“Because you’re mine, Pira.”

Elpida did not elaborate.

Pira’s eyes burned, blue lightning in a bloodless face, striking across the narrow gap of Pheiri’s control cockpit. Cold embers of the undead sunrise crawled through Pheiri’s tiny viewing port; the reddish light rekindled the fire in Pira’s flame-coloured hair. Her wounded body was a naked offering in the electric gloom.

Pira croaked: “That’s not an answer. You should shoot me, Elpida. Or have me shot, if you can’t do it yourself.”

Howl chuckled in the back of Elpida’s head. Stubborn cunt, isn’t she? Let me at her?

Not yet, Elpida replied. I think I finally understand her.

Huh. Good luck?

Ilyusha hissed through her teeth, uncoiling from her seat, tail lifting from the floor — but Elpida put out one hand to stop her. Pira would not respond well to the blunt instrument of Ilyusha’s outrage and aggression; she would clam up, close down, and fight back. Elpida needed to be like a heated scalpel, to remove Pira’s gangrenous flesh.

Elpida said, “Yes, Pira, I agree with that. I should kill you.”

Bold, Howl snorted. Don’t actually do it though, hey?

No promises.

… Elps? Fucking—

Elpida continued: “You’re a liability, Pira. You kept secrets from me and from the group, not just personal matters, but practical secrets, information which might have made the difference between our collective survival and our individual deaths. Despite that, you took specific actions which have reaffirmed my trust in your intentions — but not in your judgement. I want to make that clear. I do not trust your judgement, Pira. I do not trust that you’re telling me the whole truth even now, no matter how broken you are. You willingly joined a group that represents the worst possible way to respond to this nightmare of an afterlife. You’ve been down to the bottom, all the way down, and I can guess what you’re capable of. You shot me in a moment of a panic, a foolish decision which nearly got us all killed, or captured, or worse.”

Pira frowned. The bandages and dressings on her face crinkled in a new way; adhesive pulled at the pale flesh of her cheek and throat. “Then what—”

Elpida spoke over her. “And I would kill you, if I were a Death’s Head, or a Covenanter, or perhaps if our positions were reversed and you were standing judgement over me. But I’m none of those things. I am a daughter of Telokopolis. I am Telokopolis, a living piece of the city, still standing. While one of us stands, the city lives. Telokopolis is eternal; it will never die. And Telokopolis offers a better way.”

Pira hissed, “This is nonsense. Nothing but words. Just—”

Elpida raised her voice, filling the control cockpit with command. “Your decision to shoot me in the gut was born from lack of trust — lack of trust in me. But the mistake was not yours alone. It was also mine.”

Pira squinted. “What?”

Elpida kept her voice level and hard. “I failed you, Pira. I failed to earn your trust. I failed to make my case. I was derelict in my duties as your Commander. In a moment of panic and indecision, I failed to guide you. Your mistakes and errors and failures are mine to bear.” Elpida pointed at her own stomach, at the layers of bandage and gauze and stitches behind the fabric of her tomb-grey t-shirt. “This may as well be self-inflicted.”

Pira tried to scoff, but she hadn’t the energy. “Absurd. I pointed the gun, I pulled the trigger, I—”

“You. Are. Mine.”

The jumbled surfaces and screens of Pheiri’s control cockpit absorbed the whip crack of Elpida’s voice; the additional effort had made her stomach wound spike with pain, but she swallowed her wince. Ilyusha flinched in her seat, talons scraping on metal. Pira blinked, eyes wavering. Was she about to break? Elpida had barely pushed; she hadn’t even spelled out the equation yet, the retroactive responsibility for Pira’s actions, as her Commander. She had led this particular dance half a dozen times in the past, in life, with her cadre, even with—

Howl? Elpida thought. I hear you panting. You alright?

Howl snapped: I’m not fucking crying!

Didn’t say you were.

Just … fuck, Elps! Fucking, this? Really? For her?

She’s my responsibility. You said it yourself, she’s one of my girls now. She took the deal and followed her orders.

But-

Leave nobody behind. I did this for you, too, Howl. I did this for all the cadre, collectively, and for some of you individually, over half a dozen different matters, even when you didn’t deserve it, even when it was stupid and I didn’t want to. This is what it means to be in Command. Your failures are my failures, your transgressions are my transgressions. And Pira didn’t need much, she’s already there.

