Mako (The Mako Saga: Book 1) (30 page)

“Haggis?” Noll asked, sensing that he was missing something. “Sounds… interesting.”

“Aye sir, it is. A fine meal indeed, and truly one befitting a strong, upstanding military man such as yarself!”

The next hour featured a wide range of conversation topics as the two groups continued to get comfortable with one another. Some were of a more serious nature (philosophy, politics, social ethics), though not all of them (food, art, Sammy Hagar vs. David Lee Roth). As the night wore on, it became clearer to Lee that, while they were obviously from different worlds (with all of the expected differences in culture and history, among other things), there were a lot of similarities between Reiser’s people and his. Still, the academic in him could never pass up the topic of history.

“Forgive me if this is a little outta bounds,” Lee prefaced over his final bite of chicken. “But how did the war with Alystier begin? I mean, who they are and their reputation as a militaristic society is well chronicled in the game, but there’s never any real reference made to how this conflict got started other than to briefly talk about some sort of mine dispute. Are they just a bunch of power-hungry aliens that wanna invade your world or what?”

Reiser looked at Noll, who hesitated before nodding his okay to respond.

“That’s a very long story,” the doctor noted, his expression turning sullen.

“Well, we’ve got no shortage of time,” remarked Lee.

Reiser took a moment to collect his thoughts before answering. “The Alystierian people,” he began, “while different from us in virtually every social and moral way, are actually the descendants of a group of Aurans who seceded from our world a little over 75 years ago.”

“Whoa, so they’re essentially like your long-lost relatives?” Mac noted, eyeing what looked to be cheesecake on the serving table behind them.

“Yes, that’s correct,” said Reiser. “A century ago, Aura was very much as it is now, a peaceful civilization that believed very much in the enlightenment of its people through advancements in science, technology, and the arts.”

“Sounds nice, Utopian even,” Lee added, lacing his fingers in front of him.

“In many ways, that’s correct,” said the doctor. “At the time, we hadn’t yet achieved the ability of space travel, nor had we encountered any alien life. Much like your world is now, many Aurans falsely believed that we were alone in the universe, and because most of our crime back then was minor in nature—land disputes, petty theft, that sort of thing—Aura’s defenses were little more than a collection of small law enforcement entities to help keep the peace when necessary. For whatever reason—call it self-enlightenment, social advancement or just stupid pride—we thought we’d evolved past the need for a military.” He paused. “We paid a heavy price for being that naive, too.”

“Let me guess,” said Lee. “You had no defensive prowess to speak of and that’s when the aliens you spoke of earlier showed up on your doorstep.”

Reiser and Noll went silent, and Lee could plainly see he’d struck a very sensitive nerve.

“Yes… The Great War, as it’s called in our history,” said the doctor. “To this day, we still don’t know who they were, or why they came. In our texts, they’re simply referred to as ‘The Beyonders’ and they invaded utterly without warning and completely unprovoked. The assault began early one morning while most were still asleep, and it started with the strategic orbital bombing of 16 of our major cities. Much of that time period in our recorded history was lost in the devastation, but by our estimates some 6.2 million men, women, and children were killed in the first 72 hours alone, and that’s before the first pair of enemy boots ever set foot on the ground. For the first year, our people just focused on staying alive. The Beyonders took no prisoners, so if you were discovered, you were simply shot on sight, and our weapons at the time were no match for their technology. Therefore, the only recourse we had was to run.”

“So how did you survive?” Lee asked, like the others, completely immersed in the story.

“Initially,” said Reiser, “we hid out in rural areas—forests, caves, swamps… anywhere with cover, really—and stayed out of sight. At that time, there was really no way of fighting them. Their soldiers were covered from head to toe in a strange sort of battle armor that our weapons, which were never designed to kill, simply couldn’t penetrate. If you were caught, you were dead—plain and simple. The first two years were spent that way—running, hiding, and helping whoever you could along the way—but predominantly just trying to stay as far out of the cities as you could.”

“What was left of them, anyway,” Noll muttered, his face somber.

“What changed?” Danny asked.

