by L B Garrison
Space in the cockpit was tight, but he moved closer. “Just say it, Mandy.”
His body heat filled the space between them. Her eyes met his. “Fine. I don’t know how this will go. According to plan, I hope. But, if it doesn’t and I have to make choices or you have to—what I’m trying to say is I’m just one of many copies made of a girl who died long ago. We weren’t ever supposed to meet. You and Bailey are real—”
Cisco pulled Mandy into a gentle hug. “I’m not letting go. What I feel for you is real. That is worth fighting for and so are you.”
His breath warmed her skin and she melted a little.
The wisp circled around to make a final approach to the landing spot.
Mandy put her arms around Cisco. It was like being home, if only for a moment. Her lips trembled. Three little words full of possibilities, complications and wonder. Why couldn’t she just say them? Make the commitment.
Something moved beside them. They weren’t alone.
Mandy pushed Cisco away.
Shadows whirled. A face flashed by. A flicker of red hair. Mandy slammed into a marble column, sending broken fragments clattering through the darkness. The marble floor hit the side of her face. Rain thumped against the building’s roof.
The placement of the columns. The shape of the room. Even in the low light with her view along the floor, Mandy could tell, she had been teleported into the Senate Annex chamber. In the center of the chamber, glowed a cage made of translucent purple spikes. Shadows moved within.
Mandy jerked herself into a sitting position and scanned the hall. Someone was there.
Footsteps padded through the darkness, like an unseen predator. A familiar voice echoed in the dark. “After you bested Mother, I expected more from you. You wear Rin’s body, but you aren’t her equal. This is disappointing.”
“Atropos? Why did you bring me here? Why are you here?” Atropos should be waiting to assemble with the fleet. This was probably bad.
The footsteps stopped. “I’m here to divide you from your allies. Though the effectiveness of your assault seems doubtful.”
The first encounter with the enemy. “That doesn’t answer the real question and you know it.”
A chorus of voices resonated through the chamber. “So many resist me and are lost in the struggle. Rin could have been the answer, but she had too much of you in her. Atropos is the solution to this universal war.”
An icy tingle seeped down Mandy’s spine. She looked up toward the voices. Hundreds of humans hung from the high ceiling like stalactites, their bodies twisted and withered. Mandy had to concentrate to keep the bile in her churning stomach from creeping into her throat. A web of glittering quantum threads connected them in a network of some sort. Alex hung in the center. She looked whole, for the moment.
Images from across the tortured city swirled through the air and provided the only light. Among the pictures, hundreds of hexagonal pits displaced the ruined buildings, toppling them like dead trees. In the hollows lay dark manta-ray forms in various stages of completion. They were Mobius ships, like Rin, and there were so many of them.
One picture was a live feed of the wisp landing with Trident hovering above.
“You can see through the stealth field,” Mandy whispered. In an instant, everything had gone wrong. Her stomach knotted.
The image faded.
Thousands of tiny feet skittered through the gloom. Building weavers. They scurried over the quantum filaments, like web tending spiders in a child’s nightmare.
It knew where they were and had dozens of Mobius ships to bring against them, on top of its own mechanical creations. Everyone she cared about was in mortal danger and she had led them here. Panic rose inside her. Mandy let all the horror show on her face to make them think she had been broken, while gathering her legs beneath her. If she could catch them off guard, touch Alex and transfer the mind phage, this would all be over. Mostly. She could deal with Atropos afterwards.
In the images, multi-legged machines crawled over the buildings. Smaller machines flooded the streets, in an angry torrent. They swept toward the wisp.
Mandy jumped, reaching out to grab Alex.
Atropos, sheaved in a null field rammed into Mandy from below.
The null field burned. The impact drove Mandy off course. Her fingers missed Alex by less than an inch.
“No!” Fear squeezed her heart as she fell. In trying to save Alex, she might have lost everyone.
She slammed into the floor, with Atropos on top. Tendrils of pulverized marble filled the air.
Atropos smiled. “I don’t understand what you think you’ll accomplish, but I adore that look of despair.”
