Necroepilogos

Elpida dreamed of playing chess.

She and Howl were seated at a familiar table, in the rec room of the cadre’s private quarters, deep inside the Legion District on spire-floor 186, in the heart of Telokopolis.

Dreamlike phantoms haunted Elpida’s peripheral vision — memories of her other sisters, pausing to watch the game in progress, or heading for the sofas and the screens on the far side of the rec room, or passing by on their way to other pleasurable diversions. Elpida was vaguely aware of Metris and Yeva sliding from a sofa to the floor together; Metris was straddling Yeva in a way that told Elpida the rec room may soon grow noisy with ribald suggestions and cheers and laughter, or that some sisters might soon move to the dorms to continue the activity in question. Elpida ached to join them, to surrender to the logic of the dream, to lose herself in her sisters.

But that was only a memory. She focused on the game. She did not look up.

The chess set was made of wood. The pieces had been carved by hand and lacquered in black and white to indicate the opposing sides. The set had been presented to the cadre as a gift, by General Inglas Orion of the Legion’s XII Division, one year to the day after Elpida had helped save the General and his men from their failed expedition into the green. The chess set would fetch an obscene value on the open market; the Civitas and the Grower’s Guild placed strict limits on the extraction of raw wood from the buried fields below the city. The chess pieces and the board were probably made from pruned branches. Even a decorated war hero General did not have the kind of political pull to claim part of a felled tree for personal use.

But the chess set was a symbol; General Inglas’ real gift had been his voice in the Civitas.

A small voice. Not enough.

Elpida pushed those thoughts away. Regrets would not serve her well in a dream. She and Howl could have chosen to play with holographic extrusions from the table itself. They could have chosen a thousand other games in which to compete. But Elpida had insisted on chess. Dream logic had done the rest.

Elpida finally made her move: she advanced her single remaining raven, leapfrogged three walls, captured an isolated lighthouse, and pinned Howl’s empress with a pincer movement that she’d been setting up for the last ten turns.

“There,” Elpida said. “Escape that.”

Howl snorted. She unfolded herself from her habitual squat in her chair, letting go of her own naked ankles and reaching out for the board. She did not stop to think. In a single move Howl advanced a snail, took Elpida’s raven, and put Elpida’s city in check.

“Done!” Howl cackled. She folded herself back into her comfortable squat-crouch. “Escape that? You’re stuck, Elps. Give up. Surrender. Submit. Do it now, before you take another turn, and I’ll go easy with the punishment. I’ll only sit on your face for fifteen minutes this time.”

Elpida sighed with relief, leaned back in her chair, and looked up from the board.

Howl’s purple eyes sparkled with cruel humour. Her albino-white hair was raked back over her skull, sticking up in all directions. But then her brow furrowed with confusion.

“Elps?” she said. “What are you so happy about? You’re losing, Co-maaan-durrr.”

Elpida smiled wide. “I was always terrible at this game.”

“Yeah, exactly! Remember when I beat you in twelve straight matches? Remember the night afterward?” Howl stuck her tongue all the way out and touched the tip to the bottom of her chin.

“Mm. It was mostly you, Metris, and Scoria who were any good at chess. Arry and Quio were close, but a little slower. Kos was incredible, but only if she wanted to be. I never learned to play.” Elpida shook her head. “And I still can’t.”

Howl narrowed her eyes. “Elps, where are you going with this?”

Elpida said: “You can’t be a figment of my imagination, or a partitioned piece of my own mind, either brought on by stress or grown by nanomachine self-modification of my neural structure. You know how to play chess. I’ve been paying attention this whole time, concentrating, not letting myself dream. You’re following the rules. You’re beating me. You know this game. I don’t.”

Howl grinned. “Still don’t trust that I’m me?”

“I trust that you’re real. But are you the real Howl, or something else imitating her?” Elpida sighed. “I’m not sure that matters.”

Howl cackled. “And now I’m gonna beat you and sit on your face. Wanna taste test me, too? Maybe that’ll convince—”

Fzzt.

The dream flickered, like a glitchy monitor slapped with an open palm.

Howl grimaced. “The fuck was—”

* * *

Elpida woke up.

