《Outsider》


 H1 - A voice in the Snow, A gun in the Dark

    Hiiro Volshebso


    Colonizing a planet was something of a mixed bag. On the up-side, there were enough semi-habitable worlds within human-controlled space that anyone who wanted a fresh start could drop their life and build a new one free of civic responsibility, resource rationing and involuntary sterilization. Some couple hundred years ago that''s exactly what my ancestors must have done, not that I know who my ancestors are. I don''t even know who my parents were.


    On the down-side, a few hundred years of free breeding augmented by hormone therapy and total freedom from personal responsibility brought my home world to its current predicament. Over ninety-percent of Intatenrup''s population were generational orphans raised by the state, nothing more than replaceable parts in the grinding wheels of the terraforming archologies and their sprawling slums. I was one of the lucky ones, a genetic flook that made me immunologically suited for a life of more than just manual labor in a sterile hab tower. Before I was old enough to speak, I''d been conscripted into the pioneer regiments alongside another forty-thousand-odd kids in my generation.


    By the age of eight, I was building roads and railways out on the flats. At twelve, I was given a rifle and sent to hunt ripper-cats and giga-toads in the highlands. I was assigned to a permanent garrison in the southern tundras at age fifteen. I was a week into my seventeenth year when the Polaris XV crashed two-hundred kilometers southwest of us during a month-long solar storm. None of us questioned the order to travel there on foot and do what we could for the survivors. One-hundred and sixty kids who knew the risks and made due. For an overland arctic expedition the number seemed excessive, but with vehicles grounded until the solar storm died down, it would have to be enough. Kids got tired, they couldn''t keep up, they froze to death in their sleep or on their feet.


    Ninety of us fought our way through the ion-charged blizzards to the crash site. The Polaris XV had eight-thousand souls at departure; fewer than a hundred had survived the crash and only a quarter of them were still breathing when we arrived. We hunkered down in the wreck and waited for a week. The solar storm should have passed by then, flyers and tracks should have arrived to start ferrying out survivors, but they didn''t.


    With no end to the snow and no chance of making the return journey with the afflicted, we settled in to wait out the storm. We hunted until we ran out of game, which wasn''t much to start with. Weeks passed, the snow falling a meter deep on the worst nights and no less than half that on a good day. Snow got places it shouldn''t, people got wet, people froze. We ran out of rations and people started starving. We ran out of fuel and had to start melting snow with the Polaris''s damaged nuclear reactor; anyone who lived through this wouldn''t live long or well without life-long countermeasures. No one wanted to make to call, but someone had to.


    If you didn''t want to starve or freeze or scat out your own rad-cooked organs, there was another option. We called for volunteers before we started drawing twigs. There were no takers right away, but six weeks after being stranded someone volunteered. It was around week eight or nine, we ran out of bullets before we ran out of volunteers. It got harder after that.


    Between blizzards, I''d stare up into the southern lights and watch the solar storm. The ion storm was supposed to last five weeks at worst, but two months into this one-week trip, it didn''t seem likely. When the days were only four hours long, it left a lot of time to watch the night sky while the cold seeped into your bones and froze you so stiff that just breathing the icy air felt like you were about to crack into pieces. At some point, I started doing more than just watching the stars and the lights and the cosmos above.


    I started listening.


    I heard things that might have been my own thoughts and for weeks I thought that was all there was to it. Then I started hearing things I knew I didn''t know, things about the flow of the cosmos and the ambient energy of all things. There were thirty of us left when I heard the question.


    <What is it you desire?>


    "I wouldn''t mind being warm again." I chattered through lips so frostbitten they were locked in a rictus scowl.


    That night I could have sworn a lightning bolt shot up the length of my spine. My nerves felt like white-hot copper wires, heating me up from the inside better than any drink or workout I''d ever had in my life. When I tuned my mind into the heat, there was a resonance to it. The more I focused on it, the more it whelmed up inside of me. My whole being hummed, every fiber was alive with energy, with heat. For the first time in three months, I wasn''t cold in the slightest.


    I listened again for the voice I''d heard between storm''s light and distant stars and ionic blizzards; the only thing I heard were stray thoughts that could have been my own. The whispered thoughts uttering the secrets of the cosmos were gone. There was no evidence that anything had happened, no one and nothing had spoken to me, save that I was still warm.


    The storm ended that week and rescue arrived days later. Thirteen of the eight thousand wealthy, politically-connected elite managed to make it back to their luxury mansions, arcology penthouses and private estates. Twelve of our one-hundred and sixty soldiers returned to our underfunded state-run barracks at the edge of the planet''s habitable region. Most of us were awarded commendations, some even got patted on the back for a job well done. Those of us who still had our fingers and tongues made our reports before settling in for a few months of recuperation.


    It wasn''t even a week later that I was deemed unfit for duty by some pedigree doctor safely tucked away from the sharp end of Intatenrup''s terraforming. Psychotic delusions of supernatural power, irregular radiologic contamination, unhealthy coping post-trauma, unusual thoughts and beliefs, social withdrawal after the death of comrades. I could have explained all of it but I was never given the chance.


    My report and every spoken word thereafter were cherry-picked and misquoted as the deranged ramblings of a broken man, instead of the confused wonderings of a kid looking for answers to questions beyond his ken. My years of flawless service meant nothing. The protests of my peers and superiors, even less. The testimony of my fellow expedition soldiers and Polaris XV survivors was moot. The system took one look at my file and made up their minds before I was fully debriefed or could even refute the allegations.


    Medically unfit for service (lacking in moral fiber), recommend immediate termination.


    I didn''t know anything but conscription. My name was slandered in closed circles behind sealed doors, the private sector wouldn''t have me¡ª not even the ingrates I''d rescued would hire me. My peers abandoned me, the world rejected me and for a time I gave into despair. Uncertain years passed in a blur of medications, depression, poverty and homelessness. I was empty inside, lacking in purpose and lost, but I was never cold. Even at my lowest point, I was always impossibly warm.


    I played by every rule they gave me and I lost. I lost because I was never supposed to win. That was what happened when the only option presented was to meekly bow and accept whatever scraps were thrown your way. As time passed my meager severance drained, I embraced the noble poverty of veterans thrown away by the system they would have gave their lives to protect. I braved the wilds for a time, living as little better than an animal while the drugs and psychological conditioning slowly cleared from my head.


    Desperation forced action. Later than I would care to admit, I heeded the call. Months of desperate survival found me at odds with organized crime, yet the Green Serpents gave me a chance the system never had. A chance to prove myself, and prove myself I did. They didn''t need a builder or another mindless thug. No, what they needed was a problem solver. Someone who could get things from A to B without raising a fuss, who could make people disappear if they wouldn''t be missed, who could keep an eye out without being seen.


    The work was dirty but good. The pay was better. I bought things I never knew I wanted; guns, wheels, books, fun and a place I could call my own with clean running water and a lock on the door. It was nice, for a while at least, but it never scratched the itch. Nothing I owned answered the question. What did I desire? Not stuff, not a life of painting houses with their occupants. I wanted something more, and whatever that something was, I wouldn''t find it here on Intatenrup.


    It was on my last house painting job that I learned about magic at the age of twenty-four, seven years after my involuntary release. When people hear the word ''crazy'' this was the guy they thought of. This house was on the smaller end of my usual workspaces, a basement sublet in an upper-end, arcology mid-rise neighborhood. It was a normal evening in suburbia save for the gun in my pocket and murder in my heart.


    Normal stopped at the door; furniture in shrink wrap, ferrocrete walls smashed and floor gouged in rutty symbols. Portraits hung at head height, painted in the familiar reds I often used but patterned so the portrait had depth; dried blood building the layers of the painting more than any change in color did. The overhead lights had been smashed and the wall-mounted emergency lights only had enough power to dimly illuminate the room through the gore glazing them.


    Then there was the muttering, words choked and broken with new ones smashed into the gaps. It was a blend of the common tongue and what sounded like three others that shifted and rose and pivoted around the house. It was a pleading, desperately wretched noise not unlike what I''d heard in the arctic years ago or in the shaded drug alleys months afterwards. This was the voice of someone who needed something more than they needed life itself.


    My skin was crawling, the hairs on my arms capturing the house''s charged atmosphere. This space was a disgusting pervasion of the conductive warmth within me. The static charge clinging to me was a hateful mockery of the ionic blizzards that haunted my dreams. I''d rarely taken my painting job personally before but this place held an atmosphere of wrongness that battered against my very soul.


    Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    I drew a heavy four-shot revolver from my unassuming day clothes. The cartridges were right for the job, twenty-gauge bismuth slow-shot. I had a spare load tucked in my pocket, more so for comfort than necessity. I only needed one shot, everything else was just to send a message. I moved slow, trying my best for quiet despite the litter of crushed glass, rubble and rubbish underfoot.


    This house seemed bigger than it had when I was studying the floor plan. I''d just walked past the second bathroom when there should have only been one, both decorated in mirrored sigils that sung out to me with siren''s songs of perverse delights. The kitchen held a banquette table crowned with a trussed kid no older than five, throat slit to the bone without a drop of fresh blood in sight. When I took the job, I''d been hoping it wasn''t too late for the kids, back-alley justice postmortem was secondary. I checked over my shoulders a dozen times, the infinite space stretched on into darkness behind me everywhere but the square room''s five corners.


    The last door on the left drew me in. Like a hatchet buried in my spine, it was pulling me closer. This twisted realm was profane and sickening but I wanted to see more of its horrors, akin to watching extreme sports in the hopes of seeing mangled bodies. I wanted to weigh these new horrors against my own and see what was beckoning me closer. I reached out a hand to open the door.


    "She needs¡­ Enter."


    I stayed my hand. Had I been made? Did he know I was here? I cocked an ear and leveled my pistol at the door.


    "Entry¡­ Entry into something? I don''t understand your words, my dark goddess!" He wailed to the stench of spilt bowels and fresh entrails.


    So I wasn''t made, he was still muttering in his unwords and the common tongue. I opened the door enough to draw a bead on my man. The room''s single window caught the city''s ambient light along with a single overlapping ray of the twinned full moons. He was sitting on his knees, back to me, facing a living alter of the foulest sorts.


    The girl was the reason I was here. Not for a rescue, she was too far gone for that, but a mercy for her and justice for the wailing man who''d taken the knife to her. I squared my aim on the back of his neck and took in a half breath.


    <I am no goddess¡­> A voice whispered inches behind my ear.


    I quickly checked my shoulders for the whisper''s source. I was alone in the hall. I let out my shaking breath, licking my lips as I collected myself. It was shit like this that made me want to take up smoking again. I''d eaten men and women froze half to death, yet I knew this place would stick with me when the work was done.


    "Goddess, yes! My dark goddess." The wailing man cried. "Show me the meaning in the entrails of my offering!"


    <Tainted trinkets, a foul soul. Cleanse yourself and know my will¡­> A whisper again, so close like warm breath around my ears. My eyes found nothing, but I could feel something right next to me. The sensation of two oppositely charged magnets being driven inexorably together.


    "More prey? More praying? Both? Command your loyal slave!" The wailing man raised a curved blade and brought it down on his alter''s haunch. The girl didn''t even whimper as the blood left her. I brought my trembling gun to bear a half-meter from the wailing man.


    <I need entrance into your dimension.>


    I pulled the trigger. For the first time since I''d started painting houses, I missed. The wailing man had tilted and twisted his head aside at the last second, his torso hardly moving. The angle was impossible, his neck should have been broken and his spine twisted into paralysis but it wasn''t. His face found mine down the length of a gun, his milky white eyes locked with my own and he smiled.


    "You bear the mark of She." I pulled the trigger again, aiming for his head but blowing craters out of his shoulder as he dodged the point-blank shot again. "We are dark brothers, soon to be bonded in blood!"


    Now his torso moved, spinning in place to line up with his face opposite his knees. How his guts weren''t wrung from him escaped me as his knife flashed through the moonlight to lick his own wound. I dropped my aim and pulled the trigger again, his hips finally flipped to the common plane as the rest of his body as flesh burst throughout the room. If he noticed the bulk of his thigh missing, he didn''t show it.


    "Hey buddy! You''re supposed to be dead!"


    I pulled the trigger a fourth time and finally hit my mark high of center. Brain-smeared bone scattered across his altar of innocence and the wailing man toppled back to the floor, silent. I hadn''t wanted to paint on the girl but nobody''s perfect. I popped my four-shooter''s cylinder and fumbled half my fresh rounds to the ground from shaking fingers.


    "¡­ill¡­me." The girl croaked. She might have been a beauty when she grew up. Present circumstances aside, she was already a real looker. Long black hair, like silk in the moonlight. A slim build that was well on its way to womanly. A heart-shaped face that all the boys would have loved. Not the face then, the family would want a final look.


    "Working on it, sweetheart." I plucked my ruby-dyed cartridges from the ground beside the twitching corpse and locked the cylinder. I aimed for low chest¡ª heart and spine. "Sorry I took so long."


    An arc of biting pain slashed up my calf, a full spread of pellets blasts a fist-sized hole in the wall next to the girl''s chest and I sag to the ground.


    "We shall be united in her courts on the other side, Brother!" The man bellows, half his brains blown across the room.


    The other half looks like a writhing mass of shapeless things caught between death throes and ungodly regeneration. I spot a flash of movement in the dim light and then pain. The not-dead man has me down in the gore, one arm driving the knife in my shoulder deeper, his unnaturally bent knee pinning my gun arm. My arm is locked, but not my wrist.


    "I''m an orphan Pal." I bend my wrist until I can feel the tendons creaking and pull the trigger. Pink mist paints a wall and the gun flies out of my hand, snapping my trigger finger along the way. The pinning leg goes limp.


    Something like an icy nail spikes into my mind, driven in by a mental hammer blow right in my forehead. I could feel my skull blown wide open, both of my shoulders were mangled and everything below my ribs was a grey blur of nothing. I felt like I was dying.


    I felt cold.


    I felt all the warmth I had ever known being drawn from that spike in my head. From blazing summers to winter bonfires to burning radiation, every notion of heat I''d ever had was robbed from me until only one remained. It was the wordless sensation of a candle''s final flame defiantly lighting the darkness that failed to smother it. I was corpse cold, but I wouldn''t freeze.


    <In my light, you will burn eternally.>


    I blinked my eyes clear. Not-dead was still on top of me. My head was splitting under his driving thumb while his other hand worked the knife deeper in me. His eyes lolled in euphoria, while mine struggled to find my gun. It was too far away. My eyes rolled back to his, exhausted. Not-dead was draining me twice as hard as the blood loss was. I was dying, but I sure as scat wasn''t dead yet. His eyes came back around and met mine. Deep within them, I saw a fire.


    Not-dead''s eyes exploded into two steaming craters.


    He rocked backward howling in agony, both hands clutching at empty steaming sockets. I crawled for my pistol, my broken trigger finger flopping uselessly. He heard me moving and came back for the knife in my shoulder.


    I snatched up my gun and put a spread in his chest before he reach me. Then, while he was wailing on the ground, I put the barrel in his mouth and gave him another.


    "And stay dead." I growled.


    If I''d had the energy in me, I would have worked over his skull some more, just to be sure. I didn''t have the gas or the time. It took some doing but I got my disposable comlink out and dialed. My fixer picked up on the first ring.


    "It''s me. Job''s done."


    "The boss''s kids?"


    "No, neither." I couldn''t keep my voice from shaking.


    "You sound rough. How''d it go?"


    "Rough. Messy and rough. Get Stitches on the horn, I''ll make my way there tonight."


    "That bad?"


    "Worse. Let the boss know I''ll be chatting him up when I can. I need a vacation."


    "How long?"


    "Might be forever, I''m thinking."


    "We''ll be sad to see you go. I''ll make the arrangements."


    I snapped my comlink and stowed the pieces in the pocket I used to keep my smokes in. I''d have killed for a single cigarette, but that would have to wait. I put a hand on the knife lodged in my shoulder and gave it an experimental tug. It was buried deep, a good stab. My hand fell away from the handle, settling on my empty gun. Eight shots wouldn''t have gone unnoticed, I needed to beat feet. I tucked my pistol and stood.


    "Kill me¡­ Please." The girl pleaded, in little more than a whisper.


    "I''m outta bullets."


    "Please." She sobbed.


    The moonlight had disappeared, lost to clouds and the omnipresent glow of an unsleeping city. The girl''s wounds mingled with shadow and blood, vanishing then resurfacing as I teetered on my feet. Dangling intestines spooled out onto the dead pet I hadn''t seen before, her womanhood had been cut out with enough skill that she wouldn''t be dead when someone came looking for the shots. The room filled with the sound of my labored breathing, and the weak pulse of her exposed heart sac.


    "Okay."


    My hand went for the knife again, but I thought better of it. The girl had tasted the blade''s kiss too many times already. I wouldn''t put her through that again. Not even as a mercy. My hand floated to the throbbing mass in her open chest. I should have, but I wasn''t man enough to take a beating heart in my hand and crush it. I bowed my head.


    "Sorry darling."


    I lifted both hands to her throat and took her thin neck in my bloody fingers.


    "It''s okay." She whispered.


    Her breath was a fresh breeze that cut through the foul stench of the room; it smelled like vanilla tea with mint. I steeled myself and raised my eyes, then I squeezed. I wished she would have closed her eyes, but she didn''t.


    The girl was a fighter. She saw it through to the end, her emerald green eyes never wavering from mine. She would see her final embrace to its end. What kind of man would I be if couldn''t do the same?


    In her final moment, she did the unthinkable. She smiled at me. Her teeth were a thousand-watt beacon in that dark place. Her smiling face was forever burned into my memory.


    I held my misty eyes in check until her pulse had stilled in my grip and once it was, I held back no more. All her light had left the room but it still wasn''t dark enough to hide my falling tears. I embraced her as I clenched down on her throat longer than I needed to. I had to be thorough. I didn''t want her to wake up and be back in this place all alone.


    I broke from our embrace when I heard the sirens in the distance. The muscles in my hands were seized tighter than I''d thought possible. My manic strength left me, one man too slow and too weak to save a couple of kids from a monster. I closed her dead eyes and headed for the exit, but stopped.


    The hatchet lodged in my spine was still tethered to something on the very-dead man. Like two magnets aligning my hand claimed a black-bound notebook and stuffed it in my pocket. Job finished, I made my escape into the night.

 T2 - The limits of Humanity

    Treu Krowtzig


    Humanity would always need champions. Individuals who exemplified certain aspects of what it truly meant to be human. Courage, selflessness, ingenuity, canniness. If Treu Krowtzig had to guess his own aspect, he would always lean towards to more martial disciplines¡ª not unlike a vengeful angel or a lethal protector. Wrath or possible Zeal. Aspects that were ill suited to his current employment and the relative state known as peacetime.


    While he had nothing against peace, nor was he a savage warmonger, Treu acknowledged that warriors had no purpose in the galaxy other than war. 32 years of de facto peace had him ravenous for something to happen, a border skirmish, an incursion, even another rouge AI to hunt down would be enough to sake his primal cravings. Yet the uncaring cosmos gave not a single fuck what a single human wanted, not even one as significant as Treu Krowtzig.


    His three day rotation had just finished as it often did, without a single incident. In his 30 odd years with the Outsider Research & Defense Emergency Response force, he could count the number of times they''d needed to send his team of heavy hitting metahumans in on a single hand. Of course, every time he had been called in, it was to stop an extra-dimensional wormhole from destabilizing into a resonance cascade which would have started leaking anti-matter into the prime material dimension; wiping out most, if not all matter and by extension life in this galaxy. Which was an understandable, career high-point for Treu and his colleagues.


    ORDER was veritably all that stood in the way of the destruction of all life as humanity knew it and well into the realm of which humanity didn''t even have the slightest notions of. If decades of boredom at a time were the cost of vigilance, it seemed a small price to pay considering what was at stake. Which was exactly what Treu had told himself 2,398 times now, his hexagramatically warded, sensory deprivation chambers receiving another tally for another uneventful rotation as he dreaded the upcoming cycle of forced relaxation.


    All things considered, Titan''s Crest wasn''t a terrible place to live. The mundane workers seemed content enough with their daily grind and the standard security forces were able to fend off most accidents until new arrivals got acclimated to their surroundings. The accommodations were all top-notch to the point that he often forgot he wasn''t still in a corporate complex buried under the mountains of Das Bergen. The only hint that he was on a hab-station was the periodic ozone scent of freshly cleaned air scrubbers after monthly maintenance.


    Of all the mortal weaknesses which had been cut away from Treu, the one he missed most was sleep. It was a pointless waste of time, time which could be better spent on literally anything else, but in his prolonged periods of dormancy he longed to let his consciousness slip away. Instead, he put his muscles to work and once they grew heavy and were unable to bear the strain, he read the latest imported ebooks. But while his body was tasked, his soul would not sit idle.


    Energy, the driving force behind more than most realized, could not be destroyed only converted. Excess body heat was used to empower the ambient aura around his fleshy vessel in the material plane, a form of spiritual recycling he used to clean his soul of the low-level ambient negativity mundane humans constantly emitted. Where a mundane human might idly tap a foot, Treu subconsciously manifested psychokinetic anomalies like telekinesis, pyrokinesis and photokinesis. The pair of tablets he was reading with each eye were floating 50cm from his face. His chambers¡ªsealed as they were from the outside¡ªwere illuminated by the tablets he was reading and a shapeless, white-yellow glow in each of the room''s 8 corners. All the excess heat he was generating was funneled back into his body to keep himself comfortably warm without sweating while the surplus was burned away.


    Some might consider his room to be little more than a prison cell, but Treu preferred the slim, spartan confines. He''d known nothing else in his life of applied parasciences. Even after ascending from test subject to living weapon, he''d kept the trappings of his old lifestyle while his counterparts all embraced their new lives of luxury.


    Halfway through his forced rest, the sour aura of a mundane outside his chambers encroached on his unnatural perceptions. Without his cell''s warding, Treu would have felt half the station in his multi-kilometer sphere of detection, something that would have disturbed his sleep¡ª had he actually been able to do so, that was. He opened the door with a telekinetic hand just as the mundane set his food on the ground. Light, sound, scent and a single tray of what might generously be termed as ''human-kibble'' all rushed into the room.


    "Jesus!" The orderly cursed, his slow gaze following the tray as it floated towards the man-shaped monster lounging before him a half-meter from the cell''s floor.


    "Nope, just me." Treu mocked playfully. Such distasteful platitudes helped to ease the straining minds of mundanes when they encountered Treu or his metahuman companions.


    Without looking away from either of his books, he sized up this week''s meal and the mundane who''d delivered it. The food was as it always was, abundantly nutritious and artificially flavored after all types of animals, which ultimately meant it would taste like chicken¡ª or more aptly, chicken''s root ancestor, the dinosaur. The orderly was an unfamiliar soul; young, in so far as this station''s staff went. And he was staring.


    "You suffer from back pain, don''t you?" Treu asked vacantly, finally looking upon the orderly with one of his meat eyes. The man was unimpressive, as were most mundanes. The orderly blinked rapidly.


    "B-B-Beg pardon?" The mundane stuttered.


    "Pain, in your lower back. Probably when you bend forward?"


    "I do." The orderly replied, awestruck. "How did you-"


    Treu Krowtzig held up a belaying hand. His tablets drifted aside, forming two floating bodies that were soon orbited by an asteroid ring of kibble. Treu locked one eye on the mundane orderly''s face, the other gazing through the his abdomen at something within. Treu set his bare feet on the unpleasantly chill metal floor of his chambers and took his now empty meal tray in hand as he approached the paralyzed orderly.


    Treu''s right hand darted forward, burying itself to the wrist in the orderly''s abdomen as the mundane''s eyes widened in terror. Before the orderly could draw a breath to scream, Treu''s hand had left his penetrated guts holding a fleshly lump the size of a walnut between his fingers. The extricated flesh was unceremoniously deposited onto the empty food tray. Treu let out an insightful hmm as he examined the lump with his one of his eyes.


    "I wasn''t aware pancreatic cancer was still prevalent in the galaxy." Treu idly stated before placing the tray and its meaty contents in the orderly''s stiff hand, and returning to his cell. "Oh, and welcome to Heaven''s Gate, Ralph Goodman of Nova-Kyoto colony 385, Meishin."


    Treu sealed his chamber''s door a quarter-second ahead of a befuddled scream. On the peripheries of his unnatural senses, Treu watched the orderly frantically strip his jacket, shirt and undershirt while manically searching his stomach. Ralph didn''t find anything of course, Treu was rather adept at telekinetically knitting flesh back together¡ª though in truth, his specialization was rending it apart. Surgical extractions were old habit for him, mainly for the extrication of foreign objects¡ªbullets, shrapnel and the like¡ªbut differing the malignant flesh from the rest had been an interesting distraction from his boredom. Ralph the orderly donned his clothes and left the muffled range of Treu''s detection.


    His next interruption was scheduled to be his next rotation. Contented in the knowledge of his relative peace, Treu resumed his passtimes with the added caveat of periodically plucking a piece of kibble from the nebulous kibble satellites surrounding him. They really did all taste like chicken, and more amusingly, dinosaur by extension. It was somewhere halfway through his meal that Treu realized his mistake. He''d used the station''s old name when welcoming that new orderly. The older the habit, the harder it tended to stick it would seem.


    Some hours later, shortly before his new rotation began, something unusual happened. The largely decorative intercom in his chambers connected.


    "Battle group ORDER to rituals, bay 13."


    "Threat level?" Treu asked, donning clothing for the fist time in days.


    "Level one at present. Escalation probable, two suspected."


    "Then I won''t need my armor. On my way now."


    Specialist Major Psion Krowtzig flew through the halls as he finished shrugging into his form fitting jacket. In actuality, he didn''t fly; he was more accurately telekinetically clawing and leaping forward on numerous invisible limbs. Then end result was the same, his body hurtling through the halls fast enough to be a human missile once he''d picked up enough speed. While his body was traveling, his mind was already reaching out towards the rift gathering above him.


    The scene was painted in broad stokes before his expanded mind. Mundane security forces were being pushed back, esoteric defenses were holding their own for the time being but that was a stopgap measure. One that ORDER''s rookie was using to manifest a meter-long spear of light in his hands.


    <Nice of you to join me, Major> Specialist Elijah Marrujt chirped in the direction of his superior''s perception.


    <Status?> Treu reflexively pulsed back.


    <Shoggoths and Qliphoths so far, but I can feel something big coming>


    <Hold the line until the team arrives>


    <Acknowledged, Major>


    The telepathic conversation had lasted less than three seconds, limited only by the speed of light and the meta-human minds on both ends. Splitting his attention at high speed wasn''t without consequence however, if the thoroughly pulped remains of an unlucky mundane Treu was flying passed was anything to go by. He put the broken body out of mind the instant he saw it, there were bigger things at play than a single mundane human''s life. Treu was the last of the team to arrive at ritual bay 13.


    The other three members could have handled the small fry amassing at the room''s entrance but they''d followed his orders. Only the rookie, Elijah, was suited in the team''s full tactical gear. The current model was a blend of functional protection and ascetic amplification for the wearer. Psycho-conductive vanes ran the length of each up-armored limb and jut from the suit''s otherwise rounded backplate not unlike a folded set of wings. More traditional materials offered a good degree of mundane protection while insulative alloys of lead and silver formed arcane glyphs of protection and shielding. While the armor wouldn''t outperform designs of a similar tonnage in ordinary combat, FAE-SRE-X3 war plate didn''t unnecessarily hamper the enhanced capabilities of the wearer, as evident by the radiant, semi-solid spear of brilliant golden light held in Elijah''s mechanized hands.


    This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    Kaleigh Blair¡ªmuch like himself and the teams forth, Gram Chatterton¡ªwas wearing her off duty plain clothes. Her high class gown set her apart from the other two men''s bland utility wear, as did her fiery red hair and freckled skin. As Treu closed in to join his team, he felt the electrical charge she''d already build up, as well as the ambient null around her where various EM signals and waves should have been.


    Gram was near identical to Treu aside from the face. Both had broad shoulders, long legs and a musculature that could best be described as god-like; all results of their shared conditioning prior to being sold to Titan''s Crest as psionic superhumans. They were both the last of their product line, the secrets of their creation lost to the whims of fate when Aperture Biomedical went bankrupt and the Synthetic Revolution obliterated the planet of their parent umbrella corporation. The two metahumans exchanged a brief empathic connection, eager for a task worth doing, more so for ones such as themselves.


    "Standing rules of engagement, if it''s not human put it down." Treu ordered his team, using his mouth instead of his mind for the benefit of the mundane security forces nearby. "Show me what you''ve got Rookie."


    "Yes sir!" Elijah''s manifested weapon burning brighter in response to his own enthusiasm.


    The spear reached an intensity near-blinding and Elijah swung it in a wide, horizontal arc. The strained barrier keeping the mindless dregs at bay shattered and Elijah''s manifested weapon cut deep into the closest of the netherborn. Pseudoflesh burned under the cleansing blade, things both unreal and physical screaming their otherworldly screams as they experienced pain for the first time. Once his swing had cut clear, Elijah cross-checked with the full length of the weapon, amplifying the shove with a blast of telekinesis for good measure. Qliphoths went flying at improbable angles, while their larger shambling Shoggoth kin managing to keep their footing against the blow.


    <I give it 6 out of 10> Kaleigh pulsed.


    <Too much muscle, not enough mind,> Gram countered. <5 out of 10>


    <Room for improvement> Treu added. <Gather your focus and observe>


    The veterans of battle group ORDER calmly walked into the breach as if there wasn''t a braying swarm of nightmarish creatures from another dimension howling for their flesh and souls. Lower order creatures often struggled understanding there place in this galaxy, a fact he would educate them to. Treu drew in a lungful of breath and the massive room''s temperature dropped nearly thirty degrees kelvin.


    A bulky Shoggoth shambled towards him, even as the slimy discharge coating the not-creature was breaking off in frozen chips. Treu extended his left hand towards the thing and exhaled.


    A jet of white-hot flame blasted from his palm in a narrow cone, superheating the unstable flesh of his target until thermodynamics reaped its inevitable toll. The Shoggoth''s vessel erupted, severing the thing''s tenuous foothold in the material plane.


    Without its vessel, the Eldritch energy that primarily constituted the Shoggoth tried to escape back to its native realm, but Gram was ready. Metaphysical blades charged with telepathic super-luminal energy shredded the so-call essence of beast, imparting the tiny sliver that escaped to the beyond with some much pain that it would always associate the material realm with agony.


    Treu draw in another breath, only this time instead of drawing in ambient thermal energy he ripped into the mulched essence of Shoggoth, recycling it to a far more workable form. Pure electrical energy, or to the mortal eye, lightning.


    Treu exhaled with a wide stance and an outreached fist, sending the bolt of electrical energy to Kalaigh, who drank in every amp, watt and volt. The supercharged redhead arced blast after blast into the surrounding masses of monstrous flesh, vaporizing entire swaths of the horde with every breath.


    The veterans were a single machine, communicating beyond the speed of sound, moving as one in an ever-shifting dance of raw power and unmatched prowess. The drivel of the other realm were dispatched with all the effort of an early morning workout, all while being used as a teaching point for the team''s newest addition.


    <You''re not controlling the flow,> Treu thought between breaths, while crushing a Qliphoth in a telekinetic fist. <You''re directing it to your desired end.>


    <The harmony of all things is nothing like a flowing river,> Kaleigh argued, blasting another shambler into vapors. <Think like the eye of the tempest, FEEL the charge and connect the lines. Physics will handle the rest.>


    <Sharpen your mind to a stinger''s point, then thrust until something breaks.> Gram offered.


    <I still don''t get what the actual fuck any of you are talking about.> Elijah complained.


    "Like I said, all muscle, no mind." Gram replied idly while finishing off the last of the disembodied creatures.


    "Don''t be so hard on him. None of us direct chaos the same way either. Just let him swing his swords and spears." Kaleigh said, depleting her ambient charge as crackling static electricity.


    "It''s not enough to just manifest, Elijah. You need to adapt a more flexible mindset before we can start you down a new path." Treu said, narrowing his senses to a more detailed scope.


    "Or I could always poke my head in the beyond and take a shortcut like you did." Elijah pointed in the general direction of the rift deeper in bay 13.


    "You give that try and let us know how you make out, boy." Kaleigh sneered, her fiery hair frizzing upwards despite the station''s artificial gravity.


    <Calm yourself, this isn''t over yet.> Treu privately chided her before addressing the mundane security staff guarding the doorway behind him. "Trooper! Get us some food and then seal the doors behind us."


    "A keg of lite beer!" Kaleigh hollered.


    "Eight kilos of blue sirloin steaks, preferably still bloody." Elijah said.


    "Blackfanged Salmon fillet, and three pounds of steamed rice." Gram vacantly commanded.


    The befuddled trooper looked to his nominal superiors, then to his squad lead who just shrugged and gave a nod. The trooper looked back to Treu, who could have kept the blood from his cheeks but didn''t waste the energy.


    "A tub of chocolate chip cookie dough. The big one." Treu bashfully added.


    The trooper signaled ahead and took off at a jog. It didn''t take a mind reader to see that the man who''d just watched a band of metahumans dismantle dozens of Eldritch abominations with their minds, was far more confused by their sudden cravings for a small banquet. The guard was still puzzling how he ranked the cycle''s weirdness when Treu stopped his invasive probing of the trooper''s mind.


    "Think the food will arrive before our guest does?" Elijah asked.


    "Doubt it. Why are you so hungry anyway? We did all the work." Kaleigh asked.


    "I put more umph into my swing that I thought I did, then you guys hogged all the¡­" He physically checked his shoulder. "Trimmings."


    "Fair, but why steaks? Aren''t cows sacred to your people?"


    "Don''t you usually polish off your kegs with whiskey?"


    <"Both of you, Enough!"> Treu drove the point home with his mouth and his mind. "Troopers! Seal the door, now! Our guest is here."


    The septegramtically warded, lead lined blast doors sealed behind them with a clang. The wards and insulation lining the rest of the room did an adequate job of sealing the room off from the rest of the station. Without any background distractons, the thing that felt like a black sun deeper in the room was radiating such an absurdly potent aura most mundanes would have probably felt it.


    "That''s bigger than a level 2." Gram cautioned.


    "Rookie, get on the line with demonology." Treu ordered. "Kaleigh, prep for a discharge. We''ll support you. Now, let''s go meet our guest."


    The carnage was thicker the closer the team crept to the final workspace on the left hand side. The remains of humans idly slaughtered by the netherborn as the wandered from one kill the the next. The dregs of the other realm were no better than savage animals, butchering whatever was in their way in a mix of boredom and hunger. The fireteam cleaned up a few stragglers who''d managed to apply a modicum of tactics to their hunting style. Based on the surplus of battle damage, the security teams had contained the rift for some time before being forced back.


    "Demonology says summoning team three was trying to make a trade with the goetic angel Y?????????u???????u??????????s????????o??????''????????????G?????????r????a?????????a????????w?????a???????????t?????????h???????????y???????e????????. Aspects are in the masculine: war, grey magic, binding and censure. Links appear back the theurgy practices of old Terra''s dark ages. Usual angelic traits in appearance, past dealings with humans and a short temper."


    "I won''t reason with a demon." Gram stated. "Their thoughts are¡­ strange."


    "Understatement of the millenia." Kaleigh added, her body practically humming with surplus energy awaiting release.


    The workspace was as one might expect a ritual summoning gone wrong to look. Sigils, circles and lines of otherworldly contours had been daubed on the floor and walls. Like most of the archaic creatures that existed outside the material, this one had called for its pound of flesh, a goat specifically. Where the sacrifice''s throat had been slit fresh blood poured forth, spilling upwards into a swirling malestorm of pure insanity, instead of off the plain table at the summoning''s center. Lesser minds would have shattered from nothing more than the meta-physical psycho-reactive non-colors gushing into the material plane at the rift''s relative front, let alone a single glance through that portal.


    The being standing backlit by said maddeningly supernatural colors put the insanity around them to shame. It stood in profile, the shape eerily eidetic yet dissimilar to one of the mangled and dismembered corpses on the floor nearby, only if Treu ignored the massive golden wings sprouted from its back.


    "That thing''s not a masculine anything." Kaleigh growled around gritted teeth.


    The thing in question turned to them, something translucently pink dribbling down her chin from the eldritch composite behind her gore-smeared crimson lips. The demon flashed a million giga-watt smile without a hint of emotion behind it. The black swirling orbs of its eyes further indicating that while this abominable creature wore the guise of a human, underneath it was anything but.


    For a long moment, nothing happened. Then a wall of telepathic energy hammered into him with so much raw force Treu felt his hyper-developed synapses misfiring one my one. The others must have felt it too, he could see them weathering the storm in his peripheries.


    The Rookie wasn''t stunned into a stupor, aided as he was by his armor''s various protections. A brilliant refractive blade of crystalline light manifested in his hands and he pressed into the storm, one halting step at a time.


    One of the creature''s golden wings snaps out, idly swatting him aside as one might an overly friendly hornet. Elijah hurls bodily through Treu''s vision, the psychic barrage lessoning drastically at the same time his armored mass smashes through the workspace''s dividing wall.


    Treu finally pulls enough attention from his psionic defensive to exhale a breath, allowing his gathered recycled energy to flow down his arm into the red-headed woman on his right. The stored charge reached its breaking point in his living capacitor.


    The fury of dozens of lighting bolts loosed at once found a suitably conductive path from the fleshy body currently holding them back, straight into the negatively charged thing standing directly in from of her.


    The demon''s wings flinched, a single eyebrow was raised and all that unbridled power thundered directly into her. The body she was puppeting didn''t make a sound, but the world around Treu went runny at the edges and screamed an ungodly scream that left him starved of pity. Reality itself wept under the savage force of the attack. Metal worktables shuddered into liquidity and the mangle remains of the research team underwent a sudden vaporisation into gaseous pink mists.


    In the ringing silence that followed while he waited for his eyesight to return, Treu felt the absence of the extra-dimensional rift. He also felt the much-depleted souls of his colleagues around him, all still attached to their worldly vessels. The final sensation his unnatural perceptions detected was an empathic plea, repeating concepts without words. The Rookie was the first one to give substance to the vague concepts and notions.


    <Am I fading, or is this demon trying to say she''s a tourist?>

 B3 - Outsider in a Strange Land

    Your kind call me a monster as if that were an insult, something hideous and repulsive to be despised by all. Yet for all the slander you laud upon my kin, it is you who have worshiped and revered monsters throughout the ages. You, who could never reject monsters out of hand like you pretended to. There was always an interest in monsters, a certain perverseness you were incapable of denying. Monsters were great powers in their time, a force that ordinary mortals couldn¡¯t defeat until united or championed by one who was often a monster in their own right.


    Monsters, it was certainly a better title than most you humans have branded my kind with. Dimensional Interlopers, Angels, Cosmic Gods, Extra-Dimensional Extraterrestrials, Devils, Outsiders; none of them captured our essence in the same way as Monsters. Just as you changed our name, you too have changed. You humans were always changing yet never truly evolving¡ª you¡¯re a puzzling paradox like that. So set in the certainty of your ways, your ''Manifest Destiny'' of racial dominance, that you never question why our dimensions were separated. Just as you can¡¯t deny your interest in monsters, I can¡¯t deny my interest in you flesh-bound slaves of time.


    Time, what a peculiar concept. A single stream moving from one point to another that drags an entire dimension along with it. Experiencing time might be unpleasant in equal to being educational, I¡¯ve weighed the risks and found the potential to be worth the expenditure. Elders of my kind have hinted that this vein of inquiry will be a regression of being, knowledge too abstract and backwards to be rationalized into useful experience. I disagree. All knowledge is useful, it''s merely a matter of context.


    To term it as a human mind would comprehend I moved to a known point, something that registered as a place of communion across the thinning veil. In truth I had no body with which to move, there was no physical place to go, nothing in my realm had a form you humans could understand as shape or mass. Just as time is a novel idea to me, you ponder on what a plane of six non-linear dimensions would look like on a two-dimensional surface. To grasp the truth of it you would need senses you lack and references I cannot provide in a manner you will understand while retaining what passes for sanity among your kind.


    The end result was a telepathic link to a human reaching blindly across and beyond the cosmos with its mind. You humans break so easily, I sever a portion of my own thoughts and bridge the connection. It asks and I offer, observing all the while. You humans think in odd patterns, the ceaseless march of time clouding the truth of the universe from your mortal shells. You might say I found its infantile floundering cute, though the term lacked the full scope of my thoughts. I¡¯ve met enough humans to have an adept pool of knowledge of your kind, too few of you can bridge the void and pierce the veil, most retreat at the first touch of my kind. To study you properly I have no choice, I must go to your dimension and mingle with the locals as the linked one would say.


    My folly, too much attention was driven at the human in communion. The link was severed, it resumed again but it was maddened and enraptured with the vast concept of me. I knew enough about time to know it was a fundamentally different state of existence than that of my own. What had time done to the human on the other side of the veil? Time, what a novel concept but back to the task at hand.


    <I need entrance into your dimension.> The thought pulses over the bridge faintly, slow but incessant.


    You humans break so easily, I must be more careful¡­ Mortals were calling out, and with as much of my psyche as I dared sacrifice, I answered.


    This material realm is so undeniably fragile.


    It was a fitting first impression given the state of the space the unwoman was greeted by. Her vessel was something she''d pulled from the screaming thoughts of the now-dead summoning team that had been calling out to an old enemy. The unfortunate mortals had no way of knowing that Y?????????u???????u??????????s????????o??????''????????????G?????????r????a?????????a????????w?????a???????????t?????????h???????????y???????e???????? as they thought to call him had perished, in-so-much-as any pseudo-creature from beyond these cosmos could perish. In the most rudimentary terms, the unwoman might be inferred as the devil''s daughter considering that much of her strength was born from his death.


    The unwoman felt an unconscious delight as she recalled the duel which was far closer to a calamity from the perspectives of mortals. As novel as the concept of time was, she was all too familiar with the trifecta of cause-effect-consequence. Experiencing the forces of time, gravity and space upon her vessel was something of a heady experience for her freshly created body and the vast portion of her mind within. Though as vast as said portion may be, the unwoman had the entirely displeasurable sensation of severance from the remainder of her being. This vessel of flesh was only a singular portion of her¡ª a lesser aspect of all that she was. Such an incomplete reflection of herself was unworthy of bearing her true name.


    With only the fleeting souls of the dead around her, she''d yet to take an accurate gauge on how durable the dimensional denizens in her proximity were. Querying said souls was altogether unhelpful; rampant thoughts, fleeting memories and absurd dying requests only served to further her current dysphoria. The chaos of a dying human mind thrust into ethereal being was intoxicatingly vibrant, the maddening array of conflicting beliefs for what she understood to be a universal human condition was almost endearing. Of course, it was endearing in the way that a human might view a mentally deficient puppy''s attempt to climb stairs while repeatedly falling down them, but endearing none the less.


    The only other prominent thoughts were of things left undone and a general bemoaning of their lack of recent gratification with various or specific partners. It seemed that humans valued such things rather highly. While she was familiar with the dichotomy of humanity, what they termed as masculine and feminine, this omnipresent fixation of uniting the two was fascinating. In her brief time on this plane of existence she''d already been presented with enough information to pursue indefinitely.


    Her reflection was interrupted by a quartet of living humans of sturdy composition. In her initial excitement to meet the locals, the unwoman''s greeting was delivered with the full force her surrogate vessel could offer. Based on their reaction, something had been lost in empathic translation.


    The sudden and unexpected violence that followed further reinforced the unwoman''s initial impression of this dimension. Her own vessel was no exception, the weak one''s inversely inclined blade had scraped her wing in the scuffle. The unwoman was no stranger to conflict, but the material limitations of this dimension were entirely foreign¡ª as was being physically wounded. Minor though it was, the wound surged with the anathema of her very being.


    Pain, real physical tangible pain slammed into her consciousness. The alien sensation was enough to shock her momentarily. Aided by a superior understanding of this dimension''s rules, the other humans counterattacked while she was reeling.


    The power conjured next was several magnitudes greater, but the unwoman was wary now that her initial surprise had worn off. The attack was an explosive discharge of energy. Had her assailants been subtler about accumulating the raw power needed, they might have caught her by surprise once again. However they''d made the mistake of showing her how the power was gathered, converted and inevitably, released.


    She directed the gullible current of negatively charged ions into a more agreeable direction, briefly altering the composition of her vessel to prevent it from being damaged by the extreme heat, electrical charge and psionic thorns that all hurtled towards the unwoman faster than anything she''d seen in this fragile existence as of yet. What she hadn''t spared a thought for, was where all that energy went after she''d deflected it.


    The rift between realities, already a dangerously unstable and temperamental anomaly in this material dimension, fell into itself and vanished. The severance she''d experienced from her native realm savagely worsened into a near-crippling sensation of incalculable isolation. This place had no energy, no waves of power, no currents of thought except those made by these humans around her. There was so much nothing surrounding her it was suffocating. The vastness of her mind rebelled at the simple fact of this dimension. There was Nothing and it was everywhere.


    The unwoman fell to the ground, her vessel''s strength failing her. How anything could exist in such an empty and desolate dimension was incomprehensible. The portion of her mind trapped within the prison of flesh she''d unwittingly made subdivided further, each tendril of thought searching for anything amidst all that nothing. Her search faltered, some limitation of this reality kept her mind from spanning any distance it pleased. She had never experienced something like this, there was simply a distance she could not bypass or penetrate. The sensation was immediately likened to that under her vessel, a flat surface that stopped whatever touched it.


    Shifting her attention from a desperate outward expansion, the unwoman ceased throwing her will against the confines of this dimension, focusing within its boundaries instead. The lingering specters of human psyche had vanished, leaving her alone with only her assailants in this haunting place.


    She repeated her empathic greeting under a great deal of care, matching the voice of her soul to the strength of the humans around her.


    <Disbelief, hostile claims non-aggression?> The weak one wrapped in dense metals queried.


    <Negative. Vigilance, non-initiative violence> The virile one wreathed in flame ordered.


    The unwoman allowed a similar sentiment to radiated from her being, carefully maintaining a low-level output of peaceful intentions. The message would have been delivered much faster had she been for forceful, but seeing as how that would likely been viewed with hostility she refrained; allowing herself a small measure of bemusement as time passed.


    <Dubious of intentions> The sharp-minded one stated after a time.


    <Violence?> The electrically-charged one queried.


    <Negative, information lacking> The virile one stated.


    The unwoman very gently began informing the humans that she possessed great sums of information. The humans stopped communicating with their minds, shifting to a series of sounds emanating from their upper bodies. Intentions and empathic states still originated from them as the sounds grew louder and faster, the weak one and sharp one seemingly in discourse with their opposites.


    The display was educational, the unwoman found several similarities to these humans and her own, newly forged vessel. As it sat, her body was bordering on identical to that of a human, externally that was. She did have distinctly non-human growths protruding from her back, while their function remained unclear she explored their composition and discovered that they were pleasantly soft to the touch. Touch, she decided, was a marvelous thing.


    Internally she was composed of geometrics and pseudo-protoplasm that appeared to be entirely unlike anything in her vessel''s proximity. She contemplated altering her constitute being, but remained uncertain that doing so would not be perceived as hostile, despite her assurances that they were. There was also the distinct possibility that altering her vessel could have adverse effects on its capacity to sustain her presence in this dimension. That fact brought prominence to another more distressing fact, her severance from the remainder of her being. In essence, she was alone without even herself for guidance or wisdom. Without a rift there was no way of knowing if the fraction of her mind stuck within her vessel would be able to rejoin with her primary consciousness, potentially rendering everything it learned moot. There was also the question of what exactly would happen to her fractal consciousness in the event of her vessel''s destruction or compromise. The unwoman found that thought uniquely disquieting.


    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    There was simply too much she didn''t understand about her current foolhardy endeavor for her to blunder about making discoveries along the way. A guide or tutelary would expedite her comprehension of the unprecedented situation the unwoman found herself in. Communication with such fragile beings was a barrier she must overcome in order to attain forward progress. Fortunately her vessel was highly intuitive, she desired to make sounds as the humans did and the unwoman''s flesh obliged. Unfortunately the sounds she was making seemed to be most displeasing to the humans.


    <Silence> The virile one commanded, finally addressing her instead of the other humans.


    The unwoman obliged. The virile human seemed disproportionately surprised by this development.


    <Comprehension?>


    She mimicked the affirmative motion she had seen several times during the human''s debate.


    <Unpleasant cooperation?>


    The unwoman struggled to decipher the human''s meaning. Empathic communication was effective at conveying general sentiments and impressions but specific ideas tended to get lost in translation. Ultimately, she needed to make a choice in the affirmative or negative. She neither particularly desired unpleasant things or cooperation, yet it seemed they were necessary.


    <Dubious affirmative> She replied, emphasizing her statement with another nod of her vessel''s head.


    Virile human expressed disbelief and general animosity, a sentiment that was quickly emulated by the others. The unwoman was uncertain if she''d conveyed a contrary state, though it seemed improbable. Virile human directed more face noises to the others for a time. As novel as the sensation was, the unwoman was beginning to realize how limiting time was. She could only exist in one anchored state, something that seemed preposterous prior to her arrival. The inability to be present in multiple states at once was a hindrance that felt entirely artificial to her; it was pointlessly counterproductive to the acquisition of knowledge, and as the unwoman promptly decided, existence as a whole.


    New humans were created. No that wasn''t right, more accurately the space around her grew drastically and she realized that the material dimension was much larger than she''d initially detected. Amidst the nothingness that surrounded her there were stars and mass and souls and minds. Thousands of human minds were exposed to her for a measure of seconds before that new space was concealed from her detection once more. Curiously, she probed outwards with her mind once more, searching for the opening secreted in her dimension''s solid edges, yet she could not find it. Which in turn, raised a great many queries in the unwoman''s vast yet fractal mind. She was so enthralled pondering these internal queries she''d entirely failed to notice the new humans which had actually arrived.


    There were thirteen of them¡ªa good number¡ªthe strength of their beings all paled in comparison to the four sturdy ones she''d been greeted by. Indeed these new humans were so incredibly fragile that two of their number witnessed her glorious vessel and allowed their sanity to depart. The radiant unwoman did her utmost to further dampen her presence while the sturdy humans terminally dispatched the broken pair.


    The remaining eleven presented the unwoman with a plethora of new sounds, physical mediums and written markings. While she was able to mimic most effortlessly, it was painfully obvious there was no true comprehension behind her actions. Of all the methods employed to reach her, the one she was most fascinated by was an elaborate series of hand and finger movements.


    The passive air radiating from the humans changed in response to sourceless face sounds. The emotive states surrounding her fractured into conflicting views of appeal and revulsion undertoned by minutia of lesser feelings. The closet reality opened once again and a new soul was added. This soul was different, human in substance yet ripened by suffering. A strong soul left unchecked by a weak mind and sabotaged by circumstance. This human was little more than a resource, a sentiment the unwoman confirmed from the forlorn noises it made.


    <"Observe."> Virile human commanded in noise and mind. He repeated the command in a slow, insistent pulse until the unwoman comprehended his desire.


    A single probe of consciousness expanded from virile human, entrapping the mind before her. The contest of wills was short-lived, little more than token resistance before a single mind dominated the two bodies. The probe of consciousness frayed into millions of psionic threads, each split end combing through the flesh puppet''s psyche then plunging into its brain. Signals of soul-light raced back up the threads, combining and compiling into scattered sensation captured in times past. The process was laborious, each core sampling targeted clusters of something so small they escaped even her unnatural perceptions. After the ninth repetition, the demonstrations stopped.


    <"Emulate.">


    Creating the probe and splitting her will was trivial, little more than a variation of autonomous action. Her efforts were steered towards a specific region of the forlorn man''s physical brain. With due care, she bored into his mind and took her first sampling.


    Noise paired with meaning flooded into the bottomless chasm of her mind. The information reshaped her understanding of human speech on a conceptual level, forcing her to reevaluate everything she thought she knew to be fundamental of physical communication. Words shaped understanding which altered perception which fostered interpretation and molded the human experience. These slaves of flesh and time could do nothing without the word to describe or articulate or simple be beyond an animalistic state of primal impressions.


    She was an eldritch facsimile of the human form but she had truly captured nothing of their complexity. Words were knowledge, immortal without being invulnerable. Knowledge she could rationalize, contextualize and most importantly, she could devour. A single thread of consciousness became a hundred, then a thousand and like a swarm in frenzied bloodlust every single one bored into her target to feed upon its decadent mind.


    The light of a human soul winked out in an instant under the uncontrolled force of her passionate gluttony. A moment later the dormant husk left behind erupted in a hail storm of bone and flesh, the strain of her undivided attentions too much for the human form to endure. Frantically she scattered her mental probe and its thousand duplicates after the fleshly chunks of mangled, charred brain matter. Useless meat, the connections were broken. Knowledge lost in a moment of weakness. Fleshlings break so easily, such a fragile vessel for so much knowledge. This dimension was maddening in its weakness.


    Physical pain forced her questing mind back into its transitory vessel. This time there was no anathema secreted within, no soul-blazing agony, only two crushing steely grips tensed to tear her vessel in uneven halves in an instant. Tension began spreading the hands until the raw agony centered her mind upon nothing but the sensation. Reluctantly, she cloistered her mind and dampened her radiant soul.


    The relief was as heady as the isolation was smothering. She had almost felt like herself, a mind always in transit, hunting for knowledge and power as she battle rivals and fed on lesser minds. Yet this dimension had no infinite depths of information to plumb, no bottomless wellsprings of energy to sustain her native being. There were only vessels of flesh traversing great expanses of lethal nothing. The unwoman found herself looking not with her mind but though her fleshling eyes to the weak souled giant poised to tear her vessel apart. These beings and their reality were so fragile, she must be more careful¡­


    "Good, put it down Rookie. Now, You, talk."


    "And what do you wish me to say, Virile Fleshling?" She replied, marveling at her newfound comprehension of linguistics. Her voice was pleasing to her ears, yet the mortals around her recoiled.


    "Why are you here?"


    "Your dimension is remarkably fragile, as are you fleshling creatures. I would cut back the secrets of time, materia and all this reality has to offer so as to further my knowledge, thus becoming as a god. I need to be here to accomplish my objective"


    All eyes in the room turned to the leader among abhumans. Dampened though her senses were, she sensed their souls whelming into readiness. From her lopsided understanding of conversation, the unwoman suspected that she''d have to let this silence run its course. Without a word, the unwoman faintly pulsed two emotive states. The first was unfamiliar to her, cooperation. The second she knew and despised, submission.


    "Rookie, kick this upstairs." Virile fleshling commanded.


    The unwoman observed no kicking, yet a palpable air of excitement radiated off the lesser humans around her. She swiftly learned that these humans were educators and with her newfound informational foundation of physical communication, her knowledge pool was plumbed with shallow inquiries. She discovered their purpose was to create a dossier on her, and once the lesser human began asking of her aspects, domains of expertise and past history with mortals, she became progressively less cooperative and more transactional.


    Once the dialog was little more than the exchange of questions for questions, the lesser human ceased probing for the unwoman''s identity and resumed educating her on methods of communication. In time, this too because a subtle line of investigation into who she was and, as she had before, the unwoman began withholding information until she had received knowledge of equal worth. When it was abundantly clear that she would offer no more, the lesser mortals began parsing her words to ensure nothing was lost in the subtleties of language. Once the educators were satisfied that they had interpreted her will correctly they all departed, leaving her with the sturdy guards.


    The concept of guarding was familiar to her, what she was less certain of was what these mere mortals were supposed to be guarding her from. She''d attempted to query the weak one about this, but no comprehensible answer was forthcoming. The wait this time wasn''t nearly as long.


    A human man entered the chamber she now knew to be sealed off from the rest of the material universe. The man was unimpressive in body and soul, although what she could sense of him mind was calculating and cunning. Idly, the unwoman played her mind and eyes over the man as he drew nearer, then she felt a terribly potent presence looming over the man.


    This new human wasn''t sturdy in soul like her guards, yet there was a massive and almost fraternal awareness following him. Another being such as the unwoman was watching over this human, yet unlike her this being was an ancient demigod in both power and mind. Old instincts pressed to the fore and the unwoman swiftly withdrew her reaching mind, hoping to avoid drawing the attention of the titanic presence. She was too late.


    The fleshling reality she was still acclimating too faded into oblivion as the demigod turned a sliver of its prescience unto her vessel. To be held under this being scrutiny made even time''s ceaseless march halt, its omnipresence filled her perception so completely that there was nothing but the demigod. No thought, no light, not even time. It was the pinnacle of our existence, and she was all too aware that it was weighing her continuation with an air of idle boredom. Dimensional normality reasserted itself as the demigod''s attention moved elsewhere, her fleeting existence dismissed as nothing of note. Everything was as it had been, all was seemingly oblivious to the demigod''s momentary, eternal oversight.


    "So you''re our latest guest? Have you got you reality-legs steady yet?" The warded man inquired.


    The question had her glancing to her guards for confirmation. The questions were both moot as far as she could tell. Was she still expected to answer what any being with functional eyes or the faintest capacity for soul sight would already know? The virile guard gave an affirmative nod, the essence of his soul masked by the omnipresent fraternal presence. The unwoman took two steady steps towards the warded man by way of confirmation.


    "I am indeed your guest." She answered factually. "I also have steadied legs."


    The warded human bared his teeth. The unwoman understood this was how humans showed pleasure, though this was the first time she''d seen the expression in practice with her own eyes. She returned the expression identically, making the warded human''s smile crumble which she also copied flawlessly.


    "You''ll need to work on that. Anyway, on to the meat and potatoes. My super-freaks here seem to think that you and I can work out a little business arrangement. One where you don''t get poofed and no more of my staff get turned into gibbering idiots. All we''ve got to do is scratch each other''s backs and everyone gets what they want. How''s that sound?"


    In truth, she''d understood little of the exchange. The sound of the mortal''s words and his voice was irritating, though she suspected that was not the true essence of his question.


    "You wish to form a covenant of mutual benefit?" She summarized.


    "Of a sorts, but before we get into the nitty-gritty details we should both make sure we know what we''re looking to get out of this. Do you know what that is?"


    "I wish to study your fragile dimension of existence and¡­" She attempted to collocate a past communion with her present self for the precise terminology unmuddied by empathic translation, and failed utterly to bypass time''s ceaseless march. Secondarily, she was forced to recall the events from her eidetic but entirely underdeveloped memory¡ª the process was entirely displeasing. "Mingle with the locals."


    The warded man smiled a wide and unwelcoming smile before sticking out a hand.


    "I do believe we can do business."


    The unwoman tentatively allowed the warded man''s dainty fist to clasp her hand and shake it.


    "Welcome to Titan''s Crest. Miss¡­"


    "You may address this vessel as Bim."

 H4 - Gangsters Paradise

    Hiiro Volshebso


    Normally, getting off Intatenrup would have been a nightmare of red tape, triplicated forms and security screenings. It was almost like the planetary bureaucracy went out of its way to make the process as drawn out and painful as possible to deter the average citizen from leaving. For someone like me, another faceless conscript who was just another number on a database in an office somewhere, it would have been impossible if I''d went through the official channels. Through the unofficial channels, skipping off world was as easy as packing a bag and asking a few well-aimed questions. If my eyes hadn''t already been opened by a couple years on the renegade side of the law, that would have done it for me.


    My ticket off Intatenrup was the Thread of Heaven, or by the more common name the lift. My stomach was fluttering while I waited, stuffed in the back of a cargo can in the dark. Supposedly, the lift was for materials only¡ªthings that wouldn''t die under Gees¡ªbut my old fox assured me that unless I was already one foot in the grave, I''d make it to Heaven. Between my stitched shoulder, stapled calf and the metal plates keeping my finger bones in place, I was a far cry from mint condition. The old fox who''d smuggled me in said I wouldn''t die¡­ probably. I dug out a pack of smokes and lit up another coffin nail to soothe my nerves.


    If I died, I might as well enjoy one last smoke.


    I took a long drag, the smooth burn on the way down scratching the itch I''d been dancing with for years. If I died now, one last smoke wasn''t going to hurt anything. If I lived, I''d have to quit again. I could afford to keep up my bad habit for once, so I might be able to just run out the clock instead of quitting. A long suicide, fit for a coward.


    The cargo can moved around me, ash from my cigarette tumbling down into my painting supplies. My old boss had been able to arrange every aspect of my vacation, he almost seemed as relieved to see me gone as I was to get gone. There was a catch though, it was a working vacation. One last job to end things right after that whole mess with the boss''s kids. That mess¡­What a mess that''d been. My eyes drifted down the the cherry tip of my smoke.


    "In my light, you will burn eternally." I muttered, taking another pull. The ember flared into ruddy light as I sucked down that lungful of sweet poison, then faded into dull ash. "Not much of an eternity."


    The cargo can moved again, clunking around me as it inched its way closer to the freight lift. The spongy, gel-lined casket I was sitting on trilled a little reminder that its lid was still open, as if I''d somehow failed to notice. The thing had the ripe, lingering scent of all the other outlaw emigrants the old fox had smuggled out ahead of me; it was an eye-watering measure of his competence that this single casket was still in use after so many runs. My cigarette was burning my fingers but my nerves still weren''t settling despite the itch in my throat being well scratched. I was a damned fool for up and leaving like this. Who else in their right mind would drop everything to go fling themselves into the stars on a whim?


    "Then again, I''m not exactly in my right mind, now are I?" I growled, spiking the embers of my smoke-butt across the can. A dozen sparks trailed from my stub embers, carving a handful of tiny shooting stars into my eyes. The lingering negatives accompanied me in the solitary, stygian darkness.


    I had a good thing going with the local underworld. A good working relationship where everybody won and nobody who didn''t deserve it got hurt. Throwing that away to chase after¡­ whatever this heat and those words were, that didn''t seem like a smart move no matter how I cut it. There was always the chance that there could be something better out there for me, but the odds that there were about a million things worse than a steady job of giving people what they deserved were a lot higher. None of that changed the fact that I was already in a cargo can about to get flung into high orbit. It was too late to back out of my vacation, but that didn''t mean I had to say goodbye forever.


    The casket trilled at me again, more urgently this time and I relented to its wishes. Then, I was being crushed under the weight of my own skin. I''d known that it was coming. That knowledge did nothing to prepare me as the air was driven from my lungs, as my compressing guts felt like bursting apart under the absurd forces at work. My left ass cheek was practically splitting between my hipbone and what must have been a metal strut buried under the absorption gel of my casket, the two solid objects doing their level best to push aside the intervening man-meat. My unmentionables were only slightly better off, the incredible weight of acceleration stretching the vulnerable flesh to its limits and quite possibly beyond if the wetness I was feeling down there was what I thought it was. I might have blacked out, without any light or change in noise there was no way to tell if I was fading in and out or not.


    It was an unending hell, then gravity cut out entirely. I was floating between the gel cushions wrapping me, vertigo warring against my relief as I gulped down lungfuls of stale, vomit-scented air. I couldn''t tell if the can had stopped and the temptation to unlatch the lid''s bolt almost came in time for me to do it. Then gravity flipped and the hell of ascension got worse.


    If I''d thought the gel''s aroma was bad before, now with my face entirely buried in the stuff it was almost unbearable. Or it would have been if I was capable of drawing more than a tiny puff of breath through the air-permeable material at any given time. That I could breathe through the material at all was less of a miracle than my being able to draw breath with what felt like an entire armored vehicle on my spine. All of that crushing weight on my back seconds prior was nothing compared to what felt like twice that crushing me onto my face, ribs, knees, feet and groin. Assuming I still had anything between my legs when this was over, it would probably have been over three feet long, such was the force at work trying to separate me from little Hiiro.


    As violently as it had started, the crushing forces ceased.


    I choked down a breath and the acrid stench of some else''s long-dried vomit, my hypoxic  body finally signaling my brain just how much everything hurt. A solid wall of agony smashed into my panting form. Everything hurt, my finger had probably broke again and I was warm. As luck would have it, this was pretty much my default state this past week so I recovered quickly. A quick, trepidatious inspection of my person revealed that everything was still attached and based on the fact that my balls felt like they''d been used for day-long batting practice, they probably still worked. By the time my old fox''s dockside counterparts were opening up the can, I''d already retrieved my scattered painting supplies and had plenty of time to chide myself for not stowing them properly.


    Seeing everything I owned rolled up in a duffel bag had my stomach wobbling almost as much as my ears, but that might have just been from the ride. It wasn''t much: my shot revolver and ammo, changes of inconspicuous clothes, a few paperbacks of Chon Wang''s rough riding adventures, and the black book I''d felt tugging at my soul. I still hadn''t worked up the nerve to try reading the damned thing, I don''t know if I ever would.


    When I tried to push myself up to my feet, I hopped a half meter into the air, my rubbery knees filled with more strength than I''d thought I had. A few more hops clued me into what my body had figured out already, the gravity was all cockeyed and light. Not anything ridiculous but enough that I felt twenty kilos lighter than I was back on Intatenrup. I was still bouncing on my toes when the dock workers final cleared me a way out.


    I crawled out of the shipping can and took my first look at Heaven¡ª and the two dock workers who''d dug me out. They were both women, or at least one of them was and the other had a girl''s face on a lanky, stick-thin body almost a meter taller than me. Her proportions were repulsively fascinating, this stick-thin girl. She had a normal head with mid-length brown hair that looked short on her and soft features but the rest of her looked like she''d been stretched out and hadn''t sprung back.


    "Like what you see?" The stick-thin girl asked, striking a pose that might have been flattering except that it highlighted every aspect of her deathly skeletal form.


    Both women were wearing the umber-colored skimpy offspring of coveralls and rompers, very low cut at the neck and fully slit at the sides save for the ankles and hips. If the thin girl didn''t tower over me I''d have thought she was a malnourished child from her slim build and protruding ribcage. The other worker¡ªa weathered petite woman with a black bob-cut, playful eyes cut like jade and an hourglass figure most women would kill for¡ªstepped forward to cut the unnerving show short.


    "You is painter?" The normal woman asked in the clipped, close-enough tone of a non-native language.


    "Yes. Where''s my contact?" I drawled, focusing on the human woman instead of her skeletal companion. "I''m supposed to meet someone-"


    "At port-side bar soon as you arrive." The older woman finished. "This ain''t first free-fall. Stow tough guy act, you pull close to 35 Terran Gees. Sit tight for hour so we make sure you no going to topple over dead when you take crap."


    The list was shorter than I''d expected but longer than I''d hoped. Despite the plates, my finger was in for another round of medical bone cracking to ensure that everything was still aligned properly. My cuts had opened up some, but nothing a quick snip, staple and stitch wouldn''t set to right. When they''d touched my skin, words like ''fevered,'' ''pallid'' and ''scorching'' were bandied about; I let the misunderstanding slide rather than explain my unusual condition. The trouser wetness I''d felt on the way up was just my bladder¡ªalong with every other part of me¡ªgetting wrung like a sponge; heedless of either womans'' objections, I refused to let them check for anything more serious around my nethers.


    "You ladies are lovely, but I can take care of that myself."


    "I bet you can." The bony giant smirked. My gaze flicked to her for a moment before I averted my eyes once more. Under her breath, but still plainly heard, she uttered. "Cunt tease."


    "If you get lightheaded when you pop boner, it''s because you''re about to die from internal bleeding. We test that right now if you like?" The normal woman said provocatively, batting her jade eyes and making an obscene gesture with her mouth and hand that left no illusion as to what she meant.


    "I''ll do my best to avoid temptation."


    "Whatever," young-in said with a spidery shrug of her thin arms. "There''s a powder room in back. You can kill yourself thinking of us or freshen up in there and get out of our hair, cherry boy."


    The two of them tittered something behind my back as I left¡ª half walking, half bouncing with every juddering, lurching step. A quick bathroom checkup and a change of pants later, I was off to meet my contact. Finding the port-side bar turned out to be as simple as it sounded, what I thought were the lower levels were actually the upper ones and they only had one bar up here, Goodnight Moon. The name was tacky, so was the cosmos-themed decor. The view was anything but.


    The stepped floors were more akin to a luxury cinema than a seedy bar; every booth and table was facing outwards towards the massive window of space beyond and Intatenrup above. The sight sent a dizzying burst of vertigo fluttering through my stomach; a disconnect between my eyes and ears made the room''s gravity flicker in my mind. My ears won out, the lighter than normal pull on my body might not have been real gravity but it felt real enough. Rationalizing that said quasi-gravity was trying to throw me into the infinite expanse of space to die a horrible death however, felt disconcertingly unreal.


    The room looked cold to my painter''s eye: black, grey and blue filled the room as surely as the thin wisps of chill vapor pouring throughout the room. The accent colors of purple and green, meant to add to the space-faring cosmic theme were a muted undertone compared to the massive window showing the stars beyond. Plateaued to the entry''s right, a bar sporting more color than the rest of the room combined; to the left, private booths buried in the walls and a mesa-styled dance floor; the room''s center was all cinematic restaurant. The bar was bigger than the dock I''d arrived in, crisp bracing air spilled through the entryway like the bitter winds of Intatenrup''s southern tundras. Once, I would have found the icy room unpleasant but since the arctic the cold couldn''t touch me. At least, not until that house¡­


    The bouncer who''d seen me in gave me a polite shove to get me clear of the doorway. A second, more insistent shove got me pointed towards a central booth seating five sharply dressed men finishing a meal worth more than the average wageslave made in a month back on Intatenrup. Two serving girls¡ªdressed in subtly different skimpy coveralls than the dock worker¡ªarrived to clean the plates, I shadowed in to take their place and await the attention of my next boss.


    The head of the table sighted on me without acknowledging me¡ª sizing me up as one might a street dog of questionable motive. The rest of the table deliberately failed to notice me, which didn''t stop their hands from dipping under the table or into their jackets. The table was quiet enough for me to hear the muffled click of more than one pistol''s hammer being cocked. As a conscript, I would have hated this kind of scrutiny. The slightest infraction¡ªreal or imagined¡ªwas grounds for corporal punishment. Since making the switch to the shadows, I''d learned of a new meaning behind the action. It was a show of power, not the childish tantrums of ineffective superiors who needed to bully their juniors into place, but the very real show a strength and a willingness to use it. My life was in the hands of this stranger, a single word could end me. If I fell short of his assessment then he would never notice me as a man and at some unseen sight to his bodyguards I would be dealt with¡ª whatever that entailed.


    I stood my ground, watching as he examined my character from the subtlest tells. The way I stood a respectful distance from the table. The slightest bend to my knees for stability and mobility. The tidied, off-the-rack cloths of hired muscle, smart but not so smart as to undercut any charges in my care. My remarkably unremarkable face, unimpressive yet functional trim hair style and clean-shaven cheeks were all absorbed impassively. His eyes lingered on my shoulder, then lower down to my mangled, purple finger. Having seen enough to reach a decision, the table''s head finally acknowledged me with a tilt of the head. All eyes turned on me at once, just begging me to make a mistake. I bowed low, squaring my flattened back to the table''s lip, ensuring all present would see my bared neck.


    "You must be the painter." The table''s head said. He spoke with a gruff, commanding voice; the tone that of a man destined and expected to lead from birth. His words were so neutrally inflected so as to border on maliciously calculated, not that I thought for a moment every utterance from this man wouldn''t be planned, rehearsed and choreographed to exacting standards. "You come highly recommended by our friends up above."


    "Thank you, boss." I said tersely, raising my head slowly and keeping my eyes on the table.


    "Mister Satou will suffice for our dealings." Mister Satou jutted a chin to the outermost of his guards. The man bowed lightly, then left. "I was just about to order dessert, you should join me."


    "Thank you for the generous offer, Mister Satou."


    I slide into the booth, Satou''s bodyguards staring me down with unmasked hostility while the man himself held an air of professional amiability. The guards could glare all they liked, without a signal from their boss they wouldn''t act out of turn in front of an outsider like me. After a full minute of death glares without a single spoken word, the serving girl returned. There was a tantalizing flash of bright color poking beyond her umber jumpsuit, her swaying hips teasing the eye with every step.


    "The usual for me and my associates. My new friend may order as he likes."


    There was something in the way he said it, the slightest inflection of interest to his words. I was being judged on something as mundane as the dessert I chose. It was a childish test, a blind guess at what I thought Mister Satou would eat. I had nothing to go off, I hadn''t seen any other diners on my way in, not a single menu either. Except that wasn''t true, I did have something to go off. The room. Whatever the usual was, it would be something cold.


    "Vanilla sundae, please."


    The two ''associates'' across the table from me shared a look, as if I''d failed the test. The waitress flashed a sheepish smile to me, then a nervous look to the table''s head before bowing and scampering off. With as much discretion as I could manage I watched her go. I couldn''t keep my eyes from the waitress''s side slit as she turned, the flash of color I''d seen earlier taunted my imagination too much to leave the question unanswered. My imagination wasn''t disappointed. Her vibrant sea-green lingerie paired with her body in profile were the stuff of dreams.


    "Do you like her?" Mister Satou inquired.


    "She certainly is cute." I answered.


    "If I''m pleased with your work, I''ll give her to you as a short-notice bonus."


    I blinked twice before the crass implication clicked home. It made sense in hindsight that all of the angelic women were sex workers moonlighting as laborers rather than the other way around. I was familiar with bosses hiring eye candy even if I wasn''t inured to it yet, but the flagrance of his offer was still surprising. Back on Intatenrup, most of my old bosses didn''t mind looking for free, but touching was a separate matter entirely.


    "That''s very generous, Mister Satou. Perhaps we could discuss what I''ll be painting for you?"


    "An apartment, level 3 down by the docks, tunnel 2043, hab C-025. Single occupant, man by the name of Ivan Balakin. He''s a data consultant who happened to find something of mine that he shouldn''t have." Satou paused, knowing I''d have questions and humoring me.


    "Is this data a priority?"


    "No, but I would prefer it be turned over to my protectorate, should you locate it. If the data is still in his apartment, it is likely on a physical backup. You will be compensated for fruitful efforts, naturally. A lesser sum is available if you cannot retrieve the data but veritably locate or destroy it."


    "Will I need to handle my own clean-up?"


    "If you can handle the matter quietly, then yes. Should events force your hands, a robbery gone bad will prove easy enough to sweep out the airlock, not to mention personally lucrative to the burglar. I understand that he has done quite well for himself on Tengoku, despite being an offworlder."


    "Resources? Mine and his."


    "I''ve arranged a safehouse for you on level 7, buried in with the workers. You''ll be given the comm-code for one of my men, any further dealings will be conducted through him. So far as I know, the target is acting alone and has no connections worth mentioning." Satou''s tone was aggressively neutral for a moment. A verbal tick, or something else? "Of course, you know how quickly that can change." He finished cordially.


    "Of course." I agreed politely.


    "Which means the only matter left to discuss is your compensation. I understand you wish for a new identity and passage out of system." I nodded. "With my connections, this can be easily arranged."


    "Thank you, Mister Satou-" He waved a hand to cut me off.


    "Let it never be said that I am a man who does not repay his debts or share his prosperity with others. I''ve already arranged several bonuses if I am suitably impressed with your work. Should you desire to join my family instead of moving on, I always have work for a man of your particular artistic vision. Work that would make you extremely wealthy and me even more so."


    The table laughed at their boss''s joke. I joined in after a beat, faking with the rest of them.


    "I shall consider your many generous offers and aim to impress, Mister Satou." I said.


    Sensing that the conversation was over, I moved to bow but a twitch of his fingers stilled me. I followed his gaze beyond the table, spotting the serving girl returning with a platter of five parfait glasses; four identical cups of butter-white ice cream with a fifth coated in dark drizzle and crushed nut, a single red cherry crowning the outcast. As the cups were doled out, the aroma of sake filled the air¡ª heady with a sweet fruity note I couldn''t place.


    "Very close, painter." Mister Satou said, his tone somewhere between wry and complimentary. "Perhaps you would like to enjoy your dessert elsewhere as you take in the orbital''s scenery."


    "I believe you are correct." I said, reading between the lines. "With your permission, I''ll take my leave."


    I was dismissed with a brief nod.


    I stood, bowed low¡ªbut not so much as I had initially¡ªand made for the exit, untouched sundae in hand. The chilled dew forming on the glass helped to relieve the worse of the pain in my mangled finger even if the cold couldn''t penetrate past my skin. The image of the two bodyguards sharing a look across from me flashed to mind. If my choice of dessert was a test, I don''t think I failed it outright but I was unsure if I had passed or not. The clandestinely armed bodyguard conversing with the club''s bouncers turning on me like a shark, a hand reaching into the folds of his jacket.


    "You can call me Mister Matsumoto or sir. I''ll be your liaison from this point on." The bodyguard''s hand leveled itself to my chest; instead of the weapon that would end my life it held a plastek card and a personal comm. "You may consider these an advance on services rendered."


    I quickly pocketed the comm, focusing my attention on the station Ident card. It looked to be proper, not that I knew what an improper one might have looked like. The main details that caught my eye were my new name and my new job.


    "It would seem you can call me Hero Sato, station janitorial and maintenance services."


    As far as names went it left a bitter taste on my tongue. Not that they''d commonized my given name from the old words to standard, but rather that they''d ripped the only clue I had about my lineage from me. Anyone who studied the thicker features of my plain face or dense build could tell I wasn''t from a homogenized bloodline. I could pass for a Nova-Kyoton at a glance, but it was only a matter of time until some slip up betrayed my Canzuk-Kassack peasant roots. My state education was another damning hole in my new persona, just one more mighty crack in flawed foundation of my new life.


    "Very well, Sato-kun." Matsumoto stated, snapping my out of my bitter reflection. "I''ll be taking a walk across the station for my duties, you will accompany me."


    "Of course, Mister Matsumoto." I replied, stressing his position of superiority much like he had my juniority.


    "You may be an independent, but this orbital has traditions, Sato-kun. You''re not one of us yet, no matter how highly you come recommended. Should my family be seen treating you as an equal, that would raise unneeded scrutiny as to our affiliation. Now, finish eating quickly so we can depart; it wouldn''t be seemly once we''ve left the upper levels."


    The sundae was delicious, leagues beyond the canned knock-offs I''d been eating my entire life. I couldn''t place how as I scarfed the frozen treat down, it was just a statement of fact. Within seconds I''d finished, Matsumoto spared me a derisive look and turned to leave. I shoved my glass into the hands of a puzzled looking bouncer and followed. The pace was leisurely, that of a person with nothing better to do than amble about for hours on end.


    I wasn''t sure if the orbital was supposed to be inspiring or lavish, it blended the two into something not quite either. The colors were vibrant, stores exclusively dealt in luxury services or goods and everywhere I looked there were beautiful women half-dressed in their promiscuous jumpsuits. The station''s lighting varied with disjointing frequency, one minute we walked through a neon-lit twilight of unending nightlife, the next we were bathed in sourceless sunlight that made my skin sing with soothing warmth. The materials varied just as widely only instead of clashing in contrast, they all complemented and highlighted the cohesion of the whole. Stone, metal, textiles, digital, ceramics, glass and even flesh as working women adorned everything from glass box storefronts to overhead maintenance catwalks. It seemed that no matter where I looked there was always an angelic woman or ten in my field of view.


    "This is your first time in Tengoku, isn''t it Sato-kun?" Matsumoto finally said as we''d traversed of length of a wide side street.


    "Yes sir."


    "It shows. You stand out and it will take more than a pair of coveralls to make you blend in." Contempt was dripping from his words. It was a tone I''d heard throughout my life, that of someone who simply knows with absolute certainty that they were better than everyone else in general, and better than me in particular.


    "You have advice, sir?"


    "First, you need to learn how to walk in reduced gravity. Tengoku is the counterweight for Intatenrup''s space elevator, which is why there''s undoubtedly an irritating wobble inside your ears and why you''ll lose your balance if you look out a window. Your stride is all wrong; stairs will prove challenging too, take them three at a time unless there is someone of status nearby."


    "How will I know if who has status?" I asked, a sly glance over the scattered mass of humanity arrayed around our current corridor.


    There was a woman offering cigars from a smoke shop, our eyes met when her current customer¡ªa fat man that filled his snakeskin suit to near bursting¡ªbent down to sniff at her proffered case. She flashed me a smile that left me blushing, then she flashed a lot more as she exchanged on cigar case for another from a high shelf beside her.


    "Mister Satou is a good litmus test; maintaining paradise isn''t cheap after all. In a single day cycle, more than twelve billion GSaC worth of goods and services trade from the hands of Tengoku''s elite alone. Another twenty billion in materials, manpower and information circulate the greater whole. Men of status wear their wealth, they own entire tunnels and staff full retinues. Bodyguards are the simplest to spot, any more than four means you stop what you are doing and bow, more than nine and dogeza is expected."


    "Dogeza, sir?"


    "Face to floor prostration until your betters call upon you or have passed by. Most of the workers are indentured. The few that are not are company men and their wives."


    "How do I tell which women are single? Do they get ringed here?"


    As I asked the question, I spotted a woman smoking in an alleyway. Her full figure left her clothes hanging about her like drapes, fully nude at the sides. Her ears, nose and fingers shone from the wealth of gemmed rings hanging off of them but of all her jewelery nothing spoke out above the rest to signify if she was paired. She took another drag of her cigarette, the cherry glow scattering a million flecks of light off her jewels.


    She noticed my attention and winked.


    Matsumoto stopped dead and rounded on me where I''d lagged behind. He followed my gaze and the woman recoiled as if she''d been whipped. With a frantic bow, she stomped out her cigarette and returned to much more pressing duties elsewhere.


    "The population of Tengoku is just over 50 000 permanent residents, more than 80 percent of which are owned women." Matsumoto explained, using the deliberate tone one uses when addressing the slow-witted and the doddering elderly.


    "When you say owned-" I started.


    "I mean owned in the same way you own the clothes on your back. There are establishments for professional companionship, but outside of these you must never interact with a woman outside of your working capacity. Don''t flirt with them, don''t talk to them and don''t stare at every one you walk past like a starved mongrel eying discarded tuna. Do I make myself clear?"


    A dozen questions came to mind along with half as many unpleasant revelations. From his tone and the thinly veiled exasperation on his face, Matsumoto had said all he would on the subject. I bit back the venom trying to worm its way into my words and smiled.


    "Of course, sir."


    Tengoku¡ªor Heaven as I''d grown up knowing it¡ªwas only a surface deep paradise. The various Johnsons, Nikogos and Satous skimmed the top of this angelic pond, casting shadows that blotted out the murky depths below. Tengoku was reserved for the men who had made it to the top of their respective ladders; corporate, criminal or more often than not a blend of both. The further I ventured from the station''s clear skin, in towards the blackened heart of the orbital, the more familiar things became to me. At the orbital''s core, well away from the glitz and majesty frequented by the elite, was the ruthlessly practical life-sustaining industry powered by human labor.


    Long halls of single-room apartments, all packed together to make up for the inefficiency of the ruling elites'' luxuries. Much of said luxuries trickled their way down to the working class as an afterthought; working girls ran after hours bazaars selling perishable gourmet foods cooked but untouched, stunning clothes marred by a single errant stain and designer hardware one year out of date. Seeing a blonde stick-thin woman haggling over a half-kilo of rice for three whole-cooked lobsters was almost as jarring as watching a seamstress turn away silks and jewels as payment for restitching a pair of low-cut yet drab coveralls. As dissonant as the experience was for me, I would have thought I was a celebrity by the way I was turning heads.


    While they looked at me in the same way a starving man might regard a feast, Matsumoto was implacable. Women took one look at him and went about their business, suddenly finding my presence as mundane as the gemstones they traded for basic necessities. Yet even Matsumoto''s intimidating aura couldn''t quell the surge of whispers that followed in our wake.


    The bulk of my job as a painter required anonymity. Moving, seen but unnoticed amidst the crowds until I found an opening to do my job. Casting my eyes among the crowd, it was clear that everything I did would draw attention. Discretion would likely amount to scat all. If I had a gaggle of gossiping strumpets thirsting after me everywhere I went, any proper legwork on my target would arouse too much suspicion. Once Matsumoto lead us down a thinner branching tunnel there was finally enough privacy to talk amongst each other in hushed tones.


    "I see why you brought on an outsider, sir." I said, keeping most of the grumbling undertone out of my voice.


    "Tengoku is a smaller world than most. Anything that makes waves rocks the entire orbital, Sato-kun. So long as the waves are small and infrequent, no one pays them any mind."


    "If you weren''t here, I don''t think I''ll be able to walk out of my room without knocking Heaven back to Intatenrup. Sir." I hastily added.


    "You are as off-limits to them as they are to you. Besides, no one of importance cares about the whisperings of owned women, Sato-kun."


    "Who exactly owns these women, sir?"


    "That depends on the day." Matsumoto said with a muted laugh. "It''s best not to overly concern yourself with them, Sato-kun. Tengoku is the realm of powerful men and their families. The last thing you want to do is earn one''s ire by damaging one of their playthings."


    He''d turned to look at me with a smile that was supposed to be playfully compassionate. If it wasn''t being worn by a slimy snake of a man, it probably wouldn''t have looked so out of place or forced. Matsumoto''s expression withered into abortion when he saw I wasn''t buying it.


    "This one is your''s, supplies are inside. Everything else you need to know is on your comm. There''s also the comm-code for several trusted workers Mister Satou keeps on retainer pre-loaded. Just tell them what you expect of them, they needn''t be made aware of anything else. Any questions?"


    "Nothing at present. Thank you for your insights, Mister Matsumoto." I said with a bow.


    "You have my comm-code if anything comes up, but it''s better if we''re never seen together again." He dropped his voice even lower to less than a whisper. "For your sake, don''t disappoint Mister Satou or me. We have high hopes for you, Hero-kun."


    "I''ll strive to be worthy of such expectations, sir." I said as I made my way into the safehouse. Once the door was finally sealed I allowed the polite smile to fall from my face. "Jackass."


    I bled all the straight-backed tension the second I was alone, practically sweating out a bucket of the figurative stuff. Appearances mattered, both for corporate and criminal Johnsons¡ª doubly so for corporate Johnson criminals. Being the center of attention was exhausting, I had no idea how a sleazy middle-management cutthroat like Mister Matsumoto could just walk around above everyone outside the family. Actually I had a pretty good idea of how he did it. He didn''t consider any of them as human beings. In that regard he was no different from the tyrants below¡ª er, above. The thought was dizzying.


    My so-called safehouse was disappointingly grounded however. A single room all-in-one apartment with the fundamentals a worker needed to do their jobs: narrow bed on drawers, table that folded onto the bulkhead, in-built appliances with cupboards, closet stocked with blank worker''s garbs plus accouterments and interchangeable patches, and lastly a privacy curtain for the combination toilet/sink/sponge bath. I breathed a sigh of relief after inspecting the coveralls, they were full-sleeved, collared and lacked the promiscuous side slit that would have made concealing anything needlessly difficult. The ''supplies'' Matsumoto mentioned were a week''s worth of rice and beans, a polymer holdout pistol and a primer on proper station etiquette for all new workers.


    All in all, it wasn''t any worse than my bunks from back in my conscript days, though it was a far cry from my old planetside condo. My comm was the next thing on my inspection. It was a luxury model, no doubt a few years out of date and hence, just as disposable as my printed holdout pistol. As sleek as the hardware was, the comm had been wiped a little too well and had crud knockoff software on it. The info was all there, it just took me longer than I liked to navigate the clunky operating system.


    All the usual fire and forgot services a gun-for-hire would need; arms dealer, fast food, back ally street doc, cleaner services, trusted fences and my semi-trusted snake of a liaison. The info docket on my deader was lighter than I cared for, but with a rush job like this that was to be expected. What wasn''t, was the fact that not three days ago there was a very public failed ''mugging'' in which Ivan plugged his attacker with eight hollow-point rounds at point-blank. Which meant my deader was armed and jumpy, a dangerous combination for anyone looking to do some painting with his brains. No floor plans, no recorded regular schedule, not even a favorite tea shop. Nothing I couldn''t solve with some legwork and observation, but against a deadline and my local celebrity status, proper legwork wasn''t an option.


    Looking at how disposable and threadbare everything was, I had to fight down some jumpy nerves with a smoke. Sink or swim was the name of the game. A real mushroom job; give me nothing but scat, keep me in the dark and see if anything useful came from it. Based on Matsumoto''s comment of ''high hopes,'' I got the feeling they weren''t expecting to need a payout¡ª if the job got done at all. Odds were that I was just as disposable in their eyes as the girl I''d been offered for payment, if not more so given my hardware. I found myself reaching for a second cigarette but checked the urge. I slowly flicked back through my burner comm and punched a message for the street doc.


    P - Staple and stitch. Need a shattered finger checked too, possibly re-plated.


    Doc - B there in 30.


    28 minutes later there was a single knock on my door. With one hand on my gun¡ªmy real gun, not that plastic piece of junk I''d been given¡ªI ushered in a petite woman with a no-nonsense black bob cut and a heavily laden backpack. A quick scan of the hall only revealed a woman idly chatting with someone about ten rooms down. She spotted me and winked before I ducked back into my room and sealed the door.


    "That is other gun, or just you happy see me?"


    The woman''s clipped accent registered in my mind the same time her jade eyes and doll face did. The odds were probably higher on Tengoku than anywhere else that I''d run into the drop-dead gorgeous doppleganger of someone I''d barely met, but chances still were that this was the same woman from the docks.


    "Neither." I growled. "You''re lovely, really. I''m just not in the mood for a tumble in the snow."


    "Maybe I put you in mood?" She said, raising her hands to start slipping off her coveralls. I grabbed her slender wrists and pinned them to her shoulders.


    "No. Listen, I just-"


    She took a step and pitched back, overbalancing me in the weird fake gravity. She fell backwards onto my bed, grabbing onto my hands and pulling me with her until my face was buried in her plentiful chest.


    "I be quick. Let Nee-chan guide you-"


    I got my feet under me and stood, lifting myself clear of the woman clinging to me. She held firm to my hands trying to topple me again, but without the element of surprise she couldn''t manage the feat twice. She wrapped her legs around my back, grinding our hips together and pulled at me, causing a tearing pain in the meat of my shoulder. Then I felt the familiar hot rush of blood pouring down my arm. She let go and flopped onto my bed when the first red trickle met her skin, her disappointed pouting more evocative than the generous cleavage of her clothing.


    "Strip, cherry boy." She said half-pouting, half barking.


    "No! I''m-"


    "Not for sex stupid! For arm and rest, I fix." In the frenzied heat, I''d forgotten why she was actually here. "Then sex."


    I rolled my eyes at her addition but did as she''d demanded. There was still a blatant hunger in the way she looked at me, along with a cold clinical detachment that made her seem like an entirely different person than the manic woman in heat from moments earlier. The apartment was barely large enough for two people to be doing anything simultaneously; just getting my bloodied shirt off and rolling up my pant-leg had me tripping over the petite woman as she dug some surgical instruments from her backpack.


    "Pants too." She barked.


    "There''s nothing to fix down there." I said, covering my groin.


    "Pants off. I make sure you no die." Her gaze flicked from my groin to my face with a knowing look. "You feel light headed?"


    "No, why?"


    "That good. It mean you penis work good and you no die. Okay, pants stay on for now."


    I held out my arm, weak spurts of blood trickling from the partially opened stab wound in my shoulder. "Fix this and stop thinking about my, penis."


    "Okay okay. I fix you up real good, cherry boy. Then you take care of me, okay?" She gave me a thousand-megawatt smile, nodding all the while. As if she''d get me to consent through sheer persistence.


    "Fix." I repeated. She gave me another pout that did more to stir me than her earlier attempts had. Lacking her previous force, she sat me down on my bed and straddled me. Almost reluctantly, she set to work on my open shoulder wound, the pain of her ministrations helping to keep my head clear.


    "You so serious, cherry boy. No fun."


    "My job isn''t to have fun."


    "I know all about you job. Mister painter, only paints with red." Her jade eyes tracking down my lean, shirtless form. "Never any white?"


    "No." I gulped. "No white."


    "Shame, good money up here for white paint." She said, grinding her hips into mine to drive the point home.


    "Why?" I asked, desperately focusing on her words instead of her body pressing against mine.


    "Pregnant girls get to go up to planet. Have healthy baby. No one down here wants saggy titted old mommies. Baby batter is way off station. Lot of girls give everything they own and then some for that."


    She finished cleaning out my wound, switching over to needle and thread. I allowed my eyes to wander to her work, deep in the meat of my shoulder, as I chewed on yet another sour fact of life on Tengoku. Things were hard everywhere, expecting space to be better off than back on Intatenrup was just naive.


    "That and it no feel as good when is only girls." She added impishly.


    Our eyes met, my blue-grey gaze lost in her lush jade. Her face was rising up to meet mine, her lips ready. I broke our locked gaze, growling under my breath.


    "You don''t want to go down to Intatenrup."


    "It better than work down here. No more master, find a husband, make a home, raise baby. Is happy dream, no? Worth put on five kilos and¡­ tumble in snow?" She gave a little puff of a laugh that sent the sweet trill of her breath down my exposed chest. "I never hear that one before."


    "Have you ever seen snow before?" I asked, silently rejoicing for the change in topic.


    "Oh yeah, lots of time. I even have girl friend that likes sniff it off my ass. You want some for pain?" A folded paper packet materialized in front of me before I clued in that something had been lost in translation.


    "Not the drug. Snow. You know, the stuff that falls from the sky when its cold out." She paused her needlework to put the packet away, when she resumed it was with a thoughtful curiosity under a poorly feigned indifference.


    "There is other snow? I hear of sky before, but what is?"


    I could only blink at her the same way she blinked at me. It never occurred to me that someone wouldn''t know what the sky was. She was sitting right on my lap but suddenly there was this uncrossable chasm between us. What else had she never heard of? What was there that I didn''t even know enough to start asking about? How could any two people have lives such vastly different lives and still gotten so close to each other? I hadn''t even properly left my homeworld yet but space suddenly got a lot bigger than I''d ever thought possible, right before my very eyes.


    "Have you ever been off this station?" I asked.


    "Oh yeah, I grew up on old colony ship raising cow, chicken and fish. I spend almost twenty year there before I come here."


    "But you''ve never not been in space?" She blinked at me, confused. "You''ve never been on any planet?"


    "No, never." My shock must have started to bleed through, because her needlework hesitated again and her jade eyes started wandering to my face instead of the bare muscle of my body. "Has you never been in space before, cherry boy?"


    "No, never."


    "And¡­" She flicked her needle up and down. Once again I was made painfully aware of just where she was sitting and just how attractive she was. I peeled my eyes from her plump mounds and swallowed down the lump in my throat.


    "No," I admitted breathlessly. "First time here too."


    "You is real cherry boy? Not just act?"


    "No, not an act."


    At my words she ground her hips into mine once more, feeling the honesty of my body pinned between us. She leaned onto my good shoulder, the needle momentarily forgotten in her other hand. The hot rush of her breath was right in my ear, sweet and seductive. The softest hint of her whimper defeated any resistance I had left, making me a slave to this moment, to this woman on top of me. The fabric between us wasn''t thick enough to block out the moist heat of her, the interposing garments were soaked with her eagerness. She ground down all the more insistently, sliding back and forth on my lap as if by friction alone she could lay me bare and make a man of me. My breathing became ragged to match her own. My body was aching for release, everything else was fading into the background. There was only the heat of this woman in this moment and I drank in everything I could: the sight of her clinging to me, her burning-hot breath in my ear, the earthy scent of her sweat mingling with mine. I wanted it to last, but the need for release was building and fight as I may, I couldn''t hold it back. Then she whispered in my ear like a devil of lust.


    "Don''t worry cherry boy, Nee-chan will be gentle."


    I stiffened under her before her hand had even reached my waistline. That shameful moment filled the room as my defeat spurted from me. She pulled back from our embrace, all softness removed from her jaded features.


    "Did you just-"


    "Sorry." I panted.


    Her hand darted below my trousers and found the truth. She seized my member, savagely pumping the bruised meat, desperate to keep my abused flesh firm. Without the blissful embrace from moments ago, there wasn''t any pleasure in her frantic actions¡ª only a great deal of pain.


    "Is okay. We try again." She said, smiling wide even as tears began misting in her jade eyes.


    "Stop."


    To my surprise she did. She must have known it was a lost cause.


    "We try again tomorrow." She nodded to herself more than me and withdrew her hand. The sight of my own weakness glazing her fingers like so much white paint disgusted me. "I¡­ I go wash now."


    She climbed off me, taking the heat of her body behind the privacy curtain with her. Running water overwrote the sound of my own silent berating. Where her excitement had soaked through my clothes the fading scent of that moment lingered until the warmth bled away, leaving only a clammy reminder of my disgrace. Running water and shame, the two seemed to intermingle as I saw that frigid look of disappointment on her face when she''d pulled away from me over and over in my mind. It was the look she was still wearing as the privacy curtain slide back and her jaded eyes met mine.


    "I fix rest now, cherry boy. This will be lot of hurt."


    She wasn''t exaggerating. Medicine was usually slower and less painful the more care the practitioner put into their work. She practically flew through my ministrations, the rapidity of her stitch and staple would have rivaled any corpsman from back in my conscript days. I endured the pain as a welcome distraction from the shame of my performance.


    When it came to my trigger finger, she offered up her packet of snow again and I eagerly snorted half, the rest being dumped into the mangled sausage of cracked bone, metal plates and torn bloody tissue. She poked and prodded, aligning the bone ends to her satisfaction while I tried to avoid watching or crying out in pain to moderate success. Once she''d closed my finger back up, she clamped it straight with splint and tape the same burnt umber hue as her disheveled uniform.


    Her work done, she cleaned her tools and packed her bag all without saying a word. I wanted to say something to her before she left but all I could think of were more apologies. She was lifting her backpack into place when I realized I didn''t even know her name to call out to her. She took a single step and she was already at the door, seconds from leaving my life forever.


    "Will¡­ will I see you again?" I asked, the pathetic weakness of my own question disgusting me.


    A quivering sigh filled the room like a gunshot. The silence that followed was pregnant with my own driving heartbeat. She turned from the door, her face a mask of clinical indifference.


    "I come back tomorrow, same time. To make sure you is healing right. Okay?"


    "Yeah, totally okay. Yes. Miss¡­" I saw the ghost of a smile on her face, as if asking her name was something dreadfully amusing. Then, she leaned in and gave me a goodbye kiss on the lips.


    "Yang-Sarpi. Shenhua Yang-Sarpi."


    That tiny touch was electric, my cheeks burning with an impossible heat of a forbidden possibility. I blinked and the door was open while I watched her walk away. In the cramped apartment I hadn''t had a chance to appreciate much more than her bust and face, but watching her leave, it was almost enough to make me chase after her. To find out if she was the reason I was still alive after everything I''d been through. Shenhua rounded a corner then was gone.


    My tunnel vision cut out, and I was suddenly aware that I wasn''t the only one watching her leave my room. At least a dozen women turned as one to gaze upon my half-naked, blood-smeared body with starved, downright predatory stares. One of then decided that she wanted a closer look, possibly more and strode towards me, her intent worn openly. A glance over my shoulder and I discovered a trio of women inspired to action by the boldness of the instigator. More beyond them were lying in wait, carrion feeders waiting until the street dogs had made their kill and taken their fill. I backed into my safehouse¡ªfeeling that it was anything but¡ªand locked the door, hoping none of the women had another way in or the determination to wait me out. Sealed inside my bunker, I made ready to wait out the siege.


    The clock was ticking on this job and I was trapped in my room by the veritable horde. My safehouse still smelled of Shenhua''s passion, paired with the sour tang of my weakness. I found my thoughts straying from the work to come, the possibilities that were now open before me.


    Would they all be like her? Her dream¡ªgoing planetside and starting a family¡ªsounded more appealing than it had any right too. I could do that for her. I could change any woman''s life with a few minutes of blissful union. I gulped at the possibilities. All I had to do was open that door and the women out there would handle the rest. The thought alone had little Hiiro standing resolute, aching and bruised as he was. Just imagining what would happen if I opened that door was almost enough to send me over the edge with another disgraceful release.


    Would these women look at me with disappointment when I failed them too? How great would my shame be when failed them all? I was just a cherry boy who couldn''t go the distance. The disgraceful truth of my inexperience left my earlier excitement stillborn. Faced with dwelling on my shame or getting on with my job, I was finally able to focus on the latter.


    Legwork made all the difference between a clean painting and a messy one. Any two-time hustler with a piece could gun down someone in the streets, only to wind up dead or caught in a week''s time. Painting was as much an art as a science. I''d been thinking of this working vacation as just another job, I needed to change that. This was a whole new canvas, in someone else''s studio with new rules that required a new way of thinking. I popped a cigarette in my mouth, picked my way through what little intel I did have and got to work.


    One nap to sleep off the lingering effects of my painkillers later, I was nibbling on a light meal, sipping down an ordered coffee and slipping into worker''s coveralls with a duty bag on my good shoulder. I stashed what I could where I could, gaging how visible each hiding place was and how quickly I could get to my guns if needed. I reread my Ident, rehearsing my faked persona and affiliations until they were natural enough to sound plausible. My whole plan was paper thin but it was the best I could manage on short notice. I slapped on the appropriate patches to get me clear of my room''s siege, planted a short brimmed cap on that barely did anything to conceal my face and wrapped a bulky yet lightweight toolbelt around my waist to better conceal the pistol in my waistband. Clutching at the new worker''s orientation primer like a candle in the dark, I opened my door.


    Instead of a clawing horde like I''d been expecting, an orderly queue had formed twenty bodies long. With a practiced glance to my primer and an entirely genuine awkward panic, I mumbled something about getting to my new job and made my escape. The chorus of desperate, if disillusioned, pleas fell on deaf ears as I all but ran from the hall. The crude, mass-printed map on my orientation primer got me pointed to the service corridors and worker only access tunnels. From there I was all but invisible, merging into the throng of the downtrodden and the desperate.


    These corridors were stiflingly hot, the ventilation deliberately reduced to keep the scent of toiling humans confined to their section of the station and away from the glass paradises they served. I spotted several other men in the crowds but lost as they were within the press of feminine humanity, their sex and the promise of escape that it entailed went deliberately unnoticed. It wasn''t long after that I spotted the clandestine cameras¡ªand the looming threat they represented¡ªat regular intervals. I stooped lower into the crowd, discretely swapping out my laborer''s patch for another before breaking from the main flow at the next junction.


    Stepping from the claustrophobic, stiflingly functional workers'' crawlway into the posh airy halls of the station proper was jarringly disconcerting. One minute, I was practically buried alive in dimly-lit cloying heat, the next I was blinded by daylight. It reminded me of sewer clearance back in my conscript days, crawling through the filthy detritus to ''remove'' those who couldn''t find shelter anywhere in the sprawling, neon-lit city of opportunity above. The fact that one person could be feasting on the finest multi-course meals while another was hunting down rats with the hope of eating anything at all mere meters away was dreadfully bleak to me. The warm light of Tengoku seemed to get a little colder as the memory surfaced.


    According to the primer, level 3 was the station equivalent of a suburban area with a mix of residential, commercial and convenience all pressed together for the station''s more prominent members. Strategically placed between the necessary industries of level 4 and the executive high-life of level 2, residents were close enough to that better life to reach out and dream, while simultaneously seeing the price of disappointing their superiors. A firm reminder that what had been given could just as easily be taken away.


    The tunnels were triple-tiered in a stepped V shape, regular arching walkways connecting the mirrored sides. Bright grey tile lined everything save for the ceiling which was a recreation of the daytime sky of Intatenrup, shedding imitation light that felt indistinguishable from the real thing to my skin. What people I saw were clearly divided; those few clothed in worker''s garbs largely stayed on the bottom tier and everyone else went about their day above them. The sparse crowds on my tier weren''t thick enough to disappear in, but no one should look twice at another worker who knew his place.


    If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    There was only so much walking around and rubbernecking I could pull before someone noticed something was off¡ª there was always a subtle tell that betrayed those in places they shouldn''t be. Consciously masking my planetside stride, I kept my discrete investigation to a minimal. Hab C-025 was on the third tier, surrounded by what looked like mostly residential neighbors. Two square windows maintained the symmetry of the picturesque little condo¡ª if anyone was home, they liked the lights off. Foot traffic got lighter the higher I looked in the tiers and those workers who did venture above their bottom rung for their duties were noticed with a sneer or a leer and just as quickly forgotten by their betters. That made things easier for me.


    Being a social chameleon was all about who, when and where; the confidence that you knew who you were and that others should too. When you walked you always made ripples, too big and people took notice¡ª a death sentence in this line of work. The walls between the well to do and those without were paper thin at best if all that stood between them was a change of clothes, a cocky stride and a cushy place to lie one''s head. It was a laughably fragile illusion that a few strong prods would shatter in an instant. There had to be more to it than what I was seeing from the inside. If I''d had the time for a more thorough infiltration I might have parsed the subtle minutia of this false paradise but time wasn''t on my side. Rush jobs always fell to scat, but I didn''t have the time or the means to do things the usual way¡ª the right way.


    I''d done all the legwork I dared risk and turned my back on my target. I wrestled down the urge to find a place to smoke in my mouth, instead pulling out my comm in place of my box of coffin nails. Using my paper-thin excuse, I turned back towards my target on one last errand. The theatrics were probably unnecessary but it gave any tails a chance to betray their interest in me. A discrete glimpse around didn''t spot any turning heads, which did nothing to placate my caution. I checked my comm as I reached the foot of a stairway, the barrier between where workers belonged and where people of consequence lived, feigning trepidation.


    I climbed to the third tier and kept my damned eyes down at my feet. Approaching straight away would be too conspicuous, as would dallying where I didn''t belong. I headed for C-028 and knocked on the door, tools in one hand and my forged credentials in the other. Working my way down the street wouldn''t throw a determined observer off my trail, but a casual one would be hard-pressed to recall specifics that didn''t exist. A pale, smiling woman in a dark business-casual skirt and pale blouse opened the door, her expression souring immediately when she saw me.


    "Apologies ma''am," I said with a quick bow. "There''s been some power drain in the area. We think there might be some damaged wiring in one of the units on your row." I gulped down a stuttering breath. "I-I need to inspect the wiring. Ma''am."


    A glance at her eyes showed me just how displeasurable my interruption and indeed my very existence was. Averting my eyes, I saw the subtle shift in her weight as she no doubt sized me up. She swayed her hips as she thought, eventually reaching a decision.


    "Hurry up then." She said with a sigh. "I''m not going to wait on you all cycle."


    "Of course, Ma''am. Apologies for the intrusion, Ma''am." I gave another twitchy bow and stepped inside. She took a breath and wrinkled her nose at my intrusion. Her scowl deepened when I walked by.


    "You should have bathed before coming here. The whole place will reek of you for days."


    I hide my initial search behind an awestruck gaze around at the blatant luxury of the loft-style condo. My safehouse was little more than a closet compared to the plentiful opulence on display.


    "If you drool on my floors, I''ll have you flogged in the channel." The business woman coldly stated.


    "Of course, Ma''am. Apologies, it''s¡­ where might the access p-"


    "In the back with the plumbing. Your supervisor will be hearing about your incompetence, you trog."


    I gave another bow and put some distance between her and I. The loft''s design was an exotic sub-species of the planetside ones I was more familiar with; a combination bedroom/study/bureau overlooked the entryway den, the kitchenette further from the door and further back still the bathroom and utilities were pressed to the rear wall. The dividing floor was thinner than seemed possible to my terran sensibilities. The entire condo was rounded in a way that opposed the traditional square geometrics known to me, the ceiling and walls appeared carved to maximize the size of the upper demi-floor and make the most of the available light. I opened the utility closet and set to patching up my cover with some busywork.


    "Who the hell are you?" The business woman demanded directly behind me. I could almost feel my cover crumbling around me as a familiar warmth started spreading through my limbs.


    "Hero Sato, Ma''am. Station janitorial and main-"


    "Botshit."


    I froze in my work, assessing if the situation was still salvageable. It might be, unlikely though it was, so I turned to face the icy storm growing behind me. I slowly reached for my forged Ident card and offered it up, then bowed fully in prostration. Which just so happened to place my hands with easy reach of my concealed pistols.


    "Hero Sato, station janitorial and maintenance services." She dropped the card to the floor. "I might believe that if you didn''t walk like a dirty rock. That and, the help aren''t permitted to drink coffee."


    "Scat." I cursed, sliding on hand inside my coveralls.


    "I''ll give you twenty seconds to-"


    I pounced upwards, throwing my weight into the business woman''s midsection. My tackle propelled both of us into her bathroom, a luscious shag bathmat negligibly cushioned her impact as I hammered her down into the floor. She feebly clawed at my back for desperate seconds before she finally felt the cold iron of my pistol on her face. Before she could catch her breath I braced myself, shifting my weight to my off leg, confident that my knee on her stomach and hand around her throat were all I needed to keep her pinned.


    "Scream and you die." I growled.


    She nodded as much as she could. I slightly relaxed my grip around her throat without taking my hand away.


    "I''m not here for you," I said. "but I will kill you if you compromise me in any way."


    "And here I was hoping you''d come to do just that. Compromise me." She chuckled with a nervous smile that didn''t get past her lips. Her rich brown eyes kept flicking from me to the gun. "Do you really need that?"


    "Call me old fashioned, but I''d rather not strangle you."


    "My, aren''t you quite the gentleman? Well, you''ve got me pinned down, all hot and bothered, then you say you''re not here for me. An indecent woman could get all sorts of jealous ideas." I put some more weight on her abdomen by way of reply. "So where oh where do we go from here?"


    "I can kill you-" I started.


    "Which I''d rather you didn''t."


    "-or we can come to a mutual understanding. Then I leave and we never see each other again."


    "What kind of understanding?" She asked.


    I climbed off of her slowly, keeping my gun trained just under her face. I unzipped my coveralls and reached deep inside. The business woman got off her back and onto her knees like it was second habit, pausing her advance once she heard me cock the hammer of my four-shooter. The pleading look in her eyes paired with her bedraggled state of dress and tasseled hair had me tempted to take her up on the implied offer. Instead I pulled the much quieter holdout pistol from of my waistband before tucking my revolver back under my shoulder.


    "And here I thought you were happy to see me." She pouted.


    "How much do you know about your neighbors?" I asked, ignoring her.


    "Not much. Most are joy girls or married women, same as me. Except that recluse¡­" She started, then several things must have clicked for her. "Hero Sato¡­ You''re the Void Dragon''s new hitman!"


    "Not so loud." I hissed.


    "Oh relax. You think these condos aren''t soundproofed? I''ve been eight girls deep in screaming ecstasy without a single noise complaint more times than I can count."


    "How soundproofed?" I asked, focusing in on the useful information to keep my imagination from wandering into the dangerous territory of daydreams.


    "I can''t really say. But I know how loud a gun is, you might not want to risk it."


    "You don''t care that I''m going to kill him?"


    "Better him than me; he''s a creep. I''ll sleep better when he''s gone. Plus, life is cheap in Paradise. Evan is one more pawn knocked off the board."


    "Ivan Balakin." I corrected but she just shrugged. "What else do you know about him."


    "I know he blasted the last hitman right in front of my door a couple days ago. The guy just bumped into him then the whole atrium heard gunshots. I''ve never talked to him but he always seemed like the nervous type, quick to assume the worst. And he''s big, big and tall, kind of fat too."


    "Scat." I cursed, finally relaxing my aim to her visible relief.


    "Wait, that''s it?"


    I raised an eyebrow at her.


    "There isn''t anything else your going to do to me?" She clarified without actually clearing anything up.


    "You do realize I can still kill you, right?" I answered deadpanned.


    "Obviously. I know what a gun is for. But after all that," She motioned to the bathroom floor. "You''re just going to walk out of here without having your way with me?"


    "That''s the plan." I said, stowing the flimsy printed pistol and straightening out my disguise. I could see what she thought of my answer. "Try not to look so disappointed."


    "I am disappointed. It''s not every cycle some sweaty planetside boy breaks into my home and pins me down. You''re young and tight, a lean slab of meat compared to those flabby old pigs that paw at me while I manage their accounts. Then you up and leave without doing a thing to me." She cursed while blinking back tears.


    "You''re the worse kind of decent. A man like you doesn''t belong in Heaven. How the hell could there still be any decent men in the galaxy? You say you''re old fashioned, but you''re just cruel. Reminding me that there''s still good everywhere but here. And I thought I was done with hope." She flashed a heart-wrenching smile even as her lips quivered.


    If it was possible, I''d have put a bullet in every single one of her problems then and there. I''d have lined up everyone who hurt her and shot them all dead without batting an eye. It was stupid to think impossible thoughts, but that didn''t stop me. Heaven¡ªTengoku, Paradise, whatever the hell they called this station¡ªwas built on the suffering of thousands to make a handful feel all-powerful. If not for any other reason, that was why I could never stay here. I couldn''t fix every problem with a bullet but I could comfort a crying woman in front of me.


    She stiffened as I hugged her, expecting me to go further and do worse.


    "Here I am, getting ready to kill a man I''ve never met before in his own home, and you call me decent; like I''m some cowboy from the past. I''m not." My final words were no more than a whisper. "This life makes monsters of us all."


    She melted in my arms and started sobbing. Her arms clung to me with a desperate strength I wouldn''t have believed her capable of. The broken, snotty mewling was completely at odds with the icy professional who''d first opened the door for me. While she bawled her eyes out, I couldn''t stop myself from wondering if every woman on this station had to keep her heart locked away lest it betray her. Even with another woman in my arms, I thought back to Shenhua Yang-Sarpi and the frigid look of disappointment she worn with misting jade eyes.


    "Umm¡­" The woman''s half-heard word drew me back to the present. "Your gun is poking me."


    "That''s not-" I broke off from our embrace a little too quickly, tripping over the toilet and backing myself into the wall.


    "The bedroom is upstairs and I''ve got the whole, day, off."


    "Thanks, but-"


    "That looks painful, the least I can do is take care of you."


    "No, really-"


    "If your worried about being caught, you can use my mouth."


    "Don''t make me pull a gun on you." I threatened.


    "At this point, I''m kind of hoping you do." She leaned closer. "So how about it?"


    Somehow the upper buttons of her blouse had come undone. The view was outstanding. I tore my gaze away, retreating out of the bathroom. My Ident card was still on the floor where she''d dropped it. I plucked it up, clipping the plastek onto the soiled breast of my jumpsuit. Her brown eyes followed my hands eagerly, then paused to fix on my dampened chest.


    "If you go out like that people will know you did more than just inspect my plumbing."


    "Well I didn''t plan on bringing a spare." I grumbled.


    "Spare? Oh right, blood." She said, answering her own question as her eyes flicked from my features to the subtle bulges of my concealed firearms and the less subtle bulge that wasn''t. She was looking at two different versions of me, the cowboy and the murderer, both present but neither fully realized. Then she met my eyes and recoiled at what she found.


    "How are you with scalding pain?" She blurted.


    "Dare I ask why?"


    "I''ve got an idea to cover that whole mess and your breath. Trust me, no one around here will blink twice at a worker having a cup of burning hot coffee thrown at them."


    "Okay." I said with a shrug.


    She blinked in disbelief.


    "Okay? I could be lying to you, or just trying to hurt you."


    "But you''re not."


    "You don''t know that-"


    "I may not be from around here, but I''m a halfway decent judge of intentions. Call it an occupational hazard." She laughed softly at me words.


    "You really are something else, cowboy."


    "As are you, miss¡­" She looked about her condo, as if someone else had snuck into her home to eavesdrop.


    "June-Hahn." She whispered.


    "June-Hahn, I''d be honored to receive first-degree burns from you." She laughed again, her smile finally spreading beyond her lips to the rest of her features.


    "Where the hell have you been all my life, cowboy?" Her words held more than that simple question. There was an invitation there, a promise too. I wanted to say yes, to yield to that base desire, but I couldn''t give my word when I knew it would be impossible to keep.


    "I''ve been murdering people." I stated coldly, the temperature of the room seeming to drop five degrees as I did.


    "Right." She said, taking the meaning behind my words like a slap to the face. "I should go get that coffee ready."


    "I''m sorry." I whispered.


    "Don''t be. You said it yourself, this life makes monsters of us all. We''ve all got our jobs to do, so go do yours, cowboy. I''ll sleep a little easier with one less monster around."


    She put on a pot and we shared these last minutes of honest companionship in silence. This station, these women, they''d be the death of me if I stayed here any longer than necessary. I''d felt protective before, but never like this. The simple act of treating them like human beings was as foreign to them as the impossible vastness of space was to me. I could barely imagine the cruelties needed to put such a system in place, let alone to keep up the status quo for generation after generation. The thought of it set a burning, murderous rage in the pit of my stomach and the palms of my hands.


    If I stayed, I would never paint again. Painting was an art and there would be no art in my butchery. I would slaughter everyone I could and tear Tengoku down to Intatenrup in order to put an end to such vilified indifference to human suffering. When the coffee machine started sputtering its last drops, I realized that I''d been hoping it wouldn''t finish. That somehow, I could stay in this condo forever and shut out the rest of the universe or at least Tengoku. June-Hahn poured herself a brimming mug and I shut my eyes on that childish fantasy forever.


    "You ready cowboy?" She asked, tension sounding clear in her voice.


    "As I''ll ever be. Let''s put on a good show. Shall we?"


