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Sprayber
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Dixie
Oct 2000
time: 23:20
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In the course of my life I have seen Humanity come close to destruction so many times that it now seems routine to me. I have been called a historian by some and propagandist by others, but in truth I am merely an observer who puts down what he sees. My live began many hundreds of years ago on the mother world. Or at least what we once called the mother world. At that time Earth was looking like a lost cause to most of the experts and to many of us that only knew the day to day misery of living in poverty or the occasional war it looked equally bleak. For many young men in western North America, such as myself, the only way out of the poverty was to join the federal army or one of the many local militia groups competing for power in the remains of the western states. I wanted to join the Federal Army because they paid more and the chances of surviving to my twenty first birthday were far better then in the local militias. But situation and location made the long difficult trip to the border almost impossible, so I was left with the bleak and depressing options of the militias. I chose the City Guard in New Los Angeles. They were sanctioned by the distant federal government which meant that I still had a remote chance of some day leaving this god forsaken state and living a decent life. Until that distant day however, I was stuck in the hell that was New Los Angeles. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t as bad as say India or Eastern Europe at the time because at least we had food and there was no radiation to contend with. And it wasn’t a constant war zone like Ireland or Spain. It’s just that one day all would be ok and the next day you were in the middle of a fire fight against a militia that wanted to extend their territory into your neighborhood. After a year and a half of that nonsense, a man starts to wonder exactly what he is fighting for. Then of course he is reminded exactly what he fights for when he sits down at night to eat. One thing that I learned during my stay there was that idealism is easy on a full stomach and in warm bed. I also found out that those people in a war zone tended to be much more practical then those in far away conference rooms.
I met a lot of interesting people during that time, but none would come to dominate my life like one particularly attractive and powerful woman by the name of Corazon Santiago. My first clear memory of Santiago is of a young woman trying to find her niche in the world. She had joined the City Guard at a relatively late age compared to most of the veterans. But her experience in small scale fighting was far more extensive than most of ours because she had come from Mexico which was in far worse shape than California ever dreamed about being. So when Santiago showed up in NLA she was already a veteran in her own right. She may have joined the Guard relatively late compared to myself and others but a year later she became the youngest commander in City Guard history.
Her leadership ability was tested very soon when the East Side Militia decided that they needed breathing room and city hall stood in their way. The thirty days of chaos and death that followed were among the most savage and cruel displays of humanity that I have seen in my all my days. The site of thirteen year olds being used as the vanguard of the attack has stuck in my mind until now. The street to street fighting that followed the initial day of attack and the joining in of the other two major Militia groups spelled the end of the uneasy truce that had descended over the city following an agreement brokered by the Feds and UN. The UN envoys hadn’t even made it out of the city before their convoys were attacked. In a way the failure of the UN gave Santiago the opportunity she had been looking for. She had inherited the peace talks which she never fully wanted. And while the UN guards were being slaughtered in the streets, she began to put into motion her plan that she had worked out on assuming command. I can still picture that fool negotiator demanding that Santiago stop her attack operations long enough to negotiate the release of UN personel. The last image of him that I saw was him trying to pick himself up after a back hand from Santiago. Not him or the entire UN army was going to stop Santiago’s plans. After the month was up Santiago had not only retaken the city, but pushed far up into the surrounding hills where she routed the remaining militia supporters. After three more weeks she held undisputed power in most of Southern California. For the first time in eleven years the people of Southern California knew peace. That peace had come at a price in lives and untold damage, but there were no more militias. Only Santiago. When the officials from the federal government arrived to take over, Santiago was ready to leave as the boredom of being a commander with no one to fight proved more than she was willing to take and there was no way that she wanted to be an administrator. Before she left she asked a few of us that had become close to go with her. Now I think of myself as an individual and I am proud of that fact. But to be truthful, not me or any of the men she asked even cared where we were going. We just knew that she had respected us enough to ask for our skills. For me at least, I didn’t really care if she was going to invade hell. I for one wanted to be there when she succeeded and took Satan’s throne. To my surprise, we ended up going the opposite direction. I couldn't help but wonder how I had gone from being a teenager with no future, to part of a humanities last desparate act to ward off extinction. While the future still looked uncertain to most of us that went with Santiago, we knew one thing for sure. She wasn't just going along for the ride. She had a plan. A plan that would one day lead to a society that would make the most of the vast frontier that lay ahead of us. A society that would make it's presence felt upon the history of humanity.
Spartan Kell-----The early years
Last edited by Sprayber on 17-06-2002 at 07:26
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17-06-2002 07:04
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