by Alex White
“Jeannie…”
“When it was all done, he’d killed her in a rage, and”—she nodded to herself—“he understood that he was a monster. He was exactly what they wanted him to be.”
Boots stared at her for a good long time, watching her shoulders shake with the anguish of what she’d done. Alister had snapped and gone on a killing spree because he’d been betrayed, but he’d been raised by spies and cutthroats of the highest order. His victim had been one of them.
How many of Boots’s shots had struck something other than their targets in the skies over Clarkesfall? How many other gladiators and slaves had died at Orna’s hands in the pits?
“Cordell told me about Siobhán. Said they found your nanny with cuts all over her, and she hadn’t put up a fight,” said Boots. “Do you think he’d snap like that again?”
Jeannie closed her eyes. “You don’t get it. He didn’t snap; I did, and I imprinted that snap on him. I twisted his love into fury. She was the only person he’d developed an affinity for, and I made him kill her.” She wrinkled her nose and scowled through the tears. “I haven’t even told you the worst part.”
Boots stood and walked around the table to sit by her, patting her hand once. “All right, now. Take your time.”
“He begged me to help him forget her and what he did to her—make him what he was before.” Jeannie looked up at Boots with a sad smile. “And that’s where I messed everything up. I tried, and… He… he gets so angry and he doesn’t know why. I wanted to impart the truth to him—that we were from nowhere, but he didn’t get it. He keeps trying to be from somewhere else, because his mind doesn’t want to listen.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sometimes, he tells me he’s from Taitu, and when I correct him… he gets pretty mad,” said Jeannie. “I don’t know how to be okay, Boots. Most days, I want to take a slinger, and just, like, finish it, you know? He’s all I have, which admittedly… isn’t much.”
Boots threw an arm around her, and Jeannie stiffened before relaxing. “We all know that one, Jeannie. Hell, sometimes I wonder if we take on just a few too many suicide missions.”
The other woman laughed once. “I’ve noticed.”
“But you’ve got to forgive yourself for doing what you had to do. For your safety, I’ve got to ask: has he ever hurt you?”
To Boots’s relief, Jeannie confidently said, “No. I’m all he has, and I think he genuinely loves me. Sometimes, he likes to tell me he’s so powerful, so much more than me, but… but that’s just the chalet talking. All the evil in him is what I put there.”
“You were raised by monsters, and you did what you needed to escape.”
Jeannie shrugged Boots’s arm away. “But I wasn’t good enough.”
“I watched bombs turn most of my home country to glass,” said Boots, “because we lost a couple of battles. We found out about the Harrow twenty years too late to do anything. You’re not always going to be good enough.”
She pulled Jeannie in for another hard hug, squeezing her shoulder. “What’s important is that you’re trying to be good. That’s all anyone can ask.”
“So I’m supposed to just forgive myself?”
Boots stood. She was due in the med bay in ten minutes, and she couldn’t miss the appointment.
“None of us ever forgave ourselves, kid. We’re still carrying that weight. I want you to think long and hard about what you’re going to do with it.”
Jeannie nodded, lips white, and bowed her head.
“I’ll talk to the captain, but he’ll understand. Get back to your brother before he gets into trouble.”
“Glad we had this chat.”
Boots stopped at the door. “Don’t let this stuff drown you, Jeannie. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Boots sat by Nilah’s bedside as Malik adjusted the pumps and prepared to bring her out of deep sleep. A duraplex splint had been wrapped around her stump, but there wasn’t much work to do on it—the cut had been clean and cauterized below the knee.
It was way nicer than what Mother had done to Boots’s shoulder. She’d never forgotten the scrape of metal claws on bone.
Cordell had told her to be there when Nilah woke up. Boots felt it was Orna’s job, but that hadn’t carried water. She was the only one who could understand, he’d argued, eventually winning out.
The scanners chimed lightly, and Nilah smacked her lips. A pulse pattern traveled up her dermaluxes as they initialized, ending at her wrists.
