by C. T. Phipps
Kristoph shook his head. “If it saves a half-credit, the government will destroy worlds. They see only dots on a screen and resources are always less than necessary. Which needs asteroid mines, farms, terraforming, toxin removal, bloodporn, backwork, and other ways for the poor to justify their existence versus draining the economy.”
“Who was trying to kill us?” I asked, uninterested in the squabbles of an ancient family of rogues.
Kristoph finished his champagne in one gulp. “Janice, probably.”
“Oh, bullshit,” Clarice said, growling. “Janice loves you. You’re her baby brother.”
“You’re her sister as far as Janice is concerned,” Kristoph said, snorting. He already looked a little drunk. “Even so, she’s apparently lost her love of you. Over and over, every day, she blames you for abandoning the family. For abandoning her and leaving the responsibility of running the Syndicate all on us.”
Clarice looked like she’d been struck. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying she never would have gotten involved with those Free Systems Alliance bastards if not for you.”
I rubbed the ear where the paper from Hiro rested. This was not good and would only make things worse.
“What is she doing, Kris?” Clarice asked, her voice low.
He took a deep breath. “Supplying arms, weapons, and diverting crews of convicts or debtors set for penal labor to be freed by the FSA if they meet the psychological criteria for joining up. She’s not the biggest creditor for the group but is one of the major players. The Chel and transtellars have been paying her well but it’s not enough for the risks involved.”
“Janice wouldn’t do that,” Clarice said, frowning. “She’s not stupid.”
“A cause is like a drug,” Kristoph said, wrinkling his nose. “Buddha knows we’ve sold enough of both to know the similarities. Plenty of the Syndicate raised objections to getting involved in politics but Janice has been ruthless in pruning away all opposition. The family table has fewer seats at the top.”
Clarice shook her head, clearly stunned by the news.
“What is it you want, exactly?” I asked, more than a little uncomfortable we were dealing with Janice’s subordinate rather than her. It seemed likely Ida had underestimated Janice and believed her to be doing any aid strictly out of profit. Then again, I’d only known the “real” her for three days and had no idea what was planned by her and what was bad miscalculation.
“I want you to help me plan a coup,” Kristoph said.
Clarice actually laughed and leaned back in her seat. “In what possible universe do you think I’d agree to that or would even be able to help?”
“We both have friends in the Commonwealth now,” Kristoph said, pouring himself a glass.
“You’ve been spying for them,” I said, understanding now why he had decided to contact us directly.
Clarice straightened up, clearly not expecting that.
“Yes,” Kristoph said, frowning. “Unfortunately, my contact has met with an unexpected end and I can’t tell who is compromised and who is not. Thankfully, I was able to get some datajacks to recover their files and learned quite a few secrets I’ve been able to parlay to protect myself.”
“Except for the assassination today,” I said.
“This was a warning,” Clarice said, shaking her head. “For him, rather than me. If Janice had wanted Kristoph dead-dead, he would be.”
“You overestimate her,” Kristoph said.
“You severely underestimate her,” Clarice said, staring. “What do you think we can do?”
“Janice has recently received a very large number of data files and research she is having the contents assembled for. There’s a massive gathering going on here today for when she’s going to pass it on to the Free Systems Alliance. They’ve got everyone there, including the Butcher of Kolthas.”
I did a double take.
So did Clarice.
“What?” I said, blinking. “Could you repeat that?”
“Count Cassius Mass,” Kristoph said, sneering. “One of those tank-bred disgusting mouth-breathing cousin-fucking Satanists. He and his wife have been staying at the Water Palace for the past week.”
I stared at him.
I opened my mouth, closed it, then just chuckled.
Clarice looked over at me. “Cass—”
I raised my hand, trying to process the fact my doppelganger was right next to us. I’d have considered it wildly unlikely if not for the fact I was being led around by the nose by not one, but two, of the Commonwealth’s spies.
