Vash snapped back into reality, disoriented and reeling from what he’d seen. He was no longer where he had been. The room he found himself in now was dimly lit, more expansive. The centre of the construct? Someone was standing over him, playing with invisible shapes in the air. Dark, cropped hair and sharp, wide eyes. Beautiful, in a way that didn’t quite seem human. Vash felt he should recognise her.

‘Aurelie.’

‘I’m here,’ she said, resting a hand on his shoulder. ‘You can take a moment to process it. I did.’

‘All the centuries I’ve lived wouldn’t be enough,’ Vash replied. ‘I suppose a moment will have to do.’

He breathed deeply. It felt wrong that he wasn’t incapacitated by grief or shock. There would be time for that later.

‘To confirm: you saw the Broadcast. You saw the story of the Dyn as they would tell it.’

Vash nodded slowly, his gaze fixed on the middle distance.

‘Let’s not equivocate; what I saw was a species multiplied across millions of worlds whose very biology compels them to slaughter and enslave one another on a scale that is almost incomprehensible…’ As he spoke the images returned to him, unbidden. He forced himself to continue. ‘Every world they settle is a charnel house. You could excavate entire planets to find the mass graves they’ve dug… Aurelie, I knew of the Broadcast through rumours. I’ve seen isolated, contextless fragments over the years. But to see it like that, in full… ’

‘You have witnessed them for what they truly are, Vash,’ Aurelie said, placing her hand on his. ‘Now let us do what must be done.’

Vash sagged as the images sleeted through his mind, a nightmare vision plumbing deeper depths of depravity than even the most brutal chapters of human history.

‘Kill them before they kill us?’

‘Leave your conflicts to the moral philosophers of a free Earth,’ she said sharply, before softening her tone. ‘Vash, look at me. The questions of what the Dyn mean, of how we should understand them, interact with them – they’re important. But they count for nothing if everyone is dead.’

‘Something’s changed, hasn’t it?’

‘The warseed network relayed a Dynic ultimatum whilst you were out.’

‘There’s no precedent for that, there’s been no direct address from the Dyn since -’

‘They know we survived the battle on the beach and even if they do not know the specifics of our plan, they know something’s up. For every hour that we don’t surrender, they’re levelling another conurbation. We no longer have the luxury of time.’

‘Did we ever have that?’ Vash massaged his temples. ‘K’txl’s grip on power was weakening even before this. She needs to make a show of strength. When was the ultimatum delivered?’

‘We have thirty-three minutes to make up our minds, if that is what you’re asking.’

‘I have to talk to the Dyn.’

‘Vash – ’

‘K’txl as good as told me the truth. She told me the Dyn were afraid of us, that their actions were preemptive. I couldn’t see what she meant. It wasn’t just our minds, it was our priorities, our goals. They fear our ethics, because of what they could drive us to do. If we attack them, we prove her right.’

‘We are right,’ Aurelie said. There was no particular force to the words. ‘I don’t much care what the Dyn think about it. It doesn’t matter now – we have the weapon we need.’

‘We should listen,’ said Vash. ‘Isn’t that why you brought a Dyn here?’

Aurelie shrugged.

‘I wanted answers from it in case we needed them. I wanted a hostage, something that would all but guarantee your involvement. I don’t care about its moral arguments. The only reason it didn’t die on that beach is because Jan helped it.’

‘I thought so too… Suddenly I’m not so sure,’ mused Vash. He noticed Aurelie’s quizzical look. ‘Do you suppose the Utilitaria anticipated this and planned for a Dyn to be here?’

‘Come on Vash, even the Utilitaria couldn’t predict that.’

‘The Emissary asked that I speak with the Dyn before making my decision.’

A strange expression crossed Aurelie’s face. Confusion? Contempt? It vanished almost before Vash could even register it.

‘I guess it can’t hurt,’ she conceded, stiffly. ‘But do you really think that they will surrender?’

‘If they have reasons, that means they are amenable to reason. It means we can sit down and talk. Nobody has ever even been in a position to try until now. It’s sometimes easy to forget the tiny kernel of wonder in all this- the Dyn are an alien species, intelligent and self-aware, like us. We, I, always thought we were alone in the universe, as all logic suggested. But, somehow, impossibly, we share it with other minds. First contact! What we decide here could reset the relationship between our species and theirs. Just think of what we could learn.’

‘The Dyn are the enemy. The surrender of a single fleet on the fringes of their expansion would not change that fact.’

