On Shalimar - IV E-Book

Suzann Dodd

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Humans have been defeated.  Shalimar and Beta Mar are the only two remaining active, as Earth has ionised its atmosphere.  Ki-ZerShaz has already included Beta Mar in the Empire, and now includes Shalimar.

But he is not focused on power or administration, but on Sharon, who was his wife, and now, her memories erased, he must somehow, regain her love.

Leseprobe

Suzann Dodd

On Shalimar - IV

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Next Round

WAITING FOR THE NEXT ROUND

TONY JOHNSONABOARD THE ELMINACHENROUTE TO SHALIMAR 

If humans spent more on exo-anthropology and less on hardware, then a sap like me would have linked with a Zerk like uPaychel and there wouldn't have been war.

An exo-an like me and a ZeSha like uPaychel would have seen the similarities and differences in each other and output truces and treaties and exchanges and maybe even tourism and sports.

But humans depleted coffers on hardware and R & D of more hardware, destruction the only use of the product, while the ZerShaz honed themselves into a war machine waiting for the spark.

I don't know why the Supreme Military Computer output we'd win, but I lie. Computers only know their input. I'm sure nothing I ever wrote, any exo-an who wasn't a swordwaver wrote, got into that Com, so it's garbage in garbage out.

I assume someone keyed that the Zees build on planet contra us who build in Space. Guess that wasn't significant in the logic of the SMC.

Guess it would be too much to expect a computer to figure out that maybe, just maybe the Zees had a heap more hardware than we did and that maybe, just maybe, their weapons were if not better, than on par.  The SMC crunched the data it was fed and, as a toady, told us we were better.

We lost.

We didn't have to lose, we didn't have to fight.

A saps like me could have lined a Zee like uPaychel and we'd move into a new age of prosperity. But we were ratchety to fight prending we would win.

If we hadn't warred, we wouldn't be a conquered people today. The ZerShaz wouldn't own space, and I wouldn't be sitting on one of their warships, gazing through the triangular window watching the planet of Shalimar below.

The erssavi is in slow orbit, waiting for the ceremony of inclusion to end before landing. uPaychel is iSaz of the Seventh Sector, no power nor right to be here, in the Eleventh. He has to wait until uReglimi is confirmed as iSaz and invites him to descend.

The orbit is slow enough so I don't see Shalimar spinning like a top which would get me losing my lunch in the sani, though I'm close to it anyway.

I'm swallowing one of their drugs called 'imtra' as if it's water trying to keep my head out of the crapper. It's about 30o in this room; beyond the double transparencies absolute zero.

I rest my head against one side of the window frame, my feet against the other, close my eyes, trying not to be sick.

It's ironic that since Invasion humans are barred from space, but me, the King of the Space Sick, has been flying more than a commercial pilot.

The last normal I had was July.

I'd returned from sabbatical, arguing with administration for my semester's classes. If I didn't own tenure I'd be job hunting as the University of the West Indies was not thrilled at my return.

I'd published; one must to survive. It was what I'd published.

If I'd stuck to academic interest only subjects I'd be out of the loop. But I had gone for controversial. Objectively, it was only truth.

At first encounter, over two hundred years ago, we'd defined the ZerShaz as a different species. One didn't need a degree in medicine to realise that different species can not mate and bring forth viable offspring.  The categorisation was not biological, it was political. Reduce an enemy to subhuman making killing not murder. I also have a degree in psychiatry, I know the use of hate.

I suppose I shouldn't have written:

      "The birth of half breed children disproves the theory long held."

And after a few paragraphs of nothing much:

                     "Though reasons are advanced to continue the separation

                    of the races, the real one is to prevent interbreeding,

                    since it is not impossible this would occur and not all

                    would be amenable to a cry of rape."

It had been buried in prose but Newsweek had found it, published it, and I was no longer an unknown lecturer at UWI but one of the best known and most despised on Earth.

In 2491 I was invited to lecture at Berkeley in California much to the joy of the faculty in Jamaica. 

Just at that time, Sharon Feinstein, abductee from the past, was being assimilated into the 25th Century; given a job at UWI, and reading classes.

I, as 99.999% of the population of the known galaxy, wasn't aware she existed. I, unlike 99.999% of the pop, should of.

The reason I'm on this Zee ship, soon to be landed on Shalimar is not because I'm one of the leading exo-anthropologists with my doctorate in the ZerShaz 'species'. It's not entirely because I'm a Psychiatrist, though as Sharon seems to be suffering amnesia that sounds good.

I'm here, as opposed to being underground on Earth, because my psychological profile matches her's.

Among other things, this means if anyone could have understood her, it would have been me. But me was in California, when she was being acclimatised to this now at U.W.I.

I didn't get back to Jamaica until she had gone, hadn't known she'd been. Not then.

In fact, I'd gotten home just in time for war.

The ZerShaz had destroyed two planets, uBern and Limo II which had belonged and been occupied by Lymogyenes, one freaky little species no one was much interested in.

Lymogyenes resembled deformed babies so their annihilation didn't cause much hysteria. What caused hysteria was when we learned this human world of Shalimar had been invaded.

Before the hysteria could wane the Zerk's attacked Beta Mar, one of our prime pieces of real estate. Then Xenos III fell.

That's when two Space Intelligence types showed at my door, asking me to come with them. I went as being dragged would dirty my slacks.

I was taken to a shuttle where I eyeball the best and brightest then into space, into an Ark and I'm sick. Everyone else is getting Long Sleep, I'm going minute to minute. Sick minute to minute.

Then they put me in a coffin, though I wasn't dead yet, gave me a lie to tell, which considering my condition I didn't hear so don't recall what it was, and blessedly, Long Sleep.

Unfortunately, it ended early, so I'm still going to where in a coffin hoping I don't die by inhalation of vomit.

Somehow the coffin lands, I'm taken to a hospital and when I'm making it 1 + 1 find myself on Galteri. Earth has been conquered and to prevent invasion the atmosphere was ionised.

Terrans got to live underground save those thought worthy of preserving. Those thought worthy were Arked as I had been arked.  Unlike the remainder of the Worthy, who continued into the beyond, I was on, or more precisely, in, Galteri, a planetoid in the Second Sector.

Of all the places I'd never want to go, Galteri was first.

It was somewhat larger than Luna base but with this deep hole that went how deep I don't remember. As an experiment, atmosphere had been poured into the hole and capped, instant eco-system.

The science crew got it stable, the mil took it over. Humans were living there; if that's living I'm a breadfruit.

And that's where they sent me to perform academic masturbation.

Ensconced in a decent enough flat, given all the data possessed on eDapktchoy, a ZerShaziemn, and Sharon Feinstein, the Time Warped human, I was to give answers.

Study eDapktchoy who had been an Officer in the Terran Space Fleet, (when we had such accouterment), study Sharon, who had become a Pirate, (before elevation to Zerk goddess); and tell whomever asked, why, what and maybe.

This insanity goes from August until December, then up pops a Zerk ship demanding me by name. I don't know I'm here, how do they?

All things taken into consideration, the mil decides my continued existence among them not worth the test, hand me over.

And there I go, back into space.