Necroepilogos

Victoria was alone in Pheiri’s control cockpit, watching her friends come home.

“What do you think, hey?” she said. Her voice was blurred by the close and claustrophobic static of the storm — a rumbling murmur even inside Pheiri’s hull, far within the walls of the tomb, buried deep underground. Distant creakings and groanings sang a reply to the howling wind outside. “They’re taking the exact same route back, right? Drones up front for a vanguard, nice wide spread. What do you reckon, fifteen minutes?”

A screen lit up down by her right elbow. Glowing green text flickered in the electric gloom.

>20:00

Victoria clucked her tongue. “Oooh, I dunno about that. Twenty minutes, really? They’ve been on the move for almost thirty minutes already. Elpi’s got them hustling fast, making good progress. And that last stretch is all wide open corridors, right? Nah, come on. Fifteen minutes.”

The green text refreshed.

>20:00

“Well, you would know better than me.” Vicky was not exaggerating; Pheiri was Pheiri, with all his sensors and his processing power, while Vicky had only rough location pings, indicated by blinking green lights on a tiny steel-glass screen set into the communication console. “But I’m confident,” she said. “Fifteen minutes. Are you confident enough to bet against that number, Pheiri?”

>y

“So, what do we wager?”

>accuracy

“Ahhhhh. Bragging rights. Honour. The satisfaction of ‘I-told-you-so’.”

>y

“Didn’t know you went in for that kind of thing. Not the sort of wager I’d usually risk. Certainly not against Kaga, she’d be insufferable if she won … ”

The glowing green text held steady.

“You’re on,” she finished. “Fifteen minutes. I’ll trust you to keep count, of course.”

>20:00 … 19:59 … 19:58 …

Vicky took a deep breath, let out an equally deep sigh, and leaned back her seat with a creak of metal.

She was sat in what she had begun to think of as the ‘comms seat’ — the battered old chair perched before the bank of consoles which served as a crew interface for Pheiri’s communications array. Technically there was no need to sit directly in front of the comms console itself; Vicky could have set herself up in any seat she liked. Some of the chairs toward the rear of the cockpit boasted significantly more stuffing left in their backrests and arms; she could have forgone the rolled up t-shirt pressed into the base of her spine or the spare coat folded beneath her backside. Pheiri would happily flash any information she needed onto any of his dozens of screens, with nothing more required of her than a vocal request. If she needed to talk to the fireteam — Elpida, Kagami, Atyle, Hafina, and Ilyusha — she need only speak out loud; Pheiri’s pickup and broadcast equipment would render her voice in perfect clarity even from halfway across the room.

But Victoria refused to sit back and wait; she had enough of that in the GLR 18th Infantry — ‘hurry up and wait’ was the watchword and joke of all old soldiers, and Victoria had been an old soldier for much, much longer than she’d been undead.

She had spent most of her time over the last few weeks familiarising herself with every part of Pheiri she could reach, which meant pretty much everything above the tunnels of the engineering deck beneath her feet, where only Melyn’s tiny android body could fit. Victoria longed to see Pheiri’s nuclear heart and the baroque complexity of his engines for herself, so she might do what she could for the worn and aged components of his main drivetrain; but she had to trust in Melyn’s slender little hands for that job, and the miracle of Thirteen Arcadia’s grey nanomachine sludge.

Instead, Vicky had crawled into hidden compartments all along Pheiri’s spinal corridor, opening new rooms and spaces which had gone lightless and unused for hundreds of years. She had contorted herself and wormed her way upward into the sponson-chambers and armour-bulges of Pheiri’s many guns, to count and catalogue and check on his systems, to oil and grease and wipe clean his ageing servo-motors and ammunition feeds. She had spent entire days up there, wriggling back and forth with tins of lubricant and a heavy tool belt, doing maintenance on a machine more complex than any artillery piece she’d known in life. She had even inspected much of Pheiri’s exterior armour, accompanied by Hafina and Serin, protected by Pheiri’s heavy guns; she had searched for cracks and flaws and breaches in Pheiri’s bony white shell, though she could do little to heal those wounds. Pheiri’s skin repaired itself, given enough time and nano-sludge.

