“My lady,” Dr. Caecelia Medica said, bowing, “I come with the samples you requested.”

“And?” Alestra asked from her place on the throne. She perched delicately on the edge of the seat, careful to appear casual but not too casual, giving off an air of cool indifference. She fixed her gaze on the young woman, trying her very hardest to make her both uncomfortable and awed. That was the key to achieving such a deadly, dedicated cult of personality—encouraging a blend of fear and reverence that rivaled that of a god.

“They came back negative,” Dr. Caecelia said, her voice a soft cadence in the echoing room. She trembled—it was subtle, but she was shaking.

“They didn’t show evidence of any of the diseases I suspected?” Alestra asked, surprised, but trying not to show it.

“No, my lady,” the doctor clarified. “They were… negative. None of the samples we took had any DNA at all. Or rather, they did, but it was completely unreadable—so destroyed that it’s impossible to draw any conclusions.”

“I see.” Alestra narrowed her eyes. “What do you suspect, Doctor?”

Dr. Caecelia bit her lip. “In all honesty… these symptoms—they don’t make sense. We’ve found some evidence of infection, but it’s a different pathogen every time, and many are opportunistic infections that healthy soldiers would never pick up on their own, so we can’t attribute it to any one specific virus or bacteria. Besides, none of the pathogens we’ve found cause the symptoms you’re describing. Sudden hair loss, intestinal distress, testicular decomposition, kidney failure, liver failure, multiple organ system failure in general, cardiac arrest, skin sloughing… I mean, we’re seeing men literally scratch their skin off in sheets. It’s unclear what the cause is.”

“So what you’re indicating is that you have no idea and this information is useless,” Alestra said, standing.

“Well…” the doctor said nervously, “I can think of some things. Every cell just stopped working at once. If I had to guess, I would say that it’s a problem with the DNA—it’s been destroyed. A large dose of radiation, perhaps, though it’s curious that it only seems to be affecting the Nova soldiers—civilians aren’t showing the same symptoms, despite being in a similar area, and young adult men seem to be the most commonly affected age group.”

Alestra quirked an eyebrow. “What makes you think that this is due to the destruction of DNA rather than something else?”

“From what we can tell, there’s a delay between the exposure and the appearance of symptoms. Now, whether you want us to tell the soldiers that is up to you, of course, my lady. I would not suggest it if you want morale to remain high-“

“Naturally,” Alestra said. “So it’s incurable, then.”

“Unless somehow someone can manage to rebuild thousands of men’s destroyed genomes… yes.” Dr. Caecelia looked discouraged. “Like I said before, it’s similar to fatal radiation poisoning or a lethal dose of chemotherapy. There’s no medication or treatment that could fix it. They’re as much as gone before they even display any symptoms. Walking ghosts.”

“I see.” Alestra stepped down from her throne. “Leave the samples with me. You are dismissed.”

Dr. Caecelia curtseyed, which was rather awkward looking, seeing as she was wearing a lab coat, and placed the samples on the surface of the table at which she sat. Once she left, Alestra gestured to one of her servants, a pretty young Ministratora whose name she had long-ago forgotten. It was uncommon to have actual human servants when robots were more precise, and according to some more ethical, but it felt much more powerful to have people at her beck and call rather than faceless machines.

“I want this analyzed by the entire medical staff,” Alestra said. “Everyone. I don’t care how many resources we use up, I need them on this now. Every man, woman and child who is involved in biologics in any way needs to be focusing on fixing this immediately. I do not tolerate noncompliance. I want you to make it clear that this is a direct order from me and me alone, do you understand me?”

“Yes, your highness.” The girl curtseyed with considerably more grace than the doctor had, and the logo on her back—a twisted double helix enclosed by laurels—glimmered in the stark white light.

As the servant darted out the room, her ballet flats clacking on the marble and malachite floors, Alestra pocketed the sample and strode to her own quarters.

