Your response to Entara, a message that in previous Sorrows would have been a matter of vital importance, was relegated to an afterthought in the aftermath. You later learned that Elil crafted the response, their Focus of Clarity granting it to them quite literally in this case, as well as a much needed precision. You had other concerns, some of them much closer to home, and far more immediate.
The bridge was a haze of noise, and the shipnet beyond it was even worse, crossed-over threads of pain and resentment sparking like tinder at the base of a collective trauma that still defined much of humanity. You could feel it, the imbalance growing as you all stared out at the cruellest truth you'd never dared to imagine. Fire dancing on the fabric of a hard-won harmony, licking at the weave as it tried to set it aflame with a rage as vicious as it was circular.
And yet.
:It is always that, isn't it.: Sidra's comment surprised you, the Unison having been oddly quiet for a while now. You knew they felt your concern, and you'd tried to poke at the silence some, but you also wouldn't force anyone. Perhaps that was a failing, but it was your failing, and one you would hold to until your death.
For a moment there was only silence in reply to that silent declaration. Then something loosened in your mind, a lock or restraint you'd never once realised had been there, and a fury with all the terrible power of a star's death blazed through your bones. You felt the truth of that anger deep inside you in the same moment: a simple, childlike pain, that the world could be so unfair. But you had learnt a great deal more about galactic history than most of humanity, and knew how dangerous that feeling could be.
And yet.
:Yes,: you agreed. :It is.:
You were a product of a world that you had helped learn to lay down its rage. You had been as deeply scarred as any by the Week of Sorrows, by the loss of your parents, the loss of humanity's nature. You had grown to adulthood with few elders to guide you, the hands of basic synthetic platforms more common than their own. But you had grown, and you had overcome, and from that and more had flowered in time the fullness of humanity's promise sown anew.
That was another truth, another reality, and one that was as true for you as any aboard the Adamant. It was the truth that had seen the Shiplords defeated not once, and not twice by now, you believed, but three times in barely more than a score of years. And it was, you thought, a piece of what had made your race worthy of more than death. The words of two Shiplord commanders stood to that, as well as those of a Shiplord so ancient that she had seen their change across a timescale of shifting suns. It was why you had come here, to find a path that did not end with half the galaxy in smouldering ruin, instead of marshalling with the forces of humanity.
:That's who we are,: you said. :Who we chose to become. A people who can look at the horrors of a broken galaxy, and find it in our hearts to not just find those words, but mean them.: And just like that, the pain vanished. The fury scorching your bones hadn't vanished, but the heat of it faded. And you smiled, so very gently.
:And yet, Siddhartha. And yet.:
You were good at words, at weaving inspiration into the world with your voice and mind. Sidra knew that, they'd been part of you long enough. But they'd been directly exposed to that gift of yours only rarely, and never in a moment so crucial as this. You recognised the duality of the anger you felt, how some of it was Sidra's, how you'd missed it until now. And you spoke to the Unison as much as the crew.
"Listen," your voice cut the haze of crisscrossing words on the Adamant's bridge, the quiet word reducing it all to nothing. The entire internal network resonating with your voice might have helped too, you supposed with a wryness that almost surprised you. But why would it. These people were yours, and you theirs. All you needed was to remind them.
"We don't know what happened here." Establish that first. Make sure it was heard, and understood. "We don't know what combination of events led to this result, and that actually matters. Discovering how the Gysians are alive is a direct part of our mission here, in fact the core of it. We came this far to try and discover another path to peace, and what is this system if at least a form of it?"
You felt the rising reply, the emotion, and caught it short. "I know that this isn't so simple. I know that this burns, that it sets fires in the scars that we all bear. That it feels, and that it is, so unfair that the word seems insufficient. But listen."
A pause.
"Listen. Remember all those still alive back in Sol. All those whose futures rely on this mission, and the billions more beyond our star who do as well. Remember what we're fighting for, and why this mission was approved. Not because we thought it would give us weapons to use against our enemy, but because it might help us set them down." Those landed. You felt it in the fluid surge of the kindling weave around you, choking out spots of angry fire that had set moments before.
"I can't ask anyone to forgive this." And that would hold once you knew the truth, too. You weren't sure you'd be able to, but the name Entara had given… No. You shook the thought away. "I ask only that you remember why we're here. Remember who we are, and the decisions we've made in coming this far. This is as close to the future we wish for as we've ever seen. A race that broke the rules in a way so terrible that it has scarred them for millions of years, and yet still alive."
