Chromium

7.1

Unedited/ First draft

"You're lying." Dia hissed. "You're lying!" She repeated, snarling like a beast ready to pounce on its prey.

If what he says is true, they sacrificed us. Just like bait, sacrificial lambs threw to the wolves for the sole purpose of creating a pretext, a casus belli to start the war.

No matter what he said, she couldn't believe it.

"Am I?" His voice clanged and echoed. 

It was an odd, scathing sound like a rusty mechanism turning, the disturbing noise of metal scraping against metal. It took her some time to understand the Umbra was laughing at her, but when she did, Dia felt just one thing: pure, unadulterated rage.

The anger of before was like a drop in the ocean compared to the storm raging inside her now. She gnashed her teeth, the floor under her feet cracking as she got ready to charge, cross the distance separating the two of them with a single jump.

But she never did.

"Then, what about the training, Miss Zephyr?" The Umbra asked, his words like cold water, cooling down her anger.

"Don't you find strange that recruits, fresh out the academy would be subjected to that kind of torture? He said and tilted his head. "A bit harsh for a bunch of rookies, don't you think?"

Dia blinked, recovering just a tiny bit of her rationality. It was strange, undoubtedly so. But at the same time...

"If we were supposed to die, why did they train us?"

"Finally a good question. Why, indeed? Clearly, someone knew what your mission was really about, and didn't like to sacrifice an entire crew just to start a war."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because, Miss Zephyr." He answered patiently. " that person didn't try to stop the mission. Instead, he chose to train you, give you and your crew a fighting chance, a way to survive. That person had to be an officer with enough clearance to know about the real mission. Anybody comes to mind, Miss Zephyr?"

There were a few candidates, but her guts told her it had to be the Sarge. But it didn't matter now.

"Let's say for a moment that I believe you. Why would the emperor do that?"

"Why? What do you think, Miss Zephyr? Why would the emperor, the most powerful man of the entire galaxy do something like this?" He asked.

Dia just glared at him, all the irritation and anger she was feeling coming back twofold when he refused to answer. The Umbra's voice was toneless as before, but she knew he was mocking her, goading her for some reason. A pity she wasn't clear-headed at the moment, unable to understand why he was pushing her to the brink. Unable to understand why she was so angry in the first place.

"I would like to say there is some grand plan, a greater and noble purpose behind the emperor's actions." The Umbra said after a while. "But unfortunately the reason is much more trivial: money."

"Money?" Dia repeated, incredulous.

"Or power. Pick one. A little cliche, I know, but they are the same in this case."

Money and power?

"This is ridiculous."

"I knew you would think that way. But don't worry, I don't blame you" He said like he was making a big concession. "You are just misinformed. You don't know how fragile the empire really is. In the last two centuries, the empire survived or even prospered, expanding its borders, exploiting the labor of the settlers and depleting the resources of the fringe worlds. The last emperors maintained peace and order creating a police state, controlling the media and suppressing the population with the empire's oversized fleet. But now?" He snorted. "Now, there is nothing left to conquer, no planets to colonize to revitalize the empire's rotten core. The empire needs new habitable worlds, and there is just one place where it could find them. Can you guess where?"