1
The knife shook between pale fingers no longer strong enough to hold it, and dropped to the floor. The creature nodded drunkenly, her head wavering, balancing, then tipping forward, a student dozing off in class for the last time.
After a few minutes, Reina leaned forward and lifted the long, curved knife from where it lay. She wiped runnels of crimson from the ancient iron with a cloth she then dropped on the floor beside the slumped body, and returned the knife to its sheath.
This, she took with her. Sterilization could take care of the rest.
---------
By the time they reached the shelter of the doorway, the protective qualities of Reina’s thermal gear had worn painfully thin. She fumbled the door’s control mechanism with numbed fingers, pulled and twisted, then staggered gratefully into the marginally-warmer darkness beyond. The imp stumbled in behind her.
“The imp” was Reina’s personal title for the small being presently disentangling herself from a maze of harsh-weather gear. Reina had referred to her variously over time as “the capsuleer,” “ma’am,” “Ms./Miss/Mlle. Jenneth,” “the mistress,” and “my employer,” among other titles. The former immortal’s loss of godhood had done little to reduce the alien quality in her movements and expression—eyes that perceived without reacting, a face that typically displayed what its owner put there.
Even now, stripped of the implants that had detached her from the human condition, it was easy to think of Aria Jenneth, with her too-young skin and her bones salvaged from the corpses of children, as something other than entirely human—a ghost, or an evil spirit. She certainly thought of herself that way.
“The inner door is still warm.” That was Aria. The imp. The Achur demon.
“They should only have been gone about eight hours,” Reina said. “The equipment should be all ready for us inside; we’ll have twenty-six hours to complete the procedure. Plenty of time.”
The creature nodded, her expression distant as she pulled off her gloves, then paused a moment longer to adjust the bandages on her forearms.
Why do you do this to yourself? Reina had asked, before, while they waited for the medical staff to arrive.
To remind myself that I still have a body, her employer had replied. To try and remember that the thing hurting, is me.
“Give me just a moment….” Her own numb fingers poked at a holographic pad. “There; we’re in.”
That was Reina, loyalty and preparedness in service to the mad and treacherous.
Then what do you think you should do, hm?
I should record and remember, and aid my employer as best I can, said Reina.
The old professor’s eyebrows furrowed. It makes you an accomplice to a criminal enterprise. Extortion. Smuggling. Tariff evasion. Doesn’t that bother you?
Yes, sir, said Reina.
Then isn’t it your duty to report him to the corporation?
It would be my duty as an accountant, or any lesser employee, sir, said Reina.
And what is your duty? His voice pressed the “your.”
Reina took a deep breath. It is the duty of a personal assistant to serve as an extension of the employer—to provide abilities the employer does not possess, but which the employer can trust fully. It is a sacred bond, like that of a doctor, a lawyer, a temple priest, or a banker. Without that trust, our role is meaningless.
The professor’s eyes searched hers. Is it ever acceptable to break that bond?
Only if my family or myself is placed in danger by my employer, and I must ensure my employer is informed of the extent of those loyalties.
So what can you do?
I can prick my employer’s conscience, use my protected position to encourage right action.
The professor leaned forward. And if your employer does not listen, you will do what?
I will persist.
Through bribery and corruption?
We must persist. That is all that we can do so long as our families and persons are not threatened.
Through fraud and sharp dealing? Robbery and extortion? If your employer’s corruption leaves orphans starving on the streets of New Caldari?
We must persist….
Murder?
Reina’s eyes drifted down to one of the imp’s pale little hands as the two women moved down the corridor. So small—the hands of a child (probably literally, on the skeletal level).
Even murder?
Blood, enough blood to drown all the monasteries on Achura.
Yes, sir; even murder.
She looked away. Absurd; the imp had killed her own grandfather with her ankles, not her hands.… The rest, she had killed as a capsuleer, in the manner of capsuleers: with her mind. Those hands were mostly innocent.
“Excuse me for a moment, Ms. Jenneth.” Reina took a sharp right turn.
