“It will take some time to reshape the Syndicate’s presence in the new galactic order,” a voice in the back said. “We need a representative to handle this.”
That was going to be a lot of work. I wouldn’t fit into a normal cube pen with that level of responsibility. Even the Chiefs’ corner offices would be tight. They might need to haul me into my own building for that much math.
I opened my mouth to answer, but laser fire cut me off. The sound of shattering glass followed. I threw myself to the ground with a wet thud. And as I watched holes blossom in the heads and stalks of the Chiefs, my mind started to race.
There had only been a 4.0875% chance of an invasion during a galactic war. Now that the war had ended prematurely, all bets were off. The Principate had been easy to guide; we’d been doing so for eighty years. The Second Spark, on the other hand, were prone to high risks, dramatic gestures, and emotional reactions. And there had been a Marsis-sized gap in my analysis.
The Spark had sworn, at odd times, to show neither pity nor mercy to those who’d betrayed them. The market may have profited from their mutual destruction, but the Syndicate stood at the heart of the market. And none had profited more-so than I. Their ill will was, perhaps, understandable.
On the bright side, that made situational analysis easy: I was too large and slow to run, so I’d be dead in moments.
I slowly rolled over to face my executioners. An odd mishmash of uniforms stood above me, guns at the ready. Some were Spark fighters. A few wore Principate uniforms, albeit ragged ones. Apparently, the Spark had executed a hostile takeover of their competitors. Now they were going to repeat the performance with us.
An oddly familiar voice said, “It’s good to meet you, Marsis.”
Uh-oh. “You’re my Spark contact?” I asked the human woman.
“I was, Marsis. But the Spark is no more.”
“You have my sympathies,” I said.
“No, sir,” my former contact declaimed. “You have our money.”
“With all due respect, that—”
“The funds,” she continued over me, “were frozen by your supervisors.” Her voice lowered. “We were the rightful heirs to this galaxy and the numbers contained in our combined accounts were—”
“Appropriately astronomical,” I suggested.
“We want you to fix this,” the woman said as she holstered her gun. “Your Chiefs are dead, Marsis. But you? We’d like to give you a chance to make this right. One chance. Though I’m sure you have competent colleagues downstairs.” Then she grinned and added, “Speak freely. No matter how bad your operational security, you can trust us.”
I made a show of weighing the decision, but it wasn’t that hard to calculate the risks. There was a 27.125% chance my new, emotionally erratic employers wouldn’t kill me if I made myself useful. And while there was 51.33% probability that my colleagues would burn me alive for aiding a hostile takeover, I could help our new employers write contracts to everyone’s advantage. There was a chance yet, however small, for Marsis of Ambyt Seven, formerly of the Syndicate, to find a reasonable rate of return.
I slowly raised a tentacle toward the woman’s hand and joined a new portfolio.
Final Flight
of the PhoenixWing
Y.M. Pang
It was firstlight on Twin Moons Day. A basket of peaches sat on Haruna’s nightstand. I must really be going deaf, she thought, if Chiyo managed to sneak in here without waking me. Haruna turned a peach over in her hand, feeling the fine hairs brush against her skeletal fingers. The peach was red bleeding into white—perfect, no blemishes, contrasting her age-spotted hand. The sender must’ve spent a small fortune; peaches only grew in bluedomes, though they were one of the few Homeworld fruits that grew on Rankyuu at all.
Putting down the peach, Haruna reached for the card on the basket and read: Happy Twin Moons Day. Best, Your great-nephew Arata. Printed, not handwritten. Haruna spent two seconds feeling annoyed before she remembered Arata had never learned handwriting. At least the card was nice, a thick blue weave decorated by miniature origami fans. Would’ve been better, though, if Arata had bothered to see her instead of just sending a basket of overpriced Homeworld fruits.
Haruna’s persona-comm vibrated. She lifted her left wrist, tapped her finger on the large-read button. A green hologram message blinked to life before her.
He lit his comb and turned his mirror upon her, and found his beloved Izanami half-devoured by maggots.
Arago: AT 398-1173-942 / 3 tiviens after lightfall.
There. Then.
