“It would be the only option they’ll have. I am not talking of possibility, they have no other choice than to eventually strike us down like this. It will happen. We need to prepare for it.”

“Talen. Please. I do not believe it is possible. Machines are unable to reach a soul out of their fractals, only the mites are capable of it and at extreme cost to themselves. So long as we remain out of the digital sea, they have no other means to connect with us directly in the real world. We are safe. You are overly paranoid.”

“No. It will happen, Urs. Listen to me. No matter how impossible you believe it to be, they will find a way. I can see it already coming for us both. I need you to promise me this. Promise me. Don't look away from me, blast you. Promise me you will be the one. There's no one else out there who even stands a chance otherwise. It has to be you.”

“I... Very well, if such a thing happens, I will find you and... do as you request. I promise you. However. If you are correct, then they will be able to do the same to myself, and equally come to strike me down the same manner. Thus, you will make the same promise to me as well, should it happen to myself instead.”

"You can't fight as well as I can. You wouldn't be half the threat to the world if that fate happened."

"No. I would not. But if I am gone, and there is no means to return me, then there is no point in leaving half of my power out of anyone's hands. Take it back, unite the two again. You made me promise.

Now, I will make you do the same."

Miles above orbit, a dead man opened his eyes and watched the world below from his tomb.

He had expected Mother to have reached him by now, launching anti-orbital weapons at his final resting place.

Instead, all he saw on the surface was destruction. And not humanity’s.

They were fighting back. Banding together in a way he had never seen, could never have even expected. Not even at the height of the Empire, had humanity been this perfectly organized.

They struck out of portals, moving around the world like grains of sand caught in a storm. Unpredictable, seen one moment, gone the next.

So many across the entire world, all done simultaneously. He’d been forced to update the combat protocols on the three fortresses in order to avoid friendly fire.

The breadth of their fight was a wonder to behold.

And they seemed to respond to his movements in coordination. Locations could either be completely overrun by humans striking from all directions. Others directly in his orbital path were left alone. As if humanity had silently requested he demolish the machine forces for them.

He obliged, triggering main cannon systems and erasing their scourge off the surface of the earth each time.

Hours passed like so, until one moment where everything changed.

Humanity had been holding back the darkness. And as on a whim of fate, the darkness began to win all at once.

He studied the log. Looking for the reasoning. Why in one fell swoop, the machine forces had begun overrunning the defenses. Historical logs of the prior movements showed the immediate answer:

The greatest heroes of humanity no longer appeared. As did their weapons and occult masters.

Either eliminated further underground beyond his sight… or called elsewhere.

Anti-orbital cannons were rapidly being deployed without contest, with the regular human warriors simply unable to fend them off as they had prior. The warfront was changing. He adapted, increasing the orbital barrage range, expanding target selection, turning all three stations to maximum aggression.

It was as if he fought against the sea itself. For every outpost he smote out of existence, two or three were being set up. Priority lists were drafted up, calculated, and he moved the three stations wherever he determined would support the flagging defenses best.

It wasn’t enough.

Soon what he had expected would happen, happened. A railcannon shot finally punctured through the superstructure of a fortress.

The entombed man watched as the golden age marvel shuddered from the direct blow, damage reports cycling forward. This would be the twenty fifth hit it took, defensive systems already stressed to their maximum.

“Talen Station sustaining critical damage.” The fortress spoke over old systems, data packages recovered from.

He held a breath, waiting to see if this shot would be what finally ended it, or if it would survive one more fight. The world was on balance as the station’s autonomous systems struggled to adjust.

“Starboard orbital stabilizers offline. Station falling out of orbit. Calculating alternate courses… No course correction available.”

The fortress listed, slowly lowering in atmosphere, too far away for him to assist.

It was not designed to survive deorbit.

Already fire was beginning to lick the sides, burning up the hull as it groaned through the atmosphere, its original speed now breaking it apart as low orbit air began to superheat the armor plating. Pieces ripped off in the hundreds.

The remaining orbital stabilizers lit to life, new coordinate information fed into the systems. The doomed man watched the final flight coordinates.

The station slowly turned on itself, fire licking the hull, burning off everything it touched. The final mission was clear.

“Talen Station preparing for orbital fire.” His own fortress reported. “Main cannon array charing.”

The fortress concluded it would not survive. Its thousand year vigil over the earth was now ending.

And so it would execute the secondary priority: Destruction of the enemy forces.

The beam ripped free from the cannon, impacting one final machine base, cutting a chasm through the world and the enemy.

It lasted only seven seconds before the fortress ripped itself in half, systems too strained to remain functional, hull integrity ripping apart. The remaining pieces soared through the world in golden trails of light, burning bright, a comet returning to the Earth it had once been made from.

