The beginning of the Great World War was officially announced at the end of the broadcast. The war had only started, and already, my uncle and three cousins were dead. There was no time to grieve our losses before my father had us pack our bags to the brim of what could be carried, and we evacuated the area. We weren’t allowed to bury our loved ones. We barely even got to say goodbye.
Our already hard lives were about to get a lot harder.
Flashes of my dead cousins and uncle covered in blood entered my mind, and then images of my sickly pale and unmoving father and cousin took centre stage. It made me sick to think I broke my promise to Jarek when my father and Zee died in my arms from the Great Illness. I failed them; I failed my entire family, and I always believed that my walking the Earth alone was my punishment from Almighty.
I closed my eyes, forcing the images of the war from my mind. The war had only lasted a few weeks—just until the virus that was uploaded to the collective chips of all augmented people could be rewritten—but within those few weeks, an unholy amount of people had been slaughtered. Within those few weeks, families had been torn apart, and a divide in mankind had been created.
Originals—the nickname for humans without augmentations—were on one side and the augmented were on the other, and to this day, that divide still stood tall, waiting for the other to step out of line.
I focused on my task and thought calming thoughts to bring down my elevated heart rate. I didn’t want to make it easy for any augs who took up work as watchmen. I focused on the shack that could just as easily kill me as any aug. The roof, most of the walls, and parts of the floor were missing from the two-story structure, so I needed to watch my step and look out for animals and people who could sneak up on me and attack.
With an arrow in one hand and my trusty self-made wooden bow in the other, I crouched down and moved towards an open space in the wall and looked through it. Bright white spotlights lit up the WBO; it gave away many of the positions of the patrolling watchmen on the forty-foot wall of the building. I curled my lip in disgust at the sight of them.
Watchmen were worse than any mindless man, woman, or rabid animal. They were the humans with great power and could decide your fate with the snap of their fingers. There used to be a thing called the ‘court of law’ where those accused of crimes could go and fight their accusations for their freedom, but not anymore. If a watchman decided you were guilty of something, then you were guilty. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. They were supposed to be protectors of the innocents and a beacon for a new law and order, but many of them were monsters in uniform. To me and many others, they were the root of all evil.
I’d take my chances with a pack of feral mutts before I’d ever trust a watchman.
My head was low as I scanned the perimeter. I glanced at my surroundings every few seconds to keep an eye on things before I’d return my attention to the WBO. My eyes searched the dark night sky for drones in the air, and when I saw none of the flashing red lights, I breathed a sigh of relief.
Drones were a nightmare to deal with, in general, but at night-time, they were always going to cause the death of someone. They scanned everywhere for the heat signature of a living being. It gave up people’s positions to the watchmen even if they were hiding in the most unlikely of places. A traveller I met hours before told me that the power link for the drones and all operating weapons of the WBO had been shut off when the Maji arrived. No one knew why, and if someone did know, they weren’t letting the information slip.
Normally, I wouldn’t care. Normally, I wouldn’t break away from the rules that have kept me alive all these years, but I had a gut feeling I had to come to the WBO and see for myself what was happening. So far, my gamble was turning out to be a complete waste of time … until something happened. I startled when a patch of dark a thousand or so metres to the left of the WBO compound lit up suddenly. I sucked in a choked breath. Half a dozen small spacecrafts came to life and lifted from the Earth’s surface, ascending to the starlit heavens, but that’s not what amazed me.
The mother of all spacecrafts was sitting in the newly lit up area, and it was huge. I had never seen an alien spacecraft like this one up close before. When I was younger, I saw a few of them from a great distance as they descended from space and docked at one of the many trading posts stationed across the planet. This spacecraft, however, was the largest I had ever seen. I could not believe the sheer size of it, and when white lights began to flash across the hull, I found myself staring at it, my mouth agape with awe.
I was, by no means, an expert in vessels not of this world, but I had listened to my father discuss them from the moment I could understand him until the moment he died. Growing up, manmade craft engine halls were like a second home to me. I knew the ins and outs of your typical spacecraft and its engines. I wholeheartedly knew the functions of a destroyer vessel and what made up the interior and exterior of one, and this craft was most certainly a destroyer.
Being an engineer had been my father’s trade since he was twenty. After years of hard work, he had been promoted to chief engineer for many different crafts from the Earth’s military fleet when they were docked. He was so good at what he did; he even assisted the aliens with their mechanical problems when they docked at one of the trading posts. Because of my father, I understood spacecrafts, and I appreciated them, which was why this very one blew me away.
It was easily five thousand metres long, and from what I could see, the only colour anywhere on it was the blue glow of the reactor core—the heart of the spacecraft. That very reactor powered twenty-two massive drive assemblies that would propel the ship at what must be an unmatched speed. Sixteen dorsal turrets mounted particle projection cannons in pairs, lending what I knew would be excellent firepower. Fourteen monster plasma blasters were on either side of the nose of the craft and a heavier alpha plasma down its centreline most certainly permitted the ship to deliver blistering damage to anything unlucky enough to be caught within firing distance … and those were just the weapons I could see.
If only you could see this, Pa.
Again, my eyes watered, but I rubbed them until the stinging threat of tears subsided. Apart from being in love with the crafts, my father was a space fanatic or ‘space freak’, as I liked to tease him in my younger years. He loved the other species and was fascinated with them. Their differences, their similarities, their history, their culture—everything. He loved it all. He was part of a small fraction of people who believed the other species had a right to exist just as we did.
He always said, “No planet or race lays claim to the universe; it lays claim to us.”
My father was a wise man, and if he were with me, experiencing a spacecraft of this magnitude up close and personal, he’d be beside himself with happiness. The emotion I felt at that moment distracted me, and that distraction was about to cost me dearly.
When I heard softly creaked movements close by, I jerked away from the crack in the wall, reached back, withdrew an arrow from my quiver, and readied my bow. I heard a gruff curse then the sound of heavy footsteps began to pound up the stairs of the building I was in. It caused my heart to slam into my ribs with stomach churning fear.
Watchmen.
“Civilian female at HQ,” a muffled voice said. “No signs of any augmentations on the scanner, but she is armed and is considered dangerous. Alert the Maji of a possible attack.”