"So take that reality, and try to see the hope in it. Try to see what it could become, if we can learn how it happened." You considered for a moment, then shook your head. It wasn't even a choice. "And if you struggle, then know I will help all I can, without pause. And you know what that means. You have lived the meaning of that promise - it brought us here. Find the bonds that you trust, and the future that I know you believe in. Remember how it was born. I know that is not easy to recall, faced with this. But this is bigger than us."
"I know it's going to be hard seeing that. So I'm not going to try." There was a sudden hush around you at that. Confusion, shock, but faster minds were already leaping ahead to the realisation. "Not right now."
You'd already called up a chart of the Adamant's decks, and a searching finger stabbed forward a moment later. That was what you'd been looking for. "Instead I put out the call. I will be in Circle Quarters."
Circle Quarters had taken the place of compartments in pre-Sorrows warpship designs set aside for personal faith. When the predecessors to the FSN, humanity's unified navy, started designing ships they'd repurposed those to recognise the changed nature of the species. Contrary to their name, the spaces weren't administered or even affiliated with the Circles you'd woven through humanity. They'd simply been another expression of a reforged civilisation, and the name had stuck.
Now they were exactly what you needed to try and set this to rights. It was almost enough to make you start believing in fate.
"If this has set you adrift, come there when you can. And we'll find a way back," your gaze flickered across the room, seeing far deeper than flesh and blood. "Together."
Like we should be, a spectre of the last battle you'd fought whispered in your mind.
The Third Battle of Sol had almost been the death of you. Tens of thousands of your people had died in a maelstrom of warped gravity and particle fire, and if not for a singular action it could have taken the entire Two Twenty Three with it. Unisonbound Potentials wielded their Practice in ways that defied conventional understanding, thanks to the aid of platform intelligences like Sidra. Yet for all the joined power of two souls in one, all of it relied on Practice. At the Third, the Shiplords had shown that whilst they certainly did not understand that gift, they understood enough of the universe to disrupt it.
The weapons had never been built to fight Potentials, but knowledge gleaned from rebellious Uninvolved and the Shiplord Sorrows had unravelled both their cause for creation and the why of their efficacy. Caught within a trap that no one had known was coming, you'd tried and failed to wield the greater strength of Practice to defend your command. The result had been…
Pain, lashing through your soul and the body above it. A desperate breath, as you tried to call forth power amid a stifling veil of disruption unlike anything you'd felt in your life. And then, a scarlet flame, diving into the heart of the Shiplord fleet.
What had saved you hadn't been providence. It hadn't been understanding or some secret weapon. Separated from humanity's fleet assets, it had been a willingness to sacrifice everything to protect that had seen you through the fire. Kalilah had hurled herself into the depths of the new Shiplord fleet, drawing more deeply on the strength of her soul than any Potential you'd ever seen.
Light and fire painting the void, a sphere of spiteful power swelling in spite of weapons that had humbled all others turned their full attention to the two beings at its heart. Sudden, desperate realisation of what was about to happen. A plea. A refusal.
A choice.
The decision you'd made that day hadn't been exceptional. But it was important because the risk you'd taken had been total, and you'd done it to save someone else. Presented with the temptation of loss for a greater cause, you'd rejected it completely. A life had been saved, because you could do nothing less, and the result of your action had been victory unimagined. Yet despite your place in that story, you'd been anything but alone in the doing. It was why you weren't trying to solve this pain all at once. Could you have? Maybe. You were without doubt exceptional. But did you have to?
The world around you burning, destruction and hate and a terrible resolution woven through the flames. Arcs of brilliant light cleaving Shiplord craft from the skies even as they rained fire down upon you. Pain surging in your skin, biting at your soul, and not a shred of it mattered. Your arms enfolding another, catching them in the moment of their sacrifice.
There was no destruction.
Only light.
You'd poured the collective will of humanity itself through your own soul into another's, set ablaze by her own hand. It had saved her, and then she'd saved you, but it had been humanity's power that had seen you through the searing detonation which had scoured an entire Shiplord fleet from reality. Yours might have been the hands to wield it, but it wasn't your power and you knew that. It had been the power of a collective, many minds believing together. And that was what you needed here. Which led to the Circle Chambers.
They were small enough to be cosy, but large enough for there to be space. You'd come straight from the bridge, passing off your duties for this much larger one. Jane had understood, and you thought you'd be seeing her once the current shift ended - if only for a while. Ship captains rarely had time for recreation. But you weren't alone here.
