Grey sky, threat of rain. There will be no sundown tonight; the grey will grow deeper, the clouds swirling into a dirty blackness, and then the night will come. Over the lit streets droplets will fall, a myriad liquid fingers tapping insistently at the windows for insomniacs to turn and gaze, to remember: this is what living under occupation looks like.
Brago stares out the window of his eightieth-story apartment and into the skyline, restless hands clutching emptiness behind his back, eyes glued to the shadow that dominates the horizon – dominates the entire city – trying his best not to glance at his own grim reflection in its gilded cage. Behind him, warm lamplight cascades over unused furniture kept dust-free solely by the tireless toiling of Brago’s mechanical servants, all of whom now silently recharge out of sight.
He prefers it this way, this emptiness, this quietude where there is no one to judge or condemn him, no flagellating words screamed from beneath a podium and no accusing glares but the one cast of glass. Brago walks to the countertop, grabs the first bottle within reach and pours himself a drink without looking at the label; all he knows is that it’s expensive, and that alone is enough to nearly ruin the beginning of his nightly descent into stupor. Again he avoids his own eyes peering from within the crystalline liquid, swallowing in one gulp and letting it burn its way down into his stomach. Then he returns to the window and watches the shadows engulf the sky but for that one obscene shape, that terrible mountain that, even within the deepest darkness, remains.
The shape is everpresent, its ovoid countenance looming over the city even though its stillness is absolute and has been so for at least a decade. So out of place it looks, round where the city skyline is jagged and angular, perversely organic amidst steel and glass, and yet most choose to ignore it, to treat it as just another mundane feature of the metropolis. They turn their heads and move on with their day, never speaking of that which cannot be avoided, never lingering too long on the doom gestating in plain sight. Denial becomes sanctuary, indifference begets peace. This is what a life spent staring down the barrel of a loaded gun looks like.
This much Brago has contributed to. His speeches provoked mixed reactions at first – claps of cautious enthusiasm at the promise of lasting calm and furious peltings fueled by his undeniable betrayal – but it is the message he conveys that keeps the city from erupting into riots: do not interfere and you will be spared. Such is the way of Brago’s benefactors, the absent overlords of the entire planet. His word is now the status quo, his mouth decreeing the intent of their faceless conquerors.
Delusions of martyrdom are always tempting, the transmutation of Brago’s infamy and ostracization into a sweet balm to assuage his guilt. What sweet respite it would be to give his curse meaning, to fool himself into truly believing he is an agent of the greater good, a willful symbol of oppression meant to focus the resentment of the people. Yet Brago knows there is no way out but punishment, no absolution but the one purveyed by the mob of irate citizens who – tired of the occupier and its emissary – may one day strike him down and paint the banner of revolution with his blood.
But for that to happen, rage must overcome fear, fear of the fleshy monolith crowned with stormclouds whose shadow crushes the spirit and snuffs out the dreams of liberation that once flourished in Brago’s heart – dreams he once hoped others would nurture and make manifest. In their anguished absence, the barren soil breeds only hatred.
Brago hates the shape and its shadow, hates its pulsing bioluminescent veins as wide as he is tall and the low rumbling they make when approached like the gurgling of a drowning throat. He hates that it rises beyond even the tallest building in the city, a reminder of how easily civilization can be snuffed out by forces beyond its darkest nightmares, turned to ash and cinders in a single night. He hates that everywhere he looks the abomination is inevitable, and that the apartment its creators gave him looks straight into its heart. He hates himself most of all, a tailored traitor for his own kind, forced to be a voice of intent not his own, locked in a cage of unwanted and undeserved luxury in exchange for lying from his podium every time the oppressor wishes to deliver a message, betraying himself and the memory of his comrades with every breath he takes.
They are two sides of the coin, the shape and Brago – one made to embody terror, the other preaching a false normalcy, both keepers of the strangling status quo the oppressors call peace. And in the dying light of the evening, as the storm within rises to match the one outside, Brago at last meets his reflection’s gaze superimposed on the shape’s faceless visage and understands this truth that joins them both. He breaks down as the sky begins weeping, kneeling to supplicate forgiveness or at least punishment as the remembrance of his first betrayal pours out of his wounds.
