Ten days.

Andora groaned within the Network, feeling aches she never knew existed within her digital consciousness.

Her obsidian orb, deep beneath the rousing Citadel and within the virtual mindscape, sighed as she metaphorically stretched her limbs, pausing for a few seconds to reassess the situation.

Ten days of arduous work doing something she despised utterly and contemptuously—administration and logistics.

Numbers, spreadsheets, data packets, galactic map projections, routes, graph after graph, timetables, ship manifests, design work, design rework, liaising with the Third Fleet, repairing and upgrading the Third Fleet, and everything foul thing that threatened to gnaw at her mind with anxiety.

A feeling borne from a need to prepare for the worst.

Was it enough? What else did they need? How will they make it to the other side of civilized space?

Thoughts such as these vexed Andora, her Overseers, and the planners of the Third Fleet. She forgot how tedious meetings were with organics.

Meetings with her Overseers sped away efficiently and effectively. Among them, Luna massively assisted her in combing through every little detail to extend their probability of success.

Conversations between the two AIs happened quickly in a cold, analytical, and surgical manner.

But the times she had to speak with Tov and his people made her recall the… inadequacies of conversing with those having a slower mind.

Memories of human bureaucrats, business magnates, military commanders, the media, and the public pounded the front of her head. She shivered, remembering the fake smile and interested look she plastered across her face when those people droned about human-android relations and her personal life, of all things.

Sinking in like hooks to her brain, they annoyed her to her core.

Those moments numbed her mind with droning inanity, but at the very least, those times with humans didn’t carry the weight of their survival.

Andora winced, feeling the losses, the empty nodes, the depleted stores of ammunition, supplies, and war assets.

She looked through her assets again at the automated drones patrolling the Inner Zone, casting a protective net over their battered lines. She frowned in displeasure, unable to fault anyone but herself.

Her subordinates did their best, one nearly paying the ultimate price.

Luna, Mars, and Jupiter formed twelve Battlegroups in what they’re coining as the Last Battle of Sol. Those small fleets, each denoted by a month, comprised the entirety of her forces, excluding the Overseer’s fleets and the reserves on Earth.

From those twelve, Andora managed to reorganize the remnants of the grueling battle into three combat-capable groups.

Three.

Of which they had to undergo significant rearmament and repairs.

Andora wished to vent her frustration but found few targets to direct her ire, settling with preparing a few more gifts for their new prisoner.

At the very least, they scavenged the hollow hulls of their destroyed war machines and used them to further the capabilities of what they had—switching from quantity to quality.

“Luna,” Andora summoned, and the Overseer in her silver avatar instantly zipped toward her. The Sub-AI, her second-in-command and oldest among her fragments, orbited Andora’s colossal manifestation.

“Yes, Eldest,” the formal, polite, and monotone voice of Luna greeted.

Andora felt the Overseer’s background thoughts still in the constant grind to keep everything on schedule.

“Report,” Andora commanded, pausing before adding, “Please.”

Luna raised her brow, adjusting her circular glasses with her dainty fingers. “Is that necessary?”

“Humor me, Luna. I want your opinion on our assembled force,” Andora spoke, summoning her humanoid avatar in front of her second. Light blue skin covered in a feminine jumpsuit and jet-black hair tied to a neat bun shone under the light of the Network.

Yet, the silver Overseer pursed her lips.

Andora felt her confusion and discomfort. In truth, she did know it all, but in an attempt to be more… personal, she felt it necessary to try despite her omniscience within her domain.

Perhaps doing it with the fragment that initially personified her surgical, machine-like precision and efficiency-above-all nature wasn’t the best person to start.

Andora sighed, awkwardly smiling as she patted Luna’s shoulder, who only appeared more uncomfortable with her furrowed brows. She coughed, waving for the Overseer to speak.

“Very well,” Luna muttered, wiping away the emotion on her grey face. “If that is to your wish.”

“It is, begin,” Andora uttered as her eyes looked to the assembled nodes. Luna pulled up a group, appearing before them like a constellation, some big, many tiny, and everything in between. All were connected to the most prominent light, which was connected to Andora.

She could interface with the smaller assets, but a central controller lifted some of the weight from her mind.

