Day Twenty-Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT
My apologies for the delay; my scribe was rather shaken by the events last described and declared that she 'needed some people time' before vanishing in a burst of feathers. While I could have carried on without her— I have, through considerable time and effort, finally managed to master that so-called "art" of scratching small symbols into a solid medium— she took her typing device with her and I much prefer dictation.
Embarrassing? Hardly.
For the record— the written record, in symbolic format— my scribe Bonadan Moninedo-sa is a skilled typist and fine companion in these lonely mountains. I would never be able to use those tiny keys myself without a great deal of frustration.
Not embarrassing at all. Good work should be recognized. I speak, and it is translated into silent format, awaiting mental reconstruction— not so personal or accurate as receiving information directly from the source, but, as they say, when on Center, wear your best ribbons. If the truth is to be learned frozen, so be it.
I certainly learned my truths cold.
To wake, in an unfamiliar place, consumed by unfamiliar ache, and realize...

Well, it wasn't a happy truth.

They built the pod in haste, following the form of one of your drop vessels— the Demolisher carriers— with exacting attention to both internal and external features. No hint of our own technology, no way to trace it back to its makers, no indication that it was not simply stolen from a wayward fleet. If the Array were to interact with the outside, they would do so in a manner concealing their involvement. The only peculiar detail was the pod's lone inhabitant.
Me.
We had watched you for over a decade; you had never laid eyes upon us. Not that we knew.
Us, never. But our machines...
To you we were the unknown, terrible constructs from the depths or the far regions, horrors lurking in your histories and lying in wait for the future. We were monsters that burned worlds; we were gifts of the golden divine. We were inexorable, unstoppable, our artifacts returning in every age for another test of your will to rule and your right to live. We were Fate incarnate.
Had I known this, I may have been more confident.
"Here I am!" I would have said, standing tall with outstretched arms and open jaws, "Creator and controller of the Mazes, the Burning Ship, the Encounters; the teeth behind Biter and the face of your gods. It is I who dictates the course of empire, I who prompted your first foray into space. I am Silent-Sands-Drift-Against-the-Wall, Ninth House and Void, the mystery against which your Royals are born to defend. Before was but a tremor— now comes the quake. Now are the end-times, visited upon you in vengeance for what we have lost. Only fools and children place their faith in the stars."
But I didn't know.
It seems many problems arise when one is kept in a state of not-knowing.
Who would have known?

I dream of whirling silver, balls hung on strings, twists of wire and glitter, corkscrews and vortex, playthings spinning in undefined space and suspended in cloud. I say I dream; Silence Hunters do not sleep, and therefore we do not dream— more a hallucination, these spindles, false figments brought on by procedure and pain. They sing to me, piercing chitters and droning whistles, pops and gurgles and falling chords. It's all nonsense, but who said whirligigs could talk?
"Cheee grah-glick hwis-kah meko."
"Ke, ke, meko chin-kwen sograhma no."
"Chimagrah. No meko glick-gan sonmeck."
The chimes spin and collide and arc away from one another, twisting, wobbling, humming with repressed force. Whether I am inside or outside, among them or merely watching them, I cannot tell.
"Meshaga," say the chimes. "Hwin-to no gangasha."
A faint sense of movement. Metal against my plates. Of being lifted, carried, deposited in another place.

Rumbling.
It is not the familiar, comforting drone of the pillars, or the susurration of the old engines. It is higher, sharper, harsher, tainted with the occasional scrape or rattle.
I can feel it churning my insides.
To move?
No.
Better to lie, and listen, and allow my mind to drift. As it has for four days, as it will for many more. It's so much easier not to think.
The rumble builds, the deck shudders; something around and below spins to a howl.
A rift tears itself into my brain— the hole where the Link once was, the emptiness that was my people, my guardians, my siblings— and pulls the rest of me through.
Not Echoes-Die. Not quite. But close.
Flickers of past/present/future. Golden walls. Vine-wreathed trees. Pale sparkling wings. Chimes, spinning, speaking, dancing away to dimness.

A Jump. My first.
The vessel carrying me reappears somewhere else.

"Kashega go meko, sonmeck richa."
"Ke-ke?"
"Garashan tono. Grah-glick hwis-kan meko."
"Mengi. Hesh hesh."

Meko. Meko.
Outsider. Unnatural. Robotic.

More movement. None of it by my own motive. I lie, and listen, and accept what is done.
If it is them— and I believe it is so— there is little I can do. I have been given up to their power. Cast out. Abandoned. The Array has taken all that I was. And for what? For attempting to save them. For attempting to show the way. For lack of knowledge and foresight. For being young. And stupid.

We have no word for martyr, but if I knew it then I would have invoked it.

