Unconquerable Sun

by Elliott, Kate

  She frowns as she considers. “My mother said she had an unexpected source but not what it is. At least not within my hearing.”

  “And your father didn’t bother to tell you? I didn’t think he kept anything from you,” I remark gracelessly.

  Sun sets a hand on my shoulder, the pressure firm and insistent. “Say nothing of any of this to anyone, not your cee-cee, not your friend. No one. Until I say otherwise, everything we’ve discussed here is between you and me alone.”

  I imagine myself locked in a steel-walled pit beneath the Lee House atoll, water above me and rock below, never again breathing fresh air or seeing the sun except through baffles that mirror it down from a surface I can never again touch. If I’m lucky I might get a toy van to play with.

  “All right,” I reply, “but what about Zizou?”

  “Zizou? What’s your interest in Zizou?”

  My cheeks heat.

  She tilts her head to the left in that questioning way she has. She’s not going to let up until she gets an answer.

  “He’s one of us,” I say, feeling the burn as she shoots a glance heavenward as if asking herself why I’m not being honest.

  “I thought you hated the Gatoi, Perse.”

  “He’s not what I expected.” I can still feel the flush in my cheeks.

  “A lesson for us all,” she says, so deadpan I can’t tell if she’s amused or bored by my transparency. “Don’t worry. The Phene picked up Zizou, just as I knew they would. I have a powerful tracker on Zizou.” She taps her ring.

  I glance at the ring I wear. “Where does this ring network come from, anyway?”

  “It’s a gift from my father. Banner technology.”

  She stands. Our cozy chat is over. I slug down the rest of the coffee. The flavor is starting to grow on me. Sun leaves the tray for someone else to clean up. We collect Ti and Solomon on our way out. Isis sticks her head out of the galley to give a hand sign to Sun that I don’t recognize.

  It’s a short walk from the suite to the command center hatch. As Sun walks up, the hatch cycles open. A caustic swirl of chemical-tinged air stings at my eyes as we enter. The first thing my gaze catches on is Jade Kim actually seated in the tertiary pilot’s seat like an authenticated crew member. As luck would have it Jade glances around just as we enter. A smile is as good as an air-kiss of scorn, sent to me across the crowded, noisy space. I gesture a quick asshole sign. The charming smile widens. I hate the way that smile still has the power to stir me. Fortunately Jade then raises a hand to make sure I see the ring they are wearing, an exact match to my own as if CeDCA graduate Jade Kim now has the same status as the Honorable Persephone Lee does. We’ll see about that.

  Then the reality of the scene crashes in on me. I’m ashamed by my petty thoughts. The bodies I saw in the virtual feed are gone, but dried blood still stains the deck because no one has time to clean in a battle. Crew are bent over working consoles while mechanicals and maintenance chiefs cluster around damaged equipment. James is half inside the guts of one of the consoles, his cap hanging on a cable. Alika has put away his ukulele and taken Sun’s place on the strategos dais. Hetty is standing by Senior Captain Tan, holding a clipboard manifest on which she’s collating information.

  “Captain!” Sun calls as she strides in. “What’s our ETD?”

  “We’ll be beacon-worthy in nine minutes, Your Highness.”

  “Beacon-worthy?” I examine the shambles that is now the command center. “Shouldn’t this ship be headed to a shipyard for repairs?”

  “The shipyards are in worse shape than we are. Anyway, I’m not done yet.”

  “The queen-marshal ordered you to return to Chaonia.”

  “Set a course for Troia beacon, Captain,” says Sun, ignoring me. “The Phene gunship is seven hours ahead of us. I will recover the lab consoles, researchers, and captured banner soldiers. The Rider who led the raid hasn’t beaten me yet.”

  40

  Hard Landing

  Zizou grips the mesh as the gunship rolls in multiple tumbles. Despite his strength he is slammed repeatedly into the padded bulkhead, head whiplashed back. His system pumps adrenaline and blockers until he can’t feel pain. A ghastly shudder shakes the entire ship. A metallic clank rings out as an object strikes the hull. An auxiliary power cube set in the middle of the hold spits a spray of sparks, hisses smoke, and goes dark.

