Necroepilogos

Try as she might, Victoria could not sleep.

Consciousness clung to her mind with subtle claws, digging deep whenever her eyelids creaked shut, jolting her awake in little snorts and starts. She was greeted again and again by the peeling cream-white paint of the bunk room wall, or by the jumble of thin blue sheets and tiered beds on the other side of the narrow room, or by the sound of soft breathing from within warm shadows.

The first time that happened, Vicky had no idea where she was.

For several racing heartbeats she thought she was back in a tent or a pre-fab, deep in the heart of an artillery park, somewhere in the staging grounds south of the Chicago Arcology. If she rolled to one side and hopped to her feet, she would see her comrades, the regiment’s other engineers and gunners, spread out in cheap steel bunks, or wrapped up in sleeping bags on the floor, or just dozing on their packs whenever they’d dropped. No matter the arrangements, Cirilo and Petir would both be snoring their heads off; Andrew might be drunk, unless Elmer and Christman had gone with him on one of his night-time wanderings. Gale and Sonia would be tucked up in their own corner, probably still awake, probably playing some card game Vicky had never heard of. She could always join them, no matter how awkward she felt. They appreciated her company. All the younger soldiers did. She’d been around longer than most, and spoke more sense than some.

The Colonel would still be awake, of course, poring over maps or fire plans sent down from divisional headquarters — there was simply so much to do these last few days. Vic should get up and help, she’d had enough sleep; this would be a good time to check the regimental fuel reserves and make sure the shells were stowed properly. She didn’t want another cook-off incident like those poor bastards over in the 14th. Everyone was getting sloppy during this lull in the fighting, ever since the Arcology’s Euro-trash mercenaries had turned tail and fled. Nothing stood between the GLR lines and the Arcology’s automated defences now — but those defences were nasty. Old Empire robotics, mostly. Some of those things would shrug off hi-ex shells like water balloons.

The child-eating monsters up in the Arcology were quiet for now. Their Old Empire jets were wary of the foreign AA missile systems guarding the GLR staging grounds. But after more than twenty years of war, they could smell their end coming. They could hear it in the camp songs on the wind, see it with their long-range telescopes from the tip of their glittering spire, taste it in the brackish water reserves; the GLR had blown the main supply pipeline sucking Lake Michigan dry, two weeks back. The Arcology would get desperate soon; everyone was lucky they didn’t have any nukes left, not after the big raid three years ago. Soon they would throw their aircraft into the teeth of the guns, just for one last roll of the dice. And Vic did not want any stray rounds landing on an unsecured pallet of 155mm.

For a split-second Vicky was back inside the military machine of the Great Lakes Republic, held like a sharpened sword to the throat of her lifelong foe, poised on the eve of a battle she had worked toward for her whole life. The second battle of Chicago. The revolution had come full circle, come back to where it had started, come back to finish the job.

Then Vicky’s heartbeat made the rear of her skull throb with pain, and she remembered where she was.

Two hundred and fifty million years in the future, curled up inside the belly of an armoured vehicle the size of a barn, surrounded by nanomachine zombies.

The Chicago Arcology was long dead. So was the GLR, or whatever it had become.

And so was Vicky.

“Yuuup,” she grumbled to herself, the first time that happened. “You’re dead too, dumbass. Mmhmm.”

At least her bunk was comfortable enough — scratchy sheets and a lumpy old pillow were luxurious by her standards, infinitely preferable to the hard insides of the combat frame’s control room, or the freezing mud of a shallow foxhole — but she could not toss and turn.

The back of her skull was still a spider-web of half-healed fractures. Even the fanciest feather pillow or the most expensive memory foam could not have cradled her cracked cranium softly enough to avert the nausea, the disorientation, and the headache spikes, whenever she put pressure on the rear of her head.

Melyn had examined Vicky’s skull earlier, but the sweet little med-bot hadn’t been able to do much except wash off most of the dried blood. Vicky’s only choice was to let the raw blue nanomachines work their magic, fuelling her undead biology, sealing skin and knitting bone — and hopefully regrowing a few damaged neurons.

