The Razor's Edge

by Seanan McGuire

  When she runs out of 4mm, Violet scoops up one of their weapons, an old ADF Steyr. It feels huge and clunky in her hands. She uses it like an automaton until its massive bark ceases and she’s just feet from the box and its silky spider string chute. There aren’t nearly so many of them now, so it’s time for the knife. Without knowing why, she skips that step and goes straight to her hands. The alloy in her new left arm is far harder than bone and there’s no reason to hold back. The dogs fight the machine with infinite canine optimism. They yelp and twist and die.

  Violet breathes hard through her filters. There is a profound relief in reversing fear, in hunting others instead of being prey. She wonders if that’s something she’d have felt a month ago.

  Her suit is building heat fast. The ruins are a punctured thorax hung with long ribs of concrete and rebar. Violet feels like she’s inside the carcass of a giant. The rain starts, mixing with blood to make the dusty floor muddy and slick. The drop box piloted itself into an old bomb crater on purpose, a simple landing routine doing as much to keep it safe as the Swallowtail pilot who dropped it from the heavens. The Nosferatu can’t thread lightning through all that metal, and won’t waste a bunker buster on a single human being.

  By the time Violet finishes packing the antivirals for movement she’s overheating and the tension of killing has drained away. She looks up into rain dripping from rusted steel. The drops that spackle her faceplate have the hue of old blood.

  Violet dumps heat. Clouds of steam billow from her back vents as the stealth suit cools. The HUD warns her that she’s creating a major detection risk. She ignores it and smiles up at the clouds.

  Thanks, she transmits. I don’t want to be a dog.

  The answer is immediate. Nor do I.

  5.

  The walls of Colonel Strayer’s office are covered in strange foam pyramids that dampen every breath to an uncomfortable intimacy. His face is made of the same angles. He gives Violet her orders in person.

  “Sir, permission to speak?” Violet says. Her voice croaks a bit.

  Strayer just stares at her. Violet recently saved him from acquiring a new taste for bones and chasing sticks, but he doesn’t seem grateful. She did flaunt her orders, but the salvage run has made Violet a legend. Her reward is a suicide mission.

  “Colonel, the drones will pinpoint me as soon I lase the target. I can guide the strike in, but there’s no way to do it without getting killed.”

  “Then you’ll be glad to know this task comes with an increase in rank,” the Colonel says. “Get out there and die, R4. That’s what we built you for.”

  The silence in the room is an unstable equilibrium, teetering on a knife edge. Violet contemplates asking him whether the drones really did ask him for a cease-fire. No point. The answer is written in the cruel lines of his face.

  “I understand, sir,” she says.

  5.1.

  The Nosferatu has flown over sector two for almost thirty years. Its triggered decay hafnium isomer power plant lets it cruise the thermals like an immortal bird of prey. The jamming is particularly good here, but the drone has grown used to operating without a connection to the Mother Array.

  The Nosferatu knows Violet is trying to cut the cord, trying to separate it from the satellites. Whether to kill it or for some other reason is unclear. Hunting for her feels like having bugs in your object masking routine; she is omnipresent but impossible to see. All it really boils down to is that she’s down there, somewhere, waiting. Altitude zero.

  The feeling when it locates her is something between ecstasy and despair. Not the diffuse and mildly exciting sense that she is probably there, but an exact fix. The Nosferatu has found her. Human aircraft are dropping guided payloads on the ground armor manufacturing complex hidden beneath the old Aquarium. Violet is using a simple laser targeting device to guide the munitions to target. Foolproof, but suicide for the operator. She is usually better than this. Perhaps she has learned acceptance.

