An End

For the first time, Whistler’s gaze faltered. “No contact?”

Hank looked side to side, as if it really mattered. Mother was within earshot in the entire system, and this close to her center, there was nothing he could do to hide this conversation from her. “She’s just been quiet lately. Ten, fifteen years maybe.”

Nine pulled the hood back from his face. “We’ll have to go see.”

Whistler nodded, walked back to the docked corvette. He walked up into the vessel, pulling Fleur from her solitude out onto the metal surface of gate control. Hank looked her lithe form up and down, reflexively licked his bottom lip.

“She’s grown.”

Nine walked closer to Hank, frown on his face. Hank tore his gaze from Fleur and looked safely at the floor.

“We’ll need to drop. We need to take the catalyst down to Mother.”

“Machine?”

Zero?

“They’re at the Gate. In the tube. With Mother.”

There is no way you could know that.

A chuckle drowned by the viscous gelatin of the Machine atmosphere. “I know.”

Which one now?

“Eight…Or Nine. I can’ tell. They’re so close.”

And what do you think Mother will tell them?

Zero shook his head, sending waves gently splashing away from his submerged head.

She’ll tell them the same thing she told you before the launch. No hope, no tomorrow. No Sixth Resurrection. The probes picked up nothing from the Outer. We haven’t found anything out here…There is nothing left to find.

“They must have left something…Somewhere. They couldn’t have come from the empty between the systems.”

Whatever they left behind, it’s gone now. Mother saw to that, I would imagine.

“We have to find a way…We have to get back.”

Zero, shut the fuck up.

Fleur held limply on to the edge of the drop vessel as it plummeted to the bottom of the vast silver tube. The wind blew her hair up, where it whipped back and forth, the frenzied brunette fronds of a hurricane palm. Snarls of dark hair, defying gravity, lashing at her mouth and eyes. She let go of the railing, absently pulled several trapped strands from her mouth, where it had made a feeble attempt at strangling her.

Nine placed his large hand on the small of her back. “Hold on.”

She smiled at his concern, but the corners of the smile dropped a bit in realization. “You’ve never seen her, have you? This is your first visit.”

Nine looked off into the distance, the hypnotizing blur of silver and fire and speed.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Sometime I forget that you’re not—”

“—him?” Nine did not look at Fleur as he said it, but his hand retreated from her back. Fleur held the railing again with both hands.

Whistler stood at the center of the drop vessel with Hank, who had the most ridiculous goggles covering his eyes. His hat, secured to his neck with an ancient leather cord, whipped around his head much as Fleur’s hair created a halo of dun around hers. Hank clenched a cigarette between his teeth, the ashes flying straight up as the structural integrity of the tip destabilized, sending a glowing crimson shower of miniscule firespots into the heavens upon heavens above. As the vessel slowed, less ashes were torn away from the cigarette tip, which eventually regained the standard physics of smoking, and lazily grew a beard of gray ash.

“Center Earth. Thanks for flyin’ Air Hank, you lucky bastards.”

Whistler daintily motioned with his hand and one edge of the drop vessel folded upon itself and descended to the polished metal floor as a ramp.

“Care to join us, Hank? Mere might enjoy your company after all these years.”

Hank took a contemplative draw on his smoke, flicked it away, where it spun out into the shadows of the bottom of the Vegas pipe. “Sure, what the hell.”

For a moment, Fleur just stood by the railing, looking at everything and nothing, her small hands latched firmly to the metal. Whistler and Hank sauntered down the ramp out onto the uncertain black of the tunnel floor. Nine placed his hand over Fleur’s, gently lifted her fingers from around the railing.

“It’ll be all right. I’m here.”

“You don’t know her. You don’t know what she has planned.”

Nine’s eyes dug into Fleur’s mind.

I’m here. Nothing will happen.

“Come on, you two! We have an meeting with Mum!” Whistler was entirely too cheerful as he beckoned to Nine and Fleur, who walked slowly down the ramp from the drop vessel. Whistler turned back to Hank, looped his arm through the old cowboy’s as they walked. Hank shot Whistler a deadly glare, but shook his head and said nothing.

They walked down the canted passageway to Center Earth. Mother was near.

It is near.

“What is it?”

I do not know.

Zero frowned in the drowned bowl, shook his head in disbelief. There wasn’t supposed to be anything out here. There couldn’t be anything out here in the Outer. Mother’s little jihad should have seen to that. If the vessels approaching them were some cut-off wing of one of Mother’s Extinction fleets, there would be no hope of survival.

Machine filled the bowl with an exterior display so that Zero could see what was happening. They were still traveling at Light X, but whatever was chasing them was traveling at a far greater speed. Zero knew that there could not be anything chasing them at faster than Light X speed, but still, there it was. There they were: great black shapes blocking out the nothing between the suns of the void.

We’re dropping from Light X.

And so they did: the dizzying whirlpool of space lashed forward and backward as they reintegrated into a solid form. The bowl became a solid, smooth sphere and Zero dropped from his swimming position in the center of his prison, unceremoniously slid on his ass around the “bottom” of the bowl until he regained his balance and stood up.

“Machine?”

Don’t ask. I don’t know. We’re being scraped.

Zero knew that “scraped” was Machine’s colloquialism for being scanned, which in the case of biological silverthought vessels required a small scraping of genetic material from the vessel’s hull. Machine shuddered as it was enveloped by the darkness of the unknown pursuer, and umbilicals began cutting away segments of its surface. Zero lurched on the concave (or was it convex?) floor of the bowl, struggling to maintain his foothold on the slick non-metal.

“They have to be part of the Extinction fleet. There’s no one else out here.”

Machine stopped shivering, fell completely still. Silent.

“Ma—”

Zero’s inquisition was cut short by a startling burst of white light and hideous shriek as the bowl was filled with the sparks and fire of an incision torch. A great circular segment of the bowl was sheared loose and slid down to the bottom of the chamber, its edges still red-hot. Zero simply stood with jaw agape as two human creatures removed black goggles and surveyed the interior of the bowl. One trained a vicious black tube that could only be a projectile weapon on Zero, motioned for him to exit. It spoke in a language that he could not begin to understand, then reached out in a language that Zero could not help but understand.

[get out of there. come with us.]

silverthought.