She knew she was lucky; in life a wound like this would have killed her, or left her with permanent brain damage. Recovery alone would have taken months or years. She would have needed surgeries to remove blood clots, then replace or reinforce the shattered bone with metal plates or pins. She’d be on anticonvulsants, barbiturates, and opiate painkillers, perhaps for the rest of her life. She might lose some memories, or her entire personality. She might never taste or see or hear again. She might have been a bed-bound vegetable. She’d seen other soldiers end up that way, people she’d been close to, people she’d fought beside. Waadey had been too close to the blast-wave of an air strike outside Charleston — he’d lived while a dozen others had died, but his brains had been shaken inside his skull; he’d been discharged on full pension, a drooling mess of quivering and shaking, shitting into his pants every couple of hours. Walter Keogh had been one of Vicky’s older comrades, from back in the early days just after the first battle of Chicago; he’d somehow survived a dart of shrapnel directly through his right eye, with the tip lodged in the front of his brain. He’d never been the same again, mean and cynical when he wasn’t distant and dazed.

But lucky Victoria was a zombie now. All she had to do was wait and rest. Resurrection would handle the mess.

Undead biology retained other indignities, among the silver linings — like insomnia.

Vicky had tried everything. She’d lain on her right side, facing into the darkness of the bunk room, watching the shadows between the tiers. Then she’d tried her left, staring at the old paint and cold metal of the wall. She’d snuggled down beneath the sheets, spread out on her front, head pointing one way, then the other. She’d tried curling up into a ball, chin tucked tight to her knees, but that just made her cough, which in turn made her skull ache.

She ended up splayed out wide, one arm dangling off the side of the bunk, trying not to think.

She hadn’t expected insomnia.

She’d assumed she would fall into easy unconsciousness the moment she lay down, lulled to sleep by the deep rumble of Pheiri’s engines down below the decks, soothed by the knowledge that she was finally tucked away somewhere safe. She felt like she could sleep on the bare floor, or on her feet, or under fire. She was exhausted in both body and mind — by post-combat adrenaline crash, yes, but also by the sheer amount of mind-boggling information she’d tried to absorb. She didn’t even know how to process half of what she’d seen — the golden diamond airship thing, the biological miracle of Arcadia’s Rampart, and even the lesser surprises like Iriko and Serin, or whatever was going on with Elpida’s head, or the Necromancers.

Perhaps that was the paradox. Too many things to think about, too many things she could not process, too exhausted to sleep.

After what felt like hours of fruitless inaction, Vicky gave up and got out of bed.

She was careful not to make any noise as she swung her legs over the side of the bunk and lowered herself to the floor. She didn’t want to wake the others; everyone needed rest for their own wounds and stress, they didn’t need to hear about her problems. When she stood up, waves of slow pain throbbed through the back of her skull. She had to squeeze her eyes shut and take deep breaths. She gripped the bunk for support.

The pain passed, leaving behind an echo of fractured bone.

Vicky glanced around the cramped confines of the bunk room and suddenly felt very silly. She asked herself what she was doing — how would she have dealt with this kind of insomnia in life?

The answer was not useful. She would have gotten up and tended to her duties. She would have spent the lonely hours of the night stripping down and oiling up an engine, or checking on the maintenance schedules on the tubes, or even just walking a perimeter to look for holes in a fence. She’d probably go pester the Colonel. Make some coffee. Grumble.

But here? Could she go bother Elpida? Probably; Elpi wouldn’t mind, though what could they grumble about together? They had almost nothing in common, despite both being soldiers.

Could she make herself useful? That was another matter entirely. Probably not, Vicky guessed.

On her feet and fully dressed; Vicky was still wearing her tomb-grey clothes, t-shirt and trousers and thick socks, swapped out for fresh ones after the journey through the muddy crater. But with nowhere to go.

Inside this armoured vehicle which was so far beyond Vicky’s technical skills, she had nothing to do.

“Not yet,” she whispered to herself. She reached out and tapped the side of the bunk — tapped Pheiri. “Wanna get to know you, thinking machine. You got user serviceable parts? Mm. Must do.”

