Twenty-Six

Rickar endures another short passage through asymmetric space, now among fewer captives after the group’s split. In the common room, he and Dervan share uneasy companionship; he experiments with Vaudai’s viewscreen controls while Dervan laments their powerlessness.

On the Carryx command side, the subjugator-librarian chooses to divide the dactyl: a minor expedition ship remains at Ashtin-Kah while the main force accelerates toward the Jurupe system’s inhabited world. The Carryx abandon stealth, activating field weapons specifically to be noticed so enemy fleets will converge, their distress serving the Carryx strategy.

Rickar succeeds in switching the display to a live image of a blue-green planet lit by vast city networks. As Carryx field signatures spike, enemy ships boil into normal space from multiple vectors, confirming the bait worked. Assessing the odds, the subjugator-librarian increases the fall toward the planet, prepares a Saren-hund to deny resources if destroyed, and orders long-range attack with no acceptance of prisoners.

On the screen, an auroral wash blooms over the planet’s night side, shifting colors as it spreads. At its edge, city lights fade into a uniform dull red: fires beneath smoke. The bombardment advances like a false dawn, stripping land and sea of life and color.

Dervan begs for it to stop; Rickar switches back to a schematic showing the futile, distant enemy strikes and the Carryx pressing their assault. Watching the genocide in real time, Rickar admits he had forced himself to forget what the Carryx are—and now he remembers.