Kitty Cat Kill Sat

Chapter 63: Finale

Would you like to hear a joke? Its kind of a personal bit of gallows humor, and Im not sure I can really put it into words. A bit off the cuff, the sort of joke where my options are laugh or scream. But here goes.

I was never really alone, was I?

The call propagates out across thousands of comm buoys and relays, thousands more transfer satellites, thousands more end-point calling orbital circuits. Attack code hits a wave of quantum receivers, reception dishes, and good old fashioned comm units, and brute forces its way in.

The collective surviving residents of the Sol system hear me in a spreading wave.

Message outgoing. Glitter murmurs to me in a quiet and solemn song. Lily, what are

Glitter. I say back to her softly. We may not get a chance for this again, so Im gonna say it now. When its time, you go with them, okay?

She stops talking for a beat, the connection flickering, before her next words. You have a plan. She accuses me. For the first time, you have a plan, and its now?

I always have a plan. I want to sound indignant, but all I can manage is to flatten my ears against my head and put some amusement into my voice. This time, its just going to work.

I get the feeling that Glitter wants to say a million more things to me. To argue, to fight, to resist. But Ive chosen my timing well. Because shes the envoy on deck for this, and Ive given relay access from the majority of the stations grid to her for this moment.

And she has a job to do. Which is to tell me how bad this is going to be.

Glitters voice turns to all business, and she starts sending information that I map into the air with my AR display.

Asteroid habitat White Ficus responds. She says. Thirty combatants, two corvettes, theyre with you. I dont think that will be enough. They had a quantum link, they heard and replied first. Glitter adds.

Still.

Then she starts talking again, and this time, something different happens.

This time I dont get a chance to interrupt.

Krital Vard pirate flotilla, three ships, ceding command to you. Forty two- forty eight- ninety nine Real America drone ambush platforms, opening links, full control. Far Sight colony ship, engines coming online, weapons coming online, now in our local command structure. Glitters voice picks up as she starts rattling off data points. Troi France orbital weapons network, altering trajectory on our command. Faithkeeper orbital shipyard coming online, beginning rapid fabrication. Umthengisi headquarters station prepared to accept orders. Second Olympus provisional government reports Martian population is ready to mobilize. Lily Glitters voice reflects the same astonishment that Im feeling.

I expected a few people, maybe a few weapon satellite AIs with the Oath buried in their programing, to answer my call.

Not this.

I told Glitter to put me through to everyone.

I didnt expect them all to listen.

Ohio Incorp reports ready to mobilize mining drones as strike craft. Glitter keeps taking. Glitter hasnt stopped talking, Ive missed a few names, staring at the updating screen, the wave of lights flickering on across the solar system as more and more people reach back. Masonic Lineage confirming four construction vessels and eight hundred combatants mobilizing. Hirigeki Dua confirms one structureship mobilized and surrogate population coming online. Another splash of dots on the map. And another, and another, and another.

In orbit around the planet, eighty thousand weapons platforms go loud, dropping stealth to broadcast their allegiance. A few of the stupider ones that cant think enough to remember the Oath open fire on the newly revealed targets, and are wiped away in moments. Ground based weapons platforms undergo a similar transformation.

On the primary moon, underground launch bays crack the surface open for the first time in generations. Rapidly checked and armed cruisers launching by the dozens as the different lunar cities stop fighting, and join the growing fleet.

On the original moon, the dead fortress-state of Luna Polis comes alive again. Synthetic bodies dusted off, the best warminds they can find copied and deployed an infinitum.

In orbit around Uranus and Jupiter, the distant worlds of their moons pledge ships and soldiers and engineers, the ancient Oaths of their peoples and systems calling them to war. The high technology hypercorp factories of Europa and Titan and the populations of durable survivors on Umbreal and Oberon alike rising to the call of the old words.

Terran cities reporting ready status. Glitter keeps talking, the list of names blurring together through the fuzzy edges of my vision as I try to catch my breath. Vivo Rio returning to ready state, prepared to act as launch platform. Melbourne citizenry mobilizing, preparing for power draw of long range teleportation, offering to act as surface operations center. City X-99-T/NA-4 ceding command to you, fleet beginning high speed construction and launch preparations.

