Third Player Page 4

  On his left, marched a young, serious-looking man with chiseled features and dark curly hair. He wore the uniform of a pilot from the Terran ship Excalibur, and was easily identifiable to all as the legendary telepath, Moss Pendragon. The angry buzz of whispering increased when everyone recognised who he was, but no-one was really surprised by his presence. The part Moss and his team had played in recent events was by now, common knowledge.

  The person who really grabbed everyone’s attention stood on Hillmead’s right. She was tall and willowy, with pale, almost translucent skin. Her long hair trailed down the base of her back, and was a pure white. She wore long flowing robes of a strange pattern, that on Earth, would have been described as a form of tartan. Boots made from soft animal skin peeked out from under her garments, and she moved down the steps toward the stage, with a grace unknown to the women of Dyason.

  The three of them stepped up to the podium, with every single pair of eyes in the Hall of Representatives watching them intently. The civilian politician stepped aside without a word, and Chelekov remained notably quiet.

  Hillmead stepped up to the microphone and began in a strong firm voice, ‘Fellow citizens of Caranak, and the people of Dyason. Now is not the time for fighting among ourselves! Haven’t we all been through enough already? Who can say they have not lost loved ones, in the many bitter struggles that now appear so pointless?’

  ‘They may appear pointless to you Hillmead!’ the obese general spat out. ‘But they don’t appear pointless to us, the people who created order from chaos!’

  There was a murmuring of approval to this interruption from a few members of the military in the front rows of the auditorium, but they were drowned out by the mass jeering. Hillmead turned to face his heckler and snapped back, ‘You’re wrong Tylosk. You and all your power hungry friends are entirely wrong! You’ve been looking for wars to fight, and grotesque machines to build, not because Dyason has ever faced a real threat from without. No, the real threat has always come from within! You and your military cronies are the real threat! It’s been your madness, your desire for power, which has brought us to the brink of environmental destruction!’

  The auditorium erupted into a frenzy of clapping and cheering. Hillmead truly was, the spokesmen for the people! Didn’t he say what they all thought, but never had the courage to say?

  ‘The relics from our Imperial past speak of the danger of aliens, of the threat posed by the unknown race that arrived in the third great starship!’ Hillmead paused for dramatic effect as Moss had instructed him to, and scanned the faces of those before him. Silence descended upon the hall as the audience hung on to his every word.

  ‘Well, here are your aliens!’ he opened his hands dramatically and gestured toward Moss and the strange white-haired woman. Nobody said a word, everybody sat or stood in stunned silence. Knowing this was the most dangerous moment Hillmead plunged on. ‘On my left stands Moss Pendragon, the legendary Terran telepath, who made life so difficult for our colonial forces on Earth. Do you notice something about him? Do you notice that except for the colour of his hair, and his skin tones, he looks just like you and I? Have you noticed that?’

  There was an uncomfortable murmuring from his audience. Hillmead knew he was on thin ice, but he continued before somebody interrupted him and ruined the moment. ‘And on my left, is the beautiful lady who is in command of the third starship. The ship these fools would have you believe constitutes such a threat to our planet! Here are your aliens! Here is your supposed enemy!’

  The murmuring became louder, but Hillmead waved them down. He needed to control his audience for a moment longer. He needed to deliver his punch-line. In a minute his job, thank the gods, would be done. But, for the moment, he needed to keep control of the situation. He swallowed hard and in a louder voice said,’ There is an enemy out there! There is an enemy who threatens not just ourselves, but the planet Earth as well. There is an enemy out there, in the depths of space, who has already devoured this good lady’s planet, and her people. It is this enemy that we need to work together to destroy!’

  ‘But don’t take my word for it,’ he continued, not giving anyone the chance to interrupt him. ‘Hear it from the lady herself. Let her tell you of the danger we all face!’

  The background murmuring became more like the buzz of a disturbed nest of insects as the white-haired woman stepped forward and Hillmead stepped back, looking at Moss as he did so. The Terran telepath nodded at his new friend, as the mysterious woman nervously faced a semi-hostile audience. Admiral Chelekov half got out of his chair, but fell back dramatically, as the woman raised her arms in an open gesture, but uttered no words. Instead, every single man and woman in the hall found they understood the meaning of the words and images, that entered their minds.

  ‘My friend, the one you call Hillmead, speaks the truth,’ she mentally broadcast to them all. ‘We are not your enemies, nor are the people from the planet you so recently tried to dominate... You only have to look at the physical similarities between our three races to realise that we must have all, at some time, come from a common background. If we are all brothers and sisters, how can we be enemies? No, the real enemy lies beyond the boundaries of your imagination, out there in the darkest part of the universe! I tell you this from cruel and bitter experience. I am, or rather was, the high priestess of a peaceful world we called Heligsion. My name is Dauphne and I was the seer for my people, a people who no longer exist. I failed to save my world… Now all that is left to me, is the hope that I can save yours. But let me start at the beginning…’

  Images were fed into the minds of all those present at that historic meeting, regardless of who they were, and what their beliefs were. The images didn’t intrude into their thoughts, everyone retained full awareness of their surroundings and what was happening, but the images and narrative were crystal clear. The seer Dauphne played her story to them, like an ancient cinema projectionist playing newsreels to a captivated audience.