Reiser shifted in his chair. “In that third year, as the first groups of what would later become the Resistance began to form, one of our patrols happened across the body of one of their soldiers. He’d apparently been killed in a rock slide, and for whatever reason, his unit had been unable to retrieve the corpse. After the better part of a day of digging, our people pulled it free of the rubble, and even though most of his tech had been crushed, they managed to salvage just enough of his armor and weaponry to begin dissecting it for weaknesses.”

“I take it they found some,” Mac guessed.

“Yes,” said the doctor. “Six months later, a trio of refugee scientists perfected Aura’s first lethal weapon against the Beyonders… a rifle, and with it finally came our people’s ability to defend themselves. Early on, the Auran retaliation began with small skirmishes and tactical strikes, whereby raiding parties would attack sporadically—in the woods or under cover of night—killing as many Beyonder troops as they could, and when possible, establishing underground supply lines to other resistance cells that grew in number by the day as word of our successes began to circulate.”

“Guerrilla warfare,” Lee noted.

“Exactly,” Reiser acknowledged. “In any case, over the next five years we managed to beat back much of their occupation and retake a number of critical areas, though the tide of the war was ultimately turned in The Battle of Retaun, which fell under the command of a young and extremely ambitious general named Clayton Zier.”

“If I’m not mistaken, Retaun is the Auran capital city, is it not?” Hamish asked, leaning forward to rest his hands on the table.

“That’s correct,” said Reiser, “and needless to say, it was a major victory for our people, both morally and strategically. By the time we’d destroyed the Beyonder outpost there and reclaimed the city, a team of engineers was nearing the final development stages on a massively destructive weapon that we hoped would end the war, once and for all.”

“WMDs,” Link muttered, tossing his fork onto the plate in front of him. “Yeah, we’ve got those too.”

“Perhaps, Mr. Baxter, but nothing like this,” Reiser said darkly. “This particular device was capable of rendering a planet’s atmosphere all but uninhabitable for supporting life, a notion that went against everything our society thought it stood for. But as you know, when one faces his own extinction, desperate times call for drastic measures.”

“It was literally us or them,” Noll declared. “I personally have no problem with what happened. My grandfather was an acting sergeant on the strike team that led the first wave at Retaun and I’ve heard those stories since I was old enough to understand what they meant. That bomb saved our people—end of story. We don’t have to be proud of it, but we did what we had to.”

“So you sent the bomb, then?” asked Hamish.

“Indeed,” Reiser went on. “We retrofitted a Beyonder supply ship well enough for one of our own to pilot and hacked the central data core to find what we believed were the coordinates to their homeworld. Once the final preparations for deployment were completed, the bomb was loaded and the mission was launched with one simple directive: Detonate at all costs.”

Lee ran a hand over his forehead as the others stirred, similarly troubled, next to him.

“I’m guessing it worked?” said Mac, drawing another soulful pause from Reiser.

“We can only assume so,” he said. “All we know is that we calculated a 36-hour timetable for the ship to arrive at its target, and 42 hours later, the Beyonder forces were leaving our planet as fast as their soldiers could board their ships.”

“Why do you suppose they left?” Lee asked, now beginning to understand the significance of the phoenix at the center of the PGC and Auran military crests. “Not to sound incredibly insensitive, but you’d think that after havin’ their home destroyed, they’d spend every wakin’ moment after that lookin’ for payback against your people.”

Reiser shrugged. “That question has been raised and debated more times than can be counted in the years since that decision. All we can surmise is that they knew we were a science-oriented society when they attacked, and if we could develop a weapon powerful enough to wipe out their homeworld then, in their minds, there was no end to what we were capable of by that point.”

“They sure as hell weren’t questioning our resolve, that’s for sure,” Noll muttered, chomping on a piece of ice.

Sitting back in his chair, Lee thumbed the edge of his napkin as he took in the details of Reiser’s grand, historical tale.

“So how does this lead to Alystier?” he asked.