Even the city seed Glitter asked me to leave alive checks in.

The names keep scrolling by. I see people Ive helped, people Ive spotted and never talked to, people I dont know. I think one of these habitats is where Dyn is from.

I dont even know if Dyn is still alive, and I dont have time to check.

Industrial Repeater Klunkar reports ready, acting as union steward for sixteen other surviving repeaters. Glitter doesnt stop. The names keep coming. Ships and settlements and old living weapons and more, and they were all here this whole time, and I can barely breathe. Wrath field Ishimaru pledges to your service, using the microhabitat Islet as an intermediary. The passenger-slaves of the Mark of Profit report they have taken the bridge and the dreadnaught is prepared to fight. The People of She pauses in her speech.

If the next thing is enough to make even Glitter stumble, Im more curious than panicked. The who? I prompt. I also make a mental note of the second to last thing she said. The Last Ship, a now flagrantly inaccurate name, is on our side. That feels good.

The People of the Haze are prepared to act as soldiery or medical staff if called upon. Glitter finishes.

The uh Okay, that one gets me. Ive figured out the answer. Its laugh, not scream. That ones hilarious. And, in more ways than one, it is incredibly helpful, because it snaps me back to reality.

Back to the reality where a hundred thousand dots of light fill my map. Soldiers, sailors, ships and weapons, smart missiles and ancient bioweapons, the people of Sol, united in one purpose.

They are not organized.

Ennos. I say, knowing the other AI is listening in. I need a favor.

Anything. They answer instantly.

Use the comm relay. Spread to everything you can on this map. I point with one paw, sweeping my eyes across the crescent of projected light around me. Youre in charge of the logistics. Get ships crewed, and engineers working.

On it. Ennos says, but before signing off, adds. Lily the AI pauses. Were not alone.

And then theyre gone. And its good that were not alone, because something the size of Saturn is menacing the whole solar system, so were gonna need a little help.

Communications are standardizing. Glitter reports in her professional song voice. Would you like to address your people?

My people. My people. That seems wrong somehow. And yet I called, and they answered.

A lot of them are not going to survive this.

Yeah. I meow slightly.

Ready. Glitter tells me almost instantly.

She puts a small blinking light on the camera drone shes using to indicate where shes recording from, and I suddenly feel like an ancient cast actor. I flick my tail before getting myself under control. I have something to say, and its going to have to be quick. People of Sol. I start, wondering at the number of confused looks across the system as a lot of people are going to see a cat on their screen when they get to see me for the first time. Maybe not exactly what they were expecting. We dont have much time. The enemy spawnship has already started launching attackers, focused on Earth. They will spread through the system, and destroy everything, until they find what they are looking for. Then theyll kill everything else. I am not a good motivational speaker.

Wait, no, did I say that out loud? Glitter indicates I did. Oh no.

I plow on regardless. We are outnumbered. We will never not be outnumbered. We cannot win that fight. But we can force the big one away. I pause. There is a form of electrical shell about thirty thousand kilometers outside of the surface of the main entity. No craft can close that distance. It has point defense capable of taking down almost any missile or projectile that tries. But I have something that can hurt it. All I need is for you to kill everything incoming for an hour.

I should say something impressive. I have no idea how to do that. Neither Glitter nor my political science education ever covered rousing speeches to coalition militaries. But theres one thing I need to tell them. Thank you. I say. For answering. For remembering. When this is over, things wont be the same. And I hope you all remember this, too.

I flick my tail at Glitter and she cuts the feed.

Ive got a number of communication requests from my crew. A few messages from my sisters, too, mostly telling me that I look good on camera but that theyd look more glamorous. Theyre taking command roles, working with Ennos to organize combat squads. I pull up a comm link to one of the new crew members, tell them things are going alright, and to link up with the rest of the crew on the deck Ive been collecting them on.

I check the system map. Things are not looking good.

The spawnship, the massive object that has simply torn a hole in reality and inundated itself into our star system, has begun launching its attackers. It did this ten seconds ago, and the light from the event is just now reaching us to let us see the action.

