by Sara King
One of the nearest robots cocked its head at her and said, “Draftee, you are headed to Eoirus, five years from here. You will not have access to a cheeseburger until you pass through the Nephyr Academy and are granted a leave of absence.”
“And that,” Anna said, tapping a final command and then shoving her r-player into her pocket with a smile, “is where you’re wrong, bolthead. Dobie, if you would?” She jerked the hand cuffed to him impatiently.
Doberman obediently released her wrist from the cuff, and Anna tossed it aside. As the entire room watched in stunned silence, she wandered over to a corner and sat down on a crate of engineering supplies. When she was settled, she gestured at her robot impatiently. “Well, go on.”
Doberman immediately threw open his gun compartments and blew every other robot in the room away. It took six and a half whole seconds. Anna frowned at the excess. They’d definitely have to work on that.
All around the ship, kids began screaming as their robots exploded or evaporated beside them, the remnants of their metal bodies dropping, dripping, or drifting to the floor, their disembodied arms heavy enough that they took most of the kids to their knees with them.
“Release them from the cuffs,” Anna said, yawning again. “I want their attention for this.”
“Of course, Overlord,” Dobie said. He went down the line and released each child from the draftee cuff that had held them to their escorts. While he was wasting her time doing that, Anna went back to her r-player and continued researching the potential of creating plant-derived Yolk components from bioengineered legumes, namely fava beans due to their spectacular growth rates. She was several minutes into her work when she realized everyone in the room was standing and staring at her.
“Ah!” She grinned and tucked her r-player away again, then jumped to her feet. “Greetings, fellow ex-Nephyr draftees!”
Utter silence filled the transport ship as Anna paced briskly to the front of the group of kids in the cargo bay, hands clasped behind her back. Doberman stood off to the side, locking the cannons back into his forearms, watching the scene indifferently. The ship began to hum with pressure around them as its autopilot rerouted them, currently doing a big loop and taking them to the Silver City instead of the Core. She really did want that hamburger.
“As you’ve probably noticed,” Anna said to her new minions, “you are not skinless ice-cubes hurtling towards the Inner Bounds, and your former escorts are now dismantled pieces of space-junk. Some of you are probably wondering why.”
She saw flickers of curiosity across their faces, but none of them asked. Good.
Anna smiled at them. “Glad you asked. For the duration of this meeting, I’m your new Evil Overlord, and this is my pet robot, Dobie. We’ve come to the decision that sending our best and brightest off to the Nephyr Academy is counter-productive for the future of Fortune, so we’ve commandeered your shuttle. If you please me, some of you will get offered a job. If you don’t…” Anna shrugged. “You’ll go home and forget this ever happened.” She waved a dismissive hand. “Make babies, spread the genetics, that sort of thing.”
“Evil Overlord,” Sasquatch scoffed. “Riiiight. What are you, like six?”
Anna stopped and gave him an irritated stare. “Dobie, how old am I?”
“You are nine, Overlord,” Doberman said obediently. They had agreed not to use her real name at the outset of their mission, and Anna loved the ring it had coming in the form of a robot’s matter-of-fact reply.
“But I thought that government robots couldn’t be hacked,” the kid said, blinking up at Dobie.
Anna sighed, deeply. “They can’t. Dobie, send the primate back home to his mommy. He’s obviously outta his league.” With a swiftness that delighted her, Doberman stepped forward, grabbed the kid, who screamed and struggled, shocked him senseless, then administered a forgetfulness serum mixed with a bit of long-term knockout drug, and dragged him off to the corner she’d just vacated, where the kid slumped against the wall and started to drool. One down. Twenty-five to go, minus the one drugged up in cryo. Anna scanned the remainder. “Any other stupid questions?”
Most of the kids started to babble and step backwards in obvious terror, but there were a handful that stood their ground. A fat little pumpkin of a girl and a twiggy boy with long ice-blond hair tied at the nape of his neck, for instance, just watched her as placidly as if they were all sitting around at a tea party.
