zero_gravitas

zero_gravitas, 2 months ago

Transacta-7Y1 made a fist, a symbol they’d agreed on at the beginning of their companionship. They both tensed, making ready to move. Surprise was on their side. Nothing else was, but they took what they could get. But Envaric had one more thing to say.

‘Tee. Tell me something before we die, yeah?’

She turned to regard him, gazing at his deteriorating form through her monovisor. She said nothing, but he had her attention. The look in his eyes was what she suspected to be amusement. This was it, then. One last joke.

‘Are you pretty under all that?’

It took her a moment to process this. She’d never been asked such a thing. Beneath her armour, she was an irradiated foot soldier of the Machine-God. Her skin, deep brown at birth and not unlike Envaric’s in that regard, was a starved and sunless grey. She’d been ritually delimbed, her extremities replaced with arms and legs of inexpensive cybernetic purity. Much to her honour, she had attained such a state of grace within her mechamorphosis that more of her body was now comprised of holy iron than what remained of her flawed birthflesh. Under her helmet, she was pockmarked with cryo-controlled radiation tumours. She possessed no eyelids, no hair, no teeth, and no nose – and what hadn’t been surgically removed had rotted off over the course of her years of sacred service.

In short, she was skitarii.

Transacta-7Y1 keyed in a symbol and tossed him the dataslug again. He caught it with weakening fingers and read the symbol there.

[affirmative]

He gave a bloodstained smile. ‘Yeah, I thought so.’

Though neither of them knew it for certain, they were the last of their combined platoons. When they attacked a few moments later, killing two of the Emperor’s Children from ambush, it was the final act of resistance in the defence of the Principa Collegiate.

• excerpt from Echoes of Eternity by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, chapter 9

zero_gravitas, 2 months ago

Off-topic, but because a few people have been shocked when I’ve mentioned it lately, just a note that Schwartz Media outlets - including the Saturday Paper - have long been under boycott for their erasure of Palestinian people (the owners are strongly pro-Israel):

The Schwartz Media group has faced accusations of supporting Zionism and Israel, and of avoiding critical discussion of both, as ABC journalist John Lyons has written. Indeed, as Randa Abdel-Fattah has observed, Schwartz Media “has what seems almost a policy position of avoiding coverage of Israel (and not publishing Palestinians, let alone Palestinians critical of Israel)”.

The company is currently under boycott from Palestinian and other writers in solidarity, including many First Nations writers, because of this continued work of erasure. Projects like The Sunday Paper — in contrast to the Schwartz-owned The Saturday Paper — have arisen to highlight this and to build alternative spaces for political discussions around indigeneity and solidarity.

from: …com.au/…/statements-from-the-soul-zionism-indige…