Shades Of Forever

Violet tries not to breathe. The strangely curved knife that hovers beneath her chin looks more than sharp enough to lay open bare skin. She racks her brain for an escape, but the only one that shows any chance of success is if the Wutan-Weylan combat variant's greed is equal to their intelligence. A fifty-fifty split would be enough wealth to live as a lower board member in any of the other three corpos.

"...feel about going what?!"

Her heart races in her chest. Bribery's clearly out. There's nothing left. Even if Corgia attacks, it won't be fast enough to keep her alive, which means Corgia can't do it. A sudden motion draws her attention.

"Sky," the strange woman with the ancient rifle and bleeding eyes rasps, trying to keep her aim steady, "can you stop doing... you know..."

"...oh. Sorry."

Pressure unexpectedly disappears from Violet's ankles, and the deadly length of metal vanishes from her throat. Surprised, she twists her head to catch her assailant's piercing gaze.

"You're... not going to kill me? I mean, that's a smart decision. Very wise. Even if we don't go halfsies, you'll need me to get out through the fleet. We can go thirdsies. You get two of them, obviously."

"What should we do with her, Torch?" The Wutan-Weylan combat variant ignores the offer, sounding exhausted. The bloody-eyed woman shrugs, lowering her rifle slightly but still keeping it pointed in the same direction. Violet looks on with wide eyes as the prototype, a burly bruiser with scarred fists and bulging muscles walks up next to the woman with the rifle.

"Don't suppose you have any sort of jail in the village?"

"What the fuck's a 'jail,' Chief Outsider Engineer MacWillie?"

"It's where... you lock up... you know, never mind. I can fashion some restraints. The real problem isn't the lass anyways, it's the wee beastie."

The prototype points at Corgia and Violet's stomach sinks. If they destroy Corgia's mobile processor unit, her ability to manipulate the infonet is going to be severely limited. That would be a disaster. The dog tries to scamper down the ramp towards her but the strange... thing in front of it refuses passage, one paw raised to swipe with fractal claws.

"No!" Fingers tighten around her upper arms, and she tries not to thrash. "Please. It's my dog, my only friend. You can't kill it!"

"You thought we were just going to kill your friend? Without even talking to you first? MacWillie, what kind of savages live out there?"

The voice behind her is equal parts disgusted and horrified. In front, the prototype brings a broad hand to her face in what looks a lot like exasperation.

"No, Sky, look, it's not... the beastie isn't really alive. It's offloading some of her integrator's capacity. Probably quite a bit of it if she is what I think she is."

Violet's mind races. Why are they talking so familiarly with each other? Wasn't the Pilar tasked with taking the prototype back to Wutan-Weylan by force?

Corgia, interrogate assumptions.

A sea of calculations, data points, secondary associations, tertiary linkings, and so much more floods through Violet's mind. In less than a second, her personal reality shifts into a new framework with all the grace of an aircar crashing into someone's living room. She can't help but interrupt the conversation, once again twisting to look at the figure restraining her.

"Oh shit. She's not the prototype. You're the prototype."

The grip on her arms doesn't loosen.

"My name's Sky." A pause. "No, Box, I don't understand why a 'net integrator' is so dangerous, but I'm not just going to kill her out of hand! Not her dog, either! We haven't even talked with them yet." Another pause. "How am I supposed to know if dogs talk or not? Pete talks!" A third pause. "No, Pete, you can't kill anyone either!"

As Violet tries to wrap her head around the strangely familiar one-sided conversation, another person enters the clearing, a tall, older woman carrying the same antique rifle as the first. She comes to a halt near the one with the bloody cheeks, her own weapon mirroring the casually deadly posture of the woman next to her, keen eyes scanning everything.

"What's the situation, Torch?"

"Sky has whoever came down in that big metal thing restrained, but Chief Outsider Engineer MacWillie thinks we need to do something about her creature. Sky says we need to talk to them. Not sure what to do about any of it, so I guess it's your barrel of crabroaches now. Fuck, I need more sleep. Where's Dirt's lazy ass at?"

"He's around if we need him," the older woman replies, examining Violet more closely. Violet attempts to reach out for her integrator, see if there's an opening she can leverage to change the situation, but it's the same oddity as before - there's no integrator to be found.

"Who are you people?" she blurts. "Hypertron Special Cadre? Jinseki Ghosts?"

"Don't know what those are," the voice behind her snaps, "but that's my question. Tell us who you are and how you found us. Are you from Wutan-Weylan? Why aren't there Marauders with you? You said there's a fleet; is it here yet?"

Violet's mind races. There has to be a way out of this that doesn't involve giving up her freedom. As soon as they learn she's a daughter of the Kumar family, obviously they're going to use her for ransom, sell her to Pen or her mother or father in order to climb their own corpo ladder.

She'll die before she goes back into that box.

Why don't you just alert the ship, your Dark Mistress? An orbital strike nearby would give us an opportunity to escape.

Because then we'd have to explain why sister dear was alone on the planet and there's no amount of bullshitting I can do to get their integrators to play along with that suspension of disbelief.

...you said this was a quick and easy in and out. I told you not to say that.

Fine, Corgia, you were right, now help me think of something believable!

Ideas are debated and discarded in the span of microseconds, Violet's mind working in overdrive. Eventually, the beginnings of a plan emerge.

"I'm... not from Wutan-Weylan," Violet begins, subtly nudging oxytocin levels higher in the integrators she can reach on the local ad-hoc network. The frown on the large, scarred woman eases slightly, but the restraining grip on her arms remains firm. "I was scouting out a report of a ship going down in..."

Her voice trails off as more people emerge from the trees, some carrying weapons, others archaic tools, most empty handed, all dressed in the same rustic clothes that bear no resemblance to any sort of current Diaspora fashion. Their excited chatter fades as they take in the tense scene, and almost as one they turn to the older woman still half-aiming her rifle at Violet.

"Broom Idiot, what's going on? We all saw the thing come down from the sky; is it more outsiders? Do they know Chief Outsider Engineer MacWillie and Outsider Engineer Huckens? What should we do?"

Violet gapes at the crowd, her mind momentarily blanking. Over twenty bodies fill the clearing now, more filing in behind, and none of them have integrators. None of them look like Voidmarch citizens. She accesses the assault shuttle's link to the planetary infonet and goes through the reclamation databases again, searching for some sort of explanation, but the results remain the same as when she first looked - Earth is empty except for small settlements around the starports, everywhere else deemed too hostile for human habitation.

"Who are you people?!"