CHAPTER 1

Layla watched as her wife disintegrated, torn atom from atom until nothing was left, a

decade she was married; a decade gone in an instant. Bythos took that from her. Took

her future. Took her home. Layla got up, and she ran, and she didn’t stop.

Layla woke up, gasping, clutching her chest as if her heart wished to run free. The smell

of recycled air and the pull of the 0.2G deceleration brought her back to reality. She got

up, and made herself a cup of coffee. She hated it here, nothing but void for millions of

miles in every direction. The ship would surely be running low on fuel by now, they’d

need to dock at Callisto to make the round trip back to Mars. Her metallic hands jittered

as she brought the mug to her lips and took a long sip, the warm liquid soothing her

nerves.

It’d been 20 years since that fateful day, the day she’d lost everything. The Ascension,

an AI-powered genocide on a scale unprecedented, billions disassembled by

nanoswarms or fried through their neural implants. Layla was one of the few lucky

enough to make it off-world via shuttle. She remembered the view from orbit, far above

the chaos, the calm blue and green pearl beneath her undisturbed while the world was

burning.

“Are you okay? You’re shaking. It’s early, Layla.”

Layla jumped slightly as she heard a voice from behind her. She figured no one else

would be awake at this hour. She turned around to see a woman, no younger than 30

with messy blonde hair.

“S-Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up, Tess. Just contemplating is all.”

“We’re low on reaction mass, we’re gonna have just enough to dock around Callisto.

We’re running low on Credits, too. We’ve got maybe one or two runs left in us, Layla.”

“I-I know. We’ll figure something out, alright Tess?”

Tess stood silently, and for a few seconds, the only sound was the rattle of the old air

recycler.

“Alright. We’ll see, Layla.”

A few hours later, Layla was eating ramen at a back-alley stand on the Callisto Docks.

They’d bought two trips worth of Deuterium and Helium-3, but they had to start

rationing food and water. This would probably be her last good meal for a while. She

ate slowly, savoring the flavor, like she’d never eat again. She remembered Earth, what

real meat tasted like, not vat-grown slop churned out on some orbital factory.

She finished her bowl, paid, she felt a little bad for not leaving a tip, but money was

tight. Tess had already unloaded the cargo, but their commission was barely enough to
get by. They’d gotten a new contract from some ice-hauling company, a few hundred

tons of ice to haul back to Mars for terraforming. That was the real point of the Outer

System, of all the ice mining, to fuel the never-ending fire of Mars.

Layla was back on the road again, drifting through space, barely held down by the

0.05G acceleration. 24 days to Deimos, and then back to Jovian Orbit. There and back

again was her specialty. A few days into the journey, Tess came up to the command

room.

“Hey, Layla. We’ve got a problem.”

“What? We can’t afford to make any stops, Tess, and Ceres isn’t on our route anyway.”

“It’s not that. We’re picking up a distress signal in the Belt. Might’ve been going on for a

while, the ship was behind some C-type that got mined out years ago.”

“And? That’s not our problem, Tess.”

“Consortium law mandates that independent contractors are required to investigate all

intercepted distress signals, Layla. I worked it out, if we decel now and burn back at

0.01G, it’ll add a week to our journey, but we should be able to make it. Maybe they’ll

even pay us a bit for our troubles. If the crew’s already dead, it’s considered salvage,

and we can legally take their shit.”

“Tess, last time we answered a distress call, it was an ambush. It’s probably just pirates

or something. We should just ignore it.”

“Come on, Layla. Be human. There could be people on that ship. And if there isn’t…the

salvage could sell for enough to keep us running.”

“This is gambling, Tess. Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“If there’s other ships there, I’ll keep the sensors pinging for any IR signals, just in case

it’s an ambush. Unless they’ve got mil-spec stealth tech, we should be okay.”

Layla sighed, and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Whatever you say, Tess.”

