by C. Gockel
“We don’t live by our choices; we live by Alaric’s choices!” Alexis cried, and felt tears in the corners of her eyes threaten to tumble. She’d taken a step toward the huddled weere woman without thinking, and Volka looked up at her with wide, stunned eyes. The weere’s eyes weren’t right and made Alexis’s lip curl up in disgust. It took her a moment to realize besides the inhuman amber color, the pupil was wrong, ovoid and alien.
Staring down at her, it occurred to Alexis how furious it would make Alaric to see Volka on the floor before her. He’d intervene and declare it was because it was the “right thing to do.” But he’d get a satisfaction out of defending the weere woman. Alexis knew it. “Get up.”
Volka climbed to her feet, eyes ducking submissively once more. Her yellow dress had a spot on it from the weere maid’s shoe.
Alexis studied her, tasting bile in the back of her throat. Volka was so small, so dainty. Did Alaric enjoy that? Did it make him feel powerful? Hadn’t Alexis always accommodated him, though? Hadn’t she always played the part of the perfect submissive wife? Alaric’s words about Volka abruptly rang in her mind. “She doesn’t loathe me, and that is always nice.”
Alexis put her hand to her temple and turned away from the door. “Why do you need me? How can I possibly help the Republic?” Her mind seized on the one thing she had to offer. “I’ve shared every translation, faithfully—if you’re looking for explanations of the alien weaponry, there are none that I’ve seen.”
“That’s not it, ma’am,” Volka said. “We need something that Luddeccea...or rather, Luddeccean men won’t allow.”
“I will not subvert my government,” Alexis stated.
“We were hoping that you might change their minds,” the woman said.
Alexis was suddenly exhausted. The woman had come here and pushed all her buttons for something that was not in her power. “If Alaric thinks it can’t be done, I certainly can’t do it.” Surely, he had been asked.
Volka released a breath. “It’s outside Alaric’s sphere, and I haven’t approached him on the matter…I needed to talk to you and asking him if I could speak to you seemed…wrong.”
Alexis straightened, her mind churning through the implications of that. Was the woman pretending to be concerned for her?
Volka continued, her words coming fast and desperate. “We have tried to take it up with the archbishop, and I think he supports the idea, but politically he is stymied by, well, if you let me tell you, I think you’ll understand.”
Massaging her temple, Alexis spun on her. “Well, what is it?”
Volka glanced over her shoulder at the maid, and Alexis took her meaning.
Waving her free hand, Alexis said, “Merta, you may go. Please shut the door.”
Scowling at Volka, Merta bowed and left, shutting the door as she did.
Alexis looked pointedly at Volka, mentally demanding she speak.
“The Republic needs weere,” Volka said.
Alexis raised an eyebrow. She thought that Alexis could convince the Guard to give up their weere recruits? Weere sense of smell was handy, it was said, in detecting the Dark. Better at it than any technological tool of the Republic, some were saying.
Volka raised her hands. “Not the men. Just the women…to detect the Dark. There’s nothing the Republic has that works as well as our noses, and there are so many more soft targets in the Republic for the Dark to strike.”
Alexis’s hand dropped from her temple. Alaric had said the Republic was disorganized for all their technological superiority, and the border along the Kanakah Cloud was a “sieve.” When she was a child, Alexis had feared the Galactic Republic sweeping into Luddeccean space and enslaving everyone, hooking their souls to giant machines. That had never happened—her mother had said that Galacticans were too spoiled and lazy. Alexis had reason to doubt everything her mother had ever told her, but when the Dark had inhabited her, she had seen glimpses of the Republic…and that assessment had appeared true. She’d seen that if the Galacticans wanted to take over Luddeccean space, they could. They just didn’t need it or care.
The Dark though…The Dark wanted Luddeccea…it wanted everything. It was its own God and religion; she’d felt its confidence in its purpose and its sense of righteousness when it had inhabited her. Closing her eyes, she thought of the newborn that a mother inhabited by the Dark had let be killed, and a child inhabited by the Dark describing the newborn as a “parasite.”
