by Jay Allan
“I’ll go for a slice of vanilla cheesecake myself. New York style, if that’s okay, BOB?” Amanda requested.
“Certainly,” BOB answered. “I’ll procure them momentarily.”
“I loike coming here. ‘E talks all proper-like,” Amanda said in what Kelsey suspected was a working- or lower-class accent.
Kelsey scooped a pile of chili, cheese, and jalapeños onto a chip and stuffed it into her mouth. It was spicy and hot, just the way she liked it. Another long drink of beer chased it down.
“This is great, BOB. I want the chili recipe,” Kelsey called to BOB’s back as it retreated to the bar. “Where was I? Right…I had plenty of things to do on my ship, Persephone, but I felt like stretching my legs. While I’m sure Talbot would rather I stayed up in orbit, there are a few benefits to being the heir to the Imperial throne, so I went.
“The planet was almost completely untouched. It looked as if the people had landed in one place and spread out from there. Five hundred years had let them grow as a society, but we guessed they still had less than ten million people on the whole damned planet. They probably came from a single ship’s crew. Plenty of room for them to spread out and develop.
“Once we’d landed and Talbot had his Marines formed up into a perimeter, some of the scientists came out to take samples of the vegetation. Talbot was busy, so I didn’t bother to tell him I was taking a look too.
“I did tell the other Marines, but they knew I could take care of myself. I wonder if they expected I’d find as much trouble as I did? Or in such a short period of time.”
“Sounds like you have as much luck with your plans working out as I do. I’m glad it’s not just a Marine thing. How did you respond?” Cain asked while building a nacho mountain to shove into his mouth.
“About like you’d expect,” Kelsey admitted with a sigh. “My life is filled with dealing with the consequences of me not planning things out. Maybe one day I’ll learn.
“Anyway, given the low population density in the area, I felt pretty safe from unintentional observation, but it is always good to be careful. Pro tip: when you feel like you’re the empress of the universe and go waltzing somewhere with your eyes shut, bad things will eventually happen.
“I found a hill with a decent view of the city in the distance. It wasn’t much to look at, but I wasn’t much of a tourist either. The area around me showed signs of human activity. Someone had cut down a number of trees a few years back, based on the condition of the stumps—not enough to ruin the wilderness feel, but more than enough to thin the canopy and allow me to find a nice seat.
“I’d barely settled in to drink in the sights when I heard a child screaming. It wasn’t close by, but my enhanced hearing is pretty acute when I want it to be. I normally have it dialed back because I’m not a snoop and even that has limits with too much input.
“That said, I can hone in pretty well on a single set of sounds at a distance. The woods weren’t noise-free, but the screaming was so different that I had no trouble isolating it.”
She paused to grab another few chips off her plate, stuff them into her mouth, and wash them down with that fabulous beer. She wiped the grease off her lips with her napkin and scanned the other occupants around the table.
“I haven’t had kids of my own, but I grew up with a twin brother. We were inseparable as kids, and I loved him. Things changed when we grew up, but that’s another story, and not a fun one.”
Kelsey used her sleeve to wipe her eye, then said, “Another pro tip: never use your napkin to wipe your eyes while eating anything with jalapeños.”
Rika snorted a laugh. “I have to be careful not to slice my face up.”
“Ouch.” Kelsey nodded toward the cyborg woman and shook her head before taking another drink of the terrific beer.
“The smart thing to do would’ve been to use my implants to co-opt one of the drones and scout the area, call for backup, and move in cautiously. Naturally, I hauled ass through the undergrowth toward the screams without wasting a moment on thinking things through.
“Thankfully, my combat enhancements make me fast, and my cranial implants are excellent at sorting out details like upcoming terrain and potential obstacles before I run into them—occasionally literally.”
Her face turned grim. “I came out of the brush at a dead run and spotted a group of children near a patch of ground with berry plants of some kind planted in rows. There was a man dressed in dark robes there with maybe a dozen kids ranging from eight to twelve, boys and girls, evenly split. He was holding one boy up by his arm and beating him with a stick.
