The Slaughter of Superfluous Men

Rise up, rise up the horses. Beware. Ultra-stealth. They moved through the trees in a shimmer. They were blessed and weak, powerful and distant. We came creeping through the hedges. He heard too much and was gone, just like that. An instant moment that caught the graze between two worlds; and as always, he longed for a higher intelligence, and saw them shimmer and slither as they landed. The normal person knew as much about them as a cat knew about the Roman Empire. We were blessed to be here. He could feel them running before the wind, cascading down centuries, feeling at once loved and divine. He didn't know how to stop them. He didn't know how to call a halt to it all. 

The days of postponement were over. He was giddy from the shock. He couldn't land safely. They were hyper-alert; he was on guard. The air moved through the trees; and the way they were was so different. He was sick of the wash of thoughts from the surrounding humans. He was sick of being a target. He cried and heard the names of others. He went walking and they came with him. And they shimmered through the groves. They arched up and reached across. They reached out a long taloned finger and caressed him. Some of the shapes were humanoid. All were caught in a mystery. He bowed before an alien sun. He tried to be true, and got swallowed at every turn by an infinite history, by a world with no edge, a time that would strangle him if allowed. 

But there was something else now. They only came at turning points. They could move mountains and walk on water, they could dance between the stars and still survive. There was no affection, only purpose. This is only one run on a very long train, a track that wound into the distance. Non-linear. For all were at cross purposes; as they moved into ultra-stealth. They could not be tracked. They could not be heard. They would not be caught; they would deliver their message and be gone. 

We love you, our creations. Your country is in ruins. Your leaders possessed. The evil that they brought everywhere. 

Previous instructions to murder were ignored. 

The assassins failed to reach their target. Nothing was as simple as it first appeared. The invisible soldiers, sent forth on errands he assumed would succeed, had now vanished back into their own beyonds. There would be a repurposing, a rearming, a place and time we could call our own. They sought safety; their own Garden of Eden. They wanted to materialise; to be of flesh, to know that very thing, the feel of air on skin. To know that a place would be theirs forever. 

They have always walked among us. And yet, and yet. 

"This is ridiculous," the Watcher on the Watch muttered in frustration. And he heard, heard too much. Knew their divine future. Knew, already, their day of death. 

We would reach forth and kiss you, embrace you, but we are not of flesh, know nothing of the frustrations of your species. We do not know what it is to be embraced in flesh. 

The integration is going well; another observed; and divorced from his own history, relegated, as he had previously said, to the viewing seats, that vast shimmer, the things that took place without our knowledge; the way of it, the way of all flesh; they came for you at nighttime. 

Surrender. Or die. The decision is yours. 

THE BIGGER STORY: 

The Defence Minister has denied any alleged war crime murders in the Afghanistan special forces report are “fog of war” incidents, hitting back at critics of the Brereton inquiry process.

Senator Linda Reynolds, who said she was left “physically ill” after reading the report’s claims that Australian troops had killed 39 Afghan civilians and prisoners, described the incidents included in the report as “alleged cold-blooded murder” outside the heat of battle.

“There are 39 incidents of credible evidence of murder. Not fog of war, murder,” she said.

“That cannot be swept under the carpet … you cannot look away, I cannot unsee what I read.”

Senator Reynolds’ full-throated defence of the Brereton inquiry on Wednesday was a direct response to criticisms from former special forces captain Heston Russell. Just 24 hours earlier, he blasted the report’s key claim that the alleged murders were not in ‘fog of war’ situations.

“What is the ‘heat of battle’?” Mr Russell, an Afghanistan veteran, said in Canberra on Tuesday. He claimed special forces troops had the legal authority to “prosecute, capture and kill” enemies “in any circumstances”.

“I don’t know what ‘the fog of war’ is … what we need to do now is not sit here and debate ‘fog of war’, we need to allow those accused to be afforded the presumption of innocence.”