Atlas and his Ship stood on the bridge of a spacecraft parked in the Titan system. They were overlooking the utter destruction that was the ring.

Atlas had expected his plan of overloading the Starnet to work. But it hadn’t. He assumed it was because the Atua were very adept at hacking. They had very deep knowledge of the systems on Titan. Atlas had no idea how they had gotten in, but his current running theory was the Atua had already infected all the systems before. This was different from the previous attack that Atlas had destroyed. The Atua must have had multiple sleeper AIs just waiting to be switched on.

Crashing the Starnet did stop the Atua from sending any new instructions. Atlas assumed it was because they had AIs operating already, with complex goals they were moving toward.

Still, Atlas thought his theory about the Starnet had to be true. So he continued to have the bandwidth taken up by useless messages. He was now on a separate spacecraft that he had docked in the system. This had a completely different Starnet connection and so wasn’t impacted by his attempt to overload the one running on Titan.

Atlas could only guess, but it looked as though the death toll would be measured in the millions. And if the ring broke apart, he was confident it would mean a total wipeout of the population.

The ring was on the cusp of falling apart. Somehow the alien had taken over one of their defense turrets, which normally wouldn’t be an issue because they were fixed in place and had no way of pointing the weapon at itself. But the Atua solved this by completely detaching it from its housing. It was drifting out in space with thousands of eleph-ANTs being used to point the end of the laser weapon at a section of the ring.

And boy did that weapon make an impact. It had cut right through the daimond-infused shielding around the ring. It had also melted and deformed much of the surrounding structure. This on its own was a bad thing. But then, as more and more of the shell was cut into, the centrifugal force was stretching the small hole out and turning it into a giant gash.

Atlas knew there were people among all the debris that were unfortunate enough to make it out into space.

“I don’t see them slowing down the rotation, Ship. Are they getting our messages?”

“I haven’t had confirmation from them yet.”

“Keep the message on repeat; just keep broadcasting it until they respond.”

Atlas felt like the ring was in a precarious position. It looked like it was causing more and more self-inflicted damage. The spin on the ring was causing more additional damage than the laser weapon itself. Atlas knew the Atua knew exactly where to aim to cause maximum damage. They had fired right at one of the hidden joints, at an area that wouldn’t be noticeable unless you had the original blueprints of the ring.

Atlas began to worry that one more shot was one too many shots for the ring to take. “How many humans can we fit in here, Ship?”

“This wasn’t built to house humans.”

“But if we needed to. How many could we fit?”

Ship thought about it for a little while. “Maybe a few thousand. But we couldn’t hold them for long. We’d need to get the atmosphere from somewhere.”

Atlas pointed at where the hole in the ring was forming. “Let’s enter there and start pulling people out.”

“Are you sure? If that weapon fires while we’re entering, we might end up dead.”

“Anyone in that section of the ring will be dead soon if we don’t save them. I think the risk is worth it.”

Atlas felt the spacecraft move as they headed toward the target.

“That gun is firing at regular intervals,” Ship said. “If we move fast, we’ll get there right after the next shot.”

Atlas received a notification at the same time he witnessed the whole ring begin to slow down. He immediately began to see the pressure being put on the gap begin to ease and the two ends that were coming apart begin to close in on each other. “At least they’re finally slowing it down.”

“We’re being hailed by the head of the military,” Ship said, projecting a hologram of the leader in front of the two of them.

He was a stockily built man. He had a short military cut and stood like he had spent years standing at attention. He looked like he was in his pajamas though.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“Atlas, this is General Lemuel Bossman,” the older man on the hologram said. “Can you stop overloading the Starnet? It’s messing with our internal communication network.”

“Of course,” Atlas replied, looking at Ship, who nodded, evidently freeing up the bandwidth again. “Sorry, I thought that was how the Atua were hacking in.”

“We agree with your assessment. But it’s also impacting our rescue efforts. Do you have any other tricks up your sleeve for disrupting the Atua?”

“I know as much about this attack as you do, general.”

Atlas saw light coming off from the weapon again. Atlas assumed it was about to begin firing once more. It felt a little too soon; the weapon had only just finished its last shot.

Atlas turned his head and saw the light wasn’t coming from the head of the laser but the base. Then he realized it was an explosion. All the lights around it switched off at that point.

General Bossman looked to the left of himself, as if he was communicating with someone off-screen. “We’ve just had confirmation the weapon the Atua were using is completely offline now.

“Do they have access to any other lasers?”

“If they could hack into this one, they’ll be able to hack into any of them. I’ve got my team entering all the manual-control centers and disarming them one by one.”

“Good.”

