Helios
Unlucky0013
Lord Zee
DracoLunaris
Frettzo
Vec
Eviledd1984
Kalmar
ButtsnBallsThe Final Battle
Grey eyes watered as they stared upwards. Streaks of fire smeared the violet sky. Loud booms echoed above, and shouts shook and squealed uncertainly below. The entire sky flashed once, twice, leaving the negative to blind the watching eyes of the Senator. Cylinders the size of trains broke from the flaming streaks in the sky, and they plummeted with an earth shattering sonic boom.
In the broken streets one of the metallic cylinders fell, it’s reinforced sides clipping and smashing through the outcrop of a closeby roof, crumbling the stone. With a slightly lopsided landing the cylinder crashed into the street, digging a few feet under with a ear splitting bang. In seconds more of the cylinders came crashing to land near the first, until the streets were littered and destroyed.
The Senator winced as he watched more and more fall, bright lights beginning to coat the landed cylinders until it hurt to look any longer. Turning from the window, the old man’s eyes fell upon the last stronghold of the old government: the supreme parliament room. Papers flew around freely, and rich shoes hung from the feet of dangling politicians too scared to face the coming tide.
With trembling and bloody hands, the Senator pushed the limp leg of a hanging man aside to walk to the center of the circled room of death and destruction. From above, if a fly from the rafters looked down, the Senator stood center in a perfect ring of podiums and self taken lives. Those dressed in military uniforms stood against the walls, dressed in the colors of the government, but worn by traitors.
“Is it not bad enough to take our peace by clothing your rebels as our protectors? Is it not bad enough to force the hands of the fellow senators to their own deaths? Is it not bad enough?” The shaking voice of the Senator called out against the walls he so boastfully once gave his speeches between.
“I asked for your surrender, just as I asked for the others,” a calm voice replied.
“I did not ask for death or destruction, just for the reigns of our great nations.”
“To ravage it for you own gains!” The Senator spat back.
“To save it, to mend it where you refused to.”
“We gave you our military,” The Senator huffed, his voice broken alongside his ego, “we gave you our trust, we gave you-”
“You gave us dust when we asked for the return of what you’ve taken!” A new voice hissed, unhuman and angry.
“And what… what did we take?” The Senator looked at the shadows he argued with.
“Our peace, our virtue,” the hissing voice replied.
The Senator’s face twisted in confusion, “bah! I have committed no crime!”
“Then why do you watch your own citizens welcome the airdrops of my troops? Of so called traitors?”
“Because you force my eyes as you force their kindness, you’re a witch with a even more devilish tongue.”
“I force nothing!” Peter Marshal replied, stepping from the shadows, allowing the light permeated from the constant airdrops of soldiers outside to enlighten his features. Youth wrapped around his face, but spoiled with experience and the life of a soldier. Blue eyes dimmed with cynicism and lips tight in a emotionless line.
“You along with the rest of the Senate had lead our nation into forty years of war, under your rule I saw entire races abducted and used, I saw your own soldiers mistreated, and your citizens milked dry and beaten when barren. I saw corruption!”
“YOU SAW THE COST!” The Senator bellowed, “Do you think holding the systems together is free? Do you think it’s easy? I SUPPOSE YOU’LL SOON FIND OUT WON’T YOU!”
“Stop your screaming!” Plash Shree hissed as he walked out from the shadows, his large opaque eyes of jet quickly squinting as the light sparkled against them. Letting a pair of shades fall from his pale alien forehead he continued, “you stripped my people from their home, you stripped them of their peace.”
“I stripped them of nothing.”
“You showed us war, you showed us hate.”
“You’d have me to believe that the Muni didn’t know those things?” The Senator huffed, “I suppose you also believe that this little coup will fix that don’t you?”
Plash’s thin lips pressed tight over sharp teeth in hesitation.
“It is the first step of many,” another hissing voice sounded, this one from the Muni known as Pon Shen.
“And step one,” Marshal continued, “Senator Baxter, I place you under arrest in the name of the new Coalition of Systems under the banner of the States of Innerzik.”
The Senator forced a laugh over his fear, “you hold no such authority!”
“Except that given to me by the people and her military, this is martial law-”
“This is treason!”
“Treason suggests that your government still exists.”
--------
“Fucking shit!” Pul Rease rasped through lips pinched against the butt of a cigarette. His slender Muni fingers slipped from the metal crevice of a bulky device.
“Did you finally lose digit?” A female human mused idly as she stared upwards into the violet sky scarred with warships in the distance.
“Bah.” Pul said through a puff of sickening smoke, the toxins soothing his strange alien lungs. Silently he continued to tinker with a long metallic instrument now mounted atop his hovering jeep, terrible music from the 1970’s scratchily playing from a device a few thousands years newer than the ancient tunes.
“So what even is that?” Terra, the woman, asked.
Past aviators, the Muni’s large black eyes blunk at the question. His surprised face quickly turned into a whimsical smile full of sharp knife like teeth, “it’s old, I read about them in the books.”
“Ugh, not the books,” Terra crossed her arms.
“Hey!” Pul pointed a grease covered finger, “you get trapped in a silent ship out in the middle of space and try not to peek at a few books.”
“That’s not the problem, the problem was that the books were on the shelf of a man way too into the old 20th century, and nw I can’t stop hearing about it.”
“Bah,” Pul puffed another cloud of smoke.
“I don’t see why we don’t just join in on the siege,” Terra jutted her chin at the city in the distance.
“It’s no siege,” Pul grunted as he slowly slid a large oblong piece of metal inside a tube on the end of the instrument, “the Muni fighters already ripped open any resisting ships and gassed them out, Peter is just showing off his support.”
“So sure?” Terra raised a brow.
Pul nodded and tapped a nail against a glass that was attached to the instrument, “I saw that last bit through this.”
“What?”
Pul smiled as his fingers winded a knob on the side of the strange instrument, “yep, saw Pete himself talking to one of the old Senators.”
“Still? Shouldn’t they all be dead?”
“Yep.” Pul spat out the now burning filter of his cigarette and with one swift motion he tugged hard on a fibrous string feeding into the long machine. There was a loud clank, a whir, three beeps and a monsterous bang as the whole instrument bucked upwards in recoil, the bullet blasting out of the barrel herald by a spout of flame.
The bullet rotated through the air, heating its path as it whizzed into the city. The projectile stormed past the soldiers exiting the cylinders, past the supporting citizens of the city, over the dead bodies of the loyalists, between the towering buildings, through the window of the parliament window, over the shoulder of Peter Marshall, and into the head of Senator Baxter with a wet whack