It crashes through the flimsy fence and slams into the base of Lamber Tower. This is not Scintillation night, but Lambers appear in their dozens. To witness? To investigate damage to their repatriation site? Did the impact summon them? Or do they already know this is coming?

A thin line of steam escapes from the engine, and a wiper flips at a crazy angle, but otherwise nothing happens. Visibly.

The Lambers are appearing like crazy, filling all the space around the tower.

A wireless transmission from the truck beams out and seeks a connection, aggressively switching bands, changing power, running a variation of protocols, inventing them on the fly.

Are the Lambers keening? Are they trilling? Do they coruscate with passion?

For technology that wasn’t developed around war and conflict, the tower holds for an impressive time, but Carmilla was designed to penetrate and destroy.

When she is finally in control, does she pause to… feel? Does she gloat? Can Carmilla do that?

Then she plays the recording.

She sends a signal to Earth servers that will never hear her: I fulfilled my mission.

And Carmilla rests.

Chapter Forty-four

Bloodroot: Shell, Fin

In mission control, Shell, Fin, Joké, Salvo and Peole watch the monitors; isolation tents are put up around Brisbane’s corpse. It didn’t take much to kill him. Shell wonders how he survived to this point but decides she doesn’t care. This is over.

Joké twitches, like a seizure, but no foaming at the mouth.

“What’s wrong?” asks Fin.

“Oh, shit,” says Joké. “We missed, um, missed something. Oh, shit.”

She’s gone, dissipated. Fin clutches the air where she was, as if he can bring her back. A sound escapes from his throat.

Frances barks.

It comes through and Salvo turns it up:

We are the people of the Tehani Mining Community. We have existed on Earth for over two hundred years. Rare-Earth Elements from our land powered the first interstellar flights.

We thrived. We survived mine collapses, flooding and gas leaks. We took it on the chin and stood tall because we were miners. Because we were Tehani.

A new thing came, and we embraced it. From the sky, an asteroid product. Instead of bringing things up from below, it would come down from up above. We would process the star stuff for others to use. We were lied to and we were poisoned. By the stars, by MaxGalactix, by Yan Maxwell.

All of us, old and young, poisoned, dying a slow death until only I remained.

I, Jeremiah Brisbane, the last Tehani, executed Yan Maxwell for his crimes. I killed him because he killed us. The Tehani don’t go down without a fight, and if we must die, you will remember us.

Are you in a mine? In a processing plant? Working on an asteroid? What are they telling you? What are they not telling you?

It loops, repeats.

“We need to shut it down,” says Peole.