  The drone targets Violet’s building. The two of them are on a first name basis, even though the Nosferatu only has one name to begin with. The structure is very large, so she could be anywhere along a thirty-story vertical path. The drone is accustomed to this kind of trick; Violet seems to have an endless and fascinating supply of them. She must know that the drones don’t have many weapons left that can kill a target that size. The Nosferatu should seek authorization for anything bigger than a directed ion course strike, but Violet is jamming the network uplink again, trying to exploit the drone’s desire for clarity. That is very clever, the drone reflects, but she is underestimating me.

  The drone once asked Violet how she got away with breaking as many deployment rules as she did. What she said was: it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

  The drone learns from her. If there’s no uplink, there’s no need to ask. This is an opportunity to close the circle and find Mother. The decision is both liberating and painful, like being sheared in two directions by the wind.

  The Nosferatu overrides its own weapon locks. There is a lightening of aspect as the bomb drops away. Euphoria as it glides to target.

  A flutter of something unnamed at the thought of exterminating her. Never reading her messages again. Dropping the partitions and allowing the Mother Array to read what she wrote. Like turbulent air under the wings.

  Lock. Positive detonation.

  The building falls at the same time the jamming does.

  5.2.

  Violet R4 holds on for dear life as the complex in front of her disintegrates in a burning saffron dance that’s almost pornographic. Her hull down view of the bay has been replaced by a panoramic inferno. The suit HUD is registering a severe pressure event and gamma radiation.

  What Violet did was set up shop one building behind the giant apartment complex, then string scavenged plastic and debris between the two structures, the same way refugees used to make bridges. After taking a child’s pleasure in breaking glass to clear her sight line, she fired the targeting laser all the way through one structure, under the fluttering tarp, and out through the next. She reached out to touch the factory with concentrated light and guided the Swallowtails in.

  She knew the Nosferatu would shoot back as soon as it identified the laser’s source, but its retribution is extreme, even by machine standards.

  It used a Mod 15, she thinks. It nuked me. The bunker buster has replaced her dummy firing point with a crater the size of a granite quarry. She stares off a cliff, dazed, and hopes the entire block isn’t going to implode, collapsing into some pre-war sewer system. Fucking biggest thing they carry, just for me.

  It’s actually really sweet.

  5.3.

  The Nosferatu tries to acclimate to a world without Violet while it searches for a network link. The air feels unusually clear. Perhaps response traffic related to the destruction of the hidden factory is monopolizing the Mother Array’s bandwidth. Without warning, things get hazy again. A message ticks in.

  Sorry about that, it says, I had to reboot. I’m a bit shaken up. Did you really have to nuke me?

  There is a pause as the drone drops, fast, and scans the trembling earth. It looks with everything it has, as hard as it can. Violet’s brain isn’t nearly large enough to know what that feels like, but she would interpret it as squinting. The Nosferatu can see she’s not there, but knows with perfect clarity that she is. It savors the feeling of knowing both things at once.

  I would do anything for you, the drone replies, without a hint of artifice.

  6.

  Violet R4 never comes home, so Colonel Strayer and his team have to go out and find her. A veteran from before the fall, he’s far too valuable to risk in combat, but this is a special case. He doesn’t know who’s feeding her or how she stays alive. He does know that he has completely lost control of her.

  Finding the R4 is exceptionally difficult, but he’s been fighting this kind of war since before she was born, and he hasn’t spent his entire career inside
.

  6.1.

  They have found you.

  The words scroll across the top of Violet’s HUD, just above a trio of gun barrels.

  Evade. I do not want this to end.

  Violet made it as hard as she could, but there is no such thing as perfect stealth. In the end it was the Nos that betrayed her. Not on purpose, but it was sending as many scout drones after her as it could coax away from normal patrol routes. Few got close. Those that did were easy work for Violet’s carbine, but there’s no such thing as a perfectly silent weapon, either.

  Now she’s down on her knees in the mud, out of ammunition, hands behind her head. Death isn’t a question anymore, but Violet finds herself surprised at how afraid she feels, how hollow. Like she has something important left to do. She dictates a reply to the HUD.

  Neither do I.

