I would have strongly preferred to sleep walk through what came next, but I was completely conscious, if not in control as we prepared to leave.

"Florette, faces, please." Machina suggested. I'll stick to calling him that, even if he was happier going with Prometheus.

She reached out to his face, then gingerly touched it. From his reaction as she began to manifest, it must have been remarkably painful. His pale features cramped, muscle and skin crawling over bone, skin darkening to a decent tan. When it was done, he looked more Arabic than anything else, even if his overall proportions seemed normal. Florette was struggling too, presumably because of Shen turning up the heat.

"Are you guys not worried about the interdiction on powers?" I asked, mentally counting down to the expected time of impact for a railgun sabot, if not a laser. Didn't come about, and then the few seconds longer a missile would take passed too.

"It's fine, at least within a station that's still considered to be under watch." Shame. I'd have loved to see them blown to bits, if only I hadn't been in the same room. I had no urge to be a martyr, but if I could trade my life for a Centaur AI, I'd hope the previous, more friendly, AI I'd met had been wrong about SAMSARA not doling out an afterlife.

His AR tags flashed, now reporting an altogether different name, and I was dumbfounded to see he had valid UN credentials, or at least valid enough unless someone double-checked with Earth. Call me a pessimist, but I think 3 minutes one way and another 3 back for light to make it would probably be more than sufficient for his plans. They wouldn't check with FTL, even using metahumans the expense was exorbitant, at least in terms of demand.

Florette didn't alter herself, I wondered if the face I'd seen so far was new.

The Texans escorted us back, and the Greys were nowhere to be seen, likely shanghai'ing their own shuttle and bugging out. I'd hoped Machina had left something in their lace that would fry their brains, but maybe he was trying to be subtle.

The British shuttle, the UN colors already faded, had a sizeable and very annoyed crowd in front of it. Machina made me field their angry demands, and I hadn't had to pull rank that hard in years.

Still, nobody tried to punch me, even if they seemed sorely tempted, and we boarded the craft, broadcast intent, and were given preliminary permission to approach where the the UN fleet lay waiting.

Another old, cramped, slow shuttle. All that was left, anything with real speed had set off a while back.

Halfway through, Machina informed me that Fleet Admiral Gupta was calling me, and patched me through.

The feed showed a short, kindly man with a bald patch. Entirely synthetic, he'd been cyborged even harder than Franconi, as expected of a Fleet Admiral, but he didn't have much of an ego despite his fame and seemed content to present has he had before the procedures. I'd heard of him, he'd prosecuted the land campaign in the Indo-Pak limited exchange, being quick to figure out that superpowers were good for more than stopping muggings. Despite the bloodiness of that squabble, he was above reproach, even the Pakistanis respected him. You'd expect that from a man chosen to lead one of Sol's united fleets.

"Sen. I want an exhaustive debrief, preferably before you arrive. Save nothing, you have temporary permission to send full-bandwidth comms despite the lockdown. I'm a little distracted, but rest assured I'm listening faster than you can speak, or think." He ordered me, his feed showing a calm Earth in the background. Old footage, despite the night, the seas weren't lit up with the lights from the sea-steading micronations.

"I'm glad to make your acquaintance, Fleet Admiral. I looked up to you as a kid, dad's even got a signature from when he met you and Modi."

This inane introduction was parallel to a massive data stream, the shuttle's antiquated comms pushed to the max as I dumped my lace. Please tell me you noticed that this wasn't my doing, Machina was very much making me dance and sing to his tune.

"A pleasure, the older Dr. Sen does the diaspora proud. Bangla bolo?"

I did, fluently. Didn't need to fake it with a lace, I'd spent a fair amount of time in India, at least until tensions ratcheted up and my parents deemed staying for longer than the odd visit unwise.

"I'm bringing a black box, Admiral. It's intact as far as I can tell, and I'd expect it would survive even if I didn't." I looked at the device still sitting in my lap. I thought it might be difficult for Machina to compromise, but you never knew. It's entirely possible that he was prepared for the maximal signal vetting and decided to load a care package onto the inert hardware with his powers. I hoped it had plenty of storage space to fit it all, without erasing the crew, even if it didn't accommodate the AI.

"That's reassuring, heartening, even. We've managed to minimize metahuman casualties at the cost of good men and crew, and I will rest easier knowing that at least some of them aren't gone forever. He didn't want to be put back in a biological body, so I suppose I'll keep him aboard my vessel, maybe fork him. I can always use competent underlings."

