The Secrets' Crusade

There was no time for real consideration. Kicha was possessed of perceptual accelerators at least as good as your own, and you couldn't appear to be trying to shape her perception. Not that you wanted to, but she didn't - couldn't - know that. You weren't sure where the words came from, in the end. Only that you spoke them.

"Would you Witness or Remember?"

Kicha's veil flickered madly between partial formations, like a face trying to pull five different expressions at once. Spikes of subtle anger, fired by confusion and sudden and terrible pain. It was soothed by a well of nearly desperate hope you'd seen in her choice to offer her life, but only that and no more. And the question you'd asked was complicated by factors she couldn't be aware of.

"There is a risk you must know in the second," you said, before she could muster any reply. Your words were measured, and you hoped that your Masque was translating your emotions properly. She needed to see that you meant what you'd said, despite your addition. "It relies on what we call Practice, the source of so much of our survival. I don't know if the systems here will detect it, but if they do-"

"I understand," Kicha's reply was layered with meanings too deep for you to follow. Maybe Vega would have better luck, but you lacked the Harmonial's instinctive mastery in applying her Focus to conversation. "You still don't know why we react that way, do you?"

You shook your head, and Kicha's veil shifted, flowing into the motions of a wistful smile.

"It is good to know that that remains for you to learn," she said, and if you had not been in the midst of a far more delicate conversation, you would have demanded a true answer then. Instead, you let her continue. "But if you fear the scanners and sensors of this place, I would Witness. As the steward of this Sorrow, I have the ability to override them, but I'd have to explain why."

Her veil swept into gentle amusement. "I doubt that would be to any of our benefit."

"No," you agreed. "I don't think it would be."

"Witness, then," Kicha repeated, nodding firmly.

"Alright," you reached inwards. :Sidra?:

:You're going to have to relive this at some level to let me project it,: they warned you, always so concerned for you. Not entirely without reason, you had to accept. You'd been far more deeply damaged by your first experience with this memory than the others. :I know you learned from that, but are you certain?:

:I was the one to offer it,: you replied. :I'm not thrilled by the possibility, but we know what's coming this time. And with all of you able to support me,: you turned the words out, into the Heartcircle around you, :I think I'll be ok.:

:You're determined to do it anyway,: Lea sighed. That it wasn't a question made her acceptance all the clearer. :If your control flickers for even a moment, I will knock you out of the memory. Understood?:

:Of course,: you agreed meekly. The feeling of a collective sigh didn't vanish, but it faded enough for you to feel like someone wasn't going to stop you.

:Connecting to projection environment,: the statement lacked much of Sidra's emotion, a computer response to a computing problem. The holo around you flickered as they took control of it, and the entry imagery faded away into an endless field of stars. :Are you ready, Amanda?:

There were a lot of things you could have said to that. You chose the simplest, more raw emotion than words. :Do it.:

:Beginning memory projection.:

You'd done something like this before, more than once. But never with a memory this charged, and it told in the surge of phantom pain that shot through your soul as the field around you wove into a vista of gentle starlight, looking out across the galaxy. You didn't, couldn't, speak but you could still think and that was enough for others to do so in your place. Though the one who caught the thread still surprised you.

"The Uninvolved do not, did not," Mir stumbled a moment to correct himself. The Uninvolved in this memory had been aeons older than Tahkel, and that would surely have had an effect deeper than your own experiences with the younger, far less free beings who shared the title today. "See time as we do. But they were aware of your war with the Hjivin. They watched it, prepared to help you protect reality from...a fate the memory did not translate."

Before and around the formless presences of Uninvolved gathered, flitting across the vista with words and emotions and endlessly more. Mir's voice continued, but the words were lost to you, consumed by the memory etched into the caverns of your memory. Consumed in the moment, yes, but still in control of it.

"The eldest of them felt something," you heard Mir say, feeling the movement around you as the body of a being perhaps as old Kicha herself felt the first waves of death that must have been screaming out into the world beyond your own from the Hjivin's abomination. You dived away from the outlook of stars, seeking a single sun between the death cries of stellar cousins. You saw Kicha reach out to one of the blooming detonations as you passed, a mournful recognition alike to tears twisting her veil. And you knew that worse was to come.

