Let's want no discipline, make no delay
For lords, tomorrow is a busy day...
...March on, join bravely, let us to it, pell-mell,
If not to heaven, then hand-in-hand to hell.
–Richard III, before the battle of Bosworth
Corporal Woodward, PFC Roth and PFC Yancey, Tir Tairngire Peace Force, had hunkered down in a defile among the forests that rolled and whispered down to Shasta Lake. Observing the entrenchments around the dam, they felt somewhat like wardens of the Blood Wood in a Fourth Age Trideo, despite their ruthenium-polymer stealth cloaks and Styr AUG rifles.
Redding's Defenders had done a professional job, for amateurs. Ugly ranks of blast shields and sandbags, hung with wards against astral intrusion, marked a perimeter close enough on the dam to bar airstrikes or artillery. The slope down to the water would naturally shield a support line - the heavy weapons that would keep panzers and rotorcraft at arm's length. For a while, perhaps; it was rumoured that informants within Redding had been suspiciously over-effusive in their reports of SAM launchers and assault cannons.
An attack across the lake would face another barricade on the dam's far side, forewarned by patrols ranging along the shore. With multi-spectrum field-glasses, the Tir scouts picked out a string of figures through the distant treeline. Battered AK-97s, black shirts bulging over cheap kelvar vests. Mismatched helmets, without comms, HUD, flare visors or infra-red.
"Tech, they're ugly devils."
"The human or the ork?"
"Race-mixers. What's the difference?"
It had been an ancient joke before Glerethiel Morkhan Shoam 'Keeper in the Monkey House' had spread it to every home in Tir with a Trid player. Woodward and Yancey still chuckled. Roth didn't, but this was serious work.
Tir scouts had picked off a few Defenders last month as they began digging in, assured that militia wouldn't dare a counterattack. They hadn't, but a few Tir had fallen to sniper fire in turn; a patrol had been torn apart by a powerful air spirit. The Tir had cut some sentries' throats on a moonless night in answer, but scorned to trade more elvish lives for pitiful pawns. Barring drone flyovers, both sides were holding their breath. It chilled Yancey that the Defenders had stuck to their posts, unbroken – but those Native Californian savages had surely put them through worse already.
Woodward could already hear the MMGs, now hidden, that would lash out against waves of green-clad infantry. Clearly as he could picture the goronits penned in their own tight defences, chewed up by grenades and Fireballs. Stunted by poverty and haste, the artfully laid entrenchments would become a deathtrap. Whole forests on Tir's border had been levelled for open kill-zones, but the treeline here still almost touched the perimeter. Redding's Defenders had one elevated position to cover such hollows as the scouts were safely entrenched in - the lakeside village of exiles on their right flank. Defiantly unabandoned, some way off from the dam – but once an assault had wiped out those wineg-slotting traitors, it would Tir's troops that held the high ground.
"Hope no one gets any bright ideas about commandoes, or divers." Yancey muttered, "Tricky stuff like that can go FUBUR. Those morkhans even beat the Ghosts."
"Don't repeat that rumour carelessly, my friend." Woodward's easy smile took the edge off his warning, "We'll kick in the door; they'll break."
"We'll take some knocks if they hold – but, yeah, we'll break them and that'll be it. If the dam was wide open, I'd be more worried."
"You, worry?" Both elves chuckled again.
Yancey had told his comrades about his father, whose patrol had been massacred in '37 at a forest crossroads; an elf in stolen Tir uniform had stopped their transports and RPGs had blown them off the road. Yancey Senior had crawled into a ditch while the guerrillas were shooting into his comrades' bodies. He'd killed four celenits with gun and knife before reaching occupied Redding. While the Peace Force were still going house to house, taking five lesser lives for every elf. Some morkhan deckers had got the footage out, and ultimatums from UCAS and the NAN had sent the elves limping back to Eureka, after all the blood they'd shed.
Woodward and Roth had told Yancey his father was an elvish hero. He hadn't told them about the howls in the night, the piled wine bottles, the dull-eyed stare. In a nation with universal conscription (he'd have been an eyeblight's jobless son without it), and in a world full of elf-hating monsters, Yancey had known from childhood that he might one day face what his father had. He only hoped he'd face it as a true elf of Tir– wise, proud and impervious. As his father palpably had not.
It was their job to check for tricks that could never forestall elvish victory but could cost elvish lives. Narrowing emerald eyes, Yancey scrutinised the treeline before the– and soon drew Woodward's attention to a faint gleam between forked branches.
"Spycams. Dear, oh dear...a shadowrunner's trick. Our own deckers will deal with them. Or perhaps…"
Woodward raised his Styr and adjusted the sights. He was about a hundred metres of forest away from the spycam and a trained shot. His bullet blew the device to bits.
"Steady on..."
"Don't worry, Yance. Those goronits couldn't hit a dragon at this–"
On instinct, Roth shoved Woodward's head down. A shot cracked over him, hitting the turf behind his feet.
With elvish speed, the three soldiers shifted their position. They remained still as stone for five minutes, before electing to withdraw.
"Tech, some shooting…"
"Why, thank you." Woodward quipped.
Even Roth laughed. From relief above all, but there was a tense and wavering edge to the laughter of the elves.
-0-
From a hill across the lake, almost two thousand metres off, Will Casper watched the tiny figures vanish from his rifle scope. In a far-ranging decade of blood and madness, he'd poked out eyes from further off with worse weapons than the only Ranger Arms in Redding. Still, one dumb kid more or less…he couldn't even feel frustration. Was he losing his teeth? A soft, crawling dwarf, instead of soaring death?
He'd liked animals and spirits more than people since his despised, bitter boyhood, even as Merseysprawl's environs swallowed the little forests about a town in Yorkshire. He was never going to mop floors in the depths of some bloody archology. At fourteen, he'd left a hated home behind for the British Army (easy enough for dwarfs, or orks and trolls). He'd already known about hate, death and survival – the pride in a Merlin hawk's eye, before his bloody brother had shot it out. He'd learnt about hunting in the Lambeth Containment Zone, the concrete jungle where army snipers would set down over a street after curfew and pot any terrorist dumb enough to show his black face (Not women or kids; that weren't natural). He'd killed his brother, a hundred times. He'd learnt in Hong Kong, Seattle and Calfree. Until death was life and nature, beauty and ugliness, everything and nothing.
But then a pretty ork lass with a scarred brow and sharp, strong eyes had made a child's game of it all. He'd never even bothered with lassies before. He'd made friends with stray dogs or cats, while his chummers had trawled knocking shops – missed his lost friends, not his dead chummers. Animals were beautiful, formed and focused for life. More honest, strong and self-filled than any metahuman but the best and maddest – even Hotspur and Fighter, the boss-kids, only got there sometimes. Only Hrafna had been absolutely a metahuman, and stronger, really stronger, than the hellhounds who whined at her feet. He'd thought wounds meant weakness; never believed before that mercy was strength.
A lone Redtail was soaring on the high thermals, away from him. Sweeping redwoods crawling with life down to the lake and up to the sky, strong and still as eternity. There was precious life in the sprawls, clinging to concrete, but how often in ten years had he just gone out in the green and listened?
The silence was unbreakable, the earth rich with the smell of decay. Casper sighed and returned his eye to the scope. It weren't altogether a bad world, but hard to die alone in.
-0-
Susan Shuang Lei and Harry Fawkes would have agreed with Casper. The boat back to Redding was full of Corpsec, they were still on the Run – but they still made love in their cabin while Ilsa and Hailey made calls and kept watch. Moving carefully together, they considered crippling bullet wounds, corporate prisons and torture chambers. What it would have been, to fail and die alone. They outdid each other in being good to one another, pressed together in the steel berth like children between nightmares.
"Oh, Harry…that fragging elf should've geeked me, again. I know it." Susan buried her brow in Harry's clavicle, grinding fiercely. "Anya's gone, Hailey went through all that drek, I'm still a dead girl walking. He was still stronger than me…"
"…and you still beat him, angel. We won, they lost, and I love you. Because we're shadowrunners."