The rush of escaping gasses diminishing away to silence, the digital gauge displaying external pressure descending towards zero….
As without, so within. Atmosphere purged. Venting of all compartments complete. Lifeforms still aboard: one—well, two, counting myself. Are you alright, Ms. Davasi?
Reina quintuple-checked the seals on her gauntlets. Despite a life of ships and stations, it had been the first time she had ever worn a spacesuit. I’m alright, Ms. Jenneth, she managed, fighting down panic.
Good. Two thousand, one hundred thirty-eight potential spies down. One more step, and we should be properly rid of our Dark Angel problem. The Spartan compartment around Reina plunged into darkness. All unshielded electrical systems shut down. EMP activation in three, two … of course, if you’re a Dark Angel, I’m really in trouble. Activation.
The digital pressure reading winked off, along with the rest of the heads-up display.
Reina burst through the door to the women’s lavatory and hurled herself over to a stall, where she collapsed over a toilet, retching explosively. Dimly, she was aware of a shadow over her shoulder, hovering—concerned?
Remember, Reina Davasi, you are a bonded personal assistant. It is a position of sacred honor and sacred responsibility among the Deteis, and the Caldari.
Her stomach revolted, and she bent over again.
May you make your ancestors proud.
2
The apparatus unfolded, a spider-god of surgery.
“Hm,” said the imp. Then, “I don’t … recognize some of these.”
“The technology’s new. A lot of it had higher security clearance than I could buy access to,” Reina explained. “… At least if we wanted anything much left to bargain with. The system’s mostly automated—high-end medical expert systems. Human interference increases the probability of error by two orders of magnitude, so even if we don’t know precisely what it is or how it works, it should do its work better than we could.”
“Assuming nobody’s tampered,” the imp replied, maintaining the same aloof, lightly uncaring tone she normally maintained when indirectly discussing her own death—which was often. “We still have resources enough for a retaliatory strike if there’s treachery?”
“If there’s treachery, the promised payment goes instead to cover the cost of retaliation, ma’am.”
“Does it …” the creature stepped up to one of the surgical array’s many arms, hematite-hued eyes examining a needle-like contraption of much the same color. Her head cocked to the right, then the left. “Will that be enough? Our associates in the Cartel are a little upset.”
“We’ve been promised a temporary crippling of local operational capacity and likely exposure of several embarrassing secrets above and beyond what could result from publicizing our own datastores. The provisional plans look adequate. Of course, nothing’s certain.”
“Nothing ever is. And you?”
“Ma’am?”
“How are you, Ms. Davasi?” The imp had turned away from the medical equipment, and now trotted over to perch on the edge of the console where Reina was checking the array’s systems. “These have been difficult weeks. Are you going to be alright through this?”
“It’s nearly over, ma’am,” Reina said.
“Nearly, yes. You’ve … never been this close to it, have you? You’ve vetted security teams and even arranged a little wetwork for me, but you’ve never been this close. Have you?”
“It’s nearly over,” Reina repeated. “That will … be enough for me, ma’am.”
“Yes—and you’ll be out of my service, fabulously wealthy for a baseliner, and free to enjoy it all in peace so long as you do it quietly.” The imp nodded to herself as though she’d just summed up the essential motivations and desires of all humanity, and walked around to the apparatus again. “And I’ll … be back in the military, I guess. Are there any strings attached to this identity?”
“Only whatever happens here, in the next few hours,” Reina sighed. “That’s not a book anybody’s likely to be able to read. When we finish here, the site will go into its cleaning phase and then mothball itself until the next bunch of subjects are brought in next month; there won’t be any organic material left to speak of. There are a lot of identities getting edited, revised, or totally restarted in this thing; I doubt you’re the only one expending a few favors to get added in around the edges.”
“Or a few hundred,” the other muttered. “Let me get this straight—this thing fully bisects your brain and adds this odd implant right in the middle?”
“Um … something like that, ma’am. And, it bisects your brain, not mine. With respect, I’m not going near it.”
“And after?”
