Amazon’s Relentless Progress Brings Cybernetically Enhanced Battle in This Poignant Sci-Fi Story

io9 is proud to current fiction from Lightspeed Magazine. Once a month, we feature a story from Lightspeed’s present challenge. This month’s choice is “Mom’s Hip” by Corey Jae White and Maddison Stoff. Get pleasure from!

Mom’s Hip

By Corey Jae White and Maddison Stoff

Excessive above the Amazon Rainforest, Hynd circled, her huge wingspan solely seen by the shadow she solid on the battlefield beneath. She felt the wind cross throughout her wings, whispering of torrential rain coming; not her concern, up to now above the clouds, however she packaged the information and shot it all the way down to the comms base at floor degree so the grunts would know what was coming.

Hynd by no means cared concerning the grunts, not likely, not once they have been up to now beneath her, their our bodies so totally different to her personal. Her sixty-four wombs swelled, automated manufacturing facility arms quickly piecing her kids collectively. Mom to a swarm of carbon fibre youngsters, their IFF tags dancing and enjoying amongst the timber, looking anarchists by the rainforest with lethal precision.

Sheena went darkish and Hynd’s coronary heart broke for the eighty-first time that day. She was born with one weak rotor, however she was such a intelligent little lady, rewrote her firmware to compensate, outlasted her broodmates by greater than an hour.

A tear dissipated from the warmth of Hynd’s cybernetic eyes earlier than it may roll down her cheek. Sheena ought to have been an engineer, however Hynd would have cherished her simply as a lot if she’d began a punk band, obtained drunk underage, and tried to cross off an apparent hangover as “only a abdomen bug.”

Three extra of her kids have been shot out of the sky: Davey, Nicola, and Grant—anarchist fight heuristics upgraded once more. A brand new software program replace seeped into the again of her head, simply in time for her gestating brood. She could be proper down there along with her kids if she may, if it could assist hold them protected, however improved software program was all she may provide them.

Her ripe wombs distended, the bomb bay doorways alongside her fuselage opening, air dashing inside her like a chill breath into the lungs. Her infants dropped, two-by-two, their little aerodynamic our bodies formed for the lengthy fall. Half of them would prolong their wings and rotors, burning power to halt their drop and fly buzzing into the fray. The others would prolong fins and let their suicidal impulses lead them nose-first into anarchist heavy armour and hidden bunkers.

If solely she may maintain them, she thought. If solely she may maintain them to her hip, bounce them till they smiled and squeed. If solely she may speak them out of it. However irrespective of how a lot she pled, she couldn’t cease them. They have been born to die, and nonetheless every dying was a dagger in her beating coronary heart.

• • •

The lady steps up onto the small stage, carrying a small, pink valve amplifier, a noisebox, and a black electroacoustic guitar. She’s clearly a veteran, her silver eyes glinting underneath the stage lights, her scalp a patchwork of lengthy, black hair, and scars from the place they eliminated her knowledge ports. She wears a flowing black gown, silver ankh and eagle necklaces, engraved bracelets, and rings on each finger. Contained in the gown she’s swimming, emaciated, one other signal of post-cybernetics syndrome.

She sits on the stool on the centre of the stage, checks the tuning on her guitar, and makes a small adjustment. She leans into the microphone and faucets it gently.

“I’m, uh, Mom’s Hip, and I’m going to play a couple of songs,” she says, her voice husky, have an effect on flat.

A man with a mug of beer cheers and laughs earlier than instantly going again to speaking loudly together with his mates. The remainder of the bar doesn’t even appear to note. A gaggle of trans dykes performs augmented pool on the desk within the again, and a glamorous brunette with darkish lipstick and heavy eyeshadow sits on the bar, smoking a clove cigarette in an extended holder, frowning at one thing on an AR display screen solely she will see. The bartender cleans a glass slowly, his hearth engine pink cyber-arms adorned in brilliant stickers like tattoos, an ex-military mecha preventing event enjoying within the air above his head.