She’d learned how to operate the comms system — or at least enough of it to participate. She’d set up a recurring tight-beam ping to Hafina’s on-board radio and Elpida’s headset, to keep her and Pheiri updated on the group’s progress back toward safety and home. Not that Pheiri couldn’t have done that himself, or flashed the information up on a screen at Vicky’s request. Technically any manual operation of Pheiri’s control cockpit was pointless. Learning what the buttons and switches and displays did was a waste of time. Her input was duplicated work; Pheiri could do it all himself with nothing but a thought.

But it was wrong to expect Pheiri to do it alone. So Victoria had a little display all to herself, lit up with green text showing estimated distances and automatic ping returns. Hafina and Elpida were moving fast, well within ten feet of each other. The drones were in a ring, shown as auxiliary pings in contact with Pheiri’s on-board IFF sensors.

Kagami had refused the ping set-up, of course, because why not?

Vicky lifted her gaze to the screens above the comms console.

A dozen of Pheiri’s displays showed exterior views, from out beyond the hull — high angle panoramas from up on his turret, past the bristling guns of his armour; low tight-range sights from the rear of his ramp or down his sides, watching the floors for signs of hidden movement; infra-red, night-vision, and powerful magnification peering into every corner and crevice, sweeping back and forth across the yawning metallic darkness of the tomb.

Pheiri was currently burrowed deep into the second subterranean layer of the tomb. He was stopped toward the rear of a massive chamber of grey metal, which dwarfed even his substantial size. There were four ways in and out of the chamber — one to Pheiri’s rear, one in front, and one on either side, all covered by plenty of Pheiri’s guns. On the left hand side of the chamber, between Pheiri and the wall, corpses lay stacked in rows — the remains of Lykke’s group of revenants who had slipped past Pheiri and raced for the gravekeeper. The corpses were too numerous to process all at once, or to cram inside Pheiri in the meantime, so there they lay. Vicky tried not to look at them too often.

Getting down here had been simple enough. The grey metal passageways of the subterranean levels appeared to be built for vehicles, equipped with ramps and wide corridors, not at all like the tight spaces of the upper layers. But this was as far as Pheiri could reach, at least without blasting holes through the tomb’s innards; up ahead the corridors narrowed into twisty little tunnels, as if to restrict access to the gravekeeper’s chamber.

Pheiri didn’t need anybody to watch his cameras. Pheiri had every angle covered, everything under control. If a bunch of zombies shambled around a corner and tried to pop him in the flank with an anti-tank weapon, he would jerk out of the way or flash-start his shields or flatten them with a cannon round, all long before Victoria could shout a warning or press a button. The danger would be over and gone before she had time to clench.

But she didn’t like to leave the old boy all by himself. He deserved some company on watch.

It wasn’t just that, but Victoria tried not to think too hard about the other part.

Pheiri was alert to any sign of Necromancer activity, of course. His detection could not be fooled and his firepower could not be overcome. If this ‘Lykke’ bitch came back, she wouldn't stand a chance. Pheiri was immune to Necromancer bullshit and his guns would reduce her to paste, no matter how many times she reconstituted herself from the walls — which was apparently a real possibility, according to Cyneswith. But the fireteam out beyond the hull had far less protection, only Kagami’s drones, Hafina’s immunity to Necromancer paralysis, and Elpida’s trump card, Howl.

Victoria dealt with anxiety the same as she had in life — watching the skies for incoming counter-battery fire.

Besides, she wanted to keep a personal eye on Shilu.

Pheiri had several screens dedicated to Shilu. He kept the ‘Necromancer’ painted with half a dozen weapon systems, highlighting her black metal body in reds and purples and night-vision greens, pinning her in the centre of targeting reticles and predicted blast radii. If Shilu so much as sneezed wrong, Pheiri could turn the entire front half of the chamber into molten slag.

But Shilu did not sneeze. Shilu did not twitch. Shilu did nothing. Shilu sat there crossed-legged, hands on her knees, eyes closed. She had done nothing but sit there since Elpida had asked her to wait.

