by King, Sara
And, Magali knew, Anna was right. Magali had nothing that could even compare to Anna’s quirky, egotistical—sometimes even vicious—eight year old brain. There was no comparison. There was just…Anna.
“Besides,” Anna said, yawning. “The only thing you’re good for is pulling a trigger, anyway.”
Killer, Magali heard Wideman say again. She cringed inside. “Shut up, Anna. I told you I don’t wanna hear about that.”
“What, still afraid you might be a robot?”
A robot who could hit a starlope from a mile off…with iron sights. “I said shut up, Banana,” she warned. Magali knew she wasn’t a robot. During one of her more gloomy days, after another of Anna’s taunts, she had cut open the bony part of her wrist, just to make sure.
Anna hit her in the arm. “Don’t call me a banana.”
“Or…what? You’ll make it look like I insulted the Camp Director to her face?”
“You make it sound like she’s better than us,” Anna growled. “We’re not prisoners. They just act like we are. This is our planet, Magali. We should kick ‘em out and take the Void Ring for ourselves, before those bastards get reinforcements back from the Core and lock this place down like a penitentiary.”
Magali quickly glanced around to see if anyone with a gun had heard. Seeing no one, she grabbed her sister by the scruff of the neck and pulled her close. Leaning down, she growled, “You can insult the Director all you want, make me look like an idiot, make me cover your ass for all your stupid stunts, call me a robot ‘til your lips are blue, but don’t you dare say stuff like that. That’s treason, Anna. I don’t care how old you are. That’ll get you handed over to the Nephyrs.”
“You think I didn’t check to see if someone was listening?” Anna demanded, her rust-brown eyes indignant.
“Did you?” Magali snapped.
Anna grunted and picked at lint.
“Anna!”
“I’m just a kid,” Anna said. “What could they do?”
“Kill you, for one,” Magali said. “They like to peel off skin, Anna.”
“Then let them,” Anna said. “It’d be the last straw. We’d start a rebellion and throw them off this planet once and for all.”
“We wouldn’t do anything,” Magali said, shaking her little sister. “You would be dead.”
Anna shrugged. “I’d hang around until I saw you knock ‘em around a bit.”
If there was one thing that disturbed Magali about her sister—aside from the cruel phases where every word that came out of Anna’s mouth was a bone-deep insult—it was her apparent utter disregard for her own safety. Death, to Anna, seemed like just an inconvenience.
Magali released her sister, glaring. Saying nothing, she turned and went into the aluminum barn that served as their food hall and stood in one of the three lines. They took their breakfast trays from the sour-faced server at the end of the line and, sitting down, Magali said, “I don’t like it when you talk like that.”
“I don’t like it when you talk at all,” Anna said. “So we’re even.”
“Great.” Magali stared down at her eggs. She took several breaths, focusing on the air in her lungs. Then she looked up at Anna and said, “Someday you’re gonna say one too many nasty things and I’m going to step back and really examine just why I care about you.”
“Because you have to,” Anna said, putting a gob of eggs into her mouth.
Magali stared at her sister. “Have to?” She slammed down her fork. “Anna, there’s no have to about it. Plenty of people hate their siblings.”
Anna gave a bored sigh. “Not people who got their parents killed and now are trying to make up for it by being nice to the only blood relative that survived their stupidity.”
For a long time, Magali was so shocked she could not speak. Then, slowly, she got to her feet.
Anna continued to shovel eggs into her mouth, completely unconcerned. It probably didn’t even register to her that she had said something to hurt Magali’s feelings—it never did. With Anna, insults and compliments were one and the same.
Magali knew she should let it slide, like she had let every other jab slide over the years. After all, Anna couldn’t help herself. She absolutely, categorically, could not help herself.
And yet, this time she’d gone too far.
Magali got up turned away from the table, leaving her eggs where they sat.
“Where you going?” Anna asked.
“Away,” Magali said. “I don’t feel hungry anymore.”
Anna glanced at the tray, genuinely confused. “You didn’t eat anything.”
She doesn’t get it, Magali thought, squeezing her fingers into fists. She really doesn’t get it.
