Writing Samples

My body hurts. I just lie there, shield tied to my off-hand, sword lying a few meters away, as I stare up into space. This rock that I’m on, no one cares about it. The fight is out there, on the ships floating across the void. Painted against the backdrop of space, I can barely see them. Flashes of light signal close-quarters fire from ships or mages, but I’m far enough away that I can’t really see individual soldiers. My suit’s indicators blink in my peripheral vision, warning me of “suit power at blah blah percent” or “suit integrity compromised at blah, blah, and blah.”

It won’t matter, I’m out of the fight. As soon as I got thrown far enough out that my suit couldn’t hook into the ship’s gravity any more, it was over. I’m lucky I even landed on something this close. I had to use my emergency suit jets, so one of those indicators I’m ignoring is probably something to do with that too.

Wait, is that… What is that? A streak of fire crosses the sky. It’s really close. Another streak joins it, then a third. They’re extremely close, far outside of the battle space.

I finally stand, my muscles protesting against the strain, and use my visor magnification to zoom in on the spots of light. Three ships; three Ungoli droppers; coming this way.

Am I really worth that much dead? I guess the queen’s brother is worth a lot dead. Why are they sending so many troops? Couldn’t they just hit me with a ship’s gun?

The realization dawns and my stomach turns. They don’t want me dead, they want me alive.

Deny your enemy any advantage. They won’t take a political prisoner today. I walk over and grip my sword, its power indicator appearing at the edge of my visor as I grab the hilt. Barely any charge left, and no mage in sight on this barren asteroid to charge it. I’ll just have to rely on old-fashioned arm strength. I move through a few sword-patterns, testing the way it moves in the micro-gravity of the asteroid that my suit is amplifying. After a moment, I survey the rocky landscape and select a hill to stand on.

Three impacts shake the ground, and I turn around. The droppers have touched down hard in typical Ungoli fashion, sending out clouds of pebbles stirred up by the landing and by the air jets aimed at the ground just to make the dust swirl more dramatically and obscure the exits of the ships. Ungoli begin to burst from the cloud of dust, charging toward me.

The initial wave are those skinny ones, long-limbed half-breeds scrabbling at the dirt. They crawl across the surface of the rock, galloping toward me quadrupedal, weapons clipped to their backs. Behind them, the true Ungoli appear through the swirling dust, hulking creatures in their horned helms wielding warhammers, waiting for the chaff to tire me out so they can sweep in and take me.

 I twist the pommel gem to ignite my sword, gripping the handle of my shield so the golden sun on its front shines in their evil faces. My sword sparks, then goes dark. The old fashioned way it is then.

The Ungoli can’t hear me through the void of space, so I don’t bother to speak. I don’t bother to spout the normal warcries, “for the queen!” “Death to usurpers!” “For house Narinna!”

Only ghosts listen in the void. I make my final prayer and raise my sword as they begin to draw their weapons, near enough for me to make out their toothy snarls through their visors.

My sword ignites, white energy crackling up and down its length.

Maybe it’s ghosts and gods that listen in the void.

“Hali, are you awake?”

Haliru’ah opened her eyes. Fis’akru lay across from her, on the adjacent flat, his eyes glittering in the tiny light coming from the door. “Yes, child. Are you hungry?”

“No Hali, I have questions.”

Hali sighed. She lifted herself up, propping herself on two of her arms and peering through the darkness at him.

“Are these questions that should be asked of the Dreamwardens?”

Fis’ arms wiggled in that way she knew meant he was nervous about something.

“I don’t think they would like to hear my questions,” he said.

“Ah,” Hali understood. “You have questions about the states of being. What are your questions?”

“Why do we wake?”

Straight to the why of it all.

“Well,” she said, “do you want the answer the Dreamwardens would give you?” Sensing the young one would want to discuss at length, Hali lifted her body up off the cushion and ambled over to the light switch.

“I want the answer that you would give me,” he said, twisting to keep his eyes on her as she went. “I don’t want the religious answer, I want the true answer.”

Perhaps I need to limit my intake, she thought, noticing for the first time she was using all her arms for locomotion, instead of just four or six. Her body had grown large over the past few dreams.

She flicked the switch using one of her short arms, then ambled back to sit on the cushion next to Fis. “Scoot over, child.”

