the front. It’s coming in super fast.” It makes that sound again, that little trill of pleasure. “This is so exciting! Don’t you think it’s exciting?”
Sarya is barely listening. She is breathing faster, and it’s not because of the mob out there. No, she is not afraid of them; because to get to her, they have to get through Shenya the Widow. This is different, a deeper and more fundamental dread, and it takes her a moment to pinpoint its source.
Mother.
A Widow’s primary weapon is fear, and right now Widow pheromones are drifting through the shared ventilation system and speaking directly to the lower regions of Sarya’s brain. Even across the species divide, even after spending her entire life in the loving embrace of a Widow, she has to keep a titanium grip on her own emotions. Those people out there…they should be terrified, and for good reason. They wouldn’t dare approach her now, and she’s almost disappointed that their betrayal will go unpunished.
“Show me the common room,” she says softly.
A second rectangle appears next to the first, and a second audio feed takes over from the chaos outside. This window is almost black and almost silent. Sarya can just barely hear a rhythmic chiming through the ancient Network prosthetic on the floor. The cadence is almost soothing in its softness. If not for the fear-smell, this would sound like bedtime to the daughter of a Widow. And then, in the black rectangle of the common room, a dim red light clicks on.
“What is that?” asks Helper.
“It’s Mother,” Sarya says simply.
A dark and gleaming shape waits in the center of the room. One by one, limbs extend to their farthest extension. The shape sways, nine cubic meters of quivering and ringing blades surrounding a softly hissing nexus. This is it. This is what Mother has told her about in all those stories: the Widow battle stance. Whoever opens that hatch is a fool.
“Come,” whispers Shenya the Widow in a voice Sarya never wants to hear again.
The hatch slides open immediately, admitting the tense murmur of the corridor. Pale light slides across the swaying Widow, glinting on carapace and blade.
Sarya squints at the shaky video feeds floating above her prosthetic. Something metal and massive stands in the doorway—two such things, each one thicker than her torso and lit from behind. They flex backward with a whine, and four burning eyes in a dented faceplate descend into the frame. And then the odor rolls in, a piercing smell of chemicals and hot metal that clashes with the Widow scent in the room and makes Sarya’s eyes water.
Hood is so large he is forced to reconfigure and come through sideways. With a screech of metal on metal he unfolds and leans on his one massive arm, a tangle of cables and jointed pistons with warnings all over them. Even in her room Sarya can feel the impact. Crouched as he is, his head still brushes the three-meter ceiling. And then, so slightly that Sarya is not sure she detected it at all, those eyes brighten, and he draws back. If that is alarm, she is glad. He is, after all, within striking distance of a hissing and battle-ready Widow.
“Greetings,” says Shenya the Widow. Her voice is still quiet, made of a gentleness that sends a shudder through her own daughter. Helper, in one of its many stories, once described it as the voice of someone simultaneously tucking in her daughter and premeditating murder—and right now, Sarya cannot think of a better description.
The giant glowers in silence while several more figures squeeze out from behind him and take up stations in the corners. They, at least, have the decency to show some honest fear of this thing in front of them, this black void of a being who is keeping a slow and rhythmic time on her many chiming blades.
[I was hoping it would not come to this], says Hood.
“And yet here you are,” whispers Shenya the Widow.
Sarya watches Hood stare death in its many-faceted eyes. He’s clearly wavering behind his metal faceplate, and Sarya is almost disappointed. Something inside her wants him to go for it, wants to see her mother cut him down for daring to lay a limb on the daughter of a Widow. And then he straightens with resolution and the rasp of metal, and Sarya’s raging heart is glad. Come and get your Human, you kidnapper.
[And yet here I am], says Hood.
“Ah,” says Shenya the Widow, and