About Human Spirit And Rage

By Ruggero

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The war council observed in religious silence, while the Head-Council searched on their datapod. At long last they seemed to find whatever they were searching for, and started messing with the airscreen in order to project it on the council room's projectors.

With a slight grunt of satisfaction, the Head-Council clicked the last button and relaxed themself.

The connection started:

Audiovisual meeting, date 16.342/33/290.

Recorder: Headsquadron commander-representant "?#;@/?;¢$∆¶"

Initializing connection…

The video started, and a being, "?#;@/?;¢$∆¶" with all probability, massive even for the standards of their species, just stared silently at the camera for a moment. Maybe they hadn't been certain whether or not the datapad had already started recording.

The council waited in silence for some moments. Then the moments became seconds, then dozens of seconds. Right when the council members were about to speak, the being did so:

"Ehrm, here it's Headsquadron commander-representant "?#;@/?;¢$∆¶" of the seventh legion, Human war dispatch on Astraluminal VII."

Once the due presentation had been done, Headsquadron commander-representant "?#;@/?;¢$∆¶" seemed to fall again in his previous mental state, they almost seemed catatonic.

"Are they in their right state of mind?" asked one of the council members. A nod from the Head-Council silenced any further reserve.

"Honored members of the High Council, I present important informations on humans to you all, in hope for your thinking to be clearer, and your decisions wiser."

At least they didn't forget the right etiquette, even in their dubious mental state, thought everyone in the room.

"Yesterday, we drove the last attack on the Human colony of Astraluminal VII, "New Rome". Obviously…"

They paused, as if considering whether or not to use the word 'obviously'.

"Obviously, we won. And yet…"

They looked blankly in the camera for a second.

"The council will have to excuse me as I am conscious of my impoliteness, but I will have to drop the formal speech here."

They grabbed a mug of Eht with their lower left arm, and sipped a short, shallow mouthful.

"The message I am… The thing I… It's hard."

They took another sip.

" I'm hopeful all honoured council members will be familiar with the humans. Or, at least, their anatomy."

Another long silence.

"They are weak. They are one third of us. They are frail, slow, clumsy, little and so prone to sickness, it's harder to find someone without diseases, rather than the other way around."

"?#;@/?;¢$∆¶" made a mocking sound with its jaw's pincers. A mocking sound all too bitter to be sincere.

"If their males lift more than 500 kilos, they are considered exceptional. Our children lift those weights in order to start training. If their runners run at 35 kilometers an hour, they are considered incredibly fast. Our runners can touch the 100 kilometers an hour. If they fall from 20 meters or so, they are most likely to die, and even if they survive, they break their frail bodies. If you throw a rock at them, they bleed. Feed them poison, and they die. I could go on, but I hope the honoured council members get my point."

Another long sip ensued.

"They don't have any armor, any claws nor fangs, nor tusks or poisonous talons. They don't even have wings to flee."

"?#;@/?;¢$∆¶" watched their own physique, wondering for the first time in their life what would they be without all their natural weapons. They were something so natural to "?#;@/?;¢$∆¶", that they wouldn't be "?#;@/?;¢$∆¶" without them.

"They have an incredible stamina, I'll give them that. I saw humans run for hours and hours without stopping, or humans…" They stopped for a moment, falling again in that catatonic silence.

"Or humans surviving fatal damages to vital organs. They are Endurance incarnate."

Another long sip.

"I hope the council won't misinterpret my words: shoot them and they die. Cut them, poison them, break them, starve them and they die. Just, sometimes, when you less expect it, they survive long enough to amaze you."

The council now was starting to wonder what that whole videoconference was about, and if it was the case for "?#;@/?;¢$∆¶" to be suspended from their role until further notice. It was only because of the Head-Council still watching in silence that no one uttered a single sound.

"When you less expect it…" they chuckled, looking at the empty mug. A void chuckle.

"Yesterday we launched the final attack, and their colony fell. When my squadron engaged, it was the last of several battles. The humans are weak, but even then, their weapons can kill us. Hardly, but the humans are fast to learn and even faster to better themselves. The first time I fought with them, it was a massacre. Yesterday, it was a battle."

Another long silence ensued, in which "?#;@/?;¢$∆¶" stared silent at his own desk, wondering who knows what in their mind.

"When they informed me about humans, I laughed. I mean, I did internally. - C'mon, the Council really expect something like… like them to be a menace? To even be a challenge? To be anything else than dead meat?!- I thought, while studying them: one heart, one spinal cord, four limbs, a hundred kilos at most. No natural armor and everything else. How could they survive on their own planet, let alone dominate it?! I thought it a joke that they could travel the stars."

