At first I think the wandering stevedore is going to transfer through the security gate to the military side where a Lee House shuttle sits in a hangar. Instead, wearing workaday clothing and with a hoodie pulled up over his head, the figure walks briskly out of the warehouse compound. I lose sight of him. When he doesn’t appear at the nearest station I panic, then trawl the next three adjacent stations and finally find him because I recognize his posture and stride. After that it’s easy to follow him through the train lines, even when he reverses direction and changes clothing. I know this system like I know my own heart. Although maybe that isn’t the best metaphor.
When I realize where he’s headed I sink back with a kick of triumph. “Five Prosperities Station.”
Five Prosperities Station connects to the single civilian spaceport on the outskirts of Argos, which is tasked for high-value deliveries and time-dependent foreign or business delegations that aren’t being escorted in via military courier. Everything else goes up and down by space elevator.
Moira exhales sharply as she reads her virtual screen. “The commercial vessel Weak Execution captained by a Toby Cheek departed Reliable Winds Spaceport fifteen minutes after what appears to be Kiran’s arrival there. It latched onto a Remora freighter, which made a routine scheduled transit drop through the Molossia beacon less than an hour before the Phene raid on the industrial park.”
“Baron Voy seems to have gone missing too. Do you think he’s on that courier?”
“Never trust a Yele bearing gifts.” She stares at the console for fifteen seconds, although it seems an eternity. “Persephone, I have to lock down Lee House. We’ve been compromised. Only I as the governor have the authority to do a complete reboot. You go at once to Eirene with this information. Tell her in person. Preface your briefing with the phrase ‘frost on the ground’ so she’ll know it comes from me.”
“Sun guessed,” I say.
My aunt isn’t listening as she loads her report onto a hornet drive, the kind that will sting any unauthorized user, and hands it to me.
“Eirene’s shuttle leaves in fifteen minutes. Chaonia’s security is in your hands.”
36
A DISPATCH FROM THE ENEMY
Dear Mom,
I don’t want to die, and you don’t want me dead, I know that. But please promise me that if I do die you will release your repro-lock and have the second child you always wanted. Find a nice person, like the mechanic at Tranquility Harbor, because he totally has a thing for you even if you pretend not to notice. I bet he’d be an involved parent. His sisters always made me welcome at their table. I guess if I’m being honest I’d have to admit how much I always wanted a sibling. I’m so grateful for my rack-mates here, Cricket, Deadstick, and Splash (I can’t tell you their real names). They have become friends, and they have my back.
Don’t forget to lay an offering for me at the altar of Saint Arthas the Cursebearer. I hope I have lived up to your dedication of me to the Path of Arthas, but if I’m being honest I’m not dying for the homeland. The thing is, I will never let the other lancers down. Please stay safe, and don’t mourn me too much.
Suited, sealed in, and tubed up, Apama sat in her lancer as the Strong Bull jolted from an unknown hit. The silence drew taut as they waited. Sometimes pilots died when they were crushed, suffocated, or burned alive in the launch tube. Before her thoughts could fall into that horrorscape, the private internal comm crackled.
Delfina cleared her throat. “You don’t have to answer, but do you have some weird secret in your past? I didn’t ask before because I didn’t want to seem rude, but we could be dead in five seconds and I’m really curious.”
Apama was grateful for a distraction. “You mean, why did I get this assignment right out of flight school with no combat experience, unlike every other lancer pilot on this ship? Why did the fleet wait three days for me before launching?”
“You have to admit it is odd, even with your great scores.”
“I honestly don’t know. Like I told you, my mom’s people were grunt shipyard workers. When she was sixteen that big accident happened at Tranquility Harbor. All her family was killed, so she had to strike out on her own—”
The ship jolted again, throwing Apama so hard sideways her shoulder smacked the side of the cockpit.
Voice tight, Delfina said, “You think we’re ever going to be launched?”
Under stress Apama’s mind became suffused with an icy clarity. “I hope so. I’d rather die fighting.”
