what makes a man different from a monster?
and who is to say which is which?
N A T I O N
A general stood tall, his feet planted firmly on the dusty gray-green soil
of the alien world. The dirt had been neatly packed, clean, narrow streets
running through the metropolis. The city was now in shambles, buildings toppled,
roads cracked, bodies crushed. Dust and the smell the death tainted the air with
a stale reek.
Twenty-five hundred thousand. The city had had a population of twenty-five
hundred thousand, give or take. The soldier, solitary and stiff-necked, had
brought the proud city to pieces, shot the population down to a few desperate
hundred, scattered citizens who had been lucky thus far.
The general, who had initiated the attack on the city and who had lead most
of the onset, thought back to his orders. Clear the landscape of all
hindering obstacles. Do this quickly. There was no mention of life forms —
sentient, animal, or plant. No orders to leave them be or to destroy them as
necessary. Naturally, the condescending young man in charge of this
rehabilitation decided that it was not essential for this filthy world to have
its native society running about.
A sharp, barked order and an impatient warning was all he gave his men to be
on alert and to get out of the way.
The muscles in his back rippled, his shoulders tensing and rolling in their
sockets as he pulled an arm back. He turned his head to the side, glaring at the
broken landscape. As a gunman would do so, taking accurate aim at his target,
the young man squinted one eye shut. There was nothing to distract him from his
intent. His heart skipped a beat, his pulse hitching a moment in his throat. He
felt something go off in his head, a nerve ending exploding, its panicked signal
passed on to yet another nerve just in time. He shuddered but stood his ground.
His body tightened impossibly more, and his fingers bent and positioned
themselves into a claw-like provocation. The mental signal combined with a
ferocious violence deep inside. The result was an explosion of white-hot heat
with enough backwards propulsion to nearly knock the soldier off his feet.
But he stood, stood as highly as ever, feet digging into the dirt. The air
cleared, his head stopped ringing, and the general allowed himself to take pride
in the job he had done. The beautiful city, the hopeless survivors, the
unfortunate warriors. Gone, not even ashes left in their wake.
The young man sniffed, searching for evidence life — a drop of blood, burnt
flesh, a shadow, even melting metal. Nothing. Just the baked ground and the
thick air. He permitted himself a smile, a satisfactory sneer at the power he so
surely possessed, the hopelessness of his prey from day one.
Their blood was always in his hands.
His lips parted, teeth shown in a savage grin. A chuckle rumbled deeply in
his throat. Soon it was full-fledged laughter, his pleasure echoing around the
vacant land, in his head. After all, what was to stop him from delighting in
this homicide — pray tell?
His shoulders slumped. His sore muscles relaxed. He had done it — he had
done it again. He had killed the nuisance, and had destroyed their city. He had
executed it with almost no help and the job was finished in under forty minutes.
I deserve this title, he thought. I pull this off all the time.
An entire elite team of the finest soldiers was under his command.
He had a sum of one hundred and thirty seven planets purged, conquered,
destroyed. Each planet dealt with in record time. Count this one, and he had one
hundred and thirty eight. Well over a million souls to add to his reputation.
The general had yet to hit fourteen.
