Shaka II Read online

  “And if some of them do not want to come?” I asked at last.

  “You will explain their options, and they will come.”

  “Their options?”

  “If they will not serve me, I have no reason to keep them alive,” he replied.

  And it was just as he said. Within two weeks, his entire staff were Zulus, and his closest advisors-always excepting his astrologer Hlatshwayo- were his half-brothers and half-sisters.

  12.

  Anyone who thought Tchaka would stay on Earth, trust his officers, and await news of the conflict in comfort and luxury clearly didn’t know him.

  He named his flagship Great Elephant, the Zulu sobriquet for the original Shaka, and it was actually the first of our fleet to take off. I was the only sibling aboard the ship, but five other brothers and sisters were on other ships as our navy entered the wormhole just beyond the Port Cloud and emerged eighteen light-years away, precisely where Tchaka wanted us, midway on a wide arc between Delta Pavonis and DX Cancri.

  As soon as we emerged and found that we were not confronting the enemy, Tchaka ordered one of his officers to pinpoint all the uncolonized oxygen worlds within five light-years of where we were.

  “We might as well put the time to good use,” he told me. “If we wait, sooner or later these worlds will be claimed in the name of Earth”-a contemptuous grimace-“as if Earth was a nation or a government.”

  Within a day the answer came back: there were seven such worlds. Tchaka immediately sent a small scout ship out to plant the flag, not of South Africa but of the Zulu nation, on each of them. It would take the better part of two months, but if we were attacked in the interim the scout ship would be no more use to us than a lifeboat would have been to a seafaring battleship of old.

  As it happened, we did not encounter the enemy for almost three months. By then we were so bored with our dull, daily routine that the presence of a small fleet of ships, doubtless carrying cargo to the embattled ships around Delta Pavonis, actually surprised us. We had almost come to the conclusion (which none dared voice) that Tchaka had guessed wrong, and that the supply lines would be established elsewhere.

  “There are fourteen ships, sir,” said an officer. “Shall we engage them?”

  Tchaka looked at the viewscreen and frowned. “Something is wrong here,” he said, more to himself than to us.

  “Sir?” said the officer.

  “Their configuration is wrong.”

  “Their formation, sir?”

  He shook his head in irritation. “Their configuration.”

  “They are probably not human or humanoid, sir,” said the officer. “Their ships will naturally be configured differently.”

  “Shut up,” said Tchaka, still staring intently at the screen. “It’s more than their configuration. There are no welds.”

  “What difference does that make, sir?” asked another officer.

  “And the motive power,” continued Tchaka. “It’s wrong.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Tchaka ignored him and continued staring at the screen for another full minute. Then he turned to us, the trace of a smile on his thin lips.

  “We will not engage them,” he announced.

  “But isn’t that what we came here to do?” asked the first officer.

  “We will choose one ship,” he continued. He turned to the officer. “I will give you the honor of selecting it. And once you do, our entire fleet will attack it with every weapon at our disposal. I want enough firepower not just to disable it but to blow it apart. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A few minutes later we closed with the enemy. Their ships tried to move into a defensive formation, but Tchaka had learned and experienced spatial warfare tactics when he served with the American fleet, and it was obvious that the cargo ship commanders had only a rudimentary knowledge of them. We managed to isolate one ship, and once we englobed it the other thirteen ships quickly retreated.

  “Now,” said Tchaka, and a moment later the full firepower of our twenty ships tore the enemy ship apart.

  “Spectroscope-fast!” ordered Tchaka as the ship’s inner atmosphere seeped out, slowly at first, and then in a huge translucent cloud.

  “They’re chlorine breathers, sir,” said the officer manning the spectroscope.

  Tchaka smiled. “I thought so. The structure was so different I had a feeling that they hadn’t evolved on an oxygen world. There was no trace of welding, no indication of any science having its basis in heat or fire.”

  “Shall we pursue the other ships, sir?” asked an officer.

  “No.”

  The officer looked surprised. “Sir?”

  “Do you want to live on a chlorine world?” asked Tchaka. “I don’t-and why fight for worlds we can’t use? We’ve already found and claimed seven oxygen worlds. That is where our interest lies.”

  “But what of Earth, sir?” persisted the officer.

  “What of it?” replied Tchaka with no show of concern.

  The officer stared at him uncomprehendingly. “Our colonies are under attack, sir.”

  Tchaka shook his head. “Earth’s colonies are under attack. As of this moment, we are no longer a part of it.”

  13.

  Commander Sanchez sent half a dozen furious messages, all of which Tchaka ignored. Then the battle must have taken all of her attention, because the messages abruptly stopped.

  Tchaka sent one of our ships into orbit around each of the seven oxygen worlds. They reported that three were inhabited by sentient races, four were not.

  “It is time to announce the founding of the Zulu Empire,” he said when the last ship had sent back its information. “We will inform Earth that these worlds have acknowledged me as their inkosi.”

  “Would it not smooth the way more if they acknowledged you as their President or Premier, rather than their king?” I asked.

