The Last Weapon
© A.R.Curry
His vision blurred, and his eyes fluttered bravely to a permanent conclusion. His chest rose, then exhaled.
Proudly, his last breathe was drawn.
Random clouds of dry ice hung about in the pinkish-orange sky. The massive volcano Olympus Mons sat overbearing in the outlying remoteness as if an emperor, its base melting into the expanse of the crimson soil. Rising from the ground, falling from the sky, lingered a sulfurous stench.
A surge twitched through his freeze-dried skin, leaping from millions of dying nerves into millions more; spreading swiftly, wholly. An internal sizzle sparked. The smell of roasting flesh, along with a faint smoke, seeped up and out from the punctures of his spacesuit. Off they drifted into the flow of the wind mixing with the reddish dust of the soil blown about.
Foreign ammunition continued to wiz past, chipping away at the stone block his lifeless body leaned against. He hears none of this. Not the snarl of an extraterrestrial weapon, nor this enemies taunting cries, not even the progressive ticking of the surgically inserted timer beginning to count down to the end.
The ground vibrated as a result of the masses. Their shouts though incomprehensible, were vague yet ever rising as their footsteps drew nearer. They mixed with the gale of bullets forging a cohesion of hostility, perhaps even desperation.
Their attacks continued unrequited until a commanding cry roared out bringing it all to an end. The firing stuttered to a stop, their quick paced charge slowed to a cautioned advance. An occasional protest of uncertainty and concern rose amongst them, but gradually their heavy breathing calmed, and their shouts dulled into a silent pause. They stood there, huddled tight in formation. Large scaled, multi-jointed soldiers of extermination.. Unknown failures. All at once, they erupted into an accomplished cheer, celebrating so it seemed their victory.
Spread around them, littered across their planet, laid years of dead bodies; hundreds of thousands of human soldiers, a planetary effort. A race they knew, though they cared little, only reacted to the unprompted viral attack by them. Ignorant to the fact that each of these seemingly inadequate life-forms were part of a larger plan; a backup plan in the event of failure. Each, valiant and in every respect willing to take part in the day that failure meant ultimate success for all of mankind.
Yes, countless bodies lay around them; long done dying on this last battleground. Some, if exposed directly to the atmosphere, suffered collapsed cells, circulatory interruption, acute anoxia, convulsions … These were the lucky. These were the seventy-seconds of bliss true soldiers willingly accepted under the conditions of this foreign planet. The ultimate death. And when the last to die twitched then fell into a sudden seizure, concern formed on their jagged horned brows.
A section of his chest had already melted away from the inside and now revealed a pulsating yellow light. It spun easy but gained speed and vitality until a high-pitched siren shrieked from its axis. The alien soldiers standing around crumpled down, clutching to shut out this piercing noise. One, powerfully built and daunting raised its weapon opening fire and ending the auditory assault. But its efforts came too late, the extermination had begun.
One by one the dead human bodies reacted, their chest likewise pumping out as if drawing for postpartum air, then settled back into the normality of the deceased. Caution twitched through their populace. What was this anomaly? Humans, once dead, did not respawn… Each underwent a seizure that united, rippled across their planet. This undulation, much like boiling water, was followed by the same melting of flesh and the dreadful strobe-light. The sky illuminated with the multitudes of toxic lights and the discharge of their sirens until all blended together and the crescendo collapsed onto itself, then exploded.
The blast didn't spread across the planet, rather than detonate its entirety all at once with a tremendous concussion that splintered its very core. The force channeled through Valles MArineris, a valley stretching nearly two-thirds the way across the planet, braking its complete body into crumbling hemispheres. F ragments of its deepest crust roared off into the depths of space in a splendid display of lighting vaguely viewable 55 million kilometers away on Earth.
Somewhere, a small boy gazed up upon this sight. His vision blurred, and his eyes fluttering bravely at the permanent conclusion of a distant planet. His chest rose, then exhaled.
Proudly, one of many more breathes to come, was drawn.