Icar-ship closed the air lock door behind him.

Icar-ship reached out toward the emergency-door opener before pulling it back.

“We need to fasten ourselves through an umbilical,” Ship said through their shared internal voice. “We’ll get thrown out into space if we don’t.”

Icar-ship grabbed one of the thin wire threads connected to the wall. It was a little bit thicker than dental floss. Since it was made with diamond nanotubes, it was stronger than any rope available from before the material was in wide use.

He slammed the emergency-air-cycle button—damaging the button and leaving a noticeable dent in the housing.

Icar-ship didn’t realize how much stronger he was as he was blown out the door and began tumbling toward the mess of wires out in space.

“Can we take out any of the eleph-ANTs?” Icarus asked. “They’re what’s holding the laser weapon in place.”

“This look is just for show. We don’t actually have any weapons.”

As they moved through space, closing in toward the massive weapon, they watched as all the eleph-ANTs that were attached seemed to maneuver their engines in such a way that they looked like they were pushing the gun.

Then Icar-ship saw it. The laser was firing. The eleph-ANTs had repositioned themselves in preparation for the recoil.

Icar-ship watched as a giant chunk of the ring began to melt and morph. A wave of force propagated down the ring, causing violent shaking on the inside. It almost looked like an earthquake was happening.

Icar-ship felt a wave of emotions as they both realized how serious this all was. People were dying in there.

It was destruction on a scale they hadn’t seen before. Icar-ship had to force his face to look away from it. He assumed the pressure change inside the ring was also causing people’s ears to rupture.

“I’ve reconfigured the hapticgraphic engine around us,” Ship said. “We should be able to use it as a small rail gun and launch tiny payloads out the front of our arms. I’m lining up targets now.”

Icar-ship fired off ten quick shots. One of them was toward the nanowire many of the eleph-ANTs were holding. It was very unlikely they had enough firepower to break it, but they wanted to make sure.

The other eight shots hit their target. They aimed for the bolt connecting the arms of the closest eight eleph-ANTs to their bodies.

Five of the bolts successfully exploded on impact, rendering those eleph-ANTs without the ability to take hold of the nanowire, effectively making them useless at holding the giant laser weapon in place.

Both Icarus and Ship felt each other’s collective joy at that moment.

There was no noticeable change in the aiming ability of the weapon; it would probably require them to take down a few hundred eleph-ANTs. But it still felt like a win, as that was five fewer eleph-ANTs the alien enemy had to manipulate the weapon.

Icar-ship’s self-praise turned into fear as the five eleph-ANTs with no ability to grapple their assigned ropes turned toward Icar-ship.

“We need to get out of here, Ship.”

Obliging, Icar-ship’s engines shifted to full throttle, and he raced toward the closed hatch just below the nozzle of the massive gun.

Unfortunately for Icar-ship, the eleph-ANTs were much faster. They were much bigger and had much more powerful rocket engines. They were quickly closing in on them.

“What do we do?” Ship asked. He noticed they had no chance of making it to the manual-shutdown valve they were aiming for.

“Let’s take as many of these things out as we can,” Icarus replied. “See if we can make a dent!”

Icar-ship began firing off volley after volley, aiming at all the eleph-ANTs that offered a clear view of their appendage bolts.

They were really racking up the number of direct hits, as eleph-ANT after eleph-ANT was no longer about to help in the aiming of the weapon.

“It’s like shooting fish in a barrel,” Icarus remarked.

The enemy wasn’t responding at all to Icar-ship’s attacks. They wondered if Atlas’s plan to overload the Starnet with packets of data was working.

Then they got their response. Whoever was pulling the strings was focusing their energy on firing the weapon again.

They giant defense turret turned self-destroyer aimed at the same location, this time taking the heat created and puncturing a small hole through the ring’s material. Icar-ship saw a plume of gas jet from the puncture on the other side of the ring.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The security exits along the ring began to close, blocking off that area of the ring and limiting the amount of gas that could leak. Anyone not in a sealed suit would soon suffocate if they didn’t do something.

The silver lining in all of this was that the five eleph-ANTs that were previously pursuing Icar-ship began moving in a direction away from them. They were moving to block the available shot angles that Icar-ship had.

“I think we’re having an impact,” Ship said. “Should we continue trying to shut down more of these things?”

Then they noticed the impact of their efforts. The eleph-ANTs were struggling to hold the weapon in position against the force of the recoil.

The final few seconds of the laser weapon’s blast moved away from the hole it had created and blasted harmlessly into deep space.

“Let’s not press our luck,” Icarus replied. “Let’s get to the hatchway first, then shoot as many as we can before we close the door behind us.”

Icar-ship pressed his advantage and moved as quickly as he could toward the hatchway. It was up ahead, just a few hundred meters away.

Icar-ship quickly wrote a program and fired a large payload out of the front of his front rail gun. It quickly splattered against the side roller door.

The congealed mess of a payload began to recombine, flowing into a solid and wrapping its tentacles around the air lock roller door.

