The Last Human IV - 47 - The Veins of the Earth

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The cave was a dagger wound in the Earth, hollowing out the rock for hundreds of yards straight down. Agraneia and Laykis walked the steps that spiraled down the crevasse, and when the steps stopped, they climbed hand and foot into the increasingly-narrow passageways, trusting in the video of Yarsi’s memory to guide their way.

At the bottom of the cave, they found the outer wall of a huge metal tunnel, and Agraneia sighed in relief. She had feared they wouldn’t find it here. 

“Why is it so big?” Agraneia said. Her helmet made her voice sound too loud in her own ears. “Does the Sovereign fly ships down here?”

“Fleets of them,” Laykis answered.

Agraneia blinked.

“Underground is one of the better places to hide an armada,” Laykis explained, “As long as you have the ability to carve out the infrastructure. And the Sovereign has nothing but time and tools for planetary alterations.”  

Planetary alterations. She said it as if this entire world was nothing more than a piece of rock for the Sovereign to chisel and break. 

“I don’t know that I’ve ever felt so small,” Agraneia said. 

“In this case,” Laykis said happily, “Small is a very good thing.” The android’s eyes glowed as she surveyed the wall of the pipe, scanning slowly back and forth. She seemed to pick a point with great intention, but to Agraneia it all looked like the same smooth, featureless iron. “Slice here, please.” 

Agraneia summoned the liquid metal into a razor-thin drill, and began to draw it in a slow circle around the point. A chunk fell through. Laykis poked her head inside first, before levering herself inside, and sliding down the pipe with a grating screech. Agraneia followed, slightly quieter. Gone was the stone floor of the cave, the natural patterns in the rock, replaced with massive bundles of perfectly ordered wires, wrapped in pristine, black material. Overhead, huge beams ran in exact parallel, some carrying gas hot enough to make the air waver, others made of transparent plastic and pumping a constant supply of icy coolant deep for miles ahead. And in the center of the pipe, enough space to fit a sizeable ship. 

They walked. Tunnels branched off at even intervals, and Agraneia’s helmet beeped as they passed those gaping mouths, alerting her of the toxic gasses mixing with the main tunnel’s air.

They stopped and hid when a cargo-carrier drifted through the wide tunnel, leaving only the barest gap between the walls as it slid past. Sometimes, they saw maintenance constructs clustered around the pipes or the walls themselves, repairing the most minor cracks and tears. But other than that, they saw nothing as the hours turned into a day. And then, another. Though Agraneia’s suit kept track of the time, her body lost all sense of night and day. They camped in the quiet nooks, and spoke only when necessary. 

On the second day, they met the first cleaner. At least, that’s what Laykis called it, but it looked more like a massive siege engine, with brutal looking claws, two on the front, two in back. Each claw wielded an army of industrial scrapers and smoking soldering irons and jets of water that looked strong enough to chew through her suit’s soft parts, and scour the flesh off her bone.

Its body filled the tunnel, so that there was no way past it. Though it was moving toward them, at least it moved at a glacial pace. Agraneia suggested they back track, and find another way around. But Laykis had another idea.

“What do you mean you want me to kill it?” Agraneia growled in disbelief. 

“There’s an access point right below it’s belly there. If you can climb up that leg and reach it—”

“And the giant claws?” Agraneia asked. “Or are you going to tell me those are just for cleaning.”

“They are,” she shrugged, “But that doesn’t mean the machine can’t defend itself. I will distract it, while you run in.”

She had to slowly increase her volume as she spoke, because the thing was rolling close and making the whole tunnel vibrate. Agraneia could feel it in her nose, in her teeth, in the roots of her scales. Then, the cleaner stopped, and gave a deep, digital bark as it seemed to notice them in the tunnel. Lights on its hulking shoulders flashed, and dozens of compartments running down its gargantuan arms slotted open, revealing slender projectile barrels and missile tubes. 

Agraneia didn’t have time to question the plan. She charged the thin gap between the cleaner’s belly and the floor, and she dove with her liquid arm stretched out before her.

The voices whispered and cut at her attention. This is your end, they said. This is where you die.

The barrels whined to life. Agraneia roared her defiance, even as the first bullets slapped the walls and tore up the wires and rattled against her armored suit. Tiny missiles shot out in blinding, white streaks, and clapped the floor—but none of them hit her. In fact, most of the bullets missed her, too. The null cloak? She wondered. It hung off her armor, but the stray bullets were starting to rip it away—when, behind her, Laykis took off her own cloak, and put her hands out, attempting to draw away the fire. 

