Thapa I
Ret. Naik Bishnu Thapa agrees to take the train down from his home in Nepal to meet me in New Delhi, where we sit down in a local park and start our interview. He proves to be a very polite and humble individual, and quietly requests that I remove his nervous stumbles while we speak.
Q: Thank you very much for agreeing to this interview. I know that many of the Gorkha Regiments prefer to avoid the spotlight.
A: As is proper. We should strive to fight for our country and its people, not our own personal glory.
Q: Now, the Gorkha Regiments became well-renowned for their actions in India against the Race. I know that you specifically saw combat near Hyderabad.
A: Indeed I did. I was a rifleman when I was first deployed alongside the rest of the 8 Gorkha Rifles. When the Race landed in Hyderabad, the forces in the region were forced to retreat northward, as they were caught almost completely off-guard. The armies trying to retake Mumbai'i now had to try and keep the Race from conquering the heart of the country at the same time.
To try and curb the upwards advance, they called us in.
Q: What was your mission?
A: The Race was setting up numerous bases as they spread out from the captured city. Our mission was to attack these bases to disrupt their advances, and bog them down long enough for reinforcements from the regiments near Delhi to arrive. I was part of the 6/8 Gorkha Rifles, which was to attack the base near Narsapur Lake. We numbered five hundred altogether, and were backed up by five tanks and ten IFVs.
We were flown in ten kilometers from the base, and dropped in from fifteen meters in order to avoid detection.
Q: Fifteen meters? How did your parachutes deploy in time?
Thapa gives me a confused look.
A: Parachutes? We simply landed in marshy ground.
Q: But even that's... never mind. What did you do after you landed?
A: We marched out of the marsh and towards the base, using the cover of darkness to avoid detection. The armor hung back, waiting for our signal while we prepared to mitigate the base's defenses.
I and twenty three others were sent to neutralize the guards that patrolled the base. Silence was important. If they saw us, they could prepare their forces, and increase our casualties. However, we are Gorkhas; this is what we have been trained to do for years. The same techniques our forefathers used against the Japanese could be used against the Race, even if they were aliens from another star.
Q: Which is?
A: What we do best. May you please stand up, sir?
I do as told. Thapa circles around me, then suddenly clamps a hand around my mouth and drags the edge of his hand across my throat, pantomiming a knife. He lets go, thanking me, and sits down.
The Race's species don't have lips, and wider mouths. To silence them, we had to pinch their jaws shut, much like when handling a small crocodile. We also needed to lift them up for a proper cut, due to their diminutive stature. Still, they have throats, and their throats were just as easy to cut, if not more so. One's head even came all the way off when I killed him.
It was simple, taking down the guards. By then they had already discovered the ginger root, and were becoming even more undisciplined. They would casually walk around the perimeter in pairs, chatting to themselves and tasting the spice. When they were between security cameras, we would move in pairs ourselves and kill them simultaneously with our khukuris. They make no noise when their throat is sliced open, due to how their vocal organs work.
Only six minutes passed between the first of the guards being killed and the last one. We then radioed in for the attack.
Q: How did that go?
A: As expected. They didn't see our tanks smashing through the gates until it was too late. Our tanks shot what we assumed was their communications station, then started destroying their landcruisers while they were still unmanned. The rest of us climbed the fences or went through the broken gates, killing all we could find. The fighting proved surprisingly intense, due to the fact that there were close to three thousand in the base, and a returning envoy distracted our IFVs. At some point, it devolved into barrack-to-barrack sweeps, almost entirely in hand to hand.
My group was pinned down by sixty or so males that had managed to run to the armory and went to defend their barracks. They took shots at us from one of the rooms, while we laid suppressing fire from the hallway. We were low on ammunition, however. So, we did what Gorkhas do.
Six of us, myself included, crept out of the building while the rest continued to lay suppressing fire, then we came in through the windows, khukuris drawn. At that moment, the rest of us charged in with our khukuris.
The hand to hand fighting favored us greatly. Race males are small and weak, with no training on what to do if the enemy is too close to use a gun. The Hallessi are even weaker. Rabotevs, however...
He pulls down his shirt, revealing a trio of long white scars in his dark skin, trailing down his chest.
They are strong for their size. I have learned that despite being more primitive than even the Hallessi when they were conquered, they still managed to kill hundreds of Race males, while the Hallessi only killed a few dozen. I am unsurprised.
