The Art of War: Epilogue – Funeral Rites [COMPLETE]
Posted: Thu Dec 02, 2010 12:54 am
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The year is 2012 and it is business as usual on Planet Earth. However, the Earth of the modern times is very different from how it used to be in centuries before for one very important reason. Perhaps one of the most significant events of human history took place six decades ago on a small island on the other side of the English Channel.
The Basitins arrived.
No one knew at first what they were or what they wanted, however it soon emerged that the Basitins had not come by choice but had instead been driven from their ancestral homeland and their own world by a force of power-hungry humans who called themselves: The Templar. Now refugees on an alien planet, the Basitins have had to forge themselves anew from the fires that consumed their once proud civilisation and accept a life completely beyond their own control. Rallied by the great General Keith Cornelius Keiser, the Basitins have endured into the modern age despite the mysterious disappearance of their great leader not many years after their arrival.
However, not all is well on Planet Earth for something sinister is stirring in the darkness; a plot that could threaten to consume the Earth in the fires of war that engulfed the Basitin’s home world years before. Everything is in place and the pieces have started to move. The fate of the Earth and all its inhabitants shall very soon be decided.
What can save us now?
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Prologue – At 40 Fathoms
Wreck of the SS Andrea Doria – Fifty miles due south of Nantucket Island
A piercing light cut through the gloom in the murky depths of the ship’s cargo hold. It swept left then right, searching for any dangerous aquatic life or rusted metal that could endanger the life of its owner. Finding nothing, the light cast its gaze on the floor and its master entered the hold through one of the small doors now located on the ceiling closely followed by his partner. The two men were wearing dry-suits and full face masks that allowed for easy communication via a radio headset integrated within the mask itself. In addition, they were each carrying a harpoon gun and a long serrated diving knife to ward off any overly aggressive fish. Or any other divers that got in their way. Both men were ex-Navy SEALs with over 4000 dives under their belts between them and they would need all of their experience if they were to complete their mission and get out of this graveyard alive. The Andrea Doria has claimed 15 lives since its submersion, all due to the extremely hazardous conditions found when diving on the wreck, strong currents, freezing cold water, and the fact that the wreck has decayed into jagged edges and tangled wires which can easily trap and kill even the most cautious diver.
None of this mattered to the two men however; they were the best and their “employer” knew that, which is why they were chosen for this particular dangerous task. These men were no ordinary treasure hunters, they were after something very specific, a relic lost years ago that their contractor was willing to pay obscene amounts to obtain. If they completed this job, the two would never have to think about money again.
Finning towards the bottom of the cargo hold, the first man settled down with a small plume of sediment and retrieved a laminated chart from a bag attached to his dry-suit. The second man joined him, “You sure it’s here?” he asked, speaking into his radio.
“Yeah,” replied his partner, “ultrasound picked up a small hollow on the south wall, we just have to find it under all this mess,” he gestured at the mass of decayed metal and sediment that once formed steel and wooden crates that was strewn about the cavernous room. They pushed off, gliding towards the south wall of the hold, their high watt torches picking out small fish and barnacles amongst the morass. The ultrasound told them what they were looking for but was not precise enough to tell them exactly where on the wall it could be found which was a problem when it was covered in so much debris that you could miss it while being mere feet away. The only option they had has to search around and hope that nothing heavy had fallen on it over the years.
After twenty minutes of scrabbling around in the dirt, the second man clicked his radio twice. He had found it. It was a small door; barely big enough for a man to fit through located about two meters up the wall from where the floor used to be. It was also welded shut. No matter, the two ex-SEALs had had enough experience to account for every possibility and the first man reached back into his bag again and retrieved a small but powerful underwater plasma cutter. Firing it up caused an explosion of vaporised water around the nozzle and so he quickly touched it against the welds; the super-hot beam easily powering through the decaying metal. In three minutes flat the door had been cut through and he and his partner carefully lifted it free of its housing, depositing it on the floor with a cyclone of silt. A dark corridor beckoned leading deep into the bowels of the ship, a place untouched by any diver or any human for that matter in almost 60 years.
The first man grinned; words were unnecessary at this stage of the mission, there was only one more step between them and riches beyond their wildest dreams. Still; no need to be careless. The first diver flashed his torch about and then pulled himself through the corridor, his air cylinder scraping along the roof and letting out an eerie sound like a drowned man’s last call. At long last the corridor came to a halt with another door, this one mercifully unlocked and yielded with just a small push to its strangely untarnished surface. The small room on the other side was oddly well lit, despite the fact that the corridor before it had been as dark as the night and the water seemed warmer in here too. Very strange. Leaning against one wall was a box, obviously tossed there when the ship went down from a small dais-like platform on which it had clearly been resting. It was a steel construction of better quality then all of the other storage crates they had previously seen. Again like the door, the box was unmarked as if decades of sea water had had no effect on it whatsoever. Covering its polished surface were strange markings that, on closer inspection, turned out to be runic characters of some description. The runes had a strange glow which was what was lighting up the room in such an eerie way and they almost seemed to shift, being different to how they were when last you looked at them.
