by Paula Guran
The little one leaps on Telle and starts tearing at her slick.
Kep and Luce and I drag the girl off. Telle binds the girl’s hands, trusses up the other two with plastic wire.
We string them together and make for Central. We’re a long way from Central.
We don’t talk about that.
“So Mother Mai says—”
“Fuck Mother Mai,” I say.
Telle’s got watch over the girls. They’re huddled around a big cicada tree. Ro’s poking at the fire beetles in the stove. Dusk is heavy. The lavender sky goes deep purple, then black. It’s like being smothered.
“Mother Mai says, what you gonna do with a womb anyway? It gonna chew your meat for you?” Kep’s sitting up on the fallen tree behind me, wiping down her gun. She’s got a globe up there, set low. The light’s orange, like bad urine.
One of the girls is bleeding, the little one. It’s been three cities since I seen a woman bleed. I forgot that some still do it. Telle’s still got a grudge against that girl. She’s started calling her Maul.
“So my sister has it put back in. Nip and tuck,” Kep says. “You know what happens?”
Luce is pulling off the heads of powder bugs. She keeps dropping them on me. I pound at her ankles. She kicks away.
“Nothing happens!” Kep says. “She doesn’t even bleed, ’cause she’s got implants, of course. I thought she’d be crying all the time. Like a boy. No. It’s social, my sister says, makes boys so screwed up.”
“Your sister should run for a seat,” I say. “She sounds like a bleeding heart. Her and all the bleeding hearts can run the whole damn world from the seat. Start wearing their wombs like trophies.”
“Yeah,” Kep says. She spits sen on her cleaning rag. “Yeah.”
Ro yells at Luce and tells her to run a perimeter sweep. Ro kicks me and makes me heat up the pot. I take some over to Telle and the girls. The little one, Maul, bares her teeth at me, but she takes the food in, takes it so fast she vomits it up. One of the others, this big, broad-shouldered mutt, just looks at the pot like she’s never seen food before. She goggles at me like a kid. When she looks at me, I hear that boy. The mewling one.
We move at light, after delousing. The girls are sweating too much. Losing too much water. All that uncovered skin. No slicks. They drink too much.
Luce is running scout. She circles at midday, when we’re sitting out the worst of the heat.
“Off track,” Luce says. “They put up a ward over the road.”
Ro spits sen. “Our road?”
“Yeah.”
“Pekoi doesn’t want us coming back in,” I say.
“Or they’re just doing road work,” Ro says. “Don’t think they’re savvy. We reroute. Telle?”
Telle flips on the tube and reroutes us. We have six more days in the field, but the reroute gets us two more. Ro puts us on cut rations.
The girls whine about water all night. All but the broad-shouldered one. She has a tangle of curly hair, always hangs her head over. Kep starts calling her Doll.
“What we calling the other one?” Telle says.
The third one, the skinniest girl, with a face smeared purple with bruises, holds her arms over herself, bobs her head. I have a boy back home, he bobs his head like that when things get tense. Says he’s thinking too much.
“Call her Wonder,” I say.
The girls slow us down. There are bugs to eat, but the girls keep retching them up.
Kep’s on scout next day, comes in, says there’s a village a click south. “Maybe two or three dozen bags,” she says. “Mostly boys.”
Ro gives the nod. “Stock up on water. Be good.”
We push. Luce switches out scout with Kep. Kep paces me. Telle’s still on girl detail. Ro’s taking up the rear.
Kep and I hit dirt first. We scare a group of scraggly girls and kids in one of the bug farms on the edge of the village. The girls slosh up onto the banks of the ponds. I see the roiling forms of giant madillo bugs churning through the muddy water. Some of the girls grab stones as they disappear into the bush, but nobody throws any. They’ll hide and wait. Ro tells us to be careful now, look for trips. Don’t go in the water.
When we get into the spread of the village, a bunch of girls are there. They’re darting back and forth. Carrying stones. A couple have razor bugs mounted on long poles.
Telle’s got the language down, tries some bargaining, but they won’t have it. Some stones fly. Kep sprays a couple of the closest throwers. They screech. Their skin starts melting off. Telle shouts out again that we want water, a roof.