She was lying flat on her back, in the bunk room, inside Pheiri.

She had managed to wedge herself onto one of the middle bunks, with her head in one corner and her feet in the other, knees bent to compensate for her height. She stared at the underside of the next bunk up, blank cream-white paint on cold metal. The room was very quiet, silence backed by the slow heartbeat throb of Pheiri’s reactor far below. The thunderstorm had passed. A muffled drip-drip-drip of water kept time in the gloom. Perhaps that was run-off from Pheiri’s exterior hull.

Elpida felt a moment of heart-wrenching loss for the dream of her sisters. She wanted to sob, but she was too groggy. Her vision was blurry. Her body felt heavy. Her limbs were filled with lead. The molten agony of her gut wound had burned down to a thin smoulder. She let her eyelids drift shut. Perhaps if she went back to sleep she might dream of her sisters again, safe in the heart of Telokopolis.

But then a face invaded her field of vision.

Copper-brown skin, shiny and clean. Electric purple eyes, wide and manic. Albino-white hair, long and loose, tucked over a shoulder. Leaning over the bunk. Peering down at Elpida. Noses almost close enough to touch. A nightmare mirror on the precipice of sleep.

Elpida’s own face.

Necromancer! Elpida tried to scream — but her throat was paralysed. Her tongue and lips refused to move. She tried to jackknife her body to head-butt the mirror’s nose and slam a fist outward to bury her knuckles in the imposter’s gut. But nothing happened. Her muscles were frozen. Her body was locked up. A weight pressed upon Elpida’s chest, crushing and suffocating.

The Necromancer had taken control, just like up on the combat frame’s hull.

The mocking mirror of Elpida’s face split with a grin from ear to ear, peeling back both lips and flesh. Steel teeth, razor sharp and needle-pointed, tips coated with blood and gore. The Necromancer’s imitation mouth was all torn up inside, lacerated by her own teeth, running freely with crimson and scarlet.

“Still try—ing, dead thing?” the Necromancer hissed in a parody of Elpida’s voice, scratchy like static. “Don’t, know how you diiiiid it, but here, you are. And where did I — go, hmmm? How did you? Do that?”

Elpida tried to shout a warning to the others. Her throat would not move.

Howl! she yelled into her own mind. Howl, wake up! Howl, get out here!

“Ah—ah-ahhhh,” the Necromancer whispered. “Don’t be so, angry — now. You’ll last longer if you. Don’t try. So hard. A piece of advice, dead thing: keep your head, down. Go, off unnoticed. Don’t be — seen.”

The Necromancer closed her gore-smeared mouth and slid back out of Elpida’s field of vision. Elpida could not even move her eyeballs to follow the motion.

The weight stayed on her chest for a long time, pressing down on her ribcage. She felt her bones creak.

Silence. Drip-drip-drip. Distant breathing. Pheiri’s engines, throbbing and humming.

All of a sudden the pressure vanished. Elpida’s muscles were her own to command. She gasped and jerked sideways on the mattress, lashing out with a fist, ready to fight—

No Necromancer.

Nothing but the bunk room. Gunmetal grey with flakes of cream paint, scratchy blue blankets over thin mattresses, the scent of sweat and old books and firearm lubricant.

Elpida lay still for several seconds, panting through her nose, eyes wide, heart racing. Adrenaline surged through her bloodstream. Sweat beaded on her skin. The bunk room was silent except for the distant drip of water and the soft susurration of sleep.

Elpida climbed out of her bunk, slowly and carefully. She peeled back the lumpy blanket. She swung her legs out first, found the floor with her feet, then slipped out and stood up; her gut wound complained at the contortions, stitches pulling at her skin, a hot line of fire running across her belly and deep into her intestines. But the raw blue nanomachines had done their job — the pain was very bad, but bearable.

Her internal body clock had regained coherency; she had slept for perhaps twelve to fifteen hours, long enough that the others had likely all gone to bed as well. Was it night outdoors, or was it the sad memory which passed for daylight in the black and soot-choked sky? Her muscles were stiff as old wire and needed a stretch. Her eyelids rasped like sandpaper. Her head was thick as cold tar. Her throat was dry and dusty, she needed water. But her mind was moving fast.

