Freedom, Humanity, and Other Delusions (Death's Handmaiden Book 3) Read online

  Freedom, Humanity, and Other Delusions

  A Death’s Handmaiden Novel

  By Niall Teasdale

  Copyright 2020 Niall Teasdale

  Amazon Kindle Edition

  Contents

  Part One: The Chūnibyō in Class 14D

  Part Two: Dirty Fighting

  Part Three: Quis Custodiet

  Part Four: One-Woman Army

  Epilogue

  Part One: The Chūnibyō in Class 14D

  Shinden Alliance School of Sorcery, Shinden, Clan Worlds Alliance, 236/1/10.

  The sun was warm and that was a plus. January on Shinden could be a particularly icy month and this January day was pretty typical. It had dawned bright and clear with a sub-zero temperature thanks to the clear skies the night before, but the sun was giving it a boost and there was every possibility that the temperature would be bearable by the time Nava Greyling Sonkei had to brave it in uniform. Currently, she was wearing a thick sweater under a coat and opaque hose under a short skirt, and she was already looking forward to changing back into something similar following the graduation ceremony.

  Not that Nava was graduating. Her second year at the Shinden Alliance School of Sorcery – SAS2 to its friends – would be starting in two days. Graduation was five years in the future. However, she had acquaintances who were graduating this year, she was in school anyway, and not attending the ceremony might have seemed churlish.

  Before the ceremony, however, there was the arrival at her new accommodation. This was why Nava was taking the unusual step of walking through the school to the area known as the Estate. Generally, the Estate was where the school’s staff lived. There was no reason students could not rent a house there, but student apartments were cheaper and there was a convention of sorts which kept the Estate and the nearby apartment buildings to postgrads, faculty, and ancillary staff. In particular, the Estate was really designed for couples and families, but that kind of rule had done nothing to stop Nava’s friend and lover, Mitsuko Trenton Sonkei, from arranging to rent one of the larger houses. With the combined power of Nava’s and Mitsuko’s allowances, and a little help from Melissa Connelly Avorn’s far less abundant funds, the three of them were moving into a four-bedroom house which Nava had yet to see. Mitsuko and Melissa had been working to move everything in for about a week, but Nava had had other duties to take care of before today.

  The Estate was a maze. Technically, it was more like a forest, but the effect, if you were driving, was maze-like. Curving, dead-end streets branched off from a couple of main roads. Smaller streets branched from the branches. Nava assumed that someone had designed the layout; presumably it had been someone who had failed a course in civil planning. If you were on foot, things were a bit better. Various paths cut through between the streets allowing for a considerably more direct route to most places, but the house Mitsuko had selected turned out to be on the far side of the Estate, quite some distance from the main school buildings. From the helipad where an Alliance Security Force transport had dropped Nava off, she felt as though she had walked through the entire school to get to her destination.

  That said, upon arrival it seemed as though the house was worth the walk. Situated on the end plot of one of the cul-de-sacs, the house was a low, broad building with big windows facing the street and a warm, pale-yellow render on the walls. There was a lawn at the front with a short, flagged path up to an entrance portico. Much to her pleasure, the door recognised her ketcom when Nava waved the device over the intercom and, dragging her lone suitcase, she stepped into an entrance hallway where she was faced with a stack of boxes, one large black case, and a collection of footwear lined up at one side.

  She was also, almost immediately, faced with an oncoming Mitsuko who rushed out of a door on the right. There were no words, because Mitsuko did not allow time for them. A second after seeing the tall, beautiful student president, Nava was balancing on her toes as Mitsuko lifted her into a very enthusiastic kiss.

  ‘I missed you,’ Mitsuko said when she finally had to break for breath.

  ‘I would never have guessed,’ Nava replied. ‘With such a lacklustre greeting, I should suspect that you’d forgotten me in the eight days since you last saw me.’

  ‘Eight days is a long time when you’re horny,’ Melissa said from the doorway Mitsuko had entered through. ‘It’s good to see you again. How was your ASF training?’

