Priestess Pilot Alicia Eminescu stared at herselves.
She was floating in two biovats, positioned opposite each other in the hospital bay at Mercy Base. Both of her were naked; both were rigged with medical tubing.
But this was no mirror image.
One of her was barely recognisable: mottled with bruises and burns, muscle and tissue exposed where radiated skin had sloughed off in the extreme salinity of EXO19’s ocean. Her ?mech’s crash corset had forced her into a brace position—preserving the brain on impact—but her other internal organs were pulp.
The other Priestess was pristine, fresh from the ectogenic sac. Her gothic-pale skin was unblemished; her eyes—one green, one blue—were free of the G-burst capillaries common to mech pilots. Her black hair drifted upright in the biovat fluid, revealing a single scar above her left ear where the eunuchoids had inserted the implant.
As direct clones, the entanglement was perfect, with none of the duplication/duplication effect that non-clone pilot pairs experienced—a tactical advantage of picoseconds.
<ul>
<li>Not that it had helped against the Martian…</li>
</ul>
The last thing she remembered was a purple flash. Then, she awoke in the biovat, first as one, then gradually two as the implant created neural pathways in the fresh clone, her consciousness burrowing into the blank wetware like Artefacts through spacetime.
Now, a eunuchoid in white scrubs entered the bay. Like all its kind, it was bald, mute, and genetically conditioned for subservience. Alicia watched it drag a modesty screen in front of each biovat, obscuring her floating bodies from the neck down. The screens were patterned with neotapestries of a muscular Saint Christopher carrying a child across a starlit river.
<ul>
<li>Visitors?</li>
</ul>
She’d been hoping to see her ?mech squadron—Faythe, Carlos and Francis—but the man who entered wasn’t a pilot.
Alicia mentally groaned. Priest Captain Mallory Quinn: head of the Logistics Choir at Mercy Base; a frank pain-in-the-ass, may the Saint forgive her for thinking it. He wore ill-fitting vantablack vestments and had a face like one of the rats that used to plague the vestry in her father’s church.
He approached the new clone, not hiding his preference for her undamaged face over the flaking visage of her ruined self. Alicia didn’t like the way his murine eyes flicked down to the modesty screen, like he was trying to see through the Saint to where her naked body was paralysed in the biovat. He stepped close, his wet lips almost pressed to the glass.
“I know you can lip read, Priestess. Your father was deaf, yes? And so pious that he refused the Ectogenesis that would grant him new cochleae. A ‘Christian’, in the old sense of the word, pre-Schism, pre-Christophite. I wonder what he would make of you, his only daughter, now in her…fourth body, is it?”
<ul>
<li>Mention my father again and that body will be your last, Mallory.</li>
</ul>
But of course, he couldn’t hear her. And she had no choice but to ‘hear’ his monologue. His nasal drawl might be inaudible through the biovat fluid, but she couldn’t close her eyes.
“With the Bishop Commodore’s permission, I have reviewed the black box recordings from the wreckage of your ?mech—the ?mech that is currently scattered over kilometres of ocean, that is. The other is radioactive dust.
“Your actions were foolhardy. Our orders were to hold this hemisphere but avoid confrontation. The Mars-Christophite peace talks are ongoing. If word of your skirmish—a nuclear skirmish—gets out…” He drummed his fingers on the glass.A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
<ul>
<li>It wasn’t my nuke. And not all of us have a gold mine waiting in this desert called ‘peace’…</li>
</ul>
Everyone in the squadron knew why Mallory had been promoted beyond his years and ability to Priest Captain in the Logistics Choir. The Quinn family were heavily invested in the Christophite Mercantile Corp. Rumour had it there were backchannel deals being struck between the CMC and the Martian Oligopolies ahead of the peace talks. Was this really to be the result of two generations of holy war? The sanctity of the Artefacts desecrated so that the likes of Mallory Quinn could get richer…
<ul>
<li>Did I die for this? Twice?</li>
</ul>
It made Alicia feel sick. Both of her.
