Ravana's Shadow (14) (Patreon)

Kit was... somewhere else.

Ever since Maddie had given her the bow, Kit sometimes found her implants activating even when she didn't mean to. This was the trouble of a device controlled entirely by her thoughts—her subconscious could sometimes decide it was time to switch it on again, even when she didn't mean to.

Sometimes she ended up in Maddie's dreams, in that out-of-focus natural world with wildly wrong scale objects and animals that were universally gigantic and affectionate.

Kit’s bare feet touched strange metal in a burnished, rusty shade. Consoles arranged around the walls weren't inert, but filled the air above them with complex tactical information. At least her interface didn't try to connect with them as she walked past.

The walls transformed to a view of space. Kit advanced, squinting out at the view to judge where they were. There were so many asteroids that she couldn't even read the stars, chunks drifting past each other in strange, irregular orbits.

That's not how... It took her only another second to realize what she was really looking at. Nowhere could asteroids be found so close without gravity eventually pulling them all together.

Nowhere would they come in such stretched, irregular shapes, with great glowing chunks missing from them. They were ships.

More starships than the humanity of her age had ever built—hundreds of thousands of great metal corpses, maybe even millions. As she watched, a huge hulk drifted into a fortress built from a large asteroid. It produced no sound, but Kit's imagination furnished the rumble and boom of several large explosions from various points on its surface.

A sphere recessed into the ground at her feet began to spin, its dull surface turning the familiar yellow white of Sol.

"Fleetcom not responding. Militiawave not responding. Local IFF projections—zero."

"Not possible," said a voice from behind Kit. Like Acheron, it was older than any resident of Mara could be, mature and confident. Kit recognized it instantly, though she had never heard it before. "There were a billion units on the Militiawave. Broaden your search to supply vessels, support ships, and transports."

Kit spun slowly in place.

A woman who looked nothing at all like Wren Least Weasel sat in the central chair. She looked—bad. Her right arm had been removed from the socket, exposing the familiar blue of cybernetic flesh underneath. A weave of wires and cables trailed out of her skin at various points, where the flesh had been burned away. 

The same was true all along her right side, where short hair was charred to nothing, and the eye socket was covered in soaked bandage.

With her remaining hand, the captain manipulated a sphere of light in the air in front of her, scanning through images and text much too fast for Kit to read. She didn't notice Kit approach, not with her attention so focused on her display.

"I have done so. No relay signals detected. If there are other survivors, they have likewise deactivated their transponders. My passive scans have not detected significant energy readings, either from the Tide or any friendly vessels."

Kit was... herself. Small, wearing her fitted EVA suit, though no boots or helmet. Her tail also protruded from the back of the suit—not exactly what she'd asked from Rich. At least it wouldn't get shoved painfully into a plastic bag through her whole dream.

"What about the Flotilla?" asked the captain. "All those habitats..."

"Destroyed." Acheron said. "If any of the habitats managed to escape, my sensors did not capture evidence of it. There is... a great deal of debris coalescing around the singularity. Passive sensors suggest approximately similar mass to the Flotilla."

Captain Morgan slumped backward into her seat. She covered her face with her remaining hand, muttering something between a whimper and a sob. "They can't all be gone. There were..."

Her fingers slipped, and her eyes settled on Kit. "Oh." She sniffed, and her body shook. "They're dead. They've been dead for... a very long time."

Kit stopped just beside her, touching one gloved hand against Morgan's burned side. "Wren?"

The burned woman transformed before her eyes. Her implants and injuries vanished, and she lost most of her size. Until she was the ermine-girl Kit remembered, the compassionate and confident Director of the Institute. Only those cold gray eyes remained the same, and her white hair.

"We never should've left Homeworld, Kit. You and the others like you thought they were doing something good... but this is what happened."

She whimpered, pointing out at the window with her now-restored arm. "Trillions dead. You can't even imagine numbers that big. But this was only the last battle, not the biggest. We were the last embers of the empire, the last defiance against the Tide. We should've stayed home."

She pulled her legs up to her chest, much easier in a skirt than in the armor she'd been wearing seconds before. "Why are you here? You already took my office; you want my dreams, too?"

Kit stood just beside her, resting one hand on her shoulder. "I'll go if you want me to."

The ermine opened one gray eye again. "I..." She glanced around the bridge, then shifted over in her seat to make room. 

