by eden Hudson
“It’s what I would do,” she said. “Convert the downtrodden. Offer them something better, or the chance to torture and kill their oppressors in return for their lives.”
It made sense. Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to kill somebody who had skinned them alive and enslaved them?
Eventually, Iceni finished with her investigation and came down from the treetops to rejoin the group. “Based on what I’m seeing, it’s looking like an attack in the middle of the night caught them off guard. They subdued the aid team first, then the villagers, all fairly quickly. Either several attackers or a few very fast, very skilled attackers. We’re not seeing a lot of bullet holes or even the markings from the bombs the skinners tended to use when we were at war with them. You got photos of all the Guild bodies—front and back—before Beausoleil took them down?”
Carina nodded. “I’ll message them to you.”
“Any wristpieces recovered?” Iceni asked. “There was a dedicated documentarian on the team. She should’ve been recording constantly.”
“They’ve got it back at base,” Carina said.
I threw my hands up. “Why didn’t you people just watch that? We could be wading through a sunken city already.”
“I didn’t know why not, either, until we saw the recon footage,” Carina said. “But if Tects are mechanically upgraded, then they either are or have access to cyborgcromancers.”
“Aha,” I said. Cyborgcromancy was one of the most complicated forms of technomancy. I shot her with a finger gun. “Someone who could create a cyborg wouldn’t have any trouble magicking up fake wristpiece footage. If you’d watched the footage beforehand, your reading of the evidence might have been influenced.”
Carina looked at my thumb and forefinger for a second, almost like she was stopping herself from firing back with that sorry excuse for a gun she always made. “Exactly.”
“That level of technomancy might explain the lack of resistance, as well,” Iceni said, touching her knuckles to her chin. “Skinners never leave their village perimeter unsecured. If the attackers were human-sized or larger, this place should’ve been screaming with alarms before they set foot in the village.”
Carina nodded. “Note that in your report. Last thing for now—I’m not seeing any weapons, dropped, broken, or functional. Did you find any up in the houses?”
“Not even replacement straight blades or soldering irons.” Iceni thought about it, then slogged over to a tree with a bullet hole in it and pulled out a knife. She dug it into the splintered wood for a few seconds, then turned back to us, shaking her head. “They cleaned up the shots fired, too.”
“They’re stockpiling as they go,” Carina said.
I opened my mouth to suggest that they didn’t have a reliable supply of metal to mod-out their new converts, but a female voice to my right interrupted me.
“The electricity is about to go out.”
Adrenaline flared to my heart, sharpening everything I could see. My flame kigao floated above the surface of the red-black water, burning and boiling features just defined enough to give the impression of a pubescent girl.
I turned in a circle, searching. Nickie-boy and the stick bug were tying body bags to the top of the APC. Jha was at the other end of the village, taking pictures of saw marks at the tops and bottoms of the crucifixes. Nothing looked obviously wrong.
“The electricity is about to go out,” my kigao repeated, mimicking my spin.
Sweat prickled down the middle of my back as if my waders had sprung a leak and turned icy in the cold air.
“What are you doing?” Iceni was watching me, smiling.
Carina was watching me, not smiling. Her dark brows pulled down and she raised her rifle to firing position. “Van Zandt, what’s wr—”
“Here!” Jha shouted.
A splash.
By the time we looked, he was gone.
Carina and the rest of the knights slogged toward the churned-up water where he’d been, kicking their legs and high-kneeing it. Curls of red-black swamp water sprayed up beside them as they ran.
I grabbed the roots of the closest tree and hauled myself up onto them, out of the death soup.
“Swamp charge out!” Nick yelled, tossing an explosive at the spot where Jha had been pulled under.
The charge plunked into the water and sank. A second later, a geyser of dirt and water erupted. No blood and no body parts. Whatever had taken Jha was on the move.
“On me!” Iceni yelled. “I got a visual!”
Carina and Nick adjusted their trajectory.
Iceni jerked a charge out of her purple-and-green armor and tossed it. “Swamp charge out!”
Another water and mud geyser erupted.