  They all saw a beautiful, lush planet bathed in the warm light of twin suns. Vast fields of tall crops swayed in the breeze, whilst healthy, well-fed children played outside tidy communal farmsteads. They saw visions of large beautiful sailing ships crossing oceans, their huge sails dazzling to the eye. Then they were shown garden cities, where the great minds of the Heligsion gathered to discuss important matters of philosophy and religion. They saw children laughing and playing under clear blue skies, and open-air concerts of the most beautiful music. The fearful, distrusting people of Dyason, whose poisoned planet was on the verge of destruction were shown a world of peace, beauty and harmony. To a soul, they were spellbound.

  ‘This is, or was, my world,’ the seer narrated to them. ‘As you can see, it was a gentle world of peace and harmony. We are an ancient race who long ago, vowed to live in harmony with our natural surroundings. War and machines of destruction were unknown on my world. In fact, there were very few machines of any nature on Heligsion. There was no war, no strife, no starvation, and there was a simple reason for the absence of these horrors, that have become such a way of life to the citizens of your world. Our needs were never so great as yours. Mutual co-operation and communication was something we took for granted. You see, the people of Heligsion were all natural-born telepaths.’

  As the seer mentally spoke these words to her captive audience, she also displayed more images of day-to-day life on her idyllic planet. For the majority of the Dyason present, these images filled them with awe, and the wish to see their own world transformed into the vision of harmony, that was Heligsion. However, for a few, the images filled them with a deep sense of fear and mistrust. Even now, this minority didn’t believe the display they saw was genuine. They were determined not to be taken in by what was so obviously, no more than some fancy parlour trick.

  Moss felt the aggression and malevolence in the souls of the minority with disappointment, but without surprise. It was no more than he expected, but it saddened him to think of the inevitable s
trife that lay ahead for the Dyason people. Once, he hated this race with every fibre of his soul, but not anymore... He wouldn’t wish the hell this planet was going through on his worst enemy, which up until now, of course, was exactly what the Dyason people were. God knew, the looming civil war was the kind of shit they could all do without at the moment. It would make the final battle even harder to win, and Moss wasn’t at all sure that the planet Dyason and its people could survive.

  The seer continued to tell her story, projecting an image of a shooting star flashing across a night sky that was filled with stars. ‘For generations life on my world carried on, largely unchanged from one year to the next. Our population level remained steady, no one went without food or a decent roof over their head. There was work for those who wanted it. Those who didn’t dedicated their time to the expansion of the mind both as a single and group entity. We were happy with our lives, content to live with the wildlife of our world rather than try to conquer it.

  ‘Then one night our planet passed through what we believed to be a group of rogue asteroids. The heavens were filled with pyrotechnics as our planet’s gravity pulled the asteroids into our atmosphere. Little did we know then that such beauty could hide such evil. Several large meteors fell to the ground in desolate regions of our world, and our best cosmologists travelled to these remote locations to study the fallen cosmic debris. However, no matter how hard they looked, none could find any trace of the meteors. After many fruitless weeks searching, the cosmology teams returned to the settlements empty-handed. ‘

  The seer then went on to explain how after several seasons, farmers at the fringes of Heligsion settlements began to find the remains of animals gutted in a most vicious manner. There were still some large predators living in the wild, more remote areas of Heligsion, but it had been many generations since these animals had dared to venture near the settlements. Even so, at first these attacks were blamed on the planet’s natural predators.

  However, the farmers of outlying regions soon began to find their livestock was being decimated, literally ripped apart in a fashion none had ever seen before. The violence and strength used to attack their large beasts of burden indicated a predator bigger than any creature indigenous to the planet. Alarm bells began to ring across all the settlements. The planet’s best Biologists joined teams of local farmers and militia and searched the lands outside the settlements. None of the teams returned.

  One evening as the people of Podigk, a small farming community resting in the foothills of the Indos mountain range, were putting their children to bed, the inhabitants became aware of a terrible noise approaching their community—a deep beating clacking, like iron bars smashing against brittle bone. Men dashed out of their homesteads, their wives close behind, looking for the source of such a godless sound. They were appalled by the vision they saw! Descending the mountainside in numbers too many to count, were creatures straight out of their nightmares. They were being approached by what every man and woman instinctively knew to be the hordes of hell—’the devil creatures’.

