A Bitch of a Paradox Read online

  Bethany Anne couldn’t help but smile at the innocent imperiousness of the little big cat. She took a knee and offered the scratch Alyssa wanted. “Don’t worry, we’ll get him back, little one.”

  She looked up to see Amanda’s sunny disposition was now clouded with worry for Matt. “Morden could be anywhere,” she admitted

  Bethany Anne got to her feet. “Not an issue. I have every AI and EI watching for anything unusual. The second he shows up, we’ll know about it.”

  She glanced at Liz before asking her next question over the Link Amanda had created between their minds. ~Is Morden likely to kill Matt?~

  ~I don’t think so,~ Amanda replied after a moment. She put an arm around Liz. ~He wants me distracted, and he wants leverage. He’s succeeded on both counts.~

  Bethany Anne moved away, her mind on figuring out the Reavers' next move. If Morden knew Amanda well enough to pull this, he probably expected her to chase her ass all over the universe to find him. If she was a smart Reaver, as she suspected Morden was, she’d have a team moving Matt around to keep her out of the way while she went for the goodies.

  Amanda released Liz and walked over to Bethany Anne, her expression serious. “We need a plan.”

  “We'll make one,” Bethany Anne assured her. “Starting with figuring out what they’re looking to steal.”

  Bethany Anne wasn’t too pleased about leaving Matt in the hands of the enemy. However, she had to be realistic. No matter what the Reavers wanted, they had to be stopped.

  Amanda looked to be handling it well enough to suggest a previous incident.

  “Has something like this happened before?” Bethany Anne asked.

  Amanda nodded. “He’s been kidnapped by a Magus before, yes. I got him back, but he’d suffered during that ordeal. I taught him a few tricks for resisting telepathic attacks in case it happened again, so hopefully, he’ll manage okay. I’m not leaving him with Morden and his followers. We’ll get him back.”

  “About that,” Tabitha cut in. “Your friend had a lot of backup.”

  “Firstly, they’re most certainly not my friends, and most of them are not Magi,” Amanda explained. “Morden has enchanted their armor and weapons.” A smile replaced her thoughtful expression. “Which is exactly what I’m going to do to yours.”

  Bethany Anne raised an eyebrow. “You want to do what, now?”

  Tabitha looked skeptical. “Okaayy. How do you enchant a weapon?”

  Amanda pointed at the knife on Tabitha’s belt. “Let me show you.”

  Tabitha unsheathed the knife. “Will it damage it?”

  “No, it’s quite safe,” Amanda explained, holding out her hand.

  Tabitha gave her the blade hilt-first. Amanda held it in her hand and closed her eyes.

  Bethany Anne felt the shift and surge in energy around Amanda and the knife. After a few moments, Amanda opened her eyes again and handed it back to Tabitha with a smile.

  “What did you do?” Bethany Anne asked.

  “I infused it with Essentia so it can damage the Aegises of Morden and his crew,” Amanda replied.

  Bethany Anne recalled the need to turn up her Jean Dukes Special when they fought the Reavers at the station.

  “Aegises?” Tabitha asked.

  Amanda nodded. “The Magical shields Magi use to protect themselves. The armor that Morden’s troops wear is enchanted, too.”

  Tabitha took her knife back and examined it with interest. “Hope this works.”

  “What else can you do to give us an advantage?” Bethany Anne asked, thinking about the consequences of having Magical items loose in their universe.

  Amanda opened her arms and smiled. “Whatever we can think of.” She waved a hand, and Tabitha’s blade burst into flame. “That’s very basic but always effective. At the very least, I should enchant your armor to give you some protection. I can put an Aegis on it to make sure you’re resistant to Magical attacks.”

  Bethany Anne’s mouth curled. “Excellent. I noticed that my Etheric Energy and your Magical Energy appear to interact on some level, so maybe this will give us an advantage.”

  “Maybe,” Amanda told her. “You can be certain that Morden is doing whatever he can to understand your powers.”

  Bethany Anne raised an eyebrow. “He’ll have a hard fucking time. My powers are unique.”

  “Same here,” Tabitha added. “And it’s not like he can just grab someone and get the knowledge from them.