“Atlas, can you look into how they hacked us and find a way to stop them?”

“I can tell you now, they built this back door a long, long time ago. I think we’ll have to assume they have access to all our systems.”

Lemuel Bossman looked down toward his phone. “Did you get a message?”

Atlas got the ping too. Ship pulled up another separate projection next to Bossman.

It was PDB, the original Atua that they’d met. It was a prerecorded message.

Atlas nodded and Ship played the recording.

“I consider this matter concluded,” PBD said. There was a snarling as the alien looked directly into the camera. “Do not return to our planet.”

There was no preamble. No long-winded speech. But Atlas knew there was a lot of threat in that message. Atlas knew that PBD had a very good grasp of human psychology. He knew that this message would be analyzed and broadcast to the public all over the galaxy. Atlas knew that the nonchalant nature of the message conveyed much more than any long threat could have.

That message said that punishing humans was beneath them and that they would do worse if humans tried to retaliate.

That message would cause fear in everyone.

Atlas didn’t have a moment to analyze the message further though, as they’d just touched down.

“General, we’re going to help rescue some people,” Ship said before closing the projection. “Let us know if you need anything else.”

The place was like a war zone. Buildings had toppled over as the space vibrated and moved. Sections of the walls had fallen down and acted like boulders crashing into things. Because the whole ring was moving at the same time, it acted like a pinball machine and caused the massive chunks of walls to bounce around, causing more damage.

The air was full of cries for help, people screaming for their loved ones. The air was thin too, as more and more gas escaped.

“Send out all our ANTs,” Atlas ordered. “Get everyone here or to one of the emergency exits.”

Ship was already doing that. Ship was directing ANTs to carry people with missing limbs and serious injuries out of harm’s way. They didn’t have medical facilities to help anyone either.

“Atlas, I’ve got our two onboard fabricators churning out medical equipment. But we’re not equipped to help anyone with a serious injury.”

“Let’s just save as many people as we can.”

Atlas was running into one of the nearby buildings. It had been crushed by a falling tree. He thought he heard a noise coming from it.

He forced his way through the half-broken door and made his way toward the sounds. It was a woman. She was screaming for help.

“Are you hurt?” Atlas asked as he got closer.

“I’m stuck. I can’t get out,” he heard her say in a panicked voice.

Atlas saw that the tree had landed right on top of the door to the room she was in. It meant she wasn’t able to open it. By the looks of things, she was trapped inside of a bathroom.

Atlas used his electronic muscles to break the giant trunk and move it out of the way.

Atlas opened the door, and the woman smiled at him. She looked to be her twenties.

“Are you all right?” Atlas asked.

She collapsed and fell to the ground.

Atlas raced forward to catch her. He wondered what had happened. Then he analyzed the air and realized the oxygen was thinning quickly. There must have been a bigger breach in the wall.

Atlas picked her up and raced her as quickly as he could back to the spacecraft. He knew that brain damage could occur quite quickly once a person was oxygen deprived.

Making it to the rocket, he grabbed one of the small oxygen tanks from the ANTs that were handing them out. Then he placed her down on the metal floor, in a clear space. His ship was full of injured people.

Atlas felt a wave of emotion run over him. Anger. He wanted to kill the Atua. But first he had to save as many people as humanly possible.

Atlas went back and forth, searching and rescuing as many people as he could. They were using eleph-ANTs to ferry people out of this section of the ring. They were using ANTs to send out oxygen masks as quickly as their fabricators could produce them.

Everything was go go go. Until it wasn’t. General Lemuel Bossman called Atlas on a private line.

“I don’t know how to say this, Atlas. We’ve had confirmation that Icarus was in that laser turret when it blew up. He saved us, but that version of him is gone. I’m sorry.”

Atlas couldn’t think.

Everything was swimming around Atlas’s head.

Everything went dark.

He knew on the surface that Icarus wasn’t truly gone. He knew he had a backup protocol. He knew a version of Icarus would come back. But it wouldn’t be his Icarus. It wouldn’t be the one he’d spent months traveling around the planet with. The new Icarus wouldn’t have the shared experiences and memories. It would be Icarus. But it wouldn’t be Icarus.

Atlas’s vision went dark.

For a moment Atlas could think again. Then he couldn’t.

“—las.”

Atlas wondered who’s voice he was hearing.

His face became wet.

“At—”

He could hear Ship’s voice out in the distance.

He wished it was Icarus’s voice.

An emotional scar he didn’t know was there reopened. He missed Icarus. He also began to miss his first child—Atreus.

He closed his eyes.

But the pain got louder.

He opened his eyes and couldn’t see a thing.