Delusion

((written by Stitcher, Silver Night and myself. ))

The agent currently going by the name Alain Manenault had been staring at his knees for what felt like hours. There was little else to do, when one was securely manacled to a chair, which was in turn bolted to the floor next to an equally securely anchored steel table, in a square room with only one very solid door. When finally it opened, he was grateful for the chance to raise his head even if the fatigue and lack of food made it feel leaden, twice its usual weight.

He hadn't been entirely sure who his interrogator would be. The Invelen woman, he had supposed. Or the Roth woman's grim-faced, grey-eyed bodyguard Alpassi, maybe.

What he got was a lean Civire man in comfortable white fatigues and a grey T-shirt. Full beard, shavetail haircut, blue eyes that glimmered like glacial ice even in the dim, ruddy lighting of a Minmatar station.

He went on the offensive as the door closed, a ReAw marine stood at ease to protect it.

“And just who the hell are you supposed to be?” he asked.

The Caldari man sat down opposite him, setting a slim hard-copy dossier in front of him as he did so.

“The Yulai convention forbids the cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners.” he said conversationally, by way of an answer.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I figure angry Intaki blondes aren't that unusual, but just to be safe I thought it best if somebody not directly involved in today's incident handled this interview.” he treated Menenault to a weak smile that radiated insincere concern. “You look terrible.”

“So you're the good cop then?”

“I can be whatever kind of cop you like, Agent... just for the record, what is your name?”

“Alain Manenault.”

“Your real name.”

“Alain Manenault.”

“I see.”

A note was scribbled in the margin of the dossier.

“Official record begins, twenty-three hours forty-one, fourteenth of December YC113.” the Caldari intoned solemnly. “Subject: known though unidentified FIO officer impersonating corporate personnel, responsible for security breach and hostage scenario as detailed in attached briefing files and in violation of the CONCORD Pod Pilot Act of YC one-oh-five, perpetrated against Re-Awakened Technologies Inc.”

He fixed “Alain Manenault” with a long, cool stare.

“Alain Manenault. Born on the Eleventh of September, YC seven-zero, aboard the Scope development studio at Deninard VIII, Moon one.” He recited, staring straight across the table and apparently not bothering to consult the notes. “Graduated MSc in mathematics from Caille University in YC ninety-two, winning a Bronze Guillard Prize for excellence in the field of chaos theory. Was accepted into the LeTrise graduate fast-track program and spent the next twenty-two years working for CreoDron, assigned to the Electromagnetic Physics department of their station in Aydoteaux, under Masalle Ambrette. Retired to pursue a better-paid position working for Re-Awakened Technologies Inc.”

The interrogator paused and tilted his head on one side fractionally. “Curious history for a man who would then do something so foolish as to kidnap one of his corporation's capsuleers and torture him with a shock prod in an attempt to extort information from the CEO. I would go so far as to say that it's not the history of such a man.”

When “Manenault” didn't respond, the officer merely shrugged and leaned back in his chair.

“What could you possibly hope to gain?” he asked.

“You've seen the recording.”

“Indeed I have, and it makes you look like a paranoid psychotic. One who's in denial over his good friend's dementia, it seems.”

“I knew Jorion Roth well, right up until shortly before the Debreth incident. I'd have known if he was coming unhinged. He wasn't.”

“And yet he tortured his daughters extensively. I've seen the scars myself, Agent.”

The corner of Manenault’s mouth twitched up. “The interrogator's job is to build trust. Lying isn’t a good strategy.”

“I am not lying to you, agent.”

“Invelen was. That Sansha podder with the funny callsign was.”

“Were they?”

It was a flat statement of scepticism, not a question. The agent treated it as if it were.

“They were, and you know it.”

“Do I?”

“You're going to look me in the eye and tell me the same damn thing Invelen did?”

“I know full well that you have a social adaptation chip, Agent. I know full well that it reported to you the last time I said this that there was no evidence that I might be lying, but I will repeat myself – Jorion Roth did terrible things to his own children on Debreth. I have witnessed the physical and psychological scars of that event myself.”

He sat back, leaving “Manenault” to desperately hunt his cybernetic memory for any hint of falsehood.

“Would you like some food?” He asked, pleasantly, after a slight wait.

“Screw you.”