  ‘Boring to the point of aneurism. A lot of lectures on procedure and how they operate in practice.’ Nava gave a slight shrug. ‘It’ll be useful, eventually. It’s nice to be back here where I may learn something useful to me now.’

  ‘Well, we’ve left your stuff for you to put where you think is good.’ Melissa indicated the boxes which contained all of Nava’s worldly belongings, except what was in her suitcase. ‘First, we should probably show you the house.’ Melissa grinned. ‘I told my parents about it and they asked who I’d had to sell my body to to get it. I think they were joking.’

  ‘You didn’t sell it to anyone,’ Mitsuko said. ‘Really, it’s more of a rental agreement… Let’s do the tour!’ She pointed to the back of the hall where there was another door. ‘That takes you straight to the back of the house. There’s a door off it into the sento.’

  Nava held up a hand. ‘Wait. We have a sento?’

  Mitsuko grinned. ‘When I saw that, I just had to have this house. Apparently, they put them into most of the larger houses. The more recent builds anyway. It’s more like a large bath than a proper sento, but you can get three or four people in it and it’s got separate washing facilities.’

  ‘It’s pretty nice,’ Melissa agreed. ‘We have two shower rooms with toilet and such as well, so we shouldn’t have conflicts over usage too often. The kitchen’s… You know, let’s just take a walk and you can see.’

  The door Mitsuko and Melissa had come out of led into the lounge. It was large enough to double as a dining room if you wanted, but it seemed that the two women had decided on more of a Japanese feel. Sort of. If you squinted. There was a large sofa arranged to face the main entertainment screen which occupied the opposite wall, but between sofa and screen was a low table that seemed to be the only surface suitable for eating on. To Nava’s right as she entered was the big picture window which, she noted, could be entirely blocked out by heavy blinds. Decoration was light: the walls were painted in a soft, creamy colour and that was about it. It turned out that the same decoration had been applied to all the rooms except the sento; paintbrushes could be seen in their future.

  In the middle of the back wall was a door which opened onto a corridor. To either side of this were the bedrooms. Mitsuko had claimed the one on the right closest to the lounge and Melissa had selected the one on that side at the back. This turned out to be because those rooms had windows. They also shared a shower room; connecting doors from the bedrooms let into the smaller room between them. Smaller, but with a fairly large shower cubicle, and Nava could already see how her evening was going to start tonight. The bedrooms on the other side were set up in the same way and Nava selected the room opposite Mitsuko’s to be hers, even if she was not going to be sleeping in it very often.

  At the back, through another door off the corridor, was the kitchen. That had a window overlooking the rear garden, a door out onto the garden, and all the usual appliances. The garden was pretty bare, just grass which did not appear to have been maintained well up until now. Mitsuko had plans to get one of the gardeners from her parents’ estate to come down and do something with it.

  Then there was the door to the sento.
Nava revised her estimation of the way the evening might go on seeing a small pool raised a metre or so off the ground but also clearly sunk into it. A pair of hand-shower stations for washing let you get clean before plunging into the temperature-controlled bath which almost certainly was big enough for four. Yes, sex in the sento seemed like a high-probability event. Since the outer wall of the room was a window, floor to ceiling, you could do it in semi-public, if you wished.

  That left a mudroom – as Melissa described it – in the corner of the building with another door out onto the garden there. Opposite that door was the inner door onto the corridor from the entrance hall. You could get from front to back without entering any of the private rooms.

  ‘There’s a void,’ Nava said, looking at the inner door. ‘The corridor doesn’t fill the space between the bedrooms and the outer wall.’

  ‘Services room,’ Mitsuko said. ‘Air conditioning and the house computer and stuff like that are in there. Room might not be the word to describe it, but it’s the best I’ve got. It’s full of pipes and electronics, but there is an access door and you can move about in there.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Melissa said. ‘Not easily.’ She tapped her expansive chest. ‘You need to be able to fit into fairly narrow spaces and I’m badly equipped for those.’