The sample DNA looked like it had been soaked in hydrochloric acid, dipped in ammonia, and sprayed with gamma radiation for weeks on end. Entire sections of it were destroyed, and the rest was so heavily mutated Alestra had no idea what it was meant to code for in the first place. The karyotype looked more fit for a HeLa cell than a human. Even the terminal couldn’t even begin to decode the mess of loose molecules and stains that dyed the genetic soup—it didn’t matter what options she chose or what data she asked for, the computer couldn’t create an accurate image of what someone with these genes might look like, which risk factors they might have, a family tree, an ancestry. It couldn’t determine which cells the information had been retrieved from or even who they were from, and there was absolutely no way a soldier had slipped through without giving his genes to the database. Hell, even if they did, soldiers were so similar to others in their unit that their comrades would have shown up as brothers or cousins. And every citizen of Eleutheria was pieced together from so many different fragments of DNA that multiple parents should have been lighting up on each and every one of their family trees. The fact that the terminal, a machine built for this purpose and this purpose alone, couldn’t even find a sibling for a DNA donor that had to have had dozens of biological half-siblings, was a testament to how mangled the genetic code was. And what’s more was that it was skillfully done.

Alestra didn’t know what she expected.

Of course Acidalia wouldn’t go for a traditional virus like smallpox or Ebola, something that killed with excessive bleeding or cytokine storms or high fevers. She was Eleutherian, too, and she knew that there was no use in such a thing. Symptoms could all be dealt with and treated—there were artificial organs and cybernetic implants and blood substitutes, and as long as the brain was salvaged, anything else could be replaced. Perhaps the Nova wouldn’t have managed to save all the men, or even most of them, but the more important among them would have survived, and the battle could have kept raging.

But this… this was something else. Acidalia had destroyed the source code of the human body. She’d wrecked the software so much that no amount of expensive hardware could save it. They could inject false blood and implant titanium bones to their hearts’ content, and it wouldn’t make a shred of difference because the body couldn’t try to help itself heal. Without DNA, nothing could be done, not even autophagy. Cells couldn’t even kill themselves.

It was absolutely, unquestioningly brilliant, and Alestra was almost angry that she hadn’t thought of it herself. It had all the hallmarks of her style—it was a silent, deadly killer that spread through a population with both subtlety and horror. Soldiers would have no way of knowing if they were infected until the symptoms started appearing, and by that point it would already be a death sentence. The anxiety alone could cripple an army, not to mention the fact that at least half the active forces were dead or dying.

“You look pensive,” someone said from the doorway, interrupting her train of thought. Kryptos—untrustworthy, manipulative, dangerously brilliant Kryptos—had found the way into her quarters, and he was waiting. His soft blond hair stuck wetly to his damp face; it must have been raining outside. Alestra hadn’t seen rain since the Celestial Wars, and she knew enough about meteorology to deduce that weather systems being down never meant anything good.

“Why are you wet?” she demanded, though she already knew the answer.

“It’s snowing.”

Alestra groaned internally. Rain was bad, but snow was even worse. That meant the weather forcefields had been down for so long that the water had crystallized, and it would stick to the streets forever, a thick and hypothermia-including blanket of ice. And the people weren’t stupid—they knew that such a catastrophic meteorological-system failure meant something very, very bad. Snow was a sign that Eleutheria was collapsing, and that would incite panic. Alestra groaned.

“I take it we’ve seen little improvement in diagnostics,” Kryptos said, looking over Alestra’s shoulder at the DNA terminal.

Alestra had neither the time nor patience for this. “Why are you in my quarters?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“You should have waited outside.”

“It’s important.”

“I don’t care. If you were anyone else, I’d have your head on a platter right now.”

“Ah,” he said, “but I’m not anyone else.”

Alestra bit her tongue. She wanted to argue with him, but he was too valuable a resource to fall victim to her ire, and she needed him on her side. Normally, the Imperatrix Ceasarina did not defer to anyone, but these were dangerous days, and she wanted all of the allies she could possibly get. Kryptos was no Einstein, but he’d make a suitable dragon, and he had the looks for the part.

