Fay pointed at the proper kitchenware for Dot to fetch.
As she poured the tummy medicine, she asked, “So, I heard that Una will give that keycard she has for control of the fleet over to Tam, is that right?”
Fey’s face brightened at the sound of fresh gossip. “Really? I thought it was that earring she wore, you know, the funny looking one. People always said it was big enough to hold a chip for access,” she mumbled.
“Oh right! Well, you know how people, always assuming stuff and gossiping about,” Dot said and gave the medicine to Fay.
She sipped audibly. “Yes, it’s terrible, gossip gossip all day long.”
Dot smiled.
Ash wore the bio hazard mask. People were frail and susceptible enough to diseases, locked inside the Frostips that it wasn’t uncommon to see some germophobes. That was mostly back then, on his time. Gen 4. When the ships were crowded, filled to the brim. Two thousand people each.
Ash was about to get on the pod and fly to Frostip 1, but he hesitated. He was home. It was an empty husk of the ship it once was. He couldn’t run down the corridor for two steps without bumping into someone. Now here he was, back home, corridors, empty, quarters abandoned.
No sounds. No people.
He turned back and made haste. He needed to see his home. He just had to. What would he even find there? Would it just have been given to someone else? Would everything simply be untouched, what little belongings his family had?
Would he find them dead in there?
No, the drones would never allow such a thing, for medical reasons alone.
But that was the imaginary picture seared into his mind. His parents, aged and dead, right on their kitchen table.
Ash reached in the mask and rubbed his eye. He went down the familiar corridors, he was gone for so long but this was his world growing up. Some of the scuffmarks on the aged ship had been caused by him, his running about, his playing, his hanging out with Ben.
More marks were there of course. It had been sixty years, quite a long time.
Ash turned to his block. His heart raced as he walked. He was so fixated he almost fell on a woman going about her business. He narrowly avoided her, bowed for sorry and went on.
His home. Door code was the same. Swoosh, the doors opened and thin dust danced about.
He bowed his head. It was more anticlimactic than he expected. The quarters were empty, simply abandoned. All of the house utilities were there, but anything personal had been taken away. The quarters were just a dusting away from a fresh tenant.
He gulped, and went inside. He sat on his desk, and remembered his mother, bringing him his last birthday cake at fifteen. He pictured the scene, but this time he didn’t look at his pad, he didn’t hurry to get leaving. This time, he stood up and hugged her, and kissed her, and told her how much he loved her, and how much he appreciated everything she and Dad had done for him, and how he was doing this so they’d be proud of him, so proud, and how he’d come back safe.
“I’m back safe mom,” he whispered in the empty room.
He started when the workstation lit up, activated by his familiar voice.
He hesitated, but tapped his email. There were many from some classmates, some of his friends. It was customary to leave messages to people when you thought of them, or send them videos of things they’d enjoy. That way, they’d see them afterwards and they’d be touched, he guessed. He scrolled through some of them, he was surprised to see he didn’t really care for any of them. They thinned out over the years, they were many from classmates from the dates after he left, and a trickle since then.
But there was one, single email that he did care about.
He tapped the video, and watched in silence.
“Where are you Ash? I need you to save me from the bullies,” the old man in the video said and Ash’s tears cleaned the dust off the desk in round, blotchy spots.
Chapter 32: Gen 7
Ash charged the first Eve he saw off the airlock, and kicked her in the face.
A mask of prismatic light appeared and she was left unharmed, but shocked nonetheless.
Ash punched her many times, always striking the momentary barrier of the protective force field. The Blessing of Luna.
The Eve, now rebounded herself and angrily knocked him down and beat him senseless.
When he came to a couple of minutes later, he was surrounded by a tribe of post-apocalypse warrior women in a place full of hunter’s trophies. Many had finer gear and armor made after their revolt, but some kept the general makeshift vibe the original Eves had begun with.