“Well—the biographical data you can customize to suit you on that terminal over there. So long as you don’t pretend to be from somebody else’s hometown, it should work out well enough. It’s probably not going to be an environment where many people are talking about their pasts.”
The imp sucked at her lower lip. “This is not coming across as your usual thoroughness, Reina,” she said at length. “What I’m hearing is that I’m going to disappear, but we don’t know into exactly what context or for what reason. For all we know, this is an elaborate cerebral cortex harvesting scheme.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Or a Nation front.”
“… Probably not that, ma’am.”
“Probably. Or an effort to create TCMC-controlled foot soldiers, which would be nearly as bad.”
“Possibly, ma’am. Ma’am, what you needed was a way to disappear off the Cartel’s scanners, and to do it permanently and irrevocably, without dying. This project’s been drawing in a lot of resources from the State war effort, and they’re not the sort of resources you throw away lightly. Yet they haven’t been picky about height, weight, physical condition….”
Reina shot a glance over her shoulder at her employer. For a capsuleer, Jenneth kept her teeny-tiny self in terrifying physical condition. The grandfather whose neck she had broken had not been some osteoporosis-stricken old man.
For all that, the figure she cut was not at all imposing.
“… legal standing. The details are unclear, yes, but it looks like the most comprehensive opportunity to rewrite a life that there’s been in a long time.”
“Even mine.” The imp’s voice had slipped into an eerie singsong.
“Even yours, ma’am,” Reina verified.
She looked up from the screen, across the surgical theater, trying not to focus on anything in particular. Her stomach had just given another sour twist. How long had it been since she had betrayed everything she had been, all she had aspired to, for the last ten years?
Two hours? Three? How fast could local transportation move on this snowball? Would there even be a response?
A vain thought—of course there would.
“We should probably move to the control room,” she said. “The surgery will need to disinfect.”
Aria nodded. Reina set the pre-op sterilization sequence, then followed her out the door. The imp had stopped in the hall, frowning. “Do you feel a draft?” she said.
Reina swallowed. “You know, ma’am,” she said, her throat tightening, “I think I do.”
3
“Only one?” The imp squinted at the security image, a still of a ginger-haired pixie.
“Only one,” Reina verified. The security biometrics put the intruder at one point four-seven meters and forty kilograms even. Maker’s mercy….
“Dark Angel, you think?”
“Um, Archangel, actually,” said Reina. “Tarsia dalVallen, callsign ‘Wisp.’ She’s a Heaven-born Sebiestor, a professional deep space hijacker. She’s been staying at a safehouse here while recovering from a shot she took in the leg, um, ten months ago.”
Aria was staring at her.
“Uh, pretty much spotless record for someone with so many remarks about her pugnacious attitude; favored tactics include gas grenades, sabotage … subversion of ship systems?”
“Now that is more the level of work I expect of you, Ms. Davasi,” said Aria. Her sidearm was in her hand. Reina wondered why she hadn’t yet received its muzzle in her ear. “… when you have been doing preliminary research on a potential employee. She’s here to kill me, I take it.”
“More likely to kill us both, ma’am,” said Reina truthfully. “I didn’t really do any negotiating when I sent the file.”
The imp scowled at the screen, biting her lip. The little matte-black scrambler remained at the small demon’s side and kept not, as Reina constantly expected, coming up and frying Reina’s brain.
“I really pushed too hard, didn’t I,” said Aria at length.
“Yes, ma’am,” Reina choked.
“In which case,” the Achur went on, seemingly to herself, “I can’t depend on much help from you. But you’ve had your bit of rebellion, and now you’re spent and waiting to die. Penance for your transgression. What did you send?”
“Just a burst … a message. Who we were, where we were going to be and when, doing what, under what conditions.”
“Enough to get her here.”
“You don’t deserve to live,” Reina managed, her eyes blurring with tears.
“And neither do you.” The voice was flat, matter-of-fact. “Is that it?”
Reina could hardly see the console anymore. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Justice.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A short pause. “I don’t believe in justice,” said Aria, and she left.