  Amanda gave Bethany Anne a curious look. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

  “Well, I keep a tight rein on my technology,” Bethany Anne added. “Everything would go to shit fast if unauthorized people got their hands on it.”

  Amanda nodded. “So you’ll understand why my enchantments will cease to work after I leave.”

  Bethany Anne chuckled softly. “Fuck, yeah. I don’t want Magic turned loose here any more than I want my tech being picked up by every two-bit asshole with a desire to become king of the universe.”

  “A wise decision,” Amanda agreed.

  Bethany Anne opened her internal HUD and sent a message to her head engineer, telling Jean to expect her and Amanda by the end of her day. “We’re going to take a little detour.”

  Liz glanced at Amanda. “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “No, I want you here with the cats. You can help protect the Hexagon too,” Amanda replied.

  “Sure thing.”

  “Stay safe, okay?”

  “I will,” Liz answered.

  “Take the Pod back to the Hexagon,” Bethany Anne told Liz. “Sabine and Ricole will take care of you.”

  Liz smiled when Samhain purred. “You like them?”

  Samhain nodded and moved off to herd Sam and Alyssa into the waiting Pod. He returned a moment later and nudged Liz with his head to get her moving.

  She shrugged. “Looks like I’ve got my marching orders.”

  Amanda laughed. “I think my boy wants to get back to Demon. Isn’t that right?”

  Samhain fixed her with a cool stare and nudged Liz again.

  “I’m going to head back with them,” Tabitha announced. “Pete is taking a recruit unit out for EVA training and Lillian isn’t here yet to watch Todd.”

  “He causing trouble again?” Bethany Anne asked.

  Tabitha’s face said it all. “This is my son we’re talking about. The universe blessed me with him to pay me back for Nickie.”

  Bethany Anne chuckled. “Payback is a bitch. It’s what you get for being the ‘fun aunt.’”

  Tabitha snorted. “You’ve got that right. That boy of mine needs eyes on him every second. I had to pull him out of the Pod-doc in the arena’s med bay the other day. He’d cut it off from the system and was about to activate his nanocytes. Can you imagine an eight-year-old Pricolici running around the Hexagon?”

  Bethany Anne made a note to have Winstanley block Todd’s access to the Hexagon’s vital systems. “I’d offer to scare some sense into him but he’d just laugh.”

  Tabitha wrinkled her nose. “The only person he listens to is Nickie. He idolizes her.”

  “It’s a shame she’s not around more.” Bethany Anne turned to Amanda with a grin. “Let’s go.”

  Amanda laughed. “Okay, then. Where do you want to go?”

  Bethany Anne considered heading straight to QT2, but in light of Matt’s kidnapping, it would have to wait. “We’ll start in my personal armory. I want to see what you can do before we make any larger changes.”

  Amanda smiled. “Do you want to do the honors, or shall I?”

  Bethany Anne held out a hand. “I want to try something.”

  Amanda’s smile grew wider. “I’m always up for a new experience. You wouldn’t believe how repetitive life can get.” She gave Bethany Anne a thoughtful glance. “Actually, maybe you do.”

  “If you’re talking about the universe having an inexhaustible supply of assholes in need of correction, you’re right,” Bethany Anne agreed. She opened the Etheric around them and closed it again, leaving them standing in gently rolling grey mists.

  Bethany Anne swallowed the rush that came with being in the dimension she drew her power from and swept an arm around. “We went through pretty fast last time. Welcome to the Etheric.”

  Amanda glanced around curiously. “This place has no Essentia. Interesting.”

  Bethany Anne pushed away the mists dancing at her feet, eager for her to shape the energy to her purpose. “No, just Etheric energy. Are you okay? Can you be here without discomfort?”

  Amanda nodded. “I’m fine. It’s a little odd being somewhere with no Essentia, but there are places on my Earth like this. We call them Dead Magic Zones. Anyway, I can store Essentia within me, so I’m not defenseless.”

  Bethany Anne created a platform from the energy swirling around their feet. “This will take us to the Baba Yaga’s position.”

  Amanda stepped onto the platform and a bubble came into being around it at a twitch of Bethany Anne’s finger.

