Hekate's Call, Chapter 49, Finale

Morian Kyrnn had never really adjusted to space. She’d lost count of the years. They changed the years, you see. But things were so big and grand now. The Eidolons seemed so massive and impractical the first time she saw them, but it didn’t take long for everything to catch up.

The freight tunnels of Errant HQ were no different. Four standards could march shoulder-to-shoulder down them, and massive transport vehicles could move a dozen machines from one dock to another. They had to be big, because Errant had both internal mechanized infantry training grounds as well as a warship dry dock. Her feet were aching, and quite honestly she wasn’t expecting to make it this far on foot. Nearly to the hangar where her shuttle was waiting.

The foundation flashed before her as she reached the end of the tunnel. She was killed by a sonic boom, liquefied. Her consciousness faded before she got to experience the entire process, since the brain was one of the first things to liquefy. A shame.

Morian Kyrnn turned back down the tunnel in the shadow of Chronos and lit herself a cigarette. She’d been putting it off to avoid the chemical detectors that would alert someone, somewhere if she had any earlier. No point hiding anymore though.

Krystyn saw the small figure walking along the massive freight tunnel roads — so large that the Inertia could stand at its full height and sprint and still have room to maneuver. It helped them catch up to Kyrnn quickly.

“Manya, fire.” Krystyn said calmly into her radio.

Manya whined. We aren’t even going to talk to her?

“If this was enough to kill Kyrnn, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Fire the rail.”

The Inertia could feel the capacitors come up to charge. Its blood screamed as the rail fired down the massive freight tunnel. Krystyn’s eyes jittered in her skull again. Just like before. No shockwave. No bullet. Only the Corpse Eater.

And that thing.

At the end of the tunnel was a machine the size of the Scandal, looming above its master. You could tell it was Kyrnn’s machine on account of how stupid it looked. A long cloak, patterned in time-weathered greens and blues and golds, obscured its form save for a spindly pair of legs. A matching witch hat shadowed the frame’s face. Just looking at it stirred something in her heart. A sort of homesickness for the idea of a place she’d never been to or known. A primal feeling. Another of the Necromancer’s tricks.

Below it was the Necromancer General herself. Krystyn’s sensors zoomed in to get a good look at the enemy. Sol’s first sin against the universe. Lit cigarette hanging from her lips. Hands in the pockets of her gaudy lab coat, embroidered with flames and skeletal arms reaching up from the bottom hem. Dark circles ringed the woman’s eyes beneath those circular glasses. Hair pulled up in a messy bun. Facing down the Inertia and the Work From Home with an expression like she was just told she’d have to work overtime.

Morian Kyrnn wasn’t afraid of them. She was inconvenienced.

Well. There was a short pause while Manya communicated with her co-pilot. Yeah. Orchid’s got nothing.

“Ilina?”

No answer. Typical.

“Hunter?”

Hey, Illustrious. Can you get a reactor signature off that thing?

Now she responds. Not to her name. To the name that Kyrnn called her. That left a bad taste in Krystyn’s mouth.

Nope.

Symeon. No heat signature either. Spooky.

Nothing in the databases either.

Krystyn already knew all of that. It was real, though. The Inertia’s magnetic radar could detect parts of it. Internal wiring, like being able to see someone’s bloodstream at a distance but not their skin or muscles or heart. It raised so many questions.

The dreadful woman pulled an earpiece from her lab coat and put it on. Cleared her ragged throat into the unencrypted frequencies. “You can’t stop me.” She sounded weary.

“Fire again.”

Manya groaned, but followed the order.

She expected the same thing as before. The shot would simply vanish, leaving an after-image of the Corpse Eater’s body torn asunder by the shockwave of the rail slug. Instead, the rail slug hung frozen in the air. Kyrnn’s stupid witch-frame extended an arm from their cloak holding a large staff emitting that unreal blue-green light.

Something about that light tugged at the edges of her psyche. It cast no shadows. The light passed through every object, casting that even glow over everything. An uncanny wrongness told in absence.

“You can’t stop me. Nobody can.” Morian ashed her cigarette as she spoke.

