Bim
The unwoman's vast mind was contemplating the duality of her current situation as the Black Cat made its orbital entry. She was simultaneously delighted with recent events culminating in this foray into the great unknown of human civilization and she was disgruntled to a similar degree. The drop ship was living up to its name and plummeting to the planet below in a fuel-saving maneuver that induced pleasant, momentary weightlessness. Bim's fellow passengers didn't seem nearly as pleased with the momentary reprieve from gravity and its simulated kindred as she was. Once the ground had closed to a pre-calculated distance, the shuttle burned hard against its freefall, gracing its occupants with a semblance of acceleration once again. As detestable as the burden of metal and bone in her back was under normal circumstances, it became intolerably excruciating as the perceived weight of her vessel tripled, then quintupled its relative norm.
When the Black Cat slammed to a stop minutes later, Bim had a dizzying second of dysphoria and disassociation. It was almost as if her soul had been beaten from her vessel at the same instant the shuttle thudded onto the ground. The second passed and she wasn't sure if the sensation was caused by the soul-crushing weigh of her body, an over acute perception of momentum or legitimate astral projection of her blunted senses. The humans around her were unbuckling themselves and unfastening the first load of equipment they'd brought planetside. Bim decided to do likewise.
"The meter's running," Aivery announced over the shuttle's intercom. "Engines are still burning, so get that shit off my bird on the double! I've got nine more flights and I want to finish before the sun comes back up."
"Evander, offload with your team." Leeroy bellowed over the shuttle's roaring engines. "Remainder, lets go meet the client and figure out where we'll be camped for the next six months."
The mercs tromped off the shuttle, Bim embedded in their numbers while her tormentor remained firmly apart either group. Had she been observing a solitary creature in the wild or perhaps an isolated example of an otherwise social animal ignoring its natural tendencies, she might have dwelt on the subject in complementation. However, it was Treu, she would learn little that had not already been censored and sanitized from him. Her surroundings proved to be an altogether different case.
The humans surrounding her—nominally those who were her fellows in this endeavor now—all carried a measure of who they were in the most intriguing ways. Leeroy walked with a lumbering sway to his shoulders, his stride accustomed to carrying a heavy load that wasn't there. The way Princess flicked her scrupulous gaze everywhere and nowhere at once behind the large wire-rimmed sunglasses she was wearing despite their nighttime arrival. The supple rolling gait of Alice's quiet, measured steps; she walked as if she loathed the grating texture of materials grinding underfoot nearly as much as Bim did. Hiiro's simpleminded awe of the courtyard they'd landed in and the antiquated mansion presented a short distance away was plain yet another clouded sentiment lingered in the stiffening of his posture and the sudden rigidity of his arms.
The building was unlike any construct she had witnessed as of yet. The fragmentary recollections of her first teacher could only draw the loosest comparisons, a roof held aloft by walls and a great sum of transparent portals called windows that were not walls for some reason despite being functionally similar. The building as illuminated from within and without by warm yellow lighting, its elaborate wooden paneled construction made to create a mocking skin of differentiation from the cool stone and metal interior. In terms of volumetrics the building was larger than the Stalking Shadow was. Bim spotted four visible levels excluding the flat roof and the mansion had a peculiar shape, like a hexagon that had been hollowed out and cut in half laterally. She altered her thinking from geometrics to, what she thought was, a more human interpretation; that that regard the building could be identified as having a central 'body' with two wings or arms reaching out wide towards the courtyard. The association was something of a stretch considering the inhuman proportions of the mansion, but it was a pose mirrored by the human man walking out of the mansion to welcome them.
Compared to the ethnically diverse, racially heterogeneous yet culturally homogeneous crew of the Stalking Shadow, the approaching crowd was unimpressive. The central figure was of lower than average height, above average body fat, and sported a wide toothy smile which highlighted the seven golden teeth mixed with a mouthful of black and yellow originals. Two more men of similar height, weight and build flanked their gold-toothed principal, though their dress clearly denoted them as guards. Where their charge was casually dressed in brightly colored loose cloths, both guards wore pale fatigues blotted with tan and sandstone coloration while carrying compact firearms.
"My Friends! It is very good to meet you in person, I have been very excited since our many messages. Welcome to my… humble, abode." The man gestured loosely to his extravagant mansion, then held out his hand in the traditional human gesture of pact sealing.
