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”What do you think; do human beings really deserve to inherit the stars?”

”Does an entire race deserve to die for sins they’ve not yet committed?”

”That’s why you’re doing this, isn’t? Visiting me like this. Some kind of retribution.”

”No. I regret nothing, Byron. But I refuse to stand idle while a universe withers and dies for lack of the living.”

”How noble of you.”

”Nobility has nothing to do with it, my friend.”

He had stood atop the tallest structure in the city – buffeted by the icy winds that roared above the snow-dusted rooftops. He had crossed his arms and looked up to a starscape beyond his imagination – an ancient universe in which he, and his kind, were only beginning to comprehend.

What would it be like, he wondered, to look up and see no stars? To see an empty sky, devoid of entropy or matter – to know that one was utterly alone in an endless void?
He could not replicate the feeling, he knew. But he could feel empathy – sorrow – for the trials of a people long since dead.

”This…isn’t the path I had envisioned my people taking. Atom bombs. Bringing mass-death at a whim, standing on the brink of total annihilation, and for what?”

”I would expect nothing less. The Progenitors were no different. Maybe even worse, since they didn’t live to tell the tale.”

Byron tore pale blue eyes away from the starscape and turned to face the pale man with a sober expression on his face. ”So why come to me, then? These, these dreams, these visions – why??”

The man only grinned his death’s-head smile, peering back at the man through the unkempt, flowing locks of white-blonde hair that fell ignored in his face. ”Don’t they inspire you, Byron? You should be grateful.” But even as he said it, Gabriel wasn’t sure he felt all that differently from his friend. Was to be part of a greater plan – a plan that spanned space and time and the universe itself – worth anything at all?

"Of course it inspires me. Byron said, turning back to face the sleeping city – to look down at a people who might well soon perish within the atomic fires of their own deadly invention. "But that doesn't mean I'm entirely dedicated to devoting my entire life to a project that I will never see completed. The way things are, I doubt it will even be considered. Nobody will ever build this, it's insane. So why then? It's the least you could do."

But the tall, pale man behind him did not reply. He never did reply, to those sorts of questions. They had gone over this before. A hundred times before, and it was always the same.

He teased Byron with visions of the past, revealed himself only to one man in the entire world – told him stories of those who had come before, the Progenitors – The First – but there was more. There was always more – and Byron would never shake the sensation that there was a universe of untold knowledge that he would die without tasting.

”It will come to fruition, you know. The Star. Mankind might seem to be on the doorstep of total destruction but…if you design it, they will build it. And they will survive.”

”Not within my lifetime.”

”Nor the lifetimes of many future generations. But it will be built.”

”Let me guess, you’ve seen it?”

”I am but a mote in the eye of an angry God.” The man replied, seeming to relish the enigmatic words with some small, sadistic delight. Byron chuffed something between a laugh and a scoff, and crossed his arms, tucking hands into himself. The cold was starting to reach him - maybe he should have grabbed a coat first.

“Look at us. The madman who sees visions of aliens and talks with specters in the night. Surely my legacy will be great.” There was a bite of sad complicity there. Not that leaving a legacy or being remembered had ever been a priority for him.

“They’re coming along well, I take it?”

That question set Byron to scowling and shifting the pale blue eyes behind thick framed spectacles. “Why don’t you just peek in my head and see for yourself?”

The man’s laugh was immediate, rich and full. His voice was deep and as smooth as silk, approaching a baritone that did not seem befitting of a tall, pale, skinny man such as himself. The sound fled from the rooftop and disappeared into the blackness of night. But despite this, it was controlled, and measured. Everything about the man was that way - not as if he had planned it out, but rather that he already knew how it would play out.

And despite that the laughter was clearly not aimed at him, Byron felt a hot rage swelling in his gut. “You know it doesn’t work that way, friend. Why must we have this same conversation every time?” The tall man said, and Byron whirled on him suddenly, arms unfolding, fists balled at his side. “I am not your friend, specter.. And don’t try to make this out to be something it’s not.” There was a bite in his voice like the nip of icy wind or the growl of a snarling arctic wolf. “You, whatever you are - you invade my dreams, you haunt me, you say these cryptic things and tell me nothing. I’m just someone who’s doing something that serves some mysterious, arcane purpose of yours that I'll never live to understand. Never be allowed to understand. You’re not oblivious to just how much of my life I’m putting into this. I’m nearly forty years old and hardly halfway done with this ridiculous project. The least you could do is, is…"

But his words stuttered, halted and faded off. He was too tired to be arguing with ghosts. He couldn’t be up here shouting at a wall in the middle of the night.

But for once, something he said must have actually affected the man to some degree. This was the part of the conversation that had not been repeated a hundred times. The death’s-head smile had faded from his narrow, pale face, and a sober, almost sympathetic look came over him. Byron found himself suddenly seeing the ethereal man not as the manipulative, enigmatic creature that he was - but a man, or something approaching one. A person who had seen too much, known too much, done too much. Someone who had been manipulating and using people for longer than the human mind could envision. Someone who had ruined lives in the pursuit of an end that was so far away it bordered on myth.

The specter watched Byron with that expression for long moments, as if expecting to wear the man down with his sad stare - but the middle-aged architect persisted. And, in the end, he won.

“I’m sorry, Byron." The man said, looking regretfully down at the floor - the roof of Byron’s apartment building - and he sounded as if he actually meant the words as an genuine apology. An admission of guilt, rather than some dismissive gesture. Byron deflated, and pointedly shoved his hands into the pockets of his beige slacks. He gave a heavy sigh, heaving the breath from deep within him, and turned back again to gaze almost absently at the city that stretched out before him. Low buildings, boxy things, brick and concrete, pale and drab colors. The rooftops and roads were darkened and shimmered with the shallow pools and eddies formed by melting snow. The streetlamps shone above them like miniature suns - but dim, and lifeless - comforting only in the suggestion of giving some sign that life was in this place.

It was a dismal place, and it was nights like these that Byron found himself wondering regretfully why he had chosen to make this, of all places, his home, and the home of his future generations to come. He had little affection for this place. His name was regional, but his connection to the country ceased there. Why, then?

“I’d have done it anyway I suppose.” He said at last. “Regardless of your mysterious ulterior motives. I'm not doing it for you, and I think you know that. The world needs the Star. We need a symbol of unity between nations before we destroy ourselves. I suppose I’m something of an idealist, aren’t I?”" It was not a question, and he let the words drift away.

“You don’t have to believe me," the silky, near-baritone voice behind him said, “But I find that to be a truly beautiful thing.”

Byron cracked a grin and turned again to look back at the man, to comment on how unlikely he found the prospect - but the man was gone.

The words, unspoken, seemed to hang in the air and in his mind -
a thought that was not his own, yet was.

He felt compelled to say it, even though it was only a breathy mutter, heard by him alone in the world.

“And...when the end of the Universe comes, it will be The Idealist who speaks on behalf of the damned."

Even as he said it, he did not know what the words meant - only that they were as true as anything he had ever known.

”And from His Mind...will come The Next.”

---

With an almost dejected huff, Byron Petrov shrugged, then slumped his shoulders, and made his way across the silent rooftop to the access door, propped open a crack by a handy block of wood. Even that seemed metaphorical, he thought with some amusement, though he couldn't place the imagined meaning.

The air in the musty stairwell was colder than the outside chill if only due to the stagnation. Spider webs accumulated in the corners, and the paint was little more than flecks of green barely spotting the bare concrete walls.

The hallway on the fourth floor was better. Old, industrial carpeting. The bite of bare bulbs made soft by cheap, frosted glass sconces. The walls had been painted within the decade. The door to apartment nine creaked softly as he slipped through, absentmindedly flicking the lights on as he closed it behind him.

The apartment was much nicer than it might have looked given the state of the rest of the building. The scent of aged leather, decent coffee and the faintest spice of the occasional cigar. The carpet was auburn and plush, the walls refinished wood paneling. The floor creaked as he made his way across the living room, where he had barely spent any time at all since moving here some years prior.

