Epilogue

Daisy was laying back in bed, staring at a display fixed to the ceiling and repeated through the neural network in her skull, when a smattering of pebbles moving at speeds describable as 'very fucking fast' rammed into her station.

"Fuck!" she thought as she was thrown out of her bed and into a wall. Before she'd even struck it, she twisted her hips around, then her upper body, executing a roll that had her slamming into the wall heels first.

Then she raised her hands over her head, blocking loose pillows and cushions from hitting her in the face.

The station's artificial gravity gave out a moment before the lights flickered off. Now, the only light she could use to see was coming from the wall-length window on the far end of the room. Fortunately, the station was angled so that she had a nice view of the burning surface of Mars.

"Lynus! Status report!" she shouted aloud as she batted away her pillows.

One moment... your station was struck in seventeen places by what seems to be particulate remains. A scan of the incoming projectiles suggests that they are all inorganic matter. Rocks.

"That went through my shields?" she asked. Her augs connected to the station, and she ran through a quick diagnostics check. It wasn't looking so good. There was a lot more red than green at the moment, but she did have tertiary power.

The lights came back on, the gravity did not.

The shields are only rated to take so much damage. Most of the stones were stopped.

Daisy grumbled, then pulled up a wire-frame of the station. It showed the entire bottom half missing. "Oh, come on!" she said. "Get the repair drones out, salvage what we can. I need the shields back online, and the main generator... was right there, okay, secondary power, that was in the top section, it should still be functional."

The reactor was struck, though it should be repairable.

Daisy grunted an affirmative and pushed herself off the wall, then with another rolling twist, she flicked her arms out and caught two things out of the air. Her bunny slippers. She'd been keeping them next to her bed. Now she slipped them on just as someone knocked at the door to her room. "Come in," she said.

The door opened, and Daisy found herself looking at herself. A clone, to be precise. Unit 054, currently wearing her off-duty uniform of a loose fluffy plaid top and pants. "We're in trouble," the clone said.

Daisy reached up, touched the ceiling for a moment, then pulled herself towards the doorway. It was slightly awkward. For all the time she spent in space, she didn't enjoy zero-G all that much. Unless she was sleeping, in which case it was actually kind of nice.

"What kind of trouble?" Daisy asked.

"Phobos exploded."

Daisy pinched the bridge of her nose. She remembered now. 054 was the quiet one.

Why her clones all had to diverge slightly in personality and behaviour was a mystery to her, and one that was really annoying sometimes. All she wanted was an army of like-minded but subservient individuals to do all of her work for her so that she could stay at home, wear nothing but pyjamas, and watch cartoons and read books.

But no. Her clones all needed to start diverging away from the perfect workforce they were meant to be, which only caused headaches on top of headaches.

"How did Phobos explode?" Daisy asked.

Unit 054 looked back over her shoulder, then back to Daisy. She blinked slowly. "I don't know."

Explaining how an entire moon exploded probably required more than three words strung together, so if Daisy hoped to get a more complex answer, she'd need to look into things herself. With a sigh, she reached a hand towards Unit 054 and the clone grabbed onto it, pulling her out of the room while anchoring herself to the doorframe.

Daisy and her clones were linked. Yes, they had their own brains, but in reality most of their brain power was reserved for autonomic controls and to keep the clones going. They could think on their own, form their own memories, and had their own reflexes, but for the most part, their upper-level thinking was simply missing.

That was reserved for Daisy herself. Hence, the very advanced and very complex neural system jammed into her head.

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In a very real way, she was her clones. Most of the time, she let each one do its own thing, but when needs must, she could swoop in and take more direct control of the individual clones. Which was why the sudden void she noticed bothered her. Her senses were reaching out and finding spaces that were missing.

"Shit," Daisy said. Seven clones missing from the network.

"Bad air ahead," Unit 054 said. She swung over to one wall where a small panel slid aside, revealing masks and small silvery tanks with chartreuse lines painted across them. She flung one to Daisy who caught it and squeezed it on.

"Set the second priority for the drones to be checking out the life support systems. Then coms, and finally, plugging holes."

Noted.

She'd have to buy more oxygen in bulk after this. Actually, she'd have to buy a new bottom half for her station.

"This is going to be so expensive," she muttered. Millions of points, even. She was hoping that the Mars extermination campaign would be far more profitable. So far it had been, but this fresh new expense was going to cut into her margins.

Arriving in the central room of the station, Daisy floated over to the command throne in the room's centre. A few clones were already at their stations, plugged into the station's network and doing what they could.

"Manoeuvring jets are partially online," Unit 038 said. "The station's stabilising. We're going to need to adjust our orbit."

"Detecting a lot of scattered remnants of Phobos out there. Too many for our scanners. Longbow's ship is sending compiled data. We're out of the main disaster area, but still on the fringes," Unit 067 said.

Daisy sat down just as a clone came closer and took a seat on the arm of her throne. "How does this make you feel?" Unit 005 asked.

"Really?" Daisy asked.

Unit 005 leaned forwards, then very carefully, she reached out and patted Daisy on the head. "There there."

Daisy sighed. She should not have leant this Unit out to Grasshopper. "Stop that. We have things to deal with," Daisy said. "How are things on the surface?"

"There's a full-scale evacuation order in progress," Unit 067 said. "Geiger, Jolly Monarch's Queen Drone, and Lady Kingpin are moving their ships to intercept the largest fragments of Phobos."

Daisy frowned. "Did we have any signs that Phobos was going to blow?"

Unit 067 took a moment to reply. "Previous scans of the moon suggested minimal antithesis activity. It was cleared with a few tactical strikes. The resulting radiation on the moon's surface might have interfered with further scans."

Daisy was frowning harder when she received a ping from the Family. She glimpsed it, reading through the multi-page report in an instant. Phobos hadn't just exploded. It had exploded in a specific way. Something large had flown out from the destroyed moon, gravity warping around unnaturally as that large thing flung itself out and away from Martian orbit.

Even now, it was being pursued. The Albatross of Love, Shard, and Saint George were after it. All three had picked up signs that the thing was at least partially organic.

So an antithesis trap, and one triggered just as they'd finished bathing the surface of Mars in fire.

The thing vented more reaction mass, and Saint George had pulled back to deal with what were likely space-capable antithesis models hidden in that mass. The mass now had a new heading. Daisy guessed it before she even reached the end of the report. Earth.

She tapped into a channel in her mind and felt her awareness expand and grow. "This is Deus Ex. I want units to EVA and check on the station's wreckage. There might be survivors out there. The rest of you, on full alert. This is..." She swallowed. "This is a No Sunday level emergency."

There were a few gasps in the room, but Daisy ignored them.

Ever since she'd arrived on Mars, she felt like it had been too easy. Sure, they had lost a couple of dozen samurai, but that was far too few for an operation of this size. Losing A-Okay had stung, but... but she came here expecting things to be a lot worse.

She reminded herself that there was no situation so dire that it couldn't be made worse.

"Right, let's get our shit together. Earth will have to handle itself for a minute."

***