Taking a deep breath, Magali forced herself to sit back down and pick up her fork. Jabbing it into her eggs, she said, “What I don’t get, Banana, is how you can manipulate people like the Director like it’s easy, but you are completely clueless about other stuff.”
“Like what?” Anna asked, around her eggs.
“Like what you just said to me now. It hurt a lot.”
Anna shrugged.
Seeing it, Magali narrowed her eyes, but she kept prodding at her food. “Do you do it on purpose? Be mean on purpose?”
“I do everything on purpose.”
Magali slammed her fork down again, this time hard enough to make the table shudder. Every face in the cafeteria turned toward them when Magali shouted, “Did you accuse me of murdering our family on purpose, Anna?”
“You did murder them,” Anna said. “So what?”
Magali leaned close. “You’re the robot, Anna. You’ve got a heart of goddamn stone.”
“That’s technically a golem.”
Magali opened her mouth to scream, then stopped. A slow smile spread over her face.
“What?” Anna asked, looking nervous, now.
“I just figured it out,” Magali said.
“Figured what out?” her sister asked suspiciously.
“Why I don’t kill you in your sleep,” Magali said sweetly. “I understand now.”
“Really? Why?”
Magali reached across to poke her sister in the chest. “Anyone who can survive living with you without going mad or killing something is destined to go to heaven when it’s all said and done.”
“And the Easter Bunny is real, too.”
“You bet your ass it is,” Magali said. She picked up her fork again and began shoving food into her mouth. “Better be, after what you put me through.”
Anna watched her for some time before she said, “I really made you mad, didn’t I?”
“Yep,” Magali said, brusquely stabbing at more eggs.
“Why?” Anna asked.
“Why.” Magali contemplated trying to explain, then shrugged. “Forget it. Talking to you about emotions is like talking to a hamster about nuclear weapons.”
“No it’s not,” Anna said, looking disgruntled. “I understand them. Just look at what happened with the Camp Director.”
“You see their effects, but you don’t know what it feels like. It’s all like pulling strings to you. You can use them, twist them around to make people do stuff, but you don’t understand them.” Magali shoved her plate away and glared at her sister. “There’s a big diff.”
“If it’s all like pulling strings, why do I make you mad?” Anna asked.
“You got me there,” Magali said. “It’s like you’re trying to drive away your very last friend in the world.” Magali leaned forward. “And for an eight-year-old, that’s saying a lot. Kids your age don’t make grown men cry.”
Immediately, Anna’s face broke out into a smile. “No, but it was fun.” Then, seeing Magali’s glare, her little sister cleared her throat. “I mean, that dumbass Parker should’ve learned how to stop stuttering when he was forty-five. And that cranky old Darian Hold was mean to everybody anyway—I was just giving him a taste of his own medicine.”
Magali glared. “I was talking about my boyfrie
nd.”
“Oh.” Anna immediately took on a bored look and waved a dismissive hand. “He had it coming.”
Magali stared at her sister, the thought of reaching across and grabbing her by the neck and pounding her strawberry blond head into the table so vivid that her fingers twitched. She tapped them against the wood to keep from placing them around her sister’s throat. Finally, she said, “We’d been dating four years. He never even wrote me after that.”
“Eh.” Anna shrugged. “You’re too good for him, anyway.”
Magali lifted a brow. “So you chase off my boyfriend so you can have me to yourself when you tear apart my ego?”
“Ego is just a construct of the mind, anyway,” Anna said. “I’m helping you to transcend.”
Magali narrowed her eyes and lifted her fingers. “You’re this close to a beating.”
“Probably the only thing you’d be good at—beating up a nine-year-old.”
“You’re eight.”
“Nine.”
“You’re seven Standard,” Magali countered. “So just cut the crap, all right?”
“We’re fifth-generation Fortuners. The next time I hear you use Standard, I’m going to crush your tender feelings again. Once BriarRabbit and I kick the soldiers out, there will only be Colonial anyway.”