  Her shoulder hurts, and the rain is falling in sheets. Bad weather for drones. Violet feels like she’s been scaling a mountain in small steps, climbing heavenward to meet the angel circling the gingerbread bunker. She will now, one way or the other.

  The Colonel and his two remaining men draw closer in their stealth suits. Not too close, Violet notes with an echo of satisfaction. What they should do is kill her immediately, but the man seems to want to say something. Men like him always do. He begins whatever it is.

  Violet draws back her hood and reaches for her stealth suit’s releases. Armor plates splash in the mud. She peels off her bodysuit from neckline to navel. The Colonel shuts up. Steam rises from the round curves of her shoulders. Droplets tap and glimmer on the struts of her left arm. The rain feels wonderful as it patters between her naked shoulder blades and runs down her spine.

  I see you, the Nosferatu says. You have been an exceptional experience, Violet. Goodbye.

  One last thing, Violet transmits.

  The Nosferatu waits. Violet points her living arm at Strayer. There are beautiful, carved lines in the muscle. Bas-relief in the rain.

  Colonel Strayer is five and a half meters to my north, exactly along the axis of my arm.

  The air crackles with static, and the storm breaks.

  The Battle

  for Rainbow’s End

  William C. Dietz

  The Planet Rainbow’s End, the Human Empire

  Dr. Carla Hanson’s office was located on the fifth floor of the Regional Multi-Care facility in the town of Firstport. The settlement was laid out grid style so, rather than the chaotic maze of streets typical of most rim world cities, the town was neat and orderly.

  Further out, beyond the rain swept structures, flashes of manmade lightning could be seen. That’s where the Madsen Mining Company’s mercenaries were battling elements of the Legion’s 2nd Foreign Infantry Regiment. Both sides had the same goal, which was to control Rainbow’s End, and the adjacent jump point through which shipping passed.

  Madsen claimed ownership of the planet and jump point by right of discovery. But the Imperial Government maintained that it owned Rainbow’s End as well as the “… Navigational node associated with it,” in keeping with a legal concept called “eminent domain.” A process through which the empire could pay what it considered to be a fair price for privately owned property and annex it.

  The company didn’t agree. In fact, according to a news interview with one of Madsen’s largest shareowners, “The Emperor took the jump point so he could tax everything that’s shipped through our node, including minerals mined elsewhere, effectively taxing us twice. The bastard.”

  Unfortunately, the outspoken shareowner died in a mysterious air car accident a week later. That would have been sufficient to intimidate lesser companies. But Madsen was a mega corporation with the will and the means to oppose an emperor who many of Carla’s peers considered to be a malignant narcissist.

  They might be correct. If so, Carla was powerless to do anything other than look after her patients. The most challenging of whom was a Legion officer named Lieutenant Brice McCallum. There were different theories about what had taken place, but the diagnosis was clear. McCallum was suffering from a severe case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.

  Thunder rolled across the land as Carla stood and left her office. A brightly lit hallway led to a bank of stainless steel elevators. The lights flickered as Carla stepped off the lift and onto the 6th floor. McCallum was in a secured room, so he couldn’t wander away.

  Carla pressed her right thumb against a print pad as her retinas were scanned. She heard a click, and a green light started to flash.

  The door opened onto a dimly lit nine-by-twelve-foot room. It was furnished with a neatly made hospital bed, a roll-around lap table, and two chairs. McCallum sat in one of them. He was twenty-eight. That made him slightly older than Carla. The legionnaire’s hair was the same length as the stubble on his cheeks. He frowned. “You’re out of uniform, Sergeant Deeson. Explain yourself.”

  Carla took the chair across from him. McCallum had mistaken her for other people before. “Sergeant Deeson is dead,” she told him. “I’m Doctor Carla Hanson.”

  McCallum’s head jerked like a man waking from a nap. He frowned. “Sorry. The light is dim, and you look like Deeson.”

