Chapter 21

Chapter 21

I am, once again, drifting through the condensed nothing of hard vacuum.

My AR link is cut off as soon as Im outside the station. How, exactly, the station has decided what is and is not inside itself seems arbitrary. But I also dont have the position to complain about it; after all, its not like I plan on rustling around in root code that I cant even read to try to tamper with the directives that keep my air going.

Im in communication with Ennos this time, though. A simple encrypted radio link is good enough for this. Theres an amount of interference, obviously, given you know everything. All this stuff. But its not like we really need anything more powerful, given that Im traveling to something within jumping range, and not more than a light second away.

Okay, I said that, and then I remembered how space works. Jumping range has more to do with when I starve to death than with how much distance I can cover.

Its not that I ever forget how space works. Just that I spend most of my time not in it.

Below me, Earth looms. So large that I feel like nothing compared to it. My home is so high up, with such a massive vantage point. And yet, I watch over only a tiny sliver of the world at a time. There are still millions of people down there, and while they may not know it, a lot of them rely on random chance, the luck of having me overhead when a certain type of problem crops up.

It makes me angry. So, so angry.

My station is unbelievably old. So old, it has had to purge old data records from the grid as time went on. But it doesnt wear down, it doesnt age, it doesnt decay. It keeps going, even when the maintenance routines slip and the life support shuts down from lack of use, the emergency backups keep it going. For *thousands of years* it has kept going. For so long, I cant even tell you how long it has been.

This is what people used to build. Even when that golden age ended, and rivals started taking and retaking the station, adding their own tools, their own purpose to it, it kept those parts going too. Its a living library, a near invincible record of the people who once were.

And now, all that is lost. The station is all thats left. Half memorial, half sentinel, watching the sophonts of Earth scramble in the dirt to try to rebuild even a scrap of what that old golden age produced.

There are culprits, of course. Demagogues, corporations, reactionary movements. I dont have a whole picture of history, but I have moments. Snapshots, dredged up in my ongoing research. The stations grid has a lot more storage on it now than it did when I woke up, let me tell you. I dont wanna lose another history text again.

But all those culprits are long dead. Its far, far too late for me to shoot any of them. All that is left below is ruin and ash.

Poison clouds, radioactive wastes, rogue machines from forgotten wars and pointless greed, dead cities, mass graves, crashed starships, old automatons, mutated wildlife, and an endless supply of violence. And everywhere, people. Hanging on by threads sometimes, but *people*. A beacon for emergence events, for parasites like the Haze, or just for their own folly.

But hanging on.

Lily? Are you there? Ennos voice crackles through my internal comm.

How can something so big be so small? I mutter back.

Thats called perspective. Ennos says dryly, missing out on the profound and fragile nature of Earth. And speaking of perspective, you may not have noticed, but youre approaching a pair of satellites in a magnetic orbit with each other. Recommend engaging grav plating, and shifting starboard three-two-six degrees at time one-four.

I dont even have a I stop. There is, in the corner of my vision, a glowing red number displaying a time stamp. It ticks up as I watch. How did they get this in here? I didnt put this here, that would have been foresight, and I dont do that. Also Were within a light second of each other, you dont need to timestamp maneuvering commands. Void, you dont even need to give maneuvering commands in general; you can just yell at me to dodge and Ill probably be fine. Im basically immortal anyway.

The word basically does a lot of work for me. I should thank whoever invented it.

Ennos replies with the sort of voice that makes me think theyve been going through media archives and really, really want to be a fleet admiral now, but are getting stonewalled by me crushing their dreams. Just dodge the stupid satellites. They sulk.

Yes captain. I reply.

I thought you were captain. Wait. How is it that you are in charge of the station, anyway? Ennos asks, suddenly curious. There are no other cats on board. I never thought about this. Where did you come from? Are you of a lineage of uplifts removed from a cryo pod every generation to maintain the station?

Well, I have some time while I float closer and closer to the potential orbital farm. I can answer a few questions. But first. What cryo pod would I do we have cryo pods?

