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| Published in Issue 1, Volume 10 of Schlock! Magazine |
There
must have been thousands standing in the rain that day. The skies had split
open and the tears of the gods were pouring down on the patient earth with such
volume as it had never been seen before. The water soaked our bodies and ran
down our brows, to our eyes. We shivered, the thousands of us, but we stood and
we held hands, as we watched the great hollow war-bird land.
It
screeched like the predators of the rocky planes, spitting fire from its sides,
gliding through the air. My eye caught the brief outlines of faces and bodies,
as they stood packed behind the war-bird’s transparent skull.
With
a jolt, the war-bird touched down on the muddy ground, the flames quenched. For
long moments it stood still, as if counting our numbers, weighing our mettle
against its own ferocity. Across the One-Mind, one of us was praying.
Unbeknownst to me, I found myself praying too.
With
a whirring noise, the war-bird opened its beak and disgorged its occupants, the
way schwirm-floaters do, upon finding prey, spilling out acidic fluids over
their victim. We heard their boots clang down on the war-bird’s beak and saw
them march into formation, light-spitters at hand. In unison, we shivered and
felt great anticipation across the One-Mind, our hated enemies standing before
us at last, vastly outnumbered. We picked up on their fear and we silently
rejoiced.
It
was a while before the Most Important Human Among Them left the war-bird’s
belly, clothed in regal form-fitting clothing, his form gaunt and tall. The One-Mind
tasted his contempt and we fought back against the rising tide of anger among
us. They were in our hearth now and they would be defenseless against us,
should they dare threaten us.
The
Most Important Human walked steadily, reaching the One-Father, leader to our
tribe and father to us all. He clicked his heels and saluted, the tips of his
fingers touching the rim of his cap, palm extended outward to show that he was
without weapons. The irony of this motion, in contrast to the armed men in
armor behind him was not lost to us.
“Satrap
Donovan Ben-Azal Al’Quar, representing the PanHuman Empire.”
The
One-Father nodded his head in assent, blinking the top set of his eyes and
responding in kind:
“One-Father
Juk’kul, representing the Tribe. You are here to negotiate the release of the
August D’ross, given power by Imperial Command?”
“That
is correct. You are to release Brigadier August D’ross immediately.”
“And
in return…?”
“In
return, I will guarantee that you, your tribe or your land will not suffer the
effects of the standard procedure according to Protocol 5-B relating to
xenomorphic races openly attacking an Imperial troop carrier ship and taking an
officer hostage.”
There
was a short pause among us in the One-Mind, as we leafed through the sum of our
knowledge. Of our people, many had suffered under Imperial yoke and had some
knowledge of its workings. It took us two beats of a heart to find what
Protocol 5-B stood for. The Satrap that called himself Donovan Ben-Huir, as if
somehow picking up on what we knew, smiled and said:
“If
you return the hostage immediately, then I will make sure my people do not rain
fire upon your bald grey heads and then land here so they can pick off what is
left of you. I am your only friend in this, One-Father and I am willing to give
you every chance to get out of this little mess you got yourselves into…alive.”
There
was poisonous, fierce joy in his words. There were thoughts spiked with venom
and a desperate need for us to deny him his request, so he could slaughter the
Last Free Men of Nudai. My warrior-brothers however reassured me: they would
gladly die and be burned. They would gladly risk having their ashes scattered
in the Nothing-Outside-The-World, instead of living as slaves and stripping the
planet that birthed them under Imperial rule.
The
One-Father crossed his lower arms and said: “Will you then listen to us,
friend? Will you heed our words and consider them, even? We will not ask for
much or even for things beyond your Empire’s reach. You will have your August
D’ross back, in exchange for a flick of the Empire’s tiniest finger.”
“I
give you no guarantee.” the satrap said. There was the faintest motion on the
fabric of his clothes, noticed by one of the Scout-brothers, so small that it
barely registered.
“We
ask that the Telekill field that is set around the border of our land is
lifted, that we may once again speak to our brethren. Not for long, though.
Only for the interval of five minutes, that we may re-establish contact and
find our lost kin that is in your domain.”
“It
cannot be done. I can, however, provide you with a list of the kin you seek and
tell you what you wish to know.”
To deny us even this tiny request? To tear down our
dream of uniting with the World-Dream? They came here and they cut us off from
the Nudai! They tore our One-Mind into shreds, wounding our brains and now they
will not even give us a drop of balm? We thought in unison. The outrage among us was growing. But the
One-Father, with a gentle thought, calmed our turbulent minds.
“Then
tell me, Satrap. What of Qui’Koom, chief of the Shadow Mountain Tribe?”
