Post by rusel on Mar 17, 2019 17:34:55 GMT 10
This Planet Must Bleed: Chapter 1 extract
God's Hammer
It was midday of the 30th of June 1908, that the modern world received its first bloody blow. It wasn't a death blow, not quite. We know now that it could have been but we were lucky, we were warned and we have since acted. It took us many years of strife and turmoil to rise above our human fears and paranoias enough to unite and step out into the stars. It was hard but we have succeeded.
But first we had to cope with the knowledge that this terrible destruction was the first time in human history that the planet had bled for reasons other than its own convulsions.
Out of the eastern morning sky it came. A great fireball too bright to look at. It was a hot cloudless day and the fireball brought fear and dread into all the hearts of those that laid eyes upon it as it travelled for thousands of kilometres over the northlands. People have said that at first it was but a small sun floating where the sun should not be. A tail then appeared that slowly grew and grew till it seemed that the very sky was on fire. As the fireball passed over my village, it left a black cloud. Like the tail of the devil the locals later said. As it approached the ground it seemed to dissolve into a cloud of dust. A black cloud formed above the ground, with toungues of flame reaching into the sky. Then the sky exploded.
To the survivors the resultant roar was like the greatest thunder. Everybody in the village where I was stationed, ran into the streets in terror, the old women were weeping. Some prayed loudly thinking the end of the world had come. For some it had.
The force of the explosion hit us knocking me off my feet, injuring most and killing some where they stood. Roofs were torn from buildings, anything that was lying around was picked up and hurled before the gale force wind. I cowered behind a low stone wall as the world screamed around me. Parts of a house and the crushed carcases of two goats became lodged on my wall. The howling of the wind slowly eased and I summoned the courage to crawl out from my refuge. My village was destroyed and the desolation stretched in all directions.
I made my way towards the outskirts of the village. People were appearing from amidst the rubble of their lives. Cries and wailing began to fill the air. Children called for their parents, animals screamed in pain, but no one came to help because every healthy adult that I came across was starring at the end of their world. I looked toward the west where the explosion had occurred.
Great columns of cloud filled the sky, fires were burning everywhere and it seemed to my estimation that St Petersburg cannot have been too far from the centre of that hellish conflagration from the sky.
For those of us that survived, the world was never the same again.
Somehow I found a horse that was still alive and uninjured and I made rounds of my village and the nearby farms and began organising the survivors. After some days and we had buried those we had found and had erected sufficient shelter for the survivors, I deemed it timely for me to take my leave of these shattered remnants of homes and their shattered occupants. Though the remaining elders of the village begged me to stay I felt a growing urgency to go to my headquarters in St Petersburg.
So commandering the horse and promosing to return with aid as soon as I could I set forth down what had been the road to our glorious capital. It was not long before I met with other officials and soldiers from the surrounding areas that had also survived the Hammer of God as they were calling it and having done all they could for their charges, had now set forth like I. We moved through the destruction that our world had become and wondered if the whole world was now reduced to this condition as we made our way toward our great beloved city. At first we headed due west but our way was so blocked by the destruction and fires that were still burning a week later that we turned to the south to skirt our way around the ruined countryside.
For the better part of two days there was nothing but destroyed villages and charred forests with most of the trees broken and flung away from the direction of the blast as if some hellish hand had pushed them all over in the one direction. Any survivor we met we helped and then sent them south away from the destruction and toward succour. The summer heat had made short work of the dead that we came across be they human or animal, and the stench mingled with the smell of the charred timber and the scorched earth. Surely this must be the way that hell appears!
Finally we came to the river Neva that flows south from Lake Ladoga then west before turning north west to our jeweled city of the Baltic. Where we came upon the Neva it was where it turned toward the west. Here the river made its sluggish summer way out of the destruction of the north east and appeared to us that as it turned to the north west it became a border between life and death.
To the south west the land and villages retained some health and vibrance but to the north east lay nothing but hell sent desolation. We came across an abandoned river boat that was beached against our south side of the river. We found some food and decided to rest before continuing on. The next day with the aid of more soldiers acting as we were, we were able to float the river craft and erecting a makeshift sail and taking turns at the oars we made our way with the river flow toward St Petersburg. Many times we were hailed by other survivors and each time we told them to travel south and stay there until the government sent them word.
As we came to the outskirts of St Petersburg the river still seemed to act as some form of boundary. All parts of the city on the northeast of the river were damaged, increasingly so the further to the north east you gazed. Soldiers were everywhere and we were told to head to the nearest barracks to be assigned duties. One third of the city seemed to lay in ruins. Thousands upon thousands were dead, and disease was beginning to take its toll of the injured survivors. Soon the healthy would be at risk.
The following weeks and months were the worst and the best of times. I saw people rise to the occassion and give of themselves endlessly in the service of their fellow Russians. Others sunk to the lowest behaviour imaginable for a human being and many were caught and duly punished.
