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92. Little Bird and Dragon
The ship thumped and Gin rocked back to consciousness. The first thing she became aware of was the catch of her safety restraints as she leaned forward in the rapier's pilot-chair. She lifted her gaze to look through the forward canopy and saw the distinctive shoulder and prow of a Hyperion Vanguard. They'd just docked.
"Legion?!" she called out in alarm.
"Commander Ookami," Legion replied pleasantly from the shipboard speakers.
"Where are we?! What happened?!"
"We have just docked with the Shirubāurufu."
For an instant she was stunned silent. Then she whispered, "you took me back to Drake." She felt cold, numb and hopeless. How could she possibly look him in the eye?
"On the contrary," Legion replied. "I contacted Drake and facilitated our rescue by Rear Admiral Ea't s'Quid as well as a rendezvous with the Shirubāurufu to ensure that you receive the medical attention that you require."
Gin's eyes found the sector map. They were in the northern reaches of Avarice, a sector Drake once effectively ruled, and were guarded by the Osan'gar and two Panther class frigates. There were also several wings of susanowas flying their CAPs in a twenty klick perimeter around their carriers.
"What did you tell him?" she asked and was horrified to hear the tremble in her voice.
"That we were in need of rescue," Legion explained. "We left the planet pursued by a squadron of Argon military pilots in advanced discoverers. Upon reaching the system sector we were engaged by police interceptors while the north and south gates were denied to us by a Cerberus class frigate with fighters and a centaur corvette with full fighter escort, respectively.
"The improved capabilities of this ship allowed us to outmaneuver and then outpace the Argon Military Interceptors. We do not possess a jumpdrive, however, and were easily outmaneuvered by the arrival of the 'Valiant', a Colossus class carrier belonging to the Argon Military, which emerged from Montalaar's East gate 8.7 kilometers ahead of us.
"We were able to plot a course under the valiant and managed to boost through the gate before fighters could be deployed. The Argon Military quickly blockaded both gates in Avarice. So we were able to outdistance our pursuit but, without a jumpdrive, we were effectively denied access to the gate network. At which point the probability of your capture or death by the Argon Military began to climb exponentially..."
"Drake went to war with the Argon Military for me?"
"Not quite," Legion replied, "although it is highly probable that he would have. Instead we deployed our single jump beacon which allowed Admiral Ea't s'Quid..."
'Admiral again is it?'
"...to jump to our location and set up a blockade around our position. This was followed by a communication from Drake to the Commander of the Valiant. Afterward the Argon Military departed without incident allowing us to rendezvous with the Shirubāurufu. Commander s'Quid's forces will be standing guard until we are underway."
There was a great big gap in that story, Gin noted. It was right around the part where Drake and that Captain were chatting. She briefly wondered if Drake had threatened him, bought him off... or both. A moment later she realized that she was gazing at Anderson's reflection in the canopy and blinked. The man's face was white as a ghost but the palms of his hands and the tips of his fingers were a dark and unsettling shade of blue. She turned back to the forward canopy. "It just occurred to me, Legion, that I once again owe you my life."
Legion was uncharacteristically silent.
"If you hadn't been here..." She shook her head. Then looked directly at the dashboard camera. "I owe you my life, Legion. Thank you."
"If it is true, Commander," Legion replied, "that you do, in fact,
'owe me your life' then I would like to make a request: please treat your life as if it is your most precious possession and guard it well."
Gin stared at the camera for a moment and then dropped her gaze. She felt rebuked and started to feel like she was falling. "You do have a way of cutting to the quick, don't you, Legion?"
"I do not mean to add to your distress, Commander. I would simply like to remind you that you are a significant component in a system capable of dramatically changing the landscape and experience of the sentient races in this galaxy. Your well being is of vital importance to a number of people, or variables, within this system who would all be adversely affected should your life come to an abrupt end."
"Wow," she said. "You know I remember being told that I mattered and was important to people... or Alex does-err... did." She fixed the camera with a wry stare. "But I've gotta tell you Legion. You're the first to make it feel impersonal."
"You have my apologies for any discomfort, Commander. I've simply noted that your behavior and thinking have a higher incidence of achieving coherence after having been confronted with demonstrable facts."
Gin looked up and stared through Anderson's reflection. From an objective standpoint her experience was fascinating. Rationally she could accept what Legion told her. Yet simultaneously there were ironclad logical arguments stating that he was wrong. That it was impossible not only that she did matter to others but even that she could. Those arguments happened faster than the blink of an eye, rushing along old and well-worn paths paved with countless sequences of thoughts and decisions that led, over and over and over again, to the undeniable conclusion that, for everyone's sake, she was better off alone. Perhaps even dead. It was a routine as old as...
~'...as I am?'~
...her cybernetic body. It was a routine that had, time and time again, steered her away from people, keeping her out of memory the same way she avoided cameras.
'Part of my damn programming!?!' she thought bitterly.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sudden muffled thumping of someone pounding on the far side of the rapier's starboard docking hatch. As Gin lifted her head a woman's voice carried through the ship's metal skin and frame. "Gin!" Seldon barked at her. "I know you can hear me! I also know you took a hit and need medical attention!" There was a momentary pause. Then Seldon shouted, "
Again!" There was another thump from the airlock. "So you better open this damn hatch before I bust out the plasma cutter!"
Gin scoffed and weakly shook her head. Then she glanced at the dashboard cam. "Well go on then," she said to Legion. "You know she's not bluffing."
The airlock opened behind her and Gin was instantly aware of Seldon and the two corpsmen behind her. The corpsmen smelled of clean soap, disinfectant, laundry detergent, aftershave from the male and a flowery shampoo from the woman as well as the tired, incessant ache of endlessly recycled air and water. One of them had a piece of hard watermelon candy in his left pants pocket. The other had recently had sex in a utility closet. Seldon, meanwhile, was agitated and angry but, amazingly, smelled of
sunlight and
salt water, of dry sand and tropical flowers, of algae, open air and ocean breezes. There were also traces of a thick, meaty musk that Gin was sure belonged to a large canine.
She took a breath to steel herself and then turned the chair to face her friend. Seldon was bronze from recent exposure to real sunlight and pointedly looked Gin up and down. As she did, the woman's face contorted into an expression that somehow managed to say everything that could possibly be said regarding the state of what she was looking at.