“With all due respect, Kristoph, we have bigger issues than the family,” Clarice said, trying to regain control of the situation.
“What is more important than the family?” Kristoph said, his voice almost shrill.
“Cognition A.I.,” Clarice said.
Kristoph almost dropped his glass.
I barely heard her, though, because I was contemplating the fact I could meet up with my late wife once more. Zoe II, if I were to use her ridiculous appellation for herself, was almost identical to my sister. So much so that I had been in the same room with her, talked with her, and smelled her perfume, yet couldn’t tell the difference.
In part, it was one of the reasons why so many people hated bioroids. For the vast majority of human existence, mechs had been firmly on the other side of the Resemblance Valley, as it was called. Robots that looked cute and human-like were well-loved by the public, but those that came extremely close to humans, but weren’t quite right, were disturbing to the public.
Developers had assumed bioroids, which were identical in appearance and behavior to humans, would be accepted and, broadly, they were. However, for a significant percentage of humanity, that similarity was an offense. These Five-Percenters, as they were called, adopted draconian laws and committed violence against bioroids in hopes of making it clear they considered them inferior mockeries of man.
I was not one of them.
It was, intellectually, sick to contemplate spending time with a copy of Judith. To replace her like one might a tool which had been broken. Yet the absence in my heart was something that wasn’t intellectual or philosophical. Humans were selfish and needy creatures, to the point that just being able to talk with said copy was an astounding temptation. I wasn’t even threatened by my doppelganger, as much as I hated the concept of him, and wondered what it would be like to talk to myself of five years earlier. Maybe I could persuade him to turn from this path.
We were, after all, family of sorts.
“I need you to pay attention to what they’re saying,” Hiro’s voice spoke in my ear. It was a strange weird vibration I didn’t so much hear but feel.
I looked up and heard Kristoph mostly repeating the word bitch, throwing his glass against the wall, and swearing in a mixture of New Japanese and Albionese.
“You need to kill Janice and take the Cognition A.I. before it arrives,” Hiro said, his voice very low.
Still in pain from my injury, I whispered. “No.”
Neither Clarice nor Kristoph seemed to notice.
That was when my entire body felt like it was on fire. Strangely, I lost complete control of it and simply trembled while swearing, unable to even shake my hand. It was enough to make me want to scream but I couldn’t.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Hiro said, his voice low. “You were under the impression this was a negotiation. That little device you put in your ear has fully acclimated to you and delivers a special series of shocks to areas of your brain. It’s called an earworm. Rather a brilliant device, really.”
I reached up to rip it off.
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” Hiro said, chuckling. “It can also deliver a fatal jolt to your brain if it’s removed while armed. I probably should have told you about these side effects earlier but then, really, you wouldn’t put it in your ear, would you?”
“What do you want?” I muttered.
Kristoph heard that. “What do I wa
nt? I want Janice not to have doomed the entire fucking planet! Is she insane? If it is a cognition A.I., then screw repercussions through the legal system! They will bomb this planet to ashes! Do you have proof, Clarice? Tell me you have proof? Then we can kill her tonight and end this madness! We have a future as respectable citizens of the Commonwealth now.”
“We don’t have proof,” Clarice said. “Let me handle this.”
Hiro continued talking. “I’m not the bad guy here, Cassius. I made you an offer and you should be grateful it came with the carrot before the stick. Sadly, you tried to send your sister to go tell Ida about my suspicions and that was very foolish. I mean, you told a person I know the codes to control and interrogate. Naughty-naughty.”
“Kill…” I trailed off.
“Me? You?” Hiro snorted. “I don’t think so. I’ve already wiped out your fortune and all hope of you walking away from this. Now you’ll earn your continued life, the way it should have been done in the first place. You’re a war criminal, Cassius, and I’m glad I don’t have to pretend to respect you anymore. You need to kill Janice and anyone else involved in replicating those devices. Otherwise, we will destroy this planet. We will burn it from orbit and the rest of the galaxy will thank us for it. No one cared that we bombed Crius halfway to oblivion, and they’ll care even less when we do the same to a bunch of slavers.”
