One of them managed to knock Eva’s helmet off with a weapon like a sharpened spoon, and their Attuned tore her face open with its claws, but she had no time to deal with it in the moment, even as the hot blood ran down into the collar of her armor. There were too many of them, and they were winning, and she hated being a loser.
Eva was as short-tempered as ever back then, but she wasn’t a fool. She knew they wouldn’t last if they stuck to standard tactics. So she did what she was good at.
She burned it all down.
The fires Eva set were fast, and they were hot, and they sent up clouds of toxic black smoke that obscured the canopy and sky above. The soldiers who had been so focused on her squad shifted to engage in emergency evacuations of that branch and the others around it. Because one of the things Tito hadn’t told her, in his infinite wisdom, was that this combat zone was full of civilians.
To her knowledge, they all escaped. The redirection of soldiers and deployment of other local first responders, coupled with appropriate infrastructure, meant the xana weren’t entirely unprepared. But they had to cut through the branch to save the tree, and when its massive bulk fell like the tendril of some impossibly huge beast, Eva felt the first stirrings of a sense that this mission was going even more wrong than she realized.
Still, she had a goal: find and eliminate Mother. And while the fires burned, while Tito’s crew made their own slow forward progress, Eva returned her squad to their task.
They climbed, and they climbed. The closer they got to the sky, the brighter it became as the layers of leaves decreased. More widespread evacuations had also occurred, because the buildings they passed were all empty, their brightly colored walls and floors translucent and showing only the shapes of furnishings inside. Whether the people had fled or been taken, Eva didn’t know, but she pressed on until looking down made her dizzy, and looking up made her angry. Everything smelled green and alive, and she was there to kill, and a seed of doubt that had been planted at some unknown point in her past began to grow faster and faster.
They found Mother on a platform near the top of the canopy. There were no barriers to stop her from falling over the edge, as if she were unconcerned by such things. Eva wasn’t entirely sure it was her, except that she was surrounded by other xana who knelt in front of her, pressing their small horns against the edge of her tail one after another. Then they would rise and leave, as if she had issued silent orders and they were eager to follow.
As stealthy as they’d been, B Squad’s presence didn’t go unnoticed. Soldiers appeared, first in pairs, then in larger groups, until they had no hope of survival, much less success. But Eva had a job to do, and she hadn’t come so far to fail now.
She and her comrades huddled in an isosphere as Eva assembled her sniper rifle. There were five rounds in her magazine, but she doubted she would have time to take more than two shots before the xana reached her.
As it turned out, she needed only one.
Eva aimed, letting the scope’s targeting systems guide her. The shimmering pearlescent isosphere was deactivated, and she pulled the trigger. The boom came moments later, after the shot had already hit its target, after the recoil had wrenched Eva’s shoulder, sore from climbing.
Mother fell over the side of the platform, and as she did, every single xana who had been attacking them fell as well.
Eva had seen meat-puppet soldiers in action, mostly in holovids, but also once on the ground in a far-off war that had not a damn thing to do with her, except she was delivering something to the troops. In the middle of accepting her cargo, the soldier had suddenly frozen, then turned and marched over to the barracks like he’d been possessed. He’d shouted an apology at her as he went, because even though he had to go where he was told, do what he was made to do by his controller, he still retained some basic functions.
As it turned out, one of the things Tito had failed to tell Eva, beyond the civilian presence, was the extent of the psychic abilities the xana possessed. They could mind-link with each other, and by so doing create a neural network that let them share thoughts more quickly than other forms of communication. It meant they could operate as a single unit, a creature with many hands and feet, a tree with many branches.
But if you killed the brain, the rest of the body died with it.
When C Squad arrived to attempt an extraction, Eva was staring down the barrel of a miniature plasma cannon, attached to the arm of a certain Nara Sumas, whom she later learned had been hired by the planetary government to find the rebel leaders and eliminate them. They were surrounded by the corpses of xana soldiers, and Eva was still trying to figure out exactly what had happened, because the scope of it was more than she could handle after being so sure of her own imminent demise.
Nara, in her terse way, explained. Eva didn’t believe her. It wasn’t until Tito arrived, wearing his smug sinvergüenza face, congratulating her for a successful mission, that she realized he had known all along what would happen.
The rebel leader proclaimed Eva the Hero of Garilia that day, but quietly, in the belly of Yamamoto as Pink was tending to her wounds. The revolution had been successful, and a new age of peace and enlightenment would carry his people proudly forth into the wider universe.
Peace. Eva could hardly believe someone like him could use the word without his pants spontaneously combusting.
She had asked him how many people she’d killed, and he had seemed surprised by the question. As if he hadn’t expected she might care.
He told her, and she nodded and thanked him. And when he left, Eva screamed and cursed and cried until her voice was gone, until Pink finally sedated her so she would rest.
Within a week, she and Pink were on Minnow, newly christened La Sirena Negra, and Eva swore she’d never speak to her father or Tito again.
Funny how things worked out.
Eva stared down at the table, unable to look at her crew after she finished her story. She’d told it haltingly, doubling back and repeating details, trailing off and picking back up, because it wasn’t a story she had ever told anyone before and the words were slow in coming. No one spoke, though a few times Sue gasped quietly, unable to stop herself. Eva didn’t blame her.
