JANE ALEXANDRIA — violence&Body

The flesh&Body, waited eagerly, as it always did, to hear him, the darling&Body, over the radio. “I love you,” he told it, his soft voice crackling over the video link, and then the dropship’s clamps released, and it was falling, falling through the blackness of space. It tried to say something back, a grunt, something like I love you too, but language had never been its strong suit, and its makers had little use for a weapon who could speak its mind. In truth, it barely understood what the darling&Body had said to it, only his kind tone, his soft smile, his adoring gaze. He, too, had been made, made for it. He was the powder. It was the gun. It was made to watch instructional tapes sometimes. When new weapon packages were added to its violence&Body, its flesh&Body would see other violence&Bodies, sleek plates of interlocking dark armour sliding over each other to expose gun ports, missiles, and blades. In those tapes, the black backdrop was pockmarked with grainy white sparks. It had never seen them itself, and it did not know why. It wanted to know, but could not ask. It did not know that its theatre was in the shadow of Humbrol’s Maw, that the nameless planetoid it was endlessly deployed to and retrieved from orbited just beyond the event horizon of a black hole. It only knew that here, the only lights it could see beyond its violence&Body were other violence&Bodies hitting the atmosphere, dropped from the same ship it had been released from, to the same dark surface. A proximity alarm screeched, and its attention returned to the here and now, the gun mounted to its violence&Body’s left upper arm whirring to life and spraying a burst of lead through the orange plasma glow that had engulfed it. Moments later, the shattered remains of the missile that had been on course to hit it clattered against the hull. Its flesh&Body could even hear it, buried as it was deep within the violence&Body’s chest. “You’re doing so well, love.” The darling&Body’s voice was soothing and cool, and it hummed happily to hear him. Sometimes atmospheric entry scrambled communication lines back to the dropship, but today it seemed the lines had remained open. It crashed through the cloud layer, not that its violence&Body could see that, in the dark. But that didn’t matter. The laser altimeter told the violence&Body’s thrusters when to fire, and the flesh&Body screamed wordlessly in agony as the deceleration force crushed its ribs and spiked its blood pressure. The damaged parts would have to be replaced by more vat-grown spares when it returned to the dropship. While its flesh&Body’s vision blurred from the pain, the violence&Body’s camera feed, which was piped directly into its brain, remained entirely clear. The floodlights mounted to its shoulders flickered on, and it saw many others do the same… followed by flashes of gunfire and distant explosions. It and the others from the dropship must have been dropped directly onto the foe&Bodies. It fired its lateral thrusters, scooting up a small hillside, the feet of the violence&Body leaving great plumes of dust as it crossed the barren landscape. A target acquisition alarm chimed, and it launched a swarm of missiles from the back-mounted rack on its violence&Body. A thump, and a flash several hundred meters away. “You did it! Good work, dear, I knew you could!” It risked a glance at the darling&Body, risked taking its eyes off the battlefield, and the sharp electric shock of the violence&Body’s discipline system. He was perfect. The flesh&Body had been the first component, grown in a vat to be slotted into a violence&Body. But before that its brain was wired up to a computer, its grey matter poked and prodded. Even a blank slate had preferences, certain quirks from the cloning process that could be reinforced with conditioning. Then, the darling&Body was created. Its heart fluttered as it examined him through the grainy videolink. Everything about him, from the softness of his lips, to the arch of his nose, to the fullness of his breasts, to the soft brown eyes of the darling&Body had been made to enamour it, to titillate the desires of the flesh&Body. His gentle, warm, caring personality too. It worked. How could it not? He was its perfect match. He loved the flesh&Body, just as it loved him. It could have stared at him forever. It didn’t hear the proximity alarm until it was too late. The foe&Body crashed into it, and its violence&Body barely parried the arm-mounted blade with its own. The foe&Body sheered off the violence&Body’s missile rack instead of dealing a lethal blow, and it panicked, jetting backwards on its thrusters to try and get some distance, spinning up its machine gun again. “Watch out, love!” Not fast enough, not precise enough. The foe&Body swept its blade, and the flesh&Body screamed in pain as the mechanical arm its gun was mounted to was separated from its violence&Body in one stroke. It was truly on the back foot now, tears streaming down the flesh&Body’s cheeks as it flailed at its assailant. Pain, yes, desperation, yes, but also a recognition of what this meant. Its eyes flickered over to the darling&Body again… and the black-clad people who were now in the room with him, visible on the videolink, faces covered by reflective visors. “It’s ok. Don’t worry about me. Just stay alive-” He interrupted himself with a shocked squeal as the person to his left swung out, suddenly and viciously, with a hammer, shattering the darling&Body’s collarbone and sending him sprawling. The white room where he was kept echoed with screams of pain, which briefly stopped when the other black-clad person fired a kick into the darling&Body’s ribs, winding him. Its tears came thick and fast the more they hurt its love. It understood the arrangement; stop losing, and the darling&Body would be left alone. Continue losing, or worse, die, and the darling&Body would suffer. It sped up. It had to. Its distress and fear for the darling&Body fuelled the violence&Body, it responded faster to its demands, reflexes heightened, focus sharpened, parrying the foe&Body’s blows, every scream from the darling&Body making