It was the study where Byron spent most of his time, now, and the room showed it. A small chamber, lined with books from floor to ceiling. Architectural theory, poetry, classics, references - and even a small collection of guilty-pleasure science-fiction novels packed into one corner. Contemporary works. The bright colors of their spines stood out brashly in their little corner shelf.

In the center of the little room, against one of the walls without bookshelves, sat a luxurious leather wing-back armchair, brass rivets darkened with patina, the leather on the arms showing the first signs of real wear. Byron sat in the beloved chair where he spent most of his life, and leaned lazily forward on the large, mahogany writing desk. A simple, gilded lamp craned over it to shine down upon the works. And strewn almost haphazardly across the face of the desk, among an assortment of writing tools, was a small taste of the work of half a lifetime.

The images depicted a technological utopia. Great cities and their seemingly impossible technological marvels. Railcars that hovered on tracks which curled around the elegant shapes of great skyscrapers. Some were fully finished, colored in vibrant hues, while others were barely sketches, vague shapes that would, perhaps, become something beautiful. Most were conceptual pieces, but some were technical documents including brief explanations of finer points.

And hanging above the desk, set in a cheap, wooden frame, were the towers.

He had seen them in his dreams, even before the mysterious man had started to visit him. He had gazed upon the great, gilded spires as if recalling a memory that was clear as day. He had looked down upon them, standing amidst a world that was green and alive, where a city rose up like ivory shrubs in the shadow of a golden grove. He had walked among the towers, felt the vertigo of standing at its base and looking straight up at the baffling heights at which it stood. He had walked within the towers, wondered ponderously at the inner workings of a great machine, the purpose of which he could only speculate.

And he had known how The Star would have to look. Even the memory of that night was clear as glass in his mind - the way he hastily stumbled out of bed, fumbled about his desk for the tools, and then spent until the break of dawn recreating the city of golden towers down to the finest details. Even now, almost twenty years later, it was still his most masterful piece. It was, he knew intrinsically, the way The Star must be. Golden towers - and within them, a city of all people, living in unity, their home a testament to the ingenuity of their species. The towers themselves would be a blatant show of decadence and defiance against the universe that sought to keep them trapped on a world.

Still gazing up in something approaching reverence at the exquisite depiction of a place out of time, he blindly reached for the stubby glass of brandy that he had not quite forgotten, and by some measure of luck, found it easily. He sipped at the amber nectar, relished the familiar warmth it brought.

Then he placed the glass down gently, adjusted the cuff of his shirt, plucked up a pencil and resumed mapping out a complex network of interconnected corridors. He hummed a quiet, meandering tune to himself as the future of all mankind spread out from his fingertips.

Deep within the superstructure of the Stella Viventium, a young man in a long, brown coat sat on the floor, back against the wall, and wept. Long, black hair spilled over his face, the young man curled in upon himself hands clutching at his face, and sobs wracking his shoulders. He shook his head slightly, silently denying the truth of what it had all been reduced to.

A few steps down the corridor, a young woman stood, leaning with arms crossed, against the opposite wall. Brown hair tufted at the top, and bound in a long braid from the back of her neck almost to her hips. She wore a grey hooded sweatshirt and jeans - a stark contrast to the young man in appearance and demeanor alike. The young woman did not weep, though the sorrow became her no less. Her eyes, a curious blend of lavender and pale grey, watched the carpeted floor as if something in the texture might hold some hidden consolation, if only she looked at it long enough.

The corridor held the vague scent of fresh paint and lacquer, accented by hints of ozone and freshly minted electronics. The lights were bright and new. It looked like a sparsely used hallway in an office building. She felt as if, should she look out a window, she would see an Earthside cityscape, bustling with activity, beneath the blue sky she had grown up beneath. Or, perhaps she would see Mars - where the edge of Mariner’s Metropolis met the dusty plains, under the ruddy, but beautiful sky that she had long since come to appreciate.

But there were no windows.

And even if there had been

There were no Earth or Mars to look out upon.

They were gone. All of it. Everything that the human race had struggled so hard to build over the course of their meager existence - all the achievements - gone in an instant. And, she had decided some minutes earlier, they were all going to have to accept the fact that they were never coming back again.

Why should they?

Her fiancé, in his grief, had insisted that there might be some chance that everything would go back to normal. That his brother would figure something out, and fix the problem. His brother could fix anything, he thought. There were no limits to Paeryc Petrovalyc’s genius. Surely this was all a big mistake, and he would fix it all. He always came through.

Except that he didn’t.

He wouldn’t.

This time, it was different.

Everyone had lost everything. She had lost her parents, her older sister, her cousins. She had lost the beautiful blue and white marbled world of her childhood - and all that remained of any of it were the memories. He had lost the only family member he’d ever had. There was nothing left of humanity.

So, what was the point of going on? Nothing mattered now, she knew objectively. The paltry millions aboard the Stella were barely a fraction of a fraction of what there had been. A meager tribe - and already on the brink of collapse.

Alex clenched her jaw. That was what she needed to focus on.

Humans had never changed, even in all the centuries since they had come up from the Earth to populate the System. They were violent, territorial, irrational, emotional. She was no exception - but it was her responsibility now to be something more than human. Her and Aelyn. She risked another sad glance his way. She had been weeping that way yesterday. Both of them had wept almost every day since it happened. Everyone was weeping. Mourning the death of all mankind. The two of them had gotten past the point of bothering to comfort each other - there was nothing one could do to ease the other’s pain, though staying close did help.

From around the corner, a tired, middle-aged man in sweat-stained collared shirt and slacks came shuffling. Alex couldn’t remember his name, but she recognized him as one of the officials who had been in charge of the coordination and preparation of humanity’s first venture into the galaxy. A journey that had once been a symbolic beacon of hope in troubled times, now a meaningless endeavor.

He cleared his throat, looking awkward, and apologetic. ”Uh, Mr. Petrovalyc, the council has called a meeting and-”

Alex hadn't’ meant to lash out at the man, but it was done before she could stop herself.

”Would you shut the @#$% up!” She snapped, whirling on the man. He probably hadn’t slept in days - none of them got much sleep anymore - and being in some position of authority or office, he was one of those unlucky few who found themselves in charge of holding the last remnants of humanity together in the face of insurmountable crisis.

The man stiffened and backed away half a step. Alex, immediately regretful, softened her furious expression back to the image of quiet misery she had been before. ”I’m sorry.” The man smiled weakly. “I understand.” He replied, earnestly. They all understood. They were all finding themselves snapping at people who didn’t deserve it, lashing out in their grief and anguish, looking for someone to blame.

”What were you saying?” Alex prompted the man, who fumbled awkwardly with a sheaf of papers in his hand, vaguely gathered into some sort of folder. “A meeting has been called. The council wants to go over our options.”

”Again?” Alex retorted dryly, looking fed up already. The man returned the expression with an apologetic undercurrent. “Again. And...we really think Mr. Petrovalyc should be involved this time…” He left the remainder of the sentence to hang unspoken - because this ship belongs to him’ - but the look in the man’s tired eyes connected with Alex’s own, and she nodded in silent understanding. Her glance back toward the young man curled up against the wall behind her was almost imperceptible, ”I’ll talk to him.” “That would be good. It’s being held in two hours in Command 4.” ”Alright.”

And the man departed, looking no less haggard than he had been when he appeared. Alex watched him go, then turned again to face Aelyn. He had stopped crying, though his defeated, reclusive posture persisted. He rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hand. She walked over to him, crouched beside, and wrapped her arms around him. Her fingers idly, soothingly toyed with stray locks of black hair, like she had always done. She said nothing - everything had already been said a hundred times.

It was he who spoke, after some indeterminate amount of time sitting in silence and gathering himself together.