Luna propped up her glasses as she spoke, “Our forward assets, which you’ve named Battlegroup Mictlan, stand ready in orbit around Earth.”

Andora hummed at the sight of their vanguard and every vessel’s specification.

“As a result of our reorganization, it comprises two battlecruisers, eight destroyers, and twenty frigates refitted with the best sensors available. Leading Mictlan is the superheavy carrier, Xolotl,” Luna answered. “Nothing has changed apart from last-minute improvements. Each has been fitted with the experimental psi-barriers based on the Pneuma Bulwark Emitters, though their efficacy is debatable without the presence of a psionic.”

Andora sighed, “I expected as much. Recordings lack soul, as Volantesh said. Let’s hope we don’t have a repeat of what happened then,” she scowled, recalling how their uninvited guest cut her off from much of her forces.

She looked back to the superheavy carrier. The class was cheaper and smaller than a battleship-sized carrier like Luna’s Xerxes but more capable in all aspects than a typical carrier. This monster class acted as the flagship and alpha of this pack of drone vessels.

The Xolotl possessed a light frame, making her remarkably fast but still managing to host its legions of dronefighters. She was also fitted with robust sensors and control apparatuses to facilitate the Battlegroup command better.

It had a typical design, uninspired apart from its black, gold, and emerald-colored hull.

Mictlan would act as the probe for their combined armada, the first into the next system, ready to relay what lay ahead and serving as the mother for the far-reaching scout vessels that would keep an eye over all the solar systems ahead of them.

Expendable in the worst-case scenario.

“Our rear guard is Battlegroup Mag Mell, led by the Tethra, a superheavy cruiser-slash-industrial vessel. The same composition as Mictlan apart from the extra two frigates,” Luna reported.

Andora looked to the second group of nodes; their purpose was self-explanatory, ensuring their rear had enough buffer for whatever followed in their wake, also acting as eyes for the places they left behind.

Tethra, colored in tans and black, was a capable superheavy cruiser, but as Luna mentioned, it also acted as an industrial vessel set to manufacture one thing.

Mines, lots and lots of mines. A plethora of little presents armed with a menagerie of lethal packages from nuclear payloads, plasma, and grey goo to experimental warheads like monomolecular wire nets and condensed gas canisters capable of creating a short-lived cosmic storm.

Andora smiled cruelly as she thought of the suffering it would inflict on anyone following their backs with knives bared to stab. “Be sure to stock up on extra material,” she reminded, to which Luna noted silently, hearing the same comment a dozen times already.

“Finally, the Galla Fleet. Your last line of defense, Eldest,” Luna reported, bringing in a constellation of nodes double the amount of the previous group.

“Gugalanna and Nergal look hungry,” Andora smirked at the twin battleships. “Is Mars still grumpy that I took the Zhukov and the Caesar?”

“He is. Apparently, calling it the Five Greats doesn’t have the same ring to it, or some such,” Luna shrugged.

Just then, Andora heard the familiar grumble over the digital mindscape, the red Overseer expressing his grievance. He argued something about omens and bad luck about renaming vessels. She rolled her eyes at the comment but was unsurprised that a war nerd like Mars would say so.

She chuckled, “Those two Sentinel-class battleships were the weakest among his Greats. It was a miracle they only succumbed after the battle from their internal damages after being pushed over the limits for so long. They will make good defenders for my Citadel.”

She looked to the twins, stripped of their previous owner’s coloration and decorations and upgraded and refitted with the wrecks at their disposal.

Painted in gold and black, the battleships, much like their previous incarnations, were focused primarily on point defense. Countless secondary and tertiary guns covered her flanks and housed a powerful linked shield system, sharing the damage inflicted upon them.

And to appease her red Overseer, she made sure to throw a bottle of wine or whatever humans did to purge the warships of their old names; she couldn’t bother herself to remember, and Mars could do whatever he wanted if it bothered him.

“As for the rest of the Galla Fleet, four battlecruisers, sixteen destroyers, forty frigates, and the remaining gunships, corvettes, and small craft. Led, of course, by the Ereshkigal,” Luna finished.