“So, I will not be authorising yet another instantiation of you,” continued Mallory. “These bodies will be your last. And you will not be assigned another ?mech. You’re grounded.”
<ul>
<li>On whose authority, you [REDACTED ?<sup>blasphemy</sup>?]?!?!</li>
</ul>
“The Bishop is aware of my edict,” said Mallory, as if reading her thoughts. “Judith is fond of you, but she sees the logic of my position. We cannot have your actions jeopardising humanity’s first chance at peace since the Great Cascade. The matter is already decided, but I thought I’d give you the ‘heads up’ before you’re decanted. To let you…acclimatise.”
<ul>
<li>You’ve got less balls that that eunuchoid. The reason you’re telling me while I’m in the biovat is because I’d have kicked your ass so hard you’d have entered orbit and been swallowed by the Artefact!</li>
</ul>
Mallery adjusted his vestments. “There is one other matter. We’re going to send an envoy to the Martian Mecha Corp’s Forward Operating Base and propose a détente while the new Artefact matures. It will be difficult: you killed one of their pilots in the skirmish, and Priest Pilot Pérez lanced the other during your medevac. They’ll want blood. So, we’ll need to send a…gesture of goodwill. Something we—or indeed, you—no longer need.”
He turned around and approached the damaged Priestess’s biovat, looked into her bloodshot eyes. “Let’s give peace a chance, eh?”
***
Alicia’s new clone needed a lot of sleep. There were neural pathways to consolidate, muscles to synthesise and strengthen after storage in the ectogenic sac.
Her damaged clone also slept—in fitful, futile attempts at post-traumatic self-repair.
She alternated sleep between the two selves, always keeping one awake in case Mallory returned. It was a pointless exercise—she was still paralysed in the biovats —but her father had taught her to look danger in the face.
She dreamed / watched herself dream.
She was standing in Saint Christopher’s Cathedral, between the giant mirrors placed on either side of the nave. Her reflection stretched out either side of her, duplicated to infinity.
The frothy waters of the River of Spacetime surged through the transept, partitioning the altar from the congregational pews. Five years ago, she had stood on the wet marble, feeling the weight of the baptismal tungsten vest and the eyes of a thousand Christophites at her back. But today she was naked and alone.
No. Not quite alone…
Footsteps on marble. Someone was coming up the aisle.
Alicia spun as he thrust. She sidestepped—barely—and kicked out at her attacker’s knee, but he slipped behind her, locked an arm around her neck, held a blade to her throat.
She knew she was dreaming. She could see her clone’s eyes twitch from across the hospital bay. And yet…it felt so real. He felt real, pressed up against her, as naked as she was. His breath was in her ear, but his voice was in her head.
<ul>
<li>You killed my wingmate.</li>
<li>You killed my clone.</li>
<li>Freak.</li>
<li>Infidel.</li>
<li>I should kill you where you stand.</li>
<li>You still think I’m afraid to be martyred? </li>
<li>I’m the one in control now.</li>
<li>You haven’t realised, have you?</li>
<li>Realised what?</li>
<li>We’re dreaming. Or at least, I am. You’re dead, Martian… </li>
</ul>
A ripple of doubt spread across the surface of his thoughts, but the arm against her throat tightened, the blade pressed closer. A single bead of blood ran down her throat, between her breasts…
***
Both of her were awake.
Her old self was still in her biovat, looking down at her new self, who stood in front of the glass. The eunuchoid had given her a jumpsuit and withdrawn to a respectful distance, arms crossed behind its back, eyes lowered.
It was time to desync—to become one and one. Alicia wondered which one she would be—the perfect specimen in the jumpsuit or the sacrificial cripple in the vat.
<ul>
<li>Either way, I’m going to find you, Martian. </li>
</ul>
She placed one hand on the vat and looked herselves in the eyes.
<ul>
<li>DESYNC.</li>
</ul>