Hi friends,
The second part came in a record time. Partially because of some of you pushing me to release it soon. Thanks a lot for your read and i hope Part -II justifies your expectations. Do leave your feedback. It helps me a lot in my writing.
A quick recap - Soon after first inter-species war between humans and far advanced reptilians, a reptilian is captured in the outer fringes of the solar system by General Crush (a Mirror. Mirror.. character). He and sergeant Raghav are interrogating him in the storage bay of a small scouting ship to elicit more information but to no avail. Crush continues to punish the reptilian more by waterboarding as the reptilian resolves to die along with the secret.
Lets see what happens next..
PART – II
A refreshing splash of acid – that’s just what the reptilian
felt before regaining his consciousness. His body was still paining like hell.
Level of pain which he never knew existed. Afterall, for a reptilian this kind of torture
was unfathomable. Pain still hindering his thoughts, he belatedly realized that
he was in a human spacecraft wanting to die. As his compound eyes adjusted to
the light, he could see two tall figures in front of him.
‘Please kill me. Kill me soon’ – he screamed
General Crush let a hearty laugh. Of course he certainly had
other plans. He was to become a first person in the last 300 years to use
waterboarding for torture.
He pressed a nob on the reptilian’s chair and it
straightened up. It caused an unbearable burst of shock to the reptilian’s
already broken body as he shrieked in pain.
‘Ok so this will be the most entertaining thing I have done
since blasting off that asteroid of theirs’ - said General Crush circled his
catch. He looked at it with contempt and disgust.
“Do you know what this is?” – asked Crush while swinging the
nozzle of the small cylinder dangling in one hand
Reptilian tried hard to see but the pain caused him to just
mumble in a grating voice of his- “I…I..don’t know. But please just give me death. I told you
already I don’t know anything. We just lost our way in space and landed in your
solar system before you attacked us. Now, just let me go…I can’t tolerate this
pain anymore”
Ignoring his request General Crush roared – “You don’t die
till you speak you bas***d. I decide if you live or die in my solar system.
Start talking and I can promise you an instant death”
“I…don’t know what you want” – murmured the reptilian
“Well…I was kind of hoping you wouldn’t. You see, I was
planning to teach Raghav here some new stuff. He is a good man but he respects
the system too much. This cylinder in my hand…this is pure oxygen. You know
what this means? One minute of this and you’ll die …and it’ll be a painful
death. Very painful. In fact it’s the worst
kind of death known to mankind and of course the best talking medicine invented
to aid the interrogators.
It recreates drowning…you know the feeling of not getting
enough of vital oxygen to the body. And when that happens, body tries to
breathe in more…even if you tell it not too. You will just observe your
instincts get best of you and when they do…more water enters into the lungs. And
the torturous cycle repeats till you are about to die. But that’s exactly when
interrogators stop. Just let enough oxygen to seep and the whole process start
again. We might not be technologically as advanced as you but we do have our methods“
Raghav felt a tingling under his skin. Drowning was
certainly the most horrible way to die…you sustain your conscious enough to
feel the each and every ounce of pain the body can take. You feel water filling
into your lungs before it gets pumped to the body. Red blood cells begin to get
diluted and start bursting. The heart ultimately fails and it all ends in a
cardiac arrest and you live long enough to experience it all.
“Except..” – General
continued – “You’ll be the first one to go under oxygen boarding. And remember…it’ll
all stop whenever you want it to.”
“Time to make you a man young boy” – General Crush said as
he handed over the oxygen cylinder to Raghav
“But sir…there has to be some other way” – Raghav tried to
argue
“Not anymore”
“But…” – Raghav
tried again
“Its an order
sergeant” – General screamed
Raghav silently
extended his hands to take the oxygen cylinder from the General.
He then looked at the half dead body
of the reptilian lying on the chair. He had already broken him as much as his
body could take. And now he was about to push it further. His mind protested
while his hands obeyed the order.Afterall he was a military man who was trained
and disciplined to follow the orders. He
slowly turned on the nob for oxygen and the gas began to flow from the nozzle
directed at the reptilian. The reaction was spontaneous. The reptilian body
stiffened and began shaking violently as his reflex fought for breath. Raghav
could see the mad vibration of his head instinctively trying to keep out of the
flow of oxygen. Of course to no avail.
