The Aschen Cluster

The watchtower pinged it's response.

"Authentication codes cleared, wounded acknowledged, proceed to Langara via Tal'dor, LDA is requesting routing to Themis Spaceport. Caprica City is locked down."

"Perhaps not," Arrow replied, a frown crossing his features. "What you have done on Terra can never be undone. But there are many better places for new beginnings than in the clutches of any government's special forces. Empire or not, I do not doubt there will be tasks you are given that are far from pure and just. Men and women in power are too often motivated by it."

He sighed. "If you truly seek a new beginning, there is a whole galaxy out there waiting full of places where nobody has ever heard your name. No doubt there is good you could do there, ways to give back to the universe some of what your crimes have taken. That would be more just than giving yourself to their service."

"Acknowledged. Proceeding to Langara via Tal'dor to the Themis Spaceport now," Adams replied.

---

"This isn't a discussion," Whisper replied. "I should go, we'll be on Langara soon."

She turned to leave.

Arrow sighed. "So be it. Goodbye, Whisper. Until our paths cross again."

He waited a few moments until she was gone, before he too turned to return to Oriel for the short while before they landed.

An apparition resided there with Whisper. Though it could not be seen, heard, smelled, or felt through touch it was there, watching. The thing's consciousnesses the only reason that Whisper may be aware of it. How does one go about describing a consciousness? Courage and conflict, the ringing of swords as they clashed, and the call of men to come to arms echoed through the presence as if its emotions were composed of these sounds. A dragon's roar and a trumpet's call beckoned and tugged at the spirit. Chains rattled and coiled off a great wheel as doors slammed and locks were bolted. The sounds did not gather in the ear but in the mind as if they were emotions wrought by the thing into sounds that only a mind could hear.

Saffron and ozone, the smell sensed not by the nose but the head. The calling card of a gold dragon and a bolt of thunder. The sea after a storm and the crash of ocean waves against some rocks. The smell of the sea spray and the feel of it upon one's cheeks. Rough leather gloves, belts and buckles, and the feeling of a sword gripped in the right hand. The entity was not hiding its mental or spiritual presence. It was surely there and yet it was not. Within and upon the surface of this consciousness where the echoes of these senses but no true emotion could be found there.

The reason for Whisper's abrupt dismissal of her conversation with Arrow didn't become apparent until after she had turned the hall and was standing alone. She searched the area briefly with her eyes in a reflexive gesture, but it turned up little that her mind hadn't already informed her of. Someone, or something, was near at hand. She had felt its arrival during her conversation with Arrow but chose not to make a scene until she better knew the nature of this... entity.

Its consciousness was rough and grating; though, it held a sense of strength and power to it, but there was strength too within the girl's own psyche. It was a strength hidden beneath the layers of psychosis that had long claimed the girl's mind from her - but not her nature. However where this entity's essence crashed against her, her own was the subtle sound of whispers in the dark as their consciousnesses coiled against one another.

When she spoke her lips did not move, but her words rang clearly to the entity near at hand.

'I don't take well to people spying on my affairs,' she echoed. There was a bite to her words, and a sharpness to the whispers of her consciousness that would cut and flay as surely as glass if he kept his consciousness too closely entwined with her own. 'Make yourself known and name yourself - lest I name you foe.'

When addressed the entity's consciousness rippled and then it shifted, moved, or turned as if those words could accurately describe the movements of the mind or spirit. In turning a veil was lifted and the true vastness of the entity revealed. Eclipsed the psyche had been before. After it had been pressed to make itself known it was like a star that no star in the cosmos could contend with in terms of brightness or intensity. Then the entity's consciousness collapsed into something more easily comprehended and yet still alien.

"Ain't no sunshine when she's gone...", a male voice seemed to echo in song but these words were faint as if their origin were far away. "Hrmm", grumbled a voice much closer. "I am evaluating...", said the voice of an old man. "...not spying. I have no need to spy and there is a vast difference between those two actions." Without fan fair, a bolt of lightning, or a flash a man appeared within two reaches of the woman's right arm. The physical representation of the consciousness not there one moment and there the next.