The bunk room hatch was closed. The equipment and books on the lower bunks had not been disturbed. Nothing looked out of place.

Elpida was not the only zombie making use of the bunk room: Amina was curled up in the same top bunk she had occupied before, snug and small beneath her coat and blankets; Ooni was lying on one of the lowest bunks, with her back pressed tight against the wall; Atyle was also present, on a middle bunk, flat on her back, stripped down to tomb-grey underlayers, her hands crossed over her chest.

All three were fast asleep — or at least pretending. Any one of them could be a Necromancer in disguise.

Howl? Elpida hissed inside her own mind. Howl, wake up, right now.

Howl replied in a groggy gurgle: Mmmm-what? Elps, what? Immasleepin.

Did you see the Necromancer? Just now, did you see that? You see what I see, don’t you?

Howl sighed, wet and grumpy. You had a fuckin’ dream. Go back to sleep, Elps. You need it. Go back to sleep so I can sit on your face. Bitch arse, you’re so … mmm … 

Howl rolled over and went back to sleep.

Elpida stayed very still, hunched below the bunk room ceiling. She considered the possible scenarios, from least-bad to worst-case.

One: sleep paralysis and/or hallucination. Two: external broadcast from beyond Pheiri, into Elpida’s neural lace, taking advantage of the liminal state between sleep and consciousness. Three: Necromancer intrusion, Pheiri unaware. Four: Necromancer intrusion, Pheiri aware, crew not alerted to minimise danger. Five: Necromancer intrusion, Pheiri compromised.

She discarded scenarios one and two as wishful thinking — not impossible, but unworthy of response. Scenario five would render any actions pointless; she may as well go back to bed. Scenarios three and four both demanded the same action: head to the control cockpit and ask Pheiri.

Elpida got dressed, quickly and quietly. She took a fresh tomb-grey t-shirt from the supplies piled on the lowest bunks. Her gut wound complained as she lifted her arms to pull the t-shirt over her head, but she gritted her teeth and stayed silent. Somebody had moved her armoured coat from the infirmary and left it with the rest of the equipment. She dragged the coat on over her shoulders. A single layer of bulletproof fabric would probably not stop a Necromancer from killing her — but it might make all the difference in a sadistic game of cat and mouse. If the Necromancer wanted to kill Elpida, it could have achieved that aim while she was paralysed. It had not done so.

No, Elpida decided — if there really was a Necromancer on board, this was not about killing.

Elpida retrieved her submachine gun, made sure it was loaded, the safety was on, and then looped the strap over her shoulder. She crept to the bunk room hatch, opened it slowly, peered out into the crew compartment with her weapon ready — and then whipped back around to the bunk room.

Neither Amina, nor Ooni, nor Atyle had moved an inch.

Elpida had not expected that trick to work, but she had to try it anyway. In a similar situation against any other foe she would have woken all her companions, made sure everybody was armed, and swept Pheiri room-by-room, with others to cover her back. But if the Necromancer could imitate Elpida then it could probably imitate any of the others.

Or maybe that was what it wanted Elpida to think?

Elpida stuck to the plan. She stepped out into the crew compartment and gently closed the bunk room hatch behind her.

Hafina and Melyn were asleep on the floor, in what Elpida gathered was their usual spot, snuggled down inside a nest of blankets wedged against one of the metal benches. Hafina was rumbling and purring in her sleep, a deep and resonant sound, a counterpoint to the distant heartbeat of Pheiri’s reactor. Melyn was cuddled up against Hafina’s front. The blankets and Hafina’s bulk swallowed up Melyn’s tiny, pixie-like physique, leaving only a pale grey-white face peeking out.

The airlock door stood at the rear of the crew compartment, shut and sealed, several inches thick. Beyond that lay the airlock chamber and the wide ramp for external access. Elpida guessed that the crew compartment had once been intended for deployment of ground troops — perhaps Hafina and her own long-lost comrades. The Necromancer could not have entered through there. Everyone would have noticed.

