To Wal the Constellations

RED

I opened my eyes with a huge goofy smile. My head was throbbing with happy drugs, and I felt the tingling, buzzing feeling at the stump of my left arm had moved, maybe, three inches further down than it had been. I turned my head to the side and saw that yeah. Yeah. The stump was a bit longer. Bones and muscles, growing out from the severed nothingness. A haze of nanites, buzzing in the air, making it fuzzy and shimmery. I swore I could see the skin growing, the bone growing, the veins growing, the...uh...mmm...

Happy drugs. Nice.

"Soooo," Techne said, cutting into my buzzing vagueness. "What. Was. That?"

She was playful. Like a feline. And suddenly all my happy feelings vanished and my entire face went red – which did the exact opposite of hiding the real reason why I was so happy. I looked back and saw that Techne was seated on the small, curved chair that was set in the medical bay of the Tiamat, her arms wrapped around the back of the chair. Her silvery lips had skinned back and her camera lens eyes whirred as they zoomed in on me.

"Nutthin," I muttered, mumbled into my collar as I ducked my head forward, feeling the faint

tug

of the wires running into my neck.

OH REALLY?

Techne grabbed onto the small display console that hung from a mobile, grippy arm that thrust from the wall and ceiling. She swung it around and showed a scan of my brain. The voiceless voice of my djinn told me it was an EKG with deepstim neuroscanning functionality enabled by medichines. And it showed five or six big spikes in my brainwave in the past hour.

"That?" Techne pointed at one spike. "Is an orgasm. And that. And that." She tapped the spikes. "And that's

three

. In a fucking row. I mean, I've got dream functionality, but that wasn't a dream. You weren't in R.E.M sleep, and here, you've got electrical and hormone inputs emerging from

nowhere

. They're not originating from any classical brain structures." She swung the arm away, so that there was nothing between us beyond the back of the chair. She grinned and leaned forward.

"So," she purred. "What. Was. That?"

A WHORE'S HONOR

"You can't tell anyone. Promise me," I said, my voice as serious as I could be. My still physically attached hand clenched and I felt a vague

ghost

of a hand clenching, somewhere near my hip, near by implanted plug. Techne pursed her lips, then nodded.

"Okay," she said. "I swear, on a whore's honor."

I looked skeptical. Techne looked offended.

"A whore's honor's a valuable thing," she said.

"Oh, I know," I said, my voice dry. "But you were faking being a whore, weren't you? A secret Alliance spy and all that."

"I can be both!" Techne actually looked

more

offended. I wilted a bit, hunching my shoulders and blushing again.

"Sorry, sorry," I said, then sighed. A whore's always got to have hull-solid honor. People say things to a whore they wouldn't to anyone else. They show themselves. According to the stories I'd heard! Since, I, um. I hadn't ever. Uh. Until. Um. Right now. That is. If that counted. Did it count. When it was with spooky action at distance? Was I a...um...

Techne was looking less offended now and more impatient. The quiet drumming sound of her fingers against the back of her chair sounded like rain on a tin roof. I forced it out: "I have a friend. Another Liminal Knight. He and I, we...share dreams. Visions, I guess. He's been teaching me how to fight and how to use my powers." I licked my lips. "H-His name is Thale."

Saying his name made my belly quiver, like bugs wanted to fly out of my mouth.

"So, how hot is he?" Techne murmured.

My cheeks went even hotter. I swear, if they could, my dots would melt off. I ducked my head forward and mumbled incoherently. Techne scooted herself closer and bumped my shoulder with her metal knuckles. "Come onnnn!" She prompted. "You grew up on a post-apocalyptic hellworld, literally being a slave for a nasty man. You may not know this, but on lots of worlds on the Chain, gals being pals means sharing sexy secrets about significant others. So. Spill. How hot is this

Thale

." She crooned the name in the exact same way that I did when he'd been...

Uhhhhhhh.

"Real hot," I said.

"Frigging

details

, woman!" Techne held up her hand and started to pop off, flicking finger after finger with each bullet point – accentuating them with the

tink tink tink

of metal on metal. "Twig or brick? Muscle? Cush? Body hair? Scent? Exigenic features? Mods? Size! Paint me a word picture!"

