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Eseld stared into the empty eye sockets of her own denuded skull, lost in the static of the storm.

She was curled on her side, lying on a thin mattress, facing a wall of peeling cream-white paint and dull grey metal. Her naked skull was cradled in her arms; it weighed much less than she had expected, robbed of skin and muscle and brains. She ran her fingertips across the osseous texture of exposed bone, stroking her own parietal and frontal plates, cupping the gentle curve of her cheek, caressing the teeth still in their sockets above the subtle sweep of mandible, the jaw fixed in place with metal pins. She ran a thumb around the twinned orbits where zygomatic and maxilla had once held the soft jelly of her own eyeballs.

She was not alone. Su and Mala were here too. So was her beloved Andasina. Their skulls sat in a little row of three, propped against the wall of dull metal and peeling paint.

Eseld had cradled Andasina’s skull first, before embracing her own. She had left wet, salty stains on the bone. She had made terrible noises, howling and screaming and sobbing into a thin and lumpy pillow.

Eseld’s chest was a void. Her lips were slack. Her head was empty as the skull, both filled with storm-fury from beyond the walls. Her eyes felt raw and dry; she had cried for a very long time, when her sobs had matched the hurricane. At first she had wept hot and hard and urgent, when the tears had mixed with the taste of saint’s blood. But then the disciples had pried her jaw open and left her empty; her tears had turned cold and weak and slow, until she was flayed and de-boned and laid out with nothing left to give.

The storm raged on, pounding the exterior of the tomb with rain and hail and hurricane winds, beyond Pheiri’s hull, inside Eseld’s head.

Eseld envied the storm. She wished she could keep crying.

She stared into her own empty sockets, into a void where once had been meat and brain and life.

She did have a vague notion of where she was; she had been placed on a bed in the ‘bunk room’, inside Pheiri, which was the name of the huge armoured vehicle that the saint and her disciples called home. She’d been there for — some hours, at least? Time had ceased to mean anything. A hollow space could not keep count; the echoes multiplied any attempt.

“—winters too, they are most terrible and dark where I come from. They go on for months and months, with so much snow you can barely walk through it after more than a few days of the coldest weather. Sometimes the snow comes down mixed with ash, and nobody can go outdoors for days on end, or they get awfully sick. That’s when we use the tunnels between the houses, you see? Everybody stays indoors, where it’s nice and warm, and we do all our visiting without setting foot outside! Do you really not have proper winters where you’re from?”

That was Cyneswith, still chattering on. Her voice rose from somewhere past Eseld’s feet.

A reply came, hesitant and halting. “Oh. Um, I misspoke. We do. We do have snow. Especially in the mountains. Just not that much.”

That was one of the saint’s disciples. Their names had flowed over Eseld’s mind like water over heavy rocks.

Amina, perhaps?

“Mountains!” said Cyneswith. “Oh, what a delight! Real mountains? I’ve seen pictures of mountains in books, but we had nothing of the sort. Just the forested hills, and they don’t go up too far. Even a young girl like myself can climb those pretty easily. Not that we did much of that, not off the roads. All sorts of dangerous things live deeper in the forests.”

“Mm,” Amina grunted. “Mm, yes. Real mountains.”

Cyneswith giggled. “I know you say you’re not really a fairy, Miss Amina, but it’s very hard not to consider you as one regardless. Oh! Oh, I’m so sorry, I see I’ve made you embarrassed. Think nothing of it. I shouldn’t have shared that thought. Please, don’t blush on my account. Though you are very pretty when you blush.”

Rainstorm waves passed across metal walls; hailstones drummed like thunder. Tiny mechanical sounds whirred and hummed inside the tank — inside ‘Pheiri’ — joining the static haze inside Eseld’s head.

Eseld curled two fingers around her own left eye socket. The bone was dry and hard and empty.

Amina whispered: “Did she just … ?”

Cyneswith moved. The pressure on the foot of the bunk adjusted. “Miss Eseld? Miss Eseld?”

Eseld considered opening her lips and moving her tongue, but she knew that she would speak only soulless static.

She stared into empty bone.

After a moment, Cyneswith’s weight adjusted again.

Amina said, “What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s had a terrible shock,” said Cyneswith. “But I think Miss Eseld is going to be alright. I have to hope she will be. She was so very brave, back in that awful mausoleum full of coffins, the way she threw herself between us and that terrible monster. She is a very brave lady. But even the brave have to rest. Give her time, and I am confident she will be restored to us.”

Eseld considered laughing, but she did not, for she would merely vomit forth the sound of the rain and the hail, insensible to mortal meat.

After a moment, Amina said: “She ate a little bit. That’s good, I think.”

A dry swallow from Cyn. “A little … human flesh, yes.” A forced laugh followed, a single exhalation of breath. “Forgive me. This is why I struggle to fully believe you are not all fairies.”

“You’re the same as us,” Amina said. “We’re all the same now. Except Elpida.”

“Yes. Quite.”

Eseld barely remembered eating, but she did recall the taste of human meat. Somebody had dangled a strip of bloody flesh before her face. Appetite had betrayed sorrow, and she had crammed it into her mouth, then licked the gore off her fingers, so as not to soil Andasina’s skull. Even storms needed fodder.

Amina sighed. Eseld heard a smile in that sigh, mixed with tension and worry, and a distinct desire to be elsewhere.

The saint’s disciples did not trust Eseld or Cyneswith, and they were not subtle in their distrust. They didn’t trust Sky either, but Sky was unconscious, laid out on a medical bed in some other room; Eseld had a vague memory of being carried through the main compartment of Pheiri’s innards, and glimpsing Sky’s limp, unconscious, armour-clad body carted off into the ‘infirmary’.

Eseld and Cyneswith had not been left alone since they had been brought inside Pheiri. Eseld had been frisked and stripped of the weapons she had taken from the tomb armoury, left helpless and unarmed, just like before, wearing only grey layers and the heavy wrap of her armoured coat. She had not been capable of resistance — sobbing and whining with her teeth buried in the saint’s flesh. She did not recall exactly what had happened, or when precisely she had allowed her jaws to be parted and the saint’s arm removed, or when the saint had brought the skulls of herself and her friends, and said ‘these are yours’. All was a jumbled blur of screaming and tears and blood in her mouth.

At first several people had tramped in and out of the room, talking at her, trying to get her to talk back, growing frustrated or angry. The saint had cleared the others away for a while. Then another person had checked her over in near silence, feeling for wounds with firm little hands, pressing strange instruments to parts of her flesh, and finally pronouncing her uninjured. Cyneswith had talked at great length, with both the saint and some of her disciples, to tell them the story of her resurrection and their journey through the tomb alongside Shilu.

A long time had passed. The saint and others had gone out of Pheiri, then returned; Eseld knew this by the sounds of their voices, and the sound of Pheiri’s ramp going up and down. Others visited the room, but she paid them no attention. She sank deeper into the storm and into the sockets of her own skull.

Eventually the saint had led another group out into the tomb. Eseld had overheard urgent words, angry words, but they meant nothing to her. All she knew was that the disciples were tense with expectation.

Down at the foot of the bunk, Cyneswith let out a matching sigh.

“Miss Amina?” she said. “You may as well sit down too. It’s not fair that you have to stand there in the doorway all by yourself.”

“I’m … um … I’m fine,” Amina replied. “The— I mean, I’m supposed to— I—”

“You want to join your friends, but you’re supposed to watch us,” Cyneswith said. “Ah! No, no, don’t blush, please. I take no offence. It’s obvious, you see? You don’t trust us, and that’s okay. It’s just, if we’re going to sit here and have a chat, we may as well settle in for—”

Boom-boom-boom!

A cannon roared and rocked just beyond Pheiri’s hull. Vibrations shook the bunk room.

Cyneswith yelped, jerking so hard that Eseld felt it through the mattress; Amina flinched and let out a small gasp. Mechanisms inside Pheiri went clunk-clunk, cycling fresh rounds into the great guns up on the hull.

Eseld stared into her own empty eye sockets. Storms were not moved by gnats and flies.

Cyneswith stammered, “W-what, what—”

“It’s okay, it’s okay!” Amina said quickly, almost embarrassed. “It’s just warning shots. Elpida said Pheiri might have to fire warning shots. It’s okay. It’s just warning shots. U-unless there’s any more … ”

Two pairs of startled lungs filled the bunk room with rapid panting. A swallow — Amina — and then a little forced giggle — Cyneswith. Silence stretched on, drowned beneath the distant whip and whirl of hurricane winds.

Amina blew out a long breath, then spoke strong and clear: “Thank you, Pheiri.”

Cyneswith said, “Is that the custom, here?”

“Y-yes. Pheiri’s keeping us safe, after all. Melyn and Hafina do it, and they’ve been here longer than us, so … ”

Cyneswith cleared her throat gently. “Thank you, Pheiri!”

Both zombies fell silent. The howl of the storm and the drum of the rain rushed back to fill the space. Tiny mechanical sounds ticked and hummed inside Pheiri’s body, purring and glugging behind bulkheads. Awkward feet shuffled on the decking.

Cyneswith said: “I would tell you to go join your friends. But I know you can’t, and I’m not in charge of you, anyway. They’re all watching your leader, aren’t they? She’s gone out to speak with Shilu?”

After a moment, Amina muttered, “It’s okay. Elpida will be okay. I don’t need to watch.”

“Did they leave you here because you’re the smallest?” Cyneswith asked.

“Oh. No.”

Eseld cupped the rear of her skull, pressing her palm to the thin plate of occipital bone. All her machinery was gone, her soft mechanisms of grey matter and electrical impulse, the seat of the soul ripped out and eaten up.

Where had her soul gone? Had it fled her skull and entered this new body — or was she a husk, filled with wrathful storm? Perhaps no zombie had a soul after all. Perhaps she had been wrong all along, and God had not died or been murdered, but had absconded from the world with all the souls of all the peoples of earth, leaving only this dead and empty meat behind, to gorge itself upon itself for the rest of all eternity.

Eseld was exhausted, but sleep was impossible. Her eyes hurt too much. Besides, storms did not sleep.

She stared into her own corpse and considered cursing God.

After a long time — minutes or hours, Eseld couldn’t tell — a pair of feet approached the bunk room door, tentative and light but without attempt at stealth. A third voice spoke from the doorway.

“H-hey,” said — which one was that? Eseld didn’t know. “Hey, Amina. Hi. I’m to, er … take over, if you want to go forward. Into the cockpit, I mean.”

“Mm!”

Eseld heard Amina fly across the decking, feet hopping out of the bunk room and into the larger compartment beyond. She chattered back, suddenly breathless: “I’ll see you later, Cyn. Sorry, sorry, but I have to go see! I do! You were right! Later!”

And then Amina was gone, the sound of her feet swallowed up by Pheiri’s innards.

A long, heavy sigh fought in vain against silence and storm, followed by an awkward swallow, both from the new arrival.

Cyneswith said: “Do I get the impression that Miss Amina doesn’t like you very much?”

“S-sorry?” said the new arrival. “Um, uh, yeah. Yes. I mean, I think so. Amina and I don’t talk much. Or at all, really.” Cloying silence crept back in, washing the air with waves of rain. Eseld expanded to fill the room. Then the disciple spoke again, with halting desperation: “I’m Ooni, by the way. If you didn’t catch my name before. Hello.”

“Mmhmm,” purred Cyneswith. “I remember you, Miss Ooni. I’m very good with names. Or at least I like to think so.”

Ooni walked into the bunk room, much deeper than Amina had ventured, clumsy footsteps thumping across the deck. Eseld heard her sit down on the opposite bunk with a creak of metal and a little pop of one knee joint. The room was very narrow and cramped; when Ooni spoke again her voice was close, pitched low and soft, as if Eseld were merely sleeping and should not be awoken.

“How is she?” Ooni asked. “Eseld, I mean, not Amina. Did she sleep at all?”

“No change,” said Cyneswith. “I believe she may have drifted off for a small nap, for a little while, but I cannot be certain.”

Silence, perhaps beckoned by a nod. Storm crashed and raged inside Eseld’s skull.

Ooni said, “Is she … alright, with those skulls?”

“Your leader said not to take them from her.”

Ooni sighed. “Yeah. They are hers. S-shit, uh … do you need to sleep? You seem kinda … ”

“I’m fine, thank you. Somebody needs to watch over Eseld. But I am curious. How do I ‘seem’ to you, Miss Ooni?”

Ooni let out a strange laugh, hesitant and awkward. “Like you’re not afraid.”

“Should I be afraid?”

“Well, no,” Ooni said — and seemed surprised at her own answer. “No. No, you shouldn’t. You’ve fallen into good hands. I-I think.”

Eseld heard the smile in Cyneswith’s voice: “Did you volunteer to come and tell me that?”

Ooni was silent for a moment. “W-well, sort of. I thought you might be afraid. But, oh, uh, this is your first time around, isn’t it? You’re a real freshie. You and Sky both. Not like Eseld.”

“I don’t know the true meaning of so much fairy-speak,” Cyneswith said. “But I think I understand your meaning, yes. I died, and now I am here. This is my first trip to the realms of faerie.”

Awkward silence settled deep and hard, broken by storm’s rage. Eseld wanted to rear up and grab Cyneswith by the shoulders, to shake her until her teeth chattered. Enduring Cyn’s lack of comprehension back in the tomb had been one thing, but now Eseld’s own metaphor for the world lay in ragged tatters — angels had become demons, demons had metastasised like cancer, and her belly was warm with the blood of a saint. She could not stand it any longer. She had listened to several of the saint’s disciples explain to Cyneswith the nature of the world, some of them with great patience. But Cyneswith did not seem to accept the reality of undeath and nanomachines and obligate cannibalism.

But Eseld could not do any of that. She stared into empty sockets.

Hurricane fury drenched the air with static haze. Wind howled like the voice of God pouring forth a deluge of air to blast the tomb flat. Pheiri hummed and murmured, like a mechanical cocoon. Eseld became all these things, emptied out and refilled over and over and over again.

A stealthy tread crept up to the bunk room door; the creeper — whoever she was — thought she was being clever and quiet. Perhaps she was, for her footsteps were very gentle. But Eseld had a hunter’s ears, tuned to rabbits on the open heath or foxes on the forest floor. The eavesdropper stayed silent, and did not interrupt.

Cyneswith said, “Miss Ooni? Pardon my presumption, but your face makes it plain that you have something to say.”

“They took me in, too,” Ooni answered, very softly.

“ … yes?”

“Elpida, I mean. The Commander. All of them. Pheiri, too, in a way. He makes decisions as well. Them … all of them. I wasn’t here with them at first.” Ooni’s voice grew in confidence as she spoke, then faded as quickly as it had rallied. “I was … I was an enemy, I suppose. And I thought maybe you might … maybe I could help … if you were afraid, I mean.”

“That’s very sweet of you, Miss Ooni,” said Cyn.

Ooni swallowed, dry and hard, then said: “Elpida ate a piece of me, too.”

Eseld blinked.

After a moment, Cyneswith said: “She did?”

Ooni swallowed again. “Yeah. Not for nutrition, though. It was a … a symbol I had tattooed, right here. Here, see?” A rustle of cloth followed. Cyneswith made a little sound of acknowledgement. When Ooni spoke again, her voice was tight and strained. “It was, uh … a bad thing, um … it was a … a symbol … uh … ”

“Miss Ooni,” Cyneswith said, “you don’t have to explain. I wouldn’t understand the intricate details of these fairy matters, anyway.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course. I just … I-I wanted to help, but I-I can’t explain it. I was a … I was in another group, and they were … difficult … people. And Elpida, the Commander, she should have had me shot. She should have killed me and eaten me. She had me, dead to rights, and it’s what we would have done to her. She could have killed me. She should have!” Ooni was almost panting now. “But she didn’t. It took me a long time to see, to understand what she did, and why she did it, when she took this piece of flesh off me. She … she … made me … clean.”

Ooni sobbed the final word, then heaved for a while, sniffing back tears. The bed creaked beneath Eseld — Cyneswith, reaching forward, perhaps to pat Ooni on the knee.

A little while later, Ooni spoke, voice firmed up once again: “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cry. I hadn’t spoken to anybody about that. Hadn’t realised it myself. I … um … I meant to come here and help you. But, thank you.”

Cyneswith said, “You’re welcome, Miss Ooni. I had no idea that fey creatures could suffer such.”

A moment’s silence. “Uh, right. Anyway, I was trying to say that Elpida, the Commander, she made me clean. So now it’s my job to do the right things, to stay clean, to justify what she did for me, to … make her proud, I suppose. I … I don’t know if that helps you, or … or Eseld?”

Cyneswith said: “I’m sure it warms her to hear you speak of it.”

Eseld stared into her own eye sockets, lost far away amid the storm.

Ooni’s situation had nothing in common with her own. Another disciple at the feet of the saint. But why had Ooni been spared, when Eseld’s friends had not? Eseld wanted to surge to her feet and punch Ooni in the jaw, to pull her apart with hurricane winds and fling her naked bones to the sky. But she could not find the energy or the motivation, not even to blink a second time.

Ooni puffed out a big sigh. “Anyway, I’ve gotta stick around in here for a bit. The Commander’s outside, and everyone’s watching her talk to Shilu. We have a couple of packs of cards, kept by Mel and Haf. Do you know how to play cards? I didn’t know, but—”

Those stealthy footsteps from before suddenly announced themselves with a smart little stomp; another zombie entered the bunk room.

Ooni cut off and rose to her feet with a creak from her bunk.

“Leuca!” Ooni said. “I didn’t hear you coming, were you meant to be in the … control … ”

“I was listening,” said ‘Leuca’. Her voice was dead and flat, with nothing in it for the storm to drown.

Cyneswith cleared her throat. “Leuca? I’m terribly sorry, but I thought your name was Pira. Am I mistaken?”

A beat of silence. “Pira, to you.”

“Lady Pira,” said Cyn.

“Just Pira.”

“Very well, Miss Pira.”

“Mm.”

Ooni said, “Leuca, is everything—”

“The away team is fine. Nothing is happening. They’re talking to the Necromancer right now, but it’s all preliminaries and I don’t care.” A pause. “You.”

Silence.

“She’s got battle shock,” Ooni said. “She doesn’t respond to anything. Just strokes that skull.”

“Can she hear us?” said Pira. “Does she know we’re talking?”

Cyneswith answered, her voice gone carefully polite. “I believe she does, yes, Miss Pira. She responded when we gave her food. And she is currently awake. Her eyes are open.”

A heavy tread crossed the cramped space of the bunk room in three short strides; a lighter tread backed away into the corner — Ooni, making room for Pira. A rustle of cloth moved just behind Eseld’s head, like a piece of storm brought close. A weight pressed on the edge of Eseld’s bunk. A shadow fell across the yellow-white bone of her naked skull.

Pira was crouched behind her, peering over her shoulder, peering into those same empty sockets.

“Your skull?” Pira said.

Eseld didn’t see any reason to answer.

“Your skull,” Pira repeated. “I’ve never held my own. Must be a strange experience.”

The storm returned to fill the gap left by such inane words, rain-static flowing into the bunk room, hailstone drumming drowning out—

“I watched the Commander remove the flesh from all four skulls. I watched her clean them. Brush them down. Rinse them. Sanitise them. Before that, I watched her remove the flesh from your body, and from those of your friends.”

Ooni hissed, “Leuca—”

“I’m talking to Eseld,” Pira said, in the same dead, flat tone. “Be quiet or go away.”

Ooni decided to be quiet.

A moment passed before Pira spoke again. “Elpida killed you and your friends. We all did. We all held the guns, all pulled the triggers, all ate the meat. We have collective responsibility. Melyn and Hafina are exceptions, because they’re not zombies, not like us. They don’t eat meat. I’m a zombie too, just like you. But I didn’t eat. Do you know why?”

Eseld didn’t care.

“You don’t know why,” Pira said. “So I’ll tell you why.”

Pira leaned over Eseld’s body. A periphery of flame-red hair floated like a forest fire on the horizon, framing a sliver of pale skin, dusted with freckles. Pira murmured into Eseld’s ear.

“I know what it feels like to press a gun to Elpida’s flesh.”

Eseld blinked.

“I know what it feels like to pull the trigger, and want her dead, and mean it.”

Eseld blinked again. Her throat bobbed; her mouth was so dry, she could barely swallow. How had she not noticed that until now? Her chest was quivering inside, as if her heartbeat was struggling to match the storm. She was coated in sweat and tired enough to die. She could not keep this up. She would cease to exist.

“I dumped the entire magazine of a submachine gun into her belly,” Pira said. “Three bullets made it past her armoured coat. Chewed her up with a gut wound, would have killed any other zombie. Left her torn open, bleeding out. And I meant it. I meant it more than you meant that round aimed at her head.”

Eseld stirred.

For the first time in hours, she moved her neck. Her muscles felt like rock. She turned to look at the face of one who would wound a saint.

Pira was beautiful, in the way a forest fire was beautiful — how had Eseld not noticed before? A cold, sharp, fire-hardened expression, wrought on a face like pale wood, framed by hair the colour of grass aflame. Celestial blue eyes left nothing concealed.

Eseld opened her mouth, and rasped: “You shot her?”

“Yeah, I shot her. She bleeds just like everybody else. Do you know what she did to me in return?”

Eseld shook her head.

“She came back for me. She counted me as one of her own, one of her comrades, even though I’d put three bullets through her belly. She called herself my Commander. And she’s right, she is my Commander. She feeds me mouthfuls of her blood, every few days, to keep me from starving, because I don’t eat, I don’t cannibalise other zombies. She does it with her hand, so I can drink from her palm. I am hers.”

“ … why … why are you telling me this?”

Pira eased back, giving Eseld some breathing space. The bunk room opened up either side of this flame-sprite forest spirit, with dull grey walls and peeling paint and thin blue blankets on narrow mattresses. Pira stood up; she wore tomb-grey trousers and a matching t-shirt, with heavy boots on her feet. She carried a pair of pistols in a holster around her hips, and a machete strapped to one thigh.

“Get up,” said Pira. “You’ve been lying there for hours. Any longer and you’re going to get bedsores. You’re undead, not invincible.”

“B-but—”

“Get up.”

Eseld wanted to coil back around her own skull and press herself against the wall, to sink into the static of the storm; Pira’s blunt intonation did not intimidate her, because she didn’t care anymore if she lived or died. The saint might eat her, or the disciples might tear her apart, or they could leave her here to rot into the blanket. It made no difference, changed nothing about the outcome, and would not grant her any clarity or truth, for she was nothing except soulless meat, powerless before the angels and demons and monsters which still stalked the world in God’s absence. Meat, was all she was good for, all she would ever be, and—

“Stop that,” said Pira.

“Stop what?”

“Retreating inside yourself. Pay attention to me. Get up.”

Eseld was still not intimidated — but Pira had already cracked her shell and drawn her forth like a morsel of wriggling meat. The storm seemed further away every second, just noise beyond the walls. Resistance was more bother than acquiescence.

Eseld sat up, slowly and painfully. She discovered that many of her muscles had gone stiff and sore with long stillness; how long had she really been lying there? She winced and hissed as she moved. She eased her legs over the side of the bunk until her socks touched the cold decking. She brought her skull with her, cradling it in her lap.

Cyneswith was sitting a few paces to Eseld’s left, eyes wide with shock, mouth covered with one hand; she looked so small and dainty in tomb greys. Ooni was at the opposite end of the bunk room, up on her feet, eyes darting between Eseld and Pira as if a brawl was about to break out. Ooni was not like Eseld had expected — she was dark-haired and green-eyed, willowy and gangly.

Pira stared down at Eseld’s disrobed skull.

Eseld swallowed to clear her throat. “I’m not leaving me behind.”

“Mm,” Pira grunted. “You would fight me for it, yeah. I can see that. Keep it, it’s yours.”

Pira sat down on the opposite bunk, so that she and Eseld were face to face. Eseld said nothing — she was still numb and exhausted, even if she had finally torn her eyes away from her own skull and her soul from the gyre of the storm. She felt the pull all the same, eyes dipping back down toward the bony plates of her own cranium. She started to caress the orbit of the left eye socket with two fingers.

“Why are you doing that?” Pira asked.

Eseld looked up. She could not think of an answer.

“You must have a reason,” Pira pressed, her voice flat and dead.

A nasty impulse bubbled up from within Eseld’s chest, hotter than rain, harder than hail.

“Because,” she spat, ramming two fingers through the eye socket so the tips brushed her own fleshless sphenoid bone. “I’ve already been skull-fucked to death. I may as well jam my own fingers in there too.”

Pira smiled.

Eseld almost choked. That smile was nasty.

“The Commander,” Pira said. Her smile died as quickly as it had blossomed. “Elpida. She bleeds like anyone else. She’s not a saint, or a demon, or an angel.”

Eseld blinked rapidly. “How did you know—”

“I listened to you,” Pira said. “You’ve been muttering for hours, on and off, especially earlier. The others tried to talk to you, but I listened, and I understand what you’re thinking. But you’re wrong. She’s not an angel, or a demon, or a saint. Though that last one is a good word for what she might become one day, eventually, if she’s right, if she’s setting us on the correct path.”

Eseld shook her head. “She ate me.”

Pira nodded. “She did.”

“You … you all ate me. Me and Andasina. And Su and Mala. You hunted us and you ate us.”

“We’re all zombies,” said Pira. “We’re all no different.”

“No,” Eseld murmured. Then stronger: “No. No. She’s different. She is a saint. She is. Even if she’s … rotten, or … I don’t know. I could taste it in her blood. She’s different.”

Pira nodded again. “Mmhmm. She is. Do you know why? Do you know what she’s got, which we all lack?”

“Divine grace.”

“Ideology. Purpose. Clarity.” Pira stared, unblinking as a skull. “And I believe in her. I believe in what she has chosen to do. She’s made me believe. But she’s only human. Or only undead. She’s not perfect, she makes mistakes, she fucks up, and sometimes she gets herself shot in the stomach. So you — you could have landed that bullet, and it would have killed her, because she’s not a saint. She’s not invincible. She would have returned to the resurrection buffer, and waited out another ten, or ten hundred, or ten thousand years, just to try again. Do you understand?”

Pira’s cold blue eyes finally sent a shiver up Eseld’s spine.

“Are you—”

“Threatening you?” Pira said. “Yes. I am.”

Ooni whined, “Leuca—”

Pira raised a finger and Ooni went silent. The sound of the hurricane beyond the tomb rushed into the gap, roaring in Eseld’s ears. She stared into those eyes of celestial blue, empty and cold as winter skies.

“If you make an attempt on the Commander’s life,” Pira murmured. “I’ll kill you myself, if the others don’t get to you first.”

“Hypocrite,” said Eseld.

“Yes.”

Eseld found that she was not afraid. “Fair enough.”

Pira took a deep breath; something unclenched in her face, behind her expression. A smile leaked into her eyes, but did not touch her lips.

“Good. Now we understand each other. I’m not going ask to you to believe in her, not yet. It took me lifetimes of failure and pain to understand, and I still barely just have enough faith left for the Commander. But I do have it, and I’m not going to ask you to share it.”

“Then why talk about all this?”

