Weekly Drabble #242: Quality of Mercy (Patreon)

This week's prompt is from Xpholia with 'the reaper's mercy', so it should be no surprise that we're back in in Heresy and Hope. Enjoy!

The prompt thread will be up on Sunday as normal, but it will be later than usual, so stay tuned for that.

~

Quality of Mercy

Everything about Hope is still so new. The ship never had a chance to get worn down by use. It’s like the kind of ship you see in movies or in recruitment videos. Everything gleams. At least, everything that isn’t broken. The massive colony vessel is far from a derelict, but it still needs a lot of love.

Eris’s bare feet tap softly along the polished decks as the Purge’s construct walks the halls. Some of the crew have said it would be more fitting if she had cloven hooves, or burnt feet. Instead, you just wonder why she made the choice that she did – and it was a choice. She could have completely randomized her features, but she didn’t. She chose her appearance carefully. You already know that she cares nothing for the thoughts or opinions of humans, let alone any other organic life... or at least, barely anything. There is a level of curiousity there. It’s small, but it is there.

Likewise, the heretic Purge seems to a preference for how you perceive her. Is there symbolism there? It’s hard to imagine that she put in the effort to understand the human psyche. Is this how she perceives herself, filtered through a human appearance? More questions, ones that Hope’s guest is disinclined to answer. You should probably be happy she isn’t wearing a permanent sneer of disgust and being around so many organics.

Eris goes wherever she wants aboard the ship. You’d be concerned about what she could do with nigh-unfettered access to every part of the vessel if her ship-self couldn’t swat Hope like an insect. She doesn’t need to plant viruses or sabotage systems when all it would take is a handful of her weapons systems. Even at the height of the war, humanity’s most powerful ships could never take sustained fire from a Despoiler like Eris. Iron Phoenix held the record; three times the battleship survived four volleys from a capital-class Purge and managed to escape. There wasn’t a fourth time. Iron Phoenix died at the outset of the siege of Earth, trying to buy time for Jupiter’s lunar colonies to evacuate, hopelessly standing its ground against a pair of Despoilers, firing for all it was worth until the machines blew it and its thirty-nine escorts into atoms.

If Eris had any ill intent, she certainly didn’t need to compromise Hope. The captain wasn’t taking chances, though. Any time she was aboard, her human body had to be escorted by someone. Today, that’s you. Just being around her is an experience. She seems to have only three emotions when it comes to humans: arrogance, condescension, and disgust – and those are when she can be drawn into having an emotional reaction at all.

Well, you remind yourself. Maybe there’s a fourth. She has no need for companionship, but she will still return to Hope, watching your goings-on like a researcher studying ants. Looking for something. For what, no one knows and she hasn’t bothered to share her thoughts with any of the crew. Not even you, whom she seems to tolerate slightly more than the rest.

You’re her favourite ant, Tawny said over dinner one night. You can’t even disagree with that. You don’t know why, though. Maybe it’s as simple as the fact that you were the first one to awaken.

Most of the crew avoid Eris on her walks. Those that can’t try to ignore her. It’s not that difficult, and yet surprisingly hard. She rarely gets in the way, leaving Hope’s personnel to their tasks with only the very rare comment made, but her presence is like a black shroud and knowing she’s watching unsettles even hardened veterans. That’s why she has minders. To watch her, and to prevent incidents.

Incidents like the one that starts now as a man with an empty bottle in one hand and an unsteady swagger in his steps approaches the pair of you, his face red with too much too drink and righteous anger.

Commander William Billingsley, Engineering. A good man. “I have a question for you,” he slurs angrily as he steps in front of Eris, blocking her from moving around him. “Was it you?” The question’s incredibly vague, but you know William. You know exactly what he’s asking.

The Purge’s avatar doesn’t answer the commander’s demand. She seems more intrigued by the confrontation than annoyed or concerned. The researcher watching one of the ants approach them.

