Lanced steel bolts of lightning pierced the atmosphere as the raid ships rained down an ungodly torrent of death and destruction. Haamal watched as the city she once knew was turned to rubble, distant explosions threw up megatons of white-grey dust, she tried to imagine people’s possessions getting vaporised in a femtosecond and becoming a nondescript cloud of detritus thrown high into the atmosphere and then whipped away by the encircling nuclear wind.
Another concussive whump shook the citadel causing her ears to pop, the wide window of her apartment afforded her a first class view of the destruction.
Haamal half expected the diamond lace lattice to shatter like so many shards of ice, but it didn’t, instead it hummed in tune as waves of shock lapped against it like an angry sea.
For the first time she noticed the twin streams of tears making their way down her cheeks, she wasn’t usually one for emotions, especially ones accompanied by an outward manifestation for all the world to see.
“Jeeta! Jeeta! Come in!”
He must have used his protocol override, she had turned off her comms about fifteen minutes ago, she needed a long unbroken string of uninterrupted thought in order to watch the destruction in solemn peace. Now though, it was ruined, here thoughts blew away like footsteps in hot sand.
“What?!”
“For the love of Baal woman, get out of there!”
She allowed a slight smile to steal across her lips, it was a funny game that her and KoosO liked to play when they visited a new planet. They delighted in who could find the most obscure religion with the quaintest traditions. KoosO had chosen to worship Baal, whilst she had settled on Jainism.
“That whole sector will be converted to nanoparticles in less than two minutes. What’s wrong?”
What wasn’t wrong?
“Jeeta…. Come on girl, I can’t get a lock on you if you don’t reactivate.”
A heavy, almost theatrical sigh whistled through her nose, perhaps this time she would simply stay here and die.
Her stomach chilled as she wondered how many times she’d had these thoughts before, how many planets had she ingratiated herself with the locals only to see them all perish in the blinding laser light of justice; only later to have their memories wiped from her mind?
They may be alien but they were still her friends, Jerry, Linda, Paula, and even the ever-horny Cal, she was genuinely going to miss them, simple creatures with simple pleasures who did not appear to have a bad bone in their bodies.
A sudden blackness arrived as a terrible wind painted a thick grey ash across the sky, destined to cover the planet, blotting out the sun for around half a century . . . Somehow it didn’t seem fair.
How could you even measure fairness on such a scale?
Most civilisations had the common decency to do things in the right order, an industrial revolution eventually leading to a technological one, in turn leading to a fledgling space age. Then eventually a small migration to the nearest planet or heavy asteroid, or failing the proximity of either of those two entities, a Near Planet Station. Then the second space age, discovery of macro quantum principles, the web-rift and then finally . . . finally . . . The jump.
Every now and again a species would manage to make that jump, or at least get close to making it, without going through the prerequisite political/socio-economic changes. Usually, at some point between the second space age and the discovery of macro quantum principles most species realised in order to truly progress, they needed to do away with the whole concept of money, borders, countries, races, religions and all the other things that held them back from joining the greater galactic community.
In rare circumstances a species would find a way to get to the point whereby they could jump away from their own system, with their political structures and their religious sensibilities intact.
This had been allowed to happen once, and The Council had sworn never to let it happen again, it was considered too great a risk to allow a warmongering species with an ever-growing destructive capability to let loose on the wider galactic community. Because of course before long, they would discover just how relatively easy it was to destroy the galaxy and possibly the universe with one slip of a finger on the goo button.
The Council had tried other approaches first, they hadn’t gone straight to destruct mode, with the Kilanians for instance they had tried to tread a more peaceful route. That didn’t go down too well, and the resulting conflict ended in multi-gigadeath.
Now it was the humans turn, they had discovered the web-rift and judging by their usual standards for technological advancement, would have worked out how to create a jump-ship within a decade, leaving them free to spread their poisonous dogma throughout the galaxy. History had shown that once a species managed to make it this far without seriously changing their economic structure, it would never happen.
The apartment lights finally gave out, only her enhanced eyes allowed her to contemplate the devastation left behind. KoosO had saved her from the annihilation for as long as he could.
She was ready now, ready for death and then rebirth . . .
“Ok KoosO, I’ll see you on the other side, try not to confuse me with talk of this place.”
“Are you sure this is what you want?”
It felt rude to do otherwise, she had been a resident of earth for almost two decades, it was the least Haamal felt she could do was die with them.
“I’m sure.”
With no further indication that she was going to speak further, KoosO sent the final codes to the raid ships encircling the planet, Haamal had just enough time to contemplate twin plumes of fire momentarily lighting the dusty gloom.
“See you in the next life friend.”