Ghost Brother
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Posted - 2010.04.23 11:59:00 -
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ôI am not of Paracelsus minde that boldly delivers a receipt to make a man without conjunction.ö
-Thomas Browne
This was captain Deon ArsikeÆs sixth large fleet engagement, and yet he still stood on the bridge of his Maelstrom-class battleship in awe of the armada around him; hundreds of ships, tens of thousands of souls, all coordinated into one action against a fleet, presumably, close to the same size. The sheer amount of people, resources, weapons and everything else couldnÆt contain itself in his immediate mind. But one thing was sure, he always knew: there would be no sound. Outside, if a wandering soul were to stand insignificant, incorporeal and alone amongst the battle, with the explosions, debris and psychotic complexity all around, it would not hear anything. The vacuum of space nullified everything. ôCaptains, confirm alignment,ö the voice of the fleet commander echoed in over the matrix. Arsike wanted to simply say, ôYes,ö or, ôYeah, IÆm pointed in the right direction,ö or whatever, but if that were the case, and all captains were to reply similarly and at once, the communications hub in the Ragnarok flagship might release a flurry of voices, and then explode. So, all that was required was a simple ping. And with a gesture from Arsike to the communications officer, a small burst of affirming radio waves were directed towards the monstrous Matari titan. All spacecraft were aligned to the same vanishing point in the stars: an area in the same solar system where the enemy had mobilized. æI could die today,Æ Arsike thought briefly, but was interrupted by the fleet commander again speaking. Through every speaker of every ship in the entire fleet, the voice of the captain of the titan flagship Kultia, a newer Ragnarok of several decades, spoke with dignified priority over all other communications to every person with ears. ôAlright, in ten seconds,ö a pause, ôaaaaand, warp!ö The warp timer front and center on the bridge, above the main view, started. 10à 9à It was going to be a big fight. The alliance had called for a massive coordinated act of aggression towards a malevolent neighboring corporation for silent reasons, but everyone knew. A primary industrial system had been overrun by an assault fleet from said corporation. Nearly everything was lost, hundreds of mining vessels destroyed, but the ensuing strategic counterattacks had expediently regained the lost and empty territory. In response, the current fleet was assembled to destroy a secondary blockade on the aggressor corporationÆs front lines. 8à 7à A divertive attack had commenced not but half an hour ago further down the newly formed front, and reports that massive enemy mobilization had been spotted far away from where Arsike and his fellow captains were to strike. It had worked. However, Arsike knew that this did not mean the oncoming engagement was going to be an easy one. But the intention of the attack was to destroy everything in one area, at most an entire solar system, and leave. Simply a display of power; a warning. 6à 5à æI could die todayàÆ Yes, it was true. But what was death? His given flesh had died a long time ago. He was a copy of a copy now- a clone of a clone. He had died many times, but was never really dead. At times the idea completely engulfed his synthetic brain, and a feeling of utter panic spread through his artificial nerves and into his constructed gut: My body is not real. Sure, ôrealö in the sense of things solid and of an actual existence. But not True. Sitting alone with a cup of tea and a book, looking out into the stars, he would suddenly feel as if he had been cheated. Conned, his body stolen, replaced with this impostor, this hollow shell. He was evicted from his former residence and placed here, a house and just a house.
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