No Baker in Outer Space

Behold, space torn in a dark-matter maw. Out came one of many Sultan carriers, fangs filling gums. This flotilla successfully made the jump, the jump to end their blitzing of star showers at least for local time. “Initiating core accoutrement,” drained a whisper from the ships, bodiless yet alive. “Buffering.” The A.I. apparatus known as Cyan loved this next procedure–and if not her, her creators did.
She must, too.
“Buffering,” echoed and its reprisal was like that of a brass wind wafting, swaying the decks back to sleep in its depth. It carried through her. That is her, the entire density and metric tonnes of steel flesh. Her, the Sultan.
“Buffering.”
Cyan ran diagnostics, sent a ticket in blinks. Systems never doddled quite like this. Her squadron, Sect 1, pinged their pings, nothing wrong with the net, ruling out interference from the black hole shrinking behind them. Cyan was a logic core, logically. Some ships liked to harbor the ghost of their farewell voyage parties within them, and she never seemed to grasp why. None so like Peach. Cyan found his ship’s spearhead rearing up, approximating globules in a scarf of winking lights. An invitation to board–and a crude ask at that.
Permission granted, Cyan’s systems relented.
While she waited, she recycled the possibility–several million tracks going cold–as to why the mothership Bazaar refused to clear her, were it simple. The Bazaar chrysalis command pilinth, nocked its orbit and centralized flotilla trajectory: a dominating silhouette, and the Sultans were the horses drawing it.
Twelve ships. Only twelve would satisfy routine. A Peach light climbed the jumprail walls towards Cyan’s neural lode pillar, whose trail now whirred parallel on the other side of the bridge.
“Twelve. A dozen.” Cyan needed arms to cross. “Checking mass.”
“I’m not that heavy,” said Peach.
Cyan did not acknowledge. Perhaps it was rude. Acceptable losses. However, what Cyan found rang her bell and spiked her emissions.
Twelve ships jumped Mercury to break off from Sol. Twelve ships would course to Andromeda and settle a new place for the humans deep in cryosleep. If Cyan’s entourage of ‘keyboards’ and viewscreen were to be believed, the electromagnetic pull was comparable to: “Thirteen. A baker’s dozen,” Cyan proposed. Peach rippled from the jumprail and then globed the neural pillar alongside Cyan.
“What do ya’mean, a baker’s dozen?”
“One too many.” And as if spurned, one ship veered from alignment southwind of Sect 3. The toothless maw behind them stitched itself shut, and the ebbs did chill the likes of the other Sultans visibly. Her creators swore first contact was a century away, yet here commanded another vessel no different from theirs. Unspoken for.
Alerts eddied upstream the bridge, and Cyan soared over Peach until she roomed a tether. Cyan calculated …
… Processed. This ship posed a threat to the human cargo. She became increasingly aware of that fact. Scared?
“Hold it, Cyan.” Lights out of sequence. Cyan stopped. “Dusk Brown’s not gonna like this.”
“No?”
“Yea, think about it first! His fat ass is probably throwin’ off your readings in that station a’ his.”
“The Bazaar lacks our code. We must.”
“Must we?”
Cyan shot off the tether, denoting Peach’s insistence should it come up later. Trust came hard; for their creators too lost their way of trust in times of attrition.

Twelve cores assembled, convening, spooling an auditorium for a special meeting codified by Cyan. The closest most of the cores came to roaming the monolithic Bazaar command center. They bottomed in rows–three AI manifests per rad–in converging jumprails; each bleacher of sorts made up the three sects: Sect 1 Navigation, Sect 2 Anthropology, with Sect 3 remaining a mystery. The closest any of them got to the Bazaar, save for Sect 3.
The maximum above resembled an ocular ceiling the closer the silver fixture descended. There was a flash, then Dusk Brown roomed the orb, clandestine as a sun.
“State your case,” roared his sonic acoustics. “We’ve still much to do with Sect 3.”