“I'll take that as a no. So, to return to my original question, Agent... what did you hope to gain by assaulting our pilot?”

“I want to know what was done to Jorion, and how it can be un-done.”

“And what proof do you have that anything really was done to him?”

“Please. You don't expect me to buy Invelen's gas about a convenient degenerative condition do you?”

“Please answer my question, Agent.”

“The whole story stinks like a month-dead fedo!”

“That's a subjective valuation based on prejudice. I'm asking what proof you have. Hard evidence.”

“Why, so you can destroy it? Suppress it?”

“Just answer the question, Agent.”

“No. This is a waste of time.”

The bearded man with the blue eyes nodded. “Clearly.” he agreed. “If you actually had anything tangible to go on, you wouldn't have done something so remarkably stupid.”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, kidnapping a capsuleer and torturing him with a shock stick? That takes balls that could tank a doomsday, but it's not exactly the most sensible thing I've ever seen a man do. Indeed, you blew your cover to attempt it. What did you think could possibly be worth that?”

“No comment.”

“See, I have a theory. I think you really are just working a coincidence up into a conspiracy through confirmation bias. I think that you've spent too long in a futile hunt for the evidence you need to prove that your friend didn't lose his mind naturally and you finally got desperate. You 'owe' Jorion Roth? What did he do, save your life?”

“No comment.”

“That's a 'yes' if I'm any judge. So, the guy saves your life, sadly drops out of the crazy tree and hits every branch on the way down, and you can't accept that somebody who'd do that for you would turn into the monster who nearly killed both his little girls.”

“No comment.”

“You're as delusional as he was. He saw Sansha in his daughter's brain so in he went with needles and saws and microcontrollers. You saw a monster violating your friend's mind, so in you came with a shock stick and a half-formed plan about getting a confession out of a woman who had nothing to do with it. Sad, really.”

Manenault didn't dignify this with a response beyond producing his best glare, which apparently glanced off without causing any real damage.

The man stood and picked up his dossier “Thank you, Agent whatever-your-name-is, you've been most illuminating. I'll be sure to inform your employers that we don't intend to press charges as you're clearly mentally unaccountable for your actions. End record.”

He turned to go. The door was open and he was half across the threshold when the Agent called after him.

“Why didn't you tell us about Jory?”

“I'm sorry?”

“Jorion. Why hold him at a secure facility and not tell us about his condition? Assuming it's true.”

“I believe Captain Night already gave you the reason, Agent. To quote him: “We had hoped to avoid this exact sort of situation.”

“Your corporation cracked secure FIO cyphers and code phrases and spent months impersonating an officer who had gone MIA in order to avoid inconvenience? I don't buy it.”

“Thank you, Agent Doe, this interview is over.”

“My name is Du Viers. Agent Rober Du Viers, serial 921849-Epsilon.”

“Thank you, Agent Du Viers. That will make it easier for me to contact your superiors.”

In the moment before the door slammed shut behind him, Du Viers finally noticed the gleam of metal at the nape of his interrogator's neck.

*******

“Not bad.” Amieta Invelen had been leaning against the wall outside the interview room, drinking something hot and brown out of a metal mug. Pilot Hakatain had handed his dossier to her the second he left the room, and was busily shrugging on a black sleeveless jacket.

“Rating my performance?” he asked.

“Nice working getting the name,” Invelen said. “Might be able to get a bit more out of him, if we lean a little.”

“I doubt it,” Hakatain said, taking the dossier again

“Don’t sell yourself short.”

“I’m not.” Hakatain’s voice held neither pride nor modesty. “I won’t get much more from him because he doesn’t know much more. I'm certain of that.”

“Meaning?”

“Du Viers had an intensely personal motive for coming here. He has no solid evidence to back up his accusations against Cia or this corp, and he defied orders to do it. We know for a fact that he has precisely nothing with which he might convince his superiors to launch a more serious investigation of ReAw. Taken together, that's more than enough material to discredit him and see him relegated to desk work for at least the next five years. He's defused, and hopefully so is the Roth situation for now.”

He looked sidelong at Amieta. “Of course, the bigger problem is that he's more-or-less right, isn't he?”

Amieta sipped her tea, “About what?”

