The Last Human IV - 64 - One Last Test

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The falkyrs’ wings beat the air, driving the hot winds away. One wrapped his talons around Khadam’s shoulders, and—without landing—hefted her from the ground. Khadam gasped as his talon dug into the blackened patch on her shoulders. The disease had spread since she’d been stranded on Earth, but Khadam was too exhausted to adjust herself in the falkyr’s grip. 

Agraneia and Eolh were carried alongside her, and dozens of other winged warriors flanked them on their flight up into the Ark’s underside. Though the Ark was half-submerged in the clouds, she could see the ruin of her last creation. Horrendous gaps had been torn from the ship’s sharp hull, and great scars ran along its spear-head length. But the light from the porthole beckoned them in, and Khadam could not remember a sweeter sight.

The moment Khadam’s feet touched the airlock floor, she sent an impulse to her ship. Position us out of the Sovereign’s visual sensors. Give us as much time as possible.

Instead of the usual computerized tones, Khadam was surprised to hear a living voice: Yes, Khadam. Moving to the clouds.

“Yarsi?” Khadam asked out loud.

Everyone in the airlock turned to look at her. Eolh and Agraneia and even the falkyr, still gasping through open beaks. 

“How is Yarsi controlling the Ark?”

“She’s a prophet,” Agraneia shrugged. 

Khadam stared at her, dumbfounded. 

“Her implant,” Agraneia grunted, touching at the scales of her own neck. “Memories, from a god.”

Khadam chewed her lip thoughtfully. Is that why the Sovereign didn’t destroy the Ark? The ship was in bad shape, but it should never have survived the Sovereign’s armadas. 

“Yarsi, ship status,” Khadam said. Semi-transparent feeds expanded across Khadam’s vision, giving her access to the Ark’s remaining sensors and internal logs. 

Khadam grimaced. More than 60% of the sensors were damaged, if not outright destroyed. Most of the stabilizing repulsors were shattered, and the remaining ones would be overloaded soon if they didn’t leave the Earth’s atmosphere. But the cannon craters and shorn-off plating meant that most of the Ark would be exposed to the vacuum. More systems were offline than not, and life support was on its last legs. A few weeks of repairs, and maybe the Ark would sustain itself again, but, honestly, oxygen was the least of their worries. 

One of the Sovereign’s drones had burrowed into engineering, found the last two fuel cells, and shattered them.

The only fuel left was what was already in the reactors. 

“We only have enough Light for one jump,” Khadam said. She pulled her hands through her hair, and slumped against the wall. “One.”

“I might,” Yarsi’s digitized voice poured over the speakers, “I might be able to stretch it to two.”

“Two then.” She blew out a frustrated breath, and shook her head. “And the Sovereign will follow us, no matter where we go.”

Khadam slid to the floor, and massaged her scalp, sliding her fingers across the neural conductors running from her eyes to her temples. Her thoughts dripped as slow as cold oil. Her body wanted to sleep for a hundred years. Even after waking from the cold chamber, she hadn’t been this tired. 

“Yarsi,” Khadam said. “How did you know where to find us?”

“The First Prophet’s memories live inside me,” Yarsi said. 

“Emorynn?” Khadam said, “You have Emorynn’s memories? But—Yarsi—then you’ve seen everything.”

The First Prophet’s visions were legendary. Of all humanity, she had seen the most. Of all the infected, she had lived the longest. Rodeiro had built his entire clan upon Emorynn’s words to him—when he had served her. If Yarsi was carrying Emorynn’s memory…

“You knew we would be on that mountain. You knew the Sovereign wouldn’t destroy the Ark. You know what happens next. You’ve seen everything.”

“Emorynn saw everything,” Yarsi corrected her, “I was merely gifted her memory. But the memory has gone dark. I knew where to find you. I knew we would lift you from the Earth. But everything after this moment was erased.”

“There’s nothing else?” 

“I am made blind, again,” Yarsi said.

“But why? Why would Emorynn erase her own memories? Why would she keep them safe for so many years, only to have them dry up when we need them?”

Yarsi had no answer. But someone did. 

