The Last Human IV - Ch. 20 - The Deadly Art of Extraction (Patreon)

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The metal casing of Khadam’s ocular implants were sculpted, according to her exact eye shape, and polished to the micrometer in the cold labs that once orbited Outer Namotsk. Nanotech constructs threaded artificial nerves and sensors through the retinal layers of the implants, enabling her vision to span numerous spectrums of light and motion. In the right conditions, Khadam could view down to the cellular level, and up to the near-astronomical.

Some of the finest cold smiths and cyberbiologists had once helped her fine-tune the implants, so that she could watch (and record) everything at millions of frames per second.

Even so, Khadam could not believe her eyes, as the Light from the Scar fell upon the extractor.

Two octagonal layers formed a translucent drum, dripping with wires. Inside the drum, a disc—painstakingly shaped across thousands of working hours under the watchful expertise of Rodeiro’s finest cold smiths—seemed to float, completely still. But Khadam’s suit registered the steep drop in ambient temperature as she walked, disbelieving, closer. Ice condensed on her helmet, and frost crept up her gloved fingers as she reached for the device.

The Scar shed a brilliant golden-white glow through the observation window, flooding the deck so that it was hard to see anything without squinting. The drum had been propped up against the dam’s great window, and its parabolic dish angled toward the Scar, funnelling the Light into the floating disc, which spun so smoothly its shape was almost liquid. When the Scar—tens of thousands of miles away, outside the great viewing window—flashed with Light, the extractor seemed to hum a little louder.

At the bottom of the extractor, a cradle held two cells, brimming with Light. Literally overflowing, as white mist leaked out. And so, too, did the sense of relief. It almost didn’t matter that the Light cells were full… with an extractor like this, they would have energy to power the Ark forever. It was like having her own personal Light dam, that she could take anywhere.

Khadam held her hand over the extractor, and felt the gentle tug on her cerebral implants. She impulsed into the operating system, confirming what she already knew—what she could not believe.

She had seen them working on this design, back on Seraph. Back on the orbital station Khadam had called home, before she’d gone into cryostasis.

Back in Rodeiro’s clan.

“It’s not possible,” she whispered to herself. If Agraneia was listening, the cyran didn’t say anything. “Who put this here?”

She impulsed a query to the extractor, running through the logs in reverse chronology. Mostly, standard operations, though a few odd ticks clogged up the history: testing loops and process errors that had been manually overridden. Frowning, and working her fingers to keep them warm, she scanned through them quickly, and was about to eject when she gasped.

Buried at the bottom of a routine calibration test, there was a note:

T, I think I’ve got one working again. Going to power station 15, see if I can fix that one too. I hope you see this. - JM.

Power Station 15… wasn’t a real power station. It was code for one of the clan’s more dangerous hiding spots, on a planet that orbited perilously close to a Scar. She could only guess at the initials, but it was the date that gripped her. The note had been written less than a decade ago.

Khadam plucked the two Light cells out of their cradle, and hooked the delicate glass-and-metal vials on her belt. “Agraneia!” she called. “Agraneia, I need your help carrying this thing!”

A groan shuddered through the walls, like the song of some deep leviathan swimming in the abyss.

“Agraneia?”

She looked around, squinting through the endless streams of Light. It was so thick in here, it made the air shimmer. Khadam crouched down, slid her fingers along the underside of the extractor, and tried to heft it up. It rocked to one side, and thudded down heavily, jolting the spinning disk so that it buzzed and stopped spinning. “Shit,” Khadam cursed. “Agra?”

“N-n-not r-r-real,” the cyran’s voice slurred in Khadam’s helmet. She was a hunched shape, kneeling at the entrance to the observation deck. Her hands clamped the sides of her helmet, as if to block out a noise that only she could hear.

“It’s … too much. I can’t…”

“Hey, I need your—ah!” Khadam yelped and jumped backward, as a knife made of liquid metal slashed at her chest. Khadam threw her hands up to block the strike, but it stopped before it reached her.

“You?” Agraneia struggled to say. “Is that you?” The cyran squinted up at her, sweat dripping down her brow, a look of total fear carving into her scales. Khadam had never seen the cyran look so afraid before. Then, Agraneia’s eyes widened with horrified recognition. “Oh, gods. Divine One, I did not recognize you. I thought…” Agraneia shook her head, and fell forward with a grunt, barely catching herself on her hands.

“You okay?” Khadam frowned down at her, careful to keep her distance. Whatever was happening to the cyran, it was more than a simple stress-induced hallucination. She didn’t know if she should offer to help her up, or to back away.

“I can’t move.”

“What do you mean?”

Still on hands and knees, Agraneia nodded at the floor. “They’re here. They’re everywhere.”

“There’s nothing there, Agra. It’s just the floor.” Khadam tapped her foot on the hard metal. “See?”