“If Jorion really did have that kind of degenerative condition, it would have been simpler, cheaper and more permanent to hand him back over to the FIO and let them worry about their brain-damaged former agent. And you were... not quite telling him the whole truth and nothing but back in the hangar, weren't you?”

“He was a danger to himself and everyone else for months even before the Debreth breakdown. Hell, he thought he was someone else entirely for a while there - and the FIO was happy to let him run loose. You're assuming they wouldn't just have said 'thanks' and sent him back to 'work'. Forgive me if we didn't decide to entrust Cia and Cami's lives to their competence. We released him once he was far enough along he wouldn't be a danger even if they did.”

“Sounds plausible. But this thing's top of the range.” Verin said, tapping the “third eye” spot on his forehead where social analysis cybernetics were traditionally implanted. “You don't give me much to work with, but unlike Du Viers I'm not speculating without evidence, Commander.”

Something whined into life inside Amieta's hand, though her grip on her coffee mug remained loose and relaxed. “You're free to believe that. What's your point?” she asked.

“No point. I'm certainly not going to shed a tear knowing the bastard's been... unfortunate. Cia may not quite be a sister to me, but I sure don't have any room in me to forgive anyone who'd do that to her.” He pulled a cigar from a slim steel case in his pocket, already trimmed, lit and smoking as the device registered his hand approaching the dispenser. “And I'm definitely not about to share my speculations with her.”

“Then you’ve learned something,” Amieta said evenly. “After the last time you decided to ‘share speculations’ with Cia. Putting her through that again would be … bad.”

“Mmm. Her sister, taking her dad and going into his head with knives and needles and turning him into a Jorion Doll.” There was an edge to Hakatain's otherwise reasonable and understanding tone. He stared philosophically into the glowing mess at the end of his cigar. “That would, indeed, be bad.”

Invelen said nothing, but the mug issued a slight creak as it deformed a little in her grip.

Verin glanced down at it, then back up to her face. “I understand and agree with what you're doing. But the day's going to come eventually where the deception can't be maintained any longer. Do you suppose you'll be able to go to bed that night feeling good about yourself?”

Amieta glanced through the door's one-way glass to where Du Viers was studiously contemplating his own knees again. “The ‘deception’ is in your head, Pilot,” she said, and turned a steady gaze back to Hakatain. “And I sleep just fine.”  

Equal

((co-authored with Silver Night))

The numbers stream past her fingers in a river of light and sound, whispering their secrets to her, dancing at her command. Arranged and rearranged the symbols resting on her left hand equal the ones circling her right. They separate and recombine and make new patterns in the darkness behind her eyes, spin into all the shapes of space. There, Nolikka Toin tells them, and there, and there.

They obey her, beautiful in their asymmetrical perfection, obey her as she must obey –

The treacherous thought slips in and the numbers wobble. Nolikka fights to bring them back into line but she’s lost the balance of it and they spin sideways and away, slipping out of her control like everything else is out of her control, racing towards the vanishing point …

She hits the keys to save what she’s done and takes a deep breath. Don’t think. That’s the key, mad as it is for someone whose very life depends on her ability to think better and faster than others. Don’t think about where you are, about what you’re doing. Just the numbers. There’s nothing but the numbers, after all, in the end.

As she’s about to try again, a voice stops her. “Dr. Toin! Over here.”

Nolikka doesn’t have a name for that voice, doesn’t have a name for most of the Gallente accents in this place she’s in for those hours of the day she can’t find a way back to the numbers. She knows it, though, male, middle-aged, belonging to a man who smells of hair-gel and cheese and too much cologne. The voice is in charge and she can’t afford to hesitate, turns and walks across the laboratory towards it, sidestepping work-tables and colleagues who are, as always, in exactly the same place as they are every day.

“This gentleman,” Too Much Cologne says, “has some questions for you, Dr. Toin.”

People there, she can tell, not just one, not just this gentleman. Their breathing and the small sounds of movement make a slow surf of dark waves behind her eyes, in front and to the right of her. Then a voice, a new voice, male, tall. Expensive, Nolikka thinks, not knowing why, hearing it as a taupe ribbon shot through with silk, slipping tautly though her fingers, the standardized accent of a newsreader that was standard to no-one at all with only the occasional depth of the vowels betraying …

Ishukone.