Saito and the Japanacorps still owned the Baysprawl. Susan couldn't say it. If the Runners did their job, the Corps would own Redding. Harry didn't say it. Freedom was meant to be their strength – the freedom Ghosts and Red Samurai sacrificed to their masters, for greater strength – but Susan didn't feel free or strong.
Four years' struggle since that night, when she'd been beaten into the gravel and filth. Knowing she was still a powerless fake almost hurt worse. Still and cold, she kept clinging to Harry. He warmed her breasts with love and kissed her brow, until life returned.
Firmly as they held on, they barely spoke again. The dawn saw Susan gliding through her Kung Fu drills on the deck, while Harry languished alone in their berth. Eyes grim beneath swelling bruises, she hammered out strikes and side-kicks. A corpsec mage and adept, idling at the railing, had swiftly thrown their cigs into the ocean and headed below.
"Hoi, omae, go a few rounds?" She'd called after the adept, "We're fighting for the same thing, now."
The adept, who had a family, a pension and a cooking netblog – who'd been silently asking which of his team had pissed off a middle-manager, so that they were all being sent to the death that shadowscum lived to die – told her, go to hell.
"Drekhead; that's where we're all going." Harry quipped, when she'd rejoined him in bed and told him about it, "Hell is in the world, in here; we know that."
"Dad told me something like that. The Wheel of Life, and suffering, held by a demon. He said peace only comes from accepting the universe as it is, your limits as they are, even death when it comes. Whatever he did, or he suffered, before Redmond, he did nothing with all his strength for years. Except for training me. If he found any peace…I still think he deserved it."
"We've all got limits, babe. Chip truth, I learned that the hard way."
"But you're still pushing. We're still fighting. How can I make peace with limits when we die if I fail, and thousands of others?"
"…we endure it. We take the pain. Because we're still alive…and can't you take the pleasure as well?"
"Take what comes, like a ronin tossed on the waves? That sounds…romantic."
Harry knelt by the bed. Susan's sigh rose from her feet, as his fingers pressed them, adeptly. He kissed her knees and her thighs, already shining from her workout. She couldn't hold him back from parting her legs and lapping within them, softly at first. Through the beloved breakers of pleasure, she marvelled how his submission always overcame her.
Her feet curled and beat on his back. She wondered if stepping on him would fulfil her frustration, whether her man would go down so far for her. You couldn't have anything without pushing limits, and she had to feel stronger than this. Wave-tossed acceptance was beautiful, but not enough for her, or him.
Susan almost wished she was a better Buddhist. No more burning hunger to save and win, only a Bodhisattva's compassion for human need (She pulled Harry's panting lips up to her own. Clung to him with her legs). Without Harry, nothing but martial arts. She could've given her life, like the Shaolin nuns who'd been her girlhood heroes. She might've won through, a real hero...
No. Oh, no, no. She couldn't have given up this need, his need, even for a day. She couldn't be alone again, she would fight for this – and for every soul in north Calfree that hurt and loved.
-0-
Then there was the short drive to Redding, in dispersed vans. Where they had to tell Orion that his daughter…might be gone?
Backing up an AI – not simply copying a subsystem into a drone or meat-brain, but a complete clone – was presently almost as tricky as AI creation. The spark of sentience wasn't even understood in metahumans; it had taken Darkchild years to make his copies, in an Ultraviolet host. Flitting from cheap host to low-grade grid, on the run with her father – Susan realised – had been like starving under a constant cope of lead for Anya. 2053 had not been ready for her, in every way.
Hailey had told them all to wait, while she sussed out what level of backup Anya had left. The Turing test, she explained, wasn't so simple. A 20th century relic could imitate metahumanity as it beat a grandmaster at chess, barring expert midgame analysis. Orion had accepted that he wouldn't be much use. How he felt about the idea of Anya 2.2, perhaps a copy of a copy of his daughter, no one had dared ask.
After San Francisco's disasters, Susan wanted to sleep for a day and punch the wall for a week, but she couldn't. Her chummer was gone, again, the invasion was practically on them, and she remembered what the bare idea of losing his daughter had driven Orion to, in their Agency days. It wasn't only from shared sorrow that she, Harry and Ilsa sat with Orion – although she wasn't sure that all of them would be enough, should he finally go loco.
They pulled up chairs in the hallway outside the comms room where Hailey was working, where Harry wouldn't have finished Ork Slayer without Anya's backup. Shoulders hunched, Orion seemed to be trying to speak. Nothing came; Susan couldn't believe it.
"I'm sorry. Shifu. I should've done something…"
"What didn't you do?" Voice low and level as ever, the old ork looked up at Susan's blackened, fist-mangled face, "What could you have done?"
"I could've beaten that elf. What Anya gave for us – what good would it done if we'd all died? Or if we die next week, because I should've trained with my life, like a real martial artist! There should've been something!"
"Love," Harry broke in, "You've trained every day since you were three."
"And I couldn't even win one fistfight!" Fury mounted in Susan's voice
"Perhaps you imagine you could punch grief to death, with sufficient strength?" Orion smiled bitterly, "I made the attempt myself and came dangerously close. Grief is love, and love is our strength."
"Is it? Then why am I whining about me, when my chummer's gone, your daughter…? I'm sorry, shifu, I'm sorry. I'm a mess."
"You are alive, here. Facing the fight of your lifetime. It is right that we speak about Anya, and about you. Your heart for your comrades is a source of strength, not disharmony or weakness. A single warrior cannot save a city, or a people; it demands a movement, an army. I have come to accept this truth, and you know it in your heart – it is your own failure, terror of the absolute defeat we have all known, that truly shakes you. This, too, must be accepted. This, too, is a source of strength; more dangerous, but needful for what we must face. Survival requires strength, but strength always requires sacrifice. Sometimes, neither are worth the cost."
"The cost." Ilsa's voice was sharper and burning, "Not the same as a sacrifice; you never know the worst you've lost until it's too late."
"It's not right. You never had a chance, shifu, you or Anya. We shouldn't have let her come!"
"She went of her own free will; perhaps the definitive quality of all sentient beings. Free will; the heart, soul and strength of Anya Kotto. That stubborn, brilliant girl, who left the stubborn, foolish father that never wanted her to Run the Shadows. I'd lost her mother, and everyone else, but I knew I could not hold her. Had no right. Her eyes were blazing steel, as she walked into the night, the true beauty and strength of an orkish girl…but she looked back, once. My heart must have lived on that one look, for almost a decade.
"When I saw her again, in the Agency's clutches, I could do nothing but protect her. With an adept's will, I accepted that I would never embrace my girl again or speak with her about my books and her music. Still, the longing for what was lost, I would not destroy. Only submerge, and every atom of it flowed into protecting her, as our jailer intended. I would have killed you to protect her, before I let you set us free – and yet, you freed us. You gave us both one singular annus mirabilis. It was not enough…but if it must be, it will be. You, Susan, and my Anya, by her own will. You also, Dr Tresckow, although I suspect you never believed it."
"I suppose metahumanity itself is a matter of faith," Ilsa couldn't meet Orion's eyes, "To believe that we are not all conscious machines, determined by circumstance and internal forces, but free-willed metahumans, and A.I. To believe that we did save Anya Kotto…that we will."
"You did save her. She was a strong girl – it took her months to truly tell me how hard it was, to live on in a digital world. Yet she lived on, and not only for my sake. For both of you, for Hailey and all her friends and comrades. For Anya Kotto, herself."
It was the best Ilsa could do; to bow her head before precious faith that she could not share. She could not cry for Anya, or herself, but her shoulders shook with guilt. Susan fixed her arm around them, tears running.
Whether from years ago or days, she knew about regret. What she hadn't done, the ones she hadn't saved. Ilsa's arms felt frail as their first Run, when she'd dragged her poisoned, dying chummer through the caverns under Club Antumbra, towards the light. Four years of drek and blood, just to feel cold and weak. It burnt inside her still, a screaming sickness.