Howl sniffed, loudly. Yeah, yeah. Get on with it. This is ugly.

Elpida went on: “You’re alive because you’re mine, Pira, because you belong to Telokopolis. You’re alive because I was there when you needed me, and you accepted me. You’re alive because you’re one of my girls now. You’re alive because I say so, because I order it, and because I am your Commander.”

Pira’s lips curled — disgust, a last bastion raised in haste. “These are all just empty words, Elpida.”

“Commander.”

Pira snorted. “Elpida. You don’t even know what to do with me. You don’t—”

Howl rose up Elpida’s throat and took hold of Elpida’s voice.

“Elps might not,” Howl said. “But I sure fuckin’ do.”

Pira froze, blue eyes gone cold as ancient ice. Ilyusha leaned forward in her seat to look at Elpida’s face.

Howl? Elpida asked. What are you doing?

This bitch is almost as stubborn as you, Elps. You’ll be here all day. Let me ride her for a bit, pretty please? I won’t make her too sore, promise.

Fine. Go ahead.

Howl peeled Elpida’s lips back in a wide and whirling grin.

Pira hissed: “You again. The other personality. From the infirmary.”

Howl said: “Yeah! Hi there, bitch cakes. You gonna keep being a bad girl? Need a good hard fuck-spank before you sit down and do as you’re told? Or are you gonna keep throwing a tantrum until reality gives up and spits you out? ‘Cos that’s all I see here. A little baby bitch tantrum. Wah-wah-wah, sucks to be you. Sucks to get picked up by somebody who won’t let you go, right? No matter how badly you screw up? When all you wanna do is wallow in how sad and defeated you are? Boo-hoo-hoo.”

Pira asked, “Who are you?”

Elpida resumed control. “This is Howl, one of my dead sisters. She doesn’t think very highly of you.”

Howl snapped: “No kidding! You think Elps would cast me out if I shot her in the gut? No! She’d smack me upside the head and call me a bad girl, but I’d still be here. Because I’m hers. Because we all were! We all are!”

Pira stammered: “Y-you have no reason to keep me—”

“Alive!?” Howl cackled — Elpida’s own voice ringing out against the inside of Pheiri’s hull. “You wanna die so bad, do it yourself!”

Howl reached out with Elpida’s hand and picked up Elpida’s submachine gun. She opened the breech to show a round in the chamber, closed it with a metallic clack, and then offered the gun to Pira, grip first.

Pira stared at the weapon. Her brow furrowed. Her lips twitched.

Howl’s hand shook; Elpida had to take control to steady her own fingers.

Howl, she said. You shouldn’t offer this if you don’t mean it.

Elps, shut up!

You’re copying what I did with Ilyusha, but you won’t let Pira shoot herself, not really. You’re not prepared to see it through. This is just a stunt.

And you would?! Howl raged. You’d let her blow her brains out?!

If I offered it, I would mean it. You can’t fake this, Howl.

Then fucking help me!

Elpida sighed — with her own mouth — and re-assumed control of her body. She kept the gun extended toward Pira, to keep the offer open. She said: “Pira, Howl is being stupid about this, but she’s making an important point. I can’t actually stop you from killing yourself.”

Pira looked up from the gun. Her eyes were a blue void.

Elpida said: “Back there in the Death’s Head skyscraper you could have easily gone through with it, killed Ooni and then killed yourself. But you didn’t, because I turned up in time and told you not to. But that’s all I did — told you not to. I was weak and wounded, I wouldn’t have been able to wrestle the guns away from you, and the others weren’t committed. You could have done it, but you chose to listen to me. All I have now is words. You could leave us, when everyone else is sleeping. You could steal a knife and open your veins. But you didn’t. You’re still here. And I’m confident that you don’t actually want to die. All I have is words, but the decision to follow me is yours. I can only save you if you say yes, but I think you’ve already said it.”

Pira’s gaze dropped back to the gun. She reached out with one hand and took the grip. She tapped her index finger just above the trigger.

Fuuuckkkk, Howl gurgled. Fuck! Elps, I’m sorry, I—

Trust me.

Pira was still for a long time, one finger extended above the trigger. Her knuckles turned white with pressure. She didn’t breathe. Her wounds, her sallow, pale, drained complexion, her sagging musculature, the dark rings around her eyes — she looked like a corpse about to collapse.