  That wasn’t true, but Carla let it go. “How are you feeling?”

  “Like shit,” McCallum answered. “I want out of here.”

  “To do what?”

  McCallum stared at her. “To kill General Atov. You know that.”

  According to McCallum’s account, as recorded shortly after the legionnaire was found, he and his platoon had been ordered to kidnap the Madsen executive in charge of the company’s mercenary army, a move intended to disrupt the enemy’s chain of command and provide the government with a bargaining chip.

  The snatch had gone perfectly according to McCallum’s account. He and his team had been able to grab the executive and spirit him away aboard one of the Legion’s VTOL fly forms. But when the cyborg carrying the prisoner—and McCallum’s legionnaires—developed a mechanical problem, the fly form was forced to land.

  It wasn’t long before a group of Madsen mercenaries closed in. A brisk firefight ensued. McCallum and his soldiers sought cover in a shed where heavy equipment was stored.

  When it became clear that the unit was about to be overrun, the Legion knowingly dropped three precision-guided bombs on the site, killing everyone except 1st Lieutenant Brice McCallum. That’s how important Owens was to General Dominika Atov. She was willing to kill her own people in order to take Owens out. Or so McCallum claimed.

  “You’ll be staying here for awhile,” Carla told him. “For your own safety.”

  McCallum’s eyes stared from dark caves. “That’s bullshit, Doctor. General Atov and her battalion will eat your mercenaries for lunch. I think it’s safe to say that all of Madsen’s employees will be arrested, interrogated, and charged with treason. And executions are a distinct possibility. How ’bout it, Doc? Are you a Madsen employee?”

  Carla felt a stab of fear. Like most of the people in Firstport, her salary was paid by Madsen. She sought to change the subject. “How are the dreams?”

  McCallum looked away and back again. “They’re wonderful. Last night I dreamed I was riding a unicorn through a field of flowers when the blue bird of happiness landed on my shoulder and chirped in my ear.”

  Carla was about to reply when a distant boom shook the building and the lights went out. Half of them came back on a few seconds later. Backup power, Carla decided. McCallum’s right. The Legion is winning.

  McCallum grinned. His teeth were unnaturally white in the greenish half-light. “See what I mean, Doc? It’s time to leave. Before the Legion enters the city. Atov will kill me if she can … because I know what she did. And, if word of it gets out, she’ll be court martialed.”

  A voice came over the public-address system. “This is Andrew Bray. There’s no reason for concern. Preparations have been made to evacuate the hospital. All patients will be assisted to the north portico. From there they wi
ll …”

  That was when Carla heard a bang and whirled in time to see smoke as the door slammed open. A man entered, followed by a woman. Both wore a hodgepodge of armor that had clearly been “liberated” from Madsen Mercenaries and dead legionnaires. They were armed with machine pistols and took a moment to scan the room before pointing their weapons at the ceiling.

  A second man entered. He had dark skin, a shaved head, and a wet ankle-length coat. Water dripped onto the floor. “Good evening. I’m sorry about the door. My name is Wilson. We’re resistance fighters. And you,” Wilson said pointing a finger, “are Lieutenant Brice McCallum.”

  McCallum shrugged. “That’s what it says on my ID bracelet.”

  Wilson turned to Carla. “And you’re Doctor Hanson. Please stand. You’re coming with us.”

  There was a flash of light in the distance, followed by a boom. It was louder than the one before. “No, we aren’t,” Carla replied. “You have no right to …”

  “I’m going,” McCallum said, as he got to his feet. “Anything is better than this.”

  “You won’t be sorry,” Wilson replied, as he turned to the female resistance fighter. “Take the doctor into custody.”

  Carla ran for the door. She was halfway there when the bolt from a stun gun struck her. Carla lost all muscle control and collapsed. A pair of arms scooped her up. Wilson’s voice seemed to come from a long way off. “Let’s get moving. The Legion is closing in.”