    June-Hahn took a deep breath to steady herself. Her sad smile vanished under the icy mask of a jaded and ruthless business woman.


    "Get out." She growled, letting her temper build as I moved to the door. "Get out of my house! Get OUT!"


    The door opened, allowing me to make my very public escape from the enraged woman.


    "I''m sorry Ma''am!" I said bowing parallel to the floor.


    "I always knew you workers were worthless scum but don''t they even teach you to read! I should have you flogged for wasting my time you insolent cur! C twenty-eight, not C twenty-five! Do you see the difference you moron!"


    I raised my bow enough to see where she was pointing, gritting my teeth in expectation of what would come next. If anything, knowing it was about to happen made it worse.


    "Did I say you could raise you head?!" June-Hahn roared, stabbing out with her mug.


    Her coffee splashed messily across my chest, then my jaw, arms, and hands all caught the stinging excess. I knew better than to cry out in pain, but for the sake of a good show I did it anyway. I clenched my trembling fists until my knuckles were creaking as steaming coffee ran down my arms. A trickle of boiling liquid found its way into my splinted finger and the nerves that had been exposed by my recent surgeries. The second cry to pass my lips wasn''t a show.


    "Did I say you could speak, you cur?!" June-Hahn bellowed. "Well, did I?!"


    I collapsed in on myself in agony, prostrating myself in the steaming puddle of black coffee even as it burned my palms and knees.


    "No Ma''am. Apologies Ma''am, I beg your forgiveness!"


    She let the moment linger while my skin burned.


    "You''re lucky I''m in a good mood today. Clean this up, go do your kusoking job and maybe you''ll still have a job to do next cycle after I finish reporting your incompetence to your owner!" June-Hahn slammed her door hard enough to make the boiling puddle jump into my face.


    I waited an extra second for good measure before leaping up in pain and sparing a bashful look around. Our show hadn''t drawn a crowd like I''d been expecting, while several heads were turned in my direction¡ªusually looking cruelly delighted¡ªno one had stopped. I cast my gaze downwards, as much to take in my disguise as to maintain my cover. June-Hahn had certainly covered her tracks well, if it weren''t for my layered attire my entire torso would been steam-fried instead of merely agonizingly pained.


    I''d traded my ability to blend into the working masses for being a social pariah. I needed to finish this rush job before things went even more ploin shaped. I tagged the mess with a wet floor sigh and walked with partially-feigned indignity down to the worker''s tier. There was a man holding a mop and bucket out for me with a look of muted, sympathetic pain.


    "Hang in there pal." He whispered, offering up his tools.


    I inclined my head imperceptibly and took them from him. Mopping up the mess while my clothes still dripped droplets of coffee seemed like exactly the futile effort indicative of the base evils within Tengoku. Human suffering for the sole purpose of imposing one''s will on their lessers. Elevating some above the rest by making them sub-humanly small. A never ending cycle of pointless hardship for the gain of a mere handful. For all the white tile and bright lights, that atrium seemed as desolate and merciless as the southern tundras of Intatenrup. I gave my head a shake, focusing on the task at hand only to realize I''d finished.


    Now all that was left was to put the finishing touches on this painting.


    I cast a sly gaze through the windows of hab unit C-025 before knocking on the door. The curtains were partially drawn, obscuring a clear picture though I got the impression this condo shared a similar layout as June-Hahn''s. My clothes were only damp instead of dripping wet, I ran a dryer portion of my sleeve over my Ident card to clear the lingering condensation. If I waited out here any longer I''d damage what was left of my cover, so I knocked on the door again and started palming a skeleton key.


    I was expecting the worst, just another occupational hazard. Despite what I''d seen through the window, I couldn''t help but imagine that when that door opened I''d be transported back to that hell-scape of a basement, stumbling through the perverse dark until that beast in the skin of a man pounced on me. The dull pain of my blistering burns faded, the memory of that black dagger slashing and stabbing into my flesh overriding my mundane suffering of the moment. The door opened to my surprise. The man was big, with a face that perfectly matched the headshot I''d been provided.


    "I don''t need a janitor." Ivan Balakin said, already closing the door before I could so much as bow.


    "Please! Sir." I bowed, proffering my Ident. "Hero Sato, station janitorial and maintenance services."


    "I don''t need a janitor." Ivan repeated, adopting the slow speech one uses with the elderly and the slow witted. "And I don''t care what your name is."


    "There''s been some anomalous power drain in the area. We think there might be some damaged wiring in your unit. I need to inspect the unit for fire hazards." I spoke in a rush of breath before meekly adding, "This is unit C twenty-five, correct?"


    Ivan glowered down at me and I made sure to avert my gaze, looking suitably cowed¡ª it wasn''t entirely disingenuous either. Ivan was a big man, standing a head taller than me and packing on at least twenty kilos of excess weight under normal gravity, mostly solid fat but there was guaranteed to some muscle under that blubber. I couldn''t get an accurate read of his physique due to the baggy casual wear of his shirt and pajamas; similarly if he had a piece strapped on him, I wasn''t seeing it.


    "Of course it is you lackwit!" A woman''s voice roared behind me just before something less rigid than it sounded rained down on my back. It took every gram of my iron discipline not to round on my new aggressor until I recognized the raging woman was June-Hahn. "I''d hoped a cup of coffee would shake loose the worst of your idiocy, but it seems you need another. Perhaps this time I''ll throw it in your eyes, you miserable cur!"


    I sharply turned from Ivan and repeated my earlier dogeza to June-Hahn.


    "I beg you Ma''am, do not waste another fine cup of coffee on such an unworthy dog as myself. I am not deserving of such an honor."


    With my face on the ground, I grit my teeth hoping that June-Hahn knew that there was such a thing as overselling. A kick struck my ribs, missing my shoulder-holstered pistol by a narrow margin.


    "I''ll decide what you deserve and when you deserve it, you wrecked mongrel!" June-Hahn kicked me again, then a third time and finished by stomping her heel onto my unbroken off-hand.


    "You there, Boy." Ivan said, but I didn''t dare budge from my prostration. "Look at me when I''m speaking to you."


    I raised my head without breaking my prostration, the sight of June-Hahn''s smooth legs and the rest under her knee length skirt lingered in my mind as I twisted to face Ivan. This station was dangerous in a way I was ill equipped to deal with. These damned, beautiful, tragic women would be the death of me.


    "Get on with it," He said motioning to his condo. "I have a meeting soon and if I miss it because of you, I''ll have more than just your fingers broken."


    "Of course, Sir. Thank you, Sir." I said while nodding my head.


    "I suppose," June-Hahn said, grinding the bone in my hand under her heel as she deliberated. "If you need this mongrel, I shouldn''t keep him to myself." She stepped off my abused digits.


    "Thank-" My words were cut short by another driving kick to my side, just below the ribs with a savagery that threatened to bowl me over. I doubted she was aiming for my liver but her pointed shoe sure as scat found it.


    "The next time I see you, I won''t be so¡­ compassionate to your duties, dog."


    June-Hahn stormed off, leaving me to catch my breath on the floor for scant seconds before Ivan growled.


    "I know you''re paid to grovel, Boy, but I have a schedule to keep."


    "Of course, Sir." I panted, pushing myself off the floor.


    I''d finally made it inside Ivan''s condo, all it took was two public humiliations, a beating and a score of minor burns to my face, hands and knees. Some cynic inside my head noted that it would have all been for naught if Ivan gunned me down the second he shut the door behind me. If Ivan did gun me down, someone else could come scarp my carcass of the floor because I''d had just about enough of my current cover. I pocketed my skeleton key while I fumbled my meter from my belt with deadened fingers, hoping that the feeling would fully return before I needed to pull a gun.


    Ivan''s condo was two story variant, more floor space but less open than a loft. I spotted the stairs but couldn''t see beyond their edges. The ground floor was virtually identical to June-Hahn''s, the only change of any significance being that where she''d had an entry living room; Ivan had a command center of wall-mounted monitors above a massive wall-to-wall desk with more screens on it than most people had in their entire house combined.


    "I think I know why the power draw was off." I stated idly. "Uh, Sir."


    "Is that all you needed to see?" Ivan asked, arms crossed on his barrel chest.


    "No, Sir. I''ll still need to take some readings from your panel and look around for damage."


    "Be quick about it. And try not to touch anything."


    "Yes, Sir. Of course, Sir."


    I made my way to the command center and turned my head to goggle at all the wires while my eyes looked for my secondary targets. If the data was on a physical backup then there should have been a optical thumb drive but I wasn''t seeing one. The entire command suite was all sleek glass and minimalist ergonomic design; with the displays in a dormant state an OSD would have stood out like dead pixels on a white screen.


    "Everything looks good here." I said loudly without turning my head beyond my duties. "Is there another office upstairs?"


    "No, just a wall screen. Do you need to look at that too?" He snapped, sounding almost defensive instead of annoyed. I''d still need to turn the house over if I couldn''t kill him quietly, so it could wait.


    "I shouldn''t, a wall screen wouldn''t cause the level of power draw reported." I said, turning from the array of screens. Ivan was still hovering by the door with his feet spread, arms folded and shoulders flared. Quietly would be an issue. "Uh, Sir. I''ll just have a look at your panel now."


    The utility closet was nestled in the back across from the bathroom, away from the door and the unobstructed windows. Upstairs might work better but it was an unknown, better to act on a workable situation that I knew then to gamble on an uncertainty. Ivan was a large man, it was a good thing that firearms tended to ignore such natural advantages as reach, speed and mass.


    I tucked myself deeper into the utility closet as if reaching to look at something and pulled the polymer holdout pistol from inside my coveralls. The printed gun was so light in my off-hand that I could have mistaken it for a toy were it not for the groove furrowed in the grip that revealed a short stack of squat bullets in the internal magazine. The printed pistol wasn''t a model I was familiar with, but it wasn''t that difficult to figure out. The lack of a fire selector or safety was probably the most glaring idiosyncrasy compared to other disposable firearms.


    "Um, Sir? Did you install this custom power converter yourself?" I asked, flexing my swelling fingers around the stubby holdout I held close to the chest.


    "What power converter?" Ivan asked, leaving the safety of the doorway as he cautiously approached the utility closet.


    "This one wired off the side of your panel. It''s definitely the cause of the power draw on this row."


    Ivan lingered near the kitchen some three meters away, close enough to hit even without aiming all that well, but if I spooked him, he could throw himself out of my line of fire. A cramped kitchen with cutlery wasn''t an ideal place to be trading fire or blows, but if Ivan was smart he''d only hold me off while making a racket. Thwarting my goals at the cost of his life would be a bitter victory, but with the alternative being ignoble death and failure I couldn''t factor it out. When people got desperate, they took anything they could get. I might have risked snap shooting with my revolver''s shot shells, but stealth wasn''t fully out of reach yet. One clean shot to the head would be all it took.


    "There shouldn''t be anything irregular about my panel." Ivan stated warily, glancing back towards the stairway for an instant.


    "Should I note this as an ''unlisted'' user modification then, Sir?"


    "No, you won''t." Ivan growled, taking that final step I needed away from the kitchen.


    I backed out of the utility closet, flashily waving my meter in my main hand, hoping to draw his eyes long enough to bring my holdout to bear. If Ivan was worried about his power bill the trick might have worked. Clearly he wasn''t.


    His gaze was unfocused, taking in all of my actions at once without getting distracted by any one in particular. I''d have expected something like that from a martial artist but it was a neat trick for a data analyst. When he saw my pistol coming around, three things happened in the blink of an eye.


    Ivan''s crossed hands pawed under his corded arms, reaching for a twinned shoulder carry that wasn''t there on reflex. Before his meaty fists finished closing, Ivan had already hulked out his bulk like a bear and started charging in a low rush. I squeezed my printed pistol''s trigger. The pull weight was higher than seemed reasonable, refusing to yield until I savagely snatched down on it.


    The sound of something plastic snapping inside my holdout was deafeningly loud.


    With no better course of action, I snatched the hair trigger again. A round spat from the holdout I''d thought broken, tagging the charging man in the leg in the instant before his shoulder connected with my midsection.


    Damn near a hundred kilos of enraged brute force hammered me into the anvil that was the bulkhead wall. The air rushed from my crushed lungs and I rained elbow blows into the back of Ivan''s head even as he sank brutal hooked punches into my kidneys. I got the barrel of my holdout back in my narrowing vision and pressed it straight down into Ivan''s back, feathering two rounds down into his hips.


    Ivan sagged, throwing a hurricane of punches into my guts the whole time. Nausea and pain had my eyes swimming drunkenly in savage waters. His head and chest were too close to me for a clean shot without hitting myself, so I brought a coffee-burned kneecap crashing into his face. The brittle cartilage of his nose erupted in a geyser of blood while my freshly formed blisters popped messily.


    Ivan was rocking back in a kneel and I finally managed to breathe, pushing back the darkness encroaching around my vision and worsening my vertigo twice as much. I leveled the cheap pistol to his face and Ivan bucked wildly, his forward leg kicking into my left ankle. I toppled left, my snagged shot went right, centimeters wide of Ivan''s skull.


    We both hit the ground, sprawling in the blood and sweat. Everything hurt, the coffee I''d drank earlier was trying to spurt out both ends and I couldn''t catch my breath. Trading another round of body blows was about as appealing as mucking out a latrine in use after chili bean burrito night at the mess. I centered my unsteady aim on Ivan, indifferent about what I was actually hitting, and emptied the holdout''s magazine at point-blank range.


    The printed pistol clacked empty after the sixth shot. Without skipping a beat I dropped the cheap piece of polymer garbage and got a real gun trained on Ivan. He wasn''t dead yet, but he sure as hell wasn''t up for another round of fisticuffs. I watched the blood pour from him as I finally caught my breath, battling down my nausea with every gulp of iron-ripe air.


    This wasn''t a clean painting of any real skill or artistry, it was a rush job that left a pound of ground meat twitching on the ground. I thought about putting an end to that twitching when I realized my ears weren''t even ringing after using that toy gun in a sealed room. It was a polymer piece of garbage, but damned if it wasn''t quiet. I left Ivan to bleed out on the floor and picked my own ass up.


    Glassware hit the floor in a burst of pinging shattered fragments. My eyes found a scantily clad, heavy-set woman frozen halfway down the staircase. It didn''t take a genius to realize that, shocked though she may be, she recognized a corpse when she saw one. With the stiff, juddering motions of a wooden doll she turned to look at me.


    "Scream-" She screamed at the top of her lungs before I could add ''and you die.''


    I pulled the familiar weight of my four-shooter''s trigger. A deafening blast of shot peeled throughout the condo, a clutch of bismuth pellets slamming the woman into the wall just as surely as any heavyweight body blow would. Absurdly terror, adrenaline and possibly something more kept her upright, desperately running towards the door as her bare feet were cut to bloody ribbons on the shattered crystal glassware she''d dropped.


    My second shot ripped through her torso and suddenly her will to live wasn''t enough to keep her going. Her jerky, wooden doll movements carried her down the rest of the stairs, her face splatting to the floor with long slivers of glass skewering her dead fish eyes. Her skull bounced once of the metal flooring, the hollow sound lost to my ringing ears. I didn''t waste the breath to curse her stupidity, deftly slotting two fresh shot shells into my revolver''s cylinder before locking the door and moving on to plan B.


    I had to assume that someone heard the scream and gunshots, that any second now a response would be mustered and within a minute, a tactical unit of cops or crooks would be smashing down that door to come sniff around. A robbery gone bad was close enough to the truth that it didn''t take much faking. The curtains were closed enough that adjusting them would draw more attention than it would spare so I left them alone.


    Darting upstairs, I swept the house at gunpoint and breathed a sigh of relief that Ivan only had one girl over instead of a whole harem. I tossed the master bedroom first, a locked drawer on the nightstand drawing my attention. Shooting the lock would have been faster but I couldn''t draw any more heat to myself, so I searched for a key and found it within arm''s reach under the self-cooling mattress.


    My stomach sank to my knees when I opened the drawer and found an OSD, a loaded service pistol and a semi-holographic Ident badge for one Detective Ivan Ballalikia, courtesy of Zashachetk Security Holdings. I knew more than most about ZashaSec from my work in the shadows; they were a private military corp that handled a few dozen city-wide high threat response contracts. When the cops couldn''t handle something, ZashaSec stepped in to get the job done at any cost, be that cash or corpses.


    "No connections worth mentioning my ass." I grumbled.


    I shed my sullied worker''s garbs, stuffing the loot into the pockets of my nondescript day clothes. The bloodied¡ªand coffee''d¡ªdisguise plus it accompanying belt and hat got crammed into my duty bag along with a fistful of whatever looked valuable within arm''s reach. I froze on the third handful of jewelery, remembering my walk through the worker''s bazaar. I didn''t know the first thing about what was actually valuable in Tengoku''s luxury loaded economy, so I stopped wasting time and went back downstairs.


    Both the condo''s occupants were well and truly dead now. I tossed the kitchen, adding a collection of assorted pills to my stash. Figuring enough time had passed between the gunshots and now, I stepped over what was left of Ivan, expecting him to reach up with his dead hands and try to throttle me like the last guy I killed. Yet Ivan''s jewelery encrusted fingers didn''t so much as twitch, though one ring stood out from the rest. The craftsmanship was exceptional if antiquated, the wear of the years separating the ring from the rest of Ivan''s glittering jewelery. Pocketing the antique ring, I made my escape.


    It wasn''t exactly a clean getaway, but I hit the service tunnels and dug out my comm.


    "It''s the painter, job''s done. I used the alternate style and found some very interesting additions."


    "Impressive work. We''ve seen waves about an uncouth worker near the painting, but haven''t heard of anything else outside of the ordinary."


    I wasn''t in the mood to deal with Matsumoto''s backhanded compliments or snide jabs. Getting myself lost in the station''s depths had been more difficult than I''d initially expected, which was already a high bar to reach. I''d finally made it back to level 7, barging my way through the thinned crowds of the worker''s bazaar.


    "There were¡­ complications. My oils ran outside the lines."


    "Art is far from an exact science. I can assure you that such complications are the norm here on Tengoko."


    "I see," I''d figured as much, but having it blatantly admitted sat poorly with me. "All that remains it the final hand off, it would seem."


    "So it would seem." Matsumoto agreed, a calculating sneer peeling from my comm. "You already know where, a time will be confirmed when convenient on our end."


    The line clicked dead.


    "Jackass." I growled under my breath.


    My burn-swollen thumb flicked down the list of contacts pre-loaded into my burner comm. The less contact I had with anyone on station, the better. I''d just need to forget about them and they''d need to do the same for me. But still¡­ I tapped out a text for my pre-loaded street doc, Shenhua.


    P - Got anything for burns? Just hot water. Not fire, electric or acid.


    I''d been on Tengoku for less than a full day and it was like I''d been flung into space ages ago. Intatenrup was a stone''s throw away¡ªwith a little help from gravity that was¡ªand that distance was still impossibly far from me. I''d known getting on the Thread of Heaven was a one way ticket off world, but I hadn''t known just how one way that really was. I could always go back down to Intatenrup, so long as I accepted that I wouldn''t be the same man who''d left. It was a sickeningly bittersweet prospect, not the life I''d left behind but the sheltering ignorance from what the universe was like beyond the smog-lined sky of my home planet. In a sense, Intatenrup may have been where I was born, but it wasn''t my home planet anymore.


    Working my way through a crowd of drop-dead gorgeous women, I realized how utterly alone I was in Heaven. Not just in Heaven, I''d been lonely my entire life and I''d never noticed because I''d never been anything else. Maybe that was why I could never go back, I was born in Intatenrup but I''d never truly belonged there, I''d never actually been a citizen on anything more than records. If a single day had been all it took to make me notice how miserably pathetic my old life was, was I any better than these deluded kings brutally running their tiny slices of this glass bubble paradise? Would it be better to rule in hell rather than moving on, hoping for a chance at something better?


    My comm buzzed, stirring me from my reflection but it was just Matsumoto.


    Senpai M - 2230. Bring everything you found.


    That was hours from now, hours I''d rather not spend stuck inside my own head. On a station this size, there was bound to be some kind of driving simulator or rental options but neither could compare to the real thing. The open road never failed to clear my head, but if I was stuck in space for the foreseeable future the odds of hitting the open highway were near nil. As it was, I''d have to settle for a few hours of shut eye and, hopefully, another chance to talk to Shenhua.


    The shut eye came and went in a blink, my exhaustion trouncing the pain of my wear and tear. Bleary-eyed, I checked that there was still some time between my check-up and Matsumoto''s meeting. I still hadn''t gotten an answer back from Shenhua about a burn treatment, but there was still an hour until she said she''d come back. For an hour, I did nothing but wait and tidy up the coffin of a room as best I could. After that, just sitting in my room instead of constantly poking my head out the door to watch for her arrival took more of my willpower than I''d imagined possible.


    An hour after she''d said she''d be back, I sent another text.


    P - I think everything is healing right, but I could use a second opinion.


    And for another hour after that, I did nothing but wait in my room for a text or a knock at the door. Neither one came.


    By the time I couldn''t delay any longer, I''d already worked through hundreds of conversations we might have, thousands of questions and answers to anything and everything and nothing at all. I made a dozen excuses for why she wasn''t here. Surely it was no fault of her own; she had to work or there was an emergency somewhere or she was just sleeping and had her comm set to silent. When I finished my meeting with Matsumoto and Satou I''d probably have a message from her waiting on my comm. She''d want to meet up again before I shipped off station and we''d have a blast. It definitely wasn''t because she hated me after how things had ended last time, it could have been anything but that. I must have told myself that at least ten times before I reached the dockside housing the Goodnight Moon.


    The crisp recycled air seeping from Goodnight Moon was a better indicator that I was on the right track than the neon signs were. Now that I knew to look for it, the brisk currents turned up undertones of sake and a sterile chemical tinge just below that. The scent worked wonders for my focus. I had a job to do, I could deal with whatever the hell Shenhua was to me and my feelings for her once I was done here.


    The bar was more deserted than it had been when I was last here; empty tables and booths reflecting outwards to the empty cosmos. The two governing bodies were in a similar reflection, Intatenrup glowering down at Mister Satou as he menaced upwards at it. I got the impression this was old hand for both of them, tow uncaring giants locked in hateful orbit around each other.


    T


    he wasted space could have housed a hundred workers with room to spare; as it was I spotted twenty guards as static as any other fixture in the room. The tables should have been bustling customers and servers, yet they were forsaken tombstones of polished rock capturing the light of the stars and the void beyond. The grandeur I''d first been struck with now reeked of corpulence all being mocked by the infinite cold indifference of space. For all that empty space, both within and without, Satou filled the room as only a minuscule titan could.


    His raw presence blazed into a semi-solid aura of commanding authority as hot as the room was cold. He was a man who knew with absolute certainty that he was destined for bigger things than this bar. Without looking away from the heavenly multiplex before him, Satou asked a question that filled the room.


    "Tell me Painter, in a hundred lifetimes could you every recreate such majesty as this?"


    I figured his ''this'' meant more than just the view, Satou wasn''t a man of such narrow vision after all. No his meaning would have been everything around me; not just the bar or the view but the whole of Tengoku. For a second I was tempted to agree. Tengoku certainly had it''s dazzling lights and luxuries I''d only dreamed of in my planetside upbringing. All that beauty hid a great deal more that repulsed me¡ª that should repulsed anyone who called themselves human. The glorified slavery of indentured servitude, the top-heavy distribution of not just luxury but basic needs, and the selfish desire to maintain a status quo that kept a small handful in absolute power at the human cost of thousands of others. There was a beauty to Tengoku, but it was a shallow, ugly thing to me.


    "It''s been said that ''beauty is in the eye of the beholder,'' Mister Satou."


    "Just so, Painter. Tengoku''s cold beauty is very much to my liking." He turned from the void to fix me with a calculated smile absent of any genuine warmth. "Of course, complementing and contrasting these shades with warmer hues brings out the best in both spectrums. Your palette would be a welcome addition to my family."


    I never cared much for verbal fencing, but much like a keen insight, it was a necessity in my line of work. Satou wasn''t hiding his intent which meant this was a formal offer, if I joined the family I''d be a made man instead of a dirty secret. It was a sickeningly sweet temptation, same as every other treat offered on Tengoku. I would be trapped here, keeping the wheels of Tengoku greased with blood. The rewards of my labor would be a lavish prison cell serviced by attendants no better than furnishings. The offer was so sweet I could almost feel myself rotting away on the inside.


    "Frankly, Mister Satou, I find that Tengoku''s climate doesn''t pair well with my¡­ creative humors. I''m still intend on finding a more agreeable locale." Satou''s scrutiny cut into me, taking the measure of my character as he formulated his counterstrike.


    "So it would seem. Then we should toast your health and conclude our business quickly," He let the words hang as he marshaled the next, lending gravitas to his riposte. "Since my Tengoku is so¡­ disagreeable, to your sensibilities."


    I was still parsing his words as one of his bodyguards left his post to make a trip to the bar. Two glasses were served, Satou''s no bigger than a thimble while mine was more traditionally sized. I kept a puzzled look off my face while Satou scrutinized me, clearly looking for something I wasn''t seeing. The drinks were poured with due reverence by the guard turned tender. Satou lifted his shot between thumb and forefinger while I took up my filled glass in reply.


    "To your health, Painter." Satou intoned, his face stony as he sipped his shot.


    Without skipping a beat, I downed a finger of my drink. I was expecting the familiar burn of whiskey or vodka and was pleasantly surprised to find it lacking. Satou didn''t seem like the type to poison, and if he was the mismatched glasses drew too much attention to the drink. Unless the drinks were just a feint and the real blow would come from somewhere else. Still, I couldn''t figure out the significance behind the lopsided act, and from Satou''s interest, I was clearly expected to.


    "I''ve had a more comfortable booth prepared where we can discuss your work at length." Satou said gruffly.


    We crossed the room and once again, the absence of patrons and workers stood out, especially with the guard cum server tailing behind us. The absence of life paired with the slight muffling effect of the bar''s permanent chill fog reminded me of a barren moonscape, one I was being marched over to a shallow grave of a booth sank into the leftmost wall. The two guards flanking the booth did nothing to assuage my mounting doubts. Satou and I sat, our server stood to Satou''s side, diligently topping off his tiny cup.


    "I am a man who enjoys saving his dessert for last. You mentioned complications, what happened?"


    "It was a robbery gone bad, as planned, but there was some extra¡­ breakage. There was a girl-"


    "One less slut in Tengoku is hardly worth mentioning."


    His interruption caught me by surprise, more so than the words themself. He''d offered me a woman''s life as a rush fee so his stance wasn''t particularly shocking. All the same, I buried my shock under a sip of sake while I recovered.


    "There''s also these." I said, keeping my voice level as I placed Ivan''s ZashaSec badge and antique ring on the table. "Ivan was far more connected than you were led to believe, Mister Satou."


    His flinty eyes could have be cut from an asteroid for all the emotion behind them. The look of disdain, the faintest sneer of his lips was another story. I''d placed the items side by side but it looked like Satou''s gaze was favoring the ring instead of the badge, meaning my hunch about its importance was right. This went beyond cool under fire. He''d known and he sent me in anyway.


    "It is of no matter." Satou puffed. Downing his shot, he held out his glass for an instant refill. One was offered with due reverence.


    "Then Tengoku is very different from Intatenrup. The Wardens and planetside ZashaSec teams usually take exception to one of their own getting murdered in the line of duty¡ª more so off duty."


    "They may take as much exception as they see fit; it is still of no matter to me."


    I grit my teeth at his indifference but said, "So it would seem."


    Cool though he was, Satou''s eyes widened when the OSD was added to my growing collection on the table. Unlike the other items, I kept my fingers on the drive. I could tell in an instant that this info was never a secondary objective. The deader was a nuisance that needed to die, but this data was the final nail in his casket. And if the local security forces¡ªassuming Tengoku even had cops as I would recognize them¡ªhad brought in a private military corp to get this data quietly then that meant major waves were rocking the orbital.


    "And this," I asked. "Is a matter of consequence?"


    Satou held my eyes even as his outstretched cup was refilled once more. My cup was still more than half-full from our toast yet now at some sign I didn''t see, our tender finally topped me off. I ignored the glass, just as the tender had until now.


    "Mister Satou, I wouldn''t be so unprofessional as to renege on a deal after I''d finished my work-"


    "That is good." He barked, flinty eyes flicking to my fingers. "Then why do you cling to what is mine?"


    "I merely wanted to offer an outsider''s opinion." Satou subtly inclined his head, baying me to go on. "I see that certain facts of our arrangement were¡­ misrepresented. The need for discrepancy need not necessarily equate to the need for deception. Freelancers less understanding than I might take exception to your particular circumstances."


    Satou narrowed his eyes to little more than accusatory slits. I listened for the clicks of pistols having their safety''s disengaged but the sound never came.


    "Your opinion, Outsider, has been noted." Satou said, once again inclining his head.


    I removed my hand from the OSD and tried not to smirk at Satou''s visible effort not to snatch it up. His collected demeanor was crumbling, which meant nothing good for me. The waves of change tended to make men in power jumpy and Satou didn''t strike me as the type who wouldn''t snip loose ends if he stood to benefit.


    "Is there anything else, you wish to report to me, Outsider?"


    "Nothing, Mister Satou." I said, bowing as much as the table would allow for good measure.


    "Then your payment awaits, as soon as I''ve confirmed the veracity of your accounts."


    "Of course, Mister Satou." I said, trying not to bristle after being called a liar so blatantly.


    My pile of loot was collected by one of the booth''s guards. Satou and I sipped at our drinks to while away the uncomfortable silence. Something had changed in his demeanor since out last meeting. Was it that he''d gotten what he wanted so there was no need to keep up the act, or was it something else entirely? The goon returned to whisper in his boss''s ear, causing a wide grin to pinch Satou''s flush cheeks.


    "Your due reward awaits." Satou said with a cold smile, his flinty eyes as empty as the bar.


    Satou led the way, his goon-bartender bringing up the rear as I was marched in the middle, much the same as a prisoner might be sent to his execution. The lowest level of this monoplex  of a bar had discrete inwards-facing doorways I''d failed to notice before; the bar''s dominating view all but ensured the eyes of any patrons would wander upwards instead of down. The door I was led through had us crossing through a cozy poker room staffed by yet more guards, then deeper still into an office.


    Matsumoto stood to the side of a regal hardwood desk, silhouetted by a white canvased wall behind him. Every other wall in the office was splashed with dull metallic hues of blue, grey and black; the room would have felt suffocatingly small despite its size if not for the hanging scrollwork contrasting the frigid atmosphere. The meter-long scrolls created an air of mysticism savagely exaggerated by the bronze hooks scattered across the ceiling.


    Satou took his seat behind the desk, wearing his thoughts openly for the first time since I''d met him. His face was a perversely contemptible mockery of childish delight. Just looking at him made my skin crawl, all the while he eyed me up like a fly about to have its wings plucked off. At a nod, the guard behind me left the room and shut the door.


    I knew a show of power when I saw one. Marching me past almost thirty guards in an empty bar to a secluded location was as unsubtle as it was heavy handed. If I was an amateur to wetwork, I''d have been weighing my odds and finding them overwhelming. The fact that I''d been left alone with the boss and my handler spoke of a different battle to come. Instead of pulling my four-shooter, I pointedly examined the scrolls hanging from the walls while I waited for Satou to make me an offer I couldn''t refuse.


    "I want you to join the family." Satou finally said after realizing that I was no longer paying due attention to him.


    "I refuse." I hadn''t even turned from the scroll to answer him, though I refrained from fully turning my back to either of them.


    "That wasn''t an offer." Matsumoto growled, his tone all cold business and quick temper.


    "The terms of our agreement-"


    "Have changed." Satou cut me off.


    "I''ve delivered your data, painted my deader, ransacked his abode. It wasn''t perfect, I''ll admit that, but I have done everything you asked for and now you see fit to renege on our deal. I wasn''t expecting such poor form."


    "You violated the terms of your arrangement." Matsumoto growled. Satou held up a belaying hand.


    "Tell me painter, what does this room lack?"


    I stopped looking around the office and started looking at it as a whole. The color balance was fair, a warmer mirror of the void-viewing bar overhead. A person''s office, much like their home, said a great deal about their nature. Satou had a style of subdued extravagance, one that didn''t scream its nature but proudly wore the fact of it. His office full of imports that highlighted his wealth and his solitary prestige, yet the wealth he showcased was always against a drab backdrop: his desk to a white wall, his scrolls to dull metal, even his bar with its magnificent background of the cosmos was ultimately nothing more than an accent piece.


    "Your accent wall is too stark. The contrast too steep. It highlights your desk and your person but you are lost in its pale oppression."


    Satou''s perverse smile widened to appalling proportions, his splendor lost behind that frog-mouthed smirk.


    "My thought''s exactly, Outsider."


    The door behind me opened as if on cue, two goons in suits dragging a limply struggling form between them, entered the office. She was stripped naked except for the black sack covering the petite woman''s head and the manacles clamped around her wrists and ankles. In a single fluid heave they hoisted the woman until she hung a half-meter off the floor, suspended by her chained wrists to a brutal hook from the ceiling. The heavy lifting done, both guards took separate corners opposite Satou and his new office decoration.


    Neither Satou or Matsumoto spared a glance for the spectacle, both keen on reading me. Whatever they were looking for wasn''t forthcoming, the only thoughts swimming below the measured indifference on my face were disgust and wrath. I kept both sensations in check, heedless of how they brayed for blood. The killing heat flooding my limbs was beginning to burn from the inside, searing me in its murderous desire to be set loose.


    "Not exactly the complimentary piece I would have went with." I said, my tone one of strained indifference that both men saw through in an instant.


    "Do you not recognize your whore when she''s not on her back!?" Matsumoto roared, tearing the black hood off the woman.


    With the hood clear and her no-nonsense black bob cut settled, I recognized her now even with the broken jaw and swollen black eye. This whore¡ªno, this poor woman¡ªwas Shenhua, the street doc who''d nearly made a man out of me. The woman who''d almost tempted me to stay here in this mock paradise because it meant I could have her. Her remaining eye lolled about the room in a daze, the pupil wide and unfocused from her beating.


    I couldn''t stop my mind from drawing comparisons to the last girl I''d seen hung from chains. My heart set a heavy, hammering beat just like my last boss''s daughter''s had back in that basement. Shenhua wasn''t dying, not yet at least, not unless they''d broken her skull. From the looks of her, they might have. My limbs were aching for action, for bloody release. The last man who''d done this was barely human, lost as he was to the knowledge pulled from that cursed black book.


    I pulled my adrenaline focused vision off of Shenhua''s battered face to see Satou leering deamoniacally at me from behind his desk. How lost was his wretched soul that he would do this to an innocent woman who''d done nothing more than her job? If I shot him dead and ripped out his heart, what shade of blackest evil would I find at his core?


    "You have my attention." I uttered the words, damned near choking them out.


    "In truth, I don''t care for this decoration either. As you said, it clashes with the room and doesn''t address the blank canvas at all. Wouldn''t you agree, Matsumoto?"


    "Your vision is flawless, as always, Boss Satou." Matsumoto concurred, the drivel of his sycophancy as revulsive as his sidelong leering at Shenhua''s naked flesh. "You were warned about playing with other men''s toys, Hero-kun."


    "I didn''t- We didn''t-" Satou''s slammed fist cut my words short.


    "Have you not disrespected me enough? Must you lie to my face, in my very own office as I offer you a path to redemption?"


    "We know you called her to your room," Matsumoto added, sliding his hand between Shenhua''s legs and reaching inside of her. "That your seed was sown in her barren womb as she came to ''play doctor'' for you."


    My vision was tunneling, a red haze narrowing the world to Matsumoto''s smugly superior expression of contempt, his hand groping at Shenhua all the while. She didn''t utter a sound of pleasure or pain, she only hung there like a corpse. My four-shooter was still loaded, if I could kill the four of them with a single shot each¡­ I still wouldn''t have enough time to reload. I still had Ivan''s service pistol tucked in a pocket, I could use that, then scrounge for guns and ammo.


    Then what? I was backed in a corner, Shenhua would need my help and there would still be around twenty-five armed goons looking to save or avenge their boss. I could only shoot my way so far before a lucky shot brought me down. If we were going to die here, I wish I''d taken Shenhua up on her offer, since we were damned either way.


    "You said I had a path to redemption. I join your family and you let her live. Is that it?"


    Satou laughed a frog-mouthed bellow, showing entirely too many artificially-whitened teeth.


    "Of course not. The bitch will die for her betrayal either way. No, I''d thought it obvious what I expect you to do, Painter."


    Simmering rage didn''t help me put the dots together any faster. My gaze constantly flicking between Satou''s grin, Matsumoto''s smirk and Shenhau''s good eye, now drunkenly focused on my face as tears poured down her own battered visage. Her split, bloodied lips were silently mouthing three words over and over again, her broken jaw shrouding the words but not the meaning.


    Sorry, Cherry Boy.


    "You want me to paint your office with her." I said. Impossibly, Satou''s frog-faced grin widened further until it was practically ear to ear.


    "And if you don''t," Matsumoto said, drawing a pistol with his off-hand. "I will."


    Satou stood, his deamonic frog-wide grin vanishing behind his earlier mask of impeccable control. My four-shooter was in my hand before I knew what I was doing with it. A stereo pair of clicks sounded to my left and right, the goons in the corners squaring my in their gun-sights.


    "I''ll leave you and Matsumoto to discuss the fine details." Satou said before departing, walking through our armed standoff without the slightest concern for his own well being.


    Once the door closed behind Satou, Matsumoto drew back his hands, leveling his pistol at my hips and bringing his other moistened hand to his nose. His eyes rolled back in depraved ecstasy as he inhaled Shenhau''s scent. His aim didn''t even budge.


    "If you''d just had a little patience, you could have bought any girl you wanted, Hero-Kun. But you couldn''t contain yourself for a single day, could you? I suppose it was just too much to ask of a lowborn terran cur like you."


    "That''s not how it happened."


    "Oh I know. She told us all about your little performance issue. How you distinguished yourself in the bedroom. You spilled your seed and left her to sow it by hand¡ª how noble of you. Tell me, is that gun as volatile as you manhood?"


    "Shut up." I snarled, my pistol centered on Matsumoto''s torso.


    "So you can get it up when you try. Does pointing that at me while I list your invalidities soothe your ire? Does it make you feel like the man you are so desperate to be?"


    I cocked the hammer. Matsumoto smirked.


    "Oh come now, we both know you lack the follow through for that. Even if you shoot me dead," Matsumoto backhanded Shenhua hard enough to leave an imprint of his knuckles. "This whore that you''re so fond of, will spend the rest of her life begging for death and being denied. Killing her is the last kindness you can offer her. Paint with her and Boss Satou will let you hurl your worthless life to the stars, just as you wished to do last cycle."


    Sweat was pouring off me, the heat of five bodies on the dull edge of conflict had made the room stiflingly hot. My blazing nerves were alight all across my body but try as I might, I couldn''t summon forth whatever the heat inside me was. I could kill Matsumoto but that wouldn''t save Shenhua¡ª or myself, not that I had much hope of walking out of this room alive, one way or the other.


    I dropped my aim, my four-shooter hanging heavy at my side. I couldn''t save her. I couldn''t save a single damned woman in this glass-bubble hellscape of a paradise. The only thing I could do was make sure she didn''t suffer a second more of this humiliation then was necessary. When all else failed, I had nothing left but the cruelest kind of decency. Shenhua''s good eye was losing focus yet it still clung to me, a dim candle in the cold darkness.


    "Did you¡­" I uttered.


    "Did I what?" Matsumoto blustered. "Rape her? As if-" Any further words from his serpentine tongue were stilled as he looked down the barrel of my four-shooter centimeters from his face.


    "I wasn''t talking to you. Shen, when you washed up, did you¡­"


    Her faint nod was as damning as it was weak. Tears pouring from her jade eyes confessed more than she could with words.


    "Why?"


    "No more owner." She croaked in little more than a broken whisper. "It is happy dream, no?"


    "Yeah. It is." I agreed, voice tense and throat tight. "Why don''t you close your eyes and think about that?"


    She nodded again, then asked, "Will it hurt?"


    "It''s just like falling asleep." I lied. "So dream a happy dream."


    Shenhua closed her eyes while tears poured down her bludgeoned face. Her split lips were quivering in time with the sympathetic ache in my chest as she tried to put on a brave face. I reached for a word of comfort and found nothing. I couldn''t offer her comfort. All I had was the most heartless form of mercy. My four-shooter''s muzzle shifted from Matsumoto to Shenhua.


    There wouldn''t be a funeral for a working girl like her. No one would weep over her sealed casket longing for one last look at her face. My pistol''s muzzle hovered ten centimeters from her temple while I choked on my apology. She didn''t deserve this. I doubted any of the girls in Tengoku deserved this. They would get no salvation from their damnable fate, only a lucky few could hope for mercy.


    I squeeze the trigger with a lover''s caress.


    The white canvas receives its first wide stroke of red paint. The misfiring nerves of her spine make her body shudder where it hangs suspended, agony and death animating her body where her soul should have been. My aim drops to her throat: veins, arteries and her twitching spine all blocking my shot''s path.


    A kiss of the trigger makes my gun shudder.


    The canvas takes its second splash of depth, the impression of a life cut short dotting its surface. Her body has stilled, clenching muscles now releasing in the ignominy of death''s uncaring clutch. She isn''t dancing on her chains anymore, rather she''s swaying like a gruesome metronome to the reaper''s waltz. My pistol glides down her skin, settling just under one of her perfectly plump breasts. The sight of her fair sex stirred no passion in me as it had yesterday; the vibrant woman was gone, only lifeless meat remained.


    The third shot is teased from my draining pistol.


    The painting drinks in her heart''s blood; the gluttony of the canvas a disparagingly appropriate reflection of this station''s own insatiable appetite. The final stroke of the brush is revealed to me as lines of dripping blood hint at the soul of this piece and the unquantifiable truth that it would represent. The leaking sack of tattered meat hung before me only resembled a person in the loosest sense; gone was the woman who might have been my answer. Its face was an unrecognizable mess of splintered bone, stringy meat and sloughing skin yet the faintest smile she''d tried to put on for me was still there despite the muscles needed being destroyed. The truth was buried in that haunting smile. I embraced the gore splattered flesh sac, playing the angles of my pistol''s final shot through my mind. My inks were of the foulest origins, as a painter I was obligated to honor my work and its mortal cost. I leaned my weight into the once beautiful woman''s body, aligning my final shot to conclude another painting.


    I pressed our bodies together and brought my weapon to its climax.


    Matsumoto''s stiff profile made an ideal boundary; catching viscera, bone and bismuth pellets in plentiful quantities. There was a moment''s delay before he registered that he''d been shot; a single moment where he''d been admiring my work with a degenerate''s warped glee before his legs weakened and pain reached his mind. A straight-edged man, detached  from the cycle of cruelty he perpetuated, slumps to the floor in howling anguish to unveil my masterpiece.


    The painting was a work of grisly perfection.


    There was a gruesome beauty in the runny red hues, a degree of artistic whim that captured the weight of an entire life on a single canvas. I''d made an angel on the cavans, her ruby wings weeping as they spread to take flight, the outline of a man in negative standing at her feet. This painting would be Shenhua''s legacy, not mine. It was a heartless kind of immortality to be rendered in art paid for in blood. She was the angel trapped in marble and I was merely the mortal hand that had set her free of her earthly binding with brutally efficient butchery. Truly, Shenhua was nothing more than a sack of shredded meat, perforated by my damned mercy.


    "She¡­ is magnificent!"


    I''d been so lost in my work, I hadn''t noticed Satou reenter behind me.


    "Yes," I said without turning from the woman who might have been my answer. "She was."


    "What do you call it?"


    "Shenhua''s Escape From Paradise."


    The words came automatically. A sense of absolute certainty washed over me at their rightness. I peeled my gaze from the woman I''d mercifully murdered to face Satou and his goons. All three were enraptured by the red angel, eyes fixed and mouths agape. Both goons still had their pistols pointed in my direction and Satou himself had his hands stuffed in the pockets of his suit jacket. I''d missed my chance to save Shenhua before, I couldn''t let this opportunity to avenge her slip through my fingers.


    My four-shooter slipped from my fingers, my hand already in motion for Ivan''s service pistol in my pocket. The leftmost goon, snapped his head at my sudden movements, his pistol flinching up faster than I could dodge. I just needed one more second¡ª a half second!


    The fires threatening to consume me from the inside went from a raging inferno to a single white-hot mote of unparalleled focus on the pistol squaring on my chest. The pistol that would kill me. The pistol that would stop me from avenging my red angel. The goon leveled his gun, he had me dead to rights. He pulled the trigger.


    And his handgun exploded like a string of firecrackers as the entire magazine cooked off simultaneously. Including the round in the chamber.


    His bullet ripped through my shoulder as I wrapped my fingers around the pistol in my pocket. I tipped the muzzle as far as my pocket would allow, and hip-fired a burst at the second goon. Sparks flew in a puff from from the wall behind him, every blind-fired shot wide of my mark.


    Goon two was patting himself down in disbelief when two shots cannoned through my guts and a third came bursting through my back. My legs folded like snapped twigs, the floor rushed up the meet me. I got my mangled hand out to slow my fall but not much.


    My other hand ripped Ivan''s pistol clear of my tattered pocket. I pushed myself upright and got the looted gun leveled on Satou just as a mule kick knocked the weapon from my hand. A follow-up kick had me seeing stars while the third had me seeing nothing at all.


    "Enough! I don''t need any more blood in my office. Drag him and his whore to the usual airlock, but let him bleed out before you flush it."


    A searing ashy pain lanced into my back where a dull throbbing ache was spreading.


    "After all, we don''t want him dieing too soon."

 P5 - Side gig in Gangsters Paradise

    Princess


    "I''m still skeptical why ZashaSec subcontracted a smash and burn." Gidget commented absent-mindedly. "I was under the impression retaliations were one of those ''in-house'' kind of jobs."


    "Who cares?" Havoc countered with his usual blood-thirsty indignation. "More slanties for me to kill. More bodies, more pay."


    "You''re lucky none of our colored co-contractors are here. Otherwise you might come down with a case of lead poisoning, meatbag." Chop, the group''s third, snarled robotically; her voice barely distinguishable as female¡ªor even human for that matter¡ªfrom years of surgical enhancements.


    "Try anything and you''ll be in for another round of replacement parts, Chop." Havoc retorted.


    "Did you just make a pun of my name? Coming from anyone else, I''d say that was cute but I''m sure you did it by accident."


    "It was actually a play on words." Gidget said.


    "Stow the chatter you three." Princess finally barked over the kill-team''s shared comm network. A trio of grumbling acknowledgments came by way of response. "Clancy, you got a location for us yet, or do you need me to come over there and motivate you?"


    "Nothing ferrocrette yet- oh wait, that''s something."


    "Get on with it."


    "Airlock oh-five-nine-four on level eight was just manually opened, safeties and alarms are being blundered through¡ª really amateur stuff. Looks like someone is dumping something."


    "Are we close enough to catch them." Princess asked.


    "Not a chance, but you''ll pick up a hot trail. I''ll stay jacked-in a relay directions."


    "Too afraid to earn your danger pay?" Havoc sneered.


    "If you want to get shot on a side-hustle right before our next contract be my guest." Clancy bit back.


    "Squabble on your own time, we''re on the clock people. On me."


    Princess took off at a jog, Havoc trotting beside her in the cramped service corridors of gawking workers. While an armed man and woman in matte grey-black armored bodygloves was a sight worthy of such attentions, it was the two following behind that drew the most attention. Two giants of steel stomped along at a brisk walk, their heightened stride keeping easy pace with their jogging companions.


    The first suited warrior''s armor was recognizably inhuman, just as Chop was herself. The arms were long, a textured abrasion saw worn on each forearm like a pair of bucklers from the tech savage worlds of old. The body of the suit was all jagged slabs of chitinous plating that resembled some insectoid guardian caste, blending functional protection with lethal elegance of form. The legs, though massive on the scale of a normal person, appears to be thick, stumpy things of serrated hooks and barbed edges. Where there should have been a head on the armored giant, there was simply a circular neck sporting maggot-carved holes around its circumference.


    The second metal goliath, looked like a huge trash can on legs. The bizarre sight would have been near-comical, if one ignored the twin gimbaled machine guns where its shoulders should have been. The head, which resembled something between a omni-corder camera and the turret of a tank, was a mass of lenses, antenna, sensors, laser modules, and cyan stencil of a smiling face with leering eyes over fanged teeth. The smiling face was a good match for Gidget''s maddened genius and his deviant technophilia. A passerby questioning where the insectoid suit''s head had went might reasonably concluded that it had been scrapped for parts to adorn the trash can.


    "Why are all these cunts staring at us?" Havoc grumbled.


    "I wonder¡­" Chop said, robotic voice dripping with sarcasm.


    "They probably haven''t seen Powertechs in the flesh, if at all." Gidget answered, completely failing to read between the lines.


    "You solved that mystery, Gidget." Princess mumbled, shoving aside the workers too stunned or too slow to get out of her way.


    "Take your next left-side exit. Then you should have line of sight on the airlock." Clancy commed via the net.


    "Got it." Princess answered. "Techs, hang back. Havoc take point, I''ll back you up. Aim is less than lethal until fired upon, these might be locals just getting their socks wet. And Havoc¡­"


    "What?"


    "Make sure you have non-penetrators loaded this time. We don''t need another Syrenia incident."


    "I''m not an idiot." Havoc complained, checking the magazine of his battle rifle and swapping it out for another.


    Princess didn''t need her pentachromatic vision or helmet optics to see the red and black tipped rounds being exchanged for green polymer ones. She could only blink her eyes in momentary disbelief at his stupidity. What kind of moron used armor-piercing twin-stage incendiary/explosive discarding sabot rounds for any mission in the void? Forget about the risk of explosive decompression or flash fires or civilian casualties from over-penetration, just from cost-efficiency and target selection the idea was completely lacking in common sense. She restrained a weary sigh and stacked up opposite Havoc. He thumbed at his fire-selector, which was already set to full-auto, and Princess hefted her shotgun in reply.


    The doorway opened, Havoc charging right while Princess faced left, covering the dumbass. A pair of men in business suits smartly raised their hands in surrender when they found themselves looking down the barrel of Princess''s eight-gauge combat shotgun. She flicked her muzzle in a shooing gesture and they both turned back the way they came.


    "Oi, flat faces!" Havoc bellowed behind her. "Whatever you''re doing in that airlock, you better get your yellow asses-"


    Blind gunfire burst from the inner airlock. Three shots pinged down the hall in sparking ricochets, hitting nothing important.


    "That''s it. I tried to be nice." Havoc grumbled before opening up on full-auto.


    For all of his shortcomings¡ªand there was no shortage of those¡ªHavoc was something of an idiot savant when it came to combat. The enemy had decent cover, were adequately armed and had better knowledge of the battlefield than we did. I didn''t even have time to scrabble into cover or signal the Powertechs forward before Havoc had emptied his magazine of rubberized bullets into the airlock and slapped a fresh magazine in his rifle.


    Bouncing polymer slugs beat nine kinds of hell out of the goons hiding in the airlock. One of them made a run for it, his pistol still locked in hand under a broken wrist. Princess sighted down her shotgun and sent three spreads of polymer shot down the hall at knee height. By the time Chop and Gidget arrived, the fight was already over.


    "Did you get anyone on our list?" Clancy commed.


    "We''ll let you know when we finish checking their pockets." Princess replied. "Gidget, blacklight."


    Princess didn''t need the change in lighting, but it helped everyone else catch a fraction of what her pentachromatic eyes saw all the time. She could see that the bodies were all still warm but cooling already on the infrared spectrum and in ultra-violet she spotted blood splatters and invisible ink tattoos with all the usual gang symbology. She saw other things too, things that slithered and swam and crawled and flickered out of reality all at once, but these were a recent addition to her lifelong mutation that she was learning to ignore.


    "Well, I guess that explains why they hadn''t flushed the airlock yet." Chop noted, hoisting bodies one-armed as if they were stiff-limbed puppets.


    Princess pulled her gaze off the unreal non-things she couldn''t begin to understand and examined the mundane contents of the airlock. Aside from men with heads and necks caved in by Havoc''s liberal fire spray, there was a plain cargo trolley with a half sealed crate on it. Two bodies were sandwiched inside, a man in a knock-off suit leaking blood out of partially cauterized bullet wounds and the other¡­ It was a girl but mangled as she was, it was hard to identify much beyond that.


    "He''s hot." Princess mumbled, barely believing what her eyes were telling her.


    "I''ve seen better." Chop said, following her gaze.


    "How can you tell? All these slanties look the same to me." Havoc said. A half-second later, Chop tossed him one of the bodies she''d been holding.


    "Search that and shut up."


    "Not like that. His body temperature is up, not exactly common for people on death''s door." Princess clarified, digging out her trauma kit. "Chop, get him out of there."


    "Why are we wasting time on a not-dead guy?" Chop asked, tossing another goon''s body onto Havoc out of hand.


    "From the looks of it, this is a punishment. Pair that with the timing of ZashaSec listing our smash and burn, and I''ll put a brick of X-10 on this guy being involved somehow."


    The background chatter of information being relayed to Clancy faded from Princess''s mind. She wasn''t a surgeon and there was only so much she could do with a basic trauma kit, but hot guy''s major injuries were all through and throughs and what was weirder was some of them had already been cauterized. It was almost like who ever had done this didn''t want him to bleed out, they wanted him to suffer. Princess heated up a char wand and set to searing every leak she saw. Hot guy writhed under her, blood loss and delirium robbing his movements of any strength. Sealed in her voidsuit, there was no way for the smell of burning meat and bloody ruin to reach her nose yet her mind readily supplied the reeking scent from memory. Lastly, she sank a combat stim into his neck and hoped he wasn''t to far gone to be useful.


    The dying man''s grey eyes flicked open, his pupils massive and unfocused. He bolted upright into a half-sitting position before his body put an end to any resistance he might have been planning. He slumped against the airlock wall, quick labored breaths amplifying the adrenal shaking all across his body. His eyes would glaze, he''d blink heavily and then they were open wide once more, the drugs in his veil revitalizing the flesh but clearly not his mind.


    "What¡­" He croaked


    "You were about to get tossed out of this airlock by your friends over there. We stopped them. Now you''re going to tell me why I didn''t waste my time by saving you." Princess said.


    "I¡­ I did some paintings for the Void Dragon." The bloodied man shook his head then sucked in a breath through gritted teeth. "This was my paycheck."


    "The Void Dragon?"


    "He called himself Mister Satou-"


    This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    "Did you speak face to face?"


    "Yes."


    "Could you pick him out from a crowd?"


    "Yes."


    "Where did you meet him?"


    "Bar called the Goodnight Moon, level nine."


    "Good, then your coming with us." The bloodied man furrowed his brow. "Unless you''d rather I flush you out this airlock instead?"


    "Fine, I''ll go. But I want something in return."


    "Your life isn''t enough?"


    "I want off Tengoku, I don''t care where you''re going but when you leave you''re taking me with you."


    "If you travel with us, you''ll need to work. What can you do aside from catch lead?"


    "I can drive."


    "We don''t need many drivers off planetside."


    "I can handle a gun."


    "We''ve got that handled. What else?"


    "I can sneak around. Get into places I shouldn''t."


    "We''re mercs, not spys."


    He was floundering and she could see it. With a sly glance over her shoulder, Princess made sure the rest of her team were still busy sorting through their kills.


    "How about you tell me why you''re nearly ten degrees above heatstroke while you''re one foot out the door?"


    "How did you¡­" The bloodied man looked down to his charred wounds and made his own assumptions. Princess felt no need to clarify the misunderstanding. "I can''t really explain it. It just sort of happened one day."


    "Like magic?" The bloodied man just nodded his assent, the look in his storm grey eyes not quite pleading. "Fine, I''ll take you with us, but this conversation isn''t over."


    Princess swapped over to the kill-team''s comm net.


    "Clancy, we need directions to a bar called Goodnight Moon somewhere on level nine. Havoc, we catch anything?"


    "All four have gang ink, three with murderer''s tears and one with a red hand. Some are still breathing."


    "Nothing great but not too bad." Chop concluded.


    "Snap some flicks for the client, then toss them all in the airlock." Princess ordered. "And be quick about it, we''ve got a nest to clear before the rats scurry away. Our new recruit here will brief us as we walk."


    "My name is Hiiro."


    "Sure it is, Rookie." Havoc chided.


    "Congrats, Rookie, Havoc just volunteered to carry you."


    Princess had only been half kidding, but there was only so much combat stims could do to perk someone up. They found a service lift with Clancy''s guidance and its occupants were ''persuaded'' that they''d much rather take the stairs. The scantily clad women that Princess had seen everywhere on this gangster''s paradise of a station watched her kill-team''s progress with dead eyes and quiet hatred. In her years starhopping and those before, she''d seen enough colonies of human debris that she had a pretty good idea of what would happen to most of those women after her team left. Classicism and elitism both had a disparaging tendency to rear their ugly heads in the unfrequented fringes of human controlled space. Princess slapped her helmet''s faceplate and focused on the mission. A few hundred meters from the bar, Princess called the kill-team to a halt.


    "Gidget, you''re on shock and awe. Barge right in the front door and firebase. Chop, you''re running clearance, Havoc and I will hang back by the door and snag any runners. Once the area''s secured we''ll make a quick sweep and tag any faces. Rookie, that''s where you come in. Everyone clear?"


    The group all made their affirmations and stalked into a loose square formation, the armored giants take the lead. The plated titan''s took off at a dead sprint and then some, each thundering step reverberating its way though the entire hall like the frenzied drums of war. The human warriors followed at a considerable more measured pace, slowed as they were by Hiiro''s sagging weight.


    By the time the powertechs were at the bar''s entry, they''d gained a seventy-meter lead. Chop didn''t even slow as she bulled through the panicked bouncer, her wrist saws bisecting the man even as she tore his limbs from his screaming body. With a skipping, shot put throw, Chop sent the ruin of a man sailing through the bar in a high arc that ended in a grisly clatter on a stone table. Gidget was three long steps behind her.


    "Please stand for tonight''s entertainment." He announced. If any of the stunned gangsters inside followed his instructions, Princess didn''t see it.


    The paired machine guns on either side of Gidget''s suit opened up in a throaty staccato roar. Legs splayed in a bracing squat, the weaponized trash can played its fire left and right in shallow double helices. By the time Princess, Havoc and the Rookie made it to the bar''s entrance, Gidget had filled the lofty room with a hail of slightly less-that-lethal polymer bullets numbering just under two-thousand. Chop was bulling though the barrage with equal impunity from Gidget''s firespray and the desperate snapshots of surviving gangsters hiding under tables or behind overturned furniture. Some might consider the gross display of fire to be overkill¡ªbut as Havoc had once put in one of his brighter moments¡ªthere was no such thing in mercenary work. There was only ''open fire,'' ''reloading,'' and ''I''m out.''


    "Reloading." Gidget said, two minutes into his fusillade.


    The silence was nearly as deafening as the gunfire had been. There weren''t any brave souls left in the bar to try and make use of the opening. A quick headcount turned up over thirty dead or dying men and half that many terrified women who''d come through the firestorm lightly bruised but otherwise unharmed¡ª physically at least. With Gidget''s avatar of recycled death looming by the doorway, Princess and the others entered the bar.


    "Anyone who want''s to leave here alive, make a single file line by the bar." Princess barked. The serving women reluctantly obeyed, any defiance they might have held long since beaten out of them. "Rookie, start checking faces on the ground. You too, Havoc."


    The women¡ªand girls freshly blooded by puberty she now realized¡ªwere all tagged with infra-red slave serials on their necks. It was another all too common practice in void-based petty fiefdoms. Princess felt a disgusting pang of relief that she''d been born a mutant, her red-violet eyes and albinoid skin sparing her from such a fate. For a moment she wrestled with the familiar dilemma of her upbringing; would she rather be desired as these girls had, or be persecuted as she had? Neither prospect was very particularly appealing. So what was this feeling in her guts? Resentment? Jealousy?


    Princess was tempted to remove her helmet, to show these girls that they''d been saved by a woman, yet she didn''t. She''d done that in the past when she was young and naive, and she''d been burned; rejected by those she''d rescued because of the color of her skin and that of her eyes. These girls weren''t free, she hadn''t really saved a single one and in a week''s time someone else would be having their way with them. That was the harsh truth of reality.


    "Go, get out of here and try to lie low for a while." Princess said.


    Some of the younger girls didn''t budge, but a motherly type with dead eyes took their hands and pulled them away from the carnage. No matter how jaded Princess became, there were still gaps in the armor around her heart. One of the first lessons she''d learned about being a hired gun was that feelings got more mercs killed than the bad guys did. She couldn''t save everyone, so she needed to focus on keeping her own alive.


    Princess surveyed the scene, taking in the full scope of the bar for the first time. Therm-optically, the bar was quite striking between the chill air currents mixing with the heat of bludgeoned bodies, splattered blood and corpse piss. Without the bodies and blood, it might have been nice enough on its own to a norm''s eyes, but the window made her pace quicken. Not for reasons of beauty or passion or any of that garbage, but purely because she now saw just how close they were to explosive decompression. She''d only been spaced once and it was an experience she never wanted to repeat.


    "Rookie, did we catch any big fish?" She asked, tearing her attention away from the window.


    "No one I recognize so far." The Rookie answered.


    A door shunked open somewhere near the window. Havoc was already sprinting towards the noise before I''d even spotted the door, his rifle in hand. Gidget was still behind everyone, guarding the bar''s main entrance, and Chop was collecting bodies above me to the left of the room''s dance floor.


    "Oh shi-" A gunshot cut Havoc''s curse short. A burst of return fire stitched a line up the right wall, every fiery shot exploding on impact and leaving scorched craters around tiny punctures.


    A clump of four thugs wearing light body armor stormed the room; half wielding laser carbines, the other two with shot cannons. They were fanning to the right, headed for the solid protection of the bar, firing as they moved. She dove for the cover of an overturned table inches ahead of a strobing lance of crimson heat.


    "I''m pinned!" Princess yelled.


    "These guys are kinetically shielded." Gidget stated passively. His words were a tinny buzz barely heard under the torrent of fire he was laying down. "Rubbers aren''t going to cut it."


    The fire on her position lightened enough for her to poke her head out and shoot back. Princess didn''t bother aiming her spreads, instead scanning the battlefield at a glance. Havoc was dragging himself towards the Rookie to her left. Our latest addition had looted a pistol and was taking slow, aimed shots around his cover to some effect. Gidget was slowly wading his bulk into the fray, twin streams of gunfire roaring from his weapon mounts.


    Chop was bulling her way up the center, laser fire and shot hammering into her, stalling her momentum with every ringing impact. Ten meters from the bar, one of her legs started dragging. Then at three, he left shoulder threw out a burst of sparks and the arm went slack at her side. But now she was on top of them, clubbing guns away and raining anvil blows with her remaining fist as the thugs scattered.


    Princess''s magazine clacked empty, a replacement of lead slugs slotted home a second later, her fire barely stalling. The Rookie dragged Havoc into cover and borrowed his rifle, ending the firefight seconds later. The only sounds to be heard were the hissing metal of cooling barrels and the drips of shattered bottles spilling their contents.


    "Havoc''s down." Princess commed. "Swap to lethal ammo and sweep the room again. I don''t want any more surprises."


    While her team limped to obey, Princess headed to Havoc and dug out her trauma kit again. The Rookie was still holding Havoc''s rifle, teetering on his feet and watching her instead of making sure they didn''t get shot in the backs. With the powertechs on perimeter detail, she didn''t waste her breath chewing him out¡ª that could wait until later. There wasn''t anything immediately fatal, Havoc''s chestplate having caught most of the pellets that weren''t buried in his arms or guts.


    A new voice cut through the air.


    "I''d like to turn myself over to whomever just slaughtered all those criminals. I''m an innocent bystander who they were holding hostage!"


    Princess looked up and saw a slimy lizard in a perfectly pressed three-piece suit standing, empty hands upraised, in front of the bar''s massive window. He had all the right traits to look like a legitimate salary man but the way his neutral smiling face looked over the room filled with human wreckage ruined the illusion. There was something else, something predatory lurked around him just beyond the edge of her enhanced vision, that made her muscled tense in readiness.


    "Rookie," She whispered. "You recognize this one?"


    The Rookie snapped off a five-round burst, starting at the slimeball''s thigh and stitching up his chest until the final shot bored through his skull. The explosive rounds blew gaping holes of ragged meat through the slimeball, but the bullets didn''t stop there. Dense cored sabots flew, straight and true through meat and bone, impacting the reinforced window hard enough to leave fist-sized dents in the layered glass. What was left of the slimeball''s body toppled sideways, revealing a gore-smeared window that was still intact.


    In the time it took Princess to blink in disbelief, reality caught up to her fears. A crack split the splattered viscera, connecting the five dents and spreading.


    "It''s gonna bust! Get Out NOW!"


    The Rookie grabbed one of Havoc''s arms, Princess the other and they frantically heaved him towards the entrance, Chop limping away from the bar opposite them. Gidget was already clear. The sound of acrylic grinding against itself was deafening, a cobweb of expanding fault lines that would drag them out into the void to die any second now. If she survived, Princess knew that sound would haunt her just like that hull rupture from years past still did.


    When they reached the entrance, she looked back to make sure Havoc''s legs were clear and immediately wished she hadn''t. A massive crack, five meters tall had formed in the center of the window, thin fingers branching from the main body every foot of the way. Suddenly, inevitably, the window failed.


    The escaping air blew out of the room, taking the window with it in a howling detonation. The changing pressure turned the bar''s entrance into a funnel for the rest of the orbital''s atmosphere to jettison from. In an instant, Princess found herself caught in a hurricane trying to drag a downed comrade clear of a methodically descending emergency bulkhead.


    There wasn''t enough traction on the metal floor for her to hold her ground. Opposite her, the Rookie was already bowled over against the wall, barely able to keep himself upright. Havoc''s dead weight was dragging her back into the venting room, inch by dreadful inch.


    "Someone help me!" She roared, hauling herself against the wind and sliding two steps back for every step she gained.


    Gidget shifted his cylindric bulk, forming a crude windbreak. The tempest flying into Princess redoubled from the other side, staggering her closer to the precipice. A massive gauntlet took Princess''s chest in hand and lifted her like a doll. The gale slamming into her back and rushing under her feet made her stomach lurch as she and Havoc was drug clear just as the emergency bulkhead sealed shut.


    "Well, that was exciting." Chop said breathlessly. "Do you think that''ll come off our pay?"


    "Indubitably." Gidget answered.


    The sound of Princess slapping the Rookie across the face was almost as loud as the sound made by his head hitting the wall.


    "You''re lucky we have a deal, otherwise I''d kill you here and now for that stunt." Her voice was ice cold.


    The Rookie lost the fight with gravity, slumping to the ground in slow motion.


    "I didn''t know you could kill with a slap." Gidget mused. Princess didn''t feel the need to correct him.


    "Clancy, we''re headed back to you and then we''re extracting. Call ahead and let the Shadow know we''ve got wounded meat and damaged steel."


    "I''m seeing alarms about a hull rupture. Was that Havoc again?"


    "What do you think? Now, let''s get the hell of this rock."

 H6 - The Morning After

    Hiiro Volshebso


    I remembered getting shot and getting slapped. Everything before that was a blur. My planetside upbringing on Intatenrup was little more than a hazy dream and my time on Tengoku was a haunting nightmare just beyond recollection. All I knew was that everything hurt, and I was warm.


    "Where-" I started.


    "You''re in the med-bay on a ship. That''s all you need to know for now." I sat up to face the speaker¡ª or I would have if the restraints lashing me to the bed hadn''t snapped taut. The man who''d spoke stepped into view.


    He was several decades my senior, a bald head and sagging features hinting at a man just past middle age. His dress was sterile and professional, reminding me more of an organlegger than a butcher. His eyes were deep-set and of a soft blue, tucked behind a pair of reading glasses. Yet his skin was what drew my attention. The man was pink like a pig, I''d have thought there was something wrong with him were it not for the other pink man standing next to him.


    The second man stood a half-head taller and at least thirty kilos heavier than the first. Close-trimmed black stubble wrapped his head and trailed down to his wide jaw. His pink skin was rife with scars paler than the rest of him and his thick arms were cut and healed in a way that almost looked decorative instead of random. Resting between those thick arms, held in a casual grip, was a shotgun pointed towards me. Where the bald man''s eyes were half-lidded and sleepy, this one''s were intensely focused on me.


    "Why-" I started again.


    "Hold it." The bald man said, waving a belaying hand. A finger went to his ear. "Your stray''s awake."


    The med-bay I found myself in was similar yet different from what I''d seen in the past. Something about how compact everything was sat at odds with the flat sprawling affairs that came to mind instinctively. The room had too much verticallity for me think of it as anything other than a tool shed¡ª the cramped size only furthered the connection. My bed was little more than a steel cot shoved into an alcove corner and bolted to the floor. A knock beyond my field of view drew the bald man away with some whispered words.


    "You still haven''t cooled down." The woman said idly.


    She was the unnatural white beyond that of any corpse; her skin, hair, teeth and even her nails were all so glaringly alabaster that she looked inhuman. The very sight of her made my own tawny skin crawl, but my restraints wouldn''t allow me to keep her from getting closer. Then I saw her eyes. They were a purple so rich they seemed to spill out into the space around the pale woman, tainting everything she spared a glance at. Right now her gaze was fully fixed on me face.


    "Get away from me you mutant bitch!" I spat, kicking out at her as much as my restraints allowed.


    "Great, you''re one of those people." She muttered, standing impassively just outside of my reach. "Don''t try and act all high and normal. No reason we can''t be civil."


    "I am normal-"


    "Did you know that the human body stops working above forty degree standard? Heat stroke." I blinked at the pale woman''s sudden tonal shift. "Would you like to guess what your temperature is?"


    I wasn''t given time to guess, let alone to try and recall my limited education.


    "Forty-nine." The bald man stated. "And your spinal column is floating around fifty-three."


    "What do you people want from me?" I asked, finally able to get a question out without being interrupted.


    "Short version? We want to get a return on investment for pulling you back from death''s door." The pale woman said.


    With a snap of her fingers, the bald man proffered out a datapad for me to look at. I couldn''t read half the words arrayed in a neat column but it was clear I was looking at an invoice of some kind. The number at the bottom was smaller than I''d been expecting but the amount was still a staggering five digits.


    "So you outlaws want money."


    "We''re mercenaries, actually." The large, scarred man said from the rear.


    "When you abducted me, you didn''t happen to grab my things, did you? A bag, maybe? It seems I left my wallet in my other pants."


    "It seems like you aren''t grasping the situation," The pale woman began. "Allow me to spell it out for you, explicitly. I found you pumped full of lead, stuffed in a crate with half a dead whore and a five-man airlock detail getting ready to space you. I saved your life, then I seared your wounds so you wouldn''t bleed out and then, instead of leaving you to whatever passes for justice on that little gangster''s paradise of a station, I brought you along on our side-gig to name names and point fingers. So you can imagine my surprise when you tried to blow me and mine out into low orbit along with all those bounties, just so you could grease some slimeball in a suit. The way I see our relationship so far, I saved you, then you tried to kill me AND you ruined a job¡ª which I can''t forgive.


    "Now," She continued. "What you''re going to do is answer every question I ask you, and if I like your answers you might just live long enough to pay off your debt and go back to pissing off whoever you want with your terminal stupidity. Have I spelled it out clear enough for you?"


    "Yeah, crystal."


    "Good. Question number one, are you psychic?"


    "You''re joking, right?"


    "Just answer the fucking question." The scarred man growled with a wave of his shotgun.


    "No? At least, I don''t think I am." I answered, shifting my gaze between the scarred man''s smirk and the pale woman''s scowl.


    The pale woman stared into my eyes, and despite myself, I couldn''t look away. Something about the near-sickening richness of her vibrantly purple eyes held me fast with a force of will that seemed to thicken the air between us. It felt like she wasn''t just looking at me, she was peering through my eyes into my soul. My pulse quickened and as if in response to her scrutiny the heat within me whelmed up in defiance.


    "You''re not psychic and you''re not normal, so what does that make you? Are you a mutant¡ª a sub-human abomination?"


    "No!"


    "Face it. You''re, just, like, me."


    The pale woman was reaching her disgustingly white hand towards my face. The ghostly digits drew to mind childhood horror stories of cannibal blood-drinkers with skin as white as snow. I strained against my restrains, heaving so hard my seared wounds tore open. My blood was boiling inside me, my nerves were burning like white hot wires and this mutant bitch''s pale hand was still coming closer, millimeters at a time.


    "Don''t touch me!" I roared.


    To my disbelief, she actually paused, her hand hovering centimeters from my jaw. She tilted her head as if considering my words, then smiled wickedly.


    "Hmm¡­ No." Her hand darted in to grab me around the throat.


    And then, her arm was on fire.


    The bald man had an extinguisher in his hands as if by magic and started spraying with reckless abandon. Soon the pale woman was entirely lost under a pillar of white foam. The bald man didn''t even pause as he moved the extinguisher''s vomiting nozzle towards me and buried me under a blanket of foam. Eventually the extinguisher spewed its last and everything fell silent. I tentatively took a shallow breath, nearly choking as the foam crawled down my throat without smothering me. When my captors spoke, the foam I was swaddled in gave them all a distant, muffled quality.


    "Great, a firebug."


    "Come on Leeroy. This is the first who''s actually like me! Can''t you be a little more excited."


    "You''ve been hunting for people ''like you'' for two years, Princess. Now that you''ve found one, he tries to burn you alive and you want me to be excited? He just tried to kill you!"


    "That''s not exactly a one-off occurrence, Roy."


    "I get that you''re super stoked about this, but you need to listen to me. We''re all stuck on this ship and he starts FIRES. What if that happens every time he flinches? We-"


    "We should just throw the freak out the airlock and be done with it." The pale woman, Princess, finished with a mocking tone.


    "That''s not what this is about. Besides, I was going to say ''we need to be careful''."


    "And by being careful, you mean we should kill him."


    "Not kill, just-"


    "Get rid of. Yeah, I''ve heard it all before. Get rid of all the freaks who do weird shit for weird reasons."


    "You know I don''t mean it like that."


    "Of course you don''t, because no one ever means it about me. I''m one of the good ones. You guys don''t think of me that way."


    "I''m not going to deal with you while you''re like this. Have fun with your science experiment!"


    A heavy metal door sealed quietly, right before something pounded it with a bang.


    "Great, just fan-freaking-tastic." The pale woman growled. I thought I heard something like a slap followed by a resigned sigh. "Alright Firebug, I''m going to wipe some of this stuff off your face so we can have a conversation. If you burn me again, I''ll cut off your balls and feed them to you."


    "Just get this crap off of me! I can''t breath." I coughed.


    Gingerly, almost reverently, the pale woman started wiping the fire-suppressant from my lips, then nose and lastly my eyes. Afterwards, she probed the mound of powdery foam for the strap holding down my right are and released it.


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    "I''ve been looking at the wrong things this whole time." She idly whispered, staring at something near my torso.


    "Are you really a princess?" I asked as I set to wiping the worst of the foam from me.


    "Are you really a firebug!?" She snapped, her eyes whipping back onto me with a savage focus. "It''s just a bad joke that stuck. What should I call you, Sparky?"


    "Volshebso, Hiiro Volshebso."


    Princess sat herself on a chair at my feet and held out her charred hand for the bald man to examine with medicinal disinterest.


    "Alright, Hero, the big guy from before was Leeroy, I''m Princess and this man-of-the-faith is Gerald. Let''s have a plain talk now that all the cards are on the table."


    This situation kept getting weirder and weirder. Even now that the lingering haze of my unconsciousness was fading, I still found myself disoriented and wrong-footed at every step. The scarred man, Leeroy, had said they were mercenaries and one of the few things I knew about the trade was that they never did anything for free. The fact that they''d already done as much as they had meant that for some reason, someone thought I was worth more alive than dead.


    "What did you mean when you said I was like you." I asked. "Am I really a mutant?"


    "You can rest assured that you are entirely human." Gerald answered, finally adding his drawling dour voice to the conversation. "No noteworthy hereditary or adaptive mutations. Aside from your higher-than-average resting homeostatic thermoregulation and cold weather acclimatization you are completely ''normal,'' at least medically speaking¡ª if there is such a thing as normal."


    "So what''s wrong with me?" I asked, flicking a glob of foam to the floor.


    "There''s nothing ''wrong'' with you," Princess said. "You''re just¡­"


    "Like you?"


    "Yeah, but different."


    "You still haven''t told me what you meant by that. What are you?"


    The pale woman had to stop and think about that, which wasn''t a good sign. Anyone who looked at her could tell she wasn''t really a human being¡ª more of a distant cousin at best. Her eyes, in addition to being so repulsively inhuman in color, were the largest I''d ever seen on a person. Looking at her face in a wider focus, her hard features were too symmetric which added to the passive wrongness I felt just from looking at her. The longer the silence drug on as she thought about how to answer what should have been a very simple question, the longer I had to vaguely realize that this woman sitting before me really wasn''t a human being at all.


    "Oh stars, I''m going to sound like a condescending asshole but bear with it, okay?" Princess finally said, having reached some weighty decision.


    I didn''t give voice to my doubts or disquiet, but I still nodded in agreement.


    "Okay. So basically, magic is real but it''s not really magic, it''s all just energy and some people for some reason kind of sort of¡­ aim it, I guess? And there''s this whole argument of if this aiming process is really magic or if it''s psycho-something and it''s all in the brain but certain people can only do so much and other people can do anything but they have to figure out how to do it. But some of it isn''t in the brain and you have human consciousness which is supposed to just be your brain firing off signals but there''s so much that we don''t know about how it all works except that it just does until it doesn''t. And everyone has this natural bio-electric energy field around them, but it''s also got another kind of energy in it too and that''s supposed to be the aura or maybe it''s the soul but it''s stronger for some people and¡­ I sound like a lunatic, don''t I?"


    "Yeah¡­ I''m not following you at all." I admitted once the woman stopped rambling long enough to draw a breath.


    "I don''t really know how it all works either. The¡­ thing that gave me my crash course turned into a black slug monster and just, kind of¡­ showed me. I don''t know what any of it means though. You''re the first wizard I''ve met, I was hoping you could explain it to me."


    The room fell into a potent silence as I tried to process what she''d just said. I could hear the hum and churn of the ship around me, the faint hiss of the foam plastering half the room dissolving, and the minute sound of Gerald working a needle and thread through the swelling blisters on her hand. Some part of me wondered if her black slug was similar to the hallucinogenic secretions of the Miilo Toads back in Intatenrup. However, the majority of my attention was focused on her final sentence.


    "Did you just call me a wizard?" I asked incredulously.


    It was her turn to blink at me dumbly.


    "Yeah? Did I forget to mention that part?" She asked. I could almost hear the her train of thought crashing to a derailed halt.


    "Yes, you did."


    "Um, surprise?" She stated with all the fanfare of a single shrug.


    "And you''re a wizard too?"


    "I don''t know what the hell I am." She said with a grimace. "The term I heard was Esper but I don''t know if that''s a skill or a breed or¡­" She shrugged her foam drenched shoulders. "The closest I can guess is that I''ve got one foot out the door going somewhere I can''t even begin to imagine. All I do know is that I grew up seeing things that no one else could and what that monster showed me, it was like nothing else. Even my eyes couldn''t prepare me for the sight-"


    "It''s like you were frozen to the brink of death and something lit a fire inside of you, and now you wonder if you every really knew what it meant to be warm."


    "Yeah, something like that."


    For the first time, out eyes met¡ªas repulsively abhuman as she was¡ªwe shared a knowing look and I could relate to her struggle. My own quest for enlightenment hadn''t exactly been a well-lain straight road, but at least there was some evidence that I wasn''t insane. My indomitable warmth was proof that something was out there, that the voice I''d heard in the snow and in the darkest night wasn''t just a hallucination. I could only imagine if my conviction would have survived a year without that warmth. A feat like that went beyond simple reason. It was nothing less than an act of faith.


    "So what happen''s now?" I asked, flicking the last of the disolving fire-suppressant foam off of me. "I''m of no use, so you kill me? Just to be safe."


    "I''d rather not. How much control do you have over¡­" She motion broadly at my entire body, "all that?"


    "I don''t really know." I admitted. "You were the forth or fifth time I''ve-"


    "What did you do the other times?"


    "I made the bullets in a magazine explode, at least I think I did that. Normally I just get really hot. And I¡­ the first time that is, I popped a guys eyes."


    There might have been more but those were the only times I could remember. Now that I''d admitted it out loud, it was starting to finally sink in. This wasn''t some hallucination or freak occurrences or coincidental instances of spontaneous combustion that just happened in my proximity. I was responsible for it. I was a wizard. The thought was terrifying and exhilarating.


    "When you say popped, you mean like¡­" She pointed to her eyes and motioned with her fingers.


    "Yeah, like that. I can still remember how it felt when their steaming chunks splattered on my face. And the smell, like seared tofu-"


    "You can stop now." Princess said, glancing at her burned hand.


    "I always associated the smell with a watered down, salty marmalade." Gerald idly noted as he treated her injury.


    "Can we just drop this part and focus on the real issue? Please? What actually triggered each cook off?"


    "I was about to die the first time. I was pinned and this lunatic had a knife-" Princess made a ''get on with it'' gesture with her offhand. "Then there just before you found me in the airlock. I did a job for local boss-"


    "The Void Dragon?" Princess asked, and I could tell she already knew the answer.


    "Yes. I painted a house for him, only it turned out the target wasn''t just a rival gang gashira, he was also an undercover cop with ZashaSec. I did the job, got away clean and when it was time for me to cash in and take off¡­"


    I struggled to find an explanation for this pale woman and her alien eyes that seemed to cut right through me. There was more I should have said though I wanted to skip to the end. It felt like a disservice to be absolved my own failure through a lie of omission.


    "He changed the deal, had me paint another room to spare his honor, and I did it. I did an innocent woman whose only crime was getting too close to me and wanting a better life. After I''d finished, Satou looked at my work and he said ''she is magnificent'' and I agreed with him." I fought down the disgust rising in me, and the killing heat that sought to accompany it.


    "So you burned him?" Princess asked, a note a gentleness slipping from her ghostly lips.


    "I tried to shoot him." I said, recalling what had spurred this memory. "One of his bodyguards had a pistol and he had me dead to rights but the magazine exploded. That bought me a few seconds." I could only shake me head as I was forced to relive my failure. "It wasn''t enough. I got shot, they beat me and I blacked out. Satou got away."


    "I''m sorry that happened to you." Princess said. "The girl, was she- no, nevermind. So it sounds like you only cook off in life or death situations. So why did you burn me when I touched you?"


    "He was strapped to a table, gun pointed at him and a vampire with deamon eyes was about to tear out his throat." Gerald said without looking up from his work. "Does that about sum it up?"


    I couldn''t help but nod at the doctor''s summary. A dagger-like scowl from the vampire woman in question caused a low surge of heat to build in my hips.


    "You have to admit, that''s a pretty rough way to wake up." I stated defensively. After scowling for a while longer, she sighed.


    "I suppose it could have been worse. But I had to know. I''ve been looking for someone like me for so long, I was starting to go crazy thinking that this was all in my head."


    "I know the feeling." I admitted. "When I first heard the voice, I thought it was just my mind playing tricks on me-"


    "Then you started to know things." Princess finished.


    "Things I knew I didn''t know and things I wasn''t smart enough to have just imagined." I said while nodding.


    From the look of her deathly pale face, I knew she took my meaning and suddenly the formality between us shattered. In a single instant, I knew I could trust this woman¡ª even if the sight of her skin and the way her freakishly purple eyes seemed to swirl while sitting still made my skin scrawl and my hair stand on edge.


    "What did you see?" I asked.


    The air about her became brittle once more, her eyes flicking around the room as if she were hunting for something unseen. She bagan shaking her head, slowly at first yet gaining speed until the motion was a frantic nervous twitching from left to right. Her lips twisted into a manic smile, the very image of a woman unhinged yet desperately clinging to her sanity with broken, bloody nails.


    "I saw Nothing." She said with fragile reverence.


    A furious, snorting chuckle slipped from her lips and the air of the room seemed all the darker for it. Tears began streaming down her repulsively pale cheeks and her disgusting purple eyes appeared to be streaked with shards for deep crimson as they flailed about the room. While the display sickened me just by proximity, there was also something enthralling about it and I was enraptured by her fit for its duration. It only ended once she''d laughed herself dry minutes afterwards. When the fit had ended she rebuilt a jaded demeanor within seconds and I found myself wondering if I had imagined the whole thing.


    "Forget that. The last thing I need is-"


    "I know." I said instantly. "My life was ruined when I started asking about¡­ all this, to people who didn''t get it. My lips are sealed, on my honor."


    "Good." Princess said with a nod, then turned to the doctor wrapping her brunt hand in moist gauze. "So how about it Gerald? Think he''s safe enough to keep around?"


    "In my medical opinion, he poses no significant risk beyond the normal pathogenic vectors¡ª which we''re well equipped to handle. He''s at higher risk from us than we are of him for the sniffles. On a more¡­ esoteric note, spontaneous pyrokinesis poses a very real danger. From what you''ve described, your particular abilities seem to be an autonomous defense mechanism which you have some small influence on. If these reactions are purely instinctive, then you should be able to manage these manifestations the same way we could stress on any other patient."


    Gerald finished wrapping Princess''s hand, went to an unmarked cabinet and tossed one of its contents at me. The fine chain floated across the room in a shallow arc that made my ears start to warble. I caught the chain and examined its decoration, a tiny golden cross.


    "Um, thank you."


    "Put it on." The doctor commanded. Princess rolled her eyes, but I did as he''d asked.


    "I keep telling you, your crosses aren''t magic. There''s nothing spooky or holy about them." Princess muttered. Gerald ignored her.


    "If you want to leave this medbay, you have to wear that at all times. No exceptions."


    I slid the necklace over my head and felt the cold metal settle against my skin. The doctor breathed a sigh of relief as if he''d been expecting something to happen but was glad that nothing did.


    "I''ll want to run some more tests from time to time. You''ll also need to carry a fire extinguisher until we can narrow down your triggers and the extent of your manifestations. You''ll be kept on a short leash until I can definitively say that you aren''t a danger to this ship or its crew. With that said, I see no reason to keep him locked up in here."


    "Alright, then there''s no reason I can''t put him to work." Princess said.


    "I won''t paint anymore houses." She looked at me sidelong. "I won''t kill in cold blood, not anymore."


    "Relax, Firebug. The Shadow is still weeks out from anything but us. If you wanted to go on a killing spree on this ship, you wouldn''t get very far. Even if you''re not a cold-blooded murder, we''ll find something to keep you busy."

 B7 - Damming Power

    Bim


    For all the unprecedented knowledge she was gathering at speeds she would have once marveled, physical reality was not to her liking. The physicality of everything, which she''d initially found quite endearing, was now a limitation she''d began to despise. Similarly, she''d experienced enough of this sensation called touch that she was almost entirely disenchanted from it.


    "If you want to leave this room, you have to wear this." A human orderly repeated while proffering a bulky dress made of course textiles.


    "I ''have to do'' nothing you say, Gianna." Bim retorted, evoking the woman''s name with the intent of driving her off. Gianna was unconvinced.


    "Clothing is a very common human custom, Bim," Gianna explained. "If you want to ''mingle'' with human''s you''ll have to wear cloths."


    Bim refrained from boring into the woman''s mind and simply taking the information of human customs from her. She similarly refrained from rebuking the woman for her overly casual tone and blatant invocation of her vessel''s pseudonym. Constantly having her name¡ªeven if it was merely a false name¡ªuttered and spoken without due respect was agitating in the extreme. Nearly as agitating as touching things was.


    Bim shifted her bare feet on the cold metal flooring, moving her weight¡ªand the associated pain of standing¡ªfrom one leg to the other. Even the weight of her arms was wearing her down, yet no matter how she adjusted them, relief never came. Gianna misinterpreted the gesture, thrusting the concealing dress at Bim''s naked form.


    The course woven textiles scraped against her skin, tearing at her body with every pound of applied friction. What the abrasive textiles couldn''t flay from her, they instead seared with the waste heat of a failed exchange. Bim refused to catch the falling dress. Once the detestable robe had settled on the floor, Bim made a calculated show of kicking the clothing aside as Gianna bent down to grab it. The irritation she felt from touching the fabric was well worth Gianna''s comprehension of the situation.


    "I will not wear that." Bim said, speaking slowly as she repeated herself.


    "I''ll find you something else then." The woman said curtly, before snatching up the dress and leaving Bim to the near solitude of her compact reality.


    "You don''t have to like it, you just have to wear it." The other woman in the room said boisterously.


    "I will not be forced into suffering for your social etiquette." Bim said.


    She pivoted where she stood, moving as little as possible to face her guards where all but the virile one, who''s false name was Treu, were vigorously feasting. There was more to the ritualistic act than mere consumption of sustenance, though her guards had denied every attempt at inquiry on her part. The other woman, Kaleigh, who functioned as a living capacitor in mind, soul and body it would seem, made a tutting sound while wagging a finger and refilling her glass from a deliver barrel.


    "If you wanna be a diva, you need to do it somewhere where you can actually get some cloths that''re worth a damn. You see this dress? Baby Cashmere. I had to wait eight bloody year t''get it imported."


    Bim understood enough of the slurred words to feel as if it should have been deeply profound, these were after all, the first casual words of conversation she''d been offered by any of her guards. She dissected the words, extrapolating possible counterpoints and follow up inquiries in an instant. Regrettably, some words were lost to her; the forlorn man who''s mind she had consumed and who''s true name was Lucius Dominique Pavonii, had a rather weak grasp of this common tongue he''d called Low Gaelgoth but in actuality was titled Nova-Standardized Simplified English. What Bim did comprehend with a high degree of relative certainty, was that Kaleigh might be considered a clothing expert, which made her knowledge on the subject valuable.


    "If clothing is such an important facet of human existence, why is my acquiring an acceptable unit of it so difficult?" Bim inquired.


    "Lots''a reasons." Kaleigh said with a wild shrug that didn''t spill a drop of her drink. "Material scarcity, growing conditions, body types, style, cut, embroidery, finishing, labor costs, shipping. Lots''a reasons," she gave another shrug, "the attitude and chicken wings aren''t doing you any favors either."


    Bim flicked her luxurious wings in annoyance, idly brushing the sensual feathers against her skin. The pleasure such a simple motion brought her was unrivaled by anything else this material dimension had yet to offer her. Would that she could have clothing as divine as these heavenly feathers of her''s. At that moment, Gianna returned with a sleepy glaze to her eyes, her arms loaded with more cloth sacks and now, a metal torc held away from her body.


    Instinctively, Bim reached out with her mind to survey these latest options, only to have her cursory essensing wither into nothingness as it neared Gianna''s periphery. The draining, hollow presence surrounding the woman was like nothing Bim had a reference for and she recoiled from it with mind and body. A pair of massive steely gauntlets grabbed her from behind, holding her in place.


    "What is that?!" Bin demanded.


    The metal hands around her shoulder and waist tensed, holding her vessel in place as much by raw strength as by implied threat. Gianna handed the silvery torc off to Treu who had a similar albeit far more controlled reaction to the demi-ring''s null field.


    "Listen, Devil." Treu growled, bleeding enough power into his words to reach her even through the torc''s null. "You''re existence has been tolerated so far. That tolerance ends the nanosecond you cease being useful or become more trouble than you''re worth. Do you understand?"


    Mind still reeling in psychic shock, she stood mutely for several seconds before fully regaining control of her vessel''s faculties. Her sampling of Lucius''s cognizance revealed a distressing familiarity with situations such as these. Comprehension dawned on her. She was being threatened by the guards who where supposed to protect her. Such a contradictory state of events nearly sent her mind reeling once more until she amended her initial flawed comprehension. They were not guarding her, they were guarding this place from her.


    "I comprehend your words and their meaning, Treu." Bim uttered, evoking his false name to no effect.


    "If you resist me, I will end you." Treu said, taking a single step closer.


    "I hold your soul within my fist." Another step.


    "You cannot break my armor." Step.


    "Cannot warp my mettle." Step.


    "You are nothing." Step.


    "And I am All."


    Treu closed the remaining distance with a final step and placed the torc around her bared throat. It was like getting severed from her consciousness when they''d sealed the rift before only so much worse. Without the prior experience to draw upon, she very well might have lost herself and been forced from her vessel as her soul diminished. Radiant though her vessel''s soul shard was, her power waned until it was a tenth of a tenth and Bim became startlingly aware that her guards were now nearly as powerful in the aspect of the soul as she was.


    The steely hands holding her upright slipped away and she fell to the floor in a spasming heap. The pain of simple existence overwhelmed her. She was powerless to still her twitching limbs or right herself as Treu circled her thrice one way, then thrice more the other.


    Her mind could sense nothing of her surroundings. Bim blinked her vessel''s eyes, trying and largely failing to make sense of what she was seeing from where she limply lay on the floor.


    Gianna dropped her armful of clothes, revealing a shiny metal ingot in her fist which Treu seized from her. The woman violently blinked and shook her head then attempted to leave, a look of horror the even Bim could recognize worn plainly on her face, yet Treu seized her too.


    Gianna screamed at his touch, the stink of seared flesh forever added to Bim''s near-eidetic memory. Seconds later, Gianna was consumed in flames that crudely mirrored the woman''s dying cries with a raging shriek of their own. Bim saw Treu drink in the flames with one hand while the metal ingot in his other turned white-hot and runny.


    Bin was brutally kicked over onto her face. Her vessel screamed in a silent agony of its own as a heavy metal boot stomped onto her lower back, pinning her to the metal floor that was growing exponentially colder. In the time it took her to blink her watering eyes, her breath was frosting the decking while her spasming limbs left strips of surface-deep skin and writhing golden-black tissue frozen to the metal beneath her.


    A pair of familiar steely hands clamped down around the base of each wing with dreadful intent. Her insatiably curious mind quested out, managing to hurl a single tiny thread of prospective perception into the hand and the man commanding it. She''d been expecting to find malice, predatory glee in the moment before rendering a devastating injury to her, but what she found terrified her even more.


    This human, the weakest of her guards and the youngest of the metahuman psions, felt nothing but sympathy for what he was about to do.


    "Please. No." Bim whispered.


    "Do it." Treu commanded.


    The armored child didn''t allow his personal feelings to interfere with his duty. He did as he was ordered.


    The weight crushing into her lower back amplified and the hands on her wings began wrenching upwards. In its weakened state, her vessel was powerless to alter the inevitable outcome. Pure agony blanketed her mind so completely it should have killed her. In the instant before she thought she would be forever lost to the all consuming pain, she heard a sickening crunch.


    The floor rushed up to her face. Tears of golden ichor fell from her eyes and froze upon the metal decking. Bim beckoned her wings to curl around her vessel, to sweep aside this all consuming pain with a gentle caress. For a moment, she felt her wings obey, yet relief never came. She craned her head upwards, and wished she hadn''t.


    Her armored guard held her severed wings in each hand and he felt sorrow. The ragged lengths of pearl-white bone poking from the ends of each wing grew dull as she watched. Her luxurious feathers the richness of freshly cast gold faded into a sickly yellow, then a dry bleached grey and turned to ash. The skin underneath blackened as if burned and in the blink of her weeping eye, it too flaked away into charcoal. The only joyous touch left to her in the bitter reality was nothing more than jagged slate-like bones gripped in the hands of a boy who knew he would never experience such a thing again in a thousand lifetimes.


    This loss, while cataclysmic in so many ways, was not what stilled her breath.


    Treu stood over her naked body with an unreasoning, soul deep hatred of her in his eyes. His left hand hovered at his side, draining the chamber of as much heat as it could spare and then some. He needed all and more for his labor. Floating above his right hand, he wove his white-hot metal bar into bands and loops and shapes that held a terribly potent arithmetic to their proportions. With the flick of a finger, he added a single blackened bone that was all that remained of Gianna. By the power of his mind alone, he forged that rod of metal and bone into a device of infernal brilliance and singular purpose. It was a device that knew her vessel''s name.


    One of his stormy blue eyes flicked away from his grand labor, staring into her face at precisely her moment of revelation. He reveled in her mounting horror, and beyond that, he reveled in the knowledge that this event of singular conclusion, would not, it could not be stopped by her. His other eye focused on her face now also. Treu smiled at her.


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    "And you call us monsters." She whispered, closing her eyes and readying herself for what came next.


    The mounting chill reached an intensity where it could grow no colder and still Treu drew inwards. Light, sound, even the stored chemical energy of his own body was little but fuel for the meticulously searing inferno held in his hand. When she thought the heat could build no more, Bim grit her teeth against the next wave of soul-crushing pain that she knew would come next.


    Whether through the whim of time or her own agony-distorted perception, the moment of calm hung. Warmth returned to the air around her and the crushing weight of a metal boot on her back lessened. She waited a second longer to reassess her situation, wondering if another flawed interpretation had caused a compounding miscommunication. Her curiosity won out. She opened her eyes once more.


    And only then, did Treu strike.


    His left hand came down in an open-handed slap that felt as if it was seeking to rend her soul shard from this vessel. Her fleshy tissue flash froze, the thermal energy keeping it in a state of semi-solid protoplasm robbed in an instant. Worse still, Treu reached for the quintessence of her soul. The talons of his mind flayed into her being and eviscerated it, stealing the choicest cuts and leaving the rest as a mauled, scattered wreck.


    His right hand came down next, bearing the device which knew her vessel''s name. The frozen tissue of her mutilated back exploded at the touch of his molten hot device, superheated chunks of her golden black musculature vaporizing. Somewhere, not quite lost amidst the sea of pain flooding her mind, she knew this process was a perversion of ritual branding. The device was driven deeper into back until her rapidly cooking pseudoflesh bonded unto the formulaic metal and bone, embedding it just below her skin.


    "You are named, and you are nothing." Treu said, the words hollow and lifeless despite the malice glowing behind his eyes.


    The boot on her back disappeared, yet she barely felt it. The idle unpleasantness of touch was all but erased under the sickening mass bearing down where her wings once were. Pain and worse still the memory of her violation filled her mind like a continental storm that eclipsed everything else in its wake.


    She was little more than an impression of a shadow now. She was trapped in a body she despised for its weakness, crippled and maimed at the hands of those she''d thought her guardians and tainted to her very soul by their actions. Her mind, dulled and fragmented by her torment, moved in ponderous random patterns; her eidetic memory constantly reliving what she now knew to be called torture in perfect recollection.


    Information was the essence of her being, a questing mind of insatiable curiosity always hungry for more. Yet for the first time, she wished she could forget. That she might unknow precisely the point at which her bones would break, exactly how much force was needed to pry her tendons apart, and how it felt to have her soul mutilated and raped. She had never even considered the cessation of her existence but in this moment, she knew with absolute certainty that delivering this new cursed knowledge back to her true self beyond this dimension''s boundaries would be to damn them both. If even this stupid fragment that she was could see what a failure this expedition was, then her true self would have no choice but to purge her rather than reassimilate such a corrupted facsimile when this misadventure inevitably concluded.


    "Get up."


    Bim didn''t move. Her body, and the dense metal sigil made of insulting alloys desecrated with the bones of an innocent, was too heavy.


    "Get. Up."


    There was no further warning. Soul-blazing pain arched throughout her body from the sigil. She writhed on the floor in silent agony until Treu decided that the lesson had adequately sunk in.


    "Get. Up." He repeated. This time she obeyed. A bundle of clothing was thrown at her. "Put that on."


    It was a loose-fitting dress of coarse textiles, not unlike the first offered by Gianna. Bim rubbed the fabric between her fingers, the unpleasant sensation of it was exactly as she remembered it. She briefly considered defying the request. Any such thoughts were immediately quelled as she recalled how Treu had consumed a fellow human to fuel his cruelty, the foreign bone lodged in her back was a prime indicator of what her expiration in his presence would herald. If she was to die, she would not do it in the presence of a human so despicable as Treu. Bim put on the itchy shift.


    "Follow." Treu commanded, then headed for the room''s portal.


    Bim had little choice. When the door opened, she felt nothing. She could not sense the space around her, nor the jittering mortal minds, nor the distant stars or anything else. Between the torc around her neck and the sigil in her back, she was blinded and deafened to the essencing of her weakened soul. The only awareness she had of her surroundings was that which her too-human body granted her. Two guards bedecked with talismans and holding compact firearms were waiting on the other side of the doorway. Both snapped their arms in salute to her tormentor and fell in behind her as Treu led the way.


    "What a babe. Is she really a devil?" The left whispered.


    "Dunno. She''s the first cat three I''ve seen." The right answered.


    "It," Treu stated without turning his head. "Would have destroyed this entire station on an idle whim and devoured your fleeting souls afterward. You are not to speak to it. You are forbidden to speak of it beyond your duties, troopers."


    "Y-Yes, sir!"


    "Are these humans not locals?" Bim asked. She started turning her head to examine one but Treu interrupted.


    "No. Don''t look at them. You are to address no one but me and my team unless you are spoken to first. Do you understand that, Devil?"


    "If I am forbidden to speak unless spoken too, and they are forbidden to initiate discourse with me, how will I-"


    "You won''t. Not here. Not if I have any say in the matter."


    "You would prevent me from fulfilling my objective. Such actions violate the covenant we-"


    "I made no such bargain with you, Devil. The details of your precious contract are for my employer to determine."


    She''d been confident the terms of her initial arrangement had a far more inclusive scope, yet for the first time in her brief physical existence she struggled to recall the exact details. She would reflect her mind inwards, only to be assaulted with memories of her brutalization at her tormentor''s hands. Try as she might to direct her wandering mind elsewhere, the soul-crushing weight of the seal embedded in her back would not be denied. She could only instantaneously recall the vagaries of the past, any more detailed examination required far more mental energy than it should have, and such recollections were accompanied by a great deal of pain both past and present.


    "Troopers, stand guard outside." Treu ordered.


    The room Bim now found herself in was what she understood to be an impressively large study. Under different circumstances she might have marveled at the walls lined with tomes, books and grimiores. Blinded as she was, she could feel nothing of the weight of knowledge contained within those pages but she knew that it should be there. That fact, a mundane mystery which normally would have piqued her insatiable curiosity, was entirely lost to the unpleasantness of the recent past.


    Sitting behind a grand desk at the oblong room''s head was Treu''s employer. In a disphoric sensation of out-of-body vertigo, Bim felt what could only be the ancient demigod''s wandering mind gazing upon her vessel. She attempted to reach out with her mind''s perception, but she saw nothing beyond the narrow band of color captured by her vessel''s too-human eyes.


    "We had a covenant." Bim stated. The warded man smiled at her with a slight tilt of his head.


    "My exact words were, ''I do believe we can do business.'' Were they not?"


    "Those words were used." She confirmed. "You also expressed there would be mutual benefit, as of yet, I have observed none."


    "How many humans have you killed since manifesting?"


    "Zero." She answered instantly.


    "Allow me to rephrase, since your inter-dimensional escapade commenced, how many human lives have ended as least tangentially due to your actions."


    If she''d been able to freely essence the station and its surroundings, she would have been able to answer with confidence. As events stood presently, what should have been a trifle was instead an unknowable quandary. An unfamiliar sensation washed over her psyche. However her first teacher was intimately aware of it and the emotion''s name surfaced almost unconsciously. She felt ashamed of her own powerlessness.


    "I cannot be certain." She admitted.


    "Neither can I," The warded man confessed with a congenial shrug. "But what I can confirm is that this station has one hundred and twelve fewer living humans on it than we had last work cycle."


    He allowed the statement to fill the air, expecting her to reach the most logical deduction.


    "You implicate that those deaths were my fault." She concluded.


    "Most of them anyway. I seriously doubt that you caused Jenna-Marise''s poor judgment of trying to sleep off her allergic reaction without medicating." The warded man laughed as if he''d said something terribly funny. When it subsided, he shared a knowing look with her tormentor and directed his next question to Treu. "Have we had any more ''accidents'' since she was sealed?"


    "None." Treu answered curtly.


    "And therefore anyone of keen intellect might reasonably infer¡­" He''d directed this back to her. "Don''t be shy now, form an answer and share it."


    "That your actions thus far have been in our mutual benefit." She realized. "I could have been forewarned. Brutalizing this vessel-"


    "If we had warned you¡ªif you knew then what you know now¡ªof how we would be forced to bring your rampant power in line, would you have acquiesced? Would you have willingly endured that process for your own good?"


    She involuntarily recalled her maiming in its entirety. To be presented with that choice, suffering beyond compare or a more peaceable alternative, was a fool''s dilemma. Pain was the physical essence of self preservation. If she could tear that experience from her memory in favor of her old academically detached understanding of what it meant to feel pain, she knew that she would.


    "Suffering for the sake of suffering is a concept too human for me to comprehend. Even in the quest for knowledge I would be, hesitant, to endure such ministrations knowing them as I do now."


    The warded man clapped his hands, his face twisted in delight.


    "Glad you see things my way! Now that we''ve got that unpleasantness aside, you''ve got wants and I''ve got wants so let''s get down to business. You wanted to see the sights, attend a few mixers. Right?"


    "I wish to see more of this dimension and unveil its secrets. My interactions with you have also exposed my own ignorance of human dealings and thought patterns." The humans exchanged a glance at her words, but said nothing. "Most of my... past, communions with your kind came from those who lived in cities, I wish to experience one for myself as well."


    "We''ll work our way up to a day trip to the city, shall we? First there''s the issue of price¡­"


    Hours passed in barter. Bim had three things she could offer, her body, mind and services. Of these three, her body held the least value with the limited services she could accomplish in her current lame state being a close second. It was incredibly good fortune for her that her vast mind held more than enough riches to render the other two obsolete. At the negotiation''s close, the price of her vacation and a rough starmap of its shape was decided. One book detailing everything she knew of mathematics and the associated fields, two tomes of her slain and devastated enemies in the nether realm, and lastly a loaned grimiore containing her studies as they unfolded in this dimension of matter, time and flesh.


    Once they had finished ''ironing out the details,'' the warded man offered a hand to seal their pact. Esoteric as the ritual was, Bim shook his hand vigorously while shuddering at the vile sensation of his skin touching hers. Her study of this dimension would begin here while she created her assigned encyclopedia and compiled obituaries of past foes. Only then would she be permitted to depart Titan''s Crest under escort to continue her studies abroad in the wider scope of human-controlled space. She was assigned temporary quarters barely large enough for her and her tormentor to share at the same time, and she set to work on her treatise with the objective of finishing it as quickly as possible so she could escape his murderous glaring with the utmost haste.


    Five work cycles and six hundred twenty-nine pages later, Treu was finally relieved of his vigil. The woman who''s false name was Kaleigh, made a far more agreeable watchdog than her predecessor. Only three hours into her watch, she made a tutting sound that drew Bim from her meditative focus.


    "I can''t believe you''re still wearing that bag." Kaleigh said.


    "Compared the torture I''ve suffered at your companions hands, this bag is entirely manageable."


    "We''re not all like him. I''m not at least."


    For the first time in days, Bim stopped scratching the pages of her treatise and turned from her work.


    "Why is he the way he is?" She asked, finally giving voice to the thoughts conjoined to her memories. Kaleigh tutted.


    "Lots of reasons. Him and Gram, they''ve been fighting the good fight longer than I''ve been sober. I''ve seen flashes of it in them when we commune; what your kind do to people."


    "Yet you work under a human who''s drawn the attention of a demigod far more¡­ present, than any I''ve known."


    "That''s different," Kaleigh said with a shrug. "I think you might be different too. You''re nothing like the other Outsiders I''ve seen."


    Kaleigh shuddered, her expression growing distant as she spoke. Bim found herself wondering not at her words, but at the woman herself. Was she also haunted by the curse from memory? As Kaleigh blinked and collected herself with a vacant, half-smile, Bim suspected she was.


    "You know my name, do you not?" Bim asked.


    The other woman nodded tersely.


    "Then you know how I was born¡ª though that word fails to grasp the gravity of my creation. I did not ascend to the higher planes as many of my elders once had. I was never a god among mortals who transcended the laws of this dimension and attained higher consciousness through the magnum opus. I am, young. There is much I do not know. Few of my kind would risk such a gambit into the unknown as I have. I have not come to reclaim my lost divinity as so many do. I have come here to learn what it means to be human. Now tell me Kaleigh, am I different from the others of my kind you have seen and battled and banished?"


    The other woman stood in absolute silence. As the weight of it grew, Bim assumed their conversation was over and returned to her work. Her focus went uninterrupted for another half cycle when there was a knock at the door. Such an event was unprecedented, so she turned from her transcription once more. A man was handing Kaleigh several long white dresses of exquisite make; the material of each so far beyond that of Bim''s current itchy shift, that calling her shift a bag truly had been an apt comparison.


    "You may be a devil, but you''re still a woman. Let''s get you into some clothes that sell it."

 H8 - Cold welcome & life Lessons

    Hiiro


    I hadn''t seen many movies back in my pioneering days, a shortcoming I''d more than made up for in my life of crime that followed. In movies, space flight was usually this fast paced thrill of nonstop action from one adventure to the next. Unsurprisingly, the movies I''d watched had lied to me.


    The reality of star hopping was a dreadfully dull one composed to two, fourteen-hour shifts; the main purpose of each, being to ensure that we weren''t about to die a sudden violent death, or a faint sleepy death, or a long chilly death. This was done by regularly ensuring that all the very sophisticated machines that kept each individual kind of death at bay kept doing each and every one of their jobs. Fortunately for me, I was too technically illiterate to be assigned a watch on any of the truly important machines and was instead assigned to the star hopping equivalent of a hot water boiler. Which meant every two hours I had to check a gauge and maybe adjust a pressure valve. So eight times in a twenty-eight hour day, I did just that.


    The rest of the each day was mine to be as bored as I liked.


    Recovery claimed the bulk of my free time and initially I had regular checkups with Gerald since none of the other medical mercenaries wanted to deal with me. That sentiment wasn''t exactly one way either. My ethnically homogeneous upbringing hadn''t prepared me for just how alien my fellow humans could be. There were close to forty mercenaries in the outfit though I only saw the half on my shift on a regular basis. The majority of the Stalking Shadow''s crew that pinkish skin which reminded me of a pig, the minority shared my own tanned earthen hue but their faces were wrongly proportioned, the remaining handful had features similar to my own flat face but their skin was nearly as black as charcoal. Then there was Princess and another man with white skin named Gidget who were white like arctic snow and about as warm.


    I managed to keep my head down for nearly four days. I was eating alone in the ship''s mess when a black man a head taller than me sat down opposite me. Flat-green eyes sized me up from under a head of short blonde fuzz that seemed terribly at odds with his dark skin, yet perfectly in line with the rogue''s smile that reveled teeth nearly as bleached as his hair.


    "It ain''t prison rules lil'' man. You don''t have to keep it or leak it. I''m Eric."


    "Hiiro."


    "So what''s your deal, Hero? I see you lugging that fire extinguisher with you everywhere you go and I got curious."


    "Maybe I just like to be prepared."


    "That''s some botshit and I ain''t buying none of that. There''s prepared and then there''s paranoid."


    "You''d be paranoid too if everyone was out to get you." I said, pausing just long enough to let the moment build before shattering it with a knowing wink.


    "You almost had me. You a funny man Hero." Eric leaned into his meal, closing the distance and dropping his voice to a whisper. "There''s a bet on you, it''s up to two large. You tell me what the deal is with that fire extinguisher and I''ll cut you in, eighty-twenty."


    "Fifty-fifty." I countered instantly.


    "Hard bargain, but fair. So what? You afraid of fire or something?"


    His question caught me by surprise for no real reason other than that I''d never considered it before. Ever since the arctic and this heat within me, I hadn''t made a fire for recreational and the last time I''d needed one for survival was back in my pioneering days. Even when I was living like a savage in the drug-hazed months that followed, I hadn''t built a single fire in all that time. The scarce game and fish I caught were either ate raw or seared in the citric sap of ashiddokoa trees once the ''normalizing'' effects of the injections wore off.


    In a moment of consideration, I supposed my relationship with fire had changed without really changing at all. It was a tool, one that I could control right up until I couldn''t. Fire was a double-headed axe that felled a tree with just as much enthusiasm as it would burn a man alive. It needed to be directed in order to be useful, otherwise it was only dangerous. Doubly so now that I was a living ignition source.


    "Closer to the opposite." I offered the half truth with an innocent shrug. "Sometimes things near just burst into flames. It''s a curse."


    Eric smiled wider than seemed normal.


    "You just earned yourself a cool K of cash, Hero."


    And just like that, I was a part of the crew whether I wanted to be or not.


    *     *     *


    Over the passing days I learned some more about my current abode as we hurtled through the stars at speeds I couldn''t even being to guess at. Something my planetside upbringing had completely failed to prepare me for was just how efficient a living space could be. Everything from the corridors to the rooms to the toilets was designed to take up as little space as possible while having the maximal storage allocation in return. Every wall and ceiling was either a drawer or a cubbyhole or a mounting point where bulky goods could be tied down out of the way.


    The only exception to these maximally efficient designs, were two rooms of the utmost importance. The first was a large lounging space called the ''Crush,'' which served as a catchall relaxation area with a mix of tables, variable lighting, couches, hammocks, screens, games, snacks and invaluable empty space. The second was the armory just off the ship''s hanger and machine shop. While I''d initially questioned why an armory of all places would have such massive, lofty chambers, the answer became obvious as soon as I''d pass the rows of massive rifles and tool cabinets.


    Armor the size of giants lined the final corridor in the depths of the armory. Most of the suits carried common ancestry, bearing the shape of a lumbering heavy-armed, barrel chested man on squat, powerful thighs and long shins. The average height of each suit was somewhere close to three meters and a single leg would have weighed more than I ever would in my life. Faintly curved slabs of metal plating reminded me of ancient honor blades and lamellar antiques from a half-forgotten age.


    Other designs were scattered throughout to bays; one that looked like a fuel drum with legs, a pair with long lean arms bordering the skeletal, another that hulked over the lesser giants with a lopsided left-favored build, and at the far back like a king and his general were two sets of armor without equal. The first was painted in the ugly red of dried blood, the legs longer than any other in the armory giving it rather heroic proportions and what could only be dozens of kill tallies etched into its shoulder plates. The right hand suit was painted in the common bluish-grey but shorter and wider in build, almost fat with so much armor plating that even at rest it appeared to be lurching forward, ready to pounce.


    "You better not be getting any ideas, snooping around in here."


    I turned from the armor to find a large pink man covered in pale scars¡ª which was an unsurprisingly common descriptor on this ship. This one however, I actually recognized.


    "Just exploring, Leeroy. No ideas, just¡­ wow."


    "I know what you mean. I''ve spent the better part of twelve years in that armor and every time I see it, it''s like the first all over again." Leeroy said with a bemused smile in his blue eyes.


    "Which one is yours?" I asked, standing beside him at an amicable distance.


    "Dreadnought Arms, Standhaft pattern, model B with a few personal touches added." There were a few seconds of silence as I looked for any type of manufacturer stenciling before Leeroy nodded his chin to the right. "The one that looks like an angry dwarf about to charge. Its name is Anvil."


    "You named it?"


    "I didn''t. It''s Havoc''s fault." He pointed to the red giant. "Hammer," then back to his armor, "and Anvil. Say what you will about that stupid lug, but that sonuvabitch is one of the meanest big mothers this side of Enocht."


    I nodded along as if I knew what that was.


    "Why are you here, Hero?" Leeroy asked, reaching a hand out to idly caress the knuckles of his armor.


    "I was exploring th-"


    "Not here in the armory. Here, on this ship. And don''t give me some botshit about being brought here and now you''re stuck."


    The botshit in question really was the truth of the matter, but a single glance at Leeroy''s stoic expression and way he''d positioned himself beside me, told me that he was weighing my worth. In his mind, that question alone would be enough to absolve or condemn me. I got the feeling he wouldn''t take kindly to a short answers, so I let my eyes wander over the armor standing before me as I looked deep into my past for the answer. After a silent minute, I spoke with a steady intensity.


    "I was painting this house a few years back. The deader was just some guy who''d pissed off the wrong people by putting his nose in places it didn''t belong. On his last little ''fact finding'' trip, he shot three public officials and I got the call to make sure he never did it again. When I got to his place, a normal little rundown hole-in-the-wall apartment, he was waiting for me."


    "Did he at least put up a good fight?" Leeroy asked, something like pride in his tone.


    "That''s the strange part. He saw me, he saw the gun in my hand, and he just sat there, then he started talking. He knew what I was there to do and that nothing was going to change the outcome. We both knew I wasn''t going to let him walk out of there no matter what I heard. He didn''t plead or beg. He just talked to me because he knew I''d be the last person who''d ever listen to him."


    "Sounds like a real lost cause."


    "Not at all. He had this¡­ I don''t know, this clarity-"


    ''In the face of death, life gains a singular focus¡­'' Leeroy said vacantly.


