Eleven Pipers Part 1:
Night Time Blackout
Yarith Sluktor trudged through the cold, dark streets of Rokire City, the third largest settlement on the planet Sithesti, one of over one hundred planets settled by the species which had spawned on the planet Nisala several millennia ago. The streets were almost deserted. Curfew was due to start in half a dup (diurnal unit period) and the streetlights were already at their dimmest settings before being blacked out completely when curfew commenced. It still puzzled Yarith that such precautions were necessary. The defence cannons, produced at the factory in which he worked, ringed Rokire City and, it was said, could produce such firepower that the City would be almost roofed in lead projectiles and energy beams at the mere flick of a switch. The curfew order came from Sithesti's governor and could not, would not, be disobeyed. Air raids and orbital bombardments from the Third Worlders, against which species war had raged for several centuries, were not common against Sithesti, but the risk could not be ignored. The citizens of Rokire City, and other Sithestan settlements, took such precautions as a necessary inconvenience against Third Worlder aggression.
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Yarith reached his apartment structure. He had quite a nice dwelling about midway up the twenty storey building. He nodded to the building's night-shift supervisor and entered the elevator cage at the end of the foyer. The ride up to his floor would take a while as the gearing in the lift mechanism was in need of repair. While slow, at least the lift still functioned and spared Yarith the laborious hike up ten flights of steps.
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He caught sight of his reflection in the polished bronze of the lift walls. Of average height for a Nisalan male, but somewhat more bulky than was healthy (or so his last physician's opinion had been), Yarith's body was a roughly cylindrical mass of translucent bluish protoplasm. As the light caught his body, his internal structures for digestion, reproduction and sentience could be seen as vague shadows within the slowly churning fluids. The upper end of his body was domed and the lower split into two locomotory pseudopods. Common to all Nisalans, his sensory orbs were located just below the sentience structure, and the oral orifice sat centrally just beneath the sensory orbs.
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Just above the centre of each of Yarith's flanks were two sets of tentacles, each as long as he was tall. Yarith's lower-left tentacle, however, was stunted and shrivelled, the result of an accident many sops (standard orbital periods) ago. He had endured much taunting and teasing by healthier young Nisalans but had risen above his contemporaries due to his intellectual faculties and had made his way through life on his wits and intelligence. Most of his contemporaries had been drafted into the armed services and Yarith wondered how many of those who had bullied him were still alive.
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Yarith trudged into his dwelling, turned on the luminators at their dimmest setting so no light leaked past the curtains and broke the blackout rules, then slumped onto the couch in front of the TV set. TV, short for Tri-dimension Video, was a relatively new technology, and Yarith was only allowed to have such a gogglebox due to his administrative job in one of the most productive armaments factories on the planet Sithesti. He touched a tentacle-tip to the remote control and tuned to the news channel.
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The TV tank - not a physical tank, like those for keeping pet aquatic species - but a volume of air above the gogglebox (which was, itself, a black plastic box) displayed the usual lightning-streaked static before resolving into the three dimensional image of Kala Phasrilis, the lead anchor-being of the prime news programme, SECTOR NEWS.
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Yarith watched, fantasised (and occasionally drooled) about, the gorgeous Kala, as she launched into her news round up for the sector. Surely those pseudopods are enhanced, Yarith thought, with somewhat lustful ideas swirling around his sentience organ.
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Dateline Navato
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"The third planet of the aggressive Sol system has attacked the peaceful agri-world of Navato. The Third Worlder expansionists cited the possibility that Navato could be a base for our attacking their ninth (so-called) 'planet'."
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Phasrilis bracketed the word "planet" with a condescending wave of her lower tentacles. In Nisalan society, that would have bordered on insulting.
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How can she put such humour into a news report that implies several thousand sentients are going to die? Yarith wondered. At the same time, he was worried that he, too, would be drafted. A call up he had dodged three times already because of his shrivelled lower-left tentacle. That counted him as disabled and, therefore, a non-combatant. But if the clashes of the Third Worlders and the Nisalan Homeworld continued, how long would it be before every able-bodied - or even semi-able-bodied - Nisalan male would be called upon to fight? The bulk of protoplasm that constituted most of Yarith's body squirmed in discomfort.
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Dateline Assaykim
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"The Great General Nysgha is pleased to report that the Third Worlder colony on the planet we call Assaykim has been annihilated. Goods and resources from that plentiful and beautiful world are being shipped to the Homeworlds as we speak."
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Phasrilis oral orifice smiled in a sensuous manner at the mention of Great General Nysgha.
HUSSY, thought Yarith.
"Breaking News," Phasrilis screeched.
"Supreme President Athusk has just announced a great military breakthrough against the Third Worlders. We cut directly to the Presidential Fortress at ...", a burst of static before the words "LOCATION REDACTED FOR SECURITY REASONS" scrolled through the TV tank.
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Yarith watched the tank burst into a swirl of monochrome static for a few seconds until the image resolved into the resplendent figure of the Nisalan President Athusk Oroughden The Third. He could tell that the President had undergone several rejuvenation sessions during his term in office. For one thing, the President's gut channel should be a much deeper shade of purple for a Nisalan of his supposed age. And there were many fewer wrinkles under the upper tentacles than there would normally be in a Nisalan of the President's age.
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Phoney, thought Yarith.
"My Fellow Nisalans," began the President. "It is with great pleasure that I announce the victory of our people versus the Third Worlders on the desert planet of Echumorm. With this victory safely under our navel-cinches, we will press forward, deep into the Sol sector, past the so-called ninth planet towards the Third World homeworld itself.
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"While I announce this victory with great pleasure, it is not without a sense of sorrow. For I must demand that every Nisalan of fighting age report forthwith to his local recruitment centre. We have the Third Worlders on the back limb with this victory and must press them to ultimate defeat.
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"250000 Nisalans are required for this, the Final Push. With the drive, tenacity and bravery for which we Nisalans are rightly famed, we will be feasting in LunDun by Exmass! We begin this glorious recruitment drive on the planet Sithesti."
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Oh pudu! thought Yarith. His time was up. He would never avoid the draft this time.
There had to be another way! Yarith's sentience organ pulsed with a mixture of exasperation at the stupidity of both species - who had been close allies several centuries ago - and fear of his almost certain death on some hideous battlefield unknown parsecs from home.