Ilyusha gritted her teeth so hard that Elpida heard her molars creak. Pheiri’s control cockpit hissed and buzzed, almost below the level of human hearing. Deep in his belly the nuclear heartbeat throbbed, keeping time with Elpida’s pulse.

Elpida counted sixty three seconds. Her arm began to tire, but she did not waver. She would respect Pira’s choice.

Sixty four seconds. Sixty five seconds. Pira’s trigger finger twitched. Sixty six. Sixty seven.

Pira let go of the gun.

Her hand was shaking; she flexed the knuckles and returned it to her lap, limp and spent. She cast her eyes toward the floor. She started to cry again, slow and silent.

Elpida lowered the gun and suppressed her own sigh of relief. Ilyusha hissed, hard and restless.

Elpida said: “Thank you, Pira. I’m glad you’re going to stay with us.”

Pira shook her head. “I don’t deserve this.”

Elpida said, “It doesn’t matter if you deserve it or not. That’s not for you to decide.”

Pira squeezed a sob through clenched teeth. “You can’t be serious. You can’t forgive—”

Howl snorted, taking control of Elpida’s words again: “Forgive?! I didn’t hear anyone say that word. Did you? Illy? Elps? Am I hearing fuckin’ voices here? Is Pheiri growing speakers and chatting with us now?”

Ilyusha snorted too; Elpida thought that sounded forced.

Pira raised her head, tears running down her cheeks. She looked so lost.

Howl went on: “The Commander’s not offering you forgiveness, you dozy bitch. You don’t even want it! You’d never take it, not of your own accord! If she offered then you’d be disgusted by her, right? I know I would! Ha!”

The last flakes of brittle crust fell away from Pira’s expression. Wide eyes wept freely. “I … yes … I would.”

Elpida said: “Howl, I can take it from here. Settle down.”

Any time, Commander, Howl giggled. Got her all fluffed and prepped for you. Have fun with the juicy core.

Elpida ignored the sex joke — it was Howl’s way of dealing with her own discomfort. She put Howl from her mind for now. She focused on Pira.

Blue eyes hung in the gloom, wet and wasted. Pira’s final walls had fallen.

Elpida straightened up and put the firearm in her own lap. “Pira, I am not offering you forgiveness. I’m not giving you that choice, because I don’t trust your judgement. You have the choice to run, to leave us behind, because I cannot stop that, and you have the choice to kill yourself — though I am ordering you not to do so. But you don’t have a choice of forgiveness. It’s not yours to reject.”

Pira’s eyes widened; she must have realised what Elpida was about to say. “N-no, Elpi— C-Commander, no—”

“You are forgiven, because it is my choice, not yours. Your mistake is noted. Forgiveness is your punishment.” Elpida indicated her own gut again. “And you owe me, for this. If we were not nanomachine zombies, then this gut wound would have killed me. Then, despite that, I stopped you from killing Ooni and yourself. You owe me three lives. The sum of the debt is you, yourself.”

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Pira tried to swallow; she coughed, choking on her own saliva. She shook her head.

Elpida said, “You reject the debt?”

“No, no, I … I can’t be trusted.”

“Because you used to be a Death’s Head?”

Pira said, “No, not that. Because I don’t believe in anything anymore. Elpida. Commander, I didn’t turn against the Death’s Head ideology. I already explained that. I just stopped believing in anything at all. The old gods from when I was alive, the new ideals from The Fortress, the Death’s Heads, everything in between. None of it means anything in this place, living like this. This isn’t even life, just ashes. All fires have gone out. How can I believe in anything?”

Elpida smiled. “You believe in not eating other people. You believe in rejecting predatory cannibalism.”

Pira winced, slow and wounded. “I reject the premise of survival at any cost. It’s the only way to resist.”

“To resist what?” Elpida knew the answer, but she wanted Pira to put it into words.

Pira gestured with her bionic hand. The arm was badly dented. She indicated nothing and everything. “All of this. Whoever made it. Whoever keeps it going. I used to believe that we might grow strong, or build a home, or use power to strike back at … at what?” Pira sobbed once, harder than Elpida had expected. “At dust and echoes? At shadows on the wall? There is no amount of cannibalism that can protect us. Refusal is the only true choice.”

Ilyusha grunted: “Sounds like belief. To me. Huh.”

Pira shook her head. “It’s a rejection of belief.”

Elpida said, “The only winning move is to remove oneself from the game. If that is the case, I have one more question for you.”