“Sit down,” she snapped. He made himself comfortable in a white chair across from her, twisting it around so the back was in the front between his legs. “What do you want with me?”

“Why the hostility?” he asked, the picture of innocence.

“You know why.”

He actually had the nerve to snicker. “You didn’t honestly think they’d find a cure for it. Acidalia’s low-class, not stupid, and she is a Cipher.”

“You don’t need to keep reminding me.”

“On the contrary, I do,” he said, “because while you were in here sulking about the death of half your army—“

“Three quarters—“

“I was out consulting with political scientists and propaganda artists, which, lest you forget, is supposed to be your job. Forget about the Martian bastard for once and listen to me, Alestra. We’re in a bad place militarily, and if we don’t do something soon, we’re going to lose the whole damn war.”

That was enough to get her attention. “Which political scientists are you talking to?” She doubted anyone in the Nova would be brazen enough to say that to his face.

“Doesn’t matter. At this point it’s not even the deaths that are causing our problem. We may as well just ignore those and start growing new soldiers, because this just isn’t something we can fix. We need to raise the white flag already and start raising up a better army—one that Acidalia can’t make fall apart at the slightest provocation.”

“Seeing as whatever hellish virus she released targets and tears apart human DNA, I doubt we will ever manage to create a population of completely invulnerable adults,” Alestra replied dryly. “Even I don’t have the money for millions of robots. You are altogether too optimistic.”

“Well, then, we’ll just have to kill Acidalia before this can happen again,” Kryptos shrugged. “Anyway, my point is that we need to forget about this shit for a while. There’s nothing we can do about it anyway—it’s time to move on before we plummet even further into this nightmare. Let’s deal with the problems we can fix.”

“And those are?” Alestra hadn’t been made aware of any major issues, though that might be because all of her usual advisors were dealing with an onslaught of dead soldiers and lost battles.

“Well,” Kryptos said, reaching into his pocket, “number one is our public image.” He pulled out a holographic projector the size of a button and set it on the table.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Right now? Pretty much everything, and you can also blame your daughter for that. Look.”

At the sound of his voice, the projector came to life, displaying a faded, flickering image that slowly clarified into something approximating Acidalia. Her facial features were obscured, though Alestra couldn’t make out why, and she wore the uniform of some kind of Revolutionary military official. The juxtaposition between her disheveled appearance and her elegant, regal pose gave the picture a sort of surreal feeling, and Alestra felt suddenly is if those big brown Martian eyes—Elijah’s eyes—were burrowing right into her soul, with their traitorous lack of blue.

“What is she covered in?” Alestra asked, spinning the picture around. The same substance that dripped down her face was splattered all over her back, and it clung to her hair in coagulated chunks of sludge. It looked almost like—

“Human blood,” Kryptos finished. “She escaped from you through a blood pharm.”

Alestra wrinkled her nose. “Not an attractive look.” She chose not to acknowledge the inflection with which Kryptos said you; it made her sound incompetent, like it was all her fault Acidalia had gotten away. Meanwhile, he and Cassiopeia were off doing god-knows-what at Alpha base and ignoring or avoiding every command they were given. It wasn’t Alestra’s fault any more than it was his.

“Maybe not, but it’s good for propaganda.” Kryptos swiped left, revealing another picture taken from a different angle. Acidalia wore the same outfit and had the same faux—messy hairstyle, but this time she also had a pair of garishly bright blue latex gloves, and she held in one hand a defrosting bag of blood labelled O-. It was a live hologram, and the ice crystals in the bag sloshed left and right with the rise and fall of her chest.

“What’s that supposed to be?” she demanded.

“They’re claiming that all the blood coming from that factory is unfit for medical usage, which isn’t actually false,” Kryptos said, “but, more importantly, she’s pinning it on you.”

