There is no genocide because the Network leaves no opportunity for genocide. These and a thousand other species-wide crimes have been wiped out. If a species decides to reject half a billion years of work toward this end, that is its own choice. If, however, it decides to undermine said work, then the Citizens of the Network are themselves left with no choice. They must assume that the species in question wishes to introduce that which others have spent eons eradicating.
And thus, the species itself must be eradicated.*2
We hope to hear from you soon.
*1 This sentinel can certainly keep itself on an out-of-the-way moon or minor body. The Network is not unreasonable.
*2 In the eons that the Network has existed, its invitation has been refused very few times. In fact, only one species has ever triggered the Network’s last resort.
It has been fifteen hours since Sarya watched her mother die.
She has not spoken during that time. She has not cried either. She has shouted, yes, screamed herself into exhausted unconsciousness at least once. She has done violent things, which is why there is blood crusted on her face and the backs of her hands. But she has not spoken and she has not cried, and now she stands in the flickering light of a foreign corridor and wonders if she will do either of those things ever again.
Fifteen hours ago, she shot backward through vacuum while the sky split around her. Below her blazed the fire of the gas giant, frozen in its silent roar. Behind her stretched the infinite star field. Before her spread the shrinking gold-lit amalgamation of geometry that contained nearly every memory she’s ever made. Watertower Station, Section F. She hurled epithets at the suit, cursed Eleven as a coward and a traitor, physically reached for the bright spot of the station airlock they left behind, that rectangle where she knew she would see the familiar silhouette of her mother any second. No matter that she had just seen what she had seen, there’s no telling what a Widow can survive—even conquer. But ultimately it didn’t matter because above, bigger than anything she’s ever imagined, there was something else.
The ice ship.
Eleven’s interior display laid out the scene with all the life and feeling of an architectural diagram. The section they just left, in which a laughing Widow stood before a river of silver death—that was [Dock A]. Far to her right, that clutter of cubes was [Residential]. That’s where her neighbors still lay on a synthetic floor, eyes open and fluids congealing. Below that was the dome of the [Arboretum], where she’d spent so many afternoons while her mother slept. And that part, toward which the needle spike of the ice ship swung like an impossibly long, brilliant blade—that was [Reactor B].
Watertower didn’t explode, then, so much as it simply ceased to exist. It was destructured, unbuilt, homogenized into elementary particles. The process flashed Eleven’s interior a blinding white, and when Sarya could open her eyes again the station was gone. The ice ship continued on its massive arc, now missing its first few kilometers but otherwise unharmed. And that was it. That was the end of everything that Sarya had ever known.
She doesn’t remember much past that. She doesn’t remember entering another ship, though it must have happened because here she is. She vaguely recalls the shock of frozen air that hit her when Eleven’s shell cracked open and its gangway lowered. She has a faint memory of two figures bundling her out of the suit and up a freezing ladder. She went with them because what else could she do? She remembers that one was huge and one was her size, and that the big one wouldn’t stop trying to thank her for something, but all she wanted was for them to go away. They must have done just that, because the next time she looked up she was lying on the floor of a bare room with two stacked bunks against a wall and a standard sanitation station in the corner.
And that, as near as she can recall, is when the screaming began.
So. Screaming and self-harm: that was her introduction to Ripper or Tidal or whatever this hellship is called. But now those have burned out and a different part of her brain has taken over and negotiated a sterile peace within her. It doesn’t matter, says that part of her brain—not that anything ever really did. You should go