Unconquerable Sun

by Elliott, Kate

  “Right now it’s the only Phene ship we have.”

  A shattering roar boomed across the heavens. Dust, debris, and smoke churned above the canopy. The sky-tower had fallen.

  Sun shouted, “Direct the vehicles in the center to go in unmanned! Use screening agents for concealment!” She fixed the telemetry helmet’s air filter over her nose and mouth, then pinged Alika.

  “Whales moving,” he replied, all business, no show. “The park network is dead. I can’t get an overhead view to see if other ships have set down.”

  “James, get more wasps out.”

  “On it.”

  Visuals flashed past in Sun’s ring network. Wing was being buffeted by grit from the collapsed tower, view veering crazily. A wasp sighted down a long straight avenue where janitors trundled as in parade, cadets advancing in their wake wearing telemetry helmets and body armor. Their formation was tight and steady. It looked good. It looked courageous and bold. A surge of certainty flooded through her. Lee House wasn’t the only one who had access to Channel Idol. They didn’t get to control the narrative. She clipped out a tight signal to her Companions: ALIKA. JAMES. HETTY. VISUALS OF EVERYTHING. WE MAKE OUR OWN STORY.

  She said to Isis, “I’m going in.”

  “I can’t recommend you place yourself in such danger, Your Highness.”

  “The Phene have lorded their superiority over us for generations. Now they’re trampling on our soil and mocking our inability to stop them. I will stop them.”

  Isis didn’t bother to argue. She dropped off the back. As cadets abandoned the vehicles at the front of the line, the ones designated to go forward under remote control, she rounded them up into squadrons.

  Thumps marked the release of smoke bombs and swirling light shimmers. Shielded by these screens the leading unmanned vehicle raced into the clearing and was immediately punched to a halt by rail gun fire. Its big wheels deflated, and it tipped sideways. A two-wheeled Fox raced past and, knocked off course by heavy gunfire, collided with a landing strut.

  The forward wave of the debris cloud from the sky-tower’s collapse boiled out of the trees from the other side of the clearing to obscure the ship. Sun steered the Wolverine into a dense streamer of smoke and blasted into the clearing. She released a wide pulse from her stinger. Its parabola dulled the stinger’s impact, but she only needed to stagger and stun.

  “Move! Move!” shouted Isis from the trees. “The princess is in there alone.”

  A stuttering round of shot from the Phene defenders hammered into the base of the Wolverine, pitching Sun sideways. As she hit the ground the shock of impact throbbed through her shoulder, but she rolled into it as Octavian had taught her and came to rest on her knees amid ferns. The Wolverine turned incandescent beneath the full fury of a hailstorm broadside. She scrambled up and ran for cover behind the nearest tree. The trunk crackled as a pulse of heat seared across its bark. Needles burst into flame and fiery branches rained down around her. But she wasn’t dead or mortally wounded, so the burning sting didn’t matter.

  Two unmanned Wolverines barreled out of a hedge of smoke. After them ran a squad of cadets on foot, bent over as they popped off bursts of fire. One dropped, hit in the torso, but the rest kept running. Sun fell in alongside to race through the noxious debris cloud. A landing strut loomed up through the billows like the leg of a monstrous beast. Isis already had a squadron crouched under the struts. Of course.

  As Sun slid in, Isis gave her a tip of her chin in acknowledgment.

  “Give me covering fire,” said Sun. “I’m boarding the ship.”

  “Let me. You need to find the lab.”

  Annoyance flickered in Sun’s heart at the thought of shrinking from any challenge, but Isis was right. “I’ll keep moving.”

  Isis said, “You five, with me up the ramp. You five, lay down covering fire and create a perimeter. Everyone else with Sun.”

  Sun and the cadets assigned to her raced for the far tree line. Isis went up the ramp amid a racket of fire. Sun glanced back. The last cadet on the ramp toppled sideways, back carved out by a shot from out of the trees. Her people. Her command. Response must be immediate. Sun sighted back down the trajectory and slammed out bursts until she caught a target. A figure flailed in the haze and vanished.