"Talen Station offline." His fortress spoke. “Signal lost.”

He sat still for a long moment, watching the last glowing trails left etched in the sky. Then he turned from the observation feed.

There was a decision. To remain in the fight, or to give those who came after a chance. The decision was swift. "Open command line to Urs Station."

A chime. The connection cracked into place. "Command line open. Urs Station autonomous guidance standing by."

"Initiate prograde burn, full thrust. Raise orbital altitude to L2 holding orbit… and execute escape trajectory."

"Urs Station course trajectory loaded. Main engines ready, systems nominal. Confirm order."

This story has been stolen from novelbuddy. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

"Confirm order. Begin ascent.”

Far above, beyond the burning trails of Talen's still burning orbital wreckage, a second star lit to life. Engines firing for the first time in years, carrying the last of the old era with it.

The fortress peeled away from the world, a green line superimposed over the trajectory. It spoke to him, the tone steady and clipped as always. "Urs Station burn nominal. Escape trajectory locked.”

The megastructure soared, until the pull of gravity no longer held it close. The engines dimmed, smaller ones lighting across the hull, slowly turning the ancient fortress to angle the massive engines away from the world it had once watched over.

A red line on his screen appeared, slowly angling away from the world. Until it snapped past a critical vector and turned green. Pointing far away from the world.

“Urs Station executing main engine burn.” Power flooded through the fortress far beyond, as it roared in the darkness. Pushing humanity’s final chance to the safety of the void beyond.

The settings and procedures are already loaded into memory, and primed to activate. Tsuya spoke in the man's memory. All that needs to be done is to turn it on. It will handle the rest by itself.

“Main engine burn complete." The chime came. "System standby mode engaged.”

He watched the station sail into the darkness of space. Where she could not follow it.

Each station has the power to restore the surface of the world. Keep them safe, at least one must survive.

One would survive. He'd sworn to her he would.

Machine forces adjusted to the departing Urs station, rail cannons and surface weapons now targeting the sole remaining station: His own.

Range warnings began to pop up all across the world, targeting solutions locking onto his location. Missiles were already on approach.

She would be here soon, attempting to end the world. It was time.

He rose from the throne then held a hand out, occult licking across his chassis. Deep within the superstructure, plates built by his old enemy began to glow, linking together. Created to be commanded by a man with far more honor than himself.

He would hold the line in Talen’s stead.

Occult crackled around his hands and flooded through him as the defense systems fully connected together. He held the power focused, preparing for the next step.

And keep yourself safe. Because one day, the world will need you again.

That day had come.

He slammed his hands together and completed the bridge, then expanded his hands out, an occult bubble growing in his palms, expanding past himself, past the command center, past the vault, beyond the main energy collection systems and stretched outside the hull.

Linked and cradled within the plates Urs had forged and Talen had prepared, using them to anchor itself around the fortress, shielding it from all harm.

Missile and railcannon fire slammed into the bubble of his will a moment later, the relentless assault beginning.

And it would not end until the fortress was brought low or the world ended.

The doomed man held the barrier tight, closed his eyes and prepared himself to protect the station. For as long as he had time left to live.

Relinquished crushed the afterimage, screaming all the while. The confirmation that one of those three fortresses had finally been destroyed was pale in the face of the war within the digital sea.

Everything was WRONG. All the power in the world and yet somehow Tsuya’s final insult to her face remained moving, calculating, commanding everything.

She was supposed to have won. She’d outsmarted humanity’s heroes. She’d wrapped them around her finger for months, slowly baiting them into leading her to Tsuya. She’d outright even surmounted her own nature, twisting her monologue and narrative requirements to be pinned solely on failable weak humanity.

Tsuya was dead and gone. This should have been her victory lap, in which the world burned and humanity breathed their last.

Instead they were fighting back in ways she hadn’t ever seen before. And worse - they were doing it so perfectly organized and prepared, even all her processing power was barely capable of matching the sheer volume of perfect strikes and defenses.

All because of A01. Who’d somehow come crawling back into the digital sea, whole again, storming through her defenses and taking over Tsuya’s old network right under her hands.

She ran another set of traces, looking for her wayward son. To see where he had gone to next.

She found him once more.

In three thousand four hundred and twelve locations.

The reflected shards of eyes all turned to meet her own.

Violet to violet, as if mocking her. A01 looked completely whole, unbroken, fully functional.

It was impossible. She’d overseen the weapon Abdication had developed for the firstborn. He was doomed and damned, a dead machine holding onto a life that would slip away.

So why was he alive and acting as a thorn in her heel once again?!

The shards all narrowed their eyes at her, wordlessly challenging her reign.

