Crimson Dawn

After his training, he was assigned a job in the city. From then on, he was responsible for overseeing the comings and goings of vehicles on the big bridge. It was a monotonous, mind-numbing job that quickly turned into routine. With his first paycheck, he moved out of the living container into a house on the outskirts of town, which he shared with ten other rebels, one of whom was a high-ranking member. They were young men, mostly in their twenties and thirties, most of them born here in Rykuunh, some from other cities in the Ognons District, but no one besides Lex had ever set foot on the other continent.

Right after his late shift, he picked up Mirela for breakfast. The sun hadn’t risen yet, but dawn was breaking, with sluggish clouds above them and the last pale stars fading. They took a seat at a small table outside a café that had just opened. They sat there for a long time, enjoying the first rays of Tau Ceti, ordering black coffee and eating biscuits made from homegrown oats.

Lex got the sense that Rykuunh was a microcosm, able to exist entirely on its own. Everywhere he looked, uniformed rebels were patrolling, controlling traffic or dealing with disputes between citizens.

"We care deeply about the people. And the people who live here love us," Mirela said. She was wearing a loosely knit wool sweater, her slightly messy hair pulled back and tamed by a thick knit cap. The morning sunlight made her brown eyes sparkle, revealing a mysterious depth, as if, at the core of her iris, the essence of innocence was hidden, only to be uncovered by the sunlight.

Lex took a sip of his coffee; in the icy cold of the early morning, the cup steamed like a chimney. "It’s nice here," he said. "Actually, it’s really nice. More peaceful than in Vega Prime."

"Did you ever think, after everything you went through in the jungle, that you’d have a time like this, so beautiful and peaceful?"

"No," he said. "But I wish it would last longer. We both know this is just the calm before the storm. Beyond the highlands, the cities are already burning."

She looked up from her coffee.

"Is it worth it, Miri?"

"What do you mean?"

"The Black Orb, whatever it is. Is it really worth so much that the rebels are willing to let the TC burn their cities to the ground for it? Aren’t the innocent people who die because of this reason enough to end the war and give the TC what’s rightfully theirs?"

"You’re asking me why Algernon Beaulac doesn’t just hand the dark pearl back to the corporation?"

"Exactly. Then the war would be over, and no one else would have to suffer."

"The war would end, yes, but the oppression would continue, just as it has ever since the colonization of Cetos Five. The Crimson Dawn sees this discovery as the turning point in their history. They see the Black Orb as the chance to free the world from the corporations’ grip. You’re asking me if this cause justifies the suffering of those who lose their lives, their families, their loved ones? Millions of people for billions?"

Just as she raised her cup to her lips, she paused. Through the fleeting steam, she looked at him. "I can’t answer that. I’m just glad I don’t have to make that decision."

He grabbed the coffee cup by the handle and gently set it down. He thought about her answer for a while. "I’d like to make that decision," he said finally. "I’d give them that little piece of crap back in a heartbeat."

*****

The old wooden chair wobbled as the boy balanced his weight on its back two legs. His feet were crossed on the desk, his dusty boots resting on a copy of the clearance slip from the last transporter that had passed through four days ago. The document still needed to be filed, but there was no rush. Ever since the war had ravaged the nearby regions, supplies rarely made it to the city. It was as if the world government had already wiped out the neighboring towns, as if they no longer existed. And maybe that was true.

He tried to focus on reading again. On one of the dusty e-readers, the only one on the shelf that still had a bit of battery left, he’d found a book by an old writer named George Orwell, who wrote about a future that was now seven hundred years in the past. It was the only book in his language. And yet, he couldn’t really understand it. The reader rested on his lap, held loosely in one tired hand; with the other, he lazily waved away a fly buzzing around his face. Had they really brought these useless pests from Earth, just to clone them here in the New World?

He rubbed his eyes through his closed lids, pinching away the gritty sleep from the corners. Sweat trickled down his temples. He tried again. Reading wasn't his strength. Focusing on a story was hard.