  She sprinted to where she’d seen the movement. Under a spruce rested two dead Phene. One was tangled in webbing with blood spattered over body armor. The other was an older woman with age lines easily visible on her pallid skin and a starburst scar on her chin. Her clear helmet was high-end military gear, meaning she was an officer, although the Phene wore fewer markers of rank than Chaonians or Yele. She lay as still as the other corpse but with eyes closed peaceably, no mark on her. A cadet stepped carefully over the sprawl of extra arms to check for signs of life.

  “Make sure they’re dead. Especially that second one.”

  “No pulse,” said the cadet.

  Sun pinged Isis: STATUS.

  No reply. Before Sun could turn back to the ship, a big Bear rumbled out of the smoke from the left flank, packed with cadets. James jumped down. He’d taped his flatcap onto his telemetry helmet.

  “I’ve got a second gunship. It landed.” He blinked coordinates and an image from a wasp. A ship had set down next to an unexceptional factory block on a plaza one klick due west from the eastern edge of the park. Not far from her current position. “If that’s where the lab is, the Phene must have been tipped off.”

  “It’s likely, yes. The other gunships?”

  “The second wave of gulls is keeping a third ship busy aloft. No sign of the fourth.”

  “A group of Phene and lifepods came off the damaged ship behind us.” She considered Isis’s situation, but the second gunship took priority. “Send wasps to look for them and leave sentries. You and Alika get control of the roofs and approaches around the plaza.”

  She did a scan of her ring network. James beside her. Alika at the depot. Isis inside the ship, dead or alive. Hetty safe at CeDCA with Tiana. Candace a swift-moving blip in the air headed for the park. Zizou far away in the forest. She pinged Persephone, a blip near the depot, but got no response.

  “Either she hasn’t figured out how to use the ring or she’s the Phene collaborator,” said James with no mockery or anger, just focus. He tapped two fingers on Sun’s arm in a gesture of intimacy she only allowed her Companions. “Do you think the Phene came here for Prince João?”

  The thought of her father in danger made her resolve grow as sharp as the razor edge of a scylla’s teeth. “Maybe. But I think they’re here for Zizou.”

  “Zizou? He’s cute but not that cute.”

  No time for his cheap joke. “Why else raid deep into our territory? They’re desperate. They’ve done something weird and complicated to Zizou and maybe to other banner soldiers. Things they don’t want us ever to find out about. Go.”

  She waved her unit forward. James took the vehicles under his command in a swing south, so they could flank the Phene position while Alika swung west.

  Sun and her people emerged from the forest into the dying storm of the sky-tower. Ash and dust swirled into their faces, clogging filters and smearing grit over eye masks. Beneath the roar of the storm pulsed the muted hooting of an All Alert system someone had finally gotten going. A racket of shooting added to the din. They drove their two Bears, three Wolverines, and four Foxes to the terminus of the nearest avenue and lined them up just out of sight around the corner of a factory block. Her imbed did a cadet count: fifty-one. Because their faces were masked against ash and smoke, all she saw were eyes fixed on her, waiting for orders.

  James linked her into the feed of a wasp flying over the park. The second gunship had landed in a plaza one klick due west down this very avenue. The Phene had extended deployable shields around its position, giving them commanding lines of sight. Six visible snipers had set up on the roofs around the plaza. A straight assault would be a bloodbath. But only a straight assault would be fast enough to
stop the Phene before they grabbed and got out.

  She pinged Alika. WHERE ARE MY WHALES?

  ALMOST THERE.

  Just as the ping faded five Whales appeared north of her position on the outer road, rolling toward her. She found Persephone’s blip. The mechs and janitors were still working as a moderately effective screen for the unit that was pushing down a north-south avenue under withering fire toward the landed gunship. Good tactics.

  On the plaza, Phene troopers were off-loading lifepods and guiding them in through the block’s access gate, sited at the northwest corner facing onto the plaza. One of the roof snipers shifted, gun barrel swinging up with a flash as they took a shot at the wasp. The panoramic image snapped out.

  Sun pinged. “Isis?”

  No reply. Her gut twisted with anger; never with fear, never that. Keep the target in mind. They had to keep moving. Two more Whales rumbled into view, coming up the outer road from the south.

  Isis’s ping lit her network like a stab of relief.

  SHIP SECURED. IT IS A PHENE IN-SYSTEM GUNSHIP WITH EXTERIOR DISGUISE AND FITTED WITH A BEACON DRIVE. I’VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT. SHOULDN’T BE DOABLE. CASUALTIES TO COME.