Three yards away from the explosion, Jha surfaced, gasping and choking, wrapped in metal arms. Then he disappeared again.
Carina and Iceni tracked it, but Nick stopped running.
“Funnel it toward the APC!” Nick yelled.
When Jha and the beast surfaced again, Carina opened fire. Bullets winged off the metal in all directions. I hugged the tree and tried to scrunch my entire body down into my boots.
“Swamp charge out!” Iceni yelled again.
Another explosion, followed by wet thrashing.
Carina’s rifle chattered, and ricochets whined. Jha choked out something that sounded like “Tect!” before his voice cut out again with a smack and splash.
I lifted my head enough to see Nick pumping his arms and sloshing toward the vehicle.
“Swamp charge out!” Iceni yelled, tossing her last one. “Switching to rifle!”
A geyser billowed up from the boiling water where Jha and the beast had just disappeared.
“Switching to charges!” Carina yelled. With her free hand, she pulled one of the fist-sized explosives from a pouch in her armor.
Jha and the Tect broke the surface, only ten yards from the APC. I could see the Tect better now, a decaying human head with eight or ten long, thick, metal tentacles riveted to its clamped-off neck stump. Three of the tentacles were wrapped around Jha’s torso and throat. It was using the rest as legs and propulsion.
The Tect lurched for the open swamp to its right. Iceni opened fire, turning it back.
The Tect jerked to its left, but Carina was already lobbing a swamp charge at it, cutting off that escape.
“Swamp charge out!”
The Tect threw Jha toward Carina and dove back underwater. The old man hit a tree, stomach-first, and folded around the trunk.
Carina didn’t wait to see if Jha was still alive.
“Tighten up!” she yelled, closing in on where the Tect had disappeared.
Iceni pushed in from her side.
Nick had disappeared into the APC. Kuchera leaned out the back as if keeping watch. When the Tect came up right in front of the APC’s rear doors, Kuchera opened fire. Muzzle flash strobed, lighting up the interior of the vehicle behind him. Carina and Iceni dove to the sides to avoid acute lead poisoning.
The Tect screamed, its voice a whispery shriek. Its mechanical tentacles twisted in on its head like a dying spider. One of Kuchera’s bullets opened up the Tect’s skull. Its shrieking stopped and it collapsed into the water, spilling wet gray matter, but the kid kept firing until his rifle ran dry.
“That’s good,” Carina yelled at him, pulling herself up out of the water. “Kuchera, you’re good!”
The kid nodded, his head bobbing jerkily on his stick bug body. He lowered his rifle. The muzzle was bright red and steaming in the cold air.
Iceni lurched to her feet, shedding swamp water. She glared at Kuchera. “You are one lucky, lucky, trigger-happy little boy. Firing at a moving target with your teammates downrange! If I’d pulled a stunt like that on my first call—”
“Sorry.” Kuchera swallowed, his Adam’s apple wriggling in his scrawny neck like it was trying to escape. “I’m sorry. I—I saw you and Sir Xiao, but that thing was so close…” He looked at Carina. “It was so fast… I di
dn’t mean to…”
“You stopped it,” Carina said as if that was all that mattered. She nodded to Iceni. “Were you hit?”
“No new holes,” Iceni said. “Thank God.”
Kuchera was still staring at the Tect. He shuddered.
“Let’s get it on the APC,” Carina said. “The investigations committee is going to want to study it. Iceni, help Jha into the carrier. Kuchera, reload, then get this thing running. I want to move out ASAP.”
Nickie-boy appeared in the back of the APC, his thick brow furrowed. “Didn’t work.”
“What didn’t?” Carina asked.
“I tried to shut it down with an EMP, but the pulse didn’t affect it.” The adrenaline had intensified his trashy mountain-bayou accent, elongating some vowels and breaking others. His gray eyes studied the Tect, dead in the water, as he considered this. “They could have a pulse shield like wristpieces, only scaled up to fit their—” He gestured at its extra appendages. “Could even be that their mechanisms don’t rely on a circuit board.”
“It’s a one-plus,” I said.