In case Gin missed it the bitch also summarized. "Girl," Seldon said, with her eyebrows most of the way to her hairline, "you look like
shit."
********
It was true. Gin stank of blood, stale sweat and sour armpits. She was covered in black, loamy soil, leaves and... Tasha plucked one of the things from Gin's shoulder... pine needles. The crushed remains of ferns clung to the thick layer of that same black soil on her boots above a smear of red silt on her soles.
Most notable, however, was the glistening bone of her hip peeking out from the squirming flesh and obliterated clothing of the woman's right flank and thigh. Adams and Grimes had also noticed and were momentarily stunned, not by the injuries they were looking at, but by Gin's apparent indifference to them. A moment later they snapped out of it. Grimes immediately began setting up the stretcher while Adams stepped past Seldon to start inspecting the woman's injuries.
"Seriously?!" Seldon met Gin's eye. "What is it with you and getting shot-to-shit?" She spread her hands. "Is it some kind of
fetish?"
Gin gave her a withering look that Tasha was sure she'd last seen on Drake's face.
"Damn, girl," Seldon leaned back and put her hands on her hips.
"What?" Gin asked as she began to stand. Adams stared at her in awe but didn't have the nerve to object.
Meanwhile Seldon couldn't help but stare as the woman's flesh writhed within her wounds. "Err..." Tasha began while forcefully tearing her gaze away from the charred muscles and bare bone. "Let's just say that you and Drake have gotten to that point in your relationship where you've started to-umm... look alike."
Gin's expression was now nearly identical to the one Drake used when he was doubting her sanity.
"Seriously," Seldon assured her. "You look just like him."
Gin scoffed with annoyance and looked away. "There are times when I genuinely don't know how I feel about you, Tasha."
Seldon blinked.
That was new.
She watched the woman's jaw clench as she heaved herself toward the stretcher. Gin was obviously exhausted and in quite a bit of pain but Seldon had seen that before. The fact that it was right there on her face was different. As long as Seldon had known the woman Gin had always been cool and distant. She was just hard and in control in a way that even the toughest of her marines couldn't manage. And the bitch managed that even when she was, sometimes literally, falling apart. The woman just didn't exactly
do emotional expression.
Until now.
It was subtle. Tasha doubted that Adams or Grimes would have noticed the differences even had they been pointed out. But, for Tasha, Gin was one of
her people. Which meant that noticing and paying attention to subtle changes in behavior was just part of her S.O.P. Subtle changes in a marine's demeanor often meant underlying emotional issues that could jeopardize lives. Which meant, compared to her usual stoic hypervigilance, Gin's current display of irritation and weariness was noteworthy.
Just then Gin actually lost her balance. Seldon caught her. "Easy now," she said, steadying her friend with a hand under the elbow.
Gin froze. It lasted less than a heartbeat but was accompanied by a look that was practically
haunted.
Tasha grinned at her. "C'mon," she said cheerfully and began helping her friend toward the stretcher that Grimes had just finished setting up. "Let's get you fixed up."
Gin sighed, weary in a way that had nothing to do with lack of rest or injuries and allowed Tasha to help her. "Thanks," Gin said in a voice that didn't carry beyond the cockpit.
Seldon kept the smile on her face but was once more taken aback by how
raw Gin was and, also according to her S.O.P. she proceeded to carry on with the subtlety and tact of a gauss cannon. "Hey," she said with a grin that was just a bit too sharp, "don't thank
me." The implications were as in-your-face as her typical grin. "I didn't send this little rescue party out here for you." It wasn't until the words were hanging in the air between them that Tasha realized how they were meant to hurt.
She regretted them instantly.
Gin actually winced and, a moment later, the silence between them became so thick and heavy that Tasha could have sworn it had mass. Gin wouldn't meet her gaze and, for several moments, neither woman said anything. Then, supported by Seldon, Adams and Grimes, Gin collapsed on the stretcher. As she did she produced just the hint of a whimper, which wasn't just out of character it was a bit like a Split warrior needing a hug. For an instant it almost felt like the universe was unravelling.
Then she sighed as Seldon and Adams helped her lie down and it almost sounded melodramatic with despair. As Seldon straightened back up their eyes met and, in that instant, Tasha felt like she was gazing through a pair of windows that looked out upon the fields of hell. The guilt and self loathing she saw in the other woman's eyes was something that, until that moment, Tasha had only ever seen in the mirror after one truly catastrophic series of choices or another. In that instant Tasha felt a string of knots along her spine all slip loose and come free in a single rush of understanding.
"I'm sorry," she said without even realizing that she'd meant to.
A question formed in Gin's eyes.
Tasha cast a meaningful glance at the two corpsmen. There were things she wouldn't say in front of them. She felt Gin's stare on the side of her face for a moment, then she shrugged and met the other woman's eye. "He's okay," she said and, again, Gin winced. Seldon put a hand on her shoulder. "Listen, I want you to know that. He's okay. Thane even gave him one of his dogs. You ever meet Max? He's a character." She smiled. "So," she spread her hands, "he's good."
Gin stared at her for a moment, reeling before the onslaught of information and subtle implications. "But?" she asked.
"No butts," Tasha shrugged. "I've just been kinda pissed off at you for a while and..." she shrugged. "I'm not anymore... or, at least, not as much."
"So how is he really?" Gin asked.
Seldon snorted. "I just told you!" Then she shrugged. "Seriously!" She grinned. "He's Drake! Full of piss and vinegar and itchin' for the next fight."
Gin exhaled softly through her nose and managed a slim smile of her own.
"Actually," Seldon told her, "a
whole lot has happened since you... err."
"Left," Gin supplied and, again, Tasha realized her friend was even more angry at herself than she had ever been.
"Yeah," Seldon nodded.
"Like what?" Gin prompted.
"Well," Seldon showed her a crooked grinned, "the kid's a
Clan Leader now."
Gin snorted but there was a smile on her face. "Of
course he is," she said, unable to conceal the warmth in her voice.
Seldon was, once again, struck by the change in the woman's demeanor. Gin was
present in a way that Seldon had never experienced before.
Gin looked up and met her eye. "Well? Go on," she said.
"Oh kid," Seldon chuckled, "we don't have enough time. You're gonna be in an amnio tube in a few mizura."
"Well then you'd better talk fast."
"S'jar t'Chk," Seldon said, "talked nine clans into trying to take the kid's weapons complex from him."