Atropos yanked Mandy up and tossed her, like a stuffed animal. With a jarring thud, Mandy smashed through a marble wall. She bounced and tumbled across the floor, landing on her stomach. Part of the roof collapsed. A heavy chunk of the architrave above the columns fell, crushing her against the floor.
Mandy clamped her mouth shut, muffling a cry. She took a ragged breath and dug her fingers into the floor, tearing gashes in it. She pushed against the tiles and tried to drag herself from under the multi-ton stone.
Shadows whirled. Atropos’ dark form filled the gap in the crumbling wall. Black lightning jumped from her body to splinter the stone around her. She slipped into the room with the deadly grace of a cat playing with cornered prey. “You should turn your pain perception down, but then it wouldn’t be as much fun for me, would it?”
Bugs swarmed at the edges of the darkness. Atropos held her arm to the side. An azure plasma bolt flared, sending the bugs skittering into the shadows.
Mandy had fought Razor in the forest, but Rin had to finish it. There was no Rin anymore.
The building rumbled, vibrating debris across the floor.
Atropos tilted her head to one side. “My other selves are launching against the Mobius fleet. The EC is outnumbered and outclassed. And you are boring. I had thought you would be a challenge, but no. Perhaps hunting your companions will provide better sport.”
Mandy stopped her struggling. Her face warmed and her heart beat fast. “You leave them alone!”
“Or what? Could it be even now, you are in denial? You are weak, Mandy. Weak, exceptionally unskilled and—”
Mandy skipped from under the stone and charged, bringing her fist back.
Atropos brought the plasma bolt up, but too late.
Mandy grabbed her arm. The plasma exploded against the far wall in a hail of blue sparks. She punched Atropos in the gut with all her strength, all her frustration. “And I hit like a girl!”
Atropos splintered the mahogany doors and bounced into the glass-walled legislative chamber.
Mandy wiggled her fingers. Her arm tingled from the punch. She ignited a null field and skipped into the chamber.
Atropos bounced and landed on her back in the main aisle. Mandy skipped in above her and came down with all thirty thousand metric tons of her mass. Their shields blazed. Atropos looked surprised as the force embedded her in the floor.
“Ha!” Mandy yelled.
Shadows fluttered. Atropos vanished, leaving Mandy standing alone in a hole in the floor.
Darkness moved beyond the glass walls. Mandy skipped to the ledge just outside the golden windows. An alpha strike from Atropos bisected the building. The glass behind Mandy shattered. Flames poured over her shield and threatened to push her from the ledge. Most of her weaponry was in her ship portion, but she was used to being human and hadn’t taken advantage of it.
Mandy leaped and spun her hull out of the elsewhere. She landed on the upper deck. Her shield blazed as she hurtled skyward and fired a salvo of hypervelocity shells at Atropos’ hull.
The impact drove Atropos down. Ricocheting shell fragments shattered glass across the lower half of the capitol building. A jingling golden rain of shards fell to the sidewalk below.
Artificial thunder echoed through the cluster of buildings as Mandy went supersonic. She re
formed the virtual particle drive field to keep her firmly on the deck and ran to the stern.
Atropos rolled sideways to pass through the outer ring of skyscrapers in pursuit.
Now what? They didn’t exactly teach strategic planning in high school. Or was it tactical planning? Misshaped buildings burred past. Her defensive shield tented the world a light mauve. Alex seemed immobile now. If Mandy could get a moment alone with her, she could implant the mind phage. Atropos was the problem. Mandy was going the wrong way. That was a problem too.
Possibilities spiked. Atropos skipped in above Mandy. Her null field pressed against Mandy’s. Lightening crackled at the interface between the flickering fields.
Mandy reinforced her defensive barrier, but it didn’t matter. The shields began to merge. A circular opening appeared where they met.
Hypervelocity rounds tore deep furrows in Mandy’s armor. She staggered. The pain was like skin ripping. She veered away, firing wildly with her upper guns.
Atropos followed, pouring emerald fire down on Mandy.