A bird appeared out of nowhere and perched on the windowsill. When he glanced up, it looked like the bird was pecking something off the sole of his boot, though in reality, it was about a foot away, sitting on the edge of the open window. A massive cargo airship drifted in front of the sun, casting the checkpoint into shadow, like an eclipse. The boy tilted his foot, and the bird flew away. It was always airships, he thought, never clouds. There didn’t seem to be any clouds in this part of the world. The zeppelin filled a large part of the sky, just having left its platform and slowly heading toward the Great Sea. Against the sun, it was just a silhouette, a blinding bright outline. Lex leaned forward, squinting at something he could now see, something that stood out against the bright midday blue, like a flock of dark birds of prey, except these were too still, too orderly to be alive.

At that moment, the old latrine door creaked open across from the checkpoint hut, and his shift partner stepped into the shadow of the airship. He glanced over at the boy as he tightened his belt. He’d only taken three or four steps when, behind him, the zeppelin burst into flames. Explosions shook the ground all around, and moments later, contrails of rockets streaked through the once peaceful midday sky.

In the next ten seconds, Lex saw four airships plummet from the sky like burning stones. Still in the air, their aluminum skeletons were exposed as the ignited hydrogen consumed their thin outer walls like fire devouring the head of a match.

Then the eerie wail of air raid sirens echoed across Rykuunh.

Lex jumped from his chair, bolting out of the hut, shouting something to the man. Toward the city center, where the large military base stood, a munitions depot exploded. An immense shower of sparks shot miles into the sky. Four or five seconds later, the deafening boom followed. It was literally ear-splitting. It took a moment before Lex could hear the sirens again, the screams of people. Then he saw the upper floors of the towering city building were on fire.

In the next instant, a missile hit behind him. Debris struck him, and in the sheer terror of the moment, he had no idea how badly he’d been injured. He instinctively looked back, saw that where he had just been working was now nothing but a roaring inferno. The checkpoint hut had been wiped from existence. Like so much else would soon be.

Had his shift partner made it?

No time to think about that.

The access bridge collapsed.

Lex was convinced they were going to destroy the entire city. Everything, just to find the Black Orb, the one no one knew anything about. What it was, what it meant, or what it symbolized.

*****

The Rebels at his Station had always suspected that sooner or later the corporations would manage to sneak a disguised convoy of military personnel past the scanners at the bridgehead, a trojan horse. But in reality, the attack came from the skies.

From a mothership fifty miles away, which hovered like a floating mountain in the distance, barely visible against the clear sky and only noticeable with a second glance above the canyon, the World Union sent an armada of remote-controlled drones toward the city. He had never seen combat drones in the air before, let alone so many at once. Tau Ceti glinted between their black metal bodies. Despite the anti-aircraft defenses, the sky beyond the defensive perimeter was still dotted with the black messengers of death. Under the barrage of rebel fire, they advanced toward the city. For the resistance, it was a hopeless battle where the greatest victory was minimizing their losses.

In morbid fascination, Lex watched the missiles leave behind contrails in the sky, lingering long after in the destruction they caused and the death they brought to the people.

He could hear explosions near and far, feeling the tremors they sent through the ground. Black smoke darkened the Rykuunh skyline. Over the radio, he heard that a missile had destroyed the northeastern elevator. The entire attack aimed to sever the city’s supply routes in one fell swoop, cutting it off from the outside world. Lex saw people jumping from the burning city tower, plummeting to their deaths. Massive fires raged out of the shattered windows, war sirens continued their eerie wailing throughout the city, and the dust from the destroyed buildings coated the streets, leaving a dry, bitter taste on his tongue. Locals fled in streams, but no one knew where to go. On the rocky plateau, they were trapped. The access routes and elevators—all destroyed.

A terrible feeling washed over him. He hoped it was just a feeling. He was leaving a trail of blood behind him, but he still couldn’t tell where the debris had hit him.

He felt nothing, nothing but fear and a sense of impending doom.

Between the buildings, the scorching heat from the firestorms raging in the upper levels was building. Smoke clouded his vision, and hot ash filled the air, making each breath a struggle. Near the market, several missiles had hit nearby houses. The shockwaves from the explosions had completely ravaged the market stalls. Lex made his way through the chaos, stepping over the bodies of merchants and buyers who had been caught off guard by the attack.