“You keep her covered, boss,” Vicky muttered. “Keep those eyes peeled real good. Dammit, I wish she would move. Adjust a leg. Scratch her nose. Let out a fart.”

>y

Victoria tugged her armoured coat tighter around her shoulders. She wasn’t cold; the chill was all in her head, brought on by the hurricane, deepened by the incessant creaking and groaning of the tomb structure. She couldn’t see anything through Pheiri’s tiny steel-glass slit up in the top right of the control cockpit, but she glanced up anyway, then chuckled at herself. As if she could look outdoors and watch the rain.

At least they had plenty of spare clothes now, enough grey tomb-grown gear to go around a dozen times over, currently packed into Pheiri’s storage racks.

In fact, Vicky and her comrades now had more equipment than they knew what to do with — guns and body armour stacked up in the crew compartment, bullets galore in buckets and bins, weapon grease and grenades and boots and helmets, more than they could ever use, all from this one tomb’s armoury.

Vicky knew the task of sorting and stowing much of that equipment would fall on her shoulders; after all, she’d learned more about Pheiri’s compartments over the last few weeks than anybody else among her comrades, with the possible exception of Melyn. She’d end up more quartermaster than mechanic. Amina would help, she was always eager. Ooni too, she was a fast learner and all smiles these days. Maybe she could bully Pira into assisting, too. Kagami, of course, would not deign to lend her drones for the mere task of lugging firearms about.

And meanwhile? Hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait. Don’t dawdle, old soldier, hurry yourself up now — then wait for orders.

Vicky sighed.

Screens flickered and hummed in the electric gloom. Hurricane static hissed and buzzed against the far-away walls of the tomb. Vicky leaned back, her chair creaking again, an imitation of the black metal beneath the howling storm-winds.

She peered at the screen which showed Pheiri’s assessment of the storm — wind speeds and rainfall and the like — but none of the numbers looked any different to five minutes ago. She lifted a headset to one ear and reviewed the audio logs of sounds picked up inside the tomb — zombies scurrying about, a few snatches of unintelligible words, nothing important. She checked on Iriko again via the tight-beam, and received something like a snore in reply. That made her smile, so she checked on Hope as well, searching the skies with the comms array. But Thirteen Arcadia’s pseudo-satellite child was hiding well beyond the edge of the hurricane.

Vicky waited, watching the darkness, watching Shilu, listening to the storm. On watch with Pheiri. A good way to pass her unlife.

Elpida’s fireteam reached the chamber a little while later. Victoria saw the direct tight-beam uplink to Pheiri, chattering on the console before her — Elpida, letting Pheiri know that the figures about to round the corner were just her and Kagami and the rest, not some random zombies blundering through the tomb. Vicky watched as the little team scurried out of the corridors and hurried across the wide chamber, flanked and guarded by Kagami’s bulky new drones, all picked out in pale night-vision greens and ghostly whites. Elpida’s head was high, eyes flickering back and forth to make sure the others got aboard safely. Hafina carried Kagami. How very cosy for the Princess.

Vicky felt Pheiri’s crew access ramp descend with a thump, then watched the tiny low-light figures scurry upward and squeeze inside. A moment later the ramp closed with a matching clank of metal.

“Everyone’s back in one piece, right?” she asked out loud.

>y

“Good to know.”

Victoria did not leap out of her seat and hurry down the spinal corridor to welcome Kagami home. That would not earn Vicky a warm reception, let alone a coquettish hug and a chaste peck on the cheek. Getting a hug out of Kagami was like trying to take a wild cat for a walk. A kiss? They hadn’t kissed since that night Victoria had told Kagami the truth. If Kaga wanted to continue their earlier conversation, she would probably try later on, in her usual circuitous fashion. She’d doubtless call Victoria over to the lab in some roundabout way, or probably badger her about the storage space for the new drones, then insult her several times and stomp off again. Until then, Kaga would flare her spikes to keep Victoria off.

Hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait. Even when it came to Princesses from the Moon. Hurry up! And wait.

Besides, Pheiri still needed somebody to watch the cameras, and nobody had turned up to take over.