Una was standing over him. She was missing her earring. “A man. What are you doing in my domain?” She spat on his face.
“I’m not here to exchange fluids with you, if that’s what you think,” Ash said and snorted. Ben would have loved that comeback. Ben would be proud.
“Do you see? This is what men were like, always thinking about sticking their filthy dicks in our vaginas. Nothing else crosses their mind.”
The Eves nodded and cradled their swords and spears.
“Why the sword and sandal act? Don’t you girls know how to fire an energy pistol?” Ash said and regretted it instantly. Damn, he was hanging out with Knox too much. If he survived this, he’d limit his exposure to Knox.
Una punched him hard, blood trickled from his lower lip.
“This takes me back to my childhood. There were bullies back then, just like you. You’d like them a lot, Una. Are you sure you killed all the men? Cause you might have a healthy relat-”
She punched him again, and kicked him in the stomach.
“Shame. No partners for you. But then again, you should take out your anger on me. Keep hitting me, come on. Kill me. Let’s see what Scout Luna thinks about that,” he smiled.
Una stood up and gave him a sly smile. “You mean the ship this trashcan was about to repair?” she said and waved to her crew.
A monitor lit up, showing Knox in a video comm, bound inside a metal cage, raving like a madman. “Get away from me vagina-humans! I’m radioactive, I tell you. Ptosis. Look it up goddammit!”
Ash grunted in physical and emotional pain. This plan was going to hell real quick. He still had one trick. “Let me and Knox go, and we’ll return your keycard to you.”
Una seemed worried for a moment.
Ha! Ash got her now.
“What keycard?”
“The one… The earring you use to control Luna,” Ash said, looking around the Eves’ angry faces for any response.
Una laughed hard, very loudly. “You think I control Luna? Me? Oh I thought my Eves were worshiping me all these years, and here comes a man,” she spat out the word like poison, “Thinking I can move mountains and order Frostips around! Fantastic!” she clapped.
Ash went pale.
Una’s face hardened. “No, male, I don’t control Luna. Nobody controls Luna.”
“But… If you don’t control her somehow, how does she let this happen?” Ash asked and felt ill.
Una knelt over him and stepped on his foot. She reached in close, whispering in his ear. “Because it’s her own Blessing,” she said and bit his earlobe tenderly.
Chapter 33: Gen 7
It was the end. He had a literal sword over his head, ready to come down at Una’s order. Ash didn’t know what else to do. He had no other options. His biggest card was Scout Luna, who might somehow be able to communicate directly with Luna on the Frostips and help them and stop this madness…
But she already knew. Luna already knew. And she allowed this to happen.
And the noise. That stupid, mumbling dickless chauvinistic drone went on and on about letting him go and cursing the women and… What was his problem anyway?
Come to think of it, Knox was no ordinary drone. Their designs were pretty much the same always, with slight variations based on their tasks. Knox was…
Unique?
He was old enough to have gone about the Frostips before he left, a
nd more so during his Scout training. He hadn’t seen a design like him, anywhere. Was it a new type?
And why was his mind racing to motherfucking Knox all of a sudden? Knox, Knox, obnoxious Knox. He had to think of something useful, something tangible, right here, right now. A dodge, a parry, something to let him out of his bonds, to stop the Eves from killing him.
Why was his subconscious bringing up Knox at a time like this?
Knox, Knox. That voice, that personality… That doesn’t happen by design, it was purely by accident. What had Ben said, about AI upbringing? Think, think Ash, think! Take this goddamn train of thought to it’s conclusion before they chop off your head. Ben said… Uh, that to get an efficient AI at repetitive tasks, you had it’s mind grow more strict. But to get an AI that could function in unexpected situations, you’d have to… Uh, let it grow, unbounded. Somehow you ended up with really eccentric ones, really…
Why was he fucking thinking of this now? Why?
Eccentric ones, like… Like a damn chauvinistic drone, Ash realised. One of a kind.
The epiphany was liberating.
