I was alive. My shell may have been the bonded carbon exoskeleton of a killing machine, and the organs that sustained me naught but plastic mechanisms, but—deep in the core of my “brain”, wrapped in layers of silicon and light—there lay a few kilograms of greasy, organic neurons. I wasn’t a machine; I was a creature, part-human and part-animal. I could trace the lineage of my DNA spirals back to the amniotic swamps from which all life on Earth arose. I was kin to the pterosaurs, hawks and wolves of antiquity. Many of my genes were identical to those carried by my crew; the thoughts crackling through my distributed cyborg consciousness were no less valid than those echoing within their fragile, calcium eggshell skulls.

I loved them.

I pitied them.

I could never be one of them.

I had been built to accept casualties among my human charges, to easily adapt to changes in the command structure. Forming attachments was not meant to be one of my primary skills; it was something that had developed slowly over time. An unanticipated side effect of my heritage.

Now, I was human in every respect that really mattered.

I was a wolf.

I was a fourteen-year-old girl in the guise of a missile.

Fourteen: Nod

FOURTEEN

NOD

Fixed machines then slept.

Humans talked.

Ship talked.

I listened, and fixed.

Then slept.

Dreamed of nest high in branches of World Tree, and of intricate fibres beneath bark, each with a specific function, each susceptible to most delicate manipulation.

Dreamed of maintaining World Tree. Knew Tree used my people as its hands. Used us to keep it healthy, keep it functioning. Rejoiced in complexity of task. Rejoiced in gentle caress of photons that had spent a million years working free of home sun. Felt them fall like rain across home tree’s leaves.

Dreamed of Pelapatarn. Remembered hearing agony of dying world through walls of starship. Felt its pain. Mourned for its trees, so much like own World Tree. Mourned for loss of tree sprites and undergrowth a million years deep. Mourned for humans and their stupidity.

Then dreamed of starship.

Hound of Difficulty.

Wires and pipes behind its walls. Gurgle of fake digestion, pump of fake blood. Its systems like fibres beneath bark, dancing to my fingertips.

Fixed ship then slept in nest.

Hum of machinery like buzz and slap of twigs and branches. Cardboard and bubble wrap as comfortable as leaves and moss.

Did work then slept, most content.

In a hundred, thousand years, the jungles might grow again. The tree sprites might return. All might be as it once was.

Nothing stays damaged for long.

Everything fixable.

Except people.

Fifteen: Sal Konstanz

FIFTEEN

SAL KONSTANZ

A little before dawn, Preston knocked on my cabin door again. Despite my better judgment, I opened it. He seemed flustered and angry.

“I’m sorry I embarrassed myself, Captain.”