She loses the thread of his words, scrambles after it, makes sense of his question and finds that his question makes sense. Answers it without thinking, and finds him with her at the end of her explanation with another question pointed directly at the gap in her hypothesis.

For a few moments she forgets even Ishukone in the sheer exhilaration of another mind, a mind whose thoughts she isn’t intimately familiar with after two years of close confinement, a mind that follows hers and understands.

Words are inadequate. “It's easier to show you,” she says. Let me show you what I see. Please. “ I have the simulations – ”

“Of course,” Expensive says.

She hurries back to her workstation, hearing him follow her, other footsteps, she didn’t care who, it didn’t matter. Keystrokes bring up her simulation, the electro-magnetic charge of the projection pricking against her skin. “This is the current mass-manufactured version.”

“I’m very familiar with it,” Expensive tells her. She believes him.

Nolikka reaches up to run her fingers over the field, every number in every line of it as familiar to her as Haraila’s face had been. “You can feel the resilience, but ultimately it’s a go-no-go solution. Go ahead. Go ahead and touch it.”

She feels the shift and give in the projection as he does, and smiles. “Wait a moment now.” The numbers answer her, change their faces and join hands in a new dance of new equals. The tingle of the charge against her skin changes colour and she feels her equations move them both back a little, firmly but politely. There’s no excuse for bad manners, Noli, Hara had always said and she has taught the numbers that, for Hara, to remember.

“Interesting,” Expensive says, and Nolikka hears the hint of Ishukone again and falls hard out of the equations and back into her hungry, collared self.

Stupid, stupid, she chides herself. You planned and waited and prepared and almost lost your chance because someone asked you about your work. Head-in-the-clouds is right.

He has more questions for her. She has answers, some, not all, because his questions are good ones and she knows they’ll make her work for the missing answers tomorrow and the next day until they were there and clear and vivid in her mind.

Not now, though. Not now.

Nolikka clears her throat, makes her voice as casual as she can, and asks, “Is that an Ishukone accent I hear?”

Mistake.

Pain, every nerve in her body firing distress signals at once, crackling red light behind her eyes. Beyond comprehension, beyond bearing except she has no choice but to bear it, crushing even her thought of no, no, no into a white-hot black hole of agony.

Then gone. The edge of the workbench is hard beneath her hands. Sparks crackle and blaze in her head, neurons still firing at random, and she sucks a breath, another, tries to remember who and where she was and then does and tries to forget again.

A rich dark taupe ribbon unfurls in her head, the threads of silk gone to a burnished samite, and says “I’m sorry, you’re mistaken. It’s Korama.”

Which makes no sense. Because what is there in Korama but Ishukone?

I’m sorry, you’re mistaken, that’s right.

Or.

Yes. But I don’t want the others here to know.

Hope, then. A small sharp bubble of light in her mind. Not a coincidence, that Expensive is here, with his clever questions and the trace of home in his voice.

He has more questions. Nolikka forces herself to focus against the residual flicks and jerks of the collar, testing him with her answers now, pushing past the concepts into the strings of numbers beyond them. Expensive follows her, and she takes another deep breath and another chance.

“These are the equations I mean,” she says, and touches the keys that will bring up a screen of data she can’t see. Can’t see, but knows, nonetheless, because it’s her numbers there, a string of familiar formula and, seeded in among them, carefully segregated from the strings to prevent automated checking from noticing, numbers and letters that didn’t belong.

Not in shield tech, anyway.

On a docking registry, though, there they’d belong, telling any reader that the Otanuomi Blue was in port.

“I understand,” Expensive says. “This is exactly the kind of thing I’m looking for.”

Nolikka touches the keys she knows will blank the screen, hope acquiring sharp edges that make it painful to look at. “This is cutting edge work, Mr ... ?”

“Captain,” Expensive says. “Captain Night.” Which is not the right name for that voice, which is not the soft grey of a sleeping station or the cold sable of a sky empty of sun, but perhaps, Nolikka thinks, it’s just exactly as true as Korama is.

“Captain Night. These simulations represent years of research,” Nolikka says. “Years.”

“I know,” Captain Night says. “Of course, the proof will be in the final tests.”

Proof. “I'm not sure how much more proof I can provide you at this stage, in a laboratory, Captain.” I could run for the door and make them cut me down in front of him, that’d be proof. Is that what he needs me to do?

