midsagittal plane breached it’s spread into ready lesioning probe on my physiologic confirmation of the target location initial pass in three two
but if i take a few days between sleeping, my dreams have answers in them, and
a pain so great and sudden that he dropped his cup of coffee to the table.
“Paul?” Hope’s voice: confusion and concern.
He felt tissues give way as blood surged from his nose. He coughed in reflex, a fine mist of red spattering his hand as he clamped off the flow with a napkin entirely too flimsy to contain it all.
“Jesus, boy.” West pulled more napkins from the dispenser at the table’s center. “You okay?”
He waved away the extra napkins. His eyebrows furrowed, and the blood was gone as he thought it away. “Don’t know where that came from.”
Benton’s eyes met West’s.
“You need to sleep. You can’t stay awake like this.”
“I don’t need sleep.”
“That wasn’t normal, kid. Nosebleeds don’t just happen like that. Maybe you have high blood—”
“Cardiac shield’s not beeping, is it?”
“Well, maybe—”
“I’m fine. Just have a headache.”
“You need sleep.” Benton touched his hand.
“I’ll be fine.” His words were cold and final. He pulled his hand from beneath Hope’s.
She’d noticed the shaking.
“Seems empty here tonight.”
“Lots of ships are out. Myers meeting up with John Wayne, Spear and Riley for a Fuck-Run-and-Go.”
Benton shook her head. “You boys and your cute little names.”
“Behind your back,” Paul took a sip of coppered coffee, “we call you ‘Sugartush.’”
“Now I know you’re sleep-deprived.”
Paul and West looked at each other and grinned.
“Hi!” Honeybear jumped onto the table.
West flinched. “God, I hate this bear. Don’t sneak up on me like that!”
“I’m sorry, Mr. West! How are you today?”
“Shut up.”
“Okay!” The bear sat down between Benton and West, glassy-eyed smile directed at Paul.
“I guess we have to take him out on a run sometime?”
“Yeah…Should be able to get a pretty good lock on Windham with him.”
“Great.”
“Oh, he’s not so bad.” Benton patted the bear’s scruffy head.
West grumbled.
“Big run tomorrow. You two should get some sleep.” Paul picked up his cup to take another sip of coffee, but Benton took the cup from him. It snapped from the construct.
“You, too. No more coffee.”
“Yes, dear.”
“We close enough yet?” fleet on scope.
“Bring Mindel up on gel.”
calling.
Alina slumped against her interfaces and leaned into the warm slurp of the neuroflux gelatin. She blew a few bubbles from her mouth, which danced outward to her command chamber’s metallish crust.
Eddies wrapped, swirled into a form a little taller, a little more angular than Al’s. Static snap and the form sculpted a translucent smile, swam forward to embrace her. Sam adjusted the gelatin consistency accordingly to make the contact convincing enough.
“Frosty!” The two young women, one molded in flesh, one carved in jello, giggled and covered each other’s cheeks in slimy kisses. “It’s been forevers.”
“Too long, babe. How’s it hanging?”
“Oh, you know. Mediocre, but it gets the job done.”
“Ready for a little midnight special?”
“Fuck and run, you know it. How’s your fleet holding up?”
“Just fine until they pulled us out of the Jag. Sent us to patch up hotzones closer to A-Point. Lost our fort sometime last—Well… A while ago.”
“Time flies in the mind of—”
“Minolta. Oh! You’re going to hate me for not telling you sooner, but I met him.”
“Met who?”
The gelatin form’s eyes pinched to mischief. “The Author.”
The bridge slime Alina inhaled took on a bitter cool. “Really?”
“Jud’s little retrieval team misfired into our Jag When. Kate and I got to personally deliver him to the suspected Delta bleed at Lascaux.”
“You bitch!” Her stage frown became a smirk. “What’s he like? I mean, in real life?”
“Didn’t say a lot. Didn’t smile, either. His hands—”
sorry to interrupt, darlings, but we’re closing on-target.
“Okay, Sam. Meet me after the dance in the construct?”
“Sure thing, Al. Let’s lube up.”
“Bang their bottoms out, hon.” Wink.
“Later!” Mindel Frost’s gelatin form drizzled back into the bridge tide.
Alina sighed and sank back into her gauntlets. “You get that?”
it’s all recorded. Judith ME confirms Delta bleed on Fort John Wayne patterns.
“Bring them to visual.”
All around her, the dusk of Sam’s bridge faded to the intense white of the Timestream. A scattering of Judith vessels flocked according to home forts.
“Secondary confirmation?”
neurological extrapolation confirms Delta bleed. tainted code. she’s silver.
“Sweep for crawlies?”
negative on enemy pattern.
“Okay, open channel to my kids.”
done.
“Judith Ft. Myers fleet,” her fingertips raced over the projected timescape, “close on these targets and engage on my mark.”
Her finger hesitated over Mindel Frost’s vessel, Judith Kate.
“Open fire.”
tracing these constellations of flesh, greater silences than stars provide
“You, too. No more coffee.” Benton pushed back from the table. She was about to stand up when she saw Samayel and his captain approaching.
“Yes, dear.” Paul’s eyes were locked on hers. He hadn’t seen Sam & Co. yet.
“Al, don’t—”
The young woman walked right up to Paul’s side and struck him across the face before Sam could grasp her flailing arms, hands pulled to fists. West jumped up and took one of the fists harmlessly to his barrel chest. He growled as her forced her arms behind her back, slammed her to the tabletop.
“Shit. Fuck. I’m sorry, Paul. She’s—”
“The fuck’s your problem?” West bore down on her, incapacitating her against the metallish table.
Paul said nothing. He wiped a line of blood from his crumpled nose, upper lip split by that inherited chisel of teeth. With a thought, it was gone. Silver burned behind muddied eyes.
“I don’t care who you are.” Alina struggled beneath West’s heft. “If you send me on another mission like that, I’ll fucking kill you.” Her bared teeth looked entirely too sharp.
“Wanna help me out here?” Paul searched Hope’s eyes.
She activated her glass, waited. “They went on a bleed containment run today. Took out the Fort John Wayne fleet remnants.”
Paul sighed.
“She was my best friend!” Alina blinked back tears.
“Captain Mindel Frost.” Benton snapped the glass shut. “Delta-infected, 99% certainty.”
“We met her…When this all—”
“Get off me.” Alina shrugged from underneath West. He lifted her with one hand to her feet.
“You gonna control yourself?”
She didn’t answer as she fixed the tie in her hair.
“Have a seat. You three let me handle this.” Sam, West and Benton faded from the construct, now empty except for Alina and Paul.
She sat. Two distinct lines of tear wet her too-big cheeks. She wiped them away.
“I’m sorry. Really.” He reached out to take her hand, reconsidered and withdrew. “I know it wasn’t easy.”