'Why are you here, Kuma?' It might be my twin I'm looking at, but Euiva is behind her eyes. A being as vast and powerful as Aeotu but... There's something not right about it, something that runs up and down my nerves, jagged shards of plasglas slicing up my insides, until I'm as red as it is.
There is madness in the blood, a frantic kind of anger twisting her insides, and beyond it... Beyond it is the darkness left by the water-kin, feeding the madness.
Even Aeotu shudders.
'I'm here to save Citlali,' I say.
A smile stretches Grea's mouth, creases her eyes, and suddenly she looks old, like she could be Mum. It's a sad kinda smile, aged and a little condescending, like a parent when their kid does something funny but naive. 'Citlali's already dead, Kuma.'
'No, the crew's on there. Mum and Dad, Onah—'
'Core's gone and the engines...' She laughs. 'Well, I have plans for them.'
'Whatever you're doing, you don't have to. We can still fix Citlali.'
Grea cocks her head. 'With what? You think there's steelcrete just laying around? Or fusion matter? What about the biologics? You think Mum and Dad are gonna want to use corpses to replenish the biogel tanks, to fertilise the crops with the bodies of their friends? Think they're going to want to eat that?'
'I... There are planets. We can resupply.'
A laugh. 'That's cute, Kuma. You know as well as I do how realistic that is. Besides, do you even know where in the galaxy we are?'
I don't even get my mouth open.
'No, you don't, you just assume it's not that far from Jørn, or wherever the hell they want us to think home is.' She rolls her eyes. 'I got news for you, baby brother, we're not. We're not even in the same galactic quadrant anymore. The beings who made all this?' She gestures to herself and then down at me. 'They're not local, and they don't like us. I'm sure you've already figured out why.'
She's in my face again, looking up at me, not much, but enough to see the madness, Euiva's madness. 'There's no help here, Kuma, no one but us and the Sisters.'
Her voice echoes when she says "Sisters", reverberating through the soles of my fug-feet, making the bulkheads shake. And there's Euiva, rolling over Grea's eyes, boring into my brain, reaching not for me but through me. And there's Aeotu reaching back, riding up the back of my throat, taking over my tongue.
'Sisters,' she/I say, and I don't just see the golden web of minds, I feel it. Home. The Sistermind.
Grea nods, and when she speaks, her voice is too deep, echoes with traces of Euiva. 'The creators have corralled us here. They have left us to die, when they're not experimenting on us, pulling us apart piece by piece.'
Images flow around us, not just one or two, but hundreds, layered one atop the other in a carpet of pain. I see Them, the creators, marching through rounded corridors, black uniforms drinking in the light, strange equipment hovering along in their wake. In another image, They are in a Sister's AI core, ripping into the bright, kaleidoscopic tree-like trunk of her brain with lasers and knives, oblivious to her screams. There are more images, more memories being played out everywhere I look, some just as bad. Most worse.
Euiva/Grea's voice threads through the horror. 'There was no escape before. The creators were wily, they knew we could subvert their programming and they fenced us in.' A handful of the images change, replacing torture with star charts and schematics. As soon as I recognise the shuttle-sized platforms – the fence-posts – they change.
A Sister, engines sputtering, approaches the fence. There is a moment of hesitation, a pause like she's bracing herself, before she pushes forward, passing through the energy pulse and—
I don't want to see this, don't want to hear it, to feel it in every fibre of my being. I want to slap my hands to my ears, want to yell, 'Make it stop! Make it stop!'. But Aeotu has a hold of my hands, my voice. All I can do is endure.
Eventually, it fades.
Euiva speaks into the silence. 'We have a plan, but we need you; your engines, your avatar and the ship in your gut.'
She/they hold up their hands palms out, and they must have magnets in them because Aeotu/I follow suit, and then our hands are meeting, merging. The golden web, the Sistermind, is in our veins and it blazes. Intoxicating.
'My avatar has made the preparations,' Euiva says, and there's Grea in it. 'All you must do is give it to us, let us direct it.'
