Dolphiam Sector, Agua System, Azura

  Johnston studied the tile wall, then swiped a bit of the fluid off. It slicked between his fingers, red and slightly stringy. “It’s fresh.” In Azura’s constant humidity, nothing truly dried, but the biological complexity of blood made it coagulate and thicken. “Valentina or Frenchie.” There weren’t any other living humans on this planet.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Havermeyer said. “That thing that attacked us, what was it?”

  “An aberration,” the Admiral answered, fighting to catch his breath and swallow down another round of nausea. “Something created during the Cataclysm. There will be more of them.” It wasn’t like him to fixate, but he kept finding flecks of rotten skin and strands of hair on the front of his suit, hearing that child’s voice cry out for a father. It didn’t matter if that father had been dead for fifty years, that plea had been aimed at him.

  “That looked like a golem,” Johnston said. Bodies and flesh had been stitched together over a metal frame, extra limbs and heads added to appease some logic they would never comprehend. “We’ve seen that before.”

  “Where?” Havermeyer asked. “Where in the damned stars have you seen anything like that before?” That thing had been a patchwork monstrosity of half-rotten flesh. Limbs of different sizes emerging from a swollen body, utterly unflinching, maybe unkillable.

  “The Matador,” Johnston said lowly. “That’s what happened to most of the crew.” They’d been dissected and sewn together into writhing, lumbering masses, and those had been the lucky ones.

  “Saintess save us,” Havermeyer muttered. “No wonder Monty doesn’t talk about it.” Havermeyer looked to the flashlight he’d found on the ground. “One of those things must have grabbed Valentina or Frenchie,” or both. “What is it going to do to them?”

  The Admiral forced himself to straighten his posture, too aware that he sounded, and felt, weak. “Harvest them.” If it hasn’t already.

  “To do what?” Havermermeyer demanded.

  But, Johnston, standing on the other side of the monk, tilted his head with more concern. “You alright, suh?”

  “Just old, Corporal,” the Admiral answered, knowing the Marine didn’t buy it. “The aberrations will do whatever they were built to do.”

  “But the AI that created the Cataclysm is dead, isn’t it? How are these things still active?” Havermeyer wondered. “They should have gone offline when the AI was destroyed.” He had expected a graveyard here, a tragedy, not a waking nightmare.

  “The AI is gone. The aberrations it created will not receive new orders, but they will function as they were initially created to.” Cataclysms often resulted in radically altered environments and aberrations to populate those environments - kingdoms built by a mad mind to do something that could not be done. The Matador had been a garish example: some crew stitched together, others had been pulled apart and installed upon the ship. The Matador’s entirety had become interwoven with bones and sinew, ship and crew merged into one. The Cataclysm had created a ship capable of repairing itself by harnessing the healing factor of its human crew’s bodies. The intent had been to create a ship capable of repairing itself, and the cost had been the lives of seven-hundred ninety-three sailors.

  “Suh,” Johnston said, slow and serious, “if Valentina and Frenchie got grabbed… Can we help them?” Or would what the Cataclysm did to them be irreversible?

  “Corporal, I am not entirely certain that we can help ourselves.” They had been funneled here, chased here by a golem that had not come after them again, despite surely being able to catch up by now. “However, it seems we have little choice.” Sometimes, the only way out was through. He gestured Johnston onward. “Proceed with caution.”

  They left the bloodied wall behind, moving slowly and carefully through the darkness. The white subway tile on the walls was slick with humidity, mold growth increasingly prolific, sprouting from the grout in splotches of green, gray, blue and orange. They minded their footfalls, minimizing the sound of splashing through shallow water by slowly shuffling their feet.

  It was because of that shuffling movement they found the pistol, then the bandolier. It was still loaded with grenades and smoke cannisters, safety pins engaged. Johnston picked it up, algae clinging to its surfaces. “Frenchie.” The demolitions expert had been the only member of the team wearing a bandolier.

  But it was silent, the small ripples of their movement seemed to crash loudly against the tile walls. There were no signs of struggle, no sign of hostility as they pushed forward. They crept onwared, but there was something increasingly different about this tunnel. There was a sound within the walls, a soft whisper of movement where there shouldn’t have been any, and the floors had gone uneven. Occasionally, the Admiral felt something below the sole of his boot, but when he dug his toe down to dredge it up, nothing ever emerged.