“Wow, what do ya make of this,” intoned the second man, clearly in awe of the mystical runes.
“Nothing, it’s just a box, we’re after what’s inside remember. Now give me a hand with the cutter, this looks pretty tough.”
The two set to work, bracing themselves on the wall and guiding the beam onto the inscribed facet with as much precession as they could manage with their heart rates going at over 150 bpm. This cut would take much longer; the beam was having trouble eating through the hardened metal. As soon as they had made a small incision water poured in and a powerful glow penetrated through the gap, casting flickering shadows on the wall behind and sending the men reeling back in a moment of surprise. Recovering, they glanced at each other; what on Earth was this package they were supposed to be retrieving? After a short while the glare faded to an iridescent glow that pulsed occasionally, filling the room with more dancing shadows. After 12 minutes they had managed to cut a sizable hole out of the box, just enough to allow a man to squeeze through should the need arise. Cutting through the last edge, the square fell away to reveal…
“Jesus,” they both breathed
The first man patted his comrade on the back
“Well I think we’ll have certainly have earned our pay on this one, get the bag.”
Adjusting his headset with a gloved hand, he found the long wave frequency that he had been told to use only upon completion of their mission. As his partner reached into the crate, he let himself sink back slowly into a sitting position.
“Loki this is Dive 1 do you copy?”
There was a hiss of static
“Go ahead Dive 1, good news I hope.”
The man smiled “Oh yes we got your package, tell your “master” to have our money wired immediately, we’ll be surfacing in less than an hour.”
“Very well Dive 1, you’ll get your cash as long as we get what we want, a boat will be waiting for you topside so don’t take too long, out.”
Switching back to short band, he clicked the radio three times: the signal for “let’s get the hell outa here”. His partner was ready, their cargo stowed in a large bag over his shoulder. Taking one last look back at the mysterious box and it’s even more mysterious contents, the two men finned out of the room and back down the dark corridor. They could almost taste early retirement.
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???
“Loki” put down the radio, his face barely registering emotion. Fishing a mobile out of his jacket pocket, he keyed in a number. As the call went off it was automatically ran through an encryption program that was designed to be able to best the combined efforts of the CIA, MI5, Mossad and any other intelligence service you care to mention even if they had from now until judgement day in order to do it. The General was not taking any chances. After two rings a voice came on the other line, “Yes?”
“Sir, I’ve just heard from Dive 1, they have what we’ve been looking for sir.”
The General breathed, “Good, so it seems our intelligence was right then, very good. As soon as it is recovered finish off Phase 1, you know what to do.”
Loki did; no loose ends.
“And after that sir?”
A small chuckle could be heard down the line
“After that my dear fellow; begin Operation Muspelheim at once. No delays.” The General hung up. Placing the phone onto the desk, Loki reclined into his padded chair, his thoughts swirling around inside his head like a great whirlpool. Now that things had been set in motion, everything would start moving fast and he had to be ready for it. There would be no room for error here; one slip up would spell the end of him and of everything else.
Taking up his phone once again, Loki started making calls. He had a lot of work to do.
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The World in Which We Live
Hi there. My name is Gerrard. Keith Gerrard. I often get a second glance when I tell people my name for the first time, I guess people think of me as a bit of a stereotype, being named after a national hero and all. Oh, I should probably explain; while my surname is perfectly ordinary, I was named “Keith” after the famous Keith Keiser; the great general who (rather like Moses if you want a human reference) led us out the darkness and onto the little blue planet on which we now reside. If you’re a Basitin like me the you will certainly know his name and should also be able to recite from memory the majority of his life story (or at least, that which is actually in the archives) and if you’re a human, well, you should at least know who the guy was. I mean, he lead the exodus of an alien race to your planet for heaven’s sake, pay attention!