It surprises her, realising how much she doesn’t want to die. But if it would get the others out … She is Ishukone, and so are fully half of them. And she had been Lead Project Scientist, and that should still mean something to her. Is that what you need me to do?

“Of course,” Captain Night says. “We will need plans to go to full scale testing. That's why we're here. To see if we can't get the tech working out in the wild in the near future, as it were.” Wait, that was, Nolikka is almost certain, parsing plans and near future.

Wait.

Captain Night excuses himself, says something about hammering out details, and she hears his footsteps receding.

Nolikka waits, straining to hear the voices at the other end of the room, too far away for anything but a low blur of conversation, until –

Pain.

And gone again, almost immediately, leaving her shaking and gasping and then an instant later pain and then not and then again, and again. Her thoughts scatter and fracture, I did something … they know … what was it …, muscles spasming as nerves fired at random. Her name, Too Much Cologne is calling her name, and she has to go, not to go will mean more punishment, that Nolikka knows even as jagged flares behind her eyes break apart every other chain of thought she tries to put together until there’s red and red and redredred and nothing else in all the world.

“Temporary side effects,” Too Much Cologne is saying as she gets closer. “With no effect on productivity, of course.”

“So I would hope,” Captain Night says, and the silk behind the ribbon of his voice has gone completely.

“Dr Toin, you'll be going with Captain Night,” Too Much Cologne says, “to examine the setup of his manufacturing facilities and make sure there's no impediment to our moving forward with production.”

There is one right answer to that, one answer that won’t get the collar triggered. “Yessir,” Nolikka says.

“His staff will ensure your focus on the task at hand as we do here.” Too Much Cologne’s voice leaks fake bonhomie over Nolikka like a broken sewer and for a moment she thinks fear and nausea combined will have her vomiting on his shoes. “Can't have you scientists day-dreaming the day away, can we?”

“ We also want to ensure that to the degree it is practical,” Captain Night says, “that the production version of the technology is compatible as possible with our setup, so you'll need to make sure and take note of our processes.”

One right answer to that, too. And the answers have to be right. Her muscles are still jumping and twitching and nerves scream with memory. “Of course, Captain.”

“I don't want Captain Night to have any complaints about you, Dr Toin,” Too Much Cologne says. “I’d take a dim view of that.”

"Some of these research types just require a firm hand, I've found.” Nolikka wonders if she imagined it before, the trace of home she heard before, the depth she had been so certain lay behind Captain Night’s smooth announcer’s tones. It’s not there now. “I'm sure she'll do splendidly."

They talk about money. After a few moments Nolikka understands that she’s being bought, that Captain Night is haggling over the price he’ll pay for her, with nobody being so coarse as to say so out loud. Perhaps this is the plan, she thinks.

He’s either lying now, or he was lying to her before, and Nolikka doesn’t know him well enough to tell whether this is his real voice or the other was.

Doesn’t know him at all.

Except he understands her equations.

And she has no choice.

She goes where she is told, until they reach the door that none of them are able to pass and her feet stop without her willing them too. A hard shove in the small of her back sends her forward, off balance, bracing herself again pain that doesn’t come. Her shoulder hits the wall and she is suddenly in a space she doesn’t know, when every step for the past two years has been familiar to the point of monotony. She can’t move with the knowledge of it, can’t breathe. A hand takes her arm and tugs her along and she stumbles forward.

“No trouble out in the station, Doctor,” Captain Night tells her. “Mr Erquilenne is a talented amateur. We are not.”

There is one right answer to that as well. “Yes, Captain.”

Outside, then, strange voices around her, spaces wider and then narrower and then wider again. Smells, noises, the colours behind her eyes are a senseless cacophony but the hand on her arm keeps her moving. Then a quieter place, metal echoing beneath their feet, a cold oily smell that she remembers. It equals hangar. They are moving up an incline that vibrates beneath their combined footsteps. Boarding ramp.

A smaller space. A hiss and click behind her and a change in air pressure.

“Excuse me,” Captain Night says hurriedly, and all the burnished low notes are back in his voice. Fabric rustles, footsteps, a door closing, and Nolikka realises he is gone.

A Gallente voice says neutrally, “Are we secure?”

Nolikka turns her head, trying to tell who she’s there with, how many. Another voice, a woman’s, Ishukone clear in more than the vowels, saying “If we aren't, we're fucked.”