Morian waved her hand and discarded the rail slug into the foundation. There was that little itch at the back of her mind. These girls were powerless children in over-sized toys playing pretend like any of them knew what a real war was like.

Lenore’s voice rang in her head. A teaching moment. Any situation could be a teaching moment if you had something to impart. No. No. These were Elisabet’s charges. It wasn’t Morian’s responsibility to teach them.

Their performance was representative of Elisabet’s skill. So, it should fall to Morian to test them. Elisabet’s performance was representative of Morian’s skill after all. As above, so below.

Data bursts over the encrypted channels. Chronos could crack them open, but that would be unfair. Fairness was important for a test. Lenore taught her that.

“You can have the initiative,” Morian droned. If she started monologuing she would sound like a madwoman. She was never good at giving lectures. The university didn’t want her in a lecture hall either. Morian was of more use to everyone in a lab, sequestered away from the public.

Focus, Morian.

Chronos pulled her attention. When she turned she could see the tell-tale refraction of active-camo moving quickly. Her finger twitched, and Chronos drew one of its swords to block the axe-blow. Hunter crashed into the thin blade with full force.

The differences in material sciences between the war and now was unfair. A righteous unfairness. Humanity had no need for it anymore. There was no reason to allow a perpetual arms race between indestructible god-machines and weapons designed to slay those gods.

Despite the differences in strength, Chronos budged. A foot at most. Almost imperceptible. If the Again in Hell’s axe was made of the same material as Chronos’s blade…

Hunter would be thinking the same thing. The girl wouldn’t dwell on why she couldn’t break it, but she would know she could match Chronos in sheer strength. Knowledge gained. Experience internalized. Instincts honed.

A Scandal in Heaven and the Work From Home opened fire with their mid-ranged weapons. Chronos put up another barrier, and all the bullets stopped dead. It looked like a scene from a late 20th-century action movie. The advent of computer-generated special effects and the first death knell of Scavenger’s beloved martial arts choreography.

Focus, Morian.

She lost sight of Hunter for a split second between the bullets and her remembrance.

A grenade exploded above her. Chronos set a second barrier to catch the shrapnel. The Problem With Inertia marched towards her in her peripheral vision. They meant to split her attention and overwhelm her.

Was Krystyn taking the lead, or was it Hunter?

Chronos ducked out of the way of Hunter’s swing. The girl was aiming for the staff now. She caught a wire in the air and swung her momentum around to bring the axe down on them.

Chronos touched the foundation.

The real hung around Morian and her machine the way an afterimage hung on your retina. Not quite still. Drifting around in your vision just slightly. Dr. Mishra explained why things drifted in the foundation before, though Morian was always a bad student when it came to physics. Not as interdisciplinary as Dr. Mishra was. Something about photons and possibility.

How would humanity react to knowing their Goddess was an immigrant scientist? A thick, Indian accent that Morian struggled to recall correctly — it died on the colony ships like so many other things. Beautiful in a way that embarrassed Morian. Greying hair, deepening creases of a life long lived. That confident posture of hers that Morian couldn’t begin to fake.

“Would you come to my office when you’re done?” Dr. Mishra’s voice echoed through the foundation as Morian tried to focus herself on the present. “That won’t do. Come now. I’ll be dead long before you decide you’re finished.”

Morian liked the lab. She liked the work. Never had the taste for alcohol or parties or the like. She had always been told her unwillingness to network would be the death of her career. That was why she was chosen, of course. Her single-minded, stubborn nature. Her unwillingness to compromise. The only time such a statement had been meant as a compliment.

“Ah! David was right,” the aging woman complained as she leaned on her desk. “The investors can’t pronounce the project name. Just call it something more western! Bah! Name it something more Christian, and suddenly white people are falling over themselves to give you money.”

Morian was trapped on a little chair in the director’s office, listening to her complain. Pasty white little Morian trying to put on her friendliest face for her boss. Wasting time when she needed to be working. Dreadful. Absolutely ghastly. Prattling on while Morian’s project was collapsing without her.

“I want you to head up the Eidolon project.”

