Clarkesworld Anthology 2012 Read Free

interplanetary war, while they were still weak. She’d rest later — after the San-Tay were gone, after the Mheng were free. There would be time, then, plenty of it.
    Bao and Nhu were hitting the door with soldering knives — each blow weakening the metal until the door finally gave way with a groan. The crowd behind Anshi roared; and rushed through — pushing Anshi ahead of them, the world shrinking to a swirling, confused mass of details — gouged-out consoles, ornaments ripped from shelves, pale men thrown down and beaten against the rush of the crowd, a whirlwind of chaos, as if demons had risen up from the underworld.
    The crowd spread as they moved inwards; and Anshi found herself at the center of a widening circle in what had once been a guest room. Beside her, Bao was hacking at a nondescript bed, while others in the crowd beat down on the huge screen showing a sunset with odd, distorted trees — some San-Tay planet that Anshi did not recognise, maybe even Prime. Anshi breathed, hard, struggling to steady herself in the midst of the devastation. Particles of down and dust drifted past her; she saw a bot on the further end, desperately trying to contain the devastation, scuttling to repair the gashes in the screen. Nhu downed it with a well-placed kick; her face distorted in a wide, disturbing grin.
    “Look at that!” Bao held up a mirror-necklace, which shimmered and shifted, displaying a myriad configurations for its owner’s pleasure.
    Nhu’s laughter was harsh. “They won’t need it anymore.” She held out a hand; but Bao threw the necklace to the ground; and ran it through with his knife.
    Anshi did not move — as if in a trance she saw all of it: the screen, the bed, the pillows that sought to mould themselves to a pleasing shape, even as hands tore them apart; the jewellery scattered on the ground; and the image of the forest, fading away to be replaced by a dull, split-open wall — every single mark of San-Tay privilege, torn away and broken, never to come back. Her bots were relaying similar images from all over the station. The San-Tay would retaliate, but they would have understood, now, how fragile the foundation of their power was. How easily the downtrodden Mheng could become their downfall; and how much it would cost them to hold Felicity.
    Good.
    Anshi wandered through the house, seeking out the San-Tay bots — those she could hack and reprogram, she added to her swarm; the others she destroyed, as ruthlessly as the guards had culled the prisoners on Shattered Pine.
    Anshi. Anshi.
    Something was blinking, insistently, in the corner of her eyes — the swarm, bringing something to her attention. The kitchens — Zhiying, overseeing the executions. Bits and pieces, distorted through the bots’ feed: the San-Tay governor, begging and pleading to be spared; his wife, dying silently, watching them all with hatred in her eyes. They’d had no children; for which Anshi was glad. She wasn’t Zhiying, and she wasn’t sure she’d have borne the guilt.
    Guilt? There were children dying all over the station; men and women killed, if not by her, by those who followed her. She spared a bitter laugh. There was no choice. Children could die; or be raised to despise the inferior breed of the Mheng; be raised to take slaves and servants, and send dissenters like Anshi to be broken in Shattered Pine with a negligent wave of their hands. No choice.
    Come , the bots whispered in her mind, but she did not know why.
    Zhiying was down to the Grand Master of Security when Anshi walked into the kitchens — she barely nodded at Anshi, and turned her attention back to the man aligned in the weapons’ sights.
    She did not ask for any last words; though she did him the honor of using a bio-silencer on him, rather than the rifles they’d used on the family — his body crumpled inwards and fell, still intact; and he entered the world of the ancestors with the honor of a whole body. “He fought well,” Zhiying