Chapter Eighty-One (Leebaw)

Leebaw had been severely wounded. First came the Overseers, the Lanaktallans, who had destroyed the Leebawians spaceport that they were so proud of, then destroyed their cultural sites, then had relegated the small land dwelling amphibians to the status of worker drones for the Ukewa's Packguru Manufacturing Industrial Concern (A subsidiary of Nu'ukluk Entertainment Conglomerate) as was 'right and proper' as the Overseers had extracted the resources of the planet. The Leewbawians had been reduced to living in small 'reserves' when they weren't working for the Overseers. Their lives devolved to misery and sadness, their dreams of founding or joining an interstellar organization crushed and obliterated.

They had just wanted to make friends.

Then came the machines. Coldly cruel, they destroyed the Overseers and their factories. The Leebawians had gone out to greet these newcomers, hoping that their obvious hatred of the Overseers meant that perhaps they would be friends to the Leebawians.

Instead, the little googly eyed, whiskered amphibians had been slaughtered with the mechanical glee as the Overseers.

The Leebawians had retreated to their little mud burrows, hiding in the swamps and deltas. The machines had largely ignored them, concentrating on the Overseers.

The Leebawians had learned, though. The stars in the sky weren't full of possible friends.

They were burning pinpricks of malice.

Then came another race. This one arrived with furious violence. Slamming to the ground to disgorge bipeds who roared in rage and killed the machines, smashed them to junk, bashed them to pieces. They avoided the Leebawians, who huddled in their burrows and just wished that the newcomers would kill everyone else and then leave.

Here and there, a Leebawians discovered that the newest ones were rescuing the Leebawians when they could.

The newcomers handed out weapons to those willing to raise a webbed hand that they were willing to fight.

The newcomers taught something called jawnconnor to the Leebawians.

How to raise their fists into the air. How to hold a weapon in their webbed hands. How to scream their rage against the night. How to charge the wire.

How to smash. those. metal. mother. fuckers. into. junk.

Even the youngest Leebawian was taught to pick up a rock and smash.

It took three whole seasons, but eventually the last circuit was smashed and the Leebawians stood beneath their bluish-white sun and realized that they would no longer allow others to take what was theirs.

The newcomers, the Tear-ands, agreed. They taught the Leebawians to fight, something that they had tried to leave behind when they had reached for the stars to make new friends. The Tear-ands had warned them that the universe was a cruel place that would take from the Leebawians just because it could.

They had helped the Leebawians set the charges and blow up the coal fueled power plant, then helped them rebuild their starport. It wasn't as large and impressive as the Overseers had been, but it had been theirs.

The Tear-ands had agreed to only land at the new spaceport if the Leebawians gave permission. They had promised to protect the high orbitals while the Leebawians relearned space flight and could protect their planet themselves. The Tear-ands had found what technology the Leebawians had possessed before the Overseers had arrived and, without asking for anything, handed it back.

Leebawian podlings sat in comfortable little bowls as they were taught more than just how to work a machine. Adult Leebawians kept expecting the other boot to drop, to press against their necks or faces, just like the other times.

The other boot was a pair of them. Handed to any Leebawian willing to put them on and learn how to march, how to move, how to fight. The Leebawians needed to resurrect a thing long ago set aside, a thing that the Leebawians had decided was a dangerous thing.

The Leebawians needed a military. Needed to be taught and to teach the jawnconnor time to each other.

How to smash someone into junk.

Some of the Leebawians felt despair.

This wasn't how it was supposed to be.

Was it?

The Tear-ands met with those who were willing, who were brave enough. They looked like hairless lemurs of the southern continent made large.

The despairing ones voiced their sadness with croaks and clicks.

The Tear-ands agreed.

It wasn't supposed to be like that.

The stars were supposed to be full of friends you just had not met yet. The sky was supposed to be full of wonders, of sights that took ones breath away, of amazing things that were almost too incredible to be taken in by mere mortal eyes.

They too lamented that the only way you could meet friends was to have big enough and as many enough of guns to make those who did not want to be friends to go away.

Or be smashed.

Talks went on. The older and wiser of the Leebawians meeting with the Tear-ands, discussing how they would proceed together.

The Cult of the Solitary Burrow agreed with the Tear-ands.

The only way to have peace was to be willing to kill for it. Peace and security and the burrow were the most important things and because they were important the creatures like the Overseers would take them unless you smashed them into junk.

The Tear-ands talked of many things that were strange, frightening, but also exhilarating. Of equality under the law. Of personal responsibility. The right to croak your dissatisfaction without reprisal by rulers. Of choosing your own rulers and creating your own laws. Of defending yourself and those of your community from the intent of violence of others.