The Germans were the first foreigners to arrive to give succour in our hour of need. Our Czar’s cousin, the German Kaiser, had sent his fastest vessels with food and clothing and medicinals. Their ships road in our harbour for the duration of the crisis with many acquiring Red Crosses and acting as hospice to our injured. They maintained a steady routine of ships arriving and departing as they unloaded supplies and dispensed whatever aid was requested.
Many gained great affection for our German cousins while the more cynical derided such activity as the best naval invasion exercise the Kaisers navy could wish for.
Slowly we created order out of chaos, we cleared the rubble and began rebuilding.
The months passed and our great city came back to life. The Czar returned from Moscow to declare that St Petersburg would become a shrine to the glory of God and to Mother Russia. That the world was welcome to come and view the power of God first hand for there to the north east lay the giant crater left by the Hammer of God.
It was through this invitation that the foreigners and especially the Germans never left. From that time on we always had some number of their ships in harbour and their priests, mystics and scientists moved freely amoungst ours as the debate began to rage.
The scientists told us that some sort of celestial object had crashed into our cities outskirts. The Priests told us that it was a warning from God to turn away from the profligate materialism that was taking hold throughout the world and that Russia had been chosen by God to show the true way back to eternal life based on the word of God.
For the rest of us, most cared little for the priests or the scientists, we only wanted the diseases and the famines to end and the brigands to be arrested. Peace did slowly return and the land began to heal itself from the scarring of the celestial impact.
We then faced a new threat to our lives and wellbeing. Social unrest began to increase as the foreigners who visited the crater or the Site as it was now being called, displayed their wealth and told the people about their privileged ways of life. Change though came slowly to the Czar but it came and the lot of the peasant seemed to improve. Then we had it all torn away by the Great War and then the Revolution as the communists unleashed themselves upon us.
The world once again turned on its head.
We here in Petrovia had had enough though, and with the assistance of the German armies now guarding the Site, we took up arms and forced the communists back to the east. We declared our independence from Czars, from Commissars, from anyone who would tell us what to believe and how to live.
Along with the Baltics, Byelorus, Ukraine, Caucasia, Kurdistan and many others we declared independence from Csarist Russia, and we held such hard gained freedom, safe, close to our hearts.
I, Yuri Gregorivich swear by the life blood of my mother that though the times have been hard. Though disease and famine have ravaged the Motherland, we in Petrovia have never been more content with what we have created !”
God's Hammer
It was midday of the 30th of June 1908, that the modern world received its first bloody blow. It wasn't a death blow, not quite. We know now that it could have been but we were lucky, we were warned and we have since acted. It took us many years of strife and turmoil to rise above our human fears and paranoias enough to unite and step out into the stars. It was hard but we have succeeded.
But first we had to cope with the knowledge that this terrible destruction was the first time in human history that the planet had bled for reasons other than its own convulsions.
Out of the eastern morning sky it came. A great fireball too bright to look at. It was a hot cloudless day and the fireball brought fear and dread into all the hearts of those that laid eyes upon it as it travelled for thousands of kilometres over the northlands. People have said that at first it was but a small sun floating where the sun should not be. A tail then appeared that slowly grew and grew till it seemed that the very sky was on fire. As the fireball passed over my village, it left a black cloud. Like the tail of the devil the locals later said. As it approached the ground it seemed to dissolve into a cloud of dust. A black cloud formed above the ground, with toungues of flame reaching into the sky. Then the sky exploded.
To the survivors the resultant roar was like the greatest thunder. Everybody in the village where I was stationed, ran into the streets in terror, the old women were weeping. Some prayed loudly thinking the end of the world had come. For some it had.
The force of the explosion hit us knocking me off my feet, injuring most and killing some where they stood. Roofs were torn from buildings, anything that was lying around was picked up and hurled before the gale force wind. I cowered behind a low stone wall as the world screamed around me. Parts of a house and the crushed carcases of two goats became lodged on my wall. The howling of the wind slowly eased and I summoned the courage to crawl out from my refuge. My village was destroyed and the desolation stretched in all directions.
I made my way towards the outskirts of the village. People were appearing from amidst the rubble of their lives. Cries and wailing began to fill the air. Children called for their parents, animals screamed in pain, but no one came to help because every healthy adult that I came across was starring at the end of their world. I looked toward the west where the explosion had occurred.
Great columns of cloud filled the sky, fires were burning everywhere and it seemed to my estimation that St Petersburg cannot have been too far from the centre of that hellish conflagration from the sky.
For those of us that survived, the world was never the same again.
Somehow I found a horse that was still alive and uninjured and I made rounds of my village and the nearby farms and began organising the survivors. After some days and we had buried those we had found and had erected sufficient shelter for the survivors, I deemed it timely for me to take my leave of these shattered remnants of homes and their shattered occupants. Though the remaining elders of the village begged me to stay I felt a growing urgency to go to my headquarters in St Petersburg.
