The first thought is simple: brace for impact! And the second is that any weapon that can be seen from orbit is unlikely to be one that can be survived. For a moment, Redana stands there, staring—

And then the Auspex answers the questions she did not even ask. A world, and the [i]Yakanov[/i] spinning around it. Zap! The world hangs suspended in golden chains. Zip! The world spins in its web, faster, faster, the wrong direction, as years run backwards on a counter. Zowch! A golden chain runs through Chibidana’s head, and her clothes go back to the sort of historical style from that great museum of the War. Zotzie! Chibi-Alcedi pick up their spears and lock into a phalanx as from the sky...

Oh no.

“They’re bringing back the war,” she says, to Demeter and Hades and Poseidon, to the chaos around her, to nobody at all. “They’re going to make everybody here live through it [i]again.[/i]” And for a moment she has the ridiculous thought of climbing somewhere high with a bat and waiting for the weapon to strike, palms sweaty as she makes the one swing that would ever count—

But it’s ridiculous, and too late, and once that thing fires Redana is going to be one of her mother’s soldiers standing in the middle of an Alcedi— no, it’ll be them in the middle of her [i]mother’s[/i] fortress, and then everyone will start fighting, and they won’t kill each other on purpose but the point of fighting back then was to stop people from daring to get back up, and don’t they still have Hermetics here? If they left, did they take Iskarot? Did Iskarot leave her behind because she ran off?

The Auspex begins the countdown to final firing and Redana screams in frustration. There’s nothing more she can do. She’s stuck down here, and...

And what must a commander do when they know they are going to be compromised, Redana?

[i]”In such circumstances, the commander must, with all speed, send word to such subordinate as they trust, informing them of their will, and enclosing with their message continuity of command, such that their will may continue to be a living quality upon the battlefield, and their value to the antagonist as regards the disruption or full neutralization of their force will be negated to a necessary degree...”[/i][1]

And Redana stands below that awful yellow star and raises one hand to her face, covering her other eye.

***

And there stands the fifth person to appear suddenly in the cramped room, quite suddenly without anyone else seeing her appear. She stands there, pale, hair caught in an unseen wind, blind yet with that awful blue star burning past the simple leather in front of it. The Auspex will not allow itself to be cloaked when it goes to the effort of entangling Redana so. The Alcedi would call her a ghost, and perhaps they would be closer to the truth than other guesses.

“Still down here,” the shade of Redana declares to Alexa (and thus to the room she does not see, her Auspex blind as it tears her in two and transposes her very self). Her voice is coming from an impossible distance, clear as a bell drifting through space, each word not so much spoken as carved into the senses. “You’ve got—“

And then the waveform snaps under the strain and the shade fades away until it is clear the false Redana was nothing more than shadows playing on a wall, somehow. And the final word remains unspoken.

***

[1]: [i]Tactics of the Post-Molechian Era: A Thesis,[/i] Elacitus et alia, Published through the Imperial University Press, signed first edition.