Agraneia blinked, as if she couldn’t comprehend how the ground could be so smooth. After a moment, she nodded, and answered without any conviction, “Yes, of course. You’re right.” She started to get up. Her legs gave out underneath her. Khadam rushed forward, and caught her, helping the dazed cyran to stand. Though the suits servos enhanced her strength, Agraneia was still heavier than she expected. The two of them steadied themselves in the doorway, and Khadam pressed her visor against Agraneia’s, so they could clearly see each other’s faces. “You’re all right. It’s just the Light. Come on, help me get this thing out of here. You have no idea how lucky we just got. We can—”

A rapid, chirping sound sang through the walls, rising in pitch until some distant part of the dam snapped off, and the ground jumped. If not for the magnetic cling of her boots, Khadam would’ve been thrown to the ground. Behind her, the splintering sound of glass. She whipped around to see a massive crack branch across the observation window, but thankfully it held together. The frame around the glass, however, began to glow far too bright. It burst at the top seam first, a pure white light, billowing with glittering mists that filled the room, and all that cold air began to heat up.

Given time, the mist would seep into their suits and decay the softer materials.

“Help me get this out of here!” Khadam screamed. But the cyran was sprawled on her back, not moving. Her visor was completely dark. Khadam still read lifesigns from her suit, but the signal was fading as the mist clouded out her sensors.

Khadam took one last look at the extractor. All the power we would ever need. The Ark could run and hide for thousands of years with that one device.

Then, she looked down at the still form of Agraneia. The cyran groaned, her voice crackling in Khadam’s helmet.

Outside the cracked window, a jagged streak of celestial lightning shot out from the Scar, as if searching for the observation deck. The Light’s intensity blossomed, and Khadam had to dim her visor almost to black, as another chunk of the dam was bathed in Light, and snapped off the structure with a distant, reverberating snap. One of the support plates, she thought, judging by the towers now tumbling away into the void.

Only then, did she notice the howling wind, as the air was sucked out into the void through the growing cracks.

She could drag the machine. She knew the suit was strong enough. And yes, it might get damaged in transit, but there would be enough that maybe she could salvage the whole thing. Maybe…

Khadam spat out a curse, and turned her back on the window. She hefted an arm underneath Agraneia’s shoulders, and grunted, “Come on, cyran. Time to go.”

Agraneia groaned, and kicked weakly at the floor as Khadam pulled her backward, staring at the clan’s extractor the whole time.

They were halfway down the next hall, when she heard a glass crunching sound and a sudden silence as the observation window was sucked out into the void. Chaotic filaments of Light, like flames made of pure energy, whipped and writhed up the hallway, as Khadam did her best to keep moving, hsouting at the cyran the whole time.

“Wake up! Agraneia, get on your feet!”

More frantic now, she slapped at the cyran’s helmet, making a dull thunk inside. Agraneia’s eyes were open, but her pupils wouldn’t focus on anything, and she simply lolled to the side. The flames coughed up clouds of shining mist that rushed into the hallway, and in between errors, Khadam’s suit warned her of the rising temperatures.

Khadam put her hand on the cyran’s liquid arm, and spoke, “Help me. Get her out of here.”

The liquid arm split open. It formed a kind of living harness that wrapped itself around Khadam’s waist. Her suit’s servos whined as she dragged Agraneia like a sled behind her, the cyran’s own armor screeching and scraping on the metal floor.

Khadam replayed their path in a corner of her visor to find their way out. Even so, it was hard to tell which path was correct, given how much the dam had already deteriorated. Bullet-holes of light pierced the walls and the floors, growing slowly wider like burning marks on paper. Metal groaned and shook as huge, distant pieces of the dam tore loose.

One section of the floor was gone. The Light had bled through, and peeled open the hallway, that a pool of bright, shining brilliance separated them from the Gateroom. Khadam stopped, trying to puzzle out a way across. Turn back? She wondered frantically. Would I even be able to find another route? Clouds of mist billowed up from the pool of Light, spewing sparkling ash that clung to every black surface, glowing briefly brighter before dissipating on the Light-dampening metal. It made the place between Khadam’s shoulders itch just by looking at it.

“Agraneia,” she tried again, and the belt of liquid metal slackened as she crouched over the cyran. “Agraneia, please.”

Agraneia groaned. Her head came up an inch from the floor, and fell back with a heavy clank. “Where are you?” she slurred over the comms.

“I’m right here.”

“Leave me,” Agraneia struggled to push the two words out.

“I would,” Khadam smiled sadly, “But Yarsi would never forgive me. Not to mention Talya…”

It had been so much easier, when she was all alone, when she thought she was the only person alive. But now, there was an entire civilization of xenos depending on her to stay alive.

