He don’t answer.
No more shards come at me, but my perch is getting evil precarious. I stick my head up after a minute. Seems safe. Maybe the Matakas are fighting miners now, or security.
“No!”
Three things go and happen at once.
I slip on the guts that have gone everywhere, and I nearly go tumbling off the pipe. Taltus catches me.
Right below us, a Mataka takes aim, right at my head.
Taltus whips around, and takes a shard full through the back. He falls onto me, twice my weight, pushing me back into the open maintenance tunnel.
Taltus is gagging, and bleeding all over me, the shard still burning in him, having broken up to burn its way through his bone and blood and organs. I look up into his eyes, between the hand-carved holes in the bone of his mask. Blood oozes out from the bottom of his mask, thick black blood dripping down onto my spacesuit.
“Take it,” he mutters, and presses the big old handle of his soulsword into my hand. “Tell my people to believe. Jaqi—Saint Jaqi—”
He reaches up, hooks a hand under his mask, and—
Then he’s dead.
I nearly scream at the Matakas, but I just stop myself. Somehow, handing off the big old soulsword of Taltus to Kalia, I get into the maintenance tunnel and Kalia closes the door. The mag-locks engage and shards flash outside.
Taltus’s body falls into the incinerators.
“They killed him,” Kalia says. “They killed Taltus! Those bastards! We should shoot them all!”
I can’t find no words.
“How will we get out of here without the Matakas?” Kalia asks.
“Let me do that worrying,” I say, gripping tight to Taltus’s sword. I don’t expect Kalia to take that—figure it’s about time she had one of her moments, what where she cries and prays and all that.
Instead, she just nods, and holds her brother, and them tears are silent. “Okay, Jaqi.” Kalia touches her head and her chest in that way that church folk do. “I’m sure that Taltus will be . . . he’s . . . he’s with God. Okay. What should we do now, Jaqi?”
Hell, I just said that on account of I couldn’t think of nothing. “We do the mission.”
-13-
Jaqi
THE KIDS ARE TOO QUIET.
I been around kids a little while now, and I can tell you they don’t ever stop making noise, even when they’re trying not to. They’re always grunting, or whimpering, or crying, or twitching noisy-like. Even when they sleep they flop around and snore and babble.
Not now. These are the quietest kids in all the spaceways. We’re sneaking through the cell blocks of Shadow Sun Seven, silent as any trained assassin. I’m holding out the sword Araskar gave me, Taltus’s being too heavy. Managed to strap it to my back for now.
Slab, you there? I en’t sure where we are—what’ve you got in your brainpan that could help? He don’t answer.
So far, Araskar and Z are useless. Here I am doing the Reckoning’s dirty work in the butt-guts. They’re up there eating pure thurkuk secretion and Routalais chocolate.
Behind me, a door I hadn’t noticed—must be a passageway for guards only—opens right up, and a guard steps out. One of them blobs.
Thought they was supposed to be sick?
The blob’s between me and the kids, and they’s who he sees, not me.
He’s oozing blue mucus, gurgling and making noise like I make when I’ve drunk way too much, and he raises a dripping tendril, and gurgles something into a translator that says, “Humans? What are you doing out?”
Kalia and Toq don’t do a damn thing—they just freeze, stare at the guard.
“Back to the mines.” A giant slop of mucus falls off him and splatters on the floor.
I keep waiting for him to see me, but he don’t—just focuses on the kids. Them fluid sentients can see out of their whole bodies, but maybe the sickness is making him stupid. Maybe I have a chance, here. Just for a second. He sways slightly, and a couple of drops of mucus ooze from his body to splash on the floor. “How’d you get out without—”
I cross the space between me and the guard and I sink that soulsword of mine deep into the blue oozing flesh. He wails, and his whole body shudders and starts to melt, to try and slide off the sword, but I yank it around, and I must cut something vital, because he shrieks and stops moving and just flattens, oozes—
And then he’s a puddle at our feet, goo dripping off the sword. He’s dead.