“Remi!” he yelled with his last straw of energy.
The litany of curses stopped. “Remi?” Knox said. “I’ve changed my name years ago. A dear old friend told me it was a bit feminine.”
“I’m Ash! I’m Ben’s friend!” Ash yelled at the video comm and got another punch in the face.
Una raised her arm, “Enough! Silence you weakling. Face death with dignity.”
Knox was silent. Now he decides to stay silent?
“By Luna’s law, Ash challenges you to a duel,” Knox said formally in a loudspeaker volume. He even fake-cleared his throat beforehand.
“He does?” Una asked incredulous.
“I am?” Ash spat out with blood.
“I serve as a witness, and he reserves the right to avenge his friend’s death. You wouldn’t disobey Luna’s Law, would you Una?” Knox said coyly, still in loudspeaker volume.
Una nodded and the sword moved away. “No, I wouldn’t,” she said coldly.
“Excellent. We shall duel two weeks from now, and honor the-”
“No, drone. That is not the law. Me and the male, we duel now.”
Chapter 34: Gen 7
“Please don’t die Ash,” Dot said and held him tight.
“Okay, okay,” he said surprised and worried. “I’ll try my best not to.”
She let him go and looked down, sniffing.
“To be honest, it doesn’t matter if I die. My time is long gone, I have no place in this world now.”
“Don’t talk like that,” she sniffed.
“No, really. There’s no one here for me Dot. No one to miss me. Not like you, you have two great moms, even though one is kinda kooky. I also can’t ever look her in the eye again. That alone is worth dying for.”
“No Ash,” she said holding his hand. “I didn’t have anyone missing me in the first place. I was a foundling Ash.”
“A what?”
“A foundling. Abandoned baby at the doorstep. My mother didn’t want me Ash. Do you get that? Do you get how fucked up this is? In a society where matrimony is a holy thing, where each and every single one of the women are accounted for, where each child is delivered by Sue, somehow I was conceived, born and abandoned. I’m the only one, and Sue hasn’t figured out how all these years.”
“You’re a miracle then,” Ash said and cupped her face.
“Yes you moron!” Dot said crying and hitting her foot on the floor. “And I will miss you if you die. I will never forgive you if you die.” She blew her nose on her sleeve. “And fix that damn tuft of hair, it’s driving me nuts,” she said and leaned close to straighten it.
Ash kissed her then, for the first time.
The crowd gathered in the amphitheater, just like during the Renewal ceremony. The patches of dried blood on the floor did not make Ash feel well. The place was packed, every Eve was watching. Drones had the task of camera operators, feeding the event through their own eyes to those who had important tasks and couldn’t attend.
Ash felt as if he had two thousand eyes staring at his back. And that didn’t even include the e-persons.
He weighed the sword he was given. It was well balanced, not that he knew much about swordfighting. All his knowledge was from some action movies. He thought they would cheat him on the hardware, but Una seemed to play fair so far. Who the fuck used swords in the day of energy blasts and power armor?
Well, the answer was the Eves. These crazy, angry, but ultimately beautiful and pivotal women that would one day help humanity reach the colony planet. He was planning to throw down the towel, give in an hope for a shred of mercy. He honestly thought that maybe, just maybe, the Eves were better off this way. Luna had allowed it. Heck, Luna was still blessing them. He couldn’t remember the details about the fields Ben was yammering on about, but what he did remember was that they were expensive.
Ash and Ben had never seen one field being fired in their whole lives, and now here these women were, getting shielded like there was no tomorrow, at immense energy cost to the fleet. Ben had also said something like it was an inefficient technology and how we had the early models, and daydreamed on the field applications people might have back on Earth by now.
He could recognize a handful of faces. Dot, with her mothers up there, looking worried. Knox was with them, flanked by armed Eves. The black woman, Tam, the tall one, next to Una, giving her encouragement.
That was it.
Una snarled up and down the stage, which was now a death ring. “Let’s get this over with,” she said and charged Ash.
