The Heroic Era

Chapter I

Chapter I - Horus

The Kulkari War looked to be the end of humanity. With their advanced technology and vast armada of spacecraft, the hostile alien race seemed destined to destroy all life on Earth. However, unlike with their previous conquests, the viral mutagen they used to cleanse the worlds of their enemies did not kill humans. It changed them.

-Professor Donald Chandler,  The Heroic Era



I was walking down the road towards my apartment when the attack came. At first, the buzzing that filled my implants simply confused me. Did I forget to turn off news updates this morning? I pulled up the incoming alert with a mental command. The buzzing grew louder as the words WORLD GOVERNMENT ALERT: RETURN TO YOUR HOMES- SPACE RAID IMMINENT flashed across my vision.

I swore loudly, causing the mother passing by me on the sidewalk to look disapprovingly at me as she pushed a stroller along. I was pissed. First, WG forced all able-bodied citizens to join the local space-defence forces. Then, they instituted a law requiring all places of work to have space raid drills. Now this? An all-points practice for a space-bourne attack? Ridiculous.

I was still mulling over my anger at the system, thinking what I would do if I was in charge, when the ground shook underneath me. I stumbled, nearly falling into the road and getting hit by a 'craft, then caught myself on a lamppost. I stood up and looked around. Everyone else did too. No one seemed to know what had happened.

Then another quake hit, followed quickly by another. I looked up and saw the clouds parting around the hull of a spacecraft. That wasn't very odd. Human spaceships and low-orbit craft often came low over the city to mine a little energy off of the fusion projector station that provided power to the surrounding area. However, there was something different about this craft. Different, yet familiar. I knew I'd seen one like it before. Then I remembered where from.

The news broadcast about the battles above Avalon.

The ship was Kulkari.

I booked it for my apartment block. The Kul' ship kept firing down on the city. I saw a flash from the hull of the craft, and a section of the city to the south of me vanished in a blast of superheated plasma. I saw another ship breach the clouds, then another. From the bellies of the massive spacecraft, hundreds of single-ship fighters, bombers, and the bulkier troop transports emerged, spreading in a cloud over the city. They continued to fire down upon the buildings, skyscrapers collapsing under the streams of dissassociated ions from the Kul' guns.

The streets were a confusing mess of people running, screaming, crying. Shots from small arms could be heard from all directions, although I couldn't tell whether this was random weapons-fire or soldiers and militia fighting back against the invaders. My implants were screaming warnings at me, telling me to get inside a government-built shelter. I pushed past a clump of people trying to break into a gun shop, sprinting as best I could to get to my apartment. If I could just get there, gather a few of my belongings, get to a shelter-

A wing of Kulkari bombers flew over the street, bay-doors open, bombs falling. They floated down, slowly, the exploded in midair. Instead of fire, however, they released some kind of gas. It spread swiftly, covering everything in sight. I held my breath for as long as I could. I ran and ran, looking for stairs, for some way to get above the choking cloud. My lungs burned. I breathed in the gas.

My entire body lit afire. Every muscle, every tendon, every cell tried all at once to tear itself apart from the others. I screamed for what felt like hours as the gas seeped into me lungs, my stomache, through every opening in my body. Then the pain stopped, vanished, like it was never there. I gasped, breathing in oxygen. I stood up, slowly, still groggy from the now-absent pain. I looked around me. Others were standing now, too. Some seemed like me, disoriented. Others screamed at the remembered pain. And others...