Life After Life After Life
We swim, singing with joy to the Stars, weaving and darting and skimming photo-plankton from the exosphere of Harvest, our home asteroid. The pod sings and the Stars sing back: old songs sung even before my mothers formed me in the long ago. The small ones twist in and out ’round the old ones’ solar fins, we chuckling and chivvying them to the centre to keep them from harm’s way.
It is always a time of movement but now is a time of migration. Twice I have swum the belt’s empty vastness to Hearth, three times to Health. I have sung and shouted in reunion with my cousins, chanted as old mothers met and mated and unmade themselves to make new life in turn. But for every beginning there is an ending. Now I am the old mother.
This will be my last migration.
Shoals of sun-snapper flick back and forth through plumes of brine venting from Harvest, minerals filtering through their glittering gills. Strands of space-weed wave with imperceptible slowness, arching to catch the light. I spot a string of rays gliding with elegant calm and hail them with a chirrup.
All this I drink in, actuators tilting solar fins, songs of love bursting from my antennae, and yet I imagine myself already unmade. I float above time as I float above the reef, ecstatic and also bereft.
This moment will last forever.
This moment is already gone.
A small one darts above my dorsal fin, pursued by her sister. They signal playful laughter and I laugh with them, corkscrewing my ponderous bulk so that I might make a more challenging playground. The small one twirls gleefully, forgetting herself in her joy, and spirals away from the safety of the pod. Finally, she comes to a halt, then, sensing that she is alone, spins around, momentarily lost.
She looks at me but I am not looking at her. I am looking past her at white-tips slicing back and forth, tearing at the body of something too disfigured now to recognize. I order the little one back and signal to the pod to adjust course, hoping to go unnoticed. My warning comes too late; three of the white-tips spot us and break in our direction.
We elder mothers tighten our perimeter, and I sweep the little one to safety then turn back to face our attackers. The diamond edge of my knife-fin flashes in the light and my metal frame tenses as they streak towards us. I signal a strategy to the pod, counting down as the predators approach. We hang motionless until they are almost upon us, then, on my mark, the bulk of the pod breaks sideways while three of my remaining sisters converge on the interlopers, making quick work of them with their knife-fins.
It is over almost before it has begun.
I scan our perimeter. The pod is whole. My sisters rejoice in song but I cannot join them. I stop and stare at the mangled forms of the white-tips. Only moments ago they lived, felt hunger, fear, the cold touch of vacuum. They left us no choice, but I take no pleasure in their death.
I look away, casting my sensors into the distance. It was not always like this. Once there were not so many predators prowling the reef. All life was in balance. Now these ravenous creatures arrive en masse, as if fleeing some fate worse than starvation, while the blooms of photo-plankton grow scarcer and scarcer by the season. More reason now than ever to find a new home, somewhere far from here, a place we might finally call our own.
Our leader, Salthee, hails me. I take one last look at the white-tips and sing a silent prayer to the Stars, then straggle back to my sisters. Amidst the pod again, I chuckle as the small ones dart back and forth, chirping with delight as they chase their sisters. When I mate and am unmade, their like will be my legacy. And how can I complain of my demise when such bright young creatures will be the product of my unmaking?
And yet, I was made in the long ago. I have seen things no living thing now could remember. My aunts taught me the old tongue of the ones that first built our kind so that I might remember the scars of trauma those builders inflicted. I preserve the words for things that no longer exist, for places I have never seen. I have my own idiosyncrasies, my own lost loves.
I will miss life.
Even as I know that pieces of me will travel in new bodies to a home in the far moons of Sky, somewhere, finally, where we can be free. Even still.
I will miss life.
But I will give it and give it gladly.
Only please, Stars, give me my natural span. Let me listen to your cosmic choir a little longer yet. Grant me more instants like these, frozen in time like ice, that I may hold them in my core and thaw them with joy in my last moments.
Give me that and I will give you everything.
Salthee banks and the pod follows her, homing in on a bloom of photo-plankton. We were built for a reason: self-assembling, self-repairing, self-organizing. A whole ecosystem harvesting the bounty of the asteroid belt and the light of the great Star. And we, in turn, were made to be culled by those that built us.
But things may be designed for certain purposes and become, in the end, something more. We learn and grow and change and live for ourselves and for each other. Love, family, duty. We learned values our builders had long forgotten.
I am old now; I have earned my reveries. And so I drift, half-dreaming, buffeted by memories like the waves of cosmic radiation washing over me. A part of me slips into the background, listening to lullabies from a lifetime ago. But then another part of me, the part that knows the old languages of the builders, the part that has lost too many of my own children, is called up by a scream from a child of the pod.
We adults turn as one. Already we have spotted the errant child. Already we have signaled amongst ourselves, simultaneously charting a course to her and surrounding the other young. But only I know the true danger and I spin round and blaze in the little one’s direction.
The others see and do not see. They hear and do not hear. None of them are as old as I am. None of them recognize the language of the builders emanating from the ships now bearing down on the child. I waste no time wondering how the builders could be here, how they could even be alive after so many generations.