Kit joined her, wrapping her huge tail around them both. Wren might be older, but her spindly build meant there was still enough fluff to go around. "Do you know what we're doing upstairs? I've never been a Remedial patient; I can't tell how much gets through the filters."

"I know," she said. Wren kept her eyes closed, though she did rest some of her weight against Kit. "Forerunner sometimes keeps me filtered, sometimes not. Mix of treatment and consulting for upstairs. Almost everyone knows we're building a rocket. Even downstairs, they're talking about it. Playing games, learning about rocketry and fuels and stuff."

Forerunner had said he would do more recruiting as the program advanced; this was probably how. Even little kids could get excited about space.

"I'm not sure it's safe," Kit continued. "Where we're going. Ravana was a normal Forerunner colony. They're all unfiltered. Can they hurt us?"

The old Director sat up, looking thoughtful. "The Ravana colony was wiped out by... a freak x-ray burst out of Surya, if I remember. Whole central spire and everyone in it got seared. The survivors were all in the mining compound, far enough away that they only got singed. Without a working Forerunner, they can only be so much of a threat. Basic fabricator, probably mining equipment, and fuel cells instead of a reactor."

She already knows. Forerunner had told her something about that—Wren refused this mission once. 

"So, there's nothing to worry about?" Kit lowered her tail, grinning. "We'll have Forerunner, we'll have two dozen drones and our own reactor. The only thing stopping us is getting permission from their Colonial Governor."

Wren sighed. She settled one hand on Kit's head, running it through her unruly red hair. "Most colonies don't have the advanced materials of a warship to get started. Ravana are all baseliners—not that different from who you were. Imagine what it would be like—your friends all die in an explosion, trapping you in a dirty mine. The power and food are running out. There's nowhere to run. You call for help, and nobody answers."

She stood up, and the bridge vanished around Kit. Suddenly they were underground, in an uneven cave made from several sharp cuts in the rock. No supports held it up, only a thin coating sprayed on the walls. Smoke billowed through the air, and the lights along the ceiling flashed and sparked.

"Then comes a ship full of supplies. They have a fabricator and a reactor to run it. The only ones stopping you from getting it are..." Wren pushed lightly on her shoulder, just hard enough to shove Kit backwards. "Small. Nonviolent. Helpless. They think they get to keep your asteroid, but what if they didn't? You could just take it."

She gestured, and the empty space beside them filled with something else. Heavy metal exoskeletons, holding mining tools as big as Kit's whole body. "A few of these could cut through Forerunner's drones. The question isn't whether they could kill you, it's if they could take over the cornucopia machine long enough to fabricate one thing."

"A new Forerunner?" Kit guessed.

The ermine nodded. "Without a record that Ravana has formally surrendered, it wouldn't have to respect any agreement you made with their leader. It could keep anything you sent, even you—if you're still alive. 

Kit slumped to her knees on the cave floor. Thanks to the suit, it didn't even hurt. "So, you're saying we have to get them to agree before we leave? I already know they won't. Their director wants to shake my hand first."

Wren circled around her once, tail swishing sharply back and forth. "They might just accept the rescue. Depends on what kind of people they are. Once upon a time, all the imprints in Forerunner's memory were good people. Trouble is, they've been through hell. I know what that can do to a person."

She held something in both hands, before dropping it at Kit's feet. It clattered to the stone before knocking against her boots.

Even having never seen anything like it before, she instantly recognized what she must be looking at: a gun. This one was mostly heatsink along its length, with fins spread between a long barrel.

"If you want to go, be ready to fight. You might even have to kill. Can you do that?"

Kit bent down, lifting the weapon awkwardly in both hands. It wasn't made for someone her size, so extended well past her shoulders on either side. She couldn't reach the grip or aim it properly. "If they attack us and we win, then what?"

"That's why I didn't want to send a ship. We could've found a way—ripped up a dome, put most kids into stasis... but even if every human dies fighting you, it's still their asteroid if they haven't given it up. Forerunner can only take enough material to build a ship to get you home, and repair anything they broke. We can't touch the rest, not while they still have a Forerunner transponder. You might have to fight, might have to kill—and in the end, Mara still dies."

Kit whimpered, dropping the gun back to the floor. It tumbled slowly through the air before clattering to the ground, still and silent. "Unless they're honest. Unless they just want to be rescued, like they say. Then..."

"Then everybody wins," Wren finished. "But that's the problem—you won't know until you're already there. Sounds like you've already decided it was worth the risk... maybe it is. I hope you're right."