“I never had anything to do with that pharm,” Alestra snapped, “and the claim that I did—“

“But that’s the problem—she’s not actually saying anything that isn’t true,” Kryptos sighed. “You didn’t have anything to do with that pharm, and she knows that just as well as everyone else. But that’s the platform she’s criticizing you on—she’s saying that your regime’s lack of regulation is what caused the whole problem with cost-cutting and unusable blood. She’s not lying, just playing with the truth.”

Alestra gritted her teeth, and she seethed at the knowledge that she couldn’t even really be angry with Acidalia. It was true that she’d never really considered the pharmaceutical industry—or any non-military industry in general, for that matter—to be something worth her time, and she could never have imagined that anyone would criticize her for it. There were wars to fight and rebellions to quell; unless the pharma companies were helping her in some way, she had so many better things to do than deal with them, and nobody expected the Imperatrix Ceasarina to take a piece out of her very busy day to go deal with some random Appalachian corporation selling poorly-made blood. But naturally, Acidalia—holier-than-thou, high-and-mighty Acidalia, with her idealistic visions of a utopian world and her insufferable personality—would take affront to that.

“Between this and everything else, our image is plummeting, and it’s only going to get worse,” Kryptos continued. “Acidalia is still alive, which makes all of us look completely inept, and makes her look like some sort of demigod, because it’s common knowledge that almost nobody escapes when you want them dead. So support for her is only rising. Then there’s the fact that so many of our men are just dropping dead in the streets because of invisible diseases, which doesn’t add to our perceived strength. And it’s snowing on the bodies, which makes us look even worse, because it’s not very often that the forcefields go out for along enough time for ice to crystallize. Combine that with the claims that we’re making ‘literal blood money’—I know, she thinks she’s real clever for coming up with that—and all the other ridiculous propaganda they’re putting out, and we are in a bad place.”

Alestra scowled, reaching up to turn off the hologram of Acidalia. “Fine. But I don’t see why that’s my problem.”

“You don’t see why this is a problem?” Kryptos asked incredulously.

“I recognize that it is a problem, but it is not mine. All of this falls to the information department. Maintaining our image and countering Acidalia’s propaganda is entirely their responsibility.”

“Well, it’s gotten to the point where even the information department can’t do much to combat this.”

“Then kill the information department and find me a better one.”

“You can’t exactly expect them to fix everything without giving them something to work with. After all, you’re our biggest source of funding here—you’re our leader, and everything they put out revolves around you. They can’t do anything if you don’t cooperate with them.”

“I am cooperating.” More anger bubbled in Alestra’s throat. Who did this man think he was, questioning her motives and her desire to help? Of course she’d cooperate—how dare he act like this was all her fault?

“No, you aren’t, because you’ve been busy holding audiences for no reason and yelling at scientists who aren’t at fault for anything,” Kryptos said, deadpan. “Listen. I get it. You’re irritated. I am, too. But we are better than this. We can’t let anger get in the way of our plans. Sitting here and moping and seething and complaining is only letting Acidalia and her movement grow stronger. We need to do something.”

“I’ll make a speech,” Alestra said. “I’m the best orator on the planet. All it takes is two pages of words and they’re won over, and we don’t need an army for that. That will almost certainly make people hold us in higher regard. Aleskynn and I can shoot more propaganda, I’ll start work on a bioweapon, and if the Revolution doesn’t start cooperating, I’ll start threatening nuclear war.” Alestra hated atom bombs—they were so messy and destructive, with their electromagnetic shockwaves and radioactive fallout, and they didn’t discriminate between one’s enemy and her friends. Besides, if she dropped a bomb, the Revolution would, in all likelihood, retaliate in kind, then Eleutheria would inevitably become nothing but an irradiated wasteland if one of them didn’t stand down.

That being said, Acidalia wasn’t the type to enjoy mindless destruction, either, so there was a very real possibility that she would stand down. If she was forced to choose between letting the Nova win or letting the world turn to dust, she’d probably choose the former.

Acidalia’s allies, on the other hand… Alestra had a feeling that the cyborg Praetor would have no qualms about decimating countless years of culture and human history. After all, Labora weren’t exactly known for being intellectual types.