He scrabbled, shifting his bulk and rolling to give her more space to lay herself against him on the bed. His smaller body was hot against her side. She wrapped him in a comforting hug.

“The religious answer is the true answer, child. Please don’t speak such heresy, even to me.”

“You—you know what I mean!” His voice pitched up as he shifted to keep her at arms’-length. “I don’t mean it as heresy, I just… I just want to know what you think, not what the Dreamwardens want me to think.”

“There is a reason why they want you to think that way,” Hali said, gently pushing away his fighting arms and drawing him close. He only resisted a little.

“They just hate when we think for ourselves or question the Dreams,” he complained as she drew him close again. He leaned his head on her.

“Our race has been following the Dreams since we were born from them, child.”

“Yes, I know that. I’m not questioning the Dreams, I want to know why we wake at all! Why do we even wake up, if the holy state is in sleep, in the Dream?”

“Have you ever taken sustenance in sleep?” Hali said.

Fis groaned. “Stop that! You know what I mean!”

“I do, but the example is relevant,” she said. “There are things we must take care of in waking that we cannot do in the Dream. Eating is just one example of that.”

“But the dohisa, they take their nutrients through injection so they can spend more time in the Dream.”

“They do, but that is a religious choice they have made to alter their lifestyle. One day if you choose you may join the dohisan order too.”

“And what about soldiers? They spend all their free time in the Dream!”

“Well, combat training is much safer in the Dream, there’s very little risk of injury when your body is not actually at risk.”

“Exactly!” Fis seemed to think he’d made a point.

Hali shifted, lowering herself off the sleeping platform. “Let’s go eat.”

The two of them strolled down the silent halls, into the auditorium chamber that served as cafeteria for the palatial estate. A servitor approached with two plates held aloft and followed them to a platform. It set the plates in front of them after they rolled onto the depressions in the platform that served as seats.

“I thought it was stew today,” Fis said, picking up one of the strips of sauced meat and lifting it to his mouth.

“There was a change of plans this morning,” the servitor replied, placing two beverages before them before moving off without elaborating further.

“Fis, one of the truths about waking is simply that the Dream is not ‘real.’” Hali scooped up a strip of meat, thought back to her earlier discomfort when she’d gotten up, and set it back down in favor of the roasted vegetables.

“It is real!” Fis said. He raised his head up to make himself taller. “We can use experiences in the dream in real life! That’s how I learned flying.”

Hali chuckled. “You just said it yourself. We can use things we experience in the Dream in real life, but in the end, it is not real life. Real is what we’re doing right now.” She reached across the table and patted his face.

He slapped her arm away. “You know what I mean,” he said, more insistent this time.

“I do know what you mean, but the truth is in what you have said, not how you meant it. Things we experience in the Dream are not real, though they seem to be real, and they affect our lives in many ways.”

The boy was silent for a few minutes, chewing his food with a vague expression on his face as he contemplated.

“But if it’s not real, why is it holy? What does it matter at all?”

Hali closed her eyes and heaved a deep sigh. Young minds could swing so far from one side of an argument to the other in so short a time. There were no gradual steps in logic with the young.

“Fis, why are you asking these questions? This is basic religion you learned as a small one. What’s the real issue here?”

He pushed his food around the plate in silence.

“Fis,” she said, softening her voice. “What’s wrong?”

“Why am I the only one left at home?” He didn’t look up at her.

“As in, why did your parents send your brother and sister away, while you are left here?”

He nodded. Now she saw the core of his concern, the backdrop his questions were framing.

“They’re out there doing ‘real’ things, and I’m stuck here with you and the Dream!”

Hali reminded herself the child was speaking out of his own conflict, that he didn’t mean it as the slap in the face she felt it to be. She took another deep breath before responding.

“Have you met your marah, yet?”

Fis ducked his head. “It has not yet appeared to me.” He went back to pushing his food around the plate.

“So you do not know the joy of the Dream in its full state of being,” Hali said. “Your marah will teach you things about the Dream you have never known before, things that will connect you to the holiest places in the Dream.”

“But when will I see them?” Fis threw himself off the platform, landing with a bump as he scrabbled away from the table. Hali scooped up her plate in one arm and moved to follow him back toward the sleep chamber.

They settled themselves on the sleeping platforms and closed their eyes. Fis settled into sleep in seconds, but Hali kept herself awake for a moment, questioning herself.

