The Traitor

[Rmorph]

We Corsairs await death joyfully. It is the only truth.

We grip it with both hands and scream in elated madness as it takes us in its last embrace.

I swear I have heard pilots singing as their titans spin out into void. A fiery spark and they are gone.
But - through the static...

Some ancient battle hymn drifts in and out. a ghost whispering a tuneless dirge.
Something shrill from a time when our weapons spewed flaming iron across blood soaked seas. Under a different sky, a different cosmos.

I swear I hear them still. My brethren - I hear them screaming still.

---

No Screaming embrace for me. Not yet.
I have died the greater death... and been banished from my kind.

I am the traitor.

I, Razor-Red, Titan pilot for the fourth arm air fleet irregulars, off Leon.
I am exiled from Crete, from the cradle of my race and creed.

All that I fought for has turned against me. I am dead to them.

Yes. They think me dead, in body and mind. and though I yet breath and sweat and bleed, still they know the truth perhaps better than I.

My body, despite all silent prayer and protest, refuses to give in. My heart beats. My breath quickens.
I heal from these wounds.. Inflicted by my brethren.

I was executed. Torn from the skies of Crete by order of the elders. Yet here I am.
Technology has spared me for the long pain of recovery. Fate has spared me for some other purpose.

---

My crime is heinous. Let us not delude ourselves. I have spoken against the elders.
I have called the Corsairs dishonorable. Spat in the face of the hierarchy.
Truly. I am dead, that I believe Corsair honor broken.
Truly I am damned, that in my pride I believe I must fight to restore it.

I hear the screaming still. I hear my brethren.
And I think of them. Their honor.

When we flew under those pale stars, as our ships roared and guns blazed and one by one the lights of my brethren went out. We flew for one thing. We-
They.
They died for one thing.

They died for honor.



Now. So have I. And so will I again.

A fleet lies ready at my call. Friends still living have called and urged me to a higher duty.

I will return to Corsair space and reclaim the honor of my people.
And then I shall live again.



I am not dead Elders. I come to knock on your doors.



Razor-Red.
Corsair.

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