"We talked, of so many things." Orion went on, "She had forgotten the bold, brilliant Runs she closed in Seattle, before the Agency, but I had heard and remembered the stories. We went back to the Ork Underground and saw how far our people had come. How much remained to be built. We went to goblin rock concerts – Nekrogoblikon and Mag Thraka – where hundreds of orks and trolls were dancing but we were both content to listen."
"Club Underworld 93? Maria M's world-tour-opener?" Susan already knew Anya wouldn't have bothered with 'mainstream mush' if she'd had a free ticket. Orion met her smile as she wiped her eyes.
"In truth, our time was predominately spent evading Saeder-Krupp assassins and cyber-commandoes. Working together, always, talking one to another, at last. Her desire was to speak of family, more than shadowruns – the adventure and incident of a single day spent with loved ones. It was hard to talk of them, once more, but if she would bear it, so would I – and as it hurt, it healed."
"Know what you mean. Frag, we had talks about trid shows I'll never forget..."
Susan and Orion kept talking about Anya and their memories, as if unable to safely stop. What she had liked, longed for, done. Harry couldn't join in, and Ilsa didn't, but it was even a comfort to them. Until Hailey stepped out of the comms room, as if from an operating theatre, with life and death in her face.
"I ran simulations, on the backups Anya left. She tried…I'm sorry. Her memories are there, something like her personality, but not her will. The way she is, no, it...it can only react. Like a fragging program."
"I understand." Orion's voice was terribly gentle, as Hailey's frail shoulders shook, "Hope is a cruel addiction. May I…?"
"It's not Anya. A machine replacing the one you love is – trust me – a horrible fragging experience."
"Then, a technician must tell me whether or not my daughter is alive?"
"That's, like, the world we live in. The Corps own cyberbodies and cyberbrains – but not us, her chummers. Not our hope."
"If you don't know how A.I. awake in the first place -" Susan's eyes rose, "-you can't give up."
"Absolutely not. It might take an Ultraviolet server. It might take time. Or it might…this isn't, like, the best time, but I think you'd better hear this from Anya's boyfriend."
Hailey's comm-screen displayed a short human Amindian, visibly uncyberised except for datajacks. Under Orion's heavy gaze, he stumblingly related that he was Ian Namingha, originally from Pueblo, presently with the People's University. No shadowrunner, just very good with computers, and in love with the most beautiful intelligence he'd ever known. Susan had to painfully wonder if Anya had been less into him; however vast and infinite the matrix, dating options for AIs had to be limited. When Namingha got to the point, however, he spoke with a shine to his eyes that faintly reminded her of Harry.
"…true AI code is quantum complex, and constantly self-evolving. That's what it means to be self-aware. You couldn't pin down the code for sentience, although it must physically exist, any more than you could cut one of us open and find the tick. There was barely anything Anya took more seriously than surviving – she said she wanted to see the same future as everyone else. She had this crazy, desperate idea. If she backed up her memories and base persona, then stripped down her own code to the smallest fragment she could get, to escape an unbreakable trap – her spark, her 'spirit' would be in that fragment. It wouldn't have consciousness in that state, or even intelligence. But if it were added to the backup Anya left us … then, we would have excellent reason for hope.
"Renraku are looking for the fragment as well, but they're still in chaos. We were looking first, we know the Baysprawl matrix, and we know Anya – we will find her first, I promise. Then when Anya comes back to us, brave and brilliant, she'll be bringing hard evidence that consciousness digitisation works. That a digital intelligence is a person – that the spark, the spirit, the geist in Anya Kotto, A.I., is truly the spark that was in your daughter, sir."
"…I already knew that. I always knew…"
The first tear rolled down Orion's dark, rough face. Then another, then his head fell into his hands. His chummers gathered round, sharing the pain, joy and hope of the bond they shared. With Anya Kotto, the digital ork beyond sight or touch who they would still hear from again, one day.
-0-
Central Valley, Calfree, Interstate Five. 24 May 2053
"How long has it been?" Desorn Lightfall smiled soullessly across a battered portastove at his fellow traveller, "One does run into old friends in the strangest places."
Shavarus glowered in response. His eyes showed a more frightening blaze, against his dark beard and brow, than the stove's invisible flame. A looming, living statue, unchanged save for scars. Animated, still, by the golem's brand of fury and hate upon his brain.
He had remained seated, however, as the former Ghost collapsed beside his campfire. Nor had his warband touched the elf; a dozen trolls laden with arms and grisly trophies. Gathered like cruel standing stones about an altar, in the starless night of the Valley, off the empty, endless Five.
"These are all your followers, now?" Desorn smiled more like a corpse than an elf, and moved as if drugged by despair, "We have both seen better days."
"You. Betrayed me. Abandoned me. Slandered me. Betrayed metahumanity itself, when you cast away my dreams in the dirt! San Francisco would have fallen, humanity drowned in its drek…nothing since that day has gone to plan. I would kill you, except that I judge you would welcome the mercy."
"You betrayed your own dream, as I recall. Begged for your life, in fact."
Trolls raised swords and shotguns. Shavarus waved them down, though his eyes were terrible. Desorn did not move or protest. Death he had once embraced, to destroy Tir's foes, was now indifferent to him.
"I don't believe I ever appreciated" Desorn murmured, "What an eyeblight Calfree is, beyond the Bay. The Native Californian depredations were merely the final act in a brief, busy history of invasion, exclusion and massacre. The very antithesis of Tir Tairngire, land of blessed security."
"We killed many Native Californians," Shavarus growled, "Many traitors and man-lovers of the so-called MPA, before they drove the true prophet into the wilderness. What did you ever do for the suffering metahumans of Calfree?"
"That old human couple…" Desorn ignored the troll's taunt, "…two days back, with their one-pump gas station. They were ignorance and poverty personified. Yet, they shared their morsels of food with me, without questions …perhaps their grandson is an elf. Perhaps, they remained good people, somehow…better persons than the Land of Promise made me."
"Sounds like the humans yesterday, the ones we burnt with their filthy hovel. Cockroaches deserve no mercy."
A few trolls reached for weapons again. Baysprawl veterans of the Shadows, terrorism, simple crime and murder, they knew what the Ghost had been. Only Shavarus could have been any match for him – but Desorn merely shut his eyes in pain. Where he had fallen, he lay still.
"A beaten dog of Tir – and yet, you also head north, to Redding. To ruin and to death; to the final, dreadful battle with all foes of metahumanity. Tir Tairngire. Tresckow. Hotspur. Orion, the traitor. The damned breeder, Susan Lei! We will have our revenge on them all, even with tusk and claw! Even to drown them in our blood, drag them down with us to death, with all the strength of true metahumanity…the power of the troll. Yet, you will follow us. You will kill the Tir you once served. Those shadowrunners will be mine…"
As the troll's final followers rumbled their assent, hypnotised by the only unshakable conviction they had ever known, Desorn clearly understood that Sharavus was laying a more literal hypnosis upon him. He had no purpose, barely consciousness – stumbling north toward Redding and Tir in his dreams, like a broken machine. Who he would kill, and whether he was free, he no longer cared.
-0-
Old City Hall, Redding, Calfree. 24 May, 2053
After one proper night's sleep, Susan stood in the doorway of City Hall again. Three months felt like a lifetime, not just for her; war crammed every week of waiting with hosts of struggle and fear. There was back-slapping and fist-bumping among the squads coming in from drills or patrols, but one boy's laughter was strained and high. The bar that had done good business in the basement was shuttered, along with other merchants. Practically all the civilian supporters they could never have endured without had been sent off. Marks of the NC assault were plastered over, but what was coming rested heavier than their guns on every Defender of Redding.
Susan stepped into the hall, as if into the ring – already victorious, bringing it home. More than the scattered cheers, it was cheek-splitting joy to hear that Dan's wife and her new baby were fine. Sali had made up with his boyfriend. Jane's training injury hadn't kept her down. Rhoda's eyes were still haunted by that fragged-up NC ambush on the Five, but she was still there. Tomas was gone, but his brother Rick, still there. The shrapnel in Bob Reeder's chest had done nothing to his grin; trolls from Redding were tough twice over.