“Damn it, Anna!” Magali cried, glancing around the cafeteria. They had two minutes left to their meal, and soldiers were already stepping in amongst the tables, getting ready to force them out for their first shift. Seeing no one that had overheard, she grabbed her sister’s hand and yanked her close. “BriarRabbit? What the Hell, Anna! That sounds like a damn video game ID! You think you’re playing a game?”
“It’s called a hacker’s handle, and yes, this is a game.” Anna grinned. “A fun one. Like poker, but I’ve got all the cards.”
Magali narrowed her eyes, not sure Anna was screwing with her or being serious. “Okay, listen up. I don’t care how smart you are. You mention anything about this phantom underground uprising within hearing of those Coalition women and one of them is going to lock you up and throw away the key.”
“It’s not phantom,” Anna said loudly. She spread her arms wide to include the whole cafeteria and all of its tired-eyed, haggard-faced eggers. “It’s all around us. One of these days, the Coalition is going to get what’s coming to—”
Magali slapped her sister.
Anna touched her cheek and blinked back tears.
Jabbing a trembling finger at her younger sibling, Magali said, “Shut up. You don’t get it—Merciful Aanaho, I don’t understand why you don’t get it. They will kill you, Anna. They’ll kill you deader than dinosaurs and then I’ll be left all alone.” She swiped tears from her eyes. “So just shut up. All right? I don’t want to see you die, too. You’re all I’ve got.”
Anna narrowed her eyes at her. “Maybe you should’ve thought about that before you killed Mom.”
Magali leapt to her feet, and for a second, both of them thought she would hit Anna again. As Anna flinched back, however, Magali swung around and stalked from the room, pushing her way through startled eggers and soldiers alike.
Behind her, Anna laughed.
Chapter 2
The Rebel Brothers
Stop. Let me out for air. I can’t stand this anymore. Giving up on her search for two rebel brothers that had recently been charged with blowing up a munitions depot, Tatiana gave her soldier the signal to halt.
It hesitated. “We’re still in colonial territory, Captain. It is very much advised that you—”
I don’t give a damn! Tatiana snapped. Let me out. Now.
The soldier sat down and unfolded, allowing fresh air to enter its belly cavity.
Tatiana gasped and choked on the tubes, knowing she was hyperventilating, yet unable to force the machines to produce more air.
It’s happening again, she thought, panicking. She had to get out of her soldier before it beamed her heart rate back to base and she got hangared for another Psych eval.
Damn it, she thought, gagging as she drew the food tube from her stomach and the intravenous lines from her arms. Tears welled in her eyes as she endured the nauseating pull of electrodes from deep under her skin, but she knew ten more seconds in her soldier and she was going to lose her mind.
Like last time.
Damn it, damn it.
She disconnected the wastes lines and then pulled herself out of the sticky, mucousy substance that cradled her, protecting against sudden blows and jarring explosions. Then, her naked body pricking with goosebumps and dripping slime, she crawled out of the vault, stumbled off the heap of warm metal, and fell to her knees in the alien underbrush.
She vomited.
Hands splayed on the alien dirt, head hanging down amongst the sticky green stems, she panted until she saw stars.
This can’t be happening. Not again.
Trembling, Tatiana glanced back over her shoulder. Her soldier sat lifeless, a hulk of weapons and hydraulics, waiting for its operator. Her. A host of precautions—thumbprint, retinal scans, genetic tests, voice comparisons—made it impossible for anyone else in the universe to operate the weapon.
And with good reason—Tatiana was the best at what she did.
…when she could bring herself to do it.
Now, looking back at the egg-shaped chamber that awaited her, all Tatiana felt was an overwhelming dread. She crawled away from the thing, brought her knees up under her chin, and cried.
Twenty minutes later, Tatiana had stopped crying, but she hadn’t done much else. The buoyancy gel had dried on her naked skin in a tight, painful crust. Her fingers were stiff, her lashes and brows gummy, her short-cropped hair a spiky mass of dehydrated bouyagel. The dry alien air had already whisked away most of the substance’s moisture, leaving her body covered in hard goosebumps around the cold metal nodes.
