Before Sleeping

"In the fogged up shed that led to us wanting to fog the Ebonites shed up in return for what they done did tuh us, the plan-it Earth, we was sent - some udda Baddest Bad to the bones Bros the universe done ever did see - to kick some ebonite ass. Day sin tus in many spaceships fulla stuff more dedly than dynamite"

Before.

Untold pain, suffering and the eventual war between unified Earth and the planet
Ebon. Ebon bombed Earth, therefore, let it be said that Ebon struck first.
And the bombing set in motion;
Fear of a black planet. Fear of the blackness known as Ebon.
Fear that has spread across the earth like the crashing waves of the final deluge, engulfing it's people, washing them away and into the endless seething maelstrom of hatred. This hatred in turn moved Earth's people to a willingness to cooperate with one another, forced a quirky union, a pact that was as brittle as the shell of an egg.

Heated disputes.
The union called United Earth nervously, clumsily builds a fleet with trembling hands and hastily fills the fleet's ships with crewmen who have never tasted the bitterness of Astro-war. United Earth built it's fleet of ships and sent them forth in diarrhetic fashion shooting them out in unpredictable, often violently ejected increments, an attempt at full speed running through a pitch black forrest. The runs. Split, splat, spl-splat. A messy adventure of the stinkiest kind. Some of the ships exploded before leaving Earth's atmosphere and many soldiers attempted desertion till all were routinely led at gunpoint to the boarding docks for each and every launch.
And Unified Earth's defense forces soon became a vast, quickly, although sloppily mobilized Astro-fleet.
What was it that actually caused the war? This is a question many traitorous dissidents ask. They argue provocation of the Ebonites.

"Lettuce forget bout them settlers that got sent out all over the yoony-verse by them big companies and the whores and the gambling and them strip joints they done took with em. They was piece-full, they ain't never done no-one no harm."

Manifest Destination was no hindu god but like a hindu god it spawned thousands of yearning arms that stretched across the reachable universe in search of more land in the form of inhabitable planets and opportunity, sending settlers to every known corner of the universe.

"Lettuce forget them all-night gambling joints, them hotels for them hawty, fine rich people. And them fast food joints. They poppin up all over the place on just about all-a-them plan-its." They poppin up like bad weeds in a priddy garden. You can get a Doner Kebap or a greasy cheeseburger on just about any plan-it these days."

Although Manifest Destination was a peaceful form of expansion it could and was, at times, supported, even heralded by military force.
A Bomb struck the earth and the bomb was said to be of Ebonite construction. It hit the earth they said. A huge sun disintegrating part of our planet. Somewhere in an impoverished African country they say. "Who'll be next?" Asked alarmed you-mans throughout the world. "Good thing it hit a not-so important cun-tree" said others.

First there was fear.
"Then Earth got Mad and reprints thereof and red what they should do to get even with Ebon. Earth built space ships and chocked 'em full with fighters for freedom."

These were actually men prepared to fight and die for the Brotherhood, an exclusive society of rich and powerful believers in the freedom from the slavery of taxes and of the righteousness of Manifest Destination. The Brotherhood persuaded the Earths nations to protect properties of the Brotherhood, numerous properties like pins of possession tacked all over a big map on a boardroom wall. Gods stretching a greedy, jealous hand, gathering worlds, some in faraway places no normal earth man, woman or child have ever heard of with names no human tongue could ever pronounce.

"They was stingy, them Ebonites was and they didn't want us to have the itsy-bitsyest bit of their plan-it. They wuzn't nice to us and then they threw a bomb on some poor African cun-tree to top it off. Good thing it was just a poor cun-tree, could've been us."

Some of the treacherous, traitorous dissidents who criticize the war actually suspect the Brotherhood of having pressured world powers into a hoax. They suggest that the Earth bombed itself in order to justify a war with Ebon.

"Not true, not true. We would never bomb no Africans or no one else."

The Dissidents carry signs with the words "Never again Nagasaki" and "No More Hiroshima's" and "Big Business Kills" and "Peace" painted on them as these traitorous scum are arrested and thrown into jail cells across the globe just as they should be.

"Now son that's enough for tonight. You gone sleep good now. You don't need to be scared a no dissidents or no ugly Black Aliens. We done killed em all so nobody need to have no more nightmares no, no more."

