Chapter 296.5 (1/2)
The park was full of the laughter and squeals of playing children. Podlings playing with hatchlings playing with nestlings playing with Terran children. The slide had an orderly line watched over by two broodcarriers who were talking softly to the children and one another. The swings were full, some of them with children old enough to swing themselves, the other swings, the bucket swings, being gently pushed by adults of all races. The jungle gym was full of playing children, all of whom were laughing and squealing. A few dozen children were involved in different games with soft balls that involved a lot of running, kicking, throwing, and physical effort.
Brentili'ik sat on the bench, ignoring the fact that she had two large Terran warborgs behind her, watching her broodcarriers and podlings run around and have fun on the sunny day.
She couldn't even see the scars from the two back to back wars her people and the Terran military forces had fought to secure her world for those very children that were playing happily in the warm sunshine.
Brentili'ik's husband, Vuxten, had fought right in this spot, standing on top of a destroyed tank, rallying the Telkan Marines when the massive Dwellerspawn creatures had lunged out of the now vanished jungle.
She still had a hard time believing that it had all taken place. That the elves, like the one sitting in the shade of a tree reading an ornate heavy tome's contents to wide eyed children who hung on every word of the story, had fixed the air, earth, and water.
”Penny for your thoughts,” the human next to her, Colonel Harvey, asked softly.
”Just marvelling at the fact it's less than two years and you can't even tell the fighting happened right here,” Brentili'ik admitted.
”Ah,” the human said. He lifted up a cold drink and sipped at it through the straw. ”I suspected as much.”
”Am I really so predictable?” Brentili'ik asked.
The human shook his head slightly, still sipping at his drink. He swallowed and set the drink down on the ground. ”This is not the first planet I have been to that needed an Elven Court to repair.”
Brentili'ik sighed. ”The universe is cruel.”
Colonel Harvey nodded. ”And will laugh as it takes from you everything that you love.”
”Are you worried about the last messages we got from the Confederacy?” Brentili'ik asked.
Colonel Harvey shook his head. ”Better races than the Lanaktallan have tried to take out Sol.”
”Like the Dwellerspawn tried with us?” Brentili'ik said.
Colonel Harvey nodded. ”It's ancient history, but the Elven Court's origins lie in an attack much like the Dwellerspawn upon Terra itself, before we had more than a handful of colonies.”
”Really?” Brentili'ik turned to look at him better. ”Tell me.”
Colonel Harvey took another sip off his drink and set it down. ”It was before the diaspora. Nobody is sure how long ago, but a eco-terrorist group attacked the entire planet with a genophage that turned all of nature against us. Plants, animals, all of it immediately went straight at humanity and our works. Within a year the Extinction Agenda Attack had claimed over eighty percent of humanity and over seventy percent of the habitable land was uninhabitable.”
Brentili'ik looked at the shrubs around the play area and shuddered. ”How did you beat it?”
Colonel Harvey laughed, a bitter sound. ”After almost two hundred years the Mantid attacked Terra and glassed the place. That solved that problem.”
Brentili'ik merely stared for a moment, her mind boggling at the way Colonel Harvey was grinning, like he'd just heard an amazing joke. Then he made a 'snerk' sound, then began to laugh. The two warborgs made grinding noises of amusement.
”What is so funny? Billions of your people were killed in the attack,” Brentili'ik said.
”Yeah, but it did for those plants,” Colonel Harvey laughed. He wiped his eye. ”When it was over, we took the research and advancements we'd made to take on the Extinction Agenda Attack life forms and applied them in a new direction to undo the Glassing and the remnants of the Wildlife.”
Brentili'ik shook her head. ”You humans are weird.”
Colonel Harvey nodded. ”Yeah, we are.”
Brentili'ik saw a podling fall down, skinning their knee. The broodcarriers rushed over and comforted it as it wailed and held its knee. A Terran child knelt down and hugged the podling carefully, patting the podling's head in sympathy. Once the broodcarriers had comforted the podling it toddled off, holding the human toddler's hand.
”What do you think will happen in TerraSol?” Brentili'ik asked, watching her own podlings slide down the slide.
”The Lanaktallan will be hammered until they surrender or are completely destroyed. It's called 'Fortress Sol” and 'Fortress Terra' by the other races for a reason,” Colonel Harvey said. ”It's the sixth time someone has tried to invade, and that doesn't count the four inter-dimensional invasions of Terra itself.”
”I thought other dimension were inhospitable to life,” Brentili'ik said.
”Didn't stop them from invading,” Colonel Harvey shrugged. ”The Emp-Wraiths were the worst. That was a sixteen year war. They had us on the edge twice, but we pushed back.”
Brentili'ik shook her head. ”The way you say that: had us on the edge.”
”What about it?” Colonel Harvey asked.
