by L B Garrison
“Again. What?”
“You didn’t die that night!”
Mandy sat rigid as stone on the bench, her skin bloodless. “That can’t be.”
“Mr. Moto saw to your care. It took months, but you recovered. You became a chemical psychiatrist, married a man named Claud, had three children, seven grandchildren and retired to a cabin by a lake.”
Mandy sat with her eyes glistening in the dim light and her hands clasped over her mouth. “I had a life after all. That bastard Moto was good to his word.”
Tingling, dizzy, light as zero-G. Warm and pleasant. Sensations moved through Rin as she touched Mandy’s life. “There are pictures.”
Mandy dropped her hands. “Please.”
Still pictures and looped videos filled the room, mingling with Rin’s graph and banishing the shadows like a sunny day. She added captions to provide context.
Mandy walked through a life she never lived.
Rin stayed by her side through memories of weddings, Christmases, vacations and a smattering of professional awards. “When you were thirty-six, Daddy sought you out. Mom and Daddy never remarried, but the grandchildren eventually brought them together. Here. This is Moto and you in front of the Happiness Foundation you co-founded.”
Rin stopped next to one crowded image, filled with young adults and laughing children clustered around an elderly couple. The woman’s smiling eyes were the same striking emerald green as Mandy’s.
“This is my favorite,” Rin said. “Three generations together.”
“Strangers from my past.” Mandy reached out and touched the image of an older version of Sage and herself at a birthday party. The cake had fifty-one candles. “We really were friends for life.”
“You helped many people and had a life that mattered. Human or machine, that’s all we can ask for.” Rin reached out to touch Mandy, but hesitated.
Rin let her arm drop.
“Oh, I wish you’d stop being shy.” Mandy grabbed Rin and drew her into a hug. Mandy’s grip tightened and Mandy’s body shook. Was she crying?
Rin put her arms around Mandy. “I’m sorry. I thought you would be happy.”
“I am. Shut up and let me process.”
“Okay.”
Rin shuffled through the pictures for a few moments while Mandy’s sobs ebbed. In his youth, Claud had the same beefy build and wavy hair as Landin and Cisco. There seemed to be a pattern. No. It wasn’t their appearance, but kindness and a sense of humor they all had in common.
Mandy wiped her eyes. “I thought I screwed up. Let them fool me and wasted my chance at life. You can’t know how much this means to me, but I’m sorry your bad girl panties won’t fit anymore.”
Data traffic spiked. Mother disseminated coded orders to the other ships without including Rin in the transmissions. A level two kill-code shut down Rin’s ability to use her Jinx engine within Mother.
Pillado knew about Mandy.
“We have to go.” Rin turned to the glass window.
Atropos appeared in a burst of shadows, blocking her path.
“You were always his favorite.” Atropos reached to trace Rin’s jaw with her fingers. “Always everyone’s favorite. Despite the tough rhetoric, he hesitated. I had to stroke his anger and convince him that the only way to get his little girl back, was to hurt her. They’re coming to reboot you.”
Rin knocked Atropos’ hand away. A reboot would overwrite Rin’s memories and kill Mandy. Rin shifted, ready to fight. “I’ll skirmish with the others, but Jazz-mir wouldn’t want us to battle.”
“Jazz-mir is dead. But you were there, weren’t you?”
The words punched Rin in the gut.
Shadows flickered across the room, leaving eight freckle-faced girls in its wake. The leather clad Imps were the avatars for Mother’s squadron. “Enforcer Core Ship, Rin, you are ordered to report to maintenance bay four,” they said as one. “We will escort you.”
Rin calculated the distance to the window and Atropos’ reaction speed.
Atropos smiled. “I can see the plans behind your eyes. Will you struggle against fate?”
If Rin got far enough across the hangar, Mandy might have a chance to escape. Rin’s throat tightened. Another sensation she could thank the programmers for. “I’m sorry for what’s become of us.”
Atropos shifted to create an opening between Rin and the transparent plastic. “Entertain me.”
