Categories > Original > Sci-Fi
Broken Glass
0 reviewsThe Trithinite sister’s eyes hunted back and forth between the wounded man and Captain Norr. Her fingernails dug crescents into her palms, and finally frustration defeated reserve. The sister’s...
0Unrated
Prologue
The crown of the ridge had been a holy place for a thousand years and more. First there had been wild, dark, heaving rituals. Savage dancers in furs and skins waved spears around a shaman drenched in the blood of animals and men. In the center of a ring of fire, every voice called out to gods without names to save them from beasts in the night and cold from the north. Then the gods grew older. The dancers put down their spears to till the soil. They began to want names for that which was unnamable. They christened God with ten thousand titles. Every river, mountain, and storm had its own, and was divine. As the lives of men passed on, so did the names of God, until only the sacred and fearful legend of Ikozi was left.
And then the Trithinites came, with their books and their figurines and their small, knowing smiles. There was blood, and there was flame, and this time when the people laid down their spears the name of God was Sa. Sa, the missionaries taught, hungered not for blood and fire. Sa wanted buildings of stone and glass, and gifts of gold to build ever more of them. The people, eager to please their new master, built great gray walls for Him where once dancers had twirled and the gods had no names.
The church they built stood quiet, and after a time became a mute old friend to the village that had grown up around it. Mosses spread thick and blue over its foundations. Vines twined up and framed every arching entrance. Windows of colored glass shone warm and bright and clear in the bitter Atelian night, and every traveler took comfort in their light when the sun dipped below the mountain.
It was during such dusk that the trees started to fall. A farmer looked up from his gate and saw the earth of his field trembling, the forest beyond shaking loose its leaves. A younger man might have fled, but the farmer had tended seventy-one seasons of crops on this field and all his days of running were gone. When he saw steaming iron beasts burst through the thick boughs of centuries-old trees, his heart failed him. His red and wrinkled fingers grew loose on the gatepost. The beasts chewed across the field, drawing ever nearer, reducing his seventy-first crop to broken stalks and muddy ruin. A younger man might have called to Sa, but the farmer was old. When darkness took him, the god he called to had no name.
The groans of the dying echoed in the village, the fires of battle still burned, but both were low and would soon be extinguished. Massive, squat Rahmosian tanks blocked the road before the village church, mobile buildings facing off against a stationary one. Uniformed men with smoking rifles stood in a circle surrounding a small, battered group of weary prisoners. One bandaged Trithinite sister limped among the most seriously wounded, tending them as best she could without supplies and under heavy guard. The wall of guns parted for a Rahmosi officer, captain’s stripes on his arm, and he stepped inside the circle. The captain stood watching the prisoners with a mixture of amusement and contempt, and addressed the junior officer in command of the guard detail.
‘Is that all of them, then?’
‘Yes sir, Captain Norr. They were hiding in the Trithinite church just there.’
‘How appropriate. Where are the rest of them?’
‘The rest, sir?’
‘You mean to tell me this sad little gang is the entire regional Atel resistance?’ Captain Norr’s mouth twisted up at the corners, a distant cousin to a smile. ‘Nonsense.’
‘Yes sir. We’ve cordoned the perimeter and gathered all the villagers into the market square. Shall I start a second sweep?’
‘That won’t be necessary. We’d be at it all night. Our source within the Atel suggested a large force, well-trained and reasonably equipped. This rabble couldn’t even run away correctly. A discrepancy exists, but not to worry. We have all these war criminals here, eager to redeem themselves. Or at least…’ Captain Norr turned to face one of the captives. The man wore a grimy bandage over his eye, and blood seeped out below it like tears. ‘…they will be shortly.’
The bleeding captive sneered at Captain Norr, and spat on the ground. ‘You underestimate the resolve and fighting spirit of the Atel. We will not weaken!’
A prisoner with blue and yellow bruises swelling from under his silver beard spoke, his voice resigned. ‘Shut up, Walter. They’ve got us. You’re only making it worse.’
A sudden, brief snort of laughter burst from Captain Norr. ‘You really are new at this, aren’t you? Things couldn’t possibly get any worse for you than they are right now. In the eyes of your government and of mine, you’re not even prisoners of war. You’re common criminals, and the only due process you get is what I decide to give you. You, my friends, are well and truly out of luck. Unless, that is, one of you has a rare fit of good sense and tells me what I want to know. For a cooperative soul like that, I may be able to muster some sympathy.’