A
few seconds later, the movement lessened and Raghav, sensing the cue, turned
off the oxygen. Reptilian, coming back from near death, drew some deep breaths of sulphuric acid said
– “Please, please don’t…Just kill me right now…do you humans have no fear of
galactic gods..”
“Kill
you eh? Ok you see this blaster?” said crush drawing his gun from his holster.
He waved it in front of the reptilian as if trying to entice him with a reward.
“Yes.
Kill me with it..i can’t take this anymore”
“No.
Not yet. But the choice is in with you scum…just tell me what you were doing here
and one single clean blast through your head will let you free from all your
misery”
The
reptilian closed his eyes as if wanting to think something. He wanted to
protect the secret till his last breath. But the excruciating pain was now “inside”
him. He could feel his heart beating too rapidly. He now wanted to die more
badly than live. But he can’t just let his ancestors down. But before he could
say anything, impatient General took his silence as an act of defiance.
“Still
no? See you are making me do this, and then you say that I am the one who is
heartless.” said General Crush sarcastically– “Sergeant, go again and now don’t
stop till I tell you to”
Raghav
could not believe the extent to which this man can go. He now realized the
reason he caused terror in even the strongest soldier’s hearts. But it was his
ship and he can’t let this happen without a protest.
“With
all respect sir…I just want to say that he will die from this…and we are not
authorized to do this”
“You
are disobeying a direct order from a General, Sergeant.”..said General angrily
as he pointed the blaster in the general direction of Raghav – “Or you just
want to increase the collateral damage? Your death won’t be much difficult to
explain. I say do it. Now.”
Raghav had no other choice but to take part in the madness.
He pointed the nozzle towards the reptilian once again and lethal oxygen poured
from the nozzle onto the reptilian’s face. His shrieking pierced through the
whole ship as he suffered the agony of getting drowned again and again.
..and finally he screamed – “Please stop this….I’ll tell you
everything…but please don’t”
A smile played on General Karl’s lips – “See Raghav…that’s
how its done”
Still holding oxygen cylinder in hand, Raghav carefully
straightened the chair on which the reptilian was lying. Reptilian was still
crying in intense pain the torture has caused him. Raghav, a hardened army man,
found himself unable to not to feel terrible for doing that to another being –
even a reptilian.
“Species like yours don’t deserve this from us. Its now only
fitting that you get to know the truth when you are only days away from your
destruction.” – gasped the reptilian from his breath
“I told you…that these guys are going to attack us…”- said
Karl
“Listen to me human…we were not here to attack you”
“But if you were not attacking us why you had to come to our
solar system…and that too with ship with cloaking device to hide from us”
“To save you! Like we did in the past.“
“Don’t lie to me you filthy creature”
“I am not…I wish I could but I am not human enough. Let me
tell you everything. “ – reptilian took a some deep breaths and painfully
started narrating
“As you know, our reptilian civilization is 6 billion years
old. We existed even before your Sun was still a cloud of dust and gas spread
light years across. Even before your Earth existed we gained intersteller
travel technology. We first started to explore our own neighborhood and then
began to travel even to the distant parts of the galaxy. A civilization’s desire
to explore new worlds is only limited by technology and we had conquered that
limitation. But as we explored the Universe, we realized that life was not as
abundant as we initially thought. Most of the planets had inadequate Suns,
others simply lacked the right
combination of right elements, and still others just managed to harbor
bacterial life before being destroyed by one way or another. We learned that life
is rare..very very rare.
And then we discovered a beautiful planet right at the
opposite end of the galaxy. That was your planet. A gem probably even rarer than
our own planet. When we first discovered your earth, around a quarter billion
years ago – only large reptiles you call dinosaurs roamed on your planet. They
were not very intelligent but still it was a significant discovery. We were
very excited and waited for evolution to take its course. But we still kept an
eye on you.
Everything was going according to the plan. Evolution was
paving way for more and more intelligent life forms. But then you had a
terrible accident – a large asteroid wiped the earth clean of its life
including the dinosaurs. It happened very quickly and by the time we could do
anything about it, it was all over. It was devastating – in human terms it was
like seeing your own child dying in front of you. And we have always felt guilty about it.
And then, in another few million years galactic Gods gave us
another chance to cleanse us of our guilt. Life resurrected on planet Earth
again and this time we decided to protect earth like our child.
We took it on ourselves to take care of your planet.
Initially it was just like taking care of a new born. We even used to come to
your planet to fix smallest of the things for you. We helped you walk on your
two legs. We helped you work in groups to help your survival. Our biggest
decision came when we realized that your senses were weak to survive in dark.