  “It would indeed,” agreed Tchaka. Then his face hardened. “It would smooth the way if we were willing to kowtow to the wishes of America and China and the rest, if we cared what they thought of us, if we heeded whatever organization they have created to succeed the last in an almost endless line of failed international organizations. But we do not.”

  “Then, to be totally accurate, we should claim an Empire of four worlds, not seven,” said James Mkhize, who was not quite an aide or an advisor, though he sat in on all policy meetings. As nearly as I could tell, he had appointed himself as Tchaka’s biographer, and it amused Tchaka to let him act as such.

  “Seven,” Tchaka replied.

  “But-”

  “If the original Tchaka had avoided all Shona, Matabele, Swazi and Xhosa lands, would the first Zulu empire have ever grown beyond the size of a large farm?”

  Mkhize wisely chose not to argue the point-people who argued with Tchaka tended to disappear-and asked what type of sentient life existed on the three worlds.

  “I’ve no idea,” answered Tchaka.

  “Will they object to our presence?”

  Tchaka seemed amused. “Does it matter?”

  “No,” said Mkhize quickly.

  “They have not yet achieved space flight,” continued Tchaka. “They will present very little problem.”

  “Which planet will be your headquarters?” I asked.

  “I will look them over and then decide,” answered Tchaka. “In the meantime, we need to populate these worlds. I have already sent word back to Pretoria that the government will pay to transport any Zulu who is willing to emigrate to any of them.”

  “Including the three populated worlds?” asked Mkhize.

  “Of course. They will be pacified before the first Zulu colonists arrive.”

  And it was as Tchaka had said.

  He named the seven worlds after seven Zulu kings and princes-Mpande, Cetshwayo, Dinuzulu, Mthonga, Bakuza, Jama, and Mbuyazi. It was the last three that held sentient populations. I almost said “alien populations”, but of course on their worlds
we were the aliens, not they.

  The inhabitants of Bakuza were humanoid-small, quick, shaggy bipedal beings averaging less than five feet in height. They still lived in their culture’s equivalent of the stone age. They were primarily nomadic, and they had just invented clublike weapons to bring down the herbivores that shared their planet. Arrayed against them were Tchaka’s warriors, armed with laser and sonic weapons, pulse guns, and projectile weapons. We had body armor; they had none. We had rudimentary force fields to protect us from any incoming weapons; they had none. We of course had equipment that allowed us to see in the dark; they were all but blind at night.

  The Battle of Bakuza took three days. The totals were staggering: four Zulus dead, three wounded; eight hundred thousand Bakuzans dead, another ninety thousand wounded.

  Tchaka contacted Peter Zondo, one of our half-brothers, whom he had placed in charge of the “pacification” of Bakuza, and told him to send out parties in all directions from wherever Zondo chose to make the new capital of the planet, and elicit pledges of loyalty from the Bakuzans.

  “And if any should refuse?” asked Peter.

  “Kill them.”

  “We may need them to work the fields once we begin cultivating the planet,” said Peter. “Perhaps we should invite them to-”

  “Kill them,” repeated Tchaka, breaking the communication. He turned to an aide. “Have Captain Nene make sure he does what I have told him to do.”

  “And if not?”

  “Kill him, too,” said Tchaka, as if the question was too foolish to have been asked.

  Jama’s inhabitants were like nothing anyone had ever seen before. I’d say they looked like centaurs, but even that is misleading. They had short stubby legs, elongated bodies, narrow torsos, and heads that seemed composed entirely of wrinkles. They had no eyes, but possessed some unknown sense that functioned every bit as well, because I never saw one trip over or bump into anything. They had a complex social order, but no technology. They greeted us with open arms-well, that’s a misstatement; they didn’t have any arms, not by our definition-and seemed happy to give us all the land we wanted. They had no objection to being impressed into labor camps, and in fact seemed so totally lacking in resentment that many of us felt that, social order or not, they were equally lacking in sentience. After all, ants have a complex social order, and no one claims that they are sentient.

  Mbuyazi was the most traditional of the three populated planets. They were humanoid, they had sophisticated weapons (though nothing to match our firepower; theirs would have been better suited for warfare in the late 19th or early 20th centuries), and they had no intention of sharing their planet with anyone.

  It was a bloodbath. They simply wouldn’t surrender, and every adult and child fought to the death. In something under six weeks we had killed every last one of them, and even some of Tchaka’s most hardened soldiers were sickened by the slaughter.

  But when the dust had cleared, the Zulu Empire was in complete possession of seven worlds, and every day brought immigrants from Earth’s thirty-five million Zulus to each of the worlds. Tchaka chose Cetshwayo as his headquarters world, and within a month a small city had been erected, with the Royal Palace dominating the landscape. Before long he had palatial dwellings on each of the worlds, and small cities were springing up on all of them.

  We had no idea how Earth’s war against the chlorine breathers was coming along, but one day we received a communication, not from Dolores Sanchez but from Alexander Petrovitch, whose signature appeared over the title: “President of United Earth”. He thanked us for adding seven worlds to the fold, and announced that he would soon send his representatives out to examine them.

