Extinction (40 page)

“That is why Emperor T’Leh did what he
did. He knew that if he ordered a withdrawal from conquering, that he would be
killed by his own protectors. He also knew that if he had used the virus
developed to kill the warriors across his entire empire, that he would be
overthrown by the majority of his subjects and the Nortes who ran the military.
Once his protectors were dead, there would be no stopping those who wanted the
power of the throne. The Nortes had grown too accustomed to ruling the galaxy
and not having to work for themselves to live any other way and they would not
allow any emperor to take that away from them. He believed that even if the
warriors were dead, the Nortes would follow anyone ruling the empire as long as
their usual way of life continued.”

“So what did he think would happen after
he quarantined this sector? Would he allow his empire to just shrivel up and
die? What of his other subjects?” The president tried not to sound too
disturbed as he asked his questions.

Hugany sipped her water and took a bite
from the food she had been given earlier. “Once the order was given that no one
was to leave the current empire, he knew that his warriors would not allow
anyone to do so. The warriors took care of almost everything. They oversaw the
slaves, protected our borders, and kept peace within the cities. Although the
slaves provided almost all of the manual labor within the empire, most Nortes
did not come in direct contact with them. This was again due to paranoia.
Although the general population did not desire to live without slaves, there
were always some who had a conscience and wanted to end the slavery. It was
thought that if Nortes were given broad access to the slaves that some might be
able to set up resistance cells and eventually overthrow the warriors and the
empire. The slaves did outnumber the warriors and Nortes population
dramatically and so it was a valid concern.

“Almost every Nortes lived like a king.
They did not have to work, think, or do anything if they did not want to. They
could read, philosophize, invent, play, travel, do anything they wanted. There
were hundreds of conquered worlds to visit and so many other things to do. It
was utopia, but only for the Nortes and no one else. They did not want to
change and so they had to be forced to do so.

“The warriors only live about fifty
years if they do not die sooner in battle. The idea was that in sixty to
seventy years, every last warrior would be dead. Without anyone to create more,
they would become extinct. When they were dead, there would be no one to keep
control of the slaves. The Nortes wouldn’t know how to control them because
they were never taught how and obviously didn’t have the strength in numbers to
make the slaves do anything if they didn’t want to. Then, the Nortes who wanted
peace and to live in coexistence would rise up and take control to change
things for the better. With no warriors to stop them, they would have little
resistance.”

The secretary of state looked up from
the tablet he was reading. “Wasn’t he putting a lot of faith into the slaves
and the anti-slavery Nortes to change an entire empire? After all, the slaves
are prewired for slavery and it would be hard to change that. Even with the
warriors gone, they would be predisposed to following orders and would fall
into line no matter who was cracking the whip, even if it were a timid Nortes.
And what of your Nortes officers in the military? Didn’t they run things and
oversee the warriors? Couldn’t they just take control?”

“First”, the empress began, “The Nortes
officers would, in fact, be able to control the warriors and maintain order at
first. But the plan counted on the fact that the warriors had a very short
life-span and soon the officers would have no one left to control. They would
lose their muscle and their might; their numbers would be too small to maintain
order on their own. Also, the Emperor left behind as few Nortes officers as
possible to make their task of controlling the downfall even more difficult.”

Then the empress touched a control on
her pad to bring information on everyone else’s pad. It showed a picture of two
Nortes males and one female. “Secondly, there was another component to the plan
that was integral to its success. During T’Leh’s time in school, he became
friends with D’Nerth and P’Tong. D’Nerth was a very beautiful woman and P’Tong
was her husband. They had wed very early but were more in love than T’Leh had
ever seen. All three became inseparable friends. T’Leh could not have loved
them more if they were family.

“D’Nerth and P’Tong were members of the
underground movement that sought to overthrow the current Nortes way of life.
Eventually they told T’Leh of their secret and found that he felt the same way.
T’Leh, of course, could never join the underground. He would eventually be
discovered and killed and that would, of course, compromise the movement.

“Together the three friends planned for
decades how they could force the separation from the empire and make the change
happen. The resistance cells were trained and prepared for the day when the
warriors would no longer exist. They had covert connections to the slaves and
built resistance cells within their ranks. When the warriors were gone, the
resistance would rise up and take over the empire and abolish slavery and force
the other Nortes to accept all races as equals.

“Without warriors, the slaves would have
control of the shipyards, the factories, the weapons, transportation, every key
element within the empire. All they would need was guidance and support from
the better-educated and well-placed Nortes. The slaves were never allowed to
interact with other slave races or learn their languages, so they would need
sympathetic Nortes to help bridge these gaps and help them to work together
towards their common goal.

“The reason they decided to separate the
empire and fake the plague was key to the plan. During such a massive forward
movement through the galaxy, the emperor would have all of his key military
staff present with him. Usually his military staff was spread throughout the empire,
controlling outposts and other military installations. The warriors could be
trusted to maintain peace in the empire while the bulk of the forces began the
biggest colonization movement the empire had ever undertaken.            

“Although Nortes citizens lived
throughout the empire, only the ones trained in the military and key to
conquering new worlds would be in the first wave to colonize this sector.”

The president had so many questions that
it was difficult for him to pay close attention to every detail Hugany was
saying. “I still don’t understand why he separated the empire. Why not just use
the virus to kill the warriors in the empire and then rise up with the workers?”

