The flame lit the memorial in a warm, soothing light, reflecting from the highly polished floor and the industrial steel walls. Gathered around it stood a small, almost intimate crowd. Off to one side, M’halixx shifted from one foot to another, to another, nervously waiting for some cue only she knew.
X’arrik, a bit put out by having to attend this dreary event, ticked off the minutes.
The structure enclosing the memorial consisted of rocket fuselages serving as columns to hold a domed roof, which shone copper on the outside, but from inside displayed a stunning view of the galaxy above.
On one small bit of the circumference, the rocket columns gave way to sheets of steel, resembling the sides of an ancient spaceship. It was against this that the fire burned.
“At least we don’t have to stand in the rain,” he thought. And almost as if on cue, thunder pealed, long and slow, a deep, reverberating bass, followed by a series of bright flashes of light.
“This sodden planet,” he cursed beneath his breath in an audible hiss.
“What was that, X’arrick? I didn’t quite hear you.”
The speaker, J’aldrixx, came up only about two-thirds of the way to X’arrick’s impressive height, making her a rather tall female. She fixed a couple of eyes on him, with just a hint of sarcasm.
“You heard me well enough,” he responded. “And you know it’s true. A thousand worlds and we had to pull a billet in this backwater dump. Who did we piss off?”
She chuckled, a chittering sound, high-pitched, but soft, aimed for his ears alone. “I don’t know about you, but I slept with the Admiral’s wives.”
“You would.”
She waved an antenna at him, questioningly.
From the front, M’halixx cleared her throat and began the proceedings. They both fixed most of their attention on her.
“Thank you all for being here. It means a lot,” she began.
X’arrick snickered, “As if we had a choice!”
J’aldrixx punched him, not so gently.
“As you know, we come to this shrine each year to remember the fallen, the brave heroes who stood their ground in defense of home and country. And more, because the battle that felled them was not a mere conflict between rival countries. It was a battle for existence.
“They fought,” she intoned.
“And we won,” the room responded, even X’arrick added his voice to the chorus.
“Yes. We won, as we always do. Sometimes we win quickly and sometimes without even a fight. But not here. These creatures, these defenders, fought to the bitter end, tooth, and nail, as it were. Not one of their kind remains. All we have of them now is what they left behind. And it is in memory of all that was lost in this place, the last battle of the last war, that we commemorate here now. So much destroyed! An entire species gone!”
X’arrick tracked with her for a while, but then his mind began to drift. He hadn’t been here then. The battle for this planet was before his hatching. But the stories were told across the universe, this tiny little planet with a few billion inhabitants came closer than any other to beating the Z’azzen.
In millions of years of history, no one else had managed to hold there own for so long against the Z’azzen’s appetite for more worlds. Thousands had been lost!
It was here that his grandfather had been wounded, losing all but three of his arms. He survived, although it wasn’t pretty. Many others were not so lucky.
The room echoed with another choral response and X’arrick snapped out of his reverie.
“So today, we commemorate the bravery and sacrifice of the inhabitants of G’oldurree, this tiny blue planet, third from its sun. The race of humans put up a great fight. We are sad to see them go. They would have made fine Z’azzenjees.
“But they are no more,” she intoned.
The room in one voice responded, “Gone but not forgotten.”
At the final words, the crowd dispersed, each gliding effortlessly across the floor, their many legs undulating so that they appeared to move without moving a single limb.
The last to leave, X’arrick gazed into the flame, wondering how there could have been any other outcome. The Z’azzen never lose, and apparently, humans never surrender. Looking up, he thought, it is written in the stars.
The Earth, as they called it, now an insignificant outpost for the multigalactic Z’azzen.
“You can have it back, as far as I’m concerned,” he hissed aloud, and glided out into the rain.
Also published here.
Lead image by Troy Mortier on Unsplash.