By David C. Daoust
Danielle Donaghy’s life was not without sudden revelations. Not only the kind that led one to a new path, a better life, or maybe open one to new areas of understanding. But also, the kind one secretly hoped, no one ever learns, they thought such situations may work in some other way.
As a small girl there was that moment, she realized, that not everyone, were ‘friends she just hadn’t met yet’, and, in fact, were anything but.
She remembered her first year at University– the first professor that realized she was more than just the expected ‘Space Hick’. That she may actually have a brain. Dannielle had gone out of her way to win her over, to prove herself. As though she could be the prize student that Danielle knew she could be. The young student’s estimation of the professor’s reaction, however, was far off the mark. This professor already had a prize student. All Dannielle did was threaten the prize. Make herself a target.
Of course, she would have to add in that revelation on Mars. That moment when she realized the War was taking a far greater toll than the ‘Martians’, protesting it on Earth, could ever know.
Danielle was not one to bulk at such revelations, she took them in stride.
The months she’d lived as an Earthborn Ambassador, within the Venusborn lands, had increased these revelations a hundred-fold.
Dannielle was there as an emissary, to move things out of the Harrowing War that was rampant on Mars. She was on a mission of peace.
It was no easy task working with the Venusborn. The upper city of Parvel, was all ship-shape and clean. Equally as rigid as the uniformed men and woman that marched the streets. They smiled, and presented themselves in favor of her mission. She would have to say, if ever she gave such a recount of these secret revelations, that her first as an emissary, was that a lot of these people hated her. This revelation, however, only took a few moments of eye contact.
Such a recount would go on and on—
Not all of those that accompanied her, were there to work in peace’s favor. Earthborn spies were in her retinue. They threatened every aspect of her dealings, yet she knew there was nothing she could do to change it…
The revelation she was probably not going to see more than the surrounding towers of the Venusborn Capital or, officially, meet anyone outside of the rigid black uniforms of the Ruling Party…
These were the simple ones; the hard ones would come later.
For example, the transport accident that just happened to happen not far from her docking bay- was an explosion meant for her.
The biggest revelation, was just how fractured the Venusborn really was. The Premier was not only contending with the Earthborn, there was infighting within the High Council. And there were rebels gnashing at their heels from within the lower tunnels. Hungry rebels. Literally starving.
Eventually she would learn of the real conditions of the Venusborn. Eventually she would meet those below, and witness the true motivations for all the killing. Eventually she would lose all taste for the meat served within Venusborn lands. ‘Left to wonder all her days, if what was served those days before, was really as it appeared. She told herself she would know, though had no real clue what human flesh may look like, taste like. There was no evidence of the crime among the Ruling Party, but the thought alone would make her doubt. She would spend all her remaining years a vegetarian, forever studying the Venusborns’ eyes, looking for some sign of feral darkness, some sign of broken souls, something to prove to her, that such actions would leave a tell-tale mark.
Armis Clemente, proved her only true ally. It was a relationship that blossomed and grew to something far greater. Greater than friendship as well. It was their partnership that led to the peace talks that would bring all the leaders of Mars to the same table.
The Premier, his trusted Generals; the President of the Earthborn and his– all packed under the same dome.
Danielle had dozed off in the transport, her head lolled back and slightly off to the side. The steady vibration of the engines masking her steady breathing as she’d lost consciousness. Her dreams, perhaps, were that of the peaceful days that would come. Dreams that shattered as readily as the promised peace, when the dome rending blast sent shockwaves across the entirety of Mars.
She awoke startled among a turbulence that seemed to shake the universe. Her being hollow, charged for the forward cabin, plunged into the cockpit of pale-faced and ashen pilots– to be informed of what she already knew.
An hour later and she would have died with her brother, her fiancé Armis, the delegations of both sides… the entire city… the peace-talks had been bombed… all at the hands of the opposition.
Danielle was defeated that day. Peace was defeated that day. Not for the years to come, not for Mars. Peace died in her heart.
Justice, however, was made manifest.
The blast was so great, trapped beneath the dome, that reality was said to warp– creating an anomalous shard of unknown material at the heart of the blackened ruins. Truly unworldly, it was stark white, nothing could mar it, unbreakable, whose edge could slice through anything known. Eventually, it would be known as the Clean Blade.
The story would be told for centuries to come, that the Hero of Mars, Danielle Donaghy, had flown down among the rubble, found the Clean Blade, took it up in her hands like a great tool of justice, and razed the Venusborn lands from the face of Mars.
The truth was far from it.
The Clean Blade itself was not anything to be wielded by man. Only a Galliant could lift such a massive shard. And only a legion of scientists could find a way to wrought the clamp-like hilt, and only then, once they realized that this was the only substance in the known universe, that could rend the Venusborn’s ‘impenetrable’ shields.
With Danielle’s Brother dead, she was now Commander of Fergus.
Danielle Donaghy led the armies of Galliants that obliterated the shields, freed the starving Venusborn from the lower cities, and slew all those that thwarted peace.
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