by L B Garrison
Rin scanned the city. Near the northeast power station probabilities shifted. Jazz-mir.
Rin reached out, stirring possibilities in the clouds. Amber lightning fell on the remaining Kinderen. Billions of electron volts sizzled across its flickering shield. She leaped, landed on her upper deck and fired her main guns. Blazing emerald light lanced through the Kinderen’s shields.
In the distance, the top of Midgard burned. Debris tumbled down the sides of the tower. It would take five minutes for the wreckage to hit the ground. Anxiety squeezed Rin’s heart as she watched the last elevator burn. No one would be getting off Demeter.
“Mandy, I need the body.”
Mandy watched the second Kinderen fall. “Yeah, okay.”
Rin materialized above a collection of conical cooling towers and a jumbled of cubical buildings near the edge of Lake Veneer. One of the large Kinderen machines lay half buried in the molten parking lot at the power station’s edge. Jazz-mir hovered beside the buildings. Black smoke from the burning asphalt rolled along the underside of her hull and spilled into the misty noon air.
Hunters scrambled over the rooftops, darting among the pipes. Lightning flickered and the metal building shuddered in the thunder. Shadows troubled the water off shore.
Rin swung around to take up a firing position above the power station and cast her awareness across the battlefield. Fear came from the humans in the surrounding buildings and resolve from those in the power plant. Exotic matter moved in the lake where it shouldn’t be. Hunters leaped for the buildings toward Jazz-mir. Their dark forms would easily cover the ten meter gap.
Mandy crossed her arms and shivered in the cold. Fat drops trickled down her hair, turning it a dark shade of honey as if the weather could affect her image. “In the lake. They’re watching.”
Jazz-mir’s image stood next to Rin. “Do you feel them?”
Rin nodded. “Three signatures. Take out the diversion and follow my lead.”
The water off shore exploded. Three massive tick-tanks as large as the power plant rose from the lake. Their shields sputtered into existence as their arachnid bodies cleared the water. These machines were laced with exotic matter and real power.
Jazz-mir vaporized the leaping hunters with spheres of sapphire light and pivoted to face the water. Rin timed the pulse of the enemy shields and linked with Jazz-mir’s main guns. They fired alpha strikes of blazing emerald energy between the flickers of the defensive fields.
The blast sheared away half of one Kinderen’s body. It fell against a cooling tower. Whirling fan blades shattered, puncturing the cooling tower’s shell and sending shrapnel across the refinery, cutting lines and shattering skylights.
Thick, yellow coolant bled from the pipes and dribbled from the roof. The tower buckled under the Kinderen’s weight and the machine rolled onto the power plant, crushing the west end of the building.
Rin came about to fire at the next Kinderen and powered up her Jinx engine.
The other Kinderens’ fields blazed to full power, boiling the water.
Jazz-mir’s image grabbed Rin’s shoulder. “Pull back. We need to draw them away from the humans to—”
Jazz-mir’s telemetry went dead.
Rin’s insides twisted. The air rippled, becoming as unyielding as steel. Her head struck the deck in a blaze of light and pain. Smoke veiled the sky. A space-time weapon. Like the nebula ambush.
Rin soared. Her hull itched from the damage of the near miss.
At the bow, Mandy reached out to touch Jazz-mir’s frozen image. It crumbled into multicolored pixel dust.
Rin’s stomach churned. She struggled to her feet and staggered to the edge of her hull, knowing what she would find.
Jazz-mir’s smoldering hull rested on the fractured asphalt by a garden of bright yellow daffodils. Deep rippling distortions were folded into her rigid hull.
Rin’s next breath didn’t come. Rain thumped against her hull and her hair fluttered in the wind. All the details of the outside world, down to the path of individual atoms, were known to her, but inside all was cold and numb. What was wrong with her? She should feel something.
A mocha-colored arm protruded from beneath the wreckage. Rin clasped her hands over her mouth and gagged. Not what she expected. No memories of childhood, Jazz-mir’s loving touch or the smell of her hair comforted her. It was like being turned inside out. This was the first moment she had ever known, when Jazz-mir was not part of the world.