Soon you had to show many images, the overlay of memories too complex to focus on just one. The Uninvolved arrival, slipping between the worlds of the system. The horror as they saw and understood why they had been drawn here, unease transformed into the recognition of an anathema. A glance back, through space that burned to see the movements of nations crashing against the other. The realisation that even at their swiftest, the Shiplords and those who fought with them would never reach this world in time.

Your knuckles whitened as the second-to-last pane dived down towards the planet below, sweeping into the places where the Sphere had twisted and stored billions - and not just their own. And then those places beyond, where deadened minds fed their souls into biological machinery to fuel the Hjivin's monstrosity. Kicha recoiled from it, her veil sharpening like unsheathed claws and only swift words from your Heartcircle prevented her from lashing out at the images.

And then the last act. The Uninvolved, ancient beyond meaning, lashed through the fabric of reality with a weapon that it had wished to forget, but never quite could. The abomination, still lacking true awareness, burned in the centre of a firestorm summoned by a being millions of years old. One who acted immediately, for it could not risk the time to consult its peers. Who had seen in the knowledge of the Hjivin's creation a reason to break the first promise of the Uninvolved for one even older, that they had made long before leaving the material world behind. The first lesson from those who had taught them of the galaxy - the Shiplords as they'd once been?

You knew your face was deathly pale, your breathing came raggedly as the vision faded back into the starfield where it had begun. Around you, the others of your Heartcircle didn't feel much better. As for Kicha, it was hard to tell. She'd gone utterly quiet as the vision ended, but you could feel the intensity of her thoughts surging to process what you'd shown her.

Your shaking sigh broke that silence, drawing the Shiplord's attention. For a moment, she simply stared at you, watching, examining, you couldn't be sure. But when she spoke, her voice was dead-toned, like a thing of glass shattered to dust.

"Where did you find this?" There was a touch of fire in the question. Had she been in any better condition, it would have been a shouted demand.

"On this world's twin," you answered hoarsely, ignorant of the tears on your face. "We felt something there, and on investigating, this was what we experienced. It hurt all three of us who found it, but it gave us a unique perspective on what happened here."

"I can see how it would," Kicha nodded heavily. She felt very cold to your wider senses, the same ancient pain she'd shared before numbing her reactions. "We knew that the Hjivin were trying to become or create something like an Uninvolved; those who ended them told us that. My understanding of the incarnation's words was that they had never wanted to act like that again, but would if needed to prevent such abominations. Those facts fuelled the Authority's agreement to the proposal to create weapons that would allow us to fight such beings ourselves."

"Why?" you asked. "The Uninvolved were clearly capable of it, and the Sphere were monsters. I-" Kicha raised an arm, her veil splitting into a subtle mimicry of a human hand, palm raised, and you stopped talking.

"Because," she explained, in the same voice of dead sand, "there is a reason that we reacted the way we did to what the Uninvolved did. Not their taking of action; that happened at the First Sorrow. But the way they did so here. The comparison is like night and day. And I am sorry, but I cannot explain why. You must see it for yourselves."

"Why can't you tell us?" Vega asked, a half-breath ahead of Kalilah's far more demanding tone.

"Because it is the duty of the Hearthguard to tell of their Sorrow alone," Kicha explained, the first strands of positive emotion leaching back into her voice. She loved the Hearthguard, like you'd loved the Circles. "I can place your identities under the seal of the Hearthguard if you wish for your visits to the other Sorrows, and provide access codes for the starship you must have. I can tell you the coordinates of the other Sorrows, and our numbers for them."

"But I cannot," she paused, "I will not break my oaths as a Hearthguard. They have been the one constant I have for almost two million cycles, and I am sorry, but it is not in me to abandon them."

You felt Kalilah's irritation subside. She wanted to be able to finish this mission, and Kicha was refusing to allow that. But you also knew that she respected the ideal of an oath kept. You could, theoretically, compel Kicha. But if you tried, how much would you put in jeopardy? You had made contact, friendly contact, with a Shiplord. How many millennia had it been since any could claim that?

"What will you do with this simulation, then?" you asked. "It proves that another way is possible, isn't that enough?"

"No," Kicha's veil was slowly recovering its emotion, now it shifted to a headshake. "Not anymore. Maybe if you had come here before the War Fleet sent to your star arrived, but not now. Your victory there has sparked no lack of fear among my people, and the Authority is as affected by that as anyone."

She began to say something else, but your question pierced the words like an awl. "Our victory?" you demanded. "You mean we actually won?"

