Continued on From 'Dark Histories Part One'

‘It was…’ she continued hesitantly, trying to find the right words, ‘hell, I suppose you’d call it. A cliché I know, but nothing else comes close. Pure bloody savagery on a massive scale.’

She looked Shaana in the eyes, tried to find some understanding there. The girl gazed back, curiosity sparkled, but little else.

‘The Confederation had already attacked a number of worlds within the protectorate, planets like yours I suppose, where they rampaged on a small scale, destroying communities and taking captives, planets on the outer rim, isolated and vulnerable, testing our resolve. But nothing on a planetary conquering scale. The capitol worlds hastily assembled a suitable response, commissioning warships, raising a military, formulating strategy. War was new to us, but we had thousands of years of human history to study, and it turned out we were pretty good at it. But nothing prepared us for Akashan. They attacked the world with such ferocity we didn’t have time to respond. Our fledgling army was deployed, to force the bastards off world and back into their own space. But they were superior in every respect…hardware, weapons, military prowess, tactics, training. They’d been preparing for this for hundreds of years, looking at us, their neighbours', with envy and hatred. They slaughtered millions, enslaved more, and when we arrived they brushed us aside with brutal ease. My first taste of battle…’ Mya’s voice drifted away as the memories came back, the atrocities she witnessed, the scale of the slaughter. Shaana touched her arm, gentle but urging her to continue.

‘As it happened, I was a very good soldier.’ She smiled weakly, looking to the water that flowed past them, seeing the faces of ghosts in the eddies and foam. ‘I joined what we laughingly called the marine corps, assault troops that would hit the ground first and try to establish a bridgehead so that the larger infantry divisions could come in later and take over the assault. We had very little in the way of armoured support, our job was to hit them hard and quick. Oh, we had aerial support from the two carriers we had managed to cobble together, but our aircraft were no match for theirs. We were exposed, outnumbered and systematically annihilated within a matter of hours. That’s when I found myself pretty much alone.’

‘I know that feeling!’ Shaana whispered. Mya looked at her and saw for the first time that frightened little girl that must have been so terrified when the Confederation came to her world. She placed her hand on that of the girls as she continued to grip her arm.

‘Yes, I know.’ She said simply. ‘Turns out though, that that’s when I’m at my best.’

Shaana cocked her head slightly, looked at her curiously.

‘A Confederation patrol, I don’t know, maybe twenty of them, and a dirty great gunship, came upon me in no man’s zone. I’d lost contact with my platoon and become isolated. As they approached me I heard them laughing and talking. I got the impression they thought they were going to have some fun with me.’

‘And?’ Shana quizzed urgently as her voice trailed off again.

Mya smiled, ‘I killed every last one of the fuckers, and brought the gunship down with one of their own RPG’s.’ The triumph in her voice sounded hollow, even to her, but the memory of that little victory in the middle of all that destruction still gave her some pride. If only she had known then that the consequences of that action would lead her to the miseries of this hell, she may have taken a different direction. The bastards had had their revenge in the end, had taken their pound of flesh, and then some. If she ever got off this shithole planet she knew she would never be the same. She’d lost a large part of her humanity on Akashan, but they’d done a pretty good job of ripping the rest of it away right here...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mya's story begins...

I knew I was going to tell the back stories of my protagonists at some point and I did this one quite a while ago now, so I'm glad I've finally got the chance to post it.

Thanks for looking