In a blur, Rin lunged for the window. It splintered and she dropped with the tumbling plastic shards to the deck fifty feet below. She hit the metal and surged into a full run. The deck blurred around her as she picked up speed, heading toward the security membrane and freedom at the hangar’s far end.
Mandy projected an image in Rin’s path. “Where are we going?”
Rin grabbed her wrist as she passed. “Ange Noir.”
The hangar faded into swirling gray ash. Rin’s boots crunched the grit on the debris choked street. The heat of a burning school warmed one side of her body, while the frigid air of a nuclear winter stung the other. Mandy had slipped through her grasp.
“Dammit.”
There was only one place she could be, the memory’s focal point.
Rin slipped through the shadows of destruction. The Confederation was a utopia of sorts, but no one could leave. The separatists went so far as to break contact with the Q-net and that allowed covert genocide.
Christ’s Church stood on the corner of Union and 38th Street, a great domed building with walls made of white crosses and green stained glass. The last steps were the hardest. Every shallow breath of bitter air burned Rin’s lungs.
Broken shards of emerald glass reflected a child weeping on the cold stone steps. Her flight suit and face were grayed by ash. Black lightning flickered through her honey-blonde hair. In the final days of Ange Noir, she had never strayed far from the church.
Mandy was there, kneeling by the child. “This time I followed the crying sound. It’s you, isn’t it?”
Rin clutched her flight suit at the base of her throat, pulling it tight. This was the emptiness at the heart of her soul. “My task was done, cities burning, defenses shattered. Commander Leupold feared for my sanity and left me alone. For two days I wandered the ruins I created, while Special Forces hunted down survivors. Then I found this place.”
Rin climbed the steps to stand beside Mandy. She caressed one of the rough concrete crosses that formed the dividers between the stained-glass panes. “Do you remember the stories Mom told us at bedtime?”
Mandy looked up from the child. “Bible stories? I’m not sure I believe that stuff anymore.”
“I do. Otherwise this is all so pointless. I didn’t know what else to do, so I prayed for the survivors’ safety, but God’s grace isn’t for machines and when we left, no human life remained.”
Tenderly, Mandy stroked the girl’s hair. “I’m sorry, Rin. I should have been here for you.”
Rin shuddered as Mandy touched the girl. “I think you weren’t, because I wasn’t ready to listen. Not before.”
Mandy stopped and laid her hand on the child’s heaving shoulders. “Then, Jazz-mir shouldn’t have allowed this.”
Rin took an unsteady breath. “She never knew the details. The operation was beyond black ops and even if I could have told her, I wouldn’t. In part, I did this to save my own life from the mind phage, it’s true. But a gun doesn’t choose where it points or when it fires. Who it kills. If I can’t be a weapon, I’m nothing. It should have been different this time, but it wasn’t. I’m broken and I didn’t want Jazz-mir to know.”
“I’ve seen you and Jazz-mir together. She wouldn’t have cared. You shouldn’t have kept this inside all this time, but I guess the question is why are you telling me now?”
“I want you to understand my choice, so you can move on.”
“Move on?”
“Outside, in the real world, time is passing slowly, but it’s still passing. I’m only half way across the hanger. You’ll ha
ve to make it the rest of the way. Escape Nyx and the others.”
Mandy stood. “What the hell are you saying?”
“They’re going to use the mind phage. It’s over for me, but you have a chance. They can’t control you.”
Mandy glanced at the child. “I had a life. It should be me. It should always have been me. I’ll surrender.”
Rin closed her eyes. “I can’t survive this, but I’ve isolated you from my systems so you will. Ironically, I did it trying to murder you.” Rin sighed. “I’m tired, Mandy. Tired of having the mind phage, like a gun against my head every day. Tired of all this on my conscience. Terrified, I might do it again. This is the atonement for my sins.”
The world rippled. On the horizon, buildings crumbled. The pieces fell into the stormy sky, leaving a crackling white fog to fill the empty spaces.
“I’m going to hug you now.” Mandy pulled Rin into an embrace.
The emptiness rolled towards them. Rin couldn’t remember how she met Jazz-mir. Her smile.
Mandy wrapped her arms around Rin. “I don’t know if I can do this without you.”
