by Alex Kirko
Blake cocked his head to the side. “Is this investigation confidential?”
“It would be best if you didn’t inform Miss Dorheftung in case she isn’t who she appears. You are dismissed.”
Blake got up, walked out of the office, and headed for the park where he had his next meeting. He had read about Lyndon Liun back in Hazy Meadows. The man was one of the more prominent Terra Nox scholars. He had published dozens of papers on the political structure of Old Earth and the possible reasons for the colonies being abandoned and the mother planet disappearing. But it seemed to him that Liun had found his new calling in lording his power over others.
Nat was waiting for Blake on a bench, looking at an artificial lake and feeding ducks. He sat nearby.
She said, “The ducks don’t belong on this planet. They get sick all the time, and we search for ways to keep them alive instead of letting them die out.”
He watched flares of red and blue dance along the coolant pipes in her suit. She didn’t move, but the energy she was expending on simply sitting spoke for itself. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.
“You’ll have to be more specific.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you wanted to die?”
She turned to him then, and there was something melancholic in the tilt of her head and the slouch of her mech’s soldiers. He heard her sigh. “I’ve lived a shit life, Drummond, but I don’t want to die. Otherwise I’d just take off the helmet in the middle of the street and be done with it. But the world I grew up in was ugly and cruel. Now it’s gone, and I’m as ugly and cruel as it ever was.” She paused for a second. “Then again, so are you. I saw how you didn’t even flinch when you killed that officer back in Mortenton. If hell is other people, and we push everyone good away, then I wonder: does that make us devils?”
They watched the ducks together for a while. Where everything in Seind had been smooth pastel under Republic rule, colors now appeared. People didn’t look complacent anymore. Some would walk with wide smiles, and some would drag their feet looking at this new city that lived around them. A construction crew was rebuilding a mall across the small park, and he saw that the design clashed with the surrounding towers, no longer a part of one plan.
“You have your team, Nat,” he said. “And you aren’t cruel. You may be ugly under that helmet though.”
A group of children entered the park, laughing and chasing each other. This was new too. Children had been hidden in rearing centers before. Now they no longer had to play in isolated yards, eat with professional teachers, and see their parents only on weekends.
“You are a good man, Blake,” she said.
“I’m afraid I don’t share your faith in me.”
“The Council is building up forces nearby. Maybe they are planning a counterattack, maybe they want to intercept us before we take another city. What’s important is that they’ll bring scientists, engineers and medics. Will you help my team nab a couple?”
“Very no-nonsense,” said Aileen. “I like her.”
Blake said, “What kind of offer do you have?”
“They are setting up the chamber nearby as we speak. It will take a week or so.”
“Shouldn’t be that complicated to plug it in.”
“When we got it out of Mortenton, we damaged some of the interface. Katherine Lind is taking care of it, and she says it needs recalibrating.”
“I could help,” he said.
“No offense, Blake, but you are a mech engineer. We need a researcher who has worked on intact regeneration chambers before, and luckily for us, the Council is bringing several people here. They are your ticket to freedom.”
He felt something caustic and hot bubble up in his throat, and the suit felt stifling. Blake looked at the children, playing hide-and-seek among the bushes, and his fingers twitched. “Those weren’t the terms,” he said.
She laughed for the first time since they had met. It was a deep, rolling sound. “Don’t worry. As soon as the chamber is online, you will be healed. There is no guarantee it will work properly though, not without somebody more familiar with the technology.”
Evasions and half-truths. He knew that the chances he would be hurt during regeneration were minuscule because of all the safeguards, and he knew that they knew.
She said, “What’s perhaps more important is that if you do this for us, there will be no going back. The Federation is willing to make you a lieutenant in our forces.”
“Is this how you promote people? Grab a guy, let him do something reckless, see if he survives?”
“Lankershire is churning out Ascended a hundred a week. We need experienced officers, even if they are mech pilots. They’ll be promoting me after this too.”
Blake shook his head. “I’ll need to think about it.”
“Remember Lankershire. Remember what the Council was willing to ignore just to preserve their precious status quo.” Nat stood up but didn’t leave. “Blake, because of you my people survived what was supposed to be a suicide mission, so I’ll be honest. Chances are, the regeneration chamber will work just fine, and you’ll be able to join the Federation as a citizen, but we’ll never trust you enough to let you in the military. I can see it in you, you know. The ambition. Completing this mission is your chance.”
Blake watched the graceful assassin mech walk away and wondered what Nat looked like under it. Unlike other sealed Federation soldiers he had seen, she never took off her helmet, at least not in front of him. For some reason, he imagined short brown hair and haunted green eyes. She probably didn’t look anything like that.
Blake spent the rest of the day watching the rebuilding effort. The Federation had pulled the old construction cranes out of hibernation, and the giant machines attacked the ruins left by the battle for the city. Robots took collapsed metal beams and straightened them out with sheer strength. They fused plastic with lasers mounted on their arms and passed it to other machines. Before his eyes, a crew of twenty managed to rebuild almost a tenth of a mall in three hours. They would soon run out of buildings, but not before the Federation or the Council demolished some other place.
He messaged Tara, and she agreed to meet.