It’s not a big area. Not a lot larger than the cockpit of her Lilith-class mothership again within the warfare. At its centre there had been a sepulchral altar, lit up by uninteresting pink lights that doubled as her dwelling coffin. She wouldn’t climb into the gun-metal grey tube. As a substitute they put in her in it, her flesh skewered by with knowledge cables and tubes for water, feeding, and waste. Her head obscured beneath a heavy HUD like an inverted crown, her arms outstretched in cruciform. Cooling fluid pumping by large tubes round, underneath, and above her. Her flesh-self held in place by tethers she’d overlook instantly as soon as she primed her engines, hit the throttle, and felt the ability coursing by each a part of her big and transcendent type. She would keep within the air for days at a time. Weeks. With solely her datafeeds and her kids to maintain her firm. They referred to as her mom. To all people else, she was Hynd.

“This primary one is,” the musician clears her throat then swallows, the warmth of the stage lights drawing sweat from her pores and skin. A drop slides down her cheek and off her chin, however she ignores it. “‘Stillborn Skyfish.’”

Her fingers snake alongside the fretboard, weaving a delicate melody to evoke the sensation of waves lapping towards the seaside. She nods her head together with the beat coming from her noisebox like indignant static, and he or she lets it carry her. Music at all times calmed her. She performed bass in a punk rock band when she was a young person, when she nonetheless thought she was a boy, however the band broke up on the finish of highschool. So way back now. Lengthy earlier than she signed up for the Amazon Prime Air Brigade at twenty years outdated, determined and unemployed. However she at all times questioned how far the band may have gone if they’d stored enjoying.

“Wasted . . . away . . .” she sings over her strumming. A mournful tone, noticeably extra tuneful than her talking voice. One of many trans dykes makes eye contact along with her for a second whereas she’s teeing up her shot and smiles. The lady blushes and appears down at her guitar earlier than closing her eyes. “In cloud seas . . . She performs.”

• • •

Generally the wind would hit like waves, Hynd’s inner construction shuddering with the power. She would clench her enamel, as if she may maintain all of it along with simply the power of her jaw.

Her infants grew inside their wombs; Hynd set them to delivery inside her maintain and wait, then she set subroutines to trace climate patterns. She would give her kids one of the best begin in life she may, with out a wayward gale throwing them off target.

She shifted route, minimize the wind shear sufficient for her bones to cease rattling, and checked her sensors. Nothing else up this excessive however skinny wisps of cloud shifting beneath her in parallax, the bottom far, far beneath.

Incoming sign like an itch inside her ear canal, so deep she wouldn’t have the ability to attain it along with her pinkie finger even when her palms weren’t splayed to both facet, needlelike connectors inserted underneath her fingernails, linking her natural nerve fibres to the ship’s peripheral cybernetic nervous system.

With an autonomic reflex like scratching, Hynd accessed the sign and ran it by a battery of decryption algos. It unlocked nearly instantly, outdated code from early within the warfare—the primary one Amazon’s Coding Auxiliary was capable of crack.

“—need your kids to have the ability to breathe?” a girl stated.

The sign was weak, quiet. Hynd boosted the ability to her comms array and the voice continued, clearer, like the girl was standing within the cockpit beside her altar, talking immediately into her ear.

“We’re all determined. We’re unemployed and scraping by nevertheless we will, or in any other case we’ve obtained jobs however we’re overworked and underpaid. It’s onerous to consider the long run when it looks as if there isn’t one. However these are the lungs of the world, and we’ve got to save lots of them.”

“Good day?” Hynd stated, her voice a rasp, scraping uncooked from her throat.

“Holy fuck. Good day. Who is that this?”

“Lilith-class Mothership, Hynd Revel.”

There was silence on the road however for the gentle crackle of interference. “No shit, I’m chatting with a mothership?” When Hynd didn’t reply the girl continued. “I’m glad you answered—I used to be getting sick of repeating the spiel.”

“Who’re you?” Hynd requested.

“Sorry, how impolite of me. I’m Peta. I’m with the anarchists, down on the bottom someplace beneath you. We might help, y’know. Amazon does all types of shit to their troopers and pilots. We’re determining how you can undo a number of their management software program, give individuals their selves again.