Vash shook his head. Hate wouldn’t help him or them, so he would not feel it.

The world played an unfair game. How was a twelfth century peasant supposed to discover a cure for the bubonic plague, or a sixteenth century Inca defend himself against gunfire and steel swords?

Those were the words he had consoled himself with, when K’txl had threatened to wipe out Conurbation One in an apparent fit of pique, if he refused to commit an atrocious crime. But it had been contrived, a false dilemma to test his morality to destruction. There had been another way, and he hadn’t seen it. He would not make the same mistake again.

‘K’txl – she isn’t evil. I think she genuinely wants to find an understanding. We have to return the gesture. Cooperate, not defect.’

Aurelie reached out an arm and hauled Vash to his feet, the chair moulding back into the floor. She hugged him tightly.

‘Very well. We’ll make a fine judge and jury.’

‘And executioner,’ said Vash as he pulled away. ‘Do not forget that part.’

The two of them stepped towards the sealed wall. Aurelie waved her hand in a practised motion, like a conjurer.

Why could she command this place so easily? Vash had only a moment to consider the question before the wall opened.

The Dyn stood just beyond the door. In one appendage, it held a bloodstained rifle. In the other, it held Jan. His face was a mess, blackened with bruising.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jan begged. ‘I – needed answers.’

Don’t freeze. React.

‘Pao and Tuva followed us into the tunnels… ’

Why would the Dyn take a hostage, if not to compel? They had something it wanted.

‘If you kill me, then no-one will ever be able to use the weapons,’ Vash stated, taking five rapid steps backwards. The Dyn slowly advanced. ‘Let Jan go.’

‘So, there are weapons,’ the Dyn hissed, its voice more sibilant than he had expected.

‘Lasers, hidden beneath the ocean, replicated. Enough to destroy everything in orbit. We can control them with a thought,’ Aurelie snapped. ‘Understand? Do not approach closer.’

The Dyn halted, still gripping Jan, vaguely pointing the rifle at them as though it wasn’t quite sure how to use it. Vash spoke.

‘I met K’txl, the Liar to Animals, and her conscience. That’s what she called her – the girl she had melded with. She told me we had to understand each other. That is what we will do – we will reach an understanding. The alternative is that I give the attack order. You’ll kill us, here and now, and your Line and tens of thousands of others will die. Your occupation ends and a war begins. So, I will not ask again. Let Jan go.’

The Dyn released Jan delicately. It stepped back, still holding the rifle. Something had come over Jan’s face – anger, or vindication.

‘Eva… so you did meet her… ’

Several things clicked together in Vash’s mind – the abductions, corroborations with rumours and things K’txl had said. It was true, and he had failed to notice until now. Vash’s thoughts exhausted themselves.

‘I did. She’s healthy, Jan. I can’t imagine the meld is pleasant but -’

‘You’re going to kill her.’

No. This is too much.

‘I get it, I know what you’re thinking. In the scheme of things her life doesn’t – but she matters to me, Vash. I just can’t lose her. Not again. Not after all this – I… can’t,’ Jan pleaded.

Vash spared him a glance, but when he replied his eyes were locked on the nameless Dyn. It was horribly, blandly obvious that he could not consider Jan or Eva in his decision. It would not be fair.

‘If I can resolve this without having to fire a single shot then I will.’

‘Then hand control of the weapon over to me, to the Dyn. We shall take this as a gesture of trust, of understanding between species. The surrender of a duplicitous and dangerous artifact. You will be spared. Cooperation and peace will continue. Is that not your desire?’

‘It is,’ said Vash. ‘But not on those terms. You no longer have the upper hand. So we will put you in contact with K’txl and you will convey this to her. You will tell her to withdraw from the system. Those that follow her will be spared. Those that attempt retaliation will be destroyed.’

‘You may be able to destroy the fleet,’ hissed the Dyn. ‘But the rocks? How confident are you that your weapon can prevent them from being deorbited? Can it destroy them before they reach the ground? A single one is enough to scour the surface. You will emerge from the ocean to see nothing but ash and fire. Maybe the oceans themselves will boil.’

Vash shared a glance with Aurelie.

‘We will take our chances.’

‘The Dyn will never accept your terms. Certainly not K’txl. I know her thoughts. Fear is a natural response to overwhelming threat – it is what saved my ancestors, and yours, from extinction.’

‘We have both seen the Broadcast, the message you sent to humanity at our first encounter. We understand why the Dyn felt threatened, but -’ Vash began.