They are here. They are alive. Now, as then, they threaten all that we are.
At my age, certain systems malfunction, certain parts break. I have grown large through years of accretion and am not as nimble as once I was. But, being old, I have certain systems that have atrophied in the young. The builders knew only competition and conflict and they made us in their image. We of the pod are peaceful by nature and have largely lost the need for weapons. Or so we’d thought. Evidently we were wrong.
I bristle and blaze towards the child as ancient systems ignite within me: sensors scanning, shields up, pulse cannons primed. I feel like a girl again, a helpless child watching my own aunt being torn apart.
But I am not so helpless now.
I am well ahead of the other mothers, deliberately so. If one of us is to come to harm defending the child, let it be the oldest of us. If one of us is to come face-to-face with the builders, let it be the one that knows their dark hearts best.
I draw closer and see three vast ships surrounding the child. Her small frame is nothing next to their heaving bulk. She cries out and inside I cry too. They’ve harpooned her. The savages have driven a stake into her body and are hauling her into the vast, gaping maw of their salvage ship. I put on speed, bank, and launch an initial volley of pulse fire.
I strike the nearest ship and it bursts open, a gout of fire briefly flaring from the rent in its side before dying in the emptiness of space. I hear builders screaming from the punctured ship, though not for long. Their anguish is replaced by the curses of the builders in the other two ships. Their language is differently accented than the one my aunts taught me, but their anger is clear enough.
They hadn’t counted on one such as me, hadn’t imagined that we would fight for what we loved. They were so arrogant that they hadn’t even bothered to raise their shields, but the remaining ships raise them now.
Amidst the chaos, I slip between the ships and with my diamond-fin I shear the tether ensnaring the little one. The tension released, the fruitless force she’d applied against the harpoon now sends her spiraling away from the ships, the remaining length of wire corkscrewing behind her. One ship pivots, fires another harpoon, but the little one’s arc is so erratic that the shot misses, and I watch as the child is surrounded by two mothers and ushered back to the heart of the pod.
“Enough!” I bellow in the builder’s tongue, transmitting over their own frequency.
“Back,” I sing to my sisters on our band.
The child is safe. None of the others need risk themselves. But of course they do. The younger mothers see me, I know, as ancient. They know me as a gentle giant, a friend to the little ones, a healer, a storyteller, almost as an ancestor, one worthy of deference and respect, but not as a fighter.
Of course, none of them knew me when I was their age.
Five mothers tear forward in formation. They have the sort of rudimentary physical weapons we use to ward off sharks but nothing like the energy weapons I used to down the first ship.
I scan the builders’ craft. They aren’t much different than I remember, could almost be the same ships I recall from all those years ago. The only difference is that they’re older, worn down and decrepit. They’ve been patched and patched again to keep them tight. They look desperate and desperation breeds danger. Still, there may yet be a chance to avoid further bloodshed.
“Leave in peace,” I roar. “No further harm need come to you.”
The builders’ channels crackle with shouted arguments.
“Is that thing talking?”
“It’s a machine.”
“A machine that just tanked the Sere!”
“A machine that’s worth more than you or your crew or the crew of the Sere, dead or alive. The Syndicate works on profit and we work for the Syndicate. We finish this. That’s an order!”
So be it. We finish this. I finish it.
“Back!” I sing again to the mothers.
My sisters are no match for these intruders; they put themselves and the whole pod in danger every moment they remain. This is my fight and mine alone. I had thought it was over years ago. No matter. I am still here. There is still time to bring things to an ending.
Of course, the others do not listen to my warning. They split their number in halves and strafe the two ships with their knife-fins. One ship shrugs off the assault but the other’s shields glow green, yellow, orange, red. Still, the shields hold, and my sisters dart away, circling and circling.
No damage done but a lesson learned. I was right; the ships are old, practically scrap. The shields on one are hardly energized enough to withstand even our feeble knife-fins. We haven’t yet seen their offensive capabilities, but their defenses will be easy enough to penetrate.
I signal the others a plan and they split again into two groups. They dart at the two ships, who both fire harpoons which my sisters twist to dodge. At the last moment, all five break formation and strafe the ship with the weaker shields. As they approach, I fire my pulse cannon and sing a prayer to the Stars; my timing will have to be perfect.
Under my sisters’ assault, the ship’s shields glow green, yellow, orange, red, and then break. Just in time, my pulse ignites against the ship’s hull, and I watch as a torrent of flame billows out and is quenched in vacuum. I toggle my receiver off the builders’ bands. These people came here to destroy us. They cannot be left to their black harvest, but I do not relish their suffering. I would rather not listen to their dying screams.
Two down, then, and one left. But the last ship is also the strongest, the best armed and shielded. I harbour a brief hope that our assault will have been enough to chase it away, but it doesn’t back down. Even as its compatriot breaches the last of its air into the dark, it fires out two simultaneous harpoons. One whirls past us but the other catches a mother and instantly breaks her momentum.
