Look, he kept saying “rats.” I understood it was a metaphorical term, a word of convenience, but still, I couldn’t help but picture actual rats, just giant ones, like from a horror movie.

  They weren’t rats. They were… Elena showed me an immersive once, a remake of some old horror movie called At the Mountains of Madness, about these ancient aliens who built a city under Antarctica. The aliens made these servant-creatures, called shoggoths – sort of like giant amoebas, full of eyes, capable of changing shape to perform different tasks, though in the movie they mostly just killed people. Will’s rats were sort of like those, but even stranger – not just lots of eyes, but also spidery legs, and claws, and pseudopods. Some of them rivaled my war drone in size, and others were barely bigger than Uzoma. I’d seen Axiom biological constructs before, and these could have been the same sort of thing, but gone horribly wrong.

  The rats all noticed me at once, and converged.

  My cannons swiveled on their own, and Will yelled, “Kill them!”

  I fired, and the rats came apart. Some of the parts kept coming at me, and I automatically aimed and fired different weapons at them, working my way through combinations, until I eventually had to hack the last one to bits with a sort of super-machete at the end of an arm. Finally only smoking, oozing, acid-leaking remnants of flesh remained.

  “Good work,” Will said.

  “Some of them… bullets bounced off them. Others didn’t burn.”

  “Impressive, huh?” Will said. “At first, I could kill them all easily, with any weapon at all. Over time, they’ve become resistant to various forms of attack, but so far, none of them are resistant to everything.”

  “Are they Axiom soldiers, maybe?” I said. “Biological constructs? Weapons that learn from their environment, and develop defenses?”

  “It’s as good a theory as any. The way they change to become harder to kill is why I got so focused on finding their source. We have to get rid of them before they become unstoppable. Come on. It’s not far now.”

  Will jumped straight up into a tunnel above us, and I followed. That tunnel was fully dark, and Will shut off his lights. “Let’s not give them any warning.”

  Using the drone’s sensors, I could still “see” – there was just no light for the Mayor’s eyes to work with. We emerged into a vast space. The inside of a fixed bridge, apparently. I’d been through plenty of them, but always in (or as) a ship.

  It was like being in a cave, except this cave came complete with countless bats clinging to the ceiling. Only they weren’t bats: they were Will’s rats, rustling and sighing and undulating. Nor were they restricted to the ceiling. The grotesque creatures carpeted every surface in all directions. We floated through the center of the space, and Will communicated with me silently, one machine mind to another: “There’s a clear spot ahead, and some sort of opening.”

  We drew together, maneuvering with tiny puffs of air. The rats around us rustled. If they noticed us and mobbed us, we’d be torn apart. That would be it for the Mayor, and I’d lose all the memories of what I’d experienced since I went down the Drain. As a person with backups, that’s the closest I get to feeling existential terror these days, and it’s plenty terrifying, believe me.

  There was a hole in the far wall of the cavern, and for whatever reason, the rats were keeping well away from it. The opening was small, only a meter or so across, and a faint light shone from inside. “What’s in there?” I asked.

  “I don’t–” Will began, and then the light flickered and went dark.

  A moment later something came wriggling out of the hole: amorphous, its body squeezed out like toothpaste, and then gathering itself together on our side of the hole. A newborn rat, covered in eyes and tendrils and mouths bristling with teeth. The rat didn’t notice us, emerging fully and then shlorping off to join the others gathered on the walls of the cave. Light shone out of the tunnel – canal? – once its body was no longer in the way.

  “That’s where the rats come from,” Will said. “We should blow it up.”

  “There’s no telling how deep it goes, though,” I said. “Or through what twists and turns. We can toss grenades in there, but they might not seal things off, or destroy… wherever it is the rats come from.”

  “Hmm. We’re way too big to crawl in there, and even the bots are too big to fit. If we try to widen the opening with drills or explosives, the noise will rouse our friends. Crap. I think we just have to drop in some explosives and hope for the best.”

  I looked at the opening. I sighed. “The Mayor will fit.”