Yes. Several hundred. Did you? Ennos doesnt bother finishing the question. Of course I hadnt noticed. Ah. They sigh.

Ive been here most of my life. I said over the radio link, shifting my paws up to fire the grav plating and roll myself away from the dancing satellites. My mom - adopted, you know - brought me up with a delve crew a while back. They were looking for I mean they I trail off, the words fizzing out as I falter. There was something on the station they wanted. I decide on.

This answer does nothing to clear up Ennos confusion. The only surface-to-orbit activity in the last fifty years, by the record, has been either shot down, cargo railguns firing to nowhere, or otherwise a failure. Except for the drop shuttles of what I must assume is the Last Ship?

Yup. I say, carefully keeping my tone neutral and my eyes on the looming farm structure. Its starting to come into focus now. Three big pillars, connected by smaller struts. Hallways, maybe? Without going inside, I cant know if these are meant to be tall, or wide.

Lily? Ennos asks several minutes later, voice small. How old are you?

Uh Thats an awkward question! How do you tell your friend that youve lost track? Some number over four hundred?

Four hundred what?

Years.

The answer silences Ennos for a long while. Im close enough to the farm to make out individual portholes by the time they speak up again. You have been out here, alone, for all that time? They ask softly.

Oh! Its not that bad! I instantly deflect from what I am forced to accept is pity. I wasnt even that smart when I got here; just a normal old cat. So I didnt start to get bored for I mean, theres always something to do so you know

You uplifted yourself? Ennos sounds either doubtful or incredulous. Im not sure what the difference between those words is, so it could go either way.

I refrain from nodding, not wanting to have to course correct if I screw up my momentum. But I think about it. Oh yeah! Give a cat a century or so and she can learn stuff. Its just harder. I mean, compared to I guess anyone? I bet I could learn faster than a shark, though. I get sidetracked, and start mentally listing to myself all the animals I was probably more clever than. Anyway. Its been fine.

Has it? Ennos voice is so quiet, I wonder if Ive actually heard anything. Ive been alive for weeks. And yet it feels like a lifetime. It *is* my lifetime. Four *hundred years*? They sound so sad. What have you been doing?

Trying to have a peaceful life, I guess. Its such a stupid answer. Its so nothing. And a lie. And a lot of other things.

Im a couple hundred feet closer to my destination, starting to spin up the grav plates to break down to safe landing speeds and look for an airlock, when Ennos continues the conversation. I would not have assumed you wanted a peaceful life. They say. I had thought you had chosen combatant as your path.

The words hurt. More than body slamming through a metal grate hurts. More than getting shot had hurt. More than that one fabrication error where Id gotten one of my forelegs sliced off and had to spend a week in a vivification pod hurt.

I wasnt expecting it to hurt this much.

I already knew I was a combatant. I self-identified as a soldier, of sorts. But still. I dont know. I dont know how to react. Part of me wants to run and hide, but I am trapped in this conversation by virtue of being a quarter mile drifting into space and unable to hang up on my guiding assistant.

But ahead of me ahead of me, lit up in the red glow of the chemlights, is a sign over an access door.

Greenhouse Layer M, it reads, the old monitor reads. There is no power going to it, but it held those words for so long, they burned into it.

Air reads as clean. Ennos tells me. Theres no real airflow, but its a safe oxygen mix. No pathogens, no spores. I shiver. I have had enough spores for a lifetime, after *the incident*. No power signatures. Not unexpected, but it wait.

I wait. But Ennos is clearly distracted. So I dont wait too long, before I am investigating the door to the greenhouse.

I trigger the manual release on the door. Carefully, so as not to accidentally destroy anything, I deploy a few more chemlights around the threshold of the door.

Row after row, a grid of troughs, lattices, and automated gardening tools. Sprinklers, solar lamps, pollinators. Some of the spaces are dirt beds, others are layered hydroponics, the two layered over each other to maximize use of space.

The place is cramped, dark, and empty.