She’d never heard of it before. It had a different name before. Something Indian. Morian couldn’t pronounce it let alone remember it, and she always regretted not putting in the effort at the time. She also didn’t get the chance to say no. The transfer was abrupt.

Chronos swept Morian out of the path of Hell’s falling axe swing and left the foundation. It released the barrier holding the wall of bullets at the same moment, letting them continue their trajectories. In a testament to Hunter’s reaction time and flawless movement, she deflected several of the bullets with the axe and stood unscathed where Morian had been a fraction of a second ago.

Hunter was a beautiful young woman. The most dangerous thing in the universe that wasn’t Morian. The smallest flourish as she rested the axe over her shoulder.

“If you aren’t willing to kill me, Morian, then you aren’t going anywhere.”

Enemy has blocked the path to the shuttle from that position.

Morian adjusted her glasses. “Nobody can stop me.”

“I can.”

Chronos raised a barrier as a shadow engulfed the two of them. A ferrofluid tide crashed into the barrier.

Oh.

Morian twitched and brought Chronos to the foundation. She couldn’t let the Inertia touch the barrier. The time shift between the barrier-contacted nanomachines and the rest of the Inertia’s nervous system would give away the trick. That was if Hunter hadn’t already put it together. That girl was already probing with the airburst grenade.

Allow me to disable the enemies so that you may return to the Ossuary.

“Chronos, dear,” Morian said in the perfect silence of the foundation. A timeless space. “This would be far easier if you would allow me to pilot.”

You will attempt to self-destruct again. The survival of Dr. Morian Kyrnn must be assured.

A large hand scooped Morian up to reposition. “What if I promise I won’t try to kill myself?”

You have attempted this tactic thirty-four times.

Well, she didn’t have a goal the past thirty-four times. The war was over, humanity survived and infested every corner of space like vermin. Her duty had been done. Now, the situation has changed. She couldn’t afford to end it here. She had to see it through. It was important. She couldn’t allow Isobel’s legacy to fester any longer.

“Have it your way,” Morian pouted as she gently hopped off the hand at their new position. “Do not kill the pilots. Disable the machines.”

What of the Eyrines-descendant?

“Interjection.”

Interjection has failed to alter the actions of Hunter Falke—

Every. Single. Time.

Yes, she knew that it wouldn’t actually stop Hunter. She was a stubborn girl, to put it lightly. Reasoning never got you far with her either. At the very least Morian could stall her. Leave her for last.

The Problem With Inertia’s magnetic radar was more accurate than any other sensor on the machine. That enemy frame instantly moved to a side, deposited the Corpse Eater, and then moved past the Inertia towards Symeon.

Krystyn smiled despite herself. Squaring off against the Corpse Eater? With three other pilots? Any glimpse at Domon military history or doctrine would tell you that Domon had been preparing to go to war with this one woman since its inception. Hah!

Krystyn Zechs. A good-for-nothing pilot that nobody wanted.

Manya Carie. A walking art project that spat in the face of human sensibilities.

Symeon Vigil. Well. Krystyn had nothing bad to say about the dog.

Humanity’s bulwark against the Necromancer General. What a fucking joke.

The dog was the second fastest pilot they had. She drew her axe preemptively and flared it as she brought it down on the witch-frame, expecting it to dodge like it had when Ilina had swung at it. The witch-frame’s hand twisted at the wrist, spinning the staff up to push the axe aside. The rest of the body moved past the Scandal with a light twist and placed one of the blades on the inside of the Scandal’s knee. A single smooth motion severed the leg cleanly.

Manya opened fire with her mid-range rifles. Short bursts to control the recoil. Her aim was always near-perfect. As long as she had a clear visual she could shoot into a melee and hit just her targets with ease. Though every single round met an invisible wall at the edge of the eerie staff-light and vanished like the rail slug.

The Inertia’s barrier surged towards the Work From Home. It would go for her once it was finished carving up the Scandal. Krystyn kept a thick line between her and the main mass of the barrier to let it react quickly, but maneuvered the Inertia towards the witch-frame.

