Chapter One

The Mpfifis

Tankar pushed aside the worksheet covered in equations. He had completed the theoretical part of the task, and soon he would be able to begin construction of the hyperspace communicator. The lab was quiet after hours, his co-workers having long since returned to their homes. He was weary but happy.

I wasn’t made to be a soldier, he thought for the umpteenth time. Mathematical research, the struggle to conquer the unknown….

Much had happened since the stopover on the virgin planet. He had not seen Anaena since. The day after their return he had a short, stormy meeting with the Teknor.

“I don’t approve of what my niece has done,” Tan said. “But I don’t approve of your conduct either. What do you want?”

“Nothing,” Tankar calmly replied. “To live quietly until the day you can drop me on Earth or some other human planet.”

“Will Iolia go with you?”

“She will.”

The Teknor shook his head. “I expected better from you, Tankar. I thought you’d help us against the enemy, an enemy that won’t spare any planet, human or other.”

“I was about to do exactly that when someone stole my blueprints. Somebody here has them. Find the plans. Find the thief. Then I’ll settle the score with him in one of your parks. After that, you and I can talk in a more meaningful way.”

“Your stubbornness puts everybody in danger, including Iolia,” the Teknor pointed out.

“I don’t agree, but, if you’re right, we’ll take the risk.”

“What if we were to just leave you here?”

“You can’t,” Tankar smiled. “The Pilgrims brought me into their fold. You’re tied to me in the same way you’re tied to them. They won’t let you abandon me.”

Tan waved his arms in frustration. It was useless. He walked away.

Tankar and Iolia were married even before the mining camps had been set up. The Pilgrim-style ceremony was short and simple. Since that day, the Pilgrims considered him one of their own even though he had not adopted their faith.

He stood, put away his notes and glanced at the tracer. Nothing. He filled his pen with ink, packed a roll of paper, and was about to head out when the needle wavered slightly. He reset the external antennae and searched for the source. Far away in hyperspace, something was moving.

A city-state? Or might it be the Others? he wondered. Should he alert the Patriarch? The Teknor? Whoever had stolen the plans could warn Tan. Tankar hadn’t yet told Holonas the tracer was operational. His colleagues in the lab thought the machine was the preliminary result of Tankar’s research into hyperspatial communications. And that was exactly the way he wanted it….

The needle abruptly swerved, then reset at zero. In any event, they were wandering in hyperspace a long way from the danger zone. Contact was lost. They were not at risk. He waited in the lab for another hour anyway and then went home.

Iolia was already asleep, so he gently slid into bed next to her. She tucked herself into his arms and hugged him without waking. He lay staring into the darkness, and thought about getting up, calling the Patriarch, before exhaustion overtook him. Little by little, numbness overcame him. He was tired of his long vigils and was in bed, warm and happy. I’ve been married for three months now, he thought, three months of happiness.

The sound of a thud woke him, and his warrior instinct kicked in. Another, lighter thud followed, and then came an explosion that caused the hull and the metal partitions to vibrate. The sirens wailed, and Iolia bolted upright. She lit a lamp. “Four bells,” she said. She was shaken to her core. “Major incident or….”

Overcome by guilt, he finished her thought. “Or the Mpfifis….”

He threw on his clothes and listened to the communicator. “Attention, all. The Mpfifis have attacked. All males, grab your weapons now. Do not waste a second in joining your sections.”

Tankar furiously ripped off the security seals on the weapons chest and took two fulgurators, a short-nosed rifle and his ammunition belt. A very pale Iolia armed herself as well. “I’ll go to the hospital; that’s where I belong.”

“I’m off to Section 4.” He kissed her passionately. “Be careful, Io. Whatever happens, thank you for making me so happy, and remember that I love you. Take no unnecessary risks!”

As he headed out the door she called after him, “Until later, my love!”

“Don’t worry,” he assured her. “I’ve been here before.”

Tankar took a last look at the slender figure in her white nurse’s smock and left. Pilgrims raced through the streets as he swiftly made his way to military HQ where his section waited. The enormous room swarmed with armed men coming and going in the usual chaos that was war. He managed to reach the captain.

“Tankar Holroy, Section 4. Where’s the attack?”

