General Gorax

Gorax bellowed with laughter.  “Pathetic defenses!  This should be easy.”

“Sir,” a smaller member of the crew interrupted, “I think those were communications satellites.  The dish arrays were pointed back at the planet’s surface not away from the planet toward…”

“Gach!” bellowed Gorax, silencing his advisor.  Gorax loved to bellow.  He had no inside voice.

Gorax was one of the generals of the Grand Arpathian Armada.  He was very adept at waging war, but not much of a diplomat.  He lived to crush, maim, and destroy.  Talking was for pacifists, unless your words were demands for immediate surrender.  Immediate surrender was what he was after. 

It was his job, as general in the Grand Arpathian Armada, to deliver worlds to his government.  The Arpathians were in need of resources: air, water, and organic compounds.  They sent out fleets across the universe to find suitable planets in order to strip them bare.  Some of the planets were, unfortunately for the inhabitants, already occupied.  It was for that reason that the Arpathians hired the most ruthless warriors they could find to lead their forces.

Gorax was a particularly ruthless general.  However, his methods often conflicted with the Arpathian Council’s desires, which was to collect essential resources.  Gorax had a terribly short temper and had a tendency to immolate things when he did not get his way immediately.  It was exactly this action, setting fire to the atmosphere of the planet XJ-232, a once inhabitable planet, rendering it a useless, carbon husk, that forced the Council to keep him on a short leash.

The Council had sent Stokol on this mission as an adviser to keep General Gorax from crossing the line.  He had been warned, under penalties of civilianhood and harmony, that he was not allowed to touch the atmosphere of the planet, much less land on the planet’s surface.  He could draw their forces into open space where he could do with them as he pleased, and could make the official demands for complete surrender, but he was under no circumstances allowed to interact with the planet itself.  If he could not gain surrender from orbit, he was to pull the fleet back beyond the orbit of the planet’s natural satellite and wait for the Council for his instructions.

General Gorax was resentful of the Council’s decree and displayed nothing but disdain for their emissary Stokol.  The only reason he did not immediately kill Stokal was because of his fear of being forced into a civilian life.  The word civilian disgusted him, as it had the word civil as its root.  The word civil didn’t even exist in Gorax’s vocabulary, beyond the desire detest it.   He would never treat others with respect or dignity, nor live in peace, as long as there were creatures alive in the universe to be eviscerated, decapitated, exsanguinated, detonated, or otherwise annihilated.  So, he played along.

“Put their leader on screen.  I will demand their immediate surrender.”

“Which one, general?” asked Stokal. 

The question itself seemed to irritate and incense Gorax.  He stared at the air between himself and Stokal, believing his glare alone would compel the air to ball itself up into a fist and punch Stokal in the face.  It did not, which just seemed to make him angrier.

“Their leader!  Get me their leader,” Gorax brayed as if saying it louder would make it possible.

“General, this planet has no one leader.  There are roughly one hundred ninety-six nations on this planet, each with their own form of government.  There are also many other, primitive peoples who follow their own tribal leaders.  If you had read the file…”

Gorax roared over the latter half of Stokal’s speech, making a noise that sounded like someone pronouncing a grawlix. 

“Very well,” resigned Gorax. “I shall demand their surrender,” he said with resolve.  “Bring me the translation device and set it to their planet’s language.”

“Sir,” interrupted Stokol, “if you had read the file…”

“If you mention that file one more time I’m going to shove it up your zlax-chute, jam you in a torpedo tube, and fire you at the center of the nearest star at the speed of light!”

“Yes, General, however this planet has an estimated six thousand five hundred languages spoken.”

Stokol could hear Gorax’s teeth crack and splinter as he ground them together.  Despite the fact that Gorax’s teeth would be replaced by those from the row behind, Stokal quickly attempted to appease the general.

“There is one language, I believe it is called English, sir, which seems to be spoken internationally, however it is only spoken natively by three hundred forty million of the over seven billion people on the planet.”

Gorax slammed his fist against his captain’s chair smashing the armrest and slamming it to the floor.  It was not something Stokal imagined he would ever see happen to steel.  He made another gesture of conciliation.

“I’ll set the communication device to English sir, however…” Stokal paused.  He knew what he was going to say next would anger Gorax beyond belief.  Though he had the backing of the Council, he did not want to have his head bitten off by a livid Arpathian general with shattered teeth.

Gorax reached out for the device.

“General,” asked Stokal, “what is your plan for eliciting surrender of the planet?”

Gorax did not know what the word ‘elicit’ meant, so he stared blankly.

“If you had read the…” 

Sokol stopped himself before he was flayed and used as a throw rug.

“If you had read the dossier…”

Gorax did not know what that meant either.

“…frankly, sir, the Council thought that you might have a plan for this particular set of circumstances.”

Gorax stood there holding the microphone of the translation device.  He looked at the microphone, then at Stokal, then back at the microphone, then back at Stokal.  He seemed confused.

“Well, general, considering there is no one person available to speak for the whole planet and no one language to speak to them in, I must remind you that according to the Council, you must pull back beyond their moon and wait for further instructions.”

Gorax’s eye began to twitch.  He was going to eat Stokal and command a full ground assault on the planet, not stopping until everything on the planet was crushed to rubble.  Then he would command his soldiers to grind all of the rubble to dust.  Next, he would command his soldiers to pee into the dust, covering the planet with a thin sludge of urine and what once was.  Finally, he would set fire to that sludge. 

But, he thought of the punishment prescribed to him by the Council.  He imagined being forced to hold hands with children and sing songs with them while skipping through fields of wildflowers.  The whole thing made him want to eat children which, apparently, the Council frowned on as well.  He wanted to set the Council on fire.

“Call the ships back,” a defeated Gorax grunted.  He followed that up by with a standard Arpathian expletive.  At the moment he spoke, he leaned too close to the translation device and the invective was immediately translated and broadcast in a language apparently called English which none of the Arpathian soldiers had ever heard before.  The word sounded, phonetically, like \’fək\.