The streets weren’t safe… after dawn.
They had been fighting all night to comply with their emperor’s decree. It was satisfying for RedX999 to watch the enemy shriek and run asunder. But now, over the mountain top a red glow had started scattering. Blowing to smithereens their cover. He muttered something inaudible, something horrible. Gathering his depleting energy, he let out a high pitch whistle, audible to his band but painful for others, while absolutely inaudible to sapiens and such like. They came rushing from hither and tither, forming a grey haze which abruptly melted in the rubble.
They had to be careful. The sun was the usurper of their powers. Their goal was simple- to take over!
As day broke, RedX999 and his band of ferocious warriors were exposed and threatened.
“There they go!” whispered an alert enemy sentinel.
He was waving his antennas to reel in all the signals. That was his expertise. Let no signal escape. Of movement, of thermal-images, or any olfactory sensations.
“Wait seargent! Let them settle.” The Captain of the elite forces whispered under his breath.
“Alba 2020, are the ambushes on the escape routes set?”
“Yes Sir!” whispered the tiny creature.
The fierce golden light of the sun, seared the sky. Its flaming orange tongues darted through the ether to ignite whatever it could land on and burn it to cinders. The temperature on the surface of the planet was suitable to convert liquid aqua into its gaseous version. The denizens had long vanished into the deepest crevices awaiting the Protector- the one who would save them from this hell.
RedX999 was drenched… in sweat or fear, one could not tell, as he addressed his band.
“Halt all actions! Movement is death! Wait!”
They nodded. It was to be a quick short operation, before they zoomed back.
“Sir, its too hot. We might perish even before we resume our fight!” whispered one of the junior privates, recently promoted to the deadly Refulgent Rodents.
Snarling, the leader hissed, “Then die…. !”
He pointed to a dark abyss among fallen boulders and mounds of rubble, signaling to take refuge in it. Young MintY007 had her apprehensions. She scouted the grey neighbourhood and spotted a gash further away. Sprinting towards it, she had barely rolled into the cool interiors when she felt it.
The fight for life sustaining aqua had been raging for millenniums. The scorching heat of the sun had singularly ended thousands of species. Only a handful escaped extinction. Sapiens, had built space crafts and escaped to different galaxies. Did they survive? The warriors never got to know.
“Attack!” hissed Captain Mocha into the micro-transmitter. The passion in the tone unmistakable. Simultaneously clouds of grey green fumes spurted into the barren landscape. From cracks in the ground to tops of mounds and hillocks, toxic fumes engulfed the cordoned off area. His hand-picked warriors zipped out of the way, smoke masks in place. After all, they had survived millenniums of starvation and annihilation.
***
Over time it had become unbearable… the heat. One day the sun had poured molten rocks onto the terrain. Water, or aqua as it came to be known, sizzled and evaporated in an instant. Everything was burnt instantly and vanished in the blink of an eye. Only a handful of sapiens on a secret mission, deep in the belly of the desert, escaped. They were testing their inter stellar mother ship. Out on a spin, they had no home to return to. Banished forever.
The Commander of the spaceship wished to make the planet their home, again. The green smoke, a speck in the distance was a warning. Alarms went off on the bridge. “Halt!” he yelled into the screen, but the ship had already entered the exosphere and was drawn like an iron filing to a magnet. Hurtling to the surface.
***
RedX999 felt the burning in his snout first, and slowly it seeped in to his lungs. His paws clutched his throat, trying to open his mouth wide, to squeeze in a breath, his whiskers twitching, his beady eyes bulging. The fur stood prickly as it disintegrated in tufts. He tried to look towards his band, but the darkness had engulfed them all, providing them shelter from their prosecutor, while enabling Death to gobble them up.
The tiny sentinels, removed their masks, antennae twitching, their compound eyes absorbing all.
“Alba 2020, how many alive?”
Swinging her antennae in wide arcs, she waited, letting her sophisticated equipment note any indication of a life form.
“None Sir!” she squeaked, with the joy of one who has accomplished their task.
“What’s that?”
MintY007 crawled out of the dark gash, clutching her once pink snout, her glistening fur disintegrating in places, her tail tattered and torn. Life ebbed from her beady eyes as she lay still on the harsh, hard ground, littered with flints and scree. Her claws stiffened, imploring for one more breath.
***
The cockroaches gathered around the fallen spaceship that stood shattered and smoking.
“Alba 2020, anything alive?”
“None Sir,” she muttered.
Written for @ArtoonsInnWritersRoom #Inntales7
Pic courtesy: Dave Hoefler on Unsplash