“Because despite all that faith, she’s just another zombie. And I’m going to tell you—” her eyes flicked to Cyneswith, still silent behind her own hand “—both of you, all about just how badly she can screw up, the kind of mistakes she can make, the errors of judgement, the flaws in her thinking.”

Eseld frowned. “Why?”

“Because the Commander has been unwell. And for some reason your presence has healed her. I think it’s best if you understand why. I think it’s best if somebody other than her explains to you where we’re going, where she’s leading, so you can make your choice.”

“You’re going somewhere? Where?”

Ooni said: “Metaphorically speaking, she means.”

“Thank you, Ooni,” Pira said, without looking up at her.

Cyneswith spoke. “And, Miss Pira, where is your Commander leading you?”

“Telokopolis.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Poor Eseld. Now there’s a feeling only a zombie can experience – holding your own skull, and knowing the flesh and brains has passed through the collective mouths and guts of your new ‘friends’. At least Pira is using her ill-gotten skills for good, for once. And Cyneswith sure does seem friendly …

Well well well! Arc 12 is going places, lots of places, in a big overlapping mess of complexity that I’ve had to physically draw up on a whiteboard. No, I’m not exaggerating. There’s gonna be many more POVs shifts yet. Elpida hasn’t even gotten started on talking with Shilu, and the zombies out there in the tomb are going to be getting ideas. Soooo yeah, arc 12 is probably going to be just as long as I had predicted, perhaps even more so! We’ll see!

A small heads up/reminder – there is no chapter next week! I’m not yet 100% sure how to indicate this new schedule, other than by pointing to the Table of Contents page, which I will be doing my best to keep updated with the all the planned publishing dates for upcoming chapters. Necroepilogos will be resuming as normal the week after, as before!

If you want more Necroepilogos right away, or you would like to support the story, please consider subscribing to the Patreon:

Patreon link! It’s here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 5k words. Behind the scenes I am still very much trying to build up some kind of a backlog of chapters, and when I do, I’ll be sharing more chapters ahead with patrons. I hope!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which helps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps!

And thank you! Thank you for reading my little story, dear readers. I couldn’t do any of this without all of you, the audience, and neither could Elpida. She’s got her work cut out for her this time, between stray zombies and undead wreckage and the mysteries of the tomb. Let’s hope she’s keeping it together. Or Howl can do it for her. Seeya next chapter!

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Pheiri’s rear access ramp unsealed with a clunk-clunk-clunk of bolts drawn back, then descended with a deep mechanical purr. Bitter cold rushed into the airlock chamber, bearing a mingled reek of dark metal and congealed blood. The static hail-haze hurricane-murmur grew louder, no longer muffled beyond bulkhead and armour, drumming against the distant walls of the tomb.

“Stick to the plan,” said Elpida as the ramp opened, voice undrowned by the storm. “Remember, we are completely safe beneath Pheiri’s guns. If anything unexpected happens, retreat to the airlock. No heroics. No surprises.”

“Quite,” replied Atyle, with a worrying smile on her lips. “No heroes left in the grave.”

Elpida prompted, “Vicky?”

“Uh, yeah,” Vicky said. “Yeah, of course. Understood, Commander.”

The ramp yawned wider; a red-lit wall loomed from the Stygian gloom. The ramp-edge touched the floor with a sharp click of bone on metal.

Elpida took the lead, boots thumping against the ramp, her long loose white hair a beacon in the dark. Atyle sauntered after her as if beneath a summer sun. Two of Kagami’s new drones were already on-station, holding position just to the left of the ramp — thigh-sized oblongs of matte black, picked out by the steady red points of their own running lights and forward sensors.

Vicky took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the stale stench of old blood and older metal. She tried not to grimace, then walked down the ramp.

She strode with a display of false confidence, just as Elpida had ordered; head up, shoulders back, hands resting casually atop the automatic grenade launcher now slung over her belly. Confidence was key for this mission, so Vicky put on the act as best she could.

She wasn’t going to give Kagami the satisfaction of being right.

The tomb chamber opened out to either side and soared high above Vicky’s head as she descended the ramp. The ceiling was wreathed in darkness, dripping down the metal walls, barely beaten back by Pheiri’s crimson red external lights. To her left, past the pair of drones, the corpses of Lykke’s ‘hounds’ were laid out in rows, most of them still in their armour, though some of them in several pieces. That was the source of the blood-and-meat stench hanging in the air.

Vicky stepped off the ramp; her footsteps clicked on the black metal floor, echoing off into the dark.

She suddenly felt very small and very vulnerable, surrounded by the great yawning emptiness of the chamber, despite the additional protection she wore; Vicky had ‘up-armoured’ with part of the haul from the tomb armoury, also at Elpida’s suggestion. A thick bulletproof vest lay beneath her armoured coat, with additional padding and plates covering her throat, groin, and upper thighs. She wore knee-pads and shin-guards, a silent statement that she was ready to drop into position, shoulder her weapon, and take aim at a moment’s notice. A lightweight helmet of black polymer protected her head; a headset with earpiece and microphone completed the look.

And it was a look; all for show.

Elpida was back in her armoured coat. She wore nothing beneath except a grey thermal t-shirt and matching trousers. Her right sleeve was rolled up to expose the bandage around her bite wound, showing off the limb with which she had defeated Lykke — another statement. A freshly cleaned and oiled submachine gun hung from one shoulder, while a pair of heavy pistols jutted from her waistband, out in the open rather than sensibly tucked away in pockets or holsters. She also wore a headset, to keep the team linked with Pheiri — and by extension, with Kagami, on overwatch in Pheiri’s cockpit, managing the drone escort.

Atyle wore a headset too, but she was naked from the waist up, with her coat hanging over her shoulders like a cloak, empty-handed and unarmed. Vicky wasn’t quite sure what statement that made, but Atyle made it very loudly.

The AGL, the pistols, the nudity, the drones, all of it was for show. Pheiri provided the real protection, from other zombies or from Shilu. One wrong move from the Necromancer, one unexplained shadow on the chamber walls, and half those big guns would burst everyone’s eardrums and turn the offender to a smear on the floor.

The low red glow of Pheiri’s external lights dyed Elpida’s hair a sticky blood-red, shading her purple eyes to black; Atyle’s naked belly and chest writhed with crimson shadows.

Vicky wondered if she looked intimidating too, dressed in armour, carrying explosives. She didn’t feel it. She felt awkward and clumsy.

Once all three were clear of the ramp, Elpida signalled back into the airlock with a raised fist. Hafina was waiting by the manual controls inside; the android was fully armed and armoured — emergency backup in case something unexpected went horribly wrong. Hafina answered with a raised fist in return.

Elpida whispered, “Vicky? Atyle? Are we good to go?”

“Of course, Commander,” Atyle whispered back. Her eyes were elsewhere, already roving across the chamber.

“All good,” Vicky hissed. “Good to go.”

Elpida spoke into the microphone of her comms headset: “Kaga, we’re clear. Pheiri, button up.”

Pheiri’s ramp rose with a mechanical hum. It sealed with a clunk-clunk-clunk of bolts, closing Pheiri and the others back inside the thick layers of metal and bulkheads and bone-white armour.

“Vicky,” Elpida said. “It’s time. Get yourself loaded.”

Vicky nodded, then crossed to one of the armoured pockets on Pheiri’s rear — a series of projecting abscesses in his armour, large enough to climb inside, each one capped by a heavy plate of bone. All but one pocket was currently empty, all of them remotely locked by Pheiri himself. Vicky had to use both hands to lift the lid, then extracted a string of sixteen slender cylindrical grenades — flashbang-EMP combination rounds, perfect for scrambling cyborgs and zombies. She replaced the pocket lid, opened the drum-mag on her launcher, and loaded the grenades. She double-checked the safety was on, then rolled her shoulders and tried to resume a casual stance.

“Ready,” she hissed.

Elpida said, “Vicky, relax.”

“Right. Yeah. ‘Course. ”

“Relax. That’s an order, soldier. Just follow my lead.”

Vicky took a deep breath and patted the AGL. “Sure. Relax. Cool as a cucumber, that’s me.”

“Remember, whatever happens, Pheiri’s got our back.”

A soft acknowledgement ping chimed in Vicky’s headset — Pheiri, agreeing. Vicky managed a smile. It was true, Pheiri had her back. She trusted the old boy more than she trusted her own nerves.

Atyle was already stepping around the right-hand corner of Pheiri’s rear armour, striding out into the chamber. Elpida glanced after her, then shot a wry look back at Vicky. “Come on, let’s not get left behind.”

Vicky followed Elpida out from behind cover. They walked beside Pheiri’s flank, trailing Atyle along the cliff of bone-white armour, staying well within the fifteen-foot radius of Pheiri’s low red external lights, pooling in a bloody puddle about his armoured skirts. Pheiri’s armour seemed the only landmark in the featureless black and shadow of the tomb chamber, studded with the bulges and knots of sponson mounts and weapon turrets. His bigger guns loomed overhead, tracking slowly back and forth across the distant walls.

Atyle waited for them at the forward corner of Pheiri’s hull, one dark hand resting on a knot of bone. Elpida and Vicky halted beside her.

The tomb chamber was a black cavern, the ceiling lost in dripping shadows, the far walls barely visible. Four passageways opened in those walls — one to the rear, through which Pheiri had entered, then one each to the left and right, and one straight ahead. The rear passageway was wide and smooth, designed for vehicle access, but the other three rapidly split and narrowed into a tangle of twisty little tunnels.

Shilu still sat thirty feet from Pheiri’s front — cross-legged, straight-backed, eyes closed in her ghostly face. Red backwash from Pheiri’s lights snagged on the sharp angles and cruel spikes of her black metal body. She was the same shade as the tomb.

Half a dozen of Kagami’s new drones hung in a rough picket line further out; running lights winked red in the dark.

Vicky tried not to shiver at the chill and the gloom; she was undead, immune to the cold, the effect was all in her head. She could see in the dark well enough, but somehow the darkness inside the tomb seemed different. It was like damp seeping upward from the black metal floor combined with tar dripping downward from a leaky roof, filling the room with a layer of tarry dark oil. The shadows and the metal amplified every footstep into a myriad of echoes, interrupting the whisper of hushed voices, all drowned out by the distant static haze-hum of hurricane hailstones and torrential rain.

Elpida and Atyle ignored all of that. They were both more experienced in combat than Vicky, more able to focus past the nerves, less twitchy and jumpy; they were both looking past Kagami’s picket line of drones, into the shadow-choked mouths of the three passageways ahead. Vicky forced herself to do the same, ignoring the sweat beneath her armpits and the churning in her belly. She could do this. She was up to this challenge. Kagami was wrong.

Dark shapes and hunched figures clustered in the passageways.

The distant backwash of Pheiri’s low red light picked out a face there, a shoulder of armour plate here, the dull glint of a rifle held in loose hands, the reflection of a pair of bionic eyes, and a hundred other details sunken in the gloom. Little oval faces peered around the corridor corners, bisected by peeking from makeshift cover. Feet stirred and fell silent against the metal floor. Occasional whispers ghosted forth, only to be swallowed by the fury of the storm.

Vicky raised her grenade launcher and looked through the sight; night vision swept aside the darkness, but revealed only a confused jumble. The passageways ahead were broken up and complex, with natural barricades and barriers built into the floors and walls, studded with nooks and crannies, pockmarked by side corridors and empty rooms.

Dozens of faces peered back at her, some naked, many masked or helmed, matched by an equal number of guns held at the ready.

Vicky lowered the launcher and swallowed hard; she couldn’t help it, her mouth was so dry. “Shit. Shit me, that’s a lot more of them than I expected. Are they still coming?”

Elpida whispered, “Hold steady. Pheiri’s got us.”

“Yeah, but why?” Vicky whispered. “Why are they here?”

Atyle chuckled. “To watch the show, perhaps?”

“Interrogation is not a show,” Elpida said. She raised two fingers to the earpiece of her headset. “Kaga, give me a headcount.”

Kagami’s snort crackled over the short-range uplink, broadcasting to all three headsets: “Too many, Commander. Too fucking many—”

“Numbers, Kaga.”

Kagami huffed; Vicky could practically see the rolling eyes. Kaga said: “Pheiri reads thirty seven revenants straight ahead, twenty in the left hand corridor, and seven in the right.”

Vicky swallowed again. She was not used to this — seeing the eyes of her opponents up close; give her an artillery park under drone attack any day, not this face-to-face over no man’s land. She kept her eyes peeled, hands on her weapon; pointless with Pheiri’s guns at the ready, but it helped her heart.

Elpida said: “Can you identify separate groups?”

Kagami huffed again. “How should I—” Then she paused and tutted. “Yes, fine. Pheiri estimates five separate groups in the corridor straight ahead. Might be six, they’re gathered close but they’re keeping their distances from each other. Left hand corridor, four groups. Right corridor … they’re all too close to tell, maybe just one group. Maybe one group and a single.”

“Are they all bottom-feeders and scavengers?” Elpida went on. “Anybody out there with powered armour, high-level cybernetics?”

Vicky whispered: “Saw plenty through the scope, yeah.”

Another voice butted in, crackling across the comms uplink with a metallic rasp — Serin: “I spy all kinds, Coh-mander. Everyone is at the watering hole, but nobody is feeding.”

Vicky glanced up and to the left, trying to see onto the front of Pheiri’s armour, where Serin was crouched in her unblinking contest with Shilu. But the black-clad zombie was tucked too deep into a whorl of Pheiri’s armour, hidden with too much skill. Vicky was glad Serin was on their side.

Elpida said: “No violence? There’s been no fighting among them? Is that correct, Serin?”

“Correct,” Serin said. “Not that I have spied.”

Vicky whispered into her headset. “Serin, have you ever seen anything like this happen before?”

“No,” Serin replied. “But then again, I have never seen a storm like this before, nor heard roaring like that voice outdoors. The fools and cannibals are shocked. Perhaps they think the world is ending.”

Atyle said brightly: “Perhaps they are right.”

Revenants had begun to appear in the passageways about thirty minutes earlier, while Vicky had been deep in conversation with Kagami and Elpida in the lab, discussing how exactly they were going to interrogate Shilu.

Vicky had wanted to postpone the interrogation until after everybody had a chance to rest. She wanted to prioritise the new arrivals — Eseld, Cyneswith, and Sky. She also wanted a chance to talk with Kagami in private; they needed to discuss what was going on with Elpida, the return of her confidence after Eseld, the renewed light in her eyes, the clarity of her command decisions. Vicky trusted Elpida’s intentions and judgement, even when clouded, but this change was sudden and sharp, after her long weeks of brooding over sins and skulls. She was back to her usual self. The Commander had pushed to carry out the interrogation right away, in case the storm should begin to pass, or the other Necromancer — Lykke — should find some other way to return. Vicky and Kagami had been on the verge of presenting a united front; they had almost convinced Elpida to at least take a nap, but then the gathering revenants had forced the issue.

Ooni had come blundering down Pheiri’s central corridor in a fright when the zombies had started showing up on Pheiri’s sensors, not knowing what to do without command direction. Up until now the other revenants who had managed to take shelter inside the tomb had avoided Pheiri completely, scurrying away in fear whenever they’d happened to spot him down one of the corridors. This change in behaviour had no explanation.

Vicky knew she shouldn’t really be out here; she should be in Pheiri’s cockpit beside Kaga, or deep in Pheiri’s guts, oiling up machinery and looking after her new home. Her place was behind the big guns, not in front of them. But Elpida had insisted the interrogation had to go ahead, especially if the revenants were gathering because of Shilu.

Others had wanted to come too — especially Ilyusha, because of the potential for a confrontation. That almost made Vicky chuckle. She liked Illy a lot, and could always rely on her to be ready for a good scrap, in exactly the way Vicky never was.

But Vicky wasn’t out here to be a grenadier, despite the weapon in her hands; this was all for show, all to shift the unwanted audience, all to strike the right tone for their little chat with Shilu.

Kagami had not approved.

As the others had been getting ready, Kagami had pulled Vicky aside and hissed in her face. Kaga had said that Vicky was an idiot and a fool. Kaga had called her a fascinating new variety of obscure Moon insults, some of them very scatological, one of them so sexual that Vicky had laughed — which had not gone down well. Kagami had told her in no uncertain terms that she was to stay put, she was to let Elpida jump the gun if she wished but Vicky was to sit her pretty little backside back down in the cockpit where Kaga could keep an eye on her, because Vicky was not cut out for this, Vicky was not to be risked so carelessly like this, and Vicky was a fucking idiot to trust the Commander’s badly impaired judgement like—

Elpida spoke into her headset again: “Pheiri, you ready?”

Vicky flinched and silently chastised herself. The argument with Kagami lay heavy on her mind, but she could not afford distraction, not while she was on duty, out here, beyond the hull.

Pheiri responded with an acknowledgement ping.

“Let them know they’re spotted,” Elpida said. “Hit the lights.”

Three narrow cones of blood-red floodlight lanced outward from atop Pheiri’s hull, blooming across the three passageway mouths in bright splashes of bloody illumination.

For a split-second many zombies were caught unaware, frozen in the sudden revelation of crimson, standing with mouths agape and weapons held loose, or pressed tight to the walls in what had been sure hiding places a moment earlier. Serin was correct — all kinds of revenants were represented among the scatter-shot audience. A clutch of predators with maws full of sharp teeth and limbs twisted into bone-spears were poised in uneasy truce right next to a squad of heavily-armoured, full-helmeted, black-clad cyborgs, bristling with shoulder-mounted weaponry and heavy guns. A group of naked bottom-feeders huddled around a low barricade, flanked on one side by a towering giant of gleaming chrome and black bionics, and on the other side by another group all wrapped in heavy rags, carrying a mixture of long blades and short pistols. Three robe-clad zombies held hands in a little ring, their eyes all pointed in one direction together, right next to a gang of fang-mouthed predators with bionic tendrils waving from their shoulders.

Then the zombies broke and fled, swarming backward in a wave; everyone scurried for deeper cover.

Vicky watched through her scope, braced for return fire, pressed to Pheiri’s armour, ready to hit the deck. Many of the opposing groups veered too close to each other as they retreated, snapping words lost in the storm-haze, brandishing weapons and waving guns, flashing insults and baring teeth; one or two even shoved and pushed each other.

But then the moment passed without conflict. The audience assumed new positions; they had not left, but only retreated as far as they had to, just beyond Pheiri’s light.

Atyle chuckled. Vicky turned a sigh of relief into exasperation. “Not gonna make it easy for us, are they?”

“Round two,” Elpida said, then spoke into her headset: “Pheiri, give me external audio for one sentence, seven words, then cut.”

An acknowledgement ping sounded in the headsets.

When Elpida spoke again, her voice was projected from Pheiri’s external loudspeakers, echoing off the dark metal walls of the tomb chamber.

“Disperse,” Elpida said, “or we will fire on you.”

The zombies in the passageways shifted and stirred, beetles and grubs squirming at the edge of Pheiri’s blood-red light. Vicky sighted down her launcher again, into the green-grey night-vision gloom.

“Doesn’t look like anybody’s moving,” she muttered.

“Kaga,” Elpida said, her voice reduced back to normal. “Do you see any takers out there?”

Kagami’s voice crackled into Vicky’s ears: “A few. Not many. Most are content to stay put.” She sounded so smugly satisfied, Vicky almost tutted; she couldn’t tell if Kagami was taking more pleasure in being right or in the opportunity to scare the shit out of Vicky. Kagami continued: “You do know, Commander, that if you don’t back up your threats, nobody’s going to believe you or take you seriously. I suggest you put our guns where your mouth has led us.”

Vicky hissed: “Kaga—”

Skeeeert-squeak!

Vicky winced. A rejection ping, for her ears only. Elpida and Atyle did not seem to have heard it. Kagami could not chew her out or insult her right now; the control cockpit was probably full, everyone watching the action on Pheiri’s screens. So a nasty little noise was the best Kagami could muster.

Elpida said: “Agreed. Pheiri, put warning shots into all three passageways, please. One round. Aim high. No casualties.”

A voice echoed down the comms link, probably over Kagami’s shoulder: “Fuck ‘em up!”

Illy, cheering; Vicky smiled.

Kagami sighed. “Commander, for a—”

An autocannon on Pheiri’s hull opened up with a trio of single shots — boom! boom! boom! — splitting the static haze of the hurricane and slamming through the shadowy innards of the tomb, tracking from left to right. On the left a corner of wall exploded into a puff of pulverised metal; dead ahead a distant crack-crack of shattering steel announced the round’s impact; on the right a deep crump-crunch indicated the round had penetrated the metal, then stopped dead on a more dense inner layer.

Revenants fled, scurrying down the corridors and vanishing into the depths of the tomb. Shouts and screams and squeals echoed back — but no gunshots.

Within seconds, the passageways stood empty.

Vicky let out a sigh of relief. “What was that all about? Seriously, what were they gathering like that for?”

Atyle said: “To witness. To witness us. To witness Pheiri. To witness the Necromancer with her wings clipped and her strings cut.”

“Food,” said Elpida.

Vicky squinted. “Eh? Sorry?”

Elpida sniffed the air. “Food, Vicky. Take a whiff.”

Serin’s voice cracked from Vicky’s headset, laughing. “Haha! The Coh-mander is correct, I believe. The stench of corpses brings many hungry mouths.”

Vicky blinked several times, then almost laughed as well. The smell of blood and meat was so heavy in the air that she’d not considered it abnormal. The kills from the gravekeeper’s chamber — Lykke’s ‘hounds’ — were attracting the zombies who wanted to eat them.

“We can address that later,” Elpida said. “Now, Shilu—”

Kagami’s voice suddenly cut in on comms: “Commander, we have some reluctant stragglers.”

Elpida said, “Explain.”

“All the others turned tail and ran away, as they should have done, but there’s still seven zombies in the right hand corridor! All seven of them!” Kagami huffed. “They haven’t even moved. Are you going to pussy-foot around with more warning shots, or are we going for a kill?”

Vicky sighted down her launcher’s scope, into the mouth of the right-hand corridor; a cluster of figures remained in the shadows beyond the crimson light, ghostly night-vision smears in Vicky’s sight. They weren’t even in cover, just standing out in the open.

“What the hell?” Vicky murmured. “They’re just standing there.”

Elpida said nothing for a long moment.

Kagami’s voice crackled down the comms uplink: “Commander! They’re clearly planning something. We have to open fire, for real, for—”

“Serin,” Elpida said. “Are any of those zombies carrying heavy weapons? Anti-tank weapons? Anything which could hurt Pheiri?”

Serin rasped: “No, Coh-mander. I can see their leader from here. Her head is in my scope.”

“They have an obvious leader?”

Serin chuckled. “She is in front and unarmed. She is leader, or bait. I can kill her now.”

“Negative, Serin,” Elpida said — with a strangely satisfied smile in her voice. “Don’t take that shot. This is a positive development. This is good.”

Serin purred a wordless question.

Vicky realised a second before Elpida answered. She spoke first: “Elpi? Elpi, were you hoping this would happen?”

Elpida took a deep breath. “Did I hope? Can’t say for sure. Did I speculate? Certainly. But I didn’t want to get anybody else’s hopes up, or cloud our purposes. This is a happy accident, for now. If I’m correct.”

Kagami snapped down the comms link: “Commander, what the hell are you talking about? Are these friends of yours?”

“Not yet.”

Vicky hissed, “Elpi?”

Atyle laughed. “The Commander has so many plans even she cannot account for them all.”

Elpida said, “All the revenants who made it into the tomb are under a general truce, brought on by shock. Nobody planned this or made it happen. The hurricane has caused a sudden outbreak of peace, that’s all. And that applies to us too.” She gestured at Shilu; Vicky couldn’t help but notice the Necromancer’s eyes were still closed. Shilu had still not moved a muscle, despite the booming noise of Pheiri’s guns. “Shilu can wait a bit,” said Elpida. “I’m going to cross the chamber and talk to that group who didn’t retreat. I want to ask why they’re not running. Atyle, Vicky, you don’t have to come with me, but—”

“I am with you, Commander,” Atyle said. “I am curious, too.”

Vicky almost laughed. “I’m not letting you go alone, Elpi. I’m—”

Kagami’s voice hissed into Vicky’s ear on a private-channel: “Victoria, do not! You think she’s gotten over her death wish so soon? Do not—”

“—with you too,” Vicky finished.

Elpida nodded. “Good. Thank you both. Atyle, stop when I stop. Vicky, safety off, present a credible threat, but don’t fire unless I do. Serin, keep eyes on their leader, but please don’t shoot. Kagami, swing those drones in behind us. Pheiri, point some more guns at them, make it clear we’re not letting our guard down.”

“Gotcha,” Vicky whispered. She disengaged the safety on her AGL, then placed her index finger in the ready position, well clear of the trigger. Up above, she heard Pheiri’s guns rotating in their turret-mounts and armour-bulges, and the distinctive iris-flicker of missile pods opening like flowers.

Elpida said: “Let me do the greetings, but speak if you want to. This is entirely speculative. I don’t know what to expect, but we have to try.”

Kagami’s voice spat over the headsets: “Try what, Commander?”

“Making friends.”

Elpida led the way across the echoing immensity of the tomb chamber, striding out in front of Pheiri, cutting between him and Shilu; Atyle trailed to her left while Vicky took up position her right. Vicky kept the AGL stock tucked tight against her shoulder, eyes scanning the passageway mouth for unexpected movement. Several of Kagami’s drones detached from the picket line and moved in behind, winking red in the black. Their footsteps echoed off into the vault of the tomb.

Shilu’s eyes opened as the trio passed by, turning her head to watch as they left the circle of Pheiri’s blood-red illumination. Vicky met her gaze for a moment, but tried not to react.

The passageway mouth loomed ahead, twice as tall as Pheiri and three times as wide; the floodlight lit only the first few feet, caught on the projecting angle of the wall. Side-passages and stairways climbed and clambered off in the deeper darkness, turning the passageway into a nightmare warren, the perfect tunnel-fighting environment, impassable to Pheiri. Vicky did not want to step down there on foot, not even inside a suit of powered armour, not for all the nanomachines in the world. Her heart caught in her throat just peering into those tangled shadows.

Elpida stopped a good twenty feet short of the passageway. She planted her boots wide, raised her chin high, and hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her trousers, framing the pair of pistols already on display. Vicky would have rolled her eyes, but she understood the purpose of the show.

Atyle stopped at Elpida’s side, peering into the dark with her bionic eye. Vicky pulled up short, ready to raise her grenade launcher, feeling clumsy in her heavy body armour.

A cluster of seven figures lurked just beyond the boundary of Pheiri’s bloody light; the closest one, up front — the leader? — was short and oddly shaped, her outline flaring wide. Behind her stood the hard angles of two zombies in heavy armour, their weapons a matte threat in the dark, one of them with greenly glinting eyes set deep in a solid helmet. Behind them was a trio of smaller figures that Vicky couldn’t quite make out, not without pointing her AGL at them, and she did not want to do that so close, where she might present a direct threat.

Attached halfway up the right-hand wall was a mass of ropey tentacles and loops of tarry black mucus, hanging over the short one in front. A face peered out of that mucus-mass on a stalk-like neck, blinking eyes too large to be human.

Elpida raised her voice, and said, “Why didn’t you retreat?”

The short one stepped forward alone, into Pheiri’s blood-red light.