Mary sat on your right, and you could sense the shivers in her soul, running across jagged scars that she'd spent painstaking years healing. Her father had led the research teams that discovered the First Secret, bringing the Shiplords inevitably down on humanity. The implications of this place were all too simple to someone as brilliant as her, and she couldn't stop what it was doing to her. The guilt was one thing, but she'd learnt to fight the sorrow. It had never been anger - not like this.
But to speak of anger was to consider the figure at the door to the compartment, pacing back and with steps so vicious that it was a good thing she was doing so in the air. Given who she was, those steps could actually hurt the Adamant's superstructure of Inviolate Matter.
Kalilah had been a mother and by all accounts a happy one, with a thriving family when the Shiplords came. She'd lost everything to the Sorrows, including a daughter no doubt long dead aboard one of humanity's first interstellar survey ships. To say that loss had changed her would be an understatement. In the agony of a mother's loss, she had found hate, and in that a simple wish: to see those who had hurt her destroyed.
Strip away all the power she wielded and she was still that woman somewhere. Screaming out in pain that had seen hatred as its only outlet. You'd spoken with her a little on the way here, as she had not been - in her own words - fit company to the bridge crew. And it had made one thing…very clear. Her wish was now a conflicting one.
She wanted to hate the Gysian survivors, for everything they represented that humanity had been denied and yet…she couldn't. Not until she knew why they'd been spared. And that uncertainty fed the bubbling cauldron of outrage that had long since welded itself into her nature. Fed it like no fuel could, and it was driving her insane. She was holding together, but you didn't want to think about what might happen when whatever truth this place sheltered took shape. Kalilah was the most directly lethal of all those aboard the Adamant and that lethality was not limited to personal scales.
Another challenge, but perhaps the two could help each other, if you found the right connection. That wasn't something you'd have considered before the Third, but Kalilah's near-sacrifice had changed a great deal. But that would have to be for later - the three of you weren't the only people in the section.
The War Office had chosen to include an unusually large set of Circle Quarters for a vessel her size when designing the Adamant's internal spaces. You'd been here more than once since departing Sol, and they'd never been this full. The compartments were packed with what felt like every crewmember not currently on duty - you'd heard the order from Adrianna standing down much of the non-essential watch personnel. And almost every one of them here was watching you.
No pressure, you told yourself. Just the fate of the most important mission in humanity's history on the line here. The last few were here now, though. That meant it was time.
You stood.
"Here we are," you said. Silence rippled out a moment ahead of the statement, a recognition of motion that few could win here, where rank meant little. "You all heard what I said, and I hold to it. I can't offer you a solution to this. It's bigger than any of us."
You took a breath, letting that statement sink in. There was silence, something almost like resentment, but an understanding too. "But all that means is that we have to fix it together. And that was what these places were made for.
"I've always told you that all our victories came from unity," you smiled sadly, raising your head to let your eyes sweep the room. Letting the truth in that gaze be felt and seen. "We all have our parts to play, and you decide those as much as anyone here. There are more paths to serenity than there are stars in the sky. All I ask is that we choose one."
The hours that followed were not simple ones. Nor were they kind. They were a practice in a pure form of your Focus, Mending that gave without exception and could place terrible strain upon the soul even as it restored others. There were tears and rage, anger cast against this system, its keepers, and the universe that had allowed its existence. Hate fought to nest among the flickering pyres, setting roots in the ash of the exhaustion that only comes from expelling pain until you pushed it back.
That hate was a venomous, twisting thing. Nothing you could do could truly banish it, all one had to do was look back at the Adamant's sensor intake to find it slithering forward. For some that might have been welcome, for another people, another race. But you weren't those things and on that day you fought as hard as you ever have to prove it. And where alone you most certainly would have failed, you'd not been truly alone since you were born. Family, then friends, then the blending of both that the Circles became. Those bonds had carried you through fire and near-death many times. This was no different.
It wasn't just those you'd expected, either. Vega and Mir you'd known would find their way through this faster than most. Harmony and Peace were powerful Foci alone, and placed together they'd successfully contained a furious power matching that of Sol itself. Having done so, they turned their minds and Foci to aiding the process you'd begun. Those contributions reflected off of each other, building steadily into something that - as always with Practice - was so much more than the sum of their parts.
And yet, that was only one such example. Within that haze of words and motions, there were other sparks. Souls who were not Potentials, who had no Focus, and yet shone just as brightly to your eyes. There was a brilliance to that, an affirmation of a fact you'd helped found a civilisation upon. It didn't matter if you were blessed with strength or insight beyond reckoning, those things could help, but only that. Practice enhanced the vehicle of change that any sentient was capable of becoming, and here you saw it again.
