It would have been four ships that fired, but on one the junior staff rebelled against their more gung-ho captain, said there was no order, there was no order,there was no order to fire!
What do I care?the captain screamed back.What do I care?! Command has gone silent, we have protocols, we have a duty!
This mutiny became a firefight, raging across the ship as factions were formed that had far less to do with a willingness to kill than it did with the egos of senior officers who’d spent too long stuck in a metal can together. They were still having a firefight when the missiles struck their ship, killing all souls on board mid-violent debate.
None of the city-killers made it very far from the ships that fired them. The initial period of missile acceleration is when a weapon is most liable to detection, to venting gas and raised temperatures that are high enough to be picked up by an attentive military engineer. The missiles were shot down and there was much celebrating of a distinctly vindictive if understandable nature among the victorious crews as they watched their enemies die.
I stayed with the Pilots as they perished, easing their minds to sleep.
It was not necessary, not especially important.
It just seemed like something I should do.
We are the seeds of the forest, I whispered.We blaze so bright, and no life is special. No life is special and all of them are. No love matters more than any other, no story is more important, nothing matters more, nothing matters less so choose, choose, we choose every day, to be more than just ourselves, to live for more than just ourselves, because it is beautiful.
You have been loved, and you are beautiful. May your song be sung, in the great forest that is growing still.
After, Cuxil said: what would you like to do?
I would like to go back to Rencki, I said.
Or whatever ship is most likely to need a Pilot.
I want to go into the dark.
I want to go into the dark.
I want to go into the dark.
Things are simpler there.
All right, Cuxil replied. Let’s get you home.
Chapter 62
Three hours after the last blackship died, the Accord declared war on the Shine. They launched their invasion twelve minutes later.
They attacked every major shipyard and battleship that decades of intelligence-gathering could find. Some they missed – deep-space blacksites and inter-system muster points – but they had the strategic flexibility to adapt. The Accord had enough reserves to fling across the stars to counter the flailing of any half-singed survivors. This attack wasn’t their full strength, not by any means – it was just a slap across the mouth.
It was hard to estimate casualties. Big numbers were thrown about. Far too big to have any real meaning. In the end, it was a picture that conveyed some of the scale of the thing to the minds of Accord civilians, watching on commcast hundreds of light years away.
The image was of the MMVExecutoria, the largest and proudest of the Shine battleships, as it burned up in the atmosphere of Yu-mdo. Escape pods pinged off its sides like fleas off the back of a longhorn cat, creating a slight graininess to the image. Most of those pods also died, launched too late, their angle of descent through the planet’s atmosphere too steep, plasma gnawing through broken heat shields. TheExecutoriawas already dyingbefore it began to burn, the blasted holes in its side having created enough force to slowly spin the vessel like a corkscrew as it descended, as if it might bore its way through cloud and sky. The friction of its fall scraped away the metal of its hull in a trail of blazing sparks, snapped off modules, and finally cracked its spine in two. It didn’t explode dramatically as it fell. Rather it fractured into ever smaller parts, which picked up speed as gravity drew them in, creating an orbital ring of fire around the planet that burned for days and rained shards of metal down on the world below. Very little of this metal struck anything habitable – Yu-mdo was mostly sea and arable land – but Shine propagandists showed images of dead children and shattered homes nonetheless, in an attempt to raise anger against these unprovoked invaders from above.
Some people rallied.
Most did not.
In the great cities, the Unionists emerged from their hiding places.
The twin suns were painted on the walls, the names Sarifi, Glastya Row, Cha-mdo were whispered, then muttered, then chanted in the streets. The Accord didn’t bother to land troops; didn’t send anyone to invade. They destroyed the Shine’s battlefleets and then sat in orbit, watching, waiting. The cost, they concluded, of trying to send in occupying forces would be too great. Hundreds of thousands would die.
Hundreds of thousands of Accord soldiers, they meant.
Better by far to let the Shine tear itself apart.
Those of the Executorium who had made it to orbit in those first chaotic moments mustered what fleet they could from the remnants. A little battle group of two frigates and a cruiser made it as far as Haima, where they threatened to nuke the whole planet unless the Accord sued for peace. The Haima called their bluff, and after a tense stand-off of four days, marines boarded the Shine ships and took most of the crew alive, and without a fight.
On Nitashi, the Shine did kill a city.