She was petite and compact, perhaps only a teenager in life; a heart-shaped face was so pale her skin was almost translucent, with a stark tracery of blue veins beneath the surface, framed by a messy mass of dark red hair — probably darker beneath Pheiri’s lights. She wore a patchwork dress in tomb-grown grey, once an armoured coat, now modified and sewn back together from scraps and offcuts. She was covered from chin to knees, throat cupped by dark fabric, leaving only a pair of heavy boots exposed beneath the ragged hem of her dress.

She sported sixteen arms. Some of them clustered together on her shoulders, making the bones bulky and lumpy where they attached, while others sprouted from her flanks as if fixed directly to her rib-cage. Every arm was sleeved inside her modified dress, with each hand either gloved in black and grey or tucked away inside the sleeve. She showed no skin but her face.

Vicky quickly scanned the girl for the tell-tale grinning skull of the Death’s Heads, just in case, but she saw no symbol or sign of any kind.

Plush lips curled into a knowing smile, beneath a pair of eyes without iris or whites, just blank orbs of unbroken black.

“Why run from warning shots?” said the many-armed revenant.

Elpida nodded slowly, lips barely moving; Vicky heard her orders over the headset: “Kaga, talk to me. What am I looking at?”

Kagami’s voice murmured a reply. “Regular zombie, expected nanomachine density. Lots of internal bionics. She has a couple of guns tucked away inside that ridiculous dress. And an axe? An axe, yes. Nothing special. She’s clean — ha! As much as any of us undead can be ‘clean’.”

Elpida said out loud: “Are you the leader of this group?”

The many-armed revenant shrugged with half her arms — an undulating motion of too many bones in her shoulders. “Guess I am.”

Elpida smiled. “What’s your name?”

The many-armed girl raised her eyebrows. “Aren’t you supposed to, like, give your own first before asking for another?”

“Elpida,” said Elpida, then gestured. “Vicky, Atyle.”

“There’s more than three of you.”

“Correct.” Elpida thumbed over her shoulder. “He’s called Pheiri.”

The many-armed girl’s eyes flew wide in surprise. “He?”

“That’s right.”

The girl gestured at Shilu. “And her?”

“She’s none of your concern,” Elpida said.

The girl smiled, showing too many teeth, then giggled — a little scratchy, but not inhuman. Her many arms and hands all gestured at once, some shrugging, others wiggling gloved fingers, one pointing at Elpida, another two indicating herself.

“Puk,” she said. “That’s me.”

“Hello, Puk.” Elpida nodded. “And what about your friends?”

Puk smiled and laughed. “They’re all too shy. Sorry!”

The other zombies behind Puk shifted in the shadows. Vicky twitched her grenade launcher, but held her nerve; she needed to stay steady.

Suddenly the black mass of ropey tentacles attached to the wall jerked downward, as if she’d let go of her perch, sliding down the wall. Two mucus-dripping tendrils dipped into the red light, sheltering Puk.

“ … n-no,” the wall-climber gurgled, her voice high-pitched and girlish. “You! With the grenades! No! No!”

Elpida gestured low and easy. “Vicky, barrel down.”

“It is down,” Vicky hissed. “I didn’t even take aim.”

Atyle let out a gasp of wonder and delight, staring upward at the blob of black goop stuck to the wall. “Oh. Oh, you are quite beautiful, little one. What is your name?”

The mass of ropey tentacles withdrew slightly, waving her head-on-a-stalk as if confused.

Puk spoke upward without looking away from Elpida: “It’s alright, Tati. We’re all being friendly here. Aren’t we, Elpida? Tati’s a bit nervous about my safety, that’s all.”

Elpida said: “That’s very sensible. We won’t open fire if you don’t.”

Puk spread her many arms. “Bit late for that, isn’t it? You already did.”

“Warning shots,” Vicky said. “You didn’t take the warning.”

Up on the wall, Tati gurgled again: “Piss off!”

Puk smiled. “Tati, dear sweet. Let’s us just talk, ‘kay?”

Tati fell silent, pressing closer to the wall, withdrawing her dripping black feelers. The other revenants in the dark exchanged a few whispers.

Elpida said, “Those arms, are those all you? Did you grow them all?”

Puk giggled and put a finger to her lips, then winked as if on stage. “Oh, you know, it’s easier to steal than sow — so you can ‘sew’ yourself together. Haha!”

Vicky swallowed. “You stole all those arms? From other revenants?”

Puk shrugged. “I’ll leave that to your imagination.”

Elpida said, “Let’s not get lost in the weeds. I’m going to ask my question again, and I’d like a proper answer, or we’ll just turn around and return to what we were doing before. Why didn’t you run from us? Why didn’t you run from Pheiri? How can you be so sure we won’t kill you and eat you?”

“Mmmmm,” Puk hummed. “This is unusual, isn’t it? For me, too!”

“Very,” said Elpida. “A truce. Why?”

“Everyone’s spooked. Scared shitless. The storm, and that roaring noise! Nothing like an external foe to unite the squabblers, right?”

Elpida shook her head. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

Puk paused. Vicky found it very difficult to tell where the girl was looking, without any whites to her eyes. It was like talking to Atyle but a hundred percent worse, with both eyes an enigma rather than just one.

A gentle whisper came from behind Puk, from one of her companions. The ropey girl hanging off the wall said something as well, soft and gloopy and wet, which Vicky couldn’t make out.

Puk licked her lips, then said: “We didn’t run from you, because we’ve seen you around before.”

“What do you mean?” said Elpida.

Puk shrugged again. “Everyone’s seen you around. Your tank, I mean. Pheiri? You don’t prey very often, or at least not openly. You don’t go off shooting unless somebody tries it on with you first. You don’t make a habit of chasing down kills. So, you’re probably safe to approach.” She spread her many arms and opened her gloved palms. “Empty handed, of course.”

Vicky snorted. “Why? What for? Why would you risk it?”

Puk smiled, sniffed the air, and made a noise of anticipation. “Meat, of course.”

Vicky grunted. Atyle nodded. Elpida said, “Everyone can smell it, right. And that’s why you’re here?”

“You’ve got so much of it just piled up over there, all going to waste.” Puk dipped her head, pinched the hem of her patchwork dress, and sketched a half-decent curtsy, smirking as she did. “Spare a corpse or two for a poor little orphan girl and her friends, madams and misses?”

Elpida opened her mouth to answer — but before she could get a word out, Kagami’s voice cut in over the comms uplink.

“Commander! No!” Kagami snapped. “Absolutely do not agree to that! No, no, no! You give out one corpse to one group and then the next thing we know we’ve got hundreds of them battering down Pheiri’s doors, crying out for more meat! We cannot start giving it out. Commander? Elpida? Answer me, say something! Vicky, Vicky, back me up. We cannot start giving—”

Another voice interrupted Kagami, from somewhere back in the cockpit. Pira, exasperated: “Kagami, stop, please.”

“And you can shut up!” Kagami’s voice whirled away from the microphone. “As if you have any right to—”

Elpida said: “Pheiri, sound off, please.”

The voices cut out.

Puk — who had been waiting so patiently — said: “That was somebody back inside your Pheiri, wasn’t it? Probably telling you that you shouldn’t start giving out charity, or else everybody will be wanting some. Well, I’m not going to argue with that.”

“You’re not?” Elpida said.

“Mmhmm!” Puk smiled. “That is exactly what will happen, yes. And I think you should do it anyway. I think you should give it out. All of it.”

Vicky snorted. “To you, right?”

Puk shook her head. “No. To everyone.”

Elpida held up a hand to forestall another comment from Vicky. She said to Puk: “Why do you care if we share with other zombies or not?”

Puk sighed wistfully, eyes going up and away, twisting one foot in a girlish gesture. “Weeeeeell. There are somewhere between two to three hundred zombies stuck in this tomb right now. More than three hundreds, actually, I thinks. All of us, packed into a very small space. Everyone who didn’t run when that storm started up. All tense and tight, shoulder to shoulder in here. Noooooot good. Not good. War will break out sooner or later. All these tunnels, these close conditions. Nowhere to run. It’s going to be very, very bad when everyone stops feeling so scared and confused.”

“I agree,” Elpida said. “But that’s not an answer. Why do you care?”

Puk burst into a peal of giggles. She raised her arms, toward the ceiling, toward the storm. “Because the world is going mad. Do your ears work? Hurricanes, giants, where do I begin? The rules are rapidly flying out of the windows. Not that I’d want to fly, in this storm.”

Elpida nodded. “You think a supply of meat can extend this ad hoc truce?”

Puk lowered her arms and shrugged. “I don’t know. I think this weird little peace can hold a little longer, maybe. If we’re lucky, and if you’re clever. And if it holds long enough … maybe we can make it ‘till the storm passes, hey?”

Elpida said, “Alright. And what’s it in for us?”

Vicky hissed, “Elpi?” But Elpida just flicked her fingers — go along with it for now.

Puk shrugged again. “I don’t know. What’s in it for you?”

Elpida smiled. “Changing the world.”

Puk snorted. “World’s already changing. Weird things have been happening all over ever since your Pheiri turned up, you know? That thing fell from the sky a while back. Those huge monsters turned up, that big gold diamond, then the ball. And now this storm, and that thing roaring outdoors earlier on. Is this all your fault, Elpida? You changing the world around us?”

“Not yet,” Elpida said. “Not like that.”

“Well, good luck. But me and mine, we’re just interested in lasting through the storm. Are you going to spare a corpse, or not?”

Kagami’s voice broke back in over the comms; she was calm now — calm and cold. “Commander, she is just trying to score a meal off us. She doesn’t share your vision and she’s not going to be convinced by a mouthful of meat.”

Vicky hissed, “Kaga, shut up.”

Elpida spoke out loud, eyes locked with Puk. “Maybe not. But she’s also not wrong. Puk, we have a favour to ask in return.”

“Mm?”

“Keep the peace, if you can. If there’s a truce, hold to it. Tell the others we’re sharing our meat. But only with those who don’t break the truce.”

Kagami sighed down the comms link, beyond exasperated.

Puk curtseyed again. “No promises! ‘Truce’ is a bit much, this is all unspoken. But we can spread a word or two. Allllllso,” Puk added, almost shy. “There’s a blob monster upstairs. We know she’s with you, everyone knows that. Can you keep her from eating her way through everyone in the tomb?”

“Iriko?” Vicky muttered.

“Yeah,” Elpida said. Then to Puk: “We’ll try. She needs feeding too. Some of these bodies are earmarked for her.”

“Fair dos!” said Puk.

“Wait there a second.” Elpida raised two fingers to her headset, and said: “Pheiri, put me through to Hafina and get ready to lower the rear ramp. Haf? Haf, I want you to come out, head down the ramp, and grab a corpse from Lykke’s soldiers. Pick one we haven’t stripped of meat, but don’t leave any weapons on the body. Then bring it over here. Thanks.”

A moment later, Vicky heard the distinctive whirr of Pheiri’s rear ramp opening wide.

Puk smiled, twirling the hem of her dress back and forth where she stood. Elpida just stared at her, waiting for Hafina to arrive. Vicky took deep, slow, steady breaths, flexing her hands around her grenade launcher, trying not to stare at the dripping mass of ‘Tati’ stuck halfway up the wall. Tati stared at her regardless, massive eyeballs glowing faintly in the dark. Puk’s other companions stayed very still.

After what felt like several long minutes, Hafina’s massive armoured form stalked out of the darkness on Vicky’s right, flanked by a trio of Kagami’s larger drones. She was carrying a big corpse in four of her arms, stripped out of armour, wearing only grey clothes.

Puk lit up with a smile. “Thank you kindly, kind ma’am.”

Elpida put out one hand, indicating Hafina should halt. “Wait a moment, Haf,” she said. “One more thing, Puk, before we hand over the meat.”

“Ahhh?” Puk puckered her lips. “A catch? Oh dear. Really?”

“Not a catch, just a question. Are there any Death’s Heads in the tomb? Any of them make it in here before the storm hit?”

Puk’s expression went sober; her companions stirred behind her, swapping whispers. Up on the wall, Tati let out a messy gurgle.

“Yeah,” said Puk. “A few. I think. Maybe. Who knows for sure?”

“Where?”

Puk giggled and shook her head. “Sweetheart, I’m not about to go looking for them, not for all the meat you’ve got laid out over there. You can truce with some, and this one’s holding like nothing I’ve done before, but with them? Nuh uh. If anybody breaks this first, it’ll be them, with a knife in somebody’s back.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

What tales of the undead are unfolding even now, out there in the storm-wrapped darkness of this temporary sepulchral refuge? Too many for Elpida to save single handed, too many to feed even with all that meat. But maybe she can make a dent, and keep the peace; or perhaps she’s just too hopeful, and it all ends in blood and teeth, like always.

Amazing how Kagami and Victoria managed to keep bickering even over the comms, right? I didn’t actually plan that, they just … kept going!

As for Puk and Tati, perhaps we’ll be seeing these two again soon enough. As long as they don’t run into any Death’s Heads. We haven’t heard from Cantrelle in a while; wonder if she made it into the tomb?

No Patreon link this week, as this is the last chapter of the month, and I never like to risk double-charging new Patrons! I am going to be switching to the other billing method soon (it’s being forced on us, boo), so this might be the last time I have to exclude the link, but for now, if you were just about to subscribe, feel free to wait until the 1st of September!

In the meantime, there’s always the TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which helps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps!

And thank you for reading Necroepilogos, dear readers! I couldn’t do this without all of you, there would be no story, no zombies, no tomb, without all of you reading along! Thank you so much for being here! Next week, the darkness of the tomb yawns wider, and even Pheiri is a very small lad compared to this immensity. What’s hiding in the nooks and crannies of grave dirt and rotten flowers?

Seeya next chapter!

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

When Victoria stepped into the lab, she found Elpida and Kagami waiting in uncomfortable silence, wrapped in static storm-haze from beyond the tomb.

Kagami’s laboratory occupied the compartment which contained Pheiri’s ART charging cradles — a long, cramped, tight space, accessed via a sturdy steel hatch off the left-hand side of the spinal corridor.

When they’d first converted the compartment for the scientific and engineering needs of the meat-plant project, Elpida had referred to it as Pheiri’s very own ‘buried fields’, in comparison with her long-lost Telokopolis. Atyle and Serin had both taken to calling it ‘the greenhouse’; that name had caught on with Amina, Ilyusha, and Ooni, but only until the failure of Kagami’s first few nano-engineered meat seeds, the ones which had to be thrown out and burned. Vicky didn’t like to think too much about those, the way they had twitched and spasmed as if trying to scream, and their awful rotten-egg reek. Ilyusha had started calling it the ‘shit pit’ after that, which worried Vicky. It wasn’t Kagami’s fault the nanomachines were so difficult to work with. Kaga was performing miracles in that little room — a combination of biology, physics, botany, and nano-engineering, which had probably never been attempted before, at least not by anything smaller than some god-like room-sized AI-brain.

Vicky had insisted on calling it just ‘the lab’, never ‘Kagami’s lab’. She was determined not to let Kaga treat it as her private domain and private responsibility. There was too much risk of Kaga retreating inside, barring the door, and refusing to ever come out again.

Eventually the name had stuck, especially once the project had started to work.

Five of the six ART charging cradles — the person-sized android self-repair and recharge stations — were laid down on their sides to form a workbench against the rear wall. Elpida and Vicky had checked with Melyn and Hafina before disconnecting the cradles; would the Artificial Humans ever need these again? Hafina had said a simple ‘no thanks’, then refused to elaborate; Melyn had disliked the question so much that she’d dropped into a non-verbal state for the following twelve hours. Consulting Pheiri had confirmed Victoria’s deduction; Melyn and Hafina had long since left behind any need for the charging cradles, except in extreme emergencies. They would be fine as long as they kept eating and drinking from Pheiri’s on-board manufactories. Elpida had eventually elected to keep just one of the charging cradles in the upright position, wired into Pheiri’s systems, ready to go, just in case Haf or Mel ever got seriously wounded.

A long flat sheet of metal scavenged from the city served as a work surface, laid across the top of the cradles. Two seats had been commandeered from Pheiri’s spinal corridor; one sat before the makeshift workbench, stuffed with spare blankets — Kaga’s comfy throne. The other stood near the lab’s entrance, skeletal metal with some remnants of foam still clinging to the bones.

At the far end of the compartment was a little nest of bedsheets; Vicky knew from experience that Kagami sometimes slept here when she wanted to be alone, or when she couldn’t be bothered to walk back to the bunk room. The nest currently cradled a pair of matte black drones, each about the size of Vicky’s forearm — two of Kagami’s new acquisitions from the armoury.

One end of the workbench was cluttered with Kagami’s equipment and instruments: a powerful microscope; a set of containers full of various murky liquids and assorted sludges; a single glass cannister which contained less than one mouthful of precious raw blue nanomachines — inert now, allowed to quieten and die as a sacrifice to the scientific process; and a whole mess of circuit boards and exposed wiring, hooked up to tiny screens, dials, and switches. Beyond that lay the more esoteric machines, built by Kagami herself from the cannibalised innards of one of the ART charging cradles — an ‘electro-stimulation nerve-jack’ which just looked like a cattle prod, a ‘bio-res flesh-inhibitor’ like an inverted cup made of mirrors, and a weird set of metal prongs which was apparently called a ‘growth-provoking pulse delivery system’.

Three meat-plants occupied the rest of the workbench, dominating the space, growing from sloppy grey soil in big shiny steel basins.

The soil had been scraped from between cracks in the city streets, then mixed with almost a full pint of blood — mostly Elpida’s donation, though everyone else had given a little of themselves to the project, even Serin. According to Kagami the soil was merely a ‘nano-stabilising medium’, not the source of the meat-plants’ growth; that was provided partly by the electrodes and probes sunk into the soil and hooked into Pheiri’s power supply — a poor substitute for photosynthesis, apparently. But the primary engine of growth was the internal nature of the seeds themselves.

Kagami had tried to explain this to Vicky, once, but she had quickly descended into technical jargon far beyond Vicky’s comprehension — ‘proton self-stimulation’, ‘nanomachine nucleo-germination’, ‘matter translation via quantum foam impression reproduction’.

The bottom line, boiled down so that any old artillery officer or Medieval peasant or ‘paleo’ primitive could understand, was that Kagami had figured out how to make the nanomachines copy themselves. This process was slow, awkward, and prone to awful fail-state mutations — not to mention incredibly primitive and disgustingly messy and beneath even the lowliest of Luna’s technology. In a non-nanomachine biosphere this would risk the worst kind of ecological destruction, a true grey-goo scenario, the eradication of all biological life, and so on and so on and so on, as everybody had heard a dozen times over, whenever Kagami got started on the topic. Good thing the biosphere was dead already and the world had filled up with zombies. No danger playing with the ashes when there was nothing left to burn.

The meat-plants were miracles, little hijacked pieces of the nanomachine ecosystem itself.

If Elpida was even half-right about the purpose of this whole nightmare afterlife, then these meat-plants were revolutionary praxis. Sustenance without predation. Food for all, given enough time and further success.

Vicky always tried to keep that in mind whenever she stepped into the lab, because the plants themselves gave her the creeps.

They’d been alright when they were little nubs of crimson flesh nestled in craters of grey soil, and they were much better than the failures which had twitched and shivered and stank like rotten eggs, but as they’d grown they had looked more and more like what they really were — living meat.

Each plant was almost three feet tall now, supported by a tracery of vein-like roots throbbing and pulsing under the grey soil. Each ‘trunk’ was a thick wedge of skinless muscle, glistening in garnet and crimson, forever weeping a pinkish froth which moistened the soil beneath. Fronds and frills sprouted from the trunk at mathematically precise intervals, like fern-leaves crossed with the inside of a healthy human lung, always shivering gently, though there was no air-flow in the lab. Each leaf was coated in a thick layer of viscous mucus, collecting at the tips of the ferns and dripping onto the soil like tar. The lowest of the ‘leaves’ were a good foot wide now, growing gravid with heavy buds on their undersides. The buds were identical to the seeds from which the plants had grown, the seeds Kagami had engineered from raw blue and fresh blood and electricity.

Fruit — to be planted or eaten. But not yet ripe. The project had weeks or months to go.

Kagami was currently sprawled in her comfy throne. Her six silver-grey drones lay on the workbench next to her. As Vicky entered and straightened up, Kagami looked at her with a pinched and offended frown. No improvement since she’d left Victoria behind in the control cockpit.

Elpida was examining the meat-plants, her back toward the door.

Kagami spoke before Vicky could open her mouth, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Well done, Victoria. That wasn’t so hard, was it? Now, shut the door and sit down, don’t just stand there glaring. What are you waiting for? A doggy treat and a pat on the head? Want me to call you ‘good girl’ again? Huh!”

Victoria returned a silent stare.

The fury of the hurricane filled the air, wind whipping around the distant corners of the tomb.

In the corner of Victoria’s eye she saw Elpida turn away from the plants, but Elpi was smart enough not to intervene.

Kagami spread her hands. “What? For fuck’s sake Victoria, what now?”

Vicky spoke slowly and carefully. “You can get away with one little ‘woof woof’ at me. I’ll let that slide. Maybe I even deserved it. But if you keep talking to me like that, I’m off.” She thumbed over her shoulder, at the open hatch. “I’ve got plenty to be getting on with. Sorting all our new equipment, checking on the newbies, or just, fuck it, jilling myself off in my bunk. You’re not my commanding officer and this isn’t my old regiment. If you want to mess with me, Kaga, you’re gonna have to throw hands. And I guarantee I will make you bark first.”

Kagami’s face exploded with incandescent blush. Her jaw shivered, then clamped shut. She looked away.

“Drop the dog jokes,” Vicky finished. “Thanks.”

Storm-tossed hailstone-haze and howling wind filled the silence.

Elpida cleared her throat. “Vicky, good morning. Good to see you.”

“Elpi, hey. Is it really morning already?”

“Technically.”

Elpida smiled, a little wry; her purple eyes showed no sign of fatigue. She had stripped out of her coat and trousers, leaving her long brown legs exposed, barefoot and unarmed in only underwear and a skintight tomb-grey t-shirt. Her right forearm was bandaged over the deep bite wound she’d taken from Eseld. Her long white hair hung loose, swept to one side.

She looked — good, Vicky realised. Too good. The brooding cobwebs of the last few weeks had been swept away without a trace.

Elpida took a step forward and clapped a hand on Vicky’s shoulder. Victoria felt herself stand up a little straighter, breathe a little easier, think a little clearer.

“How are you holding up, Vicky?”

“I’m good, thank you, Commander.” She bit back a return question — and you?

Elpida raised her eyebrows. “Really? Are you sure about that?”

Vicky hesitated. “Uh … ”

“Between the hurricane, our current position, and the encounter with the Necromancers, morale is weird. Not bad, exactly. We did win, after all. Bellies are full, bullets are plentiful, we’re all safe. Just … weird. I can tell, it’s in everyone’s eyes. Yours too. So, Vicky, I’ll ask again. How are you holding up?”

Vicky puffed out a big sigh. “Rattled, I guess. This is weird, yeah, you’re right about that. And Shilu is giving me the creeps. I think she’s giving everyone the creeps, just waiting out there like that. We should hunker down and prep, I think I’d be more comfortable if we focused on that. Pheiri needs maintenance. We’ve got lots to stow. That kinda thing. We should talk about stuff too, Commander. Important stuff, I mean.”

Elpida nodded. “I agree. And how about physically? You alright?”

Vicky laughed. “I’m good. Maybe a little tired. But hey, it’s not like I was doing much.”

“Don’t minimise your contributions,” Elpida said. “Thank you, for running mission control here in Pheiri. It’s very important.”

“You’re welcome. And thanks, Elpi.”

“And how’s my little brother himself doing? Anything out of the ordinary?”

“Pheiri’s fine, everything’s normal. I left Ooni up in the cockpit for now, keeping an eye on the screens. She knows to watch Shilu carefully, I reminded her of that.”

“Good job, Vicky, thank you. And Shilu still hasn’t moved?” Vicky nodded. Elpida let out a curious ‘mm’ sound, then stepped back. “Well, like Kagami said, go ahead and shut the door, please.”

Vicky hesitated. “What is this all about?”

Elpida’s expression was suddenly unreadable. “Shut the door, please. This needs to be private.”

Victoria did as she was asked, but her heart skipped a beat. Kagami was eyeing her with bitter embarrassment and smouldering recrimination — worse than usual, like something terrible had happened. Elpida was unreadable, professional, back in command, with all the rough edges of the last few weeks suddenly filed off and folded away. Had her encounter with Eseld really fixed her that quickly?

The distant roaring of the storm filled the compartment, muffled beyond so many layers of dark metal and shadowy void.

Had Kaga and Elpi — with each other?

Upstairs, in the dark, during their expedition? No, no, there was no way! Kagami wouldn’t have the guts, and Elpida knew that Vicky and Kaga had a thing going on. Elpida wouldn’t, she wouldn’t — but then again, Elpida and her cadre back in life, they’d all been one giant happy polycule together, hadn’t they? To Elpida, physical intimacy was just another interpersonal tool. She was used to being close to her comrades — skin-close, casual sex close. Right? Kagami had mentioned ‘betrayal’, but not Vicky’s betrayal, whatever that had meant. Vicky had chalked it up to Kagami’s usual spleen, but had Kagami meant her own betrayal? Had she — with Elpi?

Was this Elpida’s way of trying to mend the rift between them? Or of shoring up herself, her own psyche?

No, no, this was all wrong! This wasn’t what Victoria wanted at all! She was treating Kaga gently, giving her time and space and—

Kagami snorted. “I can’t believe you brought that bloody talisman with you.”

“A-ah?” Vicky blinked. “Sorry, what?”

“That!” Kagami jabbed a finger at Victoria’s automatic grenade launcher, strapped over her shoulder with the weapon’s heavy sling. “I don’t know why you’re carrying it around. You’re not likely to encounter an occupied enemy trench in here, are you?”

“Uh … yeah, I just— I didn’t want to leave it with Ooni.”

“Ha!” Kagami laughed. “I thought you trusted the little ex-fash goblin.”

“I do!” Vicky sighed. “Kaga, don’t make this any more difficult than it already— I mean— I mean, yes, of course I trust her. Trust had nothing to do with it. I just don’t want her to fiddle with the components.”

Elpida said: “That’s from the tomb armoury?”

“Yeah,” Vicky said, turning to show the weapon. “AGL. Automatic grenade launcher.”

“Very nice. And you’re familiarising yourself with it?”

Victoria nodded. “Stripping and checking the parts. If I’m gonna use it, I don’t want any risk of a jam. And don’t worry, it’s not loaded.”

“I know,” said Elpida. “I’m not worried.”

Vicky tried to swallow her own heart. “Seriously, what’s all this about? Don’t keep me on the edge of my seat here, you know? Heh … ”

Elpida leaned back against the workbench, stretching out her bare legs. Her white hair was framed by the shivering blood-red fronds of the meat-plants. She crossed her arms, raised her chin, and said: “Are you ready, Kaga?”

Kagami huffed, rolled her eyes, and looked away.