"Celio-Rodrigo das Estrelas Salvador Dominar," Leeroy said, his practice of the fluid syllables allowing him to say the client's full name without tripping over anything. Leeroy took the offered hand and firmly shook it once. "Leeroy, von Stalking Shadow. I'm looking forward to working under you. This is my second, Alice, and my command staff for this op, Hero, Bim and Princess."
"A Princess and a hero you say?" Celio said with a chuckle. "Well well well, if I'd known you'd bring such beautiful women as these, I would have brought you into my employ years ago."
Celio reached out his hand to Alice. She raised her own to return the traditional gesture, but he seized her wrist and brought her knuckles to his lips. Alice spared a glance to Leeroy, but otherwise made no overtly negative reaction to the breech in decorum. Bim noted the variation of established human tradition, resolving to investigate the matter in due time when such a breach of decorum would not prove detrimental to her research as a whole. Celio shook Hiiro's hand next, causing her to wonder if his previous gesture went beyond greetings and pact sealing.
Then it was Bim's turn. She plastered a neutral expression on her vessel's face since she had yet to master the art of smiling, and resigned herself to the momentary disgust of physical contact. Celio reached for her hand, not clasping her fingers so much as guiding her placid arm upwards; his skin was unexpectedly soft and moist against her own, lacking the coarse calluses she'd experienced every other time a human hand had touched her own. The gentleness of his touch was appreciated, not so much as it repulsed her but so far this was one of the least displeasing physical greetings she'd experienced. Then his lips touched her knuckles. Where his skin had been moist, his lecherous lips very practically dripping wet. Celio pressed them tighter against her fleshy casing, flicking his tongue over her skin, sucking on her third finger, nipping once at the excess skin of its joint while his fetid breath billowed against her hand. It was disgusting. This ritual was vile and repulsive. Bim now understood why Alice had looked elsewhere, to distract herself from Celio's thinning head of hair as he suckled on her flesh.
Bim's curiosity once again faltered. Why hadn't she heeded the warnings of her elders? Truly for the many backwards wonders and knowledge to be gleaned from this repugnant insidious existence of flesh and linear time, there must have been an incalculable number of horrors, pains and curses. The underside of Celio's tongue slithered back down her finger's length, leaving a trail of reeking saliva that made her want to tear her hand from his face. It took no small sum of will to resist the urge. This was the price of knowledge and even cursed knowledge might one day be useful— though how this could ever be useful to know was beyond her current comprehension.
Celio finally raised his head, allowing Bim to reclaim her hand without breeching the observed decorum. The condensation from his breath and the vile trickle of his sticky saliva running off her skin almost made her want to cut off the hand to be rid of. Instead, she though of Treu and his mutilation of her to obliterate the paltry agonies of her flesh in the present moment.
Celio moved before Princess, but the pale woman didn't offer her hand. She reached up and removed her square aviator sunglasses, allowing a full unadulterated view of her face and inhuman eyes. Both guards behind him raised their weapons, not into a firing stance, not yet anyway, but rather into a high ready as a blatant show of force. The woman's ploy worked as planned, Celio visibly taken aback by the revelation. He stood there, mouth agap for a long moment while his face transmogrified from one expression to the next in a cycle of caricature Bim found very educational. Ultimately the one he settled on was a face of morbid curiosity, simultaneously attracted and repulsed by the creature standing before him. Vile as Bim found the man, she couldn't help but wonder what his face might look like when he discovered that she wasn't human either.
"Princess," The pale woman said without a gram of warmth or welcome in her voice. "I'll be handling the explosives we're using in your perimeter defenses. Every time I catch you leering at me like that again, I'll move the lethal radius in five meters."
"How large is it going to be initially?" Celio asked, his cocksure swagger returning with gusto.
"Fifty meters beyond the courtyard." Princess answered.
Celio though about this for a moment before smiling his gold-toothed smile and examining the pale woman to a nauseating degree.
"Forty-five now." He said. "I was thinking about replacing my windows anyway, Princess das Neves. The exotic beauty of your wintry complexion will be a welcomed complement to this world of unending summer suns."
"Sir-" Leeroy started.
"Just Celio will suffice in private company, Mister Leeroy. Only the public and strangers need be so formal with each other."
"Very well. Celio, our shuttles will be ferrying in gear and personnel throughout the night. I'm aiming to have everything and everyone tucked away before sun up, with your permission my second will coordinate the details with one of your staff while we get down to business."
