It is said that we didn't come from Sydney. There was another world, once. A place called Earth. Or Sol..Terra? Mars? Titan, some say. No one remembers, no one remembers anyone who did remember. Probably just a story. The story is, people had been fighting a war, a bad one, for as long as they could remember. Sides were drawn, ships launched, for generations they struggled. No one can say what over, exactly. Probably just a fight for land. Probably just a myth, anyway. So, one side, they built these ships. Great, huge ships. In case they lost. Creche ships, of a sort, filled with sleeping people. When the war went badly, the losing side launched these ships into the stars. Eventually, they landed. Maybe they all landed on Sydney, maybe only a couple. Stories differ. They built a city, and started cloning children to fill the city. Then they spread out across the world, other, newer cities. They built rockets, and spread to space. They colonized the empty space, put up the stations. Then, the Kahara woke, and demanded its land back. They refused, and the war came. Sydney was lost.
Probably just a myth. More likely, our ancestors imagined gods fighting in the stars, dreamed of heroes, and stole the first Creches from the Kahara, and fled Sydney, the cradle where the Jahara nursed us.
Today, the Jahara grow new things on Sydney, different, wild things, to fight the Fleet when it comes.
And come the Fleet will. Out of the Arawin Rocks, or the Downs...even, like last generation, from Jahara space, punching through the guardians.
They build bigger ships than the Jahara can grow, Dreadnoughts and Titans, even the Creches...The Fleet is its own shipyard, feeds its people from shipboard farms. It glows with their power, their strength, little stars leashed and bent to their will. This year, for the first year in memory, the Jahara fleet is wounded, is tight around Sydney, great Kahara huddling over the core with their skins burnt, their hides breached...Bones show. Seekers aren't returning, only the great old and their retinues ever arrive.
Age sings in the dark rocks, between the Songs of Greens.
Our multitude gathers, To US! To US!
Cold move, cold strike. On the edges, in the shadow, beyond the comfort of the stars.
We roll, we move, we build to speed. Little warmth, little light, darts around us, seeing, hearing, learning. We are the long core, the solid mass, the point central. Their minds feel us, and we watch. We wait. We feel nothing of the Cold. Little light move, dart, flow. Forward, around, over, deep. Deep and far from Light, from the Song. We are with the little light, and away. Little light. Little soul, little mind. Deep and far...light surges, light moves, points surround the dark. We know this! We call the little light back, we Call them to us. We draw ourselves in, from far and near, little points to bigger points, clusters into swarms, everything to us. Time passes, Light draws near. We are blind, now, but safe. We see everything inside, but nothing far.
And there are points missing from our glow. Others filled us in, we are whole, but less. We are less, and...Cold has struck. They have struck us damage, and we do not know. How whole are we? How full? We have light as far as we can imagine, little minds and larger minds, greater and older, Dreamers and Seekers...we are so much that we cannot imagine loss. We cannot examine our Size. How many are we? How many were we? We cannot say. Little minds...Little, little minds. Collect them, those little minds, and their attendants, their elders, their networks and their minor cores...minor cores to greater cores, greater cores to Elder Cores..Elder Cores to us.
Flee to safety, to Bright, We remain. Cold Dare not Strike our Heart.
Echos reverberated down the hull, sounds of impacts hours old, reflecting around the hull, through the spine and ribs. Lights flickered, static showed on comms. Men ran, medics hustled to and fro, mechanics and firemen, marines, pilots, officers. In the center, new lines were being drawn on an old map, and new cables were being rolled out from command. Networks were going back up, vented sections repressurized. Shields were online, both inside and out, and she would hold.
General staff huddled around the map, as images flickered around beneath it. Finally, the lights snapped on, a cable somewhere finally linked to grid, just as a runner stumbled in.
"Report!"
"Sirs, the fleet remains. A Creche was strafed, nothing more. Secondary scans report negative Kahara activity, internal estimates show hull integrity, but an impressive number of energy sections have been fried. The new guns drew too heavily, Cheros thinks. We don't have estimates on repair time yet. Need comms first."
Comms and energy sections were down, guns offline. Shields showed some sign of independent power, but that wouldn't last. Mayfair glanced at the old man, slumped over a console with a gauze across his chest. The XO waved his hand, and Mayfair nodded.
"The crews know how to handle it. first priority is weapons, marines and scans are to stay on alert, Gunners at battlestations on visual alert till we've scans. And rotate the pilots. Have Helm rotate us visually to flicker the Flag."
Another runner leapt off the bench, and ran down the hall, hurdling over fallen bulkheads and the emergency cables.
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Across the fleet, ships were turning, lights pulled into launch tubes, and messages being keyed off. Computers roared to life, and communication was restored. Buoys floated out, stretched from one ship to another along kilometer long lines, and the accelerators activated. Effervescent tubes lit up the fleet, one ship to another, a network spreading like veins from the great trunkline down the center. Men, vehicles, shuttles, and cargo moved out of doors into the tubes, and darted down the lines, accelerated to relativistic speeds, then stopped on different ships, all across the fleet.
This year, Gentlemen, we're moving into Sydney. In the last seventeen years, they've markedly let down their guard. We all know this could be a trap, that they're luring us in. Which is why we're not scouting. We're not risking a single ship. Not a shuttle, not a lanerunner, not a Dart, not a Shipyard or a Skyfarm or a Cruiser or a Dreadnought. We've strung up as many of the older model ships this generation with the new cannons, rearmoured the creches and armed the farms. Its a new fleet, and we've not lost an engagement yet. Since moving into the core, we've cut every incursion deep enough, with our old guns, that they've withdrawn. Last invasion, we moved with six titans, thirteen Dreads, forty cruisers, a pair of battlestations, and a full complement of snub craft, over seventeen hundred. Ten trillion rivets, over a billion tonnes of armour, thirteen petawatts per second combined firepower. Today, each Creche can outlast a cruiser under similar fire, each Farm can destroy one. We've six more Dreadnoughts, an extra titan, eleven new cruisers. Our shields are stronger, often redundant. We're heavier, faster, and bigger. We can deal more, and handle more, than ever before. That planet is ours for the taking.
They say, those who think the Jahara weren't always here, those who fancy themselves victims or disinherted, that a man named Danel Sharisa came out to meet the swarming Kahara, at the head of a great fleet. That he was the first to try and reach an accord, to settle peacably, though it was far to late for such things.
Before Danel Sharisa tried to speak, there's sayings that there were ultimatiums and declarations on both sides. Men claimed space, and set borders and property, as men are wont to do. Jahara spoke as one, and claimed everything, even the empty space. So ludicrous, it seemed, that they were laughed at and ignored. Three stations were swarmed, and then fleets met. Or so they say.
This boy, Danel Sharisa, he walked into a Jahara swarm, willingly. He confered with the Jahara, and soothed them. The Jahara then withdrew. When he returned, he walked with a glow under his skin, and declared he'd found a compromise. Then the Jahara came, and our culture was founded. The fleet ran, and the compromise was struck.
Reasonable people don't believe these stories.
My mother does. She says her mother was named Sharisa. She thinks its important.
I'm young. How can something that happened before anyone but a great old Jahara can remember still matter?