Pira sobbed. “Don’t.”

“Why do you keep coming back?”

Pira squeezed her eyes shut as hard as she could, tears leaking out between the darkened creases of her skin. Her every muscle was pulled tight despite her wounds; perhaps she was trying to keep herself from bursting.

“Pira?”

“I’m so tired,” Pira hissed through her teeth. “I want this to be over. I want this to end. But it won’t. I don’t have the choice anymore. I can’t make it end, I can’t stop, because I made a deal.”

Pira had mentioned this once before; the first resurrection, from life to revenant, was free and without consent, but subsequent resurrections required the zombie in question to give a reason to the machines, to the nanomachine ecosystem, or to whatever directing mind lay behind all this software. Pira had been unable to describe the feeling or sensation when she’d previously spoken on this subject. She had claimed that after death everything was different.

Elpida clarified: “A deal to come back, the first time you die here, the first time you die as a zombie. You have to give a reason to keep going. Is that correct?”

Pira nodded. “Wasn’t the first time, though. Changed over time. Refined it. Got angry.”

“What deal did you make, Pira?”

Pira shook her head. “Can’t put it into words. It’s not something you understand in words. Can’t explain how it feels.”

“Try.”

Pira went very still and very quiet, breathing hard and rough. “Promised to … to try to … tear it all down.”

“Promised who?”

Pira hissed: “I don’t know.”

“Okay, Pira, relax. Stop thinking about it now.” Elpida took a deep breath and let it out slowly, for Pira to mirror. Pira obeyed, shivering and whimpering, wincing with little pains, like unclenching a fist held tight for far too long. Ilyusha grimaced and nudged Elpida in the ribs; Elpida gave her a placating look and mouthed ‘almost there, don’t worry.’

Elpida’s mind was full of strange coincidences. Pieces were slotting into place.

After a few moments of silence, Elpida said: “Pira, can you believe in me?”

Pira opened her eyes and stared at nothing. “Why?” she murmured. “What for? What’s your plan, Commander? What plan can you possibly have?”

“I thought you liked my plans,” Elpida said. “You complimented the general direction in which I was going, before you shot me in the gut.”

“You had a plan and it failed.”

Elpida laughed, big and open; that made her own gut hurt, but she ignored the pain. Ilyusha and Pira both frowned at her.

Elpida said: “What, because the combat frame didn’t get up first try? Because we stumbled and fell? Because you shot me? That’s just what happens sometimes. Plans fail. People die. Cities fall. But not Telokopolis. You know why? Because here I am.” She spread her hands. “We got the group back together, we recovered our missing members. We’re here, we’re alive and breathing — or at least undead. And while we can think and move and speak, we can make new plans. It’s that, it’s always that, or give up.”

“I— I want to give up. I want to be dead.”

“I don’t think you really do,” Elpida said. “We need you, Pira. I need you. I need your skills and experience, your knowledge of the nanomachine ecosystem, your combat abilities, your advice, your support, your trigger finger. And now that I understand you, I also want the promise, the deal, whatever it was you made with the system or the machines or the gravekeepers.”

“W-what?”

“I want you to make a new deal, with me. I want you to transfer that promise. I want you to fight for me even if you don’t believe in me. I want you to accept that I am your Commander, I am your judgement.”

Pira’s tears dried in her eyes. She stared at Elpida, mystified. “Why?”

Elpida leaned back in her chair and allowed herself a smile. It was only half performance. “Because the graveworm knows who I am. Because I’ve got a Necromancer who talks to me via sleep paralysis, who wore my face to get into that combat frame. Because a combat frame fell from the heavens when I was resurrected. Because we’re sitting in a treasure trove of information and firepower.” She reached out and patted the bare grey metal of Pheiri’s innards. “Because Pheiri here was within driving distance, out of an entire continent-spanning city. Because Ooni was here, near the tomb in which you were resurrected. Because you were here at all — a zombie who made a deal to start wrecking the system, resurrected alongside me. Because of messages inside my coffin, and coincidences I cannot explain.”

Pira tried to laugh, but the sound was hollow. “Messianic delusion.”

“It’s not delusion,” Elpida said. “I’m starting to disbelieve all these coincidences. I’m starting to believe that we’ve been assisted — or at least I’ve been assisted — by something we can’t see yet. You want to access the fulcrum of the world, Pira? You want to tear down whatever this is? Stick with me and you might just get to see it. You know why?”

