Book 3 - Stars
Part 1
This thread is intended to be paired with The Hourglass (3.1)
CW: Arson, Murder
Monday, March 13th, 2023
Arzaalnay, Dabaab 54th, 412
One week until the revolution
Colonel Saarkis Hawk was old, but even he was not old enough to remember the beginning of the occupation. His parents hadn’t been either. And even his grandparents had only been children when Zakyn Petroleum had swiftly and surely established their vise-grip on the Republic of Sayaduun. Unlike in Mukarras, there was no fighting. Unlike in Bohyate, there were no deals. The Sayaduuni people simply let it happen. They were fishermen, not fighters.
Of course, that didn’t mean that Zakyn Petrol was any less harsh than Golden Oil had been. Far from it - in fact, they had taken the Sayaduuni complacency as a sign they could do whatever they wanted. With no oversight, no resistance, and only the directive to profit as much as possible, Zakyn too people from their homes at night, brought them to labour camps, and made them do whatever Zakyn needed to be done. Saarkis had been thirteen when his own father was taken. Back then, nobody knew what happened to those who disappeared - the last time somebody was reported coming back home, their house had burned down the next day, with them and their family inside. The AVG declared it an accident. Nobody believed them, but everybody pretended they did. That’s what you did in Sayaduun in those days - if something was wrong, you pretended it was right, and hoped against hope that it wouldn’t be your family next.
When Saarkis was 16, he had run away. He had been tired of pretending everything was okay when it wasn’t, and he had wanted to make a difference. He had heard of Alkhatawf, The Hook - founded by the mythical Habuub herself. They kept to the shadows, making graffiti, stealing from the AVG, helping those in need, building up their power slowly. They weren’t soldiers, but fishermen have their own sets of skills too, after all. When Saarkis had made it there, he had wanted to fight. They had guns, why weren’t they using them? So he and some other young revolutionaries had trained and planned. Eventually, they brought their training and planning to the council, and the council let them carry it out.
The first time Saarkis had taken a life was at a labor camp near Sahla. They had snuck in, scaled the walls, killed guards without making a sound. Saarkis didn’t feel the guilt until later - they were complicit, after all. Most of the time, they didn’t have families, or people waiting for them. Their deaths would be celebrated, not mourned. It was a massacre - not a single guard remained. They got the trucks, the prisoners, the money, the weapons - they took it all. Not a single casualty, except for Taamir’s sprained ankle, but he got that from being an idiot so it didn’t really count. A massive success, all things considered.
Saarkis was 19 when he saw his father for the first time in six years. Alkhatawf had continued to green light more and more operations, and Saarkis had even been promoted to sergeant in just a short three years - a meteoric rise people were sure would put him at the top. They had been right, but… anyways, they had been raiding a camp out east, near the border, when Saarkis Hawk saw his dad. Gaunter, ribs poking through, and dressed in rags, but still unmistakably the same man he had been when Saarkis was still a child. Saarkis had taken a small step forward. ‘Son?’ his father had said in disbelief. And then his father had been shot.
It wasn’t the first time a mission had gone wrong. It wasn’t the first time they had gotten into a firefight, and it wasn’t even the first time they had lost some of the hostages they were freeing. But it was the first time it was personal for Saarkis, and it had felt like a three-year joyride coming to an abrupt halt when one of the wheels flew off and everyone in the car was catapulted into the scorching sand - simply put, not very fun.
He had gone to tell his mother the news, like an idiot. They followed him. They knew who he was, they waited, and they followed him. She hadn’t been there when he got to her house - all that was left was a formal notice, stating she was to be hanged. He had gone to stop them, but it was too late. Months later, Saarkis had found out that Taamir had been the traitor. Saarkis had shot him in the back of the head the next night while they were drinking. He didn’t feel remorse. He just worked his way up the ladder.
In the 80s, the oil dried up. Zakyn had drilled too deeply too quickly, and now their hubris was their downfall. They tried to reopen the fishing docks, but any fishermen had died of old age decades ago. And so the taxes and the protection money got harsher. Businesses could reopen - but if you were in the red, you disappeared. Zakyn tried mining copper, but it didn’t sustain them. When he was 28, Saarkis became the youngest councilman that Alkhatawf had ever seen. He stopped doing raids, thinking that Zakyn would die on their own soon enough. He was unwilling to risk what he did, and even less willing to make others do the same. Forty years later, they were still here.
Saarkis Hawk hadn’t been around when WEGEC came, and he hadn’t expected since the death of his father that he’d be around when they were destroyed. So when Yufraan Abd’ildarra, the voice of god herself, told him that with his help the battle would soon be over - after more than a century! - he had been scared. He had been in this fight for too long to believe that it could be won. But god had been right. Surrounding him were soldiers, young and dumb like he’d been once been, eager to fight, and eager to make sure that their families would never end up like his did - even if it meant their own death.
Wouldn’t he have taken that chance?
In. Out. In. Out. His breath, steady as a fishing boat at calm sea. But now he had the chance to catch his white whale, as the expression went. He opened his eyes to see the faces of his comrades, just like it had been 52 years ago.
“Alright then, let’s get started making this plan. What’s our point of entry?” And with that, the true revolution began.