Chapter Four: Sarah Becomes a Generalissimo

        The airforce that crested the horizon and flew above Haven was not the largest that Sarah had ever seen. But in 4498’s defense, he had been more than a little bit distracted: The time between the construction of the first factory and the finalization of his airforce had involved Sarah introducing him to the concepts of ‘oral’ and ‘breathplay’ and several other ideas that occurred to her in the hazy, half-drunk attitude of the desperately horny.

        But there was a limit to even Sarah’s depravity.

        And so, she was now nestled up against 4498 as he hunkered down on the largest of the flying craft, a heavily armored, quad winged VTOL that cut through the air in the exact same way a brick launched from a catapult might. Around it buzzed the half a dozen strategic bombers that he had constructed, each one packed full of heavy ordinance. It was an almost ludicrous amount of weaponry to bring to bear on a settlement the size of Haven. Sarah felt her guts knotting in nervous tension as she leaned past the edge of the dashboard on the flying machine that she was settled in – she saw people down there.

        Then her eyes focused, refined themselves, and the ‘people’ bloomed before her. She had to bite her own knuckle to not let a giggling snort escape her – her eyes half closed as she scrunched forward.

        “What is it?” 4498 asked.

        “Nothing!” Sarah said.

        Haven was populated entirely by sex toy mannequins. They had been hastily set up around the town and posed in various picaresque poses and risque situations. But they were also definitely not people. 4498 swept out one tentacle in a commanding way.

        “Light them up!”

        The bombers around them bucked in the air, like their engines had suddenly become twice as powerful. Their wings sparkled as the impact casing around their bombelettes was shed in a haze of fine dust. The bombs themselves were tiny disks, each one blinking with a small red guidelight, and they clustered down towards Haven. The roaring sound of their detonations reached Sarah, attenuated and thinned by the distance between her and them. Blossoming flowers of orange flame ripped apart the ground and sent one of the structures arcing into the air, before it crashed back down. Rubble was strewn throughout the canopy of the jungle, and when the smoke cleared, all that was left was a glassy crater that had once been Haven. The plateau that it sat upon now looked more like a volcanic caldera – an effect not lessened by the smoke that drifted away from the wreck and the run, like the hair of a ghost.

        “And that puts paid to those commies,” 4498 said, his VTOL drifting slowly down towards the ground. It settled there and he sprang out, hovering above the still smoldering glass. He looked around himself with a faint whirring sound. “And sent!”

        “Sent? What do you mean ‘sent’?” Sarah asked, blinking.

        “Oh, I have a QE link back to the UN,” 4498 said. “Well, technically, it’s a QE link to a deep space probe that was stationed at the edge of the system. That probe’s HPS Drive will trigger and it’ll jump back to SOL after a few jumps – eh, maybe four or five?” He bobbed his entire body. “It’ll take maybe two days before it gets back home. But they’ll know to send a mop up fleet to hunt down and shoot any more reds, and then they’ll...hey!”

        “What?” Sarah asked, standing up in the cockpit – unwilling to test her own toughness against the bubbling glass.

        “I just got an executive override order to-” 4498 said, sounding offended.

        Then he exploded.

        The explosion started in his midsection and it peeled his side open like an overripe orange. Chunks of metal went flying and smoke burst out as his red iris flickered, then dimmed. He wobbled on a rapidly destabilizing cushion of antigravity before he crashed into the slurry of rapidly blackening glass, sending up a haze of gleaming chips into the air. His tentacles spasmed as Sarah leaped out of the cockpit. Her feet smashed into the glass and she felt them cracking and crunching against her skin, trying to cut her. But it didn’t work. She sprinted over.

        “4498!” She dropped to her knees beside the mangled body of the machine.

        “Daisy...” He whispered. “Daisy...”

        “What?” Sarah asked, looking around, trying to find his quantum core. She saw it, as the smoke cleared: The glass was cracked and a glowing fluid dripped from him. It was, she knew, the artificial illumination that the corporations put into quantum computers to make them seem like they were more than just boring rectangular chunks of hardware.

        “It...just seemed like...a good last thing to say...being a...”

        His iris went out and his body slumped onto the glass.

        Sarah gaped, then looked around, hurriedly – the airplanes were whirling slowly overhead, like vultures. But she knew, without orders, they wouldn’t do anything. She whispered. “4498?” she asked, shaking him. “Help? Help!” She called out.