  ‘Speaking of fitting into things,’ Mitsuko said, ‘you should change for the ceremony, Nava. Oh! Are all your uniforms in the boxes?’

  ‘I think I got whiplash from that change of topic,’ Nava replied, starting for the corridor that would lead her to the entrance hall, ‘but I foresaw this very situation when I left after the New Year celebration. I have a uniform in my case. I’ll go and change into it now and we can all watch Kyle graduate.’

  ~~~

  There was quite the array of outfits on show at the banquet after the ceremony. Obviously, there were SAS2 uniforms; a substantial number of graduates were wearing their uniforms for the last time before they went off into the wider world. However, there were also ASF uniforms because a lot of students went into the ASF following their time in education, especially those on the combat side. The ASF did not wait for graduation to employ them either; most of those wearing the black uniforms were on a day’s leave from basic training. There were also people in the school’s faculty uniform – rust red instead of blue – and there were the visitors in a variety of clothing ranging from the very casual to the strictly formal.

  Nava watched the people celebrating with her usual somewhat disinterested demeanour. The banquet was a buffet; some twelve hundred and seventy students were graduating, plus guests, plus faculty, and a sit-down meal was a logistical nightmare. In fact, there were multiple banquets spread across several refectories around the campus. Nava had eaten sufficient food that she could make do with something light in the evening, and now she was following Mitsuko around as the student president ‘pressed palms.’

  Mitsuko had actually described what was going on in that way. Various higher-ranking citizens and students had an expectation of personal congratulations from the president, and Mitsuko was endeavouring to meet that expectation. However, the president was also the daughter of the leaders of one of the most prestigious clans in the Alliance. More people wanted to meet her than might be expected of other graduations. Added to that, she was being escorted by the newest member of the secretive but very influential Greyling family. Plenty of people wanted to get a close-up view of Nava too. Nava had concluded that her role was that of an escort: part girlfriend, part bodyguard.

  Melissa was getting off lightly. ‘I think I’d want to murder someone by about now,’ she said to Nava as yet another pompous parent pushed their son at Mitsuko. No one was especially interested in some random girl from a small clan from the edge of Clan Worlds space, and Melissa was glad of that.

  ‘Suki’s actually had lessons in not murdering people at events like this,’ Nava replied.

  ‘She has?’

  ‘Sort of. She got some basic instruction in politics and public speaking. Her parents knew she wasn’t interested in getting into politics at all, but they also knew she was never going to be able to avoid it entirely.’

  ‘And then she stands for student president.’

  ‘That’s because she had an agenda she wanted to push in the school. She doesn’t have… Hm. Clan Worlds society as a whole suffers from this false warrior ethic. Maybe she should continue after she leaves.’

  ‘Don’t you dare suggest that where anyone else can hear,’ Mitsuko said. Apparently, she had escaped her latest admirer. ‘Changing things, at least a little, in SAS-squared might be possible. Changing that attitude in the Clan Worlds as a whole will take more than just one person talking a lot.’

  ‘It has to start with someone.’ Nava held up a hand to deflect any response. ‘I won’t press you into it, however. Spending your long life as the most unpopular person in the Alliance is something you’d need to choose to do. Now, who else wants to have their existence confirmed by feverishly gripping your hand?’

  ‘Kyle,’ Mitsuko replied.

  Nava turned to see Kyle and Courtney weaving through the crowd in their direction. Courtney was in her usual SAS2 uniform with the gold trim associated with some position of power. The black ASF uniform looked good on Kyle. He was a big man; the uniform tended to obscure his muscles, but he was still tall and broad-shouldered. His shock of dark-blonde hair was a strong counterpoint to his dark skin. His uniform was essentially the same as the SAS2 uniform for boys, so it just appeared that his usual attire had been recoloured in black with gold highlights. Aside from the cape: a gold cape sat on Kyle’s right shoulder, hanging over his back and right arm. That made this the dress uniform. Without the cape, it was the operations uniform. Completely replaced by something else, it was the combat uniform; the ASF uniforms were not especially practical until they needed to be.

