Tony Daniel by Metaplanetary: A Novel of Interplanetary Civil War

damned Free Radical Patrol. Some kind of machine followed me here, and I didn’t realize it. Amés must have found out from me—the other part of me—where Ben is.”
    “What is a Free Radical Patrol?” I say.
    Something hits the outside of the hoy, hard. “Oh shit,” TB says. “Yonder comes the flying monkey.”
    The pilot glass breaks, and a hooked claw sinks into TB’s shoulder. He screams. I don’t think, but I move. I catch hold of his ankle.
    We are dragged up. Lifted out. We are rising through the air above the hoy. Something screeches. TB yells like crazy.
    I hold on.
    Wind and TB’s yells and something sounds like a million mean and angry bees.
    We’re too heavy and whatever it was drops us onto the deck. TB starts to stand up, but I roll under his legs and knock him down, and before he can do anything, I shove him back down through the pilot dome hole and into the hoy.
    Just in time, too, because the thing returns, a black shadow, and sinks its talons into my back. I don’t know what it is yet, and I may never know, but nothing will ever take me without a fight.
    Something I can smell in the grist.
    You are under indictment from the Free Radical Patrol. Please cease resisting. Cease resisting. Cease.
    The words smell like metal and foam.
    Cease resisting? What a funny thing to say to me. Like telling the wind to cease blowing. Blowing is what makes it the wind.
    I twist hard and whatever it is only gets my dress, my poor pretty dress and a little skin off my back. I can feel some poison grist try to worm into me, but that is nothing. It has no idea what I am made of. I kill that grist, hardly thinking about doing so, and turn to face this dark thing.
    It doesn’t look like a monkey I don’t think, though I wouldn’t know.
    What are you?
    But there are wind currents and not enough grist transmission through the air for communications. Fuck it.
    “Jill, be careful,” says TB. His voice is strained. This thing hurt TB!
    I will bite you.
    “Would you pass me up one of those gaffs please,” I call to the others. There is scrambling down below, and Bob’s hands come up with the long hook. I take it, and he ducks back down quick. Bob is crazy, but he’s no fool.
    The thing circles around. I cannot see how it is flying, but it is kind of blurred around its edges. Millions of tiny wings—grist built. I take a longer look. This thing is all angles. Some of them have needles, some have claws. All of the angles are sharp. It is a like a black-and-red mass of triangles flying through the air that only wants to cut you. Is there anybody inside? I don’t think so. This is all code that I am facing. It is about three times as big as me, but I think of this as an advantage.
    It dives, and I am ready with the hook. It grabs hold of the gaff just as I’d hoped it would, and I use its momentum to guide it down, just a little too far down.
    A whiff of grist as it falls.
    Cease immediately. You are interfering with a Hierarchy judgment initiative. Cease or you will be—
    Crash into the side of the hoy. Splash into the Bendy River.
    I let go of the gaff. Too easy. That was—
    The thing rises from the Bendy, dripping wet.
    It is mad. I don’t need the grist to tell me it is mad. All those little wings are buzzing angry, but not like bees anymore. Hungry like the flies on a piece of meat left out in the air too long.
    Cease .
    “Here,” says Bob. He hands me a flare gun. I spin and fire into the clump of triangles. Again it falls into the river.
    Again it rises.
    I think about this. It is dripping wet with Bendy River water. If there is one thing I know, it is the scum that flows in the Bendy. There isn’t any grist in it that hasn’t tried to get me.
    This is going to be tricky. I get ready.
    Come and get me, triangles. Here I am just a girl. Come and eat me.
    It zooms in. I stretch out my hands.
    You are interfering with Hierarchy business. You will cease or be end-use-eventuated. You will—
    We