The Shadows Cycle

Chapter 3

The Army of Nations

Kara awoke in her cube the morning after the incident with the Narlan.  A bright orange planet loomed before her, coming closer every second.  She looked down at the monitor screen in front of her, which read:  Approaching Planet Konak

“So, there were Narlan aboard our station for three days, and we do not realize that they are here.  If this is the best we can do, we might as well just surrender to them.”

Kara turned around, startled.  The Captain was there.

“Can not even keep track of our own crew when they are standing right behind us,” he said, laughing under his breath.  “Now let’s get to business.  You killed one of the Narlan, and the other one jumped out the window and killed himself.  He will be far away by now.

“Anyway, they got in through the airlock, and did a mighty fine job of doing it, for they could have got killed, but imagining how they survived this long.  They must have brought rations, for not one of the Narlan has survived very long without food.  But we have just realized that they want a war.”

“What do you mean?” asked Kara.

“They typed a message on the monitor that they were using.  It said, ‘Our army will be waiting.’  You must have startled them, for it seems that they were going to tell us where the army was waiting.  Well, I must go oversee the pilots as we land.  Good-bye.” At that he left.

As the station broke through the atmosphere, everything started to shake.  After about a minute, the tremors subsided.

When the station had landed, the crew began to unload, and all of them were examining the landscape of Konak with watchful eyes.  A large squad of soldiers and the leader of all the humans in the galaxy, Avrian Horkov, the Corian, greeted Commander Heffer and Captain Beckley.  He was about as tall as the Commander and was bald, but he had a thick accent to his voice.  They began to converse as they were driven by several hovercrafts across the vast field and towards a large gray city in the distance.

A week went by and spacecraft for the coming war and traveling were built.  Soldiers and pilots started their training.  No report as to where the Narlan were located had yet come in.

Planet Konak held more troops for the Commander’s army, and repairs were done to the station.  More battle-crafts were built for them, and these had strange weapons included, some of which the laser destroyed, but kept going through the target and some which fired a series of grenades that homed in on only the enemy engines.

It was late in the evening and Kara was walking back to the platform, when she began to hear two voices around the corner of a large building.  She recognized the Commander’s and the Corian’s voices.

“-dangerous.  This kind of attack has happened three times now, twice on us.  That radar they took was special.  Do you not realize that this, this force, now probably has the three most powerful weapons ever created and one of your men?  We—”

“Yes I do realize this, but the Intimidator was really only partly finished.  It was twenty-five-years ago that the Narlan turned against us. It took forty to even get that far.”

“Yes, but it took ten years to blue-print it.  They would not need to blue print it now, would they?”

“What you are saying is that we possibly have only five-years to find and destroy this force before they finish it, considering that they do know how to construct it, unless of course it was the Narlan behind the attacks the entire time.”

“Yes, but your plans for this war against them will most likely destroy all of your troops.”

When the Corian said this, Kara walked around the corner.  She looked at them, waved, and continued walking.  When she arrived at the transportation platform, Captain Beckley stopped her.

“What did you hear them saying; I must know."

“What?”

“I saw you around the corner.  You were listening in on the Commander and the Corian’s conversation.  What are the Commander’s plans?  He only goes to the Corian for advice on his plans of attack, especially if he needs help with designing a particularly complicated maneuver.”

“Well, they were discussing something that had happened about one hundred years ago, and something about some sort of radar.  The Corian then said something about the Commander’s way of attack and how it would most likely get most of our troops destroyed.”

“Did you hear his plan?”

“No, I was too late for that,” she replied.

The Captain walked back over to one of the soldiers and said something to him.  Kara went back to a hovercraft transporter that would take her to the station.

They stayed at Konak for two more days, and when they finally left, they had ten-thousand more soldiers and one hundred-ninety more scouts.  Extra segments had been attached to the station in order to accompany the extra recruits.

Training sessions took place throughout the following days.  Kara often saw the Captain hurrying down the hall in an attempt to try to catch the Commander as he oversaw each training session, but the Commander was doing very well in avoiding him.  Then one day, Kara was walking down a hall that led to the observatory, for she was coming back from her lunch, when she heard arguing. As she had suspected, the Captain had finally caught the Commander.  Soldiers were grouped around them; some were still running down the hall towards the commotion.

“You know that plan will not work!  Of course it will destroy every one of our troops.  It’s suicide to just throw our forces at them.  You don’t even know what kinds of things that they may have planned for us!”

“The troops will survive, and the Narlan will be quickly destroyed.  Besides, the Corian agrees with it, so why do you not just stick with your own business!”

“The Corian does not agree with it; to me it seems like you forced him to agree.”

“That is not true.  I am not at all forceful to my superiors.”

“That is a lie.  I have a witness as to what you and he said.”

At this comment, the Commander grinned.

“You do, who?” he asked.

“Kara, she was coming back to one of the transporters when she overheard you and the Corian.  After what you both have told me, you definitely seem to be trying to utterly destroy your own army. Ah, here she comes now!”

Kara walked tensely into the room.

“There is no need to look so serious Kara.  The Commander and I were just having a talk.  Discussing the plan, you know.  But did you not witness him and the Corian speaking about his plan, and is it true that the Corian did not agree with him?”

She looked between the two of them before answering.

            “Yes sir, I did.  The Corian was worried about your plan.”

The Commander looked dumbstruck.  He knew that she was telling the truth, but he would rather just deny it than accept and have to change his plan, which would involve having to formulate a new strategy and getting all of the leading officers informed of it before he announced it to the entire army.