”Alex...Alex I’m a scientist, not a ship captain.” He whimpered. His voice was weak, and the words trembled slightly. ”I Can't do this. I can’t...make decisions on behalf of all these people!”

”Ael, you’re just about the smartest person I Know. You’re brilliant. And frankly I Can't think of anyone who’s better qualified for the position.” The words did not sound like empty reassurance, and he didn’t seem to take them that way. ”And...for what it’s worth, I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

That made him smile. For the first time since the dread had overcome him minutes before, he took hands away from eyes and looked at her. Alex had to suppress the shudder that ran down her spine at the sight of them.

The eyes.

They had been hazel. And now they were inky black pits of darkness, with brilliant points of white..It was bone-chilling. A part of her wondered why it had happened to him but not her - but it was a question for another time. What had happened to them was strange enough as it went.

He did not seem to notice Alex’s shiver - so she must have kept it off her face. That was good, at least. They had lost everything - but not ‘everything’ - and if the disappearance of their entire civilization couldn’t change that, inexplicable incorporeality couldn’t either.

Still, it had been a hassle keeping people from trying to hand them things.

The silence of the hallway blanketed them, as if nobody had noticed how quiet it was until that moment. And for a while, they sat, while all that remained of humanity bore all its weight down upon them.

---

When they entered Command Board 4 two hours later, they were the last to do so. The room seemed too small. The ceiling arched above like a small chapel. The table running down the center was long and sturdy. Some of them were sitting in the chairs lined up against it, though most were standing. The energy was too high. The whole room abuzz with anger, fear, desperation - all crushed together into the agonized hearts of people who had lost everything.

Aelyn wore the cheap pair of solid black sports sunglasses he had found in his pocket. Even he thought it looked ridiculous, but there was nothing to be done. Nobody could be allowed to see what he and Alexia had become. Everything was fragile enough without incorporeal, black-eyed demons. Her hand was clasped in his, fingers interlocked, but hidden behind the low railing that sectioned off the speaker’s podium. The room gradually quieted as the two of them walked wordlessly to the back, stepping up, and standing stoically where they might address the group as a whole. They said nothing - and eventually, everyone had taken their seats.

Alex looked over them, her expression blank, but with the same undertone of despair that had become a permanent fixture on everyone’s face. It was a pathetic group of people. Only a week before, these had been powerful, influential people. Members of the Stella Viventium’s Board of Operations. Minister of Colonization Mark De Santa, slumped over the desk with his face buried in folded arms. Philip Gerard, Head of Security, sat with arms crossed, leaning back, and glaring at the table as if it might have been the reason that his entire life was ripped out of his hands. Maggie Wallace, Head of Agriculture. Bill Steinburg, Head of Engineering. Alice Porter-Li, Head of Research and Development. Peyton Jennings, Head of Commerce. Mei Jian, Head of Industry. And there were others. A full board, all aspects of the great ship accounted for in a single room. All pale, hollow-eyed, in sweat-stained clothing that hadn’t been changed in days for lack of a spare moment.

But Alex had to give them credit – despite their fear and despair, they were working hard – doing their best to keep what little remained of Mankind from collapsing into meaningless chaos. They were good people – unaccustomed to this new lifestyle, but good. Angry with nobody to be angry at, grieving for the loss of everyone they had ever known – and capable of irrational action under the stress, but good.

And the same applied to the other three million people who had chosen to leave their world behind and embark on the most ambitious venture in history. They had been ready to bid farewell to those who remained on Earth and Mars, and Europa and Ganymede. Communication would be slow and at a premium, but they would still be there. The cool, green hills of Earth would always rest beneath fleecy skies.

Except – they wouldn’t.

There had been riots – still ongoing in some sections. Looting in the commercial district. Murmurs of mutiny in Command. The Research Department had been nearly overwhelmed with desperate, terror-stricken people demanding that they work some technological magic to fix the problem. Navigation had been taken forcibly by a group of self-proclaimed ‘security’, claiming that it had been the Navigators’ fault – that they had somehow moved the ship to the wrong place, rather than the seemingly impossible truth of the matter. Security had to retake that section by force – which only added to the growing sense of ‘martial law’. People began to feel oppressed – as security began enforcing curfews, confining people to quarters, guarding the colonization supplies, agricultural centers, against looters who thought the end of the world meant they needed to stock up on food. There had even been a suicide bombing in the Governmental District – some religious zealot claiming that the Stella was a sin, and they were all meant to die for it. Medical centers were at or over capacity with those who had been injured in panic-induced violence between people who had once been adamant to cooperate and build a new world.

Alex glanced sidelong at Aelyn – he had been standing there for what seemed like an hour in the silence of the room, though it had only been a minute or two. Still – public speaking had never been something he was comfortable with. Alex gave his hand a subtle squeeze, and it seemed to help.

”I’m sorry for not being present at these meetings before today.” He began without preamble, his voice almost without inflection. Alex was impressed. ”I won’t try to tell any of you that this is anything but the biggest disaster in human history. And…I won’t try to tell you that there’s any going back.” There was a restless shifting of the men and women in their seats. Nobody liked to hear it – even if it was becoming more true by the day. ”I wish I had answers. This ship…the people on it, they deserve to know what happened – but it’s becoming clear that there’s no real chance of answers coming.”

The way they looked up at him, Alex realized, was not merely the exhaustion and determination of powerful people trying to make things work – because they too were no more than human beings. Just as the people in the body of the vessel were desperate for answers, for someone to blame, for someone to look up to and assure them that they would handle it all – so did these men and women. They were strong in the face of the apocalypse – but they could only be so to an extent.

Alex looked at Aelyn as he spoke. Watched him – and knew that it was going to have to be him. He would have to be the one that these people could look up to, to put their faith in.

And she knew that he would accept the burden – even though there was nobody for him to look up at. He was at the top – and all the weight of everything below pressed down on him, with nowhere to go and escape it.

The realization that there was nothing she could do about it brought Alex to the verge of tearing up with acute frustration. He was going to do it, and she couldn’t stop him. For all she cared about the people in the Board, in the Stella proper – she didn’t care enough about them to justify the weight that Aelyn was going to bear on their behalf. He would take charge – she was certain of that now – and she would be there every step of the way to keep him standing at these fiery gates. She would not be allowed to bear the weight – but she could support it. The young woman leaned slightly into the tall man at the head of the room, slightly, unconsciously. She wanted to cling to him. Wrap her arms around his waist and bury her face in his chest, and tell him that everything would be okay – that she was still there – but it would have to wait.

”The lives we knew…they’re over. And there’s nothing we can do about that…Except…what humans have been doing for generations. In ancient times, when cities burned, the people left and built new ones. When the systems on Eros died, survivors left and started anew. And even though their homes were gone, they could have something new to live for.”

They were enraptured – all of their attention was on him now. Not eager, but focused. Finally, after all these days, someone was going to do something. Anything.

”The Stella is…fully self-sustaining. We could stay where we are and wait for generations, on the chance that our old lives might somehow return to us – but we have no reason to believe that is ever going to happen. We could stay here and live out our lives looking down on the ashes of the worlds we left behind…Or we could move forward.”

The tremor sneaking into his voice, Alex was sure, would only be audible to her. Again, she squeezed his hand, and held it that way.

”I say we need to…w-we need to go. Fire up the stardrive and move on. This chapter in human existence is over…but it doesn’t have to be the last. We’ll find a new world, and we…we’ll start again.”

He needed to catch his breath, if he was going to maintain the illusion of what strength he had. Alex wasn’t sure she had ever loved him quite as much as she did in this moment. And still, nobody had said a word.

”Tell the people…we’ll be holding a memorial ceremony…in memory of the people we’ve lost.”

And suddenly, there was a tightness in his jaw – a determination underlying the sorrow. The words trembled, but with a boiling passion rising up from within.