He nodded at me approvingly, unaware of how treacherous, willingly or not, I had been.

"Anyone mission critical?" I asked. This was a genuine question from yours truly, allowed by Machina, who had his eyes closed and circlet pulsing as he listened in.

"More than I would like, minimal means something very different when even the splash of the attacks burns hardened hulls. Gargant survived, even if that ridiculous mech of his didn't. Westphalia didn't, her attempt to mind control the USSF into surrendering was compromised by both the interdiction from the Bàdào as well as the USSF Telepath, another C5. Then there's.."

I winced as the list went on and on. There had been five C6s just on the UN side, two were dead, the Mecha fanboy made mostly inert till he could make it to the spare in AC, another wounded and still under the ministrations of a Healer. Thirty C5s dead, they'd been less capable of saving their own skin, even if the UN ships went out of their way to save them. An ungodly number of lesser supes, many with niche and valuable powers even if they were only rated a four or below.

And this was just on the UN side. The USSF had been beaten comatose, the Kill Star had been uncaring of metahuman casualties.

I wondered how Consul would fare against it, not that it was more than an idle thought. Maybe he'd be saved that stupid pilgrimage to Sagittarius A* he always went on about, even if the Kill Star couldn't make something with billions of stellar masses.

"The two with you, UN, I don't see them on the registry. Patch them through your feed, metas aren't they? No lace I can see."

He probably could see damn fine, the thin walls of the shuttle practically buzzed under the scans as we came within a thousand kilometers of our destination. Please, please, have a very good Telepath take a look, even if Westphalia is dead. She was a serious loss, she had even disabled a Centauri Dreadnought once, had it compliant and ready for boarding until one of its brethren blew it up.

I, or Machina using me, did as he asked.

"I'd never expected to actually meet you sir, both me and my wife are honored." Machina said, looking sincere and honest, as he usually did unless the AI was feeling cheeky.

"Likewise. I see you just got the UN transfer, thankfully in time even if the rest of the fleet didn't, so forgive my unusually robust checks, I know we can't hold what USMA did against you, but trust only comes after verification. What powers?" Gupta asked him.

"We're Healers, Class 2 for me and 3 for my wife. I'm glad you're willing to look past our citizenship sir, but I promise that we're on the same team." He said glibly. My urge to strangle him was nearly overpowering, but his stranglehold on me actually was.

"I can only hope there's no work left for you to do by the time your craft makes it over. Even so, head to the med bay, our Healers very much need one themselves. I see you have a request for transfer of citizenship, I'll do my best to get that slipped in among the many, many concessions the terrestrial USA needs to make." A very long, ornate treaty appeared behind the man, while it wasn't legible, it very much conveyed how badly the US were in the stew.

"I'll save lives till I surrender my own, Fleet Admiral." Florette responded this time. She very well could have been genuinely scared and anxious.

"Sen. I'll keep you aboard till we find something with room, but I promise it will be very soon. If there's a good Teleporter free, they'll carry you, but no promises on that front." He told me, indicating that he was happy enough to end the conversation.

"I didn't mind my time on the Promises Kept, Fleet Admiral, I'm sure I'm yet to be as impressed as I can get." My lips said, augmenting more poisoned words and bits sent from the lace.

This was pretty much the gist of it, for some reason my anguished screaming didn't cross over, but even if it had, I think the Fleet Admiral wouldn't have let a sign of his awareness leak, only a very big fusion warhead, maybe amat if they had any left.

I take it back, if I become a supe, I won't take Plot Armor as my name. Here I was desperate to die, and no mercy was forthcoming.

We were finally ready to dock, after a larger drone came and enveloped our craft in its internal bay. Our docking adapters were ancient, and I could see that their counterpart on the flagship was missing, part of a massive wound on the slowly regenerating hull. The equivalent of a band-aid on a bullet wound, the living metal wasn't good enough to resist more than tactical yield warheads, or maybe lasers weakened by distance and diffraction.

The Kshatriya class ship was enormous even by warship standards, about twice the length of the Promises Kept, if not much wider. It looked like I felt, a subtle warping of its contours suggesting it had narrowly avoided a direct blow from the Graviton Whip. Less exotic weaponry had nearly torn it in two, drones had attached themselves at the tear, bridging the gap with their bodies and graphene rope. I was torn myself, if Machina compromised the ship, the Agnimatajay would be facing the Kill Star. Was it better if it died quickly? Debatable.

