Darkened Dreams

Ours

We fought. How We fought! Glorious, treacherous battles. Our cities were named Hiroshima, Rome, Berlin, Gettysburg. But after every battle, We picked up our wayward brothers, brushed off the dust, wiped off the blood, and helped them stand on their own again. Because that's what we were. Brothers and Sisters. You see, we fought not for the glory of war, but for peace. No other species did that. And we were so glad to see them, to learn that we weren't alone, to love them and welcome them as our new Brothers and Sisters at arms, that we allowed ourselves to bury our past. But deep inside us lay sleeping, waiting, a violent past. Merely waiting for a nicely shaped trigger, you know, a rather explosive charge in a dead-shot accurately placed blow. But they truly welcomed us. They loved us! We were divided, but that made us strong. Competition was an integral part of our society, because we were better than that group of mangy louses and the cosmos was going to know it.

But one did not love us, accept us. They feared us. So did what many chose to do to what they fear. They wanted to kill us, ruin us, prove to themselves and their Gods that they were better.

That we were nothing to fear.

They were wrong.

They no longer exist.

They fear nothing now, because what can one fear after the grave?

We were not prepared to fight them. We were slumbering and stretching our minds. We were mainly learners and scientists. We trained troops, yes. They were elite, battle ready, and untested. But we alone were hardened after millenia of fighting. We alone were aware and saw them. Our eyes never sleep, our rest is never in full. We heard of their discontent and their separation from the great alliance. We expected to face them in battle. We were ready for tricks, and we had a few of our own up our sleeves. We did not expect them to do the unthinkable. They attacked our homeworld, our brilliant blue ocean home. They ripped and burned and pillaged. They murdered and savaged. We had gathered our infirm, our innocent, our old and non-militants on our planet. And they did the unforgivable. Billions dead. Fire and radiation made our system, our home uninhabitable.

And we snapped.

Every human fought no holds back.

Every human down to the last man fought.

They surrendered. We did not accept their surrender. We did not take slaves, as animals or savages. We did not want worlds or materials.

We wanted our families back.

We wanted our world back.

We wanted our revenge.

And since time stops nor reverses for no-one, we would make the maggots feel our fury and our pain. Our ships and our banners united for one cause. We were a dozen nations, and we all lost everyone and everything. We were the vengeance of the fallen, the monsters in the night and we destroyed everything until the alliance begged us to stop, on bended knee and with broken sword. They were no more.

The alliance now recognises that we are no simple backwater nation of divided fools. The alliance now recognises that we are a proud people. That we can bear much, but we have our breaking point, and if push comes to shove, and hammer to fall, we will fight with the fury of all the dieing stars and the voids and the gods. We alone stand were no others will go. And the cosmos knows it. We made sure of that at least.