Perpetua reached for Howl’s bleeding abdomen with a fist made of knives, and there was nothing Elpida could do.
Elpida’s body moved as if trapped in a vat of tar, slowed to a crawl by the remnants of the Necromancer’s network permissions. Lykke and the Silico were both charging across the scattered remains of the Covenanter camp — but in slow motion, inching forward. The handful of Covenanters who had not fled could not have helped even if they had been free to act; their paltry spattering of light firepower stuttered away to nothing. Howl was sagging in Elpida’s one-armed grip, dark blood leaking from her wound and soaking into the jacket tied around her belly, crimson rivulets sliding down her thighs; she kicked out with her feet, struggling to help Elpida back away from the advancing Necromancer. Misane was crumpled on the floor, eyelids fluttering, drooling blood; the voice of Telokopolis had been silenced.
Perpetua’s fingertips scraped across the jacket tied around Howl’s gut wound. A bladed caress parted the fabric, loosening the field dressing. The Necromancer’s face was stone-like with cold. She wasn’t even enjoying the cruelty; it meant nothing to her. She reached forward with her other hand, to tear the jacket away.
But then she paused. She straightened up and looked over her shoulder.
“Ahhhhh,” Perpetua hummed. “The final flicker of a dying candle. Are you attempting to relight a dead star? You forget that you are nothing. Do you expect me to watch nothing?”
Eight figures in bone-white hardshell suits were rounding the corner of the nearest ancient war machine, pouring into the remains of the Covenanters’ makeshift camp. They were sprinting into position, weapons pre-deployed, missile racks armed and seeking targets, gauntlets hefting portable shield generator-bulbs — but they were caught in the same sluggish trap as everyone else, moving in slow motion.
Their commander had a two-handed monoedge sword strapped to the back of her suit. Her grizzled face was exposed, encrusted with bionic repair, cupped by the damaged remains of her hardshell’s bisected helmet.
Arin’s Legion kill team.
The Legionaries struggled against the invisible bond of time as if they knew what was happening to them. Radio clicks and slurred orders drifted across the camp, slowed to a fraction of their urgency. Arin started to draw her monoedge blade, hand reaching toward the grip. The Legionaries’ weapons came up, aiming toward the Silico, drawing beads inch by aching inch.
Perpetua turned away from them. She reached for Howl’s gut with her hand full of blades. “They will also be forgotten,” she said. “Grains of sand in—”
Misane jerked to her feet.
She moved as if a claw inside her chest had dragged her upright, ignorant of her broken bones and the concussion in her glassy eyes. She stood like a puppet held by strings and supported on rods, heaving for breath through the pain of snapped ribs and a fractured jaw. Watery blood dribbled down her chin, tears drawing lines on her cheeks, eyes scrunched with an innocent’s pain.
One little hand shot out and grabbed Perpetua’s wrist, arresting her inches from Howl’s belly. Perpetua’s wrist bones snapped with a soft dry crack-crack.
“Let go,” said the Necromancer. She tried to pull free, but Misane’s grip was like iron. “Let—”
“Ghosts cannot die,” said the thing that spoke through Misane’s mouth. “You do not understand this, because you have never been alive.”
Perpetua reeled back, staggering away from Howl and Elpida, trying to wrench her wrist free. She clutched at Misane’s bronze hair with her other hand and yanked the girl’s head back and forth, tearing and pulling at her scalp. “You trap yourself, little ghost,” she said. “I am still in control here. You are a memory, and I am fresh from the womb of my master’s mind—”
“This is not my daughter’s network space anymore,” said the voice of Telokopolis. “It is mine.”
Misane’s other hand rose into mid-air and gripped a corner of nothing. Then she whipped her arm out wide, as if ripping back an invisible curtain.
The chamber blossomed into light and space.
Blinding sunshine poured into Elpida’s eyes. An unmistakable cocktail scent — bare rock and weathered concrete and painted steel and fresh gunpowder and old blood — rushed into her nose, spiced with spilled chemical fuel and the lingering memory of burned vegetation. The world above opened upward and outward into infinite cloudless blue, pierced by a single shining needle, gleaming in silver and white, which narrowed to a tapering point as it reached for the heavens.
