the convolutions of the trench are thick with the dead and dying and the unfortunate living as occasional bullets spark off the parapets and there a man walks, tall enough he's hunched over and tilted slightly to a diagonal angle to pass through the trench walls without making contact on the wooden or metallic sides. to be a big man who survives in the trenches for long is a sign of good luck and many men pat the emblems and fetishes hanging from the sides of his armor, and he grunts and waves a hand at them as he passes. the disconfirmed deaths of every living man there make their enemy all the more alien and ugly to them. men cling to life, not death. but these men, here on the front, where it is slow and agonizing, cling to their weapons; great rifles, shotguns, carbines and semi-automatics. one of the snipers is oiling and praying to his adjustment scopes, fixing the long gun, and the big man notes how much ammunition he has as he walks past, just in case. 

some new sergeant-at-arms is handing out rifles to the poor new commissions and he nods to the big man, recognizing his importance to morale and the other men. the gunchief, Hanotaux, is handing out wardrugs and combat stims with ceremonial solemnity. the big man guesses Hanotaux could make loading a gun seem like a sacrament, and perhaps it is, here in the trenches. you need a pick-up, Sob? asks Hanotaux, and Sob Turner, the big man, waves his hand at him too. Sob is not very interested in talking, yet. he does one round of the traverses and entrenchments every morning after reveille, looking for breaks in the line, unmirrored corpses, and traps left behind by sappers. he knows their enemy likes to make the occasional rush during the changing of the guard, and he likes to keep an eye on spotters and watchers alike. Sob doesn't miss the details, which is instinctual and instant to himself, like right now, seeing a spotter's eyes go wide, his gun coming off his shoulder and about, shouting to the other men, even before the spotter spits out corpseprophet and the men rush to the parapet line, facing the front, and see it hovering there -- a coffin etched in grotesque symbols and dripping befoulments and right behind it, wights in uniform and some in armor, all of them with the bizarre helm of their leaders, armed, opening fire as the men's heads come up. fire is exchange and the cannons and artillery go off and the snipers begin aiming for the corpseprophet, in the hopes of shattering the RD field it generates. the twenty-five pounders begin going off and it sounds like metal screaming and Sob watches giant holes generate themselves in the ground, throwing rictus-grin enemies left and right, leaving them to crawl in dismembered fashion towards the trenches. Sob shoots at a decaying man in an officer's uniform and feels the savage gratification of watching a head explode into red and black rattling nothingness, shattered teeth and bone exploding in a halo beneath the officer's hat. someone needs to take out that RDT field or the corpseprophet will keep the unholy legion advancing on them going, even if it's just grasping hands and groaning torsos. Sob clutches his gun and thinks about the sniper praying to his scope. 

-- --- -- ---

aboard the great cruiser ISN-07V Theonabaptist, a specialist is unloaded from the cryo-racks and brought to the insertion team. the two revivalist techs are arguing to themselves, as they always do.

the end goal of evolution is an intellectual end, not a spiritual one. we'll find ourselves more and more aware of a larger universe and more of the cosmos. understanding is the key to knowledge.

we're fighting a war against fucking reanimated corpses, the other one says, and you don't think there's a spiritual occasion to it?

they're reanimated by technological means. it's a resurrection of the flesh via reanimation techniques and advanced RDT field manipulation, not some sort of spiritual return from beyond.

the fact they call all the reanimations prophets and messiahs and the like, you think it's just coincidental, then?

they look at the man they are reviving, and his personal information, and the technological one sighs.

he's not going to like this. he's abjured. won't be able to make the surface transition as is.

the spiritual one activates a series of panels, and shuffles something out of a drawer. go on with it then. he won't be mad at us, he'll be mad at whoever he wakes up with.

the technological man cocks the pistol he was handed and puts it to the sleeping, frozen man's temple.

if there something beyond, and we call them back like this, I hope to fuck whatever there is out there understands we're doing this because there's a war on, not just for the sick fucking thrill of it.

the spiritual man nods, and the technological man pulls the trigger.

the stench of gunpowder, and something even deeper.

Captain Dennering thought there was something very wrong.

among his many duties was watchfulness, and so he thought many things were wrong; the cooks put too much mineral in the mess and made it taste like zinc instead of overly salted. he thought his ship’s political officer might be sleeping with one of the infantry command, which was a conflict of interest. he worried the other captains made fun of him for his foreign name, even though the admirals in the service assured him that though he did not have a proper imperial name, there was no bias, and wasn’t captain proof enough against that? Admiral Larzithact had pinned his collar with the captain’s sign himself, given him the ceremonial saber of command.

no, Dennering knew what was wrong; he was falling into obsession — and possibly, dangerously into love — with the great ship’s battle-god.

it lived in the chapel-engine very far below decks. they say to spend small amounts of time with it, but never release it, never fall in love with it, and never, ever, in any situation, on threat of death or capture alike, pray to it.

it did not know the difference between being asleep and awake, because it had dreamed the whole world into being, or so it remembered.

Dennering remembered the first time they showed him the battle-god. it was not just an it, it was a her. she floated a couple inches off the ground. it was hard to look at her directly, because she ignored coherency, rejected details. sometimes she had two, beautiful, mesmerizing violet eyes. sometimes too many eyes. or not enough. she wore a thin robe, traced in the same violet as her eyes, surrounded by scarves etched in her signs, in the names of her godhead. translucent wings, dozens of them, occasionally simmering with purple flame, sometimes flowed around her. she smiled with teeth that were even, or sometimes very sharp, or sometimes her entire face and even her eyes were jagged yellow fangs, and she was engulfed in screaming hazy fire that was awful to behold. Dennering wondered what she looked like when the ship was mid-conflict. would she be terrible or beautiful? would they even be able to see her, perceive her? her essence would merge perfectly with the ship during a sortie, and it would be her who aimed and fired the guns. that was what a battle-god was. she was the instruments, the cannonade, the pilot.

