Contested Landing

[Unseelie]

It is said that we didn't come from Sydney. There was another world, once. A place called Earth. Or Sol..Terra? Mars? Titan, some say. No one remembers, no one remembers anyone who did remember. Probably just a story. The story is, people had been fighting a war, a bad one, for as long as they could remember. Sides were drawn, ships launched, for generations they struggled. No one can say what over, exactly. Probably just a fight for land. Probably just a myth, anyway. So, one side, they built these ships. Great, huge ships. In case they lost. Creche ships, of a sort, filled with sleeping people. When the war went badly, the losing side launched these ships into the stars. Eventually, they landed. Maybe they all landed on Sydney, maybe only a couple. Stories differ. They built a city, and started cloning children to fill the city. Then they spread out across the world, other, newer cities. They built rockets, and spread to space. They colonized the empty space, put up the stations. Then, the Kahara woke, and demanded its land back. They refused, and the war came. Sydney was lost.

Probably just a myth. More likely, our ancestors imagined gods fighting in the stars, dreamed of heroes, and stole the first Creches from the Kahara, and fled Sydney, the cradle where the Jahara nursed us.

Today, the Jahara grow new things on Sydney, different, wild things, to fight the Fleet when it comes.
And come the Fleet will. Out of the Arawin Rocks, or the Downs...even, like last generation, from Jahara space, punching through the guardians.

They build bigger ships than the Jahara can grow, Dreadnoughts and Titans, even the Creches...The Fleet is its own shipyard, feeds its people from shipboard farms. It glows with their power, their strength, little stars leashed and bent to their will. This year, for the first year in memory, the Jahara fleet is wounded, is tight around Sydney, great Kahara huddling over the core with their skins burnt, their hides breached...Bones show. Seekers aren't returning, only the great old and their retinues ever arrive.

The Fleet is coming.

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