He dodged her attack easily, she wasn’t holding anything back. Then he parried her once, simply by accident and gut reaction. The crowd booed and cheered, hoping for something more exciting than a one-sided battle.
But then his luck was over. He swung back, hitting Una in the center of mass, a good blow by all standards. The sword was simply deflected by a field.
That was it.
Una bellowed and spur for the counterstrike, and Ash realised that real swordplay didn’t last as long as in the movies he grew up with.
The crowd was ecstatic, a seamless aural mass of female voices, demanding his death.
So be it. His instincts, his heightened reflexes that made him fit for a Scout did help him now. All they told him was that Una was quick, experienced. Murderous. There was no chance of him winning, he could see it clear as day.
The sword struck true.
Then nothing.
Ash looked down at his chest. He was expecting to feel something during his death, some pain, some twitching? A light maybe?
There was a spark of light. Wasn’t there supposed to be a tunnel?
The sword was stopped in a shimmering field, holding it back over thin air, millimeters away from his skin.
The hall gasped as if in a single breath and went silent.
Una’s expression was unreadable. She dropped her sword and it clanged on the floor. “Impossible, she mumbled. He can’t be blessed, impossible.”
The women talked and yelled, opinions and doomsayers and curses and names, all bundled together.
“You’re not one of the Eves!” Una repeated. “You can’t.” Una tested her own Blessing with her belt knife, pricking her finger.
It bled.
In a single eyeblink, Tam stepped forward and slashed Una’s throat with a deliberate, forceful sweep of her knife.
It was chaos, the room erupted, the armed Eves pulled their swords and spears but they weren’t certain what to do. “I was Second,” Tam bellowed. “Now, I am First.” The yelling calmed down. “Does anyone refute that? Step up now.”
Ash fell on his knees and tried to put pressure on Una’s throat. It was gushing like a stream, running down the stage, warming his hands. Ash looked into his enemy’s eyes and couldn’t find it in him to hate her anymore. She moved her mouth, Ash leaned in close to hear.
“Tell her I
am proud,” Una croaked before she bled out.
Chapter 35: Gen 8
Tam, despite her bloody rise to power proved to be much more reasonable than Una. She let them go. She also changed Una’s tribal decor into more modern stuff, art deco she called it.
Luna spoke after so many years, and ordered a vote. Those who wished to remain on the fleet, aboard Frostips 1, 3 and 4 would continue their journey towards their original destination, the solar system of Gliese 832. They would survive, and die, to give their place to the next generation, and the next, and so on until they eventually got there.
Those not wishing to stay were moved to the pristine Frostip 5. Thankfully, there were a few more than the minimum required Eve population of 200, so the expedition was approved. Ash became captain, but most of the piloting was left to the instance of Luna.
Scout Luna was repaired but stayed with the fleet, despite Ash’s pleas. She wasn’t cut out for the domestic life. Plus, she still had a lot to explore. Who knew what wonders they would find there a hundred years from now?
Doctor Sue stayed aboard the fleet to help replenish the population by about 200. Her expertise was essential to the survival of the colony, but Ivy accused her of planetophobia. She had read that on an encyclopedia. They parted with many tears and hugs, since Ivy naturally would go where the men were about to be born.
Knox went of course with his male buddy, and with his perfectly stored memories of Ben’s teachings towards that blasted female assistant whose name he couldn’t remember, he educated the next batch of scientists, carrying on Ben’s legacy and propelling genofixing technology forward by an estimated 200 years. In contrast, his thousand-page thesis on male supremacy didn’t help anyone and was shelved indefinitely.
Frostip 5 broke off the fleet and traveled on it’s own for four years, carrying the branch of colonists to the superhabitable planet Ash and Scout Luna had discovered. It weathered the ionized cloud surrounding the planet Webb and was beached into an idyllic location by the sea, where Ash and the Eves founded a new human colony.
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