Quoted By:
“MIZAR-III has never known rain.
The dense atmosphere of the alien homeworld forbids coalescence, and its smooth, water-logged surface gives no purchase to orographic precipitation. The feeble snow-bands flanking its polar circle disappear into a brackish ocean hundreds of kilometers deep – a tithe rarely seen and never appreciated by its aquatic inhabitants.
But MERRYGATE and I know rain well: from the crash of a torrential downpour upon bare skin to the patter of helium droplets against shielded hull. We have tasted water carrying the grit of stratospheric dust; smelled petrichor from loose soil and decaying foliage.
Rain marks the birth and death of seasons, conjoining the humble earth to the fickle skies above. And so, our vessel’s namesake stems from the oldest determinator of human survival. She is named after November’s parting gift – the ice-cold rainfall that washes away the last hint of autumn to render the world frozen and barren and lifeless.
Within five days, we will enter the outer reaches of MIZAR-III’s exclusion radius. A quartet of defensive stations orbit lazily around the planet’s Lagrange points, their antennas and missile racks splayed outwards like a rank of uneven pike-points. Shoals of corvettes and destroyers cluster in the shadow of a half-dozen heavy cruisers – stalwart in their defense despite the loss of their out-system reinforcements.
By all rights, I should feel fear – the creep of pressure that has accompanied me since my first engagement, now mellowed like an old scar. But it is no longer there. I only feel acceptance – knowledge that our parts and roles and are set; surety that only the execution of it remains.
Together, we will breach the final bulwark of their civilization. Together, we will invoke rain upon their homeworld and reap vengeance for our people.”
- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, DECEMBER 4th, PERSONAL JOURNAL