It. It is me, or not just me but me and Hunt, the two of us wound together in a single entity. Hunt doesn't care, but I don't like being an "it", don't like the inflection in Euiva's voice, flat and impersonal, as if I'm a tool instead of a person.
Aeotu feels it. She looks at me, really looks at me, all the way to my anima and then through to Hunt. She hesitates
Euiva senses it. 'Your avatar must only destroy one platform, Sister, and then you and I will take care of the rest.'
'Yes.' The word is Aeotu's but the voice is mine, nothing else though, not my eyes, not my arms. The web under my skin, the one Dude uses, Aeotu's using it now, the full kaleidoscope of her being burning through my bones. 'Take it,' she/I say.
The ora explodes, new colours, new sounds, and suddenly I'm not me anymore. It's like Hunt coming down over my vision, except more, deeper. There's a new part of me, and it feels so familiar, as if Mac is there beside me, and we're back in the corridor pushing through the red. A brother/partner. Kin. Pack. He hovers on the edge of the between place, and yet it's not him. It's ... The Sistermind reaching back along Hunt, wrapping around my brain, like the fug's wrapped around my body. A part of me, an extension, a swarm welcoming me with a warm golden glow that reminds me of Dude.
But it's not Dude, and that warmth hides a ruthless determination. Free will is just a concept to the Sistermind, an optional extra to be swept aside for the greater good.
A kin's command sphere is nothing compared to this.
The Sistermind's plan is my plan, my purpose. There's nothing but it. Nothing at all.
I feel. The armour, cold and hard against my skin. The rush of blood through my veins, my heart drumming in my chest. And there, a second thrum, deeper, louder, still me but coming from outside. It's huge, and energy runs through it, Hunt's fusion generator.
We're going to need that.
The void is peppered with lights, the bright pinpricks of drones, the larger bursts of stardrives and the pervasive glare of the station, drowning space in violent yellow. My HUD is alive, squares and numbers eating my vision and Hunt responds, whispers in my head, telling me the power packed into our chest. Anticipation takes my heart, my breath shallow, even as my brain dumps more chemicals into my system.
{{ Here. }}
A new square lights my vision, and I swing my new body about, feeling the actuators in my legs stretch, the thrusters kick in and I'm rocketing through the void, all those bright lights at my back, Hunt still whispering in my ear.
Massive legs unfold, cords of nano-muscle stretching, paws flexing. And there, there is the platform and the fence holding the Sisters in. The square on my HUD throbs. Numbers and trajectories spinning off into the distance, grey lines of data unfurling, and Hunt is whispering in the back of my head, a soft mumble of data, while the awareness says it's not for me. And there's that strange connection, the sense of being more than one, and of being less. A thing without thought or will; a tool in the hands of the Sistermind.
The square throbs again. The platform is rushing at me, a thin silver-black disc of metal-stone and nanites, the pulse of a generator at its heart, steady streams of power coming from ports on either side, each the width of my mech's leg. It's dominated by a rounded dome of the same material, dull and plain to my eyes, until the HUD changes. Energy blazes through the dome, in veins of pure silver.
Nanites. Alien nanites, and they need to die. Need to turn to dust and wither in the void.
We can do that.
Hunt is showing me how, is lighting up the blades in our arms. The power coursing to them is a line of lava forming out of my stomach an
d rushing down our second forearms. There are cylinders rising out of our flesh, metal plates shifting, deforming as barrels rise out of the surface, the ends bright orange.
We're rushing at the platform, and something has changed with the flow of silver.
The platform has sensed us, decided we're a threat. There are new shapes forming out of the platform, short stubby projections blazing with the same orange as our guns.
We jerk to the side. Heat sears our upper biceps, tears a hole in our armour. Nanites are flowing, filling the hole.
We don't stop.
A kilometre.
Another orange bolt zips through vacuum.
Five hundred metres.
Fire down our leg. More nanites.
Three.
Two.
Thrusters firing, twisting us. Our feet pointed at the platform.
One.
Collision warning.
Impact.
