T. Harris - Alien.Assassin

The jewel of the additions was the UN-444, the only Class-7 starship he had ever seen. It dwarfed his own flagship by a factor of ten, and actually carried in its massive hold six light battlecruisers, the kind of which made up the bulk of his own fleet.

Overlord Yan’wal was aboard the UN-444, a freelance Senior Overlord and personal envoy of the Juirean Council. He was legend among the ruling class, destined for a position on the Council itself.

And he had come to see Giodol.

Since the Juirean race was so regimented and serious regarding their role as leaders of the known galaxy, rank normally did not intimidate them to any large degree. The vast majority of Juireans had their life-long designated positions, and went about their jobs as efficiently as possible. They therefore had no fear of superiors. And since their positions within the structure had been bred into them from an early age, ambition for advancement was also very rare. Juireans advanced solely through ability and accomplishment — and occasionally, through circumstance. That was the reason Giodol was more uncomfortable than he had ever been in his life, and this strange feeling made him even more unsure of himself. He would say he was nervous, if he understood the concept.

At the proper time, Giodol and his contingent boarded a shuttle for the short journey to the UN-444. For a moment, as he marveled at the immense size of the starship, Giodol forgot his trepidation. He had served aboard dozens of ships in his years but he had never seen anything as glorious as this. Each layer of the hull was built of progressively shorter lengths, with the longest section making up what would be the keel of the ship. Then each subsequent layer grew progressively shorter, and offset slightly toward the stern of the ship. Finally, the skewed pyramid was topped off with a massive bridge section, aglow with light from its expansive, 180-degree forward viewport. The bridge section itself was nearly half the size of Giodol’s entire flagship.

Once aboard, it was still another ten minutes before his group made it to the enormous priority quarters where the Overlord was staying. The ante room was easily thirty meters across, with ceilings reaching ten meters high. The sheer volume of the room, especially aboard a spaceship, was quite awe-inspiring.

His group was escorted into a smaller conference room, where the Overlord was waiting.

Giodol had been notified that Lord Yan’wal was not coming to The Fringe to replace him — another Overlord would soon arrive for that. Yan’wal was there to coordinate the search for the Klin.

The new Overlord was surprised to hear this news, coming as it did several months ago now, and only days after the death of Overlord Oplim. As far as Giodol knew, no one had relayed any communication to Juir regarding the possible existence of the Klin. Further, he had learned that Oplim and Deslor had hidden any information regarding the Klin from everyone in their command — including Giodol. It wasn’t until he received the frantic link from Lord Oplim, just moments before he died, that Giodol even had any knowledge of — or belief in — the continued existence of the Klin.

It was common knowledge among all members of The Expansion that nearly 4,000 years before, right at the beginning of the Juirean rise to power in the galaxy, the Juireans had attacked and exterminated the Klin race. The Klin — the default leaders of the Seven World Common Alliance, the precursor to the Juirean Expansion — were the technological wizards of the Alliance, and it was their tight-fisted and unfair control of this technology that had made them the mortal enemy of the Juireans.

Yet the Juireans would get the last laugh.

At the time of The Reckoning, the Juireans raided the Klin homeworld and wiped it clean of all life forms higher than that of a rodent. Even now the planet was used primarily as a storage world for raw material coming into the Juirean production centers near the Core.

Of course, rumors still persisted through the ages that some of the Klin had survived, and were in hiding, just waiting for the right time to make their presence known. Giodol had heard all these stories, but he had never heard nor seen any concrete evidence that would prove the rumors true.

Not until Oplim’s link.

Forever etched in Giodol’s memory would be the image of the beaten and bloodied Overlord, his great mane of blue hair matted and burnt, staring wide-eyed from the screen and declaring, “The Klin exist!”

Even then, the ramblings of the Overlord were quickly dismissed, at least in The Fringe. Yes, the mysterious ship he and Counselor Deslor were aboard had exploded, taking with it any proof of its origin. Yet the simple fact that all records of the ship had been removed from the Library only added to the mystery.

Giodol, at the direction of the Juirean Authority, had begun an immediate investigation into the mystery ship and the death of the Juirean officials. He soon found that technicians had been working on recovering data from the ship’s computer core, but they had been unsuccessful in the facilities on Melfora Lum. Just before the explosion, they had transported the core up to the ship in orbit.

And then it exploded, so even that evidence was gone.

And yet there were still traceable events surrounding the movements of the ship itself. Giodol had learned it had been brought to Melfora Lum from Nimor at about the same time the young Overlord was ordering him to recover the ship’s computer core from the Fringe Pirates. As it turned out, the pirates never did have the core, but somehow, Oplim had still acquired it.

In light of all the information Giodol had collected, his only conclusion was that the mystery ship was more-than-likely a Klin starship. If this were true, then the whole dynamic of the galactic power structure could change. If the Klin did exist, and had been in hiding for 4,000 years, what evil could they bring upon the Juirean race?

Overlord Yan’wal had spent the past seven months traveling from Juir to The Fringe. Yes, there were other Overlords much closer who could have led the hunt for the Klin, yet the Council had decided that this information was much too important to be broadcast across The Expansion and left to a more junior Overlord. Even though rumors were bound to surface regarding Yan’wal’s mission, the Council felt it was better to keep the number of people who actually knew of the Klin to the barest minimum.

So Yan’wal had come to lead the search. And his first task was to debrief Giodol, who was now seated to the Overlord’s right, while all the other Jurieans seated around the massive conference table were staring at him.

There were twenty-two Juireans seated at the table, more of his own race together in one location than he’d seen in over ten standard years. Being so small and inconsequential to the affairs of The Expansion, The Fringe had never had more than ten Juireans in the entire Sector. Until now.

As they stared, Giodol began to experience that strange feeling again, and he actually began to sweat…

“We have all spent a very long time getting to this point,” Lord Yan’wal began. Instantly, all eyed locked on him. “I will now summarize our tactical plans for the benefit of Lord Giodol and his staff.”

A screen on the wall behind Yan’wal came to life, displaying a graphic representation of The Fringe. Highlighted was the planet Nimor, near the center of the spread of twelve named planets forming a crude crescent and bordering the vast emptiness of The Void. There was a short red line running to the left of Nimor on the inner edge of The Void, then a dotted straight line running from the solid red line until it intersected with the planet Dimloe.

“If we assume that the Klin ship continued on a straight-line course from the point of the attack,” Yan’wal continued, “we would place Dimloe as its final destination. We cannot be sure, since the ship may have taken evasive action once confronted by the pirates.