The Last Human IV - 52 - The Sacrifice

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A hundred could fit on the Bridge of the Ark, but twice as many xenos crowded the lower command deck, and more stood at the bulkhead doors, desperate to see the spectacle on the massive screens that lined the walls. The crowds were almost reverent in their silence. Nobody said a word as the Ark turned toward the nearest star. 

Shapes lurked in the hazy light of the star’s photosphere. Long-range scanners chirped, slowly at first, as they locked onto individual targets. Then, the chirping became a furious stream of beeps as the target count climbed. 

“How many?” Ryke asked. A redenite technician whispered something to a cyran officer, who turned to her and reported, “We’ve spotted fifteen thousand vessels—”

The tech tugged on his arm, and whispered again. “Eighteen thousand,” the cyran said. “And counting. But there are concerns that more are hiding behind the star. We can only guess…”

“How many?” she asked again.

The officer glanced over at the redenite, who was frantically switching between screens pouring with data. Complex readings and mathematical notations flew faster than she could possibly hope to read, let alone understand. The cyran officer seemed just as lost as she did.

“Another ten thousand?” he shrugged. “Or a hundred thousand? We don’t even know what kind of ships they are.”

We don’t even know what kind of ship the Ark is, Ryke thought. And with a hundred thousand warships—or more—bearing down on them, the Ark might as well be a vast, floating coffin. The Swarm unspooled from the star’s photosphere, stretching like broken, silver threads across the void. A single ship, even one built by a god, couldn’t hope to match the armada they flew toward. 

“Two—two hundred thousand,” the cyran officer said, almost choking on the count. 

And more, Ryke thought, as she watched the threads reach higher. 

The redenite technician started chittering madly at the command screens, as the Ark changed readouts automatically. Now, individual ships came into view, separated by class. As if the Ark was only a botanist, cataloging a strange new patch of plants. It found frigates and cruisers and cannon platforms, and arranged them by munition types. It found drone barges whose exteriors rippled with quivering, metal bodies. It highlighted key support vessels, branching arms and open rings for docking and repairing ships mid-fight. And still, the silver threads of the Swarm lengthened, casting a wide net across the void. Leader drones, fast-flying probes the size of an avian, flung themselves further than the rest, as if to drag the threads wider.

“What are they doing now?” Ryke demanded.

“Your Majesty,” An avian commander stepped up, a professional who didn’t let her nerves show, “We think they’re triangulating our exit points.” 

“Meaning?”

“If we jump, they will be on top of us.”

Finally, Ryke allowed herself to look over to the main command console. Yarsi stood, hunched over the console, her legs shaking, too weak to hold her up. Her jaw was set, and though her eyes were open, the last jump had burned them to a milky white. Yet, she seemed to know Ryke was looking at her, for she shook her head no.

Blind, but she sees.

“And if we don’t jump?” Ryke asked. 

 The commander’s disciplined expression cracked, “Your Majesty, we must. The Swarm encircles us. By the time we turn around, they will have us. We must jump now, before it’s too late!” 

The largest screens showed the sun, threads carving up in silvery lines that connected the dots of distant stars. Tens of thousands of drones, wrapping the Ark in a great celestial net.

“Your Majesty,” the commander said, almost pleading, “We are out of options.”

Movement from the console caught Ryke’s eye. Yarsi tilted her head back, and it looked like she was going to fall backward, but her hands were stuck, firmly on the central command console. Wires poured out of the console, sliding like living things up her wrists. 

“Yarsi?” 

The wires bristled with clusters of smaller wires, each thinner than the barbs of Ryke’s feathers. They snaked through the gaps in Yarsi’s scales, outlining them in silver and gold, before plunging into the soft flesh between. Yarsi jerked back, clenching her jaw and snarling as the wires dug into her. 

“Error,” the Ark’s speakers announced. “Incompatible neurological structures detected.”

Pinpricks of blood seeped out from under her scales, dotting her forearms with red lines.

“What is she doing?” someone said. “What did she do?” 

“Half a million, and growing. Gods, help us.”

“We’re running out of time!”

“Yarsi,” Ryke said again, but the Ark spoke over her: “Unable to apply alternate integration due to potentially fatal—”

The lassertane girl mouthed a voiceless word, and the Ark declared, “Override accepted.” 

Mute, but she commands.

Gaps opened in the seams of the floor, followed by jets of gas. Frost crystals condensed on Yarsi’s bare, clawed feet, whitening her mottled scales. She lifted her long neck, and began to shiver. The officers and technicians closest to her felt it, too, and stepped back. Ryke stepped forward, her hand outstretched. The gas numbed her fingers almost immediately. 

Though Yarsi’s eyes were closed, she seemed to sense Ryke approaching. She threw out her hand, ordering Ryke to stand clear. Mechanical restraints struggled up from the floor and crawled up Yarsi’s ankles and calves, growing like the roots of a silver tree. Metal traced delicate, bracing lines up her back, creating indents in her scales while leaving space for her spine.

“What is this?” Someone asked. “What is happening to her?”

“Mercy of the gods,” another cried out. Xenos bowed their heads or covered their eyes or fell to their knees. Not all of them, but many. The outline of the girl’s spine pressed against her clothes. Yarsi’s head fell forward, like a priest guiding her flock in prayer.

“Yarsi?”

“Ryke,” the Ark’s voice reverberated across the Bridge. But Yarsi, half-covered in gleaming metal roots, beckoned with her head for Ryke to come near. Hair-thin golden wires had split out of the tips of the silver roots, and had crawled up Yarsi’s neck, but now they struggled, waving back and forth. Unable to realize their intended form.

