The Secrets' Crusade

:Maybe…: The word flickered out into the link that had made you and Sidra into a Unisonbound. There was still fear, still doubt, but below and beyond it all was the terrible hope that had driven you to accept this mission in the first place. Sidra knew it better than anyone except maybe Mary, and with your dearest friend otherwise occupied at the moment, you turned inwards to the everpresent companion born of Practice and your own soul.

:Maybe?: Sidra's voice was a gentle thing of melded tones, the Unison Intelligence clearly just as thrown by what you'd witnessed. The prompt wasn't really necessary, but the question gave you something to attach your swirling thoughts to. Just as they must have intended. Why did that feel different somehow?

You let the thought slide away for now, but left a mental pin in it. Something told you it was important, or could be later. For now though, the world reasserted itself in a blur of crisscrossing conversation.

"Surely you can't think-" Niden was saying, his veil drawn tight around him, restraining emotion to terse outbursts flowing through his words.

Whatever else he'd meant to say was cut off by Krea, her own veil swirling with colours as it swam into patterns like fans or feathers all around her. There, you realised. There was someone like you. As separated as you were by oh so many things, there was no mistaking the vibrant passion of her movements, or the intensity of her hope.

"I know how impossible it seems, Ni." The gentleness of Krea's words surprised you, but the reasons couldn't be clearer. The other Shiplord had pulled in on himself even tighter in response to the most obvious display of emotion you'd ever seen from their kind. Could this be what shouting looked like for them? Not the sound, but the motions?

"I know, we all know, how unlikely it was that anything could come from this. The Sorrowful speaking. Ignore all the commentators, no one really thought we'd see something new. But now?" Fluttering motions tugged at her veil. "Now there is something new. Something none of the Authority could've seen coming.

"And maybe, maybe that'll come to nothing in the end," Krea sighed. "But I know you've watched the Zlathbu Condemnation; we did it together during our out-transit. The Hearthguard never talked like this then-"

"Don't you think I know that?" Niden snapped. His own veil surged into a thing of sharp angles, pain, fear for a future he could see playing out behind his eyes. "I know you mean well, Krea. I know you want this to be something good. But…you all heard the Sorrowful's words, right?"

Silent nods shifted veils in reply, and his own shifted from the closest thing to a panic attack you'd ever seen from a Shiplord to something a little more stable.

"Then please," he continued, "think about what they mean. The Hearthguard withdrew after the Zlathbu Condemnation-" there was no mistaking the capital letters this time "-because they recognised they couldn't win the argument with words. They weren't willing to take the step their Warden just committed them to, because if the Authority had stayed the course even then-"

"We understood, Niden," Everan's voice was soothing, a match to the patterns of his veil. Though looking closer, there were ragged edges there. "But there has to be some sort of middle ground, no? Something between hope and… and civil war."

Niden's veil spiked a few more times, as if fighting his attempts for calm, and you did your best to give the small group their privacy. Difficult enough when sitting together, even harder when your Focus could recognise the break in his thought process that had led him there. But you didn't get to follow that further, or find a distraction in Mir and Vega's silent conversation.

"What do you think?" It took you a moment to realise the question had been directed at you, or at least at your group. The question of how to reply circled your segment of the Heartcircle – none of you had caught the others up yet. The answer was simple; why not the truth?

"I think," you sighed. The tight hold you and Sidra had been keeping on the Masque's translation suite relaxed. "I think there's hope here, no matter how I wish it hadn't had to come to this."

None of that was false, though the reasons might be a bit more than the true Shiplords here would've been able to handle. You did wish it hadn't had to come to this. But mostly you wished that the Shiplords hadn't made this exact situation inevitable. You'd played a part in this exact result, but all the pieces of the scenario had been there for hundreds of millennia.

"Even if the cost," Niden started to say, but cut himself off. You made a motion analogous to a headshake.

"This was always going to be the cost," you replied. You didn't need to act out your sorrow for that, either. There had been better ways, all of them. "If this is what leads to us being better than what we've been for millions of cycles…I'm not sure I could object even if I wanted to."

"But-" Niden began, but Krea hushed him.

"She gave you her reply, Ni," she admonished gently. Something else passed between the two in those words, but you didn't clock any specifics. "What about the rest of your trio?"

"Much the same," Mir replied, a little hesitantly. He'd interacted comparatively little with any of the Shiplord envoys at the Sorrows and was still feeling his way through the odd courtesies and terms used even in an informal situation like this one. His Masque leaned a little towards Vega, and the Harmonial shaped hers into a smile, brushing one hand down to rest on a forearm of the younger Third.

"I worry, of course," Vega admitted easily. "But someday the Hearthguard were going to break. Maybe it's better to have that happen now. Pain is difficult, but the only way out of it is through. And if they're still as powerful as you think, then who knows. Maybe we could see some actual change."

"Dreamerkin," a voice sang, the same one that had called Krea much the same. You focused on the speaker, accessing the idents. Raine, apparently. "I worry myself. Making this now, making it about the current complications, I wonder if it'll not make FleetCom move faster. We've seen similar things before."

