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Chapter Three

Introducing Naye Proclaven. The young woman at the centre of the story, who finds herself in the middle of a global religious war.

The butt of the white assault rifle broke open a bright-red wound on the elderly woman’s head. She held both hands towards the law enforcement officer, pleading.
Her beige headwrap became heavy with claret as it inked a dark patch toward the site of the injury, yet still, she smiled at him, taking the impact with little more than a sharp gasp. Offended by her resilience, he placed a boot to the wound, causing her to pass out. She made no sound, just fell. The surrounding crowd erupted in anger.
Law enforcement directed the androids into the temple while they remained stationed outside. The noses of their rifles surveyed the protesters, each officer’s shoulders rising and falling as the adrenaline amplified their breathing.
One sign a young female was holding in the baying crowd read: “We stand by our Osihlian brothers and sisters”. Another held by an older male had a picture of praying hands and underneath the words, “Freedom of worship in Golkann lands”. There were at least fifty people surrounding the temple as they dragged the Osihlian worshippers out, parading them before all.
Naye approached the crowd from the back. Golkann supporters protesting oppression of the Osihlian community in the region were nothing new. The issue was that the protests were becoming more frequent.
Naye looked toward the sky at the closer of the two moons. The small dot before one of them caused all of this.
Since it arrived in the skies twenty-three years ago, El-Baynans dubbed it “The Mother”. A contentious arrival from the stars, forbidden to explore, the origin of the recent continual conflict, and the reason for the recent religious clashes and skirmishes planet-wide. After over two decades, the Golkann tribe, her people, still hadn’t found out what or who this visitor in the sky was.
“Run! Naye!”
Her best friend, Rye, burst through the throng, pushing aside the protesters, her face covered in a balaclava-type garment.
As a muscle memory reaction, Naye gripped her eight-month bump, protecting her child. As Rye sped past her, looking back, Naye felt a heavy arm wrap itself around her neck, the muzzle of a pistol pressed against her head through her thick afro curls.
Hot breath hit her ear, nervous breathing. Her attacker held his grip around her collar; a male, one of the law enforcement officers, had grabbed her. The payment for whatever transgression Rye had just committed.
“Hey! Leave her alone, she’s pregnant, you f…”
In a precise, efficient movement, the officer fired his weapon toward a protestor’s skull, then whipped the warm muzzle back against the side of Naye’s head, his other arm still wrapped around her neck.
The protester dropped to his knees, still looking up at Naye. The orange bolt fired, lodged into their head, cooking the surrounding flesh. They slumped forward, forcing the bolt to break through the back of their skull as their face crashed to the ground. Blood sprayed over Naye’s face, gushing in spurts.
Paralyzed with fear, she focused on the blue wispy clouds in the early evening sky. The officer was cursing. Words to the effect of “Your bitch left you!” Naye didn’t listen, she couldn’t. It will be okay, it will be okay. If she fainted, what would happen to her child? The crowd surrounding them looked on with abject anger and disgust at the treatment of this pregnant female by the officers of the Supreme Leader of the Golkann tribe, Mabior.
“He’s got her friend, look!” shouted another. “She’s pregnant!”
Tears rolled down her face as he pulled her along with him, left to right as he aimed the white pistol at various screaming, incensed faces before them, trying to find the culprit who shouted. He couldn’t, so he fired at two random sign holders he decided he didn’t like the look of. The screams from the crowd chilled Naye to the bone.
They dragged all the Osihlians out of the temple, and one by one, they threw them in the back of the law enforcement vehicle, where waiting androids, white plastic skeletal frames, wires exposed at limbs—lanky and awkward—took over.
The detention vehicle, a large twenty-person rectangular box trailer, with a separate driver’s compartment at the front, like all modes of transport on the planet, had no wheels. It was propelled by advanced air manipulation tech. It lifted off the ground as a gasp of air blasted from underneath it, sending dirt and debris into the masses like the disturbance a landing helicopter would make. It pulled itself into the sky, sirens blaring, and then took the Osihlians away for “processing”.
As they pulled more out of the temple, some by their hair, the crowd—after seeing the killings and treatment—began throwing stones, signs, and items at the officers, the rising fury audible from their mass.
The grip released around her neck as the one who grabbed her roared in teeth-baring anger. His back was now covered in a white, paint-like liquid; Rye had returned for Naye, maneuvered behind the officer, and thrown some kind of sticky substance over his back.
“Run, Naye! Now! Go! Go!”
No deliberating this time, Naye lost the guard as she snaked through the crowd and down a side street where her ACV (air-cushioned vehicle) was waiting.
As she approached it, the door opened, and she threw herself in, rubbing her belly with one hand. She pressed a few buttons on the dashboard, and the craft came alive through flashing panels and waking digital displays, pulling from the ground as the air jets kicked in.
Please, Rye, please, please! Naye said to herself. She contemplated going back for her, but she didn’t have the courage. No other reason. Nothing to do with protecting her unborn child. She was honest; she was scared. She knew Rye would make it, so she would wait in the ACV until…
A frantic banging on her window. She’d made it. Rye pulled the balaclava off her head and threw it high into the air, almost in celebration, as Naye opened the door for her. Rye threw herself in, already adjusting her short afro.
“Are we going then? Or are we sitting here waiting to get arrested or killed?” Naye, whose concern had changed to furious anger over her friend’s recklessness, slapped a large button on the dashboard. The control stick between her legs moved of its own accord, and the ACV took off for the skies.
In the rear-view mirror, Naye glimpsed approaching law-enforcement lights.