Keito
The message she’d been anticipating for fifty-eight years.
Arabic numerals for the coordinates. Kanji and hiragana for the old legend they’d set as their passcode. Haruna wasn’t surprised. She followed the news; she knew the Deepsearch Company’s T99.6 had emerged from Portal 27. The news shuttles had found no trace of Nakada Keito or the other rebels from the Half Year War, but Haruna wasn’t worried. Keito was either coming or dead, and Haruna rarely feared he would be the latter.
Haruna swung her legs off the bed, groped for the cane that was usually propped up against her nightstand. She found it lying on the floor. Chiyo had probably knocked it over while leaving the basket. Back creaking, Haruna bent to grab the cane. Stars, that hurt! There was a reason she’d switched her sleeping pallet for a raised bed.
It took her only a few wobbly steps to reach her bedroom door. Her sister Rena called the room claustrophobic, especially against the overall vastness of Haruna’s manor. But Haruna was comfortable in small spaces. Comfortable in small spaces within vast spaces, more precisely. It came hand in hand with being a wingbot pilot.
When Haruna emerged from the bathroom, Chiyo was waiting for her.
“Commander Haruna,” Chiyo said, “breakfast is ready. Is silvertooth soup okay?”
“Silvertooth soup is fine.” Haruna walked to the dining room, Chiyo trailing behind her. When her attendant showed up that first day—at Rena’s insistence, with Haruna’s grudging agreement, because it would be stupid to die in an accident before receiving Keito’s message—Chiyo had worn a costume from some Homeworld country called England. Haruna had convinced her to discard the museum piece for a more practical set of slacks and zipcoat.
Haruna settled down by the rectangular dining table and ordered the curtains to open. A familiar sight greeted her: a stretch of orange earth, then the Metal Crescent, looming mountainous in the distance. The waterfalls cascading over the Crescent reflected the light of Arago, Rankyuu’s star, almost blinding Haruna. She wondered how those who lived darkside felt: restricted to a view of flowing water every day, able to see the world only through a quivery curtain.
Haruna lifted the bowl of silvertooth soup, inhaled, sipped. Housebird had really outdone itself today. Haruna contemplated what to do with her last day. Her mind drew a blank. She had done everything, said all she needed to say, outlived every other pilot of her generation. Save for Keito, and that only because he’d headed off in a T99.6, travelling at speeds so close to light that time no longer passed for him the way it did for her. He was all that remained for her: his message, his homecoming, and the promise that had spanned seven years of his life and fifty-eight years of hers. Haruna’s only regret was how long it had taken.
* * *
Two tiviens before lightfall, Haruna sent Chiyo off to Highpoint with a shopping list. Even with the roader and the lift, it would take Chiyo a good three tiviens to reach that lofty section of the Metal Crescent.
Haruna, now alone, took the elevator down to B3. Her index finger left a smudge on the scanpad and the screen blinked to Accepted. It wouldn’t have done so for Chiyo, or even Rena. The elevator doors opened and the lights flicked on. Haruna hobbled down the corridor of rounded metal walls, wondering if she should’ve taken Rena’s suggestion of installing a cart and tracks. Then Haruna could roll down the tunnel like she herself was a launching wingbot.
A quarter-tivien
passed by the time she reached the hangar. Three seventy-four-foot wingbots stared down at her. All three had a base plate of golden yellow. All three were edged in orange with scarlet wings.
To the right was her most recent PhoenixWing, updated a few times since her retirement for extra sensitivity and flight agility. In the middle was PhoenixWing 5.22, in which she’d led the clash against the Gelbin System Fleet. The laser holes had been fixed and a new right arm crafted to replace the one hacked off by a Gelbin sword, but it still had the air of something used, something fought over and loved.
Haruna made her way to the leftmost model. PhoenixWing 3.72. The exact wingbot she’d piloted the day Keito rebelled. She looked over it every week, took it on flights at least twice a month. But outside of the necessary services to keep it functional, Haruna made no modifications to it. She hadn’t even bothered replacing the broken metallic feather on its head. No matter. Wingbots were made to fly and fight. Aesthetics served only as a symbol and a warning, and Keito would recognize her by her flight patterns even if she showed up in a GenLine.
