"Amalia! Come back in! We're going to eat soon!" 

That got her attention.  She was having fun in her game with the other children in the appartement block, throwing balls at each other in the hallway, but she was pretty hungry, and father had said that supper was more important than game. 

"If you leave, it means you lose!" Arros told her. He was pretty annoying, but there were few enough children of her own age in her appartement block, so she had to make do with what she had.

"You only say that because I've gotten you three times already," she said derisively, before running off to her appartement like a responsible nine-year-old.

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To her dismay, today supper was just half a loaf of bread and a few vegetables she didn't care for. "Couldn't we at least have some kind of meat?" she complained loudly to her parents.

"No, we can't," her mother said with a look just as disappointed as her own.

"Meat's expensive. You know that," her father said. That's what he was always saying; [i]Chocolate is too expensive, toys are too expensive, shoes are too expensive[/i]. She didn't understand why she couldn't have all these things, though at least she knew that most of the other children were deprived in the same way. In the city of Eginberg, everyone was poor, it felt like.

"But considering what day it is today-"

"I wish we could," her father said sadly. She barely saw her father anymore because he had to work three jobs to keep them afloat. He always seemed to have a tired look on his face these days.

Amalia grimaced, and took another bite out of the bread. 

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That night, like many others, she found she couldn't sleep. She tossed and turned and fumed, but sleep still wouldn't come. After an hour, she gave up trying, and settled for listening to the noises of the city: The rush of cars, the distant sirens, sometimes even gunfire. Although she'd never seen one herself, her father said the gangs were responsible, and that they were everywhere in the city.

Honing in to that sound, she frowned. There was a lot of gunfire, tonight, and it sounded different, somehow; not the usual popping, but instead violent cracks and booms. It was growing louder, too, she decided as she continued to listen. She also heard footsteps outside her room; her parents were awake, it looked like. Her door opened, and her mother's face peeped in. 

"Amalia, get out of bed and get dressed, quickly." She seemed scared. Amalia jumped out of bed, excited by the change of routine. By the time she was done and out of her room, she could make out what sounded like screaming, too. She realized all that noise must be coming from under her floor.

Her father spotted her, looking up from the table. It seemed as if he was filling a bad, but why, she had no idea. "Amalia, good, we need to go for a while."

"Go?" she asked, confused. "Go where? Why?"

"We don't have the time to explain this. Just do what I say, alright?"

So she helped her father gather everything that, in his words, they couldn't do without. By the end, they had only filled only two bags, which probably reflected a lot on their poverty. Her father took one, her mother the other, and then they were off. Now, the gunfire was loud as thunder. 

They rushed towards the stairs, which ran all the way to the bottom floor of the block. Her father opened the door- revealing behind it a giant.

Covered in a strange black suit, his face hidden by a terrifying mask, he held a gun the kind of which she had never seen before, coal black, the same as the rest of him. Her father had just the time to let out a "What-" before the stranger brought his rifle butt to her father's head, the impact making a  large crack as he fell to the floor. Her mother screamed, and she just stared dumbfoundedly. The stranger aimed his rifle and took fired a shot into her father, the sound almost deafening, and her father stopped writhing.

"Run!" her mother said finally. "Amalia, RUN!"

And she did. Without a second's thought, she bolted down the hallway, diving around a corner, running without much thought where she was going, She heard more of the thunder, and also the loud cracks of wood splintering. They were breaking into people's homes, she realized, horrified. Everything was chaos, now, and she sometimes saw other people in the hallways, families desperately trying to escape. 

As she turned a corner, she saw there were three men, armed and armored in the same way as the first stranger, standing up ahead. She quickly jumped back, and peeked around the corner, hoping desperately that they hadn't seen her.

They hadn't, she saw. They were circled around Arros, who was on the ground, looking terrified. [i]He's just eight[/i], she thought, as one of the men kicked him with his heavy boot, the impact making a sickening crunch. "Little brat," she heard the man say, his voice rumbling from inside his helmet. 

"Alright, you've had your fun," another said, and shot the boy in the face. She had never seen so much blood before; it coated the hallway, now. They then cracked open apartment doors with their rifles, and burst in. She took the opportunity to run across the hallway, not looking back to the source of the screams. Eventually, she came upon another staircase without further incident. As she started going down, though, she heard marching from under her. Panicking, she ran the other way instead, making for the rooftop.

Reaching the top, she opened the heavy metal door, and was greeted by a rush of cold, damp air. There was a light mist covering the city. She looked up, and gasped. There was a giant spaceship in the air, which seemed to go on forever. Around it flet a swarm of smaller ships, which would fly down and fire and parts of the city. 