Tears fell on Rin’s shoulder. Rin pulled her closer. The rhythm of Mandy’s heart echoed her own. Someone had held Rin like this once, but she didn’t know who. “I’ve trained you as well as I could in the time we had. I have faith in you. When you have doubt, remember that.”
The streets fell away. A white blizzard consumed the world, leaving the three of them and the church.
The girl stared up and wiped her eyes. “Are you afraid?”
Rin reached down. “No. We’re going home.”
The girl wrapped her small fingers around Rin’s and smiled.
A numbing white static took Rin’s breath.
Mandy dropped to her hands and knees on Mother’s amber deck. The murmuring in her mind was gone.
“I can’t feel her . . . not at all,” Mandy whispered. Tears darkened the metal deck.
Admiral Pillado’s image smoothed nonexistent wrinkles in the folds of his black and green uniform. “Rin? No, it can’t be. After the mind phage, you should be incoherent. Take the schism.”
Hands seized Mandy’s arms and pulled them back. She winced at the burning pain in her shoulders. More hands grabbed her and forced her head down to the deck. Mandy struggled, but there were so many of them. Not far away, she heard children sobbing. Trident.
Atropos leaned close. “You are so disappointing.”
“Take her to maintenance.” Pillado walked away.
Hands yanked Mandy to her feet and dragged her across the deck. Mandy was going to die again and Rin had given her life for nothing. “No.”
Pillado turned, his eyes darting across her face. “What did you say, ship?”
“I said, no!”
Mandy focused all her might into one flash of her shield. Metal vaporized. The avatars holding her were thrown across the deck. She stood. Someone grabbed her from behind and spun her around. Mandy had just enough time to glimpse Mother’s tan face and black hair before a fist slammed into her midsection, sending her hurtling across the hangar.
She smashed into the far wall. The deck spun. Pain throbbed through her body. Mother charged. Mandy braced for the impact and wished she could be anywhere else. In a flurry of shadow, she found herself in the center of the hangar.
“Hey, I never did that before,” she gasped.
Mother’s fist was embedded in the crumpled wall where Mandy had been. Alarms wailed. The hangar lights faded to red. Mother jerked her fist free. She gathered her wayward black hair and flipped it over her shoulders.
Mandy backed away. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Mother smiled. “You won’t.”
With a sweep of her arm, Mother threw a wave of burning plasma at Mandy.
Mandy threw out her hands and brought her shield up. A blinding flash lit the hangar as chaotic probabilities quarreled. The pressure pushed Mandy back, but she didn’t give. The blinding light faded. Mother surged forward, faster than Mandy could follow.
Pain flashed. The hanger lights flickered by. Rin had mentioned something about reducing pain perception. Mandy really should have learned how.
She struck the deck and slid on her back. The unyielding surface turned soft. She reached her arms out as she sunk, panicking in the liquid metal. The floor rose and dragged her with it. The metal solidified with a crackle. She strained, but couldn’t move. It was like the table and chairs at Skylax. The deck could move and take shape.
“Time you understood the way of things.” Mother sauntered across the deck and grabbed Mandy by the chin.
Mandy couldn’t look away.
Mother squeezed till it hurt. “You are no machine, no warrior. I’m a predator and you’re just a fluffy bunny.”
Mandy closed her eyes and gripped Mother’s wrist. Probabilities spiked. “This bunny has teeth.”
Protons decayed. Mother’s wrist exploded in a flash of gamma rays. The blast shook the deck and threw Mother back. The deck holding Mandy dissolved.
The other avatars surged forward. Mother grit her teeth and stood, holding the smoldering stump of her right hand.
Atropos joined Mother. “Well, isn’t this fun?”
Mandy ran.
The other avatars closed the distance. Mandy pulled her hull out of the elsewhere and filled the hangar. Her mass drivers blazed, punching holes in the deck and sending a dozen ship avatars running. She jumped onto her upper deck. The hangar doors were closing. Shadows flickered and Mandy leaped free of Mother.
Demeter’s white sun was almost a light-year away and easily lost in the starry backdrop of the galaxy.