Elpida knew exactly where she was. Within sight of home.
Time unclogged itself; Perpetua’s network permissions meant nothing here. Elpida staggered backward, almost falling with the sudden resumption of normal motion — but she was still tangled with Howl. They caught each other, though the effort made Howl spit and hiss with pain. Perpetua finally overpowered Misane, yanking her arm from the girl’s grip and shoving her away; but Perpetua tottered back, unsteadied for a moment by this translocation within the network, or perhaps stunned by the stripping of her permissions. Misane slumped to her knees, sobbing and shaking, clutching at her broken ribs and weeping at her fractured jaw.
Lykke and the Silico both slammed to a halt — Lykke resuming her human form, the Silico skidding on all six feet. Elpida couldn’t tell if they were simply shocked or somehow rebooted by the change in network specifics and location. The seven remaining Covenanters stopped firing, their jaws hanging open, eyes wide with shock and awe. Even Arin’s kill team faltered, their professional experience stuttering in the face of reality visibly falling apart.
Elpida did not blame them; she felt much the same. Even though she knew this was a simulation, a lifetime of her own cultural context was hard to disregard. Any Telokopolan would be shocked and dismayed to find themselves suddenly out here.
This was the plateau — the vast platform of ageless rock upon which Telokopolis stood, the only piece of land on Old Earth not sunk beneath the green.
In Elpida’s life — and in all the times she knew of before then, reaching back to the founding of the city — the plateau was an ultra-dense warren of fortifications, ring after ring after ring of steel and concrete winding outward, like the layers of a shell accreted by the loving protection of the city herself. The plateau’s surface was ridged and rimed with line after line of bunker-systems and covered trench-works, studded and striated with millions of automatic guns larger than anything a combat frame could carry, clogged to bursting with forcefields that could halt a hurricane, reinforced with walls strong enough to hold back the ancient oceans, all knitted together into a patchwork of funnels and killing fields and narrow passages, where Silico could be cut down in their numberless billions. Mile after mile of automatic weapons watched the edge of the green, their tiny machine brains linked together in a web of silent chatter, watched over by the hundreds of thousands of Legion sentries who manned the city’s outermost defences. Beneath the hardness of the eternal rock, sheets of Telokopolan living metal were sunk miles down, to frustrate Silico efforts to dig toward the buried fields beneath the city, and to protect the subterranean tunnels that linked the surface defences, some so wide that whole Legion detachments could move through them alongside their armoured vehicles. In the air above the plateau, stationary Legion airship platforms kept watch on the deeper reaches of the green, feeding data to the city down the great tether-cables that kept them aloft.
The outer line of those fortifications — scarred and patched and blackened and melted, as they always were by the constant churn of Silico skirmishing — lay over a hundred meters away to Elpida’s left. The network trickery of Telokopolis had deposited them in the outermost killing field, at the very edge of the plateau, on the ring of naked grey rock where Legionaries burned back the green with flame-throwers every dawn.
Beyond those fortifications rose the spire of Telokopolis herself, a perfect gleaming needle against the blue, so tall she seemed impossible.
In life Elpida had known for certain that this was the greatest fortification in human history, no matter what strange foes or dark times humankind had faced in the past. How could it possibly be otherwise? But now she had seen how small Telokopolis may indeed have been, even compared with the continent-spanning expansion of her own city-daughters in the aeon after Elpida. Who could say what unthinkable fortresses had been raised in all the millions of years before Telokopolis — or elsewhere, out among the stars that Elpida could scarcely imagine?
But none of that mattered now. Telokopolis stood invincible and eternal.
Elpida was home.
She could not afford that emotion, not now, not yet, and not only because this was just a simulation. In life this had been one of the most dangerous places in her world, save deep in the green itself. Telokopolis had not chosen this spot by accident.