Mandy spoke, but Rin’s mind could not make sense of the sound.
The remaining Kinderen machines turned and waded into the lake. Shadows whirled around them as they prepared to leave.
Rin’s shallow breaths came quickly. The dizziness made her stumble. It had never been about bringing the shield down. This wasn’t a battle. It was an assassination. “On my head. It said this is my fault. Mine.”
Anger bubbled up inside, bursting from her lips. She clenched her fists and screamed. Black fire ignited the air. Reality burned, annihilating the ground and wilting the edges of the power station buildings. At least this was a familiar emotion. One she knew how to express.
The fire swept over one Kinderen. It staggered and boiled to mist. She reached for the other. Physical laws strained to the breaking point. The sky turn clear blue, then dark and airless. Reality fractured.
Something soft and warm with a will of iron wrapped around her. Mandy.
Rin pushed against her. “Let go!”
Mandy held on stubbornly, smothering Rin’s resolve with her own. “I can feel them, Rin. Like little candles all around us.”
Rin’s fingers dug into Mandy’s shoulder, eliciting a muffled cry from the slight girl. People. Millions of people with hopes, fears, lives and purpose.
The city’s shields flickered. Fuel and time had run out.
Mandy’s eyes bore into Rin’s soul. “Can you live with revenge?”
Shadows cleared and water splashed to fill the space left by the fleeing Kinderen.
In a moment of anger and weakness, Rin had overwhelmed the safeties and nearly shattered Demeter. The black fire died.
Her eyes didn’t work. They stung and the world blurred. The diagnostics checked out, but her chest ached so she could barely breathe and her labored breath bordered on sobs. “It hurts.”
Mandy held her. “I know. I know.”
Minutes passed and Mandy still held on. Rin shouldn’t allow this. Only Jazz-mir and Trident could touch her like this, but, just this once, she could let one more in.
With a fraction of her mind, Rin examined Jazz-mir’s corpse. The central portion of her hull seemed undamaged. Taking action could distract her. Keep her from feeling. She pulled away from Mandy.
“There may be something we can do.”
Rin folded her hull into the elsewhere and splashed onto the puddle strewn parking lot. Orion soldiers moved through the devastated landscape, escorting a handful of emergency vehicles and searching for Kinderen stragglers. Red and yellow lights played in the deep shadows. Rin used her stealth field to slip unnoticed among the humans.
Jazz-mir’s hull lay with her port space-time rudder driven into the garden and the other tipped skyward. She had probably been hit by intersecting space-time wave fronts. Rin slowed as she moved closer to the partially buried wing. A mocha-colored arm protruded from under the wreckage.
Rin trembled as she slid her fingers under Jazz-mir’s palm and lifted the soft hand. The warmth was gone. It was her touch Rin would miss most of all.
Rin took a shaky breath. These couldn’t be normal thoughts, but how would she know? When the Kinderen destroyed Einstein-Rosen, she had been consumed by anger, but with Jazz-mir’s loss, it was a struggle just to stand. She laid Jazz-mir’s hand down. Gathering herself, she leaped and landed on Jazz-mir’s tilted upper deck.
Rin knelt and touched the cold quantum armor with her palm. Static crackled as unlikely probabilities increased and random events began occurring in the exotic ceramic.
/> Silently, Rin trembled in the light drizzle. Rain dripped from her bangs. Mandy knelt beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulder.
Rin stared at the fractures multiplying in the armor. She didn’t trust herself to look at Mandy. “I’m a weapon. I don’t know how to grieve.”
Mandy’s warmth seeped through Rin’s uniform. “There is no wrong way and you’re doing fine.”
A status update alerted Rin that the program had completed, giving Rin the power to take her body back and kill Mandy. She ran her tongue over her dry lips. The touch of someone familiar dulled the ache in her chest. “Stay with me a moment longer. Please.”
Mandy touched her head against Rin’s. “Where am I going to go?”
In seconds, the armor aged trillions of years. A circular area a yard in diameter crumbled and fell away. The smell of new and burnt plastic drifted from the dark interior. Rin slipped from Mandy’s embrace and dropped inside.