“Five Points, look at the map. Immediately join Sections 6, 7, and 8 at Point 3.”

Out of habit, Tankar saluted and clicked his heels. Despite the urgency of the moment, the Pilgrim smiled.

Tankar’s entire section had come together: a hundred men holding two fulgurators each and 10 machine guns. They headed straight out of the Pilgrim enclave and raced through deserted streets toward Point 3 on Bridge 4, Sector 2. A Stellaran wearing an officer’s armband stopped them before they got there.

“Destination?”

“Point 3.”

“Too late. Our lines have been breached. The fighting is in Park 15. Go. Now!”

The soldiers split into two groups before diving into the gravity slide and connecting with another section. Tankar could not help but think of the Pilgrims’ refuge. Luckily, none of the combat points is near the compound!

All of a sudden his thoughts turned to Anaena, and he imagined her with Tan at the command post trying to direct the troops. He felt a pang of regret; his rightful place should have been there, at their side.

As the soldiers approached the battlefield, they could hear the dull sounds of explosions, the whistling of fulgurators, the bursts of machine-gun fire, and another choppy sound that Tankar did not recognize but surmised was produced by the Others’ weapons. At the Park 15 checkpoint, Tankar and another section commander, a skinny brunette, walked toward an officer. “You, Scott, take the left flank and meet up with Sections 122, 123 and 127. They badly need reinforcements. As for you….”

“Holroy.”

“Ah, the planetary. Well, this is our chance to see how the Empire’s Stellar Guards fare in battle. You go right with your Pilgrims and support Sections 80 and 87. They’re in pretty bad shape too. You’ll need to stay with them for two hours.”

“Enemy position?”

The officer pointed to a map that displayed a pencil drawing in a crescent shape. “Last I heard, about 10 minutes ago, they were here.”

“Classic,” Tankar mumbled. “Can’t we use the roof sprinklers to flood them?”

“No…. Ah, wait, that might be an idea. We could make holes in the…. Now, you get going. I’m going to run that idea past the Teknor.”

Tankar shrugged and turned to face his men. “Let’s go. Do nothing foolish. Simply do as I taught you during drill. Everything will be okay.”

They entered the park through a small secondary gate and plunged directly into the battle. The air was thick with smoke, bushes were in flames between the two lines, and bullets whistled above their heads before scoring the metal flooring.

“Forward! Camouflage yourselves behind the small trees. You, machine gunners, deploy in one line. One fulgurator in the right hand, one in the left.”

The men progressed with Tankar in the lead. He looked back occasionally to ensure that they were following him. Then they heard the harsh sound of ammunition almost on top of them. “Get on your stomachs! Crawl! Supply team, let’s move.”

Tankar found himself nose-to-nose with a man moving toward the rear. “Where are you going?”

“I wanted to see if reinforcements were on their way.”

“We got here as fast as we could. Take me to the lines.”

“What’s left of them? Sure.”

In the dry bed of a small stream the remainder of Sections 80 and 87 tried to contain the enemy.

“Who’s in charge here?”

A man crawled to Tankar. “Me. Ballart, Section deputy chief.”

“Okay. Section Chief Holroy. I’m taking over. How many of you are there?”

“About 50.”

“Down from two hundred?”

“No. Four hundred. We also had Sections 76 and 40. Be careful!”

A lethal hissing sound whizzed over their heads and crashed about 10 meters from them. A short flame, a cloud of dirt and smoke rose toward the high ceiling.

“At least there’s a limit to the firepower they can use,” the deputy chief grumbled.

Tankar was not listening, instead barking orders into his microphone. “Fulgurator number one, sweep those bushes, then decamp immediately. Machine guns? Get ready to fire.”

The hedges burned furiously, collapsing to the ground in heaps of ashes. Tankar glanced over the bank of the dry stream and got a view of the far side of the small park where alien shapes flooded through the gates and dropped to the ground.

“Machine guns two and four, concentrate your fire on that gate! Stop them bringing in reinforcements! Damn it! This should’ve been done a long time ago. Where the hell are your machine guns?”

“We didn’t have them, sir.”

“You were sent into battle empty-handed?”

“We had rifles, grenades and lightweight fulgurators. We had to hold out until reinforcements arrived.”