Hull plate buckling, not ours. And now we're moving, legs and thrusters propelling us up and down again, the generator pulsing in our vision, superheated blades springing from our second forearms, targeting system guiding the downward stroke—
Second fists buried in metal-stone, our whole body twisting, straining as we carve a massive circle out of the hull, not just severing the power cable, but ripping it out of the platform. Enemy nanites spill out of the cuts, brilliant silver, trying to stitch the pieces of the hull together. More follow, bursting out the hull, aiming for our hands, our arms. Magma engulfs us, our magma, our skin hotter and hotter and hotter, burning the enemy as it reaches us. And still we twist and cut.
The incision as wide as our torso, our blades sunk a metre deep. Twist. Cut. Burn. Twist. Almost there. One metre until the blades complete their circuit. The enemy is quick, sinking into the hand-width of curled slag, thin latticework of new metal-stone forming.
Thirty-three centimetres.
A power warning flashing on the HUD. The magma draining our power, the generator running higher than recommended.
Armour beginning to cool.
Enemy nanites digging into our hands.
Seven centimetres.
The enemy filling the gaps between the lattice work with new skin, microns thick, thinner than tissue, easy to break. But not for long.
One centimetre.
Pain. The enemy breaching our outer shell.
Enough.
Blades retract. We dig all four hands into the circle and pull.
Teeth clenched, muscles – fleshy and nanotech alike – straining. Thrusters firing.
Nothing happens. A heartbeat. Two. Three. The enemy has found the joints in our hands, the ports for the blades. There is no more power to fire the magma, we need it for.
What.
Comes.
Next.
The silver nanites holding the hull together tear. The straining of our legs shoots us into space, thrusters propelling us back into reach of the energy canons, except the canons are dead, the severed ends of their power conduit dangling from the metal-stone in our hands.
The enemy is crawling over the hole, a thin silver scab growing thicker by the moment.
We must act now, but there is pain, starting at the knuckles and shooting up our second arms. Enemy nanites are deep in our superstructure, eating at the skeleton, seeking pathways to our core and the soft fleshiness at our heart. Our own viyu is not enough to repel it.
The decision is made in a micro-second.
A small agony in our wrists and then our second hands are numb. Gone.
We let go of the hull, kick it further into space, take notice of our hands still attached to the circle of hull only to observe the silver exploding out of the severed wrists.
And now for the next.
Power gathers at the points of our first hands, an orange glow, quiet at first but building until it is a mini-sun. The generator at our heart burns past the point of safety, warnings blazing on the HUD even as our bones grow cold.
Soon enough the only warmth is in the space between our hands, the only thing we see is the enemy closing the wound we made. Soon enough we don't even need that. There is only the warning on the HUD, the alarms blaring in our ears, the expanding sun.
Now, fathead. Now!
Now.
We loose the sun.
We can't see it blazing through the vacuum, don't sense the microsecond it impacts the platform, burns through hull, turns the enemy to ash. We do not see the explosion.
We feel the shockwave, hear our internals scream as it tears into our skin and sends us tumbling end over end into oblivion.
I wake and for three heartbeats, it feels like I'm back in the escape pod, gravity gone, waiting to die.
You did it, fathead.
Grea. I turn, but she isn't there, and my body… it's too big, is ponderous and slow and cold. So cold, everywhere except the spot under my chin.
Dude fuzzes and that's how I know I'm not in the escape pod anymore.
That brings another thought, the memory of crashing into the platform, of the explosion and the shockwave that threw us into the void.
As if my attention is a trigger, Hunt awakens. The HUD flickers, and suddenly I'm no longer in the dark. Pale light washes my face as the screen flickers, and warmth starts travelling up my fingers. There's a deep THRRUUUM and more screens light up, readouts and scans. I still don't know where we are or what we're doing and Hunt, although present in the back of my mind, is silent.
A flicker, and instead of incomprehensible readouts and scans, I'm looking at stars, twinkling in the dark. Bigger lights are moving too, blobs that can only be starships, the firing of engines, shadows on shadow, blocking out the stars behind them as they inch forward.
