Barbarians

It's time to forget about the past

To wash away what happened last

Hide behind an empty face

Don't ask too much just say

Cause this is just a game

It's a beautiful lie

It's a perfect denial

Such a beautiful lie to believe in

30 Seconds To Mars - “Beautiful Lie”

Minister Leandra Singh knew she had a temper. Lord knew her mother had admonished her enough about it, growing up. Over the years she’d struggled to keep it under control, but there were times...usually when it was the most inconvenient… when her anger would come bursting through.

And now she was working on a rage of epic proportions.

She couldn’t say she stormed through the outer offices, though it was a near run thing. Leandra shouldered her way through the doors and stalked her way into the Chambers, mounting the steps and dropping into her seat as she fixed her counterparts with a smoldering glare.

“Is something wrong?” Lassoarth asked, sensing her fury. “The latest reports from Uzaunx have been most encouraging,” she said in what she hoped were placating tones.

“Oh, something’s wrong, all right,” Leandra growled. She fixed each of them with a withering stare, causing both Lassoarth and Qomzoixaa to make nervous glances towards the exit. Σ 121 Sub Δ just sat on its pedestal...seriously, how did one go about intimidating a shiny metal ball? And how would you know if it worked? Perhaps next time she’d bring a hammer with her and see how it reacted to that.

She held up a thick file, letting the Ministers get a good look at it. They printed it on old fashioned paper, because this was one time she didn’t want to leave any electronic traces in her wake...for the simple matter she still hadn’t decided how to handle the situation. Depending on what happened in the next few minutes, leaving a paper trail could prove disastrous.

Leandra opened the file and looked at the other Ministers. “Prior to the First Battle of Uzaunx, we dropped a four-person team onto the surface. Their mission was to gather intelligence, assuming the enemy had chosen that planet as its next target. The size of the force, the tactics they used, anything that might help us fight this war.”

“A sound precaution,” Σ 121 Sub Δ said with guarded approval, though she sensed nervousness on his part. Good.

“Indeed,” she smiled. “After the defeat of TF Odysseus, we lost contact with the team. It wasn’t until our ground forces landed during the second battle that they reestablished contact. We extracted the team...along with a prisoner they’d captured.” She paused for a moment, as her gaze swept the room. The other Ministers were on edge, though whether that was because of her own mood or something else was difficult to say. “We interrogated the prisoner…a warrior named “Chaaghtozh”...at great length, and one of the very first questions we asked him was Why? Why did they attack the Triumvirate?” She lowered the file and stared at the others. “Care to guess what he had to say?”

Qomzoixaa shifted in his seat. “How would we know the reason for such insanity?”

Leandra shook her head in disgust. “So you intend to drag this out to the bitter end. Fine. I can play that game too.” She closed the file and glared at the other Ministers. “You three screwed up big time. You spent ten millennia burying the truth, and by now you must have almost forgotten all about it. And why not?” A wry expression appeared on her face. “The real story was accessible only by the highest-ranking officials of the Triumvirate. Its Ministers.” She paused for a moment, savoring the sweet taste of justice long denied. “Which was safe enough, I suppose...when there were only three of you.”

A dawning sense of horror appeared on the herbivores faces, as her eyes blazed with righteous anger. “You never in a million years thought we’d figure it out, did you? But as soon as we learned why they’d come...why they’d returned...I started digging into the Ministry’s archives. After all…I have full access now, don’t I? All thanks to you.” Leandra leaned back in her chair, with a smile the Cheshire Cat would have envied. “Once we knew what to look for, it didn’t take long at all to learn the story...of how the gentle and benevolent Triumvirate tried to murder an entire race of beings, whose sole crime was that they were omnivores.” The smile disappeared as she snarled at them, spitting the words out. “Just like us.”

Lassoarth and Qomzoixaa shrank back in their chairs as Leandra rose to her feet. “For almost a century you’ve looked down at us, sneering at the poor half-evolved violent apes of Earth. You’ve kept us at arm’s length, made one demand after another to tame us, dangling shiny bits of technology as a lure to do your bidding. And all the while, terrified we’d learn your dirty little secret.”

She advanced on them, as implacable as Juggernaut. “You’ve spent ten thousand years covering up your mess, burying it so deep that no one even suspected it. What could bring it all back up again, and rock your perfect little society?” The sarcasm dripped like poisoned honey with every word from her mouth. “Only you didn’t kill them all, now did you? And when they came boiling out of space, bent on vengeance, it must have been your greatest fear come to life. Your own personal bête noire, determined to do to you what you had done to them.”

Leandra was working herself up to a real lather, and she had no intentions of trying to rein it back in. Oh no, not this time. “I can only imagine the discussions you three must have had, as you tried to figure out what to do, how to save your people.” Her hands clenched in fists of rage. “And then one of you had the brilliant idea of having Humanity fight your war for you. It must have seemed like the perfect solution...having one predator destroy another. Utter symmetry.” Her nostrils flared as she sneered at each of them. “But then we humans know all about “Final Solutions”. I won’t pretend we’re innocent of that crime...but at least we had the decency to only practice Genocide on ourselves.”

She wasn’t sure that was something to be proud of, truth be told, but then she’d been waiting decades to throw their smug superiority back in their faces.

“...we were frightened,” Σ 121 Sub Δ said in a small voice. “We didn’t know what else to do.”

“YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD US!” Leandra bellowed. “Maybe we could have intervened, somehow. The Khonhim didn’t have a grudge against us, remember? We might have been able to broker an agreement, as neutral parties.” Her entire body trembled with fury at the sheer stupidity of these so-called “Enlightened Races”. “Only now it’s too late. We took your side, trained your people to fight, and led them into battle. Our hands are now as bloody as yours...all because of a lie.”

The silence that followed her tirade was deafening. Leandra could feel the adrenaline coursing through her veins, singing like boiling mercury, but now that she’d vented her spleen on the very individuals she had felt so much anger towards for so many years, she could feel herself deflate. Hell…it had almost been therapeutic.

Leandra forced herself to sit back down, taking slow calming breaths. “So now we know,” she said at last, “and we have decisions to make.”

It took several long moments before Qomzoixaa worked up the courage to respond. “How many of your race knows the truth?” he asked.

“At the moment...myself, Marshal Antuma, Admiral Fujimoto, Governor-General Granville...and the four-person team who made the discovery. We’ve kept this under wraps until we decide how to proceed.”

“Why haven’t you exposed us?” Lassoarth asked. “It is obvious you wish to.”

“Believe me, I’d like nothing more,” Leandra said, “but it’s not quite that simple. Just how do you think they’ll respond, your people and mine, once they learn the truth? “

The Saurotaur Minister closed her eyes. “...I do not know,” she whispered.

“Neither do I,” Leandra replied. “Your people I suspect will keep fighting, out of sheer necessity, if nothing else. But mine?” She shrugged. “Many will demand our withdrawal. They’ll say you brought this on yourselves, and why should human blood be spilled for your crimes? Oh, some will still fight...it’s the first war we’ve had in a century, and there will always be some of my people drawn to that, but will it be enough? At the moment I couldn’t hazard a guess.” She took a deep breath. “But I can tell you this much...if we pull out, your people won’t stand a chance. We might have shown them the way, but they don’t have the experience...or the temperament...to carry it through. Not yet...and not soon enough to make a difference. The Khonhim will grind you into dust.”

“...please,” Σ 121 Sub Δ begged, “you must help us preserve the secret. Whatever you think of us now, know that we were not the ones who tried to destroy the Khonhim. We inherited the secret from our distant ancestors and are not responsible for their crimes.”

Leandra regarded the metal sphere. “And if it had been us, all those years ago?” she asked it. “Would you have hunted Humanity into extinction, as you did the Khonhim?” The Ronin Minister did not respond, as she nodded. “Your silence speaks volumes, Minister. I suppose I should be grateful you’ve given up the pretense of lying to my face.” A bitter smile appeared on her lips. “You should be glad you didn’t attempt to wipe us out as you did them. You think the Khonhim fight dirty? Wait ‘til you see what a human will do when our back is to the wall.”

“Minister Singh…please,” Qomzoixaa beseeched her, “do with us what you will, but we must ensure no one else ever learns the truth, for the very reasons you have just laid out.”

“It won’t work,” Leandra said. “Eventually we’ll take other prisoners, and the word will get out. It’s inevitable. We can delay it a little, but you had better prepare yourselves for the storm that’s coming.” She took a deep breath. “And this storm, unlike the war, just might bring your perfect society crashing down. When they find out they’ve been lied to all these years, that their ancestors were just as warlike as us humans, well...I can’t predict how it will all end.”

There was a long silence as they considered that future, until the Ronin Minister spoke. “We must open the Archives,” it said at last, “and show them what happened. Minister Singh, you must understand that in those days, when the Triumvirate was first founded, we believed that only herbivores could achieve sapience. Even the race of my Creators, before the Plague consumed them, were such. When we first encountered the Khonhim and discovered to our horror they feasted on animal flesh...” Somehow, without moving a millimeter, Σ 121 Sub Δ gave the impression of suffering a bone-deep shudder. “...all we could see was a Predator. We could not run...but science gave us the means to defend ourselves.” There was another pause, and then the machine seemed to sigh. “No...that is incorrect, for they did not strike the first blow. Perhaps if they had, we would have not tried so hard to bury the truth. Minister, we reacted out of fear, then. I do not offer that as an excuse...merely an explanation. We did not consider the possibility that a Predator could be anything other than a threat.”

“And when you met us?” she asked. “Was there a debate about whether or not to try it again?”

“There was,” Σ 121 Sub Δ admitted. “But ten millennia had passed, and in that time we had been so successful in keeping our secret...we no longer knew how.” The machine sounded almost wistful. “Besides, your own warlike past was not quite in the past. Had we tried…”

Leandra snorted. “Had you tried...we would have wiped the floor with you.”

“Yes...we too came to that conclusion,” Σ 121 Sub Δ agreed. “So instead we used our technology as a bribe, just as you said, in the hopes we could wean you away from the need for violence. And in our defense, it worked.”

She sighed, nodding her head. “It did, mostly...and I’m not saying we don’t owe you some gratitude for helping us mature...but you still should have told us the truth.”

“How could we?” the machine asked. “When not even our own kind knew what had transpired, so many long years ago? But now it seems we must tell our people the true story of their beginnings...only I fear that when we do, we will lose everything.”

The human Minister was silent for several long moments, before an odd look appeared on her face. “We might be able to help you with that,” she said at last.

“How?” Σ 121 Sub Δ asked. “Once the truth is out, it is out.”

Leandra chuckled. “You think our warriors are scary? Wait until I introduce you to Spin Doctors.”