With
a strange motion of his hand, the satrap called forth a ghost image of Nudai,
its suns and moons (daughters and sons of the All-Father, first and foremost of
all living things) orbiting our sweet home in perfect harmony. But the rolling
hills had been paved with asphalt and plasteel that poisoned the sweet red
grass and the mountains had been ground down to plains by terrible machines that
screamed like flocks of death-birds. The ghost-image spun, flickered and then
finally stopped to a shore near a circle sea, the waters now a murky black
where the engines of the Empire had regurgitated their deadly cargo.
“Deceased.”
Those
among us of the Shadow Mountain beat their chests and sang a mourning
ululation, lamenting the marvels that their leader could have performed,
rattling their glass bracelets in their hands.
“Of
B’ruk then? He was head Seer of the Dimmed Eyes.”
Again
the screen flickered and spun and this time it stopped over a place that was
once the forest of the Baobab, home to the Verdant Sages. What it had now
become, I dared not even think of it. The dirges of the Dimmed Eye tribesmen
among us told me enough.
“Deceased.”
“Look
for Oogmotsi; she was mother to a hundred warriors.”
“Deceased.”
On
and on the list went and on and on the ghost-image of the nightmare of Nudai
flickered and spun, each revolution bringing only news of death and the
mind-cries of the survivors, as their last glimmers of hope died down and were
swept away. And all this time the rain did pour on us and mixed with our tears,
as if the gods could no longer hold back their grief at the news of the
slaughter.
Wearied
and nearly broken, the One-Father at last asked:
“What
became of the Mau’ruk? They were a clan of a few hundred, but they were artists
and poets. We would wish to reach them and hear one of their songs, if only for
a moment, to ease our grieving Mind.”
The
Satrap smiled then, a great wicked grin. Something terrible formed inside his
thoughts and projected into our mind, gangrenous and sickly. He said, each word
dripping sickly sweet malice:
“Id-shattered.”
At
the sound of those words, a rage of such magnitude as one that had never before
risen through the One-Mind rose up; bile and curses that had never been spoken
formed and danced across our minds. Our other brethren had perished, but their
collective thought had descended again into Nudai and would one day be reborn;
but to be Mind torn, to live life with a brain shattered into a million pieces,
this was punishment unfitting to even a human.
The
One-Father fell to his knees then, but quickly regained his composure. He set
his lower limbs onto his knees as he crossed his legs and hid his eyes with his
higher limbs. He wept not, even as we all mourned the final loss of the
brightest among us. He stood in silence for a long while, until the Satrap
said:
“Any
other requests that you would like to make?”
“Yes”
answered the One-Father and there was malice in his voice and murder in his
thought, eager to lash out against the minds of the gathered humans and drive
them mad before killing them. “We would wish that the Empire would perish, its
ships fall into distant suns, its people killed by fire and light and violence
of great ferocity. We your world to be crushed into powder by a million guns,
held by the people that you enslaved and killed and had their minds taken from them.
We wish every child that was born today to live a slave and die in a pit and
every last trace of you expunged from the Universe. We wish that by the time
this is done, not even the memory of humanity remains.”
The
light-spitter was in the Satrap’s hand before we even knew it, as if it had
materialized from nothing. In the time of a thought, there was only a great
hissing sound and then the thump of the One-Father’s body, as it fell lifeless
into the mud.
“Request
denied.” The Satrap said.
And
inside our minds, there was a crashing and a roiling that tore us apart. As our
collective power shattered and turned back on us, we fell on the ground and
reeled, holding our heads with all our limbs, screaming like children at the
first sight of the sun.
I
barely held myself together, so I could pick up a rock and toss it at the
war-bird as it began to ascend, before I too lost consciousness. When I woke
there was only grieving and the sound of jumbled thoughts inside my head.
Fire
came from the sky by nightfall. It scoured the Lost Valley and decimated our
tribe. But we hid inside deep caves and waited, until the sky ceased spitting flame.
We stayed in the dark and the cold as we saw the hated humans, clad in their
precious armor, wielding their terrible weapons while they searched for us
through the ashes and then we struck from afar, killing them all.
And
when the next day they retaliated with more fire and with killing gas, we hid
deeper and we fought on, reaching into their brains and destroying them. For
every one we killed, they killed a hundred, yet in the end it was us who
celebrated victories and sang songs inside the bowels of Nudai, instead of
them.
Now
we hide and we fight and they drive us deeper. And across the One-Mind, I feel my
brethren worrying, thinking of the possibility of running out of ‘down’ for us
to go to, of places for us to hide. Our places of refuge will soon run out. I
know that we will die fighting.
It
is not much of a life, but it is better than what we had.
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