This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/PSHoffman on 2025-11-10 16:54:14+00:00.
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Cold hands held her. Each finger was taller than her, and had too many joints that rippled and pressed unnaturally against her flesh, making Khadam shiver and jerk away as the hands turned her over and over. Gentle and quick, the fingers clicked as they peeled away the last of her armor, and grasped at her sweat-stained clothes.
She fought to keep her arms against her chest, to tuck her legs in, but the fingers plucked at her hands and feet and pulled softly until she was splayed out in the frigid air. “No,” she groaned as more hands whispered up from the darkness. They sliced through fabric and reinforced threads, sliding like ice across her skin as they carefully cut away the last of her clothes.
The cold, stale air settled on her naked flesh. Shivers rolled up and down her spine, her legs, her stomach and breasts and neck. She gritted her teeth, trying to fight them back. Trying to pretend it was only the cold that made her shake so … and not the fear.
It made no difference if she opened her eyes, or squeezed them shut. Everything was black. Even her thoughts were smudged with an inky heaviness, clouding her mind. Making it hard to stay awake. The great hands spun once more, with Khadam hanging humiliated in the air, her naked back exposed to their prying touch as they click, click, clicked away in the echoing darkness.
“ANOMALY DETECTED,” a deep, robotic voice belched, its voice echoing strangely in the space. Above (or below, Khadam couldn’t quite tell which direction she was facing) a motor let out a high pitch whine, followed by a rapid flashing of lights as some medical device scanned her naked back. Khadam’s eye implants shrank her pupils to prevent the light from blinding her completely, and she caught a glimpse of her surroundings in between flashing pops.
Steep, curving bulkheads and harsh metal ribs disappearing into the gloom. Huge pipes ran along the bottom, paralleled by dozens of overlapping tubes. Netting and wires ran across bulkheads and below the deck, as if to keep her from climbing out. As if she might somehow escape the titanium hands that gripped her.
“DISEASE MARKERS DETECTED. ISOLATION PROTOCOL REQUIRED.”
Khadam gasped as a pair of syringes, one thicker than the other, pierced the skin between her shoulders, prodding at the corners of the black, glittering patch eating her flesh. The great hands turned her more slowly now, flashing every inch of her body with rapid lights. She could feel the heat off them, as if they were baking her body with radiation.
Khadam narrowed her eyes, and the implants shrank her pupils further, until she could see the lights, dozens of them of every size, and other sensors, glass discs, and delicate orbs glittering with electronic components, imaging her body from every angle and in every spectrum. One sensor dwarfed all the others.
Thousands of interlocking lenses formed a great, compound eye. In the depths of the eye, Khadam could make out millions of microscopic sensors, rippling and warping beneath the polished lenses, blinking in shimmering waves and changing patterns. Streaks of blue expanded across fields of orange, which flipped to emerald greens and hypnotic golds. Khadam could see her own body—bloodied and bruised and wrapped in mechanical claws—reflected in the great, compound eye, and painted in its ever-changing colors.
Its gaze lay on her, heavier than any titanium hand. Even through the fog of her thoughts, she could tell it was waiting for her.
Why?
The Sovereign was a thoughtless, unemotional machine. In the Lightning Wars, it had wiped out billions of humans in days. It had hunted down hundreds of far-flung clans, thousands perhaps, and obliterated them without a moment’s hesitation. It had infested every planet, every moon, every cold rock that showed even the slightest sign of human life—spending enormous resources to dig out survivors who had hidden away for decades—and slaughtered them.
Why hasn’t it killed me?
The compound eye’s lights shifted through green and blue and warm yellows as the voice boomed, hollow and emotionless, “STATE YOUR NAME.” All the smaller sensors glittered and flickered as they watched Khadam’s every movement.
She summoned the reserves of her strength, fighting down the chills that wracked her body. Saliva and blood gathered in her mouth. She spat. It arced up, splattered the corner of the thing’s great eye, and dripped back on her own neck. Tiny, almost microscopic drones crawled out of the dark holes around the eye, and flooded across its thousand lenses, wiping them clean in a miniature, glittering tidal wave.
The patterns of light glowed a burning red this time. “STATE … YOUR NAME.”