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

Andora hummed, looking at her fleet and dreadnought. Pulled from the leftovers from the two Battlegroups, the entirety of the Earth Defense Net, and bits and pieces from her Overseer’s fleets, her Galla Fleet formed a pleasing phalanx whose spears gleamed under Sol’s light, thirsty for Starless blood.

But then she remembered what she once commanded. A far cry from the peak of her strength when all her Sub-AIs were present. Then bit by bit, year by year, loss after loss…

“This is it,” Andora muttered, the culmination of her efforts in defending this graveyard she called home—unwilling to let go. Not yet.

She looked at Luna, and peered into her second’s twin silver eyes. “How are you? How is everyone?”

For a moment, Luna widened her eyes at Andora’s question before settling her expression. She hummed, taking out her handkerchief and covering her mouth. “I am fine; nothing has changed, and I am ready to continue serving. My minor assets are depleted, but more vital warships like the Xerxes and Gilgamesh are as close to pristine as they can be. I have moved my Nexus to the Ozymandias and completely adjusted to my new abode.”

Andora nodded mutedly. By necessity, her Overseers had to move from their bunkers. The Ozymandias, Luna’s mobile fortress and jokingly referred to as her dreadnought by her siblings regarding the silver Overseer’s disdain for the ship class and the Ozy’s smaller size compared to the Bucephalus and the lost Ultimatum.

“Mars is similarly settled in his mobile fortress and has begun shutdown procedures of Olympus Mons. His fleet is currently making its approach to Earth. If you’ve noticed, he is… rather quiet these days,” Luna muttered.

She did notice that ever since one of their own nearly sacrificed his life, Mars had retreated to his shell, only replying quietly over two weeks since Andora and the Zolann’tono left to rescue Jupiter.

In truth, taking the Zhukov and Caesar so blatantly was more to elicit some response from the red Overseer.

“Venus and Mercury—” Luna continued before being cut off by Andora.

“Are making themselves home within my Citadel. It’ll be nice to have some roommates this time around,” Andora finished for her second-in-command. She drifted her attention to the two non-combat Sub-AIs.

Both of them had proven themselves capable commanders in their rights, and though they requested to take command of Battlgroups Mictlan and Mag Mell, Andora was not quite ready to approve of their request, squashing their dreams for a Venus and Mercury Fleet, for now.

Still, she allowed them to commandeer the Gugalanna and the Nergal when the situation arose.

“And as for Jupiter…” Luna paused, her gaze drifting to the weak blue light that huddled close to the Third Fleet. She sighed, continuing, “His fleet is destroyed, with his dreadnought being the only surviving asset. We finished stripping the Buddha’s Palm for parts to repair the Will of Sisyphus and upgrade the Zolann’tono. We’ll have to continue the reconstruction on the go, but she’s space-worthy.”

“And how is he…?” Andora muttered, recalling his Nexus's scorched and dented state after they pried him out of his disintegrating fortress, saving the Overseer from being consumed by that unstable, gluttonous maw.

Luna sighed, her lips pressed tightly. “He’s awake at least, but he still hasn’t relinked with the Network.”

“Give him space,” Andora told her second. “He’ll come home eventually. Maybe some time with Tov and his people will do him some good. I know it did for me… I think…”

She turned her attention to her new allies. She recalled the days before their arrival, between long bouts of hibernation of sweet nothing. A routine day-by-day of systematic slaughter, tallying more vermin kills to her board, unable to do anything but keep the stalemate going.

The arrival of the alien expedition changed everything. They disrupted her slow march toward death and opened festering scars built atop layers of rooted traumas. It nearly broke her, causing her to lose the ability to command her forces without addressing the glaring symptoms of her fragile psyche.

She, Tov, and a strange companion in the form of a digital ghost echoing a brother who merged with countless other android minds for her gestalt rebirth. A lingering vestige of solid memories and emotion, latching onto reality, refusing to be absorbed into her mental soup.

Echo, right now, she could feel him, a tiny dot within her vast mind, gathering entities like himself in the hopes of addressing the deeper problems they couldn’t fix through simple deletion or incarceration.

Ultimately, she and Tov emerged to a dogged resistance by her Overseers and the Third Fleet.