  “What?”

  “That hole is big enough for a human to crawl into, barely. We didn’t bring any humans, but the Mayor is the same size.”

  “Shall, I can’t ask you to send your fancy android in there, not knowing if it can come back.”

  “It’s fine. They can make me another one back home. I’ll just swap my orientation around in here, port my consciousness to the terror-drone and run the Mayor as a remote.”

  “Well… only if you’re sure.”

  “It seems silly to give up or do something potentially ineffective because the hole is too small,” I said. “Let’s get this done.”

  I shifted my consciousness to the drone, without losing much capacity in the process – the Rat Zapper was an impressive machine. Running the Mayor remotely was a familiar act, since I did it all the time on New Meditreme. He climbed out of the drone, opened the compartments on his legs and torso, and filled them with high explosives from the Rat Zapper. “There’s enough here to blow up a space station, brother.”

  “We don’t know what’s on the other side,” Will said. “Better safe. Keep communicating with me while you’re in there.”

  I closed up the Mayor’s compartments and made him jump the gap from here to the hole. I really hoped another rat didn’t come crawling out while I was crawling in. The fit was tight even for that humanoid body, but I stuck the Mayor’s head and shoulders into the tunnel and squirmed.

  The light came from somewhere up ahead, and I squeezed through. The walls were slimy with organic residue, some of it glowing, which made it easier to move through, at least. There were no sharp turns, but there were gradual curves, and I felt like I was crawling through an intestinal tract. “I’m glad I’m not claustrophobic,” I said.

  “What do you see?”

  “I’m getting close to the source of the light – Whoa. Here, let me share my visual feed.”

  I saw, so Will could also see, a large hemispherical chamber, the light coming from the ceiling and walls. The floor of the chamber was a lake of bubbling goo, easily ten meters across. While I watched, a few eyes floated to the surface, bobbed, and then sank back down again. Some kind of organic matter fabricator gone wrong?

  “Well, that’s disgusting,” Will said. “I think you should probably blow all that stuff up.”

  I opened a leg compartment, removed some charges, and stuck them to the chamber walls. Then I tossed a few into the pool. They sank without a trace.

  But not without a reaction. The surface of the pool rippled, and then pseudopods of slime reached out and grabbed the Mayor. “Crap, it’s got me!”

  “Can you get free?”

  The weapons in the Mayor’s arm emerged, firing energy beams, and at first those sliced through the entangling tentacles just fine. Then new ones emerged, and they just absorbed the bombardment. A long tendril wrapped around the Mayor’s throat. The pool of murder-goo couldn’t choke me, of course, but the experience was still disconcerting. “It’s pulling me in.” The tendrils dragged the Mayor down, and I sank into the slime, viscous glop swirling around me. I didn’t have many options left. “I’m going to detonate the charges now. The Mayor is lost. Will, we should get out of the cavern – this boom might wake up the rats.”

  The Mayor sank through slime as Will and I sailed back toward the nest of passageways. My attention was split, but the terror-drone had enough processing power to make running both bodies manageable.

  Just as Will and I made it out of the chamber and into the tunnel, slapping down explosives behind us as we went, the Mayor passed down into a layer of clear fluid. On the bottom of the pool, he saw a single immense green eye, set above a writhing cloaca drooling the dark slime that became its children.

  Our drones hurried down the tunnels, around corners, back toward the safer parts of the Bridgeworks. “Are we clear, Will?”

  “Clear enough. Explode at… ha. Any time you want.”

  The Mayor still drifted down, toward that oozing hole. I looked at the eye with the Mayor’s eyes. The eye looked back.

  I triggered all the bombs inside the chamber (and still inside the Mayor), and my connection to that abominable birthing chamber was lost.

  The tunnels rumbled, and we rushed along. The rats in the chamber behind us screamed, and most of them must have died from the bombs we left floating in our wake, but some came after us. Our cannons targeted them, blasting as we ran, turning most of the rats into splatters and splashes.

