Some Desperate Glory

by Emily Tesh

“I have something I’ve always wanted to say to you,” she said. “And I might not get another chance.” “Go on, then,” said Kyr. The corner of Cleo’s mouth lifted. “All right. So,” she said. “You’re a horrible bitch, Valkyr, and everyone hates you. I hope they give you Strike and you die.” Kyr swallowed. Weirdly she wanted to cry. Strike: the vengeance of humanity. The wing that didn’t exist. Cleo breathed out. “That didn’t feel as good as I thought it would,” she said. “I meant every word, though. Promise.”

She didn’t know what she’d done to deserve a life suddenly full of talkative people;

“Haven’t you ever liked someone, or cared about them?” “I care about you,” Kyr said. “Not like that!” Mags rounded on her. “Haven’t you ever wanted someone?” Kyr got to her feet, not liking the look on his face, but before she could say anything he barreled on. This was the most she had heard him talk at once in years, the most expression she’d seen him show since the awful months after Ursa had left. “Forget the queer thing,” he snarled, “just—don’t you ever want to touch anyone? Don’t you ever want to be with someone, to love someone—” He broke off, gasping again. Kyr’s body moved before she realized that she knew what to do. Kyr’s body was always the best of her. She went to Mags and put her arms around him, and he shuddered like it hurt and then collapsed into the hug. Kyr could feel dampness where he had his hot face against her temple. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s okay.” He was shaking. Kyr found that her hand was rubbing soothing circles on his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. It’s okay.” Do you really think it doesn’t count, that I care about you? she wanted to say. Do you think it doesn’t count, when I refused my assignment, when I left home, when Cleo called me a traitor—I got stabbed, did you know—when I came to this stupid collaborator planet and lived in a shack with a majo for two weeks and then had to see Ursa again—all of that—just because it’s nothing to do with sex stuff, do you really think it doesn’t count?

The “warrior code” or “code of honor” so often used to explain human behavior to other sentient peoples is in fact more often honored in the breach. Humans may claim to be honorable, but they will cheerfully lie, betray, and exploit every available weakness in the pursuit of their goals. Actions which at other times would be considered even by humans themselves to be hideous crimes are justified in warfare as the price of victory. It is perhaps best to understand honor as operating optionally and on the individual level, while the authoritative driving forces of human military design work perpetually on the most ruthless calculus of cost and benefit.

“Avi, Avi, Avi,” Kyr said, and she laughed weakly. “You really are gone on him, aren’t you?” Mags said, “Yeah,” and then, “He said I’d get over it.” “Will you?” “No,” Mags said, with certainty. “I don’t think so.”

“I thought they were virtual realities,” said Kyr. “Pretend.” “Nope,” Avi said. “The agoge’s the real thing. Fourteen billion people die every time someone fails Doomsday.” Kyr went still. For a vivid instant she could almost taste the stale air of her combat mask as she stood on the defense platform and watched the blue planet begin to unravel. “If it’s any comfort,” Avi said, with a nasty little smile, “it’s the same fourteen billion, and by this point they’re probably used to it.”

Kyr thought about calling Lisa before they left, but what would she say? Hi, I liked kissing you, but for complicated reasons I need to run away and commit crimes, sorry. Also, in another universe I failed you in every possible way and never even noticed, so it’s weird now. Bye!

She told Mags and Yiso she needed sleep. “We were up all night hunting you two,” added Cleo. “Thanks for nothing. Wake us when it’s time for whatever alien terrorist crimes we’re committing.”

Then she thought of something else. “But you shot at me,” she said. “When I was running away, in the Victrix hangar. You shot at me and missed.” Cleo folded her arms and gave her a pointed look. “… Oh,” Kyr said. “Right. Thank you.” “You want to know something? You are the first person to ask me that question,” Cleo said. “They sat me down and interrogated me after you’d gone. Every single decision I made. They did not want to lose you and they wanted someone to blame. But you know what? No one said, Hey, Cleopatra, how come you missed that shot. I thought they would. They had my training scores and range records any time they wanted to check. But not once did it occur to those sons of bitches that I was better than that.”

It wasn’t like it was hard to keep him talking. It would have been harder to get him to stop.

Mags looked alarmed. “What’s it saying?” he asked. “Yiso’s not an it,” said Kyr sharply. “They’re a bit confused, that’s all.” “You try having a god machine commit suicide in your head,” said Yiso.

“I thought I could get out,” he said in the end. “I thought I would one day. I was just waiting for the chance. I thought—but I never did. I never got out. I couldn’t leave Gaea Station. I tried, and I just took it with me. And it killed him.”

And you thought he was a hero, said the cynical, ever-more-distant voice of Valerie Marston into that hollowness. And you thought he was a terrible monster. But you were wrong both times, weren’t you? He’s just a creep who gets off on power. That’s all.

Kyr felt suddenly and forcefully the weight of legacy. She wasn’t Earth’s child. She was Elora Marston’s, and Yingli Lin’s, and Ursa’s, and she owed her duty not to some abstract unknown planet but to the women who’d come before her.

The fearlessness Kyr had once inhabited now seemed like an idiot’s castle, with walls built from fantasy and self-delusion. She’d grown used to feeling fear, this time round.

“What aren’t you telling me?” said Kyr. “So many things, Valkyr, most of which you wouldn’t understand anyway.” That was a deflection. Kyr grew more certain. “Avicenna.” “What, you think you can give me orders now? Drunk on Command, Valkyr? Magnus always said you were kind of a bitch.” Avi dropped that with the air of someone tossing a grenade. He watched for the effect with a mean little smile. Kyr looked at Mags. After a moment Mags said, “Well, you are.” There was a place inside Kyr where she would have been hurt, not so long ago. Mags and his soft spot for horrible lost causes. She’d never realized she was one of them. She laughed.

What a waste it was, what a terrible waste, to take a person who dreamed cities and gardens and enormous shining skies and teach him that the only answer to an unanswerable suffering was slaughter. Gaea Station had made them both what they were. But Kyr was determined to be different.

When she started to run—her steps echoing on the Victrix’s stripped plasteel floors, the ruddy glow of the emergency lighting flashing past her feet—there was a second when her body told her this is what you get for slacking: a catch in her breath, a twinge in her knee. Then the long years of a Gaean upbringing kicked in. So it hurt. So what? Twelve minutes. Kyr knew she could go faster, so she did.

“I’m disappointed, Valkyr,” said Jole. “I thought you probably would be,” said Kyr. There was a pause. Kyr met Jole’s cold eyes. He’d meant that to lash her like a whip. It hadn’t touched her at all.

I would not normally end a work of fiction with a reading list. But if the ideas in this book interest you, you may wish to read about them in treatments which are fuller and more thoughtful than a novel can aspire to. In no particular order, here are a few of the books I read while writing this story: The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert O. Paxton, for a considered examination of the twentieth century’s most terrible political creation; The Impossible State by Victor Cha, which discusses the history, the logic, and the peculiar international position of North Korea; Going Clear by Lawrence Wright, particularly interesting on the personalities that drove the creation and lasting power of the modern cult of Scientology; The Spartans by Paul Cartledge, for an overview of the ancient militarized ethnostate that has cast such a remarkably long mythic shadow over the two thousand–odd years since its total failure. None of these has a direct correspondence with Valkyr’s story, which is pure fiction. I am not a knowledgeable enough historian to make a good allegorist.