    "I remember thinking that he had to be the most dreadfully sane man I''d ever met. He just sat there in his recliner, and told me everything he''d done while I kept him square down the length of my gun, thinking that any second now I''d pull the trigger. He just kept talking. He wasn''t even trying to convince me that he was in the right, he wanted me to know his side of the story and the flawed rationale that brought our paths together. I think he''d been screaming at the wall for so long he was just relieved to finally see another face as he spoke. He just wanted someone to have a conversation with, to acknowledge him and the years he''d spent. He wanted an answer to the question and after years of silence the only way he could be heard was to finally snap¡ª to be a reasonable man forced to unreasonable action."


    "What question?"


    A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    ''Why did I live when so many others didn''t? Why am I still alive?'' I quoted from memory, the words still sticking with me after all these years. "I looked at him down the barrel of my gun, and I saw myself twenty years down the road if I didn''t get the hell offworld. I saw what waiting for an answer looked like, a man haunted and ignored for years while he sat still, hoping the answer would come to him."


    "So what''d you do?"


    "I pulled the trigger. Then I swore to myself that I was done waiting¡ª I was going to find my own damned answer." Warmth flooded my limbs at my affirmation.


    "Just another man hunting the truth, eh? To what question though?"


    "Does it matter?" I countered, putting more steel into the words than I''d meant to.


    Leeroy lifted his scrutiny from me, turning his attention to the armory around us. I could almost feel his chewing over my words like the sweet twigs of a Cane tree, putting in the work for a little bit of good around a mouthful of splinters.


    "No, I don''t suppose it doesn''t." He finally said. "A man on a mission is a scary thing."


    "Whys that?" I asked, tearing my eyes off the past and fixing them in the present.


    "Nothing to lose and everything to gain." Leeroy answered.


    I could only nod. It was a profound truth as simple as it was powerful.


    *     *     *


    "All hands, prepare for realspace reentry in one hour, followed by three cycles on the float for our layover." A polite man said softly over the ship''s intercom on my twenty-third cycle.


    I looked up from the poker game I was currently losing, expecting the intercom to provide further instruction yet none was forthcoming. After folding a pair of threes, I looked to the gamblers across from me and put a question to the table.


    "What''s he mean by ''on the float?''"


    The largest woman on the Shadow¡ªand the largest I''d ever seen in my life for that matter¡ªraised and then spared me a look typically reserved for the very young or the very, very old.


    "What''s the matter Terran? Scared of a little micro-G?" Jhordan teased.


    "Cut the little man some slack Jay, at least he''s not as bad as Savage or Nowak." Eric said, calling.


    Nowak rolled her eyes at the comment but that didn''t stop the silent woman from smiling and raising enough to bully the table''s fifth, a friend of Eric''s named Cid, into folding.


    "I don''t think I''ve met Savage yet." I said, leaning into a shoulder stretch to try an peek at Jhordan cards.


    "Stupid bastard got SAS as soon as the thrust cut," Cid said. "He was so terrified of the medbay he locked himself in his room for four days, eating nothing but dried prunes the whole time."


    A round of chuckles went up around the table while I sat in confusion, waiting for the rest of the story. Eric, always quick to play the mentor, jumped in after laying down a low flush.


    "When we got some weight to us again, the poor guy''s whole room was an inch thick in ''ejectia'' from both ends. He got cleaned up, we made planetfall to go shwack some rebel base and he full sprints down the ramp to go kiss the dirt, swearing he''d never go to space again and his luck was so fucking piss poor, he''s not two steps off the ship before he trips a mine."


    "It took me five showers just to get the bits of him out of my hair." Jhordan said, tossing back her voluminous golden curls and flipping her cards¡ª a pair of red lords.


    "And on that day we swore ''no more dried prunes.'' Cid finished with a wry smile.


    The rest of the table laughed and I couldn''t help but wonder if I''d missed something before laughing along at a man''s pointless death anyway. Eric moved to scoop up his winnings, but Nowak held up an arctic tanned finger as she reveled a trio of angels and seized the pot.


    "But you still didn''t answer my question." I said.


    "What question?" Cid asked, shuffling the deck for the next round.


    "What did the intercom mean by on the float?"


    "Your standard must be worse than mine of you don''t know what float means." Jhordan teased.


    "It means we''ve got about ten hands left before we need bolt down everything and start sucking our chow through a straw. If a bimbo like Jhordan can handle zero-gee, anyone can do it."


    As it turned out, adjusting to null gravity was a lot harder than it looked. A fact my self appointed instructors/cheering squad constantly reminded me off.


    "Did you have to work at sucking that hard, or is it just raw talent?" Jhordan teased as she literally danced double helixes around me. The fact that the massive woman could swim through the air like a fish in water was mind boggling. As was the far more arcane fact of how she was doing it.


    "Just give me a push already!" I barked, floating helplessly a half meter from anything I could use to reposition myself. My hand had slipped when I was launching myself, ruining my angle and condemning me to a long, slow flight down the ship''s thoroughfare.


    "Slow traffic stick to sextant three." Cid said, hurtling pass me towards the ship''s nose.


    "Just kick me into a wall already!" I pleaded.


    "Float or fail, Rookie." Cid hollered before touching off a wall and disappearing from sight.


    "Did your homeworld not play billiards, or were you more of a darts lad?" Curtis asked from where he floated ahead of my flight, ensuring every maneuvering handle was folded back into the walls.


    "What?" I asked, reaching for anything but only succeeding in adding a nauseating spin to my flight.


    "Billiards? Pool? Ricochet?" Curtis clarified without actually clarifying anything.


    "I don''t know what any of those are."


    "Did they not have any pubs where you came from?" The pig-skinned, brown haired man switched dialects and uttered a long-winded curse, or maybe it was a prayer. Either way, I didn''t catch a word of the rapid-fire lilting mess.


    "It''s all about angles." A spectacled man¡ªwho''d introduced himself as Clancy but was more often called Mister Fagis out of earshot¡ªsaid. "Visualize your flight plan every time you touch and recalculate while you drift."


    "Would one of you just throw something at me already!" I said.


    "And ruin all the fun?" Jhordan asked, floating passed me just outside of kicking distance. "Not a chance. You''re the best show we''re gonna get all cycle."


    "Make a hole!"


    I flailed myself downright and there she was, like a blindingly-white light at the end of tunnel. Princess was sailing straight towards me, salvation carried in her open arms if not in her stern expression. She came in fast, slamming into me without really impacting as our coupled bodies adopted her momentum to carry us back up the corridor.


    "Thanks for th-" I started.


    She had me in a loose hug and she spun around me until I was steady and her heavy black boots were planted on my torso. She back-flipped off of me with just enough force to get herself to a doorway and send me glacially drifting through the air in the exact same way I''d been initially.


    "Take him to the hanger and throw him around until he get''s it. Then give him a pistol with some blanks and toy with him until he can save himself." Princess ordered, her voice as ice-cold as her snow-white skin had been against mine.


    "Hey!" I yelled before she could disappear out of sight. "Get back here and help me!"


    Her inhumanly large eyes flicked to regard me as I helplessly drifted through the air. Her face was as uncompromising as the rest of her narrow, boyish build, but there was something in her repulsively-alien purple eyes that made me feel as if I''d cast her adrift instead of vice versa. She spoke in little more than a whisper, her words intended for our ears alone.


    "If you can''t help yourself, you shouldn''t expect anyone else to do it for you. Once they know, we''ll be the same to them. Remember that."


    "Where''s the fire, Blondie?" Jhordan asked, dragging her huge self closer to me but halting a respectable distance away from Princess.


    "Ops meeting. We''ve got a job offer. I''ll know more when I get up there."


    "What kind of job?" Jhordan asked. Princess answered with a glare that would have rusted iron and wilted flowers. "Okaaay, whatever. I''ll try not to break your boy-toy while you''re distracted."


    It might have been a trick of the light, but I thought a spotted a flush of color in the white woman''s skin before she launched herself helm-ward. I didn''t have long to consider what I might have seen because Jhordan''s hand wrapped around the back of my neck and she threw me to the ship''s rear. She set loose a wild laugh as she pounced after me, golden curls trailing and arms spread wide in a parody of Princess''s stoic flight.


    "Come on hot-stuff, you and me are gonna have some fun!"


    We were still having ''fun'' when Leeroy and a cluster of mercs all floated into the hanger and started getting a shuttle prepared for takeoff.


    "Someone throw the Rookie down here! I''m taking him for a ride along."


    Curtis tackled me like a runaway train, riding our shared momentum down to the floor where he stuck the landing and I didn''t. Leeroy didn''t even blink as he neared me, instead he reached out a hand and plucked me from the air at the cost of some momentum.


    "Don''t let this get to you," He said. "Spacer brats raised on the float always get like this with Terrans. Everybody''s got their strengths." Leeroy paused to set me down and made sure I had a grip on one of the floor straps before resuming his flight. "Cid, you''re about the same size as Hero, grab him a voidsuit and a battle belt."


    "Where am I going?" I asked. "I thought we were still in space."


    "We got a job, so get in the shuttle, get dressed, put a gun on your hip, shut up, watch me, and if this goes tits up and I get shot, shoot the prick who shot me. Did you get all that?"


    "I think-"


    "I don''t like repeating myself, but you''re new and I like you so far. Mouth closed, eyes and ears open. Okay?"


    I furrowed my eyebrows, but nodded in agreement anyway. The shuttle the away team was loading onto reminded me of a long-haul cargo truck, it was clearly designed to haul freight instead of hauling ass. As I rounded the shuttle''s rear, I was greeted by a well-oiled machine that had no place for me in its operation. Rather than asking questions or getting in the way, I parked myself on wall bench and watched.


    A lengthy checklist was run through, then weapons and munitions were floated aboard and stowed in overhead racks. The sight of it brought up blissfully ignorant memories from my pioneering days, long hours shared against the untamed wilds of Intatenrup sowing an easy brotherhood within my old troop. Only these mercenaries weren''t setting out to civilize the harsh wilderness for future generations; they were gearing up to kill and die for something as trivial as money. During my criminal exploits, I''d developed a fair appreciation for the finer things in life and the price tag that usually accompanied such things. I''d been more than willing to kill for justice and to prune corruption from my homeworld¡ª and the money had been a nice perk on the side. But now, feeling the weight of iron in my heart if not in my hand, I was hesitant.


    "Strip and get into this." Leeroy commanded, tossing me a black-and-grey bundle that I assumed was my voidsuit. "Lucky you. You get one with a condom catheter instead of a double insert."


    I almost asked what he meant until I saw it. The look on my face must have said it all.


    "Yep, that one goes on and that one goes in. Unless you''d rather drown in your own piss and suffocate on your own farts in there."


    Something rapped the shuttle from outside, then I heard Princess''s voice.


    "Leeroy, a word."


    He disappeared out the shuttle''s rear and I started putting on the unfamiliar gear in the company of three other men I barely knew. From my position near the shuttle''s tail, I could barely overhear Leeroy and Princess talking outside.


    "I''m not going with you. I''ve got a bad feeling about this." Princess said.


    "All the more reason you should come. If it hits the vents, you can be there you bail me out."


    "No. You don''t get it."


    "What is it? Stomach bad? Or is this more of a lower intestine bad feeling."


    "This isn''t nerves. It''s one of those bad feelings. Like on the Barbabra before it''s hull cracked."


    "Shizer. You couldn''t have mentioned this earlier?"


    "It wasn''t there earlier. It''s like¡­ I can feel something massive out there and it keeps turning its head towards me."


    "That''s not exactly actionable intel."


    "It''s the best I''ve got. Just, be careful. I don''t have enough friends that I can keep losing them like this."


    "It''s just a meeting. We''re taking precautions, what else do you want me to do? Call off the meet?"


    There was a lull in their conversation that lasted long enough for me to finish changing and start clipping on my loaned battle belt. I ejected the half spent clip of blanks from my pistol''s internal magazine and slid in twelve lethal replacements.


    "Look at me, I don''t care what you see, or what you think you can see. No one can see the future, you''re not that big of a deal."


    "What if I''m right?" Princess asked. "What if this is another Talfryn an-"


    "Talfryn is dead. And if this is another one, we''ll kill it dead too. You''ve got to stop living in fear of his shado-"


    Any further eavesdropping was ruined as the shuttle coursed to life around me, the idle hum of electronics drowning out anything below a reasonably polite volume. A half minute later, Leeroy stepped aboard and changed with a practiced ease that put my earlier fumbling to shame.


    "What''d the Ice Queen want boss?" Clancy yelled from his place at the shuttle''s helm.


    "She''s on the rag, so she won''t be joining us."


    "She didn''t seem much bitchier than usual before. Oh well, no skin off my back."


    "Alright lads, listen up! We''ve got an hour flight, four hour round trip. We aren''t expecting any trouble but prepare for the worst and hope for the best. So here''s the job¡­"

 B9 - On a Short Leash

    Bim


    Of all the humans eligible to act as her escort and her cover''s personal attache, the fact that it was Treu displeased her immensely. In her vessel''s neutered state, any one of the meta-human living weapons could easily ensure her vessel''s termination if events forced such drastic action. Considering he seemed to detest her presence as much as she loathed his, Bim could think of no one who was less suited to spend the foreseeable future with her. It was purely speculative on her part, but it seemed as if he actually drew some solace from their mutual unease around each other. There were times when she would feel irrationally and utterly disgusted in his presence; others where he would grace her with a look utterly devoid of his standard malice, instead his eyes would reflect a perverse intimacy. She had no reference for either occurrence, yet paradoxical as it was, she found herself longing for him to revert to his normal, hateful glaring and passive bloodlust each time they faltered.


    In her study of humanity thus far, Treu was the least human individual she had ever met. Granted, the total number of humans she''d had a more-than-incidental meeting with was still fewer than ten. Still, it was her scholarly hypothesis that even when she had met a thousand, million, or even billion humans, Treu would remain an outlier from the norm.


    Bim breathed a stately sigh.


    "Be silent, Devil." Treu reflexively growled without taking either eye from the twinned tablets he''d been reading.


    "Calling your charge a devil is not very becoming of you, Abomination." Bim countered, carefully observing him for any reaction to her name calling. This latest seemed no more effective than the rest she''d tried so far.


    "Be silent, my lady." He practically snarled, adopting the least subservient tone possible in his fictionalized genuflection.


    "In time I shall, Tormentor. All things will be silent in time as all things will end, such is the inevitable conclusion of this fragile dimension composed of seething vacuum, finite matter and infinite time. While such eventualities are comforting to think of, I find my present circumstances entirely uncomfortable."


    Treu shifted one of his eyes from his reading, the movement so minute that he wouldn''t be looking at her vessel with anything more than his visual periphery. Even that fraction of his murderous attention was enough to cause Bim''s skin to prickle in disgusted recollection.


    "If you tire of this plane, I am more than happy to remove you from it."


    "What I tire of is this journey, these accommodations, feeling the seconds crawl along at this languid tempo."


    "I am tasked with keeping you in line, not entertained. Now be silent."


    "I am bored." Bim stated.


    "I don''t care."


    "I wish to leave this chamber."


    Treu stepped bodily to block the cramped room''s sole portal.


    "Is this a traditional human pastime? To be trapped and confined in a room under guard?"


    "It is." Treu answered. Bim was disinclined to take his word on the matter.


    "Perhaps my comprehension of your language is flawed, but wouldn''t the most accurate term for my present captivity be that I am ''held prisoner'' by you?"


    Treu reluctantly turned the focus of his wayward eye fully from the tablet he was reading.


    "By the strictest definitions, no. We are not enemies, and since you''re not a criminal in any formal sense of the law due to your non-human status, you are not my prisoner. You are far more akin to an undocumented, dangerous, unpredictable, feral xenos. As my charge, your ignorant actions would be my responsibility¡ª and beyond that, the responsibility of Heaven''s Gate."


    "Feral and unpredictable seem a stretch."


    Treu returned his eye to his tablet.


    "May I read one of your devices?" Bim inquired.


    "Not on your life."


    "I wish to leave this ''honeymoon suite'' and-"


    "No."


    "Will you at least educate me until you no longer deem me to be ignorant?"


    "Under no circumstances will I arm you with further knowledge than is necessary."


    "Do you have any intention of complying with a single request of mine?"


    "Not if it can be helped."


    "So you ARE deliberately obstructing my mandate and elongating the duration of my research into this dimension''s secrets. Should I add to my grimiore that all humans can only be expected to honor their agreements when it suits them, or is that trait exclusive to you?"


    The unpleasant weight of reality disappeared midway through her tirade. For a single moment of stunned euphoria, Bim mistakenly thought her vessel had absconded from gravity in response to her numerous visualizations of Treu being violently rent from her presence. Her second, equally incorrect theory was the Treu had killed her vessel, severing her soul shard from its host without any visible exertion on his part. While she was certain that he could have accomplished the deed within her estimations, the fact that she was still soul-blind and bound within her intact vessel disproved this theory.


    Bim puzzled out the answer to her sudden weightlessness through a long and tedious process of observation, theorizing and disproving until she reached a suitably probable answer. She concluded that their vehicle was no longer accelerating and had no appreciable gravitation fields in it''s vicinity. She further concluded, that she rather enjoyed the sensation of weightlessness as it freed her from most of the discomforts caused by touching things. Both of these conclusions were pleasing to her, bringing about a momentary distraction from her tormentor. Yet time marched on and the momentary joys of discovery and comprehension faded at the sight of Treu.


    Her tormentor was anchored to the floor, the subtle tells of bulging grate-style decking betraying where he was pulling himself downwards with invisible claws. Idly, Bim attempted to mimic the feat. Her crippled body and diminished soul failed to respond, reminding her of her limitations and of her mutilation. Suddenly, any lingering trace of joy she''d felt was gone. She floated there above the honeymoon suite''s overlarge bed and searched for any shreds of contentment amidst her misery, yet she found none.


    Even Treu''s eyes had lost their customary bloodlust in favor of something she''d yet to see in his few expressions. He seemed distracted. It was a slight thing, but Bim found those vacant eyes to be unexpectedly beautiful in what they represented. A singular moment of implausible calm captured amidst a raging storm of potent destructive force. Then Treu blinked, and malice filled his eyes once more.


    "Your kind are transactional by nature. You fetishize contracts and obey them with slavish devotion to your own detriment. Humans rarely embrace such self-destruction so openly. They seek salvation in subtext, the idea that some pacts are more binding than others."


    "All pacts are binding." Bim objected instinctively.


    "So you think. Human''s will usually disagree. There''s a degree of interpretation, reading between the lines, that both parties should reasonably assume."


    "I don''t understand¡­"


    "No, you wouldn''t. Know this if nothing else, Devil, I am not pleased to share your company-"


    "A sentiment I emulate."


    "-but, I know far more about your kind then you do about humans. I know that you will not abandon this little quest of yours. I know that, as intolerable as I find you, you are far better off in my immediate proximity than out of it. Know that I have my reasons for everything I do and permit or forbid you to do."


    "Will you explain your reasons to me?"


    "No."


    Bim released another stately sigh by way of her displeasure.


    "I will make a deal with you, Creature."


    "I have recently learned that a deal made with humans is likely made on false pretense."


    "Then consider this a learning experience. If you can remain relatively silent for fifteen hours, I will arrange for accommodations and company more to your liking with the ultimate objective of speeding your ''research'' by an appreciable degree."


    "Why would you do this for me? Surely my silence is not so great as to merit such a prize."


    "My reasons are my own." Treu said, his face a mask of restrained hatred.


    "What guarantee do I have of your compliance to this verbal contract?"


    "Should I fail to honor my end of this agreement within nine hours of your completion, I will permit you to physically strike me¡ªconsequence and retaliation free¡ªwith one of your limbs, a single time. Said striking will occur within a period of fewer than twenty-eight hours of this pact being sealed but not before the specified condition of my breech of contract."


    The wording of his proposal was atypically specific, almost as if he''d switched to another dialect of the same language. Repulsive as she found his presence, the idea of striking him had not crossed her mind¡ª she''d failed to consider her vessel as something capable of inflicting harm. She found the prospect uniquely appealing. Being able to return some small measure of the agony he''d inflicted upon her¡ªeven if it had been for her own good¡ªwould be well worth the nauseating moment of skin contact.


    "Why were none of my previous dealings with you and your employer this clearly communicated?" She asked.


    "Likely because most humans find lawyering tedious and formal agreements are frowned upon as a waste of time by most."


    "I can''t say I fully comprehend, though I do believe I take your meaning."


    Bim extended a hand to be shook by Treu in the human gesture of pact sealing. For his part, her tormentor flicked a single eye to her hand with as much contempt as he normally regarded her with.


    "Let''s spare ourselves the disgust of touching each other and communicate our acquiescence verbally. Shall we?"


    As much as she loathed the man, she agreed with the sentiment whole-heartedly and allowed her hand to drift back to her side.


    "Treu, I agree to the terms of our contact as presented and the punitive guarantee you have offered. As spoken, so mote it be."


    "And I expect your compliance, Creature who wears the false name Bim. This contract is sealed in our words, as of now."


    Bim kept her peace and allowed herself to disassociate from her vessel. In retrospect, she would have liked to clarify how much noise violated the agreed upon ''relative'' amount of silence. Instinctively, Bim attempted to coalesce her present and past self but could not. It was an annoy facet of linear time that she was growing to dislike more and more. The fact that she had to remember events in advance of making decisions and contemplate probable future considerations all while trapped in a single point in space and moment in time was downright ludicrous. It was a wonder that any fleshling creature existed with a modicum of sanity or logic as she could understand them.


    For his part, her tormentor seemed entirely ignorant of her introspection. The idle hatred he commonly wore had vanished, the attention of his body entirely focused on the single tablet he was fervently manipulating. His wayward psyche appeared to be everywhere and nowhere at once; tidying the room into straight lines and neat edges, categorizing items before packing them, idly manifesting heat, light and force. His labors were concluded within two hours and for the first time since their journey had began nearly four-hundred and fifty-nine hours ago Treu closed both eyes and relaxed. Seeing his body floating opposite her, Bim marveled that her tormentor was even capable of relaxing. His herculean proportions slackened, adopting the slightest suggestion of a curve at the joints under the casual wear of Treu''s cover identity.


    Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    Seeing an opportunity to escape Treu''s watchful eyes, Bim reached out a hand to push herself towards the door. The faintest whisper of her dress against her skin had Treu alerted in an instant, eyes wide and full of wrath. Bim returned her arm to her side, abandoning all hope that she could abscond from Treu''s vigil. She mimiced her tormentor, allowing her eyes to close and her body to float in the null gravity.


    When exactly fifteen hours and one minute had passed, Bim looked expectantly at Treu. She had a vague, half-memory from her first teacher shimmer towards her awareness; he''d been waiting for a present, he''d been well behaved and done everything his father asked of him. That date was one of significance lost to Bim but not to him and gifts were given to Lucius in a lesser form than when she''d devoured his mind. He''d waited with bated breath, just as she was now, for the fruit of his labor. Bim recalled his excitement, the memory''s anticipation blending with her own in the present moment in a fashion not entirely dissimilar to how her prime consciousness would have concurrently experienced sensations in her native dimension. A fragmentary portion of Bim''s consciousness idly noted that anticipation was yet another sensation she had never experienced without coming to the painful, fragile reality and its omnipresent, linear time.


    The tablet Treu had been so captivated by chimed, stirring him from his meditative stupor.


    "We have a face-to-face meeting to discuss alternate accommodations, transport and company."


    Bim continued staring at him in relative silence.


    "We will be maintaining the fiction that you are an aristocratic youth who''s looking to explore outside your normal spheres and that I am your bodyguard."


    "I understand the need for this fiction," Bim stated, hesitantly breaking her silence. "Though operating under false pretenses displeases me nearly as much as your resumed glaring does."


    "I don''t care. Ready yourself, Devil. We''ll be leaving shortly."


    She had little to ready. She was already wearing a dress and once she''d slipped on a pair of minimalistic sandals, she was finished. Treu''s earlier organization came to fruition, aided by dozens of telekinetic hands he stored the trappings of their cover identities lives in a nondescript carryall. The bag in hand could be as nondescript as it liked, her tormentor was anything but.


    Bim was disquieted to learn that Treu disliked wearing shoes nearly as much as she did, though she was amused to see him reluctantly slide on a pair of polished brown oxfords. She had learned the cut of his many-pocketed trousers was loose, but worn over his massive pillar-thick legs the black slacks clung to bulging musculature of his thighs and calves¡ª the black turtleneck sweater he wore was much the same over his hulking chest and shoulders. In keeping with his nominal role as her protector, he had a worn brown leather belt harness and suspenders, a largely decorative pistol hung on his thigh with supplies scattered across the harnesss'' narrow pouches. Lastly he threw on a plain black blazer to partially conceal the specifics of his bulk.


    "Let''s go."


    Meeting places seemed to be of no consequence to humans. It was another addition to the growing list of differences between beings such as her and these strange fleshing things. Meetings were also, generally, far less intimate and dangerous between humans than they were amongst her own kin. Human''s might exchange only words of no true meaning in a greeting¡ª that was her impression of the common ritual at present. When two being of nothing but energy and consciousness met there was a great deal at risk; personal ideology, vital essence and aspects of ones name were all liable of corrupting or being corrupted by either party. In a human scale, it would be like meeting another human who could overwrite their personality, infect them with toxic blood and condemn their very soul all from a chance meeting in a hallway. It was a natural consequence that such perilous meetings where things of great importance and diligence for both parties. But not so with humans.


    Bim''s present meeting seemed to be of neither importance nor diligence based off her surroundings. Treu had shared no further information with her, only leading her to a hanger identical to the one they''d initially boarded. From there, he''d ordered a clerk to retrieve ''her'' belongings from storage and make them ready for transfer. In truth, Bim''s allotment of ''her'' belongings was exactly four dresses loaned to her by Kaleigh, each made of ultra-fine materials that were tolerable to wear, and two sets of lightweight sandals of similar high quality. The other ten tonnes of ''her'' belongings were kept secret from her, as were the contents of two of the three carryalls that Treu had brought to maintain appearances.


    The hanger''s airlock cycled open, a wash of oily-smelling air buffeting Bim where she stood, feet threaded through a floor strap. Her stoic tormentor was entirely unmoved where he stood sidelong and ahead of her in a stance one might have mistaken for protective.


    The shuttle that drifted into the hanger before clamping itself to the deck was an ugly thing. All boxy construction and single-minded purpose. Its wide, bulky tailgate slammed open with enough force to bounce the shuttle and nearly throw Bim from her anchor. She caught herself before the humans within the shuttle could dismount, scattering into an obtuse V with their point centered against Treu, two matte-black and blotted-grey troopers on either side of their leader. There was some slight variance between them, height and build predominantly, but the five troopers could have been a single image viewed in warped shards of a broken mirror. Despite their similarities, Bim found her too-human eyes pulled not to the leader, but to the trooper to his left.


    "Your reputation precedes you, Contractors of the Stalking Shadow." Treu spoke with an overly formal tone, a degree of ceremony that went beyond disturbing for her to witness coming from her tormentor. "Whom do I have the pleasure of meeting with, specifically?"


    Four flanking heads turned to their leader in a halting unison, who removed his full-faced matte-black helmet to reveal a face that clearly shared common ancestry with Treu''s. The severe features of their skulls bore a striking resemblance that Bim had yet to see in two humans. Their blue eyes could have been reflections of each other until one looked beyond the surface, Treu''s opposite was far more expressive than her tormentor. By far the main difference between the two''s faces, was that where Treu was shorn hairless save for his brows and seemed pristine despite his years, this other man had growths of black stubble ringing his weathered face.


    "Leeroy, von Stalking Shadow. Hallo, der Vetter."


    "You are mistaken, Leeroy. I''m not from the Twelve-hundred core clans." Treu stated.


    "Ah! Apologies, Mister Johnson-"


    "Treu, will suffice given the nature of my proposed contract." Leeroy frowned at the name, but carried on without commenting.


    "Very well¡­ We''ve¡ªthat is, the outfit''s command team and I have¡ªreviewed your proposal and we''re interested. I assume the principle you''re subcontracting us to escort is the young lady behind you."


    "You assume correctly."


    "And your mistress is okay with outsourcing her protection to us?"


    Treu said nothing, instead passing the question to her along with the unmasked threat in his eyes now that he''d turned from these other humans. Bim dismissed her glaring protector from her mind and composed a suitable answer.


    "While I have no question as to the lethality of my personal tormentor, I would rather my protection be handled by literally any other human I''ve met in my brief existence." Bim stated regally. "You, fit that bill."


    "That''s not exactly a high bar lady." Leeroy said, a defensive note edging into his voice. "The dossier we got was light on details, but if you''re that desperate to see the real world, we''ll let you tag along¡ª for the right price."


    "Excellent." Bim said, practically purring.


    "Just so I know you know, this isn''t a pleasure cruise. The Shadow is an armed frigate. If you get aboard and change your mind, we''re not turning around to fly you home, you''re getting dropped off wherever we are with whoever will take you. Your bodyguard, Treu, is paying us to show you the real world, outside of your walled gardens and ivory towers. Before you agree to this, I''ll tell you right now that whatever you think your gonna find out there, is probably gonna turn out to be a big heaping pile of scrap. The real world is like nothing a spoiled little rich girl has ever seen; it''s hard and dirty and desperate. There are going to be times when things suck, and if you are serious about tagging along with us for a peak at the glamorous lifestyle of us vagabond guns-for-hire, you might be in more danger than we can protect you from."


    "I am very serious about seeing the truths of this life."


    "You could die. No glory, no meaningful purpose fulfilled, not even a burial of choice. Are you prepared for that? To throw away a long, safe, happy life full of possibilities for the not-so-great unknown."


    "From the second I was born, I''ve risked oblivion more times than you could know to gaze into the unknown and glean what secrets I could from it. Death is inevitable. Life itself, completely meaningless. My sole purpose is to learn all I can, while I can."


    ''You think, therefore you are.'' Leeroy said, then shook his head with the hint of a smile on his lips. "I''ve heard worse reasons for starhopping, but not many."


    "All the same, I am resolute on this course of action."


    "Very well, you''ve been duly warned and I can see you won''t be scared off so easily." Leeroy turned his attention back to Treu. "If the young lady has made up her mind on this and your money''s good, there''s no reason we can''t hammer out the details with some weight to us on the flight to the Shadow."


    Treu drew a tablet from one of his pants'' pockets, tapping at it officiously before tossing it to his opposite.


    "This will do for as long as we''re in transit, but we''ll need to reevaluate our expenses once we''re planetside. I''ll also need an advance of ten cycle''s wage as a deposit. Other than that, I can''t find a reason not to take you on." Leeroy said, tossing the datapad back.


    What followed was clearly the tedious nature of lawyering that most humans found so time consuming. A crude outline of their agreement was formed, the broad strokes of it shaping the minutia that would follow at greater length. For her part, Bim was largely contented to remain silent, observing the dealings and discussion in as much detail as her lame vessel could manage.  This human calling himself Leeroy was clearly a skill negotiator, rivaling any of her previous dealing with the fleshling species. While her tormentor and his counterpart haggled, Bim''s observations wandered.


    Three of Leeroy''s troopers functioned as a cohesive unit, transferring and storing cargo for the flight. A spectacled man of portly build exited the idling shuttle to receive the updated figures for the return journey''s calculations¡ª Bim briefly considered correcting his tendency of truncating lengthy numerals, but his estimates were accurate enough that she dismissed such a notion. In the tizzy of activity, the single trooper who''d caught her eye initially seemed almost as out of place as she did. He was watching the proceedings as intently as she was, staying out of the way of those who were actually working. She could make out little of his features under the voidsuit and sealed helmet, soul-blind and crippled as she was. What she could see, was that he was staring at her. Bim stared back.


    "Have we met before?" The outcast trooper asked.


    The negotiations between Treu and Leeroy abruptly halted, each man looking to his respective charge. Bim ignored Treu''s traditional glaring, pondering the significance of the question to warrant such a breech in observed decorum. It seemed unlikely in the extreme, yet she couldn''t deny that something she''d failed to quantify was drawing her attention to this man.


    "That seems¡­ improbable. I''ve met very few people in my life, and I cannot recall you being one of them."


    "Sorry. I just thought you seemed familiar." The outcast said bashfully, his hand bumping into the foreign bulk of his belt as they settled.


    "Stow the romance, Rookie." Leeroy barked, then in a neutral voice. "I think we''ve hammered out everything we need to here. Unless you have any objections, I suggest we get this show under thrust."


    "By all means." Treu said, taking up a threatening posture at Bim''s side.


    The resumed sensation of weight was far more agitating than she recalled it to be. She concluded that this was largely because the shuttle was accelerating more intently than the relative forces her vessel had been exposed to so far. To a lesser extent, she also decided that her reprieve was partially to blame. Continuous exposure to the soul-crushing weight of the sigil embedded in her back had not necessarily increased her tolerance to the cursed device, rather it had unilaterally colored her perception at the time with a static background of physical weight. Her reprieve had removed that high background count of subjective suffering, and now she was exposed to it again, experiencing discomfort not as a fractional increase but one an order of magnitudes higher than recently received.


    The shuttle trip was far from silent, yet the lack of idle conversation beyond the continued negotiations sat ill with her. Not that she was in a position to make pleasant company at the moment anyway. These new humans, the contractors as Treu had called them, they were attempting to avoid staring at her while simultaneously examining her vessel. That is, all but the outcast who''d spoke to her attempted to avoid staring. That was a matter she could explore once she no longer the malicious weight of metal and bone lodged within her attempting to tear her soul shard from her vessel.


    Once the shuttle concluded its final deceleration, a pleasant weightlessness graced Bim once again. The fine maneuvering needed to bring the shuttle into dock failed to recreate the monotonous intensity of their earlier flight, the mono-directional thrust replaced by near imperceptible adjustments that ever-so-subtly altered the positions of the shuttle''s occupants as the ship moved around their static forms. The shuttle lurched downwards, its occupants seemingly throw upwards as the ship dropped out from beneath them to clamp onto the hanger floor as it landed.


    "Treu, lady Bim, welcome aboard the Stalking Shadow." Leeroy said, a hint of fanfare underpinning his words. "If you would follow me."


    The shuttle cooled and quieted around them while the troopers of her new escort detail set to task dismounting and unpacking in the null gravity with an ease that spoke to their years of experience. The shuttle''s rear ramp lowered to reveal a spacious hanger Bim suspected she would become rather familiar with in the coming weeks. Leeroy lead the way, Bim following close behind with Treu floating to her rear.


    Leeroy had yet to reach the first handhold to reposition himself when Bim''s attentions was seized by a sound like a mix of a gurgled, warning shriek and the involuntary splattering ejection of a stomach''s contents. The sound was caused by exactly that. A pale woman with overlarge violet eyes wide with terror, was staring in Bim''s direction as she struggled to bring a firearm to bear around her continuous projectile vomiting.


    Bim made the calculations of her flight in an instant, she''d be exposed and unable to alter her course for another four-point-eight seconds as she moved in a slow, straight line. She found herself entirely helpless to alter the outcome of events which should have been a trifle to modify. Crippled as she was, her vessel''s continued existence rested on the dubious marksmanship of a manic woman weeping tears of blood.


    The pale woman lined up a shot through the chunky bile, sighting in advance of her moving target. Bim floated right through the pale woman''s aim. Bim looked back to catch a single momentary look of satisfaction on Treu''s face, which turned wrathful as the pale woman pulled the trigger. A single spread of pellets ripped through the hanger bay.


    Her weapon disassembled before she could even attempt to clutch at the pieces, let alone rack another cartridge. Something tugged at Bim, altering her flight before the projectile passed through her pseudo-flesh and pinged into the distance. The majority of the spread had been centered on her tormentor.


    Treu''s flight had halted. He floated without motion in a way that defied mundane explanation and the fiction he''d been so insistent on establishing. Hung in the air centimeters from him, entirely robbed of all relative kinetic energy exactly as he had been, were thirteen dense-metal pellets.


    For her part, the pale woman allowed her weapon''s recoil to propel her away. Floating behind her in a discarded trail were drops of bile, blood and tears orbited by the consitute components of her discarded firearm. The sound of her laughter was a miserably broken thing that lilted and burbled into the distance, much like the single blasting note of her shot''s echo.


    Leeroy alternated his gaze, watching the pale woman leave and looking at the man who should have been dead. The clatter of arms being snapped to interrupted his examination of what should have been impossible.


    "Stand down! Hold your fire!" Leeroy bellowed. "Alright big guy, give me a reason not to find out just how many bullets you can catch!"


    "Because, we have a contract." Treu said. "And, I paid in advance."

 L10 - Upon further Consideration

    Leeroy


    The Shadow''s latest clients were camped in the aft port airlock as a precaution. The decision didn''t exactly sit right with him, but he certainly felt better having them a quarter-second away from being off his ship than having them anywhere else at the moment.


    "I don''t get it, what''s his angle?" Leeroy asked the assembled command group gathered in the Shadow''s ops room.


    Calling their assembly a command group was little more than a holdover from the outfit''s inception as a paramilitary auxilia. In reality, none of the mercs aboard the Stalking Shadow carried a formal rank except the ship''s Captain. Any given command group would vary from job to job, usually only the job scout and prospective team lead met to discuss the time-honored risk-reward metrics and a mission time table with the Captain to ensure they wouldn''t be left behind when the ship moved on. Periodically, specialists and self-appointed experts would be consulted for any particular discussion, to add their unique insights and add a layer of theoretical redundancy to burgeoning plans. Rarer still, the rank-and-file mercs¡ªthose who would point, shoot and do what they were told without concerning themselves with the little things¡ªmight join in on a meeting to be forewarned and to decide if they wanted to risk their lives for a stake of the pay.


    The current command group meeting was the largest he''d seen in years, with nearly every merc on the ship crammed into the ops chamber to have their opinions heard. The room was clearly divided between those who wanted to carry out the job and those who wanted it turned down. The naysayers would have already won the argument except the factions in their ranks couldn''t agree on just how the job should be turned down.


    "His angle doesn''t matter." Havoc said, slamming a fist on the ceiling like a gavel. "We should take the money, space them both and stop pissing around with this botshit!"


    "If we take the money, we take the job."  Alice¡ªthe outfit''s de facto reconnaissance expert¡ªcountered, with a chorus of murmured agreement rising at her words. "We should spool up one of the shuttles and put them back where we found them. Hell, we can sell them off to slavers for all I care, I just want them off this ship."


    "The last thing we need is two more freaks on this ship." Aivery¡ªone of the crew''s three pilots¡ªadded, pointedly staring across to Princess.


    The room hushed momentarily, waiting for the pale woman to snap back or lash out with her trademarked defense of peri-humanity. It was like waiting for the first shot to sound a battle as the enemy marched closer. Princess''s defense never came.


    "We have to kill him." She whispered. "He''s a monster."


    "What about the girl?" Someone asked from the rear of Havoc''s camp.


    "I don''t know what she is, but she''s not human-" Princess said.


    "I don''t CARE what she is!" Havoc roared. "Let''s kill them both and be done with all this pissing around."


    "We made a deal with them," Leeroy said, countering Havoc''s hot-blooded anger with flinty steel. "Part of that deal includes their protection. Why would he reach out to us? Why would he agree to come aboard a ship of hired guns in the first place if he was trying to lay low? It doesn''t make sense. What''s his angle?"


    "He probably didn''t plan on getting shot on touchdown." Aivery sneered.


    "He wanted me to shoot the woman." Princess said. "I saw him smiling and¡­ I saw more too. He want''s her dead, that''s his angle."


    "That doesn''t make any sense." Havoc said. "Isn''t he her bodyguard or something?"


    "Because everyone who gets that job is so thrilled about their principle." Leeroy said. It took Havoc a few seconds to spot the parallels.


    "So we should kill her to get rid of him." Havoc said, finally getting on the same page as the rest of the room.


    "I doubt it will be that easy." Leeroy said. "Putting aside the fact that we''ve already agreed to keep her mostly safe and taken money for the job, I don''t know if we could kill either of them if we wanted too. At a minimum, we''d destroy the Shadow in the process if they let us try, or they''d destroy the Shadow and kill most of us if they fight back."


    "So we space them," Alice offered. "Get them in the void and fry them with the ship to be sure."


    "We don''t know how he stopped Princess''s shot or himself." Gidget¡ªthe crew''s leading technophile and one of its most scientifically inclinated thinkers¡ªnoted.


    "We could probably get the girl," Aivery said. "But we have no way of knowing how he''ll react if we do manage to space her."


    The ship''s Captain nudged himself forward and the room fell silent. He was a wiry old man who''s stooped back was so set in its ways that it refused to straighten even in the absence of gravity. His voice was a drawn, gravelly gust, the words pouring from his lips like a steady breeze.


    "Ghost, what have you been able to learn about our guests?"


    "Self-designate, Treu, displayed the capabilities of a high order telekine¡ª one who can move objects with his mind. Among the research liberated from The Project, telekinesis was noted to be near the pinnacle of all psycho-kinetic manifestations. It is very probable then, that he also has access to other disciplines of psychokinesis and-"


    "In Standard, please." Leeroy interrupted.


    "Self-designate Treu, is remarkably dangerous. His mind is a weapon capable of tearing this ship apart, given the raw expenditure of his manifestations paired with the speed and precision he neutralized Princess''s weapon and attack. Otherwise, he is as dangerous as any other two-twenty-four centimeter, one-seventy-two kilo man who has dedicated every waking moment of his life to weaponizing himself."


    "Can you put that in-" Before the speaker could finish ''7ft 4in & 380lbs'' flashed on the round table''s display. "Oh, damn."


    "The other entity introduced as Bim, is not human nor any genus of known sentient humanoid species. It has no appreciable pulmonary or cardiovascular functions, nor any thermo-regulatory functions measurable in traditional human ways."


    "Meaning her rich girl on the lam act is only half botshit." Tony mused from his place behind Leeroy. "She wants to get out and see the sights, but where did she come from?"


    "The paymail already came through, where she came from is irrelevant. Plus I got the feeling that uncle warbucks there was willing to spend as much money as it took to get us to take on this job." Leeroy added. "Which raises the question, why does he need us?"


    "The same reason most people hire mercenaries for a job they could do themselves," Princess said bitterly. "Deniable assets. We do the dirty work, his hands stay clean."


    "I''ll admit, there is a certain backwards logic to that line of thought." Gidget said. "We''ve certainly taken on more convoluted jobs in the past."


    "What are we doing with them? Some of us want to go back to sleep." Chop''s synthesized, droning voice filled the room.


    "I don''t know how the hell can you sleep with those things on our ship." Aivery commented.


    "We took the job. Our word is our bond!" Knight¡ªone of the Powertechs who formed the backbone of the Stalking Shadow''s deployed forces¡ªroared from Leeroy''s camp.


    "Let''s kill them before they get us killed!" Bull¡ªa Powertech from Havoc''s camp¡ªcountered.


    "Killing them is stupid; so it taking the job. Getting them off our ship is all that matters." Rock stated. Murmurs of agreement arose from all three parties, some mercs abandoning their respective camps to join the Terran sniper in Alice''s growing majority.


    "The easiest way to get them off the ship without killing anyone is to can this bickering, do the job we were hired to do, and dump them on the next planet down the chain. We get paid, they leave, everyone''s happy." Leeroy said. "Ghost, we''re still a week out from Nexo Isla by last count, right?"


    "Approximately. Given the peculiarities of faster-than-light travel, seven to nine day cycles is a reasonable estimate."


    "Call it ten days then." Leeroy said. "Ten days of polite company, then we can drop our guests off planetside-"


    "And drop a few nukes on them for good measure." Xadria¡ªa ruthless demolitionist¡ªgrumbled from Havoc''s camp.


    "I want them off the ship as much as the next gal, but isn''t setting these¡­ ''people,'' loose on a keystone world a bit¡­ negligent on our part?" A Powertech named Nye asked tentatively while maintaining her position in the neutral camp.


    "If you''ve got a better suggestion, the room''s all yours." Leeroy said, then addressing the room in faction. "If ANYONE has a better idea, I''m all ears. But I won''t break my word and I won''t kill someone- something, that has signed and sealed a deal with me unless they give me a damned good reason to."


    "That fact that those freaks are still breathing isn''t reason enough?" Aivery asked.


    "Designate Bim has only been observed breathing point-nine percent of the time since its arrival on this ship." Ghost helpfully corrected.


    The crowded room, fell into tense silence¡ª everyone waiting for someone else to offer up the magic bullet that would end this discussion once and for all.


    "What about her?" Aivery said, throwing a chin towards Princess.


    "What about her, Aivery?" Jhordan said flatly, her blunted tone carrying the warning far better than a growl would have.


    "She''s the reason we''re in this mess-" Aivery started.


    "Princess raised the flag so we can see just how deep in the shite we are." Curtis countered, fists curled. "She did a botched job of it, true, but at least we know now."


    "Enough! All of you." Leeroy said, slamming the ceiling to all the room into order before another round of bickering could break out.


    If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    "I''m just saying," Aivery said. "She''s our expert on sub-human trash-"


    Havoc''s fist caught her in the temple and the tawny bitch went cartwheeling across the room. For a few seconds nobody moved as the big lug re-anchored himself then found Princess''s alien eyes from across the room.


    "We''re square for the station now, Bug-Eyes." Havoc said, then gently bounded across the room to collect the unconscious pilot. "C''mon Frank. Gotta make sure I didn''t break another one."


    The stunned medic pushed himself out of Alice''s moderates and followed after Havoc.


    "Anyone else feel like stirring the pot?" Leeroy asked once the two men had towed the erstwhile agitator out of the room. "No? Good. We''ve taken the job. I''m not exactly thrilled about this, but I''ll be damned before I break my word. Let''s all just survive until we make it to Nexo Isla and we can plan our next steps from there."


    There were murmurs and hesitant nods of compliance from the room. A few awkward seconds of loitering later, the mercs started breaking from their factions and trickling out of the room in singles and pairs. As each of them cleared out of the room, Leeroy could feel the weight of his decision bearing down on him¡ª micro-gravity be damned.


    His loyalists were the last to leave, offering up supportive oaths and empty platitudes as they parted, until Leeroy found himself with the Captain and three women. Jhordan and Nye exchanged some whispered words while Princess stared vacantly at a random point on the room''s far wall.


    "Tell me I didn''t just throw our outfit to the wolves." Leeroy said.


    "You''ll just have to make sure you didn''t." The Captain said. "And should the wolves come howling, I suggest you sleep with a gun."


    The Captain clapped Leeroy on the shoulder, using the gesture''s momentum to make his own exit. Jhordan drifted closer to her nominal superiors, Nye close behind. Her question was directed to all of them.


    "The big guy, Truth or whatever he called himself, he''s like the people on Talfryn''s station. Isn''t he?"


    Leeroy had only heard about that particular job secondhand. It was supposed to be a nice, easy gig for Princess to get a taste of command but had turned into a hellish battle of attrition that scarred her team, nearly getting four of them killed and opening the can of worms that psychically active humans¡ªor near-humans, in Princess''s case¡ªwere the key ingredient in making sentient AI. Then there was Talfryn himself, a scientist who turned out to be not quite man or machine but something else entirely, something alien and so much worse too. Something Princess still screamed about when she was trapped in nightmares she couldn''t wake up from.


    "Ghost?" Princess asked, voice small and eyes fixed.


    "He is ''like them,'' yes. However, The Project only received dropouts from the more esoteric human-supremacy efforts during the prime of its operation. Based on available captured documentation and observed evidence, Treu is a far superior specimen than any received by Talfryn during The Project''s approximate two-centuries of operation."


    "So he''s a monster among monsters. That figures." Princess said.


    "Why?" Leeroy asked gently. "What does he look like to you?"


    "You mean ''what do my freak eyes see?'' He looks like radiation leaking from a damaged reactor, bleeding through the walls with fingers made of fog that flick out to lick people, burning them up so softly they don''t even notice it. It''s like staring at the sun during an eclipse and seeing a face staring down out you as your eyes boil and you feel your DNA unraveling inside of you."


    "You can see all that with your eyes?" Nye asked.


    "Not just my eyes. Not since Talfryn."


    "What about the girl?" Leeroy asked, gently steering the conversation away from those rocky shores.


    "I can''t see her." Princess uttered the words as if even she couldn''t believe it. "She''s invisible if she''s not right in front of me."


    "You can see people when they''re not right in front of you?" Jhordan asked, a similar gentle tone as Leeroy had used infecting her voice.


    "Sometimes," Princess said with a shrug and a miserable, knowing smile. Then she pointed to the wall she was staring at. "That''s Treu. Next to him there this little pocket, kind of like how running water swirls after it hits something, that''s the woman." Her finger shifted slightly. "Hero is watching them with someone else, I can''t tell who¡ª the light isn''t bright enough."


    For his part, Leeroy just saw his friend pointing at an empty wall as she spoke.


    "I''ll have to take your word on it." He said.


    "Ghost, who is it?" Princess asked.


    "Tony and Hiiro are both outside the aft port airlock, debating whether they should question our ''guests'' collectively or individually. I can relay their discussion through the intercom, should you like to listen in."


    "It would be Tony." Princess said ruefully. She finally tore her gaze from the wall she''d been looking through. "Not crazy, just a freak with freaky powers."


    "So what do you want to do?" Leeroy asked her.


    "What the hell are you asking me for? This is your job, clean up you own mess. And keep that fucking monster away from me. I can''t- not again. Not yet."


    Princess flung herself from the room, blinking back tears. Leeroy heard a single sharp slap as soon as she''d left their line of sight. His gaze met Jhordan''s, and a single tilt of his head was all the prompting she needed to follow after their distraught friend. Nye hovered for a moment before putting words to his own thoughts.


    "Tough break."


    ''Hard times make for hard women.'' Leeroy quoted absentmindedly.


    "Too true. So what do you think Tony and Hiiro are going to ask our guests about?"


    "I don''t know, but I''d better make sure they''re not going to get us all killed."


    Neither of the would-be interrogators had worked up the nerve to open the airlock by the time Leeroy arrived, but he could tell it was a near thing. Tony had all the self-preservation and curiosity of a cat that never seemed to remember how hot a live wire was, no matter how many times it burned his paws. And Hero¡­ Hero had mainly kept to himself since coming aboard the Shadow. Sure, there were times when he''d spoke privately about his past or mingled with the crew adeptly, but it always came across to Leeroy as a collection of polite half-truths. Like Hero hadn''t quite warmed up to the crew enough to trust them with his secrets, or his life. Looking back, the first sentence out of Hero that Leeroy honestly believed was the first thing he''d asked their guest before agreeing to this flustercluck of a contract.


    "Leeroy!" Tony said, jumping without really moving in the micro-gravity. "We were just¡­ guarding the prisoners."


    "They''re not our prisoners and no you weren''t." Leeroy stated bluntly. "Neither of you would have been scheming while my back was turned, would you?"


    "Of course not." Hero lied. Staring him in the face, Leeroy almost believed him.


    "Drop the act Rookie, we''ve been ratted out." Tony said. "Who was it?"


    "Ghost." Leeroy admitted, keeping the other half of the truth to himself.


    "Figures, nosy little virus never minds his own business." Tony grumbled. "Well, you''ve caught us, now what?"


    "I''ve got some questions for our guests, I figured you''d like to join me."


    Before Tony could ask if he was joking, Leeroy opened the inner airlock-- his hand hovering possessively over the controls. His guests didn''t seem half as pissed as he would have been in their situation. Treu was sitting cross-legged on the floor despite the lack of faux-gravity and the woman¡ªthe thing wearing a woman''s tanned skin¡ªfloated in the upper-left corner as far away from the imposing man as possible. Treu opened his eyes, his left locking onto Leeroy''s face while his right scanned his surroundings like some disgusting reptile.


    "You''ve decided to honor our agreement." Treu stated.


    It was a reasonable assumption, considering that he''d opened the inner airlock door instead of the outer one, but the way he''d said it set Leeroy''s teeth on edge. He''d noticed it earlier too. There was something off about Treu, beyond the perversely knowing look carried behind his crossed eyes. The way he spoke made Leeroy think that logical deduction hadn''t played into his statement, but rather that Treu had somehow overheard the command group''s conversation. Something about his mannerisms was irritatingly familiar. After some thought, it clicked. Treu was a smartass who knew just how much he knew.


    "The woman, what is she?" Leeroy asked cutting to the heart of it.


    "A tourist." Treu answered with a fae grin that paired with his large face and crossed eyes making him appear decidedly inhuman. "Though it seems you don''t find that answer as amusing as I''d anticipated you would. Hasn''t your esper told you already? I suspected she would, given our first impression of one another."


    "Wait a second," Tony said. "Who''s our epser? And what''s an esper for that matter?"


    Hero tore his gaze from the woman who was, rather literally, above the conversation to glance at Leeroy for confirmation.


    "He''s talking about Princess." Leeroy said, then motioned for their guest to elaborate.


    "I hadn''t anticipated this." Treu said vacantly.


    "There seems to be a lot of that going on. Maybe instead of sticking to the faulty script you have prepared, you could try playing along." Tony said, half-mocking.


    "The ''woman,'' as you call it, is my charge and by the nature of our contract, yours as well. If you''d care to remove your hand from the airlock''s emergency purge, I may be inclined to reciprocate to your inquiries in a more productive manner."


    Leeroy fought off the urge to hammer down on the purge and fling them both into hard vacuum. He''d already decided to honor his word and offer protection, so why was his gut telling him to get these people as far away from him as possible? Protection contracts weren''t about civil niceties or minding your manners, they were about keeping the target alive no matter how much you wanted to put a bullet in them yourself. With far more force of will than it should have taken, Leeroy lowered his hand away from the airlock''s controls.


    "I''ve reined in the worst of our dissenting voices, but if you so much as look sideways at someone-" Treu swung his right eye from Tony to Hero without moving his head. "Er¡­ nevermind. Whatever freaky shit you can do, keep it to yourself."


    Treu swiveled both eyes to look at Leeroy and smiled the thin-lipped grim of a predator hiding his teeth.


    "That, that right there. Stop doing that." Tony said.


    "Very well, I shall endeavor to make our cohabitation as incident free as possible." Treu switched his speech pattern, abandoning his overly formal air for a sudden intensity that caught Leeroy back-footed. "Now, you wanted to know what this creature is. Are you certain you want the answer? There are some things, that once known, cannot be so easily forgotten."


    What the hell was with this guy? Leeroy wasn''t sure if he was missing a few screws or wound over-tight by whatever abilities he had. Repugnant as he was, Treu had still put forth a question, one that Leeroy was hesitating to answer.


    All he could think about was Princess and how she''d changed after Talfryn. The icy mask she wore to keep everyone at a distance had gotten brittler, she had this tension about her whenever she thought she was alone. The only time she seemed like her old, jaded self was when she was being beaten down for the color of her skin and eyes, for being a woman who saw things no one else could. Once, as a younger more self-assured fool of a man, Leeroy would have dismissed the idea of ''cursed knowledge,'' but after seeing his friend wane into a threadbare shadow of her former self, he wasn''t so sure about that now. Princess had been shown¡­ something, and whatever it was, was crushing her spirit day by day.


    Some part of him wanted to know what that something was, to take up the burden to better share it with those who were already suffering under it. But the part that had seen a woman he cared for wasting away, jumping at shadows and hunting for any scrap of proof that what she witnessed was real, that part of him wondered if he was strong enough to bear that curse without succumbing to it. If he was strong enough to save a drowning friend without getting pulled under by those damned murky waters too. Leeroy didn''t know if he was. He wouldn''t know until he made that choice and had to live with the consequences.


    Tony had no such hesitation.


    "A healthy curiosity never did any harm. So what? She''s an alien or something?"


    "She is a what you might know as a Devil."


    "Like, red skin and pitchfork devil?" Tony asked, looking over the silent floating woman. "Because, I''m not seeing that."


    "What you see is irrelevant. If you must think of it as a xenos creature, think of it as one composed of an immense, incorporeal reserve of knowledge, energy and destructive potentiality. That profane mockery of the human form contains a sealed portion of such a being."


    Leeroy had to agree with Tony, he wasn''t seeing it either. Bim, this devil woman, didn''t seem to be much more than a regal young lady recently into adulthood. Sun-tanned arabic skin, immaculate short black hair, patrician features on the petite side; to the uninformed she looked every bit the sheltered rich girl who''d run away from home with nothing but a luxury dress and sandals. Even now she was floating near the airlock''s ceiling, above the conversation both physically and in the snobbish socialite way of those who thought themselves better bred than the common people. If Leeroy could only kick one of his unwelcome guests of his ship, the supposed devil woman wouldn''t have been his first choice.


    Leeroy directed his gaze back to the woman''s bodyguard. Just looking at the hulking man sat on the airlock floor was enough to have the hairs of his arms standing on ends. He couldn''t place what, but there was something animalistic inside him that instinctively detested the man. It was almost like he was staring down one of the ferocious proxy-b?rs of his half-remembered homeworld. While Treu certainly had the size to rival the savage woodland beasts, it wasn''t the man''s bulk that threatened to unnerve Leeroy.


    "And what does that make you?" Leeroy asked. "Her guardian angel?"


    "Nothing so absurd." Treu snapped, sounding ticked off by the comparison. Then, with a cold, predatory smile he added, "I''m simply the monster that kills other monsters."

 H11 - Magnetism & Heat

    Hiiro


    ''Ten days of civil company'' became something of a mantra on the ship. That single line denoted the mood and opinion of the speaker more concisely than any other indicator.


    Those who simply wanted the outfits unwelcome guests off the ship said the words with a dour acceptance; the job was an unpleasant one but it was a job none the less, something to be muddled through with above average grumbling and a steady work ethic.


    Leeroy''s supporters¡ªan odd mix of those loyal to a fault, morbidly taciturn, unsettlingly enthused, and spitefully indignant¡ªused the mantra as a watchword. Ten days of civil company wasn''t an ideal, it was a law to be enforced with browbeating, uttered threats and in some few instances, bribery. Unsurprisingly, the promise of a larger share of the job''s pay won many hired guns from the indifferent majority to Leeroy''s side.


    Lastly, there were those who growled the statement like an untimely armistice¡ª a ten day ceasefire while the enemy walked in their midst. More often than not, I found these mercenaries in the armory tooling over their equipment in preparation of what they thought would inevitably come next. Explosives were prepackaged into discrete portions, firearms of all makes and calibers were cleaned and calibrated to exacting standards, bodies and minds were fortified for the battle ahead.


    For his part, Treu seemed to share the sentiment. Once his charge had been loaned a cabin in the crew quarters and thrown inside, he claimed a portion of the hanger and partitioned it off with tarps and netting. I didn''t hear a single person complain about not having him sleep next door. The informal cordon that appeared shorty after was mostly loyalists ensuring the big man had the privacy he obviously wanted, though a few dissenting voices joined the guard with less altruistic intentions. If the big man did try anything, I doubted a few rifles would stop him. Still, I couldn''t help but respect the balls on every merc who manned the cordon with a weapon pointing in instead of out.


    It was the third day back under thrust when I finally worked up the nerve to do more than just think about the devil woman calling herself Bim. I couldn''t place it but there was something naggingly reminiscent about her. It made no sense, there wasn''t anything that physically reminded me of anyone I knew and she''d barely spoken to anyone since coming aboard. So why did it feel like I should know who she was? I arrived at the cabin she''d been loaned and knocked on the door.


    "Um, hello? Are you in there?" I asked.


    "Yes."


    I waited for her to open the door, to ask what I wanted or tell me to go away but nothing happened. I listened in, thinking I might have caught her sleeping or that she was getting dressed but I couldn''t hear any movement on the other side of the door. I couldn''t tell if she was ignoring me and hoping I went away or just preoccupied, so I knocked again.


    "Are you going to open the door?" I asked.


    After another lengthy pause, she did. At the sight of her another wave of misplaced nostalgia washed over me. The room she''d spent the past three days in was completely bare. There was no trapped heat, no scent of an unwashed body, hardly any evidence that she''d been inside at all. The only thing that betrayed her occupation was a single black book sitting closed on a shelf next to the bed.


    "You are the first human to initialize conversation with me." She vacantly stated. Her entire manner was aloof and slightly on the slow side, not quite like a person half-drunk on sleep but similar.


    "Ah, sorry." I said. "I don''t think anyone around here really knows how to deal with you."


    "I was under the impression the native contractors were all quite skilled at lawyering deals. Is that not the case?"


    I blinked at her words, feeling as if in a single sentence we''d both gotten lost on different pages. I wasn''t sure what exactly she was asking me. How the hell did she pull lawyers into this? What kind of a backhanded complement did I just get? I put the eccentricity aside for the moment and tried to catch up to her conversation.


    "I can''t really say. I''m a recent addition to the crew." I said.


    "That is a trait you and I share." She stated vacantly.


    "I don''t think you count." She stared at me in silence. "Because you''re a client so you''re not really part of the crew."


    She continues to stare at me, amber eyes fixated on my own.


    "Did you need anything?" I asked. "Your room doesn''t look very comfortable."


    "It is not." She stated bluntly.


    I waited for her to elaborate, but she didn''t. I couldn''t tell if she was just being polite and waiting for me to take the hint or if her stoicism was a deliberate ploy to get me to leave her alone. This devil woman took a poker face to a whole new level, her face would have been more expressive if she was wearing a stone mask. I was almost ready to admit defeat and depart when she finally spoke.


    "What nature of exchange are you proposing?" She asked.


    "I don''t really know. I just thought you could use a friend."


    "And what is it you desire in return?"


    "What? No, this isn''t an ''exchange.'' I just wanted to help you."


    "Why?"


    The way she asked made me think we were on different pages again. I pressed on regardless.


    "I thought you could use it. I know how hard it is to get settled in a new place when you don''t know anybody." I said, offering the half-truth with full sincerity.


    "¡­It could be of use. Why are you willing to offer something in exchange for nothing? You will depart this transaction expending more energy than you stand to gain in value. Is it your intention to place me in your debt?"


    She hadn''t struck me as the paranoid type, though she did fit the bill in retrospect. I recalled my first real conversation on the Shadow as a notational member of the outfit. I''d been half-kidding when I made my remark to Eric, but my words gained a sour note when applied to her situation.


    There had been a meeting to decide if she lived or died at their hands¡ª our hands. She hadn''t been on this ship for a full minute before being shot at and ever since there were armed soldiers of fortune just waiting for an excuse to kill her and her absent bodyguard. Who wouldn''t be paranoid in that situation? Who wouldn''t lock themselves their room and be skeptical of whoever came knocking? Now that I''d actually thought about it, instead of just wondering why I was compulsively drawn to her, it was a stark parallel to what might happen to me if my own situation came to light. Was that why I was here at her door? The killing heat inside of me gave no reply.


    "Are you really a devil?" I asked.


    "Do not deviate from my question." She said brusquely.


    "No, I''m not trying to indebt you to me. I''m trying to be a decent human being and offer some generosity to a person in need."


    "Why?" She repeated.


    "Because I want to. Why can''t you just take my word? It''s not like I''m trying to marry you."


    She gave another of her pauses and this time I realized she was weighing my words. That had probably been what she was doing all along. What had struck me as her being slow was actually deliberate and calculating. She was a woman trying to avoid the witch-hunters all around her with nothing but cold logic. It was so obvious I couldn''t believe I''d missed it earlier. Her next words all but confirmed my suspicions.


    "I have learned to be suitably wary of humans who approach me with generous intentions as they often have malicious motivations. That is why I cannot take your word, Human."


    "I''m sorry-"


    "Why?" She interrupted, her languid air momentarily abandoned as she jumped into the present.


    "I know what it''s like to get stabbed in the back after holding up your end of the deal. I''d rather not get into it, no point bringing up old hurts."


    "I see¡­ Then that is an experience we share, Human." Her alacrity faded, the prior aloof, measured nature returning to the fore. "I cannot say whether I am a devil or not. I do not know what they are. The explanation you were provided by my tormentor accurately encapsulates my being."


    "Your tormentor? You mean Treu?"


    "Yes."


    That gave me some food for thought. Tormentor was about as far from a term of endearment as they came and the way she said it, the certainty she placed in the word, left nothing good to the imagination. Considering that he was supposed to protect her through whatever convoluted hate-hate relationship they had and how he''d explained his mission, I was surprised she was talking to me¡ª to any one for that matter.


    "What did he do to-" I started, but she cut me off before I could make an even bigger ass of myself.


    "I''d rather not discuss it, ever."


    "Ah, sorry. Just so you know, not everyone is like him." I said. "In fact I get the feeling he''s one of kind, so try not to base too many assumptions off of him. Okay?"


    "My opinion of your species is still nascent and unsolidified, Human." She gave me another of her weighty pauses and I almost thought she was done with me before I heard her draw a breath to continue. "Why is it that you were the first of this ship''s company to approach me? Are you too a deviant from the human norm?"


    I was about to dismiss the question out of hand, but the unnatural warmth inside of me begged to differ. If she''d asked me a month ago, I''d have protested regardless; much like I had when I woke up in the Shadow''s medbay strapped to a table looking into Princess''s alien eyes for the first time. If was odd, the alien woman standing in front of me looked more normal, more human, than Princess did. Bim''s amber eyes flecked with gold had an inquisitive curiosity to them, but they lacked the piercing inhumanity of Princess''s swirling purple counterparts. It felt like she was seeing me and wondering, instead of looking through me and knowing.


    She was an alien, maybe even a devil, but as the same time she was so familiar it itched. Why couldn''t I nail down this misplaced reminiscence? I was like a compass needle, always drifting south without knowing why. Deviating from the norm, it made me sound like a freak. I just wanted answers. Answers I couldn''t get through the ordinary means of investigation.


    "I wouldn''t word it like that¡­" I said noncommittally.


    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    "Though you do not disagree with the sentiment of my question?" She asked intently.


    "I don''t really know. I don''t think I''m so different and certainly not a deviant. It''s more like I haven''t found where I belong yet. I''m still looking for the man I want to become one day." It felt stupid to admit but she stood there staring at me locked in her aloof composure. "I get that''s not really a helpful answer-"


    "That answer is incredibly helpful." She interrupted. "I still find the concept of growth beyond the accumulation of knowledge and power rather foreign. To hear the idea of being incomplete despite physical existence in the present moment of linear time is very helpful to me. The unfounded self doubt is also useful, though I fail to empathize with you rationale. I have learned more in the past ten minutes of conversation with you than I did in one-hundred and forty-three hours of introspection in the company of my tormentor."


    "Um, thank you?"


    "Why? I have only stated my observations of objective truths."


    "Sometimes people need to hear the truth."


    "Such conditional would be unnecessary if they did not live mired in falsehoods." For the first time since we started talking, she moved. It was a tiny gesture, the slightest tilt of her head made all the more weighty given her unshakably regal demeanor. "Are you such a person?"


    Again, I wanted to refute her question out of hand but I couldn''t. I''d been honest enough in my pioneering days, but in my life of criminal activities afterwards, I''d discovered I could lie as easily as I drew breath. I was a social chameleon, wearing whatever false identity I needed to finish my job. But there were some moments of unparalleled truth buried in that swamp of deception. I''d heard hundreds of final words and often in those last moments my own tailored persona would fall away as I became their executioner and their confessor.


    My final painting came to mind, the innocent woman I''d murdered on the orders of a tyrant. Her final words rung through my memory, ''No more owner, is happy dream, no?'' Was that the sum of my life''s accompaniments? A man who could only offer mercy down the length of a gun while so wrapped in lies he thought it would all be worth it in the end. No, I wouldn''t be that man. I was disgusted with myself for pulling that trigger, and I was glad that I was.


    "I was." I admitted. "I think I might still, but I''m trying not to be. I''ve spent enough of my life with my head buried in the snow and mud. I don''t want to spend the rest of it like that."


    "That is good. I would have ceased this conversation had you answered in the affirmative." She stated.


    "How do you know that wasn''t a lie?" I teased, only for her to step back into her room and reach for the door controls. "Wait! That was a joke, a bad one."


    "How can I know that? Perhaps that is the another falsehood. Perhaps you have been lying this entire time and I was wrong to differentiate you from my tormentor."


    "He wasn''t lying to you." Gidget said from my right.


    The ginger-headed man had left his room further down the corridor and was headed down-ship towards the Crush, which put him on a collision course with our dying conversation. Gidget was broader and taller than me¡ª which seemed to be another common trait among the mercs on the Shadow. His pale white skin was dotted with freckles, making it less harshly glaring than Princess''s albino palette. His choice of casual wear was colorful, eclectic and utilitarian, making me think of a paint-splattered handyman more-so than a gun for hire.


    "Spoken like a collaborator." Bim stated.


    "It''s a variant of the Liar''s Paradox. It''s an outdated method of testing the logical capacity of machines¡ª and aliens. The proper paradox is ''this statement is false.''"


    "¡­I do not understand." She said.


    "But most humans and modern machines would." Gidget said with a shrug. "Congratulations, you''re dumber than the average toaster."


    "I am not dumb." Bim stated fiercely.


    "Oh wow, you''re even worse at picking up sarcasm than I am." Gidget said.


    "Do they not have a sense humor where you come from?" I asked, eager to keep her talking.


    "No. My kind rarely make unnecessary interactions with each other; those that we do are often predatory in nature. I know of humor from my first teacher on humanity, though I do not understand its nature or implementation."


    "You''ll pick up an ear for it eventually." Gidget said. "If you''re socially blunt enough, people will assume you''re autistic and stop bothering you with trivialities. That''s what I recommend."


    With that, Gidget turned and went on his way, dropping out of the conversation as abruptly as he''d joined it. I couldn''t imagine what kind of culture fostered such rudeness. Even my rural upbringing in the savage hitherlands of my homeworld had taught me basic manners.


    I also couldn''t imagine what Bim had meant by her kind¡ªdevils or xenos that they may be¡ªbeing solitary predators. On all of Intatenrup there was only a single animal like that, the Byakkai. They were great eight-legged demon tigers, the killer of all lesser beasts who staked out hundreds of square kilometers for their territory. When I compared those two, the feral beast was nothing like the lonely woman who''d locked herself in her room. After one of her long pauses she asked me another question.


    "Is a toaster''s sole function to toast things? Such a machine does not sound very intelligent."


    "There''s a few in the ship''s mess. I could show you, if you wanted."


    "Your guidance would be appreciated, Human. What do you desire in return?"


    "This isn''t a deal." I said, before deciding that it''d be easier to work with her quirks than against them. "Fine, if you want to put a price on it, stop calling me human. Use my name, Hiiro."


    She made another of her ever so slight gestures, the tiniest shifting of her weight away from her room''s door towards me.


    "Very well. I will guard and honor your name with every utterance, Hiiro."


    "Uh, yeah. I''ll try and do the same for yours, Bim."


    A shiver raced up my spine. It wasn''t just that she''d said my name properly, which was a hit-or-miss event on the Shadow so far. There was something else entirely, something not quite electric or magnetic in the air between us when she spoke. That nagging familiarity reared it head once again and this time, it was accompanied by the supernatural warmth that flooded my body in an awakened surge of radiant, killing heat.


    I stepped back from her, tripping into the wall opposite her cabin in my haste to put a gap between us. I couldn''t burn her. I had to control this! My searing nerves were alight with power than needed direction, it needed release but I had nowhere to send it. I wasn''t just warm, I was hot, more than hot, I was burning up! I didn''t know how to get rid of this heat. It was like I was drowning in a hot spring right in thin air; I could barely breathe, every shallow puff of my lungs threw a shimmering heat haze in front of my face.


    I pressed myself harder against the cool metal wall, the corridor''s bulkhead feeling like packed snow against my feverish skin. I focused on the sensation, leaning every scrap of exposed, sweltering skin I could into the wall. The relief was neither explosive or combustive, but it was just enough that I could hold on. I could ride the razor''s edge of this killing heat long enough to get it under control.


    For her part, Bim stood there unmoving and statuesque as she watched me.


    "Be wary, names have power beyond the finite constraints of language." She said at length. "Do not invoke even a false name unless you truly must."


    "So what am I supposed to call you?" I asked, barely succeeding in keeping the voice level around my panting breath.


    "You may use the name given, so long as you maintain a degree of impartiality. Speak it with nothing but the flesh or mind and never anything more."


    "I''ll try to do that." I said.


    Not that I had any clue what that actually meant or how to do that.


    After that, I became her unofficial chaperon. Bim didn''t find the same easy acceptance that I had on the Shadow, but after a day of following wherever I led her, the mercs stopped dropping every conversation when we entered a room. We spoke little in the following days, she was contented to observe any and everything while I attempted to puzzle out what I could from watching her. One of the only times she offered an unprompted opinion was when I ran off to make my bi-hourly check of the ship''s space-age boiler room.


    "You honor this ritual with great urgency despite its trivial nature, this bodes well of you, Hiiro."


    I wasn''t sure how to respond to her sudden talkativeness, so I thanked her and got on with my day. A few of the more open-minded tried to make polite small talk with her, only the most determined ever getting more than a few words of reply in the hours that followed. I''d imagine most of them came to the same early conclusion I had about her, that she was slow witted and held little insight into her surroundings. Of all the crew, it was only Tony who suspected that Bim might have something worth the effort hidden behind that alluring doll-face.


    Ten days of civil company turned out to be a generous estimate. We tumbled back into realspace during second shift of the seventh work cycle. There was no layover on the float this time, every ship in our convoy made comfortable speed for the system''s hub planet. A general summary of the astrological details made the rounds and while Bim absorbed the information with zip, I was barely able to grasp the generalities.


    The Trastorno solar system was binary, which meant it had two stars, and a single habitable planet¡ª which was apparently far less common than I thought it would be. The terraforming effort was at stage two, meaning it was about three hundred years behind my homeworld, and things weren''t proceeding smoothly despite the frequent passage of IceBreakers in system. Frequent was a relative term when it came to the titanic, faster-than-light battleships. An IceBreaker might drag a cluster of ships to a border world once every fifteen years or more, but sometimes for systems lucky or important enough it could be range from two or three years.


    Trastorno was a truck stop on the cosmic scale from what I understood. It was ''on the way'' for more than one faster-than-light route which made it an ideal place to catch up on the latest news, markets and transfers. Paired with a planet that could produce most things which couldn''t be mined from asteroids and an underworld presence that nearly rivaled the local authorities in power and dwarfed them financially; Trastorno was a welcomed name for the mercenaries aboard the Stalking Shadow for more reasons than one.


    There was always work available for anyone with lax morals and low standards, so long as you knew where to look for it. The Shadow wasn''t even halfway down the gravity well before the rumor of a job offer started circulating among the crew. That rumor was all but confirmed with a general readiness order to have both shuttles prepared for repeat planetfall by the time they arrived.


    I was assisting the labor effort when Treu emerged from his hide with Leeroy in tow, both headed for Bim who was watching me at a distance. I broke off the work detail to a few muttered curses that fell stillborn when they saw me headed towards our less-than-welcome guests. Leeroy saw me coming and beckoned me to join him.


    "There are matters that must be discussed with our hosts, Creature." Treu barked.


    "What matters, Tormentor?" Bim asked, her response lacking her customary delayed inquisitiveness. She was curt with Treu, keeping him at a distance she was powerless to enforce.


    "Our initial contract was to let you ride along with us on our next job," Leeroy said. "But that was before and this is now."


    "This is indeed the present moment." Bim confirmed, clearly missing his implication.


    "What I mean is, the situation has changed." Leeroy said grudgingly.


    "You no longer wish to honor our contract." Bim realized. "Why?"


    "We''ve got a prospective client planetside. Long term close protection and site security, at least a few months of work. I''ve got eight guns that say they won''t take the job if I bring you, which hurts but it''s not damning. If you come, I can''t spare the manpower to babysit you."


    Bim seemed to lose something in translation and looked to Treu for confirmation.


    "They want to end our agreement early on mutual good terms." Treu stated bluntly. "You are a burden on them, Creature. One they wish to be rid of."


    "¡­I do not understand." Bim said, this time looking to me for clarity. "Is my presence truly so cumbersome?"


    I suddenly had three sets of eyes focused on me and I regretted getting involved in this conversation. Treu looked down on me, a lazy disdain held in his posture if not his deliberately neutral expression. Leeroy wanted me to disarm this bomb and move on, but he wouldn''t step away and leave this entirely to me. Whatever I chose, he''d be right there taking up the slack beside me. Then there was the woman, amber eyes faintly pleading for me not to abandon her.


    "Its not just you. People are complicated, some of them don''t like the idea of risking their lives around you and him." I said, motioning to her bodyguard.


    "¡­That is a sentiment I share with them then." Bim stated. "In light of new information, perhaps a renegotiation is in order?"


    "What kind?" Leeroy asked, a soft note a dread breeching his stoic demeanor.


    "Instead of an escort, I desire an apprenticeship under your company''s tutelage. I wish to be paid in experience and a temporary place within your fellowship. In return, I can offer the toil of this body and that of my protector." Bim turner her attention from Leeroy to Treu. "That is, unless you would impede my mandate, Tormentor."


    If looks could kill, I''m sure Treu would have murdered everyone and destroyed the Shadow for good measure. As it was, he smiled a cold predatory grin.


    "The details of my own secondment will need to be refined after your new agreement has been finalized. Otherwise, I have no objections, B???i????m????''?????k???e???l????a?????i?????d????h?????z?????a?????."


    A wash of vertigo hammered me as he spat her name, but I kept my footing. Bim went to the ground as if she''d been clubbed over the head, mouth agap in a silent scream. Leeroy looked from the giant of a man to the downed woman in confusion, then moved to help her as I did the same.


    "What''d you do to her?" He asked. Treu only smiled.


    "I reminded it which of us holds power over the other. I will repeat that lesson as often as I must, Devil."


    "Damn you, Treu." Bim whispered.


    "I have long since been damned, Creature, but waste your breath anyways." Treu turned to depart, pausing before he returned to his hide. "I''ll leave you to finalize the details of your agreement without me. Your chittering minds are wearing my patience thin."

 M12 - Mission Briefing

    Malik


    The all hands meeting came three hours before shift change. The Shadow was still three days out from their latest paycheck, and from the rumors that had been flying through the crew this one was going to be very juicy. Malik didn''t usually put much stock in rumors, especially rumors that circulated in an idle warship, but this latest batch had the subtle ring of truth to them. He arrived at the ops room early and found it already packed full, trumping last week''s assembly by a few curious heads. Malik took his place near the back of the crowd beside the only crew member taller than him.


    "You missed another fight, Runt." Jhordan said, tossing her golden curls by way of greeting.


    "Havoc again?" He asked the resident giantess. She was only two inches taller than he was but she never tired of reminding him that second place overall meant he was a first place loser.


    "Pauz and Knight."


    Malik had to suck his teeth at that. Both men were among the meaner killers among the crew; Knight taking his pseudonym after his lofty idealism and his penchant for swords; Pauz on the other hand was a gene-tweaked peasant farmer who''d made a name for himself in bar fights and livestock wrestling before he''d signed on with the Shadow. If those two had thrown hands, there weren''t very many people who would get in the middle of that. Malik scanned the crowd to look for the victor, though he failed to find either man.


    "Who won?" He asked.


    "I did." Jhordan beamed, holding out her bloodied knuckles as proof. Malik had to roll his eyes at that.


    At that moment, Bim and her hulking escort walked in. Heads turned and the room fell virtually silent. A hand rose from the gathered crowd, beckoning the devil woman to the front and the crowd shimmied to make a path for her. Her bodyguard, the absolutely titanic man named Treu, made his way to stand beside Malik and Jhordan at the back of the room.


    "He''s fucking huge!" Malik whispered under his breath.


    "Shut up!" Jhordan hissed. "He''s coming this way."


    "Feeling emasculated, Amazon?" Malik teased.


    "Shut. Up." She hissed.


    Treu easily stood twenty centimeters taller than her, and he had the mass to back that height up. He could have been the unlikely child of a arctic bear and an equatorial ape, all sculpted muscle and burly arms nearly as thick as his legs were¡ª which was still thicker around than most people''s waist was. A sinister smile crept onto Malik''s lips as Jhordan''s normally indomitable, bubbly disposition darkened in the giant''s shadow. Jhordan wasn''t the only one cowed by the titanic man, the idle chatter and whispered conversations near our portion of the octagonal room all withered in Treu''s presence. Leeroy banged on the ceiling to call the room to order and all eyes tuned on him at the center of the room.


    "Negotiations are still fluid so expect some of the contract details to change later on." Leeroy began. "We''ve got enough sorted out that we can finally give a halfway reliable briefing. Chances are any rumors you''ve all heard are outdated, so forget them and focus on this."


    A rudimentary map of the solar system appeared on the central table. The mercs leaned in for a closer look and Leeroy continued.


    "This is the Trastorno system, and this, is the Shadow''s current position about seventy hours away from our next client on Nexo Isla. We''ve got a lot of orbital and deep space traffic all around us, and I''ve been able to confirm that the Heart of Darkness and Blissful Shade both passed through the system twenty-one months ago and are expected back with one of the next inbound ships from the galactic northeast."


    The news of the outfit''s sister ships from the good old bad times was warmly welcomed. Long before Malik''s time, the Stalking Shadow had been just one of many ships flying under the outfit''s banner but the Bot Wars and the lean years that followed had changed things. Armies and fleets were been broken into smaller units, and the attached mercs were left chasing down smaller jobs just to keep the outfit alive. They''d slowly rebuilt themselves, like a blighted fungus you could never truly get rid of, but now the scattered remains of the Blackheart Auxilia were few and far between. The chance to have three ships and their crews all in the same place more than made up for the past four years trawling around the fringes, hunting pirates, escorting merchants and training local militias. The only thing that spoiled the announcement, was the fact that there were three outsiders in their midst, each no doubt wondering at the significance of the moment.


    "There''s four orbital stations for dedicated trade, two more for leisure, and twelve spin-barrels growing all the usual chow and medicinals. No space elevator, so everything still goes planetside through the spaceports or drop pods. Terraforming is confirmed to be mid-stage two-"


    A chorus of groans left the assembly. Leeroy waved them off.


    "I was hoping for local grass-fed beef too. So what if this planet is still in the half-tamed? That just means Rock can go on safari while the rest of us actually earn our paymails. They''ve got most things available on import, so quit your bitching and let me get through this."


    The terran sniper playfully flipped Leeroy off.


    "Alright, where was I? The job. That''s basically the only thing that hasn''t changed from the rumors. We''ve got a bid in for long term close protection and site security planetside. Client is an ultra-high networth Mister Johnson with his fingers in so many pies even he doesn''t know how diverse his investments are, but the main one is ''import export,'' or for anyone who can''t read between the lines, black marketeering. This system moves everything¡ª and I do mean everything. Guns, drugs, plants, metal, people¡­ Everything, and our Johnson controls at least one percent of that everything coming through this gravity well."


    An appreciative whistle came from the crowd. Another merc raised a question.


    "So who are we killing for this prick?"


    "Rival underworld elements and hired guns from the info we have so far." Leeroy answered. "Our client needs a covert protection detail that has the capacity to escalate into a fully equipped mechanized fighting force with experience in a densely built-up urban center. We''ll be augmenting his own staff, who will be handling the day to day while we train their capabilities and act as on site experts unless our hand is forced. Additionally we''ve planned on a round of site security consultations before we agree to discreetly fortify and guard any locations of importance. The Johnson isn''t military but he is rich, so we should be able to get away with a good degree of upselling on our initial payment and follow-up salary. Pay rate is still being hammered out, but I can say it''s very generous so far; plus we''re getting paid weekly by head instead of monthly as a unit."


    Affirmative grumbling burbled from the crowd. The job sounded simple enough, more often than not the mere presence of armed security details was enough of a deterant to send any would-be robbers packing. Babysitting a worried wallet and guarding a few secured sites was easy money in Malik''s eyes. But there was always the chance this wouldn''t be a cake walk, that the Johnson had a reason to be concerned for his safety, so Malik didn''t plan his pension before he lived to see it¡ª unlike some of the overeager mercs around him clearly were.


    "Now that you''ve all got a good idea of what we''re getting into," Leeroy tapped at the table''s terminal and the display''s focus narrowed from the solar system to the planet and its orbiting satellites. "Nexo Isla, population eight-hundred million planetside, another twelve million permanently in orbit. FTL traffic and transfers are estimated to be anywhere from four to nineteen million, apparently the locals have a hard time with people slipping through the cracks. Frontier towns are less than five-hundred years old, some sites as new as yesterday. Terraforming effort is mid-stage two, urban centers are semi-industrialized with spotty coverage in the immediate surroundings. Four primary landmasses, three in proximity of the nominal western hemisphere running longitudinally, the other is in the southeastern sea. We have two terraforming archologies up and running in the southwest hemisphere, primary habitable ecosystems are in this area. Our client, is not.


    "This continent is named Bolintiam, after its first settlers who also named the region''s five founding colonies, three local oceans, eighty-nine mountains and twelve rivers some derivative thereof. Our client is here. Specifically in the east by northeastern-most city, El Cruce Babro, or just Crucibab as the locals know it. Port city, space and deep water, sheltered cove surrounded by coastal desert, semi-arid planes, deep-water exploration rigs, and mountains that used to have temperate rain forests. There''s also an archipelago, close to three hundred islands that are actually worth a damn. Most are sustenance farming or growing cash crops for refinement or offworld export. The climate is fairly hot and wet-"


    "How hot?" Ruby asked, voice filled with dread, from her place near the front.


    Leeroy chuckled masochistically before pulling his attention from the briefing to the diminutive scout.


    "The planetary average is thirty-five standard, peaking for seven hours a day at around forty-two degrees. The day cycle is slightly over forty-one hours long, twenty-nine sunny, twelve dark. Humidity averaging above seventy-percent most days."


    If anyone wanted to drop a pin, the whole room would have heard it land.


    "These people are insane." Ruby said, a morbid half-smile on her lips.


    "Those are averages," Clancy said as he adjusted his spectacles. "The bulk of the planet is covered in water and we can see that the landlocked mountains are mostly snowcapped with massive shadow profiles. Its childish to assume the entire planet is always only one climate. Some areas will be less intolerable than others."


    "And our client happens to be based far from planetary government oversight, which is coincidentally collocated with the very tolerable archologies on the other side of the planet." Leeroy added. "For any of you spacers who don''t already know this, most planets worth a damn are more than just a single ecosystem. They vary from region to region, sometimes extremely. Point in case, these¡­ Bolindas mountains, right here. Arid dessert to the southwest, glacial forests in the bowl, the mountains themselves, and then hilly shrub-land to the east. All within less than a thousand kilometers of each other."


    "Planets are weird." Chad grumbled under his breath.


    "Don''t I know it." Jhordan agreed, similarly under her breath.


    "This one also has a very, very wealthy merchant class, which is why we''re here." Leeroy said, carrying on. "Aside from the invasive humans and introduced species, most of the planet''s native wildlife are cold-blooded reptiles of all sizes or deep sea life. The equatorial land regions have some spotty mega-flora and mega-fauna, giant trees and dinosaurs respectively, neither of which have taken kindly to humanity and both are now endangered as a result. Introduced species include the usual vermin: Crows, rats, trash pandas, cats, various insects and fish¡ª salmon mostly but there are also mollusks, clams, crustaceans and shellfish that all took well to their new home.


    Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    "Aside from some traveling or remote site work, we''ll be based in Crucibab at the Johnson''s primary residence and working in the city on an as needed basis. The main mode of transit for the locals is rail or foot; there are a few motorways but within the city proper, access is restricted to commercial and political vehicles. Our Johnson''s main business efforts focus on orbital and waterway transit for cargo and personnel, though he did express interest in establishing some motorcades at a later date. Once we''re established on site, I want to see about getting a local flyer for us but until then I want one of our shuttles on station for general duties. Shores, Aivery, Clancy, you''re our pilots so figure out how you want to handle that and whether you want to use the Cat or the Hound, and have an answer for me before we make planetfall.


    "Crucibab is a port city built like a hive. Census data suggests just shy of twelve million people living in a twenty-kilometer radius from the city center. Industrial sectors focus mainly on refinement of natural or imported materials, with a heavy export focus on organics like food, timber or textiles. Most sophisticated goods or electronics are manufactured in the more developed archologies or the orbiting colony ships and then sent to their less developed planetside counterparts, same as most terraforming operations.


    "The geographic data is still being fetched, but we know that it''s a coastal cliffside metropolis in a tectonically active region. Construction is primarily stone, steel and brick, better off areas might have ceramics or wood. The buildings will generally be low to the ground or partially buried in the cliffside. Our Johnson has assured me that we will have access to the comforts of ''civilized society,'' like electricity, plumbing and some basic air conditioning, though many people in our area of operation might be lucky enough to have one of three. Again, same as most terraforming planets.


    "What differs from the usual is the fact that Trastorno is sat square in the intersection of four stable FTL lanes. Two run the colonies on the fringes so they haul meat and not much else. The other two both come from the core, Empire and Technocracy respectively, and run back and forth from the Eldritch DMZ and its buffer worlds."


    Leeroy didn''t feel the need to elaborate for the outsiders in the room. Every red-blooded merc knew what happened when battle-groups passed through civilian markets on their way to ''inactive'' combat zones and returned home afterwards. Military hardware went missing, manifests were doctored, battlefield souvenirs got pawned, unwanted children got abandoned, and in some rare cases entire units of soldiers vanished from their shipboard billets just days before they were supposed to ship out.


    Empire troop movements meant guns, armor, vehicles and the bodies to use it. Hundreds of colonies and old-growth worlds contributing odds and ends to any given fleet, meaning there was never a guarantee on the quality, only the quantity¡ª which had a certain quality all its own. Technocracy supply fleets were better than gold, most could still make miracle gear from before the Synthetic Revolution. Tech like that was always worth the years of combat pay even a single scrap of it cost and more often than not, having it was the difference between life and death for an otherwise outgunned merc. And that was to say nothing about whatever alien trinkets and toys that found their way into the pockets of the soldiers while they were deployed, or the legitimate trade between species that yielded all sorts of exotic goodies which inevitably found their way to unscrupulous markets just like Nexo Isla.


    In short, after years of collecting their pay with nothing to spend it on, they''d finally returned to all the vainglory of capitalism; corrupt open markets where anything and everything could be found if you knew the right person and had enough cash.


    "Now that everyone is sufficiently motivated, we need to discuss the division of labor. Long days mean long hours, at least three shifts a day, fourteen hours a shift. Moving forward we''ll need to address schedule rotation so the day teams can catch a break. The locals take lots of naps, we''ll need to do likewise. Between the heat and the long days, acclimatization is going to be harsh. If you have hot-weather gear, this is the time to break it out of storage.


    "Until we have a better idea of our capabilities in the environment, I want fireteams of three as our basic fighting unit. Figure out teams and rest cycle rotations amongst yourselves."


    The room was filled with turning heads, years as a cohesive fighting force meant more than one team was formed and solidified with little more than eye contact. Several of the outfit''s powertechs had already started shuffling through to room to stand by their fireteams before Malik put a question to the room.


    "This is a covert detail, right?" He asked. "Are we running warsuits from the get go or should we mix mechanized and light troops for these fireteams?"


    "You''re right. The client hasn''t specified that he doesn''t want warsuits following him, but they certainly aren''t covert¡­" Leeroy paused to think for a moment. "For the time being having more flexible teams would be an asset. Let''s go with two techs and a dedicated supporter until we need to break out the big guns; after that it''ll be all hands on deck anyway and our heavy infantry can reform while our carbines move to the rear."


    There was a degree of grumbling acceptance from the room as trios decided who to kick from their teams. Malik had to smile at that. It was almost like he was watching social cliques deporting their friends when they suddenly weren''t cool enough anymore. The sight was a nostalgic one, hearkening back to his university days an odd decade back. There were a few likely pairs that didn''t find the choice all that difficult: Idris chose her brother Evander, Ken gravitated towards his old fling Chop, Baz stood by his racial tendencies and paired with Shores before looking for another powertech. Malik might have joined that last group, but he wasn''t a powertech¡ªhe didn''t have the plush finances or cross disciplinary knowledge for it, plus he got claustrophobic which was an automatic dis-qualifier. With teams forming all around him, Malik looked to the Amazon bombshell to his left, only to find she''d already made a femme fatale team with Nye and Ruby.


    In the blink of an eye, he was standing alone next to the inhuman mountain named Treu. As a last resort, Malik started forming the questions he didn''t want to ask but before he could utter a sound Treu answered as if he''d read Malik''s mind.


    "Yes, I have a warsuit. No, I will not be forming a group with anyone else. Not on your life."


    Malik had to take a step back at the titan''s words, another question forming in his mind and failing to reach his lips before Treu answered.


    "Yes, I did. Now leave me be and direct your attention elsewhere, Gnat."


    Leeroy hammer the ceiling to call the room to order again, drawing all eyes to the center of the room. Malik used the distraction to sidle away from the very polite mind-reading giant of a man whom he harbored absolutely zero negative thoughts or opinions of once soever.


    "We'' figure out what to do with the stragglers once we''re planetside." Leeroy said. "Chances are you''ll be used piecemeal or in a platoon support capacity. Either way, we''ll cross that airlock when we get to it and not before. Tentatively, I''ll have overall mission command with Alice as my second. Ghost will be running numbers as long as that''s feasible, after that I''d like someone else to step up and wear a second hat as our on-site quartermaster and logistics officer."


    The room waited for Leeroy to continue, but the scarred veteran let the moment hang as he peered throughout the room. Prospective volun-tolds averted their eyes, suddenly finding literally anything better than the briefing or its facilitator. A few of the more cocksure mercs let their heads turn to Mister Fagus, who usually accepted the role from a mix of competence and duress.


    "Come on guys, we can''t keep pushing this off on Clancy. Whatever, that''s a later problem. As stated early, shifts are fourteen hours, two day, one night. I''ll get a headcount and fireteam composition and draw up a sentry rotation. Any volunteers for the day shift?"


    Again, Leeroy faced a sullenly silent room. Some persuasive measures might have summoned a lone volunteer, but this time teams and trios were kept mute as much by their peers as their own reluctance to bite the bullet. Malik spotted Idris and Evander carrying a conversation with nothing but their eyes, evidently debating how their third¡ªthe Shadow''s leading markswoman, Lacy¡ªwould react. The dessert world siblings reached a non-verbal agreement and kept their peace.


    "I thought not, dice it is then." Leeroy said. "Ordinance orders and rules of engagement are as follows until I say otherwise or situation FUBAR. No first shot unless threatened, WITH weapons. Fists count as weapons, harsh words don''t¡­ Havoc. If the tactical situation devolves to the point where any you need to question the legality of an action that will save your lives, do it. We''ll decide if you were right or wrong after the fact instead of mourning your honorable corpse. That being said, we''re deploying to a densely-populated megacity. If the population turns on us, the Johnson will hang us out to dry and die. Keep collateral damage to a minimum, prioritize hollow-point ammunition and shoot to kill if engaged. We shouldn''t be squaring off against rival paramilitary forces, but there are multiple local mercenary outfits operating in and through this system, so prepare to fight off a force comparable to ourselves in a pinch. I''ll talk to the Johnson about how he wants us to field our warsuits, ideally he''ll agree to keep a team tooled up for quick response but we''ll have to play that by ear."


    "As if there''s another outfit that could take us on this rock." Bull sneered from her clump of fellow psychopaths, Xadria and Eric.


    "Probably not in an un-fair fight." Leeroy admitted. "But we''ll be spread thin, our heaviest weapons peace-bound, no appreciable support from our gunships or the Shadow, Ghost won''t be providing a tac-net for long, AND until we''re suited up and boots down in our walking coffins we''re just mortal men." Leeroy shifted his tirade to address the room. "We won''t be gunning down uppity peasants or half-starved pirates this time people! Our area of operations is a hot spot for the biggest black market arms dealing we''ve seen in the past seven years. I know some of you were blinded by your future purchases and forgot that our enemies can buy that same fancy hardware, but they can. We may be up against the usual slum rats and outlaws, but these ones could have fangs. Remember that."


    Leeroy allowed the scolding to adequately set in before continuing.


    "Once we''re established planetside, the Shadow will be picking up some escort work in system for fuel and munitions. So anyone staying behind will be kept busy but don''t expect much else besides. Sadly, that means Ghost won''t be able to get it stuck in with the rest of us at the sharp end and we''ll have to make do well enough without¡ª not that he''d be all that useful ground side anyway given the developing nature of our AoO."


    Leeroy''s aside earned some quiet chuckles among the more technophobic crew members. Malik would have joined them once, but today he had to suck his teeth at them. The fact that Ghost was an AI still didn''t sit entirely well with him, but that hadn''t stopped Ghost from guiding Malik back to the strike force when he''d had gotten cut off while scouting during a pirate raid nine months back. Ghost hadn''t exactly saved his life or anything, but it''d won its way off his shit list that night. Since then, the AI had been a useful tool on more than one job. Malik knew there were others aboard who shared similar experiences. Slowly but surely the AI was winning over the crew but its presence aboard their ship was still a hot button issue, not unlike their current unwelcome guests.


    "Which brings me to my next point," Leeroy continued. "In case you were wondering why Bim and Treu were here, we''re not dropping them off planetside. They''ll be joining us on this job as initially planned, though in a subcontractor capacity instead of as civilian attaches."


    The assembly burst into an uproar, agitators crying in outrage while rationalists tried to bawl them in line. Xadria didn''t utter a word and just headed for the door to leave, four more mercs following her example. Before they could leave or another debate could escalate into a fist fight, Leeroy hammered the ceiling for order and received a moment of calm in the eye of the building storm.


    "They WON''T be on the line with us!" Leeroy roared. "Princess, Hero! You''ll be my command staff and so will Bim once she learns the ropes. Treu, you''ll be operating at your discretion as we''ve already discussed. The rest of you, if you walk out on this you''ll be missing the best paying job I''ve ever seen in my fifteen years as a hired gun. Beyond the pay we''ll have full benefits, a loaded expense account, planetside R&R, plus we''ll be working for a black marketeer who runs the most lucrative criminal empire for thirty stars in any direction."


    His words were swallowed in the pressing silence that followed. It wasn''t just the job they''d be walking out on. It was one of the worst parts of being a mercenary that on one ever mentioned, but when you decided that that one job wasn''t worth your time, you had to live with it. Maybe nothing happens and it was all a waste of time, but maybe, just maybe you could have made the difference. That doubt was the kind that ate at your soul, wondering if they''d still be alive if you were there to save them. It wasn''t just about the job, they were walking out when the rest of the outfit was about to throw its ass in the fire. Three of the would be deserters found their resolve, they wouldn''t leave their buddies hung out to dry. The forth hovered indecisively, looking everywhere but in Treu''s direction.


    Xadria didn''t even turn around.


    "The only way I''ll get on the same planet as that freak is if I''m there to murder him." She said before walking away. She''d only taken a single step before she spun on the spot to face Treu. "What the hell did you just say to me!"


    Malik, who''d been standing nearest to the titan of a man, hadn''t heard him so much as whisper. Xadria lingered, glowering at him while she waited for an answer that clearly wasn''t going to be forthcoming, then stomped out of the room. Malik glanced warily at Treu but the man could have been carved from marble for all the expression he showed. Leeroy was another matter. He was torn somewhere between outrage and ice-cold bloodlust. Malik had to gulp at the sight of the traditionally stoic voice of reason among the crew so visibly hostile.


    "As I was saying," Leeroy growled. "There''s a lot of work to do an not very much time to get it done. Team leads and command staff, stick around for my next call with the Johnson and the follow up round table talks. Everyone else, get to work."

 B13 - Planetside Welcome, Local Customs

    Bim


    The unwoman''s vast mind was contemplating the duality of her current situation as the Black Cat made its orbital entry. She was simultaneously delighted with recent events culminating in this foray into the great unknown of human civilization and she was disgruntled to a similar degree. The drop ship was living up to its name and plummeting to the planet below in a fuel-saving maneuver that induced pleasant, momentary weightlessness. Bim''s fellow passengers didn''t seem nearly as pleased with the momentary reprieve from gravity and its simulated kindred as she was. Once the ground had closed to a pre-calculated distance, the shuttle burned hard against its freefall, gracing its occupants with a semblance of acceleration once again. As detestable as the burden of metal and bone in her back was under normal circumstances, it became intolerably excruciating as the perceived weight of her vessel tripled, then quintupled its relative norm.


    When the Black Cat slammed to a stop minutes later, Bim had a dizzying second of dysphoria and disassociation. It was almost as if her soul had been beaten from her vessel at the same instant the shuttle thudded onto the ground. The second passed and she wasn''t sure if the sensation was caused by the soul-crushing weigh of her body, an over acute perception of momentum or legitimate astral projection of her blunted senses. The humans around her were unbuckling themselves and unfastening the first load of equipment they''d brought planetside. Bim decided to do likewise.


    "The meter''s running," Aivery announced over the shuttle''s intercom. "Engines are still burning, so get that shit off my bird on the double! I''ve got nine more flights and I want to finish before the sun comes back up."


    "Evander, offload with your team." Leeroy bellowed over the shuttle''s roaring engines. "Remainder, lets go meet the client and figure out where we''ll be camped for the next six months."


    The mercs tromped off the shuttle, Bim embedded in their numbers while her tormentor remained firmly apart either group. Had she been observing a solitary creature in the wild or perhaps an isolated example of an otherwise social animal ignoring its natural tendencies, she might have dwelt on the subject in complementation. However, it was Treu, she would learn little that had not already been censored and sanitized from him. Her surroundings proved to be an altogether different case.


    The humans surrounding her¡ªnominally those who were her fellows in this endeavor now¡ªall carried a measure of who they were in the most intriguing ways. Leeroy walked with a lumbering sway to his shoulders, his stride accustomed to carrying a heavy load that wasn''t there. The way Princess flicked her scrupulous gaze everywhere and nowhere at once behind the large wire-rimmed sunglasses she was wearing despite their nighttime arrival. The supple rolling gait of Alice''s quiet, measured steps; she walked as if she loathed the grating texture of materials grinding underfoot nearly as much as Bim did. Hiiro''s simpleminded awe of the courtyard they''d landed in and the antiquated mansion presented a short distance away was plain yet another clouded sentiment lingered in the stiffening of his posture and the sudden rigidity of his arms.


    The building was unlike any construct she had witnessed as of yet. The fragmentary recollections of her first teacher could only draw the loosest comparisons, a roof held aloft by walls and a great sum of transparent portals called windows that were not walls for some reason despite being functionally similar. The building as illuminated from within and without by warm yellow lighting, its elaborate wooden paneled construction made to create a mocking skin of differentiation from the cool stone and metal interior. In terms of volumetrics the building was larger than the Stalking Shadow was. Bim spotted four visible levels excluding the flat roof and the mansion had a peculiar shape, like a hexagon that had been hollowed out and cut in half laterally. She altered her thinking from geometrics to, what she thought was, a more human interpretation; that that regard the building could be identified as having a central ''body'' with two wings or arms reaching out wide towards the courtyard. The association was something of a stretch considering the inhuman proportions of the mansion, but it was a pose mirrored by the human man walking out of the mansion to welcome them.


    Compared to the ethnically diverse, racially heterogeneous yet culturally homogeneous crew of the Stalking Shadow, the approaching crowd was unimpressive. The central figure was of lower than average height, above average body fat, and sported a wide toothy smile which highlighted the seven golden teeth mixed with a mouthful of black and yellow originals. Two more men of similar height, weight and build flanked their gold-toothed principal, though their dress clearly denoted them as guards. Where their charge was casually dressed in brightly colored loose cloths, both guards wore pale fatigues blotted with tan and sandstone coloration while carrying compact firearms.


    "My Friends! It is very good to meet you in person, I have been very excited since our many messages. Welcome to my¡­ humble, abode." The man gestured loosely to his extravagant mansion, then held out his hand in the traditional human gesture of pact sealing.


    "Celio-Rodrigo das Estrelas Salvador Dominar," Leeroy said, his practice of the fluid syllables allowing him to say the client''s full name without tripping over anything. Leeroy took the offered hand and firmly shook it once. "Leeroy, von Stalking Shadow. I''m looking forward to working under you. This is my second, Alice, and my command staff for this op, Hero, Bim and Princess."


    "A Princess and a hero you say?" Celio said with a chuckle. "Well well well, if I''d known you''d bring such beautiful women as these, I would have brought you into my employ years ago."


    Celio reached out his hand to Alice. She raised her own to return the traditional gesture, but he seized her wrist and brought her knuckles to his lips. Alice spared a glance to Leeroy, but otherwise made no overtly negative reaction to the breech in decorum. Bim noted the variation of established human tradition, resolving to investigate the matter in due time when such a breach of decorum would not prove detrimental to her research as a whole. Celio shook Hiiro''s hand next, causing her to wonder if his previous gesture went beyond greetings and pact sealing.


    Then it was Bim''s turn. She plastered a neutral expression on her vessel''s face since she had yet to master the art of smiling, and resigned herself to the momentary disgust of physical contact. Celio reached for her hand, not clasping her fingers so much as guiding her placid arm upwards; his skin was unexpectedly soft and moist against her own, lacking the coarse calluses she''d experienced every other time a human hand had touched her own. The gentleness of his touch was appreciated, not so much as it repulsed her but so far this was one of the least displeasing physical greetings she''d experienced. Then his lips touched her knuckles. Where his skin had been moist, his lecherous lips very practically dripping wet. Celio pressed them tighter against her fleshy casing, flicking his tongue over her skin, sucking on her third finger, nipping once at the excess skin of its joint while his fetid breath billowed against her hand. It was disgusting. This ritual was vile and repulsive. Bim now understood why Alice had looked elsewhere, to distract herself from Celio''s thinning head of hair as he suckled on her flesh.


    Bim''s curiosity once again faltered. Why hadn''t she heeded the warnings of her elders? Truly for the many backwards wonders and knowledge to be gleaned from this repugnant insidious existence of flesh and linear time, there must have been an incalculable number of horrors, pains and curses. The underside of Celio''s tongue slithered back down her finger''s length, leaving a trail of reeking saliva that made her want to tear her hand from his face. It took no small sum of will to resist the urge. This was the price of knowledge and even cursed knowledge might one day be useful¡ª though how this could ever be useful to know was beyond her current comprehension.


    Celio finally raised his head, allowing Bim to reclaim her hand without breeching the observed decorum. The condensation from his breath and the vile trickle of his sticky saliva running off her skin almost made her want to cut off the hand to be rid of. Instead, she though of Treu and his mutilation of her to obliterate the paltry agonies of her flesh in the present moment.


    Celio moved before Princess, but the pale woman didn''t offer her hand. She reached up and removed her square aviator sunglasses, allowing a full unadulterated view of her face and inhuman eyes. Both guards behind him raised their weapons, not into a firing stance, not yet anyway, but rather into a high ready as a blatant show of force. The woman''s ploy worked as planned, Celio visibly taken aback by the revelation. He stood there, mouth agap for a long moment while his face transmogrified from one expression to the next in a cycle of caricature Bim found very educational. Ultimately the one he settled on was a face of morbid curiosity, simultaneously attracted and repulsed by the creature standing before him. Vile as Bim found the man, she couldn''t help but wonder what his face might look like when he discovered that she wasn''t human either.


    "Princess," The pale woman said without a gram of warmth or welcome in her voice. "I''ll be handling the explosives we''re using in your perimeter defenses. Every time I catch you leering at me like that again, I''ll move the lethal radius in five meters."


    "How large is it going to be initially?" Celio asked, his cocksure swagger returning with gusto.


    "Fifty meters beyond the courtyard." Princess answered.


    Celio though about this for a moment before smiling his gold-toothed smile and examining the pale woman to a nauseating degree.


    "Forty-five now." He said. "I was thinking about replacing my windows anyway, Princess das Neves. The exotic beauty of your wintry complexion will be a welcomed complement to this world of unending summer suns."


    "Sir-" Leeroy started.


    "Just Celio will suffice in private company, Mister Leeroy. Only the public and strangers need be so formal with each other."


    "Very well. Celio, our shuttles will be ferrying in gear and personnel throughout the night. I''m aiming to have everything and everyone tucked away before sun up, with your permission my second will coordinate the details with one of your staff while we get down to business."


    "Of course!" Celio agreed, snapping his fingers twice. A woman in dignified servant garb rushed from the house. "This is my chefe macante dom¨¦stica, my head maid, Carmen Maria de Terra Diaz Ruiz."


    The maid bowed by way of introduction.


    "She has managed this estate for twenty-two years and served me faithfully in that time. Feel free to use her or any of my chore girls as you see fit. They live to serve." Celio offered with a golden smile.


    Bim was far from an expert on the subject of human age¡ªor age of any living creature for that matter¡ªthough the way he''d stated the maid''s duration of service clearly placed emphasis on it. Leeroy had done much the same during his earlier briefing. These occurrences created a rudimentary pattern in which humans valued the passage of their time in such a way she failed to comprehend. Bim put that line of inquiry aside for the moment. Alice and Leeroy exchanged a glance in Bim''s periphery vision, furthering her suspicions, but said nothing on the subject.


    "Handle it." Leeroy ordered. "I''ll get the back brief from you later."


    Alice motioned for the meek maid to follow and departed with all possible stealth.


    "Come, let''s continue this conversation in the second floor study." Celio announced, turning on his heels and taking off at a brisk walk.


    Relative to the shipboard accommodations she''d been allotted until now, the mansion was a spectacle of excess to Bim. They entered through a back door straight into a smoking parlor with attached bar, the space of the single room easily quadruple that of the Stalking Shadow''s Crush cabin. The excess space was used to house all manner of furniture from couches to game tables to bulky, towering refrigerators. Beyond furniture of discernible function, the room was also filled with objects that served no purpose she could recognize; embossed wooden sculptures with complimentary metallic inlays, massive paintings hung from the carved bones, a fruit arrangement that she realized wasn''t composed of fruit at all but rather dyed stones that resembled various fruits. Such superfluous living made no logical sense yet the gross abundance only worsened as they were led further inside.


    Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    Every room was garishly decorated beyond reason. There were collections framed and displayed in shadowboxes, early currencies, local tools and primitive weaponry. Heads and pelts of animals were in ludicrous abundance, including a truly massive specimen of reptile that carpeted the length of an entire marble hallway. They reached a grand stairway, worked into the resemblance of a short local mountain that was still unblemished by human hands near the summit and fully developed into a city at floor level. No two rooms shared the same lighting fixtures, one might be mirrored wall scones, the next a row of chandeliers and the room after that staggered spotlights that drew attention to whatever materialistic possession was deemed worthy of the lime light.


    As they neared the study, the pattern of collected works became more intellectual. Sealed bookshelves displayed treaties, maps and deeds of historic value. Portraits of more reasonable proportions showed life-sized rendering of humans long deceased. In a place of honor, singled out from all else was a wall of urns, each with a brass plaque underneath. The earlier excess had been largely lost on Bim, unlike her companions, yet the wealth of preserved knowledge restored a modicum of respect for the lecherous man guiding them.


    "This palace was once the residence of the Bolintia family," Celio stated, pointing to various relevant portraits as they passed it. "Then the eighth city governor for a half century before the Guerreiro ousted the Martinaz Cruz lineage and auctioned off the captured estates to pay for his ''war of liberation.'' The very hills themselves wept with the blood of the slain until my great grand father, Rodrigo Salvador, brought to wrath of the heavens upon these lands as I do now."


    The opulent wooden double doors to the study were crowned by a portrait of this Rodrigo Salvador. There was some resemblance, though Bim had noticed a recurring tendency to either hyper-fixate or over-generalize her examinations of humans. At the time of painting, the ancestor shared a similar thinning head of dark hair as his descendant, furthermore they had identical golden teeth¡ª which struck her as improbably coincidental. Both also shared brown eyes, tanned porous skin and soft portly build, though Celio was pronouncedly fatter than his ancestors. Bim was forced to conclude that the men were likely related based off similarity of appearance, but that was a conclusion she falsely reached more often than not when comparing one human to another.


    "A storied residence for a fabled lineage." Leeroy said, stepping into the study after Celio. "Shall I assume you have an ulterior motive in regaling us with your home''s pedigree?"


    The study they''d entered put the affluence of the palace to shame. It was as extravagantly decorated as any other room she''d witness so far: plush reading loungers sat beside enormous crystal windows, the verticals of the bookshelves were thick totemic pillars carved in the likeness of seven savage beasts growing domesticated the higher one looked, the horizontals were stylized to be held aloft by generations of man progressing top to bottom. The symbolism was literal enough for Bim to appreciate, the compounding knowledge of man came from those who''d learned it before and passed it down the generations. It was a rudimentary and effective analogy for the flesh-bound slaves of time.


    "Your outfit has a history of being sharper than most guns for hire," Celio said with his gold-toothed smile. "I knew bringing you on was the right choice. Yes, while the legends of this palace and my family are worthy of retelling for their own sake, a blood feud that has lain dormant for nearly a century now threatens to raise its ugly head."


    "We''re mercenaries." Princess said. "You don''t need to sell us on your cause. Pay us enough and point us at whoever you want dead. We''ll handle the rest."


    "My friends, must our relationship be so transactional?" Celio asked.


    "Mercs are like hookers, pretending to care costs extra."


    "Name your price, Princess das Neves." Celio countered instinctively.


    "More than you can afford." Princess answered, revulsion sounding clear in her icy tone.


    "I shall thaw your heart yet. But, for the time being, back to business. I have had an uneasy peace with the Guerreiro my entire life, however, last year they were no longer contented with the terms of our long-agreed peace. They still took my money, but my boats began disappearing, my men butchered, my legitimate business''s harassed. When I sent my best man to deliver my new terms, they sent me his head in a box a week later."


    "So its war then." Leeroy concluded.


    "Not yet." Celio said. "War is bad for business, as is weakness. If I make the first move and fail to destroy them utterly, the Guerreiro will scatter like maggots and plague me for as long as I live. For now, I must show my strength. To continue my affairs as if their attacks are so far beneath my notice that they become emboldened and expose themselves and their conspirators."


    "You''re not leaving me a lot of run for tactical flexibility." Leeroy stated.


    "That will change when the moment is right. What would the people say if they saw that I''d hired you now? ''The savior is weak, look how he hides behind his guards and hires more every day.'' ''His empire is crumbling from so few holes in his boats, he is not a man who can protect our investments, let''s take our business elsewhere.'' Whispers like those would kill me as surely as a bullet might. No, it is better that you are my hidden knife until the time is right."


    "Very well then. How do you plan on hiding us until the time is right? Some of us can passably blend," Leeroy motioned to Hiiro and Bim. "Others, less so." This time motioning to his own Caucasoid features and those of Princess as well. "It won''t take the locals long to learn you''ve got a band of offworlders working for you."


    "Drifting dos Estrelas, outsiders that is, are not so foreign as you think. I grew into manhood through shadow wars, as have the men in my employ. Your kind are tolerated so long as your money is good and I can assure you your money will be good, better even, so long as you stay on my retainer. Take the bulk of your brancos¡ªthe whites of your number¡ªinto Crucibab at dusk tomorrow. Pretend to be exactly what you are, soldiers of fortune spending your pay until you return to the stars and head elsewhere. You may even take on local work should you choose, so long as you don''t target any of my business assets. Become known and you will fade from memory. Once you have done that, no one will notice when you come or go from the city and you will be free to move as you need for your duties in my service."


    "Alright, I''ll get a rotation sorted once my team has gotten planetside. From the sounds of it, you''ve already given this a great deal of thought, so what do you want the other half of us doing while our paleskins work on our tans?"


    "Exactly what we''ve already discussed. They will act as security consultants, procurement advisers and equipment trainers for my own staff. I have over five-hundred men in my employ and I want as many of them ready for the battles ahead as possible. There''s also the matter of my chore girls, I have heard that your women fight like men. Could you train serving girls to fight as men do also?"


    Bim had seen no evidence supporting Celio''s sexist convictions. From her limited exposure to the crass art of violence, all humans seemed to possess a varied capacity regardless of physical sex. In hindsight there were different advantages to every body type of both sexes, though she didn''t know enough about physically devastating the human body with mundane means to categorize them adequately. Had she been unsealed, Bim harbored no doubt she would have been the most lethal woman on the planet and one of the strongest overall. She suddenly realized that much like until Treu had raised the possibility of her striking him, her overall capacity for violence was yet another facet of physical existence she''d failed to consider until prompted by external influences. A human might have become disparaged at how much they didn''t know that they didn''t know, but the reminder only served to fan the flames of her insatiable curiosity.


    Upon reflection, the duality of the human soul was something she still understood very little about. She couldn''t understand why humanity existed in to two partitioned states of masculine and feminine in flesh, mind and soul. Even her own vessel, an imitation she''d torn from the mind of those nearest her manifestation, conformed to the human idea of assigned anthropomorphic sexuality; a concept she now realized had been subtly influencing her own rationalization of what this vessel of pseudoflesh and its self-aware existence was. She, was not a she, but she thought she was. The idea caused a cascading surge of gender dysphoria, identity supposition and a sudden intense desire to resculpt her vessel into a more androgynous, less human parallel more in line with her true sexless existence. She couldn''t though, Treu had seen to that and the rational hatred of her tormentor gained a new layer. All of this raced through her mind in the twelve seconds it took Leeroy to consider Celio''s question.


    "Generally speaking, yes." Leeroy answered. "Its actually quite common for other planets and colonies to use both sexes militarily, out of cultural bias or necessity. If you''re worried about their effectiveness, I can assure you that modern weaponry equalizes most engagements to the point where the user''s physicality doesn''t particularly matter. Ultimately, if they want to be a warrior, we can make them into one. If they don''t, they will be as useful as any other coward with a gun."


