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Chapter Three – The Man Who Fought Back

It began slowly. Stories like that always do.

When the riot was going on and blood was being spilled no one stopped and pondered over who did what first. Fists were flying, buildings were burning, the cursed soldiers were easy targets everywhere you looked, there were plenty of weapons in the form of bricks and lumber and dad’s old rifle, who had time to chat?

It was hours later, when the temporary barracks the local constables had set up for the additional troops was a blackened hole in the dirt, when smoke rose from a dozen pitched battles, when the soldiers -- the ones that were still alive -- were huddled inside barricaded government buildings, far from the maddened crowds, that was when people had time to wonder..

The soldiers had fought back desperately to contain a maddened populace that outnumbered them many times over. Many of them, them that believed in the dignity of man and the ultimate righteousness of the Alliance’s cause, did their best to calm the situation. They were the ones who had made friends among the citizens of Persephone while they were stationed here, and in more than one situation that respect saved lives. Several were granted safe havens when the rampaging crowds drunk on their own righteousness would have killed any solder outright. One sergeant and his platoon holed up with several local families on the same block and protected them from all attackers, military or civilian. As in every war, big and small, there were stories of heroism and nobility on both sides.

The troops in this mismatched battle without safe retreats or friendly defenders were forced to become more brutal and relentless just to survive. Some ( a small minority, for what it’s worth) had been brutal from the day they arrived; this just gave them license to cut loose what few shreds of decency had survived so long. That didn’t do much for crowd control but such atrocities d