"I, um..." I bit my lip. "H-He's..." I struggled to try and find words to describe Thale. But everything felt so tawdry and shallow and

dumb

when I started to put sounds to them. I could tell her about Thale's ears, or the way his tail smoothly merged with his back, or that tiny constellation of scars that ran along his ribs, which he always covered with one arm when he wasn't thinking. I could talk about his belly button, or the implant plug for when he needed to use an acceleration tank. Except I couldn't. My voice choked and I trailed off with an utterly lame: "He's hot."

Techne groaned.

I glared at her. "I could inject the image into your brain with my magic space powers, if you want," I said, sullen and shamed.

Techne's eyes whirred in and out of focus. "You can?" she asked.

"I can influence computers, I guess. I can influence

your

computer," I said, blushing and then drawing my legs up. I slung my still attached arm around my knees, tucking my head forward. My eyes closed.

Techne chuckled. "Well, then. Do it." She sounded teasing, like she was challenging me. I lifted my chin and looked at her – and slowly, I closed my eyes. I reached out with my feelings, the way Thale had taught me. It came slow and awkwardly. I didn't feel the whole ship at once, like I could sometimes. Instead, I felt fragments of it here and there. The whisper of the agrav engine. The crackling buzz of the comptech. Then the complex, clicking sound of Techne's body. Her musculature. Then I found her mind – and I took the most intense image of Thale I had. The image of him when I'd first seen him, all those months ago, and I underhanded it into her.

Techne drew in a quick, sharp breath. She didn't need to breathe – but in the momentary connection, I could see how breathing had been worked into so many layers of her brain architecture that trying to remove the need to breathe would leave her a bugged out, ghosted mess.

Knowing

that I could reach in and yank and leave Techne dead eyed and twitching made all my flushing and blushing and nervous excitement turn to ash. Instantly.

I looked away, while Techne fanned herself, furiously. She didn't know what I'd seen. What I'd felt.

"Holy.

Shit

." She crooned. A wordless, eager sound. "Hooooooolllly

shit

."

"You already said that," I muttered.

"Well, I mean, hot damn, that was a gorgeous guy," she said. "And he was just naked like that? Is he always naked?" Her eyes narrowed. "How many times have you-"

APPROACH

The PA crackled and saved my bacon.

"Mal here," Mal said, his cheerful voice bouncing off the walls in the medlab. "We're on approach to Atom. Is Venn ready to hit the bridge?"

"We're in Atom?" I asked, looking away from the PA and at Techne. She nodded to me.

"We needed to scoot out of Hydra," she said. "So we burned hard to their primary and slipped out – their navy didn't bother us." She grinned. "I guess our smuggling tricks worked, huh?" She squeezed my shoulder. "You were out of it for the jump – we had to delay the rebuilding until after. It should be finished before we leave Atom City, though."

I nodded. "Can I go to the bridge?"

Techne laughed. "Mal flew a slightly wonky course to make sure you'd

be

there for the arrival. Our furry pilot wants to show off. And in more than one way."

I flushed. "I should tell him about Thale," I said.

"Are you and he mono?" Techne asked, offering her arm as I started to stand. The wires automatically detached and I felt my body settle as I stood, the fuzzing of the nano continuing their busy, busy work.

"Um," I said. "I dunno."

"Then find that out first," Techne said, causally. "I'm a fan of polylove myself." Her arm slid along my back as she held me up and I leaned into her, my cheek resting on her shoulder. "Poly and pan makes paradise, as I always love to say." She grinned at me and I tried to not burst into flames at thinking about how Techne looked or felt or, uh, anything like that. Anything at all. We came to the bridge with me still in a confused tangle of emotions and there, thank Christ, there was plenty to distract me.

ATOM

Another jump, another system.

I should have been bored of them now. Oh, yawn, another cluster of stars fanning out around a central point like an infinite sprawl of beauty and wonder, how blasé. But it wasn't. Looking through the cameras of the Tiamat was still a punch the gut awe moment, a moment that shot through my nerves with electric fire. I slipped out of Techne's arm, my legs feeling more sturdy and steady now as I came to the screens and admired the new cluster. These constellations were full of jagged lines – lightning bolts carved across the sky, surrounding the bulk of Atom itself.