The cleaner barked again, and its motors whined as its heavy claws lifted, reaching out for the android. Leaving itself open. 

Agraneia slid under, and stabbed up into the thing’s abdomen. The liquid arm made contact with something hard and smooth and perfectly round. Then, she pulled her arm back, and impulsed it into the shape of a drill hammer, and drove it up into the gap. She felt the core crack. She told the liquid arm to keep hammering, until the core shattered and a kind of thick, golden oil spilled out, covering Agraneia’s visor. 

“Get out!” Laykis’s voice rattled through her helmet’s speakers, “Get out now!” 

Agraneia ripped the liquid arm out of the cleaner, but its body was already leaning dangerously over her. She had to duck as metal ridges and still-smoking barrels tilted over her. She slid the last few feet, right before it landed on the floor with a crunching, metallic groan. 

“That,” Agraneia said, “was the biggest thing I ever killed.”

Laykis put her cloak back on, and climbed up the cleaner’s body. She put her fingers into the back of its head, silently straining as she pried the panels of armor open.

“So why did we kill it?” Agraneia asked.  

Carefully, Laykis pressed both hands into the thing’s head, and plucked something out. “For this,” she said, holding it between her thumb and forefinger. A small green chip, the size of a thumbnail, threaded through with almost hypnotic layers of copper and silver. “This will open more doors than any amount of hammering or cutting ever could. We must hurry, before they invalidate this chip’s access.”

They made camp twice more. They followed Yarsi’s guide, wandering down metal passageways and metal chutes and metal hallways that weren’t made for xenos. Sometimes, Agraneia caught flickers of movement at the corners of her vision. Xeno tails, flicking through the miles of pipes, or dead faces watching her from the cracks between the metal plating, or limbs hanging limp from the ceiling. When they brought back old memories, Agraneia tried tapping her shoulders. Left, then right. And sometimes, they had to climb up the pipes to avoid the armies of shivering, beetle-like drones that crawled along the wires and the walls.

“Repair bots,” Laykis clicked quietly,. “Like cells of the body.”

“A machine that makes machines to keep itself alive,” Agraneia grimaced. Something about it seemed wrong to her. A perversion of the organic. A machine, imitating life.

Her eyes slid to Laykis. Oh, no you don’t, a voice croaked in her ear. She is nothing like the Sovereign.

She was made by a human, too, wasn’t she? Agraneia thought. And she repairs herself…

If you can’t trust her, Eolh croaked back, then you are truly lost.

Somehow, that made her feel a little lighter, because Agraneia did trust the android. Not as lost as you think, Agraneia thought.

All she heard back was a dark, echoing chuckle. 

They came to a vast intersection, where all the tunnels and utilities converged into a single direction. Laykis put a hand out, stopping Agraneia before she could take another step down the central tunnel. The android peered ahead, her eyes flickering in concentric patterns as she scoped the terrain ahead. 

“What do you see?” 

Through her touch, Laykis sent a zoomed-in image of what lay ahead. A massive, black door capped the end of the tunnel. Myriad weapon systems bristled around the entrance—hundreds of cannon barrels and dangerous-looking bulbs and other unknowable designs aimed at the tunnel. But something seemed off about them. Most of the weapons were exposed, even though they had dedicated slots in the walls, and all of them aimed straight down at nothing. Then, she noticed the flocks of drones that covered the floor. Each one, no larger than her palm. All of them, dead. 

“Someone’s been here before us,” Agraneia said.

“Yes,” Laykis’s eyes glowed with joy. “Someone has.”

They crept closer, still wary of the array of weapons guarding the door, but nothing in here moved. 

Agraneia approached the door, feeling like an ant staring up at the sealed entrance of a godlike tomb.

“I’ve seen this metal before,” Agraneia uttered. “Built around Sen’s Mirror.” Though her helmet kept her voice from carrying, she felt the need to whisper next to this monolith of strangely-textured metal.

“The Dams are also made of it,” Laykis answered for her. “It absorbs the Light, and dampens its effects.” 

Agraneia twisted to look over her shoulder, just to make sure the faces were still there. They slithered up into the shadows, as if hiding from her sight. But when she looked up at the black door, she saw nothing among the interlocking textures of the black metal. She ran her fingers across the textured metal, feeling the bumps and ridges which swirled into a black, geometric tapestry. It was surprisingly warm, as if the metal hadn’t quite cooled from the forge.

