Corporal Dérkomai Skótos jacks in.
She has replayed the combat footage over and over again. And again. And over again. Her cervical neuroport is inflamed from jacking in time after time after time, the surrounding flesh hot to the touch. Her cerebellum feels heavy in her sleep, her amygdala murmurs, but she doesn't care. Beaming in the recordings just isn't as good. She dreams them, now; she's the observer watching as mining outposts, colonies, trading vessels are torn asunder.
They appear, they attack, they disappear. They are so precise their movements almost become mundane, if not for the carnage that blooms in the wake of their strikeships.
Somnifugae venatoris sapiens. Adequate name, albeit somewhat sensationalized. The scientists of the Federation have yet to come to a consensus regarding taxonomy, and it's hard to blame them—no two Somnifugae specimens are alike. Not really. Polymorphism, genetic engineering-who could say? They don't leave much for the coroners to study. When a Fugue flatlines, an implanted capsule of acid detonates within the mesothorax. Chitin and and corroded metal and denatured protein is all that remains-woe to the one within the blast radius.
She reads about K-2L often. How some fought, some surrendered—and were slaughtered and butchered for their effort. Absurd. You don't negotiate with tectonics or tides or time.
She likes to think that, even were she young (well, younger) and not the military-moulded woman she is now, she would have intervened. Not just stood there like chattel to be slaughtered, or flee screaming like a coward only to catch a photon dart in the back. She would've stood and fought and died, and she would've taken a fistful of them with her.
That is what she likes to imagine, anyway.
But it is hard to let the imagination run afire when the recordings are of such low resolution. There has yet to be a metacortex successfully recovered from victims of the attacks; the Fugues, in their wisdom, make sure to disintegrate the CNS of every sapient organism they encounter. Those unfortunate enough to be captured for ransom are returned blinking, frowning, staring at a yawning gap in their memory that extends to just before their capture.
She wants to look one in the eyes. Straight dead into those fiery, dodecachromatic eyes. Two, four, six, eight—she doesn't care.
She wants to kill one.
Every day she trains for it. Every night she straps herself into the medbay reconstructor and feels her muscle and sinew and bone bind itself back together without anesthesia. She is the first in queue for chemical therapy, gene therapy, anything that will polish her edge even an iota more.
She wants to kill one so badly she stays up at night dwelling on how she would kill one. Her fingernails ache. Her teeth ache. She has to shave her head every week to stay snug in her helmet—her cells divide so quickly, now.
With her linegun, maybe. Yes, a perfect dead ringer of a shot. Or her knife—she would go arcblade to tacscythe, edge to edge, and with a flourish, strike the pirate commando dead where it stood. The battle would cease and all would see.
She dreams of that often.
Her first Fugue kill is sweeter than she could have ever dreamed.
The glittering tongue of antihydrogen lashes out brightly and snaps a bite out the armor. And another, and another, and another, until its blinding fangs crack through. The linegun is silent, having eaten its fill.
The pirate falls-slowly, its ganglion still defying the evident-its exposed flesh glistening, hemolymph bubbling and frothing to a slowing rhythm. It knows it's dying. From the day it emerged from its egg clutch with its siblings in tow, it knew that all organisms must die and it was no different.
It looks at her, compound eyes switching in and out of focus. It is a harsh appraisal, she thinks. Contempt and disgust, as if she were a microbial growth in a laboratory.
The last thing it sees are the many teeth of her smile.