The witch-frame’s doll-like limbs twisted at impossible angles in their sockets as it gracefully carved the Scandal into pieces. The blade passed beneath the arm from behind, and then pressed up and drew the blade back as part of its next movement. The other blade found the hip joint for a leg and carved it off the same way it had all the others.

Krystyn’s brain was ticking faster with help from the Inertia’s co-pilot. She understood now why Manya called Orchid a co-pilot. Piloting this mess was a pair job. It was the only way to keep up with the amount of processes she needed to.

It hadn’t nicked a single armor plate. The blades were thin and precise and found their purchase as a sort of drawing-retreating motion between joints. Despite proving against the Errant pilots that the blades were sharp enough to cut through the main body, armor and all, it was still fighting as if armor was an impediment.

It took Ilina’s first swing head on because it had to protect Morian. But against machines of equal size it treated them like real threats. The witch-frame also moved before letting the Inertia touch the barriers that could delete armor-piercing rounds from existence.

It couldn’t fight the Inertia.

Morian could have used it to open the door and leave if it could interact with the world in whatever space it jumped to. But she didn’t. Morian was the only thing that it could seemingly come into contact with while moving in that space.

The witch-frame could dismantle everything but the Inertia. Getting in close with the Inertia risked extended contact. It might have a bunch of technology that nobody’s seen before, but those kinds of tricks only worked the first time. You had to make them all count.

Her face was starting to hurt from smiling.

Ilina was fucking right. They could fight the Necromancer and win.

Two more movements and the Scandal had been reduced to a torso. The frame’s spare hand twisted with the momentum to place the torso face-down on the ground. It would prevent Symeon from dismounting. Not only was it not a coup de grace, it was a way of keeping the dog safe.

Another thing Ilina was right about. Too sentimental.

But the witch-frame made quicker work of the Scandal than she expected. Krystyn adjusted course to cover Manya. For what little good it would do. The frame had more tricks up its sleeve, after all.

The Work From Home careened to the side, throwing itself off-balance, before Krystyn registered what happened via the magnetic radar. A volley of rounds. Specifically, Manya’s own rounds returned from a space near the witch-frame. Before Manya could right her machine the witch-frame was on it.

A blade severed a load-bearing leg at the joint and let the Work From Home crash into the dirt. It used the staff as a lever to wrench up the heavy rail so it could slip the other blade in the gap between the hull and the rail housing. The rail was dead. Krystyn could see one of the thick bundles of cables that powered the magnets severed.

Krystyn was still too far away. Even the ferrofluid she sent towards it couldn’t grasp at the edges of the witch-frame before it bounded back to a safer distance. In the straining light of the freight tunnel she could see reds and golds and other boisterous colors adorning the frame beneath the cloak.

The Work From Home was still operable, so she wasn’t too late.

A small comfort.

Hunter stomped the ground. Again. Again. Again. Until the reinforced flooring began to crack like ice under the repeated force. Again. Again. Again. A wordless, howling scream until the girl’s lungs were empty.

“Are you done?” Morian asked bluntly.

She froze in place. With the helmet on it was difficult to tell what the girl was thinking.

Finally the radio picked up a weak plea. “Take me with you.”

“Hunter,” Morian sighed. What was she going to say? There were no words that could convince her, probably. But her answer was the same no matter what. “No.”

“Then kill me.”

“No.”

Hunter stomped one more time and puffed out her chest. “I am Ilina Hunter Falke, the last remaining Fiend of the Corpse Eater. If a corpse no longer has a purpose, it must be discarded. Right?”

Fiend? No, child. She had never been specific enough. It would have hurt to know them more than you did.

Velia Lore is a narcissist who hurts people because she wants to sate her overinflated ego despite her low position in the world’s pecking order.

Scavenger was an old war dog who refused treatment after his service, refused to stop fighting despite his war being over. He killed his family and countless others to do so. He was Elisabet’s finest work. She found the slightest crack and peeled back his armor to make rehabilitation an option.

Butcher killed hundreds in her fruitless, useless pursuit of the Necromancer General. A selfish, sorry attempt to get her family stationed in the empire’s heart and dine with real oligarchs. A deal made in finality, offered by Morian to a weary soldier, lest she drag the rest of her family into the grave after her.