Pira swallowed. “Because you think you’ve been chosen.”

Elpida shook her head. “No. That part doesn’t matter. Whatever I was chosen for, I refuse it. My purpose is my cadre. My purpose is to be your Commander.”

Pira stared, no longer crying, her face naked and raw. She did not sit straight, but no longer did she shiver beneath her armoured coat.

Pira whispered to herself. The words were just loud enough for Elpida to hear: “Never give up. Never stop. Never lie down.”

Elpida decided it was now or never. She put her submachine gun aside on one of Pheiri’s many control panels, and turned to Ilyusha. “Illy, do you have a knife on you? May I please borrow it?”

Ilyusha pulled a sheathed combat knife from the side of her torn-up tomb-trousers.

“Thank you, Illy,” Elpida said. She accepted the knife, stood up, and rolled back her left sleeve.

Pira’s eyes widened. “Commander?”

Elpida drew the combat knife and handed the sheath back to Ilyusha. The blade was black and clean, drinking the thin reddish dawn from Pheiri’s tiny window. Elpida flexed her left hand and held the knife in her right.

“Pira, you and I made a deal, back when we had a fistfight. I offered you my blood in place of cannibalised flesh. You agreed in principle, but we never sealed the pact.”

“Commander. Commander, no, I’m not—”

“Elpida,” said Elpida. “It’s Elpida again now.” She raised her palm and the knife. “You’re badly injured and you need to heal. And I need you to know that you are mine. This blood is given freely, willingly; this is not an act of exploitation. Are you ready?”

Pira’s lips parted with a wet click. She was panting softly. She gave a very tiny nod.

Elpida quickly drew the blade across the meat of her own left palm. Pain blossomed a split second before the blood. The flesh parted and the crimson flowed, pooling in the shallow grail of her metacarpals.

She lowered her hand toward Pira’s waiting lips. Pira grasped her with fluttering fingertips at knuckles and wrist. She touched her pale lips to the side of Elpida’s palm. Her eyes fluttered shut. Her throat trembled. Scarlet blood slid into Pira’s mouth, sluicing over her tongue, smeared around her lips.

Pira drank, pale throat bobbing, until the flow weakened to a trickle. She took little more than a few thimble’s worth of blood; Elpida’s circulatory system was host to enhanced clotting agents and specialised platelet structures, another blessing of Telokopolan genetic engineering. She had no doubt that Pira would derive scant material benefit from the nanomachines which comprised her blood. A poor meal compared to a single bite of corpse-meat — or even better, fresh brains — but blood meant more than nano-mould or empty air. And the nutrition was a secondary purpose.

Pira let go, hands quivering, eyelids heavy. Elpida withdrew. Pira sagged in her seat, smears of blood on her lips and chin. She dropped her eyes toward the floor.

“No,” Elpida said. “Be proud.”

Pira straightened up. Eyes to the front. Wiped her chin and licked her lips. Hardly full of energy, but not looking so sorry for herself anymore.

“Good girl,” said Elpida.

Elpida flexed her left hand. The pain wasn’t too bad. She would heal quickly, what with all the raw blue nanomachines already inside her body. She allowed two droplets of blood to fall from the edge of her palm and land on the metal deck: a symbolic offering for Pheiri. She would explain it to him later.

She sat down and went to hand the knife back to Ilyusha, but she found Illy staring at the bloody split in her palm. Ilyusha’s claws were extended, crimson razors at all her fingertips. Her tail silently flicked back and forth.

Elpida extended her left hand. “Don’t be jealous. Here, Illy.”

Ilyusha bared her teeth, blushing as red as the blood. “I don’t—”

“You clearly do, Illy. Take it.”

Ilyusha snapped: “Don’t need it!”

“You know that’s beside the point. Clean my hand. Go ahead.”

Ilyusha relented, squirming and blushing. She clicked her claws away and then lifted Elpida’s wound toward her mouth; she licked the blood from the creases in Elpida’s palm. Her tongue was small and raspy. Elpida winced.

Gritty raindrops trickled down Pheiri’s tiny steel-glass window; it was still raining, a cold and wet day in hell. Tiny machine sounds clicked and whirred from deep inside his body. Ilyusha licked and lapped until the wound began to close. Pira said nothing, her eyes finally at peace, blue skies after a storm. Elpida considered the fact that three of her companions had now consumed her own blood.