  They put up a bitter fight, but to no avail. The peaceful people of Podigk had only a few pitchforks, steel bars and the occasional shotgun to defend themselves. Every last man, woman and child was killed, ripped apart by those hideous claws. Mercy was shown to no one…

  Of course, being telepathic, the rest of Heligsion instantly knew and shared the suffering of the people of Podigk. In one night the peace of generations was shattered, and the twin suns would forever more shine down on a landscape stained with blood. The Heligsion race began its battle for survival…

  Armed militia were formed as quickly as possible, but without a large industrial base, their arms were pitifully few and inadequate. More and more remote settlements were wiped out. Scientists examined the bodies of the few creatures killed in the fighting and soon came to the conclusion that they weren’t native to the planet. The DNA of the demons was totally alien, as was their biology and physical appearance. The devil-creatures were low and squat, standing no more than half a man’s height off the ground. This indicated to the scientists of Heligsion that the demons originally came from a planet with much higher gravity than their own. The armoured shell, that protected the main body, sprouted six multi-jointed legs, that moved in a bizarre combination to propel the devil-creatures faster than any man, or natural beast, could run. The large oval-shaped heads could swivel from side to side, as the creatures looked for prey with their twin multi-lensed eyes. They devoured flesh with mandibles and attacked with large snapping claws and a vicious barbed tail. Two ancillary claws acted like clumsy hands, allowing the demons to pickup objects if necessary. To the scientists of a peaceful planet, who had no experience of war, these creatures were perfect, invincible warriors.

  However, two things confused them. Firstly, the demons had no reproductive organs and secondly, their life-span was less than one season. So where was the queen that produced these devils, and why was she producing hordes whose sole purpose was to destroy? If they’d managed to find the answers to these questions. They might have won the war.

  The war raged across the planet for two years. The people of Heligsion through necessity, gradually became more inventive and built ever bigger machines of destruction which at times, halted the advance of the hordes. But every time they beat off an attack, the demons would return a few days later in double their original number and simply swamp the defenders.

  ‘By this time it became obvious to the high council that our people would not survive the advance of the demons. There could be no doubt by the end of the second year of war, that the hordes meant for our people to be destroyed to the last man, woman and child,’ the seer told the people of Dyason, projecting horrific images of the hordes overrunning towns and cities, devouring everything in their path. ‘Our hurriedly created armies were being eroded away. Each and every new weapon we invented was matched by the armies of devil-creatures. We produced artillery, and within a few weeks, the hordes had somehow produced their own version. We invented multi-barrelled projectile weapons that could cut down a forest in a matter of seconds. For a short while, this weapon gave us an advantage, but inevitably the horde were soon operating their own version of our invention.’

  Tears poured down Dauphne’s cheeks as she recounted her horrific tale to the occupants of the Hall of Representatives. Only the most cynical members of the military council failed to be moved by the story, but even they weren’t about to stop her before the tale was complete. Up in the mini-television studio above the amphitheater, the producer in charge of recording the proceedings on behalf of the Democratic Front, was completely enthralled by the mental transmission from the alien. He was completely lost in the incredible story. Only later would he discover that the words and images his mind was receiving were also being recorded on the video tapes behind him—a fact that would have a dramatic effect on events to come.

  ‘We tried to make contact with the minds of the creatures,’ the seer told them, ‘but their minds were too alien for us to reach. They had no individual consciousness, no minds of their own. They operated as groups, nests even, so their consciousness was collective, not singular. We attempted to contact the group mind, but failed. We had no idea why we were being attacked, only that we were being destroyed.

  ‘A few specially trained groups attempted to find the nests of the horde. They tried to destroy the queen, the layer of the eggs. In two spectacular cases they succeeded, although none of the troops ever returned. However, it wasn’t enough to do anything more than slow down the inevitable.’

  The image of a huge cavern hidden beneath an ancient abbey was displayed to the audience and those in the know immediately recognised what they saw. It wasn’t the cavern that was of interest as what it contained—a machine of vast elegant dimensions.

  ‘For some generations my people had been aware of the mysterious machine that was entombed in ancient caverns below the oldest of our religious monuments. It lay in the northern highla
nds, one of the few areas still free of the hordes.

  ‘Our scientists recognised the vessel for what it was—an ancient starship, and had spent years carefully studying it. The knowledge gained from the ship was still being analysed when the invasion of the hordes began. The high council decided that our last hope rested with that ancient starship. Somehow, our scientists had to revive the vessel, bring it back to life after eons. Then the starship would become a lifeboat. Filled with DNA samples of as much of the life on Heligsion as we could muster, together with chosen members of our race, we planned to flee our home-world.’

  Images of members of Dauphne’s race toiling over the ancient starship were projected to the amphitheater’s audience. Once again, to those in the know it was obvious that they were looking at an exact copy of Excalibur and Dominator, the two starships also discovered in underground caverns on two separate worlds.

  ‘The race was on to prepare and launch the vessel before we were completely overrun by the demons. It was a very near thing!’ Dauphne projected images of a vast battlefield that stretched from horizon to horizon. A system of trenches surrounded the ancient abbey that marked the position of the caverns. The last members of the seer’s race occupied those trenches and as the people of Dyason watched, a huge battle, bigger than anything anyone had seen before, erupted on that once peaceful world.

  ‘The last stand of my people took place on the surface above the caverns of the ancient vessel we called “Valvia”—’last hope’. It was a close thing. The ship with the best of what Heligsion had to offer on board was launched just as the last trenches were being overrun. As we left our planet finally belonged to the demons.