It still did not save them. All of the males lost their lives, while we only lost six.
Q: After the base was taken out, what did you do?
A: We took whatever equipment we could, and destroyed what we couldn't. We piled the bodies in the center, leaving their heads on pikes for their comrades to see, to let them know that it was the Gorkhas that had killed them. We were already at the extraction point when the remains were discovered.
The other operations were a success as well. The Race lost four bases that night, and their invasion upwards was delayed. We lost nearly eighty Gorkhas in the fight. After that, the Race made us 'priority targets'. If an Indian army regular surrendered to the Race, he was to be spared and brought to a POW camp. If a Gorkha surrendered, he was to be shot.
We were undeterred, for we never surrendered. Kafar Hunu Bhanda Marnu Ramro. It is better to die than live a coward.
For the first time in our interview, a proud look crosses his face.
Many of us Gorkhas died in that war, but no Gorkha was a coward.
-/-\-
From the Journal of Shistvan, dated December 5th, 2020
It hasn't been easy for us, trying to fill the whole Ttish left after he became paint on the road. Everyone was chafing under Psanak when he was put in command, saying that he wasn't qualified. I was with them on that; Psanak was always the distant, quiet type, never really imposing himself on the others. We all said behind his back it was because he was Hallessi, which meant he couldn't be compromised by the Spice. I think we were all offended by that, since none of us are tasters. I mean, Ristov had a close call when he decided to sample a stew he found, but he managed to wean himself off.
I'm digressing again. I've been doing that a lot in these entries. I think, deep down, its because I know I'm probably going to die soon, and I want to immortalize as much of myself as I can in these pages. I want whoever reads this to know that I like to click my big right toe claw when I'm nervous, because no one else is going to.
Back to it. Right. This continent's been less punishing than what I've heard in the other places. Weather's not too bad; if I squint hard enough, it feels like Home. The biggest not-empire down south has fallen, and the forces are sweeping up north with the other landing. We met up with the force in Bangui yesterday, and together we've been taking the heart of the landmass. I think half of it is under our control, now.
This morning, we started rolling into a region a few hundred miles from the city that one of the landings was destroyed. I think the Tosevites here call the region Dār Fūr. Mostly a few small towns and lots of villages, but that's not why I'm writing about it.
Our group was sent to quickly take a small village. Just us in two landcruisers. Can't spare the malepower, not when there's so much territory to take. After that old Tosevite, I was nervous of whatever surprises were waiting for us in such an innocuous place.
There was no resistance when we trudged into the village and demanded their surrender. There was almost nobody to resist us.
There was a pile of bodies near the village's well. Emperor preserve me, the smell. These Big Uglies don't just look bad, but their corpses produce such a horrific stench. There were clouds of flies hovering over the bodies, and it was obvious that they'd been rotting for some time, staining the place with unmentionable secretions. I coughed my morning rations onto a bush when I came across them.
There were maybe twenty people in the village, out of close to a hundred. No adult males, just females and their not-hatchlings. Many of them looked as though they had been beaten and cut. Some of the not-hatchlings had blood between their legs. They all came towards us, many of them weeping and wailing in those unnatural Tosevite voices. Some of the females tried to pull at my hands, whimpering something in their tongue, and I had to back away.
Ristov knew their language, and he started asking them some questions. I just walked around the village as he talked with them, looking at the devastation.
There was a not-hatchling sitting on a rock. I don't know what sex it was. All I saw was that it had no legs. Not blasted off, but roughly cut off, as though someone had taken a dull blade and started hacking away. Despite being naked, there was cloth tied around the stumps, probably to stop the bleeding. I didn't want to see the bloody mess between its legs.
The not-hatchling didn't seem to register me. It just looked at its stumps, just... just staring. Staring. I'm not even sure its alien eyes were taking in the sight.
I had some first-aid supplies on me, and I started wrapping a bandage around the stumps. The not-hatchling didn't react when I wiped at the wounds, or when I put on the last of the bandages. It just kept on staring, even as I carried it back to the other Tosevites.
Ristov had gotten the full story by then. There was some group of Tosevites that didn't like the villagers' type of Tosevite. Something about skin maybe, or the type of giant Big Ugly they believed in. Well, the group had come to the village just yesterday, and done what they'd been doing to other villages for years. They killed the males, and brutalized the females of all ages, forcibly mating with them. Some had their mating organs mutilated with knives, or pierced with hot needles.