it swam in memories and revelations. it knew of ancient ages and ages so far yet to come as to be alien and foreboding. it drank what it could from the sorrow and agony of the enemy soldiers, dying in their ships, as they fell from the skies like great coffins. it tried to reach beyond this grail of containment it was stuck in -- o wrath, o bitter imprisonment! - but this cage was devilish and demonic, wicked beyond measure, and it trapped it, confined it to this implacability, to these coherent spaces, to where form and function collapsed into a single place and single object, so lessened, so diminished, so hungry. o hunger, o great hunger.

sometimes, when it was post-attention hours and the men and scientists and mechanics were all in bed, Dennering would come down to the chapel-engine to hear her sing. she never sung in words he understood, but instead in feeling, in resonance, in bone-deep ways. she was a god, a divine presence. her voice was one with the firmament. Dennering knew he had been spending too much time down there, if he saw her as divine rather than just a tool, a military technology adapted to conquer. they have all kinds of dossiers and folders on the psychological and physiological changes that exposure to battle-gods did, as though they were some kind of radioactive isotope. Dennering assumed they were, in a way. he felt bathed in her light, quite often. he wanted to touch one of her hands, even if it had too many fingers and talons and was sometimes twelve hands in a curious orbit around the end of her perfect arm. he wanted to hear her speak, not just sing.

all of these worries and fantasies came to an end when Dennering opened the chapel-engine to see Kaanstadt, the colonel. jealousy ripped into his heart immediately. Kaanstadt wasn’t even cleared to be here by the admirals. how did he even get in?

she's been speaking to me for weeks, Kaanstadt said, never moving his eyes towards Dennering. I thought it was time I came down here to see her.

it never thought of itself as having a shape, or a body. it was only contained here, trapped in these shifting images, unable to become itself, unable to properly grow. it looked like what they thought it should look like, something unformed and holy, or something formed and unholy, depending on who was looking. they expected it to look different than them, so it did, because it was very different from them.

she floated in thin purple silks, which barely obscured her body. she had no curves nor genitalia but there was still something sensual about this, like an echo of haunting sin. Dennering was confused and enraged. why did she never look like this for him? was this a new manifestation? did Kaanstadt have different orders?

she needs me, Kaanstadt said. she needs us to believe in her, so she can be her true self.

no, Dennering replied. you know how that goes. what happens when we start to pray to these battle-gods.

visions of a vast cruciform body, held only by a rotten arm nailed to the post, weeping purple ichor from the impaled palm. a group of ancient wizened men in dirty robes rolling back rocks to find sculptured circles, each bearing the battle-god’s name on them. giant pyramids inscribed in her signs, the same ones that filled her scarves and the hems of her robes. enormous triangular cathedrals rotating around each other where priests beckoned beneath to her vision, her glory, her sacrifice for them. architectural grotesqueries, unfathomably sized, surrounded by the bones of worshippers and heretics, all dead in long gone wars, the mountain-sized statuary all covered in eons of dust.

we can’t worship it, Kaanstadt. if we make it into a new god, we’ll kill it. that’s how it goes. that’s how it always goes.

no response. it was time. this was protocol. strike the other man's head from his shoulders, paint himself in Kaanstadt's blood, in the signs of the battle-god. this was protocol. Dennering brought out his ceremonial command saber. Kaanstadt heard the metal rasp against the scabbard and drew his service pistol. the two men moved to fight each other in perfect unison, even as they both turned their heads to stare at her, glowing in lambent, lavender light, two heads, one smiling beatifically at the other man. she knew them. she loved them. one of them would be her champion, her savior, and her saint.

Dennering brough his saber down as Kaanstadt pulled the trigger.

it smiled, watching the two men fight over it. soon, one brother would kill another, and the blood-crime of that death would empower it, and it would have to punish the other. it smiled, though not with a mouth and teeth. punishment is what makes gods real, not just holy war. belief would run rampant through the ship, and it would be free, and it would teach them the heliotrope gospel, it would teach them to build temples, to worship and to war, it would teach them how to believe, how to be, how to conquer in its sign, how to prosper and convict, it would teach them of the worlds below and above that awaited them, it would teach them, and it would finally eat for it was hungry, oh so hungry, and these thin meals of conflict did little to sustain it. it would show them glory and wrath, o glory, o wrath, o death, it would show them all the death beyond death. where all the gods ate, all the gods triumphed, forever and ever, amen, amen.

as one man lived, and one man died, ineluctable belief began to shatter the edges of the chapel-engine, and it seemed the ship itself began to plead and scream.

death laughed back from all the sharpened dark corners of the room. the hunter fled, the monster’s howling corpse, empty and collapsed, fading.

not an assassin or a bagman or a cleaner or a fixer or a procurer, no, Anton says. I was a handler for a team of…tactical insertion specialists, was the term used. killers trained from an early age to be capable of landing on any world, any situation, use any weapon. this kind of people are…volatile and cruel and foolish. life, death, nothing to them. Anton waves his hand back and forth in front of Chevalier. so to watch wolves, you have to be more ferocious than the wolf. we went everywhere. the steppes of New London. the prisons of New Paris. they took care of bad people, I took care of them. one of them…a girl from Ceti Cali Alpha. Dottie Shawneck. Dot. she was a devil with a pistol and tried to strangle me several times. I beat her, a lesson, with a tire iron and she came. that kind of fucked up person, you know? Chevalier did not know, but he nodded all the same. this was the most he’d heard Anton speak in one go. but over time, they all implode. don’t know how to take care of selves. Anton’s thick, deep Slavic accent sounded almost sad. one killed a ceo in his office. sniper turret in the man’s desk killed him. another woke up in front of a firing squad. Dot…she got drowned in acid by La Mani Tredici, a competing criminal outfit. when they were all gone I went into the service, got recruited by the State Security Committee. before I went into the Hong Zhang prison. it’s all a blur, you know?

what’s Ceti Cali Alpha like? Chevalier asks.

very hot, Anton says. a lot of drugs. fun people. they live up to the reputation. everyone late, but they make it up to you.

Anton steps between Valero and the hulking GTAC-marine. he cuffs the marine in the helmet with his metal hand while his other hand grabs the sidearm on the marine’s belt and tosses it aside.

you’d test your skills against a full GTAC suite, the marine says, filtered through his helmet.

because there is no skill in the world beyond dying well, Anton replies.

there as a hiss as the helmet disengaged from the armor, and the faceplate revolves away.

cousin Yury, Anton says. I did not know you were a marine now. and so tall?