“Why does it look like this?” Agraneia asked. “Do the patterns strengthen the metal?”

“They trap Light. The Scars emit Light, which permeates our universe and goes through matter, sort of like actual photons. But instead of being mostly absorbed by the rock above us, the Light simply passes through. This metal is the best solution humanity created to attract the Light, and the texture was designed algorithmically to pool excess in the cracks and crevices. That heat you feel is from the Light’s residual power, slowly burning. The Light cannot enter.” 

“Is that why Yarsi’s guide ends here?” The video of Yarsi’s memory showed the walk leading up to the door, and showed it irising open. But the moment it closed, everything went dark.

“Humanity had hoped this metal would protect them, like EVA suits and their anti-radiation layers.”

“I have no idea what that means,” Agraneia said. 

“Oh, yes. Sorry. The point is, humanity was infected long before they created this metal.”

“But the Sovereign is using it now to protect something inside?” 

“I believe you are correct.” Laykis held up the tiny, green chip. “Would you like to find out?”

Agraneia leaned back to survey the door. Her shoulders were tense, and the whispering voices behind her made her feel exposed. Ahead, there was no guide. For all Agraneia knew, there were a thousand guns, ready and waiting on the other side. For all she knew, this would be the last thing she ever did.

That’s why you came on this suicidal quest, Eolh croaked. Isn’t it? 

She clenched her fists, and growled to herself. “I must do this.”

Maybe. But you don’t have to do it alone.

Agraneia glanced at Laykis. Nodded to her. The android nodded back. Laykis pressed the chip between two palms, and spoke a word, “Open,” and the door began to move. The center seemed to froth in a flurry of pixelation as blocks unsealed from each other, and folded back into the massive triangular teeth, which retracted into the walls. A howling inhalation of air nearly knocked Agraneia over as the air pressure changed.

Inside, the floor was a sea of black, boot-sized maintenance drones so deep they waded up to their shins. There might’ve been millions of them, laying on the ground, some on their backs, some curled up with their legs stuck together. They glimmered with a soft, sparkling snow that took Agraneia a moment to realize was nothing more than shattered glass.

“What is this?” Agraneia asked.

Laykis pointed at the walls, made of that same black metal. Rows of sconces perforated the walls, and each one hosted a cage—some shattered, some still intact and holding a single occupant within. Mostly, they were crumpled things, or shallow and thin webs of tissue. Organic, certainly, but Agraneia couldn’t tell what kind of xenos they were supposed to be—or, indeed, if they were all the same kind of xeno. The only thing she could be certain of: they were all dead.

Laykis shook her head, and whispered mournfully, “Khadam. Oh, Khadam. What have you done?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Vul, cyran. The last remains of Humankind.”

The black door hissed as it folded back into place, blocking them in near darkness. Only a flickering light came from ahead, barely illuminating the thousands—tens of thousands—of shattered cages and rotting bodies. A genocide of the Makers, committed by the last Maker herself. Agraneia waited for the voices to whisper. Waited for Eolh to say something about Agraneia’s own crimes. But in this black metal cocoon, there was only silence. 

“Come,” Laykis whispered with reverent urgency. “She may be close.” 

Bodies of drones rattled and clacked and, occasionally, crunched under their feet as they slogged down the tunnel. 

“These things won’t wake up, will they?” Agraneia asked, her mind automatically playing through the worst case combat scenario. Millions of them, and two of us. Not her favorite odds. 

“Better to push on than to find out,” Laykis said. 

Ahead, the source of the flickering light became obvious. There was a ragged hole in the wall, as if someone had shot a cannon straight down into the tunnel. Sparks rained down in a fiery waterfall, and the air wavered and flashed with welding light. Laykis gestured for Agraneia to hug the wall, as far away from the hole as possible, as they walked past. Agraneia’s helmet dimmed when she looked up, letting her see the shadows of machines grinding and cutting metal and spitting sparks, their limbs heated orange bright.

Flames belched down the hole, and with it came the whispers, hissing curses and yelping with jackal laughter. Soon, they said. The end is near. 

Was it just her fear, manifested in hallucinations? Or did they know something she didn’t? 

They passed the hole, and the whispers faded, and so did the furious flickering lights. But Agraneia’s doubts lingered. “Laykis?”

“Yes?”

“When I met Eolh, back in Vorpei’s prison on Thrass, he tried to tell me stories about a pilgrim. An android pilgrim. I thought I knew his kind. Thief. Vagabond. So I didn’t believe him. But now, I’ve met you. And I think he was always right.”