With a few words, a strong grip and a fearless smile, she spoke to all their unease and the fight that was coming. The unflagging defiance she heard brought hope to her heart; beat down her own painful nub of doubt that remained. Orion had been right. He hadn't had to speak of chummers you couldn't keep from dying, however you tried – they'd all known that pain and fought through it, again and again, to save anyone they could.
Norton was as merrily crazy as ever. Elorn, gloomy as ever, but the brooding elf look obviously worked – he was already one of the gang, and not unadmired by some. Paladin was already giving Ilsa a tragically formal report; a few malcontents had indeed tried for a leadership change in the Runners' absence and promptly been run out of town. Arai and Takahashi were hard at work with the troops, as Sarah had been – Susan had firmly clasped her waist already, grinning in her chummer's massive arms. Then she was sobbing for joy, for Hrafna. The strength in her smile as she joined the crowd.
Then she heard the news that made her snatch up her comm. Harry was outside the hall, reuniting with another party of Defenders, though Susan barely needed a commlink.
"HARRY! WE'RE GOING TO HAVE A FAMILY!"
The commlink was silent. Susan's grin wavered; everyone around her was supressing laughter.
"…Susan, I understand. All this drek going down, anyone could've forgotten a fragging pill…if you want, I mean, I don't, I mean, I want, I'll try, oh frag, frag, frag…!"
"Harry…I meant, it's Pup who's, well, having puppers. Not, er…sorry…"
"Oh. Frag."
It was indeed Pup, the canine companion who had followed them through firefights and firestorms, from Los Angeles to Redding, who very visibly had a bump. She was sprawled out under the back staircase, well-supplied with water and blankets. As well as two bodyguards in the heavy forms of Bummer and Lazarus, who didn't need to growl twice at any incautious Defender who got close. They only tolerated Hrafna, the dogs' principal carer while Susan had been charging all over Calfree. The ork shaman stroked Pup's head and cooed, grinning her tusks off.
"So…novahot. Totally awesome." Hailey's joy was no longer bouncing and childish, after the world had shown her its worst, but heartfelt as ever and grateful. At her side, Sarah's smile was small but brave with hope.
"Indeed, a miracle of nature," Norton spoke with deep satisfaction, "A magic more beauteous than any kenned by mage or crafted by science."
"I can't imagine that this was a miraculous conception, Highness." Ilsa noted. Paladin hid his smile, "I think there's no great question regarding responsibility for this?"
"I do now recall," Norton mused, "That my faithful companions through many adventures, those friends whose indefatigable spirits have revived my own from their lowest ebb, good Bummer and loyal Lazarus, suffered a briefly violent rift in their friendship, perhaps one month ago. You don't suppose...?"
"YES! WHO WON?"
Norton couldn't say. Probably, the dogs themselves couldn't have answered with certainty, but both Bummer and Lazarus were clearly content to protect their mate and her offspring. Very possibly, both of them were the father - canine superfecundation, Ilsa explained, wasn't uncommon. As far as animals could love, which was a fair way, love was all they needed.
Susan watched as Lazarus made a point of pushing Bummer away to nuzzle Pup's ear, then pretended not to notice as she gave the patient Bummer a big lick. Then Pup looked back at Susan, quite expressively.
If you're going to keep running off, her gaze said, and barely manage to give me one pat, when you are around, have you any right to be surprised? I was an independent woman before you took me in. Still am, with a life of my own, as you can see. What the frag have you been doing, anyway, while I've been making new life with my boys? I am prepared to forgive you, and let you share in more joy than I can even put into words...but only if you're very nice.
Patiently, Susan expressed her friendly intentions to Bummer and Lazarus until they let her pass. She spoke softly to Pup, finally reached out, and finally nuzzled the dark, happy head of her dear, brave girl. Tears stood in her eyes.
You fought in a world of blood and steel, so that mothers, children and defenceless people had a defender – or more often, just to pay safehouse rent, keep your chummers alive, and not be weak. It took all your strength, heart and mind. Then it tortured you, if it didn't geek you, when you couldn't be stronger; no more to give. While all you'd fought for and given up passed away, to the lightside world of family meals and dogwalks with kids. Beyond the safehouses and fear, the guilt and killing rage.
Susan thought about Maria and Ana Ortega, back in the Redmond Barrens. The kids she'd played basketball with, kids she'd dragged from BTL dens...it'd been a while. For a while back then, she hadn't known any regular people. Not that Runners weren't regular people, that was the fragging problem – you just lost some drek. As a singing star in the light, she'd drawn close to nobody, except Hailey. She'd been lucky to find a brief home in Colma; insanely lucky to find Harry again. That was why she sat with green recruits after she'd trained them and talked down their fears. Urged on weary volunteers when she was spent; held their hands and carried their tears when they'd been beaten and broken.
Despite her own doubt, worse than any fight, that a Runner and a killer could still be a woman who cared. How many hearts could you punch out, how many useless hours training to kill, before a heart's deepest drek was beyond your shadowed light? Her kids, the Defenders, faced her with cheerful strength – but would they tell her, if they were terrified? Believe her, if she told them she was a failure?
"Hey. Fighter? You chill?"
Hrafna's dark eyes were fixed on hers, over Pup's blissful head.
"…it was a tough Run. Chip truth, it was a frag up."
"That's tough. Even if you never got geeked, or broken, or–" Hrafna gestured at her headband. Sarah loomed above her like a cloud of old pain, "–you know. Might not be enough for a hero like you, but something to appreciate."
"You're right. I fragging tried – but it wasn't enough! If Harry had just tried, when the NCs hit this place..."
"Yeah…but you saved me first." Broken pride and pain laded Hrafna's thanks with weight, "Without throwing a punch. Sat with me and waited, while a war was kicking off outside. I felt like hiding this face in the dark, forever, and it's fragging harder to rise than sink…I guess I had to show you, an ork who'd never killed could fight too."
"We're here only because you tried, Shifu." Sarah knelt down with them, between the hellhounds, "People from Colma, Redding – every fragging place you've fought, since that night you chose to keep fighting – everyone else could keep fighting too. You taught me to fight – I fragging hate how strong you are, sometimes, but you saved me. Don't say what you've done doesn't mean nothing."
"Never – just never forget, you saved yourselves. All I could do was show you the way – I mean, thank you." With a last rub of Pup's ears, Susan got to her feet, "Sarah, how about a spar? Give me all the hate you're got, until you're maybe ten times stronger than me."
"Face like that, you still want to fight?" Sarah shook her head, smile hugely rueful, "Why've you got to be such a fragging hero?"
"Just got to fight, same as all of us. Hrafna, how about learning martial arts?"
"…I'll stick to prayer and meditation."
The three women set off for the training basement. The other gathered Defenders left Pup to rest with her boys and went to make ready for battle in the time they had left.
-0-
"'Going to have a family…'" Harry muttered in Susan's ear, in their hotel bed, "Sure that wasn't on purpose? Like some dumb trideo sitcom…"
Tired from the work that Redding had piled up for them, they'd fallen into bed and made love once. Often, that had been sufficient for them – with frightening suddenness, it wasn't.
"Why would I do that?" Susan tried a grin, "I'm not that jealous of you saving Redding from the NCs when I was gone, or beating the Ghosts with Ilsa, while I got beaten..."
"One more time; you beat an elf who could've geeked Ork Slayer in half a minute. An elf who got that strong as a slave-soldier for the Princes. We're not wageslaves comparing the size of our bonuses; you've saved me too many times for that. If I'm only the strongest man in the world, that's fine."
"…so strong, you're maybe not so scared of kids as you maybe thought?"
"I am not scared. I know I'd frag it up, or this world would. If it was an accident, I'd fragging try, but that's different. Anyway, I should've known better. You'd never have sounded that happy about a baby who was going to take you off the battlefield."
"Excuse me?" Susan sat up in bed, her breasts bare and heaving, "I'd have to leave the fight to Ilsa and Sarah, everyone but me? While daddy charged off to get geeked before his kid got born?"