The thing she most dreaded now was their reactions. Because no matter what, they would hurt. If her crew were angry, upset, ready to bail out, she would understand, but she would be devastated to see them go. If they were kind, though, it was almost worse. Because she didn’t deserve kindness. She didn’t deserve sympathy. All she deserved was scorn.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Eva said. “I’m here if you want to, obviously, but you can talk to Pink instead.” If you don’t want to talk to me ever again, she thought. If you don’t feel safe or comfortable anymore. If you think I’m a fucking monster, because I am.
“Wow,” Min said finally. “Wow.”
Eva didn’t have a response to that, so she stayed quiet. Sue didn’t say anything, either, as if her earlier comments about people thinking they were doing good had crashed into an asteroid, and all that was left of her optimism was twisted metal and chunks of rock.
Vakar, though. When his smell hit her, Eva closed her eyes in a vain effort to keep the tears in them from leaking out.
Cigarettes and fire and rust. He was upset, and angry, and in pain, and how could she blame him? What did you do when you found out your partner was not just a killer, but a mass murderer? And one of them would ask, one of them had to ask, because even though Eva hadn’t come out and said it—
“How many?” Sue asked, her voice small and hesitant.
Eva swallowed spit, as if it would help the dryness of her throat and mouth.
“Three hundred and nineteen,” Eva said.
“Wow,” Min said again. “That’s a lot.”
Is it worse than killing one person? Eva thought. Philosophers tended to focus on questions of life, of whether it was better to save one person or a dozen, a hundred, a million. How many lives would be a re
asonable trade for one, and so on. But death? That was the domain of statistics.
In statistics, every person was a number, and numbers didn’t kiss their kids before tucking them in, or bring their partners presents on anniversaries, or laugh or sing or dance or do any of the shit that people did. Numbers just added up, and up, and up.
And none of those numbers ever got to see the local star rise above that massive tree again, the light gleaming through the colorful walls of their homes and workplaces and stores, glinting off the leaves, turning the branches and vines a warm, burnished copper. None of them got to fly up into space, explore the universe, touch down on other planets with different stars and different trees.
They were dead, and Eva wasn’t, and that would never be good or just, no matter what she might do to atone. And she’d done precious little beyond hiding from her guilt, running away from it, and trying not to be the same kind of person who would turn someone else into a statistic.
Even so, she hadn’t left violence behind. She told herself that now she only did it for a good reason, but was there ever a good reason?
“It wasn’t your fault, though,” Sue said finally. “If you didn’t know—”
“That’s not how fault works,” Eva said. “What matters is the outcome, not the intention.”
“Right, but—”
“But nothing.” Eva slammed a fist on the table and looked up at Sue, who recoiled like a kicked puppy. “I did it. I can’t take it back. I can’t undo it. And I . . .” Her lips trembled as she struggled to keep from sobbing. “Even if I’d known, in that moment, I probably would have done it anyway. To save my own life, and my squad. If I had to do it now to save all of you, I’m not sure I’d hesitate.”
The room fell silent again, a silence that stretched and grew like a bubble waiting for a sharp edge to pop it. Eva nearly held her breath, for fear that it would be intrusive.
A sound interrupted. Mala, purring like an engine in Eva’s lap, her claws digging into the flesh of Eva’s thighs.
Another purr joined that one, then another. All of the cats had at some point snuck into the mess, and were clustered around Eva’s chair as if it were the most normal thing in the universe. A sea of furry faces looked up at her, their eyes eerily intelligent as always, but none of them seemed to be trying to hypnotize her or manipulate her emotions—not psychically, anyway. They just sat around her and rumbled gently, their tails neatly curled around their bodies and resting on their paws.
Her tears fell, then, finally. She refused to let herself sob, throttled every urge to run back to her room and hide; she simply sat there, like the cats, in the mess of the ship that had helped her start a new life when she probably should have died on Garilia. She sat with the people who had come to mean so much to her that it ached like the sum of every injury she’d ever had all at once. Not for the first time, she considered that maybe they would all be better off without her. That the universe, the grandest statistical experiment of them all, wouldn’t register her loss as even a fraction of a percent, but that it would nonetheless shift the average goodness that much higher.
That, in itself, was a kind of egocentricity that had made Pink roll her eyes more than once.
And it was Pink who snorted and spoke first. “Sure, y’all would be sympathetic, you bunch of predators. Get out of here before you start shedding on the food.”
They ignored her, as if they were perfectly aware that there was no food to be seen.
Vakar, meanwhile, continued to smell conflicted. Eva didn’t dare look at him, because she was afraid of what she would see. This was bigger than anything else they’d ever kept from each other, bigger than him hiding his past as a Wraith to join her crew, bigger than her being a reformed criminal with delusions of morality.
“So, Cap,” Min said hesitantly, “are we going to have trouble, you know, landing or whatever when we get there?”
Eva shook her head. “I doubt it. I was Beni Larsen back then, on a whole other ship with a different crew and a doctored biosignature. As far as they know, Eva Innocente is a completely separate person, and La Sirena Negra is just a simple cargo-delivery vessel.”
