_ Bim

  The unwoman's vast mind was contemplating the duality of her current situation as the Black Cat made its orbital entry, descending from the Trastorno binary solar system to the terrestrial body know as Nexo Isla. She was delighted with recent events culminating in this foray into the great unknown of human civilization and she was simultaneously disgruntled to a similar degree.

  The drop ship was living up to its name and plummeting to the planet below in a fuel-saving maneuver that induced pleasant, momentary weightlessness. Bim's fellow passengers didn't seem nearly as pleased with the momentary reprieve from gravity (or its simulated kindred) as she was. Once the ground had closed to a pre-calculated distance, the shuttle burned hard against its freefall, gracing its occupants with a semblance of acceleration once again. As detestable as the burden of metal and bone in her back was under normal circumstances, it became intolerably excruciating as the perceived weight of her vessel tripled, then quintupled its relative norm. When the Black Cat gently touched down the humans around her snapped into motion, unbuckling themselves and unfastening the first load of equipment they'd brought planetside. Bim decided to do likewise.

  "The meter's running," Aivery announced over the shuttle's intercom. "Engines are still burning, so get that shit off my kitty. I've got nine more flights and I want to finish before the suns come back up. Thirteen hours and counting, double time it mercs!"

  "Evander, Pauz, Jhordan offload with your teams for local defense." Leeroy bellowed over the shuttle's roaring engines. "Remainder, lets go meet the client and figure out where we'll be camped for the next six-plus months."

  The mercs trooped off the shuttle, Bim embedded in their numbers while her Tormentor remained firmly apart from either group. Had she been observing a solitary creature in the wild or perhaps an isolated example of an otherwise social animal ignoring its natural tendencies, she might have dwelt on the subject in contemplation. However, it was Treu. She would learn little that had not already been censored and sanitized from observing him. Her surroundings proved to be an altogether different story.

  The humans surrounding her all carried a measure of who they were in the most intriguing ways. Leeroy walked with a lumbering sway to his shoulders, his stride accustomed to carrying a heavy load that wasn't there. The way Princess flicked her scrupulous gaze everywhere and nowhere at once behind the large wire-rimmed sunglasses she was wearing despite their nighttime arrival. The supple rolling gait of Alice's quiet, measured steps; she walked as if she loathed the grating texture of materials grinding underfoot nearly as much as Bim did. Hiiro's simpleminded awe of the courtyard they'd landed in and the antiquated mansion presented a short distance away was plain, yet another clouded sentiment lingered in the stiffening of his posture and the sudden rigidity of his arms. As always, her gaze lingering on Hiiro— still searching for that unquantifiable nagging trait which drew her to him.

  The building they approached was unlike any construct she had witnessed as of yet.

  The fragmentary recollections of her first teacher could only draw the loosest comparisons, a roof held aloft by walls and a great sum of transparent portals (that were not walls for some unknown reason despite being functionally similar). The building was illuminated from within and without by warm yellow lighting, its elaborate wooden-paneled construction designed to create a mocking skin of differentiation from the cool stone and metal interior. In terms of volumetrics, the building was larger than the armed frigate named Stalking Shadow. Bim spotted four visible levels excluding the flat roof and the mansion had a peculiar shape, like a hexagon that had been hollowed out and cut in half laterally. She altered her thinking from geometrics to (what she speculated to be, that is) a more human interpretation; in that regard the building could be identified as having a central 'body' with two wings or arms reaching out wide towards the courtyard. The association was something of a stretch considering the inhuman proportions of the mansion, but it was a pose mirrored by the human man walking out of the mansion to welcome them.

  The central figure was of lower than average height, above average body fat, and sported a wide toothy smile which highlighted the seven golden replacement teeth mixed with a mouthful of black and yellow originals. He approached the troop boldly, both arms outstretched in a predatory display that made his seem larger than he was. Bim was not intimidated, nor were any of the humans with her. Leeroy even mirrored the gesture and the two men met in a weak clash, wrapping each other in their arms and striking each other's backs. A curious ritual, but humans were curious creatures.

