by C. T. Phipps
The top of the cockpit shot out of the Engel with both my flight suit and a barrier protecting me from the worst of the gravity tremors. Even so, I felt like my face, body, and toes were being ripped off as the boosters propelled me away from my Engel’s burning remains. It was like a comet sailing away, the sides trailing burning gas. Moments later, it exploded, now far enough away it looked like a pinprick of light in a sky full of them.
Fuck.
I didn’t dare activate my rescue beacon now, lest some of the Commonwealth’s soldiers decide to pick me off or scoop me up via a tractor beam. Instead, I merely floated in the starry void, hearing nothing and seeing the spectacular exchange of light going on beside me. War was always beautiful from a distance, full of glory and promises of epic heroism.
It took an up-close and personal acquaintance with it to know every one of those light exchanges meant people boiling alive in an ignited atmosphere or being frozen to death after explosive decompression. I hated the Commonwealth and everything it stood for, but I couldn’t help but feel sympathy for all the soldiers dying this day.
That was when all of the light exchanges stopped. I blinked, staring out into my helmet’s screen and commanding it to pick up the transmissions which had to be going on. A sudden and complete end to the fighting could only mean one thing.
Oh, no.
I couldn’t hear anything on the Commonwealth channels, their encryption software had improved dramatically in recent month, but a single message was being repeated over all Crius ones. “Stand down and cease all hostilities. Prince Germanicus and the rest of the royal family are dead. Grand Admiral Plantagenet has transmitted our unconditional surrender to the Commonwealth of Interstellar Planets. Crius has fallen. Repeat: Stand down and cease all hostilities—”
Chapter Two
I felt cold sweat trickle down the sides of my face and the front of my chest as I awoke shaking. I was naked underneath the plain synth-weave sheets and it was dark in my room. It was five years past that day and I still dreamed about that night in the wee hours of the morning. Taking a moment to clear my thoughts, I remembered I was on board the Melampus and we were currently traveling through jumpspace.
The Melampus’ medical officer, Isla Hernandez, was lying naked next to me with her shining hair still woven into a weave down past her shoulders. She was as beautiful as a genetically-engineered noblewoman but off due to the long scar across her face, with silver hair, golden skin, and a perpetually pleasant disposition even though we had almost nothing in common.
My room as the ship’s navigator was reasonably large but undecorated. I had my bed, a metal chest, footlocker, and almost no decorations or personal effects. The room was almost the same as it had been when I’d first come to work on the transport.
Sliding out of bed, I stumbled over to the chest next to my footlocker and waved my hand over the top drawer. It popped open and revealed a bunch of undergarments, a half-drunk crystal decanter of amber-colored vodka, and a half-dozen bottles of painkillers, mood-stabilizers, and memory-suppressors alongside.
I removed the top of the decanter and took a swig. Awful, but I wasn’t exactly drinking it for the taste. Putting it down on the chest’s top, I checked the pill bottles and noticed several were missing from each. Isla, probably, or one of my other crewmates.
“Eh, who gives a shit?” I said, shrugging. Picking up the vodka and taking another swig, I also swallowed a pair of memory drugs and painkillers.
My cybernetic brain hurt more every day and it was clear it needed maintenance. While Isla was good, she wasn’t that good, and any other place I took myself would run into the possibility of identifying my genetic code. Even if they didn’t have that on file, the fact I was borged out of my ass with military-grade enhancements would be a tip-off I was someone important in hiding. Fuck, maybe I should turn myself in. Execution or prison had to be better than this.
“Lights,” Isla said, alerting me to the fact she was awake.
“Ah.” I covered my face with my free hand. “Warn a guy before you do that, would you? I have enhanced eyes.”
“I believe your problem is a hangover.” Isla sat up, not bothering to cover her scarred breasts. The entirety of her right side had burns across it and I’d never asked her about it in our months together.
“Is that your medical opinion?” I asked.
“I do have some expertise in hangovers, yes. Practical and scientific.”
I smiled and took another swig. “Well, it is said on my home planet that the best cure for a hangover is more of what gave you it in the first place.”
“Oh, was that Artemis or Amaterasu?”
I paused, making note I’d claimed both as my homeworld. “You know, I honestly forget which.”
Isla gave a light chuckle. “You know, Marcus, you can actually tell me who you are. Everyone here is running from their pasts. After six years of serving as this ship’s medical officer, I’m not going to be shocked by anything you say.”
I put the top back on the decanter, then placed it back in the drawer. “I thought we both made it a point to not pry. It’s easier that way for both of us.”
“This may surprise you, but I’ve actually come to like you these past three months.”
Three months I’d been part of the Melampus’ crew, and about half of it had been spent with Isla. I hadn’t noticed until today she’d gradually winnowed down her number of lovers among the crew from a dozen to just me and Clarice. “Oh, dear, does that mean we have to break up?”
Isla gave a half-smile. “It might. I try not to like my lovers on the ship.”
I was tempted to say, You have enough of them, but I didn’t want to start a fight. Possessiveness was something I had made it clear I wanted to avoid in our relationship, and I had no right to complain if she’d taken me at my word.
