by M. D. Cooper
LOCATION: Philip Kirkus Academy, The Isthmus, Sparta
REGION: Peloponnese System, Politica, Praesepe Cluster
Amy had spent the following day trying as hard as humanly possible to pay attention to her teachers, but it hadn’t gone well. She may as well have tried her hand at flying a starship, for all the success she had. It just wasn’t happening.
Her instructors seemed to notice. When she asked to go to the restroom near the end of the afternoon’s second class, her instructor nodded, but caught her arm as she passed.
“When you get back, you’d best finish those algebra problems perfectly, or I’ll be speaking to your father after class.”
Amy swallowed and nodded silently before walking as calmly as she could from the classroom into the hall. She turned left at the first intersection, and then right, striding down the long hall toward the bathroom. She kept her eyes staring straight ahead, but managed to peer into the dark alcove where Rika had hidden the day before.
As she approached, Amy noticed a small motion within and knew Rika was there waiting for her and the vial she clutched tightly.
Amy ducked into the alcove and saw Rika with a smile on her lips as she reached out for an embrace.
“Rika, I got it; I got the hair,” Amy whispered, holding up the small vial in her hand.
“Excellent!” Rika cooed proudly as she took the vial. She slipped it into a crevice on her arm that closed up, secreting the container and its few precious hairs away. Then Rika’s eyes narrowed, and she touched Amy’s cheek, her cold steel fingers coarse against the girl’s skin. “What happened? Are you OK?”
Amy flushed. “I’m fine, it’s nothing. Don’t worry.”
“Amy,” Rika’s eyes were serious as she spoke in a level tone. “You don’t need to hide anything from me; there is no shame in what happened. What someone else does to you is a reflection on them—not on you. Always remember that. Sometimes even we get hurt when we go on missions. It’s never fun, but we take it, we get back up, and we carry on.”
Amy nodded silently, tears welling up in her eyes. “But he’s not a mission; he’s my father. He’s supposed to love me.”
Rika pulled Amy in close, her body hard, but her cheek soft as it pressed against Amy’s head. “I know. The ones we love are always the ones who can hurt us the most. It’s just how we’re made.”
Amy looked up at Rika. “But I wasn’t made, not like you. You’re a mech. I’m a person.”
She instantly regretted the words she’d chosen—they were wrong and she recognized her father in them, but she didn’t know how to take them back. Instead, she pressed her face down into Rika’s cold neck, hiding from the anger that was sure to come.
But it didn’t come.
“I wasn’t always like this,” Rika told her quietly. “Once, not that long ago, in the grand scheme of things, I was a little girl like you. Just trying to understand how I fit into this mad universe—just like you are now. It’s OK that you said the wrong thing, Amy. You know it hurt me, and you don’t want to hurt me again, so you’ll grow and get better. It’s all that any of us can do.”
“I’m sorry,” Amy whispered. “Am I bad? Has he made me bad?”
Rika placed a hand on Amy’s head and gently pulled it back so they could see one another’s eyes. “No. He has tried to make you bad, and you have some bruises and scratches from it. But you are good. I would know; I’ve seen a lot of bad. When you see your mother again, and she wraps you in the best hug you’ve ever had, you’ll know I’m not lying. You’re a good girl, and no one else can change that about you. Do you understand?”
Amy wasn’t sure if Rika was right about everything she had just said, but she really wanted her to be right. More than anything, she wanted Rika to be right.
“I understand,” she said in a quiet voice.
“Good. Now, tomorrow night, make sure you go with your father; wherever he’s going, try to be there with him. Things are going to get interesting.”
Amy searched Rika’s eyes for some further meaning. “Interesting? What do you mean?”
Rika patted Amy’s head. “The good kind of interesting. Well…good for you and me. Bad for your father.”
THE CLUB
STELLAR DATE: 04.03.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Politica Senior Officer’s Club, The Isthmus, Sparta
REGION: Peloponnese System, The Politica, Praesepe Cluster
In Stavros’s Politica, the officer’s club was really that: a club. Not the crass sort of bumping and grinding club, with strobe lights and deafening music, but a refined sort of club, with round tables spread throughout the room, semi-circle booths in the corners, and a stage at one end that stood a meter off the floor.
The staff that served the officers all wore crisp, white jackets and fitted black pants. In the dimly lit room, they almost appeared to be floating torsos, carrying trays of food and drink.