The empress had learned this entire
story by the time she was six and had passed it on to her son, who was already
eight. She continued, “In order to allow the Nortes resistance to infiltrate
key areas and build resistance cells within the slave community, they needed to
have certain people removed from the equation. If there was only a skeleton
crew of warriors and Nortes soldiers running things in the empire, it would be
much easier for them to perform their task.

“If the Nortes virus was released on the
key military officials, then it would be seen as the coup attempt that it
really was. They needed a plausible explanation for the warriors and military
staff to be eliminated that would not be questioned.”

“And an unknown virus in an unknown
portion of the galaxy was the key.” Dr. Bates looked at the assembled panel. “No
one from the empire would be able to say it wasn’t real because they wouldn’t
have access to any raw data. And because the warriors wouldn’t allow anyone
from the empire to travel to the new colonies, it would be taken at face value
as fact. They would have no other choice.”

“Exactly.” Hugany refilled her glass of
water. “Once the separation was made, the warriors in the new colonies would be
killed with the virus. The Nortes in charge of conquering new worlds would also
be killed with a virus. The only people to survive would be the emperor, his
loyal staff, a few hundred thousand Nortes colonists and low-level military
personnel, and, of course, the slaves.

“Everyone would be told that although
they were lucky enough not to die from the virus, they were all still carriers
of the disease and therefore could never return to the empire. T’Leh would then
allow the colonies to start to fall apart on their own. Without the warriors to
maintain the slaves and perform their other duties, there just weren’t enough
Nortes to keep everything running. T’Leh would then address his new empire and
decree that slavery must be abolished for the sake of the colonies. Only by
uniting with the slaves and working together could they survive.

“Nortes colonists were generally made up
of military personnel, farmers, builders, technical staff, and other people who
generally liked to work. They lived to explore and build new cities and worlds
for their people. They weren’t common among the Nortes and were even shunned by
the majority because they actually liked to get their hands dirty and work for
a living. Because of their way of life and their general beliefs, it wasn’t
very hard at all for T’Leh to sell them the idea of unity and working together.
Most of them didn’t believe in slavery to begin with. They felt that slavery
just weakened their society by allowing people to become complacent and lose
skills and knowledge through laziness. The current dilemma that they were
facing just seemed to prove their point.

“They had already charted several worlds
on which to relocate their people. Each species was given a choice as to where
they wanted to live and start their lives over. Many decided to live in a
system near what is now the Detrill home world. The first worlds we occupied
were chosen strictly for their military value, so we had no use for them after
the unification. They were abandoned and all of their secrets buried. We moved
into the sectors we now live in and built our communities. We have enjoyed a
thousand years of peace and unity with our former slaves.”

“Until now.” The president let out a
sigh and continued, “Whatever happened to the rest of the empire?”

“We don’t know; all communication was
severed with them. T’Leh had sporadic communication with the empire over the
next year. He led them to believe that everyone was dying and eventually that
he, too, had died.

“Once the warriors in the empire died of
natural aging and the resistance freed the slaves, the colonies and the empire were
supposed to unite. T’Leh never received word from his resistance leaders and he
feared the worse, that the plan went completely wrong. He felt that alerting
the empire to the deception would just bring war into this sector. So we have
lived in silence ever since.”

“Is it possible then that someone
figured out how to create these warriors and allow the empire to live on?” Dr.
Bates didn’t think that even with the information he had in front of him that
he and his best scientists could reproduce the warriors. However, the Nortes
were obviously much more advanced than the Coalition was.

The secretary of state spoke up again. “How
did T’Leh plan to guarantee that no one created anymore warriors after the
current ones had died?”

Hugany adjusted in her seat and pressed
a few buttons on her pad. “You will note on your pads the world known to our
ancestors as
The Breeding Planet
. They called it that because the
warriors were created there. Only a handful of Nortes knew where that planet
was, and of those, all were either killed in the purging or lived on in the
colonies after the unification.

“The planet has an orbital defense
system that is impenetrable by use of force. The gun platforms are
self-replicating in case any of them are damaged or destroyed during an attack.
It’s not so much the power of the guns that are devastating; it’s the sheer
number of them in orbit. It took two hundred years to put all of the defense
guns into place. There were entry points within the defense perimeter that
ships would approach in order to be scanned. If a living member of the royal family
was not on the ship, it would be destroyed. Even if a ship could withstand the
destructive force of the guns, they would have to find the cloning labs that
are ten kilometers below the surface of the planet. Then they would have to
have security codes as well as DNA from a member of the royal family to enter
the complex and access any computer terminal once inside. And then you would,
of course, need the scientific expertise to use the equipment and create the
warriors.

“A member of the royal family lived at
the installation constantly. Every eight hours, that person would have to enter
a code into a terminal, have their DNA checked, and perform a retinal scan. If
they didn’t, then every Nortes in the complex would be killed by a release of a
nerve gas.

“No slaves or warriors were on the
planet surface, only Nortes. Once the warriors were born, they left the planet
and were shipped off to whatever assignment they were given. Much like the
salmon of your home planet, Mr. President, the warriors were encoded
genetically with instructions concerning their birthplace. However, with them
it was reversed. Warriors were encoded with an absolute lack of knowledge of
where they were created. They could not go anywhere near the breeding planet; if
they did, they died. Once they left, they could never return.”

Dr. Bates was originally hopeful that
the cloning labs could be accessed once the threat had passed. The amount of
good his scientists could do with this technology was almost unlimited, but it
didn’t seem as though that would be happening anytime soon. “Was the facility
destroyed? How did they smuggle all of the personnel off the station? Were
warriors created on an as-need-basis or were they stored there?”