”Like's it nothing. I've lived through being pushed to the edge twice now. It is not something I would refer to so lightly,” Brentili'ik said. She sighed. ”I would like some context. Define: had us on the edge.”
Colonel Harvey shrugged. ”Well, if we just go with Terra itself, the worst we had was the Xang-Yi Event. The impact itself left barely a hundred million human beings total, no infrastructure, an ice age on top of it, disease, famine, and when it was all over, there was less than a hundred thousand humans left. We bounced back from that pretty quickly, mainly because of the wider Terran Descent Humanity's help. The Bronze Age Collapse was another, probably set us back a few thousand years and about a third of humanity died. World War Three was nasty as hell, cost us about 8% of our habitable land and a quarter of the population.”
Brentili'ik just stared. She had to turn off her implant because it kept trying to offer her data.
”History is just one mass grave on top of another,” Colonel Harvey shrugged. He nodded at the pullup bars. ”Ooh, that's going to scare the broodcarriers.”
Brentili'ik looked over to see a female human child, no more than nine, hanging upside down, her knees folded over the bar that she held tightly to. She was rocking back and forth slightly.
Brentili'ik gasped in horror as the human child suddenly straightened her legs, somersaulting in midair to land on her feet.
”Cherry drop,” Colonel Harvey said softly when Brentili'ik looked over. ”She's displaying her physical prowess to dominate the other girls.”
Brentili'ik looked more closely at the bars. There was a whole cluster of human girl children around the bars. As she watched the one who had flung herself off moved over and agilely climbed up to sit on the bar, her chin raised slightly as she played with a braid of her golden hair.
As she watched the six other girls, three on each side, all attempted the same maneuver.
One failed, landing flat on her stomach with an involuntary cry of pain driven out of her by the impact.
The other human girls watched with bright eyes, leaning toward her slightly, their eyes glittering in the sunlight as their expressions turned eager, almost hungry, with the exception of the one who sat on the middle and highest bar who had done the trick first. That girl watched with a haughty expression of indifference.
Brentili'ik was reminded of 'Net videos of carnivore animals watching their own groupings for any sign of weakness.
The girl got up and Brentili'ik swallowed thickly as she saw that the girl's tights were torn, revealing bloody scraped knees, one palm was scraped and oozing blood, she had scraped her chin, and blood was seeping out of her mouth from a bit tongue. She turned around and straightened up, lifting her chin defiantly. Another girl had reached up and grabbed the bar the injured one had jumped from but the injured girl shouldered her out of the way and climbed up.
Brentili'ik noticed all the young girl's expressions turned to approval as they resumed their conversations as if the injured one had not fallen. Brentili'ik noted that all she did was wipe the blood from her chin, she made no other attempt to clean the blood from herself or tend to her injuries.
”Why?” Brentili'ik asked. ”Why let them do that?”
Colonel Harvey sighed. ”It's our nature. We tried to deny it. There's some very dark chapters of our history where we tried to change it through drugs, genetic alteration, social and cultural conditioning,” he shook his head. ”Dark times indeed. We're a competitive species, we had to be, we still have to be.”
”If the Lanaktallan defeat you, they will attempt to gentle you, prevent what those younglings are doing,” Brentili'ik said.
”That never ends well. There's something about us, nobody's sure what, just something off,” Colonel Harvey admitted, shrugging.
The blonde girl with the braids, sitting on the highest bar, lifted up her arm and checked the device on her wrist. Brentili'ik knew it was her personal gravity monitor. Most Terrans had a device to ensure they were at one 'Standard Earth Gravity' at all times, not the gravity of Telkan, which was only 80% that of Earth. As Brentili'ik watched she grabbed the bar with both hands.
The blonde girl suddenly fell over backwards, swinging down, then releasing, somersaulting twice before landing on her feet. She turned around and faced the others, lifting her chin slightly before walking back and climbing back up onto her perch.
Brentili'ik exhaled sharply. The whole thing had made her anxiety spike.
The others suddenly repeated the action of their leader. One missed her landing, slamming onto the ground on her back in a puff of dirt and dust. She laid there gasping as the others walked back and climbed up onto their perches.
”Get up. Do not be weak,” the blonde one said loud enough for Brentili'ik to hear.
The one laying on the ground struggled to her feet, beginning to sob. She was crying as she hugged herself.
All of the ones on the bars tittered as the leader just stared silently, lifting her chin imperiously, her eyes moving from cornflower blue to cold amber.
The one that had fallen glared at the others, her eyes suddenly turning bright red, and lightning began to cascade down her arms, down her legs, snarling around her fists and feet. Broodcarriers exclaimed in alarm and whisked away the littles from around her.
The leader, up on her high perch, held out one hand, tiny arcs of electricity moving up and down between her fingers, her braids lifting up slightly from electrostatic charges as her eyes began to glow a dim cool red. The others leaned forward, their eyes glittering in the bright sunlight as their eyes began to glow amber.