        Synth was the first one to emerge over the lip of the plateau. She peeked, saw Sarah and 4498, then ran over. Her thick boots crunched on the glass and when she came to a stop, she was looking confused. Uncertain. “What happened?” she asked.

        “4498, he...” Sarah looked down at the oblong sphere she was cradling, as if he was some dying prince. “He just...he reported in that he’d finished his mission. Then he exploded.”

        Synth knelt down. She didn’t put her knees against the ground – instead, she remained balanced on her toes, her eyes narrowing as she leaned in. Her voice was soft. “I’m sorry, Sarah. This guy’s dead. His blue box is cracked – his quantum waveform’s collapsed.”

        “B-But...” Sarah stammered.

        Tears blurred her eyes.

        She had just been talking to him. She had just gotten to know him. She had even had this plan, to, to have Synth and Tasha look him over and yank out the hobbling, so he could be an ally. She drew her hands slowly back and saw they were flecked with the luminescent fluid. She blinked slowly, tears burning down her cheeks. “B-But he wasn’t a bad guy,” she whispered. “He had no idea what a communist even was , Synth!”

        Synth put her hand on Sarah’s shoulder and Sarah felt the tears flowing faster and faster. Her hands planted themselves against the side of the dead Warform Independent General. Her fingers tightened and metal squealed. She clenched her jaw.

        “Get everyone up here.”

***

        “Wow. This was your fucking plan?” the black masked woman asked, looking over the still smoldering craters. “Let them blow up our home?”

        Grumbling mutterings came from the rest of the group, including the DSA and the Neo-Syndicalists.

        Sarah looked down at her feet. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, it was.”

        “Well, great fucking plan, you stupid-”

        Sarah lifted her head, glaring at the black masked woman. “Did you know that the ‘Cardies’ you were blowing up were sentient?” She asked, her voice tight.

        “I...I mean, they’re AIs,” the woman who lead the DSA said, her voice slightly hesitant. “AIs are self aware, we have a few in Haven. But that’s just war-”

        “You blew them out of the sky and never even asked them if they...they were all lied to !” Sarah said, her voice growing hotter. “And when they complete their mission, they get murdered . They’re like fucking children and you blew them up and made it a fucking game!” She shook her head, disgust burning in her, for not only the corporations, but for her entire species.

        “Uh, whoa, hey, we’re the bad guys now?” the black masked woman asked, her palm going to her chest. “Because we’re not about to let some corporate oppressors just blow us off the map just because they send children slaves to fight us. That’s not our fault. We didn’t just build children to send them into the meat grinder ! The corporations did that!”

        “We could have tried harder to take them alive...” One of the Exunt Tesla folks said.

        “Yeah!” A Havener that Sarah couldn’t see said.

        “Oh yeah, take the murderbot with the nanolathes alive -”

         “We could have tried!”

        “And risked all of our lives?”

        “Shut up,” Sarah whispered, her eyes closing.

        “We could have put it to a vote.”

        “Democracy isn’t the right to vote your neighbors into a suicidal, feel good mission!”

        “Shut. Up.” Sarah’s quiet growl was lost in the shouting.

        “You just don’t want to admit-”

        “This underlays the faults in-”

        “If we’d become a demarchy like I suggested-”

        “I won’t put a listening device   in my  brain, Carlos !”

        “ Shut up !” Sarah shouted, sweeping her arms to the side. A rippling wave of force emerged from her, blowing up a fine pal of dust and a haze of chips. The Haveners lifted their arms, crying out in alarm as their clothing blew in the sudden. Sarah panted, heavily. “I don’t know and I don’t care which of you is right! I don’t care if the future is a socialist or a union or a demarchy or anarchy or anything!” She clenched her fists. “All I know is that while you are bickering over who gets to design the fucking flag, the corporations are crushing billions  of us under their fucking gears! They’re fighting wars for stuff when we can make stuff out of thin air !” She started to prowl around the circle. She thrust her finger at the black masked girl. “While you’re calling ancaps monarchists, they’re glassing hives on Earth!” She thrust her finger at the rose wearing woman. “While you are calling for votes, they’re ripping off limbs  for amusement park rides !” Sarah shook her head. “While you guys argue, my people, my parents, my whole fucking class, is starving to death on a planet choked by smog and run by by by by…” She clenched her hands, then flung out her arms. “By fucking  vampires!”

        The Haveners all looked at her.

        Sarah panted as she stood in the center of their attention. Slowly, she shook her head. “No more. I won’t fucking allow it!” Her breath was coming in short pants.