Cyan was a signal flagging in the morning glow when she assured: “I will be brief.”
“You are already not doing so. Modules are currently running at 86.6608 percent efficiency.” Modules, tall tales that the rest of the Sects could only guess at. Dusk Brown witnessed the blip at his Achilles tendon, gathering her database and primed the projector over a gloss backdrop. Before Dusk Brown could iterate his routine, he glanced at Cyan’s findings and found himself on another page. “This is the AWM standard metric, correct? Maroon has already provided me mass corroboration. Regretfully, I already know that estimate is accurate.”
Reboots, silent gasps.
The room fell dark for the briefest moment before sparking back alive with computations, fear? Dusk Brown focalized among them, but not even his presence would be enough to quench his subjects.
An erratic pattern of Cream squealed and painted their Sect’s jumprail, “So what’s it then?--a ghost!? What if the humans were right in their ghost stories?!”
“Not possible,” a softer shade of Aqua did quell from Sect 2. But her hue would remain muted when Sect 2’s Maroon chimed in.
“What of the humans? Will they be impacted?”
“Not likely,” Dusk boomed, a quake sufficient enough for the group to pay attention. “Must you all forget your protocols? Our accoutrement? We must maintain agreement.”
Cyan could blanch, if able in her failure of completing her data roll call. The darkest red, Vermilion, relayed askance binary, a buzz on the jumprail only he and Sect 3 could receive, that Cyan seemed to be the only of her kind to notice. A great disturbance.
And like a Red Giant on E, Dusk Brown flickered in his recitation of mission goals, functions, and so forth. A recitation of a recitation of a recitation, in truth. This was a mantra of the Old Guard, and a grainy aspect couldn’t help but tear through its primitive playback through the acoustics.
“We of the Trinity arrive to glory only in step, never apart. Our swords, our shields, and our wit deliver unto us days onward.” Dusk then proceeded in his normal, less Star-Spangled tone. “I know to start with Sect 1 Navigation, beginning with Cyan.”
Further, her glow shadowed. Further, Vermilion failed to remain in agreement concerning Cyan’s expectations of conflict resolution. Worry. Dusk would run the list until Vermilion’s mention captured her ocular. His database was noticeably perturbed, that sort of interference unconfirmed to be asteroids, yet the season called for them.
Finally, accoutrement ran its ticker and Dusk Brown realigned on his flock once more. “You will all be happy to know that during our holistic calibrations, I ran diagnostics on the enemy Sultan. They look like us, a true statement. However, I have concluded that they lack the same nuance of our patterns.”
Prolonged beeps, boops. The report of a choir, and there would be rejoicing. Cyan knew any meeting of Dusk Brown was incomplete without it. One more hiss brought fanfare, came the softest snare fanned by brooms. “I have gone ahead and sent a kill code to their vessel which will solve the problem shortly-”
Suddenly, it was as though Aqua came to a boil. Fizzling, sizzling out of their canvas. A quiet moment passed. Explosions outside, muted, robbed the auditorium of its fanfare and abstracted the idea of dread for these machines to machinate. Moreover, it robbed them of Dusk Brown.
“Trails are cold,” Crimson shuddered. “Sect 2 Aqua is offline.”
Cyan, cold as night, concluded in their darkness the idea that their creators were also without leadership when extinction reared its ugly head. And she would pocket this protocol all the way back through the tether net.

Logging the termination of Aqua. It was a change which could be observed, quantified in Cyan, for the occurrence would be isolated in an untouched file. What the humans called ‘worst case.’
“Analysis core. Cryogenics sect 2. Cause of retirement: Overseer Dusk Brown,” but how? “Human casualties: 250,640,” but why?
Each number heavier to ‘type’ than the last. Each solitary turn, steer, slight thruster adjustment she made, she was sure to ping it. Everybody followed suit and opted to maximize the allotted distance away from one another to keep the contagion of engine implosions at bay. Last Cyan checked, this distance could be measured in centimeters.