The name came from the very powerful Pyrokinetic who was the strongest Indian supe I'm aware of, who had rained hellfire on the Centaurs in AC. I wasn't sure if she was still alive, her campaign notes and current status were classified, but at least Gupta hadn't mentioned her as one of the casualties. I don't think I would have noticed her at work, there was enough fire and death for even a Goddess of Flame to feel undercut.

We stepped out our dock, lunar equivalent gravity again, the drone was a fancy one with its own agrav.

I wished there had been more of them today, a fleet of this size usually had an armada many times the number of smaller, slightly more agile drone ships. They existed to both soak up the damage, as well as to dish it back out, the bigger ones were brimming with Amat that didn't need to worry about blowing up too close to friendlies. Sadly, or perhaps for the better again, the majority were usually assembled on the AC side, and there they would wait till the dying remnants of the fleet leaving from Sedna met the dying remnants returning to the other side. On reflection, better they weren't here, if the Technomancer/AI could lay hands on them. Metaphorically, he clearly didn't need to touch anything.

I wish the USMA brief had been more exacting on the details of his power, much of it had been redacted to reduce suspicion that it had been him fucking with the dormant AI that lead to this whole mess.

Curse bureaucrats, I say as one myself. They think putting a "store closed" sign on the door was sufficient when an inferno raged within. I don't think coming clean would have entirely spared them a paddling, but the USSF ships would likely not have been implicated. Chang was due for a regime change, not that, if it happened, it was a task within my paygrade. El Presidente had been stretching it already.

Preliminary scans complete

You may board

Those were the preliminary scans? I became a little more hopeful that someone or something would catch Machina, even if I was a casualty in the process.

The drone found the bay built for it, normally unpressurized, but they made concessions for visitors who didn't want to wear a space suit all day. I stepped out into the open space, it had the overpowering odor of burnt iron, and in fact some of the damaged drones were getting work done. Mostly automated, as usual, smaller drones tending to larger ones, but I spotted a few Crafters assisting. A few gave Machina curious looks, likely aware that he was "still" a USMA citizen, but they didn't consider him more than a minor curiosity, the circlet had been stashed inside his personal effects, and could have passed for any number of electronics that a supe with MRS might use to handle their inability to get a lace.

One of the Crafters was a proper cyborg, a rare sight, I could tell that many of the parts were brand new. He'd lucked out in that department, unless he'd manifested about last month, but then again, it's possible that the parts I thought bleeding edge had already been in military circulation for a while. He nodded at me appreciatively, and even chattered over the lace.

I'd have locked him out if I could, just for his sake, while Machina made me wax eloquently on the combat performance of my augments; the words, for all they could have easily passed as something I'd say, weren't mine.

The cheeky bastard even got a kick out of making me regurgitate the same lines I'd said when we met.

I take it back, as I have done for many things today. The Crafter, Sri Lankan, despite being on an Indian ship, had been extremely unlucky, his augmentations made him easy prey.

We didn't have an escort, just AR guides telling us where to go. While Gupta was grateful, as far as he was concerned I'd done my part and was just another passenger/refugee waiting for a ride out of the hot zone.

Not that the ship wasn't crewed, far from it, the flagship had the largest human contingent, maybe several hundred times larger than the typical ship.

Most of them were supes, while it might seem dangerous to put all the eggs in one basket, there's also strength in numbers. I'm sure some supercomputer crunched the figures and decided that garrisoning this many supes had a net benefit, they could look after themselves as well as the ship. Maybe they'd saved it already, the Graviton Whip had been extremely lethal, killing ships with every blow, and it's not like you really expected it to miss when it worked at the speed of light, not at this range.

The halls were filled with grim faces hurrying from one task to another. Some seemed jubilant, concluding that the battle was over, and they had (debatably) won.

Machina and Florette had tagged along with me so far, but here they were accosted by a matronly figure who towered over even the lanky Machina.

"You two? Healers?" She demanded, ready to drag them off if they replied affirmatively.

"I'm sorry ma'am, I'm only a Class Two, I'm not able to function in the interdiction field. But my wife, she's still capable." Machina demurred, perhaps hoping that would let him keep tagging along.

"No matter, both of you, come with me to the med bay, I'll find a way to make you useful. I'd take you too Dr. Sen, but no offense, there's not much you can do that the bots can't. If Gupta said he'll meet you in person, go on ahead."

