Perhaps they could have gotten away with it. If they had been a little cleaner, a little more secretive… perhaps he never would have known. Perhaps he would have stayed by their side, following willingly, still considering them the final incarnation of Mother’s will within the colony.
Perhaps. Perhaps.
But they hadn’t been.
He had never been the smartest man. It seemed that every other day brought some new social blunder, some new mistake. He could feel the weight of them piling up, pressing down upon his chest and his shoulders, the wrong words falling from his lips like stones no matter how hard he tried to school himself to keep them shut. And yet…
Every night, he walked a lonely path down the halls of the Star-bloom, brushing a hand against the dust caked doors that had once opened up into warm and welcome warrens, singing with life. No one lived forever, it was true. Even among the Empire. And yet…
Yhinn, the first to fall. The trail of blood down the hall.
She had been looking for him.
Of course she had. The spies that had slipped within their halls, the Blade and the Shield would need to be alerted, would they not? Why then, had the startled Striker stared at him as if he was the anomaly? Why had the first words from out of their mouth been –
“Sir?! You weren’t supposed to–”
They had covered quickly. Perhaps he would have missed it, grief stricken and manic, but he had replayed that evening a thousand times over, felt the weight of her body in his arms time and time again. It wasn’t Yhinn who had horrified them.
It had been…
And Saea. Small and mischievous and bright. Always laughing. Always dashing. Dodging, ducking, appearing where no one had seen her go, getting to places faster than anyone could possibly expect. She, out of everyone knew her way through the drone-paths. Even without the Shipwright’s touch, she moved in tune with the Star-bloom’s ever-present hum.
So how…? How could she have been so carelessly crushed? How, unless…?
“A tragic accident,” Terr had sang, pressing a single hand to his chest in remorse as he eyed the glint of brass buttons, peeking out from beneath the door.
And then Mother… !
Mother…
Her body colder than the air, the monolith of her person seeming to suck the life from any who stepped close. And in the silence of the wake…
A glint of purple in the dark.
A glint of triumph, exchanged while others should have been distracted. He saw it then and he recognized it, the pattern lighting up the highway within his mind. He could feel the truth light electric, lighting up the dark. The truth he should not have known. The truth it was impossible not to realize.
Endless hallways. Soaked in blood. And a pair of golden Daughter’s eyes, widened in terror as her Flight burned around her, a memory played over and over on the screen in Mother’s resting room. Her resting place now. And in the darkness. In the back. As the light of the screen flickered over our gathered forms…
A glint of purple.
A glint of triumph…
He had never been the smartest man. But he was not quite as stupid as they thought.