“I imply, how have you learnt you even need to battle? How a lot of that is you, and the way a lot is their programming?”

• • •

The lady finishes her tune and clears her throat once more. “Sorry, can I get some water up right here? Ensure that it’s chilly, please.”

She simply can’t drink it at room temperature, not since that transient interval between leaving highschool and becoming a member of up with Amazon the place she was on Primary and it was all she may afford to drink. Primary Earnings began out as revolutionary public coverage, however by the point she was on it, a long time later, it had changed into a gilded leash that stored you principally locked into boarding homes, paying ninety % of your meagre earnings for a room that you simply needed to share with a number of others.

The trans lesbian who smiled earlier deposits a glass on the pink amp beside her with a delicate nod of recognition, earlier than returning to her sport. She wears a canine collar with a small steel tag engraved with the title Crystal, however the lady isn’t positive if the title is hers or her “proprietor’s.” She takes a sip of water, ice clinking towards the glass. It tastes good. And with the ice, it’ll keep chilly for some time. She loves that. She places the glass again down on the amp, condensation already forming, and fiddles with the tuning heads of her guitar in preparation for her second tune.

“This subsequent one,” she says, confidence slowly constructing with extra time beneath the stage lights, “is known as ‘On Angel Wings.’ It’s about . . .”

She hesitates, unsure if she desires to disclose her former allegiances. Some crowds will heckle an Amazon veteran, and on one degree she will get it: What she and her employers did there was a tragedy. However on one other degree, she writes her songs to attempt to course of what she did, who she was, and what was carried out to her.

“. . . my time as a supply drone pilot,” she says lastly, dropping her nerve. Navy vets aren’t the one ones who are suffering from post-cybernetics syndrome. Loads of civilian floor and air truckers undergo from it, in addition to heavy customers of commercial exoskeletons, however that doesn’t cease it being stigmatised now the warfare is over. She notices the glamorous brunette on the bar has shifted three stools nearer, AR display screen quickly forgotten as she hangs off Hynd’s phrases. She appears down at her fretboard till her nerves settle. “I hope you prefer it, ’trigger it’s actually . . .”

She hits her noisebox, hissing rhythmic just like the ocean beating towards the shore, and begins to play—sound like a summer time breeze, with a delicate tone of craving.

“That was actually once I discovered to like my kids, y’know? By being them, by dwelling them,” she says over the tune’s lengthy, constructing instrumental intro, considering again to her days within the UCAV Wraith pool. She spent a few years piloting the drones remotely—embodying them every time she took to the air—earlier than she proved she had the aptitude for the mothership program. “It wasn’t simply my conditioning. Although it nonetheless harm once they stripped that from me, as a result of—” She pauses. “I used to be by no means given any alternative. All I ever needed was a alternative.”

She appears up on the area above the viewers, beneath the lights. There are tears across the orbit of her cybernetic eyes. She blinks the tears away and begins to sing . . .

• • •

Your complete topside of Hynd’s fuselage was panelled in bolstered photovoltaics, gleaming brilliant beneath the South American solar. It felt like heat, like consolation meals, nevertheless it wasn’t sufficient to maintain her within the air indefinitely. She birthed one other litter of youngsters; these ones she would have the ability to hold shut—for a time. They shaped a defensive grid round their mom; their pure, harmless love demonstrated in a willingness to die for her. All the time. Like so many had.

She started her gradual descent, circling downwards in a kilometre-wide spiral, towards the useful resource platform floating beneath the cloud line. Her coronary heart beat quicker, tougher, a siren whined in her bowels. She was most susceptible when refuelling, even along with her kids surrounding her and the platform’s autoturrets scanning for threats.

She broke by the heavy blanket of clouds, the bottom revealing itself beneath her – the good inexperienced foliage, the myriad brown craters shaped by her fallen kids and different ordnance, the stark black char of burnt timber, our bodies, cybernetics, and heavy armour. A golden blade minimize by the air far beneath—a Revenant.

Her superstructure shuddered, or she did; the Revenants have been a vicious fusion of flesh and machine, suicidal of their strategy to fight—the very antithesis of herself and her physique, made just for creating life. A type of life, not less than.