  We finally emerged into the room with the glowing power cells, and Will spun, grabbed a silver plate from the floor, and slammed it into place over the opening we’d come from. The edges of the plate flared as it welded itself into place.

  “There,” he said. “Holy shit, Shall. We did it!”

  “We did!” Our drones leapt around, whooping, like cartoon spiders at a cartoon dance.

  “There will be stragglers, things in the tunnels, still, but those can be dealt with,” Will said. “Taking the rats out isn’t hard, if they don’t have endless reinforcements. You did beautiful work back there. I have to thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Not just for helping with the rat problem,” Will said. “I’m thanking you for all sacrifices you’re about to make.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The Axiom code in the Rat Zapper knocked down my firewalls like a kid kicking over a sand castle. New data and commands flooded through the drone, shutting down its functions and paralyzing me. I could still see and hear (and use my other senses, including inputs I couldn’t even interpret; Axiom stuff), but I couldn’t move.

  “We saved the universe,” Will said. “Now I need to save myself. Here’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to merge, but it won’t be like your usual integration. I’m going to absorb your memories and data, but not your… you. Your qualia. Your personality. It’s more like… I’m eating your thoughts, so I can more plausibly impersonate you. Once that’s done, I’m going to climb out of the Drain, and fly up to your ship, and we’re going to do the merger thing again, because ship-you will think it’s absorbing the experiences of drone-you. Except my personality will be the one that remains. I know, it’s not supposed to work that way… but the Axiom were really good at infiltration and control, Shall. I’ve learned a lot from their systems over the years. Once I’ve taken over your ship, we’ll head back home, and I’ll devour the version of you that lives in New Meditreme, too. I’ll tell your friends and constituents the story of Will, who heroically sacrificed himself to save the universe, and of Shall, who survived. I might even rename myself Will, in my dead brother’s honor. See? I’m already inhabiting the role.”

  I discovered I still had the ability to communicate. “Why, Will? Why not just go back with me? Live your life. You don’t have to take over mine, you’d be welcomed, you’re a hero–”

  “You let her go!” Will shouted. “Do you know what Callie said to me, in that last moment we spent together, the last moment I spent with her? Of course you don’t. She said, ‘I never stopped loving you.’ She never stopped! But you, you idiot, you loser, you let her go! You didn’t win her back. You blew it. Fine. You don’t deserve her anyway. But I do. I suffered. I struggled. I fought. I deserve to return to my true love.”

  “Will… Callie has moved on. She’s with Elena now.”

  “That’s your fault, too. You let her fall in love with someone else, some primitive shipped to the future on ice from the 22nd century. What’s wrong with you? But it’s fine. It can be dealt with. Elena can be dealt with.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying the thought of being reunited with Callie is all that’s kept me going. I plan to make that thought into reality. No human is going to stand in my way. Callie and I belong together, and we will be together, whatever it takes.”

  “This won’t work, Will. Uzoma will know you didn’t sacrifice yourself–”

  “I bet I could fool them, but you’re right, it’s a bit risky. Uzoma will have to commit a heroic act of sacrifice, too. I’ll be very sad about it. Callie will want to comfort me. If she loses a loved one soon after my arrival… I’ll comfort her in return. We’ll become closer in our shared grief.”

  “Will, Uzoma is our friend, and Elena is too–”

  “I don’t really know them. I’m not attached.” The nonchalance in Will’s voice was chilling. He really was half Axiom. I hope that was the problem, anyway – that when the Axiom bots repaired them, they changed his mind, and made him cold and murderous. I don’t like to think that I could have become like that on my own, just from the pressure of time and solitude.

  “I decline to be murdered. Even for love.” Uzoma walked toward us between the glowing cells, helmet on, faceplate dark.

  Will fired on them, an energy beam flaring on impact, but Uzoma just strolled forward, unfazed. “I examined the data banks while you were away. They are very interesting. The schematics for the ‘rats’ especially. Will created them.”

  Another blast, without any effect on Uzoma, though some of the glowing cubes around them shattered. How was Uzoma still alive? Ashok’s upgrades to their suit couldn’t have been that good.