Hoping that’s gonna be a trend? Howl chuckled.

Not sure. Can I produce blood faster if I modify myself? Maybe.

Bloodbag. Ha.

Eventually Ilyusha finished cleaning Elpida’s hand. Elpida reached over with her other and stroked Ilyusha’s messy blonde hair, smoothing it over her skull. She said: “Good girl.”

Ilyusha closed her eyes and purred.

They sat together in silence for a while longer.

Eventually Pira asked a question. A croaking voice from a bone dry throat, but no longer wet with tears: “Commander, what is your plan? This isn’t a rhetorical or philosophical question. I’m asking for practical answers. What do we do now?”

Elpida said, “Short, medium, or long term?”

Pira raised her eyebrows. Had she not expected such detail? “Long term. Give me the wide view.”

Elpida leaned back in her chair, flexing her left hand, savouring the sharp, shallow pain of the cut. “We have two long term strategic options. One: head back toward the graveworm and attempt to make contact, with the intention of obtaining access to the nanomachine production facilities inside. Can we get past the worm-guard? I have no idea. Has the graveworm really been speaking to me? Howl?”

I’m no worm, Elps, Howl snorted. How would I be? Don’t you remember what that moon-bitch said?

Moon bitch? You mean Kagami?

Yeah! You can’t broadcast shit through Pheiri’s hull unless he invites it. It’s bone-mesh, remember? How can I be the graveworm if I’m talking to you now?

That Necromancer managed to broadcast through Pheiri’s hull.

You had a nightmare! And I’m not a worm!

Elpida trusted Howl, at least about this. She shrugged so Pira and Ilyusha could see. “Unknown. We would need to test the worm-guard, at the very least. I’m no longer certain that they were intentionally waiting for me on the combat frame. That may have been the Necromancer’s doing. I would also need to re-attempt contact with the graveworm itself. Option one may not be possible, not without the combat frame to put us on an even footing.”

Ilyusha hissed: “Big fucker. Yeah. Too big.”

Pira said: “Option two, we leave?”

Elpida nodded. “Correct. Option two: we strike out, away from the graveworm, toward one of two destinations. The first possible target is one of those three towers you’re so interested in, Pira, where you think we might be able to meet plenty of Necromancers, or find some kind of control systems.” Elpida shook her head. “In theory Pheiri can make the journey, he’s survived beyond the graveworm safe zones for a very long time, but when we turn up at a tower we’re just a bunch of zombies. One Necromancer froze me on the spot, like I was a puppet. If you’re right about those towers, I don’t fancy our chances, not as we currently are.”

Pira frowned. “What’s the other destination?”

Elpida smiled. “Telokopolis. You weren’t there when we saw the ‘satellite’ photos in the tomb, but the city is there, right where the plateau should be. Dead or undead or ruins, it exists. And it will live again.”

Pira laughed, a single huff without humour. “A journey into the depths.”

Elpida nodded again. “Thousands of miles. Ten thousand. More. I asked Pheiri about this briefly, while you were unconscious, and he’s never managed to reach the hypothetical position of Telokopolis. It lies far beyond the usual circuits of the graveworms, past layers of the city he’s never penetrated. You and I can review his data together, Pira. You’ve been out there beyond the worms too, so I want you to compare notes, let me know if you think it’s feasible.”

“Does Pheiri?”

Elpida sighed. “He didn’t give me a straight answer.”

Pira swallowed. “Die at the towers or die in the wastes. You don’t even know what you’d find at Telokopolis, Elpida. An empty shell.”

Ilyusha grunted: “We’ll make it. We will!”

Elpida held out a hand; she ignored the pain of Pira’s reasonable doubt. “All of this depends on the combat frame. If we can get that online, we have a much greater chance of survival, whichever option we choose. But I doubt we can. I think it’s damaged in some fundamental way, or it would be up and moving under the pilot’s own power, or by itself if the pilot is too wounded.” She shook her head. “I have to get in there and take a look.”

Pira said: “That’s your short term plan?”

Elpida said: “Yes. Our long term direction depends on short-term results. Before we even choose, we need to recover Kagami and Vicky, and I have to … ” Elpida took a deep breath. “I have to decide what to do about the pilot inside that frame.”

Ilyusha hung her head. “She’s fucked.”