“All right,” Anna said, clapping her hands together. “Dobie is going to start asking you each a series of increasingly more difficult questions to determine just how useful you are to us when we decide to take Rath and kick the coalers off our planet. If you fail more than six questions or if your overall score displeases me, you join that idiot over there and forget this conversation ever took place.” She gestured to the drooling Sasquatch, then motioned to the closest kid. “It’s all pretty basic stuff. Go ahead, Dobie.”
The first kid peed himself and started stuttering so badly he couldn’t answer Dobie’s questions, and he got added to the corner. Kay McClellan and two other girls passed, though barely. Then a fourth girl failed. “Aren’t you going to tell me what I got wrong?” the girl sobbed, when Anna shook her head a seventh time and gestured for Dobie.
Anna laughed. “This is a test, not a learning experience, dipshit. Dobie, get rid of her.” The fifth girl likewise failed. “He said cubed, not squared, Aanaho Ineriho!” Anna cried. She yawned and sat down with her r-player in disgust, only half-listening to the rest.
Most missed seven of Dobie’s questions, or couldn’t list all of the timed examples required of them, or were too frazzled to do the mental math. Those were all added to the pile. Pumpkin-girl, however, only missed two.
“Keep her!” Anna called over the sound of her heavy metal, not even looking up from her r-player. Even a tubblet could be useful, if she didn’t have to run from anything.
The whole room went silent, however, when the robot reached the twiggy blond and, instead of answering Dobie’s first question, he gave Anna a really long look and said, “You’re shorter than I thought you’d be.”
Anna frowned and glanced up from her device. When she saw Dobie waiting for her response, she snorted dismissively. “That counts as a failed question.” She cranked up the volume and waved Dobie on.
Dobie asked another, this one a chemistry question.
The blond smiled. “I always thought strawberry soda reacted unfavorably to hydrochloric acid. Too much gas.”
Anna froze. Very slowly, she lowered her volume, then scowled at the kid. “Another fail,” she told Dobie, glaring at the kid. “Ask him something else.” To the blond, she said, “You better answer his questions. You only get four more fails, and he’s got some doozies.”
The blond just gave her a placid grin.
This time, Dobie gave the kid a logic problem.
“Funny way to die, killing yourself on a nugget of silver,” the boy replied.
Anna set her r-player down and got up to scowl at the kid. “Three more fails.”
He just grinned at her.
Dobie asked about botany.
“A vegetable that carves on veggies. Some would call that a horrible waste of food.”
Anna fisted her hands and walked up to peer at him, eye-to-eye. “Two more fails.”
Doberman hesitated, watching the two of them. “He doesn’t seem to be responding to my questions, Overlord. At his current rate, I would not expect him to pass. Would you like me to administer the serum?”
“Overlord, huh?” the kid said. “I would’ve gone with something like Maximus or Daimyo or Khan or Fuhrer. Or, hell, just Boss. Overlord is kinda corny.”
“Continue, Dobie,” Anna growled, without taking her eyes off the kid’s smug face.
Doberman shrugged and offered him a pattern recognition problem.
“Hmm, let’s see,” the kid said, still grinning at her. “Little Anna Never Diddles Batteries Or Rusty Nails.”
Anna scowled. Getting close enough that their faces almost touched, she said, “One more fail.”
Doberman asked about dermatology.
“Always wondered what it’d be like to stitch someone’s skin back on,” the kid replied. “Hiding the scars must be difficult.”
Leaning in close, Anna said, “You’re all out.”
The kid grinned. “Oops.”
Anna narrowed her eyes. “Keep going, Dobie.”
Doberman asked, “Add all the integers one through one hundred.”
“Five thousand fifty,” the blond replied, in less than a second, without taking his eyes from Anna.
“Give him something harder,” Anna growled. “That was just trivia.”
Doberman said, “A Shrieker, a starlope, and a goat shared a stable and two feed bags. Their feeding conditions were thus: One: If the Shrieker ate oats, then the starlope ate what the goat ate. Two: If the starlope ate oats, then the Shrieker ate what the goat did not eat. Three: If the goat ate hay, then the Shrieker ate what the starlope ate. Which of the animals always ate from the same feed bag, and which bag was it?”