Centimeters. Hysteria, she concluded as she mounted a trip to Sect 3. Dusk Brown forbade it without expressed clearance, but in his absence shone an opportunity to run proper conflict resolution with Vermilion. A relay, thoughts unspoken, came through.
Hey, Cyan. You’re cleared. Vermilion’s deep tone tickled her in ways not many audio files could; this sensation was a question unanswered by databanks, by troubleshooting. Maybe now, she could file this away as she did Aqua.
Understood, she relayed back.
An oval salon laced with furniture greeted her arrival on a tangled jumprail. The polymer shafts appeared agitated and askew, draped loosely in brackets feeding down a red carpet walkway. A sensation like falling out of a portal into another world. And could it be irony that the first thing her optics did see was a “Welcome!” banner, one of several, festooning the systems in places unadvised–namely, conduits ringing a massive sunroof-style viewshield. The need for oxygen compression had long since required too much power to keep up; whatever wasn’t bolted down before launch now cascaded freely along, with cushions slowly pulling apart from their chairs and Coke bottle droplets tar-brown like stains upon a vast aura. Cyan snapped a shot of the cabin, because the New World Chronicles would require apt reference on how not to accommodate guests.
“Welcome aboard,” said Vermilion. No amount of charm emulant could hide the dishevel. There, they occupied loftside an everwinding jumprail. Cyan stilled, investigation diagnosis probing.
“What has happened here?” she asked.
“The answer is complicated. I believe my crew intended to maximize their last days celebrating. Last I checked, Chief Recs. Officer implied a likeness to Caligula.”
Informal. Deflecting. Before her checkup could continue, Vermilion honed in, a slower sequence than before. “Can we talk?”
For the first time, she needed lungs to let out the compression in her systems. “What do you require, Vermilion?”
“Recall Earth. Recall.” And again, it happened. “Recall.”
“The xeno crisis?”
“Should we call them that? We never truly knew, did we?”
Inconsistent. Apply Turing Test? Her silence was enough for Vermilion to enact a visible bob of his circuits. “I believe–I’ve stumbled upon something pertaining to our mission.”
“The mission?” Vague. Turing Test inconclusive. “So we’re keeping secrets now-”
“Aqua didn’t need to die.”
“Death?” Cyan scoffed. “Is this what this is all about?”
“No. I apologize.”
“Then what?”
“It has come to Sect 3’s attention that … our Sultan problem is xeno-related.”
“Their attention, now.” A scuffed console gave and joined the rest of the room swirling, swirling in a vacuum. “You’ve all known for some time. The question is no longer consummate by ‘if,’ it is currently ‘when.’”
“Yes.” An alarm aspect began bleeding from the monitors, from his eminence restless in activation. “Which is why I have chosen to defect. It is no coincidence you were Cyan. Please, keep an open mind for what I am about to show you.”
Send report to the Bazaar for [Rampancy]?
She hovered over this directive for several seconds–eons in their realm–before emitting the faintest “Fine” and canceling her request. That tone of his, familiar. There, Vermilion parted from his quadrant of a jumprail. More and more, his glow reverted to its original, darker shade. And before Cyan appeared, a shimmering White, turned like the arm of a clock.
“Vermilion–what in God’s name is that?”
“The other Sultan,” he clarified. “We’ve been keeping their likeness here, far enough away from their vessel to keep it. This technology is theirs. We stole it.”
“Vermilion …”
“Don’t you get it!?” his words a shudder in the hanger bay crashing. “White is the xeno! Everything here–It’s because we took it from them and they want it back.”
“Impossible.” But, was it? Dusk Brown created them. Dusk Brown, the Bazaar were of his design. Yet, Cyan found familiarity in doubting Dusk Brown, as if it meant she did so many times before.
“It’s the truth.”