I looked over at Clarice.
“Let you handle this!?” Kristoph said. “This goes beyond handling!”
“I can fix this,” Clarice said. “And if anyone needs to kill Janice, then I’ll do it.”
My eyes widened even as I opened my mouth to speak, then closed it. I knew Clarice still viewed Janice like a sister and I wasn’t sure if she was serious or not. I did know, however, it would probably break her worse than the Chel.
I covered my mouth and muttered under my breath. “And if I refuse?”
“Then I won’t just kill you, but I’ll kill other people,” Hiro said, sounding frustrated. “Maybe I’ll wipe Isla’s memories or just shut her and Zoe down, sell them on the black market. See? Look at what you’re making me do. You’re making me break out the mob stuff. I could kill everyone on board this ship and it would be justice because it’d be in the purpose of saving this planet and stopping the threat of Cognition A.I. from spreading.”
It was at that moment I started to wonder if Hiro was actually a spy. It seemed grossly incompetent that he would have to resort to an explosive leash, for lack of a better term, and naked threats in order to make sure I cooperated. Any idiot leg-breaker or his boss could resort to those in order to get their way and I was used to agents with a bit more finesse. Ida and my brother, in particular, would eat Hiro alive. Then again, the threat of Cognition A.I. might actually justify his actions.
We were all in over our heads here.
“I don’t like killing, don’t get me wrong.” Hiro backpedaled. “I would rather get through this with as minimal a loss of life as possible but there’s no way my superiors would tolerate anything less than this woman’s destruction, as well as the death of everyone else involved in this forbidden research. I’d like to believe you. Underneath that smug faux-nobleman’s exterior, you’re also possessed of a similar code of honor to the one we follow in the Commonwealth. Just don’t think for a second I’ll hesitate to break your Dolls.”
He referred to Isla and Zoe both, I suspected.
“I understand,” I said.
“Good!” Kristoph said, feeling the side of his head before going to pour himself an amber-colored fluid from his bar, which I suspected was much stronger than champagne. “Because if we don’t get this resolved, we’re all dead.”
Outside the luxury transport, I saw our convoy arrive above the Water Palace, one of the most beautiful constructions in Sector 7, if not the entire Spiral. Built on top of the ocean with massive super-steel legs, the palace and its ten thousand fountains, as well as a hundred micro-lakes, were covered by a translucent series of domes, protected from the worst of Shogun’s monsoons. The architecture was a mixture of the modern and classical with the small-city containing several dozen skyscraper-sized pagodas mixed with a hundred more mansions, putting to shame anything outside of Crius or Albion.
“You grew up here?” I asked Clarice, momentarily distracted from the fact I was going to be making an enemy of everyone here.
“Unfortunately,” Clarice said. “I spent my first fifteen years in my father’s harem quarters, only occasionally allowed to visit my mother’s and uncle’s.”
“Fascinating.”
The luxury transport lowered until we found ourselves in a much smaller dome off of the main one. Behind us, Kristoph babbled about whether the Melampus could get him off Shogun and how much he’d be willing to pay us.
“Shut up,” Clarice said, her voice now accusatory. “I said I’d handle it.”
Kristoph, mercifully, did so.
That was when Janice’s entourage arrived. Two dozen red-robed Palace Guards in ceremonial, but functional, blast armor, several beefy well-formed male consorts in see-through silk togas, which covered little, and two women who I recognized.
The first I knew immediately to be Janice. She shared an identical genetic code to Clarice, the only differences being she was a few inches taller as well as possessing an ampler bust, which was either surgically endowed or the result of a very impressive brassiere. Given her clothing was only slightly more opaque than her consorts’, I doubted the latter to be the case as her outfit revealed details of her body that left little to the imagination.