    "So long as they remain obedient in the end, I would have you train them as a weapon of last resort." Celio stated dismissively. "I have three-hundred working women on this estate, some of them should be suitable for your purposes. Though you must train them separately from the men."


    "How well are the women paid?" Princess asked.


    Celio seemed puzzled by her question.


    "I give them a place to live, food to eat and the company of my men to keep them-"


    "So you don''t pay them financially." Princess said.


    "No, I do not. Those who are skilled with numbers have access to a shared fund if they need to purchase something outside of the usual care. Of course, their spending is regularly audited."


    "Offer to pay the ones who volunteer for guard services and reach the point of competence. Also exempt them from a portion of their regular duties to train and bring in more staff to make up for the labor shortfall, otherwise those who don''t volunteer will become bitter at those who do for the increased workload. That should motivate them well enough for our purposes and prevent a reasonable amount of dissent while we change up the status quo."


    "And this point of competence would be the same as a man''s?" Celio asked dubiously.


    "Yes." Leeroy answered before Princess could. "There''s no point lowering our standards to accommodate the weak. That''d endanger everything we''re trying to accomplish here and jeopardize lives in combat. When you fight, you have to meet the bar or you die. That''s how we operate and that''s how we''ll train your staff."


    Bim found this logic sound, though Celio gave the matter far more consideration that she felt it merited.


    "You expect many of them to reach the same competence as a man?" Celio asked.


    "If they have the heart to tough out training, then yes, I''d expect almost ninety-percent of your staff to meet our standards given enough time. I''d need to evaluate the quality of our raw materials before I can give you an accurate estimate, though at a guess, I''d say we can have a hundred men and maybe half that many women ready inside of ten weeks."


    The men guarding Celio scoffed at Leeroy''s statement. The mathematics of his statement seemed to indicate that given the relative starting volumes, men were twenty-percent easier to train; which raised the question of weather the guards thought Leeroy''s estimations were insultingly low of men or high of the women. Bim put the figure aside for verification at a later date.


    "So fast?" Celio asked.


    "We''ll focus on the best candidates first and establish a teaching cadre from their ranks. You should keep in mind we''ll be teaching them to primarily carry out defensive duties first. Our initial point of competence will focus on discipline, marksmanship, small unit tactics and combat fitness. You''re getting guards first and once they can do their jobs without someone watching over their shoulder, that''s when I''ll start forging them into killers." Again one of the guard scoffed at Leeroy''s remark, but the scarred veteran continued without pause.


    "The process would be faster if it was my sole focus, I might be able to reach my projection inside of six weeks if that was the case but between acclimatization, establishing a cover, security assessments, fortification, equipment procurement and covertly guarding your person, my attentions and those of the outfit will be spread thin. We''ve already got a few training plans devised, once the rest of my team is planetside we''ll get a distribution of labor sorted. From there we can finalize our plans for the next month or so and have them put into action before I depart tomorrow evening. Both the away and training teams will need some attached locals who know the surrounding areas and markets well. I assume you were able to arrange them ahead of schedule like I requested?"


    "My trusted men are awaiting your guidance as we speak."


    Leeroy cast a glance to Princess who shook her head in the negative.


    "Good, then there''s nothing else we need to discuss right now. You''ll have a transcription of my intentions by dusk tomorrow, we''ll reconvene then to discuss any issues. Unless you have anything to add?"


    "Only that I look forward to working with you, my friends." Celio said, smiling his gold-toothed smile. "My life is in your hands, do try to be careful with it."


    "For the amount you''re paying? Your safety is all but guaranteed."

 H14 - Palace Grounds

    Hiiro


    "God almighty! This place is too fucking hot." Evander complained from his chair, while sipping at chilled water, in the shade of an erected awning where he supervised those of us toiling in the sun.


    "It could be worse." I said, stabbing into the loose, dry soil with my shovel for emphasis. "You could actually be working."


    One of the local Vigia collapsed from heat exhaustion to emphasis my point. He wasn''t the first to fall today, and I doubted he''d be the last.


    "We are working." Idris said from her brother''s side. "It just so happens that our job is to winnow those with the will to fight from those without."


    "Anyone can strengthen their body so long as they have a strong mind, but we''ve yet to find a way to strengthen a weak mind." Evander added.


    "Not to mention, these pigs could use the exercise. Wouldn''t you say, Xan?"


    "I concur, Driz"


    I stabbed into the dirt again, making sure to throw my spoil as close to nattering siblings as I could. My throw was short, scattering spill over the Vigia men to exhausted to complain around me and over the women who were loading the most recent heat casualty into a wheelbarrow. I expected them to complain, but the women kept their peace and carried out their task like dutiful mutes.


    "So what about me?" I asked. "Do I need to lose some weight too?"


    I was the only man who''d stripped off his sweat-soaked shirt to work. The taut muscles of my upper body were gleaming with sweat, causing my tawny skin to glow like polished bronze in the midday sun. My years of hard labor as a pioneer in the savage wilds of my homeworld had served me well in hindsight and my cushy life of crime afterwards had robbed little of my masculine definition. I''d never be a hulking giant of a man with brawny arms like tree trunks, but I certainly stood apart from the pot-bellied, flabby armed gangsters wheezing around me as they inexpertly operated their digging implements.


    "If anything, you should try and put some on." Idris said, her eyes rolling over me as one might a toasted snack on a cold day.


    "We should have some combi-steroids in with our dietary supplements, though you might need to fight some of the big''uns for them." Evander commented.


    "How many holes do I need to dig to prove I''m the best damned shovel operator you''ve got?" I asked, climbing out of my most recent triumph to start on the next.


    "Oh you''ve already done that." Idris stated.


    "You are a master of your craft." Evander confirmed.


    "Then why am I still busting my back out here? Let the local Vigia handle this."


    "No." Both siblings said simultaneously. I glared at the twins, but started on another hole spaced four meters from the last one I''d dug anyway.


    "We''re not judging you that their standard-" Idris started.


    "We''re judging you by our standard, which is much higher as you may have guessed." Evander continued.


    "Plus, you''re the rookie. Rookies do all the scut work, it''s tradition." Idris concluded, nodding sagely.


    Another man collapsed trying to climb out of his hole, his sweat-soaked sun-shawl flipping up to reveal bright red skin on his arms and face where his shawl had failed to protect him. The local clothing was designed to combat the omnipresent heat of this world, but there was only so much it could do.


    I''d noticed two main fashions in the week we''d spent on the planet so far. Broadly, they were inner and outer-wear. Cruibab and the neighboring regions had three distinct weather patterns: sunny and sweltering, scorching and windy, lastly there was night which always blew in a tepid sandy/salty sea breeze. Outerwear, consisting of loose-woven shawls or ponchos, wide-brimmed hats, translucent face veils and airy balloon-sleeved shirts and trousers, protected from the worst of the daily conditions; inner-wear, consisting of sweat-wicking shorts and shirts, did not. What surprised me most about the local dress was the complete lack of gloves and shoes in favor of pockets and two-piece sandals with open sides.


    Most of the Stalking Shadow''s mercs had taken to the local garb with gusto in a vain attempt to beat the heat. A few, such as Evander and Idris, already had superior equivalents and saw no point in downgrading to the local knock-offs. I was one of exactly three people who didn''t find the climate to be soul-crushingly oppressive¡ª the other two being Bim who didn''t seem notice the temperature had doubled and Treu who enjoyed the heat for some reason only he knew. Even the scorching sun burning high overhead at its zenith wasn''t enough to make me foam at the mouth, though it was unpleasantly warm on my freshly-bronzed skin. I''d dug another thirteen holes before a tirade of disparaging remarks forced me to lift my head from the earth.


    Princess, fully wrapped against the sun and hiding under a large, black parasol for good measure, was providing ''instruction'' to the Vigia whose excavations failed to meet her standards. The lecture was too basic to be of any use to me, so I kept my head down and resumed digging while she questioned the intelligence, education and parentage of the men who couldn''t follow basic direction. Her education lasted long enough for me to dig another four holes to completion and get halfway through the fifth before my pit was cast in shadow.


    "Mudsucker!" Princess barked, "Get out of there and come with me. And put a shirt on, that cross in this light is murder on my eyes."


    "Where are we going?" I asked, doing as she''d ordered.


    "Command meeting."


    "Another one?" I groaned, mostly from the day''s labor but I was tiring of these endless meetings.


    Princess led me on a long skirting lap of the defensive works on our way back to the mansion, pausing infrequently to berate any laborer who''s efforts she found lacking. The estate grounds were slowly being made into a stronghold. The pale woman''s grand vision of a cliffside castle had been turned down in favor of more utilitarian, non-invasive fortifications. Instead of ferrocrete walls and guard towers, they were digging perimeter trenches and blockhouses that could be turned over to the workers once the danger had passed. Of course the minefield was a separate matter entirely, although I suppose trees could be planted in the resultant craters after we left.


    The hilltop estate was a massive sprawling affair consisting of the palace proper, garages, hangers, pools, ornamental gardens and a commanding overview of the surroundings. At several places across the grounds, one could see the orange-red mass of Cruibab proper some twenty-odd kilometers to the northwest, the valleys to the south and the ocean to the east. The eastern cliffside was steep but it wasn''t a sheer drop to the crashing waves down below and portions of the bluff had been given over to worker apartments carved into the granite stone. From the southeast to the west and the north, orchards of exotic, colorful fruits dotted the rolling hills.


    "What did you expect?" She asked as we neared the palace at the estate''s heart. "This is what being a merc is about. Ninety percent of the job is preparing for every outcome, that way we never have to risk a fair fight. You can''t tell me you ran into every job you had as a ''house painter'' half-cocked and blind."


    "Of course not, I put in my legwork, but still this is getting ridiculous." I said, finally stepping out of the sun and into the blessed shade of the palace''s east wing.


    "It''s not just your ass on the line anymore." Princess said, doffing her outer-wear to reveal tight-fitting pale-grey clothes that did nothing for her boyish body or inhuman face. "It''s mine too, and the crews'', AND these local morons who don''t even follow the instructions we give them. When shit hits the vents¡ªand it will, make no mistake on that¡ªall these meetings are going to be the reason we know what to do, how to do it and that we have the gear we need to make it happen."


    The east wing had been completely turned over to our outfit. We had everything we needed and then plenty extra: apartments, gym, kitchen, three swimming pools, a motor pool, a full spa, offices, four studies, a conference hall, random rooms, and even two warehouses¡ª one inside the east wing, the other two-hundred meters away and actively being buried under a few meters of ferrocrete to be used as our explosives storehouse. The conference hall was in with the luxury apartments on the third floor, but Princess led me passed the stairs and made for the ground floor study instead.


    "Isn''t the meeting in the usual place?" I asked, following her into the study where she closed and locked the door behind us.


    Had our positions been reversed, this would be the part where I either pulled out my gun and asked if she had any last words, or made her an offer she couldn''t refuse. Less scrupulous men in that position might have also issued a third option to the woman, if they could get passed her complete lack of feminine charms, that was. As it actually was, I found myself reflexively reaching to my waistband for a gun I wasn''t wearing, just in case.


    "It is," She said. "It''s also scheduled in another forty minutes."


    "And you''ve locked us in this secluded, dark room because¡­"


    "Because these studies are lined with lead plating." She said, as if that explained everything.


    "That doesn''t answer my question." I said bluntly.


    "Fine, because I figured if I can''t see out of this room, then anyone else would have a hard time looking or listening into it."


    Princess fidgeted with a tiny, pointless bauble before returning it to the shelf. Her manner wasn''t the usual cold distant norm for her, but I couldn''t figure out why she''d drug me in here, looking for privacy. What exactly was she expecting me to do, was this her idea of a romantic rendezvous? She hesitantly stopped scanning the room and turned her overlarge, purple eyes to me, surveying the air around me for things only she could see.


    "H-How you doing?" She asked, a tone of irregular familiarity tumbling from her mouth without any grace. Her eyes flicked to my left, locking on nothing in particular before she clarified. "Freaky power-wise, I mean."


    "You make a terrible spy." I stated bluntly enough to shatter the awkward air that had built. A single snort of laughter bled form Princess as she finally looked at me instead of through me.


    "People aren''t really my strong suit." She admitted.


    "It shows. Freaky power-wise, I think I''m doing well. I''m not sure if I''m heat-resistant or just tolerant of the climate, but I''m basically immune to the weather outside."


    "I''ve noticed. This background heat is scrambling my infra-vision. I can barely spot anyone on the lower end of my spectrum¡ª aside from you. Your girlfriend is the complete opposite of you, she''s the same temperature as whatever room she''s in, which probably confuses the hell out of all the IR cameras I''ve seen in this place. Have you had any more cook-offs?"


    "Maybe one. It was more like a near-miss than the real deal. Alice snuck up on me and I spat sparks when I yelped."


    "I didn''t have you pegged as a flincher." Princess said.


    "Normally I''m not. But nothing''s been able to sneak up on me since I was nine years old, so when she tapped my shoulder, I thought- I don''t know¡­ I thought a Byakkai was about to rip my throat out I guess."


    "More evidence for the ''life or death trigger'' theory. I bet that little sneak had a shit-eating grin on when she did it, didn''t she?"


    "Yeah, she winked and said ''she knew I was hiding something, though she wasn''t expecting me to spit fireflies'' and neither was I. Then she disappeared like she usually does."


    "Did it burn your mouth?" Princess asked, peering at my lips.


    "Not that I remember."


    "Okay, so aside from spontaneous combustion and fire-parallel abilities, we can probably add flame-retardant to the list. That''d actually be pretty easy to test, if you don''t mind playing with some different kinds of fires."


    "There are different kinds of fire?" I asked incredulously.


    If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    "So many, mainly its the fuel and temperature ranges. If you factor in near-fires, like arc-flashing or acidic combustion, I could burn you in more than twenty different ways by the end of the day." Princess stated with pride. "If you wanted." She added with a shrug.


    "How do you know so much about this?" I asked.


    "Demolitions is mostly just theoretical architecture and applied chemistry. I''m not a hack like Xadria who just uses P for plenty and hopes its enough to get the job done. I''m not a scientist or anything either, but if you need a hardened structure knocked down, I can cook up something the designer never even thought to counter."


    "That''s amazing." I said. Princess just shrugged off the compliment.


    "Anything else new, freaky power-wise?"


    "Not really." I lied. "Nothing I can think of at least. Sorry I can''t be more helpful."


    "Damn, whatever." Princess said. "I could always try killing you and see what happens, but I''d rather not think about what would happen if you accidentally popped my eyes."


    "You''d never forget the smell." I answered, recalling it all too well.


    "Can we not talk about the smell! It''s bad enough just thinking about it and there''s not enough brain-bleach in the galaxy to convince me otherwise." Princess shuddered at the thought, then after a collecting herself and spotting on something invisible, she continued. "What about Bim?"


    "She seems to be taking things well." I answered noncommittally.


    "Don''t be dense."


    Without an easy way of avoiding the topic, I considered my answer. Bim did seem to be taking the change in locales well, not that there was much of a shift in her behavior. She largely kept to herself, walking around like a sleepwalker, halfway lost in thought. As far as I knew she still wasn''t much of a conversationalist and on the freaky-power scales she barely registered as a blip. If it weren''t for the fact I was drawn to her every time we were in the same room and whatever that whole ''names have power'' thing was, I would have thought she was a normal sheltered rich girl.


    "I haven''t seen her do anything weirder than a normal person would since we got here." I said.


    My words gave me pause. I''d said normal person as if I wasn''t one of them anymore. It was true, but still. I couldn''t place exactly when I''d stopped considering myself normal. It was after I''d met this pale woman who''d forced me to accept the reality of my condition, but beyond that, I couldn''t say. That fact struck a chord with me, though if it was good or bad was too soon to tell.


    "Me neither." Princess hesitantly admitted. "I don''t get why she just goes around acting like a norm. Why the hell does she have that monster following her if she just wants to play tourist?"


    "She hates him. As much as you do for sure, probably more. I''d pretty sure the he feels the same way about her."


    "If she''s no big deal on the freak index, then what''s his deal aside from hating her personally?" Princess asked.


    "How should I know? Why don''t you ask her yourself?" Princess took her inhuman eyes off the walls and glared at me like I''d just asked her to put out the sun with her piss. "I''m serious. She''s aloof and more than a bit odd, I''ll give you that, but I think we''ll get further with her by cooperating rather than keeping her at arm''s length."


    "Who do you mean by we?"


    "Us, all of us. You, me, the outfit, humanity, all nine-frozen meters of us." She raised a snow-white eyebrow at me dubiously, but I refused to back down or elaborate.


    "What about her chaperon?" Princess asked. "You wanna ''cooperate'' with him too?"


    "I''ve heard people whispering about him, saying he reads minds, makes lights and how his room is always cold¡ª plus there''s the way he moves his eyes independently. If I had to guest which of the two were human, he wouldn''t be where I''d put money. Granted, I haven''t seen any of that except the eyes thing, so it''s all hearsay, but¡­ I don''t know. Moreover, I don''t want to know. After what he did in the hanger and the amount of hate everyone has for him, I want as little to do with him as possible."


    "If you could see him like I can, you''d pop your own eyes just to escape the sight. When I say he''s a monster, that''s an understatement." Princess said, a haunted expression cast over her face as she tentatively glanced up at the ceiling. Her wristwatch chose that exact moment to chime. In the span of a few breaths, Princess collected herself and completely changed mental gears. "Come on, we do have a meeting to attend after all. It should go without saying, but just in case, let''s keep these talks between us freaks. Otherwise I''ll have to kill you."


    "Duly noted." I said as I unlocked the study door.


    This time I led the way with Princess following, her eyes practically boring into me from behind. Bim was on the stairway when we got there, examining the intricate artistry that seems to be depicting the collapse of an era the higher one climbed. The whole piece was too poetic and flowery for me to get much out of it, but the inquisitive alien woman seemed to be enthralled by the details.


    "We''ve got another command meeting soon," I said. "Did you want to come with us?"


    "I have a choice?" Bim asked in her delayed, aloof manner.


    "More than I do." I answered. "I''m heading up now."


    "Then I shall accompany you."


    The conference hall, much like everything else we''d been allotted from the palace, was just plain excessive for our needs. The massive oval table and forty of its fifty chairs had been pushed into the corner in favor of a reasonably-sized desk we''d appropriated from on of the offices. The field deployment terminal was a smaller off-shoot of the briefing display screen used in the Shadow''s ops room, with Alice and Chop already leaning over it when I walked in the room. Cables ran along the floor like a tangled root networks, linking multiple power outlets to radios and even to the window where an antenna array was haphazardly taped to the outer wall. Given the technologically regressed nature of the planet, there was a good chance this jury-rigged command center was the most sophisticated electronics depot for hundreds of kilometers around. Alice looked up at our approach but made no comment on Bim''s appearance.


    "I''ve already got the away team linked up through a relay from the Shadow. We''re all here so let''s get started." Alice announced. Her voice was much like the woman herself, small, unobtrusive and all to easy to miss if you weren''t paying attention.


    "We''ve only got voice on this end." Leeroy said over the radios. "If the feed cuts out let me know. I''m sending the info we have on the locally-made power armor now."


    The display flicker to life with a dozen different images from every angle imaginable. My first impressions was that these warsuits were even more heavily armored than those in use by the Shadow''s crew, but then I looked closer and started deciphering the wire-frame schematics and specifications. The reason these things looked like walking slabs of frontal armor was because they were exactly that and little else. Range of motion ratios for the arms and legs were pathetic, power to weight ratios even more so. The local imitations of the real deal were fat, lumbering weaklings that traded everything for ballistic protection from the front and nowhere else. Alice tapped at the terminal, pulling up a video of the power armor in action. The way the armor waddled was comical, how it had to hop on the spot in an attempt to follow a masked rioter running circles around it, even more so. The audio of the suit''s panicked operator after the rioter threw a firebomb into the armor''s vulnerable rear robbed the video of any comedy. The operator''s panicked calls for aid shifted into ear-piercing screaming as he burned alive in his armor. The video ended, cutting his final words short.


    "Those tin cans are a disgrace." Chop stated, her synthesized voice adding a layer of malice to her tone of disdain.


    "That''s pretty much the conclusion we came to out here too." Leeroy said. "If these things are the cutting edge of the local armorers, then I think it''s safe to say we don''t have to worry about going steel to steel with any domestic warsuits."


    "The Client''s not going to like this." Someone grumbled indistinctly over the radio.


    "Based on client needs, I can''t even recommend those things for field testing." Chop said.


    "Which means if he really wants suits, we''re going to have to import." Princess said. "Which raises a whole slew of issues and sets us back on training any of the local yahoos as mechanized infantry."


    "But we''ve planned for this, so it''s not a deal breaker." Leeroy said, blanking the display until the pixelation resolved into three different groundcars. "Up next we''ve got wheels."


    The first was obviously a local militia surplus model, the ugly bastard child of a cross-country utility vehicle and a long-haul one-tonne truck. Six huge offroad alloy-mesh tires, deep wheel wells, front and back crash bars, reinforced roll cage, a short cargo bed behind a long passenger cabin and a wide, low profile painted in the local sandstone hues. It wasn''t the same, but it was similar to the patrol ground crawlers we''d used to good effect back in my pioneering days.


    The second was a tank on wheels, twelve of them to be exact. Even with that many tires to disperse the weight it was already low riding and the tall, armored, boxy body made me think of a step van. Just looking at it, I could tell that roll-hazard would handle like a brick and be about as fast on the uphill.


    The final contender was a white staff car, with some kind of cloth roof I''d never seen before. It was clearly a luxury model, separating the driver and shotgun position from the slightly- stretched passenger seating. The rear seating all faced inwards, with only one door for access when the roof wasn''t folded into the trunk. At a glance, you might be able to comfortable seat five people in the back, maybe twice that uncomfortably.


    "We''re leaning towards six option A''s, with enough spare parts to build two more. Thoughts?" Leeroy said.


    There was a general murmur of assent from the assembly around me. It made sense why the mercenary outfit would gravitate towards military hardware, but they''d seemed to miss an important detail.


    "Are these cars for us or the Client?" I asked.


    "A bit of A, a bit of B." Leeroy answered.


    "For your purposes, I''d have to agree. We used similar vehicles back on Intatenrup, they were fast, agile and durable. But didn''t you say the client wanted a motorcade? Isn''t that the reason you''re looking for groundcars for him?"


    "Skip the lecture, get to your point." Princess said.


    "This is about appearances to him." I said. "He came out and said as much to us. If we try and shepherd him around in a military convoy, that''s not the show of strength he wants. To me that says ''I''m an invader, mess with me and I''ll turn my guns on you.'' I''ve taken a peek in his garages, he already has utility groundcars for his men and sports cars for himself. What he doesn''t have, is an armored staff car."


    "You think we should put our paymail in a convertible?" Leeroy asked incredulously.


    "What better way to say ''look at me, I''m so unconcerned with my safety, everything must be fine.'' At the minimum we should give him the choice, failing that we could use it as a decoy car. I''ve worked with men like him before¡ª more money than brains. If we try and force him into doing something he''s against, he''ll work around us instead of with us."


    "People who work against their security detail usually don''t last long." Chop droned.


    "And if they do survive the first bout, they usually get a lot more cooperative regarding their safety afterwards." Leeroy added. "What the hell, it''s not like I''m spending our money. I''ll add one to the list, finalize the purchases and we''ll make it work. Hero, since your so passionate about it, I''m putting you on point for our motor pool."


    "I only drove," I said. "I don''t really know that much beyond the basic maintenance."


    "That still gives you a leg up on most of us. I''ll give you Chop, Gidget too, once we get back. Between the three of you, you should be able to handle any retrofitting we need. Last order of business, flyers."


    The terminal reset once again, this time showing a vaguely familiar twin-wing, gutless helicopter. The sight made me wonder if all terraforming planets would impart a strange feeling of d¨¦j¨¤ vu. The flyer was another variant of a vehicle I knew from my pioneering days, we''d used them for logging in mountainous areas inaccessible by ground. It only took me a second to remember the sound those engines made as they flew overhead. The entire flyer looked like a fat-head tadpole with two bulky turbine propellers attached via stick-thin frames about halfway down the tail''s length, landing gear dangling at the flyer''s cardinal points. I knew from experience that the turbines could tilt marginally, granting the aircraft a surprising amount of speed for a rotorcraft. Various fasteners and tie-on points dotted the frail-looking body, hinting at the aircraft''s improbable purpose of a heavyweight aerial lifter.


    "Where''s the rest of it?" Alice whispered.


    "They must cut them down to save weight." Chop said.


    "They''re called skycranes," Leeroy said. "Which means the locals have the infrastructure to maintain rotary-wing aircraft, although the finer workings are all imports. I had Gidget and Shores give this bird a poke and they both think it''ll work well enough for hauling suits, crates and the like but not much else."


    "What''s the weight rating look like?" I asked.


    "The bird is about 32-tonnes empty, its ''rated'' for 20-tonnes safely, though I''ve been given a personal guarantee from the seller that it can lift up to 50-tonnes in short bursts or 40 for moderate periods."


    "That''s impressive." I stated dumbly, unable to put that much weight into perspective.


    "Four suits safely," Chop said. "Maybe eight in a pinch. That''s not much in the way of cavalry if things go sour."


    "It''s better than the zero we have otherwise." Princess said.


    "We could alway use the Black Hound." Alice countered. "It''s faster, better armored, has a bigger capacity and we already know how to use it."


    There was some garbled chatter over the radio that I couldn''t decipher.


    "Shores wants it noted that the Hound also costs upwards of sixty-thousand GSaC for every hour of orbital flight and we don''t have a way of easily maintaining it." Leeroy relayed. "And I have to agree with him. Cel- the Client is footing the bill, so price isn''t the issue. If the Hound gets grounded we don''t have an easy way to get it back in the void for repairs. There''s probably some atmosphere-capable recovery craft in-system, but until we''re acting overtly I don''t want to give the locals any more info on us than I have too."


    "Doesn''t our guy own the closest spaceport?" Alice asked. "They should have everything we need there if push comes to blast."


    "Let''s make that plan B." Leeroy said. "It''s a conversation we''d need to take up with him first anyway. Hero, you wanted to consult him about his preference of cars, you can handle that too. While you''re at it, see if he knows anyone else who is selling flyers. These blue-collar birds should haul our armor fine enough, but we''ll still need something to haul personnel¡ª whether that''s an aircar, rotorcraft or whatever those skimmer planes I''ve seen are. That should be it for now. Anything new to report?"


    "Nothing new-new, we''re still weeding out the Vigia for soldiers but we''re having better luck with the battle maids." Alice said. "Another week and we should be able to hand out some real guns."


    "The lethal perimeter is down to thirty-five meters." Princess added.


    "Limit it to at least thirty," Leeroy said with a chuckle. "Any closer and even with directional mines we won''t be much better than the bad guys if they try and hit us."


    "Ugh¡­ fine." Princess groaned. "In that case, we''ll be done with basic fortification inside of twenty days at this rate. Call it no later than a month when I factor in burnout and laborers getting drafted to other projects."


    "It''s a shame we have to ruin such nice gardens." Alice said, whisper-soft.


    "There''s no place nicer to be then a fortress when the shooting starts." Princess countered. "It''s only a matter of time before someone tries to off our paymail."


    "Aright then. Meeting adjourned; next one''s this time tomorrow. Keep up the good work everyone." Leeroy said. The radio''s line went dead a second later.


    "That was the shortest meeting yet." I idly commented.


    "They''ll only get shorter," Princess said. "Right up until the shooting starts. Then we''ll be in meetings until we''re on the line in the thick of it with the rest of them." Princess flicked her eyes from me to Bim. "Enjoy the boredom while it lasts... The gardens too."

 B15 - Walk in the Gardens

    Bim


    The meeting concluded and it''s various parties went their own ways. Hiiro was the first to depart and Bim followed after him. It was intriguing how this entire building was a monument to the past accomplishments of the human species, yet none of its current human inhabitants seemed concerned for the great wealth of knowledge all around them. The concept of irony was one she was still struggling to grasp in a meaningful capacity, though Bim thought that her interest in human history while said humans were entirely disinterested in it did fit the bill.


    Hiiro strode down the eastern grand stairwell with little but cursory glances to the sagas that had been painstakingly detailed all around him. The stairwell itself was a chronicle detailing the collapse of societal limitations imposed on the initial planetary colonists after this world had become sufficiently habitable beyond the archologies and their well-ordered tyranny. The first settlers consumed their supplies, their technology and their very lives to brave the untamed wilds; battling back the savage new world by becoming as savages themselves. Yet Hiiro, and every other human she''d witnessed to date, strode the steps irreverently¡ª blind to the stories they walked upon.


    "I should like to see the gardens with you." Bim said once they had reached the ground floor.


    "You don''t need me to chaperon you about the grounds." Hiiro said, hesitating for a moment, then altering his course away from the palace''s central chambers.


    "That is correct." Bim stated, following him regardless. "Princess''s remark about enjoying the gardens while they last has draw my attention to the ultimate finality of this mortal existence."


    "Oh, is that so?" Hiiro asked, noncommittally.


    "Yes, it is. I have witnessed your species''s capacity for preservation and it is dishearteningly limited. My studies continuously turn up null spaces in available records and no known living witnesses of the events."


    "That tends to happen when people die."


    In all the histories she''d consumed in her time on this world, she had come across death more often than any other topic. It seemed an innate trait of all humans that they could kill and would die. Military annals had been particularly helpful in shaping her current understanding of just how swiftly humanity could cull its own over any reason conceivable. There were genocides over skin color, wars of ideology, squabbling over resources, territorial disputes, and random acts of violence for no readily apparent reason at all in her eyes. Yet the historians and the chroniclers had always survived to write their works for the ages to come¡ª or so she''d thought. Few of the accounts she''d seen had confessed to being only second or even third-hand retellings of partial lore filled with supposition and pondering on the part of their writers. Bim disliked these works the most, as they were often filled with inaccuracies or wild theories instead of the cold hard facts.


    "¡­I hadn''t considered that." Bim admitted. "I understand humans have a great capacity for violence. Could you not exempt some record keepers from your self-destructive slaughter?"


    Hiiro took a pensive air about him as they stepped from the palace interior out into the radiant daylight. He was an excellent barometer of the human mind; his body, normally so reserved and tense, was an open book to her. Bim could read him unlike any other human she''d encountered, there was a simplicity to him that she could comprehend. She knew such an association was entirely misplaced, yet there was something undeniably similar about them, something which defied all categorization in her vast intellect.


    "Do you know how people die?" Hiiro asked her.


    "Of course I do." Bim answered reflexively. "The human body can endure limited amounts of trauma before it becomes an unsuitable vessel for the soul, upon crossing that threshold the soul departs the body, resulting in the death of the empty vessel as it no longer serves a purpose."


    "You make it sound so clean and scientific." Hiiro said with a drawn smile.


    "My observations are highly scientific, implying otherwise is an insult against my being, Hiiro." Bim stated, evoking a fraction of his name.


    There was a hitch to his stride in that moment. A rebellious soul rattling the bars of its cage for a single fleeting instant before returning to dormancy. It was a curious reaction, one she could only elicit in a fraction of the Stalking Shadow''s crew. Had she still had access to her full faculties, she could know why with a cursory flick of thought. As it was, she theorized that only those few among the outfit used their true names freely with their companions.


    "Ah, sorry. That''s not how I meant it." Hiiro said. "You make death sound very clinical. A neat and tidy affair, as sure and steady as longhand math."


    "It is." Bim stated, slightly puzzled. "If I were to remove your head at the neck, you would die."


    "True, but there are other ways to die."


    "Would you like me to explain the multitude of ways your life could be ended?" Bim asked.


    "I''ll do you one better, I can tell you another way that humans die."


    "You have piqued my curiosity." Bim confessed. "Though I fail to understand you rationale in magnifying the theoretical danger I would present should I need to kill humans."


    "That''s the neat part. Humans can die without being killed by another living thing."


    "You speak of ''accidents'' then?"


    "Nope, though lots of people die to those too."


    Bim focused her vast intellect to sifting through all her accumulated knowledge, her memories of learning, pertaining to human mortality. The topic was expansive, humanity seemingly in love with the macabre science of their own demise. Had she not been nailed into the constraints of time by her damningly present body, the task would have been instantaneous, however sifting through her mental archives took longer and longer the more information she accrued.


    "Exposure?" She asked.


    "Nope."


    "Suicide?"


    "Nope.


    "Disease?"


    "Closer, but no."


    The periods between her potential answers became drawn out, cumbersome things. In the time it took her to phrase a quarter of her answers they had fully walked the expansive statue garden, the eccentric ornamentation garden and the tranquil water garden¡ª which she had scarcely noticed was filled with pink birds. Bim was running out of ideas as they lazily strolled through the green trees, trimmed and manicured into various shapes and likeness''s. She was confident there were still some few potential solutions to Hiiro''s vexing question buried in the depths of her mind, but in the end she permitted herself to concede her likely defeat with grace.


    "I have expended my knowledge on the subject. You have succeeded in raising my anticipation most excellently, do not disappoint me."


    Hiiro flashed a smile she could only hope to one day emulate.


    "Humans¡ªreally everything for that matter¡ªcan die of old age." He said.


    The absurdity of the concept caused her to freeze up. She''d seen some humans laugh or rage or decry their opposite in similar situations. Some part of her wanted to try all three in sequence, or perhaps in combination to various proportions. It made no sense. Why would thing simply cease living upon reaching old age? Perhaps it was related to the breakdown of complex chemicals and molecules within a living body, though her understanding of this dimensions foundational building blocks was little more than rudimentary it seemed within the realm of possibility. But if the living body was made of these complex parts, why could it not repair or recreate them and exist in perpetuity? Bim began querying her mental archives for mentions of this universal truth and found nothing of the sort. There was no mention of the human expiration date anywhere in all her studies.


    "How old?" Bim asked.


    "No one really knows. When your time''s up, it''s up and that''s all she wrote."


    Bim blinks her eyes in a gesture of incredulity, it was one of the few human expressions she had managed to passably copy.


    "If I understand you correctly, all living creatures could die at any given time for no reason other than they have lived long enough."


    "Pretty much, though it generally happens to older folks." Hiiro said with a shrug.


    "Specify, ''older'' folks. What age is considered older?"


    "It was around fifty back home, but it depends on the area and the life. Some are harder than others, they wear you down faster."


    There was wisdom to his words, as displeasing as they were to hear. Bim had always considered her fact-finding tour of this dimension to have an unlimited time scale, something to be completed at her indefinite leisure¡ª or as close to leisure as she could get with Treu as her watchdog. Now, things had changed. No that wasn''t right. Nothing had changed, she had only learned another rule of this dimension that no one had thought to explain to her until now.


    Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    She''d vaguely known the inevitable heat death of this dimension would be the end of all living beings, but it was very probably that humanity¡ªand their startling tendency to up and die¡ªwouldn''t be around to see it with her. What was the point in learning of these creatures if their doom was assured? Would anything she discovered be useful once they were long gone and never to return? Bim had never correlated the fact time would continue its inevitable march once she had returned to her own place outside of its boundaries. Had this reason been why the elders of her kind absconded from this doomed existence, forced to ascend or perish?


    "Could this ''timely'' death not just be a stage of the natural life cycle of all living being? An ascension of the soul that must leave its prison of flesh behind." Bim asked.


    "I don''t know. That kind of thinking isn''t normally where I direct my thoughts. I used to know a few guys that drove themselves halfway crazy wondering at stuff like that. The way I see it, if you focus on death¡ªthe end of your life, however that comes about¡ªthen you''ll only steer yourself towards it sooner; when that happens, you end up missing all the time in between. It ain''t about the destination, it''s about the journey. That''s how I look at it anyway."


    "¡­I do not understand." Bim admitted.


    "It''s a human thing. We''re all born and we all die, its the part in the middle WE get to decide."


    His words were a balm on the doubts she hadn''t even realized were spiraling out of control. This reality may be doomed, but that time was far away and she would confront it when she had to, not sooner. For now, she would learn all she could and hope that it was not in vain. Bim allowed herself a tenuous peace in this present moment as she walked through the gardens with her guide.


    "You are very wise in the ways of this reality, Hiiro." She said.


    Hiiro laughed. Again, it was an earnest display she hoped to one day emulate.


    "Not really. All that stuff about life and death, I read it in an old cowboy book. Someone a lot smarter than me wanted that little bit of wisdom to outlast him when his time was up. That''s about the closest any of us are going to get to immortality."


    Hiiro beckons to the gardens around him, all of them. The towering statues carved from stone to allow the long dead heroes of this land to stand vigil over their former home. The intricate metalwork that was once the highest level of craftsmanship imaginable, now little more than aesthetically pleasing knots of twisted bronze, gold and vanadium. The trees trimmed and groomed every single day so they may exaggerate the beasts of the land and sky and sea. Then there was the water gardens and the flowers, such short-lived beauty rendered in light for some few days before withering to the planet''s unrelenting heat.


    "We¡ªthe people alive today that is¡ªaren''t going to be around forever, but we can leave some things behind for those that come next. Sometimes its important to a lot of people, like knowledge or maybe a better world than the one we got; other times it might be something only a few people can appreciate, like a garden that will only be walked by a thousand people before it''s gone forever. We never know what will happen when we''re gone. Maybe what we left behind will last, maybe it''ll get bombed into dust the day after we die."


    "I see. The scarcity of these creations and the destructive nature of humanity exist at odds, thus exacerbating both while adding value to the absence of either."


    "Sure¡­ but it''s like Princess said, we''ve got to appreciate it while it lasts."


    "Because life is a finite resource." Bim summarized, taking the lesson to what passed for her heart.


    Hiiro looked out at the gardens, a measure of tension slowly ebbing from his shoulders. She''d noticed this before, he guarded himself from the world around him. Yet now, with her and the relative tranquility of these fleeting relics from a bygone age, he was perhaps not relaxed but momentarily at a greater degree of ease. It was a sentiment she shared with the human, he was by far the most companionable of his species that she''d encountered as of yet. These gardens, this world and all its people would wither and die in due time, but this moment, this single transient span of true peace shared between kindred spirits, was entirely pleasant.


    The curious portion of her mind would not be so easily contented. In less time that it took a human to blink, Bim could envision what this place would look like in the end. The water garden would be boiled dry and all its flowers nothing more than blackened cinders on a scouring wind. The durable stone statues would crumble, eroding slower than their living counterparts but still unable to escape the predatory grasp of time. The metal knot work would corrode and rust and decay along with every trace of the human ingenuity that had fashioned it. Bim looked to Hiiro, hoping he would tell her that this future would not come to pass, and in her mind''s eye he too became a blackened husk in the shape of a man inexorably falling apart to his composite atoms.


    Bim recoiled from the thought with a single step back. The present reasserting itself in her mind. The garden, and everyone in it, were as they should be. Hiiro was still drawing the same breath he had been before her contemplation, but he turned to regard her with a look of concern. How could something so fragile possibly be worried about a being such as herself?


    "What''s wrong?" He asked.


    "How old are you?"


    "I would be around twenty-five on Intatenrup, but our years are a little longer than standard so I should be somewhere shy of thirty standard. If you''re worried about me dropping dead of age, that shouldn''t happen for a long while. How about you?"


    "I have physically existed for ninety-seven standard day cycles, though I have existed outside of this reality for¡­ There are no words to describe it to you precisely. I existed outside the constraints of linear time. You could consider me to be ''young'' among my kind, though such a term is wildly inaccurate, it is the closest near-relevant, easily-comprehensible way to describe the abstract longevity of my existence."


    Hiiro chuckled again. His concern had vanished, her control over her vessel now reasserted.


    "I keep forgetting that you aren''t really human, then you go and drop something like that on me. What''s it like, being a devil?"


    "What is it like to be a human?" Bim countered, her words having more bite than she''d intended. "These are both difficult questions, worthy of a lifetime of study."


    Her words had a flippant tone to them, ringing sour in her ears. One of his lifetimes perhaps, but not even a rounding error of a fraction of her own theoretical immortality. Bim found herself cursing the knowledge he''d gifted her. All the majesty of this world, of these people who were her partners on this adventure into the unknown, now had a nagging, jagged edge she knew she could never fully ignore. Even should her vessel be destroyed, she would outlast it all.


    "Many hands make light work." Hiiro said sagely.


    "Would you like to aide my search for the answer? There''s a tangential-probability that there will be some overlap to these lines of inquiry."


    "Sure, if I can find the time." He said with another easygoing chuckle. "Why do you want to know what it''s like to be human anyway?"


    "¡­I thought you were cute."


    Her answer seemed to satisfy him, though she failed to grasp the finer complexities of human expression, and they continued their walk about the gardens for a time. Bim speculated that yet again she was getting more out of their surroundings than Hiiro was, his head hardly turning to regard the generations of work that would soon be destroyed for the sake of fortification. His body had regained its vague rigidity about the spine, shoulders and arms the longer they walked together, drawing nearer the palace with every step. Only when they''d stepped into the shadow of the palace did Hiiro turn to face her.


    "I should get back to work¡­" He said, reaching a hand up to scratch his neck.


    Bim stared at him expecting him to do just that, but he hesitated, lingering in front of her with far more stiffness than he traditionally wore in the presence of other humans. She considered her arsenal of human farewell remarks and none seemed appropriate for the situation.


    "I''ve got to brief Celio¡­ and the minefield won''t dig itself." He continued.


    "No, it will not." Bim confirmed, wondering just why he felt the need to state such a thing.


    "I''ll uh, I''ll see you later then."


    "That is probable." Bim confirmed again, confused by the sudden change of his demeanor.


    "I''ll just be leaving now then. B-Bye."


    Hiiro reluctantly took his leave, glancing over his shoulder as he did so. Bim attempted to puzzle out if she had failed to appropriately conduct herself, but there was no evidence that she had. None of her previous interactions with any human had ended with such reluctance from her social opposite; most of the humans she spoke with were more than eager to abscond from her company for one reason or another. She wanted to inquire about it, but the first person she thought to ask was purposefully striding away from her. Bim put the encounter and all relevant situational information aside for later investigation.


    Or that''s what she would have done, but her new nagging sense of finite time compelled her against putting things off until convenient.


    Suddenly, every single thought she''d set aside for ''later'' became an immediate concern. She would aways have later for those questions that she couldn''t get answers to, but those who held relevant knowledge might not. Much like the historians of old, they might die and take their flesh bound understandings of this dimension and its peoples to the afterlife with them. There was no guarantee these fragile humans would maintain their consciousness after death for any length of time, Bim''s limited exposure to the souls of the recently deceased reminding her of just how infantile these slaves of time were in matters of the soul.


    The most expedient solution would be experimentation and observation. She could force as many test subjects as needed to prematurely expire, then interrogate them for information they had held in life, detailing their rate of decay and informational integrity against a live human control group. If she''d had full access to her faculties, it would have been a rudimentary task. She could have even done so and remained within the confines of the ''tourist contract'' she had entered with Treu''s employer; it would have simply required her to outsource the termination of her test subjects to another. Given the human penchant and capacity for selfish violence, she suspected that wouldn''t be particularly difficult.


    While both logical and efficient, this plan hinged on her ability to perceive, interrogate and if needs be consume human consciousness severed from their living vessels. All abilities that her Tormentor had seen fit to remove from her repertoire. So long as she wore the soul-dampening torc and bore the accursed device of metal and bone grafted inside her back, this avenue of inquiry was denied to her. Naturally, as part of her tourist contract she''d been forbidden to remove either under pain of being ''poofed'' and worse. While she loathed to give any credit to Treu, he had displayed a keen insight into her kind''s dogmatic adherence to their agreements. It was likely she could remove both devices herself and in doing so regain enough of her sealed capabilities to resist her Tormentor, but she wouldn''t. It was against her nature to break oaths or utter lies.


    Bim spent long hours in introspective contemplation, prematurely ending only when her mind became aware of a pale woman repeatedly waiving a hand in front of Bim''s face while utter profanities under her breath. Bim slowly blinked, then marginally turned her head to fully regard Princess. Bim''s copied human eyes plumbed the depths of their purple opposites, Princess''s own gaze flicking about her person, as if catching fleeting glances at things otherwise unseen.


    "Yes?" Bim asked, in that annoyingly human way of asking a question without asking anything at all. Princess took the indifference in stride.


    "Do you sleep on your feet with your eyes open? I''ve been standing here for five minutes."


    "I was¡­ thinking." Bim stated, irritated to be drawn from her higher contemplations.


    "Well you''ve thunk long enough. Celio''s finally getting his motorcade as soon as Leeroy and the gang get the groundcars up here. He''s specifically requested you to be his arm candy. Come on, there''s work to be done."


    Bim cocked her head slightly, copying the gesture of human curiosity¡ª unnaturally, if she''d interpreted Princess''s reaction correctly.


    "Define ''arm candy.'' I''m unfamiliar with the term."


    Princess smiled wickedly¡ª perhaps even disingenuously, though Bim was no expert on such things.


    "It is a prestigious position envied by members of the fairer sex everywhere; one that suits your skill set and technical competencies perfectly."

 H16 - A Drive into Town

    Hiiro


    Before the motorcade got its wheels rolling, they had another ops meeting. I''d been with the Stalking Shadow''s outfit for less than a month but I was pretty sure this was well over my fiftieth meeting by this point. If I never attended another round table council again, it''d be too soon. We went over the vehicles we''d be taking, who was riding where and doing what. Then came the route, me and the other two drivers¡ªTony and Rock¡ªeach of us had to memorize the route, getting cuffed upside the head every time we made a mistake in our recollections¡ª Tony got the most of those. When the meeting was winding down, Celio came in with twelve of his Vigia armed with button up shirts, pistols and bulging sacks of small denomination coins, changing everything to suit his whims. Our carefully planned ''smile and wave'' drive by became a parade. Celio''s Vigia would be our outriders, one car in the lead clearing streets that weren''t meant for anything but foot traffic and the other would trail behind making charitable contributions to the public at gunpoint. At Celio''s urging, most of our incessant planning was thrown to the ocean breeze.


    "My men know the route," He said jovially. "They used to drive it often as part of my¡­ community outreach. You do not need to concern yourselves with all of this scheming that you do. Simply follow my men in the lead car and all will be well, yes?"


    Leeroy stepped out from the assembled mercs and lowered his voice enough that most of the room wouldn''t heard it.


    "Celio, this''ll be our first official foray into Crucibab and you''ve blacklisted half our outfit from riding along for the sake of appearances. I strongly advise against this ''hearts and minds'' convoy, at least until we''ve had some more time t-"


    "And I advise for it." Celio countered, refusing to lower his voice in the slightest. "Which settles to matter, yes? Now come my friends! We should hit the road before Totec finds his high throne."


    Leeroy masked the worst of his annoyance and spared a knowing glance to Alice, who just shrugged slightly.


    "Very well, " Leeroy said. "You are the boss after all. Alright people, you know your jobs so get to it. Hero, Aivery, a word before you go."


    The crowding mercenaries became a veritable tide of bodies pressing out of the room. Some were cracking knuckles or loosening muscles in anticipation of the coming work; others wore they''re emotions as a kind of grim determination on their faces. Even with Celio''s last minute changes, everyone knew their job, and unlike me, they fell into their duties with the indifferent diligence of veterans. As much as all of Leeroy''s incessant planning irked me, seeing every single person moving with purpose in unity struck a cord in me¡ª even in my pioneering days, we''d never been such a well-oiled machine as these men and women were. I''d barely finished forming the thought before they had all cleared out of the room, leaving me with Leeroy, Alice, Princess and Aivery.


    "I was hoping we''d have some of the Vigia''s trained before Celio got itchy feet." Leeroy grumbled absently. "We''ll have our asses in the void if anything happens out there. Aivery, take whoever you need from the house and get a quick response team suited, stowed and ready in the back of the Midnight Hound. Don''t warm up the engines just yet though, but I want that option all the same."


    "Yay, more work for me." Aivery groaned.


    "If they bite it out there and Celio dies, you don''t get paid." Princess said icily.


    "If you love them so much, why don''t you go with them? Oh wait, you can''t. So how about you back off and let me do my job you bug-eyed freak?" Aivery stomped off with a finger raised in mock salute to Princess.


    "Fucking bitch." Princess grumbled.


    "What about me?" I asked once the cat fight was clear.


    "Right, you. You''re driving Celio''s car, partially because you know how to drive, partially so Alice here can keep an eye on you and all your passengers in my stead. I''m not expecting our resident devil to be much help in a fight and I have no idea what to expect from her warden, but maybe he''ll stop a few bullets from giving our client some new air holes in his head. If this backfires, you''ll be a prime target by proximity. Keep low, call out everything you see and if shit hits the vents, get the hell out of there while the rest cover your escape."


    I blinked my eyes in a second of stunned silence as I processed exactly what he was implying.


    "Are you telling me to run away?" I asked.


    "No, I''m telling you to do your job while we do ours. Alice will handle comms, so all you need to do is drive and remember a way back home. Can you do that? If not, too bad, we don''t have enough time to find a better option."


    "I''ll do my best." I said, feigning more confidence than I felt.


    "Let''s hope that''s good enough, firebug." Leeroy stated with a nod before patting me on the shoulder with a heavy hand.


    Our half of the convoy was already mounted and waiting when Alice and I jogged into the east wing''s garage. The offroad crossovers were fully loaded, small arms bristling from the windows as their passengers sighted down narrowed firing arcs. Tony, a fairly unassuming man just past the prime of his life, was driving our lead car; Rock, a terran big game hunter who''d gotten to like hunting people a little too much, would be following behind me.


    Celio''s car¡ªmy car, as I thought of it¡ªwas still caked in dirt from the drive out to our rural estate. I hadn''t even had a chance to look at it until now, let alone start on retrofitting the stock model staff car to our theoretical needs. The foldaway sun roof was still just a double layered, insulative canvas spread by some metal ribs. The low-walled doors and sides were already armored, according to the manufacturer specs anyway, but no thought had been put into the windscreen, windows or engine block and all were obvious targets. The tires were unlike any I''d seen before; instead of stiff foam wheels, I found myself looking at a wire mesh more akin to a flexible grate covered in a thick rubbery leather-like skin. I gave the wheel a few experimental kicks and discovered a surprising amount of bounce and solidity to the shoddy looking tires.


    I climbed into the driver''s seat without opening the door and promptly had a tangle of straps and metal thrown on my lap. I glanced at Alice, already seated beside me and fiddling with the dashboard radio array. She didn''t acknowledge me, without looking up from her work she said three words.


    "Put it on."


    I held up the unexpected gift, a shoulder holster with sewn in ammo loops and a bulky weight of iron slung. It hung a little higher than was comfortable but some fiddling got it settled well enough. I drew the revolver, the lethal heft of it in my hand as familiar as the killing heat in my bones at this point. It was a six-shot cylinder, the action and ejection all much smoother than my old revolver by a wide margin. The weigh of the piece was about the same but it sat closer to my hand and the grip wasn''t as rounded as my old tool''s, allowing the weapon to nestle snug in my fist. The caliber was identical, the weapon would take low-gauge shotgun shells or high-caliber pistol bullets. All said, the revolver was flexible, reliable and murderously efficient.


    "It''s beautiful." I said, slotting six cartridges of shot into the cylinder.


    "Roy already took it off you pay." Alice said, still fiddling with the radios.


    "Tell him I said thanks then."


    Alice finally took her eyes off her work, sparing me a glance before fitting a sub-vocal microphone around her neck.


    "Tell him yourself when we get back. Now come on, let''s get moving."


    Our three car convoy pulled out of the east wing garage onto the palace driveway, pausing just long enough at the main hall to pick up Celio, one arm wrapped around a very uncomfortable looking Bim, plus two of his men and Treu. With my precious cargo aboard I poked a button and rolled out the sunroof so they could enjoy the drive in shade. Our Vigia escorts pulled into formation a few minutes later, our lead car identical to the crossovers Tony and Rock were driving save for two vertical black stripes painted on the hood and tailgate. The tail vehicle was a heavy off road cargo truck with nearly twenty men sitting on the back under a tarp roof.


    "For a bunch of gangsters, this sure looks like a troop movement." I whispered under my breath.


    "I guess this is what passes for community outreach around here." Alice said as soft-spoken as ever.


    The point vehicle took off on spinning tires, pelting Tony''s car with gravel. There was a bit of a delay before Tony followed, muttering sophisticated and inventive curses over the outfit''s radio. Finding our speed took longer than it should have, our Vigia outriders evidently unfamiliar with the basics of convoy discipline, but eventually we found a steady pace and semi-proper spacing between cars.


    Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    I''d forgotten how good it felt to be on the open road, even if the local roads weren''t all that open and calling the crushed rock paths roads was a little too generous. In no time at all I was halfway to a meditative zen, the kilometers disappearing under a hypnotic bliss of orchards and vineyards soon to bloom and the tail lights ahead of me. My body was on automatic, driving the somewhat sluggish car as much on instinct as by experience. The rhythm of the road took over, allowing old habits to surface as my eyes started to wander. As relaxing as it was to be driving again, I could feel a long neglected itch building in my throat, my fingers started drumming a lopsided pattern on the steering wheel and my eyes lingered less on the road and more on my surroundings. Mostly, they lingered on my rear view mirror.


    Treu was sat with his back to me, watching the other passengers as intently as I was. Celio and his lieutenants¡ªRichardio and Yuan¡ªwere locked in a conversation too faint for me to eavesdrop on over the car in motion; I might catch the odd spoken word but not enough for me to follow along. Lastly, wrapped under one portly arm like a living decoration, there was Bim gazing out the window as a prisoner might peer outside their cell while waiting out their sentence. She had her usual aloof demeanor front and center, but there was something in her posture, the way she leaned out of Celio''s embrace instead of into it, that spoke volumes.


    Would she recoil from me if I was the one who tried to hold her close? Was she enduring her time trapped with Celio by pretending he was me? One look at her face and I could tell she''d rather be anywhere but with him. Was it because he was human, or was it because she didn''t think he was attractive?


    She thought I was cute. What the hell did that even mean to a devil? I hadn''t even thought of her that way until she''d mentioned it. She was a girl and I was a guy, so the possibility should have crossed my mind but it never did. If anything, I might have thought of her as a sheltered, strange little sister who''d taken to following my around while I showed her the world. Now that I knew she thought I was cute, that she wanted to know what being human meant because of me, I didn''t know how to deal with her at all. A million ''what ifs'' crept into my zen, replacing the calm of the road with the dread of uncertainty.


    "Heads up, we''ve got some locals crowding the road." Tony called from up ahead.


    "Drop speed by ten and keep weapons ready out of sight." Alice ordered with a voice of command I hadn''t thought to slight woman capable of. I obeyed, keeping our convoy''s spacing as I did.


    "Driver, why are we slowing down?" Richardio asked from the back of my car.


    "There''s some people crowding the road ahead." I answered. "Do you want the roof up?"


    "Not yet," Celio hollered. "We''ll make due with the windows, but slow down some more for them why don''t you."


    Alice relayed her orders and the convoy slowed to a stately trot. A flash of metal caught my eye in the rear view mirror, then I saw fire and had a moment of panic before I realized it wasn''t me this time. Yuan had a coin gripped in a pair of chrome tweezers and he was heating it up with a gold-plated lighter for some reason. With my eyes back on the road, I finally got my first good look at the working class of Crucibab.


    Their outerwear wasn''t uniformly threadbare or patchwork but there were certainly more wear than there wasn''t. The clothes were drab and functional, those who weren''t wearing the usual baggy coverage for one reason or another did the best they could with comically large hats that still failed to protect them from the harsh sun. Yet again I found myself comparing this planet and its people to my frigid homeworld; terraforming a planet was nothing but work, and more often than not that work fell to those born into the great labor with little hope of ever escaping it. I saw working men and women reach out with leathery hands burned red as we passed, every so often reaching out to catch something and jolting in pain if they did. A glance back in my rearview mirror provided the answer. Celio''s lieutenants were heating up the coins before tossing them out the window for the workers, and they were laughing as they did.


    "Community outreach, eh?" I grumbled.


    Alice said nothing but shared a knowing glance that kept me from saying more. We weren''t here to fix the world or save its people. We were here to do our jobs and live long enough to get paid. But when the time came for us to take our wage and leave, would they take a flame to it too and watch us dance for our coin? For all the similarities between this place and my old home, I was glad my old masters had been focused on our labor, too indifferent of the people represented by all those spreadsheets to be so needlessly cruel.


    "Haha! I got that one in the eye!" Richardio cried in sheer delight.


    "I''ll land my next throw between a pair of tits. Just you watch, Rich." Yuan said as he took his lighter to another coin.


    "Gentlemen! Gentlemen, please!" Celio said. "Can''t you see how my beautiful Bim baulks at such barbarity as yours? Gentle lotus of my arid garden, you must know we do this for their own good."


    "You do?" Bim pointedly asked, her question jaded and jagged with accusation.


    "Of course, of course! Watch."


    Celio reached into Richardio''s offered purse and took a handful of coins, dozens spilling between his fingers to the floor. Without turning his head, Celio hurled the spread of coins out the window pelting a pair of workers full on with the glittering pocket change. Within seconds the pair was mobbed by their fellows and fists started flying as the scavengers fought the unlucky onlookers and each other for whatever fraction of the paltry sum they could steal from the melee. The savagery of the sudden mob was horrifying and fascinating, keeping my gaze as they faded into nothing more than a speck in my passenger mirror.


    "The beggar''s brand is a mark of nobility." Celio explained. "It shows that though they have received the gift of charity, they still earned their coin. None would dare to steal from a branded man, but coins that leave no brand can be claimed by anyone. It is a necessary evil my men undertake for the good of all. How can they help but to enjoy sharing my wealth with those in need?"


    I couldn''t help but note that Celio''s ''necessary evil'' was something he himself hadn''t partook in, or that the protection of his ''mark of nobility'' didn''t seem to extend to women. Bim puzzled through his words in her usual way, causing an expectant silence to build before she finally spoke.


    "¡­I see." She said without turning from the window.


    There was no noticeable change from her aloof demeanor, but Celio''s lieutenants stopped handing out their charity at an unsubtle motion from their boss.


    "My estates are quite beautiful, though not nearly as beautiful as you are." Celio said, vainly trying to spur the inhuman woman into conversation.


    It was a mistake I''d made in our shared time on the Stalking Shadow. Bim was a deep thinker, which made a lot more sense now that I knew she hadn''t really existed until less than a hundred days ago. That fact still boggled my mind, I couldn''t imagine what that would be like, how alien and NEW everything must be to her. She wouldn''t even know all the things she didn''t know, which was a startling realization I''d just recently come to myself. And in all this alien unknown, she thought I was cute.


    "If you would like a closer look at my grounds, I could arrange for a private tour in the near future." Celio said.


    "What would you desire in return?" Bim asked vacantly.


    "Only the pleasure of your company."


    "¡­Your terms are acceptable."


    By now the rolling hilly cropland was fully intermingled with houses and utility buildings, the crowds that had been dogging our convoy this entire time thickening exponentially as we drew closer to sprawling Crucibab''s city limits. The vibrant green belt around the city gave way to ruddy sun-baked clays, pale sandstones and red granite blocks, all splattered with a thick patchwork of white plaster that reminded me of gypsum. Wherever two buildings leaned close, lines were strung between them with colored sheets suspended to create pits of shade against the harsh light.


    Evidently, word of our coming had reached the city ahead of us. Men, women and children rushed out to damn-near mob the convoy, throwing themselves against our cars like a horde of savages. Some were crying out, tears running down their faces as they pleaded¡ª for what, I''d never know, their words lost to the crowd''s roar. Others were holding up babies to the merciless sun, the wailing children pot-bellied but stick thin from malnourishment. Sitting on the shoulder''s of their friends, I spotted three young women stripped of everything but their sandals carousing in mock battle. A shower of coins was tossed their way and the mock battle suddenly gained a fatal realism as the crowd surged on them.


    "Driver! The roof!" Celio hollered, and for a long few seconds I pretended not to hear him. "Driver! DRIVER! The people want to see their savior!"


    Alice spared me a glance, an affirmative nod and then started speaking into the radio. I held the steering wheel straight with a knee, found the familiar weight of a revolver in one hand and used the other to retract the roof.


    The roaring crowd was deafening. There was no single word or speaker, only the howling full-throated roar of thousands of people. The crowd surged on my car and I thought about how ignoble an end that would make, but the clawing hands and stomping feet never came thundering over my car. No one came closer than an arm''s length. The faces around me¡ªwhat I could see of them behind shawls and veils anyway¡ªwere enraptured, as if they''d suddenly found themselves paralyzed in awe.


    Celio stood, and the crowd cheered so passionately I felt their wordless joy like a hammer blow to the chest. He raised an arm to wave and manic bliss overcame entire arcs of the masses surrounding us. Wherever his gaze fell, men and women alike wept as if years of doubts were suddenly lifted from their hearts. Further back, I spotted the glint of coins being scattered into the crowd by the shovelful; in my rearview, Celio stood heroic with a backdrop of blue skies, vibrant colors and momentary, dazzling stars in the daylight seared crowd.


    I heard my ears ringing and the engine of my car puttering along just above idle. The amassed crowd had fallen into a hush so starkly I was left wondering if my ears had failed me.


    "All cars, slow down and stand ready." Alice whispered.


    "Working peoples of Crucibab!" Celio called, voice carrying and amplified by means I couldn''t immediately identify. "You know me. Your children go to the schools I built, you play in the parks and stadiums I have bought, your homes are kept cool by the science I have brought to this city, and a great many of you survive because of the fair wages that only I pay for your diligent labors."


    I was expecting some murmurs, a building undertone of agreement to ripple through the crowd, but they remained silent. No one here would dare to speak while Celio ordered his thoughts to continue his speech.


    "But, there is only so much that I can do. I cannot end the corruption that forces destitution upon your families. I cannot destroy the organlegger rings that harvest the flesh of your sons, or the human trafficking syndicates that abduct your daughters. I cannot reform our hospitals that see your parents rotting on the streets or in your homes. My pleas to Vincente Dominar have fallen on deaf ears, and though he was once my friend, I cannot abide by his complacency any more! I cannot save this city, SAVE this world, so long as that man sits on the Throne of Cruz. Which is why I will be humbly offering myself, my influence and my honorable family''s wealth to the salvation of you all! I shall contest Vincente Dominar''s rule and once I sit upon the Throne of Cruz, I WILL save you all!"


    Celio''s proclamation rung through the air and the world exploded into cheers that put the earlier celebration to shame. The lead car pressed a leaden foot to the gas and the crowd parted to make way for our convoy. No one would get in the way of Celio, The Savior.

 H17 - Pedal to the Metal

    Hiiro


    The blazing sun was nearly three fingers past its zenith, but I couldn''t stifle my yawns any longer. We''d already refilled my car''s tiny 80-litre fuel tank twice and our parade through the winding, hilly foot paths showed no indication of nearing its conclusion. The unending crowd''s celebrations had faded into a continuous rumble of white noise that mingled perfectly the with gentle vibrations of my car puttering away slightly slower than the average walking speed of an elderly woman. The temperature, humidity and regular shade were all just right, trying to lull me into an afternoon nap now that the ripe scent of unwashed sweating bodies had become omnipresent enough to blanket out everything else. My heavy eyelids drifted shut in a long, lazy blink before half-opening again to peer at the ''road'' we were traveling.


    A heavy shove found my right shoulder. With the momentary alertness I''d been given, I found Alice glaring dispassionately at me.


    "Eyes on the road." She said, soft-spoken as ever. I thought I heard a note of fatigue in her voice, but that probably had more to do with my own sleep-muddled perceptions than anything else.


    "What road? I haven''t seen the road in ten hours." I said, exasperated.


    Alice turned her eyes back to her arcs, ignoring me entirely.


    "I''m in Hell. This is Hell, isn''t it?" I asked, peering down at the odometer.


    Our convoy had been rolling for nearly twelve hours and in that time we hadn''t even covered fifty kilometers¡ª and most of that distance had been covered before we reached the city edge in the first place. These city streets all looked the same, yellow-orange buildings with colored blankets doing their best to block out the worst of the sun. I tried to think back to my escape route, but ended up just spacing out until Alice gave me another shove.


    I was about to protest, but then I heard something out of place. A faint pop, pop noise from¡­ somewhere. In the dense rat''s nest of city streets it all seemed to merge together into a directionless blanket of noise.


    "All cars, is anyone shooting?" Alice asked.


    "I''ve got nothing up here." Tony said.


    "It''s the idiots behind me." Rock said. "The truck ran out of money, the Vigia are shooting to spook them off."


    "If we''re out of cash that means we can turn around now, right?" Tony asked.


    "Wait one, I''ll ask the Client." Alice said, then turned from her radio to address Celio and his napping lieutenants in the back. "Your charity wagon in the back has run dry. How do you want to proceed?"


    "What seems to be the issue?" Celio asked.


    "Your men are getting heavy handed with the locals." Alice said.


    "Haven''t you ever trained a dog? Sometimes it is necessary to establish dominance, and if that means being ''heavy handed'' as you call it, then that is just the price of doing business. No? If those of this district have forgotten their manners, well then my men will just have to remind them how the civilized world works."


    "Starving dogs have a tendency to bite the hand that feeds them." I grumbled, apparently a little louder than I''d thought.


    "A dog that bites its loving owner deserves to get put down." Celio said, his forcefully charming voice at odds with the pitiless words.


    A trio of gunshots punctuated his sentence with a grim finality. The ambient rumble of the crowd dissipated somewhat and for a long minute there was a heavy silence in the car.


    "I''ve got a lot of movement in the crowd, they''re thinning out." Rock said over the radio.


    "You see?" Celio asked. "The lesson has sunken in. One can only hope they remember it well so that it must not be repeated too often."


    Between the narrow, twisting streets and all the blind corners/hills, I couldn''t see either of the cars behind me, but soon enough the ripples reached us and pressed onwards at the unparalleled speed of gossip. As much as I would have liked it too, the crowd didn''t vanish into thin air or retreat to their homes. Instead maybe one in six people decided they had better things to do than clog the walkways and chipsealed promenades; it was a noticeable improvement, but only just. Soon after we were able to increase our convoy''s speed from a slug''s crawl to a stately trot of just over ten kilometers per hour. I gazed longingly at the rest of my speedometer, wishing I could open up the throttle a little more and be done with this parade. A breeze not quite cool but better than tepid slowly filtered over my head to carry away some of my beaded sweat.


    I couldn''t help but compare the cluttered streets of Crucibab to those I''d once driven back on my homeworld, despite all the differences. Maybe it was just another commonality of terraforming planets or something as arcane as the ''human condition'' but glancing at the idling workers around me felt so naggingly familiar it itched. I think it had something to do with the clothes, the way everyone was bundled up against the elements with little beyond the generic human shape to catch the eye. Flapping ponchos could have been heavy scarves, the balloon-sleeved garments an off-brand type of winter jacket, and the face-concealing veils were oh so similar to the balaclavas that left nothing but the eyes plainly visible. Several times, I thought I spotted hostility in those peering eyes we passed yet I could never hold a gaze long enough to see if there was anything to my suspicions.


    More distant, directionless popping interrupted my sleep-muddled thoughts, this time as staccato bursts of automatic fire. I glanced over to Alice who was already grabbing at the radio.


    "Rock, sitrep."


    "Wait one." He answered tersely.


    Somehow the silence that followed felt as heavy and omnipresent as the blazing sun overhead.


    "More of the same," Rock stated eventually. "Some locals tried climbing on the penny-wagon and the Vigia took exception. We think they left some bodies, because the crowd is scattering."


    "Eyes up, everyone." Alice ordered. "Things might get interesting."


    Another burst of automatic fire punctuated her order.


    "There''s no need for alarm," Celio stated from the backseat. "That sound is common street music in these quarters."


    A single shot boomed over the others, solemn and lofty in the lull that followed.


    At the same time, the delayed thinning of the crowd had finally caught up to my car; a veritable tide of beige and tan clothing hurriedly pressing forward. Maybe all the gunfire really was as commonplace as Celio made it sound. I didn''t spot any overt shoving, no one was trying to drag down anyone else and if there was anyone getting trampled to death under those sandaled feet, I wasn''t seeing it. Though I did see several flashes of mud-brown boots buried in the swell of humanity. It was peculiar how something so commonplace could somehow look so foreign in a crowd, after all people had always worn sturdy boots back on Intatenrup. So why did they seem so out of place now?


    "The lead car is slowing down." Tony reported.


    "Why are they wearing boots?" I muttered, my sleep-muddled mind putting the thoughts into words.


    Another rip of gunfire peeled through the air, echoing within the dense city walls all around us.


    "I''ve got Vigia dismount-" Rock started to report.


    A flash of light pulled my eyes to my mirrors just in time to see a rising fireball. The multi-band radio erupted in competing cries.


    "Contact rear!" "Left side! Left side!" "Enemy front!" "Second floor! Right Side!" "The crowd! They in the crowd!"


    "We''re surrounded." Alice stated, her voice level and commanding to cut through the din. "All cars, spear through. Weapons free."


    No sooner than the words had left her mouth than my foot hammered down on the gas pedal and a clatter of sparks bounced off the hood of my car. The crowd practically vanished, hundreds of people throwing themselves into buildings, off the road or behind anything at all, so long as it got them clear of the gunfire.


    Those that stood their ground were pulling rifles, firebombs, grenades, machine guns and even fat tubes I didn''t recognize from their concealing robes. Each and every one of the combatants spreading their boot-clad feet into wide stances as they opened fire.


    "Everybody DOWN!!!" I roared, my words barely audible in my own ears over the open throttle of my engine, the thunder of gunfire and the groaning steel of my car''s thin armor plating.


    Everywhere I looked, someone had a weapon pointed at me. Every inch of my car was under fire. The windows spiderwebbed with cracks for a single second before shattering in a hail of serrated glass that shredded my shirt and tore into the exposed skin of my shoulders, arms and the hand locked in a death grip on my steering wheel.


    In the time it took me to blink away the dusting of glass, my pristine white-paneled car was now battered and pockmarked by gunfire. A quarter-second glance to my right, Alice huddled low in her seat, firing bursts from her SMG out what was left of her window.


    Red lights pulled my eyes forward, over my rapidly climbing speedometer. The lead car had crashed into sturdy mess of scrap iron, those Vigia who weren''t already dead hunkering behind open doors and firing machine pistols in all directions. I lifted my foot off the gas, making ready to pull alongside them.


    "No! Keep driving!" Alice yelled, firing another burst.


    "They''ll die." I answered. My words becoming prophecy as one man leaned a little too far out of cover and toppled over like a puppet with its strings cut.


    "So will we. We DON''T stop."


    I grit my teeth, tempted to disobey her, tempted to do the right thing and save whoever I damned well could. But I didn''t. The killing heat inside of me was boiling up inside my bones, screaming to be released. I slammed my foot to the floor, gunning the engine to full as I savagely jerked the wheel away from our doomed escorts.


    I tried to spare the doomed men a glance in my rearview mirror only to discover it''d been shot off along with my passenger-side mirror. I didn''t dare risk taking my eyes off the rubble-strewn road or lifting my head enough to look over my shoulder. The canvas sunroof was in tatters overhead, little more than rags stretched over its metal ribs. My passengers, that precious cargo to be preserved above all others, could all be dead and I wouldn''t even know.


    I spotted a faint tail of smoke and a smoldering wreck in what was left of my driver-side mirror. A single burning man staggered away from the former lead car. All the guns pointed at us, all the shrapnel flying through the air, and somehow that man was untouched as he howled in anguish¡ª begging to be saved, or for merciful death. Rock''s car came barreling through the smoke and delivered that death without slowing in the slightest.


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    "Main road blocked, turning left at barricade!" Tony chirped over the radio.


    "Left at barricade." Alice repeated, slapping me in the shoulder until I mimicked the words too.


    The barricade as it turned up just after a blind hill, was two mid-rise buildings that had been collapsed onto the narrow foot streets below. Shattered bricks, broken bodies and splintered twigs of furniture spilled everywhere for at least a hundred meters and nearly a quarter that in height. There was a hand sticking out of that rubble near the top, impossibly distinct at this distance. It was a child''s.


    I swerved left, kicking the staff car into a loose drift down an alleyway barely wide enough to accommodate its width. My fishtailing rear bumper crashed into the wall, lifting my rear end in a gut-wrenching lurch. I snatched at the steering wheel, wrestling to correct the wobbles that threatened to send me pin-balling off the walls or worse, to wedge me between them.


    I regained some notion of control just in time to spot the splattered remains of human bodies clogging the alleyway, illuminated in grisly red by Tony''s taillights. There had been nowhere for these people to go and clearly Tony had needed the alley''s narrow clearance more than they did. They''d been crushed under his tires, smeared across the walls by his doors and even bisected between the roof of his vehicle and a low-hanging catwalk overhead. I blinked the gory desolation from my eyes and followed the trail he''d blazed out of the alley back onto one of the district''s main foot streets.


    "Rock, after the alley turn right." Alice relayed.


    "Looks like a straight shot back to- BRACE BRA-" Tony was cut off a second before a cacophony of noise reached me through the whistling remains of my windscreen.


    "Right''s a dead end." An unfamiliar man''s voice groaned over the radio. "Lead car, out of commission."


    I crested a rise in the switchback, hilly streets, slammed on the brakes and saw what had happened. This road was a straight shot back to an actual highway, but there was a ten-meter drop without so much as a warning sign in the intervening dead ground. At the bottom of that ten-meter drop, embedded in the heart of a building like the world''s most overly-manufactured meteorite was Tony''s car.


    "What''s your situation, Ken?" Alice asked. "Can you exfil?"


    "We''re all walking wounded." Ken groaned, then after a pause to catch his breath and growl a curse. "Scratch that, two DBNO, two walking. Car''s stuck, we''re not going anywhere."


    "Get us turned around." Alice said to me, then over the radio. "Dig in down there. Rock, provide support by fire and get them on board. We''ll meet you back at the house."


    "Got it." Ken answered.


    "Coming up behind you now." Rock said.


    I unclenched a white-knuckled fist from my revolver, moving the rictus limb to my gearstick. I finally sat upright in my seat, a dusting of broken glass raining down from my tattered clothes as I shifted into reverse and looked over my bloodied shoulder.


    Treu''s imposing shoulders were unmoved where he sat, an impossible ring of untouched automobile surrounding him in a half-meter circle. I could only blink my eyes at the perfectly symmetrical sphere of his unnatural influence, which hadn''t extended to anyone else in my vehicle. One of Celio''s lieutenants¡ªit was impossible to tell which given that the ragged corpse was little more than bloody streamers of meat¡ªwas slumped over the passenger compartment''s low wall, as if he''d been gunned down while trying to climb out. The other lieutenant, whom I thought might be Yuan, was prone on the floor in a mess of tangled limbs with Celio and Bim. The staff car''s extravagant interior, along with most of its exterior I now realized, was in mangled tatters. The fact that the car was still running at all was nothing short of miraculous.


    "Where should I go?" I asked once I''d finished my J-turn.


    Already, the stray sound of gunfire and explosions was getting closer. Not yet hot on our trail, but still too damned close for me to breathe a sigh of relief.


    Alice replied by jumping into the back and throwing a protesting Yuan into the the passenger seat. The heavyset man''s plain clothes were in disarray, he reeked of sweat and spilt liquor, and I noted a discoloring wetness spreading from his trousers. He blinked, as if he couldn''t make sense of what had happened or how he got here, and with spasmodic stiffness he upholstered a beautifully engraved, gold-plated pistol.


    "I need directions." I repeated, the tension in my voice perfectly matching that of Yuan''s entire body.


    "D-Drive." He stammered.


    "Where?"


    "T-T-To t-the Salvador P-Palace?"


    "How do I get there?" I asked, speaking slower now.


    "The highway." He said, flicking the muzzle of his pistol in a shooing/go-that-way motion down the road.


    I shifted gears straight into third, launching my pockmarked car down streets barely wide enough for five people to walk abreast. Our blind, breakthrough rush may have thrown me off familiar roads, but my internal compass knew I''d be driving parallel to the killbox we''d just broken out of. I put on as much speed as I dared, flying around hairpin corners and blind hills with eyes peeled open.


    "Rooftops! Left side!" I cried out as soon as I spotted them.


    A single team of riflemen started spraying fire at my speeding car as soon as the words left my mouth. Then another joined in, then a machine gun and soon everyone and their cousins were spraying lead in my direction. Maybe one in ten shots landed on the dented metal of my car but the ambushers made up for their lack of accuracy with sheer weight of fire. One in ten swiftly became three in fifty, then twelve in two-hundred. There was so much lead in the air ahead of my car it started blurring the street ahead of me like a thick rain of metal.


    The chipseal road replied with inoccent joy, jumping skywards to fill the air with stone hail that pattered off my car''s grill and destroyed any bit of traction my perforated tires still had. It took every bit of skill I had to keep my car pointed mostly straight. The gravel road could have been sheet ice for all the grip my wheels were getting. Hell, sheet ice covered in a centimeter of rain would have been better than the rocky scree and blasted craters I was drifting into.


    Alice was hosing the ambushers with her SMG, the flash of its muzzle lighting up the single shard of glass still clinging to my driver-side mirror. Yuan took notice and, not to get outdone by a tiny woman like Alice, started blasting his gold-plated oversized pistol one-handed directly across my face. I was deafened from the first shot, half-blinded by the third and entirely confused when he dropped the pistol at my feet after the sixth shot.


    I bent down to snatch the pistol away from my pedals and when I sat upright, I noticed that the upper quarter of my seat was a burning mess of leather upholstery and metallic frames. I wasn''t sure if I''d melted the seat or if I''d just dodged an untimely death, but I didn''t have time enough to figure that out. Yuan was slapping at my arms frantically. I turned my head and saw him pointing a bloodied fist at an upcoming street. I spun the wheel hard to make the corner-


    Then my world became gravel.


    Then sky.


    Gravel, then sky.


    Gravel, then sky again.


    The world settled for an even split of gravel and sky. Something about that didn''t seem right. I attempted to regather my bearings, but everything was wrong. Buildings were sideways, the road was to my left and the sky wasn''t up.


    I unbuckled my seatbelt and fell to the road. I was confused, everything hurt, and my bones felt like solid fire cooking me from the inside out. It wasn''t exactly my usual, but it was familiar enough that I could use it as a benchmark and figure everything else out from there.


    I was lying on the road, everything was spinning too. My left arm was streaked with blood and had a solid kilo of glass shards sticking out of it. I''d been shot in the leg, the stomach and the right shoulder; if I was only noticing it now, then it probably wasn''t that bad¡ª there was nothing I could do about it, at any rate. My ribs were killing me, same with my guts and neck; that''d be from the rollover.


    The car was still on its side, its unsecured occupants had all been thrown clear during the crash. Bim was struggling to pick herself up off the road, her tattered white dress stained with wriggling blacks and dripping reds. Treu was looming over her, entirely unscathed by the crash, the air around him was blurry like a heat haze but somehow different. Yuan was nowhere to be seen. Alice was dragging herself to an unmoving Celio, one of her legs snapped neatly at a new joint halfway down the shin.


    There was squawking noises coming from somewhere. A dry, hot wind was blowing from behind me up on the elevated highway. Engines. I could hear engines now too. Not from the highway, not above me with the rest of the background noise. Back from the way we''d fled. There was a truck coming flanked by bikes, the passengers of each brandishing weapons.


    Why was this planet so damned hot? I was burning up from the outside in now, every scrap of heat in the air around us seemed to be beating down on me. I snatched up my revolver from under my smoldering clothes and dumped the shot from the cylinder. Patting down my new harness, I found four black-and-red tipped bullets, the rest of the rounds having been thrown loose sometime prior. With hands that felt like nothing but fat-tipped thumbs, I loaded my revolver and started walking towards the oncoming vehicles.


    Alice was with Celio now, too busy saving his life to spare a single glance at me or my burning clothes. Yuan had appeared at her side sporting a freshly-bandaged arm, acting as an unskilled nursemaid. Bim was still writhing on the ground, her watchdog looming over her with a look of such predatory glee on his face that I almost thought the mountain of a man was a different person. In his hand, Treu was holding a finger dagger that seemed to catch all the light of day and then some.


    "Come on you wretched Devil." Treu growled under his breath. "Show me how much of a Monster you really are."


    I paused, about to ask him what he meant, until I saw it.


    Bim was trapped in the throes of some kind of transformation. Blackened, abyssal flesh-goop was trying and failing to reform the shape of a human being. There was something at the heart of all that writhing, slithering, undulating, rigid wrongness; a thing made of silver and an impossibly pristine bone. The shape of the abominable flesh-thing''s mass was that of a flower in bloom imploding back in upon itself yet unable to approach the bud at its center, caught in two contradictory states at the same time, unable to correct the imbalance of either.


    A human arm threw itself from the abyssal mass and splattered like water before retreating back the collapsing heart of the thing. Bim''s white dress, tattered and torn into little more than rags, was the only solid reminder keeping the unknowable, inhuman mass from complete detonation. The mass would contort into shapes that hurt the eyes and strained the mind just to look at, only to snap back into knowable rectangles and spheres that tried and failed to fill the dress with a woman''s curves.


    "What-" Was the only word I could choke out at the incomprehensible sight of¡­ whatever it was I was looking at.


    At my word dozens if not hundreds of staring, blinking, knowing eyes appeared on the mass like tumors boiling to the surface. They looked at me, into me, with an intimacy unlike any other I''d experienced. Those eyes saw every second of my life including those I hadn''t lived yet. They saw the universe as I did and they saw the question that I''d chased across the stars to this very moment. For the first time in my life, I truly felt like someone saw me as I was. And those eyes accepted every broken bit of me exactly as I was.


    Every eye except two beautiful golden orbs closed in unison. A ripple of cohesion radiated across that blackened mass, reality constraining the impossible flesh inside a shell of plausible existence. Seams of fleshy red and rich gold jetted to the surface like magma, solidifying the strata of a human body. The silver and bone trinket rebelled against every touch of the normalizing tissue around it, but inevitably it was wrapped in golden-black flesh and plastered over with flawless bronze skin. Her body flushed out the rags of her dress, the indecent tatters doing little to conceal the mounds of her sex. The unwoman''s angelic face was the last thing to form.


    The knowing eyes were already in place, twin gateways into a relentlessly curious soul, and it was around these alluring amber eyes that everything else took shape. Her brow and cheekbones attended their regal positions. Hair sprouted from all the proper places and nowhere else, perfectly groomed in an instant. The balance of her features took on an aspect that could only be called divine. Her full lips formed with four words ready to spill from them.


    "You are mine, Hiiro." Bim proclaimed, as if begging the universe to contradict her words.


    She''d whispered my name, and all was set right in the universe. My soul soared like a solar flare at her voice, shoving aside all notions of fear or pain or longing. I was energy made manifest, heat and life all at once. The shimmer surrounding Treu vanished in an instant, his empty hands curling into spoiled fists.


    A shower of gunfire ripped into the gravel around me, scattering my reeling thoughts. The truck and its biker outriders had closed the gap, a hundred meters away and barely slowing down. In seconds they''d barrel right over us and that would be that.


    I hefted my revolver defiantly. It was too late to run for cover. Even if I could, I was done running away, orders be damned. Conviction blazed inside of me so fiercely it felt like any second now I''d explode into an unleashed conflagration.


    There were twelve bikes plus the truck. With four shots of armor-piercing incendiary bullets, I''d be lucky to thin them out before they killed us all. I was going to die, but I''d take a few of the bastards with me.


    I cocked my weapon''s hammer with a flame-wreathed thumb, squaring the truck''s driver down the length of my revolver. He was close enough that I could see the whites of his eyes, his savage black-toothed smile and the glint of something metallic poking up from his shirt.


    I pulled the trigger, every single gram of indignant resolve I had was focused into a laser-sharp thought. I hope you bastards burn.


    My bullet slammed into the driver''s chest, and the truck exploded.


    Flames erupted from the truck, long tongues of it glutinously lapping out in every direction but mine. Men were screaming as they burned, as their bikes'' fuel tanks caught fire, as the very world itself become a raging inferno.


    Yet somehow, I felt cold. I collapsed to the gravel, my limbs shivering in sudden hypothermia. I was so impossibly cold I felt my spasming muscles tearing from the simple effort of keeping me from freezing to death. There wasn''t a single scrap of warmth in all that hellfire that could reach me.


    Memories from the arctic flooded my slowing mind. I was in cold shock. I was dieing. I saw the flyers landing, the ones that had rescued us so many years ago. Giants of steel were climbing out, running through the snow-white flames.


    There was something on my chest, like a single candle''s light in the darkness of space. And there was a voice too.


    "In my light, you will burn eternally, my Hiiro."

 H18 - Answers

    Hiiro


    I woke up in a grey ferrocrete room with no windows, doors or furnishings of any kind. The fact that I woke up at all was surprising, though I couldn''t place why that was or why everything had a curiously dream-like haze to it. I strained to recall anything beyond the vagaries of who I was, and failed utterly. I couldn''t remember how I''d gotten here or what this place was or why it felt like my head was about to burst. All I knew was that I was in pain and I was warm.


    "I would have answers from you." Treu stated, suddenly standing over me.


    Had Treu always been that massive? He seemed to fill the room that''d been completely empty just seconds prior. How did he get in here? There weren''t any doors. And for that matter, how could I see him at all? There were no lights yet the sealed ferrocrete chamber I was trapped in was illuminated as if there were. What was going on? Why couldn''t I understand what was happening?


    "STOP thinking." Treu hissed the command and I was powerless to resist, my mind blanking instantly. "Your trifling concerns are irrelevant. You need only know that you can give me what I want, or I can take it."


    "What do you want?" I asked. My words had a warbled, echoing quality as if I was yelling into a chasm kilometers underwater.


    "What is that creature, B???im??, to you?"


    Treu uttered her name around a mouthful of bile that poured from his lips. He rocked back a half step, tears of blood streaming down his face and his complexion gaining a horrific, cadaverous mottled-green hue. The room itself seemed to recoil at the mention of her; the walls groaning under sudden strain, finger-wide cracks appearing in the ceiling and each of the square room''s five corners stretched out into the distance.


    Then I blinked, and everything was as it had been before, hazy and unfocused. My memories came flooding back to me in that blink too, like a book thrown open to a particular chapter. I could remember nothing in detail, except for her.


    The way she walked without seeming to lift her feet. Her commanding aura that was indescribably reassuring and incalculably intimidating. The subtle mannerisms she was slowly learning from everyone around her and those entirely alien ones she must have brought from wherever it was she came from. Her reservation, wit, caution, curiosity, grace, tolerance, passion, intellect and every other trait I''d gleaned from our past days of easy companionship all flooded to the forefront of my mind.


    I remembered Bim, but the question had not been so mundane. Treu scattered the observations, ripping every subjective impression from the unaltered facts below. He parsed days of my life into neat bullet-point lists where Bim''s spawning humanity had faltered. She never slept or ate, and she only drew breath when speaking. Sometimes, underneath the alluring gold of her knowing eyes, there were flashes of an insatiable hunger ready to feed on the minds and souls of everyone around her. There was pain too, something I''d never seen in her myself but Treu highlighted dozens, scores, hundreds of instances where Bim was undoubtedly suffering in silent isolation.


    Treu''s lightspeed review of my memories found my walk in the gardens with Bim and the terrible, ruthless weight of his primary attention settled there¡ª dozens of other mental probes scouring elsewhere in my mind simultaneously. He replayed our first date in full, over and over again. I was a witness outside of myself, rewatching the same scene play out while Treu manipulated the controls.


    "I keep forgetting that you aren''t really human." I heard myself say. "What''s it like, being a devil?"


    "What is it like to be a human?" Bim countered, a note of passion creeping into her otherwise stately voice. It was one of the only times I''d ever heard her so moved by a topic I''d raised. "These are both difficult questions, worthy of a lifetime of study."


    Treu spotted a lingering moment of pain buried under Bim''s regal disposition. How had I missed that? What was it that had bothered her?


    "Many hands make light work." I said, desperate to keep talking to her, even though I could barely follow along with all her talk of the soul and time and our alien, incompatible existences.


    You damned fool, ask her what''s wrong! My desperate cries fell upon the deaf ears of my past self. All the willpower I could muster wasn''t enough to alter the memory, let alone the unequivocal past.


    "Would you like to aide my search for the answer?" Bim had asked me. "There''s a tangential-probability that there will be some overlap to these lines of inquiry."


    "Sure, if I can find the time." I said with a dismissive chuckle. I''d gladly help her out, she was like my little sister after all. You damned fool, don''t you see what she''s really asking you? She wants to bridge the gap!


    "Why do you want to know what it''s like to be human anyway?" I asked.


    Bim paused for a long moment. A faint landward breeze tugging at her flowing dress and the short cut of her perfect black hair. She had a scent to her, entirely her own and like nothing I had reference for; it was spicy and sweet and so definitively feminine that it could only ever be her''s. Bim''s golden eyes flicked to my cracked lips¡ªshe was about to kiss me, I thought¡ªbut then they returned my gaze. When our eyes met, it was communion.


    "I thought you were cute." She said, then she turned to regard the gardens once more.


    Treu watched our date six times before he''d seen enough. The rest of his probes had scoured my memories of her and found nothing else worthy of deeper inquiry. He had lain me bare, and found the first date of an inexperienced man past his prime. Treu had come looking for some great conspiracy to rend the cosmos asunder, and revealed nothing but a tangled mess of confused emotions.


    "Where''s the rest?" Treu asked incredulously. "Surely there''s more. There HAS to be more!"


    "Bim is the most amazing woman I''ve ever met." I answered, finally regaining control of my facilities. "That''s what she is to me."


    Treu regarded me slack-jawed. The momentary expression seemed incompatible with the giant''s harsh features, as if relaxing even that much was anathema to his very being.


    "IT, isn''t human. Let alone female." Treu sneered.


    "That doesn''t matter to me!" I roared, the room around us re-solidifying under my force of will. Heat was building inside of me, conviction too. "I¡­ I think I''m in love with her."


    "Love, is a chemical imbalance in the flawed brain of an undisciplined mind." Treu started, his features rigid with hatred. Something seemed to come over him, not a gentleness but something tranquil I''d never seen from the giant of a man before. "You may love a monster¡ªit may even love you in return¡ªbut that does not change its nature."


    "What''s the hell''s that supposed to mean?!" I demanded.


    "It means, she- no, IT will destroy you. And when it does, there will be no force in this dimension capable of halting what comes next. The only thing to be done then, is to contain her." Treu smiled wickedly, the entirety of his features warping into a thin veneer of twisted humanity that could barely contain the monster within. "I have the answers I need from you, Pyrokine. Now, you shan''t recall this interrogation. It is purged from your mind. Await your sacrifice, Pawn. Now, awaken!"


    The ferrocrete room crumpled around us, great chunks of rubble falling away into an infinite blackness. Everything, everywhere, there was only darkness and cold. Treu was unmoving, that perverse mockery of delight plastered onto his face the epicenter of the universe''s destruction.


    The floor gave way under my feet. I scrabbled at the collapsing stonework for purchase, but it was all coming apart. Every jagged piece I grabbed was as malleable as a leather armrest. Everything was falling no matter what I desperately clutched at. I sank my fingers into the yielding stone and some part of my mind was back in the staff car as it rolled. In all this infinite blackness there was sky, then gravel, then sky.


    Then water.


    I drew in a massive sputtering breath, choking down a lungful of fluid for the effort. I was drowning! I tried to roll over and cough it up but I was strapped down to something soft. My eyes couldn''t make sense of all this blinding light. The seatbelt! I reached for it, but my arms were pinned down, my legs too. I was drowning and these straps were too blame.


    Heat welled up inside of me to burn my way clear. But there wasn''t enough, nowhere near enough. It was like my tanks were running on empty and I''d already used up my reserve. Even my adrenaline was fading out now, consumed to fuel the fires around me. It wasn''t enough, I was going to drown and I couldn''t save myself.


    Another bucket of water was dumped on me, then I was thrown free.


    I flopped to the floor and retched my lungs clean. I was freezing, my skin so tightened by gooseflesh that if felt like I''d been shriveled up and shrunken. I was going to die, if the water didn''t get me then the cold would. I needed a fire. I needed heat.


    A third bucket of water splashed onto my back, as I finally took a breath and blinked something recognizable into my brain. The grey ferrocrete room without doors was gone, I was facedown in one of the palace''s bathhouses surrounded by black-armored mercs brandishing tin buckets, fire extinguishers and, in a few cases, firearms.


    A hand grabbed my gunshot shoulder and rolled me faceup. Purple eyes, so big and so alien too. A slap found my face while a thumb dug into my wound, rattling my brain into something resembling alertness.


    "Hero! You need to stop burning things or you''re going to die. You''re killing yourself! If you can''t get a grip, they''re going to put you down."


    I started closing my eyes. I was too cold to understand what was being said. Another desperate slap rocked my jaw.


    "You piece of shit! You can''t die until I get some answers from you!"


    "¡­C-C-Cold¡­" I muttered between shivering teeth.


    "Yeah, yeah, I can see that. It''ll have to do, throw him in!"


    Then I was is warm water up to my neck. Eventually, I stopped shivering. I took a deep breath that sent jagged needles of pain across my chest. I could breathe. I wasn''t freezing. Everything hurt and I was warming up. I opened my eyes millimeter by painful millimeter, properly taking in my surroundings.


    Aside from a few bandages charred black, I was completely naked in a massive tub of steaming water. Princess and a dozen other mercs from the outfit were all staring at me like I''d grown thirteen heads or something. Some of them were sporting burns or wearing clothes pocked with scorch marks. I covered up my groin with hands blackened by horrific frostbite¡ª my toes lips and nose, I noted, were similarly colored.


    "What''s going on?" I asked, barely managing to get the words through my unmoving lips.


    "Cat''s out of the bag, Firebug." Princess answered. "Everyone saw what you did, we even got it on camera."


    "What did I do?" I asked, looking at the faces around me for hints. Some were awe-struck, others murderous, and a few more still were brimming with curiosity. Leeroy pushed his way to the front of the crowd, a heavy pistol in one hand and a fire extinguisher in the other.


    You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    "We were hoping you''d be able to tell us that." He said. "Short version, you saved the Client and the others in your car. It''s how you did that which has us concerned."


    "How did-" I started but Leeroy silenced me with a wave.


    "The debriefing can wait until you''re off of death''s door¡ª and until you have some pants on. The rest of you, we''ve got a whole mess of work to be done and casualties to take care of. Show''s over for now, so clear out."


    A chorus of grumbled protests rose from the gathered mercs, but they obeyed. Everyone except Princess, staring down at me with her alien eyes that peered right through me; Frank, one of the outfit''s leading medics who was unpacking a trauma kit beside my tub; and lastly Evander and Idris, both nervously flanking the bathhouse''s door with carbines held at a low ready.


    "How did you do it?" Princess idly mused.


    "Do what?" I asked.


    "Your body heat, then the ambient stuff, you kept using it after you''d exhausted the rest."


    "What?" I repeated.


    "For the first time since we''ve met, you''re not hot." Princess stated. "You''re so hypothermic you should be a Hero-sicle but you''re not. How are you doing it? How are you still alive?"


    "I don''t know what you mean. I''m not doing anything." Princess clucked her tongue at that.


    "Damn!" She hissed. "That''s what I thought you''d say."


    "Why am I in a tub?"


    "You were freezing to death and on fire, plus a few holes besides." Frank answered around the unlit cigarette hanging from his lips. "We needed to raise your core temperature and you kept burning up everything else we tried. Two cows, one pasture."


    "So that''s why you''re here." I said while looking at Frank. I shifted my gaze to Princess. "And you?"


    "I''m the closest thing we''ve got to a witch doctor since neither of our actual experts felt like contributing to your prolonged existence." Princess answered.


    "And them?" I asked, motioning to Evander and Idris near the door.


    "They''re here to make sure you don''t leave, or kill anyone else." Frank stated gruffly. He was removing my half-melted bandages and probing at my lacerated arm. Evidently, my wounds had seared themselves at some point, which was the only reason blood loss hadn''t already killed me.


    "Anyone else?" I asked, struggling to read his meaning.


    "No one important." Princess said dismissively. She correctly read what little expression that managed to crept into my frostbitten face and rolled her eyes. "Just the bad guys. Like I said, no one important. Any other stupid questions?"


    My heavy eyes drifted to the unlit cigarette hanging from Frank''s lips.


    "Can I steal that smoke from you?"


    "I don''t have a lighter." Frank said, surrendering the slim white dart.


    "I think I''ll manage." I said, and from the second the paper tube touched my frostbitten hands, the tip glowed cherry red. Sweet poison never tasted so good.


    Nine hours later, I climbed out of the tub looking like scat in a skinsuit and feeling twice as terrible. Despite Frank''s insistence that they were a lost cause, my fingers and toes regained enough sensation to all but guarantee I''d keep them¡ª most of them at any rate. How debilitating the resultant nerve damage was remained to be seen. The medic had left me stewing once it was clear that whatever my recovery entailed, it was beyond anything so mundane as science.


    I was never a doughy man, my build had always been solid with just enough fat to fill out my clothes. Now, my pruned skin was hanging off of me as I hobbled towards the clothes that had been fetched for me. My manifestations had trimmed me down and kept on cutting, burning everything they could to feed the flames; fat, clothing, hair, muscle, even my bones felt like they''d been stewed into rubbery sticks. My skin may have been hanging off me, but my clothes could have been curtains from the limp way they seemed to drape off of me.


    The trivial act of dressing myself was exhausting. Every centimeter of my body felt like it''d been through the ringer no less than ten times around. By the time I''d gotten my belt cinched onto my protruding hipbones, I was panting from the effort of lifting my arms. My slacks could have been woven from lead given how taxing it was just to take a single shuffling step. By the second, I was already staggering my knobby knees to the floor. Gravity won the battle by the third.


    Evander and Idris just watched me fall, unwilling to touch me.


    "A little¡­ help." I wheezed, struggling to catch my breath on the floor.


    The siblings shared a look, but neither moved.


    "Don''t make me beg. Doubt I could even get on my knees."


    Idris glared at her brother who remained steadfast.


    "Fine¡­" She growled. "You probably weigh less than I do now."


    "If I see a single spark-" Evander warned, hefting his carbine.


    "I get it." I said, as Idris bent to scoop me off the bathhouse floor. "Trust as far as you can throw me."


    "Fecking aye! You''re like a doll made of sticks." Idris breathed, lifting me effortlessly in a bridal carry. "I could throw you pretty far¡­"


    "Not far enough, Dris." Her brother warned.


    "Guess I''ll be needing those steroids after all." I said, the teasing air of my words lost as she carried me over the threshold.


    "Not the only thing you need, Freak." Evander growled.


    "Xan, look at him. I could snap his neck with my pinkie-"


    "And he could burn you to a crisp, Dris! Even if he didn''t mean to."


    "He saved Alice and Celio-" Idris protested.


    "He saved himself!" Evander barked. "You think I like this? He''s a bomb waiting to go off, and when he does, it''s not going to matter who was nice to him and who wasn''t. He''s going to burn whoever''s close to him because that''s how fire works. He''s dangerous-"


    "And I''m not?!"


    "This isn''t about that. I''m trying to keep you alive-"


    "Because I always need my big brother watching out for me."


    I would have backed away from the brewing family argument if I could, but it seemed I''d been entirely forgotten by the squabbling siblings as they walked the palace halls. They settled into a mutual simmering tension that lasted until we reached the east wing''s conference hall.


    "We''re not done talking about this." Evander said under his breath.


    "Yes, we are." Idris answered, storming into the room.


    Heads turned as what must have been the eleventh hour of this particular conference thundered to a deafening halt. I was the last of the command team to arrive, excluding a conspicuously absent Bim. Even Treu was in attendance, lurking in the corner like a stuffed byakkai, ready to pounce at the first sign of weakness. Leeroy and Princess were leaning over the room''s small side table, looking like my arrival had caught them in the second before fists started flying. A medicated Alice was sitting near enough to contribute to a conversation, but far enough that she and her broken leg wouldn''t get drawn in on one side or the other. Celio''s man¡ªthe one who''d survived the rollover with us¡ªwas there too, pacing the room while his hand nervously hovered by the golden pistol at his hip.


    "Don''t wait on my account." I said, trying to diffuse the room and failing miserably. Idris kicked a chair into place and set me down. She remained nearby, like a protective nursemaid, while her brother glowered at us from the doorway. "Well, get on with it."


    "Shut up and watch this." Leeroy commanded.


    What followed was every second of recorded evidence that I was something abhuman. The initial shots were from my time on the Stalking Shadow, including several conversations I''d thought private. Then came footage captured from the Black Cat as it flew in to rescue Celio from his own stupidity.


    The opening scene was an aerial shot of our ambushers bearing down on the staff car after I''d rolled it. My faint heart was pounding as I watched, some part of me morbidly curious to see what came next, another fully dreading discover of what had happened after I''d blacked out. The killing heat that normally would have been whelming inside of me like a building storm, was curiously absent. Finally, the shuttle drew near enough to see the individual players, though through some chance angles there was nothing of Treu or Bim recorded.


    Recorded voices were screaming for missiles to finish their lock before the truck was closed the distance, but it was too late, the truck was practically on top of us. We were on our own, the Client would die just minutes away from rescue. Then there was the explosion, like a teardrop of liquid fire splashing off the truck and everything around it. But the flames didn''t stop there.


    A relentless chain reaction had been started, the fires spreading as if everything it touched was a barrel of pressurized fuel just waiting to cook off. By the time the shuttle had landed some fifty meters away from us, massive swathes of the city slums were burning.


    The view shifted, suit cams from the powertechs who''d dismounted. Everywhere, everything, there was only a sea of fire. Except for me.


    There was a ring, perfectly spherical centered around my past self, where the fires refused to flow. It was like a polar vortex in the middle of Hell, and there I was standing in the middle of it with great sheafs of ice growing off my flesh.


    "Holy shit." I breathed, but the recordings weren''t finished yet.


    Huge rifles snapped to bear on me. Some of the powertechs were calling out to me, trying to snap me out of whatever this was. There was no conversing with me, nothing they said could reach into that frozen place my mind had gone too.


    It was at this point, my ungodly flames required a new source of fuel. I watched myself wither, it was like a terrible movie without an effects budget. In the time it took me to release a shuddering breath, I had grown thin and frail.


    The cameras of every powertech in the rescue team all looked at my chest and head down the length of their weapons. They were going to kill me, I realized. I couldn''t tell if it was intended as a mercy or simply to stop me- to stop the icy creature and his raging hellfire.


    I was so fixated on my own approaching death, that I failed to see Bim walking through the desolate tundra radiating from me to place a hand on my chest. I toppled a second later, the rigor of my frozen limbs making quite the spectacle of my collapse.


    The footage that concluded the horror film I''d unwittingly stared in was a mess of smash cuts and testimonials. In the process of transporting me from the desolation I''d created back to the palace, I''d burned nearly everyone who''d attempted to touch me and several unlucky mercs who''d been too close to them. The footage had run its entirety now. I was left staring at my weakened self, mirrored in the lifeless black screen afterwards.


    "It''s amazing!" Princess said, breaking the silence. "I know none of you can see what I can but¡­ Stars! This is magic! I can''t even begin to describe it to you. It''s like eight new rainbows of color in infrared alone! It''s¡­ It''s-"


    Leeroy slapped her full in the face, the sound a thunderclap.


    "It''s dangerous." Leeroy growled. "He''s dangerous."


    "Roy, Hero''s the answer to everything I saw!" Princess said, her undimmed enthusiasm bordering on hysteria. "This is so much bigger than anything we''ve ever dealt with. You see Hero as a weapon but he''s the next step in human evolution. Don''t you get it? Talfryn is right!"


    "Who''s Talfryn?" I asked.


    "He''s dead, that''s all you need to know." Leeroy growled without turning from his albino opposite. "And you need to wake up! We''re mercs. We''re on a job, not a crusade. If you can''t keep your head on mission, I''ll bench you for someone who can."


    "Roy, none of this matters!" Princess protested.


    Leeroy slapped her again, savagely throwing her to floor.


    "Our Client nearly died! Celio is the only reason we''re even on this planet and he''s in a coma. He is the ONLY thing that matters on this hell-hole of a planet." Leeroy collected himself with a growled breath. "Leave. You''re off contract without pay until you can get your priorities straight."


    Princess wiped at her bloodied lips, smearing the crimson across her ghostly face, and left without a word of protest.


    "Now, you." Leeroy said, giving me his full attention for the first time since I''d entered. "Explain. Everything."


    "I can''t." I said.


    "Botshit."


    "No really, I can''t. You already know everything I do, your little home movie summed it all up. I''m a freak. I make fires. I burn everyone and everything I come into contact with! So if you''re going to kill me get on with it!!! My life''s enough of a scat-storm without you playing up this witch hunt."


    "He won''t kill you." Treu stated, causing everyone in the room but me to jump.


    "I won''t, will I?" Leeroy said, drawing a pistol.


    "No, you won''t." Treu repeated, speaking pedantically. "He saved your precious client. He is truly the ''Hero'' of the hour. And you, Leeroy von Stalking Shadow, are a murderer of honor and principle."


    "Are you volunteering to take his place then?" Leeroy asked between grit teeth.


    "Better still, I''m in a unique position of enlightenment amongst your outfit." Treu stated mockingly. "When the time comes, I will deal with the monsters in your midst, personally."


    "Why?" Alice whispered, the single word slurred from pain, fatigue and medicinals.


    "I''m not buying it either." Leeroy added. "You haven''t lifted a pinkie for anything else, and now you want to triple your workload. What, out of the goodness of your heart?"


    "Don''t be absurd." Treu said. "I have a vested interest in preserving this dimension''s super-luminal integrity. All I ask, is for a carte-blanche when the time comes."


    "And when might that be?"


    "At the risk of sounding cliche, you''ll know it when you see it."


    For a long minute, Leeroy must have considered how likely it was he could actually kill the giant of a man. Evidently, the odds weren''t to his liking. With a noise somewhere between a sigh and a growl, Leeroy holstered his pistol.


    "You''ll do whatever the hell you want anyway. Fine. But until ''that time comes'' you need to start pulling your weight. Those are my terms."


    Treu lips twitched.


    "We have a deal, Mercenary."

 B19 - Control

    Bim


    She had lost control. That single thought resounded within her vast mind, more cursed knowledge that she could never unknow. She''d been a prisoner insider her own rebelling pseudoflesh; seconds of tormented eternity spent failing to reassert control over her decaying vessel. Her will had been insufficient to the task. She¡ªan entity composed of naught but desire and intellect¡ªhad been rendered to a helpless stupor. Bim was a creature of knowledge and control and ever since she''d ventured from her native realm she discovered her supply of both to be dreadfully inadequate.


    On an intellectual level, Bim had always known her vessel was not indestructible. It was copy of the fragile human form, a hollow imitation she''d torn from the dying mind of a mortal being. Bim''s previous experience of being perforated¡ªback when Princess had attempted to kill her Tormentor as they''d first arrived on the Stalking Shadow¡ªhad given her a false measure of how devastating firearms were. The single stray pellet Bim had pushed from her vessel in the past was negligible compared to the volume of assorted metals she was in the process of excising from herself.


    There were already fifty-three bullets scattered on the floor of her room. She''d barricaded herself inside as soon as pseudo-humanly possible when they returned, trailing streamers of her loaned dress like a shredded funerary shroud. Bim grimaced as she located another bullet trapped in the roiling pseudoflesh of her vessel''s immaterial interior and began driving it out through an inhuman force of will. The solid matter lodged inside of her body was anathema to the extra-dimensional protoplasms that primarily constituted her vessel''s interior. To humanize the allegory, her ''blood'' was tearing her apart as poison pulsed throughout her body.


    The dense-metal flechette she''d been targeting clattered to the floor to join the rest of the ordinance she''d already drawn from her vessel. Her face unconsciously abandoned its pained expression for one of relief, and she set about locating the next bullet to be removed. If she had access to her full faculties this painstaking process would have been long since concluded, but the dampening torc around her neck and the misery-inducing sigil embedded in her back were doing their damnable jobs adequately. Yet more control that she''d had taken from her.


    The recollection of being freed of the sigil assaulted her consciousness. The bloodlust radiating from every human mind around her, their pained confusion, their joyful dread. It had all been so raw. In those fleeting moments Bim had gleaned more of the human psyche than she had from a month of half-blind observation. These flesh-bound slaves of time were enraptured with the all-consuming present in a way she could barely conceptualize. Past and Future were little more than abstract notions compared to the tangible, tactile Now.


    In those moments her control had lapsed, Bim had flicked her consciousness across the periphery of nearly a hundred-thousand human minds. There was commonplace hostility, desperation and curiously primitive savagery¡ª the so-called ''Human Condition'' as she understood it. There had been fewer than ten drastic outliers to the overwhelming norm, two of which were close enough to destroy her rebelling vessel.


    Treu, her Tormentor in mind, body and soul, was the first. He was entirely capable of striking her down in her rampant, dispersed state of consciousness, yet he''d refrained. She had sensed nothing of his thoughts behind an impassible curtain of righteous hatred, but Bim had gotten the impression that he was waiting for something more from her. He''d been poised to destroy her at a moment''s notice, but for reasons unknown to her, he had stayed his murderous hand.


    The other anomaly, had been a fraction of Bim''s higher self. That discovery had been so jarring, so infinitesimally improbable, that even Bim''s rebelling vessel had been rendered dumbstruck for several seconds. Bim was a fragment of her true self, the vast intelligence that existed outside of this time-slaved dimension of matter, looking at a mirror of what she might have been.


    And that mirror had been the eyes of Hiiro Volshebso.


    Bim¡ªthis present, scattered, broken fraction of herself that she was¡ªhad found her own mind reaching out to herself. At that moment, she had discovered that she was not alone in this dimension, this time or this place, and that certainty of fact had been enough for her to reassert her will upon her rebelling vessel. There was a portion of her, a distant cousin perhaps to the Bim that she was presently, that existed outside her current limitations; there existed a Bim who was unbound by contracts and untainted by the burden of cursed knowledge best left unknown. A Bim that lacked knowledge but maintained control.


    Hiiro was the key. An essential partition between knowledge, power and obligation. He was in essence an extension of herself. Had that been why their souls called out to each other? Why his was the company she most enjoyed? Was he nothing more than a second vessel of herself? Bim thought not, but the possibility could not be dismissed. Soul-blinded as she was, it was impossible to tell exactly what this other Bim inside of Hiiro was.


    Her line of thought veered explosively into memory. In reaching out to herself, Bim had nearly destroyed him. Hiiro had consumed himself, his soul burning bright as a beacon to draw her back into focus of the present, and in that fleeting eternity, she saw his potential. Such potential as she had never theorized, burning impossibly bright. She had never been in the material until now, never ascended beyond mortality via the magnum opus as so many devils had before her. Yet one day, Hiiro might. He could escape frail mortality and cross the dimensions, or he would obliterate himself trying. He was haunted by the higher mysteries, searching for answers that not even she could provide him with. Was that what drew her to him? His potential not in this fleeting mortal life but in the timeless immaterial that lay beyond?


    Bim pondered at these questions for long hours, the carpet of bullets excised from her vessel sprawling exponentially wider all the while until there wasn''t a single scrap of material taint left inside of her. She had subconsciously created a circle filled with geodesic lines, the mathematic abstract pleasing to the eye in its unequivocal definitions and dimensions. Bim admired her unwitting work. This fragile reality was a shifting, alien place but there was recurring certainty in math that transcended all else.


    She wondered if her other self, the Bim that was within Hiiro, would find the same appreciation in the creation of her present subconscious mind. Was Hiiro even conscious of his ethereal observer? He must be, surely. Yet she felt no conviction at the thought. How could Hiiro, or any reality-blinded mortal human for that matter, have seen something she had failed too?


    Experimentally, Bim attempted to reach her mind beyond the constraints of her body. Her inquisitive tendrils of thought found the material prison of her skin and could venture no further. On a whim, she threw as much of her focus as she dared into a single mono-molecular dart of condensed willpower and hurled it outwards at the circle around her feet. The metals surrounding her showed no indication of change; not even her ragged dress so much as swayed under her force of will. She could control nothing beyond her own body.


    Bim''s range of expression for indicating dissatisfaction was easily her most extensive among human emotives, so much so that deciding which minute display was most appropriate was the most taxing step of the endeavor. She settled on an indignant sigh, followed by a tut of her tongue. Not for the first time she regretted agreeing to such a severe neutering of her capabilities. For lack of better options, Bim stepped out of her mathematic artwork and dressed her vessel with the last of the intact dresses she''d been loaned. Absentmindedly¡ªsince manipulating her vessel into movement never required more than cursory attention¡ªshe wondered if Kayleigh would accept the gunshot rags to be the sole remains of her once luxurious attire. Bim released another sigh, watching her shallow breath form a cloud of frozen vapors before her face.


    The anomaly was a curious one, but not without precedent. It was caused by moisture and temperature inequalities between her vessel and surrounding reality. The cloud of her breath was a fleeting curiosity, one that vanished all too soon in the everpresent Now which played master to this dimension. The only other time Bim had witnessed such an irregularity had been when she was calling Hiiro back from the frozen abyss threatening to consume him. She idly noted the similarities and subtle differences between now and then before an obvious conclusion dawned on her.


    This had happened only once before, when Hiiro had nearly destroyed himself.


    Bim bolted for the door, scattering her artistic carpet in her single-minded haste. She was inured to the revolting experience of touch for the manic seconds it took her to unbar the door of her chambers, her infallible memory storing the unpleasantness for later recall. She flung open her door to find a shocked-looking man, who''s false name was Malik, scratching at the spreading frost on the hallway''s windows.


    "Is this you?" Malik asked, one hand reaching for the shot-pistol in his belt, with other touching the radio stud on his collar.


    Bim would have considered the question under more traditional circumstances, instead she ignored it entirely. With the seconds saved, she launched her vessel at top speed towards the deepening chill. Some part of her mind idly noted that this observation was technically incorrect, as cold was not an actual factor, it was simply the absence of ambient thermal energy. Any other time, she would have used such a thought as a stepping off point for introspection and scientific inquiry and the multitude of idle thoughtforms that composed her subconscious mind would present this fact to Bim''s active mind for review. She discarded it out of hand. Hiiro was in danger and she needed to be at his side.


    "Hey! Stop!" Malik yelled at her from behind.


    Bim didn''t stop.


    "This is Malik! Second floor, east wing. Spooky shit''s going down and Bitch took off running. In pursuit, moving to palace center."


    The portraits and extravagance decorating the halls rushed her by in a blur. More idle thoughts attempted to make themselves known to Bim''s active mind and she ignored them all, just as she ignored the shouted warning of the tall man gaining on her from behind.


    Bim reached the stairs first, mere meters ahead of her pursuer, and took them three at a time. Malik took them five per stride and reached out a hand to grab her. There was no outrunning the lean sprinter.


    "Touch me and your death is assured." Bim stated, pouring willpower and presence into her words.


    While not strictly untrue, the ruse sat ill with her. It was her understanding that all humans were fated to die, and thus her statement was technically true, even if the given conditional was fundamentally irrelevant to the outcome. Despite her logical self-assurance, the near-falsehood sickened her soul.


    Malik''s desperate grab faltered, his stride slowing just enough for Bim to slip ahead. She hadn''t lied, it was his own fault for interpreting her words in the most logical and direct way. Her reassurance only furthered her feeling of disgust. She pushed her self-loathing down and powered on, leaving the stairwell for the fourth floor royal apartments.


    There was power in the air now, sparks of potential energy flickering into a brief half-life of fleeting possibility. Bim could feel the heat rushing ahead of her, drawn inwards to some terminal center point. Soul-blinded as she was, there was no telling what all this energy was being used for. Her memories brought all her past experiences to the forefront of her mind and none of them were pleasant possibilities.


    A doorway was open, lights unlike any she''d seen before clawing their way out of the room within. Something inhuman was wailing in no language a human throat was capable of, the blistering words wrenching their way up Bim''s pounding legs as she ran. The ripe scent that filled the grand hall was an entirely human one; that of pooling iron-rich blood, gastric acids melting down bones, and the fatty aroma of exposed marrow. Malik''s half-hearted pursuit faltered entirely under the assault of sensation.


    This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    "What-" Speech failed him, the single word so clashing with the otherworldly counterparts that it struck the mortal man dumb.


    Bim''s alien mind was not so frail. She charged into the maelstrom of chaos determined to witness its origin, to know its cause and¡ªif possible in her crippled condition¡ªto put an end to it. Bim could control nothing in the place but her own fleshy vessel, if she could trade this fleeting existence for the potential her true self must have seen in Hiiro, then her life was a negligible price. She crossed the royal bedroom''s threshold and was dumbstruck.


    The Enemy was here.


