Book One of the Hero Series: Death To Tyrants, The Birth of Liberty.

Chapter One

Chapter One

Planet Zeus

Year: 2154

The sun was just beginning its daily ascension into the early dawn light of the eastern sky, melding together different hues of red and orange to turn the once blank canvas into a work of breathtaking beauty. The sea was calm at the moment, churning gentle waves of deep blues onto the sandy shore of the beach, the salty tinge of it so crisp in the air that you could all but taste it. Save for the few fleeting high pitched sounds of an occasional seagull, the rustling of the leaves or braches of tress brushing up against one another whenever the wind gave a quiet howl, and his own steady hushed breathing it was muted. Although he would imagine that a great many of people would find such silence unnerving, for which he could not truly blame them, he personally found it to be rather peaceful, comforting even. It was heartening to know that even in these troubled times there still endured places such as this, secluded little areas where anybody go escape to for a short period of time and allow themselves to relax, or reflect. A place of haven, a retreat, a sliver of heaven that anybody could appreciate, now more than ever in this day and age........considering the fact that they were all living in hell.

Not in a literal sense of course, their days weren't spent rotting away in an endless abyss of searing hot crimson flames, nor chained to great massive slabs of stones. Although, truthfully, part of him favored that scenario. Actually he would favor any varied scenario over the current situation, even if it was a formation of maniacal criminals going on a sudden bloody rampage with firearms killing anybody that first came into their line of sight. At least in that scenario death would be quick and relatively painless, factoring out the odd people here and there that would bleed to death due to the wound being nonfatal, at least that way people wouldn't have to sit in their homes and starve to death or die of thirst knowing that they could do nothing to stop it. At least that way people wouldn't be murdering one another over a single drop of water on the pavement, over the last crumb of stale bread somehow overlooked in the corner of a pantry, or even resort to such desperate measures of taking their own lives as a means to escape.

At thoughts such as these, a deep sigh of world weariness left Isaac Smyth's lips, and glancing around at the scenery before him, he couldn't help but allow his mind to wander back towards memories of when times such as this, sitting on the soft white sand of a beach and relaxing were everyday occurrences, not something rare to be treated as if it came only once every hundred years.

Because of course Zeus hadn't always been the way it was now.............

Zeus had started off as a small colony planet owned by one of the few remaining countries on Earth. It had been established due to the vast resources of nitroLTHII, an element with similar characteristics of uranium, minus the nuclear waste by product, which had become the energy alternative when oil/coal/petroleum/natural gas etc. reserves had run dry. The first years on the planet had been rather uneventful, besides the occasional mine cave in every now and again. The only truly important date of the early years was May 2, 2120, because that happened to be when the Power Plant 35 Meltdown occurred. For days noxious hazy clouds of nitroLTHII passed through the atmosphere, but by some sort of miracle only a few hundred were killed by it the rest of the population had somehow managed to come through the ordeal with no adverse side effects. Or so it was thought at the time. It would be several months before the true side effects would be seen; it would be several months before the first mutations began to appear. They certainly hadn't appeared subtly either, unless somebody abruptly floating ten feet off the ground was subtle. Soon enough as more and more mutations began to show themselves Zeus was declared independent by whatever country had owned it due to its reluctance to associate itself with a "planet full of sideshow freaks". When that had happened the planet came under the leadership of a monarchy, the Alexanders family, and then shortly after that people who didn't agree with the Alexanders stance of not using the mutations to cause harm turned the planet into two warring factions in a classic battle of "good versus evil". Very much like those comic book oddities that children used to enjoy reading back around a hundred and some odd years ago.