I talk about who Keiser “was” rather than who he “is” not because he’s dead but because, to put it plainly, he’s disappeared. No one knows where he’s gone. And this wasn’t a “run off to the Caribbean for retirement” kind of disappear, no, this was a “vanished into thin air” kind of disappeared. It all happened about 4 years after we first arrived (that’s 1956 in case you were wondering), Keiser was supposed to be travelling to a meeting in London but his car never arrived. Several hours later it was found parked in a back ally with his 3 bodyguards and the driver unconscious and with Keiser nowhere to be found. There was no sign of a struggle and no indication of a kidnapping, no ransom letter was ever received and neither the driver no the bodyguards remembered anything about what had happened. From that day forward, Keith Keiser vanished off the face of planet Earth without a trace. It is of course perfectly possible that Keiser never survived whatever happened that night and even if he did, he could well have died of old age by now (he would be 86 this year). While it’s true that Basitins have on average a slightly shorter life expectancy then humans, Keiser always seemed to me to be one to deify the ages. After all, Marcus Kain the old Arms General and one of Keiser’s closest friends is still alive at the grand old age of 90 so it’s perfectly possible that Keiser himself could still be alive.
But anyway, enough about my namesake, I decided to keep this little journal/diary to show you what life is like now that we are guests on another species’ planet and now that humans have finally realised that they are not the only intelligent life form in the universe. It’s not a bad life, far from it in fact, all in all we’ve got things pretty good here it’s just that a little less “structured” then things were before. Not that I would actually know first hand what things were like before, I’m only 16 after all and it’s getting on for 60 years since we first arrived here. I won’t pretend things have been perfect since we arrived, there were some “growing pains” in the first decade or so, a lot of humans weren’t exactly keen on having to share their planet with a race of long-eared bipedal space aliens and so everything wasn’t all warm and cuddly at the beginning. Still, we persevered and nowadays I think that we are generally accepted and (dare I say) liked by the human population by and large.
For me personally it has been an… interesting life so far. I’m in a somewhat unique position by being the child of two human parents (and no I’m not a freak of nature, I’m adopted). I have no idea who my real parents are and, to be honest, I don’t much care. I’m very happy to be the “odd one out” in the Gerrard family for I doubt that I could, under any other circumstances, be much happier. Despite being of no blood or even species relation, everyone in the family welcomed me with open arms and hearts the day my parents first brought me home barely two months after I was born. No one really seems to mind that their nephew/cousin/grandson is, to but it bluntly, not human.
I appreciate now that it must have been quite a challenge for my mum and dad in the beginning, like most humans they knew the basics of how Basitin children are brought up (which actually hasn’t changed all that much since the old days) since it’s pretty common knowledge and also because “Basitin Society” has been taught as part of the Citizenship course that all children in the UK have taken since the mid 60s. However despite this, they never had any idea about some of the finer details such as exactly how to put my name forward for the Military Training School that is still pretty much mandatory for all Basitin children to go through. Fortunately for them, one of the local councillors was a Basitin and he helped them along with all these details.
He was also very kind as he offered to tutor me in the Basitin language (which as you can imagine, was kinda important for me to learn) as, unsurprisingly, neither my parents spoke a word. Most Basitin children are taught Basitin first (until they have enough for basic communication) and then are taught English so that they can communicate with the world at large. Fortunately, Basitins are a linguistically adept race and so we can usually grasp languages quite quickly. This means that by the time that most human children start to master one language, Basitins have already started to lean two. Luckily for me, I am no exception to this rule and so can speak and write both fluently.
Interestingly enough, it was also this same councillor who suggested my name. It was always known that Keiser was an unknown, a maverick, one who didn’t always stay true to the laws and so given my slightly unknown origins, Keith seemed like an appropriate name to give.
Still, despite this help, it can’t have been the smoothest of rides for them. The slightly awkward glances from the other parents during pick up when I was in primary school and then, some years later, those same looks coming from the Basitin parents when it was time to go home from the MTS. In fact I distinctly remember a certain embarrassing moment when I has about 8. A well meaning police officer walked over one day when I was holding my mothers had in a shopping centre and politely asked if I knew where my mummy was and whether he should be concerned about this strange lady holding my hand was taking me. Of course, the entire centre stopped to stare and it took quite some persuasion from both my mother and me before the man believed that we were in fact mother and son and not kidnapper and the kidnapped. Even to this day we still get some odd looks whenever we are out and about as a family but fortunately we are never accosted by well-meaning but sadly misguided policemen anymore.
Even when by myself or out with friends, you still get the occasional odd look and, rarely, the unguarded star. Despite 60 years of co-habitation it seems that humans haven’t quite got used to the sight of us yet. I suppose they cannot really be blamed for their stares, after all there are only about 3 million of us total on Earth and so even in England where about 2/3 of us live, we are not something you would necessarily see every day and certainly not in the fur (or in the flesh as you humans say). Add to that the fact that humans have never experienced another race before and we in comparison have been used to the sight of humans for thousands of years and you can perhaps forgive the little kids who stop in the middle of the street and gape at you (to the profuse embarrassment of their parents and then the flood of apologies while hurrying their still staring offspring away).