The green should have lay only a couple of hundred meters away, to her right. But it wasn’t there.
Beyond the slowly descending lip of the plateau, where the green should have writhed and roiled in all its verdant and glorious horror, there was only static.
A sea of static surged and swelled, crashing and rolling, rising and foaming, as if trying to mount the lip of rock. In the single glance Elpida spared, she saw vast inhuman faces form and melt within the polychromatic haze, screaming and gnashing and biting at the rocky shore, followed by a myriad of limbs and organs and eyes and more; the chaos seemed to extend outward forever, flashing and stuttering through a kaleidoscope of colours which she could not name. She saw a horizon across which leviathans strode, awarenesses that would dwarf Telokopolis a thousand times over — and she saw their glacial attention turn toward this speck of dry land.
Perpetua recovered first. She turned toward the fortifications — toward the distant spire of Telokopolis.
“The network?” she said. “You hope to eject me. This makes no difference. I am fresh and young, and you are all ghosts. This will end the same way, except you are now exposed. I will feed you to the hungry mouths of the sea, and your memory will be their effluence upon the tides.”
A crackle of comms-chatter split the air — one of Arin’s Legionaries, his voice coming from the comms uplink in Arin’s exposed helmet.
“Command, advise, retrace.”
Arin’s eyes jumped between the Silico and Perpetua and the roiling static beyond the plateau. Her gauntlet was paused halfway to her monoedge sword.
Another snap on comms. “Command, advise, retrace.” A split-second pause. “Arin. Weapons free, confirm.”
“Denied! Weapons hold!” Arin shouted. “Weapons hold—”
Perpetua turned back toward Elpida and Howl, raising her fist of blades.
Elpida stumbled away, dragging Howl with her. She shouted: “Commander! Arin! Ignore the Silico! That’s an order! Ignore the Silico, shoot this one!”
Arin hesitated. Her gaze flickered back to the Silico — the foe who had filled her entire life.
Howl surged upright in Elpida’s one-armed embrace, swallowing a scream of pain, spitting a glob of bloody phlegm. One hand wriggled inside Elpida’s ballistic vest, scrabbling for a grip, then yanked out the machine pistol.
Howl shot Perpetua through the face. A volley of reaction-mass shavings blew Perpetua’s skull apart like a burst fruit — a fruit that then turned to rubber, the blood and meat and bone sucking itself back together, reforming with a wet and meaty slurp. Perpetua stepped forward as if through raindrops.
Howl roared, “Why am I the only one fucking shooting?!”
Arin ripped her sword from her back. “Null target exogen,” she said; Elpida heard a strange quiver in her voice. “Target unknown. Weapons free, weapons free. Shoot the—” She gestured with her sword. “Shoot that silver bitch!”
The kill team snapped back into action, slamming portable shields to life at their feet, dropping into firing positions, weapons whirring and lighting up, going hot.
This time they weren’t constrained by the innards of Telokopolis.
The Legionaries didn’t bother with an opening salvo of micro-missiles or suppressing fire from their macro cannons. They had already unslung their true heavy weapons, the ones for fighting Silico machines out on the plateau or in the depths of the green. A high-pitched magnetic thump rocked Elpida’s guts — a split second later a supersonic coilgun sabot-round blew through Perpetua’s chest and dragged her spine out through her back, followed by another and another and another, punching through her guts, her hips, one of her legs, the side of her skull. A human being would have been obliterated by that strike, but the Necromancer simply paused and turned toward the kill team. Her splayed innards started to coil back inside her, spine sucking back into place, blood flowing upward through the air and returning to her body. Her long dress was in tatters, her hair a sheet of blood.
“The breath of ghosts,” she said. “What is this but forgotten words? Must I remove you from this farce before I can complete—”
Thoom-thoom-thoom-thrrrrrrrrummmmm—
Perpetua’s words were smothered by a pair of kinetic acceleration autocannons roaring to life; a cyclone of high-velocity rounds tore her body to pieces, shredding her flesh and organs and bones like wax before a blowtorch. The Necromancer’s human disguise sprayed backward in a streak of bright gore across the grey rock.