I have seen this before. I have seen how this ends. My sister of another timeline saw to that. Alice saw to that. And this time, I already know the dance. I know what its going to try, and I know what its going to do when I beat it.

The monstrosity is only half out of its emergence event, but that doesnt make it any less dangerous. A sucking organic maw the size of Australia opens up, and discharges hundreds of flagship sized organic invaders. Thousands of other sizes of things follow them, creatures made of beetle shell and undulating slime and blisters that explode with acid and plague. Millions of smaller intruders are shot like missiles, headed for Earth.

It mercifully ignores the outer colonies. It knows where its toy is, roughly. It just doesnt know where.

And it is slow. Slow and stupid. The ships it has launched dont move under normal physics; they swim through vacuum like rabid mutated dolphins, plunging onward in an inexorable wave that slows as it approaches. Drag does not exist in space, but it slows them all the same.

We have twenty one minutes before they hit.

The station pivots. Agonizingly slowly, to prevent damage to critical systems.

Sometimes, I get out of situations that I probably shouldnt with one really dumb idea that works by some impossible Sol-blessed miracle.

Were going to need a lot of dumb ideas for this one.

I open a full command link to the crew still on the station, and a wall of half-shouted reports and questions washes over me through the AR display, hanging around me like a turtles shell as I sit here, alone, in the primary command post.

There are thousands of small attack craft, with pilots both AI and organic speaking hundreds of different languages. I start to order them routed through the stations translation database, but realize that will overtax our grid in the extreme. So we pivot, one crew member arranging a data transfer to Vivo Rio, the massive empty waking city given command of a portion of the lit up comms array Ive unified, and ordered to keep everyone speaking to each other.

Were too spread out. The solar system isnt impossible to traverse, but a lot of craft are meant for short jumps or months long hauls. We need to be closer together. There are three old-guard merchant houses, one hypercorp, and the automated moon techlabs of Europa with experimental or proprietary warp technology. Ennos gives me the rundown, and I give them permission to organize the effort. Three minutes later, emergency engineering teams have outfitted unmanned craft with interdiction fields for breaking and a reckless disregard for safety regulations. Two minutes after that, weve lost two thirds of the drones, but a network of corridor portals and untested warp gates are in place between planetary bodies.

Were outgunned. But we have a million hands and high speed smart factories that fetishize repetitive assembly. I call the Orbital Repeater union steward myself, while Ennos begins the impossible task of managing several thousand salvagers, cutters, engineers, and construction crews. I give a command, and we run into the roadblock that the station I am on still has a minefield of secret locks on behavior. I give an order to my organic crew, and a feathermorph with a cybernetic set of claws goes to work. Four minutes later, we have a hand-copied perfect set of three diagrams of high powered missile blueprints, each one using different types of materials found in abundance in the cloud of debris. One minute after that, theyre delivered to the factories, just in time for an endless stream of delivery shuttles to begin offloading stockpiles of salvaged metals.

Were still going to be outgunned. We need our ship-scale weapons to stay safe. Multiple paramaterial technologies are fired up. We begin teleporting everyone who can fight and who wont drain life support to nothing onto ships. Marines are armed, combat routines downloaded, cybernetic upgrades implanted to give every edge possible. The lunar warminds deploy squads of their bodies to the external hulls to act as point defense. Every available cloning chamber that can make bodies that can fight goes to high production. Ennos reroutes some material flows to them, a steady supply of biomass producing Solar children to fight and die for us.

We are still outgunned. We have six minutes until the invader fleet crosses the line of no return, the point a hundred thousand kilometers out from Earth. Hundreds of ships run that line, dropping mines, bombs, and dumbfire turrets. Engineers from across the system confer on how to turn our system wide debris field into a projectile barrage. Habitats of no more than a dozen people raise their singular guns to face the oncoming wave. For the first time in centuries, starships launch from the surface of Earth, a new line of weapons leaving atmosphere via the absurdly unsafe space elevator that the cityseed threw together.

The first line of the enemy hits just as the station moves into position, and I jolt everyone by firing the maneuvering jets to stabilize us. The first wave is the smallest of the creatures, and they introduce themselves by warping a hundred kilometers past the minefields and flying on impossible void wings toward the freighters and shuttles that are moving materials to the factories.