Reina just let herself go, and, for a while, pretty much dissolved into tears. It didn’t come as any enormous surprise when it was the sensation of cold metal against the side of her head that brought her back to something like solidity.
“Hey, sweetie,” said the pixie holding the second gun in an hour to have surprised Reina by not killing her. The pixie pulled back a couple feet from Reina while still carefully keeping the gun on her, and idly glanced over her shoulder into the hall before closing the control room door behind her. “You’d be our interstellar correspondent on the scene, then?”
“Something like that,” said Reina, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “I’m the one who contacted you, if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s the gib, yeah. Good; means you can keep breathin’, ‘least for this tick.” Chestnut-colored eyes examined her. “Oh, go get a tissue, sweetie; I’m not all so quick on the jump as to cut you out for that.” She glanced around at the monitors while Reina moved over and fished out a fistful of tissue paper, the gun—rather larger than Aria’s, a submachine gun?—neatly tracking Reina’s every move. “Don’t suppose you can set me on the bitch?”
“No.” Reina blew her nose. “I haven’t really been keeping track of my—of Aria. So you’re Wisp, then?”
“Here ‘n there, now ‘n then. You’d be one of those Caldari, whatsit, personal servants? Sworn loyalty and that?”
“Assistants. Amarr get servants.”
“Poor thing. Can’t have had a good go of it, contactin’ me, then. Won’t go havin’ second thoughts on me, eh?”
Though Reina gave an emphatic shake of her head, the Archangel raised a copper eyebrow. “Yeah, uh, sorry Miss Assistant, but I need to tie you up, now. Hands to the back, right like that. … Now, here’s how it’s going to be: you don’t have to help me against her; I get if you’ve got duties there, even if you’re feeling like death ‘cause you’ve crossed ‘em once. But after,” and here Wisp’s brown eyes glittered with all the perverse fever Aria’s black ones ever did, “After, you’re going to show me how to work the machine. Could work out real well for you. ‘Kay?”
Reina twisted to face Wisp, though she could only get partway around with her ankles shackled to the base. “The machine? You mean the surgery?”
“Eh? What do you think it is, then?” Wisp cocked her head to the side, a gesture that looked so much for all the worlds like Aria that Reina suffered a moment’s vertigo. Maker, but the fates had a weird sense of symmetry.
“It’s some kind of a secret military program,” Reina said. “Some sort of State-sponsored soldier program, not selective about recruiting, like maybe the Valklear, or.…”
“Oh, you poor, confused thing.” Wisp plunked down on the desk beside her, submachine gun slung comfortably under one arm. “For starts, take it from me, the Valklear are way-serious selective about recruiting. For finishers, though, Miss Assistant, you don’t have near the half of it—and that’s great, by the way, you bringing that flip-flag destroyer here when you didn’ know where ‘here’ was.”
The Archangel bent forward, lips parting in a Cheshire grin.
“That, in there, is a machine for making gods.
“As your smart little head can prob’ly work out, we want in. Oh—and about all that ‘oath’ stuff? Don’ worry too much about it. People like the Empires, see, they like to fill your head with nonsense. Lets ‘em control you easy-like.” She ruffled Reina’s head, leaving her hair fluffed down over her eyes. “Perfection’s not all it’s cracked up to be. The organization’s always got a spot for talent, if yer still kickin’ at the end.”
“But,” said Reina, “if, if it was that important, why are you the only…?”
The pixie shrugged. “I’m the only one who was close,” she said. “Close and trusted, ‘least.”
The control room door hissed, and Reina was alone.
4
It’s over at last, thought Reina when the door hissed. She opened her eyes, and her first glance at Wisp said that it wasn’t. “What happened?”
“Turret.” The pixie grimaced, spinning her back to the wall inside the door, gun at the ready, left shoulder leaking crimson. “Clipped me good—bounced shrapnel off the wall.”
Indirect fire. Reina frowned. “Manual targeting?”
“Prob’ly.”
“Her tool kit is State milspec, bastardized with some tricks she stole from your people. It goes through Caldari systems pretty fast.”
“She got gip? Uh—talent?”