“Your sections don’t have machine guns as SOP?”

“Yes, but we didn’t have time to go to the storerooms to pick them up.”

Tankar choked with rage. Weapons outside the Pilgrims’ compound were kept in storage? “Of all the asinine things I’ve ever heard. No surprise, then, that the Others almost always triumph. Pay attention: they’re about to attack again!”

The Mpfifis leaped toward the Pilgrims under cover of mortar fire that sent shells raining down like hail.

“Aside from machine guns three and four and a couple of rifles, nobody fires,” he ordered. “Wait until you see their eyeballs.”

The stoic, disciplined Pilgrims did not flinch as the projectiles poured in among their ranks. A shell landed in the stream just 50 meters from Tankar and, once again, he heard the terrified screams of men being blown to bits. The enemy line inched forward; for the first time, he saw the enemy with his own eyes. Bigger than humans, they ran with a supple grace while their weapons spat out a deluge of bullets and incendiary tracers. They started at 40 meters away, closed to 30, then 20.

“Fire!”

The eight concealed machine guns, the fulgurators and the rifles joined the action. Tankar stood and fired as though he were at target practice, seemingly invulnerable. The enemy assault wave retreated leaving countless dead and wounded in its wake.

“Cease fire! Swap places! Quickly!”

A machine gunner passed by Tankar’s side followed by six men covered in sweat and dirt. One of the men was a Stellaran. Tankar could not remember who had been with that team and who might now be missing. He buzzed the four deputy section chiefs.

“Malpas here. Two killed. One lightly wounded.”

“Turan here. Three killed. Two gravely wounded.”

“Rau here. No men down.”

“Smith here. One dead, no wounded.”

The enemy onslaught resumed, stronger and more precise than before.

“No reason to wait this time since they know what to expect. As soon as they get up, fire at will, but don’t waste a single bullet.”

They repelled the attack again, but this time suffered great losses of their own. The sirens had first sounded only one hour before, at least according to his digital timepiece.

The battle raged for two more hours. The left flank split, so the enemy now attacked them from that direction. Tankar thought to retreat a moment before he received the order to do just that. They’d been asked to fight for two hours; they had held out for almost three.

He and his men took to the street single file, dodging well-timed salvos that led to another handful of fatalities. Tankar latched on to a captain. “How’s it going on the other fronts?”

The man pulled Tankar aside. “Things are bad. We’re being sunk at Points 1, 2 and 5. Only you and 4 held them off. The enemy has managed to infiltrate pretty much everywhere.”

“What’s the Teknor up to?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t received new orders from him for an hour. I’m afraid we’ve been cut off.”

“What’s in this sector?”

“Dwellings. Empty. The noncombatants have been evacuated into the central parks.”

“Then what the hell are we doing here?” demanded a frustrated Tankar.

“We’re defending the city, planetary,” the captain righteously replied.

“That’s not the way to win this thing! We need to launch a counter-attack. Take the fight to them!”

“Easier said than done,” the captain retorted.

“We can give it a try. Let’s head back….”

“No. We have to stay here. Teknor’s orders.”

“But that’s idiotic! As soon as the Others break through our lines, as they well may have done already, they’ll spread throughout the city and the situation will be hopeless! We won’t be able to stop them!”

The captain gave him a weary look. “What can I do?”

“You can come with me and bring your men.”

A violent explosion sent both men crashing to the ground. About 20 meters from them, the jagged partition broke open and released a flood of Mpfifis.

“Too late, planetary!”

But Tankar was not there. He had turned a large machine gun on to the advancing enemy with the help of a handful of Pilgrims and launched heavy machine-gun fire. Ignoring the bullets and mortars whizzing past him, he aimed and fired at the seething mass running through the street.

“Let’s go! Forward!”

He ran and threw two grenades that cleared a passage. He threw a third into the breach, jumping ahead of it to find himself and 30 others with two machine guns on a deserted street. He slipped into an empty apartment and tried to reach central command without success.

“No reason to get killed for nothing. There must be second lines somewhere.” They found them at the next intersection. From there he got through to the Teknor. “Holroy here. If this position is blocked, we lose. Give me a free hand and two hundred men, and we’ll attempt a counter-attack.”

“What do you plan to do?” the Teknor asked.