Your human ancestors were nearly wiped out by nocturnal predators. As a father
can go to any length for the life of his offspring, we had to take a very big
decision. We had to make your absolute dark nights, lit. And we captured an asteroid and brought it in your orbit.”
“Are you talking about the moon?” – A wide eyed Raghav
exclaimed
“Yes..I am talking about moon. It was a difficult task even for
our technology but we did it. Without it life wouldn’t have survived for long. Even
now you think that that perfect satellite with just perfect reflective
properties was just a galactic coincidence. Your scientists haven’t yet figured
out how earth was able to capture such a large body with its weak
gravitational pull.”
“Anyway, it started getting complicated after you discovered
the telescope about 800 years ago. We had to be more subtle from then on. In
fact in the year 1994 we faced with another challenge threatening your
survival. A large comet was headed your way and it could have wiped off the whole
planet. You were advancing but you were not capable enough to deal with it. We
somehow succeeded in diverting it to Jupiter without being detected by your
telescopes and satellites. Shoemaker Levy comet would have been your doomsday
messenger if not for reptilians.“
The reptilian was now panting heavily. The oxygen was now
mixing with his bloodstream and destroying its vessels. Green stream of blood
flowed out from his nose. Raghav helped him clean and he continued-
“Listen to me…I don’t think I have much time. I have one
last thing to tell you”
“Yes…my friend” – said Raghav with a newfound respect for
the species which has protected them and raised them through the last 65
million years
“I wish you trusted us on what we were doing here. But its
all futile now. Listen, there is an asteroid 20 Kms in diameter which has lost
its orbit from outer fringes you call Kuiper belt. It is headed directly
towards the earth and with its velocity it will hit you in another 20 days.
Your telescopes have not captured it yet but ours did. And that was when we had
to come here with a tractor beam which could have bent its orbit. But now you
destroyed it along with my ship. You can not deal with it and even if you fire
your nuclear armaments to it probability of it not colliding with earth are
only 0.1%. Tractor beam is the only answer to ensure the survival of your
species. Listen contact the reptilian base and tell them everything. If they
can reach here in time, humans can still be saved“
“All the best….my
frie..” – said the reptilian looking at Raghav and took one last breath
Raghav now stared at now lifeless face of the reptilian and
then tears rolled down his eyes.
“They were protecting us all this time…and I killed him” –
said Raghav guiltily
“..and its all because of you. You are a monster…”
“Listen Raghav, I did what I felt was most important for
humans…”
“Just shut up now..” – shouted Raghav with still moist eyes.
– “I am now going to relay to the senate now. And I am going to tell
everything. Earth must know the truth about everything. At least in its last
few remaining days. It deserves to know about its galactic guardians. Ones who
have long protected it from any harm.”
He stood now face to face with his superior. For a moment
Gen Karl was astounded by the sheer audacity of Raghav. But he soon recovered –
“Don’t mess with me sergeant, this is a matter of galactic
security and you have to follow the orders. Or I’ll treat you as a traitor to
GalPol. Listen now, you will not say a word about what happened here. The
reptilian for all we know was a spy who was lying to us the whole time…”
“What? Are you crazy? Did you not hear what he just said? “
“I have…but that may be an elaborate lie to keep us off guard
in case of capture.”
“You don’t stop at anything ..do you?..now you listen to me…I
am now going to relay all the information to the GalPol HQ and the senate..you
better keep your stories for the trial because you will pay for the the crimes
you have committed ”
Raghav started walking out of the room towards the control
room of the ship. He suddenly felt a jolt at the back of his head and turned.
General was holding the blaster in his hand pointed at him. He could see vapors
coming out of the gun and before he could say anything he collapsed on the
floor.
General Crush walked down to the lifeless body of the
Sergeant and sat down next to it.
“I can’t let you do this Sergeant. Earthlings need a powerful
enemy to unite and reptilians are it. Wars bring more peace to earth than the any
other false ideal. And I can’t have you ruin it. Reptilians were and will
remain the ultimate enemy of mankind”
The mechanical voice of the ship’s announcement system beamed
-
“Attention. Attention all personnel. This is level 4 alert.
A rogue asteroid is observed with tentative orbit intersecting the earth.
Probability of collision 76%”
‘That’s 99.9% you fools’ mumbled General while dragging the
body of Raghav to the storage bay
****