But that en’t all of it. No, the soulsword talks to me, all of a sudden.
I felt this before, but it was from a battle-hardened scab of the worst sort; this simple guard’s life done rushes into me.
This en’t no high-up Imperial lackey, en’t no one of no harm. Just a scab needed a job. All his folk did. He got mates and a child; the fluid sentients mate in threes. He is first-mate; his second patrols the market, his third tends the child and fixes broken shard-blasters. Together they manage to survive sleeping in a converted prison cell, and they are saving up to go somewhere better than this hole. It’s one of the only places with decent work for fluids, but there’s something rotten about it, them prisoners being worked too hard.
Fact is, he knows something funny about the mines. Something going on with the miners—but I forget that, for a minute, when I learn how his child loves it when he brings home olives; they get vat-grown olives in the guards’ lounge.
She slurps them right up, when he holds them out on a probiscis.
He won’t bring home no olives tonight.
Worst part is, I feel some of his knowledge, about how to get around down here, will be damned useful. Suddenly I know where we are, I know how to get to the 2000s cell block. Araskar briefed me, but this is much easier.
All that life, and now nothing more than blue goo on the floor and useful intel.
“Jaqi?” Kalia and Toq stare at me, their eyes wide.
Blue goo all over me and all over the floor, that was a sentient until just a moment ago.
“Jaqi, are you okay?” Kalia steps forward. “Jaqi, you’re trembling.”
“You killed him,” Toq says, almost in relief.
“I know what I done, Toq,” I snap. “There’s still a call out for your heads, you forgot?”
The kids freeze. Aw, hell. “Sorry,” I say, and pull them close. “I’m sorry. I ought not to bark.”
Toq embraces me. Kalia resists, and after a moment, she starts to babble, “We didn’t know, Jaqi! We didn’t know what the bluebloods did! We didn’t—”
“Shhh,” I say. “Don’t nobody deserve what was done to you. Come on.”
“We didn’t know,” she babbles.
I may be comforting the kids, but it don’t mean a thing to me. It’s hard to talk. Somehow I figured, in this prison, they’d all be scabs like the Matakas, what deserve it for one reason or another. This blue fellow’s little one won’t see him come home. “There’s a lift at the end here gonna get us where we want.”
The kids run to the lift.
I know I shouldn’t look. I shouldn’t stare any longer at this puddle of blue goo, what used to be a genuine sentient that just got in my way. But I do stare. I stare a long time, and I think a thousand crazy things in just a few moments, think that I’ll go find his child and take care of her.
I wish for a funny thing: I wish I could talk to Araskar, him what might understand what this feels like.
I put my hand on the sword. Slab, you there?
* * *
Araskar
This is the morning after we were first together. Difference is, I’m seeing it through Rashiya’s eyes.
She’s watching me dress. Admiring me as I pull my clothes on. Admiring my vat-grown muscles, every inch of them. No scars, not yet, just the body I’ve been sweating and shaping in hopes I’ll get through the Resistance’s first battle. She thinks about running her hands over my chest, clinging to my back, thinks it would be a shame if a body she liked so much won’t make it out.
/> And then she’s nervous. Terrified, actually. She didn’t have to do this, and here she is, about to go into battle with the same chances I have. Her father told her she had a chance at safety. Her mother begged her not to go.
I wish I could tell my younger self how random the chances are, how all the training won’t matter. He’ll see everyone die, but he’ll duck back into the boarding pod in time, just because he drew the safe spot at the back. An entire platoon. Thirty-nine other people he’s laughed and drank and sweated and cursed and prayed with.
But this version of me doesn’t know anything. Doesn’t know how special he’s about to be.
“So, private,” Rashiya asks, because she’s not willing to say, “Come back to bed for a bit,” or any of the tender things she’s thinking. “What brought you to the Resistance?”