So commandering the horse and promosing to return with aid as soon as I could I set forth down what had been the road to our glorious capital. It was not long before I met with other officials and soldiers from the surrounding areas that had also survived the Hammer of God as they were calling it and having done all they could for their charges, had now set forth like I. We moved through the destruction that our world had become and wondered if the whole world was now reduced to this condition as we made our way toward our great beloved city. At first we headed due west but our way was so blocked by the destruction and fires that were still burning a week later that we turned to the south to skirt our way around the ruined countryside.
For the better part of two days there was nothing but destroyed villages and charred forests with most of the trees broken and flung away from the direction of the blast as if some hellish hand had pushed them all over in the one direction. Any survivor we met we helped and then sent them south away from the destruction and toward succour. The summer heat had made short work of the dead that we came across be they human or animal, and the stench mingled with the smell of the charred timber and the scorched earth. Surely this must be the way that hell appears!
Finally we came to the river Neva that flows south from Lake Ladoga then west before turning north west to our jeweled city of the Baltic. Where we came upon the Neva it was where it turned toward the west. Here the river made its sluggish summer way out of the destruction of the north east and appeared to us that as it turned to the north west it became a border between life and death.
To the south west the land and villages retained some health and vibrance but to the north east lay nothing but hell sent desolation. We came across an abandoned river boat that was beached against our south side of the river. We found some food and decided to rest before continuing on. The next day with the aid of more soldiers acting as we were, we were able to float the river craft and erecting a makeshift sail and taking turns at the oars we made our way with the river flow toward St Petersburg. Many times we were hailed by other survivors and each time we told them to travel south and stay there until the government sent them word.
As we came to the outskirts of St Petersburg the river still seemed to act as some form of boundary. All parts of the city on the northeast of the river were damaged, increasingly so the further to the north east you gazed. Soldiers were everywhere and we were told to head to the nearest barracks to be assigned duties. One third of the city seemed to lay in ruins. Thousands upon thousands were dead, and disease was beginning to take its toll of the injured survivors. Soon the healthy would be at risk.
The following weeks and months were the worst and the best of times. I saw people rise to the occassion and give of themselves endlessly in the service of their fellow Russians. Others sunk to the lowest behaviour imaginable for a human being and many were caught and duly punished.
The Germans were the first foreigners to arrive to give succour in our hour of need. Our Czar’s cousin, the German Kaiser, had sent his fastest vessels with food and clothing and medicinals. Their ships road in our harbour for the duration of the crisis with many acquiring Red Crosses and acting as hospice to our injured. They maintained a steady routine of ships arriving and departing as they unloaded supplies and dispensed whatever aid was requested.
Many gained great affection for our German cousins while the more cynical derided such activity as the best naval invasion exercise the Kaisers navy could wish for.
Slowly we created order out of chaos, we cleared the rubble and began rebuilding.
The months passed and our great city came back to life. The Czar returned from Moscow to declare that St Petersburg would become a shrine to the glory of God and to Mother Russia. That the world was welcome to come and view the power of God first hand for there to the north east lay the giant crater left by the Hammer of God.
It was through this invitation that the foreigners and especially the Germans never left. From that time on we always had some number of their ships in harbour and their priests, mystics and scientists moved freely amoungst ours as the debate began to rage.
The scientists told us that some sort of celestial object had crashed into our cities outskirts. The Priests told us that it was a warning from God to turn away from the profligate materialism that was taking hold throughout the world and that Russia had been chosen by God to show the true way back to eternal life based on the word of God.
For the rest of us, most cared little for the priests or the scientists, we only wanted the diseases and the famines to end and the brigands to be arrested. Peace did slowly return and the land began to heal itself from the scarring of the celestial impact.
We then faced a new threat to our lives and wellbeing. Social unrest began to increase as the foreigners who visited the crater or the Site as it was now being called, displayed their wealth and told the people about their privileged ways of life. Change though came slowly to the Czar but it came and the lot of the peasant seemed to improve. Then we had it all torn away by the Great War and then the Revolution as the communists unleashed themselves upon us.
The world once again turned on its head.
We here in Petrovia had had enough though, and with the assistance of the German armies now guarding the Site, we took up arms and forced the communists back to the east. We declared our independence from Czars, from Commissars, from anyone who would tell us what to believe and how to live.
Along with the Baltics, Byelorus, Ukraine, Caucasia, Kurdistan and many others we declared independence from Csarist Russia, and we held such hard gained freedom, safe, close to our hearts.
I, Yuri Gregorivich swear by the life blood of my mother that though the times have been hard. Though disease and famine have ravaged the Motherland, we in Petrovia have never been more content with what we have created !”