Perhaps it was time. She put her plate down, slid herself off her own platform and went to lay next to the boy. He would need the comfort when he awoke.

It was time for the child to meet his marah, his Dream Spirit. If he was old enough to be having this kind of identity crisis, he was old enough to learn the deep secrets of their people, to meet the great Sleeper and to bathe himself the creeping chaos of His thought, to know truly and fully what it meant to be Kyyrvak.

She closed her eyes and fell asleep. The Dream met her, and she went to find the great Sleeper.

Originally published in Mythic Winter (2022), audio version available on YouTube courtesy of Mothweaver.

“He really wants us to go out in that?” Rini stands beside me in the door to our little log cabin, watching the snow pour down from the gray sky.

“I have to, at least,” I say. A transparent gray line extends out from my feet, disappearing into the blizzard. I know where it goes.

“Unless you want to eat plain rice for breakfast today,” I say.

“Did that for dinner yesterday,” she says. She’s staring off into the distance, the same look we all get when we’re reading something from our implants.

“You know He doesn’t like it when we run out of cooked rations.” I hold up a finger and bob my head back and forth as I quote the memo He sent us last week. “‘The morale of the colony is an important factor considered by the company, and is one of the pillars of healthy coexistence on the planet.’”

Rini knows the company’s tag line, and recites it with me at the end of the memo, rolling her eyes as she does.

“Safety, necessity, positivity.”

“The caravan should get back today,” she says, going to the basin and pouring water to wash her face. I have the same information she does in my implant, but there’s something real about speaking the words aloud, something that calls back to everything we lost when they jammed these chips into our brains and shot us down onto this rock.

“Hopefully they got everything we needed,” I reply, taking my parka off the peg by the door and throwing it over my head. It’s getting ragged around the edges, and the drawstring around the hood broke weeks ago, but the Administrator hasn’t approved a replacement to be made yet, so I’ll have to deal with it.

“Hopefully they’re all still alive,” Rini says, leaning over the basin and staring at the water, a chill wracking her body as the water on her skin cools.

She is just as anxious as I am to see them return; Mabel, my sister and Rini’s best friend, is out with the caravan.

The Administrator is watching the caravan through their implants, keeping tabs on their progress, doing His best to make sure they’re safe, that they don’t get lost, and that they don’t lose anything along the way, but this planet is harsh; there’s no telling what or who could have waylaid them. The tinge of bitterness in Rini’s voice is there because try as we might, the Administrator never tells us beforehand when something bad has happened to a caravan. He tells us only what we need to know, when we need to know it.

The waiting, not knowing, is always hard on Rini. Mabel is the colony’s socialite, a fast-talker, a negotiator, so the Administrator almost always assigns her to go on a caravan.

“I’m sure they’re fine.” is all I can manage to say.

I zip the parka all the way up, pinching the edges of the hood between my fingers, and turn to Rini, who is still staring at herself in the water.

“What’s your first job of the day,” I ask, shoving my feet into my old boots.

“Logging,” she says. When we landed here, she knew nothing about living life on a company-owned colony, but she’s adapted well to it. The muscles on her arms and shoulders are hard, growing stronger each day with the brutal labor and intense sparring sessions we’re required to do.

“Still? Don’t we have like, ten cords stored?”

My implant sends out a tiny vibrating pulse, a gentle reminder that I should be on my way to the task I’ve been assigned, but I ignore it for the moment.

“Yeah, but I don’t have any other assigned jobs right now, so chopping wood it is. Besides, the generators use a ton of it, especially in this cold.”

“Alright,” I say, shrugging my shoulders even though the puffy poncho hides most of the motion. My implant vibrates again, stronger this time. “Well, good luck, stay dry,” I say, and turn away to step out into the snow.

The cold hits me, a bitter blast to the face and hands, which I hastily shove into my pockets as soon as I get the door shut behind me.

The ghostly gray line of my priority job extends out in front of my feet, turning the corner of the nearby hut. I follow it around the corner, stepping from one snow-covered flagstone to the next in a vain attempt to keep my boots from getting bogged down in the soft packed now. Two shadowy figures pass across the little main street of our colony, hunched over in their own winter gear. The snow is coming down so hard in the pre-dawn gloom I can’t really see who they are.