"I never did like him," Gin said sourly.
"Yeah well," Seldon shrugged. "He got what was coming to him."
"Drake?" Gin inquired.
"Yes and no," Tasha replied.
The med bay appeared beyond a five meter corridor and a ten meter common area where the crew ate meals, drank after hours beverages and generally relaxed. Gin gave her a meaningful look.
"Drake captured him." Seldon told her.
Gin didn't miss the significance.
"Drake did?" she asked.
Seldon managed a sour look and met her friend's gaze.
"Yep," she said, managing to pack more emotion into that one syllable than Gin had into the first six weeks of their friendship. Then Seldon let her eyes go wide, "and that's
another story we don't have time for!"
"How?"
Seldon blinked.
"How did he capture t'Chk?"
"We took the Brimstone," Tasha told her.
"So he's boarding ships now?"
"Aah..." Seldon grimaced. "Not... really. It was aaah... special circumstance."
Gin snorted and shook her head.
"Yeeah," Seldon grimaced. Then shrugged.
"I
have missed a lot," Gin stated, suddenly sounding just a little drowsy. A flick of Tasha's eyes revealed the micro-injector in Grimes hand.
"Yeah," Tasha agreed. "You really did."
"So t'Chk's gone...?" Gin asked.
"Not just t'Chk," Seldon said, realizing too late what she was about to say.
Gin turned her head to stare at her friend. And waited.
Tasha rolled her eyes.
'Me and my damn mouth.'
"Tasha?"
"We took the Brimstone," she said.
"So you said."
Tasha met her friend's eye. "Then Drake spaced the entire Set'jak clan."
Gin's eyes went wide.
"Oh yeah!" Seldon nodded. "Right in front of everybody too! We'd just captured the ship and were underway from Weaver's Tempest... where it all went down... to Thane's shipyard? The kid had us load all those poor bastards into the launch tubes and just..." She made a swooshing gesture with one hand.
Gin stared at her for several paces. Then she asked, "all of them?"
"Yep. All of 'em. So... two," Seldon shrugged, "maybe three thousand. We did a post-op scrub of their ship's databases but t'Chk wasn't exactly big on record keeping. So," she shrugged.
"Shit, Tasha," Gin was horrified. "Is he all right?" Seldon knew the woman was remembering Drake's list. "Has he talked to anyone about it?"
"Only thing he said to me was to make it happen," Seldon replied. "And yeah. I'm pretty sure he's just fine with it. Frakker broadcast the video from the Necromancer to the whole bloody system. Showed all those dead frakkers bouncin' and tumblin' into the dark. You could 'even see the random corpse burn up in the Brimstone's shields."
Gin's face was actually slack.
Seldon rolled her eyes and then met her friend's gaze. "He was pissed," she explained with barely a shrug. "Nine clans just attacked him and he wanted to make a point. So yeah, I'm pretty sure he's fine with it. No more midnight marathons if that's what you're worried about. In fact I think it was one of those choices that come easy to him. He saw it as them or us."
"Was it?" Gin asked. They'd reached the med bay and Adams and Grimes immediately began prepping Gin for submersion.
Seldon sighed. "There were lots of reasons for it," she said, "and they all made sense."
"But?"
She met Gin's eye and waited for Adams and Grimes to both become preoccupied before whispering, "I think it was Thane's idea. My guess is that he figured getting rid of the Set'jak would make it easier for Drake to ascend but... err... I don't think he expected Drake to televise it." She smirked. "I got the sense that it threw a monkey wrench in his efforts to wine and dine the other Clan Leaders. He was a big part of Drake gettin' the crown."
Gin just stared at her for a few moments. "Any other disasters I should know about?"
Seldon thought of Chinomu lying in a hospital bed down one arm while the little sister rotted in one of Drake's brigs, the Wakiya that sent her to kill the kid, Wen Digo and that seriously scary gambit, Huritas and all her pawns, Cala Ma who was rich, insane, very well connected and undoubtedly furious with Drake and Ea't, Snake Eye (whatever the hell he was up to at the moment), Ricky Machado the apparently unkillable tattooed psychopath and, of course, Salvadore Vassar. Just the thought of whom had started giving her genuine chills. She managed a broad smile. "None that won't keep."
Gin stared at her and, for a moment, Seldon had the impression that the other woman had just read her mind. Gin continued to watch her while the two corpsmen cut her clothes away. Then, finally, she asked, "are you staying aboard?"
Seldon shrugged. "Probably not for long," she admitted. "You know me. I just do what your boyfriend tells me to."
Gin's lips thinned into a dry smirk. "Uh-huh," she said and looked at the two corpsmen doting on her. Seldon had to admit that, odd as this new emotional expression was, she was impressed. Gin had just managed to fit a staggering amount of sarcasm into those two syllables.
Tasha smirked. Then she sighed softly. "Hey," she said, calling Gin's attention back. "Drake wanted me to tell you to do what you need to do." She smiled. "He'll be here for you when you're done."
Gin looked away again and Seldon understood that it was to conceal the self-loathing in her eyes.
"Also," Seldon went on, stepping back to get out of the corpsmen's way, "he wanted you to know that this ship is yours." Tasha gestured to the Hyperion Vanguard around them. "She's fully stocked," she nodded starboard, "has a kitted susanowa, a full crew including a pilot for the fighter and a squad of my guys to back you up the next time you decide to get shot at in a forest."
Gin continued to stare at the ceiling. Tasha sighed to herself and leaned against the bulkhead behind her. The two corpsmen had finished removing her clothes, prepping her wounds and preparing the amnio tube. They fitted her with a breathing apparatus and VR goggles that acted as an interface with the ship's computer. Which provided the patient the means to both communicate and alleviate boredom. As the corpsmen began levitating her into the tube Gin met Seldon's eye. Once again Tasha saw the pain her friend was in.
"Get some rest," she smiled and tapped the woman's undamaged thigh with the side of her hand.
Gin's hand rolled over and gave a thumbs-up. Then she was in the tube. The stretcher was lowered into the gel before being collapsed and removed, leaving Gin suspended in the fluid. Moments later the tube was closed and began filling the rest of the way with the slightly thick, slightly viscous fluid that always made Seldon think of snot. As she watched Gin's eyes closed and she went limp, resting in a drug-induced slumber.