“After the Beyonder exodus,” Reiser continued, “a massive reconstruction process was launched across the planet. In the years that followed, our people raced to rebuild not only their cities and infrastructure, but their lives in general. Once our global information network was back online, billions of people worldwide began the exhaustive search to track down loved ones and family members lost in the war. However, through it all, two undeniable truths were forever made crystal-clear to us: One, we were not alone in the universe, and two, not everyone values peace the way we do.”

Fully cognizant of the Alystierian culture’s emphasis on military power, and knowing full well how the devastating events of war could force even the most devout of societies to re-examine their principles, Lee could already predict where this was going.

“Let me guess,” he said. “Everybody agreed that your world needed a military to defend itself when needed, but what place does such a force have in your society, and moreover, how much power should it wield?”

“Your studies serve you well, Dr. Summerston,” Reiser applauded. “By the end of reconstruction, as our government moved back into the newly rebuilt capital, two distinct political parties had formed. The first was referred to as ‘Traditionalists.’ They fervently believed that while a military was obviously necessary for defense, it should be used for nothing else, and therefore, its power should be limited. In short, they believed that the only way to truly restore our cultural heritage was a strong and immediate return to the founding principles that had guided our way of life for nearly a millennium prior to the invasion. The second party, dubbed ‘Imperialists,’ was a group of military radicals—mostly soldiers and the occasional cell members left over from the war—who believed that not only should Aura’s top priority be to construct a massive military force, but it also needed to make sweeping changes to our Constitution that would effectively make this new armed force the very backbone of our civilization.”

“Not to be a tool, Doc, but can you really blame them?” Link piped up. “So they wanted to construct a big, honkin’ military? So what? With respect, you people had just gotten your asses kicked, almost to the point of extinction. It’s kinda only natural to wanna carry the biggest stick in the valley after something like that, ya know?”

“You misunderstand my meaning, Mr. Baxter,” Reiser elaborated. “When I say they wanted to make sweeping changes to our Constitution, I mean they wanted to change the very essence of what our people stood for. To give you an idea of what I mean, under their proposed agenda, every able-bodied Auran citizen would be required by law to serve a minimum of one five-year tour in the new military. If they failed to comply, they would be denied a number of fundamental freedoms, such as the right to vote in political elections, the right to own land, and even the basic human right to have children.”

“Whoa, jump back!” Mac blurted aloud. “So if you didn’t serve in the military, you couldn’t have kids?” She scoffed in disgust. “What the hell was that all about?”

Reiser sipped his water. “According to IP doctrine, the fear was that an anti-military household would only breed more hostility against the government by producing more citizens who refused to fight. Therefore, such a family had to formally request governmental authorization should they wish to conceive, and should they do so without the proper legal consent, the pregnancy would be terminated immediately.”

“So fall in line or else…” Mac growled under her breath.

“Essentially, yes,” said the doctor. “Furthermore, one of their policies called for the complete overhaul of the Auran education system, whereby public schools were converted into military academies where programs such as science and literature were all but non-existent, in favor of programs designed to prepare our children for active service upon graduation.”

“How much traction was this Imperialist Party able to gain?” Lee inquired. “I mean, what you’re talking about is a complete departure from everything Auran society stood for, so it couldn’t have been met with that much favor, right?”

“Far more than most would’ve thought,” Reiser admitted. “Mr. Baxter hit on something earlier, and that was that people were frightened. By the end of the war, tens of millions of lives had been lost and as you pointed out, we had no way of truly knowing whether or not our world was still at risk. So even as much as they might’ve disagreed with the IP’s agenda a decade earlier, the fact was that many of our people just wanted security; and rest assured, the Imperialists knew that and played to it heavily through political positioning and propaganda.”

Noll gave an audible grunt across the table. “None of it would’ve ever taken root without Zier,” he gritted. “Clayton was the key.”

“Wait a second, the Retaun guy?” Lee asked in surprise.

“The very same one,” Reiser acknowledged. “He was the original chairman of the IP and the perfect face to deliver their message. Everyone, military and civilian, knew who he was, and they respected him without question because of his successes in battle. From the time he was given command, he never lost a campaign during the war. So when he said ‘Believe in me, and I will keep your families safe at night,’ people listened.”