The War with the K'val - Part 3

Yesterday, I described the turning point in the war with the K'val. The human settlers on Hades knew they were overmatched. The pattern was set. The K’val would return once a year and enter the village which became known cynically as Pax and demanded one colonist. Each year, one of the colonists volunteered rather than have the humans subjected to the unrelenting pain.

As long as they gave up one of their own, there was no more bloodshed or torture. Once the humans accepted their fate, the K’val changed their procedures slightly and turned the exchange into a ceremony. Each year, when the K’val returned, they also returned with the body of the person taken the year before. The body did not look human. It looked like one of the colonists who had died along the long journey to Nu2 Lupi. The bodies were basically mummified. Perhaps it was because the K’val wanted to keep the colonists afraid or perhaps the aliens just didn’t want the bodies around. Or maybe they thought it was a gesture of peace. Nobody knew.

The K’val also started giving the colonists food, seeds and so on during the exchange. They would dump the body on the ground, place cartons of foodstuffs next to it and make their peculiar gesture meaning send someone with us. The colonists got to be pragmatic about it. Until they were able to build up arms sufficient to fend off the K’val, it was “cheaper” to just give up one person. Babies were made at a faster rate than people were taken so slowly but surely their numbers started to swell.

The Darwin contingent, decimated by the first “war” began building a secret arms factory. Their mission superseded cooperating in the strange peace arrangement that had been established. They were able to work with some success the first year. They were able to build up even more weapons the second year. But the third year, somehow, the K’val knew of this secret base. Before the exchange ceremony, the aliens went directly to Darwin Base and wiped out the entire contingent, killing everyone involved and they leveled the factories. This effectively ended the Darwin initiative on Nu2 Lupi. It also permanently implanted a pacifist streak in the people who lived on the planet now known as Hades which was the Greek word for Hell. One person a year didn’t seem like much of price to pay for peace and prosperity for the rest.

When Aason Bierak arrived, 60 years later, this was the colonist's lives. They built, they worked, they farmed, they made babies and every year, they gave up one of their own to the strange aliens from another world. Because there were still one or two of the original colonists left (well into their 90s), Aason was able to get a first hand recounting of how the humans in the Nu2 Lupi system came to live this bizarre lifestyle.

(Author's note: this back story may change some when I render it into The Milk Run but at least you get the idea.)