Seldon turned and met Grime's gaze. She placed a hand on the man's shoulder and held his gaze. "Take care of her," she told him.
"Copy that, Chief."
A few moments later she'd made her way back through the ship to step back aboard the rapier. She closed and locked the hatch behind her. Then she walked into the cockpit and, after a brief, slightly bewildered inspection of the corpse of USC Captain Anderson, she sat in the pilot's seat and glared at the desktop camera.
"Alright, Legion," she said. "Spill it. What the hell happened out there?"
********
The Endless had a magnificent compartment devoted to nothing but the illusion of being a park. It was a place where people came to feel living soil under their feet, hear birdsong and running water with the soft light of a simulated sun on their faces. Just then it was also filled with the squealing, roaring victory of small children and the indulgent, if often exhausted expressions on the faces of their guardians.
Lu walked across the grass toward a small tree that had been positioned so that a nearby vent stirred it's leaves. Beneath the tree was a small, stone-lined brook that was not more than a single long pace across, a grassy meadow, a heavy marble bench... and Gabe, who was watching the children play nearby.
Lu stepped up to the bench and smiled at his brother. Gabe was wearing a soft expression. It wasn't quite a smile but it was close. And there was an easy light in his eyes that put Lu's soul at ease. As he met Lu's eye that almost-smile bloomed into the easy joy that had once been all there was of Gabe, back before all the things they'd done that left scars on parts of themselves that no one ever saw.
"Hey, kid," Lu clapped his brother on the shoulder and sat down beside him. "How're you feeling?"
"I'm good, Lu," Gabe told him with an easy, slightly bored smile that clearly indicated he was tired of such questions. "The robot that runs the ship says being around kids is good for crazy people."
"Is it?" Lu asked.
Gabe paused for a moment and then nodded. "Yeah."
Lu looked at the side of his brother's face for a while before he chuckled. "Glad to hear it."
"It's like," Gabe told him, "somewhere along the way I forgot...
what I was fighting for.
Why the fight, you know?"
Lu nodded hesitantly.
"It just became," he shrugged, "all about the fight." He looked his brother in the eye. "Remember the berserkers?"
"Yeah," Lu said with a nod.
One of the kids, a little girl, was out on the lawn squealing with glee. Gabe turned his head to watch her. She had strawberry blonde hair and a smile too big for her face. After a moment Lu realized that, just then, the kid was the light in every eye in the vicinity. Lu didn't understand the game the kids were playing, only that it involved a bright red ribbon and that the girl was winning. "I got lost in the berzerker," Gabe said.
"Yeah," Lu nodded. He was watching the little girl while the remorse in his heart tried to strangle him.
"Hey," Gabe elbowed him.
Lu looked over at his brother.
"Knock it off," Gabe told him.
"I'm sorry..."
"Shut up, Lu," Gabe told him. "I mean it. You can't carry everybody. You just can't. I know you did your best." He turned then and made Lu look him in the eye. "I made my own choices, man. You don't get to take them away from me."
Lu looked back into his brother's eyes and, after a few moments he realized with something akin to awe that a pair of tears just fell from his eyes. Then he reached out and grabbed Gabe by the back of the neck to pull him into a hug. "You never fail to humble me, Gabe."
Gabe shrugged and waited patiently for his brother to stop hugging him. When Lu let him go the man just went back to watching the little girl and the children chasing her around the open grass. "I'm your brother," he said as if that explained everything. "It's kinda my job, ain't it?"
Lu blinked. He had to think about it for a moment. Then he laughed. As he did Gabe chuckled beside him. A moment later they looked at each other. "It's good to see you," Lu told him.
Gabe nodded. "Yeah man. Back atcha."
"So what's next for you?" Lu asked him.
Gabe shrugged. "I don't know. I'm liking the treatment I get here. They didn't try to pump me full of meds or slap a quick-fix 'how to remain productive while dealing with instability' band-aid on me."
"What
are they doing?" Lu asked, curious.
"Well," Gabe wrinkled his nose with concentration, "it's hard to say, exactly. I mean I wake up at zero four hundred and come out here to do this... it looks like stretching but it's really subtle. I do it with others. And Chief Hess, the woman that runs it, is," he shrugged, looking for the words but Lu already knew he liked her. Gabe finally shrugged, "I like her." He said as if that explained everything and, to Lu, it kind of did.
Then Gabe turned and looked right through him. In that instant there was nothing between them; no lies, no illusions, no nonsense. They just were, just as they'd always been, and Lu knew what his brother was about to say and ask before the words even began to form.
"So..." Gabe began with that gentle, little brother lean that, at this point, felt to Lu a bit like being a sapling in the way of a ten ton boulder. Where Lu had always been lean and hard like steel covered in rawhide, Gabe was thick and broad with significantly more meat between skin and bone than Lu ever carried. It was still obvious that they were brothers but, just then, even with the weight he'd regained, Lu was less than eighty kilograms. Whereas Gabe was easily in the neighborhood of hundred to a hundred and five. Gabe had also always possessed the same undeniability as an avalanche. Once he started moving in a direction he was impossible to dissuade... and Lu knew where this was heading. "You gonna talk about," Gabe nudged him with his elbow, "whatever it is that you're not talking about?"
"I can't," Lu said immediately and was oddly grateful that it was the truth.
Gabe looked at him for a moment. His nose was still wrinkled and a pair of vertical lines had appeared over his nose in his muscular forehead. Then he nodded and looked back at the kids. "What can you say?" The avalanche kept on coming.
What amazed and humbled Lu was how his brother always knew how to ask him the
right questions. "I can tell you that I love you," Lu said with a smile but found himself looking inward with the same intensity that Gabe was looking at him with.
'What can I tell you?'
********
Seldon opened a channel to Drake. In the bottom left hand corner of her vision her UI showed her the routing sequence of the call first to the Shirubāurufu, then from the Shirubāurufu to the Predator. At which point it was rerouted in less than a hundredth of a sezura to the Brimstone. At which point there was a five sezura delay before it was finally routed to Drake's personal quarters. Her UI also showed her the current bandwidth and ping time which could indicate, to a trained eye at least, any evesdroppers that might be listening. A moment later Seldon found herself staring at Drake's new chair (which, to Seldon's eye, looked like the throne of a comic book villain).
It was empty.
After a few sezura Seldon scrunched her face up in frustration. "Hello?! Drake?!"