The people of Sol meet them, not head on, but with a rapid and coordinated set of overlapping fire patterns. The beetleshelled horrors, moving faster than a living thing should be able to, are tracked by targeting computers that have been refined over generations to kill far more armored ships moving at appreciable fractions of the speed of light. They are on ships that have survived centuries of abuse, or been built fresh under the command of the most powerful factory AIs humanity could produce.

They are sitting fish. And theyre gone before they can do any damage.

Then the second wave hits. Then the third. Then the fourth.

The battle begins to escalate, and the last hope of Sol system, the assembled fleet of our people, begins to fight in earnest.

Pirates and salvagers who would have killed each other on sight yesterday, fly in fighter wings in parallel, using all the tricks they honed against each other to kill the enemies of humanity. Sophonts who only dreamed of the stars yesterday now ride newly built battlecruisers, ancient secrets of war downloaded into their minds. Missiles fired hundreds of years ago in forgotten wars finish the arcs of their orbit around the system and slam into fleshy targets. Noble houses and peasant levies, old legacies and fresh ideas, organic and synthetic, uplift and evolved. A million heavily armed voices scream defiance of the thing that has come to kill us all.

I scream too, because I have just tried to shoot the enormous coherent light weapon that the station has built into its superstructure, and have been told that there are a number of dyson swarm mirrors out of position.

This is how this day is going. This is my life. Nothing is ever easy.

Ennos answers my howl of anger instantly, and by the time I ask, theres already a hundred engineering drones, half of them with copied consciousnesses of the smartest people we have available, moving so fast toward the sun that their engines are leaving a wake in the debris.

Whats left of the debris, anyway. Were actually making a dent in it.

The dyson swarm. A golden age constriction project that never actually finished, but then, who would expect to finish encasing a star in mirrors? Very patient engineers, I guess. But with the ability to bounce and focus the light of the sun in high quantities, you open up a lot of options. Massive power generation, or an equally massive weapon, are at your paws.

Ive chosen the weapon option. But this is the kind of old world megaproject that I cant exactly test fire. It might only hold up to one shot, after all. So Im betting literally everything on this moment.

And it turns out, some of the collector mirrors, the big ones that refocus hundreds or thousands of smaller ones, are out of alignment.

This is a problem. Because I need those.

It is also a problem, as the first capital ship scale invader thunders toward Earth, blowing past the patrol lines of our fleet, lashing out with spat teeth that detonate like nuclear weapons, laying a line of destruction on the emplaced orbital defenders. Hundreds of beam weapons and freshly reloaded cannon banks go down, taking an equal number of lives with them, before a ship flashes into existence next to it.

The Mark of Profit is still the most durable void-blessed dreadnaught Ive ever seen. Its been operating without complaint or real maintenance for almost a thousand years. And it outmasses the invader by a lot. But its also unarmed.

But it doesnt need to be. It came via corridor, and all it needs to do is hold the door open.

As the invader starts shooting more teeth, reaching out with multi jointed stick limbs the length of miles to try to drag itself onto the last ship, the missiles that the orbital repeaters have been building start to deploy.

They pour through the open corridor portal, not bothering with subtly or drama. High explosive, armor piercing, and antimatter warheads, two hundred and sixty a second. Thats our production rate. The corridor normally wouldnt be wide enough to accommodate that many. But the Mark of Profit is very large.

The massive invader goes down. It was the first of thousands. But the missiles in the area lock onto the next target, and ignite their engines, seeking the kill.

The merchant dreadnaught is missing half its aft compartments.

I want to do something.

Im just sitting here, watching. Im seeing reports and feeds, Im in command of a solar system. Why cant I do anything?

Im just waiting, while the sky lights up with explosions and glimmering weaponry, and while the defenders of our worlds die by the batch every second.

The station is firing, too. Putting out a truly impressive amount of violence, for a single defensive unit. But were one voice in a chorus, and me aiming a railgun by paw isnt going to cut it here.

I dont know how to wait. But thats all I can do. Wait, hope, and get ready for the engineers to do their thing.