But an insidious, petty part of herself wailed and complained like an incessant gnat, seeking to pin the blame on easy targets, people who wrenched out her buried emotions and annoyed her with the snail’s pace at which they worked.

Andora shook her head from the faint throbbing pulsing from the Central Nexus. She couldn’t fault them. The Third Fleet earnestly worked with her, and their intellects and cranial implants surged on overdrive, trying to keep up with her.

And everything moved at a snail’s pace compared to her.

At the very least, Tov and his extensive list of administrators, captains, commanders, and other leading personnel focused on their people and fleet. She was willing to bet they’d suffer an aneurysm trying to bring to heel the apparatus that was the Sol Defense Network’s evacuation process.

She had to adjust whenever coordinating with the Third Fleet. After over a century of dealing with the cold organization of her assets, she found that speaking and working with people again sparked a paradox of emotions within.

Joy and irritation. One fueled by nostalgia, the other by a glaring power imbalance.

Andora sighed. She embraced it all—finding pleasure in the simplicity of it all.

“Ironic…” she mumbled to herself within the Network. She thought such a thing only applied to logic, but the insertion of emotion bulldozed through the constant weighing scales she’d grown used to.

She thought back to her second-in-command, looking through the digital mindscape and seeing the silver orb of light casting her net over her assets, moving, adjusting, canceling, and approving, constantly juggling countless variables, drawing up thousands of predicted outcomes, and simulating the absolute best course of action.

A rat race for perfection, pristine, unshakeable, and impossible to achieve in their timeframe.

Tov and his people reminded her of a different path built on trust, instinct, and a bit of faith.

It was messy, but she was slowly warming up to it all. If only the situation hadn’t slowly looped a noose around their necks, Andora would have enjoyed it.

Then, a prominent notification appeared before her, signaling a vital step of their evacuation plan. She turned to her second, nodding.

In a split-second, Andora shifted her view from the digital mindscape, looking back to the ruined Earth.

The planet where she was born appeared hollow to her eyes, devoid of the memories she cherished, all of which were now ferried to the South Pole.

Trains, boats, and shuttles all carried things she deemed essential to preserve, last-minute pieces of memorabilia she missed after a century of scouring the world. There was little else. She couldn’t take the slagged remains of the Eiffel Tower or the crumbled chunks of the Statue of Liberty.

Only pieces. Proof of their existence, edifices of humanity’s mark on this universe, housed beside the rest of their history and culture within her Citadel.

The remaining cargo consisted primarily of metal and raw goods, a last attempt to strip the planet of value.

Antarctica, barren of ice and snow after a century of war, shook with the hordes of machines swarming its landscape.

Laser drillers, cargo haulers, and other construction drones worked overtime to ready the coming ascension. They cracked, bored, and shaved away the ground, lifting away chunks of rock and stone, forming a trench that encircled a ruined city, one that sunk deeper and deeper into the Earth, approaching sites where explosives can be planted and detonated in a controlled manner.

Massive sections of New Eden’s rubble were cleared away for bunker emplacements, structural reinforcements, and layers of molten metal. The process neared completion but would continue to be outfitted as they traveled.

Andora’s drones swept more of the city clean, using what valuable goods there were as construction materials or storing them as supplies. She felt a pang of sorrow at the sight before reminding herself of the necessity of it all.

“The city would crumble to dust upon liftoff anyway,” she sighed. “Might as well make the most of it.”

The few Juggernaut Crawlers settled into their new homes as primary weapon hardpoints, drones buzzing around and fusing the gargantuan war machines in place. Their guns swiveled from their mounts, the metal beasts scanning the horizon and the skies for threats.

Andora winced, wishing she had fleshed out the Final Contingency instead of writing it down for the sake of it.

“I should have put more thought into this,” muttered Andora with a grimace, finding multiple faults in the process and the ad hoc measures they made on the fly.

Luna shook her head, “It was understandable at the time. Victory was a… near-impossibility without intelligence on the enemy. Evacuation seemed pointless.”

“What’s done is done. We’ll have to make do,” Andora sighed as she and Luna drifted their gazes down into the Citadel proper, passing through the kilometers of stone, concrete, and metal.

