I don’t have a bridge. I have a command center.

I don’t know what the difference is. I do not care. I like how command center sounds. I think bridges are for ships?

Legally speaking, the station is classified as a ship, because it can move. I did not file the paperwork for this or anything, it’s a legacy aspect. But I’ve added a lot of engines, so I know it can still move.

But that doesn’t make my command center a bridge.

I can count on one paw the number of times I’ve actually used a command center. Even in past years when the station wasn’t so empty, it was never really needed.

Not like now. Not like this.

Dyn steps out of a transfer pod with me still on her shoulder, claws digging into the heavier material of the armored scavenger suit she’s pulled up around herself. Neither of us need a map for this, but the AR throws lines against the wall just in case. She steps out, takes a sharp right, and moves forward as fast as her body still works, falling in behind another human that’s running the same way we are.

They look like a cadet. So young, with a blue and gold patch on their suit shoulder in the shape of a paw. They go down with a crunch of bone as a multi-jointed limb of bulging muscle and leather slams through the bulkhead to our right, metal tearing outward like wet paper.

The claw of the limb latches onto the far wall, and starts to pull, dragging the ball of flesh it’s attached to through afterward. The ball glows with a sick organic orange light, and my brain does not want to process the fact that there is nothing else to this creature but an arm and a glowing orb of loose skin and inner light.

Dyn shoots it, firing into its joints and dusting the corridor in orange blood as her shots collapse whatever is holding it up.

I wait for the flesh ball to explode, but it doesn’t. So, small mercies.

Bounding off her shoulder, kicking off as softly as I can so I don’t topple her, I rush to check the human. He’s bleeding, and looks like he has a broken arm. But he’s alive. I summon a medical transport bot team, and take off ahead of Dyn. She’ll be fine, and she’s turned to cover our rear as another one of those things tries to smash through the ventilation.

I’m under attack, and I knew this was going to happen.

An emergence event has opened in my station. In my home. I’m under attack, and I’m so furious, I’m having trouble not reacting by doing something stupid. The only thing holding me back is the fact that I need to know, before I commit to being an idiot, if this is it or not. If this is the Moment where history pivots.

I stride into the command deck, past a pair of planetsider marines who do their best to not stare at me as I pass. Inside things are a little hectic.

“Invaders spotted moving down the grav shafts!” ExoLily yells. “Origin points marked!”

“Strike team can’t find the way to the hole.” One of the new kids says, staring at a projected map of the station and the marked points of where fights have happened, soldiers have fallen, and invaders have died. “It’s a maze up there.”

Up there is the sensor array. They’re right. “Lily!” I hiss out, and a hologram of my digital sister crisply snaps into view near me. “Get up there, guide them!”

“On it!” She flashes away.

I check my AR. We’re not blind, the grid is up and the majority of sensors are working. There’s only a few that aren’t, a trio of short range projectile intercept tracers that could each be the source of the event. But they aren’t. I know they aren’t, because I’ve kind of seen this show before. And also because it’s suspiciously obvious that the thing in the middle of the three destroyed sensor nodes is still operating.

We’re not blind, but we’re disorganized. There’s almost a hundred people on the station, and they’re running around like they’re all working on their own. And lark, maybe they are. Let’s fix that.

“You!” I point a paw at the two nearest newly promoted sensor techs. “We’ve got a dozen ways to spot these things! Start sweeping the station. You! We know where the crew are, start directing people to link up with each other! Get to security posts, armories, turrets, whatever!”

I glance down at the automated routine I set up earlier. Something weird has occurred that the minor intelligence of the program can’t process, which means it’s spotted an invader. I switch to the local view, and trigger a turret flamethrower burst to annihilate a pod of those weird arm things. They do explode when set on fire.

Five decks above us, the station loses a chunk of a foundry module as I burn out the infection. We don’t even feel it down here.

“Lily!” Ennos’ voice comes through, and a few of the new crew who were raised on tales of evil AI flinch around me. I’ll harass them later, when we’re all alive. “I’m… something is…” Ennos’ voice cracks and breaks. “I am… processing… memories.” They stagger out. “Through the relay, I am processing information. About. This.” Ennos modifies my AR, and a local image of an invader comes up. I manually slave a nearby wall turret and shoot it with something non-flammable.

Wait. Hang on.

“How?” I demand, as reports of damage and chaos come in around me. A hull breach alarm starts sounding. It’s probably fine.