Without missing a beat, the blond said easily, “Aside from the fact that hay is not stored in a bag and starlopes have a chemical intolerance to the gluten in the seeds of some terragen grasses that will kill them within thirteen hours of ingestion, it would be the Shrieker always eating hay.” His grin widened. “That all ya got?”
“Harder!” Anna snapped. She barely noticed Doberman glance between the two of them out of the corner of her eye. He was toying with her. She was so angry she was seeing red.
The kid then proceeded to answer every following question correctly, taking only a fraction of a second to form his response, sometimes even answering before Dobie finished his question. Anna watched him the whole time, face-to-face, surveying the smooth workings of his mind as he stared back at her, unflinching.
“So,” the boy said, when Dobie finished. He still had that idiotic grin plastered over his face, and he hadn’t backed down from Anna’s stare. Looking her up and down, appearing as if he were thoroughly enjoying himself, he said, “Did I pass, Boss?”
“Judging by his responses, Overlord, I would put his score at—” Doberman began.
“I know what he scored,” Anna interrupted. “Dobie, how did this kid get in here?”
“The ship computer has no records on him, Overlord, and he was not being escorted by a Gryphon or a Ferris.”
That just made her madder. “What the hell is his name?”
“I’m not aware of that information, Overlord. His facial structure has no matches above eighty-five percent.”
There was always a match above eighty-five percent.
The kid continued to grin at her. “You like sweets, Anna?”
“What the hell is your name?” Anna demanded, a fraction of an inch from his face.
“How about candy corn?”
Anna felt a cold sweat rush over her and her heart stuttered a bit.
The blond kid’s grin widened. “Thought so.” He cocked his head at her. “How about we go kick these bastards off our planet, eh?”
Regaining some of her composure, Anna growled, “BriarRabbit.”
He inclined his head minutely.
Immediately, the pumpkin waddled over and said, “You’re BriarRabbit? And you’re CandyCorn?”
Anna glanced at the pumpkin. “Who the hell are you?”
“SexGoddess,” the fatso said.
Anna scoffed, looking her up and down. “Sure you are.” She had thought SexGoddess had been compensating for something.
The fatso gave her a flat fatso stare. “And the two questions I missed were four million, six hundred thirty thousand forty-two point eight-nine-five and the black pony.” She glanced at the blond. “Forgive me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you the two instigating the rebellion?”
Anna snorted derisively. “Rebellion? How could kids be instigating a rebellion?”
“I want in,” the pumpkin said. “Nephyrs killed my mom and sisters six nights ago when they came to get me. I’ve got a brother in the mountains who also had in-utero Yolk and I know how to contact Everywhere666 and BabyDoomsday. I think we could get MadMorga and FlameOn easy enough—they’re both in Silver City somewhere.”
Anna felt a slow, predatory smile cross her lips as she looked at the tubblet with new respect. “Oh, this is gonna be fun.”
CHAPTER 9: Dragonfly
18th of May, 3006
South Tear
Fortune, Daytona 6 Cluster, Outer Bounds
“Magali.”
Magali was staring at the ceiling of the ship, the same place she’d been staring for hours.
“Mag.”
She didn’t hear it. Not really. She knew someone was calling her, but she had neither the will nor the desire to care.
Fingers were snapping in front of her face. Glassy fingers, glittering gold in the harsh light. Fingers that enjoyed blood, relished pain. “Mag, please come back, Mag.”
Killer, Magali thought, as she’d thought for hours. She danced with it, spun with it, sank with it, soared with it, finally giving in to its seductive pull. Killer, killer, killer, killer…
“I need you, Mag.”
Everything else was gone. Her dreams gone. Her hopes gone. Everything gone but that one, single word. The word she could never escape, because she was the word.
Killer.
“Please don’t go.” It was almost a whimper, the sound of a pained and dying thing. “Please don’t leave me.”