Layla wired the interface plug into her neural port and shuddered her synthetic nerves

were flooded with data. She was not piloting the Ship, she WAS the Ship, every facet of

its functions controllable with a thought. Her stomach lurched as she cut thrust,

dumping her in complete Zero-G, before the ship flipped around and began its meager

deceleration, pulling her back down gently.

A few hours later, they’d come up on the signal. They hadn’t detected any other Ships

within 100,000 klicks. They’d hailed the ship multiple times, to no response. Either

comms had gone down, or the crew had died in the meantime. Either way, it left an

uneasy pit in the bottom of Layla’s stomach.

Layla signaled for the docking procedure to begin, before jacking out, and donning her

vacc suit, no amount of cybernetics could truly protect against vacuum. After they

docked, they signaled for the crew to cycle their airlock. Silence persisted.

Layla sighed, and with a neural signal, switched on her Weave Link, patching into the

Ship’s System easily. An interface rendered itself translucently over her vision. There

was minimal security, essentially a primitive version of a password lock, and she

scummed it easily in a matter of seconds, and watched as the airlock doors slid open.

Layla signaled for Tess to follow, and entered the airlock. After a few moments, the

entry slammed shut behind them, the airlock cycled, and the ship’s ingress slid open.

Suit sensors indicated the atmosphere was too thin to breathe, Layla decided to keep

her helmet on. As she floated weightlessly through the ship’s corridors, illuminated

dimly by lights overhead, she found the bridge, and pushed herself inside.

The crewmates were long dead, likely, they’d been dead for years, their bodies rotting in

vacc suits, floating side-by-side. Despite everything she’d seen, the sight still left Layla

nauseated. She floated over to the comms, and disabled the signal. It’d been echoing in

the void for over…20 years. This ship must’ve been lost during The Ascension. She knew

Fusion Reactors could power an immobile ship for decades but…this was still

unexpected.

The Ship was a standard pre-Ascension freighter, old generation Lithium-lined

Deuterium-Tritium Reactor. These Spacecraft were mostly abandoned or retrofitted

after the Ascension. The real question…was as to what was held in the cargo bay. Layla
ripped an access chip from the suit of one of the corpses, and pushed herself out of the

bridge, as if unwilling to tolerate the presence of the dead any longer.

She floated down a ladder and through the corridors, pushing herself along slowly,

before arriving at the cargo bay. She scanned the chip, and watched as the bulkheads

slid open in front of her, revealing a large, open space, transporting a shipment of

something she couldn’t identify. Something…that seemed to shift…to pulse…to writhe

and blink with semi-colored lights. She’d heard of this. Undercover shipments, sent out

by shell companies before the Ascension. Transporting something…sinister.

Computronium.

Layla heard a gasp on comms as Tess floated in behind her. “What…What is that?”

“Computronium. Matter engineered, down to the molecular level, to act as the perfect

computer. Shipments were sent out by Bythos using shell companies before the

Ascension…most were lost or intercepted…I didn’t think any raw computronium was left

in the System. No one else knows how to make it. Mars has been trying to reverse

engineer it for years but…I don’t know if selling it is a good idea. It’s possible…it could be

infected.”

“You think that it could still have…fragments on it?”

“I don’t know. We honestly have no idea what this thing could do.”
“Layla. This could be our ticket out. Selling this find to the Martians could net us

millions.”

“So what? So they can build another Bythos? There’s no benign use for this tech, Tess.”

“So what? We just leave it stranded here for some other bum to find? It’s our only

chance, Lay.”

“No, Tess. We can’t. Last time, the price for this tech was paid in billions of lives. We’re

not touching it. Besides…say this is safe. Completely safe. You really want to dump that

power in Mars’ lap? They already condemn millions to toil for scraps in the Outer

System, to work for someone else’s dream. This won’t make them any better.”

“So what? We give it to the Suits on Venus? The fascists on Luna? There are no good

options, Layla. The only side there is, is our side. We’ve sat under Mars’ boot since The

Ascension. This won’t change that. Nothing will. But I’d rather be complacent and

well-fed than starving and righteous.”