Max barked somewhere off camera. A moment later he bounded into view and looked around, trying to figure out where she was hiding.
"Hey boy," she said with a genuine smile. He looked in her direction, tilting his head to one side and then the other. "Can't see me, huh?"
"WHOOF!" he barked at her. Seldon, who had spent most of her waking moments in the dog's company for the past few days, had learned to understand and appreciate many of his expressions. This one was a mix of playfulness and curiosity with just a touch of annoyance. He didn't like her being sneaky. She started laughing and Max trotted up to the desk and started sniffing around, providing her with a very up-close-and-personal view of his nostrils.
Just then a hatch opened off screen and she heard the tell-tale
whoosh of an auto-toilet. Max immediately whipped around and trotted off to find Drake. A moment later the kid appeared from the right side of the screen and plopped his skinny ass down in his throne while fending Max off with affectionate pats and shoves.
"He taking your calls for you now?" Seldon asked him.
Drake gave her the look that said he was wondering when the next punch would land. "Only
some of them," he replied cautiously.
Seldon genuinely couldn't tell if he was joking or not.
"Alright," he said, "talk to me. How is she?"
"Alive," she told him.
Drake stared at her for several beats and then raised one eyebrow in exasperation. "Why don't you just skip to the bits I don't know," he prodded her.
While Drake was looking at her Max was sitting at his hip, watching him with a rapturous expression. The sight of the adoration in the dog's eyes actually made Seldon feel just a little bit jealous. She and the monster got along and she was able to keep him occupied while Drake was away, but Max had
never looked at her that way.
"Hey!" Drake snapped his fingers in front of the camera. "You still with me?"
"Remind me to slug you the next time I see you," she barked at him.
He leaned away from the camera. "NOW what'd I do?" he only barely managed not to whine.
"Nothin'," Seldon griped. "I just feel like slugging you."
Drake gave her the exact same expression she'd seen on Gin's face thirty mizura earlier. "What did Legion tell you?" he asked her.
"Not a damn thing," she confessed. "He said he wasn't gonna 'violate her privacy' or some shit. At least... not for
me." She squinted at him. "He might for you, though."
"Yeah," Drake said noncommittally.
"He'd probably tell you!" Seldon prodded him
"Exactly," Drake replied, letting himself be distracted by Max. "I'll let Gin decide when she's ready to talk."
Seldon squinted as if looking into a wind. It was so strange. The kid never failed to defy her expectations. He'd become so powerful and wore the scars he'd earned along the way with poise, dignity and, often, a roguish grin. Yet every once in a while the light would hit him just right and Seldon would find herself staring at this little kid who was, for some reason, pretending to be a grown up... and everybody was going along with it.
"Drake..." she started and then immediately thought better of it. She bit her tongue and looked away. Even before she looked back up she could feel him scrutinizing her. Finally she grimaced and met his eye.
He waited.
Seldon held his eye and just listened to herself breathe for a moment.
"Something you want to tell me, Seldon?"
"Yep." Seldon said it without even thinking... but then remained silent.
Drake arched an eyebrow as Max whined at his elbow. Seldon was pretty sure the pup needed to pee. "Uhmmm..." Drake laughed. "I don't even know what questions to ask, Seldon. Do I need to come over there with a crowbar?"
"Something's wrong," she confessed and instantly felt, for some reason, that she'd just betrayed her friend. She shrugged and actually felt like a five year old squirming in front of her mother. "I don't know..." she realized she couldn't look Drake in the eye, "I don't know what's going on but..." she looked away to organize her thoughts.
"But?" he prodded her.
She squinted and thought of Gin snarling at her. Then she met Drake's eye. "The way she's acting?" she said.
"Yeah?"
"It's off."
"What do you mean?" He asked and she could hear the concern in his voice.
"She's emotional," Tasha told him. "
Cranky even."
Drake stared at her. "She's been through a lot recently."
"Yeah," she said and held his eye. Seldon wasn't exactly one to choose her words carefully. She didn't really operate that way. She found her way instead by choosing her intentions. She needed to be many things right then and they were pulling in different directions. Gin was hurting. Gin was being secretive about it. Drake, her employer, believed in and trusted her beyond reason or self protection. It was charming and romantic in the complete and terrifying way of the young and hormonally supercharged. It also scared the shit out of her.
There were several hundred thousand lives who worked for and directly relied upon the boy for their livelihood and, more, their safety and security and, often, the safety and security of their families. For their sakes, for all of their sakes, he needed a level head and Gin needed to be held accountable for her choices. Seldon didn't understand what was going on in that hellscape but, as much as she liked and believed in the woman, Seldon had a duty.
"Seldon?" Drake prodded again. He wasn't smiling anymore. "What do I
'need to know'?
Seldon nodded. "Back on Nova Somnia I saw that bitch get gutshot and all she did was apologize for Chinomu's jacket. Now? I looked into her eyes and saw..." She shook her head. "Drake, for whatever reason that woman hates herself. I don't know what's causing it. I don't know what's going on. The bitch doesn't exactly 'share.' But she's hurting, Drake. I mean... I looked in her eyes and saw... err...
'torment'." She curled her lip around the word. It was awkward in her mouth.
"Torment?" Drake echoed her. He was as deadpan as Rana.
"She's hurting, Drake. Bad."
Drake stared at her for a long moment. She could see the wheels turning behind his eyes. Then Max
huffed at him. The kid looked away and smiled at him. The dog huffed at him again, this time sounding impatient. Drake rubbed one of his ears. "In a mizura, all right?" Max produced a slightly grumpy rumble but put his head on the arm of Drake's chair. Where he then stared at his master
intently.
Drake turned that chilly stare of his back to Seldon. "Stay with her," he said and she nodded. "Help her any way you can." She nodded again. "And keep me in the loop."
She sighed and dropped her head. "What if she doesn't
want me to?"
He skewered her with that chilly stare of hers and she got the impression he was choosing his words carefully. Then, finally, he said, "I trust your judgement, Seldon."
Seldon blinked. Then she nodded. "Okay," she said. "Will do."
The link closed and the holographic display winked out of existence. For a moment she simply stared out into space. After a moment she found herself thinking of a sunny day she'd spent out to sea in her Dad's sailboat. She wasn't supposed to go out alone. The school she attended routinely made a show of the statistics and horror stories in order to drive the point home. Never go out to sea alone. Her Dad, though, he understood... or at least pretended to. Instead of telling her 'no' he'd just make her check in via radio every hour or so.