"Never with something like this," Thalim replied gamely, but there was a lack of fierceness in the reply. Their veil shifted towards the reconciliatory. "But it's easy for me to say that when nothing like it's happened before."

"Perhaps," you found yourself saying. "But that doesn't make the statement any less true. It just gives it flavour. And maybe…maybe that's what's needed?"

"What do you mean?" Everan asked.

:Mandy?: Vega asked carefully. It was far more than just a repetition of your name. Concern surged across the links between you, and it wasn't just Vega's, you realised. Mir was part of it too. You reached back, opening yourself.

:Trust me,: you sent, entwining a gestalt within the words. Enough to give them the picture of your intentions, at least. Nothing too far, you promised, but you'd only get so many chances to explore this. And only once whilst the reactions were this fresh.

"Maybe," you continued, Masque shifting tentatively. "Maybe what's needed is exactly what Thalim has called it. Something new, that forces exploration of a changed existence." You wondered for a moment how much these children knew about the war that had to be erupting across the galaxy at this point. Raine had mentioned complications, but what did that mean?

"Even if that exploration means," Niden's veil shook for a second, as if the very idea of internal conflict was beyond his ability to speak.

"I don't think the Hearthguard wants to fight the rest of Shiplord society." In truth, you weren't sure at all. Kicha's knowledge at the Third had spoken of deep wells of influence within Shiplord society, but there was no baseline for you to measure it against. "But these Sorrows, do you really think they're working?"

:Careful, Mandy,: Vega sent. This was a risky line, but you wanted…you needed to see what they would say. The sudden silence spoke volumes, and every passing second deepened it. Network traffic between the small group of Shipteens had exploded upwards, and that was just the sections you could detect.

"No," Everan finally said for the group. His Masque had tightened like Niden's, but it felt more like resolution than panic. You hoped they'd forgive you for what you realised you'd just done. They'd all been circling the realisation, but you'd shoved it into their faces. That something truly was broken inside the civilisation they called home. The only civilisation they'd ever known.

"No," Everan repeated. His veil shimmered with something like moisture, flares of colour you struggled to track. Deep wells here. "If they were, the Sorrowful wouldn't have done this."

"I take it back," Raine said softly, her veil darting into a trio of points, one levelled at each of you. "Dreamerkin only dream. Changers. Wishers."

"Is it wrong to wish?" You asked.

"No." She gave the reply no emphasis. "But wishes can be dangerous. The Consolat taught us that."

The admission sideswiped you. You'd known that the Shiplords had to know the truth of the Secrets, and likely far more than you. But for their youth to know…

"No one's arguing that," Vega said as you grappled the thought aside. Not now. "Change is a risk, we all understand that. But sometimes it's a risk that needs to be taken."

"Whilst that can be true, it'll need confirmation first," Everan pointed out.

"Yes, yes," Krea said quickly. "But that doesn't change how important the action is on its own, does it? How much it means. I know we don't all agree on what it means, but surely the scale is something we can agree on."

"That, yes," Niden agreed. Curiously, there was no reluctance in his acceptance. "I'm not sure anyone really knows how much power the Hearthguard still has left, and that's a statement of it in itself."

"Don't forget." Raine's veil moved as she spoke, paling as it formed a rippling overlap of uncertainty. "There are many sleepers."

"You think this could rouse them?" Thalim was the one to ask the question, but they weren't lone in the shift to their veil. There was anticipation there, but touched by something very close to fear.

Raine nodded with her veil. "Some," she added a moment later. "Many? Hard to know."

You noted that statement with silent interest. Ever since the presence of large-scale Storage operations had been confirmed, you'd wondered if there were enough to actually make a difference. The hesitance here told you a lot. Most simply that yes, there were enough whiling away the endless millennia in quiet sleep or virtual dreams to matter.

"Change either way," Everan said. His attention had turned back to his group, but some of it remained on you. "Maybe necessary, but who's to say what necessary will mean in this case. Or how long it'll take for it to be determined."

There was one bright side. The Shiplord military would, no doubt, have few compunctions about deploying in full force against rebellions sweeping across the galaxy. But what Kicha had done in binding her and her faction's compliance to that broader crisis would delay any true decision. And if they refused to listen…

Niden's fear felt very real. He was young, you knew that, but that didn't make him stupid. If he truly believed that the Hearthguard were capable of escalating their resistance – and none of the rest had disagreed - you had to weigh the possibility seriously.

But it still left you with a much more important question. What did you do now?

Vega and Mir wanted to stay and continue the conversation, and you could sympathise. There were more questions that could be asked, you were sure. But there were also the others here, and their tasks. How a Tribute Fleet officer would react to this, for example.

No best option. But you had to pick one.

What next?
[] Ask the Shipteens more questions.
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-[] Mary, Kalilah and Lea, who were wandering the enormous central galleries of the museum.
-[] Iris, who'd gone to speak with a Tribute Fleet officer.
[] Leave the forum
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--[] Write-in questions
-[] Return to the Adamant to assess and plan your next move.

If you return to the Adamant you will not be able to return to the Last Memory.