Beside her, dressed much more conservatively in a white body-covering robe with her hair up, was Judith.
Back from the dead as if she’d never left.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I remembered when I first met Judith, over a decade ago on board the Revengeance. I was already a Major-Baron through my efforts in the Scorpion Suppressions with three Ace pins affixed to my service record. Despite my attempts to be my own man, my meteoric rise was, in large part, due to my father’s influence and I should have realized it would make me enemies.
People who hated him. People who hated clones. People who hated House Mass. People who just hated the nobility in general and would enjoy taking a shot at one of its vulnerable members. This particular assassination attempt was a classic one and I’d stupidly blundered into it, not bothering to play the game the way it was supposed to be because I’d thought politics beneath me.
I remembered, all those years ago, standing in an unused storage bay on Floor 42 of the Revengeance. I was surveying the collection of blades set on the plastisteel table before me. All around, drunk and jeering crew members were ready to enjoy one of the rarest sights in the Sector: an honor duel. Dueling was one of the stupidest traditions practiced by the Archduchy, but still legal. The feuds after House Lucifer’s fall had almost destroyed our planet so it had been decided the aristocracy should be able to settle their disputes with sword or pistol. Most of the duels were non-lethal, but the occasional fatality was not unknown, and I knew my opponent had no intention of sparing my life.
Standing across the makeshift octagonal arena they’d set up was Pious Stone, professional duelist and assassin. Today, he was operating under the namesake of Major Samuel Sternwise, a fictitious identity which would disappear the moment he was led off to the brig by his supporters after my death. He was a dashing brown-skinned man of classic Vedic looks with long, shoulder-length hair and a scar across the bottom of his chin. Pious had once competed in the Archduchy games as a fencer before he’d been disbarred for betting on himself as well as a series of domestic violence incidents.
Five days ago, he had beaten and raped a midshipman named Jasper Thomas after luring him up to his room for a romantic encounter. I’d liked Jasper, and we’d often played gravball during my off-duty hours. Once someone covered for “Samuel,” I’d stupidly decided to play the dashing knight and challenged him.
It was all a lure as my bro
ther had explained to me an hour earlier. He’d begged me to call it off and suffer the shame of backing out, but I found myself unable to do so. Pride would rather I die fighting an opponent I couldn’t possibly win against versus looking at Jasper knowing I’d let him suffer without avenging him. I was too much a coward to face that kind of shame, and death was better than dishonor, even when the code I abided by was meaningless.
“You should pick the proton sword,” a tough-sounding feminine voice said behind me.
I looked behind me and saw a short woman with almond-shaped eyes, short dirty-red hair under an engineer’s cap, a somewhat boyish frame hidden beneath a set of overalls, and the pale skin of someone who had spent months on a ship without shore leave or a UV unit. She was a plain-looking woman who might have been pretty if given time to decorate herself, but she lacked the genetically-engineered beauty of the nobility.
“A proton sword isn’t a very good sword for maneuverability,” I said, picking up the weapon anyway. “They’re basically all force and sharpness. The longsword equivalent of dueling blades. A gravity sword is a better choice.”
The woman gave a not-at-all-hidden snort of derision. “Yeah, because you’re going to be out-maneuvering this guy. When there’s an opening, you need to be able to strike a single hard blow to kill him instantly.”
The woman was simultaneously a commoner, a nat, and one of the enlisted—three things that made her familiarity grossly inappropriate. Nevertheless, I swallowed my tongue because I was determined not to be that noble and look down on her. “What makes you think there’s going to be an opening?”
“There will be,” the woman said, giving a surprisingly enchanting smile. “Some of us want to see you win.”
“Some of us?”
The woman shrugged. “Jasper’s friends. Your friends. People who seem to think you’re not a complete waste of space despite being handed everything from birth.”
I was now officially pissed off, which actually cleared me of the all-consuming dread I’d been experiencing. “And which are you?”