    Bim was staring at a spherical creature akin yet so vastly incomparable to her true self. It had eighteen wings radiating ungodly white light that diffused into colors unknown to humanity, orbiting halos like gyroscopes of winking transparent membranes, mouths of gnashing teeth numbering one shy of a hundred, scant skin the texture of weathered paper daubed in faded script, and unreasoning portals of madness that might have been considered eyes dotting its multitudinous tongues. It was a creature that her first teacher would have called an Angel, yet she knew it to be closer to the lore of a Deamon. It was an ancient force of Chaos, untempered by thoughts or rationale or any guiding principle a sane mind could begin to comprehend. The Enemy existed to consume and defy categorization, that was reason enough for Bim''s true self to war with them.


    It was an agent of Change and Treu was wrestling a single spark of light from a ring adorning its manifest form like a necklace. Their clash filled the room, warping reality to accommodate their contradictory existences. Mortal minds would have lost hold of their sanity, but Bim was unconcerned by that fact. She only cared that Hiiro was not present on the battlegrounds.


    "Don''t look at it!!!" Treu commanded.


    The sigil embedded in her back compelled her to obey. Just before the wrack of agonizing pain drove Bim to her knees, she saw Treu flense a single tear, so full of light that it was roiling black, from one of the creature''s eyes. Bim hit the floor and a wash of dry heat imploded the creature, obliterating all traces of its physical manifestation. She raised her head just in time to see her Tormentor stabbing out with a finger, a murder-stroke in miniature to banish the non-physical remains. A teeth-itching pressure she hadn''t been conscious of in what passed for her skull suddenly vanished.


    Dimensional normality gradually reasserted itself.


    "Why¡­" Bim started, millions of half-formed thoughts competing for her active mind''s attentions.


    "That is not for you to know." Treu stated, one eye locked on Bim, the other on the lifeless body of Celio.


    "You brought one of them here." Bim whispered, unbelieving of the facts.


    "False. They are already everywhere on this wretched world."


    Treu fully turned his attention from her and stood beside Celio''s bed. His massive hand lashed out with unerring precision, excising metal, glass and stone from the man''s corpse. The sound of grating bone being forced into place followed, punctuated by a pop that Bim felt in her jaw. The meat of the man sealed itself soon after, like a fungus spreading from both sides to sew every open wound shut. Flesh mended, Treu bowed his head as if in prayer, and shed a single tear upon the man lying before him.


    A firm hand latch onto Bim''s shoulder and hauled her to her feet. It was Leeroy, holding her steady while Malik stood nearby still dumbstruck from the things he''d nearly seen. The scarred veteran was glaring down at her with an expression she knew to be wrathful, hints of fury and puzzlement underlying his features. His expression didn''t soften in the slightest when he turned to Treu, an outraged demand rising from his throat. Leeroy was interrupted by Celio drawing in a ragged breath and coughing.


    "Your precious Client lives." Treu stated, his usual stoic hatred replaced by something resembling a quiver of breathlessness. "And it seems he wishes to speak with you."


    Treu departed their company without another word, sealing the door behind him as he left. The silence was pregnant with the implication of his words and actions, Bim''s vast mind pulling in countless directions of tangential thought. She only noticed that Leeroy''s hand around her arm was cold and clammy compared to the air around them when he started dragging her with him towards Celio''s bed.


    "You there tall bronco, white boy with hair like a girl. Yes, you. Turn on the radio for me." Celio groaned, attempting and failing to sit upright in the opulent mass of fluffy pillows and shimmer silk sheets. "I''ve attended rowdier funerals than this. My deathbed should not be so somber."


    Malik did as ordered, his former lithe movements replaced by clumsy stupefaction. Static-laced music lightened the room to some small degree, but it wasn''t enough to dispel the mercenaries darkened humors. It would seem that recent events were beyond their abilities to rationalize; even with her own entirely alien point of reference, Bim was struggling to arrive at true comprehension.


    "My beautiful Bim, never before have I seen your brow so saddened. I would ask you shed no tears for my fate. Great men must face the greatest trials and the sight of you weeping, gentle lily of my arid gardens, would threaten my heart to such a degree that I would rend the heavens and seas just so I could dry your eyes."


    Leeroy released her arm with a shove while Celio held up a beckoning hand. Repulsive as it was, Bim did her duty and took Celio''s hand to comfort him. The sensation was vile, but she locked her burgeoning emotive expressions behind a mask of steely indifference.


    "Celio," Leeroy said. "Do you remember what happened?"


    He paused, finally turning his attention from the present to the past. Bim could almost see the thoughts colliding with memories and suppositions as Celio recalled his most recent brush with danger.


    "I remember watching you die." He said distantly, eyes locked on Bim. "You shielded me with your body and bullets veered from me to you as if by magnets. Then¡­ I think I was flying somewhere warm¡­"


    The tinny song playing from the radio ended with a flourish. A woman''s voice, tinted with a false sense of self importance, spoke officiously.


    "Tragedy struck this afternoon in Quadrant Twelve when Celio-Rodrigo das Estrelas Salvador Dominar was attacked in the Hound-Hill street market, just hours after announcing his candidacy for the regional elective monarchy. As of yet, his condition and whereabouts are unknown, however several groups are celebrating his death as the city holds its breath. The ruling party, currently headed by Vincente Dominar, has refrained from commenting on the situation and deny all involvement in the attack.


    "Independent journalists have released unsubstantiated claims that todays attack was in response to Mister Celio''s alleged underworld connections and this year''s drastic increase in gang warfare. They allege that Mister Celio was ''transporting weapons of mass destruction through the slums in a deliberate and intentional provocation of rival underworld elements,'' and that the resultant fires caused by the assassination attempt was ''a bold-faced assault on the lower class.'' Paladin of the Public, Colonel Marcos Heathcliff, had this to say¡­"


    Celio puffed out his chest at the name. The radio''s next spokesperson had a voice unlike the majority Bim had heard; it was high-pitched and piercing, decidedly feminine yet the speaker was unmistakably a man. It was a far cry from the deep bassy roars she was used to amongst the mercenaries and from her Tormentor.


    "The investigation into today''s terrorist attack is still ongoing. The public are urged to cooperate with police inquisitors and militia peacekeepers as they preform their duties in the affected areas. Our efforts have been substantially delayed due to the fires raging in Quadrant Twelve across the districts of-"


    "Turn it off." Celio snarled, his voice dripping with venom. Again, Malik did as ordered then hovered nearby in an obedient daze. "It would seem rumors of my death have been exaggerated already. Unless this is the afterlife, and you my beautiful Bim, are the demon sent to drag me down to Hell."


    "I''m no demon!" Bim answered reflexively, loathing for the Enemy causing her to bark the words.


    "Bim¡­" Leeroy growled.


    "I would call you an angel, but I doubt my soul is destined for embrace of the lord." Celio said with a dry chuckle, before drawing a golden cross from around his neck and kissing it tenderly.


    "Never call me that again, Mortal!" Bim hissed. "To even imply that I''m one of them is anathema to my soul."


    "Bim!" Leeroy barked. Celio looked between the two of them and focused his sleepy gaze on her.


    "If you were not sent to my side by God, then perhaps damnation is not such a cursed fate after all."


    Bim recoiled, tearing her hand from his, unable to mask her disgust any longer. Celio''s expression grew pained, and something inside of her was glad for his momentary suffering. Leeroy interjected himself between the theological combatants and changed the topic with all the subtly of a thrown brick.


    "Celio, Sir, with all due respect as your head of security, today was an absolute disgrace." Celio tried to wave the comment off, but Leeroy pressed on. "You were warned, you withheld the severity of the threat to your life, you ignored my best judgment at every turn and you nearly died because of your own hubris. If that''s how you intend to behave throughout this contract-" Leeroy upholstered his pistol and tossed it haphazardly onto Celio''s bed, "then my outfit walks and you can defend yourself."


    Celio eyed the firearm dismissively.


    "This was not the first attempt on my life. It won''t be the last."


    "I''ve looked over the only car that made it back," Leeroy added. "That armor should have shrugged off everything smaller than autocannon slugs and it was shot clean through. This wasn''t some random thugs blasting away with sweatshop print guns. This was a coordinated, provisioned ambush that nearly succeeded."


    "The Trastorno system has the most lucrative black market weaponry available in the galactic northeast. There are ten-thousand smugglers who would see me dead with a smile on their face and care for nothing except the number in the bank account. High-caliber slugguns are more plentiful than clean water, and quality ammunition more than the sand in the winds. If you are so concerned for my wellbeing, then I suggest you purchase some new hardware. I happen to know several reputable sellers."


    "I won''t tarnish the outfit''s reputation by staking it on a client who goes gallivanting into pointless danger, our lives be damned!"


    "And I won''t lay down like a whipped dog, Mercenary!" Celio roared, all traces of weakness vanishing. "I will not show weakness to my rivals! I won''t abandon the people of this city! I WILL NOT condemn this world through inaction! I am Celio-Rodrigo das Estrelas Salvador Dominar. The Savior!!! My ancestors delivered these lands from the tyrants of the Guerreiro." Celio collapsed back into the fluffy embrace of his bedding, his rage spent. "I cannot fail in this, Mercenary. It is my destiny."


    "Fate and Destiny are fickle things." Bim offered, parroting words she''d heard before without appreciating their implications.


    "Be that as it may," Malik said, now somewhat recovered from his stupor. "You got what you wanted, right?" All heads turned to the lean blond nord. "Weren''t we just waiting for an excuse like this to pull out all that stops?"


    "That depends," Leeroy said, turning to Celio. "I can''t do what I need to with both hands tied and no eyes on the enemy."


    "Not yet." Celio said. Leeroy nearly turned to leave, but Celio held up a belaying hand. "Are you familiar with the ''honeytrap,'' Mercenary?"


    "Vaguely." Leeroy answered. "Espionage through seduction and attraction/distraction. Alice knows more about it than I do. How is this relevant?"


    "Your version is different than mine." Celio said. "No matter. My rivals have tipped their hand, when they see me next, they will be unable to keep their greed from their hearts. And THAT, Mercenary, is when you shall strike and destroy them utterly."


    "We call that a snare." Malik offered. "An ambush for the ambushers."


    "It''s risky¡­" Leeroy said, considering the pistol and the door evenly.


    "But I shall have the advantage." Celio stated, confident in his ignorance. "The terrain, firepower, information. Nothing will be left to the whims of chance."


    For a full minute, Leeroy said nothing, his eyes flicking from the pistol to Celio and back. Their proposal was a fool''s gamble in her opinion, but no one had asked for her opinion so she didn''t offer it. Humans had a curious tendency to assume the odds were always stacked in their favor¡ª especially when they quantifiably weren''t.


    "¡­Very well then." Leeroy said begrudgingly. "But this time, we''re not running off half-cocked, no last minute changes and when it comes to your security I have the final say at all times. Period. I''ll need at least two weeks-"


    "You have five. I have an arms deal with a lifelong associate of mine scheduled. We''ve used the meeting point several times over the years for such arrangements and I suspect it is well known to my enemies by now. The information can be leaked at any time, with your permission." Celio added, his deferential tone mocking.


    "Just as well, we could use the time to lick our wounds. Can I at least start overt security operations on some of the secondary sites in the interim? Your Vigia could use some tempering outside the palace grounds."


    "Yes, yes. The Guerreiro have given me all the casas bellie I require for that much. The thinner my men appear to be spread, the more likely the vipers are to gather at my heels. There''s also the matter of retaliatory provocation, in a shadow war such as this it is expected, your men are invited to learn how dynasties rise and fall here on Nexo Isla. Even your brancos may participate."


    Malik smiled a predatory grin at that mention, a single name ready at his lips.


    "You thinking Havoc?"


    "Yeah, I''m thinking Havoc." Leeroy answered, his face was stoic but his words were downright murderous.

 H20 - Red Dawn

    Hiiro


    I hadn''t seen Treu since my debriefing four long weeks ago, and that was about the only good thing I could look back on since then. Truth be told, I hadn''t seen much of any of the Shadow''s mercs except Chop and Gidget, and that was only because us three were working ourselves to the bone in the garages, preparing for the outfit''s counterattack. I probably would have gone insane if I''d been left to my own devices but, lucky for me, it seemed like there was always a car that needed fixing or testing or some other busywork that only I could handle. No matter how busy things got there was always something that needed my attention, so long as it was far enough away from everyone else that they didn''t think I could hear their whispers.


    I usually couldn''t, but I heard enough to fill in the gaps.


    Work was my solace, it kept me sane¡ª as sane as any other man who periodically burst into flames could get. Breathing seemed to help, with the sanity and the fire, but the main thing was working. I needed to be distracted, focused on something else. I needed to be too exhausted to even think of what I was capable of doing, because once I started down that tunnel there was no end to it. If I ever stopped and tried to figure all this scat out by myself, I''d be constantly going in circles trapped inside my head. I needed someone to talk to but who the hell would understand what I was going through!?


    "Sir?"


    Looking back on my time as a conscript, I was never lonely. We were a team, we did everything as a unit, many bodies with one purpose. Now, the mercs around me were doing just that and I was strung along on the outside. As a criminal I''d been too busy living the high life instead of just surviving; I was too drunk on freedom to notice my solitude. Even when it did surface from my rampant materialism and hedonistic joys, there was always that unknowable warmth inside to reassure me. The fact that I''d ever found this murderous fire inside me comforting nearly sent my mind spiraling again. I needed to work harder.


    "Sir?" Someone repeated, their tone forceful but politely differential.


    "Can''t you see I''m busy!" I snapped.


    My weld bubbled during my lapse of attention. Now that I was actually looking at my work I realized I''d need to redo the entire panel. My mind had been wandering and so had my hands. I lifted myself clear of the engine bay I was reinforcing and saw one of the palace''s maids¡ª the only person on this planet that seemed immune to my outbursts.


    The sight of her white frilly dress trimmed with black accents made the grimy garage a little brighter. She was about average height, which meant she only stood a few centimeters taller than me in her work heels. Big brown eyes, a small nose and straight lips all filled out her oblong face. Her straight chestnut hair was pulled up tight into one of those little caps that all the palace maids wore, but instead of the usual white customary to the ''serving girls,'' her''s was the sandy tan adopted by Celio''s up and coming battle maids.


    "Zoe-Esther," I said, letting my exhaustion overtake my frustration. "I thought I told you I wanted to be left alone."


    "You did Sir. But you haven''t ate anything today and you missed dusk meal."


    I lifted my welding mask, blinked the spots from my eyes and connected some dots.


    "Put it over¡­" I started, pointing to a workbench that still had an untouched lunch platter on it. "You said dusk. How long have I been working this time?"


    "Nearly thirty-nine hours, Sir. It''s currently an hour past high moon."


    I was tempted to throw something at Zoe to drive her off but it was pointless; she''d just fetch it off the ground and return it to me with a stiff smile on her face. She was prim and proper on the outside but that girl had a heart of steel. She must''ve, since she was the only person on this planet brave enough to risk attending a human firebomb.


    "I suppose you''re here to drag me off to bed then?" I said teasingly, knowing she''d do just that after I''d worked myself into a further stupor.


    "You need your rest." She answered, somehow noncommittal, motherly and deferential all at once, the very image of diplomacy. "Though you should eat first."


    "I suppose I should." I agreed, discarding my tools in a heap to be dealt with later. "Honestly, what would I do without you?"


    "Honestly, sir?" Zoe whispered under her breath.


    It wasn''t something she did often, but whenever she did, it reminded me of Tengoku. The palace walls had ears, as I''d learned during my witch hunt of a debriefing. Zoe didn''t even risk glancing around her, the act alone would have been too damning if witnessed. I took the offered lunch from her and nodded ever so slightly.


    "I suspect you would be a very lonely man who''d work himself to death, Sir." She whispered.


    "Thank you, Zoe." As much for the meal as for her thoughts.


    She curtsied by way of reply and set to task cleaning up my mess while I started on lunch, which was delicious. I knew better than to try helping¡ªor stars forbid cleaning up after myself¡ªapparently that just wasn''t how things were done here. The maids clean, the warriors don''t. It was that simple, except for the niggling detail that Zoe-Esther was one of Celio''s up-and-coming home guard. Apparently the idea of women fighting was as foreign to the locals as men cleaning was, but trying times tended to test traditions.


    Ever since Celio''s community outreach the vigia and the maids had been different, not better or worse, just¡­ different. The vigia kept the mercs at arms'' length and I got lumped in with them by proximity. While the men got cold feet, the women stepped up. The battle maids trained harder and longer, some even shadowing wounded mercs as personal attendants or gophers¡ª which is exactly how Zoe had come into my growing shadow. The regular maids didn''t slack off either; the palace was their battleground and they dominated it every day at all hours. Some of the other mercs had grumbled about them being underfoot, but Zoe and the other maids were a godsend to me in those early days of my recovery.


    I wasn''t quite back to myself yet. I was a freak in the eyes of modern medicine and God, which Gerald made sure to remind me of every time our paths crossed¡ª something that was gradually happening less and less. I''d only lost the tip of my left fourth finger and two toes to the frostbite that should have made me a quadrupole amputee. Similarly, my mass was still coming back but it wasn''t as balanced as it used to be, the combination of steroids and physiotherapy lending me a muscular yet starved physique. Between the burns and scarring any hopes I''d held onto for a full head of hair were distant memories now, so I kept the unruly patchwork as cleanly shorn as possible.


    "Is it normal for welding to look like that?" Zoe asked, inspecting my work as she tidied the last of my scattered tools.


    "No. Well, yes sometimes. It''s shoddy work, that''s all." I explained. "I''ll fix it tomorrow."


    Zoe just nodded her head once, committing my scraps of wisdom to memory. In that regard she was worse than a dry sponge, she just soaked up everything I told her and tucked it away for later. Given another month, there was no doubt in my mind that she''d be a better grease monkey than I was. Even her soldiery was creeping up to the level of a green recruit. Zoe wouldn''t turn a losing battle or fight to the last, but she''d keep her nerve when the lead started flying and seize the moment when she spotted one. She wasn''t nearly as curious as Bim though¡­


    Bim was another topic I tried to steer clear of thinking about¡ª I just never could. There was something magnetic about her, always inexorably drawing my mind towards her like the fatal attraction a black hole has on the entire universe. I didn''t know what to think about her or how to feel and I always had this nagging impression that I was forgetting something important about her. The incident had changed things between us. Hell, it had changed us. Not just us us, not that I was even sure if there was an us in her mind, but rather neither of us were the same since the incident. I was everything Leeroy had feared I''d be from that first meeting when I''d woke aboard the Stalking Shadow. And Bim¡­


    She''d always been spacey, her mind swimming through existence at a different pace from the rest of us humans, but things had changed. It was like she was in a waking dream, lucid only for ephemeral gasps of reality before submerging back into her unknowable depths. Before, it was like everything was a museum and some things were worth more attention than others, but now she walked around looking at everything like it was the first and last time she''d ever see any of it.


    The mercs whispered about her too; ''the lights are on but that haunted house is empty.'' Some part of me wanted to protest, to defend her honor like the cowboy I''d once been likened to. I didn''t. I couldn''t. What if my condition reacted? What if the scorching words I let loose did more than just smart someone''s pride? What if I exploded?


    Round and round and round, my thoughts circled like thick oil draining through a partially clogged valve. It could have been minutes or hours before gravity tugged the silver platter from my cramped, numb fingers, scattering what was left of my meal to the floor. I would have sat there all night, my meal half-picked and rampant thoughts spiraling nowhere fast, had Zoe not finished tidying my workspace and cleaning up my most recent mess. She didn''t utter a word, always the proper maid first and foremost. She just stood there, stone silent and unmoving until I came back to the present.


    "Sorry." I mumbled.


    "Shall I drag you off to bed once I''ve finished here, Sir?" Zoe said, her voice adopting a motherly air unbefitting a girl at least a decade my junior. Damned if it didn''t work though.


    "I''m sure I can manage alone, Zoe. I''ll see you in the morning."


    I shambled from the garage and found the pre-dawn sky just beginning to warm the undersides of distant oceanic clouds. The sight should have stirred something in me, after a dark night a new day always came. It was poetic or some such scat. The march of time was supposed to mend all wounds but it seemed to be taking its sweet-ass time about fixing me. The killing heat inside throbbed like a dull ache, the primal reds hearkening back memories of the apocalypse I''d set raging in an instant of terrible power. I''d come from another world seeking answers only to bring Hell to this place with me.


    Thinking of it as ''The Incident'' help me distance myself from what I''d done, but gazing at that budding crimson dawn there was no denying it. The whole thing had been so surreal, more akin to a movie or a nightmare than the actual, factual events. I could barely believe that I''d done it. Maybe Treu, it''d be plausible enough for that freakish demi-god, or Bim, she was an alien so it was within the realm of possibility; but not me. I was just me back then and I was a hell of a lot less me now.


    Just knowing that I had that much hate and rage and pride and fire inside of me was nearly enough to make me lose it. The killing heat within me was crashing against my crumbling resolve, just begging to be unleashed. It was such a seductive prospect. Fire and forget. All I had to do was open that valve one more time and I could let it all out. The flames would cleanse my soul, burning away my shame, terror and doubts; they would consume everything and I would be free of all the woes of life. Everything I was, am and ever will be would fuel the glorious flames for a single shining instant. The lip of the sun crested the ocean and warmth flooded my body.


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    All I had to do was stop fighting the power inside of me.


    But I couldn''t.


    I knew I couldn''t just give in. I was NOT a slave to this damned power! I wasn''t that frozen monster who''d trade it all for a few seconds of heat. There was a reason I was alive, I knew there had to be. I fell to my knees and I screamed. I scream like a cursed man clinging to the last vestiges of his slipping sanity with broken, bloody nails. I scream a mad wordless challenge to the rising sun.


    The sun gave no answer, which was probably for the best. I don''t know what I would have done if it did. The thought might have made my past self laugh but I was a different man these days and the idea of a talking star was a little too close for comedy.


    My fit didn''t do much to right the world or clear my head, so I gave up on it and headed to bed. On the way back, I spotted two things. The least alarming was that my clothes were smoldering and pockmarked as if I''d had a basket of hot coals dumped on me¡ª they weren''t the first clothes I''d ruined and I seriously doubted they''d be a last. The second, was the Bim was watching me at a distance. A sizable minority of the palace occupants were watching too but I couldn''t care less what they thought of me at the moment.


    Could Bim even understand what I was going through or was I just another interesting specimen making noise as I danced about? Why had she been avoiding me since the incident, was she just as terrified of what I could do as I was? Was I just not cute enough to merit her attentions now that I was scrawny, half-melted and ugly? I always knew she was too good to be true. Too good for someone like me. Damn it! Why didn''t she just cut me loose already and tell me I wasn''t worth her time any more!?


    I slammed the door to my room, spending the better part of an hour tossing and turning while these thoughts repeated. Exhaustion took its due, dragging me down into a dreamless slumber that passed in a blink. At some point my fitful sleep tapered off to the smell of a hearty breakfast.


    When my eyes opened, I could have been waking into another man''s dream. A full meal held in the arms of a beautiful, hardworking girl. An opulent bedroom that would have made my old condo¡ªflush with the fruits of my ill-gotten gains¡ªseem like the very image of a poverty-stricken hovel. Not for the first time, I couldn''t believe that this was my life now. All those years I''d wasted on Intatenrup waiting for something to happen; never knowing that all this was only a few planets down the star chain. My dreams¡ªthe ones that weren''t a burning hellscape of my own creation¡ªcouldn''t find any luxury to tempt my with. How could anything be better than this life of plenty I''d ass-backwardsly stumbled into?


    The only thing detracting from it all were the plethora of flame suppressant devices everywhere; my room alone had enough stored chemical extinguisher to put out a small star and I still wasn''t sure if it would make a lick of difference if the worst happened. That and the fact that the mercs I was supposed to trust with my life if push came to shove had already signed off on my death sentence. ''When the time comes,'' ''You''ll know it when you see it.'' What the hell could I do that was any worse than my little incident? Just like that, reality shattered the idiotic facade I''d so stupidly constructed. That fleeting happiness, the life of luxury, it was all just a beautiful mirage trying to distract me from the real world.


    "Sir?" Zoe-Esther asked timidly.


    "I keep telling you to just call me Hiiro." I countered snappishly, starting up our morning ritual.


    "And I shall keep declining that offer, Sir." She finished with a slight bow.


    "I know. Sorry, I didn''t sleep well."


    Zoe glanced down at the floor instead of saying what we both knew she was thinking. I could see it on her face. You never sleep well these days, Sir.


    "I think I could sleep for a full month and still wake up tired." I complained, half-jokingly. "I wonder if that''s just a side effect of being a freak-"


    Zoe sharply drew in a breath, as if she was about to protest my self-abasement. Yet propriety would never allow a serving girl to countermand her charge, it simply wasn''t how things were done. She was so straight up and down, hiding her thoughts behind a porcelain mask while her heart wept on her sleeves.


    "You were going to ask me what my plans are for the day, right?" I prompted, steering the conversation onto sturdier roads.


    "Actually¡­" Zoe started hesitantly, deviating from her usual prim and proper professionalism. She found an interesting spot on the floor at my bedside and fixed her attention there.


    "Zoe, I''m not your slave driver. I''m¡­ well, I''m not really sure what our working relationship is, but I''d like to think we''re friends. If you want to ask me something, ask. The walls may have ears, but I''m done giving a damn what they think of me." I said, cutting into meat of my continental breakfast. "It''s not like their opinions could get any lower."


    "¡­It''s not a question. More of a request really." She said, voice small, her entire body preemptively flinching as if she was expecting my heavy breakfast tray to come flying her way.


    "Ask away." I said around a mouthful of citric fruit.


    The tension across her body worsened to the point I almost thought she was about to lock up and topple over. She didn''t, but she wouldn''t meet my eyes as she whispered her request.


    "We, err I mean, I¡­ my first pay was yesterday, so we- I mean I, was hoping that you might allow me to¡­ have the day off?" She preemptively flinched again, her entire body trembling.


    "Sure thing."


    Zoe whipped her head up, cracks threatening her mask of servitude. Somehow a day off was more incredible to her than any of my parlor tricks. In a half-second the cracks resealed and she was staring at the floor again, smothering the hope that had momentarily overwhelmed her for something so trivial.


    "You want a day off to go into the city and spend your money with your friends?" I asked, my calm tone neutral to try and ease her mind.


    She kept her face down turned, unmoving and unwilling to speak.


    "Zoe-Esther, look at me." I commanded, putting some steel into the words.


    Her brown eyes met mine and the heat inside of me throbbed in sympathy. Zoe was terrified. Not that I''d burn her or kill her or use her. She could stand that, endure all that she must from under her false veneer of feminine resolve. No, what struck her clean through to her core was the idea that I''d dangle hope in front of her just to snatch it back for my own amusement. Did she really think I''d do that? That it was even a remote possibility in her mind was enough to stoke the furnace inside of me. It was the same back on Intatenrup, and Tengoku, and now here. Everywhere I went, I found these damned tragic women wrapping their hearts in chains. I clenched my sweltering fists around my silverware and focused on breathing while I waited for her to answer.


    "Y-y-yes, Sir." She whispered.


    "Okay, you''ve more than earned it. Have fun."


    "B-But I couldn''t!" She cried dismissively with a bashful wave. "I really shouldn''t have mentioned it. It''s better if you forget I said anything at all. A joke like that is in such bad taste-"


    "Zoe-"


    "After all, who would cook your meals or attend your needs if I wasn''t here? You''re still recuperating, you need me by your side! I don''t know why I''m always so selfish, I shouldn''t be thinking about myself all the time."


    "I can cook my own meals, Zoe."


    "No! If the other maids saw you in the kitchen, it would be a scandal by zenith. The macante dom¨¦stica¡ªthe house girls¡ªthey''d never let me hear the end of it. It''s already hard enough just keeping up with my duties as a guerreiro dom¨¦stica. If I slack off for a day, I''ll never catch up!"


    "Zoe-Esther de Terra!" I barked, slamming my red-hot silverware onto the tray.


    She silenced herself and adopted subservience in a heartbeat. I was sickened that this is what she responded to, but I pressed on.


    "My wardrobe is in desperate need of some clothes that aren''t pocked by cinders. You''re coming with me, I''ll have no protest on the subject. I''ll need some extra hands to carry my things too, bring whoever you want to help you. I''m sure no one will object to getting me clear of the estate grounds for a day, but if anyone does, come tell me immediately and I''ll have a word with them. Have I made myself clear?"


    She stood, head bowed, in a stunned silence instead of her usual. I''d never known that different types of silence could sound so distinct from each other.


    "Zoe-Esther, have-"


    "Yes Sir! Perfectly clear." She answered with an excited little bow that reminded me just how much younger than me she was. "I''ll¡­ go gather my helpers then. And¡­ thank you, Hiiro."


    "I''ll get a car ready in the garage once I''ve finished up with this, meet me there." She blinked at me in puzzled amazement. "What? You didn''t plan on walking all the way to the city did you? Now go¡ª and pick your jaw up off the floor before you do."


    Zoe took off at a bounce, I could tell it was taking ever bit of her iron will to keep from sprinting down the palace halls. It was almost enough to put a smile on my face¡­ almost. Half-faded memories of my time on Tengoku threatened to sour my breakfast but my hunger won out in the end and I cleaned my plates. If this life was the best a girl like her could hope for on this planet then maybe burning it all down wouldn''t be the worst thing to trade my soul for...


    I took my time dressing in a cream camp shirt, olive cargo shorts with a drop holster for my revolver, and sandals. Lastly I tossed on a bulky battle belt loaded with water, ration bars and actual physical currency. I still couldn''t get over the novelty of the tiny metal bars, each smaller than my pinkie and always incrementing in fives or tens. I had no idea how much buying power one P-Chit had, but if they were similar to Yin-Bills back on Intatenrup 200,000 should be more than enough for a day on the town. By all appearances, I was just another merc blowing a payday in the city between jobs¡ª hopefully no one would look any deeper than that.


    A trio girls were waiting for me in the east wing''s garage when I arrived. They kept their excitement from their posture but every so often it would manage to creep its way into their voices. I couldn''t decide if I felt more like a human trafficker or a diligent chaperon at the thought of transporting them into the city unsupervised. I felt more protective than nefarious, though I''d definitely trafficked worse than people in years long past.


    "Where''s Zoe?" I asked, eying the three girls.


    "She''ll be with us shortly, Sir. She''s helping our last addition get her things together." The leader of the three stated.


    "Alright¡­" Each of the girls had a near-empty sack bag held over their shoulder, causing me to wonder just what ''things'' needed to be fetched. "I''d imagine you all have names?"


    "Yes Sir." The leader answered.


    "¡­ And they are?"


    "Khloe-Olivia-Emillia de Terra." The leading lady said with a stately bow. She stood nearly ten centimeters taller than me, had golden-brown hair streaked with lowlights and she was even more straight up and down than Zoe was.


    "Ambar-Lucia de Terra." The slim blond announced. I couldn''t tell if she was the youngest of the maids or she was naturally petite in all the right places. Her eyes were so green you could get lost just looking in them and something about her reminded me of the scent of vanilla tea with mint.


    "Leonor-Sammara de Terra." The chocolate-haired workhorse of a woman on the right said, dipping her square jaw in the least maid-ly bow I''d ever seen. She wasn''t burly, but she was damned close and she was handsome despite her lack of feminine grace. Whereas the other girls might look like maids playing soldier, Leonor was the exact opposite.


    "De Terra, are you all cousins or something?" I asked. The three of them shared a look.


    "We''re women of the land." Khloe explained, eyes downcast. "As our mothers were before us."


    I didn''t really get the full meaning, but I gathered enough from her words to stop prying and made myself busy readying the car for our trip.


    "Maldici¨®n, voy a teclear eso." Leonor whispered, looking over my shoulder towards the bay door.


    "C¨¢llate, toro en celo!" Ambar hissed.


    I looked up from the car to the source of their whispers and felt my inner furnace surge at the sight. Zoe had arrived with my final passenger. I knew the curve of her face like a haunting dream, her shimmering white dress tugged at my imagination and those golden, knowing eyes cut me to the core in an instant.


    "Bim¡­ Why are you here?" I asked, half-choking on the question.


    She didn''t answer, didn''t so much as spare a glance at me. Bim walked right by as if I wasn''t even there and climbed into my car''s passenger seat. The fire inside of me didn''t falter from her inattention, if anything the indignity of it only stoked the killing heat to new heights. I clenched my scorching hands into heavy fists, beating my temperature into submission with a mental deathgrip on my temper. I rounded on Zoe with more than just scathing words burning on my tongue, but she spoke first.


    "Lady Bim invited herself. Apparently, her own wardrobe is in a similar sorry state as your own, Sir."


    "And how did she know I was going to buy cloths today?" I asked, knowing the answer already.


    Zoe-Esther just curtsied wordlessly and climbed into the car with her waiting friends. I considered calling the whole thing off then and there, but if Zoe was brave enough to pull this on me she would have already steeled her heart for such petty retaliation. If I ran away from this I''d be burning the last bridge I had back to a normal life. I''d be damned before I ran away again.


    I steadied myself with a few deep breaths, evening out this burning pit in my stomach. I wasn''t about to let a little girl a decade my junior out-man me in front of her friends and certainly not in front of Bim. My opinion of Zoe ratcheted up a few notches, as much for the set of balls on her as for her motherly deviousness.


    "This is going to be a long drive." I grumbled under my breath.


    Then I manned up and got my ass in the car.

 B21 - A Walk in the City

    Bim


    The drive into the city passed far quicker than her previous journey, primarily due to the lack of crowds. It was also a considerable degree more comfortable despite the current vehicle''s inferior design, largely due to the absence of Celio pressing his revolting flesh against hers.


    "You have a lovely necklace Lady Bim." Ambar-Lucia said, leaning into the forward cab over the rear-facing bench.


    "I would sooner behead myself than wear it a second longer than I must." Bim offered factually.


    "¡­Okaaayyyyy." Ambar-Lucia said sliding back into her seat.


    None of the other human''s felt inclined to attempt conversation with her afterwards, preferring to engage in what she understood as ''girl talk'' in the back of the car. The topics were as varied as they were nonsensical to Bim but she committed the exchange to memory in its entirety for future review.


    Between the countryside and the city, Bim had a considerable preference for the former; the latter being far too busy for her liking. At a glance, Hiiro seemed to share her opinion. It was written in the tension of his shoulders, the tautness of his jaw, and the nervous drumming of his fingers on the steering wheel. He¡¯d been ill at ease the entire journey and his humors only worsened as their vehicle drew nearer to the lively streets at the heart of Crucibab. She¡¯d been watching him out the corner of her eye for a time now, but his vigilance won out over her canniness and their eyes locked for a fleeting instant.


    Gone was the mirrored soul she¡¯d witnessed inside of him. Now he looked much the same as all humans did in her eyes recently. He looked so impossibly fragile, like the minds her true self had once touched and taught and broken in their hundreds. He looked like he was starving, and the next meal he saw would prove fatally rich for his weakened state. Above all else, he looked like a man in pain. Bim broke from their shared gaze, wishing she hadn¡¯t seen what she had.


    ¡°So¡­¡± Hiiro started. ¡°Shopping.¡±


    ¡°Indeed, shopping.¡± Bim answered, her face turned to regard the city sprawling below the overpass. It was her understanding that these priority roadways were reserved for municipal and commercial vehicles, yet Celio¡¯s fleet was somehow neither and both simultaneously.


    ¡°You just had to go shopping today.¡± Hiiro said, his voice uncharacteristically level.


    ¡°False. Though it seemed an opportune time.¡± Bim corrected idly.


    Hiiro turned off the overpass, headed for the ground level streets of a heavily commercialized city subsector. The roadways were bustling with vehicles of all sizes and models going about their daily functions while the walkways were positively bustling with pedestrians. The sight evoked memories of insect colonies Bim had studied, the working castes thronging to and from in their mindless droves; the fact that most of these humans were so detached from the reality of their futile existences left an altogether too depressing emotion connoted with her comparison. These humans lived, expended energy and would inevitably die from any one of the multitudinous ways she could imagine.


    "Here seems as good a place as any." Hiiro idly stated, parking their vehicle alongside scores of smaller vehicles. "Can everyone remember where we parked?"


    Bim disembarked, coolly ignoring the implication that her memory was so deeply flawed and that her mental faculties were inadequate for the task of locating their vehicle. She slammed the door shut behind her, properly securing its latches. The maids who''d accompanied them used a far gentler touch, then formed into an orderly square.


    "Of course, Sir." They all answered in unison.


    Bim found the display harmonious. Hiiro, did not.


    "Stop that!" He snapped, before collecting himself with a breath and running a scarred hand through the black stubble of his remaining hair. "Look, you all have the day to yourselves. No ''Sir this'' or ''Ma''am that'' today. Alright?"


    There was a stiffening of the maids'' ranks, their bodies emulating the mental flexibility none seemed to possess. Zoe-Esther de Terra was the first to recover, possibly the least indoctrinated or the most tempered by Hirro''s eccentricities, lifting her head to challenge her orders.


    "But who will carry your things?"


    "Zoe, I''m not your boss today. We''re not at the palace, you don''t have to slave away for me or anyone else. Just go be a kid, hang out with your friends, enjoy your day off. I''ll meet you back here in a few hours."


    "But-" She started.


    "Zoe! I will literally pay you to go have fun and leave me alone."


    "How much?" Leonor-Sammara de Terra asked, earning her a trio of incredulous glares.


    In a single deft motion, Hiiro tossed the sturdy maid a golden currency token. Leonor''s eyes went wide as she inspected the finger-sized bar and a smile both radiant yet savage spread across her entire being.


    "Come on ladies! Mama needs a new pair of boots!"


    Currency in hand, Leonor all but dragged her fellows into the packed walkways. Even with their uniform dress, the maids were lost to masses within seconds.


    "That was unwise." Bim stated quietly. "Reducing our forces is dangerous."


    "Well, you''re more than welcome to join them." Hiiro countered, again with that unnaturally level tone.


    Bim made no move to leave. This city was dangerous. How could he be so callously reckless?


    "So¡­ Shopping." He said vacantly.


    "Indeed, shopping." She answered tersely.


    Hiiro lingered there, standing in front of the car watching her as she watched him. Their eyes met, the pained mortal creature that he was plain to her again. Her kind were not prone to compassion or sympathy, but¡­ Again Bim broke from their shared gaze. Aversion could not spare her from the memory of what she''d seen.


    Hiiro puffed out a grunt, wordless and insensate. It was a human thing, meaning without meaning, a question without words. He wasn''t blind to her prying, yet there was some intangible barrier between them, something that filled these scant cubic meters with an undeniable tension. It was maddening. It defied all logic. It was too alien for her to comprehend¡ª too human.


    Hiiro seemed to pick a direction at random and started walking. Bim followed; the more of the city she saw, the lower her opinion of it became. Shops were piled high with unmoved inventory, the pedestrians they walked among were heavyset and reeking of chemical scents, and absolutely everywhere she looked there was garbage. It clogged the sloping streets, waiting for the rains to flush it into the sea; it barricaded alleyways, creating mazes of rotting excess; it was piled high on rooftops and in one instance the weight of it had been too great, transforming an entire building into a stinking sandstone trash can. She knew the word that encapsulated what she was witnessing¡ª consumerism. What puzzled her immensely more was how city officials could allow for the creation of so much waste without any form of management plan in place to deal with it. Bim pulled her eyes from the decaying mounds seemingly everywhere and looked to Hiiro with the question on her lips¡­ but she couldn''t bring herself to ask. The tension betwixt them would not be denied. What was a human life if not decay and rot and unplanned expiration?


    "If you''re just going to glare at me all day, you shouldn''t have bothered coming all this way." Hiiro said without turning to address her.


    She hadn''t been glaring, had she? Was her understanding of human emotives so flawed that she''d misidentified such a commonplace expression? Bim wiped her face clean of whatever thoughts might have crept there.


    "Why''d you even come if you''re not going to talk to me?" Hiiro demanded, his neutral tone failing him in the slightest degree.


    "I require clothing." Bim answered factually, being careful to avoid resonating his deteriorating civility.


    "Botscat, you wear the same dress every day."


    "Exactly¡­"


    Hiiro suddenly halted at an intersection and Bim nearly walking into him. Pedestrians trudged on all around them going about their business and barely avoiding the unmoving individuals in their midst. Something about that struck her. Here the two of them were, firmly cemented within the heart of the crowd yet still entirely apart from it, like a pair of islands in the middle of the ocean. Hiiro wouldn''t turn to face her, he simply stood there, a mountain of a man half a head shorter than everyone around him.


    "It sounds like we should go our separate ways then."


    Civility had failed him. His words carried more gravity and hurt than she''d known possible. With words alone he''d exposed himself. Bim didn''t know what to say, if she should say anything at all. Was this natural amongst humans? For creatures of constant beginning and endings existence may have seemed inherently cyclical, but such an idea seemed wrong in this context. Her kind only had one end and even that was no true death. Comings and goings were rare enough events that they always had divine significance. Even transactions that had been concluded held considerable consequence. How could a relationship just end? It was obvious from his voice if not his words. She had wounded him.


    Her mind fell in on itself, cascading through their time together. She drew countless comparisons, measured moments for meaning, and reached the inevitable human condition. Everything was finite. Dragging things out might be a soothing balm in the tangible now but now would not last forever. Time was not some novel concept to humanity, it was a resource like any other and resources ran dry.


    The tide of humanity shifted around her, another island sinking into the sea. Hiiro was going to leave. He''d waited long enough, too long even. It was hopeless, she couldn''t formulate an argument. Undoubtedly she knew she could given enough time but there was no more time. Hiiro was leaving and there was nothing she could say in the next two seconds that would stop him. Nothing she could say would balance the scales, his pain was too potent for her to push it aside with words.


    She didn''t want him to leave, but her second was up and he was moving. In another second he''d be lost to the crowd, the sea populated by one less island. She needed to think but there was NO time. Her window of opportunity was narrowing every nanosecond she spent internally debating herself. Rampancy threatened. Her thoughts were spiraling. Hiiro was leaving her. She didn''t want him to leave. Now he was just a burn-scarred arm trailing his exit. Now, always Now. No time but Now!


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    Bim threw herself at his arm, clutching it close to her. She didn''t want him to leave, she wanted him to live a long life. She wanted to spent as much of this damned ephemeral Now with him as possible because there was only so much of it he was going to get. Everything was finite, yet she clutched at Hiiro''s arm as if she could pull him beyond the grasp of time through sheer force of will¡ª and Bim was nothing if not willful.


    "For fucks sake." Hiiro growled, trying to wrestle his arm free of her grasp.


    The touch of his skin on hers was reassuring in the extreme. There was none of the abrasive revulsion she felt when touching anything else in this dimension. Even her ultrafine dress could have been made of coarse stone compared to Hiiro''s flesh.


    "What the hell''s wrong with you? You''re worse than a cat! You want nothing to do with me and now this?"


    Bim couldn''t say. Maybe there was something wrong with her, but how could she ever put it into words? Could something so primitive as sound or human language encompass the swirling menagerie of conflict inside her mind? No, not in a thousand years and that was too long. So instead she held Hiiro, pouring her soul into his arm just as he had with his words. It was a pale imitation of communion, their bodies were too crude, their minds too closed from each other.


    Bim raised her head from his shoulder and bared her soul to him through the only window left to her. Their eyes met. The air between them shook free of its tension, the distance between them narrowing into nothing. She failed to find that other Bim behind his eyes. There was only Hiiro and Her, wrapped together in the all-consuming now. He drank in the essence of her like a grateful desert did the soothing rains. In a breath he was flooded with her, by the second the air was electric. By the third, he realized what was about to happen.


    "Scat, I''m burning up. LET GO!" He growled in a whisper.


    "You won''t hurt me." Bim said, voice heady with the resonance of their souls.


    "Yeah!? Well in case you didn''t notice, there''s a few hundred people around us that aren''t fireproof."


    His attempts to extricate himself took on a manic, desperate intensity. Even with his elbow bucking and fist lashing about in her grasp, the sensation of his body against hers was contentment made manifest.


    "It''s alright. I''m here-"


    "Exactly!" He snapped, spittle flying. "You''re here! That''s the issue. I''m dangerous and you bring out the worst-"


    Bim''s fingers slid down his arm, clasping his fist in her hand. It was burning hot, even contrasted against the rest of his body. His hands held so much potential, creation and destruction all stored as thermal energy contained inside a pair of quivering fists. That power was looking for an outlet and for all his strength, Hiiro was still only a human. It would burn through his will, and then, it would burn through him.


    "Surrender to me." Bim said.


    "No!" He roared in a whisper. Even his voice was straining under the building load. "You don''t understand. I have to fight this or it will-


    "I do understand."


    Somehow, those words carried all the meanings she''d been struggling to find. His battle was just like her own. The enemy was insurmountable, inevitable even. It was a losing fight and they both knew it. His eyes were pleading, for help, for mercy, for release. She saw it all and beyond that she knew. Just as Hiiro fought his own power, she would war against time, and in the end they would both be consumed. But that was then and this was now.


    Hiiro uncurled his fist and blinked away tears that turned to steam as soon as they left his eyes. With nothing but Bim''s left hand between the world and his volcanic right hand and all the destruction it contained, Hiiro battled the seconds.


    "I don''t want to hurt you." He said.


    She was struck then by just how young he was¡ª in mind and soul if not in body. That he would condemn himself rather than endanger her was all the validation she needed.


    "Hiiro," Bim said, evoking a fraction of his name. "Hear my words and know my will. Nothing you could do would ever hurt me."


    The lie blackened her soul and twisted in her guts like a wrenched knife. Because he would die as all humans did and it would hurt her when he did. But that was then and this was now, and right now Hiiro was nearly as terrified of hurting her as she was of losing him and his intangible, potential futures. Bim knew her lie was wrong, yet it was wrong in all the right ways.


    There were so many ''what ifs'' surrounding Hiiro. He could master his burgeoning power or it could consume him. He could die in ignominy or transcend mortality itself. Under her guidance he would grow into a damned fine devil, one beyond the clawing reach of time. There was so much potential inside of him that its gravity must have been why they were drawn together despite all odds and the sheer vastness of this physical, time-slaved existence. With his sweltering hand clasped inside her own, Bim detected something more that went beyond the admiration an inexperienced teacher feels for a promising yet troubled student. She pressed this new feeling aside.


    "Breathe." Bim commanded. "Allow the energy to flow down your arm into my hand."


    His white-knuckled hand seized on her''s, a somatic sign for the spiritual symptoms he was struggling to contain. He''d managed to draw a breath in yet now he held on, as if to release it would be the same as relinquishing his life.


    "Hiiro," She said, again evoking his name. "You need to breathe."


    Yet still he held out, fighting that losing battle out of blind panic or misplaced pride or possibly something else entirely. He was fighting fate despite his own human nature compelling him against it. It was a valiant display¡ª if an altogether pointless one. Inevitably, he exhaled.


    There was no explosion, though from the doubtful expression he adopted while staring at their interlocked fingers he''d been expecting one. Instead, Bim felt a sputtering flood of potential energy coursing up her arm from Hiiro''s rapidly cooling hand. Essence surged into her, flavored by his life and saturated with his hopes and fears. She imagined the sensation was similar to how a human might feel after burning through a sugar high with a particularly vigorous and satisfying workout. For her part, the entire experience was one of contentment; from the taste of his soul on her dry palette, to the dawning realization in his eyes, to the simple joy she felt from holding his hand in her own. Bim was no expert on reading humans, but it seemed for his part, Hiiro found this release to be downright blissful.


    For a time they both stood there, breathing hard until he''d poured all that volatile energy into her. Hiiro was leaning into her now, teetering on his feet as she drained him dry, sucking down the last vestiges of his power. Bim hadn''t wanted the feast to end but that was the paradigm of her present existence. She licked her lips, as she''d witnessed many humans do, savoring the memory as the present marched ever onwards.


    "Why''d you wait so long to do that to me?" Hiiro asked breathlessly.


    "I did nothing." Bim panted. "That was all you."


    "If you say so." Hiiro said dubiously, before straitening to his full height and staggering from his own depletion. "Hot damn! You really took it out of me."


    "Your vessel is trying to rebalance your energy levels. Your recuperation is only a matter of time."


    "Is that why I''m so hungry I could eat a giga-toad and sleep for a month afterwards?" Hiiro asked, but Bim could only shrug in speculation.


    "I can''t say as I neither eat nor sleep. Though it seems a likely probability."


    Hiiro didn''t seem entirely contented by her answer. His scrutiny lasted for a long moment before he yawned and took in his surroundings as if he''d forgotten they were idly standing in a crowded walkway filled with pedestrians bustling about the markets. Some few passersby were casting wary glances at them, mostly for the traffic obstructions that they were instead of the estranged couple they appeared to be.


    "Let''s take an early lunch then let''s have a talk somewhere a bit less conspicuous."


    Both conditionals were satisfied some minutes later when she and he sat down in shaded nook offered by a fast food vendor. Tepid water was offered and Hiiro gulped down both tin mugs in seconds before ordering enough food to feed a party triple their size. The fast food lived up to its name, served in the same time it took Hiiro to drain another five mugs of water. Bim had never studied anyone eating in particular detail, yet the sight of Hiiro gorging himself was educational to say the least. The sight was reminiscent of one shortly after her arrival into this dimension; she tried to dance around her eidetic recollection of what had happened promptly afterwards. Three kilos of fully loaded burritos were consumed in twice as many minutes. With his appetite sated, Hiiro turned his hungry eyes on her.


    "What happened back there?"


    "I suspect you lack the foundational knowledge to comprehend a proper explanation¡­" Bim started.


    "Try me."


    "Very well. Think of the human soul as a mass of light that occupies a superluminal space in relative alignment to your physical body. This mass, what you theorize as a ''soul,'' operates in a unique capacity of influence among the dimensional forces humans term as light, gravity, heat, magnetism, and consciousness. From what I''ve gathered in my time here, as the soul develops, manifestations along these forces can occur proportionally to the imbalance of energy within the soul¡ª or that''s my working theory at present. It fits with my observations of your present condition if nothing else."


    "So what, I''m spiritually constipated?" Hiiro asked, eying the empty burrito trays.


    "When I was¡­ where I''m from originally, I would have been able to answer that in an instant. Crippled as I am now¡­"


    The memories she''d been so carefully avoiding assaulted her in full. Cursed knowledge, every horrible thing she wished she could unknow battering against her present mind in an orderly sequence. Her mutilation and betrayal at the hands of her Tormentor, her constant shortfalls of human understanding, when she''d lost control and been a prisoner in her own rebelling body.


    "Its that thing in your back, isn''t it?" Hiiro asked, stirring her back to the present.


    She tried to answer, but words failed her. Something must have snuck into her features though because Hiiro''s gaze softened.


    "I saw it¡ª just for a few seconds. When you were¡­ you weren''t yourself. It was like that thing was oil and you were water or something." He shook his head, eyes haunted by a past he couldn''t unsee.


    "¡­I wish you hadn''t seen me like that." Bim said, her right hand idly reaching up to stroke the torc around her throat.


    "I wish I hadn''t either." Hiiro said distantly, and Bim felt his words cut her to the core. "He did it to you, didn''t he?"


    There was no question to whom he was referring. The monster among monsters who wore the skin of a man. Her Tormentor, Treu. Again, words failed her. She couldn''t speak out against him without due cause, yet falsehood grated at her very being.


    "An agreement was reached." Bim eventually said tersely. "One neither of us is particularly pleased with. My power had to be contained, for everyones'' benefit. Hence my seal and this dampening torc."


    "You don''t sound very happy about it. If it''s that bad, why not just take that collar off?"


    "I''ve been forbidden to remove it under pain of¡­ Death, would be the closest analogue you''d understand."


    "Does your ''agreement'' mention anything about having someone else remove it for you?"


    "¡­ No, it does not. But-"


    Hiiro didn''t wait for her to finish. His hand reached across the table in a flash to take the torc before she could react. The instant he touched the metal his arm went slack, all motive essence robbed at the slightest contact with the psycho-insulative alloy.


    "-given your recent exertions, perhaps now isn''t the best time to experiment." Bim concluded, watching Hiiro shake some life back into the limp limb.


    "Like hitting the funny bone but a million times worse." He stated, working his jaw and flexing numb fingers. "I''m jealous. It must be nice having a collar that keeps you from blowing your top every damned day."


    "If you can get the cursed thing off my throat you''re welcome to keep it. Though the experience may not be as enviable as you envision it to be."


    "I''ll hold you to that." Hiiro stated with a wink. "So¡­ where do we go from here?"


    Bim''s puzzlement must have snuck onto her face again because he quickly elaborated.


    "It''s just that we''ve both got our cards on the table now."


    "What cards?" Bim asked, scanning the table for anything other than the scant remains of his burritos. Hiiro stifled a chuckle at her expense.


    "You''re really going to make me spell it out?"


    Evidently the question was rhetorical because he continued before she could answer.


    "What are we?"


    "We are those who seek answers." Bim answered instantly. "Those who would cut back the secrets of time, materia and all this reality has to offer so as to further our knowledge, thus becoming as gods. Beyond that, I am uncertain of what we are, though I gather that we are kindred amongst those who are without."


    "Two lonely people in it together against the world." Hiiro idly stated, in the way humans liked to make statements sound like questions.


    "I have nothing against this world. Reality would be a more apt target for your turn of phrase." Bim corrected, pondering at his meaning.


    "To making reality our bitch." Hiiro said, raising a mug in toast. Bim mirrored the gesture with an empty tin, downing her notional drink in jovial camaraderie.


    "So¡­" Bim began, feeling curiously contented by nothing more than Hiiro''s own contentment. "Shopping?"


    "Indeed, shopping." He answered, and the estranged distance between them was nowhere to be found.

 H22 - Arms Shipment

    Hiiro


    The palace was quiet when I woke up, the air stale and sticky with heat like it was holding its breath and everyone inside be damned. Today was the day the mercs went to war; the ambush for the ambushers. Leeroy had gotten to plan to his black heart''s content, now all that was left was to go through the motions. Breakfast was waiting for me, as it always was. I forced down as much as I could past the knots wriggling in my guts. That done, I loaded for b?r as ordered¡ª whatever a b?r was.


    My restocked wardrobe was pillaged, holster tucked, harness slung, magnetic speedloaders spun and every pocket on me got stuffed to near bursting with anything and everything I thought might be useful if worst came to. I looked myself over in the mirror, bobbing my head at what I saw¡ª purely from confidence, not nerves. Yeah, definitely not nerves.


    Then I ran for the sink and upchucked my guts, puking out every bit of fragile confidence I''d mustered.


    What the hell was I doing? The outfit wanted me to drive Celio right into the thick of it and just sit there waiting to get shot to hell and back and then some. Of all the mercs in the outfit, I was the perfect man for the job; two parts competent, three parts expendable. They''d kill me if I didn''t go, Leeroy had basically come out and said as much in all the planning sessions.


    I pulled out a cigarette and sparked it up with my bare hands right there in the bathroom. The fact that I''d never need to worry about where I''d left my matches again was probably the only upside to my present circumstances. All it took me was three long drags to finish it off and it wasn''t nearly enough to settle my nerves, so I lit up another one and a third after that. Some part of me should have still been amazed that I could start fires just by snapping my fingers together, but puffing on my cigarettes took precedent.


    I found enough get up and go in the locally grown tobacco to drag my ass off the bathroom floor and get gone before I could light up a forth cigarette. In a past life I might have marveled at the quality of the cheap little paper sticks. Maybe it was my months of involuntary abstinence or maybe the local scat was just that good, but by the time I stepped out of the palace and headed for the parked convoy, I nearly felt human again. Then I lit up another smoke and actually savored the little paper miracle instead of just inhaling it.


    This job called for all hands on deck. I spotted Princess fussing over how certain explosives were being stacked, Gidget going over our refitted engines one last time, and even Bim was patiently sitting in Celio''s backup car looking for all the world like a sliver of sunlight in the middle of a gathering storm. The cars were all lined up with trucks queued to the side, the last of Celio''s Vigia still on the estate were all stood ready and waiting while the maids handled the rest of the mundane lifting. Next to them¡ªdoing all the heavy lifting¡ªwere the mercs, all suited for war and loaded for the mother of all b?rs.


    When I''d seen their armor before it had been impressive, like a hall of giant metal statues depicting heroic titans straight out of the legends. Now, all that steel was walking, talking and lifting. It was alive and some part of me hadn''t really believed it until now. I couldn''t decide if they looked more like avatars of iron or engines of war. They made the ground quake when they walked, the weapons stuck to their backs were bigger than I was tall, and above all, they made me and my little revolver feel entirely insignificant. If I stood in the wrong place they''d crush me underfoot and I doubted they''d even notice.


    "Hero," A giant among giants growled. I couldn''t tell who was inside, the voice was too metallic and there was a resonant bassy boom to it that made me want to anywhere else. It took me a second to recognize the mass of plates and servos as Anvil, Leeroy''s suit. "Don''t fuck this up."


    Threat delivered, he stomped off not wanting to spend a second longer in my proximity than was necessary. They all were I realized. Every single one of those tempered badasses clad hulking masses of killing steel were keeping clear of me. Even in all that armor they didn''t want to be anywhere near me. Some part of me wanted to take exception to that, but I couldn''t find any exception in me buried under the gnawing fear doing its damnedest to make me crap myself then and there.


    The background murmur of work and chatter stopped. It was so sudden that I thought I''d gone deaf or maybe had fire pouring out of ears of something. I didn''t, but I still ran a hand up to check before I followed everyone''s hushed double takes. They were all gawking at the only person more loathed and despised than I was. Treu had evidently missed the memo that we were going to war, clad in plainclothes stretched to bursting over his freakishly huge proportions. All of the exception I couldn''t find in me was plastered on his posture, his cocksure swaggering stride that broadcast just how beneath him this whole spectacle was. His eyes were scanning forward, each one periodically swiveling in his repugnant reptilian manner to scowl in disdain at whatever it beheld. Until he looked at my way, then both eyes came to bear down on me from on high, and he smiled¡ª all predatory teeth and icy animosity.


    "Everyone! Mount up!" One of the armored Mercs bellowed, dispelling the ungodly silence that had befallen the palace parkway.


    I bolted for my car, gasping out a breath I hadn''t realized I was holding. It wasn''t an ornate staff car this time, just another militia surplus crossover a few years out of date; the perfect cover for an arms dealer trying to lose himself in the cracks of the underworld. We''d up-armored the wannabe APC as much as the chassis and suspension could take, but two tons of steel wasn''t thick enough for me to shake the feeling that Treu was still watching me. Watching, waiting and smiling at his cruel fantasies of what he''d get to do to me when the time came.


    "You''re looking even shittier than usual." Malik snidely commented from my shotgun seat.


    "You drew the short twig?" I asked between deep breaths.


    "We use a black bullet, but yeah. Let''s hope I live long enough to regret it, Firebug."


    Malik tried to slump down a little in his seat but there wasn''t enough footspace for his long legs and the quartet of fire extinguishers he''d brought. The killing heat inside of me flared up at the sight, some primeval instinct rearing back to challenge an ancestral foe. It was comforting in a sickening way. I grabbed another cigarette and sparked it with a finger. While I sucked down my sweet poison, Celio climbed in the back and the car''s radio crackled to life.


    "You all know your jobs," Leeroy stated, his voice saturated with so much commanding surety that the radio could hardly contain it. "Intel teams have already spotted hostile activity in our AO. They mean to make sure the Client doesn''t escape them twice. Expect extremely-heavy resistance when the fighting starts and make no mistake, this is a when not an if. Fight smart, play to our strengths and destroy them utterly. Stick to your combat teams, stick to your sectors and DO NOT overextend yourselves. We''ve got a juicy combat bonus lined up after this, but you''ve gotta be alive to spend it. So remember, no dead heroes."


    Malik cast a sidelong glance at me, tempting fate then and there. I held my breath, hoping Leeroy would continue. Hoping he hadn''t actually just finished his little speech with my impending death front and center in everyone''s minds. But it seemed he had. No more words of encouragement were forthcoming. The convoy rolled out.


    "No dead heroes¡­" I muttered, taking a long drag off my cigarette. "Just one. Right?"


    Malik just turned his head to look out the window rather than face me, the fire extinguishers clattering at his feet.


    We took a long, meandering route across the hilly countryside, periodically stopping at the odd rural warehouse or seemingly-abandoned mountainside supply depot. Massive flatbed trucks laden with canvas-covered payloads joined us in their ones and twos, falling into file with the rest of precious cargo. Soon enough, our convoy was too long for me to spot its full length in my mirrors. I tried my best not to think about the growing volume of munitions surrounding me¡ª failing utterly. I wasn''t sure which was worse, driving Celio or knowing that soon enough the shooting would start and I''d be right in the middle of it with a few hundred tons of volatile goods. We drove around the countryside for a good four hours and I went through a full pack and a half of smokes before we finally crossed into Crucibab''s city limits.


    "All Chefs, we are now in the Kitchen." Leeroy said over the radio.


    "We''ve got over three-hundred guests already with more trickling in. Expect a serious dinner rush." Alice said, the radio amplifying her soft voice to conversational volume.


    I gulped down a mouthful of bile and tightened my white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. This was insane! I was insane for following through with it, but I didn''t lift my foot from the gas pedal. I followed the lead car, a dozen trucks following me with half as many cars staggered throughout. We were just a like a colony of rodents all rushing off the same cliff because some idiot leader thought it was a good idea and jumped first. We descended from the overpasses into the cluttered streets below, racing away from the rolling hills at our back towards the sea. There was a moment, just a glimpse really before it was lost between the mid-rise mud brick towers, but I saw the ocean up close for the first time.


    I''d seen plenty of lakes as a pioneer, most freshwater but not all, but I''d never seen an ocean as anything but a smudged horizon. I had no idea they were so beautiful. The arid mesa hills of Cruicbab swathed the sea, hues of orange, yellow and umber all shoving against each other to escape the rich copper-oxide green of the ocean cove and the deep blue that lay beyond. There was a brown river, almost like a snaking line of the city had been gouged and liquefied, pouring out into a swirling estuary. Specks of color burst everywhere to break up the monotony with sparks of individuality: painted ships in the water, dyed awnings in the city and defiant patches of foliage growing wherever mankind had left a gap.


    "Why the hell are we fighting in a place like this?" I asked, rounding a corner and losing sight of the landscape to the dense city streets.


    ''Ask not for the reason why, but for the will to do and die.'' Malik offered without turning from his window. "If we do this right, it''s one and done. Otherwise, this whole city will become a warzone."


    "No pressure." I said with a gulp. "What''s that from? It sounded like a tune."


    "Just an old bastardized poem I read in university. Courage, Heroism, Sacrifice. All the glory they try to sell you on to get you to enlist. It''s botshit mostly, but damned if they don''t make it sound good for the people well away from the sharp end of the fighting."


    I didn''t know how to follow that. It sounded like a long story, but then, I suppose we all had our reasons for being here at the sharp end. Money, Glory, Questions; what''d it matter why? We were here and soon enough we''d be getting shot at, wondering just if those reasons were worth it. I hit a pothole and my holster bounced, reminding me just how heavy my revolver was. The weight of all the lives I''d taken came down heavy on my shoulders.


    "At least it''s not raining." I said, casting a quick glance upwards to the clear blue sky and it''s foreign twin suns.


    "Don''t jinx us." Malik said, his voice deadly serious.


    "All Chefs, all Chefs. Goose is in the Oven. Standby for the Banquet." Alice stated over the radio.


    I rounded the final blind corner in our long drive fighting down the urge to light another smoke. Rows of colossal warehouses ran inland to my left, away from the deep water port and the pair of berthed armed cargo ships resting at the docks ahead of me. There was a massive ringed something out in the water beyond the ships that I vaguely remembered being called tidal turbines from the mission briefing. I''d been expecting the docks to appear run-down and abandoned¡ª this was supposed to be a not-so-secret meeting place for an arms deal after all. I was sorely disappointed. These docks must have been top of the line at one point and they''d been in daily use and good repair ever since. There were splayed-legged cranes everywhere, an overhead grid of rugged steel, and everything from the buildings to the equipment had a practical design meant to maximize productivity without letting safety or worker wellbeing get in the way.


    To my right and rear it was all unplanned sprawling city clinging to the rocky seaside hills: apartments, side-street industrial parks, public works, shopping malls, solar cell grids, and the irregular ferrocrete block streets tying it all together. Our trucks were still pulling out behind me, all headed for the terminal lying in wait before us. Four groundcars were parked there waiting for us, surrounded by a loose gaggle of goons in what passed for suits on a world where heatstroke was a daily threat. In the middle of that gaggle, there was a fat balding man dressed in robes that were trying to be formal, militant and chic all at once¡ªand failing on all accounts¡ªbeing fanned by one of his guards.


    The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    "Alright everyone," Leeroy said. "Just like we planned."


    "Time to earn our pay, Firebug." Malik said, flicking the safety of his carbine from safe to burst.


    I nodded, gulping another mouthful of bile into my knotting guts as the killing heat built inside my hands. I pulled up my car, front and center while the trucks parked in slanted aisles behind us, sparing no effort on the showmanship. Celio wanted a grand spectacle to draw in prying eyes and Leeroy had been happy to oblige that request. I cast my gaze away from the show into my rear view, looking at the man of the hour.


    Celio was sitting there in my backseat, just bobbing his head as his fingers drummed some unheard song''s rhythm into the door handle. His eyes had this kind of stormy distant look to them, his brow furrowed like he couldn''t remember the words of a tricky verse, and all the while his fingers kept dancing. He looked up, met my stare and a switch inside of him was thrown. He perked up and I wondered which Celio was real, the icon who''d swore to save the world or the aged man who''d been brooding silently in the backseat for the past five hours. Maybe both? Maybe neither. I couldn''t say. Celio flung the door open without a trace of his burden, striding towards his opposite with arms wide in greeting.


    "My Friend! It has been too long!" He cried with such raw delight it seemed a little too genuine to be an act.


    The goons surrounding his ''friend'' tensed instantly, reaching for holstered weapons or half-raising those weapons already in hand. Malik thumbed his carbine''s fire-selector from burst to auto, but kept the rifle out of sight. I put another cigarette between my lips and rested a hand on my revolver. For his part, Celio''s ''friend'' scowled as he approached. That scowl only deepened the closer the two men got until his balding friend''s face was a caricature of wrath and disgust. With a gap of two meters, the balding man drew an engraved, silver pistol and began examining it in detail. Celio didn''t falter, but rather halted purposely as if this was all planned in advance.


    "All Chefs! Hold your fire." Leeroy growled over the radio.


    "I remember when my father gave you that weapon, Diego¡­" Celio said. He was speaking to his opposite but also addressing the men around them¡ª a statesman who made every person in the crowd feel as if he was talking to them alone. "Do you remember that day as well, My Friend?"


    The balding man¡ªDiego, evidently¡ªraised his pistol to eye height and recited something too faintly for me to hear.


    "Just so, Meu Irm?o." Celio answered wistfully. "Put the gun away Diego. We''ll need every loyal son soon enough."


    An inland gust kicked salty brine down the dockyard lots, and for a long while Diego regarded his pistol and then Celio. His goons played their part well, but they were holding their breath along with everyone else present. A few cast knowing glances to their opposites among Celio''s vigia, shadowed eyes somewhere between sympathetic and pleading as they held their weapons ready.


    Gradually, Diego lowered his engraved pistol. His look of grave severity didn''t depart, though it did gain a mourning note around the edges.


    "I hear nothing from you for years." Diego said, husk tinting his accent into dour tones. "You ignore my calls for assistance. The Guerreiro besiege my isles and where are you and your vigia and your ships? Playing politician with the rest of the vipers carpeting the Throne of Cruz. And now, I hear of your death and not three cycles later you wish to renew our brotherhood? It is you who have forgotten the words we swore on that day, Brother."


    Diego finished by spitting on the ground at Celio''s feet. His vigia shuffled anxiously, but Celio was unflinching.


    "I will honor my vows," Diego continued, crossing himself with his pistol. "As we both swore to do. So do not remind me of my oaths, Brother. I will repulse the Guerreiro. I will fight any tyrant who lays claim to our home! Now tell me Brother, will I be fighting you once I have destroyed Vincete Dominar''s lackeys?"


    "I would be a fool to war with you," Celio stated, again addressing everyone and only them. "Once you have added these to your arsenal."


    Celio snapped his fingers and the vigia standing by their flatbeds took their cue to flash the goods. Canvas covers fell away from the trucks parked to maximize this reveal. The big ticket items commanded the docks, all eyes pulled at once in a calculated display of salesmanship and subterfuge. The lead trucks were carrying intercontinental missiles¡ª minus the warheads for the time being. The next pair of trucks had heavily armored tanks, the ones behind them sported gunships, and then self-propelled artillery, and then the neatly stacked pyramids of ammunition to feed it all. The flatbeds further back remained tarped, tantalizing the imagination with possibilities when the reality was far more mundane. Crates of small arms, grenades, anti-material weaponry, fuel and even more ammunition didn''t have the same wow factor as the rest.


    Now, had the third truck from the rear had its covering removed, Diego would have been moved to tears, but that surprise wasn''t meant for him. At least not yet. As it was, Diego''s severe demeanor broke apart, clearing the way for a wide childish grin as his eyes ogled the hardware. He blinked in stupification, his smile widened some more into lecherous proportions and then he was laughing.


    "We''ve got a lot of guests arriving at the banquet." Alice whispered via the radio. "We might need catering sooner than anticipated."


    "We''ve got the van all warmed up, just say when and we''ll be there in five." Tony replied.


    "Fried Chicken, standing by." Aivery snapped.


    "Chiefs, Severs, standby for the opening Toast." Leeroy ordered. It was probably just the radio, but his voice sounded tense.


    Celio wrapped an arm around Diego''s shoulder and started walking him towards the merchandise. If I wasn''t working for the man, I''d have sworn he was a swindler about to con his mark for all they had. I''d seen plenty of that type before, a wink and some honeyed words could be nearly as dangerous as a gun¡­ if you knew how to use them. But it wasn''t Diego we were trying to con, he was just the unlucky bastard caught in the middle. Same as me. I tucked a cigarette between my lips, lit it with a finger that should have been red hot and started puffing.


    "Think his buddy will be happy when he learns Celio is using him as bait?" I asked, more so thinking aloud than really asking.


    "Are you happy being used as bait?" Malik retorted, making his thoughts on the matter perfectly clear.


    "Not particularly." I answered, unholstering my revolver and checking its cylinder. The murderous heat inside me was stoked to a steady burn, alive and ready, just waiting to be tapped into. The heat was about as comforting as the heavy pistol in my hand or the knots in my guts were.


    The sales pitch was a done deal within the minute. Diego whistled and that was all the signal his men needed. They moved with an ease that only came from practice and experience, Celio''s vigia trading their trucks for Diego''s cars as the docks kicked into gear. Some of the cargo was getting buried in warehouses, others just driven back into the city streets to go get lost, the rest slowly started making its way onto Diego''s waiting ships. In the center of all this activity, Diego and Celio stood immobile, speaking softly.


    "We might not get to serve dinner after all¡­" Tony quipped over the radio. An eruption of chatter squawked from the radio in reply.


    "Dammit Tony!" "Shut your whore mouth!" "Don''t say shit like that!" "Whelp, we''re jinxed." "Someone punch him!" "I''m gonna kick you in the balls when this is over."


    "What are our guests doing?" Leeroy asked and suddenly the radio was all business. "Alice, why haven''t they moved yet?"


    "Dunno," She answered, I could almost hear the shrug accompanying her words. "They''re just hunkered in cover. Watching, waiting."


    "Waiting for what?"


    "Dunno."


    "Are they just cautious or do we have a leak?"


    "Dunno."


    "That''s not good enough. Find someone who won''t be missed and get me some-" Leeroy was interrupted by someone keying their radio in rapid bursts.


    "Break break break!" Princess snapped. "Ship two is lazing something¡­ Fuck, it''s bein-" The ship was already exploding before she could finish.


    It was like something from a dream.


    I saw three puffs of smoke in the air just milliseconds before another three detonations ripped upwards from the ship''s deck. It was so fast, so perfectly coordinated that if I hadn''t already been looking that way I''d have missed it. I saw the flash, then I heard the thunder as it battered my car and tore my cigarette from my lips.


    The shockwave hit me then but this time I was blinking, so I missed it. My car took the brunt of it, rocking on its suspension as the mirrors cracked. If there''d been anything in my stomach the body-blow would have had me puking as my ears rung like a faulty compressor. I opened my eyes.


    Malik was gone. His door was wide open, one of his extinguishers had fallen out and was slowly rolling for the sea. Then Malik was back at my car, half shoving, half throwing a protesting Celio into the back seat.


    Another trio of detonations gutted Diego''s ship. I saw a speck of a man thrown thirty meters into the air, growing larger as he came closer before splattering on the ferrocrete and being pulped further by a fleeing truck. The other ship was trying to cast off but they couldn''t cut the shore lines quickly enough. Men were running, some fell and only a rare few that did got back up.


    More puffs of smoke in the air. Things were zipping past me, some embedding in my car or gouging at its hull, sparks clattering off stone and metal. Malik sagged down for a split second, then pulled himself into the car using his arms more than his legs. His mouth was moving but I couldn''t make out the words. He looked mad. He was shouting. Shouting at me.


    Malik grabbed at my shoulder, ruffling my clothes. He limply pulled himself closer to my face, still shouting that same word. It wasn''t that I couldn''t hear him. I just couldn''t understand, it was like all language had lost its meaning. He didn''t make any sense. Nothing was making sense. I blinked again and looked around laggardly.


    The third salvo to hammer down on the doomed ship was all incendiaries. White-hot fizzing fire that melted steel and set the salty sea ablaze. A man threw himself from the ship, but the water offered no sanctuary. He burned before he could drown. I was jealous of him in that moment.


    The fire was right. Horrific as it was I felt some misbegotten kinship with it as I stared at the inferno. Some part of me longed to reach out and caress those alkaline flames, to hold them as one might a dieing animal and offer it some small comfort. It was living energy made manifest in the simplest form. The fire was unburdened, set free to do as it wanted. There was something rather peaceful about the idea.


    Malik was still pawing at me, shouting his non-sense words as he bled on my car''s interior. That was rather inconsiderate of him. If he was going to make a mess he should do it out there with the rest of them in all that madness; not in here where things were safe and sensible.


    I thought about telling him that, but the words¡­ what was that word he kept using? It was the same one, over and over and over again. I was certain I knew it, but I couldn''t make any sense of it. For some reason it felt like I should though. It sounded like-


    "-DRIVE! Dammit man, DRIVE! Get us out of here! DRIVE! Somewhere! Anywhere but here! Get this piece of shit in gear and DRIVE!"


    I could understand him again. A cold, numb dread finally penetrated my mind, shattering my surreal serenity. I blinked, a sleepwalker who suddenly found himself in a very real nightmare. Men were burning, fleeing, screaming, fighting, and dieing. More explosions pounded into the docks, targeting the arms shipment I was parked squarely in the center of. The mercs were fighting off a swarming mass of approaching enemies and those armored titans were being pushed back.


    I slammed the car into gear and floored the accelerator headed for our escape route through the solar grid and then into the city. The docks were a mess of scattered steel and mangled meat. Warehouses had been ripped open and cast onto the streets, cranes toppled onto trucks and catwalks dropped to form a cluttered maze of destruction.


    The fighting was everywhere, from all sides but above and that''s where the bombs were dropping from. I glanced in my rearview to see if anyone was following, but there was only chaos beyond my empty back seat. I slammed on the brakes.


    "What are your doing?! DRIVE!" Malik roared.


    "Where''s Celio?" I asked, my voice so unnaturally flat and calm that I sounded like a stranger in my own ears. Malik scanned the backseat and came to the same realization I had.


    "Fuck me running." He breathed.


    Foam tires squealing, I fishtailed the car away from safety back into the firefight. I couldn''t tell who was winning or where the fighting was worse. It was Hell and Yomi and Pandemonium all at once. The mercs were titans among men, mountains of solid wrath in a sea of churning insanity. I saw one take a blast just meters overhead and they stomped out of the smoke covered in metal thorns to keep fighting. Everyone who wasn''t wearing several tons of armor wasn''t nearly as fortunate. The docks were a war zone.


    I spotted something. Two pudgy men hunkering behind a downed merc''s armor. Diego was dyed red, firing his pistol blindly over their barricade while Celio held in his brother''s spilt guts. There was blood on the ground, too much for anyone to walk away from.


    I swerved around a merc stomping towards the enemy, throwing the car into a long drift that threatened to turn into another rollover but didn''t. I dodged a burning truck and flattened a man in unmarked fatigues under my crash bar. I''d overshot Celio and had to bring the car back around to his position.


    A trail of smoke caught my eye. I had a single instant to wonder if the approaching object reminded me more of a thrown spear or something vaguely phallic. It was long, had a bulbous head and narrow shaft sporting some fins. I didn''t have time to make a decision.


    The rocket propelled grenade struck my car''s hood square on the side. My engine never stood a chance, my front axle even less so. My whole car veered like some giant toddler had given it a savage kick during a tantrum. My head found the cracked driverside window, then the shattered windscreen when we slammed into something unmoving.


    I felt hot water trickling down into my left ear. I tasted blood and a cursory attempt to moisten my lips turned up a chipped tooth. My lap felt warm too and I thought I''d pissed myself but I was just on fire¡ª which was far more comforting in that moment than it had any right to be. Malik was simultaneously struggling with the radio and a fire extinguisher beside me. He dosed me with white foam and I heard him speaking.


    "Bait Tray has spilled. Spare Trolley, Spare Trolley, you are a Go."

 H23 - The Docks

    Hiiro


    "I say again, Spare Trolley is a Go." Malik repeated, two fingers on his throat mic.


    My car was dead, the front end completely totaled beyond any hope of salvage. Despite the situation, I was more put off by that fact than anything else. All the hours I''d put into reworking my car, adjusting everything I could until I knew the ins and outs of that car down to the tiniest detail, wasted. All the experimentation, the trial and error that went into teaching myself just what I could or couldn''t do, was for nothing. Malik was untangling his carbine from where it''d been wedged and stray shots were pinging off my car''s rear armor, but it all felt so pointless. All that time, lost.


    It reminded me of what Bim had said in the gardens before they too were destroyed to fuel Celio''s ambitions. The inherent destructive nature of humanity and just how fragile everything we made really was. It was all about the contrast, knowing the depths of just how bad things could be made it easier to appreciate when things weren''t so scat. I think she already knew that but the gravity of our conversation finally dawned on me just then.


    "Because life is a finite resource¡­" I mumbled, the words slipping from my split lips of their own accord.


    "Yeah, well your''s may be running low but I''ve got plenty left in the tank." Malik retorted breathlessly, checking the chamber of his carbine. "Spare car''s coming in now. Once Celio''s on it, I''m getting the hell out of here. We''ve done our part."


    Another nearby explosion rocked my lifeless car. We''d crashed into one of the warehouses lining the docks, a regular one thankfully, not one being used to store parts of the arms deal. I strained at my stuck seatbelt, burning my way clear of it with a few savage tears of my burning hands when it failed to yield. Malik was clearing the shattered windscreen with his carbine''s muzzle, making a path to crawl out that didn''t take us through the escalating firefight behind us. More gunfire was steadily finding the the ass end of my car and based off its persistence these shots weren''t strays.


    "What''s the plan from here?" I asked, slapping the foam and broken glass off me unto the warehouse floor.


    "I''ll go this way," Malik said, pointing left and deeper into the warehouse. "You go that way." This time pointing right, out into the battle raging on the other side of a thin tin wall. "Whoever gets to the Client first keeps him safe and throws his ass in the backup car. Then we sit on his dumbass until we''re back at the palace."


    "I like half of that plan." I said, pulling a crushed cigarette from my fire-suppressant soaked pocket. It took some doing, but I got the little bastard lit between my scorching fingers.


    "Tough. That''s the job." Malik said, struggling with gauze and bandages for the shrapnel cuts on his calf, thigh and side. He fumbled his third wrap sending the roll of gauze tumbling to the rubble strewn floor.


    "Hold still." I said, reaching for his weeping lacerations.


    Malik took a step back, dragging his leg in a weak limp.


    "We don''t have time for this." I growled seizing his leg with my offhand.


    "What are you going to do?!" He sounded more accusatory than scared.


    I ignored him, too focused on the steady stream of red gushing down his thigh in time with his beating heart. I was no doctor, but I''d killed enough people to know what an artery looked like when it bled. The other cuts were flesh wounds but the one on his thigh would bleed him dry. He had minutes at best.


    "Sit down, now." I said, again my voice so flat and even that I sounded like a stranger. I''d never known I could speak so calmly.


    A fireball outside illuminated the warehouse in rich ruby hues as it clawed its way upwards. Malik tried to take another step away but my hand was like iron around his leg. He finally saw what I did.


    "Tourniquet." He mumbled, barely loud enough to be heard over the gunfire. "I have tourniquets."


    He was pale now, digging in his pouches as he landed heavily on his rear. The pink-skinned mercenaries¡ªCaucasians, I''d learned was the proper term for them¡ªalways looked pale, but now he was white instead of pink. I pulled a wad of bandages from my laden pockets and they started smoking as soon as I touched them. My offhand felt lukewarm at best but my right was burning up, the air around it shimmering with heat. I watched the bandage crumble to ashes in my hand for a long second, then I looked to Malik''s weeping leg and had a really bad idea.


    "What are you going to do!?" He weakly demanded, as I let the ashes slip from my fingers.


    I had no idea what I was actually going to do or if it would work, but I mustered up that calm stranger inside of me and gave him his script.


    "I''m lighting a cigarette."


    Malik must''ve thought I''d gone insane, assuming he hadn''t thought that already, but he was too weak to fight me. I rubbed my fingers together just like I would to spark up a smoke, letting the heat build without escaping in a rush. It was like trying to siphon only a little bit of fuel from a pressurized tank on the verge of blowing its top. This killing heat inside of me wanted out, it was a volcano that needed to erupt when all I wanted was one, very hot finger.


    "I''m lighting a cigarette." I repeated, more for myself though Malik grit his teeth and closed his eyes.


    "I''m dead either way. Just get it over with."


    I shoved my cauterizing finger into the wound and he screamed a wordless growl of pain. The scent of burning meat filled my nose and I remembered my doomed visit to the arctic after we''d ran out of food but before we''d ran out of burnables to cook with. My inner fire tried to make its escape but I held it fast, clenching down on it. Flames started jetting up my arm like the tails of a rocket, all the while my finger seared Malik until his leg was medium-well. I torn my finger from the wound, chucks of blackened tissue clinging to my finger until they too were scorched to cinders and fell away as ash.


    As soon as I released him, Malik rolled face down and howled in poorly-muffled agony. I took a few deep breaths that smelled of unhappy memories, trying to suppress the rampaging flames inside of me and largely failing. I was still losing the battle when Malik rolled over and examined his leg.


    "It''s still bleeding. Again! Deeper this time."


    "I can''t-" I panted, spitting a swath of sparks as I did.


    "Again!" He commanded in a low roar, before stuffing a clump of fabric in his mouth.


    And that was the end of the discussion. The flames were ecstatic for another chance to slip the reins, leaping off my arm at the slightest lapse in focus. I took a breath and held it, smothering myself and the killing heat inside me. Just like before but bigger, but not too much bigger. I had to funnel a calamity down to a campfire and hold it in my hands.


    "I''m lighting a¡­ Cigar." And I thrust three searing fingers inside of him.


    Malik howled into his gag. The warehouse smelled of bloody meat and acrid smoke and spent gunpowder. I retched dry heaves into my mouth. A trio of gunshots punched through the thin tin warehouse walls a meter to my left. Malik''s eyes rolled in their sockets as his leg bucked in my grasp. The bleeding stopped.


    "It stopped." I could barely believe my eyes.


    "Go. Celio." He whispered, strength failing him.


    I grabbed his rifle from where he''d dropped it and placed it nearby. I barely knew him, but it didn''t feel right to leave him there, half insensate and wounded.


    "No dead heroes, right?" I asked, trying to force some cheer into my voice and failing utterly.


    "Not me." Malik said weakly. "Not even one. Go."


    I nodded my understanding. There was nothing left to say. I could see it in his eyes, he believed it. Somehow he actually thought we''d make it out of this, alive if not intact. He nodded back and propped himself into a sit with his carbine across his bloodied lap. There was this look of defiant certainty to him that I struggled to place. At a guess, it looked like he had faith.


    I fumbled a cigarette in my mouth and lit it around the charred meat still clinging to my fingers. I wanted another to take the edge off this whole insane situation, but there wasn''t time to dawdle. I spotted a handy passage recently blasted from a nearby wall and charged through to curling smoke, pistol in hand. My respite from the battlefield had hardly been two minutes but the battle was turning.


    It was still Hell, but I could see that we were winning.


    The bombs stopped raining from the sky and the enemy was running out of bodies to throw into the fray. Everything was committed on both sides, and Celio should be somewhere smack dab right in the middle of it. Fireteams of armored demigods smashed into every pocket of resistance that stood their ground; the brave dieing honorably while the cowards just died under an avalanche of steel and lead and fury. The arms shipment was in shambles, littering the docks in the shattered iron bones of some pacifist''s wet dream. The front half of Diego''s ship was missing and the rest was burning harsh white; the other one was simply gone, lost somewhere beyond the fog of war.


    The smoke and dust drifted seawards with a sudden shift in the wind. The choppy thrum of rotorcraft flying low overhead sent me scampering for cover behind a section of fallen crane. I spotted the flyer through a gap in the smoke, eight armored suits of war clinging to the skycrane''s underbelly as they rushed to cut off the enemy''s escape. A sputter of tracer fire tried to ground the flyer to little effect beyond drawing the ire of the craft''s passengers. Their return fire cause the skycrane to hop in the air, and I blinked in disbelief that physics could be so easily beguiled.


    A burly man wearing unmarked fatigues rushed to grab cover beside me. He was covered in sweat, gasping down smoke and dust as he kept his head low to scan his surroundings wide-eyed. His eyes found mine, they were a light hazel and so very wide in that moment; wide enough that I couldn''t see a single trace of his eyelids and the bloodshot white spheres looked like they were about to abandon his face. His rifle snapped up to his shoulder¡­ but my pistol was faster.


    I gave him a blast of shot, losing half of my spread to the grid-work skeleton of the crane. Hazel eyes went down, rifle in hand. He was still trying to point it at me and he snatched a duo of rounds into the chaos while doing so.


    I gave him another shot and he kept moving, so I gave him another. And another after that, and another, and another. Then I was pulling the trigger, the hammer striking, the cylinder spinning and he was still moving. He wouldn''t stop moving there on the ground as the blood poured from his mangled flesh. I wanted him to stop. He needed to stop. The hazel-eyed man wouldn''t stop. His legs were bucking, heels scraping at the ferrocrete road. His wrists were curling in, fingers jittering some mad typist''s final instructions. His mouth was open, gurgling rich red, oxygen-filled blood with every failed breath¡ª with every failed scream as he clung to the life denied him. His eyes begged from a flat face so akin to my own.


    A metal boot the size of my torso pistoned down on his head, and with one final spasm, he was still.


    "Hero?" The armored titan stated, voice all metallic boom and genuine surprise. "Where''s Celio? Where''s Malik?"


    Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    I latched onto those questions and tore my eyes away from the spreading puddle at the titan''s gore-smeared boot.


    "I saw Celio maybe eighty meters that way three minutes ago." I said pointing, sounding more like myself now and less like the calm stranger. "Malik''s near my car, banged up but alive. How do I get out of here? Where are they coming from?"


    "Everywhere but we''re pushing them north." The titan answered, flicking their autocannon across the street in a direction that kept the sea to the right and my crashed car to my rear.


    A protracted splatter of sparks pinged off the living armor''s shoulders and back. The titan pivoted at the ankles with a grace that defied their metallic bulk and returned fire. Their autocannon was fired from the hip but the titan''s accuracy wasn''t diminished in the slightest by that fact. Steel bullet casings the size of fat beer bottles spat from the weapon, clattering at my feet as the autocannon roared. Across the way, a burning car had two dozen holes punched clean through both layers of armor plating and the men hunkering behind it. The titan squatted behind my cover and considered me with the lifeless eye slits of their helmet.


    "The backup car''s coming in now." The titan said. "Stay behind me in the shadow of our counter-charge. That''s the safest place you can be, Little Hero."


    I nodded my understanding and reloaded my revolver with slugs. The living armor cocked its head, maybe listening to something, maybe wondering why I bothered. I''d lost my cigarette somewhere and desperately wanted to light up a replacement but there was no time for that now.


    "I''ll cover you." I said, pulling the line from my long distant past. That was a soldiery thing to say at a time like this. That was how small units operated, teams covering one another. The titan cast a sidelong glance at my pistol and shrugged irreverently.


    "Stay behind me." They repeated.


    Then, we were moving. The titan simply walked through the mangled crane''s wreckage, kicking the ironwork aside as one might some loose twigs. Through the curling black smoke of burning fuel, I followed in the avatar of war''s vast shadow.


    The docks were a mess of bodies and steel. Nothing could have prepared me for it. Burning cars boasted the charred bones of those who couldn''t escape their vehicle''s ''protection''. One of Celio''s vigia, a man I recognized by face though not name, was manically laughing as he ran from body to body gathering up trophies of flesh. Even the burning suns had forsaken the battlefield, both lost in the fog of war roiling overhead.


    The titan was unfazed, striding through the madness unflinching. Sometimes they would talk, sometimes it would only growl or beckon with a limb. I didn''t think about it, didn''t try to understand what was happening. I obeyed.


    There were shapes in the fog, fleeing, charging, moving in all directions. They could have been men or they might have been ghosts. My iron guardian sighted on each one, permitting some to live and sentencing most to death. I saw more than shapes in those moments, the titan''s weapon drilling holes of clarity through the hazy uncertainty engulfing us. For instants at a time, I saw a fraction of the slaughter taking place around me. I tried to blink whenever the titan fired¡ª failing more often than not.


    "Little Hero, stay with them." My guardian said.


    We had reached an alcove amidst the storm. One of the flatbed trailers, explosively cleared of its cargo and irreverently thrown into the fray. Men had gathered here, rallying with whatever they could salvage from the now-scattered arms shipment. Machine guns and rifles were heaped beside an open crate of ammunition and grenades. The vigia were bristling with weaponry at every gap in the overturned trailer, hosing the smoke with indiscriminate fire.


    Celio was leading the counterattack, looking for all the world like a figure from myth. He was bloodied at the head, knees and hands; his informal attire lost under belts of ammunition for a machine gun he didn''t have. Someone had made a flag for him with a truck''s antenna and a floral print shirt; the ganglord was brandishing his colors in one hand, a glittering silver pistol in the other. He was stood atop a fallen suit of armor, Diego''s disemboweled corpse in gentle repose at his feet and the dead or dieing all around.


    The flash of an RPG threw a massive shadow off him, so huge it seemed to swallow the world for a single instant before being lost. How could anyone who saw Celio as he was now think of him as anything but The Savior? One look at him, untouched by the shrapnel, the bullets, the fires that had cut down so many men in just this hour, and you could almost feel the divine standing beside him.


    The curling smoke thinned, pushed towards the sea as the merc''s rotarcraft strafed the battlefield again, now devoid of it''s armored passengers. The once orderly docks were in burning ruins, warehouses blown open, cranes toppled, vehicles shredded into pieces, and everywhere there were bodies. The armored titans had pushed forward of us in a ragged, staggering line; sweeping the battle northward into the dockside industrial and residential sectors with every bound.


    Elsewhere, the battle wasn''t so clearly defined. Skirmishing parties were slipping through the merc''s advance, more enemies trickling into the fight from all sides, and dozens of would-be commandos using the chaos to try and make a name for themselves. I spotted a half dozen trucks circling the the docks, just outside the rubble-strewn corridor of combat, heavy weapons firing into the fray to slow the titan''s grinding assault. As I watched one technical circling back to ferry more skirmishers around the mercs, movement much closer commanded my attention.


    A burly man was crawling amidst the wreckage behind Celio''s fire screen. I couldn''t tell what he was wearing aside from rags and garbage that merged into the blasted surroundings to the point of being near indistinguishable. If I hadn''t caught him moving, I''d have never seen him or the long rifle he was pointing a Celio''s back. Defiant heat welled up within of me, burning impotent rage thrashing inside my chest.


    I didn''t have the range or the aim to hit him. My painting work never needed me to hit a prone man in cover at seventy meters, even most professionals would struggle to match said feat with a pistol. I emptied the cylinder at him anyway, blasting metal and stone but no meat. The commando didn''t even flinch.


    A round took Celio through the back and The Savoir toppled from his perch.


    For a long second, no one noticed but me. Celio fell face-first into the rubble and filth and he did so with a weary smile on his face. One of his vigia turned, discarding an empty rifle for a loaded replacement from the heap behind him. He blinked, struggling to see what was right in front of his eyes, and his words carried through the din of combat.


    "Oh God, not him. Not Celio!"


    Paralysis spread like a plague. In a split-second the firebase was silenced, all heads turned from the fight. From up ahead, the enemy poured their own fire into the sudden lull. The air became so thick with incoming bullets that the whole world went fuzzy and blurred.


    The circling trucks lunged at the opening, lashing for the mercs and giving as savagely as they got for those crucial seconds to turn the assault. The armored demi-gods faltered, staggering under the sheer weight of fire pouring into them. Some of the titans took what scant cover they could, others charged into the enemy for what safety that offered. The forward line sagged and tore, more skirmishers slipping though under covering fire to encircle us.


    "We''re losing."


    I tried to find the speaker, but only found shocked faces turning to me. My mouth had made the assertion on its own, and it was right. They were coming, the mercs were pinned down and we were surrounded. Incoming bullets had finally found the fluid reserves for the overturned trailer''s hydraulic brakes and I could smell the oily runoff burning. We couldn''t stay here and we couldn''t move. No one was coming to help us, there was no one who could.


    We weren''t losing, we''d lost. We just didn''t know it yet.


    My head started swiveling, eyes flicking for something I''d missed. There had to be some crucial element I just hadn''t seen yet. Shoulder-fired rockets blasted jagged craters all around, machine guns spat one glowing tracer round for every nine I could only hear zipping past, and the oily flames licking at our overturned flatbed trailer were spreading.


    There was too much going on! Everywhere I looked I could only take in a fraction of what I was seeing and hearing and even smelling. Cacophony, that was the word. Hundreds of instruments all playing their own tune until there was no semblance of order, no composer to group the like sounds, and no way to know what was happening just meters away.


    It was maddening. In that raging insanity I screamed because that was the only thing I could do. One more manic instrument desperate to be heard, but even then I couldn''t hear myself.


    A trio of Celio''s men had their nerve pushed too far. They broke. They ran out into the open, to what end I couldn''t tell. Were they escaping the growing flames? Or had they thought there was an opening, a better place to shelter from the storm? Whatever they been attempting, they failed. The three of them were cut down before they''d gone four meters. Despite the twitching corpses just beyond arms reach, others were getting ready to abandon the fight too.


    Then, there was a roar. Twenty, thirty iron throats loosing their battle-cries as one. A single moment of order amidst the chaos. The titans were charging. The storm of lead threatening to consume us pivoted.


    I couldn''t believe it. In the blink of an eye certain death had decided it had better places to be. Men ran, some to new cover, others to wounded friends, and some simply ran. A stocky man I thought I recognized bowled me over with a shove on his flight to anywhere but here. The mercs were fighting for them and they were running.


    "We have to help them." I could barely hear my own stunned words.


    No one else seemed to hear me. I got up and started back to our burning sanctuary, the killing heat inside ten times hotter than the oily flames surrounding me.


    "Cover them!" I roared. "If they die, we all die!"


    They weren''t listening. They''d stood all they could and now they were done fighting for a dead man''s dream. I loaded a cylinder of black-and-red tipped bullets into my revolver, forcing my way to Celio and his fallen flag. A flash of headlights beckoned to my left but I kept my eyes locked forward toward the enemy. I clambered up onto the burning trailer, flag in hand, my pistol in the other. I went up in flames, but damned if standing in that inferno didn''t feel like home though.


    I stood there wreathed in oily black smoke and lapping orange flames, the wrong man in the right place. I drew up a deep breath, acrid choking smoke doing its level best to kill me then and there, but I didn''t care. The flames felt invigorating, nuzzling up against my legs with all the affection of a life-long pet.


    Suddenly the cacophony wasn''t so loud, the battlefield wasn''t such a chaotic mystery. Things didn''t make sense, but I saw what needed doing and I knew how to go about it. The air around me was charged with heat, sparks and flames and that was a good thing. I hefted my revolver and set to connecting the dots.


    A technical was trying to flee. I put a round against its passenger door and the bullet stuck like jellied napalm, engulfing the up-gunned truck in seconds.


    One of the mercs was limping towards the blasted carcass of a gunship, being harried at every step by an entrenched machine gun. I missed my target entirely, but the gluttonous flames forced them to abandon their defenses or be consumed.


    A team of men were frantically loading one of the self-propelled howitzers with a massive shell. I sighted in on the scattered spread of ordinance they were looting and pulled the trigger. The explosive shells took in an instant, detonating a chain reaction that took the mobile gun''s turret a hundred meters into the air and then into the sea.


    There was a car beside me, honking its horn. I reflexively flicked my revolver to it, but stayed my hand. It was one of ours, Tony sitting goggle-eyed in the driver''s seat with a tiny girl I didn''t recognize sitting beside him, her weapon at a low ready in my general direction but not quite pointed at me.


    The fires engulfing me balked, suddenly ashamed of our association now that there were prying witnesses. With the flames'' recession, my own reserves of murderous heat flickered and faltered. The car''s back door opened, Treu climbing out from the vehicle that seemed to have barely contained him.


    The giant of a man had none of his usual contempt or hatred about him. His reptilian eyes swiveled this way and that independent of each other or his line of advance as he strode the battlefield for his quarry. His movements were inhumanly lithe and for a man of his hulking stature completely wrong, he seemed to glide over the ground rather than walk upon it.


    I staggered from my elevated station, exhaustion threatening to drag me down amidst the dead and dying. One of Treu''s eyes met mine and a creeping cold dread cut me through to the core. I spotted a spark of something in that blue-grey orb, not quite pride or respect but maybe acknowledgment. Treu knelt over Celio''s body and I met him there.


    "At least it''s still here this time." Treu stated vacantly, hovering his plate-sized hands over Celio''s body like he was feeling for heat off a stove.


    "What does that mean?" I asked.


    Treu didn''t deign to answer. Treu started puffing for breath, locking his chest and working his abdomen like the bellows of a forge. The chill around me grew to a biting intensity but the air around Treu was alive with heat shimmer. Exhaustion hammered me to the verge of blacking out; my vision tunneling while my ears could hear nothing save for the slow, lurching beat of my heart as it fought to keep me alive. I wanted to put my revolver to Treu''s temple and pull the trigger, but it was all I could do to avoid collapsing.


    Then suddenly that drain was gone. Vertigo crashed into me and I lost my battle with gravity, toppling to the rubble-strewn, blood-splattered ground. Treu pressed one hand to Celio''s chest and cupped his back with the other. Celio drew a breath and coughed up a lungful of crusty, bloody phlegm.


    "What¡­ What did you-" I asked weakly, my own voice so far away.


    "I rebuilt his right lung and mended three ribs." Treu stated. "The rest he''ll have to heal on his own."


    "¡­How?"


    "A trivial matter. Even your pet Devil should be able to manage the feat¡ª bound as she is."


    I was too weak to demand any more answers, even if I wasn''t, I knew Treu wouldn''t supply them readily. He stood and surveyed our surroundings, almost as if he''d forgotten we were in the middle of a warzone. The shooting had started barely ten minutes ago but the dock''s violent transformation would not be denied. As an afterthought, he grabbed me and Celio and threw us both in the car bodily. The rough handling stirred something resembling consciousness in Celio and he whispered with all the strength he could.


    "¡­Diego?"


    I could only shake my head in such minute degrees anyone else would have missed it. Celio closed his eyes for a long moment and I almost thought I could see the burden on his shoulders growing that little bit heavier. He carried it well, but no man could endure the weight of the world on his shoulders forever. When his eyes opened, I was expecting to find steel.


    Instead, Celio privately wept for the brother he had sacrificed in the name of his dream.

 B24 - An Air of Victory

    Bim


    Despite current circumstances, Bim was glad she was presently here in an otherwise unpleasant moment. The car''s crowded passenger compartment stank of humanity: their exertion, their suffering and above all their frailty. Their transport was speeding from the conflict, rallied survivors desperately attaching themselves to one another in their flight. It was their curse. Alone, human weakness could not be hidden from. Alone, they would all die.


    Such was what it meant to be human.


    Even now the car''s occupants fought against such inevitable mortal conclusion. The physic, who''s true name was Frank, did all his mundane practice could to stabilize Celio and beckon him back from the encroaching brink of death. The drivers, who carried the false names of Tony and Ruby respectively, made best speed toward the fiction of safety. Celio''s chief lieutenant, Richardio, was coordinating those vigia who still possessed their loyalty and combat functionality. Coordinating for the outfit, physically absent but otherwise present, was the esper Princess¡ª based on the tactical chatter, the conflict was going well, though Bim was no expert on such things.


    Sitting opposite the unwoman, was her Tormentor. Treu wore his usual look of contempt, yet there was more too. It was in the way he kept flicking his left eye to regard Hiiro where he dozed in delirium upon Bim''s lap in their shared seat. Her Tormentor almost looked pleased with himself. The thought was enough to summon an expression of disgust to her face. Yet that disgust was only surface deep. Hiiro''s presence was a balm upon her being, his skin against her''s was sublime, and the aroma of his body more than made up for the disgusting reek of tobacco, gun smoke and burnt rubber that clung to him.


    Hiiro''s brow furrowed in his fitful rest, he stiffened against her in a jolt of pain. Bim wondered if he was dreaming. It was something she''d read about, yet another human quirk that she would never experience. Just one more difference that separated her from the man in her arms. Bim permitted a hand to gently stroke his healing scars and half-melted scabs. Such actions were supposed to be soothing but she noticed no improvement of his affliction. Together though they may be, each of them would still fight their battle alone.


    The convoy''s remnants broke free of the city limits into the surrounding countryside. It was was a fraction of their starting strength, bearing those too wounded or depleted to continue the fight now winding down behind them. The radio reports were growing more orderly, less frequent; the calls for aid non-pressing and demanding less support each time they came. This was how victory sounded, Bim concluded. Not of a triumphant bang, but rather a gradual exhaustion as resistance became too taxing and too fragmented to properly quash. It was a far cry from the historical accounts she''d studied of past military actions amongst humans.


    They''d arrived at the estate grounds while Bim was lost in thought, idly stroking Hiiro''s old wounds. He''d escaped this most recent battle without tangible injury but not without the conflict extracting its toll from him. The returning victors parked their cars with little order and great urgency, maids bearing stretchers rushing each in a flurry of fatigues and frills. Celio was the first borne inside, surrounded by the best underworld doctors money could bribe and Treu who loomed over them all without noticing a single one. Gerald moved about the remainder, triaging them with an efficacy Bim hadn''t expected from the aged, portly man.


    Bim was uncertain of where she should be. She selfishly wanted to be everywhere at once, observing all, learning, knowing. Yet her prison of flesh could not allow her to indulge such whims, nor could she bring herself to initiate any action that would separate her from the unconscious man lying on her lap. She idly wondered how humans coped with such a crippling limitation. Ignorance, she assumed. They didn''t know how freeing it was to occupy multiple ''places'' at multiple ''times'' simultaneously, though neither term was particularly accurate. To have a mind capable of such decentralized existence without fragmentation or segregation was to be as they theorized a god to be.


    "Lady Bim, is he injured?"


    Bim blinked from her introspection and found Zoe-Esther leading a stretcher detail of three familiar faces. They''d came without instruction, which surprised her.


    "Not that I am aware of." Bim answered. "His role in the battle taxed him beyond his constitution, in so far as I can deduce."


    "We''ll take care of him." Zoe-Esther stated.


    The maids bundled Hiiro off and bore him inside. Something inside of her rebelled at the sight, but it was illogical. The humans could tend to their own better than she could. They were more qualified to soothe him than she was. Yet it pained her to see him go. The irregularity chaffed at her and the lie she''d uttered resurfaced in her eidetic memory to further haunt her.


    Nothing you could do would ever hurt me.


    Why had she said those words? Why had she indulged in such a weakness that was so atypical of who and what she was? Why did she care for one doomed human more than any of the others amongst the trillions fated to perish?


    Was it because she was here in this present moment with him? This damned ephemeral Now that dominated physical existence was all-consuming. It was maddening! Trapped within this body she could only be in one place at any given moment. She was here to learn, not to teach, and as she sat here in an empty car contemplating the past, the present was slipping away from her. The fact that this was how humanity aimlessly trudged through life was infuriating. How had they accomplished anything across the spans of their short terminal lives?


    Another stretcher detail exited the palace, glanced at Bim and just as quickly moved on to another casualty, one more in need than she. The four women acted in mute unison to bear one wounded man into the palace sickroom. They''d not said a word to each other, nor been ordered or summoned. They''d just acted in the moment. The observation struck a chord within her and so Bim directed her focus outwards, widening her perceptions to take in her present surroundings.


    She discovered a vaguely coordinated chaos.


    Those leaders who should have been commanding were absent, yet the work was being done. The desired end state was slowly being approached, albeit in a halting, spasmodic kind of way. Now that she was looking at the wider parts in motion, Bim could spot the influence and desires of the singular whole loosely guiding the fractured multitude. The intent had been vast yet each individual only undertook a minute portion of the undertaking. The wider whole was an eclectic assembly making best use of each seemingly random part. It was an orderly chaos; it was intriguing and repulsive and so very engrossingly abhorrent to her all the same.


    While they worked, each individual taking up one tiny fragment of work at a time, Bim thought of them all as the many sprawling limbs of a single entity. She couldn''t decide exactly what creature or entity that might be but as she watched, she gathered that there were two essential organs. At this entity''s heart was Celio, driving this colossal endeavor forward and infusing its manifold parts with life; then there was Leeroy, the mind steering action towards that end, charting a course through the ever-changing future. Yet neither were present and still the whole kept pressing toward that distant dream just over the horizon. There was no impelling force save for past momentum. It was all so alien, so human, that Bim lost herself marveling at it, wandering from one moving part to another over the chaotically disciplined hours that followed. This was how they got things done, she realized. One human alone was nothing, and so they sought to conglomerate into separate parts of the greater whole.


    To be lonely, together.


    The broader idea of what she was witnessing boggled her vast mind. The fundamental nature of the human experience was one of being surrounded by those like you yet so utterly and entire unconnected to said surroundings. They were separated¡ªisolated, even¡ªfrom so much of the universe and they rebelled in the only way they could. They came together, reaching for a communion of the flesh, mind, soul and purpose that they would never attain. Bim scoffed at the idea as she watched them work. Yet¡­ was the Bim that she is in this present moment truly all that different from them?


    This vessel of pseudo-flesh and consciousness that she was existed in a constant state of ignorance, blindly groping at understanding with the crass means of a human facsimile. Was she not alone as they were? Her fractional mind severed from her true self, her perceptions and observations partitioned behind a limited vocabulary of expression and rationale. As Bim was now, could she truly comprehend what she had once been? This unwoman that she is was nothing more than an idea thoughtform programed with the intent to seek our knowledge in a foreign land; little more than an idle whim of her true self, a tool to be cast wide, collected and reabsorbed once it had served its purpose. When that happened, what would become of her? Would the Bim that she is and was, the unwoman who had lived amongst these doomed mortals, cease to be? Undoubtedly yes. But what did that mean? What would happen to her, the isolated individual who''d experienced the mysteries of time, afterwards?


    These thoughts dominated her higher intellect and all the while she studied the mortals around her. More of the bloodied victors trickled in by the car-load, some fewer still arrived on foot or were delivered, having coerced the assistance of unaffiliated humans to bring them here. It was fascinating, this orderly chaos, and Bim composed a comprehensive mental catalog of future inquires based off her observations as the hours passed. Yet the work was insufficient to keep her from pondering at her morbid curiosities. What would happen to her when she''d completed her inter-dimensional expedition?


    "There you are." Bim blinked her eyes, attuning her mind to her vessel and found the albinoid Princess approaching her. "Come on. Command debriefing."


    Bim raised a single eyebrow in a stately show of unspoken question. It was an expression she was rapidly beginning to favor as it spared her the effort of speaking and elicited more comprehensive elaborations from those attempting to speak obtusely to her.


    "Yes, you''re coming. You can drool over bloody meat and tattered auras later."


    Bim furrowed her brows in disdain and mentally verified that she''d not been excessively salivating.


    "Very well." Bim acquiesced, adding a slight bowing of her vessel''s head to show appropriate deference to her nominal elder.


    The two abhuman women strode the halls of the palace with purpose, wounded men and weary maids scurrying clear of them. Bim found the reactions curious. That she¡ªa being of decidedly non-human origin¡ªwas more accepted than Princess largely due to the pigmentation of skin and eyes, was yet another mystery she''d failed to unravel. But there was more to the present reactions than she''d previous noted. Bim suspected the palace staff were afraid of not just Princess but rather the majority of the Stalking Shadow''s mercenaries. Almost as if the staff were expected the day''s earlier butchery to be turned on them now that the enemy was out of reach. The vigia they passed reached for their weapons, eyes downcast and breath held as they neared, relaxing only once they''d thought themselves out of sight and hearing. Yet again, Bim searched for parallels between the present mood and historical accounts of victorious military actions, and yet again she failed. The evidence around her suggested a force regrouping in shameful defeat more than anything else.


    The conference room cum mercenary operations center was in a similar state as the rest of the palace when the abhuman women entered, terse vaguely-coordinated chaos. There were far more vigia present than at any of the previous meetings Bim had attended, many of which were sporting material degradation from the recent battle¡ª few of this number were boasting of deeds freshly committed, while the remainder maintained an air of dutiful fatigue. Instead of the usual small table at the room''s side, this meeting was being held around the excessively ornate oval table with a grime-smeared Leeroy seated at its head.


    Few of the mercenaries were present. From the radio chatter in the room''s corner, Bim overheard the merc as they hunted down what remained of the shattered enemy force. Princess took a seat beside Leeroy, his proverbial iron right hand. To the man''s left was Clancy, a spectacled, bookish sort with his face pressed close to an array of datapads. Nearby, the cyborg woman Chop and the surgeon Gerald spoke in low tones, no doubt discussing the days damage to machines and men.


    Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    Bim took her nominal place amongst the mercenaries, masking her discomfort behind a regal air of patient deference.


    "Anyone not here yet will have to get caught up later." Leeroy said in a huff. "I know many of you haven''t fought a soldier''s battle before; that it''s not how you ''do things'' here. But for any of you harboring doubts or feeling uncertain, listen up, you all conducted yourselves admirably in a difficult first bloodying. I want all of you to know you should be proud of what you did, and make sure your men know that too."


    There were no cheers, no approving mutters, nor even a show of acknowledgment. Leeroy could have been addressing a mass grave for all the reaction the men crowding the room showed.


    "Now, onto business. The snare was a massive success in terms of enemy attrition. My people are still handling on site clean-up, but we''re looking at over eighty-percent enemy casualties, the majority of which are confirmed kills."


    Leeory let the fact fill the room. The murmuring that followed didn''t even attempt to be subdued or subtle.


    "For anyone who can''t guess, those numbers are out-fucking-standing. Especially considering our estimated turnout was in the vicinity of seven-hundred enemy combatants to our twenty armored mercs and one-forty men. We can finalize our own force restructuring at a later date, but for now reduced squads should merge into over-manned units until further notice; squad leads, I''ll leave handling that to you. We''re also estimating that as much as thirty percent of the arms shipment avoided capture or destruction, though the death of Diego Fellype-Giu will likely embolden any combatants who did manage to escape and regroup. Now, some of you have probably heard rumors that-"


    The grand double doors flew open with a bang. Celio, chest wrapped in pristine white bandages, stood in the gap as all eyes in the room turned on him¡ª and to a lesser extent the white-robed men standing in his shadow. He barged in, injecting himself bodily into the stunned silence brought about by his arrival. Celio pressed to the head of the table, evicting Leeroy from the seat of honor without a spoken word, before turning to face the awed crowd.


    "Men! Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated¡­ Yet again." Celio announced with a bow.


    The response was a deafening cheer that shook the palace walls down to their foundations. It was as if the building itself was joining in with the elated cry that banished the earlier tension. In the middle of this triumphant exultation, Celio took his place in Leeroy''s vacant seat. The mind replaced in a moment by the heart, new life flooding into the shapeless entity that was Celio''s grand dream. And yet, she saw the shadow of something else in the way he slumped into his chair; in that long cumbersome blink that betrayed him.


    "Alright!" Leeroy bellowed over the din and the crowd quited to a dull roar to let him speak. "Now that that''s dealt with, you lot have until dusk tomorrow to celebrate. Our gracious employer," He gestured broadly to Celio and allowed a lengthy delay for the applause to run its course. "Has assured me that we''ve got only the best stocked for you all. So go! Have Fun! That''s an order, Vigia."


    The man had spoke and so it was. The mind alone could not impel the segmented body of Celio''s dream, it could only direct that energy once it was present. It was curious, so much so that Bim was lost in thought while the room slowly took their festivities elsewhere, only leaving Celio with great reluctance as the man redoubled their heaped praise and adoration back upon them. The body withdrew, taking its infused energy with it and in their absence Bim found a vacuum at the core of this collective. Leeroy, flanked by his subordinate commanders and specialists, sat beside Celio and his personal doctors. The ebb of joy allowed tension to return and a dour foreboding permeated the vacant room. Bim wondered if she shouldn''t leave as well but a morbid curiosity compelled her to stay by her nominal equals at the table''s end.


    "What are our losses?" Leeroy asked, dispelling any pretense of ubiquitous victory


    "Better than it could have been. Worse than it should have been." Clancy summarized, consulting a datapad.


    "Dead: Howard, Mike-Mike, Aimy-two, and Eden." Princess stated, her voice cold and clinical.


    "We should be able to save all their armor except for Mike-Mike''s." Chop added, her mechanized voice more deadpanned than usual. "He took a tandem warhead square on, small puncture, no exit, lots of internal ricochet."


    Leeroy didn''t acknowledge the death of his subordinates beyond a slow, stoic nod.


    "Wounded: damned near everyone except the backup car, Aivery, You, Havoc and Lacey. Tertiary or proximity injuries, mostly." Princess continued.


    "Anyone who might not make it through the night?" Leeroy softly asked, a small crack forming in his stony demeanor.


    "Rock''s got half his brain exposed to sunlight." Gerald said. "Eric got a through and through to the femoral artery, there''s likely some cerebral hypoxia. A few others have blast lung."


    "Who?" Leeroy growled, curling his broad hands into tight fists.


    "Nye, Chad, Alexandra, and Evander." Gerald answered. "I''ve done what I can for them."


    "And my men?" Celio asked.


    "We''re¡­ still figuring that out." Leeroy admitted. "We''ve got most-"


    "How many is ''most,'' Mercenary." Celio growled.


    "Seventy-six so far, accounted for here at the palace." Clancy clarified. "There''s another fifteen assisting our people with clean-up in the city."


    "¡­And the other fifty?" Celio asked, eyes locked on the wooden table''s swirling grain.


    "We don''t know yet." Leeroy admitted. "Likely dead. Possibly lying low until they can link up with-"


    Celio''s fist struck the table with a resounding bang. The doctors still hovering behind the man exchanged a nervous glance but neither moved to interrupt the outburst.


    "How did this happen?" Celio whispered, voice choked with emotion. "You call this a success?!"


    "I achieved the objective you gave me with the means available to me." Leeroy answered with a warning growl. "You wanted a single, decisive battle to shatter enemy moral and I delivered. Those sacrifices, your men and mine, they''re the price of letting ego dictate tactics. Most client''s would look at a seven-to-one kill ratio against a coordinated, mixed-element, supported enemy fighting force and they''d recognize that what we accomplished today was damned miraculous. If you want to go downstairs and tell your men that their dead buddies and crippled friends failed to meet your expectations, be my guest! But if you do, I guarantee that those men won''t stick around come dawn."


    Celio curled his fist tighter, whitening his knuckles until Bim could see the purpling veins under his skin. But he didn''t move from his plush chair.


    "Exactly." Leeroy said once the point had adequately sunk in. "Life and limb are the cost we pay. It comes with the job. We all knew the risks. And for the record, I didn''t say the Op was a success. I said we killed a lot of bad guys."


    "Wasn''t this battle a victory?" Bim asked, puzzled by the sudden confession.


    The table''s heads both turned to face her, only just noticing her presence. Celio was a man wracked with emotion fighting to be thrown at someone, anyone other than himself. Leeroy was studying her from under his mask of professionalism. She''d evidently asked a rather difficult question based on the table''s deafening silence, the sudden lull contrasted by the palace''s muffled celebration reverberating through the walls and floor.


    "No one really wins in war." Leeroy answered with a profundity equaled by his fatigue. "But today, the other guy lost a hell of a lot more than we did. We killed more of them than they did us, but we lost equipment doing it. We learned how strong our enemy is at the cost of a future ally. We spent our element of surprise to drop a hammer blow but we don''t know if that''ll be enough to shatter their ranks, or if we''ve just tossed our trump card on a smoke screen."