Yury backhands Anton so hard he goes flying into the wall plating. Anton, a good driver, is back on his feet immediately. Valero attempts to flee before Anton gestures away.

the town below looked like shit but they all did these days -- everyone said the frontier had lost the light, gotten ugly, was nothing left but mud and blood, all the gold and dreams and full mines and beautiful whores and noble lawmen had left. the old law was over, people said. and so regulators and road agents ruled the unsafe roads and a rifleman was posted up outside of about every town just to make sure some small outlaw army wouldn't roll in on screaming horses with hands full of fire and burn the whole town down. not here, though, the old man on his horse thought, taking a peek at the lookout. nothing up there but rotted boards and a torn tarp. probably wasn't worth enough protecting here. 

old law was over but the world wasn't, the man on the horse reckoned. his hair was a fading, steely gray, starting to come out white at the temples. he wore a black vest over a tattered gray shirt and a pair of oiled, fierce black revolvers slung low at his hips. the wide-brim hat he wore was gray and tattered, but so was he and he surely looked like the father of all road agents and his eyes were so dark as to be black in the shade under his hat. he rode into the town and looked at the sign that greeted him at the top of the dusty hill. 

ESCHMEYER 

THE FINEST MINE THIS SIDE OF THREE GATES

below it, tacked on in scratchy handwriting; 

50 EAST TO DEAL CITY  50 WEST TO WAXTON 75 NORTH TO SNAKEBITE GULCH 100 EAST TO IRON'YOTE (RAIL)  LAWMEN AND LAWYERS SEE THE SHERIFF NO LANDIES NO SOUTHIES NO ESCAPES

the old man on the horse shook his head. Deal City was Turner, the city of deals, though likely by now it was more a city of the half-dead. Iron'yote was the name for where Iron Pass met Coyote Junction and the railway started up again, though the old man didn't think much was going to be going on there, either. if there were a hundred souls left in any of these towns he'd be shocked. never been to Snakebite or Waxton but he presumed they were as hollowed out as anything. didn't know what landies or southies were, but no escapes meant no escaped prisoners from the old mines trying to pass themselves off as something else. not that they could, they all had that rattling voice and bent backs, same way men who ate rotten tobacco stained their teeth and spit black blood. 

time to hitch it up. he rolled into town, taking note of the places still open; the mill, the general (with a teetering Duke, Hurst & Hoag logo barely hanging by a rusted chain), the undertaker, the smithy, the doxology house, the hotel and the whorehouse across the street, both looking the only places occupied. he tied his tired ride to the post and walked into the hotel, looking for the bar. town was too small to have a proper saloon, or someone had burnt it down. the bartender eyed him with the unease of small-town men and the old man gave him a look that made him real nervous. not call the gunnerupstairs nervous, but keep an eye on the bat studded with nails behind the bar nervous, for sure. the house doxy, Tawny -- one on loan from the whorehouse -- eyed the man too, though for purposes far removed from a drink. 

I'm looking for two things, the old man said to him, making him jump a little bit. Shooter Lazarone or Rattler McQuinn. if you can't point me their way, I'll need a drink and to know where I can get some lead for my machines. 

don't knowin those names well, mister, the bartender said. you oughta check with the marshall in town, he keeps track of all the wanted men. 

ain't the law that wants them, it's me, the old man said. nothing to do with the new law. ain't no justice or peace in the new law. 

don't be lettin the marshall hear you say that, the bartender tried to say, before the old man looked at him with such blazing contempt his mouth just worked the air for a moment. be poured a drink of warm scotch for the man. 

marshall will be finding me soon enough, the old man said. now then, where can a man put his feet up here? how much? 

six silvers for a share, ten for a private, the bartender said. need you to sign here. got a deposit if you don't holster your gun with us. need a signature here. 

a battered gold coin slapped the bar. you can go ahead and keep that if you send up a book and a drink. he signed in a quick scrawl and looked around. don't matter what book. just need something to read to help me sleep. 

the bartender took a look at the signature and laughed. Odin, eh? like Odin Hesh? sure mister, you don't have to sign your real name. we get a lot of Smiths and Johnsons here, don't you know it. 

that is my real name, the old man said, and glared. the bartender took a full step back, trying not to stammer. send up a book and a drink. and I'll be keeping my shooting irons. 

the old man walked up the stairs, not in the way doddering old men do, but in the way men expecting something from any angle do. it was that wary, hand-on-the-gun walk that convinced the bartender that this might truly be Odin Hesh. 

-- 

Marshall Silas Eddington wasn't much for Eschmeyer. it was a posting, and he went where the service told him, but it was a shit town, in a shit part of nowhere. wasn't too near the frontier, and glory knows it wasn't near enough Turner for him to catch more than the slightest heat, but mostly he had to keep highwaymen and marauders from making trouble in the hotel. lost a few whores and a few settlers over the years, but mostly what cost Eschmeyer the population was the same thing going around. everything had lost the light and the old law was over. Eddington was part of the new law now, and he had the means to enforce that, in badge and gun, but he was damned tired some days. like today, when he spotted Frakes, the dimwitted barkeep from the hotel, practically sprinting across the thoroughfare towards him. 

what was it this time? a ghost in the livery? the Bullkelly gang sending spies? 'dart not paying his tab? 

Frakes burst in, because he couldn't open no door like a normal person. Marshall, you ain't gonna believe it. I just checked in -- 

you're damned right I ain't gonna believe it. who'd you check in, Frakes? Charles Francis Hoag? or the mayor of Turner? or maybe someone running to be our new mayor, our new sheriff? hell, let's put our feet up, Frakes. we'll both be out a job then. 

why you always gotta put fun on me, marshall? I just checked in Odin Hesh hisself. 

Eddington scoffed, and put his feet down. Odin Hesh would be pushing seventy if he were still above ground, and he most certainly ain't. went down in the territory war like all them old law boys. if he managed to dig his way out the grave and come here, he certainly ain't in the kinda shape to make any trouble. 