  Compared to the ethnically diverse, racially heterogeneous yet culturally homogeneous crew of the Stalking Shadow, the meeting party was unimpressive. Two more men of similar height, weight and build flanked their gold-toothed principal, though their dress clearly denoted them as lesser beings. Where their charge wore brightly colored loose clothes, both guards wore pale fatigues blotted with tan and sandstone coloration while carrying compact ornate firearms. Further back, Bim saw several women standing in orderly rows in uniform dress.

  "My Friends!" The fat man announced. "It is very good to meet you in person, I have been very excited since our many messages. Welcome to my… humble, abode." The man gestured loosely to his extravagant mansion, then held out his hand in the traditional human gesture of pact sealing.

  "Celio-Rodrigo das Estrelas Salvador Dominar," Leeroy said, his practice of the fluid syllables allowing him to say the client's full name without tripping over anything. Bim felt the weight of the name and silently approved. It was a good name— for a human. Leeroy took the offered hand and firmly shook it. "Leeroy, von Stalking Shadow. I'm looking forward to working under you. This is my second, Alice, and my command staff for this op, Hero, Princess and our understudy Bim."

  "A princess and a hero you say?" Celio said with a chuckle. "Well well well, if I'd known you'd bring such beautiful women as these, I would have brought you into my employ years ago."

  Celio reached out his hand to Alice. She raised her own to return the traditional gesture, but he seized her wrist and brought her knuckles to his lips. Alice spared a sly glance to Leeroy, but otherwise made no overtly negative reaction to the breech in decorum. Bim noted the variation of established human tradition, resolving to investigate the matter in due time when such a breach of decorum would not prove detrimental to her research as a whole. Celio shook Hiiro's hand next, causing her to wonder if his previous gesture went beyond greetings and pact sealing.

  Then it was Bim's turn. She plastered a neutral expression on her vessel's face since she had yet to master the human art of smiling, and resigned herself to the momentary disgust of physical contact. Celio reached for her hand, not clasping her fingers so much as guiding her placid arm upwards; his skin was unexpectedly soft and moist against her own, lacking the coarse calluses she'd experienced every other time a human hand had touched her own. The gentleness of his touch was appreciated (though not enough to counteract her revulsion) but so far this was one of the least displeasing physical greetings she'd experienced.

  Then his lips touched her knuckles. Where his skin had been moist, his lecherous lips were practically dripping wet. Celio pressed them tighter against her fleshy casing, flicking his tongue over her skin, sucking on her third finger, nipping once at the excess skin of its joint while his fetid breath billowed against her hand. It was disgusting! This ritual was vile and repulsive. Bim now understood why Alice had looked elsewhere, to distract herself from Celio's thinning head of hair as he suckled on her flesh.

  Bim's curiosity once again faltered as this vile man slavered upon her body. Why hadn't she heeded the warnings of her elders? For the many backwards wonders and knowledge to be gleaned from this repugnant, insidious existence of flesh and linear time, there must have also been an incalculable number of horrors, pains and curses. The underside of Celio's tongue slithered back down her finger's length, leaving a trail of reeking saliva that made her want to tear her hand from his face. It took no small sum of will to resist the urge. This was the price of knowledge and even cursed knowledge might one day be useful— though how this could ever be useful to know was beyond her current comprehension.

  Celio finally raised his head, allowing Bim to reclaim her hand without breeching the observed decorum. The condensation from his breath and the vile trickle of his sticky saliva running off her skin almost made her want to cut off the hand to be rid of it. Instead, she thought of Treu and his mutilation of her to obliterate the paltry agonies of her flesh in the present moment. That she could find any solace in her brutalization seemed paradoxical, yet many of her flesh-bound experiences could be summarized as such. This dimension seemed to revel in all of its crucial paradoxes. It was maddening.

  Celio moved before Princess, but the pale woman didn't offer her hand. She reached up and removed her sunglasses, allowing a full unadulterated view of her face and inhuman eyes. Both guards behind him raised their weapons not into a firing stance, not yet anyway, but rather into a high ready as a blatant show of force. The woman's ploy worked as planned, Celio visibly taken aback by the revelation. He stood there, mouth agap for a long moment while his face transmogrified from one expression to the next in a cycle of caricature Bim found very educational. Ultimately the one he settled on was a face of morbid curiosity, simultaneously attracted and repulsed by the creature standing before him. Vile as Bim found the man, she couldn't help but wonder what his face might look like when he discovered that she wasn't human either.

