Friday 5 November 2010

What is Reality?


All around sirens and klaxons were blaring. The sound of fighting were loud, the old station was being hammered by vessels of all kinds. From the few screens she had seen on her way down here a deadly fleet was waiting outside the station. Dreadnoughts, carriers, motherships, and untold battleships and smaller. The enemy had come to the system, and all was lost. Ships were fleeing, the command structure gone. Small pockets of resistance were fighting on outside, but against such odds, it was futile. Magificent, yet futile.

Almost all of the corporation was here now, boarding whatever ships they had left, all of them pale faced, resigned to their fate. They would escape or die trying. Death was waiting outside the docking bay entrance. The rorqual went first, flanked by the battleships, surrounded by cruisers. The frigates and industrials coming last. Carmilla, in her prowler, her holds filled with the treasure of the corp flew out with them.

The void was filled with fire. Fire and death.

The hulks of destroyed ships from a hundred corporations danced around the station. It seemed as if the dreadnoughts were laughing, screams and laughter coming over the com-systems as volleys were fired. Ships exploded, pods vaporised, crews were ejected into the harsh reality of the vacuum. Rorqual spawning legions of drones, the mocking laughter over the com-system. A battleship enveloped by a siege laser, torn assunder, black blood splashing over the station.

Dozens of interceptors, with wings of dragonflies and talons of steel landed on the prowler and began to dig their way in. Laughter! Screams! The alarms sounding as the prowler was eviscerated by feral interceptors, blood on their fangs, splashing on their wings, the mocking rictus on their faces as they chew they way in.... their claws scratching at the pod until they all scream and lunge.......

Carmilla screamed herself awake, heart pounding, covered in sweat. Breathing harshly, tears in her eyes she flailed around her in the dark, babbling and screaming before falling off the bed and pushing herself into the corner, wrapping her arms around her legs, crying and looking into the darkness, trying to fill her lungs but unable to.....

Ithiria heard the scream over the communicator and ran into the room flanked by two guards. She knelt next to her wife, pulling her into her arms, seeing in her eyes the fear. Holding her close she stroked her hair and whispered soothing words into her ears, rocking her gently. Carmilla grasped her tightly, painfully, but she endured, letting her calm down. Picking her up she placed her back on the bed and laid down with her, dismissing the guards with a gesture.

After a while, she fell asleep, a trouble free sleep this time. It amazed her at times, that she still had the nightmares. Poor Carmilla, she mused, of all the people leaving our home must have hit you the hardest. Still after all these months to still be effected by the retreat and betrayal we suffered.

Dreams and nightmares, twisted visions or altered reality, half remembered and as substantial as the morning mist. Aaah, my dear Carmilla, what is reality for you? At least I have had you by my side. Ithiria looked down on her sleeping wife and brushed a strand of hair from her face, now tranquil and relaxed.
"Carm, my journey would have been so much longer without you. You are a rock in my tempestous soul, and one I have crashed against and still you stand resolute. Such devotion, in a wife... in a slave.... will be rewarded."

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