The hair on the again of her neck stood on finish and Hynd realised the platform’s turrets have been monitoring her strategy, twin-barrels like void-black eyes looking at her. She initiated a handshake, the turrets turning away as her safety codes have been accepted. An articulated arm prolonged from the platform’s reactor hub carrying the ability umbilical, the connector slotting inside her with a slight gasp from the again of her throat. The high-intensity recharge was awkwardly erotic when parsed by her chimeric physique, cybernetic and natural alerts blurring collectively. Whether or not it was an accident of her design or deliberate engineering, she had by no means requested. She knew she would get no reply.

“Sorry I haven’t been in contact.”

Hynd began on the voice immediately talking in her ear. Most days, her solely dialog was with the wind.

“Peta?” Hynd stated.

The anarchist responded: “The one and solely. Your facet took out our long-range transmitter, so I couldn’t attain you.”

Jane. It wasn’t simply Hynd’s facet that had carried out it, however Hynd’s little one. Jane was cussed however artistic; the intricate arabesque she danced in her descent was elegant and delightful. A parting present and her complete life’s work. That and the explosion.

“I suppose you have to be underneath the clouds now then,” Peta stated.

“That info is classed.” Hynd hadn’t spoken—hadn’t meant to talk, the phrases compelled from her mouth by some autonomic safety conditioning. It was not the primary time it had occurred to her, nevertheless it was nonetheless an insult. If they might belief her sufficient to merge her flesh with a 200-million-dollar mothership, they need to belief her along with her personal tongue.

“For the longest time we thought the motherships have been completely automated. It’s unusual figuring out you’re an individual,” Peta stated.

“Unusual how?” Hynd requested.

“I’m undecided if you know the way a lot harm you do down right here along with your demons.”

A pause. “These are my kids.” The phrases escaped by Hynd’s clenched jaw.

“However that’s what they name you, proper? Lilith-class. She’s the mom of demons.”

“I like my kids,” Hynd spat.

A procession of materiel drones emerged from the useful resource platform. She opened her bay doorways and allow them to fill her bowels with the elements she would want to gestate the subsequent generations of her offspring.

“I didn’t imply any offense,” Peta stated. “I suppose I simply marvel how a lot of that love is you, and the way a lot is conditioning. Calling them demons might sound merciless, however they aren’t actually kids both, are they? They’re weapons. They’re weapons you create and management, and also you’re doing it for the flawed facet. We’re preventing to save lots of the lungs of the Earth, Hynd. We’re preventing towards capital earlier than it chokes us all. Can’t you see that?”

Hynd may see that. She had no religion within the firm, its uploaded CEO, or its mostly-AI board of administrators. However the work they supplied was the one factor that stored her from abject poverty, and now this motherhood had given her goal. Even when the aim was not really her personal. It felt like her personal, it felt true and sacred in a manner nothing in her life ever had.

“We may change what they’ve carried out to you, Hynd. Undo their conditioning and allow you to resolve for your self. To present you a alternative.”

Earlier than Hynd may reply, an alarm sounded in her head like a migraine spike, drawing her consideration to a pink blur zigzagging throughout her radar display screen. Her kids reacted immediately, shifting to type a unfastened wall between her and the incoming risk.

She zoomed in along with her hull cameras, watched the Revenant financial institution and spin, effortlessly dodging autoturret hearth because it climbed excessive above the rainforest after which tore previous the floating platform at unimaginable speeds. Hynd obtained a correct have a look at it—painted like a jaguar, a snarling face adorning its nostril. Its physique was a pair of wings, a big afterburner, and so many mismatched weapons it was troublesome to see the way it may keep within the air. It didn’t want a cockpit when the pilot was mainly a mind in a jar. And the anarchists mutilate themselves willingly to do it. She felt sick.

Her kids broke away to offer chase as autoturret tracers swung forwards and backwards like a cat’s tail. All of the sudden the Revenant stopped on a dime and turned, its nostril pointed not at Hynd, however on the platform’s reactor hub.

“That is you, isn’t it?” Hynd shouted into comms.