They send somebody out, some old woman. She brings two boys with her, skinny, sticky things no better than the ones in Pekoi proper. She kneels down, and the boys kneel down next to her. She holds out their hands to us.
Telle says we have to take them. It’s a ceasefire offering. I tell her water’s better.
Ro grunts, grabs the boys’ hands. “A roof,” she says, “water.”
They put us up in the old woman’s hut, a circular mud pit layered over in thatch. Telle turns on the tube. Ro takes up the food they bring in. We stash the boys in a corner and tell them to shut up. The hut’s pretty small, and there’s a lot of us. It’s too crowded. Ro puts Kep and Luce and me outside, tells us to watch point.
Kep squats down against the house, pulls out her cards. I don’t like the air we’re getting off the locals. They’re too used to muscle.
There’s a boy watching from the doorway of one of the far huts. He’s seven or eight, old enough to be trouble, young enough not to be much trouble. He comes out of the doorway, takes a couple steps forward. I’m keeping an eye as we lop cards. Luce stares the kid straight in the face. He waves at her. Kep adjusts her gun on her shoulder.
Luce yells out at him in the local. Her accent is bad. “You stay there! Stay or we shoot. Understand?”
The boy goes still. His eyes are wide. He’s looking past us.
I look at Kep. She’s at the corner of the hut. I can’t see around it.
I yell, “Kep!”
Kep unshoulders her gun, flops on the ground. She fires around the corner without looking.
Luce is up. I dart around the other side of the hut. I hear the girls inside, screeching. I pace all the way around, duck out and see what Kep hit. There’s a couple of screamers. A boy and a woman, maybe his older sister. Their faces are pretty smeared. Black holes for mouths and eyes, flesh running off bone, no noses. They’re wiping off their own faces with their hands.
I do a quick sweep. There are half a dozen people out. More coming up from the other end of the village. They’ve got stones. Somebody’s got a writhing basket. Flesh beetles.
“Hold!” I yell. I only know a couple words in local. I got that one down.
But they don’t hold. They start screaming. Somebody throws a stone.
Luce sprays the nearest two. They go down.
There’s a girl up on a roof. I see her throw, but she’s so far off, I don’t think she can hit anything.
But her aim is good. Kep goes down, struck right between the eyes. I run toward her. The crowd screeches.
I can hear Ro’s voice somewhere behind me.
“Move back!” Luce says, and yanks me away from Kep. I can’t shoulder my gun and grab Kep. I’ll lose point on the hostiles.
“Cover me,” I say.
The girl with the basket dumps her beetles.
Luce sprays her. But the beetles are out. They swarm. Hunched, dark figures, big as my palms. I fall back from Kep, and the bugs overtake her. Kep jerks.
I duck to reach for her flailing arm. One of the bugs jumps on my hand. I try and smash it, but the pincers get me between thumb and forefinger, right through my slick. The bug starts pumping yellowish fluid.
Luce keeps dragging me back.
Ro’s up behind me now. She rips off the bug, takes a hunk of my flesh with it. Pain jolts up my arm.
Ro’s got her gun out. “Jian, take girl watch. Telle, get o
ut here! I need a translator!”
I hump back around to the front. Telle’s already heading my way. I take watch on the girls. They’re huddled in the entryway, clinging to each other. Doll is starting to cry.
We’re boxed in. We’ve got hostiles all around. I can see a half dozen more coming up from the ponds. They’re running. There’s more screaming around the other side. Ro’s shouting—
“Spray! Take them out!”
And when the ones from the pond get close enough, I take them out. Their hands are empty, but Kep’s dead, and Ro’s giving the watch. We’re the muscle. Not the brains.
I can’t hear the girls anymore, because everyone else is screaming. I slip a knife out of my boot and go and cut the ones I sprayed. Shut them up. I’ve got my slick on, so the spray stays off me. Their heads are just big globs of goo now.
Luce is running toward me. I’m standing over a half dozen bodies. I wonder how many more hostiles we’ve got left.
“Orders?” I say.
“Telle’s hit!” she yells. “Ro’s down.”