Her new comrades were all asleep, deep in the grey haze of the bunk room. Kagami was curled up tight on her side, on the bunk below Vicky’s, almost completely concealed by the privacy curtains. Vicky smiled and shook her head. Who cared about privacy in this place? In these bodies? They’d started this afterlife naked and covered in slime.

Or should she care more? Should she feel skittish and furtive? Was that the right thing to do?

Maybe Kagami was more authentic than her.

Vicky was suddenly thankful for being fully dressed. She wished she had a mirror. She’d spent a while examining herself in the reflective surface of one of those space blankets from the tomb, but that wasn’t the same. She needed to stare into her own eyes again — her eyes, set in a face twenty years younger than the one in which she had died, with the sharp edges rounded off, the wrinkles smoothed out, the forehead uncreased.

She took a deep breath and gently chastised herself; it was very hard to maintain that this was not the time for personal matters. They were all safe inside Pheiri now, right?

Atyle was also sleeping soundly, flat on her back, hands crossed over her chest like an Egyptian Mummy from a silly cartoon. Vicky wondered if Atyle was in her original body as well. The pre-modern woman was by far the most taciturn of the group; perhaps she had secrets too. Vicky peered into the top bunks, then realised somebody was missing. She went up on tiptoes to confirm. Ilyusha was sleeping alone, clutching a pillow to her front, black-and-red bionic claws sticking out of the blankets.

Vicky checked the other bunks to see if Amina had moved in the night, but there was no sign of the girl.

Worry suddenly gnawed at Vicky’s guts. Amina was by far the most vulnerable and inexperienced of her new comrades.

Several items were missing from the equipment on the lower bunks, among the weapons, body armour, extra coats, Kagami’s auspex visor, and the coilgun; Elpida’s submachine gun was gone, along with her coat and several other clothes.

And the bunk room hatch was shut, flush with the door frame.

Vicky hadn’t heard Amina climb out of bed, nor close the door. She certainly hadn’t noticed Elpida entering the room and arming up.

Must have slept after all, she told herself. Weird.

She held her breath and concentrated, but she couldn’t hear anything except the low rumble of Pheiri’s engines, the muffled grinding of his tracks against the ground outside, and the slow, stately, steady throb of his nuclear reactor, far beneath her feet.

Nothing out of the ordinary. No clattering bones or spooky whispers. Vicky doubted that a Necromancer had ghosted into the room, stolen Elpida’s gear, kidnapped Amina, and then shut the door. If that was the case, Vicky couldn’t do anything about it anyway. Amina was probably just talking with Elpida. Perhaps Elpi was teaching Amina how to use a gun. That would be good. The kid deserved some confidence, poor thing, despite her fancy knife work.

Vicky looked over the equipment and supplies again. Perhaps she could make herself useful, after all. She could take all the regular guns out into the crew compartment and do an inventory of ammunition and spare parts, strip and clean all the firearms, make sure everyone was provisioned and prepared. Maybe if she tired herself out with work, she could sleep. Maybe if—

A groggy mumble came from behind Kagami’s privacy curtains: “Go back to fucking bed, Victoria.”

Kagami sounded like her throat was full of sand.

Vicky almost laughed. She had to put a hand over her mouth. She knelt so she didn’t have to crouch, then gently parted the privacy curtains over Kagami’s bunk.

Kagami was curled on her side, facing the wall, making a bulwark with her upper back. The thin blue blankets were falling away from her raised shoulder. Vicky couldn’t see Kagami’s face, but she could imagine the curled lip, the grumpy sneer, the narrowed and scornful eyes.

Vicky whispered: “Hey Moon Princess. How did you know it was me?”

Kagami didn’t answer. Vicky assumed she’d gone back to sleep. Seconds ticked by. Vicky swallowed, suddenly self-conscious. She was invading Kagami’s personal space, no matter how silly the privacy curtains seemed in these cramped quarters. A faint scent entered Vicky’s nose, drifting out of the shadows — soft cool sweat and warm skin. Was that Kagami’s bodily odour? Vicky started to withdraw.

