Bab 62: Kill Them All

"If I can override the AI then we can make it work. Or I can try to nullify the previous registered voice and register Alexis's voice as the new pilot… that might also work. I mean the pilots do change right? So there must be a provision for changing the registered pilot." Natalia was talking to herself as she walked out of her class.

"How hard can it be?" Natalia was smiling from ear to ear as she was heading to her another class. "After the class ends, I will tell Alexis that I finally found the solution. I bet she will dance in fire with excitement."

Natalia puckered her lips when she remembered the promise that she made to Professor Tobias. "I feel bad though. He told me not to reveal that secret to anyone, and I am straightaway going to do exactly that."

"But best friends don't count when we say that we will keep something a secret, right?" Natalia started hopping again and entered another classroom.

In the meantime, in the IGT Fed base at Celine, an emergency meeting was called. In a large meeting room Colonel Amelia, Captain David, and Lieutenant Bowen were sitting in front of a round table. And in front of them General Vesper Xanthos was projecting himself from the headquarter of IGT Fed located in planet A-11.

General Vesper was currently the Head of the IGT Fed and also one of the founding members of the Federation. He had grey hair and black eyes. He was about 7 feet tall and even though he was old, he still looked like he could defeat a hundred soldiers on his own. His authoritative aura could be felt clearly.

The General started the meeting with an apology, "I am sorry that I woke you up in the middle of the night. But this was an emergency. And I will get right to the point."

Vesper had deep lines on his forehead, more than he would normally have. Colonel Amelia understood that they were going to hear things they would not like.

The General took a deep breath in and then started to speak in a heavy voice. "We received a broadcast signal from that unregistered planet. And before I give you the details about the broadcast message, I would like to reveal a few other things first, though some of you might have already read the statement given by the survivor Zhora Caldera."

David had a guess what this meeting was going to be about. And he was also starting to get worried because of the fact that both he and Bowen were also included in the meeting.

All three of them attentively listened to what General Vesper had to say. "Many things that Zhora revealed were confidential information but I believe she was not in the right state of her mind at the time she gave the interview so, no actions will be taken against her."

Captain David and Lieutenant Bowen had already read the statement given by Zhora and they had thought that the information that she gave was above their clearance level.

General Vesper cleared his throat and continued, "Anyway, four years ago, we lost contact with one of our Voyagers when it reached at a specific coordinate, 007.67|05.17|-34.20. All of you know now where it leads. We thought that the Voyager might have encountered some problems and soon after we sent out another Voyager for the rescue mission."

The General's expression slowly turned melancholic. One could feel that he was being weighted down by guilt. "However, what we did not take into account was the possible existence of intelligent species which we had not discovered yet. And just like the first Voyager, the second one also got lost in the same coordinate."

At this point, Captain David and Lieutenant Bowen both had frown lines on their faces. Bowen was even clenching his fist under the table. "Two Voyagers had already gone missing in that coordinate and why were we were sent there… to die?" Bowen wanted to shout to the General but he did not want to disrespect the Head.

The General slowly kept on revealing the confidential information.

"After lots of meetings and failed attempt to contact the Voyagers, we came to a conclusion that the people of both the ships were lost for good. And we decided to send an unmanned craft to check from a little distance what exactly was at that coordinate. We found out that it was a planet.

The preliminary report from that unmanned craft had suggested that the civilization was at a very basic stage of evolution. And it raised the question as to how our Voyagers vanished when those species have not even invented a gun yet."

"Yeah, we already know that old man. Say something new." Bowen was screaming in his mind.

General Vesper sighed and kept on speaking with a low spirit.

"So in order to get to know what kind of species lived in that planet and to possibly know what might have happed to the Voyagers, we decided to set a space station in that planet's orbit for observation.

It took us a few years to design a stealth craft which would then be used to transport people as well as station near that planet.

The original plan for the crew of Space Station was that they were to stay at the orbit for two weeks. They would collect data and capture videos. And at the end of the second week, the stealth craft would go there and extract them back.

But we had made a huge mistake again. We underestimated that species even when two of our Voyagers with a total of 500 crews were all lost. And we lost the crews from Space Station X51 as well."

General Vesper remained silent for some time. It was evident that the guilt was dragging him down. He was feeling like the blood of all the dead's were in his hand. It was the price that every leader needed to pay, their conscience.

Vesper snapped out of his silence and then said, "Now, getting to our major agenda here, we received a broadcast signal about an hour ago. Let me just play the message for you. That will be more effective."

A video message was then played by the General. In the video several hundreds of people could be seen keeling down in the background. Their hands were tied back and they all had shackles around their neck, which was connected with the each other.

The people seemed malnourished and had scars and injuries on their bodies.

While at the front, a huge man was sitting in a horrendous chair made out of what seemed like bones and skulls. The whole scene was sickening… ghastly enough to give normal person nightmares for months.

The huge man in the front looked like the leader of that species. He had locks of red hairs that came down to his navel. His beard and mustache were also red in color and were really bushy.

He was wearing a metal armor on his chest. But he looked so huge and muscular that one would think the armor was just for the show.

And he was also wearing a metal helmet that looked like a wild boar. Two horns and two tusks were protruding from that boar-shaped helmet, which was most probably his crown.

That man was holding a small device in his hand and it translated everything that he spoke to English. "I am Krorr Marru, the King of Kermurkhiem."

As he spoke, his loud and heavy voice was echoing around the large hall. He both looked and sounded scary.

Krorr Marru kept on speaking with a sinister look on his face. "You might recognize the people behind me, aren't they all your people? I have fed them and taken care of them for a long time and I cannot do that anymore. They eat a lot and we do not have much food. So I want you to come and take your people."

His smirk could be seen for a brief seconds as if he was mocking the viewers. Then he kept forth his demand with a stern voice and serious look, "But I don't want you to send as many spaceships as you like or send whatever spaceship that you like. I want exactly one spaceship which has Voyager S-11 written on it. And I will return all of your people to you."

A thin lady immediately shouted from the background "No, this is a tra…" But before she could finish her sentence, another huge man jumped in the frame and swung a huge axe. And seconds later, that lady's head rolled on the floor and her body dropped down with a thud.

Amelia, David and Bowen, flinched and turned away and closed their eyes. None of them had expected something like that to be in the video. It was clearly a trap.

Krorr Marru ran his fingers through his beard as if nothing happened in the background. He leaned forward at the camera and stared with dark, malevolent eyes and roared, "You have 15 days. If you don't come within that time, all of them will be slaughtered."

He leaned back on his chair made out of bones and rested his hand on the armrest that had two skulls at the front. He tapped at the skulls and said with a malicious tone, "And if you try to attack on our Kingdom or our people, all of these people behind me will be turned into a nice chair like this."

The video message had ended.

Bowen could not contain his anger anymore. He slammed his fist on the table and screamed on top of his voice, "WE SHOULD KILL THEM ALL…"