Lumiea

Year -20 (L.D.)

Commander Vehru stood on top of the world, her boots planted on the roof of the tallest skyscraper on the planet, and her eyes set on the tiny people in the city below. Icy wind ripped at her from this height like a thousand stabbing needles.

Right now, hundreds of kids were getting to know their new squads, already giving into the undeniable pull of kinship when they had been denied it for so long.

It was a cruel thing Vehru did to them, teaching them a life of isolation only to immediately thrust them into a blood bond. Vehru had told the young–so incredibly young–new privates that this was her favorite night of the year.

Oh, the lies she told.

Tonight was like some sick ritual sacrifice where she offered up babies to the gods, only it wasn't gods. It was the Federation.

These poor privates never had a chance to defend themselves against Vehru and her kind.

A child taken from their home and isolated from their family would cling to whatever they could get their hands on–and in this case, it was whatever Vehru gave them. But an adult without someone to love would either find it on their own, outside of Vehru's control, or have nothing to fight for. These kids were so starving for family, they would love each other immediately and fully. Tonight they drank poison in the form of camaraderie. They'd found their people and all they would ever know and love belonged to Vehru. Under her control.

This was why they encouraged their soldiers to marry and have children after rearing them to abandon their families in childhood. Love would make a person do anything. It was a human's greatest power. And greatest weakness.

What a cruel thing, indeed, giving these kids new families tonight.

Her partner, Morfrain, liked having this power over people. Vehru resented it. After more than six hundred years in her biomechanical body, the memory of flesh and vulnerability was so distant that often she could not recall how her original body had felt. That life was gone. But there were moments that she viscerally remembered being young and wanting nothing more than to discover her own life. She could imagine how these young people felt.

Vehru looked down at the bottle in her hand and remembered the first time she'd returned home after successfully liberating a world. Well, not liberating. Listen to her. She'd spent so much time on this planet having to play the part for the soldiers here that she'd started believing her own lies. Vehru had not become Death, the Conqueror of Worlds, by liberating the oppressed throughout the galaxy. It was not liberation she brought and this was a fact that she refused to deny to herself.

So, it was not the first time she returned home after liberating a world, but after conquering one, that her sweet mother took her hand, drew her close, and whispered against her ear. "How do you sleep at night? I can't sleep anymore, knowing what you're doing."

The words stabbed all over her body like the icy wind.

The answer was as simple now as it was then. Vehru raised the bottle to her lips. How did she sleep at night?

Vodka and sleeping pills.

The harder part to explain was why she chose this way. Vehru was fortunate to have a very simple cure for insomnia. One brain scan and a few neurofeedback sessions to retrain her brainwaves and she'd sleep like a baby.

Problem was no one had ever invented a better solution to guilt than vodka. Because the solution was not to ease feelings of guilt, but to fuel them. It was only just that the guilty suffer.

Look at poor Vehru, forced to be her own judge and jury since no one else seemed interested or capable of doing so.

Ha. Ha. Ha…

Man, maybe she did need to take more time for entertainment. She was bored enough to actually start to think herself funny.

She closed her eyes and took a burning gulp of straight vodka.

It didn't affect her day. The drinking. Her body was so efficient. So well-crafted. Vehru opened the bottle to drink of her sins at night and functioned well in the morning.

That was how she managed to sleep at night and wake up to conquer worlds. It was marvelous really, the medical advancements that allowed her to live a life of functional self-sabotage.

Sad thing was she could stop. Alcoholism was not just treatable but curable for her people. This was another source of guilt–that Vehru would squander her privileges in order to better torment herself.

Somehow it felt worse to have a nice night while people in the worlds she conquered suffered and died. Others might have been able to lose themselves to their own toxic behavior without having to think about the why. This was another problem with Vehru's cursed privileges. Her mind worked too well, just like her body. She couldn't help but understand why she behaved the way she did.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

It took so much work to be unhealthy these days.

Again, poor her.

Ha.

Back when she was a girl, before her biomechanical body, she hadn't needed many years alive to learn it was impossible to stay healthy. Scrapes and bruises. Broken hearts. Complex psychodynamic coping mechanisms that helped you survive as a child and ruined your life as an adult.

Sometimes she missed those vulnerable days when she knew her life would be short and painful rather than hundreds and hundreds of years of guilt.

That was the choice though. A short painful life or a long painful one. Vehru wanted to believe she chose to become Death out of a self-sacrificing drive to save her own world. Fuck, that absolutely was a major drive. Vehru's service to the Federation would earn her home planet full membership into the Federation, with biomechanical bodies for all. World fucking peace. World peace that Vehru fucking won. By herself. By her fucking self, everyone.

And that was it. That niggling, sneakily hidden all-consuming drive beating beneath her goodwill. Vehru could save her world. Vehru.