”We will light up the sky. We will sing songs and raise prayers, and give our homeworlds the funeral pyre they deserve. We will etch memories of the lost on the walls of the Living Star. Generations from now our descendants will look to the walls and know how beautiful, and magical and full of life and wonder the place we left behind really was. We’ll write their names in steel and give thanks to their memory in every step we take.” His voice had risen to a crescendo of passion – not strength, but fervor. The bone-deep love for the dead and the diamond-solid will to march forward with them at his back.

But then, the volume was gone. He became quiet again. Not defeated – but sorrowful. And his words were all the more powerful for how he annunciated them.

”And then…Once we’ve paid our respects…We’ll leave. We’ll leave, and we’ll find a new world, and build a new life. Just like we were planning to do before. We’ll show this cruel, evil, unforgiving universe that it can throw whatever disasters it wants at us – but humankind will never, never surrender.”

His grip on her tightened. The passion was welling up again – the determination – the strength. Yes, it was strength, now. Resolve. Determination beyond the scope of imagination. The words trembled with a vibrato built from something deep in his bones.

”And we won’t stop at just one world.” He continued, looking each of the exhausted men and women in the eyes, in turn. This was something new.

”No. We won’t stop at one world. We won’t stop at one star. We won’t stop until humanity has spread out through the entire, galaxy wide. We’ll build world, after world, after world. And I will destroy any obstacle in my path to protect these people! The universe took our star, but they will not take our people! We will dominate the galaxy with our presence! We will be heard by the powers that be and overwhelm the universe with our existence!” He was almost shouting now, voice on the verge of breaking. Tears had welled up beneath the sunglasses and ran openly down his face, tracing the lines of his scars. His free hand, balled into a fist, suddenly came down to slam forcefully on the podium with a sound like a gunshot.

“And we will show this cruel, hateful universe that nothing will keep humankind down, we will never be defeated, and we will never! Never surrender!”

---

In the days that followed, a great mourning swept the Stella Viventium. Yet with the sorrow came celebration. The somber, nostalgic remembrance of the lives that once had written their stories upon the worlds of Men. It was the Grand Funeral - they drank, they sang, they wept - but they wept together. And in those final moments, there was a peace. Violence was all but snuffed out for the brief time when Mankind mourned the great passing.

Upon the walls of the great, domed Grand Stella Station were carved images in tribute to each of the worlds that had been lost. The cityscape of Capitol Ares, and the grand Martian canyons. The Hanging Cities of Europa, the gossamer mountains of Callisto, the vast plains of Ganymede. The cemeteries of Eros, the shipyards of Luna - and the cities of Mother Earth herself. All rendered in masterful bas-relief by the most skillful artists humanity had to offer.

And on the Final Day, the emptiness where once a race had been born and died was made alight by the brilliant spectacle of the stardrive’s first burn. They gathered in the observation decks to witness the grandeur of the ultimate show - the sound-off of light more brilliant and luminous than the vanished Sun itself. An explosion of energy unprecedented as the engine that had been devised to carry Mankind to the stars embarked on it’s lonely maiden voyage.

And yet, for all it’s glory, it hardly seemed enough.

“Have you ever heard of…the Iridiites?”

“Is this the part about what you couldn’t tell me until we got here?”

“Humor me, Léto. I beg you.”

“Fine. I think I’ve heard the name somewhere but that’s about it.”

“Of course. Because it has been proven time and again that it is always the most important people who lose their names to history.”

All around the two men, the sounds of nature and of mid-spring rain made an intoxicating atmosphere, the air thick and wet, but rich with life. They walked carefully, watching where they stepped, for there was no path to follow. It was, Léto Amareta had to admit, a beautiful place, even in the relative simplicity of the aesthetic and moody precipitation. Vibrant tones of green, the deep browns of sturdy, deciduous trees that seemed too evenly spaced to have been wholly natural. Even the sky above, past the foliage where stray beams of soft light penetrated like silvery blades, there was a sage hue in the clouds that rained down upon them. Some kind of cloud-borne algae, Al had said. Léto had no reason to doubt that – but Léto also had no experience or knowledge in biology.

In three directions, the land was almost perfectly flat – and the airy forest seemed to stretch on for eternity. There was no trace of the little village they had left that morning. With the sun just starting to descend from the peak above behind the jade rainclouds, Léto guessed they had been walking for some seven hours. It had gone quickly enough – even though Al always seemed so distracted, it didn’t stop him from being a good conversationalist. He was also the only person in his respectably wide circle of explorers, adventurers, and treasure-hunters that was actually more of a scientist than anything else. Léto liked that.

“If the stories are to be believed, the Iridiites were the… Precursors to humanity. The people that humans were, once, long before the beginning of recorded history.”

“But I thought the consensus was for a…what’s it called – a situation where humans had always been all over the galaxy.”

Al waved a dismissive hand and made a similarly percussive sound. “Bah. Just because most people agree on something doesn’t make it true. Everything must have a beginning, and an end – no matter what these fools who think that time expands infinitely in either direction say.”

Léto nodded, glancing to Al, then back to the sparse ground cover upon which they walked – then up at the place, far ahead, where the forest seemed to stop and give way to a great plain, and greater mountain beyond. From the brim of his wide hat, rain dripped steadily.

“If time went both ways indefinitely, entropy could not exist. You can’t un-scramble an egg – that’s because of the linear nature of time.”

“If you say so.” Léto replied.

Léto was not a man of science. He was a man of exploration, of cartography, adventure. His life might not have been as romantic as explorers in films were portrayed, but it was a good life, and he was good at what he did. He had made some big discoveries, brought in some big profits, and gotten himself a ship. That particularly made him popular with some of the less skilled entrepreneurs, who were always trying to hitch a ride to their next hunch. Al was the only one he considered a real friend – so when Al came to him with the prospect of the biggest find he would ever know, he could not resist the temptation.

“But I digress. The Iridiites – they were very much like us. They were ambitious, and ingenuitive. They had an almost insatiable lust for technology – and as such, they achieved much greater heights of technology than Man ever has. We develop machines to aid us in life – they developed machines because it was their calling.”

A bird with feathers an unflattering shade of puce landed delicately on a branch, made an equally unflattering gurgling sound, and then flew off in a flutter of droplets.

“So, an ancient, technologically advanced civilization gone extinct, and leaving forbidden technology behind in the ruins.” Léto said – and Al shot him something of a grumpy look.

Al was hardly older than Léto, no more than twenty six, or twenty seven – but he looked a decade or so older than he was. Something about the long face and slight, natural jowls. The perpetual look of thoughtful disdain, and the pale, sandy brown hair added to it. He was by no means an ugly man. The two of them had been on-and-off lovers over the decades they had known each other, ever since their teen years. At present, they were ‘off’ – but Léto had little doubt that they might find themselves again in such a position, some day.

He admired Al deeply – though Al had never been one for boasting, and on the few occasions he had expressed this to the man he had been awkward about it. That was fine.

“Yes. That.” Al said, with a hint of deadpan frustration that was not so subtle as he might have intended. Léto gave a light chuckle. “I’m just screwing with you, Al. But you’ve got to admit it’s sort of an old story.”

“Yes, it is. But that story must have come from somewhere, right? Is it so implausible that it might be inspired from reality?”

“I never said I doubted you.”

“Yes, well…the Iridiites were obsessed with perfection. The idea of perfection. Legend has it that they were descended from some other race of immaculate beings – but that just sounds like a creation myth to me.”

Rather abruptly, the forest broke – and laying out before the two men was a vast expanse of green, rolling hills giving shape to gently sloping plains. Past that, a single, gigantic mountain loomed in the distance. It almost looked out of place, rising up like that. It also looked like a very long walk – but that was fine. Both men lugged hefty backpacks with enough supplies to last a week…He just hoped that Al wasn’t intending to have them climb the mountain. Almost as if synchronized, the men adjusted the light, wide-brimmed hats to better shade their eyes from the brighter light that shined down upon them through the weeping jade sky. They looked like a proper pair of explorers, right down to the shin-high leather boots and machetes at their hips. It might have been a safari.