Kagami muttered: “Distinctive tread.”

Vicky froze. Her heart fell. She tried to pull a smile, but it hurt. “Heavy footfalls, right?” she whispered. “Great clomping—”

“Mmm, no,” Kagami grumbled. “Tread like you’re sneaking. Not actually. Don’t know how to sneak. Do you?”

Vicky smiled for real. She reached down and pulled the sheets up over Kagami’s shoulder.

Kagami flinched and rolled onto her back. Her soft brown face squinted up at Vicky from within the warm grey shadows, framed by a halo of black hair, floating as if detached from the body beneath the covers.

“Fuck—” Kagami snorted to clear her throat. “Fuck are you doing?”

“Sorry,” Vicky whispered. “I was tucking you in. You were slipping out of your bedsheets.”

Kagami blinked slowly, twice. “Go back to sleep. You still have a head wound. Lie the fuck down.”

Vicky smiled and nodded. “Good night, Kaga.”

She moved to withdraw again — but Kagami suddenly lashed out with a hand from beneath the covers and grabbed one of Vicky’s wrists. Kagami scowled, groggy and heavy-eyed.

“Kaga,” Vicky said gently. “You’ve got a wound on that arm, haven’t you? Look, you shouldn’t strain—”

“That’s a liar’s face. A lying face,” Kagami grumbled, smacking her lips, still half asleep.

“Kaga? What are you talking about?”

Kagami took a deep breath, trying to rouse herself. She hissed: “You’re not going back to sleep at all. You just smiled and nodded because that’s what you think I want to hear. I got very skilled at sniffing out that sort of bullshit. My father’s attendants, doing lip-service to me while fulfilling his orders. Oh yeah, I’m real good at that, Victoria. Don’t you treat me the same. Don’t you dare.”

Vicky almost sighed. “Kaga—”

“You’re no butt monkey for taking orders,” Kagami slurred. Her eyes wavered shut again. “Your own woman. Far as I can tell. All you. Mm.”

Kagami fell silent, voice trailing off. She drew in a lazy half-snore. Her eyelids fluttered, then ceased to move.

Vicky gently peeled Kagami’s hand from around her wrist, then tucked her back beneath the covers, careful not to press against the dressings around Kagami’s upper arm.

Vicky paused for a moment, then whispered, barely more than a breath: “Not even sure I’m that.”

Kagami’s eyes flicked open. “Not sure you’re what?”

Vicky sighed and rolled her eyes. “Why are you so hair-trigger? I know you weren’t faking, you haven’t got it in you, but—”

“Answer the question,” Kagami croaked.

Vicky stared into Kagami’s dark eyes. Suddenly her heart was pounding, sending pulses of pain through the back of her skull. She felt sick. Her face was hot. Her stomach churned, with hunger and worse.

Kagami was objectively awful, Vicky was under no illusions about that. Grumpy, fussy, arrogant, and demanding; secretive, bitter, vengeful, and bigoted — at least against those she saw as ‘primitive’, which seemed to include basically everybody who wasn’t grown in a vat on the Moon. Her background was horrifying to Vicky’s most dearly-held values — a linchpin of imperial domination, the central command point of a remote-controlled military, installed on the actual Moon like an untouchable godlike being in the skies, subjecting the surface to unanswerable violence committed by brain-wiped cyborg slaves. If Vicky had understood Kagami’s position correctly, her duties and powers had also included a vast nuclear arsenal, pointed down, like a boot on the neck of the whole world.

Vicky had made it a joke, back in the combat frame. But now it didn’t seem like anything to laugh about.

So why did she trust Kagami?

“My own woman,” Vicky echoed in a whisper.

Kagami squinted hard. She snorted, then muttered: “You don’t have to take Elpida’s every whim like gospel if you don’t want to. Haven’t you figured that out yet? She’s a pushover if you say the right words. If you disagree with her, you better bloody well speak up, Victoria. Stop serving in silence, stop scraping and bowing and—”

Vicky sighed. “Kaga, that’s not what I meant. And you’re wrong about Elpi.”

