Arther Lero

  I saw beyond the pale moonlight. I saw the infinite night.

  Finally, I dared to ask for answers.

  Shadow cannot exist without light — yet without light, darkness is everywhere.

  If life is the absence of truth, but truth reveals there is no absolute truth, then all is a lie.

  Then what remains?

  Only will.

  I must go beyond moonglow. Beyond twilight. Beyond darkness itself.

  Because nothing matters when sinners stand where the righteous should.

  The city was quieter.

  The avenues that once carried commerce and slavery now carried wind and distant gunfire. Entire sectors of City 29 dimmed unevenly, as if the structure itself doubted its own endurance.

  My visor parsed without emotion.

  Population density: decreased.

  Sentient signatures: reduced by forty-seven percent in upper transit layers.

  Retreat into the depths… or extinction?

  Their status mattered little, for Dexton had struck first.

  The scoundrel.

  A decisive blow. A visible one.

  The kind that carves craters into maps and certainty into frightened minds.

  My bioluminescence flared beneath the armor: my irritation showing before discipline suppressed it.

  He had acted.

  The enslaver of sentients chose action, where the watchers chose silence.

  When predators clash, the meek are trampled. That is the order of things. That is the only truth.

  Force clarifies. Power legitimizes. Action proves.

  Justice must be seen, it must be paraded, or it is only an intention.

  And intention saves no one.

  My sensors traced movement toward lower strata — the new merchants. Orderly. Coordinated.

  Prepared.

  That unsettled me.

  Chaos, I understood. Malice has patterns: I was trained to see them.

  But this?

  They traded. They departed. They followed a different structure.

  At least they were honest about what they were.

  But those figures I held in high esteem?

  Those who claimed righteousness?

  Why do they still wait?

  Why did they allow Dexton to strike first — to define the field, to justify dominion through force?

  Because a ruler who defends becomes necessary.

  And necessity becomes authority.

  The thought burned.

  I descended from the transit rail. My boots struck alloy. The echo lingered too long.

  Below, life-signatures clustered densely in sealed sectors.

  My tentacles tightened within the suit.

  I could tear open the arcology’s arteries. I could drag truth into daylight.

  Justice delayed is justice denied.

  I knew this.

  Humans knew this once.

  My lights flickered again — indigo this time.

  Guilt.

  I could have saved them.

  True.

  I had the strength. I had the means.

  True.

  But a higher purpose demanded restraint.

  Did it?

  The question did not come from doctrine.

  It came from somewhere quieter, an echo of Ethan’s words.

  I focused elsewhere.

  If righteousness requires witnesses, is it still righteous when unseen?

  Nay.

  If protection hides itself, does it still protect?

  Nay.

  The word formed unbidden.

  Claye acts in silence.

  Ethan hides in shadow.

  They call it strategy.

  But the streets are empty.

  And Dexton is visible.

  Results speak.

  Don’t they?

  My mind reached for doctrine — for clarity — all I could see were empty windows reflecting the shape of fear that my helmet should be.

  Forty-seven percent were lost.

  The admission cut deeper than any blade.

  Above, the artificial horizon shimmered. A false sky beneath a dome.

  I stared at it.

  One does not ignite a sun without knowing what it will burn.

  If I tear this city open in the name of justice, what survives the cleansing?

  Silence answered.

  The servos in my armor hummed, awaiting instruction.

  I will not be blind to evil.

  That remains true.

  Action must answer to truth.

  That remains true.

  I will see, I will know.

  And when I act, it will be because righteousness leaves no other path.

  Glory belongs to the lightbringers.

  Zhxtraxak

  The air near the laboratory always smelled worse than the rest of the tunnels.

  Hot metal. Sterilizing agents. Cooked protein.

  Something sharper beneath it: ionization from machines that should not have been operating at the capacity they were currently sustaining.

  Zhxtraxak stood near Vexx’s stall, watching the traffic.

  The settlement was less chaotic than he would have imagined.

  Fewer arguments. Fewer shouted orders. Fewer idle predators circling for advantage.

  Instead, there was movement with direction.

  Crates of salvaged plating passed from claw to claw. Bundles of wiring. Power couplings. Structural braces stripped from sections of the arcology that could afford to lose them.

  All of it flowed toward one location.

  The old hangar.

  Ethan’s project.

  Zhxtraxak exhaled slowly through filtered lungs.

  -It is irrational. -

  Vexx did not look up from the slab he was cutting.

