Ravens of Eternity

Chapter 419 - 419 Genocide & Absolution, Pt 3

419 Genocide & Absolution, Pt The holoprojection of Orsethii joined the other officers aboard the Einherjar’s primary tactical bridge. The numerous heads of the various fleets surrounded the central tacmap, though only a handful were actually on the bridge itself. The rest were holoprojections just like Orsethii.

The Reborn looked at each of them as she walked up. And to her honest surprise, a third of the officers were themselves drogar.

Orsethii put a fist to her chest in salute, then gave the bridge officers a short bow.

“With all here as witness,” she began, “I, Dreadmother Orsethii, surrender my fleet to the Einherjar. My ships are now yours.”

“No they don’t,” Anali replied.

The pips on her collar noted that the de Jardin was now a High Admiral, and also that she was one of only a handful who were.

“Your fleet still belongs to you, Orsethii,” Anali continued. “And your ships are still yours to command. However, as you have joined our ranks, please understand that much of our strategy and tactics are determined here, in this very room.

“Which you’re now a member of,” added High Admiral Albrecht. “Unless, of course, there are any objections?”

Though he was addressing all the other officers as well, he was more specifically aiming the question at Colviss. It seemed to him that the Reborn looked visibly irate at Orsethii. Or rather, they were visibly irate with each other.

.....

The two of them caught each others’ gazes and squared their shoulders against each other. Their tails lashed in the air aggressively, even as their hands inched towards their weapons.

Not that either of them could do any harm to each other – both were holoprojections. But the instinct for them to fight was strong.

“I’ve a hard time believing you don’t have any objections,” Orsethii told Colviss.

“Well, I don’t,” the albino replied.

“Sounds like dung falling. ‘Coz I’m certain you’ve at least got questions for me. You sure there’s nothing you wanna know?”

“I already know all that I need to know. I saw all the ‘Casts. I saw what was left of Retholis. Of what you left of him.”

Orsethii crossed her arms defensively, though she looked away. A bit of guilt snuck in there, and part of her didn’t want to make it more obvious than it already was.

“Don’t blame me for that,” she replied. “I was ready to give him a clean death. He was the one that chose to… do that to himself.”

“I can and absolutely will blame you for that,” Colviss replied. “He would never have had to make that choice at all if you weren’t there to begin with! We would still have our Emperor, and the Empire wouldn’t be in… in chaos!”

Orsethii harrumphed in response.

“You can’t know that,” she said. “In fact, that’s impossible to know. And let’s say I wanna take that moment back in time – so what? I can’t. Crying about what could’ve been or should’ve been is pointless.

“It doesn’t matter how badly you or me or everyone here wants things to be different. It isn’t. Or are you telling me that every choice you’ve made has always been the right one? You’ve never had regrets or anything like that, yeah?”

Colviss shut her mouth almost instantly. Of course she had massive regrets.

She was, at one point, on the same side as Orsethii – that of the profiteers. After all, Colviss was paid to help train the initial run of Sanguine Fundamentalists. Though those soldiers were more for show than for real, time changed all that.

They had become truly professional, efficient, deadly. And that frightened her.

Something she created became an agent that completely disrupted the Empire. It had gotten to the point that everything literally hung in near-ruin.

That fear drove her into going after them whole-heartedly through the Einherjar. Like everyone else around her, she found incredible release from the destruction. Burning down the Fundamentalists and their network was the most liberating thing she had ever experienced.

Even if it cost the lives of countless people who were merely adjacent to them.

She considered all of it a kind of penance for her original mistake. But now she was coming to terms with the fact that causing all this destruction also came with its own massive problems.

That of absolute genocide.

Who was she to judge anyone at all?

“That’s why I’ve no objections,” she said. “Or questions.”

“So, I’m forgiven, then?” Orsethii asked.

“Have you even asked for it? Ah, a better question maybe – is that something you even want? Or are you just here because you’ve been cowed into submission?”

It was Orsethii’s turn to close her mouth. She ground her jaw for a moment before she opened her mouth to reply. Even then, it was a few more moments before she actually spoke.

“I don’t know,” she confessed.

“Alright, then, now I’ve got a question,” Colviss quickly replied. “If you don’t even know if you’re sorry, then why should you be part of the fleet? What if you decide you’re not sorry after all, then hit us in the back? Or just run off when we’re not looking?”

“Listen, all I can say is that if I knew I wasn’t sorry, then we wouldn’t be talking at all, would we? I’d be dead. Maybe some of you, too.