Chase stood at the side of the stage, observing the crowd from the shadows, keeping an eye peeled for Stavros. He wished they could have used drones, but this room was filled with advanced counter-surveillance tech. Letting so much as a nanobot fall off his finger would get them all in a world of trouble.
He turned back to look at Leslie, who was getting ready for her performance.
The prosthetics Barne had applied to her face made her appear very different than the woman who had stood beside Rika when they had handed Amy over to her father; though she had also been wearing her helmet, if Chase recalled correctly.
That didn’t mean that Stavros hadn’t checked into Rika’s team, though. He could still know what they all looked like.
Leslie’s cheekbones had been raised, her mouth was poutier, and long, delicate whiskers now sprouted from beside her nose. Her skin glistened, smothered in a coating that would make her gleam under the club’s lights.
“Stars, this brings back memories,” Leslie sighed as she turned in front of the holomirror to examine herself from every angle. “I’m not sure if the outfit is ruining the look, or enhancing it.”
Chase raised his eyebrows. To call the tiny dress that Leslie was wearing an ‘outfit’ seemed to be giving it too much credit.
“I don’t know if I can comment on this. I’m biased,” he said instead.
Leslie cast him a disparaging look. “Chase, with what we do for a living, do you really think that public nudity tips the scales at all? Maybe giving these stiffs a good show will make up for some of the shit we’ve done over the years.”
“Is that how karma works?” Chase asked dryly.
“Leave the dress on,” Barne grunted. “Leaves something to the imagination; that’s always a good thing.”
“Next time we do something like this, you’re the dancing monkey,” Leslie grumbled to Barne.
“We’ve been over this. I can’t dance.”
“Then you’d better learn.”
The stage manager—a woman with a pinched-looking face, as though she was always smelling something foul—walked up to the trio.
“You’re up after the emcee does his evening greetings,” she reported. “He’ll introduce you as ‘The Stunning Lady Melody’, and you’ll go out and do your bit. Three songs—the ones you submitted to us, but with the changes we made, of course—and then you break. If the crowd calls for an encore, you do only one. Then half an hour, and another set. Am I clear?”
Leslie nodded. “Perfectly.”
The stage manager walked away, and Barne gave a soft laugh. “I still think you should have gone with ‘Meowlody’. Really own it.”
“And here I thought you were the one advocating for some amount of subtlety,” Leslie smirked.
The emcee’s announcements were short, largely advocating a particular dish the chef had prepared and extolling the skills of the performers for the evening—of which there were only two, including Leslie. The other was a singer who was a regular at the officer’s club.
When the introduction was done, the low sounds of a ce
llo crept into the air, followed by a drumbeat. When the second stanza began, Leslie moved onto the stage.
‘Moved’ was the best word Chase could come up with. She didn’t stroll, or slink; it was more like she was smoke. She drifted across the stage to the ancient-looking microphone that stood in the center, and stroked it like a lover’s neck.
A moment later, she began to sing.
The first words of Leslie’s song stilled the club, and all eyes turned to her. A hushed, palpable silence filled the room.
The only sounds were those of the drums, cello, and Leslie’s voice, deeper and huskier than Chase had ever heard it. She sang of love, sorrow, loss, and rekindled romance, all the while sliding her hands, legs, and tail up and down the microphone stand—her sinuous motions and dulcet voice making every man and woman in the room envy that slim piece of metal, wanting to be it with every fiber of their being.
“I don’t know if I can watch this,” Chase said quietly to Barne. “I think of Leslie like a sister.”
“You got a hot sister.”
Chase shook his head and scanned the crowd, checking once more for Stavros, but came up empty. The dictator wasn’t present, which was probably for the best. While Leslie’s disguise should hold, there was no reason to put it to the test so soon.
In an ideal world, Stavros would never show up at all; this wasn’t one of his usual nights for attending the club. With any luck, they’d never even see him again—alive, at least.
“I’m going to go for a stroll,” Chase told Barne. “Get a feel for the area, see if I can find out where our friend might be.”
Barne nodded. “Be back by the end of the second set.”
Chase nodded and then walked through the backstage area, past the dressing rooms, and out into the side-corridor that ran between the officer’s club and a series of baths and spas reserved for the upper ranks of The Politica’s military.
He had to admit: Barne’s idea to get in here and perform for Stavros’s cronies was a good plan. It allowed them to move about with relative impunity in an area they would never have been able to get to before.
The local nets didn’t offer much information to anyone without clearance, but he did see mention of a restricted maintenance area five levels down, and decided it was just the sort of place for him to accidentally stumble into.
