The Fall of Sukrat

Fantastic steam-punk story with fighting hybrid creatures, epic battles, and daring spies in an interpretation of ELP's epic composition entitled "Tarkus."

The Fall of Sukrat

                I am the Historian Ellep, Singer of Songs and Teller of Tales, the designated curator and bearer of a weighty burden�"the perfect knowledge of my world’s disconcerting annals. No one has realized our history as entirely as I, for I have witnessed much during my lifetime as a player in my people’s recent disturbing past, and since then I have learned the rest. After centuries of discord and war, we now live in a peaceful world, a world shared by two distinct people living in harmony, but it wasn’t always so…

This is my tale of how our peoples almost destroyed each other when war machines became staggering titanic and confounding thoughtless. Ultimately, we learned after much bloodletting and death that extreme power begets supreme power that can overwhelm both sides of a conflict.

               

                Upon my world, far-removed from the juvenile Earth when proto-humans dwelled in trees, a horrible epoch unfolded. Technology on our warring planet rose in mammoth leaps though in two diverse courses by our two races of humans. Rising to a zenith during the terrible war’s escalation, our enemies the Mecks forged and hatched from the molten rock fires of the Volcano Sukrat, a great living monster and morphed it into the iron-tracked Tarkus. Armed with colossal missile firing tubes, shielded with iron flanks, and employing a great tactical adroitness, Tarkus patrolled and controlled the Plains of Tears and Rainbows pushing my people, the gentle and virtuous Bloods back to our homelands. Merely the beast’s iron-clanking clamor and steam shrieks instilled terror in the Bloods who courageously stood before it in efforts to thwart its’ advance. Simply armed and shielded, Bloods had no chance against the unfeeling iron beast�"whole hosts of victims were cut down in smoking swathes or crushed into the bloody dirt beneath Tarkus’ speeding, clanking, and unfeeling iron tracks. Despite desperate efforts to infiltrate Meckland’s strongholds to learn and report any profit they may reap against the relentless, clearly superior Tarkus, the number of Bloods’ deaths added up.

                Despite its warring masters and military might, Tarkus existed as an infant considering its’ limited breadth of experience and shallowness of soul and spirit. At first a free and intelligent animal, it was perverted and distorted by its’ Meck masters. All in all, Tarkus hadn’t endured the test of time, understood the history that reeled before its existence or the extent of suffering and loss of human life it had inflicted. In fact, on matters of emotions or spirit the beast no longer had the facilities to understand anything at all.

                I attest to a horrific encounter with the terrible Tarkus.

                He or it, depending on your perspective of what Tarkus became, stood twelve high, spread a breadth of ten wide, and extended twenty-five long measured in human heights. Its’ lethal firing tubes were large enough for a human to crawl inside though the thought of doing so makes me tremble. On its’ rampages, steam erupted from its nose portals as hot pressure provided it the driving force to move about and to sound its’ terrible shriek. In the very beginning, we knew not it alive or machine, but as I have explained, we discovered it was a terrible combination of both. In my personal encounter as a bold, youthful Blood warrior, our valiant attack brought down a rain of arrows, volley of spears, and a torrent of missiles, but they all harmlessly bounced off Tarkus’ armor. In the heat and flame Tarkus emitted, our shields crumpled and burned in our hands like paper in a campfire before consuming the flesh and bone that stood behind them.

                Finding myself defenseless and solitary, I stood frozen in fright witnessing my fellow Bloods astride me being mowed down like fresh livestock hay, laid there in eternal rest, smoldering in the open plains in the light of day. On that field of battle knowing that I too would fall and die as my fellows, I stood bravely, but I assure you, fully petrified in fright, standing there in the path of the lumbering killing-machine Tarkus. At the very last moment as the iron beast loomed above me, I succumbed to cowardice and fell to my hands and knees in a final appeal for mercy, inert and still as the dirt beneath my body while the machine-creature continued its’ undeterred advance.