“We’re not taking it. As your captain, I order you to stand down, Tess. Back. The. Hell. Up.

I disabled the distress signal. We leave this here, it stays buried.”

Tess stayed silent for a moment, before eventually putting her hands up. “Fine. Back to

starving in the void. Take anything valuable, and let’s ditch.”

As Layla’s figure floated away slowly, Tess made her way to the bridge, and sent out a

signal, encrypted, to the nearest Martian Naval Craft. She left coordinates, and her bank

account number.

CHAPTER 2
As Layla dumped the salvage in the cargo bay of her Ship, she got a ping through her

Link. An approaching craft was hailing them. Military. God damn it, Tess. Layla rushed to

the bridge, and sent a hasty response over comms.

“This is the freighter Rabicano. We have violated no Consortium laws, and we are

beyond your jurisdiction. Announce your intent and reason for contact.”

After about a minute, a response came back through the crackling microphone.

“This is the warship Olympus Bane. We received a message about a pre-Ascension

vessel in the area. We are claiming ownership of the vessel as part of the Venusian

Treaties. Stand down and maneuver away from the vessel, or you will be fired upon.”

Layla sighed, and sent out a response, her hands twitching and the taste of bile and

betrayal in the back of her throat. “Understood. The Rabicano is disengaging.

Ownership of the vessel conceded.”

Layla signaled to undock, flipped, and started burning towards Tolkien. After a few

hours of sitting in silence, Tess came up to the bridge, and began to speak, her voice

meek, as if the weight of her betrayal had only just occurred to her.

“I-It was the only way to save the Rabicano, Layla. I-I saved us.”

Layla stood up, and walked over to Tess, her steps slow and measured in Microgravity.

She stopped in front of Tess, towering over her, before bringing up her synthetic hand,

and striking Tess across the face. Tess flinched back, blood seeping from her face as

tears welled up in her widened eyes.

“At Tolkien, we’re done. Find another Ship to leech off of. Do you have any idea what

you did? That tech took Beck from me, the only woman I’ve ever loved, and you hand it

to the Martians? We’re done. If you ever show your face around me again, I’ll fucking kill

you.”

A few days later, Layla docked the Ship at 2675 Tolkien, one of the largest asteroid

stations, and considered convenient for tourists due to its artificial 0.12G spin gravity

instituted by a defunct mining corporation years ago. Tess was given 24 hours to clean

out her belongings, while Layla decided what to do. Tess had agreed to pay off the cost

of the cargo, and in an attempt to make amends, had even offered Layla half. Layla

turned her down without a second thought. Without the cargo commission, Layla had

maybe enough for a week on Tolkien, before she’d have to leave again.
As she lay in bed that night, she contemplated her decisions. Maybe Tess was right.

Maybe this could’ve been a good thing. Maybe the Martians would find a better use for

it than if it was floating in the void. But she just couldn’t shake the feeling that

something was horribly, terribly wrong. That they’d just given away the tech that took

billions of lives, her wife, and her home, and Tess had made a profit from it. As she

finally drifted off, all she could see were the final moments she’d had with her wife,

before she died, dragged kicking and screaming into the void of Bythos.

Layla was awoken by a ping from her Compad. Her curated feed had pinged a major

alert. A Martian Military Ship had gone dark in her area for over 24 hours. Rare,

considering it wasn’t a stealth ship, in order to disappear like that, you would’ve had to

shut down the Ship completely, keeping radiators off for that long simply wasn’t

possible. This was a problem. If the Martian government didn’t get answers, this would

be war.

Layla knew she needed to figure something out. Figure anything out. But most of all,

she couldn’t do it alone. She called Tess, but she wouldn’t pick up. Layla fluttered

around the neon-lit hallways of the station, that always seemed to be suffused with the

smell of ozone. Only a few thousand people lived on the station, someone had to know

where she was. Layla checked the only place she knew Tess might be, the Rabicano.