The sun lit up the cloudy sky in red, and Blake walked into his favorite bar in Seind. Will’s was mostly empty this early in the evening, and the few patrons were settling in for the long haul. On tables were beer, light snacks, and holographic projectors. Music blasted from all sides, bouncing off the walls and ceiling, making his suit vibrate with the beat. A group of five danced in a corner. He recognized them. There used to be eight.
The music cut as soon as he sat at the bar. The stool creaked but held. He said, “Hello, Will. Glad you didn’t run.”
“Blake? Like hell I would leave my bar behind. What are you doing here in your suit? Or in Seind?”
“Long story, Will. I’ll tell you if I survive this mess. The suit . . . can’t take it off, I’m afraid.”
Will pulled a bottle from under the bar. Blake heard the soft whirring of servos that accompanied the movement. The bartender rubbed the right side of his neck while he poured Blake a drink.
“How are the scars?” asked Blake.
“You know how it is. With all this damn commotion, they smart worse than they have in years. Even right after that crazy kid got me with a plasma knife, I felt better.”
Blake clasped Will on the shoulder and squeezed, for once not afraid to crush flesh with his metal fingers. The artificial muscle was hard like stone.
He said, “I keep telling you to find yourself a masseuse. Your implants will lock up if you keep going like this.”
“Don’t need a doctor, Blake, as long as I have liver regeneration meds. Now take your drink.”
“I can’t take off the helmet.”
“You don’t need to. It’s alcohol diluted in saline along with some light narcotics. Tastes and smells horrible, but you can safely inject it. Convincing your AI is on you, though.”
“Thanks.”
He stepped away, and music blasted at him as he went through the forcefield. Will’s burned enough energy for a building thrice its size, but that let it combine the bone-shaking experience of a nightclub with that of a lounge.
“So, Aileen.”
“No.”
Before Tara arrived, he had managed to convince his AI that a bit of a buzz wouldn’t hurt. There was a backup tank for drugs in the suit that he filled with the stuff, so Blake now enjoyed the best medicine for the mind. Tara walked in, grimaced when the sound hit her, and he waved her over. When she was close enough, he scanned her. There were no bugs.
Her expression softened when she stepped into the silent zone around their table, and she smiled. “Blake. Didn’t think I would hear back from you so soon.”
“I have something for you,” he said. “Single-malt whiskey with something extra special for an Ascended to feel the burn. If you ever buy a bottle, make sure you don’t give it to a human.”
“I have her mannerisms and speech patterns,” said Aileen. “Hijacking the feed. The camera above the bar is recording you two recounting how you met. It was at another bar, for the record. Hog’s Tusk. It was destroyed during the battle.”
Blake poured Tara a glass. The bottle looked small and frail in his metallic hands, but he managed not to damage it.
“It’s safe to talk now,” he said. “This place has sound bubbles around the tables, and my AI has just hacked the video feed from the only camera. Nobody should be listening in on us.”
Tara cocked her head, grinned, and downed the shot. Her eyes widened. “Damn, darling, you've been holding out on me. What is this stuff?” Tara held the bottle of ruby liquid to the light and leaned back to look at the rays playing through the glass.
He said, “I think it’s a chemical cocktail with dead human red cells thrown in to make your nanites less aggressive. It doesn’t keep long.”
She poured herself another one and sloshed it in her glass. Blake chuckled to himself. Their meeting looked like a date. He gave himself another injection of alcohol.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “Not that I’m not happy to see you, but I thought I’d be the one calling you.”
Blake craned his neck to look at the ceiling. “Tara, this has nothing to do with that. This has to do with you getting captured or killed in near future.”
The smile slid off her unfamiliar face, and she threw back a lock of red hair that was in front of her left eye. “Explain,” she said.
“What have you found out about Moira Heatsworth?”
Tara laughed and even that had changed along with her appearance. It was throatier, or maybe he hadn’t paid attention before. She could have been an actress. Blake wondered why she hadn’t become one. “Moira Heatsworth is deluded,” she said. “I had a younger sister named Moira once, yes, but she is long dead. Shipped off to Lankershire back when my family became noble. Nobody has seen her in over a century. This thing, she doesn’t have her face, voice, or manners. She is not her.”
He said, “Sort of like you are Mary right now.”
Tara narrowed her eyes and downed another shot. “You think you are so smart. No, she is not like me. I can feel it. I remember Moira. She was the kindest of us and the youngest, so my bastard of a father decided to skip her when applying for Ascension. We could have afforded it if we moved into a smaller house, but no, we needed to keep up appearances.” She was staring at the bottle. “My parents sent her to the Lankershire harem of all places, well knowing that women disappeared in that hole never to be seen again. I think this Moira might have known my sister while she was still alive. She certainly isn’t stingy when it comes to throwing resources at catching me.”
He clicked his tongue. It was convenient that Aileen had a library of sounds for situations like this. “You are underestimating them. Deputy Mayor Lyndon Liun is suspecting that you have ties to the Council, and you haven’t even bothered to put personal touches on your office.” He reached out and grabbed the hand she had on the table. He could wrap it with his two fingers. “Tara, you know they’ll catch you. The security here is only getting better. More soldiers come in every day, they are repairing the neglected city cameras, and a team of hackers is working on recovering the files lost during the invasion.”
