A poem by Scipio depicting the fall of the Orbital Guard to the Cybrid onslaught.

Glittering stars amidst the blue.

These, our dreams, are rent and spent,
Bravery reduced to wreckage
Miles to microns wide.
Treachery rests inert and silver by its side,
for then
Came death to bring home his bride
Catastrophe.
Now good and evil are leveled to the same plane
Same drifting level,
For over them is destruction's mastery.

High above now is the Tomb orbit
And, by bit and by drop
Never to stop
Rain meteorites of frozen blood.
Who but we to bring this sanguine flood?
To leave our armored aspirations adrift
Wrecked by older, darker dreamings yet,
And let our liquid remains sift
Down,
So far down,
Yet that just above their resting place
They might burn into vapors thinner than our breath.

Oh Death! That you might have taken us
And not our dreams. That you could have left
every bolt and truss -
the wreckage of our perfect selves in a place
Beyond our simple sight.
But no - where catacysms spasmed in space
Shaking the very universe in its foundations
Now leaving but a gauzy cloud of ashes and amens
This is seen at darker hours by all the nations.

Lament, for we are doomed to witness,
Rolling silently above,
Our great graveyard for broken future selves
Floating castles and galleons of the stars
Where knights and fair ladies protected ours
From harm.
What harm?
What harm?
What harm.

- Konrad Whittle, Citizen Poet of the European Alliance, 2857

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