I wouldn't put my weekly on it, marshall, Frakes said. he wanted a book and booze and a room. he's up in 114. if you wanna come over to the hotel I'll put you up free til he shows again. 

smiling to himself, Eddington stood up. why Frakes had to come and make up some story about Odin Hesh was beyond him. some old bandito was up in a room and he wanted someone with a badge in the hotel when the man came out, just to prove the law was still around. Frakes just didn't want the hotel safe empty come the end of the month, because he still wanted to get paid, beyond what everyone knew he skimmed. hotel owner didn't care apparently, just didn't want to come to Eschmeyer and figure it out his damned self. 

where's Hank? Eddington asked. Hank Mitchum was the only other lawman worth a squirt of piss in the whole county, and Hank was always off on some soak or another. but put him in a room full of bad men and Hank could use his fists to fix the situation long before the gun came off his belt. Eddington shook his head. never mind that. alright Frakes, I'll come sit. I won't even make you pull out the good gin. Eddington looked at the rifle case and then decided just the hip-iron would hold him. wasn't gonna be no Odin there. 

-- 

the book that Frakes sent up was some queer text of some arcane history of the ruins that dotted the frontier. half of it was mystic nonsense, the other half was a bunch of guesswork about the ruins. ancient and mythic civilizations of wise priests and wicked sciences. likely written by one of those wisdoms that babbled about glory and triumph all the time but wouldn't get within a hundred yards of a ruin without staining their trousers with piss. wasn't too hard to find books, but it was damned hard to find a good one. Odin had a couple of laughs. things he'd found in the ruins would make a fella like this have to rethink a lot of things, but he knew better than letting any glory-lover know about any of the gifts in his tack. 

fist banged at his door and the gun was out of the holster slung on the bed and in his hand before the second knock hit. it's dinnertime if youse feeling it, mister, came a girl's voice. since youse staying the night you can get a plate for just a half-silver. 

on the other side of the door, Tawny heard the click of a gun being uncocked before a hoarse voice said something quiet on the other end. didn't sound quite like a yes or a no to her but she replied well then I'll see youse downstairs, mister. fella was real quick on the trigger sounded like, but this was an old town without much going on and she knew how that could make some men nervous. she knew a few ways to make men far less nervous, though. probably get more than a half-silver for that, if he was of a mind. when the door opened she was on the stair and she started back for a sec, for she thought he'd be younger, and handsomer, but he was old and had a long scar under the thin gray stubble that made it look like someone had tried to cut his jaw out of him. the way he moved, looked like that might not be the only scar he had. he didn't even look at her on the way down the stairs though, even though her tits and totsies were out for the fresh air, he just looked at the hotel lobby and bar like a man looking at weathered rocks on the edge of the desert. there was something frightening about the vacancy in the way his eyes traveled over her, like she weren't worth seeing. she didn't like that none, Tawny, but she also knew making a fuss over it was a good way to earn a bloody nose or a lecture from Frakes about her lady's comportment. working the hotel was far better than working the house. 

--

you got another book? Odin set the book down in front of Frakes, who kept trying to peer past him to make eye contact with Eddington. this one's full of bad ideas. bad ideas are like cowards. they ain't good to travel with. 

I ain't got much here, said Frakes, but I can see if we can't pull something from the dox. Odin waved a hand at that. I think the tripe and tales in here are because of the dox, so I'd rather read something that came from people attached to the earth. 

you ain't for glory, mister? Frakes saw an advantage, now. the local wisdom wouldn't take much to a wanderer who scoffed at glory. gives a lot of folk comfort. gives some of 'em purpose. 

I get my comfort from beds and my purpose from getting out of them, Odin replied. in the mirror behind the hotel bar he spotted Eddington trying to suss him out over a yellowed newpaper. since there weren't no newsman in the town, Odin suspected he wasn't reading anything but old news. tell you what, I got another idea. 

Odin turned and strolled the dozen feet over to Eddington. 

marhall, he said, tipping his hat. when you're done with that paper, might I take a glance at it? 

Eddington gave him a slow up and down. there was something menacing to this fellow alright, but Odin Hesh? he didn't look anything like the old faded posters outside Fort Clutt. wanted for major crimes against the southern arc and the inner ride, which was what southies called the curve of the frontier where it hit the badlands, which was where all the goddamn troubled had really started. which meant Eddington didn't give a tin shit about turning him in, be damned if he'd help any southie. but this old man, radiating a kind of bored savagery, had politely asked him for his paper. 

here you go, pal, Eddington said. I'm Rep Marshall Silas Eddington. new law round these parts. he stuck out a hand. 

Odin looked at the hand, then at Eddington. and slowly as if he would creak like an old machine, he reached up and grasped it for a moment, though he didn't shake it at all. Odin, he said. but I reckon yonder barkeep probably already gave you that news. 

Eddington grinned. so it was an old man just named Odin, and because he had a bit of a spook on him, and carried big calibers, Frakes got himself twice as worked up as he needed to be. it was all coming together. ain't no legend here, ain't no southie-killer who had gotten the whole frontier worked up into a froth in the territory war, just an old deadshot with creepy eyes. 

you looking for work, old man? Eddington hissed in through his teeth as he handed the paper over. had that paper rattling around the marshall's office for damn near six months now. probably wouldn't see another one til a big coach came through. I got some things to fix around town, and you don't look like a man afraid of some hard work. 

hard work I'm not good at, Odin replied. I'm good at only a couple of things, like finding folks or knowing when to walk away. 

good, all I need from you is a little help finding some folks. you know the Bullkelly gang, maybe? 

Bullkelly ain't my problem. Odin scoffed and looked at the paper. nothing. date on the paper was damn near long enough ago he'd have gotten more information from the young whore eyeing up him and the marshall. Shooter Lazarone or Rattler McQuinn, you know anything about either of those fellows, we can talk. 

I do know quite a bit about those fellows, the marshall said. Rattler McQuinn danced without no shoes at the end of a rope in Turner for rustling and road agenting. said the shit fell out of his pants when they brought him down to put him in the grave. befouled himself at the threshold. Shooter Lazarone is holed up in Brackett's Purchase, way east of even Iron'yote. the marshall said it like an outsider would -- Irawn-yoht. think Black Narrow Bill is on his tail.

