JL: A Crimson Dawn

Suggested also as a prologue to a planetary romance set on Ares.

*****

Arakh Omega stood without affliction, free of infection, unbound by the shivering chills of mammalian contagion that had ravaged his form on Antares, before his exile. Here he was the warden of the human seed population of Sirius Three. A cold shiver, more chilling than the viral reaction that had clutched him on Antares, now cooled his core.

“I am alone, no longer one with Scorpio.”

Spoken aloud in his native diction, this statement caused the three grays to chatter, hug one another and gaggle pile together in fear upon their three-cushioned couch. From there they had been expected to educate the humans in the arts and crafts of their ancestors, to rebuild a world worthy of gods in attendant majesty.

“I had rather hunt the crags of Scorpio for land crab, duel with my peers—rather then dwell here were I have no peers.”

They chittered in pain and objection even as the humans conducted the conclave of the lower order, about a table as large as his body, high up on this eminence of grass-clothed rock, overlooking six distinct regions of a virgin world. Emissaries of the slave thousands exported from the arena stands, together with the individual leaders reconfigured out of history to lead them in opposition to the fief fighters exiled here in disunion, awaited on the margins of the table of land upon which their camp was pitched as Sirius scourged the sky. The grays were supposed to advise the humans, were not intended to be bred upon by him as he lingered on in sterile ostracism far and away gone from his hive home. The grays were in such a simpering titter that they had begged intercession with him of the human linguist, who, alone had been judged intelligent enough to imbibe the measures, tone and cadence of their communicative song.

The grays were disgusting slaves and could only be redeemed by toil among lower life forms or by way of impregnation by such as he, who ached in his barbed loins!

The human barely stood as high as Arakh’s war girdle above his bristling spear of reproduction.

“My Lord, Arakh Omega,” screeched the monkey in imitation of scorpionic speech, “May I address thee?”

“Yes, Human Burton, it may be.”

“My Lord, the grays are not necessary for our reinvention of the wheel, the sword, etc. They are agitated with your freedom of mind and seem disposed to set up a stellar array and complain—that is report you in the negative—to your...COUNTERPARTS of Antares.”

“Counterparts?”

The monkey chattered, more scorpion-like all the while, “Are not Thee, OH Lord, King of this Planet?”

He swelled, bristled, and scissored his wings ominously, “A King, must have more than slaves, he must have loyal grays, and peers!”

“Indeed, Oh King,” chattered the little beast, and dare I say to Thee, Oh King of Ares, this planet of crimson skies we have named in your honor, you being the very God of War—even as your armor waxes red with the dawn!”

Arakh Omega stood to his full titanic height and observed the yellow rays of Sirius streaking the morning sky as the red moon called War, leered thirstily down from heaven and his attendant moons of his own, Fear and Rout circled his crimson girth…

“And there, MY King, beyond your namesake where your throne should for ages have already brightly shone down upon we your mortals, there is the comet called Discord that these scheming gray witches intend to seed with a negative report to a distant, and dare I say, faithless king—there is the cord from which we hang, Ye Greater and we lesser.”

The ferocity of a war-scheming brain shined up from the monkey-shine face of the jabbering linguist of barely formed logical muck, as it grinned and nodded to the three grays, “Oh King of Crimson Hearted Ares, Lord of Mine, the answer to Thee lack of peers and of back-stabbing fears sits whining and pining on the couch behind us. Say the word and the naddering nodes of negativity will be gently bound by we, your willing subjects, as you hollow-spin the bark of the forest below into a hive to here about your brood wives breed your own hallowed race.”

“Let it be done, intoned the rising King within, as he clacked his mandibles at the three grays below him, frozen now in the proper attitude of their subservient kind.

His chiton now crimson shone under the morning rays of day.

From where the sun rose a vast plain rolled to the south where human tents were pitched by yellow-haired men.

To the north of sunrise soared evergreen forests, at the edge of which camped fierce red-haired men.

North and south towered the spine of mountains that here made a small tableland pass. Southward, in a high valley, stood a small stone city of men, guarded by black-haired warriors armed and armored with brazen gear.

In the still shadowed northwest, rolled forested hills down to a wind-wracked sea. From these haunts hailed red men with straight black hair and painted faces.

To the southwest, abutting a vast marshland, towered leafy-treed rain forests, from which trotted lean, brown men with black wool topping their scared faces.

It was clear to Arakh Omega that five kings would soon emerge to rule these various breeds of humankind and that this one amazing monkey of the sword and the word, who alone spoke all of the lesser languages and had the highest standing among the majority language group, was perfectly positioned to serve as an emissary between these soon to be warring races, and their warden, if such a warden would so choose to become a father of his own higher race.

Arakh Omega nodded to the grays, “Bind my wives in the mating nets.”

Did they howl, as the one called Burton directed in various languages the most savage of men, Soto, Shaka and Johnson to bind the grays as their eyes swelled from great opals to weltering pools of tears within their wedge shaped heads.

This done, the man stood as a model of obedient competence: “Your next command, Oh King?,” bowed the too-smart-by-half ambassador of ape kind.

Arakh Omega grew taller, the supercharged hormones released by his cascading pathos causing his chiton to turn crimson in full, to crack and shed, and be replaced by burnished black chiton; his voice turning three tones deeper and rising three scales higher:

“An Age of Iron is upon you! I command a truce of thirty of these days, after which ye five races of men may demonstrate excellence in war to appease I, Arakh Alpha, God-King of Ares.”

He pointed with his carbide sword to the largest, tallest mountain, clothed in ice to the south, “There shall I cut my throne from coldest stone. There shall your champions—and you, Burton, my High Priest—attend me on the longest day, and the shortest day of this world’s year. Dread to be early—fear to be late.”

With those words, Arakh Alpha, God King of Ares, spun a net from his Reproduction Glands, engulfing the mewing grays in bridal silk that stunk with his desire, that hunger waxing second in ferocity only to his ire. Looking at Burton, then to the risen star Sirius and the reclining red moon, he clacked his mandibles and sawed his wings in such a wedding song, that the common humans lost there waste or swooned, the grays mewed like the very grubs of the galaxy, and some among the heroes around the table the grays had set for them, cheered, barked and wolfed a rough and rowdy applause as their retiring warden took flight to become their King, with a human song, “Shall I eat the weak! Shall I reward the strong!”

*****

The Last of James’ contribution, to be completed by Jeth and posted at his substack, linked conveniently through our Casting Darts Publishing tag above.

I would suggest, for a sequel, Jeth, that we poll our readers here and elsewhere for ideas on historical fighting men, and nerds too, they would like to have plucked from history and written as characters in a novel set on Ares. It seems I have left you with the meeting of the Human Kings of Ares and our Protagonist, VU.

*****

Composition Notes from Jeth

Hi James,

here's the list of Blue (came through!) and Red (mostly dead!):

Blue:

Richard Francis Burton

Shaka Zulu

Lewis Wetzel

Michael Thompson

Dioxiphous

Hernando De Soto

John 'Liver Eatin' Johnson