it better and more dangerous until finally- Shnikt. In a puff of pressurised steam, it ejected the violence&Body’s remaining arm i, blade outstretched, straight into the foe&Body’s cockpit. For a moment, stillness. Then the foe&Body collapsed over sideways, leaking coolant and fuel and blood, mixing in a rainbow slick puddle under the harsh lights of the violence&Body. “D-dear…? You… you did it… I knew you could…” On the videolink, the darling&Body was alone again. Blood ran from his nose, freshly broken, and it was missing teeth. Like the flesh&Body’s ribs, these would be replaced after the battle. The stabbing pain in the flesh&Body’s stomach could not be medically treated, however; primal, wordless guilt overtook it. It whined pitifully, trying to convey an apology. It should have been better, shouldn’t have gotten distracted, should have killed the foe&Body faster so his suffering would have been lessened. “Please, my love… it’s ok… you did the best you… could…” He smiled with bloodied lips, and he was still so achingly beautiful that he did mollify its guilt a little. Another sharp screech from the console. Movement directive. It picked up its sword arm, then pulled a new gun arm free from the downed foe&Body, this one equipped with some sort of shotgun rather than an automatic weapon. For the next hour it continued to fight, applauded by the darling&Body when it was winning, unwillingly serenaded by his screams of pain whenever it made a mistake. But it survived. He survived. Finally, the violence&Body reached a ridge, overlooking the battlefield. Even in the dark and lacking any formal tactical acumen, it understood its side was losing. There were almost a hundred foe&Bodies out there, encircling and picking off the other violence&Bodies that had been dropped to the surface with it. For the fifth time in a row, they would have to retreat. It waited patiently for the withdrawal signal. None came. “L-love…?” The torturers were back. Its flesh&Body made a keening, confused sound, cocked its head. It wasn’t losing a fight, why were they- The darling&Body screamed as he was hit, disoriented, before his head was yanked up… and the other masked person drove a knife into its darling&Body’s stomach, thick spurts of red blood staining the room. It screamed as its cherished one crumpled. One of the masked people turned to the videolink camera, held up a first aid kit. The other held up a sheet of paper, one of the ones the darling&Body kept on his desk. The careful, lovingly rendered sketch of the violence&Body, which he had been excitedly showing it the day before, had the number ‘fifty’ crudely scrawled over it. The flesh&Body grimaced. And then it got to work. Flashes, gunfire, the crunch of armour split open, the roar of rocket thrusters, its violence&Body fought wildly, more and more violent and desperate as the sounds of battle ceased to be accompanied by the pained whimpers of the darling&Body, as he became stiller and quieter. Ten foe&Bodies dead. Then twenty. It spun and shot and stabbed, thirty, its violence&Body’s chassis was riddled with bullets, forty, and still it fought, until- Crunch. Its heel smashed in the cockpit of foe&Body number fifty. The violence&Body steamed. It had moved so fast, fought so hard, that its motors had overheated. Its flesh&Body looked eagerly over at the videolink, expecting to see the darling&Body finally being given medical attention. They both stood where they had before, stock-still. Another sheet of paper. Sixty. Something built in the flesh&Body’s chest. Something hot, painful, sharp. Hatred. Achieving orbit on a planetoid this size would normally be impossible in only a violence&Body. But Humbrol’s Maw’s gravity drew them all in, little by little, and when the surface was blackened by the violence&Body’s rocket thrusters, it presaged its return to space. The dropship’s guns blazed. It dodged them easily. On any other day, it would have been killed. But its brain buzzed with anger and fury and worry for its love, its reflexes and speed turned against its makers with terrifying ferocity. Its eyes flicked back to the videolink. The two torturers were holding the darling&Body, shouting at it to stop, or he would be hurt even more. He was pale, unmoving. The violence&Body’s foot smashed into the hull of the dropship, shaking it violently. It swivelled, emptying its shotgun into a nearby turret and slicing the barrel from another. The flesh&Body glanced at the videolink… and it gasped. The darling&Body’s remaining teeth were sinking into the neck of one of the masked people. The other was scrambling away, screaming for help. It gazed lovingly at the darling&Body as he pulled away, ripping the torturer’s throat out. He was even more beautiful when the blood he wore was from another. But the burst of violence had taken a toll on his weakening body. Even untrained in medicine, it could see that he had moments. So, it did the only thing it could. It popped the violence&Body’s cockpit and slashed open the dropship’s hull, opening the darling&Body’s quarters to the void. For a moment, everything was silence, and cold, and pain. Then the hatch slid closed. For the first time in its life, the flesh&Body held the cold, shaking, dying darling&Body in its hands. It wept with sorrow. It pressed itself against the soft, inviting flesh of the one it had loved and been loved by all these years. It wept with joy. It kissed his cold lips, pain spiking across its torso as it leant over on broken ribs. Then the violence&Body fired its thrusters again. The dropship was left in a doomed and decaying orbit as the lovers fell up and up, into the event horizon of Humbrol’s Maw. Trapped in the moment before death. But it wasn’t sad. It could stare at him forever. Jane Alexandria is a transgender UK-based sci-fi and fantasy author. She focuses on themes of desire, powerlessness, and also how cool it is when large things explode. Her work has thrice been shortlisted for the Northern Writers' Awards, and her hobbies include reading, cooking, building models, and sometimes, very occasionally, going outside. She can be found on Bluesky @JAlexandria69