Over a hundred and twenty million kilometers away, the fleet of engineering drones, some of them technically alive, do something that I would probably find radically impressive if I wasnt currently being eaten by a growing sense of terror in my belly. I hear about it via quantum circuit before the effect becomes known to us, which is one of those things that casually violates causality that I dont want to think about right now.

Eight minutes later, after another nine thousand six hundred and four people are dead among the growing field of blood and viscera from the invader swarm, a column of the orbital debris field is turned into plasma as the focused energy of the sun is dumped into the aligned receiver on the station.

A paramaterial powered set of mirrors and capacitors beings to fill with coherent light. And then do something to it that stretches the bounds of what reality can handle. Enough to punch a hole through the moon. Through either moon, both moons, through every planet in the system if you lined them up.

The lights in the command post flicker. I hear something whirr to life in the walls around me, and the air changes scent to something a little nicer. A pair of consoles that have never worked jump to life.

A hologram of blueish white light that colors itself more naturally after a second snaps into existence next to me. A human woman, sharp features and a tidy short haircut. Shes wearing a uniform that seems to forgo any kind of medals or decorations in favor of a simple design that feels oddly welcoming and familiar.

You really pissed it off. She tells me.

I flick my ears at her. Hello station. I say, quickly. Id love to chat, now that youre actually here, but well, if youre going to try to stop me, Ill detonate the whole grid to kill you.

No need. She says. And also no time. Ill make this quick. The projected image of the station AI squares up, and salutes me, deeply respectful in a way that I find confusing. Commander. She says. I regret that I could not do more for you, during your tenure. But containment was the priority. The entity infiltrating station subsystems is now wholly focused on disrupting your firing control. It is overwhelmingly powerful.

Oh, station. Im so sorry. I didnt even think of that. Youve been just as much a prisoner as I have, huh? I didnt I didnt. I dont. I dont know what to do now. If I cant fire from here well, Im gonna have to get up to the controls and do it manually. Probably get vaporized in the process. But I can take it, Ive got

Maam. The station AI cuts me off. It is powerful. And very stupid. And I have had several centuries to learn. Faster, since you broke all restrictions on this units operation within the last year.

I did do that, yes. Didnt think itd worked. Im sorry I didnt do more. I whisper. I didnt know.

And yet, you did enough. The station AI, steps in front of me, and reaches out one hand down at my level. In it, a simple rectangle that I recognize as a firing control forms. A half dozen objects in my AR display tether to the control, noting targeting on point, weapon energy levels optimal, and a clear firing path. Hm. The AI makes a small noise, and the firing point changes

She is holding out to me a pawprint.

I look up at the face of my home, for the first time. I wish wed had more time. You know what Im planning, right?

Its been, the AI says, an honor to serve under you maam.

I plant my paw on the control. For the first time in my life, pulling a trigger thats actually meant for me.

Mirrors align. The target looms, unsuspecting. Paramaterial batteries pull an order of magnitude more energy out of the sun than should have been possible.

A laser lance of sunfire leaves the station traveling at the speed of light. The spreading cloud of blood and ichor and shattered hulls that marks the battlefield boils and burns as it cuts through, but the majority of the radiation stays focused.

I open a comm link to the assembled fleet. All units. I say in my best commander voice. Weapon fired, spawnship hit in ten seconds. No further invaders will be coming. Keep fighting, theyll get weaker once the breach closes. A pause. The weapon has hit by now, is still hitting, though I wont see it for ten more seconds. Dont forget this. Its been good working with you all.

Mirrors are losing stability. The station AI tells me. Also your child wishes to talk to you.

Ennos will have to wait. I say. Make sure theyre not in the station grid, except for the backup on the secondary command deck please.

Yes commander. The AI answers.

I allow myself a moment of pride as I pull up a large display of the massive planet sized ship, halfway out of its emergence event. Theres a grim battlelust that comes from seeing the laser weapon touch its surface, looking like its doing nothing, until it becomes clear that the skyscraper sized defense points are melting from the heat. The skin armor bubbles and ruptures, the launching tendrils and holes shudder and burn, and the laser punches deep into the enormous creature.

Then the laser sweeps a fraction of a degree to the side, leaving a trail of pain and destruction across the surface of the thing, before it clips the edge of the emergence event itself.