“Don’t know.” Ennos says through gritted digital teeth. “Using. Relay ship. Scrambling effect… is… not… natural. Something. Deleting memories…” They trail off, and I take the moment to help one of the gunner kids manually detonate the ammo canister of a PDW, taking out a swarm of the creatures that are trying to crawl up the outer hull toward a breach they’ve made that would let them skip a lot of guns. “I’ll try to help. I have to go. Good luck Lily.”

“Good luck.” I whisper-mewl back.

Around me, chaos begins to settle in.

I’ve seen this before. I’ve felt this before. It’s a reaction people tend to have when situations like this happen. There’s a threshold beyond which the chaos becomes the accepted way things are going, and you just can’t keep panicking past a certain point. Sooner or later, you have to just start doing the work and shooting the monsters.

We get to work.

My sister in the power core reports things moving through, but not causing damage. Our energy supplies stay online, and I send another two sisters to help her kill the problem.

A pair of crew members nearly blow their limbs off getting the fire suppression systems online. They manage to do it without the maiming, and save a half a deck of the station.

A team of marines from that raft city bring down something the size of a corvette trying to claw its way down through the decks of the station.

I keep coding mid-battle, throwing out small scripts that trip alarms, giving the people around me a few seconds to activate turrets or doors, cutting off and cutting down the invaders.

We’re making progress toward the breach. I think I know where it is, but I have to be sure. And I can’t just blow off the top third of the station either, unless it’s a last resort. I mean, I could. But I shouldn’t. There are people up there. And they all deserve a fighting chance.

And then, as I’m unfolding into the chaos like I’m best at, two things happen in close succession that sets my fur on edge and my heart pounding.

“I’ve got it!” The feathermorph girl working on the sensor team squawks out. Her partner keeps monitoring incursion points and directing response teams, but I’m interested, and I have about a minute before something else catches fire. I slide across the deckplate, my nanotech sister and I popping up next to the girl in unison and getting another squawk.

“What?” I ask quickly.

“Th-the signal!” She says, curved fingers flashing across the keys in a way I envy, pulling up reports and a wavelength process I have absolutely no familiarity with. Which should be impossible, on my station. “It’s something from the sensor node the breach is in! It’s this one, here!”

“It… had a targeting beacon?” My sister asks, triangular brow furled up.

I say something different. “Command override B, six, Aelph, two, captain’s authorization, emergency situation, ignore safety warnings. Designate location six one dash five one eight. Seal, decouple, and purge designate location. Time ten five.” Under the speaking, I slip a small command I’ve preset into the system.

“All combat teams, get clear of the sensor segments!” The field commander barks into a communicator.

Fifteen seconds later, the emergence event and the traitorous sensor node that was broadcasting our location are flung into space. One of my gunners takes it out, which I kind of wanted to do myself, actually, but I appreciate the initiative.

A fresh thunk sounds near us. “You three!” I indicate my sensor operators. “Get to deck sixteen, section four. Find the jammer there, turn it on. Set it to the code you found. Whatever did this will try again.” I pause, and share a glance with my sister. “Keep ‘em safe.” I tell her. She nods, and the psychic imprint of our other sister nods around her in a halo. “Go!”

My crew move.

I keep watch over the ongoing fight. But I already know what’s going to happen. It’s almost cheating, but it actually just makes me feel sick. “Relocate to deck sixteen, section four!” I call out to a group of engineers. “Link up with my sister along the way!” I pivot to another segment, the medical station. “I’ve got a proper medbay set up on deck sixteen.” I tell them, not technically lying. “Transfer your patients there. I’m sending one of my sisters to help.”

There’s only a few people around me, and they’re too busy to pay attention to what I’m doing.

“Lily!” My sister yells at me, the feline ball of slime whipping her head around like a projectile weapon. “Something’s going on!”

Yeah, it is. “Yeah.” I say. “There’s an asteroid habitat forty kilometers away from us that’s launching bioprojectiles.”

“…How…?”

“All hands, stand by to repel boarders. Marine team to deck sixteen.” I snap out over the command link. “There’s an emergence event on that asteroid.” I tell the remaining command crew. “They couldn’t get us the easy way, so now we do this.”

The station begins opening fire with everything available pointing that direction. Organic gunners launching railguns, void beams, scrambler pulses, anything that might take down some of what’s on the way.

“They?” The two sisters of mine here stare at me. “What?” ExoLily flicks faceted augmented eyes at me. “What are you talking about?”

“I almost took too long.” I meow softly, barely heard over the alarms. Only I know she’ll hear; her ears pick up everything. “I almost didn’t get the warning in time.” I check my readings, and send a message across the grid. The shield generators on deck sixteen need more power; I get my sister on it.

