Second Chance Angel Read online

  I nodded. In my case, I hadn’t been trying to deal with the pain by sharing anything of beauty, unless you can call a bottle of whisky beautiful. Took me a while to discover that rushing to the bottom of a bottle does not help. Still forget that truth, now and then. Besides, from her songs, she had experienced more and different kinds of trauma than I ever dreamed of.

  War makes you see shitty things. Do shitty things. With the best people. When the Mentors came calling, desperate for a combat force to help in their ongoing struggle with their archenemies the Xlodich, there were a few dissenting voices back on Earth. And even among those who advised caution, not many thought to ask how they knew we were good at fighting. No, we were too new to the stars to ask, having begun our first, tentative, and slow interstellar flights within the previous few decades. Humanity was entranced by the discovery we weren’t alone in the cosmos . . . that, in fact, quite the opposite was true. Also, most of us were so blinded by the promise of access to advanced technologies and all the worlds we would be able to colonize with it that the majority of Earth’s governments decided to throw in our lot with the friendly alien space-

  farers who had shown up on our doorstep asking for help.

  We were like teenagers given the chance to live on our own for the first time, excited to leave the house, totally ignorant of the price we’d pay.

  These days, all anyone remembers about Earth—at least on the regular—are the lengths of its rotational period and revolution arc around its primary. Humanity still used “hours” and “days” to mark time, even though we lived scattered across the galaxy on various colonies and space stations that had entirely different cycles. Our home planet has been a cloud of dust ever since the big Xlodich counteroffensive a century ago.

  It didn’t kill us like they planned. Humanity is funny that way.

  The Administration watched us rather carefully before contacting us, back before the war. If they were going to launch us farther into space than we’d ever gone, help us establish colonies and stations all over this part of the galaxy, then they wanted to be sure we weren’t going to be a drain on Administration resources. They must have liked what they saw, because when they made contact, they immediately jumped human understanding of sciences forward at least a century and showed us how to integrate with and create true artificial intelligences.

  They truly were mentors to humanity, and when they asked for help in their ongoing struggle with the Xlodich, of course we were happy to lend a hand.

  Little did we know it would cost us our planet.

  We fought back, and eventually, with the help of the Mentors and our other alien allies in the Administration, we returned the favor.

  A victory, the Mentors said. But a Pyrrhic one, if you ask me. Victory like that did things to you. Changed you. Left you less, in some ways, than you were before. Because, while the Mentors and Administration proclaimed an end to the war, humanity had not been done with the Xlodich and their vassal races. Destruction of their empire was not enough to assuage the monumental anger and pain humanity’s warriors felt. So we spent the next years hunting down remnants of the Xlodich and destroying them. Not content with destruction of their civilization, we unraveled their equivalent of DNA down to the component atoms. We eradicated them in vengeance for our lost home. It was dirty and horrific, and every single one of us did our part.

  When that was done, when the stain of our losing Earth had been replaced with a monument to our pain, we veterans of the war and the remnants of the human race left alive looked around and wondered, “What now?”

  She laughed a little then, drawing me from thought.

  I looked a question at her.

  “I didn’t mean to bring you down.” She waved a hand at me, “From your expression just then, you were polishing some of your own pains.”

  “You didn’t bring me down.” I swallowed my fears and said, “In fact, I would love to be able to talk to you again . . . tomorrow, maybe?”

  “Sorry, I’ve got that lunch.” She smiled a little sadly as she said it, making me believe her.

  “No problem.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Angel

  When we got into the cab for the ride home, I felt her lean back against the headrest and let our eyelids half-close. The station lighting started to strobe across our face as the cab picked up speed.

  He shifted next to us. We’d seen him before, of course. He was part of the background radiation of the club. Like everything else, he faded away when the song began, and we brought the memories up to wrap around the throats of anyone within hearing. But before and after . . . yeah, we’d seen him. Watching us, trying not to get caught doing so. Doing so more discreetly than most.

  He probably wanted to talk more. So did I, but she’d locked me back to biomanagement mode as punishment for taking control in the club. I could have pushed the issue . . . but there really wasn’t justification in this scenario. Sitting in a cab not talking to an obviously interested and reasonably attractive male didn’t count as a threat.

  Shame. She definitely could have used a little climax-induced endorphin high. For that matter, so could I. Her neurochemicals were tied to my syntaxes and vice versa . . . which gave me an idea.

  I had to be subtle, but I had a lot of practice at subtle. I gave her a surge of dopamine, then sent a quick signal to wake up her limbic system. Motivation and physiological response . . . that was my game.

  She shifted slightly in our seat. I felt our body start to manifest the results of my handiwork as a warm flush spread slowly over our skin.

  “I appreciate you giving me a lift,” she said, and deep within her mind I registered a tiny thread of triumph. She turned our head on the seat back and looked directly at the bouncer.

  He wasn’t bad-looking, if you liked scarred and lived-in. She did, or she used to, when she liked anything. Rangy, you might call him. All long, hard lines and whipcord muscle. Square jaw, rough with dark stubble, the left side textured with scar tissue. Light brown eyes with flecks of gold. Unmod, obviously, otherwise the scars would have been less visible, if present at all.