Victoria’s pulse pounded in her ears. She wasn’t ready for this either. Was Kaga embarrassed, or upset? Had Elpida coaxed Kagami into something she hadn’t really wanted? Had she used Kagami’s needs to feed something within herself? Was that why she seemed so much better, so much more present? Or — no, no, Victoria told herself that was madness. Elpida had been deeply affected by the fight with Lykke, surely, or by Eseld’s recovery, not — not secret things with Kagami.

Victoria felt out of her depth. She couldn’t read this situation, the whole thing felt wrong.

She blurted out: “Is this really the time for this kind of conversation?”

Elpida raised her eyebrows. “Why’s that?”

“I mean … we’ve got so much to do. All the new weapons and equipment still needs sorting and stowing. All those corpses out there need stripping, for parts, and— and meat, of course, right. We need to make sure the newbies are okay. Eseld is barely there. Sky’s out cold. We need to be working on a plan, to either get out of here or weather the storm. Isn’t Kaga supposed to be figuring out how to plug herself into the tomb? And— and somebody has to interrogate Shilu. And … uh … ”

“This is all part of that,” Elpida said. She glanced at Kagami. “Did you tell her—”

“Nothing!” Kagami snapped. “Nothing!”

Victoria took a step back. Her ankles bumped the hatch. “I … just … uh, if you two … um, I don’t want to—”

Don’t want to know?

Don’t want to get in your way?

Yes, that was it. Victoria decided that was best, even though it made her feel sick. She didn’t want to get in their way.

She should have expected this, after all. Elpida — so tall and strong, confident and commanding, experienced and worldly; she was always going to open Kagami first, get her comfortable, crack that spiky shell. Victoria hadn’t failed, she’d just not moved fast enough; and how could she ever have hoped to? Elpida was a super soldier from the future, bred for this, one of a pack who bonded with sex and intimacy and comradeship beyond anything Victoria had known in life. Or perhaps Vicky had misunderstood the situation in the first place? Maybe she wasn’t what Kagami needed at all. Maybe she’d gotten it wrong from the start. Maybe she should have kept to herself, kept out of the way, kept her disgusting thoughts in private. Vicky wanted to melt away, go back to her maintenance work on Pheiri’s innards, hang out with the others, and leave these two to whatever intimacy they’d discovered. Step back, let them have it, get out of the way, pretend she never wanted it in the first place and—

“Victoria?” Elpida said, frowning softly. The meat-plants shivered and throbbed either side of her head. “Relax. Nothing is wrong. You’re here because Kagami trusts you more than anybody else. That’s why we wanted to talk to you first.”

“Y-yeah,” Vicky said. “I-I respect that, but—”

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” Kagami snapped, blazing bright red in both cheeks. “This is pathetic! Victoria, whatever sordid little fantasy has entered your primitive head, stop it! Stop thinking it!”

Victoria gaped at Kagami. “Wh-what—”

“Ha!” Elpida suddenly barked — no longer Elpida. Kaga and Vicky both flinched.

“Hahahahaa!” Howl cackled at some private joke, wide-eyed and grinning in a way Elpida never would. “You two! You two, holy fuckin’ shit, girls! You — Vickyyyyyy, come on, you thought Kaga and Elps had done the nasty, out there on the fuckin’ ground? Ha!” Another bark. “You two really need to fuck before you end up killing each other!”

“What?!” Vicky spluttered. “I didn’t—”

“Shut up!” Kagami snapped. “Shut up, shut—”

“Stop!” Elpida said, with Howl packaged back away behind her face. “Both of you, stop.”

Kagami clamped her mouth shut, fuming in silence. Victoria stood to attention; she felt the knot in her throat slowly give way. Her worst fears — ones she had not even considered fears until a few minutes ago — faded away.

“Commander,” she said.

Elpida waited a moment, then said: “I’ve half a mind to lock you two in here together until you work this out. With or without Howl’s specific suggestion.”

Kagami hissed: “Absolutely not—”

Elpida raised her voice. “But unfortunately I need both of you on point for this next move.”

“What move?” Vicky asked.

Elpida said: “Vicky, more often than not, you are functionally my second in command. That’s why I’m bringing you in on this as quickly as I can. I didn’t realise you felt any jealousy towards me. I hope you know there’s no cause for that.”

“I- yeah! Yeah, of course. Fuck, Elpi, I’m sorry. I just— my mind was running away with me. Sorry.”

“Apology accepted, but also there was no need for it.”

“Ha!” Kagami laughed. “Did you know that I’m both cynical and paranoid? Did you know that, Victoria? Apparently ‘suspicious’, too. What wonderful qualities I have!”

“What?”

Elpida sighed. “Kaga, that was nothing but a compliment. You have skills that I lack. And you’ve proved it.”

“But you, Vicky?” Kagami went on, ignoring Elpida. “Oh no, you’re so pure-hearted that it was just a little lapse of judgement, instantly forgiven. How lucky for you, you—”

“Kagami,” Elpida snapped. “Just switch on the privacy field so we can talk properly.”

“Fine, fine!”

Kagami flicked her left hand. Her six silver-grey drones rose from the workbench and floated outward — four to the corners of the floor, and the final two upward to the far ends of the ceiling, to form a hollow prism which filled the room. A crackle of soft static tickled Vicky’s ears. The iron tang of blood touched her tongue, quickly swallowed. The fury of the distant storm faded behind invisible electromagnetic walls.

“Thank you,” said Elpida. “You’re certain this works, inside Pheiri?”

“Absolutely,” Kagami snapped. “I tested it earlier. Our bodies are currently isolated from the nanomachine network. Nobody can listen, not even Pheiri. And yes, before you bleat about it, I have warned him. He knows what we’re up to.”

“Good,” Elpida said. “Now, Vicky, we’ve figured something out. Or, to give credit where credit is due, Kagami figured it out. All I did was ask the right questions. She’s the one with the relevant experience and skills. We want to bring you in on this, quietly.”

Vicky laughed. “Fuck me, Commander. You two couldn’t have been more cloak and dagger about this if you ambushed me in the dark. Isn’t this all a bit, I dunno, over the top?”

Elpida grinned — Howl, grinning through her. “S’what I said.”

Vicky said, “Why go to these lengths? What’s going on?”

Elpida blinked; Howl was gone again. “Kaga, this is your operation.”

Kagami sat up straighter in her chair. She raised her chin. Narrowed her eyes. “Victoria. All this was entirely necessary, yes. Why? Because there is a traitor among us.”

The crackle of the privacy field hummed in the air, almost inaudible beneath the distant howl of the storm. The meat-plants shivered and throbbed. Elpida took a deep breath, then sighed.

Vicky cleared her throat. “Okay? What, so, like back when you figured Pira for a traitor before the rest of us did?”

“And I was right about her!”

“Yeah, of course you were, fine.” Vicky sighed. “I wasn’t challenging that, I was agreeing with you. What’s happened now? Who is it?”

Kagami hesitated. “It’s … complicated.”

Vicky tried not to laugh “Yeah, I bet.”

Elpida said, “May I make a suggestion?”

Kagami huffed. “Yes, yes, fine.”

“Start the same way you did with me. Start with the storm. You convinced me, and Illy, and Atyle. You can convince Vicky, too.” Kagami kept her eyes averted, so Elpida carried on, now to Vicky: “I was having trouble figuring out our next moves. The storm, our new arrivals, Shilu, all of it wasn’t sitting right with me. Shilu is the obvious part, but she’s too obvious. I could get that far, but I struggled with the next step. I don’t have the skills for this kind of intrigue. Kagami does, so I turned to her, and she put the pieces together faster than I could.”

“Fine!” Kagami snapped. “Fine, I’ll do it, just … stop that, Commander. Stop treating me like I’m your court spymaster.”

Elpida shut her mouth; a smile lingered.

Kagami turned an insulted gaze on Vicky. “Are you going to sit down, Victoria? Or are you going to make me talk at you while you stand there cradling your grenade launcher?”

Vicky took the other seat and laid her AGL across her knees. “Alright, okay. Go ahead, Kaga. I’m all ears.”

Kagami took a deep breath. She closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them again, she wore a clear expression beneath a focused frown, framed either side by the messy dark of her hair. Victoria struggled not to smile; she found Kagami in her element very attractive.

“This hurricane makes no sense,” Kagami began. “And I don’t mean the mechanical properties, though those are absurd enough. This cannot possibly be a natural phenomenon. Hurricanes do not sustain themselves hundreds or thousands of miles inland, certainly not without seas from which to draw water, and not at nine hundred miles an hour. They also don’t pause overhead for hours on end, let alone for days or weeks, and yes, I strongly suspect this storm will last for weeks. There is no reason for the nanomachines to do this, no informational content or ecosystem direction within the storm itself. Atyle’s observations back that up, though I’m loathe to interpret her ramblings as data.” Kagami snorted. “Pira, Ooni, Serin, Ilyusha, they’ve all been around before, and none of them have seen anything like this. Pheiri has no records of hurricanes either, and he’s been around long enough to know. This is not chance, or process, or regular occurrence. Something is doing this, on purpose.”

Vicky nodded along. “It’s artificial, right. I get that much.”

Kagami jerked up a hand; she did not want interruptions. “It’s artificial, yes. Summoned via the network. But — and I want you to think about this question — who sent it?”

Victoria narrowed her eyes. “You’re doing a trick question on me, aren’t you?”

Elpida’s face split with a very un-Elpida-like grin: Howl again. She said, “You’re getting it gentle. Kaga was much rougher with us. Selfish!”

“Shut up!” Kagami snapped. “Let me walk her through this without the obscene peanut gallery.”

Howl slipped back behind Elpida’s expression. Elpida dipped her head.

“It’s a trick question,” Vicky repeated. “Right?”

“Just answer it,” Kagami said.

“Central, obviously. Central sent the hurricane.”

“And why? For what purpose?”

“To kill us, what else?”

Kagami smiled, with far too much satisfaction. “Wrong.” Victoria restrained a sigh. Kagami went on: “Central sent the physical assets after Thirteen Arcadia, but they always ignored us, and they ignored Pheiri. We’ve all seen the logs from Thirteen’s journey. If Central — whatever ‘Central’ really is — wanted us dead, we’d all be dust. Pheiri could not have fought off any of those things which hunted Thirteen. No, I don’t buy it. This hurricane was not sent to kill us, not by Central.”

Victoria shrugged; she tried not to pay too much attention to Elpida’s hidden smile. “Okay, sure.”

“We cannot know who sent this hurricane,” Kagami went on. “Shilu claims there is a ‘war’ inside the network, but she doesn’t know the sides, doesn’t know the forces, doesn’t know what the conflict is about. Perhaps another faction in that war sent the storm. But perhaps not. Maybe Shilu is lying. We can’t verify any of this. So, let us move upward a conceptual step — why was the hurricane sent?”

Vicky shrugged again. At least Kagami seemed to be enjoying herself for once.

“If it was sent to kill us, that’s a very inefficient method,” Kagami said. “Certainly not one I would use. A vast amount of energy, over a very wide area, with no way of confirming a kill. Pheiri could probably have outrun the storm, if we’d turned tail as soon as we saw it coming. So, what else did the hurricane achieve? I’ll tell you. It forced the graveworm to retract the worm-guard. That, in turn, allowed us access to the tomb. Without the hurricane to clear the way, we would not have made it in here. Do you see where I’m going with this, Victoria?”

Kagami paused, dark eyes blazing, chin high.

Vicky squinted. “You’re saying this was sent to help us?”

Kagami chopped the air with one hand. “Not necessarily. I believe it may have been sent to clear the way for us to access the tomb, to pull off a ‘tomb raid’, to reach the fresh meat before the predators did. And what did we find here?”

Victoria nodded. “Shilu. Right.”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Kagami held up both hands. A real smile danced on her lips now. Victoria’s heart leapt to see that. “Shilu is only one possibility. Don’t jump too far in one leap. Focus on what we found. What did we find?”

“Two Necromancers, having a fight,” Victoria said; Kagami nodded with excitement. “Three newbies, fresh zombies. One of whom was Eseld, which is, yeah, really suspicious, right, I think I see—”

“Right, right,” Kagami interrupted, hands in the air again. “So, the storm gets us to the payload — either Shilu or Lykke or Eseld, or all of them together, I’ll get to that in a moment. But then? Then it stops!” Kagami punched the air. “It stops overhead, and stays there. Why?”

“To kill us?”

“No. No! Come on, Victoria, think! You are much smarter than you give yourself credit for. You are an engineer. You— She—” Kagami pointed at Elpida “—she couldn’t get it! But you can see this. I can’t be the only one around here with basic powers of social deduction. Think. Don’t make me do this alone.”

Victoria chewed her bottom lip. She really did want to justify Kagami’s belief in her.

“Because … because whatever the storm was sent to assist with, it’s not done yet.”

“Yes!” Kagami leapt upright in her seat, teeth together, eyes wild. “Yes. Exactly.” She took a series of deep breaths and subsided back into the blankets, panting, flushed in the face. “Whatever purpose the storm was dispatched for, it has not yet been completed. It is still in progress. Still ongoing.”

“Which is?”

Kagami wet her lips. She hesitated, losing some of her steam. Victoria clenched her hands together and stayed very still.

“I have two hypotheses,” Kagami said. “They may both be valid, they’re not mutually exclusive. Option one — the storm was sent to assist an attempt to disrupt us in some manner.”

“Shilu’s assassination attempt,” said Vicky. “And then she decided not to make the kill, right. So—”

“Yes, yes, but it could be something else,” Kagami snapped. “It could be part of an attempt to insert a spy, or a saboteur, or something else, within our ranks. I don’t know, and we cannot be sure. Not yet.”

“You think Shilu is a spy?”

Kagami shook her head. “No, not her. She’s too obvious.”

“Eh? Kaga, she’s a Necromancer.”

Kagami huffed and rolled her eyes. “Sometimes I forget you were limited to books and the occasional televisual broadcast, down there in your pre-NorAm rust and muck. This is basic drama sim writing! Think it through! We come bursting into the tomb on a rescue mission, and what do we find? Two Necromancers, one a practically cartoonish abomination, the other one a little bit weird, but no more than any other zombie. One is trying to kill the fresh meat, the other is protecting them. One helps us fight the other, thus winning the thinnest sliver of our confidence. It’s too obvious! Lykke was the bait, the jobber, the designated monster to get us on Shilu’s side. A child would know not to trust her. Amina knows not to trust her!”

“Hey, come on.” Vicky tutted. “Amina’s not stupid. Don’t use her like—”

Kagami wasn’t listening. “Ironic, really, isn’t it? The stupidity of that plan cancels it out. No, it’s not Shilu.”

“ … wait a sec, Kaga. You trust her?”

“Ha!” Kagami barked. “No. But I trust that she trusts herself. I think that full-borg combat doll out there is exactly what she appears to be. A reluctant assassin who refused her mission.” Kagami glanced at Elpida. “Though I can’t see exactly what convinced her not to go through with it, seeing as our Commander is a moron with a death wish.”

Elpida nodded a silent thank you.

Vicky said, “Hold up. If Shilu was a spy, or a saboteur, sent by Central, would she even have to know it herself?”

“Yes!” Kagami clicked her fingers and pointed at Vicky. “Yes, exactly. If Shilu is a mole, she wouldn’t even have to know it. In fact, that would be the perfect insertion method. Set her up against Lykke right in front of us, have all our suspicions out in the open, but then she herself doesn’t even know what she is. That is exactly how I would do it if I was Central, or if I was trying to get an agent inside a closed network. But, no.” Kagami shook her head, her animation subsiding. “Shilu is not connected to the network. Whatever or whoever sent her, she’s not passing back information.”

Vicky raised her eyebrows. “You confirmed that?”

Kagami sighed. “Atyle did, in her usual interminable fashion. But … ” She gestured vaguely.

Elpida spoke up. “Howl says the same. Shilu’s not networked, not like Lykke was. She’s embodied like us, just matter. All she’s got is the shape shifting trick. Very durable though. I wouldn’t want to go toe-to-toe with her up close, even in a hardshell.”

Vicky leaned back in her chair, hands on her AGL. “You think it’s one of the other three?”

Kagami raised a reasonable hand. “Eseld is also too obvious. You said that yourself, it’s plain to see. She’s been placed in our path, on purpose, perhaps to play on our Commander’s personal sympathies. Of course we would be suspicious of her resurrection. She’s a very poor choice for a spy. And her mere presence raises … further questions.”

“Yeah?” Vicky glanced at Elpida, worried about the Commander’s mental state. But Elpida seemed perfectly relaxed.

Kagami cleared her throat. “She may have been selected to sow internal division and distrust.”

“ … wait, what?”

Kagami seemed on the edge of snapping, but forced herself to speak slowly and clearly. “Think about it. Her resurrection, right in our path, implies that something or somebody is already watching us, perhaps literally, perhaps through the network. Even if it’s just ‘Central’.”

“Oh. Shit. Right.”

Vicky eyed Elpida again, openly this time. How could Elpida be so calm, when she’d been so obsessed with that girl and her unknown companions for weeks? Elpida had spent hours flicking through the images of that fight — that slaughter — and staring at those four fleshless skulls.

“Uh, Elpida, Commander, are you … okay with this?”

Elpida smiled. “I’m fine with this line of thinking, yes. This is why I came to Kagami in the first place. I’m not sure I could have made that leap myself. Eseld may be compromised. I’m willing to accept that.”

“Okay. That’s good, I guess.”

Elpida went on. “She may also have been sent to help us. She may be a sign, intended to snap me out of the state I’ve been in lately.”

Kagami clenched her teeth, visibly biting back a comment.

Vicky said, “Uh, good? Good. I mean, I’m glad you recognise it. But, sent by who?”

Elpida smiled with a relief Vicky had not seen on her in weeks. Elpida said: “By the same network entity who helped Howl. Telokopolis.”

Vicky nodded, but said nothing, afraid that the wrong word might shatter Elpida’s disposition. She shared a glance with Kagami and saw a mute warning reflected in Kaga’s eyes — don’t set her off. We’ll deal with this later. The Commander is more fragile than she looks.

“Uh,” Vicky said, trying to move on quickly. “So, what about Sky?”

Kagami recovered herself with a snort. “Also far too obvious. She took a beating at Lykke’s hands, and got physically compromised, to put it lightly. She may still be compromised, so of course we’re going to be watching her closely. No. Too unsubtle. The tactic of a fool.”

“Cyneswith?”

Kagami spread her hands. “She’s the only one left, the odd one out. Very ‘innocent’, with no comprehension of her situation. Again, too obvious! They’re all too obvious. All of them are suspect. None of them are safe, not for us. That’s why we’re using the privacy field. That’s why we’re keeping this quiet. We don’t want any of them to realise we’re going to make this move.”

Vicky sighed, then chuckled at how silly this felt. “So, we’re right back where we started?”

Elpida answered. “Not at all. Kagami’s deductions give us somewhere to start. We need to interrogate Shilu, and debrief the other three, to see if there’s anything we can glean.”

“Great.” Vicky sighed. “What do you suggest, Kaga? What would you do, if all this was happening back on the Moon?”

Kagami raised her chin. “Shoot all four of them.” Then she sighed. “But we’re not allowed to do that, are we, Commander?”

Elpida shook her head. “No executions. No killings. Not unless we have to.”

Vicky said, “Wait a sec, Kaga, you said you had two hypotheses about the storm. What’s the second?”

Kagami paused, suddenly uncomfortable. She swallowed. “I believe the storm may also be acting as an anti-access area denial weapon.”

“Which means … ?”

“The hurricane may be protecting us from Lykke’s return. Or from the arrival of additional Necromancers.”

Vicky went cold. “Necromancers? As in, more than one?”

“Yes.” Elpida nodded. “I’m inclined to agree with that assessment.”

Kagami spoke with her eyes on the wall. “If Shilu told us the truth about her encounters with Lykke, then whatever force was trying to stop Shilu, whatever force sent Lykke, it was trying to achieve this quietly and quickly, before we could arrive. The plan was probably to kill Shilu, kill all of the zombies in this batch, and then vanish before we turned up.”

“Which would have meant no Eseld,” Elpida added softly. “I never would have met her again. I think it all adds up.”

Kagami sighed. “Yes, fine. And, keeping this quiet?” She gestured at the ceiling, at the storm beyond the tomb. “That’s not an option anymore. If the storm is protecting us, then when it ends, we may find ourselves neck-deep in Necromancers. Ha!” Kagami barked a laugh, surprised at herself, but there was no humour in her voice. “Pun not intended. Not intended at all.”

Vicky swallowed. “Shit. Uh. Wait, I don’t … ”

Elpida cleared her throat. “If Eseld was inserted by Telokopolis, perhaps with the aim of helping to deflect Shilu’s assassination attempt, then Lykke was sent to stop that, to stop us linking up. When the storm passes, whichever player sent Lykke might decide to drop any pretence of subterfuge, and throw everything they have at us. We need to be prepared for that.”

Kagami let out a tight, shuddering sigh. “We don’t know this for certain, Commander! Vicky, we don’t know this for certain. At the moment all of this is conjecture, theory, hypothesis.”

Vicky tried to take a deep breath, to keep all this in perspective. “Alright. Okay. So, why are you telling me all this? Why now? Why me alone?”

Elpida grinned, not Howl. “Because we’re going to interrogate Shilu, and we need you to play along. I need your eyes and ears, and your judgement.”

“Me?”

Kagami said, “You make one hell of a ‘good cop’, Victoria. You don’t even have to try. That’s going to be your role.”

“Good cop bad cop?” Vicky laughed. “Against a Necromancer? Seriously? Commander, I’m a grease monkey, I don’t know anything about this.”

Elpida straightened up, framed by the crimson fronds of the meat-plants behind her head, like a halo of blood playing over her white hair.

“I don’t understand the terminology ‘good cop bad cop’,” Elpida said. “But Kagami explained the principle to me, and I recognise it well enough. Howl and I can force Necromancers back to the network, with a little bit of physical bullying. Shilu saw that herself, up close, so that makes me the ‘bad’ one, the threat.”

Vicky interrupted. “I thought you said you wouldn’t want to fight her?”

Elpida broke into a grin. “I don’t. And I can’t.”

“ … what?”

“Howl doesn’t think she can strip away Shilu’s shape shifting. It’s not something we can touch. I’m going to be bluffing.”

“Oh,” Vicky said, a sinking feeling in her stomach. “Oh shit, Elpi.”

“Oh shit is right,” Kagami grumbled.

“It’s the only leverage we have,” Elpida said. “But I’m hoping we won’t have to use it. This is where you come in, Vicky. You’re my second in command, and I mean that. You’re my right hand for this, the most reasonable and personable member of our cadre. You and I, and maybe a couple of others, with Kagami on overwatch. We’re gonna go figure out if Shilu is lying.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Vicky and Kaga are such messy bitches, and I just cannot get enough of them. Howl has a point; a good fuck would fix a lot of their problems. Or hey, maybe it would make everything much worse! Also an acceptable outcome. But none of that is going to help with interrogating a Necromancer, is it? Tut tut.

Aaaand we are back! Thank you so much for your patience, dear readers. For anybody who missed the note above last week’s chapter, or the patreon post I made, I’ll leave a quick link here to avoid repeating myself again. I’ll be keeping the Table of Contents page over on the Necroepilogos site up-to-date from now on, to avoid any confusion about the publishing schedule!

As for arc 12, behind the scenes this is developing into a looooong one, as I had planned for! There’s just so many overlapping schemes and shufflings out in the echoing shadows of the tomb. We might see a couple of unexpected POV shifts, and maaaaybe a new POV soon-ish, hard to tell! But first, it’s time to ask Shilu some difficult questions.

Also I have more art to share, from over on the discord server! A fan-made mockup cover for Necroepilogos! That’s Telokopolis on top, and a tomb down below (by the very hard-working and skilled FarionDragon.) Thank you so much for this, it’s incredible! And it’s reminded me that I’m about to start the pipeline for some new cover art, very soon …

If you want more Necroepilogos right away, or you would like to support the story, please consider subscribing to the Patreon:

Patreon link! It’s here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 5k words. Behind the scenes I am still very much trying to build up some kind of a backlog of chapters, and when I do, I’ll be sharing more chapters ahead with patrons. I hope!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which helps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps!

And thank you, dear readers! Thank you so much for having fun with my little story! The tomb is deep and dark, and even Pheiri is so very small in these echoing halls, trapped beneath the raging storm. Zombies are hatching plots in the dark. Let’s hope they don’t dig too deep. Until next chapter! Seeya then!

There will be no Necroepilogos chapter on the 15th of August; Necroepilogos will return as normal on the 22nd of August!

I’m so sorry to have to do this so soon after I last took a week out of the publishing schedule, but circumstances have forced my hand! Don’t worry, I’m fine, and there’s nothing wrong with the story; I am as dedicated to writing as always.

I am making some changes to the publishing schedule. The super short version is that Necroepilogos will be moving to a three-week-on/one-week-off schedule, possibly just temporarily, to avoid any further unplanned breaks. If you want more details, I’ve written a (far too long) patreon post about it over here! But don’t feel compelled to read that, it’s seriously far too long. Necroepilogos will be back like normal next week!

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Victoria was alone in Pheiri’s control cockpit, watching her friends come home.

“What do you think, hey?” she said. Her voice was blurred by the close and claustrophobic static of the storm — a rumbling murmur even inside Pheiri’s hull, far within the walls of the tomb, buried deep underground. Distant creakings and groanings sang a reply to the howling wind outside. “They’re taking the exact same route back, right? Drones up front for a vanguard, nice wide spread. What do you reckon, fifteen minutes?”

A screen lit up down by her right elbow. Glowing green text flickered in the electric gloom.

>20:00

Victoria clucked her tongue. “Oooh, I dunno about that. Twenty minutes, really? They’ve been on the move for almost thirty minutes already. Elpi’s got them hustling fast, making good progress. And that last stretch is all wide open corridors, right? Nah, come on. Fifteen minutes.”

The green text refreshed.

>20:00

“Well, you would know better than me.” Vicky was not exaggerating; Pheiri was Pheiri, with all his sensors and his processing power, while Vicky had only rough location pings, indicated by blinking green lights on a tiny steel-glass screen set into the communication console. “But I’m confident,” she said. “Fifteen minutes. Are you confident enough to bet against that number, Pheiri?”

>y

“So, what do we wager?”

>accuracy

“Ahhhhh. Bragging rights. Honour. The satisfaction of ‘I-told-you-so’.”

>y

“Didn’t know you went in for that kind of thing. Not the sort of wager I’d usually risk. Certainly not against Kaga, she’d be insufferable if she won … ”

The glowing green text held steady.

“You’re on,” she finished. “Fifteen minutes. I’ll trust you to keep count, of course.”

>20:00 … 19:59 … 19:58 …

Vicky took a deep breath, let out an equally deep sigh, and leaned back her seat with a creak of metal.

She was sat in what she had begun to think of as the ‘comms seat’ — the battered old chair perched before the bank of consoles which served as a crew interface for Pheiri’s communications array. Technically there was no need to sit directly in front of the comms console itself; Vicky could have set herself up in any seat she liked. Some of the chairs toward the rear of the cockpit boasted significantly more stuffing left in their backrests and arms; she could have forgone the rolled up t-shirt pressed into the base of her spine or the spare coat folded beneath her backside. Pheiri would happily flash any information she needed onto any of his dozens of screens, with nothing more required of her than a vocal request. If she needed to talk to the fireteam — Elpida, Kagami, Atyle, Hafina, and Ilyusha — she need only speak out loud; Pheiri’s pickup and broadcast equipment would render her voice in perfect clarity even from halfway across the room.