Someone addressed as Colonel is ordered to run a scan.

Nolikka is alone on a ship with an unknown number of strangers and one of them probably has the trigger to her collar and she sees whitewhitewhitewhite as voices talk past her.

No. To her, now. Names that she can’t match to any of the bodies around her, acronyms that mean nothing, something about –

The Federation.

She gives them her name and her rank and her ID number.

It didn’t work last time.

Gives it again, or thinks she does, in the middle of whitewhitewhitewhite, and a door opens and closes and Captain Night says “That isn't necessary, Doctor.”

There’s no reason for her to feel safer, no reason at all, when he’s just bought her like a trained furrier, but he understands her equations and on a certain level that’s everything she needs to know. Whitewhitewhitewhite recedes and she can hear that there’s just four other people near her, none of them too close.

“I want to apologize for activating your collar earlier, too,” Captain Night says, a faint hint of shrip carried to her on his words. No mistaking the Ishukone now, for all the polished non-accent that lies over it. “This is my ship, and you certainly are not a prisoner. We could use your help freeing the others, though.”

“Captain Night, sir,” Nolikka says, because That’s all right is untrue and Thank you is nowhere near enough and neither of them equal the numbers balancing themselves behind her eyes. “Korama, sir?”

“Dr Toin,” Captain Night says with formal courtesy, almost as if it is not his ship but her laboratory. “How would they know? Commander Invelen and I are both Ishukone. Whatever else we might have become since then, always that.”

There’s a name, then, for the woman with the smoker’s rasp. I knew they’d send someone, Nolikka thinks, and realises she’s spoken aloud when they try and tell her that no, they’re not sent by Ishukone.

That the corporation had no intention of coming for her, that’s too much, that’s whitewhitewhitewhite again and voices washing over her in long rolling waves with an undertow to suck her down to darkness. She surfaces enough to ask to send word to her sister and Captain Night tells her that it might be best to wait until they have all the others in hand as well. Which means no, and the waves take her down again.

A question brings her back up to where she can breathe and think and hear. The dynamics of the fluctuations in the lower spectrum under sustained laser exposure, and the numbers dance for her. She follows them to the answer and Captain Night asks another, the strands of his voice no longer drawn tight against her grip but resting gently on the palms of her hands. Another answer, another question, leading her through the well-known steps of long-familiar formulae to the quiet certainty at their heart.

“The flaws in the design that you put there,” Captain Night says to her then “They were subtle, but it was still a dangerous thing to do.”

There had been a time when Nolikka had not even understood that who and what she was might not be equal, when violating the implacable accuracy of her equations and endangering the lives that might one day depend on them was outside all comprehension.

Before.

She is suddenly, deeply ashamed. “Yes, sir. I thought about the crews of the ships, sir, I did.”

He corrects her. “Dangerous for you, Doctor. A brave thing.”

Forgiven.

Absolved.

Strong hands, disorientingly cold and unyielding, help her to a chair. There is food, so rich she spins back and forth between hunger and nausea. There is a new voice, one Commander Invelen says belongs to a medical officer. Hands touch her, impersonally gentle, and then are gone. Captain Night is talking to the Gallente about our course going forward. Between one mouthful of food and the next she is suddenly so tired that the words fuzz apart into meaningless spirals and Nolikka lays her head down on the table and watches them without comprehension.

Time skips and jumps. Captain Night is talking to her, and she is answering, with no idea of what either of them are saying. She is standing, walking, a cool metal hand guiding her, smelling tobacco and machine oil.

She is lying down. A blanket settles over her. A door closes, and then it is quiet, quiet enough for her to hear her own heart beating, its slow and steady pace accommodating the susurration of her breath.

She counts and divides and multiplies and watches the long and simple string of symbols that describe the rhythm in her chest spin out in a slow and gracious orbit, until everything inside her equals their steady tempo and they draw her with them into the gentle velvet dark.

Flash Flood

((co-written with Stitcher))

Helmi Alpassi knew that she'd originally been tapped to train into Pilot Roth's personal security detail because Sarge had known she could keep her head when it mattered.

Had known it from the first moment they met, after all.

And if there ever was a moment not to panic, Alpassi, this is fucking it.