  Courtney was looking smug, and the couple had been missing for an hour, so Nava could guess what they had been up to. Kyle was looking happy, but there was an underlying current of worry to his pleased expression which might require examination…

  ‘Congratulations,’ Mitsuko said as Kyle made his final approach. ‘What is it now, Cadet Kyle Maynard House?’

  ‘Cadet through basic training,’ Kyle replied. ‘Then they promote me to officer cadet for officer training.’

  ‘A non-commissioned officer rank,’ Nava supplied. ‘Then you start service as a second lieutenant.’

  ‘At which point, I’ll have the official rank you already hold unofficially.’ Kyle lowered his voice a little to make the statement; Nava’s rank in the ASF was, technically, a secret of sorts. ‘How was your training?’

  ‘Boring. A lot of lectures about procedures.’

  ‘That’s about what we’ve been getting. An afternoon of familiarisation with the new combat armour provided the most excitement so far.’

  ‘Ah. I did that before the new year,’ Nava said. ‘My family is moving to the new gear for those who don’t have some other form of protection they prefer.’

  ‘Is that what that big case is?’ Melissa asked. ‘It came yesterday, by courier. It’s locked.’

  ‘Yes, that’s my suit. I’m supposed to continue gaining familiarity with it. They’re being introduced for students this year anyway.’

  ‘A slightly lower-spec version is,’ Mitsuko corrected. ‘The chameleon surface can be configured to show the school colours and logo, but the specifications aren’t quite up to military standards.’

  Nava nodded. ‘The protective value is the same, which is what counts for students. We’ll all have a little less chance of scraping our knees.’ She turned her attention to Kyle, fixing his eyes with hers. ‘Now, Kyle, you’ve just graduated from SAS-squared and had sex with your girlfriend, why are you looking worried?’

  ‘I’m not–’ Kyle began and then he stopped because Nava was still staring at him.

  ‘He’s worried about me,’ Courtney said. She frowned. ‘I didn’t want to br
ing this up here…’

  ‘But now we all want to know what the problem is,’ Mitsuko said, ‘so you’ll be telling us anyway.’

  That got a sigh. ‘My family found out about Kyle and they’re not happy. I said they should look at his grades and consider the career he’s likely to have. Then I said I loved him and wouldn’t leave him. And then I said that if that was the way they felt, they could stuff their money.’

  ‘They’re disowning you?!’ Melissa squeaked.

  ‘Well, no. Not quite. I’m not welcome at the family picnics until I “come to my senses.”’

  ‘And they’re stopping her allowance,’ Kyle said.

  ‘Tuition’s free,’ Courtney countered, ‘and I have some money saved up.’

  ‘And I said I’d send her money as soon as I’m in officer training,’ Kyle said.

  ‘And I say again that you’ll need it yourself. I think I can just about make it to graduation. I think.’ Pause. ‘Why are you staring at me like that, Nava?’

  ‘I’m making an assessment,’ Nava replied. ‘I believe that if you were unable to complete your course due to the inflexibility of your family, that would be a quantifiable loss to the ASF as well as an issue for the school, given your position as captain of the Student Security Force.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to be stepping down as captain at some point during–’

  ‘But not immediately. You will be less able to handle your duties if you’re worrying over financial matters. I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘What you can do?’

  ‘And we can alleviate some of the financial burden immediately,’ Mitsuko said. ‘I’ll talk to the administration.’

  Looking a little shell-shocked, Courtney turned her gaze to Mitsuko. ‘Talk to… What about?’

  ‘Well, we have a spare bedroom. I’ll have them cancel your current agreement and you can move in with us.’

  ‘I’m not taking handouts, Suki,’ Courtney said. She looked quite determined about that. Rather fierce actually.