Only Superhuman by Christopher L. Bennett

t-shirt patterned like medieval Japanese armor, tilted his head and spoke. “So—you’re the real one?”
    “The one and only!”
    “Hmp.” He stared some more. “You were cuter in the movie.”
    Emry slowly, carefully holstered her sidearm.
    *   *   *
    Pellucidar’s various managing partners soon moved in to “secure” the theme park and began bickering over whether Sorceress should be reprogrammed or destroyed altogether—and over which Vestan state had the right to make that determination. Emry wasn’t exactly a fan of the cyber—she had killed six people, after all—but the thought of anyone being put to death because they had no legal rights outraged her, and she made that known to the Vestans. The one thing they could agree on, however, was that they didn’t let outsiders dictate their policies.
    The matter was rendered moot when orders came in to report to the TSC’s local branch headquarters as soon as possible. Emry didn’t see the need; this Gregor Tai fellow from Ceres had been meeting with small groups of Troubleshooters as their availability allowed, and Emry had picked up the gist of it from them, how his Earth-backed consortium had offered to provide the Corps with new backing and resources. Sure, she couldn’t blame Earth for wanting to pay more attention to events out here after Chakra City, and it was easier to be sympathetic to them now. But Emry hated abandoning Sorceress to her fate.
    “You did the best you could, Emry,” Zephyr told her as he kneaded her sore muscles that night, the thrust of his engines as he moved into a polar orbit holding her against the massage pad without the need for straps or handholds. “I think you made her case to the press very well. And nationalist egos aside, a Troubleshooter’s endorsement carries a lot of weight.”
    His words brought her some comfort, as did the touch of his soligram avatar. She’d chosen it to look like a marble statue of a nude, clean-shaven Greek god with graceful white wings, not unlike the Zephyrus of myth, but its hands felt like warm flesh—and secreted their own lubrication. “If anybody listens. All the attention right now’s on that Tai guy.”
    “People pay attention to you.”
    “Sure, ’cause I’m the sexpot with the cinematic past. I’m someone they gawk at, not someone they listen to. That won’t help Sorceress.”
    The avatar smiled. It wasn’t just a simulation; cyber emotions may have been less intense than the human kind, without hormones to fire them to passion, but a sapient mind, guided by choice and experience rather than rigid programming, needed motivations to impel action and shape behavior. She knew by now that Zephyr’s kindness was real. Sometimes she was sorely tempted to take his avatar to bed, but without a skeleton like Sorceress’s toys, it could never hold up to her affections. Plus she didn’t think it would be fair to Zephyr to try to relate to him as a human instead of as himself. “You’re also the one who saved Earth from a bioterror attack and the patrons of Pellucidar from a very clichéd demise,” he said. “I’d call that a respectable beginning.”
    “Maybe. Feels more like too little, too late to me. Too many people I couldn’t save.”
    “I don’t think the public sees it that way.”
    “Well, I try not to worry about what the public thinks.”
    “Ha. You love the camera.”
    “And it’s mutual, babycakes.”
    “Maybe that’s the problem right there,” he said, a hint of that lecturing tone coming back into his voice. She got tired of his lectures, but forgave him because his voice was just so damn sexy. “Your conscious vanity. Despite your commitment to staying more focused in crises, you still play up your sex appeal otherwise. If you want to be taken seriously—”
    “No. I’ve heard that a million times, and it’s still bullshit. Nobody should have to hide what they are to be accepted. I’m proud of what I got— all of it, inside and