But Victoria refused to sit back and wait; she had enough of that in the GLR 18th Infantry — ‘hurry up and wait’ was the watchword and joke of all old soldiers, and Victoria had been an old soldier for much, much longer than she’d been undead.

She had spent most of her time over the last few weeks familiarising herself with every part of Pheiri she could reach, which meant pretty much everything above the tunnels of the engineering deck beneath her feet, where only Melyn’s tiny android body could fit. Victoria longed to see Pheiri’s nuclear heart and the baroque complexity of his engines for herself, so she might do what she could for the worn and aged components of his main drivetrain; but she had to trust in Melyn’s slender little hands for that job, and the miracle of Thirteen Arcadia’s grey nanomachine sludge.

Instead, Vicky had crawled into hidden compartments all along Pheiri’s spinal corridor, opening new rooms and spaces which had gone lightless and unused for hundreds of years. She had contorted herself and wormed her way upward into the sponson-chambers and armour-bulges of Pheiri’s many guns, to count and catalogue and check on his systems, to oil and grease and wipe clean his ageing servo-motors and ammunition feeds. She had spent entire days up there, wriggling back and forth with tins of lubricant and a heavy tool belt, doing maintenance on a machine more complex than any artillery piece she’d known in life. She had even inspected much of Pheiri’s exterior armour, accompanied by Hafina and Serin, protected by Pheiri’s heavy guns; she had searched for cracks and flaws and breaches in Pheiri’s bony white shell, though she could do little to heal those wounds. Pheiri’s skin repaired itself, given enough time and nano-sludge.

She’d learned how to operate the comms system — or at least enough of it to participate. She’d set up a recurring tight-beam ping to Hafina’s on-board radio and Elpida’s headset, to keep her and Pheiri updated on the group’s progress back toward safety and home. Not that Pheiri couldn’t have done that himself, or flashed the information up on a screen at Vicky’s request. Technically any manual operation of Pheiri’s control cockpit was pointless. Learning what the buttons and switches and displays did was a waste of time. Her input was duplicated work; Pheiri could do it all himself with nothing but a thought.

But it was wrong to expect Pheiri to do it alone. So Victoria had a little display all to herself, lit up with green text showing estimated distances and automatic ping returns. Hafina and Elpida were moving fast, well within ten feet of each other. The drones were in a ring, shown as auxiliary pings in contact with Pheiri’s on-board IFF sensors.

Kagami had refused the ping set-up, of course, because why not?

Vicky lifted her gaze to the screens above the comms console.

A dozen of Pheiri’s displays showed exterior views, from out beyond the hull — high angle panoramas from up on his turret, past the bristling guns of his armour; low tight-range sights from the rear of his ramp or down his sides, watching the floors for signs of hidden movement; infra-red, night-vision, and powerful magnification peering into every corner and crevice, sweeping back and forth across the yawning metallic darkness of the tomb.

Pheiri was currently burrowed deep into the second subterranean layer of the tomb. He was stopped toward the rear of a massive chamber of grey metal, which dwarfed even his substantial size. There were four ways in and out of the chamber — one to Pheiri’s rear, one in front, and one on either side, all covered by plenty of Pheiri’s guns. On the left hand side of the chamber, between Pheiri and the wall, corpses lay stacked in rows — the remains of Lykke’s group of revenants who had slipped past Pheiri and raced for the gravekeeper. The corpses were too numerous to process all at once, or to cram inside Pheiri in the meantime, so there they lay. Vicky tried not to look at them too often.

Getting down here had been simple enough. The grey metal passageways of the subterranean levels appeared to be built for vehicles, equipped with ramps and wide corridors, not at all like the tight spaces of the upper layers. But this was as far as Pheiri could reach, at least without blasting holes through the tomb’s innards; up ahead the corridors narrowed into twisty little tunnels, as if to restrict access to the gravekeeper’s chamber.

Pheiri didn’t need anybody to watch his cameras. Pheiri had every angle covered, everything under control. If a bunch of zombies shambled around a corner and tried to pop him in the flank with an anti-tank weapon, he would jerk out of the way or flash-start his shields or flatten them with a cannon round, all long before Victoria could shout a warning or press a button. The danger would be over and gone before she had time to clench.

But she didn’t like to leave the old boy all by himself. He deserved some company on watch.

It wasn’t just that, but Victoria tried not to think too hard about the other part.

Pheiri was alert to any sign of Necromancer activity, of course. His detection could not be fooled and his firepower could not be overcome. If this ‘Lykke’ bitch came back, she wouldn’t stand a chance. Pheiri was immune to Necromancer bullshit and his guns would reduce her to paste, no matter how many times she reconstituted herself from the walls — which was apparently a real possibility, according to Cyneswith. But the fireteam out beyond the hull had far less protection, only Kagami’s drones, Hafina’s immunity to Necromancer paralysis, and Elpida’s trump card, Howl.

Victoria dealt with anxiety the same as she had in life — watching the skies for incoming counter-battery fire.

Besides, she wanted to keep a personal eye on Shilu.

Pheiri had several screens dedicated to Shilu. He kept the ‘Necromancer’ painted with half a dozen weapon systems, highlighting her black metal body in reds and purples and night-vision greens, pinning her in the centre of targeting reticles and predicted blast radii. If Shilu so much as sneezed wrong, Pheiri could turn the entire front half of the chamber into molten slag.

But Shilu did not sneeze. Shilu did not twitch. Shilu did nothing. Shilu sat there crossed-legged, hands on her knees, eyes closed. She had done nothing but sit there since Elpida had asked her to wait.

“You keep her covered, boss,” Vicky muttered. “Keep those eyes peeled real good. Dammit, I wish she would move. Adjust a leg. Scratch her nose. Let out a fart.”

>y

Victoria tugged her armoured coat tighter around her shoulders. She wasn’t cold; the chill was all in her head, brought on by the hurricane, deepened by the incessant creaking and groaning of the tomb structure. She couldn’t see anything through Pheiri’s tiny steel-glass slit up in the top right of the control cockpit, but she glanced up anyway, then chuckled at herself. As if she could look outdoors and watch the rain.

At least they had plenty of spare clothes now, enough grey tomb-grown gear to go around a dozen times over, currently packed into Pheiri’s storage racks.

In fact, Vicky and her comrades now had more equipment than they knew what to do with — guns and body armour stacked up in the crew compartment, bullets galore in buckets and bins, weapon grease and grenades and boots and helmets, more than they could ever use, all from this one tomb’s armoury.

Vicky knew the task of sorting and stowing much of that equipment would fall on her shoulders; after all, she’d learned more about Pheiri’s compartments over the last few weeks than anybody else among her comrades, with the possible exception of Melyn. She’d end up more quartermaster than mechanic. Amina would help, she was always eager. Ooni too, she was a fast learner and all smiles these days. Maybe she could bully Pira into assisting, too. Kagami, of course, would not deign to lend her drones for the mere task of lugging firearms about.

And meanwhile? Hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait. Don’t dawdle, old soldier, hurry yourself up now — then wait for orders.

Vicky sighed.

Screens flickered and hummed in the electric gloom. Hurricane static hissed and buzzed against the far-away walls of the tomb. Vicky leaned back, her chair creaking again, an imitation of the black metal beneath the howling storm-winds.

She peered at the screen which showed Pheiri’s assessment of the storm — wind speeds and rainfall and the like — but none of the numbers looked any different to five minutes ago. She lifted a headset to one ear and reviewed the audio logs of sounds picked up inside the tomb — zombies scurrying about, a few snatches of unintelligible words, nothing important. She checked on Iriko again via the tight-beam, and received something like a snore in reply. That made her smile, so she checked on Hope as well, searching the skies with the comms array. But Thirteen Arcadia’s pseudo-satellite child was hiding well beyond the edge of the hurricane.

Vicky waited, watching the darkness, watching Shilu, listening to the storm. On watch with Pheiri. A good way to pass her unlife.

Elpida’s fireteam reached the chamber a little while later. Victoria saw the direct tight-beam uplink to Pheiri, chattering on the console before her — Elpida, letting Pheiri know that the figures about to round the corner were just her and Kagami and the rest, not some random zombies blundering through the tomb. Vicky watched as the little team scurried out of the corridors and hurried across the wide chamber, flanked and guarded by Kagami’s bulky new drones, all picked out in pale night-vision greens and ghostly whites. Elpida’s head was high, eyes flickering back and forth to make sure the others got aboard safely. Hafina carried Kagami. How very cosy for the Princess.

Vicky felt Pheiri’s crew access ramp descend with a thump, then watched the tiny low-light figures scurry upward and squeeze inside. A moment later the ramp closed with a matching clank of metal.

“Everyone’s back in one piece, right?” she asked out loud.

>y

“Good to know.”

Victoria did not leap out of her seat and hurry down the spinal corridor to welcome Kagami home. That would not earn Vicky a warm reception, let alone a coquettish hug and a chaste peck on the cheek. Getting a hug out of Kagami was like trying to take a wild cat for a walk. A kiss? They hadn’t kissed since that night Victoria had told Kagami the truth. If Kaga wanted to continue their earlier conversation, she would probably try later on, in her usual circuitous fashion. She’d doubtless call Victoria over to the lab in some roundabout way, or probably badger her about the storage space for the new drones, then insult her several times and stomp off again. Until then, Kaga would flare her spikes to keep Victoria off.

Hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait. Even when it came to Princesses from the Moon. Hurry up! And wait.

Besides, Pheiri still needed somebody to watch the cameras, and nobody had turned up to take over.

“Wait a sec, who won?” Vicky asked. “How long was that?”

>17:32

“ … ha! What does that count as then? Your win by two seconds?”

>draw

“You sure? You were right, Pheiri. They were closer to twenty minutes than fifteen. You sure you don’t want to claim the win?”

>y

“Well, have it your way. Mister gracious in victory.”

>y

Victoria leaned back again; the chair let out a satisfying creak of old metal. Perhaps she should putter about with some grease and scrap, see if she could shore up these seats a bit. Or perhaps she should turn back to the project laid out on the floor behind her. With the others safely back home, the knot in her stomach was loosening up. She could afford to spare attention for other tasks.

She ran her eyes across the exterior views one more time. Shilu, unmoving. The dark corridors of the tomb, shadowy and grey. Pheiri’s exterior hull, pitted by darkness and divots, bristling with guns and dim red warning lights. Serin, still perched up front, still watching Shilu. Vicky always had trouble talking to Serin, and enduring her weird mushroomy smell, but she still wished the woman would come inside.

Victoria sighed and turned in the seat. She could get back to the project now. This weapon wouldn’t finish maintaining itself—

A familiar figure stepped from Pheiri’s spinal corridor and into the cockpit — Kagami.

Or rather, Kagami floated into the cockpit with her socks a couple of inches off the floor, her back reclined just enough to make it clear that she was not walking. Two silver-grey drones hovered at her shoulders, doing the heavy lifting so beneath her lofty station, supporting her with an invisible gravity-field. Three more drones orbited her in a tight formation.

Vicky raised her eyebrows. “Hey you.”

Kagami looked rather rumpled inside her own armoured coat, too large for her slender body. Her long black hair was swept back as if she’d been raking her hands through it repeatedly. Her eyes were too wide with tension, still wired from the trip beyond the hull. Her usual imperious bearing was buckled beneath an invisible weight.

Kagami sighed and rolled her eyes. “‘Hey you’?” she echoed. “What kind of welcome is that? I’ve just spent the last hour — or more! — traipsing through this insane death-trap machine, wondering when our glorious leader is going to demand that somebody shoot her in the head again. Is that all you can manage? ‘Hey you’?”

Victoria sighed and smiled at the same time. “Welcome home, Moon Princess. Should I run you a bath?”

Kagami snorted and rolled her eyes again. “Mockery will get you nowhere.”

“Kaga, I’m glad you’re back safe. And stop doing that with your eyes, you’re gonna hurt yourself.”

“Doing what with my eyes?” Kagami squinted. “What are you talking about?”

“Rolling them. Yeah, that. Like that. Exactly that, what you just did right there.”

Kagami clenched her jaw. Victoria braced for the next stage of the process. She had learned through bitter experience that Kagami followed embarrassment with sharp-tongued rebuke. The hotter the embarrassment, the heavier the barrage of insults, until Kagami hit a buffer overflow and regressed back to calling everyone ‘dirt-eating primitives’. Victoria had been unable to resist their little exchange over the radio earlier, but here was the butcher’s bill coming due.

But then Kagami just said: “Come with me to the lab.”

Vicky blinked. “What?”

Kagami huffed. “I said, come with me to the lab. Are you having trouble with language now? Is our translation software breaking down? Because I am not going to learn pre-NorAm English. You’ll have to learn Luna, and your accent will be terrible.”

“Uh, no, I’m just surprised.” A smile crept across Vicky’s face. Was Kagami trying to be forward? Had the fear and separation of the expedition into the tomb made her want to go somewhere private together and cuddle? Victoria forced herself not to smile too hard; if Kagami was finally reaching out for interpersonal comfort, Vicky needed to take this seriously. “I’m flattered you want me alone, Kaga, but somebody needs to stay here and watch the screens, you know?”

“Come with me to the lab,” Kagami snapped.

Vicky opened her mouth to play along again, but then realised that Kagami was not flirting. She was furious and furtive.

“ … Kaga, what’s wrong? Everyone came back in one piece, right? Did something happen?”

“Come with me. To the lab. How many times am I going to have to repeat this?”

“Kagami—”

“Come with me to the lab.”

“Ka—”

Kagami shouted. “Come with me to the lab!”

Vicky spread her hands. “Why?”

“Just do it!”

“No!”

Victoria had not intended to shout back, but she did. Kagami flinched. Two of her drones jerked forward as if to protect her, but then quickly dipped back downward.

Vicky swallowed, then took a deep breath. She did not want to lose her temper with Kagami. She had promised herself she would not do so again, not since that terrible screaming match several weeks ago; she could barely recall the substance of that argument now, it all seemed very foggy in her memory. The argument had happened when everybody had been going mad with hunger without knowing it, overcome with a need to eat that crushed all other thought and made anger quick and sharp. When Elpida had gone out to hunt and brought back fresh meat, the irritable fog had lifted as if it had never been felt. Vicky never wanted to feel that again.

“Sorry,” she muttered. “Sorry, Kaga, I didn’t mean to snap, I just—”

“Why not?” Kagami said, softer but still irritated.

“Why not snap?”

“No,” Kagami sighed. “Why won’t you come with me?”

Victoria didn’t answer right away. Something was wrong with Kagami — more wrong than all the usual things which were wrong with Kagami. Was she embarrassed by the request for alone time with Vicky? Or was this an extension of the earlier jealousy, now taking some side-route that Victoria didn’t recognise? Or had something terrible happened out there in the tomb, something which nobody was telling her? Pheiri hadn’t picked up anything strange, and he would not keep silly secrets.

Vicky leaned sideways in her chair to peer around Kagami, into the jumble of systems and kinking corners which formed Pheiri’s spinal corridor. Nobody was lurking behind Kagami or blundering down through the passageway. The distant fury of the hurricane blotted out most small noises, but she would have heard the approach of another pair of feet, unless Amina was sneaking around.

“Nobody’s behind you,” Vicky said. “We’re totally alone right now. If you want to talk, we can talk right here.” She gestured at the screens which surrounded the comms console. “And I’m serious about being on duty. Unless this is an emergency, somebody needs to stay here and watch. Look, I’m happy to come with you if you call somebody to replace me. Ooni should be free. Go get her and I’ll come anywhere you want.”

Kagami sighed, began to roll her eyes, then stopped. “Victoria, I think Pheiri is perfectly capable of watching the inside of his own eyeballs.”

“Yeah, sure,” Vicky said. “But I’m on duty. Come on, you can sit down right here. You wanna talk?”

“Not particularly.”

Victoria swallowed a sigh. Kagami pursed her lips harder and harder, then—

“Fine!” she spat. “Fine. Fine. We’re going to do it like this? Fine.”

Kagami floated closer, but did not take a seat. Instead she reclined against the invisible support of her drones, one on either side of her back, until she assumed a sitting position in mid-air.

“Wow,” Vicky said.

Kaga scowled. “What?”

“Nothing, nothing. Just you, sitting on a throne of thin air.”

Kagami huffed again and cast her eyes around the inside of the control cockpit, squinting at the views of Pheiri’s exterior on the displays. Her eyes paused on Shilu briefly, then carried on down to the comms console.

“Is this what you’ve been doing the whole time?” she asked. “Sitting here and watching the cameras?”

“Somebody’s gotta do it. It’s not that different to your drones, you know?”

Kagami sighed. She closed her eyes briefly. Victoria would have assumed she was counting to ten, but Victoria knew full well Kagami never attempted to control her anger.

“I’m not trying to be insulting,” Kagami said. “And no, actually, as I just explained, this is entirely unnecessary. Nobody has ‘gotta do it’. You’re not earning karma or good girl points or washing away your sins by sitting on watch when Pheiri is doing it anyway. This is self-flagellation, Victoria. I had hoped you were less primitive than this.”

Vicky laughed and shook her head. “Bullshit. I like helping. I like doing this. It feels good.”

“Yes, yes. Whatever.” Kagami glanced around the cockpit again, into the electric shadows and the distant rumble of the storm beyond. A particularly loud creaking sound reverberated through the black metal of the tomb. Kagami attempted to suppress a shudder, but she didn’t do a very good job of it.

After a moment, Vicky said: “How are the others?”

“Fine.”

“As in, did the return journey—”

“It was fine.”

Vicky waited a beat. “Kaga—”

“Hafina is stripping off her armour. Atyle went to stare at the wounded newbie again, which is creepy and weird and I hate it. Ilyusha is probably gnawing on a leg bone. Elpida is … busy.”

“Thank you,” Vicky said. “That’s all I was asking for. Did you look in on the newbies at all? I haven’t had a chance for a while now.”

“Mm,” Kagami grunted. She didn’t meet Vicky’s eyes, but this subject finally drew some of her poison. Her voice softened. “Eseld’s still mute, won’t respond to anything. She’s eaten a few mouthfuls of meat though. Sky’s unconscious — in the ‘good way’, as Melyn put it. Cyneswith stares at everybody like we’ve all stepped from the pages of a fantasy sim. Which I do not like. She called me ‘My Lady’.”

“Yeeeeeah,” Vicky said. “She’s gonna struggle. I’ve tried to talk to her too, but she’s pretty wilful about her world-view, if you know what I mean.”

“Mm.”

Hurricane static settled into the cockpit — sheets of distant rain, the drum of hailstones on metal, the howling of the wind and the creaking of the tomb. Vicky looked at the exterior screens again, taking note of Shilu’s position and checking the entrances to the chamber. Kagami sighed, long and low. Vicky closed her eyes for a moment. This was almost nice, just sitting here in the quiet alongside Kagami, secure together inside Pheiri while the wind and the rain howled on and on outdoors. Perhaps she really should ask Ooni to come take over on watch. Victoria would very much like to snuggle down in Kagami’s lab together, maybe take a nap.

“At least that weird roaring noise has stopped,” she muttered. “Stopped about the time you started on your way back to Pheiri. Maybe whatever was making it just wandered off. Here’s to hoping.”

“Mmhmm,” Kagami grunted.

“I saw a hurricane once before,” Vicky went on. “Back in life, I mean. The remains of one, I guess. South of New York a ways. We were pitched up in—”

“What’s that?” Kagami said, voice peaking with disdain.

Vicky opened her eyes and looked round.

Kagami was pointing at the floor behind Vicky’s chair, where the disassembled weapon was laid out on the metal. Black tubes and boxes lay separated, unrecognisable as parts of their combined form.

“Ah, that’s my little treat, to myself. I was in the middle of checking all the parts.” Vicky cracked a grin. “Wanna see?”

“See what?”

Vicky turned her seat around and bent down. She picked up the bulky receiver first, then slotted the long, ridged barrel into place, followed by the trigger mechanism, rear grip, and top-mounted carrying handle. She slapped the three parts of the drum-mag back together and clicked it home underneath. She folded out the stock and slid the forward grip into position. Then she finally lifted the optical sight and targeting computer, laid them into the armoured slot in the forward part of the receiver, and locked them in place.

She hefted the weapon, about fifteen pounds of lightweight alloys and hardened polymers, as thick as her arm and over three feet long.

She struck a pose. “Well? What do you think? Does it suit me?”

Kagami shrugged. “My knowledge of primitive weaponry is rather limited.”

“Huh!” Victoria laughed. “Primitive weaponry? Moon Princess, I could knock one of your drones out mid-flight with this baby, trust me on that.”

Kagami rolled her eyes. “No, you could not. Don’t exaggerate. What is it, ECM of some kind?”

“AGL.”

Kagami shrugged again.

“Automatic grenade launcher.”

Kagami’s eyes widened beneath the creases of a concerned frown. “That’s a joke.”

“Nope, no joke. Genuine article. I really could probably knock out one of your drones mid-flight, given enough range and a few seconds to get a reading with the sights. I could pop a round through a six-inch bunker slit in half a second, that’s also not a joke. Hey, come on, don’t look at me like that. This is my one personal claim from the armoury haul.”

Kagami hissed, “And you’ve brought it in here, inside Pheiri, into the cockpit?!”

“ … Kaga, it’s not loaded.”

Kagami threw up both hands. “Fine, fine—”

“If you don’t trust me with anything else, you can damn well trust me with ammunition and explosive safety. The rounds are stored in the armoured pocket on Pheiri’s rear, they’re not even inside his hull. I’m not stupid, thank you.”

“Fine! Fine. Alright!” Kagami paused to huff. “Luna’s soil, Victoria. When are you ever going to have a need for that?”

“Hey, it’s got a perfectly legitimate combat use. If we ever need to dig some zombies out of a trench or blast apart some cover, I’ve got us sorted.”

“We have Pheiri’s guns for that!” Kagami jabbed a finger at the AGL. “That thing is a fetish, nothing more. Admit it.”

“Maybe.” Vicky sighed. She patted the chunky barrel. “It’s the closest thing I’m ever gonna get to firing an artillery piece ever again, that’s for sure.”

Kagami opened her mouth, then closed it again. She sighed through her nose.

Victoria went on: “Honestly, hey, I’m surprised you didn’t recognise this.” She laid the AGL across her thighs, then detached the sight. She pressed one eye to the rubber socket and pointed the detached optical at Kagami’s scowl. The on-board targeting computer attempted to calculate trajectory and firing arc for the tip of Kagami’s neat little nose.

After a few moments it gave up and threw an error: DANGER CLOSE DO NOT FIRE.

Kagami squinted, face framed in miniature inside the sight. “What? What are you going on about now?”

“AGL,” Victoria said. “You used to command troops down on the surface, right? This stuff is like, standard equipment for any decently heavy infantry formation.” She lowered the sight again and looked down at the ridged barrel of the grenade launcher. “I don’t mean this exact model or anything. Hell, I don’t recognise this one either, probably comes from hundreds or thousands of years after either of us. Looks kinda like a QLZ, I guess, but much lighter. Alloys are less dense. More polymer parts. Future science, I guess. The rounds felt pretty light too, but I’m not gonna test them inside the tomb. Anyway, I mean the general principle. Crew-served weapons in a heavy infantry formation. Squad-level organic firepower, all that. It’s no artillery regiment, but … Kaga?”

Kagami was just staring, blank-faced and unimpressed. “My surface agents were generally armed with more advanced systems.”

Vicky laughed. “More advanced systems,” she echoed with a smile. “Come on, you can’t beat a good explosion. It’s not quite the same as an artillery barrage, but holding one of these and doing it yourself, it feels great. Here.” She sat up straight and raised the weapon to her shoulder, angling it upward as if about to fire, trying to keep the smirk off her face. “Where I came from, they used to say that firing one of these is a religious experience.”

Kagami frowned, incredulous. “What? Don’t talk nonsense.”

“Yeah, serious.” Vicky struggled to keep a straight face. “First you hear budda-budda-budda.” She jerked the grenade launcher as if firing. “Then, you see the light.”

Kagami rolled her eyes with a great and terrible huff. Victoria started laughing.

“That was atrocious,” Kagami said.

“Come on, Kaga! You gotta admit, that was a good one. I had you going there for a sec. The joke doesn’t quite work the same though, ‘cos the ones we had were belt-fed. Old Empire shit. They really did make a sound like that, budda-budda-budda. Scary if you’re on the receiving end.”

Kagami threw up both hands. “Your people weren’t Buddhists! It’s a shit joke!”

Victoria shrugged. “I knew a few Buddhists in the GLR. Don’t be such a closed-minded Lunarian, hey. You had Buddhists on the moon?”

“That gun is absurd and you have no need for it.”

Victoria lowered the launcher again. “I wish you’d go armed, Kaga. When you go out, beyond the hull, I mean. It’s not like we’re short on guns now. Take a pistol, a sidearm, anything. Just shove it in a pocket and forget about it unless you need it. Please?”

Kagami frowned, then gestured at one of her drones, hovering a couple of feet from her head. “I don’t need guns.”

“Take one anyway? For me?”

“Why?”

Victoria stared. Kagami stared back, then swallowed and looked away. Was that a blush Victoria detected in those cheeks? Maybe, but not quite. Kagami was beautiful when she blushed, shaded by that long black hair, like she really did belong on a throne on the Moon.

“Because,” Victoria said quietly, “I don’t want you to be alone and afraid if your drones fail. Because you and I sleep together half the time and I still don’t know what that means. Take a gun with you, Kaga. At least when I’m not with you.”

Kagami said nothing for a long moment, staring off at the flickering screens of the control cockpit. Then: “Will you come with me to the lab?”

“Like I said, if you get a replacement for me. Why? What for? You can just tell me, you know. Nothing to be embarrassed about.”

Kagami looked around at last. “Elpida wants to talk to both of us.”

Vicky sat up straighter. “What? Is that what all this was about? Kaga, why didn’t you say something? Is she waiting for me?”

Kagami snorted. Her eyes tightened. Her throat bobbed. “Ahhhhh, yes. There we go. When it was just me making a request, oh no, no no no. You had excuses and counter-arguments. You were too busy watching the screens to come with me. You have to get a replacement for a job which doesn’t even need doing. But when Elpida says jump, you ask how high. When Elpida says sit, you sit. Bark like a dog. Roll over. Play dead.”

“Kaga—”

“Shut up.”

Vicky shut up. Kagami shut up too, staring across the cockpit again, avoiding Vicky’s eyes. Electric gloom flickered on her burning cheeks, the reflection of Pheiri’s screens washing out her blush.