  Silence.

  Is the ship about to break apart?

  Like all recruits chosen by the fleet council for the honor of earning a battle name, he learned how to speak Imperial Phene as well as Common Yele as part of his training. So even locked in the cage, helpless and battered, he can understand the shouted commands and stray chatter over the comms as the pilots get the stabilizers back on track and put on a burst of acceleration. The intercom blares, “The enemy is breaking off; they’re turning back.”

  The crew springs into action to make repairs. Zizou watches intently as techs examine the big cube, which routes power from the auxiliary engines into the beacon drive. But he doesn’t know enough to follow what they’re doing.

  The Rider fetches up by the consoles stolen from the lab. These blocky storage units have weathered the attack fairly well, lashed with protective webbing against the opposite bulkhead. The Rider straps herself into a safety harness with her riding face toward the consoles and her ordinary face looking into the hold.

  After months of intense training spent building the psychological shields that allow him and his brethren banner soldiers to leave behind the only home they’ve ever known, Zizou thinks he can sustain anything. But it’s creepy to see the ordinary face settle into patient repose as it gives up control of its body, to see the arms reach behind the back to manipulate the console’s lock pad with perfect ease.

  It’s peculiarly disturbing since he now knows his own corpus has an override built into it that set him multiple times to attack Persephone Lee. Like every recruit, he underwent a neurosystem alignment after being sent into Phene service. He was told it was a routine procedure that would accelerate agility, enhance strength, and make banner soldiers more able to withstand the rigors of battle. It’s what the Phene are famous for: engineering human beings to fit an environment with alterations like four arms or exoskeletons. For recruits like him, the environment is battle.

  But slivers of time and action have gone missing from that period of his training. He could have done things he doesn’t recall, things he didn’t want to do, things wiped from his memory by Phene engineering.

  The Rider’s ordinary face glances his way, marks him with mild but brief interest, and looks toward the far end of the cargo hold. Phene technicians are huddled with the ship’s commander around the power cube. An eerie quiver passes through the Rider’s body. Abruptly the shoulders come forward and the arms shift trajectory so they’re moving in tandem with the front-facing face again.

  But that doesn’t mean the Rider isn’t still awake and in charge. Because the Rider walks across the hold to the wire cage and turns so its riding face studies Zizou. The gaze of that unfinished face has an odd liquid feel to it, like it leads through gaps and baffles and reflections to a listening post much farther away.

  “Recruit, where were you captured? Who captured you?”

  He swallows. His orders are clear. “I’m not allowed to give out that information.”

  “Answer me.”

  “According to banner law I answer directly to my commanding officer.”

  “I speak for the Rider Council. We govern the Phene Empire. You work for the Phene Empire. Answer me.”

  He keeps his right hand in a fist, thumb tucked beneath the curled fingers to hide the ring. Sun will come for him, and for the lifepods and the consoles. It’s his duty to keep the Rider ignorant of these plans for as long as possible.

  “Recruit. Wrathful Snakes Banner. My battle name is Zizou.” He pauses, but the Rider doesn’t know the language of the banners or the proper response, not as Sun does. “I am sworn to th
e service of Lady Chaos.”

  The Rider’s eyes flicker, like lights toggling on and off. Then she says in her whispery voice, “You creatures are more trouble than you’re worth. But I do my duty, just as you do yours.”

  She looks toward the commander, who is consulting with the techs by the power cube. “Commander! Make for the Troia beacon.”

  The commander pats the side of the cube. “She doesn’t have enough power for a second transit. Surely the fleet can detach another vessel to pick us up.”

  “The battle isn’t going as planned. We are small enough to sneak through the Troia beacon while attention is elsewhere. We mustn’t be captured.”

  “We will almost certainly blow our remaining engines with the overload.”

  “Find a way we can get through intact. We don’t need to make a third drop, just get us into Troia System.” The Rider pauses, attention shifting inward, then snaps back to the officer. “Arrangements are being made for us to be picked up by allies on the moon of Tjeker.”

