The Heirs of Earth

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Leona stood in the chamber with her father, staring at the creature ahead.

"Hello, Alice," Emet said.

The creature ignored him.

Alice was not her true name. She gave each visitor a different name, choosing one from that species' lore. In cyberspace, she had thousands of avatars. If she had a true name, nobody knew it. To humans, she was Alice.

And we've followed her down rabbit holes before, Leona thought.

The first time Leona had come here, she had mistaken Alice for part of the machinery. Alice was a clockworker, a member of a mysterious and rare alien species.

Millions of years ago, the clockworkers had been computer bugs—literally. They had begun their evolution inside a massive computer halfway across the galaxy, a machine that covered a planet, the masterwork of an ancient civilization. At first, these lifeforms had been mere insects, scurrying through the machine, dying frequently. They got trapped between gears, burned on hot motherboards, entangled themselves in cables, and caused so many hardware failures that their host species—the builders of the machine—went extinct.

But the bugs had survived. They evolved to survive inside the giant computer. They fed on its energy. Their bodies changed, adapting to fit in the machinery. They evolved tentacles that could plug into ports, could access the data hidden within. Over millions of years, those humble bugs became intelligent, living components of a long-abandoned computer. Computers were usually built by intelligent life. Here was intelligent life that evolved inside a computer.

Alice was shaped like a gear the size of a wagon wheel. Her skin was hard and metallic. She hung on a wall, fitting into her network of computers. Her square teeth, which lined her circular body, connected to smaller gears, these ones inorganic. Tentacles extended from her body like cables, plugged into outlets.

"Hello, Homo sapiens," she said. She had no mouth, but she spoke through speakers mounted on the ceiling, giving her an eerie, disembodied voice. She had eyes, though. Almost human eyes, four of them, deep blue and wise. "How does the pocket watch tick? How does the time flow? Tick. Tock. Dib. Dab. And the chain rattles."

"Enough of your riddles." Leona stepped forward, her overcoat swishing, and placed a hand on Arondight.

Alice turned a few degrees. Her cogs moved the smaller gears around her. Lights flickered.

"Ah, the young one, risen from the meadow where mist flows." Alice blinked her four eyes. "Such a beautiful place! I have studied its numbers. Sometimes here the numbers sing like birds. Your birds are angry and caw. Caw! Caw! Like ravens seeking rotten flesh."

Leona raised her rifle. "I'll show you rotten flesh."

Alice laughed. "Still such fury, delightful as flame! Last time, you did not bring me enough of the crystal skulls I crave. And so my gears did not turn. And so he died. You still hate me. Yet does a plant not wither when you withhold water? Do gears not fall still when you fail to grease them?"

"You mucking piece of filth!" Leona shouted. "How dare you mock his death? My husband died that day! My heart died! You knew the scorpions were going to attack our base. You knew and you said nothing, and he died!"

Alice turned another degree. "Yes, I knew. I offered you a fair bargain. Fifteen megabytes of scryls for a few churns of my gears. You offered only seven megabytes of scryls." She laughed. "It would seem you neglected to water the plant. Do not blame the soil nor sprout."

"You greedy space scum." Leona raised Arondight with shaking hands and loaded a bullet. "I'm going to put a bullet through your mucking—"

"Leona, enough!" Emet roared. He pulled her rifle down. "That was ten years ago. It's over."

"Jake died!" Leona cried, eyes burning. "It's never over!"

"And millions more will die unless we save them!" Emet said. "I thought I could bring you here. That you would hold back your anger. I was wrong. Return to the ship."

Leona laughed bitterly. "Dad, she betrayed us then. She'll betray us again. I didn't come here to buy her secrets. I came here for revenge." She raised Arondight again.

"Leona!" Emet shouted, voice echoing in the chamber. "I gave you an order. Return to the ship."

She glared at him. For an instant, pure hatred filled her. For a moment, Leona understood Bay. Understood David. Understood why so many people had abandoned Emet Ben-Ari, leader of the Heirs of Earth. At that moment, Leona wanted to leave too. Her thigh blazed as if the scorpion was still clawing it.

That scar is on my outer thigh, she thought. But blood also poured down my inner thighs. That day, I lost my husband, and I lost the child in my womb.

She struggled not to weep—not here, not before this alien.

But we all lost somebody. I saw so many humans cowering, bleeding, dying. There are hundreds back in our fleet. Humans who are weak and scared. Who need me.

And now tears flowed down her cheek.

I can't abandon them. So I will stay. I will dance with the devil to save angels.

Lips tight, Leona reached into her pack. She pulled out a bag full of chinking scryls—the money she had won in her gladiator fight. She tossed it onto the floor, and the tiny crystal skulls spilled out.