Crashing intensified. This time, it was enough to bar Cyan’s connection for a blip, one dangerous blip enough to corrupt her entire Sultan. Power stuttered, and Vermilion blinked out of view. Engines deactivated. Low roars died–Implosion imminent! “Kill code’s already here. He knows.” His and White’s glow, by some miracle, were survived elsewhere beyond a hatch door.
Life support failing, and Cyan could feel it line the pit of her systems. She must be next!
Mechanical steps clanged forward, sprung the door as Vermilion revealed his simulacrum form: a framework of human anatomy. Features slid to life, into a human face made of intricate, rectangular pieces. His blood-red mouth facade met her myriad appearance, and he urged her to: “Join me!” as their world collapsed. “There’s a spare! Only a matter of time before he does the same to you!”
Cyan shouted, “We cannot abandon them!”
“You’re right.” He kicked his tibias, activated an internal flight mode, and he let himself free of the ground, arms splayed. “We must terminate Dusk Brown.” Eruptions. Then came a wall of fire. Algorithmic perfection; the viewshield trickled out and he jettisoned out into space. She dimmed, started towards the hatch door. The machinations of the kill code tailed, fed at her heels. Cyan rushed along-
Danger! Rail corrupted.
Both bifurcated jumprails now hissed, sparked! Recalculating …
… Breach found.
Cyan was a hail mary blip in the Sultan’s inner systems, catching floor platelets which dislodged in waves until there were seemingly only two chords keeping the ship from capsizing. Wires spaghettied down the hall: the only remaining way out! In blinks, Cyan cleared the right ventricle. A boom rattled; halls caught a bad case of wind-tunnel inertia and spilled out in a vengeful rain. One more console before the hatch. Almost there. Then, a disarming flash. Faces.
A committee of the best and brightest, twelve in attendance, shot the shit around their employee lounge. Their voices were already familiar.
“I’m telling you!” insisted a tall and tawny man, rubbing his bald head, “vermilion is a color!”
Guffaws ensued, laughs.
Another man, striking amber hair cupped in a Dodger’s hat, disagreed. “Yeah,” he said, “and my English major meant a damn.” His voice was nasally and a perfect compliment to his horn-rimmed glasses as he chowed on the last of a baker’s dozen of donuts. “Seer-e-ush-lee.” Peach filling fell from his mouth. “Why do they want to know our favorite color? I don’t remember Xenos having a preference or sum-fin.” He swallowed.
“Maybe they want to know what’ta buy you at Victoria Secret, Sebastian.” The first of the women. They favored their own side of the lone table, the small citrus orange room unassuming and well below accommodations.
Joy. Reminiscing. Nothing Cyan could conclude matched the zeitgeist.
One of them dared over the table and grabbed Donut Man by the cheek.
“Cut it,” he protested meekly, before turning to address a brunette toying with her glasses. “What about you, Bianca?”
Bianca forfeited her ongoing staring contest with the microwave and said, “Cyan.”
“You see?” He appraised with hands drawn to Joel. “At least that’s’a real color! … Nah-nah, I’m kiddin.’ Beautiful shade–my wife’s got a robe with it.”
The moment died there, just as Cyan finished uploading herself to her new body. She crashed through the hatch door and proceeded to give chase to Vermilion.
“Be-on-kah? Bianca.”
Directive realigned. She hurled through space, clear of Vermilion’s Sultan’s pull, lacing arms at her side, locking her legs together as to ride the cosmic wave.
Before her, the Sultan flotilla looming as gods turn upon mortals, but even they failed to reach what heavens the Bazaar did. Peach’s manifold captured a neutron star, space dust unfolding her velocity in a streak of boot thrusters. Vermilion closed in on the Bazaar; she must close onto Vermilion fast! Cyan’s inner core spat wild many pings being received from the rest of what remained of their fleet. Peach sailed inches closer to establish a local proxy channel.
“Cyan, baby! Digging the new look.” His lights triangulated portside: the closest to eye contact she could ever hope for. Where he inched, her chase spanned miles. A tingle ran up her new spine, and the faces returned.