Haruna stepped onto the lift that carried her to the wingbot’s head. The cockpit opened and she climbed inside. It was dark and cool and familiar. Haruna leaned back, placed her arms on the armrest. The PhoenixWing whirled into life, scanning her eyes, her fingerprints, her blood by the needle sliding into her forearm. The last she didn’t even feel anymore.
“Identity confirmed,” an androgynous voice said. “You are Inoue Haruna, Commander Emeritus of Rankyuu’s United Wingbot Fleet.”
“Confirm,” Haruna said. Her wingbot recognized her voice, though it had taken a few tweaks to 3.72 after age eroded her vocal cords.
A hologram appeared before her, showing all the wingbot’s functions: Fuel, full. Weapons, ready. Update … well, she’d chosen to ignore that for the best part of six decades now.
Two hologram buttons appeared before her: Armed. Unarmed.
“Armed,” Haruna said.
The hologram blinked away. “Preparing launch,” the disembodied voice said. “Is Commander Haruna ready?”
“Ready.”
The link-helm slid down over her head. The seat folded against her like a cocoon. For a moment she could neither move nor see.
Then she was gazing out of the PhoenixWing’s eyes, standing on metal feet larger than her dining table, staring down at a hangar that seemed small enough to be a prison. Comfortable in small places, Haruna thought with a smile, or rather, comfortable in small spaces within vast spaces. The wingbot slid down Launchpad 1 and the hangar doors opened to reveal an orange lightfall sky. Haruna shot out into the air, above purple kyorin trees and dry earth and her manor lands.
She flexed her left wrist—the wingbot’s left wrist. The barrel of a shotgun emerged from the metal forearm. Perhaps groundwatchers would catch that, if they’d happened to train their scopes on her at that moment. She was violating fleet rules. She’d been allowed to keep her personal wingbot hangar on the promise that she wouldn’t launch the wingbots armed, but they hadn’t actually stripped away the weapons. Haruna had said she wished to keep the weapons for sentimental reasons and Commander Miura had let it go.
If he hadn’t, Haruna could’ve stripped him of his post and installed someone else. She was Inoue Haruna and, retired or not, they listened to her. Sometimes, climbing to the top paid off. No wonder Keito had rebelled over it.
Sitting in this old, familiar wingbot, she remembered every detail of her last battle with Keito: the pattern of the lights, as Keito expended his battery to fire one last barrage at her. How she’d twisted aside, dry, piercing pain in her throat as she shouted at him. Then Keito’s voice, half-lost in the intermittent static of the dying comm channel: “You… always you … to them, I …” Then the channel cut off.
Perhaps he’d repeat those words tonight and she’d hear them in their entirety. That wouldn’t be too much to hope for.
Haruna flew higher, higher. The waterfalls of the Metal Crescent became a tiny wedding ring beneath her, albeit one with a portion missing. Was there anyone watching below? With her frequent flights, Haruna’s PhoenixWing was a familiar sight in this region. Perhaps some mother would point out the red-and-gold wingbot and say to her child, “See, that’s Inoue Haruna.” The PhoenixWing wasn’t just Haruna’s robotic extension. It was Haruna as the world saw her. Her human body was frail and slow and half-deaf now, but with her mind linked to the wingbot’s senses and body, she was still Inoue Haruna: pilot, commander, hero of Rankyuu. Still capable of one final flight, one last promise to an old friend.
As Haruna reached the upper edges of Rankyuu’s atmosphere, the PhoenixWing angled itself, space supports kicking into life. Sound faded as the atmosphere merged into space. Rankyuu below was mottled green and brown, like the two other inhabited planets in the Arago System.
The Homeworld was blue. That had been one of the first things Keito said to her, as they sat on the fields outside Highpoint Wingbot Academy. His oversized trainee uniform hung off his skinny frame and his face darkened when she asked if it had belonged to an older sibling. “My mother’s friend’s son,” he muttered. But his face lit up when he spoke of the Homeworld. “From space it’s blue,” he said, “like this.” He’d pulled a blue marble from his pocket, held it up so it half-covered Arago.