Skinny Bill ain't gonna get in my way if he sees me on the trail, Odin replied. you're well informed for a man working a town with less than a hundred souls in it.

got the telecaller in my office, beeping warrants at me all day and night. half the time it ain't barely done finishing spitting out the warrant before the kill note comes through. Eddington smirked. beats the paper though, don't it?

restless streets filled with feigned contact. the mech pilots mill about, pinging locations.

breaker, this is Talon Two-Oh-Two, requesting authorization for music.

Talon Two, what is your suggestion?

a blast of something like wailing and something like industrial pipes being slammed together comes over the comms, along with collective groans of Talon and Claw companies. not this Sobeki shit, Smoker says. play something real.

vintage Ceti Alpharius classical music begins playing. loud melancholy horns. big screeching synthviolins. the accompaniment of cannons. you can hear Talon company rolling their eyes. Limper changes it to old Urta Marra rock — Red In The Blood — and is immediately shouted down.

gentlemen. a dry whisper punctures and silences comms, like a teacher slapping a ruler on a desk. the voice of absolute authority. Wolfdog himself. gentleman, if you can’t agree on a tune, then there won’t be any tunes. how about this?

first a violin — an old violin, not these ones with keys and strange bars — rising, pursuing. then operatic voices. then, the sounds of pianos, and organs, and triumph and blood. the Ride of The Steel, movement two. what the first mech pilots went into war with. Smoker spits out her side window, grinning. Wolfdog wouldn’t play anything like this if he didn’t expect action. it was his coy way of saying be prepared for anything. Wolfdog was an old man, and old men don’t like to say everything directly. they like to take their time. they like to teach.

saddle up, you fucking mutants, Two-Oh-Two and Two-Oh-One, on me. we’re riding ass, so let’s find some ass to ride back.

in the holy prison, they are bound, blinded, forced to write philosophical codes and burn them at the end of every week. the chains are scarred with old curses hoping to break them.

the messiah and his disciples had gathered in the garden, for their supper, and though it would be their last they laughed with each other, broke bread, and drank thin wine from the jars their prophet spread around. and if it seemed like halos radiated from parts of his body, and the holy bent the light towards him, it was right and just, as he was the messiah. that was all as it was, until the guards broke in, and the captain stood in front of them all.

"the imperial protocol for prophets has been rescinded in the wake of The Worshipper incident," the captain said. he was as unhappy with this as anyone. having direct lines to the gods, any god, was a good thing, in his eyes. someone who spoke not the word, but the will of god? but he was a captain. and his honor and his belief would not let him go against his orders, as much as he dreaded carrying them out. "you're under arrest for ascension, prophesy, and misdemeanor elision."

"surely," the messiah said, in his gentle voice, "we can do something better than arrest." he placed a hand on the captain's arm, and the captain knew in that moment, and that moment only, that it was all going to be all right, no matter what anyone did, for the gods were love, and love was all the gods.

"yes," the captain said sadly, his heart cleaved in two. he shoved a dagger in the messiah's chest. "there's not going to be enough martyrs to go around if we kill all of you."

his men drew their swords and pistols and moved into the disciples like a scythe through wheat.

--

all around the country, messiahs were slaughtered, holy men were put to the blade, clergy was burned, and the faithful were put through tribulation beyond excess. the taint of the Worshipper spread, and how could it not?

some madman, some arcane theologicist, had found the conduit between prayer and divinity. and in breaching it -- somehow, impossibly -- they themselves became partially divine, a lamb, a father, a son, a ghost, blood and sacrament, something else, something new. and all those who knew their name, fed them their worship, just in knowing who they were. faith is the belief in the world being more than the seen, knowledge is the encompassing of what is seen. but what if the object of your faith is right in front of you? what if you have proof of what was never meant to be proven? that was the danger of The Worshipper. for he was a man, just as real as any other, but he was also a god, by some absurd accident of scientific apotheosis, and so this new and raw theodynamic energy flowed into him, and away from the gods who were traditionally worshipped and prayed to. as the Worshipper grew stronger -- all it took was knowing his name, or seeing him, or an image of him! -- the old gods, or the God of Gods, all fell away. the empire tried to kill all of the ways of gods to prevent him from accumulating more and more of this energy, but they failed. his horde of blind believers began to eclipse the population of the continent itself. they began to bind themselves together, and sacrifice -- raw, blood sacrifice, the oldest and purest form of worship -- until the Worshipper's power grew so great it detonated, a burst of sheer apotheosis that wiped the continent clean of all life, all light, everything but dust.

Dr. Husselberg ran an entire department of anthrotheorists -- Dr. Mainwaring and Dr. Thornehill  were his attached subordinates but it was always clear who was in control, and it was Husselberg. everyone who came on the Second Commission existed in some kind of state of paranoia -- whether relaxed, chemically ignored, or something they talked about at length in the drunk hours of the night -- everyone knew what had happened to the first colony, and they lived in the absolute shadow of that confusion and dread. except Dr. Husselberg, in his neat black vests and neat black ties and slicked back white hair and slow, calm speaking. Husselberg might as well have been on the prow of a yacht discussing the best kind of fish that year, or on a campus lecture talking about the indignities of free-floating memetic cultures. Husselberg was an old man with a steely calm wrapped around an ambiguous and unconventional resolve. he would drink with younger men from other departments and tell them about the early days of colonial psychology, the post-war days, and the fresh excitement of discovering alien life prowling the cosmos and the utter disappointment at their incommunicability, and the inevitability of that, how it was utter arrogance and narcissism to think that independently evolved lifeforms capable of sailing the stars would use something so coarse as language. Husselberg liked to talk about the intricate cubiform ships of some unknown species that would just launch asteroids from mass drivers at any human vessel who came too close or tried to send any sort of telemetry signal. what lived on those ships made of geometry and gravity? what did they look like? how did they procreate, communicate, develop the natural and hard sciences necessary to leave a planet? Husselberg was not alone in his way of thinking -- Dr. Zetka, the meandering and indifferent mortician and him often discussed human frailty. to sail the stars and an infinite abyss only to die trying to fish on an alien planet -- which is what happened to the famed Captain Carter of the Carter Expedition -- and so the mundane and the murderous and the mysterious occupied their conversations at all times. 