“Don’t threaten nuclear war, not yet,” Kryptos said, as if he was reading her mind. “Mutually assured destruction, remember? Acidalia is a fragile little flower who can’t stand the sight of a mushroom cloud, but I wouldn’t put it past some of her friends to destroy Eleutheria for fun.”

“Well, naturally. They are in the Revolution, after all,” Alestra snickered. “All right, so no nuclear bombs. What do you suggest? We need something grandiose and visible, something that will draw attention away from their victory. I suppose we could launch more chemical weapons?”

“Useless, they’ve figured out how to make helmets that block them. The only people who are dying are civilians.”

Alestra sighed. “I should have assumed that. Perhaps we could launch some EMPs and knock out the electrical grid?”

“What would that do other than kill a bunch of cyborgs?” Kryptos asked. “We have to show that we’re actually helping something—improving something. Acidalia looks ridiculous, but at least she’s relatable. Look at her. She’s wearing black like a Cantator, for god’s sake. This is appealing to poor kids, to laborers, to the lowest castes, to soldiers. She makes war look attractive.”

“So do we,” Alestra said.

“Not attractive enough,” he sighed. “The fact is, she’s 20 and you’re 45, even if you may not look it. Her life is just beginning and you’ve already had two—three, technically—kids. Simply put, Acidalia appeals to the younger generation more than you do. And we need to change that.”

“Even I can’t reverse entropic time,” Alestra said.

“No. But you can radically change how we portray the Nova.” Kryptos stood. “Look at me. I’m the antithesis of the Acidalian image. I am everything Acidalia Cipher—if you can even call her a Cipher—is not. But I’m young, I’m smart, and I am Eleutherian through-and-through.”

“Are you suggesting that we make you the new face of the Nova?” Alestra didn’t hate the idea, but it was somewhat worrisome. She feared Kryptos rising above his stature and becoming dangerous. Life had taught her to keep her friends far closer than her enemies.

But at the same time, he was right. Her image just wasn’t going to compare to her daughter’s any longer.

“I cannot, and will not, fade into irrelevance,” she said, narrowing her eyes. She’d need to keep this man on a tight leash if she wanted any chance of retaining the reputation she’d built.

“In that case, I say keep the ‘Eleutheria’s protector’ angle and play up the mother part,” Kryptos replied. “Acidalia is mythic. She’s a ‘child of two worlds.’ And I know that’s meaningless drivel, and you know that’s meaningless drivel, but it isn’t smart, educated people that she’s targeting. If you want to keep up, you have to be just as celestial.”

“Celestial…” Alestra mused. She thought briefly of her sister, but she knew that wasn’t what Kryptos meant. “I am descended from the Luminosae. I am partly, in essence, a god, and I can play the role of Hera or Juno to a planet filled with idiotic children waiting to be led.”

“It works,” Kryptos agreed. “I’m Eleutheria’s bright, young, military conqueror, and you’re Eleutheria’s benevolent, mysterious mother goddess. You and Aleskynn are the perfect, ideal Nova family. We parade you and her around like figureheads and role models, show how good our policies are, and I’ll be the face of the people who are actually making our vision of the future happen.”

Alestra nodded. “If only my eldest daughter wasn’t the leader of the opposite side.”

“Emphasize that she’s a Martian foreigner, not that she’s a Cipher daughter.”

“But I’m the one who willingly slept with a Martian man.”

“Did you, though? Was it really your fault?”

“Yes. But…” Alestra knew that lying would make her far more sympathetic than she would otherwise appear, but something about insulting Elijah like that just didn’t feel right. Even though he’d put her through hell and dragged her through a whirlwind of broken trust and betrayal, he was still her first and only love. Somehow, lying about him felt more disrespectful than killing him had been. She’d given him and his wife a dignified death; it was the best she could do, considering the circumstances.