To Elpida’s left was the narrow, steep set of steps which led up to the top hatch, more a tilted ladder than proper stairs. The top hatch allowed access to Pheiri’s outer hull. Melyn had explained that it was possible to walk around up there, on Pheiri’s flat, armoured back, like an exterior deck. But that hatch also contained an airlock.

Elpida had not yet fully internalised Pheiri’s layout: she knew the crew compartment, the infirmary, and the bunk room here in the rear; that section was connected by a crooked, junk-filled corridor to the control cockpit up front. Storage racks lay above the crew compartment and the engineering deck slept below her feet — but the latter was inaccessible by anybody larger than Melyn. The rear and top hatches were the only external entry points.

That did not rule out physical intrusion by a Necromancer. Vicky and Kagami had described how the Necromancer they’d fought had reconstituted itself from liquid, from chunks of gore, from bloody goop splashed up the wall. Such a being might easily squeeze through even a hairline crack.

Elpida crossed the crew compartment and quietly opened the infirmary door; she eased herself through the gap, leading with the muzzle of her gun. Whatever she did next she needed to hydrate first.

The infirmary was empty. Ilyusha was not there. Pira was gone.

Elpida pressed a palm to the surgical bed on which Pira had been sleeping, in the middle of the long indent left by Pira’s body weight. The blood-stained plastic surface was no warmer than room temperature; Pira had been gone for a while.

Elpida crossed to the tiny steel sink and drank several mug’s worth of water, then wiped her face with a wet hand. She didn’t need the wake-up call. Her body was already in emergency mode, full of adrenaline and cortisol, ready for combat, but the ritual of splashing her face with water made her feel better, even if the water was lukewarm and tasted like metal.

She listened to the sounds of Pheiri’s body. A heartbeat in the depths. A drip-drip-drip from outside. Tiny machine noises. Clicking and whirring.

No Necromancer footsteps creeping up behind her. No cackle in the shadows. No slither of scales over steel floors.

Elpida left the infirmary and headed toward the control cockpit. She kept both hands on her submachine gun, muzzle pointed at the floor, finger by the trigger.

Pheiri’s spinal corridor was a jumble of auxiliary systems, loose cables, unoccupied seats, dark screens, and closed hatches. Elpida had not understood why this part of Pheiri was so disorganised, not until she had spoken to him and come to know his origins. This ‘corridor’ was formed by a dozen layers of retrofitted systems, additional weapon loadout controls, and desperate attempts to cram more combat power into the armoured vehicle. Some of the screens and dead readouts and symbols on keyboards looked almost Telokopolan to Elpida’s eyes — archaeological discoveries, reverse-engineered and pressed into urgent service against a foe Elpida did not yet comprehend. A new nanomachine plague; the result of Afon Ddu’s defeat was all around her, in the corpse-city outside. But what exactly had they fought? The Silico? The Necromancers? Zombies like herself? Or were all those categories just parts of the same ecosystem?

Elpida wanted to familiarise herself with every inch of Pheiri’s insides; this incident proved that need. If there was a Necromancer inside the tank, she needed to hunt it down. The creature could be hiding in some forgotten corner, nestled in a crack of metal, lurking behind any one of these access hatches and control panels. She and the others may not be able to confront the creature, but the idea of leaving the thing to creep around in the dark was out of the question. Perhaps Pheiri had some way of combating a Necromancer. Or maybe they could contact Serin, see if that anti-Necromancer weapon of hers really worked or not.

She passed by the ladder to Pheiri’s main turret and glanced upward into the gloom. The uplink helmet hung in the darkness. If the Necromancer had already reached that, then Pheiri would be compromised. But wouldn’t the Necromancer have gone for the uplink before waking Elpida? Then again, Pheiri was not a nanomachine zombie; perhaps he was immune to Necromancer control.

None of this made any sense.

As Elpida approached the final blind corner before the control cockpit she heard a croaky voice speaking from up ahead.

“—don’t know how to do that. Don’t know how to get better. Too much has been broken. Some things never heal.”

That was Pira.

“Mmmmmm,” a reply, a grunt — Ilyusha.

Elpida called out softly: “Illy, it’s me.”

“Elpi?” Ilyusha said.

Elpida emerged into the control cockpit and straightened up. She kept her submachine gun pointed downward.