“Kaga,” Vicky started slowly, wary of another detonation. “I don’t sleep with Elpida. I don’t climb into her bunk. I don’t worry about her when she’s beyond the hull. I don’t—” Vicky had to take a breath, to sort truth from lie. “I admire her, yes. I respect her, because she’s our Commander, because she’s led us through this insane afterlife and hasn’t yet led us astray. We’re all still here, still alive, whatever that means when we’re all zombies, and that is down to her. And you said it yourself, we need to talk to her, because something is wrong with her lately. Something has been wrong with her for weeks and now she’s found this Eseld girl. That would be enough to fuck anybody up. She’s a super soldier, but I know she’s not invincible. I’ve seen her cry. So yes, I care, I worry, because she is our Commander, and my friend. But you’ve got nothing to be jealous of. Just—”

Kagami stood up — righted by her drones. She floated away, heading for Pheiri’s spinal corridor.

“Kaga, hey—”

“Maybe you’re the one who should be jealous, Victoria!” she spat back. “Fine, I’ll go get Ooni, or some other ex-fascist moron to sit in your place, so you and I and Elpida can talk all we like about how paranoid and cynical I am!”

Kagami paused by the corridor entrance, staring back, daring Vicky to answer.

Vicky said: “Kaga, where the hell is this coming from?”

Kagami stared for a moment — then three of her drones shot forward.

Victoria flinched, jerking in her seat, making the metal creak. The speed of the drones gave her no time to react. If her AGL had been loaded, she would not have been able to blast one drone out of the air, let alone three. She did not even have time to fully form the thought — that Kagami had finally lost her mind to green-eyed jealousy and the toxins of a superiority complex.

That thought only solidified a moment later, when the three drones hung in a rough triangle behind her, mirrored by three drones behind Kagami.

A gentle static crackle passed through the air; Vicky tasted a little blood. The sound of the storm grew faint, blocked by Kagami’s electromagnetic forcefield.

Vicky blinked in shock; this was not the assault she had expected, but sudden seclusion. Total privacy within this prism which held only the two of them. Even Pheiri could not listen through those invisible walls.

“Kaga, what—”

“You and I need to discuss treachery, Victoria,” Kagami snapped. “And I’m not talking about yours. You, I trust. Completely.”

The drones zipped back toward Kagami. The EM privacy field collapsed with a soft crackle. The sound of the storm rushed back, the tomb walls creaking and groaning far beyond Pheiri’s hull.

Vicky started to rise. “Hey, Kaga, woah, wait, what—”

“Keep your mouth shut,” Kagami said. She turned away and floated into the corridor. “I’ll go fetch somebody else to take over your ‘duty’. Then you come to the lab, like a good girl. Woof woof.”

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Kagami, if you’re trying to be sneaky and conspiratorial with your on-again off-again cross-cultural zombie lesbian situationship, calling her a dog is probably not the best way to achieve it. I dunno, unless she’s into that, but you should probably ask her first? But hey, far be it from me to criticize! Let’s see how this strategy pans out, shall we?

Meanwhile, Kagami does seem to actually be up to something. Hm. Perhaps Elpida put her cynicism and paranoia to good use after all …

Ahem! Well! Arc 12 continues apace! I think we really are going for a longer, chunkier, more brooding arc this time, dear readers. There’s so much wreckage through which to sort, so many strange threads on which to pull. Though perhaps the ‘brooding’ will only sustain itself as long as nobody starts letting off guns and getting in a fight. Which might be inevitable. We’ll see.

If you want more Necroepilogos right away, or you would like to support the story, please consider subscribing to the Patreon:

Patreon link! It’s here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 5k words. Behind the scenes I am still very much trying to build up some kind of a backlog of chapters, and when I do, I’ll be sharing more chapters ahead with patrons. I hope!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which heps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps!

And, as always, thank you for reading my little story! Thank you so much, dear readers; I couldn’t do any of this without all of you. Elpida and the others would have nobody to watch them! So, thank you! We continue to sink, deeper and deeper into the mysteries of the tomb, beneath the falling ceiling of the hurricane outdoors, with horrible things scuttling around in the shadows at our ankles. Until next chapter! Seeya then!

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Izumi Kagami — Seventeenth Daughter of the Moon, Logician Supreme, Princess and Heroine, Mistress and Mother, the Hub of a Wheel who had once sat atop the sphere of Earth, cradled and beloved by the blessed silver soil of holy Luna beyond the sky, the will and brain and heart of the Moon, no matter the mockery and mediocrity of her father’s court, the one true heir to the throne of Luna, who alone could command the voice of the people, who alone understood the truth of Luna’s privilege and power, who alone could see further than the end of her own upturned nose, blah blah blah, so on and so on, not that her titles and honours and merits made a gnat’s fart of difference anymore — kept her eyes screwed tightly shut, so that she did not vomit down herself.

If Kagami opened her eyes, she would be quickly overwhelmed by the visual cacophony of drone-feeds and data-streams. She would lose her concentration. Vertigo and nausea would take hold. The stew of fresh meat churning in her belly would find a way out of her stomach, up through her throat, and down into her lap.

She’d already lost enough dignity for one day; besides, there was precious little to see with the naked eye.

Not that acting as the nerve centre for a dozen additional drones was any challenge to her. Far from it! Sheer numbers were child’s play — literally, she had been running drone-swarms beyond Luna’s shallow gravity well since she was six years old. In her prime she had orchestrated fleets in the thousands, and supervised hundreds of wire-slaved surface agents at once, puppeting all those cyborg brains without breaking a sweat. True, she had achieved those feats with the assistance of her AI daughters, the cushion of her sensory suspension tank, and the support of the colossal data processing power of Luna’s Defence Intelligence Network. But even reduced as she was — to a snivelling scrap of undead meat, a nanomachine animal wrapped in an armoured coat — Kagami’s skills were as sharp as ever. She was in her element, or at least as close to it as she could hope to attain, down there in the dirt, surrounded by zombies and monsters and cyborg cannibals.

Kagami almost laughed; was she not also a cyborg cannibal now? She could hardly deny that charge, not with her guts happily digesting almost two pounds of fresh meat, her share of the kill, her portion of the bloody harvest from down in the gravekeeper’s chamber.

But she didn’t laugh. She needed to concentrate, or she would vomit.

Kagami focused on the single drone-feed piped directly into her visual cortex.

She nosed the scout-drone forward a final few inches, pushing beyond the shelter of the shattered window in the side of the tomb. The glass was almost three feet thick; huge chunks of it lay scattered in the stony chamber behind the drone, peppered with the buckshot of massive hailstones, half-sunk in pools of greasy, gritty, greyish rainwater. This was undoubtedly the window Iriko had used as an ingress point; the wind and water of the storm had washed away any visual evidence of Iriko’s usual slime-trail, but the drone’s sensor suite picked up familiar biochemical traces. The trail itself resumed about twenty feet up the corridor, deeper than the rain could reach.

Iriko’s slime trail had not been easy to locate. The hurricane had plunged the tomb into premature night, rendering the visible light spectrum almost useless. Kagami navigated the drone mostly by infra-red and laser pulses, limiting any use of the on-board lights. She did not wish to attract undue attention.

Kagami edged the drone as far forward as she dared, just beyond the shattered boundary of the window. The drone’s shields flickered and flared. Bright blue flashes blossomed in the corners of the visual feed, illuminating a few inches of the tomb’s black metal surface to the left and the right. The shields held back the whipping wind, turned away the pounding hail, and formed an umbrella of murky rain.

Kagami hissed between clenched teeth. The light was no better outdoors. She couldn’t see shit out there.

This drone was not one of Kagami’s six silver-grey oblongs, her little miracles with their powerful gravitic engines; she would never have agreed to risk one of those six in the storm. This expendable scout was a bulkier model, about the size of her thigh. It was equipped with only basic gravitics for self-propulsion, armoured like a bristling hog in steel and polymer, and outfitted with a robust suite of sensory equipment — sniffers and probes and gauges and meters. The drone was physically anchored to the rear of the room via a trio of mechanical tentacles, with spikes rammed into the stonework to hold it fast against the grip of the hurricane. It was sturdy, strong, and fast enough to escape determined pursuit, as any good scout should be. Unfortunately it was also astoundingly stupid, compared with even Luna’s most basic of semi-autonomous drones. The thing was horribly verbose, eager to flood Kagami’s visual field with oh-so-helpful data at the lightest touch, as if quivering to be of use. Kagami had spent almost fifteen minutes wrestling with the audio feeds alone, so that the hellish thunder and rumble of the storm would not be rammed directly into her brain stem.

Most of the other drones from the new tomb armoury were little better. None of them were as smart or as capable as her original six, nor equipped with the high-end gravitics she had come to take for granted. But they had proven pliant and made themselves easy enough to adopt. While Elpida and Vicky and the rest of the zombies had gone all dewy-eyed over guns and body armour, Kagami had crash-slaved as many drones as she could manage. She had concentrated on the most heavily-armed combat models, charging them from Pheiri’s reactor, working as fast as she could in the three scant hours since the fight in the gravekeeper’s chamber.

Another two dozen new drones sat piled up inside Pheiri, for later investigation at Kagami’s leisure. She relished that prospect as a welcome break from the meat-plant project, but the pleasure — and the rest! — was sadly deferred, all for this absurd little errand which Elpida insisted was so important.

Kagami would rather be hunkered down inside Pheiri, waiting out the madness beyond the tomb.

She had a dozen heavy combat drones spread out in a mobile, three-dimensional, overlapping cordon, pointed down pitch-dark hallways and squeezed into tight little tunnels, watching blind corners with their sensors and sweeping slow scanner-beaks over the ends of long corridors. Guard dogs in a ring around this risky position deep in the tomb, an early warning system alert to any zombies who might decide to sneak up on Elpida’s precious rump.

Kagami had the visual feeds minimized for now; the drones would alert her if they detected anything relevant, anything moving, or anything anomalous.

Kagami checked the scout-drone’s power draw; at this position it could endure the edge of the hurricane for perhaps seventeen full minutes. More than long enough. She took some preliminary measurements of adjacent wind speed; six inches further forward, the drone’s shields would last only thirty seconds, and the physical tentacle-anchors would likely snap under the strain.

Kagami sighed; she didn’t care that the others could hear her. She had voiced her objections to this expedition strongly enough already. Elpida knew exactly what Kagami thought of this pointless risk.

“We need to invent a new word,” she muttered out loud. “Something beyond ‘hurricane’.”

“God-storm,” Atyle replied from somewhere up ahead. Kagami felt queasy. The paleo had a point.

Kagami extended the necessary sensors outward from the scout-drone, peering out into the storm-winds with radar and infra-red, taking measurements of the wind speed, trying to penetrate the darkness and the precipitation to see anything, anything at all, any hint that the world still existed beyond the tomb.

Hail and rain formed a wall of matter, whipped into a churning vortex. The drone may as well have been blind.

She took audio samples first and ran the results through the drone’s on-board processing, trying to pick out individual sounds. But the drumming of the hailstones and the static of the raindrops told her nothing useful, except that the mysterious black metal of the tomb was tanking the storm’s punishment with surprising tenacity. Kagami had already tried to analyse the metal; she had assumed it was just steel, but the stuff defied her comprehension — a fact she was unwilling to admit to the others, not yet. The metal did not block transmissions, but it was both hyper-dense and extremely flexible. Some nanomachine nonsense, Kagami was certain, but she couldn’t look at the molecular structure to confirm any hypotheses. The tomb was making the most awful din in the storm — creaking and groaning like the boards of an ancient sailing ship in a nautical-themed sim — but it was holding together all the same. Kagami did not need the drone to pick out those noises, she could hear well enough with her own ears. The sounds made her palms sweat and her buttocks tense up and—

Audio spiked — a distant roar, louder even than the impossible hurricane. High-pitched, inhuman, lost in the labyrinth of whirling wind.

The drone picked that up loud and clear. So did Kagami’s ears.

Elpida said: “Kaga?”

“Shut up.”

“You flinched. Are you alright?”

“I know I fucking flinched!” Kagami spat. She kept her eyes screwed up. Her grip tightened on her auspex visor, cradled in her lap. “Shut up, Commander! Let me concentrate or I’m going to lose the drone and vomit all over myself! Shut up!”

Elpida fell silent. Kagami took a deep breath and tried not to shiver.

She concentrated on the drone. She took the necessary readings.

Eight hundred ninety nine … nine hundred … nine hundred … eight hundred ninety eight … gust to nine-oh-five … nine hundred … eight nine nine … nine hundred …

When she had enough data to be certain, Kagami retracted the drone’s sensors out of the storm. She reeled the drone backward on the anchor-tentacles, retreating by about six inches, but then she paused. She examined the rim of wall just beyond the broken window. She peered upward with low-powered radar and magnifying cameras, to confirm her suspicions. A shutter for the broken window lay concealed in a slot above the glass. It was made of the same black metal as the rest of the tomb’s exterior. Kagami reached upward with the drone’s whip-thin mechanical arms and slipped tiny tendrils into the gap. She gripped the shutter and pulled, but it wouldn’t budge.

A deeper examination with the drone’s sensors revealed an outcrop of mechanisms buried in the wall, spider-webbing away deep into the metal bones of the structure.

Kagami sighed, sharp and fed up. More blasted machinery! More hidden circuits! Every wall and nook and floor in this place was lousy with secret innards.

She gave up on the shutter and withdrew the drone. She sent it on a return course back to safety, followed by the two combat models she’d used to guard the flanks. Within a few moments all three were folded back within the security cordon, the angles of her sphere of drones tightened, possible contact surfaces minimised.

Kagami tried to relax, let her stomach settle, then opened her eyes.

A dozen drone-feeds crowded her peripheral vision — low-light, infra-red, and heat-map views of a dozen different corridors, covering every possible angle of approach to this absurd little away-team. Kagami felt like she had become a surface agent herself, down in the dark and the muck, wormed into some forgotten warren full of borged-up monsters and unknown threats. The left side of her field of vision scrolled with data input from her six gravitic drones; she kept those within a few feet of her real body — three orbiting her head in a slow grey halo, three further out in a loose triangle. Their sensors penetrated the walls and floors and ceilings, in case something unexpected tried to creep up on her or blow through the walls or extrude itself from the raw matter of the nanomachine ecosystem.

Beyond the feeds plugged into her visual cortex there was little to see. The hallway was nothing special, just a spot Elpida had chosen as a good place to stop. All was choked with night-like darkness. The hurricane had drowned even the faintest hint of the dead sun outdoors.

Kagami did not want to be here — thirty minutes’ journey from the safety of Pheiri’s armour, high up inside the obvious trap of the tomb pyramid, tucked away in a dark and dingy corridor straight out of a bad horror sim. Not to mention that she was accompanied by a trio of maniacs. To make matters worse, she was only about twenty five feet away from Iriko, separated from the gigantic iridescent blob-monster by nothing but a wide doorway and a stretch of open floor. Talking to Iriko over the radio was one thing, but Kagami was not eager to expose her flesh to Iriko’s sheer inexhaustible hunger.

At least Kagami didn’t have to use her horrible bionic legs; she was comfortably cradled in three of Hafina’s very strong and sturdy arms. The combat android was the only sensible person in the entire group, and Kagami was glad for her protection. Androids and drones were so wonderfully uncomplicated.

Atyle — maniac number one — was standing about fifteen feet ahead of everybody else, probably so she could feel the tongues of the storm on her naked chest, or some other equally primitive nonsense. This corridor was two floors and one staircase upward from the broken window, but the faint lapping and rolling of the storm could still be felt in the currents of the air.

Maniac number two — Ilyusha — was crouched down at the heels of her Commander like a little monkey, dragging the tip of her tail across the wall, clacking her red claws against the floor. Actually, now that Kagami looked at her properly, Ilyusha seemed agitated and restless behind her ballistic shield. She kept making her shotgun go click-click-click, quick little bionic fingers moving over the parts, checking them again and again.

Kagami allowed that Ilyusha was perhaps more sensible than she seemed. Good!

Maniac number three was staring right at Kagami. Unblinking purple lamps hovered in the darkness, framed by flushed brown skin, waiting for a response.

“ … what?” Kagami spat.

Elpida said: “You requested I stop talking while you concentrate. Have you finished?”

Kagami huffed. “Of course I’ve finished. My eyes are open and I haven’t voided my guts all over myself. You don’t have to stare like you’re trying to burn holes through me, Commander.”

Elpida nodded. She glanced away, over at Iriko, then down the corridor. “I’m just concerned about you, Kaga. We’re all tired and stretched thin. You have a veto on this operation, like everyone else. If you want to pull out, you just say so.”

Kagami rolled her eyes. “I’m perfectly capable, just get on with it.”

Ilyusha snorted, down by Elpida’s heels. “Tired as shit.”

“Illy?” Elpida said. “You good too?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ilyusha grumbled. “Let’s get this done. Done!”

“We’re all tired,” Elpida said. “Just a little longer, and then we’ll be finished. Back to Pheiri within the hour.”

Elpida wasn’t exaggerating. Between the rush for the tomb, the holding action at the gates, the mad dash for the gravekeeper’s chamber, the pair of insane Necromancers they had met, the fight with ‘Lykke’, the looting of the armoury, and now this entirely unnecessary probe beyond Pheiri’s support, they’d all been going for hours and hours without a proper break. Ilyusha — for all that she was a dangerously violent borged-up thug — was quite correct. Kagami was ‘tired as shit’.

Elpida said: “Kagami, did you take the readings?”

Kagami huffed again, then adjusted her position in Hafina’s arms. The combat android was unfailingly strong and sturdy and solid, but being carried in a static pose was still uncomfortable. Kagami muttered, “Hafina, you can put me down now, please. Keep one arm on my back for support, another beneath my legs. Yes, that’s it. Thank you. Stop there. Thank you.”

Once she was partially balanced on her own feet again, Kagami lifted her auspex visor and slipped it on over her head. The dark corridor lit up as the auspex offered her a dozen augmented options for night-vision and scanner context. She selected low-light enhancement, but that made Elpida look like a banshee, eyes a-glow, hair a sheet of ghostly white. Kagami killed the night-vision and lived with the darkness. She could still see in the dark anyway. She was a zombie, after all.

Elpida waited patiently.

“Yes,” Kagami said, “my direct readings agree with Pheiri’s assessment. The storm doesn’t seem to be rising above about nine hundred miles an hour, but it’s static, holding a position above the tomb. Which, for those of you who were raised in time periods and places without proper storms, is both impossible and stupid. Hooray for us, we have discovered an entirely new form of fucking bullshit.”

From up ahead, Atyle said: “Nothing is impossible for the Gods.”

Kagami clenched her teeth and bit back an insult.

Elpida nodded slowly. Her purple eyes floated in the gloom, reflecting the faint iridescence which glowed from Iriko in the adjoining room. White hair hung down the back of her armoured coat, still matted and bloodied in one patch of scalp where Lykke had grabbed her during the fist fight. Elpida had not taken time to rest or recover, beyond shedding the bulky carapace suit and allowing Melyn to slap a bandage around the bite wound in her right forearm. The Commander had focused on nothing but getting the rescued zombies inside Pheiri and securing the contents of the armoury.

Kagami understood well enough that Elpida was a gene-jacked super-soldier, even before being resurrected into her new nanomachine body. But she could not accept how Elpida was so full of energy, so bright-eyed, so alert, especially not after the fistfight with Lykke. Everyone else was exhausted. Even Ilyusha was on edge, and Atyle was clearly more wacked-out than usual, off with the fairies and far away. But Elpida? Our dear Commander? Walking on clouds, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, like she’d spent all night getting her brains fucked out. But this had nothing to do with sex, oh no. Elpida was elated because she’d finally gotten her redemption, at gunpoint.

The fury of the storm filled the brief silence, a great crashing of static haze upon the tomb, a deep drumming of fist-sized hailstones, a howling whip and whirl of wind around corners of black metal.

Another distant roar broke the hurricane’s steady beat — a high-pitched screech, lost beyond the wind.

Kagami bit her bottom lip to stop from flinching again. Ilyusha hissed between her teeth, then spat on the ground. Atyle just stared at nothing — reading the future in motes of dust, for all Kagami knew.

Elpida said: “Did you manage to take any readings of that? Did you see what’s making it?”

Kagami snorted. “I have no idea, Commander. Visibility is nil, indoors and out. Audio doesn’t match anything I can make sense of. And frankly, I don’t want to see whatever is making that sound, because I don’t want it to see me. I suggest we stay away from the windows.”

The mysterious roaring had started about three hours ago, while they’d all been busy looting the armoury and trying to pry Eseld’s jaws off Elpida’s radius. At first the calls had sounded more like buildings crashing through the impossibly strong hurricane winds, but by now it was unmistakably a voice, like the war-cry of some ancient beast striding through the storm.

Elpida said: “Any speculations?”

Kagami frowned. “What? What, Commander?”

“Speculations. Idle thoughts. Anything at all, doesn’t have to be backed up by data. I’m asking for your opinion, Kagami. What do you think is making that sound?”

Ilyusha hissed: “Giant monster. Fucking shit.”

Kagami stared at Elpida’s purple eyes; perhaps the Commander was going even more insane than before. Perhaps her miraculous redemption at Eseld’s hands had finally sent the Commander over the edge and falling toward stark raving madness. Kagami tried to hold Elpida’s gaze. It was not easy.

Eventually Kagami shrugged. “Maybe it’s the graveworm. Or perhaps Ilyusha here is correct, maybe it’s something that would normally stay away from a graveworm, taking advantage of the storm. How am I supposed to guess, Commander? Nothing should be able to survive nine hundred mile an hour winds! Whatever it is, I do not want to know, and I do not want it to know me.”

Elpida nodded. “Alright. Thank you, Kagami. Did you pick up any visuals out there? Any buildings, anything still standing? Anything where other revenants might be able to survive the storm?”

“No! How many times do I have to say this? Commander, I don’t know how to make this clear. Visibility is nothing. Nine hundred miles an hour is not survivable by anything short of underground bunkers and low-Jovian orbitals. And I doubt the nanomachine processes were disgorging structures that well armoured.”

Ilyusha tapped the wall with the tip of her tail. “‘Cept this!”

Kagami sighed and cleared her throat. “Yes, except the tomb. The material this pyramid is made from defies explanation. The wind should have ripped it apart by now, or at least pulled off big chunks of it. But it all seems intact. Nothing is denting it, either.”

Elpida nodded. “You think the tomb can survive the hurricane?”

Kagami shrugged. “The main structure, the walls, the floors, everything made from the black metal itself? Certainly. But the innards? That window down there is shattered, letting in the wind and the rain. The wind is ripping at the insides, the rock and the regular metal, the plastics, all that. The wind is getting in and doing damage, slowly but surely.”

“Did you find the shutter?”

“Yes, yes,” Kagami huffed. “There’s a shutter, of course I was correct about that. This place is designed to be sealed up, though for what purpose I cannot imagine. Storms like this cannot be a regular occurrence.”

“And?” Elpida prompted. “Did you get it shut?”

Kagami huffed harder. “No, I can’t close it. The wind is going to continue to eat away at the stone and masonry.”

Elpida raised her eyebrows. “Do you need to use more than one drone? Better gravitics?”

“A hundred drones would not suffice, no. The shutter is wired up to some kind of internal mechanism, like everything else in this place. Commander, everywhere I look there’s more machinery behind these walls. This whole structure is lousy with buried systems, network infrastructure, access points, the works.” Kagami gestured to the wall of dark stone to her left, lips curling with disgust. “This? This dead exterior, this is a lie. This thing, we keep calling it a tomb, but it’s not. It’s a giant dormant machine. And I have no idea what it does. Except the bit that resurrects zombies, I suppose.”

Elpida nodded. “Right, Pheiri agrees with that too. Kagami, if you plugged your wrist-uplink into one of the tomb’s access points, would you be able to close that shutter?”

Kagami snorted, then saw the serious look on Elpida’s face. “Why? Are you planning to set up camp here?”

Elpida said, “If we’re going to be stuck in here for a while, we need to seal the structure. Yes or no, Kagami. Talk to me.”

Kagami resisted the urge to gulp. She raised her chin. “I can build very robust firewalls, but if I’m plugging myself into the tomb, I want an entire server bank of fail safes. Especially with the gravekeeper downstairs. That thing would turn my mind inside out, and I’m not afraid to admit it. We’d have more luck asking that to close the windows for us.”

“Understood. If—”

“And even if I was willing, I sure as fuck would not be doing it up here, away from Pheiri, exposed. If you want me to try, we need to be under the protection of his guns, not relying on me for a fucking drone cordon.”

“Kaga—”

“Commander,” she snapped, temper finally fraying beyond relief. “What are we doing up here?”

“Checking on the storm with our own eyes.” She nodded to the right. “And making sure Iriko is okay. I know you don’t like this, Kagami, but if you feel unsafe, we can pull the plug. The moment you feel your drone cordon is not enough, we move. Has that moment arrived?”

Kagami ground her teeth. “No.”

“Good. Thank you, Kagami. Now, how close can we get to that smashed window before the wind becomes dangerous? Can we get within visual range, on foot?”

Kagami squinted. “What? Commander, I’m not getting any closer to that storm.”

“Not you, Kaga. Me,” Elpida said. “I want to see the storm with my naked eyes.” She gestured behind her. “Atyle too.”

“You cannot be serious.”

“Kaga, please. How close can we get?”

“Oh, fine!” Kagami spat. “Yes, you can probably get visual without being tossed about like a fucking rag doll. Down the stairwell and ten feet to the left. That should give you a nice enough view. Enjoy the sights, Commander! Don’t let the wind pluck out your eyeballs!”

“Thank you—”

“Wait!” Kagami snapped. “Wait a second.” She took a deep breath and tried to calm down. Perhaps she would get more sense out of the other one. “I want to talk to Howl, please. Can you spare a moment for that, before you go stick your arse into the wind?”

Elpida blinked; a toothy grin twisted her face in a new direction. Kagami tried not to flinch away from the instant transformation.

“I’m always here, Moon girl,” Howl purred. “What’s up?”

“Howl,” Kagami said. This was better. Howl was at least sane. “Do you agree with Elpida putting herself in danger like this? You agree with this nonsense?”

“Sure do,” Howl purred. “I wanna get a look at this sky-fucker for myself. If this thing’s tryin’ to murder us, I gotta stare it down. Don’t sweat, Moon girl. We’ll be right back. Ten minutes, that’s all.” She winked and made a kissy face. “I’ll miss you too.”

Kagami crossed her arms over her chest. “Fine. But make sure she doesn’t throw herself out of the window.”

Howl cocked her head — Elpida’s head — and narrowed her eyes. “Why would she do that?”

Kagami snorted. “Am I the only one who’s noticed the death wish lately?”

Down at Elpida’s heels, Ilyusha let out an uncomfortable grumble; her red-tipped tail lashed at the air.

“See?” Kagami grunted. “I’m not the only one.”

Howl grinned. “Whatever. Nobody’s jumping out of nothing.”

Elpida blinked again, back in control; Howl’s expression vanished.

“Five minutes,” Elpida said. “Illy, Atyle, you’re with me. Hafina, stick here and guard Kaga.” Elpida tapped her own headset. “Kagami, you spot anything moving—”

“I’ll scream and scream until my head falls off, yes. Get on with it, go on. Off you go. Don’t get brained by a hailstone.”

The trio departed, heading for the stairwell, off to stare into a storm which would flay the flesh from their skulls if they peered too far into the whirling abyss. Elpida went first, submachine gun covering the corner. Atyle strolled as if beneath the sun, unarmed once again. Ilyusha went last, guarding the rear, slinking off behind her ballistic shield. She shot an uncomfortable wink back at Kagami, then stepped out of sight, tail whipping behind.