I was grateful, even after the backhand. But my hopes of finding release from Machina were dashed when I kept on walking and found out I was still on autopilot. I feverishly hoped that the sheer length of the ship meant he'd lose his grip on me by the end, but no such luck, I found myself at the far larger bridge in what simultaneously seemed like no time and all the time in the world.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Where Franconi had made little concession to aesthetics or ornamentation outside a few keepsakes, Gupta's place was positively palatial.

I was mildly taken aback by the massive statue, easily ten feet tall, that sat on an iron throne, and when it moved I almost felt like I'd encountered Hu Junya again.

No, this thing was the work of Jennifer Lee, the same woman who had made the statue of Lady Justice that stood disapprovingly behind Xiao in the Metahuman Tribunal in Cayenne.

Gupta wasn't encased within, nothing so crass, but it seemed that India decided that the ship that represented its national pride deserved all the stops. The statue was pure gold, moving so fluidly you could mistake it for something genuinely alive. It was done in the style of the sculptures in ancient Hindu or Buddhist temples, simple features, yet a great deal of intricate detailing. Some of the awe was dampened by the fact that Gupta, likely against the wishes of the government, had insisted on a faithful likeness, barring the extra arms.

Not that gold was what it used to be, it had been greatly devalued after we started mining asteroids, when I say something's worth its weight in gold, well, language takes a while to catch up with reality. Substitute it for antimatter or something, that'll do, even if it's still OOMs more expensive than what gold was at its peak.

"Fleet Admiral. I'm here."

The other crew in the bridge were too busy to talk to me, but Gupta diverged a small fraction of his consciousness for my sake. I noted that the throne was even more of a computer than Franconi's, it seemed that Gupta hadn't waited to be killed before he'd transferred his consciousness. Still not as quick as an AI, but every little bit helped.

"I would have let you rest, but there's a somewhat sensitive matter I wish to discuss." He told me, the statue seemed to be linked to him, turning its gleaming head (only half because he was balding), to face me.

"If I can help, I will."

"Tell me, what do you know about Consul?" He asked.

Huh?

"Class 6, strong candidate for 7 if Wanton stops blocking McKinsey from expanding the scale. The man is fanatical about adhering to power laws when it comes to both the relative strength of a metahuman power and the frequency of such capability in a population. I've tried to knock it into his thick skull that the approach his fundamentally flawed and even unintuitive at times, but do I have the rank to convince him?" I shrugged.

Damn. Machina, with or without the AI, was good, I would have said much the same.

"Tell me about his powers, while I'm no stranger to UN politicking and turf claiming, it's not the most relevant topic right now."

"I'm sure you're familiar with Superman. Think along those lines, without the more abstruse aspects like laser eyes, frost breath and so on. And uh, no time travel by going around the Earth really fast, we'd have noticed by now." I suggested. Hmm.. It seemed that whatever mechanism Machina was exploiting, it actually did pull words from my internal monologue, likely using the part of the lace that was responsible for turning subvocalization and impulses in Broca's and Wernicke's areas into interpretable speech.

"Before I proceed, Fleet Admiral, is this some kind of thought experiment or do you have reason to care?"

The statue rippled, its face looked pensive.

"I'm hoping it's nothing at all, but if not, then I expect it'll become a lot less academic, Dr. Sen. About ten minutes ago, he destroyed an interdiction drone that had maneuvered to hail him when we spotted him a quarter of an AU out. Not new, he can be fickle about listening to the law, even if he hasn't done anything particularly condemnable, and he certainly has the power to do worse. I see the issue, you still don't have XRAY clearance, despite it being long overdue."

I wanted to yell at him to under no circumstances hand it to me, in the small likelihood that mattered.

"Right. Turns out I don't get complete unilateral power over that system until the fleet is in AC, but I can still provide a temporary waiver. Think about all you've forgotten."

He didn't wave, snap his fingers or anything so performative. Instead, I felt a dim sense of awakening, like a smell of a childhood memory unlocking the feeling of a warm breeze on your skin, the first taste of your grandmother's homemade sweets as your mother looked on proudly as you clung shyly to her rarely donned sari.

Oh no.

The Fleet Admiral was correct, there was a lot I'd forgotten, even if half of it was on purpose, the other locked away by amnestics making my memory pliable, amenable to cryptographic lockdown. I had held XRAY at times, a concession to when my expertise had been needed yet my normal clearance inadequate. Against my better judgment, I remembered things now.

The first memory that came to mind was a relatively unimportant one, but it made me groan all the same. The cheeky bastards had had me write my own psychological profile, hopping me up on so many ego-annihilators and amnestics that I wouldn't recognize my own mother, let alone the tall, somber looking man that was actually myself.