“Ne-te? Ne-te?”
Hard surface beneath my head. Hard surface beneath my side. Like the slab. Just like the slab.
“Meko ne-te?”
A prod.
“Meko ne-te?”
They're going to eat me. The Array didn't just want me dead, it wanted me forgotten. It wanted me gone. Departed. Transformed into one of them.
Another prod.
“Meko ne-te?”
Shaper to shaped. Sculptor to stone. Gardener to dirt.
“Geeka.” This voice is different, rasping. “Go-te nemaken.”
“Eh. Eh. Nemaki.” A third prod. “Goreh?”
“Go-goreh nemaken.”
“Glick-tenkah. Goreh. Ne-te songahna anomeko?”
A span of silence. I remain still. Their babbling sounded too short to equal the full ceremony. If, indeed, they have a ceremony. Any ceremonies.
Doubtful. Animals don't have culture. Much less any specific ceremonial bent. It must be much cruder than that.
Maybe they're waiting for assistance. There's only two of them. Them being... not Wonder-Conquerors, certainly, but something similar. The first a Glass-Hide. The second a Sheen-Mane. Maybe. The latter aren't common enough for me to identify with certainty.
I slit one eye open. Three twitching mandibles hover over me, encased in something white and crinkled. A clear pane curves behind, four beady black spots glinting within.
"Goreh!" exclaims the mandibles, and they draw away. "Cheee shemato hwineta ka gana-te."
A rush of air. "Ahkga, ahkga. Meghak garich."
"Ke. Hwehne chin-na-chin."
Clinks; I rotate my vision downwards to see the two aliens knocking appendages together. Both are clad in the same white substance, some sort of fabric or plastic, with the same panels over their faces. One— the Glass-Hide— is long and serpentine, no limbs save the articulated claws around its mouth. The other stands on two legs, with another two above, and is about as tall as the other is long.
They're soft. Inside. Remarkably so. No hard parts at all, save hints of porous skeletons. No battery. No equivalent heat spillage.
Strictly chemical.
Emblazoned upon their shoulders (or side, for the Glass-Hide) is that same design repeated over and over on all the alien vessels: a circle, with another circle inside, three prongs spaced equally between them. This one is colored black and silver, and small squares and lines form a ring around it.
"Meko ne-songaha vendua kia-ha?" says the Sheen-Mane, spreading one of its hands into a fan of stubby fingers.
Is it trying to talk to me? Stupid alien. Why talk to me? It must know or at least suspect that I don't understand it. Nonsense. All of it nonsense.
And even if I did understand what it was saying, why would I talk to it?
"Go-songaha," says the Glass-Hide, coiling its tail around itself, and I reason that they must still be speaking to one another. "Chennu hwata-kana kia-ha, eh?"
They stare at me.
I shut my eye again.
Why can't they just get on with it? They take me to this place, wherever this place is, and then gabber to each other while I wait in abject despair. How kind of them. How very, very kind.
Maybe they're waiting for others to arrive. More equipment. Neither of them look as though they could cut through my armor, not without mechanical assistance.
If, that is— the thought seeps through cracks, fissures poorly mended— I still have armor.
The cracks widen, proliferate, fear perforating throat and battery.
No.
No, they couldn't have. Wouldn't I have noticed? Wouldn't I have felt it? Wouldn't they have left me that, the decoration— the worthless, beautiful decoration— if nothing else?
Alien exclamations as I reopen my eye. Please. Let there be gold, rimmed in red. Alloy lined with diamonds, pale and glittering. Design beautiful, purpose invincible, breakage impossible. Let me be armored. Let me be me.
A tendril held before my vision.
Yellow-orange. Pitted, flaking. Each gem now a scar. Golden memories scraped raw, scratched parallel tracks of pale claws, bitten and burned like the surface of the world Swift-Runs never finished. Bare. My own plates only, and my own plates alone.
I look as though I'm made of iron, and I'm rusting.
The Sheen-Mane steps closer, a crinkled flower balanced precariously on its lone pair of legs. "Goreh-te-goreh, acha van songha. Tengai te-gha."
Even.... even without armor, maybe they still need tools. They're simple, by themselves. It's only when they work together that they're dangerous. Only when they work together. Just like us. I suppose if I had to I could kill them. Just these two. And maybe a few more.
“Hwana. Hwata. Kia-ha? Vendua songhana anokia-ha?”
But the Array sent me here for a reason, and they sent me stripped. They know the Wonder-Conquerors don't have the means to combat our armor directly. They know they would never have been able to eat me without preparation.
They mean for me to suffer. They mean for me to die.
"Ak, ak," says the Glass-Hide. It slides closer, gesturing at itself with the tip of its tail. "Ikgrrooak kik Rrook. De, Ikrroo."
The Sheen-Mane shakes its head, but follows suite with one of its hands. "Aleksandr Lin. De, Sashko. Maro-de gonchira."
The Glass-Hide clicks its mandibles, a sound strangely muffled by the fabric. "Anomeko?"
Recognition comes slow.
My name? They want my name?
I don't have armor. I don't even have a Link, so far as I can tell. I've been reverted to the smallest of the small, the youngest, the most basic, and yet I am no longer a child and cannot go by the name of a child. I don't have a name. And even if I did, why tell them? They would only mock it, misuse it, take it for their own even as they do the same to me. That's what they would want. In a proper ceremony you repeat the name, over and over, to remember, but they would say it too softly or say it backwards or know it but not say it at all. They're monsters. Animals. You don't talk to animals. They wouldn't understand.
What would you call me, Crackling-Wind, were I to return? How would I be addressed, Smooth-Stones? Would I be called Singular-Former-Silent-Sands?
Or nothing?
"Anomeko?"
I'm not talking to them! Why do they keep asking? What do they want?
< Torture> says Smooth-Stones, even though I know he cannot be speaking, < They want to see you snap. To see you beg, maybe>