“The Iridiites, in their attempts to achieve perfection, tried to build an artificial mind, you see. A collection of…” He put his hands out in front of him, gesturing as though he were holding an invisible watermelon. “Aspects of the natural universe – a sort of patchwork of…Well, of energies we can’t hope to understand, now. And once they had built it, they put it into a robot body, and it promptly wiped them out of existence.”

“Ouch.” Léto vocalized, grimacing. “They didn’t even fight back?”

“Oh, they tried. They built more robots – but mostly they just fled. I have personally seen one of the gates they used – it was an amazing thing to behold. You looked into this grand archway and just on the other side was a planet on the opposite side of the galaxy.”

“That…sounds like really important technology.”

“It is. But the forces in control of it refuse to let it be known. I won’t tell you what I had to go through to see it.”

Léto was, of course, intrigued by that – but Al apparently didn’t want to talk about it. That was fine.

“The chase was a slow one, however. It played out over generations. The Iridiites would build the gate from one planet to the next, and settle there. The robot couldn’t fit through the gate – so it was forced to hunt them down. Probably one generation of Iridiites never saw the robot more than once.”

“Wow. So, they lived their whole lives with the knowledge that some godlike being was, some day, going to drop out of the sky and kill them all?”

“Yes. It would make a good book, don’t you think?”

“Complex, but good, yes. I imagine many of them would believe it was just a myth until it actually appeared. Very religious.”

“Indeed. The chase obviously ended in their inevitable extermination. But they survived long enough to leave ruins on twenty two planets – possibly more.”

“And…there is an Iridiite ruin inside that mountain.” Léto finished, understanding at last. Al beamed – he rarely got excited like that, and when he did, it was always on that kind of note.

“Exactly!”

“Hey, don’t take this the wrong way Al, but…if all this is so totally unknown…how did you learn about it?” Al’s smile became something of a low-profile grin, in response.

“An angel told me.”

The two of them had a good, long laugh over that one. Al didn’t usually have much of a sense of humor – so when he did crack a joke, it always seemed to hit the mark.

---

It was dusk of the following day that the pair arrived at the base of the mountain, and the rain had ceased some hours before, at last. It was a steeper incline up close than it had looked from afar – there was no chance they would be climbing it. Léto was glad for that.

“Alright boss, what are we looking for?” He queried, crossing his arms and scanning the immediate area. He would start setting up camp soon – but the devilish anticipation that had come over Al was something worth seeing.

“Not what we’re looking for, my good man. What we’ve already found!” He said loudly, from where he had been examining the rock some yards ahead. Léto was taken aback, brows raised. It took him a heartbeat to realize he was supposed to get closer, and trotted up behind the giddy scientist-explorer. Al must have already known exactly what to look for.

“Here, right here.” He hissed excitedly, gesturing up against an almost vertical portion of the virtual wall that the base of the mountain formed. Léto stepped in closer, then fidgeted with the small light attached to the collar of his shirt, which better illuminated their find in the dusky auburn twilight.

It was a symbol, carved deeply into the rock. A rounded square, with a horizontal football shape inside, to the right. Two small, curved triangles sprouted from the top of the football on either side.

Al, without looking, reached behind him and into one of the side pouches on his backpack, withdrawing from it an artifact that just happened to match the symbol in bas-relief on the wall. A rounded square, football on the left side, so that if put face to face – it lined up.

Al held the thing there for what seemed like an eternity. The thing looked rusty, but Léto imagined that it was more the texture of the metal, or simple wearing of age, rather than actual rust. If these Iridiites were as ancient as Al said they were, anything they left behind would have to be much more sturdy than that.

He held it, and held it – until Léto began to doubt that anything was going to happen at all.

Then, without warning, the mountain came alive.

Dazzling, neon-orange light spread out from within the rock along the edges of the artifact. They shot out in all directions, straight lines and right angles in a pattern so complex that it did not look to be a pattern at all. Gaping, Léto watched as the lines of light shot along, all the way up the mountain and continuing on out of sight.

“The locals are gonna’ go ape@#$%.” He said softly, for lack of any words that would really matter in a moment such as this.

“Savages. Let them write stories and prepare for the wrath of an angry god.” Al spat disdainfully, and at last stepped back, hunching his shoulders to let the backpack slide off and onto the ground. The smaller messenger satchel was still slung over one shoulder, and he put the artifact into it.

The wall before them began to move.

It seemed to fall slowly away from them and disappear into the floor. There would be no need for flashlights inside, he saw – because the orange lines of light extended all the way down the corridor, and the downward stairs that followed. Al shot him an almost manic smile, then started down the corridor. Léto shrugged his own backpack off, and followed suit.

If it seemed to go on forever, it was only because anticipation was stretching time out to a maximum. Each step, he knew, was taking them toward something amazing. The stairs descended sharply, first in a straight line, then in a spiral that actually started to make Léto dizzy after a few minutes of going in circles.

Léto was an accomplished explorer. He had seen the ruins of ancient civilizations – found unique pieces of technology lost to disaster or theft. Uncovering the reality of that which bordered on myth was in his job description. But he had never seen anything like this.

The stairs opened up into a vast chamber – still, the orange lights in their vaguely squared patterns stretched all the way up to the lofty ceiling. This, he realized, must have been most of what the mountain outside was made of. Mostly hollow – though he knew they were below ground level.

He imagined that the lights must have been present inside here even before they had arrived, because there was a healthy spattering of flora along the floor of the cavernous chamber. The stone surface gave to clods of dirt, with vibrant grass and tall, gnarled trees. An oasis against one wall – that was when he saw it. It was the largest feature in the room – so large that it tricked the mind into not seeing it at all. The far wall was of a similar orange color to Al’s artifact – except that it wasn’t the far wall.

In the center of the huge, vaulted room was a gigantic orange cube, rounded at the edges.

It was cracked and crumbled in many places – but everywhere there was damage, gnarled juniper trees grew from the wounds. In the center, the cube almost seeming to be built around it, a single, gigantic tree. The trunk must have been yards in diameter. It was ancient, but alive – the branches splaying out over the room, blocking out the orange lights above it.

Léto was speechless. Even as Al went pacing ahead, closer to the grove that surrounded the great orange cube, Léto stood there, and took in the majesty of it. Whatever the giant cube was, it was clearly in ruins. The tree had grown out of it, had warped it until the two were one. And he was certain that the structure must have served some special purpose – but could not begin to guess. After long moments of staring in awe, he trotted ahead to join Al.

His friend was beneath the trees in the grove that surrounded the great orange cube, fervently looking over every detail – he seemed as though he knew what he was looking for, and that did not seem so unlikely anymore.

Upon closer inspection, there did not appear to be much else to the room. The monolithic cube that merged together as one with the great tree – the grassy knoll surrounding it like an oasis of life in a sea of orange neon patterns. Al had found some kind of control board, though there were buttons, or switches or controls that Léto had ever seen before. He was doing something – but a detail that had caught Léto’s eye seemed more pressing. He walked away from Al, along the side of the cube, looking up the grand wall of orange metal as he went. Just over halfway up, and far to the left – the vertical surface was marked with something other than the cracks and roots. A horizontal line. A slight bulge in the metal.

If Léto hadn’t known any better, he’d have called it the closed eye of a slumbering giant.

A cry from Al snapped Léto back to reality – he was instantly alert, body tense – and sprinting back toward Al with his hand in position to draw the sidearm at his belt.

But when he arrived, there was no ancient guardian golem rising from an eternity of waiting – nor angry cave bats on the assault. No pit of snakes or giant boulders. Only Al, standing there, before a small outcropping in the giant orange wall that was the central cube. He appeared to have opened some kind of small compartment, and slid out some kind of thin tray – upon which rested the artifact.