And this is what it’s like in England where we are relatively numerous, imagine what it’s like when on holiday to a foreign country, especially places like eastern Europe or Asia where Basitins are almost totally unheard of.
Luckily for me, having a strange appearance hasn’t affected my social life at school one bit and I have a close circle of friends both Basitin and human. I am one of the 3 Basitins currently attending my secondary school and to be honest, unless you were looking pretty close you would be hard pressed to notice any differences between us and the rest of the pupils in terms of how we are treated at school. Apart from a few obvious ones such as a general apathy towards and therefore being excused from Chapel services (we never were a religious race and to this day we find the humans belief in God a bit perplexing) and some interesting comments in relation to our physical traits you wouldn’t find many noticeable differences.
One of the more exciting aspects about being a Basitin is of course the MTS. In the old days, children went to the MTS for a whole year some time after their twelfth birthday. There they learned all the skills such as sword fighting, hunting, military tactics etc that they would need later if they decided to join the army or the Guard. Obviously not every Basitin went for that career path but the idea was that in case of invasion, in theory the entire population aged 13 and above could be called up to fight and they would not have to be trained from scratch. These days, due to annoying things like school, we can’t just take off for a year and so now MTS is rather like an out of school club and so is now stretched out over two years instead of one. We spend a few hours every weekend doing all the theory work and practising swordplay in (usually) a local town hall which we take over for a while and the, when we’ve learnt everything we can indoors, we make preparations for our Final Test. This is the part that is most like how it originally was in the old days. It takes the form of a giant, five week long exercise that tests everything we’ve learnt in the past two years and puts into practise all the theory work we spent so long learning. It takes place during the summer holidays where everyone has at least a six-week break from school and is probably the most fun I have ever had in my life.
We are ferried out to the middle of nowhere (the place changes year on year but always seems to be somewhere in Wales…just saying) and meet up with several other groups from other parts of the country. Now as one large group (usually well over 200), we start a series of tests and trials specifically designed to be as much like army Boot Camp as possible while still incorporating all that we have learnt the past two years. It’s a blast for 5 weeks and I have human friends who are genuinely sad that they can’t come along.
While much of the old MTS training is now obsolete, much of it is still relevant or has been adapted to fit the modern world in which we now live. For example, sword fighting with the Burrick (the traditional short sword) is still taught exactly as it was but now the lessons have a more self-defence aspect rather then an all out combat one. Similarly, military tactics are still taught but now we study modern human battles such as those in WWII, the First Gulf War and the Falklands etc instead of old battles fought back home.
The purpose of the MTS is still the same however: preparation for military service. Since Basitins were first allowed to join the army in 1961, we have contributed thousands of troops and have fought and died in every major British engagement since that time. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Basitins have contributed more troops as a % of our total population then any other minority or indeed, the British themselves in the army’s long history.
We even have our own dedicated regiment now, the Du’hadrin (obviously that’s a translation from Basitin runic script to how you would pronounce it in English). Named after the old royal guard, it’s made up of Basitin veterans from other regiments i.e. you need previous combat experience with one of the regular regiments before you can apply to join the Du’hadrin. After that it’s a series of trials and selection processes (rather like the SAS but slightly less brutal) to determine whether you’ve got the right stuff to make it in the Du’hadrin and not be ripped to pieces by the training instructors or your squad mates.
Life in the Du’hadrin is a little different from that in any other regiment, things are a lot more akin to what it was like in the old Basitin army, just modernized and structured to fit more in with the British army training program. For example, English is rarely spoken at all unless addressing a human (such as some of the support staff, the logistical core etc) and sword fighting with the Burrick is also taught in a way that is practical in modern combat (for example, close quarters fighting in a building). Indeed, part of Du’hadrin trooper’s combat equipment consists of a Burrick strapped to the back (or two if you’re an officer) and all soldiers are trained to draw it quickly and use it like a bayonet or a combat knife if the enemy gets too close.
The Du’hadrin have a proud, if short, record. Since its inception a few years ago, only 3 soldiers have been killed in the line of duty, which is pretty good considering that the Du’hadrin have been on the frontlines of the Afghanistan War almost constantly since 2009 in addition to operations in various other places. Add to that an almost flawless mission record and a number of Victoria Cross recipients and you can see that the Du’hadrin have quite an illustrious, if short, history.
So; that’s where we stand. We may be refugees but we are by no means a downtrodden people. Life is good, we now live in relative peace and security and we no longer have to look over our shoulders for fear of rampaging, fireball-throwing Templar. We as a people have integrated into human society quite nicely by all accounts. And the best news of all? Things can only get better.
