Volume #18: "Voices in the Dark Night"
"Keep fighting. They will not take us without a fight."
=Maybe we should retreat while we can.=
"No."
=Liberty, we must ...=
=Silence. You are prisoners of the Rokkan. Desist.=
"Never!"
=Guards, take them.=
=I do not know. We are very securely held, though.=
"That's a fine grasp of the obvious, Nokkar ... we appear to be in a Rokkan holding cell."
=Meaning we have been captured. Unusual.=
"Why is it so unusual? We ... the Rokkans took prisoners all the time!"
=Not in my experience, young one.=
"You don't really know very much then, do you?"
"Silence!"
=What is it you want, Demona?=
"Your lives. The location of your friends. Domination of the earth. Not very much to ask."
=You twisted fool, Demona. Allying yourself with these space spawn will achieve nothing.=
"Perhaps not, but it will assure me of one thing. The end of humanity. Chew on that while you simmer, Nokkar. And you ..."
"What about me, short one?"
SMACK!
"Insolent child. You are dead."
"Funny, I feel alive."
"You, come here. Did you not kill this little one?"
=Indeed I did. She should be walking the land of spirits.=
"A lot of good you did me! How could you have shot me? Wasn't I your mate?"
=You are not my mate. You are a gargoyle. An Earth gargoyle.=
"Come back. Leave them here to rot."
"I am ... now. I was born a Rokkan, though."
=You are my enemy.=
"No, I am not. I don't understand this whole war. I don't even understand why such an insignificant planet as Earth would be so vital to the Rokkan agenda."
=Because it is an outpost of my people. If the Rokkans take Earth, they are one step closer to my homeworld.=
"But that's the thing. We have no quarrel left with your people!"
=What?=
"What ever gave you the idea that our races were at war?"
=When I was first sent here, our races were in constant conflict.=
"But ..."
=Since that time ... I admit that I have been rather confused. I accused Goliath and Angela of being Rokkan agents. That was ... 26 years ago.=
"That explains it."
=What?=
"How long ago was your assignment?"
=By the Earth measure, over one thousand years.=
"Nokkar ... I hate to be the one to tell you this, but ..."
=What are you saying?=
"Nokkar ... the Rokkans destroyed your people over seventy years ago."
"What?"
=How did the Rokkans destroy my people?=
"Through avoidance. We ... they ... simply avoided your people's outposts defending your territory and staged a strategic strike on your homeworld."
=How did they get past?=
"They disguised a full fleet of warships as a medical fleet. Their spies staged a natural disaster on your homeworld, and this fleet came into your territory under the guise of offering aid. Instead of helping your people, the fleet launched a planet-scale attack when they were at their most vulnerable ..."
=... and systematically destroyed ... my home.=
"That's about the size of it. I am so sorry, Nokkar."
=You coudn't have been alive that long ago. How do you know about it?=
"It is part of our basic learning. The Rokkans celebrate that particular event as a turning point in the lives of the people."
=So turning loose a planet-wide invasion upon a helpless race suffering from a disaster is a cause for celebration? Now I am sure, the Rokkans are evil, pure and simple.=
"Are you so sure?"
=And what is that supposed to mean?=
"Maybe you know nothing of the atrocities your people committed on the Rokkans. Do you?"
=What ... atrocities are you speaking of?=
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you. You're so patriotic, you wouldn't take the information at face value."
=What?=
"You heard me. Your people destroyed a three-thousand citizen Rokkan settlement to build an outpost."
=Which one?=
"Mars."
=Mars?=
"The outpost you had in this system shortly before your Earth outpost. Solely because of your destroying that settlement, the war raged on."
=Liberty ... my people never had an outpost in this system before the Earth outpost.=
"And why should I believe you? Because you and your people are the so-called 'noble' fighters in the war?"
=No. You should believe me because I cannot lie, and I am telling you the truth.=
"Then what happened to the Rokkan settlement on Mars?"
=A natural disaster. I monitored it from my station here over 900 years ago. There was a massive seismic shift on the surface of the planet, which left your outpost in ruins.=
"Settlement. It was a settlement, not a military outpost."
=Which would explain why the Rokkans would think that my people had done it. That would also explain why they perpetuated the war because of the incident.=
"I never thought of it that way."
=Neither, I believe, did the Rokkan leadership.=
"What was that?"
=Sounds like an Earth force counterattack.=
BOOM!
"Definitely a counterattack. I hope they find us up here."
BOOM! BOOM!!
=Look there. Someone's coming.=
"Move those prisoners right now!"
"Not who we wanted to come."
=Right away, Demona. Get up, you two.=
THUD!
"Nice one, Nokkar."
=I am a warrior. It is only my nature.=
"Come on, let's get out of these bonds."
"Allow me to help you."
="Griff!"=
"At your service."
CLICK!
"Now come on, they're waiting for us at the Castle. We've got a lot more fighters here."
=I am, Sir Griff.=
"All right then, I'll meet you up at the Castle."
"What's going on?"
=I need to prove my trust in you, LIberty. My honor demands it.=
"Your ... trust?"
=Now that you know the truth. For that matter, now that I know the truth. I know now that you are not my enemy.=
"Well ... thank you. You can trust me with your back, Nokkar, I will never stab it."
=I know now that I can. Take us back.=