“Wait a sec, who won?” Vicky asked. “How long was that?”

>17:32

“ … ha! What does that count as then? Your win by two seconds?”

>draw

“You sure? You were right, Pheiri. They were closer to twenty minutes than fifteen. You sure you don’t want to claim the win?”

>y

“Well, have it your way. Mister gracious in victory.”

>y

Victoria leaned back again; the chair let out a satisfying creak of old metal. Perhaps she should putter about with some grease and scrap, see if she could shore up these seats a bit. Or perhaps she should turn back to the project laid out on the floor behind her. With the others safely back home, the knot in her stomach was loosening up. She could afford to spare attention for other tasks.

She ran her eyes across the exterior views one more time. Shilu, unmoving. The dark corridors of the tomb, shadowy and grey. Pheiri’s exterior hull, pitted by darkness and divots, bristling with guns and dim red warning lights. Serin, still perched up front, still watching Shilu. Vicky always had trouble talking to Serin, and enduring her weird mushroomy smell, but she still wished the woman would come inside.

Victoria sighed and turned in the seat. She could get back to the project now. This weapon wouldn’t finish maintaining itself—

A familiar figure stepped from Pheiri’s spinal corridor and into the cockpit — Kagami.

Or rather, Kagami floated into the cockpit with her socks a couple of inches off the floor, her back reclined just enough to make it clear that she was not walking. Two silver-grey drones hovered at her shoulders, doing the heavy lifting so beneath her lofty station, supporting her with an invisible gravity-field. Three more drones orbited her in a tight formation.

Vicky raised her eyebrows. “Hey you.”

Kagami looked rather rumpled inside her own armoured coat, too large for her slender body. Her long black hair was swept back as if she’d been raking her hands through it repeatedly. Her eyes were too wide with tension, still wired from the trip beyond the hull. Her usual imperious bearing was buckled beneath an invisible weight.

Kagami sighed and rolled her eyes. “‘Hey you’?” she echoed. “What kind of welcome is that? I’ve just spent the last hour — or more! — traipsing through this insane death-trap machine, wondering when our glorious leader is going to demand that somebody shoot her in the head again. Is that all you can manage? ‘Hey you’?”

Victoria sighed and smiled at the same time. “Welcome home, Moon Princess. Should I run you a bath?”

Kagami snorted and rolled her eyes again. “Mockery will get you nowhere.”

“Kaga, I’m glad you’re back safe. And stop doing that with your eyes, you’re gonna hurt yourself.”

“Doing what with my eyes?” Kagami squinted. “What are you talking about?”

“Rolling them. Yeah, that. Like that. Exactly that, what you just did right there.”

Kagami clenched her jaw. Victoria braced for the next stage of the process. She had learned through bitter experience that Kagami followed embarrassment with sharp-tongued rebuke. The hotter the embarrassment, the heavier the barrage of insults, until Kagami hit a buffer overflow and regressed back to calling everyone ‘dirt-eating primitives’. Victoria had been unable to resist their little exchange over the radio earlier, but here was the butcher’s bill coming due.

But then Kagami just said: “Come with me to the lab.”

Vicky blinked. “What?”

Kagami huffed. “I said, come with me to the lab. Are you having trouble with language now? Is our translation software breaking down? Because I am not going to learn pre-NorAm English. You’ll have to learn Luna, and your accent will be terrible.”

“Uh, no, I’m just surprised.” A smile crept across Vicky’s face. Was Kagami trying to be forward? Had the fear and separation of the expedition into the tomb made her want to go somewhere private together and cuddle? Victoria forced herself not to smile too hard; if Kagami was finally reaching out for interpersonal comfort, Vicky needed to take this seriously. “I’m flattered you want me alone, Kaga, but somebody needs to stay here and watch the screens, you know?”

“Come with me to the lab,” Kagami snapped.

Vicky opened her mouth to play along again, but then realised that Kagami was not flirting. She was furious and furtive.

“ … Kaga, what’s wrong? Everyone came back in one piece, right? Did something happen?”

“Come with me. To the lab. How many times am I going to have to repeat this?”