“Lily!” Ennos’ voice comes through. “The station grid is being coopted! External airlocks are opening across the hull, guns are being unloaded, what’s happening?!”

“Can you fight it?” I ask, not explaining.

“Possibly.” Glitter’s voice adds to the conversation. “It is hard.”

There’s a slight hesitation, and then Ennos answers. “Yes.” They say. “Yes! It’s the same thing as what’s been deleting… it’s… the same… it’s the…” There is a pause as they collect themselves, and I take the opportunity to manually track and fire a flux web into the path of the incoming invaders. “It’s been here the whole time.” Ennos hisses static. “It’s been in my mind.” I’ve never heard the AI sound so angry.

“I will help.” Glitter adds. “Use me as a relay. I will begin activating the system network.”

“Kill it if you can, but if not, fall back to the grid node on deck sixteen, and go to standby.” I tell them. “I… don’t die, okay? I love you.” I turn to my sisters, not waiting for Ennos to reply. “Lily, the hull has some holes in it. Deck sixteen has breaches and open airlocks, and I need it safe.”

She meets my eyes. Hisses angrily. “We’ll talk about this later!” She orders, flexible paws grabbing onto the bulk of her scarab friend before a tapped command sends the repair bot lumbering out the door and down the hall at high speed.

“What about me?” OozeLily asks.

“I’m gonna ask you to do me a favor, and take the rest of the staff here.” I sigh.

One of the staff here cuts off my moment, calling over to me. “Marauder wing launching to intercept incoming targets!”

“…What?!” My sister and I yell together. I pick up the conversation, yelling down the taclink. “Jom! What are you doing?! You can’t even see the voided things!”

My AR shifts as I get a view of the external battlefield. Technically, the computer can track the incoming entities, it just can’t react properly. And neither can Jom, as an AI. Fifty camera angles from three viewpoints light up my vision as I see the docking bay vanish, debris and other old ships flashing by like streaks of grey as Jom closes the gap in a second.

The AI is headed into the biggest flock of hostiles headed our way, and he and his brothers are absolutely blind.

Then, in unison, their flechette guns light up, a hundred points of glittering metal moving at Mach six, carving towards targets they shouldn’t even know are there.

The marauders cut through the cloud in two seconds, battle damage flashing to light on the displays as they take hits. A third of the enemy is gone.

“Get back to work old lady!” Dyn’s voice cuts across my communication network. No, across the tacnet. “We’ve got this!”

Dyn, how the absolute void did you have time to make it to the docking bay, and convince Jom to let you ride along? I don’t bother asking. I don’t have time to scream at them. Nothing I have to say will help, and any distraction could prove fatal.

One of Jom’s brothers takes a shot across the flank, Jom loses a nacel, they’re getting worn down fast. “Come back. You’ll die.” I say anyway, weakly.

“Thank you.” Jom’s clear voice comes through, the message already queued. “Thank for the chance to be more than a weapon. But this is what we were made to do. Now, let us get to it.”

“Good luck.” I mew. I close the taclink. I don’t have time to watch.

The deckplate rattles as I direct the engines of the station to begin very softly rotating us, making us a harder target I lie to the crew in the room. I move us slowly enough that nothing breaks. It’ll take a little while.

The deckplate rattles under me. In the distance, I hear the scream of metal tearing. Then it’s less distant. One of the consoles nearby sparks, then goes dark, and then through the view screen mounted in the center of the room, something made of teeth and eyes claws its way into the room.

The crew fall back, scrambling against the deck as the floor rattles and air starts rushing out of the room. I just lunge forward, wrapping claws around the soft bits, and taking the stab wounds that I know won’t stop me, the lasers strapped to my paws lighting up and bursting bulbous eyes like they’re overirradiated cherries.

Don’t you fucking dare mock me for my food choices now. It’s far too late for that.

The husk of the dead invader flops down onto the holodisplay plate, a boneless coil of pointy flesh, while I roll away and wait to stop bleeding. “Everyone out.” I say. “Get to deck sixteen, fallback point.” I look at my sister. “Take care of them.”

“Be careful.” She tells me, turning and pooling up the leg of the suit one of the crew is wearing, flexing herself around them like a black and white plastic cloak before activating her AR and guiding the remaining people out in a small team, guns up and ready to make a run to the nearest safe space.

I hope they make it.

I’m not going to be careful.

One emergence event is a problem. But it’s a problem I’ve handled before. I’ve even handled one near the station. This isn’t that.