Pira and Ilyusha were sitting on opposite sides of the rear area of the control cockpit, close to the entrance. Ilyusha was cross-legged in a chair, one arm thrown casually over the back. Her shotgun lay across her thighs. Her tail was coiled lazily on the floor, tip twitching. Her grey eyes smouldered in the gloom.

Pira looked like she should be in a medically induced coma, for her own safety. She was hunched in a chair, listing to one side like a damaged wall, her shoulders hunched beneath an armoured coat draped over her back, for dignity or warmth. Her near-naked body was a patchwork of dressings and bandages and stitches, plugged bullet-holes and sewn-up gashes and lacerations wrapped in gauze. The mass of stitches and gauze on the left side of her face was spotted with old, dried, clotted blood, turning black and crispy. Her exposed bionic arm lay in her lap. Her sky-blue eyes had gone flat and quiet, ringed with dark circles. She blinked slowly.

“Elpida,” she croaked. She had trouble talking with all those dressings on one side of her jaw and throat.

Ilyusha hopped to her feet, shotgun in her hands, tail whipping upward. “What’s wrong?” she barked. “Elpi? What’s wrong!?”

Elpida eyed the pair of them. This private meeting made sense, even if it was unexpected. There was nothing suspicious here. Elpida wished she could feel glad about this surprise.

“Illy,” she said. “Good job on following my orders. Good girl, well done. You stay right where you are. You too, Pira. I need to talk to Pheiri, quickly.”

Several dark screens flickered to life in the depths of the control cockpit. Elpida crossed to the nearest one. Green text awaited her.

>Commander

Elpida said: “Pheiri, is there an intruder on board?”

Ilyusha spat: “Fuck! What?!”

Elpida raised a hand. “Illy, hold for a moment.”

The green text refreshed itself on the dark screen.

>
///current crew compliment access query
///total expected internal: 8
. . . direct section assignment ‘Melyn’
. . . direct section assignment ‘Hafina’
. . . nanomachine conglomerations detected
. . . nanomachine conglomeration ‘Elpida’
. . . nanomachine conglomeration ‘Ilyusha’
. . . nanomachine conglomeration ‘Pira’
. . . nanomachine conglomeration ‘Amina’
. . . nanomachine conglomeration ‘Atyle’
. . . nanomachine conglomeration ‘Ooni'
///returns match expected parameters
///null response
>

Elpida wet her lips. “Are you certain? Please run whatever internal diagnostics you have.”

The text vanished and refreshed again.

>
///internal active system scans alpha — theta
///alpha return: null
///beta return: null
///gamma return: null
///delta return: null
///epsilon return: null
///zeta return: null
///eta return: null
///theta return: null
///null response
>

Elpida did not allow herself to relax yet. “Okay, Pheiri. Thank you. Here’s why I’m asking. I believe I saw a Necromancer in the bunk room. Is there any chance of—”

“Fuuuuck!” Illy screeched. She stamped one clawed foot and made her shotgun go click-crunch.

The green text refreshed before Elpida could finish the question.

>
>nanomachine control locus query
///nanomachine control locus detection NULL VALUE
>

“Nanomachine control locus,” Elpida read out loud. “That means a Necromancer, right. And you’re not detecting one nearby. Alright. One more question.” Elpida braced herself for the worst. Her hands felt slippery on her weapon. But what use would small arms be if Pheiri was compromised? “If a Necromancer attempted to sneak up on you, in order to infiltrate you, would you always know? Or could one get close enough to—”

The green text overwrote itself, too impatient to erase and refresh.

>
>patch no. 2.34.8 notes line 416 as follows

‘Nano-blob synapse feedback detection is now complete! You ain’t gettin’ past this iteration. I’ll stake a whole month’s chocolate ration on that. I challenge any of you bastards in mil-spec-six to defeat this one. Yes, you can even bring the blob in the cage and let it crawl all over the testing room, turn itself to gas, or a puddle of shit, or whatever it does when it thinks the cameras aren’t looking. None of you are getting through this. Emyr owes me for this one.’