  Only physical objects can carry messages across the vast distances between solar systems, and only ships piloted by humans can pass through beacons. But there’s a saying whispered in the barracks by the recruits: what one Rider knows, all Riders know, so never let a Rider know.

  The commander gives the appropriate orders, then goes back to the techs at the power cube while the Rider returns to poke at the consoles.

  Relaxing, Zizou allows himself to doze.

  A klaxon’s blare interrupts his rest.

  The commander walks up the deck to him, slogging against an accelerating thrust. She snakes a pliable mask through the mesh. “Fix that over your nose and mouth. It’s primitive, but it’ll keep you breathing.”

  He takes the mask.

  Satisfied, the officer calls to the Rider. “Close up your helmet, Your Eminence. We may lose oxygen in the transit. I’d be happier with you in a crash couch up front.”

  The Rider considers, then moves to the forward hatch.

  “You’ll lose your face if you lose that one,” says the Rider as she and the commander wait for the hatch to cycle open.

  “I won’t lose him or the rest of the cargo. I get why we needed to take down the lab on Chaonia Prime. But what’s so valuable about this particular one?”

  “We’re using him, and ones programmed like him, to track down an enemy asset we need to eliminate.”

  An enemy asset? What does that mean?

  The hatch closes behind them, leaving him in the hold with the lifepods and the consoles and this new question. The techs are still working on the cube. They’ve wrapped strapping around their bodies so any impact will bounce them away from hard surfaces. Busy with the repair, they’re not looking at him.

  With the precision that won him his battle name, he flares his neuro-threads with a blast of strength. By wedging a shoulder into a forward corner of the cage and his feet into the diagonal backward wall, he shoves with a strength no unthreaded human could ever have. Bolts shift. Metal groans under pressure. The stiff steel mesh starts giving way.

  The techs pause at their work, but he’s already released and pressed back against the padding. He pretends to look around the hold for the source of the sound.

  “What was that?” asks the stockier tech, scratching at an ear with a lower left arm. Both glance nervously toward Zizou.

  He keeps his eyes half-closed, running a diagnostic through his body. A bruise is starting to throb on his shoulder. He chases a dose of anti-inflammatory to the site. The techs walk a circuit of the cargo hold, shining a tool-light into every corner and behind insulated pipes. They edge close enough to take hold of one of the cage’s bars to verify that it is solid; of course they can’t budge it at all. He gives them a friendly smile that makes them skitter away like children frightened by their attempt at entry into the salt maze in the temple of Lady Chaos. The Phene may be the imperial masters of much of beacon space, but that doesn’t mean individuals don’t fear him for what he is.

  Finally they go back to work, chatting.

  “I swear an oath on Saint Cid that if this farting tub doesn’t break apart when we drop, and if we survive this saints-cursed mission, I will study properly for my quals and get out of the service and go back to uni like my family wanted me to. No regrets!”

  “Our sector isn’t releasing anyone from the service right now, not with the Chaonians scrambling to loot and pillage like the jumped-up roaches they are.”

  “Ei, hand me that wrench.”

  They work at the innards of the cube. He doesn’t have the technical knowledge to understand what they’re doing, but it’s interesting to watch how well coordinated their hands are, the interplay of arms. Their “this wire, that bolt” conversation veers twice into asides about an officer they both dislike. Their casual chatter reminds him how much he misses his people, the easy way he was brought up among folk who knew each other’s business. He even misses his squad and their crass joking.

  A bell rings to signal a beacon approach.

  “Let’s hope that holds for the length of the transit. Alea iacta est.” The techs pack up their tools and they, too, exit the hatch, leaving him the only conscious entity in the hold.

  The ship loses g. His head softly bumps the top of the cage.

  The universe goes black.

  Wisps of particulate matter curl out of the void and whisper into his neural pathways like echoes coming home to roost. A honey warmth settles deep into his bones.

  The universe rings like a bell.

  Then they’re out, alarms blaring so loud it hurts. The hull shudders. He’s flung back against the padded bulkhead then forward face-first into the mesh, smashing his nose. Blood trickles into his mouth.

