heart systems, go! - #1
The Fleet's mission ensure the future of Humanity, which having forsaken itself, approached extermination of all life in the known reaches of our existence. No stone shall go unturned, no tool shall go unused, no nail unbroken - every sacrifice must be made for the few thousands that yet remain.
A young teenage girl with dark, brown hair sits down in a patch of grass. She looks up from her phone, with a little teddy bear keychain attached, and observes a comet flying through the skies, colliding with stars across the orbital tapestry.
Far into the 24th century contained the darkest days Humanity had yet encountered; not least for Sub-Lt. Kotoe and the rest of what planet-dwellers call Celestials.
Even 72 years on from the Crescent's decimation in the advent of Ruination, the species was still reeling. A full-stop had nearly been placed at the end of the lexicon of human achievements, and regrets. The shambling corpse continued to shamble on, withstanding against all odds those who wished to put it to rest and make good the last rites.
When the news reached his wing of the fleet, Kotoe felt a neverending tempest in his head. The voices came back. Pictures of planets once teeming with life in the billions and trillions - of creatures tall and small, of the most beautiful flowers that could convince any girl to say 'Yes!', of the Everests of corpses, made their way over to the guardians of the Spheres. Only the flies would survive on these planets. He reckoned that they might have a feast for a million years. A trillion insects would replace the trillions of men. Not that the Thanati who invoked the Ruination, or his Admiral, he thought, might consider them much different.
The Fleet's doctrine has always been one of strategy as art: take a photo of an enemy destroyer without them realising, and you've as well as sunk her amongst the stars. An embarrassing failure. But then, combat was to a man. Even the scribes took up arms. There would be no time to muster the Fleet, and in rushed comms, they were all dispatched throughout the sector.
Sent to escort the General-Mayor of the League, Walter Enkh, to the planet of Evergreen, to aid in his battle upon the surface, Kotoe steeled himself. Enkh was burly and charismatic: he had to be, to be elected to lead the forces of the greatest threat to the Corporations ever assembled. But things were different, now. He called the operation "Screaming Hammer": it's goal to exterminate the crux of the Thanati cataclysm. He was an intimidating and ugly man.
Evergreen was an ugly planet too, he thought: but the First Void Lord's decrees were as good as the Bible.
Kotoe’s ship, the Chikai, and the other destroyers in attendance were able to stop much of the warbands heading to Evergreen, but not all of them - and it felt like a neverending torrent. And at some point, a secret was revealed. An ancient secret, that perhaps only Enkh, or his enemies, had known. A great shield whirred into existence, blurring sight over Evergreen, blotting out the sun. Kotoe was no longer able to bombard the surface or communicate to those below, but the warbands' ships could not penetrate the shields either; dissolving on impact.
Neither the Fleet or anyone had had communication with Evergreen since.
Swarms of boarding-ships and suicide voyeurs had originated from any hole in the System that a sworn servant of the Thanati could be found, and their fleets were more numerous than the stars. They would fight man-to-man through the galleys, inexperienced and ill-trained in the manners of hand-to-hand combat and the devastating sorceries exhibited. They were forced unwittingly into total brutality. Many of their own were suspected of collaboration and jettisoned out the airlocks. Three weeks weeks of brutal combat took it's toll until two-thirds of the wing and more in manpower were lost, and the order to withdraw was received. Pursued doggedly as they skirted through the dark chasm of space now lit ablaze by the servants of an evil god. Kotoe's own captain too would fall, for his failings.
Even now, they were vulnerable. Any hope of protecting the collective should something worse than themselves come knocking on their door lied dead in the cradle. Humanity had enacted it's own long, delayed suicide, a mortal injury that crippled the soul. For thousands of years, if not forever. Resources were dwindling, most of all men not poisoned by the taint of radiation. The one thing that the Corporations and the League had done right in the wake of Planet Zero's fall - the collegiate and unerring protection of the Fleet - was in danger of extinction.
Eventually, they were all assembled, and his eyes grew wet to think of the number of ships, the number of men, all in one place. The last hope that humanity held. The (hereditary) Admiral Damuto, had called his levies to muster onboard the Starguard: the crown jewel of the Fleet, a colossal ship, the capital of capitals comparable only in size to the old planet Pluto.
He told them in those days that if they were ever going to survive, that they must hold fast to the old ways forever - and perhaps even older ways, too. The Naval Law would be enshrined forever as their Bible, with no forgiveness, mercy, or abrogation for logic's sake. The Law and it's enforcement was to be the only succour for the illness that had overtaken civilisation. Their duty, and the duty of their descendants, was service in the Fleet, of stewardship. Stewardship of humanity, which in turn had abandoned the God-given stewardship of Zero, in favour of ever-growing profits. The end result of all the science and the rationality had returned them right back to Faith and Apocalypse.
Damuto's leadership may have saved them all really, and in time, perhaps civilisation. Without his guidance, they might've perished with the rest, but at the same time, the old narcissisms and pseudosciences had returned.
Not every legionnaire of the Thanati battalions would have died in the effort to bring the history of the homo sapiens, and of the Universe, to a close: they were neither so effective, nor so foolish. The Fleet's mission of protection would end the day the Thanati threat ended. After that, it would be whatever threats lay beyond the Crescent. And they all knew this mission could never end.
All had crossed lines they never thought they could have since, done things they never would have done in the old life: a relatively pampered one, down to near-squalor. He knew how people had looked at him in the past decades: an unaging officer, like the rest. Cameraderie had evaporated as man after man was destroyed, expelled into the Void for violating one stricture or another. A solution would have to be found one day to the manpower flooding out the Fleet's hull. But Damuto was steadfast.
It was a fairytale of space cavemen, of a neverending dark illuminated only by bursts of gunfire.
For the Fleet to uphold the Crescent, and for the Crescent to uphold Man, every seaman knew that the Law must be upheld by each of them: upon themselves, and upon the planet-dwellers below, whatever the cost.
But who is innocent, in these times?