Mister sun.
Show your face.
Frighten all the cloud away.
Into space.
Cascadian nursery rhyme
Mister Sun
The planet had been dead long before the metarex had arrived.
On the dead soil of the dead world, Dark Oak looked at the sun that was causing the planet to die. Once, billions of years ago, it had provided it with life, as many main sequence stars did. Once, the star had been smaller, brighter, and hadn't filled up the entire horizon with a blood-red glow. Once, on this world, plants had risen from both land and sea to take the light that was given to them. Once, billions of years ago, plant-eaters had fought, killed, and consumed, repeating the cycle borne witness to on a thousand times a thousand worlds. Plant-life reached to the sun and provided life. Plant-eaters and meat-eaters followed, and brought only death. Now, in this world's twilight, its plants were gone, and the eaters had joined the soil with them. As dozens of species had before them, they had been removed from the universe – unnamed, and unmourned.
It brought him no satisfaction this time. Every species the metarex had encountered so far had attempted to defend themselves with the initial belief that the children of Green Gate might be defied. Even when reality hit them, they would fight on in the knowledge that there was no choice bar death or victory. Sometimes, a species would be left behind, left to dwell in the ruins of the world after its planet egg was removed, but always, the results were the same.
Not this time. He knelt down in the barren soil and picked some up in his clawed hand, watching the dust be carried away on the wind. No battle here.
How old had they been, he wondered? The species that called this world home? Potentially billions of years old, yet they had apparently never mastered space-flight. They had waited for the end in their domed cities, protecting them from the radiation of their dying sun. They had barely reacted when the metarex had appeared in their skies. Had offered no resistance when they pounded their cities into dust. Had fought like disabled children when troopers were sent to scour what resistance remained. His sword had never tasted their blood, and he could not deny it made him ill at ease. He knew what it was like to fight against impossible odds. To see one's world and all its wonders be ground to dust by demons from on high. And yet, on Green Gate, he'd still fought. The Cascadians had dominated air and earth, but his people had made them pay for every piece of ground they'd taken.
But maybe that was it, he reflected. Maybe the ground of this world just wasn't worth defending. After all, who would want it, outside those of their vision? Who might understand that this world still yet had a place in the Grand Design, however small?
"Dark Oak."
Red Pine, for one. He, and his four other lieutenants. His believers. His champions.
"Here for the spoils of victory?" the metarex leader asked.
But not friends. Never his friends. Such notions had died on his homeworld.
"You might say that."
His lieutenant strode across the dust of the world, giant footsteps left in its irradiated soil. If not for the armour encasing them, they would have both been long dead by now, if not from the radiation then by the toxic atmosphere. Or at least what was left of it. The world still had a magnetosphere, but most of its gasses were trace elements. The solar winds had seen to that. What remained would have poisoned life of any kind, plant or animal.
"Have you considered my request?" Red Pine asked.
Dark Oak looked at him. "What?"
"My request. My petition. My-"
"Your begging?"
"I do not beg. My enemies beg before they meet their end."
"No, they don't." Dark Oak turned to face his lieutenant. "You just pound them into dust from orbit."
In his lieutenant's singular eye, Dark Oak saw a flash. Some spark of his seedrian self, shining through a chassis designed to protect body and silence the soul. "Do you take issue with my methods?"
"No. I don't. But claiming valour for deeds never undertaken…"
"Yes, yes, I know – swords, shields, all that. But I have a job to do, and I'd prefer to do it with those that don't just lay down and die."
Dark Oak remained silent. So did his lieutenant. At least until Dark Oak's words once again entered the toxic air.
"Very well," he said. "The Peneb sector is yours."
"Thank you. In the meantime, I suppose I should give you this."
Dark Oak watched as his lieutenant's right fist uncurled. He stared at the sight before him. Rage, joy, both emotions flowed fill him, as water might have nourished his roots.
"The planet egg," Red Pine said. "Not so hard to fine."
"Give it to me." Dark Oak stretched out his left hand. The right lingered at the hilt of his sword.
"Give what to you?"
"The planet egg."
"Hmm." Red Pine started tossing it from one hand to the other. "I might consider it. Of course, my forces did the excavation, so you could say I'm entitled to the spoils of war."
"Any more delay, and that hand of yours will never hold anything again."
Red Pine stopped the ball game. After a moment, he slowly handed the planet egg to Dark Oak.
Beautiful.