Hunt is still silent although I can feel it humming in the back of my head as it processes data. It's as if there's a blockage in the umbilicus that connects us, and for a second, I wonder if it was damaged in the shockwave but that doesn't feel right, doesn't—
It doesn't matter. I'm left to interpret the lines and circles appearing on the HUD by myself, outlines of sister-ships, weird squiggles that I guess are their names. Only a handful of them are moving, freed of the electromagnetic fence penning them in. The HUD tracks them, shows me projected trajectories.
They're moving outside the old fence, toward the watch station, which looks like a cylindrical blob from this far out. And I'm really far out. The explosion must have pushed me out of the planet's orbit and set us adrift. There should be panic at that thought, at being lost in the vast ocean of vacuum, but I guess I'm too worn out, too tired. Too hyped up on remembered adrenalin. All I've got is this numb wonder, all I can do is watch as four of the Sisters limp their way toward the watch station.
One of the Sisters is familiar, tows a smaller blob behind it.
Aeotu.
And then, as the HUD focuses on the smaller shape… Citlali.
The ships may look similar, the same egg-shaped hulls, but my home is barely a third of the alien ship's size.
Brother. Aeotu's voice shivers across vacuum, through the connection between me and Hunt, and now my mind is flooded not just with her, but with the awareness, with Hunt, like the blockage is no longer.
Because Aeotu removed it. Because it was Aeotu who put it there.
Confirmation sings from Hunt to me.
I don't know when I started to think of the alien ship as an ally, let alone a friend. Until now, as the betrayal cuts deep. It pushes out the emotions flowing from Aeotu, the sadness, the guilt, the steely determination. I recognise that last one because it's the same that fills my chest, that drives me after Grea even when she dives into space after a ghost. But none of it matters, none of it does anything but stop my heart and suck all the warmth from my bones.
None of it.
Aeotu changes course, nose lifting up and away from the station, but Citlali… My home powers ahead, straight for the station.
Now, when it's too late, I recall the strange cables in Engin
eering, the viyusa snaking across the deck, the way it snaked around the engines. The meaning in Grea's words, the shadows in her eyes when she said Citlali was already dead.
No.
No. No. No.
'Hunt!' I yell, the HUD swallowing the sound.
Dad's on that ship, and Mum and Mac. We need to move, have to get to Citlali, have to save them.
Hunt THHHRUUMS, and I feel thrusters kicking in, see the warnings, the damage reports streaming in front of my eyes.
In the distance, power flares as Citlali's engines come to life, not just the sub-light ones but the FTL drive, the miniature sun. There must be a rupture in the outer hull because I shouldn't be able to see it, shouldn't have to squint against the glare taking over the HUD, shouldn't have to—
Citlali implodes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Hunt is scanning, playing numbers on the HUD, tracing the shockwave of energy, the way it ripples through the graveyard, breaking up ships. The Wohol station explodes in bright yellow balls of light as their engines fail, but of Citlali…
There aren't even atoms left.
It's not right, there should be a bigger show when your home dies, the last vestige of hope. Not just the brief flash and then... nothing. Nothing. A great big steaming heap of nothing.
The same nothing that's taken over my chest.
I thought I'd feel more, but... I don't know. There's just emptiness.
And Dude.
And Hunt.
Through Hunt I sense Aeotu, and through Aeotu... The Sistermind extends all around, voices and colours filling the ora. There is joy and victory and pain for siblings lost. All of it a riot of colour, pinks and purples and greys and blues and things there are no names for. Blinding me.
Distantly, I sense Grea, the deep cherry-red of her mixed with the darkness of Euiva.
I reach for her.
Grea!
A twitch, a shadow that might be my twin, gone as quickly as it appears, subsumed by the Sistermind, by Euiva.
Grea! I yell it, reach deep and take the power in Hunt's/my chest, throw it into the ora.
There it is again, that flicker, maybe a little stronger, maybe a little clearer, before it's swallowed.
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