  Gravity fails.

  The intercom crackles. “All life-support systems fail. All life-support systems fail. Engine breach. We are adrift. Emergency measures.”

  He can’t catch his breath. Coughing turns to wheezing before his right elbow snags the tube of the clear mask. Oxygen. His hands fumble at the mask, but for all his usual dexterity he can’t get a grip on it. He tongues a burst of adrenaline through his system, enough to give him a spot of clearheaded focus. As he tugs on the mask he inhales. His breathing steadies. The lifepods’ power lights gleam green, their inhabitants untouched by the oxygen drain. There’s a leak in the hold, a whine of escaping gas that, horribly, fades as all the air leaves. The cold of space seeps in. Drops of blood from his nose boil away into crystals that float past his eyes. His neurosystem starts pumping heat, sucking energy out of his cells; the skin starts sealing, trying to protect him against the creep of vacuum.

  His pulse pounds in his ears, sluggish, sludge.

  A tremor shudders through the bulkhead; the wheel of the hatch has started to turn. The hatch opens with a whoosh of warm, rich atmosphere. Three individuals wearing full-body membranes pull themselves in and dog the hatch behind them. They spray a glittering liquid that is immediately sucked in three directions, toward unseen breaches. A strangely noxious odor stings in his nostrils and lances right up behind his eyes. Before he can kick in a counter-valence, he passes out.

  * * *

  He comes to when the gunship hits atmosphere with a turbulence that shakes him into consciousness. Straps pin him to the bulkhead’s cushioning, which is a mercy, because they are pitching and yawing and rolling so wildly he expects to crash at any moment. Someone has fastened a full-body membrane around him.

  The gunship lurches. The webbing that grips one of the consoles tears at a corner, and the console rips free and comes banging across the hold to slam into the wire cage just to his right. An impact alarm blares over and over. The comm whispers, but he can’t hear words.

  They hit the ground and bounce once, twice, three times, and finally belly through with a screech of abused metal. The loose console smashes to the new center of gravity. With a final lurch, the gunship comes to a halt. It has survived the descent, but it’s badly damaged.

&nbs
p; The big cargo hold door cracks, then groans as its hydraulics give way. The ramp peels down and thuds to the dirt. They’re already aswirl in a cloud of dust from the crash. Its grit racks him with coughs. The rank smell of an organic atmosphere filters through the membrane. He checks for composition; it’s a marginally breathable atmosphere, survivable with no filter, but the mix of contaminants and dust will pit the lungs after prolonged exposure. Beyond the ramp spreads a rocky plain littered with random piles of debris. Something’s moving out there, and he cycles his vision in until he gets a view of an old scavenger mech making a slow circuit.

  He spies a distant habitat, low-slung khaki-colored barracks tents squatting beside a city of glossy domes and shining towers. The buildings and tents drift in and out of view through blowing dust. The ship has come down on a slope somewhat higher in elevation than the city. He’s not sure of the dimensions of the domes and towers, but he guesses the city is about ten klicks away. An easy walk, even as bruised as he is. He tests the cage door with a knee; it’s ready to pop. The way is clear. He can break the straps and vanish into the haze.

  But he doesn’t. He has a job to do, even if he isn’t quite sure what it is.

  The hatch clears and the crew emerges into the hold, wearing membranes and filters. One group of techs pulls out the coils of the beacon drive, the most difficult-to-replace part of the gunship, and bundles them into oversized lift-crates. Others remove the lifepods and load the consoles onto hover-lifts. Another crew member sets charges in the hold. They’re abandoning ship.

  “We’ll be captured in two heartbeats,” says the commander to the Rider.

  “You assured me you released enough debris to mask our descent.”

  “For now, and only because there’s fighting in-system. It’ll be some while before they winnow all the chaff and find us. But they will eventually find us. How long do we have to stay hidden?”

  The Rider’s attention shifts inward, then snaps back to the officer. “Longer than I’d like. The Molossia gambit turned into a rout of our forces.”