It looked to Léto like the most beautiful marble he had ever seen – though it was slightly larger than that. It seemed to be made of glass, except that the crimson and gold colors within it gave a sense of depth that was mystifying. It was as though an entire universe existed inside that minuscule sphere. A billion stars, shrunk down until each made only a single speckle of gold or crimson in a sea of blended colors. It seemed to be liquid, but unmoving – not frozen, but solid. It was incredible.

“This is…amazing.” Léto said. “What…what is it?” But Al did not answer. He was too busy crouching down to look more closely at it, peer into the depths of it as if the meaning of life might be within his grasp. “I…get the feeling we’re going to be very, very wealthy men from here on out.” He added after a while, just to say something.

Al did not tear his gaze away from the artifact, but a scowl formed on his lips.

“What are you talking about? We’re not selling this to anyone. This is a technological relic.” He snapped. Léto frowned. Awed as he was by the thing, it still just looked like a slightly large marble to him. A trinket – even if a trinket that seemed to hold the secrets of the dead. He was not so stricken by the discovery to forget about the expenses involved in the expedition to get to this place.

“I’m sure research conglomerations would pay-“

“No!” Al snapped, interrupting him.

“Please, Al. Don’t start playing the part of ‘obsessed goblin’. We need to be smart about this.” But Al ignored him Léto sighed, and turned around to look toward the staircase they had entered from. The expedition was complicated, now. He was going to have to figure out a way to snap Al out of the euphoria of discovery before they would be able to leave – he had seen it before, even though he had not expected Al to be the type to succumb to it.

But, he realized, they had surely not explored the entirety of this ruin, just by coming to this point. So maybe there would be other artifacts throughout? It was worth a try – and there did not appear to be any imminent danger lurking among the neon lines and gnarled trees. Al would be fine here, preoccupied with his discovery. He turned to glance at Al once more, then started to make back in the direction of the strange spot on the face of the cube. From there, he could continue around the side of it, and see what lay on the opposite side from where they stood now. He spoke to Al as he went, not looking back at him for concern over stumbling on one of the many roots that knotted the grassy floor.

“Al, I’m gonna’ go see if there’s anything else worth finding – but if I come back empty-handed, we’re going to have to figure out a way to make a profit from that marble. I’ve put too much into this expedition not to get anything back.”

Percy pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes - shutting out the harshness of the light, clawing at his scalp with white-knuckled fingers. Teeth clenched, he made a conscious effort to breathe - but curled in upon himself like so, it was a useless gesture.

Abruptly, he flung himself back onto the bed, feet still touching the floor. Black hair spilled about him as he struggled to pull away his own hands, but only succeeding in shifting the, so as to cover his face with both palms like some fleshy, eyeless mask. He inhaled sharply through his nose, air hissing through his fingers - and finally ripped his hands away from his face, smacking them on the bed to either side. Emerald eyes were free to gaze blankly up at the bitter light, heedless to the vibrant afterimage which would inevitably remain to plague his vision.

He had opened a door.

Nothing else.

Was that so bad? Was he such a criminal? Such a traitor?

That he had yet to be confronted on the matter made it only worse. Maybe nobody knew. Maybe he was sweating over nothing. Surely someone would have demanded answers by now.

But if they did know - he knew all too well that there would be no trial. He would not see his daughter again. And for what! A stupid little boy who meant nothing to him! Regret flooded the man’s body with a dreadful riptide. The agony of the mind’s refusal to accept the immutability of the past, the cyclic ’what-ifs’ that had driven countless others before him to the limits of their sanity.

It played over and over, against his will - but mutating the will - distorting the perspective into masochistic addiction. It had all come down to a single, precise moment. Hardly a flick of the wrist. If only- The loathsome passion welled in his chest until it burned. I only- He despised himself with directionless rage until his arms buzzed with the need to lash out at nothing. If only-

”...Doctor?”

The voice, soft and uncertain, yanked him from the spiraling grief so harshly that a beat passed before he was able to readjust himself to the world around him. He sat up too hastily, causing his head to rush and his vision to refocus as he looked to the door of his room. It was Harry, peering with concern from the hallway beyond. Percy could only utter a querying sound from the back of his throat.

”You feeling okay?”

Percy nodded, cleared his throat with a small sound before speaking. ”I’ll live. Migraines, you know.” His own voice sounded wrong in his head - distant, yet not unlike a whispering in his own ear for the closeness and intimacy of it. HIs voice was someone else, living inside him-

Harry seemed about to say something - doubtless to offer some kind of aid - but Percy raised a politely dismissive hand and gave a minute shake of the head. ”Already taken care of.” He said, anticipating his words preemptively. HIs smile was soft, and faint. ”Just forgot to close the door is all.”

Frowning, the soldier’s gaunt face regarded Percy for a long moment, searching him. Harry was, from what Percy knew, a decent guy. He had known the Master Controller personally, even serving with him in the war, before his ascent to true forced-power. He never talked about Thirteen however, and generally nobody asked - especially not now.
The moment dragged on.

Did he know?

At last, Harry nodded, satisfied with the answer. Silently and with a small wave, he departed - thoughtfully closing the door behind him. It slid with a soft hiss - and he was alone.

The solitude of these rooms had always bothered Percy. He was free to leave any time he wished - but it didn’t stop the quarters from feeling like cells. The few personal possessions he had did little to make the room feel like home.

But what did feel like ’home’?

Certainly no place in that miserable town above, where the buildings stood squat and utilitarian among the endless fields of ashen waste and alabaster boulders. A place without a name, save perhaps for some coordinate position. But they called it ’Steel City’ regardless. A desolate place where generation after generation of nostalgic imperialists, obsessively working toward a lofty goal that had eluded them for centuries.

They had been exiled here, to this desolate rock, as punishment for brewing a massive coup d'etat. And while the fiercest of the imperialists stayed where they had landed and built Steel City, the repentants traveled far across the globe and built Adrusade - where tall, mirrored towers and wide swaths of parkland looked out onto the verdant Pine Sea.

And from Adrusade had sprouted city after city, town after town, radiating out like the serfdoms in the shadow of their grand castle fortress.

That was where he wanted to be. Where bitter winds and desolation didn’t force people beneath the surface. Where life was free and open, where the citizens strove to build a new and better place from the ashes of the old. Where, with their extended resources, they had built starships, ready at last to rejoin the Way as a new, peaceful people.

Except that Adrusade was gone now. It had been gone for two years. The buildings stood, but wisps of grass had sprouted from the cracked pavement. The bodies had been left strewn, and it still reeked of death. The promise of a bright future for the once exiled people had been crushed beneath the hate and might, beneath the imperialistic boot of those who demanded, above all else, power.

A waste.

And there was nowhere to hide, in this new Ardella - controlled like a single organism from the depths of the very facility in which he sullenly sat.

Or...so it had been.

Until the Central Processor escaped. Until he had flipped a latch.Until the Administrator had been slaughtered by his own creation. Until a physician flipped a latch, and let a door be opened.

The facility had been a shambles since then. The Administrator held no official power in any political capacity, but he was the driving force behind nearly every scientific endeavor taken on within the facility. He had never needed permission to embark on a new experimental venture. His plans were extensive, yet he had told nobody. Dozens of experiments needed to be ground to a halt or else fail in directionless chaos.

The bioweapon programs, genetic modification projects, telepathy experiments - even the so-called ’Secret Academy’ where they had been cultivating genius programmers would have to be put on hiatus. What would become of the ones involved in such programs? What would be their fate? Would they be killed?

Even the Administrator’s own son - his flesh-and-blood kin - was rumored to have been implanted with one of the prototype ’Demon’s eyes’ that had been intended to mimic the original artifact and create more Master Controllers like the very one which had now disappeared. The prototypes were limited and imperfect, but now they were the closest thing at hand to the real thing. What would happen to them, now that they were needed most? Would they, in their imperfection, be discarded of? Would the Administrator’s own son be tossed aside or hidden away so that the forces that had made his initial augmentation possible could not get their hands on him? Whey simply be destroyed?