Leather, metal, and cloth concealed the appearance of flesh. An ivory cloak marked with a pattern of black chains covered the physique of a man. Hood, cowl, and mantel shadowed his head, face, and shoulders. Whispers in the background, echoes or forks in the road that went unspoken or undone presented themselves to be observed. Though these words and actions presented to the woman were lost the moment they were revealed. Still it was his presence that fracture the fluid motion of the cosmos and it was the cosmos itself that mended the rent and rendered words and actions once clearly recognized into ghostly echoes and blurred movement. The truth of what could have happened then, what should have happened, and what actually did happen split resulting in the words he uttered next as he stood with stoic posture were he had appeared. "You are a woman and because you are a woman I will present to you my given name which is Dyew despite your demand and threat."

The Reverence-S Blackbird slipped through space at high speeds, on track to return home after its mission in the Aurora. A mission that had ended very differently to how those aboard had expected. The fugitives they had expected to be taking into custody had instead been rescued from custody and declared the rulers of the now-Empire once again. Nobody seemed to want to mention it, though. It was probably better for their health that they pretended that had been their goal all along.

Echo had spent most of the journey thus far in solitude, thinking long and hard on what had transpired. It had been his first encounter with the man they had once, and now again called the Divine Shadow. Before now he had just been a name, first one spoken with reverence and then one spoken with disdain. He had been taught to worship the ground the man walked on, and then told that had all been a lie and that he was nothing more than a man who had plunged the nation into chaos for selfish gains.

And now, things were set to change all over again. It was more than he could keep up with.

Then there was the matter of the nation they had left behind. The one that the Divine Shadow had ordered destroyed. He gathered that plans had changed, and the people were instead to be subjugated, but he couldn't help but continue to question why. Was it simply petty revenge for his treatment at the hands of their due process? Why had he ordered the death of the police officers, when Echo could easily have disabled them instead?

But Echo had obeyed. He had killed for no more reason than that he was told. Was that loyalty, he wondered? Was that a quality to be admired?

With those thoughts and questions running through his mind, he found himself at the door of the Commander's quarters. He had not spoken much with Commander Adams, but in his observations of the man he had seemed wise, experienced. Perhaps he would have answers for some of Echo's questions.

The young golem raised his hand to the door and knocked.

The door slid open with a hiss as Adams ran a hand through his disheveled hair. From his rumpled uniform and groggy state it seemed likely that Echo had roused him from slumber.

He might have dismissed Echo outright, but something about the lads eyes told Derek this was more than a social call.

He stepped aside and waved Echo in as he shrugged off the fog of sleep.

"At ease," he told Echo.

The quarters Echo stepped into were rather militant in nature with little in the way of personal effects or color to brighten the room.

"Thank you sir." Echo said, relaxing his posture slightly as he moved inside. He took in the Commander's state and immediately regretted his timing, but thought it would be more impertinent to suggest he come back another time now, after he'd already woken him.

The golem hesitated, as though expecting to be questioned or prompted for why he was here, but after a few moments of silence he picked up on the unspoken expectation for an explanation. "Sorry to disturb you, sir. But ..." he glanced down at the floor thoughtfully as he considered his words carefully.

"How do you keep track of what is right, and what is wrong, when what was right yesterday is wrong today, and what was wrong yesterday is grounds for praise and commendation today?" he asked finally, lifting his gaze back to Derek.

Derek moved to a nearby cupboard and retrieved a pair of glasses from it. A bottle of liquor too was retrieved as he poured out a glass before looking to Echo.

"A drink?" he asked as he held the bottle of amber alcohol in hand.

At Echo's acceptance of the drink he filled the second glass and offered it to the lad. The kid's question was a valid one, and one that every Aschen soldier asks themselves at one point in their life. It was more or less a matter they all came to terms with in their own ways.

He took a sip of his drink before gesturing to the small viewing window that afforded them a view of Langara in the distance.

"The answer to that question lies there," Derek explained. "It's not our place to question the orders that come down from above. We serve a different purpose. When we put on these uniforms and swore our allegiance, it was to protect the people of the Aschen Co-" he paused. "The Aschen Empire," he corrected. "There are over forty-five billion people who call this place home, and all of them look to us for their survival, their way of life. Sometimes we do distasteful things in the name of security, but as long as you serve the people of this Empire, your conscience is clear."