“What did he say?”

“Of all the priests, and all the believers, none had faith as strong as yours.”

“In what way?”

“Your faith. I wish,” Agraneia hesitated. “I wish I had your faith.”

“I have been fortunate.”

Agraneia raised her eyes to look at the android. 

“Fortunate,” Laykis said, “Because my faith has been tested more than most.” 

“That’s a good thing?”

“What do you call a blade that never cuts? An ornament. Delight in your trials, for they can only sharpen your purpose.”

“Do you…” Agraneia paused, and almost didn’t ask the question, fearing it was too stupid to answer. But the android cocked her head, and her eyes glowed like she was listening with her entire core. “Did you ever doubt yourself?” 

“Doubt is the natural state of all conscious life. When you were born, you cried, because you did not trust the world to care for you, ever again. For me, it was the same. From the first moments of my life, I was chained by doubts. I doubted my Maker’s aspirations for me. I doubted my sisters’ chances of success. And, most of all, I doubted myself, and my own abilities to navigate this universe, bereft of its gods. But it is only in doubt that faith may be born. The gods gave you a gift.”

“To change,” Agraneia muttered. 

More than pleased, Laykis nodded. “Then you know.”

Agraneia grunted, noncommittal. But the android wouldn’t let it go. Her voice clicked with renewed intensity, “Before the gods came, I was dirt, I was metal. And you? What were you, before the gods lifted up your people? Meat and bone and blood and glittering scales. Now? You may have committed unspeakable acts, but they were yours to commit. You chose your path once, and you may choose it again. And again. And until your mortal life is taken from you, you may witness your doubts and say to them, ‘to this, I will not yield. Instead, I will have faith.’” 

“Even if it is madness?”

Laykis clapped her hand on Agraneia’s shoulder with a metallic clank. “My cyran sister, we are on Earth. To survive here, you must be mad.”

With her other hand, Laykis gestured out into the dark tunnel, the endless miles of wires and pipes, the sea of drone bodies that littered the floor, and the red things, draped like strings of wet yarn, hanging in those shattered glass cages. 

More tunnels connected to this one, headed in the same direction that they were, and the sea of drone bodies thinned out. Agraneia couldn’t tear her eyes away from the strange shapes in the glass cages, when she stepped on something wet. A pile of red strings squished under her feet, coming apart as easily as wet paper. She tried not to think about it too hard.

Another hole had been shot through the ceiling, flickering with light from the welding drones. But it was the structure just beyond the hole that drew their eyes: a black silo towered over the tunnel, dripping tears of condensation. 

Once again, they pressed themselves to the far wall of the tunnel to stay as far away from the Sovereign’s drones as possible. Closer to the silo, Laykis pointed at a hole freshly cut in the metal at floor height. 

“It’s her,” her voice clicked excitedly in Agraneia’s helmet. “She was here.” 

“Android, wait—”

The android peeled away from the wall before Agraneia could stop her. 

Hatches in the ceiling fluttered open, and eight turrets with box-shaped heads spiraled down, suspended by gnarled roots of wires and pistons.

“Missiles!” Agraneia growled, and the slats on her shoulders opened. “Lock.” Eight squares appeared on her visor, but the box turrets were already whirring to life, and even inside her suit Agraneia could feel the battering wind as thousands of rounds ripped out in mere seconds. Bullets riddled Laykis’s body, jerking her back and back and back. The air blurred, and casings fell in metal waterfalls. 

“Fire!” Sixteen missiles leaped from Agraneia’s shoulders, the sudden force shoving her down to one knee. Agraneia’s micro-missiles impacted, making the air warp with the force of their simultaneous explosions. Too damn slow.

Laykis did not move. A chewed up husk, showered in casings and riddled with holes. Her core was exposed. Cracked. A clear, golden fluid started to pool around her. You failed her, too.

“No,” Agraneia fell to her knees, cradling the android in her arms. “No.” 

Movement. She looked up.

The tunnel was full of turrets. All aimed at her. She roared, firing every last rocket in a mad circle, not caring what she hit. The tunnel roared back, a deafening chorus of whirring belts feeding endless rounds of bullets. Agraneia raised her liquid arm, impulsing it out into a shield, but there were far too many. Bullets slammed into her armor, and smacked against her helmet. One cracked her faceplate, and another shattered it, cutting her scales with glass shards. 

Agraneia couldn’t hear her own screams over the sound of the voices and their endless laughter.

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