Only the west side of the old general store was still standing. Debris piled into mountains where, an hour ago, the peaceful jingle of the beaded curtain had swayed in the breeze. The flat roof had collapsed. Smoke billowed into the sky. He couldn’t get closer than twenty meters to the ruin. In the firelight, he saw the blind woman’s body on the ground, crushed by rubble as she tried to escape the destruction.

"Miri," the boy called out, his voice cracking. Around him, all he could hear was the roar of the fires, consuming the oxygen from the air, and he thought if the wind shifted, the searing hot smoke would incinerate him on the spot.

The marketplace was torn apart by the force of an explosion.

Even though Lex had taken shelter about a hundred meters away behind a building, the blast wave still shattered the windows around him. The explosion was so loud that for the next hour, all he could hear was a monotonous ringing in his ears. The panic-stricken crowd around him was silent to him, even though the faces of the locals screamed with anguish and fury in unison.

Someone grabbed the boy and pulled him into a doorway. They hid in a basement building and waited there for an entire day until the devastating rumble above them finally stopped. It all felt like a waking dream, time slipping by in strange, arbitrary patterns. When he woke up after a short sleep, the first thing he noticed was the bandage wrapped around his chest and the uncomfortable pressure in his back. He found his dirty, torn shirt lying beside him on the makeshift bed of laundry and a few cushions and pulled it on. In the room where they were hiding, water dripped from the ceiling. The air stank of sweat and human waste. Of food, feces, and urine. The dim light of a weak bulb hanging from the ceiling flickered over the terrified faces of the crowd.

Now that the defenses, supply routes, and the city center were destroyed, it wouldn’t be long before the World Union sent their soldiers into the city to search for the Black Orb. The boy had no intention of waiting for that moment. He pulled himself together, walked through the oppressive silence, and made his way up the steps, passing many of the exhausted locals who had fallen asleep. He had no idea what time it was. When he stepped outside, a shattered world lay before him. A gloomy twilight hung over the sky, and the boy couldn’t tell if it was dawn or nearing nightfall. Ash blanketed the entire city. Dead bodies in the streets, children who had lost their parents, and parents gathering the remains of their children. These were the sights he took in as he made his way toward the outskirts of the city. The cause of all this destruction and misery had always been a corrupt government ruled by credits, and credits belonged to the large corporations, corporations like Thandros.

*****

Against the twilight-cast desert sky, he saw the silhouette of a girl standing at the edge of the plateau. Motionless before the canyon. The approaching darkness flickered faintly, like a broken lightbulb behind a linen curtain. Each flicker signaled another missile strike in the distant city. Each explosion added to the suffering, fueling death and destruction.

Lex approached the dark figure, the sorrowful shadow of a girl without hope. He walked up to Mirela, placing a hand on her shoulder, but she didn’t react at all.

"I’ve been searching for you like crazy," he said. "If you hadn’t been here, I wouldn’t have known where else to look."

In her dark eyes, the burning city reflected. The gunfights, the explosions. Two shimmering rivers of tears traced their way down her cheeks, gathering at her chin before falling to the bone-dry sand at her feet.

He looked at her, then at the catastrophe unfolding in the distance.

"All of this for a little black pearl," she whispered after a while. "You asked me once if it was worth it. It’s not, Lex. It’s not. I’m sure of that now."

"Miri, I thought you were dead," he said.

She shook her head, but the motion wasn’t meant as an answer. In that moment, she existed only in her own fear. She probably hadn’t even heard him.

"This pearl, whatever it is, has brought nothing but misery to us," she said. "It ignites greed in people. It brings out the worst, the darkest parts of their souls."

Lex sat down on the large boulder nearby, where they had last sat a week ago, when the world wasn’t right, but at least their own had still been peaceful.

"My parents are there, my sisters, and I can see them, I know where their house is, and I know that I can’t help them."

"We’ll get our revenge," he said, and she fell silent. For a while, she stared at the war raging in the distance, almost soundless. Only the faint rumble of the explosions, a sinister, dull roar carried by the icy desert wind, could be heard if you listened closely.