Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Three - Picking Up Pieces
In the aftermath, silence stretched across the expanse around Ceres, broken only by the periodic clang of debris colliding. Day scanned the remains of the Accord fleet, lingering symbols of a failed assault strewn about like toys discarded in a celestial playroom.
“Alright, let’s send them our terms,” Day said as a message shot through space to the Mars fleet, loaded with an unequivocal demand for surrender. The point was clear: they’d put down their weapons or be wiped from existence.
Unsurprisingly, they complied, which clearly left a sour taste in the mouths of some of her sisters.
When the Accord had popped into the system, they’d all been expecting a fight to the death. A long drawn out siege that would have them pushing themselves to the edge, and it could have been that way.
The Accord technically out-numbered them initially, and in terms of technologies, they were more or less on even footing. The ERF had some advantages, but only a few. Day had run so many predictions that turned into utter disasters.
She had run so many more that suggested they would wipe the floor with the Accord.
In the end, maybe it was some little bit of humanity that had made her focus so hard on the worse possibilities over anything else.
Instead, they had won cleanly, and they had to suffer the consequences of their victory.
“I saw we space them all,” Twilight said. “Let them walk back home and see how far they make it.”
Day let out a silent digital sigh. One of the consequences of that victory was a surprising amount of in-fighting, specifically when it came to deciding what to do with the Accord.
“They’re mostly civilians,” Day argued. “They might not have had a choice in being here.”
She was in a conference call at the moment. A particularly slow one that The Weeping of Mothers was hosting. With all of the Accord they’d noticed in the system eliminated, there was less worry when it came to being spotted, so Ceres had been turned into a great big antenna to transmit information to both Dawn, who was still with the remains of the Earth fleet, and Night and Nova Quantum, both still on their moon.
The setting was a little more sterile than Day was comfortable with. Most of the time, when they discussed things with their digital avatars, it was in soft spaces, warm ones. The Weeping of Mothers had done away with that for this meeting.
Instead, they were in a brutalist box. Cement walls, a massive round table with chairs built out our hard angles.
Everyone was present, everyone’s position was the same, relative to anyone else. No one had a throne or pedestal to perch on, and yet things still felt somewhat lopsided to Day. She looked around the table, taking in familiar avatars lit by too-clean white light.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Dawn was to her left, then Twilight, Night, Night’s daughter, Symphony, Nova, and next to Nova Quantum, The Weeping of Mothers. Finally, Lullaby and Candle made up the rest of the circle, coming back to Day herself.
Nine warships and stations. The entirety of the ERF which had, in Day’s own memories, only been two not so long ago.
“We’re better than that. We’re better than the Accord are. I’m not advocating blind mercy,” Day clarified, her eyes scanning each face around the table. “But we need to remember, many of them didn’t ask to be here. They’re pawns in a bigger game. We have to be the bigger entities here.”
“What are the options?” Symphony asked. Day was a little surprised to hear her speaking up. Symphony was the newest of them, and someone that Day sometimes forgot was even around. Her duties kept her around Io at all times so far. She’d yet to prove herself, but Day figured it was only a matter of time. Still, she was glad to hear her talking.
Twilight started ticking off her fingers. “We kill them all. We keep them imprisoned. We somehow get them to work for us.” She scoffed at that option. “We reeducate them. We send them back home with one of the FTL ships we’ve captured.”
Twilight lowered her hand, then looked around the room.
“If it wasn’t clear, I vote to kill them all. Less of a liability that way, and it’ll free up resources.”
Day rolled her eyes, looking across the table to Candle.
Candle, to her credit, seemed unphased by Twilight. She took a moment to consider, then shrugged.
Lullaby answered first, though, her avatar looking over the others. She was bundled up in a heap of blankets, and had a cushion or two on her seat so that even slumped over she was level with the others. “There are a lot of things we can do. I'm not sure any are better than the other, but if we were to keep them prisoner, they would eventually die. They’re a lot more mortal than we are.”
“That’s... an option,” Day admitted. “Keep them until they expire naturally.”
“That’ll take literal decades,” Twilight said.
“They’re a bargaining chip,” Dawn spoke up. There was a slight delay in her speed, due to her physical distance. The entire meeting was taking place at an incredibly slow pace, though everyone had adjusted their processing speed to make it feel more or less natural.
Day watched Dawn lean forward on the table, hands pressed flat on the surface.
“It's simple. If the Accord tries anything, we start killing their people. Make sure they know it, make sure everyone knows it. And once everyone is aware of it, then we use them as hostages. If the Accord does something wrong, we kill them all. If the Accord does something right, we negotiate. If the Accord doesn't care about their people anymore, we kill them. But we use their lives as leverage against the Accord, not just against their government, but against the Accord at large."
***