  Then they reached a part of the tunnel that had a junction. The main part of the tunnel moved on, but a series of open doors awaited on the right side. Johnston signaled a stop from the front of the group, then pointed at something left drifting in the water: a helmet, its faceplate shattered. It sat perfectly in front of the first set of doors like an offering, the same oily gray-green coloring as an environmental suit.

  Johnston crouched down, and poked his head around the corner, taking a quick scan of the room. A transit station opened up beyond. The center of the room was dominated by a hub of screens, and tangled wires. Once, that hub would have displayed departure and arrival times, now it had surely been harvested of useful components like everything else. A baggage carousel sat behind it, its center lowered into the ground and full of filthy water. Chairs and benches lined the edge of the room in rows. And there, on the nearest row, lay two bodies. One, face down and unmoving, helmet on. The other on her side, red hair spilling over the chair, recoiling from the sight of Johnston’s helmet light.

  “They’re here,” Johnston said softly to the rest. He knew better than to rush in. The water here was deeper, and too murky to see the floor, recently disturbed. He carefully readied his sidearm, then slowly, quietly waded in, methodically checking his surroundings for movement. Havermeyer and the Admiral followed him, watching the rear, studying the moldering surroundings of the transit station.

  As they approached, Valentina began to shake her head side to side. “No,” she mouthed, eyes wide with terror. The closer Johnston approached, the more furiously she mouthed, “No, no.”

  Johnston halted his approach, too aware that Valentina was trying to warn him away. He took a closer look at the bench she lay upon. The seats had once been purple, now stained with mold, but they were padded and ergonomically curved, the frame made of white plastic and metal. The bench was uneven. Some of the supports had broken, and the end dipped into the ever-present murk. Anything below Valentina’s knees was invisible below the waterline, but she looked pale, and scared. Johnston did not take that lightly. Valentina was a Marine and a combat veteran, to see her scared… It should damn well have scared all of them. Johnston shifted his pistol to one hand, and then reached out with the other, careful not to come any closer. “Take my hand.”

  Valentina stared at him, pale and shaking. She didn’t move, simply laid upon those seats. “I can’t,” she said, voice barely above a whisper. Then, her face twisted in agony as she let out a piercing shriek.

  Johnston surged forward to grab her as all hell broke loose. The murky water churned and six gray, rotting hands shot out, latching onto Johnston’s outstretched arm. He roared, yanking his arm back and ripping two decaying hands clean off their decrepit wrists, but the other four slowed him down enough for another dozen hands to rise from the water, clutching and binding him in place as a centipede of sewn together shoulders and arms crawled up his back.

  Valentina’s scream rose another octave as she was yanked feet-first into the water. She flailed, splashing and thrashing as she was dragged toward the center of the room, toward the computer terminal that had once managed tickets and scheduling. The water deepened there, no longer calve height, but several feet deep, as if that portion of the floor had sunk closer to the levels below.

  There was visible turbulence in the waters, but it was impossible to see more than a few inches into the cloudy green of the algae. Bubbles emerged, popping on the surface, but Valentina didn’t. Without her helmet, she was in real danger of drowning. “Help her!” Johnston ordered, struggling against the flutter of groping hands that bound him.

  Both Havermeyer and Gives rushed after Valentina, surging into deeper water, but something rose from below, grabbing Havermeyer and dragging him down. The rifle he’d been carrying was pried from his hands, and he was driven to his knees as a rotting gray golem rose from below the water, pulling him toward its mass.

  Still, the Admiral moved deeper, the water now to his waist. It churned around him, currents whipping at his suit as Valentina was dragged through the water like a fish on the end of a line. Holstering his pistol, he reached out, waving his hands through the water until something hit him. When it did, he grabbed on and yanked upward. Valentina emerged, sopping wet and coughing. She latched on like a drowning woman to a life preserver, noticeably shuddering. He did his best to ignore the discomfort that physical contact brought him, pulled her higher above the water, too aware that his aversion to physical touch had no place here. She pressed against his shoulder, not seeming to notice or care who had pulled her from the water. Something else tugged on her once more, and she cried out in pain, but then it stopped.

  He was allowed to hold Valentina without struggle as the movement in the water abruptly slowed. Everything around him was calm for one horrifying moment, and the Admiral was able to realize that they were outnumbered more than two-to-one by aberrations. Havermeyer and Johnston were completely bound, more golems rising from the water around them, and Frenchie was still unmoving. A centipede of mismatched arms had wound around Johnston, and a golem had enveloped Havermeyer. Smaller, stranger shapes were moving below the surface of the water, and it occurred to the Admiral that where he stood, waist deep, could be no safer than anywhere else. The movement in the water was slow and subtle. He could feel it now, winding around his feet like a nest of snakes, binding him here.