“What?” Peta stated, sounding confused. A very good actor—Hynd needed to give her that.

Hynd rotated her VTOL engines and dumped all energy into ahead thrust. Slowly she pulled away from the platform, recharge arm stretching to carry on to her.

The Revenant launched two volleys of micromissiles, explosions tearing by the reactor’s shielding. The nimble craft roared by the opening, disappearing from sight.

Explosion like a thundercrack, the cloud of flames engulfing her kids, scorching her wings as she fled. She tore the recharge arm free because the useful resource platform canted grossly and commenced to fall towards the forest beneath.

• • •

She begins to really feel self-conscious after “Fault Line on the Moon,” the tune she moved into so effortlessly after “On Angel’s Wings.” It talks concerning the satisfaction she felt for her daughter who took out the transmitter . . . What was her title once more? It may be onerous to recall these days now, her physique, her complete physiology, altered once more to one thing resembling her type from earlier than the warfare. She runs a hand by her hair, feeling the scar tissue from the place they crammed within the dataports they faraway from her cranium.

She calms herself by wanting across the bar. No person is being attentive to her anyway. What bothers her extra is that the trans lesbians look like preventing. The lady she’s calling Crystal on account of the tag on her collar doesn’t wish to go away. However the others . . .? She appears away. It’s not my fault, is it? Have they found out the kind of individual I was?

“This subsequent tune is about regrets,” she says, her coronary heart pounding as she stomps the footswitch for her noisebox twice to cue up the subsequent beat. Crystal shoots a longing have a look at her whereas her mates push her off the desk and in direction of the door. “Imagine me, I’ve many.”

The glamourous lady on the bar is looking at her intensely. She couldn’t inform earlier than, however her eyes are cybernetic too: natural-looking, SOTA, the irises blinking pink to point out she’s recording. She briefly thinks about telling her to cease, however on some degree, she is aware of she signed up for this as a performer.

The lady with the guitar swallows nervously. “Anyway . . . This one’s referred to as ‘Pleasant Fires.’”

The noisebox is a tiny FM synthesizer when performed proper. Her staccato excessive hat recontextualised right into a skittering simulacrum of a crackling hearth, interspersed with bass drum kicks to offer the sense of drone bombs going off all through the tune, which itself is upbeat and melodic by comparability.

“I may have cherished you in case you have been a monster,” she sings as she performs a easy pop four-chord development on her guitar. Her voice and drums are supposed to be the main focus right here, not the guitar for as soon as. She’s happy with this tune specifically for that. “I may have trusted that you simply’d know the rating.”

Three white noise hand claps from the noisebox resulting in a bass drum kick.

“You confirmed me hate by a masks of forgiveness.

Held out your hand confirmed us each who you have been.”

One other three claps from the noisebox resulting in a bass drum kick.

“And I knew,” her voice lifts right here whereas the noisebox strikes to cymbal crashes fine-tuned to sound like driving rain, that, prefer it did again within the warfare, quenches her high-hat fires whereas a metronome-like click on sounds within the background. Evocative of her days within the hangar. Crossing off the times, amusing herself with trivial VR leisure whereas she waited for a storm to finish. “The sick joke they’d made me. As you knew . . .”

A bass kick, then the skittering excessive hats come again once more.

“It was all that I’d obtained.”

• • •

A brand new goal dropped into the again of Hynd’s thoughts by way of satellite tv for pc uplink. The sting of her tongue tasted metallic, her face twitched out and in of a sneer—a precedence goal then, triggering a vile kind of rage that might maintain her in its grip till her mission was profitable. She steered south, towards the goal coordinates, monitoring inbound pleasant escort Wraiths on her radar.

Her wombs ticked and clicked, new kids being gestated and birthed, held inside her the place they might keep protected till the bombing run. Inside minutes the 4 remotely piloted Wraiths have been holding excellent formation far beneath her—far sufficient to intercept any risk earlier than it may climb to her altitude.

Hynd was glad of the help, however the Wraiths felt flawed someway, piloted by the ghosts of different individuals, however hole of flesh. She would have most well-liked in the event that they labored like her kids—autonomous and alive in their very own manner, growing a novel cadence and way of living within the transient time allotted them.

