The Gray Machine

Ghosts, Sacrifice

It was at just that moment that the Ambassador tore into Earth sky.

Her name was Sheksama of the Ikoem Sisterhood, and she was one of the finest ambassadors they'd known. That was to say, the powers of persuasion held in her elegant speech, in long legs and fingers, and in three severe violet eyes, had been seldom matched.

Now I pay the price for my aptitude. She would be hunted by both sides until the day she died. But with her love beside her, her daughter behind, she would bring them to safety. No matter the cost.

This world called Earth, on the brink of chaos, would have to serve. There was no telling what the Magistrate might do in the name of their fallen sister Niala, or how soon she might act.

She had cut into Earth sky, swirling out of control, in a little vessel like a black teardrop dashed in swirled flame. Neither satellite nor telescope detected so much as a change in temperature. It may as well have been a ghost ship, weaving between dimensions, scattering rainbow shards in its wake.

Several others pursued, dwarfing her single teardrop – gray, angular, cantilevered monoliths that defied the fluid nature of the darkness all around. They bore the pyramid and arc sigil, the unification of all things under unquestioning uniformity. They had once been imperial vehicles of the Gold. But the reach of the Gray had spread across the Empire of Eridu like a cancer, weaving itself into every echelon of power imaginable.

The great gray road, onward to eternity...

Sheksama had torn up many of the pursuers with an epi-dimensional weapon that shredded the very fabric of reality. One of the vessels had been tossed from Earth's upper atmosphere to crash land in the Gulf of Mexico, no doubt spilling its pale warriors into the hungry waves.

And ultimately, the final two ships of the force called the Gray Machine, or simply The Purpose, had broken pursuit when she reached Earth. One could say they had no jurisdiction here, on this little world at the sprawling edge of Eridu's reach. Gray took other forms here.

When Earth's blue crescent came into view in hazy majesty, the ambassador's heart lurched in release. It was like running barefoot through dewy grass while music rose all around, like feeling your first love intertwine with you under bright stars. It meant her daughter and her beloved might live. They'd already taken her son, when he'd been so tender and small. She would not lose another.

"You see, my love!" cried Mirama beside her, sweet face aglow. "It is as I said. We will be safe to live our lives, as free and –"

A Gray behemoth sent a parting shot, causing Sheksama to flinch, to lose hold of the hair-trigger navigation for just an instant—a system so sensitive it could be operated by pure awareness alone. Sheksama's momentary lapse had pitched the vessel a fraction of a degree off course. That had been enough. Torque ripped across the ship.

Mirama shuddered, fell silent, and then slumped.

Sheksama knew within an instant. Her love had adjusted her controls to compensate, to absorb the brunt of the force. There was no surviving this sacrifice. Organs were torn to shreds inside her, skull ripped from spinal cord, brain splashed to liquid within her skull – a reaction so deft and abrupt that there had not even been time for eye contact.

"Ma, she's –"

"No!" Sheksama spat at her daughter. She could not speak of it, not at the speed and closeness to the approaching world. And because she could not bear to hear it said aloud.

Sheksama blocked the girl's plaintive sobs with fury. It took everything she had not to spin into the starlit void.

"This is the price I pay," Sheksama muttered with all the ire of a dying star. "This is the price for an instant of softness. For a mere fraction of a second of the demon called hope. Look hard upon it my child, and do not forget."