“Kind of a lot. She didn’t code the tools, but she did commission them for personal use. She preferred ‘exploration’ to mission work; there’s a lot of hacking involved. There’s a medical kit over there,” Reina gestured with her chin. “The good news is, with the facility in limited access mode, she can’t make deep changes without our status flipping to ‘active.’”
“Puttin’ us to our asses in marines.”
“Yeah. So she’ll be confined to subsystems only.”
Wisp grimaced as she shook coagulant over her torn shoulder. “So I just need t’ work where she’s going, first, from here,” she said, pulling up an interface board, with, Reina presumed, its own set of cracking tools with her free hand. “I love command cores. Wait…. ‘Ere’s a local process up. ‘Infiltration protocol?’”
Reina’s eye leapt to the turret bay in the hallway immediately outside the control room window. The doors hung open. “It’s CalNav defense protocol where there’s an infiltrated control center,” she said quietly, “an inward-facing attack. The first stage is isolation; the turrets burn anyone who tries to walk away from the center. Unless we send the interrupt, they’ll, um, neutralize us. You didn’t know that? I thought you specialized in hijackings.”
“Cargo! Not military, and not Caldari!”
Pause. “Why not Caldari?”
“Because you vils are fucking cracked! Syst’s pre-set to take out your command? Tell me how I stop it!”
“Let me up. I’ll do it.”
“Tick’s running. Tell!”
Reina swallowed hard, struggling to think. “I’ve got the same tools in my rig she has. Get me a linking cable.”
“Eh—check me if I’m reading wrong, Miss Assistant, but weren’t you kinda wishing to get dead?”
“Not if she lives.” Reina paused, frowning at the venom in her own voice.
With the line connected, data played through Reina’s system in a torrent. All of it was meaningful, if the reader had that kind of eye for detail—and an eidetic memory. Mostly, Reina let the tools and expert systems do their own work.
“In general, CalNav assumes that if an enemy force penetrates this deep, the facility is lost anyway, so the command center isn’t fortified. The real expected issue,” Reina explained quietly as data danced before her, “is traitors or spies, who could get here without running a gauntlet of hardened defenses. The idea of the infiltration protocol is to give the command crew a limited time to retake control, otherwise the area becomes a no-man’s land. Staff can freely approach during isolation, but no one can leave. There’s a five-minute interval—could you step into that bio-scanner behind me? Thank you—for whoever is in charge to get here. The interrupt is a comprehensive scan of the facility commander’s biometrics. The protocol fortifies against intrusion once active, but personnel files don’t. Congratulations on your promotion.”
“Now that’s a hole and a half,” said Wisp.
“Commanders commissioned the protocol. The staff officers who designed it probably didn’t want to die messily just because an enemy briefly took control and the commander got shot. Please hold still. And, we should be clear.”
Outside the window, the turret bay doors swung closed.
An explosive “PAKK!” and a short cry of pain followed. Reina found herself staring through a small, round hole in the window.
Another PAKK, and another; Reina had a short vision of Aria advancing down the hall, firing rapidly, thin bolts of electromagnetically-sheathed plasma punching hole after hole, high and to the right, high and to the left, high center tending left, low center right-- Reina’s right earlobe went agonizingly numb. Then the vision was tipping back and away, the ceiling dropping into view, and the floor plate whacking her unkindly on the back of the head.
The bolt fire had stopped. Wisp lay motionless on the floor above Reina’s head, the bio-scanner where she had stood pocked with plasma burns.
The imp entered scrambler-first. The little gun tracked first over to Wisp, then to Reina. Black eyes flicked over the plastic restraints still binding Reina hand and foot into the chair, stuck like a turtle on its back. The gun swung back over to Wisp, who jerked, twisted like an adder, and spun hard, lashing out with a leg. The imp’s expression barely registered surprise as her support went out from under her, and the Archangel was up and on her.
