Chapter 23

Chapter 23

For once, in my long, long, long long long - and I mean *long* long - life, I was busy with something that wasnt frantically trying to stop a hull breach, or vaporizing surface targets.

Also for once in my life, I had friends. No longer was I consigned to spend year after year, floating alone on an erratic, vaguely intentional course over the planet.

It is *almost* amusing that those things are trampling over each other.

Okay, this part. Here. Ennos hijacks my AR display - Again! I swear I fixed that! - to show me a camera feed from one of the little commercial grade drones they and Glitter have control over now. Whats this?

Im *busy*! I hiss back, flicking my tail as I watch my target with anticipation. I am coiled, ready to pounce, paws extended, tail out, the perfect predator. And I am being interrupted.

The AI does not care. For no particular reason, they decide to be callous and cruel toward my ongoing great work. Lily, in the last three days, you have spent thirty one point two hours staring at planted beans. Ennos said, the monster. You are not busy. And Im only doing this because *you* said the map was wrong.

The map is inaccurate. Not wrong.

Those are the *what is this room*?! Ennos enlarges the AR window, blocking my view of my precious vegetable children.

Knowing that this isnt going to go away until I answer, I let my eyes focus on the projection. It doesnt take long for my brain to find an answer. Oh. Zero-G training facility. I tell Ennos. For acclimating humans for spacewalks and stuff. Its part of the original station, which is all grav plated, so it wasnt added later for the low gravity parts of the interior.

Have you ever used it? They ask, digital mind updating the map while holding a conversation and piloting a dozen drones seamlessly. Im a little jealous.

No, Im a creature of grace and elegance. I lie.

There is a polite pause. Then an impolite comment. I once watched you crash through a metal grate because waiting for it to open was inconvenient. Ennos says.

Go back to your amateur cartography, young man? I stumble. No, thats not right. Young program? My ears twitch involuntarily as I ponder.

Technically, that would be accurate, but it would be like me calling you a meat. Ennos informs me. They seem amused.

I wish I could roll my eyes. Humans are always rolling their eyes. It seems so satisfying. Okay, well, what am I supposed to call you that is all at once accurate, affectionate, and vaguely insulting?

Im going back to mapping the station. Enjoy your beans. Ennos voice is dryer than dead dirt.

I *will* enjoy my beans, thank you very much.

I perch again, staring at the planter box, flicking my tail from side to side. I may doze off at some point. But thats fine. My prey is *very* slow.

Freed from their status tube, planted in reactivated nano-enhanced dirt, and given exactly as much water and heat as the need to thrive, I imagine that the seeds are just as excited as I am. They havent been waiting quite as long, but that farm was cobbled together only a few hundred years ago, back when humanity still had a more active presence among the stars. If Id been more aware back then, been uplifted a little earlier, maybe I could have talked to the spacers that worked that lonely monolith of a station. Maybe we could have arranged a trade.

Theyre gone now. I dont know where, though I assume theyre all long passed. But the beans live on. Or at least, they will now that Im here.

I should note, these are, as far as I know, normal beans. Unmodified, it will be a week or more before they even poke up the smallest of sprouts.

And yet, here I am, watching. Just in case.

Any part of the garden may require my attention at a moments notice! And this is, paws down, the most important thing I could be focusing on. Yes, yes, theres scanner data and debris trajectories and surface communications to analyze and thats all nice. But its been four hundred and eight years since Ive eaten anything that wasnt nutrient paste.

And while the novelty of the galley serving me a bowl of noodles yesterday was amusing, it still tastes like nutrient paste.

Which is to say, it does not taste.

I am watching the beans. Very. Closely.

Lily, might I trouble you for some time? Glitters voice intrudes. I do not know how long I have been watching and/or napping. My eyes are open now, though, so obviously I have been alert the whole time. If you are not too troubled. Glitter adds.

Glitter is a magnificent person, in a lot of ways. Both a terrifying relic of an old war, and a piece of abstract art in terms of her shell. Im glad shes my friend, and Im glad shes getting used to being able to talk to us at any time without going nuts about it. But Glitter, youre magnificent, but I am busy. I say.

