Prompt 4 response
Earth’s single moon was a large coin of light gleaming over the western horizon, tarnished yellow from the long night and streaks of smoke from the battlefield. The almost musky tang of smoke crowded Barricade’s olfactory sensors, filling them until they could smell nothing else, not even the sweet ionized reek of expended pulse rifle ammunition. The night had fallen starkly quiet, as though the smoke had managed to muffle sound, and even the conflagrations of battle had settled to a sedate smolder, flames licking at the sky instead of clawing furiously.
He looked down at his own damage, almost as an observer, feeling nothing. His white arm armor was black-scorched, one edge rippled from the heat of a near-miss with a missile. Circuits crackled in his chassis above his hip, where a lucky kick had dented the armor in on itself, leaving energon and coolant to streak, pink and blue, down his black armored thigh. All in all, not bad. He’d been injured worse.
He picked is way across the battlefield, footplates sinking into the churned-up ground. Everything here was so fragile. Trees splintered with a push. The ground itself seemed unable or unwilling to support his kind. We, he thought, do not belong here. This is not destiny, unless the message of destiny is that we do not belong.
Maybe our time is over. We have lived longer than this system has supported life. We have fought for longer than that. Human history flashed by: kingdoms rising and falling, civilizations born and dead as fast and as simple as breathing. And still, he thought, we fought. Is our constancy our strength or a sign of our failure to grow and adapt?
And suddenly, the fingers of moonlight stretched down through the smoke and haze that hung over the battlefield like despair made visible. Another battlefield, among hundreds, thousands he had seen. Another round of injuries that left him nothing but irritated, no longer shocked to see his own systems gaping, crackling, leaking.
And it all seemed pointless. Peace? This was the only peace he’d ever known.
He looked down at his own damage, almost as an observer, feeling nothing. His white arm armor was black-scorched, one edge rippled from the heat of a near-miss with a missile. Circuits crackled in his chassis above his hip, where a lucky kick had dented the armor in on itself, leaving energon and coolant to streak, pink and blue, down his black armored thigh. All in all, not bad. He’d been injured worse.
He picked is way across the battlefield, footplates sinking into the churned-up ground. Everything here was so fragile. Trees splintered with a push. The ground itself seemed unable or unwilling to support his kind. We, he thought, do not belong here. This is not destiny, unless the message of destiny is that we do not belong.
Maybe our time is over. We have lived longer than this system has supported life. We have fought for longer than that. Human history flashed by: kingdoms rising and falling, civilizations born and dead as fast and as simple as breathing. And still, he thought, we fought. Is our constancy our strength or a sign of our failure to grow and adapt?
And suddenly, the fingers of moonlight stretched down through the smoke and haze that hung over the battlefield like despair made visible. Another battlefield, among hundreds, thousands he had seen. Another round of injuries that left him nothing but irritated, no longer shocked to see his own systems gaping, crackling, leaking.
And it all seemed pointless. Peace? This was the only peace he’d ever known.