The Liberation of Kin

Author: Kirin Freir

Original post:

Author's Comment:

A short fiction piece for Just About. Entry for YC126 New Eden Capsuleer’s Writing Contest in the Prose category.

The sky was cloudy.

The clouds hang there, grey shades of burnt yellow, shielding the land from the burning sun. However, they did not not truly shield it from its heat.

The ground felt no less hot to the callous, dirty hands of the workers. A sandy kind of dirt was the one that clung to hands and boots, to tools and machinery, to people as a whole. It also hung in the air, giving the clouds their hue, making breathing difficult, making the work even harder. It even managed to cling to the shining, perfectly polished golden surfaces of the guards and supervisors, dimming but not extinguishing the light of their Faith.

The workers toiled in the harsh environment. Coughs and grunts rung in time with the hammering of hammers and picking of pickaxes, with the creaking of carts and machinery. The occasional cry of pain wafted through the sandy air, as a guard whipped a worker that had paused too long, that had been too slow, that hadn’t been working hard enough.

That was the workers' life: sand and hard work, each and every rotation of their dusty planet, each and every revolution around their burning star. Again and again.

Suddenly the clouds parted as burning objects cut through their coverage. The workers looked up, the guards did as well. Workers and guards united in wonder, in fear, in the stillness of the moment. Nobody thought about fleeing, there would be no point anyway. The workers wondered if their dreamed freedom had finally come, the freedom to finally reach the heavens of their ancestors, free of work, free of sand, a freedom gained through the end of the world itself. The guards, on the other hand, wondered if some kind of apocalypse was befalling on the world. Was God angry at them?!

The burning objects weren’t asteroids or some kind of debris, but, instead, they were ships. Blocky, unrefined, dark in colors. They swept in, guns blazing as they unleashed a hail of bullets on the golden compound and its ships. Explosions reverberated through the sandy air as ships and drones were hit and exploded, dark blossoms bursting up toward the sky. As chaos ensued, some guards waited for orders, some ran, some shot at the enemy in the sky, some others turned on the workers.

Workers were in a daze: they didn’t understand what was happening. They couldn’t think the freedom they had dreamed, the freedom told by the tales, tales that were themselves turning into sand, eroded by time and countless, fading recollections, was at reach, just a breath away.

One of the ships slowed down, thrusters and engines roaring. It swept above the workers, before settling down into the sand. Workers scrambled away as guards reached for their weapons. Up-close, the ship was the color of rust, of many types of rust: it looked patched up, a jury-rigging work and yet, it worked. The cargo bay doors opened, and soldiers streamed out with thundering war cries.

Workers cowered, lay on the ground as machine gun fire cut through the sandy air. Guards answered fire with fire, but they weren’t a match for the attackers: they were swept away, falling and dying amid the workers they had been supervising till mere moments before. The first wave of soldiers run fast, seeking every guard, every enemy. The second wave reached for the workers: they extended rugged hands, the hands of long forgotten, long separated kins. They helped them up, they guided them into the belly of the rusty ship. At long last, they had come freeing their kin.

Once full, the ship rumbled upward, shooting fast for the stars before another soon took its place. In mere hours, the burnt clouds were left contemplating an empty landscape, dotted with burning wrecks, dead bodies and the remains of what had been mining operations spanning entire continents, clawing into the ground in the name of God.

A holding pen had been liberated, more lost kins had been reconciled but it was just one of many still waiting for their liberation from the golden grasp of the Holy Faith.

Nonetheless, it was one step closer to the liberation of all Minmatar people.