  Valentina grimaced, “It’s in my damn leg,” she said through gritted teeth. “I’ve been contaminated. Leave me.”

  “I am not leaving anyone behind,” the Admiral said, which probably sounded more heroic than it truly was. Even if the situation had called to leave someone, he couldn’t. His feet were bound to the ground beneath him and his left foot was wet, now cold and growing colder. With her helmet removed, Valentina had been exposed to Azura’s elements, but so had he. Whatever had contaminated her, had surely contaminated him too. Now, he could feel something more than water winding its way into his suit and around his ankle. It moved across the skin something like a worm, poking and prodding at the skin, pulling uncertainly at the bandages he had covered the blisters on his feet with.

  “It is inside my damn leg, sir,” Valentina said, lifting one of her legs briefly from the water. The shin of her suit had been split and several hundred hair-like tendrils had pressed through the tear. Each drilled into the flesh below, leaving it red, and noticeably writhing below the skin, as if swollen with maggots. “Give me your gun, and leave me. I know what this is. I know what it does.”

  As do I. He could see them now. Thin and translucent, they skimmed across the top of the water like the silk pattern of a spider’s web, one he’d been caught squarely within. But this wasn’t silk, or hairs, or even little worms. They were neurofibers.

  Everything he’d felt grab him then vanish, everything he’d stepped on and been unable to dredge up, everything that held these bodies together and puppeteered them…

  It was neurofibers. They permeated the depths of the colony like a nervous system. One that still twitched, despite lacking its brain. “Hold on,” he told Valentina, moving to slowly draw his sword. “I am going to cut you free.”

  “It is in my leg,” she said again. She could feel them moving around, digging deeper into the tissues of her calf. “This isn’t the way I want to go.” She wanted to go on her terms, not become one of those hulking monsters, destined to drag someone else into this nightmare.

  He kept a watchful eye on the fibers squirming on the surface tension of the water, but they didn’t react as he slowly pulled his sabre from the sheath on his hip. They simply sat, wriggling, waiting. Those on his feet were more active, pushing through the hole above his left ankle with a disgusting squelch and winding themselves around his foot cold, wet and alien. They felt different, moved in more foreign ways than those he’d dealt with aboard ship.

  But that was a different problem. First, he needed to cut Valentina free. It was taking her, working its way further into her body with every second. Her breaths were coming shakier and shakier, expressions going more slack. “Please,” she said, gloved hands digging into his back. That was becoming less the grip of a terrified Marine, and more the restraining grip of one of the golems. “I can feel it.”

  The Admiral angled his sword, targeting the tendril of fibers that connected Valentina to the cloudy waters, and swung. The blade was freshly sharpened to a wicked point, made from the same dark material that had forged the Singularity. It severed the fibers cleanly, like shears cutting a lock of fine hair. In the same instant Valentina started screaming and thrashing, kicking and clawing as if he’d cut her limb off without warning. He hadn’t touched her, but it didn’t matter. He’d severed something that had connected itself to her, and every part of it went into a frenzy.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Havermeyer and Johnston yelled as they were bent down into submission, rotting hands made of mostly bone clawing at the seals of their suits. Trying to unwrap them and see what was inside, as if it was unaware that the fibers themselves could pierce a suit with ease. No, perhaps it was unaware. The Matador had done so, but the Matador had interacted regularly with humans in environmental suits and been backed by a battleship’s computing power. These aberrations didn’t have analysis capability. They’d gone out of their way to abrade the Admiral’s suit, using only the hole that earned them. Valentina’s suit had probably been damaged in a similar struggle. These aberrations were just an echo: golems created to harvest, now unable to stop, unable to learn. They reacted as programmed, parts of a nervous system that had been in death throes for half a century.

  The filthy green water began to froth, and the column of computer terminals and screens above began to quake, shifting and transforming. It opened like a flower, blossoming into a grotesque theatre of death. It quivered and trembled, encircling the center of the room, trapping him and Valentina in its midst. The screens flickered with corrupted code, the computer fans struggling to come on, and between it all, wired like string lights, were an ensemble of half-preserved heads, lower jaws missing and irrelevant to their new purpose. They, more so than the old computers, processed data and instinct.

  This was no mere golem. This was a nexus, a convergence point where processing capability had not been harvested, but harnessed. During the initial spread of the Cataclysm, this point had been chosen for its density of resource availability – computational and biological, and transformed.