>patch no. 2.34.8 notes line 416 END
>nanomachine control locus query
///nanomachine control locus detection NULL VALUE
>

Elpida blew out a long breath.

Of the scenarios she had laid out, the answer was either: one — hallucination and/or sleep paralysis; two — external broadcast; or five, and Pheiri had been compromised. But apparently Necromancer detection was a solved problem for the military forces of Afon Ddu.

Elpida decided to put her trust in the descendants of Telokopolis.

She placed her submachine gun down on the nearest flat console and flexed her hands. Her fingers had gone stiff. She took several deep breaths, then turned back to Ilyusha and Pira. Illy was staring with wide eyes and gritted teeth, clutching her shotgun tight. Pira just looked half-dead.

Elpida said; “Stand down, Illy. I think we’re in the clear.”

Ilyusha grimaced. She let her shotgun go limp, then tossed it into a chair. “Yeah? Yeah?!”

Elpida sat down heavily in the nearest seat. The impact sent a jolt of pain up through her gut wound. She winced and grunted and closed her eyes for a moment. She was being careless.

“Elpi?” Ilyusha prompted. “The fuck?”

Elpida explained: “I thought I saw the Necromancer again. The same one as up on the combat frame. Wearing my face. She — it — was leaning over my bed when I woke up. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. It said some words, then retreated again. A few moments later the paralysis passed, but the Necromancer was gone. It’s not inside Pheiri. If Pheiri’s sensors are accurate—”

A screen near Elpida’s elbow filled with green text: it was the same as before, Pheiri repeating that his Necromancer detection was perfect.

“—which I believe they are,” Elpida added, “then either I suffered some kind of sleep paralysis and a hallucination, or I received a broadcast via my neural lace.”

Illy bared her teeth and hissed with disgust. “Fuck. Fuckin’ shit. Messing with your head!”

Elpida nodded. “I think that’s likely, yes. A broadcast.”

Sleep paralysis was not entirely outside of the cadre’s experience; the genetic engineers of the pilot project had not been able to iron out every single wrinkle in the human body and nervous system. But it was uncommon for any of her sisters to experience problems with sleep. Even insomnia was rare.

And the cadence of the Necromancer’s speech was unlike anything Elpida had heard before.

Elpida looked to the front of the control cockpit. Pheiri had peeled back a tiny sliver of his exterior carbon bone-mesh armour plating, to expose the steel-glass rectangle of a view port. The window was set high up in the cockpit, with a seat for access. It was no larger than Elpida’s hand and the steel-glass must have been four feet thick, but she could see the corner of a distant building and the soot-choked sky beyond, lit by the first ruddy glow of dying red light from one edge of the blackened firmament. Dawn in the land of the dead.

It was still raining but too gently to hear; gritty black drizzle slithered down the steel-glass in a steady stream of thin droplets. That must be the source of the dripping sound: rain pooling in the divots and knots of Pheiri’s armour, trickling down his sides.

Elpida said, “Pheiri, can you please contact Vicky and Kagami, over in the combat frame? I need to ask them a question.”

Several readouts near the front of the cockpit flickered and jumped, filling with text and numbers. Silence descended as Elpida waited. Ilyusha huffed and growled through her teeth, then cast herself back down in her chair. Pira said nothing.

A speaker burst with soft static hum, then crackled with a familiar voice, sleepy and grumpy: “What— the fuck do you want, Commander?”

“Good morning, Kagami,” said Elpida.

Kagami growled down the comms connection. “‘Good’ ‘morning’, yes. I was sleeping, thank you. Being woken up by a direct line into my brain is not very fun. Are you coming to get us? Is this our call to up and out?”

Elpida smiled. “Not yet, but that’s next on our agenda. Kagami, are you and Vicky safe?”

“Nothing has changed, Commander,” Kagami drawled, dripping acid. “Vicky is asleep. I’m not waking her for you.”

“And how’s the pilot?”

“Stable.” Kagami huffed. “What is this, a social call? Are we team-building? Chatting about our days? If you have time to chat, come fucking get us!”

“Kagami, I have a very important question for you,” Elpida said. “You still have the corpse of the Necromancer, is that correct?”