*

The excitement of the protest over, they found a spot to grab some food.
Their glasses of water emptied, Rye was still operating with adrenaline coursing through her fibers. She enjoyed the fact her hands were still shaking. She took pride in her efforts, the stance taken.
“Fuck! That was wild!”
“What is wrong with you? I cannot understand why you would even—”
“How long have I been speaking about doing this?” Rye asked.
Naye ignored her, focusing on anything in the small café other than Rye. The anger and frustration she felt toward her best friend was encouraging her to—as she always did—cry again. She held it together.
“Don’t get angry with me! I never told you to come. I said, ‘Do not come to the protest’.”
Naye lifted her empty glass to drink, buying herself some time, and attempting to formulate her response—forgetting she had already drunk the water. She clunked the glass back down in embarrassment.
There were five other tables, all empty. They sat near a glass window on one side and a serving area on the other. No El-Baynans were present, only androids taking orders, cleaning, and checking on customers. The interior was a traditional wood, with heavy beams from the floor to the ceiling.
“There are other ways of expressing displeasure toward the system, Rye.”
“Naye, I love you. You’re so cute, but I needed this. I wanna tell Zinazin that her mom was part of the Osihlian protests. I stood up for these people.”
“Rye, you don’t even like Osihlians! I am sorry, what was it again that you called them? Crazy, religious fuckers?”
“Yeah, they are. No need to treat them like that, though. If they want to believe in angels and follow Stuk’aith, leave them to it. Let them pray. Let’s go, girl. I’ve done my bit for history!”
Naye shook her head, almost allowing herself a smile. They both stood up and tapped their payment cards on the panel at the corner of the table. A soft beep confirmed the transaction, and they left the eatery.
Naye thought her neck had broken so hard was the tug of her hair by the waiting law enforcement officer.
“We know our rights! We know our rights!” Rye screamed, lifting a tablet-like device toward the officer who had Naye by the hair to film him. His colleague snatched it from her hand.
The android stood at the entrance of the eatery and stared at them in the forecourt. The two red eyes in the “skull” lowered themselves and locked the café doors until whatever business was going on with these rogue law enforcers and these two protesters was over with.
“I love your... hair!” said the officer, pulling again, causing Naye to scream, with one hand, as always, on the bump protecting the child inside her.
The other officer stood next to Rye. There was hope. He shook his head. He didn’t approve of this.
“Please let us go,” Rye said to him.
“Once my colleague over there has protesters in his grip, he won’t stop.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“If you want to leave here, let it play out.”
He tugged Naye’s hair again, attempting to drag her to the back of the detention vehicle. Naye’s left arm tingled with a tangible heat. She thought this was her body signaling to her a heart attack was oncoming. Her arm burned more as the officer pulled her toward the vehicle.
“My savings! You can have them! Please!” Rye screamed.
The officer threw Naye to the ground and stormed over to Rye. He snatched a small, thin, credit-card-sized slither of glass from her hand and read the numbers on the front. He tapped the panel against a raised portion of his glove by the wrist. The final goodbye to her savings was the soft beep.
“Tell anyone about this, ‘Rye’, and I’ll shoot you dead and that pregnant fuck over there. We good?”
She nodded and ran over to a sobbing Naye. She lifted her, throwing her arm over her shoulder, and walked her back to their ACV.
Rye didn’t notice her friend’s hand emitting a visible curling vapor.