Everyone looked at me.
“The dead man robot.” I eased myself back down into the water and sloshed toward the relative safety of the APC. “That’s what Nytundians call them. The human brain works as their circuit board. You wanted proof of cyborgcromancy, here it is.”
“It didn’t stop coming until I shot it in the head,” Kuchera said, sticking a new magazine in his rifle.
I shot him a wink and a finger gun.
“Get the APC running, Kuchera,” Carina reminded him.
The stick bug nodded and scampered off.
Nick hopped down out of the APC and got to work adding the body of the Tect to the pile of souvenirs on top, while Iceni helped the bruised and bleeding Jha inside and started treating the surprisingly minor damage he’d sustained being dragged around the swamp bottom and shot at.
While they did that, Carina kept watch. I considered telling her not to worry about it, the threat had been taken care of, but instead I climbed into the APC and shucked off my shoulder waders, laying them out to dry.
That whole one-plus situation was something to look into if I couldn’t find a cure for the PCM in time. I’d need to find out whether anyone with the plague had already tried it, of course, see if the revival as a dead man robot stopped the progression of the beautiful corpse or if it started up again as soon as the cyborgnetics were operational. Of course, I would also need to find out whether a one-plus was still sentient or just a metal-laced zombie.
If it came to that.
NINE
A lukewarm shower in the base’s shower house and a scrub with the body wash that some forgetful or lazy knight had left in the locker room removed most of the death stench from my skin. They had Xek’s Amazing Cleaning Powder on hand for those hard-to-kill stanks, but I prefer the occasional waft of rotting meat to having that nasty shit festering in my pores and seeping into my clean clothes.
The good news was that however bad I smelled, Nickie-boy almost definitely stunk worse. Fondling those crucified bodies wasn’t going to do his BO any favors. Even somebody with an iron stomach wouldn’t be able to ignore a smell like that.
After I dressed, I messaged Carina, asking her when we were leaving for the Upper Swamps. Now that her stupid Guild investigation was over, I was done pretending to be patient. I wanted to leave immediately.
She didn’t get back to me right away, I assumed because she was in the shower as well. Maybe she and Nickie were showering together.
With nothing else to do, I found my way to the mess hall to see what passed for food in a dump like this.
Iceni was coming out as I was headed in. I stopped and held the door for her, making it very obvious that I was admiring her figure through her bright purple skirt suit.
“Thank you,” she said, giving me a sugary smile and one of those sassy half-curtsies.
“Any time,” I said. “Especially when you’re looking that good.”
She laughed, then took a step closer to me. “Hey, so, that conversation we were having earlier?”
Xek’s Amazing Cleaning Powder clawed its way into my nostrils and singed my nose hairs. The candy knight had opted to scrub down with that. Even worse, as a concession to the cleaner’s stringent shriek, she had gone extra heavy on the honey perfume.
My instinct was to follow my dick’s lead and shrink away from her, but I shifted my weight forward and gave her a hungry smile. “What about it?”
“I’ve got a couple hours before the team has to present their findings.” She ran her fingernails down my forearm. “If you wanted to do a little more than talk.”
Xek’s jammed its fingers into my mucous membranes. It was right on the tip of my tongue to tell her that all I really wished she would fuck was off, but before I could, I caught sight of Carina’s hair and back across the mess hall. Nickie-boy was sitting next to her, digging into a supersized Emden roll.
As if Carina could feel me looking, she turned around. Her green eyes locked onto mine, then took in her lead investigator stroking my arm.
For a second, I thought her face was going to give something away, some minute twitch of the lips or tension at the corners of her eyes. Maybe it happened and I was just too far away to see.
Then Nick said something to her, his mouth half full. Carina turned back to him, flicking her hair over her shoulder, and nodded.
“What the hell,” I told Iceni. I could breathe through my mouth.
***
I dropped onto the medical building’s on-call cot and wiggled my butt and shoulders to get comfortable. As comfortable as a body could get on a scrap of tarp stretched across a creaky metal frame. The candy knight maneuvered around until she could lay her head on my shoulder and stare up at me with orgasmic adoration.