Magali almost recognized the voice, almost. Then she went back to her dance. Killer, killer, killer…
Because Magali hadn’t even blinked in an hour, totally unresponsive to his voice or gestures, and because he had nothing left in the world except for the guardian angel who’d finally freed him from his nightmare, Jersey broke down and pulled her into his arms.
Sacrifice a queen…
“Mag,” he whispered, pressing his lips against her scalp. “I’m so sorry.”
She didn’t even flinch when he touched her, which made his feeling of dread only grow stronger. He’d seen this look before, at the Nephyr Academy. In some recruits, the psychological conditioning had been too much and, instead of bending to the will of their instructors, they’d simply departed. Their bodies still ate and drank and sometimes even did pushups when they were told, but nothing—not pain, not guilt, not even the desperate pleas of family—could bring them back once they passed over that brink. It was usually the soft-hearted ones, the ones who could not adapt, the ones who let go under the pressure, who lost themselves completely.
Like eggers with the Wide, the Nephyrs never sent them home, but kept them around to wander the Academy as a warning. Like eggers, they usually died of starvation. They forgot to eat, forgot to sleep, eventually forgot to breathe.
And it was happening to the innocent who had saved him. He could see it in her dilated eyes, the fact she didn’t even notice it was a Nephyr who held her, the way her limp body hung in his arms like warm, lifeless meat.
“Magali, please don’t go,” he whispered, tears stinging his eyes. “I just found you.” She was his lifeline. She was his anchor. She was his only link to humanity, and she was slipping through his fingers.
He couldn’t keep the anguish from his voice. “I can’t do it alone.” He suddenly found he didn’t care about the Revolution, or the rebels, or Fortune. He simply couldn’t face the fear of being alone again, of not having someone to talk to as the world frowned at him and judged him for a choice he never made. He’d managed to pull through the hatred and solitude on the hope that, one day, he would find someone who could help him.
He’d finally found her…and he’d thrown her to the pyre.
Jersey felt himself shaking with the thought of facing the world without that anchor, to be nothing but a monster again. He lowered his chin to her scalp—still clumpy with dried Shrieker slime because she hadn’t wanted to take a shower with
him in the next room—and closed his eyes, wishing he could rewrite the last few hours, wishing he had listened to his heart rather than his head. More than anything, he wished he had taken her someplace safe rather than trying to use the momentum they had generated in Silver City to start a snowballing effect and throw the Coalition off their planet.
“I’m sorry, Mag,” Jersey said. “I won’t make you fight again,” he whispered.
She didn’t respond to that. Didn’t respond to anything. Jersey began to wonder if she could hear him at all.
Finally, unable to take that dead stare any longer, Jersey set her down on the floor of the ship and got to his feet. His knees felt weak. He was having trouble seeing, breathing. The simple knowledge of how badly he’d failed her was like a molten spear slowly working its way through his chest. He’d known what she’d been through. He’d known what had happened to her on that cliff. And yet, he’d pushed her not only in Silver City, but then again at Yolk Factory 14.
He’d pushed her, and she’d snapped.
He’d pushed her because he was thinking about how badly he wanted the Coalition to burn for what they’d done to him. He’d pushed her because he wanted to see more Nephyr bodies littering the streets. Because he wanted to see Rath and Glassburg burn. Because he wanted to blow up the Orbital and nuke every Coalition ship that came into their airspace.
He’d done it out of a desire for revenge.
Revenge for what he’d lost, totally oblivious to what he’d gained.
It was the hardest thing for him to face, the knowledge that he might have destroyed the only person who had ever shown an interest in helping him get free of the constant, daily terror in the Nephyrs because of his need for revenge. After years of systematic psychological torture, years of weathering every form of abuse, it almost broke him to realize the only one with a heart kind enough to help him lay there, broken, because of something he had done.
Jersey left her in the hold and went to the comm system. His hands shook as he picked the handset up, intending to call a doctor. When he pushed the SEND button, however, he just stood there in mute horror, knowing that no doctor in the world would ever bring her back.
