The chain of command’s a double-edged sword, and anybody who’s spent long enough tangled up in the Sargasso fucking Sea of bullshit paperwork, fuck-you handshakes and web of doublespeak intra-office memos knows what I mean. The channels you have to run everything through in an outfit like an army are as insulating as they are constricting, for the ( Read more... )

Pretoria, South Africa; 12:30 pm, 2/17/2007The wild, pounding thrum of a rave song poured out under the deft speed of Alexandra's fingers, her eyes barely glancing down at the three keyboards she was simultaneously manipulating; her gaze was focused entirely on the simulated biometric readings on the main screen of her composition panel, and the ( Read more... )

Six inches from Gerad or Rachel, the silence was deafening. Rachel, to her credit, seemed genuinely just oblivious of the subtle shift in Alexandra's bearing, as one would tacitly ignore the scattering of errant grains of sand along a dune. A subtle dance of wind on the face that nevertheless changes the structure of the whole. If Gerad wasn't ( Read more... )

The canteen was clean, and stocked with enough food to feed half the people in Pretoria outside the compound walls for a day. If not for the motley assemblage of off-duty novas scattered in singles and clusters throughout the room, mingling with the otherwise nondescript baseline personnel who saw to some of the more mundane functions of the ( Read more... )

Pretoria, South Africa; 11:00 am, 1//19/2007"...If we do that with the seeker head, we're going to lose at least half a mile from the strike range, if not more." Brushing her short black hair out of her eyes, Rachel leaned forward over the computer model hovering in the air over her workbench and tapped one of the segments, enlarging the projection ( Read more... )

The two electromagnetic fields leaned into each other, bioelectricity humming between them, and with a sudden violence Alexandra slammed her 'eyes' shut and backed down the hallway unsteadily, paused for a moment to catch her balance, then turned sharply on her heel and stalked back toward the elevator. She shouldn't have been so surprised, after ( Read more... )

Alexandra hung half a kilometer above the Pomme d'Or, sipping the virgin lime soda in her champaign glass slowly as she drank in the quiet stillness of the night sky, the slow grinding dance of the stars overhead and the vast stillness of the ocean below broken only by the burning candle of the cruise ship. Her deep violet dress stirred in the wind ( Read more... )

      Two hours later, Gerad and Rachel had both taken a drink along with their leave of the ballroom. Gerad's collar hung open around his neck and his sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, exposing pale, scarred forearms with carved definition and shocked with blond hair that ended in a pair of creased workman's hands. His tuxedo jacket and tie ( Read more... )

      A look of visible panic came over Gerad's face. Not the panic that characterizes moments of decision between fight or flight, the panic of animal struggle, but the uniquely human panic of realizing with crystal clarity that you just made a situation very, very awkward. He bit his lower lip and let a pregnant pause pass as he avoided eye ( Read more... )

      A couple hours had passed since Gerad had arrived, and he'd achieved little more than confirming his worst suspicions of human nature. He'd been approached by a dozen or so people, all novas, who had made some otherwise pleasant attempts and polite conversation and been either rebuffed by Gerad's coldness or startled that the inhuman charm ( Read more... )