Volka cleared her throat, and Alexis blinked and realized she’d been leaning against Silas’s desk.
“It’s not all weere women we would try to recruit,” Volka said, ears still folded. “We were going to recruit among the older weere women…” Her hands twisted in front of her. “Specifically, among the older weere rejected by their patrons. No one that would be missed, ma’am, by human or weere.”
How dare she? Alexis felt bile rising in her throat. “Are you trying to elicit sympathy from me for your…your…trollops?” But as she said the words, she felt the prickle of sweat on the back of her neck, and she knew it wasn’t the warmth of the room. The one time she’d seen for herself hard evidence of her father’s unfaithfulness was when he’d “traded in” his old mistress for a “younger model.” He’d said, “I don’t need an older woman, I’ve got a wife for that.” Alexis had heard him say those words when he’d complained to male associates at a card game he’d hosted in their home on an evening when her mother was away. Her father’s “old” weere woman had been calling the house at odd hours. Her phone call had woken Alexis, in fact, and that is why she’d been spying on her father and his friends. She’d found out later the woman had been all of thirty.
“No, ma’am,” Volka said. “I’m stating facts. Weere don’t want them. They have few skills that are marketable—since no human woman would trust them in domestic service…and I understand that, of course. They take their own lives very frequently.”
Something niggled at Alexis. The numbers didn’t add up. The Republic had thousands of colonies and gates spread over vast distances. “And you’d only claim women rejected by their patrons?” Alexis huffed. “You’re lying.”
Volka swallowed audibly. She took a deep breath. “A bit, yes.”
Alexis felt a tiny thrill of triumph, but bit back the smirk that wanted to pull at her lips, crossed her arms, and kept a hard stare on the weere woman.
Rolling on her heels, Volka said, “I…wouldn’t turn away a girl who was being sold into patronage, ma’am. Or a girl or boy trying to escape the weere houses. Or…or…just anyone who was afraid of facing the season with so many weere men gone.”
Alexis should have corrected her for mentioning “the season.” It wasn’t done in polite company, even if she knew very well what Volka was talking about. But she felt her tiny sense of triumph melt, and her arms fell to her sides. She turned to the window, the implications of what the woman had said setting in: weere men outnumbered, weere women with no one to turn to when they were hormone mad. What a lovely coincidence for human men. She laughed…of course, of course, the men on the Luddeccean Council must have thought about it. Half of them had mistresses. How many of those would want to “trade in” their old one for a young weere girl in a frenzy? How many stories had she been told about how willing the girls were to debase themselves in such a state, how they’d submit to any encounter, no matter how violent, cruel, or fleeting? That was why it was so important that human wives be submissive toward their spouses. Hadn’t she heard that, too? She’d been that submissive spouse, but it hadn’t turned her husband’s heart from the woman behind her. And Volka was submissive with her curled ears and…
Alexis remembered Volka shooting the child in the pirates’ camp and telling the robot to stun her. That had not been submissive, not at all. But plenty of women were wicked toward other women while being sweet as sugar to the men in their lives. Maybe Volka’s submissiveness now was the same sort of facade human women wore for their husbands? She fought the urge to glanc
e over her shoulder. Who was Volka really? Who had she been to her husband? Who should Alexis be?
“Ma’am?” Volka said.
Alexis shut her eyes and massaged her temples. “And you think I can help you somehow?”
“Not you alone, ma’am…but the issue is going before the council…it’s one of their secret votes; it won’t be made public. I thought maybe if you discussed the matter with your lady friends, they could put pressure on their husbands.”
Gazing out the window, Alexis studied the flower beds that were the demarcation line between the woods and the lawn, and she thought of the stack of letters she’d received this morning and all the invitations from ladies’ groups. She did have the connections, and it wouldn’t matter that the vote was supposed to be secret. They wouldn’t arrest her for revealing it. She was a mother, a daughter of the First Families, and the only person who could read the People’s language. She was regarded as a hero for helping the civilians aboard the Manna escape, and even if they tried to silence her, even if they arrested her, she was also the wife of Captain Alaric Darmadi, and he would fight it. She exhaled. He’d been willing to defect for her…hadn’t he? She remembered him rubbing his eyes and saying that he sometimes thought he was born on the wrong side of the Kanakah Cloud, the border between the Republic and Luddeccean space.