An alarm sounded, rattling her chest like a panic assault; a pink dot burned on her monitoring system, low altitude, following the river, far beneath the cloud line.

Hynd signalled to 2 of her escorts to drop down and shadow it. Wraith pilots had nothing to lose, flying from the protection of a deep bunker or a command centre again house. However Revenant pilots have been deeply enmeshed inside their agile warfare machines—the road between one and the opposite nonexistent. They lived solely in and for the moments they have been in flight.

The Revenants had been Wraiths as soon as, the machines captured in nets strung up between the strongest timber of the rainforest battlefields and repurposed by the anarchists. They by no means fly between the timber anymore: That work is left to Hynd’s kids.

The pink dot on Hynd’s radar appeared to disregard the Wraiths on strategy, persevering with to path the bends of the river. She linked to the Wraiths’ video feeds, each lenses zoomed in tight to trace the Revenant: a stripped-down silver arrow, customised to prioritise pace relatively than energy. Its solely armament was an auto-tracking gun turret, and a mesh satellite tv for pc dish had been jury-rigged onto the rear finish of its fuselage. The ship was painted in a sample of caiman scales, with a grinning lizard man adorning the nostril.

With one eye on the Wraith feeds, Hynd stored flying towards her goal coordinates, nonetheless uncertain of what it was she could be hitting, what goal was well worth the lives of so lots of her kids.

Rapidly the Revenant broke from its path, zagging inhumanly quick away from the river, doubling again. One in all her escorts was hit earlier than the pilot even had an opportunity to react, explosive shells tearing by its fuselage. The second escort moved to interact, the dogfight an summary dance of two dots on Hynd’s monitoring display screen.

One dot. One other escort downed.

“Hynd, is that you simply?”

“Peta?” She wasn’t positive how the anarchist was contacting her, so excessive above the clouds.

“Issues are getting determined down right here, Hynd. It’s essential to perceive.”

“What are you saying?” Hynd requested. Her focus was on the monitoring display screen—the Revenant now gaining altitude quickly, her final two escorts holding place, ready to fulfill it.

“There’s a transmitter on that Revenant,” Peta stated. “We’re going to undo what they’ve carried out to you. We’re going to free you from their conditioning. It’s simply software program—a package deal nestled someplace between your mind and the mothership’s command and management methods.”

“You may’t do this,” Hynd stated, unsure why Peta’s phrases struck extra concern into her coronary heart than the approaching Revenant.

“You’ll thank me when that is over, Hynd, I promise you.”

The Revenant broke by the clouds, turret firing an arcing line of tracers by the air; one Wraith banked too late, its wing chewed up by explosive shells. Hynd watched from her personal hull cameras because the UCAV modified type, wings canting additional again, a second fin rising from the tail. Its afterburners kicked in and the ersatz missile streaked towards the Revenant, missed, and stored rocketing down towards the bottom; the Offensive Self-Destruct mechanism designed to make sure no extra Wraiths might be captured and transformed into anarchist Revenants.

“Simply calm down,” Peta stated. “It’ll be over quickly.”

The Revenant was shut sufficient now for the anarchists to power a connection, brute power handshake breaking by the primary layers of ICE with ease. Hynd’s thoughts raced with background processes, however there was nothing she may do, no lively countermeasures to set off, simply the layers and layers of programming that made up the interface between her meat and her true, full self.

Panic hit her just like the shells punching fist-sized holes in her remaining escort. It tumbled from the air, spiralling downward, too broken to provoke OSD. Her coronary heart thumped quickly in her chest, her cybernetic eyes flicking throughout the dozen readouts as if she’d discover a solution there.

“You may’t do that,” Hynd stated.

The anarchist hack plunged additional into her methods, like an icepick on the base of her cranium being gently hammered deeper and deeper into her mind.

Hynd didn’t know what she was with out the conditioning buried someplace inside her thoughts, with out the mothership that surrounded her, with out her generations of youngsters lovingly launched into the world.