“Water,” she croaked, and the med bot served her a straw through which she sipped.
“Morning,” said Boots.
“Ugh,” Nilah replied, rolling over and pulling the covers up. Then she scrunched up her face and began to shake her stump. “Sodding leg fell asleep.”
Boots grimaced. Nilah was technically correct.
“I’ll be nearby if you need me,” said Malik, abandoning Boots. “Good luck.”
“What time is it?” said Nilah, continuing to try and flex her missing appendage.
“Almost day cycle,” said Boots. “You need to open your eyes, because I have some bad news.”
Nilah opened her eyes with a face like she smelled something rotten. She sat up in her bed, and it took her no time at all to figure out what was wrong with her right leg.
“Oh,” she said.
As initial reactions went, at least she wasn’t screaming in horror.
“I—” Nilah squinted, visibly searching her memory. “Orna saved me, didn’t she?”
Boots raised an eyebrow. “She did. How are you feeling?”
“Incomplete. Where is she?”
“You’re taking this remarkably well.”
A cautionary look. “Would you rather I start weeping like a schoolchild?”
Boots stroked her own metal manipulator, unconsciously running a finger along the seam where it met her shoulder. “Well, you’re putting me to shame. I started shouting at the doctors when I found I was missing a hand.”
“Not my style. Haven’t cried since I lost my shot with the Driver’s Crown at Vorlanti four years ago.”
The loss of a limb and the loss of a championship hardly struck Boots as equivalent, but she held her tongue. Nilah had always been so much braver than most, willing to dive into hopeless situations like punching out springflies or hacking demented ancient warships.
And she’d been doing so much crying recently.
“That is one hundred percent false,” said Boots.
“Yeah, but I don’t feel like admitting it.”
She reached over to press the bed raise button, sitting up, and Boots saw her lip tremble. She blinked a few times as if testing her eyes, then swung her leg over the edge of the bed.
“I have to be honest with you, Boots,” she said, “I was getting a little jealous. Here you’ve been traipsing around with an arm cannon, and I—a galaxy-renowned mechanist—have no big implants at all, just the dermaluxes.”
“That’s one way to find a bright side. It isn’t exactly a picnic.”
Nilah looked at her sidelong, then examined her stump as her dermaluxes dimmed. “Maybe not for someone like you, but I’ll have access to the state of the art. Magical prostheses are basically as good as the real thing, and I can make all sorts of upgrades to it. I’ve always wanted one, but I’ve never quite had the stones to chop off my own limb.”
Boots chewed her lip. Nilah’s words came a little too fast and cheery for her taste.
“‘Someone like me,’” Boots echoed. “So if I had a cardioid…”
“Yes, well, you’d have a lovely selection. That’s why you shouldn’t be concerned about me. There’s a bright future on this stump.” Nilah wouldn’t look her in the eye as she said, “I can see why you wouldn’t really understand that, though—what with your condition.”
Boots sniffed and rested her chin atop her fingers. “You’re trying really hard to chase me off so you can cry, aren’t you?”
Nilah drew in a sharp b
reath, voice quavering, and said, “No. ’Course not, love.”
Boots held up her manipulator to regard its strange angles and metal plates. She ejected the stiletto knife from her index finger, its blade gleaming after she’d cleaned Harriet’s blood from it. “No matter how much tech you put there, no matter how close you get to the real thing, that’s never going to be your leg again. There’s always going to be a part of you that didn’t make it off the Vogelstrand.”
She retracted the knife and looked to Nilah to find the woman staring at her. “But I think you know that already. You’ve had a crap couple of days.”
“Breaking news.” She dabbed at her nose with the back of her hand, and Boots passed her a tissue. “Feels like pieces of me are dropping off all over the bleeding place. First my father, now…”
Boots stood, went to her, and held her arms out. The other woman bowed her head and came in for a tight embrace, her powerful muscles crushing Boots until she inadvertently coughed.
