The Grey Chronicles Part One: New Declaration of An Old War

Chapter 23: A History Lesson and a Severed Head.

The Anarchist, outer space around Onyx Seven, May of 8096 AL.

Briarios hurried onto the bridge with a silver platter, setting it on the center of the curved table. He whipped the chrome dome off of the platter to reveal Salem's severed head, oozing blood onto the shining metal. Its skin was pale, lifeless, and its blank, dead irises stared directly into the eyes of...Salem.

The man raised an eyebrow and poked the flash clone of his head with his fork, as if testing that it was real and not a figment of his imagination.

"This, does not look like an omelet with ham and cheddar." He grinned and looked up at his son as he wiped his fork on his napkin. "It's perfect! That's the handsomest severed head I've ever seen in my time, and that's saying quite a lot."

"Hush darling, your ego is showing," Korana chuckled and stared at the head. "I'd always dreamt of seeing your head on a platter, though that dream generally started with me finding a knife under my pillow."

The rest of Demon squadron was seated around the table waiting for their breakfast. Briarios had requested the clone be made the night before, and after picking it up from the infirmary he just couldn't help but present it properly. He was about to say "breakfast is served" when Annabelle Butlin (more affectionately referred to as Mama Cookie), the mess hall manager and head chef, walked onto the bridge and up the ramp to the command platform. Two messies followed behind the wide hipped woman with dark skin and a southern drawl. She carried a wooden ladle, and she whacked the messies over the head when they didn't move fast enough. The assistants pushed a large aluminum cart, laden with the normal breakfast dishes as well as one exceptionally large one. She started at the sight of the head.

"What the hell is this? Why is that nasty thing on my breakfast table?" She turned on Briarios; Cookie was one of the few people even Salem listened to. "Get that shit off my table before I whoop your skinny white ass!"

Briarios couldn't help but laugh, which earned him a knock on the skull with the ladle. Cookie never saw skin color as a negative thing, but she enjoyed how it made some people uncomfortable. Cookie's entire family, the Butlins, had worked as some of the top chefs in the UCAM, often going on to own a chain of high-class restaurants in the capital system. Her skill in the kitchen was such that Salem had made sure she was assigned to his ship, in his mind one of the most important things a general can bring on any campaign is a good cook; the moment he'd been made aware that one of the Butlin family had graduated basic training, he insisted she be transferred to the Anarchist. The Titanus had kept detailed records of their slaves' lineage so that they could more easily breed them; Annabelle Butlin was one of the few surviving Americans from the invasion of Earth, her family had originally run a series of restaurants, so they were trained to do the same for the Titanus Regime.

When the Titanus discovered the small planet in the Sol system, they started watching them closely. The humans had no idea, not for thousands of years until a drone was shot down outside of Roswell, New Mexico. Almost two hundred years later, in the summer of 2136 AD, the Titanus showed themselves; they had watched the world in silence, and from what they could gain from the human's internet, the United States of America was the most powerful faction on the planet. The Titanus glassed the entire North American continent, destroying Canada and the United States. They brought an armada of cruisers and ordered everyone to lay down their weapons. They promised to spare the world if two-thirds of the population were given as a tribute. As is human nature, their first reaction was a big, resounding middle finger. The Titanus began bombing smaller countries into nonexistence, and eventually world leaders submitted. The Titanus took two-thirds of the humans and launched into the atmosphere, then did something that probably should have been expected; they showed the surface of earth from orbit, appearing on TV screens in the walls of the new slaves' cells, and forced them to watch as they bombed the planet to rubble. The humans were beaten and tortured, forced to endure several millennia of evolution in only two years; fetuses were genetically altered so that the children would come to be an average of eight feet tall, four hundred pounds, and with an increased lifespan. This new breed of human was made to be the perfect slave; strong, capable of working endlessly with very little food or sleep, and most of all their lifespans stretched far past their usefulness. The children born of this forced evolution were the first generation of the Machinae race, their name had been derived from the Titanus word for "slave" and the Latin root for "machine." They were treated as such; for thousands of years they were as disposable as farm animals, bred for work, fed just enough to be able to swing an ax or pick, then slaughtered and trashed when they were no longer useful. Until one summer, when a Machinae slave was foolishly put behind the wheel of a truck transporting weapons and armor.