“She is obviously lying.  Kara must have been just playing along with your little game.  Did you not see how she had hesitated to answer?  Is it not clear to you that I am telling the truth?”

One of the soldiers suddenly spoke.

“I agree with the Commander.  It is true that Kara did hesitate to answer.  She also looked at the Captain as if she was looking for help with what to say.”

“See, someone agrees with me. Now, I am beginning to think that this meeting should be ended.  Good afternoon to you all.”  Commander Heffer left.

Days passed, but no trace of the Narlan was able to be found, so given this extra time, the station made seven more stops to pick up even more troops.  By the third week after the stop at Konak, the army now consisted of more than twenty million soldiers.

The last planet, Mysi, had been able to build several more stations to accommodate all of the soldiers, but soon even these were almost completely filled.  As they recruited even more soldiers from the different planets, the Commander knew that the army would soon be completed.

He was trying to outnumber the last known amount of Narlan: Fifty-million, but Narlan were able to multiply very fast, so this was going to be hard to achieve.

Ten more stops were made.  The planets Cym, Dheri, Hrode, Maje, and Julipatn were among them.  They supplied the most amounts of troops, for they were the five most populated planets of the solar system.

About a week after the last planet that they would go to, Kashan, another meeting was held.  It would be the largest meeting that had been held after the one that had included the IMAGE from the separation of the humans’ alliance with the Narlan.

“As you all obviously know, we have been stopping from planet to planet collecting troops for the war ahead of us.  I do not know if you have realized this, but the Narlan have been unusually active this year.  I believe that they have been planning to make war with us in the coming future, which was proved by the message that they had left us.”

The Commander looked around the room. Everyone was intently listening and waiting for the rest of his speech. 

“Many of you know what the Narlan are like.  When they want to fight, they are merciless.  They proved to be useful allies, for they helped us to be victorious in the Old War.  The Vril were the greatest empire in the universe.  A species with a mysterious past, the Vril were one of the cruelest empires that ever lived.  They were especially cruel to humans, for we were advancing in technology faster than any other species that they had control over.

“After centuries of tyranny, we joined alliances with most of the species under control.  One of them was the Narlan.  We started a war greater than any ever fought.  It began to go our way, and the Vril started going frantic.  They knew that they were going to lose, so they put the full weight of their forces upon us.  We thought that we would actually fall, but then the Narlan took charge and won the war for us.  The Vril are now extinct, for their army was their entire population.”

The room suddenly filled with a strange buzzing noise; everyone was talking in hurried whispers.  As this was happening, the Commander told one of his officers something, and the officer left.

Everyone settled, and the Commander started talking again.

“The Narlan had used an especially powerful and secret weapon; to this day, no one knows what it was or how it was used.  The Narlan had never given us a single clue as to what the weapon was, but it was built into the core of the Intimidator.”

Four days went by, and there was still no sign of where the Narlan could possibly be.  Spies came back with no news to tell, and still more training was held.  With these events, the Captain was looking more anxious than ever.

Repairs were made to the parts of the stations that had been damaged by various space rocks.  New equipment was in the process of being installed into the pods, some of which included partial over shields; new weapons had also become available.  Many of these consisted of upgraded lasers that would catch fire when they hit their target, as well as a sort of small silver Frisbee that would send small spiraling beams of energy into the enemy.  The disk would gain more power the longer it took to reach the target, which enabled a larger explosion on contact.

The following day came like most other days.  Training was held with more effort than ever before; new abilities were being taught every week now.  As the day progressed more officers were crowding the corridors.  Kara kept wondering whether all this preparation was really worth all of their effort.  The Narlan had been able to stay in hiding for so long, she wondered if they would ever show themselves?

As the evening neared, Kara was sitting in her cube looking into space and at the different glowing stars and galaxies.  Then suddenly a scout pod was visible above the horizon, and it was only a few miles from the stations.  The pod was traveling unusually fast, so Kara curiously watched as it flew towards the docking area.  Was it possible that the Narlan could have finally been found, or would it be just another fraud like the others with no further information?

The report was finally an answer as to where the Narlan had been spotted.  But although the Narlan had finally been found, it was not the only news brought back.  They seemed to have chosen a galaxy almost impossible to reach, for the Belt of Crontias blocked the way.  This was the largest asteroid belt for parsecs in space.  It had a shell that consisted of fifteen million miles of asteroids, and then the outer edges of the galaxy could be reached.  The asteroids had amazingly formed a solid barrier three-hundred-and-sixty-degree sphere around the entire galaxy, but even if they were able to get through this, they still had to find the location of the Narlan.  Dangerous species also had to be avoided.

They traveled for four days without a single trace of the galaxy.  Orders were made to improve and check the radar monitors for any trace of it.  Finally, the galaxy of Crontias was found about fifteen-thousand miles away; the stations could reach it within thirty-six hours.

The next day, a reddish light could be seen in the distance.  In about fifteen-hours they would start to reach the outer edge of the belt.  Dangerous as it would be, the trek had to be made.  The only other option would be to wait for the Narlan to emerge and attack them here.

With about nine hours left, Kara looked out of her window.  Ahead lay the enormous broken globe of rock which enclosed the perfect place for the Narlan to bide their time, waiting for the humans to come.  With each second that passed, the awaiting doom through the path of the shell grew steadily larger before Kara’s eyes.