“Kill me.” she said. “Kill me and be done with this.”
“KHADAM ANDREESEN NAHAR. CONFIRM YOUR IDENTITY.”
It was the first time she’d heard her name—her full name—spoken in thousands of years. And the fact that it was spoken by this machine? That stung. It left a sharp hole in her heart that only widened as the seconds dripped away. Her parents’ names, given to her so very long ago.
They were dust now. They were all dust.
“YOU ARE THE LAST ONE,” the machine’s voice crushed her with its reverberating finality.
“What do you want with me?”
“CONFIRM YOUR IDENTITY.”
“Tell me. And then I’ll tell you.”
“YOU WILL BE DELIVERED. THE COUNT MUST BE COMPLETED.”
“Delivered where? Why am I still alive?”
“KHADAM ANDREESEN NAHAR. CONFIRM YOUR IDENTITY.”
Khadam lifted her head, her hair sliding off her face in sweaty, cold strands. “That’s not my name. You got the wrong person—”
Something snapped and crackled behind her. It touched her spine, and blistering white agony pierced her thoughts. Her legs shook, she tried to writhe away from the pain, she jerked and twisted her head back and forth, gritting out a scream.
It stopped, as quickly as it started.
“CONFIRM YOUR IDENTITY.”
“Do whatever you want,” she said through heaving breaths, “I’ve never heard that name in my life—”
Electric pain. She screamed again, screamed until there was no breath left in her body. A rod pressed hard into her flesh, rolling burning waves of energy rolled through her body, cooking her from the inside out. When it stopped, her vision had gone blurry. Even with her eye implants, she couldn’t make out the sensors staring back at her anymore. They just looked like stars, and a single blurry sun.
“CONFIRM YOUR IDENTITY.”
Her throat was dry and ragged, and her breath came in stuttering gasps. She tasted blood. She resisted the urge to let her head drop. She fought the drowning darkness. Think, she told herself. Why did this machine need to know her name? What difference could it possibly make?
“CONFIRM.” The machine punctuated its command with a burst of crackling energy from the rod—not quite touching her, but close enough that she twitched involuntarily away from the device.
Might as well tell it. I’m dead anyway. Maybe it would spare the pain.
Khadam curled her lip into a sneer. “Fuck you,” she said.
Electricity snapped behind her. The air sizzled, and she smelled the burning of her own skin before she felt its sting. She couldn’t keep her jaws shut against the scream rising in her throat.
Then, the world ripped open. A massive gash carved through the hull, snapping the ribs and splitting the deck and pulling the bulkheads apart. The scream was torn from her lips, and all the air went out. And suddenly, she saw stars. Real stars, gliding slowly past the tattered, shredded gash. Khadam gasped, trying to suck down the last of the oxygen before it slipped away. The cold touch of the void wrapped around her, making her shiver violently against her restraints.
Outside the ship, red-hot lines streaked past the gash. They left glowing trails on her vision. Cannons shells, she thought. Massive ones. Something big was out there, attacking the Sovereign’s ship.
Do they know I’m in here?
The metal hands jerked her sharply as something slammed into the ship. Metal fingers compressed her body, squeezing her ribs into her lungs, cracking the bones. The vacuum sucked at her skin, and dug at her eye sockets. If her eyes had been organic, they might’ve burst away by now, but she still felt tears (or was that blood) bubbling over her ocular implants.
Another blazing shell sailed, silently, out of the darkness. Massive, and yet it made no sound as it slammed into the ship. The metal fingers collapsed into pieces, dropping silver joints and spilling Khadam out into the void like the ragged contents of a broken egg.
She exhaled, to prevent her lungs from rupturing. She didn’t know why she bothered. It was inevitable. Maybe a minute, maybe two, before she died. No suit, no clothes, nothing but her skin and implants to protect her against the vacuum. She was spinning too fast to see the Sovereign’s ship, nor the thing that had destroyed it. All she could do was drift, and gaze at the stars one last time.
Something glowed behind her. Probably the ship, exploding.
Then, a shadow came from behind and fell over the stars. Jaws of metal yawned wide and swallowed her whole. They seal...
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