"I'm not going to die, love. Never…" They both knew it was a lie, "I'd have to go. All our chummers, facing the Tir, I could not let them down. Frag, I got by without a dad. It wasn't fun, but it's better than dead."
"Really? Well, I'm not getting geeked if I can help it. Not leaving a fight to anyone else. Never, no way. It'd my baby…my choice."
"You'd do it, wouldn't you? Walk onto a battlefield, with our kid in your belly. You're a terrifying woman, Susan Lei."
It scared Susan as well, but she had never held back from battle. She could not, not for anyone – she was not weak. Now, her husband who had loved her strength seemed to be looking at a monster.
"…I could…not keep the baby. If there was an accident, if that was what you wanted…frag, I'd think about it…"
"That's not what I want! No!" Harry couldn't think of abortion without a chilled sweat, over what his penniless, abandoned mother had surely had every right to consider.
"Okay…but you don't want kids. Hey, are you sure you don't have a kid or two already? Left behind in Hong Kong, or Seattle?"
It was a nuclear landmine, and Susan knew it. Harry shouted some very ugly things at her. She screamed back through her tears that she was sorry. Harry finally sank down on the floor, beating his palms against his forehead.
"Love, stop! Frag's sake!" Susan caught his wrists, pinned him. Understanding that they could easily kill each other instantly quenched the fight, "I'm sorry! It was stupid…I just think, a man as brave as you, who loves like you? You'd make an novahot dad!"
She'd waited a long time to say it, at the worst possible time. They couldn't just make up, but a lot of lives depended on them both saying sorry and staying silent. They both fell asleep on the floor with the bed between them, powerless to mend with word or touch.
-0-
"We're on the edge." Selene, the quartermaster, told them the next morning, "The edge of battle, the edge of everyone's spirits. We've built all the defences we can; our people have trained as hard as they could. Morale couldn't be much higher. Meaning, it can only go down, when they finally sit and think about what's coming. We're probably going to lose some more people, over the next few days."
"Yes, and many more after that." Arai added gruffly, "Since I have every confidence that our nakama will stand and fight. Even our new corporate allies." At heart, Arai was still a marine; the IJM rated corpsec below the Imperial Army and Navy, Runners, and cyberized guard dogs.
Kei Tonegawa, the corpsec senior officer, was a consummate professional used to dealing with marines. She breathed calming breaths and ignored Arai completely.
"Suit looks good with the shades," Hotspur's smile was too bright and brief, "But could your guys maybe dress down, lose some of the polish? We're trying to let Redding think of you as more mercenaries, not the Megacorps' vanguard."
"Yeah. Suit does look good." Susan wasn't smiling; Harry deliberately looked away. Kei wondered if she'd live long enough to get killed by the Tir.
"The people of Redding aren't fools, Hotspur." Ilsa noted, icy, "As you should be grateful for."
"Certainly, they understand the situation we are in." Paladin inclined his blonde head towards the corpsec officer, "We are grateful for your timely assistance, Tonegawa-san."
"Danke schön, Herr Steiner."
Hotspur and Fighter were professionals too, not moody teens; their apologies were far from mumbled, but without much spirit. Representative of their whole morning.
Ilsa sighed through her teeth. Susan had tried to collar her that morning for advice, which she had given without a wasted breath; it was too late for regrets, and there was no more time. At least one idiot out of two had shown the sense to ask for help; Ilsa was more concerned about Harry, but she couldn't sort out everything.
Couldn't sort out anything she could believe in, that would keep thousands of lives unblasted. Fighter and Hotspur clearly had their own intruding fears for Redding's fate, and suffered them alone. Their eyes were smouldering and pitiful.
Glad that isn't us? Paladin's gaze spoke to her, Perhaps we would have been worse, but I still love you.
We got on well enough, Liebling. Until you had me arrested and almost killed, then asked me to marry you. Still, we'll always have Berlin.
There hadn't been any dramatic bust-up, after their thoughtless tryst in Colma. Without a word the next morning, they'd known it for a mistake. A magnificent mistake, but no way out of the silent web of knowing, that kept them together and apart. Knowing that no one in existence would ever understand her so well as David, but the things she couldn't accept, he would never change. How could that be love? When she was still stupid enough to meet his gaze, and breath within the cool blue of those eyes, what else could it be?
"Why not give our people a pleasant distraction?" Ilsa knew nothing but the battle would have entered her mind, before Redding, "Not only to occupy their minds, but raise their spirits?"
"That sounds...surprisingly practical." She'd have looked a fool, returning Paladin's smile, but Ilsa's heart did give a double beat.
"I was thinking of an event, to acknowledge how far we've come. A shindig, if that's the word? We have DJ Omphalomous briefly as our guest, and a favour owing. Several of Redding's Defenders also have musical accomplishments of note."
"SeeräuberJenny...again? Frag, after all this time...?"
"Susan, when was last time any concern, even a valid one, stopped you from charging in to win? Just hold back some of your frustration, for the Tir."
Susan answered her chummer with a big smile. Harry really grinned to see her happy.
"If I might ask, can you keep synthol out of this party?" Tonegawa raised her hand, "Working on the assumption that we don't want the troops who haven't accidentally shot each other to face Tir's finest with a hangover?"
"What is it with corpers hitting the bottle?"
"We don't get much choice about department socials." This time, Kei rose to Hotspur's jibe, "Networking, bootlicking and guzzling down enough rotgut to bear all that drek. I'm reasonably certain my men could outdrink anyone in this outfit - or the Tir, if we were going settle this with whiskey shots, rather than fight like hell."
Everyone assured the corpsec captain that it was all chill. The SINless and free didn't only have booze to put fire in their hearts and life in their limbs.
-0-
The ones who lived to remember the Night Before the Battle remembered it as such for the rest of their lives – although it was over nearly twenty four hours before the first assault on Shasta Dam. Even when it had to be stretched over a day, so all four shifts of Defenders got their party. Orion - despite his philosophy, in no mood for merriment - remained at the dam throughout, cutting up old touches with Norton. The two elders could probably hold off the Tir alone, for a while – so the other's joked. For one more day, they threw all their efforts into dance and laughter. For all the chummers they'd found and kept this long.
As if by magic, as well as some requisitions, Ilsa filled City Hall with a lightshow of electric blue radiance and purple glows, reflected from fine mist so that more was done to obscure the hall than illuminate it. A stage and basic sound system had been swiftly assembled, under the still-proud Bear-and-Sun flag. They didn't have live-autotune, so Susan played to her strength with dancing. The sight of the female force-of-nature who had taught them to fight, spinning and sashaying through the steps of 'Sky's No Limit', almost raised the roof. The appearance on the dancefloor of Ilsa, grand strategist, dressed for a party and moving as if tomorrow would never come, excited just as loud a reaction.
"Give it up for the heroines of Redding, heroes!" Omphalous yodelled irresistibly from her mix-deck, "Let them hear it in San Francisco! Los Angeles! Tell those drekheads stuck-up-their-own-hoops in Portland!"
The hundreds of fighters packed in and around City Hall let them hear it. They'd come to Redding by many paths – mercenaries, militants, refugees. Simple Californians, who weren't willing to give their scrap of ground up to uncaring powers. Humans and Metas, Reddingites and outsiders, had hard-won the fight against the Native Californians together. There was no one who didn't know that the titans warring over Redding, blindly trampling closer, were incomparable in strength – but for a few hours, no one remembered.
New-forged chummers from Colma and the Valley danced to classic beats they all knew. Old friends from Redding clapped arms to shoulders and bawled out hook-lines they'd never heard. Professional mercs and corpsec, who'd seen nothing quite like it, plunged through the throng thrashing their heads down the bassline. Sarah swayed through it all with her eyes closed, admired from all sides, in her own world of dance; her passion, her real power.
