Children of Heaven: Choir of Silence, Chapter 33

Chapter 33:

November 25^th, 4233
Hyperion Hive
Outer Reaches
United Terran Concord

UTCNS Avenger

Eighth Fleet moved slowly, heading farther away from the warmth of Hyperion into the darker outer reaches of the system, passing asteroid belts, moons and planets. Minelayers went about their business, sowing fields of SLIPs in bands thicker then planets, OWPs and fortresses drifting silently in space, missile sites buried on asteroids and moons. And somewhere out there were the Lefu scouts, watching the fruits of their labours come to fruition. In attacking the Concord, they had roused a giant and if that giant had been slow to fully awaken, it had done so now. Hoss did not know how the Lefu aboard those ships must feel. They knew fear, anger, hatred. They bled, just like he and the men and women under his command.

There was going all too much of that soon enough.

~

The ships had long since vanished from sight, but Goldstein remained in the observation bay, uncertain as to how he should feel. A year ago if anyone had told him that the Concord was embroiled in a bitter conflict that dozens of ships and millions of personnel had already died in, his first inclination would be to say ‘good’ and leave it there. He had no love for them, especially not recently, but he knew what those men and women, sons and daughters, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, mothers and fathers were heading into.

He wished them fortune, suspecting that they would need all they could get.

~

Like Goldstein, Natalya continued watching, though Eighth Fleet was far beyond simple visual range. Courageous’s sensors tracked the armada across the system, two hundred warships and more then half that in support ships. Colliers, troopers, constructors. She honestly didn’t know how to feel, but she knew her crew well enough by now to know how they felt. Gryphon Peak had been the last straw. Curare had been bad enough, a reminder that Terrans were vermin to the Lefu, but it was Gryphon Peak that had driven that point home. Someone had leaked part of Ramillies’s drone information onto the hive’s net. By now, everyone had heard the pleading cries of civilian transports as they were butchered mercilessly.

That had been the very last straw. It wasn’t about survival, it wasn’t about freeing the planets under the Lefu’s control, taking back their territory. It was about destroying them completely, about two halves of the same coin locked onto a suicide course.

And that she could do nothing to stop any of it.

~

In her cell, Arykka sang. A haunting prayer, soft and trilling that filled the empty spaces around her. There were no words, but the melody was enough. Fire.

She prayed for fire.