“Wow,” she panted, her voice starry. “That was…”
“Mediocre, I know.” I laced my hands behind my neck and shrugged. “I’ve definitely had better, but you did the best you could.”
A few heartbeats’ stunned silence passed while the stink of Xek’s and honey perfume pounded against my temples. Mouth-breathing hadn’t worked. I could taste the smell of it.
She pushed up onto her elbow. “What?”
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “And I get it, I really do. Your job probably eats up a lot of your time and energy. You’re working a case, so you grab some convenience food here, skip the gym there, maybe do a little stress snacking, and before you know it, your body’s nowhere near what it was when you were younger and in combat rotation.”
The candy knight barked an indignant laugh. “I am in incredible shape. I run six miles a day—and that’s just when I’m working. I run ten on my days off! Do you have any idea what my mile split is? There are plenty of men who would kill to be where you are right now.”
“I believe you,” I said, nodding. “They think because you’re cute and you like to flirt, you’re a sex goddess. You’ve even bought into that image of yourself, and that’s great. I’m glad it boosts your confidence. That’s half the battle. The other half is technique, and you’ve still got some time to work on that before you have to scramble to find a husband who won’t mind if you let yourself go.”
“You loved every second of what we just did!” She lurched up off of the cot, making her half-cup-of-sugar breasts jiggle beautifully. “When I turned around like that, you practically had a seizure.”
I giggled. “Yeah, I mentioned I have PCM, right? I sort of had an attack there in the middle. It’s not your fault that you didn’t notice. They’re not very obvious to observers. I wasn’t going to tell you because you were having such a good time, but since you brought it up…”
Her blue eyes raked over my face like a set of candy-painted fingernails. “You’re deluding yourself.”
“I wish you wouldn’t make such a big deal out of this. It was fine. You were fine.”
“You know what—” She raised one h
and to shut me out. “No, forget it. Keep pretending like you’re the inventor of sex; do whatever you have to do to give yourself the catharsis you need. You’ve obviously got major issues rooted in self-esteem and sexual prowess that I don’t have time to help you work through right now. I’m not your therapist, and I have a holo-com with a Guild investigations committee in twenty minutes. I’m going to go get another shower and wash this—” She pointed one bright fingernail back and forth between us. “—whatever this was—off of me. You’re welcome for the best ninety minutes of your life.”
She slammed the door on her way out.
I grinned up at the ceiling.
My heart wouldn’t stop pounding, and the stink of Xek’s wasn’t dissipating. It must’ve rubbed off on my skin.
Black fishhooks of energy twisted in my calves and prickled down my back. It felt like I’d fucked a HandHeld full of razorblades while walking a slackline over shark-infested waters and still somehow managed to escape with my genitals intact.
Xek’s sex. Just a guy screwing while smelling a smell that smelled like the cleanup after a man drilled into a woman’s stomach with a hole saw.
I giggled, rolled onto my side, and vomited soapy-tasting bile onto the floor. The greenish-yellow looked toxic against the gray of the cement.
I launched myself off the cot. A second shower wouldn’t hurt anybody. And maybe another dose of good old-fashioned soap and hot water would take the last little waft of rotting flesh with it.
After I tossed the used condom into the corner opposite the trashcan, I got dressed and left for the shower house. I hadn’t been joking about the bang being mediocre. I’d only been that gentle with my criticism because I knew exaggerated understanding and kindness would hurt the candy knight the most. Compared to the PCM fit that had surprised me in the middle, even the satisfaction of knowing Carina had watched me disappear with her lead investigator seemed flat and pointless.
It was no wonder the rest of the beautiful corpse victims weren’t scouring the Revived Earth for a cure like I was. PCM fire was probably the first good thing they’d ever felt in their pathetic lives. Even as incredible as I was, I almost looked forward to its interruptions, to that burn that straddled the line between perfect pain and perfect pleasure, to that spicy sweet taste that had my mouth watering whenever I thought of it, to that nothingness of past, present, and future.