Khadam wriggled her shoulders uncomfortably, trying to ignore the spot—that damned spot—itching between her shoulders. The Light seemed to make it worse, and she worried if this intense exposure was making it spread. She knew what she had to do… what she was supposed to do. Leave her.

But Khadam couldn’t make her feet move. These last five years, Agraneia had been her silent, brooding companion in the valley where she worked on the Ark. She’d been the only one who didn’t worship her every step, who didn’t cling to her every word. Who made her feel… normal. Or whatever approached normal, these days.

“Come on, cyran,” she whispered. “All you have to do is stand up.”

“They’re coming for me,” the cyran muttered to herself, rocking her head from side to side. “They’re here. All of them. All of them. Oh, gods, they’re everywhere. Get out. Get back, get back—”

Khadam smacked the deck next to the cyran’s head, “Agraneia!”

The cyran flinched, and her panicked muttering ceased.

“On your feet!” Khadam enunciated by hammering the deck.

Agraneia’s eyes were glued open. Though her movements were robotic, she sat up. “I can’t see,” the panic started to rise again. “I can’t see anything.”

“Did I ask you to see?” Khadam barked. She wrapped her fingers around Agraneia’s arm, and heaved the cyran to her feet. “I said get on your feet, now!”

“What—”

“Ready. And,” Khadam crouched, pulling Agraneia with her. “Jump!”

The pool of Light was a brilliant wall of pure white. Khadam couldn’t see across the other side. She didn’t stop to think. She pushed with all the force her legs could muster, and threw herself at the Light.

Time lost all meaning. They floated. The individual beats of her heart hammered as slow as a tolling bell. A single inhale lasted for minutes. The moment froze.

An hour passed.

Then three.

Then a day. A week—

Khadam crashed to the otherside, and lancing pain spidered out from the spot between shoulder blades, making her writhe and gasp. She had forgotten about the jump, had forgotten to land so that she sprawled on the ground. Forgot the dam was breaking all around her. Yet, her hand still held Agraneia’s—and when the cyran fell in a twisted heap on the ground, she pulled Khadam with her. A flurry of errors scrolled up Khadam’s vision, followed by a brief darkness as some critical system crashed.

Her suit’s sensors flickered back to life. In that brief moment, the temperature had ticked up another three degrees.

“I was there,” Agraneia moaned on the ground. “I felt them all. Every single death. Oh, gods, I felt it—”

Khadam shook the cobwebs out of her thoughts, trying to remember where she was. There was the Gate room, up ahead. Spears of thin Light pierced through, making a cage across the entrance foyer. Get out. Get out now.

She grabbed Agraneia by the neck of her suit, and hauled her toward the Gate room, teeth clenched and muscles straining with every step.

The room was falling to pieces, the ceiling was tearing away from the walls as Light carved open the dam. It drifted, slowly, apart and the vacuum of space howled in her suit’s sensors.

She dragged Agraneia onto the Gate, and left the cyran there to curl into a ball.

Then, Khadam sprinted to the console.

But the console was dead. Despite the unimaginable amounts of energy bursting into the room, burning holes in the structure of the dam, the Gate had run out of power. Khadam slammed one of the Light cells into the slot, cursing and praying at the same time. Almost immediately, the Gate’s arms started to spin, and the huge chunk of the ceiling started to spin with them. She stared up at it, desperately willing it to stay out of the way.

The Gate’s arms rose to that tell-tale whine. All the spears of Light in the room started to bend, to swirl together in a massive spiral of glimmering brilliance. The ceiling ripped away, just as the Gate warped them through space.

Her heart thudded in her throat, but everything else was quiet. All she could hear was the crackle of static, the sound of her own breath, and a gentle ringing in her ears.

Her suit beeped. Nominal ambient temperature.

It took a long time for the room to stop spinning. It took even longer for her to believe.

They were back on the Ark. They’d made it out alive. And one of the Light cells still hung on her belt.

“Why?” Agraneia said, still curled up on the Gate. “Why did you save me?”

“You’re supposed to say ‘thank you.’” Khadam growled.

“You should have left me,” Agraneia growled back. “You should have taken the machine. You could have saved millions. My life is not worth one of theirs. My life is not worth the future.”

“How do you know how much your life is worth?” Khadam snapped, her blood still running hot.

Agraneia lifted her head, and stared at her, frowning hard. In all the years Khadam had known her, she had never seen Agraneia cry. Now, two drops trailed lines down the side of her face.

All she saw in her was a scared woman, who hadn’t been able to make sense of her world for a very long time.

Khadam frowned. She let her hands unclench, and softened her face. She padded over to the cyran, and crouched over her. “You have no idea how much you’re worth to me.”

“I have cost us everything.”

“Everything?” Khadam grinned, holding up the Light cell, still brimming with power. “And there’s something else. I found a note in the extractor. There’s someone else out there.”

Maybe, she dared to hope, maybe even more than one.

***

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