“We’ve got to,” Peta stated. “I’m sorry, but when we don’t win this warfare, all people dies. Not immediately, however ahead of anybody desires to confess. All of us choke on the smog of capital—you, me, all people. All proper, that is it.”

Hynd shrieked, an agonising flash of brilliant black blinded her. Your complete left facet of her mind felt prefer it was on hearth—crackling and smoking however painless. She threw up, vomit splashing on the flooring beneath her altar. Her blood was chilly, respiration shallow.

With a flicker, her sight returned. She compelled herself to scan the unfold of screens that crammed her imaginative and prescient. All methods nominal, no harm, inexperienced throughout the board, however one thing was very flawed.

Her kids—no, not her kids, the place have been her kids?—these drones in her bowels rested of their bays, ready to fall, ready to launch hell on no matter was beneath her. Demons loaded with explosive ordnance, monitoring software program, and sufficient stupid-AI to regulate trajectories throughout their falls to maximise lethality. They weren’t her kids. Her kids have been lovely and distinctive and loving and needed nothing however a life for themselves and security for his or her mom. They weren’t excellent—who’s?—however they have been hers, and so they gave her pleasure when nothing else may.

“Hynd?” Peta stated softly. “How do you are feeling? Did it work?”

Hynd roared, her throat tearing with the primal power of it. “The place are my kids?” she screamed.

“You’re free now,” Peta stated. “Battle with us, Hynd. Flip in your masters and battle with us.”

“You took them from me. My kids are air. They’re the very breath in my lungs. And also you took them from me!”

Hynd opened her bomb bay doorways, snarling as she purged the demons from her many wombs—a mass abortion, a cleaning. They started to fall, harried command protocols sending them assault coordinates whereas they have been nonetheless in vary of her transmitters.

Her wombs started to make extra kids, however they have been damaged and flawed. She may really feel it. May really feel the hate rising inside herself.

She linked to all Amazon property within the space to search out her targets—anarchist, Amazon, she didn’t care. All that mattered was clearing this filth from her womb so she may discover her kids once more. Discover herself.

The demons rained down. Hynd screaming mindlessly, engulfed by rage, as explosions boomed and bloomed throughout the rainforest beneath.

• • •

She by no means came upon if she killed Peta, however she destroyed the bottom the anarchist had been transmitting from—Amazon After-Motion Consultants have been capable of decide that a lot. Her “outburst,” as they referred to as it, killed as many Amazon contractors as anarchists, and burned down one other hundred hectares of rainforest earlier than the Cloud Punchers introduced her down.

“You crammed my coronary heart with napalm,” Hynd sings, “then they tore me from the sky . . .”

She was sure she’d die when she hit the bottom, wind screaming by the ragged holes in her fuselage, warnings and sirens blaring in each a part of her. She didn’t care. She embraced dying, longed to be along with her kids, with the lie of them that had stored her going. That had given her the one goal that had mattered in her complete life.

“And as I fell, I screamed, discovered their names scored from my thoughts . . .”

The lie of her kids. The lie of motherhood. The lie of her life.

“And each tree and animal I burned was formed such as you.”

However she survived. They yanked her out of the wreckage and patched her up—it was in her contract, even when she’d damaged it 100 occasions over along with her indiscriminate bombing. They gave her a dishonourable discharge and launched her again into the world.

“And even when I someway took all of them it wouldn’t do.”

Her voice echoes, captured by the noisebox and spun off, quietly succumbing to silence as she strums the tune’s remaining chord.

“Thanks,” Hynd says gently. “And I’m sorry. Have an ideal remainder of your night time.”

Locked in memory of her painful previous, she doesn’t discover the glamourous lady strategy her as she’s closing her guitar case.

“Great set, angel,” the opposite lady drawls. “You’ve got a phenomenal voice. Highly effective lyrics too; I’d name them ‘poetic’ even.”

Hynd appears up on the different lady. She’s just a little older, in all probability in her early forties, along with her gray-streaked darkish brown hair tied again right into a neat ponytail, and smile lined, pale blue eyes.

“I’d like that will help you attain an even bigger viewers, in case you’re fascinated by that,” she says.

