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stream 70 - Soliloquy of a soldier.
Copyright: Suse Hammond-Pears
It was the Empire who made me what I am.
They engineered my genetic structure. They grew me in a womb of steel and glass without a heartbeat. They nurtured me.
I was their soldier, through and through, bred and born and trained that way.
I was alive when the Emperor ruled.
Yes, I am that old. Older than most, yet not as old as some. Age becomes immaterial in the centuries of stasis, slowsleep, cryostorage, physical regeneration, cloning and wetware and braindumping.
Fact.
stream 69 - What-might-have-been & Forever-is-lost
Copyright: Suse Hammond-Pears
It was cold when she woke.
The floor was hard, cold; she was wet through. The slightly bitter scent of the puddle of liquid she was laying in told her that it was cryo fluid. Her nose was bleeding; her lip split, her wrist painful and swollen. Untreated injuries: she’d been tanked with them. Her neural net immediately started scanning for local frequencies; found herself cut off from net traffic. Undeterred, she skipped to her own frequency… and inexplicably found it blocked.
“I’d really rather you didn’t.” Luka said.
Her grey eyes opened, focused slowly.
“You’ve learned a lot.” Her throat was dry.
“I’ve had quite a few weeks to get to grips with what you infected me with.” Luka was sitting on a ledge a few feet away from her, leaning forward, elbows resting on his legs, hands clasped loosely together. “No, please, really don’t try to get up. Tael hit you quite a few times before you were tanked and I’m afraid I wasn’t in the mood to put you in the surgeon tank before you were frozen.”
stream 68 - The Angel & The Alien
Copyright: Suse Hammond-Pears
They fell a long way, in the elevator shaft; Tael's wings folded in close against his body, protecting both himself and the tall woman in his arms. Slice drifted in and out of consciousness briefly.
In.
Falling.
Out.
Garbled data drifting past her consciousness. Was this wake, was this dream? Was this the elsewhere? Status reports from filament strands became tears of light that slid over her vision, blinding her. A forgotten reminder to send her brood-mother a transmutations-day greetings flag blipped around her mind, five years out of date. Had she sent the greetings flag? Had she forgotten, or discarded the reminder? This tiny detail seemed to be all-important, all-consuming; and Slice obsessed over it.
stream 67 - Ghosts
Copyright: Suse Hammond-Pears
Hands pressed up against the glass, pale flesh flattening against the inner surface of the tank. Nothing more than a brief flail of limbs, dull thumps of panic, uncoordinated thrashings. The liquid was cloudy, whether by design or accident Luka didn’t know offhand, but he could tell that she was at the end of her limit. There was no rationality in her movements, no conscious focus that showed attempts to do more than generically struggle, and even that was weakening, becoming more intermittent.
“Quill, throw me the big gun.”
Without hesitation or needing clarification of which of the by now impressive array of weaponry Quill had acquired recently was the ‘big’ gun, the avatar tossed the quasar gun across to him.
He caught it expertly, thumbing the safety off.
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