Bottled water was passed out on every door, and most of the dancers still had their guns on shoulders or hip – that was the night it was. Nobody snuck in synthol, or drugs, or dropped a weapon and shot their own hoop off. An order to make ready for battle would have been completed in minutes. Redding's Defenders were nothing so careless and impervious as a police force or military, but a community fighting for its whole existence. Hotspur and Fighter had brought nothing to Redding but their legend and faith; from factions and separatists they had miraculously drawn a movement in their wake. Laughter roared over orks' tusks, beside gleaming elvish smiles, and humans' eyes filled with the same unbearably bright, brief joy.
DJ Omphalous' thrumming tunes and notoriously novahot mixes were far from unsupported. Horatio, Kali's bartender-turned-arms-dealer-turned-bartender, who'd always really wanted to front a band again, played a mean dwarf-size keyboard. Will Casper, the mad shaman-sniper, had unexpectedly taken centre stage. Most of Calfree couldn't get one word in three through the little guy's Yorkie accent, and of course he couldn't sing – but madness had a certain charisma. It transpired that Casper was very good at working a crowd up.
"Hated British Army, an' I hate t' bloody Tir!
Don't give much damn for Uncle Sam, or tha pack of gobshytes here!
Ain't gonna work no SINNer's job, or die for bloody flag,
Live na die, under big blue sky, 'tis only job tha had!
Cough it aaht, loud and strong,
T' immigrants sing, all night long,
Straight ta hell, boys,
Go straight ta hell, boys!"
"SING IN TUNE, THA BASTARDS!" Casper howled to the crowd, pumping his tiny fists.
The crowd sang back louder, laughing in the face of hell. Hrafna – the only girl in the crowd Casper saw, with his hawk's eyes – howled back like a wolf and threw both arms in the air. Her shaman's spirit rose above fear with his.
Takahashi, in a pink dress shirt, and Arai, in a black synleather jacket, were all over each other. Harry and Susan, once she'd left the stage – not so much. Harry told himself he'd find her, tell her again that he was an idiot who loved her, when he'd bumped fists with one more crowd of chummers. Just having so many chummers, being one of the guys, was novahot. This shindig wasn't about Fighter and Hotspur, anyway, Better they join the crowd and let some other couple in Redding be the heroic lovers of everyone else's dreams.
Ironically, he'd found himself in the darkness outside, leaning against a throbbing wall with Paladin and Angel Florez, the Salvadorian sniper. Paladin hadn't really seen Ilsa dance her heart out before; they'd practically had to drag him out, though he still seemed helpless to do more than look. More surprisingly, Angel also transpired to have picked a bad night for a romantic crisis.
Gabriela, his refugee elf talismonger, had finally decided to join Redding's Defenders herself. Angel, younger than Harry, had sanguinely believed that his absolute refusal would settle the matter. Now, his smooth, trideo-idol face was twisted with distress; he'd kept his cool rather better when Orkslayer had stabbed him. Harry knew Angel was a chill chummer and a pro, wished he'd had time to know him better. Though Angel himself had spent all his time knowing and loving the elf who'd captured his heart.
"…called me a silly pig. As if I thought women could not fight!" No one, Hotspur and Paladin agreed, could be that dumb, "Just not her. Not now. Not ever!"
"Chummer," Harry clasped Angel's shoulder, "If the Tir get to Redding, they won't care if the 'traitor' elves they kill have guns or not. Want to protect your girl? Get her out. If you want to go with her, go. You've bled enough."
"Certainly; what does a Runner's rep matter, next to his love?" The irony in Paladin's eyes settled deeply in Hotspur's innards; Angel looked pretty sick, "Is this about protection? I think, if it were, you'd both already be in Seattle."
"…knew you were smart. Just like your woman, but Gabriela…she is the most incredible chica in the world. Better than me in every way. She can run a business, publish research papers, paint beautiful pictures – you know she plays three musical instruments, and writes poetry? I tried to write how I loved her; it was mierda. All I've ever done is kill. Protecting her; all I can do."
"Don't know that all you can do for her, Señor…but we can't be sex objects, can we?" Even Paladin couldn't help matching Harry's grin, "Yeah, love should be enough, but it isn't. We've got to do something…be good enough for them. Chip truth, though, you've got to accept the woman you love as she is. Help her and protect her, if she wants to share what you do. I'd be more worried if Susan didn't…if she wanted to do something that wasn't fighting or Running…?"
Harry fell very thoughtfully silent, while Angel groused that it wasn't so easy.
"Not for Catholics, anyway." Paladin looked even more bitterly thoughtful, "Or any men who impose their own ideals and desires on women…all but wishing in their heart they were married to the Virgin Mary."
"What? What the frag would be the point of that?"
It seemed it really was a Catholic thing; Angel was the one who answered. His words were characterfully warm and passionate, but chilled Harry's heart as they poured from the past's black pit.
"My mother was a good woman, a strong woman. My father was a good man, but a government minister in El Salvador – that means doing bad things. I don't know if he told mamá, but she knew, and I know she forgave him. Then the Azzies came and killed them both, with my brothers and little sister. Then me and my compadres killed many Azzies. Many others. It felt good, back then, thinking that I could rid the world of every godless, devil-slotting Azzie, one day. Watch Tenochtitlan burn…drink dry a whole ocean of blood. I was fifteen; I suppose I had a gift. Even when the hope and the joy went, I felt nothing very much, about killing…until I woke up in the darkness three years later, in a safehouse above a brothel in Lima, and knew I was a murderer, damned to hell. I crawled down, grabbed onto the first girl I saw – she was mestizaje, with hair the colour of sunrise – and I told her every terrible thing I had done. She listened, and she forgave me. Madre de Deo…! So did Gabriela. She was perfect, and she forgave me."
As Susan had forgiven Harry, that night in Hong Kong which his soul, sanity and future had hung from. Harry had looked on hell, guilt and despair, when he had raised a gun to his head; the mere hope of his love's forgiveness had saved him.
"You don't want her to kill." Paladin's voice was flat, "For your own sake, as well as hers."
"Si. I kill for nyuyen – I know I'm going to hell, nothing can change that. But I cannot go on without la voz de mi angel. It is all I ask."
"…hang on, she can't forgive you if she's…killed, like us? No, no, if she knows what you've gone through, what it takes to survive-"
"Can one who hates justice govern, Hotspur?"
"Uh, yes, a cliche of megacorps run the world for profit, and your God seems chill with that? Sorry for saying, but…why?"
"I often wonder," Paladin smiled with frightening patience, "If there is any such thing as justice, however, there must be a God, and He must be absolutely just. Not only forgiveness – the absolute redemption from our pasts we all desire cannot be conferred by a lawbreaker. Nor by any mortal person, but murderers such as we cannot stand before God…and so we still seek, at all costs to them, the forgiveness of women. Even in the Sixth World, some things never change."
"It saved me. She saved me. If a hooker in Lima could do it, why not a killing angel? Why not Susan? If I've got to burn forever because I kill for nyuyen – I let my chummers die, I let her down, again and again! – then she'll forgive me. She'll go with me, herself, and that will be all we need. I know it. She did! Omae, if she loves you like that, if you love her? Accept all of her, as she is, herself! Even if the timing's fragged, even if she doesn't know what she wants, even it scares you more than dragons and death squads…frag, I'm such an idiot."
Harry took off with no more words, pressing through the crowds and searching through the Stygian lightshow. Angel and Paladin followed him, after perhaps a minute of thought and silent prayer.
-0-
The show was winding down to a break, before this crowd caught some sleep and the next watch came back in from the dam, when Rick Moran shuffled onto the stage. He'd never been any kind of performer, his brother Tomas had got all the charisma, but he wanted to do something for his brothers the NCs had killed. To sing Danny Boy, not well, but with a soul's heights and depths of emotion possessing his gravelly ork's voice. The militia who Tomas had led for years wept; everyone remembered and honoured the chummers who'd gone on ahead.
Omphalous smoothly followed up with one of her famous slow numbers. A few Defenders who'd found something like love together held on, swaying as if before a wind. More of them, men and women, silently partnered with any chummer in reach rather than dance alone. Others stood still, thinking on absent partners, lovers, kids. Waiting in their homes for war to fall on them with fire – only close to their fighters through prayers and fears, this close to the plunge.
