Icarus Descending Read Free

Kalamat—”
    I was bent over a console, supervising the repair of one of the solex panels that give breath and light to Quirinus. It was my duty, an important one if tedious. I knew that I was supposed to feel honored to have such a task. On Quirinus lived members of the Ascendant Autocracy, who from the relative safety of their orbital stations ruled what remained of the poisoned Element. Those of us who served them were constantly reminded of our great fortune, that we would live our thousand days in HORUS and never have to look upon that blighted world.
    Still I dreamed of it, and was dreaming now even as I worked. So when Cumingia crept up behind me, at first I did not hear her. When I turned, it was as though I turned to gaze at myself in a mirror—eyes, hands, face, mouth, all save the spot where Cumingia had carved her left breast and upon the smooth scar that remained incised the image of her inner self, the Cumingia, a shell from the seas of the Element. Cumingia’s duty was to guard the docking chamber of Quirinus. So she had been the first to greet the delator Horacio Baklas when he arrived, ostensibly to serve our Masters as psychobotanist.
    But his true mission soon became known to us. He was one of those humans who had joined the geneslave rebellion, though at that time we knew nothing of the Alliance. Under pretense of carrying with him a new shipment of spores for our pharmacy, he had instead brought irpex irradians, the radiant harrowing, one of the thousand Tyrant plagues that have been set loose upon the Element. But we did not know that yet. We had yet to hear of the Asterine Alliance; yet to hear of the Oracle, or the rumors that our father finally had risen from his long sleep to reclaim his enslaved children.
    “She is dead?” I stopped my work, scratching my head absently. “You are certain, sister?”
    Cumingia nodded excitedly. “She claimed that she saw her father and brother coming to her through the air lock. She commanded me to open it, so that she could greet them. I watched as the Ether took her, and came here to tell you.”
    I frowned. It was not a good thing, for one of my sisters to witness a Master’s death. “Was there anyone with you? Were you alone?”
    “The psychobotanist Horacio Baklas was with me. He laughed and laughed to see her die. I believe he has brought a plague with him.”
    And so it was, as we learned over the next few days. First Medusine, then Vanos Tiberion, then Hosi and Ahmet, and finally all the rest, all of our Masters died. Hosi impaled himself. Ahmet and Lisia Manfred took themselves together to bed until the plague passed over them and the chamber smelled of the sweetness of their blood. For the rest it was quick madness or the lingering hours while their blood turned; but for all of them it was death. One by one we brought their corpses to the air lock and watched them slide into the void. I felt no sorrow, to see their pale bodies floating past. We energumens, the cloned children of Luther Burdock, live only one thousand days apiece, and outside of Quirinus the Ether is full of the bodies of our kin. There are many more of our dead than there are of humans in that void outside the HORUS station, hanging motionless but seeming to move in slow mournful circles as the station spins upon its orbit. It seemed a small enough offering, to let the bodies of our Masters join ours in the darkness. So one by one we gave them to the Ether, until only Horacio Baklas remained.
    “Thus you are avenged!” he cried to my sister, she who is called Polyonyx because of the anomuran crab that is drawn upon her left breast. “I have waited three years, but it is done now.”
    He seemed saddened, Polyonyx told me later; but that is the way with our Masters. They bring about the deaths of their own kind, and then pretend regretfulness. He gazed at my sister and suddenly smiled. “You are free now, Polyonyx. All of you—your Tyrant Masters are dead. It was a specially