Alice was shaped like a gear the size of a wagon wheel. Her skin was hard and metallic. She hung on a wall, fitting into her network of computers. Her square teeth, which lined her circular body, connected to smaller gears, these ones inorganic. Tentacles extended from her body like cables, plugged into outlets.
"Hello, Homo sapiens," she said. She had no mouth, but she spoke through speakers mounted on the ceiling, giving her an eerie, disembodied voice. She had eyes, though. Almost human eyes, four of them, deep blue and wise. "How does the pocket watch tick? How does the time flow? Tick. Tock. Dib. Dab. And the chain rattles."
"Enough of your riddles." Leona stepped forward, her overcoat swishing, and placed a hand on Arondight.
Alice turned a few degrees. Her cogs moved the smaller gears around her. Lights flickered.
"Ah, the young one, risen from the meadow where mist flows." Alice blinked her four eyes. "Such a beautiful place! I have studied its numbers. Sometimes here the numbers sing like birds. Your birds are angry and caw. Caw! Caw! Like ravens seeking rotten flesh."
Leona raised her rifle. "I'll show you rotten flesh."
Alice laughed. "Still such fury, delightful as flame! Last time, you did not bring me enough of the crystal skulls I crave. And so my gears did not turn. And so he died. You still hate me. Yet does a plant not wither when you withhold water? Do gears not fall still when you fail to grease them?"
"You mucking piece of filth!" Leona shouted. "How dare you mock his death? My husband died that day! My heart died! You knew the scorpions were going to attack our base. You knew and you said nothing, and he died!"
Alice turned another degree. "Yes, I knew. I offered you a fair bargain. Fifteen megabytes of scryls for a few churns of my gears. You offered only seven megabytes of scryls." She laughed. "It would seem you neglected to water the plant. Do not blame the soil nor sprout."
"You greedy space scum." Leona raised Arondight with shaking hands and loaded a bullet. "I'm going to put a bullet through your mucking—"
"Leona, enough!" Emet roared. He pulled her rifle down. "That was ten years ago. It's over."
"Jake died!" Leona cried, eyes burning. "It's never over!"
"And millions more will die unless we save them!" Emet said. "I thought I could bring you here. That you would hold back your anger. I was wrong. Return to the ship."
Leona laughed bitterly. "Dad, she betrayed us then. She'll betray us again. I didn't come here to buy her secrets. I came here for revenge." She raised Arondight again.
"Leona!" Emet shouted, voice echoing in the chamber. "I gave you an order. Return to the ship."
She glared at him. For an instant, pure hatred filled her. For a moment, Leona understood Bay. Understood David. Understood why so many people had abandoned Emet Ben-Ari, leader of the Heirs of Earth. At that moment, Leona wanted to leave too. Her thigh blazed as if the scorpion was still clawing it.
That scar is on my outer thigh, she thought. But blood also poured down my inner thighs. That day, I lost my husband, and I lost the child in my womb.
She struggled not to weep—not here, not before this alien.
But we all lost somebody. I saw so many humans cowering, bleeding, dying. There are hundreds back in our fleet. Humans who are weak and scared. Who need me.
And now tears flowed down her cheek.
I can't abandon them. So I will stay. I will dance with the devil to save angels.
Lips tight, Leona reached into her pack. She pulled out a bag full of chinking scryls—the money she had won in her gladiator fight. She tossed it onto the floor, and the tiny crystal skulls spilled out.
"Thirty thousand scryls," Leona said, turning to stare at Alice. "I won these in the arena. I bled for them. They're yours. We have work for you, Alice."
Emet exhaled in relief. He gave Leona a small nod.
Thank you, his eyes said. I'm proud of you.
He pulled the scorpion memory chip from his pocket. He showed it to Alice.
"Alice, this was taken from the Skra-Shen," Emet said. "Those we call the scorpions. We need you to hack into it, to translate the data inside into a language our computers understand."
Alice turned several cogs clockwise, then counterclockwise, and her cables flashed with lights. Compartments opened in the walls, and an army of micro-drones emerged, each the size of a mouse. They began collecting the fallen scryls. One of the drones flew toward Emet's hand and took the memory chip from him.
"Interesting," Alice purred. "I do love Hierarchy tech. It feels like raw iron and vibrating silicon and hot sizzling zinc. I would lick my teeth if I still had a tongue. My drone is like a taste bud. It trembles with delight."
The drone clung to the chip with tiny claws. It flew toward an outlet in the wall. Other drones opened drawers and rifled through many adapters, finally choosing one. They plugged the adapter into the outlet, then plugged in the scorpion chip. At once the glyphs on the chip lit up. The words blazed: The Human Solution.
"Can you read the data?" Leona said.
Alice closed her eyes. She turned from side to side, moving the gears around her. It was almost like a dance. Cables buzzed, lights flashed, and humming emerged from the machinery.
Around the room, cameras flickered to life, and holograms appeared.
Leona gasped, stepped closer to Emet, and clasped his hand.
Lists.
Holographic lists hovered before them, scrolling rapidly through thousands—millions—of words.
To their left were lists written in a red font. To their right, lists in blue. Alice had translated them into the common human tongue.
Names.
They were lists of names. Human names.
"Alice, can you slow down the scrolling?" Leona said.
The scrolling slowed down, and Leona got a closer look. Each blue name showed a date of birth, a gender, and location. She read a few.
Robert Ingrum, Male, Born 4085, Beta Polaris V
Sarah Crane, Female, Born 4126, Alpha Telaron II
Ayaan Hoyle, Female, Born 4140, Beta Polaris V
Name after name. Thousands of them. Most were located in Hierarchy worlds, but many were from Concord worlds too.
Leona turned to look at the list in red. She read a few of those names.
Matt Collins, Male, Born 4097, Exterminated 4150, Morbus Gulock
Ichika Adachi, Female, Born 4120, Exterminated 4150, Iskara Gulock
Ashara Patel, Female, Born 4075, Exterminated 4150, Morbus Gulock
The red list scrolled on and on. There were thousands of red names. Maybe even millions. All exterminated in 4150. The current year.
"My Ra," Emet whispered.
Leona tightened her grip on his hand. "They killed them," she whispered, voice strained. "The scorpion bastards killed them. And they logged each kill." She trembled with fury. "And they're keeping lists of who they plan to kill next."
Leona reached up a shaky hand. She touched the hologram and found that she could manually scroll through the lists. She raced through both lists.
There were millions of names.
Millions.
Her tears gathered. The Heirs of Earth had never known how many humans still lived. They knew that billions had lived on Earth in the old days, that billions had died when the Hydrian Empire had destroyed their world. The Hydrians were no more, vanished into the shadows of time. Often, Leona had worried that only a few thousand humans still remained.
"If these lists are comprehensive," she said, scrolling to the bottom of the blue list, "twelve million humans still live across the galaxy, scattered across a thousand worlds. More than we thought." She turned toward the red list, and a chill ran through her. "And the scorpions have murdered three million of us so far."