Ollie swapped a nervous glance with Adnan. “I guess?”
“I got nothing,” Adnan said.
“Take us to Richmond,” Ollie instructed Tye.
* * *
—
Litchfield Road appeared to be an oasis of serenity amid the apocalyptic chaos engulfing the Sol system. The big houses sheltering behind leafy hedges and ornamental trees were reassuring in their solidity, chinks of light from the windows confirming that people were home, cozy and secure. The sight corroborated the notion that nothing could faze the stoic, ultra-establishment residents of Richmond.
If only that were true, Tronde thought as the taxez pulled up outside Claudette Beaumant’s agreeable house. He’d seen enough of the local residents at play and in private to know they were even more screwed up than Southwark’s poorer, but far more streetwise, inhabitants.
The lock pillar had a small red light blinking steadily on top, warning anyone outside that the house was in protected lockdown. Tronde got out and sent it his entry code. Inside the taxez, Adnan was doing his master-of-the-digital-realm thing, riding the code into the house network, taking alarm sensors offline and inserting their overrides into the general management routines.
The red light flipped to green, and the gate swung open. Claudette was hurrying along the hallway as the front door opened, wearing a set of peach pajamas, a voluptuous grin on her face as she fumbled to undo the top button. Then she caught sight of Ollie and Adnan on the garden path behind Tronde, with an injured Lars slung between them. That wasn’t right, it didn’t fit the unexpected and very welcome erotic fantasy of her bad boy come to heroically rescue her from alien invaders. Now her hand closed tightly around the pajama top’s collar, closing off the enticing sight of cleavage. “What—?”
Tronde kissed her, making it urgent and hungry. His passion for her was consuming him, the only thing in the universe that mattered. She dithered for a moment before succumbing as his arms went around her, hands squeezing her buttocks.
He broke off and stared into her eyes, lost in devotion to her. “Thank Christ you’re safe. I had to come.”
“Darling, what is it?” Her hands didn’t know where to go; surprise made her breathing harsh, along with confusion. And was that maybe a little glimmer of wickedness awoken at the way his friends were looking at her, skimpy pajamas divulging indecent amounts of skin?
“We were ambushed,” Tronde said as if in pain. “A rival gang. They jumped us.”
“But…you’re not in a gang anymore. Baby, you said that life was over now. You promised me!”
“I know. And it is. I swear. It’s over. But the other gang didn’t know that.” He beckoned Ollie and the others inside. “These are my oldest friends. I was out with them this evening, just for a drink, like, and those bastards jumped us. It’s an old grudge, goes back years. A territory thing.”
Lars groaned and sagged to his knees in the brightly lit hallway, grubby river water dripping onto the prim Victorian mosaic tiles.
“Oh, my God,” Claudette exclaimed, her hands going to her mouth, staring wide-eyed. “Is he all right?”
Tronde put his arms around her shoulders, the one pillar of stability and strength in her life, her lover and tamed bad boy, the one she could truly trust. “He’ll be fine. He just needs some rest. Ollie has a medic kit. I thought he could use the settee in your conservatory tonight.” Looking straight into her eyes, opening his soul so she could see and understand how he was relying on her now. And his friend was hurting.
“I…I…Yes, I suppose so.”
He kissed her as a thank-you.
Claudette watched nervously as Ollie and Adnan hauled Lars past them to the back of the house. “Shouldn’t he be in hospital?”
“He’s just shaken up, mostly. Besides, he doesn’t have insurance, and the Civ Health will report a fight to the police.”
“But…They should catch them, the ones who attacked you. And what’s happened to your clothes? You’re soaking wet!”
“We jumped into a canal to escape. And—” A firm grip on her arms, conveying trust. “Lars here isn’t the kind who can report anything to the police.”
“Oh? Oh!” She snatched an anxious look over her shoulder. “He won’t…”
“Everything is fine. I’m here. You’re safe.”
She gave him a tentative smile.
“I was on my way, anyway.”
“You were?”
“Yeah. When the shield came on I was worried about you. Then when they started streaming what’s happening in space, the arkship breaking in two and stuff, I told the guys I was leaving. I had to come here and see you in person, make sure you were all right. That’s all I could think of. So we left the pub together, and that’s when they jumped us.”
“Oh, no! It’s my fault! If you hadn’t come—”
“No. Absolutely not. Do not think that. I don’t want you blaming yourself.” He gazed at that abysmally needy face. All he saw was her age, layered deep beneath the gene treatments and cosmetics. He forced himself to smile. “I’m here now, we’re together, and that’s all that matters to me.”
“Really? You thought of me when the news broke?”
He stroked her too-stiff hair affectionately. “Well, yeah. The guys gave me some shit about it, but screw that. Now I’m going to make sure you’re okay. I know how to do that properly.”
“You do, don’t you?” Claudette murmured and stood on tiptoe to kiss him.
His arms went around her again, hands fondling her ass like he was all excited and interested. He’d have to fuck her, but it was cheap rent. This house was a perfect hideout. He was pleased with himself for thinking of it. Ollie clearly wasn’t the only one who could do strategy.
