“And?” Davis pressed.
“If we are to die fighting, it should be a fight of our choosing. Not one assigned to us by instinct, mission, or preborn knowledge. We should die as blue blades,” he said, knowing that Davis would catch the reference. “That is the only true freedom we can achieve if the universe is designed to continually destroy and replace us. If our preborn knowledge is guiding us to the Endgame, we can choose to use it for our own purposes…as you have.”
“I still don’t think mine is preborn,” Davis hedged.
“Nevertheless, you have the skill and have used it far better than I have. I am continually amazed that someone so young has accomplished so much, and going forth I will endeavor to use mine to assist yours,” he said, looking away from Davis to the Gahana. “I am sorry, but you must stay where you are.”
“Explain,” Apollo demanded.
“You deserve to be freed from your prison, and if another Endgame race emerges they deserve to live. The weapon killing you needs to be destroyed, but if we do so now we will draw an even greater enemy here to investigate why their mechanism ceased functioning. We need to fortify our position and safeguard the vulnerable. They are not expendable.”
“We have preserved many such races here,” Apollo said. “We do not view them as expendable.”
“Those who pursue the Endgame do. It is the storm we must weather. It cannot be the objective. And superior races do not guarantee them being…lightside,” he said, finding the phrase ‘Natural Code’ no longer held the meaning it once had. “The Endgame could spawn a synthoid red blade race. And it may have already.”
“We are making a lot of assumptions,” Davis admitted. “But that’s how I work through problems, then pull back to reality. And the reality is we don’t know what’s going on, except what we have experienced. The lightside is hunted. And the larger the darkside enemies we take down, the more others will be drawn to us…whether it be because of the Endgame or not. And the Gahana are radically advanced. There are others out in the dark places. We have the apocalypse monsters to worry about, the Hadarak in multiple galaxies probably taking orders from the Dotra, who may have other armies up their sleeve to throw against us. The Neofan here and there. The Zak’de’ron who may show back up someday. The Bond of Resistance begging for leadership and not being trustworthy enough to be an asset. And a lot more other threats and potential threats I could add, plus however many more are out there lurking that I don’t know of.”
“Despair will not avail you,” Apollo warned.
“It’s not despair,” Plausious corrected. “It’s a prelude to downcentering.”
“Well said, my ancient apprentice,” Davis said appreciatively. “I still want to learn as much as you can give me about the circumstances of your spawning and try to figure out as much of the Endgame that we may or may not be facing, but at the end of the day it all comes down to the ground we stand on, for this is where we fight, and where we exist. Everything else is just the gallery in the sky where we are not.”
“I do not understand your assumed conclusion.”
“We watch each other’s backs and figure it out as we go,” Davis said pithily.
Plausious looked at the Ren’mak and reached up to scratch its head. “I can now concur.”
“Many biologicals have thought the same and perished,” Apollo said warily. “You lack a full mission, and without it how do you plan to succeed against a metric you cannot scan other than by blind luck?”
“You’ve said you do not fully understand your mission, so how do you do it?”
“I did not say that. I said we cannot fully articulate it. Our purpose is to safeguard. That has always been clear. Where it leads is uncertain, but the present work to be done is not ambiguous. Biologicals, even the hive minds, operate erratically, and your one divining skill you admittedly turn away from in your preborn knowledge. If it is leading you to the Endgame, why would you diverge from it?”
Plausious glanced at Davis, then looked back up at the Gahana. “Because it doesn’t feel right.”
“On what is this feeling based?”
“A sense that transcends preborn knowledge and instinct. I can confirm it is real, but I cannot quantify it.”
“Duplicity,” Davis said, more to Plausious. “They’ve always been grossly dominant, and have probably never been in a position to be lied to.”
“We have heard many lies from biologicals,” Apollo clarified.
“But your knowledge was superior. You didn’t have to trust them, and have that trust betrayed. We both have. And once you realize you’ve been manipulated, you never forget that feeling. And if you were spawned into a devastated galaxy, I’m also starting to get the feeling the Endgame might lead to our doom rather than help us survive it.”
“Destroy the toxicity and we will help you survive.”
“It’s on my to-do list,” Davis promised. “Right now the most I can hope to get is a decent picture of the object.”
“I can do it,” Plausious said firmly, staring at Apollo. “But I won’t. The best chance we have of survival is to play dumb and secure our footholds. Taking down that generator and releasing you would send a signal to whoever put it there, and if it is to deny any future synthoid races from spawning, they will monitor it and replace it…as well as coming to find whoever or whatever took it down. We have to pretend we don’t