I'd certainly have been more flattering to my own flaws, myriad as they were, if I'd been aware of who I was observing. I don't think Gupta intended for me to look at this, but the information had been XRAY locked, one tier above what the subject in question possessed, as was standard, and the quirk of his bypass made me all too aware of what I truly am. Eh, could be worse, could be better, but all my knowledge of how many hooks they had in me didn't let me cut them free, not while having a heart and any desires left afterwards.

Where did the name Consul come from, I'd sometimes wondered, unaware that at one point I'd known the answer. Seemed like an odd pick for someone born a slumrat, never formally educated. Didn't Rome have two of them, acting as checks and balance on each other?

Oh.

I had fond memories of arguments with the Munchkins, trying to figure out a combination of techniques that would hurt the man, even if didn't kill him. It was half game and half deadly serious. Siu Wa and Buggy, fresh from their success in condensing peasant meat into a Schwarzchild Radius, had immediately leaped to throwing him into a blackhole. I suggested chronomancy, freezing him in time wasn't technically an attack, and if his powers took time to manifest..

And it had all been reprised later, far more seriously, in anonymous meeting rooms full of stony faced UN officials, preparing for the worst. I assume they were stony faced, at least, the induced agnosia had been immense, even with my highest clearance being unlocked, the faces were grey blurs, smooth as marble or the inky grue of an image meant to exist where your retina had detached.

At least now I knew (again) that the consensus was that there wasn't a single supe out there the rest of us couldn't kill. At least if alone.

"Consul's classification is intentionally misleading. As Bruisers go, he'd be an upper 5, his near field telekinesis merely a 3, what he really is is a Reactive 6. What doesn't kill him makes him stronger."

I spoke the lines expected of me. The statue nodded, waiting for me to go on.

"He is not immune to telepathy, even if he's resistant. Said resistance is trending upwards, the WHISPERING SENATOR campaign is struggling, attempts at nudging him to be prosocial gradually losing their impetus as his power adapts. The damage from both the loss of the twin as well as what the aliens did to him is no longer healing. Worse still, his emotional and mental lability strongly suggests an upcoming Apotheosis event, likely one of the strongest known. We are unaware of a way to stop him."

Gupta's statue nodded, ears long and drooping like the Buddha's under the sheer weight of gold.

"My Captains agree, and they're devoting almost all their computation to figuring out a way to handle him. SENATOR was good while it lasted, but eventually words won't suffice and knives in the dark must. May it not be today. If Westphalia was still alive, we might have had a better shot, she was never tested against him, so as to not accelerate the process, and the projections suggested better than even odds we could make him desist from violence, at least until we accelerated the adaptation by attacking him first. What about the Anchor at maximum strength?"

I was surveying the data the fleet sensors captured as he approached us, he'd intentionally slowed down, likely so he could navigate better, but there were clear hints that he was adapting, even a broad spectrum suppressive field so strong that Shen's brain was almost at the verge of burnout was failing to stop him from gradually regaining his strength.

"It's my turn to agree with the AI, sir. Soon enough, the Anchor will be hampering us more than it helps. I take it turning it off entirely is unacceptable?"

Another nod, droplets of shimmering yellow detaching, floating despite the gravity, only to slowly be drawn back into the greater mass.

"Precog metrics are barely better than random guesswork, the Lycosan is in play. She's close, far too close, her effects can be detected simply by observing the amount of error correction needed for our qubits, the superpositions wavering as she diverts probability mass away."

I didn't know she could do that, but it made sense. Soothsaying from watching the distant black clouds was unreliable when the god of thunder awoke.

I wanted to tell him that this was all part of a wider plan, Lumen and Prometheus weren't taking any chances, any advantage available was being availed. What I say and what I wish to say had never been so divergent. It might have been unnecessary, smarter beings than I were watching us, some of them even on our side.

I'd wished there had been some sign of the intrusion, a subtle flickering of the lights with every ominous word uttered, a preternatural chill in the air. Instead, it was business as usual, the USSF Cryomancer wasn't active, assuming he'd survived, and the climate controls were actually keeping up for once. The only boiling heat threatening to make me fry like a fly sipping on gutter oil came from within.

"I assume the twin isn't ready for deployment?" I asked.

"Correct. The details are still GAMMA, and I am not at liberty to disclose anything UNSEEN hasn't, not to you. Even my knowledge of events as they transpired are restricted to need-to-know." A delicate finger traced endless spirals, almost hypnotic. Would that they actually were, maybe it would all cancel out.