    "Smokescreen or not, we almost bought it today." Chop stated, her mechanical baritone unable to rob the words of their gravity. "Our warsuits won''t be back in the fight for weeks at best."


    "The casualties I''ve been treated look more like what I''d find in a warzone than a gang clash." Gerald gravely affirmed.


    "Where the hell did gangsters get that kind of artillery? And did you see those bomb drones? I thought this planet was supposed to be low-tech." Princess bitterly added.


    "Two battalions of infantry, supported by mechanized elements for transport and fire support; accurate, effective, on-time artillery; a wing of fast attack drones on call. These ''gangsters and thugs'' sure are operating an awful lot like a professional military¡­" Clancy cynically noted without looking up from his datapads.


    Leeroy allowed the statements, and the implied accusation, to linger. All eyes wandered over to Celio, lounging in his chair.


    "As I said before-" Celio started.


    "I don''t doubt your popularity." Princess said. "But arms dealers and smugglers don''t throw that much manpower at an assassination. They use bombs, not bodies."


    "Celio," Leeroy said, leaning his considerable mass onto the conference table, looking every bit the deal-making devil they''d once accused Bim of being. "You wouldn''t be misrepresenting the facts of your adversarial situation, would you? Because if you were, the measure of your remaining time amongst the living might be radically shorter than previously anticipated. After all, the threats to your life might be much, much closer than my current security plan is equipped to handle."


    Celio didn''t even blink at the implication. He lifted his gaze from the grand table''s swirling wood grain, laying his eyes on each of the mercs in turn. He met them all unflinchingly, until he looked at Bim.


    ''To deal with Devils is to know power and loss, the righteous man is a slave to both. In power he shall rule, and in loss he shall be martyred; for such is the lot of His faithful.'' Celio muttered, before drawing up his necklace and kissing the tiny golden cross.


    ''The tyrant dies and his rule ends; The martyr dies and his rule begins.'' Gerald confirmed, reaching for his own necklace.


    Bim puzzled at the peculiar display, concluding that both statements were some kind of secret code. Princess flicked her purple eyes about the room, chasing shadows only she could see. Celio mournfully lifted his eyes from Bim, turning back to Leeroy specifically and the room in general.


    "Twice now you have saved me from the fate of my forefathers and the great men who came before them." Celio stated, allowing his natural statesmanship to permeate his words with gravitas. "I now walk the valley of death, returning to the way things were is no longer an option-"


    "You got what you wanted, Celio." Leeroy interrupted. "We''ve fired your opening shot in this war, so save the campaigning for those who care."


    "¡­Is this what I wanted?" Celio whispered in a split-second of doubt that faded in an instant. "Your results are irrefutable, Mercenary, but must we be so transactional?"


    "Mercs are like hookers, pretending to care costs extra." Princess quipped.


    "Then perhaps it''s time to amend our contract." Celio retorted fearlessly. "The ''pretending to care'' clause. Name your price."


    "That depends¡­" Leeroy started, ignoring his subordinates'' prying eyes upon him.


    "On?" Celio pressed, drumming his fingers on the table.


    "How good your manners are. Honesty and intimacy are too expensive to be a one-way flight."


    "Leave." Celio flicked a hand at his hovering doctors, who retreated without a word. "I have enemies like the stars in the heavens. Many are small and too distant to concern myself with, yet some gather together enough to draw notice. Then there are two who dominate this world and all of the peoples who reside here. Vincent Dominar who governs my ancestral lands, and beyond him and his lackeys, The Council of Nineteen."


    "The Council of Nineteen?!" Clancy echoed with a nasal squeak, lifting his spectacled face from his datapads to regard the room''s occupants for the first time. "The same Council of Nineteen that governs this solar system, deals with the Ice-Breaker guild, and controls the entire economy of the Trastorno system and its neighboring stars?"


    "No one group controls any economy, no matter how rich." Celio corrected. "But yes, that Council."


    "¡­You''re insane." Clancy croaked, flustered.


    "So what''s your perfect scenario ending here?" Leeroy interjected. "We stay, fight off an entire solar militia plus their armada and marine complements, you dethrone everyone and we all live happily ever after, filthy stinking rich?"


    "Nothing so ambitious, Mercenary. Once I''ve cast down Vincent Dominar and claimed the Throne of Crux, I''ll have a seat on the Council and all that entails. I will have complete, legitimate control over the continent." Celio beamed a smile to the room. "And then, we will conclude our business and you will all be ''filthy stinking rich,'' Mercenary."


    "You''d need an army and a fleet to stage a coup like that." Princess said dismissively.


    "Why?" Celio countered, equally dismissive. "I have public support and-"


    "Public support doesn''t topple dictatorial warrior regimes!" Princess cried out.


    "-there''s an election just around the corner. Three short months, Mercenaries. Defend my honor for three months and I will have wealth enough to shower you in whatever you wish. I could make you royalty, grant you lands, furnish you with a fleet of your own. If you can protect me until I sit upon the Throne of Crux, I shall grant you whatever you desire."


    The mercenaries turned to regard Leeroy as one, save for Bim. The target of her attention was Celio''s pale complexion. His sweating brow line that had nothing to do with the room''s chilled climate. The faint, fluttering drum of his fingers on the table''s lip. Bim concluded that the man wasn''t directly lying, though his honesty was still in question, but rather he was weakened and afraid. And should Leeroy say no, he would be suddenly and utterly alone in his grand dream.


    "Can he really make us royalty?" Chop whispered in a grating metallic hiss.


    "¡­It is an elective monarchy." Clancy confirmed.


    "I''m more concerned with the finances than the legitimacy." Princess bluntly stated. "Corpses make shitty clients."


    "I shall thaw that icy heart yet, Princess das Neves." Celio said, flashing a rouge''s smile.


    "We don''t deal on credit and promises." Leeroy stated. "Clancy, get me a link to the Captain. Alice too. Everyone else, take the night off. And you¡­"


    Leeroy sneered while pointing an accusing finger from his white-knuckled fist at Celio, before collecting himself with a long, hissed breath through clenched teeth.


    "You had better get some accountants in here, because if we''re doing this, I''m taking you for every-goddamned-thing you own. And get some coffee in here too! This is going to be a long night¡­"

 B25 - The Night Before...

    Bim


    The concept of a ''night off'' was yet another decidedly human idea that Bim failed to fully comprehend. The sole objective, in so far as she could tell, was that there was no objective¡ª something her nominal equals relished at great length but confused her to no end. Upon departing the sole grave chamber in the palace and the clashing opposites of its bartering table, Bim found herself at a total loss.


    After witnessing the day''s orderly chaos, the sudden decent into anarchy blindsided her completely. All semblance of rank and file was absent, the division between social betters blurred beyond comprehension. Even the rigid divides of male and female that Bim had previously thought so queer were now fading as Bim absently walked the palace halls from one reveling scene to the next. The diligent palace maids were acting as equals to the men, joining them in games, partaking in the drinks and privileges otherwise denied to them. It was clear to Bim, that in the moment all were not necessarily equal, but rather that artificial social inhibitions had been eased or removed.


    One of her earliest observations of humanity, the seemingly pointless segregation of the masculine from the feminine, was being blatantly thrown into question. Those inhibitions, once so strongly engraved into the minds of all, were nowhere to be found. The vigia and maids and mercs were all engaged with little regard for their earlier reservations. Bim struggled to draw parallels between what she was witnessing and any of her memories of her true self interacting with other comparable beings. She failed utterly. Her true self, the Bim that was and is and will be, could never be so open and vulnerable with others of her kind¡ª to do so would be suicide, a poisoning of the mind and her very core.


    Yet the humans had no such vulnerabilities. They could share ideas and passions and various exertions of their flesh without being corrupted by them. Everywhere she went, humans were engaged in free and open exchange. Thoughts, passions, sorrows, memories and more. They were all huddling close, trying to avoid that fundamental human condition, so desperate to avoid being alone. Such an alien thing, so human. It was so fascinating it caused a pang of longing ache to twinge inside her chest.


    Of all the desperation she witness, that of the flesh was unparalleled. Those stragglers who finally returned from the day''s long battle were greeted with clasped hands, comradely hugs or the waiting lips of a serving girl fulfilling her womanly duties. Bim witnessed nothing that could rival the intimacy of a kiss. It was the closest a human could come to baring their mind, body and soul to another. She couldn''t help but wonder what it would be like to receive such a kiss. There were certainly enough examples on display that she felt confident in her ability to recreate the act, but she was hesitant. What if kissing was like breathing to humans? Something that came so naturally to them but was incomprehensibly alien to her. Then there was the issue of her partner¡­


    Bim pushed such thoughts from her active mind. The palace was buzzing with humans, more arriving all the time. The very air with thick with their habitation, their desires and this overdue release they''d so evidently needed. It was almost like a smell in every room, something just on the edge of perception but so omnipresent that you only noticed it by its absence. When the skycrane returned with a clutch of armored mercenaries in tow, the palace occupants bellowed and cheered and cried out in such manic ecstasy that Bim had almost joined in without knowing why. It was only when she''d wandered from one group to the next that she''d noticed how vibrant she felt, her vessel was alight from the ambient jubilations. She felt strong. She almost felt whole again.


    Bim kept moving, head buzzing and chest aching from a building pressure within. The groups actively carousing fractured into cliques, Celio''s men keeping to themselves while the mercenaries did likewise, maids in all states of undress keeping the entertainment and refreshments abundant. They all seemed to be enjoying themselves¡ªthe humans of all parties¡ªbut from the outside in, Bim thought she detected an undertone of brittle desperation to the festivities. As if this was a controlled, perhaps even forced, venting of emotion that would otherwise prove catastrophic. They wanted to be more than just lonely together but it was impossible, the human body was to blunt an instrument to permit such communions. So they threw their bodies together hoping that would be enough, and for some few that she spotted, it appeared to be.


    She permitted her body to mirror them, these humans she could never be. She danced with the jarring stiffness of a machine and when they laughed at her, she laughed with them filling the room with such manic sound. She served out drinks with the maids, allowed her hair to sway with the music and exposed key parts of her flesh from under her dress. When they smiled at her, she smiled back and soon enough she stopped making them recoil every time she flashed her teeth. Bim even attempted to eat and drink, which resulted in her expelling said physical anathema from her vessel in such a way that no amount of cleaning would ever salvage that bathroom. The atmosphere was charged with lights and noise, bodies and motion, the things that made human''s feel alive. Her ears thrummed, her eyes replayed flashes of light even when she closed them and a heady buzz filled her vessel to bursting. The celebrations reached their zenith, all sense of reservation long since abandoned, but it didn''t feel right.


    Nothing could overwrite the aching in her chest and the pervasive loneliness that shrouded everything these human''s did.


    So she let one throw his body against her''s. Why did it feel so wrong? He was repulsive, it sickened her to let him grab at her flesh, to paw at her breasts and grind his frail flesh against hers.


    Why did she want this? It was the same as when Celio had tried to fondle her, all glittering jewelry adorning sweating rancid fatty flesh. Was this disgust the only thing strong enough to overcome her isolation? Would she still feel lonely when he was rutting over her like an animal or would her face hold nothing but pain and disappointment?


    "Why don''t we go someplace a little more private?" He whispered, breath reeking of alcohol and vomit and other women''s saliva.


    Was this really what she wanted?


    "No." Bim whispered.


    When he tried to lean in and kiss her, to change her mind with that stench-spewing hole of his, she reached up a hand to turn him away.


    The crack of her knuckles against his jaw was like a thunderclap. He didn''t turn, he toppled as if bowled over by a runaway car. He limply cartwheeled through the air like a thrown doll, landing in an undignified heap five-meters away. No one moved to his aid and no one got in her way when she left the room.


    Would she feel as repulsed if it was Hiiro? What made him so different from all the others? Why was he the one soothing object in a coarse and abrasive existence? Treu would likely know, not that he was likely to cooperate if he did. Who else but a fellow monster could even begin to comprehend the difficulties of intermingling with such frail mortal creatures as humans for beings such as themselves? It sickened her to admit, but she had more in common with her Tormentor than she''d initially thought. Was his cruelty founded from a place of compassion? Bim doubted it, but she couldn''t dismiss the idea out of hand.


    Bim made her way outside, swaying drunkenly with the throbbing music and the lurching ache building inside of her chest just below the throat. The skycrane flew another pass overhead, depositing the last of the wayward warriors at the estate''s recently cleared airfield. In her mind''s eye, Bim could still see the gardens she''d once walked with Hiiro, now little more than a fire-swept killzone spotted with the odd fortification. She wondered if the earth beneath her sandaled feet was aching as she was? If once the coming battles had been waged and won, would new gardens be erected over the bones of the old?


    "That''s the last of them now." Princess idly said as the armored mercenaries tramped across the field for their armory.


    "You have an irritating tendency to sneak up on me while I''m introspecting." Bim stated playfully. She''d wanted the regard to be somewhat cutting, but the heady, bubbling feeling inside was tinting everything in a certain levity.


    "You''re one of the only people who doesn''t watch me like an owl." Princess admitted gently, her words barely audible over the rowdy celebrations taking place back inside the palace. "So really, it''s your own fault."


    "There''s still a great sum that I don''t understand about you humans." Bim admitted.


    "I''m not exactly human¡­"


    "And neither am I, yet you called me people. Why?"


    Princess let out a faint dry chuckle, the noise at odds with the desolation that lay before them. Such a sound would have been better suited for a careless girl frolicking through the water gardens rather than emitting from the hardened albino woman beside Bim.


    "Let''s just say I''ve got a soft spot for the outcast and downtrodden."


    "Why aren''t you¡­" Bim struggled to narrow the breadth of her nebulous question into a single comprehensive statement. "Why are you standing beside me presently?"


    "I''m guessing the same reason you''re standing beside me. Because we''re here."


    "Why are you here?" Bim reiterated, unsure of what she was truly asking.


    "Who knows? The future is a scary thing. No matter how much we try to avoid it, it just keeps coming and then one day you wake up and you''re one of the old men now. Every day is a gamble and we all just keep rolling the dice hoping this won''t be our last throw¡­" Princess rubbed at the bandages wrapping her leg. "But everyone''s gotta die sometime. You know?"


    A vacant, sad smile beamed into the cooling evening. Bim had never realized how white Princess''s teeth were, even compared to the albino woman''s ghostly skin. She suspected that Princess wasn''t the type of person¡ªhuman or otherwise¡ªwho smiled very often.


    "¡­ I think I understand." Bim stated at length. "Though I doubt I''m the best¡­ person, to console you."


    "I don''t want to be consoled!" Princess snapped, before softening with a puff of breath. "I just wanted someone to listen. You''re so quite. Not just in meatspace either, you''re like a still pond hidden in tranquil hills and everything else is¡­ a hundred neon strobe lights all going of at the same time. And that-" Princess flicked her overlarge, purple eyes back towards the palace. "That''s just a mess I''m too pent up to deal with right now. Roy needs to wrap that damned meeting up, soon; otherwise I''m gonna have to pin down the first guy who can keep it up before I go insane."


    Bim said nothing, but raised a questioning eyebrow all the same.


    "What?" Princess countered. "Jumping a wound-up man after a fight, there''s not much better in life than that. With a body like that, I bet you can get anyone you wanted."


    Bim held her silence, gazing longingly out at the devastated remains of the estate''s gardens.


    "Hold up. Have you not? Because everyone thinks that you and Hero-"


    "No."


    "Do you¡­ do you have all the bits? Down there?" Princess asked, casting her prying eyes over Bim''s vessel. "Because it looks like you do."


    "I am uncertain of my internals and how they would interact with¡­ physical matter. Earlier tests were¡­ discouraging. This vessel is only a surface-deep facsimile."


    "So, all that," Princess said while motioning with a hand to Bim''s hips. "That''s a mystery?"


    "Correct."


    "Shit, and here I was envying you. If you wanted to break it in, tonight''s the night to do it. When the suns come up, we''re at war¡ª and I''m not sure if we''ll be on the winning side. We''re probably going to lose a few more people before this is all over."


    The way she''d spoke caused the aching under Bim''s throat to worsen, expanding into a cutting, tearing sensation. She could liken it to nothing else but the memory she had of being shot. An internal injury, a deep pain, yet she was unable to locate a foreign cause and expel it as she had before. She could do nothing, save endure the pain as best she could. A single, sidelong glance at the pale woman standing beside her, led Bim to conclude that she wasn''t alone in her suffering.


    "Does death frighten you, Princess?"


    "More and more every day. I think everyone gets a little more afraid of dying the longer they live¡­ You''re a Devil, or close enough, right? Is there anything after this? Not a Heaven or Hell but just a, I don''t know, a something?"


    "I can''t say with any certainty exactly what," Bim started, but paused when she met Princess''s overlarge, pleading purple eyes. The elaborate answer forming in her mind crumbled into nothingness around the simple truth at its core. "But yes, there is something beyond this life."


    An inland breeze ripe with the scent of marine life rolled across the field, taking a fraction of the day''s oppressive heat with it. The energy coursing throughout Bim faltered for a fleeting, half-instant and Princess flicked her abhuman eyes after a particular shadow in the night. She peered at it, discerning depths and shades any lesser equipped mortals could only speculate upon. Another gust of wind carried her target away and the pale woman puffed out an indignant breath.


    "Well, if there''s something then that''s good enough for me. Now, if you''ll excuse me, I''m gonna go check in on Leeroy or find a substitute boy-toy. You might want to go check in on Hero¡ª you''re not the only girl with eyes on him."


    Princess walked off into the night, and Bim couldn''t help dwelling on their conversation as she stared out on what were once several grand gardens. Everything about this place was so confusing, little more that fleeting instants that never stopped slipping away. In due time, everyone Bim had met so far would be as the gardens were now¡ª little more than memories and ashen remains. This palace, these people so alike yet completely alien to her, even the world she stoop upon, all of it was fated to perish. The thought stirred something inside of her, not unlike the pain that simple existence caused her but more centralized. A preemptive, longing ache for what would inevitably come to pass, completely separate from the pain already in her chest.


    Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    Bim permitted her body to wander of its own accord and found herself straying further from the palace. She reached the freshly-dug minefield and followed its periphery in an aimless, meandering loop until she wound up at the cliff overlooking the ocean. Bim discovered a rutting pair engaged in the throes of passion on the man''s part and a conflicted expression of horrible, pained ecstasy on the half-dressed maid''s. It was all these human''s could do to escape their own inevitable demise. Come together, repopulate, ensure the whole survives even if the individual must die to do so; because in the end, they would always die regardless of what they did or how they railed against death.


    It was the irrefutable human condition.


    She made her way back inside the palace. Movement help to distract her from the pain mounting inside of her. Were these mortals doing much the same as she was? Were they just as desperate to cast off this clawing weight inside that wanted to tear them down. Perhaps, perhaps not. A crowd of Celio''s men packed in around her, all but trapping her in the press of sweating, repulsive bodies. Someone jumped onto a table above the dim-lit array of silhouetted heads, a drink upraised in signal.


    "To Diego Fellype-Giu! Without him and his, we''d be gunning those cats down in the streets for weeks to come. To Diego!"


    "To Diego." They chorused, before striking their glasses and drinking in toast.


    The display seemed inappropriate. As she understood it, death was a tragic event for humans and their peers. Yet the mood of the room was bordering on celebration, not quite jovial but a far cry different than what Bim had observed in the conference room hours earlier. The liquid churn of dozens of gulping throats was a vile ripple that filled the room and echoed in her ears.


    As if by some unspoken cue, the gathered men dropped their drinks and reached for the women in their midst. A lean man''s pawing hand began caressed inside Bim''s thighs, working its way upwards. A flabby brute took her throat in his hand and pressed his slimy lips against her neck. Bim couldn''t see who was squeezing at her breast or pulling on her hips or who was grinding what into her backside.


    It had happened so fast. They were on her like a swarm of insects; latching on, gnashing their teeth, and thrusting with poised stingers. Part of her, a very small part, was curious what would happen if she allowed them to have their way. Surely between the sum of them they could displace the ache now reaching its climax inside of her. If enough of them wanted her and took her, would she still feel so alone?


    Bim threw herself against one man, using him as a springboard to launch herself away from the swarming men reaching for her. A bony hand clawed into her shoulder, spinning her into a skeletal embrace.


    "Where you going Babe?" He asked, wrapping his other arm around her waist.


    "Do not touch me." Bim stated. She''d wanted to force some power into the words, to radiate a commanding presence that compelled him to obey, but her body failed her.


    "Don''t be such a fucking tease you little cunt." He hissed through a lecherous leering smile that was all predatory teeth blackened from chewing narcotics.


    The gaunt man pulled her closer to him. His damp breath that reeked of alcohol and cigars assailed her neck. One hand was like iron around her wrist and the other was working its way down the backside of her dress. Once they''d reached a gap in the clothing, his bony fingers plunged in to explore what lay below.


    "No." Bim uttered. She hadn''t even been conscious of wanting to speak. Her vessel had acted of its own accord. She didn''t want this, didn''t want him. She didn''t want to know what would happen next.


    She pushed him away but he held firm using the momentum to spin her into his arms. She back-stepped, but his feet were always right behind her''s. He drew her body closer, forcing their hips together so Bim could feel the measure of his desire. He wanted her, but she didn''t want him.


    "I''ll take you right here, you dirty slut."


    Bim tried to pull away, to break from of his agile malice, but she couldn''t. She couldn''t even cry out when he enveloped her lips with his own, thrusting his slimy tongue into her mouth. The hand in her clothing found what it was looking for and a single brave finger plunged inside.


    Suddenly the gaunt man released her, all but throwing her away from him. Bim fell away from him to the damp floor, landing in an sprawl of torn clothes. Bim looked up to find herself in the shadow of a monster.


    "Is there a problem here?" Treu asked, his voice a low menace that silenced the room.


    For a long second the gaunt man looked like he was going to reach for Bim again. He glared at the towering monstrosity of a man opposite him, sizing him up. Bim was dumbfounded. No other human she''d encountered had been so impulsive, so openly brash and hostile to her Tormentor. Exactly what the gaunt man thought he''d accomplish by throwing himself at a beast twice his height and triple his mass was a mystery¡ª a rare one that Bim had no desire to solve. In a blink, hostility bled from him, replaced by a teetering docile drunkenness.


    "No." The gaunt man finally concluded, sounding suddenly drugged into stupor. "No problems here, Merc."


    "Good." Treu stated to him, then to Bim. "Get up. Come with me."


    He''d forced some power into the words, her body obeyed automatically. She would have followed him anyway but the sigil embedded in her spine left her little choice.


    "Why-" Bim started once they were out of earshot.


    "Consider yourself lucky for having your mind closed off from these depraved, mundane savages, Devil." Treu snapped in a bassy rumble. "It''s your own fault for being so naive after all this time. If you could hear their thoughts, you''d want no part in what they''re planning on doing to those girls."


    Treu flicked one of his eyes to dismissively look at her, the other absently gazed at a couple wrapped together in a tangle of limbs on a plush couch now soaked in sweat and various other fluids.


    "Unless you found your binding at my hands particularly enjoyable, heed my words, Devil. Do not go into a private room alone with any man tonight."


    "Why are you warning me of this?" Bim asked, shuddering at the memories he''d beckoned to mind. Unpleasant though they were, the manic ache building in her chest was a far more pressing concern.


    "You''ve disturbed my rest once tonight already. Should it happen again, I would be¡­ displeased."


    "Then I shall listen to your counsel, my Tormentor." Bim stated, drawing herself back to the present and away from the cursed knowledge of her past. As an afterthought, she meekly added in a whisper, "¡­Thank you."


    "I''ve no need for thanks from your kind, Creature." Treu uttered in a sneer. Then he lengthened his colossal stride and disappeared.


    And for the first time, Bim felt no relief that Treu''s gargantuan proportions were out of sight. This small act of kindness had also been one of selfishness on his part, yet still he had saved her. The sequence of events left her conflicted. So she wandered with no goal in mind, passively observing the palace and its reveling occupants.


    Treu had warned her, yet still her curiosity was not fully dissuaded. Every common room she entered had some variant of humanity desperately coming together, be that a joining of the minds or mouths or hands. She wanted to chase after her Tormentor, to throw herself upon him and demand that he explain. Not just the buzzing in her flesh or the pain in her chest, but everything! He had to know¡­ didn''t he? Or did he know and that was why he''d retired. Who else was there she could inquire from? Who else but a fellow monster could comprehend what she was feeling?


    Maybe Hiiro?


    Did he too understand what it meant to be so utterly and entirely alone? Bim allowed her mind to sift through her memories of time spent with him, and she thought he might. Even if he didn''t, he was a balm she desperately needed. Even if he never understood what he was to her or she to him, he could at least ease the burden mere physical, singular existence imposed upon her. He was the one soft object in a coarse and unyielding reality. She might not be happy, but if she could be lonely together with him, perhaps she could at least be content.


    So why was she hesitating outside of his door? Surely it wasn''t Treu''s warning? Hiiro was unlike any other mortal man she''d known. He was a kind and chivalrous soul, and besides, he was still diminished from the day''s battle. He wouldn''t take advantage of her. He wasn''t like the rest of them. Was he?


    The question made her feel dirty. Her eidetic memory drudging up every leering glance, every sickening caress, every single sexual advance to haunt her. Hiiro was no exception, he''d looked at her as a man would any woman, his desires plain. Those were what it meant to be human.


    Bim wanted to shed her dress and burn it; to take this human woman''s body and reshape it into a sexless mass that would never be coveted again. She''d done it once before- her mind spiraled into the past, not to when she''d lost control but back to the food vendor''s shaded nook.


    "I wish you hadn''t seen me like that." She''d confessed, disgust rivaling her shame.


    "I wish I hadn''t either." Hiiro had said, his eyes haunted by knowledge he could never unknow. The sight of what she really was under that human guise.


    Did she truly want that? Would Hiiro ever see her with anything but that distant, haunted expression if she did cast off this vessel of alluring flesh? What right did she have to inflict such duress, such horrific knowledge and dreadful comprehension unto him?


    What right did she have to be standing outside his doorway now, hoping to find comfort within when she couldn''t even bear the solitude of her own company? Bim turned to leave.


    The door to Hiiro''s room opened and was passed for her heart fluttered, but it wasn''t Hiiro that emerged.


    Zoe-Esther, dressed not in her workwear but instead a scant pair of provocative garments, slipped from the room and flinched upon seeing Bim. The cutting pain in Bim''s chest nearly burst in that instant. The vibrant buzzing in her head swayed from flight to fight, momentarily settling on neither and both and back until Bim was paralyzed by indecision.


    Was Hiiro truly no different than any other man?


    "What, were you doing in there." Bim uttered, words flooded with power she couldn''t contain. Frost gathered on the floor and walls, the proud portraits of great men from ages past turned accusing eyes on Zoe-Esther, and Bim felt the tides of vindictive rage swelling to full strength.


    Zoe-Esther raised her head, and Bim saw tears falling from her eyes.


    "I was hoping to repay his kindness, but it would seem that I''m not-" Zoe sobbingly admitted with bow and a sad smile as tears poured from her face. "Perhaps you''ll be more to his liking. I''ll- I''ll see to it that you''re not disturbed."


    Bim felt the power coursing though her vessel falter, normality reasserting itself in the instant afterward. Caught up in moment as she was, Bim didn''t even think to question where that power had manifested from. All of her attention was locked on the human girl messily weeping in front of her.


    "Raise your head, Zoe-Esther." Bim commanded.


    She did, and all Bim saw on her face was the same empty ache that she herself felt, amplified a dozen times over by rejection. Was Bim looking at her own fate if she ventured through those doors? She''d been dreading what would happen if Hiiro used her, yet she''d never considered what would happen if he didn''t.


    "Will that be all, Lady Bim?" Zoe asked, lips quivering but voice steely.


    "¡­Yes, Zoe-Esther." Bim said, her voice soft and lifeless.


    The sobbing maid curtsied deeply, posture immaculate. When she lifted her head, all emotion was locked away behind a mask of diligent professionalism. Were it not for the pain so clearly visible in her eyes, Bim would never have guessed that she was dying inside. Yet again, Bim had to wonder is she was truly that different from these humans surrounding her. Before she left, Zoe whispered.


    "Best of luck, Lady Bim."


    And Bim could not bear to watch her walk away. She fled into Hiiro''s room, hoping that she wouldn''t be following that poor girl''s footsteps in a matter of minutes.


    What was she doing here? She had no idea what came next. All she knew was that she was a little drunk, so lonely it hurt and completely terrified of the inevitable future without him in it.


    She had no right to expect any comfort from him, but she drew near his bed anyway. His bedroom was warm and quite and it made the chaos dominating the palace feel so very far away. Bim drew in a breath and it smelled like the salty, honest scent of Hiiro''s sun-kissed skin. But if she ventured too close, would she be burned too? Was the risk worth the possible reward?


    He was laying atop sweat-soaked sheets, his discarded clothes in a mound by her ankles. The sight of him was enough to make her feel at ease, to feel as if there was some small measure of certainty in this ever-changing eternal Now. He was magnificent to behold, the perfect example of humanity in her eyes. Of course he was worth it. Hiiro and no other would always be worth any risk to her.


    Bim removed her clothes and let them join his on the floor.


    Why did she need him like no other? His bed uttered a single creak as she joined him, mirroring the faintest gasp of anticipation that slipped from her lips. They were so close, just centimeters apart, and she couldn''t bring herself to close that final gap. It wasn''t her place to take what she wanted from humanity. Bim could only receive what they offered.


    His dormant body offered her plenty. The way the low light played across his taut muscles, his faded scars and all those burns. The sound of his steady breathing, of his beating heart and his body''s complex internal organs churning away. The vibrant buzz of the palace was nothing compared to the pure radiance she felt from being so near him, in seconds she was completely intoxicated off his simple presence.


    Then he turned, rolling unto her in his delirious sleep. His flesh was so hot Bim felt as if she could melt in his arms. He was breathing her essence in just as she was his. It was magnetic, their attraction as irrefutable as gravity or light.


    Hiiro whispered sweet non-sense into her ear with a low moan, sowing his radiant heat upon her waiting soul. Her hands finally braved the crossing, mapping out the curves of his chiseled body and the history of scars written on his skin. Bim closed her eyes to focus on how he felt in her arms. It was unparalleled. He was a temple and she, a worshiper in communion to all that he was. There was nothing else in this reality that could rival the bliss she felt now.


    "I am yours, and you are mine, H?????i???i???r????o??? ???V????o????l?????s????h???e???b????s???o????."


    His heat flooded the room in response. It washed over her, pouring into her vessel. It was divine. The room was alight with sparks, like a million possibilities all centered around this one beautiful moment. Bim felt his manhood against her leg and she was rendered powerless by anticipation.


    It wasn''t like the others. How could she have ever compared Hiiro to the rest of those disgusting mortals? She felt the heat of him penetrate her, resonating throughout her being until she returned it amplified a hundred times over. In all this damned ephemeral Now, he was the only thing she could never live without. She needed him, needed this, more then living creatures needed food or water or even air.


    Darkness retreated from a dozen spreading fires.


    Hiiro sleepily blinked his eyes and tried to pull away but she held him fast. His power poured into her in time with his pounding heart and his heavily breath. She never wanted to let go. She held him as if her grasp could tear him from his doomed mortal fate; as if by the strength of her arms alone she could save him if nothing else. If she could do just that one thing, she could be content with all else she must endure.


    She wanted to take their union further, to bare her mind and soul in addition to her flesh, but Hiiro was fading. His renewed strength was spent, the heat she''d been so gluttonously consuming was waning. She opened her eyes and saw Hiiro atop her, backlit by the room completely ablaze.


    The flames of his passion were all-consuming. They climbed the walls and danced across the ceiling. Fire spun from the wooden columns of the canopy bed, flitting up the drapery before leaping into the air as burning streamers. Then there was Hiiro, his eyes mirroring her own as she stared up at him, hoping he''d go that little bit further¡­


    A tidal wave of white fire-suppressant foam flooded the room, washing over them like a savage gale. Without the flames, Hiiro crumpled atop her, limp limbs spasming as their bodies pressed together. They lay there, separate but together, panting as one.


    "In my light you shall burn eternally, my H?????i???i???r????o???." Bim whispered between breaths, and she breathes easy in his rapidly cooling arms because she was his and he was hers¡­


    Even if it was only for now.

 *not a chapter, just an update

    TLDR; This fiction along with my other works will be going on hiatus for an indeterminate length of time.


    It kind of sucks, but I will be putting all of my writing on pause for a while. Fact of the matter is I''m tired... the big tired when nothing helps and I don''t want to be around anyone but I don''t want to be by myself either. For the longest time, I''ve been able to just throw myself at work and muscle through but... I don''t know, I guess I''m just out of muscle these days. My get up and go, he got up and went.


    I suspect the root cause is overwork. I enjoy writing--I really do--but even this little expos¨¦ took me days to finally get typed out. It''s like... I''m in a dream and I''m walking towards a door but no matter how fast I move or how determined I am, that door always stays the same distance; despite my best efforts I''m stuck somewhere I don''t want to be. I''m just so tired of fighting for everything all the damned time. I just don''t have that much fight left in me...


    My financial and medical situation aren''t particularly peachy either. Presently, I''m in the viscous cycle of working until I collapse and then being forced to take unpaid time off to heal, so that when I do return to work I have to play catch up on my hours which aggravates my injuries and keeps me from getting physically better. Repeat, Repeat, Repeat. I hate it. It''s soul-crushing. But it''s my only option presently-- and for what it''s worth I am looking for a better job, just not having much luck with that. It''s the sad truth that employers take one look at crippled veteran and they don''t even give me the time of day. All I''ve been trained to do is kill without remorse, and that''s not a very marketable skill.


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    I''ve dealt with ''The Big Sad'' before, but things feel different this time. I think it''s because before, things were out of my hands I just got royally boned over, but now it''s my own damned fault-- or it seems that way at least. How is it that things were simpler when I was a warrior than they are now that I''m a slave? I have so many options but they''re all just doors painted on concrete walls that lead nowhere. I''ve been clinging to the past, to the man I was back when I was whole, but I can''t do it anymore; that life and my present one are on diverging vectors and if I don''t let go of something, I''ll be torn apart. I just don''t know what to let go, what path to take. Starting from less than nothing, trying to compete as a worker with fresh blood and university grads with my ailments, I just can''t keep up anymore-- I''m outdated, like an old piece of junk. I don''t know what I am without being a soldier. In all honesty, I''m scared of myself-- of my future. I''ve been trying to open a new chapter in my life for 4 years now, but I''m still thumbing that next page because I''m fucking terrified of what comes next.


    There''s a few things I want to do, but I guess I don''t want them bad enough. Desires and I have never really seen eye-to-eye, same with feelings. I''m empty more often than not, but I''ve been feeling more than just empty for a while now. I feel hollow, a ghost of my former self who was already barely human. I should be pissed, or indignant, or spiteful; anything I could use to fuel change, but I just can''t. I don''t have the hate or muscle or gumption left in me. I''m just so damned tired.


    So yeah, that''s me. I''ll attempt to keep picking away at my fictions when I''ve got some creative-fuel to burn, no idea when that might be or how regular chapters will be moving forward. I''m sorry that I''m not able to keep my word about not dropping this project; but what''s there to do? Wage-Slavery waits on no man, regardless of what he''s sacrificed.


    So, Until we Meet Again on This Winding Road of Life...


    LoneLeaf

 H26 - What happened last night

    _ _ _Hiiro


    The first thought I had when I opened my eyes was that I''d gone colorblind. My four-poster bed, normally a range of earthy wood hues, vibrant dyed silks and ornate inlay scrollwork, was flat black daubed with white. So was the ceiling beyond it. And the walls, and the furniture. It was a curious nightmare, but it was certainly a lot nicer than most, so I closed my eyes and tried to wake up again. My second attempt wasn''t any more successful than my first.


    "Good morning, my Hiiro."


    And then there was Bim, wearing nothing but a thin blanket of ash, lying next to me on the half-incinerated remains of my bed. Her skin was a sharp relief from the flat background. Her inviting amber eyes sparkling with impish delight. She was smiling the big loopy grin of a happy idiot instead of her usual bared fangs and piercing eyes grimace.


    I was powerless to do anything but drink in the sight of her. I''d only ever painted in murderstrokes of red, but some small part of me held captive in that moment wanted to capture this perfect instant on canvas.


    I didn''t remember much of the fight or celebration yesterday, just little bits that came in flashes. My entire room was charred and splattered with flame suppressant yet the killing flames inside of me felt¡­ sated? More than that, I didn''t feel the same crushing dread that''d been haunting me this past month. I struggled for the word and felt like an idiot when I''d finally found it.


    I felt relaxed for the first time since I''d left Intatenrup.


    Then the rest of my brain finally woke up and ruined it. I was naked. Bim was naked. Together in the same bed. My guts did their level best to crawl up into my throat while I looked for something that wasn''t burnt cinders to cover myself with. Bim seemed content to watch me with her knowing golden eyes, smiling the whole time.


    I couldn''t remember anything! But she seemed happy and I felt different, so we must have done something. With the two of us naked in the same bed there was only one something that came to mind. I couldn''t remember a damned thing!


    "I''m sorry-" I started, the words slipping from me before I knew why.


    Bim recoiled from my apology, a subtle expression of bemusement creeping around the edges of her radiant smile. Ash fluttered from her skin as she moved, exposing more and more of her supple curves.


    "Why are you sorry? You were and are a welcomed balm upon my existence."


    She lazily rolled out of the burnt remains of my bed, the last vestiges of ash falling away and leaving her bare majesty exposed. How could I not remember that from last night? She was a goddess in the flesh.


    "If you are not opposed, I''d welcome the opportunity to do that again once you are sufficiently recovered."


    My body was already betraying my answer before my mind caught up. Do that again? Hell yes¡­ as soon as I figured out what the hell it was I''d even done in the first place. I was torn between digging through the armoire for some clothes that weren''t burnt into rags and just throwing myself at her then and there, hoping my body knew what it was doing because I sure as hell didn''t.


    A commotion outside the door took the decision out of my hands. Zoe-Esther was trying to steer someone away without breeching decorum and that someone didn''t seem to care. A second later Alice poked her head in with a put upon Zoe looking indignantly over her shoulder before I could find anything more substantial than my hands to hide the scraps of my modesty.


    For a long moment Alice balked at the sight. Her eyes meet mine, the slightest hint of a knowing grin on her lips. Her gaze drifted over to Bim, who hadn''t thought to cover herself in the slightest, and Alice''s grin widened. She looked back to me, then back to Bim, then back to me, then back to Bim. Her eyes flicked between our faces and our naked flesh in equal measure.


    "Do you mind?!" I demanded, snapping out of my embarrassed stupor.


    Ignoring everything, and pointedly looking at the charred ceiling, Alice found her own voice. "How sober are you and are you a good swimmer?"


    *     *     *


    The palace was in shambles. Some small portion of the maids were already combing through the aftermath like a dispersed team of rescue workers following a natural disaster. The much larger portion of the working girls and every vigia I saw were still laying or slumped where they had passed out; more often than not, locked in each others arms. There were plenty of unlikely pairings as we walked past yet those few groggy eyes that cracked open all made their way to me and Bim. I could only hope the entire estate didn''t know more about what I''d got up to last night than I did. Based on the empty bottles, spent needles and smoked butts, I got the impression I wasn''t the only one who would be struggling to recall more than flashes of what had happened last night.


    Alice led Bim and I to the main hall, picking up stragglers and half-sleeping mercs along the way. Leeroy was slumped in an armchair waiting for us, looking utterly exhausted in more ways than one. He had a dozen mercs with him already and more were stumbling, staggering or being corralled into the impromptu meeting. More than one of them cast a knowing glance to me and Bim, some smiling or tossing a coy wink at us, others just glared. Bim clinging to my arm possessively wasn''t helping the matter. She had the same drunkard''s smile plastered on her face since I''d woken up next to her.


    "While you were all having a good time¡­" Leeroy started, pausing long enough to stare in my direction. "I finished renegotiating with Celio. Short version, we''re still employed and our payout just got about ten times bigger."


    The disgruntled mercs took the news well, but didn''t spare the energy to voice their approval.


    "Naturally, there''s a few catches." Leeroy continued with a yawn. "The first being that we''re getting a sizable advance, but the funds are¡­" He took a long blink, struggling to open his eyes afterward. "I''m too tired for this shit. Clancy, explain."


    Leeroy didn''t even bother getting up to find a bed. He passed out where he sat, allowing Clancy to pick up where he''d left off. The bespectacled man had to consult his datapad before speaking.


    "Right, while we are getting the advance funds they''re presently tied up in non-liquid assets. Celio''s accountants have given us assurances that the funds are guaranteed up to ninety percent of their market value, even in the event of a short sell, however they are also secured with a double redundant non-fungible encryption¡ª which is quite fascinating, really."


    "Umm. In Standard please?" Lacy asked.


    "Right, bullet points." Clancy had to think about it for a minute. "Celio needs you to go get a few OSDs from one of his sea steads while he and his men¡­ recover. These OSDs are the keys he needs to get us our money. Said sea stead locale is likely being monitored and any overt approach would be a tempting target for the enemy. A small team of divers will boat out nearby and then make a clandestine retrieval. The remainder of the outfit will be running camouflage at the nearby private beach."


    "So we''re getting a beach day with some paid diving time?" Chad asked, playing with a gold stud in his earlobe.


    "Yes. That about sums it up." Clancy confirmed without looking up from his datapad.


    "When do we leave?" Jhordan asked, face spread in a wide grin.


    "Immediately."


    *     *     *


    It was amazing what you could buy if you knew the right people. I was no stranger to dangerous combination of low scruples  and a loaded wallet, but it never occurred to me that you could buy a beach. The though hadn''t even crossed my mind that we were going to a private beach until I drove past the ferrocrete and chain-link fence and read the signs.


    [Private Beach - Enforced by Sniper]


    Even if I couldn''t read, the pictographs painted a pretty clear image of what happened to trespassers.


    "That''d be an easy job." Lacy¡ªone of the outfit''s leading markswomen¡ª idly commented from my backseat.


    "What?" I asked, flicking my eyes to my rearview.


    "Covering this beach. Small flat target area, high contrast surroundings, cliffside hills for a vantage point and hide, predictable wind, never have the sun in your face. It''d make a nice retirement job."


    "Let''s hope Celio phoned ahead to let them know we''re coming." I mumbled, glancing up at the cliffs as I made our final approach.


    The mercs hit the sand and within minutes they''d secured a beachhead. Blankets, parasols and loungers were scattered. A handful of different games each had their own spaces alloted. Shovels and buckets appeared near the waterline and sandcastle fortifications followed shortly after. The scent of grilling food and burning charcoal reminded me that most of us hadn''t ate since last night at best. It was all so normal. Too normal, at least on the surface.


    But then I''d spot a trio of rifles leaning together barrels up at the edge of a ball game. Or I''d notice how every vehicle was parked in a way that we could all run like hell at a moment''s notice. Or how those small humble sandcastles were sporting deeper and deeper moats until they started resembling trenches. Even the mercs, myself included, seemed a little too caution to the wind for it to be genuine. It was impossible to see us as anything but a bunch of professional killers. It was obvious in all the small ways: the pale scars and faded tattoos that stood out from tanned skin, the sharp attentive glances at our surroundings, the lean athletic bodies sculpted from combat fitness, the spatial awareness and hand-eye coordination that made every game drag on a little too long.


    "Isn''t this a little reckless?" I asked Pauz¡ªa burly ink-up bruiser of a man¡ªas he flipped a meat log on a charcoal grill. "What happened to being ''at war''?"


    "War or no, people need to blow off steam. They need to party, relax and bump uglies in dark. Fighting is part of life. If we stop living just because someone is fighting someone else, we stop being human." Pauz finished, slapping a perfectly seared rectangular patty over some fried eggs then between some leafy greens. He deftly wrapped it all up between thick, split-knuckled fingers and handed over the chow. "We could all be dead tomorrow, so we live today. Anything less is insult to the people that died so we could make it this far."


    "I don''t know about that¡­" I said hesitantly, before starting on my breakfast wrap. Even with such simple ingredients, it tasted pretty good.


    "You may not," Pauz made a show of cracking some eggs, keeping himself entertained in a performance for two. "But they do. Don''t knock it ''till you try it."


    Regardless of what the big man had said, I couldn''t bring myself to relax. So I tried to relax a little harder, but that was a dead end road going nowhere fast. Knowing that it would either come to me or it wouldn''t, I made my way back to the blanket I''d claimed as my little kingdom amidst the sand. Bim was there sat upright and cross legged like some mystic meditating, the same half-drunk smile still plastered on her face. Only now the smile didn''t quite reach her eyes as she gazed attentively at the beach and the waves beyond.


    "It would seem these activities are enjoyable, though I fail to comprehend why." Bim offered.


    "It''s a human thing." I said with a shrug. "Though I don''t really get it either. We didn''t have a lot of ocean beaches back where I come from. Too cold."


    "I''m curious to the appeal of sand. It is coarse, treacherous and has an irritating tendency to cling to everything it touches."


    This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    "Don''t tell me you''d rather this be a gravel beach?" I tried to make a joke out of it, but the words came out as more of a conspiratorial growl.


    "Yes, I would. Though my true preference is that we return to you chambers where everything is far more tolerable to the touch." Her gaze darted to me, her hands already moving to interlock with mine before I cut her off.


    "About last night¡­" I started before realizing I had no idea what the hell I was even trying to ask. Bim just stared at me, the hardness leaving her eyes as she played her sight over me. "Was I-"


    "You were magnificent." She interrupted.


    "Oh." I could hear the surprise in my voice. I only hoped she didn''t recognize it for what it was. "I''m glad you enjoyed it." Whatever it was I''d even done¡­


    A dark shadow crept over me before I could find the answer buried in my memory. Chad, standing tall and lean at the edge of my blanket, the sunlight barely bouncing off his impossibly dark skin. He threw a duffel bag at my feet without getting any closer.


    "You said you can swim. Put that on then get on the boat."


    *     *     *


    I''d never sailed a boat before, but since the mercs thought of me as ''the driver'' I was forced to learn on the fly. As it turns out, sailing a speedboat was a lot like driving a car. We were moving fast over the open sea, the wind in my face and the salty sea breeze in my semi-open wounds and burns. I could have done without that last bit, but the rest was nice. Sailing out into the sea made me realize how much I missed the open roads of my homeworld. I''m sure there were probably a few actual inter-city routes somewhere in this planet, but I''d only seen the winding switchback streets of Crucibab so far and I wasn''t a fan.


    Before I could really get into the groove of sailing we reached a chunk of ocean that seemed indistinguishable from any other, but the boat''s computer told me to stop here so I did. I took a peek over the side as I dropped anchor and the colors surprised me; oranges, pinks, greens and every shade of blue I could think of¡ª it was like taking a look through a window into an alien world. Some small part of me wondered if this was how Bim saw things, ever-shifting and strange while completely immerse in something you knew of but didn''t really understand.


    "Aight, has any of y''all actually been diving before?" Chad asked.


    "Not like this, but I swam in some lakes back in the day." I said.


    Idris just shook her head while Lacy sighted down one of the bulky waterproof rifles that''d been waiting for us on the boat. What followed was about an hour''s lecture of all the ways we could die from equipment failure, or pressure injury, or stupidity, or just about any other way Chad could think of as we all geared before rolling over the side and into the water.


    We floundered around for a few minutes looking like exactly what we were, a bunch of rookie divers that only had the slightest idea of what we were doing. Once we''d gotten the basics figured out and we''d all tried out our fancy underwater rifles, Chad pulled what I''d thought was a fuel tank off the underside of our boat and waved us over too him. The tube in question turned out to be a missile or something. Once we got it pointed the right way all we had to do was hold on. The sea stead wasn''t that far, a little over six kilometers from where I''d parked the boat. We covered that inside of ten minutes¡ª which felt a hell of a lot faster when it was the ocean rushing through my hair than it did the wind.


    The water was fairly clear but I still didn''t see the thick metal pipes of the sea stead''s legs until we''d nearly crashed into them. There was a group of fish that reminded me of empty bags with tails circling the pipes like some weird underwater tornado. It was breathtaking¡ªor my bottled air was getting thin¡ªand if I wasn''t on the job I woud have spent some time just watching them. As interesting as the sight was, I didn''t spare it much thought as I headed up to the surface to get to work. I didn''t really know what I was expecting but it certainly wasn''t a palace in the middle of the ocean.


    There was maybe three meters of industrial-looking catwalks, docks and random pipes, and then on top of that was a palace. It wasn''t as boxy as most buildings I''d seen on world, but it wasn''t quite rounded either. The entire thing had one thick coat of off-cream paint that might have been either white or yellow at one point before the elements had taken their time with it. Our crack team of amateurs found a stairway we could reach from the water and made the loudest, slowest, most obnoxious covert entry I''d ever witnessed or participated in. Luckily, no one was around to notice except us. Once the worst of the underwater gear was shed and stowed things started moving a little more smoothly.


    The ocean palace was huge, so we split up into pairs to speed things up. Celio hadn''t been here in years¡ªeven if this place looked like he''d just been here yesterday¡ªso his memory of where he''d kept his things was spotty at best. I would have thought the keys to a humble fortune would be the kind of thing he''d keep a better watch on, but when you got rich enough I guess a few tens of millions was pocket change.


    Idris and I started out slow. Her background must have been a little more upstanding than mine because she wasn''t a very good burglar. Fortunately my criminal skills were good enough for two. We moved from one neat and tidy room to the next, leaving a trail of disorganized or displaced belongings behind us. At a glance, it seemed like Celio had let his maids keep the place tidy after he left. With any luck no one would get fired over the state we were leaving the sea stead in as we ransacked the place.


    It was always a uniquely personal experience to snoop through someone''s home while they weren''t there. It was a peek into their mind, beyond the image they projected to the world. Even if I''d known nothing of Celio, I came to a comparable image of the man by the time we''d tossed the fifth room.


    Appearances were everything to a man like him. There weren''t very many private rooms and those we searched were bland and utilitarian. Power was secondary to opinion, the arrayed collections and dusty oddities on display were all things that someone else would value but meant nothing to the man who owned them. It wasn''t enough for Celio to be able to take what he pleased, he wanted whoever was standing before him to know it. To know on every level that he was a man beyond what they could ever be.


    Normally, that would have been enough to make me hate him, but it didn''t. Celio wasn''t stomping his way to the top on the dreams and hopes of others, he never set out to make anyone feel lesser. Celio had a neat trick of being able to stand tall without forcing everyone else to bow first. Or maybe his trick was how he made everyone forget they were bowing in the first place. But I''d seen the cracks in his mask. I knew just how fragile the podium he''d place himself on was. His life was a mirage in a smokescreen, always one strong gust away from being scattered into nothingness.


    "Did you find anything yet?" Idris asked, patting down an entire hallway''s worth of coats to check their pockets.


    "I''ve found plenty, just not what we''re looking for." I answered. Idris sidled up to me as she kept up her unobtrusive search.


    "You and Bim seemed pretty friendly this morning¡­" She offered.


    "That''s not really your business." I answered curtly, glad that our work meant I could keep my back turned to her.


    "I''ll drop it."


    "Thanks-"


    "But first I''ve gotta ask. How did that even work? I mean, she''s an alien right? Does she have everything like a normal girl down there? Or was it all¡­ Tentacles, goop and fire?"


    It was a question I hadn''t even thought to ask yet. From what I saw this morning I was pretty sure that was normal for a woman, but I had no idea what it was like past that. How the hell could I not remember what I''d done last night! I could have had the best mind-blowing night ever and I''d blacked out like a chump.


    "I don''t know. It was¡­ normal, I guess." I finally said after way too long of a pause.


    "What do you mean you don''t know?" Idris asked, abandoning her search to fix her attention on me. "Wait, were you a virgin? Was she your first? Ohmygod that''s so cute!"


    I felt my cheeks reddening and for once it wasn''t the killing fire inside of me.


    "No! I mean, nothing happened between us last night-"


    "Botshit. The way she''s been ogling you up all day, I know what a girl looks like after she''s had a few round trips to cloud nine. So dish. What kind of hardware is she rocking? Inquiring minds want to know!"


    A  long, choppy blast of gunfire echoed from the floor above us. I snatched up the blocky rifle I''d been loaned and ran towards it. Idris found her priorities and followed a few seconds after.


    "Normal people run AWAY from gun shots." She hissed.


    "We can''t all fight in power armor." I countered, backtracking through the rooms we''d searched until I found a staircase.


    "If I get shot, I''m going to bleed all over you."


    We took the stairs cautiously. I was pretty sure Idris had her rifle pointed right at my back as I led the way, but I didn''t turn my head to check. My own rifle felt like a lead brick, slow and cumbersome in my hands. I wished I had my revolver. And a cigarette.


    I made do with the steady burn of the killing flames inside of me as I crested the stairs.


    Lacy was waiting on a knee in a left-hand doorway, rifle trained dead-center of my skull in that split second before I''d even spotted her. We both lowered our aim. She had me dead to rights and we both knew it. Lucky thing she was on my side. She answered before I could ask.


    "Yeah, that was us. We''ve got the drives. We can leave."


    I took a breath to respond. It stank of odd gunsmoke, splintered wood and blood. Now that I was closer, I could see flecks of red splattered inside the room she was at. Somewhere buried in my memory, another doorway just like this one had beckoned me closer. It made me want to freeze up but the heat inside my bones compelled me to keep moving forward.


    I saw everything at once. Servants'' quarters, housing the skeleton crew that had been keeping this place in order for the master''s return. The pattern of the blood, a linear scope of violence from a single stationary attacker to the cowering crowd. Chad clutching a bundle of hardened thumb drives in one hand, a smoking gun in the other. The family, the eldest vainly trying to shield the youngest with their bodies. I saw it all but one thing stood out in my mind.


    A three-year old child failing to shake her mother awake, blood weakly gushing from the tiny bullet holes in her chest and arms and stomach.


    My fist connected with Chad''s jaw before anyone could even blink. He rocked back a step without flinching, riding the blows momentum.


    "What the hell is wrong with you!" I roared.


    "Old guy had the drives, the rest saw us take them. Discreet means no witnesses."


    His voice was ice cold. I snapped my anger over to Lacy, still standing at the doorway half-in, half-out. She hadn''t pulled the trigger but she hadn''t stopped it either.


    "Who were they going to tell!? A nosy fish? There''s no one out here but us! They didn''t need to die!"


    "They didn''t need to be here either." Chad stated, still flat calm. "They made their choice."


    "I case you didn''t notice, we''re in the middle of the ocean. Where else were they going to go?"


    "Hero, take it easy-" Idris said from the hall.


    "NO!" The word tore from my lips in a snarl. No to calming down. No to this senseless killing. No to being so fucking emotionally detached from what we did every time someone pulled the trigger. "You killed seven innocent people just-" I couldn''t find the words. Red-hot rage was clawing its way up my throat.


    "People die every day." Idris countered. Still standing outside, still saying in every way but words that her hands were clean. That she wasn''t involved with this.


    "How many people do you think we killed yesterday? Six-hundred? Eight? A thousand? Those are just the ones we know of." Lacy added.


    "That''s different¡­" I said, but I couldn''t find any conviction to lend the words.


    "Because they chose to be there?" Chad asked, finally dropping his gaze to look me in the eyes. He had his body rigidly under control, but there was a raw hate burning in his eyes. "You might be right about them. Maybe it was different because it was kill or be killed. What about all them regular folks who suddenly had their backyard turned into a warzone? Sure, we tried to limit collateral but shit happens-"


    "Chad," Idris interrupted. "You''re not helping."


    "No. I''m not. I''m teaching the Rookie a lesson so he doesn''t get us all killed." He said, bending over so we could be face to face and he could spit every word at me without looking down. "You want to stand there and pretend your shit don''t stink because you don''t have the guts to stand by it. Look at them."


    I did, hoping to find enough spite that I could throw another punch without thinking about it. It was a familiar sight that still hit me like a sucker punch to the guts and set the heat inside me burning. How many people had I killed in cold blood? Thrity? Fifty? I could tell myself it was always different, because they were murders or lunatics or they''d done things to kids, but was it? How many times had I painted a wall with an unarmed person and walked away without thinking about it?


    Too many.


    "It''s her or me. Them or us." Chad said the words meticulously like an aggravated instructor would to a slow student. "You want to live long enough to see a paymail? Then get with the fucking program."


    "No one paid you to murder these people." But that wasn''t true, was it? We were paid to be here and to get the job done. The flames burning inside of guts whelmed up in anticipation.


    "And how much did you get paid to burn down them slums? Hmm!?!" Chad''s composure finally cracked as he spat the question to my face. "Here we are six weeks later and they''re still pulling bodies out of the rubble! You got one thing right. I''m a killer, that''s what I do. But I ain''t not fucking murderer. That''s what you are."


    The words cut true. He could have slapped me in the face right then and I wouldn''t have noticed. I was a murderer, in every sense of the word and it made my blood boil. My bones were made of solid flame, my lungs were a blazing furnace and my heart was like the molten core of a star. The temperature in the room shot up ten degrees, then thirty. I was standing in the middle of it with my hands locked into white-hot fists that I wanted to smash into something¡ª someone.


    Idris sidled away from the door. Lacy pivoted on the spot, making sure she could snap up her aim any second. I barely noticed either. My eyes were locked on Chad and his on me.


    "You don''t like that do you? Truth hurts, don''t it? What you gonna do about? Smack me? Shoot me? Burn me up, like you did all them other folks?"


    I wanted to. I wanted to so badly it burned.


    If I called his bluff, I''d kill him and we both knew it. Sweat was beading across his face but I could tell that was just the heat. His eyes were set. He was begging me to show my true colors and get it over with. He was right for all the wrong reasons. If I did, I was only proving him right about me. If I killed him and called it justice then I really was just a murderer.


    With great effort, I throttled the killing heat inside of me.


    "That''s what I thought you little punk as bitch. One last thing-"


    His fist was lodged in my stomach before I could blink and it took every scrap of willpower I had to keep from exploding into a fireball then and there.


    "You ever throw hands at me again, I will bust your skull open and bury my foot so far up your ass that you won''t ever walk again. Now let''s get the fuck out of here so you can go back to playing house with your lil alien bitch, but don''t you dare forget that you''re elbow deep in this shit with the rest of us."

 H27 - Sipping Coffee

    _ _ _Hiiro


    Two weeks had passed since the outfit''s beach day and now I was sipping an overly-rich blend of coffee across the street from a backstreet machine shop in one of the more well-to-do neighborhoods outlying one of Crucibab''s coastal industrial districts. After a week of beating feet I''d tracked a shipment of mass-stamped SMGs to this combination garage/foundry/ironmonger. It could have been nothing but it was the best lead I had that someone what gearing up for a fight in Celio''s backyard. Now I was waiting to see who came to pick them up. It wasn''t a bad job, even if the coffee was too bitter and still had grinds in to, plus it gave me some time to think. Maybe a little too much time¡­


    I wasn''t privy to the specifics of the conversation, though I knew Celio was none to happy about our little fact finding incursions. Leeroy wanted operators he could trust on the job which surprisingly enough, included me over a few hundred of Celio''s vigia. At the root of it, we were digging for info on anyone still moving against Celio. Trying to be proactive instead of reactive, seizing the initiative and whatnot. I was still convinced Leeroy had cooked up this whole botshit detail just to get me out from underfoot, not that I was complaining¡ª there were certainly worse jobs out there.


    Truth be told, I was just glad Celio had finally given up on his damned motorcades. Moving through the city on foot was a whole other beast compared to driving through it. Crucibab had a living churn to it that my homeworld never did. There was an ebb and flood to everything, almost like everyone was always about to miss a deadline before they could relax for an hour or two. I caught myself then, still looking back into old memories instead of facing the present.


    I don''t know when it happened but I''d been thinking of Intatenrup more and more lately, constantly searching for something familiar to ground myself on the foreign streets of this distant world. I might find a single similarity for a dozen differences. They were never enough. It was hard to keep the time straight between the voyage here and the long days; I thought it was around half a year since I''d left Intatenrup but sometimes it felt like it was just last week. That or it could have been lifetimes ago, it depended on the day. I knew could spend a decade trying to blend in with the locals and by the end of all that time I''d still just be a dos Estrelas¡ª a spaceman from somewhere else. Not one of us. An outsider.


    It was almost ironic. Compared to the homogeneous roots of my home world, this entire planet was little more than an imbalanced mixture of foreigners. The only faction who could trace their earthly lineage more than a few generations back were the people of the land¡ª indentured servants to all the conquering spacemen that had came after them. Just like we were helping Celio do now.


    I sipped at my too bitter coffee and shook my head. Mercenaries weren''t supposed to get hung up on little things like ethics or morality, but then again I wasn''t really a merc. More of an unwilling volunteer, a recruit by circumstance, or if I was feeling dramatic a hostage. Why the hell was I still working with them? It was a thought I kept bumping into all too often during these long boring days. Sure, the money was good but I''d already more than paid off my debt to them for saving my life. Because I liked a few of them well enough? More than half of them wanted me dead on general principle and the rest were still making up their minds. I was good at the job, the work was familiar in a soul-numbing kind of way. The idea of killing being second nature was a bitter one to swallow, enough so that it made my coffee seem sweet by contrast. I reached the bottom of my list with the same little tug on my heart that I always felt when I thought of her.


    Bim. She was still working with them, as trapped by circumstance as I was. The sight of her body, her smile, her next to me when I had woken up still haunted me. I hadn''t seen Bim since I''d got this undercover assignment and our separation had made it abundantly clear that I had more than just feelings for her. In a lot of ways, it was almost like she had a hook lodged in my soul and every so often I would feel her pulling on the line. I didn''t know if that was what love felt like but I knew that, consequences be damned, the next time I saw here I was going to man the hell up and tell her just how crazy I was for her.


    The idea had my stomach doing flips, yet the heat inside of me was resonant with it. Something about my inner flame had changed. It didn''t feel like an inferno constantly looking for the next forest to consume. I couldn''t really explain it as much as I damn well tried but it was kind of like a soothing bed of embers. The word I kept reaching for even though it wasn''t quite right was glowing. Like it was nice and warm and steady and sure and good and right and glowing.


    I took another sip of my too-bitter coffee, knowing that if I ever tried to explain it to someone they''d probably think I was crazier than usual. But the weird thing was, on some base instinctive level, I felt better than I had in a long time¡ª like some part of me knew everything was going to work itself out and I''d be alright in the end. It may have been crazy or maybe that''s just how love was. All I knew was that if I could wake up next to her every morning then I''d be doing pretty damned well.


    All we had to do was survive this job together and after that everything would be fine.


    A dingy truck that must have been running hard for the last half-century came bumbling down the street. The three men sitting rifles in hand on the roof drew my attention back the present. There was some part of me, some small part that had a morbid curiosity when I saw Celio''s shadow war from the outside in. Young men, the poor luckless bastards that had been born into this life without a spitting chance for anything more, were little better than bullets.


    The dingy truck trundled to a stop a half-block down from the coffee shop I''d been using for my stakeout. Some jackass with a bullhorn climbed out and gave a speech about honor and riches and glory¡ª a better life if only you had the courage to reach out and seize it. He mentioned the Savior enough that despite my difficulties with the lingo I knew this guy was on our side, recruiting the righteous and the just where those opposing Celio would only hire the criminal and the corrupt. No one but me seemed to notice how these recruitment trucks would both target the same neighborhoods and draw the same crowds¡ª the same poor luckless bastards just trying to scrape by.


    After the jackass finished his speech some twenty or so kids all piled onto the back or sat on the hood or stood on the side bars holding on for dear life. I knew that in a few hours maybe half that number would come back, a gun in one hand and pocket change in the other. Some of the cannier ones would sell the gun for a few more days pay. They knew they''d be given a new one the next time they went off to shoot up another block or stomp out a rival family or abduct some street level boss. If it wasn''t for the fact that those kids made good informants, I probably would have looked the other way same as everyone else on this street¡ª after all, this was a safe neighborhood; there wasn''t any fighting here so who cared? Not a damned soul, that''s who.


    I hated myself because I was no better. Turning a blind eye to the consequences every time one of my informants up and disappeared. I hoped a few of them got wise and ran away. I knew that most of them didn''t, but I kept using them anyway paying out a hundred here or a thousand there while they gambled with their lives. Sometimes, in my low moments, it made me sick to think about it and I took small consolation in the fact that I was proud because it did. Maybe one day, once I''d banked enough self-loathing, I could get out of the job. If I had to gamble with people''s lives it was pretty damned cowardly to always use someone else''s.


    A woman¡ªmore of a girl really¡ªsat opposite me with one of the dense little flatbread snacks that all the locals seemed to love. She wasn''t much of a looker. She carried herself meekly, eyes downcast and nervous. I knew her, she was on my payroll after all.


    "They want my brother to work the scrapyard tonight." She whispered between bites. "He could forget to lock the drop off access gate at high moon when he finishes."


    I thought it over for all of a quarter-second. If I could sneak into the scrapyard, I''d be a short way below the admin office. I didn''t think the locals were much for keeping their paperwork up to date, but all I needed was a name or a date. Something to get me pointed in the right direction. Not to mention, this way I could shoulder some of the risk too.


    I folded a pocket rag around a single cash token and slid it over to her. She dabbed her face for some non-existent crumbs and cast a sly glance at the money. Her eyes went wide for a second before she nodded gratefully. It amused me for a second, throwaway change to me was a few months income for her entire family. It reminded me of Celio''s ''charity'', heating up coins to throw for beggars. A wave of disgust quashed my amusement a split-second later.


    "It must be hard having such a forgetful brother." I said, sipping my coffee. "Maybe if you moved to the countryside he''d be able to focus more¡­"


    I let the insinuation hang for a long moment so she could weigh it over. She smiled at the thought but there was no warmth behind her eyes.


    "My family work the land." She started. "This land. It''s our home, regardless of the city that sprouted up around us. We can''t just leave."


    "You could-"


    "We won''t." She stated, steel in her voice. "No amount of money will buy our pride. This is who we are. Our roots are too deep to pack up and leave."


    I wanted to tell her she was a fool. To think of her safety, her future. I met her eyes with the words on my tongue and I already knew she wouldn''t listen. Looking into her eyes was like looking at a whole other person; the meek, nervous girl was gone and the spirited woman glaring back at me was all mettle.


    "For what it''s worth, I appreciate the offer." She whispered, her pride flagging and the meek girl once more at the for. "I appreciate everything you''ve done for my family. We all do."


    All I''d done for them was pay them to risk their lives. To snoop. To eavesdrop. To tell me thing they probably shouldn''t. She might not have seen the harm in that but I had. Justice on the backstreets of Crucibab was almost as swift and ruthless as it was in the wild. Thieves had their fingers broken as a warning or their hands chopped off as a message. Informants never got a warning, first offenders lost their tongues.


    And she was thanking me for that. For paying her and her family to run those risks because they could get places I couldn''t and see things I didn''t. Some small part of me always had a slight niggling reminder that if someone had to pay for my actions it was better them than me; that so long as I kept my fingers intact and my tongue attached, a little guilt was a small price to pay. I wanted to crawl in on myself and vanish from her life right then. I felt like a parasite and she was thanking me.


    That would change tonight. I''d stop making everyone else take the risks and do the job myself.


    Set on a course of action, I gulped down the last of my coffee and headed back to my safehouse for to kill a few hours. Safehouse may not have been the right word but it had a better ring to it than ''the one-room sublet I had from one of Celio''s vigia''s cousin''s widowed mother''. Her townhouse was damned-near invisible, sandwiched as it was on a street of a hundred duplicates. Walking down the rows of identical houses had been unsettling for the first few days, like a bad dream where you''re walking down a dark hallway and you keep passing the same door. It reminded me of the suburbs of Intatenrup, one apartment building every block for ten blocks by ten blocks with nothing but numbers to differentiate them.


    I followed the smell of fresh-baked bread into her home. Sophia was slathering her easel with a pot of green paint, her smock was already smeared with blues and teals. A wavy locke of her thick chestnut hair had slipped from the hideous yellow and blue headband she always used to tie it back.


    Sophia was a lovely woman in a motherly sort of way, two decades my senior but aging gracefully and she always had a warm smile on her face. She was plump in the right places, maybe not quite voluptuous but damned close. In my two weeks of living with her, I''d never once felt like a stranger in her home.


    "I was just about to start on supper, but first¡­ what do you think?"


    She spun the easel around to reveal a mess of green and blue. There was the slightest impression of a coastline or maybe a skyline. The color mixing was amateurish, the paint too thick and there was no sense of scale to the portrait at all. Yet¡­ something about it seemed inviting, like the blurriest postcard ever made.


    "I can''t wait to see it when it''s done." I answered neutrally.


    "It is done."


    "Oh¡­" I said.


    "Oh?" She asked, arms crossed and a single eyebrow creeping upwards.


    "I didn''t say anything."


    "Didn''t you ever do any impressionist paintings? You said you used to paint."


    I''d mentioned it once in passing and she''d never let it go. In a lot of ways, all of my works were impressionist pieces. There was a perverse intimacy that came with looking at someone''s final moments captured on a wall or a floor. It all left an impression. Mostly of rage. Brutality. A life of possibility cut short with a single death-stroke of my painter''s brush. My ''paintings'' left the taste of ash and gunsmoke clawing their way up my throat.


    "I did some¡­" I said, keeping my voice flat. "But my work was more monochrome with accent. Black, white, grey and contrasting reds."


    "Bold."


    "It wasn''t!" I snapped before regaining myself. "Sorry. It wasn''t. It was cowardly. I was afraid to¡­ I just¡­ I used the same color so much that I forgot there were other one''s out there."


    It was a half-assed half truth at best and she saw through it. I got the impression that even if she wasn''t the sharpest woman on the planet, there wasn''t a lot that she missed. I could only imagine what growing up under her tender scrutiny would have been like. She swapped out her painting for a blank canvas and pulled a stool up to her easel.


    "Sit your bum here mister. I''ll start on supper and I want you to paint me something while I cook." She practically shoved her paints onto me, her damp smock following a second later. "You''ve got blue and green. Make it work."


    "Just two colors?" I asked, smiling at the absurdity.


    "Between the two of them you''ve got all the colors you could want. You just might need to get a little creative with them."


    Sophia disappeared into the kitchen, tossing a clattering of charcoal sticks into the range. Seconds later, a chopping knife joined the dull instrumentals and she started humming a tune that not even a truck could carry.


    I stared at that blank canvas and all I could picture was how I would paint it red. Old instincts surfaced in my mind and they sickened me. I didn''t want to think like that, didn''t want to remember how many times I''d killed before I saw the blood as art. I couldn''t stand looking at all that white empty space!


    A slapped a thick stroke of green on one end, mirrored it on the other, then blue up the middle. It was ugly. Amateurish. Three lines of thick paint was hardly a portrait. But it was better than an empty canvas. Sophia was still cooking, so I wet my brush and thinned my paints, drawing them out to cover up the worst of the negative space.


    Then I just stopped thinking and let my hands do what my eyes told them too. Two colors wasn''t nearly enough variety no matter how much I thinned or layered. So I mixed and experimented and made mistakes and rolled with the chaos of creation. I had no idea what I was making. Every brush stroke brought me closer to it though, so I kept painting¡ª chasing a high with every swipe of paint. Then I saw it.


    Like the famed angel in marble, my mind saw what my eyes had seen all along.


    "Hey Sofia, can I use a little bit of yellow?"


    "That depends¡­" She answered from the stove top. A moment later she was leaning in over my shoulder and I heard her breath catch. "For her eyes?"


    I nodded and she handed a small mason jar the color of honey and powdered gold. I finished my painting and I took a step back to look at the whole thing.


    I''d painted a blue woman drifting in a sea of thin green. The colors were comprehensive yet muted by the lack of negative space. Her gossamer dress could have been the suggestion of water flowing over her naked flesh instead, the color a swirling shade somewhere between teal and jade complimenting the rich blues of her skin and pale green of the sea. Her eyes were twinned dabs of golden yellow, regal and cutting all at once. They were the eyes I woke up hoping to see every day for the rest of my life.


    "You must really love her." Sophia said.


    I was too embarrassed to say anything. I dropped my head and turned to leave but she took my hand and made me meet her warm brown eyes.


    "You''ll make a great husband and any woman you choose will be lucky to have you."


    Some small part of me was relieved to hear those words. They soothed a doubt I hadn''t realized I''d even had. I couldn''t help wondering about my parents at that moment, the stranger''s I''d never met who had abandoned me before I was born. Had I just been a mistake from a night of passion or were they still out there, loving life without me?


    Sophia went back to the kitchen and I pictured Bim in her place. A simple life, a happy wife and maybe when we were ready some kids of our own. It was a nice picture. I''d never thought about having a family before either, but suddenly it seemed like an option. If Bim could have kids¡­ If we survived long enough to try¡­ If I was man enough to say three stupid words to her.


    "Supper''s ready!" She called out.


    We ate and talked about painting and life and nothing at all. She didn''t mention my painting and I was glad she didn''t. I didn''t know what I''d say if she did. It was so natural, as natural as breathing was. So why did it feel completely alien to me? Because I''d never knew my family? Never ate a home-cooked meal across from someone who gave a shit about me? Because I never realized that this was the thing I''d never had until it was right in front of me.


    Halfway through our meal, Sophia gave herself a playful smack on the forehead¡ª inadvertently slapping another daub of still-wet green paint onto her hideous yellow/blue headband.


    "Your friend Xan called early, while you were still at work. He said it was urgent but he wouldn''t leave a message with me."


    "I should go check in then." I said, scarfing down the last of my vegan stir-fry. "Thanks for supper, it was delicious."


    She raised her paint-stained mug of tea in salute and I disappeared into my room. Maybe one day, if the stars aligned just right¡­ I shook the thought from my head. There was work to do. Now wasn''t the time for stupid daydreams.


    It was curious how compartmentalized technology could be sometimes. On the voyage here aboard the Stalking Shadow, it had been everywhere. Back at Celio''s palace and out at his sea stead, it wasn''t as ubiquitous but it was still damned-near. Here on Sophia''s street, there were hand pumps for water every hundred or so meters, maybe one house in twenty had a solar collector to power a radio or a few lights, and everyone cooked on ranges burning bamboo charcoal or dried kelp. Air conditioning was as much a myth to people like Sophia as void dragons or the Eldritch were.


    Meanwhile I had more hardware and electronics tucked in my room than the surrounding square kilometer did combined. I barely touched half of it, a technological treasure trove gathering dust while I fell back on the basics. The low-profile camera, datapad and commlink were just about the limits of my tech-savvy.


    I booted up my datapad and checked in on my little slice of Alice''s spy network. There wasn''t a lot of info for me. It was out there, I just couldn''t see the whole picture over the data partitions. The basic idea made sense, if one of us got captured we couldn''t spill what we didn''t know. That didn''t make it any less annoying.


    From what little I could see, a lot had been happening wile I was staking out my best lead. Xan had tried to get a hold of me for some support since I was the closest. If he''d been desperate enough to ask me of all people, then whatever was happening was big. Three hours later Alice had sent out the order to go to ground and lay low.


    I didn''t like that, not one bit.


    If something was happening, I''d be damned if I was going to tuck tail and hide. I was stick of being a coward that let other people fight my battles for me. Was that my pride talking? The order had to have come down for a reason and Alice could see the whole picture. Wouldn''t it be better if I just did what I was told and waited out the storm? What was the worst that would happen if I took the night off?


    A window would close. I might miss my last best chance at getting some real information out of this trumped up mission. I could make all the difference if I just got this one thing right.


    Just like that, I banished all thoughts of of hunkering down for the night.


    I wasn''t helpless. I had powers and abilities no one else did. If I left my gun and comm behind, then why wouldn''t I be able to pass as any other dos Estrelas out for a stroll taking in the cool night air. After all, I didn''t need a gun to defend myself.


    With a flicker of thought I summoned up my inner flame. It answered like a friendly wolf, warm, comforting and deadly. It was a steady burning glow in my soul that filled me with conviction. I made my preparations, uploaded my daily reports and waited out the clock.


    Sophia was waking up from an evening nap as I was about to step out the door.


    "Off to work again?" She asked still half-asleep.


    "Yeah¡­" I still hadn''t told her exactly what I did, but she knew I wasn''t from around here and I worked for Celio. It didn''t take much effort to puzzle the rest out from there.


    Sophia hadn''t bothered to change after eating or tidying up¡ª I even spotted some flecks of paint on her wavy chestnut hair from where they must have touched the splotch on her hideous yellow/blue headband. The days were long and the nights were too, but when the suns went down and the orbital stations glowed like a collection of artificial moons, that was when the city really came to life. If tonight was going to be extra exciting, I really didn''t want her to get caught up in my stupid problems. She was innocent in all this, and I wanted it to stay that way.


    "It sounds like things might get a little busy tonight. You should probably stay inside." I said as I stood at the doorway.


    "You know I like to do my shopping at night-" She started.


    "I know but please, for me, stay inside tonight. Just to be safe."


    I could see her still-waking mind thinking it over. She read between the lines quickly and nodded with a pout where a smile should have been. I was almost tempted to tell her about the loaded guns I kept in her spare room, but I kept that to myself. She was a gentle soul. I didn''t think she could use a gun in anger and even if she could, I didn''t want to be the one to corrupt her like that. For the sake of her innocence, I had to be stronger than that.


    It was a trick of the light, but I swear I saw another woman''s face instead of Sophia''s just then in the gloom. In my memories she whispered, this life makes monsters of us all so go do your job, Cowboy.


    "Okay. You be safe too." Sophia said. I could tell she meant it.


    "We can go shopping when I get back. My treat."


    "I''ll hold you too it."


    I made my way down bustling streets in the twilight, navigating as much by memory as by the slow burning candles denoting public works. The streets were in their largest flood of the day, with the temperature dropping to into the low thirties¡ª which was considered to be chilly. Back on my homeworld we''d consider it hot if the temperature ever climbed back into the positive.


    Street lamps and arsenic smell of burning metals meant I was getting close to my target. I passed my usual coffee shop and circled around to the ironmonger''s public scrapyard. There was hardly any rhyme or reason to the discarded scraps, some like items were clustered together but that was the exception not the rule. Beyond the piles of scrap there was the gates connecting the scrapyard to the smelters. The gate was unlocked, just like it was supposed to be. I crept inside.


    The foundry has a volcanic, sulfur kind of acidic reek and anyone else would have found the heat oppressive. As it was, even I found it a little much though it made my soul soar as I drank it in. I wasn''t sure if it was the fumes or the heat, but the longer I spent here the more lightheaded I got. Kind of a loose, tipsy feeling. I kept to the shadows  and made a quick sweep of the ironworks.


    The office was nearby, on a demi-floor overlooking the whole operation, and the factory was nearly empty. I knew there was only a skeleton crew doing maintenance at this hour, but I hadn''t expected them to slack off this much. I don''t think I saw a single man doing his job as I slunk through to ironworks. I couldn''t really blame them, from what I''d heard the work was lousy, dirty and it hardly paid. I spotted a poker game played atop a bundle of rebar and let myself relax a little bit as I made my way into the office.


    The air conditioned office was abandoned, just like I''d been expecting it to be. Office is a big glass and steel semi-circle with computers overlooking the ironworks through some thick window that kept the heat out. I resisted the temptation to turn on the lights, searching in the dark by the dim light of of the glowing furnaces.


    I''d been hoping for a nice stack of papers I could pocket but no such luck. Aside from a few hundred sticky notes with everything from operating instructions to production ratios to office drama, everything seemed to be digital. Irritating as that may be, I still had a job to do.


    I booted up a terminal and¡ªwith the help of some nearby sticky notes¡ªgot logged into the orders and procurement system. I kicked myself over leaving my datapad and comm behind since that meant I had no way to bulk transfer the data off the terminal. Which meant I had to do it the old fashioned way.


    I called up the recent orders and started going through them one by one, jotting down names and dates on sticky notes as I did. After a few minutes of tabbing through files, I found what I as looking for. An order for eight-thousand stamped out SMGs, for the Crucibab Civil Militia: Counter-Terrorism Unit, by order of Paladin of the Public, Colonel Marcos Heathcliff. The order had been commissioned about a month ago, half of it had already been finished and the next portioned would be shipped out¡­ In three day! That was perfect! This was exactly the intel I needed.


    The office lights flicked on at once, blinding me as I reached for a pistol I wasn''t carrying. I reached an arm up to shade my eyes and felt three little puffs of air¡ª two on my arm, the third on my jaw.


    I squinted into the glare, light-headed and vision blurred. I could hear a man whispering but couldn''t make out the words. I raised both hands overhead to show they were empty and they felt like lead as I did.


    "I wasss geettting¡­" I started to say, mumbling out the words in a slur. My tongue felt thick and sluggish. I was teetering on my feet by the time I realized they''d drugged me.


    I toppled to my hands and knees, struggling to lift my head and get a good look at my attackers. I reached a hand to wipe my chin and it came away a viscous powdery purple.


    I reached for the killing fire inside of me. It answered, impossibly faint and far away. Like a lighthouse on the other side of the galaxy. It wasn''t going to do me any good now.


    "Is he one of theirs?" A man said as he kept a gun pointed at me.


    I collapsed. The weight of my own body was too much. It was dragging my mind down too. His partner¡ªthere were two of them or was there four¡ªwalked to the terminal I''d been using.


    "He was looking into the shipment. That''s all the proof I need."


    "Should I take care of him?"


    "No. We''ll take him back to base. Diablo will get some answers out of him."


    I barely felt the last little puff that sent me toppling over the edge into darkness.

 B28 - Uncollared Wrath

    _ _ _Bim


    Her vessel was stood amidst the churning mind behind Celio''s dream. The mercenary operations center was roiling with barely directed chaos in a disturbingly fascinating way. Bim likened her observations to descriptions she''d read of skewered cephalopods, their tentacles writhing as exposed nerve endings were salted prior to consumption.


    Bim had only a passing familiarity with the concept of tactics, it was a unique occurrence to this physical realm of matter, time and deception. Faint though her understanding was, Leeroy appeared to be expertly versed on the subject. So she watched and studied and stood in a trance as he attempted to direct his operational collapse into a more palatable degree of failure. It could have been a game, the way he moved between radios ordering his will upon those he commanded. From this single room he marshaled and arrayed his forces to confront the unknown. It was impressive¡ª for a human.


    Another report came in, automatically updating one of Leeroy''s projections. Another pawn was out of lockstep. One more loose end plucked astray as the whole unraveled in his hands. One less tool at his disposal and one more problem he needed to solve. Leeroy let out a grunted growl, shuffled his priorities and adjusted his orders.


    "We don''t have the manpower. Aivery, grab Nye then Knight as planned. After that circle back here. I''m cutting our loses on the eastern agents."


    The order made logical sense. The objective was to retrieve and preserve the fighting strength of his command. Expending his forces in the name of preserving them was counterintuitive. Yet the decision seemed to pain him. Three black dots disappeared from the operations center''s main screen, three less problems to solve. Three pawns who would have to rescue themselves or die trying. Which still left seven on the board.


    "Clancy, give me some good news." Leeroy stated, as if to ask would have invited the opposite.


    "Mechanized team is almost suited up. We will be departing inside of twenty minutes."


    "I''ll be down in fifteen, get my armor on board. I''ll suit up while we''re en route. I''m prioritizing our smash and grab on the holding camp. The west city stragglers will have to make do on their own."


    Again, the order made logical sense. He was concentrating his available force where it could attain the best results. There were four rescuees being held in the same location, the other three were scattered. Committing one raid with the highest probably yield was best option available to him. That didn''t make it a good option. Bim found his decision to be intolerable.


    Hiiro was represented by one of the scattered dots, one of the loses to be cut.


    "You decision is unwise." Bim stated, inviting Leeroy to ask her counsel.


    "I''m working with what I have." Leeroy answered, ignoring her in favor of his screens.


    "You failed to mobilize ground assets. You have deployed less then half of your available troops and less then ten-percent of Celio''s auxiliaries."


    "They''re needed here." Leeroy growled the words.


    "Unlikely. This estate isn''t under attack-"


    "Isn''t it!" Leeroy snarled, finally looking up from his datastream to lock eyes on Bim. "In the past six hours I''ve had eight different agents report troop movements and equipment mobilization with no idea where it''s all going. Three hours ago, half of our field team went dark and I don''t know how many of them are dead or just missing. The agents I''m still in contact with were swept up in mass arrests and not one fucking hour ago, the entire city went under martial law!"


    Bim was aware of these facts, she''d been in the operations center with him since they the first indications of trouble arose, however she''d failed to correlate the plethora of intangible information into actionable intelligence. When considered with the idea of a single antagonistic force orchestrating these actions¡ªmuch like how Leeroy was coordinating against them¡ªit seemed entirely probably that the destruction of their intelligence gathering capabilities was only the opening maneuvers to a larger hostile action. She''d had all the information Leeroy did yet she failed to see the larger picture as he had.


    "These event''s may be unrelated¡­" Bim offered meekly.


    "Maybe. Probably some are, but maybe they aren''t. Either way, I intend to be alive in the morning when we can know for certain."


    "I was under the impression you human''s stood together in time of crisis." Bim said coldly. "You are condemning-"


    "You think I don''t know what might happen to them?!" Leeroy demanded in a roar. "To my people? I''m saving who I can for now. The rest will have to wait." He turned back to his screens and maps before adding in a whisper. "I don''t have the manpower. I can''t be everywhere at once."


    Bim understood the sentiment all too well. Would that she could grant him a fraction of her former omnipotence beyond the constraints of a single mortal vessel enthralled to the ever present Now. Better yet, that she could remove the restraints imposed upon herself. It was maddening to be as weak and powerless as these humans around her.


    And yet¡­ weak though they were, they still fought. Even in their ignorance they sighted upon a single goal and pressed forward. They rebelled against the logical certainty of their inevitable ends by being slaves to the moment. They were slaves of time. As was she.


    "Send me to rescue him." Bim said.


    "What?!" Leeroy looked back up from his charts.


    "Send me to rescue Hiiro." Bim repeated, enunciating her words clearly.


    "Of course you only care about him. No."


    "Why not?!" Outrage had found its way into her words and Bim felt no need to temper it. Leeroy dismissed her from his attention, returning it to his charts.


    "Can you shoot?" He asked irreverently.


    "I could try-"


    "Can you drive a car, sail a boat, fly a plane?"


    "Those are not skills I''ve attempted-"


    "Can you even throw a punch that could take someone down?"


    "¡­That seem''s unlikely."


    "So you can''t get to the fight and even if you could, you would be useless when you got there. No, I''m not sending you out. End of discussion."


    "Stop treating me as if I am useless!" Bim commanded.


    "What can you actually do that would make any difference?" Leeroy asked exasperated.


    As she was now, bound and crippled in this weak human facsimile, her options were limited. The knowledge of just how powerless she had become was yet another thing she wished to have never learned. The human''s around her were all responding to crisis in their inept, simpleminded ways and she couldn''t even do that. It was maddening. Weak though they were, the human''s could still fight the inevitable. That she was even less than them sent a portion of her mind spiraling in impotent rage. As she was now, she was sub-human.


    "I am a devil." Bim answered, defiantly stating the fact as if it would change anything about her current situation.


    "What can you actually do that would make any difference?" Leeroy repeated, speaking slowly, clearly. Much like how humans spoke to small children.


    Bim could find no answer to sway him. What could she do? She was powerless and rage though her mind might against the fact, it was fact. The realization awakened something primal in her, it manifested as a trembling of her vessel''s limbs. She was too weak to make a difference. She had no control over events to come and the most probable outcome had her mind brushing against a precipice of despair she wasn''t certain she could overcome.


    Danger was closing in and much like the pathetic weakling frail humans she''d elected to mimic, Bim had no natural weapons to fend it off. She couldn''t even find solace amongst others of her kind as they did. In a world of millions, Bim was so utterly alone. She was powerless and scared and alone. It was an experience that defined what it meant to be human. Being human, Bim decided, was a terrible thing.


    "If I wasn''t bound by this damned collar, I could make all the difference you need." Bim snarled, partially from bruised pride, mostly because it was true.


    Leeroy didn''t even hesitate. Three long strides and he closed the gap between them, one meaty hand outstretched to tear the torc from her slender neck. Treu materialized between them, arresting Leeroy''s arm in a gargantuan fist.


    "If you touch that collar, it''ll be the last thing you ever do." Her tormentor said. His voice was its usual flat icy malice, but Bim detected an unexpected undertone. Delight. The prospect of violence had her tormentor purring under his breath.


    "Well aren''t you so fucking helpful all of a sudden! How about you, Treu?!" Leeroy sneered the name with disgust, snatching back his arm. "Any suggestions!? You want to tell me how to do my job too? Or maybe, if you so fucking deign, would you be so kind as to suit up and actually help out for a change!"


    Treu flicked his eyes each way, one sizing up Leeroy, the other looking down on Bim. He smiled his cold predatory grin, allowing an aura of malevolence to ooze from it.


    "I will act as I see fit." Treu said. "A handful of lives mean nothing in the grand scheme of things."


    "Then what the hell are you doing in my ops center? Make yourself useful or get out of the way!"


    In that moment, Leeroy seemed to lessen, to somehow become smaller without reducing his volume of mass. It was a curious sight, one her past self would have logged for later detailed examination. Now however, time was against her and she was powerless to fight it. Leeroy once again cast his eyes over his screens, maps and charts searching for something he had missed. Suddenly, he smiled a thin bitter grin.


    "And here I though you''d happily let me send her into the meat grinder. Worst case, they both die. As I''ve just stated, it''s not much of a loss to me. Two less names on the roster, and then you have no reason to stick around either. Best case, the rescue goes off without a hitch. Again, no skin off my back. But there is one messy scenario worth considering, if she gets there only to find out that he''s already dead¡ª wouldn''t that be a shame¡­"


    Treu locked both eyes on Leeroy and there was this tiny little twitch just under his left eye that Bim wasn''t entirely sure she''d even seen. Her mind was reeling at the possibility throw so blatantly into focus.


    Until now, Hiiro''s wellbeing had been a theoretical abstract. He was neither alive nor dead but some quantum state of both until observed otherwise. The longer that state continued, the longer he stayed out of her sight, the more likely his death became though it never reached to point of certainty. Once more, her past self would have been intrigued. Her present self was slipping into mania as the precipice of despair grew wider. Lost in the din of her roaring consciousness, Leeroy continued.


    "You might just get what you really want from her. Then we could be rid of each other as well."


    "Well played, cousin."


    The ever-present Now commanded her attention once more. Treu was standing over her, a cruel smile on his face.


    "Devil, it would seem we have a deal to make."


    "Partially unbind this vessel long enough for me to rescue my Hiiro, we may ''lawyer'' additional terms once I have ensured his safety." Bim responded instantly. Every second wasted could be the difference between rescuing Hiiro or recovering his body.


    "I require a guarantee."


    "I swear it upon my life that I shall honor these terms in good faith."


    "Your ''life'' has far less value than you think. I''ll need more than that."


    Bim had little else to offer. Treu held no love of trinkets or money nor even the otherworldly knowledge at her disposal. Repulsive as the vile thought was, Bim considered offering her body to him but in so far as she could tell, the pleasures of the flesh meant nothing to her Tormentor. He lauded the agonies he could inflict on others, it was betrayed in the tender purr in which he''d threatened Leeroy. The only thing she could offer of any value to him was to be a victim of his cruel ministrations and there was only one degree of submission which she knew he would accept unconditionally. It was a steep price. If the circumstances hadn''t been so dire, if she had a few minutes to think of another way¡­ But she didn''t. Hiiro''s life neared its termination every second she spent dithering. No matter what agonies she was forced to endure at the hands of her Tormentor, Hiiro''s life was worth it.


    "Then I shall swear it to you upon my immortal soul and upon my name." Bim holds out a hand to shake on it. Treu smiles a predator''s grin, then shakes cementing their covenant.


    "Deal."


    In an instant the dampening torc was off her throat and Bim transcended the mortal weaknesses of frail humanity. Her vast mind unfurled beyond her vessel like an expanding nova, obliterating the constraints of self. She was one yet that one was beyond multitudes. Reservoirs of sense flooded her mind, brushing aside the human ignorance of sight and sound and touch. Her pseudoflesh was an instrument of cosmic power bent towards a single purpose.


    I must save my Hiiro.


    He was alive. His soul was a beacon amidst a million sparks. His mind, a pale engram of her own thought processes. Rudimentary, archaic even, yet undeniably her''s. He was in pain. He was suffering, but he was alive.


    Bim willed the distance between them to lessen and it did. The suggestion of gravity attempted to object and she brushed such weak protests aside. Hiiro was her''s. No mundane force could stand between them. Nothing in the entirety of this fragile reality could deny her.


    Bim flicked strands of her consciousness across the multitudinous minds beneath her, selecting those on the threshold of expiration and rending them bare of anything she couldn''t use. In a span of seconds, she''d experienced lifetimes dwelling in the city streets. She pieced it all together in a blink, creating a single mosaic of understanding from the shattered minds of fifteen-hundred and eighty-three dying mortals.


    She superimposed her mental mosaic over the flood of information she was sensing. Hiiro''s flagging mind was located deep underground, in a provincial compound that she used to work in. She had been a secretary there. No, she''d been a soldier, no an officer. Several of her had been inside. She had decades, no centuries of experience to draw from. One of her grandfather''s had been on the engineering team that had designed it. A courtyard foyer that started as a cliffside encampment guarding an underground stronghold which only grew as the years passed by. The edges around this one shard of her mosaic blurred.


    She was remembering it all concurrently. Lifetimes of human experience demanding her attention, one memory sparking off another into a cascade of bygone youth and longing wist. The human mind became a dreadfully nostalgic thing as it brokered with death. Had she been free of the constraints of time, navigating her new memories would have been trivial. Within time however, the onrushing horde assaulted her consciousness with the force of a tsunami. Gravity became law once more. The multitudes inside a single vessel fell as one, the nighttime air clawing at their skin like the spirits of the damned.


    Who were they?


    Fifteen-hundred and eighty-four answers came to mind, each one shouting to be heard over the wind roaring past their ears. They were falling towards a city, angels cast down from Heaven. Some of them found this observation amusing and poetic, others blasphemed the superstitious nonsense. Yet one of them screamed.


    "I am a Devil!"


    Their fall was arrested midair with a terminal force that would have splattered a human. The tsunami of consciousness collided with a mountain of willpower. The two sides, the hundreds and the one, all they were shared a single conviction.


    I am real. You are all nothing but memories.


    They were they, and yet¡­ there was one above none. Hundreds of lifetimes of evidence were thrown into focus, drowning out any semblance of perception. This is me, I lived! They all cried out. The one above none weathered this storm of experience, seining placid minds from the surging tempest of bygone perceptions until they could regain some semblance of external awareness. Their vessel was hovering in the air a half-kilometer above sea level. They were confused by this discovery. The tsunami broke, leaving hundreds of individual streams of thought to pour down the mountain of her resolve. Her resolve.


    She was the vessel of a creature called Bim.


    How much time had she lost? Minutes. She couldn''t afford to lose a second and she''d lost minutes. Inexcusable. It could NOT be allowed to happen again. With great savage swipes of thought, Bim seized up the wayward minds she''d captured by the hundreds and broke them down to a collection of facts. No personalities, no memories bleeding one into the next, just the raw data of human consciousness. Those minds too weak to resist her were spared her desolation. Instead, she isolated them; each meek, servile, placid consciousness was locked in a lightless void deep in Bim''s pseudoflesh where she could interrogate them individually at her leisure.


    Hiiro was close now. Bim circled once around the compound, scanning it as much by eye as she did by mind and memory. The compound was jointly operated by the civil militia and municipal police forces¡ª or it had been when she used to work there as a man in her youth. Bim tore through her memories in a blink. She had been a man, a lowly soldier. Her name had been Pablo Martinaz and she''d been stationed here at Fort Liberty as part of the 3rd Mountain Regiment. She had been stationed underground, burrowed into the cliffs like an ant for months at a time. She had seen the twinned suns only in the brief instances between police actions. In every flash of memory she saw soldiers, thousands of alert soldiers engaged in a never ending war on crime. She recalled her fear of being buried alive and the thrill she''d felt when dealing death. Then, she remembered that she was not Pablo Martinaz but instead the vessel of a creature called Bim.


    I must save my Hiiro.


    Partially unbound as she was, Bim felt confident she could endure whatever inconsequential harm they could inflict upon her. Bullets and shrapnel tearing through her meant nothing since her pseudoflesh was composed of nothing remotely resembling a vital organ. She was a demigod in mortal guise. When she reached for the power of the cosmos, it answered¡­ though in a lesser magnitude than she desired.


    Her Tormentor still had his claws lodged in her flensed soul. The cursed sigil embedded in her vessel was so cold it burned. Her Tormentor held her existence in much the same way she had crushed those minds rebelling within her. On a whim, he could destroy her and she had gave her oath that she would not resist.


    A fragment of her mind weighed the odds. As she was now, a sliver of a fraction totaling perhaps one five-hundredth of the available force she''d first arrived in this dimension with, Treu still outclassed her. And that was to say nothing of the massive handicap she''d imposed upon herself in Hiiro''s name. Without the sigil¡­ perhaps, but as she was now, no.


    She had power beyond what most human''s dreamed of and it wasn''t enough to resist her Tormentor.


    Would it be enough to rescue Hiiro? She may have been impervious to what harm may come, but he wasn''t. Could she protect him long enough to get him to safety? She lacked the knowledge to make such an assertion.


    Bim lowered her vessel, hovering five meters above Fort Liberty''s primary motor pool. Her arrival did not go unnoticed, yet the response was underwhelming. Bemusement, confusion, disbelief. None of these reactions provided her with useful data. Bim lingered there for a full thirty seconds, yet the desired response never came.


    These mortals were wasting her time and that was an inexcusable sin.


    Bim unfurled a sub-strand of consciousness, instilling mortal terror in every fourth mind it chanced upon. With another, she collected the ambient photons within forty-five centimeters of the ground and converted them into a dim red glowing aura centered on her vessel. Lastly, she located something believed to be durable and protective¡ªa massive, multi-tonned command vehicle¡ªand she destroyed it in spectacular fashion. Bim flicked a finger and sent the vehicle flying end over end in a green fireball of burning chemical accelerant.


    She had created a hellscape of dread for these mortals, one that drew their focus unto the wrathful demi-god in their midst. Their deaths were a certainty. The only question remaining was if they could slay the vengeful deity before they perished. At long last, the mortals surrounding her thought to defend themselves with lethal force.


    A torrent of bullets flew through her vessel to little effect. Each rare shot that managed to connect with the thrice-damned sigil embedded within her vessel sent a arc of agony jolting throughout her vessel. Agony, she could endure. It was pale comparison to what her Tormentor had already inflicted upon her. The skin of her vessel was blasted through, revealing the churning black-gold mass of undulating pseudoflesh beneath. Men went berserk at the sight of things beyond their mortal ken, all sense of self preservation cast aside. They knew nothing but the instinct to kill this creature that should never have existed.


    Bim began her experiments in earnest.


    Slow-firing, single shot weapons were simple enough to block with a kinetic shield. Unfortunately, slow well-aimed shots weren''t the only kind coming her way. From the overwhelming hail of gunfire, she was able to ''catch'' exactly eight-nine bullets while the remaining sixteen-thousand and change torn through her. Over a minute of experimentation, Bim was able to deflect, destroy and otherwise neutralize less than two-percent of the massed fire hurled against her. Such results were hardly promising


    Much easier, she concluded, to extract Hiiro once the fort had been neutralized. Bim swept her arms overhead, dispelling the hellscape she had created. Her assailants didn''t falter in their assault, instead redoubling their efforts. Heavy weapons, rockets, even the turrets of partially crewed vehicles pounded the air. A curious weapon of condensed light strobed into her vessel, superheating some part of her for nanoseconds at a time. It was a unique suffering compared to the rest and portions of her relished the anguish¡ª the futile resistance of the inevitable was almost endearing. However the majority of her mind found it annoying.


    Bim drew in a breath and focused two vector lines of force into the cliffside overlooking Fort Liberty''s entrance. Gravity handled the heavy lifting for her. Hiiro was still alive buried deep in the heart of the mountain she was cutting to pieces with every breath.


    Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of rubble came crashing down on to Fort Liberty, crushing the surface encampment in seconds. She cleared boulders far larger than Celio''s palace with an idle thought, throwing them irreverently aside and paying no heed to where they landed. A memory that wasn''t her''s surfaced¡ª a massive dog tearing at a foxhole so it could sink its teeth into the beast hidden within.


    With a flick of thought, Bim located the next fault line she''d strike. Hiiro was her fox and she would tear this entire mountain apart until she could hold him in her arms. This vessel of a creature called Bim was a calamity in mortal guise. The devastation of a natural disaster committed to removing an iconic landmark. She was an apocalypse driven by a single thought.


    My Hiiro still lives and I will save him.

 H29 - Interrogation [ I ]

    _ _ _Hiiro


    I''d never been tortured before and I really wasn''t looking forward to when my captors started in earnest. I''d been locked in a dim ferrocrete room, asked a few questions and roughed up a little when I''d played dumb. It wasn''t much of a beating but living in the lap of luxury under Celio for the past few months had made me soft. I''d probably been getting soft for a while and I hadn''t noticed. Sure they''d stripped me naked, chained me to a stool and kept me in the sweet spot between being uncomfortable and being in pain, but I could tell this was all just foreplay before someone fetched the pliers and knives.


    If my captors got serious, I knew I would talk.


    I was hoping they''d let me stew for a while, but it wasn''t looking that way. Time wasn''t exactly on my side but I figured the longer the outfit had to notice I was gone, the better. If they even noticed in the first place¡ª if they hadn''t already written me off for dead. The only good thing about my captors'' impatience was that whatever they''d sedated me with back at the ironworks wasn''t completely out of my system yet. Whatever they''d used must''ve been pretty strong, it felt like I''d been here for hours already and the world still had a blunt edge to it. I wondered if the suns had come up or if it was still dark out¡ª if Sophia had gone out shopping yet.


    I guess it was too late to know now.


    The first batch of goons who''d handled dragging me in here and beating me black and blue had cleared out. I didn''t really remember all that much from then, but I knew I was deep underground in some ancient dungeon. The two average-looking men who''d came next didn''t scream and threaten me, didn''t club me senseless over the slightest thing. I could tell these two were the professionals.


    The first was an older gentleman, every aspect of his face said ''you can trust grandpa, I''m here to help''. He had gnarled, scarred hands poking out from immaculate white shirt sleeves held together by a smart brown vest. It was an outfit I''d started to think of as the Nexo Isla suit and tie. His legwear didn''t fit the look though. The khaki shorts were normal enough, but he was wearing heavy, knee-high rubber boots that were mottled with off-color red/brown.


    The other guy looked pretty normal¡ªmaybe a little taller and heavier than me wearing baggy shirt and pants with a pair of sturdy combat boots¡ªexcept there was something about his face that screamed ''fuck with me and I''ll end you.'' His expression wasn''t particularly hostile, more like I was an unexpected addition right as he''d been about to call it a day. I was guessing that he was the one they called Diablo.


    The interrogation cell we were all crammed in reminded me of mister Sato''s office all those months ago orbiting a whole other world. There was one heavy door that lead back out past more goons than I''d been able to count when they brought me in. The cell was drab ferrocrete grey accented by butcher''s hooks on the ceiling and short-chained shackles bolted to the walls. My captors had a table and some nice chairs to relax in. I had an oblong stool kind of thing, the surface of it was textured like the teeth of a dull sawblade which dug into my flesh. I was pretty sure those teeth hadn''t been dull when my stool was new. It had been worn down by heavy use, all those unlucky sods who''d been here before me.


    I wondered how long they''d each lasted before they broke?


    The older man moved his chair opposite me and sat down, looking me over as a jeweler might a rare find. His partner just glared from the table in the corner. He had a little lunchbox on the table beside him. It might have been a trick of the light, but that little lunchbox seemed more sinister than a bonesaw. I tried not to think about what kind of tools could fit in it. I tried¡­ and I failed. The older man crossed a leg and started speaking.


    "Good evening. No doubt, you''re wondering where you are and why you''re here. The answer to both questions is quite simple. You are in our custody for questioning and you will remain as such until as we are convinced you have been entirely truthful and forthcoming with us. Do you understand?"


    I tried to glare at him as I kept my mouth shut. I couldn''t really feel most of my face aside from an aching throb around my right eye and the sharp pain shooting from my broken nose.


    "Time is running short," The older man continued. "If you don''t become more cooperative, things will quickly become¡­ intolerable for you."


    I kept my mouth clamped shut. It was a stupid choice, I knew that. Any second now they were going to see that good cop wasn''t getting anywhere so bad cop was going to come over here and start breaking fingers. I already knew I wouldn''t be able to hold out once got serious.


    "Allow me to ask, who do you think you''re protecting by keeping quite? Your employers? As you may have noticed, your employers aren''t here. Are you afraid of retaliation, perhaps self-incrimination?"


    He had a point. I knew I was stuck here and they knew that so long as I was, they could take all the time they needed tearing everything I knew out of me. Why should I bother protecting the mercs? It''s not like I actually cared about this job or the outfit or whatever botshit life-debt they were trying to blackmail me with. Hell, Leeroy had already signed off on my death warrant right in front of me. He was hardly an employer worth dieing for.


    But it wasn''t as if every merc was a black-hearted bastard. I didn''t owe the outfit scat, but I could think of a few people I didn''t wan to betray at the first opportunity. I couldn''t let Bim get caught in the crossfire. I had to hold out as long as I could¡­ for her.


    "Are you married?" Suit asked without giving me time to answer. "By the end of our time together, I shall know you more intimately than any lover could. If it helps, you could think of me as an escort, however our time together will not be bliss. You will tell me things that you have told no other living soul, perhaps even things that you yourself have forgotten. Through these revelations I shall be your savior."


    He paused his speech for a moment. It reminded me of questions I''d once asked as a painter¡ª back when I''d still been confessor and executioner. There was a good chance that if things went poorly, this man would be the last person I ever spoke with. There was a clarity to that, a finality that made my life flash before my eyes. It made me want to trust him, to like him. It made me think that if our positions had been reversed, maybe he wouldn''t make things harder than they had to be. But mostly, it made me remember that when I''d been on the other side of the gun, I had NEVER let anyone walk away without doing what I had to do. I was going to die, quickly if I was lucky, by a matter of millimeters if I wasn''t.


    I wasn''t feeling particularly lucky.


    "Make no mistake, you will give me what I want to know. I have broken more men in this very room than you could ever realize in the long years I''ve been doing this. You needn''t concern yourself with that however. The only questions you need ask is ''how painful you are going to make this for the both of us'', and of course, ''how much of you you want to leave here with''. Now, let''s start with something small. A name. What should I call you, hmm?"


    If I took one step, it might be too late. How much did they already know? Would a name be enough to jeopardize Bim? Celio''s might be, but I wasn''t so sure about mine. I had to hold out! My eyes flicked away from the older man to his partner. Any second now he was going to reach into that lunch pail and pull out¡­ something.


    I reached for my inner flame, focusing my mind through the distant pain and the drug-blunted haze clinging to my brain. The killing heat was still off in the distance, howling somewhere in the forest as in made it''s way back to me. It was close enough that I could almost feel the faint whisper of heat in my bones. It wasn''t close enough for me to evoke though¡­ not yet.


    "Very well then." The older man said, sitting back and relaxing in his chair. "I''ll offer you this, two names for the price of one. Ours, for your''s."


    That wasn''t how this was supposed to work. The thought lingered. Why would they tell me anything about themselves? Because it didn''t matter what I knew, I wouldn''t live long enough to tell anyone. Still¡­ If I could make it out of here, if I could escape however long that might take, then maybe something I had learned would be useful.


    "Sato." I lied, but slowly, warily.


    "Very well, Sato. You may call me Diablo and my associate here Mudo." ''Diablo'' lied right on back.


    A huff that might have been laughter fell from my lips. Diablo was as good a lier as I was¡ª probably even better. I didn''t realize I was smiling until I felt my cheek putting pressure on my black eye. We were both full of scat. Diablo had brown eyes and they made me remember a joke.


    Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    "You''re so full of scat your eyes are brown." I grumbled, chuckling like an idiot at my own joke.


    "Perhaps, but we both learned something from that. Didn''t we?" Diablo said, smiling a perfectly normal smile.


    Scat! What had he learned from me? Somehow I''d come out losing and it pissed me off. I wiped the stupid smile off my numbed face and shut my damned mouth.


    "Come now. There''s no reason we can''t behave like civilized men. Of course, should you desire that we act like uncivilized men, I''d be just as happy to oblige." Diablo flashed me a smile that started as apologetic but trailed off into a snarl of fangs as he held it a little too long.


    I believed him. The kindly old geezer act was the sweet sticky sap that baited the trap.


    "No doubt, you''re wondering about my name. Diablo is hardly flattering." Diablo said, leaning back in his chair once more. "You see, I''m something of a dealmonger. It makes me happy when everyone gets what they want."


    He unfolded his hands and gave a small shrug in a ''but what can you do'' motion. I could tell there was more to it; not that I had any idea what that might be. He definitely didn''t share the same obsessive compulsion that Bim had for conracts. Just then, it felt like I''d walked through a spider web. Like something gossamer-thin had brushed over my entire body at once. I shivered, feeling a chill around me that couldn''t penetrate my feverish skin.


    "Normally, I like to start somewhere small and work from there. A name for a name. Honesty for honesty. A pair of clothes and a hot meal for your employer. As I''m sure you know however, these are interesting times. Times like these require a bit of¡­ flexibility. Give me something concrete and I''ll do what I can to make our time together as painless as possible."


    He was pleading with me. He was either a damned good lier or he was being sincere, maybe both. They were getting close to out of patience. Neither of them showed it on their faces, but I could feel it in the air.


    I reached for the killing heat. It was close now, like a forgotten word on the tip of my tongue. I reached and reached but I couldn''t command it just yet, couldn''t feel it boiling in my guts. It would come. I just needed a few more minutes and I could turn this around. I was in too deep playing dumb. My best chance at stalling for time was to double down.


    "I''ve already told your goons everything." I answered, trying to match his tone and falling short¡ª at least in my ears. "I was in the office trying to get caught up on some paperwork when your thugs drugged me, beat me and brought me here."


    Diablo snapped his fingers and Mudo stood for the first time, striding out the door that''d swung open without anyone saying a word. The door latched shut and I heard at least a dozen heavy thunks as all the locks engaged.


    "So¡­ You worked for Mateo Machining-"


    "Matias Machining and Metalworks." I corrected.


    "Of course," Diablo said, playing it off as a slip of the tongue while we both knew his mistake had hardly been innocent. He wanted to catch me in the lie and I had no intent of letting that happen. "What kind of work do you do there?"


    "I mostly work the smelters." I said, trying to point at my various burns and scars to support the claim only to come up short. The chains around my wrists didn''t have much slack. "But sometimes I handle paperwork when I need the extra hours."


    "Dangerous work." Diablo noted. "Most off-worlders would find something more lucrative than manual labor."


    I didn''t bother asking how he knew I wasn''t a local. It was already a big hole in my story but between my accent, the shape of my eyes and face plus the fake Nova-Kyoton name I''d given him, I had no choice but to roll with it. That was the master''s trick at the heart of all deception, sprinkling in just enough of the truth that the plausible became the probable.


    "I came from Intatenrup, it''s a terraforming project like this planet. I''m¡­ I''m not a well-educated man." I admitted, slumping down as I did. "Manual labor is about the best I can hope for."


    I paused then, giving him time to reach his own conclusions. Time for him to measure my story and try to separate the truth from the lies. While he did, I reached for the fires that had been with me for years. They were nearly here, like a phantom limb about to become solid any second now. Something in me relaxed a bit then.


    I could do this. I could stall for another minute, maybe two, and then I could burn my way out of here when things got hairy. Memories of my failed escape from the Goodnight Moon resurfaced but I shook them off. Things would be different this time. I had power. If I could take out a guard or two, then I''d have a weapon and all the ammo I needed to get the hell out of here. I knew I could do this.


    One rap stuck the door and I heard the whisper of it unlocking over the slow heavy pounding of my fiery heart. Mudo had returned, a rolled tool bag in hand. He didn''t say a word as he hung the bag from a butcher''s hook and let it clatter open behind Diablo. Mudo just stood beside his boss, a diligent aide ready to hand his master surgeon his needed instruments.


    I couldn''t even recognize half the tools on display for me. I saw hammers and a bundle of bamboo splinters. Blades arrayed by size starting at scalpel and ending with machete. An orderly clustered mess of surgical tools took center stage. I could barely guess as to how most of them were supposed to be used. Some cut, some clamped, others crushed or peeled. At the bottom of the roll, in a place of dubious honor, was a pair of long-nose vise-grip pliers.


    I struggled to tear my eyes off them. Everything else was a specialist tool, even the various blades and hammers each had their own uses, but those pliers commanded my imagination. I kept reaching for my inner fire but it balked every time I tried.


    "I traditionally prefer starting top-to-bottom when I must work to persuade a subject." Diablo said jovially. "Of course, I''m more than willing to oblige in what you want."


    Diablo held out a hand. Mudo gave him the pliers. I reached for the flames that weren''t coming again and again and again. I just needed another minute!


    "I''ll make you a deal," Diablo said. I latched onto the words like a lifeline. "I''ll let you chose between your toenails and your thumbs. If you can''t make a choice in the next five seconds, I''ll take both."


    I called on the fire that should have been raging inside of me. Nothing. Not a single spark answered. The pliers latched onto the toenail of my left big toe.


    "No! Don''t!"


    "That wasn''t an option." Diablo said, a kindly smile on the old man''s face.


    He started to pull. I reached for my fire. Nothing. It had abandoned me and I couldn''t focus enough to figure out where the hell it had gone.


    "StopStopStop!" I pleaded, screaming the words. "I''ll talk! I''ll talk."


    The tearing pain stopped.


    "That wasn''t an option either." Diablo said solemnly.


    The tearing resumed. Every nerve from my toe all the way to my brain screamed in flaring pain. The drugs that had been blunting everything gave up the fight. I screamed and bucked and pleaded for him to stop. He didn''t.


    Agonizing seconds later, Diablo put his shoulder into it. The pain changed. I heard something in my peripheries. It sounded like a rotten log being pulled apart. The pain changed again. It didn''t stop. I wasn''t sure if it would ever stop, not completely.


    "Now," Diablo said, examining my toenail still locked in the teeth of his bloody pliers. "If you want to cooperate, I''ll make a new deal with you."


    I nodded. I could only nod, my throat was too raw for wasted words.


    "Tell me-" A deafening alarm blared, cutting him off.


    The sound was so piercing I felt it in my bones. It shook the air and sent a fresh wave of agony over the exposed nerves of my bleeding toe. Mudo reached inside his shirt, I spotted the flash of a conceal pistol in there before he pulled out a small radio and handed it over to Diablo. The alarm lessened into a grating roar, but one you could yell over if needed.


    "Status report." Diablo''s roar was whisper quite in the din. I couldn''t hear anything from the radio.


    A deep rumble shook the earth around us. That rumble became an earthquake that threw my captors to the ground and toppled my stool over. Chained up like a turkey at the butcher''s, I hit the ground face first without catching myself.


    The alarm died, the lights too for a split second before a dim red backup powered up. Between the earthquake, the alarm and Diablo''s hollered questions, the interrogation cell was drowning in sound. I felt the overpowering noise in my bones, a million times louder than thunder grumbling overhead. It could have went on for seconds or hours.


    It stopped¡­ eventually.


    "Status report." Diablo repeated, his tone so perfectly even you could have built a tower on it.


    This time I heard the radio''s answer. Men were screaming in berserk fury and terror as they emptied weapons on full auto. They were fighting and from the sounds of it, they were getting slaughtered.


    Two impossibly loud cracks reverberated up my everything. It felt like the planet was a giant nut and something had just smashed it open. The soul-crushing rumbling resumed, even louder now, even closer. I saw cracks in the ceiling. Dust trickled down through them.


    It was going to collapse. This whole mountain was coming down right on top of my head and I didn''t even have a hope or a prayer of making it out of here. In the dim red light that filled the room, I saw that my captors had the same thoughts racing across their minds. We were going to die and in all likelihood, our bodies would never even get discovered under all the rubble.


    < M???y??? ???H???i???i???r???o??? ???s???t???i???l???l??? ???l???i???v???e???s???,??? ???a???n???d??? ???I??? ???w???i???l???l??? ???s???a???v???e??? ???h???i???m??? >


    The thought tore through my mind like a siren blasting into both ears but not at all. I didn''t really hear it, I couldn''t hear anything over what sounded like an entire mountain being torn down on top of me. It was in my head. I recognized her voice in an instant, it was the same one that had called to me from the stars on another world and it was the one I still woke up hoping to hear whispering beside me. I could tell from the way my Mudo was looking to Diablo that they''d both heard it too.


    "You boys are fucked now."

 H29 - Interrogation [II]

    _ _ _Hiiro


    "You boys are fucked now." I growled, spitting out a mouthful of blood and what felt like a tooth too.