Pointless. They were still inside Kagami’s drone cordon. She could protect them much better than their own guns.

Kagami leaned back into the support of Hafina’s arms. She tried to relax.

The storm raged on beyond the walls of the tomb, crashing and howling, roaring and hissing, drumming with hailstones like cannonballs, turning the air itself into a void of death. The black metal of the tomb creaked and groaned incessantly. Kagami hated that. Despite her readings and measurements and the data she had collected, she was struck with an irrational and irritating terror. Would the whole tomb burst asunder and expose her to the raw fury of the storm? What if the roof peeled away, layer by layer, forcing them all down underground? What if the whole structure collapsed atop her head? Even her gravitic drones could not endure that.

Kagami had never been beneath a storm before.

She had watched countless hurricanes from up in orbit, of course, tracked them across the Atlantic Ocean and observed all the details as they slammed into the southern coasts and vast seawalls of NorAm, assaulting the fortress-like concrete bulwarks which kept those coastal cities from death by drowning. She’d experienced a few via wire-slaved surface agents — nothing much to note, really, as her attention had always been on the missions and the tasks, too busy to mind the weather. She had weathered plenty of storms inside sims, too; big dark spooky storms were a favourite in many genres. She’d passed the night inside more than one simulated haunted house, while a picturesque thunderstorm had crackled and flashed beyond the creaking walls.

But never with her physical body. Never with the shaking and the quivering. Never with the crash and roar and groan about her own ears, unable to shut it all out or exit the simulation.

She wasn’t afraid of the storm, she told herself. She wasn’t afraid of the storm.

Kagami cast a wary glance at Iriko’s iridescent bulk through the connecting doorway. The giant blob was sleeping, or at least resting, exhausted by her ordeal chasing Lykke. Kagami watched for a moment, making sure that Iriko wasn’t about to start galumphing toward her. Then she cleared her throat and glanced up at Hafina’s dark helmet instead.

“Sometimes I think you and I are the only sane ones here,” she said.

Hafina looked down at Kagami — or at least angled her helmet downward, blank and eyeless — but said nothing. Kagami looked away. The noise of the storm and the creaking of the tomb rushed back to flood the silence.

Kagami cycled through the drone-feeds from her outer cordon, staring down dark corridors inside the blank metal innards of the tomb. At least two hundred revenants had stampeded into the safety of the pyramid after Pheiri had ended his blockade of the entrance; there was a lot of room in here, more than enough for several hundred zombies to keep well out of each other’s way, but Kagami wasn’t taking any chances. She had detected some furtive movement on their way up here, the occasional echo of a shout or a distant voice, the bang of a door or the stomping of feet. But no gunshots or screams. The godlike power of the hurricane had forced a brief truce among the cannibals and cyborgs.

The storm howled on and on and on. Kagami’s breath clogged up her throat. Her drones had nothing to say.

Eventually Kagami turned her attention back to Iriko. She flickered through the visual inputs on her auspex visor, then sent one of her six grav-drones into the adjoining room for a closer look. She spent a few moments cataloguing Iriko’s burn wounds and examining the spots where her armour plates had melted. The damaged patches did seem smaller than before. Elpida had slung a bag full of meat into Iriko’s mass when they had arrived at this position; perhaps the blob was making good use of the nanomachines.

A tight-beam radio connection licked out from Iriko like a questing tongue, touching the grav-drone, then tracing the control back to Kagami.

<<special mission mission failed? mission failed? iriko did a bad. iriko tired tired sleep tired please?>>

Kagami did her best not to shudder or flinch. <<Don’t worry about it,>> she replied down the comms link. <<Go back to sleep.>>

Iriko said nothing more. Kagami let out a sigh of relief.

“Sometimes I wish you weren’t so taciturn when you’re on duty like this,” Kagami muttered, talking to Hafina. “You talk well enough when we’re inside Pheiri.”

“I’m concentrating,” Hafina said, muffled inside the black angles of her helmet.

“Right. Right, of course. Very sensible.”

Kagami swallowed a much worse flavour of sigh, choked down the venom of her pride, and pinged Pheiri’s comms from her auspex headset.

Victoria answered with shameless speed.

<<Kaga?>> Vicky’s voice came over the radio, clear and clean on the tight-beam. <<You okay out there? Did something happen? I’m not seeing anything on the board from Elpi or Haf, are you—>>

<<I’m fine,>> Kagami snapped. <<Nothing is happening. Sit down.>>

A long pause, filled with the static of the storm.

Kagami could perfectly picture the stupid little confused frown, followed by the blossoming realisation on Victoria’s face. The smug smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. Her inevitable attempt to suppress the grin — or not, seeing as Kagami was not currently in the room with her to scowl at her idiotic gurning. Kagami pursed her lips, burning with fresh fury at the expression she knew Victoria must have worn that very instant.

Vicky said, <<I am sitting down, Kaga. I’m in the comms seat.>> A hint of mockery entered her tone. <<Unless you’d rather I rise to my feet whenever you call. Should’a guessed you’d like that.>>

<<You know what I mean! Don’t sound the alarm and send the cavalry, that’s what I mean. Nothing is happening. I’m fine.>>

Vicky sighed. <<Cavalry’s already with you, anyway.>>

<<What?>>

<<Iriko. I’m talking about Iriko. She’s the closest thing we have to cavalry, right?>>

Kagami was about to argue, but she realised this was probably correct. She snorted instead. <<Since when did you become an expert in ancient combined arms?>>

<<Since right now. And hey, cavalry was still relevant when I was around. Helicopters and the like.>> A short pause, then: <<Kaga, are you okay, seriously? I know Elpi moved off-station, she sent us a location ping, she left you with—>>

<<This is not a social call, before you get any stupid ideas.>>

Another long pause. Vicky cleared her throat, then said, <<Well, if it’s not an emergency, and it’s not a social call, what it is? Can’t you go without me for twenty minutes? Should I be flattered, or what?>>

Kagami swallowed a bolus of poison.

She had no idea how to manage Vicky these days, not since they’d almost fought in that haze-like period of blinding hunger, before Elpida had finally given up and decided to hunt for fresh meat. Some nights she and Vicky shared the same bunk; some nights Victoria held her from behind, though Kagami still did not know what any of that meant, or how to turn around and return the gesture. On other days she couldn’t stand the look on Victoria’s face — the easy smiles and adoring eyes she saved for Elpida. Those looks made her want to slap Victoria across the cheeks. Kagami had no time or energy to spare on figuring out the complexities of this dirt-eater nonsense. She was too busy with her work, with bioengineering the meat-plants — or was it nano-engineering, or both? Whichever, Victoria was a distraction.

But Vicky’s voice drowned out the storm.

<<Just checking on home base,>> Kagami said. <<I have to make sure you’re not running with scissors or playing with matches.>>

<<Ha ha,>> replied Vicky. <<You want a serious answer?>>

<<Yes. All clear?>>

<<Yeah, sure, everything’s fine. Nothing’s come near Pheiri. A couple of zombies wandered down a nearby corridor about half an hour ago, but they ran like the wind as soon as they saw Pheiri sitting here. No sign of Necromancer stuff again. No Lykke, or whatever her name was. The home front is quiet, Kaga. No worries here.>>

<<How about our new arrivals?>>

<<Ahhh, well.>> Vicky seemed less certain. <<Pira and Amina are looking after them. Melyn’s working on the one who got wounded. Sky? Yeah, Sky. She’s in a bad way. Still unconscious, or at least semi-conscious. Lots of broken bones. Internal bleeding. It’s a wonder she’s still alive. Or, well, you know, ‘alive’.>>

<<Mm. And how’s our little biter?>>

<<Eseld?>>

<<Mmmhmm.>>

Victoria sighed a very big sigh. <<Not good. She’s not comatose, but she’s barely responsive. Shell shock. PTSD? I dunno what to call it. It’s bad.>>

Serves her right for almost shooting Elpida in the head, Kagami thought. But she didn’t say that part out loud. Victoria wouldn’t like it — and she would like the loyalty to Elpida too much.

<<Any word from our eye in the sky?>>

<<Nah,>> Vicky said. <<Hope’s put herself beyond the edge of the storm, we’re still out of contact.>>

<<And how is our uninvited guest?>>

Victoria paused, then cleared her throat. <<Creepy. Hasn’t moved the whole time.>>

<<Have Pheiri patch one of his front cameras through to my auspex visor.>>

<<You serious?>>

<<Yes, I want to get another look at her. Visual is fine, I don’t need to see her guts or anything.>>

Pheiri handed Kagami a carefully scrubbed feed of one of his front visual pick-ups, so as not to overwhelm her with data.

Shilu was right where they’d left her.

She was sitting on the metal floor of a wide corridor, crossed-legged and straight-backed, about thirty feet in front of Pheiri. She hadn’t re-donned her human disguise. She still looked like a scarecrow made of black iron, topped by a pale oval of plastic face. Pheiri had her covered with enough firepower to blow her to pieces, whatever she was made of. Serin was crouched on the front of Pheiri’s armour, locked in a one-sided staring contest with the Necromancer.

Shilu was not staring back; her eyes were closed.

Eventually, Vicky said, <<Kaga?>>

<<Why the hell am I all the way up here, Victoria? Why was this necessary?>>

Vicky sighed, matching Kagami’s musing tone. <<Because Elpida trusts you, Kaga. Come on. She needed the drone cordon. And she wanted your opinion. She values you. She trusts you!>>

<<I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but our Commander has been going steadily insane. She almost got her head blown off today. And now she’s swanning about like she’s full of uppers.>>

Vicky fell silent for a second. <<I … yeah, I know.>>

<<And you agree with her, don’t you? I should have guessed. You think she was doing the right thing by letting that idiot put a gun to her head.>>

<<She had a point … >>

<<She had an obsession! Victoria, she has spent the last few weeks memorising the faces of dead people and staring at skulls! And then she almost gets herself shot, and the only thing which stopped her was Howl. I saw it, Vicky. Up close. She was going to take that bullet! She would have let it happen! And without her we—>>

Kagami cut off. She’d said too much.

Victoria lapsed into a long silence. Kagami prepared for the teasing — without Elpida we what, Kaga? We wouldn’t survive? We wouldn’t stick together? Don’t you want her to screw you until you scream as well, Kaga? Shut up! Shut up!

But then Victoria said, <<We … we need to talk about this, yeah, when everyone’s back here. Didn’t have a chance earlier, with the tomb loot and this … Shilu woman. You’re right, Kaga. Elpi’s not well. It’s weird.>>

<<I don’t trust her.>>

Vicky sounded surprised. <<Elpi?>>

<<No. The Necromancer. ‘Shilu’.>>

Vicky laughed, perhaps too glad for the change of subject — or maybe too happy that Kagami trusted Elpida. Kagami wanted to spit.

<<Yeah!>> Vicky said. <<I don’t trust her either. Elpi sure doesn’t.>>

<<And would you trust her, if Elpida did?>>

<<Uh, I … what—>>

<<You would, wouldn’t you? If our dear Commander said jump, you would leap face-first into the storm.>>

Vicky sighed again, but differently now. <<Kaga, you’re the most jealous woman I’ve ever met.>>

Kagami snorted, not convincing even to herself. <<What’s to be jealous of?>>

<<I dunno,>> Vicky said. <<You tell me. Where’s this coming from?>>

Kagami’s cheeks burned; she and Victoria had not spoken like this face-to-face in weeks, not in the lab room, not in the bunks, not even in bed, pressed up against each other through their clothes. What was this? Kagami felt as if she’d left familiar hand-holds far behind. She opened and closed her mouth several times, suddenly very glad that Hafina could not listen to the private tight-beam connection.

Vicky started to laugh — but then Kagami was saved by the storm, or by what hid within it.

Another roar rode the waves of the hurricane, still distant but so much closer than before. This roar was so loud it made Kagami’s bowels quiver and drew a gasp from her throat. In the corner of her eye, Iriko’s iridescent skin shuddered in disturbed sleep. Hafina adjusted her footing.

<<Fuck me,>> Vicky muttered as the roar faded. <<Fucking hell. Fuck.>>

<<You heard that one too, I take it?>>

<<Yeah, loud as anything. Hey, Kaga, seriously, what do you think it is? Something alive out there?>>

Kagami snorted. <<Nothing is ‘alive’ here, Victoria, you know that.>>

<<And you know what I mean, Moon Princess.>>

<<Honest answer?>> Kagami said, with odd relief. <<Actual honest answer, I don’t know. I am praying to Luna’s silver soil that it’s not anything except the storm itself, because I have no idea what could survive in winds like that. Do you understand that, Victoria? Nine hundred miles an hour, that’s the wind speed out there. If there’s something which can live in that, it can probably squash this tomb like a house of cards. Do you understand?>>

<<Hey,>> Victoria said. <<Hey, hey, Moon Princess—>>

<<Now is not the time for—>>

<<You’re perfectly safe up there with Elpida. You’ll be back down here with me and Pheiri and all the others, real soon. Just focus on your drones—>>

<<I do not need you to lecture me on focus!>>

<<Just try not to think about it—>>

<<Oh yes, don’t think about it. That’s always your grand solution, isn’t it? Don’t think about it, don’t think too hard, don’t think at all! You absolute—>>

A new voice cut into the radio — Elpida, speaking out loud on a separate channel: “Kagami, we’re coming back up. Haf, you too. Hold fire.”

“Confirmed,” Kagami grunted. Then, to Vicky: <<I’m signing off. Later.>>

She didn’t wait for a reply.

Thirty seconds later the trio of madwomen reappeared around the corner ahead, looking windswept and rumpled. Elpida’s white hair had been whipped back by the power of the storm, though she could not have approached within fifty feet of the window. Atyle was wide-eyed as if she’d taken a huge hit of custom drugs. Only Ilyusha showed a borderline sensible response — cowed and quiet, hurrying ahead on her clicking claws, to crouch in the relative shelter of Hafina’s side. Ilyusha peered into the room where Iriko slept, then waved hesitantly at the massive bulk of the blob-like revenant.

Elpida and Atyle rejoined the group.

“Well?” Kagami demanded. “Did you get your naked eye look into the storm? Tell you anything useful? No? Didn’t think so.”

Atyle answered: “Godlike fury, but not divinely ordained. No clear meaning in the maelstrom.”

“And what does that mean?” Kagami snapped.

Elpida said, “Just a theory we were discussing. Kagami, how long do storms like this usually last?”

“Hurricanes?” Kagami shrugged. “A week? But real hurricanes move fast, and more importantly they move over water. That thing up there is not remotely natural. Technically it’s not even a hurricane. I wasn’t joking when I said we need to invent a new word.”

“How long do you think it could stay in one position like this?”

Kagami spread her hands in an exasperated shrug. How the hell should she know?

Elpida took a deep breath, looked up and down the corridor, then said: “Are you still confident in the security of your drone cordon?”

“Yes, of course I am. I know what I’m doing, Commander, this is simple stuff. Why?”

“I’d like to talk for a minute or two, right here. Are you comfortable with that, Kaga?”

Elpida’s purple eyes burned in the darkness, focused on Kagami. A hard lump grew in Kagami’s throat.

She was not scared of Elpida, not really, of course not. Elpida was her Commander, and despite all of Kagami’s doubts and disagreements, Elpida always seemed to stay true to that. Besides, Ilyusha and Hafina were right here; Ilyusha even straightened up as well, frowning at Elpida with a curious look on her face. Atyle seemed less surprised, but she raised an eyebrow. This was not some secret plan to drag Kagami off into the dark for a quiet murder, or else Elpida would be doing it alone.

“Commander,” Kagami said slowly. “We are in the middle of a tomb, surrounded by storm, and zombies, and … and … and whatever is out there, making that roaring sound. We need to return to Pheiri. ASAP. Or have you finally taken leave of your senses?”

“ASAP, agreed,” Elpida said. “But first, if you’re comfortable, I want your counsel.”

Kagami boggled at her. “My— my what? My counsel?”

“Yes.”

“About what? And why here? What is all this cloak and dagger about?”

“Yeah!” Ilyusha barked. “Elpi, what’s up?”

Elpida held out a gentle hand. “About what? Several things. Theories about the storm. Theories about the zombies we rescued. Theories about Shilu. Why here? Well, because here is about as far away from Shilu as we can get right now.”

Kagami stared for a moment, speechless. Ilyusha barked a laugh. “Right! Right yeah!”

“Ahhhhhhh,” purred Atyle. “Clever, clever, clever.”

Kagami snapped, “Is that the whole reason for dragging me up here? Is that why we’re standing here, exposed, in the fucking dark? Seriously?”

“No,” Elpida said with a soft shake of her head. “We needed to take readings of the storm, because we need to know what is going on. There was no subterfuge or trick to that, I promise. But I do want to ask your counsel, and this is our best option for making sure that Shilu can’t overhear.”

“She might be plugged into the tomb itself, Commander! We can’t be sure of anything!”

Kagami glanced at the camera feed in the corner of her auspex visor, still showing Shilu sitting cross-legged before Pheiri. She hadn’t moved an inch.

“It’s not perfect, yes,” Elpida said. “But it’s our best option.”

Kagami shook her head. “Why me, Commander? What is this about?”

Elpida smiled. Her eyes glowed, purple irises catching the minuscule backwash of light from Kagami’s auspex visor.

“Because, Kagami, you are the most cynical, suspicious, and paranoid member of our cadre. And right now I have need of cynicism, suspicion, and paranoia.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

What’s this? Elpida realising that she’s really bad at interpersonal intrigue and doesn’t have the skills to ferret out lies, dissembling, and treachery? And turning to Kagami for help? I guess Pira mag-dumping into Elpida’s belly really did teach her something after all.

And now it’s time for Kaga to shine! Her natural talents of being an absolute-

Ahem! Well then! This chapter actually ended up as the single longest Necroepilogos chapter so far, purely by accident. I didn’t intend it to sort of make up for skipping a week, but I guess it worked out that way. Kagami just has so much on her mind, it was impossible to stop her going and going and going like this. Oh well! At least she’s prepared for what’s up next. Right? In more metatextual news, behind the scenes this arc is shaping up to be pretty long, I think. We’re going to be jumping back and forth between POVs a bit while the rain pours, the wind screams, and the hidden monsters roar behind the wall of the storm. Onward we go!

If you want more Necroepilogos right away, or you would like to support the story, please consider subscribing to the Patreon:

Patreon link! It’s here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 5k words. Behind the scenes I am still very much trying to build up some kind of a backlog of chapters, and when I do, I’ll be sharing more chapters ahead with patrons. I hope!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which heps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps!

And thank you, dear readers! I know I say this every week, but thank you for reading my little story. I couldn’t write even a fraction of this without all of you, the readers! I hope you’re hunkered down inside the tomb, far from any windows and walls, because the night is dark and the storm is strong, and these zombie girls need to burrow deep. Until next chapter! Seeya then!

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Iriko was on a very special mission.

Technically she was on two special missions at the same time, but the first mission was neither particularly difficult nor any different from what she would have done anyway. She did not need to be asked or encouraged or have her efforts acknowledged, but those things all felt very nice regardless of necessity. Outwardly Iriko had replied to the transmission with a sharp complaint and much residual grumbling, via several follow-up tight-beam radio squirts. But inwardly she had delighted at the message.

Iriko admitted to herself that this undermined the task’s designation as a ‘special mission’. But special missions were cool, and therefore she was on a special mission. Pheiri was rubbing off on her, silly boy that he was.

Iriko’s first special mission was very simple.

Stay alive!

The mission had come from Pheiri himself, via the private tight-beam uplink through which they passed all regular chatter. The actual wording was much more complicated than simply ‘stay alive’; even at the best of times, Pheiri was a gentleman of most ostentatious loquaciousness. He loved his data so very much, and loved to gesticulate it around to make points which could be easily condensed into much more concise forms. His tight-beam squirt had included predicted weather patterns and incoming rainfall amounts, wind speed adjustments and debris saturation calculations, and even suggested routes of exfiltration beyond the range of the incoming storm, backed up with locations of several dozen nearby potential hardened buildings or subterranean tunnel complexes, which might survive the fury of the approaching hurricane. Pheiri did not so much ‘order’ Iriko to flee — he never ‘ordered’ her to do anything. He simply and strongly suggested via a torrent of information that she needed to make herself scarce.

Iriko felt all warm and fuzzy at the request. Pheiri cared, despite his usual prickly exterior.

But Iriko wasn’t going anywhere. Oh no, not now. She would have to flee for miles and miles to outrun the storm. She wasn’t about to leave Pheiri behind inside that horrible tomb.

She’d been feeling a little lonely and abandoned after Pheiri had gone charging through the tomb’s outworks and fortifications, guns blazing in all directions, shield flashing, punching his way through any groups of zombies unwise or stupid enough to engage him. Iriko had watched from her rooftop vantage point with actual eyeballs, suitably modified with magnification and telescoping so she wouldn’t miss any of the details of Pheiri being all heroic. He had been very dashing, but then within thirty seconds he was inside the tomb’s gates and Iriko was left outdoors, all by herself, with only the rising wind and the pouring rain for company, amid thousands of zombies starting to panic and run off through the city streets.

So she sent a big raspberry-blow of refusal — 「nooooooooo! no! no! no!」

Pheiri’s personal tight-beam connection narrowed into raw audio, unspooling directly inside Iriko’s body.

「Hey there Iriko, how’s it hanging out there?」 said one of Pheiri’s zombies. It was Vicky!

Of all Pheiri’s zombies, Iriko liked Vicky the best, because Vicky talked with her more than any other. She’d even held one or two conversations with Iriko while standing up on Pheiri’s back, rather than across the tight-beam connection. Iriko had enjoyed those a lot, even though Vicky had struggled to understand Iriko’s replies. It wasn’t that the other zombies never talked to Iriko at all, but the others were often all business, or treated Iriko like she didn’t understand, or like they were speaking with an animal. But Vicky? Miss Victoria was always up for a good natter.

Iriko replied — not with a detailed breakdown of her current biochemical composition and mass-levels. Pheiri always demanded that whenever he was concerned about Iriko’s condition. Instead, Iriko replied with a poem, composed that very moment, as raindrops began to kiss the tiny scales of her refractive mail.

「victoria yes!
full stomach and lightened heart
sky fury scary?」

Vicky laughed down the radio, but Iriko could tell something was wrong. Vicky’s laugh was all stressed.

「Yeah, Iriko, uh, beautiful phrase. Sky fury scary. You see all those low clouds on the horizon to the north? That’s a bunch of very high winds and really heavy rain. Pheiri says it’s an actual hurricane, but uh, he’s already sent you that data, right. You’re probably feeling the leading edge right now, but within fifteen minutes those winds are gonna be hitting sustained speeds of eighty to a hundred miles an hour. Behind that, uh … shit. Fuck me.」 Vicky stopped and swallowed. 「Well, it’s a very powerful storm. We’re worried about you, Iriko. You can’t stay out there in this storm, not even if you stick yourself to the ground and armour up. You gotta leave the area or come indoors, you—」

「no tomb not tomb dark tomb dead things badness dark smelly bad bleh bleh. bleeeeeh!」

「We all know how you feel about the tomb. I’m sorry. But it’s the only structure sturdy enough to withstand the storm. Iriko, please, you’re going to get hurt. You need to come inside, or flee, or take some kind of shelter.」 Vicky did a big sigh; Vicky liked doing big sighs. 「Iriko, we’re on a serious time limit here. That storm is going to rip a canyon straight through the city. Come on, girl, don’t be stubborn now. You gotta understand this. Do I need to put Elpi on? Or Serin, you’ll listen to Serin, right?」

Iriko understood perfectly well. She knew all about typhoons and hurricanes and great big storms. She couldn’t remember any specific storms from before being like this — her memory was still a shattered window of broken fragments, which she knew she would never restore. But she got the gist of it. Big wind, lots of rain.

She also knew this storm was special. She didn’t need Pheiri’s big clever eyes and the panicked voices of the zombies to tell her that. The leading edge of the storm had chased the worm-guard away from the limit of the graveworm’s safe-zone a couple of hours earlier. When the ceiling of black cloud had started to dip and bulge toward the earth, the worm-guard had scuttled off through the ruins. Pheiri’s long-range sensors showed that they’d retreated into the shelter of the graveworm’s body itself, huddling beneath the vast curve of dark grey metal.

The storm had cleared a path for Pheiri and Iriko to strike inward for the tomb.

But Iriko wasn’t going to take shelter inside that tomb. She hated tombs! She couldn’t remember why, but tombs were very dangerous. Tombs were the most likely place to die, over and over again. She would get eaten if she entered a tomb. Tombs were dark and scary places full of dead things.

But the word itself was a paradox; Iriko found that fascinating, in a way she would not have been able to do so as little as two months earlier.

A ‘tomb’ was a place where you put the bodies of dead people. But the tombs here made people anew, bringing them back from the dead. The massive black metal pyramid which reared toward the sagging black belly of the sky was not a ‘tomb’ at all. It was the opposite of a tomb.

Iriko composed a poem about that paradox. The rain was falling heavier now, splashing across the top of her body, coating her refractive armour, and running down her sides, to pool in the cement surroundings of the city below.

「not dead but only
resting in eternity.
returned, for eating.」

Iriko decided she didn’t like that poem. It was another failure. She didn’t broadcast it, not to Pheiri or any of his zombies. She filed it away in the new parts of her mind where she kept notes and scraps and other such failed poems.

「Iriko? Iriko, hey, come on, say something!」 Vicky was still broadcasting down the tight-beam. 「You can’t just sit up there on a rooftop and ride this one out. At least get down to ground level and into a tunnel or something! Come on, girl!」

Iriko heard other zombies in the background — Kagami and Pira and Elpida, arguing about something, clattering about with their guns and armour plates. Somebody started shouting about risky behaviour.

Suddenly a new voice crackled down the tight-beam.

Elpida said: 「Iriko, I’m leaving Pheiri and pushing into the tomb, with a team of five. If you’re staying on-station instead of running from the storm, I need you ready for network interdiction.」

Vicky spluttered behind Elpida: 「Elpi, she can’t fucking stay out there! The winds will rip her apart—」

「Not if she gets into the tomb or gets underground. Do you read, Iriko? Do you understand?」 Elpida paused. Iriko didn’t feel like answering. 「You need to enter the tomb or get underground. I know you can do it, for me and for Pheiri. Iriko? Iriko, I want you to acknowledge me, please. Get into the tomb or get underground. Iriko, acknowledge please. Iriko. Iriko. Acknowledge—」

「pppppffffffffftttttt!!!」

Iriko blew a big raspberry down the tight-beam, then cut the connection.

Elpida was only trying to be nice, but Elpida’s ‘nice’ was so pushy! Besides, Iriko did not feel like running and hiding anymore. She had spent so much time running and hiding. Now things were different.

Iriko decided to enjoy the storm.

The wind began to shriek and wail between the taller concrete buildings, just as Pheiri and Vicky had said would happen. Tentacles of wind tugged and pulled at loose boards and hanging beams, whipping up whirls of grit and dust, sending great swirling torrents of sideways rain splattering against broken windows, running down the brickwork and the exposed steel in great flows of crashing water.