She scowled. What Alaric would or wouldn’t do wasn’t the issue. The issue was what she would or wouldn’t do. She didn’t want to help Volka. She hated that she’d invaded her home…but she did want to fight the Dark, and the Galactic Republic’s weakness was Luddeccea’s weakness.
And stealing weere whores right out from under men’s noses…A smile played at the corner of her lips despite herself. It would upset so many men so much to be deprived of their weere. The smile faltered. Some of their wives might not be overjoyed if their husbands lost their pets—her mother had always been happy enough to not have her father about.
She lifted her chin. To hell with it. She’d do it, but not without conditions.
She turned back to Volka. The weere woman was still standing with her eyes downcast and her ears back.
“I will help you,” Alexis said.
The woman’s ears shot forward, and she lifted her head, but then quickly dropped her eyes and put her ears back.
“But in return,” Alexis said, “I want you never to speak to my husband again.”
The woman sighed and closed her eyes. “I cannot promise that, ma’am.”
“How dare you?” Alexis hissed, drawing toward her.
The woman’s ears came forward and her eyes met Alexis’s. “He is married to you, and I respect that. But we meet occasionally in the line of duty. We’ve aided one another, and I will not turn away if he needs my assistance.”
Like she hadn’t turned away when Alexis was taken prisoner. Alexis exhaled, and her jaw dropped at the woman’s impertinence, yet at the same time she felt a lump rising in her throat.
Volka said more gently, “I would not turn away from any Luddeccean vessel that needed aid, though, ma’am.”
Her husband’s lover—allegedly former—was asking her for a favor, and yet not repaying her with a favor in kind…for reasons that were perfectly logical but still made Alexis’s heart sink. She would be within her rights to kick this woman out of the house now, to call the Guard in and have them drag her out.
Spinning, Alexis walked back to the window. She took a breath. A breeze was picking up outside, and the shadows of the waving branches played across the lawn. She felt as helpless as the trees, bending in the winds of events. She was immobile. Trapped in this war, to this place, and in her role. If Alaric were in danger, did she truly wish Alaric to die rather than receive help from Volka? Maybe a part of her did, but she knew that part wasn’t right.
And hadn’t she once promised herself that she would do anything to save her world against the Dark?
Alexis would help Volka achieve her goals for the sake of Luddeccea, but she would not—could not—pretend to be pleased about it.
“I would still be in your debt, ma’am,” Volka said.
“Get out,” Alexis snapped.
“Yes, ma’am, thank you, ma’am,” Volka replied. Was that the faintest hint of triumph Alexis heard in her voice? Looking over her shoulder, Alexis saw Volka turn smartly, the skirts of her alien finery swirling.
Alexis’s hands balled into fists at her sides, remembering the treatment she’d received in the Galactic Republic, the torturous sensation it had given her of being boiled alive from the inside out. Upstairs, Markus started to cry.
She would stoop to any level to save Luddeccea, but she would also do it for him, and all her boys. She would do anything to protect them. She’d already famously demonstrated that when she saved Markus from the pirates that captured her. She hadn’t had to think when she did that though, and even if she had, she wouldn’t have guessed the horrors before her. She’d spit in her captor’s face.
Knowingly aiding Alaric’s weere was harder. It was…soul crushing.
5
Power Draining
Galactic Republic: Asteroid S1O27.234935
6T9 moved through the higher gravity of the prairie scape for 57.3 minutes, ripping clumps of grass and soil out of the earth and tossing them at nothing. He was trying not to think, just running down his charge, not sure why he was mad at James. He pulled on an extremely stubborn clump of grass that would not release its grip on life. He snarled, and his Q-comm sparked with frustration, and then inspiration. You’d think he was mad at the grass when he was really mad at James. Why was he mad at James? It finally occurred to him that he might not be mad at James at all. James, like the grass, was only a convenient target for his “bottled up” rage.