Time had dulled his emotions, but the planet eggs never lost their beauty. The core of any planet that gave rise to life. The root of life, by all indications. Many races had some kind of creation myth - some kind of version of "Mother Nature," given more names and titles than there were stars in the sky. Not that it had stopped the animals from tearing themselves and their worlds apart, but even savages might gain some inkling as to the nature of their existence.
And thus, with this, the galaxy moves one step closer to peace.
His thoughts were not only his own, but of all the metarex in this system. In an instant, thousands of troopers heard his words and returned to their motherships. In hours, they would all be aboard. In even less time, the fleet would be ready to move out. To find the next egg. To take out step more along the road to completing the Great Work.
"Does it bother you?" Red Pine asked.
Dark Oak paused, before asking, "does what bother me?"
"Does it bother you?" Red Pine repeated. "The knowledge that what we do for this world will be for nothing?"
"Do you doubt our mission?" His right hand, once at his side, began to move closer to the hilt of his sword again.
"Our mission? No."
Liar.
"But you must be aware that even if the Great Work is completed, that if silence and peace come to the galaxy, it will mean nothing for this world? That whatever grows here will die? That even its ashes will be consumed by this star?" He gestured towards the orb that filled the horizon. "The planet egg may serve us, but it won't serve this world."
"The Great Work requires as many planet eggs as possible."
"Yes, of course it does. And meanwhile, you've got scouts serving for seven glowing stones on some miserable unnamed world that will supposedly make it happen."
And there was the rub, Dark Oak reflected. The tacit admission of what he'd known all along. That Red Pine was commander and lieutenant, but no believer. A tool, interested only in conquest, but not the reasons behind it.
"The Chaos Emeralds will be found," Dark Oak said.
Which wasn't a problem in of itself. A tool was a tool. Tools were always useful when used correctly.
"Of course they will," Red Pine sneered. "And when you cut off my arm because little Lucius is playing soldier, you-"
Dark Oak drew his sword, and at a speed beyond that of any mortal, put it to his lieutenant's throat. No vein was there to cut, but if the head was removed, the body would die. The tool, if it ceased to function and became a hazard, would be dealt with.
"Never call me by that name," the metarex leader whispered. "Ever."
Red Pine remained silent. The dust swirled around them. The planet egg shone. In the skies above, trooper upon trooper returned to the ships in orbit, like leviathans out of a plant-eater's nightmare.
"Very well," Red Pine said. "You play scientist, I'll play soldier. And when all is just and right, and all your dreams have come true, ask yourself who made it possible."
Dark Oak withdrew the blade. If…when, that day came…well, what of it? Whatever happened to him after the Great Work was completed was irrelevant. Red Pine could bask in self-adulation all he wanted when that happened. In the meantime, he could stand watch over the galaxy and the peace he had wrought, safe in the knowledge that what had transpired on Green Gate would never occur again.
"I take my leave," Red Pine said. "I'll see you…well, when I see you."
And with that, he took to the sky. To the harbinger of his wrath. Towards species that might even test him before returning to the dirt that spawned them.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
He shook his head – a Cascadian had said that once. The barbarians had some culture, and he'd heard a prisoner mention it before seedrians had taken what vengeance they could. And yet…
And yet Red Pine was right, he reflected. This world was long dead. A billion years from now, maybe even less, it would be consumed by its star, and all evidence that it had ever existed would be removed from the face of Creation. He could save the galaxy, but not this world. For all the technology of the metarex, taming stars was not among it. And if any race had ever managed such a feat, he had yet to hear of them. In silence, he knelt down in the soil, picking up a second handful of dust. Dry, dead, and irradiated. These specks of dust were the same as all the other specks.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
Sorry, for his inability to save this world. Sorry, for his inability to save his world. Sorry…for something else. Anything else. Maybe sorry, for every compromise he had made. Sorry for the one whom he had parted ways with on a devastated world. Sorry, for the paradox that the peace he envisioned could only be met through the application of power.
No.
He got to his feet. He could never be sorry. Not now. Not ever.
Clutching the planet egg close, he took to the sky. To the ships in orbit. To one fleet of many, as the gears of the Great Work grinded on.
It was an easy flight.
For here, there were no clouds.
A/N
I bet when you played Mister Sun on the piano that you never thought you were describing the future extinction of life on Earth as the sun becomes a red giant and boils our atmosphere away, did you? DID YOU?!
Now that my childhood is ruined by that revelation, decided to drabble this up. :P