Elpida felt a pang of terrible loss for a woman she had not yet met. “If we had an atmospherically sealed hardshell, we could help her get into it somehow. The combat frame should be able to flush itself, chamber by chamber. If we could get a hardshell into the pilot chamber, and if she wasn’t wounded … ”

If, if, if; Elpida’s mind tried to plan ahead with resources she did not possess.

Pira said slowly: “Even if we could secure some kind of atmospheric suit, the suit itself would be contaminated. Do you understand?”

Elpida actually smiled; there was Pira’s usual frost, almost back to normal, despite her near nudity and the wounds all over her body. “I believe I do.”

Pira said: “Everything is contaminated. A suit itself would be made of nanomachines. The entire biosphere, the ground, the dirt. Concrete, wood, everything. Every surface. Every cubic inch of air. That pilot will die the second she’s removed from that tube.”

Elpida said, “I know. But I would like to see if there’s any other options.”

Ilyusha chuckled: “Send her back to space!”

Elpida said, “Maybe. So that’s the short term plan — as soon as I’m recovered enough, we’re going to travel back to the combat frame.”

“How?” Pira demanded. “Right past the Death’s Heads again?”

Elpida shook her head. “Small numbers, travelling light. Perhaps just me and Hafina, for stealth. I haven’t decided yet. The Necromancer may attempt to waylay us again at the hatch, to gain access to the combat frame — but Haf’s not a nanomachine zombie, she can’t be paralysed or controlled in the same way. She’s our trump card there. I think.”

Ilyusha looked up with a toothy grin. Pira blinked in surprise. “I didn’t think of that.”

Elpida continued: “We’ll recover Kagami and Vicky, do what we can for the pilot, and try to reactivate the combat frame. I’m doubtful that will work, but we have to try. Once that succeeds or fails, we can make a decision from there.” Elpida pointed at Pira. “Kagami does want me to shoot you, by the way.”

Pira grunted. “Not surprised.”

“She may attempt it herself. She did warn me that you might be a traitor, and in a way she was right. Expect gloating, possibly worse. I’ll do what I can.”

Pira’s eyebrows climbed. She seemed genuinely impressed.

Ilyusha said: “How do we pick? Elpi, how do we choose what to do?”

Elpida said, “We’ll discuss it, with all of us in one place. Pheiri too. I’m the Commander, but that doesn’t mean my orders come from above. They come from all of us.”

Pira said, voice cold: “Voting. Hm.”

“But before that,” Elpida said. “We need intel.” Her lips curled in a new kind of smile. She stretched out her legs across the control cockpit and felt the dressings tugging at the edges of her gut wound. She invited the pain. “There’s no sense deciding what to do until we can get a better view of the board. We can’t see far as pawns.”

Pira frowned. “What?”

Ilyusha said, “Ehh? Pawns?”

Elpida explained. “I’ve been putting it together in the back of my mind, ever since I got captured by the Death’s Heads. Actually I started a little before that, the moment I saw that Necromancer wearing my own face.”

Pffft, Howl snorted. You mean I’ve been putting it together, in the back of your mind, for you. Don’t shit on staff work, Elps!

You get all the real credit, Howl.

Don’t you forget it!

“We’re pawns,” Elpida said. “Everything I said earlier, all the strange coincidences. Combine all of that with the things the Necromancer said to Vicky and Kagami, and the information it apparently passed to that group of Death’s Heads. Put all of that together. We’re pawns in a game — or in a system — which we cannot understand from the inside. We don’t know which way to move because we don’t know the consequences — toward the graveworm, or the towers, or to—” the corpse of “—Telokopolis? And I’m not just talking literally, I’m talking about the motivations and agendas of things so far above us that we can barely glimpse them. So. We need the eyes of somebody who can see the game board, or at least a little higher than us.”

“A Necromancer,” Pira croaked. “How? How can you even contact it, let alone coerce it?”

Elpida said: “We don’t have to. Because there’s somebody else the Necromancer has been talking to, a whole lot more than it’s been talking to us.”

Ilyusha’s eyes lit up. “Yeah! Yeah! Fuck!”

Pira went cold and still. “You’re not suggesting we … ?”

“Yes, I am suggesting that,” Elpida said. “Combat frame or not, once we have Vicky and Kagami back with us, I propose an extraction operation. I propose we kidnap and interrogate the leader of that Death’s Head group, before the graveworm moves on and this temporary watering hole dries up. A smash and grab, to get answers from Yola.”