The Dyn shook its head back and forth. Was it a gesture of distaste?

‘After all this, you still wish to discuss how we care for our Lines?’ its voice rasped, incredulous.

‘Yes,’ said Aurelie bluntly. ‘So talk.’

The Dyn turned its head, assessing the situation one last time. It seemed to reach a resolution.

‘Your words are ill suited to the task. You understand our reproduction? Dyn lived on Firsthome for many ages, many myriads of reincarnations of the Line. We farmed, and adapted to it.’

The Dyn were not merely herbivorous, but evolved farmers, Vash understood. Their claws were ploughs; their massive jaws made for crushing plant material. What would humans have become, if they had lived with agriculture for a million years?

‘We produce many offspring, all independent. The Autarch must bring order. There are always too many children, and when they reach the age of maturity if not properly controlled by – pheromones? They branch off, forming their own competing Lines. So that there are even more children.’

‘You are mature and independent, yet you still follow K’txl,’ Vash pointed out.

‘I’m her heir, among the chosen few. I have melded with her. I will continue the Line. The Line is greater than the individual. The Line is eternal. The individual is only a cell – the Line is the body. Do you see? But the young cannot understand that, they’re selfish. They do not know that they do not matter, so they must be culled when numbers grow too large. The alternative is war without end. It has always been so – population always expands to match capacity. Your kind is less… efficient, but in time, evolution would have guided you to the pinnacle we have attained, were it not for the waking dream you inhabit.’

They had spent too long evolving, Vash realised. The Dyn, trapped on their homeworld for geological ages, never advancing quickly enough to outrun it, had returned to the Malthusian condition. Despite their intelligence, they had adapted to produce more offspring as they became able to support more. When they had risen to true intelligence, they had discovered further methods of control. If that was all there was…

‘We can help. However your genetics work, it wouldn’t be beyond us to make a difference, once we relearned what we once knew. We could modify you so you produced fewer children per birth, give you more fine-tuned control over your fertility, prevent your children from reaching mental maturity until after the culling – anything would be better. We would make it work, if it took every ounce of ingenuity we had. We can come together and save all Dyn, born and unborn. It will have been worth it, for all of you to reach this moment after thousands of generations. It can all culminate in what you decide, here and now. There would be no more slaughter, and no more conflict between us. That’s all it would take.’

The Dyn let out a rapid, exasperated click train.

‘Save us?’ it hissed incredulously. ‘The Lines would end, with no churn of life and mind to feed them. There would only be scattered Dyn, lone individuals. Nothing, like you: meaningless, insane disunity. The end of everything. I may as well offer to save you from old age with this.’ It waved the rifle.

‘Who are you, Vash, to sit in judgement of us?’ it continued. ‘You are human, we are Dyn.’

He said nothing. There had to be something, some argument or form of words that would make it see that this was all wrong, that what the Dyn had become could be fixed. But if there was, Vash couldn’t see it. He tried to imagine how somebody could convince him that the mass murder of children was a good thing. It was impossible.

‘Your curiosity is satisfied?’ asked the Dyn. It seemed to relax deeper onto its haunches.

‘I think we’ve heard enough,’ Aurelie said. She’d remained largely silent throughout the exchange, a calculating look on her face.

The Emissary, or at least the machine it represented, would be observing them, gathering information, seeing what they chose. Vash had tried to find a resolution, but time was running out. Aurelie was decided. So was the Dyn.

Never again, he thought. There would be other chances, when he was more prepared, when his position was stronger. But he could never forget that this time he hadn’t done enough.

It was all his fault. To think he had believed for a moment that he might trust it. He had wanted so much to believe the Dyn’s intoxicating promise. If only Pao and Tuva hadn’t somehow followed them into the tunnels… He’d tried to stop it, but it had thrown him against the wall like a ragdoll. He had watched as it casually slaughtered Pao and Tuva. Now he was its prisoner, a hostage, a human shield.

Vash had confirmed it. Eva was alive, with the Dyn, and if the weapons fired she would die. Somewhere else, somewhere that seemed very far away, Vash and Aurelie argued with the Dyn. He barely listened.

Standing before him he saw Eva.

She wasn’t as she would appear now – she was still just a young girl, no more than twelve – but her face was clear to him, not blurry with memory. Eva spoke to him, her voice somehow older.

You need to let me go, Dad. I may be alive but I’m not Eva. Not any more. I’m half monster, half lost. Let me go.