  The platform began to move, picking up speed rapidly. “I’m going to guess that you would have the same limits in my universe,” Amanda mused out loud.

  Bethany Anne increased her draw on the energy, her attention on damping the inertia inside the bubble as she drove the platform at high speed on an upward incline. “Likely.”

  Amanda had a thoughtful look. “It makes me wonder, can we use this to our advantage. Do you have to be touching someone to bring them here?”

  “No,” Bethany Anne told her. “I can make the Etheric do anything I can imagine.”

  Amanda nodded, flicking her hair back over her shoulders as the platform raced through the mists. “Same with me and Essentia, except yours is technology and not Magic, right?”

  Bethany Anne’s mouth turned up at the corner. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, to quote—”

  “Arthur C. Clarke,” Amanda finished, smiling. “So your abilities come from tech added to your body.”

  “That’s correct. Kurtherian technology called nanocytes.” Bethany Anne slowed the platform as they approached the place where she could sense the Baba Yaga.

  “But the Kurtherians are your enemy?” Amanda asked.

  “It’s complicated.” Bethany Anne offered a small shrug. “So you inherited your Magic? From your parents?”

  Amanda chuckled. “You could say that. From my mother’s side, I guess.”

  “Were they as powerful as you clearly are?”

  Amanda chuckled. “That would be an understatement.”

  Bethany Anne raised an eyebrow when Amanda didn’t elaborate. “We’re here.” She took them out of the Etheric and into her personal armory on the superdreadnought.

  Amanda whistled, looking at the racked weapons displayed between cases of armor. “So you like weapons?”

  Bethany Anne grinned. “What can I say? It doesn’t come anywhere near my shoe collection, but more than two hundred years of my engineers pushing what’s possible has given me a lot of toys to play with.”

  Amanda’s eyes flicked left for half a second before the air shimmered next to Bethany Anne.

  The shimmer burst into red-gold sparks that resolved into a negative of Bethany Anne.

  Bethany Anne smiled. “Izanami.”

  The white-haired, black-skinned AI pointed at Amanda. “Who is this on my ship?”

  Bethany Anne’s smile faded some. “You mean, my ship. This is Amanda and she’s my guest, so don’t kill her.”

  Izanami huffed. “There is a security process for a reason, my Queen.” She vanished in another plume of red-gold sparkles.

  Bethany Anne met Amanda’s incredulous stare with a smile. “Don’t mind Izanami.”

  “Ship’s AI?” Amanda ventured. “I like her sparkle effect. I’m not as enamored of the paranoia.”

  “She’s still an adolescent in AI terms,” Bethany Anne explained. “She’s feeling insecure about the Kurtherian who got aboard just before you arrived.”

  Amanda nodded in understanding. “Oh, okay. So, AIs in this universe use light to manifest?”

  “They use whatever the hell they want,” Bethany Anne replied. “Izanami prefers hard light, which means she’s currently limited to the ship’s hard light projectors. I funded two separate mobile hard light drives for her and she wrecked them both.”

  She smiled. “Actually, you might be amused to know it was your Samhain who broke the second one when she pissed him off.”

  Amanda laughed. “That’s my boy. So, this is Izanami’s ship, judging by her attitude.”

  Bethany Anne see-sawed a hand. “It’s my home, and also her body.”

  Amanda nodded. “We have them where I’m from. The AI on my ship is called Jinx, but she frequently uses a Mobile Frame.”

  “So, they have the same rights as any sentient being?” Bethany Anne inquired.

  “Absolutely,” Amanda replied cheerily. “They’re fully integrated into Nexus society back in my universe. Many have bodies of their own if they want one, or they’re embedded into ships or other systems. That’s their choice to make.”

  >>See, AIs from her universe get the bodies they want.
  “What?” Amanda asked. “ADAM isn’t free like the others?”

  Bethany Anne shook her head fondly. “ADAM is as free as any AI. He enjoys giving me shit about not having a body, but he’d be lost without me and TOM.”

  Amanda tilted her head. “I did consider getting an AI in my head, but I decided against it. No one wants to listen to my crazy thoughts.”

  “You also have to listen to theirs,” Bethany Anne reminded her, clamping down on the protest from TOM about all the time he’d spent in her mental doghouse over the years.