"How do they look to you? Weak?" Hrafna growled in Casper's ear.
Sitting with her by the wall, and very glad of it, Casper nonetheless wasn't quite mad enough to think Hrafna would shag him because she liked his song, or his answer. Just talking to her once was enough.
"Aye. Weak. T' most of 'em onery folk with guns, still. Not soldiers, nor killers. Dunno what bloody business they reckons to have, marching away for ta get killed."
"The ones that aren't Runners, mercs or anything but humans and metas who want to keep the homes they've found – they're still going to fight. Isn't that something?"
Across the room, Susan had sat down with her newest recruit, Gabriela Mendoza – the splitting image, it happened, of Olga Kurylenko's Hispanic and elvish granddaughter. Older than Angel, she certainly looked more like a supermodel than a soldier, until you looked her in the eye. Susan still might have refused her – she couldn't stop thinking of poor Sandra – except that they needed all the magic and more they could get.
"–though it isn't magic that keeps us alive. Training and a sack of grit, or mages and adepts get geeked like anyone. Chip truth, it'd be better if we had a month."
"One month's training, three months, a few days – it's only my going that can make a difference, am I wrong?" Gabriela lifted her perfect chin, with a firm smile, "I'm not doing this to share or steal my man's work, any more than you. I've never held back before from what I knew I could do and should do – I only prevaricated because of Angel. Did I tell you, I worked for Aztechnology in San Francisco? I had myself extracted before you took them down, of course. I told Angel, after our first time…and he didn't care a bit."
"Boys, huh? I'd say a pretty face gets a lot of forgiveness, but vendettas aren't just revenge, they're hell and stupidity. That boy of yours is a mess, but we all are, and I don't think I need to say–"
"–that he loves me." The glimmer of sorrow and joy in Gabriela's dark eyes told the same story, "He's so romantic. I don't mean guitar-and-roses; he'd do anything for me. It's only hard for him to see that I must do this…"
"And why is that?"
"Why must Tir Tairngire, an expansionist feudal autocracy, and its 'promise' to elvenkind, be fought by elves? Moreover…three months ago, I fled Sacremento, as I fled San Francisco, with little more than the shirt on my back. I saw that many of the metahumans who fled were less fortunate, many other women…I was a research mage, a talismonger, and many of them had horrible ends because I could do nothing. So, I want to protect this city. This place where we can live as we wish, talk with our friends about love, and make a home for our children, one day, that isn't a warzone or a slum. Isn't it the same for you?"
Too dry in the throat to speak, Susan clasped Gabriela's slim arm. Just before Angel pushed his way through the crowd to them, sweat shining on his flawless cheeks, and shouted over the music that he would love everything Gabriela everything did. Then he dropped to his knees, shouted something else – and went sprawling, as Gabriela launched herself from her seat with outstretched arms.
A circle was rapidly cleared as the lovers found their feet, to rapturous cheers. Not simply from romantics – metahumans from Colma, human and meta refugees from the Valley, elves from Redding. The ones who'd been lost too long cheered for what Angel and Gabriela had found. For a twenty minute encore, DJ Omphalous filled the playlist with Latin Hex Chicano songs, and Calfree Chrome Country songs of roads back home.
The space in the crowd meant that Harry, at last, found Susan. She caught his eye, slipped away, and all but sprinted to his second-floor office; more of home than their hotel, they'd worked and loved there so much. Harry met her, gently pushed her against the desk. The music rose through the floor around them, while they hungrily kissed and joined their warmth together.
"Susan, I'm sorry. I love you. I don't get anything else…but we should talk about the future, when this is over, and I'll listen. I won't be afraid."
"Harry…I said some dumb drek myself. We will have to do something that isn't shadowrunning…an army jumping out, as soon as we docked at San Francisco, sort of spelt it out."
"The writing on the wall, for more than a year. I've got some ideas… I just wish we'd had a shot at the Renraku Archology!"
Susan knew the wild hero's shine in Harry's eyes. Unsatiated by worlds of adventure, untarnished by years of blood, shamelessly denying that they would die in hopeless fight against an army, tomorrow or ever. Nothing had bound them to Redding, but Ilsa had found them a place worth fighting for – the thing outcast, SINless heroes needed, for their love and their strength.
Susan knew her eyes were shining the same. There was only a whisper of fear in her heart, because she'd never had so much to lose. She clung to Harry's shoulders; their heartbeats knocked together like fists.
"You took the Pyramid, from the Ghosts of Tir, love. You're going to keep Redding from them, and that's better. When that's done…then we can slot like no tomorrow, but right now, I have a promising recruit to train. A few days, a few words…it could make a difference. It's what we've got to do, now."
"…okay. You know, you've always been a great teacher? You always knew what it was, to struggle and learn at your limits." Susan gnawed Harry's lip with a passionate growl; he kissed her back until she had to shove him off, "…Frag. Okay. When it comes…we'll fight together."
"I could kiss you again, for that, but I daren't. Now, I need to collar Gabby before she thinks of anything else to do before a battle, and then I need to sleep – but first, I need to find Ilsa."
-0-
A few dancers were left, but most of the bodies that had more than filled the hall were gone. No one would dance to exhaustion, tonight, even if it was still in their heart to – Ilsa watched men and women empty their hearts as they embraced beloved chummers one last time. Come through alive. If you die, I'll never forgive you. Don't frag up. Let's go.
Then there were only scattered bottles and rubbish. The remnants of a bloodless battle through nearly a thousand hearts.
"It was an excellent idea, Ilsa," Paladin told her, "To encourage our chummers with this, and make them ready. Wasn't there a grand ball, or something, the night before the great Prussian victory at Waterloo?"
"Oh, David. You always knew just what to say to a girl."
"To you, Ilsa. Sometimes."
Except for those few unforgettable times, Ilsa herself had hardly ever seen Paladin out of his armour and work clothes. The simple white dress shirt he'd found took nothing away from his still magnificent chest and arms. Albeit his jaw looked perhaps slightly hollower than in those most treasured, pain-fenced memories. Those beautiful, natural eyes, faintly exhausted.
"I don't regret that I once asked you to marry me, Ilsa …but it was the wrong thing to ask of you, and I am sorry. I also asked you to leave the Shadows, that were destroying you. I still believe you could have done it."
"That would have destroyed me; it would not have erased my guilt. I have suffered in the Shadows, but I have survived. I spared no effort to destroy myself, for revenge –I became a murderer, a monster, and then the saviour of thousands, because I remained in the Shadows, and did not turn back from what I am. I could have done nothing else; because it was the choice I made."
"Did it bring you joy? Do you feel in yourself that saving lives has redeemed you from guilt?"
"…it cannot." Ilsa's fists shook at her sides, as she stared at the empty hall, "I brought Susan to this place, and all the rest. All these good, simple Kameraden, whom I have led to this brave, hopeless battle and their deaths, for the sake of my own past sins. I have not changed. Yet, I can do nothing else."
"You put too much responsibility on yourself, Ilsa." Paladin couldn't keep his hand from her bare, shaking shoulder, "All these people came here freely, for what they sincerely desire, as did you. I will not press my desires on you, I will respect your choice…but you still have one."
"And you, David? You would never have committed murder, against your conscience, unless for me. All you have done and suffered since then, because of me…"
"For you, Liebchen…but for me. I believed myself that Gruber deserved to die. That the NC fascists we shot in the back when they ran deserved to die, although I cannot recall it without loathing myself, or forget."
Ilsa stared at what she had not seen in two years. Her knight's armour fallen away. The pain of a pure but mortal man, lost in the Shadows, plain on his face.
"I could not protect you in Berlin," David struggled on. "I could never…no. I did not kill without hoping, two years, that one day you would be to me what I wished for. I'm sorry, Ilsa. I confess that I was a fool."
"You loved me. I…did love you, but it wasn't enough." Pale with shock, tears shining behind her glasses, Ilsa squeezed her knight's hand once more, then let go; it was simple to end as a life, "What will you do…if we survive this? Bitte, David, you're too pure to spend more time among Shadows, drek and killing."