I double check the readouts. The air here is clean. With a mental command to my drone-suit, and a hiss of equalizing pressure, I open the helmets face plate.

The smell of dry dirt, with just a hint of old rot, slams into me. Something so close to what I instinctively know is the scent of the living world. And yet

Its empty. I whisper.

I fire more chemlights to be sure. But the bigger picture just makes me even more disappointed. The dirt is dry and lifeless. The last remnants of the things that once grew here are scraps of vine and leaf on the floor, the space so dead that the bacteria didnt even eat everything on the way out.

But I dont give up hope. This farm is *enormous*. And if its survived, without a hull breach, for this long, then *anything* could be left inside.

I move up, and check the next deck.

Empty.

Next. Empty.

Next! *Empty!*

I sweep the lower decks first, before moving up. Layer by layer, greenhouse by greenhouse. Until I have seen everything I need to of this third of the farm.

There is nothing left alive here. There was, once. I am in the right place. Im just decades, or centuries, too late.

My heart hammers with frustrations and disappointment as I finish my sweep of the second segment. I have found a few sealed pallets of dirt; an early attempt at a stable nanoswarm imitating living soil. Its a technological curiosity, but nothing more. I have found dozens of pieces of documentation on exactly how much produce this place used to ship out to other orbital habitats. I have found lost mementos of lost people, small bits and pieces of old lives lived here. Decorated gloves, shared graffiti in the galley, a deck of cards that look handmade. I dont go into the crew quarters; I dont want to know if the crew made it off or not before this place was decommissioned. I dont need to disturb their rest. I have long since put my helmet back on. The smell of dirt is almost pleasant, but very taunting.

But whatever my search turns up, live plants are not part of it.

Lily. Ennos butts in on the radio channel.

What! I meow out, a little angrier than I intended. I gotta watch that; my voice should be what I want it to be, not what I reflexively let it be. Sorry, what? I soften my words.

Theres a power source active there. Ennos tells me. Ive triangulated it, from between your suit and the stations sensors.

...Where? I refuse to get excited again, only to be let down. But Ill still check.

Your segment, two decks down. Ennos tells me.

I begin moving. I really should have brought some ration art along for this, Im starting to get hungry. I could dawdle, but there is technically a time limit. Well be in similar orbital paths for another hour or two. And while I could come back anytime now that we know the coordinates, its actually quite hard to properly aim a jump thats four thousand kilometers long. So I hurry, is what Im saying. I dont want to get stuck here and have to hop across old wrecked warships to get home.

What is it? I ask Ennos as I move down the decks.

I do not know. The AI replies. But its to your side. Yes, that side. They sigh in relief. Look up. There. That way.

Theres another sealed door. This one is *very* sealed. It takes Ennos a whole four seconds to crack the access codes after the engineering nanos do their thing.

What were they storing in here? I muse to myself as I pass the threshold. The material on the inside changes, dramatically. Some kind of shielded material; my sensors are having a hard time working with it scattering some of the methods of information gathering they use. The lights are on here, too. Or at least, the are once I - okay, once Ennos - opens the door. Casting a low white glow across the interior.

Its a single chamber. Small. Not sized-for-me small, but small enough that a human would have a tricky time in here. Especially with the walls being as crowded as they are.

The walls are lined with crystalline pods.

Some of them are the size of a single paw. Some of them are the size of a single *all of me*. They jut straight out of the walls, cutting a good couple feet off the floor space, each of them with a trio of lights next to them. The lights glow in different colors for each pod. Some orange, some red. A scant handful of them, green.

What I meow to myself.

And then my eyes realize what theyre seeing.

The pods are full of seeds.

This is a genetic vault.

And the stasis engine is still running.

Ennos. I say as I reseal the door behind me, one of my backup battery units attached to the system, *just in case*.

The AI sounds almost as excited as I do. In that sort of distracted, vaguely interested way that Ennos tends to sound. Yes, Lily?

I pause by the pallets of nano-enhanced dirt. Briefly, my brain considers the concept of logistics, before I land on a decision. Were going to need a shuttle.