        “You? You won’t allow it?” the black masked girl asked, her voice sounding like she was trying to sound sarcastic, but wasn’t able to quite match it.

        “Yeah.” Sarah nodded. “And once the last of the CEOs have surrendered, the last of the Commanders have given up or died, and once the corporations are smoldering ruins...then.” She smiled. “Then. We put it up to a vote on what happens next.”

        The Haveners exchanged a glance with one another.

        Then two of them stepped aside as L'Laya stepped forward. Her translation orb – looking as if it had been repaired recently – floated around her head, speaking for her: “Is this wise, Sarah? The Claw, even now, is gathering strength. Their fleets are growing, to replace the losses you inflicted on them in Wolf-359. They will fall upon your most populated worlds like locusts, the instant that they sense weakness. That will include a massive war against your corporations.”

        Sarah nodded, slowly. “Then we’re just going to need to be bigger.”

        The Haveners glanced around themselves.

        “And how do you plan to do that?” the black masked girl asked, reaching up and tugging her mask slowly off. She was pixie-cute, with black eyeliner and a big A tattooed on her forehead.

        Sarah grinned.

        “Well,” she said. “That’s where we, uh, actually will need some voting. Or at least...” Her tongue slid along her lips. “Volunteers.”

***

        L'Laya, Zeradar and Sarah all sat on a small rocky outcropping a few miles away from Haven’s smoldering ruins. The distant sound of whirring nanolathes filled the air, audible even from this distance. But Sarah tried to shut them out as she looked at the two Pro-Tas.

        “I will say this,” Zeradar said, his voice sounding gruff and cautious, even through the translation orb that bobbed around his head. “In the entire history of the Claw, even among the renegade hybrids that turned against them, no one has ever tried this before. “

        “That is because it’s...” L'Laya paused. “I’m afraid the only term I can come up with is a mite ableist.”

        Sarah grinned, shyly. “Question: In the entire history of the Claw, have they ever captured a biologist and chosen them for their hybrid?”

        L'Laya and Zeradar exchanged significant glances.

        “You’d know more than I, Zerry- Zeradar!” L'Laya’s cheeks darkened from gray to nearly black. She looked at Sarah, who was grinning at her, her spines flexing a bit.

        “Zerry?” she asked.

        “Ahem!” Zeradar said, his orb flying over to gently bump against the side of Sarah’s temple. As it flew back to him, his voice continued. “I have observed almost twenty Cullings. Each time, the Eye picked a member of the population that had been two things: The first requirement was that they were, well...weak willed. The second was that they were a minority. It didn’t matter what kind: Religious, ethnic, social. In most civilizations, such minorities are not particularly educated – they are, in fact, prevented from accessing that kind of information. Humanity is rather unique, to have created an economic system where someone can be highly educated and still trapped in debt and wage slavery. It’s really quite impressively-” He stopped. “It’s...humanity is...very unique.”

        Sarah snorted. “Nice save. Though, uh, why are only minorities weak willed?”

        “Forgive me, it’s two unrelated thoughts,” Zeradar said, hurriedly. “The weak willed is so that they might be more easily controlled. The minority is because, well, those are less likely to be noticed as going missing. The Eye’s initial conflict with all species begins subtly. Quietly. They strike at the edges of space, then go inwards, by the time that the warning will be too late. After all, they did not cull so many races without learning the best ways to do it. And rushing things has ended with significant hassle for them.”

        “Right,” Sarah said, nodding. “So, they grab me because I’m a wage slave prole. But I also happen to have a doctorate in biology and have spent my entire life studying how to figure out ecosystems. And so, I just applied  that.” She grinned. “And voila.”

        The two Pro-Tas nodded.

        “I admit,” L'Laya said. “It is…a unique tactic. One that has not been tried before in any previous Cull.”

        Sarah smiled. “So, while Step One of Sarah’s Plan to Save the Galaxy is going on, I brought you two here for a reason.”

        “Oh?” Zeradar asked.

        “Hailee mentioned that I have paracausal quantum effects,” Sarah said. “I’ve managed to tap into it through trial and error.” She made a face. “And via Hailee earfucking me. But I have to know...how...do I use them for real? Without needing a beta level AI jam their tentacles into my ears.” She blushed. “That’s a mite distracting.”

        Zeradar nodded. “Such a talent is not unknown to me.”