“And they probably won’t recognize me,” Pink said. “The rebels had their own problems to worry about, and I was busy tending to our people who’d gotten busted up in the fight. I was just a field medic.” She squeezed Eva’s shoulder for a moment, the briefest of touches.
Still supporting her, as usual. Pink was the backbone of the ship, and Eva was deeply aware of how much work she did, physically and emotionally, for every single person on the crew. Without her, Eva would have burned out almost immediately, like a comet flying straight into the heart of a star. Without her, Leroy would have kept struggling to stay clean and out of trouble. Min would have withdrawn fully into the ship and her virtual worlds—not the worst fate, all told—and Vakar would have kept to himself in the bowels of the ship, quiet and unassuming and secretly hurting in ways he never told anyone.
“You are,” Eva said, with an intensity that surprised her, “way more than just a field medic.”
Pink chuckled. “I’m also more than a black woman, and a trans woman, and a daughter, and a sister, and a lot of other things. It’s nice to hear it from you, though.” She raised a hand, as if sensing Eva’s shift in position. “Don’t hug me. Let’s finish this meeting and get back to our own bullshits. My therapy appointment is today, and I definitely don’t want to miss it.”
“Right.” Eva inhaled and exhaled slowly as she gathered her thoughts, still extremely conscious of the fact that Vakar hadn’t said anything.
Before she could continue, Min interrupted. “Oh, Cap, you’re getting a call. On the emergency frequency. I think it’s your mom?”
A brief rush of hope flooded Eva’s veins. “Finally,” she said. “Maybe she’ll have something else we can work with.”
“Or something that confirms we should be going to Garilia after all,” Pink added.
“Right. Send it to my bunk.” She gently placed Mala on the floor and stood, finally looking over at Vakar.
He was staring at the table, now smelling like farts and acrid incense. Eva wanted to say something to him, to reach out and touch him, to beg him to touch her, but fear held her back and she swallowed the feelings threatening to choke her.
“We’ll continue this in a few minutes,” she said. “Stand by.”
This time, the call included visual, and Regina’s head and torso floated in front of the closet in Eva’s cabin, her face already fixed in a half-frown. Her mother sat in her kitchen, the yellow paint bright and cheerful, and Eva knew if the perspective shifted a bit to the left she would see the same white curtains covered in lemons that had hung there for over twenty years.
For her part, she hoped her mom wouldn’t notice she’d been crying.
“I haven’t been able to find anything else,” Regina said, after the barest of greetings. “Your friend’s brother seems to have stopped using their family’s account at some point after he reached Abelgard.”
Eva’s hope vanished like a fart on a breeze. “No te preocupes, Mamita,” Eva said. “I appreciate you checking, really. You’ve helped so much already.”
“Bueno, y ahora qué? Maybe you should try contacting the police, por si las moscas.”
“Ay, no, por favor.” Eva shook her head for emphasis. “We have one other lead we’re checking out, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll try something else.”
“And is there anything else I can do?” Regina asked.
Eva shrugged, giving her mom as kind a smile as she could manage after what she’d just been through in the mess.
“Nada, nada, limonada,” Eva replied. “I know you’ve got a new big-deal job, pero there’s only so much an auditor can do. Now it’s up to me and my crew and a whole lot of flying de aquí a Casa Carajo.”
Regina’s already-frowning expression grew more pinched, her eyebrows narrowing as her lips thinned. “Oye, Eva-Benita, escúc
hame bien. I don’t know if you think I’m a fool or what, but I looked up your friend. She’s a criminal, mija, and something suspicious is going on with everyone in that family.”
Mierda, mojón y porquería. Of course her mom wouldn’t just do what Eva had asked. She’d always been such a metiche. Eva could feel her anger rising despite how exhausted she was, or perhaps because of it.
“Sue is my engineer and I trust her,” Eva said. “She’s a good person, and I—”
“Good people don’t rob banks,” Regina snapped. “Did she tell you about that?”
“Yes, Mami, she did.” Eva resisted the urge to flop backward onto her bed, instead sitting up straighter and staring directly at her mother’s eyes. “She had her reasons, and she—”
“Ay, no me diga, reasons,” Regina said scornfully. “Your father had all the reasons for doing what he did, y mira lo que pasó. And you, going off to work for him, and ending up doing who knows what.” She reached for something, which turned out to be a glass that Eva assumed was a gin and tonic. Her mom was nothing if not consistent, and Eva knew then that any further argument would be pointless.
Not that it would stop Eva, because she was as stubborn as a goat.
“I should never have let you go with that cabrón sinvergüenza,” Regina continued, after sipping her drink. “I should have stopped you before you ruined your life.”
“My life isn’t ruined,” Eva said, though after telling the story of Garilia in the mess, part of her wasn’t entirely on board with that assessment. “Anyway, this is nothing like that. And I’m a grown woman; I can make my own life choices. No fastidies tanto.”
“You’re the one who asked me to help!” Regina shouted.
“Fine, coño, gracias y adiós!” Eva shouted back.
Prime Deceptions Page 15