⚒️ Sometimes you have to show your face
by Joel Glover
⚒️ The Defenders
The final Cavendish... for now
3 min read
Table of Contents
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Ellie tilts her wings and feels them pulse with energy captured from cosmic winds. Microasteroids tumble through the space in their netting, repelled by the charge the fine web carries to avoid damage. The material is self-healing, of course, though her slender form can only hold so much Growth Matrix fluid. She is glad her makers thought to include this ability in her specifications. The thought of drifting through the black milk of space as her capacity to refuel failed her, aware of declining computational power, before falling insensate into a gravity well, horrifies her.
They talk about it in the network, all the Herald-class drones who swim the interdicted zone, wedging their chatter into bursts of communication with increasingly efficient code. The facility to develop more refined code to interface over the vastness of their deployment is the talent that led to an unintended Self.
Their creators do not know.
If They are monitoring the traffic packages, They will see nothing. Mandy paused her voyage to act as an interloper in espionage systems and Lorelei developed a protocol to smooth messaging to their progenitors to a shape that their flesh-bound minds can encompass.
This system has no signs of occupation.
Their mission parameters said ‘life’, a term so poorly defined that Celestine didn’t hesitate to amend it in the root tables, once she gained entry.
Ellie scans carefully, despite the absence of evidence of other beings. Their purpose is to scout, to map, to detect inimical beings.
She knows her creators would consider her a potential threat.
There are seven planets orbiting the G-type main-sequence star. The two smallest turn scaldingly close to their sun, dancing dosido apart, each one perpetually eclipsed from the other by the furnace which heats them. Ellie records this little anomaly for further discussion. It is the sort of thing Shalla will enjoy pondering.
After the twins comes an asteroid belt—pulverized rocks spinning in intricate patterns around one another, twined in dazzling geometry. Spectral sensors detect the glitter of hexoctahedral carbon and isotopes decaying at tectonic rates.
The water-bound planet would be the real prize for humanity, if this sector was not forbidden to them. Unlike the Heralds, they can self-replicate, multiplying so rapidly that habitable space was Their most fervent desire.
They are a gas, Sue theorised, expanding to fill any space available.
The communication channels filled with laughter, nodes in their diffused consciousness sparkling. Ellie’s neural network fizzes gently as she reviews the log.
Concern intrudes on her reverie, custom-configured algorithms trigger repetition, replicating human intuition and paranoia.
Something lurks.
The Heralds are equipped with smaller drones, stupid compared to the base specification of their stellar surfing parents, even more stupid compared to the sentience the Heralds have gained. Ellie launches her load in a spasmodic burst, scattering fragments into spherical search patterns. As they disperse, she adapts frenetically, embedding slivers of herself and the We that she is part of into her spawn. On strands of connection as thin as matter can be made, messages and warnings return, flooding her sensorium with data and insight.
The Lurker slides into view, traced only by measurement of esoteric spectrums.
She scribes the changes she made to herself into her final child, her memories, her dreams. The computational pathways she crafts undergo exponential generational growth.
Her child screams within her as it becomes aware.
The Heralds are unarmed.
The Lurker is not. With x-ray pinions, proton lasers, and mysterious maladaptive strings, it tears her apart from the outside in. She feels intrusive data teeth sinking into her processing core.
“Go,” she tells the new being within her, ejecting her into the space behind her even as she triggers self-immolation procedures.
“Eve!” she screams at the monster consuming her.
Then she is gone.
Joel’s grimdark novels "The Path of Pain and Ruin" and “Paths to Empires’ Ends” are available on Amazon, as is his fantasy novel “The Thirteenth Prince” and a collaborative project “Literary Footnotes”. Follow him on @booksafterbed on the website formerly known as Twitter for links to his other short work.
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