"Pilot, Lieutenant Etay," she said calmly, "if you'd come to the front of the house with me now, the shuttle is on approach."

Charles Etay was carrying one of the babies in a safety-capsule. Amieta Invelen had the other. Helmi couldn't tell which was which and really didn't give a shit, so long as the total number of babies equalled two and they were each in the most expensive and sophisticated piece of protective child-transport equipment available in the Cluster. Helmi had picked those capsules herself, after a lot of research.

Finding out they were tested by dropping them out of a second story window with an actual child in them had sealed the deal.

Still, she would have preferred them to be carried by her people, would have preferred all the civilians to be hoisted up and hauled at speed to the assembly point, really.

If speed had been an issue, Pilot's feet wouldn't have touched the ground. But the shuttle won't be here for another three minutes anyway.

And Pilot was prone to panic. Helmi knew that part of her job description was making sure Pilot felt safe, as well as was safe.

So she let Etay carry one of the twins. And she didn't take Pilot's elbow to hurry her along, even when Pilot paused and said something about flowers and the nursery.

"I'll make sure they're packed," Invelen said reassuringly, and Pilot started moving again. Helmi scanned the sky, looking for spikey sansha shapes, saw none, saw ...

The sky.

It was wrong in a gut-wrenching way, the familiar off-black interstellar dust clouds of New Eden as seen from Debreth at sunset shifted towards an ugly yellow-green, like a gathering storm of forces Helmi didn't want to guess at. The Intel suddenly went from an intellectual threat to a real and immediate one. Adrenaline pulsed her implants to a higher pitch, burning copper on her tongue.

And on the horizon, burning rain. Five stars, moving as stars shouldn't, glowing like a banked furnace in the fading light as they twisted and writhed, shedding speed. Almost hidden behind the wind, the banging of the air as it raged  impotently against this supersonic violation swept across the valley, echoing like a distant battle.

Nothing so clean and wholesome as thunder and lightning rode on the winds of this storm.

And the floods it brought were not the kind Debreth was build to withstand.

Implants on her retinas read the friendly, so that's fucking something IFF broadcasts from the falling constellation as it shed the last of its speed in one low looping bank over the river and swept in towards the estate.

A surface-to-orbit shuttle painted in the livery of Re-Awakened Technologies Inc settled in the wide avenue as three of the remaining ships – angular Caldari gunships bristling with weapons - screamed overhead, their hulls bearing a blue starburst on bare gunmetal. The fifth, much larger ship settled in to a relative stop above the Roth estate and the grounds thrummed with the subsonic rumbling of immense graviton pads keeping the staging platform aloft. A percussive blast rattled the windows as explosive bolts blew along its flanks and four humanoid giants, armoured and massive, dropped from the flanks of the the thirty meters to the ground and landed in a blast of pneumatic gas. Within a second their guns and sensors were tracking the skies as they fanned out, covering the grounds.

Only a moment behind them were the ropes, ten of them, and before those ropes had even finished uncoiling to the ground, the first of the troopers was on it, her arrestor hook buzzing harshly as it slowed her descent. She hit the ground and rolled, moving aside with only a heartbeat to spare before the next trooper, and the next after him hit the deck, rolled and bustled to cover, each claiming three drones from the swarm that swept from the dropship's bays. Almost-white painted ceramic hardsuits, each with that blue starburst splash and a mirrored visor covering the face, Kaalakiota assault rifles. Airtight, nanite-proof, damn near bulletproof, but still light and clean-lined enough to allow the soldiers to move with grace and ease in Debreth's low gravity.

The flurry of activity swept towards the little knot of people on the lawn, parted around them, and left them untouched, except for the wind whipping their hair.

One of the troopers, the first one out, jogged towards them, heading unerringly for Pilot Roth. No rank insignia, Helmi noted, just a blue sunburst, and the words Hakatain Dynasty Holdings and A. Sihayha. I.D. confirmation spooled across her retinas and Helmi stopped the instinctive reach for her sidearm before it was more than a flicker of muscles as Captain Hakatain's personal bodyguard tapped the side of her helmet to clear the faceshield, saw a corresponding flicker in the other woman's eyes.

"Captain Roth," the woman said. "Chief Aato Sihahya. Captain Hakatain sends his regards."