"Were the people we found the Divine Shadow amongst threatening our security?" Echo asked. The tone of the golem's voice suggested that this was a genuine question, as opposed to a challenge to Derek's statement. He took a sip of the offered drink, and was briefly surprised at the taste of it before the warmth that followed. While Derek looked out over Langara, he gave the amber liquid a suspicious stare before he returned his attention to the window and Derek.

"Why do we sometimes kill when it is not necessary, when ultimately the deaths will be meaningless?"

"You have seen the damage done to Caprica City," Derek reminded Echo. "People who are not of the Aschen Empire will always pose a threat to our security. Millions of people died on that day, most of them civilians. Sometimes, fear is the only way to ensure that doesn't happen again."

He shook his head and downed the rest of the the amber liquid in his glass.

"By seizing Isiria we secure our assets, and bring their civilians under our protection. They will be citizens now, and afforded the same rights as any other Aschen citizen. Some will die, but those casualties will be worth the billions more that are spared."

"What makes them so different to us?" Echo asked, "Are we not the same to them as the ones who attacked us?" He knew little of the strike on Caprica, only conflicting rumours of it being a strike by UCON, Terra or any number of old enemies.

"Do you think they have the same conversations? The same thoughts of protecting their people? Why is it that people continue the cycle of mutual fear and hostility, when both nations want the same thing?"

The golems eyes fell again. "And on a personal level, too. When I was ordered to retrieve the Divine Shadow, he was in the custody of law enforcement officers. I had thought to disable them as I had those in the hall, but he ordered me to kill them. That was not necessary. Their deaths meant nothing, no gain could be garnered from them. There was no point to it."

Derek shook his head. "Had you left them alive, and one of them killed one of our men, those deaths would be on your conscience instead. In an ideal world such measures would not be necessary, but we don't live in an ideal world. If you don't kill, you will be killed and probably get others killed with you. We showed mercy in bringing Isiria into the Empire. They are bound under own laws now, and afforded all the rights of an Aschen citizen. When people are left to anarchy and heresy you end up with places like Terra. Their talk of freedom and independence sounds nice, but their subjecting millions of people to living in fear of crime and brutality is not lawful or just. Their personal and selfish ideals aren't worth the millions that suffer for it. We look to the bigger picture and do what it is necessary to spread Order."

"I could have rendered them as harmless as any of the hospital staff. Taken their weapons, rendered them unconscious. They were police officers, not soldiers. Would they have been so dangerous without their weapons that we could not afford them their lives?" Echo was reluctant to accept that the risk of the officers harming others justified his actions. "There were alternatives. Why were they not viable?"

Far from defiant, the golem simply seemed confused. He didn't know what he was missing in his assessment of the situation.

Derek frowned briefly as he set his glass back down.

"It is in human nature to not forget, nor to forgive," Derek replied.

Derek set his glass down on top of the cupboard.

"It is better to rule through fear and for a few to die to ensure the obedience of the rest than to forsake Order and reduce ourselves to the level of heretics and savages. We cannot hesitate nor question our actions in the execution of our duties. To do so is a betrayal of everything we stand for, and the people we stand to protect. It sows the seeds of discontent and anarchy and makes us no better than the Terrans."

"You're dismissed," he added with a gesture for the door.

"And Echo? It would be best if you put these thoughts from your mind. They will corrupt you as they have corrupted the Terrans. You're an Aschen soldier now, and you took an oath when you took that uniform."

"I... yes, sir." Echo set his glass - still practically full - down and gave a salute, before turning for the door. His eyes betrayed his continued - albeit lessened - uncertainty, but with no other answers to look to, Derek's would be the ones he took away from this. For now, at least, any discontent was quieted with reaffirmed certainties and restated truths.

Morality was a strange thing, Echo thought, that something could feel wrong when reason dictated it to be right.

removed.

Gina Inviere has left the area, heading west into The Aschen Rim.

Gina Inviere has arrived, coming from The Aschen Rim.

Gina Inviere ascends towards Outer Arm.

Gina Inviere arrives, coming from The Aschen Cluster.

Nirvana the Dark arrives, coming from Outer Arm.

Nirvana the Dark roams deeper into space, in search of life...