  Tchaka responded instantly. The seven worlds-he used their new names-were part of the Zulu Empire, and were in no way connected to or under any obligation to Earth. They would pay no taxes, accept no military conscription, and would not give Earth a Most Favored trading status.

  There was no answer for the next three days. We were all starting to get nervous, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  How could we have known it would be Tchaka’s?

  14.

  Earth announced that it was considering applying economic sanctions to get Tchaka to fall in line. It insisted that the Zulu Empire agree that we were actually a series of United Earth colonies, loyal and beholden to Earth and no one else.

  “What do you think?” I asked as I read the communiquйs.

  “They have always lacked imagination,” replied Tchaka. “Even worse, they lack audacity.”

  He closeted himself with his military leaders and his astrologer for a long afternoon. No one else was permitted in, none of his advisors or aides knew what the conference was about, and he didn’t see fit to tell us.

  We found out soon enough.

  Two days later one of our ships exploded halfway between Cetshwayo and Mthonga. Tchaka claimed it had been attacked by a United Earth ship and demanded reparation.

  Earth denied any involvement in the incident.

  “Then,” announced Tchaka in a broadcast that reached not only the seven planets but Earth itself, “we shall decide upon a fitting reparation and claim it.”

  That night I checked the reports to find out how many of our men had been killed or wounded in the sneak attack. There were eleven names; all had been killed. But something troubled me about two of those names, and I checked further-and found that the two names I recognized, plus the other nine, had actually died in battle against the natives of Mbuyazi.

  Tchaka, who rarely slept more than three or four hours a night, and was often seen wandering the halls and offices of his new headquarters in the dead of night, entered my office just as I made my discovery.

  I looked up at him. “Did we really lose a ship at all?” I asked.

  “Does it matter?” he replied. “We wanted an incident. Now we have one.”

  “Did we want one?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Why?”

  He walked over to my computer and had it cast a Tri-D representation of the closest fifty light-years.

  “Computer,” he said, “show the worlds of the Zulu Empire in flashing yellow.”

  Seven worlds began flashing a bright yellow.

  “Now show the colonies of United Earth in flashing blue.”

  Some twenty-five worlds began flashing.

  He turned to me. “Why should Earth have so many while we have so few?”

  “Do you actually plan to go to war with Earth?” I asked, startled.

  “The first Tchaka knew better than to go to war with Britain,” he replied.

  “Then I don’t understand.”

  “Britain was thousands of miles away, and was preoccupied with wars in Europe,” he continued, “just as Earth is concentrating its efforts on its war with the chlorine breathers. Britain had no problem with the first Tchaka increasing the size of his territory a hundredfold, as long as he did not make war upon them.”

  “And Earth will let you claim parsecs upon parsecs of space, as long as you do not go to war with them or charge them for passage,” I said. “But what good will it do you?”

  He pointed to the half dozen colony worlds that were farthest from Earth. “Do you really think they will send any part of their fleet out to defend these worlds while they are engaged in a major war much closer to home against the chlorine breathers? What politician or general or admiral will move a single ship thirty light years from home to settle a minor dispute when the enemy they are battling is within five light years-and for all we know, maybe even closer by now?”

  “So we’re just going to land and claim these worlds?” I said.

  “We have right on our side,” he reminded me. “Earth attacked our ship, blew it up and killed the entire crew, and refuses not only to make restitution but even to acknowledge their heinous deed.”

  “It will never work.”

  He stared at me for a very long minute, and I could feel myself shrinking beneath
his gaze. “Be grateful that you are my brother, and that you have served me faithfully for so long.”

  He turned and left my office, leaving me to consider what he had said.

  I had longer to consider it than the colonists on the six worlds he claimed as reparation. The bulk of our fleet took off the next morning, and within a month all six worlds had been added-unwillingly, but unquestionably-to the Zulu Empire.

  15.

  Tchaka often made unannounced visits to the various worlds of his growing empire. I still remember the day he came back from Mpande with a new pet. It was about the size of a small dog, though it didn’t resemble any dog ever whelped. It had six legs-the first animal larger than an insect I had ever seen with more than four legs. Its skin was scaly yet shiny, a brilliant red. It head was absolutely circular, the nostrils mere slits, the ears nothing but holes. I wondered what it ate, until Tchaka fed it a small lizard. A tongue that seemed half the length of its body shot out, wrapped around the lizard, literally squeezed the life out of it in just a second or two-you could hear the tiny bones crunch from across the room-and popped it into its mouth. I guess it continued squeezing, turning everything but the bones, which it spat out a moment later, into pulp.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” I said. “What is it called?” I asked.

  “I can’t pronounce it, so I shall have to give it a name unique to itself.”

  “What name?”

  “I will have to think about it,” he said.

  “Is it male or female?” I asked.

  “Female.”

  “There are many lovely women’s names,” I said.

  “This animal shall be our national symbol: small, unafraid, adaptable,” said Tchaka. “It needs a special name.”

  By the next morning, he had come up with one.

  “Nandi?” I repeated. “But she was the original Shaka’s mother.”

  “The mother of the Zulu nation,” he agreed. “What better name for our symbol?”