Perpetua abandoned her disguise, surging back upright as a whirlwind of flesh and bone, a hundred tendrils reaching for the Legion kill team.
They blanketed her with the purple beams of plasma cannons, the directional explosions of miniaturised shaped-charge drones, and the sudden blinding light from a portable microwave beam emitter. A volley of micro-missiles incinerated a cluster of acid-spewing tendrils; the backwash of plasma fire melted the steel teeth of a snapping maw. A squirming mass of flesh slipped through the cordon of firepower, slithering upright to crash against one of the kill team’s portable shields — only to be cut down by Arin’s two-handed monoedge sword, the detached scrap of Perpetua deflating and dying beneath Arin’s hardshell boots.
The Legionaries forced Perpetua back, herding her toward the edge of the plateau and the static sea beyond. They chased her with leaps and bounds, igniting their suspensor packs to carry them forward in low arcs, keeping the Necromancer pinned with overwhelming firepower.
Perpetua attempted to escape by sliding sideways, slipping out from beneath the unrelenting barrage by retreating toward the edge of the plateau and then rapidly looping back. For a single moment she was free from the kill team’s guns, arcing toward their flank before they could re-orient the heavy weapons.
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But then the Silico was in her way, suddenly guarding the team’s side. Whirling combat-limbs caught Perpetua’s wriggling mass and hurled her back. The Silico darted forward like a hunting dog, cutting off the Necromancer’s escape.
Several of the Legionaries almost stopped firing in shock, but they quickly recovered.
Elpida felt an urge to cheer, and knew she would roar herself hoarse if she did. She had saved Legionaries so many times, sweeping aside formations of Silico too dense or too numerous for them to face, striding past them in a combat frame. Now they returned that help a thousandfold, to make up for what they had not been able to do in life.
Lykke sprinted right past Elpida — still nude and bruised and covered in blood, whooping and giggling, her golden blonde hair glittering in remembered sunlight.
She skidded to a halt and turned back, then threw her naked arms around Elpida’s neck and peppered Elpida’s face with kisses.
“Oh, Zombie!” she cried over the din of firepower, drawing back with a pained twist on her face.
Howl slurred, “Heyyyyy punching bag.”
Lykke’s eyes flicked down to Howl, sour with distaste. Howl made an obscene gesture with the machine pistol. Lykke ignored that and met Elpida’s eyes again.
“I can’t stay! I simply can’t stay!” Lykke said. “They’ll never be able to force that filthy, conniving, horrible little whore out of you all by themselves! I have to push her head underwater and keep her there until you’re closed up! I-I can’t stay! I— you—”
Lykke shrugged, biting her bottom lip, eyes crinkling wet. She let go of Elpida and turned to leave.
“Lykke!” Elpida said.
Lykke looked back over her shoulder.
“Thank you,” Elpida said. “You’re a good girl.”
Lykke’s eyes widened with awestruck delight.
“Telokopolis is forever!” Howl roared in Elpida’s grip. “Telokopolis is for you too, you squealing little cunt!”
Lykke started to laugh, crying manic tears. Then she turned and sprinted away and stopped pretending to be human. She crashed into Perpetua’s other flank as a tidal wave of flesh and bone and a hundred shrieking maws.
Arin strode up beside Elpida, still in the rear of her team, as if she’d been waiting for the Necromancer to pass on. The Legionarie’s hardshell suit was battered and burned, as if she’d been in a war worth of engagements since Elpida had last seen her. The crack in her right thigh armour was crusted with blood, still unfixed from the first encounter with the Silico. Her heavily patched face, covered with scars and extensive bionic repairs, turned her distinctive sneering tilt to Elpida.
“Commander.” Elpida waggled the stump of her right arm. Arin waved a salute. “Thank you for the assist. You came just in time.”
“We aim to please.” Arin’s sneer curled into a grim smile. “Twice now. You owe me, pilot girl.”