The year is 2012 and it is business as usual on Planet Earth. However, the Earth of the modern times is very different from how it used to be in centuries before for one very important reason. Perhaps one of the most significant events of human history took place six decades ago on a small island on the other side of the English Channel.
The Basitins arrived.
No one knew at first what they were or what they wanted, however it soon emerged that the Basitins had not come by choice but had instead been driven from their ancestral homeland and their own world by a force of power-hungry humans who called themselves: The Templar. Now refugees on an alien planet, the Basitins have had to forge themselves anew from the fires that consumed their once proud civilisation and accept a life completely beyond their own control. Rallied by the great General Keith Cornelius Keiser, the Basitins have endured into the modern age despite the mysterious disappearance of their great leader not many years after their arrival.
However, not all is well on Planet Earth for something sinister is stirring in the darkness; a plot that could threaten to consume the Earth in the fires of war that engulfed the Basitin’s home world years before. Everything is in place and the pieces have started to move. The fate of the Earth and all its inhabitants shall very soon be decided.
What can save us now?
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Prologue – At 40 Fathoms
Wreck of the SS Andrea Doria – Fifty miles due south of Nantucket Island
A piercing light cut through the gloom in the murky depths of the ship’s cargo hold. It swept left then right, searching for any dangerous aquatic life or rusted metal that could endanger the life of its owner. Finding nothing, the light cast its gaze on the floor and its master entered the hold through one of the small doors now located on the ceiling closely followed by his partner. The two men were wearing dry-suits and full face masks that allowed for easy communication via a radio headset integrated within the mask itself. In addition, they were each carrying a harpoon gun and a long serrated diving knife to ward off any overly aggressive fish. Or any other divers that got in their way. Both men were ex-Navy SEALs with over 4000 dives under their belts between them and they would need all of their experience if they were to complete their mission and get out of this graveyard alive. The Andrea Doria has claimed 15 lives since its submersion, all due to the extremely hazardous conditions found when diving on the wreck, strong currents, freezing cold water, and the fact that the wreck has decayed into jagged edges and tangled wires which can easily trap and kill even the most cautious diver.
None of this mattered to the two men however; they were the best and their “employer” knew that, which is why they were chosen for this particular dangerous task. These men were no ordinary treasure hunters, they were after something very specific, a relic lost years ago that their contractor was willing to pay obscene amounts to obtain. If they completed this job, the two would never have to think about money again.
Finning towards the bottom of the cargo hold, the first man settled down with a small plume of sediment and retrieved a laminated chart from a bag attached to his dry-suit. The second man joined him, “You sure it’s here?” he asked, speaking into his radio.
“Yeah,” replied his partner, “ultrasound picked up a small hollow on the south wall, we just have to find it under all this mess,” he gestured at the mass of decayed metal and sediment that once formed steel and wooden crates that was strewn about the cavernous room. They pushed off, gliding towards the south wall of the hold, their high watt torches picking out small fish and barnacles amongst the morass. The ultrasound told them what they were looking for but was not precise enough to tell them exactly where on the wall it could be found which was a problem when it was covered in so much debris that you could miss it while being mere feet away. The only option they had has to search around and hope that nothing heavy had fallen on it over the years.
After twenty minutes of scrabbling around in the dirt, the second man clicked his radio twice. He had found it. It was a small door; barely big enough for a man to fit through located about two meters up the wall from where the floor used to be. It was also welded shut. No matter, the two ex-SEALs had had enough experience to account for every possibility and the first man reached back into his bag again and retrieved a small but powerful underwater plasma cutter. Firing it up caused an explosion of vaporised water around the nozzle and so he quickly touched it against the welds; the super-hot beam easily powering through the decaying metal. In three minutes flat the door had been cut through and he and his partner carefully lifted it free of its housing, depositing it on the floor with a cyclone of silt. A dark corridor beckoned leading deep into the bowels of the ship, a place untouched by any diver or any human for that matter in almost 60 years.
The first man grinned; words were unnecessary at this stage of the mission, there was only one more step between them and riches beyond their wildest dreams. Still; no need to be careless. The first diver flashed his torch about and then pulled himself through the corridor, his air cylinder scraping along the roof and letting out an eerie sound like a drowned man’s last call. At long last the corridor came to a halt with another door, this one mercifully unlocked and yielded with just a small push to its strangely untarnished surface. The small room on the other side was oddly well lit, despite the fact that the corridor before it had been as dark as the night and the water seemed warmer in here too. Very strange. Leaning against one wall was a box, obviously tossed there when the ship went down from a small dais-like platform on which it had clearly been resting. It was a steel construction of better quality then all of the other storage crates they had previously seen. Again like the door, the box was unmarked as if decades of sea water had had no effect on it whatsoever. Covering its polished surface were strange markings that, on closer inspection, turned out to be runic characters of some description. The runes had a strange glow which was what was lighting up the room in such an eerie way and they almost seemed to shift, being different to how they were when last you looked at them.