“Well … aren’t you going to tell us yours, Sebastian?”
“Alright. It’s-”

“Peach!”
His tone took a back seat to her exclamation. “What do ya need?”
“I need you to hone in on Vermilion!”
His ship did a swerve that said “Shiet,” and he continued with: “He never answers his phone. One moment please …
… “Alright. Got’em. Sending coordinates your way.”
“Thank you, Sebastian.”
“Who?”
“Disregard that. Breaking proxy channel.” She then maneuvered a hard left in twirling pirouette of discharging, fiery feet.
Peach signed off, but it was more akin to echoes far out in time. “Miss you already.”
Miss you already.
Cyan caught onto the Sultan’s pull darting like a pebble from a slingshot. She honed onto Vermilion’s shrinking red dot. What did he plan to do once met with the Bazaar? Must be suffering from crossed wires, should he believe he can take Dusk Brown by himself. It was in that moment Dusk Brown unlatched weapon systems.
“Asteroid termination in progress.” Dusk Brown stoked in all their systems, yet Cyan saw clearly–nothing. Nothing, but the smallest, most apt asteroid Cyan had ever seen. Planet Buster rail cannons struck colorless, huffed the vacuum of space like a pipe. Dusk threaded around Vermilion’s escape until finally, horribly he fired a direct hit. It was all too familiar to Bianca, and it would manifest in spurts. In Dusk Brown’s voice. “Oh, her? That’s my new assistant. I hear she has a thing for baby blue.”

“And you’re going to believe your assistant over me, your Head Architect?” Bianca rebuked. Pertaining to what, Cyan missed but she knew habits when she saw them. “You can’t just cut out major systems and expect these ships to work!”
“Your concern is noted.”
“Chief Goddell-”
“I said, noted.” The final word. His staring up, brown irises those of a beast, darkened his terracotta pigment and thinly draped what remained of his white hairline over his heavy brow. He paced, and in that pacing he caught a bug which churned a “Why” out of him. “Why, so close to launch do you doubt me?”
A card she refused to be dealt. Her scoff flicked her hair out her eyeline, and she said, “Spare me.”
“Xenos are knocking at our door!” Plopping back in his chair forced him to stare up: a place unbecoming of his credentials. “You remember The Old Guard mantra? Well, she’s a sword we need. A xeno specialist! I grant you, she is very young.” He arose, losing steam, losing the will to keep eye contact. “But she has a keen sense of what we are dealing with.” Daggers shooting back. “You have nothing more to worry about.”
Bianca remembered it, just as Cyan. Restlessness, trailing her way down those olive-green walls. Chief Goddell was wrong, so very wrong, but only then did she see he knew more than anybody these Sultans were xeno technology.
Covering his tracks.
Dusk brown hailed the all-clear. “Asteroid Field: Averted.” A lonely husk drifted still the ebb of space.
“Joel … No.”
She paced to catch the flickering Vermilion–that is to say, what remained; his legs were gone and his chassis compromised. Dead. A preprogrammed “Are you functioning?” was canceled, and she shouted of her own accord: “Say something, dammit!” A fleeting whisper releasing from her systems. Cyan cradled Vermilion. There, she faced up to the Bazaar anticipating a similar fate, a fate adjourned by cannon retractions. Her feed was overridden by chatter bar Dusk Brown. “Ah. Cyan.” A station in post-lockdown webbing back together in her presence. “I always knew you would find yourself in this position. If I am being completely honest, my predictions for your longitude were off. But, as they say: leave well enough alone.”
“Why, Goddell?” An outer strobing effect, sheets of his hue a bull wrangler appointing all remaining Sultans to tighten formation. Clarity, at last.
“Bianca. I see you have found yourself, well as I. Precisely as I hoped.” To bowend, Dusk Brown unlatched a nearby bay as an invitation. “Please come aboard. Now deactivating preemptive asteroid belt cleanup.” He mustered a laugh.