They fought silently, at least for a moment. One, two, and the scrambler skittered off across the floor. Three, four, and Aria’s right arm was pinned. Five, and Wisp was straining to hold a curved Achur dagger two centimeters off from her ribs. “No odds, bitch,” she snarled, twisting the knife out of Aria’s hand, then twisting the arm, locking the joint, forcing the little Achur face-down on the deck plating. “You’re a bad shot. First was on, but your scatter’s horrid bad. That’s okay—you’d rather play with knives anyway, huh, egger?” she panted. “Here, I’ll give you a pic how it’s done.”
The first noise out of Aria’s throat was a startled scream as Wisp unstrung her elbow with a combat knife.
5
“’Sready, right? Get it started.”
The surgical array, sleeping spider-god, appeared unchanged, whatever arcane procedures it had been executing. The console waited, shining.
Reina stumbled towards the console feeling like someone had surgically implanted a granite slab in her stomach. Wisp dumped the rag doll she had made of Reina’s employer next to the door, then bent down to prop her up.
“Um … the surgical area needs to stay sterile?” said Reina.
“Don’t give. First stage after the implant is cut yourself out, anyway. Hey. Hey! You still with us, eggy? Don’t go crashing out on us, now. This, here, is stuff you ought’a see.”
Aria’s clothes were a sodden mass of blood and black cloth, dusted with powdered coagulant. Wisp had made an example of her, of sorts—an example called, “how human limbs are joined together,” or not, as the case might come to be with a sufficient application of sharpened steel. The lesson had been too much for even Aria’s stoicism habit, and her efforts not to give Wisp the satisfaction of hearing her pain, if that’s what they were, had not been wholly successful. She slumped against the wall like an abandoned puppet, staring glazedly into the middle distance.
But why give it up, ma’am? It seems like an awfully large sacrifice. Have they even really threatened your life?
Not directly, no. The Cartel isn’t above direct threats, but they’ve handled me more … kindly than that, so far. But, it’s something I think I have to do, Reina. I cannot allow myself to be ruled by these people any more. Allying myself with them in the first place was a mistake, even with treachery in mind—especially with treachery in mind. It’s not something they can forgive.
“Hey!” Wisp presented Aria with the back of her hand. The little Achur’s eyes widened incrementally, then narrowed, focusing on the pixie. Wisp beamed. “Hi. Welcome back.”
It’s nothing so simple and stupid as “evil.” But they are … tribal, and not in the Minmatar way. They’re tribal in a primal way. “Us versus the universe.” They’re … human, in the animal sense of the word. Small circles of intense loyalty, no veneer of rights or enduring tradition or deeper philosophy, a society that gets to be as large as it is exclusively because the strong force the weak to heel.
“So, I’ve got this quiz. Did you know any better than your bit, there, what this place was about? Did you know where you were coming, ‘god of destruction’? Tryin’ to turn in immortality Mk. I for the new model? Or did the all-knowing go out the hatch with the all-powerful?”
I was wrong about them, Ms. Davasi: they’re not the shadow of the empires. Each empire contains its own shadow. The Angels are drawn to the poorly-socialized, the dispossessed, because they have something in common: they’ve seen the illusion of civil society for what it is …
“See, here’s how it’s going to be. Your friend’s gonna get me set up in here, and I’ll catch power you can’t stretch your egger head around, it’s so different from yours.”
… and they’ve rejected it.
“Sure, I’ll hang around the camp and play sweetness for a while—a few months, a few years, won’t really matter. Just another recruit, another call sign with a fogged up past. Another face. But when I get the chance? It’s right off back home. Maybe it won’t be me that brings it; maybe it’ll be one of ours in the Republic, or the Federation. They’ve got stuff like this, too, did you know? But we weren’t having much grip getting in here.
“And I hope it’s me that gets back first. Oh, oh, oh I hope it’s me! See, we reverse-ran the Machariel. You think there’s a chance, even a prayer, we won’t reverse-run this? An’ this time, there’s no fulleride eggshell ta build, no Jovian rig—just one little implant, and a lot of biomass. We can do biomass.”
