Upgraded by Peter Watts, Greg Egan, Ken Liu, Robert Reed, Elizabeth Bear, Madeline Ashby, E. Lily Yu

your memories,” the Satrap says. “You’ll hand deBrun over. I know you. I have tasted your memories. Partaken of you.”
    “You know who I was, know who I am, ” you say. “That was the me before, I’m the me after they took all that, sliced me apart, rebuilt me, and deployed me.”
    You grab John’s head, and before anyone in the cavern can twitch, you slice his head off and hold it up into the air. John’s body slumps forward, blood fountaining out over the rock at your feet.
    “How long before the dying neurons are inaccessible in here?” you shout.
    Everything in the room is flailing, responding to the movements of the Satrap’s tendrils as they shake in anger.
    You ignore all that. “Give me. My memories.”
    The Satrap calms. “You are too impertinent,” the mouths around you chorus. “I am near immortal. I know the region the man was in. I will continue hunting for that world, and I will eventually have it. But you . . . ”
    The large man crushes the memory box. Hyperdense storage crumples easily under the carbon fiber fingers and steaming coolant bursts from between his knuckles.
    Fragments drop to the ground.
    You stare at them, lips tight.
    “Ah,” the Satrap sighs all around you. “Now those memories only live inside me. They are, once again, unique within flesh. So . . . if you kneel and behave from now on, I’ll tell you all about your life. Every time you complete a task, you will return and bow before me right here, and I will tell you about your life. I will give you your past back. Just hand me the head, and kneel.”
    “You actually believe that I will hand you this head, and take a knee?” you ask.
    “I do. From here, those are your only two choices. So the question is . . . ”
    You throw the head aside and hold the machete in both hands firmly.
    As expected, half the men and women in thrall scrabble for the head. There’s a twinge of regret. Maybe John would have been able to hide in his ship if you hadn’t shown up. Maybe he would have been able to sneak enough fuel to his ragged fleet to make for that hidden world.
    But you doubt it.
    And here you are.
    Killing the puppets who are in thrall to the Satrap is a thankless task. They are human. Many of them would not have asked for this life. They are people from the home world who fell on hard times, and were given a promise of future wealth in exchange for service. If they live long enough. Others were prepaid: a line of credit, a burst of wealth for a year, and then thrall. Others are criminals, or harvested from debtor’s prison. Prisoners of war left over from various conflicts.
    The Satrapy is “civilized.” So it says. It doesn’t raid for subjects. They have to, nominally, be beings that have lost their rights. Or agreed to lose them.
    Doesn’t mean most can’t see what thralldom is.
    But you kill anyway. Their blood, sliding down the hydrophobic blade to drench your sleeves. The three nearest, beheaded quickly and cleanly. There’s no reason to make them suffer.
    You walk through a mist of their jugular blood settling ever so slowly to the ground in the lower gravity. The Satrap, realizing what’s happening, pulls humans around itself. One of them holds deBrun’s head in their arms covetously.
    The big guy is the artillery.
    He advances, legs thudding, even here. Dust stirs. You walk calmly at him. He swings, a mass-driver, extinction-level powered punch that grazes you. Because what you have is speed. Mechanical tendons that trigger and snap you deep into his reach.
    Just the whiff of his punch catches you in the ribs, though. They all crack, and alloys underneath are bent out of shape.
    Warning glyphs cascade down your field of sight.
    You ignore it all to bury your blade deep into the giant’s right eye socket, then yank up.
    Even as the body falls to the ground, you’re facing the Satrap once more.
    “I’ve already called my brothers and sisters down on the ground to come for you,” it says