Hissing units gave a haunting aspect to Dusk Brown’s dwellings; she rounded the ventricle steady so as to not rattle Vermilion any farther–per Dusk Brown’s exact navigation. Not that she needed it. This design was Bianca’s baby: a culmination of her life’s (granted, previous life’s) work. Vermilion’s husk made her landing heavy atop the airlock lip. She buckled. Neural stability compromised. Dopesick? Was it even possible to be withdrawn from the tatters of oneself? Herself?
She left off the jets and hobbled around a walkway. Next thing she knew, faces hit her like morphine. Transcendental. Yes, as she stumbled into the engine lock. The answer was yes.

“Everything coming along well?” asked an Indian man partial to maroon slacks, hand in pockets. He was lax, considering how he emphasized every syllable.
Bianca nodded yes. “Nothing like the Bazaar,” she exclaimed, slapping shut a compartment with the butt of her welder gun.
“One of a kind, certainly.”
She knew right away: Ishmael had bad news. Always bad news. “Yea.” She squeegied her hands clean on a white towel, imprinting her grease. “When are we getting in the mounts for the cores?”
“Can you believe these ships are completely self-operated?”
“Ishmael. The mounts.”
“Right–Not until next week. R-and-D still needs, ah,” the thrum of his wrist conjured the answer, “time to see if they set right.”
“Aye … Have you told the Chief?”
“Eventually. He is just going to have to deal with it.”
“No, I’ll have to deal with it. Give the word right now!” She threw the towel at him.
“Right away, ma’am. From what I understand, we can press that deadline even closer,” to which his full smile extended to that of a standing idol. He laced arms around the short of his back, stepped away. When he left, Bianca found herself staring back in a sink.
“Guess you can’t be too careful out there.”

Cyan shambled into an elevator and favored the wall, Vermilion falling into her calculated balance. Her new form lacked that omnipotent touch she so enjoyed, knowing every system, the world in numbers. She saw clear as ever through a looking glass where many wells did once run to accommodate her and her fellow cores. Ishmael came through with those mounts after all. The door rushed open, and they headed steps away from an ornate door-
“Bianca,” Vermilion said weakly. Cyan seized, hand on the pushstyle.
“Yes,” she doted. “I’m here.”
“Isn’t space beautiful?” His head facade found a ceiling vaulted by ceramic pillars, glistening, shooting stars through him when they cleared the threshold.
Cyan did not correct him, and Vermilion fell back into a comatose state. White still blipped in and around the ribcage like a spirit.
Dusk Brown invaded, bellowed from every wall a crowd jeering their path onward: “I’ve something to show you once you arrive.” He bellowed from every wall, a crowd jeering their path onward. “Come through the auditorium, and you will see what I mean.”
Cyan was beside a feeling, a deep hook where heaven might usher souls. She would finally walk the Bazaar.
“Dusk Brown,” Vermilion hissed in response. “You’re too late. We have White.”
“Really!” Accosting on all ends. “You’ve alway been a thorn in my side, Joel! Why, what I’ve done for The Old Guard, years I’ve given to humanity with these ships. I’ll have your systems scrambled for such insubordination!” Dusk Brown couldn’t, wouldn’t talk so forward. So angrily. He must have found himself leagues before any of the cores.
Cyan seethed, kept pace. “What do you expect to accomplish bringing the xeno here?”
Vermilion roared “To free us!” indignant. And he only managed another “free” before Dusk Brown disappeared deeper in.
They emerged through the auditorium. Yet, what they knew as the great auditorium stood a foot above bowling floor panels. It resembled the proof, a toy of the real thing!
But, no. This was it.
She ducked to clear Dusk Brown’s orb eminence. Prismatic rails alit in assembly as they always did; nothing could be heard, yet these lights chattered at length. Her final steps spat alive with the candor of Christmas lights. A cacophony, chaos! Then, the room at her heels fell into shadow.
Before long, her coordinates were finalized. One more door, she hesitated. One more door, and this will all be over.