< They're making fun of you> adds Crackling-Wind.
To talk. To talk to someone. It doesn't matter that they're not actually talking. Couldn't be talking.
< Making fun of me?> I whisper.
< Yes. They know they have you in their power. You can't do anything>
< But— but look at them! They're little tiny things!>
“Anomeko?”
< If they weren't so confident in what they could do, they wouldn't keep asking, now would they?>
< Maybe they're bluffing> I reply, cringing back as one approaches yet nearer, < They have to be bluffing>
< You don't know that>
< I could figure it out>
< How?>
“Anomeko? Ne-Ikrroo. Ne-Sashko. Ne-anomeko?”
< Like this>
I snap my head upwards, wind whistling over the scars, and bellow, "No name! I have no name! Stop talking and either eat me or go away, and choose one or the other right now or I rip your heads off!"
The Sheen-Mane jerks backwards with a sharp exclamation, arms held before it like a shield. The Glass-Hide does likewise, silently, mandibles snapping wide. Afraid! They're afraid, afraid of me, afraid of us.
< Oh. They were bluffing>
< Congratulations>
< Keep it up>
I pull myself upwards, jaws gaping. “Haaaaaah!”
The room is smaller than I had thought, designed for lesser beings, and clad in white panels. Rectangular seams on one wall evidences an exit; a dim reddish glow above is the only light. My platform seems to be part of the floor, raised upwards, and the surrounding solid surfaces provide for a satisfying amplification of sound.
“I cut holes in your planet,” I scream, making loose panels resonate, “and I'll do the same to you!”
“Ano--”
< Don't let it talk!> urges Smooth-Stones, < Get it! Get it!>
I sweep an arm at each alien. “You! Yes, you! Ikgrrooak kik Rrook de Ikrroo! And you, Aleksandr Lin de Sashko! You heard me! Holes! Lots of holes!”
They were never going to do it. And even if they had, they wouldn't have done it properly. What was I doing, allowing them to cow me? Me! A Silence Hunter! If I am to die, I will die, but it will not be at the hands of cruel, pathetic, cringing creatures who dare to strike only with sickness. A terrible power, to be sure, but it takes time. And these two—
Well, these two don't have much time left.
I roll onto my chest, gathering my legs, regaining my balance as the room sways.
"You, Ikrroo, and you, Sashko, you'd best start running. I may be unarmored, separated, cast away— but I weigh more than you do and I bet I'm faster."
The two keep their distance. The Sheen-Mane is standing straight again and the the Glass-Hide is more than half uncoiled; they seem to have regained some courage.
< That won't do. Keep them running>
< Yell some more>
"Run!" I scream, and am gratified to see them jump.
"Gashari anomeko," says the Sheen-Mane, holding out its hands, "Nemochi-de akgha—"
"I grant you a count of seven before the cutting starts," I inform it.
"Ak cheee shemato—"
"Six."
"Chiruman-te kia-hwenta ke—"
"Five"
"Go-nema de ke ne-temushio," says the Glass-Hide, slithering even further away.
"Eh," replies the Sheen-Mane, keeping its hands out, "Ne-songaha vendua."
I crouch atop the slab, arms retracted and held back out of the way, and snap my jaws. "Four."
The Glass-Hide reaches the doorway and turns to operate a flip-out panel. "Sashko—"
"Go-Sashko, songaha rikunameko no—"
"Three."
The door retreats upwards, and the Glass-Hide retreats likewise. “Sashko!”
< Wait, they don't follow our rules>
< Why count?>
< Just kill them>
I shrug. If they can't recognize a count when they hear it, they don't deserve the full benefit.
I leap.
"Sashko!" screams the Glass-Hide.
"Aaack!" screams Sashko.
"Hrooooooor!" I scream at Sashko and the Glass-Hide both.
A number of things happen at once.
The Sheen-Mane performs a startlingly fast about-face and vaults towards its companion. The Glass-Hide slaps something on the exterior wall with a tail. I crash to the floor. I stumble. I skid on the smooth surface. The door slams closed. I slam into the door. Both myself and the door slam into the opposite wall outside of the room.
I scream. The aliens scream. The door screams.
I claw the door in half and try to disentangle myself from its pieces while my tormentors flee down a vertiginously narrow corridor.
"Sashko!" I yell after them, "Ikrroo! You think your halls will save you? These halls are nothing! This door—"
CRUNCH
"—is nothing!"
My head hits the ceiling. My tail sweeps what's left of the door into yet another wall. My claws scrape fissures into the deck. Crushed, confined, outcast, I charge forward, sides tearing away signage and loose piping, voice ricocheting like a length of chain.
"You, Ikroo and Sashko, will soon be nothing! You and all your kind! And all the other kinds! And any additional kinds we haven't yet found and identified— they die, too! All of you!"
Wailing. Whirls of red and yellow.
My crests catch on the ceiling for the third time, ripping away one of the sirens. Sparks shower onto my plates— my marred plates, my tortured plates— and the mechanism emits a final shriek before falling mute.
Too slow. I'm too slow. This place is too small, and my legs are too stiff, and I have no idea where I'm going or what I will do if I cannot catch up. Roam, perhaps. Search for other victims. This must be a vessel, or a station, or a compound of sorts— there will be others. Many, many others.
< Get them! Get all of them!>
I hurl the siren after the fleeing aliens.
It soars, turning two revolutions... and then clatters against an obstacle. A massive obstacle, directly ahead, that wasn't there before. Hard. Smooth. Deep green, striped with yellow. Hoses drape across its chest and sides. A dark mask, hands tipped with blades; it holds a blocky black-painted device with a band of lenses across the end.
The air around it crackles with cold.
"Move!" I command, adjusting pitch until exposed metal leaps and buzzes, "Move or the door's fate is yours!"
"Sssaaaah," it hisses. Frost curls across the pipes beside it. "Meko sse-rasss."
I barrel towards it, coiling my arms into clubs and readying my claws.
"Move! Move now!"
It fires.