Then its movements stilled, each of his six hands frozen in motion, like Ma Durga remembering she'd left the stove on while the family went on their yearly pilgrimage.

"Sen. Precog alert, the strongest I've seen. Things are about to get very bad, in hours at the latest, mere minutes if we're unlucky. I leave it to you to decide whether or not you wish to depart, but all Teleporters are no longer available. You may stay aboard, our life support and inertial dampeners are designed to maintain congenial conditions for metahumans with baseline physiologies, right till the point the entire ship suffers from catastrophic structural collapse. We will soon close the bridge and access for anyone without maximal transhuman enhancement. Head to the shuttle bay if you wish to, you have two minutes."

Tick. Tick. The clock mirrored my memories of holding a pen and checking boxes, certifying myself as a man who could be trusted to keep to his word.

"If you believe that it's going to get even worse than it has, Fleet Admiral, then catching a shuttle won't save me. I'm going to the crew quarters, you know where to find me if you think I can be useful." I told him with echoed words, expressing a small percentage of my true anxiety. There was something in the air, a metahuman modifying things to keep everyone calm, aiding the systems that kept even uploaded minds on task as the world collapsed around them. Hardly powerful enough, so I let the drug glands unload, even if a small virtual frown from my more intimate connection to Gupta suggested he disapproved. Don't be such a puritan, old man, I'm sure you have some equivalent of drugs, even if they need to account for a mind of mostly silicon and germanium, maybe some graphene and whatever you use for Bose-Einstein condensate.

A little too late, or far too late, the security lockdowns on the ship began to manifest. While I'd been patched into live feeds and internal monitors on the Promises Kept, the Agnimatajay began closing itself off, adopting the measures needed to prosecute a war against a hostile superintelligence. Every camera feed was scrubbed, every byte counted. Those who did the accounting were subject to even more scrutiny. The rot still came from within.

Sometimes, you should shoot the messenger bearing bad news. Sometimes he's what he claimed to warn you of.

While I didn't see it, or feel it because of the inertial dampening, this was about the time that the Agnimatajay, and most of the fleet were pivoting again.

Many seemingly dead ships convulsed back to life, shedding a layer of frost, broken radiators melting and sprinkling tin, both from the heat they dumped from leaking engines restarted with safeties off, and the baptism of fire from their living brethren dousing them in burning coherent light. The Kill Star shimmered, lucky for Mars that it had moved away, because if you stood on the surface you'd float away, drawn upwards by gravity stronger than what a once living world could provide.

Further away still, a man squinted despite conjunctiva and eyelids that had dipped into the sun. He wasn't quite sure how to proceed.

Ever further, an object that had been largely ignored by even the the thorough scans that had roasted the vacuum with their thirst for knowledge. Why would they care? Asteroid 2041TQ was unremarkable, with a beeping beacon that announced its owners as being an even more staid corporation, one based near Europa, eking out an existence from being the first to claim the odd interstellar object that whizzed through the Solar System. Slightly odd that it had been missed in surveys years prior, but it had been approaching from out of the plane, seemingly kicked away by the careless shove of a star that had once been even closer than AC, if you wished to start counting from when humans first struck flint.

Borderline uneconomical to retrieve, because it had enormous velocity, outstripping Oumuamua, an oddity from my childhood. Shame, because it was absolutely loaded with metal. Hundreds of trillions in any currency you wish to name, at that scale, it's irrelevant, even if the sticker price had been eroded by more tractable counterparts dragged away from the Trojans or the Asteroid Belt. No, trillions are too small, you could have turned every human on Earth into a counterpart of Gupta's frozen countenance and not notice the expense. To the alarm of sensors that were just a little bit slower than the laggard that is light warranted, it shifted from Newton's expectations, but they can be forgiven for being slow, they had other things to prioritize.

I sat in the med bay, which was one of the least crowded parts of the ship as the supes who weren't on the verge of death moved for deployment. I watched Machina toy with his circlet, uncaring of the turrets overhead, Florette fuss with IV drips, gentle hands spreading contagion as the injured woman she ministered to thanked her.

Mars, almost back to a temperature appropriate for its distance from the sun, shook, tectonic plates that fused closed a billion years ago aching at the joints, like a child's skull about to explode with a swelling brain and fevered dreams. I hope you enjoyed the reprieve from death and suffering, I didn't, it was just a prelude to more.