“I’m not talking spanking here. I mean striking him all up and down his back and legs with a rod the thickness of my thumb.”
“Aaah, yes, a feckin’ dick, I think they’re known as,” Amanda commented.
“Got it in one,” Kelsey agreed.
“I didn’t even consider yelling at him to stop or using my stunner. Wouldn’t have been a clean shot anyway. But I was seeing red.
“He was so focused on beating the boy that he never saw me coming. I shoved him hard enough to send him ass over tea kettle as I pulled the boy loose.”
“I’ve come close to pulling my boy loose a few times, if ye know what I’m sayin’?” said Artur, grinning up at the others. He quickly realized he might have misjudged the moment and shrugged. “Ah, feck ye, then.”
“Only close?” Kelsey asked with a hint of deviltry in her eyes. “Maybe one day you’ll find the right lady and get to haul your boy out for her.”
“Only if size is measured in picometers.” BA pulled her drink in front of her. “Maybe I should switch to Coke.”
Kelsey laughed, then sobered and gave her listeners a cold smile. “Needless to say, my appearance brought everything to a screeching halt and focused all the attention on me. The guy was pissed and jumped to his feet pretty quick in spite of the hard landing.
“Who are you to lay hands on a priest of the Eternal One?” he demanded while looking around, probably for the rod he’d dropped.
“His entitled tone pissed me off even more than I had been before. I put my hands on my hips and glared at him. Probably not that intimidating, I know, but it was what I had.
“I won’t allow you to harm that boy,” I told him, making my voice as stern as I could.
“At that point, the guy reached into his pocket for what I assumed had to be a weapon, so I jumped him and yanked his arm up. Turns out it wasn’t a weapon at all, just a whistle.
“I was still giving it a look when the guy slammed his fist into my gut. Guess I should’ve been watching him more closely. He might have had a real weapon stashed on him somewhere.
“As it was, he found out firsthand—get that? Hand!—how tough graphene-coated bones and artificial muscle woven into real muscle could be. Oh, the punch still hurt, but Marine Raiders are built to take a literal beating.”
“A princess and a Marine as well. Wow, impressive,” Amanda commented.
“And a goddess too, don’t forget,” Charline added. “Although we’re still waiting to hear about that part!”
“Trust me when I say that I was never meant to be a warrior,” Kelsey replied. “At least, I’d have never guessed that about myself. The Marine part came after the hardware.
“A Marine Raider is just about the most artificially enhanced human fighter possible. I carry tech long lost to our people until the AIs captured me and implanted it against my will—without anesthesia.”
Kelsey shuddered at the memory. “They cut me open and put it in while I lay there screaming. It’s been four years, and I still wake up from horrible nightmares almost every night. I absolutely wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
Rika nodded and held up an arm. “I was awake when they cut mine off as well. Sounds like you and I aren’t so different. You just don’t have the interchangeable parts.”
“Very unfun,” Kelsey agreed. “And yep, I’m stuck with what I have. We don’t have the tech to rever
se it without killing me. At this point, I’m used to it.
“Anyway, the man’s punch didn’t even make me grunt, and I suspect from his howling that he broke some knuckles. Another pro tip: don’t punch hard things with your fist. Use the side or heel of your hand.”
She broke her story to shovel more nachos into her mouth and take a deep drink of her beer, waving the empty stein at BOB. “Can I get another? This is great. What’s the brand name, and what planet did it come from again? I need to get some for later. Maybe order some to go when this bull session is over.”
“That is a Wissent Lager,” BOB informed her. “From Nadzieja.”
“It’s amazing. Thanks!”
Turning back to her audience, Kelsey resumed her story. “As you can tell, I’m a little thing, so even with my protection, his hit moved me. It stung, but that was it. Didn’t even trigger my pharmacology unit to dump painkillers into my system. The medical nanites would have handled the issue anyway.”