Tatiana shivered and tried to cover the biggest nodes with her hands, hating the creepy feel of cold air penetrating her insides. Huddling in on herself, listening to the brisk alien breeze stir the terragen grasses that were currently at war with the less savory, sap-soaked native species, she could almost believe she was in a very bad dream. She looked up at the big, slick alien trees around her, trying not to feel as tiny and vulnerable as she felt. The odd clicks and cooing of native wildlife echoed from the gnarled red canopy, and Tatiana was reminded again that, as valuable Coalition property, she hadn’t stepped outside sealed Coalition structures in over eleven years, zoomtime. Letting an operator ‘commune with nature’ was too dangerous. Never mind that there were whispers of an underground revolution stirring on Fortune—with her body pocked with metal hookups, a single bug down the wrong node could kill her.
Swallowing, Tatiana quickly checked the ground around her to make sure she wasn’t sitting on an alien anthill. She would have given anything for some node-caps, but she’d left those back at the station and the crash-kit didn’t include any. After all, the soldiers’ vaults were impenetrable, and operators weren’t supposed to leave their vaults until they were safely docked at a military facility. It said so right in the contract. “…Further, operators of Special Operations Large-Demolitions-Integrated Elite Reconnaissance Systems will disembark only at an approved Coalition hangar, or, alternatively, when their remains are removed from their SOLDIERS by recovery personnel.”
Jumping at a particularly loud alien rumble in the shrubbery to her right, Tatiana desperately tried to remember Major Wilcon’s presentation on alien fauna at orientation. As an operator on a colony like Fortune, Tatiana had been so sure that she would never set foot outside the sanitized hallways of the military barracks that she hadn’t paid attention as the good Major had droned on about his precious Three P’s—poisons, predators, and psychic shock. After all, operators didn’t need to know that stuff. The only way she could wind up skinny outside her soldier was if she exited the vault of her own volition.
…again.
I am so dead. Tatiana’s misery r
atcheted up another notch and she bit her lip as she stared at the open vault of her machine. The buoyancy gel had started to dry, leaving a semi-opaque crust coating the internal workings of the operator’s egg.
Tatiana knew they weren’t going to overlook this. Not this time. Only ten thousand soldiers had been made, each one worth a planet or two on the black market, and the line to get inside one of them was longer than a flight back to the Inner Bounds. She was replaceable. Not even a Third Commendation on Muchos Rios and a stat sheet to make an admiral cry were going to change that.
Tatiana huddled in on herself, trying to imagine a life without her soldier. Though most would-be operators would have gladly taken the eleven years as one of the Coalition’s best and gracefully bowed out once the stress became too much, Tatiana knew she’d end up being one of the wackos who ended up strangling her would-be successor with her bathrobe, once they forced her to step down.
She tried to imagine running cargo as a commercial pilot, or flying security for trade vessels, but after being solidly at the very top, in the most coveted Spec-Ops spot in the Coalition fleet, she knew going back to stick would drive her even more crazy than being locked in a dark, sticky chamber, unable to suck enough stale air into ragged lungs…
Tatiana shuddered and tightened her grip on her legs as she peered over her knees. She knew she couldn’t stay there forever, staring at her soldier like a dipshit, but the thought of climbing back into the vault and reattaching the lines, tubes, and nodes left her feeling sick.
Just the idea of closing the lid, locking herself back into darkness, left her in despair.
When she finally couldn’t take the cold any longer, Tatiana crawled up to her soldier’s cargo pod and pulled out the survival pack with clothes, food, water-filters, fire-making supplies—and an emergency beacon. She lifted a crisply-folded navy blue jumpsuit from the bottom and, after much debate, shook it out and stuck her sticky legs into it. When she returned, the Coalition would know she had exited her soldier, but, with nightfall approaching and the strange animal sounds getting louder, she was willing to cross that bridge when she came to it.
Tatiana zipped up the suit, tucked the collar down, then built a fire and ate a packet of rehydrated stew. Even after it became obvious to her that she was not going to be able to get back into the machine, she could not bring herself to trigger the beacon. She knew that when she did, they were going to rip away her nodes, sew her up, and send her back to fly freight in the Core.