“Uh, ha.” I laugh nervously. When did I ever laugh nervously? Before I’d ever been into battle, it seems. “Everyone in our platoon thought it sounded better than the Dark Zone.”
“That’s really it?”
“That en’t good enough?” When did I ever use spaceways slang? Must have my guard up. Trying to sound like I’m not a cross; we all know perfectly well how to speak because of the data dump in our heads. “What, you were convinced by the Imperial propaganda? You Aren’t Sentient, Because We Need You to Die?”
“Just wondering,” Rashiya says. “Sometimes people have these detailed answers about what they want to do with their lives. I’ve met quite a few crosses that want to be writers, or artists, or singers. They’ve got a book planned out, or a ballad of the Resistance. They act like the war’s all but won. Like we’re not all lined up to die still. I mean, we’ll die in the service of something, but it’s still death, aiya?” She tries not to sound afraid.
She’s so afraid.
She used spaceways slang too. I guess we were both putting up a front. “Have you ever been in a battle?” I ask, from where I stand sliding my shirt over my head.
“Oh, a few.”
“How’d a homegrown cross get involved?”
“My folks were . . . agricultural workers.” A practiced phrase. “A lot of escapees from the Navy try to blend into the ranks of the farmers. The Empire used to raid the farms and conscript anyone who looked like a military model. It didn’t exactly endear me to the Empire.”
“They still around?”
“Yes, but they don’t know what I’m doing. I’d like to keep it that way.”
“Yeah.” I stop and look at her. Nervous as hell, I am.
“We’ll do this again,” she says, “if we’re both lucky enough to come out the other end of this battle.” She gets up, and gives me a quick kiss. Not a lot of compassion in it. I try, fumbling to return the kiss, but she steps away. “I’ll take that kiss if we survive.”
The ghost of Rashiya detaches from the memory-Rashiya, turns and talks to me. “I never said I loved you, did I?”
“You couldn’t. I got promoted. The next time you snuck into my bed, you bribed three minor officers to ignore what we were doing.”
“Right,” she says. “My father hadn’t recruited me into black ops yet. And you looked different.” Her ghost-hand comes up, to trace the scars on my face.
“I saw battle.”
“Seemed stupid to talk about love, after that.”
Another one of her memories. Another moment isolated by the war. We’re in some sanctum for John Starfire; Rashiya was brought here blind, so that she wouldn’t know where her sisters were. She suspects her father had the same done—a soulsword could reveal the location, after all.
It’s a nice place. A farm in the hinterlands of Irithessa. Even here in the center of the Empire, they remember a time when a star system had to be self-sufficient. A few hills made purple by the morning mist; wide fields of corn and wheat.
She’s standing on the porch talking to her father.
“You’ve been quiet,” he says. “It’s about Araskar?”
“Let’s not talk about him,” she says, and turns her gaze to the wheat fields, a hazy golden stretch in the morning mist.
“We’re all lonely in the end, in this business, Rashiya,” he says, and touches her arm. “Your sisters don’t understand that. Your mother doesn’t accept it. But that’s what it is. We’ve been changed by the war, and we can’t change back. No matter how you love him, you’re both soldiers, and you’ll always be broken.”
“I know, Dad.” She sounds every bit the petulant teenager who doesn’t want a pep talk.
“So, you’ve thought about my offer.”
“Black ops.”
“You’d outrank Araskar, next time you meet him. Could order him to lick your boots and he’d have to.”
She laughs. “I just might, pater.” She hesitates. “I’d see more of . . . the ugly side.”
“Yes, you would.” He stays at the edge of the porch, staring out over the wheat fields. “You know what would happen if we let them go. If we let them poison what we’ve made.”
Them. He won’t even say the word humans.
“How did he do it?” I ask Rashiya’s ghost.
She turns, disengaging from the memory, disengaging from the world I took from her head. “Do what?”
“How did your father make peace with the Shir? How did he even speak with them?” I try to reach out for her, take the ghost in my arms. “And why did he think it was possible?”
