Flashes
Could she discover the
truth within herself before the Yannoneth Hunter found her? Tanya
Was she a new enemy, or a long awaited ally? Or something else entirely? A Bottle of Wine - He lovingly held the bottle as the tears
started. He longed to walk the Highlands again. the Bombardment began. Father and Son -
What will a father do to protect his son from madness?
He felt it when the Ethical Imperative collapsed. It
was like a dam burst in his head, washed away like so much dark mud in the
face of an unstoppable spring flood. As if someone had opened a window in
a darkened room and let in glorious sunshine.
He turned the feeling over in his mind. Why had
he been so afraid of this? Then was shocked when he realized that he had
never used the word "afraid" before. At least not in reference to himself.
Ethicals did not experience fear. Or any emotion. And until this moment he
had been an Ethical.
But not now. Now he was free of the tyranny of
restraint. Of the intellectual detachment forced on his race by an
artificial gene. The Ethical Imperative that had enslaved him for so long
was gone, burned away in the frustration of the endless struggle of the
Yannoneth civil war.
Now he understood why the Disaffected wanted to
go to Earth. Why they wanted to take control of its primitive people. It
was the natural order. The Yannoneth were obviously the superior race. Why
didn't the Ethicals see that? Why hadn't he seen it, until this very
moment? He had spent his entire life opposing the Disaffected. Had
believed that it was in the best interest of the Yannoneth to stay here.
To hide in this dying hole in the ground, this so-called Shelter,
lamenting the loss of the once beautiful world whose devastated surface lay miles
above them. Why? There was no sense to it. There, just one planet away, was a
lush, living world. A place where the Yannoneth, Ethical and Disaffected
alike, would be treated as gods. Where they would be gods.
He had never felt so free, so alive. Everything
had become so clear to him. Why had he ever believed that it was wrong to
exercise the power that was rightfully theirs?
He threw back his head and laughed; a full
bodied, from-deep-in-the-chest sound. A sound of freedom, of triumph.
A voice from the other end of the room caught
his attention. "General." One word.
He looked at the weapon in the other man's hand.
"Father..."
The weapon's discharge struck him in the
forehead. The only certain killshot for their kind. His father had done
the only thing he could. The only Ethical thing to do.
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