Chapter Eighteen

We join a young soldier called Mella, as he faces God’s angels on the streets of Koteshastan on the earth-like planet of El-Bayna. The question the entire globe has, “are they peaceful? Looking to spread God’s love?” is answered.

The military was under severe pressure in the Koteshastan region of El-Bayna. In pockets of the area, they were having sporadic successes, though. The city of Lessdahn was one such breakthrough sector.
Mella tapped the side of his helmet and spoke. “They’re falling, sir. If we aim for their waist, it takes out their flight and—it seems—their protective shield. But there are so many of them. All coming from the skies.”
A voice crackled back from his helmet. “Press forward. Tell your troops to press forward!”
Mella wore dark blue frontline military clothing, with black body armor that covered his limbs. Upon his head he wore a round helmet with a thick clear front visor, and he held a white assault rifle.
The voice crackled once more. “So, are they… angels?”
“Yes, I think so, sir—they… look like angels. Wait a minute, sir.”
From the top of a building in the distance, several mysterious visitors stood as silhouettes, their wings extended like birds of prey.
Mella and twelve of his troops were standing in a large open public park, within the center of a wide complex of buildings. Stone paths, small viewing ponds, and well-maintained flowers still stood fresh. A few days ago, families would have enjoyed the shopping and food courts here. There would have been children playing on the grass and elders enjoying slow walks by the shrubs. Now, there was only the sound of weapons fire.
Two angels from the group watching from the building shot into the sky, their great extended wings majestic. The troops each found their own target in their sights and locked on to their chosen enemy.
“Hold your fire! Not yet!” Mella shouted.
The park was a pedestrian area surrounded by lofty buildings, now all but deserted.
The two angels circled overhead, stalking their kill from the skies. Mella took a cool breath through his nose, filling his chest.
“Go! Go!”
Each troop squeezed their respective triggers, the powerful bursts of the projectile leaving their weapons sharp in their ears. Several of the crew screamed with a potent cocktail swirling within them of fear and adrenaline, the shots lighting each one of them in flickering bursts.
The angels spun and twisted above them, missing the sharp hot bolts fired from the weapons. One lowered himself next to the circle of troops, avoiding a string of projectiles. He opened his hands toward the troops and fired two thin spikes of lightning from them. They cracked through the armored chest plates of a male and female soldier who were dead before they dropped to the ground.
Mella spun around to see his fallen soldiers. He clenched his teeth and shot the assault rifle toward the being, who was now hovering only a few feet above ground level.
They were too elusive to tag. They were either flying too high or when they were within a high percentage shot range, it was too late. This angel, however, misjudged Mella’s reactions. By the time the angel had raised another palm in his direction, he had already rolled forward free of the impact zone. While still on the floor, he lifted his weapon and fired it straight into the rib area of the angel.
The struck angel gripped his mid-section and shot to the skies. His cries were high-pitched and unusual. The remaining troops still tried to pepper the angels above them.
“Shit, Mella, you got one!” shouted a voice from the window of a nearby store.
Another angel joined those circling overhead. His dark silhouette was several feet above them in the sky, watching on. Once the second being was struck by the remaining troops’ projectiles in the collar bone, sent flying away screaming, this new foe interjected.
The injured one flew toward the sky, away from the gunfire, gripping his shoulder. The new arrival—his face one of teeth baring anger—grabbed him in the sky as he attempted to escape and threw him to the ground. As the new angel landed next to the one he’d just thrown back to the grass, Mella screamed: “Aim! Fire!”
A volley of orange red-hot spikes flew toward this blond angel who stood before them. He was in his early fifties, with the lightest stubble, and like all of them, he had white skin. His stature alone indicated he was of the highest rank among them.
