This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/PSHoffman on 2025-11-26 17:22:29+00:00.

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The Ark’s speakers spoke with calm urgency. “Enemy fleet detected.”

One of the cyran engineers saw the Swarm’s fleet first. It showed up on the energy scanner as an angry red wedge, angled directly at the Ark. On screen, they showed only as a flock of black silhouettes blocking out the starlight. Millions of ships, curved like vicious claws, or trailing long tentacled limbs, or bristling with gun barrels sharpened into spines and stingers.

“All hands!” one of the avian admirals shouted, as if he was ready for battle. As if any of them were in control.

“12.5 million miles out.”

“Did he say million?”

“We might have weeks before they’re in range.”

“Or months.”

“12 million miles.”

Everyone went quiet as they calculated the impossible speeds in their heads. The silence was only broken by an update from one of the techs. “11.5, now. The Ark says we have less than eight minutes.”

The room erupted. They ran to their stations, furiously tapping away at consoles they barely understood.

“Someone jump this damned ship! Get us out of here, now.”

“The prophet!” someone cried.

“What prophet? She’s just a girl. A mute, not a miracle worker*.*”

“She did it once, she can do it again.”

Hundreds of xenos of all kinds craned their necks up at the command platform. Faces lined with doubt.

“Can she?”

Yarsi could only guess at what they saw. The blood had barely dried on her snout from the last jump. Her eyelids felt heavy, and she had to fight to keep the world from turning in place. Her fingers curled into the controls of the command console, which she barely understood herself.

One of the xenos echoed her fears. “Maybe it was luck…”

More joined in.

“Maybe she can’t help us. I mean, look at her. She’s half dead already.”

Yet, Yarsi did know. She knew too much. A list of numbers—of coordinates in space and time—were painted on her memories. Dozens of them, spread across the coming weeks. Yarsi could even see the exact time of each jump.

She just didn’t know why she knew all this. Or, in fact, if the numbers were even right.

They were just there. Fragments of someone else’s memory, isolated from all context.

What if I lead them to danger? What if I kill them all?

What if these memories lead the Swarm to the Ark, like it did to my own people … ?

Yarsi blinked away the wetness in her eyes, and tried to swallow down the overwhelming darkness. It caught in her throat, and she tried to shrivel away from what must be done. Ryke and Laykis towered behind her, offering her only a little comfort. Not even they could understand.

“Four minutes,” the tech said.

But the tech was wrong. The incoming fleet had masked its nearest machines. Yarsi could see the timer, the real timer, ticking down the last seconds in her head. Yarsi curled her fingers into the console.

You will break. A voice welled up from the depths of her memory. You will.

Her fingers hesitated. Ryke whispered over her shoulder—pleaded with her—to jump. But what if it doesn’t work? What if this makes it worse? A memory of the Swarm, firing rockets into her old cavern home. Killing them. Killing them all. In seconds.

The air in the Ark was too hot. Her body recoiled from the lancing pain she knew would split her mind in half.

An alarm ripped through the command deck.

“They’re here!” someone shouted. “They’re already here!”

She gagged on fear. She forced her hands into the console, working her fingers over the contacts just as she had seen Khadam do when she was testing the ship’s Gate.

The Ark began to jump.

And in the fraction of a moment where the vast ship hung suspended between one place and another, Yarsi’s mind split open.

***

An auditorium.

She was sitting on the stage. A headache wanted to carve her head in two. She reached up to rub at her temples, but gasped as pain wracked her arms. Her arms were black and stiff and too painful to move. Her hands glistened, like crystalline stone under a sharp light. My hands. She couldn’t recognize them. One hardened finger was cracked at the base. About to break off.

Low lights illuminated hundreds of people sitting throughout the auditorium. Most of them had strange heads. Like bubbles. No, that wasn’t right. They were wearing suits, with breathing tubes proofed against the air. Like they didn’t want to be infected. How do I know this?

Some of them didn’t care. They wore their usual clothing, and she could see their faces. Black veined, or carved up with crystalline scars.