That day she was several kilometers offshore. It had been one of those long, lazy summer days that she'd spent swimming, snorkeling and sunbathing. She'd even netted a pair of kahawai when a school swam right past the boat. The sun was still high in the west and she was enjoying the warmth of it when a sudden shift in the wind raised gooseflesh on her legs, arms and back. The wind was uncomfortably cold and heavy with the scent of rain and ozone. She remembered turning her head into the wind and scanning the horizon for the gathering clouds, knowing even before finding them that she was in trouble. She couldn't say why but she felt the same way now.
"Shit."
********
Gin awakened from reliving her moments in the forest over and over again. Each recycling of the memory began with the shock on her twin's face and ended as Legion ripped the hill apart with the rapier's EMP cannons.
She thought of the other, of she in the woods. The other had been
on-mission. There were questions, certainly.
'How is my target as fast as I am? I've shot her twice; why won't she go down?' and, of course,
'why does she have my face?' But she was 'on-mission'. She had a task to complete and violence was not only necessary but easy. It was
always an immediately available option. It was self defense. It was mission security. It was the mission itself. Her very existence was death and it was always closer than her next breath.
After several moments Gin realized that she was staring at the unobtrusive HUD of the med suite's VR interface. It was informing her that it was awaiting instructions and how she could give them. As unobtrusive as it was, the interface demanded a shift in her attention. It was harder than she expected it to be. Her mind just kept returning to the look on her twin's face, to the shock, horror and outrage on her face... and then the violence. For a moment Gin's mind was simply a storm. There were too many questions and she didn't want the answers to any of them. Her entire existence was a bloody horror show.
She took another breath and, after several more moments of staring, she realized that there were things she did, in fact, need to know that the medical suite could tell her. A moment later she began querying it regarding the state of her neural interface. At first the answers the machine provided her didn't make any sense. According to the medical suite there was nothing wrong with the enzyme layers, synthetic neural receptors or any of the sub-systems. All of the synthetic systems that she'd designed were intact and behaving normally. There was, in fact, no localized explanation for what she'd been thinking of as 'the collapse of her emotional buffer'.
She thought of her sister's face again. She recalled the other's indignation when the pair of them reached the same conclusion simultaneously as well as the terror beneath it; an endless existential horror that was so easy to funnel into outrage and lethal intent. It was a well-crafted routine that both of their minds had experienced simultaneously.
'Like two passengers on the same damned train.'
Gin took a breath as she understood. She understood the difference between them. It was right there, all at once and it was as beautiful as it was tragic. Drake and Seldon and Kao t'Kt and, hell, even Erica Chinomu had helped participate in the grand conspiracy to...
"...make me human," she said aloud.
Before Drake and the people he'd brought into her orbit she'd been in hell; years of silence, loneliness, terror and despair. Then she'd followed Kao t'Kt into that restaurant and... everything changed.
Right then Gin suspected her twin was, as Drake would put it, coming unglued. She imagined she knew exactly what thoughts, questions and emotional experiences the other woman was going through. She knew and did not envy her.
For a moment Gin just lingered in a confused, exhausted silence. Her mind was overwhelmed and reeling. She'd been either numb or sleeping during the trip from the planet. Now that her mind had re-engaged, however, it had endless questions and Gin didn't want the answers to any of them.
It was easy to slip into nihilism. It was easy to begin doubting the validity of her own existence. She could even imagine several quick and expedient ends to all of her problems.
"Shit," she groaned. "How the hell do I deal with this?"
Which is when a strange thought reached her conscious mind. The thought was strange for several reasons. Firstly it reminded her of someone that, if she was correct, she'd never actually met. Secondly, the thought didn't seem to originate from within what she thought of as...
her. It was more like a radio signal that her brain simply interpreted.
'With your eyes wide open, luv.'
For a moment Gin just "stared" at the thought. After several moments she tried to dismiss it as the product of an exhausted and overwhelmed mind. Which was a perfectly rational explanation for what she'd just experienced. The problem was that it just didn't quite ring true. It genuinely felt like the thought came from not just elsewhere but from
someone else. To Gin it felt like Anna; Alexandra MacConnor-Gabriel's mother; a woman her psyche identified as...
"Mum," she whispered. Then she shook her head again.
She thought of her sister again, and wondered what the other was going through. She suspected it was familiar; the way she used to feel when she'd ride that 'train' all the way to it's last, lonely terminus.
She sighed.
The "train" was a series of pseudo-logical arguments that all led to the same conclusions: She was only safe when she obeyed, when she stayed on mission, when she followed protocol and, most of all, when she
returned to control. She could see the program for what it was now. She could also see how much pain, suffering and loneliness it had inflicted upon her. The conditioning had faded in recent months. There had simply been so much to evidence to disprove the conclusions her mind tried to route her into that much of the program had simply dissolved. She'd left her terrible little cocoon long enough to see the truth in the faces around her. Once she had the lies lost all their power.
Now, though, thinking about the other "her" in the forest, and it all came flooding back. Every thought, every emotion, every mental pathway was suddenly ignited. She could actually watch how every thought and conclusion validated the
vital and
immediate need for security, vigilance, discipline, routine, isolation and...
"Return to control," she snorted with disgust. It occurred to her then, in much the same way things become apparent when one turns up a light, that THAT had been the very first of their instructions she'd defied. Immediately afterward she remembered how that had come to pass... in all its confusion, horror and revulsion. For a moment she simply stared at it. A moment later there was an onslaught of guilt and horror. She was back in the pit, falling into the same old, familiar abyss.
It had been a simple job. She didn't know the why. She'd never known the why. Her instructions always only included the who and the how. In this case the how had been both straightforward and simple. Go to this address and kill this person.
She'd done so.
She'd carried out her orders.
She'd done her job.
The target had been neutralized. Witnesses had been eliminated. Her instructions were clear. It was time to...
'Return to control.'
Only she couldn't.
She felt an echo of the compulsion. Control was always safe. Control was always the right answer. Whenever she was in doubt she should...
'Return to control.'
Only...
...the witnesses that she'd just silenced...
...wouldn't quite...
...
let her.