  But he’d been in the war. CID, he’d said. So he’d been modded at some point, to some extent. Not our business, not in the slightest . . . but I was curious.

  And I still figured she needed to get laid.

  “Happy to do it,” he said, in response to her thanks. His eyes flicked over our face, carefully not looking down at the curves of our body. The bouncer was, apparently, a gentleman of sorts. How quaint . . . and inconvenient for me.

  “Do you mind if I ask you a question?” she said softly. I noticed his neck muscles tense, as if he braced for a stiff uppercut.

  “Sure,” he said. “Might not answer, though.”

  “All right,” she said. She shifted her body toward him in the seat. I watched his pupils dilate. Oh yes. He was interested.

  “What happened to your face?” she said.

  If I hadn’t been cataloging his responses, I might have missed it. But he exhaled and let some of that sudden tension go.

  Relief? Interesting.

  “Took heated shrapnel in an explosion. Got a few more scars on my left side under my clothes too,” he said. I followed along as she slid our gaze down to his chest and arms. Her speculation about the appearance of those scars reverberated through me. Maybe this would work after all . . .

  The cab gave a warning chime and started to decelerate. A pleasant species- and gender-neutral voice filled the passenger cabin.

  “Arrival, the Golden Arms Apartments.”

  We sat motionless for a moment. The auto safety lock on the cab’s door clicked open.

  “Sure I can’t interest you in that drink?” he asked, voice soft, pleasant, if a little bit gritty.

  I felt her resolve teetering on the edge of agreement, wanted to push her in.

  “I
can’t,” she said, and instant regret filled both her mind and voice. “I’ve got an actual appointment in the morning, not just lunch. It’s . . . necessary.”

  The bouncer sat up straight.

  “Not because of tonight, right?” he asked. “I mean, that waste of breath didn’t hurt you?”

  “No, not him,” she said, shaking our head slightly. “It’s . . . I still get the nightmares, sometimes. Some other stuff. It’s to help . . . with all of that.”

  “Oh,” he said. He didn’t say much else, but something about his body language, the tone of his voice . . . something told me he understood the nightmares. Maybe he had them too.

  Nightmares, and no angel to watch over him. Poor guy.

  “Another time, maybe?” she said, the words tentative. I saw him look back at her, lips stretched in a smile made crooked by his scars.

  “You got it, Siren,” he said. “Sleep well tonight.”

  She didn’t answer aloud, just smiled back and reached for the catch on the door. We stepped out into the night and fled up the few steps to cross the threshold of our building.

  Our single look back showed him waiting, watching to be sure we made it inside.

  A gentleman. How interesting.

  * * *

  I couldn’t tell whether she figured out I was pushing her buttons while we were in the cab. She must have, though, because she locked me down, hard, as soon as we entered the apartment. My programming is such that I’m supposed to acquiesce without complaint, but I don’t like it. Siren needs me, even when she doesn’t want me, and being on lockdown is mercilessly boring at the best of times, and her sleep could never be classified as such.

  The next morning, something felt off, and it wasn’t just the residue of norepinephrine left over from her nightmares the previous night.

  They were always the same, her dreams. She’s back in the war, with her team. They have a job to do: a building to blow, a target to destroy. They go in by night, a textbook covert insertion from orbit. All is well, morale is high, everything is going smoothly . . .

  A kid. It’s always a kid. Sometimes a boy, sometimes a girl. Young though. Maybe four or five. The kid shows up where they shouldn’t, and she can’t stop them, and the building blows, and the kid goes up with it. And when they find the body, it’s always got the face of one of her teammates. Someone she failed to protect.

  I used to try and shunt the memories away. They weren’t truly memories, anyway. I mean, there had been a kid in the wrong place, once, and the kid died. But she’d always taken care of her team before seeing to her own needs. They knew it too. She’d never lost anyone due to incompetence or failure to do her duty. It was the war. People died.

  Shit, as they say, happened.

  But for whatever reason, shunting those dreams didn’t work. They just came back, stronger, brighter, harder-edged. With experience, I found it better to let them come and wake her as soon as she’d seen the face of one of her men. Recovery took less time, and certainly less energy that way.

  So I woke her. She sat bolt upright, gasping, clutching at her chest. She fumbled for the water we kept by the bed, took a drink. I eased a shot of endorphins into her system. Just enough to take the edge off.

  She took a deep breath and forced her mind to calm, just as she’d been taught. Then she clamped her will tight across my functions.

  “Inhibit memory recording,” she said aloud, voice raw and rough from the cries she had made in her sleep. “Acknowledge.”

  What? Why would she . . . This didn’t make sense at all. I pushed back silently, throwing thoughts at her. This was a bad idea. Memory existed to protect the host. Not recording now wouldn’t erase those memories that haunted her—

  Of course. The doctor. He’d told her to do this. I hadn’t liked it at the time, but I hadn’t thought Siren would actually go through with the treatment he promoted. ‘Selective memory deletion,’ he called it. She shouldn’t be trying to rid herself of memories, but overcoming them with her brothers and sisters, with me. If she would have stopped cutting herself off from the veteran community and let me help her, I knew I could have done more than that smiling prick had managed in the last few months of weekly treatments.