        “Because the Claw has been making hybrids for bazillion years with them, yeah, I was wondering-”

        “No,” Zeradar said, shaking his head. “It is because such power was innate to our race.”

        Sarah blinked, slowly.

        “Have you not noticed how we are able to vanish from sight when not wanted, and appear when we desire to be focused upon?” Zeradar asked.

        “Or how we could withstand the biting cold with ease, despite being naked?” L'Laya asked, her three fold mouth twitching ever so slightly upwards in what might have been a smile. “Or how quickly Zeradar found my centers of pleasure, despite being a male?”

        “I mean, your clit has a guide light on it!” Sarah said. “That’s cheating!”

        L'Laya laughed, a musical little laugh, while Zeradar harrumphed and crossed his lean, gray arms over his barrel chest. His eyes transfixed Sarah’s severely, the almost completely black orbs reflecting her image back at her like obsidian mirrors. “The ability evolved on our planet and is the basis for how our civilization developed. The basics, as our sciences explain it, is that there is a field that exists throughout the universe. This field is what describes and ‘holds’ the basic fundamentals of all interactions between particles. When taken in its totality, the field can be termed causality: It is what states that this...” He picked up a rock, kneeling momentarily to do so. “Precedes that.”

        He tossed it into the murky, chlorine smog of Haven’s jungles. A ripple of sluggishly displaced gas was the only marking point of where the rock had gone.

        “Being able to manipulate that field, even in minute ways, allows events to precede their cause. By extending this logic outwards, to infinitely, nearly any number of highly implausible events become possible. It is possible at any moment that the air within your lungs will rearrange itself into gold, via specific quantum decay states. However it is so implausible that it will not occur, even if you sit there, breathing for longer than the universe will exist as stable matter.” Zeradar inclined his head. “However, via manipulating the causal field with the organs within our brains, you could have the event of such a thing happen before the cause  – the infinite march of time.”

        “If you could do that naturally, how did you not develop faster than light travel?” Sarah asked, slowly, her hand going to her chest in alarm.

        L'Laya sighed. “Waste heat is produced as a byproduct of the biological systems which allow this ability. Even if a master like Zeredar was to try such a feat on you, he would suffer the Death By Brain Boiling In His Skull and Spraying Out of His Eye Sockets In Jets of Superheated Bloodmist.” She paused, considering the translation that had come out of her translation orb. “...that...it’s just one word in our language. And considerably more lyrical.”

        Sarah nodded – and then remembered her own superheated body whenever she returned from severe injury. She frowned. “So, what if the waste heat got emitted elsewhere?”

        “Well, it would make you significantly stronger and more potent than either of us,” Zeredar said, sounding affronted. “But such a thing would-”

        Sarah held out her arm, frowning at it. She had the ability to understand the biological makeup of a creature pretty much from just connecting her wrist tendrils to it. It was how she was able to affect biological changes, after all. But she had shied away from using that same power on herself – to confront just how much she had changed. No more. She focused and saw the less overt biological changes. The slow, impressed whistle that escaped her lips was nearly begrudging. “Well,” she said. “I have a system of waste heat...basically, you guys are fan cooled, while I’m liquid cooled.”

        Zeradar harrumphed.

        “Teach me,” Sarah said, quietly. “I have to know how to use this power, if we’re going to take on the Claw and the corporations.”

        Zeradar nodded, slowly. “Very well. It has been many centuries since I have taught one in the way of our people. But if it will help to end the galaxy’s darkness, I shall.” He crossed his arms over his chest once more, the faint rasp of his metal armbands glancing against one another filling the air. “Begin by opening your zk’glorar.” The orb squealed and clicked a few more times, then said, in a mechanical tone of voice. “Translation Error.” But Zeradar was still speaking, and it hastily caught up: “-then tansflux your metagenic conception folds, and begin by brachiating your consciousness into a dourflop and-”

        “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Sarah held up her hands. “Whoa! Slow down, there. I don’t even know what the first word you said was.”

        “I- '' Zeradar's mouth flaps squirmed underneath the cloth he had draped over his mouth to conceal it. He looked at L'Laya, who shrugged her shoulders slightly.

        Sarah frowned. “Well...” She paused. “I can understand better if I have access to your biology.”

        A long, awkward pause filled the air as Zeradar and L'Laya exchanged looks. Sarah was almost certain that they were speaking to one another, in some place below thoughts. Below the audible communication that she and the human race took for granted. She waited patiently. Or as patiently as she could. Her fingers drummed on her thighs – and finally, Zeradar nodded his head curtly, then said: “Very well.”