“Oh?” Kagami snorted again. “Am I really?”

“She leads from the front. She risks herself. She’s for real. And she’s not a pushover, not about the things which matter.”

Kagami rolled her eyes.

Vicky hissed: “And she came for us! She pulled us out. She didn’t leave us behind. She could have, very easily! And then she … I don’t know, fought a giant flying god machine for us? Kaga, what the hell is your problem with her? Don’t you feel grateful? At all?”

Kagami turned sullen and sulky. “Rescuing people is easy. I should know. I did it plenty of times—”

“Stop deflecting. She’s doing a good job. She’s kept us alive.”

Kagami sighed. “So she has. Fine, alright, whatever. And I’m following her, yes, because she’s keeping us alive and feeding us brains and recruiting fascists.”

Vicky winced. “I don’t think she had a lot of choice about that. And anyway, Ooni seems … damaged.”

Kagami glared. “Yes, fash generally are — in the fucking head.”

Vicky hardened her expression. “You can talk, Kaga. Didn’t you spend your entire life sat on the moon with a clutch of nukes pointed at the surface? What do you call that, huh?”

Kagami’s face went cold. “Really?”

Vicky’s stomach lurched. “I mean—”

“You’re equating me with race-war obsessed primitives? The kind of people who run death camps and do genetic testing on foetuses? Really?”

“I— Kaga, I just—”

“I expected a pre-NorAm revolutionary brat to know better,” Kagami hissed between clenched teeth. “I suppose I shouldn’t, seeing as your future countrymen spaced me rather than cut a deal! Didn’t want some moon-cunt in their famous little orgies!”

“Kaga, wait—”

“I am not a fascist, Victoria! I am many things, all of which I am well aware of, thank you very much. And you know what? You were right first time — I should have been elected, Queen of Luna! Should have joined in the little game and had my father poisoned when I was twelve. Do I really need to walk a committed revolutionary soldier through the basic differences in political economy between feudalism and fucking heads-on-spikes fasc—”

“Okay!” Vicky hissed, hands raised. “Okay, fine, okay. You’re gonna wake the others up, geeze. Fine.”

Kagami glared, mouth set, eyes fully awake now. “I expect an apology, if our friendship is to continue.”

“ … we’re friends?”

Kagami snorted and turned her head to face the wall.

“Are you sulking? Kaga?”

“Apologise or go fuck yourself.”

“Alright, alright,” Vicky hissed. “You’re not a fascist. I’m sorry I said that.”

Kagami muttered, “And why did you say it?”

“I was … jumping at rhetorical shadows,” Vicky whispered. “Though you’re definitely an imperialist—”

“None of us are anything, anymore,” Kagami grunted. “We’re all zombies now. Who cares what you or I were? Why does it matter? Why do you give a single solitary dried-out turd what I was in life? I’m right here, aren’t I?”

Vicky made a placating gesture with both hands again, though Kagami was still glaring at the wall. “Fair point, okay.”

“Huh,” Kagami grunted. “So you believe the little rat can be rehabilitated, by I can’t? Is that it? I stand by your fucking side and neutralise a Necromancer and that doesn’t count for anything, but some shit-painted skull-measuring primitive comes in with a sob story about ‘just following orders’ and you’re ready to have her gnosh down on your fucking lap?”

“No, I—” Vicky lost her temper. “For fuck’s sake, Kaga, that is not what I meant. Stop it.”

“Uh huh.”

Vicky took hold of her patience; Kagami was being impossible. “I don’t believe that Elpida made the wrong decision by letting Ooni live. I think people like her can be reformed and rehabilitated. Maybe not all of them, okay. But, Ooni? You only have to look at her. That’s why I changed my mind. I think Elpi is right. And I’m sorry I called you a fascist. Whatever my opinion would have been of you in life, we’re … we’re not alive now. We’re all dead. All zombies here.”

Kagami snorted softly.

Vicky said: “Can we be friends again, Moon Princess?”

