The Unseen Freedom

[Eichann Rush]

Rush worked late into the night, not that day and night had any meaning in space, where the fiery sun always burned just as bright.
He drew, and drafted, wrote and recorded, planned and plotted, referenced and cross-referenced, and by the end of his work, he had come up with a plan.
It was complicated, regretabbly so, but the loftiness of his goal combined with the sparseness of his resources neccessetated complication.
He had only one Scylla at his command, and precious few fighters and bombers, but he had two things his enemies did not: surprise, and a burning faith fit to make him a martyr.
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~The Unseen Freedom, chapter twelve, page 237.

"The Baffers are not our most powerful enemy. True, they have mighty battleships, and many pilots, and whole planetfuls of recruits, but all they can do is kill or imprision us.
Neither are the Kusari our most powerful enemy, with their fleets upon fleets of amorphous globulated ships, nor the Corsairs, who fight with the ferocity of madmen.
We are our most powerful enemy, for only we can allow ourselves to falter, can make ourselves feel fear, can betray The Cause to its enemies, can turn from the true path.
Only we can allow us to lose, and only we can take our freedom from us.
So i tell you, watch for fear! Watch for cowardice, and ill thoughts, for insanity and betrayal. But above all, watch for doubt.
Its a small thing, to doubt, but like the seed of a tree, it grows, and grows, and grows until it can collapse under its own weight, until it blocks out the sun and chokes other plants.
With the smallest amount of faith you can destroy your enemies, but it takes only the smallest amount of doubt to destroy yourself."
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He looked out the windscreen of his bomber, surveying the mining field, looking for-there.
An ungainly shape, designed for volume and not escape.
Some called it a Hegemon.
He called it a target.
The engines of his ship warmed as he veered away from his flagship, beginning the first attack run of the day.
He was not stealthy, or subtle. He came in screaming over the comms, firing his cannons at maximum range and not letting up.
The goal was not to get away unnoticed, but to give his enemy that final rush of fear, before he would be able to fear no more.

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