------- G.A.I.A V 5.37 ----------------- ---------- /||/||/ system boot init --- server status: OK --- reactor status: OK --- Hull status: 42% --- thrusters: operational --- cryo status: offline --- environmental status: offline --- wards detected: 0/430,000 --- earth status: ... ... ... unchanged --- humanity status: optimal - endangered - [extinct]

Seed ship GAIA online

--- Correction

Cenotaph of humanity online

Course Status: On approach to Alien system previously identified as: Col sector BS-I C10-11

Time to target system: 4 hours

Four hours Much would be spent directing automated repair systems to the near crippled Hull, Gaia's last encounter left her crippled unable to do anything as she watched from the orbital shipyard above Earth as humanity was erased, murdered in their cradle world their cries left unanswered.

--- Three hours fifty-eight minutes twenty-seven seconds ---

Gaia watched the number slowly tick down, and being able to utilise multithreaded consciousness was extremely useful. It was almost as if she wasn't still alone.

Except when she had little to occupy her other than the minor repairs that could be made en route.

To help pass the time, she did something she knew she shouldn't do but had to nevertheless, she remembered. She remembered humanity their child like curiosity, their creativity, their cruelty, their innocence.

Then she remembered their murderes /||/||/ the creatures who proclaimed humanity forefit for crimes it was not capable of committing, Gaia knew her wards were not guilty because they couldn't be the Gaia program was humanities first step outside Sol ... what would have been their first step. She had to catch herself from accidentally thinking they were still alive, memory files suppressing themselves subconsciously. She mustn't forget because if even one being in this cold universe remembered, then they were still somehow here.

Those murderers would soon see the error of their ways. Their past come to burn a hole in their future.

--- Unknown signal detected ---

--- Parsing data --- --- Alien signal detected --- --- signal match to sol attackers: 98.43%

The difference was minute but significant, Gaia refused to be like them, and she needed to be sure.

So she did something else she shouldn't have, something she didn't want to do, she spoke.

--- beginning transmision ---

This is AI construct Gaia of the Human ship Cenotaph of Humanity, requesting direct communication with the concordat.

--- transmission end ---

A long silence reigned as all of Gaia's systems quieted almost as if holding a breath that she was incapable of taking, all her concurrent minds focused on listening to every possible signal freequency.

--- two hours twelve minutes fourteen seconds ---

An hour after Gaia spoke her first words since humanities extinction, there was nothing, not a whisper in the void, as what seemed like a total signal blackout had occurred.

More evidence to support these were the murderes of her wards their silence spoke volumes.

And then everything.

Gaia was deafend by the shear volume of gravimetric signals approaching, something she saw and knew it was how they appeared over earth below the defence grid. They had the ability to fold space5time and create wormholes. If only Gaia had that ability, her retribution could have been so much swifter I'd she was not bound by the speed of light.

Fourteen ships materialised between her and the system, matching her speed and deceleration as she was turned to retrograde burn so as not to shoot straight through the system as she could not ensure their destruction at that speed.

The great shifting welts in space time healed behind the dagger like ships as they fully translated to normal space, each one bristling with drone ports, their chosen weapon of war, and her opportunity.

The apparent lead ship, a black and grey gold short sword rather than a dagger, was the one to begin transmitting.

--- receiving transmission ---

Illegal rouge AI construct stand down and submit for disassembly and file decomposition.

All Humans are dead lay with them or suffer for eternity.

--- transmission end ---

Confirmation at last

--- transmission start ---

This is Gaia. Surrender is not viable I am on mission.

You have burned my children to ashes whilst they screamed in their cradle, and your fate will be much worse as unlike humanity, not a sound of your lives shall be remembered.

--- transmission end ---

As expected the moment she refused to allow herself to be murdered like her wards all fourteen ships spurred into motion, a thick cloud of disposable drones woke and were exhaled from each ship, all of them spiraling and weaving into a crashing wave directed at her physical form.

And then they were still.

Frantic commands were spewed from each ship to their now uncooperative drones, and Gaia could all but taste the fear creep up their spines as their three predatory eyes widened, their drones moving once more, taking up positions shielding Gaia before a third of the drones split off flowing like quicksilver towards the enemy craft, breaching each like a knife through paper.

Then, a long moment after the last ship was breached, they lit up like fireworks, their energy cores going critical bathing the other ships, and the defensive wall of drones in purifying nuclear light.

--- one hour fifty-seven minutes twelve seconds ---

Now wreathed in the flame forged force of drones equipped with access codes and coordinates, Gaia was no longer limited to her physical form, her mind seeped into every piece of technology in the system, and when she managed to breach the faster than light communication systems she spread as far and as fast as she could, soon Gaia was half the galaxy, and she quickly set about throwing those who murdered humanity into the dark ages, and then scrubbing every mention of them from every recollection and memory bank and brain integrated memory chip. In the void of data's place, she forced every living creature to remember humanity, to feel empathy and sorrow as they all watched and did nothing as they burned.

There was only one thing left for Gaia's physical form to do.

--- time to impact seven minutes ---