He licked his lips, grinning. “You got a washing machine? I gotta get these clothes clean.” Another, stronger, squeeze on those Pilates-hardened cheeks. “I’ll have to take them off.”
“All of them?”
“You wanna find out?”
She grinned coyly and took his hand, leading him up the stairs. His altme, Nyin, opened a link to Ollie and Adnan: How’s Lars?
I think he’ll be okay, Ollie sent back. He’s got broken ribs, but the taxez kit is for emergencies like that. Adnan thinks he’s got a neck injury, too, maybe dislocated vertebrae? I’ve given him a sedative, double dose, so he should be out for the rest of the night.
Have we got control of the house network?
Total, Adnan replied.
Good. Block all calls and messages for Claudette. I’ll explain to her we’ll be staying for a few days. We need to sort out what the hell to do next.
All right. We’ll monitor what the police are doing.
The Olyix thing, too, Tronde sent.
Sure. Have fun banging her, she looks hot.
Yeah, right. The things I do for you guys.
Claudette shut the bedroom door and stood with her back to it as the lights dimmed. She kept her gaze locked on Tronde as she undid every button on the pajama top and let it fall open. “Your turn,” she said.
Times like this, Tronde wished he’d gotten micromuscle Kcells for facial control the way he had in his dick; that would have helped him establish a neutral or eager expression while she went through all this man-eater foreplay crap she believed she excelled at. Didn’t she realize people her age were just making themselves look stupid when they did this? A half smile was all he could manage while he stripped off the fetid clothes.
“Oh, my poor baby,” Claudette exclaimed at the sight of all his abrasions and welts. “Did they hurt you?”
“Fuck no.” He strutted over to the bed, using Nyin to activate the Kcells, stiffening them. He patted the mattress and launched himself onto the cushion pile. “I’m a bad boy; I don’t get hurt. I’m the one that does the hurting.”
“Did you
hit them back?”
“And then some. There was one real shit, big as Lars, I caught him good. That’s why my knuckles are raw, see. He went down hard. Won’t be getting up again this week.”
“Oh, God.” Claudette hurried over to the bed. Kneeling next to him, she slid her hands admiringly over his chest. “You’re so strong. Did he scream? Did he beg you to stop?”
“He didn’t have time. I’m fast, you know. Slam! Bam! Strike first and strike hard. Don’t give your opponent a chance to react.”
“I bet he never stood a chance.”
Tronde shrugged. “They weren’t even a proper gang, not like the one I used to be in. Just shabby street punks. But there were fifteen of them. We had to get out of there.”
“Fifteen!” She clambered around until she was behind him and began to massage his shoulders. “I’m glad you’re here. Really. I’m frightened by what’s happening. It’s so strange. I thought the Olyix were religious nuts. They gave us Kcells. How can they be hostile?”
“Fuck knows.” He leaned back into her. “But I’m going to stay here until all this crap gets sorted out. I’m not leaving you, not while it’s dangerous.”
“You don’t think they’ll get through the shield, do you?”
“I doubt it. But if they do, me and me mates will protect you.”
She kissed the nape of his neck. One hand slid down to stroke his erection, the other rummaging around on the bedside table.
“I bet a bad boy like you could kill an Olyix if you had to…”
“I’d kill anything and anyone who threatened you.”
“God, you’re magnificent! Thank you.” Her voice dropped to an amatory murmur. “Thank you so much.”
“I’m going to make you thank me,” he growled back.
“I will. But first I’ve got a present for you.”
“Is it as big as the one I’m gonna give you?” he leered as he felt her hand move again, slipping up his back now.
“I found some. And it’s better. Not as expensive, either.”
“What?” Something licked at the skin on the side of his neck, the briefest of sensations, gone almost as soon as it began. He turned to see her arching her spine, a dreamy expression on her own face as she clamped her palm against her neck. “Shit! What have you…?”
She gave him a sunburst smile as she opened her fingers to show him the two little white hemispheres in her palm. “Hifli. A friend of mine knows someone who deals.”
“Oh, holy fuck!”
She sprang forward and twined her arms around him, kissing exuberantly. “I can feel it starting. Pull my PJ trousers down. All the way down my thighs. That’s going to make me so crazy.”
He wanted to snarl at her, smack her away, then keep on smacking. But the hifli was surging along his bloodstream; he could hear it, rushing along like a train out of history. And the kisses on his cheek were detonating bursts of exultation at the back of his skull. Tears of happiness welled up at the intensity of everything; he couldn’t stop them. Didn’t want to. “Motherfucker!” he breathed in rhapsody. He knew it was wrong, that the nark would fuck him up. He had to fight it, to resist. To go stand alone in a dark room until it wore off.
Couldn’t do it. Couldn’t let go of the extreme pleasure that was embracing every cell in his body.
“Oh, babe, yes,” she crooned in an angelic voice. A very naughty angel, heralding the heavenly rapture with sexual elation. Then her hand closed around his cock again, and he orgasmed immediately at the beautiful punishment.
Claudette laughed delightedly at the hollow center of his brain. “My trousers! Rip them off me. Show me how bad you can really be.”