“Look at it this way – we’re all soldiers here, right? We’ve all killed. Or ordered kills. Hundreds, thousands, millions, billions… At which point did it all become numb to you, hm?

“Do you even remember when you stopped caring who you shot your gun at? I don’t.

“So am I sorry for killing Retholis? Should I also be sorry for everyone else I’ve killed along the way? I might’ve even killed people some of you knew and loved. Am I sorry for those deaths?

“Much like you and your Ra’ventrii killed people I knew and loved. Are you sorry for those deaths? We’ve all massacred countless people. We’ve massacred ourselves and each other.”

A long silence filled the space between the officers. It was a truth they all knew and understood. But they simply didn’t want to hear it.

“Now, don’t get me wrong,” Orsethii continued. “I’m not saying all this to point out some hypocrisy which we all share. I mean, we do, but that doesn’t matter much. Not really.

“Thing is though, I’m betting most of us don’t know the answer. You’d tell me, if I asked you the same thing, you’d say you don’t know either.

“Of course, something in all of us shut off. Just so we could keep doing what we’re doing.”

Orsethii made motions with her own arm – she swept her extended talons across her body and mimicked getting disemboweled.

“No, I’m wrong,” she continued. “Its torn out of us. Years and decades of all this… It’s… we can’t handle it all. We rip it right out of ourselves, on purpose, just so we could bear it.

“So, am I sorry? I don’t know. I think I might be, and I can’t tell. I think many of you feel the same, maybe. That’s it, that’s all. And drogar to drogar, if your blood is my blood, and if I find it difficult, then I’m sure you do, too.”

The officers murmured with each other. Everything Orsethii said was true to most of them – their guilt was something they were still attempting to understand and process.

They couldn’t get bogged down in blaming who was to blame for what. Simply because they were all to blame. Also because that didn’t help anything.

Worse, there was more.

“I’d like to say something,” said Anali.

Her voice cut through the mumbling and chatter like a knife. Everyone immediately turned their attention towards her, even though she didn’t formally issue a command.

“All of us are no doubt facing some… internal crises,” she began. “They’ll be difficult to overcome for many of us, myself included. But I need to stress something crucial – our war isn’t over.

“We might try our best to hide it, or subdue it. But all of this is in all our true natures, blood to blood and all that. Hope you don’t mind me taking a bit of your drogar saying there.”

“Not at all,” Orsethii replied.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that we’ve always been terrible to each other. If we weren’t, then the entire concept of spears and shields wouldn’t ever exist, would it? We’ve all got that primal need to destroy and kill.

“That’s our nature. We’re all wild beasts out in the wilderness of this galaxy. Biting and gnashing at each other.

“And I’m in no way saying that’s a good thing. Only that it’s a thing at all. That deep down, we can’t help but fall into this trap of cyclic destruction. Almost as though all of us revels in it. Even if we’’ come to regret it later.

“Because sure, we burned so many planets down, razed everything. But we didn’t just leave hell back on those planets, did we? Of course not. It’s us now. We bring it. It’s who we are.

“Wherever we go, no matter what we do, hell’s with us. Now and for the rest of our lives. It doesn’t matter if any of us are sorry or not in the slightest bit. Because we’re all haunted. By who we are and the choices we’ve made.

“It’ll continue to haunt us until our last hours alive.

“I hope that we can all cope with what we’ve done. That we each find peace with our actions. That could come quickly for some, and maybe never for others.

“More than that, I hope that we can all cope with everything that we might have to do. Because, like I said, we’re not done yet. Many of us may want to rebuild the lives we’ve ruined. But we can’t. Not yet. Not while the war’s still ongoing.”

“The Empire, the Hegemony, and the Federation are committed to all-out war with each other, even with most of the major heads of state cut off. We’re all suffering from power vacuums and internal struggles so chaotic that the only thing that’s constant is everyone’s last standing orders.

“We could disband and go our separate ways and do our best to avoid the war. Wouldn’t last though, would it? Eventually, we’ll all get caught up in it again. Only this time without a fleet by our side. And possibly, no-one to stop whoever’s left.

“Which means that no matter what happens, we’re stuck fighting in this mess. If anything, just to keep everyone else off of us and any of those left alive.

“We’re stuck in a hell we made, ladies and gentlemen. Doesn’t matter if you like it or not. Or if you’re sorry about it or not. But we’re gonna do our goddamned best to stop it, and maybe salvage something of value with what’s left of our people.

“Or maybe, we’ll all die trying.”