“Sorry,” said Nilah, giving her one more squeeze before letting go.
Boots held her at arm’s length. “You can wish things had gone better, okay? But you can’t carry any shame over what’s happened. I’ve been through this, and you’re going to get through it, too.”
“Yeah, I suppose you have. And I’ve got Orna.”
Boots chuckled. “You know you’ve got a good thing when she can cut off your damned leg and you still love her.”
“Mark of a true power couple,” Nilah replied with a rainy smile. “I’m sure I’ll return the favor one day.”
On cue, Orna arrived at the med bay, breathless, and froze in the doorway like she’d hit a snag in her programming. She’d obviously been worried about Nilah, but had no idea what to say. She opened and closed her mouth several times, each false start flustering her even more.
“Doc told me you were awake,” was the best she could muster. “Look, I had to save you, and—”
Nilah pushed Boots toward the door and beckoned to Orna. “Quit gawping and get over here, you silly beast.”
Boots knew when she wasn’t needed, and took her leave. Outside, she ran into Cordell, who carried a box of expensive Protheran chocolates. Since there hadn’t been a ton of time for luxury shopping, Boots had to assume he kept a private stash for exactly these occasions. He gave her a curious look and nodded to the open med bay door.
Boots tapped the door shut and leaned against the wall. “You didn’t bring me flowers after I lost my damned arm, so I’m going to need at least one of those chocolates.”
“How is she?” he asked.
“Started acting like a little jerk when I tried to show her pity, so I suspect she’d drop a megaton of fury on you for those. Orna is with her. She’ll be fine.”
“Never was much for the sympathy stuff.”
“A marauder captain like you? No…”
“Now, now. No call for insubordination, Bootsie. You holding up okay?”
She shook her head. “Seems like I’m attracting all the sob stories these days. Sir, we’ve got to talk about Alister.”
“I understand, but my priorities have to be on what we got from the Vogelstrand. That trip was a lot of fuel, and I’m not sure we’re going to be getting Compass payouts for a while.”
“So we’re financing revenge out of pocket again, sir?”
He scratched his cheek thoughtfully. “Maybe not. Still got some cash yet.”
“Well, has Orna made any headway on the Vogelstrand’s central repo?”
“She had to rig something special together, first.” He turned and bade her follow him to the elevator, where he tapped the button for the cargo bay. “We can’t just slot a data crystal like that into the Capricious. For one, we don’t know what kind of security it has on it.”
“Yeah. Kin made that pretty obvious.”
“I had Sokol hook it up to the Devil for decryption. She says it has more advanced firewalls than we do.”
The lift doors parted before them, where Boots found a mess of cables running from various ports on the Devil to a makeshift drive housing for the Vogelstrand’s massive crystal.
“And how is that going?” asked Boots.
“The freaking thing keeps making fun of their ancient security protocols… but it hasn’t cracked any code yet. Truth be told, Nilah is the best hacker we’ve got, and… well… I’d really like her to get back to work.”
Boots rested her hands on her hips. “You’re a good guy, but this isn’t the end of the Famine War. We don’t have to get her back on station right this second.”
“I give people plenty of time off. Some might say I’m too lenient.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah. That’s you. A big old softy.”
The Devil blared a short alarm, and flashers erupted from recesses across its armor plates. Boots yelped in surprise.
“Alert,” said the Devil, “I have reached a conclusion.”
Boots stomped the deck. “Don’t scare us like that!”
“I needed to get your attention, and it worked,” the car protested in return.
Malik came rushing through the door. “I heard an alarm.”
Boots sneered. “Apparently, that’s just its messaging notification.”
“The Element Corporation prizes effectiveness over subtlety,” said the Devil. “Would you like to hear my conclusion?”
“Lay it on us,” said Cordell.
The flashers vanished into the armor. “I have discovered that my systems are not capable of this kind of decryption.”