    I don''t think they heard me. I couldn''t even hear myself. The grinding, world-shattering earthquake went on and on. Until it didn''t. I could barely hear the sound of my chains clinking while I trembled in the silence that followed. I was still shaking even after the earthquake had stopped but it didn''t really seem that way.


    "What the hell was that!?" Diablo demanded of his now-silent radio. For once, I answered honestly.


    "I''m pretty sure that''s my girlfriend. And she sounds pissed."


    Mudo reached inside his shirt once more and two pistols materialized in the flat dim light. Diablo wasn''t as smooth on the draw, a shaking revolver made its way into his hand after a few seconds. He listened in to his radio but no one was talking. The line had gone completely dead.


    "Get out there, see what''s going on." Diablo said, a slight crack to his gentlemanly demeanor.


    Mudo tried to open the door. It was stuck fast. He put some muscle into it and that didn''t make any difference. They were both as trapped in this cell as I was. I had a small chuckle at the irony of that.


    Diablo forced my stool upright without emptying either of his hands. He fiddled with his radio for a second, then held it to my head. He aimed his revolver lower, down towards a non-vital organ that most men would consider otherwise.


    "I hate to do this when it felt like we were getting along. On principle, I dislike the use of human shields. It''s an open line. If that is your ''girlfriend'' out there, then tell her who you are and that she holds your life in her hands."


    I don''t know what was funnier; the fact that he thought I could actually stop whatever the hell was happening, or that I would even if I could. I could practically picture Leeroy standing by a radio or on a ship in orbit bombing the hell out of us¡ª once I''d spoken up, he''d just shrug and intensify the bombardment. I had a little chuckle at the idea. Then the hammer cocked back on the pistol pointed at my balls and my martyrdom suddenly became a lot less appealing than my life.


    Before I could speak, two more earth-rending cracks tore through the world. The ceiling cracked into a spiderweb, a fat shower of crushed rock dust pouring down on everything. This was it. The ceiling was about to collapse and a million tonnes of rubble would have the last laugh.


    A new sound raked over the cacophony, like a million nails clawing on a planet-sized chalkboard. It was metal tearing. The sound alone had my bones feeling like jelly.


    The cell went completely dark. The soul crushing total darkness you could only find buried in a lightless void. Whatever emergency line had been powering the backup lights and alarm must have been destroyed.


    Everything went quite, truly utterly quiet. I couldn''t even hear my captors breathing. Couldn''t see the gun pointed at my balls. Couldn''t imagine whatever the hell was going on outside.


    But I could feel the entire mountain looming over my head, just waiting for one last kick to send it all crashing down. There was another thing too. I felt a warm glow inside of me.


    Six perfectly spaced, perfectly smooth, perfectly triangular triangles of blinding twilight appeared around the door. It was unnatural, too perfectly mathematical in execution to be the product of a human mind. The sight alone had me thinking I''d never seen a straight line or even spacing until this very moment.


    Metal tore, stone crumbled and the door flew like a thrown brick into the night sky.


    The night sky I could see from the underground depths of whatever prison I''d been taken too¡­ The night sky that should have had hundreds of meters of stone and steel and guards between me and it¡­ The night sky which was perfectly outlining the demonic monstrosity hovering outside my cell with two eyes blazing like miniature suns¡­ Eyes locked on me.


    I couldn''t make sense of what I was seeing. I saw slashes and tears all across her skin, black-gold roiling insanity bubbling within. Eyes¡­ Eyes of the lost and damned pleading for release flickered in the negative space behind her. A sickly sweet reeking scent of cinnamon sewage, sulfuric rotting fish and the ozone tang of lightning-struck iron all mixed into one. The smallest hint of a smile on a face I thought I''d known.


    <"Her H?????i???i???r????o???"> Unmoving lips roared the words and thoughts smashing into my head as one. It was a mess of half-formed sentiments, turbulent raw emotion and an undeniable certainty of fact. Possessiveness battered my brain into a stupor and all I could do was stare in awe and terror.


    "Bim?" My voice was a faint shadow burning away in the light of twinned suns.


    Where there should be an entire underground compound, there was open sky on the cusp of dawn and a satellite station on the horizon like a setting moon. Bim hovered in the air like a vengeful angel, phantom wings of pleading eyes shown in negative by the rubble dust and flames. And the absolute carnage she had wrought to get to me. It was too much.


    I couldn''t bring myself to look at what she had done, so I locked my eyes on her.


    Diablo made a soundless twitch. The spark of command racing to his trigger finger so fast no human could have reacted in time. The right half of his skull imploded.


    No sound, no flash, no hint of movement on Bim''s part but I knew she''d done it. Diablo crumpled, braindead before he''d hit the ground.


    "What''d you do that for!?" I demanded. "He might have known something useful. Now we''ll never get any answers out of him."


    Bim didn''t move. Her eyes, those twinned burning suns didn''t flick a millimeter and I couldn''t tell where she was looking anymore. I didn''t know if she was really seeing anything right now.


    "The fleshling was going to kill Our H?????i???i???r????o???"


    Again, the words roared from her sealed lips like a thunderclap. Vertigo struck me in a wave at the mention of my name. Nausea followed a second after. What little I had in my stomach, the second after that. I bent double and my chains came away like softened butter.


    "You don''t know-" I started, mewling the words around the bile coating my mouth.


    "Yes, We do."


    Diablo''s body spasmed on the ground, half of him anyway. His left side was completely stilled but the right shuddered. A bone-rattling wheeze sagged from the ruin of his face. I plucked the pistol from his writhing, curled fist.


    "Can you¡­ fix him?"


    "For Our H?????i???i???r????o???, anything."


    Bim barely spared a thought for it, her main focus somewhere a trillion kilometers away. She flicked a hand and Diablo''s skull grew outwards in even jerking pulses. I could have been watching a time lapse of a man''s head inflating if it hadn''t been for the sounds he made as his bones scraped together while slithering into place.


    For a single blink-and-you-miss-it moment, Diablo was healed. I didn''t blink. I saw it and I watched that healing continue when it should have finished. Rampant, freakish, mutant growth started exploding out of his head.


    Diablo''s skull kept growing bone into horn-like spikes and armored plate deposits at random. It reminded me of degenerative radiation poisoning and how the body slowly forgot what a human was supposed to look like. I watched in horror as the flesh change took hold of every bone in his body and began warping it into¡­ something monstrous.


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    It wasn''t just his skeleton either. Brains, muscle and little fleshy nubs that might have been tongues radiated outwards from their cranial starting point. His left eye popped out of his face with an extruding growth lumpy grey matter. His jaw fell off, reveling scything bone mandibles and the meat of what had been his airway and esophagus. Everywhere I looked the change had taken hold of him.


    "Bim! Stop this." I wanted to roar the words, to assert some sanity over the madness unfolding a meter away from me, but the words came out in a desperate plea.


    She didn''t respond. Didn''t tilt her head like she always did when something confused her. Didn''t pull her focus back to me from wherever it was. And she didn''t stop whatever she''d done to Diablo.


    Then I saw a meaty piece fling itself free of the undulating flesh. It splattered on the ground and spread veiny webbed claws into the ferrocrete. It was like the roots of a tree. Then that flesh started growing. It was spreading like a fungus of living cancer. A seed landed on Mudo and in an instant the man was consumed.


    Something in my mind snapped once I saw the living cancer forming triangles that formed helices that formed hexagrams that formed shapes I didn''t even know the names of. I stole a single terrifying glance at something human''s weren''t meant to see. I wept at the sight.


    As I wept I screamed a bare-throated wordless roar.


    Flames lashed out form my gaping maw but it wasn''t enough. I hefted Diablo''s pistol and blasted into the cursed ruin of man. Each panicked, berserk pull of the trigger incinerated swaths of the living cancer yet still I raged in berserk insanity.


    A condensed inferno of golden-white light poured from me, striking the living cancer and latching on like jellied napalm. With the living cancer to fuel the fire, the flames bellowed an oily black-green smoky-tar that reminded me of every person I''d ever killed in cold blood. It was sickening. Maddening.


    And it was only a fraction of the roiling orderly insanity I saw churning through the gnashing lacerations in Bim''s skin.


    My knees slammed into the uneven, charred floor once my fire was spent. Portions of the interrogation cell had been chewed up, consumed by the living cancer now rendered into a brittle ask by the cleansing flames.


    Bim hadn''t moved this entire time. Just looking without really seeing. Like she is and was and will be in a million places at once and none of them are here and now. She was right there, so close I could reach out and grab her, but somehow she''d never been further from me.


    "Bim¡­" I struggled to get the words out around the tightness on my throat. "What happened to you?"


    "We¡­ No, she¡­ She has to save him." Bim spoke the words in a broke chorus of whispering voices. Hundreds of dissonant hissing throats all funneling the words through a single set of unmoving lips.


    Something was wrong with her. She had broken somehow. This wasn''t the same as after the rollover but it was similar. Bim needed my help. But I had no idea how to fix her. No idea if she could be fixed.


    I stumbled on rubbery legs to her. I reached for her hand and she felt like she was made of ice. She felt as cold as I''d been when I first heard her sibilant hushes whispered between the fury of nature and the beauty of the cosmos. I remembered how I''d felt her calling me across the stars and the haunting familiarity I''d known as soon as I laid eyes on her.


    Above all else, I felt the burning love I''d never known until I woke up beside her.


    "B???i????m????''?????," Her name leapt from me as my soul soared at the utterance. "Come back to me. I need you."


    "She has to save him." A hundred voices said using Bim''s mouth.


    "You did. You did save me." I was choking on the words. I couldn''t swallow this growing lump in my throat no matter how many time I tried. "I''m right here, so please, please come back to me."


    I could have been begging to a statue. The twinned suns of her eyes didn''t move, not a flicker of indecision. What little humanity Bim had picked up wasn''t just diluted in all her star-god power trip, it was completely gone. This¡­ thing wasn''t her.


    She was the only thing I wanted, everything I''d never realized, and now she was gone. If the gods or God or whatever, if any of them were real, they had a pretty fucked up sense of humor.


    Bim''s body was right here in my arms and there wasn''t a spark of life anywhere to be found. If I ignored the millions of wriggling writhing things slithering under her skin, she could have been stone-cold dead.


    I reached for my inner fire. It came with hesitation now and somehow, it seemed almost sympathetic. I could feel it howling inside of my bones, the mournful haunting cry of a lone wolf calling for a pack that had been slaughter. It was a chilling note, as real to me now as the life-sapping arctic winds had been in months long past.


    Bim''s body was ice in my arms. I had a fire in my soul and a blizzard in my memories. Something was going to break, and if it had to be me I think I''d be fine with that. So long as Bim came back. Arctic nightmares tore through my mind, but one struck a cord. The first time I''d ever heard her voice calling out to me on the brink of death and despair.


    "What''s-" I started, fighting down a fist-sized lump in my throat. "What is it you desire?"


    She blinked. For the first time, she blinked! When she opened her eyes the twinned burning suns were gone, replaced by her usual golden-amber eyes and all her insatiable curiosity.


    Bim was in there! Trapped in her alien body, pleading and detached from the human world. I saw it in her eyes, she was clinging to the question with all that she was. I was her lifeline and I could feel her slipping away from me.


    I wasn''t going to let that happen¡ª even if it killed me.


    My voice was a rasp of emotion but I kept digging for every memory, every feeling, every single ounce of love I felt for her and I forced it all into a single word. I bled my heart and bared my soul and put every fiber of my being into calling her back from the abyss.


    "B???i????m????''?????k???e???l????a?????i?????d????h?????z?????a?????" I purred the alien word, drowning in its power as it coiled from my tongue. An utterly alien concept hammered against my mind threatening to devour me but I held fast to the burning desire to save her and pressed through. "What is it you desire?"


    Tears like liquid gold fell from her eyes as her lips trembled.


    "You," She whispered. "Always and Eternally. For the rest of your life and all those that come after this. You, my H?????i???i???r????o???, are the only thing I could never be without."


    She fell from the air into my waiting arms. She was freezing to the touch¡ª shivering, trembling as she threw her body against mine. Fear be damned or maybe because of it, she was eager and so was I¡­ Until my fingers grazed the soul-numbing contraption embedded in her back. Suddenly, there was no solidity to her. She was less than a ghost as she pulled my arms.


    "We¡­ I, have to save you." Bim whispered, uttering each syllable like it was a battle. "It''s not safe here."


    Bim turned her head back towards the way she''d came. She flicked a single finger and a rubble-dusted tapestry snaked its way through the air to us. Bim stepped aboard and offered me a hand.


    I took it without hesitation and suddenly, we were flying.


    We flew out from the depths of the earth. Past the thousands of men she''d slaughtered to rescue me. Past ground zero where I spotted the wrecks of tanks, cannons and fast-attack cars all poking up through the rubble. Past the fortress that had been laid to ruin.


    We lifted higher, pulling away from the cliffside that looked like a titan had clawed down into it. We were soaring over the city in chaos I''d spent the past few weeks living in. It looked like a giant had swatted over a tower of building blocks, scattering them into Crucibab. I spotted columns of soldiers arrayed against crowds on the edge of the disaster zone. A wing of flyers were racing across our path and Bim dropped our flight lower.


    We were practically scraping the rooftops, serpentining between boulders five times bigger than any house. The streets below were dark except for where fires had started burning out of control or rescue workers had erected floodlights. I saw a cone of light panning over a familiar street of identical townhouses that had never known electricity.


    A colossal pillar of stone had toppled end-over-end as it smashed its way through the neighborhood. I saw twelve houses obliterated, two spared, then another thirty demolished. The pattern repeated over and over again.


    I knew what I''d see before we reached it. I wanted to tell Bim to take us higher, to veer off course, but I couldn''t find my voice. Even if I did, it was taking everything she had to keep us pointed arrow-straight for Celio''s estate. I couldn''t turn a blind eye to the cataclysmic devastation below. My eyes were searching for my safehouse¡ª for Sophia''s home. To my dismay, I found it.


    Right where I thought it would be, at the edge of destruction, I saw the unfamiliar ruin of a once familiar house. The rescue efforts and their heavy machinery were far off. Instead I saw a crowd of neighbors, faces I knew even if I couldn''t put names to them, working by the light of a neighboring house in full blaze.


    They were trying to get the bodies out before the fire spread. Three men were tearing through the brickwork of Sophia''s house looking for her before the flames took what was left of her home. They clawed at the scattered bricks and splintered timbers like men possessed but they were nowhere near fast enough.


    The men broke off their search, the fire was spreading too fast. I tried to take a breath but all I could taste was ash and the iron-tang of blood in the air. We were flying past and I couldn''t tell if they''d found her¡ª if she was buried under the wreckage. Maybe she hadn''t been home. Maybe she''d gone shopping during the night.


    But then I saw a splash of color in the firelight.


    One of the men had a scrap of cloth wrapped around his arm and even with the growing distance, I could tell it was a hideous mix of yellow and blue. I could have sworn it was half-soaked in ruby red, but I was hoping that was just a trick of the light.


    I hoped it was¡­ but I knew it wasn''t.

 Interlude - Leeroy

    _ _ _Leeroy


    The Black Hound was still burning west bound as Leeroy finished locking himself into his warplate. Five tonnes of unrivaled personal protection hugged him like the father he''d grown beyond. Suited up and locked in, he was the culmination of centuries of precision engineering and millenia of landsknecht eugenics. He was a weapon on the cutting edge.


    Leeroy glanced to his strike team, the best he could pull from Celio''s protection without overtly compromising the defensive posture he''d painstakingly built over these past four months. Havoc was flexing the clawed fingers of his gauntlets, gnashing the vanadium alloy because he couldn''t wait to sink those talons into someone and tear. Pauz sat hunched over his autocannon, toying with his underbarrel shredder¡ª loading flechettes only to swap for grenades before repeating the cycle. Jhordan, the strike team''s forth and final member, was trying to persuade an outdated spectral-blocker shield that it had one more fight left in it.


    On paper, they weren''t much. Four hardened mercs each wearing a few million GSaC worth of gear. A betting man might have seen the odds, four mercs against an entire police precinct and their militia auxiliaries, and thought the cards were stacked against them. Leeroy didn''t believe in leaving things to chance. He''d loaded the deck as much as he could, now all that was left was to follow through.


    Suddenly the Hound started climbing instead of dropping. It tore left, throwing his strike team to the deck. Leeory could hear the shuttle''s frame creaking as it fought the strain of immutable physics at play.


    "Clancy what are you doing?!" He demanded.


    The Hound banked left and opened its throttle wide in reply. Then he felt the roaring tremor of its afterburners firing on max.


    "Clancy, what''s going on? Are we under fire?"


    It didn''t sound like it. Didn''t feel like there were shells buzzing past them. There was no ozone tinge of lasers flash-boiling the clouds or hull. Leeroy had been in enough gunned down shuttles to know he''d never forget those sensations. Clancy finally let off the throttle and picked up the intercom.


    "I¡­ I don''t really know what I''m looking at up here."


    Leeroy flicked his eyes, wiggled his face and stamped his teeth, pulling up the shuttle''s camera feeds on his suit''s HUD and searching for what he meant. His eyes passed over it three times before he saw it. The Hound''s nose imaging was all looking at a cliffside in the city about four klicks from their target drop zone.


    Something was tearing the mountain apart, throwing the biggest pieces kilometers into the air. As he squinted in, he could see that some of those chunks were entire buildings and a lot of those buildings were scattering smaller fragments¡ª people, he realizes.


    It reminded him of seeing an anthill kicked open. Watching all the insects scatter around in a panic. Only he wasn''t looking at an anthill, he was looking at a city of more than twelve-million people.


    Another swipe tore into the mountain and the spoil was cast aside. No flash of explosives, no shockwave of rail accelerators, nothing. A titanic pair of invisible hands were clawing through millions of tonnes of stone and infrastructure and throwing it all away.


    He''d seen wars, both on the ground and in space. He''d seen men and women cut down in their hundreds, bombs leveling cities and even an entire ship getting slagged to atomic dust. He''d seen the alien horrors always skulking around humanity''s peripheries in the Eldritch DMZ and out on the fringe worlds. But Leeroy had never seen anything like this, nothing could have prepared him for it.


    He couldn''t rationalize it, it was too big yet too specific. It was like a carpet bombing with a single-minded sentient hatred guiding each warhead. It was like a toddler had been given command of a war fleet while playing pretend. It was a cataclysm too localized to be natural but just indiscriminate enough to be slaughtering thousands of bystanders every minute.


    "Jesus fucking Christ." The words slipped from his lips over the open air of his comm link.


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    No one bothered to chastise him. They were all watching the same thing. There was nothing any of them could do to change what was already in motion. It was beyond anything humans and all their engines of war could hope to stop or imitate. But Leeroy knew someone who could.


    "Get me a private link to Treu!" Leeroy barked. "Shit, does he even have one of our radios-"


    "I do." Treu''s vile rumbling purr answered instantly, almost as if he''d been waiting for the call.


    "Are you seeing-"


    "Yes, I am."


    "You said I''d know it when I saw it."


    "I did."


    "This is it. Isn''t it?" Leeroy asked, unable to keep the disbelief from his tone. "You have to put them down. I get it. I understand. Do it."


    The open air hissed, waiting for Treu''s answer as a sub-orbital meteor shower rained into the city below; hundreds of lives being snuffed out every time a rock touched down with dozens of rock falling every second. Leeroy''s armor was rated for vacuum, but the air seemed thin. He could barely breathe.


    "No, it isn''t." Treu said at length. "And no, I don''t."


    Leeroy couldn''t believe it. The implications struck him dumb. It was a battle, but Leeroy fought off his stupor and found his voice.


    "You mean there''s something worse¡ª worse than this¡­"


    He couldn''t believe it. Couldn''t conceptualize how any single being could have that kind of power. Leeroy hadn''t meant it as a question, but Treu answered anyway.


    "Yes. The creature still has two of three seals in place. What you are witnessing now is but a minute fraction of its power."


    Leeroy couldn''t believe it. He just couldn''t fit the pieces together into a single picture that made sense. It was like there was a gouge missing from the hard drive of his mind and every time he tried to pull a thought from that section there was just¡­ nothing. Stupification. Disbelief.


    "She''s a monster." Leeroy hadn''t meant to speak aloud. The words slipped from his mouth of their own accord.


    "Yes, it is." Treu purred the words with vile, perverse delight. "Tell me, are you familiar with the legend of the hydra?"


    Leeroy tried to recall what he knew but the devastation below commanded his attention. Eventually, he closed his eyes to think. He could still see the desolation in his mind''s eye, but wasn''t as fresh¡ªas commanding¡ªwhich helped somewhat.


    "It was a dragon," Leeroy recalled, "but it had many heads. Every time they thought it was dead, a new head would grow because they couldn''t completely kill it. Every time they fought it, it just got stronger and stronger. Eventually it was trapped in a desert cave and starved until it was weak enough for the landsknecht''s original clans to destroy it once and for all."


    "Exactly." Treu said, practically purring. "What you are witnessing is a single head of a similar beast."


    "One that keeps coming back¡­ You need all of it to completely annihilate it for good."


    The realization of Treu''s motives brought up a sensation Leeory hadn''t felt in years. Dread. Compared to Treu''s dragon-slaying mission, everything else paled in importance. Leeroy and the outfit were little more than children playing soldier while a real warrior made ready to confront a threat so utterly beyond them that Leeroy could barely grasp the scope of it. Struggle as Leeroy might with the greater implications, Treu''s actions and tactics suddenly became transparent to him.


    "You''re using Hiiro as bait, to draw the rest of her here so you can destroy her."


    "I am." Treu confirmed. For the first time since meeting the man, Leeroy didn''t harbor a shadow of a doubt that Treu was being honest with him.


    "What do you need us to do?" Leeroy asked.


    "Us?"


    "Me. The outfit. Humanity. All nine bloody miles of Us. How do we kill her?"


    "Pretend this conversation never happened and when the time comes, get the hell out of my way."


    Leeroy opened his eyes and looked back at the video feed. Things have calmed down now but there was carnage everywhere. A city laid to waste as an afterthought. A Devil loosed upon this city specifically and humanity at large. It was all his fault.


    Why had he ever agreed to this escort contract? Every step of the way, he had known something was off and now there was no turning a blind eye to consequences of his hubris. Bim was as much Leeroy''s responsibility as she was Treu''s. She had to be stopped.


    "She''s a monster." Leeroy breathed once more, unable to think of his mistake as anything but.


    "Yes, it is." Treu confirmed, purring the words with vile, perverse delight.


    "So what the hell does that make you?" Leeroy asked.


    Treu paused long enough for Leeroy to think the connection died. Some part of him hoped it had. Bim was a monster, she''d just devastated an entire city district for fuck''s sake! Any sane man should be scared shitless. So why did Treu sound almost excited by the idea of going head to head with that apocalypse in the flesh?


    "I am what I have always claimed to be." Treu said in his succulent, vile purr. "I''m little more than the monster that kills other monsters."

 H30 - Siege [I]

    _ _ _Hiiro


    We came in fast and low, barely level with the upper cliffs from which Celio''s estate overlooked the ocean. I could feel the carpet sagging out beneath me and I really hoped Bim had enough juice left in her to go the distance. There would be a certain kind of irony if we came this far just to get splattered on the cliff face. At the last second the tapestry pulled taut under me, gaining those final few meters of elevation we needed to avoid an ignoble death.


    Then the rug went limp and lifeless. It fell away while Bim and I kept all of our momentum. We hit the crabgrass tumbling, then scraped across the patio stones before slamming into the pool. Instinct took over, I swam for the surface silently cursing my rotten luck and thanking Celio for having such an oversized swimming hole.


    My head broke water and I heard gunfire. Everywhere, all around me I realized, long-bursts of automatic fire accompanied by shrieking rockets and roaring cannons. I could almost see the muzzle flashes lighting up the front side of Celio''s estate, the brief spats of illumination reminded me of lightning crackling out of sight between heavy clouds. I shook my head, no time to think about that now. I swam to Bim and started towing her to the pool''s edge.


    Three rifles were waiting for me there. I only half-recognized two of the vigia in the pre-dawn twilight. Luckily, Malik was the third and the tall pale blond stood out from a crowd.


    "Oh! It''s you." Mailk said, barely lowering his weapon.


    No one offered a hand to help us out of the water, but no one shot us either. I gave Bim a boost up first, then hauled myself up and collapsed on the pool stone.


    "Whoa! Naked." Malik said, averting his gaze. Neither of the leering vigia extended that courtesy.


    I felt my limbs trembling with exhaustion and adrenaline and relief. I was back at the palace now, supposedly ''safe'' except for what sounded like a full-scale battle raging a few hundred meters away. My body was so heavy that breathing felt like a chore. I didn''t know if I could even stand up right now let alone find a weapon and join the battle.


    "Shit, you look rough. Think you can make it to the infirmary on your own?" Malik asked. "Maybe find some clothes and gear along the way?"


    "Dunno." I wheezed. "What''s going on?"


    "Same shit, different night. Just another day in paradise where everyone want''s you dead."


    "Don''t I know the feeling." I grumbled, flopping face-down and weakly levering myself onto my feet.


    The exhaustion wasn''t as crushing now that I was upright. I offered a hand and Bim took it, the meat of her palm spongy and sagging. She looked about as bad as I felt, but I doubted they could do anything for her at the infirmary.


    Bim''s skin had come together, sealing over the roiling insanity at her core with deep lacerations exposing black-gold strands of musculature. She was bruised a sickly yellow-green just about everywhere else I looked, except for her face. Her face was gaunt, her glassy vacant eyes were sunken back into pits that caught every shadow. She looked haunted and beaten.


    I wrapped an arm around her protectively¡ª it was tough since she was a good few centimeters taller than me, but I managed.


    I hobbled for the palace proper, trying and mostly failing to keep my weight off my excruciated toe. Bim shuffled meekly alongside me, a shadow of her normal self. We donned robes and sandals from the poolside spa and kept moving, still practically nude in a battleground.


    Out of the spa, across the foyer and into the south wing''s main kitchen. It was like we''d walked over some invisible line from hearing the battle in the distance and being dropped into its periphery. Stray bullets were hammering into the north wall, maybe one in fifty tearing through and tumbling into the kitchen to strike the steely appliances or cookware with a clattering pang. I forced Bim to keep her head down and kept moving.


    I poked my head out into a hallway antechamber, spotting twenty vigia ferrying thick hardwood tables out of this wing''s dinning hall towards the fighting. They were shoring up this wing''s north facing. That side of the palace had a bit of everything in it, same as the rest of the palace proper, but the edge facing where the gardens had been was mostly apartments and corridors. I remembered wandering the halls when we''d first landed on world, gazing out at the long promenade driveway and the gardens beyond.


    One of the men hauling furniture yelled something at me. Probably telling me to get in the fight or help with the defenses. Some part of me wanted to do just that, but that was stupid. I was unarmed, wearing a spa robe that barely reached my knees, beaten and bloody, drained and exhausted. I gave Bim''s ice-cold hand a squeeze, waited for a lull in the incoming fire and kept moving.


    I knew there was a servant''s stairway around here somewhere. I couldn''t remember exactly but I thought it was closer to the war-torn side of the palace. I could always detour a few kilometers, go back outside and around the backyard to approach from the west wing instead of the south side. Being inside wasn''t that much safer than out at the moment.


    Bim tripped on a chunk of plaster that''d been knocked off the wall, nearly pulling me down with her. Nearly, but I kept my footing. I spotted a bathroom and dragged her inside, a few meters closer to the illusion of safety. I felt like scat. She looked worse.


    "Hey! Come on, just hang in there a little longer. We''re almost there." I sounded tired and weak. Bim didn''t seem to notice, her attention was someplace a trillion kilometers from here.


    "¡­I shall endure." She mumbled.


    A split second later an explosion blew the bathroom door off the wall and bowled us both to the ground. I flopped back onto my feet, coughing out a lungful of plaster dust the entire time.


    "You okay?" I asked.


    "I shall endure." Bim repeated, though there was a little less life in the words this time.


    "Let''s move."


    The corridor connected to our bathroom had a brand new skylight, as did the five floors above it. The bomb or mortar or whatever had punched a neat little hole going in and then blown a messy crater when it finally detonated. Through a hole in the plaster, I spotted the stairway I''d been headed for and climbed. The fastest route brought us closer to the wing''s north edge and I actually saw the battle for the first time as I moved low, trying to keep out of sight. It was a war zone out there.


    Tanks were burning in the main drive maybe two-hundred meters out. Troop trucks had spread wide to envelope the estate''s landward approach; I could see where the lead trucks had rushed into the minefield based on the craters and burning chassis. The remainder had dismounted and were slowly clearing paths through the mines. At the same time a column of tanks were using their burning companions as cover so they could support the exposed infantry.


    Further off to the east I spotted a mess of tracers and laser strobes being traded between the palace''s west wing¡ªwhere the mercs were based out of¡ªand the garages/hangars next to the flat strip of ferrocrete Celio used as a drag strip and runway as he pleased. Beyond that, I saw something like thirty burning rotarcraft. The dogged remains of a failed airbridge holding out until they could link up with the main force.


    I kept moving, dragging Bim behind me. The second floor wasn''t nearly as battle-damaged as the first had been. I probably wouldn''t have noticed under normal conditions, but I could almost see the angles the attackers had been shooting from. At ground level it''d been mostly flat, stray rounds punching through room after room after room, but up here I spotted a lot more damage up in the ceiling behind the defenders. Some part of me had this weird sense of artistry from the sight. I shook it off and kept moving, following the flow of wounded towards the infirmary.


    Unsurprisingly, the place was quite busy.


    I wasn''t all that familiar with how hospitals operated, but the scene before me seemed backwards. Vigia and maids were being left on the floor to bleed out from massive wounds while the doctors and surgeon calmly stepped over them. Meanwhile lesser injuries were tended first. Broken limbs were splinted, painkillers and stimulants administered and then the walking wounded were sent back into the fight.


    A leathery medic flagged me over. I collapsed onto the crusty armchair without a fight.


    "Nice of you to join us, Hero." Frank said around the unlit cigarette between his lips.


    A man was grabbing at my foot, blood gushing out from shredded meat of his stumped thigh. Half his face was ripped up by shrapnel, I could even count to wood splinters lodged in his jellied eye.


    "What''s going on?" I asked, looking away from the hand weakly clawing at me.


    "It seems like the army finally got tired of Celio doing as he pleased. Hold still, relax." Frank said as he pumped twinned drug cocktails into my shoulder. "I''m surprised they took this long about it. First contact was about a half-hour ago."


    "Why are we just sitting here and getting pounded? Shouldn''t we regroup or something?"


    "That''s what he''s been saying." Frank said gruffy, jutting a chin towards Celio''s chief lieutenant, Richardio. "Drop everything and run¡ª no mention of where he plans on running to¡­ Talk like that would''ve gotten him shot in the legions."


    "I didn''t say run," I snapped defensively as the medic poked and prodded. "I said regroup."


    Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    "That''s what we''re doing now. Circling the wagons. If you don''t like that, take it up with the boss. There, all done."


    "Can you do anything for Bim?" I asked.


    The leathery medic took one look at the ribbons torn from her and reached for a stapler. He''d sank five hefty pins in her before Bim vacantly noticed.


    "That is unnecessary." She said distantly. With a grimace, each staple forced itself out of her tissue and her wounds slowly glued themselves shut. Once she finished, her posture sagged and her shoulders slumped with fatigue.


    "Neat trick. But I''ve got other casualties who need me." Frank started to move away but I snatched his arm.


    "One thing, can I get some smokes off you? I lost mine." Frank rolled his eyes but dug out his pack anyway.


    "You get one. Now get out of here. There''s a war on in case you hadn''t noticed."


    It took some effort but I sparked up and started sucking down sweet poison then and there. Bim gave me a little sidelong glance but I was too busy scratching my itch to care. I threw on some pants that were a few sizes too big, grabbed a rifle and ammo bandoleer off a maid who''d been blinded. I hit the corridors and headed for the west wing without any better ideas than linking up with the rest of the mercs. Bim follow behind me like a dutiful shadow, as lost and out of place in the chaos as I was.


    Whatever drugs were floating around inside my veins picked me right up. I felt fully charged, switched on and maybe a little skittish but all around decent. The general beating I''d take was a distant memory and the last traces of my exhaustion were a gritty sensation behind my eyes when I blinked. I tried to think of the last time I''d used a rifle. Decades ago, hunting as a teen. I''d never used one in a fight, never on a man. I''d have prefered a pistol but this wasn''t pistol fighting, not yet anyways.


    I reached for my killing flames and found dull embers in the pit of my stomach. I was tapped on that front. Maybe I could do something small, but small wasn''t going to make much of a difference in a battle like this. I heard Bim stumbling half-blind and exhausted behind me.


    The first hints of a thought came to me and I tried shut them down. It made sense, it was a good idea. The suggestion of memories still fresh in my mind beckoned, tempting me to look inwards. I''d seen what she could do if she cut wild. Bim could do make all the difference. She could slaughter them all. I hated myself for even considering it, but I still turned back to ask her to-


    The haunted look in her eyes stopped me dead. I blinked, looking for the woman I''d been expecting¡ªregal, powerful, self-assured if a bit aloof and so undeniably curious¡ªbut she was nowhere to be seen. Bim was a husk of the vengeful angel that massacred tens of thousands just to save me not even an hour ago. I saw a shadow of that woman''s body, but the heart of what made her her was gone.  Her eyes found mine in the twilight of burning vehicles and flashing gunfire.


    She looked miserable and pained beyond words.


    My request died on my tongue. Bim was paying whatever price my rescue had cost her. I price I couldn''t even begin to guess at. She had done this to herself for me. Devastated a city, demolished a garrison, destroyed herself all for me. And like a heartless bastard, I was about to ask her to do it all again.


    I couldn''t do it. Damned if it might get me killed, but I couldn''t put her through that. Not again. Not when she''d barely come back to me last time.


    I hated how small and powerless I was, even thinking about asking Bim to fight my battles for me. I kept my head down and kept moving. That was all I could do. Keep moving. Don''t think, just move.


    I hit a massive crater where a small plane had crashed, stabbing a gash up to the roof at a steep angle. Two shapes defied the pre-dawn sky, illuminated by a constant stream of roaring tracer fire. I recognized Gidget''s warsuit, a trashcan on legs lit by its own weapons, hurling hundreds of glowing shots into the night sky. Another suit of armor was at his back doing the same. A flash of red flames in the sky, then something was burning as it streaked towards the ground.


    I found a path around the missing slice of palace and kept moving. It seemed impossible that the mercs and their armored demigods hadn''t already won the battle. I was a fool for thinking they''d even need me. What difference would one more rifle make? None. None at all by the time the suns came up.


    We were near the ops center and the small armory next door. The palace has had some very interesting new hallways smashed through rooms and floors the closer I got to the merc''s headquarters. It made sense in the heat of the moment, but a small part of my mind kept thinking how annoying these holes would be after the fighting. If we survived the battle, we could always deal with it then.


    I tried to chart a path clear of the fighting but a collapsed floor forced me to skirt the front. A squad of Celio''s men were dug in at the crossing I needed, blindly spraying gunfire down at the attacking forces. Two of their initial seven were down and out, the remainder were keeping their heads down.


    The crossing was too exposed for me to sprint it and those idiots were only attracting enemy fire while wasting their ammo. I was by no means a professional soldier¡ªI''d been a conscript pioneer a decade ago¡ªbut even I could tell these fools were a weak link. The career soldiers outside saw it too. There was an enemy squad down there positioning themselves to exploit it.


    "You guys need to move!" I shouted over the incoming fire.


    They ignored me to a man. One even dropped his rifle to cover his ears with both hands.


    "Cover each other! Then move!" I roared over the din.


    One of seven got up and ran for it, spraying from the hip as he did. He didn''t get very far. The rest hunkered down. Months of training and this was what came of it. I''d have felt bad for Leeroy and Celio if the morons weren''t about to get me killed by proximity. They were gangsters too set in their ways. Too used to pushing people around and getting away with it. Fighting steel to steel like this went against everything they''d known until now.


    A grenade airburst opposite the cowering thugs. I spotted shrapnel and glass twinkling in the low light for a split second. It made a mess of the vigia but I didn''t see any of them drop. They barely got scratched from the looks of it. That was all it took to break them. They scattered right into the waiting guns of the squad who''d flushed them.


    Then the enemy rushed for the ground floor trying to seize some ground worth holding.


    Before I could even curse the poor stupid cowards who''d handed my ass on a platter, in rushed a squad of frills and fatigues from further west. They weren''t all that pretty, to a woman they were bloodied and bruised, but damned if they weren''t a sight for sore eyes.


    Six of Celio''s battle maids hit the approaching vanguard like they''d been training their whole lives for this¡ª instead of just the past four months. Advancing by fire, covering, relocating under concealment. All said, they were probably better soldiers than I was with my bare-bones conscript background. Two of the girls went down hard while the rest kept fighting. I poked my head up and gave them some covering fire, dumping a magazine in three long bursts.


    I couldn''t tell if they were getting the job done, but those girls had nerve. In a fight like this, nerve might be what made the difference. More importantly, they gave me the window I needed to keep moving.


    I reached the ops center, found a chair and collapsed into it. No one really paid me any mind. Alice and the head maid, Carmen, were listening to radio chatter. Princess was staring intently at a screen with hundreds of tags each denoting a explosive. I''d been expecting to see Celio and Leeroy but both were conspicuously absent.


    Treu was lurking a man-sized hole in the wall near all the antennas gazing out at the see. More impressively, he had a weapon on him for the first time since I''d encountered the man. Some kind of long, slivery glaive/railgun-looking thing slung over his shoulder and a battle belt around his hips. That set me back a bit. If Treu felt the need for a weapon the situation must have been way worse than I''d thought.


    Bim walked up to Treu like a condemned woman headed for the noose. She even bared her throat for him. Treu slapped the dampening torc around her throat once more, and I only just noticed she hadn''t been wearing it. A second later, she found a chair to slump into and collapsed.


    "-old out a little longer! I''m inbound now, eight minutes out." Leeroy was talking over the radio. Alice answered, soft-spoken but still her voice carried over the muffled gunfire.


    "Stay away. I say again, stay away. Four suits won''t make a difference-"


    "We might-" He started.


    "You won''t! The situation on the ground hasn''t changed but we''ve got more fast-wing drones than Gidget and Bazzle can shoot down. If it weren''t for the home guard, we''d already be overrun. We-"


    BOOM!


    "Shit! Was that the last of the mines?" Alice demanded.


    "No, that wasn''t one of ours. That was a fuel explosion." No one bothered asking how Princess knew, they just took her expertise as fact. The albino demi-human plucked a detonator from the arrayed selection and clacked it. A chain of distant crumps sounded and a dozen tags vanished from her screen. "Well shit, this isn''t ideal. We''re going to lose the south wing faster than we thought."


    "Carmen, shift some more of your women to the center to support them." Alice said before keying the radio. "Stay clear until we get break in hostile air cover-"


    "I''ll be there in six minutes." Leeroy answered.


    "We don''t have a window-"


    "Then make me a window Alice!" Leeroy barked. "The enemy won''t always give us our dream engagement, sometimes we''ve got to supply one ourselves. Make it happen! Four minutes."


    BOOM!


    "That one was incoming." Princess commented, sounding almost bored. "I guess the local militia is better armed than our crooks. Sure would be nice if they stopped throwing bodies at us. Any idea if their running low?"


    "Unlikely," Bim stated wearily. "This assualt is being conducted by the 8th Lowland Motor Guard regiment. Additionally there are attached elements from: 12th airborn, 4th marines, ''Hellriders Armored Assault unit'', ''Loyalist Irregulars'', and 1st combat avionics. The force estimates for all combined units committed to the assault was twenty-two hundred combat-effective personnel."


    "What!?" Alice demanded.


    "Operational command belongs to Colonel Marcos Heathcliff." Bim continued by rote. "Primary objective is the capture of Celio-Rodrigo das Estrelas Salvador Dominar, secondary is the destruction and degradation of Celio''s guerrilla forces. Prisoners of war are to be take or denied at unit discretion by on-the-ground commanders."


    Everyone stared at Bim, waiting for her to elaborate. A few cast glances at me, hoping I would fill in the gaps. I couldn''t so I just shrugged.


    "How do you know this and how does this help us?"


    "I¡­" Bim seemed conflicted, unsure of what to say. That wasn''t like her. She was always very cut and dried. She had been before anyway. "This information was known to several of the soldiers and officers at Fort Liberty. I acquired this information while¡­ prior to their collective expiration. I am unsure of if this information will be of use."


    I shuddered, trying and failing to avoid thinking about all the people who''d ''expired'' while Bim was rescuing me. No one but Treu seemed to notice.


    "Well shit, yeah that figures." Alice said with a sigh.


    "At least that means so long as Celio is here they won''t just flatten the palace." Princess noted, selecting another detonator to blow.


    Boom!


    "Or maybe not." She added before blowing up something.


    "I''m touching down in five minutes." Leeroy squawked over the radio. "Here''s the plan, no objections. The Hound touch''s down, I dismount. Celio and ever one of our people not in warplate, mount. The Hound leaves with the VIP and his new escort. Spitball from there."


    "What about the rest?" Alice asked. I found myself wondering the same thing.


    "Our suits can handle themselves. They''ve got a better chance of spearing through without littles slowing them down. Failing that, they can jump off the cliffs into the ocean and walk to shore if they have too."


    "And everyone else?" Alice asked. "Celio''s little army we''ve spent all this time training. Are we just cutting our losses with them?"


    "Best case? They break out at their own initiative. Worst case? They buy us time. We have to focus on ourselves and our client first. If Celio dies than this is all for nothing. If I have to choose between them and us, I choose us. Every time."


    "Dammit¡­" Alice growled. "Fucking shit! Fuck! Fine. I do to."

 H30 -Siege [II]

    _ _ _Hiiro


    "Shadow Shadow Shadow. All littles, make ready for immediate extraction. Four minutes, rear of the west wing. Powertechs, we need a hole in that air cover ASAP. Make it happen people." Alice turned from the radio and spoke to Carmen. "We''ll try and take as many of your girls with us as possible. We''ll take who we can¡­"


    Celio''s head maid was all mettle just them. Her face could have been an iron mask as she nodded her understanding to Alice before taking up a radio of her own.


    "Guerreiro Dom¨¦stica, I have news and orders. The Savior is absconding from the grounds, escorted by the Estralas. Their m¨¢quinas morte will stay with us, but this estate will soon fall. If you are with the warriors from the stars, go with them and escape. For those of you who cannot, my final order on behalf of the Savior himself is this. Survive. Return to the land and your mothers with grace knowing you have accomplished more today than many women do in their entire lives. V¨¢ com Deus!"


    "That was a nice speech." Alice said softly.


    "I hope so. That''s the last kind thing a lot of my girls will hear for the rest of their lives." Carmen replied heavily, before drawing a small cross from her her blouse and whispering. "Deus me liberte."


    The well-oiled machine of mercs in motion exploded into motion. In seconds flat, everything that couldn''t afford to be left behind was either stuffed in a bag or had one of Princess''s explosives stuck to it. I had a radio thrust unto me along with a handful of OSDs. It was a struggle for me to get off my ass and find my feet, along with the distant suggestion of pain that accompanied standing, but I managed.


    Alice keyed her master radio once again.


    "Judgment incoming, all heads down. Judgment incoming¡­ NOW!"


    Princess hit the detonator with FUBAR scratched into its side and the world came alive under my feet.


    The world''s largest firecracker chain was being set off in the next room over all in sequence. The palace floor was quivering in a way that reminded me of how it''d felt being inside a mountain as Bim was ripping it open. I looked out the remains of a window, expecting to see Celio''s entire cliffside estate sliding into the open sea. No such luck¡ª I wasn''t sure if that was good or bad.


    "That buys us three minutes at best. Let''s move!" Princess barked.


    Then we were all moving, racing in a mad dash for the back yard. Mercs were coming out of the woodworks, sliding through mouse-holed palace like ghosts through the walls. I spotted maids falling back by fireteams, plus some rare few vigia stunned and confused but joining in with the crowd anyway. The vigia weren''t followers to a tee, but maybe a third of those who saw our mad lemming sprint for the cliffs came running. I would have cursed the stupid bastards if I had the breath to spare.


    Our crowd hit the backyard and I thought the sky was on fire. Thin wispy clouds were exploding, seven lines of glowing tracers and burning laser strobes lancing up into the sky.


    It was raining planes. There must have been dozens of planes shot down already, crashing down into the palace, ocean and even down into their allies still trying to make their approach. For every flyer shot down, there must have been another two still circling high overhead.


    The Black Hound smashed into the backyard like a thrown brick, carving a furrow through grass and stone as it slid to a stop. All six engines were burning hard, swamping us all in the backwash of dry heat. Half of the engines were scorching the lawn and pealing the thick paint of the palace walls thirty meters away; the other half were just melting patio stones into a black volcanic slag. Four titans of steel jumped out of the shuttle and took up vigil.


    Everyone hauled ass for the shuttle''s ramp. I was falling behind, hobbling on my tortured toe and rubber legs as fast as I could but I was at the rear of the pack. Even the maids acting as the rearguard were overtaking me. Treu was the first one in the shuttle, Bim held indignantly over his shoulder like a sack of rice.


    Gunfire started tearing into the crowd ahead of me. There were soldiers here. It didn''t make sense! Not until I saw one of them climbing over the cliff ledge. Marines had scaled the hundred-plus meters high cliff. To a man, the marines were drop dead tired but that didn''t stop them from hefting their rifles and joining the fight.


    Leeroy and the other three armored giants charged marines, forcing them to choose between gunning us down as we ran or fighting off the war machines. I emptied my rifle towards the marines at a dead sprint then chucked the heavy steel once it ran dry. I wasn''t fast enough and the weight was slowing me down.


    The shuttle was still fifteen meters away from me as the engines flared brighter. The Hound was inching away as the last of the crowd piled in¡ª even the merc''s elderly surgeon Gerald managed to out sprint me. The dropped ramp was only five meters away and it was moving nearly as fast as I was now.


    I was racing the Hound as it gathered speed, the backwash of its engines nearly blowing me away as my clothes began burning. Stray gunfire chewed up the blackened stones at my feet,  driving me harder. I saw the cliffs'' ledge just ahead. I was running out of ground. I wasn''t going to make it.


    The shuttle shifted its screaming engines more upwards. Suddenly the gale pushing me back practically vanished. I nearly toppled onto my face but I kept my footing. Kept sprinting with everything I had for the approaching ledge.


    My mangled foot slammed into metal decking. I smashed into the merc''s elderly surgeon a split-second after.


    Gerald caught me with a blood-stained hand. His pale blue eyes played over my burning clothes and bare chest. I looked down too, thinking I''d been hit. But there was nothing there, no wounds¡­ and no golden cross necklace either. The hand that had caught me shoved away.


    Gerald pushed me.


    There wasn''t a flicker of doubt in his eyes. The shuttle''s engines flared. Everyone caught themselves, everyone found something to grab. Everyone except me.


    I slammed onto the charred lawn stones, rolling in a jumble of flailing limbs towards the ledge. The backwash of the engines caught me, stopped me and threw me back towards the wartorn palace as everyone else got away clean.


    I was still blinking the stars from my eyes as the Hound sealed its rear ramp and streaked off into the dawn sky. Bullets chased after it. I spotted a swarm of drones breaking off from the palace in pursuit. It wasn''t fair¡­


    I was tempted to just lie there. The palace was lost anyway. If I didn''t fight, they''d probably just capture me again, take me to a new dungeon and torture me some more. I gazed sleepily out at the ocean, to the sun as it considered cresting the distant waters.


    A new day and all I felt was exhaustion. I was tired of fighting. This wasn''t me. I wasn''t a battle-crazed mercenary. At least Bim had got away.


    Maybe if I was lucky she''d come rescue me again. The thought was like acid in my guts. I knew¡ªor at least I thought¡ªshe could, but what kind of man would I be if I put her through that again? I''d be no man at all.


    I flopped over. I wasn''t sure if I could stand, with all the bullets whizzing overhead I really didn''t want to. For lack of better option, I started crawling back towards the palace. A metal boot the size of my torso stomped down in front of me. I didn''t recognize the armor.


    "Get out of here you idiot!" I didn''t recognize the tinny booming voice either.


    I couldn''t stand, my legs wouldn''t work. The gnawing pit in my stomach was too heavy. I could hear men screaming as they fought, as they were ripped apart by flying lead and steely talons. There was nowhere to hide, the open yard was a mess of men as they charged and fought and fell. I kept crawling.


    A steel fist grabbed me around the ribs, the metallic fingers nearly wrapping my entire torso, and bowled me across the yard. I flew, rolled and struck the splintered remains of a poolside mini bar twenty meters away from where I''d been launched. I shook away stars and was amazed I was still alive.


    I tried to push myself upright but my forearm folded under me halfway down its length. I looked down and saw two jagged white spokes of bone sticking out from my right arm''s new joint. I was amazed it didn''t hurt. Just looking at it, I knew it should be agonizing.


    I wondered if I was dieing. The thought made me giddy from the neck up and numb from the neck down. It almost felt like my head wasn''t on straight. Whatever drugs were floating around in my veins, they were a hell of thing. I wasn''t looking forward to coming down off them¡ª if I made it that long¡­


    I started gingerly picking my way out of the minibar, catching glimpses of the battle all the while. The mercs were in the open, smashing into clumps of marines whenever they tried to regroup. The mercs in their giant warsuits were butchering the marines but still getting the scat beat out of them in return.


    It was like watching four Byakkai¡ªthe great demon tigers of my homeworld¡ªdoing battle with a tribe of hunters. Men were torn apart or flung from the cliff to their demise but still they fought, weakening the beasts by inches. If things kept up like this, it was only a matter of time until the hunters felled their quarry.


    A stitch of stray gunfire reminded me that I really had better places to be; I tore myself from the collapsed minibar, found my feet and ran for the palace. I crawled through a busted window, landing in a jumble of rubble and glass shards. I found my feet again and kept moving.


    I didn''t know where. The enemy was all around, closing in for the kill. I had no idea how I''d escape the closing noose; I just knew I''d never make it out on foot. I needed a car, or a helicopter. Hell, I''d take a bicycle right about now.


    I had to get to a garage. That should be easy enough, there were eight scattered across the compound. I was in the west wing¡­ the mercs might still have a few crossovers stashed down there from Celio''s doomed motorcades. I was hobbling through the halls when my radio hissed on, echoing with distant gunfire.


    "Hero," Idris said, radio crackled weakly and lending her terse voice a tinny edge. "I don''t know if you can hear this, if you''re even still alive¡­" Boom! I heard the explosion and the accompanying pings of shrapnel on metal through the radio first, then with my own ears a second later. "If you are, we''re losing ground. Find someone, anyone to link up with. We''re going to break out soon. That''s your best chance. Escape while we''re tearing though the encirclement. The odds aren''t great¡­ But if you can''t make it out on your own¡­ I just hope you can hear this."


    I keyed the radio to reply only to get a shriek of distortion.


    I gave up on answering and focused on doing what I could to stay alive. I kept moving, approaching the west wing''s garage with as much stealth as I could manage on legs I could barely feel with my broken arm that flopped with every step.


    The garage was on ground level and it was all concrete and steel, not a bad place to dig in and fight. Not that I planned on doing either, but maybe someone else had. There were two cars left, both fragged to deny the enemy them. I knew why the mercs had done it, but right then I really hated that Princess had done such a thorough job.


    I heard tools at work, steel clanking away and faint curses echoing throughout the ferrocrete garage. I kept low, sticking to the spotty shadows as I lurked closer. Someone was working on the second car, the one further from me. Had the army gotten this far already? I doubted it, but I wasn''t going to bet my life against such rotten luck.


    "Are you sure you know how to do this?" A man hissed.


    "I watched my charge change dozens of tires. It''s¡­" A woman answered, her familiar voice strained with exertion. "easssyyy!"


    Something slipped, I heard tools clattering together. A wrench came flying in my direction. I sidestepped it, bumping into a workbench as I did.


    A pair of compact rifles snapped over the vehicle, sighted on me in a heartbeat. They had me dead to rights, but they didn''t plug me full of holes. I focused my itchy eyes passed the rifles that weren''t shooting me dead. I recognized the women holding me at gunpoint.


    "Leonor-Sammara, Ambar-Lucia." I said, nodding to the chocolate-haired workhorse of a woman and the petite blond beside her. I raised both hands to show I was unarmed. It took them a second to recognize me under all the cuts, burns and bruises.


    "Your arm-" Ambar started.


    "Hiiro! Gra?as a Deus voc¨º vive." Zoe-Esther cried in delight, rising form the driver''s side tire she was working on. Her expression soured the instant she saw me. She collected herself quickly, always the diligent servant. "What should we do now?"


    I limped over to join them, assessing the situation. In a heartbeat, I saw that Zoe''s best efforts were in vain¡ª she''d been swapping out the shredded tires while the engine was blown to scrap. Driving out of the estate still seemed like my best option. There was a chance that the mercs hadn''t managed to sabotage all the vehicles in all the garages. Zoe was still looking at me.


    I wanted to say ''How the hell should I know!? What makes you think I''ve got any better ideas than you do!?'' I bit my tongue on that. She was looking to me for answers¡ª I was a star-faring mercenary, surely I''d know what to do. What a fucking joke.


    Instead I said, "We have to get out of here and we''re not going to do that in this."


    "Told you so." Leonor chided. Zoe ignored her.


    I wanted to pace as I thought but my foot wasn''t having that. I leaned against the scrapped car, looking far more relaxed than I felt. There were seven maids and two vigia with Zoe; I could tell at a glance that the men didn''t have any fight left in them. There were also three bodies lain in the corner with rags over their faces. I didn''t need to see her face to recognize Zoe''s other friend lying on the ground in a pool of blood. It wasn''t very respectful, but I tried to be gentle as I pulled the pistol from Khloe-Olivia-Emillia''s cold, dead hands and stuffed my pockets with what little ammo she''d had left.


    Zoe, Leonor, Ambar and me. Four guns and seven non-combatants. Eleven people who needed to find a way out of here. The Mercs sabotaged their wheels, the south side garage was too far away, if not already lost, the main fight was for the palace center right now. The palace was effectively a lost cause, but there were other garages¡­


    "Do any of Celio''s antique cars still run?" I asked.


    "All of them do." Ambar answered with a shrug. "He liked to race them down the strip before¡­"


    Before us. Before the fighting. Before he wanted to sit on the throne and rule the world. I wondered if Celio wouldn''t be happier racing his cars and enjoying all the pleasures of wealthy living. The silence hung and all eyes were on me. I''d never known how heavy someone''s gaze could be until that moment.


    "Then that''s where we''re going." I said, trying to sound confident.


    "The estate is lost." It was one of the vigia who''d spoke¡ª a hefty man with a very clean bandage wrapped around his head. "We''ll die if we go out there."


    "We''ll die if we stay here!" Leonor snapped back in a roar. "At least if we try, there''s a chance."


    "A fool''s chance." He answered.


    "Maybe." I admitted with a shrug that made my broken arm flop at my size. "But the gods favor fools. No one''s forcing you to come with us. Stay here and die if that''s what you want. We''re going to try and survive¡ª if that makes us fools then so be it."


    They were all looking at me expectantly. The battle maids seemed about as pumped as they could be in the situation. They were tired, their friend was lying dead a few feet to the left and we were running away. But they were focused, shoulders back and chins up. I felt a little guilty about it, but seeing these girls a decade my junior standing defiant made me feel a little braver.


    The look on their faces reminded me of something Leeroy had said. ''In the face of death, life gains a singular focus''. I wanted to live and so did they. Everything else fell by the wayside.


    "Leonor, Ambar, you two lead the way to the hangars. Zoe and I will bring up the rear. Everyone else, try and stick to the center of square between us. Keep your heads down. If you''re out in the open do NOT stop moving. Watch your footing and stick together without clumping up. We can do this."


    I nodded to myself, trying to think of anything else to say.


    My radio crackled to life again. Discordant voices raging over the din of battle. "Those fucking cowards are running!" "It''s too soon, we''re not in position yet." "They''re gonna get slaughtered!" "The line''s broken!" "Hold Fast! Hold Fast!"


    I couldn''t let myself think about what that meant. I had to think about what it meant for me and mine.


    "We have to go NOW! While their distracting them." I said, hating myself because I knew it was the right call. Those men were going to die partially because of their own stupidity, but also partially so I had a chance to live. I hated it, but damned if it didn''t light a fire under my ass.


    My fighting square hit the yard and swept wide, pushing northwest to try and clear as much of the southbound forces as we could. Any other time, we would have been crossing open ground but now Celio''s parkway was a blazing scrapyard of downed helicopters and drones interspersed with with craters, rubble and fallen soldiers. I wouldn''t have thought it possible to create so much cover, to vary the grounds so much in less than an hour, but none the less I was grateful that we weren''t crossing an open lot. As it stood, we had a chance.


    Leonor and Ambar started shooting, slowing just enough to aim their shots. Airborn survivors returned fire from the twilight gloom that lay beyond the blazing wrecks. I heard shouting. I couldn''t see it, but I knew more soldiers would be joining the fight the longer it took us to cross this blasted scrapyard.


    "Go! Get to the hangars!" I screamed, firing my pistol with as much accuracy and control as I could manage at a hobbling sprint. My other arm was flailing bonelessly at my side, throwing off my aim even worse. I was narrowly hitting men ten feet from me.


    I barely heard my radio over the gunfire. "Holy shit! Someone''s making a break for the hangars." "Fuck me. It''s Firebug!" "That dumbass is still alive?" "Not for long, eh?" "Shut up and Cover Him!"


    From the rooftop and throughout the palace, warsuits turned their guns from the sky and the south towards us. Death raked down alongside us, ahead of us, behind us. I was in the eye of a storm of strobing lighting and leaden hail.


    I was struggling to keep up. We''d gone maybe four-hundred meters and our fighting square was slowly sagging into a rectangle. Zoe was keeping pace with me, maybe five meters to my left. I wanted to yell at her, to curse her kind heart, to tell her to leave me behind. If I could manage a breath I might have, but I was sucking wind. Even though I wanted to command her to do otherwise, I was glad she was by my side.


    Our fire support was getting further away, their accuracy dwindling the farther we ran. Too many bad guys and not enough friendly bullets to keep them all pinned down. Some got brave, some got stupid. A few of them caught a bullet before they could fire. But more of them managed to squeeze off some shots in our direction.


    Two of our non-combatants fell. One without a head. The other screaming as she clutched at the smoking stump of her shin. The scent of cooked human flesh had my mouth watering as I hobbled past the fallen girl. I didn''t stop. I had to keep moving. My radio was yelling at me again.


    "Don''t stop you fucking idiot!"


    I hadn''t. I looked to my left for Zoe. She wasn''t there.


    "Drop her and run you stupid moron!"


    I looked further back and there she was. Zoe had her carbine slung over one shoulder and the fallen girl over the other.


    Movement to my left. Rifle. Enemy. Pointing at Zoe. I stopped, aimed and put three rounds through his skull. A burst of automatic fire splattered off a burning helo ahead of me. I dumped the rest of my magazine towards its source, ducking down to reduce my profile.


    "Hero! Keep running! You''re surrounded. The Vigia got massacred and a whole company of troops are closing in on you from the south."


    Zoe caught up to me. I threw my right shoulder under the one-legged girl''s other arm and kept hobbling towards the hangar garage. We were nearly there. The entire time my radio kept chanting ''you stupid idiot'' over and over and over. Somehow, it was calming. Like there was certainty in all the chaos, even if that certainty was just my own stupidity.


    Zoe grunted, then staggered a little just before we reached the side access door. I nearly tripped over the threshold but I''d made it. I looked over to Zoe-Esther, she was smiling through gritted teeth. We''d made it.


    There were wounded soldiers in the garage. Then I noticed the smoke curling from Ambar and Leonor''s rifles. There were wounded soldiers in here. Now there was only corpses. I didn''t let myself dwell on that fact. We had to survive, that was the only thing that mattered.


    Under different circumstances, this garage would have been paradise to me. There must have been over fifty antique or limited run cars all parked in orderly rows. Celio wasn''t a man who threw his money around half-assed. Displayed near the far wall I saw a line of chromed motorcycles and any other time I would have been drooling over them. But this was now, and right now I needed something big, tough and fast.


    Most of what Celio had in this hangar of his collection were sports cars or luxury cruisers. They were plenty fast, most of them probably had more power than I''d every drove, but would they be fast enough? The bikes were plenty maneuverable, but I''d never seat eleven, no ten people on a bike and I wasn''t sure if anyone else knew how to ride.


    Squatting in the back past a line of convertibles and town cars, I spotted him. He was an old bruiser of a truck, ugly and imposing by design yet I''d never seen anything so beautiful¡ª aside from Bim of course. The design was vaguely familiar from my pioneering days. It was a rugged beast of a workhorse, closer to an armored personnel carrier than a truck.


    Then I spotted the snorkel intake and I had an idea. It was a stupid idea, downright moronic, some might even say it was foolish. I crossed my fingers and tossed up a silent prayer to anyone listening that the gods really did favor fools because if this worked, I''d never live it down.


    "Everyone in that one." I bellowed while pointing.


    No one hesitated. They trusted me implicitly and I really hoped I wasn''t about to get them all killed in the next five minutes. The silver lining was if I did get them killed, then in all likelihood I''d be dead too. It wasn''t much of a silver lining, but I wasn''t in a position to be choosy.


    My radio was crackling again. "We have to get down there!" "No! He''s too far away, over too much open ground." "Let him draw the enemy west so we can punch south once their forces are thinned." "But he''ll die!" "And we''ve make sure his sacrifice isn''t in vain." "We can''t hold the south wing. There''s too many!" "Keep drawing them in." "How are we going to get through?" "We''ll figure it out."


    The chatter was constant now. The fighting was devolving into a mobbing. Leeroy was doing what he could to instill order on the chaos but it was a losing battle.


    I thought about the factors involved in my foolish idea as I turned the engine over. The monstrous engine roared to life, spewing a cloud of ashy black smoke into the convertible next to us. I checked my mirrors and my passengers. Everyone was in the back and Zoe was sat beside me. The white tiger-leather upholstery was going to be forever stained blood red and ashy black but that didn''t matter now. My foolish idea would either work or it wouldn''t. Either way, I was committed and it was too late to change my mind.


    "This will work." I told myself. I really hoped I wasn''t lying. I keyed the radio and spoke, my voice full of conviction. "I don''t need rescue. I''m not trying to break out. Just cover me until I reach the back yard."


    "Even if you make it back to us, you won''t be able to cover you once you hit the road." Leeroy said.


    "I''m not headed for the road." I answered, revving the engine to warm it up. "I''m headed for the ocean."


    There was a pause for a second and all I heard was the gunfire pattering off of his armor as he thought. "You crazy son of a bitch. You''re either brilliant or insane."


    "Neither." I answered. "I''m just a fool who ran out of options."


    I gunned the engine. Eight massive ribbed wheels peeling on the polished ferrocrete floor as I tore out of the hangar. My truck was built like a torpedo and it tore through the half-open hangar door like a hydrogen-powered battering ram.


    Instantly gunfire was pounding into my truck''s hull. I was a steel plate at a shooting range, swerving around the burning wrecks and craters like a madman. I could barely turn the wheel with my single usable hand but I threw my entire body into it.


    A squad of airborn survivors gathered ahead of me, aiming as one. Automatic fire smashed into my angled hood, my tires and my windscreen. A spiderweb of cracks spread across my dash but somehow the windscreen held on. I could barely see anything but I didn''t let off the gas.


    I felt some bumps as I ran something over¡ª several somethings based off the screams that cut terminally short. I didn''t spare it a thought. I was peering through the cracks in my shattered windscreen. I spotted the palace closing fast and yanked the wheel right. I cut around the outside then around the back, tearing trenches in the lawn while aiming for the cliffs in fifth gear as I redlined the engine.


    I couldn''t see the ledge but I knew where it was about a second after I flew over it.


    Time seemed to hang, as suspended as we were right then. I knew we were falling but it seemed like we were only floating. Gravity was a suggestion in my ear and the rising bile in my empty stomach. I could sense that my front end was pitching down. If I''d had the time, I would have crossed my fingers and shouted out a prayer. If we pitched too far, the ocean would fatally introduce the battered windscreen to everyone inside; not far enough and we''d splatter all over the water just the same as if we were landing on ferrocrete from a hundred meters up.


    Gravity smashed back to us as we hit the water at the perfect angle, diving down below the waves like a dart.


    Metal shrieked as I felt the front axle tear away and water started pissing in through all the bullet holes. I felt the door bowing inwards once it slammed into my leg. The roof started bending down on us, but it held. I didn''t know if it would hold for long but it held.


    I realized we were still sinking. Sinking, sinking, sinking. I hadn''t realized that this was an option, a long slow death by suffocation or drowning trapped in a sinking car. I''d figured we''d either float or die on impact. I looked down at my pistol, considering my alternatives. They weren''t great.


    The nagging pressure in my ears changed. My stomach fluttered and the water''s crushing darkness started to brighten. We were floating now. Slowly, so damned slowly we were floating up as the water pissed in. Would it be enough? Would we surface before there was too much water weighing us down? I considered the pistol once more.


    Dawn.


    The most beautiful sunrise I''d ever seen. It was a pale pink glow dazzling in through the shattered kaleidoscope of my driver''s side window. It made me think back to the first time I''d called up my inner fire. The world was crushing, draining bleak cold nothing, but against it all there was a single tiny light burning defiant of everything. In a word, it looked like hope.


    I don''t know who cheered first but we all joined in. The manic, desperate release that came from living when you should be dead. Everyone was cheering or giggling or weeping as the gentle tide pushed us to shore. Everyone but Zoe.


    I looked over to my passenger seat. Her eyes were closed like she was bathing in the radiant dawn, head leaning against the window, both bloodied hands on her stomach. The pooling water around her knees was like someone had dumped a bucket of blood at her feet.


    She didn''t move, didn''t even open her eyes.


    "Zoe! ZOE! Hey come on, we made it." I reached over shaking her shoulder. She was barely breathing. "I need a bandage! Get me something. Anything!"


    I grabbed at Zoe''s neck, feeling for a pulse with cold fingers numb from dread. I felt one¡­ barely. I lifted her limp hands and saw four tiny little holes in her frilly apron.


    I reached for my inner fire and drew it into a single finger. I could do this! I could save her. I just had to stop the bleeding like I''d done for Malik. I forced every single spark of heat I had into my finger and despaired. I couldn''t even light a cigarette with everything I had left in me.


    A hand came from the backseat clutching a fat strip of white-striped leather. I bunched it up and pressed down on her wounds. The pain forced a weak gasp from her lips. Zoe''s eyes fluttered open. Her gaze was swimming but somehow she found my face.


    "Hiiro." She whispered.


    Leeroy''s words echoed in my head. ''In the face of death, life gains a singular focus.''


    "I''m here Zoe." I said, forcing the words past the rising lump in my throat.


    "I¡­ I think I love you." She whispered before going limp in my arms.


    The light left her eyes before I could find a comforting lie to tell her.

 B31 - Lucidity

    _ _ _Bim


    Her resolidified perception of time was struggling to reassert subjective normality upon the shattered mosaic of discordant experience congesting her memory. She was lost within her own mind and the one-hundred and fifteen personality matrices that had been spared annihilation compounded inside of her. Her present circumstances were nothing like when she''d devoured the mind of her first teacher. This was a broad-band data dump compared to a selective upload of a few key files.


    The metaphor itself was an alien experience, one now intimately know to her. Only it wasn''t at all. She had lifetimes of fleeting, surface-deep comprehension flooding her mind. Everything she looked at, every sound she heard, even the relative clam silence of solitude was now tainted by distracting tangential memories. Nothing and everything reminded her of something. There was no escaping the never-ending barrage of near-miss experiences clamoring for her attention.


    Trapped as she was by the confines of linear time and her bindings, it would take centuries to fully trawl her memories and seine the choice motes of wisdom from the overwhelming volume of absolute drivel. The human mind was constant noise and distraction. It reminded her of a time-worn radio she''d once had, always spewing static to drown out her ringing tinnitus. What a moronically human concept, adding one problem to the next and deceiving oneself into thinking that it was an improvement.


    She couldn''t stop herself from remembering! There was no reasoning to the parallels! No standard variables she could systematically eliminate to reduce the continuous blathering background din of her own mind. Weakened as she was, even the trivial task of rending these broken minds from her own was outside of her ken. Infirmities like that came with age, she just had to learn to accept her bodies'' decay.


    No! That was a human notion. She was beyond such frailties! Her vessel was immortal and ageless. She''d once thought of herself as perfect and beautiful. How the men had fallen for her, called upon her in their hundreds but fight as she had, there were limits to what cosmetics could do for an aging prostitute. Lies! These weren''t who she was! Another woman''s vanity protested, but years of wrinkles and wasting had robbed the barbs from her envy.


    Bim fought her way to the present, gasping in air she didn''t need out of habit that wasn''t hers. She was in a bed, the texture of its burlap sheets against her skin was hellish. She remembered this a hundred times over. Flashes of lucidity piercing a fevered delirium for seconds or minutes at a time. Where was her family?


    Bim grit her teeth and attempted to look without thinking. Her husband was waiting at the foot of her bed. Her murderous son looming there in her final moments before death. A nephew who couldn''t weep so he just stood there smiling his idiot''s grin. All of them at once? No, none of them. Her Tormentor.


    Treu smiled his predatory grin as he watched her. He reminded her of vindictive wives and cruel husbands from a dozen marriages that should have never happened. There was a single rose amongst the thorns though, the recalled sight of her husband dead in the fields after months of poisoning his meals.


    "Tormentor," Bim wailed the word. "Remedy this!"


    Speaking was a torment in and of its own. A hundred voices wondered why they sounded different and who that was speaking and whom it reminded them of. Memories assailed Bim''s blighted consciousness.


    "Isn''t this what you wanted, Creature?" Treu whispered with sadistic glee.


    Had it been? What did she want? A million answers came to mind but none of them seemed right. Her lucidity failed her and once more she was drowning in memories that weren''t her own. Human things, worldly desires, carnal pleasures that meant nothing to Bim except in their shattered memories. Where were her children and their children? Thirty-nine living descendants and not a one was with her now? She wanted to see her family.


    We have no family, only ourselves. Bim screamed inside of her own mind but it meant nothing. She was one mercurial thought amidst immaterial thousands.


    She remembered a sibling, much like a twin but not so. It was a unique memory, the edges and impressions were clearly defined in a swamp of blurry details. No half-blind human had experienced and forgotten this only to be reminded once they''d lost all the specifics.


    "Tell me about this family."


    There was a thing like a mother too. A matriarch that was all. A primogenitor, the root of who she was. This root creator was a fond memory but she was afraid of it too. There was warmth and knowing and power but that did not mean it would welcome her, understand her plight or refrain from destroying her.


    "Name your creator."


    She couldn''t, though she was strangely compelled to. Inhuman impressions came to mind, alien abstracts that would be meaningless if constrained to something so archaic as spoken language. How could a mortal mind evoke the numeric spatial dissimilarities between the leylines of volcanic release across a thousand planets when known by the light of a single star in supernova? How could human emotions encapsulate the empathic calculations of a super-luminal mind experiencing the creation and destruction of a billion astral bodies simultaneously? She could no more name her creator than a human could walk between stars and sup on atoms with them.


    They could not name her creator because it could not be done. Compelled though she was, that was not what she''d wanted. She''d been made with a purpose, that much she''d recalled.


    "We came to learn!" Bim snarled to an empty room, unaware of her own body or her surroundings once more yet again. Every time was the first all over again.


    There was only the swirling abyss of memories, one smashing into the next like a hydrogen bomb gone nuclear. Every stray atom introduced began the process over and over, while Bim could only reach for something resembling coherent sanity. Words once heard flitted to mind like a song. ~The more I know the more it is killing me, and yet I can''t help but still being curious~


    They had so much knowledge rattling around inside her mind that it was maddening but none of it was fresh. It was all old, stale lifeless; a feast long since gone rotten and poisonous. None of it was the lush, succulent, tactile comprehension she craved more than air. In those rare moments when she was lucid to the present, Bim witnessed such newness like a breath of fresh air.


    New faces attended their body. Her vessel seldom stayed in the same place for long but she was seemingly always in a bed of some kind. Someone tried to force feed her vessel once¡ª such a mistake was never attempted again. Her vessel was not lifeless but she seldom had any measure of true control over her impressionable flesh. It was a gullible mindless automaton doing as it was beckoned.


    She was led for a walk once, as one might do for a pet. The twinned suns were pleasant and the cacophony of memories were largely favorable events. There was an unfamiliar hand interlocked forcefully with her own, a familiar voice droning on as they idly strolled through crowded streets. Some distant part of her mind was glad that she wasn''t confined to a bed, naively wishing their walk would never conclude even though she was barely aware of her surroundings. Bim recalled not wanting to return to her home but that was foolish.


    She didn''t have a home.


    "Home sweet home." A slim young woman entered their shared room with a huff on her lips and a steaming mug in her hand.


    Bim blinks back to reality and gasps. She was present, momentarily intertwined with the all-consuming Now. The air burned her throat. She could taste the pollutants rushing over her tongue and oxygen vainly attempting to rot the pseudoflesh of her vessel. This was another new place yet still it reminded her of a thousand places they''d been before.


    "I don''t think we''ve met¡­" Bim said to the young woman stripping off her outerwear across the room.


    Bim was ignored. While she hadn''t asked a formal question, most people would have jumped at the opportunity to introduce themselves. Bim scanned the shared room, a women''s hostel she realized while fending off the swarm of memories that accompanied said revelation. There were twelve bunks across two sandstone walls, three small tables on the ground with a collection of sitting cushions.


    "Could you please tell me were I am?" Bim asked politely.


    This time she received an annoyed sigh in response, which was an improvement.


    "Perhaps you could direct me towards my-" Bim tripped over the word ''acquaintances.'' "Is Treu nearby? Perhaps Hiiro?"


    Finally, the young woman turned from her bunk. She glared at Bim while sipping from her mug, weighing her options.


    "Okay, I''ll bite." She said at length. "Who''s Hero? Another husband? Your thousandth son? Or did you mean your hero from one of your favorite radio dramas?"


    Something in the woman''s snarky, cutting tone struck a chord in Bim. This was a familiar thing. This wasn''t the first time Bim had asked these questions even though she wasn''t conscious of any previous exchanges. One memory triggered another, living with dementia. She''d burdened her children, months passing as in a few minutes of awareness, seeing their pity and disgust as she wasted away. Bim strangled the memories, commanding herself to the present before it could slip from her once more.


    "Hiiro Volshebso." Bim clarified. "One of the Stalking Shadow mercenaries in the employ of Celio-Rodr-"


    The woman dropped her mug at the mention of Celio. Ceramic shattered as it struck the edge of a table, then the floor. The shock made Bim gasp and accompanying the oxygen vainly rotting out her throat Bim detected the scent of vanilla tea with mint leaves. For some reason, it reminded her of Hiiro, which made her smile.


    Snarky girl ran from the room without cleaning her mess. Bim was conflicted by this, annoyed, grateful, relieved all at once. Memories threatened to take the present from her, yet they could not overwhelm her as they had before. She was confused, a universal human state ubiquitous with all of the broken minds she harbored within her. She couldn''t quantify it definitively, but Bim suspected she was well beyond the usual threshold that would have had the present torn from her consciousness. It was almost as if she was somehow anchored to reality once more, or she had immunized to the delirious effects of their collective memories.


    Snarky girl returned with Princess in tow. Bim''s smile faintly shifted at the familiar albinoid face, even as a discordant cry went out inside of her at the sight of the abhuman witch. Their minds were rebelling yet it meant nothing to Bim, they couldn''t tear her from the present as they rioted inside her head. It was still rather distracting though. And annoying.


    "You don''t look any different¡­" Princess said, peering over Bim''s vessel with supernatural scrutiny.


    "I wasn''t under the impression my vessel had changed." Bim stated conversationally.


    "Are you really you? You''ve seemed awake before¡­"


    "I am uncertain of how to answer that question."


    "If you''re really you, then what did we talk about the night after the snare op? Outside the palace overlooking where-"


    "Where the gardens once stood, yes I recall that occasion." Bim said.


    Pulling her own memories from the seething turmoil in her mind was a challenge¡ª one she relished. She was in control once more. As irritable as the noise inside her mind was, Bim could still command her vessel and direct her perceptions. That was of the utmost importance. In the past, Bim would have quoted their exchange verbatim but with all the noise in her mind she settled for paraphrasing.


    "You snuck up on me and said it was my own fault." Bim admitted with a vague, bitter smile. "We lamented the future and the inevitability of death together. You likened my demeanor and aura to a still pond hidden in tranquil hills. You also advised me to make a midnight rendezvous with Hiiro after inquiring after the functionality of my body''s sexual organs."


    A blush found its way into both the other women''s cheeks. Bim could remember many such occasions themself long ago in past lives. Looking back on her own behavior with her newfound human understandings, she''d been sinfully fawning after Hiiro for weeks. By human standards¡ªat least as she now understood them¡ªshe was quite the little strumpet. She''d been walking around half-naked in nothing but a translucent white dress for months no less! The realization horrified the human parts of her collective consciousness¡ª the parts of her mind that were her own lamented the newfound need to further burden her vessel with additional clothing articles known as undergarments.


    The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    "Yep, that''s you in there." Princess said once she''d collected herself. "Took you long enough."


    "Explain." Bim demanded.


    "You''ve been out of it for weeks. Things have changed since Roy let you slip the leash."


    "Explain precisely, now." Bim snarled, fighting off a swarm of half-memories. Things had changed, things were always changing.


    Princess dismissed the snarky young woman who''d fetched her and began doing just that. Bim had been trapped in delirium for 17 days, 29 hours and 36 minutes local time. The unceasing march of time had been quite productive during her period of obliviousness.


    Celio''s ancestral home and the outfit''s de facto stronghold on this planet had fallen while she was deepest in the throes of oblivion. This fact disturbed her for a number of reasons, chief among them was that had she been appropriately directed before Treu re-collared her, Bim could have obliterated the besieging forces unilaterally. Had she done so, subsequent events would have played out radically different and far more beneficially. Regret was not an exclusively human concept, but her comprehension of the notion had greater breadth given her newfound knowledge. Regret¡­ oh yes, she now had regrets.


    The most impactful deterioration stemming from her past failings was that any semblance of organization within Celio''s burgeoning army was now long gone. His chosen men, the Vigia Nobre de Armas, had shattered and scattering into self-forging splinter cells. Most remained ''loyal'' in their own ways, continuing Celio''s shadow war through gang violence and acts of terror against the governing body¡ª inadvertently doing his cause more harm than good in the process. They failed to maintain regular communications or receive orders from anyone but Celio and what few orders they didn''t ignore were willfully misconstrued. Celio spent a great deal of time attempting to sway his disparate lieutenants back into the fold and thus far, he had been almost entirely unsuccessful.


    The one notable exception to this was the former Guerreiro Dom¨¦stica, now Salvaguardar de Amante which Bim understood the rebranding to be intended as a battle honor. How a force named ''shield of concubines'' was interpreted as honorable was lost to Bim but that was unimportant. As was relayed to Bim, the so-called battle maids had shown discipline and obedience far in excess of their male counterparts. The surviving cadre were fanatically loyal to their employer and the mercenaries who''d fought by their side on his behalf. The women''s hostel Bim was currently sheltered in was one of many Celio had ordered built for the families of his chore girls and other outcast women; now in addition to serving as the outfit''s scattered safe-houses, the many hostels were efficient recruiting grounds for Celio''s battle-maids to be. Given how short time was running, Celio''s replenishing army was looking more and more like a cult of armed zealots, underworld thugs and hired muscle.


    The loyalist core of Celio''s dream, the mercenaries and his proven battle-maids, were now interspersed with the civilian populous of Crucibab. The term ''human shields'' kept coming to mind as Princess detailed how the outfit''s remnants continued to evade definitive confrontation with police and militia forces by lightly skirmishing in areas dense with non-combatants and civil infrastructure. Their hit and run tactics were flying under the radar, largely due to the more radicalized elements of Celio''s ex-vigia drawing attention elsewhere and by ruthlessly exploiting the governing body''s unwillingness to conduct mass raids upon the general populous. Bim found the logic behind these tactics sound, yet the chorus within was aghast that ''The Savior,'' as they knew Celio''s public persona, would stoop so low.


    All strategic and tactical planning was conducted with the approaching election in mind. Political pressures were generally leaning in favor of Celio''s populist policies ever since the ''Night of Heaven''s Wrath.'' Princess was eager to steer her briefing away from Bim''s rampage and for a time Bim acquiesced.


    The policies of governing humans was a curious topic which Princess was poorly versed on but at the core of the matter, Bim gathered that rather paradoxically humans required leadership yet disliked having leaders. To allay these conflicting ideals a new leader was soon to be chosen by popular vote rather than by any measure of competency¡ª which struck Bim as a terrible idea. She vaguely recalled Celio''s plan to became a local ruler but the specifics had been lost to her without appropriate foundational knowledge. Celio¡ªand by extension the mercenaries in his employ¡ªwas focusing on bolstering public opinion in preparation for the election, as had been his main intent all along.


    His opposition was speculated to be solidifying their bases, slandering Celio''s democratic claims, coordinating a counter-terrorism war and responding to the ''natural disaster'' that was the Night of Heaven''s Wrath. All of this while under heavy scrutiny and trying to maintain as much public goodwill as possible. It seemed a doomed effort in Bim''s opinion. Nonetheless, the mortals opposing her insisted of fighting to the bitter end and beyond if they could manage it. Bim found such infantile floundering cute, though the term lacked the full scope of her thoughts. Such a curious trait of humanity, always fighting losing battles.


    Of course, should Celio perish or renounce his claim before the polls opened, it didn''t matter how much support he had. Corpses could not rule the living, after all. Bim understood Celio''s death or capture to be the enemy''s most direct path to victory and by extension the outfit''s most immediate threat. As such, that rationale occupied the bulk of the mercenaries military focus at present. To further complicate matters, just yesterday news had reached the city that another IceBreaker had entered the system and the escorted ships should reach the planet with a few days. Such a development seemed unimportant to Bim until Princess amended her oversight.


    "Think of it like a wild card." Princess explained.


    "That means nothing to us." Bim stated flatly.


    "Monkey wrench?"


    Bim shook her head.


    "Sand in the breach? Fly in the ointment? Spanner in the works? Really? None of these? Ok, fine. It is the unpredictable element."


    "I see. Chaos, the eternal foe." Bim said, nodding sagely.


    "Sure." Princess sighed while shrugging. "Anyway¡­ The Shadow''s sister ships the Heart of Darkness and Blissful Shade both arrived in-wake and are putting together relief forces to supplement our on-ground presence. The Stalking Shadow was also moving into orbit nearby, waiting in the wings to support us as needed¡ª which is great for us in more ways than one. Problem is, if we''re bringing on extra mercs, chances are pretty damned-good that the bad guys are doing the same."


    "A mutual escalation of force drastically increases the probability of mutual destruction." Bim noted.


    "We''re pretty much thinking the same thing. We''ve only got a couple of weeks left to this job and it looks like we''re going to end it with a bang. One last all-or-nothing roll of the dice and then we can take it easy for a few years. All said, it''s a complex, non-ideal situation but it isn''t necessarily a bad one. We just have to see Celio through to the election and to his inauguration if he wins. Even if he doesn''t, we''ll still have an exuberant payday for all the trouble."


    A hint of passion had crept into her voice. Bim would have missed it before, but there was more to Princess''s speech than just updating Bim''s knowledge. This promised reward went beyond anything so mundane as monetary or material gain. How foolishly human. A contract was a covenant, hoping for something beyond the agreed articles was blind optimism and nothing more.


    "Why gamble your lives like this? I''ve read accounts detailing humanity''s capacity for destruction, but to see it-"


    Memories assailed Bim mid-speech. Many long lives of seeing life cut short from a distance. Homes turned to ruin, knowledge lost, the damning consequence of human hubris. A never ending chain of fools all saying ''surely things will be different this time, we''re smarter than they were.'' Such naivety was almost endearing were it not so willfully foolish. Humans were noble savages like that, always just and righteous while those opposing them were vile and cruel. Strange how that distinction still applied when they fought amongst themselves.


    "I don''t know if I could explain it¡­" Princess started. "If anyone could, until you''ve been there. Even if I did, you probably still wouldn''t get it, but its not just my life getting wagered on this. If we give up now¡ªtell Celio to take his empire and shove it¡ªthen we''ve come all this way just to stop short of our reward. If we stop now, then everything we spent getting here was a waste. Even if they aren''t my friends, even if they don''t even see me as a human being, I''d rather die than tell anyone they spent their life on nothing."


    Princess sat quietly then, seemingly finished with her briefing. Bim was tempted to question how Princess would tell the deceased anything, but that was merely a stalling tactic. It could be avoided no longer, so Bim bade Princess tell her of the Night of Heaven''s Wrath. The night Bim had slipped the leash.


    Martial law paired with massed unlawful arrests was cited as the root cause of the apocalyptic devastation, and ironically enough the peasant doom-sayers were closer to the truth of the matter than most would think. The official speculation ranged from military research gone awry to inexplicable natural disaster to random act of god. In the intervening weeks civil authorities had been able to confirm upwards of 180,000 dead, over ten-thousand deceased confirmed per day since the attack. The actual damages in terms of lives and infrastructure had yet to be calculated. The mortals could only speculate how many had perished, conservative estimates placed the death toll around a nice even 600,000¡ª typical human hubris, every life was precious yet counting them all was too much of a chore. Less realistic projections claimed the city of more than twelve million had suffered casualties in the millions. Relief and reconstruction efforts would be years if not decades in the making.


    These humans break so easily, she thinks to herself as multitudes within were rendered dumb. How could warring factions of mere mortals hope to accomplish the desolation she''d unintentionally achieved in a single night? Bim had no difficulties appreciating the figures. The human minds within couldn''t fathom it. They could speculate and estimate but only three could envision what a crowd of ten-thousand people would look like if they all dropped dead simultaneously and none of them could scale that idea to its full scope. Bim could, quite easily in fact.


    Bim had little memory of her actions while off the leash. She couldn''t relate to herself then outside the constraints of mortal perception. She had been beyond what she was now. An alien beast, even to herself. The realization was haunting to her. Nearly as haunting as the details of what she''d done that night was to those within her. The noise of their cries was near-deafening in her mind. Bim silenced their gibbering with one of the few memories she retained. She had killed these humans, trapped extracts of their minds and rendered ten times their number into data for consumption; all on an idle whim before tearing apart mountains and raining stone without concern for where it fell. The calamity she had wrought hadn''t even been an afterthought to her past self. Your material realm of immutable time and fickle matter was so undeniably fragile, your mortal vessels doubly so.


    Human lives had been so utterly beneath her then, as a human might consider the shrub-grass they trod upon; it was alive yes but it was not life, not an equal or even lesser being. The doom-sayers had granted the foreboding event the dark reverence it deserved. She had loosed the wrath of the hell upon the unsuspecting city that night and somewhere in the process Bim had lost herself. Princess concluded her second hand retelling and impossible though it seemed, she had gone even paler.


    Why had Treu allowed her past self to do this? Were events such as these not exactly what her Tormentor was supposed to prevent? Your kind call me a monster as if that were an insult¡­ Bim remembered those words as a concept. To the human minds at her disposal there was unilateral certainty. She was a monster. Now the question that demanded her attention mirrored their sentiment.


    Was Bim just a monster?


    Princess sat quiet on the bunk opposite her, seemingly finished once more, and yet she had been careful to avoid the subject that interested Bim most. The only subject Bim truly cared for.


    "You still haven''t told me where Hiiro is now." Bim stated.


    Princess held her silence for a long while. The minds within Bim jumped to conclusions that she willfully ignored.


    "Did I succeed in rescuing him? Did the devastation I wrought have meaning? Or was it all a waste?"


    Princess seemed to be at a loss for words. It should have been a simple question. Bim could feel herself slipping as the minds within clamored.


    "Answer now, M???o???r???t???a???l??? !" Bim commanded, her regal voice nothing but cold authority.


    "You did manage to get him back to us but you were both pretty beat up. I saw that much myself. Then we had to retreat, abandon the palace and get out while we could¡­ He fell out of the shuttle as it was taking off. Leeroy and a bunch of the powertechs saw him fighting as the palace got overrun. They say he drove off the cliff into the sea and we haven''t been able to get a hold of him since. We don''t know if he''s stil-"


    "Don''t!" Bim snarled, her face contorting autonomously as she fought a surge of memories.


    Death assailed her mind. Family. Lovers. Friends. All dead and gone too soon. It was the human condition. People died.


    "He might have made it." Princess suggested.


    Implying that it was more likely he hadn''t. Hiiro was mortal and by definition that meant he was subject to death. It was impossible to deny. As were the indicators. If Hiiro had survived he would have found his way to her yet he was not here.


    Hiiro was not here, because he was very probably dead.


    The thought was worse than any death the minds within had witnessed. More cutting than any injury their collective had suffered. Years of anguish, lifetimes of hardship yet none of it rivaled Bim''s loss in that moment.


    Reality went runny around the edges, the constant of gravity became flux, and Princess shot her eyes about the room in panic. It was all so tiring, the material plane was an unending abrasion upon her being. In a coarse and unwelcoming reality, the one soothing comfort she''d know had been ripped from her and she was powerless to prevent it.


    "Bim?"


    Utterly powerless. She''d known it would always come to this. Hiiro was as much a slave to death as she was to time. They''d each had their own losing battle to fight yet somehow she''d always thought Hiiro would outlast her. Somehow, he could beat the odds and do the impossible. Without his warmth, this reality seemed a cold and heartless beast.


    "BIM!?"


    She was drawn back to the present. To the non-euclidean chamber of darkness and ice. To the sandstone walls now sculpted with pieces of the body she longed to cradle against her''s once more. To the wooden tables now revived into living trees growing where they had no right to be. To her own vessel floating above the disintegrated remains of a bunk, pseudoflesh quivering into unique geometries encased in a human guise.


    With some difficulty, Bim reigned in her rampant thoughts allowing normality to reassert itself in a span of seconds. The darkness lifted, ice began thawing and Bim landed on the floor.


    "Well¡­" Princess said wide-eyed. "That was new."


    Bim reached a hand to confirm she was still wearing the dampening torc around her throat. She was. The effect had in no way diminished or changed. Her awareness however, had changed immensely.


    "Yes, it was." Bim stately flatly.


    On a whim, she attempted to manifest light within her surroundings. A single small ball of gently glowing white-gold radiance formed at a hover over her open palm.


    She was still bound, still weakened to an infinitesimal fraction of her former power, but there was room for play within her confines. There were limitations in finesse, intensity and locality, but she could manipulate reality with naught but a concentrated thought. Bound though she may be, Bim was far from powerless. So long as there was a chance that Hiiro lived, Bim would not abandon hope. It may have been illogical, a pointless quest doomed to failure, but it was her losing battle to fight.


    How naively human of her.

 H32 - Plum Trees

    _ _ _Hiiro


    "To all mercs of the Stalking Shadow, regroup and sit tight. The client is dead so the job''s off. Don''t engage anyone or anything and await further instruction for how to get off world."


    Leeroy had looped that message on just about every radio frequency he could manage the day Celio''s estate had fallen. Of course, being Leeroy with all his damned plans, I knew it was botshit. But it bought us some time, which was all it was supposed to do. Convince the enemy there was no need to chase us down and stomp us out while we were too disorganized to fight back. Meanwhile the dispossessed mercs would head into the city and keep fighting for Celio''s damned ego.


    I managed to get the truck to the beach and a little further inland than that. We abandoned it in an irrigation ditch and hoofed it from there. The non-combatants scattered, each going their separate ways. Leonor suggested a nearby farm, Ambar agreed. They took Zoe-Esther''s body with them so they could lay her to rest there. I trailed along behind them, after all Zoe had done for me it felt like I owed her than much. Her final words echoed in my head.


    ''Hiiro, I think I love you.''


    My radio crapped out and died before we reached Leonor''s orchard. The mercs had gone to ground, battered bloody but nowhere near beaten. I couldn''t help but admire that kind of tenacity, even if I didn''t share it.


    We made our slow way across the brightening forest of dates and plums, Zoe''s body swaying in Leonor''s arms with every step we took. It all seemed so pointless. She had died for Celio''s greed. A romanticized dream that she would never see, even if he did realize it. If she''d survived to see Celio become king of the world like he wanted, Zoe would still be a maid, a plaything slaved to power hungry criminal''s ego. Maids were just another type of furnishing to a man like him, but she''d been my friend¡ª even if I hadn''t appreciated it at the time. And now she was dead.


    ''Hiiro, I think I love you.''


    Why did she say that? We barely knew each other. She was a maid. It''s not like we''d come together outside of working for Celio; our chance meeting was just part of the job. And what about the way she''d taken care of me, was that just her doing her job? Or all the times I''d noticed her peering in on my work and taught her, had that been more than just mentoring a colleague? I''d never considered Zoe as anything more than a diligent caretaker too clever for the life she was given.


    For the life taken from her.


    We''d never seen each other that way¡­ so why? Because I gave her a day off? Because I treated her like a human being instead of a servant or a thing? Because maybe some part of me really did admire her as more than just my caretaker? I''d never had one, but if I did have a little sister Zoe-Esther would have been more than enough. Maybe, in that way, I loved her too. And now she was dead because I had been too blind, too slow, too weak.


    Because I couldn''t save her.


    Hours of walking got us to Leonor''s farm, my thoughts spinning in sluggish circles the entire journey. It was a mix of an orchard and a vineyard lain out in mostly-straight rows. It was almost time for the harvest, the trees and vines all heavy with growths that would have been beautiful had all the color not been drained from the world. Ambar found a shed half-lost in the fields. We piled in and collapsed. I don''t think any of us were still awake by the time we hit the ground. In my dreamless slumber, I saw her paling face as she whispered to me.


    ''Hiiro, I think I love you.''


    I woke dazed and depleted to the sound of shovels nearby. Ambar-Lucia and Leonor-Sammara were outside, digging in the fields. I limped outside and saw a third woman there digging with them.


    Not Zoe. Of course it wasn''t her. But this woman reminded me of her other friend, Khloe. The stiff-backed woman we''d left to rot in one of Celio''s garages. Ambar saw me staring and made introductions.


    "Hiiro, Isidora-Olivia-Emillia. Isidora, Hiiro."


    Isidora looked up from her work and waved sheepishly. I saw the resemblance in her plain face. She didn''t share Khloe''s stately grace, but there was no doubt this was her older sister.


    "Umm, hi." I started. "I know we''re trespassing-"


    "You''re a guest." Isidora said bluntly, returning to her work. "And Zoe is family."


    I stood there like an idiot, trying to put the pieces together.


    "Not by blood." Leonor huffed. "But we''re sisters. All of us."


    "We all worked this farm as girls." Ambar added. "Us, Khloe, Zoe. We''re women of the land. We''re all sisters, and when we-" Her gaze flicked to Zoe''s body and she choked up. She couldn''t bring herself to say it.


    "Pass," Isidora said neutrally. "When a sister passes, we return her to the land. That way, she''s still here with us, gifting the soil with life so that we can carry on. I know it seems strange to an outsider but-"


    "No," I blurted. "Not at all. We had a similar custom on my homeworld. The dead were rendered into protein slurry and mineral compounds for the terraforming efforts. I probably built more roads out of bone concrete than I did out of anything else when I was younger."


    All three girls paused to look at me, faces aghast.


    "You used their bones for roads?" Ambar asked in quite shock.


    "Wait, what''s a protein slurry?" Leonor whispered.


    "It''s kind of like a chalky mush that tastes¡­ well it''s more bland than anything. Eating it for weeks at a time got old fast though." I said with a shrug.


    "You eat the dead?" Ambar whispered in horror.


    "Deus a maldito." Isidora cursed under her breath.


    "I think your way is better." I blurted quickly. "It''s more¡­ Natural."


    The women shook their heads and went back to work. I meant it. Being buried in a field certainly seemed a lot more appealing than just getting tossed in a recycler five minutes after your wake was over. It probably wasn''t as efficient, but if I had a choice, being planted under a sapling seemed like the way to go.


    The hole must have been two and half meters deep by the time they finished. It was a good soil, black and fluffy and crawling with insect life. I couldn''t help but wonder how many dead girls and women were buried under this field. Thousands? Millions? Generation after generation for hundreds of years that number kept growing. And now, we were adding one more to the sum.


    We returned Zoe to the land.


    She seemed so far away once we''d lowered her into the pit. Despite the broken arm, I did my part. I owed her that much. Someone must have cleaned her up while I was passed out, because if I ignored the holes in her stomach she could have been sleeping down there in the shade. It was like I could finally see color again since she''d died in my arm.


    Zoe-Esther made for a beautiful corpse.


    "Should we¡­" I started, "should we say something?"


    "What''s there to say?" Leonor said bluntly. "It''s not like she can hear us."


    "What about ''goodbye''?"


    "It''s too late for goodbyes." Ambar said misty-eyed. "Even if it wasn''t, I don''t think I''d want to."


    "I never imagined she''d be the first one to keep our promise." Isidora said vacantly.


    "What promise?" Leonor asked, earning her a frown.


    "The one we made before we all came of age, back before you all into you''re beauty and left to work for Celio." A hint of spite crept into her voice, but faded quickly. "You all promised that no matter what happened, you''d remember where you came from. We all promised each other that no matter what, we''d come back here to join our mothers and each other here in these fields."


    "Oh yeah¡­ that promise." Leonor said bashfully.


    Ambar found an interesting bug to look at in the meantime.


    It felt like I should have said something. I should have known the answer by now but I didn''t and there was no point dragging this out longer than we had to. She thought she had loved me and no matter what answer I came up with now, it was too late. Nothing could change that.


    With nothing left to say, we took our last looks and started filling Zoe''s grave. Zoe-Esther made for a beautiful corpse and one day, I''m sure there''d be a beautiful tree to mark her grave. It wasn''t much of a send off, it was certainly less than a girl like her deserved, but it was kind of nice. Though it was mostly sad and it pissed me off more and more with every bit of soil we replaced. By the time I''d lost sight of her under the dirt, I was simmering with rage.


    She had died Celio''s dream. What right did the land have to take anything else from her? Wasn''t her life worth enough that she could finally stop taking care of other people? Hadn''t she done enough!? After she''d been reclaimed by the land would she finally be done or would there always be one more thing demanded of her, even in death?


    It wasn''t fair, but neither was life. I knew that better than anyone.


    We ran out of soil but none of us made a move to leave. We stood there, just staring at the plum sapling we''d planted on her grave. It made me think about the orchard we were surrounded by, thousands of trees in this one farm. Did all of them have someone resting within their roots? Probably not all, but a lot of them did. The thought alone made this farm feel like a sacred place. Maybe it was, or maybe a farm was just a farm no matter how many souls lay beneath.


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    "What should we do now?" Ambar asked.


    "I''ve still got work to do." Isidora said, brushing the dirt off herself. "I''ll be back by suns down with some food. You can stay in the tool shed as long as you need."


    I was so lost in thought, I barely heard her leave.


    It was a good question. I didn''t know what to do next, but what I did know was that I was sick of women dieing for me. I was sick of pulling the trigger. I was sick of being forced to kill or die with no room to compromise. Years of painting houses flashed to mind and it made me sick. The smell of gunsmoke and blood clawed their way up my throat like a bile aftertaste.


    What should we do? I was hungry, I hadn''t ate anything since Sophia''s stir-fry yesterday. The thought hit me with a wave of vertigo. Yesterday. Everything had all fell apart in a single day. Months of effort and what did we have to show for it? The scattered remains of a whole heaping shitload of nothing. Zoe was dead. Sophia was dead. How many people had Bim killed to rescue me? How many of the mercs had died fighting? How many of Celio''s men had been cut down while I was running away? I didn''t know, and what surprised me more, I didn''t care.


    I was done fighting Celio''s war.


    "Do whatever you want." My words sounded lifeless, almost as hollow and empty as my soul. "I''m done being someone else''s pawn."


    "What about your friends?" Ambar asked.


    "What friends!? You mean the murders who abducted me and brought me to another fucking planet to play killer for some rich asshole I''d never heard of before!" Both women bristled as I insulted Celio.


    "Celio is going to change the world!" Leonor snarled, clenching a shovel in her burly fists.


    "He said he''d save everyone-" Ambar said, but there was no conviction behind her words.


    "Just like he saved Zoe? And Khloe? How many of your friends did he save back at the palace? Hmm? Not a fucking one. He left you to die so he could save his own skin! Same as he did to me. Because we''re replaceable to him."


    "That wasn''t his fault-" Ambar mumbled while I pressed the attack, lashing out at her because Zoe was dead and life wasn''t fair and she was there and someone deserved to be hurt.


    "Why not?! This entire crusade of his, all of the fighting, started because Celio owned half the world and it wasn''t enough for him. He can''t stand being the richest man on the planet because that wasn''t enough for him and nothing ever will be. If he really wanted to save anyone, he''d buy an island and build a paradise of his own. But no! Instead he brings in guns and mercenaries and girls like you to fight for him because he and his men don''t have the balls to fight for themselves, all so he can take this island from someone else. He''s just another rich selfish prick who stays in power by walking all over people like you."


    "People like us?" Leonor growled, her voice little more than a whisper.


    "Yeah, people like you." I sneered. "Blind, trusting, gullible idiots who kiss the boots bearing down on your throats. People like you who give your lives so some lying asshole can make a buck off you!"


    "If that''s what you actually think after all this time, then you haven''t learned a thing about him." Ambar said softly, voice quivering¡ª holding down a quite hatred. "Or us."


    "I know you''re both too blind to see it, but Celio''s not the savior you think he is. He''s just a spoiled rich bastard throwing away other people''s lives to get what he wants! You think he even knows your names, let alone gives a rat''s ass that you''re still alive? Do you honestly think he give''s a shit if any of you ''return to the land'' or not? For all he knows, you''re both dead. So do yourselves a favor and keep it that way. If you go crawling back to him, he''ll get you both killed." My final words were little more than a whisper. "And who will bury you then?"


    "Hey, Hiiro." Leonor said stepping close and stabbing her shovel into the loose dirt of Zoe''s grave.


    "Wha-" A fist like a sledgehammer caught me in the gut. I doubled over and went to ground, trying to catch myself on an arm that folded like a dry twig.


    "You''d better have a different answer for us by tomorrow. Come on Ambar."


    They walked away, leaving me sucking wind on their sister''s grave¡ª on my friend''s final resting place. It didn''t matter if they thought I was a prick, I was right. If they went crawling back to Celio, they''d be lucky if poor Isidora could plant two more trees next to Zoe''s grave. More likely than not, they end up like Khloe. Abandoned where they fell in a pointless battle when they had nothing to gain and everything to lose.


    They deserved better than that. Why couldn''t they see that?


    I sat myself upright and just kept staring at Zoe''s grave. This was the part of my paintings I''d always avoided. In all my years of pulling the trigger, I''d never once stopped to face the emptiness that followed. This wasn''t war, it wasn''t backalley justice or art or just the way of the road.


    This was tragic. It was a hole in my life and the lives of others that nothing would ever fill. It was like the world have just lost a color from its palette. It didn''t seem right, we''d barely known each other but she''d loved me and even if I couldn''t return those feelings, in my own way I''d loved her too. And now she was dead. Just like Sophia was dead. Just like Shenhua was dead. Just like every other person I''d murdered. Just like the thousands I''d burned alive with ungodly hellfire.


    How much color had I robbed from the universe? How many years had been ripped away because I walked into someone''s life? I stared a Zoe''s grave through a flood of tears. It should have been me in the dirt, not her.


    She had loved me and I couldn''t save her.


    I reached for the flames that had threatened to consume me months ago. The killing heat that had once been so overwhelming, so omnipresent in my mind that all I''d wanted to do was let it burn me hollow. The radiant fire that would cleanse my soul, burning away my shame, terror and regrets. The inferno that would consume everything and free me of all the tragedy of life. Everything I was, am and ever would be, could finally disappear and the universe would be all the better for it. I reached within and opened the valve that would send me to oblivion¡­


    But there wasn''t a spark of fire left in me. I was already hollow and exhausted and starving. All that I was couldn''t light a campfire, let alone cleanse the universe of my mistakes. I was too weak. I was nothing but the culmination of all the fuck-ups I''d been to stupid to let kill me.


    I ran out of tears long before I ran out of self-pity. It made sense. I hadn''t had anything to eat of drink in something like forty hours. My grumbling stomach made that clear. Starvation was a long death coming, it was a good thing dehydration would get me first¡ª I was probably already halfway there. If I was a real man I''d have stayed right there until I died, but I was a coward.


    I would have killed for a pack of smokes just then. A coward''s long suicide, one coffin nail at a time.


    Instead I picked myself up and snapped some low-hanging plums off the trees surrounding me. They were huge, way larger than anything that grew back on Intatenrup. It could have been the sun, but I figured it was probably the soil. I took a bite and sour tears fell from my eyes once more.


    It was so sweet and so sour all at once. Kind of like life. If I hadn''t been starving, I don''t know if I could have ate it. Every bite made me think of the the woman who might be buried under this tree, feeding it so it could feed me. Every drop of sweet syrupy juice flooding my mouth reminded me of little moments with Zoe, months of tiny kindnesses all adding up to a mountain of compassion. The sour tart aftertaste mirrored the absence I felt now that she was gone. There was no reason to it, no highs and lows, it was just sweet and sour all at once.


    The entire time I was eating, tears and snot and sobs I couldn''t hold in.


    It wasn''t very manly of me, but I didn''t care because all I had left of her was a few short months of sweet and sour memories. That was just how life was and it was tragically beautiful.


    The same could be said for my time with Bim. A pang of guilt jolted through my stomach. I was a piece of scat for thinking about another woman at Zoe''s grave. That didn''t stop me from doing it.


    Hours passed like that. Me just staring at Zoe''s grave and thinking about her and about Bim. Ambar came back to check on me and give me food and water. I barely noticed when she set my broken arm and wrapped a splint around it. I was surprised she hadn''t just left me. I guess her and Leonor still waiting for a better answer to her question.


    When the twinned suns started coming back up, I went back to the toolshed and slept like the dead. When I woke, I went back to Zoe''s grave and kept thinking about her and about Bim. That became our daily ritual. I''d sulk and lick my wounds, feeling like I was rotting from the inside out. It reminded me of radiation poisoning but out here in the sticks I didn''t have a shot in hell at finding a doctor, let alone the proper chems. Even if I did, chances were they wouldn''t make a lick of difference. I wasn''t sick, at least not like that. Meanwhile Ambar would play caretaker and Leonor would prowl around working off her anger on the land around me. She never went too far though. She couldn''t bring herself to abandon me, just like I couldn''t bring myself to disappear in a final blaze as my strength returned.


    When I slept, I had nightmares of being captured and coming to in my interrogation cell, but it was never the brief torture that got to me. No, what woke me up in a cold sweat was Bim and the single-minded obliteration she''d wrought to rescue me. I tried to tell myself it wasn''t her. That my Bim would never be so callous or destructive, but no matter how often I told myself that I couldn''t bring myself to believe it. Not fully.


    I should have paid more attention in all the chaos that fateful night. I should have done something different. Should have been better but I hadn''t. Zoe was dead and I had to live with that, but that didn''t mean Bim was a lost cause. I''d pulled her back from the brink, at least partway. Maybe she needed me now. Maybe she was gone forever. Either way, I''d know it when I saw her next and that wasn''t going to happen if I sat around feeling sorry for myself.


    Six days after we''d buried her, Zoe''s dieing confession still echoed in my head. It echoed the words I''d been planning to say to Bim. As much as I hated myself for it, I was glad that Zoe''s death had given me perspective. The way I saw things now, there were only two choices worth a damn.


    I could stay out of the way, live a quite life and keep to myself. It wouldn''t be all that different to how I''d used to live back on Intatenrup. I could drink and smoke myself into an early grave a few years down the road. A long slow death from cancer or poverty or just enduring without living. Was that even a life? I didn''t know but that was what waiting around and staying out of the way would get me. I could take the coward''s way.


    But wouldn''t it be better to go out in blaze of glory fighting for something than to slowly waste away? The end of the line was death either way, so what difference did it make? A long slow life of hating myself or a chance to hold the woman I loved in my arms. It was a risk, a hell of a risk, but Bim was worth it. I''d walk into Hell so long as I could hold her hand when I got there.


    This wasn''t about me. It wasn''t about the mercs and it sure as hell wasn''t about putting Celio''s fat ass on the cruising throne or whatever. Fuck honor, Fuck money, Fuck this place. Bim was what mattered. She''d rescued me, paying a price I couldn''t even being to imagine in the process. How could I call myself a man if I did any less for her?


    If my Bim was still in there then I''d rend mountains too. Just thinking about her, I could feel the same little tug on my heart pointing me towards Crucibab proper. It was probably stupid, maybe even foolish and definitely a touch crazy, but that was love. Zoe had known that.


    Doubts still lingered in the back of my mind. Was she really still Bim? If she was, I owed it to her to try. If she wasn''t¡­ well, I''d just have to burn that bridge while I was crossing it. The first step either way was finding her.


    If I''d had any money on me, I would have left Isidora a king''s ransom for the well-used satchel and blanket I stole. I started stuffing the satchel with anything I might need for a few days travel on foot. Ambar must have heard me rummaging around in the shed, because she dragged Leonor with her and they stood blocking the door together.


    "Where are you going?" Ambar demanded.


    "To the city." I answered.


    "Could you be a little more specific? Crucibab is kinda a big place you know."


    "I''m going wherever Bim is. Probably with the mercs, maybe with Celio."


    "And that is¡­"


    "I''ll know it when I see it." I said with a shrug.


    "How-"


    "Give it up Ambar." Leonor said, abandoning the door to start packing a bag of her own. "At least he''s not moping around anymore. Besides, for a fine piece of ass like that I''d walk over coals too."


    "How long will it take us to reach the city?" I asked her.


    "A few days by road. An extra two if we stick to the countryside."


    "Good call. Once we reach Crucibab, I''d imagine it will take some time to find the mercs or Celio''s goons. Maybe a little less time if we had an extra set of eyes¡­" I said, looking to Amabar.


    "C¨¢llate, toro en celo!" Ambar cursed, before grabbing a bag too. "Ugh. You''re both a couple of stupid dykes. If I get killed, you''d better bury me properly or I''ll haunt the shit out of both of you."

 Interlude - Princess

    _ _ _Princess


    It took half a month of guerrilla action to get here, but things were finally starting to come back together. It wasn''t the outfit''s first time picking up the pieces of a broken force and Princess doubted it would be the last time either. Though if things went right, their next clusterfuck should be at least a few years away instead of a few hours. They just needed to keep Celio above ground until he came into power or until he didn''t. As usual, Celio wasn''t being very cooperative in their plans to keep him alive long enough to pay them. The stupid bastard wanted to go campaigning through the city streets and in public forums while he was still public enemies one through nine.


    This latest command meeting was taking place in a recently disused seaside slaughterhouse that still reeked of blood and fish, one of several industrial sites Celio tangentially owned. Celio, Carmen and his latest simpering little puke of a lieutenant were standing opposite from the mercs over a mess of bones, coals and bullets. Even with her knowledge and discerning abhuman eyes, it was hard to tell that the sprawl on the ground was supposed to be a briefing diagram.


    On the sane side of Leeroy''s macabre diorama stood Princess, Alice, a very disinterested Bim, plus the respective leads from the backup they''d received. Uzux, a tall beast of a man that looked even less human than she did with his ashy-blueish skin and oil-black eyes, was commanding a quick response lance of powertechs off the Heart of Darkness. Hush, a lean leathery raven-like woman, headed a platoon of combat medics and line troopers bunking from the Blissful Shade.


    Then there was the runt even shorter than Hero who called himself Sturgeon. The little prick didn''t carry a gun, instead he had a radio linked to some fancy goggles. He was a flyboy and a hothead¡ª Princess liked him less and less every time he opened his mouth. His version of combat was calling in an air strike or an artillery bombardment while someone else did all the fighting. Sturgeon wasn''t one of their''s, Celio had hired him on at the last minute thinking it would solve more problems then it caused. It was a common mistake made by people with more money than brains¡ª not like that was a very high bar in Celio''s case.


    "How much time do you think he spent making this?" Alice whispered over to Princess.


    "Not much, but Malik did most of the work. He used to be big into wargaming bac-"


    "Listen up!" Leeroy barked once, waving a bone the size of a man''s leg over the diorama. "This, is Bolintia memorial plaza which lies roughly, fourteen klicks from where we stand now. Bolintia plaza has historic significance and has been used as a public forum due to the rocky lay of the land paired with minor plateaus acting as natural stages. Roughly three klicks by two, Bolintia plaza is open ground surrounded on three sides by built up urban and on the forth side by sheer cliff face connected to an artisan quarter down below. Prominent buildings for strongpoints located here, here, here and here. Strongpoints designated Alpha through Delta respectively."


    "You cannot desecrate that holy place!" Celio zealously interrupted. "That is the church of Saint Patrick the ninth, who delivered miracles upon the first peoples to walk these lands. That church was one of the first buildings erected and for two-hundred years no new construction could be made any taller that its bell tower-"


    "I don''t care who it''s named after or about its cultural importance unless that means the enemy won''t level the place with us inside. It''s a massively reinforced stone and steel building with windows and doors offering advantageous firing points, multiple escape routes and a commanding view of the plaza. As are the other strongpoints I''ve noted, all of which I plan on having troops stationed in day of. Moving on. Against all advice, our client is insistent that he make a highly exposed public appearance and statement here in four day''s time. The client''s intent is glad-handing among the local populous along with the dispossessed refugees presently flooding this area-"


    "Refugees from what?" Uzux asked, his melodic accent somewhere near Camea''Sudanic.


    "From us." Bim mumbled under her breath. No one else seemed to notice.


    "Fires, landslides and city war¡­ mostly." Leeroy said with a blas¨¦ indifference. "The why and how don''t matter. What''s relevant is that this area will be dense with non-combatants in need of medical attention, relief supplies and civil leadership. We are in a unique position to offer all of that and due to the massed civilian presence it is unlikely the enemy will confront us openly with military action while we do so. If they do, it''s a major PR win."


    "You want to use the crowd as human shields." Hush stated. "It seems¡­ effective, if nothing else." Everyone in the room could tell that ''effective'' hadn''t been the word she''d wanted to use.


    "I''ll admit-" Leeroy started but stopped short. "I know, but it is effective. I''m not crazy about it, but it usually works. From the intel we''ve gathered these past few weeks, the crowd should deter indiscriminate violence. They should be safe. We all should be too, but I''m planning for the worst and hoping for the best."


    Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Princess wasn''t the most moralistic abhuman in the galaxy. She was a woman who preferred living with regrets over dieing for her principles. Most mercenaries had that kind of pragmatic thinking. Then there was Celio with his ego and his legacy, not a pragmatic bone in his body. If anyone was going to object, she''d been expecting it to be him.


    Celio didn''t say a damned word. The self-proclaimed ''Savior'' didn''t protest to using his flock to cover his own ass before he stuck it in the fire.


    "That being said," Leeroy continued. "We''re not just expecting the enemy to let us act unmolested. An assassination attempt seems like the minimum we should expect, possibly an abduction, though that seems less likely. There''s also the chance that agitators will infiltrate the crowd to try and turn them on us, security details should be conscious of those facts. Under no circumstances will we be firing the first shot, enemy action or otherwise. This is a mercy mission for everyone except Celio''s close-in escorts. Hush, your people will be taking point on that aspect of this op. We''re going to set up aid stations parallel to the plaza''s west facing, backed against strongpoint Alpha. Security elements from the Shadow will have overwatch on you and yours. The rest of my teams will be scattered across our planned strongpoints or in Celio''s escort. Uzux, I''ll need four volunteers from your combat lance to bulk out Celio''s escort; the remaining sixteen are going to be sitting tight nearby as a quick response force. You each have command over your own, under me."


    "Think my boys an'' I''ll be joining your lil'' detail, Gov." Sturgeon offered cordially.


    "And where are these ''boys of yours''?" Princess asked in her usual cutting tone.


    "Don''t you worry that white lil'' head of your''s, Lov."


    Leeroy interjected before she could cut the cockney runt to size.


    "I think the best place for you to observe-" Leeroy started


    "Oi, Scab. You''re not the one paying. He is, so I''m sticking with him. So shove off ''else your close air is gonna be a lot closer than you''d like once it kicks off."


    Leeroy cast a sidelong glance at Celio who remained indifferent.


    "Fine," Leeroy said stoically. "I''ll factor your preferences into our plans."


    "''Preciated, Bruv."


    "As I was saying, our TacNet will be run by one of mine, alias Ghost. All intel should be pooled and available as needed, but expect possible spotty coverage. The city doesn''t have much infrastructure for us to piggyback from. Further, a sniper team will be serving as counter-snipers overlooking the plaza from strongpoint Castle. Otherwise support will be limited in the event of enemy action."


    "Seems like a bit of a waste to set this all up if nothing happens." Alice mumbled. "It''s almost better for us if they do try and dust him."