The command comm crackled in tandem with a triple burst of bell tones, the alert for launch. Tower chimed in, “Heads up, Maces. We’ve got a debris field right as you launch. But don’t worry, it’s all former bad guys.”
“Dyusme,” breathed Delfina. The readout for her pulse quickened as her adrenaline surged.
Apama’s whole body tensed, so she took in a five-count inhalation through her nose, held it for a five count, exhaled on a five count through barely parted lips, and held her lungs empty for another five before starting again. She’d practiced this calming exercise so many times. So. Many. Times.
Mom had worked hard to pay for her schooling, to give her this chance.
I will not let you down.
“Mace Sixteen, you are fourth in line to launch.”
Telemetry bloomed within the membrane that sealed her into the lancer, giving her an operational sphere of view onto surrounding space. The Phene assault fleet had swung around the third planet and was now racing toward the second planet and the beacon through which they’d exit into Troia System. Jewel colors represented the escort groups that accompanied the high admiral’s flagship, a behemoth named Choki’s Beauty. The fleet moved in a disciplined formation like a school of armored and armed fish in a dark ocean. Two scattered groups of Chaonian ships seethed at the edges of the Phene fleet, one retreating in disorder and the other an undisciplined pack nipping at the fleet’s wake.
A garnet gleam marked the Strong Bull, which with her escort of light cruisers was holding a rearguard position together with her twin dreadnought, the Steadfast Lion. The Chaonian ships in pursuit were mostly frigates and corvettes, but they were persistent enough that the Bull’s captain had sent out the lancers to slow down the harrying. The reds, blues, greens, and yellows designating each individual lancer in the Bull’s flights had scattered like chaff on a solar wind. It sure didn’t look to Apama as if there were sixty dots remaining. They’d been told the engagement in Molossia System was meant to be the easy part of the double-pronged attack, for the lancers, at least.
Had the high admiral miscalculated the speed and ferocity of the Chaonian response? Yet as the ancient sages said, no plan survives contact with the enemy.
The tube clunked, rolling them halfway over.
“Mace Sixteen, you are go.”
They were kicked free and released into space agleam with ships on the move.
They slid straight into debris.
“Evade!” Delfina’s voice blasted in tandem with the bleat of the collision alarm.
“None of this can puncture us. Let’s use the cover to get a look round.” Apama manually switched off the collision alarm to blessed silence.
They reported in to Mace leader. The debris had separated them from the rest of their flight.
“Do you see the ship this debris came from?” Apama asked.
“Saints protect us, that’s one of our own.” Delfina’s whisper was so faint Apama barely heard it above her own ragged breathing.
A suited lancer pilot, torn membrane melted half away, tumbled past like an acrobat in a low-g spectacle.
“We are all destined for death,” Apama murmured. Her throat felt choked, but she swallowed and shook it off.
A bulkhead heaved into view from the direction Apama had labeled zenith. As the damaged hulk of one of their own light cruisers passed, a few red lights blinked deep within jagged gouges where life-control systems were struggling to survive.
“Looks like it took tw
o direct hits to the drive compartments,” said Apama.
The light cruiser’s debris cloud enveloped them, objects thunking into their shield as the lancer shuddered and shook. They spun and wove an evasive trail out to the string of lit beads the dying ship had expelled: lifeboats and lifepods set adrift like glittering tears spilled into space. The silence always seemed eerie to her, who had grown up on a planet made bright and lively with sound. She scanned the telemetry. The Strong Bull’s reassuring bulk blocked her view of the stars in one octant, its escorts flashing fire in a curved net around it.
“Do you see any cutters coming to pick up the lifepods?” she asked.
“Pakshet! Chaonian assault frigates incoming!” Delfina flagged the movement on the telemetry sphere. “Seven hostiles.”
A hail of javelins streaked past their lancer, headed for the Strong Bull, followed by bursts of cannon fire that couldn’t do much damage to the much more massive heavy cruiser.
Apama spun the lancer as the lead hostile came into range. The lancer’s close-range weapons wouldn’t do more than tickle a fleet ship, but they had four powerful missiles.