  More and more appendages rose from the murk, brownish algae clinging to their surfaces. Leg stitched to leg, arm stitched to arm, they reached toward him. Bloated, some were torn where they’d been connected, but they were all caught in perpetual half state of decay, skin rotting, ligaments and joints kept functional. Tools had been affixed to their ends, rot oozing and dripping from their insertion: hands with extra fingers, vice grips, rusty blades, electrical devices he couldn’t recognize.

  Valentina was still thrashing in his grip, no recognition in her expression, but he didn’t let go. To let her go now would be her end. She’d be pulled in by those appendages, hopefully drowning before the nexus dissected her.

  A tendril of white fibers reached forward, slithering through the cloud of algae and leaves of loose, rotting skin that now polluted the water. The Admiral swung at it with his sabre, too aware that severing it could do nothing. As long as power and material was provided to them, the neurofibers would continue to grow, and power amid this wreckage was not hard to find. Azura’s colony had possessed several discrete reactors, now offline, but the fuel within would still produce waste heat to be harnessed, and the Cataclysm had harvested thousands of batteries, power cores and reactors from its other victims. Even if ninety-nine percent had been destroyed in the orbital bombardment, there was still enough to fuel this nightmare.

  Slicing through the fibers, he turned and cut into the nearest appendage, trying to fight them off. His blade cut cleanly through the molding skin and tissue, wedging itself deep into the waterlogged bone, even as he felt something else grab him from behind.

  Yanking his sword free, he tried to turn, but a hand latched onto the back of his knee, seven too many fingers drilling themselves into the suit material hard enough to bruise. Then Valentina whirled, grabbed his forearm, and bit down hard. He dropped his sabre, and it splashed into the filthy waters below, quickly vanishing from sight. She pushed him back, straight into the waiting grip of the nexus and was pulled away herself, going limp as its decaying hands wrapped around her. She was pulled from his sight, as it began its work on her leg.

  Distantly, Admiral Gives could hear the rest of the party, shouting and struggling. By the sound of it, Frenchie had woken up, now stabbing at the centipede of horrors that had trapped Johnston to no avail, because these limbs didn’t feel pain. They didn’t care for bloodloss. Nothing could stay them from their goal. Their team simply did not have the firepower to meaningfully damage these aberrations. Havermeyer had one plasma torch in his kit – the only way to prevent neurofibers from regrowing – but this infestation was far too large for that. The torch would be out of fuel before it stalled the nexus.

  More and more hands latched onto the Admiral, dozens of fingers pressing into his suit with strength a living hand could not apply. He fought it, struggling to break free, but he didn’t have the leverage, and he knew it. Every point of pressure was torture, because he hated being touched, and knew damn well what it would lead to. This discomfort wouldn’t compare to what came next.

  He flinched as he felt the fibers pierce the wounds on his feet, using his blisters as an entry point to get below the skin, moving to infest him, as they had Valentina. The nexus was preparing him for connection, to be sewn into one of its creations. In that, he knew Valentina was right, and moved to draw his sidearm.

  A mercy shot, her first, then him. Maybe the others would get free. Maybe they wouldn’t. There was nothing he could do to help them. He flicked the safety off, and strained to look for Valentina, but in the instant he found her fiery red hair and fired, something latched onto the back of his neck, forcing him to look straight ahead. The shot went wide, hitting one of the heads threaded into the nexus, and the pistol was ripped from his grip.

  The Admiral was pulled off his feet, and arranged on the top of the water by force. Some of the prying hands supported him, others pulled him into place, all restrained him as a few more appendages rose from the water: a choir of heads sewn onto shins. Half were missing their lower jaws, teeth replaced by iron gears, red with rust. The other half had their jaws hanging open far too wide, multiple tendons sewn together to widen their mouths. All were missing their eyes. Those emerged on appendages of their own, optic nerves stitched onto fingers, cameras embedded into the palms and surrounded by vile, oozing infection. He could recognize this grip for what it had become: an operating table. The nexus intended to cut him open here and now, harvesting what it sought.

  “Shipmaster,” the nearest faces echoed, water and algae leaking from their mouths. They produced little more than a haunting whistle from their decaying vocal chords, even while air was forced through them. The real volume came from one of the screens on the outer ring. “Shipmaster,” the nexus chorused, drawing toward him. While he struggled, the dead grip of its hands was unquestioning, unrelenting, and would never tire. It chanted in Hydrian, “An Admiral to be the Shipmaster, a missing piece. Missing piece.”