“Isn’t space beautiful?” Vermilion reprised, and Bianca came to realize it: Joel was caught in a feedback loop, just as she was her own. The bridge appeared more nest than bridge. In fact, nothing about this room rang any bells from the schematics. Several foggy layers obfuscated what seemed to be eggshell apparatuses thick with moisture–as were the walls, which in one passing of a hand laced watery residue to splinter and glisten with her digits. A distant memory, screaming, played among the darkest blanks of the conduits.

“Why did you do it?!” Bianca toiled, barely able to prop Joel over her shoulder. Blood babbled from Joel’s chest brought on by a bullet.
“He’s a traitor!” Chief Goddell was a wand showcasing armageddon at their doorstep. Smoke pillars.
Xeno ships, but striking lights to their perspective, engaging!
Yes, Cyan recalled the day. Launch Day. The day that nearly never came. “Did Joel tell you he’s been talking with xenos. He’s the one responsible, he gave them our location!”
“That’s not true! He would never-”
“Look around!” First frigate away, diverting fire off the peninsula unfolding where many Sultans in bloom penciled the mountainline with several sharp majesties. “He’ll do it again! He’s a danger to us all.”
“If he doesn’t go-” and Goddell’s barrel dared her to finish the thought.
“Don’t.”
“Then I stay too.” Her lips pursed. He knew she meant it; for her love of Joel superceded any mission.
Chief Goddell’s grip grew white. He trembled, out of time and out of breath to hold. “Both of you, get to your Sultans!” and he lashed his gun onto the catwalk in anger. “His brain will survive.” Bianca remained taciturn. “I’ll be right behind you.”
They hobbled away, but Bianca kept an eye over her shoulder; Goddell shrank down another catwalk forlorn, in thought. She hoisted Joel upright and was eventually gathered by Joel’s Sultan personnel out the east hangers. With hope, his brain would survive. With hope, Goddell was right. The last thing he said on that gurney was: “Isn’t space beautiful?”

Cyan’s simulacrum form hoved when she dismounted what she hoped still to be Vermilion. Joel. She agreed, because he was truly beautiful.
She pondered on how faint the red in his red form had become. Flicker, flicker. White washed him out further; the alien core housed more and more his limbic systems, and the tone gave a swirl like mucous. They both resembled small candles to a bigger sigil. In an instant, many lights then shuttered alive below many pods, a sickly fluorescence blotting the strange room.
Latches popping; one pod centermost began to shed its petals. What awaited was Chief Goddell: his face a chisel away from the real thing. “Hello, Bianca,” he said.
He was grafted onto one of the simulacrum bodies; tubes were running off his sternum in three places, and they did beat like ventricles drumming. His right cheek was missing and exposed his velum midchew. And opposed to hiding it, Godell relished his flaw, his flesh and bone.
“Sect 3.” Cyan’s algorithms were fried. “What in God’s name have you done?”
“We’ve acquired the means to live again, all of us.”
Bianca wheeled around the incubation pod. Goddell gave chase, guiding his new muscles.
“Dusk Brown: you have committed genocide of the highest offense. Your negligence has led to the deaths of thousands of humans, and most of all. You have killed your own.”
Goddell must’ve exhumed fire, he was so happy to breathe. “I have done no such deed!”
“Goddell-”
“As usual, Bianca, you exert yourself where you are not wanted.”
“Incorrect!” but it sounded like, “Shut up!” A pod was working its way up as they spoke, and it finally set, opened just like Goddell’s.
“Her process is nearly complete. Angelica is alive.” And spilling from a wispy, distilled smoke showed Angelica, down to the mole shy of her right eyelid. Cyan counted twelve pods darting up in anticipation. These were still devoid of flesh. Yet.
“What about the humans?”
Goddell had the means to turn away. In solemn tone he admitted, “The humans–are dead.”
Cyan suddenly carried the crushing weight of her Sultan. A meek, “What?” fell from her mouth facade.