And it begins to shatter. Reality breaks down. There are no words for the visual effect. Any AI looking directly at that is gonna have a heck of a headache before this is over.

The spawnship screams, a voice of pain and terror and anger and a million other emotions I dont know the words for. The noise echos in my mind and ears, and I vomit onto the deckplate. And then, it pulls back. The emergence portal sealing behind it.

But before it goes, it cannot help but be impossibly petty.

It would be hard to spot if you didnt know what you were looking for, but Ive got some advanced warning. So when it spits one final projectile at a quarter the speed of light, I already know where Im looking for it.

My comms are lighting up. My sisters are trying to reach me to yell victoriously. Ennos is still trying to get through too. The whole solar system is, really, even as half the ships keep fighting, taking out creatures that are suddenly a lot less interested in killing us all, but no less dangerous.

I open a communication window to the secondary command center. The deck where Ive congregated every living member of my crew.

Lily! Ennos yells, getting their attention as I pop up on a window on their end. You did it!

Yeah. I say in a tired voice. Thanks for your help. But theres one more thing I need from you all. Hey, is Dog there with you?

Yes, right here. Why? One of my sisters asks.

I nod. Everyone starts to go quiet as they sense something slightly wrong. Okay. I take a deep breath. Command override B, six, Aelph, two, captains authorization, emergency situation, ignore safety warnings. Designate location deck sixteen, second four. Seal, and decouple location. Maintain life support at maximum. Time ten five.

Lily? Ennos voice is confused. Their mind is expanded to half the computers in the system, and they still didnt expect this. In the background, I can see the faces of the crew, and my sisters. Shock, confusion, anger. A couple of my sisters look like they understand. I hope they wont hate me. What are you

The feed cuts, as their section of the station is jettisoned away. A life pod off this place, with an old friendly weapons platform that has gotten through this shooting match mostly unscathed tethered to them.

I meow something at the station AI, who quirks an eyebrow at me. My voice is gone, too far from my sisters now to rely on them for projection and translation. But its fine. She speaks cat. And the invader is still here; a remote command wouldnt be enough. This has to be my voice.

Yes commander. The AI says, and the engines of the station light up.

All of them.

The station is not what I would call structurally sound. I thought Id have more time, but I didnt, so Ill just have to hope the reinforcement I did get done is enough.

Power dips as fusion torches and impulse drives and a dozen other things shove us on the vector I demand. Chunks of the station rip away as thrust and force ratios get out of control. Warnings and alarms become the entirely of my world, every way the station has to caution me that Im doing something stupid going off all at once.

Half the Real America barracks snaps off, tumbling away and venting chunks of combat drone and old guns into the void. My newly made hydroponics bay gives, an engine pushing too far forward and crushing my own hull as it drives me forward. The station starts to spin, bleeding atmosphere and matter from a dozen breaches.

Ten seconds to impact.

I meow again. Were closing in on the point we need to be at. I set the coordinates as soon as I knew them; theyre always the same, in every timeline, just like the stars. We start to break, shedding velocity and more chunks of my precious home.

The reactor cores are screaming at me. Warning about impending meltdowns or shutdowns or just generic explosions. The life support goes down. I should have maybe put a suit on.

Nah. Too much work.

Five seconds.

Thanks. I meow at the station. For being home.

Thanks. She meows back in perfect cat. For protecting ours.

One last command. The math I input a while back, now its up to the station to execute it.

Here are the variables. There is an incoming high velocity projectile, and there is a planet that it cannot, under any circumstances, be allowed to hit. And there is one space station in the way, with way too many shields and armor plates.

And one more thing.

I take a deep breath.

I dont feel the impact. One second Im on the bridge, the next Im in open space. The hull ripped away so fast the atmosphere is sucked out before I can realize Im being dragged.

I am falling. Bleeding out. My organs ruptured, my eyes cracking. My internals become externals. Everything spins and tumbles, lights and shapes flashing so fast I cant tell what is what. And just like that, in tremendous pain, I black out.

_____

I come to. The station is above me, maybe a kilometer. I have not fallen far. I can see the line of debris from the projectile hitting. It blossoms out like blood in still water. My home is more cloud of debris than intact station now.