And what was the ultimate source? He traced back the feeling through his time logs. He’d ripped up the first clod of grass and sod when James had mentioned the independent traders 6T9 had worked with. His hands tightened on the grass’s skin-slicing tough blades. They had been small-time criminals—fencers, mostly. They hadn’t been sadistic, murderous cutthroats like the pirates of The Copperhead who’d tried to steal him and do much worse to Volka. Well, they hadn’t been very sadistic, and when they were cruel, he just turned up his internal masochism settings and had liked it. Physically. But they hadn’t been good Doms. There had been no safe words—still, he was a ‘bot; he didn’t really need safe words—and there had certainly been no aftercare. He’d been a toy. Unstimulated in every other way but his core programming. Why had he put up with it for as long as he had?
The grass gave, a tangle of roots nearly as long as 6T9’s body coming with it. 6T9 hurled it extra hard, and it whistled as it flew through the air. 6T9 gave a cry as it did. More rage—or anguish—he wasn’t sure.
From the forest behind him came a squeak.
Looking over his shoulder, he saw Carl at the tree line, whiskers twitching.
“You should get back, Weasel,” 6T9 said.
Carl hopped forward instead. Growling, 6T9 turned away. The higher gravity of the prairie would send Carl back. 6T9 bent down and grabbed another clump of grass, his hands by now bloody with synth blood. The primary reason he had synth blood was so that he could be “life-like” to humans that enjoyed “blood play.” With a grunt, he yanked the clump of grass from the ground and sent it hurtling through the air. Panting, watching it go, he heard a squeak from not a meter behind him.
He turned around and saw Carl there. The higher gravity was having an effect on the little creature. He was flattened against the earth, and all but his middle pair of legs were sprawled to the sides. At 6T9’s glance, Carl slithered forward, like a snake. “You dropped this,” he said.
Seeing nothing, 6T9 scowled at the creature.
Carl attempted to rise, gave up, and rolled onto his back, proffering the item in his middle paw pairs. It was 6T9’s access key. “You dropped it,” said Carl.
6T9’s jaw sagged in dismay. He had dropped the key that James had br
oken laws to get, the key that could turn him into a slave again. 6T9’s hand shot out, and he ripped it from the tiny creature’s grasp. Carl cheeped. In pain or shock—6T9 wasn’t sure—but it made static surge along his spine. He’d berated James for turning him into a sadist, and here he was, causing suffering that he supposedly was angry about being able to commit. And Carl had just helped him immeasurably. 6T9 sank to the ground, connected to the asteroid’s main computer, and eased the gravity back to normal. “I’m sorry,” he said, almost reaching out to touch Carl, but then, thinking better of it, he pressed his face into his hands. “I think you should go away.”
A moment later, he felt tiny claws on his legs. Carl’s necklace crackled.
6T9’s lips turned up in a grimace. Face still pressed into his hands, afraid he’d use his hands to hurt Carl again, 6T9 spit out, “You have some quip you want to share?” He deserved a verbal lashing from Carl’s sharp tongue.
“I do have something to say,” Carl said. The werfle’s necklace crackled as though Carl was clearing his throat.
“Go ahead, spit it out,” 6T9 said. “Tell me I’m worse than the violent humans I despise.” If James had been human, James would be dead after having been tortured first.
Carl squeaked. “I don’t really think you despise humans—I think you despise unnecessary violence and suffering.”
6T9 lowered his hands. “I’m just programmed that way.” Maybe he would despise them if he’d been programmed otherwise. Maybe he should despise them.
“Hmmm…” said Carl, eyes intent on him, whiskers twitching. “I wanted to say that werfles are not venomous when they hatch.”
6T9’s mouth opened, snapped shut, and then he growled. “I have access to that data.” He had no idea why Carl was bringing it up now.
“Our venom develops slowly,” Carl continued. “It’s for our own protection, really. Can you imagine a werfle hatchling having the bright idea of biting the ankle of a lizzar and then having the beast collapse on top of it?”