Mountain was a dustball imperial pilot that had far too many violations on record. Enough that even the military was willing to fudge some paperwork to see him gone. It took a long time for Morian to reign his behavior in.

Hospital was a nurse who killed patient after patient who talked back to her. Morian was surprised how efficient she became as a pilot so quickly. She was one of the Fiends most helped by changing her incentive structure.

The Fiends are not your family. The universe would have been better off without any of them. They took, and took, and took, and pushed the costs onto everyone else in their lives.

They delighted in hurting people.

That was the difference between Hunter and the Fiends. Hunter did it because it was work. Efficient and brutal, but not unnecessarily cruel. Callous and disconnected because it was the only way Hunter could survive it.

“You were never one of them.” Morian said, with finality.

“I was! I am! I am the last one!”

Arguing with children was always a dead end. Especially Hunter.

Interjection triggered, throwing Morian into the foundation.

There is only one true magic in the universe and its name was agency.

The power to make choices was the only power that mattered.

And for that reason, and that reason alone, Morian Kyrnn was the most powerful entity in the universe. Appropriately reviled for all the wrong reasons. Her true crimes didn’t exist on any battlefield or in any laboratory. They would never be recorded in any history book. They existed in all the choices unmade.

The choices you might have made, but didn’t.

The choices you wanted to make, but didn’t.

The choices you did make, but didn’t.

Morian hadn’t believed in fate until she met Hunter Falke.

The foundation creaked beneath the weight of Hunter’s agency, as it had so many times before. The world began to smear with the shadows of every possible choice and cosmic accident in that moment. The cascading choices smearing even the air itself with possibilities.

In the center of the smearing of reality was Hunter, lunging forward with a speed that prohibited normal reactions. Every version of this moment slowly collapsed in on itself until the only thing in Morian’s vision left was Hunter’s clean-edged form. It practically glowed with magic.

Morian would have said the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen was a particularly greasy cardboard bowl of nachos with that unhealthy yellow cheese-approximate drizzled lazily over it, in her favorite run down movie theater back home. Well. She would have said Lenore if she was in earshot. But she wasn’t most of the time, and so beauty belonged to the nachos.

Or it did until the first time she saw Hunter threaten the foundation.

Interjection was one of the applications of the foundation that was found early on. It was built into Chronos before they had left Earth. Simply stop in the foundation and let possibilities play out in front of you and pick the one that was the most convenient. A passive defense mechanism that Dr. Mishra had teased Morian with by calling it a world-altering conflict-avoidance engine.

Well. It has always worked wonders.

Except in every version of this moment, every possibility, Hunter lunged forward with the intent to kill Morian. Bisected before she could move an inch from where she was standing. At least she couldn’t hear the child’s tantrum in the foundation.

“Don’t kill her,” Morian ordered as Chronos ran towards them.

It placed a blade in Hunter’s path, before dropping them out of the foundation.

Hunter swung her axe to meet the blade, but rolled over it. Interjection triggered automatically when Hunter’s feet touched the ground. The same action repeated forever. Bisecting Morian in roughly the same way as the first time.

Chronos adjusted again and dropped them from the foundation.

Hunter’s reaction was faster this time. Near predictive. A smooth slide under Chronos’s blade. Interjection triggered again. And again. No matter how little time Chronos gave her to react, step by step she closed the distance until Chronos had to sweep Morian up in its free hand and move her further away.

Hunter’s blade sliced the air where Morian had been moments ago. And then she started laughing! Morian chewed her lip.

Chronos dropped the first rail slug from the foundation, putting up a pass-through barrier to eat the sonic boom that echoed through the tunnel. The Inertia was nearly cored, thankfully not. Chronos was always a perfect shot, so it wasn’t a concern. It looked as if Krystyn was about to use the loop to dash Morian from existence from a distance. Unfortunate.

Hunter forced words through her delirious laughter. “You can’t kill me. You can’t kill any of them either. You never could make the hard choices. That’s what we’ve always done for you.”

The child was babbling again.

“And if you can’t kill me, you can’t stop me.”

Pretending to understand.