If she could single-handedly save her entire world, what else could she do?

Love might have driven her to take the power her people needed to be free, but she couldn't pretend it was love still driving her. Vehru simply wanted it too badly now. No one in the Federation had been willing to believe in the girl from a conquered world. Not until Vehru made them. And now she couldn't stop.

Back when she'd first advanced through the ranks on her home planet, much like these kids today aimed to do, and finally earned herself a menial role in the Federation–as well as the chance at having a biomechanical body– she'd been young enough to believe the lie she did it all for her people. She thought she had just wanted to save the world and show the Federation that the seeds they planted could grow into more than what they intended.

Another swig of vodka. The burn worsened with each drink, a deterrent built in to curb alcoholism so people didn't get addicted in the first place. Too bad the pain only made Vehru want to drink more.

The truth was that Vehru knew when she became Death it meant she wasn't a good guy. Only a bad guy could swallow the vile sins of hundreds of years of conquering, even if something good came of it. Even if doing so meant her people no longer had to suffer and die. A good person would find a way to help her people without having to become evil incarnate.

Okay, that wasn't true. While good people believed it was possible to do that, Vehru knew it wasn't. The fact was Vehru alone was still alive when everyone she ever knew back home was long dead, including all the truly good people. Everyone except for the one person she was allowed to bring into the Federation with her and to give a new body to.

Survival was messy and brutal.

Vehru was strong enough and bad enough to accept and treasure the good that could come of a ruthless person who also happened to very much care.

Wow. Someone really needed to do the universe a favor and kill her.

She sounded dangerous even to herself.

So Vehru chugged the last of her bottle until she sank forward to her knees, gasping from the lava pouring down her throat. Why wasn't vodka faster? Fast enough to dumb her synthetic mind so she didn't have to hear herself think? Especially not hear herself think about how she didn't want to think.

Vehru didn't want to think about the kids in the city below taking their first steps into loving their comrades and how badly it would hurt when they lost them during training, or in the field, or inevitably when Liberation came and the death really began. Vehru didn't want to think about anything.

This was not Vehru's favorite night of the year.

It was the worst.

Poor her, right?

----------------------------------------

Vehru kept her steps quiet as she entered her mother's dim room and sat beside her bed. Dawn warmed her window in soft light.

"Hi, Mama." Vehru took the woman's hand gently in hers. As young as her mother still looked in her biomechanical body, the woman felt so frail to Vehru that it was easy to imagine how she would have looked elderly in their world.

"It's time again, isn't it?" Her mother's voice was dry but her eyes moist. "You'll pick your witness soon and then it all begins again."

Tears filled her eyes. "I want to take you home when I'm finished with Earth." She ran her fingers along her mother's arm. "Please wait for me that long."

"I will, sweet girl."

The mercy of her mother meaning such words nearly reduced Vehru to a puddle of tears, but she kept her posture strong as she smiled. "Do you feel ready?"

Almost had been her answer for the past fifty years. Today, she said nothing. Only smiled back at Vehru and lifted a weak hand to her cheek.

"Remember, Vehru… Each life is this…" Her fingers feathered along Vehru's cheek. "Each life is your mother, holding your cheek in her hand. Each life is a daughter, feeling her love."

Warmth trailed her cheeks. Vehru nodded. Wanted to apologize again and knew she wasn't worthy of receiving her mother's forgiveness again. So she swallowed the words down and let them rot in her twisted gut. "So, you are ready now. How can I ask you to wait at least another twenty years?"

Her mother's eyes closed. Synthetic bodies could last forever, as far as they knew. Eventually, though, the soul gave out. Her mother was on life support now. Already gone. It was her time. But Vehru knew the woman could wait, just a little longer, for her to take Earth, and they could have time to return to their home planet to say goodbye one last time.

Could her mother wait long enough for her only living child to make her proud?

No soul could last long enough for Vehru to do that.

When Vehru finished this operation, she would have to give her mother up to death. But she didn't want to be Death with her mom.

Vehru let herself fall into the chaos of her limbic system so sorrow thrashed within her like ocean water twisting in a night storm. "I need you, Mama."

"Then take care to make sure you're ready when the time comes for us to say goodbye. Make sure you become who you need to be to live without me."

She bowed her head and held her mother's hand close. If Vehru hadn't taken on her contract with the Federation, her mother would have died hundreds of years ago in her natural, biological body. Yet, now that they were synthetic, if Vehru hadn't lived this violent life, then her mother would live much longer in this advanced body. She'd killed her mother one sin at a time. Vehru's guilt poisoned them both. Just like Vehru would poison these young soldiers with their own love for one another.

"I'm sorry." Vehru mouthed it, so her mom wouldn't hear and try to forgive her.

They spent their time together quietly until she felt her mother weakening and Vehru watched her drift to sleep.