The Strange One's

Introduction
A siren loud and clear, yelling its riddle for all to decipher… was adding to the initial confusion after the fire-fight… a round ball fell from eight fingered hand, spinning and glowing on the floor, a strange beeping sound starting to emanate from it… almost as if warning all around that they had precious little time left over. 


A monitor flickered on overhead, cracked and only showing a partial image of the deathly scene, a wonder it had survived the fire-fight still working even though it had lost all its audio, it mattered not, for he knew that the closed circuit cameras mounted in the walls would still be broadcasting the image to those outside and beyond, breathlessly being narrated by anchors and field journalists, capturing the end of life as we knew it for all to see; as two leaders lay at the feet of a few, casting the fate of billions in the balance. 


One was dead; the other bleeding but still breathing with difficulty. True irony it was, that the he was one of two people still left standing, when seconds previously there was so many. Picking up the gun that was dropped as fire fight first started, he walked over to the Alekui Leader… raised his arm… aimed… and with two bullets killed him. An act of mercy in his eyes… cold murder in another’s. 


It was an odd day that sealed his destiny after all, to kill one not from his world, for after what seemed like months of no rain, he had awoken to a cloud filled sky that morning, which now was drenching those still outside with tears of rain, as one who was elected to lead… instead chose to bend knee in the heart of his nation… the infamous Oval Office. In some places the President would surely have been killed on the spot for this act, but it seemed he cared not… perhaps the President had known this was to be his fate regardless of what transpired hereafter. 


Now standing over the bodies of both leaders, the man known as Conner knew that he had just rung the death-siren that would kill countless many others… in the hope of saving a few. If his life’s tale was ever told, some would praise him, most would loath him, strange how none that came after would know his face he thought, for he could see only his silhouette was broadcast on the monitor, yet his name he knew would be made infamous, used as a curse, in the eyes of all who come after… it was to be a cruel anecdote to his life story spent in the defence of others. 


Yet all that mattered now was that he had bought the time needed – to inspire a few to stand up and fight for their right to live free, a right bought over countless eons. Perhaps his wife and son would be one of these few, he would never know. His last bullets already spent – defending his world, he feared more would have to do the same before the end was in sight… Turning to the microphone on the President’s desk he utters “I love you Alisha, protect our son!” as the lone surviving Alekui came walking slowly towards him… a glint of steel in his hand, showing a stony face, yet with fire of ill intent in eyes. 


Chapter 1
It was time to move on. The Elders knew that the strange one’s would come back once morning came, they said it was our destiny to prepare, to hide whilst others were made slaves, for we had to make preparations for the coming prophecy, ‘the will of ages’, to learn the ways of the past in order to fight the final battle that would either free us, destroy us or worse enslave us once and for all.


None now knew why these strange one’s… these Alekui, had initially come to our world. Most believed it was to take our resources, our minerals, water and to make some of us into slaves, one species indentured to another, to build warships, but this had somehow changed. The strange one’s did not move on. Their world ships were somehow destroyed and it had become our way of life instead, to be preyed upon, by a daily menace now living in what once was called Africa.


Few of the Elders remembered how it came to be that the Earth was scorched… they only knew from whispers in the night that we were betrayed, by one called Conner Anderson, a name now used as sign of displeasure, of ridicule and hate amongst those that survived. It was common belief that the Alekui wished to return to their realm and bring more of their kind back through their gates of perdition. These gates hung in the cloak of space, five times the distance from Earth to Moon, yet still visible to naked eye. It was said not long now and it would be once more within the Alekui’s reach. They wanted vengeance for an act five centuries in the past, when first they walked the soil of our world, and we feared we would never be rid of them.