Four Months Ago...
TODAY
He sits at the head of the Special Mode Transporter with his Captain and best friend Gege letting the silence seep into them as they approach the city, at least what the map onscreen says. He knows they're cloaked but something about this specific mission daunts him. When he closes his eyes, the nightmare from last night returns to him, the screams more than he can bear.
"Are you aright Si?" Gege asks.
"What, er, yes. I am quite well," he lies.
"Are you sure because you haven't said anything for the whole journey. It's very unlike you my friend,"
Sirius looks at his friend not sure whether to share his nightmares. The man would probably tell him that it was just his mind playing tricks on him and that he would be fine. Yes, that is his desire right now. Gege still looks at him patiently smiling.
"It's just that--"
Gege looks away to his System.
"Hold that thought my friend. The Riders ahead tell me the passage is clear, we are now entering Maagme's borders."
ONE DAY LATER
Blood everywhere Sirius looks. A trail of it goes straight into the overturned transporter where half the corpse of one of his unit men lays. He crawls towards it the pain in his stomach cutting through his whole body. He stares down in horror and disgust as his entrails graze the ground from the cut, his other hand failing to hold them.
Still he gets closer to the transporter. When he forces himself to stand the first time, the agony cuts through his knees and he falls on his stomach making his injury worse. He tries once more grabbing onto the corpse he saw only to fall back with it. A scream escapes him as he stares at the lower half of the body cut roughly from its other half on his lap.
"this is your doing boy, this is your darkness."
TODAY
What he sees is a marvel entirely different from what he expected. He stares up at the moons in the sky illuminating the great hole in the ground. No a hole is too little to describe the Sunken City. It's almost like the larger moon Eane fell the the Earth and sunk into it closest to the core.
The lights from the First Village, as his System shows, are incredible to look at. One would think these men and women had found a way to grab the stars from the sky and place them each in their houses. His commanding officers had called them savages but all he saw here was a land more developed than his own Acropolis.
"Alright gams and gasses, we're going to take this village and if any of this dark skin devils try to resist, you burn them with plasma. Move out!" Gege says.
With that, each gets on their rider speeding into the night unnoticeable, the captain ahead. They arrive with the darkness bringing noise to the otherwise silent and sleeping village, breaking through what seems to be a barrier, though their Systems do not pick any technological threads.
Slowly the village wakes with frightened children wailing, women crying and men yelling as the soldiers round up each house. As Sirius notices, the houses are well arranged in a fashion that he only has once seen in a history book about the old earth and its civilisations. The houses are all rather simple and all appear to be made from mud and something else that makes them appear plastic-like.
He stops his rider in front of a house bigger than the rest he's been to but still smaller than the one at the center rising like a small tower. He blasts the door off its hinges screams greeting him as he points his plasma rifle. He looks around at the only three people in the first room, a man larger than any Sirius has ever laid eyes on, a petite yet tall woman all dark skinned and a child.
"Out!" He commands.
The family only stares at him, the child weeping silently in its mother's embrace while the father pleads with his eyes.
"I said out!"
Still they do not move. Sirius walks over to the mother and child and aims his gun at the woman. Immediately, the man starts whimpering now on his knees before Sirius begging in his own native and backward language. Sirius points his gun towards the door then to the family and mouths 'out'.
The woman seems to understand looking at the door and saying something to her husband. The man stands and slowly they walk toward the door always staring at the plasma rifle in Sirius' hands. Before, however, the man passes through the door frame, he turns to Sirius with a fearsome look of malice and anger. Maybe he imagined that.
The man was too full of fear.
ONE DAY LATER
The man was too full of fear.
"was he?"
Of course he was. His child and wife were in danger. Any man, even a man as backward and inferior like him would have known that resistance would only lead to their deaths. Any man would have fear for their well being.
"did he?"
He must have. Otherwise he would not have gone out of the room so peacefully. Well he was peaceful for the most part until the stupid chief...
TODAY
"Captain! We think that's all of them!" Iash, one of the only female soldiers on the mission says.
Gege walks between the lines of kneeling villagers stopping to check their faces. He crouches at one point to observe a really old lady and man. The two take Sirius by surprise. Not even in Acropolis with all its technology, had he seen folk aged so much as these two. Gege seems to think the same as he whispers into the night. The old lady, those eyes....
The captain finishes his counting and turns to Iash and all of them eventually laughing. Sirius finds no will to laugh even as his fellows chuckle with their captain at their work. Then he remembers.
"Geg..erm Captain, we need to find their chief," he says.
Gege stares at him for a while as if looking for a new emotion that only Sirius could have at the moment. He finally switches to a smile looking at the villagers.
"Which ones here have you found to understand our normal language?" Gege asks.
One of the other soldiers, Ouko Sirius thinks, points his rifle at the two elderlies. Gege returns to them crouching once more.
"Hello, my name is Captain Gege Tami and I need to know who your chief is,"
If any of the two understand him, they never show. He asks again this time the rifle raised a bit higher. Still, no response.
"You sure these things can understand me?" Gege asks the lad.
Before he gets his answer,
"Why?"
Sirius notes that it's the old man.
"Why what?" Gege says.
"Why attack us? We no do anything to you, why you attack us?"
Gege laughs in his face turning to his fellows and finally to Sirius who looks away.
"Listen to the savage speak like us. Like a child!" The man loses himself in laughter till the lady speaks.
"You should have known twas sin to break into the barriers without invitation to Yeri," she says.
Gege stops laughing staring at her for the longest while, Sirius almost predicting the stupid things he's putting to mind. Finally the captain stands, walks to Sirius.
"What in the star blight crosses is wrong with you tonight?" He whispers.
"Errr, nothing sir."
Gege looks hurt, his face in shock.
"Sir?"
"You will all pay for sinning on grounds unwashed before the morn," the old lady continues.
Gege storms off taking out his blast pistol. Before Sirius can yell no, he shoots one of the villagers a woman through the chest. As she falls, he shoots two more, a man and what appears to be a child through the head.
"Okay lady, I shan't be asking any more. Who here is your chief!"
She does not answer. Another villager falls. Gege stares at her, a maniacal smile on his face, his blast pistol swaying dangerously in his fingers.
"Who-here-is-your-chief! Who-"
"Be silent! He has heard you and now he comes," she says.
Sirius sees black as a roar fills the air.