In fact, I was stupid to have let it get this far. I couldn’t afford to let myself become emotionally compromised if I wanted to stay ahead of the Watchers. I had spent too much time on the Melampus as it was. I should have made an ass of myself then and driven her away. It had worked with the other women, but I was tired. Let her ask her questions. Let her be concerned. She’d soon come to regret doing so.
“What was your dream about?” Isla asked.
I closed my eyes. “The end of the war.”
“Ah,” Isla said. “A lot of soldiers have dreams about that day.”
“Not the Commonwealth ones.”
“Even them.”
I thought about Crius and the last time I’d seen it. It had been my father’s funeral. I’d been recalled from Analathas despite being desperately needed there. I still remembered the gathering of siblings, cousins, in-laws, servants, concubines, vassals, allies, and rivals at my father’s estate. Six or seven hundred guests plus a six-course meal provided with vintage Belenus wines. All to commemorate the passing of a man they’d each detested. Father’s appetites had finally caught up with him and the man I was genetically identical to was so obese they’d had to have his coffin custom made for him.
The rings of Crius and its four moons were visible in the day above the funeral as the sun covered the terraformed world in warm golden light. The planet was several times larger than most human-habitable worlds, and the super-concentration of metals within resulted in gravity which was slightly stronger than galactic standard.
My last image of Mass Castle had been that ancient crystalline palace standing tall against the sunset over my father’s mausoleum with two huge banners hanging from its sixteen-story east and east towers. They were the red war flag of the Archduchy with a black cross across the center covered in the white and black wings of the now-extinct House Lucifer. A golden flaming sword pieced through the center with a halo around the handle, symbolizing something I had long since forgotten.
All of it gone.
“Well, it’s not every day someone loses a planet,” I joked.
Isla looked at me strangely. “Did you have a family back
on Crius?”
I grimaced. “Yes.”
“Were you close?”
It was a strange question to me, but it really shouldn’t have been. The majority of the crew was on the run from something or from families which had formed naturally in space. One thousand five hundred people called the ship their home and the vast majority had no one in particular who would miss them beyond their shipmates. Part of the reason I’d chosen to make my life here. No one cared who I was as long as I didn’t care who they were.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I was close to my family.”
Thomas.
Zoe.
Judith… Oh Judith.
“Were you married?” Isla asked.
Isla was being unusually inquisitive for a relationship we’d both agreed would be primarily about sex and secondarily about drinking. I suppose we’d both made the mistake of being friendly to one another to the point we’d slipped into the realm of asking each other questions.
I didn’t want her to know about my past, as it might get her killed (and worse, me), but I wanted to share some of it with her. Somewhere along the way, I’d come to care for Isla. Even if I didn’t feel the same way for her as I’d felt for my wife, I felt something and that was one of the first true feelings I’d had since Crius. It was worth preserving, no matter how dangerous those sorts of feelings were to a man on the run.
“Yes,” I said. “I was married. No kids, but she was the most important woman in the galaxy to me.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t.”
Judith had been a short woman with long red-brown hair, almond-shaped eyes, and numerous other signs of uncontrolled genetics. When I allowed myself to remember her, I tended to see her in a white flowing dress with a purple lilac on its left shoulder strap.
It was her favorite and the one she used to travel along the lake together with me in when she wasn’t fixing up my starfighter collection or her hovercars. She’d been pretty, but not gorgeous, at least not in the way Crius noblewomen tended to be, with each more perfect than the last and body-sculpted to inhuman loveliness. By their standards, Judith had been hideous since she was a nat with a face and body full of flaws. I’d loved her for each and every one. If I thought hard, I could even hear her voice.
“God, I hope this funeral ends soon,” I remembered Judith saying.
“Have a care, he was my father.”
“He hated me as much as he hated his other children, which is pretty damned big since he engineered you in order to disinherit them.”
“True.”
“Let’s go sailing afterward. Take the hoversailer out on the lake and make love in the ringlight.”
“That would be inappropriate.” I paused. “Tomorrow.”
“Just as long as we’re together tonight,” Judith buried her head into my arm. “I love having you back from the front. Even if it’s only for a little while.”
Unfortunately, remembering the good brought back the bad. I saw Judith slowly transform from the fresh-faced, pretty-but-not-genetically-sculpted perfect woman I adored into a flaming skeleton, then ash. I saw the entirety of my estate, with all of its servants and those relations I’d grown up with, die in a conflagration that turned Crius into a reflection of Hell. Up in the sky, I saw a hundred orbital mass drivers blasting down rocks at relativistic speeds, causing massive piles of ash to blot out the sun.
It was all a product of my imagination, but I’d seen enough of the recorded footage to know it had gone down exactly like that. I’d watched all of it a thousand times from a hundred different recordings in hopes of gaining some evidence my loved ones hadn’t died.
All for naught.
Taking another drink, I muttered, “I really hope those memory drugs kick in soon. I can just about stomach living without a past.”
“They don’t work like that, you know,” Isla said. “They just block the emotions associated with traumatic memories.”