Silently, Jan pleaded with her, tears running down his cheeks. He could no more choose to let her die than water could decide to flow uphill. Eva laughed in that light, easy way that meant he was being silly.

People always have a choice. Keep your promise to Christo. Help defeat the Dyn.

He’d promised to protect her. He’d failed. She shook her head, squeezed his hand.

I promise you… you’ll see me again. I love you. I hold on to that. Now let me go.

He blinked away the tears and she was gone. He inhaled as deep as he could despite the ache in his chest, steeling himself for what he had to do. What he should have done.

Vash and Aurelie needed a few precious seconds – enough time to summon the Emissary and give it the order.

The Emissary didn’t need him.

That was the choice. He could do nothing and maybe she would live, or he could be the one to make her death happen.

He didn’t waste time on hesitation.

Jan leapt for the Dyn’s weapon. Alien digits awkwardly fumbled the trigger and before it could fire he’d knocked the gun from its grasp, narrowly dodging a swipe from its free clawed forelimb. He spun and with every ounce of his strength punched the Dyn in the fleshy underside of its neck.

It let out a choking wail and stumbled, striking the wall, wrestling Jan down with it in a tangle of limbs.

‘Now!’ Aurelie commanded, cold and absolute. Vash squeezed his eyes shut. The Emissary coalesced over an agonizing, drawn-out second, and stood before him.

It looked into his eyes and nodded, its statue-like face betraying nothing.

‘Executing. Observe.’

Vash’s eyes snapped open, not a moment too soon; the Dyn was nearly upon him, an injured Jan staggering to his feet behind it. The seconds he had given them had made all the difference.

Before Vash could even react Aurelie was between him and the charging Dyn. She deflected a swipe from its claw with practised ease but it caught her off guard with a lash of its tail, slamming her against the wall. It turned the focus of its fury on her but before it could land a finishing blow she sprung up, landing another strike on its neck. Further off Jan, bleeding heavily from a wound to his abdomen, reached for the gun.

A piercing, disembodied whine exuded from somewhere deep within the walls, climbing in pitch. The surrounding illumination flickered and the entire structure shuddered, as though coming alive.

‘Go!’ Aurelie yelled.

Vash didn’t need to be told twice.

He started running immediately. Behind him he could hear the sounds of their struggle, the thuds of impact, pained cries and the hissing of the alien. He saw Jan grimly raise the rifle as he passed, the lights dipping again. Jan fired at something behind him, the gunfire drowning out everything else as it lit the room, a staccato clatter of freeze-frames.

As he entered the corridor the lights were replaced by dim emergency illumination. He ran as fast as he could, feeling as though he was pushing through cement, his thoughts racing ahead to the battered bathyscaphe, his only means of escape. He picked forks in the labyrinthine tunnels more or less at random with only the vaguest sense of where it might be, merely hoping to put as much space between and the Dyn as possible and praying the intentional architecture would respond. The sounds of their struggle grew muffled, increasingly drowned out by the world-ending electric whine. There was a final unseen burst of gunfire and somebody, or something, screamed, the sound distorted by the winding passages.

The floor shuddered again, throwing him to the ground this time as he lost his balance, tripping over something. A body – Pao’s or Tuva’s; he didn’t wait to find out. Something was chasing after him. As he lurched to his feet he heard it coming closer, gaining on him, a furious scrabbling, the low guttural clicks and whoops echoing ahead.

The Dyn was almost upon him. But then he was out of the claustrophobic tunnels, stumbling into the expanse of the receiving chamber. He could see the dark bulk of the bathyscaphe ahead, its lock still open, just as they had left it. He risked a glance over his shoulder into the gloom of the tunnel behind, and regretted it instantly as the Dyn rounded the corner.

Before he could cry out the door flickered shut around the Dyn, severing its tails and mangling a hindlimb. It let out a blood-curdling shriek. Still, the crippled alien dragged itself forwards, driven by malice and desperation, its limping gait still a match for his own.

Vash didn’t dare turn again in case he stumbled, instead he compelled his exhausted body onward, faster, so close now. He leapt for the lock, diving for it in a last feat, swinging it shut behind him.

The Dyn’s slavering maw slammed into the porthole moments later, the three gigantic jawbones scraping against the bathyscaphe’s hull.

As if on cue water exploded into the chamber, and the Dyn was swept away, crushed and broken; a mosquito under an anvil. Vash was thrown back against the wall as the explosive flood of water hit the bathyscaphe and the world went black.