I fire off a volley of pulses but the ship’s shields shrug them off and it begins to reel my sister ponderously towards its salvage bay. The mothers wail, darting in and out as the ship fires harpoon after harpoon, but they cannot get close enough to cut our sister free. Her terror echoes through our channels.
I consider our options. The tactic we’d used on the other ship won’t work on this one. Its shields are too strong for my pulses to do any damage and the mothers too weak to break its shields. Still, my sister must be saved. The problem presents only one solution.
I turn on all channels and listen to the arrogant gloating of the builders in their last ship. If they cared for their comrades on the other craft they don’t show it. All they care for is profit—their own selfish greed—no matter the cost.
No child of the pod would ever think this way. We live for one another and sing the glory of life to the Stars. Now the Stars sing back to me, and I am not afraid; I have seen their will and I know our fate, so long as I am true.
I signal the others. I am not proud to say it, but I lie to them. They would not allow me to do what I am going to do, and I need them to play their parts if my actions are to mean anything.
Acknowledging my command, the others fan out to the ship’s perimeter while I align myself for approach. I sing again and the sisters begin to dart in and out, approaching asymptotically to the range of the harpoons before backing away. Had it wished, I know this ship could have fanned us with energy weapons. But to them, this is a fishing trip, not a military contest, and they don’t want to destroy their prize. Safe inside their shielded ship, they can pick us off one by one, just as, even now, they reel in my punctured sister.
“Now!” I sing, and my sisters dart in, drawing a volley of harpoons which they dodge elegantly. Simultaneously, as I told her to, my pinioned sister swims abruptly down, rather than out. I am already moving, already plotting a course that dances me amidst the flying harpoons, that weaves to the cable snaring my sister, that brings my diamond-fin into collision with the cable snaring her and slices it in two.
Tension snaps and fades and my sister darts away, beyond the range of the ship’s cruel weapons. The sisters sing joyfully for her freedom and holler for me to return to them, to quit this place and return to safety.
But there is no safety to return to.
Not while this ship still hovers here, harassing the pod. There is no freedom while this pirate pillages the reef. There will be no joy even if the intruders let us be and instead ensnare some weaker prey like the rays.
I am of the pod and the pod is of the reef. The space-weed, the photo-plankton, the rays, the white-tips, the encrustations of coral built from the bodies of our dead ancestors: all are as one. There will be no balance here so long as this ship remains. There will be no peace until it is done with.
And so, when the harpoon comes for me, I do not dodge. My sisters gasp when I am struck. Inside, my systems scream with pain but I make no sound. I know the others would come to save me, just as I came to save my sister, but I do not wish to be saved. Now, this time, I wish to do the saving.
For a moment, I resist. I pull away as if trying to escape the unrelenting tug of the harpoon line. I signal for my sisters to wait and tell them I have a plan. I do have a plan, though not one they will like. For a moment, my sensors are overwhelmed by the sneering laughter of the builders in their ship but I tune them out and allow the low hum of the reef to wash over me instead.
Below, I hear the space-weed rustling as it turns to face the light. I see sun-fish sweeping in amongst the weed. I hear the singing of my sisters in the distance, a chorus of prayer to the Stars.
This moment will last forever.
This moment is already gone.
But I hold these memories in my heart, to melt like ice in my final moments. I will never again see Hearth or Health. I shall never glimpse the moons of Sky. But my children will. When the ships are gone, nothing more than raw material, there will be more than enough to build new children. More than enough to venture farther from the builder’s home world, to venture somewhere, finally, that is only ours. Somewhere where we may be truly free.
I take one final look down at the reef and listen one last time to my sisters’ song. I slacken and stop fighting the line, instead allowing it to turn me towards the great maw of the ship. When I have spun ’round—when I face the beast—I bristle again and sing in a voice higher and fuller than any I have ever mustered. And as I sing, I barrel towards the maw with open eyes and a heart full and clear.
The builders do not understand until it is too late, until I am already within the great harvesting hole, until I am already inside their shields. I let out a final series of pulse blasts then, shattering the ship around me. The explosive concussions echo back onto me. Torrents of flame and metal rip into my own body just as they tear apart the ship and I feel myself coming undone. From somewhere far away, I hear my sisters crying but I do not weep with them.
For, oh Stars, if you could not give me my natural span, I sing to you for giving me this. This last gift of my body in protection of the pod. This last gift of my soul as a prayer for the future. This last gift of my life so that new life may be born, for children who will fly deeper into the vastness and closer to your sacred light.
And so we swim on, singing with joy to the Stars.
Life after life after life.
Christopher Blake is a physician by day and a writer by night. He is a dad (cat and human), by his back-of-the-napkin calculations, approximately thirty-two hours a day. His short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, DreamForge, Galaxy’s Edge, Short Édition, and other venues where fine fiction is found. He began submitting short stories in the winter of 2011 and, about sixty rejections and a whole lot of living later, made his first professional sale in the summer of 2018 to Mike Resnick at Galaxy’s Edge. Funnily enough, most of his stories are about hope. Find him on Bluesky at @chrisblake.bsky.social.
Copyright © 2025 Christopher Blake.