His eye roved through the mass of prisoners shivering in the rain, some standing, most sitting in the cold, sticky mud. Captain Norr settled his gaze on the Trithinite sister. She tore strips of cloth from the rags of the dead and moved from prisoner to prisoner, binding the wounds she could and wiping the mud away from those she couldn’t. Captain Norr took her arm when she came near him, pulled her back. ‘What about you, sister? Want to spare your friends a bit of death and dismemberment?’
‘Of course. But talking to you won’t spare anyone. Please, let me go. These men are hurt and there is only me to help them.’
‘Then you can help them best by keeping our conversation brief.’ Behind Captain Norr, the bandaged man with blood like tears staggered. The bearded prisoner caught him. He was weak and could only control his friend’s fall, going to the ground with him.
‘Look at that. They’re falling to pieces without you. Better hurry, sister…where are the rest of the Atel?’
The Trithinite sister’s eyes hunted back and forth between the wounded man and Captain Norr. Her fingernails dug crescents into her palms, and finally frustration defeated reserve. The sister’s voice was a husky shout, too ragged and exhausted to scream. ‘I don’t know anything more! You’ve captured all of us! You’ve won, can’t you see that? Please, don’t hurt this village any more than you already have!’
The hard line of Captain Norr’s mouth softened, and he again twisted his lips into his peculiar not-smile. He released the Trithinte’s arm, shaking his head, and his voice was like one chastising a naughty child. ‘It seems, sister, that you do not trust me. But that’s silly! We have so much in common with each other. You’re all men…excuse me, you’re all people of honor, willing to fight for a cause you believe in. So are my men. And I personally have much in common with you, sister. You see, I’m here on a mission of conversion as well.’ Captain Norr looked beyond the sister’s shoulder to the mammoth tank blocking the narrow street, and bawled out an order. ‘Gunner! Convert that church!’
Without a word, the gunner dropped into his machine. The thick metal hatch shut behind him with a hollow clang. A cloud of smoke belched from the tank as it rumbled back to life. The massive guns rose, swung round, gears clanking under the weight of enormous artillery. The barrel, big as a man’s thigh, pointed directly at the church doors.
‘No, you can’t…’
The roar of the gun was like a hurricane, a mountain flood, the wrath of God. One moment the church stood atop the ridge as it had for generations, silent, vine-strewn, a cheery glow pouring from the windows. The next it was exploding outward, its bright, warm light a shower of biting points raining down on the captives. Enormous blocks of stone slapped down in the sodden road around them and shot up tall plumes of wet black mud.
The Trithinite sister’s mouth opened and closed, but she could find no words. Her eyes were huge and blank, and the flames in the ruined church were reflected in them. Captain Norr shoved her roughly back towards the prisoners. ‘Go on. Tend the sick. Raise the dead, for all I care. And when I see you again, have an answer for me. Or the rest of this village goes the way of your church.’
Captain Norr let her stagger away. He placed a boot on one of the large blocks of fallen stone and leaned forward, chin in hand. Watching prisoners die helped him think, yet nothing horrible enough to make the Atel give up their secrets occurred to him. They’d talk eventually, of that he was sure, but Captain Norr wanted to take action right now. ‘Perhaps if we start shooting the children…’ he muttered to himself. His junior officer was watching him. It wrecked his concentration.
‘Problem, lieutenant?’
The lieutenant’s salute was clumsy, his voice hesitant. His young man’s face was not yet skilled enough at disguising his emotions to hide his unease. ‘If I could speak freely, sir…I don’t mean to question you in front of the prisoners, sir, but…’
‘Not at all, not at all. I welcome a free-flowing exchange of ideas from my men. That’s what Rahmos is all about, son. Freedom.’ Captain Norr picked a small bit of broken stone from the block under his boot, sent it spinning out into the mud. It bounced perfectly off the nose of the unconscious man with the bandage over his eye, and landed somewhere behind him.
The junior officer took a deep breath, and spoke. He picked his words carefully, as though any of them might explode in his mouth and send him reeling headless into the muddy road. ‘Thank you, sir. It just all seems a bit…I mean, we’re supposed to be winning these people over, aren’t we? It seems like all we’re doing is scaring them. Are we…is this the right thing?’