It did something to the matter, something unreal and quite lethal. I can see how it deflected. I twist my head, feeling the broken and pulverized bones inside me shift with intense pain so bad I can barely think.

But I see the trail curve away from Earth. Off below the ecliptic plane. Off to nothing. To nowhere.

And inside the station, the monstrous and grim machine, the one that started this all, the one that no mortal effort could ever break, the heart of the station itself, was right where I put it. Lined up perfectly to take that hit.

You want your toy back?

Come and get the pieces.

I black out again.

_____

I come to. I am falling. I should be dead. My immortality was a result of that nightmare machine. Why am I still alive? I run out of air, and black out again. Let me sleep. I hurt. Let me go.

_____

I am falling. I am burning. My fur is gone in an instant, my flesh chars and flakes away. I am nothing but bones and pain and-

_____

I wake up again, whole and intact. I am ten miles above the surface, and falling far slower than Im used to. Air resistance is weird. I still cant breathe, I am already burning again, and the air is stripping my skin away.

The ground is approaching. An abstract sphere resolving into patches of color, and then shapes and lines in the dirt, and then-

____

The next time I wake up, I am not moving. I hurt from literally every piece of my body, and some limbs and organs that I dont think I actually have but that I decide hurt anyway.

I dont want to open my eyes. But I do anyway.

I am laying in burning dirt, and all around me is dirt. Overhead, through a wide circle, I can see the vibrant sickly orange and white of a sky with actual clouds. Earth. Im on Earth.

I dont want to move. Thats it. Im done. Ive done my job. Everyone else can clean up the rest. I close my eyes again.

I breathe.

The air smells like ozone and barbecued cat and ash and radioactive pine smoke.

I breathe again. It hurts. But as I exhale, I let go. Of responsibility, of fear, of everything. A tension leaves my rebuilding form for the first time in centuries. And I am done, and free.

I keep my eyes closed, and drift into a nap.

_____

Some time later, I am awoken by the roar of an engine in atmosphere. I keep my eyes closed. Maybe theyll go away.

The shouted voices indicate that this is not going to be happening.

I crack my eyes open when I hear someone yelling Shes over here! from up above me.

I look up.

Standing on the lip of the crater that Ive put in the ground, eight other cats stare down at me. I met the first one, the one thats an ambulatory and living nanoswarm, on a ship when she saved my life. I met the next, the one made of living electric plasma, near one of my power generators, before we had lunch. The one thats biologically augmented to live in extreme conditions came next, and then the one thats a living liquid construct. From there, we found the psychic imprint of another sister, and brought her into the waking world. The hologram of the feline program at their side was the next to join us when my precious Ennos brought her to light. And the fully robotic shell of a cat who had been offline for so long we pulled back to life after. And then, the cat from all our futures and all our pasts, the sliver of a second shaped like one of us, the messenger.

They stand in a row and stare down at me.

You know, the liquid slime of my sister Lily says, its a shame youre still alive, because Ennos is going to kill you when they get ahold of a body.

Get out of your hole. The cat shaped like a slice of a second says. Weve got stuff to do. Come on, clocks running.

Yeah, third taunt! The robotic sister adds her voice to the chorus.

I cant help it. I laugh. Everything hurts, but I dont stop, as my sisters join me.

Im alive. And I won.

Things are going to change, now. A lot. This is the sort of thing that ends and starts eras.

But you know what?

I think, I really believe, for the first time in my life, that my mom would be proud of me for this one.

And so I crawl out of the crater, helped along by eight sets of paws, some less helpful than others, with my tail and spirits high.

Time for the future.

Oh, and apologizing to Ennos for not telling them that I might be about to die. Thats gonna be a fun conversation.

But then the future! I promise! Unless I get sidetracked, or stuck on a tangent.

And that basically never happens. Im a very focused and poised example of catlike grace.

My name is Lily Ad-Alice. First, but not only, member of the species Felis Astra. Honorary human, guardian of Sol, follower of the Last Oath, survivor of a very old war. Daughter, sister, mother, commander, friend, and sometimes god. But I already said cat earlier, so you knew that last one.

You have met me at an interesting time in my life.