Chapter 2

BOABDIL STATION

Kelima Lasker carefully slid from her cocoon on the flank of the merchant ship. Nothing unexpected painted her sensor-studded exterior. All was as it should be in this place of commerce. She extruded additional crab-like limbs and crept slowly along the flank of the merchant’s crew module. Whenever she stopped to search her surroundings, she seemed just like any of the dozens of other odd lumps of external tech gear attached to the merchant’s hull.

This was a far cry from zipping around space in her fighter, killing Idenux, but it also promised to be a lot more rewarding. Before she’d gone mechanical, when she’d flown combat missions in her fighter, she had thought in terms of millions of kilometers traveled, at hundreds of kilometers per second. In her fighter, she could cross that sort of distance in minutes. Now, reincarnated as an entirely different vehicle, she measured her progress in centimeters, or, infrequently, meters. This particular journey of two hundred meters was much more important than any of her earlier trips of millions of kilometers.

An hour of patient, cautious movement brought her to the hull of the station. Kelima laser-welded a tiny metal plate to the agreed spot and withdrew her last contact with the Prenger merchant. They had done their part: they had delivered her to Boabdil Station, and their contract was fulfilled. Somewhere on board that ship, a piece of jewelry would have changed color. Only the owner would know the now-green stone had previously been blue.

They could leave knowing they had upheld their end of the bargain, and knowing their personal accounts had all been significantly enriched. Officially, Prenger was neutral in this war. Unofficially, as one of their Senior Traders had put it, “ ... the Empire is bad for business, the Families aren’t.” Prenger, above all else, was concerned with business.

Kelima used her crab-limbs to hold her centimeters from the hull of the station and moved as slowly as she could. This was the riskiest part of the whole mission. If there were detectors focused on the station exterior, an alert individual would detect her. This part of the station’s hull had numerous exhaust ports and other obstructions in the winding path she had memorized. Her exterior was configured to look similar to several of those objects.

Months ago, as a fighter pilot, she had gone into the battle at Setosha knowing she was forever alone. Her sib Parey had died during the Raid on Home, killed on the ground fighting an Idenux raider. Her other sib, Angie, had also died in battle, years ago, helping stamp out a nest of Idenux raiders. None of them had had any children. Her family wanted her home. She wouldn’t go. She couldn’t stop fighting, not yet. What good was it to bring babies into this war? Kelima wanted every last threatening Idenux and Imperial blasted to plasma before she would even believe babies could be possible. The family had genome samples from her and her sibs. That would have to be enough. Her accounts with the vermin were not yet balanced.

At Setosha, Kelima had seen and felt the funeral pyre of the Imperial battleships. For one tempting, bittersweet moment, she had considered diving into that blaze so she could be with her sibs again. It hurt so much, knowing that no matter where she looked, she would never find them. She would never hear their voices again, ever. She had almost given in to the temptation, but something kept her from it.

Throughout the rest of the battle, as she had savagely flung herself against fleeing Imperials, she had wondered what purpose there was to continue alone. When, finally, there were no more targets, no more enemies, nothing but gas, dust, and the Glory, she had understood at last. Somebody had to make them stop. All of them. Not just the ones who came to raid Home or to invade Setosha or to steal peaceful merchant ships. Every last one of the vermin everywhere must be accounted for. They had to be cut off at the source. It was the only solution that made sense. If you didn’t, they’d keep coming. When the time came to land her fighter on Yi Sung Sin, Kelima knew she would go Mechanical instead.

Most of the Mechanicals she had known had died alone. The life of a Mechanical, for all the wonder of the Glory that suffused every moment, was mostly spent in monotonous, lonely patrol work. Most Mechanicals guarded the three planets the Families occupied, waiting hours, days, months for something to happen. Others patrolled independent stations or other places the Families had built. They survived, performing a useful duty until they expired quietly, their frail bodies failing from lack of exercise or lack of sunlight or simply from longing to feel another human’s touch again.

Kelima had thought long and hard about that. She had thought about the difference one more fighter could make to the war effort. She wanted to be something more than just another killing machine. She wanted more than to just keep flinging herself at the vermin. She wanted to make a contribution to the Families that meant something more than just killing a few more Idenux or Imperials before she herself died.