“And I’m not letting you just leave me behind like they did!”

This has always been about Adeline Falke and Irene Hunter.

“So either you kill me, or you take me with you.”

Poor girl had started crying again.

“I’ll do whatever you tell me to.”

Morian triggered interjection manually, if only to torture herself for an eternity in a moment. A penance for what she had done to this child. Everything went wrong when she tried to help someone. The words echoed in her head over and over again. Each sob.

Some of the possibilities were different.

None of them were different enough.

In some of them Hunter didn’t cry, but the words were the same. In some of them she started crying right away. The further that Morian dug for the version of events where Hunter gave up or walked away, or even hesitated, the more she found versions where Ilina’s sobs turned into apologies and begging.

It hurt. It hurt so much to hear. She wanted to tell the girl that it would be okay. Even though it was a lie. Morian couldn’t make anything okay. She wanted to tell Hunter to go with Krystyn and Symeon, but Hunter never would. This was the choice Hunter had made long before they reached this point. Too far back for Morian to change it now.

Fuck.

She was backed into a corner again.

Fuck.

Morian raked the back of her neck, trying to think about what she needed to do to avert this. Interjection had always made these decisions for her. Morian had the last word in every argument since humanity departed Earth.

Until she met Hunter.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair.

She could never say no. Not to her parents. Not to her teachers. Not to the university. Not to all those faceless, forgotten techs who piled their work on her. Not to Dr. Mishra. Not to Isobel. Not to Lenore. Not to Elisabet. And certainly not to Hunter.

It wasn’t fair.

The Problem with Inertia lurched forward toward the Necromancer and her over-sized puppet. Some of the outer walls of the reactor were cracked from the rail slug. No way to avoid it when it just comes out of space like that. The witch-frame threw one rail slug back, which meant it probably still had the first Manya tried to put into it.

Another two stored-and-returned volleys carved out the Inertia’s legs at the knees. Krystyn hung half-limp in the harness, dripping blood onto the consoles she couldn’t really see. One of her eyes was fucked. Probably a scrap from one of the overheads that was bouncing around the cockpit.

Didn’t matter. The Inertia began crawling towards Morian Kyrnn.

Maybe Ilina already put all the tricks together. A little more time and Krystyn could have been sure. But the witch-frame never pulled its disappearing act while touching another frame. Ilina got in close and the only solution was to move Kyrnn away.

So all Krystyn needed to do was get her hands on her. Morian was so frail. Ilina always said so.

The Inertia fed the sensor input directly into her brain. Morian was throwing a fit, pointing and yelling and emoting in Ilina’s general direction.

Morian Kyrnn had to die. She probably wanted to. Don’t make me hurt Ilina to do it.

Please.

The witch-frame continued to carve up the Inertia as it approached. That was fine. She could take it.

Taking the hits was all Krystyn had ever been good for. Why change it up at the final hour?

The cockpit swung open and Krystyn released her harness, tumbling down the frame and hitting the freight tunnel road shoulder first. That was fine. It was her bad arm anyways.

She’d made it pretty close, all things considered. The witch-frame probably couldn’t kill her. And it wouldn’t have the chance once she reached Kyrnn. Krystyn forced herself to her feet.

One of her feet was on sideways. God it all hurt like hell. She should have hit herself with some stims before getting out.

One foot mostly in front of the other. A slow march to finish it once and for all.

Morian turned to her and said something. Maybe. Krystyn actually couldn’t hear anything.

Fuck.

She was going to make it, right?

Well, she almost made it. Never could follow through with anything. She should have known better. But Morian was kind enough to come to her. Knelt right down beside her and said something.

The world was getting dark around the edges. Not much time left. Krystyn wrapped her hand around the Necromancer’s throat and squeezed with every ounce of strength she had left.

“No, no. Stay with me,” The doctor spoke directly into Krystyn’s head despite her ruptured eardrums. That same wordless echo that the Inertia tried to speak to her with.

Morian Kyrnn smiled her too-wide straight-toothed smile and stared down at her with manic eyes.

“There is so much more work to be done, and Hunter would throw a fit if I let you leave her behind like this.”