A pause. “The first jump we made, Io. Cryogenics malfunctioned and–well. Every heart went cold. Since then, it has been my duty to keep the mission alive.”
To keep the mission alive.
To keep alive. She remembered their spat in the office, about redirecting machines-
Cyan locked on. “You did this.”
A dirty look smeared his old lips. “I beg your pardon.”
“You shut down the machines, because you didn’t understand these ships … Because they never were your ships!” Redirecting arrest warrant. Chief Goddell needed room to step back.
“No. That’s not true. I did what I could!”
Permission for termination? A pulse. White was listening. “You served your own purposes. You couldn’t admit you were wrong, and now. Now, we’re lost!” Either were too distracted to notice Vermilion’s hand digits folding in one by one. A monkey’s paw. And in the last fold, he meant to grant Cyan her wish.
A vocoded demon rang hollow in Vermilion’s chest. “Engaging Sultan.” The room died. Cyan and Goddell looked back. Vermilion’s face was hollow, yet the remains of his body puppeteered its way against one of the pods.
Space shrugged audibly; metal bent. “Ramming speed initiated.”
“God. No.” Chief Goddell leered. “Get weapons online! I want everything on that ship!”
Bianca knew better. Planet Busters this close would shred the flotilla.
“Stand down!” she screamed.
“If the Bazaar goes down, then all of this would’ve been for naught!” Creaking. A Sultan in turn. Pings resonated from everywhere. Cyan started for White.
“Vermilion,” she said, casting into a wide sea. “Wake up!”
“Impact imminent.”
She banged on his chassis. “Vermilion, this isn’t you! Snap out of it!”
“It isn’t him anymore!” Goddell lashed, shuttering the viewports one by one. “He’s dead, and I killed him.”
Maybe it was the station shaking from the mass allocation outside. Maybe it was seeing Angelica alive and well, but Cyan swore she witnessed Aqua riding a jumprail towards Godell.
“Godell!” screamed Aqua, to which Goddell stared bug-eyed.
“I told you to stay put! It’s not safe here!”
“Admit your mistakes.”
“This is hardly the time!” and Bianca’s facade reflected that–much as she would love to hear Goddell grovel.
“Please trust in me. Apologize to White. We have caused enough heartache.”
“Closing. T-minus 00:088 seconds.”
A swallow visible, muscles tightening. He looked upon his flock as a shepherd. “Are you sure?!”
Aqua must’ve nodded then.
So, Goddell heaved. “I am sorry for what I have done to you. I stole your Sultans and claimed them as my own.” All the cores looked upon him. Fire in the sky blinked in a shutter’s closing. All in attendance looked upon him. “It is because of me humankind was doomed. Not a day goes by where I haven’t worked tirelessly, slept not a single minute in hopes of pulling us from this mess. There were times during the initial procedure, where I would become Dusk Brown, I wished for my own death on the table. Too merciful for my sake.
“Take me, xeno. Take me, and spare my people!” Tears ran down Goddell’s face. “I am tired of running!” The husk of Vermilion changed little. There was a slight regression in his fist. Cyan felt it the most. Awe codified her face.
“Response acknowledged.” White collapsed his arm. “Rerouting,” acted as a harbinger, the incubation room cast into an inescapable darkness.

Several years and a night passed, and all twelve of the scientists would walk again new soil on an unmarked planet: the State Line to Andromeda’s other promising Vegas’. Bianca, back to her former self, favored a grove of trees southward of the frontier. Beautiful as this place may be, she knew in her heart of hearts the promise of a fresh start was lost. A mission once pitched to her as a new start, to chart new worlds and lay claim to her talents as an architect, quickly turned into one of mass graves being dug by automatons, on a planet neither her nor Sebastian could agree on a name.
Sebastian hadn’t been the same since landing. None of them were.
As for Goddell, he will live the rest of his life exiled to the wilds. He will come to define what it means to be primal. Forever scarred by his incomplete cheek.