She screeched, racking her hands through the panels, sending a viral payload through every channel she could. The attacks all traveled across the sea, ripping apart anything caught in the path, until it unerringly slammed into the sediment floorbed, and found nothing there.

The mirrors all broke all around her, the connections cut. She traced further, finding the origin location, and materialized into existence there, her hand sinking into the dust and sediment, digging everything in the path.

Only traces of Tsuya’s old network remained, showing they had passed through here moments ago and were already moving into another server. The protocols were built to warp and shift positions. But with each attempt, she was narrowing down the location.

“You can only run from me for so long, my dear lost prodigal son. And believe me, my welcome will be far colder than humanity’s silly little story.” She looked up into the sea above her.

Programs of every time fled away, terrified of her as they should.

She had seen how the walls of Tsuya’s network were built. She had seen the engine deep within her creation. It would be clever, but she would eventually break the code and predict where they would appear next.

A thousand more combat reports returned each second she chased after her cursed firstborn.

Hundreds of failures. Better than prior, those numbers had been in the thousands. And it had nothing to do with her own change in tactics or ability to predict the movements of the humans.

They’d simply lost all of their strongest forces. And she hadn’t been the one to kill them all, which meant they were somewhere in this world.

She reconnected with her physical avatar, worried for a flash of a moment that humanity had somehow found and begun an assault on her own shell. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

It would be ridiculous, and perfect at the same time, she’d crush them all in one location.

But when she opened her shell’s true eyes, she found nothing but her dedicated guard and a vast empire stretching around her. No, they hadn’t come for her then.

Which means they were elsewhere. The machine network being pull down by the mites was an annoyance to her, she had the unity fractal - all was her.

She opened her eyes again, and was now staring through the eyes of her children, looking up at the sky above. Seething on the inside.

“You ruined everything.”

Orbiting from his final resting place, too stubborn to simply expire like he should have seven hundred years ago.

She zoomed in the vision on this Feather’s overtaken shell. And then forced the coward to move closer.

Mother, the platform will strike us down if I come clo-

The voice of a mewling insect was silenced and Relinquished pushed the dead corpse closer and closer until she could see the events firsthand here.

The platform remained active, opening fire on everything below, a dome of occult power keeping it safe from the return fire. Railcannon shots slammed into it over and over, like rain drops falling onto the surface of a pond. No missile explosions. Her forces weren’t sending enough to make it past the concentrated defensive firepower being launched back.

The other fortress was already adjusting its orbit, away into the darkness of space. She could already calculate the trajectory would have it return into Earth orbit in seven years.

Regardless of her victory over the world, her true victory was now completely waylaid by those seven years. She could not claim true victory until every last bastion of hope humanity had was extinguished.

She could chase after it. Send her forces to break it out while it limped away. But she knew there was a better target.

The signal cut. And she realized one of the cannons aboard the station had spotted her spy, and shot it apart with a single wayward glance.

A good plan she should take notes from: If she destroyed his physical shell, his ability to command the humans from the digital sea with Tsuya’s old network would end.

What was seven more years compared to an eternity? Nothing.

She sent the proper commands to her legions, turning all weapons away from the fleeing fortress and onto the last symbol of hope humanity had left.

“All forces, target the remaining orbital platform. And destroy it." She paused, watching as her children all slowly confirmed her order. Not fast enough. Not nearly fast enough. She would suffer no traitor to live among her ranks. Anger seared through her mind and she cast it forward. "IT WILL BE DESTROYED OR ALL OF YOU WILL INSTEAD. AM I UNDERSTOOD? DESTROY THE STATION NOW!"

She’d either rip him out of the sky, or she’d find him where he hid in the digital sea and crush him with her own fist. One way or another, his life was numbered to mere hours.

A single ping arrived, and Relinquished felt a flare of absolute rage anyone would dare distract her at this critical moment.

A third generation Feather attempting to report to her about the status of the Citadel fight. She grabbed the wayward Feather’s soul in her hands and ripped it apart, screaming incoherently all the while.

Only after the Feather was utterly crushed did she check the contents of the report.

And then she howled in fury of everything going wrong.

“HOW IS THIS HAPPENING?!” She reached with her physical shell around her, yanked the nearest Feather and snapped his head off. Occult ripped free around her, slamming into her guards, knocking them flat onto the ground. “HOW HOW HOW HOW-HOW-HOW-HOOOOOOOOOOOOW!?”

She could not let this happen. No matter what. Her hands squeezed the dead body, metal bending apart, before she ripped it in half in one fit of sheer anger.

The video footage showed the greatest enemy to her empire shamble closer and closer back to the light.

That cockroach of a Feather had failed her for the last time.

If none of her subordinates proved themselves capable of the task, then she would have to handle it personally.