I cross the street to the main cabin, making my steps as long as I can. The door to the cabin creaks as I push it open, the cheery interior of the meeting hall shining out to meet me on the doorstep. I kick the snow and mud off my boots at the door, then pull my parka off and hang it on a hook. The gray direction line crosses the room in front of me and goes through the door at the far end of the grand hall, into the kitchen.

“Hey Burk.” One of the two people seated at the table in the middle of the room waves to me. Kilo and Max are having breakfast early today, I wonder why the Administrator got them out of bed so early.

I return Kilo’s greeting, crossing the room to lay a hand on each of their shoulders. My implant buzzes again, more insistently this time.

“What’re you having for breakfast today,” I say cheerily, even though I can clearly see the bowls of plain rice and quinoa sitting in front of them.

They smirk back at me and chuckle.

“An artisanal preparation of grains,” Kilo replies, lifting a spoonful of the bland food.

“Hey, at least it’s hot,” I say, clapping him on the back and causing him to spill the spoonful of rice he was holding.

He grumbles good-natured insults at my back, which I ignore as I turn to head into the kitchen. “I’m supposed to cook you pawns some food today,” I say. “My only assignment today, so I guess we’re stocking up!”

“Great,” Max says, “So we can look forward to fresh food tonight and frozen meals for the next month.” He pauses to look at something on his implant, sighs, then bends to shovel the last few bites of rice into his mouth.

“Prioritized?” Kilo looks up at Max as he stands and stomps over to the door.

“Yeah!” Max stuffs his arms into his coat, his mouth compressed to a tight line. “Prioritized, like I’m doing something super important that absolutely has to get done right now in that blizzard.”

“Haven’t you been digging out that old machinery for the past two days?”

Max jams his feet into his boots, which were standing up by the door. “Yep,” he grumbles. “Apparently that’s critically important right now, definitely needs to happen before the sun even comes out.”

“Of course,” I say. “Gotta make sure we have components for the air-conditioner units.”

“Hey man, the company charter says on a colony this climate He’s required to put AC in bedrooms, barracks, and meeting room by the end of the fourth quadrum. It’s cold now, but Winter Holiday is next week, and it only gets hotter from then.”

“Ah yes, ‘Winter Holiday,’” Kilo rolls his eyes. “The company-approved December 25th celebration that’s definitely not Christmas.” He raises his glass of water and downs it like a mug of beer after giving a toast.

“Definitely not,” I reply, “Can’t afford the royalties on that.”

“Do we even have the components for that many units?” Kilo turns back to Max at the door, who holds up his calloused hands.

“Hey, I just do the digging. Ask the Administrator, or check the inventory yourself.” With that, he turns and disappears out the door, the sound of the snowfall waxing and waning as he opens and closes the door.

—

I go into the kitchen, the gray line at my feet puffing away as I finally reach my destination. My implant buzzes a pleasing little chime, my reward for following orders like a good little colonist.

Kilo’s voice drifts in from the main room. “Are you coming to S.P.’s Holiday party tonight?”

I turn to the stove and flip it on, then pick up a sack of rice off the pallet in the corner, walking through the ghostly image of the bigger, nicer stove that the Administrator has planned for us to build. I seriously doubt whether any of our builders will get around to that, since we already have a functioning stove. The plan will probably sit there until the Administrator gets fed up with the plans cluttering his screen and either deletes it or prioritizes it.

“Come on, man,” I call back to Kilo, heaving the bag of rice up onto the counter, “you know S.P. and I don’t get along.”

“You don’t have to talk to him, just show up! We’ll all be here, it’ll be fun. Where’s your holiday spirit?”

“If it’s S.P.’s party, I’ll have to talk to him sometime. Besides, the caravan’s coming home today, and I’m sure Rini will want to hang out with Mabel. She probably bought goodies or gifts for Christm—Holiday.”

I turn to my work, measuring out the rice and putting it in a pot to boil.

“Oh yeah, right.” Kilo shovels the last of his food into his mouth and stands. He picks up both his and Max’s bowl and brings them into the kitchen, tossing them into the sink and giving them a quick scrub.

“Well, if you change your mind, be here at 18th hour, I—“

My implant chimes, a message appearing in ghostly text in my vision: A caravan has arrived safely.

“Eyyyy, there it is,” Kilo grins at me after reading his own version of the notification. “Safe and sound, ain’t that nice.”