“Wow, what do ya make of this,” intoned the second man, clearly in awe of the mystical runes.
“Nothing, it’s just a box, we’re after what’s inside remember. Now give me a hand with the cutter, this looks pretty tough.”
The two set to work, bracing themselves on the wall and guiding the beam onto the inscribed facet with as much precession as they could manage with their heart rates going at over 150 bpm. This cut would take much longer; the beam was having trouble eating through the hardened metal. As soon as they had made a small incision water poured in and a powerful glow penetrated through the gap, casting flickering shadows on the wall behind and sending the men reeling back in a moment of surprise. Recovering, they glanced at each other; what on Earth was this package they were supposed to be retrieving? After a short while the glare faded to an iridescent glow that pulsed occasionally, filling the room with more dancing shadows. After 12 minutes they had managed to cut a sizable hole out of the box, just enough to allow a man to squeeze through should the need arise. Cutting through the last edge, the square fell away to reveal…
“Jesus,” they both breathed
The first man patted his comrade on the back
“Well I think we’ll have certainly have earned our pay on this one, get the bag.”
Adjusting his headset with a gloved hand, he found the long wave frequency that he had been told to use only upon completion of their mission. As his partner reached into the crate, he let himself sink back slowly into a sitting position.
“Loki this is Dive 1 do you copy?”
There was a hiss of static
“Go ahead Dive 1, good news I hope.”
The man smiled “Oh yes we got your package, tell your “master” to have our money wired immediately, we’ll be surfacing in less than an hour.”
“Very well Dive 1, you’ll get your cash as long as we get what we want, a boat will be waiting for you topside so don’t take too long, out.”
Switching back to short band, he clicked the radio three times: the signal for “let’s get the hell outa here”. His partner was ready, their cargo stowed in a large bag over his shoulder. Taking one last look back at the mysterious box and it’s even more mysterious contents, the two men finned out of the room and back down the dark corridor. They could almost taste early retirement.
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???
“Loki” put down the radio, his face barely registering emotion. Fishing a mobile out of his jacket pocket, he keyed in a number. As the call went off it was automatically ran through an encryption program that was designed to be able to best the combined efforts of the CIA, MI5, Mossad and any other intelligence service you care to mention even if they had from now until judgement day in order to do it. The General was not taking any chances. After two rings a voice came on the other line, “Yes?”
“Sir, I’ve just heard from Dive 1, they have what we’ve been looking for sir.”
The General breathed, “Good, so it seems our intelligence was right then, very good. As soon as it is recovered finish off Phase 1, you know what to do.”
Loki did; no loose ends.
“And after that sir?”
A small chuckle could be heard down the line
“After that my dear fellow; begin Operation Muspelheim at once. No delays.” The General hung up. Placing the phone onto the desk, Loki reclined into his padded chair, his thoughts swirling around inside his head like a great whirlpool. Now that things had been set in motion, everything would start moving fast and he had to be ready for it. There would be no room for error here; one slip up would spell the end of him and of everything else.
Taking up his phone once again, Loki started making calls. He had a lot of work to do.
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The World in Which We Live
Hi there. My name is Gerrard. Keith Gerrard. I often get a second glance when I tell people my name for the first time, I guess people think of me as a bit of a stereotype, being named after a national hero and all. Oh, I should probably explain; while my surname is perfectly ordinary, I was named “Keith” after the famous Keith Keiser; the great general who (rather like Moses if you want a human reference) led us out the darkness and onto the little blue planet on which we now reside. If you’re a Basitin like me the you will certainly know his name and should also be able to recite from memory the majority of his life story (or at least, that which is actually in the archives) and if you’re a human, well, you should at least know who the guy was. I mean, he lead the exodus of an alien race to your planet for heaven’s sake, pay attention!
