David Hanrahan - Archon of the Covenant

“It’s okay! It’s okay. Don’t be afraid.”

But she was terrified. She felt the module shaking, annihilation riding on the ballasts of ammonium perchlorate. The first stage boosters fired into the flame deflectors at the bottom level. The revin bodies, twisted and crammed into the exhaust ducts, ignited beneath the massive engines — the solid rocket propellant burning through the flesh and bone like stove flame through paper.

The pathoton pushed forward and the revins stumbled back into the cramped stairway. The red strobe alarms flashed with the madness of the siren call, bellowing through the cableway:

“Warning! Lower fire escape is open. Exceeding unsafe temperatures. Blast doors must be closed. Warning!”

Further down the passage, the series of four-ton blast doors began to retract into the inward chambers.

“Warning! Launch countdown commenced. Warning!”

A searing heat carried through the staircase and ripped past the edges of the mattress. The rectangle was encircled in a ring of fire and, above the din, the screams of a hundred revin souls pulsated through the floral pattern of the bed. The stitches began to melt and pop. The revins went mad, pushing from the other side, backing the pathoton into the entryway. The hellfire of propellant melted the springs and cast them back like serpents ablaze, the fabric blasting into the pathoton with the roar of the rocket engines ripping through the staircase. Marrow and flesh flew through the air, the revin bellies blooming open and emptying into the heat, casting their insides into the furnace. The pathoton howled its glitch into the conflagration and Becca heard it through the module walls:

“YOU WILL BE OKAY!”

The alpha’s eyes widened and it gazed down at the trembling frame of the machine. The sentinel had the alpha’s wrist gripped firmly. The others saw their herald held still by the sentinel and they tumbled forward, pushing past each other at the chance to tear the thing apart. The light began to fade and a faint clicking sound radiated beneath the revin, like an igniter on a gas range. The alpha’s expression turned dour and it looked helplessly at the mess of bent panels and stripped cables adorning the sentinel’s trident frame. DDC39 could no longer see, but it heard some sound coming from the anemic being wriggling in its grasp. The alpha saw the spark flickering beneath the base of the machine and it mouthed out some recognizable sound. Its lips pursed and it sounded like a familiar objection. Its lips drew back, almost as if it was saying:

“Stop!”

ARCHON V lifted off the base, pulling upwards through the silo and out of the closure doors. The blast incinerated the naked bodies squirming upwards through the egress and tore through the anodized wire wrapped around the pathoton, fiber optic cables peeling backwards and evaporating in the inferno. Becca pressed her hand against the oval windows and peered outwards. Raindrops rolled down the aluminum silicate panes. The silo vanes spewed rocket blast aloft, pouring upwards, igniting a sea of flesh on the desert floor. The charred remains of the pathoton fell to the plank in the blackened landing, which went dark save for bone embers swirling in the air.

A searing tide of napalm coursed through the mineshaft, obliterating every creature slinking in the dark. The alpha saw its flesh melting, falling slack off tissue and bone, dripping into the hard base of the mine as everything went white. The heat sucked the air in ahead of those gathered outside, the rain briefly bending into the dim fissure. The revins looking into the mine from the bench road felt the draft pulling them inwards. It was quiet for a moment, and then the cries of the incinerated sailed outward. Unhinged echoes of the dead. The blaze ripped out of the mineshaft and washed over those outside, whipping into the caldera like a solar flare. Tissue and blood spit from the cleft, cast into the pit with fire and rain. The sentinel lost sentience. A torpor washed over everything.