“Kagami—”

“Come with me to the lab.”

“Ka—”

Kagami shouted. “Come with me to the lab!”

Vicky spread her hands. “Why?”

“Just do it!”

“No!”

Victoria had not intended to shout back, but she did. Kagami flinched. Two of her drones jerked forward as if to protect her, but then quickly dipped back downward.

Vicky swallowed, then took a deep breath. She did not want to lose her temper with Kagami. She had promised herself she would not do so again, not since that terrible screaming match several weeks ago; she could barely recall the substance of that argument now, it all seemed very foggy in her memory. The argument had happened when everybody had been going mad with hunger without knowing it, overcome with a need to eat that crushed all other thought and made anger quick and sharp. When Elpida had gone out to hunt and brought back fresh meat, the irritable fog had lifted as if it had never been felt. Vicky never wanted to feel that again.

“Sorry,” she muttered. “Sorry, Kaga, I didn’t mean to snap, I just—”

“Why not?” Kagami said, softer but still irritated.

“Why not snap?”

“No,” Kagami sighed. “Why won’t you come with me?”

Victoria didn’t answer right away. Something was wrong with Kagami — more wrong than all the usual things which were wrong with Kagami. Was she embarrassed by the request for alone time with Vicky? Or was this an extension of the earlier jealousy, now taking some side-route that Victoria didn’t recognise? Or had something terrible happened out there in the tomb, something which nobody was telling her? Pheiri hadn’t picked up anything strange, and he would not keep silly secrets.

Vicky leaned sideways in her chair to peer around Kagami, into the jumble of systems and kinking corners which formed Pheiri’s spinal corridor. Nobody was lurking behind Kagami or blundering down through the passageway. The distant fury of the hurricane blotted out most small noises, but she would have heard the approach of another pair of feet, unless Amina was sneaking around.

“Nobody’s behind you,” Vicky said. “We’re totally alone right now. If you want to talk, we can talk right here.” She gestured at the screens which surrounded the comms console. “And I’m serious about being on duty. Unless this is an emergency, somebody needs to stay here and watch. Look, I’m happy to come with you if you call somebody to replace me. Ooni should be free. Go get her and I’ll come anywhere you want.”

Kagami sighed, began to roll her eyes, then stopped. “Victoria, I think Pheiri is perfectly capable of watching the inside of his own eyeballs.”

“Yeah, sure,” Vicky said. “But I’m on duty. Come on, you can sit down right here. You wanna talk?”

“Not particularly.”

Victoria swallowed a sigh. Kagami pursed her lips harder and harder, then—

“Fine!” she spat. “Fine. Fine. We’re going to do it like this? Fine.”

Kagami floated closer, but did not take a seat. Instead she reclined against the invisible support of her drones, one on either side of her back, until she assumed a sitting position in mid-air.

“Wow,” Vicky said.

Kaga scowled. “What?”

“Nothing, nothing. Just you, sitting on a throne of thin air.”

Kagami huffed again and cast her eyes around the inside of the control cockpit, squinting at the views of Pheiri’s exterior on the displays. Her eyes paused on Shilu briefly, then carried on down to the comms console.

“Is this what you’ve been doing the whole time?” she asked. “Sitting here and watching the cameras?”

“Somebody’s gotta do it. It’s not that different to your drones, you know?”

Kagami sighed. She closed her eyes briefly. Victoria would have assumed she was counting to ten, but Victoria knew full well Kagami never attempted to control her anger.

“I’m not trying to be insulting,” Kagami said. “And no, actually, as I just explained, this is entirely unnecessary. Nobody has ‘gotta do it’. You’re not earning karma or good girl points or washing away your sins by sitting on watch when Pheiri is doing it anyway. This is self-flagellation, Victoria. I had hoped you were less primitive than this.”

Vicky laughed and shook her head. “Bullshit. I like helping. I like doing this. It feels good.”

“Yes, yes. Whatever.” Kagami glanced around the cockpit again, into the electric shadows and the distant rumble of the storm beyond. A particularly loud creaking sound reverberated through the black metal of the tomb. Kagami attempted to suppress a shudder, but she didn’t do a very good job of it.

