Tobias Buckell - Ragamuffin

“I don’t want to go.” Kara tilted her head and stared at the both of them.

“You’re just a kid.”

“I’ve seen more than many adults.” Kara folded her arms.

“Look—”

“You have talked to me about the horrors of revenge. But if the Satrapy is going to kill us all, or take our minds, what can I think of myself if I did nothing? Could it be worse than Agathonosis?”

Nashara sighed, and so did Cascabel. They glanced at each other. It could be worse. She could certainly imagine worse herself.

“I’m sympathetic,” Nashara said.

“But it’s just not something we can allow,” Cascabel finished.

“Do you think you are my parents?” Kara snapped. “No one here can tell me what to do.”

“Okay.” And Nashara saw a message pop up in her lamina. Cayenne was back.

Nashara could, of course, physically force Kara out onto one of the outgoing Ragamuffin shuttles.

Screw it. Cayenne was back and needed her, Nashara had more important things to care about.

“Okay,” Nashara said. “Stay. It’ll be dangerous. You’ll help with wounded. We’ll have Azteca and Raga aboard, and medical pods for the wounded. You’re able to interface with lamina, so you’ll be able to talk to the pods and authorize whatever medical treatment they want to give. Now I need a moment for an important conference.”

Maybe seeing the chewed-up bodies that would come from all this would temper Kara’s thirst for vengeance.

Nashara waved Kara out of the cockpit, and Cayenne and Cascabel appeared.

“Cayenne, what the hell happened on the Takara Bune ?”

“Etsudo isn’t all he seems,” Cayenne muttered, then caught them up.

Nashara rocked back, as did Cascabel. “He what?”

“Altered our minds.”

Cascabel looked at Nashara. “I don’t feel it, I don’t feel different, do you?”

Would they even know?

“Think about it,” Cayenne said. “If this happened on Astragalai, would we even have stopped to consider whether his live was worth saving?”

“I would have flushed him out into the vacuum the moment I had the ship back then; right now, I’m not so outraged,” Cascabel said, and Nashara nodded.

“I know,” Cayenne said. “And I can’t. That’s a problem.”

“Shit,” Cascabel and Nashara said. “Can we still function?”

“I’m ready to face Hongguo. But we have to be careful with Etsudo, you know?”

Fair enough. That was done. There was Piper to deal with. She was getting the shit kicked out of her, the Wuxing Hao suffering enough damage it didn’t look as if it would even get through the wormhole in one piece.

Cayenne was the closest, and she was able to get a tight beam through to Piper, who showed up in their midst looking wan.

“I know I’m virtual to you guys, a spin-off, but to me this is damn real. The ship is falling apart, and I’m losing processing power with it. I’m dying. For real. I’m not going to make it.”

None of them knew what to say. Nashara reached a hand out.

Piper smiled. “Look, I’m going to try and get through one of the communications buoys, but it’s a far shot, and I don’t think I can. They’re shut down, and I can’t crack them.”

Nashara, Cascabel, and Cayenne watched her fade out, all flinching as the connection died.

“We’re gearing up for the attack on the Hongguo,” Cascabel whispered. “I’ll catch you up later, Cayenne.”

And they all turned away from each other.

Nashara knocked on the bulkhead before rolling the door open. John blinked back at her as she drifted in.

The door shut.

“What’s going on with the girl?”

“The girl wants to stay.” Nashara kept drifting until she snagged a footloop under one of the bunk bed’s rims. “I can’t change her mind unless I drag her out myself.”

John cleared his throat. “She’s what, early teens? Good luck with that. Who is she?”

“Girl we found aboard a habitat, one of the last survivors. The Satrap had taken over, used them all as extensions of its mind.”

“Plucky.”

“Very.”

“Reminds you of yourself, no doubt.” John rubbed his eyes. He grabbed her hand and looked at her directly, pleading. “You are risking her life keeping her here.”

Nashara looked down and pulled her hand away.

“Maybe. A little.” Nashara rubbed her palms together. “I’m going to let her stay.”

“If she means anything to you, you’ll regret that.”

“She is right, you know. I’m not her mother.” Nor did she want to be. “And she’s seen a lot. I think she should be allowed to make her choice.”

John deflated. “I’m too tired to fight about something like this.”

Nashara grabbed his collar and pulled him closer, oddly nervous.

He jerked back. “I’ve been through too much.”

“I’m not trying to sleep with you.” She let go. He’d just loaded his dead son into the cargo hold of the ship. “But do I make you uncomfortable, being Pepper’s clone?”

She was keyed up, overfocused and overconfused.

“I just need to sleep right now.”

“I’ve been running, and running for years, alone. And I just watched myself die, I think,” Nashara said. “And I want to be next to a human being right now. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” he whispered, and unsnapped enough for her to crawl in next to him.

They awkwardly lay there, until Nashara turned around and put one arm around his stomach.

He fell asleep within several minutes, and Nashara just lay there. She wasn’t a monster, or a robot, just an very oddly configured human. This was what humans sought, and she still had it in her.

She could see what John couldn’t: Cascabel right there in the lamina with her, unable to touch John but trying.

Azteca and Raga fighters came aboard, and Cascabel left to guide them into the ship and show them where to stow their equipment.

It only seemed like seconds later that Cascabel woke her up. “We think it’s started, Hongguo communications traffic just leapt off the scale and they’re moving.”

Nashara carefully pulled herself away. “And?”

“Everyone is evacuated here, it’s time to punch out and do this.”

Etsudo looked up, surprised as Cayenne allowed a limited amount of access to the ship’s lamina.

“We’re not allowed in, we’re going to hover in the periphery. Any movement and we’ll be reclassified as enemy combatants,” Cayenne told them. She sounded annoyed. “We get the privelege of watching this battle from a distance. Which means you two will be getting into a pod and leaving here, I can’t take the risk of you trying to trap me again. And believe me, I’m being nice, I should have vented the air locks on you.”

Leave and go where? Etsudo wondered. “You sound eager to get into the fray,” he said.

“Piper just died.” Cayenne looked around. “She took the Wuxing Hao , now it’s just debris.”

“One ship against the Hongguo, what were you thinking?” Etsudo asked.

“Trying to run the blockade,” Cayenne said with a sad smile. “Trying to warn the humans out in the forty-eight worlds that the Satrapy was heading to exterminate us all.”

Etsudo looked at her. “That’s a big assumption.”

“They’re destroying the only armed human force they know of, they’ve completely taken over the Hongguo for their own needs. Look out there Etsudo, this isn’t a normal Hongguo operation.”

She was right. And in the lamina Etsudo watched the battle develop slowly.

Hongguo drones poured out through the security shield around the wormhole and madly accelerated out, hundreds of them destroyed as they smacked into new layers of chaff or mines the Ragamuffins had added to the shield.