Ordinary people, as if any willing to wager their lives against countless trillions more could ever be called ordinary, who saw in the pain and anger of those hours something more. They took that resolution and offered it to others, altering it without complaint until it could be shared without prescription. It was everything you'd wished for, but that didn't make it any less exhausting to be at the centre of it.
You'd never been happier to crawl into your bed that night, in the quarters you shared with Mary. Tonight it was shared a little more than always, slender arms holding tight to one another as the two of you tried to breathe out the pain of this new reality. Your dearest friend had come out of this in better spirits than you'd dared hope, and it was her holding you this time. An inversion of recent experience, but not a cruel one. You needed it.
"You pushed yourself today," she said, her voice soft at your ear. "I don't have to be a Mender to feel that."
"Not with me?" you asked. You felt her shake her head, the tender motion brushing against your hair.
"Not with you."
A soft silence followed, a gentle thing that was nonetheless more deadly than an assassin's blade. It didn't push, or pull, or do anything really. It simply existed, stretching out from your dearest's soul to surround you. What was to come, what had to come, next didn't take long - and you didn't try to fight it. There was no point and you'd have lost anyway.
It started in your chest, a shudder breaking the artful calm of your breath as it passed your breast. Tears pricked at your eyes, and the pain behind them welled up, lances of exhaustion and sorrow stabbing down and down to meet mirrors spawned by your own weeping soul. Some of it was the fatigue of aid, the giving of your own existence to help recover the stability of scores and hundreds. But some of it was yours, too.
For all your certainty, for all the terribly fragile hope that the Shiplord's Warden of their Third Sorrow had planted, this hurt in a way that nothing else could. Perhaps, even, because of it. It made sense now, why Kicha had been so unyielding in your need to see this for yourself instead of having it explained. Perhaps a warning would have helped, but you weren't sure. To know what was coming might let you prepare, but it also gave you time to create reasons. Weeks of time to consider the whys and hows of this action would not have been healthy.
The shaking spread and goosebumps crawled across your skin, phantom touch and ghostly pains spreading out as your walls crumbled. Everything that was, everything you were, everything that had touched or hurt you in the last twenty-four hours. It all poured out, thoughts without heading and emotion without sense.
Mary's arms were firm around you, murmuring something soft and indistinct into your ears, a single hand brushing through your hair. Soft fingers moved your damp fringe aside, settling it with easy motions. Flickers of vision through eyes squeezed shut showed her face; concerned but not fearful. She knew what this was, and why it was needed: this wasn't the first time you'd fallen apart in her arms. The only difference was how well she knew you.
"You don't have to have an answer," she told you. "I know it's simpler to do so. I know how it helps, to be able to give or receive something. But no one had an answer today."
"But I," you began to protest.
"Amanda Hawk," Mary replied, and you felt her eyes flash with fire. "You are not a messiah. You are not the single pillar holding aloft our sanity in this mad and hurting world."
"I know."
"You're only human," she added. "And that's exactly how you should be."
"I know," you whispered.
Yet inside, you wondered. The memory came to you again, the moment in that place between the stars themselves where you learned why an Uninvolved had reached out to you. Why, even after stepping down from a position of true power, they had singled you out.
Perhaps you believe that it will fade, as it did after your second battle against the Shiplords. It will not.
You shivered in Mary's arms, jerking your head back and forth with a messy swiftness. The Third Battle of Sol had changed you at the level of some arcane fundamental, but you still had no idea what that truly meant. Tahkel, the Uninvolved who'd contacted you, had said that they would have sought Insight's Thoughtcasts if not for you. But they'd been able to contact you just as easily - maybe more so.
Yet for now, it did no good to linger further. Mary shifted next to you, one hand tilting your face up until your eyes met. You were both crying, but there was a strength in those green eyes that simply refused you any right to self-flagellation.
"You aren't where you need to be right now. Not for this," she told you, never once dropping your gaze. Her lips thinned a touch, a motion of concern. "Go to sleep, dear heart."
Then she pulled you close again, and started to hum. It was an old tune, one you'd taught her in fact. The same one that your mother had sung to you when you'd been a little girl. And for all the separation in time and space from who you'd been then, it still did something. Coming from the right person.
Your breathing slowed, and you sagged forward. The tension of an entire day of the hardest form of healing, the type that took time and only time, slowly faded back from your waking thoughts. It would still be there in the morning, and nothing could change that. But that would be then.
For now, you could let yourself rest.
The next day passed in a haze.
