Chapter 9 - Fireflies in the Memory Graveyard

Arya's eyelashes were crusted with ice crystals, and an alarm of -190 degrees Celsius pulsed on her tactical goggles. She peeled back the network of mycelium covering the console, and was suddenly pelted in the face by a spurt of fluorescent spores - translucent dots of light that formed human faces in the air, none other than three hundred different versions of herself.

"Warning! Memory leak." The synthesized voice of the ship's AI was tinged with a cry as the bulkheads oozed black slime. Ramon's mechanical fingers plunged into the control panel and liquid metal flowed down the circuits to the core, "This isn't a battleship, it's a coffin."

The fluorescent spores suddenly coalesced into a holographic projection. An image of Primary Administrator Alpha-1 surfaced, the snow wolf crest on her battle armor was oozing blood, "To the 327th Successor, by the time you see this image, the Homeworld's Reaping Fleet will be 0.5 light years away."

Arya's tactical gloves are seared through the console and DNA authentication triggers the dusty log. The chamber suddenly fills with seawater, and the holographic projection switches to an undersea scene: countless incubation pods suspended in the abyss, each sleeping humanoids genetically similar to her.

"Earth is not a cradle, it's a petri dish." Alpha-1's voice was interspersed with current murmurs, "The Godslayer seed we stole is in the blood of all the subjects ..."

The jolt hit suddenly, and Ramon rolled toward safety, holding Arya in his arms. Where they had just stood, the deck cracked open in a huge opening, and instead of flames, countless glowing jellyfish-like creatures poured out. Each jellyfish core was encased in memory crystals that reflected the moments of destruction of different civilizations.

Arya grabbed the nearest jellyfish, and the crystal melted in her palm, and what flooded into her mind was the memory of Ramon's perspective - it wasn't a communicator he had secretly repaired last night, but a transmitter tower that had sent a locator signal to the home planet!

"You really are lying to me." She pressed Ramon against the blood-seeping bulkhead, her demon pupil scanning for the hidden interface at his spine. Upon forcing the access, what she saw was an image that took her breath away: a record of the deaths of all generations of Beta Series administrators, each one executed by her own hand!

Ramon's mechanical fingers suddenly jabbed into his temple, pulling out the sparking memory chip, "Look at this." The chip projected a wedding scene they'd never experienced before - in front of an altar covered in nerve fibers, she personally put a wedding ring woven in code on him.

The ship's AI suddenly let out a sharp pop, and all screens displayed the same warning, "Home planet observer detected." The jellyfish creatures in the incubation chamber spontaneously combusted en masse, and out of the blue-green flames stepped a three-meter-tall crystal skeleton with galactic swirls dancing in its eyes.

"Experiment numbers α-19, β-19," the skeleton's mandibles opened and closed, falling chunks of data forming death warrants in the air, "You have violated the awakening of the seven emotions."

Arya's demonic pupils suddenly oozed bronze liquid, and all matter in her vision turned into flowing code. She saw the Crystal Skull's true form - it was a swarm of nanites encased in a quantum core! Ramon's robotic arm automatically disintegrated and reconfigured itself into an antimatter rifle, "Aim for the Klein Bottle logo on its forehead!"

At the moment of the firefight, the time flow inside the chamber began to disrupt. Arya saw the bullets disintegrate into grapevines in the air, the vines bearing but miniature black holes. As she leapt up to slash, her demon pupil suddenly resolved the Achilles heel: the skeleton's twelfth vertebrae hid the Queen Bug proper.

Ramon suddenly hugged her and spun around, using his own back to withstand the swarm's attack. Amidst the charred smell of melting mechanical bones, he hissed and shoved the antimatter rifle into her hands, "Remember the special training in the Basalt Cave?"

Memories broke like a flood. Arya recalled images of training that didn't even exist: in the virtual reality grotto, Ramon had taught her by hand to shoot at star core weak points. When she pulled the trigger, the bullets were instead viral code programmed with the saliva they'd exchanged during their first kiss.

The moment the antimatter beam shattered the twelfth vertebrae, the crystal skull dissolved into a data storm. Memory fireflies rose in the eye of the storm, and they converged to form Alpha-1's dying words, "Flee, to the Church of the Confessor on the backside of the moon ..."

The wreckage begins to crumble, and Arya jumps into the escape hatch, dragging Ramon's half-melted body with her. As the hatch closes, she sees a chilling sight: instead of following the action, her own reflection writes in blood on the glass - 'You're the beta-19'.