Without Warning
By
Phillip C. Beebe

Without Warning is an original manuscript by Phillip C. Beebe, © 2000. All places mentioned, real, or fiction are from the imagination of the author. All characters, real, or fiction are solely from the imagination of the author. No part of this manuscript may be copied or reproduced in any fashion, without the written permission of the author or his agent.

FORWARD

There weren't any sirens wailing in the night to warn of impending danger. No telephone call advising the people it would be better to leave before it was too late.

Death and misery had just stopped by, not for a moment, but to stay, to weave its evil, claiming the souls of thousands. It was Monday, January 15, 2277 and at 9:00 o'clock in the morning when the first bomb exploded in the busy market place killing twenty people in the blink of an eye. The destruction of a way of life and a society didn't cease with just one bomb, thousands of bombs would reduce the cities to rubble, leaving block after block ablaze, with no hope of quenching the hunger of the raging fires The beast consumed the major cities, yet it wasn't good enough—the rain of destruction kept falling.

The smaller towns and villages had been virtually obliterated leaving only broken bodies and rubble in the once peaceful setting. Only the harsh, deafening explosions were heard.
Among the sounds of the explosions, the screams and cries for help from the unlucky hordes caught in the open could also be heard, but were quickly drowned out by yet another explosion and the death of yet more innocent, loving, caring people.
The only help that would come for them would be the specter of death and for some—not soon enough. War had come to this tiny sector of the universe. A war the leaders of the planet had clearly foreseen and did nothing to prevent or prepare for. Of course, preparing for the onslaught that was to befall their planet would have been an exercise in futility.
When the first weapons of war announced the beginning of the end, the leaders had simply boarded their private starships and left, going into hiding, abandoning the people to the vices of the yet unseen invader. The Darvonian homeworld belonged to the Rahj now. The destruction that the Rahj left behind during their rampage of conquest was well known throughout the known universe. They would attack without provocation, destroying everything and everyone in their path, with few exceptions.
Those spared were forced into slave labor; many died at the hands of their captors for no other reason than the sport of the hunt. In their hearts, the Devonians' had resigned them selves to the fact that no one had taken notice of the wholesale slaughter on their once beautiful world.
They were trapped—with no hope at all. Only death would release them from the torture that they were to suffer.