“Yeah, well, they’re not working right now.”
Isla sighed. “I think we should share each other’s secrets. We’ve known each other a while now and I think you’re one of the people who can be trusted with mine. I’d like to think I’m a person you can trust with yours.”
“You really don’t want to be that person.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
“Isla, you don’t know anything about me.” I would have to break up with her, it seemed. Well, as much as we could break off our thing. We would still see each other every day while serving together. That was one of the hazards of befriending a lover on a ship this small. Isla picked up her snow-white bra from the floor and slipped it on. “I know you have military-grade cybernetics, which means you fought in the war. I know you’ve had extensive plastic surgery to change your face and fingertips, but only had the most cursory gene-clouding done—either for fear of enhancement rejection or the fact your DNA means something personal to you. I know you speak Commonwealther like you learned it from a textbook, which implies an education. You pretend to be a lout whenever you can, but it always comes off as forced. When you’re not thinking about it, you let the females and the elderly walk through doors first and you eat one bite at a time like it’s a dinner party. Oh, and you keep a Crius officer’s proton-sword in the air vent above your room. Its house sigil has been burned off, but it’s kept in pristine working condition. Which was a mistake as you could have just claimed you’d gotten it at a flea market.”
I paused, put down the decanter, then pulled out a pair of undergarments from my dresser before pulling them on. “I think we should stop seeing each other. In fact, I’m going to probably quit tomorrow.”
“It’s not a capital offense to have fought for the other side, Marcus.”
I sighed, noting she didn’t even know my real name. “That’s a matter of opinion.”
After the devastation of Crius, the Commonwealth had done an extensive De-Nobling of the Archduchy. Countless officers and soldiers had been sentenced to labor camps spread throughout the former Archduchy, while others were executed for war crimes. I couldn’t sort the propaganda from the truth, but quite a few charges they’d levied against the Archduchy felt uncomfortably possible. Genetic cleansing, forced labor, mass-execution, and human experimentation, for a start. Ironically, the only people immune to prosecution for such acts were surviving members of the nobility who had almost invariably been given high-ranking positions in the Republic of Crius Provisional Government.
Bastards.
“I wouldn’t hold it against you if you did things you weren’t proud of either.”
I looked at her. “It’s not that I did things I’m not proud of, Isla. It’s the fact I’m not proud of what they’d make me do.”
“Excuse me?”
There were three options if I turned myself in. The first two options were that they’d execute or imprison me, which were the preferable ones. The other option would be they’d make a spectacle out of the Fire Count. A spokesman for our Commonwealth masters and the New Era we were to participate in. I’d be asked to play on my war record, attend rallies, and participate in clandestine meetings to undermine every change the Commonwealth made while paying lip service to their cause. I was already a fool for ever trusting the Ruling Families.
I would not be a hypocrite.
“Never mind,” I said. “You shouldn’t have gone through my things.”
“You shouldn’t beg me for drugs to suppress psychological trauma.”
“I’ll find another source.”
I went to my footlocker to retrieve my red crew jumpsuit, now set on ending whatever I’d had with Isla. I wasn’t sure if I would leave the Melampus, but it seemed like a better option every passing minute. I was growing fond of the crew and making a clean break now would be better than later.
Isla got out of my bed put on one of my shirts she found lying on the ground, hanging down past her knees. I was a good foot taller than her. “Marcus—”
�
�That’s not my name. I’m not Marcus Grav.”
“I know.” Isla closed her eyes. “You need to know something about me.”
“I think we’ve already exhausted every possible conversation topic we could possibly have.”
I didn’t want her to leave. I didn’t want to push her away, but the fact was, I didn’t want to love her either, and if this continued, then I’d probably fall for her and then we were both doomed. Me when it came out what I was and her when she found out what I was. No one liked Crius outside of its own people. I’d discovered that within my first few days as a fugitive. Satanists. Fascists. Murderers. The monsters the Commonwealth used to justify the Reclamation.
“Not-Marcus Grav, I’m from Crius too.”
I blinked. “What?”
“I was a slave to the nobility there.”
Chapter Three
I, stupidly, said the first thing which came to mind. “The Archduchy did not keep slaves.”
Isla looked at me with a somewhat pitying look. “No, they didn’t keep human slaves.”
Her statement confused me and left me pondering what she might mean before a slow, horrifying realization came over me. “You’re a bioroid.”
Which, to other members of the crew, might as well have been me saying she was a toaster. Isla nodded, shaking a little bit as if worried I might report her to the captain or sell her at the next port of call. Half the crew would. The other half would consider her equipment from then on.
Bioroids were a special kind of robot created by Ares Electronics, which existed as a controversial substitute for the chattel slavery to many border worlds. They were organic human bodies with an AI-equipped electronic brain. Legally, this meant they were machines rather than people and the property of their owners on all civilized worlds.
Including Crius.
I’d never actually given much thought to the idea of bioroid rights and had always thought those who cared for them, like Isla’s lover Clarice, had been somewhat foolish. Realizing I’d been sleeping with and befriending one this entire time left me with a choice to either accept her or treat her like property.