"I've hunted down enough ghouls and vampires. I will do something other than killing; if I sin no more, there is nothing that God cannot forgive. What will you do?"
"Kill a great many elves, I hope. Preserve the lives of as many of those gathered here as can be, by any means. After that – who knows? If I can imagine myself redeemed, for all the wrong I've done – regain the assured self-faith I began with, before poisonous damnation – I believe I might do a great deal in the Shadows, and some good."
"Do as you judge right – but may I ask that you chose a future, a reason to live, before the battle? That you will not die, if it can be managed by any means?"
"Liebchen….I will try."
"…if things had been different…?"
"David, these were the roles we were born for. We might return a thousand times, and it would not work…a million, Liebchen, before I could accept it without pain."
Ilsa couldn't watch the man she had loved in vain for so long, walking away. She knew she would never forget him, if she lived to change the Sixth World and see the Eighth.
Susan was with her, when she had dried her eyes, to hold her for as long as she needed. To tell her that she must not die in the battle to come; what Susan knew she still needed to hear.
In the upper-floor comms room, Hailey was with Elorn. The elf had listened as she spoke about Whiteknight, the Pyramid and Anya. Held her in silence, as she wept it out.
"…I seriously needed that. Like, thanks. It was like you accepted all the horrors, all my drek…you didn't even have to say a word. Just being with you is, like, so chill."
"It's nothing. Even if the world seems mostly drek, there's no reason not to care. Hailey…when this is over, do you really want to keep Running…?"
"Oh, yes. Very much. Starting out, I had, like, no clue what it took, what was out there. I got shot, dumpshocked, almost brain-fried, shamed, and just when I thought my first year had been the worst…but I had the best chummers, the best ever. With them, I could learn and survive. Keep on swinging, thanks to them."
"Keep smiling. I could never understand how you could smile so much." Hailey smiled, bewitchingly, shifting on Elorn's lap, "Er, I mean, if you ever need another chummer, someone to be there and listen–"
"–or, you know, do this?"
Hailey kissed Elorn's lips. Her slender form sank into his lean, muscled frame. It was more than he could do with the physical, simple moment not to answer in kind. Wrap his arms tighter round her, until she started to pull his jacket off.
"Uh, Hailey…why are you doing this? We barely know each other."
"You know me; I know you listened. I know you're sweet and brave –like, you're got more sense than me – and you're, well, sort of smoking novahot. You could talk a bit more, you could smile a bit more, and you could have some fun for one night only with a certain very svelte, very keen young genius decker…?"
"You could talk for Calfree, anyway. You're beautiful…but is it that simple, am I enough…?"
"Enough for tonight. I've, like, had it with complex and painful. I've still got the hardest battle of my life coming, and I just want to make real love, once, with you."
"Is it real love…?" But Elorn's willpower had run out. His hands swept down her burning sides as he kissed her neck, and Hailey laughed out that it was, it totally was.
-0-
Tir Tairngire, Calfree border. 28 May 2053
Twenty hours after DJ Omphalous and her crew had lit out of Redding for the NAN, fifteen minutes before the off, PFC Roth was comm-calling his fiancé. He called her every day, almost without fail – several of his squadmates had an idea how needfully.
Four years ago, her foster-parents had stumbled over a hologram on a newsfeed. A sixteen-year-old girl, thin and small enough to be fourteen, as if eaten from within by the monsters in her eyes. A street gang had imprisoned and abused her for over a year to make BTL chips for sadists. She'd only outlived the elves who died for their beauty every day in every human city, or between them, because she'd had a particular sensitivity to pain and degradation that her captors had nurtured like artisans. When Roth considered that she was still being sold in a chip, on the streets of Seattle, he could only calm himself with the knowledge that those streets would be a plain one day. Fertilised with the blood of four million monsters.
The strength of his passions scared him, sometimes, but it was only truth. His newsfeed, his school, his friends, had always confirmed that the human nations were so many poisonous Mordors of hate and corruption. The Native Californians were only the froth on a black flood, poised to drown the light of elfkind if it got a single chance.
His fiancé's parents had wanted to get out of their soulless megacorp jobs; staring at that hologram, they'd realised they had to. They'd fled to Tir Tairngire's woods with their silent daughter. After four years of magical therapy and patient care, she had a small, well reviewed art gallery in Portland, and her parents were the happiest people Roth had ever known. You didn't need cities of miserable, vicious consumers to uphold the paradise of a few bloated Corpers. You only needed the few who understood what really mattered in life, a safe place for them to love and be beautiful. And somebody prepared to eliminate any threat to their Eden.
"Be careful, my love," She was telling him again, "Just…please come back. If, if, if you didn't, I don't know if I…"
"I should be with you. Tech, I was mad to volunteer."
"It was your path. Your vocation and desire – I truly couldn't have borne it if I'd held you back. I'm so troublesome, aren't I?"
"Because you are beautiful. Te-belet serathilion."
"Oh…darling. Imo medaron co versakhan."
Be death to my enemies; no words at that moment could have given Roth more joy. He had never taken a life, in common with hundreds of his comrades packed into concrete barracks along the Calfree border, but he could believe he would be good at it. Good as the nobles and senior officers, set apart in their well-appointed wooden cabins, trained from birth to kill with class and efficiency.
So would all of the Peace Force elves now comm-scrolling on their bunks, grousing about months of waiting or comm-calling their loved ones – someone down the way with a guitar was strumming a popular tune. They'd all learnt that elves were a warrior race. Even without Roth's personal knowledge, they knew that celenits, goronots and winegs were enemies of their way of life and their families. They were eager to take North Calfee and stay as long as it took to keep it. Protect the peace of the settlers when they moved in. Not truly for the nyuyen and glory, but in faith that Tir Tairngire, land of the elves, had a right to be.
"…only remember…not every one of the celenits is evil." The words were painful, but they came, "It was a human woman, an adept, who saved me."
"…no, it was your parents who saved you. It was Tir Tairngire. We have to do this, now…but I promise, one day, I will save you too."
"Save me, now, my hero. Then come back to me."
After the call, Roth went to his bunk – before he could shed his armour, the klaxon sounded. He leapt to his feet; in the same green milspec kelvar, Woodward and Yancey rose beside him.
"Three tech months, and five minutes before end of watch!" Woodward laughed, "See you on the other side, brothers."
All three clasped hands, then all three rushed out, into a river of green uniforms and exquisite eyes. Like parts in an unnaturally rapid and intricate machine, Steyr AUG rifles were thrust to one elf, then the next, and the next. Mana crackled over a thousand slim sets of fingers, flexing. Ten thousand combat helmets and ballistic masks hid elvish ears and lustrous hair. Feet swiftly running, as they'd practised until they dreamt of it, towards the landing fields and rank after rank of transport rotorcraft.
Their squad was in the first wave. Packed into their thunder-shook plasteel box of soldiers, Woodward, Roth and Yancey passed over razorwire and sentry towers, then the forests rolling down to Shasta Dam. Their captain stood between the seated rows, hanging from a strap; in noble Mid-Atlantic diction, he exhorted them to kill. The scar that had split his perfect cheek in '37 seemed to glare through the gloom.
"Time to fight, boys and girls! Keep your eyes quick, hit the ground even quicker! Shoot straight, shoot anything with a weapon, anything that could have a weapon, or corrupt, unelvish magic! If you see any goronagit traitor, shoot him through the head before he stabs you in the back! You are elves of Tir, worth a thousand goronits, every one of you. Prove that it is so, and there is a glorious future promised to you! Vereb'he! If you just don't frag up and die to these dogs!"
Now, the rotorcraft was hovering in place. Clouds of fire burst through the night outside, outlined the hatch they would pass through within seconds, like the door of an oven. Howls and screams, faint through his helmet noise dampers, still reached Roth's ears even as bullets pattered off the hull against his back.
The hatch dropped, with a gust from hell. In order, mechanically swift, elves rappelled down into the forest and the screaming night.