In that life long extinguished, Brago is twenty-three summers young and full of righteous wrath. Five years have passed since the first moment of occupation, and every minute of it has been far too long. Tens of biomechanical warships hover over every major city on the planet, skeletal carapaces impervious to what little weaponry Brago’s people have, ventral tendrils twitching and shifting in perpetual vigilance of the populations they conquered the instant they breached the atmosphere. In the streets there is a tension that threatens to erupt into full-blown panic; the only thing stopping it is the certainty that any who would openly show resistance is a dead man walking. In all this time, no envoy has been sent down from the invaders’ spacecraft to address the world, yet they all know who this is: the Emerald Hegemony, unstoppable and pitiless.
Vatrara has been a neutral planet since the moment it gained independence from the Immortal Empire, its people proud of having colonized and terraformed an inhospitable rock into a thriving world of gleaming cities and lush biodomes. Even their joining of the Alliance of Free Worlds was signed with utmost caution, Vatrara’s leaders wary of becoming a cog of yet another imperial machine. Yet when a member of the Alliance is threatened, what do its fellow planets do? They scurry away to play an empty game of diplomacy, a farce meant to give them some semblance of credibility when the result is inevitable: the Emerald Hegemony now owns Vatrara, and that is the sole message its ships relay. No help will come, for no help is possible at all.
The cosmos is ruled by the strong. Treaties are signed and violated again and again, and in the end it is solely the empires that maintain a semblance of order through their expansionist desires. The Immortal Empire, the Solar Dominion, the Emerald Hegemony, the Coalition of Merchant Kingdoms. They are each others’ sole regulator, forced to uphold agreements only by the prospect of endless warfare amongst equals. Everyone else is fair game.
Every news channel on Vatrara is now a pit of hopeless resignation. Authorities advise people to remain calm and go about their day as usual, while experts shoot down any possibility of resisting the invaders by pointing out that Vatrara’s planetary defenses would be quickly overrun through sheer orbital saturation. Conspiracy theories abound that this is a coordinated move with the Immortal Empire: the terror of the Hegemony occupying Vatrara and the Alliance’s powerlessness will scare many other independent planets into flocking towards the seemingly more benign superpower – cold revenge for Vatrara’s independence. There is noise everywhere and it sounds like doom.
Then the inevitable happens and the announcement rancors through the planet like endworld trumpets: the Alliance of Free Worlds has recognized the Emerald Hegemony’s annexation of Vatrara. There will be no further discussion, no attempts to stop them at all. Chaos reigns. Multitudes pour out into the streets to protest and demand their independence be given back, public servants are lynched for their perceived complicity with the invaders, buildings set alight to spell out one last desperate pleading to the pitiless eyes watching from beyond the stars.
Then there is a poisonous calm. The citizens of Vatrara cease tearing each other apart to behold the sole ship descending from the heavens – a viscous aberration carrying a single individual even more repellent than itself: a Xevion, the Hegemony’s diplomatic caste, slithers over its myriad tendrils, its grotesquely engorged brain pulsing with bioluminescent flashes, and opens its serrated beak to hoarsely proclaim to the assembled masses their new overlords’ first decree. “Do not interfere and no harm shall come to you. That is all.”
With that, it returns to the fleet and leaves the people to do what they will. Violence slowly dies down, the truth of the Xevion’s promise made self-evident by the Hegemony’s utter inaction and apparent disinterest towards the planet’s inhabitants. Only when a rogue ship attempts to escape the planet do the limits of that promise reveal themselves in a rain of fiery shrapnel: no one is allowed to leave.
In a matter of weeks after the annexation of Vatrara becomes official, the Hegemony takes over management of everything that reaches or leaves the planet. Supplies, communications, travelers – they all are carefully controlled and vetted, subjected to a rigidity that borders on hermeticism; Vatrara is effectively cut off from the rest of the universe. On the ground, however, life goes on. People gradually return to a semblance of normalcy, preoccupied with their jobs, their families and what mundanities afflicted them before the Hegemony appeared in the skies. The fleet remains static, unmoving and uncaring, each day becoming less of a looming threat and more of an uninteresting blot in the otherwise pristine blue. The new normal settles without a single shot being fired in opposition.