I talk about who Keiser “was” rather than who he “is” not because he’s dead but because, to put it plainly, he’s disappeared. No one knows where he’s gone. And this wasn’t a “run off to the Caribbean for retirement” kind of disappear, no, this was a “vanished into thin air” kind of disappeared. It all happened about 4 years after we first arrived (that’s 1956 in case you were wondering), Keiser was supposed to be travelling to a meeting in London but his car never arrived. Several hours later it was found parked in a back ally with his 3 bodyguards and the driver unconscious and with Keiser nowhere to be found. There was no sign of a struggle and no indication of a kidnapping, no ransom letter was ever received and neither the driver no the bodyguards remembered anything about what had happened. From that day forward, Keith Keiser vanished off the face of planet Earth without a trace. It is of course perfectly possible that Keiser never survived whatever happened that night and even if he did, he could well have died of old age by now (he would be 86 this year). While it’s true that Basitins have on average a slightly shorter life expectancy then humans, Keiser always seemed to me to be one to deify the ages. After all, Marcus Kain the old Arms General and one of Keiser’s closest friends is still alive at the grand old age of 90 so it’s perfectly possible that Keiser himself could still be alive.
But anyway, enough about my namesake, I decided to keep this little journal/diary to show you what life is like now that we are guests on another species’ planet and now that humans have finally realised that they are not the only intelligent life form in the universe. It’s not a bad life, far from it in fact, all in all we’ve got things pretty good here it’s just that a little less “structured” then things were before. Not that I would actually know first hand what things were like before, I’m only 16 after all and it’s getting on for 60 years since we first arrived here. I won’t pretend things have been perfect since we arrived, there were some “growing pains” in the first decade or so, a lot of humans weren’t exactly keen on having to share their planet with a race of long-eared bipedal space aliens and so everything wasn’t all warm and cuddly at the beginning. Still, we persevered and nowadays I think that we are generally accepted and (dare I say) liked by the human population by and large.
For me personally it has been an… interesting life so far. I’m in a somewhat unique position by being the child of two human parents (and no I’m not a freak of nature, I’m adopted). I have no idea who my real parents are and, to be honest, I don’t much care. I’m very happy to be the “odd one out” in the Gerrard family for I doubt that I could, under any other circumstances, be much happier. Despite being of no blood or even species relation, everyone in the family welcomed me with open arms and hearts the day my parents first brought me home barely two months after I was born. No one really seems to mind that their nephew/cousin/grandson is, to but it bluntly, not human.
I appreciate now that it must have been quite a challenge for my mum and dad in the beginning, like most humans they knew the basics of how Basitin children are brought up (which actually hasn’t changed all that much since the old days) since it’s pretty common knowledge and also because “Basitin Society” has been taught as part of the Citizenship course that all children in the UK have taken since the mid 60s. However despite this, they never had any idea about some of the finer details such as exactly how to put my name forward for the Military Training School that is still pretty much mandatory for all Basitin children to go through. Fortunately for them, one of the local councillors was a Basitin and he helped them along with all these details.
He was also very kind as he offered to tutor me in the Basitin language (which as you can imagine, was kinda important for me to learn) as, unsurprisingly, neither my parents spoke a word. Most Basitin children are taught Basitin first (until they have enough for basic communication) and then are taught English so that they can communicate with the world at large. Fortunately, Basitins are a linguistically adept race and so we can usually grasp languages quite quickly. This means that by the time that most human children start to master one language, Basitins have already started to lean two. Luckily for me, I am no exception to this rule and so can speak and write both fluently.
Interestingly enough, it was also this same councillor who suggested my name. It was always known that Keiser was an unknown, a maverick, one who didn’t always stay true to the laws and so given my slightly unknown origins, Keith seemed like an appropriate name to give.
Still, despite this help, it can’t have been the smoothest of rides for them. The slightly awkward glances from the other parents during pick up when I was in primary school and then, some years later, those same looks coming from the Basitin parents when it was time to go home from the MTS. In fact I distinctly remember a certain embarrassing moment when I has about 8. A well meaning police officer walked over one day when I was holding my mothers had in a shopping centre and politely asked if I knew where my mummy was and whether he should be concerned about this strange lady holding my hand was taking me. Of course, the entire centre stopped to stare and it took quite some persuasion from both my mother and me before the man believed that we were in fact mother and son and not kidnapper and the kidnapped. Even to this day we still get some odd looks whenever we are out and about as a family but fortunately we are never accosted by well-meaning but sadly misguided policemen anymore.
Even when by myself or out with friends, you still get the occasional odd look and, rarely, the unguarded star. Despite 60 years of co-habitation it seems that humans haven’t quite got used to the sight of us yet. I suppose they cannot really be blamed for their stares, after all there are only about 3 million of us total on Earth and so even in England where about 2/3 of us live, we are not something you would necessarily see every day and certainly not in the fur (or in the flesh as you humans say). Add to that the fact that humans have never experienced another race before and we in comparison have been used to the sight of humans for thousands of years and you can perhaps forgive the little kids who stop in the middle of the street and gape at you (to the profuse embarrassment of their parents and then the flood of apologies while hurrying their still staring offspring away).