“Down?”
“Down!”
I stare past Luce. Telle’s humping back. There’s a heap of oozing bodies behind her. She’s got Ro’s gun.
“The fuck?” I say.
“She’s down,” Telle says.
“The fuck you mean she’s down?” I say.
“Let’s go. Let’s get these bags and go,” Telle says. She grabs Wonder by the arm, tries to yank her up. The whole lot of them are clinging so tight that when Wonder moves, they move too.
I do a quick count, look for movement. There’s the heap Telle and Luce left behind, the heap where Ro and Kep are. I can just see something flickering on a far roof. What have they got left? Kids and kittens?
“I said we’re up!” Telle says.
Luce and I share a look. “Luce, run point!” I say, because I can’t grab the girls and aim my gun. I’m stronger than Luce, but she’s a better shot.
I look back again, at Ro and Kep and the bodies. I can’t even tell one from the other.
“Move!” Telle says.
I grab hold of Maul. She bites at my slick, so I throw her over my shoulder. She goes limp, and we move. Luce paces ahead. She sprays anything that moves. Boys, chickens, bugs. She sprays out a path, and there’s nothing left living behind us.
We make it to the bug ponds. Maul twists suddenly, so sudden I think she’s having a fit. I lose my grip, and she goes over, rolls into the water with a splash.
Luce twists toward the pond, aims her gun at the water.
“Luce, point!” I say, because I’ve got my own gun out now. She’s moved off point.
Wonder and Doll are crying.
I try to switch my gun setting low, but it’s been jammed since the last city.
“Go get her!” Telle says. She’s got the other two by the hair. Some of it’s come out in her hands.
“Fuck you,” I say, because she isn’t Ro, but Ro’s dead. And that leaves her.
The girls’ sobs are turning to keening. I can’t see a ripple in the dark water.
Luce sets off a spray ahead of us. “I got movement!”
”What are you shooting at, dogs?” I yell.
Telle hits my shoulder with the butt of her gun. I nearly lose my balance, nearly go over.
But Telle had to let go of the girls to do it. Doll’s crawling away. Wonder’s almost on her feet.
Telle grabs Wonder by the hair. This time, a big hunk of her hair comes away, leaves a bloody scalp. Wonder screeches.
I stumble forward. These bags of sludge are going to come apart. They’re going to come apart and vomit on us, hock up a thousand hours of organic tailoring.
I grab Doll by the ankle, pull her toward me. She bites at my slick. Her teeth don’t go through. I put my hands around her throat and squeeze. And squeeze. She flails, like Kep flailed, only her face is turning gray.
Telle’s with Wonder. Luce is yelling something.
Doll finally goes still. I let her go limp. I stand up. Telle’s standing over Wonder. Wonder’s curled up into a ball. I take my knife out of my boot.
“Don’t cut her!” Telle says.
But I cut her anyway, because Telle can test and bag a corpse better than a live fish, and Ro and Kep are dead.
Wonder bleeds, more than I thought she would. I keep her between my legs, hold her still. She jerks a little. Her eyes go glassy.
I let her go, wipe my knife. “Tag and bag her,” I say. “Central gets their proof. They just won’t be live.”
Telle’s staring at me. Luce’s still got her gun trained on the trees. I stare out at the water.
Telle rips off her test pack and starts cutting open Wonder’s warm body. Wonder jerks some more.
I crouch, point my gun at the pond, and wait. Maul’s body finally comes up, floating face down. Telle’s hands are elbow-deep in Wonder’s corpse.
I chew some sen. “You gonna fish her out?” I ask Luce, but Luce hasn’t seen the body yet. One of the big bugs grabs hold of it again, hauls it back under.
Telle sits back on her heels. She wipes her hands on her slick. She stands up. She looks blank.
“What?” I say.
“Body’s clean,” she says.
“Clean?” I say.
“There’s nothing in there,” Telle says. “They weren’t organics.”
“Check the other one,” I say.
“I don’t need to—”
I point my gun at her. “Check the other one.”
Luce licks her lips.
Telle guts the other one. She cracks open the ribcage. The body shudders. She digs around for a while. Her hands come out bloody. No sludge. Clean. She looks up at me.