• Solar power cell — 0%. Solar armor — breached

• Drivetrain — non-operational

• Visual/cortico/thermal/radar optics — unresponsive

• HD/Comms — compromised; non-operational

• Water — 0%. Napalm — 0%

• Railgun — 0% capacity

• JE — (scrambled)

• Forced shutdown; entering hibernation

Becca and the others slunk into their seats, pinned back by the velocity of the rocket lifting into the troposphere. The main engine roared with 500,000 pounds of thrust. T+10. Becca’s eyesight began to constrict into a tunnel vision. The ship oscillated violently. She looked around and saw the other passengers — children — close their eyes. A small digital display on the ceiling showed a human diagram beeping, depicting passengers going to sleep. Becca turned her head and felt the arc of the rocket begin to twist, its trajectory tilting. She pressed her head to the side, straining with all her might, to peer outside of the small oval window. She looked down and saw the contrails of the rocket falling backwards and there, close enough to touch, was the wisp of storms rolling over Sonora. The first stage booster decoupled, tumbling into the blue like a barrel into Niagara. Sheet lighting cracked through the dark maelstrom they had just passed through. T+30. They were above it all. Becca wondered what was happening and if she was ascending into heaven. The expanse of the Earth’s lithosphere stretched out like a dream, encircled by green aurorae flaring in soft tufts like apparitions wandering through the sea. A solar wind, wailing in the void of the magnetic field. The rocket passed through a noctilucent cloud on the edge of times cessation. They entered the thermosphere and the massive vehicle gradually softened, the violent rattle subsiding to a hum. Becca felt her eyes grow heavy. Her heartbeat slowed down. A nozzle near the display whistled, discharging a vapor into the thin air of the cramped module. The cylinder emanated the acrid smell of anthracite and the human diagram blinked red with worry. Becca felt herself blacking out. As her eyes closed, she heard the promise, again:

“You are a survivor.”

End and beginning and end. The world without man went on. One epoch passed and another emerged from the cold depths. The cracked glaciers reformed, pulling salt water into crevasses and seracs, freezing into silver tusks that pierced the low clouds of the Arctic Circle. Ice flow pushed into the polar plains, drumlins disappearing into the abyssal sediment. And so with it, the anthropogenic mass extinction was halted. The anthropocence was over. The fallow lands of slash-and-burn were reborn. Forests thrived and saw blades rusted. Cities eroded into the firmament and asphalt roads dissipated like veins wilting with age.

The summers grew short in Sonora, deluged in rainfall and sparked by intermittent sun. The winters crept down from the Catalinas, lingering for most of the year and blanketing the lowlands in snow. The saguaros and palo verdes disappeared, giving way to ponderosa and fir. The desert plains vanished. Dust turned to sorrel leaves and conical detritus. A thick canopy enveloped the ruins of Old Main, Hotel Congress, and the broken dome of Bio3. Bison thundered south across the Baja Peninsula. Condors made their homes in the shattered penthouses of abandoned skyscrapers. And machete fish glimmered along rushing tributaries that sprang from dry washes along the alluvial fan. A new wilderness flourished amidst the cemetery of post-history.

But while one mass extinction was averted, another still loomed. Revins spread across the warmer climates. Those that had huddled in the caves and ruins of the north fled south, congregating in great masses along the Sonoran badlands. While they still couldn’t wield tools, nor could they stitch clothing, they grew in girth, adding heavy layers of fat and skin that kept them warm in the changing seasons. While they didn’t hunt larger animals — elk, bear, ram — they were vicious in their predation of smaller creatures that they would trap in crude ways. Gophers, rabbits, and, in the vast sewers of remnant cities, rats. Populations would swell when food was discovered, and dwindle when depleted. The chain was disrupted. Smaller species were disappearing. The larger mammals had to migrate to survive, or prey on the revins. And they did both. Revins were killed in sporadic numbers by mountain lions, which grew more vicious with each kill. They had to adapt to survive. They would hunt in packs, move in packs, and reproduce in packs. The inbreeding compounded their feral behavior. Their cognitive ability remained unevolved. Their prefrontal cortex was irrevocably destroyed. But their bodies conformed to the environment encroaching upon them. Deep claws, sharp incisors, concave skulls, sloping spines, and calcified kneecaps that protruded from their skin. They moved quickly but stayed close to the ground, sliding along their knees when frightened by some sudden sound. Their nasal cavity elongated, better suited to sniff out predator and prey. Their eyes widened, limbs shortened, body hair thickened. They were almost unrecognizable from their ancient kin. They were distorted relics of bygone times. Wallowing wights of the foreverwinter.