata, you cant..."
"A G'ashti is sentient. A sand-ripper is sentient. More importantly we're sentient and we're starving! Or more to the point the commoners are starving, and they'll soon question why you and i eat meat and they choke down protein pills when they outnumber us a thousand to one!"
There was a long silence.
"Then we're in agreement." C'ata said smugly.
"What exactly do you propose we do? Invade?"
"Not outright no. They arent an advanced people, not by our standards, but it would still take many ships. Many armies. They do have nuclear weapons after all. What i was thinking is something more subtile. Fifty years ago my father conquered the Echoes by de-terraforming their world. It took twenty yeras. This world, so similar to C'eia, will take no more than twelve. One ship, one army, and one Warp Gate...and we can have a new world and a new source of food in a mere twelve years. Maybe less. That is what i propose."
One week later...Venusian orbit.
A flash of light darted across space, tearing a bloody wound in the fabric of space/time. The slender, spire-shaped C'eian battlecarrier drifetd out of 4-dimensional space, it's vast gravity sail, a disk a full fifty miles around, pulled the hundred mile long vessel through space. It hung above the sterile landscape of Venus, motionless, but only for a moment; the glare of ion drives ignited, and the enlogated teardrop shapes of C'eian troopships were birthed forth from the battlecarrier's hangars, pushed through space on contrails of blue-white.
Holographic cloaking engaged as they neared the moon. To the human eye they were all but invisible. The only evidence of their arrival was a momentary 'skip' of one ship across the atmosphere, sending a chunk of antanae hurtling towards the Earth as a burning ember.
Kira Mannion sat, again, in jail. She wasnt sure if her mother would bail her out this time, and she didnt care; she clocked that smug hick Mercer when he tried to break up the protest and she was damn glad she did. His weapons killed millions, in Serbia and the Middle East, and his hack'n'burn mentality had leveled whole forests. Sitting in this cell, draped in an orange jupsuit, if she spent the rest of her life in jail she'd still be glad she broke his nose.
She brushed her dark brown hair, almost black in's hue, back from her face, an attractive, gently rounded face, with piercing blue-white eyes, her thin lips bearing a contented half-smile, and as she did she tried to remember a time when her life was simpler...it was difficult to say the least. "Mannion, up." the thickset guard barked, opening the cell door, "Your sister made bail."
"Wonderful." she said, "Is the princess here to greet me?"
"What?"
"Nothing, dont think too hard, Barney. I can already hear the gears grinding."
Kira walked gingerly past the various pigs as they went about their work. Enforcers, her colorful term for policemen, had to be number three on her list of hated professions, with Coporates and Republicans being numbers one and two respectively.
Her sister, Kylie, stood waiting in the loby, signing the last few papers to get her released. Kylie was eighteen, a full two years younger than Kira, and yet between her youthful features, not unlike Kira's, and her prepie atire she looked all of thirteen. If a thirteen-year-old were trying to look like an eighteen year old republican that is.
"You dont look happy to see me, princess."
"Dont...dont call me that, Kira."
"Yes your highness."
Kylie threw her arms up in anguish. She took the time to appologize to the cops before storming out, Kira in tow. As soon as they were outside, she exploded.
"Why the hell do you always have to make an ass of yourself? Dont you know how this looks, dont you know how mom and dad..."
"Mom? Fuck her. And dad's a klansman!"
"He is not, dont tell people that, god! What is it with you, you act like anyone with money is satan and mom and dad are Nazis!" Kira leaned in close, her blue-white eyes meeting those of Kylie, "If the shoe fits, princess. Now give me a break, i'm tired, i'm hungry, and dont need this from you too."
Kylie shook her head. "What happened to you. You used to love your family until you started with this eco shit and went all hippie on us."
"It's called a moment of clarity, i call it realizing what kind of shit i was up to my chin in for the first seventeen years of my life! Maybe someday you will too."
Par the course, Kira stormed off in the general direction of home. "Do you need me to drive you home." Kylie said, breaking long seconds of silence. "I'll walk, thanks." Kira snapped.
A tiny red streak shot across the sky. A falling star. In times long past they were considered a sign of great importance, be it for good or ill. This shooting star was a severed sensor antanae burning up in our atmosphere, not the star stuff seen by civilizations past to fall from the heavens. But it was no less an omen.
Generations later, after the full truth of the C'aian invasion was revealed, the name Kira Mannion would be known across the world. The girl who led the Human Resistance, who fought tooth and nail to save mankind with nothing more than nerve and a few stolen guns. The woman whose name would be spoken in the same circles as Joan of Arc, who would lead a rebel army against an invasion from beyond our galaxy.
But first, she who would lead mankind, would be chrsitened by the falling bolt of red-orange steel streaking across the sky.