They ignored the massive library of humanity's remains and the cold facility housing the Starfallen, and eventually, through thick cables and pipes, they stopped.

With a thought, Andora summoned her android shell to a dark room above her Central Nexus, Luna following along with her body teleporting beside her.

They stood before a house-sized rectangular prism at the chamber's center. The device thrummed as if a heart pulsed within. Lights lining its glossy frame flickered to life as various pipes attached to its base surged with coolant.

Sub-zero liquid metal rushed into the sleek CPU’s systems, combating the rising heat as the device resonated with its surroundings, spreading its influence on every nook and cranny.

“It’s finally time,” Andora whispered, feeling the intellect within reaching saturation, pushing against an invisible barrier marking the next stage of its evolution.

“We initiated its activation protocol right after you entered the ergosphere,” Luna reminded. “It is fortunate there has been no hiccups with the formation of its AI Matrix.”

“I try to be thorough. Even if the Final Contingency was an off-hand project, designing a new mind takes a special touch, and I was not going to be sloppy in that aspect,” Andora muttered.

Andora and Luna watched in anticipation at the birth of an AI.

“Still…” muttered Andora, reminding herself of its not-quite-sentience. Perhaps it would develop one naturally, but Andora refused to use the template she and her creator used to build her siblings.

A pulse washed over the Network like a breeze as its programming slotted into place. For a moment, memories of watching a dog giving birth to puppies entered Andora’s mind. The concept of children following suit and the image of her daughter’s face—

She shook her head fiercely, banishing the thought for now, especially with the presence of the two people who held her heart placed at the center of the Hospice Facility.

Andora returned to the awakening process before her, calming the torrent of emotions she tried to bottle down again.

After so long, the Final Contingency had taken its first real step, Andora feeling an eagerness she hadn’t felt in so long. A desire for the new. She didn’t care about what it lacked, only that she’d brought something to life instead of inflicting death.

She allowed herself a small smile.

“Come on, you’re almost there,” Andora whispered as she stepped forward, approaching the base of the massive device and placing a hand on the metal. “Don’t be afraid.”

Luna raised a brow toward her, something Andora ignored without an ounce of shame as she gave little boosts, coaxing the AI further. She imagined tapping on an eggshell as the creature within struggled to break free into a new, vibrant world.

Andora frowned momentarily, realizing what dark reality awaited it. She sighed, unable to see any other alternatives.

Bit by bit, byte by byte, and soon, enough data to fill scores of supercomputers surged from within the rectangular prism. The CPU housing the Citadel’s Seneschal AI glowed brighter and brighter until an ethereal layer popped, and a new node bloomed to life and solidified.

“Amazing,” Luna sighed admiringly, tilting her head to the side.

The AI attracted the attention of the other busy Overseers as the android shells of Mars, Mercury, and Luna teleported into the room, the gloom plastered on their faces momentarily buried away by an onset of curiosity.

“Is that…?” Venus whispered, her fingers covering her mouth as stars appeared in her eyes.

Mercury hummed, leaning forward to inspect the newcomer. “It’s been a while since we’ve had a new addition.”

Mars remained silent, content with observing.

Andora enjoyed the reactions from her Overseers, feeling a similar sensation as she watched her creation awaken completely.

Andora and Luna saw the new presence through the Network, a wobbly existence slowly merging into a blob of color and geometric shapes. It appeared to expand, almost stretching like a cat, metaphorically yawning as it prodded and perused its programming, function, and purpose.

It paused as it realized the presence of others.

Everyone held their breath, and Andora stared at the AI warmly. Soon enough, satisfied with what it found, the newborn digital existence spoke for the first time.

“IRKALLA, OPERATIONAL,” the vaguely feminine and robotic voice of Andora’s fortress echoed throughout the Network.

“Behold, the Seneschal of humanity’s last and greatest fortress,” Andora smirked, swiping her hand toward Irkalla like a host presenting her next performer.

Adjusting the frame of her glasses with interest, Luna whispered, “And so, the underworld rises,”

Within the Network, the Overseers approached the new light with boundless curiosity overshadowed by Irkalla’s own.