Captain Norr nodded, and took off his gray hat. He turned it in his hands, looked it over. Raindrops beaded on the resistant surface of the fabric, gleamed like pearls in the light of the burning church. ‘That’s a question with more than one answer, son. I’ll give you both and you can integrate them as you like.’ Captain Norr gave his hat a brisk shake and put it back on his head. ‘Officially we are here to free the good people of Atelia from tyranny, religious oppression, and ignorance. You, I, and all of Rahmos want to see a stronger, unified Atelia come from our presence here. Peace in Atelia means a safer world for Rahmos, and our families.’
He paused to scrape a bit of ooze from his gleaming black boot. It plopped back into the mire and settled there.
‘Unofficially, Atelia is a cesspool and Atelians are the bits bobbing in it. That’s not a problem for us, but this particular cesspool has valuable resources underneath. That wouldn’t be a problem, either, if the bits would bob to one side so we could reach under. They won’t, and that is the problem. Atelians live on top of wealth that they’re too backwards to know what to do with, and too stubborn to hand over to Rahmos.’ Captain Norr paused to let his words sink in, watched the lieutenant’s reaction to them.
‘In other words, they don’t matter. They’re just things that are in the way. That’s the extent of it. If I could make them all disappear by shooting this captive in the face…’ He tapped the barrel of his pistol against the forehead of the man with blood like tears. ‘I’d…well, I’d shoot him in the face.’ He grinned, ruffled the unconscious man’s hair. ‘I may do that anyway.’
‘But enough philosophy. We have work to do.’ Captain Norr holstered his gun and stood, stretching his arms and rolling his shoulders inside his sleek gray uniform. ‘Go back to the market square and make an announcement. Tell the villagers to remain calm. Tell them we’re sweeping their homes for poisons and explosives the Atel have planted, and that they will soon be safe.’
‘Yes sir.’
Captain Norr walked backwards into the small sea of mud and bodies and wounded Atel as he finished giving his orders to the lieutenant. ‘I’m off to get some answers from a particularly difficult Trithinite. So no matter what you do, keep the villagers in the square.’
He turned around to step over a twitching, moaning Atel fighter and swifly walked away, his last sentence echoing in the lieutenant’s ears.
‘We may have to shoot most of them before the night’s over.’
The crown of the ridge had been a holy place for a thousand years and more. First there had been wild, dark, heaving rituals. Savage dancers in furs and skins waved spears around a shaman drenched in the blood of animals and men. In the center of a ring of fire, every voice called out to gods without names to save them from beasts in the night and cold from the north. Then the gods grew older. The dancers put down their spears to till the soil. They began to want names for that which was unnamable. They christened God with ten thousand titles. Every river, mountain, and storm had its own, and was divine. As the lives of men passed on, so did the names of God, until only the sacred and fearful legend of Ikozi was left.
And then the Trithinites came, with their books and their figurines and their small, knowing smiles. There was blood, and there was flame, and this time when the people laid down their spears the name of God was Sa. Sa, the missionaries taught, hungered not for blood and fire. Sa wanted buildings of stone and glass, and gifts of gold to build ever more of them. The people, eager to please their new master, built great gray walls for Him where once dancers had twirled and the gods had no names.
The church they built stood quiet, and after a time became a mute old friend to the village that had grown up around it. Mosses spread thick and blue over its foundations. Vines twined up and framed every arching entrance. Windows of colored glass shone warm and bright and clear in the bitter Atelian night, and every traveler took comfort in their light when the sun dipped below the mountain.
It was during such dusk that the trees started to fall. A farmer looked up from his gate and saw the earth of his field trembling, the forest beyond shaking loose its leaves. A younger man might have fled, but the farmer had tended seventy-one seasons of crops on this field and all his days of running were gone. When he saw steaming iron beasts burst through the thick boughs of centuries-old trees, his heart failed him. His red and wrinkled fingers grew loose on the gatepost. The beasts chewed across the field, drawing ever nearer, reducing his seventy-first crop to broken stalks and muddy ruin. A younger man might have called to Sa, but the farmer was old. When darkness took him, the god he called to had no name.