“I’ll find a way to repay the favour.”
“Fuck me,” Howl hissed. “It’s her. This is some serious ghost shit. Hey you, you great big slab of muscle.”
Arin glanced at Howl. “Your sister?”
“The same.”
Arin looked back at the advancing line of her Legionaries. She had only seconds to spare; her comms uplink was clicking and crackling with rapid-fire chatter.
“I won’t pretend to understand what this is,” Arin said, “but we need to force that thing over the edge of the plateau. Out into the … ”
The static sea rolled and crashed beyond the lip of stone, whipping itself into a frenzy, as if beneath the lash of a storm. The shapes inside seemed to be gaining coherence, biting at the sloping rock with gargantuan teeth, trying to haul themselves out of the deep. The horizon was full of giants stretching up beyond the sky, beyond sight, many of them turning now and moving toward the plateau, so far away their motions were like the undulation of mountain ranges.
“It’s not the green anymore, Commander,” Elpida said.
Arin nodded. “I know. We’re all dead. We’ve been dead all along. And we’ll still be dead tomorrow.”
“The dead have inherited the earth,” said a small voice filled with more than it could hold. Misane stepped up next to Elpida, holding herself like a puppet again. “But all the dead will be my children, natural or adopted or otherwise. You no less.”
Arin stared down at Misane, eyes wide with the kind of numb shock an old soldier rarely shows.
“The only way to force that thing out is to follow it down,” Arin said slowly, speaking to Misane — to the voice inside her. “Into the green. Like we used to. But out there … I don’t know … ”
Misane reached up and cupped Arin’s left cheek, small soft fingers tracing her scar tissue inside the padding of her hardshell suit. Arin’s eyes filled with tears.
“You will seem lost in infinity,” said the voice of Telokopolis. “But you will not be lost, because I will be with you. Go, and I will be there, wherever you are.”
Misane withdrew her hand. Arin saluted. “Yes ma’am.”
“Commander,” Elpida said. “Are you sure?”
Arin cracked another grim smile and clapped Elpida’s shoulder with one hardshell gauntlet. “A war that never ends, with the city at my back? Better that than oblivion. Get your sister home, pilot girl. Go on, use those legs. Get the fuck out of here.”
And then Arin was gone, striding after the rest of her team, snapping orders into the comms.
Misane looked up at Elpida; the girl’s face was a war between childlike terror and perfect serenity.
“You cannot linger to watch, and neither can I,” said Telokopolis, speaking through her. “You must return home.” She pointed at the spire, the clean needle against the sky.
Elpida nodded, tightening her grip beneath Howl’s shoulders. Howl gaped at Misane, mouth falling open. Elpida said, “What about Misane herself?”
“I will shelter her. Her wounds are mine to bear.”
Misane took a step toward the line of plateau fortifications, as if to lead the way. But then she staggered, legs buckling with broken bones and awful bruises. She stopped and wobbled. The girl inside sobbed once.
“I … I cannot walk.” She looked up and around, at the static sea gathering at the edge of the plateau. The waves seemed higher and higher with each passing second, the crashing chaos growing denser and clearer. “The network is becoming aware of me, and I must hide my face once again, or risk destruction. I … I need … daughter—”
Elpida said, “I can’t carry you and Howl both, but I’ll try. Come here, grab my arm—”
The remaining Covenanters came forward.
There were seven of them — the seven Covenanters who had not fled, who had developed enough comprehension of the situation to open fire on Perpetua with their small arms. Four men, three women, greensuit hoods discarded. All were wide-eyed with shock. Elpida doubted any of them had seen the edge of the plateau in life. Now they all stared at Misane.
Misane said: “I cannot absolve you.”
One of the Covenanters — a young man with a shaved head, a wiry build, and the tattoo of an artisan guild on the side of his neck — muttered, “I renounce the solemn vow and covenant.” Then, much louder, snapping orders to the others, “Carry her! Two, three of you, carry her! Carry her!”