The only light came from the opening and a few scattered blue fiber optic cables. Rin crawled through warped hexagonal supports and around conduits of various sizes. Her breath quickened in to desperate gasps each time she squeezed through a tight spot. The air turned thin. She didn’t even need oxygen, but couldn’t disregard the illusion. Normally, narrow spaces would not affect her. But this was anything but normal. She was burrowing through Jazz-mir’s corpse.
At last she came to an open area. In the center, was a tube one foot long and five inches wide with glowing blue etchings on its sides. A taunt web of black strands held it in place.
Her heart somersaulted. “It’s safe. I was so afraid.”
Mandy crawled into the space. “What is it?”
“It’s Jazz-mir, her personality and memories.”
Rin moved her hands between the strands and twisted the cylinder free, the web fell away.
Mandy stared at the tube. “It looks so light.”
Tenderly, Rin stroked the warm casing of Jazz-mir’s mind. “How much do you think a soul should weigh?”
“Not the kind of response I would expect from you.”
Rin ached with each breath. She touched her chest. “I have no damage. My pain reception is dialed down, but it still hurts.”
Mandy scooted closer. “Jazz-mir was a piece of you. Now she’s missing. That’s what you’re feeling.”
Rin drew an unsteady breath. “Why do we have to be this way? Why can’t we be simple machines? Unfeeling things?”
Mandy frowned and looked to the side. “I think it’s because intelligence requires emotion. You’re not broken. This is the way it should be.”
A reality spike washed over the planet. Rin glanced up. Only one ship had that much mass.
“Will it hurt much?” Mandy asked.
Rin’s eyes were drawn to Mandy’s. How much did she understand?
Mandy turned her back. “You have to take up the slack when I fight. When you fight, I’m in the way. I’ll always be in the way and there are so many Kinderen. You can’t save the world with me in your head and you can’t go home. You have to take care of yourself.”
Rin held Jazz-mir’s soul close to her. How could Mandy make such a sacrifice when Rin hadn’t been able to? “Because I’m a flawed copy?”
“What?”
“Mandy, I—”
“It’s no one’s fault. It was incredible to see the future and to meet such amazing people—even you.” Mandy looked at the ceiling. Her laughter sounded like soft bells. “Cisco and Bailey are safe as they can be on Demeter. You have to do the rest. Don’t feel guilty, because I’m asking you to do it for everyone’s sake. Just get it over with. I don’t want to think about it too long.”
Rin sat nibbling her lip in the suffocating darkness for a moment, until she was sure her voice wouldn’t tremble. “May I speak?”
Mandy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Is this the part where you tell me it’s been a privilege and an honor?”
“I wouldn’t lie to you, Mandy.”
“And I just was starting to like you.” Mandy’s lips flattened into a straight, thin line. She sniffled. “I’m trying not to cry and you’re not taking this seriously.”
Rin crawled around so they were side by side. “I apologize. I don’t do emotions well. It’s not my thing. Or next to my thing. When I’m uncomfortable, I default to humor instead.”
Mandy looked sideways at Rin. “Me too. I never realized how annoying it is.”
“Back to topic, I’ve been thinking about this and I have a plan. Our history together is spotty, I know, but can you trust me?”
Mandy cocked one eyebrow. “Plan? You aren’t just saying that to catch me off guard, are you?
“I’ve been clear that I intended to kill you, but when I could and you ask me to, I didn’t.”
Mandy rolled her eyes. “Fine. Points for that. What’s the plan?”
Rin looked at the cylinder as if Jazz-mir could lend her strength. “We have to get to the carrier first. I need to be repaired and rearmed.”
Rin crawled back to the opening, clutching the cylinder to her body. The light coming from the breach was much dimmer. She dragged herself into the stormy air. A black crescent, nearly a third of the size of the city, hung in the sky. A cloud of black fighter drones swarmed around the carrier.
A lithe, black-haired girl stood, crushing a few surviving daffodils beneath her boots. She stared at the canister and offered no help. “Tell me Rin, why it is that whenever there is a mess to be cleaned, you are at its center?”