He wore a gleaming shawl that was torn to pieces like white confetti as the troops fired into his torso as he stood over his cowering companion. As they continued to unload rounds of red-hot spears into him, he looked around, surveying the area as if his firing foes didn’t even exist.
The projectiles were bouncing off his muscular torso, the glowing top half of his shawl shredded from the weapons fire.
“This guy is different. The gunfire it’s not even affecting him.”
The blond angel barely flinched as each shot pinged off him. He turned toward his colleague on the floor and opened a palm.
“No, please! Horrin, I...”
A circular white orb consumed the blond angel’s palm, coating everything within a few feet of him in blinding light. The troops were still firing, screaming obscenities toward the being.
He spoke but not in a language they understood.
He spread his four wings, and the span looked enormous. Still, they fired. Without looking down, this superior one threw the quivering white orb of light, consuming his entire hand to the ground, toward the head of his fallen, failed subordinate, executing his own kind in front of the El-Baynan military. The lower-ranked being’s skull exploded into a bloody mash, and red liquid sprayed the face of the one that was called “Horrin”.
“Nothing. Not one shot has even grazed him. Retreat! Retreat!”
The troops sped off in different directions across the wide, flat grassy area in an attempt to find cover in the surrounding buildings.
The blond angel spoke—once again—in a tone and language that made no sense to them. He seemed to plead with them, warning them. He spoke again, this time in broken El-Baynan.
“God’s... anger. I am a vessel for God’s anger. I... offer you this chance... to repent.” The accent was strange, unrecognizable. Mella stopped in his tracks when he heard El-Baynan and turned around to face him. The rest of his troops disappeared into the abandoned nearby buildings like scattering ants.
“What do you want? Why are you here?” said Mella, looking down his sights, his assault rifle aimed toward the brain of the winged male.
“Stuk’aith, The Prophet of El-Bayna. Maihnart, salla hunquell fhurnak Osihlian zell borh?” The angel broke off into that unknown language mid-speech.
“Do you accept Stuk’aith as your prophet, and will you embrace the Osihlian light?” he asked, this time fully in El-Baynan.
“It can’t be!” said Mella.
The commanding voice in his helmet spoke. “Mella! What’s the report? Who are you talking to?”
Mella saw within his visor the red digits of numbers counting down. They were at twenty seconds left. He dropped his weapon to the ground and unclipped his headgear and armor, which he threw to the same spot. He had short dark plaits and looked several years younger than his twenty-two years on El-Bayna without his full military wear. It was over.
His troops were shouting at the top of their voices, echoing from the windows of the various shops they had retreated to, some pointing toward the sky as all heard the hissing air jets of a military craft overhead breaking through the clouds.
Horrin looked toward the sky, and an El-Baynan drop ship appeared above them by a few hundred feet. It was a rectangular boxed ship designed to carry troops to stations across the planet. Underneath, they could see housed two large, flat circular sections. It was metallic midnight blue with two broad turrets on each side, with smaller cannons sticking out like stubby arms.
The blond attacker seemed fascinated as he looked upwards toward it. Mella uttered something about loving his children when a large metal sphere fell toward them from underneath it.
Screams came from the shop windows.
The bomb detonated on top of Horrin. The blast radius wiped out the entire park and surrounding buildings in a violent torrent of destruction.
Horrin emerged from the flames, covered in debris, stripped of his clothing, unmarked. He looked upwards and flew toward the clouds, pulling a trail of dust and smoke. He tore through the ship above him, erupting from the exit hole he left like a giant bullet. A shower of torn metal and electricity exploded, filling the horizon. A resulting fire splintered itself throughout the ship before it fell as Horrin disappeared hundreds of feet upward through the clouds.

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