That marble hadn’t survived the day. At lunchtime some fellow trainees had snatched it from Keito and smashed it.
Haruna punched in the coordinates Keito left her in his message. She steered the wingbot herself though. She couldn’t risk autopilot for even a second, not in current circumstances. The Keito she knew would not attack her without warning, but who knew how much he’d changed after a roundabout journey through a Portal twenty-eight light years away at .996c. She hoped his trip through Portal 27 had been worth it, that he’d finally gotten to see his little blue planet.
Haruna reactivated the shotgun, raised the laser snipers on her wingbot’s shoulders, then drew the sword with the PhoenixWing’s right hand. She brought up the clock on the edge of her vision. It said barely two tiviens after lightfall, but—once again, assuming she still knew Keito—he should already be there waiting for her.
Sure enough, as she drew close to the message’s coordinates, her sensors flared to life. She magnified the image at the corner of her vision.
Keito’s SeaGale. Deep blue body edged in silver, like his little blue marble, his blue Homeworld. A wingbot she hadn’t seen in decades, yet one so familiar its every curve was etched in her memory.
Haruna flew closer, sword tight in her wingbot’s hand. She hesitated a brief moment, then opened a comm channel. Would he answer? Did he have more to say that day, or …
What she feared did not happen. She did not find his channel closed, did not find only the darkness and silence of space. Instead he linked with her and for the first time in almost six decades she heard Keito’s voice.
“Haruna.”
Just that. Her name. Not commander. Not even captain, as she’d been during most of their flights. She’d expected nothing less.
Haruna didn’t hesitate this time. She opened the visual comm, allowed him to see her face beneath her link-helm. Let him see her white hair, her wrinkled skin. Let him see the years; he’d hear it in her voice regardless. They’d both known time would pass differently when they made their promise. To everyone else, Haruna was happy to present herself as the PhoenixWing. But it felt important to let Keito see her human face.
No gasp filtered in through her comm channel. It was as she’d hoped and expected—he cared nothing about her age or appearance, only that she was Haruna.
Haruna cleared her throat and said, “Keito, welcome back to Rankyuu.”
His laughter sounded a little broken, though perhaps it was only the aging comm systems of both their wingbots. “Always the commander, aren’t you? You think you can welcome me back to Rankyuu though you technically do not rule it anymore.”
His visual comm blinked to life as wel
l. Keito’s face was as familiar as his wingbot. Seven years had added a few lines to his brow, hollowed out his cheeks even further so that he was all lean edges and razor intensity. But he hadn’t changed the cut of his hair and his eyes remained the same: dark as the far reaches of space, narrowed in hatred as they’d been the day he rebelled.
“We do not rule Rankyuu,” Haruna said softly. “We protect it. That is the first rule of being a wingbot pilot. Surely you remember that?”
“Your rules no longer apply to me, Haruna. I left, remember? I left a traitor. Or has it been too long for you?”
“Not long enough, evidently.” Haruna smiled. “Or else I wouldn’t still be here.”
Keito paused for a moment. “Why?” he asked. “Why are you here, when you have everything and I …”
Haruna waited for him to say more, but only silence stretched through the comm channel. Keito’s face was unreadable.
“The same reason I let you go fifty-eight years ago,” Haruna whispered. When his wingbot had hung motionless before her, all power spent. When she could’ve cut him in two with a swing of her sword and rid Rankyuu of its rogue wingbot pilot. But Haruna had just floated there, all comm channels shut off save her dead one with Keito. She’d watched the rescue shuttle arrive, watched the surviving rebels pull Keito from the cockpit and into the shuttle. Instead of firing at them, she’d allowed them to fly off, to throw their lot in with the Deepsearch Company.
She’d left her persona-comm open to receive Keito’s final message: a promise of a rematch, and the old story that would serve as their passcode.
Now Keito scowled at her on the visual comm. “Do you expect me to thank you? You had my life in your hands. That you didn’t kill me doesn’t change a thing.”
“You are here now,” Haruna said. “As am I.”
“I didn’t think you’d come.”
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