They lowered their eyes.

"And yet, here they are. Fighting armies bigger than theirs, composed of soldiers deadlier than theirs. And yet, they do not falter. They die in the tens of thousands, and do not falter. It's… It was incredible, the first time I saw it."

Now, somehow, some of the council members were silent because they were listening, and not because the Head-Council was silent. Some of them could see there was something going on, behind "?#;@/?;¢$∆¶"'s eyes. Something quite difficult to pinpoint, and just as much disturbing.

"I remember clearly our fourth fight, the first battle they won. In only a month or so, they went from massacred preys to actual combatants. To our shame, they won. I will never forget that date, for two reasons: the first being they won, the second…"

They grabbed another Mug of Eht and sipped again, holding it with both their lower arms.

"The second reason being I lost my brood-sibling that day. To a female human! In the human race, honoured council members, contrary to our own, it's the female the small one between the sexes, and the male is the battle-oriented one. That fact shocked me: a female, on the battlefield? After that, I started investigating the humans. Not only their military and their strategies, but also their culture…"

They sipped.

"What I discovered shocked me even more: they have no racial subdivision. No social hierarchy established since birth: every female is just as good to lay eggs and raise children, and every male is just as good to fight and go to war as anyone else. Even females go to war, apparently!"

A dry laugh shook their broad superior shoulders.

"They are not conditioned by their genetics: they can replace anyone with anyone! Anyone of them can be a soldier, and then go on and be a teacher, and a leader, and a labourer and so on, contrary to us: even if I wanted to, I couldn't lay any eggs, assuming I were to be a female. And even if a Raiser were to find himself in a dire situation, without a Soldier protecting him he wouldn't be anything but a dead body walking. Heck, us soldiers are even asexual, in order to ensure a better fighting! Our gender is war!"

"?#;@/?;¢$∆¶" laughed at his own joke, a joke all too common between the soldier caste.

"And yet, that human, that weak female, killed my brood-sibling. When we retrieved the body, can any of the Honoured Council members guess how the human accomplished such feat? For your information, she was disarmed and without ammunitions, and already fatally wounded. Even without any external intervention, she would have died in a matter of minutes."

A dead silence followed. The council was now curious, to say the least.

"She took a grenade, and jumped on my brood-sibling. She forced their mouth open via destruction of their own hands and shoved the explosive right down their throat, down to her shoulder.

When you watch a human long enough, you learn to read their emotions; they are incredibly expressive, and even the slightest emotion can be showed on their faces: her corpse, for instance, was laughing like… it's impossible to describe, but it was something creepy, something… just wrong. She seemed happy, but her happiness came from… death."

"?#;@/?;¢$∆¶" scratched their right arms, visibly uncomfortable.

"Anyway, after this episode I decided I wanted to know the humans. 'Know your enemy', as the Great masters say. And so I did. I started studying their culture and I started interrogating the prisoners."

They put away the mug, and started scratching nervously their arm-scales. They were nearing a topic… Hard. Hard to discuss, hard to contemplate, hard to…

Hard.

"the first human I interrogated was rather confused by my questions" they said shaking slightly their antennas in amusement.

"I asked them how their families were structured, how their society worked, how they raised their children… this kind of question. All was relatively normal – remember we still talk about an alien race – until I asked how they dispose of their dead. Can you guess the response?"

"?#;@/?;¢$∆¶" looked the camera straight in the eyes.

"'It depends' said the human. Up until this point, nothing too strange. We too have different ways. So, I asked: 'on what?'.

And the human started listing a lot of modalities and their reasons. After listening to them for some minutes, I asked them about Death. About their relationship with it. And they responded jokingly, perhaps mocking me, but still, and I quote: 'The old pal? It's there, and one day it will take every one of us. We know it. At least, I do'.

He called the Ancient Enemy "old pal"?!

From that momento onward, I concentrated all of my researches on that. On their vision of death. And I found out almost all of their cultures revolve around death, or at least touches it."

They made an hysteric clicking with their jaw-pincers, visibly shocked by something.

"You know that humans still die of disease and hunger? We have forgotten those centuries ago, but they still fight death on so many occasions… We evolved from an apex predator, we had no one above us; they evolved from preys, they had, and still have, a lot of beings that prey on them. They dance with death every day! Until not too long ago, it was common for the females to die while giving birth!"

"?#;@/?;¢$∆¶" stood up and walked in circles for some moments, before calming down. They sat down again.

"I'm sorry, honoured Council members" he bowed "What I meant to say is that humans have a way tighter bond with death than they even realize. And this brings me to what I wanted to say:"

The council finally saw this long charade coming to an end, and listened even harder than before.