The groans of the dying echoed in the village, the fires of battle still burned, but both were low and would soon be extinguished. Massive, squat Rahmosian tanks blocked the road before the village church, mobile buildings facing off against a stationary one. Uniformed men with smoking rifles stood in a circle surrounding a small, battered group of weary prisoners. One bandaged Trithinite sister limped among the most seriously wounded, tending them as best she could without supplies and under heavy guard. The wall of guns parted for a Rahmosi officer, captain’s stripes on his arm, and he stepped inside the circle. The captain stood watching the prisoners with a mixture of amusement and contempt, and addressed the junior officer in command of the guard detail.
‘Is that all of them, then?’
‘Yes sir, Captain Norr. They were hiding in the Trithinite church just there.’
‘How appropriate. Where are the rest of them?’
‘The rest, sir?’
‘You mean to tell me this sad little gang is the entire regional Atel resistance?’ Captain Norr’s mouth twisted up at the corners, a distant cousin to a smile. ‘Nonsense.’
‘Yes sir. We’ve cordoned the perimeter and gathered all the villagers into the market square. Shall I start a second sweep?’
‘That won’t be necessary. We’d be at it all night. Our source within the Atel suggested a large force, well-trained and reasonably equipped. This rabble couldn’t even run away correctly. A discrepancy exists, but not to worry. We have all these war criminals here, eager to redeem themselves. Or at least…’ Captain Norr turned to face one of the captives. The man wore a grimy bandage over his eye, and blood seeped out below it like tears. ‘…they will be shortly.’
The bleeding captive sneered at Captain Norr, and spat on the ground. ‘You underestimate the resolve and fighting spirit of the Atel. We will not weaken!’
A prisoner with blue and yellow bruises swelling from under his silver beard spoke, his voice resigned. ‘Shut up, Walter. They’ve got us. You’re only making it worse.’
A sudden, brief snort of laughter burst from Captain Norr. ‘You really are new at this, aren’t you? Things couldn’t possibly get any worse for you than they are right now. In the eyes of your government and of mine, you’re not even prisoners of war. You’re common criminals, and the only due process you get is what I decide to give you. You, my friends, are well and truly out of luck. Unless, that is, one of you has a rare fit of good sense and tells me what I want to know. For a cooperative soul like that, I may be able to muster some sympathy.’
His eye roved through the mass of prisoners shivering in the rain, some standing, most sitting in the cold, sticky mud. Captain Norr settled his gaze on the Trithinite sister. She tore strips of cloth from the rags of the dead and moved from prisoner to prisoner, binding the wounds she could and wiping the mud away from those she couldn’t. Captain Norr took her arm when she came near him, pulled her back. ‘What about you, sister? Want to spare your friends a bit of death and dismemberment?’
‘Of course. But talking to you won’t spare anyone. Please, let me go. These men are hurt and there is only me to help them.’
‘Then you can help them best by keeping our conversation brief.’ Behind Captain Norr, the bandaged man with blood like tears staggered. The bearded prisoner caught him. He was weak and could only control his friend’s fall, going to the ground with him.
‘Look at that. They’re falling to pieces without you. Better hurry, sister…where are the rest of the Atel?’
The Trithinite sister’s eyes hunted back and forth between the wounded man and Captain Norr. Her fingernails dug crescents into her palms, and finally frustration defeated reserve. The sister’s voice was a husky shout, too ragged and exhausted to scream. ‘I don’t know anything more! You’ve captured all of us! You’ve won, can’t you see that? Please, don’t hurt this village any more than you already have!’
The hard line of Captain Norr’s mouth softened, and he again twisted his lips into his peculiar not-smile. He released the Trithinte’s arm, shaking his head, and his voice was like one chastising a naughty child. ‘It seems, sister, that you do not trust me. But that’s silly! We have so much in common with each other. You’re all men…excuse me, you’re all people of honor, willing to fight for a cause you believe in. So are my men. And I personally have much in common with you, sister. You see, I’m here on a mission of conversion as well.’ Captain Norr looked beyond the sister’s shoulder to the mammoth tank blocking the narrow street, and bawled out an order. ‘Gunner! Convert that church!’
Without a word, the gunner dropped into his machine. The thick metal hatch shut behind him with a hollow clang. A cloud of smoke belched from the tank as it rumbled back to life. The massive guns rose, swung round, gears clanking under the weight of enormous artillery. The barrel, big as a man’s thigh, pointed directly at the church doors.