"I," for a moment, she almost seemed embarrassed. "Yes. High Command chose to deploy a Lumen, and it was destroyed after your system Orrery forced the War Fleet to withdraw. I'm sorry, I didn't think to say."

"Knowing now is enough," you told her, meaning every word. That truth was a fierce, bright flame inside you, blazing up at the shadows that had gathered around your mind and soul. Questions about the battle still shifted between those places that remained, and you felt their echoes in the links between your Heartcircle. The Orrery had worked!

Alas that it did not take long for the other shoe of that realisation to drop.

"They're scared of us now," you said, feeling out the words. Somehow Kicha's motion of affirmation didn't make you feel any better. How would they feel when the other races who had found you declared war? "Then what can we do?"

"The Hearthguard can present this as new evidence, without your presence," Kicha told you. "The reaction of our people to your survival presents some unique opportunities, though I don't rate many of the chances to exploit them highly. But what you can do is continue on from this place, and do what you did here again. Find the places where we missed things, find the ways through our fear, and the promises we never learnt to keep. This Sorrow is where many of those took root, but it is not the first place to do so, and-" she cut off, her veil shifting to expression of recrimination.

"I'm sorry, that was almost too much."

"I think we understand." Lea said gently. You did, at least. Continue doing what you'd been doing all your life. Not a tall order, the stakes were just infinitely higher.

:Not like you were alone in that,: Vega chastised you, in tones of quiet laughter. :Or that you are now."

:That's true,: you admitted. Not much chance of doing otherwise, really. :But now what?:

:I think that's simple,: Mir said. :We decide where we're going. I can't imagine we're on any less of a time limit than we were before, and I doubt Kicha can stay here forever without drawing attention. So we need to chose.:

"Before you make your decisions," Kicha spoke up. It was odd, but the statement didn't rattle you. How many times had she seen others consider their options, even if those options were a touch different to your own. "There's something I feel I must tell you. Your people, you possess single-person combat forms of considerable power. I expect all of you have them as well."

She had to be referring to the Unisonbound, but why was that relevant?

"Before the War Fleet withdrew," she swallowed, and you shifted in place, stepping closer in what you hoped was a motion of confidence. Whatever this was, it had to be important. She'd barely hesitated in explaining more about her people than you'd ever hoped to understand, but now did here?

"They captured one of them," the words came out in a rush, and the bottom dropped out of your stomach. "Right at the end of the battle. I'm not sure if your people would even realise it. The War Fleet killed three, and took a fourth. I don't know where they took it, them," she corrected herself, "but I know they were taken alive."

"Oh." So much could be said by that one syllable. Half-thoughts flashed between the Heartcircle, laden with grief for those who had been lost. And tinged with true terror for the one who had been taken.

"Oh fuck."

What do you do next?
[] Push for more information on the Unisonbound.
Vega: If she knew more, she'd have told us.
[] Shelve this horror for now and continue with your visit at this Sorrow
-[] Remember
Amanda: Still our best chance to see more of Shiplord society. And maybe one of them could tell us more about the other Sorrows? Asking could be risky, though. None of us know enough about them to make proper conversation.
-[] Witness
Mir: We know what this is already, and I highly doubt it would have more information than what we've found here.
[] Return to the Adamant immediately
-[] Visit one of the ships in orbit (only available if Hearthguard seal acceptance chosen)
-[] Leave immediately to
--[] The First Sorrow
Navigator's note: The yellow sun at the heart of this system was somehow twisted off axis by some monumental stellar event. Three major planetary bodies.
--[] The Second Sorrow
Navigator's note: A red giant surrounded by a graveyard of shattered worlds.
Kalilah: Our host implied that the First and Second Sorrows are somehow linked. She was there for the Second, not the First, yet gave the First far more importance. Why? Something to consider.
--[] The Fourth Sorrow
Navigator's note: A dying red supergiant, still flanked by the remains of its coterie.
Amanda: Very strongly without saying as much, Kicha suggested that we visit this Sorrow last. She wouldn't explain further.
[] Write-in?

Do you accept Kicha's offer of Hearthguard seal and ship id/access codes?
[] Yes
-[] Just the Hearthguard seal for your time on the ground at the other Sorrows
-[] Just the access codes and ship ID for the Adamant
-[] To both
[] No