"About yesterday's battle… We didn't fight soldiers. They were civilians. We fought their militia three days ago, and yesterday was meant to be a simple occupation. No fights. No deaths.

And they fought with their civilians. They sent everyone that could hold a weapon. I saw their females, their elders, their younglings. I didn't see a single soldier, and yet I saw a whole colony of fighters. And the shocking view was that they… they launched themselves to death. They ran against the projectiles without searching for repair. They launched themselves in close combat without weapons. They charged in almost suicidally…"

"?#;@/?;¢$∆¶" averted their eyes, nervous.

"when we finally took the colony, there were no civilians to capture, except children too small to understand. No survivors. Every single human big enough to charge, charged. They covered the lands in blood, both our and theirs."

"?#;@/?;¢$∆¶" shivered.

"Humans have the fantastical habit to record everything. And when we entered their city, we found the recordings of the speech one of them made to the whole city. And… well… honourable Head-Council, can I share the video?"

The Head-Council clicked their jaw-pincers twice, a yes.

"?#;@/?;¢$∆¶" tinkered a second with their datapad, then sent the record.

The video showed a Human, a male probably, in a public plaza with a voice amplification device and a rifle on his shoulder. Some of the council members shuddered, this the first time they actually saw a human, with their soft flesh, the pink skin, the weird fur on their head…

"Brothers, Sisters!" screamed the human, while the translators of the council members made his speech understandable.

"They came here and started a war with us! They killed our soldiers! They overcame our defenses! They cornered us! And now, they are coming for us! Right now they are marching toward our city! They will take us, and they will end us!

I won't lie, I WON'T say that everything will be fine if we fight with all we've got! We may have ideals, dreams and hopes, but once you are out there, they don't matter anymore! Such is the cruel reality! On the battlefield, every hope, every dream, EVERYTHING, is useless! None of it changes how a projectile kills, how a blast burns our bodies, how Death itself walks those cursed lands and embraces soldiers on both sides! The only thing that matters is to kill the enemy and survive another day!

Because, in the end, we will all die one day!

Does that mean our happiness doesn't matter? Does that mean our ideals are meaningless?! Our very lives?!

DON'T FUCK WITH ME!

Who, here, would dare to say such thing about our brothers and sisters that died to protect us? Were their lives meaningless? Were THEY?! NO! They serve as an example! They live in our memory, in our hearts, and in our lives everyday! They are still alive, through us! I lost my very son against those monsters! If anyone here thinks he died in vain, come here! I will kill you personally!

They died, yes, and soon it will be our turn! Does that mean our lives have been useless up until now? Was it meaningless to be born!? Reinforcements won't make it out in time, when they'll arrive we will all be dead by long. Was it useless to build this city then, because of that? Did our ancestors wrong us, by setting their eyes to the stars, and saying: 'they'll be ours, one day!'?

EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM, AND THEIR DEATH, HAS MEANING!

Because we refuse to forget them! We refuse death to take even their memory away!

I won't lie, brothers and sisters: we WILL die! I won't edulcorate the bitter truth! But will we let them take away everything from us? We will die, brethrens! But will we let those monsters take even the ultimate freedom from us? Will we let them decide HOW we die?!

If there is no difference, hear me! Embrace your weapons, and take as many of those monsters together with you to hell today as you can! We won't go gently into that good night, brothers and sisters! We won't die an easy death! Together we shoulder the memory of our fallen, and our children will shoulder ours!

Hear me, warriors! Do not surrender to death! Don't offer the enemy this last courtesy! If you have to die, die free, not like cattle! Make them hear your last screaming!

Rage, soldiers, against the enemy! Rage against the dying of the light! They will have to conquer every single centimeter of our city! They will have to shed sweat and blood, to take it away from us! They will have to tear it off our cold, dead hands! Because my brethren, we do not falter against the cruelty of life! We do not back down! We look it in the eyes, and bite it back! We push forward!

Rage, warriors, and curse, swear, and scream against the enemy! Against life! Against fate!

AGAINST DEATH!"

A roar broke up, and thousand upon thousands of those humans screamed furiously, in a view that made even them, the War Council, flinch.

Then the video stopped, and the council members found themselves back in their council room, shocked by the speech. Some of them had broken their glass without even being aware of it.

What did they just see?

There were… no words.

"And after this speech, those humans fought like crazy." Spoke "?#;@/?;¢$∆¶"

"They launched themselves against our army on their… "cars"… and when we destroyed them, they started running. When we started shooting at them, they took their fallen and used them as shield."