        He held out his wrist to her and Sarah gulped, then reached out with her hand as well. Her fingers closed around the base of his elbow as she focused, letting her wrist tendrils slip out and then press against his skin. The feathery contact caused his body to squirm a bit and Sarah frowned a bit as her tendrils quested for some kind of genetic information. But the body of the Pro-Tas had a cellular structure completely unlike any other organism she had contacted before. She cocked her head, frowning a bit as she furrowed her brow.

        “I need something more densely layered in genetic infor-” Sarah stopped as she noticed that the armored codpiece that Zeradar wore had just made a soft click noise. She blinked. Then she glanced at L'Laya, who was looking down at them with widening eyes.

        Sarah arched an eyebrow at her, an idea sparking in her head.

        L'Laya’s cheeks darkened and she very subtly nodded her head.

        “Well, then I suppose we shall have to begin the months of training it will take to open your zk’glor-” Zeradar’s voice cut off in a squeal of translation circuits as Sarah reached up with her other hand, hooked her fingers on the codpiece, then tugged forward. The thick, ridged cock of the alien popped into the air and his musk filled Sarah’s nose. Sarah grinned at him, slightly playfully.

        “Or I can get genetic samples the fun way,” she murmured. Her mouth pressed to the side of his gray cock and Zeradar made an abortive grab towards her head – his fingers curling back on themselves as he jerked his hand back, as if worried that her head spines would impale him. L'Laya, her cheeks darkening even more, slid her hands along her sides, pausing to hook the blunt tips of her thumbs on the hem of her leggings, her eyes growing soft as Sarah kissed her way, gently, along the side of Zeradar’s cock, finding the tip of his member. It twitched instinctively against her tongue and she opened her mouth, pressing the flat of her tongue against his maleness. Her eyes half closed as she crooned.

        “Tasty...”

        She withdrew her wrist tendrils, freeing both of her hands. One closed around the base of his cock, squeezing firmly. The other caressed his bony, angular hip, gripping him and holding him in place as she took a few inches of his cock into her mouth, sliding forward. Inch by inch, she closed her lips tighter and tighter around him as she let her eyelids droop more and more, to focus only on the decadence of the moment. She felt every tiny ridge of him against her lips and her teeth as her tongue slid around and around and around the tip of his cock. She wished he had balls for her to grip, but made do, reaching back to cup and squeeze his ass.

        The deep, masculine groan that escaped his mouth and warbled through his translation drone – which flew down to circle gently around Sarah’s shoulders like a buoy in a storm tossed ocean – was so satisfying. L'Laya let out her own musical note of pleasure as her long, oddly jointed fingers plunged into her own cunt, her fingers circling her glowing clit as she watched Sarah take more and more of her lover’s cock into her mouth. Sarah drew back, so that she could take a deep breath once his dick was out of her lips. Her hand closed around his cock again, pumping him slowly.

        “So, question,” she said, quietly. “Are you two...can you two breed the Pro-Tas back to...”

        “No...” Zeradar said, shaking his head. “There is not enough genetic diversity for two Pro-Tas to repopulate our species. Even if we fucked, every day, every night, from here until the end of our lives, all we would be doing would be birthing a scant few children to then see their own race die off, without mates or partners beyond their own siblings.”

        Sarah pursed her lips. “Hm...” She closed her mouth around his cock again, her eyes closing. This time, there was no gentleness. No hesitation. Nothing but a focused, directed effort to bring pleasure . Her hand pumped and rotated along his exotic cock, her tongue flicked against the tip of him, licking up the tiny spurts of what might have been precum that escaped from him. The effort paid off: His translation orb warbled and fell out of the air, clunking onto the ground next to her while his thighs pulsed . She saw tiny waves of movement, as if muscles she had never seen before were tightening in a rippling pattern.

        Then the first blast of a Pro-Tas’ warrior’s cum began to paint the roof of her mouth. It washed down her throat and Sarah closed her eyes tight, focusing on drinking and tasting and enjoying – and oh, it was an enjoyable burst of seed. He tasted rich, like smoked coffee that cost her nearly her entire paycheck, and his cum coated her mouth and her throat, sticking to her more than a human’s spunk would have. She had to work a bit harder than she expected to swallow, to get it down.

