Silicon and Bone

[Hard Sci-Fi] [Grand Scope] [Space Warfare] [Conspiracy] “What are you doing this for?” The redhead leaned against the bulkhead, a cigarette he hadn’t lit dangling from his lips as he asked. They had just barely escaped an ancient ruin. The ship was still losing air through its port side, and the chief engineer was cursing up a storm below deck. Shen Yi didn’t answer. He stared for a long time at the hollowed-out asteroid beyond the porthole. What was he doing this for? So when that thing broke free, humanity wouldn’t still be hurling artillery shells at itself? So the neighbors who’d been fighting for centuries could sit down at the same table? So a bunch of lunatics wouldn’t wake the ancient AIs that had been sleeping for who knew how long? Was he doing it for the words he never got to say all those years ago, when his parents pushed him into the mine tunnel: “Wait for me”? He snuffed out the cigarette in his hand. He didn’t even smoke; he’d just swiped it from the redhead. “Let’s go,” he said. “The next ruin is waiting.”