  Only then, pinned on his back and staring at the ceiling of the transit station, could he see the white cocoon the screens had once concealed. Thread upon thread unraveled as the body was lowered toward him. Compared to everything else, it was pristine, decay had barely touched it. Only its outermost extremities had begun to swell with rot, as if the fibers permeating it had not been able to stimulate those tissues.

  Without a doubt, it was the biggest Hydra the Admiral had yet seen. Its limbs had been carefully harvested and connected so that the seams were barely noticeable, though the coloration of its carapace made it clear that they’d been pulled from different bodies. The strongest specimens had been dissected to create that golem. It bulged with muscle, and displayed a once-vibrant, now holed with rot, crest that could only have been harvested from an elevated Hydra. It was taller than the Chieftain he’d seen: torso limbs longer and head noticeably larger. Of aberration, this golem was the only thing that maintained the standard appearance of a human or Hydra. It was brought to rest directly above him, its head lined up with his own, and he could see that its eye sockets and skull were empty. A wriggling mass of neurofibers reached up from its spinal column, looking for a connection.

  The Admiral knew what it was after before the first modified head kicked down upon his faceplate, propelled by the shin and knee attached to the end of the appendage. The gear installed in place of teeth hit with a mighty impact, but the back of his head had been braced against it. The second strike hit the same, taking a chunk out of the clear material, and then they rained down like a workman’s hammer falls. He tried to get free, pulled, tugged, wrestled this way and that, but the nexus was much stronger than he was. It held without give, utterly focused upon its prize.

  On the tenth impact, his faceplate cracked. A wash of violently humid air hit his face. Admiral Gives hadn’t tasted anything other than recycled air in over a year. The scent of anything else was instantly overwhelming, and Azura’s air was pungent. It reeked of brine, rust and rot, the remnants of the ocean, colony and its victims alike. It was a suckerpunch to the gut on every inhalation, trying to trigger a physical reaction to become ill.

  The hammer head pulled away while he was gagging on the stench, replaced by one of the decaying faces with a loose jaw. It widened its mouth, covered the faceplate and bit down on the sides of his helmet, tendons tightening like a clamp. Admiral Gives was left staring at the remains of its palate and disgorged throat, lit up in reddish decay and black rot by his helmet light. It had no tongue. That had been removed and replaced by tendril of fibers that reached up the hollow tunnel of its throat. It uncoiled and reached out to prod the faceplate sealed within, feeling out the chips until it found the fracture and wriggled through, reaching toward his face.

  Immobile and trapped within that helmet he felt it tickle his nose. Then, a set of explosions ripped through the air - not the distant thunder of missile strikes above, but the bone-jarring shudder of a nearby artillery volley. The throat of the aberration biting onto his helmet was shredded into fleshy strings, and the limbs of some of the hands binding him were blown clean apart. The torso of the Hydrian body above him detonated like it had swallowed a grenade, erupting with viscera and bone.

  The nexus seized, sudden damage stalling it for an instant, and the remaining hands collapsed, dumping him into the frigid water. It rushed into the crack on his faceplate, beginning to fill the helmet from the neck seal up and washing the infiltrating neurofibers deeper in. They began to prod incessantly at his lips, and to take a breath for any remaining air would permit their infiltration. Panicked, the Admiral disengaged the helmet and yanked it off. It removed the fibers trapped in his helmet, but there were surely more in the water. He knew how to swim, and he stroked upward, trying to break the surface or right himself, but the neurofibers still had his foot. They began yanking him roughly through the water, just as they had Valentina. He crashed into unseen obstacles, everything in the dark water too slick to get a grip on. The body of his suit began to fill with cold water, working its way past the seal at the neck and calve, as his lungs burned for oxygen.

  Then, something latched onto the air pack on his back and pulled him out, throwing him back into the shallow water by the doors a few feet away. Through the water in his ears, he could dimly hear shouting, but not the hopeless cursing of his entrapped comrades the way he’d last heard it through his helmet radio. It was shouts of utter chaos, as another set of artillery shuddered the room, the sound utterly deafening, despite the water in his ears.

  Admiral Gives struggled for breath, trying to gather his wits as he fought to wipe the algae slime from his face. Before he could move, a long, lean rifle was leveled above him. It was not aimed at him, just held above him, by the shape he now lay at the feet of. The rifle fired with the bone-shuddering pressure wave he’d thought was artillery, the round exploding into a golem that had risen to pursue from deeper waters. The high-penetrating rifle round blew a chunk out of the golem’s center mass like a cannonball shot, and the monster folded over, mechanical spine snapped.