He turned into the larger corridor that ran through the officer’s territory and walked toward the closest bank of lifts. Politica elite walked past in small groups, most talking seriously in low voices, though some groups were louder—one, comprised of majors and colonels, by their lapel insignia, appeared to be completely inebriated as they careened down the passageway.
Chase avoided them, not wanting any extra attention, and made it safely to the bank of lifts. None of the decks below were accessible to him, but a lieutenant pushed the down button as he approached, and Chase waited silently beside the woman for the next lift to arrive.
When it did, the lieutenant smartly stepped to the side, and Chase followed. To his surprise, the first person out was Silva, followed by Stavros, and then Rika.
It took Chase a moment to realize that the second mech was indeed Rika. Rather than her traditional helmet, she was wearing a Mark-2 model with a single eye painted on it. The baleful eye was wreathed in flame; an image Chase remembered seeing in the past, though he couldn’t recall where. If it weren’t for the GNR on her right arm and the distinctive dent on her left shoulder plate, he wouldn’t have had any clue it was her at all.
Chase turned his head, not wanting to chance being recognized. The team’s faked tokens and light prosthetics made them unremarkable to the security NSAI, but a sharp eye and keen mind often made connections machines did not.
Rika didn’t so much as glance his way—not that he’d be able to tell if she had—but as she walked past, she reached out and shoved the waiting lieutenant back into the bulkhead.
Chase was surprised, but when Rika jerked her arm out, a small object flew toward him, which he deftly caught. The lieutenant stumbled and swore softly, not noticing the handoff that had occurred right in front of her.
Rika continued on her way, and, after a moment, the lieutenant walked into the lift muttering something rather unpleasant under her breath about mechs.
“You coming?” she asked sharply as Chase continued to stand in the corridor.
“Uh, no; I just realized that I need to go up, not down.”
“Whatever,” the woman sounded exasperated as the doors closed.
Chase shook his head, somewhat dismayed that he was missing whatever was going on—though it was probably for the best.
He didn’t look at what Rika had passed to him until he was back in the rear rooms of the club. When he opened his hand, he saw a small vial with two hairs in it, along with a small data chip.
He carefully opened the vial and shook the chip out, keeping his finger over the opening enough to hold the hairs in. The chip was a standard data packet, and he slid it into the small slot on his forearm.
What’s her plan? A thousand mechs tips the scales more than just a little.
Chase confirmed that the data Barne would need was on the chip and looked at the hairs in the small vial. Those two small bits of biotech could save all the mechs on The Isthmus. He didn’t know if it was possible, but for Rika’s sake, they’d try.
Barne grinned.
THE NEW ACT
STELLAR DATE: 04.03.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Politica Senior Officer’s Club, The Isthmus, Sparta
REGION: Peloponnese System, The Politica, Praesepe Cluster
Rika was surprised at how glad she had felt to see Chase. It had only been a couple of weeks since they’d parted ways, but it was the longest they had been apart since their reunion on Pyra in the ruins of Jersey City.
Running into him was pure serendipity. Rika had anticipated needing to hunt the crew down later in the evening to signal them for a dead drop pickup of the vial and its contents—but when she saw Chase, she chanced the handoff right then and there. Hopefully, the added time would help Barne get the job done. If anyone could pull off what they needed, it would be him.
Niki shrugged as she danced and twirled through the tall grass in their shared mental space.
Rika was about to deliver a stinging retort to Niki when she realized the AI was joking.
Rika laughed quietly inside her new Mark-2 helmet—which was a very tight fit, now that she had a proper nose and ears again.
Rika wasn’t sure if Niki was being serious or not, but decided not to ask. The AI had a habit of turning the most innocuous question or casual observation into a very long and distracting conversation.
Tonight, Rika needed to be on her game; not distracted by an AI’s prattling.
Silva led the way through the wide doors of the officer’s club and into the foyer, where the maître d’ inclined his head respectfully.
“Basileus Stavros, a pleasure. We were not expecting you tonight.”
“I had a change of plans,” Stavros replied. “General Alexi also told me that there is a sight here to behold.”
“Of course, sir.” The maître d’ turned and led them into the club. “A very impressive display of dance and song from a woman bearing the name Melody, if I’m not mistaken. Would you like to sit with the general?”
“No, a private table this evening,” Stavros requested firmly. “I plan to have a chat with my new acquisition here.”