“Help me,” the Ark’s voice boomed. Yarsi bobbed her head, gesturing at the device implanted at the top of her spine. “Start there.”

“Are you sure?” 

Yarsi’s mouth moved soundlessly. A moment later, words echoed from the Ark, “I must.”

“What if it kills you?” 

“Do you not know who I am?”

Who you are? Ryke thought, I don’t even know what you are.

Silver and gold crawled between the scales of her face, weaving a delicate second skin, rising into a broken crown where the living wires couldn’t figure out how to adapt to the structure of Yarsi’s skull. The shape was wrong, but somehow beautiful in its wrongness. And despite the frigid gas layering ice over her scales, Yarsi no longer shivered. She gazed upon Ryke, her blind eyes resigned. Or maybe, at peace. 

“Now, please,” Yarsi’s words boomed across the Bridge. 

Ryke felt all eyes shift from Yarsi, to her. When she reached for the lassertane, one of Ryke’s officers said, “Majesty, let me.”

“It’s fine,” Ryke said. It wasn’t fine. She might be Queen, but she was no longer in control. Yarsi, who had come to her as nothing more than a mute girl, lost and broken and the last of her kind, had become something outside of Ryke’s comprehension. There was a feeling in Ryke’s chest, like the thunder of the waves against the shore. Like a blazing sun burning through mountains of clouds. Afraid of her own powerlessness. But not just afraid. 

“What must I do?” 

Yarsi twisted her head away, showing Ryke the top of her spine. There, between a harsh outline of inflamed flesh and perpetual scabs, the memory device sparkled in the frost. Yet, the living wires could not find it. A cluster of thick, silver threads had pulled a delicate cylinder out of the console. It looked like a cross between a glass egg and a tiny, ornate chandelier. Ryke caught a glimpse of the cylinder’s base, where a series of glittering lights and polygons almost too small to see slid over each other. Caught in its dazzling, unknowable depths, she stared, amazed that something so small could contain so much.

“Guide it unto its rightful place.”

The feathers along Ryke’s arm were frozen stiff. The object was even colder. Spikes of frost drove into her finger tips, but the moment she touched the delicate shell, Ryke felt a tug on the back of her mind. She could hear words, like the chanting of thousands of voices, all whispering different prayers that somehow laced together in perfect rhythm. Is this the voice of the Ark? The beauty and wonder tied knots around her heart. Ryke almost couldn’t move. 

“Do not delay.” 

Gently, careful not to snap the hair-thin wires that trailed from the cylinder, Ryke pulled the objet to Yarsi’s neck. The Queen held her breath, trying not to inhale the frigid gas. Her hands shook. Unsure of herself, she tried slotting the base against Yarsi’s memory device. “How do I know if—” 

Metal clicked against metal, and Yarsi threw her head back, her scales and slender muscles bulging against the silver restraints. The gold-woven crown folded against her skull, layering an almost-human mask over her face. Thin wires plunged into the corners of her eyes, and four lines of blood dripped down the sides of her snout. 

“Vul!” someone shouted, followed by a horrified gasp from the crowds as all the command screens went dark. The air vents died, and within moments a thick heat, deprived of oxygen, settled into the Bridge. Something thrummed deep in the bowels of the Ark, punching deep into Ryke’s chest. 

Steam rose from the lassertane’s neck. The scales closest to the memory device began to singe and burn and flake, white hot. And yet, the lassertane girl didn’t seem to notice. Even as smoke poured up from her flesh, she eased back in her restraints.

“Yarsi!” Ryke screamed. 

“Gone,” the Ark answered, “Gone is the Mute, and gone is the First among Prophets. Gone, and made anew.”

“Into what?”

“I am the Maker Who Made Herself,” the Ark sang, “And I have come to lead the flock.”

A breeze stirred in the Bridge as the air vents gushed fresh, cooling air. The screens flashed to life, and the audience cried out—at first, in relief. And then, in despair. Great silver threads wove out from the near star, ten times as many as before. The threads arced overhead, and now, behind the Ark. 

“We’re damned,” an admiral muttered, sagging against the nearest desk. “It’s over.”

But the Ark’s repulsors were climbing to maximum thrust. “We’re picking up speed.”

“She’s bringing us into the Swarm?”

On the minor screens, the Ark scoped in on the threads of ships, until the ships themselves were visible. Unimaginable numbers of cruisers bristled with heavy cannons and tubes for launching guided torpedoes. Frigate-sized ships drew slow spirals around battleships that looked like misshapen heads. These were covered in bulbs whose purpose she could only guess. And dwarfing all the rest, vast metal hulks poured countless drones from their bellies. The Ark measured these hulks in kilometers. Some were larger than the Cauldron. That can’t be right, Ryke thought.

“What are they doing?” 

The head-shaped battleships left the threads of the armada and fanned out between the gaps in the net. Space rippled around them as their bulbs, the distortion expanding and warping the Ark’s long-range visuals, until the void seemed to waver like water on a dark night. The distortion spread between the battleships, unfolding and overlapping until it became a screen that shielded half of the armada. The Ark’s data all but stopped flowing as the Ark struggled to identify anything beyond the screen.

Then, the distortion shield blinked out, revealing a wall of pinpricks of light. The Ark’s systems went wild as they tracked each one, and reported back on the screens. Missiles. Tens of millions of missiles.

Gods save us.

“All hands,” Ryke shrieked, “Brace for impact!”

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