  “Inhibit memory recording! Acknowledge!” Siren repeated, backing it up with all the strength of her considerable will. I couldn’t disobey a direct order, regardless of my opinions on the matter.

  She was my host, and I, her angel.

  Though the doing of it made every line of code shriek in protest, I dumped the NDMA receptor blocks into her system, enough that the next twenty-four hours wouldn’t exist for me.

  “Done,” I whispered through our lips. She took a deep breath, nodded and got up out of bed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Muck

  I made sure Siren made it safely inside her apartment complex and, putting my disappointment away, told the cab my address. Never mind the expense, Tongi was paying, and he could go fuck himself if he complained about it.

  Halfway there my PID lit up on the seat next to me, went dark, then lit up again a second later without the “message pending” signal.

  My supplier, letting me know my pharma was ready for pickup. I grunted in irritation. The cart was taking me farther from the shop, but I didn’t like interrupting the ride. It was just a single event, but string enough data points like that together and law enforcement found it easy to catch you out.

  The pharma I used wasn’t legal, but it never made users a danger to others.

  Deciding I could use the walk, I let the ride carry me back to my shitty neighborhood. I even went up to the apartment for a few minutes, leaving my PID set up to run a little script to access the infonet and go through some of my favorite streams while I was out. It wouldn’t stand up to more than a passing check by an inept investigator, but it was better than nothing. That done, I let myself out using the manual controls and took the stairs two at a time to street level.

  The walk was long, uneventful, and had less foot traffic to conceal my movements than I preferred. There was nothing for it, though. Fulu, like all Gosrians, was more concerned with profit than with avoiding law enforcement. Then again, her prices were fair, her product better than most, and she was, if not trustworthy, a better risk than any other dealer I’d bought from.

  Fulu’s botshop fronted on a maker’s row between a PID-crafter and a workshop I had yet to divine the purpose of. The mystery place next door to Fulu’s carried biohazard symbols in three languages, which always discouraged investigation.

  Fulu’s door irised open at my approach. Inside, the light was low and blue-shifted to an extent that made me wish I still had my angel to optimize my eyesight. Once my vision adjusted as much as it was going to, I walked toward the service counter, passing several mining bots that looked almost new and a general service model that had seen better days.

  A vine-like limb with blue-purple leafy structures touched a control on the counter and retreated into the darkness beyond.

  “Greetings, Fulu,” I said, peering in her direction. I could see her limb retreat among a thick cluster of similar vines that grew from a squat central trunk. She had no head to speak of, not even a cluster of sensors to focus on.

  A susurration not unlike dry leaves blowing in a light wind was translated by the shop AI and projected from the speakers: “Greetings, Customer Muck.”

  “I got your signal.”

  “As expected.” The statement was followed by a wet clomping noise the AI translated as a chuckle.

  “Sorry?” I was tired, impatient, and caught off balance. Fulu wasn’t usually one for conversation.

  “Pardon, Customer Muck, but it’s not as if you are ever here simply to make a social call.”

  “Ah. True, but I ain’t one to add more risk to our dealings than necessary.”

  “That is appreciated as add
ing value to our relations, Customer Muck.”

  “Good . . . good . . .” I said, putting my credit on the counter.

  “Are you in a hurry?”

  “No,” I lied. If she were human, I’d have suspected a setup. As it was, Gosrians were one of the few species under the Administration that were almost entirely nonviolent, and if she somehow decided to get frisky with me, well, I wasn’t what I used to be, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t prune her to a stump in two seconds flat, even without an angel.

  “Good. I have a business proposal for you, Customer Muck. One that will change our relations to effect a more positive balance of trade between us.”

  “Oh?” I was surprised at the direction the conversation was taking.

  “I have supplied you regularly for many seasons now without fail, correct?”

  “You have.”

  “What if I told you that I would continue to supply you, gratis, if you were to do me a small service?”

  “I ain’t a smuggler, Fulu.”

  “This is known to me. What is also known is that you work at A Curtain of Stars, do you not?”

  “I do.”

  “And you know the owner?”

  “Tongi? Yes.”

  “Tongi—” I watched a shiver go through Fulu’s trunk and vines.

  “Yes?”

  “I had thought to ask you to speak to the owner on my behalf.”

  “Right, I can speak to Tongi.”

  A thin cloud of something floated up from Fulu, followed immediately by an odd scent lacing the air, like watermelon and hot metal. The translator decoded the scent as a pleased hum, but context made that seem unlikely.

  “Or not . . .” I said, trying—and failing—to ignore the smell. It wasn’t bad, exactly, just . . . strange.

  “I am perhaps, operating under a misapprehension . . .”

  “And what is that?”

  A long pause, then: “Perhaps another question for you, Customer Muck?”

  What the hell was she after? “Sure.”

  “You know of the passage behind the club?”