Ghost Faction (Necrospace Book 4) by Sean-Michael Argo

Author:Sean-Michael Argo [Argo, Sean-Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severed Press
Published: 2016-09-08T07:00:00+00:00

DEAD ALIVE

Jada knew that but for the margin of chance, it would have been her crossing the mineshaft instead of him, her shattered helmet on display in the temple’s central altar instead of his.

Mors was dead.

Jada was alive.

There seemed little difference between them beyond the obvious carnage of a body riddled with bullets. Jada had looked into the eyes of the Hollow Horde several times now, and there was a kind of light behind those dead eyes, a spark, and where there was such a spark perhaps there was life, or something that resembled it.

During her time in necrospace, she’d fought the re-animated bodies of fallen penal legionnaires, Helion troopers, and even a few salvage marines. They moved and made war like any other living being, only she knew for a fact that they’d died before being reborn, so to her, the line between life and death was arbitrary relative to technology.

Perhaps, at one time, there had also been a religious component to the understanding of mortality beyond the cold facts of science. Cold facts which were being turned on their heads by the existence of the Gedra, yet such things had been abandoned long ago by corporate society. Spirituality was a concept all but lost in the grinding gears of chronology and commerce, so there was little thought given to death, or life, beyond measureable data.

The truth was that Mors was dead, and had been so before his body had even hit the ground. It reminded her of the men and women she’d seen over the years who were hit by artillery fire, their bodies shattered or destroyed entirely in the blink of an eye without any warning that they were about to meet their doom. At least most soldiers in a firefight have some concept that they could die at a moment’s notice.

As Jada looked at Mors’ helmet perched atop a small altar at the center of the temple, she wondered if the man had accepted that his life could end at any moment, or if he at least expected to know death was imminent seconds before it arrived.

As Jada took in the full sight of the temple, for the first time, she began to feel as if she was achieving an understanding of the phrase ‘fight as though dead.’

Mors had been a Dire Sword for fifteen years; before that, he’d been a cor-sec officer in the Rubicon Corporation and had earned his data coins during a brief and bloody civil war deep in central Rubicon space. He was like the rest of the Dire Swords, having walked over countless bodies along the path of his life, leading up to the moment of his death. It could have come for him at any of hundreds, perhaps thousands of times in the past, before finally claiming him.

His helmet would be enshrined upon the altar for several days before being placed on one of the many shelves in the temple. The chamber had no name beyond simply being referred to as the temple.

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