Mandy’s shields sizzled under the onslaught. She pushed probability beyond all reason. The cityscape twisted and popped. She reappeared half way across Artemis, trembling in the cold air. The capitol building lay the other direction. She had to get back. Somehow.
Around the capitol, brilliant white flashes left ghostly afterimages on Mandy’s vision. The rumble of explosions rolled across the city after each burst. The others were in trouble.
Mandy opened her dark energy capacitors. Whatever happened, she would need power for her main weapons and shields. Without it, she couldn’t even skip or used her primary drive. More than power, she needed a plan.
“Huh.” The purple-black drive-field crackled around her. Could that be the answer?
At Midgard, Alex had used a pulse to rarefy the local dark energy and stop Rin from using her Jinx engine. If Mandy could do that and hold enough in reserve to operate, she’d have a brief advantage over Atropos. About three hundred seconds worth, if she had the math right. Timing would be critical. Trident couldn’t be caught in the blast either. At least their defensive position was fixed. It should be easy to avoid swamping them with dark energy.
Mandy let her shield sputter and die. Atropos knew how to go around it anyway. The hypersonic wind whipped through her hair and threatened to rip her from the deck. It was dangerous, stupid even, but she couldn’t afford the power drain.
Atropos lined up behind Mandy. Energy spiked.
Mandy jerked the ship to the right. The sky spun. Desolate streets rush passed. The near miss lit the city with greens and hues of ultraviolet. The weapon’s volley rumbled like thunder. Heating the night.
The shadow of Atropos’ hull flashed overhead, skipping in and out of the pumpkin-colored clouds.
Atropos had to use low grade weapons to preserve the city. Otherwise, this might already be over. The capacitor was only half full and if Mandy wanted to finish this, she had to step up her game. She dove left and chose a new path at random.
“Why are you playing tag with Atropos?” Trident whispered.
Mandy spun around. The deck was empty.
“Trident? Can you hear me?”
“Duh, why would I ask a question, if I couldn’t hear the answer? Why is Atropos here?”
The buildings were smaller and further apart. Mandy had reached the fringes of the city.
“Atropos is helping the Kinderen.”
Trident’s image popped into focus next to Mandy. She had a butterfly hair clip. It was Eins. “I thought Atropos was here because of Pillado. This is lots worse. How’re we going to beat the Kinderen and Atropos?”
Mandy shifted her weight. “I’ve got an idea.”
She made a near right angle turn. Even with the powerful drive field, the three hundred G maneuver made Mandy skid on the deck. Dozens of blue flares spiraled towards her, trailing gray smoke and weaving with her erratic movements.
Mandy rushed the swarm of missiles.
Trident put her hands over her eyes. “I don’t like this idea. Shields, Mandy! Shields!”
“I got this.”
The cloud of Atropos’ missiles pulled into a compact group and spiraled towards them. Mandy rolled into the elsewhere. The world smeared and went black. The howling wind vanished. Her hull opened as if she were standing on top and inside all at once. Everything shifted when she turned, like a reflection in a funhouse mirror.
Mandy’s stomach wiggled in protest of the strangeness. Her movement relative to the real world was imprecise at best. Hopefully, she could sneak close to Alex, but it seemed nearly as likely that she would get lost in the middle of the planet first.
Eins’ image walked around, looking perfectly normal, though she wasn’t standing on anything. “You shouldn’t have your avatar and ship part in the elsewhere at the same time. It’s super dangerous, if you aren’t used to it. You could get lost or come out left-handed. That’s why we have EMPs, viruses and decoy drones to stop missiles.”
Rin really should have mentioned the drones. Mandy checked her location as best she could and sent the details to Eins. “Listen, I’m going to use a dark energy burst to starve Atropos’ Jinx engine. I can time it to minimize the effect on your position.”
Eins frowned. Her eyes flickered back and forth, as if she was speed reading.
Queasiness rolled through Mandy’s stomach. So much depended on this. “I need you to hold out ten minutes and be ready to leave when I bring Alex. Can you do that?”
