Chapter 34
Dead Lock
It had been so long since Fia had been immersed in the song of her people.
Every ounce of her focus was hard-fought to maintain.
The stirring swell of excitement, fear, camaraderie, relief, terror, mundane apathy, and an indescribable song of longing filled the Chorus as she descended into the water.
It was a strange bunch, this Council. Not the same she had known when last she slept. There were unknown faces, and some so ancient that perhaps she had known them, but had forgotten their features as time marched on without her.
There were perhaps two dozen, maybe more, gathered here to lay their pleas before the Council.
All in attendance took their places in a respectable arc before their Sovereign, with the twelve of the Council flanking the Sovereign herself.
The Sovereign had been ancient when Fia had last seen her, but what she saw now was almost frightening.
The lifespan of an Icthian varied wildly.
Many could thrive for centuries if given the opportunity to regenerate in a spawning pool.
But the Sovereign had to be encroaching on her second or third millennia, likely with no way to regenerate unless the Fleet had found the means to do so synthetically, and her body looked like it would not endure for much longer.
“Rel Parovek, once thought lost to Sol, has been returned to us,” the Sovereign resonated in Fia’s mind.
A soothing, familiar sensation. “My son, whose passion spurs us onward, you have asked not to waste this moment of reunion with celebration. Instead, you wish to lay your urgent rebuttal to my resolution before the Council. Speak true, Commander.”
Vek turned to face them all, his words echoing with an intensity that made the waters around them thrum with his fervor.
“The Fleet laid before me a task: to find a path forward to claim our home in this system. I come before you to say that such a path exists. The grip that the Federation has here is not absolute. We can join forces with the resistance, raise our banners, and oust Sol with our combined might before it is too late. They will fight for their freedom, and we will fight for our survival.”
A ripple of hesitation, fear, bitterness, and anger wove through the crowd as he spoke.
“We must take action now. If we let our caution guide us, we will have wasted this opportunity forever,” he continued. “All you need is to rise from your cowering and seize it!”
Before there was a chance of furious debate, the Sovereign brought them to silence with a single, wordless wave of urgency that threaded through the Chorus.
“Rel Parovek sets before you his vision of our future. One born of his passion and his zeal. As the voice of the Fleet, I stand firm in my resolution,” she began, and the energy in the water grew almost solemn as she spoke.
Even while floating weightlessly in the water, Fia felt her posture stiffen with anxious tension.
This could be the way forward to a life with Davik.
There may be a cautious and peaceful path, if her Sovereign had truly become as pacifistic as her commander had implied.
It was a strange feeling. She had always been restless in times of quiet, and now, all she wanted was a life full of quiet nights.
Quiet nights with him.
“You all have sacrificed for our survival. In kind, I will offer my own sacrifice,” she continued.
The regal resonance of the Sovereign’s voice was nearly painful to behold.
Her words, her song in the Chorus, were thick with pain and loss.
“We will leave behind this cluster of worlds and set for a new home. One untouched by Sol.”
As she spoke, the pair of golden-scaled attendants unfurled a sheet of glowsilk several meters wide before them.
On its surface was the unmistakable pattern of a starchart, glittering and slowly undulating in the water.
The entire galaxy, rendered in beautiful detail, with a path drawn that stretched to a distant star over thirty thousand light-years away.
The swell of excitement and awe in the crowd was debilitating.
“It is not a journey that I will survive,” the Sovereign said, her words echoing in Fia’s mind. “But when you all awaken in that untouched world, you will be free to live in a system without the pall of the Federation suffocating you at every turn.”
Fia felt everything around her crumble as the crowd erupted into a chaotic clamor.
Some took the Sovereign’s pledged sacrifice as a blessing and demanded it be honored.
Others echoed sheer hopelessness about the commander’s bid for war, wanting to take the journey across the galaxy just to escape that constant cycle of death.
Others whispered worry that Commander Parovek was foolhardy, reckless.
That his capture was driving him to think vengefully, not tactically.
Yet many loud, bright sparks in both voice and Chorus were reveling in the call to battle. To fight, to strike, to emerge from hiding and embrace the glory of combat.
An overwhelming cacophony roiled around her, and Fia struggled not to be dragged into the tumult. Her commander’s stern violet eyes met hers several times, an unspoken call to join the conflict.
She was not meant for this. Their Fleet had grown too small, so small that she had risen to the echelon of being a deciding voice simply by the loss of those who were above her.
This was not where she had ever wanted to be.
She wanted to rest decision and passion in the hands of those wise to use it.
She did not want to wield that responsibility.
A cool kiss of calm swept across her brow, and the world around her ground to a halt. The Sovereign had sought her out and brought her mind into that strange, timeless space that only she could hold. A frozen heartbeat where she could speak to you and hear your mind.
“My lost Sentu, why are you so quiet? Have you forgotten your song in your slumber?”
Fia felt the words before she could see the Sovereign, her eyes poised and bright. The rest of the water was still and silent. Only their thoughts, only their feelings, shared in this brief bubble of synchronicity.
“This will decide the fate of this system and the Fleet,” Fia murmured in the unheard connection between them.
“I have only been a denizen here for less than a year, and I have been so long departed from the Fleet that I do not recognize it. I cannot sway the decision that carries the fate of two worlds I do not belong to, my Sovereign.”
“Then speak to me. You can not sway me as one voice, no matter how much passion stirs in you.”
Fia sank into the welcome embrace of the Sovereign’s words, watching as the threads of her own memories from the last months danced before her.
She bore to the Sovereign moments spent with Davik as he spoke on the injustice in Tau Ceti.
How no fight against Sol ever hurt anyone more than those trapped in the bottom rungs of society.
“You think a war would only bring more suffering. Yet, you do not wish for us to leave. What way forward do you see that would save our people?” the Sovereign asked, her words lacking judgement, but thrumming with deep curiosity.
“I do not know. I am just fearful of what will be lost, no matter which path we take.”
Without a parting word, her perception of time snapped back into the steady, familiar pace of normalcy. Fia’s heartbeat thundered on as she frantically worked to bury her bubbling longing and worry within her song.
The Sovereign must have gotten the answer she sought.
The embroiled exchanges of words and reverberating passions in the waters stretched on for hours, every Icthian in attendance presenting their justification and their opinion.
The Council were divided in twain in their support to stay in Tau Ceti, or flee for worlds unknown.
The water was full of stirred bubbles of hissed anger.
Flares of vitriolic and fearsome displays of light danced along the scales of those who were arguing to overrule the Sovereign’s call to leave.
Tirades flew, echoing sentiments of fear and injustice.
Finally, the Sovereign called for silence. She spoke no words. From her ghostly tendrils, a singular pulse rang in the Chorus that jarred their attention back to her.
The time for deciding was upon them.