A whorl of colour, spiraling into nowhere, and a too-familiar shudder in the
floor. Missed again, damn it.

We couldn't tell how things were going on the ground. Ill-prepared, we had no
communication aethers open to hear how they were faring. Heck, we didn't even
really have a crew, and we were on the wrong ship. All we knew was that it
wasn't going well. Deathsense crosses even aetherspace and the images it
brought were discouraging. The Harmonium couldn't last much longer at this
rate, no matter how many people were focusing on it.

Neither could we. Our empath stank of some kind of fish, and was carrying some
pungent... something, in a jar. She couldn't've been a day over seventeen, and
her hands had been shaking as she linked herself into the grid. The turrets
were hardly much better: I was the most experienced of the lot and I'd never
even fired on another ship before. Usually I sat in the command chair, but we'd
ended up in the wrong ship, and the chair didn't know me, the algontherine
refused my commands. Ill-prepared on all counts, and trying to make do.

Seems some astrologer had made some error of calculation. Today was supposed
to be an ordinary day. Maybe do some hunting or spend time with the family, or
work on refining those hammers at the forge a little more. Our best combatants
were somewhere far away doing... whatever it is their type did in far-away
places. They didn't talk much to the rest of us, except to bark orders without
explanations. Normally that was fine: follow orders and everything works. But
when it didn't work, when there was no one to give the orders, we end up...
ill-prepared, I guess.

The other guys apparently didn't have that problem. As I lined up my turret
for another shot that probably wouldn't do a thing, I wondered if their leaders
explained themselves, or if they just happened to have them there today, because
their astrologer could add. Either way they fell upon us like a storm.

The shudder when my shot fired astray was almost comforting in its regularity,
its predictability. There was a sort of staccato rhythm as the three turrets
spat their ineffective fire out of phase with one another. It was like three
drummers on three different vision quests were in the same circle, and somewhere
in the chaos there was a hint of a bigger pattern you couldn't quite make out.

It would have been enough for there to be two enemy ships here, a dreadnought
constantly bombarding the Harmonium and all its defenders, and a frigate dancing
around us and peppering us with splashes of whorling flame that flayed bits of
algontherine flesh into the aethers. But there was a third ship, a tiny scout,
darting in and out and dragging behind it angry creatures. Sometimes they
picked on the dreadnought or the frigate, but maddeningly often they chose us as
the tastiest prey. I guess we were leaking blood, or whatever it is wounded
algontherine leak, maybe auronidion? And the predators were drawn to the smell.
The creatures were small fry on their own, but combined with the frigate's
fury, enough to outpace our poor empath. Even in a destroyer as big as this
one, we were dying the death of a thousand cuts. Or more accurately, a thousand
nibbles.

Another flare of red light spoke of the Harmonium's pain, but our empath wasn't
even skilled enough to scan it. It couldn't be much longer before it fell,
though, and midnight was a long way off. Immediately the dreadnought was
building up another volley of bombardment. This had to be the last one the
Harmonium could take.

The scout ship darted in again with a swarm of gorgogs behind it, flying right
at us. Our commander sounded like his voice was about to give out as he called
us to fire on the swarm. Our hull strength was so low, if we didn't clear the
gorgogs out of our sky, we wouldn't last.

Ill-prepared. I grabbed my turret to swing it from the dreadnought towards the
gorgogs, thinking of how futile it all was, and as I did, the scout came into my
sights. On an impulse, I pulled the lever to unleash fire upon the tiny ship.
The commander would be upset at me not following orders, but what did we have to
lose? I'd be answering to Atropos before I answered to him anyway. Didn't even
have vitae. Ill-prepared on all counts.

The floor shuddered. Of course, another miss, I thought, but there was a
torrent of fibers floating apart in my turret's sights, and shouting in my ears.
The scout ship had imploded... from a single shot. It was even smaller than
I'd realized and the gorgogs had had a few nibbles along the way too. A thought
crept into my mind, as the turrets recharged. The fibers of shredded
algontherine flesh, wafting lazily, unhurried, across the backdrop of twisting
hues. A sight I'd seen plenty of; our own ship had shed more than a few. But
we weren't the only one.

Urgently I exclaimed to the commander to throw the ship into a spiral and
followed with orders to the other turrets. There was a commotion of objections.
We couldn't possibly survive if we followed those orders. Not a chance. And
who was I to be calling the shots from a turret? I wasn't even ranking officer,
not by a long way. The commander started to build up a head of umbrage: he
wasn't going to let himself be pushed around by a young punk like me.

I didn't wait for the argument to resolve itself, didn't even answer it. I
swung my turret, now nearly recharged, to face the dreadnought. The ship
convulsed with another blow from the gorgogs, and the frigate was coming around
on our tail, but I didn't care. Muttering a quiet prayer -- if I was ever in
need of a bit of luck this was the moment -- I released a jolt at the
dreadnought, and let the hull be damned.

I suppose the people on the other turrets were tired of our commander's futile
caution, or realized that it didn't matter, we were doomed either way. They
joined me, and one of them fired a wave of some kind of disharmony at the
dreadnought, making its grid start to worble in a most amusing way. Sure
enough, it was as I had thought: a lot of those fibers of algontherine flesh,
which I'd thought were ours, had been coming from the other ship all along. The
dreadnought shuddered.

Growling something about how we'd settle this matter of insubordination later,
the commander threw the ship into a spiral flight pattern, drilling down towards
the dreadnought. It only bought us a few moments, with the frigate closing in,
to unleash maybe one more volley. But it was enough. The dreadnought was
glowing red with the energy of its bombardment about to burst, and I suppose
they decided to risk bearing the brunt of our attack rather than give up all
that investment of energy. They were doing the same thing we were doing: laying
it all on the line.

We crossed that line first. The dreadnought tore itself quietly to pieces as
one of the other turrets filled it with indigo fire at short range. They, too,
had been taking more damage than they could withstand for a while now and had
tried not to let on, distracting us with pyrinnes and piddling hits from the
frigate mostly to keep our offense off. Once we turned it on them without
hesitation, they couldn't take it. The wave from their sudden destruction swept
over us, throwing us and the frigate back.

Now! I howled at the commander, and there was a moment's hesitation, but only
a moment. My plan had worked so far. He spun the ship around and, with the
wave of the dreadnought's death still behind us, plunged our nearly-broken
destroyer head-first into the frigate. The ships collided with a sickening tear
as our ramhead found purchase, but I was already up and out of the turret chair.
As we hurled ourselves through the ramhead into the frigate, the gorgogs formed
a second skin on our destroyer, and it fell to pieces. The empath was still on
board; she'd stayed to heal the hull one last time, buying us the final moments
it took to board the enemy ship. I saw her tiny body, broken, float by as
aetherspace slowly rent it apart.

It turns out being locked into turrets doesn't completely immobilize you.
Ill-prepared though they were for our unexpected assault, they put up a good
defense. Our attack was driven back, our blows returned, some of us fell, but
it was enough. We couldn't finish the job, but the gorgogs could. As the
algontherine fibers of the imploded frigate wrapped around the remnants of my
own body, and I could hear Clotho's voice as if carried on a stray breeze from a
distant place where the air was spicy, all I could think of was the delicate
tinkling of the Harmonium. It would sing its song for another day after all.