“Hi, Carl,” Scolopendra said, her voice soft and sultry. She fell to the ground, skittered forward, then stood, wrapping herself around me, squeezing tight until we were face-to-face.
“We better go through the portal before the level collapses,” she said. She reached over with an antenna and touched my nose.
“Boop,” she said.
EPILOGUE
INTERLUDE
SYDNEE IGLACIA
“We are joinedby a very special guest,” Ripper Wonton said, his voice serious. “We have no roundtable tonight, folks. It’s just me and bestselling author and crawl historian Sydnee Iglacia. Her smash-hit book, having just passed a trillion copies sold, is entitledA Petite Chronicle of the Crawl: One Lady’s Journey into Enlightenment Through Knowledge and Scholarship and Three-Beat Poetry. It is available at all way station bookstores and everywhere fine books are sold. Welcome, Sydnee.”
Sydnee shifted in her chair, simultaneously trying not to appear uncomfortableoreager. This was her first one-on-one interview regarding the ongoing crisis. She was filming this remotely from her apartment in the Makoka Cloud, an asteroid field just outside the limit of the center system’s sphere of influence.
This ring of asteroids had, over the past few thousand years, become one of the most densely populated non-terrestrial settlements in the known galaxy. Her meager apartmentin the Saccathian quarter—a self-contained oxygen-, power-, and tunnel-access-included complex habitat—was called the “Observation Deck” by some, though its official name was SCC 5.
The entire complex, along with the six adjoining habitats and the central community hub, was considered luxurious compared to most of the habitats in the Makoka Cloud, which was known for its crime and poverty.
Up until just a few short days ago, her apartment had been owned by a holding group that was controlled by the Prism. But with D’Nadia’s death, whoever was running the Skull Empire in the absence of the royal family had already gobbled up all the real estate holdings of the group. She’d just received notice that her rent was tripling starting the next crutch. And that oxygen was no longer included in their rent.
She didn’t know what she was going to do. Yes, her book was doing especially well. But her publishers—a subsidiary of a Valtay company—with their fancy center system contracts were soulless, evil monsters. Her contract had a hidden clause within it that allowed them to hold on to her meager royalties for the entirety of her natural life and they would only be payable to heirs after they proved that she had been of “good moral character” in her life and that the publisher wouldn’t have to spend the money they’d so graciously collected on her behalf defending their own reputation from her misdeeds.
These payments could be accelerated if she were to happen to sign a Valtay life contract, allowing herself to be taken over post-death by a worm.
That was not something Sydnee would ever dream of doing. At least it hadn’t been until her rent was tripled overnight.
Fuck the Valtay. Fuck the Skull Empire. And Fuck Empress D’Nadia, while she was at it. That woman should never have attempted to step into that sushi grinder. Not when so many depended on her.
Her publishing contract also required her to make multiple appearances, which was what she was doing now. Thankfully, she actually liked this part of the job. After all, that was why she had become a historian and a poet in the first place. To bask in the respect of others.
It rankled her that nobody saw the crawl for what it really was. A gravestone. A monument.
A warning.
But it was more than that. It was an epic poem chronicling the fall of the greatest civilization this galaxy, this universe, had ever known. And nobody cared. They just wanted to see the crawlers dying one by one.
Only now, with systems going dark, habitats disappearing, with war breaking out in all corners of the galaxy, were they coming to her for counsel.
Well, not counsel. But this interview was going to be a good start.
“Hi, Ripper,” Sydnee said, trying to match the host’s somber tone. It would have been bad form to appear excited. She’d never been onDanger Zonebefore, and she had been excited to be invited, though she’d been intimidated by the idea of sitting in a roundtable. People always spoke over her in roundtables. They made fun of her. They never let her get her point across.
But this was to be a rare one-on-one. If only her mother could have seen her now.
Sydnee knew that Ripper was trapped in Earth orbit. He’d come to the Earth system in anticipation of being an adjutant for Faction Wars, but he’d never been chosen. She also suspected that he’d wanted to go down to Club Scolopendra but probably couldn’t afford the rate, instead settling in one of the multiple journalist barges, which was lucky for him considering what was happening down there.
These same barges were now under control of OIAN forces, though the “terrorists” were allowing the stranded journalists to keep working. And in fact, they were allowing them to air their reports without the censorship filters. She knew those in the center system had built-in homegrown censors, but for those in the Makoka Cloud and everyone else out in the wide galaxy, they were finally getting unfiltered news, which was a relief.
“Sydnee, you along with everyone else saw the Plenty’s announcement that they’ve lost control of the tunnel network outside the center system. Now, with the Scolopendra attacks starting and the eleventh floor about to begin, I’ve brought you here to live-comment on anything the AI might say. Any opening thoughts?”
Okay. Here we go. Her tentacles undulated under her dress. Her neighbor was screaming at his wife again, and she hoped the system didn’t pick up the noise.
“Yes, Ripper,” Sydnee said. “Not only was this predicted a long time ago, but it’s actually happened before. We have a fairy tale that lays the whole thing out. But here’s the thing. It’s not a fairy tale. It really happened, and history has a way of repeating itself.”
“Explain that.”
“To understand, you first need to understand the Scolopendra myth as it exists in our fairy tales. More specifically, you need to understand the myth behind what we call the nine-tier attack.”