  “What’s it like having them in your mind?” Amanda asked.

  Bethany Anne smiled. “It’s like home. Noisy at times, and occasionally I’d like to evict them both, but really, they are as much a part of me as I am of them.”

  Amanda smiled. “That sounds…nice?”

  Bethany Anne snickered. “I didn’t think so at first, and at least once a month, I threaten to tear my spine out to get some peace.” She shrugged. “It’s my life. We should get to work. Matt isn’t going to rescue himself.”

  Amanda nodded. “What would you like me to do? Besides, put an Aegis on your armor. What about your guns? I can give them unlimited ammo, and infuse the ammo with Essentia.”

  “That’s a good start.” Bethany Anne opened a cabinet and took out a pair of gleaming pistols. “Let me introduce you to the Jean Dukes Special. Unlimited ammo would be good. It holds between six and fifteen hundred rounds, depending on the load.”

  Amanda was about to pick one of the pistols up when Bethany Anne stopped her with a hand on her wrist. “Don’t try to fire it.”

  “I wasn’t going to. Why?” Amanda asked.

  Bethany Anne smiled. “You have pretty hands, and I have no idea if you’d be able to regenerate them if you triggered the security measures.” She picked both pistols up, savoring the way they fit her hands perfectly. “This is the most powerful pistol in my universe. The kickback would shatter your wrists if you fired it on the higher levels.” She placed them back in their case and observed while Amanda held her hands over them.

  Amanda nodded. “You have unlimited ammunition. Any magazine you put in there, it’ll duplicate the rounds, creating a new one every time it fires one. So, how about your armor?” She looked at the multiple cases. “Which one will you use?”

  Bethany Anne indicated the clothing she was wearing. “This.”

  Amanda looked at the heavy plated armor inside the cases, then at the skinsuit and high-heeled boots Bethany Anne was wearing. “Good choice. I love a good catsuit myself,” she replied, gesturing to her form-fitting white and grey outfit. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but, it looks like it’s infused with nanomachines?

  Bethany Anne laughed. “You’re not wrong. This is my current armor. Watch.” She willed her nails to turn into blades and showed Amanda that the fabric couldn’t be damaged.

  Amanda’s smile grew. “Nice. Fashionable and protective. I like it.”

  Bethany Anne inclined her head. “There’s no reason I can’t kick ass and look good at the same time.” She paused, glancing at Amanda’s outfit. “You too, thanks to your Magic. I’m guessing your Aegis gives you all the protection you need. Do Louboutins exist in your universe?”

  “Ooh, yes, they sure do,” Amanda told her.

  Bethany Anne sighed as she laid out weapons for Amanda to enchant. “I fucking miss those shoes. I wore my last pair out just before the twins came along, and, well, I can’t exactly visit the store.”

  “Why not?” Amanda inquired as she moved along the weapons.

  Bethany Anne sighed again, deeper this time. “Earth isn’t what it used to be. They blew themselves to shit around three years after I left. They came back from it, then some idiot fucked around and unleashed the zombie apocalypse.”

  Amanda put a hand to her chest. “That’s…”

  “Fucking awful,” Bethany Anne supplied. “Yes. But I’m one woman, and I can’t be everywhere at once. I was tied down in a conflict to free one species from the rule of another. The humans on Earth are recovering. Actually, you’d find you had a lot in common with them these days. I gave them nanocytes, and they turned them into magic.”

  Amanda’s eyes widened. “That, I have to see.”

  Bethany Anne shook her head. “Earth is staying hidden until I can be sure the Kurtherians won’t find it again.”

  Amanda nodded. “I understand. Another time.”

  Bethany Anne smiled. She was about to suggest they take a trip to Amanda’s universe sometime to take care of their urge to do some serious retail damage when Tabitha spoke in her mind.

  ***

  Matt awoke with a start, his cheek stinging with pain. He looked up to see a woman standing before him, peering at him with a cruel smile on her face.

  “Wakey-wakey,” she sang.

  “I can think of nicer ways to wake up,” Matt commented, working his jaw. His arms were secured behind his back, wrapping around some kind of solid pillar or support.