“You’ll find out.”

“Then…no.”

“Listen, Tan. I don’t give a damn about your city, but my wife is treating your wounded in one of your hospitals. I don’t want to be burned alive by aliens. I don’t have time to lay out my plans for you.”

A different voice broke in: Anaena. “What do you want, Tankar?”

“To save you in spite of yourselves, but I need two hundred men and a free hand.”

Silence. “Fine. Take them but not from where you are. Select from the reserves at the command post. Release your men to the officer in charge.”

He raced through the streets, ran into reinforcements, vaulted onto automated walkways, and climbed stairs. The gravity slides were too slow.

Anaena was waiting. “The men are here, the best ones we could find. I won’t deny that you’re probably our last hope, Tankar. Why didn’t you accept Tan’s offer?”

He laughed bitterly. “I’ve done far worse since. But this isn’t the time to look back. How’s the battle progressing?”

“I’ll show you.”

A thick red line on the command post wall tracked the enemy’s progress through the web of bridges. Tankar breathed a sigh of relief. The Pilgrims’ compound was secure.

“Where’s their city-state?”

“Glued to ours. What do you want to do?”

“Invade it!”

“With only two hundred men?”

“Just enough to distract the enemy while others climb along the hull to plant explosives. My plan is to cut off the tunnels that connect them to us. After that, the Tilsin will move into hyperspace while the atomic bomb on their hull goes off.”

“Crazy enough to work,” Anaena acknowledged, “and we don’t really have an alternative. I’ll authorize this, but you must take a thousand men.”

“That’s either too few or too many,” Tankar refused. “Two hundred will be enough. We’ll exit via one of the airlocks in the Pilgrims’ enclave and proceed under the Tilsin. I need someone I can trust to command the diversion team.”

“Me?”

“Will you know what to do?”

“As well as any other Stellaran. But the Teknor needs to be in the loop. He’s the only one who can authorize a lightweight atomic bomb.”

As they crossed the Pilgrim compound, Tankar took two minutes to try to reach Iolia, but nobody could find her, so he left a message. They went through the airlock in their magnetic boots and walked along the underside of the Tilsin. Even without reference points their walk proceeded normally until they reached the edge and had their first impression of staring into a bottomless chasm of gleaming stars.

The crushed upper deck of the Mpfifi city was the source of the five access tunnels anchored to the hull of the Tilsin. “Anaena, first blow up two tunnels. There may well be airlocks at each end, but the explosions will draw the enemy’s attention. Try to penetrate the enemy city, but don’t go too far no matter how curious you are about the inside. Make sure the other three bridges blow up 10 minutes later, and then dive through the gaps back onto the Tilsin.” He paused before adding, “I’ll find you there. See you later…or goodbye, I can’t be sure which.”

He set the rockets on his suit and shot up to the hull of the enemy city-state followed by six men hauling the bomb on a hydraulic sled. He had time to see the fireworks before the hull’s curve obstructed his view.

“Stop.” He signaled to the other men. They had to avoid passing in front of an observation post, or they’d have been spotted.

A light briefly shone on the Tilsin followed by a second blast, and Tankar knew the first two bridges had been blown. He smiled at the image of Anaena and her men rushing through the breaches into the Mpfifi ship especially since rushing while wearing a spacesuit really was not possible! Chasing away the image, he looked for the best spot to deposit the bomb. With no knowledge of the layout of the enemy ship, one spot was as good as any other. Five minutes elapsed. The men attached the device to the hull, and Tankar activated the delayed-action apparatus that, in 10 minutes, would set off the hydronuclear reaction.

“Get going,” he ordered his men. “Warn our comrades on the way. I’ll be there soon.”

As he carefully adjusted the equipment, he abruptly sensed someone near him and swore. “I told you to get out of here!”

Recoiling from a hard hit to his helmet, Tankar turned and saw an enormous Mpfifi in a spacesuit looming over him. Straightening quickly, he almost lost his magnetic boots. The enemy was a good 30 centimeters taller than he but did not appear to be armed. He must have been a mechanic inspecting the hull. The Mpfifi was poised to attack again, but Tankar ducked, grabbed the Mpfifi by its legs and heaved it off the hull. As the creature drifted through space, Tankar recalled his own fall and felt sorry for him. Then something tapped the soles of his boots.