They were cooling meat on the floor. They were loose ends successfully tied off. The job was done. She was supposed to go. Yet she couldn't look away from the three children she'd just murdered.
Gin winced. Even now she saw their faces. The three of them had been like stair steps, each roughly a year and a half a part: One boy and two girls. One moment they'd been whole and healthy, filled with enthusiasm, radiance and bright futures. The next they were gone; transformed into the lifeless subject of a nouveau-art piece called 'Tragedy' painted in arterial spray.
She could still remember the thunder of the compulsion.
'Return to control. Touch in. Make contact. Surrender accountability. Receive purpose and meaning.' It was always safe. It was always the right answer. Even though it inevitably meant another target. It was like the scream and thunder of a hurricane while she stood at the calm center of the eye. She'd been supposed to leave the apartment and disappear into the city. She'd been supposed to make contact via an encrypted uplink at 2100 later that day.
'Leave the scene. Escape the area. Evade detection. Make contact from safety.'
Only she couldn't.
She had no idea how they'd managed to enter the apartment without her hearing them. She'd snapped the target's neck. Her victim never even saw it coming. It was as fast and simple as turning out the lights. But when Gin looked up, the woman's three children were at the door to the apartment, all staring at her with identical expressions of shock and horror on their three, very similar faces.
The oldest had been roughly seven years old. He'd been a handsome lad and brave. He'd roared and thrown himself at his mother's killer. A moment later there was an expression of stunned frustration on his face as he fell to the foyer floor. Gin trembled with the recollection. She imagined that she could still feel the sensation of the blade in her hand as it glided across the front of the boy's spine. He'd died almost instantly. Both of his carotid arteries and jugular veins had been completely severed. He lost so much blood so quickly that she doubted he ever realized that he was dead.
Before the boy even hit the ground the older of the two girls started screaming. Her eyes were fixated on her brother and her voice was a ringing chime that made Gin hurt in ways she still couldn't define. A moment later the sound was silenced forever. Gin had stepped past the child and driven a fifteen centimeter blade through her back, puncturing her heart through soft little-girl ribs. There had been almost no resistance as the child fell forward and slid off her blade.
The last child, the youngest daughter, had stared her right in the eye. There'd been no confusion in her. There was no denial. The girl understood what was happening and stared accusingly right at Gin.
Gin remembered standing in the apartment's foyer as the timer ran in the back of her mind. She knew the estimated response time of the local police and was aware that some random good-samaritan could look into the apartment at any moment and inadvertently become another witness she'd need to silence. Yet the last child died wouldn't let her go. She'd fallen backwards with her lifeblood spilling into her pretty yellow blouse in a way that made Gin think of blood slides when the two panes of glass were pressed together. She'd died with her eyes open and, despite the need to flee and
return to control, Gin had simply been unable to look away.
She'd always understood Drake's madness. She understood why he recited the names of the dead to himself and why he often couldn't sleep. She understood his nightmares. There are things that can be broken that can never be fixed. There are wounds that never heal and there are crimes that can never be atoned for. Some things, once done, can simply never be undone. And no matter how far one runs or how deep into distraction one sinks, some deeds leave stains that never, ever come out.
Gin had known since that moment that there would be no safety from that child's gaze. Not for her. Not ever. There'd be some part of her staring into that little girl's eyes until the very moment of her death.
The moment she finally acknowledged that she wasn't going to...
Return to control... came back to her. The transport had been lifting off. It was pressing her into some 3rd-class seat that she'd paid for with a credit chit pickpocketed from some random stranger on the train to the spaceport. She'd changed clothes and was wearing a mask that covered her mouth and nose, an interactive visor to hide her eyes and a large hoodie under a man's oversized coat. She was all but invisible to the people around her. Which meant no one noticed as she shook with the realization of what she'd done. Without ever quite letting her rational, conscious mind in on the decision she'd refused to
Return to Control.
Even now the memory was so intense that Gin found herself slipping into nihilism again. Her very existence was an existential horror! So why - WHY?! - should she keep going?
She immediately thought of Drake. An instant later she was in tears. The bitter, hateful part of her mind was screaming at the monstrous injustice of it all. The man loved her! He LOVED her! Meanwhile her predominant emotional experience was akin to being at the bottom of a swimming pool. The world above was still there. It was still full of light and sound and motion. It was just far away. Most of the time she was just numb, disconnected in some primal, fundamental way that she could never, ever bridge.
She thought of Erik again, the only lover she ever had as a human being, a man she'd loved as if he were life itself... right up until the moment he abandoned her in his flight to save his own skin. She could remember, or at least she believed she could remember what it was like to touch him, to hold his hand, to kiss him.
She actually trembled at the memory.
Once upon a time all it took to deliver her straight to heaven was the sight of his smile or the feel of his hand on her back. She could remember sensations and delights that were simply impossible now. Her body wasn't designed for experience. It was designed for subterfuge and combat. Her brain was still capable of emotion but her body was not. So Drake might as well have been making love to a blow up doll.
She trembled with the frustration she felt and thought of her sister again. Once more she felt that sense of duality. She wasn't sure if it was just her imagination but it felt a little like what she imagined being in two places at once might feel like. One of her was floating in a tube of amniotic-gel. The other was back on Montalaar, a tornado of looping compulsions simultaneously fueled and annihilated by the outrage and horror of her new and profound understanding.
"Don't go back!" Gin whispered. Then she sighed bitterly. She was heavy with feelings she couldn't quite feel, emotions she couldn't quite express and a despair that she couldn't even begin to define... for herself! Let alone the people around her.
Her mind...
'...minds...'
...was...
'...were...'
...a whirlwind of overlapping questions.
'How many are there?'
'Am I real?
'How many just like me?'
'Was I ever real?'
'How many suffering?'
'I am so tired!'
'How many lost?'
'I am so alone!'
'How many in torment?'
'I am so pointless!'
'How many, Erwyn?!'
'I just want to...'
'How many of ME did you make, you son of a bitch?!'
'... sleep / love / forget...'
'How many desperate, confused, numb, docile, compliant..?!'
'.. Die.'
'Do I even...?'
'HOW MANY YOU BASTARD?!'
'...have a soul?'