Glitter chimes at me in frontloaded disbelief. Ennos informs me otherwise.

Im disconnecting the languages database I purr sarcastically.

You have spent thirty three hours recently staring at-

Its thirty one point tw well, point three now probably. I correct for what I assume was a short nap. Its not that bad! Im still getting my chores done! Wait, why am I justifying this to you? I can look at beans if I want!

There is a long pause that I have come to realize is what Glitter does when she wants to indicate exasperation, but is too noble to sigh or hiss. It startles me, regularly, to remember that you are my elder. She says, continuing while I protest in the background, I have been exploring the capabilities of my new eyes within your home, and I was curious. You have mentioned at several points that you believe your station is haunted. Could you elaborate?

I could, yes. I say slowly. Because I dont really know if I can. So, I do the next best thing, and deflect. Can you elaborate on what you need elaboration on?

I have been tracking a strange EM disturbance that seems to be slowly prowling the access shafts of your lower eight decks. Glitter informs me with a restrained amount of concern. And if this is, as you say, a specter of some form, I do not wish to anger them.

Something about that sticks in my memory. Lower what would? Suddenly, like a spark from somewhere else, my thoughts catch up and lock into place. Oh! That thing! I give a small mew of relief. Thats not a ghost, thats just a maintenance thing.

...No it isnt. Glitter sounds pretty confident about that. Almost enough to make *me* worried. But I actually have encountered this thing before, and I know what shes talking about.

Yeah, its a stabilized grounding field. It shunts excess charge that builds up in a few components into a weird little pseudo-subspace pocket. It really is a maintenance thing; I think the Second Syndication Council brought it on board when they were trying to install some sub-par field spinners back, like, between five and six hundred years ago? I flick my tail as I relax and settle back into my vigil. Nothing to worry about.

It ate one of my cameras!

But what does it mean? Ennos asks. Whats the end of all things? Is this an actual doomsday prophecy?

I stop my walk, hopping up into the curved ledge around a porthole out of the stations hull. Gazing out, seeing mostly just stars and black spots where accumulated wreckage blocks out those same stars, I hiss slightly. No prophecy. I say. Just an inevitability. Theres always an end coming. Isnt that right Glitter?

So it would seem.

And so the Oath was I guess they wanted to look past that. The Ays were big into unification. Ive always seen it as something to aspire to. That no matter how much things end, were all in this together. I let out a long breath, which, fortunately, doesnt stop me from talking at all. Not that I really hold to that very well, huh? I shoot people all all the I trail off. My eyes, normal cats eyes, adapted over who knows how many thousands of years to pick lights out of the dark, have just caught something out the window. What is *that*? I ask, my inability to focus on one thing for too long finally coming in handy.

Exactly three seconds later, Ennos and Glitter speak at the same time. Engine signature. The two of them say, like they were in a race to get a sensor lock.

Old ship misfiring, maybe? I muse, pulling up an AR window and using it as the galaxys most expensive magnifying glass. We should track that, make sure it doesnt hit

Lily. Ennos says my name with quiet alarm.

Hit anything My paw hovers over the AR display as I take in the information the AI has already processed.

Lily, that s a surface launch. Ennos says.

No. I mewl. No, no.

They just made orbit. They launched from the other side of the planet, thats why we didnt see them. Ennos is tracking trajectories and astronomical data now, I can see the AR windows around me shift rapidly as they rearrange and update. Local space is lighting up. Theyre made.

I do not understand. Glitter sounds confused, her voice tailing behind me as I fly down the hallway, having kicked off the crystal structure of the window. Is this not good? The world is rebuilding, relearning. Are there not still humans and others of Earth out here, with us?

Of course, Glitter doesnt understand. Shes been facing the moon this whole time. She hasnt seen how this is going to go.

Thousands of years of conflict, exploitation, and outright war. The space around Earth isnt just filled with debris, its filled with *weapons*. A minefield of hunter killer satellites, drone hives, and sometimes literal mines. Ive had a lot of time - and close calls - to kill most of what would come after me personally. But theres a lot of hidden traps out here. Hell, just launching a few small drones to pick up Glitter had provoked a military response from a nation that no longer exists. A lot of the weaponry ignores orbital infrastructure, or has very strict targeting guidelines. A lot of it is so well hidden, I wouldnt even know where to start shooting to get rid of it.