  A beacon drive! Gunships were in-system vessels powered by torch drives, not interstellar travelers. A hundred possibilities raced through Sun’s mind, each rapidly discarded. She replied:

  SEND COURIER INTO COMMS RANGE OF CEDCA. GUARD GUNSHIP UNTIL SECURED IN MILITARY CUSTODY. IS THAT 2 MORE PHENE IN ADDITION TO THE 2 PHENE KIA OUTSIDE?

  YES BUT THERE’S ONLY ONE BODY OUTSIDE.

  Isis transmitted an image from Wing’s cam, showing a Phene corpse on the ground where Sun had left them.

  Sun pinged, THERE WERE 2.

  ON IT.

  Sun pinged James. LIFEPODS?

  NOTHING BUT TREES AND SMOKE. I HAVE 3 WASPS LEFT.

  DIVERT 2 TO MAIN BATTLE. Finally she pinged Hetty. STATUS.

  THREATCON DELTA. NO FURTHER SIGN OF ENEMY. GROUND-BASED FIGHTERS & QRF ON WAY ETA 29 AND 47 MINUTES. ANALYSIS OF ENGINE NOISE CONFIRMS HOSTILES ARE PHENE GUNSHIPS.

  AFFIRMATIVE.

  “Your Highness!” a cadet shouted. “Incoming!”

  All eyes looked up. High above, an enemy gunship hurtled out of the sky. The cadets dropped to the ground, using the vehicles for cover, but Sun remained standing because it wasn’t headed toward their position. It strafed along the edge of the eastern forest about a half klick south, shredding branches, splintering trunks. Right around where James was moving into the built zone for his flanking attack.

  She pinged Candace and got an immediate voice reply.

  “We’re coming in now.” Candace’s voice was squeezed and tinny-sounding.

  The enemy ship changed course as the six remaining gulls came streaking in, headed directly for it with a bravado that made her smile.

  “Fourth ship?” Sun asked just as the gunship fired.

  “Unknown. Jade Kim has a plan—”

  Candace’s voice cut off. The sound of an impact smacked through the air. The leading gull jerked sideways and spun toward the trees as the pilot fought to pull up on a damaged wing.

  As the gunship overshot the remaining gulls, still in their V, the trailing gull broke off from the formation. It pitched into a steep dive aimed for the plaza with the landed gunship.

  “Son of a bitch,” said the cadet who’d spoken before.

  The gull’s ejection seat popped, and a parachute bloomed. Sun stepped out around the corner to look down the avenue. Drifts of smoke made it hard to see clearly, so she tugged a filter across the goggles of her telemetry mask to adapt for the haze. Strikes from a rail gun and searing blasts from a heat seeker in the rear of the gunship raked up the body of the diving gull, but it was too late. Phene troops scattered, diving for cover.

  With a shattering boom the gull drove into the grounded ship. The walls of the buildings on all sides of the plaza cracked. Pieces of ship tore off. Windows crumbled as the shock wave boomed outward.

  “Down!” Sun ducked back around the corner. Everyone crouched along the wall as the blast wave boomed past, its roar melding with the rumble of five Whale barges as they lumbered up at last.

  At three meters wide and ten long, each carrying a three-meter-tall hopper or container on its cargo platform, the barges made formidable obstacles. She waved the first driver forward. With a grinding of gears the leading barge lurched around the corner. As soon as the cadet had locked the barge’s steering to a course straight for the wreckage, she jumped out and dodged back. A sniper shot took her in the back, sending her sprawling.

  Sun leaped out, grabbed the cadet’s ankles, and dragged her back around the corner as rail gun bursts peppered the wall above her head. A second Whale swung around behind the first, then the third, then the fourth.

  “Move!”

  Her squad packed in at the rear of the fourth barge, with the Bears and Wolverines and the rest of the unit falling in behind and the last Whale bringing up the tail.

  Even damaged as they’d been, the Phene soldiers hadn’t lost their skill. They pounded the forward Whale until it smoked from heat, but the other barges shoved it forward relentlessly. Pulverized wheels scraped the pavement with a painfully endless screech.