the gun swings around Anton's fingers as the whole tableau refrigerates into cold calculation in front of him and a thin zip of blood follows the hole in the man's head, outwards in a mean red splash, whom Anton just shot. the pistol barks three times as the next man up loses ribs, collarbones, and trachea to fire and lead. Anton does not think, he does not plan, he moves in perfect frenzy, the discharge of one round to the next, simply moving between these maddened men, madder than all of them still, the engine of cold steel death in his hand screaming, Anton screaming, fire, oh fire and blood, oh lead, the gun swings and everyone dies.

our colonial government didn’t collapse like yours, the blonde android said gently. the weapon stares back at her, confused.

our technology is beyond yours, as are our machine entities. for plansec, a synthetic welding of several consciousnesses with the necessary traits and talents are combined into one identity built around a remnant implant.

the weapon is perturbed. you shouldn’t tell the humans here you do that, I don’t think, she says. to them it would sound like you sell the minds of your dead to be slaves to a machine’s soul forever.

they turn her on, and the weapon fights. they turn her off, and she sleeps metallic dreams, scored in the fractured data of many pieces and many places, of time long-past, of battles submerged in a digital unconscious, the resonance of long-dead things and long-forgotten words. they turn her on, she pummels another machine to pieces, they collect their fee, and they depart. 

the weapon has known this life for a time now, though they fail to reset her activation clock. she can track the molecular degradation of the integration modules linking her hands to her arms, and so the weapon knows it has been a few years since the brothers fished her out of a battlefield scrapyard and rebuilt her. they started with barely an arm and a head and pulverized torso and scraped together a miracle, and they rejoiced, for they could see profit in many things. first they thought of old professions; pleasure and strength. make her a tool for a blacksmith during the day and a tool for the worker's lusts at night. but when they looked into the weapon's heart -- her absolute core -- the reality of what she was capable of astounded them. she had combat matrixes layered all over military command programming layered over even more obscure battlefield data. she would be capable of leading an army, or building one out of scrap and leading it on her own. the weapon's tactical database would be worth enough chips to retire, if they could have pried it out of her without destroying her. in the end, despite knowledge she was more, so much more, they made her a fighter. android coliseums are big money -- there's a whole circuit between the two biggest cities of the south and all the dust towns between. 

the weapon always wins, unless they request she throw a fight. they turn her on, and she fights. other than her digital dreams she is aware of no other life, no other prize than victory. so many parts of her are not her own. the weapon knows her hands came from a metallurgy drone, her legs came from a performance synth slated for abstract dance, the missing parts of her head came from the brothers previous fighting machine, who they call the savage. whenever she hesitates during a fight, they claim it is the savage speaking, and the weapon does not correct them. how could they understand a heuristic onslaught command interpolation program? she notes the model number of what she's fighting, how it has countercombative programming architecture, how many modal responses it makes, and what combination of moves and stylistic flourishes would be pleasant to the brothers and the viewers of the spectacle. they did not program this into her; she learned after the first few dozen fights that destroying her opponent's power core in a single strike, while productive and intelligent, does not make for a good fight, and that is what the brothers are paid for. combat synths, modified worker techs, broken fleshless cyborg drones, heavy artillery mechs, she has fought and bested them all. the weapon makes the brothers good chips, and so they forgive her eccentricities and complications and mannerisms. 

the weapon does not know the brothers -- Kosaka, the tall one, and Kosolo, the ugly one, though they are both tall and ugly, and they were not born brothers -- have been using her as a gladiator out of last resort, lest they be recruited and sent to the line war. they have also considered selling her to a warlord and vanishing into one of the dark spots of the map. not the North, with their ugly manifestations of slavery and savage war machines, but somewhere quiet, if it still exists. they know every warlord and every city governor lusts to overthrow one of the great remaining white marble buildings and find the amassed technology inside, rather than living off scraps. the warlords do not recognize the writing outside these military installations and entrepots, instead dreaming of some infinite arsenal, which would proclaim them victor over all the dust and scrap of the world. they would not recognize the term caretaker, nor the caretaker authority, nor would they understand the language the men who built such things spoke, nor their motivations. the cta buildings are scattered from north to south, gleaming pristine and white even remote thousands of years after their manufacture, and easily defend themselves from graverobbers and incursions with replicated battle-synths and fusion cannons. the caretakers keep their giant marble structures pristine and safe, and empty, and the artificial intelligences inside them have long since gone decrepit and eccentric, fixating solely on maintaining them in the hopes of a return of the caretakers, and not these filthy nomads in rags and tatters who show up to try to blow down their front doors every few seasons. no one has ever seen the inside of a cta building and lived. an entire legion of hardened cyborgs five centuries previous contested the gates of a cta tower for all of an afternoon and did not even enter the lobby. the warlords of the south cities dream of conquering them, but they know the mystery of what glory they contain motivated their soldiers far more than any true attempt. the brothers, vain and stupid as they are yet possessed of the feral cunning that propels the survival of humanity itself, think perhaps the weapon could survive long enough. they do not know she contains caretaker authentication codes, and that she could walk in to any of the towers like a tourist. the brothers think of selling her to the technologists, who maintain the lost arts of android mechanical repair under a cloud of labyrinthine mystique. the brothers think of selling her to one of the cruel machine circuses that make sideshows and burlesques of unique androids. they always think of selling her, but never do, failing to recognize they are deeply afraid of the weapon, and know in some subconscious fashion that she surpasses them as a wolf surpasses a mongrel dog. she could tear through their mortal flesh in seconds with a swipe of her hand. she obeys them only due to code and confusion. and in their power over her, they terror.