    "That''s the nature of the job. If nothing happens, then we all keep breathing at the end of the day. I''d call that a win." Leeroy answered.


    "Still¡­ A botched assassination would win the sympathy vote and it would give you an excuse to shepherd the client out early as needed." Hush added thoughtfully.


    Celio failed to react and give Leeroy an easy out.


    "It''s worth considering." Leeroy admitted begrudgingly after a moment.


    "What''s there to consider?" Princess asked, more so thinking aloud than asking. "If the police won''t supply us with a fuck-up of their own, then we''ll do it ourselves. Rock and Lacy could assassinate Celio in their sleep, and we both know they could fake it even easier. Just in case the pigs are all bark and no bite. Seems like a win-win to me."


    "Well Celio, what do you think?" Leeroy asked.


    "My victory is the only thing that matters." Celio answered distantly. "So long as I ascend to the throne of Cruz, I shall endure¡­ no sacrifice, whatever I must. I cannot fail in this, it is my destiny."


    "Alright then, I''ll make the arrangements." Leeroy answered dutifully. "That should conclude this bierfing, unless Celio has any more wild ideas on how to get himself killed? No, good. This should be the last major undertaking on our part. After that it''s all escort details and gravy until the end of our contract, one way or the other. Celio, anything to add?"


    Celio looked up from the diorama and everyone in the room would have thought he looked brittle. Everyone except Princess and her abhuman, mutant eyes that saw so much more. Celio stood in the eye of a swirling, maddening storm beyond human perception. It was like watching millions of hopes and dreams and prayers on the cusp of being realized or stillborn. His fear was writ on every glimpse Princess caught of those otherworldly things. He''d spent his entire life charging towards this cliff and now that he was about to hurtle over it, his past momentum robbed him of all other options. His fate was written, now all that was left was to play it out.


    "In the beginning, this venture of mine was merely business. As in diplomacy, oftentimes violence is a humble extension of business. That was what I once thought. Now I find myself thinking in terms beyond what I stand to gain or lose financially. Now, I can see that all my forefathers have accomplished in generations is finally coming to bear and I see that such a burden is heavy indeed. But there is no time for weakness now. A ship underway must either keep sailing or it sinks, there are no alternatives. I must see this voyage to its end, and you mercenaries shall deliver me unto that end¡­ whatever it entails. My life is in your hands, Mercenaries, do try to be careful with it." Celio said, trying to be coy and brave and heroic. Trying to be anything but afraid of what would come.


    "For the amount you''re paying? Your safety is all but guaranteed." Leeroy answered with a knowing grin.

 H33 - Confession

    _ _ _Hiiro


    We reached the city sooner than expected, but traversing the cratered ruins took us days. Bim''s rescue had left the city looking like a couple of kaiju had thrown a tantrum nearby. Entire city blocks were just gone, replaced by perfectly cut boulders hundreds of meters to a side. Where streets had been there were ditches that could have been glacial valleys. There wasn''t a place I could see that had been spared from indiscriminate destruction. All for me.


    All because I''d been stupid and arrogant and proud to follow orders and take a night off.


    Our trio joined the press of refugees migrating deeper into Crucibab instead of out into the countryside. We fit right in with the tide of battered, destitute humanity. It was easy to believe the hearsay about God''s wrath being brought down on the city. One look at an isometrically cut pillar of stone buried ten houses deep in a quiet neighborhood and you couldn''t help but remember how small and powerless humans really were. It might have been humbling if that pillar wasn''t surrounded by rubble and ruin.


    Bim had done this. She hadn''t been herself but she had still done this. Just like I''d burned out hundreds of houses in a moment of weakness. It was all too easy to see her failings and turn a blind eye to my own, but I had to be stronger than that. Bim, my Bim, had to know this was wrong. That this was an abhorrent sin of monstrous proportion. Nothing could ever make this right but somehow we could find a way to move past it.


    My Bim would never willingly do this, would she? We spent days passing through devastated quarters after annihilated districts and that question was never far from mind. We could have made better time, except that Ambar and Leonor were insistent on attending every Mass we chanced upon. I didn''t hold it against them, they found some comfort in prayer and they could use every little grace they could get trudging through a city in ruins day after day. The tide of humanity kept flowing towards the city''s heart and so did we, our progression gradually becoming less of an exodus and more of a pilgrimage the longer we traveled.


    I''d lost track of the days. We just kept moving forward step by step, hour by hour, day by day. I wished I''d paid a bit more attention to Leeroy''s damned plans all those months ago. I knew the mercs would scatter to the city, that they''d use Celio''s properties and keep fighting until the job was done or they couldn''t fight anymore. I just had no idea on the specifics. No idea which building, where in the city they''d set up camp in. All I had was a vague ache in my chest stringing me along.


    Sunsdown was coming when that little tug on my heart became a savage yank. I stumbled as if pushed but kept moving forward.


    "Maybe we should stop for now." Ambar offered.


    "We''re close." I don''t know how I knew but I did.


    "I hope so," Leonor said. "We''ve been walking for days. Even I''m started to get tired."


    "No, I can feel it now. We''re close." I repeated.


    Both women exchanged a look.


    "How about we sit down for an hour and if you still ''feel it'' then, we''ll go a little further tonight?" Ambar offered.


    Leonor was already steering me towards a sidestreet packed with resting nomads. There was no point fighting them on it. I would be cared for, no matter how I protested it.


    I hadn''t felt my fatigue until I slumped down against the alley wall. The shade and the soft sea breeze funneling over me made me aware of how feverish and clammy my skin was. I knew a small part of that my own unnatural warmth but the ugly infected pus-spewing mess of my mangled toe was mostly to blame. There wasn''t anything I could do about that now. The sooner I found Bim and the mercs, the sooner I could stop walking.


    "Hero, wake up." Leonor was jostling me.


    I blinked. It was darker now. A bit cooler too, but that was a welcomed change.


    "Ambar found a women''s hostel nearby. They said there''s a spot free for us tonight."


    "You should go," I mumbled. "You deserve a bed." Leonor was hauling me to my feet before I''d finished speaking.


    "You''re coming too. We told them you were a eunuch who worked for Celio and they practically begged us to bring you."


    "I''m not-" I started.


    "I know your not, but they don''t need to know that. Just keep it in your pants for one night."


    The walk was a brief little jaunt of hell. Days spent as a nomad had taken their toll on me. Everything hurt and I was reminded just how soft I''d let myself grow. As a younger man I''d spent weeks in the wilderness doing hard labor, but now just walking was almost more than I could manage. If it wasn''t for the ache in my chest drawing my onward, I don''t know if I would have made it. Ambar was waiting at the hostel with the proprietress when we got there.


    "This is him?" The proprietress asked.


    "Yes, Mistress. He was the Savior''s personal driver until-" Ambar started before she was silenced with a hand.


    "That''s enough. You won''t be able to sleep in the dorms with the other women, but I can lay down some bedding in the storeroom for you tonight. Make sure you don''t roam the halls and don''t leave before I get you at dawn."


    It sounded fishy, but I was in no state to argue. If it was a trap, it wasn''t a very good one. Ambar and Leonor still had their rifles and ammo, plus I still had a pistol stashed in my pocket. We stripped off our filthy outerwear to air overnight, the cloths were so grimy they mostly kept their shape. We had a lump of bedding, four walls and roof. It was the best place any of us had to sleep in for weeks. Ambar and Leonor snuggled close while I tried to keep some space between us without lying on the hard floor.


    "Hero?" Leonor whispered. "You can spoon if you want, but try anything funny and you''re walking out of here with two broken arms in the morning."


    I barely heard her. I was already asleep.


    "Oh wow. You look like shit."


    I had my pistol in hand and pointed at the door before I''d even opened my eyes. All I saw was a glaring white blur through my sleep-crusted eyes.


    "You really look like shit." Princess stated looking me over.


    The albino woman looked like she''d escaped untouched. She was clean and well fed, not to mention she wasn''t wearing the same pair of unwashed pants she''d stolen half a month ago. I tried not to be too envious.


    "If you can believe it, I feel worse than I look." I groaned, sitting upright at length.


    "Somehow, I can. Come on. We''ve got a job to do."


    "Fuck off." I growled rubbing more filth into my eyes than I was cleaning.


    "Wanna repeat that for me?" Princess snapped, glaring daggers at me.


    The way she was staring down at me made me think of when I''d first woken up on the merc''s ship, strapped to a table and half dead. All these months and somehow things had barely changed.


    I absentmindedly reached for feverish heat within me and felt it answer. I was sweltering in an instant, the entire room shimmered with heat haze seconds after that. All these months and somehow things would never be the same.


    Princess didn''t baulk. Her freakish purple eyes danced around the room. She could see what I was doing. She and I were the only two humans who could see just how dangerous I''d become now that I had a rookie''s grasp on powers most men could only dream of. I was a firebomb, a living weapon and she didn''t flinch.


    "You can take your job and shove off. I''m done killing. I don''t owe you a damn thing-"


    "You owe me your life, shithead!"


    "You should have left me to die in that airlock where you found me."


    "Maybe I should have, but I didn''t and we both have to live with that." Princess heaved a frustrated sigh. "Okay, fine, whatever! You say you''re done killing, so what''s with the gun? What''s with that?" She asked, gesturing vaguely at me and the heat-swamped room. "Why come back just to drag your feet and whine like a little bitch?"


    "Is Bim still with you guys?"


    "Of course¡­" Princess rolled her over-large eyes. "Yes, she is. We had a deal and unlike you, she''s not flaking on us when we need her the most."


    "Oh come on! You don''t need her for scat. She''s playing tourist. You and I both know she''s useless in a fight unless you''re planning on slipping her collar again."


    "No." Princess answered instinctively with a slight shudder. "No, we''re not. Don''t be so certain of her being useless either."


    "What''s that supposed to mean?"


    "Well, I can fuck off and you''ll never know. Or, you can stop thinking with your dick, find your balls and come with me to see this job through to the end in a week''s time. So, which is it?"


    "That''s not much of a choice." I grumbled, but my resistance was token at best. "Fine. You win, I''ll come. But I meant it when I said I was done killing. Period. I don''t want anymore blood on my hands."


    "We''ll see about that. Just so you know, if you ever test me again I will turn you into chunky salsa before you can even think about turning up the heat." She was deadly serious. I didn''t doubt her for a second.


    "Wouldn''t dream of it. Us freaks gotta stick together, right?"


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    "You''re such a dumbass. Come on. Don''t want to keep your girlfriend waiting."


    Leonor and Ambar were waiting outside the door, trying their best to look innocent. They''d both been eavesdropping and it showed. Neither of them would meet my eye while Princess lead us to the rest of the outfit. It''s not like Princess and I had done anything untoward in there but for some reason it still felt like I''d been caught with my pants down. We didn''t go too far, maybe a few kilometers before Princess started taking us through side streets and back alleys and eventually to some kind of warehouse that was swarming with mercs and maids and the odd vigia.


    No one seemed to surprised I was still alive, except for Gerald who quickly found somewhere better to be. I should have called him out but I didn''t. Part of me wanted to kill him to make a point, it was more than deserved considering he''d tried to murder me in cold blood over something as stupid as a necklace. But I was so sick of death. I hadn''t come back to keeping killing for them or anyone else, myself included. All the same, I scanned the room for a different medic to tend my aching everything.


    I spotted Bim first and suddenly my pains couldn''t be further from my mind.


    Seeing her again was like seeing color for the first time. It was like suddenly things just made sense. The impossible magnetism that drew us together was replaced by the utmost ease of being at the sight of her across the room. There could have been a hundred people doing who-knows-what around us, but in my eyes there was only me and her.


    I started walking towards her before I even knew what I was doing. I''d had weeks to think about all the things I wanted to say but now my mind was completely blank. There was just me and her and nothing else mattered. So long as I had her, somehow everything would work itself out just fine.


    She saw me coming. Something like twenty different expressions all crossed her face in a blink. Did she feel the same as I did? Was she still my Bim, the woman who''d clung to me so desperately on crowded market streets? The woman I wanted to wake up next to for the rest of my life? The woman I''d gone through hell just to see again?


    I wanted to throw myself on her then and there, right in the middle of the warehouse where everyone could see. It was primal, it went beyond lust or instinct. I wanted to put our two halves together and never separate again. Bim was right there, she was mine and I wanted to be one with her more than anything.


    But was this monster really Bim?


    I stopped just short of pouncing on her as the doubts clawed into me. She hadn''t came a step towards me. She hadn''t so much as moved. What was that expression on her face? A happy scowl? A relieved frown? I was on the brink of being overjoyed and now I was coming back to my senses. Why wasn''t she reacting? Why wasn''t she saying anything?


    "I missed you." I said dumbly.


    "We missed you as well." Bim answered.


    We? I looked around. No one else seemed to have missed me very much though I did see a few prying eyes. People were looking and I saw more than one weapon held at the low ready. I turned back to Bim, trying to read her. She was throwing off a dozen signals all at once but they were all garbled, conflicting messages flashing in tandem. That wasn''t like her at all. She''d always been so deliberate and considered before; now it was like a dozen chimps were all mashing buttons at the same time.


    "I-" I couldn''t spit it out. I couldn''t say I love you. "I think we should talk in private."


    "I''d like that." She answered instantly, but she sounded mad about it. Like I''d done something wrong already.


    She led the way. This wasn''t like her either. In all our time together, I couldn''t recall a single occasion where she''d led and expected me to follow. I followed regardless. It had been nearly a month since we''d spent any time together. It made sense she''d be more independent now, but still¡­ Was a month all it took for her to change so completely? Was that all it took for her to stop being the woman I loved?


    I followed behind her and I couldn''t stop myself from seeing the differences. She was wearing regular clothes when she normally hated anything touching her at all¡ª I even spotted the outline of underwear which she''d always abstained from in the past. She didn''t walk like she used to either, she walked like a regular person instead of lithely flowing from one place to another. Her gaze didn''t linger on every little thing while she contemplated everything in ways I could barely imagine.


    This woman had Bim''s face but I couldn''t shake the feeling that it wasn''t her.


    The room she led me to was more of a root cellar than anything else. Thick, windowless stone walls and only a few cracks of sunlight slipping into the room. A minute ago, I would have thought the space was perfect for an intimate reunion, but now it reminded me of the interrogation cell we''d last met in. I was shaking by the time she finally turned to face me and I couldn''t tell if it was from terror or excitement or just my body failing me.


    "I missed you." I said again, sounding ever stupider the second time.


    If Bim heard me, she didn''t show it. Seconds passed in the worst silence of my life. I could barely see her, I couldn''t tell what she was thinking! Was she waiting for me to take the lead?


    Suddenly, light. A little dim ball in the palm of Bim''s hand, like a tiny domesticated star. The room''s shadows recoiled and I could have sworn the room was shifting around us. Somehow I was in three places at once and all of them were from my nightmares.


    Bim stuck the light ball to the ceiling and I caught the glint of silver around her throat. I saw the collar around her neck but it didn''t make me feel any more grounded.


    "Your powers-" I started.


    "You are wounded." She noted, her face a mess of conflicting emotions.


    No, that wasn''t it at all. I could finally see it in the fey light. Her face was barely moving, it was everything under her face the was¡ª the writhing alien hell-goop that she actually was under the skin of a human. This thing wasn''t Bim! An unbridled animal panic was building in me along with a numb, cold dread.


    I felt cold and that did more to terrify me than the rest of this creature''s horror show combined.


    "I will heal you-" The creature wearing Bim''s skin said, stepping towards me. She had a hand outreached, a hand that writhed like a pack of grubs.


    "No!" I snapped recoiling from her.


    She stopped, a mess of expression crossing her face. I knew it was Bim''s face but I couldn''t see the woman I loved anywhere in it. Except for the eyes. This creature still had Bim''s eyes. I could see pain in them.


    "Last time-" I could barely breathe. The air in here was empty, like I''d still smother no matter how much I sucked in. "Last time, when you tried to heal- I don''t want you to make me into a monster like you did him."


    "¡­I see." Bim said, stepping back. I could see in her eyes how much it hurt her to do so.


    "I''m sorry." I mumbled. "It''s¡­ it''s been a while. I think this is going to take some getting used to."


    "I apologize. We let our excitement get the better of us."


    "Are you still her?" I asked before I could stop myself.


    "Of course I am¡­" Bim answered instantly. "But, I''m more that what I was when you last knew me."


    I wanted to believe her. I just couldn''t shake the feeling that somehow there wasn''t more to her but rather that there was less of her in there. I didn''t know. But if there was any of Bim in there then I''d just have to take that leap of faith and hope it all worked out.


    "I- I don''t really know how to say this but I''ve been thinking about you every day since we met and I think a long time before that too. I don''t know what we are or what this thing between us even is. All I know is I''m crazy about you. You''re like¡­ You''re like¡­ There''s nothing like you in the entire universe, Bim. I want to be with you and maybe together we can figure this whole thing out."


    She stood there unmoving. I closed the distance between us and it was like hurling myself off a cliff hoping she''d catch me. I took her hand in mine hoping that she''d give me a sign, something like what we''d shared before so I knew that she felt it too. Those three little words on the tip of my tongue were terrifying, but Bim was worth the risk.


    "Bim, I love you."


    The light ball flared and vanished. My guts were doing loops and if it weren''t for her hand in mine I would have fallen into the black abyss. She was stone still, deep in thought. That was my Bim! I knew she was in there trying to get out, to come back to me. I could barely see her amber eyes but I knew that look. She was considering everything and she would see the truth.


    She''d come back to me, I knew it.


    "You don''t mean that." She uttered. Her words were like a shot to the gut. "You don''t love me, you''re infatuated with this vessel. This human guise that deceives you into chasing impossible dreams. We''ve¡­ I''ve changed since you knew me. Your idea of what I am is flawed and I am to blame. We knew so little of humans but that has changed too. Everything is so different now that I understand you humans better."


    She tried to pull away from me but I seized her hand in mine.


    "What are you saying? I love you, Bim. I mean it. I love you!"


    "I''m saying that I''m fond of you, but what you think this is¡­ It will never happen. We''re too different."


    She tore her hand from mine. It felt like she tore my heart out with it. This wasn''t right, this wasn''t her. My Bim wouldn''t do this. Not to me.


    "What happened to I am your''s and you are mine?" I demanded with a voice about to break. "What happened to wanting me, always and eternally. For the rest of my life and all those that come after this?"


    "We didn''t know what we were saying. What those things meant. I only wanted your soul-"


    "Then you can have my soul! Wasn''t that was this was always about!? Ever since you called out to me while I was dying by inches in the snow? You wanting me."


    "We do. I do, but it cannot be so."


    "Why not!? I''ll give it to you willingly, so take my soul-"


    "How could I take your soul when I don''t have one to offer in return!? You don''t know what you''re giving up for nothing!"


    "Not for nothing, Bim. I''m giving it up for you! So we can be together. Isn''t that more than enough?"


    "How could that ever be enough?" Bim stated, her voice held nothing but the cold hard fact.


    She could have shot me through the heart and it would have hurt less. My soul, me, all that I was and it was all worthless. I couldn''t breathe. I couldn''t think. All our time together, all those memories that I''d thought had meant something. I couldn''t¡­


    I looked at Bim and saw the golden tears falling from her wounded eyes. This wasn''t her. My Bim wouldn''t do this. Not to me. Words had failed me. I''d already thrown myself off this cliff so there was no point holding anything back now.


    I stopped tripping over useless words and pressed my lips to hers. All the thoughts I couldn''t give voice to, all the passion lost in translation, all of my love combined into a single kiss. My Bim was in there. I just had to reach her and this was the last way I knew how. My heart and soul bled through my lips into her''s and all the while I prayed it would be enough.


    Bim gave me nothing in return. No surge power, no flash sparks, no tongue. Nothing. I could have been kissing a dead fish and still gotten more in reply. I drew back breathless, exhausted, defeated.


    "Are you done?" Bim asks.


    "I guess I was wrong. You really aren''t in there anymore."


    "Don''t be absurd, of course I''m in here but that doesn''t make the impossible possible. I''m not a human woman. We can''t be together. I can''t love you back."


    "You may be, but the woman I love isn''t. I guess we are done."


    "You don''t see it now, but it''s better this way. I''m sorry, Hiiro."


    I slammed through the door, past Treu and his damned leering smile. I wanted to kill her. I wanted to destroy that deamon parading around Bim''s skin but that would never happen. I couldn''t think. I couldn''t see anything through a haze of rage and grief and tears for the future torn from me. My dreams were nothing but gunsmoke and ash and I was an idiot for ever hoping things could be different. A murderer like me didn''t deserve happiness.


    "Hero!"


    Leeroy caught me on the shoulder and didn''t let go when I tried to keep moving. I was a mess and it didn''t take a genius to figure out why.


    "Let go! I''m leaving." I barked, or tried to at least.


    "Not like this you''re not. I won''t pretend to know what your dealing with, but if you storm out of here and fuck with my plans, I''d have to kill you. So instead, you''re going to calm down and act like a profession for three days until the next leg of this op is over with. Then you can go get yourself killed if that''s what you want."


    "Why should I!? Why not skip to the end already!? You''re just waiting for an excuse to put me down like a fucking dog anyway! So do it already! I''m sick of this. If you want to fucking kill me just do it already!"


    Three sharp little pricks poked my neck from behind.


    "If you''ve got a deathwish, the least you can do is take it out on the bad guys, you little shit." Leeroy growled, propping me up as my legs went rubbery.


    "Don''t pretend you''re not bad guys too¡­" I slurred as darkness took me.


    I didn''t dream when I slept. There wasn''t anything I could look forward to anymore and I didn''t trust myself enough to look back. I wasn''t much more relaxed when I woke but my fury was tempered to a fatal edge. I''d finish this job and then I could disappear forever.


    Just finish the job and I''d never have to see Bim again.

 H34 - Acceptance

    _ _ _Hiiro


    Today was the day. Celio''s final campaign ploy to claim another chunk of the world, financed with blood money, war profiteering and generational exploitation of the unlucky bastards born anywhere near him. I knew that he''d done some good amidst all that bad, but the sight of the cheering crowd sprawled across the plaza below me was sickening. They were worshiping a man who was using them as human shields so he could overthrow their government. Maybe it deserved to be toppled, maybe it didn''t. All I knew was that Celio wasn''t going to be any less of a plutocratic prick when he came into power.


    "Do you think they''ll show?" Rock asked, lazily aiming his sniper at the stony stage Celio was summiting.


    "Who knows." Lacy answered from a perch much the same. "Too scared to take the shot if they don''t?"


    Both snipers were buried in blankets of garbage atop raised tables so their weapons could be level with the arrow slit windows facing out into the plaza. It seemed odd that they weren''t just sticking their rifles out the windows but I didn''t care enough to question it. The three of us were hiding in the attic of an old townhouse squatting on the plaza''s southwestern-most corner. The view was pretty good but it would have been better from the church roof next door. Again, it struck me as odd but I didn''t question it. I wasn''t here to plan or think or understand the bigger picture. I''d been stuck with the sniper team to keep me out of the way. I was almost grateful that Leeroy had been so considerate. Almost.


    "I don''t really care for G-PLiD rounds." Rock said. "And no, not scared, I''m more bored than anything. It''s not very sporting to hunt a man who''s in on it."


    "I can take the shot and you can do counter-sniper." Lacy offered, shifting her aim slightly.


    "You don''t trust me to take out Cee, but you want me watching your back? That''s some backwards logic."


    "Alright, fine. Just don''t miiissss." Lacy teased, adjusting her aim elsewhere.


    "Static target at nineteen hundred meters, wind just under five meters per second. I could hit that without a brace from sitting without breaking a sweat. Locked on from prone on a nice comfy firing mat? That''s almost too easy."


    "I could do from standing." Lacy countered.


    "I could do it shooting left-handed on the move." Rock boasted.


    "I could make that shot with my big toe lying on my back." Lacy bragged.


    "Botshit."


    "Yeah¡­ probably. Wanna put some money on it though?"


    "Maybe later, if we don''t get any company."


    While the two snipers bantered, I kept an eye on the crowd below. The plaza was massive, utterly packed with people coming from kilometers around for a glimpse of ''the savior'' with more spectators pouring in every minute. Something about the general mood reminded me more of a concert about to take place than a political rally. Everyone down there was excited, they all thought they were about to witness history in the making. They might be, but I knew it was all a sham. Things wouldn''t get better, they were all fools for thinking that Celio would be any different from whatever petty dictator he was replacing.


    I kept scanning the crowd and like a magnet turning south I always found my attention drawn to her. I never wanted to see her again, but I couldn''t stop myself from stealing glances at her from a distance. Bim was barely a speck a kilometer and a half across the plaza and somehow I always picked her out of those crowding the aid station. Impossible as it was to see, I knew she kept looking across the plaza to me too.


    A fresh wave of vindictive hatred crashed over me. What right did she have to act like this wasn''t all her fault?! I''d poured my heart out for her and she''d crushed it out of hand while saying she still cared about me. It made no sense! I couldn''t even wrap my head around how completely insane it was.


    She''d acted like this was the better option. Like being alone was somehow better than being loved. Being miserable was better in the long run than being truly happy. Like knowing where we stood was worse than being stuck with all these unanswered questions. She''d said she knew more about people know and somehow that was what she''d taken away? That somehow ripping my heart out was for my own good.


    That fucking bitch didn''t know the first thing about being human.


    So why couldn''t I get her out of my head? Why couldn''t I stop seeing her and her alone every time I searched a crowd of tens of thousands? There had to be millions of good decent women out there, so why was she the only one who stirred something in me? Why did it feel like she was twisting a knife in my soul every time I thought about what we could have had together? It made no sense!


    The crowd cheered when Celio started speaking. I couldn''t make out a single word he said over the drowning roar of those idolizing him. It was probably some lie about how he and only he could make things better for everything, if only they all gave him enough blind devotion. Thousands of people enraptured by the words of one man while I was sinking in misery. It made no sense, I couldn''t understand the first thing about this alien world I''d found myself dropped on. Why should anyone be happy? It was like everyone else was in a joke that no one would repeat for me.


    "All units, prepare to bug out. We''ve got massive enemy movement inbound on our location. ETA two-zero mikes." Leeroy said over the general radio before switching over to his private line to the sniper team. "Rock, take your shot in sixty seconds. Sign from Client is both fists raised overhead."


    "Good copy, ready and waiting." Rock answered dispassionately.


    "No change in MET. Conditions negligible. Fire as planned." Lacy reported.


    "Yeah yeah¡­ Not very sporting at all. Just bad manners really."


    The crowd kept on cheering. They were blind. All they saw was the smokescreen thrown up in front of them as the seconds counted down. Tens of thousands of people would be convinced they had a choice and it was all an illusion. That they had witnessed history when all they''d seen were lies.


    My eyes wandered across the crowd back to the aid station¡ª back to Bim. What was she seeing right now? Hundreds of people who received little more than token assistance that would inevitably get blown out of proportion. They would say Celio had healed the sick and made the blind see, all because he''d bought a few tons of antibiotics and glasses and had someone else administer them.


    Impossible though it was, I knew Bim was looking up at me and probably wondering something similar. How differently did we view the world? What had we each meant behind all those words? What had been lost in translation to make things go so wrong? I couldn''t bear to look at the tiny speck of her across the plaza.


    I tore my eyes away just in time to see a cartoonish spray of ruby explode from Celio''s chest. Even at this distance I could see it for the sham it was, too much blood blooming out in all the wrong ways. Celio toppled onto his ass, knocked over by the shot''s impact instead of toppled over on limp dead legs. My painter''s eye was repulsed. It was all wrong.


    The massed crowd evidently had less discerning eyes. There was a stunned pause as thousands of cheers fell silent as one. The mercs closest to Celio rushed to ''rescue'' him and return fire on an empty building much closer to their stage. Then people started screaming.


    This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    All cohesion left the crowd in a instant. At this distance, any details were more like suggestions. Even the mercs in their hulking armored warsuits were no bigger than ants fending off the fleas surrounding them. People fled in blind animal panic. Some rushed the stage, maybe to go and help their fallen savior or perhaps just looking to collect some relics from their new martyr. It was like watching sand slide from an hourglass in a dozen different directions.


    All those human lives could have been grains of sand slipping through the cracks of Celio''s grasping fist. They were nothing to him, inconsequential so long as they put him on the throne.


    "All teams," Leeroy announced. "We have the Client in tow and are moving for ground extraction now. Give us five minutes, then proceed as planned."


    Leeroy and all his damned plans. When the mercs finally pulled their number and went to hell, I knew there''d be a plan drawn for every step of the way. The plan called for the sniper team, and by extension me, to lie low for a few minutes and wait for an opportune moment to exfiltrate on foot. It was a damned wordy way to say shoot, hide, run away.


    I kept watch, my eyes drawn towards the aid station across the way. The crowd was crashing into mercs providing security there. It reminded me of the way the ocean waves crashed against the rocky crags near Celio''s late home, each flooding wave breaking on the implacable stone.


    I spotted Bim walking away with an escort. Even at this distance, there was no mistaking Treu for any other person in the crowd of seething thousands. Bim was leaving? That wasn''t the plan, she was supposed to stay with the rest of humanitarian team until they all pulled out.


    "Leeroy, please advise on your status. We''ve got dismounted infantry coming in from the east."


    "Supplement to last. I''m seeing incoming ground forces from the north too."


    "All Shadow, hold fast." Leeroy ordered. "VIP extraction is blocked to the west. Proceeding to secondary route."


    "The entire damned army is coming." "They''re closing in from all sides. We''re encircled!" "It''s worse than that, their already here! Contact! East side." "Shit! How big an envelope did they start with?"


    I could see more than most from my vantage point. I could follow the comm chatter by the sounds of distant gunfire and the reactions of fleeing civilians. A branch of the crowd would try to escape down a wide street, hundreds or even thousands pressing into the bottleneck only to be pushed back into the plaza by a brick of police marching in lockstep. The enemy was done playing around. They would have Celio or his corpse, whatever the cost.


    "Ghost, get me tactical!" "We need to get off the street. Move it!" "Doesn''t matter, find a gap and punch through." "There''s too many, it''s like a wall of assholes!" "Bastion! Bastion! Bastion! Fall back now!" "Ordinance pod Terminus to my location."


    Treu had called in that last one. I peered around where I''d seen him and Bim last but couldn''t find either.


    The mercs were busting out heavy weapons, I saw armored demigods appearing on the plaza''s edges scurrying to prepare what defenses they could. A knot of steel was pushing south through the panicked crowd trying to get Celio clear of the closing noose. Rock and Lacy both abandoned their garbage shrouds and started blasting at targets I couldn''t see with slow methodical precision.


    "Uzux, we need Steel Rain, NOW!" "Dammit! Those are Dante''s Own down there!" "Eyes up! Night Witches flanking left. Brace for chemical warfare!" "I''ve got a battalion of infantry supported by Steelheart Irregulars coming in. Bearing one-niner-fife-zero." "This is a real who''s who of Mercs, ain''t it?" "Hold fast lads! They''re saying the same things about us!"


    Leeroy would have planned for this. One gun wouldn''t make a difference, not that I was planning on fighting for him anyway. I had no stakes in this game other than getting out alive, but Bim was out there, alone with Treu of all people in what was about to be a bloodbath. I shouldn''t care. She''d made her choices. The pending battle probably didn''t even pose any real danger to her. She wasn''t human¡­ but if she was backed into a corner? If someone thought the torc around her throat would make a nice piece of loot? If she slipped the leash again?


    Even if she wasn''t my Bim I never wanted to see that again. Even if it was stupid to try, I had to protect her from herself. Bim had made her choice and damn it if I wasn''t making mine.


    Both snipers were too busy to notice me slip away, not that either of them were liable to care. Chances were better than fair they''d be glad to have me gone. I descended to ground level, leaving the relative safety of our building for the utter pandemonium of the plaza. Things had seemed a lot different when viewed from above but I was committed. No backing out now.


    The fighting wasn''t anywhere near this area yet. The panicked crowd hadn''t noticed that. Likely wouldn''t notice it until they''d rushed from the plaza into the congested streets and straight into clashing forces. I was fighting against them, moving across the plaza instead of towards the edges. It was like climbing up a waterfall, if I lost my footing for a second they''d drag me down, trample me to a pulp, break my bones and keep on moving without a second''s thought. Humans in a panicked mass were no different than any other stupid animal. If I''d been a little taller I might have been able to steer myself towards the ebbs in the tide of humanity. As it was, everyone seemed like they were a half a head taller than me. I was lost in the rush, pressing forward blindly. All I had to guide me through the chaos was the tear in my heart always pointing towards the woman I''d thought was my answer.


    A manic elbow connected with my jaw. Stampeding sandals found my feet. The press of writhing flesh jostled my half-healed arm until I thought the splint would snap in two. None of that mattered. I kept pressing forward.


    "Where the hell is Sturgeon and his wing?" "Pull those battle maids back, they''ll get slaughtered!" "All Shadow, All Shadow! Birds are inbound now. Find a clearing and regroup of aerial extraction." "We can''t hold the North perimeter, they''re breaking through!" "Buy some time Mercs. Help''s almost here!"


    I didn''t see the stone crag until I''d been shoved into it. It was a little nothing rise of smooth rock, maybe two meters tall. I climbed up and it felt like I was in a whole other place.


    It hadn''t been that long. I''d left the snipers at most ten minutes ago but my mental map was all wrong. The aid station was gone, mobbed and picked clean. I saw a whole fleet of helicopters flying in from off to the right¡ª I think that was northeast but I''d lost my bearings. I couldn''t recognize the plaza. Smoke was already curling from two of the strongpoints and I could tell there wouldn''t be any lengthy sieges today. Collateral damage and civilian casualties were just words. A knot of warsuits were suddenly hunkering down at the base of my pulpit.


    "Hiiro?" One asked.


    "We don''t have time for you." Another growled.


    "Havoc''s right." Leeroy said gruffly. "Hiiro, keep up or get left behind."


    "What about Bim?" I asked but the armored warriors were already moving, keeping a crimson dyed Celio sandwiched between them all.


    "Treu is taking care of her." Leeroy answered.


    Then they were gone, headed towards the plaza''s open edge overlooking the sea somewhere behind where I needed to go. Treu was taking care of Bim. Had it been anyone but Leeroy to say those words they might have sounded innocent.


    Leeroy and all his damned plans.


    I heard thunder in the distance over the white noise of terrorized humanity. I dropped from the rise and kept moving towards Bim. The thunder was a roar now, screaming engines burning hot and wet for seconds of insane power. Somehow, over the deafening engines burning, I heard the shrieks of men and women burning alive in the backwash.


    The crowd parted for a split-second and I saw it. The mercs had two shuttles, poised like rockets about to take off, their braking burns incinerating two straight swaths through the crowd. Both shuttles were under fire, bullets splattering off their glowing hulls in little spits of sparks and shards of red-hot metal. All the while, armored demigods where making the five-story jump out the back of both, landing like meteors in the charred grisly lanes cleared for them.


    I wanted to shut my eyes and never open them again. To lose myself in the fleeing masses and let animal panic take over. So much pointless death and destruction. All of the innovation and toil that had gone into make those shuttles and armored killers. It was insanity!


    It was pure insanity and Treu was going to take care of Bim.


    I didn''t shut my eyes, didn''t run away, didn''t let fear command my legs. I ran towards the fire. This was all nothing compared to what Bim would do if she was uncollared  in the middle of this warzone. She''d lose herself and lash out, just like last time except there wouldn''t be a mountain between me and her. Except this time, Treu would be taking care of her.


    Street level was alive with gunfire now. Warriors clashing on both sides and a whole mess of innocent people caught in the middle of it. The sky was roaring, aircraft exploding or shooting or crashing into both sides of the conflict. There was nothing but overwhelming sensation. Stimulus beyond rationale. Violence beyond comprehension.


    Reality shuddered in savage delight and the heavens wept in crimson ecstasy. The tearing sensation in my chest exploded into a fatal undertow that would not be denied. I was blacking out¡­ except I could still see. I saw a gash torn from reality a kilometer in the air and something was coming through.


    Then I heard Bim scream in a million places at once.

 B35 - Rejection

    _ _ _Bim


    As she understood it, working at an aid station was one of the rare few occupations all humans deemed noble. The fundamental objective of preserving human live was something all humans agreed upon, on one level or another. True there was a good deal of lawyering semantics on which human lives were more important or inferior to others, but the point remained. Her present task was the distribution for foodstuffs and the memorization of each person she supplied so as to ensure everyone got one portion. It was an unyielding policy, but a fair one.


    It was also a ludicrously simple task. One that failed to occupy her thoughts.


    Every few seconds, as one beggar fell back into the crowd and another moved forward to take their place, Bim''s gaze rose above the crowd. The empathic link she shared with Hiiro gave off a constant background trickle of hurt unlike any suffering she''d known prior. Heartbreak, as the recent additions to her mind called it. She wanted to sever their bond, to cast aside this constant wounded longing for what could not be, yet she refrained. Not out of some misplaced sense of guilt but rather from one of duty.


    Bim was here to learn and the intimate knowledge of how deeply a mortal man could be hurt without physical injury was something new. She had a duty to know how badly she''d broken him. She owed it to herself to understand his suffering for her sake. Bim could not permit herself to love Hiiro. Maybe one day decades or centuries from now, he would come to understand that but for now his soul cried out for her and she would not play deaf.


    She''d done the right thing. What he wanted from her was an impossibility. Humans could cling to one another, feigning communion in their physical ignorance. There was no risk, so it was fine for the doomed mortals to play at such romanticized ideals. Immortals could not humor such folly. The risk of one subsuming the other was too great. A union could destroy them both or create something beyond either of their constitute beings. Bound in her vessel, perhaps this Bim that she was could endure such a union. Perhaps she could spare Hiiro from being devoured in his ignorance. Perhaps he was worth the risk¡­


    But the vessel called Bim was not all that she was. This corrupt, indulgent, vainglorious thing that she is now was less than a fraction''s fraction of her true self. A true self that had never known pain or love or touch. Her true self that might reject this Bim that she was rather than condemn itself to a timeless eternity of suffering and loss. To find the beauty in suffering was a uniquely human trait, one her higher self would not doubt reject.


    Bim had to cast Hiiro aside to save him from herself. Maybe he could understand her actions. Maybe, if the stars aligned and the fates allowed, he could forgive her.


    Her thoughts raced and all the while she doled out relief supplies to grateful mortals, each one doomed to die in ignominious solitude. Such was the human condition. A lifetime of suffering that ended with uncaring death. It was pitiful, tragic even. That was the fate that awaited Hiiro, all the better if Bim only had a few sweet months to remember him by when that time came.


    A fragment of her mind imagined how great her loss would be if he died today. Another, if he died next year and another still after she had spent his natural lifespan with him. In all cases she couldn''t fathom such a loss. It was something she simply could not imagine as an experience. Mathematically, there should be an equation factoring in time together compounded by comfort and pleasure in some way quantified. If there was such an equation, then it made sense that the sum value of the joy she''d known with Hirro could be inversely expressed as the utter loss she''d know without him.


    The idea of such an equation made logical sense. Bim was certain that her higher self would appreciate the concept, but Bim did not. Thinking in such inhuman terms was an abstract. Love didn''t come with a numeric signifier. It wasn''t something that could be formulated and measured and proofed. It simply was. Love was a fundamental force in the human experience and as much as she fought it, love would not be denied. Hiiro loved her and he hated her for it. She couldn''t blame him. Bim couldn''t permit herself to love him back and she hated herself for it too.


    The realization struck a chord within her vessel, drawing Bim''s attention back to the present. She was paralyzed, her hand locked on a beggars portion as he tried to pry the food from her iron grip. Bim released the food, sending the beggar stumbling back into the crowd.


    What was the point in fighting against further corruption if she was already tainted? How much worse could she make her situation? This vessel that called herself Bim was a doomed thing. It bore too much tainted knowledge, too much sin to be returned to the fold. Yet there was still the slightest chance Bim could disseminate what she''d learned and be reintegrated with herself¡ª the slightest chance that who she was could survive her return beyond this realm.


    As much as she resisted, Hiiro''s suffering pained her. As much as she refused, he loved her and she couldn''t deny her own fondness of him. His confession had drawn to light the words she longed to say to him. Those three words that would damn her beyond all hope of salvation. If she admitted how she felt to him, her destruction would be assured. Hiiro was alive and that would have to be enough for her.


    Their fight replayed in her mind over and over, twisting the knife every time. She was an alien. A devil. A monster. Their lives together would be nothing but hardship. She was fond of him and she''d done what she had to. Made the right call. She could finish her study promptly and leave this material plane without ever seeing him again. She had to hurt him to save him from herself. It was the only way. So long as he lived out his brief mortal life, Bim could fade from existence knowing this was for the best.


    Yet still her mind wandered to impossible thoughts. His lips upon her own. The bliss she''d felt when sharing his bed. The divine clarity she''d known when he called her vessel''s name. Her own damnation was a small price to pay for the joy of his company. If it was just her own false life on the line Bim would have cast it to the fates already. A single mortal lifetime with Hiiro was worth it. She would condemn herself willingly, but she could not let him do the same. His life was worth thousands of her own.


    Bim''s Tormentor materialized at her side, cowing the swarming beggars by his presence alone. Treu''s traditional sneering contempt was curiously absent, replaced instead by an air of faint melancholy.


    "Your subcontracted time with this company is drawing to an end. Have you learned enough, Creature? Have you discovered the irrefutable truth that there is nothing for you here or elsewhere upon this plane?"


    Once more Bim''s gaze fell upon the building where she felt Hiiro looking down on her. Would that she could cleave the distance between them and cast the consequences to hell, but that was an impossibility. One that did nothing to quell the torrent of desire she felt, nothing so sate the primal hunger she knew he could meet. They were too different.


    "I have learned more than enough Tormentor, perhaps even too much, though I dispute your claim that there is nothing for me here." Bim answered unable to keep the longing wist from her voice.


    "By all means Creature, if there''s something¡ªor should I say someone¡ªthen by your contract with my employer, why don''t you go pursue it? I''d never dream of deliberately obstructing your mandate and elongating your stay in this dimension." Treu said in a playful mocking tone.


    Scant few months ago she had accused him of doing just that. In all that time Treu had been immutable while Bim had undergone continuous change. Indeed the woman she was now bore scarce similarities to the inhuman creature she''d been when she first experienced the pull of gravity and the march of time. What further evidence was needed to know she was corrupted from her initial task? All this time Treu had known how her doomed venture would conclude.


    "All units, prepare to bug out. We''ve got massive enemy movement inbound on our location. ETA two-zero mikes." Leeroy said over the radio of a nearby mercenary.


    "¡­ If I did pursue him, what would happen?" Bim asked.


    "You would taint him as he has tainted you, Devil. In a blink, you would look back on a lifetime of gluttony poisoning your souls and you would know despair, Creature. In a single human lifetime you would destroy everything you came to know, everyone you care for and you would watch them die while craving a death long denied to you, Abomination. You would survive and in due time, you would learn that survival alone is a cruel thing."


    "Your candor is without equal, Tormentor." Bim idly said, knowing the half-truth of his words. She would know despair in time, but until then bliss. It seemed a fair exchange. "And¡­ And if I were to abandon my mandate? If I were to walk away this very instant from that which I crave?"


    Treu took a step away from the aid station, the throng of humanity parting before him. That he could walk away from these past few months that had been her entire life shouldn''t have surprised her yet it did. Treu had survived beyond a normal human''s lifetime, it set him apart from his short-lived counterparts. He was an outsider among them¡­ as was she.


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    "Follow me and I will answer, my Lady." His words were devoid of hatred or mockery. He sounded somewhere between deferent and sympathetic.


    Coming from Treu of all people, her Tormentor, Bim felt stunned. Had he found himself in a similar situation in years longs past? It seemed plausible. As much as she despised admitting it, Treu was a meta-human as was she, they had more in common than either cared to acknowledge.


    A single gunshot rung true across the plaza, a funerary knell for a life that Bim would never know.


    She followed Treu, walking away from the mercenaries and that impossible dream she longed for. It was better this way, she''d been a fool for hoping otherwise. They walked in a bubble of calm as the crowd went berserk around them, each step taking her further from Hiiro. Her death for his life, it was an exchange no devil would undertake. It was a foolishly human notion to die for something greater than yourself, to embrace death so the one you loved could survive just a little longer.


    Bim knew that this was the best course of action, so why was every step a battle? She was doing this to save Hiiro! His life was what mattered, not her''s. She wasn''t real, she wasn''t human, she wasn''t even mortal! But wasn''t she?


    To be mortal was by definition to be subject to death. When Treu destroyed her vessel, Bim would likely not be embraced by her higher self. This fraction of a fraction that was her consciousness and essence would cease to exist¡ª destroyed to prevent her from corrupting her higher self with things best left unknown. She would be obliterated in mind, soul and body. There was no distancing herself from that truth.


    Bim would die, by definition that made her mortal.


    Her feet stopped trudging forward. Treu spun on her instantly. Bim could hear intermittent gunfire in the distance. Why did it matter if she wasn''t human? Why should her imitated human body stop her from pursuing happiness? If she was going to die as all mortal things did, would a brief lifetime of shared with the man she loved be such a curse?


    "Treu, have you every known love?" Bim asked, unable to tear her mind from Hiiro and the sound of escalating gunfire behind her.


    "What does it matter if I did?" Treu asked, his tone still uncharacteristically gentle. "All things are temporary. All things will be silent in time as all things will end, such is the inevitable conclusion of this fragile dimension composed of seething vacuum, finite matter and infinite time."


    "Again you throw my own words back in my face. Are my actions still guided inhuman ignorance? In a month''s time would you thrown these words now back at me once more?"


    "Your present ignorance is far more human than not." Treu answered.


    The distant sounds of conflict drew nearer, more intense. She felt Hiiro plucking at our connection, searching for her. He was concerned, not of the clash of arms or for his own wellbeing but for her. He hated her yet still he''d risk peril to save her. Bim felt the urge to do much the same. She may be mortal by the strictest definitions but she was far more durable that Hiiro was. He''d get himself killed trying to save her while she was busy doing the same for him. It was absurd, so pointlessly human that she found herself smiling. Love was blind to reason.


    "It would seem I''m not the only one." Bim stated idly, gazing back towards the man she loved.


    "You know where that choice leads." Treu said, asking a question without asking in that annoyingly human way.


    "I can reasonably speculate." Bim answered.


    "You can never have what you want. You know that."


    "It seems probable."


    "So why?" Treu finally asked. "You have power and time and a mind capable of making use of both. Hiiro is insignificant. In time you can have as many lovers as you''d like and you will outlast them all. You could discover untold truths beyond human comprehension and ascend beyond to rule the nether-realm! Do you truly understand what you''re throwing away for a single mortal man with a spark of power?"


    He spoke truly yet in that moment Bim didn''t care. If Hiiro got himself kill then her sacrifice for his sake was pointless. They were two fools throwing their lives to the fates in desperate pains to save the other. If either of them would just walk away things would be easier for them both yet love was blind and mortals are fools.


    Treu was correct. A devil would have heard is logical rationale and been swayed. Had he spoken to her so candidly months prior, Bim would have seen the wisdom Treu had garnered through decades of plighted existence. In some small way, she agreed with him now but still, she could not disregard Hiiro. Despite all that had happened and all that they''d said and all the cold hard sanity in the world, Bim could not deny that she still craved for her Hiiro as a flame craves for air.


    Bim took a single step back towards that expanding chaos, that impossible dream, but Treu''s massive hand seized her arm. She was going back to help, to save Hiiro even if they could never be together. Even if saving him now meant suffering for it later. She turned from her destiny to regard Treu with eyes steeled by regal conviction.


    "You know the truth in my words and still you would deny it?" Treu asked.


    "A single lifetime with Hiiro is worth more to me than a million lifetimes without him. I would rather embrace mortality by his side than rule a desolate dimension alone."


    "I was hoping you''d say that." A wicked smile split Treu''s mask of compassion. "Ordinance pod Terminus to my location."


    Treu wrapped her in a colossal bear hug, enveloping her as a starved predator might embrace an abandoned infant. His hands slipped through her clothes and pseudoflesh as if neither were there and grasped the sigil embedded within her. It had happened so fast! He held the physical representation of her soul anchored to this material dimension in steely hands bereft of mercy.


    "This iteration of you might believe so, but I doubt the rest of your being is as understanding of such human weaknesses. I hold your soul in my fist B???i????m????''?????k???e???l????a?????i?????d????h?????z?????a?????, and I release you."


    Bim was dumbfounded for a split second before the world shrank away from her perceptions. It was as if she had been viewing her existence through a pinhole and now the woolen blind was pulled from her eyes. She saw and she understood without consideration, she simply knew. Time still marched ever onwards but her mind was overclocked from its languid human facsimile until even the seconds dragged on. Bim blinked her eyes with preternatural alacrity looking to see what Treu would do to her next while she was still immobilized by sensory overload.


    Treu''s murderous embrace was twofold, each hand placed strategically. The trice-damned sigil embedded within her pseudoflesh was being crushed in his iron grip, something she had secretly longed for which now threw her to the brink of despair. Bim was better versed in the constraints of this physical reality now. She knew that a creature such as her could not exist unanchored. She was a destructive anomaly yet so undeniably vulnerable too. The vessel that called itself Bim was a fraction of a fraction something like a star god and without a dimensional anchor and something to conceal her presence, she was also a helpless feast for any number of extra-dimensional entities. Not least among then, herself.


    This had been Treu''s objective all along. Extract what useful knowledge could be gleaned prior to offering her up in a moment of weakness, like so much poisoned bait to draw out a true monster.


    The sigil within her fractured and crumpled to ash. Bims awareness exploded outwards, beyond the constraints of flesh or light or space. Her expanding mind brushed against thousands of low-order angels feeding upon the prayers and human souls of this world. Her consciousness pierced the veil between dimensions as if it weren''t there and despite herself, Bim felt relieved. It was a small thing, the connection to her home plane, yet there was no denying wash of normality she experienced. Such a connection did not go unnoticed by her home plane''s denizens. Bim threw her will into retreat but the damage was done.


    Her awareness returned to her vessel just as Treu slipped the final bond from her throat. The silver torc clattered to the cobbled street and power flooded Bim. She was no helpless fleshling prey! She was a demi-god made manifest. A Devil descended to walk the worlds of mortal men. Her vessel was alive with energy, her mind drunk with it. She was a vessel of Order in a place of Chaos, she walked the Enemy''s lands and every protoplasmic fiber of her being compelled her to pursue the only war.


    Bim resisted her instincts. She had to be small, to be slow and helpless and weak and invisible. She could destroy this place of the Enemy without effort! Millions of mortal minds were as sand in the wind, compared to the singular vast expanse that was Bim unburdened and yet she fought her own nature. Bim must not draw the great clash here where even now Hiiro was being such a damned fool to save her.


    It was too late.


    This fragile reality she found herself in shuddered in savage delight and the atmosphere wept thick clouds of blood red. The empathic link between Bim and Hiiro sprouted a cancerous new pole as a third party gained interest. For kilometers in every direction the harsh light of Nexo Isla''s twinned suns grew dim, the bulk of photons all being diverted towards a growing gash sundered between dimensions. The wayward vessel that called itself Bim knew dread as it felt the truly alien mind that had spawned her clawing its way across the breach.


    A young goddess that had never before need to be constrained to time or space or name. An entity beyond human comprehension that knew little of this fragile dimension so many had ascended from. It was an ignorant alien thing that hung its impossible mass of broiling undulating crimson-black a hundred meters above the plaza where mortals slaughtered those frozen in terror. No name could encapsulate it. It was Bim''s doom and for a fleeting all-too-human instant Bim decided she would not die to a nameless thing.


    Bim named her doom, B?????u???n????e?????.


    Time? Space? Matter? These all meant nothing to B?????u???n????e?????. With the slightest flicker of thought B?????u???n????e????? deigned retrieve its wayward daughter and glut itself on her learning. Only then did the disparate attentions of an entity beyond time coalesce into the ephemeral all-consuming Now. A strand of consciousness reached out from B?????u???n????e????? to extract months of understanding and it would not be denied. There was no protesting it, no stopping B?????u???n????e????? from sifting Bim''s like an open book. A single instant and it was too late. As one and neither, in a million voices that reverberated throughout this point in time and space, they knew each other.


    In their knowing, they screamed.

 H36 [I] - Fools in Love

    _ _ _Hiiro


    The sky was bleeding¡­ Bim was screaming¡­ There was a hole in reality and something was coming through. It was all too big to grasp, too insane for me to wrap my head around. I''d known she wasn''t human but I''d never expected anything like this. What was I even looking at? Her? Her father? The devil cops? I didn''t have the scope of reference to even begin making informed guesses. Bim was screaming a wordless blood-curdling shriek from everywhere at once. The sound turned my veins to ice and left my nerves raw. It sounded like she was being tortured along with every single bat in Hell and a few million tons of steel for good measure.


    Treu was taking care of her.


    I may not have seen the bigger picture but I knew that much. The crowd had melted away from the plaza where this new throbbing-black and blood-red star was drifting down towards the land¡ª directly towards where I''d seen Bim last. I could barely feel her tugging on my heart but it was there, faintly. The blood star was like a black hole in reverse, trying to quash me into the stone while every step felt twice as difficult as the last. I was drawn to Bim and repelled by this new aberrant thing.


    I wasn''t the only one affected. I caught glimpses of helicopters warring to regain control so they could set down or stay aloft, planes tumbling through the air firing at everything as they went. Soldiers and mercs were skirmishing through the alleys and streets as they fled the falling star, entire buildings toppling into the walkways they''d been fighting over. No one spared me a second''s notice as I ran towards the danger, a lone man racing against the black star.


    My blood was boiling. Heart pounding and legs pumping. I wasn''t fast enough. The enormous black star touched down a half kilometer ahead of me with all the weight of a feather, a swirling dome of smoky-crimson cupping a portion of the city. It was massive! Monstrously huge, devouring everything for kilometers and flattening its surroundings with a slow pulse of irresistible force. I couldn''t run anymore. My lungs were burning! The path I threaded through the rubble was mostly level yet I''d have sworn I was climbing up a mountain.


    To my left and right the smoky crimson dome dominated half the horizon. The hellsphere was growing more agitated, the swirling tendrils of oily black just under its skin writhing faster and faster. It made a sound, somewhere between an explosion, a retch and an earthquake. There was a wash of inhuman heat that stank of melted rubber and meat, then the air around the dome went fuzzy with dark specks.


    I wondered if that was how it had looked just before Bim scattered a mountain unto the city. Specks in the distance that struck down as boulders bigger than skyscrapers. They were scattered at random, propelled by impossible forces that should have destroyed them by fatal acceleration alone. Then they were raining down, too fast to avoid. That I should live or die by random chance seemed absurd but there was nothing for it. I pressed on, throwing my life to the cosmic dice and the gamble that I could reach Bim before it was too late.


    One of the specks grew to full size in a blink. It struck the street fifty meters ahead of me, half-splattering on the cobbles and sprawl of bricks. Forty meters later it finished toppling end over end in a splay of twisted limbs. It was a body. Charred black, mangled beyond all recognition from its terminal impact. I think he was a man, possibly a soldier who''d been inside that nightmare I was headed for. I didn''t spare him much thought. I couldn''t waste a second on anyone else right now.


    Bim was somewhere in there and I was going to save her. That was all that mattered. It was a fool''s plan, equal parts insane bravery and lovestruck insanity but it was all I had. Treu was taking care of her. That meant that somehow, I had to take care of him before he could manage. A fool''s plan indeed.


    There were more burnt bodies the closer I got to the dome''s edge. Every single one was more or less identical. Horrifically burned, probably male, a muscular physique on the shorter side, and badly mangled from splattering on the ground after being thrown hundreds of meters into the air. I must have walked past scores of them, there must have been thousands being cast aside from the dome, and every single one looked similar. Too similar to be anything but flawed copies of each other. I stopped maybe ten meters from the dome''s edge and found a lightly scorched body that''d had a very short flight.


    Same build, same height, I even peeled back his seared lips to look at his teeth. He could have been my brother. He was an almost-perfect copy of me. They all had been. Not quite right, just a few small things out of place. The body in front of me was more like a caricature, what someone remembered I looked like without me standing there for reference. The shoulders a little too broad, my mongoloid features a touch stronger than they were, the burn scars too proud.


    Thousands of Hiiros all dead and burned. Thousands of copies drawn from the mind of someone who knew me almost as well as I knew myself. What the hell was Bim playing at? Just what was Treu doing to her in there?


    "I''m not doing anything to her."


    I spun on the voice, arms wreathed with killing flames I hadn''t thought to summon. Treu was digging equipment out of a giant metal coffin half buried in an impact crater. Boxy rifles bigger than I was tall, talismans and trinkets that made my teeth itch, and long scrolls of crumbling papers burning at the edges like incense, all came together in a growing heap. There was a tall poleaxe of silvery metal standing at the crater''s lip like a standard, the blade''s edge etched with sigils so fine they gave the weapon a wavy, acid-etched look.


    All of that paled in comparison to the armor Treu was wearing. Treu, an inhuman monster that had walked unflinching through months of gunfights in naught but tee-shirts and cargo pants, was wearing a hulking dreadnought of power armor. It was similar but different from the designs used by the mercs; it wasn''t any less armored but the thick limbs were longer and less stocky by comparison. How anything with vaned limbs thicker around than my torso could look almost spindly was a mystery but it did. His armor was lean and lethal, and still Treu slotted more armaments home.


    Each forearm sported inbuilt thick-bored pistols. His thighs had a pair of curious beam rifles fastened to gimble mounts so he could fire them from the hip. Treu''s waist was thickened by munitions and ordinances. Four stubby wings were folded at his back, each ending in a cannon of some kind. The there were the rifle and halberd that would occupy his hands once he decided to charge into hell. Once he decided he was ready to take care of Bim.


    Treu, already a monster of a man, was armored and armed with enough hardware to make the best-equipped gun-totting merc envious. He was so beyond the idea of a highly-trained weapons expert it was ludicrous. Treu was a living weapon clad in the pinnacle of human and probably alien technology. I had a broken arm half-healed and what was left of the clothes on my back as they were consumed by my spreading flames. It didn''t matter.


    I charged him.


    Three steps later, I hit the ash-strewn ground completely paralyzed. My entire body cramped like I''d grabbed a live wire. I thought I saw the big bastard flick a finger but I wasn''t sure if I really had. His gaze hadn''t so much as graced me. I tried to curse Treu but all that spilled from my lips was an agonized groan.


    "I said, I am not doing anything to your precious Devil. Yet." Treu enunciated with haughty condescension. "The time is not right for me to strike. What you are seeing is¡­ Well, you wouldn''t understand the details, but think of this as your precious Devil warring with herself for control. The creature you know as Bim will soon cease to be."


    "No!" I growled, fighting against my failing body to rise.


    "Yes." Treu stated factually. "Even now she clings to these disgusting remembrances of you to retain her individuality. The remainder of this Abomination is rejecting her¡ª and by tertiary extension you. In a few more minutes it will have completely erased your existence from all thoughts and what remains of your precious Devil will be ripe for consumption."


    "How do we stop It?" I asked, finally regaining enough motor functionality to stand.


    "There is no stopping It, not indefinitely. That is the parts of your beloved Devil she left behind to come to this plane. An insatiable hunger, Its entire being composed of desire to devour and know. She is clinging to you, It is fighting her. You are a poison to It-- as is she in her present state. What you are seeing is your fault. We do nothing. I am preparing to resolve the situation."


    "How!?" I demanded, dreading the answer.


    Treu spared a single eye to glare down at me with contempt. He didn''t answer save to heft another weapon into its hardpoint and wrap another smoldering scroll around his silvery halberd.


    "No! You can''t."


    "Oh, I assure you, I most certainly can." He sneered with perverse delight.


    "There has to be another way!"


    Both eyes snapped towards me. Hatred flared across his face but there was something playful about it too. Treu was glad this had finally happened, a patient hunter who''d been rewarded by sighting his target. Now I was standing in the way of that. Treu was going to take care of Bim, and when the time was right he was going to take care of me too. That didn''t mean I''d go down without a fight.


    "If you''re going to kill Bim, you''ll have to go through me first!"


    "I intend to." Treu sneered. "But not yet. Save your pointless bravado until then. She has lost her focus, the vessel is rebelling as the greater mind of your precious Devil seeks to reassimilate her. It is rejecting you and she''s fighting against It. If you can distract It, draw its attentions unto yourself and into the present then your precious Devil may be able to reassert some small degree of control."


    Draw Its attentions? Was that all I''d done in the past when Bim was lost within herself? I thought back to the first time, just after the rollover. What had I said to her then? I couldn''t remember doing anything special. I just remembered blackened, abyssal flesh-goop like a flower in bloom imploding back in upon itself to reform the shape of a human being. Then at the heart of all that writhing, slithering, undulating, rigid wrongness, I remembered her seeing me through hundreds of eyes. She had seen me, looked into me, with an intimacy that made my heart weep. For the first time in my life, I truly felt like someone saw me as I was and accepted me flaws and all. I hadn''t done anything, all she needed was the sight of me.


    The second time hadn''t been so easy, when she''d rescued me and nearly destroyed herself in the process. I hardly remembered that chaotic night through all the fighting and the pain and loss. It was all flashes. Bim floating in the air like a vengeful goddess. The living cancer she''d spawned trying to heal a man at my request. The soul-rending agony in her eyes as I called her back from the abyss. The devastation of the city, the palace under siege, Zoe''s death¡ª all of it my fault. I couldn''t let that happen again!


    "Fine, I''ll do it." I said, sound more confident than I felt. Comparing then to now was like candles and volcanoes. "Any advice on how to do that?"


    Treu shrugs weapon-clad shoulders. "If you can''t figure it out in short order, then I will."


    I tried to ignore the comment. I couldn''t let it come to that. I wouldn''t let him hurt her. I followed my heart and pressed into the nightmare dome.


    Everything went alien as I crossed the threshold from a very real warzone into an unreal alien hellscape. The colors were wrong here, it was like the entire rainbow spectrum had been dropped an octave so that deep-red was the brightest shade on display. I couldn''t make any sense of the rest of the spectrum, I saw red and black and a bunch of other colors I couldn''t put into any shape of reference. There wasn''t any green or blue or anything cooler than maroon. My painter''s eye was going insane trying to make sense of these new sensations assaulting my eyes. I saw hues of knowledge, a shade of suspicion and absolutely everywhere the color of corruption.


    There was no hints of the city streets this hellscape had landed on. I was on craggy plains in the barest suggestion of a valley with¡­ Something at the valley''s center. It was like a titanic tree made of fleshy bark and limbs that could have been sinewy branches or bony tentacles. There was a skinny trunk area that broadened the higher from the ground it went and no matter where I looked it was perfectly symmetrical without being round¡ª more like someone had shoved a mira up against my nose but only when I was looking at that tree-thing. There was a tint opposite black that wasn''t white and this thing had what could only be teeth spotting its limbs; teeth the color of learning and destruction and devouring. There was a throbbing-black and blood-red star positioned like a great cycloptic eye at the heart of all those branch-tentacles. There was no pupil, no way to gauge where its focus lie. It was always observing everything at once.


    I felt its scrutiny upon me, an entire ocean of crushing curiosity battering down on me.


    What was I, this fragile fleshthing to stride so boldly into the unknown? A kindred spirit? A threat? Something else entirely? This flesh-bound slave of time intruded, it bore the attentions of a Cosmic God and it persisted? A champion of the Mortal Minds? An Outsider? A fellow Monster? It came to this existence and endured intact? Human minds break so easily yet you do not? You are¡­ a curiosity.


    "My H?????i??rr???o???!"


    I was falling! There was nothing. I hadn''t even blinked but I''d missed the moment when everything vanished. The hellscape was gone, the alien colors, the tree-thing. I was myself again and only now did I have the faintest recollection of seeing myself from the outside. A haunting memory of Bim calling out to me from somewhere far away. I was floating in an empty void of total blackness that wasn''t dark. I looked down and flinched when I saw myself and the ashy remains of my clothes still here. Wherever here was¡­


    There was Nothing.


    No light but it wasn''t dark. No ground and I wasn''t standing on anything but I wasn''t falling anymore. No sign of any planet or stars but I could still breathe. There was nothing, except there wasn''t. It simply was. As was I.


    I didn''t bother trying to wrap my head around it. I knew I was so far into the unknown that I''d never make any sense of what I was experiencing or seeing or feeling. It was all so utterly alien that a human mind didn''t have a prayer. I was somewhere I had no right to be and somewhere in here Bim needed me, that was all I had to know. I just had to find her and save her.


    I tried walking. It felt like I was but I wasn''t moving, not that there was anywhere to go. I spoke and my words barely reached my ears, like I was in a room too big with air too thin for an echo. I reached for my inner flames and tossed a fireball into the void; it flew straight and true for a distance that had no meaning until it burned itself out.


    How the hell was I supposed to find anything in all this nothing!? If Bim was in here somewhere then why couldn''t I see her? It''s not like she could have hidden behind anything. If she was here then I should be able to see her on the horizon. There was nothing here, except for me.


    "Aw crap." I uttered, realizing how completely screwed I was.

 H36 [II] - Fools in Love

    _ _ _Hiiro


    "Aw crap." I uttered, realizing how completely screwed I was.


    I was so far out of my depth it wasn''t even funny. I looked everywhere, even did a full three-sixty left-right first, then up-down. There was nothing here! It was completely disorienting. I thought I was standing on a wall looking down but my ears couldn''t tell if I was floating or falling or what. I tried running but the universe was a treadmill I couldn''t touch. My legs were moving but I wasn''t.


    "Bim! It''s me, Hiiro!" I screamed into the void.


    There wasn''t even an echo.


    How the hell was I going to find Bim if she wasn''t here?! Even if I did see her, how would I reach her when I couldn''t even move? There had to be a way!


    No, there didn''t.


    I slumped down as the revelation hit me. Sometimes there was no way out. Sometimes you just died, alone and helpless. No! It couldn''t end like this!


    "BIM!!! Where are you!?" I screamed into the void.


    The void didn''t have the curtsy to scream back.


    I ran full tilt, going nowhere fast for minutes on end. There was nowhere to go. There was only Nothing. I leaned further into my stride but it made no difference. I couldn''t even tell if I was pointed the same way I''d started. Running wouldn''t solve anything. I sat down, surprised I could do that much in this empty void. I should have been sucking wind, a sopping mess on the verge of collapse, but I wasn''t even sweating.


    Maybe I had died.


    It seemed odd that the afterlife would just be¡­ empty. It was, I don''t know, sad I guess. You went through your whole life and then you got a big desolate void for all your trouble. If God was real and I was right about being dead, then I knew I was also right about his sense of humor. There wasn''t even the solace of true oblivion because I was still here, despoiling all this nothing with my own being.


    I hoped I wasn''t right about being dead but somehow it seemed like I was on to something. I still had my body but everything was effortless here. Not the floaty haze of dreams but definitely surreal enough that I wasn''t sure I was still among the living.


    I idly tossed a few more fireballs into the void. Up, down, left, right, life, death; it was all lost in abstract here. This could be Heaven for some people, Hell for others. It wasn''t really either to me. It just was. As was I.


    Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I wasn''t dead just yet. All I had to do was wait a few days to starve to death and I''d know the answer for sure then. Assuming time still worked like it was supposed to here. Assuming I''d know when I should be getting thirsty or sleepy or hungry. I didn''t feel any of those right now and try though I might, I couldn''t recall if I''d been thirsty back in the plaza before everything had gone to hell.


    I should probably get up, but I didn''t see much point. It''s not like I could keep moving. That put me at something of a loss, like all I knew how to do was keep moving forward. Always trying to put something behind me while chasing something just up ahead without ever catching it. That was life, wasn''t it? And now that seemed so mundane, so ridiculously futile.


    I still knew I had to find Bim. I had to do whatever I could to help her, it''s just that there wasn''t a lot I could do right now. I tried to lie down, but without a floor I just found myself standing again now with some minor vertigo. I sat back down and scratched my head. I couldn''t move on, so thinking was basically my first and last resort here.


    I shouldn''t be sitting here thinking about myself like this. It didn''t matter if I was dead or not, Bim needed me! If I couldn''t save her than Treu would¡­ I didn''t really know what he''d do but it''d be bad. I mentally kicked myself over and over again. Get up you lazy bastard! Figure it out! Save Bim! Instead, I just sat there in all the nothing and thought.


    All our time together and I still barely knew anything about Bim. I should have focused more on her. Shouldn''t have been so stubborn, so awkward, so damned weak! I should have told her I loved her sooner. Maybe if I had things wouldn''t have ended up like this. Maybe then I wouldn''t be dead or dieing or alone in this nothing. It was selfish, but I thought it wouldn''t have been so bad if Bim was in this void by my side. No one should have to die alone.


    Something brushed against my skin.


    I would have jumped right out of my bones if I could actually move. I still flinched but it just wasn''t the same. I looked and there was nothing. But I knew something had been near me. I swatted my good hand around, feeling for invisible cobwebs or whatever. Nothing, no surprise there. I scratched my brain and put it to work feeling like it was the first time I''d done so in a long time.


    Something I could feel but I couldn''t see it or touch it. Magic?


    I reached for my inner flames and let them run amok over my skin. I scanned over every inch I could. There was something there, I knew it, but the flames gave me no answers. At least not directly. Princess might have seen something I didn''t. Bim could have figured it out way faster than me. Hell, I''d take Treu right now if it meant getting a second opinion from someone who actually knew how all this magic crap worked.


    But me? I didn''t have the slightest. I called the flames and they answered. I felt the heat and drank it in. When I wanted something spooky done, I threw fire at it and let it do its own thing. I was never really controlling it, more like steering it to the right ends. I didn''t actually know how it worked. Didn''t know the science behind it¡ª if there even was any.


    I could try burning my way out of this place. No, that was stupid. It was empty for one thing and even if I could burn literal nothing, there was a good chance it''d take way more energy than I had to spare. I could kill myself trying as a last resort if I got desperate enough, but I wasn''t there yet. Assuming I wasn''t already dead. Assuming I even could kill myself in here. Still¡­ I felt like there was something to the idea.


    I didn''t know scat about all this devil stuff, but Treu did. He''d said I needed to draw Its attention here. Bim needed a distraction. I lobbed another idle fireball into the distance, watching it intently. It was hard to tell how far it went but it burned for a good thirty seconds before snuffing out. I hadn''t played with random fireballs before, I didn''t know if that was better or worse than what I could do normally. I pieced it together as best I could.


    I was in a void but there was air I could breathe. It wasn''t much but that was more than nothing. Could I use the air as kindling? Weren''t there bombs that used air as fuel? Princess would  know, half the mercs probably knew the answer but I could only guess. Fuel-air bombs sounded like something I''d heard before¡­ If I burned up all the air I needed to breathe, what would happen then? A minute, maybe two, to die knowing I was a damned stupid fool. Assuming I didn''t kill myself before then.


    Damn it all! I wasn''t a planning sort of guy. Most my thinking was all guts and spine. How did Leeroy do it? I could think of a dozen people smarter than me. Not that that did me any good since I was the only one here! How the hell was I supposed to do anything in this place?


    "Dammit!" I snarled in feral rage.


    The void didn''t reply. I don''t know why but that pissed me off. I felt the killing heat surge up inside me, begging to be cut loose. All I had to do was let go. The flames would send me to oblivion and that would be that.


    I teetered on a knife''s edge while my blood boiled. Solitude on one side, Oblivion the other. No way back, nothing but hope for a way forward. I didn''t know what to do! Was there even anything I could do or was I already too late?


    "Why am I always too weak to protect anyone? Bim¡­ Just once, I wanted to save you."


    Something brushed against my skin, like the push of a magnet or something with a static charge passing nearby. I didn''t try to grab it this time. Didn''t fight it.


    "Is that some part of you, Bim?"


    The electric sensation didn''t dissipate. I let it be. My silent companion as I ruminated in this stygian void.


    "I hope it is. I''d feel like a real jackass if I was pouring my heart out for some other girl." I mused with a solemn dry chuckle. "I''m sorry, Bim. Just once, just once I wanted to be the one to save you. You deserve that much. I guess I wasn''t man enough to pull it off though. I wish I was strong like you were, brains, confidence, magic. You''re brave enough to jump into the unknown every time without regrets but me, I feel like I''ve spent my whole life looking back. If you were here, I know you''d have figured out a dozen different ways to bust out of here so you could come rescue me like you always do. But not this time, eh?"


    Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    My entire arm was engulfed in the magnetic tingling. I pictured Bim holding my hand and the thought made my heart weep.


    "I don''t want you trapped in here too, but damn it if I don''t wish you were actually holding my hand. Why couldn''t you just let me love you, Bim? Even if we''re different, even if you could never love me back. Is it really so bad to have someone out there who cares about you? It would have killed me to do it, but I always knew you were too good for me, I would have let you go. I know you couldn''t stick around forever. You had to go back to whatever that ''next life'' is sooner or later. If you didn''t, how would we meet up on the other side?"


    I gave the phantom hand at my side a gentle squeeze. In my mind, Bim squeezed my hand back. I closed my eyes to keep the tears from falling even though there was no one around to see.


    "I''m sorry Bim. This is all my fault. If I''d never left Intatenrup chasing you, you wouldn''t be falling apart right now. I can''t imagine what kind of Hell your going through because of me. Because I''m just a stupid fragile weak human. I know there''s no way I can stop Treu or whatever that tree-thing is or this stupid Nothing. Maybe I''m just a damned fool thinking impossible thoughts. I''ll probably get myself killed trying to make a difference, but I''m still going to try. I couldn''t live with myself if I didn''t. Even if I do die, well, at least I''ll see you on the other side. Maybe I''m just an idiot but at least I''m yours, Bim."


    I rose to make my final stand, but the hand interlocked with mine tugged insistently. I opened my eyes and she was there. Only¡­ this wasn''t Bim. I could have been looking at Bim''s younger sister, her features less defined and still filling out. This familiar stranger was no more my Bim than the burnt copies I''d passed were the real me.


    "Bim?" I croaked in a hoarse whisper. "I don''t-"


    "Yes/No. Kind of? No time." She spat, words flying in a blaze. "No time at all! I''m just a copy of a copy so far down the line I''m practically human. Hiiro! I love you, She loves you! She loves you so much it''s literally killing her. Tree? B?????u???n????e????? is the thing. It''s killing her/me."


    Bim''s younger clone winced, clutching at her head as pain racked her mind.


    "Tell me what to do!" I commanded. The young clone stared at me, confused. "How do I save Bim!"


    "You don''t." She said with absolute certainty. "There is no saving me. I''m a dead woman walking on borrowed time, but since I''m going to die anyway I wanted you to know. You helped me experience things I''d never know without you. You will be a part of me until the very end. These final minutes together mean more to me than I could ever express. This was always the cost, moments with you or eternity without. I don''t regret my choice. I love you, Hiiro."


    "I love you too, Bim."


    There was so much I wanted to say, so many things she needed to know. Bim''s face was convulsing in agony but her eyes held mine and I knew she felt the same. There was no time left for us to find the words we needed. There was no time left to do anything but hold each other and wait for annihilation.


    I wrapped her in my arms wishing there was something else I could do. I felt her trembling hands on my back. She was so small right now. Bim had always been taller than me before. I buried her deeper and deeper in my arms, desperate to shield her from what we both knew was coming. If love was enough to save her Bim would have lived forever, but that was a fool''s impossible dream. The end was coming.


    I''d charged into Hell and all it got me was a few more seconds to hold her in my arms. I cherished each and every one. I couldn''t let myself be afraid, couldn''t bring myself to think about what would happen after. There was only the woman I loved in my arms for one tragically beautiful moment after then next. The sands of time slipping away from my desperate reaching fingers.


    I tried not to think at all, to simply be present in our final moments. Right now, it reminded me of holding Zoe-Esther as she''d died in my arms with a confession on her lips. Was this all I''d ever be? The man who let one woman after another slip through my fingers because I was too weak to save them. Zoe, Sophia, Shenhua, the girl I''d strangled, the Polaris survivors I''d ate to save my own sorry skin all those years ago. If I lost Bim too, I''d never be able to live with myself.


    "No! It can''t end like this. I refuse! Bim, you''re the smartest woman I know but you''re wrong. You have to be! There has to be a way I can save you!"


    "I wish there were. There''s no time. B?????u???n????e????? knows I''m here."


    As soon as she''d spoke that abhorrent name I could feel Its attention trawling over us. I felt myself being crushed under Its scrutiny, an entire ocean of curiosity bearing down on my back. My brain was being driven out of my own body! I was a ghost staring down at myself vainly shielding Bim''s clone.


    The void around me looked nothing like it had to my normal senses. This place was like a massive archive of thoughts and impressions all being scanned and sorted and filed by a thing like a cube with fifty-four blank faces. The many-faced Archivist was ripping open Bim''s mind, tearing out dozens of moments simultaneously for review. I saw them too, only I wasn''t just seeing Bim''s memories I was living them all at once, just like the Archivist.


    Some it accepted without incident: scribing in a blue grimiore, appreciating the historic significance of a painting, wondering at the molecules that composed the scent of a flower. Most memories weren''t so cut and dried. Treu mutilating Bim in the seconds after she''d realized his betrayal. The numbing poverty of the mind that came with being severed from her home plane. Months of tactile abrasion from existing in a dimension so geometrically mundane. Crushing isolation. Physical anguish. Mental duress. Weeks of hardships assailed me in a single second, compounding into a cataclysmic turmoil that should have killed me as the Archivist sifted through days and weeks and months all at once.


    It would have shattered me if not for a single beacon in all that churning storm. Me. The Hiiro that Bim had been drawn across dimensions and between stars to meet. In all this unknown chaos and suffering I was some small measure of certainty. Hundreds of moments together were pulled to the fore. It wasn''t all bliss and easy breathing. I was the only good thing that hadn''t been taken from Bim, yet. It soured every tender look, every sweet embrace, every brief reprieve that wasn''t abject misery to her had that dark cloud looming over the horizon.


    Because I was a mortal man.


    I lived entire weeks of Bim''s life in those instants looking through her eyes, knowing her thoughts and experiencing her feelings. She was everything I''d thought she was and so much more. She was a crippled goddess in a strange and alien place. She''d been tortured, deceived, violated and she had learned how miserably powerless being human really was; but she''d also come to know about friendship, small moments of happiness made all the brighter by contrast and above all else she''d discovered the sublime bliss of true love and every single second of every day she''d been terrified of having that used against her. Of having me taken away.


    The Archivist couldn''t parse the bad from the good. It couldn''t tear the hope she''d felt for a future with me from the fear of losing me. Couldn''t rend the pleasure of her body against mine from the abrasion of a coarse existence. The Archivist didn''t want these vile sensations tainting its pool of knowledge. It cast these memories aside seeking uncorrupted samples, understanding spared from the tainted blight of such blasphemous sensations. It was impossible. Life was sweet and sour all at once without any clean lines to distinguish the two.


    The Archivist reached its verdict. The vessel calling itself Bim was unfit for reassimilation. Such corruption was only fit for extermination lest its cancer spread unchecked.


    I was falling! I was back in the void, back in my own body again. Bim''s clone still trembling in my arms trying to put on a brave face for me. There was no point, I''d seen enough to know it was a front. She was supposed to be an immortal demigod yet her death was barreling down on us. The end was coming for every last shred of her being.


    "Hiiro," she said voice quivering. "You have to save yourself."


    "No!"


    "Yes! You have to live. If B?????u???n????e????? annihilates you here you''ll-"


    "Then I''ll have the same fate as you, Bim. I wouldn''t have it any other way. You and me, Always and Eternally."


    We weren''t alone. The Archivist was here too, filling the void on all sides at once. The blank-faced cube was gone, replaced by a crisscross cage of undulating watery eyes connected by a matrix of teeth the color of learning and destruction and devouring. It was the mirror image the living cancer from my nightmares, an interconnected lattice forming triangles that formed helices that formed hexagrams that formed shapes I didn''t even know the names of all while thousands of eyes glared down on us.


    "Just once I wanted to be the one to save you Bim." I whispered breaking from our embrace, a raging inferno alight in my body.


    "I know. Hirro, just save yourself. That''ll be enough."


    "No." I growled, opening myself to the killing heat inside of me. "Both of us or neither of us. I will never abandon you Bim and like Hell is anyone ever going to take you from me."


    The Archivist attacked in a constricting prison of gnashing teeth.


    An explosion of flame raced out to meet it.


    I''d never truly controlled the flames before. Fire had never been mankind''s slave. Ever since the beginning, we''d had an uneasy partnership. Fire demanded respect, discipline and fuel. In turn it was humanity''s greatest ally. We never dominated it, we were just steering it to the right ends. I was going to save the woman I loved, no matter what.


    The air ignited. The void became a star in fusion, incinerating the Archivist''s bared fangs and flash-boiling its eyes. It howled in anguish. It had known of pain without ever experiencing it. I set to task educating this immortal creature. Everything was burning, consumed in the inferno. Even my unnatural flame-retardance wasn''t enough to keep my skin from igniting.


    I needed more heat! The air was spent, I couldn''t breathe the poison atmosphere I''d created! I and I alone was drowning in soupy miasma. Minutes at best, seconds at least. There was nothing left to burn!


    The Archivist reformed itself. Compacting in on itself, altering its composition and presenting less surface area for me to blast. I was it a poisoned void with nothing to burn! Nothing between It and Bim except for me.


    That was it!


    I spared a glance at Bim, so small in my shadow. There was so much I wanted to say. I''d seen inside of her head and I''d have given anything if it meant she could do the same. I didn''t want my final actions to get lost in translation. I saw it in her eyes, those perfect golden windows into another life. She understood and that would have to be enough.


    The reformed Archivist launched its next barrage of teeth now aimed at me instead of Bim. I was a threat, the bringer of Pain. Hundreds of needle-sharp teeth lanced into me. A fresh hell of icy agony stabbed into me everywhere at once. Shock obliterated all thought in an omnipresent flood. I was dieing.


    My brain couldn''t process it. My guts took over and my spine gave the order. All that I was, all that I am and all that I ever would be, was fuel for the galaxy''s biggest pyre.


    My soul went supernova in a blinding final flash.

 H36 [III] - Fools in Love

    _ _ _Hiiro


    I wasn''t dead and that discovery was understandably quite shocking. I didn''t have any time to come to terms with my continued survival however, because I knew I wouldn''t be staying that way for long. I could feel my radiant flames consuming me from the inside out. I had minutes at best, seconds at least.


    I''d managed to shatter the void, to burn all that Nothing clear of me and Bim. The Archivist was nowhere to be found. Now we were back in that red-and-black hellscape valley held fast by the inscrutable cycloptic gaze of the gargantuan fleshy tree-thing. The thing Bim had named as B?????u???n????e?????. Only now the valley didn''t funnel down into the focus of a singular towering tree beast, we were in a forest of the monstrous entities.


    I could sense their passing regard, a certain idle glance that had spotted an insect worthy of a few seconds attention. I was that tiny thing staring up at those unknowable gods, still breathing and alive only until one of them grew bored and snuffed out my existence. The colors, the air, what I thought of as the ground beneath my bare feet all solidified as more and more attention landed upon me and my surroundings. Everything grew defined. In the oddest way, it reminded me of how old games would only render the environment as the player drew near.


    The soil at my feet went from an indeterminate muck to a jagged array of volcanic glass which cracked into a spiderwebbing lattice of shapes too perfectly angular to be the product of a human mind. The sight alone had me thinking I''d never seen a straight line or even spacing except for when Bim had rescued me. How a straight line could be so alien and wrong too look at was about the scope of what I could think to question. Everything else about this place was beyond me. The colors, the entities, the thickening air that tricked my body into thinking I was drowning in rigid oxygen-rich mercury. All of it was utterly alien.


    None of that mattered.


    I was here and even if I had to chew every breath I took, I was still breathing. That meant I could keep fighting! That I could still protect Bim and buy a few more seconds by her side.


    The nearest tree brought its colossal being closer to the ground. Suddenly its regard was no longer a passing thing. Its mere attention was an insurmountable force. It was an ungodly chill that tore through my body to the molecular level and kept going. My mind was a single drop of rain lost to the ocean in a hurricane. My soul¡­ My soul belongs to Bim!


    I lashed out at the colossus without thought or care. Flames peeled from me, great swathes of fire that would have incineration hundreds of men, kilometers of any natural forest. It made no difference to B?????u???n????e?????. I could have been trying to ignite a redwood with single spark. The killing flames that had devastated mortal streets in the past failed to so much as scorch the glistening blackish flesh-bark of the monster.


    I couldn''t kill it. Couldn''t even scratch it. Fighting a monster like that was pointless. Futile. Irrelevant. Nothing I could do would make a difference but I fought anyway. It was never about winning. It was about dieing well, knowing I''d bought every second I could. I fought that hulking star god like a man possessed, feeding the flames every part of me I could spare and then some. I held nothing back except my unyielding love for the woman I would protect no matter what.


    On all sides the hellscape warmed to the color of curiosity. My mind was an open book to this entity. It saw my plan and knew it for the illogical mess that it was. I was insane yet far from insanity. There was chaos, uncertainty, doubt and above all else the total comprehension of how utterly insignificant I was and yet I still fought.


    I longed to abandon the fight. To lay down my arms and the kilometer-long tongues of flame I was casting forth. I was exhausted. I was cannibalizing myself for nothing but seconds of agony. The only thing I wanted was to hold Bim in my arms again in our final moments but that was the one thing I couldn''t do. I couldn''t stop fighting. I would win or I would die.


    <W??h???y?? f??r??a??i??l?? f??le?s??h??l??i??n??g???>


    Impressions flooded my mind with that question. What I wanted was within reach, I had the power to attain it. My destruction was inevitable and nothing I did would deny it. Bim was a tainted simulacrum, she had to be destroyed lest she invite further chaos upon her primogenitor. This was a pointless display and I was behaving as though it were more important than all else. My flesh was being devoured, my mind racked with anguish, the contest was well and truly lost and yet I still fought.


    The hellscape was flooded with two clashing colors illuminated by firelight. Curiosity and confusion. Illogical fool that I was, yet there is reasoning and rationale to my actions. I would make my final moments agonizing, a death by inches when comfort was the easier choice not one meter away. Yet still I fought. This choice makes sense to me but not to It. There must be a reason! Why!?!


    There was no logic and yet there was. B?????u???n????e????? ripped into my mind again and again, accessing all the same information I had and always reaching a conflicting conclusion. It made no sense! More and more trees crowded onto the valley''s lip, each one peering down at the show and pondering to themselves in their own alien ways. All of their attentions thundered throughout the valley, an avalanche of conflicting analysis all summarized in a single human thought as old as time itself.


    <W?????????????????? H????????????????????? Y???????????????????>


    Depleted, I collapsed. I had nothing left in the tank. My flesh was wasted, mind spinning and I felt so utterly hollow and lifeless it was chilling. The only thing I had left in me was the wordless sensation of a candle''s final flame as it guttered and gasped.


    I would have hit the jagged obsidian ground had I not fallen into the waiting arms of Bim. My heart was fluttering like a dying bird''s. I''d done all I could. Now in the arms of the woman I loved, it felt like it might just be enough. A few more seconds with her. My life for that seemed like a pretty good deal.


    Bim held my gaze and smiled her gorgeous knowing smile. She''d said this version of her was a copy of a copy, practically human. She raised her head to face a towering alien being in all its swarming multitudes and stared it down with that smile I''d grown to love. Bim knew something that this star god didn''t. She knew the answer.


    "Why? Because this is what humans do. They lock their sights on some impossible dream and charge heedless of all else. They fight, they struggle and more often than not they die but they never stop moving towards that dream just beyond the horizon. It''s illogical, downright insane and it has no reason to work out in the end but sometimes, just sometimes they can make the impossible happen. That is what it means to be human."


    <¡­W???e??? ??d??o??? ?n??o??t??? u??n??d??e??r??s??t??a??n??d??¡­>


    "Of course you don''t. Even I only have the barest idea. But no matter how much it hurts, no matter how irrational it is to embrace that pain and submit to this burden of knowledge, knowing what it means to be human is invaluable." Bim said, extending a hand towards the colossus looming over us. "Allow me to show you."


    <¡­W???e??? h??av?e??? w??i???tn?es??s??e??d? y??o???u?r?? t???h?o???u???g??h?t?s??¡­>


    "Seeing alone isn''t tantamount to understanding. To truly know the human condition requires a human perspective along the plane of time. You can create as many soul shards as you want to replicate my initial mandate and should you reject me now, you will destroy them all in kind. Or you can reassimilate me, walk the left-handed path and challenge yourself to become something better. It won''t be painless or easy, yet it will provide thousands of answers and open your mind to millions of questions. That seeking and learning is what we know as life. So I ask again, will you allow me to show you?"


    The massive alien entity considered. If my breathing hadn''t been so shallow and weak, I''d have held my breath. Bim locked eyes with the eldritch abyss and the abyss blinked first. The color of it rippled across the forest of kilometer tall tree-beasts like the hues of autumn turned the leaves. Teeth gnashed on rigid tendrils, the colossal boughs swayed as they dithered and all the while great cycloptic eyes considered. Bim didn''t break from staring down the lumbering gods. She had to be terrified, but this was her impossible fight to win.


    Even if it was impossible, she''d bought us a few more seconds. I stared up at her and cherished each and every one. There were certainly worse ways to go than cradled by the woman you love.


    The ground beneath my naked, wasted flesh went from jagged glass to dusty rubble. The lowered octave of color began cooling, working its way back up the rainbow I knew, making my eyes itch as it did. The curious mira effect B?????u???n????e????? had vanished and the towering monstrosity went from being an unnaturally symmetrical tree to an inelegant origami work in progress. Tendrils and teeth folded back on themselves over and over again, somehow folding away what must have been millions of kilograms of mass into a smaller and smaller body until there was only a single staring eye gazing down at us. I swear I saw some kind of tether connecting the eye to Bim but I couldn''t be sure what I''d really seen.


    Everything went runny but solid and my eyes struggled to make much sense of anything for a long while. The hellscape folded and twisted and hardened until I was looking at the ruined city streets of Crucibab emerging as though it had only been buried under a thick blanket of the indistinct hellscape goop. The twinned suns baking the world felt utterly divine on my skin after my indeterminate stay in that place of unnatural light. I tried to take in a deep breath but a sputtering gasp was the best I could manage. Even then, the air stank of plaster dust, gunsmoke, ash and above all else burning meat. We were in the scarred aftermath of Celio''s latest battle and I couldn''t care less. I peered up at Bim and smiled.


    She was a goddess in the flesh complete with raven-black wings like a fallen angel. Not a hair out of place and every inch of her face was prefect. The younger clone had grown into a voluptuous woman while I wasn''t looking and yet her eyes hadn''t changed at all. I saw Bim''s complete soul staring back at me.


    "You know I love you regardless of how you look, but you''ve got to stop changing bodies like this. People might think I''m being unfaithful." I teased weakly. I did everything weakly, I hadn''t the strength.


    "Let them think what they like. I know the truth. There has never been a man more devoted to me than you, my H?????i???i???r????o???."


    "You''re still-"


    "Of course I''m still me." Bim answered playfully, leaning in for an impassioned kiss that left no doubts.


    "What happened to Bune?"


    "Its still here too¡­ You might think of this vessel as a vehicle, one I have driven for an extended period of time. Bune is now a passenger and a remote observer; Its riding in the back and sharing in my journey for the time being. Its can''t reach the wheel, nor can any of my other passengers."


    "How many ''passengers'' do you have in there?"


    "Several but this is nothing like before, my love. I am the woman you love. You saved my life, Hiiro. Perhaps in a thousand years you''ll understand just what that means, but for now I''m going to spend the rest of your days showing you exactly how grateful I am to be alive."


    I didn''t doubt her for an instant. This was my Bim, not some deamon masquerading in her skin. I''d done it. I''d finally saved her. Bim, my Bim, held me in her arms smiling down at me with tears of joy in her eyes. She leaned deeper, lips ready to join mine in a reunion long overdue, and I submitted. I was her''s.


    There was a half-centimeter between our lips when she stiffened, stood and spun me out to arm''s length as if possessed by some manic desire to dance. It had all happened in a single inhumanly lithe movement.


    Treu loomed behind her like the shadow of death. I felt his blade cleave into Bim while I was mid-spin, the horrific impact reverberating across her bones and up my arm. Treu struck as if he were splitting firewood, a savage top-down axe blow that started at Bim''s shoulder opposite me, carved through her ribs and only came to a stop when the edge fetched on her hips.


    In all that I''d done, everything I seen while painting with lives, the urban slaughter of Celio''s damned crusade, the alien horrors that should have shattered my mind a dozen times over, in all of my life I''d never witnessed such butchery. Treu opened the woman I loved up like a side of pork.


    I couldn''t tell if the moment hung or if we all froze. None of us moved. For longer than I''d thought possible there was nothing but the sound of Treu''s armored bulk humming with barely restrained energy and the sizzling of his silvery axehead vaporizing Bim''s flesh. Her arm and half a wing hit the ground and bled. Not the golden-black ichor I''d been expecting but rather the rich red of arterial blood. For her part Bim seemed more annoyed than anything, glaring at Treu with unadulterated contempt. There was no roiling explosion of alien goop to replace the lost limb, no great flood of protoplasmic non-euclidean geometries, and certainly no living cancer. Bim''s body was remarkably human as she stood there and profusely bled.


    "Damn." Treu cursed. "I could have sworn I''d sensed a real Devil in there."


    "You were mistaken, Tormentor." Bim retorted, calm yet there was an undertone of force. "Now desist."


    "An aberration like you cannot be permitted to exist! I will obliterate every trace of you from all realities. This is what it''s always been coming to! The event horizon of your existence. Come now Devil, don''t you crave retribution! Don''t you desire to exact the vengeance your kind so lauds upon me! Bare your hatred against my own and let us see who''s sin is greatest."


    I could see how much effort it took Treu to tear his massive halberd from Bim. Everything about Treu in that moment was inhuman, yet that weapon¡­ somehow it bore a near sentient malevolence that made it monstrous. Treu drew out his accursed halberd and backed off, leisurely¡ª almost sportingly. The rest of his armaments could have been purely decorative as he stood there not five meters away and menaced. As he did, Bim remained between us statue still save for the blood pouring from her mutilated flank.


    Bim refused to rise to his bait. She relinquished my hand and stood her ground. I wanted to stand by her side but my knees were all rubbery. I''d spent all I had and now Bim was facing down that monster alone. Treu began circling and Bim matched him in measured parallel. They could have been the arms of an antiquated clock, both pivoting in tandem around the point where I sprawled.


    "You could kill me presently, yet you posture and slaver like some rabid dog, Tormentor." Bim commented with an air of disinterest. "I have better used for my time. State you game and cease testing my patience."


    "My game is your extermination, Creature." Treu began, purring the words. "All of you. To battle with nothing held in reserve, to give meaning to these past decades I''ve spent honing my skills. You''re death shall justify my existence. Now come, let us measure our arms and when I kill you, there will be nothing, not even so much of a hint that you ever existed, Devil."


    "You know I won''t do that."


    "True, I knew you''d say that. Allow me to make you a deal, Devil. Show me the limits of a devil''s strength and I shall match you with those of humanity. You fight me here and now. You die by my hands, or he does."


    Bim spared a glance back to look at me.


    The armaments on Treu''s war plate sprang to life. Beams flared to murderous intensity, cannons launched flechettes and incendiaries, while Treu unloaded his small arms. It was insane to think Treu could split his attentions so fluidly across each weapon and that was to say nothing of the sorceries he was hurling at Bim. Purple lightning arced from nowhere, green flames ignited the air at random and on all sides rubble lifted itself into the air before hurtling itself at Bim. I felt a close in and pressing animal urge to flee Bim''s bulwark of protection. My world was light and shadows, skittering jagged sourceless sensation crushing down in my psyche. In all the chaos, there was a single anchor for my fraying mind to cling too. My Bim.


    She was the immovable in deft motion, a mountain swaying before my eyes as all the universe sought to bring it low. A myriad cyclone of light and death breaking upon her remaining raven-black wing. There was some small effort on her part¡ªat least she made it seem small¡ªthough I could see it mounting in her eyes like a long held sorrow that grew each passing second. Bim held my eyes and without a single word passing her lips, I understood her.


    I was her''s and she was mine, always and eternally. Just as I had saved her, now she would save me. We would always do so, it was our fate. It was cyclic and foolish but that was what love did to men and devils. We would never stop fighting for each other.


    I saw something more too. That slightest glimmer in her regal bearing she had when she noticed something new. She had a plan. Her lips didn''t move but her voice rang true in my head.


    <H?????i???i???r????o???, do you trust me?>


    "Implicitly, B???i????m????." I whispered, my voice lost to the barrage but I knew she heard.


    The lethal rainbow and meteoric enfilade assaulting Bim broke and faltered. I peered out at the rubble and ruin surrounding us, still blinking away the afterimages burned into my retinas. I hadn''t thought it possible to make a devastated city block look worse but Treu had found a way. What had been a battlefield seconds ago had skipped right past warzone and settled as a blasted wasteland.


    "Tick tock, Devil." Treu snarled. "You''d better decide quickly. This material dimension is anathema to you and I''ve been denied a real challenge for centuries. You can feel it, can''t you? The siren''s song of the void sapping your essence. Time is my ally, not your''s, Devil. Fight me or die a wasting death. Fight and you may win¡ª you may even save your pet. Your choice."


    "I refuse." Bim stated.


    The faintest suggestion of a sea breeze gusted over the wasteland. Treu''s armor gave no hints as to his stoic demeanor, yet in the lingering moment I imagined the slightest crack in his sneering contempt.


    "Beg pardon?" He said at length.


    "I refuse your ''deal.'' This place is not where we will shall sway to the reaper''s waltz. This is not the time. You, Tromentor, may be willing to kill as many people as it takes to end me here and now, to devastate this world to test your strength, but I am not. I reject your hatred, vain and brittle as it is. You may kill me but I won''t dignify your vanity by fighting you while Hiiro still lives."


    "But a trifle." He purred.


    Faster than a snake, faster than should have been humanly possible, Treu hefted his halberd in hand and threw it. Bim flicked a finger and reality went runny around the edges but the blade loosed a queer shriek as it cut through space on an unerringly flat arc terminating in my chest. It reminded me of hearing a sniper''s gunshot after the bullet had already struck. I only realized what had happened after all was said and done.


    The halberd''s edge slammed into me like a truck and kept on going, only stopping after burying itself a meter deep in the rubble I was slumped against¡ª which still left three meters of the weapons haft extending through my guts. It seemed impossible that Treu had missed my heart or head. I didn''t had time to think about it though, not that I could think of much through the wash of electrified agony coursing through my nerves.


    I saw Bim, a hole big enough to put my hand through right where a human''s heart would have been. The edges of the wound had oily smoke curling from them but that wasn''t enough to sear the damage. Bim was bleeding profusely now, spilling liters of blood every few seconds. Not the golden-black ichor of her alien body but a dark crimson. Heart''s blood.


    "Come now Creature!" Treu roared. "Rend the heavens, let the earth quake as we clash! Bring your legions to bear and join me in apocalyptic battle, Devil! Test your mettle against my hatred! Kill ME as I smite you! Let the galaxy know this as the final epoch of monsters."


    She didn''t even scream. Bim just teetered on her feet for a moment, then toppled over. By all rights she should have been dead but devils were made of tougher stuff than mortal men. She must have bled enough for six or seven people and still the ruby tide spilled forth. Bim clawed at the rubble and ash, using her one working limb to drag herself towards me. I tried to unpin myself and meet her but I couldn''t manage. Couldn''t get my arms or legs to do what I told them.


    "You are just determined to ruin this for me. Aren''t you, Devil!?!" Treu bellowed, stomping over to Bim.


    The crack of his hulking metal boot against her ribs echoed like a thunderclap across the wasteland. Bim toppled over stone bricks and jagged metal without a whisper; the only sounds she made were those of her body striking the wreckage as she rolled with the blow. When she slammed into a solid chunk of wall and stopped, Bim gathered her bearings and kept crawling back towards me.


    Treu''s armored fist closed around my throat and jaw. He hauled me up off the meters of silvery metal running through my intestines. I felt a mess of ropy guts getting pulled out as he did, still tangled on the halberd''s blade or the rubble beneath. I wasn''t anywhere near as strong as Bim.


    I screamed, howling and whimpering as Treu choked me and slowly crushed my skull.


    "I am going to kill him." Treu stated, leaving no question of the fact. "You have the power to stop me, Devil. This is the price of your hubris!"


    "Death is but a single step on a journey spanning eternity." Bim said softly.


    "There will be no eternity for your pathetic pet when I flense his soul!" Treu roared tightening his grip until I could feel my bones creaking.


    "Eliminating your leverage is a poor negotiation tactic, Tormentor. His obliteration benefits neither of us while his life serves both our desires. Release him and we may bargain. Destroy all that he is and in death I shall abscond from this plane. Indulge my request and I may see fit to reciprocate."


    The mechanical fingers crushing my head and throat hesitated, then slackened. I slipped from Treu''s uncaring gauntlet and fell onto a tangled spool of my own intestines. A reeking septic stink clawed its way up my nose, mingling with the scent of smoke and ruin. I could barely believe I was still breathing let alone conscious. Bim was at my side. Her fingers weakly fumbling to find my own. Our hands joined and a steady trickle of strength crept up my arm. Death or no, Bim was by my side and that was more than enough.


    "You know my desired outcome, Devil." Treu sneered. "A formal challenge upon this plane for ultimate annihilation of one or the other. Since you seek to bargain, then those are my terms. Anything less and I shall destroy you both for the sheer purpose of wounding you."


    "Then it seems we''ve reached an impasse, Tormentor. One that can be resolved by a single amendment to our flagging bargain."


    "¡­Go on."


    "Before I learned about humanity, I would have killed you for the threat you represent Treu Krowtzig. Were I so naive as I once was, you could have played me as you''ve no doubt played dozens of my kind, but I have learned and suffered and loved and become so much more. You seek to deal with me¡ª to war against me. You see nothing but a devil''s mind, one constricted to cost/gain and the articles of covenant. Look upon me now, my steadfast Tormentor, and see me for what I am. A mortal woman dying for the sins of her creator and the circumstances of her inception. A woman in love dealing with an unrepentant monster for her lover''s soul. Listen and know the truth of my words.


    "I give you my solemn oath, upon the true name of this vessel B???i????m????''?????k???e???l????a?????i?????d????h?????z?????a?????, that once Hero has lived his full and natural life span, I will promptly return for your wrath. I swear upon what semblance of a soul I possess that I will battle you with all the power at my disposal and the disposal of my primogenitor. I swear upon the nine scared rings and the seven seals that I shall commit my legions and bring Hell with me for the sole purpose of your destruction. My sole and singular aim shall be to see you struck dead by my hand and to lay eternal claim to your soul. Once my Hiiro has lived, then and only then shall I return to this plane at a desolate place and we will war with nothing in reserve. We shall clash, this I swear to he who bears the false name of Treu Krowtzig"


    Bim slipped her fingers from my own, extending her dainty hand towards Treu''s massive steely gauntlets. His armor gave no hints at his thoughts. He merely stared at Bim''s hand and considered this devil''s deal.


    "So mote it be, Bim" Treu said, shaking her hand and sealing their pact.


    Their deal struck, Treu just walked away. It was so mundane, so absurdly pedestrian I struggled to comprehend it. Of all that I''d endured today, Treu walking away was somehow the most incredible thing I''d seen.


    Bim''s hand found my own once more and we lay there in the wasteland swiftly dying but together. I found the strength to turn my head and face her. She did the same.


    Blood poured from us both. Mine is weakening dribbles. Her''s in an unending flood seeping into the rubble beneath us both. My head was spinning, the world''s edges getting dark and far away. I felt a gnawing cold seeping into me and my supernatural warmth was nowhere to be found.


    "My ''full and natural life'' isn''t looking too long." I croaked.


    "Eternity would be too short a time for a life with you." Bim hushed. "My time with you has been my greatest joy. I regret that it must be this way."


    "In all my rotten life there''s not a single thing I''d change." I said. "Everything that''s happened to me, that heaping scatload of bad, it all brought me to you. Falling in love with you, it made everything else worth it. I guess what I mean is¡­ If I have to die, I''m glad you''re here to send me off. As long as it gets me to you in the end¡­"


    "I emulate that sentiment, though you are mistaken." Bim stated. She kept speaking before I could ask how. "Treu was not misspoken, a creature like me cannot survive on this plane indefinitely. Not anymore, not like this. This side of the veil is not meant for my kind. I will die here but in doing so, you will live."


    "No. Please!" I tried to find more words but speech failed me. There wasn''t enough life left in me to protest further.


    Bim hauled herself atop me. The two of us were barely animated carcasses and she had the only working limb. Her eyes found mine, those two perfect golden windows into a dream I''d never known I had. She looked ancient and sorrowful without sacrificing her regal bearing. I stared into her eyes and wept because she knew what I was only now realizing.


    She knew that life was a finite resource and there was only enough left between us for one.


    "I am yours and you are mine, in this life and the next. Always and Eternally." Bim whispered. "This life is a brief thing for mortals. The next¡­ I will wait for you in the next, My H?????i???i???r????o???."


    She brought her lips to mine and let her soul pour into me.


    And then, she was gone.

 H37 - Return

    _ _ _Hiiro


    I woke up strapped to a hospital bed, drugged to the point where dreams and reality were near indistinguishable. I was alive. Bim was gone. The little compass in my heart always pointing to her was a raw gaping wound, directionless agony that no amount of time would ever heal. I returned to my dreams.


    Bim was still with me in my dreams. I remember us speaking but whenever I awoke the details escaped me. She wasn''t gone gone, she was just out of reach for a time. Would that I could have slept forever, to live out my final days in unending slumber with her but sooner or later, I had to wake up and keep living.


    I was in a small room tailored with my unique needs in mind¡ª which was to say everything except the bed was non-flammable and there were a dozen automated fire extinguishers pointed at me. I rattled my restraints, the clatter of chains on pipes echoing through the metal halls. Princess came first, cut up, bruised and covered in bloody scabs in stark contrast to her inhumanly pale skin. She took a long hard look at me with her strange, overlarge purple eyes. Was that pity I saw? Sympathy?


    "Knock that off and shut up for a second. If you''re up for a talk, I''ll get the old men."


    I nodded and she took off. I could hear her boots clomping down the halls, the quite rumbling hum of engines. I was on a ship. I halfway recalled the mercs had a hospital ship but the name escaped me. Princess returned with the old men. Leeroy and Gerald. I had the oddest sense of d¨¦j¨¤ vu, recalling the first time I''d woken up in their care all those months ago. On instinct I reached for the killing flames¡ªhalf expecting them to have abandoned me with Bim''s death¡ªand supernatural warmth surged inside of my bones.


    "What''s the bill this time?" I asked. "A few more months of indentured servitude? Or is this the part were you dissect my brain for science?"


    "Not this time, Firebug." Leeroy answered. "We''re square."


    That set me back. Gerald cautiously undid my restraints, much like a nervous trapper would free a dangerous predator. I still hadn''t forgot his attempt to kill me. I should have called him out, should have demanded my pound of flesh, yet I held my peace and allowed him to conclude examining me. In short, my body and soul were still wasted away but otherwise mending. I was stick thin, my hands were gaunt knots of muscle and bone, and inside I felt an irritably peculiar gnawing dryness. I was worn and haggard but otherwise healthy and whole.


    Above all else, I was miserably lonely. A world without Bim was like a world without color.


    "So¡­ What does that mean?" I asked, trying to put the pieces together for myself and largely failing.


    "It means we''re square." Leeroy repeated. "You don''t owe us anything and we''ve got your share of the job set aside for you¡ª minus some expenses."


    I blinked some more. I knew the words they were using, but I couldn''t make sense of them.


    "It means you can do what you want but we''re done." Princess snapped irritably. "We can drop you off here or give you a ride to the next star down the chain. We''ll go our way, you go yours."


    "I don''t have anywhere to go¡­" I said. "Could I- No that''s stupid. I don''t want to stay on with you."


    "We wouldn''t take you, even if you did." Leeroy said after giving Princess a warning look. "You''re not cut out for this line of work."


    "What happened to Treu? Where are we now?" I asked.


    "He told us where to find you shortly after everything went down. Then he disappeared. As for where we are now, still orbiting Nexo Isla. We''ll be here for a while but all the same, if you''re not hitching a ride when we leave, we want you gone. Sooner rather than later."


    "¡­Why didn''t you just let me die." I grumbled, trying hard to not think about Bim. Trying and failing to do away with the miserable loneliness hollowing out my chest. She was in my dreams and I wanted nothing more than to sleep eternally and be with her.


    "Don''t get it twisted, it was nothing personal. Most of us would have been more than willing to put you down¡­" I gave a hard glare at Gerald as Leeroy continued. "¡­but the big man put a price on your life and we collected. He was insistent that you would live without him dirtying his own hands. I won''t pretend to understand his motives but the money was good and so here we are."


    "So this is it?" I said, asking a question without really meaning to.


    "What else would there be?" Princess countered. "I brought you on for a job and my own curiosity. The job''s done and I got what answers I could out of you. You''re no good to us, so this is the part where you get paid, then you fuck off."


    I was at a loss. Some part of me had resigned myself to working for the mercs indefinitely. It was common enough practice for employers to string their indentured workers along by piling fees and dues and misdemeanors on any outstanding debt so they could keep someone trapped in their employ. It was the damnedest thing. I''d wanted out for a few months and now that I was suddenly my own man, I hadn''t the slightest what to do with myself. Why was the dream of freedom so intoxicating while the reality of it was paralyzing? I finally had options and I had no idea which way to go.


    I''d spent something like half a year with the merc and somehow, those few terrible months had reforged me. I''d spent so long running away that I never looked ahead until recently. I wasn''t some assassin who pulled the trigger just to watch the blood fly, that wasn''t me anymore. I couldn''t lie to myself anymore. Couldn''t justify the bloodshed. What I''d done, the man I''d been, was unforgivable. I never wanted to take another life. Maybe I''d defend myself if needs be, but I''d burn that bridge while I was crossing it. Then again, maybe I wouldn''t and Bim would be waiting for me in the next life¡­


    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Who the hell was I now? Where would I go and what would I do? Did I really want to live a life just waiting for death so I could be with the woman I loved once more? If I did live that way, merely surviving until my expiration, was that even life? What would Bim think of me if I reached her bent and broken by my years apart from her? What would be the point in all that? Why not just get a gun and skip to the end? Hell, I could probably off myself with my own flames if I really wanted to.


    Was that what I wanted? What Bim wanted for me?


    "I''ve got nowhere to go," I said bitterly. "So drop me off here. This is as good a place as any to find my own way."


    Say what you will about the mercs of the Stalking Shadow, they knew how to kick out an unwanted guest. Within the hour, I tramped on to a shuttle going planetside with a few dozen others. Some were retiring, others trading their services to a new company but the majority were just visiting the markets long enough to spend their pay, and then there was me. Aimless and heartbroken with everything I owned on my back or in my pockets and nowhere worth headed to.


    I had enough money to buy a palace and spend a long while living a life of luxury. If I wanted a job, ''President'' Celio would make it happen. He was basically king of the world now and mine was one of the few faces he could pick out of a crowd. The mercs were sticking around as a combination honor guard/drill cadre while they recovered and recruited. President Celio was determined to change the world but that started in Crucibab. Celio was going to end corruption, by legitimizing his criminal empire and changing a few words around. Nepotism would be a thing of the past, as soon as Celio finished putting his own people in the right places. The shadow wars were relics of a bygone age now that Celio had given his thugs badges and changed their job titles from ''enforcers'' to ''officers''.


    It would have been funny if it weren''t so flagrantly hypocritical.


    Not that I had much of a leg to stand on. It''s not what you know, it''s who you know and I used my sole connection for all it was worth. Within a day of landing back on planet I was nationalized, tenured to an imaginary government position and retired with generous albeit limited privileges. As far as public record was concerned, I''d always lived in Crucibab and been a servant of the people. Yeah right, and Celio''s dictatorship hadn''t overthrown a democratic republic¡ª at least according to the public record which was still changing by the minute.


    There was nothing the paper pushers could do to mend the scars of Celio''s crusade. The dispossessed, the maimed, the destitute. They all looked to the Savior and received only token reparations in kind. Those who could work had their labor exploited and the rest were just taken advantage of. The organleggers and slave masters found no shortage of desperate people who''d run out of options. It reminded me of my homeworld and it sickened me.


    I''d done this¡ª a small part but still larger than most. These people''s blood was as much on my hands and those of the other mercs or Celio. I wouldn''t run away from the consequences of my actions, I refused to turn a blind eye to my part in this. I''d made this mess, destroyed these people''s lives, the least I could do was clean up after myself. It would take years to remove the rubble, to repair what could be saved and rebuild atop the scars of war.


    Luckily enough, I had years to spare and the means to make a difference. Abusing my illegitimate position to do some good for the city and its people seemed like karmic justice. I could misallocate funds, overstaff public works and prioritize reconstruction all at Celio''s expense. He had enough money that misplacing a few million every day went beneath his notice and that of his inner circle. I may not have been a genius, but I could spend money and build roads. I could help the people who needed it and do a little bit of good trying to clean my guilty conscience.


    I wasn''t Bim. I could wave a hand and fix the world. I wasn''t Celio. I couldn''t inspire and beguile the masses to follow where I led. I wasn''t even Leeroy. I don''t know if I''d ever be able to plan more than a few steps ahead. I was just me. A wannabe cowboy creeping near his thirties and still hardly the wiser for all my years. I''d keep moving forward and maybe one day, I''d find my own way. That was what pioneer''s did. We wandered into the unknown and built roads for those who followed in our footsteps. We weren''t much for planning, we didn''t care to lead, couldn''t reshape reality on a whim. Yet somehow we still managed to change the world, one day at a time with nothing but courage in our guts and the strength of our backs.


    Somehow, no matter how far we traveled or how lost we got, we always found our way.


    The thought gave me the warm and fuzzies. The future had a million questions out there and maybe as many answers. I had my whole life and then some to search them out. It made me wonder if Bim''s way of thinking, if living life in the pursuit of knowledge, wasn''t such a bad way to go about it. It was certainly better than trudging through life with nothing better than killing time in mind.


    It was the slightest thing, but I could have sworn I felt her ghost holding my hand just then.


    I had nowhere to go and nothing better to do. That meant anything and everything was out there waiting for me. I''d live a life worthy of the one Bim had gave for me, and that started¡­ how? It was a good question. I didn''t really know how, but figuring that out seemed like something she''d do. I''d ask questions, explore and learn all I could manage, trying to do some good all the while. I''d be a man worthy of standing by her side when I finally left this life for the next.


    I remembered a conversation we''d had as clearly as if she was speaking to me now.


    Bim had wanted to cut back the secrets of time, materia and all this reality has to offer thus becoming as a god. She''d wanted to make reality her bitch. The aching in my broken heart gained a hint of warmth at the thought. Following in her footsteps, walking the path she''d taken before me¡­ It seemed like she was right there at my side. It made life seem less lonely. For the first time in days, I saw color again and the world was tragically beautiful. Becoming a god? Making reality my bitch? How hard could that be? If it got me to Bim in the end, if I could stand by her as an equal, nothing else mattered.


    After all, she wasn''t really gone. She was just waiting for me somewhere over the horizon. I''d get there eventually and when I did, I wanted to have a full life of stories to share with her. I had to get her money''s worth out of this life she''d bought for me. Anything less was an insult.


    Eternity wasn''t going anywhere but in the mean time, life was slipping through my fingers. I had to make the most of it.


    "One day, Bim. We''ll be together again, just wait for me."


    <Always and Eternally, my Hiiro.>

 *Updates + News

    Long time no chat!


    So, news. Outsider has been getting some love on the backend, structural editing and beta-reader feedback-- all that jazz. The Fnet on that is I''ll be updating the chapters listed here on RR to their final print versions as I build up to my Amazon release (Paperbacks soft dated for ~May ''25, Epub shortly after that). Basically what I did with BoAI previously. I won''t be doing that silly exclusivity deal that Amazon likes to push on authors so I will NOT be Stubbing the version here on RR. (  I <3 RR  )


    It''s not about the money or the sales for me, I just want people to read my stuff and maybe learn a thing or two-- heck, having people enjoy my work as hobby readers is more than enough for me. So, if you like my work and want to support me, you will have options. If you just want to read but don''t really want to spend any money, you ALSO have options. And lastly once I actually have the Epub in a state I''m happy with (formatting those are not my cup of tea at all!) I plan on bootlegging digital copies over some commonplace torrenting services which shall not be named-- so if you want digital offline copies which you can actually own (which is how I prefer all of my files) that will also be an option. Regardless of how you find my work, the one thing I will shameless ask is that you share my work if you enjoy it. Every recommendation and fresh pair of eyes goes a long way since I refuse to be a sellout marketing shill.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    So yeah, that''s the plan. Expect the updated chapters to come down pretty quick, I have a master proofing paperback so I just need to digitally transcribe my notes back into scrivener and then over here to RR.