-- Chapter 2 -- Casualties --

Alien beings of various colors and body types filled a large room with low ceilings. The gray ceiling and floor sloped just slightly with the curve of the building's spherical architecture, giving the room a feeling of motion and claustrophobia even though it stretched nearly a hundred meters in width. The aliens were radically varied from tiny insectoid creatures to multi-limbed monsters that could barely squeeze into the room. A white uniform with gold accents, modified to fit the various aliens, unified the menagerie into cohesive whole. A shaggy, fur covered biped stood in front of the enclave and addressed the gathering.

"Trade routes, those strictly regulated tunnels through space, are the lifeblood of our Galactic Empire. They provide swift, safe, economical transit for freight between worlds. They move medicine, fuel, clothing, water, food, munitions. If a trade route should fall for any length of time, people would starve and perish from disease. Whole planets might fall into chaos and anarchy when deprived of their Over Lords.

"Who in their right mind would target a trade route? The Anarchists, and the terrorists, Hell even the run of the mill wackos, they're crazy enough to do it. There are more than three thousand attempts made on the trade routes every year. They never succeed. Can you fathom why that is? Three thousand attempts and we're still standing.

"While the trade routes are the single most targeted structure in the Galaxy, they are also the most fiercely protected. You are the elite of the Galactic Defense Force. You are the sentries standing guard against the chaos of anarchy. With your help, the farmers and traders, women and children, will continue their uneventful lives, unaware of the attacks on their lifeline. Welcome to Command Central."

Alfzo, one of the smaller creatures with a slick black exoskeleton, craned his multi-jointed neck and merged into the flow of soldiers out of the room. The speech had been meant to motivate and impress, but Alfzo wasn't a child or a zealot for fighting. The commander offered them their roles in a glorified speech about preserving the Galaxy, but for first year that role would be death for nearly eighty percent of them. Learning to pilot and fight around the dangerous slipstreams of the trade routes claimed more lives than any terrorists. It was obvious that some of the new recruits had taken their commander's words to heart. They were puffed up and walking around like champions. How easily they forgot the statistics their academy instructors taught them.

They were mostly dead men, but today they were heroes and good for them.

I'm a hero too. Alfzo grinned to himself, his slick gray unblinking eyes shining. But I'm not their idea of a hero.

Alfzo was a Xin. His species held no representation in even the Under Council. The official documentation identified them as too underdeveloped to qualify for a council seat, but the actual politics of it were very different. The Xin were as developed as anyone else in the Under Council, but they held no monopoly with which to bargain, and no one wished to further dilute their power by adding another voice to the din. Like a hundred other races, the Xin were used and abused like pack animals. Cannon fodder for war, and warm bodies for grunt work, they were without rights or privileges. With no voice to protest, the situation could never change. Alfzo watch these soldiers heading for their rooms and their meals. They stand against the darkness that is anarchy and chaos, while I stand with the oppressed, crying out for a voice. Before being tapped for battle training, Alfzo had been a teacher, a philosopher. The powers that be had no concept of value when it came to the Xin's society. The Xin were numbered and treated as uniform cattle. Things had to change. Tyranny could not be tolerated indefinitely.

Watching these soldiers Alfzo was saddened by what was to come. These soldiers weren't the offenders who oppressed his people. Most of them shared a similar situation. The ordinary citizens who depended on the trade routes weren't the villains either. So many would suffer, but sometimes blood was the price of freedom. Alfzo didn't seek out his room or the evening meal. Instead he made his way to the nearest repair tunnel and began a slow trek into the bowels of the Space Station. The tunnels were calming to him. Tight and dim, they were almost like the burrows of home. Before coming to this place, before taking this mission, Alfzo spoke to his family, his life mate and their larvae. He told them that he had been approached by some of the commander's anarchists, patriots. He explained tyranny and representation and freedom. Then he said goodbye. The sorrowful clicking of his mate still echoed in his head, and the bewildered expressions of his larvae never left his mind. Maybe, someday, in some small part due to his sacrifice, those children would be free.

The access port the patriots had told him about was small and unobtrusive. Would this even work? Could he really do this? Those men were soldiers, trained to fight. They knew that this battle would take most of their lives. Those creatures harbored no illusions. Alfzo's slick hand hovered over the circuit, and he clipped through the wire. If this worked, he and his fellow soldiers were dead now. The tunnel went dark, and Alfzo began to pray for his soul. Forgive me. I do this for my children.