They took another mouthful of Eht from their mug in order to calm down a little, their hand trembling imperceptibly.

"When we broke their legs, they started crawling on their arms; when they ended their ammunitions, they launched themselves in close quarter combat; when they broke their hands against our scales, they started biting us; when their teeth fell out, hell, they cursed at us! And when death finally took them, they glared at us with eyes..."

Remembering it made a shiver of pure frost run down their spines.

"Eyes of pure hatred and rage. And they didn't stop screaming for a single moment. Not one of them."

"?#;@/?;¢$∆¶" scratched their neck, lost in thought.

"I couldn't fathom how humans could possibly survive on their own planet, let alone colonize others. But after yesterday…"

Their antennas shook violently, their jaw-pincers clicked nervously.

"There was this man that charged at me, in the heat of the battle. He was no soldier, I could tell. He never embraced a weapon before, it was clear by how he embraced it, and he had never killed another sentient, that too was way too clear, visible in his eyes. And yet there he was, charging straight at me, screaming, only madness in his eyes. It was like… like watching a Deathrunner in the eyes."

Some of the council members shivered thinking about the only natural predator they had, one they drove to extinction long ago, but that still scared them.

"No fear. No reserves. Just mad rage. He emptied his magazine on my armor, then took a knife and launched himself at my throat."

Only now some of the council members noticed that the point "?#;@/?;¢$∆¶" had been scratching on his neck had a dent on its armored scales, a cut several centimeters deep.

"when I grabbed his head, do you know what he did? He bit me! He looked me straight in the eyes, and bit my hand with everything he got, until his teeth broke and fell out. And then he spit his blood at me and cursed. And even when he died, his fangs didn't let me go."

"?#;@/?;¢$∆¶" intertwined his hands with uneasiness.

"After yesterday, I understood how humanity arrived where it stands now.

They are frail. They are weak, slow, clumsy and fragile. But their spirit… their spirit makes up for it all by tenfolds."

They took a deep breath, searching the strength necessary to say to the council what had to be said.

"You can tame a Human. You can break them. You can make them miserable with surprising easiness. If you are capable enough, you can even break their spirit. But that is a single human. With Humanity, you can't. You can't break them. You can't break… THAT. There is no way around it.

And every time we fight, they become harder to kill. They learn way too fast."

"What are you implying, "?#;@/?;¢$∆¶"?!" asked one of the council members. The first question ever since the start of this communication. The council member had broken the rule, they had spoke without the Head-Council's permission, but it was hard to ignore an insult such as that: humans, on par with them?! Maybe their stronger weapons had a chance, but even then, they were prepared. Their soldiers were superior.

"What I'm implying, honoured Council members, is that I don't know if we will be able to…"

They hesitated, while formulating a thought that horrified them almost as much as death itself.

"If we'll be able to win. We may win the battles… but I'm not sure about the war. And even if we won the war… It would only be a matter of time until Humanity would rise again.

What I'm implying, honoured Council members, is that the Human spirit…"

"?#;@/?;¢$∆¶" stopped, silent for a second.

"We fight on the battlefield, and as soldiers it's a shame for us to die there. It means we were weak. But them, the humans… they called it the "beautiful death" in their ancient times. They searched for it. They still do, in some way. When a human soldier is cornered, their first thought, right after they realize they will die, is to take as many enemies as possible down with them. They don't just simply give in to death. They watch it, and spit in its face, and defy it, offering it the last insult while they try to make sure to bring company for their final travel.

What I mean, honoured Council members, is that I'm not sure our race is on par with the Human spirit."

"?#;@/?;¢$∆¶" looked at the camera, emptied of their thoughts. They were exhausted, both physically and mentally. They were shocked. They were still elaborating what their eyes had shown them the other day, on the battlefield.

They did the finishing ceremonies and closed the communication. And then they looked out the window, leaning back on their chair.

What they saw yesterday, in the eyes of that man… Their backs shivered recalling the memory: his eyes had a light in them, a burning flame, that they had never seen. Their soldiers never had had such animosity in them, such passion. Sometimes, they had seen a spark, but that which burned in the eyes of that man… in the eyes of ALL of humanity, was a flame. A fucking beacon, an entire sun of rage , and…

Hell, they didn't know what it was! They just knew that it was something more. That passion, that spirit which burned with absurd intensity in their skulls, that rejection of fate, made him afraid. It was something greater than their flesh.

And deadlier than their enemies' weapons.

That man from yesterday, he was no soldier. But he was a fucking warrior all right.

"Fuck."

What the hell had they picked a fight with?