  "Princess," The pale woman said without a gram of warmth or welcome in her voice. "I'll be handling demolitions, procurement and the explosives we're using in your perimeter defenses. Every time I catch you leering at me like that again, I'll move the inner lethal radius back five meters."

  "How large is it going to be initially?" Celio asked, his cocksure swagger returning with gusto.

  "Fifty meters beyond the outer courtyard." Princess answered.

  Celio though about this for a moment before smiling his gold-toothed smile and examining the pale woman to a nauseating degree.

  "Forty-five now." He said. "I was thinking about replacing my windows anyway, my Princess das Neves. The exotic beauty of your wintry complexion will be a welcomed complement to this world of unending summer suns."

  "Sir-" Leeroy started.

  "Just Celio will suffice in private company, Mister Leeroy. Only the public and strangers need be so formal with each other. Yes?"

  "Very well. Celio, our shuttles will be ferrying in gear and personnel throughout the night. I'm aiming to have everything and everyone tucked away before suns up in thirteen hours. With your permission, my second will coordinate the onboarding and offloading details with one of your staff while we get down to business."

  "Of course!" Celio agreed, snapping his fingers twice. A woman in dignified servant garb rushed from the orderly queue behind him. "This is my chefe macante doméstica, my head maid, Carmen Maria de Terra Diaz Ruiz."

  The maid bowed by way of introduction but said nothing.

  "She has managed this estate for twenty-two years and served me faithfully in that time. Feel free to use her or any of my chore girls as you see fit. They live to serve." Celio offered with a golden smile.

  Bim was far from an expert on the subject of human age (or age of any living creature for that matter) though the way he'd stated the maid's duration of service clearly placed emphasis on it. Leeroy had done much the same during his earlier briefing. These occurrences created a rudimentary pattern in which humans valued the passage of their time in such a way she failed to comprehend. Bim put that line of inquiry aside for the moment. Alice and Leeroy exchanged a glance in Bim's periphery vision, furthering her suspicions, but said nothing on the subject.

  "Handle it." Leeroy ordered. "I'll get the back brief from you later."

  Alice motioned for the meek maid to follow and the two departed with all possible stealth. Shortly after, a team of maids set to task aiding the mercenaries in their manual labors and the drop ship raced skywards.

  "Come, let's continue this conversation in the main study." Celio announced, turning on his heels and taking off at a brisk walk.

  Relative to the shipboard accommodations she'd been allotted until now, the mansion was a spectacle of excess to Bim. They entered through a back door straight into a smoking parlor with attached bar, the space of the single room easily quadruple that of the Stalking Shadow's Crush cabin. The excess space was used to house all manner of furniture from couches to game tables to bulky, towering cooling units. Beyond furniture of discernible function, the room was also filled with objects that served no purpose she could recognize; embossed wooden sculptures with metallic inlays, massive paintings hung from the carved bones of giant beasts, a fruit arrangement that she realized wasn't composed of fruit at all but rather dyed stones that merely resembled various fruits. Such superfluous living made no logical sense yet the gross abundance only worsened as they were led further inside.

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  Every room was garishly decorated beyond reason. There were collections framed and displayed in shadowboxes, early currencies, local tools and primitive weaponry were some of the first to catch her eye. Heads and pelts of animals were in ludicrous abundance, including a truly massive specimen of saurian hide that carpeted the length of an entire marble hallway. They reached a grand stairway, worked into the resemblance of a short local mountain that was still unblemished by human hands near the summit and fully developed into a city at floor level. No two rooms shared the same lighting fixtures, one might be mirrored wall scones, the next a row of chandeliers and the room after that staggered spotlights that drew attention to whatever materialistic possession was deemed worthy of the lime light.

  As they neared the study, the pattern of collected works became more intellectual. Sealed bookshelves displayed treaties, maps and deeds of historic value. Portraits of more reasonable proportions showed life-sized rendering of humans or animals. In a place of honor, singled out from all else was a wall of urns, each with a brass plaque underneath. The earlier excess had been largely lost on Bim, unlike her companions, yet the wealth of preserved knowledge restored a modicum of respect for the lecherous man guiding them.