Not everyone is content to ignore the invaders, however. There are those who, misguided by wounded pride and angry at their own helplessness, have resorted to spreading their malaise. In the shadows, cells coalesce and multiply in the streets of hate, waiting for a chance to strike, for a tiny fracture in the Hegemony’s power that can be infiltrated to expose their weakness. Perhaps then, these minds think, the people of Vatrara will rise and liberate themselves; perhaps then the steep cost they dread will become a worthy sacrifice in the name of freedom.
Small acts of protest, messages painted on the street for the tyrants in heaven to read, sabotage and vandalism against suspected sympathizers. Repetition breeds remembrance, forcing the public to keep their eyes glued to the scenery and their eyes attentive to the sound of brewing violence. But no true resistance can take root without a great show of triumph, without a true hit against the oppressor – without things going boom. And when the Hegemony again descends from their fleet and begins constructing obscene alien designs in the heart of every city, the temptation is too powerful for prudence to overcome.
As machines made of bone and sinew begin excavating the ground, laying the foundations of a permanent Hegemony presence, a plot forms for coordinated attacks. Small groups of radicalized youth and grizzled veterans of past conflicts unite under one banner and one rallying cry: Vatrara kli’sari, Vatrara burns free. This is not just a statement of intent, but an admittance to the sacrifice that will follow. Once the explosions go off and the Hegemony sheds its first blood, there will be chaos and death the likes of which Vatrara has never known, war across the entire planet, a baptism by fire over whose ashes the survivors will rebuild and prosper. The Universe and all its imperial powers shall witness this defiance, this triumph, and relent – never again will Vatrara’s independence be threatened.
At least that is what Brago believes when he attends the clandestine rallies, his heart inflamed with every patriotic speech and every promise that no victory exists without sacrifice. He claps when the words reach a high note, stomps his feet at every call of Hegemony blood, and when his chest brims with pride and his hands burn with a desire for action, he rises to the stage and proclaims his undying dedication to the cause even if it means surrendering his very life so others may live free. He is not a particularly talented orator nor does he play the novel idealogue, but his passion is raw and fiery, a spark amidst a swarm carried to every distant land by gusts of raging wind to unleash the inferno.
But rage without tempering, without structure and wit, is pitiful flailing against an opponent far superior to them. That is why reunions soon shift towards planning, scheming and weaving the shape of rebellion. Brago and his fellow co-conspirators dissect the layout surrounding Hegemony construction sites, mapping every entry point and every exit, studying the timing of guard changes and supply runs, committing everything to memory for their execution to go as smooth as possible against a foe too alien to be taken as predictable. Over their heads hangs the unspoken truth that not all of them, if any, will make it out even if their objectives are fulfilled; their quiet acceptance makes invoking the shadow of death unnecessary.
And yet, there is still brightness to be found amidst the grim atmosphere of dedication to the cause. In the weeks and months that follow, Brago finds himself making friends out of doomed men and women, getting to know their lives and their reasons to join the struggle. Some speak of unfulfilled dreams of visiting the stars, of the desire to know themselves unbound by any master; others grind their teeth as they describe the pain of families torn asunder, of the diaspora who left Vatrara without knowing they would never be allowed to come back to their loved ones; still others mutter with despair in their voices but hope in their eyes, hope that the sacrifices of their ancestors will not be rendered vain by this new threat to their freedom.
What moves Brago? He dreams of unblotted skies where the stars are not eclipsed by menacing shadows, of mirth and laughter like the ones his people knew before the Hegemony arrived, of the promised future where the entire cosmos felt within reach. He recalls the teachings of his parents about what independence and sacrifice meant, and the calm with which they passed knowing they had raised a child who would honor them beyond the grave. Every day, as he comes to know his fellow revolutionaries – his friends – Brago becomes more and more convinced that this is the right path, the only path he’s meant to follow. What cause is more righteous than this, the fight to give to others a chance at a better life? Vatrara kli’sari is no mere bloodshed, but the ultimate kindness: to give oneself up so others may live without chains.
It is with this at heart that Brago toils side by side with his comrades, training every night to fight to the last breath, going home with cuts and bruises, assembling and disassembling his gun until he can do it with his eyes closed, running uphill so that his lungs get used to burning, meditating his own death to prepare himself for a fear he knows he does not yet understand. It is with this acceptance that he allows himself to celebrate with them as the date draws near: a quiet, sober reunion to let themselves feel the warmth of their fraternity, to alleviate what shared fears remain and reaffirm that – whatever happens – they will face it together. In these last moments before the storm, Brago looks at the sky and drinks up starlight.