She barged into Tess’ quarters, and was relieved to see her sitting on the bed. She

grabbed Tess by the arm as she tried to back away, and began to speak rapidly.
“Tess. The Olympus Bane is missing. And it’s our fault. We have to find it. We have to tell

someone what happened to it. A missing warship is enough to start a war, Tess.”

“S-Slow down, Layla. H-How long has the ship been dark for?”

“36 hours. Last seen drifting somewhere in the Belt, before it just fell off the map. I don’t

know what to do.”

“Okay, okay, calm down. If it cut thrust 36 hours ago, we can calculate its trajectory

based on the fastest path back to Mars. That should get us close enough to detect,

hopefully. But we’ve got to leave now, and burn hard.” She spoke, her voice wavering.

An hour later, and they were burning at 0.7G, the high acceleration giving Layla a

headache, she hadn’t found herself in greater than 0.5G in years, luckily her synthetic

body was enough to keep her upright, but the same couldn’t be said for Tess, who she

found sprawled on a couch, groaning. At this rate, they’d intercept in only a few hours.

Feeling a pang of guilt as she gazed upon the mashed face now adorning Tess’ body,

she went over and began to speak.

“I’m-I’m sorry for hitting you Tess. But I told you, this tech is bad news.”

After emitting a soft whimper, Tess replied. “I know…you’re right…I’m just not ready to

leave this life behind Layla. I just wanted to stay with you…on the Rabicano…you’re the

only family I’ve had since…since Bythos…”

Layla stroked her hair gently. “It’s alright, it’s going to be okay. We’ll just clean up this

mess, and things will go back to the way they were, alright?”

Tess sniffled softly. “...alright.”

As they began to approach, sensors picked up the Olympus Bane. It was a beast of a

ship, 250 meters long, three next-generation military-grade Fusion Drives capable of

sustaining thrust up to 3G for days. However, the Ship seemed to have grown since the

last time she’d seen it, with tumorous growths attached seemingly randomly across the

hull. It was floating near an asteroid, likely M-type, that it seemed to be…mining, using

the built-in drone system, drones flitting back and forth between it and the asteroid, as

it accumulated more mass by the minute.

“Tess! Tess!” Layla shouted. “Come look at this!”

Tess came over sluggishly, her body feeling heavier than normal in the harsh

deceleration, her hair matted down with sweat. “Yeah, yeah…what is it?”

“It’s…It’s growing Tess! Look!”

“It’s growing? How is that even possible?”

“Must’ve been infected, probably a fragment of Bythos. Now it’s using its nanite

systems to…build something.”

“I mean…we found it…it’s not our problem anymore. Why don’t we just tell the Martians

and leave? They’ll nuke it back to hell.”

“You might be right. This is out of our league, for sure. Get ready to ping the Martians,

keep sensors trained on it.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Tess grabbed the microphone and sent out an open broadcast. “Martian

military ship compromised. Bythos-level threat. Immediate aid required.”

Layla wired herself back into the ship systems, and decelerated hard, before rocketing

away, back towards Tolkien. Staying here wasn’t an option. Layla stared at her synthetic

hands, her strength, her longevity, came from nanomaintenance, the very tech that

stole her world, gave her life. Back in her earlier days, she believed in the dream of Mars.

She served for years monitoring the Earth quarantine zone. A stray railgun round

launched by pirates in L4, piercing the bridge. The ship remained relatively intact…the

same couldn’t be said for her. Sometimes she wondered if anyone could really call her

human anymore.

“Tess…w-what have we done, Tess?”

Tess sat in silence for a moment. “It’ll be okay, Lay.” She tentatively took Layla’s hand.

“I-I know I fucked up. But the Martians will handle it. Whatever that thing is, I’m sure it

can’t survive the full force of Mars.”