They’re not the shadow of great powers, itself a great power by implication—at least, not in this century. That could change, maybe, but right now, in this century, they represent and exemplify corruption: the decision not to be ruled by the important illusion that is civilization, and the community of civilizations.
Wisp had lifted Aria’s slack forearms, and now began clapping Aria’s hands in time to her own words, jerking the unstrung limbs about with the careless abandon of a child with a marionette. “When we come, there’ll be no place for you to hide. We’ll die a hundred thousand deaths and be right back at your throats. We’ll come for you planetside, we’ll come for you on the stations, we’ll come for you on your own fucking ships. We’ll kill your clones, kill your crews, kill your families, kill your pets! We’ll get the agents who commissioned you, we’ll get their families, we’ll get their friends. We’ll burn your fucking cities right down t’ slag.
“We’ll get retribution for every Angel you’ve killed. We’ll get vengeance. An’ the best of it? With luck, you’re the one giving it to us—our own skeeving, spying capsuleer traitor!” With this, the Archangel bore down, pressing Aria’s arms back against the wounds where Wisp had severed the tendons in her shoulders. “We’ll get justice! At last! Because of you!”
In this century, they’re the barbarians at the gates.
Then aren’t you just the same? Reina thought.
A baseliner can move more easily, more quietly than we capsuleers can, with fewer restrictions. If I’m going to be free of them, I’ll need to let go of the pod, maybe for good. Of course, there are some loose ends we’ll have to tie off first.
“See, Miss Assistant and me, we understand each other. How many o’ her friends have you killed, huh? How o’ mine? Ah!” she yelled in frustration, pulling herself to her feet. “There’s nothing we can do to you! There’s nothing that’ll equal what you’ve done!” She turned back to Aria, brown eyes aglint with malice. “… But we c’n make a start.”
A boot rose, then fell, hard.
As her employer’s grunts rose towards screams, Reina’s own pained grimace widened. She’s not evil, she thought—it was almost a plea.
“Say what?” said Wisp, pausing in mid-stomp, and Reina realized she’d spoken aloud. “Of course she’s evil,” said the pixie. “Definite evil. Real evil! Don’t you know what she does? What they do?
“Fleets destroyed!” Stomp. “Facilities!” Stomp. “Habitats! Homes! Families!” Stomp, stomp, stomp. Wisp’s cheeks were streaked with tears.
“I meant you.” Reina confirmed the edit on the personnel file.
“Huh?”
“I’m sorry.” Reina tapped the theater’s holo console.
The Archangel whirled, gun rising, toward the mechanical rustle behind her. The surgical array’s defense protocol came online.
6
Stupid machine.
“What was it that changed your mind, Ms. Davasi?”
Reina was silent for a long moment. Then she said, “I decided that we have enough human gods already.”
Aria Jenneth cocked her head, black eyes bird-bright. “I am human,” she said. “We all are. We always were.”
“Yes, ma’am. But maybe a little bit differently.”
The surgical array’s expert systems had performed the delicate neurosurgical procedure to perfection, measuring and adjusting for its subject’s small stature and body weight, as well as detecting and correcting for such anomalies as severe blood loss in the subject and minor denting on the apparatus’s carefully-calibrated chassis.
Stupid machine.
With trembling fingers, Reina set a small, matte-black sidearm next to the knife. It lay between them on the deck plate where they both kneeled. Aria examined the scrambler pistol. “What is this for?”
Reina bowed her head, low. “I … failed you, ma’am. No, I betrayed you. It is your right.”
The array had also repaired hacked and torn cartilaginous tissue in the joints, set and fused bone, mended severed tendons, cleared dirt and clotted blood, knitted veins and arteries, connective tissue, and skin.
“That would be a bitter joke, under the circumstances. Please put it away.”
It had also avoided any complications from foreign organic matter, of which there had been a lot. Despite extensive contamination of the surgical theater, there was not a trace of infection.
It had restored all the hair it shaved off her head, to the last follicle.
The subject had, all in all, returned to perfect health through the miracle of very expensive techno-medical wizardry, and now had to die for the implant to take effect.
Stupid machine.