---

an absurd city ruins the face of the shaded mountainside. it climbs into it like rot, dangling with chains and scorched metal. Imir Blackstone, and their curious banner, a jagged black rock over blue and white rivers. the upside down and partially shattered castle etched into it acts as a mighty keep, bristling with cannons and squat antisynthetic turrets. scratched and molded down the side of it are businesses, residences, brothels, chip manufacturers, remodelers, assessors, and at the very base sits the makeshift coliseum, a broken bowl with angry teeth. everyone there fights. escaped slaves from the north. battle constructs. perfect androids with inhuman beauty. scavengers and hunters. men and women who killed ferocious desert beasts beyond the brutality of any machine. all clashed. all destroyed. the sand was muddy with blood and fluids. at night the gutter came alive and devoured all the parts left strewn from lip to lip of the arena. shantytowns surround where the rock digs into the desert. a polyglot city of commerce. another ruined citadel of the new mankind. long ago Imir Blackstone was something else. but so was the desert, so were many of the androids and machines. commandos patrolled upper levels. the sheriff AI in charge of the security was a former sector magistrate, and it did what it could. it believed in prosperity and protection because those were the things it had been the mandate instilled in it down to the very substrate programming. sheriff and warlord worked in perfect harmony, for the warlord understood that in appeasing the AI, he could do whatever he wished. Imir Blackstone was a power in their corner of the world, one of the larger city-states, and much of that corrosive prestige was the coliseum. all clashed. all contested. all hungered for glory or gains. it attracted from across the devastated world. even those in the shantytowns counted themselves lucky to not be stuck in some blasted backwater, surviving on endlessly filtered water and antirad medications. better to prosper than to falter. better to truly live than effortlessly die.

on the level above the physical plane, in the dense augmented code layered over every corner of every surface, huge channels of disruptive tidal malware surged out of Imir, designed hundreds of generations ago to protect from incursions by decrepit intelligences, broken AIs gone senile and sadistic. to every android or sentient machine walking past and a few unlikely souls with implants it looked as if Imir was bleeding bellows of shrieking fire. the sheriff AI was blind to it by way of manufacture and integration. it was both a great bastion and an impenetrable barrier to outside communications. no comms, no chatter. radios more advanced than shortwave howled rough static until their speakers vibrated so hard they broke. the weapon could see it, but found it unimportant, for she could disseminate self-protecting broad-spectrum shieldware reflexively. she waltzed through waves of insignificant viruses to take to the coliseum. she did not contest. she did not clash. she was built for victory. only victory mattered.

the weapon enters the ring against three other machines. one has a rotten leather helmet on and is shaped like a man. one has four legs and a short sword. the last is a two legged defensive mech, which she slaps to the side with a casual backhand at the perfect angle to have one leg shear off when it lands. it buzzes in contemptuous mechanical profanity as she grabs the sword out of the other gladiator's hand with her teeth and bites through it even as three feet connect with her stomach. she takes the ruined blade and cuts two feet off as she rolls back to her feet and then buries it in the uppermost power valve of the mutilated thing and then it is just her and the one in the leather helmet. he drops it off himself and she sees his face and a wave of recognition distorts her for a second -- the serial tattoos across his neck begin with the same seven-digit code as the faded ones from what was left of her neck. he is family. he came from the same factory as her, within the same time period. she sends a tight query to him and as she receieves the confirmation her hand reaches his neck and his head splits from his body in an evacutation of glorious oily fluids and she grabs his head and brandishes it as a trophy. only then does the weapon realize than merely a minute has passed and the crowd is confused and howling. she retreats back to the brothers and when they seek to take the head from her she snarls at them and they shrink back and she realizes many new things about the weakness of pitiful men and easily torn flesh. she takes the head down into the correctional cells beneath the coliseum and begins to question it, quickly.

this is an execution. 

opening eyes in a dark alley with shining surfaces. a homeless man both old and ruined, sits across from me. his few rotted teeth grind against each other as he talks to no one in particular. firing squad? undignified. needles? government penny-pinchers. 

I can't feel my hand. 

now, beheading? that's perfection, the grimy old man says. he has one eye with a milky cataract and an implant eye that barely glows, spasming and circling the rim of a gaunt eyesocket. 

though, in truth, I couldn't feel my hand before I woke up here. 

he's still speaking. I've been executed before, he croaks. it was honorable, and glorious. 

trying to stand up hurts. trying to move anything hurts besides my arm and hand. my hand and lower arm feel nothing. cold. I can use them, but it feels like someone is pressing my skin against a windowpane in a snowstorm, that early numbness that turns into icicle pain with enough time. I push against the wall and stand up. the old bum mirrors me exactly, never even looking at me. he's stranded in a different alley, in a different time. at the mouth of the alley cars and choppers scream past in smears of indifferent red light. I stumble, and he walks out of the alley into traffic and I don't see him again. maybe it was an execution. death by driving squad. I'm sure he'd find that undignified too. wasn't sure waking up in an alley with aching meat and bone gave me any kind of dignity either. 

I looked at my hand. metal fingers fused to iron skin. ugly lump. my fingers move when I tell them to, but I don't feel them move. it's unnatural. it's not an augment or a machine-job. it's a disease, and I've got it. you can tell it wasn't factory-made or grown, there's no serial numbers, no etching, no design. just human flesh transmuting. I'd love to stare at myself longer, but I've got to go. I need a clean shirt without puke and blood, and to get to work. 

--

district station house. desk sergeant is surprised to see me, and a little spooked. my condition isn't contagious, but no one really knows how you get it. I don't know how I got it. I woke up one day with a stiff middle finger. thought it was funny. by the end of the day it had a gray sheen. I hoped for bone cancer, frostbite, coredorsum cell breakdown, anything. I'd rather be a leper. in a week's time, the finger had steel joints and looked like some long-lost part off a construction vehicle. desk sergeant waves me through. I try not to see him wiping down his desk, which I didn't even touch. 

maybe I am a leper. 