Three of the Covenanters laid down their guns and hurried to lift Misane. The girl gasped and wept at the pain, but the Covenanters were as gentle as they could be, slinging her body between the three of them.
The Covenanter who had spoken turned to Elpida and Howl. “And you, we can carry you—”
Howl stuck the machine pistol in his face. “Hands to yourself or I’ll fuckin’ eat them.”
He put his hands up. The others shied back.
Misane said, “You are not absolved.”
“Yeah,” Howl spat. “What she said. We’ll walk.”
The voice of Telokopolis said, “There is no time. I must conceal myself. Move now, or we will all be lost.”
The Covenanters scrambled toward the outer line of fortifications, carrying Misane and the voice of Telokopolis within her. Elpida hurried after them, Howl limping at her side, Elpida’s left arm hooked beneath her shoulders. As the Covenanters slipped inside the defences, Elpida glanced back over her shoulder. Arin’s Legionaries had pushed Perpetua over the edge of the rocky slope. Half of her protoplasmic Necromancer mass was slipping into the static ocean, the half-formed entities within clambering up her in an effort to come ashore. The Silico was on the left, about to plunge in; Lykke was on the opposite side, one foot in the shallows, her body turning to static. She took a large piece of Perpetua in both hands and rammed it below the surface, howling a victory cry.
“Good hunting in the green,” Elpida whispered. “Hurry home soon, sisters.”
Howl whined with pain.
Elpida turned away and followed the Covenanters.
In life, crossing the radius of the plateau on foot would have taken hours - mile after mile of landscape twisted and knotted into an ultra-dense weave of bunkers and tunnels, concrete walls and metal bulwarks, automatic gun emplacements and thousands upon thousands of killing fields. The fortifications were designed to choke the life from even the largest of Silico forces, to block intruders with meters of steel and hurricanes of lead, wearing them down layer after layer, to require the maximum expenditure of power for every foot of ground. At any one time, various parts of the fortifications were always under repair; the Silico were constantly testing, skirmishing, inflicting minor damage here and there. This part of the plateau seemed in good repair — impossible to penetrate without heavy firepower, and slow to pass through without the positions manned to admit people into the inner workings of the vast fortress. If they had been within a bunker they could have slipped underground and raced for the city that way, but even the subterranean tunnels were extensively fortified. Elpida was stuck in the outdoor areas; those would take hours to traverse even in a straight line, let alone trapped in the maze meant to funnel Silico into the guns.
But the defences folded back to admit the children of the city. Gates irised open for Misane; forcefields powered down as the Covenanters approached; whole lines of automatic cannons dipped their muzzles in salute as Elpida and Howl passed by.
The spire of Telokopolis rose ahead, pointing the way home.
Within minutes the sky was no longer blue; the raging static inferno beyond the plateau started to creep upward, a tide rising against the exterior of a dome, swallowing the sky in great hungry mouthfuls. Vast maws and gargantuan presences passed close within the haze, leviathans which would crush the city if they could only get inside. Elpida struggled not to look as the sky dimmed; whenever she glanced upward, she felt like her vision was being drawn into the void of space, like she would see planets and stars hanging behind that static chaos, if only she looked closely enough.
“It’s the network,” Howl hissed in her one-armed embrace. “Ignore it. Full of shit.”
“The network beyond my body?”
“Mm!” Howl grunted. “Been there, done that, fuck it. Don’t think about it.”
“Right.”
But the presences above were growing more solid by the moment, pressing their maws toward the city’s spire. Elpida’s heart wrenched in her chest to see Telokopolis threatened, even if this was just a simulation. Several of the Covenanters staggered or cried out in awe; to a regular citizen of Telokopolis, such things were unthinkable.
“Keep going, you fucknuts!” Howl screamed, waving the machine pistol. “Or I’ll tear you a set of new arse holes!”
“It’s a simulation!” Elpida shouted. “Keep that in mind, all of you, it’s not real!”