“You know,” the Achur said, looking down at the knife, “I used to say that if I were human, I ought to slit my own throat.”
“There is tea, if you would prefer it. We also have guns, swords, sleeping medication, a fast-acting poison, and …”
“That won’t be necessary.” Pause. “And what?”
“And some kind of hydraulic device. I couldn’t figure out how it worked.”
“That really won’t be necessary.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Aria’s eyes turned downwards, again, towards the knife. She had dressed in white, for once. “I have never gotten used to this,” she said. “No matter how many times it happens, I always think, ‘Well, this is the end of me.’ And … I’m always afraid. Of course, I’ve never seen it from this angle before.” She and drew out the first four inches of curved blade, then set blade and sheath down again.
“Gray iron. It must be centuries old. It’s beautiful,” she said. “It’s much older than mine.”
“Should I go get yours, ma’am?”
“No—it’s a privilege to use this. They must keep it here specifically for us. For Achura.”
“I … think the ancestors will understand if you’d prefer to use your own, Ms. Jenneth.”
“This will do fine.”
They both stared at the blade.
“What do you suppose it will be like,” Reina said, “after?”
“I have no idea. We don’t even know whether the implant will work.”
“The indicators were all green, ma’am. There’s no reason to think it shouldn’t.”
They sat, and looked at the knife.
“Well,” said Aria.
----------
Sterilization could take care of the rest.
Outside, the snow continued to whirl down. Of Aria Jenneth’s and Reina Davasi’s approach, or of Tarsia “Wisp” dalVallen’s, no track or trace remained. Reina turned her face up to the falling flakes, feeling them brush against her cheeks.
Oh weep not for the dying
Of that which never was.
Our shining towers are mortared in gore
And teardrops ink our laws.
Our streets are paved in misery
Our manors walled with spite
The brightest of our summer days
Is fixed in endless night.
The sky was empty.
She looked, again, at the knife. It left its sheath easily, softly, like a sigh, gray and clouded as the night around her. The blade was weightless in her hand, a wand, a feather. She turned it inward, letting it rest along the sleeve of her coat.
Ware those bright-eyed and eloquent,
Who claim to guide and warn,
For blind are they who lead the blind
And Justice lies stillborn.
Retribution bright heralds
A bitter aftermath;
The robes of Righteous Judgment
Are poisoned wings of wrath.
With a smile on her lips, she returned it to its sheath, and, with a light step, began the long trek back to the shuttle.
The Truth it hides behind the world,
Illusion at its side;
The guiding beacon Insight
Is mired in bitter Pride.
“Well, your grouping’s getting better,” said an instructor a few weeks later, “So that’s something. Soldier, I have to ask—how in the name of the Winds did someone like you make it into this program? Were you a spook or something?”
“Uh—actually, yes, sir. Six years in deep cover. You wouldn’t believe how deep.”
“How’s that, exactly?”
“Um … well, sir, I could tell you, but I’d have to try and humiliatingly fail to kill you.”
He laughed. “Fair enough. Carry on.”
The clone soldier shot off a few more clips before returning the rifle to storage. Her scores weren’t all bad—her hacking and electronic warfare rated “exceptional,” and she was proving an able hand with explosives.
Guns, however, were pretty basic to the job.
A burst of running footsteps interrupted her gloomy musings—medics, sweeping along with a stretcher carrying a gagged, but still screaming, soldier. One of the men following paused in the doorway to toss a bundle on the table.
The operative cocked her head. These incidents were becoming more and more common. The bundle drew her eye.
Unwrapped, it contained a pair of jagged daggers, each about as long as her forearm. She reversed them easily, then flicked one back upright and thumbed the mechanism on the hilt. The cutting surfaces of the blade flickered, then buzzed, electrical arcs coiling, the central plasma channel radiating a wash of heat the operative could feel even through her suit.
“Hm,” she said.
Come dance with me out through the void
With hooded lanterns lit
And if the Dark should laugh at me
I’ll throw off this mask of misery
And laugh along with it.
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Topic: Transition (Read 2546 times)