  "This palace was once the residence of the Bolintia family, who were the first pioneers to tame these savage lands." Celio stated, pointing to various relevant portraits as they passed it. "Then the eighth city governor for a half-century before the Guerreiro ousted the Martinaz Cruz lineage and auctioned off the captured estates to pay for his 'war of liberation.' The very hills themselves wept with the blood of the slain until my great-grandfather, Rodrigo Salvador, brought to wrath of the heavens upon these lands as I do now. With his righteous armies he liberated the people of El Cruce Babro, the city we now call Crucibab, and these lands knew great wealth throughout his reign."

  The opulent wooden double doors to the study were crowned by a portrait of this Rodrigo Salvador. There was some resemblance, though Bim had noticed a recurring tendency to either hyper-fixate or over-generalize her examinations of humans. At the time of painting, the ancestor shared a similar thinning head of dark hair as his descendant, furthermore they had identical golden teeth— which struck her as improbably coincidental. Both also shared brown eyes, tanned porous skin and soft portly build (though Celio was pronouncedly fatter than his ancestors). Bim was forced to conclude that the men were likely related based off similarity of appearance, but that was a conclusion she falsely reached more often than not when comparing one human to another.

  "A storied residence for a fabled lineage." Leeroy said, stepping into the study after Celio and his guards. "Shall I assume you have an ulterior motive in regaling us with your home's pedigree?"

  The study put the affluence of the palace to shame in Bim's eyes. It was as extravagantly decorated as any other room she'd witness so far: plush reading loungers sat beside enormous crystal windows, the verticals of the bookshelves were thick totemic pillars carved in the likeness of seven savage beasts growing domesticated the higher one looked and no two totems were alike; the horizontal shelves were stylized to be held aloft by generations of man progressing top to bottom. The symbolism was literal enough for Bim to appreciate, the compounding knowledge of man came from those who'd learned it before and passed it down the generations. It was a rudimentary and effective analogy for the flesh-bound slaves of time.

  "Your outfit has a history of being sharper than most guns for hire," Celio said with his gold-toothed smile. "I knew bringing you on was the right choice. Yes, while the legends of this palace and my family are worthy of retelling for their own sake, a blood feud that has lain dormant for nearly a century now threatens to raise its ugly head. Crime and poverty run rampant in Crucibab and twelve million people now cry out for me to save them from the vipers in their city."

  "We're mercenaries." Princess said. "You don't need to sell us on your cause. Pay us and point us at whoever you want dead."

  "My friends, must our relationship be so transactional?" Celio asked, flashing a roguish gold-toothed smile.

  "Mercs are like hookers, pretending to care costs extra."

  "Name your price, Princess das Neves." Celio countered instinctively.

  "More than you can afford." Princess answered, revulsion sounding clear in her icy tone.

  "I shall thaw your heart yet. But, for the time being, back to business. I have had an uneasy peace with the Guerreiro my entire life. There was mutual benefit in allow one another to conduct our business undisturbed. However, last year they were no longer contented with the terms of our long-agreed peace. They still took my money but my ships began disappearing at sea and in the heavens, my men butchered, my legitimate business's harassed while their less-legitimate counterparts were outright attacked. When I sent my best man to deliver my new terms, they sent me his head in a box a week later."

  "So its war." Leeroy concluded.

  "Not yet." Celio said. "War is bad for business, as is weakness. It is not an army that opposes me, there is no unified foe to loose you dogs of war against. This minor dispute between my family and the resurgent Guerreiro must be kept in the shadows… for now. My family's legacy is not so simple and El Cruce Babro is not some foreign city to be conquered. No, I would save this city from itself and to do so I need the hearts of the people."

  "That's not our usual MO." Princess said. "Don't do much 'saving' with bombs and guns."