If there was one thing you could say about them, it was that the Purge were never sadistic. They didn’t cause pain for the sake of it. Suffering was never their goal; genocide was. If there had been a way to painlessly terminate organic life more efficiently than the standard methods, they would have embraced it. The level of suffering that they inflicted was completely irrelevant, but that meant just that: the level of suffering that they inflicted was completely irrelevant. The Purge were results-oriented. Asteroid strikes and orbital bombardment were exceptionally effective at planetary depopulation, but they had used other methods. One of these was to infect fleeing vessels with bioweapons and nanites to spread their pathogens across entire star systems. Anything that wore down the defences, industry and population of their targets was an acceptable tactic to them.

The Corman system had been one of the few points of resistance that humanity offered their destroyers. Originally a valuable mining colony that also hosted an off-the-books isolated research facility on the fifth planet, Corman became a heavily defended redoubt as the scientists and engineers on the world rushed theoretical technologies and drawing-board blueprints into production, refugees and fleeing warships seeking succour above and upon the world.

They’d held out longer than any other system to date, repelling several assaults of increasing strength. Eventually, the Purge had had enough of this annoying defiance. They’d sent a Despoiler and its attendant fleet to the Corman system. The outer defences collapsed almost immediately as that monstrosity obliterated them, swiftly closing in on Corman Five itself. Instead of a quick annihilation, the planet sheltered behind experimental defences, surviving everything the enemy fleet could throw at it. Despite their resilience, they had nothing that could threaten the Despoiler, though that didn’t stop them and rushed new weaponry into production in futile hope. They’d never realized that that assault had been a distraction, not until it was too late.

The Purge had been perfectly willing to bring Corman Five down through overwhelming firepower, but they’d also prepared a contingency. A bioweapon was unleashed on the planet. The Purge were as capable with those creations as they were in technical fields. They despised biological life, but they turned it to their purposes easily enough.

No one ever knew what the weapon’s vector had been or the exact mechanism of delivery, but it scarcely mattered. As the Despoiler and its fleet blockaded the world and relentlessly bombarded it, the weapon spread like wildfire, dormant and unseen as it passed from host to host. With Corman Five huddled beneath their impenetrable shield, the entire world became a Petri dish, the population trapped as the weapon did its work.

Once complete global saturation was achieved, the Purge activated their bioweapon. In hours, every living thing on Corman Five was destroyed. Not just destroyed; dissolved as the weapon broke down biomolecular bonds, turning both the Terran-born and native life into a ruined slurry. Those that had escaped the initial infection died in the outbreak as spores and cysts spread from the decaying bodies. Whether they were breathed in or merely touched your skin, the result was the same. It had been a hideous, agonizing end for four hundred million people... and Commander Billingsley had watched it happen to his wife and two children.

He’d been on a comm call to them at the time, a small privilege of his position. He’d been trying to reassure his terrified spouse, son and daughter that the Navy was doing everything in its power to figure out a way to rescue Corman Five. Its technologies might be the key to humanity’s survival, and they needed to find a way to break the blockade... but Earth had no answer for that God-damned Despoiler sitting on Corman Five’s doorstep. The comm call had been interrupted briefly as the Purge warship activated the bioweapon and then, before his eyes, William watched his family die in shrieking, excruciating terror.

“Was it you?” He demands again, belching angrily as he presses closer.

Eris stares back at the human, unmoved by his anger. In any other circumstance, a drunken, enraged man looming over an unarmed woman would be a situation needing immediate action, but even as you whisper in your comm for security, you can’t help but wonder how comical William looks to Eris. His brewing rage, his attempt at physical intimidation, the chemical waft of alcohol on his breath and the lack of control that it implies– all of those signs that would warn any human of his state of mind were just as clear to her, but they meant nothing to the Purge. Her particle construct wasn’t even truly her. Will was attempting to intimidate someone by yelling at a finger puppet that they were wearing.