But she could paint their whole relationship in a negative light so easily, and their romance could quickly be construed as a sleazy Martian immigrant manipulating an innocent young princess. Alestra barely had to say anything outright—all she had to do was sit in public and look despondently up at the red planet, and people would draw their own conclusions. Then Alestra wouldn’t be thought of as a mother betraying her daughter, but as an innocent, suffering victim of Martian barbarism facing the personification of her own trauma. It gave her an excellent backstory, and an excuse to be out for her child’s blood. If the planet thought that Alestra had been manipulated or forced into bearing a half-Martian bastard, Acidalia would no longer be seen as princess being abused by an evil stepmother, but as an illegitimate whore sired by a criminal for the purpose of illegally gaining access to the throne. There was just one issue.

“That makes me sound too powerless, don’t you think?” Alestra asked. “Although I suppose I could publicize the fact that I killed him, and make it sound like I’ve gotten my revenge.”

“That’s perfect,” Kryptos said. “You were a little Eleutherian princess from a civilized world, and he was an uncultured, uncouth barbarian from a place where they still speak Anglian like it’s 2002. What are people going to do, believe a random Martian over you? What Martian would even defend a long-dead man who fathered at least two bastards?”

“And I can also say that I tried desperately to breed the Martian out of Acidalia, and she went astray regardless—“ Alestra began.

“because it’s in her DNA,” they finished together. She could see the picture coming together now, but there was one more problem.

“Will a better image be enough?” she asked. “We need something to unify people. A universal experience or opinion that boils down to something concrete. The vague idea of fixing Eleutheria’s problems by eliminating the root cause isn’t concrete and specific enough for people to latch onto that. Acidalia has her platform. We need ours.”

Kryptos thought about it for a few seconds. “Nothing unifies people like shared hatred.”

Alestra nodded. “What we need is a scapegoat.”

“Martians?” Kryptos asked. “I mean, I know they aren’t very high ranking on the list of threats to Eleutherian prosperity. But Acidalia is a Martian half-bred.”

“No, they’re too far away,” Alestra replied. “Besides, why would that be productive? Martians aren’t even an enemy, they’re just nuisances. An invasion of the entire planet would take me less than a week, and everyone knows that. And we don’t want them dead, anyway—they’re a valuable labor source. The whole planet is close to Solis and mineral-rich.”

“Laborum?”

Alestra shook her head. “Turning ordinary citizens against the people who make all of our weapons is stupid. Don’t get me wrong, I dislike Laborum as much as anyone, but their termination will have to wait until we automate the processes that they carry out now. And there are too many Laborum—some will slip through the cracks, and we don’t have the resources to spare to get rid of them all. They’re pests; you let one go and they breed and breed. After we’ve conquered enough territory and killed Acidalia, we can turn our attention to them.”

“Religious people?” Kryptos suggested.

“Too vague, and religion is too common. We also can’t have religious Dictatora losing their minds at us.”

“We could just target specific denominations first,” he said. “Or turn them against each other.”

“We don’t even have to do that ourselves, they already hate every denomination that isn’t theirs.” Alestra sighed. “We need someone common, but not too common. Someone who can easily be picked out in a crowd. Someone who contradicts our values, but won’t be used as worker in the future—someone whose death would go unaccounted for and uncared about.”

“And someone who isn’t considered human enough to have human rights,” Kryptos added. “Clones, perhaps? Lab rat people?”

“Cantatores!” Alestra realized suddenly. “Cantatores are perfect. Paint them as the subhumans they are, make them public enemy number one, blame them for every problem we’ve ever had, and watch gullible idiots aching for a cause flow in to support us. Nobody would defend a Cantator, and nobody would ever call their slaughter barbaric. And most of them are malnourished teenagers, anyway—we hardly need a significant amount of manpower to kill them. It would divert attention away from our loss at Appalachia and it would make us look like we’re actually doing something.”

“That’s ingenious,” Kryptos laughed. “This is why you’re in charge.”

Alestra smiled. “Naturally. I am a Cipher, after all.”