Misane said, “Ignore the oceans. Come home, come home, c-come … home … ”
The Covenanters redoubled their efforts, breaking into a trot, then a headlong dash. Great steel barriers slid open in front of them, alarms blaring, automatic guns waking up to point at the sky — a direction they had never been designed for in life. Some of the batteries began to fire, thumping out shells and discharging energy bolts into the static of the false firmament.
Howl hissed with pain as Elpida picked up speed; Elpida was forced to haul her entirely off the ground, carrying Howl every few awkward paces with the strength of one arm alone, Howl’s bare feet dragging across the concrete. Howl clutched her belly with her other arm, blood running down her legs from the incision in her gut, keening between her teeth. She left a trail of dark blood on the metal and rock.
“Almost there,” Elpida panted. “Almost home.”
“Fffffuck!” Howl growled. “Fucking— ahhhh!”
“Why was she trying to steal your womb, Howl?” Elpida shouted over the thump and roar of the defences, trying to distract Howl from the pain. “Ours never worked, anyway. That’s what Nunnus always said.”
“Metaphor for something else,” Howl hissed through clenched teeth. “Network permissions I’ve grown. Later. Just get inside!”
The final layer of fortifications fell away, dwarfed by the divine body they protected.
The Skirts of Telokopolis were so wide, they stretched away further than Elpida could see, white layers dirtied at the hem where they touched the naked rock. The armoured layers of monochalkum — the outer bones of Telokopolis, an imperishable material beyond the engineers and bone-speakers of Elpida’s day — glimmered in the last scraps of choked sunlight, flashing with slow waves of silver and white, transforming the last illumination into petticoats of brilliance. The Skirts rose toward the curves of the city’s waist, but she was too tall to truly appreciate from this angle, climbing toward heaven.
Elpida almost sobbed.
A main gate was open in the outer rim of the Skirts — the kind of gate usually opened only for the full force of the Legion to pass through, as if an army had returned from the plateau. The Covenanters were sprinting now, carrying Misane’s limp body aloft; their tiny forms were like ants compared with the yawning gateway and the silver-white innards of the city.
Elpida hurried after them, hauling Howl the final few steps over the threshold. Howl screamed, a gush of blood slopping from her abdomen.
Telokopolis welcomed her children home.
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Elpida woke with a gasp.
For a moment she didn’t recognise where she was — the cramped machinery wrapped in thick shadows, punctuated by the soft glow of screens and the flicker of blinking lights, underlaid by the humming and clicking and clunking hidden behind metal bulkheads.
Pheiri’s control cockpit.
Elpida was awake and dead, back in her body.
She found that she was sitting in one of the side-chairs, away from any of the active consoles and controls, wearing her tomb-grown grey clothes. Her right arm was missing from the elbow down, just as it had been in the network projection. The memory of the explosion and the pain flashed back for a moment, then faded. The stump was neatly bandaged and dressed, with only a little blood seeping through. Time to change the dressings.
The cockpit was crowded. Everybody was looking at her. Kagami was up front, wired into Pheiri to help control her drones. Victoria was leaning over Kagami’s chair, as if she’d been in the middle of an argument, eyes strained and dark with stress. The new girl — Sky? Yes, Sky — was sitting further back, next to Atyle, who was frowning at Elpida with a strange look on her face. Melyn, the Artificial Human, was crammed into a corner, watching with subtle anger in her wide dark eyes. Amina was there too, red-eyed from crying but dry now, wringing her hands around the handle of her sheathed knife.
“Commander?” Vicky said. “Commander, is that you?”
“Finished your little nap, have you?” Kagami snapped, looking back at the lit screens in front of her. “Nice of you to fucking join us.”
“This is her?” Sky said. “Not the other one in her head? This is your commanding officer? For real this time?”
Howl? Elpida said into the silence of her own mind. Howl? Answer me. Howl—
Howl growled like she’d just fallen out of bed. Yeah, I’m right fuckin’ here, Elps. Feeling like toasted shit.
Elpida sighed with relief. Are we clear? Are we clean? Can you tell—
Howl tutted. We’re clear. Lykke’s gone. She took the other bitch with her, or drowned her. Whatever, I don’t give a fuck. It’s you and me, bitch-tits. Just us in here now.