Making her way to the roof's edge, she looked down, and saw a terrible sight: A massive crowd of pepole, stampeding towards the city centre, followed closely by a wave of the black-clad soldiers, who would wake potshots into the crowd now and again which only made it rush faster. She didn't understand what was going on. From somewhere, a loudspeaker was blaring the same repeated message:

"Inferiors have murdered the Crown Prince, and Inferiors must atone with their lives. Your lives belong to the Emperor; By your deaths, you do his will. Long live the Empire!"

Not wasting any more time, she hurried away from the edge, and found the large vent she had come here for. Climbing to its top, she scurried down it. It was only  a meter or so deep before one encountered a heavy grating, which had made it a handy hiding spot in the past. The other children never found her when she hid here. She hoped the soldiers wouldn't either.

With some semblance of safety, she curled up and started sobbing quietly, unable to hold back the tears. Today had been the lousiest birthday ever.

[u]                                                                                                                                                                                                                             [/u]
[b]Aboard the Garland-class battleship Setade, Planet Adenon, Ruthweiler System[/b]

In the Setade's control room, there was a flurry of conversations, as his officers relayed orders and requests to and from the ground units in action. Gernot Korwitz, Duke of the Verge, only watched from his end of the circular table. Although he could be personally involving himslf in the command process, in this case he accomplished more by overseeing the operation in its entirety, leaving the specifics to his commanders. 

On the table's centre was a holographic representation of Eginberg, updated in real-time wih the developpements on the ground. He stared at it intensely, though he did ignore the rest of the room by doing so. His right eye, robotic, was whirling around the room, taking everything in. 

"Your orders are to wipe out the Inferiors you find, lieutenant," General Falk was saying. "Your feelings on this matter are irrelevant."

"But sir," Korwitz could hear from the other end- his cerebral implants enabled him to follow radio conversations without a headset- "they have children with them."

Korwitz cut in there, pressing the side of his ear to activate his communicator. "This is Duke Korwitz, admiral of His Majesty. You WILL follow orders, seargant."

At first there was no answer. "Y-yes, my lord!" the soldier finally responded, his voice shaken with fear. Korwitz had cultivated a terrifying reputation over the years, and he knew it. He did not mind; fear made command so much easier, and it was only right that lesser men quail before him. 

Personally, he found His Majesty's orders to be inefficient. A messenger ship had arrived yesterday, bringing word of the Crown Prince's murder, and an imperial command to purge the inferior population of his worlds of 1/1000s of their number. To make this order somewhat possible to carry out, he had identified cities across the planet which, combined, made up that ratio of the population, and organized military assaults on them. They would raze the cities and kill any they found within, as the Emperor commanded.

Simultaneously to this operation, twenty-one other cities across the surface of Adenon were being similarly targeted, though Eginberg was by far the largest city targeted, with a population of over two hundred thousand. They were Inferiors, though, and the Imperial Forces were having little difficulty in their extermination. 

As an added bonus, this action had drawn out the terrorists as well. Unable to stand by while their people were butchered, the rebels were engaging Imperial forces across the city, in spite of being hopelessly outmatched in numbers, training, and sheer firepower. Where the rebels were too fortified for a ground assault, the Setade's guns could simply blast away. Soon, there would be nothing left of the terrorist network the Dagons had put so much effort into establishing.

Just thinking about the Pact was enough to bring back his old anger, one of the few emotions he could still feel. That it was his vassals who had proven traitor and broken off form the Empire still smarted; And in both the First and the Second Compact Wars, the systems of the Dolorous Shoals and, especially, Far Ingria, resisted all his attempts to retake. Every time he looked at a map, and saw those stars labelled "Pact Territory", it made him want to kill someone.

He was brought out of his brooding by General Bulow. "My lord, the Inferiors and rebels have centered on the city square. Should we bombard them with our guns here, or use the land forces? Either way, all escape routes are sealed."

Korwitz considered that for a moment. "Order the ground forces to advance towards the square," he decided. Orbital bombardement would make a mess of debris that the rebels could entrench themselves in, and in any case, a ground attack would be more thorough in ensuring there were no survivors. There were four main streets through the city, which convered on the square; On each one was a regiment of Imperial soldiers, who had herded the Inferiors towards the killing zone. At this point, the operation had become a simpel mop-up.

"I have other matters to attend to," Duke Korwitz announced, rising from his chair. All his officers rose too, and saluted. "General Falk, you have the command here. Serve His Majesty well."