Eins looked up at Mandy. “I think so.”
“Eins—”
“Yes. Definitely, yes.” Eins turned her face away. “You can depend on me.”
Within moments, Mandy would be in position and they would have to part ways. “Trident, I am sorry I got you into this.”
Eins wiped her eyes. “Pillado killed Rin. I couldn’t be on his side after that and he let me know how he feels too. In the garage, someone tried to trigger my mind phage. My father—he tried to execute me.” Eins took an unsteady breath. “We aren’t just machines.”
Mandy reached out to touch the girl’s shoulder.
Eins knocked her hand away. “I’ll cry when this is over. You have thirty-two seconds. I’ll stay to anchor you until you get back to common space.”
Mandy ran her fingers through her hair, a nervous habit she thought she had lost about a thousand years ago. The capacitor was full.
She rolled out of the elsewhere, into the shrieking wind and stinging rain. Not exactly where she wanted to be, but only a few miles off.
“Good luck.” Eins’ image dissolved.
Mandy was on her own.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
A
head and to the right lay the point Mandy needed to detonate the dark energy pulse to cover the capitol building. She adjusted course and accelerated.
A dark silhouette moved against the glow of the clouds. Atropos had already found her and veered in from behind. Luminous blue contrails bloomed from Atropos’ underside and arced towards Mandy.
Just a few more miles and they would be over the fountain that marked the detonation point. With her capacitor charged, Mandy had a little power to spare. She focused on the space between them. A dark hexagon formed, like a wall of tinted glass. The weapons slammed into the shield, casting stark shadows across the ruined streets. Mandy stumbled back. The fire intensified.
“You’re so easily distracted.”
Mandy whirled around.
Atropos stood on the deck, wind ruffling her short red hair and the sputtering plasma bolts in her hands.
Mandy formed a shield around her body and calculated the skip back to Alex.
“Inexperienced, as I said. That body isn’t you. The ship is.” Atropos fired both plasma bolts down into the deck.
Electric fire flashed through Mandy. She fell to the deck. Fragments of metal bounced across her armor to be swept away by the wind. Black smoke billowed from the wounds. She couldn’t think. Couldn�
��t finish the calculation. Rain sizzled on the hot metal.
The dry fountain passed below. Mandy’s shield fizzled.
Atropos ignited two more plasma bolts and sauntered toward Mandy. “I think the lesson bears repeating. This time in a vital spot. Yes?”
Mandy let go of the power she had gathered.
The dark energy burst through her, washing away the world. Not even numbness remained. In the void left by the pain, she finished the calculation and stood. At least she went through the motions of standing. It was hard to tell if she actually did. She skipped.
The world slammed back into focus. Sky and ground tumbled. The golden capitol building flashed by at regular intervals. Smoke trails spiraled behind her. With any luck, Atropos was stranded miles back with no energy to fuel her engines. The pain dulled to nausea. Mandy’s hull itched, where it had already begun to heal.
She folded her ship portion into the elsewhere, leaving her hurtling towards the building. The cold rain soaked her. Wind tore at her clothes. All the spinning and falling didn’t help her queasiness.
Mandy rolled into a ball and splintered a golden panel. She hit the floor rolling and unfurled to a standing position. The brittle sound of glass shards breaking on the tiles echoed through the legislative chamber.
Apricot colored lightning cast fleeting shafts of light through the darkness. Mandy ran up the aisle. If Alex stayed put, she would be through the broken doors in the main hall.
The building shook and dust fell. Glass shattered.
Mandy turned toward the windows. With a flash and a rush of pain, she went tumbling. Jumbled vistas of lightening and torn orange fabric whirled around her until she impacted with a support column.
Her head throbbed in time with her faux heartbeat. “Ow.”
Atropos held a chunk of wall four feet across by the twisted rebar spilling from one end. Her eyes narrowed. She swung the makeshift weapon and skipped across the room, bringing it down with a whoosh. Mandy jumped sideways. The chunk of wall exploded on the floor, debris clattering into the darkness.