“If you stop calling me that.”

“No way,” Vicky said with a laugh in her whisper. “Make up your mind. You’re my little Moon … ”

Vicky trailed off, suddenly uncomfortable. Without the emotional blur of brain damage, this felt rude and weird and wrong somehow. Was it right for her to treat Kagami like this, with pet names and gentle teasing — with flirting? Or was it intrusive and unwanted? Was she a freak, acting like this?

Kagami finally twisted her head back around to look up at Vicky. She frowned with irritation. “What? What is it now?”

“N-nothing,” Vicky said. “Just that I agree with Elpi’s judgement, and I wish you would too.”

Kagami sighed, sharp and hard. “And here we are, talking about her again. Our Commander is unavoidable, hm?”

Vicky rolled her eyes. “You’re the one who brought her up, talking about how I’m a good little yappy dog for her or whatever.”

“Tch!” Kagami pushed her sheets down with her right hand, revealing her slender chest wrapped in a tomb-grey t-shirt, then levering herself up on her elbows. Her head almost brushed against the underside of the next bunk. “I’m trying to give you confidence, Victoria. You are your own woman, you don’t need to follow every last—”

“Kaga, that’s not what I—”

“—order and copy every last piece of her inner motivation just to be—”

“Kaga!” Vicky grabbed Kagami’s face, squeezing her cheeks. Kagami flinched and went silent, eyes wide. “Dammit, I’m trying to tell you something. Something I … I couldn’t tell Elpi.”

Vicky let go of Kagami’s face. She braced for a slap or a screech; she shouldn’t have handled Kagami like that.

But Kagami stopped scowling. She went still and focused. She whispered, barely moving her lips, “And what would that be?”

Vicky took a deep breath. Her heart was racing again, making her skull creak with pain. Her palms were sweaty. Her chest was tight.

“I’m not sure that I am my own woman,” she whispered.

“And what does that mean?”

“This body, it’s … it’s not mine.” Vicky gestured weakly at herself, hands shaking. “I-I mean I do look like me, it’s still my face, my hair, my build, mostly. And I have all my old scars, too. Got the big one on my upper left thigh where I got hit by a piece of shrapnel up in Appalachia. And the two dots on my shoulder from the incendiary in upper New York. That one burned like a bitch, but they’re only the size of my little fingernail, which is crazy. And I’ve still got the surgical marks from getting my appendix removed, and the one missing wisdom tooth, and—”

“Victoria,” Kagami hissed through her teeth.

Vicky swallowed. Her throat felt dry. “This body is twenty years younger than when I died. Maybe more, I can’t tell. I was forty one years old when I died, Kaga. I was a lifelong career soldier. I feel fake.”

Kagami’s face unfroze. She frowned and squinted at the same time. “We’re zombies.”

“Yes?”

“The undead,” Kagami went on. “Nanomachine abominations. Our minds have been mathematically rotated out of the quantum foam, or dredged up from hell, or something I can’t even figure out. We have been resurrected past the end of all recognisable human civilization, surrounded by blob monsters and borged up cannibals who want to fuck us dead and eat us at the same time. Giant worm machines. That bio-tech wet dream out there. This living tank, in which we are currently sleeping — or not sleeping, at this exact moment. I’ve modified my left hand and arm into a data input-output device by drinking blue nano-slop. You had your arm glued back on. Are you following me here, yes?”

“Uh, Kaga, where are you going with this?”

“Yes. Or. No.”

“Yes.” Vicky shrugged. “But I don’t see what that has to do—”

Kagami raised her right hand and snapped her fingers and thumb shut in a be-quiet gesture, face scrunching with irritation. “But the part you’re struggling with is a bit of de-aging? The graveworm saving you the trouble of old person knees and a weak bladder? Really? That’s the part which is keeping you awake?”

“Well—”

“You are a moron, Victoria.”

Vicky’s throat was bone dry. She almost couldn’t say the words. Kagami’s mockery did not help. “It’s not just that.”