“Oh, come on!” Cordell picked up a nearby wrench and hurled it into the Devil, whose reactive armor batted it away. “That doesn’t warrant a damned light show!”
“Don’t worry,” said the Devil, “the Element Corporation has a solution to any problem facing the warfighter, and this one is no exception.”
“Which is?” asked Boots.
They were talking to the car’s rear bumper, which was a little strange. Boots felt like she should be speaking to the hood, even though it made no difference. The Devil rocked on its axles invitingly. “Captain Lamarr, my ultra-precise lethal targeting systems are detecting elevated heart rate and GSR. My driver’s seat contains a specialized massage system for extended—”
“Get to the solution,” said Cordell.
“I wanted to hear about the massage chair,” said Boots.
“The Element Corporation makes a companion processing software for the Devil, named Scry, which will enable you to decrypt this data crystal. Scry is purpose built for state-of-the-art—”
Malik folded his arms and stepped forward. “So you don’t have the power to get the job done?”
If an armored personnel carrier could look annoyed, this one would’ve. “My targeting computers are first-in-class and capable of analyzing physical properties your human eyes wouldn’t believe. My processing equipment is superior to Scry’s, but it’s pointless to compare two machines at the peak of engineering.”
“So your code is good enough to shoot down a housefly but not find basic data patterns? How could a simple AI outsmart a tactical genius like yourself?”
“Captain,” said the Devil, “I am perfectly capable of locating those elusive patterns, but this is an issue of licensing. Scry exists on my systems, and can be accessed for the low cost of eight hundred and fifty thousand argents. With it, you’ll have a mobile battlefield command. Add in Element’s upgraded comms package, and you could be sitting on a prime intelligence outpost for any engagement.”
“Wow. A tank with in-app purchases,” said Cordell, expression flat. “Truly, this is the future of warfighting.”
“All right,” said Malik. “I think we’ve heard enough, haven’t we, Captain?”
Cordell nodded. “Let’s discuss the wire transfer in my quarters.”
They left the Devil alone and didn’t speak again until they were far out of acoustic sensor range.
“There’s no way I’m doing that wire transfer,” said
Cordell. “It could bring heat to our stolen car.”
“Agreed,” said Malik. “But what can we do?”
“I’ve got an idea,” he replied. “Let’s go talk to Miss Brio.”
“Right now?” asked Boots. “Can’t we give her a moment?”
“Agreed,” said Malik, but Cordell raised his palms.
“Y’all need to calm down. I’m just going to talk.”
When they arrived in the med bay, Orna jumped back from Nilah, their lips parting with a loud smack. They both stiffened in the presence of the two executive officers, Orna going beet red.
“Tsk. You’re missing a leg and you’re already making out,” said Boots. “You’re supposed to feel a little sad.”
“That was a sad kiss,” said Nilah. “I was getting consoled.”
“We said some sentimental stuff,” Orna added.
“Miss Brio, Miss Sokol, the captain is going to brief you on an opportunity we have to make some progress,” said Malik, but then he gave Cordell a curiously stern look. “As the ship’s doctor, I would like to assure my captain that you are not fit for duty.”
Boots appreciated that. Malik’s ultra-polite style of leadership sometimes grated on her, but it was nice to see him protecting a wounded crew member from her enthusiastic captain.
“I’m ready to get back to work, sir,” said Nilah, and Malik sighed loudly.
“Good,” said Cordell, grinning. “We’re going to need you to violate the hell out of an end user license agreement.”
Nilah leaned back against the stack of transit cases, sweat pouring down her tank top. Orna came shambling over, her body hobbled from exhaustion, and handed her a beer. They’d outfitted her leg with a springy metal peg, and while it wasn’t perfect, it got the job done.
“I see we’re not watching our figures anymore,” said Nilah, taking the container and cracking it open.
“Not jumping into that wedding dress anytime soon, Missus Brio-Sokol,” said the quartermaster, sinking down beside her.