"Thirty thousand scryls," Leona said, turning to stare at Alice. "I won these in the arena. I bled for them. They're yours. We have work for you, Alice."

Emet exhaled in relief. He gave Leona a small nod.

Thank you, his eyes said. I'm proud of you.

He pulled the scorpion memory chip from his pocket. He showed it to Alice.

"Alice, this was taken from the Skra-Shen," Emet said. "Those we call the scorpions. We need you to hack into it, to translate the data inside into a language our computers understand."

Alice turned several cogs clockwise, then counterclockwise, and her cables flashed with lights. Compartments opened in the walls, and an army of micro-drones emerged, each the size of a mouse. They began collecting the fallen scryls. One of the drones flew toward Emet's hand and took the memory chip from him.

"Interesting," Alice purred. "I do love Hierarchy tech. It feels like raw iron and vibrating silicon and hot sizzling zinc. I would lick my teeth if I still had a tongue. My drone is like a taste bud. It trembles with delight."

The drone clung to the chip with tiny claws. It flew toward an outlet in the wall. Other drones opened drawers and rifled through many adapters, finally choosing one. They plugged the adapter into the outlet, then plugged in the scorpion chip. At once the glyphs on the chip lit up. The words blazed: The Human Solution.

"Can you read the data?" Leona said.

Alice closed her eyes. She turned from side to side, moving the gears around her. It was almost like a dance. Cables buzzed, lights flashed, and humming emerged from the machinery.

Around the room, cameras flickered to life, and holograms appeared.

Leona gasped, stepped closer to Emet, and clasped his hand.

Lists.

Holographic lists hovered before them, scrolling rapidly through thousands—millions—of words.

To their left were lists written in a red font. To their right, lists in blue. Alice had translated them into the common human tongue.

Names.

They were lists of names. Human names.

"Alice, can you slow down the scrolling?" Leona said.

The scrolling slowed down, and Leona got a closer look. Each blue name showed a date of birth, a gender, and location. She read a few.

Robert Ingrum, Male, Born 4085, Beta Polaris V

Sarah Crane, Female, Born 4126, Alpha Telaron II

Ayaan Hoyle, Female, Born 4140, Beta Polaris V

Name after name. Thousands of them. Most were located in Hierarchy worlds, but many were from Concord worlds too.

Leona turned to look at the list in red. She read a few of those names.

Matt Collins, Male, Born 4097, Exterminated 4150, Morbus Gulock

Ichika Adachi, Female, Born 4120, Exterminated 4150, Iskara Gulock

Ashara Patel, Female, Born 4075, Exterminated 4150, Morbus Gulock

The red list scrolled on and on. There were thousands of red names. Maybe even millions. All exterminated in 4150. The current year.

"My Ra," Emet whispered.

Leona tightened her grip on his hand. "They killed them," she whispered, voice strained. "The scorpion bastards killed them. And they logged each kill." She trembled with fury. "And they're keeping lists of who they plan to kill next."

Leona reached up a shaky hand. She touched the hologram and found that she could manually scroll through the lists. She raced through both lists.

There were millions of names.

Millions.

Her tears gathered. The Heirs of Earth had never known how many humans still lived. They knew that billions had lived on Earth in the old days, that billions had died when the Hydrian Empire had destroyed their world. The Hydrians were no more, vanished into the shadows of time. Often, Leona had worried that only a few thousand humans still remained.

"If these lists are comprehensive," she said, scrolling to the bottom of the blue list, "twelve million humans still live across the galaxy, scattered across a thousand worlds. More than we thought." She turned toward the red list, and a chill ran through her. "And the scorpions have murdered three million of us so far."

"And they're not done killing," Emet said, eyes dark. He reached toward the holograms, closed the lists of names, and pulled up more data.

New holograms appeared around them, showing star systems. Planets, moons, and asteroids orbited through the room like an orrery. Some of the worlds—the dark, rocky ones, cold and desolate—were labeled with red skulls. Human skulls.

"Gulocks," Leona whispered.

Tapping each skull revealed information. The number of human prisoners. The number of humans exterminated so far. Incoming shipments of humans. Number of human skins retrieved. Perhaps most sickeningly: lists of medical experiments performed on prisoners.

"It's genocide," Leona whispered. "All the scorpions' plans. All the millions they've slain, the millions they still plan to kill."

Emet's face was pale. His fists were clenched. His eyes were hard.

"Look, Leona." He pointed at dotted lines that stretched between the worlds, each labeled with a date. "These are future flight paths. This shows us which human communities the scorpions plan to invade next. Which gulocks they plan to take the captives to."