After a moment, Vicky said: “How are the others?”

“Fine.”

“As in, did the return journey—”

“It was fine.”

Vicky waited a beat. “Kaga—”

“Hafina is stripping off her armour. Atyle went to stare at the wounded newbie again, which is creepy and weird and I hate it. Ilyusha is probably gnawing on a leg bone. Elpida is … busy.”

“Thank you,” Vicky said. “That’s all I was asking for. Did you look in on the newbies at all? I haven’t had a chance for a while now.”

“Mm,” Kagami grunted. She didn’t meet Vicky’s eyes, but this subject finally drew some of her poison. Her voice softened. “Eseld’s still mute, won’t respond to anything. She’s eaten a few mouthfuls of meat though. Sky’s unconscious — in the ‘good way’, as Melyn put it. Cyneswith stares at everybody like we’ve all stepped from the pages of a fantasy sim. Which I do not like. She called me ‘My Lady’.”

“Yeeeeeah,” Vicky said. “She’s gonna struggle. I’ve tried to talk to her too, but she’s pretty wilful about her world-view, if you know what I mean.”

“Mm.”

Hurricane static settled into the cockpit — sheets of distant rain, the drum of hailstones on metal, the howling of the wind and the creaking of the tomb. Vicky looked at the exterior screens again, taking note of Shilu’s position and checking the entrances to the chamber. Kagami sighed, long and low. Vicky closed her eyes for a moment. This was almost nice, just sitting here in the quiet alongside Kagami, secure together inside Pheiri while the wind and the rain howled on and on outdoors. Perhaps she really should ask Ooni to come take over on watch. Victoria would very much like to snuggle down in Kagami’s lab together, maybe take a nap.

“At least that weird roaring noise has stopped,” she muttered. “Stopped about the time you started on your way back to Pheiri. Maybe whatever was making it just wandered off. Here’s to hoping.”

“Mmhmm,” Kagami grunted.

“I saw a hurricane once before,” Vicky went on. “Back in life, I mean. The remains of one, I guess. South of New York a ways. We were pitched up in—”

“What’s that?” Kagami said, voice peaking with disdain.

Vicky opened her eyes and looked round.

Kagami was pointing at the floor behind Vicky’s chair, where the disassembled weapon was laid out on the metal. Black tubes and boxes lay separated, unrecognisable as parts of their combined form.

“Ah, that’s my little treat, to myself. I was in the middle of checking all the parts.” Vicky cracked a grin. “Wanna see?”

“See what?”

Vicky turned her seat around and bent down. She picked up the bulky receiver first, then slotted the long, ridged barrel into place, followed by the trigger mechanism, rear grip, and top-mounted carrying handle. She slapped the three parts of the drum-mag back together and clicked it home underneath. She folded out the stock and slid the forward grip into position. Then she finally lifted the optical sight and targeting computer, laid them into the armoured slot in the forward part of the receiver, and locked them in place.

She hefted the weapon, about fifteen pounds of lightweight alloys and hardened polymers, as thick as her arm and over three feet long.

She struck a pose. “Well? What do you think? Does it suit me?”

Kagami shrugged. “My knowledge of primitive weaponry is rather limited.”

“Huh!” Victoria laughed. “Primitive weaponry? Moon Princess, I could knock one of your drones out mid-flight with this baby, trust me on that.”

Kagami rolled her eyes. “No, you could not. Don’t exaggerate. What is it, ECM of some kind?”

“AGL.”

Kagami shrugged again.

“Automatic grenade launcher.”

Kagami’s eyes widened beneath the creases of a concerned frown. “That’s a joke.”

“Nope, no joke. Genuine article. I really could probably knock out one of your drones mid-flight, given enough range and a few seconds to get a reading with the sights. I could pop a round through a six-inch bunker slit in half a second, that’s also not a joke. Hey, come on, don’t look at me like that. This is my one personal claim from the armoury haul.”

Kagami hissed, “And you’ve brought it in here, inside Pheiri, into the cockpit?!”

“ … Kaga, it’s not loaded.”