 Its’ noise deafening, the odor of munitions powder and steam fires sickening, I grasped my life’s inevitable wreckage. In that miraculous moment, the beast passed over me without inflicting bodily injury. The heavy clanking treads passed on either side of me as I crawled aside to avoid their crushing passage, and found that I had passed beneath its thick, iron belly! I knew that I had survived for an exalted purpose and not as I first assumed, wallowing in pathetic, pitiful cowardice before my fellow Bloods. This was my first lesson concerning the beast Tarkus: It proved blind close up, below and directly on. With a few fellow survivors, I returned to my homeland to report my revelation.

You ought to know more from the time before: From early history, our two peoples met only in matters of war. We attempted diplomacy, but this proved futile during innumerable junctures. Centuries of hand-to-hand combat became commonplace and my ancestors knew of no other existence than the constant threat of attack, death, and fear of one another for we were different and misunderstood each other’s behaviors and traditions.

The two races were situated thus: To the west the mighty Mecks and to the east our Blood homeland. In between, we engaged in warfare upon the desolate Plains of Tears and Rainbows. On Warm Star days, rainbows grew up from the Plains when rain had fallen from the scant clouds formed from our fellow Blood’s drying tears. Rainbows should provide hope and joy, but there on the Plains, they only lay witness to absolute futility and eternal sorrow. Our two races were as night and day, black and white.

The Mecks had always been skilled in forging tools and machines from iron and utilized steam to power their mechanical creations and to show their obedience to the god-volcano Sukrat. On the other hand, my ancestor Bloods had scant knowledge of mechanical crafts for they concentrated on the manipulation of living tissues through careful breeding and genetic material amalgamates. Bloods worshiped a verve-giving god that bestowed upon them a bountiful optimism in beautiful life-living creatures. During the war’s escalation period, the long-standing equilibrium of powers tilted when the Mecks forged their increasingly unique and deadly war machines faster than our Blood spies could report or our Genii could anticipate and react by breeding matching adversaries. Tarkus proved to be the Meck’s greatest creation and the Blood’s greatest nemesis.

During Tarkus’ unending onslaught, the Bloods selected carefully from their laboratory inventories and released several different strong, intelligent, and brave creatures to face Tarkus. At first, the exotic fighting creatures strode before Tarkus, but proved too soft and fragile, falling in seconds before the fiery metal beast. Fierce insects nearly the size of Tarkus shielded with natural hard exoskeletons marched forth. These creatures often stood up to several barrages of Tarkus’ missiles, but they soon fell prey without viable weapons to inflict damage in return. Over the time of attack, the insects’ shells cracked and shattered or they grew tired falling victim to a quick crushing death beneath Tarkus’ iron tracks. From ancient stock lines, our Blood Genii developed great leathery birds to take our attacks to the air. They flew and dove at Tarkus dropping rocks and debris upon it from high aloft, but the natural bombardments were no match for the iron beast’s cladding. When the birds flew lower and attacked closer for more lethal impact, they too fell victim and were utterly destroyed by Tarkus.

 Besides the constant and repeated defeat of our creatures, many human Bloods lost their lives on the Plains and as spies as they attempted to infiltrate the Meck war-making secrets. Eventually, a spy survived and returned, and though she obtained no practical information to defeat the unstoppable Tarkus, she stole and brought Meck skills and techniques in munitions and iron-working home to the Bloods’ meager factories. With this new information, the Bloods manufactured new rudimentary armor and munition-delivery systems to retrofit in their hybrid creatures. The giant insects could endure more bombardments and fire small munitions, while the great birds could drop explosive devices, but neither proved effective against the rampaging Tarkus that loomed closer and closer to the Blood homeland.  As time became desperate, more effective measures had to be taken in order for us Bloods to survive. Blood Genii labored long and hard in the technological fields they were familiar, and our leaders labored on ideas that might break the Meck’s spirit. Bolstered by their efforts and my own reinvigorated self-worth, I volunteered to join the stepped-up spy effort.