I still don't know why these Big Uglies are so obsessed with mating, but I didn't need to understand that to be horrified at what the others had done. If I was put in heat against my will, whenever someone desired...
Psanok was silent during all of this. Then, when Ristov finished, he ordered us to give spare rations and first-aid to the village. He had Ristov ask where the group had gone, and when he got an answer, he had one landcruiser stay behind, then had us roll with him towards the east.
It maybe took us six hours to find them. They were just sitting at at a little campfire; they didn't give us a fight when we rolled up and held them at gunpoint.
Ristov asked them about the village. One of them actually laughed at first. Laughed, like what he did was just some amusement. I didn't understand what they told Ristov, but I didn't need to here their case. I think we'd all made up our minds at that point.
Psanok gave them shovels, and made them dig. They were confused at first, and one tried to one before I put a round in the back of his head. Then Psanok told them to dig again, and said that they'd be brought back to a POW camp if they complied.
They dug for hours, fear in their eyes, that strange Tosevite skin secretion soaking their clothes. They looked on the verge of collapse when they finished, Tosev still shining brightly above them.
Then Psanok had us shoot them, and roll their bodies into the holes.
We were silent when we rode back to the village. Psanok just stared ahead, looking at the horizon. When we finally arrived, Ristov told the villagers of what we'd done, and they wept again, trying to gift us what meager scraps they had. We didn't take them, and we handed out more rations.
This night, as we set up camp with the villagers, we didn't make a single joke about Psanok. I don't think any of us doubt him as a leader, now.
-/-\-
Jeong I
Jeong Tae-sik invites me to his apartment in Wonsan, where he lives with his wife and two children. I am served a delicious homemade meal of some kimchi and chicken katsu, which is downed by surprisingly good beer. After sending his children to bed, he sits down with me in the study, and the interview can start in earnest.
Q: Thank you very much for the meal. I hope it isn't imprudent to begin the questioning.
A: It is not.
Q: Very well. Let's start with your situation before the war. Is it true that you were a political prisoner in the former DPRK?
A: Of a sort. It was my father who caught the attention of the authorities. He used to smuggle media, you see. Movies, television shows, things that the South secretly gave out in hopes of weakening the regime. My father would get the media from contacts, and sell them to people for sums that might seem meager to you, but where very useful for us. There was a considerable market, after all; many people were curious about life beyond the borders, regardless of what the ruling party said.
Well, eventually he got caught, and was arrested on account of spreading "Western propaganda and lies". And since he was arrested, his parents, his wife, and his children were also arrested, and sent to a kwalliso.
Q: Which one were you sent to?
A: Kae'chôn. Less than fifty miles from Pyongyang. We and fifteen thousand others were living in an area of a hundred and fifty five square kilometers. Er, around the size of your Brooklyn, I think. Maybe. It is not important.
I was separated from my parents, and forced to live with the other children in a crowded, filthy barrack. In the morning, I was sent to a school in the prison, I was fed more lies to try and 're-educate' me. When school ended, I was forced to work in the mines alongside my parents with poorly-made tools. Many people suffered accidents, as there were no safety measures to speak of. The stone would scrape and cut our skin, and we would get infections, as the guards refused to waste medicine on us.
The rations were small. A hundred grams of corn a day, with salt stew. We would try and catch rats and insects and frogs to eat, but even then we needed permission from the guards.
My father lost a hand in an accident, but was still forced to work. I watched my mother grow thin, to where her clothes barely stayed on.
He closes his eyes, clearly pained by these memories.
I was eight during this time. I was nine when the landing in Hamhung happened.
Q: What was the air in the camp during this time?
A: We were afraid. Not necessarily of the invaders, but of what the guards would do as a result of the invasion. Would we be considered liabilities and executed? Or were we to be given guns and sent to the front lines as cannon fodder?
The loudspeakers continued to blare propaganda, to try and hide the truth. "Loyal soldiers of the Supreme Leader have repulsed the Alien Devils in Hamhung with no casualties!" "Supreme Leader takes charge of counter-offensive against Alien Devils, and singlehandedly destroys them!"
They were still blaring that when killercraft began flying over the camp, shooting our pilots out of the sky. They kept at it when the guards left three days after the landing, and Race landcruisers smashed through the gates on the fourth day.