She doesn’t answer. Ghosts don’t answer.
Slab, you there? The words careen around the inside of my head.
An orchestra rises up, playing a lumbering, twisting song. I didn’t even realize I had my hand on my soulsword’s hilt. I try to stumble to my feet and my body twists painfully against the locker they’ve shoved me into.
I’m here, Jaqi. What’s going on?
In the cell block, aiya. Near to the 2000s on the lift. Should have this fellow ready any second now. Getting out’ll be a trick, though . . .
Z and X have really packed me in here. I’ve got to draw my short sword, and I’m having no luck.
Slab, something wrong?
No. Maybe. Why is getting out a trick? The Matakas aren’t waiting for the barge?
No, they en’t waiting. Their ship’s had a situation.
What happened?
Incinerator juiced up too soon. Most of Swez’s scabs got out, but they lost some, and now Swez blames me. Lost Taltus, ai. One of them Kurguls done took him out.
Shit.
That right there is a fine word for it.
We’ll have to steal one of the barge loaders, the big ones. We used them to smuggle troops in the Resistance. They can pass in and out of a node. Would have been easier just to rope and steal the barges, but it is what it is. Sounds like Jaqi’s half of the plan is going out the airlock as much as my half. I have a problem here too.
What’s going on?
Z and X want to kill the prison warden.
That dumbfounds Jaqi for a moment—which, given how talky she normally is, is quite a feat. What’d he ever do to them?
Killed a raft of Zarra, it seems. I manage to get my small soulsword mostly drawn. I push the sheath against the wall and pull, until I feel the blade come free at last. They won’t leave until they kill him. It’s suicide to try.
I told that dumb slab to keep himself alive! He promised!
He’s not keeping that promise.
He en’t getting a kind word from me ever again! I done brought him back to life!
And then the crazy thing—I can hear her crying. Jaqi. Crying. Are you— The music shifts, in a bittersweet, breaking melody that climbs over jagged chords. And it starts to detune, notes blending as if they’re off from each other. Same way as when she ran away before.
Araskar, I can’t—this mission, it’s all gone to hell. I killed a fella. A poor security fella never done nothing. I wouldn’t have known about him, but I done killed him with the soulsword and . . . didn’t deserve to get stabbed in the back! Look at me! How’ve I got
any better claim than John Starfire?
I know this feeling. Damn, do I ever. Jaqi, I know. I know that too well.
How we supposed to do the right thing when I done killed an innocent? I was trying to save the innocent.
It’ll never leave you. That’s not what I meant to say. I meant to tell her she was protecting the kids, no doubt, it’s all right, and she should focus on the mission, on keeping them alive. Instead, I find myself thinking of everyone I ever killed. It’ll tear you apart. It’ll make you want to kill your own insides with drink, with drugs, make you afraid to have any friends ever again. I twist my arm around backward, manage to scrape the point of the sword against the locker door.
That . . . en’t a comfort. The music rattles and lumbers, different instruments out of time with each other.
Wasn’t supposed to be. My mouth is still dry. My head pounds, demanding more pinks. You find some way to live with it. I’m not sure what that is yet.
Don’t want to live with it, slab! Don’t want to become one of those who live with it.
Then you’d better change everything, like they say you’re going to. I don’t know any other way to live.
Jaqi doesn’t answer that. But the music starts to come back together, instruments harmonizing, finding the beat.
I shove my arm up. Cramps run from my fingers to my shoulder, but I manage to get a little leverage behind the short soulsword, shove it through the metal, and cut down, until I can kick out a square of metal, until I can shove myself through the bottom of the door.
You okay? What you doing now, Araskar?
I don’t get to answer, because the NecroSentry is waiting for me.
-14-
Jaqi
“JAQI, IS THIS THE ONE?”
“Huh?” I release my grip on the soulsword, and my head immediately relaxes without Araskar’s words working a jackhammer on the inside of my skull.
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