I'd seen a gas giant or two. But never up close. I imagined that suns were bigger, but unlike suns, Atom wasn't surrounded by a burning halo that made actually telling what it was difficult. Instead, it was shaded with the familiar terminator and rippling darkness that I'd seen on dozens of planets now. But rather than cloud and continent and seas, Atom was one massive ocean of gaseous striations. Dozens of 'bars' of color, spanning the entire planet, moving with a slow grace. Past the terminator, I could see rumbling flashes of light – lightning, crackling through the upper atmosphere of the planet.

"There she is," Mal murmured, his hands pausing in their constant adjustment of Tiamat's engines and thrust systems. "Atom."

"Your home," I murmured.

"Oh, no, no, I was born on Atom City," he said, reaching out to flick a switch as Rossk chuckled.

"They don't birth in a place that's more radioactive than a nuke world," Rossk said.

"I thought gas giants were

failed

suns!" I said, turning away from the cameras.

"They're huge, see," Rossk said, balling up his fist and holding it near his head. "And Atom here has a massive ocean of metallic liquid hydrogen at the core. The movement of that core creates a magnetosphere twice as strong as old Jove. And old Jove could cook an egg with their radiation belts. That's where Atom gets its name

from

."

"Atom City is built into an eddy in the rad belts created by two of the moons, Romulus and Remus," Mal chipped in. "They have volcanic eruptions which basically eject sulfer into the magnetosphere and influence its course in a very stable, predictable way. With the eddy protecting it, Atom City is shielded not only from the planetary radiation but also the solar flares."

I nodded. "I mean, I'd ask you'd name a planet after what kills you, but..." I shrugged. "I'm from Stumble. So. Glass stones, thrown houses."

Mal chuckled. "That's not why it's called Atom City, Venn."

MAGNETODYNAMIC TETHERS

"That's a magnetodynamic tether station," Rossk said, punching up an image of a huge, O shaped structure floating in the vastness of Atom's clouds. Hair like tendrils reached outwards and upwards, shooting past the camera view and into space. They didn't seem to crackle or spark or flare with anything I'd call magnetodynamic energy – but then the view panned along one of the wires and I saw that when I'd thought they went into space, I'd been right. They went up and up and up and up and up, banded by circular disks of metal here and there. "Those are the agrav hooks that keep them in place and prevent slewing."

Finally, after what felt like an hour of rapid fire panning, the camera came to the very end of the tethers, which whipped slowly back and forth in the blackness of space like snakes. Here, they glowed with a halo of eerie blue-pruple lightning, arcing off in a dozen different directions. My djinn murmured in my head and I instantly knew what the machine was.

"Oh that's clever," I said.

Mal glanced at me. "Huh?"

"They stick the tether through the magnetic fields of Atom and use the differential in energy to basically run an electric generator. Like using hydro and gears, but with a planetary magnetosphere, that's clever!" I nodded. "And that's a

lot

of juice. What are they using it for?"

"Well, the hint is in the name, Venn," Rossk said, clearly amused at how Mal was looking discombobulated and uncertain. Like he'd been waiting for his chance to show off his big brain knowledge. I reached out and squeezed Mal's shoulder with a shy little smile. Then it hit me what it was for. What the name meant – though, was it something I knew? Or was it something whispered into my head? I didn't know. But I didn't have time to worry about that because the realization was so huge I had to gasp. My eyes widened and I squeezed Mal's shoulder hard.

"Atom smashers!" I said. "That's why it's the O shape!"

"The girl's scary," Rossk muttered.

"Yes, Atom's got several MDTSes," Mal said, putting his hand over mine. "Each one's an atom smasher with multiple levels of antiproton traps, cyclotron radiators, electron-phase cooling tubes" He chuckled. "The process is quite complex and requires a lot of long distance teleoperation, but the end result is that each one produces a few tons of antiproton fuel a year. Enough for Atom to sell to every world on the Chain, become fabulously wealthy, and still have enough left over for their defense fleet."

"Defense fleet?" I blinked. "Oh."

"Yeah." Mal grinned. "Atom City's got the biggest defense fleet in the Chain. That's why we're still independent." He looked a bit smug. "Hell, they've got AP torpedoes. When you're using antimatter as a weapon, you know you've got it made, huh?"

I whistled, slowly. "On a scale from one to ten, how pissed does that make the Hegemony?"

"Eleven," Techne said, butting smoothly into the conversation. But her voice was grim. "I just got a transmission from Atom City. They've got someone here from an Alliance sundiver. Someone they sent

specifically

to meet you, Venn."

I perked up, turning to face her. "Who?"