Ships at Space
Inside of one of the war ships a crew of men receive their last briefing before engagement. The group of soldiers represents nations from across the globe;
Col Stein U.S. Army and coordinating officer, Major Breakman Royal Army , NCO Yong People's liberation Army of China, Sgt. Deggs, U.S. Army, Sgt Willymoss, Nigerian Army

Colonel Stein: "Men, no matter what happens we should never forget that we're human, that we have dignity and are loyal. Above all we must never forget that we are men."

Sgt Deggs: "Oh yeah, we'll remember that all right, while we're kicking that black Ebon ass to hell!"

Major Breakman: "Deggs, your loud, often irritating and explosive displays of exuberance are neither necessary nor are they desired. Some of us have lives back on Earth. Some of us get no kick out of being here"

Sgt Deggs: "Shove it up your butt Breakman, You Brits are nothing but a bunch of pansies. Arrogant bass-turds, who needs ya?"

Sgt. Willymoss: "Watch your mouth Deggs, Major Breakman is an officer!"

Sgt Deggs: "You just keep out of this Willy-boy. This is between Breakman and me. And I don't care if he is an officer. He's British army. He ain't got no say over us U.S. boys."

Colonel Stein: "Enough!" He allowed a quiet minute to pass before continuing "As I said before, we must remember that we are humans about to fight battles in an inhuman world. We must stick together."

Major Breakman: "Of course you're right."

Sgt Deggs: "Yeah, just once, just this one time we can be cozy like we like each other.
But I still don't like no Brits even if I'm forced to fight side by side with em. The Asians and the Africans too, who really needs em? We could finish this war alone."

NCO Yong: "Too bad they stopped screening inductees for inter-cultural competence of any kind."

Another One Bites The Dust
A base ball racing towards a bat that is racing towards the ball. Crack! Lights out. Another Ship of the United Earth Defense Force bites the dust.

A group of men from the planet Earth sitting side by side in a transporter of Ebonian make peers across a dark corridor at the shadow-skinned Ebonian guards who also are sitting side by side. One stares strangely at Sgt Deggs;

Sgt Deggs thinking: "What's that thing looking at? It's got weird kinky eyes. It's looking at me kinky. Just at me. Why? Ugly as hell. Black skin but not a color. More like when the lights are dead. Creepy. I need room. Air. Light. Everything so black, so murky and dirty. Those whispers, the air. The air. Polluted. Suffocation. Worse than them others, them asians and africans. Can't breathe, can't breathe. What if it touches me?"

A group of men from the planet Earth marching like a family of ducks in a line across a shiny, slimy black field on their way to a shooting gallery where they are to be shot at. Sgt. Willymoss suddenly breaks out of the formation and runs in a full panic only to be engulfed by a thick oily cloud of Ebonian Darkness. He crumbles. Epileptic-like spasms. Talons of Claustrophobia and a much too strong belief in the existence of demons that the Ebonites resemble. Pictures in a Book. Art of the rebirth. A picture from a book that made him religion's slave. The slave to fear.

Hell and his place in it if he were bad. Was he bad? He must have been bad.
Heironymosian hell looks strangely like this one. An old nightmare becomes a new reality and old shudders of horror, like electricity, run up and down his spine now as they did then.

A 32 year old man suddenly becomes a 6 year old boy and the boy sobs as he is prodded with wands whose heads burn like hellfire jolting him into purgatory. Heironymosian hell-whips that force him to take his place in the hopelessness of a hellish landscape.
Reality is Satan with Ebonight claws that rip his mind and body to shreds.

In the black Ebonian morning of the first full day of imprisonment one the remaining men, Yong, the only POW to be brutally tortured and humiliated is found dead. He willed himself to death to escape further humiliation they said. Major Breakman becomes the victim of an unfortunate accident, slipping out on the shiny, slimy, black floor before landing soundly on his head which splits, as they say, like a cocoanut, generously flooding the floor with it's red milk. He had attempted escape. Shit does happen they said, using earth terms quite freely.
Col Stein hung himself unable to cope with the guilt of losing all of his soldiers.

The End and The Begin of Again
The operation was a success. Once again Earth's soldiers proved their loyalty in capture by eliminating themselves and the possibility of betrayal with them. The secret pact between Ebon and Unified Earth however, was broken. The Ebonites, who, actually, are a race of pacifists, refused to continue participating in the farce of imprisoning Earths soldiers which they had agreed to do as a show of reparation and regret after an Ebonite Space-ship, (not a bomb after all, as falsely stated in previous reports) had crash landed on a canadian mountain (not an impoverished african country) killing two mountain climbers with it.

With the breaking of the pact the true war with Ebon began.