The plan is simple: at the same hour, each team will target one of the Hegemony’s sites, kill the guards and place a high-yield explosive. Detonations will occur near-simultaneously, following dissemination of a pre-recorded statement through every major news network and virtual channel. As a thousand fireballs consume the oppressor’s facilities, the people of Vatrara will know who the instigators were and be given a choice: to rise up against the Hegemony or continue to suffer in silence. This, the revolutionaries hope, will be the first shot in their war for liberation.
It all goes awry very fast. Brago and his comrades suffer minimal casualties against the outnumbered Mkeun guards; their freakishly strong muscles and armor-plated skin makes them deadly foes, but a couple of well-placed high-caliber rounds soon puts most of them out of commission. As the surviving Mkeun struggle against their faster and more nimble attackers, Brago and five of his friends push onwards into the fleshy edifice, carrying the bomb with them. Thick humidity clings to their bodies upon passing the maw-like entrance, a fetid stench clawing at their nostrils from the depths.
How far down does this thing go? Brago wonders as he runs on sinewy ground that seems to recoil and twitch under his feet, his torch barely able to penetrate the vapors rising from veiny streams of green ichor that flow towards the unseen nadir of this abominable construct. They must be very deep now, for the sounds of the fighting outside are no more and only the viscous drip drip drip and the muted heaves of the living, breathing ceiling remain. A knot begins forming in Brago’s stomach, and the weight of the bomb seems to increase a hundredfold as the feeling of having walked into a trap stabs his every nerve.
When the walls come alive and the gurgling screams of his comrades echo through the faint bioluminescence of the thing’s innards, Brago runs, stumbling over puddles that reek of amniotic fluid, feet half-entangled in the spilled intestines of still-living men and women who beg to be killed before the clawed chitinous appendages that emerge from every surface of the tunnel continue their tortuous flaying. Gunfire dies out and the wet sounds of cutting and breaking punctuate the screams of the dying. Brago whimpers as he falls and drops the bomb, skin torn by barbed tendrils that ensnare and constrict him, forced to crawl with all his might until he leaves behind pieces of his own flesh. He’s not going to make it any deeper, and he sure as death will not live to tell the tale. His finger is almost on the bomb’s trigger, body stretched so much he can feel tendons about to burst.
Vatrara kli’sari! Vatrara kli’sari! He screams through burning tears. Only now, in the face of true pain and death, does he realize he must finish this not for some misguided sense of patriotism, but because this is the only way for the agony to mean anything at all.
Then, an iron grip closes over his nape and pulls him up, the tendrils relenting as a new kind of pain begins. Brago has only a few instants to gaze into the cold, pitch black eyes of the Mkeun before it drags him off into the depths, crushing the bomb underfoot. All is lost, and yet a greater despair is still to come.
The stench is the first thing Brago notices – acrid, musky, clinging to every surface, burrowing its way down his throat and nostrils. Next comes the chittering, the sound of multitudes shifting, of appendages clicking together. His sight darts from one place to another, peering through the dim and greenish luminescence until he can make out shapes and movement. When his eyes adjust, he witnesses them in all their repugnant glory: countless polyp-like Uthraan blanket the entire ground, walls and ceiling, a living tapestry throbbing with bioelectric signals as they transmit information from one body to another in quick succession, fed by streams of liquefied nutrients pumped through thick arteries into their slimy forms.
At the center of the chamber, an engorged thing presides over the moist cacophony of biomass. It has no eyes or mouth, no ears or limbs. It simply remains still, crucified by a web of feeding tubes adjusted by skitterish Yhranc engineers, suspended in a cartilaginous membrane brimming with fluids to keep it from overheating as the Uthraan’s signals coalesce and climax within its labyrinthine ridges. It is a brain, a brain so colossal that Brago feels like an insect looking up at a boot for the first and final time.
A hoarse, labored voice rattles him, his entire body cringing as if someone had dragged a jagged knife over each of his bones.
You dare to interfere. You wish to be harmed.
“I…” Brago pants in the Mkeun’s grasp. “I will not live under your boot. None… none of us will…”
Irrational. You were given peace in exchange for your inaction. You reject this at your own peril. Why?
“We will not… we will not submit… to an invader. We will burn you. We will burn all of you! Vatrara kli’sari!”
