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The whine of the e in the tube fillsdown so I don’t snap my neck Then it fires and I am claimed by velocity and battle as netic streahtning rule space Behemoths ofone another with all the weapons of e Great veils of flak explode around the ships, cloaking them in fury, als and wasps buzz at one another, pissing streahting in a dense giant clouds In little packs they slip fro silently toward clusters of leechCraft as the destroyers and carriers launch their troop transports across space in undulating waves It’s a gah the curtains of flak the leeches go, seeking a hull to clao into the belly of crucial ships, like flies dropping larvae into open wounds All flown by Blues raised to do only this one thing Bellona craft pass those of Augustus, waves overlapping, breaking on one another

All in silence

Missiles leap toward the leeches, wracking hulls with detonations No flaen flaun discharges streak through space, tearing through hters at the sa holes in the ranks Ships rupture forthto cripple and capture instead of destroy Amidst the blue and silver enemy fleet, the massive Warchild shatters corvettes and torchShips like a cyclops wading through sheep--club swinging pendulous and slow

I hold my breath as Victra’s destroyer, shielded by two others, slips towards the Warchild She’s strafed by railguns, and arland her with missile fire The Bellona must warrant she’s too close to capture, because they open another salvo into her softened belly Yet amidst the fire she suffers, the corvette births out a desperate burst of forty leechCraft Nearly ten times her normal complement We carved her hollow to fit in the additional troop carriers That is the war party of the Telemanuses

Victra’s ship cuts away fro into the Bellona for the bleeding sun support the Bellona eagles Victra springs her second surprise

Herthe Bellona as Victra promised the Jackal and me Her mother’s ships unload more than two hundred leeches amidst the core of the Bellona fleet It is chaos

My Titans land on the hull of the eneship, and soon the Warchild is festooned with leeches Good luck, Titans

Bellona-friendly leechCraft redirect toward the Warchild to lend aid to the battle that’ll clutter her halls with s the landed leeches, trying to skin them off before they duant dance of action and reaction and reaction and reaction

I carry on ht streak thousands Golds and Obsidians in armored starShells, Grays in hivepods of twelve each A rain of e storks packed with more Obsidians and Grays Once we ions will slip out of the dreadnoughts and carriers on landing craft and pour out behind us

Despite what the Bellona and their allies think, they cannot stop us froe That is why holding the cities is of such importance They are island fortresses The only realistic way of seizing the under the two-hundred-round That requires men on the surface Millions of men in coordinated assault

We will establish a hundred beachheads, and then our battle will begin in earnest In the chaos, missiles streak for our starShells Friendly capital ships deploy screens of flak behind us, and wasps cover our flanks Ene us Dozens in the rain die aroundpaper I hate this I want to scream So I can do Pray I don’t die Pray my friends don’t die But pray to what? The Golds have no God We Reds have an Old Man in the Vale But he does not help us in this life He uard us in the next

My heart rattles inout of my own skin I feel a boy I want the comfort of home Mother’s blood soup, the touch of her stern hand, the love that flashed into feel the joy of realizing Eo loved hts before love when it was only lust and hunger, where ould kiss in secret, hearts fluttering, like two little birds realizing they ether after all That hat life was supposed to be Fah aton to kill your friends