It seemed wasteful, but in times of crisis the powers tended to act irrationally - and with BioDyne imposing their impressive corporate bulk down on the Imperial scientific division, demanding returns on their investments - to what lengths would the new powers go to keep or sell their secrets?

Would this be the downfall of all his people had sought to plunder? Would it all return to the thoughtless moment where, seeing the boy wracked with terror and grief, a young doctor chose to release the latch that would allow his escape?

He’d caught his eye for the briefest second as he passed - the moment seemed to linger forever - mismatched eyes shimmering like jewels of infinite depth - and then he was gone. Soldiers had followed, knocking him carelessly into the wall as they passed, paying the physician no heed.

He had not cared for that boy - that young man who sat at the center of all the Empire’s power. He had been cold and stoic with him, as he was with all his patients. He had seen too many children die agonizing deaths at the hand of Imperial science to allow it to affect him. He certainly did not care enough about that boy to commit treason.

Percy’s gut sank as the words silently crossed his lips.

Maybe he would have escaped anyway. Maybe he would have found some other way. Maybe nobody knew that he had flipped the latch. Maybe he would resign tomorrow, take Amaya and head to some nicer part of the world - if any such part yet remained.

But he was startled out of his thoughts by the voice that rang over the facility-wide PA, standing automatically even before he heard his name.

”Doctor Kallenger, please report to Cryogenics 4.”
“Doctor Kallenger to Cryogenics 4.”

The air smelled like rain, and wet soil, dried blood and burning flesh. The pungent odor of death hung over it all like a bitter aftertaste. The stink seemed to permeate everything. There was no escaping it. The whole planet smelled that way now - and probably, it always would. Death on the kind of scale they had wrought on this hapless world did not simply go away. They talked about taking it over - and indeed, they were just getting into the swing of undertaking that very endeavor - but it was a pointless one. What was there left to take over? A dead, irradiated rock and untold sums of now helpless refugees.

But she had come anyway. Granted, it was dubious as to whether she actually had a choice or not - just as she didn’t know exactly why she had gone through with it one way or the other. Not that it mattered. She was here now, and she happened to be in one of the most important positions there was to fill. Curious, she noted, how it didn’t seem to mean so much now as it had a few years ago.

Kiba Esther was not a ‘good person’. She was a soldier - and nobody had, to her knowledge, ever been so disillusioned as to believe that soldiers could be ‘good people’. Soldiers killed - and it didn’t matter what the reason was. Someone who killed others could not, by definition, be a ‘good person’. Even if the reasons for their killing were just and good - the person who carried out the death of another forfeited their own goodness for their cause. Soldiers sacrificed their humanity for the cause they believed in.

And Kiba was fine with that. It was the philosophy of everyone she knew, and certainly the most accepted mainstream doctrine. But then, in a world where one third of the entire global population was dedicated to military pursuits, it had to be. She was expectednot to be a good person, even honored for it. Though, she refused to believe that she was a bad person. It was one thing to not be a good person - it was something else entirely to be a bad person.

But that delicate balance, Kiba found, was being disrupted more and more the longer she stayed on the newly conquered world - and she hadn’t even been here but a few days. Even if it did seem like much longer. Even the short ride over seemed like lifetimes ago.

They had won the war. Actually won the war that everyone had long since decided would rage for eternity. It was the most glorious moment in the history of her entire people. It was literally the only good thing that had ever happened. Who could deny that the ending of a war was a good thing? Even at incredible cost.

And it wasn’t as if it had been people that they had exterminated in that final attack - that they were continuing to exterminate now, four standard weeks since the final, decisive blow. They were M’Draani - not people. It didn’t matter that they were human beings. Being a human being did not mean being a person. M’Draani were less than people - so why feel morose at wiping them out of existence? They didn’t matter. They were the eternal enemy of her people - of real people.

But Kiba couldn’t help thinking about how they didn’t look so different from herself.

And yet, that had not stopped her from doing her duty. She had killed more of the wretched creatures than she could count, now. She had made a point not to count. Perhaps if she thought hard enough, she could recall a vague sum - but she didn’t want to do that. So she didn’t.

Though, she had not been quite as enthusiastic as her comrades. Some of them found it suspicious others were too busy enacting their revenge on the M’Draani people for lifetimes of fighting.

Kiba was a soldier, part of the occupation of a conquered people, and personal guard to High Commander Maas. She was not a mass-murder. Not a war criminal. Just a soldier, doing her job - and she could live with that. She would not be riddled with guilt for the rest of her life, because she had grown up knowing it would one day come to this.

But even she had to admit - privately, of course - that it was all starting to become excessive. This kind of cruelty simply was not befitting of a leader such as Maas.

Not that she was really in any position to judge.

The compound around her was a sad state of affairs, and likely it had not been much better before the final strike. Such compounds were spread all throughout the M’Draani jungles - places where they could train new soldiers for the eternal war. But this one in particular had clearly been outdated and run-down long before they arrived. It seemed to Kiba that it had been focused around the Engineering Corps - a training facility for future engineers. The people who would ultimately build and maintain the weapons that would be aimed at her own people down the line. Was the builder of a bomb as responsible for its casualties as the one who pulled the trigger?

Philosophy was no place for a soldier but it seemed to Kiba that pointed revenge should be more directed toward those more immediately responsible. If one man killed another with a rock, was the miner to blame?

Maas was an impressive figure on her own. A big, tall woman of incredible strength. Her stature alone commanded respect. Her dark skin - almost as dark as Kiba’s own, but with a redder tint - and broad face were somehow attractive, despite the woman’s approaching of middle-age. The smart, crisp uniform decorated her more than adequately - though it also made her stand out almost grotesquely in the current situation. She was immaculately clean - uniform spotless - and yet, all around her was mud, and rot, blood and filth. Kiba’s own uniform was rather disgusting at this point - not that she really cared. She was the soldier, Maas was the commander. Naturally there would be a stark contrast in their appearance. It was to be expected.

Just as it was to be expected that the person in charge of the final strike would need - and want - to savor the victory that their decisive action had brought about. Who could blame Maas for despising each and every M’Draani? Everyone felt the same way.

The girl writhing weakly beneath High Commander Maas couldn’t have been more than fifteen, maybe sixteen years old. Hardly five or six years younger than Kiba herself. She was a runt even by those standards. One of the engineers in training at the tie of the takeover, Kiba figured. She was a pathetic creature. Bright crimson-red hair was tangled and matted with blood and filth. From where she lay on the floor, face-down with head pressed casually beneath Maas’ immaculate boot, the creative wound on her back could be seen between the remaining scraps of filthy white undershirt. Someone in her group had heated up the metal, cleated sole of one magnetic combat boot until it had glowed red, then pressed their foot down on the girl’s back, branding her with the imprint of the sole. She could recall hearing the agonized scream some hours before, though only now made the connection.

Wouldn’t have made more sense just to kill her? Why the humiliation and torture? Had she personally done some harm to the person who felt the need to do that to her?

The girl’s hands were bound behind her back with simple zip-tie handcuffs that had all but cut off circulation in her wrists, and the blood from where the fibrous plastic dug into the flesh only added to the slew of open, festering wounds that covered the pitiful creature’s body. She couldn’t see the girl’s face from where she stood, some yards away, on the edge of the same cement outcropping in a mostly arbitrary defensive position.

If she looked out into the murky jungle, and forced herself to take pointed interest in meaningless detail - individual leaves, or blackened bits of branches or the occasional flower that grew grotesquely from a patch of dirt that someone had probably died on - she could avoid looking at the bodies strewn about in vaguely organized heaps along the edge of the bunker wall where the outcropping began. Most of them were dead, the rest were all but. They would be burned later. The girl that Maas was amiably grinding into the concrete would join them soon enough, just as soon as Maas decided she’d had enough, and shot her in the back of the head like she had almost all the others.