“Yeah, a relief for sure,” I say, staring down at the pot.

The door opens and three more people come in, shaking the snow from their coats and stomping their boots off before coming in.

It’s Roper, Jingo, and S.P., our colony’s three hunters. Each carries a rifle under their arm, which they lean against the wall before heading to the cooler to pick up food.

“Come on,” Roper grumbles, “plaingrain-TM again?” She holds the frozen bowl of food up, waving it at me through the kitchen’s serving window. “Burk, please, we’re suffering here!”

I can’t help but grin. “I’m working on it,” I reply. “I’ll be here all day. If you want something better, go out there and bring it back.”

Jingo punches her shoulder as he walks by, tossing his bowl of grain into the heater. “Maybe if we complain hard enough, Admin will send us a pod with real food in it! Maybe some painkillers too, something from a sparkleworld, maybe.” A dreamy look passes over his face, thinking of the shiny planets in the inner core, with their advanced tech, vacation spots, and draconian politics.

“Yeah, right,” she scoffs. “Even if they have sparkle food and meds at headquarters, He would never send it down here to us. We’re just pawns to him.”

My implant sounds an alarm. A long, deep horn sound. Everyone in the room stands transfixed, staring at the alert superimposed into all of our vision.

Incoming raid.

Roper, Jingo, and S.P. hustle back to the door, food forgotten, and pick up their rifles, piling out the door and into the night.

Kilo and I look at each other.

“You?” Kilo asks me.

I shake my head, my eyes wide as we stare at each other. The Administrator didn’t draft either of us to defend the colony.

“Maybe… Maybe it’s just a bear, or something.” Kilo finishes putting the dishes into the drying rack beside the sink, his motions mechanical.

My implant buzzes the three drum beats I know and dread. I’ve been drafted. My vision sharpens as my implant’s combat mode kicks in. I spring into action, and Kilo’s on my heels as we sprint to the door and throw on our gear. He must have been drafted too.

Kilo pauses a moment to read a notification. “I’m going for Go-Juice,” he says, his voice quavering as he shoves his feet into his boots.

That makes me pause for only a moment. “It’s not just a bear.” If the Administrator is approving Go-Juice, whatever’s here to raid us must be bad.

A rattling sound rolls over the sound of the wind, automatic machine gun fire, punctuated with high pitched pops of small arms, and occasionally the lower boom of something exploding.

"That sounds like mech fire,” I say, my eyes as wide as Kilo’s in the gloom. Did someone in camp, or maybe the caravan, stumble across and awaken some of the old machines?

“Grab me a gun and meet me at the line!” Kilo runs off into the storm.

My implant buzzes a three beat rhythm, and a jolt runs up and down my body, causing me to tense up. My stomach knots, because I know what that sensation means and how bad it is for me: the Administrator has issued me a Direct Combat Command, allowing my implant to take over direct control of my body. That either means something extremely dangerous is nearby that the Administrator is keeping me away from, or there’s something extremely dangerous He needs me to do.

The implant begins to control my movement. I dive back through the door, kicking up snow behind me. As I hit the ground inside, I hear a distinct popping sound of bullets slamming into the metal-sheeted walls. From the floor, I kick the door, slamming it shut. Without my input, I hop up and scramble across the room. I take hold of the table in both hands and flip it on its side, sliding it over to bang up against the door.

Not good.

Next, I go into the kitchen, then into the back room where the cleaning supplies and tools are kept.

I grab the the aerosol can of high-acid cleaner off the top shelf, then dig around on the opposite side of the closet until my hand closes on the cutting torch.

I can tell where this is going, and I really don’t like it, but I’ve been DCC’ed and I don’t have a choice in the matter. Somewhere above me, out in orbit on the company’s headquarters space station, the Administrator is controlling my body directly through his own implants.

I can hear a scraping sound outside, something sliding across the wall toward the door. Sounds like something sharp. I have only seconds to—apparently wait around for it to break down the door. I just stand there, in the middle of the room.

Has He forgotten about me?

I can’t move. I’m still DCC’ed, but the implant isn’t directing my body to do anything. I stand in the middle of the meeting room, amid scattered remnants of whatever had been on the table, holding my can of flammable spray and my cutting torch.

The scraping reaches the door, and the latch clicks. The door moves a fraction of an inch and bumps against the table.