To this day I can recall no interval between 'weapon ready' and 'weapon discharged.' One moment the muzzle was down, held loose and calm, and the next--

A Cutter, as I would soon discover, is a laser weapon of considerable power. Used by Demolishers, mainly, due to the weight of its power packs, and with two settings: drill and spread. There is no recoil. The beam is pulsed, designed to pierce flesh in preference to the metal of sail hulls, and damage is caused by flash-boiling and expansion. Being a laser, the beam is invisible until after the first shot. This first shot, when triggered, sounds like this:

chik

Which seems harmless enough, but is followed immediately by a blue flash, an earsplitting bang, and the smell of ash and char and blood, now pouring copiously from steaming wounds on both front and back of the victim, who may also be in two or more pieces and may also be wreathed in fire in addition to being blind and deaf and in all probability already dead.

Armored, I would have shrugged off the attack like sunlight. Armored, I would have laid waste to the facility with such thoroughness that any later investigators would have postulated an earthquake, or perhaps a fleet bombardment. Armored, a Demolisher is no threat at all.
But all I had were my own coverings, plate and scale.

The shot didn't kill me, of course. Nor did it greatly slow me down.
The latter feat required shots two through twenty-five.

First lesson learned: never charge a Demolisher.

Over the next few weeks I learned much more than that. Chief among which was the nature of my location.
My prison was not a starfaring vessel, nor a space station. Neither was it a facility on a habitable world, either above or belowground, concealed or unconcealed.
It was a facility, yes, on a planet, yes, but much more than that. The surface was lifeless; all operations located tens of kilometers below. It was garrison, shipyard, factory, mine, strategic centerpoint, and home to seven million workers and their families.
Fortress R-26.
Even if I had killed those two— Ikrroo and Sashko— I would have been less than one percent of one percent finished with the total population. I, who had depopulated a world in seconds not long before.
9,583 sailfleet plates held high orbit over my head. There would be no escape. Not unless my siblings came for me, and I doubted the Array would permit them. I wondered, many times, if the Array had killed them, too.
Sometimes, still, I wonder.