Burned

The rain was on fire. Droplets of flame cascading from the sky coming to rest on roofs, trees, skin… igniting the world. Apollo’s gaze fixed on the beauty of the shower. Its iridescence reflected in his soft brown eyes until - distant screams ripped him from his trance. He turned towards the cries and saw his village burning. He couldn’t comprehend the nightmare before him. His home set ablaze, figures running. Collapsing. Still. A terrible peal ruptured the sky. A rumble built until the ground trembled and he had to shelter his ears with his hands. Steady his vibrating skull.

A large ship descended onto a field near the village. Smoke belched from its engines and heat licked the ground scorching everything as the vessel came to rest upon a plateau of smoldering earth. Even from this distance, Apollo could smell the acrid fumes of the rocket’s exhaust. If he had been closer he might not be able to breath in the cloud of gasses, but he wasn’t. His mother had sent him out to play for the afternoon, to entertain himself in the forest near their village. Now he stood in horror as the small outpost turned to ash; a silent witness to the doom that was befalling.

Faceless men disembarked from the vessel; their heads covered by masks that filtered the molten air and their bodies encased in metallic suits impervious to the feverish chaos they wrought. Some carried weapons that they used to mow down the feeble resistance the settlers put up while others carried tubes they would brace upon their shoulders and launch nets, not lethal but ensnaring those unfortunate enough to be in their path. Apollo watched as the intruders stormed the village flushing the residents out. People fled before them. Fled out of the village, towards the woods. The woods where he sat, watching. Why were these strangers from the sky attacking them? Did they do something wrong? They were peaceful terraformers, no one needed weapons here.

Apollo spotted his sister, Vera, sprinting towards him, her hair matted in the hot air, sparks flew and smoke billowed behind her made her look surreal. Until he saw the fear in her eyes. More fear than he’d ever seen in his 11 years of life. “Run!” she shouted as she raced towards him. He didn’t move. His muscles wouldn’t respond to the command. His brain was still trying to assimilate all of the hell he was seeing and hearing when she grabbed his arm and yanked him out of his stupor. “Come on,” she hissed. At 16, her legs were longer than his and she was more athletic to begin with, so he struggled to keep up as the two of them bounded through the trees.

He stumbled and caught himself. “What’s going on?’ he finally managed to squeeze out between breaths.

“Slavers.”

They ran on, searching for a place to hide, but there wasn’t one. They had grown up here. Their parents were original colonists, but they were natives; born there. The terra forming was really just beginning. Only a small portion of the land had been transformed into habitable territory. Everything else was rock and water. The planet was ideal for a colony though. It had a livable atmosphere and water. It was luxury. The only life on the planet was what they brought with them. What they planted. So there was no threat. No danger. No need for security they thought. They were wrong. With humans there was always a threat. Greed. Selfishness. Other people.

Colonists knew there were slavers out at the edges of settled space. There were stories about them. Stories you told your kids at night to keep them in line. Behaved. But they weren’t real, they didn’t venture this far in. There were still security forces towards the core. The closer you got towards Earth, the more security you encountered. So the slavers stayed far out and there just weren’t that many of them. Not enough to worry about. It was rare for them to attack a colony as it invited response from the security forces that the bandits usually wanted to avoid. But this group was bold. Dangerous. They weren’t just abducting people to sell. They were murderous. They came in and razed everything to the ground before they even landed to capture those that survived.

Apollo and Vera were quickly running out of cover and knew it. Soon they would reach the edge of the forest and they’d face barren rock. “Where are we going?” he asked.

“We need to find a cave,” she said, “somewhere to hide.”

“What about Mom and Dad?”

“They sent me to get you.”

“We have to go back,” he cried, “we have to get them.” He struggled with her grasp until he wrenched himself free.

“Keep running,” she said. “They were buying us time.”

“We can’t leave them.”

“We can’t help them,” her agony was palpable. Pain mixed with the fear on her face, twisted and distorted it so that he barely recognized her. She was not the carefree girl he grew up with. Not anymore. The trauma changed her. And the had just run out of cover.

This intersection, where the trees gave way to the cold hard rocks and beyond them a network of caves, here they could have turned right and headed for home, the remembered love of a community and kind parents, but turning left would take them towards safety. Real safety. Shadows and a labyrinth underground. They hesitated a moment, then burst forth from the edge out into the open; too late. Ambushed. Nets closed. Movement restricted, the two tumbled to the ground. No escape. Apollo’s anger simmered just below boiling point. He had never known this type of fear or pain and his mind sizzled, ready to combust.

Their captors didn’t even rush over. They slowly walked forward collecting other refugees in their snares. When they got close enough to touch, he erupted. His eleven-year-old fists pounded into the man nearest him. A chuckle and a backhanded blow that sent Apollo spinning to the ground, delivered him unconscious.