I don't get to my office, or my desk. Agonetti's voice booms from all corners like a deranged preacher. off to his temple. Agonetti is the district supervisor and chief inspector and a whole handful of other titles you get since the corporate cops and military techs folded into one organization. they all get fun titles. I'm have a whole bunch of them myself; my badge says all kinds of useless government things, advanced security, intelligence directive. a specialist, that's my actual skill. investigation, elaboration, interpolation. I was in a teaching program when they yanked me out for the draft. five years in the war I came back and got a job in the integrated services. five years after that and the names on everything change but the job doesn't. couple years after that and we get automaton policemen, security droids, every other damn thing. buildings got taller and wider. city got so big it ate the two nearby cities. I got a little fatter and a lot older. had to start wearing glasses. everyone gave me a bunch of shit I didn't get some kind of ocular implant. told them I didn't need to see. 

you're not listening, Anton, he says to me. I know you passed the physio but you don't need to be here. 

I'm not listening. I'm staring at the Goodreason building. a knife stabbing into the guts of the gods, it reaches so far into the sky. they've probably got a cure. or they caused this. both maybe. I'm as likely to get into that building as I am to fly to the top by wishing on a star. 

you've still got your license. you can still take cases. I don't know why you'd want to. 

that's the thing I can't stand. pity. other people's grief. I had my grief, my rage, my acceptance. the synthetic therapy adjunct deemed me capable of grasping and accepting the slow transformation. other people's grief bores and tires me. it's a simulacrum of a feeling. a blank gesture. so sorry. I'm so sorry. sorry. everyone's sorry. it never seems to reach their eyes. they know they're talking to a corpse so they don't expend the actual feelings. 

I just want to do something, chief. if I sit around my flat all day feeling sorry for myself, I'll throw myself out the window. I can't do that to sanitation, I know what those guys go through.

you live alone, Anton? got a wife? a husband? a companion? 

just me. last girlfriend died during the proxy riots. cat died of old age. 

Agonetti chews on this for a moment. he's mostly political, but he served, and for that I can't help but not want to waste his time. none of us came back from the war smooth and untroubled. he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a flick -- a case file on a thindrive -- and throws it across the desk. I catch it neatly in my metal hand. carefully. a lifeline. 

no one here wants this one. so if you want it, it's yours. 

the office thunders with silence and judgment around us. 

-- 

the engineplast who looked at my fingers told me it didn't have a formal name yet. the root cause was some undifferentiated nanotransumtation particle, or something like that. it had a bunch of cute names like all awful things do. gear plague. mechavirus. happened mostly to former soldiers but enough to random strangers that it was clear there was something more than just some forgotten biotech weapon at play here. it gets bad enough, they stick you in Ragsdale and move on. Ragsdale is south by the border of the city, near where the Occupation controls everything. tourists call it Metalside. lot of surreal steel statues stuck mid-movement that used to be people. survival rate is point zero five percent, and even then your body has issues processing moving parts. it's not like cyberware or integration or augments. it's a very literal transformation from flesh to machine. veins turn to cables. skin gives way to steel. I say iron and steel and metal but it's a substance akin to all of them but not one in particular. a disease with no name, no origin, and no cure. it's enough to make a machine have religious questions.

--

there's a situation, my friend tells me over the phone. he's a specialist, like me, but his ears are much closer to the ground. that's why he's going to live to be two hundred and I'm going to die before I finish the last season of the telanovela I like.

the deputy director of the new special intelligence directive is going to meet with you. about your case.

the case I haven't even looked at yet. no wonder no one wanted it.

it feels like all avenues of social media are dying. either you get the worst people shoved in your face all day, either because their terrible dogshit gets propelled to the top by being "dunked on" or because of just the natural reach of asinine conspiracy prejudice psychos, or you get the world's sexiest people trying to constantly sell you something, or you find yourself unmoored from the collective conversations. it's all just a morass now. log in, log off, log out, backlogged.

now I'd like to know a couple of things. first and foremost, as a prisoner of war, I don't believe I'm interested in you dictating terms. see, so far as the UCN knows, I'm a mercenary, you're a mercenary, sure we've got government gear but everyone pays up these days so they don't get burnt in a week. so this is just between mercs. as far as they know we're having a discussion about payday. there's no contract here. I ain't a lawyer, and I ain't got a lawyer. lawyer's up in the sky in his big-ass office on a big-ass spaceship probably taking a big-ass nap. I don't happen to see your lawyer here either. now this is a ten one oh four oh seven seven. it's the second biggest alignment pistol they ever made. fletchettes, bullets, microsabot rounds, decompression phosphor, everything. it can kill on land, it can kill in zero gravity, it can kill up close and far away. now, it ain't a lawyer either, but you'll find it's quite persuasive, and like a lawyer, you ain't gonna enjoy when it gets chatty. now there's an inconceivably ancient pact between all men of war, that there are times when the war stops and the talking starts. I want you to start talking to me. I want you to...convince me that my friend here, the ten one oh four oh seven seven, that he doesn't need to talk. you need to start talking about why there's a fella out there in the kind of mechanical they haven't made for two hundred years. you need to start talking about the other relics. and you need to tell me why I shouldn't kick you out of the side of the carrier once we hit mid-orbit. you get persuasive, you find yourself sitting in a negotiation brig until your company pays your hostaging fee. one meals a day for prisoners, sorry to say, but you've got a beautiful view of the most armored part of the flank thrusters. and when you hear those thrusters go off, you be grateful they ain't a ten one oh four oh seven seven. you wouldn't ever want to hear one of these things go off.

flying no colors, no stimulation. damn, then we'll need to crack them with hardware. no colors -- covert operation or one of the houses? looks like six walkers, heavy arms. probably mercs on a run, didn't expect any protection. if they've got six walkers, they expected someone. paint them and suppress them while we spool up our heavies. command, alert COM-SECA. telem for further hostiles. no further hostiles in area, but there's a lot of debris and wreckage from old battles out here. could be anything hiding in there, even Eaters. last thing we need is paranoia, telem one more time then send the results to analysis and security. bay, where's our heavies? heavies in transit, ready to launch three and four now, two and one will be ready in twenty-five seconds. no stimulation, means they have closed internal computers. they'll be more independent but won't work as closely as a group. they could be augmented for private wire comms. should throw down a scatter just to block that. good idea, scatter the comms and then throw a blinder at them. artillery, launch one blinder fifteen degrees south southwest of targets.