silence and
you are of loss, of ruin
“I am.”
purpose. completion. forevers.
One heart: one, and frequent exhalation, shudder, the scrape of exquisitely-manicured nails over flesh, over metal, over flesh and
“I am Omega.”
SYSTEMS OF DESIRE
“Do you believe in werewolves?”
Samayel shrugged as best he could beneath her, his nacelles rising and falling in lubricated silence.
“I do.”
She clambered to the edge of his central hub, looked down upon the captured star. The heat was a pleasant slap compared to the months of timestream cold in which they’d been. She rolled to her back and let her nest of hair dangle over the side.
Looking up, away from the stark light of the sun below, she saw a scatter of wounded forms returning home, Judith vessels with phase scoring, here and there a vessel being dragged along by one nacelle. They couldn’t afford to leave the wrecks behind anymore. She glanced the tickle of tight-beam signals Sam sent to his returning soldiers.
It made her sad, so she turned over and looked down again.
“Fort Myers, good ol’ Fort Myers. I’m gonna miss this place.”
The orbital ring had been split into halves, into quarters, into countless fragments of metallish, but remarkably, the containment layer that held the miles of breathable atmosphere in place above the star was still in place. Alina loved the smell of air, the heat of sun, the exposed warmth of Sam’s hull beneath her. How many Judith captains could say that they’d ridden their mounts on the outside?
A flock of three Judiths passed close enough to generate wind. Alina giggled as they tipped their nacelles in salute.
“What’s gonna happen to the Fort, Sam?”
retrieval crews will salvage what they can from the shell. they’ll collapse the star and conceal the evidence.
“It’s a shame. I really liked it here.”
The atmosphere parted as a Judith destroyer entered the shell, towed by at least a dozen smaller fighters. Alina stood, shielding the light from below with her still-gauntleted hands as she tried to get a better look. “Who’s that?”
i’m not getting any signal from it…but the markings say it’s from Fort Johns.
“Flagship Jasper. He’s—Uhh.. It’s coming in a little fast, isn’t it?”
The destroyer picked up speed as it plummeted into the atmosphere. The Judith tows fell behind as its billions of tons of metallish fell faster and faster toward the sun below. Caught by a flailing particle cable, one Judith rolled dangerously close to the destroyer’s hull, slammed against its side and erupted with fire and splinters of black. Other Judith began to disengage their cables as the destroyer fell out of control.
Alina smelled the smoke as it surged past Sam: something between plastic and flesh, something between bitter and sweet. The sound it made: screaming.
The helpless destroyer erupted miles below against the containment layer, great arms of black and fire blotting out the brightness of the star.
“There goes another one.”
yeah.
Alina felt dizzy, not from the disconcerting vertigo of standing on a vessel without protection miles above the shield layer, but a deeper sickness wrought from two-point-five decades of servitude and horror.
“I think I’ll come back inside now, Sam.”
She loved Samayel, but she hated her command. She hated the war. She hated that even in a world of war, even when those last scattered remnants of her species were trying to make a stand, people could still be cruel. Boys could still be cruel. They could still work up the balls to call her “Banana Tits.” She hated those boys. She hated her breasts. She wanted them to be fuller. She hated her face: how it drooped, how her eyes looked perpetually sad and her high, high cheekbones, that in another time and place would be deliciously inviting for biting and nibbling, just made her feel so intensely ugly. Round face. Banana tits. No ass. She had a funny nose, and her body, even in stripped-down emulation, was still stippled with patterns of freckles and moles. She thought maybe if she improved her posture, just stood a little straighter, smiled a little more, maybe then she’d be beautiful.
She hated that space and time had made her sterile, removing the monthly threat of droplets of blood gumming up the systems of the ship, but hair still grew in the places where she wished it wouldn’t. Not that it really mattered. Everyone caught in this war seemed too tired to fuck. She wanted love. She wanted to make love. She wanted someone to love her. She wanted someone to remember her or care if she didn’t come back from a combat run or think of her as he drifted off to sleep, or at least what true sleep this war would allow between the killing frenzies and the running.
Sam loved her. She knew that because she knew everything he knew, but it just wasn’t the same being loved in that way. Besides, Samayel was a machine forged from metal and plastic and stars, and his soul, older than hers by at least four decades (he refused to tell her his real age), was forever and hopelessly queer.
She sighed a lot.
To one, it was a Paris cafe, filled with American expatriates of the fin de siecle. To one, it was a Laredo saloon, the rough-and-tumble crowd clustered around an overworked barhand. To one, it was an East Village dive where Bob Dylan had once been slated to perform as the opening act for a science fiction author. To Alina, it wasn’t much of anything. A few tables, a few smokers, a few glasses. She caught Sam’s beckoning smile and sat down beside him.
“Have a drink, little lady.” Hank tipped his glass to her. A smoldering Marlboro hung from his lips, the ashes considering the jump to the table. “It’ll help.”
“Not tonight, sugar.”
“I don’t know if you’ve heard,” Sam’s deep eyes swept the non-space construct, “but we lost Fort Myers today. Cleanup and collapse crews are en route.”
“Tragic.” Whistler hissed through his teeth. “Tragic, tragic. Sorry, my dears. It seems each day the Delta’s redrawn.” In his version of the projected construct, an attentive garcon placed another bottle of absinthe on the table. Whistler poured green over the sugar cube. “And each day, we lose more ground.”
“Shit, Jim. You know that ain’t true. Why, just last week we—”
“Which week?”
“Last week.”
“Which last week?”
Hank reddened. “You know what I mean. They’re doing their best to fix it all.”
“Bullshit.” Alina bummed a smoke from Sam’s pack, used Hank’s scarred Zippo to light it. “That kid doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing.”
Sam pushed his ashtray closer to his captain. “Sure that’s not the jealousy talking, Al?”
She blew smoke into and through his chocolate face, frosted with bushy vanilla beard. “You of all people should know there’s nothing to be jealous about.”
“And you, of all people,” he stole the cigarette back, inhaled, “should know there is.” He tousled her hair, which was already and perpetually tousled. “Benton needs some competition. It’s good for her. Keeps her maths pure.”
“It’s not her.” Alina blushed, a furious bloom of red across nibbleable cheeks and nose, neck and down through the periphery of her banana zone.
“Somebody’s got a crush!” Hank swigged back the last of his beer. “Ain’t it wonderful, Jimmy?”
Whistler’s eyes rolled under the swirl of his mane. “Charming. You dirty old men should leave the poor child alone. Intellectual badgering and Old West hullabaloo. You’re an episteme all your own, Messieurs.”
“Ally needs some competition. It’s good for her. Keeps her strats pure.” Hank grinned.