  "There will be bloodshed enough in the days ahead, my sanguine Princess. Even now the vipers gather to see me brought low and all that I've worked for scoured from the pages of history. If I make the first move and fail to destroy them utterly, the Guerreiro will scatter like maggots and plague me for as long as I live. For now, I must show strength. To continue my affairs as if their attacks are so far beneath my notice that they become emboldened and expose themselves— and their co-conspirators. Then you may have free use of your bombs and guns."

  "You're not leaving me a lot of run for tactical flexibility." Leeroy stated.

  "That will change when the moment is right and the people know who their real enemy is. What would the people say if they saw that I'd hired you now? 'The Savior is weak, look how he hides behind his guards and hires more every day.' 'His empire is crumbling from so few holes in his ships, he is not a man who can protect our children— or our investments.' You must understand Mercenary, whispers like those would kill me as surely as a bullet would. No, it is better that you are my hidden knife until the time is right. And then… My sanguine Princess shall have all the blood she desires." Celio said with another repulsive smile.

  "Very well then. How do you plan on hiding us until the time is right? Some of us can passably blend," Leeroy motioned to Hiiro and Bim. Then to his own Caucasoid features and those abhuman ones of Princess as well. "Others, less so. It won't take the locals long to learn you've got a band of offworlders working for you."

  "Drifting dos Estrelas, outsiders like yourselves, are not so foreign as you might think. I grew into manhood through shadow wars such as this, as have the men in my employ. Your kind are tolerated so long as your money is good and I can assure you your money will be very good, better even, so long as you stay on my retainer. Take the bulk of your brancos—the whites of your number—into Crucibab at dusk tomorrow. Pretend to be exactly what you are Mercenary, soldiers of fortune spending your pay until you return to the stars and head elsewhere. You may even take on local work should you choose, so long as you don't target any of my… business assets. Become known and you will fade from memory. Once you have done that, no one will notice when you come or go from the city and you will be free to move as you need for your duties in my service."

  "Alright, I'll get a rotation sorted once my entire team has gotten planetside. Local days here are forty-one hours, so I've planned at least three shifts a day, roughly fourteen hours a shift for my people. Your climate is atypically hot and wet too, between the long days and the heat it'll take some time to acclimatize. Of course, you are the client and your opinion will be taken into consideration, so what do you want the other half of us doing while our paleskins work on our tans?"

  "Exactly what we've already discussed." Celio confirmed. "They will act as security consultants, procurement advisers and equipment trainers for my own staff. I have over nine-hundred men in my employ within the city alone and I want as many of them ready for the battles ahead as possible. There's also the matter of my chore girls, I have heard that your women fight like men. Could you train serving girls to do also such a thing?"

  Bim had seen no evidence supporting Celio's sexist convictions. From her limited exposure to the crass art of violence, all humans seemed to possess a varied capacity regardless of physical sex. In hindsight there were different advantages to every body type of both sexes, though she didn't know enough about physically devastating the human body with mundane means to categorize them adequately. Had she been unsealed, Bim harbored no doubt she would have been the most lethal woman on the planet and one of the strongest overall. She suddenly realized that much like until Treu had raised the possibility of her striking him, her overall capacity for violence was yet another facet of physical existence she'd failed to consider until prompted by external influences. A human might have become disparaged at how much they didn't know that they didn't know, but the reminder only served to fan the flames of her insatiable curiosity.

  Upon reflection, the duality of the human soul was something she still understood very little about. She couldn't understand why humanity existed in two partitioned states of masculine and feminine in flesh, mind and soul. Even her own vessel, an imitation she'd torn from the mind of those nearest her manifestation, conformed to the human idea of assigned anthropomorphic sexuality; a concept she now realized had been subtly influencing her own rationalization of what this vessel of pseudoflesh and its self-aware existence was.

  She, was not a she, but she'd subconsciously thought she was. Bim was neither and both simultaneously, a being beyond such trifling physical shortcomings, except she wasn't. She had a vessal, the body, of a human woman. The idea caused a cascading surge of gender dysphoria, identity supposition and a sudden intense desire to resculpt her vessel into a more androgynous, less human parallel more in line with her true sexless existence. She couldn't though, Treu had seen to that and the rational hatred of her Tormentor gained a new layer of complexity. All of this raced through her mind in the twelve seconds it took Leeroy to diplomatically consider Celio's question.