Iriko lay flat on the roof for a while and watched all this, anchored to the concrete with hard spikes of extruded metal and special bone from the underside of her body; this storm wasn’t anything like the other storm a couple of months ago, the storm caused by that great shining golden diamond in the sky. This storm could not be eaten, which Iriko found very disappointing — it was just wind and rain. On the other hand, this storm wasn’t dangerous in the same way. No beast lurked at the centre of the maelstrom, nor did the wind burn Iriko’s flesh with anything more than friction.

Iriko extended special armoured eyes into the wind, followed by thin tentacles covered in millions of microscopic hairs. She added infra-red, echolocation, and a big messy clutch of predictive algorithms.

She almost giggled. Was she really going to do this? How naughty!

This was the precise opposite of what Pheiri had suggested she do. She wondered if his zombies would start to panic when they realised her plan. She had to do it now, before she lost her nerve.

Iriko retracted all her bone-and-metal anchor spikes, launched herself off the rooftop with a single muscular heave, and went surfing through the sky.

First she flattened her body to catch the wind, riding the powerful surge of air between rows of buildings, adjusting the surface of her skin to keep it hydrophobic and glossy, cutting through the rain with the edge of her sail. She extended her senses and identified a likely group of zombies down in the ruins below, busy eating each other and pulling bionics off a kill. Iriko narrowed herself into an aerodynamic, bone-tipped dart, and dive-bombed directly into the group of advanced zombies two hundred feet below, cushioning her impact on the wind itself with outstretched flaps of flesh. Her landing scattered half her prey, though she fluttered to earth as delicately as a leaf; she ate the other half, let the runners go, then spread her body wide to catch the wind beneath her fleshy sails once again. She whirled upward between the buildings, carried off in a spiral around the vast black bulk of the tomb.

Iriko liked this very much.

Ever since she had rescued Pheiri by diving off a skyscraper, Iriko had dreamed of trying to fly, but her body was simply too heavy. She had done some secret experiments with wings and pressure-based propulsion, but those had ended in failure. She was too big, too ungainly, too messy. The failed experiments had made her want to hide away again, slink off into the dark, and stop showing the ruin of her body to Pheiri and all his zombies.

But they hadn’t cared. Pheiri never cared. So Iriko had not given up entirely.

And now, in these incredible winds, she achieved lift-off with such ease.

The hurricane was beautiful. Great swirls of coal-black cloud were piled up on the horizon like a tilted stack of gigantic plates, each one racing forward and melting into sheets of pouring rain, replaced from below by layers of gathering storm. The nearer skies churned like the innards of an iron cauldron filled with boiling pitch, whipping itself into a vortex of rotten black.

Iriko composed three poems in mid-flight. Two of them were failures, but the third was passable. She tidied it up a bit and then broadcast it in the open, so any nearby zombies with suitable communications equipment would hear her work. She used to be so terrified of doing that sort of thing, but fear itself trembled beneath the need for others to hear her speak.

「wind and rain the gods
have called down upon me
but I laugh and fly!」

Iriko picked up a few scattered responses on local radio frequencies: 「—the fuck was that?! Alice, Alice, was that you? Did you fucking hear that, somebody is shouting poems into this storm—」; 「—shut up shut up shut up! Get out of my heeeeead you bastard—」; 「—cut that open frequency, something’s using it to mess with—」; 「Mediocre, at best.」

Iriko tried to reply to that last one; she wanted to hear the critic’s thoughts in more detail. But whoever it was flooded their own connection with jamming data and squirted a series of low-grade recursive viruses back up Iriko’s tentative tight-beam. Iriko squashed the viruses. How rude!

She satisfied herself with more food instead. Iriko slammed down amid groups of easily detected zombies, falling upon them from the sky, using the wind to speed up or slow down whenever she needed. She crashed through walls and straight into ongoing cannibal feasts, declaring herself the most essential uninvited guest; she landed behind ongoing firefights with a slam of concrete and brick, then ate the largest and most easily disoriented zombies; she rode the wind through hand-span gaps between buildings and fell upon clever revenants who were themselves about to ambush others — others who were more sensibly fleeing the hurricane.

In a concession to Elpida, Iriko did her best not to eat those who were running away from the storm or just hiding and keeping to themselves. But she couldn’t be sure. Certainty was impossible. What Elpida didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

The flying — or rather, gliding, as Iriko admitted to herself — required a great deal of very complicated calculations, all done inside Iriko’s mind. She could not have done any of this two months earlier, before Pheiri and the edible storm and all the talking she always did with Pheiri’s zombies.

This would have been impossible when distracted by hunger.

Iriko was still hungry, of course. She was always hungry. She would always be hungry, no matter how many zombies she ate. Even after she had absorbed so much biomass and uncountable nanomachines from the edible storm — then spent quite a bit of that biomass saving Pheiri, of course — she had felt the hunger ebb back over the next few days, leeching the clarity of mind she had so briefly felt.

But the hunger was easier to endure these days, because Iriko was not alone.

Prior to meeting Pheiri, most of Iriko’s conversations had been with those zombies she was about to eat. Such conversations had been necessarily quite short, and often ended inconclusively. But now Iriko spoke with Pheiri every single day and every single night. Pheiri was not the best conversational partner; he rarely communicated in actual words, preferring to share sensor readout data, pieces of his own internal functions, or short sets of curt instructions.

But still, he talked.

At first Iriko had misinterpreted the regular twice-daily broadcasts Pheiri always sent, no matter how much or how little they had spoken on any given day: 「location and status update report CRITICAL PRIORITY」, always followed by 「proximity acknowledgement POSITIVE. retain supporting coherency」

After the dozenth time, Iriko realised these broadcasts always came at first light and total dusk. Pheiri was saying good night and good morning! And asking her to stay close, in case they should need each other.

This had made Iriko so happy that she’d sent Pheiri half a dozen poems. Pheiri had not supplied an opinion on those poems. He must have been embarrassed!

Over the last two months, Pheiri had warmed to her, or so Iriko surmised from the implication of his guarded attitude. Pheiri was a very silly boy, after all. He liked to send her logic puzzles and chemical equations, things for her to chew on with her newly sharpened mind. He had sent her chemical compounds to improve the scales of her refractive armour and another set to heighten the potency of her various acid extrusion methods. He had spent two weeks broadcasting increasingly difficult logic puzzles after his morning greeting each day — strange many-angled shapes which unfolded inside Iriko’s mind into much more complex arrangements. Each shape plugged into the results of the previous puzzles, building a vast trapezohedron in fourteen steps. When the trapezohedron was complete, the new shape formed a fresh puzzle which required all the tricks and principles Iriko had learned by solving each previous step; the moment she had completed the puzzle she had felt as if her mind expanded. She had paused to check her body for any signs of rogue organs or cancerous grey matter growth, but there was nothing physical to the effect. A few days later, Pheiri had sent her the chemical and molecular formula of his beautiful bone-armour; Iriko had tried to replicate the material, but she’d found that her own cells did not turn in the right direction.

Pheiri’s zombies — his ‘crew’ — spoke to Iriko as well, even if not quite as often as Pheiri himself. Iriko had gotten to know them as best she could. Elpida made sure to check in with her every day and ask if she had spotted anything important, but Elpida was all business all the time, and Howl was a little bit scary. Serin spoke now and then, but Serin liked to talk in riddles and Iriko could tell Serin did not actually enjoy Iriko’s responses. Atyle liked Iriko a lot, but Atyle was impossible and spoke nothing but nonsense. Pira was weird and difficult; she liked to monologue at Iriko, and Iriko didn’t like the subjects. Amina came by now and again too, but she seemed to find it challenging to speak for prolonged periods. Kagami had stopped in to talk quite often, but she was an angry little zombie and didn’t like Iriko’s poetry; Iriko knew that Kagami was using her as a kind of sounding board, first to rant about the difficulties of her meat-plant project, then to rant about how Victoria was a primitive fool with no sense of romance or timing. Iriko didn’t like that, because Vicky was nice to her.

But no matter how weird or troublesome the zombies could be, they just kept talking.

Iriko was not alone. Not being alone made thinking easier. Iriko discovered that she could hold onto thoughts for longer, even beneath the weight of ever-present hunger.

Words became easier, too. Poetry had come oozing back into Iriko’s mind.

She knew on some level that her poems were terrible. She was using language clumsily and shamefully, in ways that some vaguely defined prior self would have been horrified and disgusted by. She knew she had been good at poetry once. Beautiful people and clever people had liked her poetry. They would not like her now.

But to Iriko, these words were still beautiful, even if she could not do much. So she kept going, and hoped the other Iriko — the older one, before she’d been ‘Iriko’ — would understand the need to continue.

After about half an hour of zipping through the air and eating zombies, the storm stopped being fun.

The winds blew stronger and stronger and stronger still, tearing crumbly concrete from the edges of the buildings and casting it into the air; the grit and loose chunks started to foul Iriko’s trajectories, rendering her calculations less reliable. The howling wind ripped at less sturdy structures, stripping away roofs and walls, throwing boulders of brick and metal into the hurricane-whipped air. Pieces of building smashed into other buildings, exploding with brick dust and sending debris flying everywhere. The rain hammered harder and harder and harder again — hard enough to pelt unprotected flesh with bleeding bruises; walls turned into waterfalls, streets to rushing rivers, broad roads to sheets of flowing froth. The lowest areas of the surrounding city were rapidly choked up with debris-filled waters, turned into deadly swirling stews of loose metal and wood and concrete. The only remaining zombies were held up inside the few sturdy structures — a handful of scattered bunkers or high-ground constructions — so there was nothing left for Iriko to eat or hunt. The beautiful sky darkened as the embers of the shrouded sun vanished, strangled to death behind a low ceiling like a fist dragging itself through the city.

Iriko stopped flying and landed on a high hilltop; the buildings up there had all been wrecked and stripped by the wind, but the rising waters would not reach this high. She could barely control her flight anymore, the wind was too powerful and unpredictable. She anchored herself hard, sending spikes twelve feet down into the concrete and rock. Wind threatened to rip her muscular foot off her perch, so she glued herself to the ground with sticky mucus, then hardened the mucus to rival the best concrete. She made herself rounded and flat and low.

Hail came next — small at first, gathering on the concrete and plinking off Iriko’s refractive mail. The sound was quite pleasing.

But the hailstones grew steadily larger, large enough to shatter glass and dent metal; the sound of them pounding into the waterlogged ruins drowned out all else, deafening Iriko even through the toughened aural organs she kept folded deep within. She added layers of spongy ablative flesh beneath her armour to absorb the repeated impacts.

But then the hailstones kept growing. Concrete began to crack under repeated blows. The wind strengthened beyond anything Iriko had thought possible; even the tiniest tongue of air threatened to rip her from safety and throw her into the spume and scum of water and debris below; Iriko made the outer edge of her body sharp and dug it into the ground as additional anchoring, but then the wind started to tear at the earth itself, pulling up crumb-clouds of concrete and clods of grey mud. Pieces of building larger than Iriko’s body sailed through the air, concrete floating like tissue paper; a few stray fragments slammed into Iriko’s hardened shell, bruising the flesh beneath, cracking the plates of her refractive armour.

A large enough piece of building would sweep her aside like nothing. Iriko pressed herself low.

Iriko could not even see what was happening with any clarity; she dared not extend sense organs beyond her armoured shell. The debris in the wind would strip flesh from bone within seconds, and even the wind itself would tear her apart.

This was too scary. Iriko had left it too late to run.

Vicky’s voice crackled over Pheiri’s tight-beam, almost drowned out by the static of the storm: 「Iriko! Iriko, is that you on that hill? Fuck me, it is you! Why are you still outdoors?!」

Iriko tried to compose a poem in reply, but panic made words hard.

「stupid blob not smart
mistakes made bad time
help can’t come fast now」

「Then get underground! You can swim, right?! All the subterranean stuff around here is flooded, but I know you can grow gills for oxygen if you gotta! Fuck, what am I saying?! We don’t need to breathe, we’re all zombies, you too! Come on girl, just go down! Dig!」

「dark in earth dark dark don’t want to go down trapped in rock trapped trapped」

Iriko wasn’t sure why she was so afraid, but the notion of being stuck underground was worse than being trapped in the storm. She knew she was panicking and being irrational, but she did not wish to go down into the dark.

「Iriko, in about thirty seconds those winds are going to hit eight hundred miles an hour! You have to go underground! Girl, please, come on! We can’t help you right now, Pheiri’s driving deeper into the tomb. Fuck, we couldn’t even come out there if we wanted to! The tomb is gonna be the only thing left standing! Just come and join us. Come on, girl! You can do it, being underground isn’t scary at all!」 Vicky’s voice moved away from the microphone. 「Mel! Mel, we need Pheiri to talk to her or something, she’s not fucking going, she’s going to die out there! She—」

Pheiri interrupted the raw audio with a packet string of three chemical equations and a topographical structure map of a three dimensional shape.

Iriko squealed with delight. Pheiri had been holding out on her. Cheeky boy!

She synthesized the compounds Pheiri specified. She almost couldn’t make them; these were similar to the composition of Pheiri’s bone-armour, and her cells wouldn’t turn the right way. Iriko had to find workarounds, but she worked fast, and she found her way around.

The first was a fast-acting superacid; she squirted it from the underside of her body in a nice thick fat layer, directly onto the blackened rocky ground. The second chemical was a kind of foaming agent, rapidly clearing the layers of melted rock. Iriko dropped into the hole she had just burned; rain and hail sloshed after her, filling the shallow burrow with deep water and concrete debris. Iriko squirted the final compound upward — an expanding artificial concrete sealant, plugging the hole and plunging her into darkness.

Iriko dived into the filthy water, churning the mixture into a soup of mud and gritty mess. Her sides blossomed with bioluminescent lamp-organs. She extended her front downward and formed a dozen versions of the topographical design Pheiri had sent.

Drills! Big drills, with side-scoops and special angles for added efficiency!

Iriko cut through the earth, burrowing deep, away from the surface and the sky and the hurricane which ruled both.

Iriko had never been underground before. She had explored basement levels and subterranean tunnels and the like, but that wasn’t the same as digging through the rock and soil itself. The concept terrified her for some reason she could not place, some piece of herself lost deep in her broken memory. The earth would surely trap her and crush her to death! But now she melted and burned her way through her very own tunnels, coating them with slick purple sealant as she went, to stop them from collapsing behind her as she wormed through the snug embrace of rock and stone. All her earlier fears melted away, just like the earth before her scoop-drills and her squirts of acid. With Pheiri’s help she could do anything, even swim in the soil like it was the sea.

She dug through layers of solid rock and burst out into flooded underground bunkers and sub-level tunnels of the buildings above, plunging back into the earth on the opposite side after drinking her fill to fuel fresh acid synthesis. She wormed deep into the open veins of natural cave systems, popping out and dropping through the black abyss before catching herself and squirming back into the tight arms of the living rock. She ploughed through layers of tight-packed soil, bursting ancient pipes and crashing through brick walls and splitting tree-trunk-width bundles of cable and wire.

After ten minutes of wild headlong flight from the storm above, Iriko slowed down and learned to navigate. She used bursts of echolocation and sweeps of deep-penetration radar to map the rock and underground concrete and the empty spaces of open caverns.

And when she looked closely, Iriko discovered something new.

The tomb — the towering black metal edifice which ripped zombies back to life — was more than just a pyramid.

Iriko’s radar returns showed that the tomb structure was mirrored beneath the ground; black metal pyramid-steps descended in reverse, toward an apex-tip pointed down, into the bowels of the earth. The black metal was pressed flush against layers of rock and soil. The whole structure was more like a sharp-ridged octahedron, embedded exactly halfway into the ground. Iriko found this very curious, but she couldn’t tell if it was important. She broadcast this information back to Pheiri, just in case, as she swam through the earth and circled the underside of the tomb, making sure of her observations. She drew close enough for a better look, but there wasn’t much to see; the underside of the tomb did not have windows or doors or any way in and out.

Pheiri replied with a plain acknowledgement ping. Iriko prepared a teasing retort at Pheiri’s taciturn treatment — but then another voice spoke first, into Iriko’s mind.

「Hey, blob girl!」 Howl yelled. 「Nice job getting down there! Be ready to rumble!」

Iriko didn’t like Howl’s voice; Howl gave Iriko the creeps.

Howl was fine when she spoke through Elpida’s mouth, but Iriko didn’t like it when Howl spoke directly into Iriko’s mind. Iriko never understood where Howl’s voice came from — it felt like a tight-beam connection, but it wasn’t. When Pheiri spoke via tight-beam, Iriko could trace the broadcast back to his current physical location. But Howl’s voice seemed to come from nowhere, with no broadcast origin. Iriko understood why this was; Howl had taught her about the network. But the sensation still made Iriko want to curl up and go quiet, in hopes that Howl would stop being so damned spooky.

Iriko sent back: 「what what ready for what ready ready?」

「I’m about to flush a Necromancer back into the network! Remember everything we talked about? You got a meal coming your way! You’re up, Iriiiiii!」

Iriko forgot all about Howl being creepy.

This was the moment she’d prepared for! This was Iriko’s second special mission.

「need help help iriko help?!」

「Nah!」 Howl cackled. 「Pretty sure we got this bitch! But be ready. She’ll be fast, just like I told you. Give it your best shot, blob-queen. Scare the shit out of her for me, hey? I’m about to give this cunt-face a set of bruises to remember!」

Howl cut the tight-beam.

Iriko went still and silent inside her underground burrow, conserving resources, preparing her heart for the task ahead; she did not have a real heart right then, of course, that would be wildly inefficient, but she considered growing one anyway so she could count the beats.

It was very quiet underground. Quiet and dark and empty. The hurricane was a distant static hum, far away, up on the surface, powerful but muted.

Iriko felt very nervous. She’d never done this before.

Howl had taught Iriko about the network; Howl had kept it simple, avoided technical terms, and stuck to metaphors. Iriko had felt offended by that at first — she was not stupid, she understood more than she could express with words. But then Iriko had realised that Howl did not understand the network either. All the other zombies got the same metaphors from Howl, same as Iriko, same as Pheiri, same as Elpida. Iriko had felt much better after that.

Iriko did not have what Howl called ‘network access’. Apparently that was impossible.

But Howl had taught Iriko how to make special senses, to observe large enough things moving through the network; Elpida had climbed down from Pheiri’s back one day and plunged her naked arm into Iriko’s body, so Howl could show Iriko how the senses should be made.

Iriko reformed and extended those special sense organs now: delicate tendril-clusters linked to gyroscopes of bone and metal held inside her core; miniature vibration-sensitive organs which contained isolated nanomachines in tiny vacuum sacks; wide plates of reactive chemical suspended between sheets of super-cooled flesh.

When the Necromancer fled — because Howl was going to give her a set of bruises? Iriko decided that was another metaphor — Iriko would be able to see the Necromancer moving across the nanomachines themselves. Iriko could not see into the network, just as she could not see the wind of the hurricane above ground. But she could measure the direction and strength of the wind through observation of what the wind acted upon. She would know the Necromancer’s escape route by the same method.

Iriko waited in stillness and silence. Minutes ticked by.

A little of the old fear crept back. Buried underground. Crushed beneath rock. Pinned, breathless, starving, eating pieces of—

There!

At the tip of the inverted pyramid, a ripple passed through the nanomachines embedded in the rock and soil, spreading outward in a dozen different directions, so tiny that no senses would have noticed the passing, except those designed by another Necromancer.

Iriko cried out in frustration — the Necromancer was going in twelve different directions at once! How could Iriko hope to—

「Get after her, blob-girl!」 Howl shrieked into Iriko’s head. 「You don’t have to get them all! Just one is brilliant!」

Iriko surged forward through the rock and soil, melting and burning and squirming and worming.

The Necromancer’s passage was faster than Iriko could move — faster even than the winds of the hurricane above ground. Iriko selected the nearest of the twelve offshoots and arced sideways to head it off, taking her one chance at successful interception.

Iriko slammed through the roof of an open cavern and dropped straight down into darkness, falling faster than she could have dug, tumbling past walls of dead rock. For a split-second she drew level with the Necromancer’s invisible ripple, a tiny signal on the network, racing downward six inches below the rock face.

Iriko reached out with a specialised, thickened, armoured pseudopod, and formed a massive acid-dripping maw laced with a special metal cage structure — a ‘Faraday Cage’, Kagami had called it. She opened those jaws wide and lashed out toward the wall of rock, to bite deep into the stone and entrap this tiny mote of fleeing Necromancer.

The rock wall exploded outward with golden-white light.

A burning face of pale marble and melting wax thrust itself from the wall of the cavern, keeping pace with Iriko as she fell through the darkness. The face cried tears of white fire, expression warped with spurned fury, bow-shaped girlish lips twisted with spite and rejection. The light was so bright it melted Iriko’s metal cage-mouth and burned away the specialised pseudopod. Her skin began to boil and bubble and cook; parts of her refractive mail began to blacken and burn. All the bioluminescent lamp-organs on one side of her body burst and sprayed the wall with fluids, droplets sizzling into smoke as the light consumed them.

The face — the Necromancer — screamed into the cavern, drowning out the hurricane above, voice like all the storms of the world combined into one.

“Treated like so much meat! Pounded and beaten, and not even a word of care! I hate her I hate her I hate her I hate her!”

Iriko ran away.

She shot out drag-lines of thick ropey tentacle and grabbed the opposite wall, fleeing from the Necromancer’s burning mask. Iriko slammed herself into the side of the cavern, then burrowed into the rock with Pheiri’s special superacid, sealing the way behind her as quickly as she could. The burning face fell into the darkness of the cave behind her, then went out like a fire snuffed beneath the waters.

Iriko did not stay to watch. She got out of there.

She dug upward, heading back toward the surface, toward the tomb. She did not want to remain underground with that thing, that tiny piece of a Necromancer, lurking down there among the horrible deep rocks. She had thought Necromancers were small and easy to eat, just like zombies except for that trick where they could freeze parts of her body. But now she knew better.

She surfaced right next to the tomb itself, on the side facing away from the hurricane and the terrible winds and the worst of the hail. The tomb was on high ground, safe from most of the flooding. Iriko burst out of the earth and slumped against the base of the tomb, cold black metal kissing her skin.

The air itself tore at Iriko’s body, high-speed winds ripping around the walls of black metal on either side. Hailstones pounded at her armour, cracking the bone and metal and pockmarking her flesh beneath with hundreds of bruises, exploiting the damage already done by the Necromancer’s white-hot fury.

Tight-beam broadcast crackled inside her mind. Vicky again: 「Iriko! Iriko, holy shit, girl, you need to get back below ground! The winds are going to hit nine hundred miles an hour, you won’t—」

「in we sadly slink
sad and wet is not enough
iriko is scared」

「 … you’re coming into the tomb?」 Vicky’s voice softened. Vicky was kind. Iriko wanted to talk more, but she was getting very hungry and that made it harder to think. She wasn’t sure how she had composed the poem. Perhaps it was shame. 「Okay, okay, come on, come on in, quickly, get inside. There’s zombies other than us in here now, but nothing which could threaten you. Get in, Iriko. Quick as you can now, come on!」

Iriko did not need telling twice. She climbed the massive metal steps of the tomb pyramid, sliding upward while clinging to the surface against the pull of the wind, thickening her armour to soak up the blows of the hailstorm as best she could. The wind howled around the sides of the tomb, making the structure creak and groan. Beyond the tomb, the city was a wall of grey rain and dense hail and the wild slashing and whirling of wind. The hurricane had swallowed everything.

A broken window stood exposed about a third of the way up the tomb pyramid. The glass was very thick — three feet, at least, but it had not survived the hail. Iriko pulled herself through the gap and out of the rain. The wind still tugged at her, so she squeezed herself down several narrow corridors and up a stairwell, until she was finally beyond the hurricane’s reach.

Iriko sat quite still for almost an hour, mending her armour, healing her bruises, tending to her burned skin. The damage was not too bad; the shock had been worse than the actual pain or lost biomass. The embarrassment was worse. She and Pheiri exchanged acknowledgement pings; he was fine, but very busy, thank you. Some of the zombies asked her if she was okay. Iriko said yes, she was alright, but she didn’t feel like composing a poem about it. She listened to the sounds of the storm and the odd sounds inside the tomb. She tried not to think about tombs.

After another half hour, Elpida spoke over the radio. 「You get the Necromancer, Iriko?」

「no nope no failed」

「That’s alright. Thank you for trying. You did your best, and I’m proud of you. Pheiri tells me you took some damage from the storm, and from Lykke. That’s the Necromancer’s name, Lykke. Did she hurt you very badly? Do you need biomass? We’ve got a lot of corpses down here, more than we can process. None of our own though. Everyone’s okay. We’ve picked up a few new faces, so be careful please, don’t eat them by mistake. Iriko? Iriko, are you there?」

「don’t want go down down is bad」

Elpida paused. 「We can bring a couple of corpses up to you, if you want. Did you enter the tomb through a broken window, or a skylight?」

「yes yes window shatter smash」

「I’ll come up and see you, then. I want to get a look at this storm with my own eyes. The way you entered might be the best spot to take a look. Don’t move far, okay? We’ll be up to see you shortly. Shout to Pheiri if anything happens or if you see any unfamiliar revenants. Stay safe.」

Elpida signed off.

Iriko extended some long meaty pseudopods back down the route she’d taken from the broken window, to peer out at the storm beyond. She stayed like that for several minutes, watching the churning vortex of clouds, listening to the screaming wind and the pounding rain, and the drumming of massive hailstones bouncing off the black metal of the tomb pyramid.

The storm did not seem to be moving; the hurricane had stopped directly overhead, as if trying to demolish the tomb.

Iriko was pretty sure storms were not meant to do that. No wonder Elpida wanted to have a good look.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Stay safe, blob-girl. Don’t get rained on.

And we are back, dear readers! Thank you so much for waiting, thank you for your patience. Welcome to arc 12! Here we go; this chapter was originally supposed to be an interlude, then got published as chapter one of arc 12, then almost got retconned to be an interlude again, then finally got to stick it out as the true chapter one of the arc. Well done, Iriko! You made it! I couldn’t deny her this place. She’s too cute, I couldn’t say no.

Anyway! Arc 12 begins, and this one is going to be rather different to arc 11, I think. (I hope, anyway! As always, I am never fully in control.) As things stand at the moment, this is probably going to be a loooong arc, maybe 15 chapters. We’ve got quite a few different POVs to be jumping between, a hell of a lot of fallout to sift through (both human and literal, I suppose), and that there storm is pounding down on the tomb, hour after hour. I wonder, who sent it? Shall we find out? Shall we ask Shilu?

There’s no patreon link this week, as this is technically the last chapter of the month; the next chapter will fall on the 1st of August, and I never like the risk of double-charging anybody. If you were about to subscribe, feel free to wait until the 1st!

In the meantime there’s always the TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which helps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps me!

And thank you! Thank you all for reading my little story. I couldn’t do any of this without all of you, the readers and audience. Thank you! As we sink down once more into the embrace of the tomb, and push ahead into the moldy flesh of this new arc, I hope you’re going to enjoy the grave delights ahead. Until next chapter!