Agraneia cleared her throat. “Poire might know.” Everyone turned to look at her, and she held aloft the android’s fractured core. Veins of liquid metal sealed the crack shut, but it was still leaking a gray, sparkling mist. 

“Laykis was the last to speak with Him.” 

Khadam sighed. This again. “Poire went through the Mirror,” she said. “He’s gone.”

“But,” Agraneia gestured at the corvani standing next to her. 

“Yeah,” Eolh said, “I don’t think she believes it, Ags.”

“But,” Agraneia said, stumbling over her confusion, “But He… But Eolh’s alive. Poire brought him back.”

“Look,” Khadam pinched the bridge of her nose. “I don’t know what happened, but that’s not possible. That’s not a thing we can do.” 

Eolh splayed his feathered fingers and shrugged, as if to say, well, here I am.

“We’re not gods.”

No one argued with her. 

No one agreed, either.

She didn’t have the time, let alone the energy, to figure this out right now. Poire was dead. The android had brought a message from him, yes, but Laykis didn’t understand either—that message was only an echo. Nothing could survive the Mirror. Nothing. 

“Poire said,” Agraneia muttered. Quietly. Almost needful. “That you were the Key.” 

“The Key to what, then?”

“Uh,” Agraneia grunted, uncertainly. “I thought—Laykis thought—that you would know what it meant.”

Khadam snorted. It was meaningless. And worse, it was just vague enough that, of course, the xenos believed it held some divine importance. Like it was some magic phrase that would just solve everything. What kind of lock am I supposed to open, anyway? Perhaps Poire’s mind had melted when he opened Sen’s Mirror. 

She wondered if it hurt him the same way her shoulders hurt now. The disease broke her skin every time she moved her shoulders the wrong way. It felt like dozens of tiny, calcified fangs were digging into her flesh. 

“Hm,” the corvani crowed, “Did Poire say anything else to Laykis?”

“That He will open the Way. And—”

“And the Way will be opened,” Eolh finished. “Yeah, she’s said that before. Many times. Does that mean anything to you, Khadam? Please. Anything.”

“No.” Khadam clenched her jaw. She wasn’t trying to be unhelpful. It’s just that they were, all of them, wasting time. She needed to think. But that damned corvani was drawling on…

“...used to talk about it all the time. And the Way will open. She said they prayed the same thing on worlds nobody had ever heard of. I always thought she was making it up. That was a Gaiam thing, I thought. Then, I found out the Historians wrote the same thing in their old Book.”

The Historians. 

They called him the Savior Divine, too. Hadn’t they?

And yet, Khadam had always known him by his other name. The Destroyer haunted her dreams, long before Poire was born.. Not a boy, but a man, shrouded in a gray and terrible light. Robes shining like metal, flowing like cloth. In his wake, destruction.

And when she pleaded with him, screamed at him, begged him, he only lifted his hands, and made the Light swallow the stars and the void, until there was nothing left.

She hated him. That was, until she found him.

Poire was a lost, hopeless child. Severed, not just from his family, but from all humankind. And then, again, from all his xeno friends, when he walked through that Mirror, and into a universe where no one could live.

And yet…

And yet, the android believed that Poire was still alive—that she had spoken to him. He watches us, even now, she had said. Khadam had chalked it up to core degradation. No construct could survive ten thousand years fully intact. For all Khadam knew, Laykis had invented her conversation with Poire. Just another kind of madness. Like the nomads on that nameless world. Or the cyrans who worshipped their emperor. 

Or the Historians and dams…

Now that was an idea. Something that only I can open, she thought. So dangerous.

Khadam reached up, and scratched her fingernails across the patch between her shoulder blades. She felt the skin crack and crumble. The disease calcified her flesh, and crystal daggers grew into her muscles. Longer and sharper than before. Tearing into her blood vessels. Turning them black. Spreading.

Maybe nothing is too dangerous to try, now.

Poire was always damned. And yet, he never stopped trying to save them. So why can’t I?

“Yarsi,” she said. “Open our communications. All frequencies. All networks.” 

“Opening channels—-” 

Noise screeched and howled through the speakers as waves of digital sabotage tried to override the Ark’s systems. Through her neural connection, Khadam could actually feel Yarsi struggling to maintain control over the ship’s crucial functions. 