The other tunnels are exploding! The Tilsin is about to dive into hyperspace!

He ran awkwardly taking long, slippery strides. The city-state was still there, and he saw two wide gaps that seemed simultaneously close by and far away as the last human shapes rushed in. He knew that he did not have enough time to descend the usual way. Using all the power of his rockets, he shot forward. Straight ahead of him he saw a long shape strike the Tilsin’s prow in an explosion of light. Then he dove headfirst inside one of the openings. Using retro-rockets built into his spacesuit he attempted to slow down, but his helmet slammed into the ground, and he fainted. He woke up in an apartment he did not recognize surrounded by Anaena and two doctors.

“So?” he asked.

“You won, Tankar. Right now we’re decimating the last pockets of resistance.”

He fell back against a pillow with a sigh. “Then I can go home now. Congratulations, Ana. You’ve got guts, which I’ve always known. Can’t we be friends? Although you’ll find out what I did….” He stifled his next words and struggled to get to his feet. “I’m going back home to sleep. Iolia must be impatient to see me.”

The look on Anaena’s face made him blanch. “She…she didn’t…?”

“The enemy’s final torpedo, Tankar,” she said softly. “It slammed into the middle of the hospital where she was working. She didn’t have time to suffer…or even to know….”

* * *

He awoke from his deep sleep with a violent headache and a dry mouth. He gazed at the ceiling not understanding where he was. Then he remembered, and he wished he was dead.

He was in his former apartment where Pei’s paintings still lay rolled up just as he’d left them. Just as he’d found….

The room reeked of alcohol. He started to get up when the sound of breaking glass told him a bottle had crashed to the floor adding to a pile of glass shards. The motion aggravated his headache, and he felt as if his brain were being tossed around and ricocheting off his skull.

Eight days! I’ve been here eight whole days…. He stood, carefully putting his feet on the ground and sidestepping the shattered glass on his way to the tiny kitchen where he drank several glasses of cold water. He sat at the table, head in hands, and remained there immobile, incapable of weeping.

Eight days! Eight days already….

He remembered, as if it were a dream, making his way through the city’s streets surrounded by Anaena and other Stellarans, cheered on by men and the women, unable to understand why. He had gone into the compound and walked, like a blind man, to the apartment he had shared with his wife. His pajamas still lay crumpled on the unmade bed next to Iolia’s neatly folded nightgown. Then, finally, he understood.

He remained alone for several hours, pacing the three small rooms, trying to forget, struggling to convince himself none of it was true. Everything in the apartment bore Iolia’s imprint. He cherished the final moments when he could still hope that she had just gone away for a little while, that she would be back soon and smile at him. Then, suddenly, he had given in to the grief, collapsed onto the bed and clutched the nightgown that still smelled of her.

Afterward, he calmly sorted through the items he wanted to keep to remember her and set aside those he would give to her family just as he would have done for a fallen comrade-in-arms. Then he’d left the apartment forever. He could no longer stand the idea of living alone in rooms Iolia had so indelibly marked.

He wanted to see where she had died. The torpedo had slipped through a hallway after penetrating the hull. Instead of exploding immediately, it decimated a ward with 30 wounded, two doctors and five nurses, one of whom had been Iolia. They found nothing of the victims, nothing identifiable.

Finally, he had paid his respects to Holonas, also shattered by grief. Tankar left the compound rather than attend the funeral ceremony. He had returned to his former apartment. Ever since, he had been drinking nonstop, passing out, trying to forget that he was, in part, responsible for his wife’s death.

The doorbell rang. He ignored it, wishing the visitor would leave him alone to grieve…. Insistently, the doorbell rang again. He opened the door, and Anaena entered. She looked at him with pity and put one gentle hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t do this, Tankar.”

“Do what?”

“Let yourself go like this. It’s not worthy of a man like you.”

He stared at her, brimming with hatred. “You mean Tankar, Lieutenant of the Stellar Guard, don’t you? Tankar, the hero? Tankar, the savior? Drunk for eight days straight.”