But there was no sense in watching, so Kiba just hefted the long, powerful rifle slung over her back, and focused still more intently on the surroundings. There was a wide swath of open space between the squat building with its concrete outcropping and the ruined remnants of what had once been a reasonably sturdy perimeter wall, probably long before Kiba was born. Useless now, except for defining a loose boundary between compound and slowly encroaching jungle. A number of M’Draani had tried to flee in that direction since they arrived yesterday, and she had shot every one of them down without hesitation. She didn’t even regret her actions. It was her job, so she did it. Now, almost all of them had been taken care of. It was terribly unlikely that there was anyone left to make a break for it. So she was the only one posted for this entire area, and even then her presence was mostly redundant. That was fine with her.

From off to her right, there was a nearly inaudible yelp, coinciding with the sound of a sack of meat being punted. Kiba would have taken no notice, except that the sound was followed by the harsh, commanding and yet almost dismissive voice of High Commander Maas. ”Take care of this.” She barked in Kiba’s direction, before promptly striding back into the building toward some errand in some other wing of the compound.

The sniper merely nodded, knowing that the Commander wasn’t actually looking for an affirmation in the first place. Maas had more important things to focus on, no doubt. Kiba waited a moment for Maas to depart from the concrete outcropping before turning and heading toward the heaping mass of equal parts corpses, and those so mortally wounded that they were virtually indistinguishable from the dead, The red-haired girl had been kicked so that she was close enough to the rest of the bodies so as to seem a part of the whole. She was curled on her side, looking to be dead save for the slight, rhythmic motion of ragged breathing.

Kiba ignored the girl, walking past her and drawing her sidearm - a hefty pistol with more than enough rounds to fulfill the currently assigned task. She had done it the day before, and would do it again now. Maas wanted her to light the pyre and set the bodies burning - but nobody could blame her for wanting to put the last remaining alive out of their misery first - if not out of kindness, at least to save everyone else the annoyance of all the screaming and moaning that came along with burning alive. Following a perfunctory and mostly unconscious checking of the sidearm’s general operating condition, Kiba turned casually scrutinizing eyes, half-narrowed, to the pile of bodies and began looking for the telltale signs of smoldering life.

One young man was missing most of his face, but a slight twitching of the lips gave him away. His one remaining eye staring blankly into space as he had some kind of nonsense conversation with himself in a delusion brought about by excessive trauma. Kiba raised her sidearm, and a shot rang out through the compound. One bullet, cleanly to the head, and it was on to the next one. A woman, probably some years older than Kiba was, made a small sound and twitched slightly. Another shot rang out. A man of indeterminate age due to the burns obscuring all his features, a young woman who looked unharmed other than a gaping hole in her abdomen. Others. Six shots rang out. Six M’Draani put out of their misery, for their own good.

Having reached the edge of the concrete outcropping, where the bodies were stacked thinner so as to not spill over the side, Kiba sat down without thinking and found herself seated immediately beside the red haired girl - who she had somehow neglected to put out of her misery. It had slipped her mind - maybe the thing was so slight of stature that she was easy to miss? Or mabe the boot-print in her back constituted such a vicious wound that she already registered as ‘dead’ in Kiba’s war-numbed mind?

She did not holster the pistol before sitting. She held it loosely, let it dangle between her knees. She stared straight ahead, willing herself to ignore the girl’s presence, and steeling herself for what had to come next. Her thumb stroke the hammer idly, finger playing about the trigger. After a time, a consistent, but subtle shuddering in the dead girl’s breathing became audible. She was the least-dead of the ones she had executed - maybe that was why she hesitated? Not that it mattered. It might take a few extra seconds, but she would put a bullet in the girl’s head soon enough.

But seconds passed, and turned into minutes. And gradually Kiba realized that time was passing, and the girl was still breathing.

Knowing that it was a bad idea, the ebon-skinned sniper looked again at the bound girl laying all but inert at her side. She looked the girl over, willing herself to see this particular specimen as no different from the rest - but to her discomfort, she realized that she did see this one no differently than the others.

The only discrepancy was that she had hesitated to shoot this one for some reason she could not fully comprehend.

An indeterminate period of time had passed and Kiba still hadn’t finished the job. Abruptly, she stood - feeling the need to put some small distance between herself and the bound girl that needed to be the next one at the end of her barrel. She paced off in one direction, then another - glancing only periodically to the red-haired girl. At last, she halted immediately beside the girl, on the opposite side from which she had previously sat - able now to get a look at the girl’s face. Maybe if she could get a glimpse of the dead, glazed eyes that were so common among her executions, it would be easier.

But the girl’s eyes were as full of life as could be.

Steely grey eyes, intense and focused - blinded by pain and saturated in utter despair, but alive, and cognizant. Full of impotent rage and unbridled sorrow. Full of life in all its’ ugliest forms. A fighter who, even while lying half-dead and on the brink of oblivion, was unable to submit fully to her inevitable fate. A strong-willed spirit who had been crushed into nothing, and yet remained. Not proud, certainly not powerful or valiant - but alive. A survivor. She even had the gall to shift her steely glare up toward Kiba and meet her eyes, grimacing with the pain that had become her existence and simultaneous loathing and contempt of the one who was undoubtedly going to end her. She was almost goading Kiba into shooting - and yet Kiba got the feeling that it was not a plea for death - but instead the utter inability to fully submit.

Kiba blinked, and did not waver beneath the withering gaze that was shot up at her from the girl bound on the rough concrete floor. She met the hateful glare with a cooly blank expression. She took in the girl’s features - pale skin marred beyond recognition with scrapes and bruises and other wounds. There might have been freckles along the bridge of her nose, but they were indistinguishable from the dirt and blood caked all over her body. The crimson-red hair was matted beyond repair. Fresh blood leaked from the corner of her busted lips. And still the defiance radiated from her. They stared each other down for an endless moment - and when the end did come, it was Kiba who was forced to look away. She glanced toward the doorway that Maas had passed through earlier - how long ago now, she was not certain.

Then, without a word and almost without thinking, Kiba holstered the sidearm, and instead drew the hefty utility-combat knife from her boot. A nearly inaudible stifling of breath was heard from the girl at her feet - a feat of hiding her more than justifiable fear that was far beyond merely impressive. She had just learned that her execution would not be with one painless bullet - but an agonizing torment by knife - and yet, she had stifled that terror so that it became barely a catching of already ragged breath.

Still without thinking about what she was actually doing, Kiba crouched over the slight body and in one swift, decisive gesture, sliced the plastic zip-tie binding the pale girl’s wrists together. Then she stood again, placed one booted foot against the girl’s side, and gave a single, slow, heaving kick, rolling the girl off the edge of the concrete outcropping and dropping her down the three or four foot height into the mud below.

She only saw the girl once more, after that. Some minutes later, after returning to the heap with a canister of gasoline. In absent minded curiosity, she peered over the edge to see the girl laying on her back, almost spread-eagle. She looked down with the same dead-blank expression as before, but was met with a slightly different pair of eyes this time. Suspicion, mistrust, disbelief, and still with a sheen of loathing, all wrapped up in agony and hopeless despair. Again, their eyes locked for a long moment - and again, Kiba was the first to look away, proceeding to go about her business as though nothing had happened.

By the time the heap of bodies was blazing brightly in the evening light, the girl was gone - with only a vague imprint of a scrawny, undersized body in the mud as evidence that she had ever existed.

A movement in the corner of her eye caught Kiba’s attention then - and against her better judgement she looked - but it was only one of her comrades who had emerged some ways down the line. The tall guy, with the long blonde ponytail - he was stooping to pick up a battered, black baseball cap off the ground. Disinterestedly, Kiba watched as he regarded the hat, brushing it off, then stuffed it in his pocket with a silent note of something like satisfaction. She looked away before he could catch her watching.

It was time for a career change, Kiba decided absently.