Techne looked grimmer than I'd ever seen her before.

"The Butcher of Malachite," she said, her lips twisting into a frown.

I gulped.

ATOM CITY

Techne didn't walk to talk about the Butcher. She didn't want to talk about much, even as we gently flew the Tiamat up to the massive docking spar of Atom City itself. Atom City was big enough and in space enough to allow sundivers to lock up to it directly – which then let it attach huge magnetic piping to our fuel reserves, to pump antiprotons directly into the bottle container in our guts. I did notice that the sundiver dock was actually located on a metal arm that looked like it was nearly a hundred kilometers long and had a huge shield made of curving metal situated on the halfway point. Almost like, uh, in case the sundiverse went up in a massive antimatter reaction, the energy would be dispersed off into space and bounced off the shield instead of hitting the city.

Gulp.

The docking arm didn't have any port crew – just the crews of other sundivers stepping off their ships and onto the broad walkway, which itself led to a series of tram cars set in circular tubes, lined with magnetic accelerators. Us four got into a car with four other sundivers. I eyed them curiously – and felt a vauge sense of comfort, seeing how each of them was just as motley and mixed up as our crew.

Then I felt the comforting blanket of an agrav field around my body as the magnetic accelerators took hold of the car and flung us down the range. In remarkably short time, we whisked past the shield and towards Atom City itself. I glued my face against the forward glass, watching as the city got closer and closer. It looked like a cone, tapering down to a narrow spire thrusting towards the planet itself – and I saw that they had their own tethers streaking out past the bottom of the spire. The surface was covered with greenery and open air cities – exposed to the depths of space. There was a bubble of air around the city, and I could see the curving agrav generators that kept it rooted right there, in place, locked into the station via gravitational shell of energy.

The amount of power it took was appalling to imagine.

The amount of technical skill it took was terrifying.

And those two facts made it so very clear why Atom City did it. There were saner ways to keep oxygen in a city in space. But there were no better ways to tell the whole Chain what the city was, and what attacking it might mean.

We're soft,

it said.

Cause we can afford it

.

Then, like a bullet, we hit the far end of the train station. I had just enough time to feel a flare of panicky screaming, but then the agrav field snapped on and magnets stopped us so fast we'd be dead. Again. If it wasn't for the agrav.

God

I hope nothing here was about to break.

REUNION

We stepped off the magnetic train and the other sundivers walked past us with a steady clip, like they knew exactly where they were going. The rest of my crew waited around, letting me gawp at where we were standing. The entrance, once you were past the blast shield, to Atom City was as impressive as their domeless green city had been – more so, in some ways. We were standing in a huge space, held aloft by stylized statue figures of human figures – muscular and angular at the same time. The walls were lacquered with wood paneling that looked real as hell, and the floor had a deep, rich red carpet that felt great against my toes once I slipped them out of my shoes to wriggle them. Mmm. Luxury.

The entrance went underneath a huge banner that said something in a language I didn't know and my djinn wasn't translating.

"Venn, put your shoes on," Techne whispered to me.

"Right," I muttered, then bent forward to tug my shoes back on.

Before I stood, though, I heard a boisterous, female voice.

"Techne VonDynne as I live and process!"

I stood hurriedly, with only one shoe on, and saw that the entire entryway was filled with the personality of a slender, golden figure. She was the same kind of human as Techne – but where Techne was all chrome and rubber, this woman was gold and polished, glittering chain. She had the same bust, the same hips, even the same face, though here Techne had ears, this girl had two little antennas that stuck out of her head like elf ears. She was dressed in a furred cloak, with a white trim and a luxuriant red coloring that matched the carpets. Underneath, she wore a hose and a jerkin that made her look like she'd come out of some primeval mythology, swaggering and flash, like Kevin of Sherwood or Laraqoe.

"Well, fuck me sideways," Techne said, slowly. "Sis!?"

"That's Baron Administrator Sis!" the girl said, grinning and wiggling her finger, then started forward. She swung her arms around Techne and the two girls hugged and squealed. Then Techne sprang backwards, as if her sis had become a north pole magnet.

"Baron Ad

what!?"

Techne spluttered. "Mal! Mal, did-" She looked back at Mal, who shook his head.

"The last BA of Atom City was Marquee Harlequin," he said.

"I won the city in a card game," the gold skinned automaton said, cheerfully.