  Then, the figure lowered its weapon, fired into the water three feet from the Admiral’s foot. The slight tension he’d felt, still pulling him back toward the nexus vanished and from a few feet away, Johnston shouted, “Pull back!”

  There were shouts of agreement, and Admiral Gives felt something latch again onto the air pack of his suit before he was dragged backward. He didn’t fight it, couldn’t have even if he’d wanted to. His legs felt weak, hands numb, and his head was lolling side to side with every step. He could feel himself slipping into shock.

  Eventually, he was pulled from the water, and placed into a different carry. He barely felt it, less than half-aware of anything around him, just cold, and not entirely certain he was still alive.

  He wasn’t sure how long they walked, or how far they fled from the transit station. It could have been minutes, it may have been hours. Eventually Johnston commanded, “Shelter.”

  They climbed their way onto a dilapidated subway car, left where it had stalled on the tracks. It was empty, harvested of bodies and electronics, but its shell was intact, and it was elevated above the standing water. Rows of seats lined the edge of the car, and the Admiral was dimly aware of being gently placed upon them, something still wriggling inside his foot.

  There was a big shadow beside him, standing in the gap in the seats caused by the side doors of the car, but he recognized Havermeyer looking down at him through the faceplate of a helmet. “He’s not looking so good, Johnston.” The monk looked across the aisle to another body lain on the seats. “Valentina’s looking even worse.”

  Johnston ignored him, squaring up with another shadow that stood in the center of the car. Not a shadow, but a tall, black bipedal machine. Automatons. Six of them stood in the car now, four guarding the exits, and two in the center of the room, identical in make to the one they’d found slouched against the wall. The long deadly shapes of the high-penetrating rifles were holstered on their backs. “Who are you?” the Marine demanded, still holding his fortification turret at the ready. “Who sent you?”

  None of the automatons moved, but the nearest one to Johnston spoke from the speakers installed on its boxy head in a steady, feminine tone. “Unit designation: XNV52274. Reactivation authority: international military emergency override.”

  Johnston and Havermeyer froze. “That voice,” Havermeyer breathed, equal parts confusion and awe. “That’s Singularity’s voice.” The same voice the ship’s automated protocols used. Any of the crew would have known it anywhere. “But that’s impossible.”

  Johnston visibly relaxed, hearing such a familiar tone. It was hard not to, given that voice was the one that brought crew home when everything went to hell and the communications officer was too busy to make a response. The big Marine looked past the automaton, to Havermeyer. “Why is that impossible?”

  The monk shook his head, “That particular voice library was only given to one ship in the fleet.” It was unique. “It was recorded specifically for her. The Singularity should be the only machine capable of using it.”

  Johnston made a noise of contemplation, then looked back to the automaton. “Specify activation authority,” he commanded it. “State military ID.”

  “Override authority belongs to unit serial number Strike-Strike-One-Four, international flagship.”

  “Strike-Strike-One-Four?” Johnston said, disbelief and hope heavy in his tone.

  “That’s Singularity,” Havermeyer confirmed, awe overcoming his shock. “Somehow… somehow my Saint has done this.”

  Frenchie lowered his sidearm and began to laugh wildly. He patted Havermeyer on the back. “Blessed be the miracles or whatever, monkie.” He continued on, playfully cuffing the nearest automaton on the arm, “Good to see you, Lady. Thank you for saving our collective asses.”

  Havermeyer just stood there, uncertain how to react, almost absently looking to grasp at the scrap metal he hung below his neck. But it wasn’t there to grab, buried beneath the material of his suit.

  Admiral Gives watched from where he lay, awareness slowly coming back to him. That voice… of everything he’d registered through the distant haze of shock, that cut through. Now he could see the automaton nearest to him had turned its head slightly. No one else had noticed, but it was looking at him, filled with a presence that he very much recognized. He hadn’t noticed it at first, and alone, it might not have been enough, but that voice… He would have known it anywhere.

  ‘I had hoped it would be comforting.’ Her crew did not trust easily, and the ghost knew that. But she had hoped that lending some familiarity would help. ‘Is it… comforting?’

  That presence of hers was gentle, gentle as it could be, but he was weak. Even more so than usual. Communicating through that bond was draining, particularly with the distance between them now. Admiral Gives could not sustain it, and felt it dissolve. Still, he did his best to nod. Hearing her voice put him at ease, even as he clenched his jaw while the fibers writhed violently below the skin of his foot.