She shook her head. “My idea of what an injury is sure has changed in the last few years. Anyway, I let him go and gave him another shove.
“Not so fun when you get hurt, is it?” I demanded of him. “Surprise. I’m not someone you can beat with impunity, and neither are these children.”
“You have no authority over me.” The man sneered from where he lay. “Give me back my whistle and I’ll show you the error of your ways.”
She grinned at the others around the table. “That man had a real talent for saying exactly the wrong thing. I took a moment to examine the whistle and laughed at him.
“You’re a fool if you think authority equals control. I’m going to make sure this kind of thing stops once and for all.”
Kelsey paused to rub her eyes. “My husband complains that I’m far too impulsive for my own good, and just between us, he’s right. I brought the whistle to my lips and blew.”
“Ballsy,” Amanda exclaimed. Cain nodded vigorously and pointed at Amanda.
“Yeah, I have impulse control issues. So, more of the priests came running from every direction. Dozens of them. More than I’d expected, really. The original one wasted no time telling them how I’d attacked him while he was ‘disciplining’ the boy.
“It didn’t take the priests long to organize. A tall man built more like a warrior than a clergyman stepped up to glare at me.”
“Who dares challenge the rights of the holy order and attack a priest of the Eternal One?” he demanded.
“Kelsey Bandar,” I told him defiantly. “This behavior is intolerable, and it will stop now.”
She laughed. “You’d think I’d mooned them, the way they all drew back. My guess is that they didn’t get stood up to very often.
“By then, we’d drawn a crowd of other adults, possibly lay brothers of their order or maybe visitors from the city. I didn’t ask. All of them stood around taking the confrontation in, so I knew there would be no going back.”
“I stepped over and picked up the first priest’s rod. As much as possible, I wanted to keep this confrontation low-key—as if a little woman like me whipping the asses of a few dozen men was all that subtle.”
Bethany Anne snickered. “You said ‘rod.’” She shook her head at her own joke before lifting her drink. “BOB? Coke, please.”
“Right?” Kelsey gave them a lopsided grin. “Still, what’s a girl to do? With a fight just about inevitable, I tagged my pharmacology unit and had it dump Panther into my system.
“That’s a pair of drugs designed for combat. They speed up the transmission rate on my nerves and also my brain’s ability to process things. Basically, the world seems to slow down in my perception and I have a lot more time to consider things, even in the middle of a fight.
“So far as everyone else can tell, I’m uncannily faster and have no hesitation in decision making. I’m not really all that much faster, but in conjunction with my implants handling target selection and tagging threats around me, I can handle myself well enough.”
“What-plants?” Ridge muttered to himself, appearing puzzled.
Bethany Anne tapped her head. “Technology in her body.”
“Exactly,” Kelsey confirmed. “Among other things, I have a computer in my head I can offload tactical tasks to while I focus on the action.”
“She’s pretty much just like me,” Rika explained. “Just with more skin.”
Ridge nodded in understanding. “Got it.”
“You seem like you can handle yourself,” Cain complimented before pointing at the plate in front of her. “Are you going to eat those?”
Kelsey silently pulled the plate of nachos a little closer and smiled wolfishly. She took a few moments to down some and reluctantly pushed the plate toward Cain.
“The fight started right then, without any more talking. The lead priest shouted something and they all produced those rods from under their robes, then they rushed me. Not very sporting, but bullies usually aren’t.
“It was like one of those martial arts movies from Old Terra—people coming from every direction and striking where they could. With my increased speed and physical enhancements I flowed between them like water, striking at their weapon hands where I could.
“With the strength in my legs, I could even vault over people’s heads or toss them a dozen meters away. Definitely far beyond human normal. That helped a lot since there were a couple of dozen of them trying to jump me.”