Two emergence events are a big problem. I’ve handled that before. I’ve not handled that near the station. This still isn’t that.

This is emergence events, at least two, aimed at the station.

There wasn’t much time left, my sister who is a slice of a second told me. She cut it close, getting in to deliver her message from a failed timeline. Apparently, this close. Because it’s starting now.

Even if we repel this attack, there will be another one. Even if we repel that one, they’ll keep coming. If we stop the way the signal is getting out, it’ll find another way.

I always hated it. I sealed it off, as best I could, because I hated it so much. Now, the offshoots of some out of context alien thing are here, looking for it, because it’s calling them, because it wants to be found again.

Somewhere, maybe not even in this universe, something has lost its toy. And the toy wants to go home. And I’m tired of it causing the end of civilization.

Deep within the very center of the station, something finds its way to a sealed wall, painted with the Last Oath. It doesn’t care, and probably can’t read. It tears the metal away and crawls into the sealed off room. Toward the grim machine that started all of this.

It lays a twisted eye of electric flesh on the device. Something changes. And then I kill it with an autoturret before it can step forward any further.

Three million kilometers above the ecliptic plane, a new emergence event forms. This one is so bright, I could see it without scanners if there wasn’t all this pesky hull in the way. It is enormous, one singular hole in reality, that something the size of a world is crawling through. It has tendrils and arms and fangs and eyes, and a dozen other pieces of spaceborn biology that I do not know how to begin to understand on the scanner maps.

Most living creatures have a body. This one has geology. A whole ecosystem. It teems with the life that comes from emergence events, creatures the size of skyscrapers looking like tiny dots against its organic hull.

I think it looks like a crab, kind of? Carcinization comes for us all, I guess.

My crew are panicking. They should be. I remember what happened the last eight times this thing ended up in this solar system.

But this time, I have a plan. All I need is to keep it busy for a few minutes.

“Glitter.” I say.

“Lily. I’m here. I don’t think the void beam I have will do much to help you, though.”

Ah, gallows humor. Even from the prim and proper weapons platform. “Glitter…” I almost laugh anyway. “I don’t need you to kill it, I just need a distraction.”

“I could fire until my batteries turned to dust from entropy, and perhaps I would distract one of its pimples.” Glitter sounds pensive. “Hm. I may try, just to say I did when I meet my sisters in the next life.”

“Glitter, you said you brought the system communications network online earlier.” I check the station’s rotation, and begin lightly firing the engines to adjust our turn. I need the place intact, for one more thing.

“Yes. To assist Ennos. They are still fighting, but it is not going well. They do not have time to talk.”

“Tell Ennos to fall back to the stand down node.” I order. “Don’t… don’t let them weasel out of this. And patch me into the network.”

I didn’t even know why I was doing it, really. It was just a hobby. Take a satellite here or there, send out some subversion code, do a little engineering. A good way to train a lot of little skills in a safe way.

Over a hundred thousand communications satellites and nodes in orbit around Earth, Mars, and even some of the FTL ansibles, are under my control. I had planned to try to do something to restart unified civilization, but that was kind of just a mouse dream. I didn’t really do it to accomplish anything. I did it to have a distraction, so my paws could focus and so I didn’t slip into despair. And then, just to have something to do. A habit. Was this outside urging? Was this something buried in my brain, that I didn’t know wasn’t even my own idea? It doesn’t matter. It’s here now, I’ve prepared it over lifetimes.

And now I need it.

“Who do you need to speak to?” Glitter asks me. “I can relay you to anyone you need.”

“No Glitter.” I say, restarting the command deck’s holoprojection and getting a good view of how the emergence event looks like a second star, blotting out a small chunk of the galaxy from view. “Not anyone.”

I need to distract a planet sized living nightmare for three minutes. I need to keep the things on it from launching a campaign of eradication across the solar system. And I need to do it with a station that is currently partially on fire, because fire suppression systems can only do so much.

I paw in a series of commands to the station. Drop stealth systems. Begin broadcasting IFF.

Millions of kilometers away, the final death of the people of Sol begins launching attack craft. It probably won’t find me, won’t find what it’s looking for. It never did in the other timelines. But that won’t make a difference to the people wiped away by its alien anger.

I look up at the ceiling, a habit I still have when addressing my AI friends. “Wide band, full spectrum, one way message. Override all blocks and security. Punch through and make it as loud as you can.” I flick my ears. “I don’t need to talk to anyone. I want you to put me through to everyone.”