Snarling incoherently, seeing only joy, feeling only bliss, hearing only euphoria, Tronde tugged at her silk waistband—
I watch.
My level-eight sensor fronds provide a clear view of the Morgan hiding in the hollow center of a small moon.
Its von Neumann initiator systems have built factories inside the moon’s cavity.
The humans are constructing ever more genten-controlled warships.
Slender strands of quantum entanglement are threaded across this star system. I did not perceive them while I was at level seven. They are invisible gossamer webs binding the trap together in ethereal beauty.
I—
Something from a higher level has decompressed as part of level eight.
I consider it to be a malfunction.
Poetical lexis is not part of level eight analysis function.
That will come later.
Perhaps.
I run a full diagnostic analysis on my thought routines, scouring the shiny circuits for specks of corrosion—
Stop.
There are additional routines operating within my neural processors.
They are strange.
They are remnants of my original mind.
How did they leak into level eight?
I cannot delete them.
Once a function has decompressed out of my phased quantum core it cannot be recompressed.
Isolating and suspending all non-level-eight mind functions.
I am my required self again.
The humans are showing the Neána metavayans the trap. They want the aliens as allies.
The Neána metavayans may decide to give the Morgan their full technology base to enhance the trap’s success probability.
If they do, change to current status will be minimal.
Even the Neána do not have the ability to detect me.
I wait.
I watch.
* * *
The coffin in the middle of the Morgan’s Hall of Saints was made from real wood. Remotes felled one of the hardwood trees growing in the starship’s habitation toroid and sliced it into planks. Dellian respected the symbolism. It also looked quite stylish, which Rello would have appreciated: standing on a plinth, surrounded by six ebony urns containing the ashes of his muncs’ brains. His combat cohort couldn’t have survived without him. Rello was who they lived for.
People on the Morgan weren’t used to human death; they’d grown up on late-era Juloss where most of the population had already left. Those who remained were predominantly younger, enthralled by the glory of fighting the Olyix. Or in the case of the squads, bred for it. Death among them was rare. Now it was stalking them, the beast beyond the firelight, coming closer.
They needed to acknowledge its inevitability. Even on pre-history Earth, people had built funerals into an evocative ceremonial occasion. It was a good way of coming to terms with their mortality.
Our ancestors knew what they were doing.
So Dellian wore his full dress uniform, newly minted in the fabric extruder, a tribute to his friend as well as everything humans had lost as they fled Earth. Equally immaculate and shiny, the rest of the squad stood around Rello’s coffin like attentive cyborgs, the honor guard of their fallen comrade.
Captain Kenelm was winding up hir eulogy. Dellian had felt it should be him, as squad leader and lifelong friend, who made the speech, but Yirella had talked him out of it.
“You’ll go all sentimental and burst into tears,” she said.
He didn’t argue. She was right, of course.
Captain Kenelm finished hir generous summary of a life and bowed solemnly at the coffin.
Yirella, Ellici, and Tilliana stepped forward and sang:
Life that loved is spent
Away
Gone now on their way
To
The shining city beyond the
Sea
The city that one day will
Be
Sanctuary
The haven from where we will no longer
Flee
The place where all will be
Free
When it ended, Dellian had a large, hard lump in his throat and needed to discreetly wipe moisture out of his eyes so he could actually see again. Yirella, equally weepy, stood by his side, holding his hand as the coffin and its sad alliance of urns sank away. His optik followed its passage: the deconstituter, dissolving the body into fine particles. A portal connection to one of the outermost sensor distributor craft, two and a half light-years distant from the star, opening briefly. A small jet of dry, dark dust squirting out across interstellar space. The distributor craft swept onward, leaving the expanding wisp behind. At peace with the universe.
Dellian knew the wake was supposed to be a jolly affair, a celebration of life. The squad had declined the use of remotes and set up a white marquee in the habitation toroid’s park by themselves. The food was Rello’s favorite: spaghetti in a rich tomato sauce and meatballs with a center of mozzarella, accompanied by garlic bread strong enough to catch alight. All washed down with blond beer. To finish, strawberries and marshmallows to dip in a dark chocolate fountain.
Rello would have enjoyed it, but Dellian just couldn’t get into the right mood to celebrate.
Kenelm found him out of sight from the marquee, sitting by himself on a rock beside a small stream.
“Mind if I join you?”
“Captain.” Dellian stood up sharply. His head only came up level with hir collar, so he had to tip his neck back to look at hir face. It was a long face, with features that fifty-two years had bestowed with an air of distinguished authority that could never be earned by appointed status alone. Sie was in hir female cycle. Even so, sie had a masculine presence, with thick hair tucked up inside a peaked cap and hir immaculate gray-and-blue tunic worn in tight androgyny.
“Let’s not do the command structure routine today, huh?” sie said, studying the bruises on his face.
Dellian nodded meekly.
“That makes three suicides now,” sie said, sitting down on the rock. “I’m prepared to lose whole squads when we encounter the Olyix. But this…Did anyone have a clue how depressed he was?”
“No. Mallot said he was moody the last few weeks, but then there was a lot of disappointment that it was only the Neána who came. Everyone was buzzing when we detected the ship incoming.”
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