Ruins of Greivstor

FOURTEEN - THE CORE

"So what do we do?"

The pilot was still trying to comprehend the numbers. A billion people of all races and colours and ages, bubbling away, ready to wake up and launch into attack, their sacks of bile and sensors bulging, insect and unfeeling. They would wipe out any attack on Greivstor in seconds by sheer numbers alone.

"And this isn't the only one," Stellada said. 'There are eight more the planet over.' The pilot spun.

"All this size?"

"Some are bigger. Total count would equal nearly thirteen billion.'"

"Tell me you're fucking lying."

"I wish I was. They're all linked in by a central mainframe hidden about seven hundred miles over there somewhere," she waved her hand randomly in the air.

"So that's what the pulse the guy saw out of the ship was? Some kind of installation beacon?"

"Not so," Stellada said. "Apparently this stuff has been here for two thousand years."

"Two thousand?"

"Looks like it. Think we've just found what wiped out the Greivstorians."

The pilot looked over the railing. He moved from pod to pod. Shadows moved inside. "They didn't wipe them out. The Greivstorians are still alive. Well, they're technically alive."

"Oh god no..."

"Say hello to the people of Greivstor."

***

"Around four minutes to go," Stellada said. She was sat on the floor, looking down at the forest of biomech converts. It was like a field, a farm. It was insidious.

"Can we do anything?" 6651 asked. "Save them in any way?"

"I doubt it. As far as I can tell, there are only two options on the system. Wake them all up, or make them all go boom." The pilot sat in silence, musing over it all.

"The biomechs. Where are they?"

"Down there."

"No, not those. The ones on the surface. They answered to the pulse, yes? Saw it and went 'oh, that's us,' and we followed them here, found out they were up to something and started blasting them out of the sky. So they know about this place.' The pilot gazed down at the crops. He felt as if they were looking back up at him with their ghostly, incubated eyes. Incorrectly formed, waiting, biding their time until being told to awaken, their tubes and wires, plumbing and veins pumping blood, oil and semen in equal measure around their bodies. Just waiting to go and conform, make all like them.

"So they should have found here by now," Stellada said. She reached for her gun. "But they haven't. So they knew the signal was for them, but not why."

"So what do we do?"

***

In his mind floated past a lifetime. He saw his first flat, his mother sending him to school. He saw his schoolmates holding their lunchboxes, the insignias on the side. He saw Celestria's large boards and advertisements when his mother could afford for a holiday to Region 12. Not even one of the most expensive regions on the planet, but still more than she could afford. He saw all of the lights, the sparks and the glamour. He felt it all pulsing inside his skull. He felt his life. He saw his love, the one he had promised all to. He saw them making love for the first time, his face in the reflection of her eyes. Felt her, tasted her sweat. He heard the door slam as she left, heard her cries of joy as she took off in the other bitch's Hygron. He tasted his tears as he had wept, the final resident of a salt-stained mattress. He saw his crystal ball, and saw the same thing, over and over again. He saw nothing else, just misery and crying. He realised that that was why he had joined the fight for Greivstor in the first place. Not for the money, not out of some sense of Celestrian pride or patriotism. He had just wanted out.

He stood up and walked over to the screens that Stellada had flicked through. "There's only one thing we can do."

Stellada got up and walked over to him. She looked at the screen. "You're right. We aren't getting out of here anyway. Mushroom's coming and regardless of all your talk, we're still too close." She looked at the screens, projecting purple menus at them. It was now somehow comforting. She put a shaky hand to them and moved through the controls, scanning and selecting.

"How do you know what all that says, anyway?"

"I'm a woman of many talents." She opened a menu with only two options. She highlighted the second one.

"You ready?" The pilot asked.

"I think I was ready as soon as I signed up to come here," she said. The pilot put his hand on hers, both hovering over the detonation.

"We have so much in common," he said. Stellada began to chuckle, and so did the pilot, and then they were laughing, full belly laughs.

"Celestrian to the core," she said. "If all else fails, bomb the ever-loving shit out of it."

5...

"You got that right," the pilot said.

4...

He felt his heartbeat for the first time in many years.

3...

He remembered the last time he had, the last time had had truly understood it.

2...

He was alive.

1...

"Celestrian right to the fucking core."

DETONATION IN PROGRESS

THE END