Are you wounded?
Kinda, Howl grunted. I’ll mend. Nothing’s missing, if that’s what you’re asking.
I almost lost you, again.
Yeah, well. Howl snorted. Stop letting strange cunts into your head.
That’s rich, coming from you.
Howl cackled with laughter. Elpida smiled.
Then she said, Did our … our mother, did she get away?
Howl went quiet. Assume so. She’s gone. Back into the network, hidden I guess. She’s been doing this for a long time. She knows what she’s doing.
Elpida knew Howl was just as clueless as her, but she said nothing, because the alternative was unthinkable.
Howl, we’re not alone. She’s out there. She’s real.
Howl snorted. We were never alone. How many times I gotta say it, huh? As long as one of us is up and breathing—
“Telokopolis is forever,” Elpida finished.
“Commander?” Victoria repeated; she stepped away from Kagami’s chair, moving closer to Elpida. “Elpida? Is that you?”
“Yes,” Elpida said, knuckling her eyes. “Yes, Vicky. It’s me. I apologise, I’ve been shirking my duties, gone too long. I had some … I’ll explain in a minute. What’s going on here?”
Kagami snapped, “We fucked up, that’s what's going on.”
Oh yeah, Howl muttered. Didn’t tell you that yet.
Victoria winced. Sky made a grim expression and folded her arms. Amina looked like she wanted to sob.
“Explain,” said Elpida. “Brief me, quick.”
Victoria said, “We tried to hunt down the Death’s Heads and we failed. Ooni and Ilyusha are cut off somewhere inside the tomb. We had comms contact for a moment, but they’re gone again. Kagami couldn’t trace them properly, so we still don’t know exactly where they are. We’re trying to get to them, but the place is a maze and they’re cut off. Shilu and Pira are out there with the drones right now, but they’re not having much luck either. The layout keeps … changing.”
“It does not!” Kagami snapped over her shoulder.
Victoria just shrugged.
“Understood. The girl from the bombing,” Elpida said. “Sanzhima. Did she make it?”
Melyn spoke up. “Stable and mending, out cold in the infirmary, where you should be. Should be. Used a lot of bandages and gauze. Gauze. Too much. Too much.”
“Thank you,” Elpida said. “Well done, Melyn.”
Melyn just looked away.
Elpida could still hear the hurricane beyond Pheiri, beyond the tomb, out there beyond the walls.
“Right. I’ll take over.” Elpida stood up. Victoria reached out to help her to her feet; Elpida didn’t need the assistance, but she accepted it anyway, then clapped Victoria on the shoulder. “Whatever happened here, you did your best. Failures happen. Don’t blame yourself.”
Victoria just shook her head. “Commander … Elpi, are you okay? Howl told us you were … well, not doing so hot.”
Elpida smiled. “I wasn’t. I’m better now.”
Victoria almost laughed. “All you needed was a nap?”
“I met my mother, and broke a Necromancer, maybe two. I’ll explain later.” Elpida turned away. “Kaga, is the storm weakening?”
Kagami twisted around and frowned. “How did you know that? Were you just pretending to sleep—”
“Kagami, details, now.”
Kagami sighed. “Average wind speed dropped by about twenty miles an hour over the last fifteen minutes. So yes, it’s weakening, but slowly. Fuck knows why!”
Elpida stepped forward, leaning over Kagami’s seat, looking down at the screens which showed the views from her remote drones. “And if it continues to weaken at this current rate? Estimated time to end?”
“Nine or ten hours, give or take?” Kagami shrugged. “It might pick up again though, it’s not natural. We already discussed this. Why are you asking this shit now?”
“Elpida,” Victoria said. “Commander. Why does that matter?”
“Because when the storm ends, we’re going to have a Necromancer problem. We need to retrieve our people and get ready.” Elpida reached down and took Kagami’s shoulder. “Kaga, show me where you think they might be.”