“Then what!?” Kagami hissed, eyes bulging in her face. “Just say it! By all of Luna’s silver soil, my heart is going to explode!”

“W-what?”

“Just say it!”

“I-I— it— my … my body … it’s the wrong … or the right, I don’t know … ” Vicky screwed up her eyes. “Sex.”

Silence.

Vicky opened her eyes, heart racing, skin gone cold. Kagami was staring at her, expression unchanged but waiting, frozen halfway to horror.

“Kaga?”

Kagami whispered: “So you’re not a Necromancer?”

“What? No, I’m not a Necromancer. I’m trying to tell you I’m—”

“Not being a Necromancer is infinitely more important and relevant than whatever weird gender stuff you had going on in life, or whatever other pre-NorAm bullshit you’re so caught up on. Fucking hell, Victoria!” Kagami’s eyes blazed. Her face shook. “I thought you were doing the big reveal on me! I thought you were about to tell me that you’re been hiding in plain sight all this time, and invite me off to … to … Luna knows what! Recruit me into the next layer of this death-fuck game! Do not terrify me like that, you absolute dirt-sucking, womb-born, shit-mating—”

“Kaga, isn’t this important?!” Vicky boggled at Kagami’s response. “The— the graveworm, the resurrections, the fact that there’s no men here? Isn’t this important somehow?”

“I doubt it. You really think that much of yourself?” Kagami snorted. “You think one little gender swap matters to whatever is going on here?”

“I … well, no, but—”

“You were a trans woman in life, then? Is that really it? That’s what you’re freaking out about?”

“Yes. I mean, no. I … ” Vicky’s stomach clenched up hard; she had to let out a slow breath. “I was, yes, but I never went through with anything much. I always told myself I would, after the war. Told myself I’d get seen by a shrink. A proper one, back out east. The GLR was good about that.” Vicky shook her head, putting into words things she had previously been unable to express — and asking herself why on earth she was unburdening herself to Kagami, of all people. “And I could have. I’d served for twenty years formally, more than that in the Irregulars. I was an old hand. I could have retired on a full pension, gone to live on the coast in one of the big cities, far from the war. But I … I kept telling myself ‘after the war’. After the war. But the war went on and on. And I really believed in it. I still do, I still believe in the GLR, even here, even now we’re all dead, or zombies, or whatever. So I never did. Always after the war.”

Kagami waited, looking very uninterested and unimpressed. When Victoria finished, Kagami shrugged. “Well, good for you? I suppose? Stars above, you’re stupid.”

Vicky’s hands were shaking. She wasn’t sure what response she’d expected, but this was not it. “Kaga,” she hissed. “Kaga, I didn’t earn this or—”

Kagami’s right hand shot out and mirrored Vicky’s earlier gesture — she grabbed Vicky by the chin. She leaned forward on the bunk, so her eyes were inches away from Vicky’s.

“You think I earned these legs?” she hissed. “You’re a zombie! We’re all zombies!”

“Kaga—”

“I do not give a shit, Victoria! I don’t care what fucked up dirt-eater bathtub-biohack nonsense you had going on down there in the dark ages! On Luna, you would be exceedingly unremarkable.”

Vicky opened her mouth again, about to protest — what? Her own innocence? Innocence of what? That Kagami should be mad with her for some other reason?

But then Kagami jerked her head forward and mashed her lips against Victoria’s mouth.

Vicky did not have much to compare with — a few fumblings in her early twenties — but even she could tell that this was an exceptionally bad kiss. It was mostly just uncomfortable. She could feel Kaga’s teeth through her lips.

Kagami pulled away, still scowling, then wiped her mouth on the back of her modified hand.

“Now, do as your Moon Princess says,” Kagami whispered. “Go back to sleep.”

Kagami let go of Vicky’s face, flopped back onto her bed, and yanked the privacy curtains shut.

Vicky stood up and stumbled back, the rear of her skull pounding in time with her frantic pulse. She stared at Kagami’s shoulder through the narrow gap in the privacy curtains for a moment, then let out a slow breath and shook her head. She shot a guilty glance at the other occupants of the bunk room, but Atyle and Ilyusha were both still fast asleep.