  James pinged in, hooking her to a wasp buzzing over the objective. A crater took up much of the plaza, debris everywhere. Bodies lay amid settling dust. The main gate into the factory block—right at the northwest corner—was crumpled and twisted, gapping open. A group of Phene survivors had set up behind an intact gunship strut to block the entrance while also firing down the four avenues of approach. It was a solid defensive position.

  The wasp’s view rose to hover over the factory block’s roof, a flat expanse where tables and chairs were arranged haphazardly for meal breaks. Several squads of cadets were moving in over the nearby rooftops. Past the boiling smoke of the fallen sky-tower could be seen three intact smokestacks: the view Zizou would have seen when he’d been taken out via aircar by Lee House.

  Was Persephone complicit?

  James linked her to a second wasp. It had followed the Phene inside the targeted factory block into a big processing plant. A catwalk spanned an assembly line floor. At one end of the cavernous space, doors opened onto an emergency stairwell beside a pair of freight elevators. Phene soldiers were shooting down into the stairwell, flashes of light answering from defenders below. One trooper turned and took a shot at the wasp. The image vanished.

  The driver of the second Whale rammed the crippled first barge against a factory wall, then bailed out as the second barge accelerated forward into a fresh barrage of Phene fire. They were over halfway there.

  A time came when you had to make the decision and charge in. She opened a voice line on the ring.

  “Persephone Lee. Reply with the green tab.”

  “What? Sun? This tab? Fuck.”

  It was jarring to hear Persephone’s curt reply instead of Perseus’s laughing insouciance.

  “I need cover so I can take the northwest gate to the factory block. Lab inside.”

  No reply.

  “Do you copy?”

  “Uh. Yeah. Over.”

  “Out.”

  By now the engine of the second Whale had turned to slag from the heat of Phene fire, and the pressure of the third barge pushing it forward had caused it to slew sideways to block half the wide avenue. Sun waved forward the fourth barge to help push, thinking together they could shove the second barge all the way to the plaza like a moving shield. But the Phene had finally gotten some kind of big armor-disintegrating weapon set up. With an ear-popping thump, almost like an implosion, the second Whale juddered and collapsed sideways as its leading edge disintegrated into shards. The third Whale crunched over the debris. One hundred meters of open ground littered with smoking wreckage to go.

  Sun waved the trailing barge forward and sent all of the Bears and Wolverines unmanned on either side, hugging the walls, crackling over glass from shattered windo
ws. She led her squadron at a run, using the vehicles as cover, as the Phene at the factory gate hammered the incoming Bears and Wolverines with a hailstorm. Axles broke, wheels shattered, and vehicles reeled off to slam into walls. A cadet went down hard and bloody over to the right.

  “Keep moving!” Sun shouted without slowing as she started to get out ahead of the squad.

  A wheel spun backward, knocking another cadet sideways. Sun broke back to grab the girl and drag her behind a crippled Wolverine as rail gun fire peppered the roadway, chipping up asphalt. A second hollow thump sent a wave of pressure through the air. The third barge slumped to a stop, the big hopper on its back cracking from a direct hit. Raw ore poured out in a cascade. More obstacles, and the Phene knew it. They were just buying time for their operation. She needed a brilliant idea to break the attention of the Phene rearguard position even for ten seconds, long enough to bridge the gap and drive them back into the factory interior. Alika and James were moving in effectively, but they could not attack the gate on the plaza.

  A soft whump caught at the edge of her hearing. A moment later a big white sack came hurtling over the plaza from the north-south avenue that ran perpendicular to the one she was on. The sack seemed directed at the factory gate’s makeshift blockade.

  Fire from the Phene split it open. White particles rained in a brief shower.

  “What was that?” said one of the cadets. Seven cadets had crowded in to crouch beside her and their fallen comrade in the shadow of the Wolverine.

  Two more sacks came flying from the other avenue. One fell short of the Phene position. The second flew past it and was torn open by a blast of fire. A cloud of pale green particles whooshed on the breeze.

  “That’s fennel,” said Sun. “Oh. I see. They’re using the spices from the train.”

  “They’re launching spices at the Phene?” One of the cadets laughed, halfway to hysteria.

  But Sun grasped the wild unpredictability of the plan in an instant. “Finding their range.”