"Of course!" Celio agreed, snapping his fingers twice. A woman in dignified servant garb rushed from the house. "This is my chefe macante doméstica, my head maid, Carmen Maria de Terra Diaz Ruiz."
The maid bowed by way of introduction.
"She has managed this estate for twenty-two years and served me faithfully in that time. Feel free to use her or any of my chore girls as you see fit. They live to serve." Celio offered with a golden smile.
Bim was far from an expert on the subject of human age—or age of any living creature for that matter—though the way he'd stated the maid's duration of service clearly placed emphasis on it. Leeroy had done much the same during his earlier briefing. These occurrences created a rudimentary pattern in which humans valued the passage of their time in such a way she failed to comprehend. Bim put that line of inquiry aside for the moment. Alice and Leeroy exchanged a glance in Bim's periphery vision, furthering her suspicions, but said nothing on the subject.
"Handle it." Leeroy ordered. "I'll get the back brief from you later."
Alice motioned for the meek maid to follow and departed with all possible stealth.
"Come, let's continue this conversation in the second floor study." Celio announced, turning on his heels and taking off at a brisk walk.
Relative to the shipboard accommodations she'd been allotted until now, the mansion was a spectacle of excess to Bim. They entered through a back door straight into a smoking parlor with attached bar, the space of the single room easily quadruple that of the Stalking Shadow's Crush cabin. The excess space was used to house all manner of furniture from couches to game tables to bulky, towering refrigerators. Beyond furniture of discernible function, the room was also filled with objects that served no purpose she could recognize; embossed wooden sculptures with complimentary metallic inlays, massive paintings hung from the carved bones, a fruit arrangement that she realized wasn't composed of fruit at all but rather dyed stones that resembled various fruits. Such superfluous living made no logical sense yet the gross abundance only worsened as they were led further inside.
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Every room was garishly decorated beyond reason. There were collections framed and displayed in shadowboxes, early currencies, local tools and primitive weaponry. Heads and pelts of animals were in ludicrous abundance, including a truly massive specimen of reptile that carpeted the length of an entire marble hallway. They reached a grand stairway, worked into the resemblance of a short local mountain that was still unblemished by human hands near the summit and fully developed into a city at floor level. No two rooms shared the same lighting fixtures, one might be mirrored wall scones, the next a row of chandeliers and the room after that staggered spotlights that drew attention to whatever materialistic possession was deemed worthy of the lime light.
As they neared the study, the pattern of collected works became more intellectual. Sealed bookshelves displayed treaties, maps and deeds of historic value. Portraits of more reasonable proportions showed life-sized rendering of humans long deceased. In a place of honor, singled out from all else was a wall of urns, each with a brass plaque underneath. The earlier excess had been largely lost on Bim, unlike her companions, yet the wealth of preserved knowledge restored a modicum of respect for the lecherous man guiding them.
"This palace was once the residence of the Bolintia family," Celio stated, pointing to various relevant portraits as they passed it. "Then the eighth city governor for a half century before the Guerreiro ousted the Martinaz Cruz lineage and auctioned off the captured estates to pay for his 'war of liberation.' The very hills themselves wept with the blood of the slain until my great grand father, Rodrigo Salvador, brought to wrath of the heavens upon these lands as I do now."
The opulent wooden double doors to the study were crowned by a portrait of this Rodrigo Salvador. There was some resemblance, though Bim had noticed a recurring tendency to either hyper-fixate or over-generalize her examinations of humans. At the time of painting, the ancestor shared a similar thinning head of dark hair as his descendant, furthermore they had identical golden teeth— which struck her as improbably coincidental. Both also shared brown eyes, tanned porous skin and soft portly build, though Celio was pronouncedly fatter than his ancestors. Bim was forced to conclude that the men were likely related based off similarity of appearance, but that was a conclusion she falsely reached more often than not when comparing one human to another.
"A storied residence for a fabled lineage." Leeroy said, stepping into the study after Celio. "Shall I assume you have an ulterior motive in regaling us with your home's pedigree?"
The study they'd entered put the affluence of the palace to shame. It was as extravagantly decorated as any other room she'd witness so far: plush reading loungers sat beside enormous crystal windows, the verticals of the bookshelves were thick totemic pillars carved in the likeness of seven savage beasts growing domesticated the higher one looked, the horizontals were stylized to be held aloft by generations of man progressing top to bottom. The symbolism was literal enough for Bim to appreciate, the compounding knowledge of man came from those who'd learned it before and passed it down the generations. It was a rudimentary and effective analogy for the flesh-bound slaves of time.
