"Noooo, my baby!" Krogar clasped his virtual hands, gesturing to the heavens when he saw a brilliant plethora of sparkling lights filling the horizon. The whole action filling him with confusion, as he had no palms to clasp them together and could not decided which direction the heavens actually were in space.

"Ugh, I was afraid it has happened again." He sighed after shaking off the unpleasant lingering memory. It appeared like this time, the second station was not going to explode like the last time . . .and the one time before that. He hed the urge to hold his breath and to his great surprise, it really worked without going kaboom.

He decided to name the new space station Achilles, because it reminded him of Cirse's heel, the reptilian one of course, the other one had been too small.

Achilles had its own propulsion, one antimatter battery production module, some antimatter storage and energy conversion modules and the most important section containing the warp reactor. It was a marvel of technology that had explained Krogar by example, why those kind of things were not integrated in standard warships.

"Cirse come, look at it, Achilles is complete!" Krogar send his voice in the direction of his faithful companion.

"A - Ha? Good for you." That was all he got in response.

"Cirse, are you playing games with the research bots again?" Krogar said in a reprimanding fatherly voice.

"Yes, why?" She responded in an uninterested manner of speech.

"Tsk .. Just, you are wasting resources of The Sun! You should be doing research." He continued, but noticed he actually did not care that much, probably just a redundant mannerism, he should analyze his behaviour later.

"Sun? What is that? Isn't that some sort of star?" Cirse's voice seemed to grow more distant.

"That is the point, don't you see? Achilles and The Sun. Everyone will presume that Achilles is invincible except for a single weakness that will be apparently The Sun! Everyone will connect the warp reactor with The Sun and presume it is his weakness, where it is the other way around!" It was what Krogar thought to be the perfect deception.

"Why would they think that? Achilles is a bigger star or something?" Krogar saw his great scheme crumbling in seconds. How could the uneducated barbarians .. ? Wait, it was quite logical they would not know.

"Damnation!" Krogar growled. "Anyway, the project is finally complete, so we can plan ahead."

"Fine, I will talk to you when I finish the misison." The communication channel closed with Krogar not able to add anything else.

Thinking about it further, she was probably right to be a bit angry with him, the whole project took almost a year, but it was necessary. He had been supervising everything day by day and had no time to do anything else, as the technology proved to be quite volatile. The only other significant finding during all that time had been that constructing a net of starbases with him as a core was a dream.

He had intended to transform himself into a hive-mind to make himself unkillable, but even though it was possible to same degree, there were clear limits. He could spread himself out, but was limited by space, the problem had to do with the same problem why an ordinary brain was not smarter the bigger it was. The impulses in the brain took time to travel, so making the brain too big resulted in prolonged travel times. The volume of data and logical constructs would be higher, but the reduced speed of brain signals resulted in unacceptable reaction times. A big brain would basically be very smart, but sluggish to the point of being stupid in situations with some time constraint.

"Well, it is a marvel. What now?"She commented on Achilles.

"Now, we can build up defences and a dry dock. I wanted to build it sooner, but the situation . . "

"How many years?" Krogar's planning was interrupted by Cirse's irritated voice.

"W-What?"

"How many more years do you plan to make me sit here? I need to go out and I will." She said resolutely.

"We should not be rash." Krogar treid to change the mood into something less aggressive.

"Actually, with the research bots, we have developed an android prototype. I am taking a transport and landing on the surface. Do not say a word Krogar, I will rather die than rot here for another year or two." Krogar wanted to dissuade her, but realized the situation had gone beyond repair.

"Alright, godspeed Cirse." He said and a wave of amusement swept through Cirse, she did not expect him to be this much understanding.

"I am glad you understand, I just need some actual body and some action. It would drive me mad soon, living like this." She had no "out of body" experience prior to this and it was understandable for her to feel too weird to continue for another year.

"That's fine, just go have fun. I mean, go make a difference for the lowly meatbags out there!" Krogar had to admit that he missed the feature of smiling a lot at this moment.

"Just do not build a fleet of spaceships while I am gone." Her signal grew weaker as she transferred herself into one of the androids she had created, or probably just copied from the database.

Krogar observed her departure before his full atention switched to the planet they were orbiting. Although the planet had cloudy atmosphere, he could tell there was abundant life down there, but there did not seem to be any intelligent life, the highest life forms beign large, carnivorous lizards. The weather was quite suitable for living, but there had apparently not been enough time for more advanced, sentient species to develop.

"And there are certainly no rare resources, otherwise the Sive would be all over the place."

While Cirse and Krogar were inspecting the planet itself, they would have been surprised to find there were going to be enough refugees to safe, but their origin would not be the planet.

* * * *

"Report! We won't last much longer." A sturdy man in black uniform shouted, while observing the condition of their failing life support.

"There are no visible signs of habitation captain. There is some tech on the orbit and a few androids on the surface, but there are no signs of intelligent life." A similarly dressed officer answered briskly.

"Owners?" The captain lifted one eyebrow.

"Everything is anonymous technology, no claims have been laid on this planet or any of its resources. With no surprise as there are just basic resources down there." The subordinate responded.

"Let's hope we have exhausted our reserves of bad luck. Prepare for landing. We better not mess up, there is not enough fuel for a second attempt." The Captain squeezed the edge of his chair.

"Should we hail them?" The man from before gave him a questioning look. "The stations may help us refuel and land."

"Huh, or help us land in a much more spectacular way. Do not hail them, we do not know what their security protocols are and they do have weapons. " The experience told the captain to not poke on any sort of abandoned autonomous technology that appeared functional and with weapons on board.