Kagami went quiet. Elpida heard a rustle. After a long moment, Kagami just said: “Yes. We do. What of it?”

“And you can visually confirm that, right now?”

“Yes. It’s right fucking there! I can see it from here. Hard to sleep with that lump lying on the floor and nothing to even cover it with. There’s nowhere to dispose of the bastard thing inside this giant living mech. You’d think it would have a stomach where we can dump crap like this, but no, no, no, no stomach! No stomach. Tch.”

“And the Necromancer has not gotten up or moved around or anything like that?”

A long silence. Then: “Don’t you fucking say that, Elpida.”

“Kagami, please confirm—”

“Yes!” Kagami snapped. “Yes, it’s not bloody well fucking moved! Great. Thank you. There’s no way I’m going back to sleep now. Fuck you, Commander. Is that all? Don’t tell me you’re having an emergency over there. Have you shot the little fascist yet?”

Ilyusha answered: “No!”

Kagami huffed and spat.

Elpida said: “We’re all safe over here. Kagami, sit tight. Hold on, rest, and keep your hatches shut. Linking up with you and Vicky is first priority as soon as we’re capable. Today if we can. ASAP. I promise. You’re both part of my cadre and I am not abandoning you.”

Kagami grumbled something inaudible. Then: “Is that all, Commander? Can I go back to staring at this Necromancer corpse in peace now?”

Elpida grinned. Ilyusha grinned back. Elpida said: “Sure thing, Kaga. Say hi to Vicky. Over and out.”

“Whatever,” Kagami spat.

The static hum cut out. Connection terminated.

Ilyusha snorted.

Elpida shrugged. She said, “Okay, that’s one line of inquiry answered. If it is the same Necromancer then it’s not literally the same body. Which is … hmm.” Elpida trailed off. That could be very bad.

Pira spoke, rough and raspy: “What did it say?”

Elpida met her eyes. Pira looked like a walking corpse. “The Necromancer?”

Pira nodded.

Elpida said, “It taunted me a bit. It called me ‘dead thing’, same as before, so that implies it may be the same Necromancer. Then it gave me advice. It told me to keep my head down, to not get seen.” Elpida shrugged. “By who or what, it didn’t say. Kagami and Vicky mentioned that during their confrontation it used the term ‘central’s attention’. But what is ‘central’? I have no idea.”

Pira stared, blank and exhausted. Elpida stared back.

Eventually Pira said: “Necromancers. Out in the open. Talking. Because of you.”

“Yeah.” Elpida waited, but Pira did not offer further speculation. “Any idea why?”

Pira shook her head. The motion made her dressings crinkle.

Elpida said, “You and I, Pira. We need to talk. I need you to tell the truth. I have questions.”

Pira nodded slowly. “I will do my best to answer them, Commander.”

Elpida glanced at Ilyusha; she and Pira had been talking for some time already. Would Pira tell the truth now? Probably; she seemed defeated inside. Ilyusha just nodded.

Elpida smiled at Illy. “You two are getting on well. I’m surprised.”

Ilyusha grimaced and shrugged. “Shit in common. Sorta. S’not a reptile. Just a dumb fuck.”

Pira croaked: “I’m a fool. I’ve never been anything but a fool.”

Elpida considered Pira, wounded and wrapped in bandages, bleeding through her gauze and stitches, hunched beneath an armoured coat in an ancient chair. She said: “Ooni doesn’t think you’re a fool.”

Pira winced slowly. “Commander. Commander, I cannot justify what—”

“Pira,” Elpida interrupted. “I want you to tell me — what was The Fortress?”

Pira’s wince turned to a heartsick lament. She stared at a point on the floor, staring into the past. Her eyes filled with a sheen of tears.

Elpida waited. Ilyusha pulled a self-conscious grimace; Elpida guessed she’d already asked this question but not gotten a full answer. A few tears ran down one of Pira’s cheeks. She sniffed and wiped at her eyes.

“Pira?” Elpida prompted.

“The last defiant human dream,” Pira murmured. “The last attempt to build something in the ashes. A failure, betrayed, ruined and scattered. Like everything else.”

“Tell me about it, Pira,” said Elpida. “Tell me what you tried to build.”