You woke early, with your mind swept clear as if by a cold wind, the pain and uncertainty washed clear of your thoughts. But this wasn't the calm of a settled mind. It was the eye of the storm at best, and the rippling sheer of an unchained tempest at worst. And the worst of it was that you just couldn't tell.
Fortunately, you didn't have to do it alone.
Mary was there beside you as you stirred, your head rested against her shoulder like a child's. Iris was in the next room, your daughter rousing in the moment that your breathing shifted.
"Hey you," Mary murmured, her green eyes a few inches shy of your own as she turned her head.
"Hey you," you replied, a rush of warmth filling your bones as you saw her smile.
"How are you feeling?" She asked.
"I," you stumbled on a more complex reply. You heard movement in the central compartment to your quarters, and identified it easily. Your closest family, as near to you they could be. There, no matter how hurt they'd been, caring all the same. How were you?
"I think I'm ok," you said, feeling out the words as if you weren't sure they were true. Your soul ached, but it was a pain you had borne before. You lay there, breathing, hearing the motion outside turn into something industrious, and recognised another truth. Nothing had broken, and that meant you didn't have to worry today.
:Sidra?: You sent, threading the same question Mary had asked into the word.
:As you, as we, am I.: There were context points woven through every silent syllable, yet none of them mattered as much as a single point of certainty. That the core truth was a real one. There would be more to talk with your Unison in days to come, but this peace would be enough for now, you hoped.
:It will be,: Sidra told you. You caught the impression of a grin, a flash of amusement and thanks that you weren't just offering care today. :I was getting quite frustrated with you, Amanda.:
:I know,: you sighed. :I'm sorry.:
You'd only touched the edge of Sidra's feelings on your current state of affairs, but it had made for a powerful reminder of how closely woven you were with them. Things that hurt you could hurt them too, and you'd been unconsciously relying on their help to hold you together after the flurry of psychological wounds you'd suffered in the last two Sorrows.
:Just get better.: It was easy to see what they meant in hindsight.
:I will,: you promised, suppressing the urge to pull yourself out of bed. Getting yourself to stop had never been a strong suit, and you'd only gotten better at avoiding attempts to stop you over the last few years. :Mending is too easy to turn on everyone but myself. I'll-:
"Stop that." Mary poked you in the cheek. "I know that look, Amanda Hawk. I know what's beneath it. And I think I know where some of it's coming from now, too."
You blinked, tried to shake your head, but Mary took your head in her hands and shook her own, hard.
"No. No thinking like that," she told you firmly. "Not today. Not when you never stopped after the Third, and we should've all seen that. You had so many good things to do, and we let you choose them over looking after yourself. We could've stopped you, I should have stopped you, but I was too focused on the possibilities of what the Uninvolved had promised. But I'm the closest of your family, and I should've seen this before now."
She shook her head again, smiling sadly. "But I'll pay that piper once we're out of this mess. You've been taking care of everything but yourself properly, and that weight supersedes mine. So today, you're going to get taken care of instead."
"Starting with breakfast," Iris said brightly from the door. Your daughter was holding a huge tray one-handed, piled with an offering as varied as it was delicious-smelling. She absolutely should not have been able to hold it like that, but you'd learned to expect that from her. Like mothers like daughter, you supposed.
"And then?" you asked. You knew a fait accompli when you saw one, but it was still a question worth asking.
"And then you spend the day with us," they said together.
"We won't arrive until tomorrow," Iris said.
"And everything can wait until then," Mary finished.
You looked between the two, at the love and care in their eyes. You felt the steady presence of your Unison. And recognised that it truly was this simple.
"Alright." And that, as they say, was that.
What is your focus on visiting this Sorrow?
[] What the Gysians are today - This will focus on the answer to a burning question: what the Gysians truly are within Shiplord civilization. Are they clients, pets, a morality token, or something else? The truth of it could answer the question of what peace the Shiplords might be willing to accept.
[] The truths of the First War - You have seen the Shiplords wage war, and from all humanity knows that they are relentless in it. What changed? How did their first great war escalate so far, and then come to a stop so suddenly, in the ruins of the Gysian home system? And most pressingly, could humanity replicate the same circumstances?
[] Why a Gysian be Warden to their own Sorrow? - Entara is a Gysian, of that there is no question. Why, then, would they be the Warden to their race's presumed near-genocide? What happened to them, to be willing to dedicate themselves to a Shiplord institution so fully? And why were they allowed?
Amanda is going to do all of these things, but your choice here will determine which of them will affect her opinion the most.