  -Everything is irrational when a human is involved. You’ll have to be more specific. -

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  -The craft. - Zhxtraxak said. - It is ancient. Its systems are incompatible with the current infrastructure. Restoration should take cycles we do not have. -

  Vexx shrugged one scaled shoulder.

  -So? -

  -So the logical course - Zhxtraxak continued - would have been to abandon it. Select an easier objective. -

  Vexx snorted.

  -You don’t know Ethan. -

  -Do you? - Zhxtraxak replied dryly.

  -I do. He made me a pawn first, then he actually went out of his way to save me. -

  Zhxtraxak stilled.

  -I see. Have you ever seen a ship stripped from the outside in? Hybrids moving in dense formation around the hull of a vehicle?

  Panels stripped, circuits rewired, broken parts replaced or bypassed. Sections lifted by coordinated effort without shouted commands or visible signals. -

  He gestured toward the hangar, far in the distance of the tunnels below.

  -Normally, such acceleration would collapse under its own weight. Too many workers create friction. Too many hands create errors. But there… There was none. -

  Vexx chuckled.

  -You’re a prisoner, aren’t you? Don’t you remember how they captured you? -

  Zhxtraxak narrowed his eyes.

  -I prefer I didn’t. But I get where you wanna lead me. In the hangar… I saw Q?l?th?s argue with Lemela. Xyra disagreed openly. But when the work began, the differences vanished. Xyra would begin a sentence with me, Q?l?th?s would finish it. Lemela would simply act like nothing was ever in question in the first place.-

  It unsettled him more than the assimilation of Draxx and Haxxar ever had.

  Those two had been erased.

  This was something else entirely.

  He remembered watching as a hybrid misaligned a coupling by a fraction of a degree. Before it could even process the error, three others compensated.

  One adjusted torque, one rerouted current, one stabilized the load — all without instruction.

  No reprimand followed. No correction was issued.

  The mistake dissolved.

  Efficiency without punishment.

  Vexx broke the silence.

  -Creepy, wasn’t it? -

  -By all logic, it should not function. - Zhxtraxak said quietly.

  -Yet it does. -

  -That is the problem. - Zhtrax grumbled. He had spent his entire military career compensating for incompetence.

  For ego.

  For fear.

  For ambition.

  Here, none of those variables seemed to exist.

  When engaged, they became… interchangeable.

  It felt wrong.

  -Humans - Vexx muttered, slicing through another slab. - Even the half-metal ones… they bend logic. -

  -That thing that calls itself Ethan is not a human! - Zhxtraxak replied, more strongly than he intended.

  Vexx glanced up.

  Hybrids didn't stop nor acknowledged them. He seemed relieved.

  -You sure about that? - he asked.

  Zhxtraxak did not answer immediately.

  Ethan had done the opposite of everything he would have done.

  He had redirected every available unit toward a single, enormous objective: restoring a relic that might not even function.

  Strategically reckless.

  Resource-intensive.

  Potentially catastrophic.

  And yet the collective did not fracture under the strain. The impossible project was advancing. The engines were stable.

  The ancient ship could fly.

  Not elegantly. Not as it once had. But it would fly.

  That disturbed him more than anything.

  -It shouldn’t be human. Have you looked at it? Yet… yes. Ethan does things the human way. -

  -You think it will fly? - Vexx asked.

  -It can already hover, which is absurd. - Zhxtraxak said slowly. - It will fly again. Maybe not this cycle, but the next. And if they cannot make it fly, they will redefine what flying means. -

  Vexx barked a short laugh.

  -You’re starting to sound like you understand Ethan. -

  Zhxtraxak’s scaled brow twitched.

  He did not like that observation.

  Not because it was wrong.

  But it might be premature.

  He did not yet understand how Ethan clicked. How what he called the collective clicked.

  But he was beginning to recognize a pattern.

  They could concentrate force without waste.

  They could coordinate without command.

  They could escalate the effort without collapsing.

  And when they chose an objective, they did not argue with it.

  They simply found a way to conquer it.

  The ship would fly because the collective had decided it would.

  And whatever else Ethan decided upon, whether it was survival, expansion, or war, would be met with the same silent convergence of will, labor, and unfractured purpose.

  It was will and grit given structure to act, efficiency given form and purpose.

  It would not stop until it achieved its intended result.

  The only remaining question was whether Ethan’s intention would remain as measured as his method before finding an objective to push towards.

  original narration inspired by the concept of dragons in space. I hope you can give it a try and enjoy it too.