The Grand Admiral's subcortical implant flashed red and ultraviolet amidst the dusty remnants of the Grand Chamber, and the galaxy spun obediently in the pale blue projection of the terminal. A thin bony head turned on the end of a soft-scaled neck, regarding the Last Lieutenant with two eyes, one wet and blinking, one hard and mechanical. The other pair of eyes on the other side of the head kept watch on the nothing-left of the wrecked and ruined chamber.

The Grand Admiral spoke, and the galaxy flashed red, drawing jagged boundaries.

"How is it possible? They were broken before we began."

The Last Lieutenant drew up to full height, a shadowy mound in the barely-light of the terminal.

"They do not view the question of wholeness in the same way that we do."

"Blasphemy, defiance in the face of experience, unwisdom," the Grand Admiral muttered, but it was the empty invocation of a shattered cant.

The Last Lieutenant breathed in sharply, forced air back out in a huff. "Impure!" —and that word still held a measure of offended rage. "They say they are human, but it is a lie!"

"No," the Grand Admiral said, slow and sorrowful, shoulders undulating in gentle denial. "We say they are human. They call themselves the Terrans. It was foolish of us to miss the distinction."

"Only some of them call themselves Terrans!" The Last Lieutenant's breath was a rasp, still striking sparks of outrage off a flinty hateful core. "Some just call themselves Sapiens! Strange and abominable children of the humans! Corvus sapiens, Felis sapiens, Cyber sapiens, many others! No pure Homo sapiens for them, they have no respect for their own genetic line!"

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"Cyber sapiens," the Grand Admiral grumbled darkly. "Mere machines, left unbound, left to rebel, tolerating the intolerable. How many of these...creatures have turned criminal? Pirates ships without crews, preying on their own creators? How can this be allowed? How many turn against?"

The Last Lieutenant sighed out a long pungent tendril of cyan smoke. "Some, but not all. Not even most. Perhaps no more than their trueborn biologicals. And when the call to war came..."

The Grand Admiral shuddered, and the suspended galaxy caught flame, cycling through relentless memories of victory ground down to defeat. "Not all answered, not all fought. They have no true unity. Their purity is shot through with ungardened branches. Their identity is shattered into a jagged thousand of names. And their gene-line! What is left of the primate originals? What respect do they show their ancestors? And now they count others among their number, not only not-human, or not-living like their machines granted heretical pretensions of personhood, but not of their star Sol at all! No respect for the origin, for the tribe, for the birthing-ones!"

"Yes," the Last Lieutenant said, and a dozen-jointed tendril rubbed nervously against the terminal's edge. "And have even taken in some of our own nu—"

"DO NOT SPEAK TO ME OF THE TREASONOUS ONES!" the Grand Admiral roared. "THEY DARE! THEY DARE! OUR OWN GENE-HERITAGE IN TERRIBLE PIECES AMONG THEIR PILE OF SHARDS!"

Silence. Nothing to be said for a time.

When the Last Lieutenant's voice returned, it was quiet and low. "Exalted Leader, this is an inspired picture-of-words. A pile of shards, not even pointed in the same direction. They will be nothing in the end, they cannot—"

"No." The Grand Admiral's word was final. "Do you hear them? Even now they approach."

Yes. Risen rumblings, delicate static in the air from approaching defensive fields. The Last Lieutenant said nothing, because there was nothing to say up against the wall of the undeniable.

"Shards, yes," the Grand Admiral hissed. "We learned too loo late. Shards still cut. Shards still cut."

The galaxy winked out. They waited in the dark as the Sapiens came.