Q: What happened then?
A: The Race were wary of us. Apparently, many citizens who bought into what they were told began resistance in occupied areas. Of course, there's only so much a fanatic with a rock can do against a landcruiser. That didn't make the Race any less uneasy. They were constantly ready to shoot us, if we gave any sign that we were going to rapidly attack them, singing praises for the Supreme Leader.
When they saw our conditions, however, I think they connected the dots, as they began to ease up. They declared that we were no longer subjects of the Supreme Leader, but of their Emperor. We didn't care; we were simply happy that they stopped making us mine and started giving us food. Race rations are very salty, and simultaneously sour. It felt like the best meal I'd ever had.
It was two days after that when we saw the mushroom cloud rising over the hills.
Q: That was the Korean initiation against the offensive north of Pyongyang, correct?
A: Yes. They buried a small fission bomb and let some Race forces roll over it before it blew. The troopmales in the camp began evacuating us to avoid the fallout, directing us towards occupied territory in Hamhung. Still, we were close enough to see the cloud rising over Pyongyang itself...
With how swiftly everything was being turned on its head, I could not help but feel that the world was ending, coming apart at the seams. Everything that should be was not.
He sits up a little, and offers a dry smile.
I suppose I was right, in a way.
-/-\-
Harpanet III
Harpanet rolls around a bit more in the mud as the interview continues. I can see a large scar on his shoulder, and he notices where my gaze has fallen.
A: In due time. There is still much more, is there not?
Q: Yes. I suppose that the next thing I want to ask you about was the destruction of Pyongyang. Your old herd detected it, did they not?
A: We did. It was some low-ranking defense-commander who detected the flash on that small peninsula. Naturally, he alerted the Herdmaster as soon as it became apparent what caused the light.
Q: What was the response?
A: There was much tension aboard Message Bearer as the information trickled down to us. This detonation, you see, was very unexpected. We did not fathom that both parties would be willing to soil the gardens of Winterhome in their struggle.
From what I heard, the Herdmaster convened his advisors to discuss what to do regarding the news. We lower-decks fithp also discussed what had happened. Were the Winterhome and Outsider fithp going to destroy Winterhome in their war? We were going to have to make our home in the asteroid belt?
Eventually, the Herdmaster gave us our orders.
Q: Which were?
A: Time was now of the essence. We could not wait for the two herds to weaken each other, as Winterhome could become a radioactive ruin before then. We were to invade ahead of schedule, and secure Winterhome before it became a glowing mudball.
Q: And the Foot?
Harpanet pauses, spraying himself with some mud.
A: If the two herds continued to resist us, as some of us feared, then we could simply pull back and let the Foot make its landing. Of course, that was a worst-case scenario.
Harpanet stirs the mud with his trunk, staring at something beyond it.
Worst-case scenario...
-/-\-
Hakmon I
Zivah Miller, nee Hakmon, now lives in New York City with her husband George. A rather tall and lithe figure, she agrees to interview me via computer, citing a busy schedule.
Q: Thank you for making the time for this interview. Let's make this quick. Back during the war, you were a private in the IDF, yes?
A: Yes. When the Conquest Fleet was discovered, I was recalled back into service, as was everyone else. Part of it was because of the need to prepare for a potential invasion, and part of it was due to rising tensions amongst our oh-so-friendly neighbors. But most of that you can find out by reading documents from the time. May I ask what is the purpose of interviewing me?
Q: I'm mainly interviewing you for a personal perspective. Especially for when the ceasefire was called.
A: I see.
She thinks for a moment.
By early December, the Lizards had claimed almost the entire Arabian peninsula, and had linked up with their landings in Iran and Afghanistan. The region was essentially cut in half. The brass feared that we would be next on the list, and so me and a hundred thousand others were mobilized to launch a counteroffensive into occupied Iraq and Arabia. The Egyptians and Jordanians also sent men, but there was notable tension whenever we met up. Even after we sent planes to help liberate Cairo, relations weren't exactly friendly.
Things weren't looking good when I arrived at the front lines. Altogether, there were three and a half million troopmales in the Middle East. The Saudi army was disorganized due to the capture for Riyadh, and was desperately linking up with the reinforcements from Syria and Iraq. Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan couldn't help us; they were reeling from the captures of their capitols, and focused solely and repelling the invasions in their own territory. The Russians were sending a hundred thousand men to Afghanistan, but that wouldn't be of any help to us.