I really would rather have something bigger to fight with, like that snow shovel against the wall over there, or a metal broom handle, or that broken pickaxe hung in the tool closet. What’s an improvised flamethrower going to do against a mech anyway?

If the Administrator has gotten distracted with something else going on elsewhere in the colony, will my implant even let me defend myself when that thing gets in?

The door crashes open, flinging the table across the floor to crash into the chairs nearby.

Automatically, my hands come up. Before I can even see the enemy silhouetted against the backdrop of snow, I squeeze the sprayer, and a thick stream of the cleaning gel shoots out. With my other hand, I click the cutting torch on and bring it up to the stream, then let my finger off the sprayer. The last bit of the gel catches fire, and it follows all the rest to splatter against the chest and head of the figure in the doorway as it barrels through the door at me.

I realize why the Administrator had me prepare a flamethrower.

I see now that my assailant is human, or was at one time. He’s naked to the waist, with wires and tubes poking out all over his body. One of his hands has been replaced with a power claw, the triple-bladed weapon already wet with someone’s blood.

My implant buzzes again, the same three-beats of a DCC, and my body unlocks, back under my own control again. I guess the Administrator deems the situation under control now.

I would argue that point if I could.

Because he’s not wearing a shirt or a helmet, the cyborg can’t strip them off to get the burning gel off himself. Somehow, he doesn’t seem to care. He charges forward even as he burns, his face a twisted mask of wrath as he glares at me through the flaming gel on his face. He must be hopped up on some combat stim, juiced out of his mind by whoever sent him on this raid.

He slashes the air with his power claw, trying to catch me as I backpedal and vault the counter top into the kitchen. The claw slashes through my parka as it flies out behind me, spilling pale white plasticotton like entrails as it tears the back of my coat to shreds.

I just need to keep away from him—it. As I slide over the counter, knocking a bowl of fruit off to scatter on the floor, I reach up and flick the latch on the hatch above me. The door swings down and slams right into my attacker’s face as he tries to follow me over the counter. Hastily, I fasten the hatch and run to the kitchen door. The cyborg is picking himself up off the floor, patches of flame still burning over his body and head as I slam the kitchen door and look around for something to bar it.

There’s a broom standing behind the door, so I pick it up and wedge it through the door handle and against the counter top.

It’ll probably only take him a moment to break that down, but it’s a moment longer than I had before.

Now’s my chance to re-arm myself, so I hurry through the kitchen to the back room. I reach for the pickax on the wall, but my eyes fall on something better. Someone left a sledgehammer back here.

I heft it and go back out, just in time to see a clawed hand punch through the thin composite of the door, tearing a jagged hole in it and waving around. The hand disappears, and a face appears, peering through at my improvised trap.

The claws come back through and swat at the broom handle, but I’ve reached the door again and I’m ready to fight.

I cock the hammer back and wait until the cyborg’s elbow comes through the hole, then I bring the steel head smashing down.

A loud pop and crack sounds as the joint dislocates, then shatters under the hammer blow. An eerie silence follows, the cyborg not crying out in pain, or even grunting. It makes no sound. The destroyed arm just hangs there, halfway through the hole in the door, swinging gently from side to side.

That definitely did some damage, but it couldn’t have killed him. Did the fire finally finish the job?

“Burk! Burk, are you in there?”

Kilo’s voice comes through to me from the main room.

“I think it’s dead,” he says. “I brained it with a crossbow bolt and it isn’t moving.”

Adrenaline has my heart in my throat. I swallow and take a deep breath.

“I’m okay,” I call out. “I’m coming out.”

My hand is shaking. I take hold of the broom that’s still wedged against the door, then think of a better idea. Even dead, I’d rather not have to slip past that thing through the narrow doorway. I unlatch the counter hatch and lift it, hopping up and throwing my legs over.

A few feet away, the cyborg hangs, arm stuck through the hole in the door and head pinned to it with a brightly-colored bolt.

Kilo’s crouched by the door, a compound hunting crossbow in one hand and two long guns over his shoulder.

“You okay?” He looks me over, then motions for me to crouch beside him.

I nod shakily. “I got DCC’ed right after you left. He had me barricade the door, otherwise it would’ve caught me outside in the open.

