An End Read Online Free

his smoke, flicked it away, where it spun out into the shadows of the bottom of the Vegas pipe. “Sure, what the hell.”
     
     
    For a moment, Fleur just stood by the railing, looking at everything and nothing, her small hands latched firmly to the metal. Whistler and Hank sauntered down the ramp out onto the uncertain black of the tunnel floor. Nine placed his hand over Fleur’s, gently lifted her fingers from around the railing.
    “It’ll be all right. I’m here.”
    “You don’t know her. You don’t know what she has planned.”
    Nine’s eyes dug into Fleur’s mind.
    I’m here. Nothing will happen.
    “Come on, you two! We have an meeting with Mum!” Whistler was entirely too cheerful as he beckoned to Nine and Fleur, who walked slowly down the ramp from the drop vessel. Whistler turned back to Hank, looped his arm through the old cowboy’s as they walked. Hank shot Whistler a deadly glare, but shook his head and said nothing.
    They walked down the canted passageway to Center Earth. Mother was near.
     
     
    It is near.
    “What is it?”
    I do not know.
    Zero frowned in the drowned bowl, shook his head in disbelief. There wasn’t supposed to be anything out here. There couldn’t be anything out here in the Outer. Mother’s little jihad should have seen to that. If the vessels approaching them were some cut-off wing of one of Mother’s Extinction fleets, there would be no hope of survival.
    Machine filled the bowl with an exterior display so that Zero could see what was happening. They were still traveling at Light X, but whatever was chasing them was traveling at a far greater speed. Zero knew that there could not be anything chasing them at faster than Light X speed, but still, there it was. There they were: great black shapes blocking out the nothing between the suns of the void.
    We’re dropping from Light X.
    And so they did: the dizzying whirlpool of space lashed forward and backward as they reintegrated into a solid form. The bowl became a solid, smooth sphere and Zero dropped from his swimming position in the center of his prison, unceremoniously slid on his ass around the “bottom” of the bowl until he regained his balance and stood up.
    “Machine?”
    Don’t ask. I don’t know. We’re being scraped.
    Zero knew that “scraped” was Machine’s colloquialism for being scanned, which in the case of biological silverthought vessels required a small scraping of genetic material from the vessel’s hull. Machine shuddered as it was enveloped by the darkness of the unknown pursuer, and umbilicals began cutting away segments of its surface. Zero lurched on the concave (or was it convex?) floor of the bowl, struggling to maintain his foothold on the slick non-metal.
    “They have to be part of the Extinction fleet. There’s no one else out here.”
    Machine stopped shivering, fell completely still. Silent.
    “Ma—”
    Zero’s inquisition was cut short by a startling burst of white light and hideous shriek as the bowl was filled with the sparks and fire of an incision torch. A great circular segment of the bowl was sheared loose and slid down to the bottom of the chamber, its edges still red-hot. Zero simply stood with jaw agape as two human creatures removed black goggles and surveyed the interior of the bowl. One trained a vicious black tube that could only be a projectile weapon on Zero, motioned for him to exit. It spoke in a language that he could not begin to understand, then reached out in a language that Zero could not help but understand.
    [get out of there. come with us.]
    silverthought.
     
     
    “What are they saying? What the fuck are they saying?”
    “Who cares? Light ’em up.”
    Zero’s heart slammed in his chest as it was filled with memories of a past that he had unsuccessfully tried to bury. Visions of a sunset, a city, and screaming masses, lambs ready for slaughter, only they were screaming in a language that didn’t exist in any of the libraries, on a planet that