Still, we fought against the invaders, refusing to let them take ground without bloodshed. For about three days, me and a few hundred others were in a small town along the Tigris, trying to push the Lizards out. They were undisciplined, especially for urban combat, but they had numbers and logistics. Our supply train was in rough shape, being stretched so thin, and the occasional bombing run by their killercraft didn't make things easier.
We made headway when Egyptian and Kurdish forces came into the town, backed up by some remnants of the Saudi army. Then, we started pushing them back to the banks of the Tigris, forcing them out house by house.
She turns her head, letting me see a faint scar on her ear.
I lost a chunk of it while peering around a corner. The Lizards are small; it means they have more places to hide in, and its not good to have to look down at an enemy who can shoot at you.
Q: Were you still in the city when Pyongyang was destroyed?
A: Yes. I was resting in some small house that'd lost its roof. The family there was grateful for our arrival, even if we were Israeli, and they gave us some tea to pass the time. I was drinking it when I heard the news on the radio.
I was terrified. Suddenly, the war just cranked up to something even more lethal. I was worried of what our response to it was going to be. Would missiles just start flying back and forth? Would some countries take advantage of the situation? I imagine there were at least half a dozen missiles pointed at Tel Aviv, whether it be from Pakistan or somewhere else, and all it'd take would be for just one to fly...
Rumors started flying about what we were going to do next. "Nuclear scorched earth" came up a fair bit.
A day later, the news of the Pakistanis blowing up a Lizard army reached our ears, and then we heard that Larkana had been destroyed in retaliation. The fear grew, and there was silence in the city on both sides. I think the Lizards shared our fears, too. How far was the war going to escalate?
The fighting in the city slowly continued, as though we were both looking over our shoulders for mushroom clouds. I remember the moment the news came in. I was lying behind some rubble, laying suppressing fire at some Lizards taking cover in a restaurant, when I heard the Sergeant yell to stop shooting. There was hissing on the other side, sounding like an order as well.
The Sergeant crawled over to us, panting. "There's been a ceasefire," he was barking, as though trying to let it become real for him. "There's been a ceasefire."
I must say, it was strange, the idea of having a ceasefire between us and the Lizards. I wondered if it was a trick. After all, we hadn't exactly been on speaking terms with each other since the declaration of war.
Then I saw a Lizard emerge from the restaurant, waving a white flag he'd made from someone's robes. "The Fleetlord and your not-emperors have agreed to a ceasefire," he was saying in badly-accented Arabic.
Slowly, but surely, we all started getting up, keeping our weapons at hand. The Lizards did the same, eyeing us warily. Their officer was still waving the flag, repeating what he'd said.
That moment of quiet was surreal. Human and Race, staring at each other across a broken street. The war looked as though it was going to escalate into hellfire, and then suddenly... silence.
I think it was half an hour before we started relaxing, if only a little. A few of us started talking to each other across the street, in broken Hebrew and Arabic and Race-tongue.
Q: What did you talk about?
A: A bunch of Race-males asked us if we had any ginger on us. The Rabotevs and Hallessi weren't affected by the stuff, but a few asked if we had any cured meats in our part of the town; apparently they liked the flavor.
David was the first of us to cross the divide, handing over some mugs of spiced chai in exchange for a holoprojector. I had an old Switch in my pack, and I traded it to a Hallessi in exhange for some books he had on him. He taught me the right way to read the pages, and I taught him how to play Rocket League.
Q: The officers didn't intervene?
A: They made sure we weren't trading any information or items that could compromise us. Nothing that could be used to search the internet, no weapons, and no talking about military matters. Officers on both sides were walking the grounds, casually trying to peek at each other's positions, and making sure we weren't getting up to no good.
A lot of us on both sides were probably thinking the same thing: we could take them. We could catch them off guard, and push them back. But we didn't.
Q: Why?
A: Because if either side broke the ceasefire and took advantage, then the other side could get desperate, and the nukes could start flying again. So, we just rested up, made sure we ready for a sudden attack, and waited for what was going to happen next.
That night, we sat back on our own sides, pulling out our radios as we listened for news about the negotiations that were going to commence, waiting with bated breath. We eyed each other across the street, wondering what was going to happen next.
After all, it's not every day that history happens.
-/-\-
You have been reading:
Worldfall, Chapter Four: Gridlock