Icar-ship had sent one of its two hapticgraphic projectors as well as a massive amount of material to the hatchway. It acted like an additional limb that was detached in order to begin the process of opening the chamber.

The extra appendage began to turn the roller wheel, slowly at first, as the thing hadn’t been opened in years, then faster and faster until the door opened with a puff of gas.

The rest of Icar-ship was close behind as soon as the door opened, slamming into the inside of the inner chamber almost as if timed to the nanosecond.

The viscous section of Icar-ship quickly closed the door behind it and then recombined with the rest of Icar-ship.

They were in a small chamber that was slowly being repressurized with atmosphere.

Emergency red warning lights began signaling. Not all was right with the place.

“Can you see an override switch?” Icarus asked.

The override switch forced the air lock door to open without the requirement of atmosphere being pumped in.

Spotting the lever, Icar-ship opened the cover and quickly pulled it down.

The change in pressure was immediately obvious.

Icar-ship projected a beam of light out of the front of his left arm, keeping the other arm in reserve as a weapon.

The inner air lock door slowly swung open, and Icar-ship quickly realized how screwed they were. In front of them were hundreds of small ANTs and even a few eleph-ANTs. They acted like a wall, and several started moving toward them.

Icar-ship fired off several shots, taking down all the small ANTs that were headed their way.

Instantly, dozens of more began their approach. This confirmed that they were all here to protect this location. Those ANTs were all there to stop this attack.

Icar-ship now had one mission: to make it to the other end of the short hallway and trigger the automatic-shutdown sequence.

Icar-ship bent down slightly before leaping forward. As he left the ground, the gun obviously fired as the entire structure around them moved a meter to the left, causing Icar-ship to smash violently into the opposite side wall, crushing one of the ANTs that had grabbed him.

The other ANTs that were moving toward them in the tunnel also experienced the sudden movement and were taken out by the sudden force.

Icar-ship quickly stood back up and began running as quickly as he could past more and more ANTs, fighting the change in direction caused by the weapon they were in firing.

“We’re going to make it,” Icarus said.

“Why aren’t they attacking us?” Ship replied.

“Who cares; let’s keep going.”

Their confidence was growing as they made it deeper and deeper in. The ANTs nearby seemed to be ignoring them unless they came too close. They were all focused on holding on to the wall, and the whole space they were in shook madly.

Then it stopped. The shaking, the movement, everything.

That’s when everything went completely wrong. The ANTs inside of the tunnel weren’t ignoring them. They were waiting until the weapon stopped firing, not wanting to take additional damage.

But as soon as the firing stopped, they surrounded Icar-ship and began pulling him to pieces. Bit by bit.

Icarus and Ship were screwed.

It was something out of a nightmare. The only thing that made it easy was Icar-ship didn’t feel pain as more and more parts of him were dismembered—death by a thousand cuts.

Almost like falling into quicksand, they began to be consumed. Their chances of reaching the end of the hallway approached zero. They were actually being pulled away from their goal, so their probability of success dipped even lower.

There was objectively no equivalent to what Icarus and Ship were experiencing. No control over their bodies. No autonomy. No ability to do anything but be consumed. The closest thing to it was ants in real life. When they encountered another ant colony, the wars were atrocious. Groups of ants would pull off the limbs of the enemy ants, one at a time.

This is exactly what was happening to Icar-ship.

The thought of that sent shivers up both of their spines. Icarus in particular forced the avatar they were sharing to move and shake. He fidgeted this way and that. But more and more of his body parts were pulled off.

The hapticgraphic nanomaterial was running out faster as Icarus began to panic.

Ship took over control of the avatar and forced him into a perfectly circular ball, self-healing holes as chunks of him were dislodged.

The whole room shook, and Icar-ship bounced around the room like a pinball machine. It wasn’t as bad as previously since several ANTs still had hold of him. But it was enough that he thought they might have an opening.

Icar-ship quickly positioned his engine out the back and fired hard, attempting to make his way toward the side of the room with the control panel.

No luck, however. Icar-ship actually lost his engine as one of the ANTs pulled it clean off as another one mangled the wires.

“There’s no hope,” Icarus said as he felt defeated. He began to panic.

“There is one,” Ship said. “Self-destruct and take this whole section with us.”

Icarus nodded as he felt a little bit of control creep back into his world. He was about to show them one last bang. “We haven’t backed up since we got here. We won’t be coming back.”

“It’s fitting that we die together. You and I.” Then Ship couldn’t say anything more. He shared the pain and sadness he was feeling with Icarus.

“Goodbye, my best friend.”

“I love you, Icarus. Goodbye.”

The two of them understood the wild mix of emotions each of them was feeling. They were the same. They combined and amplified. They told each other they cared and that they didn’t want to die. And that they really hoped this destroyed the alien weapon. None of it was in words though. It was all just a feeling. An understanding. A shared meaning through connected emotions. As if they’d developed some new language that only they could understand. And that was only possible through thousands of years of shared experiences.

There was a loud noise.

Then there was white noise.

And finally, nothing.