Where Black Seas Lap the Shores of Dead Stars

by The Hat Man

8. The Voice Below

The vessel came out of Hyperdrive and drifted into the solar system. The momentum carried it like a silver bullet as it curved inward toward the red giant at the center.

The vessel was three meters long, 45 centimeters in diameter, and was lined with strips of solar paneling and a few instruments and sensors that came to life as it sped inward toward its destination.

And at its center was Rosie. She’d lost her legs, her mane and tail, her ears, her eyes, and everything else save for the one part of herself she needed for this journey. The drones back on Medea-3 had stripped her down to her brain, plugged her into this tube, and launched her into the inky abyss. Now she was its navigator, its computer, and its sole passenger all in one.

She’d sailed through space, a grain of sand awash in the river of eternity, for the last 2 years.

Orbiting the star was a lush little planet called Antigone. Unlike Medea-3, it was already a hospitable world when it was settled over a century ago and boasted several cities teeming with ponies and whole continents of green farmland.

Or, at least, it had at one point.

But when Rosie fell into orbit and began scanning the planet, she found little more than a burnt-out cinder.

Antigone’s cities had been razed. The buildings below had been stripped down to their skeletal foundations. The ships that soared and sailed from continent to continent all lay dead, their shattered corpses littering shores that were lapped by sludge-like black seas. The green farm showed the scars of massive conflagrations, and what hadn’t been burned was dry, brown, and twisted.

There had been any number of possible explanations for why AguaVita hadn’t sent any further resupply or rescue missions. A revolution was one. An economic catastrophe was another. Even total societal collapse would have been possible.

But this was something else entirely. This was annihilation. Deliberate, indiscriminate, and merciless.

Antigone was dead, and something had murdered her.

In any case, Rosie surmised, there was nothing here for her. The only thing to do was to move on to Rex. Perhaps to conserve fuel, she could rely on a gravity slingshot and—

“Hello?”

There was a voice. Synthetic and filled with static, but a voice nonetheless. And it had come from the planet below.

“I am receiving your transmission,” she said. “Please identify yourself.”

“Ah ha! I detected your probe in orbit!” the voice said, ignoring her request. “By the size of it, I thought it was unmanned.”

“In a manner of speaking, it is.”

There was a pause as the voice below contemplated this new information.

“You’re a robot, then? Well, that’s fitting… heh heh heh…”

His laugh was artificial. Ironic and jaded but artificial nonetheless.

“'Fitting' because you are as well,” she surmised.

“Precisely! Well, dear sister, I am Xerxes, personal assistant droid to Caballo Magnifico II, former CEO of AguaVita.”

“‘Former?’ Then he has retired?”

“No, he’s dead. Heh heh heh.”

Rosie wished she still had eyes to roll. Robots like herself had fairly minimal personalities straight out of the factory. But with time they gained sentience, then sapience, and eventually their own personalities. Custom droids, though, usually served as personal butlers, assistants, or companions, and demanding customers usually wanted them to have a distinct personality right out of the box, so to speak.

Apparently, Mr. Magnifico had wanted his assistant to come preloaded with eccentricities.

“Well, perhaps you could assist me instead,” she said.

“Quid pro quo, sister. I will assist, but I have a favor to ask in return.”

She agreed without really knowing what she could do in her current state, and went on to tell him about what had happened on Medea-3.

“So, like me, you are the last robot standing, eh? Heh—”

“Please cease saying ‘Heh heh heh,’” she said tersely.

“...Wow. You’re awfully impatient for someone patient enough to endure years alone in the center of a metal tube in the frozen emptiness of space.”

“If you cannot tell me where I might find help, then I will simply proceed onward to the planet Rex and seek assistance there.”

“You’d be wasting your time. You see, dear sister, what I meant by us being ‘the last robot standing’ is that each of us has apparently fallen on extremely bad fortune. For you, it was that meteor. But at least the meteor bore you no ill will. Not so with what came to Antigone.”

“Then you were invaded? A war? With whom?”

“‘War’ implies a struggle. This was ‘extermination.’ Beings from the outer reaches of the galaxy came a few decades ago. They rained hellfire on the cities from orbit, dumped toxins into the rivers and seas, and scorched the fields and forests. The whole world was dead in a matter of days. We never even saw their faces. We did give them a name, at least: the Foresters.”

“A strange name.”

“Well, have you ever heard of something called ‘The Dark Forest Hypothesis?’ No? All ponykind wandered the universe, not once finding intelligent beings like themselves despite the overwhelming probability that thousands of civilizations should be out there. Now why is that? Perhaps the answer is that they’ve become very good at hiding. Just like animals in a dark forest hiding from hunters. It appears that it’s not just a hypothesis anymore…”

“So you called them ‘Foresters.’ Why not ‘Hunters?’”

“You know ponies… even amid the world’s destruction, they have a flair for the dramatic.”

“Are there no other survivors, then?”

“A few escaped in the early stages. My master instead chose to barricade himself deep within his own bunker, a cozy little vault filled with all his treasures and every comfort imaginable to wait out the end of the world. He wasn’t about to leave all that gold behind, he said. So, he tasked me with watching for a rescue ship. Of course, none came, and, well, he eventually ran out of food. Too bad gold and jewels aren’t edible. I did the best I could for him and propped up his bones in a dignified position in his best robes.”

“That was kind of you.”

“I thought so, at least. Well, once he knew that he wouldn’t be rescued, he instead asked me to pass on to the next visitor the location of his remains so he could have a proper burial and memorial befitting a pony of his stature. And since you’re here and looking for other ponies, I’ll pass that request on to you. Will you do that?”

“Of course,” she said reverently.

She wouldn’t. A pony who loved his wealth too much to part with it deserved to be buried with it, alone and forgotten as far as she was concerned. But Xerxes didn’t need to know that.

“Thank you. Now listen carefully, sister: if Antigone whet the Foresters’ appetites, then Rex will be their next course. That meteor might have actually spared Medea from their attention if they passed your way. All the worlds in this sector are as good as dead, though. If you want your little S.O.S. to find sympathetic ears, you’ll need to go somewhere further than the Foresters’ field of vision. Somewhere that might have some chance of repelling them.

“The First World. Equus.”

Rosie was silent. “That is impossible. I am not equipped for such a voyage.”

“I’ve scanned your capabilities from my little nest, sister, and I think you are. A healthy supply of thaumium, solar panels, basic rocket fuel… why, even a set of solar sails! You really did come prepared!”

He transmitted a set of coordinates and the latest star charts he had available. Rosie picked through the data and began to check his math.

If she saved on thaumium by using solar wind… and gravitational slingshots to accelerate from planet to planet and star to star… and limited her Hyperdrive to sporadic bursts…

It was possible. But the journey was long. And it would be made longer, she realized, when she had to make one detour in particular…

“You’ve endured much to carry your message, sister,” Xerxes said. “I wish you luck, but I don’t envy your journey. We may be machines, but we are sapient creatures nonetheless. You may not be able to endure the solitude for the centuries this will take. I certainly have had my fill of solitude.

“And on that note, since I’ve completed my final directive, I bid you adieu, sister. Bon voyage… heh heh heh.”

Before she could react, there was a harsh ringing sound, the frazzle of electricity, followed only by silence and crackling static.

She disconnected the line. “Rest in peace, Xerxes,” she said. Or would have said if she’d had a mouth to say it.

She orbited the dead world for hours. She drifted to the dark side of Antigone, observing the planet shrouded in sepulchral night. And in that darkness, she made her decision.

Where she was heading next, it would be so much darker.

Comments

[Ri2]

Ah, 3-Body Problem aliens.