Silence follows, a silence in which there should be laughter – maniacal, ironic – yet all Brago hears is absence. Then, a droning, a collective drawing of air into atrophied throats. The Mkeun, the Yhranc, the Uthraan, they all speak in unison.
All of us? There is no us. There is me, and me alone.
Brago beholds in horror as light inundates the room, each of the multitude’s brains glowing with their shared bioelectric mantra, their single voice: I am the Hegemony. I am total.
No individuality, no joining of minds. Not insects in a colony, but cells in a body – a single, massive organism scattered across the stars in parts separate but occupied by the same perverse will. This is what Hegemony means. There is it, and there is everything else – everyone else.
The microbe whose name is Brago struggles to comprehend this truth, akin to an ant who sees five crushing fingers and struggles to form the picture of one destroyer hand. He and his comrades never had a chance, and had they succeeded it wouldn’t even amount to a scratch.
“Why am I still alive?” He begs of the Hegemony.
To witness. To preach.
A sharpness forces its way into Brago’s frontal lobe, a searing-white pain befitting the ultimate violation of the self. He screams and screams, but he also sees.
He sees a universe on fire, the stars burning with hate as immense fleets emerge from the darkness and blast each other into debris. Doomsday weapons shatter planets and consume even the screams of the dying, cities ravaged by orbital bombardments as the empires wage their endless wars of conquest. Only when they have run out of firepower, when life itself tethers on the brink of extinction and the warriors gaze on their works and lament, only then do they appeal to reason: this is the path to annihilation, and no triumph can be erected on a pile of ash.
The powers build a new order and arbitrate it, but the ghost of war looms everpresent. Deterrence – fear of open war – is the only way forward amongst equals. It is the key to lasting peace, to a shared prosperity, and to further expansion. One day, perhaps, without anyone noticing, an empire well-fed on peace will grow large and mighty enough to finally stand alone over the corpses of its rivals.
Such is the way of the Hegemony: to root itself deep where no one can remove it, to expand to the farthest confines of the cosmos so that even the halving of its body is nothing but an inconvenience. Here, the great brain node – one of billions scattered throughout its conquered worlds – links together the countless cells of the creature that is empire, giving them another foothold to challenge new frontiers, its true lair belied by hundreds of simulacra so that none of its rivals may destroy it without burning down the whole planet in their frantic attempts to locate it. Here, beneath the ground that birthed him, Brago has the misfortune of hitting bullseye.
Do not interfere, the Hegemony says as the vision ends. This was my command. You could have spent your life in blissful ignorance, yet you chose to defy me. Now you see the truth, and it will haunt you. That was my mercy unto you, my meat shields. My subjects. My hostages.
Brago screams and gags and weeps and laughs. He laughs at his own pitifulness, at his own self-delusion, swallowing the truth in great gulps of air, digging his fingers into his own face and ripping until he bleeds. It was always going to end like this. No way out… no way out!
But hostages can outlive their usefulness and outweigh the cost of my leniency. And if you will not be of use, why should I not turn your world to cinders? With or without you, when the dust settles, I will still be here. The choice is yours, and you… you can be the first to show me why I should let you live.
In the present, Brago weeps his eyes out. He remembers it all – how he broke, how he yielded to the Hegemony and accepted the role he has played ever since: to be a mouthpiece of its will, to preach its gift of mercy, of a second chance Vatrara does not deserve. He can still hear the screams, those of the booing crowds as they pelt and condemn him, but also those his comrades yell from beyond the grave. If only they understood! If only they knew what the only other option was!
The Hegemony has continued its work unimpeded. It has recruited more people like Brago, and any opposition is quashed by Vatrara’s people themselves. But it has also made good on its threats: in each city, a great ovum darkens the horizon, a great egg containing the Hegemony’s answer to any further defiance. It would take the slightest provocation, the tiniest show of rebellion for it to hatch and unleash the doom made flesh. And as the colossi ravage the world, the universe and all its peoples will gaze with dread at the spectacle of fire and ruin, at the one end there can be for those who threaten the Hegemony.
And as for Brago, what can he do if not repeat this nightly ritual of blame and humiliation? What can he do but forsake his spirit and belch the lies that keep him and his people alive? For this is the truth he has accepted: in the shadow of the Hegemony there is no victory and no sacrifice, only merciful surrender.