He stood close to her so she could smell the alcohol on his breath, waves of it coming off his body. “When the hell will you leave me alone and let me be a man like any other? When will you let me howl in rage, anguish and shame in my own little corner? I don’t give a damn what is or isn’t worthy of me.” Turning his back on her, he shouted, “Get out!”

“I don’t know what to say, Tankar. I understand your pain….”

“Oh, no you don’t! You understand nothing! You can’t…I killed her.” Turning back to her he whispered, “I killed her.”

“Don’t say such a thing.” Anaena shook her head.

“You don’t know!” He began pacing in little circles, waving his arms as he talked. “I had a working tracer in my lab. And I knew something was pursuing us just a few hours before the attack. We could’ve been ready for them! I said nothing because I hated you Stellarans so very much, and because I was convinced that, having stolen my blueprints, you were capable of building at least one tracer and, by keeping watch over it, capable of defending yourselves.

“I dumped my responsibilities onto you without making sure that you had them…the tracers. And that’s how I killed Iolia, just as surely as if I’d come back that night and strangled her with my bare hands.”

“You…you had a tracer?” Anaena stuttered in shock.

“And you don’t have one, do you? You told me over and over, and I never believed you. I didn’t believe you because, when I first arrived on the Tilsin, you all made me a pariah, untouchable. After that –” he shrugged, “– it was too late. I simply couldn’t believe anything you told me. You killed her too.”

Anaena was pale. “Five thousand dead. Five thousand in addition to Iolia.” She shook her head again. “We paid a steep price for our prejudice, and you? You paid a steep price for your pride.”

“True, that. We made a fine mess, you and I. And you ignore the deaths of the Others. An entire city-state. How many were they, forty thousand?”

“Them? I don’t count them.”

“But you see, I simply can’t hate them. I hate myself and you. That the enemy kills us? That’s normal. But out of sheer stupidity you and I…that’s what I can’t forgive.”

“You’ll forget, Tankar. Man forgets in order to go on living.”

“Forget her? Do you know that, aside from my mother, Iolia is the only person ever to show me kindness? For three months I was happy, Anaena. You never can comprehend my happiness.”

“Oh, yes, I think I can since I know what three months of heartbreak can be.”

He acted as if he had not heard her. “I’d never known such peace of mind, such lively friendship, such warmth. When I came home from the lab in the evening, she was at the door waiting for me, every night except that last one when I came home too late to see her give me one last smile. Can you understand that I loved her? Aside from a handful of comrades among the Guard – and that’s a very different thing – I’d never loved any other person.

“When I fought in the park trying to stop an enemy you couldn’t contain, I wasn’t fighting for this city; I wasn’t fighting for the Empire; I wasn’t even fighting for humanity as a whole. I fought only for Iolia, for her alone. She was the one person who cared about me and, just as she needed me, I needed her.” He stopped pacing and stared at nothing, seeing no one. “I betrayed her. I failed to protect her. I killed her.”

Tankar turned to face Anaena again. “For the rest? I don’t give a damn. Get the hell out of here and let me drink. When I’m drunk I sleep, and when I sleep, I forget.”

“And do you think Iolia would approve?”

He stood, unmoving, as if she had struck him, still gripping the bottle in one hand.

Anaena continued. “She saw the man in you. She saw beyond the soldier, and she did that far better than I did; I admit it. Better than any of us.”

“Yes. And I killed her.”

“You didn’t kill her, Tankar. We’re all guilty, me first of all. If only I’d been able to see beyond my stupid prejudice…. If only I’d befriended you from the start, then that wall of mistrust never would have been built. But….” She hesitated before admitting, “But I suffered so much to see you with that woman!” She paused before whispering, “That’s the truth.”

“Orena?” Tankar was stunned. “But she never mattered to me. She was like a rope thrown to a drowning man.”

“I think I fell in love with you the day I met you,” Anaena confessed. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to bore you with my feelings. You preferred Iolia to me, and you were right to do so. She was a far better person than I am, and I will always regret having slapped and insulted her back there on that vile planet. If it makes you feel even a little bit better, you’re not the only one suffering right now, although I know our sufferings aren’t comparable.”

He remained silent for a long time then placed one arm around her shoulders. “I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to love you, Anaena.”

“I’m not asking you for anything except the chance to weep with you, to mourn Iolia and to mourn what might have been.”