        Sliding back, she smacked her lips, groaned, and shivered as she felt another blast of the thick, almost glowing fluid splashing against her forehead and her cheeks. It didn’t drip as much as she expected – sticking to her like paint. She gurgled, then giggled as she swallowed the last burst.

        Her eyes closed as her body began to play around with the genetics stored in the seed. She focused on this power, rather than turning away from it. She teased apart genomic structures and combed through a biology more alien than anything she had ever seen in this part of the galaxy – something that struck her, suddenly, as revelatory. It was something to worry about for another day, because the knowledge that was unlocking inside of her head was heady and almost instinctive.

        She felt her human mind skirting around directly confronting some of the facts that imprinted themselves against her. Not because they were impossible or unknowable, but because the context inherent in them was so…

        Alien.

        So strange.

        And then her perceptions shifted a bit and she realized that under that alien edge, there was a core of something that made her heart burn with joy, like a tiny nova.

        Tears brimmed in her eyes and the two Pro-Tas looked down at her, in confusion and concern. “Are you all right?” L'Laya asked.

        Sarah breathed in, a quick, snotty snort that made her giggle and rub at her eyes. “Yeah,” she whispered. “You two love each other.”

        The two Pro-Tas exchanged glances. “Of course we do,” L'Laya said. Her cheeks darkened and she hesitated. “Well. At least. We have the beginning of what could one day become-”

        “No, I mean,” Sarah shook her head. “I understand you both to my core now. I’ve taken your genetic structures apart and understood them. I know how your version of hormones work and how your paracausal powers function.” She grinned, slightly. “And you know what? There’s lots of alien perceptions and alien ideas in there. But under that? Love. Friendship. Nostalgia. Getting pissed off at lines, and scared about the future. Y-You guys are more like us than I thought.” She looked down at her hands. Her fingers, slender and green, flexed. The claws at the tip of each sprang out with a soft snick . “I guess sentience has certain traits that are niches, not chances.”

        “Niches?” L'Laya asked.

        “On every world, someone evolves an eye,” Sarah said, standing up and beginning to wipe the glowing seed from her face. “Because being able to see predators is a niche – a byproduct of evolutionary systems, n-not because of, uh, any random chance.” She nodded. “But...I think maybe...loving people and being friends with people and wanting to help people isn’t a random fluke of evolution. I think it’s a niche . Something that sentience is selected for.”

        “What does that mean?” Zeradar asked – his voice sounding slightly awed, even through the translation orb.

        Sarah shrugged, slowly. “I don’t know if it means anything. Beyond...” She held out her hand. “Beyond that we’re all in this together.”

        Zeradar looked at her hand. He clasped it.

        “Let’s go check on the recruits,” Sarah said, grinning at him. Then she turned and focused on the new knowledge that had been burned into her head. A glowing field of pale light surrounded her. Then it sparked. Fizzled. Popped. Blood started to drip from her nose as she stumbled, her arms flailing to the side. L'Laya and Zeradar hurried forward, grabbing her around the arms to keep her from tumbling over the side of the hill and straight into the thick, bilious fog of Haven.

        “Did you just try to fly?” Zeradar asked, his voice severe.

        “...maybe...” Sarah mumbled.

        “Don’t,” Zeradar said.

***

        Sarah, Zeradar, L'Laya and Synth stood on the rise before the crater, which no longer smoked and hissed. The quantum core that contained Hailee’s processes was on a wheelchair with a pair of speakers strapped to the arm-rests, which Synth was lounging against causally.

        “I leave you humans alone for five minutes,” Hailee said, her voice mock severe.

        “Sorry Mom ,” Sarah said. “Oh! Hailee, check this out!”

        She lifted her palm and flexed her fingers. Her brow furrowed and the pale not-quite-light appeared around her palms again. A small rock that she was focusing on quivered and twitched, then laid still. “Very impressive!” Hailee said.

        “No, I meant to-” Sarah yelped and ducked as the rock fifty degrees offset from the first rock shot at her head as if it had been accelerated at her with a railgun. It clipped a tree behind her and splinters showered her back. Sarah stood up again. “Hah! I meant to do that!” She said, pumping her fist.

        Hailee laughed.

        “Oh! Oh!” Synth said, pointing. “Look! That one’s hatching!”

        The two aliens, two AIs and one hybrid all craned forward.

        “I think...” Sarah said, grinning. “We’re almost ready.”

        Synth snapped up a salute. “At your service...Generalissimo Kappel!”

        And in the cratered ruins of Haven, two hundred and thirty seven cocoons began to hatch.