“I can’t get a better shot than this.”
Delfina grunted assent.
Apama released missile one, then tumbled the lancer into the shield of the dying light cruiser. The lancer’s ovoid shape and four-jointed propulsion system made the maneuver fluid, and its heat baffles and modest dimensions made it hard to spot in the chaos.
The lead frigate seared out return fire, clipping their missile. Abruptly, all the enemy frigates started braking and laboriously cut hard flip turns. That would shake up their crews! Her lancer’s wobbling missile missed the lead frigate by about a thousand meters and detonated at the edge of the warhead’s kill radius. The blast shook the frigate, debris and melted chunks of metal sloughing off the ship’s hull as it accelerated away.
The frigates retreated toward a mob of indistinct flares that Apama at first mistook for more debris. Only then did she realize there were more Chaonian ships chasing them than the telemetry was showing, as if new ships were arriving faster than the telemetry’s lag time. The enemy were mostly frigates, darting in and out in predatory packs like the group that had just fired at the Strong Bull.
The bold tactic was working. Two enemy javelins hit Strong Bull. The shields on the big ship held the initial impact, but explosions blossomed on the hull, impact from the cannon rounds timed to hit after the javelins had compromised the shields. The dreadnought slowed momentarily but reaccelerated to match the rest of the fleet by diverting power to the engines.
“Mace, form up around me.” Gale Force’s order came in calm and clear. “The hostiles are punching in and fading back. Harass the incoming ships to keep them busy while our big girls hammer them.”
Their flight spun off in pursuit of a fresh group of frigates that had darted in from a different part of the octant, but the enemy pulled back before they could initiate contact, and Mace leader did not want them to venture too far from home base.
Tower from Strong Bull piped in, “Hostile incoming. Bearing two four six zero mark one one eight three.”
A big Chaonian battle cruiser loomed out of the ship scatter in the fleet’s wake and swept in at high acceleration. It was one of the new Tulpar class, almost as large and fast and powerful as Phene dreadnoughts. It easily outpaced its cloud of frigate escorts. When it reached the invisible line where the other enemy ships had flipped and retreated, it kept coming, accelerating past the Strong Bull and actually inside the fleet’s formation.
What was its captain thinking? Such an audacious charge left it an easy target, easy to smash, easy to kill.
Lancers scattered to get out of the way as the huge ship cut a brutal brake and spin that allowed it to launch its rear payload across the path of the Steadfast Lion, which was now behind it. As the lancers tried to splash as many of its missiles as possible, the big Chaonian ship retreated, thrusting at a punishing burn ahead of return fire. The lancers couldn’t catch everything it had launched and could do nothing against the cannon rounds. The enemy’s payload slammed, slammed, slammed into the Lion. The impacts hit with such a hail of force that Apama could see the Lion slowed by each strike. The Lion fell back, falling out of formation, dropping behind.
“Mace flight, incoming hostile headed for home base. Retreat and protect.”
“They will not let up,” said Delfina, spinning the lancer onto a new trajectory.
They raced in a tight path back toward the Strong Bull, using the long lag to suck down energy gel, run a systems diagnostic, and bite down on a stim pack. Ahead, a flurry of lancers released all their missiles at an incoming group of enemy ships, frigates and a Chaonian light cruiser. By the time they got into weapons range one enemy frigate was venting from multiple holes, and several frigates were damaged. But the enemy light cruiser had broken through the gnat-like defense of the lancers with a devastating turret fire. It began to exchange fire at close range with the Strong Bull. A full payload of missiles from the light cruiser hit all along the Bull’s starboard flank, followed up by volleys from the accompanying frigates. The dreadnought juddered from multiple shocks even as its return fire chewed through the light cruiser, whose engines cut suddenly as it began to drift, hulked.
But the damage had been done. Cracks radiated out from an impact site on the Strong Bull. Atmosphere vented from a breached compartment. Apama’s sphere lit up with internal hails from all over the Bull. In her head Apama heard the scream of klaxons, but inside the lancer she heard only the rapid breathing of Delfina.