Kelsey winced a little and rubbed her side. “That isn’t to say that I escaped without getting hit. A few shots got through, and they hurt. My ribs were up to it and didn’t break because of the Graphene coating, but the hits left some awesome bruises.
“Then one of them managed to tag me in the back of the head with a full-power strike. If I’d been unenhanced, it would’ve probably killed me. As it was, it rang my bell good. I went down for a second and only my implants saved me, allowing me to roll away from the follow-up strikes.
“As much as I hated to do it, I really didn’t have a choice. I pulled my stunner and dropped the closest man as he was about to bring his rod down on my head again. He went down, and was going have a bitch of a headache in about four hours.
“No one missed the beam. How could they? It was a bright blue, and designed to be as visible as possible. They all backed up and stared at me as I got to my feet.”
“It’s true,” the lead priest exclaimed.
“He dropped his rod and threw himself to the ground. To my shock, the rest of them followed his lead, even the kids. I was now the only one standing in the clearing. That was not what I’d been expecting, but I wasn’t going to let it go to waste.
“Beating children—beating anyone—is not acceptable,” I told them. “I expect you to correct your behavior. Is that clear?”
“It shall be as you command, Holy One,” the priest agreed, not raising his head from the ground.
“I blinked at him, more than a little surprised—not that it was hard to figure out. I’d acted in what had to look like a supernatural way. Now I just had to figure out how to make my orders stick when I never came back.”
“Do not ignore my order or you will deeply regret it,” I told him. “In fact, let me make sure you remember I was here.
“I used my stunner on all the priests and walked back into the woods with as much slow dignity as I could manage, then I hauled ass. I needed to get the hell out of there before someone got the word out. I couldn’t let them see me again, or it would ruin the effect.
“It took me about half an hour to get back to the landing zone and inside the marine perimeter. The scientists were just starting to pack up and re-board the pinnace.”
She finished the rest of her beer with satisfaction and set the glass on the table. “Talbot was so busy that I don’t think he’d even noticed that I’d left. I had a moment where I thought I’d get away without anyone noticing anything out of the ordinary.”
Kelsey grinned lopsidedly. “Then one of the scientists monitoring a drone
grunted and gestured for us to come over. Said something was going on in town.”
“Like what?” my husband demanded.
“Not sure. Word is there was a visitation by a goddess at the temple of the Eternal One, whatever that is. The goddess of vengeance, if you can believe it.”
Kelsey shrugged. “I’m pretty sure I shrank a little at that. The last thing I wanted was to have my part in that little play revealed.”
“Eternal One?” I asked the scientist. “Who or what is that?”
“The Emperor,” the man clarified. “It looks like they deified the memory of Emperor Marcus from before the Fall and created a religion enshrining his return—only now it looks as if he is getting a daughter to go alongside Lucien, the emperor’s real son. Talk is that the church erred in some way and drew the wrath of the goddess down upon them. It’s really gotten people into an uproar.”
Kelsey waved to BOB for another beer. “As the better part of valor, I suggested that we get out of there. Needless to say, it was a surprise to my husband and anyone else who knew me, and we lifted off a few minutes later.”
Kelsey leaned back in her chair and grinned at the others. “Talbot never did figure out what had happened. My medical nanites healed the bruises before he had a chance to see them since we were busy for a few days and I was careful.
“And even though no one else knows—and I’m more than happy to keep it that way—I’m the Goddess of Vengeance in one little corner of the Empire.”
Interlude
“No one should be allowed to pick on those smaller or weaker,” Floribeth stated in a tone that made it clear she had been victimized in the past. “I’m glad you beat the crap out of them.”
“Yeah, people like that piss me off something fierce, thinking they’re the big I Am and imposing their own beliefs on others. Glad you took them down a peg or three,” Amanda added.
“I wish I knew if it took,” Kelsey admitted. “For all I know, my intervention didn’t change a damned thing. Or it might have altered the course of that world. Maybe I’ll get a chance to go back someday.”