  "Generally speaking, yes." Leeroy tacitly answered. "Its actually quite common for other planets and colonies to use both sexes militarily, out of cultural bias or necessity. If you're worried about their effectiveness, I can assure you that modern weaponry equalizes most engagements to the point where the user's innate physicality doesn't particularly matter. Ultimately, if they want to be a warrior, we can make them into one. If they don't, they will be as useful as any other coward with a gun."

  "So long as they remain obedient in the end, I would have you train them as a weapon of last resort." Celio stated dismissively. "I have five-hundred working women on this estate, some small number of them should be suitable for your purposes. Though you must train them separately from the men!"

  "How well are the women paid?" Princess asked.

  Celio seemed puzzled by her question. "I give them a place to live, food to eat and the company of my men to keep their beds warm-"

  "So you don't pay them financially." Princess noted.

  "No, I do not. Why would I?" Celio asked. "Those who are skilled with numbers have access to a shared fund. Of course, their spending is regularly audited to keep them from frivolously-"

  "Pay the ones who volunteer for militia detail and reach the point of competence." Princess interrupted. "Also exempt them from a portion of their regular duties to train, and bring in more staff to make up for the labor shortfall— otherwise those who don't volunteer will become bitter at those who do for the increased workload. And we'll also need a discretionary fund for their training outside of our own operating budget. That should motivate them well enough for our purposes and prevent a reasonable amount of dissent while we change up the status quo."

  "And this point of competence would be the same as a man's?" Celio asked dubiously.

  "Yes." Leeroy answered before Princess could. "There's no point lowering our standards to accommodate the weak. That'd endanger everything we're trying to accomplish here and jeopardize lives in combat. When you fight, you have to meet the bar or you're a nothing but a liability. That's how we operate, and that's how we'll train your staff."

  Bim found this logic sound, though Celio gave the matter far more consideration that she felt it merited.

  "You expect many of them to reach the same competence as a man?" Celio asked.

  "If they have the heart to tough out training, then yes, I'd expect almost eighty-percent of your staff to meet our standards given enough time. I'd need to evaluate the quality of our raw materials before I can give you an accurate estimate, though at a guess, I'd say we can have a hundred men and maybe half that many women ready for defensive operations inside of ten weeks."

  The men guarding Celio scoffed at Leeroy's words. The mathematics of his statement seemed to indicate that given the relative starting volumes, men were proximately eleven-percent easier to train; which raised the question of whether the guards thought Leeroy's estimations were insultingly low of men or high of the women. Bim put the figure aside for verification at a later date.

  "So fast?" Celio asked.

  "We'll focus on the best candidates first and establish a teaching cadre from their ranks. You should keep in mind we'll be teaching them to primarily carry out basic combat and defensive duties first. Our initial point of competence will focus on discipline, marksmanship, small unit tactics and combat fitness. You're getting guards first and once they can do their jobs without someone watching over their shoulder, that's when I'll start refining them into hardened killers." Again one of the guard scoffed at Leeroy's remark, but the scarred veteran continued without pause.

  "The process would be faster if it was my sole focus, I might be able to reach my projection inside of six weeks if that was the case but between acclimatization, establishing a cover, security assessments, fortification, equipment procurement and covertly guarding your person, my attentions and those of the outfit will be spread thin. We've already got a few training plans devised, once the rest of my team is planetside we'll get a distribution of labor sorted with your people. From there we can finalize our course of action for the month before I depart tomorrow evening. Both the away and training teams will need some attached locals who know the surrounding areas and markets well. I assume you were able to arrange them ahead of schedule like I requested?"

  "My trusted men are awaiting your guidance as we speak." Celio confirmed.

  Leeroy cast a glance to Princess who shook her head in the negative.

  "Good, then there's nothing else we need to discuss right now. You'll have a transcription of my intentions by dusk tomorrow, we'll reconvene then to discuss any issues. Unless you have anything to add?"

  "Only that I look forward to working with you, my friends." Celio said, smiling his gold-toothed smile. "My life is in your hands, do try to be careful with it."

  "For the amount you're paying? Your safety is all but guaranteed."