A child's library with knee high plastic seats and shelves of colorful thin books housed a mind, an alien, an overlord of the galaxy. The computer program's matrix was taken from his mind at ascension, but Kal-El wished he could change it. It should be something more alien, less reminiscent of his home, and the humanity he had been forced to forsake. This part of the program was immutable, so instead he focused on what he could change. The central portion of the library held a three dimensional display of the Galaxy, complete with flags marking political alliances and power centers. Over the system, the trade routes tied it all together with their complicated net of passageways. Kal-El loved this display. It was like playing Risk from his childhood. From this distance, you were moving plastic horses and cannons around a pretty game board. You didn't have to look at the ugliness, the living and dying, the blood and pain of war.

"Trade Route Defense – Command Central, zoom in...Stop," Kal-El said. Now the display was filled with a spherical space station large enough to be a small moon. The rotation of the station ceased, and it hung silently for a long moment. Like a bird sucked into a hurricane, the station began to drift toward the turbulent green streams of the trade route nexus. The station shrieked and crumbled. Rather than exploding, the station fell out of existence, imploding into the trade routes. The green light of the trade routes turned red and vanished from the screen.

Kal-El laughed and replayed the destruction. "Step one, end meaningful travel and make them hungry." He spared a couple of subroutines to monitor the Over Council chamber. The uproar had begun already. There shouldn't have been a tragedy big enough to bring the entire Over Council out of their mental prisons. It was simply unheard of. The end of trade in the galaxy was apparently enough to break that cardinal truth.

Kal-El listened to their random arguments and exclamations.

Who could have done this?

How will we repair it?

Who can be trusted to fix things?

The defense force is gone. Who will defend it when we repair it?

In a moment, Dessa would step in and start funneling the discussion. It had taken quite a while for Kal-El to realize that these corpses manning the Over Council only got anything done through Dessa, their puppet master. If it weren't for her presence, they would argue into eternity, proposing and supposing. She took their abstractions and made them actions, picking and choosing the routes which best preserved her blessed Eruditocracy.

Kal-El projected himself into the room as a hologram, setting himself apart from his fellow council members and their flat screens. It was time to influence this graveyard. They were used to letting Dessa lead the show. Today, they'd learn to follow a different lead. "Before we can act we have to identify a perpetrator."

The aliens behind their screens shifted to Kal-El's topic.

The junior member makes a good point.

But there are a thousand different groups who wish to destroy us and our council.

It could be anyone.

Anyone.

Anyone.

"I beg to differ," Kal-El snapped. "Our government is an Eruditocracy. The attack originated from the inside of our Defensive Command Center. The perpetrator of this act was informed, intelligent, and brutal, but the only aliens on that station were the underdeveloped unrepresented cannon fodder we throw at the terrorists yearly."

The underdeveloped were not alone on that station. The Vorians supervise our defense.

The station was full of Vorians.

A Vorian would know enough about the Command Center to disable its thrusters.

We were betrayed by the Vorians. They must be punished.

This is a crime against the whole galaxy. What punishment is adequate?

Can we punish the race for the acts of a few who surely died along with the victims?

Kal-El reveled in the spiral this discussion was following. I am the puppet master now. "We must not stand for this, my fellow council members. An example must be made. I say, strip them of their rights and seat in the Under Council. Then annihilate them, scour them from the galaxy."

"A bit blood thirsty wouldn't you say," Dessa hissed. She couldn't stand back and let this situation continue to disintegrate. Kal-El was successfully steering the discussion, but he was still unstable and unpredictable. His personality had not yet recovered from Ascension. She was beginning to wonder if it ever would. "If we start a fight with the Vorians..."

"Silence!" Kal-El turned a cold stare to Dessa. "You overstep yourself. Speak again, and I'll silence you in a more permanent way. Continue the discussion."

The proposal is harsh, Kal-El of Krypton.

Very harsh.

The crime was harsh though. Millions will die before this has played out. Blood for blood is fair.

Kill them.

No, their will be repercussions. The entire race is not to blame.

My people never liked the Vorians, a blood thirsty lot. Kill them now before they turn on us again.

Kill them, for the innocents who perish by their actions.

"A vote then," Kal-El said. "I call for a vote."