“I’m here, Sovereign.” Khadam declared.

No response, except for the mangled racket. The lights in the Airlock flickered, and the doors shuttered open, letting in a hissing wind before shutting again.

“Innovation, I want to bargain. You will leave the Ark untouched. And I will give you my life.”

Agraneia tensed, but Khadam ignored her.

It sounded like a thousand voices, distorted and perfect and layered over each other in an electronic cacophony. Beneath it all was an ever-present hum, a droning, low-frequency pulse that pressed into her skull, as if the voice of the Sovereign was trying to imprint itself into her thoughts.

“The Ark is already mine,” it said. “And you, with it.” 

Khadam smirked, bitterly triumphant.

The fact that the Sovereign had responded at all told her everything she needed to know. It wanted to intimidate her. It wanted to make her obey. 

How many imprisoned humans had she killed? Maybe I’m the last one. 

It needs me. 

The Sovereign always wanted more. And it would risk billions, trillions of its own just to take her alive. 

“I will deliver myself to you on neutral territory. If you make a single offensive move, I will destroy myself and this ship.”

A screeching pause, which was odd, because the Sovereign had been so quick to answer before.

“And,” the voices growled, roared, and sang all at once, “And the other human?”

Khadam furrowed her brow, and looked at Agraneia. Poire? She mouthed.

“The one who pilots the Ark. Will you give them to me as well?” 

It took a long moment for Khadam to piece it together. Fortunately, the Sovereign seemed to mistake that for honest hesitation. “If that’s what it takes,” Khadam said, “Yes. Both of us.”

Then, before she could make any other mistakes, Khadam nodded, and Yarsi closed the communications.

“Divine One,” Agraneia said. “What have you done?” 

“If the Sovereign can lie, then why can’t I?”

“So,” Agraneia grumbled, “You have a plan?”

“I have a plan.”

“Is it, uh, any good?” Eolh asked. 

Khadam wetter her cracked lips, tasting the metal implant that ran down her lower lip and through her chin. “Do you want the truth?”

“Think I just heard it.”

“Yarsi,” Khadam spoke. And she could feel Yarsi watching. “Take us up.” 

She could feel her pulse thudding in her neck. All the years of fear, of living on the edge of a razor, seemed to catch up with her all at once. Just a little further, she told herself. And then…

One last test.

Clouds parted, as the speartip hull ascended, scorched and scarred yet glittering in sunlight. They could see debris falling in orbit around the planet. Hull fragments and shorn-off repulsors and chunks of plates tumbled and sank into the atmosphere, glowing red hot. 

Repulsors flared in the debris. Swarms of drones, lurking in the falling metal. But as the Ark ascended, they did not come forward. A double-sided victory. On the one hand, it meant the Sovereign would let her pass. On the other, it meant that the Sovereign was no longer at war with itself. 

She wondered if Innovation had won. 

The Sovereign’s fleets still outnumbered the stars, though many of the ships were damaged, leaking fluids or trailing wreckage or pockmarked with gaping holes that showed all their internal machinery. In essence, all that destruction had cost the Sovereign almost nothing. Its fleets still wrapped around the Moon, and flickering streaks of Light told Khadam that more ships were jumping in from the outer reaches.

“Yarsi?”

“Yes?” Khadam felt the lassertane’s confirmation through impulse. She wasn’t used to the xenos contacting her this way. It wasn’t supposed to be possible. 

“You can jump the ship, right?”

“I do,” Yarsi impulsed back. And another impossibility. The Ark wasn’t made for xenos. But how else had they made it to Earth? So, she would trust her little lassertane friend, one more time.

“Okay. I don’t want the Sovereign to have time to set anything up. Sending you the coordinates now. Go when ready.” 

Slowly, the Ark started to turn. Khadam tensed, worried that the Sovereign might predict their route—but then she felt the tell-tale tingling in her head as the Ark initiated its jump. 

The Light dam over the Earth, the first one ever built, filled the view screens. And behind it—like a mouth to infinity—a great, glittering Scar.

“I know this dam,” Yarsi impulsed. “This is where I met Anu. The one made of Light.”

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