Pilot - surreally, given the circumstances - extended her hand and said with a smile, "I'm very pleased to meet you. I hope you had a safe trip?"

"Safe enough, ma'am," Sihahya said, returning the handshake with a gauntlet that could probably have crushed Pilot's hand flat if she wanted. "With your permission, we'll see to the defence of your estate and the town in your absence."

"With my ... " Pilot's voice trailed off, and Helmi suppressed a sigh. One day she'll learn that she's in charge.

Her mouth was open to translate Pilot-speak into marine, one more part of her job, Pilot Roth appreciates your offer and certainly extends all the permissions you need to carry out the protection of the Roth property and surrounding area, when Pilot surprised her.

"Thank you," Pilot Roth said, quietly but clearly. "That would be appreciated. Please do anything you feel required."

One day turns out to be today, Helmi thought, as Sihahya saluted and re-opaqued her visor with a brief nod to Helmi. Either the the Ancestors are with us, or the world is about to end.

Or both.

"Pilot, we need to be getting you on the shuttle," she said. Invelen was already moving. Helmi herded Pilot and Etay up the ramp as armoured forms set up defensive positions around them, mostly missing the flower-beds.

One baby started wailing, then the other. Pilot tried to comfort them as Invelen secured the capsules but the twins refused to be consoled and their piercing screams were a counterpoint to the rumble of the shuttle engines as it lifted off. Helmi linked her optical implants into the shuttle's external cameras and watched as two of Hakatain's gunships escorted the shuttle into high atmosphere, then stalled into a graceful backwards dive towards Debreth again as the shuttle raced towards its rendezvous with the Feather.

As the gunships shrank to invisibility against the blue-green globe below them, Helmi let the connection fade. Spirits watch over you, she wished the men and women they were leaving behind.

And Ancestors sharpen your aim.

The Worst Of It: Two

You can hold onto pain, like it's a physical thing, curl yourself around it like the little sister you'd die to protect, if you want to.

Put your faith in it like the ancestors you don't have and the spirits you only pray to in foxholes.

Hold it close, so you can't feel shame or guilt past the fire of your cramping muscles, can't see the endless chain of sleepless nights ahead past the jangling colors spiraling across your field of vision, can't taste the copper coin of despair past the sour bile burning in your throat. Fill yourself with it until the hum of it in your veins drowns out everything else, until it coils through your body like smoke through a crematorium.

Amieta clung to the pain, clenched her fists on it until the servos whined and the joints grated in protest.

No more than I deserve.

There were voices, sometimes. Sometimes they were voices she knew. A woman's, soft and tender as the hands that smoothed her hair, that wiped her face. Ami? Can you hear me? Ami?

More often they were harsh, Amarr-accented, voices that went with blood and screaming and everyone dead, every single one of them but me.

The voice she thought she knew, her sister's voice, told her It isn't real, Ami, what you see, it isn't real. You're safe, with me, I'm here, Ami. Gentle fingers tried to prise open her fists, but flesh-and-blood was no match for Zainou's finest work. Cia gave up and wrapped her own hands around Amieta's, fingers tucked against the crook of rigid metal joints. I'm here, Ami. You're safe.

That might be true.

It might not be.

From moment to moment Amieta wasn't sure which of those was the worst of it.

The pain was true, the jagged edges of it in her gut, the burning cold that washed over her in waves, the hot ache in her bones.

The pain was real.

She wrapped herself in the pain like a blanket, drew it over her head and curled under it, fists clenched in its edges.

You can hold onto pain, like it's the most precious thing you have.

If you want to.

Drown yourself in it, let it wash away the knowledge that you've hurt the ones who love you, the fear you'll hurt them again, let the acid bath of it etch away the lies you told. You can let the pain eat away the shame.

And the reasons for it.

If you want to.

Even through the pain Amieta could feel Cia's hands curled around hers. She cracked an eyelid to see her sister's honey blonde head leaning on her arm, the edge of her face, one closed eye.

You can hold onto pain.

If you want to.

A new pain, different, signals firing from the machinery of her hands. Metal ground on metal, joints abused past tolerance.

The blonde head lifted. Cia blinked, eyes still cloudy with sleep. "Ami?"

Voice rusty with disuse, Amieta cleared her throat and then again, croaked, "I'm here."

Gritting her teeth against the pain, Amieta opened her hands.