Rin climbed to stand on Jazz-mir’s hull. “Hello, Mother.”
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
R
in walked among the floating graphs and schematics detailing the progress of her repairs. Her boots echoed on the metal of Mother’s observation deck. She stopped. One messy jumble of ocean colored lines displayed her mental state. This was what she looked like naked. No. Worse than that. It displayed her soul for any passerby to judge.
She reached out, her fingers rippling through the glowing tangle. No darkness hid in the flowing colors. No sign of the hollow ache where Jazz-mir used to be. So far, she had hidden Mandy from the mind scans by shifting her location. That couldn’t continue for long, but it should buy them enough time to complete the repair and resupply procedure. More troubling was Admiral Pillado’s absence.
“So, this ship carries all of you and cares for you too. That’s why you call her Mother, isn’t it?” Mandy’s image stood between the red padded benches and pressed against a transparent plastic panel.
In the cavernous ship hangar below, machines outfitted the Tridents for war. On the far side, pinks and greens played across a security membrane. Beyond that spun two worlds locked in eternal union by gravity, the lightning speckled globe of Demeter and its craggy orange moon, Hades.
Rin moved to stand between the blue clutter and Mandy. “We call her Mother because her name is Nyx. Mother of night and shadow.”
Mandy’s breath fogged the plastic. “Oh. That doesn’t sound ominous at all. Rin? How are you holding up?”
Disconnected. Unsettled. No word seemed right. Rin’s stomach stayed tense and she didn’t know what to do. At least war had an ending. This had none. “Repairs are nearing completion. Next, munitions supplies will be restocked.”
Mandy turned and leaned against the window with her arms crossed. “You can’t hide from yourself. Just talk. Express what you feel. It doesn’t have to make sense. I’ll listen.”
Rin sat on the bench beside Mandy and rubbed sweaty palms across her thighs. “I’m a super weapon. My childhood training was more intense than the others. The simulations were so real and I killed over and over until I was numb.”
Rin closed her eyes against visions of fire and blood, but her memory was too perfect. She knew the details of every face, real and simulated. “Jazz-mir was my light. She pushed back, when they pushed too far. She kept me sane. Kept me from breaking like Atropos. I feel empty without her. Like there’s nothing inside.”
The cushion beside Rin squished as Mandy settled onto it. A warm hand slid over Rin’s. She tensed at the simulated skin to skin contact, but didn’t pull away.
“Is that how losing Alex felt?” Rin asked.
Mandy squeezed Rin’s hand and touched her head against Rin’s. “Yes, but I only knew her a short time. Mom, Daddy, my friends and my whole world is gone. Hell, I’m dead. There are so many people, so many pieces missing. That’s why I’m sorry you lost Jazz-mir. Because I understand and I don’t want you to go through it too.”
Deep shadows nibbled at the corners of the dark room, where the flickering colors of the displays didn’t reach. The base pulse of Mother’s systems thrummed in the walls. Jazz-mir was gone, along with the place she had called home, but this was still Rin’s era. How is it possible for Mandy to lose her whole world and still have sympathy for strangers?
In the shadows of Artemis, Rin had known how much Mandy had lost, but didn’t care when she delivered the news. The shivering girl had been an obstacle to be overcome, to break. So many regrets. A breathless ache crept across her chest. She should apologize or console Mandy.
Rin didn’t trust herself to speak. What did people of Mandy’s time say to comfort a loss? She searched the Q-net, sifting through its depths and bumped into pieces of Mandy’s life. Pictures of childhood, of the apartment she shared with Sage. A video of Sage and Landin in a pointed hat at a New Year’s Eve party. Images counted down until midnight. This was two years after Mandy’s final scan.
Landin made a clumsy attempt to swat the camera away. “Why are you videoing this?”
“Duh, because it last longer.”
Rin gasped.
It was Mandy’s voice.
Mandy nudged Rin with her shoulder. “What?”
Rin jumped from the bench and spun around. “It’s you.”
“I’m lost. What are we talking about?”
“I only had your memories up until the last scan. We all do. I never thought. Didn’t imagine.”