The Strong Bull’s beacon cone ruptured. Fluid erupted, boiling, then turned to a shower of ice crystals glittering where their surfaces caught light from the Molossian sun.
“Fuck that,” said Delfina. “Let’s take these fuckers down.”
They spun back into formation with the remnants of their unit: Cricket and Deadstick, Gale Force and Spot, Skinny and Croak. But just as they split into a four-pointed star, the better to target the enemy from four directions, the surviving frigates cut hard around and, at high burn, retreated toward the pursing line of Chaonian ships and safety. No lancer could keep up.
Their sphere lit up with an incoming message from home base.
“All lancers, RTB.”
“Ours not to reason why,” muttered Delfina, but her imprecations, elaborate curses, and logorrheic swearing accompanied them as they followed their pod back to the flight deck of the crippled dreadnought.
They made their slot, sliding in, jerked to a halt. The seal hissed open, and the membrane constricted to pop them out like seeds expelled from a pod. Deck crew grabbed Apama as she went tumbling feet over head. Gravity was gone.
“Clear!” shouted one of the deck crew.
The lancer got shunted onward into a holding slot, clearing space for another lancer to come in. But none did.
How many lancers had survived the onslaught?
“What happened to gravity?” she asked, and realized she was shouting to be heard above the klaxon. At least there was still atmosphere.
“Lieutenant Apama At Sabao!” The captain appeared, tethered to an anchor line. The actual ship’s captain. How did he know her name? Why did he know her name?
His face held a grim determination. His dark hair was coming undone from its regulation braids, strands stuck to his cheeks. “Back in your lancer, Lieutenant. Ba Hill, out. At Sabao, you’re taking a passenger to Choki’s Beauty. Evade all challengers. Your only job is to get to the flagship.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Delfina was gripping a rail a few meters away. Meeting her rack-mate’s gaze, she shrugged.
Bewildered, Apama pushed off in the direction of the launch tube. Gears churned busily as her lancer was pushed back into position. Just as she got there the passenger appeared, wearing a Yele-grade flight suit with a full vacuum membrane. He had only two arms, which always looked strange to her eyes. The flight suit’s faceplate mirrored her own f
eatures back at her: the oval face and strong chin and perfectly contoured eyebrows all came from her mother, together with the black hair she had buzz-cut the day she’d gotten her acceptance letter to lancer training.
“Don’t see eyes like yours much out here, fancy that,” said the passenger. He spoke with a distinctive Yele lilt, and his voice was warm and jovial, as if this was the greatest entertainment he’d had in years.
The cruiser shook, rolling a quarter turn sideways.
Comms sang out, “All hands prepare for knnu drive activation in three minutes.”
The captain was already gone, vanished to deal with every other emergency. What could be so important that he had come here in person to give her the order and see off the passenger?
“Hammer One has launched. Mace Sixteen, you are next in line.”
Hammer One was the colonel’s lancer.
The passenger had already sealed into Delfina’s seat. Apama looked around. Seeing Delfina and Renay and Ana, she raised a hand in farewell, wondering if she would survive the transit to the flagship, wondering if the Strong Bull and her rack-mates would survive the transition to knnu drive now that their beacon drive was destroyed. Wondering why in the Cursebearer’s name she had been plucked for this duty.
But it was her duty.
She slid down into a seat still warm from her body heat. The deck crew sealed her in. The lancer clunked hard, rolled halfway over, and kicked. Her passenger laughed as the dreadnought jettisoned the vessel.
She identified Hammer One with a visual and settled into its draft. The wake jostled her lancer constantly like flying in turbulence. The thought made her recall a famous piece of music about the turbulent winds of a lonely terminus planet that had become popular across the empire last year even though the musician was Chaonian.
“What’s your name, sweetheart? Apama? Is that it?” He pronounced the initial A too flat, and the syllabic emphasis was off, and he didn’t even wait for her reply. “I have a daughter about your age. Flies a Spitfire in the Yele air guard. You’d like her.”
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