"Your outfit has a history of being sharper than most guns for hire," Celio said with his gold-toothed smile. "I knew bringing you on was the right choice. Yes, while the legends of this palace and my family are worthy of retelling for their own sake, a blood feud that has lain dormant for nearly a century now threatens to raise its ugly head."
"We're mercenaries." Princess said. "You don't need to sell us on your cause. Pay us enough and point us at whoever you want dead. We'll handle the rest."
"My friends, must our relationship be so transactional?" Celio asked.
"Mercs are like hookers, pretending to care costs extra."
"Name your price, Princess das Neves." Celio countered instinctively.
"More than you can afford." Princess answered, revulsion sounding clear in her icy tone.
"I shall thaw your heart yet. But, for the time being, back to business. I have had an uneasy peace with the Guerreiro my entire life, however, last year they were no longer contented with the terms of our long-agreed peace. They still took my money, but my boats began disappearing, my men butchered, my legitimate business's harassed. When I sent my best man to deliver my new terms, they sent me his head in a box a week later."
"So its war then." Leeroy concluded.
"Not yet." Celio said. "War is bad for business, as is weakness. If I make the first move and fail to destroy them utterly, the Guerreiro will scatter like maggots and plague me for as long as I live. For now, I must show my strength. To continue my affairs as if their attacks are so far beneath my notice that they become emboldened and expose themselves and their conspirators."
"You're not leaving me a lot of run for tactical flexibility." Leeroy stated.
"That will change when the moment is right. What would the people say if they saw that I'd hired you now? 'The savior is weak, look how he hides behind his guards and hires more every day.' 'His empire is crumbling from so few holes in his boats, he is not a man who can protect our investments, let's take our business elsewhere.' Whispers like those would kill me as surely as a bullet might. No, it is better that you are my hidden knife until the time is right."
"Very well then. How do you plan on hiding us until the time is right? Some of us can passably blend," Leeroy motioned to Hiiro and Bim. "Others, less so." This time motioning to his own Caucasoid features and those of Princess as well. "It won't take the locals long to learn you've got a band of offworlders working for you."
"Drifting dos Estrelas, outsiders that is, are not so foreign as you think. I grew into manhood through shadow wars, as have the men in my employ. Your kind are tolerated so long as your money is good and I can assure you your money will be good, better even, so long as you stay on my retainer. Take the bulk of your brancos—the whites of your number—into Crucibab at dusk tomorrow. Pretend to be exactly what you are, soldiers of fortune spending your pay until you return to the stars and head elsewhere. You may even take on local work should you choose, so long as you don't target any of my business assets. Become known and you will fade from memory. Once you have done that, no one will notice when you come or go from the city and you will be free to move as you need for your duties in my service."
"Alright, I'll get a rotation sorted once my team has gotten planetside. From the sounds of it, you've already given this a great deal of thought, so what do you want the other half of us doing while our paleskins work on our tans?"
"Exactly what we've already discussed. They will act as security consultants, procurement advisers and equipment trainers for my own staff. I have over five-hundred men in my employ and I want as many of them ready for the battles ahead as possible. There's also the matter of my chore girls, I have heard that your women fight like men. Could you train serving girls to fight as men do also?"
Bim had seen no evidence supporting Celio's sexist convictions. From her limited exposure to the crass art of violence, all humans seemed to possess a varied capacity regardless of physical sex. In hindsight there were different advantages to every body type of both sexes, though she didn't know enough about physically devastating the human body with mundane means to categorize them adequately. Had she been unsealed, Bim harbored no doubt she would have been the most lethal woman on the planet and one of the strongest overall. She suddenly realized that much like until Treu had raised the possibility of her striking him, her overall capacity for violence was yet another facet of physical existence she'd failed to consider until prompted by external influences. A human might have become disparaged at how much they didn't know that they didn't know, but the reminder only served to fan the flames of her insatiable curiosity.