And of all that buried anger, oh, how much of it is aimed at the surface. Jealously guarding the threshold.

Glitter is wrong. The Earth isnt rebuilding. They could have launched ships at any point. Most people just dont, because theyve *learned*. Learned that up here, theyre outnumbered, outgunned, and unwanted.

Whoever is on that craft is already dead.

But were going to try anyway.

I still havent managed to wire firing control to a central source. I still havent managed to get the station to acknowledge Ennos as a person. But Im less than a minute from a beam platform operation station, and Ennos doesnt need to shoot things to help.

Glitter goes silent as we start working.

Priority target. Nuclear charge building at marked coordinates, fission mines. Ennos gives me a vector, and I fumble with a holographic projection, trying to layer my AR over it, before hitting the flagged segments with my paws. The station asks for a command authorization, and I scream authority at it until it fires.

Two thousand kilometers away, a trio of charged particle beams take out several homing mines. They may also have taken out a good chunk of garbage in the way. I do not care.

Missile battery, here. Ennos says, and I kill that next. Drone engines spotted, launch point in this area. I dont fire, but flag it to keep an eye on. Another missile battery. Its firing. Ship isnt evading. I blow that one away too. It takes a few seconds; its on a weird angle from us and I have to rotate the station a few degrees with our own engines.

Then, the ship clears another of those invisible lines of where space starts. And everything goes to shit.

The stations grid, already overtaxed by Ennos existence, cant keep track of how many power signatures and weapons fire instances it sees. The screens in front of me flicker, several AR windows shutting down as Ennos rushes to reassign resources. I start shooting, paw awkwardly flicking a holographic window around that doesnt detect me properly half the time.

Ive just killed what had previously been tagged as a 33rd century corporate comms buoy but was actually a fusion lance when I notice several targets flicking out of existence. I reset the display, but theyre still gone. Then, another vanishes. If thats stealth tech, it must be *good* to get away from us once weve seen it. Its hard to shake pursuit in space.

Then Glitters voice comes in. Hits confirmed. Power holding. Firing.

The ship is gone. Ennos informs me with grim determination. Command module has been erased, engines detonated, main body is molten. The AI sounds like they want to cry, and I understand entirely. But now, before we lose them, we have work to do. The automated monsters are still active, still visible. And if anyone is ever going to leave the surface again, we need to clear out as much of that as possible.

The stations own robust shielding and stealth suite keeps us away from prying eyes as we work. Glitter has to stop shooting long before I do, but thats okay; her power supply can no longer safely run her consciousness. At a certain point, the beams overheat, and I need to switch to other weaponry. But now, its just butchery. Cleanup. One by one, everything that contributed to those explorers deaths is cut down, whether by laser, gravity cutter, or just classic ball bearing grapeshot.

My body aches. My hind legs were not meant for standing like this. My forepaws are not built for manipulating joysticks or control yokes. I do not know how long it has been, but my eyes burn.

Eventually, there is nothing left to shoot.

How many? I ask Ennos, sitting back in the human-standard controllers chair that holds me easily but will never be comfortable to stand in.

Two hundred and thirty three targets. Ennos says. A good number of them mines. Ive updated our maps.

How long to get us to that area? I ask. If we start the engines now.

Three days, at safe speed.

I yawn, laying my head down on my paws. Okay. I give a command to the station, feeding the coordinates Ennos gives me into the engines. There is almost certainly nothing to find. But we owe them this much; to try to recover what we can. Okay. Im going to nap. When Glitter wakes up, thank her for me. I shudder, the day catching up to me. I dont I just

Ennos voice wraps around me. Get some sleep. They say, reassuringly. We did what we could. One day, we will have done enough.

Thats a better oath I think to myself as I drift off.

The warm hand pauses on my back, a whisper of a sigh overhead disagreeing with me.