~ Panajarum ~

From Mendera Empire – Chapter 5

~ Panajarum ~

About 1,200 Words

They’d made love so many times that it was difficult to tell where one session ended and the next one started.

“You’re always um, energetic,” Said Sikush, “but tonight you seem really hungry.”

Luri wiped the sweat off her brow and laid her head on his chest.

“Just in case it’s the last time.” She said.

Sikush knew there might be deaths in the forthcoming battle, but he doubted if Luri would be one of the fatalities, she was much too experienced and battle hardened.

“You’ll be fine; it’s the young Arcadians I’m concerned about.”

Luri moved her head along his chest until her face was right in front of his, their noses almost touching and he could feel the sweat dripping from her hair onto his neck.

“You could use Chlo; she’s very keen to defend Mendera.”

How much should he tell Luri ? He’d locked them out of the common channel when they first entered the bedroom and the constant chatter had long since stopped. Chlo wouldn’t hear anything he told Luri, but it would still be a betrayal.

“I can never use Chlo Luri, she’s much too good at destruction. You’ll just have to trust me on that, I can’t go into details.”

Luri looked about to speak, but then she kissed him once and fell to sleep where she was. He pulled a sheet over them and remembered Panajarum and its consequences. It had all happened many switches before, but it was so ingrained in his memory that it would never be forgotten and there were records in the forbidden store.

Panajarum was one of those awkward non-Empire worlds that kept needling at the edges of the Empire, a raid here, a kidnapping there. There was nothing inherently evil about them or anything to mark them as a pariah planet, they were just very high maintenance.

“I could teach them a lesson.” Chlo had told him.

He’d seen the damage Chlo had caused on her own world and knew she was probably intended to be some sort of super weapon, yet since joining him in a kind of symbiosis she had never shown the aggressive side of her nature. He’d assumed the old Chlo was a blank page waiting to be written on and that the Empire had given her a set of basic moral parameters. That assumption proved to be wrong ! Not that the Empire was perfect, it did glory in war, but there were definite ideas about proportional response and the protection of civilians.

“Give them a rap over the knuckles.” He’d told her.

Chlo had gone to Panajarum with a few warriors and warned them that any further incursions into Empire territory would be severely punished. Within a few days they’d sent a significant space fleet to cause disruption to a key trade route. Chlo reacted by destroying nearly their entire fleet and she thought the job was done, Panajarum given a beating, no more problem. She failed to understand their mentality and their internal politics. Their planet had its first ever global government and President Montello was trying to keep together the old hundred or so nations with thirty languages. Any sign of weakness and the great experiment of global government would be over. He had sent a highly skilled and well trained invasion force to take over the nearest Empire mining planet.

“Chlo, this needs sorting out.” He’d told her.

Sikush had still thought that it was just a skirmish over a piece of territory no one really needed and after a bit of sabre rattling the problem would go away and again he was wrong. Chlo used the warriors of the Empire to retake the mining colony, so President Montello sent a larger force to a heavily populated planet of the Empire to appease his internal critics. The escalation continued until the Panajarum forces used nuclear weapons to take over a major planet of the Empire.

“Now you need to use large numbers of warriors Chlo, we need a quick solution.” He’d told her.

“It will all be over in no more than three days.” She’d replied.

Sikush had assumed Chlo would use the whole might of the Empire to crush the Panajarum armed forces once and for all. Three days later he realised his error. There had been complete silence from Panajarum and there were whispers on the rifts about huge ripples of reality disturbances being felt across the multiverse. Without saying a word to anyone Sikush had gone to Panajarum only accompanied by Chlo in her original form.

“What have you done ?”

The local sun was far darker than when he’d last visited the planet a few years before, but that didn’t really matter as the entire planet was now lifeless. There was no atmosphere, the vast oceans had gone, not a single living bacteria existed in the vacuum of space which now went right down to the surface of Panajarum. Sikush could see a few blackened ruins of buildings, but they looked like they’d been there for billions of years, and yet three days before four billion had called the planet home. Even the two moons had gone from the sky and the planet had shifted several degrees on its axis.

“They are no longer a problem.” Chlo had told him.

He looked deep into her mind and still found Chlo, but she was now in a very dark place. He’d given her the gift of being able to manipulate reality and she’d done terrible things with that gift, things he didn’t want details of. The Empire rarely talked about reality manipulation, but it was the key to their success. Why use huge amounts of energy to move a craft through space when you can simply move its reality to where you want to go ? Why generate electricity when you can manipulate reality to create a power block with a perpetual electrical potential ? Everything they did used reality manipulation, it was such a part of everyday life that they used it almost unconsciously, but never for destruction, until now.

“It’s my fault Chlo, I should have taught you better.” He’d said to her.

He held her as she looked into his eyes for a clue as to her error, and he realised that Chlo was the ‘perfect weapon’. She was a permanent blank page that would adapt to any situation and use any and all means to achieve the set goal. It took him many billions of years and a lot of patience to bring Chlo back out of that dark place, back to being the smiling girl who often shared his bed. He was determined that no matter what might be on the way, there would never be another Panajarum.

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