Mandy floated among icy debris and lost comets. A sparkling halo of frozen tears surrounded her and the limitless void filled her with loneliness. Alex, Rin, and even Jazz-mir were gone. The Kinderen had trapped everyone else she knew on Demeter. With the war escalating, the future seemed too frightening to contemplate.
She dropped to her frigid deck and pulled her knees to her chest. “My afterlife sucks.”
What could she do? She could barely hold her own in her human form and as a ship, she would be nearly helpless. Rin at full power might make a difference, but Rin wasn’t here. She was a jigsaw of disassociated pieces inside Mandy.
“God, that’s so creepy.”
She laid her head against her knees. She had lost one world and now she might lose another.
Pieces? Like a jigsaw.
Mandy bolted upright, sending frozen tears glittering into the eternal night.
“Pieces,” she screamed to the mute stars.
She would need help, but could she get there? The knowledge Rin had left behind was slippery and easily lost, like trying to remember where she left her car keys. After several attempts Mandy managed to actuate her stealth field. Cloaked in space-time, she moved down the gravity well, back towards Demeter and the light.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
M
andy plunged from orbit. White fire blazed around the edges of her hull. Sweat trickled down her face as she stared through the misty darkness and concentrated on holding the stealth field together. It was so hard, like making a grocery list while picturing the Statue of Liberty and she still had seventy miles to go.
Thoughts of the coming night gnawed at her guts and screwed with her focus. Soon, the EC and the Kinderen would face off and neither seemed to care who got caught in the middle. She tightened her fists. Rin should have survived, not her. This was Rin’s element.
But that wasn’t how it happened. So, for the sake of everyone she still had left in this world, Mandy was going to war.
She punched through the low clouds. Far below, wind stirred ripples across the tree tops. The dim light rendered the ruby leaves black. The golden glow of Persephone’s Landing lay to the west.
Mandy stayed in stealth mode and rolled up her hull. She dropped. The crisp night air ran icy fingers through her hair. Leaves and small branches thrashed her skin. She broke th
rough the canopy. This body was nigh indestructible, but she had to grit her teeth against the fear of falling. The mud rushed to meet her.
With a muted thud, she slammed into the mossy ground. Feather covered starfish panicked and darted into the shadows. Mandy ran, covering miles in seconds. She slammed her foot down, ripping a furrow in the mud as she ground to a halt near a paved clearing. She walked to the edge of the woods. Orbital mirrors lit the clouds above, bathing the circular base with ghostly sunlight barely brighter than a terrestrial full moon.
The walls cast deep shadows. Silent machines moved through the dark perimeter, ever vigilant. She extended her consciousness and waited for a gap in the patrol pattern. When it came, she didn’t move.
“What if she says no?” Mandy whispered to the night. She frowned. What if she says yes and it doesn’t work? The gap came again.
Screw it.
Mandy dashed to the paved clearing and stood on the lawn next to the wall. In the shadows, the cool night breeze ruffled the grass. At one time the city had seemed welcoming, but her fugitive status changed that.
She jumped to the top of the wall. It was sixteen feet wide and covered with golden hexagonal shield emitters. Mite-sized security cameras drifted in the air. Her stealth field should protect her from detection.
A twisted path among burgundy plants led her to a four-story building. The white stucco and glass walls were unlike anything else she had seen on Demeter. She leaped to the building’s flat roof. Thunder grumbled in the sky above. Sitting on the damp tiles, she expanded her consciousness into cyberspace.
The civilian areas were open, while the military portion remained hidden from her. She could have pushed through the security, but there was no need. She found the ID tag she was searching for and smiled.
“The Misty Mood. In the middle of all this, she goes to a bar.”
Another rumble washed over the city. It wasn’t thunder, but a sonic boom and judging by the shape of the wave, it was a Mobius ship. Her time was short. She jumped from roof to roof, moving toward the multicolored lights of the entertainment district.
The hologram of a sparkling mauve jazz band played on the Misty Mood’s redwood patio. Mandy stopped on an adjoining rooftop. Echoes distorted the music.