Chapter Eighty-One (Leebaw) (1/2)

Leebaw had been severely wounded. First came the Overseers, the Lanaktallans, who had destroyed the Leebawians spaceport that they were so proud of, then destroyed their cultural sites, then had relegated the small land dwelling amphibians to the status of worker drones for the Ukewa's Packguru Manufacturing Industrial Concern (A subsidiary of Nu'ukluk Entertainment Conglomerate) as was 'right and proper' as the Overseers had extracted the resources of the planet. The Leewbawians had been reduced to living in small 'reserves' when they weren't working for the Overseers. Their lives devolved to misery and sadness, their dreams of founding or joining an interstellar organization crushed and obliterated.

They had just wanted to make friends.

Then came the machines. Coldly cruel, they destroyed the Overseers and their factories. The Leebawians had gone out to greet these newcomers, hoping that their obvious hatred of the Overseers meant that perhaps they would be friends to the Leebawians.

Instead, the little googly eyed, whiskered amphibians had been slaughtered with the mechanical glee as the Overseers.

The Leebawians had retreated to their little mud burrows, hiding in the swamps and deltas. The machines had largely ignored them, concentrating on the Overseers.

The Leebawians had learned, though. The stars in the sky weren't full of possible friends.

They were burning pinpricks of malice.

Then came another race. This one arrived with furious violence. Slamming to the ground to disgorge bipeds who roared in rage and killed the machines, smashed them to junk, bashed them to pieces. They avoided the Leebawians, who huddled in their burrows and just wished that the newcomers would kill everyone else and then leave.

Here and there, a Leebawians discovered that the newest ones were rescuing the Leebawians when they could.

The newcomers handed out weapons to those willing to raise a webbed hand that they were willing to fight.

The newcomers taught something called jawnconnor to the Leebawians.

How to raise their fists into the air. How to hold a weapon in their webbed hands. How to scream their rage against the night. How to charge the wire.

How to smash. those. metal. mother. fuckers. into. junk.

Even the youngest Leebawian was taught to pick up a rock and smash.

It took three whole seasons, but eventually the last circuit was smashed and the Leebawians stood beneath their bluish-white sun and realized that they would no longer allow others to take what was theirs.

The newcomers, the Tear-ands, agreed. They taught the Leebawians to fight, something that they had tried to leave behind when they had reached for the stars to make new friends. The Tear-ands had warned them that the universe was a cruel place that would take from the Leebawians just because it could.

They had helped the Leebawians set the charges and blow up the coal fueled power plant, then helped them rebuild their starport. It wasn't as large and impressive as the Overseers had been, but it had been theirs.

The Tear-ands had agreed to only land at the new spaceport if the Leebawians gave permission. They had promised to protect the high orbitals while the Leebawians relearned space flight and could protect their planet themselves. The Tear-ands had found what technology the Leebawians had possessed before the Overseers had arrived and, without asking for anything, handed it back.

Leebawian podlings sat in comfortable little bowls as they were taught more than just how to work a machine. Adult Leebawians kept expecting the other boot to drop, to press against their necks or faces, just like the other times.

The other boot was a pair of them. Handed to any Leebawian willing to put them on and learn how to march, how to move, how to fight. The Leebawians needed to resurrect a thing long ago set aside, a thing that the Leebawians had decided was a dangerous thing.

The Leebawians needed a military. Needed to be taught and to teach the jawnconnor time to each other.

How to smash someone into junk.

Some of the Leebawians felt despair.

This wasn't how it was supposed to be.

Was it?

The Tear-ands met with those who were willing, who were brave enough. They looked like hairless lemurs of the southern continent made large.

The despairing ones voiced their sadness with croaks and clicks.

The Tear-ands agreed.

It wasn't supposed to be like that.

The stars were supposed to be full of friends you just had not met yet. The sky was supposed to be full of wonders, of sights that took ones breath away, of amazing things that were almost too incredible to be taken in by mere mortal eyes.

They too lamented that the only way you could meet friends was to have big enough and as many enough of guns to make those who did not want to be friends to go away.

Or be smashed.

Talks went on. The older and wiser of the Leebawians meeting with the Tear-ands, discussing how they would proceed together.

The Cult of the Solitary Burrow agreed with the Tear-ands.

The only way to have peace was to be willing to kill for it. Peace and security and the burrow were the most important things and because they were important the creatures like the Overseers would take them unless you smashed them into junk.

The Tear-ands talked of many things that were strange, frightening, but also exhilarating. Of equality under the law. Of personal responsibility. The right to croak your dissatisfaction without reprisal by rulers. Of choosing your own rulers and creating your own laws. Of defending yourself and those of your community from the intent of violence of others.

But also things that were terrifying. Of bringing back armies. Of arming space vessels. Of how the Overseers were still out there, that the machines were still out there.

The Leebawians met and discussed things.

They had been pushed down, pushed to the brink, almost wiped out. Had been made to feel as if they were less than nothing and were so inferior that they deserved to be wiped out to make room for their betters.

Almost as one they agreed.

Never. Again.

The Overseers came back one day. They had ignored the little spaceport that the Leebawians loved so much and landed near the ruins of their shining city and its ugly spaceport. They had emerged from their ships and went out to find the Leebawians.

The Leebawians decided to give the Overseers one more chance to be friends.

Or they would apply the lessons of jawnconnor.

The Overseers were furious. Why had the Leebawians not rebuilt the city? Why had they rebuilt their primitive spaceport without permission? Why had they allowed the Tear-ands to remain. The Overseers attempted to remind the Leebawians that the planet did not belong to the small amphibians, but rather the Overseers and had belonged to them since before the Leewbawians had invented the printing press.