‘No, you can’t…’
The roar of the gun was like a hurricane, a mountain flood, the wrath of God. One moment the church stood atop the ridge as it had for generations, silent, vine-strewn, a cheery glow pouring from the windows. The next it was exploding outward, its bright, warm light a shower of biting points raining down on the captives. Enormous blocks of stone slapped down in the sodden road around them and shot up tall plumes of wet black mud.
The Trithinite sister’s mouth opened and closed, but she could find no words. Her eyes were huge and blank, and the flames in the ruined church were reflected in them. Captain Norr shoved her roughly back towards the prisoners. ‘Go on. Tend the sick. Raise the dead, for all I care. And when I see you again, have an answer for me. Or the rest of this village goes the way of your church.’
Captain Norr let her stagger away. He placed a boot on one of the large blocks of fallen stone and leaned forward, chin in hand. Watching prisoners die helped him think, yet nothing horrible enough to make the Atel give up their secrets occurred to him. They’d talk eventually, of that he was sure, but Captain Norr wanted to take action right now. ‘Perhaps if we start shooting the children…’ he muttered to himself. His junior officer was watching him. It wrecked his concentration.
‘Problem, lieutenant?’
The lieutenant’s salute was clumsy, his voice hesitant. His young man’s face was not yet skilled enough at disguising his emotions to hide his unease. ‘If I could speak freely, sir…I don’t mean to question you in front of the prisoners, sir, but…’
‘Not at all, not at all. I welcome a free-flowing exchange of ideas from my men. That’s what Rahmos is all about, son. Freedom.’ Captain Norr picked a small bit of broken stone from the block under his boot, sent it spinning out into the mud. It bounced perfectly off the nose of the unconscious man with the bandage over his eye, and landed somewhere behind him.
The junior officer took a deep breath, and spoke. He picked his words carefully, as though any of them might explode in his mouth and send him reeling headless into the muddy road. ‘Thank you, sir. It just all seems a bit…I mean, we’re supposed to be winning these people over, aren’t we? It seems like all we’re doing is scaring them. Are we…is this the right thing?’
Captain Norr nodded, and took off his gray hat. He turned it in his hands, looked it over. Raindrops beaded on the resistant surface of the fabric, gleamed like pearls in the light of the burning church. ‘That’s a question with more than one answer, son. I’ll give you both and you can integrate them as you like.’ Captain Norr gave his hat a brisk shake and put it back on his head. ‘Officially we are here to free the good people of Atelia from tyranny, religious oppression, and ignorance. You, I, and all of Rahmos want to see a stronger, unified Atelia come from our presence here. Peace in Atelia means a safer world for Rahmos, and our families.’
He paused to scrape a bit of ooze from his gleaming black boot. It plopped back into the mire and settled there.
‘Unofficially, Atelia is a cesspool and Atelians are the bits bobbing in it. That’s not a problem for us, but this particular cesspool has valuable resources underneath. That wouldn’t be a problem, either, if the bits would bob to one side so we could reach under. They won’t, and that is the problem. Atelians live on top of wealth that they’re too backwards to know what to do with, and too stubborn to hand over to Rahmos.’ Captain Norr paused to let his words sink in, watched the lieutenant’s reaction to them.
‘In other words, they don’t matter. They’re just things that are in the way. That’s the extent of it. If I could make them all disappear by shooting this captive in the face…’ He tapped the barrel of his pistol against the forehead of the man with blood like tears. ‘I’d…well, I’d shoot him in the face.’ He grinned, ruffled the unconscious man’s hair. ‘I may do that anyway.’
‘But enough philosophy. We have work to do.’ Captain Norr holstered his gun and stood, stretching his arms and rolling his shoulders inside his sleek gray uniform. ‘Go back to the market square and make an announcement. Tell the villagers to remain calm. Tell them we’re sweeping their homes for poisons and explosives the Atel have planted, and that they will soon be safe.’
‘Yes sir.’
Captain Norr walked backwards into the small sea of mud and bodies and wounded Atel as he finished giving his orders to the lieutenant. ‘I’m off to get some answers from a particularly difficult Trithinite. So no matter what you do, keep the villagers in the square.’
He turned around to step over a twitching, moaning Atel fighter and swifly walked away, his last sentence echoing in the lieutenant’s ears.
‘We may have to shoot most of them before the night’s over.’
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