Kagami threw up both hands. “Fine, fine—”

“If you don’t trust me with anything else, you can damn well trust me with ammunition and explosive safety. The rounds are stored in the armoured pocket on Pheiri’s rear, they’re not even inside his hull. I’m not stupid, thank you.”

“Fine! Fine. Alright!” Kagami paused to huff. “Luna’s soil, Victoria. When are you ever going to have a need for that?”

“Hey, it’s got a perfectly legitimate combat use. If we ever need to dig some zombies out of a trench or blast apart some cover, I’ve got us sorted.”

“We have Pheiri’s guns for that!” Kagami jabbed a finger at the AGL. “That thing is a fetish, nothing more. Admit it.”

“Maybe.” Vicky sighed. She patted the chunky barrel. “It’s the closest thing I’m ever gonna get to firing an artillery piece ever again, that’s for sure.”

Kagami opened her mouth, then closed it again. She sighed through her nose.

Victoria went on: “Honestly, hey, I’m surprised you didn’t recognise this.” She laid the AGL across her thighs, then detached the sight. She pressed one eye to the rubber socket and pointed the detached optical at Kagami’s scowl. The on-board targeting computer attempted to calculate trajectory and firing arc for the tip of Kagami’s neat little nose.

After a few moments it gave up and threw an error: DANGER CLOSE DO NOT FIRE.

Kagami squinted, face framed in miniature inside the sight. “What? What are you going on about now?”

“AGL,” Victoria said. “You used to command troops down on the surface, right? This stuff is like, standard equipment for any decently heavy infantry formation.” She lowered the sight again and looked down at the ridged barrel of the grenade launcher. “I don’t mean this exact model or anything. Hell, I don’t recognise this one either, probably comes from hundreds or thousands of years after either of us. Looks kinda like a QLZ, I guess, but much lighter. Alloys are less dense. More polymer parts. Future science, I guess. The rounds felt pretty light too, but I’m not gonna test them inside the tomb. Anyway, I mean the general principle. Crew-served weapons in a heavy infantry formation. Squad-level organic firepower, all that. It’s no artillery regiment, but … Kaga?”

Kagami was just staring, blank-faced and unimpressed. “My surface agents were generally armed with more advanced systems.”

Vicky laughed. “More advanced systems,” she echoed with a smile. “Come on, you can’t beat a good explosion. It’s not quite the same as an artillery barrage, but holding one of these and doing it yourself, it feels great. Here.” She sat up straight and raised the weapon to her shoulder, angling it upward as if about to fire, trying to keep the smirk off her face. “Where I came from, they used to say that firing one of these is a religious experience.”

Kagami frowned, incredulous. “What? Don’t talk nonsense.”

“Yeah, serious.” Vicky struggled to keep a straight face. “First you hear budda-budda-budda.” She jerked the grenade launcher as if firing. “Then, you see the light.”

Kagami rolled her eyes with a great and terrible huff. Victoria started laughing.

“That was atrocious,” Kagami said.

“Come on, Kaga! You gotta admit, that was a good one. I had you going there for a sec. The joke doesn’t quite work the same though, ‘cos the ones we had were belt-fed. Old Empire shit. They really did make a sound like that, budda-budda-budda. Scary if you’re on the receiving end.”

Kagami threw up both hands. “Your people weren’t Buddhists! It’s a shit joke!”

Victoria shrugged. “I knew a few Buddhists in the GLR. Don’t be such a closed-minded Lunarian, hey. You had Buddhists on the moon?”

“That gun is absurd and you have no need for it.”

Victoria lowered the launcher again. “I wish you’d go armed, Kaga. When you go out, beyond the hull, I mean. It’s not like we’re short on guns now. Take a pistol, a sidearm, anything. Just shove it in a pocket and forget about it unless you need it. Please?”

Kagami frowned, then gestured at one of her drones, hovering a couple of feet from her head. “I don’t need guns.”

“Take one anyway? For me?”

“Why?”

Victoria stared. Kagami stared back, then swallowed and looked away. Was that a blush Victoria detected in those cheeks? Maybe, but not quite. Kagami was beautiful when she blushed, shaded by that long black hair, like she really did belong on a throne on the Moon.

