Respawn (preview)
The intro to what could become a novel in an undetermined future.
"You ever seen anything like it, Ghost?" she asked, chewing on the end of her antenna.
"I don't think so, Orchid," she shook her head.
"She was like that when you found her?" The ibis' eye moved up and down in her cephalic fluid as she nodded.
"You didn't move her, did you?" This time, the ibis' giant eye moved from side to side as she shook her glass head no. "Just making sure." The ibis had moved her head back reflexively when Ghost had gestured at her with her claw when she'd asked. The ibis had known that the mantises were there to help - it had been just a reflex, but Ghost saw it fit to reassure her. While the ibis was technically a suspect, the Trackers had a long list of suspects and, although Renegades had sometimes tried to throw them off by reporting their own crimes, it was far more common for Renegades to try to dissociate themselves from their crimes altogether. Especially murder.
"What a shame," Orchid looked down at the giraffe's body dejectedly. "What do you make of it, Ghost?" she went on, turning her head toward her fellow mantis.
"As far as I can tell," Ghost started as she pulled a cigarette out of her trenchcoat, "all the ants are gone," she clucked her tongue.
"So we're looking at a husk, basically." The expression of terror frozen on the porous, plantlike mammal's face still reflected the fear that her killer had struck in the ants' hearts in their final moments.
"Poor Kacey," Ghost sighed, bringing her cigarette to her serrated mandibles. The glass-headed ibis tilted her head at what was left of the Arbitrator, as if the ibis was wondering whether she recognized the green giraffe or not.
"Dangerous line of work," Orchid observed, getting to work on her other antenna.
"That'll smart in the morning," Ghost retorted understatedly, reaching for her lighter.
"Her body as such seems to have been left completely intact," Orchid explained to the ibis.
"Damn wind," Ghost complained. The sandstorm was relatively weak, but enough to make it hard to light up.
"But without the ants, it's just a great big piece of wood, you get me?" The one-eyed ibis nodded at Orchid again.
"What was she doing on this planet to begin with?" Ghost wondered, finally inhaling.
"Beats me," Orchid shrugged.
"You don't know, do you?" The ibis shook her head so emphatically that her eye almost hit the sides of her head as Ghost exhaled.
"I wouldn't be caught dead here, I can tell you that." Orchid carefully licked her serrated claws.
"I always get sand in my eyes," Ghost agreed, striving to shield her eyes from the storm.
"We'll have to go through her files." Orchid washed her face with her forearm resignedly.
"See who she could've ticked off." Glancing at the ibis, Ghost briefly wished that she also had a thick pane of glass protecting her eyes from the sand.
"If I had some kind of weird problem with ants, Ghost, where would I be?" Orchid asked her pointedly.
"I don't know, but I do know this, Orchid." The sound of the sand hitting the ibis' glass head echoing around Ghost sounded like a hail of bullets. She should know. "Whoever did get those ants, we'll find her." The ibis looked from one mantis to the other, privately wondering if they would.
"We'll have Kacey back on her feet in no time." Ghost threw her cigarette down in the sand.
"Yep, yep." And twisted her heel down right on top of it as Orchid walked away.
***
The storm raged on in the night far over Jackie's head. The wind sounded as though it were ripping a hole through the fabric of space-time as it cut a swath across the wasteland. The cockroach stood her ground as firmly as she could, keeping her center of gravity low and holding up her cloak to shield herself from the biting cold. The nocturnal sky over the rocky horizon almost made it look like she was standing right in the very emptiness of space itself. Jackie repressed a flinch at the cracking thunder, seeing a lightning bolt come down in the distance along with it. A spark rose from the base of her antennae to their tips between them, almost like a counterpoint.
As above, so below.
The cockroach shook her head, and sighed. She was so tired. Even though Jackie could technically generate her own power, it didn't mean that she never ran out of energy. When had been the last time she'd slept?
"So you have it, right?" It was difficult for the cockroach to strike the right balance between speaking loud enough for the dragonfly to hear her over the wind, yet low enough not to risk drawing undue attention to herself. One of the reasons for which they'd picked the spot they'd picked to meet had been because the wind's howl, darkness and remote location made it that much less likely for them to be discovered in the first place, but one could never be too careful.
"Of course, Jackie." Even if her plan worked, and she never had to hear it again as such, Jackie would probably remember that distinctive, synthetic chuckle for the rest of her life. "Have I ever lied to you?" The cockroach cleared her throat, biting her tongue as she strove not to give her interlocutor the satisfaction of giving her a dirty look, settling for mildly raising an eyebrow at her instead.
"Solace, please..." The dragonfly always seemed to find everything so funny, funny on a level she imagined others just couldn't get, which made it funnier.
"Come on, I have to, while I still can. Who will I tease when you're gone?" She tilted her head, the light whirring sound of her neck barely audible over the windstorm.
"Thanks for being here on time, at least." Jackie forced a smile, trying to stay on Solace's good side for once. The dragonfly was notoriously fashionably late, when she could get away with it.
"You know me." Solace looked at her nails with a smirk. "I'm like clockwork." This time the cockroach couldn't resist rolling her eyes at her.
"You weren't followed, right?" The dragonfly clucked her tongue at her.
"Always this worry. Leave all you want, but you can't get away from yourself," Solace philosophized, crossing her arms in front of the plasma sphere embedded in her chest.
"Thanks," Jackie sighed. "I'll remember that." She pointed her finger at the dragonfly as though Solace had just made just the astute observation that the cockroach had been waiting to hear.
"I can move between dimensions, Jackie." She narrowed her faceted eyes. "Can the Commission do that?" The dragonfly looked at her expectantly. "Can Renegades?" There had been a time when Jackie had found Solace's self-confidence about her abilities charming.
"Rest assured, Solace, I'll remember what you can do for the rest of my life. However long that will be." Had Solace just repressed a shudder?
"So you're really doing this?" It seemed almost unbelievable, when she really stopped and thought about it, yet there they were.
"After everything I did for it, are you kidding? How could you possibly think I wouldn't?" The cockroach had had to work for several lifetimes to get as far as she had. She wasn't about to back out now.
"I don't know," the dragonfly furrowed her brow. "I kind of thought you were doing this just to prove you could, or maybe to have some sort of leverage for something or other?" Somewhere in the back of her mind, it still hadn't fully sunk in.
"I'm not." Jackie shook her head.
"... Oh, well." Solace shrugged. "That's that." If the cockroach was looking for someone to talk her out of it, she'd have to look somewhere else, the dragonfly told herself.
"So that's it, right? The work I did covers everything?" It had better, after all that.
"Oh, not even remotely." Solace snickered at Jackie's panicked expression. "Don't worry, you'll get your little trinket, I didn't make you come all the way out here for nothing," the dragonfly wagged her finger smarmily.
"So what do you mean?" The cockroach was in no mood for games.
"People pitched in." Jackie gave her a disbelieving expression.
"You told people?" Solace frowned.
"Hey, if I hadn't pulled a few strings, you'd still be working on earning this." The cockroach sighed exasperatedly.
"What happened to keeping this under wraps?" If they were found out, Jackie could lose her window of opportunity forever.
"Look, do you want the quantum translocator, or not?" the dragonfly asked her matter-of-factly.
"But why? Why would anyone else give you their time and effort to help me do a thing like that?" That was a bit of a head-scratcher.
"I guess more people want you gone than you thought," Solace replied tongue-in-cheek.
"Well, *that's* certainly not too hard to believe," the cockroach nodded grimly.