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Roses
Posted By: Bronzemage<mrbronzer@hotmail.com>
Date: 9 December 2005, 6:21 am
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The weak sun glinted from the thousands of spent shell casings, discarded weapons and torn fortifications, giving the scene a red glow. A glow of death, of suffering, and of ruination.
Bodies in their hundreds, thousands, were piled up, burnt and smoking. The wreckages of vehicles were strewn about the battlefield, splattered with blood and molten slag. Above, the hulks of burning ships lay, glittering and sparking, in orbit until they, too, would succumb to gravity and shatter into a million pieces, falling like so many stars.
The land, once green and thriving, was scarred and mutilated by the battle. Huge swathes were torn and muddy, blasted from orbit by fire and light. The craters from countless grenades and rockets littered the ground, along with smoking holes from plasma impacts. The scene resembled Hell – and maybe that was what it had become, forever.
Everywhere, everywhere were the signs of a last, frantic struggle. Corpses missing legs and arms still fought on, crawling and firing until the end. When their guns had no ammunition, and the vehicles were still, they used their knives and any scrap they could find. When those snapped or melted under the merciless assault, they used their hands, or legs, or head, always fighting. Eventually, they all lay still, surrounded by the bodies of their foe.
Birds – black crows – swept over the bodies of the dead, scavenging and feasting. They wheeled and dived, over the smoking holes in armour, in helmets, and in flesh. The survivors of the battle, however, let the birds do what they would. It didn't matter to them, anyway. None of it did. They had fought, they had died, and for what? To rid the galaxy of another race, for their leaders? They didn't know, and they never would. They – the multitudes, the seething masses, and the brave warriors – were required to kill, and so they did.
Now, as the survivors looked over the scene of death, the earth sighed, and a wind swept over the battlefield, sending the birds screaming and wheeling, and finally extinguishing the innumerable fires. Then, later, as the first of the dropships came down to retrieve the troops, and they left, still watching the blackened, torn, and scarred Earth, a new wind swept over the corpses, the helmets, and the tracks of the vehicles.
The wind swept over a helmet, lying beside one human in the middle of the field. One, lonely human, surrounded by the bodies of a hundred fallen enemies. He had shot them, stabbed them, and finally broken them with his own two hands. In the end, what could he do against such a force? He had stood again, and fought, the last human in the universe. In the end, he died, just as each and every one of his species had died before him. Overcome by the might, the will, and the power of the Covenant.
They tore at his armour, and he killed them. They shot at him, burned him, and yet he killed them. In the end, a dozen held him down while they clubbed him, and pierced the armour, and tore his flesh. And yet still he killed them. As he lay there, dying amidst the ruination of everything he had fought to protect, he had scrawled a message.
"I had always trained to save someone. First it was myself, then my squad, then humanity. But I couldn't save any of them, not this time. Nobody could. But I know that, in the end, I had fought them, and I defied them. I stood among the miles of ruined plains and fires, the bodies of everyone I know, everyone I ever knew, beneath the mud of their feet. So I did what I had to do. Not to survive, but to show them that there are some of us who are worthy of their respect, and honour. To beat them. And I did. I fought them until they died, not for myself, or for Earth, but to defy them, and to show them.
I did not save myself, or my team, or humanity. But I won, nonetheless."
And in his heart, he knew it was useless, for he knew that there was no-one to read it, except him, but it gave him strength. So it was that the last human in the universe died, there upon the plains of the ruined Earth, with the wind playing over the cracked and burned faceplate, and the dropships humming, departing for another conquest, another war. And there, with the bodies of his comrades-in-arms heaped like so much trash, and the ships breaking up in orbit, the Spartan felt strangely calm.
For he could smell roses, roses on the wind.
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