But also things that were terrifying. Of bringing back armies. Of arming space vessels. Of how the Overseers were still out there, that the machines were still out there.

The Leebawians met and discussed things.

They had been pushed down, pushed to the brink, almost wiped out. Had been made to feel as if they were less than nothing and were so inferior that they deserved to be wiped out to make room for their betters.

Almost as one they agreed.

Never. Again.

The Overseers came back one day. They had ignored the little spaceport that the Leebawians loved so much and landed near the ruins of their shining city and its ugly spaceport. They had emerged from their ships and went out to find the Leebawians.

The Leebawians decided to give the Overseers one more chance to be friends.

Or they would apply the lessons of jawnconnor.

The Overseers were furious. Why had the Leebawians not rebuilt the city? Why had they rebuilt their primitive spaceport without permission? Why had they allowed the Tear-ands to remain. The Overseers attempted to remind the Leebawians that the planet did not belong to the small amphibians, but rather the Overseers and had belonged to them since before the Leewbawians had invented the printing press.

The Leebawians did not huddle in fear. Did not nod along with what the Overseers were saying.

The Overseers had fled the planet. Had left the Leebawians to die in the claws of the machines.

The Tear-ands said nothing, just stood and watched, their eyes glowing a soft blue. The big ones, all machine, called the Mech-a-necks, watched unmoving. The smaller ones, the bald lemurs, watched with cold hard eyes made all the more chilling as they were flesh and blood. The ones with metal eyes seemed more warm as they glowed a soft comforting blue.

The Overseers demanded that the Tear-ands leave.

"Make me."

The Leebawians noticed that the Overseers did not attempt to use force against the Tear-ands like they had used on the Leebawians ancestors. They made demands, which the Tear-ands ignored the way an adult ignored the sound of glowfrogs in the mud.

The Overseers ordered the Leebawians to leave their new little homes and return to their enclaves, their reservations, their mud burrows. That the new little homes were more rightfully the Overseers, who weren't primitives as the Leebawians.

The Tear-ands just watched.

The Leebawians understood. They did not look to the Tear-ands to defend them or rescue them.

jawnconnor time the Leebawians whispered to one another.

The Overseers drew a line. The Leebawians must leave and return to their ancestoral dwellings and turn over all the wondrous goods the Leebawians had learned to make.

The Leebawians did not flinch. They knew what must be done.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

But it was.

The Leebawians charged the line. They croaked their fury. They clicked their anger. From bottles of alcohol stuffed with rags set on fire to wooden stakes sharpened in secret to weapons dropped by fleeing, dead, or dying Overseers, they lifted up one fist to the sky and cried out in defiance.

Do not go gently.

The Tear-ands watched.

Ambushes, pit traps, suckmud traps, roadside mines. Claw, tooth, flipper, and rock.

The charged the wire.

The Tear-ands watched.

The Overseers took heavy casualties, and reeling, fell back. They ran toward their ships, lowing out their distress.

The Leebawian chased them, throwing spears, shooting, throwing fire-bombs.

A shuttle tried to take off but a firebomb went off in an air intake and the shuttle fell to the ground, broke apart and exploded.

The Overseers abandoned the armory.

The Leebawian emptied it.

The few Overseers that made it to their ship in orbit demanded that the Captain use the guns to strike at the small towns of the Leebawians.

The Captain pointed out the Tear-and vessels that had them locked up with targeting systems, missile pods and torpedo clusters deployed, battle-screens glimmering, just sitting there, silently, unmoving.

Menacingly.

The Overseers fled.

The Leebawians rejoiced.

The Tear-ands rejoiced with them.

No, it wasn't how it was supposed to be.

But it was how it was.

The Leebawian asked if the Tear-ands would help them heal their wounded planet, help them regain what they had lost.

The Tear-ands agreed to help.

Leebaw was wounded. It needed care. It needed healing.

It needed defended.

And the Leebawians were willing to defend it.

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CONFEDNAVINT REPORT

Lintennal 515, called Leebaw by native species, successfully defended by natives with only advisor and observer requirements from CONFEDMIL. Planet in need of ecological damage repair, food chain is badly damaged and cannot sustain itself for much longer. Dispatch ecological research and science teams ASAP with food chain cloning specialists.

Native species, self-designated as Leebawians, are, at current writing, borderline xenophobic due to mistreatment by Lanaktallan rulership. Genetic manipulation detected in genome scan, request CLONEWORLD genome repair experts.

Handle species with care. They are a small people who have had the boot of tyranny on their necks for too long. Request xenospecies therapists.

Personal note: These are good people. They are a lot like we were. Let's not repeat our mistakes.

-------NOTHING FOLLOWS---------