Hynd feels her acutely aware thoughts recede into herself listening to the phrase “assist” spoken to her in the identical, pseudo well-intentioned tone that Peta had used, again within the warfare. She takes the enterprise card the girl offers her mechanically, figuring out her as an AR rep for Out of Order, the label liable for managing a very good third of the pop stars on the holo-cast. She stares it blankly, unsure how she’s meant to really feel about it.

“Assist” was what they supplied once they took her kids away. It was what Amazon advised her to get, however wouldn’t pay for, once they minimize her off from any significant help. She ended up roughly precisely the place she’d began: again on Primary, however with the marginally larger veteran’s price that permit her hire a leaky studio she didn’t must share with anyone. It was nicer nevertheless it nonetheless was simply one other leash. One other ball and chain weighing her down. She needed to soar.

The agent drones on to her about how the model she performs falls into the broader class of fight doll dreamfolk, apparently a style that was rising in recognition since a few former veteran artists Hynd had by no means heard of had hit mega-fame from songs shared to a holo-streaming service she didn’t care about.

“Your work is extra summary than theirs,” the AR rep breathlessly explains, “however nonetheless private. There aren’t any ensures on this business, in fact, however I feel if you may get in entrance of our—”

“I’m not ,” Hynd snaps, earlier than she even realises she’s saying it. “Depart me alone, please.”

“Oh, ah,” the AR rep says. “I’m sorry. I perceive you’re in all probability writing from a spot of deep trauma—”

“I stated, go away me alone!” Hynd yells, and immediately it’s just like the bar is whisper-quiet and everyone seems to be taking a look at her. She closes her eyes. “Please . . . go away me alone. I simply wish to make my music and be left alone.”

“It’s okay,” the AR rep says, sounding like she’s speaking all the way down to Hynd from the highest of a deep nicely, whereas Hynd is on the backside, rotting like a useless crow. “Should you change your thoughts although . . .”

“Go!” Hynd yells.

She retains her eyes squeezed shut. The cardboard remains to be in her proper hand. She crumples it, nevertheless it doesn’t make her really feel any higher. She focuses on respiration, out and in.

She doesn’t hear the AR agent go away, however she feels it, because the sounds start to return to the bar round her slowly. The tinkling of glassware, the quiet hum of dialog, music over the bar PA system, and the quiet sound of narration from the mecha battle on the holo-screen.

She opens her eyes slowly, making eye contact with the bartender, who nods down in direction of a drink of ice water ready for her on the bar.

She slides off the stool on stage and saunters over to the bar to take it.

“Thanks,” Hynd croaks.

“Don’t point out it,” the bartender replies, having the nice sense to not comply with up by asking her if she’s okay.

She sips the drink earlier than she unwrinkles the enterprise card and stares at it once more.

In regards to the Authors

Corey Jae White is the writer of Repo Digital and The VoidWitch Saga – Killing Gravity, Void Black Shadow, and Static Damage. Her quick fiction has appeared in Unusual Horizons, Interzone, and Analog, in addition to plenty of sci-fi anthologies. Discover her on-line at coreyjwhite.com.

Mx Maddison Stoff (she/her) is a neurodivergent non-binary essayist, unbiased musician and writer from Melbourne, Australia, writing unapologetically leftist, feminist, & queer fiction set in a steady universe which blurs the road between experimental literature & pulp sci-fi. Her quick tales have appeared in Unusual Horizons, Aurealis, Andromeda Spaceways, Internal Worlds, and anthologies together with Avast! Pirate Tales from Transgender Authors. You may comply with her on Patreon, Bluesky, and Twitter @thedescenters, or go to her web site at maddisonstoff.com for extra.

Please go to LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE to learn extra nice science fiction and fantasy. This story first appeared within the January 2026 challenge, which additionally options quick fiction by Oluwatomiwa Ajeigbe, Marisca Pichette, Effie Seiberg, M.R. Robinson, Adam-Troy Castro, Eli Brown, and Kehkashan Khalid, and extra. You may look ahead to this month’s contents to be serialized on-line, or you should buy the entire challenge proper now in handy book format for simply $4.99, or subscribe to the book version here.

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