“Because,” Victoria said quietly, “I don’t want you to be alone and afraid if your drones fail. Because you and I sleep together half the time and I still don’t know what that means. Take a gun with you, Kaga. At least when I’m not with you.”

Kagami said nothing for a long moment, staring off at the flickering screens of the control cockpit. Then: “Will you come with me to the lab?”

“Like I said, if you get a replacement for me. Why? What for? You can just tell me, you know. Nothing to be embarrassed about.”

Kagami looked around at last. “Elpida wants to talk to both of us.”

Vicky sat up straighter. “What? Is that what all this was about? Kaga, why didn’t you say something? Is she waiting for me?”

Kagami snorted. Her eyes tightened. Her throat bobbed. “Ahhhhh, yes. There we go. When it was just me making a request, oh no, no no no. You had excuses and counter-arguments. You were too busy watching the screens to come with me. You have to get a replacement for a job which doesn’t even need doing. But when Elpida says jump, you ask how high. When Elpida says sit, you sit. Bark like a dog. Roll over. Play dead.”

“Kaga—”

“Shut up.”

Vicky shut up. Kagami shut up too, staring across the cockpit again, avoiding Vicky’s eyes. Electric gloom flickered on her burning cheeks, the reflection of Pheiri’s screens washing out her blush.

“Kaga,” Vicky started slowly, wary of another detonation. “I don’t sleep with Elpida. I don’t climb into her bunk. I don’t worry about her when she’s beyond the hull. I don’t—” Vicky had to take a breath, to sort truth from lie. “I admire her, yes. I respect her, because she’s our Commander, because she’s led us through this insane afterlife and hasn’t yet led us astray. We’re all still here, still alive, whatever that means when we’re all zombies, and that is down to her. And you said it yourself, we need to talk to her, because something is wrong with her lately. Something has been wrong with her for weeks and now she’s found this Eseld girl. That would be enough to fuck anybody up. She’s a super soldier, but I know she’s not invincible. I’ve seen her cry. So yes, I care, I worry, because she is our Commander, and my friend. But you’ve got nothing to be jealous of. Just—”

Kagami stood up — righted by her drones. She floated away, heading for Pheiri’s spinal corridor.

“Kaga, hey—”

“Maybe you’re the one who should be jealous, Victoria!” she spat back. “Fine, I’ll go get Ooni, or some other ex-fascist moron to sit in your place, so you and I and Elpida can talk all we like about how paranoid and cynical I am!”

Kagami paused by the corridor entrance, staring back, daring Vicky to answer.

Vicky said: “Kaga, where the hell is this coming from?”

Kagami stared for a moment — then three of her drones shot forward.

Victoria flinched, jerking in her seat, making the metal creak. The speed of the drones gave her no time to react. If her AGL had been loaded, she would not have been able to blast one drone out of the air, let alone three. She did not even have time to fully form the thought — that Kagami had finally lost her mind to green-eyed jealousy and the toxins of a superiority complex.

That thought only solidified a moment later, when the three drones hung in a rough triangle behind her, mirrored by three drones behind Kagami.

A gentle static crackle passed through the air; Vicky tasted a little blood. The sound of the storm grew faint, blocked by Kagami’s electromagnetic forcefield.

Vicky blinked in shock; this was not the assault she had expected, but sudden seclusion. Total privacy within this prism which held only the two of them. Even Pheiri could not listen through those invisible walls.

“Kaga, what—”

“You and I need to discuss treachery, Victoria,” Kagami snapped. “And I’m not talking about yours. You, I trust. Completely.”

The drones zipped back toward Kagami. The EM privacy field collapsed with a soft crackle. The sound of the storm rushed back, the tomb walls creaking and groaning far beyond Pheiri’s hull.

Vicky started to rise. “Hey, Kaga, woah, wait, what—”

“Keep your mouth shut,” Kagami said. She turned away and floated into the corridor. “I’ll go fetch somebody else to take over your ‘duty’. Then you come to the lab, like a good girl. Woof woof.”