Human faces. They filled the auditorium until there wasn’t room to sit. Then, they squeezed against the walls, or sat cross legged at the foot of the stage. What is this? She wondered. A cult? A religion?

Only then did she realize all of them were facing her. Sitting at her feet. Leaning forward to watch her face. Eagerly awaiting her next move.

Who the hells am I?

Someone coughed. Someone rustled a sheaf of papers. Chairs creaked.

And then, as if the words had always been destined to come out of her mouth, Yarsi the Mute started to speak.

“In the End,” she said, “You will break. All of you.”

***

“Yarsi, please.” Someone was whispering over and over into her ear. There were other voices there, too. Shouting. Iron fingers wrapped around her throat as someone screamed for intubation.

“Please, Yarsi.”

Is that my name? She wondered vaguely, even as the pressure built in her lungs. Like the whole world was sitting on her chest.

“Here! I’ve got it here!”

It felt like fangs biting into her chest. She bucked. Her mouth was pried open, and a serpent rammed past her fangs and into her throat. A rush of air filled her lungs, and she gasped.

Her eyes fluttered open.

Two cyran doctors stared down at her. And an avian—Ryke?—her feathers spiked with worry. And an android, her scarred metal face impassive except for the glow of her machine eyes. And beyond them, the ceiling of a command center, deep in the bowels of a ship. Just like the one she had seen in all her dreams. The Ark. That’s what she will call it.

“She’s alive,” one of the doctors said. “Barely.”

She looked down. These aren’t my hands… Her stomach lurched as she noticed the scales and claws and strange, alien limbs. Are they? Drop by drop, the memories came trickling back.

Then, came the pain.

***

The Ark sat in the void between the stars. For three days, the Swarm could not find them.

For three days, the best minds and bravest souls of the xenos offered themselves up in service of the Ark. The engineers grappled with the controls, creating endless charts and convoluted attempts to map out the Ark’s systems. Cyran navigators and avian pilots volunteered to direct the ship, though none of them had much experience with anything more advanced than a fan-driven dirigible.

None of them asked Yarsi to connect with the Ark again—and if they had, she thought she might refuse. Just thinking about letting the Ark touch her mind again made her fangs hurt, and her body shiver.

Yet there was the timer, deep in her memory, ticking away. Not long now. And she couldn’t resist going back to the Bridge.

There, she found a brave cyran already strapped into a seat that was wired up to the command console. Tubes and vital monitors stuck out of his body, and a breath mask covered his blue-scaled face.

“Captain,” One of the generals stood over the pilot. “Are you ready?”

He nodded twice, his eyes wide with eagerness. “Good to go, Sir.” His voice was muffled by the respirator.

“Prepare for insertion,” the general called off the Bridge, and his command was echoed again and again by the lower officers and technicians.

Ryke was there, too, and when she noticed Yarsi, she swept to her side. “You should be resting,” she chided the lassertane girl.

Yarsi shrugged. She’d forgotten her writing slate, and could show that she was determined to watch.

“Insertion point identified!” a technician barked from the command floor.

The general nodded, as if he was waiting for the signal.

“Put him in,” the general said.

Several redenites in lab coats squeaked and grunted in their odd tongue as they manipulated the wires connecting the pilot’s chair to the command console. A light on one of their homemade machines blinked rapidly, filling up with green bars.

“Anything?” the general leaned over the pilot.

“I—I can feel it.” He was almost breathless.

“He’s in, general!”

“Good. Captain, can you find the ignition sequence?”

“By the gods, I can feel the whole ship! Everything. Makers Above, what is this?”

“Captain Scarpeus,” he repeated, louder and firmer, “Have you found the ignition—”

“It’s so big. It’s … It keeps going … I can see forever.”

“Captain.”

“The stars … Too much.” A sucking, gasping from behind the pilot’s mask, “I— I—”

“Shut it down! Get him out!”

The pilot convulsed, his torso thrashing, his arms and legs tearing at the tubes and wires, knocking over the redenites carefully built devices, and scattering machinery across the Bridge. They worked furiously to unhook the pilot, but it was too late. His eyes had rolled back into his skull. Blood, too much blood...

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