She wasn’t smiling anymore, just tapping her fingers on the plastic table in the rhythm of a waltz. One-two-three, one-two-three . . .
She asked, “They talked to you. Who?”
“Lyndon Liun. The guy I mentioned. Researcher of everything Old Earth in the past, paper-pusher now.”
“I think I met him—a right creep. Did you see the scales? What kind of fuck-up do you think happened during his Ascension?”
“All the Freefolk are like this, Tara. They devour animals and take their traits.”
“Yuck.”
“Bullshit. You didn’t get your current looks by staring at somebody’s photo. Changing appearance, by the way, is something only the Freefolk should be able to do. So in a way it was your Ascension that went wrong.”
“What did you tell this Lyndon guy?”
“I may have mentioned we hooked up from time to time. On nights when I felt more reckless than usual.”
“And how did I feel about it?”
He would have blinked at her. “Excuse me?”
“How did I feel about sleeping with a mech pilot?”
“Well, I may have portrayed you as a mech groupie, so, I don’t know, excited? Not like it matters now. Being out of the suit for more than half an hour won’t end well.”
They drank some more. Blake pressed a button on the table, and music slipped into their private space a bit. It was, however, different from the drum beat that played outside. Woodwinds and strings always made him relax.
“I thought about it,” she said. “Just giving up on all this spying idiocy and going back to the capital.” She fidgeted and looked to him as if she needed his approval.
He said, “Well, that’s what my plan would be. Your cover won’t hold forever, and you say the mayor is hunting you personally.”
“We could go together,” she said.
He was feeling the effects of the alcohol now, which was probably why he didn’t pick up right away on a yellow-eyed man entering the bar and glancing in their direction every two minutes. Tara sat with her back to the door, and Blake's suit didn't have lips to read, but it still sent spiders crawling up his spine.
“Stay casual. We are being watched.”
Her shoulders stiffened for a second, but she immediately relaxed and stretched, popping the joints in her shoulders and neck.
She said, “How about we continue at my place?”
“Sorry?”
“Is your mission still top-secret? I don’t think so. It would be only natural to meet your mech-obsessed girlfriend and tell her all about it to impress her.”
“Listen—”
She stopped him by laying her right hand on top of his. For the first time, he saw fear in her eyes. “Darling, I promise I won’t eat you, but I am fucked if you don’t go with me. With the story they have, it would be strange for us to meet somewhere with good security and just talk. Please.”
The worst thing was that she was right: it was his fault, but the suit . . . the risk was just too high, especially when he was so close to getting a cure.
“Being locked inside me doesn’t have to define you, Blake,” said Aileen. “We beat your body once, and we will do it again. Besides, she can drag you down with her if she gets caught.”
He rose, and gave Tara his arm. He could feel himself wobble a little, and it wouldn’t do.
“Aileen, give me another gram. I can’t do this on a sober head. And I authorize the suit computer to seal me back into the suit if something happens.”
“I told you to live your life,” she said. “Should have expected you to turn my advice into something like this. I’ll try to keep you alive, as always.”
He paid the tab, and they wen
t outside and underground to take the rapid transport system to her place. On the way, he happily spilled how he was captured by the Federation, and how there were these Ascended with animal traits, and how he and a bunch of other mech specialists robbed Mortenton to steal something for the war though he didn’t tell her what. Before he knew it, they were in front of the door to her apartment. He switched the scanner on and detected a camera in the same spot above the entrance that the Federation used at his place.
Aileen said, “You know, it just occurred to me that she can kill you and try to use that to buy her way into Republic’s higher ranks.”
“I don’t think they value me enough for that to work,” he said to her. “But it is an idea.”
The door hissed open, and she led the way inside. As Blake entered, his suit blocked for a moment the field of vision of the bug he detected above the lintel. Time seemed to slow down, and his eyes were drawn down the curve of Tara’s back and back up again, to that spot under her left shoulder blade that would lead to the heart if stabbed. His hand reached for the dagger on his right side, and he remembered how those two Ascended in Mortenton had fought, and how good Tara was in close quarters, and that it was her apartment. He let his arm go limp and heard the door thud shut behind him.
He sat on her bed and heard it creak with every movement his mech made. Tara sat next to him and brushed her fingers across the metal on his chest.
He asked, “You know I don’t feel it, right?”
“M-m-m. How about now?”
Her fingers tried to dig into the armor, and he felt it this time—the insistence in her movements. He said, “My AI says it’s alright to fool around a little, but she has always been crazy like that.”
She swung her legs and moved into the lap of his mech. The bumps of his knee joints and plasma thrusters must have been spikes to her, but Tara didn’t show it. She said, “It's a scam.”
“What is?”
“Being Ascended. Yes, there are perks, but we can’t have what you normal people have. I can’t access virtual reality.” She cupped the right side of his helmet. “I can't take a walk in the sun without feeling my skin burn off after half an hour. And I sure as hell can’t have a physical relationship without a lot of trust. Even with another Ascended.”