Her eyes widened. She gasped and clutched his arm. "So we can save them! If we know their plans, we can warn people, save people, we—"

"We have only a handful of starships," Emet said, eyes dark. "And these gulocks are deep in Hierarchy territory. It would take massive fleets, entire Concord armadas, to invade that deep into their space."

Leona was trembling. "So we must get the Concord to fight! To do something!" She yowled in agony. "Dad, there must be something we can do. We can't just have this information and do nothing!"

Emet ground his teeth. "The Heirs of Earth operate in Concord territory. We—"

"Bullshit!" Leona said. "You invaded Hierarchy space just days ago to save refugees."

"Only a few kilometers in. We barely crossed the border. These gulocks are light-years into their space."

"Dad!" She glowered, hands on her hips. "What is our motto? What are the holy words of the Heirs of Earth? Wherever a human is in danger, we will be there. Not just in Concord space. Anywhere."

"You would have us invade the Hierarchy, an axis of thousands of predatory civilizations, ruled over by the Skra-Shen themselves, the galaxy's most vicious killers?"

"I would have us fight for our species! I won't allow us to go extinct. And that's what the scorpions want, Dad. They want our complete annihilation. And I won't allow it." Leona pointed at one of the dotted flight paths in the hologram. "Look at this one. This flight is scheduled for tomorrow. According to this metadata, the scorpions will be shipping a thousand humans to this gulock. Their flight path will take them only fifty astronomical units away from the border. Just a few steps in." Leona sneered. "Let us take the fleet. Let us attack their convoy and rescue the human captives. Same as last time."

"Last time the Rawdiggers helped us," Emet said.

"We can't just depend on Rawdiggers." Leona raised her chin. "We must depend only on ourselves."

Emet studied the data. "The scorpions will protect the convoy. We have only seventeen warships."

"It will be enough," Leona said. "Maybe we cannot save the millions. But if we can save a thousand, or a hundred, or only one more life—we must. Before we can seek Earth, before we can return home, we must save whoever we can. Otherwise who will return to Earth with us?"

She was weeping now. Emet pulled her into his arms. Leona laid her cheek against his chest, crying softly, seeking comfort in his embrace like she had so often in her childhood. She was a widow, a mourning mother, a scarred warrior, a commodore in the Heirs of Earth. But sometimes Leona still felt like a child. So scared. So lost. Needing his strength.

"Wherever a human is in danger," Emet said, "we will be there. We will fight."

Gently, Leona pulled away from his embrace. She walked through the hologram, passing through hundreds of gulocks, worlds of death marked with red skulls. Eyes dry, she approached the alien at the back of the room. Alice hung on the wall, spinning lazily, her cogs moving the gears around her.

Alice opened her eyes, turned a few degrees, and blinked.

Leona placed her hand on the living gear. She had expected Alice to feel like metal, but the alien's skin was surprisingly supple. It felt like leather.

"Alice, I'm sorry," Leona said. "I was angry. But you helped us today. I apologize."

A cable rose like a serpent, then bent, forming a smile beneath Alice's eyes. But rather than comical, it seemed almost like a sad smile.

"You lost somebody you love," Alice said. "Sometimes it is easy for us clockworkers to forget. I once lived in a great computer, a machine the size of a world. I was one gear among many, one life among a trillion dead parts. But many eras ago, we clockworkers too felt love. We too mated. We too sought heat and comfort. I am part of a machine, and my arms reach across the cosmos, but they can never embrace a loved one. I too am sorry, Leona Ben-Ari, warrior of sunlight and sea."

"I lost my sea and sunlight," Leona said. "We humans too are far from our home. But I must believe that we can find Earth again. That we can all go home."

Alice reached out a cable and stroked Leona's hair.

"When you came to me last time, I would not sell you the scorpions' algorithm, and your mate overheated and could not be rebooted. I cannot undo that algorithm, but let me transfer you a new packet of information." Her eyes narrowed. "Nearby, there is a hardware installation called Paradise Lost. Many beings of flesh dwell there. Two of those beings are Homo sapiens. But exterminators are heading toward Paradise Lost, planning a massive purge. Those Homo sapiens need you."

Leona winced. She glanced at her father. "Can we spare a single ship to save two humans? When so many need us across the border?"

"Leona," Alice said, and her voice hardened. "One of those humans is named Bay Ben-Ari. Your brother."

Leona's heart seemed to stop.

She and Emet stared in stunned silence.

Bay. My brother. He's alive. He's—

Alice screamed.

Leona started, spinning toward her. "Alice, wh—"

Alarms blared.

The room trembled.

"They followed you here!" Alice shrieked. She began to spin madly, eyes wide. "Scorpions, scorpions, scorpions!"