“Was what me?” Eris asks, in a tone suggesting that she was already becoming bored with this altercation. Or if not bored, then at least... what? Like someone expecting the worst from an animal and only getting that. But, you didn’t think you were imagining it... there was something else in her voice, wasn’t there? It felt insane, but... but you think it might be disappointment.

“Corman Five,” William snapped, pointing a finger at her like the barrel of a gun. “Was that you? Were you the one that wiped out that system?”

“Commander,” you say warningly, stepping between the pair. He might just be drunk enough to try and lay hands on Eris. You don’t know what will happen if he does, and you don’t want to know. “That’s enough.”

“No!” he shouts. “Fuck that, we deserve to know! She – this thing is just tagging alongside us like a guard dog, that it? Just a helpful, friendly pooch, yeah?”

“I saved your lives,” Eris pointed out calmly. “Your entire species remains alive because of me.”

“Oh, fuck you!” William snarls over your shoulder, trying to get into Eris’s face, but your hand on his chest keeps him in place. He’s not willing to go through you. He’s still got that level of restraint. “Fuck. You. Like you did that for us. You spent years wiping us out down to the last fucking helpless child and now you want credit for not killing us, you-”

“Commander,” you say again, this time putting steel in your voice. It breaks through the fog in William’s mind and he looks at you, as if finally realizing that the XO of the ship is standing in front of him. “Take a walk.”

“But-”

“Take a walk, William. That’s not a request.” Punctuating your statement is the arrival of a pair of security guards. “Get some rest, sober up and we’ll talk about this later.” You try to soften that last part, but you and he both know what that talk will be like. The captain made it clear to everyone not to provoke Eris. Even if she didn’t care about the opinions of ants, there were things that you knew not to bring up. The death of her fellow Heretics was one. That incident was as close to angry as you’d seen her. The reason she and her comrades had spared Hope was the second, and William had been headed towards that line.

“I’m sorry about that,” you say to Eris as you nod to the security men, the pair gently but firmly directing the engineer back down the corridor, away from you and the Purge’s avatar. “But he lost his family on Corman Five.” You have to stop yourself from adding, We’ve all lost family. You have to remember the lie. She’s one of the good ones. You don’t even have to believe it, just pretend that you do. That lets you get through every encounter with her without screaming. The worst part is, she wouldn’t even care if you did.

Or maybe she would. That same small part her that’s curious about you and wanted to look just so in her encounters with you. Maybe that part is enough that she’ll take offence to the ingratitude and abuse and turn Hope into vapour. If it were just you, you might risk it. It’s not, though, is it? What William did wasn’t just stupid, it was dangerous. Eris’s opinion of organic life is already low. You don’t need her to reduce it even more.

Despite that, she ignores the apology. It means as little to her as the engineer’s fury. She doesn’t even bother with a dismissive comment or gesture. Instead, those inhumanly perfect eyes turn to you. “I’m aware.” She looked at the withdrawing Billingsley, her expression quirking oddly before she reached out and touched the nearby bulkhead, stroking it like she would a younger sibling’s hair. “Such odd little things, aren’t they?” She withdraws her hand, once again looking disappointed.

With no further word, she continues on her way. Security doors and locked sections open obediently for her, Hope treating the other AI like an honoured guest as she goes about her inspection, looking for... you’re still not sure what she is looking for. You’ve not even sure that you want her to find it.

The Purge are the pinnacle of technological evolution. As Clarke had said so long ago, what they could do might as well be magic even to other advanced races. That didn’t mean they were infallible, though. They could make mistakes, just like the weak, inferior organics that they decided to wipe out.

Hope was one of those mistakes. The reason that the ship survived at all, the reason that Eris and all of her kin had fought their own kind and died to carry this ship and all its tiny, useless organics far beyond the reach of their brethren... was a mistake. A misunderstanding.

Maybe when she learns the truth, she’ll take it in stride. Or maybe on that day, humanity will die and another galaxy will burn.