Kilo returns my nod. “I got DCC’ed too, right after picking up the rifles. He made me pick up this crossbow, and now I know why. Had to be quiet.” He motions to the door leading out into the rain. “I saw bullet holes in the door.”

“Yeah, something shot at me as I came back inside. Maybe they’re gone now if they didn’t shoot at you.”

“Maybe. Here, turn off the lights, we might be able to see out better.”

Kilo passes me one of the rifles, one of the colony’s high-powered hunting guns that we mostly only use to keep the megafauna away. We go around the room flipping off all the lights, then meet back up at the door.

“He’ll be watching the door,” Kilo whispers, “Try the window.”
Inching up to the plastiglass, I peek out into the swirling storm.
“I see it.”

Even through the storm, I can see the telltale red glow of a mech’s optics facing us. It’s far out, up the side of the mountain, peering over a large rock.

A muzzle flash makes me drop back behind the solid wall, but nothing strikes the building.

“I think it’s shooting at the main battle,” I call across to Kilo.
“Can you hit it from here?”

“Yeah,” I reply, scuttling in a crouch back to the metal table and dragging it to the window. “I need something to set the bi-pod on though.”

Kilo moves to help, and we get the table standing upright again and the rifle’s bi-pod set up on it.

“I don’t know if the window is gonna mess up the shot though,” I say, getting behind the gun and sighting through the optic at the faded red light off in the haze of snow.

“I can break it before you shoot,” Kilo replies. “I’ll just smash it out with my stock.”

“Good. I’m almost ready—” The three-toned chime sounds in my brain again, and my hand goes to the dials on the optics, readjusting them in a way I can’t understand.

Apparently the Administrator has taken a real interest in me today. Kilo stands up and smashes out the plastiglass pane, then ducks out of the way.

As soon as he gets clear, my finger pulls the trigger. The gun kicks against my shoulder and the deafening report echoes around the interior of the meeting hall. Instead of sighting the result of my shot, I yank the gun around, pivoting to down one side of the table so my rifle is aimed out at an oblique angle, directly into the center of the colony. I put my eye to the sight, and wait, staring through the haze outside at the empty side of one of our shacks.

“Burk, what’s up?”

I can’t move. My eye glares through the optic, finger poised just above the trigger. The Administrator must know something I don’t, because I can’t see anything out there.

“Burk, what—oh,” Kilo must realize why I can’t respond, because he cuts off and gets up, moving behind me and sighting out the window, back to where my original shot went.

“I think you got him,” he whispers, coming around into my peripheral view again. “Something out there is smoking, and I don’t see—”

A shadowed figure passes into view in my scope, shrouded in the dark of blowing snow. I pull the trigger and once again the report echoes though the building. Kilo jumps in surprise, startled by the sudden boom.

The three-tone chime sounds in my head as my body unlocks again.

“I’m back,” I say, shaking out my trigger hand and returning it to steady the rifle and survey the result of my shot.

“Whatever it was, it’s super dead now,” I declare, panning across the debris of the mech I shot, which is scattered up the street and against the wall of the building behind it. It has to be a mech, there’s no blood anywhere. As powerful as this rifle is, if that had been an organic, there would be blood splattered everywhere.

A notification pops up in my vision: Raid repulsed, report for emergency triage.

A ghostly gray line appears at my feet, leading out the door into the blizzard.

“Let’s go,” Kilo says, throwing his rifle around his shoulder and heading out the door.

I follow suit, gathering up the forgotten crossbow and bolts off the floor where he left it, and hustle out the door after him. The bitter cold smacks me in the face and the wind blows up the tattered back of my jacket, chilling me instantly, but I can’t dwell on that.

Is Rini safe? Mabel? Max, or Roper, or Jingo?

Kilo and I hurry up the road, intent on getting to the scene of the main battle as fast as possible.

In silence, we pass the remains of the mech I took out with my second shot. The lower body lays with legs sprawled in two directions, while the torso is scattered in a hundred pieces and fetched up against the wall behind it.

“Nice shot,” Kilo mutters, surveying the wreck.

Figures materialize out of the gloomy haze, the rest of the colonists standing at the rough wall of sandbags we use as a barricade on this side of the town.

My stomach turns to ice as the ruins of our defensive line resolve out of the dark in front of me.

The bodies of our attackers are strewn about, two human cyborgs and two mechs. These must have charged the battlements, getting over the walls before they died.

“Burk, over here!”