Her skeletal white hands clutched together, Dessa marshaled her courage to speak. If she didn't speak, this would go forward and there would be war. Couldn't Kal-El see what he was starting? This fight would split the Under Council. The Eighth Galactic Civil War would begin with this act, and there was no way to know how it would all turn out. "This is a mistake," Dessa cried. "If you vote to kill, you vote for war."

The room fell silent for a long moment, and Kal-El turned to Dessa with a wicked grin. "You accused the Over Council of a Mistake. The Over Council is never wrong. We know better than you, child. I warned you once not to speak. Take that advice, or I will dismiss you of your duties. Consider yourself warned for the second time."

They had to see what Kal-El was doing, didn't they? Dessa cringed and waited for the vote.

"I vote to exterminate," Kal-El said.

Kill them.

Eliminate them.

I dissent. Another way is possible.

Kill.

Kill.

Dessa was tempted to cover her ears and scream. This was the wrong choice. And the votes kept coming, so many for kill, so few dissenters. This was an Eruditocracy. Things like this should never happen. Those with knowledge rule. Why couldn't they see?

Then it was time for the last vote, the word of the first ascendant, the oldest and wisest of the Over Council. She rarely bothered to vote much less project her likeness into a council meeting, but her heavily lined gray face stared out at her fellow council members. "We are the strong. We hold the power in this galaxy. Some appear to have forgotten that simple truth. As you all realize, this will mean war. Wars can be good, cleansing and healthy. I say kill them, and any who would stand against us." The alien's projected image grinned, deepening the dramatic creases in its face. "The process has been slow because he was so young, but I feel that our Kryptonian brother has finally found his place here. I fought alongside a Kryptonian in life. It honors me to stand with one today."

"No," Dessa whispered. "This is a mistake." With those simple sacrilegious words, Dessa realized the truth of the Over Council. They were dead men and women, preserved beyond their lives. They weren't Gods, and they weren't perfect. Suddenly a large portion of them seemed quite insane. "I don't understand."

The vote was over and the decisions made. The rest of the Over Council disappeared back to their personal mental universes, but Kal-El stayed behind. "Are you okay, Dessa? You seem paler than usual. If you fade any more, you'll be transparent."

"Why did you do this? Are you so unhappy with your life that you have to make the rest of the galaxy suffer? How self centered are you?" Dessa moaned. She clutched her dress into her fists, actually ripping at the delicate white fabric.

"Life is a generous assessment, and I'm an adolescent, the definition for self-centered. Dessa dear, you let the dead rule you. Maybe you'll learn something when we start stinking up this place." Kal-El's hologram moved over and crouched next to Dessa. "I'll have my revenge and my freedom. Can you hear it coming? I hear the drums of war." And he left her, returning to the library from his childhood and his game board.

"Step two: talk the Over Council into picking a fight." Kal-El circled his map, the light dancing over his numb insubstantial skin. He spared no thoughts for the suffering in the galaxy, the hunger or the dying. They needed a good purging, not just for his freedom but for their own good. This galaxy had problems hidden under the rug, stagnant injustices that no one in power cared about. It was time to shake this little snow globe, and let the power fall where it would.

"You're insane, you know."

"People keep telling me that." Kal-El stepped back, studiously masking his shock that anyone could invade his inner sanctum. The intruder projected her body, a gray caterpillar-like form adjacent to his game board. It was the eldest ascendant invading his brain then, typical. "How did you get in here? This is my sanctum, my mind."

"I came to see your plan. Would you like to explain it to me, or should I speculate?" she asked. With a casual twist to her dry gray form, she examined Kal-El's hologram.

"I don't have a plan. I'm just trying to do what's best for the galaxy," Kal-El said. "Isn't that what Over Council members do? I thought you supported my new attitude."

"I said what I meant out there. The galaxy is over due for a house cleaning. I stood at the fore of the Seventh Galactic War, and it was a righteous conflict. We tried to make it better for all time, but we just created stagnation. Did you really think you were the only one who could see it? This system can't continue. The longer I linger in this in-between place, the less I understand life. I'm not fit to rule a kindergarten at this point, much less the galaxy. I realized my inadequacies several centuries ago, and I've been trying to remove myself from the decision making process in this government ever since. I didn't have the balls to wreak the havoc you've started, but I'm not insane."

Kal-El crossed his arms and shrugged. "So I'm insane, and maybe I have a plan. Who's denying it? It's getting the job done, isn't it?"

"Did I say it was a bad thing?"