Elizabeth Hand - Icarus Descending

He turned and gestured at the tiny silvery image of Helena Aulis, already smaller and fainter than it had been, a star’s sad shadow in the void. “—To that life. But this will be a very different thing—”

Kalaman frowned, then let his breath out in a long sigh. Beside him Ratnayaka dipped his head, so that his brother would not see his mouth curling with disdain. His hand tightened about Kalaman’s thigh, slid up and beneath the short skirt of coarse linen, to stroke the muscles there, the smooth curve where Kalaman’s leg cupped into his groin. Kalaman groaned, moved as though he would embrace his brother. Something cold and smooth licked at Ratnayaka’s throat.

“Patience, oh, my brother,” whispered Kalaman. He moved the kris so that its curved blade slid down Ratnayaka’s chest, dragged it gently across his abdomen until it lifted the edge of his brother’s skirt. “You will have me soon enough.”

As he stared at his brother, Kalaman’s eyes glinted black and fathomless. But Ratnayaka only laughed, threw his head back and laughed until the other energumens turned, their gaze flickering uneasily between their two leaders.

“Oh, yes,” Ratnayaka said, the hunger racing inside him like some small razor-toothed creature seeking to burst out. He brushed away the kris’s blade as though it had been a toy. “Oh, I will, my brother Kalaman. I will have you, soon enough.”

In the empty docking chamber of Quirinus, I turned to my companions and said, “We have been betrayed.”

Valeska Novus stared at me, her eyes betraying no emotion. “Imperator?”

“Who has betrayed us, Margalis?” asked Nefertity.

“I do not know, I do not know.” I pounded my hand against the wall. My human hand—when I let it slide from the tiles, a shimmer of pale fluid remained. “Agent Shi Pei, someone who saw us boarding the Izanagi; perhaps Lascar Franschii. All I know is that we have been betrayed, and my mission has been thwarted.”

Captain Novus shook her head. “Surely not, Imperator—”

“Yes!” I exploded. “It is worse, far worse than I or anyone else can possibly have imagined. The other memory unit has been found. The members of this geneslave rebellion are receiving their orders from the Military Tactical Targets Retrieval Network—”

“Your nemosyne!” cried Captain Novus.

Nefertity’s voice was nearly inaudible. “Metatron.”

I nodded. “He knows we are here. He contacted me in the Izanagi’s library; he intends to take me prisoner. It was he who brought about the destruction of NASNA Prime and the other HORUS colonies. Now he has ordered his geneslave troops to attack Cisneros, and he plans strikes against other Ascendant targets—against every military target in his database.”

I fell silent, then finally ended, “The damage wrought by this so-called Alliance is far greater than I dreamed; greater perhaps than any holocaust wrought by mankind since the First Shining.”

“But why?” Nefertity asked softly. “Why— how— could another nemosyne do such a thing?”

“I believe that Metatron intends to destroy all humanity, and set up the energumens and other geneslaves in its place. As to how a nemosyne could do such a thing, independently, with no human commanding it—”

My voice trailed off, and I stared at the scuffed floor beneath my boots. “I do not know.”

At mention of Cisneros, Valeska Novus had paled. Now she grabbed me. “We should reboard the Izanagi, Imperator! If this is a trap, we must get you—”

My metal hand closed about hers and she winced. “Oh, I think we will be back on the Izanagi soon enough, Captain Novus,” I said. “It will be the quickest transport available to them, if he truly intends to return me to Earth.”

“What of me, Tast’annin?” Nefertity’s ringing voice held no fear within it. In the softly lit expanse of the docking chamber, she burned like the blue heart of a flame. “I would not be used as a tool for slaughter. I think you should dismantle me. At the least put me in my dormant mode.”

I stepped toward a wide archway that opened into a broad corridor lit with golden sunlamps. She was right. It would be simple for the other nemosyne to alter her program, or even to interface with her and make Nefertity nothing more than an adjunct of Metatron. But it also might be possible to use her somehow to crack Metatron’s governance code. And that might be our only chance of disabling the Alliance.

“No,” I said at last. “You may be able to help us, if and when we are brought before him.”

“But who found this other nemosyne? Who has programmed it to do this?” blurted Valeska Novus.

“I don’t know. But my guess is that it was someone who had no real idea what they were doing. Even the crudest and most mendacious of the Autocracy would not have ordered the systematized destruction of the entire human race.”

“You seem quite disturbed by all this,” said Nefertity, her words tinged with slight malice. “I had thought such emotions beyond the Aviator Imperator of the Ascendant Autocracy.”

“I will choose whom I will serve, Madame Nemosyne. I am not a puppet or any man’s slave—any thing’s slave—and if this Metatron thinks so, he will learn otherwise. Captain Novus, please arm yourself.”

“Yes, Imperator,” Valeska Novus said, slipping her gun from its holster and glancing at me admiringly. An instant later her expression turned grim, as the sound of footsteps echoed toward us from the corridor.

“Captain Novus, you will defend myself and this nemosyne at any cost—you understand?”

She nodded, her dark eyes slitted as she went into a half-crouch in front of us. “Of course, Imperator,” she said, and we waited to greet our hosts.

An announcement came over the Quirinus voicenet telling us of the arrival of the elÿon.

“O sister Kalamat, they are here! Do you think our father is with them?”

I turned from my sister Hylas in ill-disguised impatience. “Of course not. That ’file transmission was from the Element. And these are—I don’t know who they are. Probably there is no one aboard but the adjutant. But I think you should go now— all of you—go to your chambers and wait for me to call you.”

Hylas and the others who had come up behind her looked disappointed, but they knew I would brook no argument. They had few belongings, so there would be little to pack for our voyage. They had only, then, to wait.

“Go,” I said. I started for the door that led to the docking area. “We cannot assemble for departure until our brothers have arrived from Helena Aulis. And I wish to speak with their leader, this Kalaman, before we do so. I will call you when we are ready to board the elÿon.” As one, my sisters bowed their heads, hands crossed upon their chests, and left.

As I hurried down the hallway, a new announcement came over the voicenet, informing me that unauthorized personnel had entered Quirinus.

“An Aviator and two nonviable constructs,” the net’s ethereal voice chimed. “None have received clearance to leave the docking area.”

My heart beat faster at the words nonviable constructs. Would this be the Oracle Metatron, somehow spirited from the Element to engage us in his battle plan? Too late I wished that I had brought a weapon. I turned the last corner, blinking at the unaccustomed brilliance of the sunlamps, and saw them silhouetted in the corridor.

There were three of them. After so many weeks without human personnel on board, they looked absurdly small to me, although only one of them was actually human—a woman, slight even by human standards and wearing the crimson-and-black dress leathers of an Ascendant Aviator. She knelt before the other two and trained a protonic gun on me.