I hurry over to the figure crouched in the snow, hunched over a body lying in a pool of blood. It’s Max, and he’s wrapping a large bandage over the severed stump of an arm on—Rini. He’s working on Rini.

I sink to my knees in the snow beside her. Her blue eyes are glassy, staring at a patch of blood in the churned snow a meter away.

“She’s in shock,” Max says, “Help me here!”

I must be in shock too. I stare dumbly at the roll of medical tape he pushes at me.

“Burk, she’s bleeding out!”

I reach out, taking the tape from him and helping him wrap her arm tightly with the bandage. I can see he’s already put a tourniquet over her elbow.

“She’ll live,” Max says.

Rini mumbles something, and I lean closer to hear, but she’s staring blankly into the distance again.

“The caravan is all dead,” Max whispers. I finally look at him and see that he’s got a bloody bandage strapped over his right eye. Angry red slashes extend down past the bandage onto his cheek and chin.

“They didn’t make it to the barricade.”

He motions with his head over the wall. I stand and look out. About a hundred meters down the rough-cut road, silhouetted in the spotlights the defenders turned on, there are more bodies, humans and pack animals, it looks like.

“I need to see if anyone survived.”

Max stares at me a long moment. “Go ahead, I’ll stay with her till you get back.”

I climb out and start walking down the road, past a few broken bodies of mechs and bloody corpses of cyborgs.

My implant buzzes, reminding me I’m not doing my proper duty, not following orders, but I need to go see. My mind is in a haze, just like the snowy fog around me.

I walk down the line of bodies until I find her, sixth and last in the caravan.

Mabel is face up in the snow, staring up into the sky, her arms and legs outstretched as if about to make a snow angel. I can’t see a wound, but the front of her clothes are dark with blood already hardening with frost.

There are no words.

I sink to my knees beside her, my hand unconsciously going out to caress her cold, pale face. I reach to close her eyes, but stop at the last moment. She loved the stars, I think she wouldn’t want me to close them.

A roar sounds ahead of me, causing me to lift my eyes from my sister’s face. A drop pod is landing in the road up ahead. Perhaps it’s another cluster of mechs, coming down to finish the job. I can’t seem to bring myself to care.

I look back at Mabel’s face, but there are letters obscuring my vision, a single word:

Prioritized.

The gray line extends from my feet down the road toward the drop pod.

We always knew the Administrator didn’t care about our feelings, but this is a new low. My sister lies dead on the ground, and He expects us to just carry on?

My implant buzzes.

“Go to hell,” I mutter. I know He can hear me.

My body seizes up, the three-tone chime sounding in my mind. If I could scream, I would, but I can’t. He makes me stand up, every fiber of my being resisting this, but all in vain.

I step around Mabel’s body and weave my way through the rest of the caravan’s corpses, down the road to the oblong gray alloy of the drop pod.

The indignity of this, the inhumanity.

I key in a code I don’t know to the panel on the side of the pod, and the access hatch pops open.

Before this, I could not have believed anyone to be so callous that they—

I lift out a long plastisteel case and open it. Inside, nestled in foam is a shining alloy prosthetic arm—ending just above the elbow, exactly where Rini’s arm now ends.

I set the open case down on the ground and reach into the drop pod again, pulling out a small square box. Cradled in the foam of this case is a glittering eyeball, with monofilament wire spilling from the back and a glinting metallic blue iris staring back at me—the same color as Max’s eyes.

There’s one more box in the drop pod, at the very bottom, stuffed behind vacuum-sealed packages of what looks like food.

It’s wedged in tight, and I struggle to lift it out, banging it back and forth as I lift it free. The scattered gravel crunches as I set it down and open the lid.

Six silver cylinders lay inside, each about the size of a water-ration bottle.

It can’t be.

I barely notice as my implant chimes an all clear and my body unlocks. I reach down and lift one of the cylinders out of its cradle. There’s silver lettering on the side, and I have to squint to make it out in the gloom.

Tri-phasic Chlorodoxiquin / Postmortal Organic Nanite Injection Serum - Administer within 1 hr.

I’ve never seen one of these before, but I know what it is. It’s Sparkleworld medicine. It raises the dead.

Six cylinders, six bodies lying in the snow behind me.

A message appears in my vision, direct from the Administrator.

Happy Winter Holiday.

The End.