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The Prophet of Landfall

From Aruhn to Sadrith, to Amaya, and thence to Branora and Laconia; and from there, emerging in the midst of vastly foreign stars, the two ships raced as quickly as they could among the worlds of the friendly Silberflussi, shattered and healing from their recent strife so close to the open wound of the Eye, unsure of just which eyes that spied them believed in their cause or condemned it. There was desperate risk to this mission, and even the journey to undertake it was fraught with danger, particularly when the states of friendly governments could not guarantee the agreement of their violent peoples, but the Honorians pressed on regardless, outpacing the rumor of their coming, until at last they materialized into physical form bathed in the glow of a yellow sun.

There was no disguising their arrival above perhaps the most highly-valued world in the Orion Spur, gliding in from their coalescing point farther out in the star system and decelerating as they approached the hub of the system’s attention under the watchful gaze of half a dozen great interstellar empires. Two Recovery-class carriers were a novelty in this region of space, where Honorias’s military reach was a joke shared by Teutionians over drinks and cigars and the coreward edges of the well-explored Spur were regarded as barbarian territory best exemplified by Cheng I Sen; nonetheless, there they were, their guns primed and their crews ready even as their communications officers broadcasted the Ashian invitation and declaration of safe passage that had brought such alien vessels to the cradle and the very heart of humanity. Before the eyes of billions, the prows of these massive ships touched the first wisps of atmosphere, and within moments they were totally embraced by the air of Elysium.

That’s when their hangar doors opened at last.

Dragged to the launch deck by motorized hooks, massive air carriers awaited signals from the bridge. One by one, the catapults did their work, launching the great machines into the skies above Sartaria, their precious cargoes awaiting the moment of their use. They departed on an expected journey of hours, while their mother ships remained high above conventional cruising altitude with their sensors and their weapons pointed directly downward, awaiting the potential for conflict with the rebels of Ash or the so-called volunteers who bowed to Emperor Sasaki; none of these threats rose to challenge them.

As they progressed through the air, ten carrier planes turned their noses toward safe territory, the rendezvous city of Port Dread. Ashian regulars, STO allies, and the collected supplies of an empire held together by the strength of a sometimes-capricious military juggernaut whose comfort and willingness to fight relied on timely and copious rations. The remaining two, on the other hand, turned eastward over the strait: Enemy airspace awaited them, where so many thousands of Ashian airmen had been immolated in an instant, now to be avenged as best as Honorias could provide. As stealthy as they could be, and as prepared for violence as they could manage ahead of time, these two planes drove into the heart of Ashian Sartaria, the so-called New Frontier, until the wilds of the southern continent stretched out before them, where no one would easily spot their arrival.

Only then, in secrecy, did the back hatches of the great carriers open.

Leaping from the hollow bellies of their hosts, four winged steel beasts activated their jet stabilizers on their way to the ground below, until they crashed through the forest canopy and arrived with a rumbling crunch. Briefly-glowing eyes scanned their surroundings for threats before the first tentative steps proved that the machines had suffered no immediate damage from their rough landing. For a moment, the giant robots stood still, as if convening a meeting that only its participants could understand. Then, as one, the four ZD-4 Sunders moved off toward the nearest known enemy location, to scout or to plunder as circumstances required.

Their cargo delivered and their planes recovered, the Recovery-class carriers in the sky above engaged their engines at full thrust once more to escape the gravity well of this world, known among the peoples of the Spur for its tendency to drag every nearby civilization into its wake. The captains aboard could only hope that the soldiers they left behind would eventually rise out of that crushing weight, and at the same time feared that they had delivered their fellow Honorians well past the point of no return.

Yet, they thought, let the Sartarians and the Yamatans fear in their turn. Honorias had landed on Ashian soil.