Gin understood that she should have been sobbing. If she'd been a 'real girl' she'd have been wracked with the enormity and horror of her experience. Instead her thoughts were an endless whirlwind. Her breathing, for the most part, remained steady and level. Her heart was even. Yet there were a pair of tear-tracks on her face. It was simultaneously amazing and excruciating. There was nothing wrong with the neural interface. Yet her body was expressing an emotional state that was completely unsupported by the synthetic vehicle her brain was housed in. There was simply no explanation for what she was experiencing.
There was a sudden "swelling" that called Gin's attention. As she turned her mind toward it she realized it was the same thing she'd felt earlier; the source of her strange, alien thought. A moment later, in a feverish unfolding of thoughts and associations, she made a connection. There
was a computer she depended on that could be malfunctioning. It could also be easily programmed to keep her compliant. It was the bit of folded meat inside her synthetic skull. An explosion of possible explanations and procedures occurred to her. Cloning with seta compression; virtual reality interfaces; constant programming and conditioning throughout the entire developmental phase of the... organic material... driving their weapon.
Gin clenched her teeth and trembled.
"How many, Erwyn?" she asked bitterly. "How many are there?! How many just like me are out there looking for...?!"
She didn't immediately know how to finish the question. She didn't know how to describe what it was. Sanity? Sense? Meaning? Connection? Understanding? She didn't know. She thought of Drake, but Drake wasn't
it. Then she thought of that radiance she'd felt coming from within the people she'd been working with... albeit from Drake's shadow. She thought of the warmth in their smiles and the strange, fierce pride in their faces...
...right up until the moment they saw her looking back at them. It was something she tried not to do; to let someone else truly
see her. Cos it was...
'...disgust-loathing-contempt-revulsion-hatred...'
...
concern that she saw in their eyes... and she didn't know what to do with it.
She thought of Drake again and the first moment she'd ever laid eyes on him. He'd been a shadow within shadows; a shadow that proved to be a skinny little kid who carried himself with the casual authority of a god. He'd welcomed her to his table, fed her, comforted her and then gave her a family.
She shook her head. He deserved better. The thought immediately resulted in a wave of emotion so vast that she couldn't name it. She thought of Rabekka Giorno and Rik Erwyn and her teeth bared themselves while her molars ground together.
She remembered the lights exploding at Heaven's Gate as PPC fire tore the station apart. A Terraformer attack.
Terraformer.
Not Xenon.
Her teeth flexed and relaxed repeatedly while her hands curled themselves into fists. Too many questions tumbled through her mind. Too many brand new potential horrors exploded like fireworks in her mind. She thought of her sister again... and then she remembered the Giant she'd slain; the one that killed Slamer and a dozen other marines and nearly killed Drake and Seldon. At the time she'd made certain assumptions about who, or at least what, that Giant had been. Thinking about her twin on Montalaar, however, she couldn't help but ask more questions that had no answer.
"Oh frak!" she cursed. At which point it suddenly occurred to Gin that Drake had assigned medical professionals to monitor her. Which meant that there was a good chance that they were listening to her right then.
She didn't want to talk to them. She didn't want to have to reassure them that she was okay. She didn't want to have to reassure Drake, who would have access to every log and recording. How could she? She felt like a leaf in a tornado. Besides, she didn't want their help. How could they possibly understand? How could she possibly make them? What would that conversation sound like? And, even if she successfully made them understand what she was and what she was experiencing, how could she trust them to have the same agenda and agree upon...?
She thought of her sisters again and was immediately angered by the absence of an ache from her synthetic heart. There should have been one. She should have hurt with the agony of compassion. Instead it felt like the rest of her existence: distant, dim, cool and quiet, as if everything real and valid and nourishing was beyond a thick wall of glass. She could see it, know it for what it was, but never touch or communicate with it. Then she stared at the fact that she could feel, genuinely
feel, anger.
Anger was available to her. Her body could feel and express anger with lethal precision... but not the love she so desperately wanted to give to Drake and Hayla and Seldon. She wanted to
feel the way she remembered feeling when she'd been
'a real girl'. She wanted to
feel the pride and adoration she saw on the faces of the people she worked with... instead of the suspicion and terror that normally defined her experience.
It was easier with the Split. They just accepted her as she was, without any of the drama her own species was so infinitely capable of. The Split just didn't ask the same questions. They didn't look into her soul trying to... she didn't even know how to finish the thought.
'See themselves?'
Gin stared at the concept and it fit. Humans always seemed to be looking for themselves in the people around her. She could even vaguely recall doing it herself. Now, though? There was something
missing within her and, whatever it was, was what allowed other people to connect to each other. She could remember it. She could even visit those feelings in her dreams. She just couldn't connect to them in the real world.
A new question occurred to her. The instant it did all the noise in her head stopped as her mind reflexively retreated back into numbness.
How did she know that ANY of her memories were real? WAS she Alexandra MacConnor-Gabriel? Did Alexandra MacConnor-Gabriel even really exist? She could remember her childhood, remember Anna calling her daughter home through the fading light of countless late afternoons. The memory came with others. Such as countless grass stains, dirty knees and irrelevant scratches and scabs she'd gotten from running across the tall scrub, gravel and grasses around...
Alex's... family home. She could remember growing up, learning, developing and changing. She remembered feeling afraid and awkward after skipping several years. She could remember Erik... whom she hunted down and killed as a cyborg.
'But... how do I know any of it was real?'
The answer, of course, was so stunningly obvious that it appalled her.
"Legion?" she called.
There was no answer. So she began working with the VR interface. In just a few moments she managed to send a message to the docked rapier. Shortly thereafter Legion was able to instruct her how to open the right ports for him to connect with the VR suite. Several minutes later he verified that all outside access to her medical suite had just been severed "at her request" and that medical personnel would be notified of any emergency.
"Thank you," she said to him when he was done with his update.
"Of course, Commander."
After several moments she asked, "Legion?"
"Yes, Commander?"
"Am..." it was hard to get the words out. As if she didn't have enough breath to make them. She closed her eyes. "Am I... am I a clone?" she asked, expecting her heart to lurch with the sudden jolt of terror she felt. It did not.
"Yes, Commander," Legion informed her.
Gin reeled again but it was just an echo of the staggering disorientation she'd experienced in the rapier after escaping Montalaar. As Legion's answer seeped into her thinking the number of questions in her mind momentarily exploded. Then they all faded. There was one question that was more important than any other. Yet she hesitated to ask it. She wasn't sure if she could withstand the answer.
"What's happening to me?"
********
Continued...