Upon reflection, the duality of the human soul was something she still understood very little about. She couldn't understand why humanity existed in to two partitioned states of masculine and feminine in flesh, mind and soul. Even her own vessel, an imitation she'd torn from the mind of those nearest her manifestation, conformed to the human idea of assigned anthropomorphic sexuality; a concept she now realized had been subtly influencing her own rationalization of what this vessel of pseudoflesh and its self-aware existence was. She, was not a she, but she thought she was. The idea caused a cascading surge of gender dysphoria, identity supposition and a sudden intense desire to resculpt her vessel into a more androgynous, less human parallel more in line with her true sexless existence. She couldn't though, Treu had seen to that and the rational hatred of her tormentor gained a new layer. All of this raced through her mind in the twelve seconds it took Leeroy to consider Celio's question.
"Generally speaking, yes." Leeroy answered. "Its actually quite common for other planets and colonies to use both sexes militarily, out of cultural bias or necessity. If you're worried about their effectiveness, I can assure you that modern weaponry equalizes most engagements to the point where the user's physicality doesn't particularly matter. Ultimately, if they want to be a warrior, we can make them into one. If they don't, they will be as useful as any other coward with a gun."
"So long as they remain obedient in the end, I would have you train them as a weapon of last resort." Celio stated dismissively. "I have three-hundred working women on this estate, some of them should be suitable for your purposes. Though you must train them separately from the men."
"How well are the women paid?" Princess asked.
Celio seemed puzzled by her question.
"I give them a place to live, food to eat and the company of my men to keep them-"
"So you don't pay them financially." Princess said.
"No, I do not. Those who are skilled with numbers have access to a shared fund if they need to purchase something outside of the usual care. Of course, their spending is regularly audited."
"Offer to pay the ones who volunteer for guard services and reach the point of competence. Also exempt them from a portion of their regular duties to train and bring in more staff to make up for the labor shortfall, otherwise those who don't volunteer will become bitter at those who do for the increased workload. That should motivate them well enough for our purposes and prevent a reasonable amount of dissent while we change up the status quo."
"And this point of competence would be the same as a man's?" Celio asked dubiously.
"Yes." Leeroy answered before Princess could. "There's no point lowering our standards to accommodate the weak. That'd endanger everything we're trying to accomplish here and jeopardize lives in combat. When you fight, you have to meet the bar or you die. That's how we operate and that's how we'll train your staff."
Bim found this logic sound, though Celio gave the matter far more consideration that she felt it merited.
"You expect many of them to reach the same competence as a man?" Celio asked.
"If they have the heart to tough out training, then yes, I'd expect almost ninety-percent of your staff to meet our standards given enough time. I'd need to evaluate the quality of our raw materials before I can give you an accurate estimate, though at a guess, I'd say we can have a hundred men and maybe half that many women ready inside of ten weeks."
The men guarding Celio scoffed at Leeroy's statement. The mathematics of his statement seemed to indicate that given the relative starting volumes, men were twenty-percent easier to train; which raised the question of weather the guards thought Leeroy's estimations were insultingly low of men or high of the women. Bim put the figure aside for verification at a later date.
"So fast?" Celio asked.
"We'll focus on the best candidates first and establish a teaching cadre from their ranks. You should keep in mind we'll be teaching them to primarily carry out defensive duties first. Our initial point of competence will focus on discipline, marksmanship, small unit tactics and combat fitness. You're getting guards first and once they can do their jobs without someone watching over their shoulder, that's when I'll start forging them into killers." Again one of the guard scoffed at Leeroy's remark, but the scarred veteran continued without pause.
"The process would be faster if it was my sole focus, I might be able to reach my projection inside of six weeks if that was the case but between acclimatization, establishing a cover, security assessments, fortification, equipment procurement and covertly guarding your person, my attentions and those of the outfit will be spread thin. We've already got a few training plans devised, once the rest of my team is planetside we'll get a distribution of labor sorted. From there we can finalize our plans for the next month or so and have them put into action before I depart tomorrow evening. Both the away and training teams will need some attached locals who know the surrounding areas and markets well. I assume you were able to arrange them ahead of schedule like I requested?"
"My trusted men are awaiting your guidance as we speak."
Leeroy cast a glance to Princess who shook her head in the negative.
"Good, then there's nothing else we need to discuss right now. You'll have a transcription of my intentions by dusk tomorrow, we'll reconvene then to discuss any issues. Unless you have anything to add?"
"Only that I look forward to working with you, my friends." Celio said, smiling his gold-toothed smile. "My life is in your hands, do try to be careful with it."
"For the amount you're paying? Your safety is all but guaranteed."