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Part 1, One Hundred Years After
Posted By: Guardian
Date: 4 August 2004, 12:23 PM
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For weeks many people stayed in the hills, hiding and waiting for news. Their husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons stayed to hold the attackers at bay, and those in hiding had no way to know what had happened to them. Only the men too old or young to fight had gone into hiding with the women.
But after three days of uneasiness, a party was gathered and they set off to find out what happened. What they found was appalling, and most cried out. Only the elders, who had heard first hand stories of this kind of thing managed to keep their silence.
Bodies littered what was left of the streets and sidewalks; they were hardly recognizable because of the plasma burns and injuries. Many were charred and blackened, with limbs missing. Blood had seeped into the pores and cracks of the pavement, staining it a deep red. Some of those stains would never be washed clean.
Very few of the small buildings that had once lined the streets still stood. They had been crumbled from the constant rain of plasma from the orbiting ships. Most of them were crumbled; their debris littered the streets and buried the survivor's loved ones.
Three months later, the town was as close to back to normal as it could be under the circumstances. Shops had been rebuilt, houses reconstructed. Everyone helped everyone else rebuild their homes and shops. Luckily, the orchards to the south that had supplied the shops with produce had not been touched. Only the town its self seemed to have been affected—anything outside the boundaries of the town were unaffected.
The bodies of the fallen had been buried in the cemetery north of town, about halfway up the mountain. It was a beautiful spot, overlooking the white-sanded beaches and the town itself. Many—if not all—citizens still made daily trips to the cemetery to put out flowers. The children left letters at on their relatives' gravestones, always hoping prayers would be answered, never understanding why it had happened.
Five years had passed, and life still had not returned to normal. Some of the older children had grown, and married, starting families of their own, but there were not many who were old enough to marry.
Fewer people visited the cemetery, only a few still made the daily trip. Most had abandoned any thought of receiving justice for their loved ones' untimely deaths. They tried to go back to their routines and not dwell. But there were still some who wanted justice more than anything.
Twenty-five years after the attack, Cerasi had become one of those people. She had been born six months after the attack. She had grown up hearing stories of the tragic day, never knowing her father. She knew he had died to save her, and her mother, and all the people in the town for that matter.
Her mother died when she was nineteen, and she moved to a small house in the forest on the south side of the mountain, living alone.
Cerasi listened to every word spoke about her father, and put all the photos she found of him in a little green album that rested under her pillow. The townspeople thought she was crazy, as she devoted all her time to trying to find the people who did this to her father.
She logged off the terminal was on her way to the kitchen when she caught herself in a mirror. Once, years ago, she would have been considered attractive. Her short auburn hair and vivid green eyes were captivating. She cut a slim figure and was caring and smart, and she was independent. Now her hair was more than shoulder length and unkempt. Her figure was the much the same, but she wore sloppy clothes that hid it. She was still smart and caring, but she was ignored most of the time, labeled as a lonely little girl looking for the impossible. Her attractiveness was still there, it was just hidden. But no one cared to try and find it.
"Cerasi," her friend said as she burst through the door. This was the one person who still saw the old Cerasi, buried somewhere in the void that was a search for Cerasi's father's killers. She knew that for that person to come out again, her father had to be avenged. "The ceremony is about to start."
"Oh, how could I forget?" Cerasi muttered. "Thanks, Jessi." The girl's full name was Jessica, but she preferred Jessi. She was almost the same image as the old Cerasi. She was slender and beautiful, with short jet black hair and startlingly vibrant blue eyes. She was only a few years younger than Cerasi, and they had been friends since the age of seven. "Come on, we'll walk down together."
"Alright," Jessi said brightly. "We'd better hurry or we'll be late." The raced one another down the mountain to town square, where a podium had been set up next to the statue remember those who gave their lives for the community twenty-five years before. Upon the stage, a man stood behind the podium, beginning his speech.
"The UNSC has asked us, as well as each city on every other planet in their control, to hold a ceremony this day. We are here today to commemorate those who served for the good of humanity. Those who served in the UNSC one hundred years ago are to be remembered. Most of us have heard stories about the war from our parents, who passed them down from their parents, who heard them from their parents. All of us are related to somebody who served in some way or another. It is because of these people that we stand here today. For it was those, those who were called upon to serve one hundred years ago . . . it was those that we commemorate this day to who eradicated the threat of the Covenant one hundred years ago on this day. That is why the UNSC has asked us to hold this ceremony.
"But we here on our world of Chenati have another reason for this ceremony. Some of you don't remember it. Some of you hadn't been born, others were just too young. But most of you . . . most of you remember. Most of you remember that on this day, twenty-five years ago, they came and they destroyed our town, and our lives. We don't know who did it," the man speaking paused, and looked around at the people now gathered in the square. Many of them were crying silently, some tried to hide it. Others just stood, stone-faced, determined not to let their emotion grab them again. They thought they had moved on, but many had not. "We don't know why they did it. But they came, and they destroyed our town, our families, and our very way of life. Our loved ones lost in the attack now lay to rest in the cemetery overlooking the town. Twenty-five years have passed since that day, the day our lives were so tragically torn apart. We remember them on this day, just as we remember those who served against the Covenant. On other worlds, they know nothing of our struggle—they know nothing of our lost loved ones. They commemorate those who wiped the Covenant threat clean of the galaxy. But in our hearts, both those who fell defending our settlement on Chenati, and those who served to defend all of humanity against the Covenant . . . in our hearts both are heroes. Both deserve commemoration, neither above the other, but both will always be remembered." He nodded and stepped down; he was in tears, as was most of the crowd. Many of the people made their way to the cemetery, to pay their respects on the commemorative day.
Cerasi sat on the curb and buried her face in her hands, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Oh, Cerasi," Jessi said, who was also crying. Jessi sat down beside Cerasi, and threw a comforting arm around her shoulder. "Come on," she muttered through sobs. "Let's go."
On their way up the mountain they heard it. Even though they had never heard it before, the sound was unmistakable. It sounded just as they had imagined when they heard the tales about it. Plasma fire was ripping through the streets.
But they also heard something else. It began as a dull roar, but grew steadily loader. They began to wander aloud what it was, but just then a U-shaped ship made of a strange, irridescent puprle metal alloy flew overhead. The watched its slow descent until it finally came to rest on the beach north of town, hovering a meter off the white sand. Two doors opened and formed ramps down to the beach and out they came, carrying personal energy shields, and plasma rifles and pistols. Twenty-five years of hard work had rebuilt the town, but those who had destroyed it had returned to bring it down again.
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