And this is what it’s like in England where we are relatively numerous, imagine what it’s like when on holiday to a foreign country, especially places like eastern Europe or Asia where Basitins are almost totally unheard of.
Luckily for me, having a strange appearance hasn’t affected my social life at school one bit and I have a close circle of friends both Basitin and human. I am one of the 3 Basitins currently attending my secondary school and to be honest, unless you were looking pretty close you would be hard pressed to notice any differences between us and the rest of the pupils in terms of how we are treated at school. Apart from a few obvious ones such as a general apathy towards and therefore being excused from Chapel services (we never were a religious race and to this day we find the humans belief in God a bit perplexing) and some interesting comments in relation to our physical traits you wouldn’t find many noticeable differences.
One of the more exciting aspects about being a Basitin is of course the MTS. In the old days, children went to the MTS for a whole year some time after their twelfth birthday. There they learned all the skills such as sword fighting, hunting, military tactics etc that they would need later if they decided to join the army or the Guard. Obviously not every Basitin went for that career path but the idea was that in case of invasion, in theory the entire population aged 13 and above could be called up to fight and they would not have to be trained from scratch. These days, due to annoying things like school, we can’t just take off for a year and so now MTS is rather like an out of school club and so is now stretched out over two years instead of one. We spend a few hours every weekend doing all the theory work and practising swordplay in (usually) a local town hall which we take over for a while and the, when we’ve learnt everything we can indoors, we make preparations for our Final Test. This is the part that is most like how it originally was in the old days. It takes the form of a giant, five week long exercise that tests everything we’ve learnt in the past two years and puts into practise all the theory work we spent so long learning. It takes place during the summer holidays where everyone has at least a six-week break from school and is probably the most fun I have ever had in my life.
We are ferried out to the middle of nowhere (the place changes year on year but always seems to be somewhere in Wales…just saying) and meet up with several other groups from other parts of the country. Now as one large group (usually well over 200), we start a series of tests and trials specifically designed to be as much like army Boot Camp as possible while still incorporating all that we have learnt the past two years. It’s a blast for 5 weeks and I have human friends who are genuinely sad that they can’t come along.
While much of the old MTS training is now obsolete, much of it is still relevant or has been adapted to fit the modern world in which we now live. For example, sword fighting with the Burrick (the traditional short sword) is still taught exactly as it was but now the lessons have a more self-defence aspect rather then an all out combat one. Similarly, military tactics are still taught but now we study modern human battles such as those in WWII, the First Gulf War and the Falklands etc instead of old battles fought back home.
The purpose of the MTS is still the same however: preparation for military service. Since Basitins were first allowed to join the army in 1961, we have contributed thousands of troops and have fought and died in every major British engagement since that time. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Basitins have contributed more troops as a % of our total population then any other minority or indeed, the British themselves in the army’s long history.
We even have our own dedicated regiment now, the Du’hadrin (obviously that’s a translation from Basitin runic script to how you would pronounce it in English). Named after the old royal guard, it’s made up of Basitin veterans from other regiments i.e. you need previous combat experience with one of the regular regiments before you can apply to join the Du’hadrin. After that it’s a series of trials and selection processes (rather like the SAS but slightly less brutal) to determine whether you’ve got the right stuff to make it in the Du’hadrin and not be ripped to pieces by the training instructors or your squad mates.
Life in the Du’hadrin is a little different from that in any other regiment, things are a lot more akin to what it was like in the old Basitin army, just modernized and structured to fit more in with the British army training program. For example, English is rarely spoken at all unless addressing a human (such as some of the support staff, the logistical core etc) and sword fighting with the Burrick is also taught in a way that is practical in modern combat (for example, close quarters fighting in a building). Indeed, part of Du’hadrin trooper’s combat equipment consists of a Burrick strapped to the back (or two if you’re an officer) and all soldiers are trained to draw it quickly and use it like a bayonet or a combat knife if the enemy gets too close.
The Du’hadrin have a proud, if short, record. Since its inception a few years ago, only 3 soldiers have been killed in the line of duty, which is pretty good considering that the Du’hadrin have been on the frontlines of the Afghanistan War almost constantly since 2009 in addition to operations in various other places. Add to that an almost flawless mission record and a number of Victoria Cross recipients and you can see that the Du’hadrin have quite an illustrious, if short, history.
So; that’s where we stand. We may be refugees but we are by no means a downtrodden people. Life is good, we now live in relative peace and security and we no longer have to look over our shoulders for fear of rampaging, fireball-throwing Templar. We as a people have integrated into human society quite nicely by all accounts. And the best news of all? Things can only get better.