She would have to disobey her Moon Princess. She needed some fresh air.

Vicky stepped away from the bunks and walked over to the door. Her hands were still shaking as she gripped the handle. She paused and made a fist, then flexed it open again. What was she panicking about? Kagami was the one who’d initiated—

She heard voices on the other side of the door. No more than murmurs.

Pheiri’s internal structure was so thick and sturdy that she couldn’t make out the actual words, even when she pressed her ear to the door and closed her eyes. But she could tell there was more than one speaker. One of the voices sounded like Elpida.

Vicky turned the handle and cracked the door open, desperate for somebody to take her mind off everything.

The voices ceased as soon as she broke the seal on the bunk room door. Dark red light flooded through the widening gap — night-cycle illumination, designed not to wake the uninterested sleepers. She slipped through the door and out into the crew compartment.

Five faces turned to meet her, among the blankets and benches and bulkheads.

Elpida stood by the entrance to Pheiri’s spinal corridor, wearing her armoured coat, submachine gun at her side, boots on her feet; her arms were crossed, chin raised in wordless command, white hair fanned out down her back, purple eyes alert and awake. Amina was sitting curled up on one of the long benches, the seat straps unsecured, half-swaddled in blankets from the floor. Hafina was awake, a huge mass of muscle and naked colour-shifting skin, sitting up in her makeshift floor bed; she looked bleary-eyed, barely awake, not really listening. Melyn was snuggled in Haf’s lap, tiny by comparison, her grey-white skin dyed dark in the red light.

Serin was standing by the infirmary door, halfway between Elpida and the rest.

Or was she sitting? Or reclining against the wall? Vicky couldn’t tell. The posture wasn’t quite human.

Serin was a scarecrow of black robes, topped by a grinning metal half-mask and a pair of burning red eyes. Stringy blonde hair was raked back from a mushroom-pale forehead. A faint scent of rotten wood and fungal growth lingered in the crew compartment.

Elpida nodded a greeting to Vicky, then mouthed: ‘Shut the door.’

Vicky closed the bunk room door, so as not to wake the others. She made sure it was flush with the frame once more.

“It’s shut,” she confirmed, speaking softly. “The others are all sleeping.”

Serin made a raspy noise behind her mask. “Hnnnh. Another voter.”

“Sorry, what’s this?” Vicky asked. “Are we having a meeting?”

Elpida said: “An informal discussion. You’re very welcome to join us, Vicky, but you won’t miss anything if you choose not to. Everyone else will be informed later. And … ” Elpida gave Serin a meaningful look. “Serin will answer any questions.”

“Hnnh,” Serin grunted.

Amina suddenly said: “She will! I think she will.”

Amina was sitting close enough to reach out and touch Serin, though her hands were hidden inside the blanket. Vicky gave her a smile. Amina smiled back, a little hesitant.

“Mm,” Serin grunted again.

Vicky felt relieved. This was safer ground than talking about the past with Kagami. “I couldn’t sleep. Need to do something, feel useful, all that kind of stuff. What are we discussing?”

Serin’s gaze caught her. She couldn’t see the smile beneath the mask, but she saw the crinkles at the corners of those glowing red eyes.

“Meat,” said Serin.

“Food,” Elpida elaborated. “Food, predation, nutrition. Our options for survival. There’s other topics to discuss too — Necromancers, allies, maybe more. We could be here all night, well into the morning. This is difficult stuff, Vicky.” Elpida reached over and put a hand on Vicky’s shoulder, squeezing gently. “You sure you want to join in? If you just want to stretch your legs and head back to bed, you’re perfectly entitled to do that instead.”

Vicky felt strength and certainty flow from Elpida’s touch. She filled her lungs and nodded.

“I’d like to be here for this, sure. Thank you, Commander.”

Elpida smiled. “You don’t have to call me that all the time, Vicky.”

“Well, sometimes I want to.” Vicky cleared her throat and nodded to Serin. “Sorry for interrupting. Please carry on. So, what about meat?”