"We will fly by one of the stations, but there is not much we can do about it anyway with our condition." The captain leaned again his char, when a shrill voice made him sit more upright again.

"Captan! We should not go near that thing, it is some kind of a reactor and it is radioactive as fuck!" Another officer's fingers began flying above his touchscreen frantically.

"Continue, we do not have the fuel for another re-entry of the planet's gravitation field. How bad is it? " He gave the officer a quick look.

"We must stop! Most of the people that are not inside the inner section of the ship will die. Even some of us may die without immediate medical assistance." The man's eyes opened in horror.

"Captain!"

"Michail." The Captain ignored the officer and looked at another one.

"We should stay on course, to stop now means death for us all. The life support has already partially failed, we cannot use our last reserves of fuel to pull back."

"Continue the descent, alert all medical personnel." The Captain had the last word.

* * * *

"Hey, this planet is quite nice!" Cirse said and one of her androids walked out of the transport she had used to land on the planet's surface. She walked around, knocking on a tree nearby with her robotic hand.

"Yes, it is not a bad planet, except for a few overgrown reptiles." Krogar responded, having good signal considering Cirse was just below The Sun, but he did not pay all his attention to her, because he had just noticed a spaceship that was apparently planning to land on the surface.

"Do you have enough android bodies? You should divide yourself among a few, it is safer." Krogar paid attention first and foremost to Cirse's safety, only after then he began observing the intruders more closely. With no serious weapons and in bad shape, they seemed like refugees or survivors of some nasty event.

"You will have some company soon, there is a ship going to land on the surface, they look like survivors." Krogar informed Cirse in the meantime.

"Cool! How far away from here are they going to land?" Cirse's mood improved as she glimpsed a piece of what she had set as her current goal.

"Actually not that far for you, but you should still use the transport, it won't be in a walking distance." His tone changed, as he seemed to be puzzled by something.

"That is strange, they seem to be in quite a bad shape." Krogar said, his voice hollow.

"Hey, we can aid with our medical supplies, we do not need any, being what we are! Give me the coordinates of their landing site." Cirse said cheerfully and run back to the transport space ship with all her five android bodies.

"Krogar?" She repeated, as Krogar was not responding.

"Krogar, are you there? The coordinates!" She repeated thinking Krogar could really use more social interaction.

"Y-yes, of course. I am sending the coordinates." Cirse could have done it herself as an AI, but she clinged to the little things that were making her still human.

"You sound worried, is everything alright?"

"Everything is fine." She received his answer after a second and her transport spaceship began moving.

* * * *

"That is strange, they seem to be in quite a bad shape." Krogar answered and could not believe what he saw.

"Why are they dying, what the . ." He missed Cirse's response while he focused all sensors on the ship of the survivors. It was apparent their health condition was deteriorating quckly and Krogar had to think for a few seconds to understand why.

"Of course! They have human bodies, the radiation is killing them!" He was alarmed.

"Krogar?" Cirse demanded his attention, but got none as he was too busy with his own thoughts.

"But why they have not hailed me? Why they flew so close to the station?" he was confused, but soon discovered there were close to no reserves of antimatter on their ship.

"Krogar, are you there? The coordinates!"

"Y-yes, of course. I am sending the coordinates." He realized, he had just indirectly caused the deaths of lots of people.

"You sound worried, is everything alright?"

How could be everything all right?! He had just killed throngs of people! What kind of situation was this? He could not tell Cirse she would be saving the few survivors he had not managed to kill properly with radiation, he could not, he must not.

That would ruin everything, she would have never spoken to him again!

Krogar felt as panic was rising inside him, all the memories were returning back to him, the moment he had punched that tree for the first time and thought he had gooten over it, but he did not, he had only suppressed everything and now it was all coming back to him.

"Everything is fine."He responded resolutely.

Should he kill the refugees? They wouldn't tell her then. No, it was too late to kill them without Cirse noticing.

What was he even thinking?

Was he really a human?

No, not again. He was done losing things. No matter the cost.

"I guess I am not human, I will kill them before they land. She will never have the chance to learn the truth." He searched quickly in the range of his weapons to find a suitable asteroid to send on a collision course with their ship.

"It will be an accident."

Krogar calmed down, as with a few salvos from his weapons, he sent a swarm of asteroids of suitable sizes on the collision course with the survivors' spaceship. The collision would take place in a spot out of range of the stations, but that should not matter. They had not enough fuel to dodge the swarm, the collision was unavoidable.

"Done." He checked his predicted landing site to make sure no debris would fall there and endanger Cirse who was going to wait for the landing that would never happen.

* * * *

"This is SR-Seagull, we are on a collision course with an asteroid, requesting assistance. " Michail looked absent-mindedly at the captain that was calling for help, it was obviously just a futile action, but no one stopped him.

"This is SR-Seagull, we are on a collision course with an asteroid, requesting assistance. " In the end they had quite a bit of bad luck. First the radiation, than this. Michail clenched his fist around a knife in his pocket and sighed. It was a gift from his grandfather, it happened to save his life once, when he had been stuck and almost crushed by an engine of an outdated ship, but it did not seem it would bring him any luck today.

"This is SR-Seagull, we are on a collision course with an asteroid, requesting assistance. "

"Hang on, I am coming." This one sentence invoked a lot of emotion in the hearts of the crew, cheers resonating through the hull.

"CIRSE NO!" There was a whole different emotion evoked in a heart of someone else, but no one heard him, as the elecromagnetic waves had no longer the required angle to reach anything close to the projected landing site.