“Clean,” she says.
“Now what?” Luce says.
“We burn them,” I say.
They don’t have a better idea. So we burn them. And they burn. Like good little girls, my little WMD. They burn.
I chew some more sen. Telle flicks on the tube.
There’s nothing dangerous in Pekoi.
We ship out three weeks later. We’ve got a new first, and a new flank. We’re the last squad to take off, so we get to see it. It’s Telle who’s on the tube, Telle who says, “We’re clear.”
They drop fire on Pekoi. Pekoi burns. Just like anything else.
The brains say Pekoi is too dangerous to the civilized world. Doesn’t matter what the muscle says, what the muscle did. It’s all about the brains, in the end. What they thought they saw. What they thought they knew.
Telle’s got the tube up by her ear. I’m watching the city burn.
“You hear it?” Telle asks our first.
Our first shakes her head.
“Eighty percent of the districts reporting. Nabirye’s leading fifty-six to forty.”
Luce is wiping moths’ wings off her boots, smearing dusty color on her cheeks. She laughs and laughs.
Nabirye flies us to another city.
Aliette de Bodard’s Empire has been ripped asunder. Rebels have taken or destroyed all the other numbered planets of the galaxy and are approaching the First Planet. It is a time of betrayal and treachery; there is no way to tell who the true enemies are. But the last of the mindships still has a mission, one that requires a warrior.
The Days of the War, as Red as Blood, as Dark as Bile
Aliette de Bodard
In the old days, the phoenix, the vermilion bird, was a sign of peace and prosperity to come; a sign of a virtuous ruler under whom the land would thrive.
But those are the days of the war; of a weak child-Empress, successor to a weak Emperor; the days of burning planets and last-ditch defenses; of moons as red as blood and stars as dark as bile.
When Thien Bao was twelve years old, Second Aunt came to live with them.
She was a small, spry woman with little tolerance for children; and even less for Thien Bao, whom she grudgingly watched over while Mother worked in the factories, churning out the designs fo
r new kinds of sharp-kites and advance needle ships.
“You are over pampered,” she’d say, as she busied herself at the stove preparing the midday meal. “An only child, indeed.” She didn’t approve of Thien Bao’s name, either—it was a boy’s name that meant “Treasure from Heaven,” and she thought Mother shouldn’t have used it for a girl, no matter how much trouble she and Father might have had having children at all.
Thien Bao asked Mother why Second Aunt was so angry; Mother looked away for a while, her eyes focused on something Thien Bao couldn’t see. “Your aunt had to leave everything behind when she came here.”
“Everything?” Thien Bao asked.
“Her compartment and her things; and her husband.” Mother’s face twisted, in that familiar way when she was holding back tears. “You remember your Second Uncle, don’t you?”
Thien Bao didn’t: or perhaps she did—a deep voice, a smile, a smell of machine oil from the ships, which would never quite go away. “He’s dead,” she said, at last. Like Third Aunt, like Cousin Anh, like Cousin Thu. Like Father; gone to serve at the edge of Empire-controlled space, fallen in the rebel attack that had overwhelmed the moons of the Eighth Planet. “Isn’t he?”
Those were the days of the dead; when every other morning seemed to see Grandmother adding new holos to the ancestral altar; every visitor spoke in hushed voices, as if Thien Bao weren’t old enough to understand the war, or the devastation it brought.
Mother had the look again, debating whether to tell Thien Bao grown-up things. “He was a very brave man. He could have left, but he waited until everyone had finished evacuating.” Mother sighed. “He never left. The rebel ships bombed the city until everything was ashes; your aunt was on the coms with him when—” she swallowed, looked away again. “She saw him die. That’s why she’s angry.”
Thien Bao mulled on this for a while. “They had no children,” she said, at last, thinking of Second Aunt sitting before the altar, grumbling that it was wrong to see him there, that he had died childless and had no place among the ancestors. But of course, the rules had changed in the days of the dead.
“No,” Mother said.
It was a sad thought, bringing a queer feeling in Thien Bao’s belly. “She can remarry, can’t she?”