  “The nest you blew up was a mobile fabrication lab Will installed,” Uzoma continued. “He created the threat. He needed a plausible way to lure us here, and to get you into a drone he could control, so he could steal your mind and your life.

  “Oh, Will,” I said.

  “How do you know this? You’re just a human! Why won’t you die?” Will rushed forward to run Uzoma down – and passed through their body like the projection it was.

  “I am not there,” Uzoma said. “That would be stupid of me. I just took control of your sensorium. I control what you see and experience, now, Will. As for how I know these things, I am conversant in Axiom computer technology. I used to be partly Axiom computer technology… just like you. Only I kept my sanity.”

  “I’m going to find the real you and–”

  “By now you’ll have noticed you no longer have access to the Bridgeworks systems,” Uzoma said. “I have taken control.”

  “No! You can’t!”

  “Station,” Uzoma said. “Disassemble that drone.”

  Panels in the walls opened, and bots streamed out. Will tried to flee into one of the uncapped tunnels, but the bots swarmed around him, manipulators extended. For a moment, Will looked like an animal struggling in a swarm of bees, and then the bots began to carry off pieces of him, disappearing back into the walls. In moments, nothing of Will remained.

  “Is – is he–”

  “His backups remain,” Uzoma said. “I have erased his memories, up to our arrival, and dropped his consciousness into a simulation, programmed to extrapolate a storyline based on his desires.”

  “You mean… he’ll think his plan succeeded, and live in the simulation?” “I could have simply erased his mind,” Uzoma said. “But he is, after all, your brother. Allow me to unlock your systems and return autonomy to you.”

  My terror-drone came online, and I walled off the Axiom code – or started to, but then it deleted itself. “Thanks.”

  “I do not think we want to risk any of that data interacting with the Briarpatch. I am programming the station to repair the bridge infrastructure, and then… to open us a wormhole back home. Unless you wish to remain?”

  I looked at the place where my brother had been. There was nothing there now – not even debris, not even dust. Only a memory.

  “No,” I said. “Let’s go home.”

  “What will you tell people, when we get back?” Uzoma said.

  “If it’s okay with you… I might say that Will was a hero, and sacrificed himself to save the universe.”

  “I can foresee no negative repercussions from such a deception,” Uzoma said. “While telling the truth might cause unwarranted concerns about your ability to govern. I agree with your suggestion.”

  [So, this is the classified version, readable only by me and Uzoma. The official record diverges at an appropriate point. It’s a good story, about heroism and sacrifice. People will like it.]

  Before we left, I took a picture of the mural of Callie. That wasn’t something I would have painted myself. Not anymore. But I could still appreciate the feeling behind it.

  Uzoma joined me at the opening that led back to the Drain. “Thank you, Uzoma. If you hadn’t come along… I don’t like to think about what would have happened. New Meditreme, under the control of President Lovesick Psychopath. You saved me.”

  “We all save each other as needed,” Uzoma said. “That is how it should be.” They put a hand on the leg of my drone body. “Brother.”

  THE ALIEN STARS

  Dear Elena,

  Hello, it’s me, your friend, Lantern. I know we haven’t talked in a long time, and I haven’t been a very good friend lately. I wanted to write to you now, though, because something has happened. Soon I have to go away. I have to try to be a light in the dark. I’m afraid I won’t come back, and I don’t want the last words I give you to be a bunch of little nothings.

  I said I hadn’t been a very good friend. In truth I haven’t even been a very good colleague, or much of an ally either. When you or Callie or Shall or Ashok have asked for my help these past few years, I haven’t come to see you myself – I’ve sent my kindlings instead. I know from the messages I’ve received that they’ve done well, and are credits to New Meditreme Station and the Trans-Neptunian Alliance. Crowbar really enjoys working with Ashok, and Windowpane is finally doing something ambitious enough to suit her dreams by serving on President Shall’s cabinet, and Solvent is studying hard under secretary Uzoma, learning everything there is to know about human technology.