by Kate Elliott
“I’m not from there.”
The scribe narrowed her eyes, examining Apama in the way of folk who feel you’ve overstayed your welcome now that you aren’t willing to accede to their demands. “Are you one of those shells? Pardon me. I’m not sure if it’s an insulting term, but the only other one I know is worse.”
Apama had run this gauntlet so many times in the course of her lancer training that she’d developed a special tone and a set of stock phrases. “I don’t have an exoskeleton. But my womb mother does. Why do you ask?”
“There’s a funny gleam to your skin. They say shells exude mucus constantly to reduce friction between the soft skin and the hard outer shell. Is your matron’s skin chitin, or keratin? Or something else?” She lifted her two hands in the gesture of submission. “Pardon. I’ve never had a chance to ask before, and you seem nice.”
What was taking the hells-bound clearance so cursed long?
“It’s complicated. A dual endo- and exoskeleton was one of the earliest Phene genengineering projects. That was a really long time ago.”
The scribe was nodding, the ribands and feathers of her triple-spined headdress waving in time to her head’s movement. “Having a hard shell would be good for certain kinds of dangerous jobs that need extra shielding like shipyard work and ground infantry for planet-side invasion.” Her gaze flicked over Apama’s four arms, the true mark of imperial Phene. “Surprised to see you down here. Military transfers come in via military transport straight to the orbital station. You getting picked up?”
Apama wasn’t sure if it was travel exhaustion that made her uneasy or the weird isolation of this dusty hellscape of a moon. She of her own self with her humble origins wasn’t worth spit, but a fully trained imperial lancer pilot? That was another story. Ransom. Forced labor in a Hesjan cartel. Spiteful political murder by anti-empire insurgents. It wasn’t common, but it happened.
“Do transfers usually get picked up here?” She wasn’t going to reveal she had no orders beyond taking commercial transport to this town on this moon.
“I wouldn’t know. Like I said, we don’t get military transfers through this office.”
A flash of green signaled completion. Apama managed to clamp down on a yelp of joy.
The scribe frowned as she popped the chip out of the cube. “Here’s your scrip, Lieutenant. You’ll need to clear it for entrance.”
Apama pressed the scrip against the node embedded behind her right ear. The scrip initiated contact with a stream of new code from the security cube; her node recognized the official seal entwined with her individual cipher, and the link flashed on the cube. The scribe unlocked the barrier to let her through.
After the barrier closed behind her she set down her kit bag to get her bearings and roll down her jacket sleeves. There was no waiting area here, just two empty desks facing glazed windows along the front, and a lavatory off to the right.
She turned back to see the scribe still watching her. “Is there a base nearby?”
The scribe raised her eyebrows. “They didn’t give you a map? There’s a post at the east end of the port. It’s one klick down the road.”
“Is there a mobile connecting them?”
“A mobile? Oh, you mean a tram or a moving walkway. We don’t have those here. My cousin runs a lift concession. Reliable and inexpensive.”
“I’ll walk.”
Apama offered the hand sign for thanks and farewell and went out through the front entrance into the harsh light of day. There, she halted under the eerie aura of the infected beacon and the blast of a hot sun. The landing pads and stevedore platforms spread to either side behind the arrivals center, punctuated by drab warehouses and a squat control tower painted so dull a beige it was insulting. A hardworking gantry crane refused even a splash of color was at work unloading the Fake Vestige, the freighter she’d come in on. She shaded her eyes against the sun’s glare and tried to pick out the freighter’s crew—Captain Ann and her clan had been a lively bunch who’d welcomed her into their shipboard routine—but the crane blocked her view. They couldn’t help her with this anyway.
She started walking along what appeared to be a repurposed runway, glad the moon was big and dense enough to have close to standard 1 gravity. The adaptive fibers in her uniform absorbed and rechanneled the heat, but the light was intense and the air was like breathing inside a furnace. Unfortunately the town was dreary and ugly, with blocky, pragmatic buildings covered in solar soaks and not a scrap of decoration to suggest glory days of any kind. The place didn’t even boast a cathedral spire to enliven its torpor. Not a single soul was out and about.
Despite what the scribe had said, in older days this resource-poor system had probably been little more than a nondescript rest and refueling stop for ships on their way to far more interesting places, ones easily reachable across the immense distances of space because of the beacon system. Now it was one of the ends of the line in the extended lattice of the Phene Empire, a lonely military outpost built on an outcast shore of the Gap.
Why had she been sent via commercial freighter to the moon rather than being given a place on a military transport that would have gone direct to the main military orbital habitat where she’d be stationed? It was odd to be dumped down here. It almost felt like being abandoned. Like one last piece of nasty hazing for being a shell-born who had the temerity to think she could qualify as a lancer.
She shook off the thought. It was too expensive to train a lancer pilot only to discard them. Nevertheless, she licked her dry lips nervously as she reached the entrance to the fenced-off area. It was definitely a post, not big enough to be a base. The technician first class on duty sat on a tall stool pulled up to a counter. Apparently she was dozing, eyes closed, her chin resting on her cupped upper hands and lowers folded in her lap.
Apama tapped on the guardhouse’s transparent shield.
The soldier startled upright as Apama’s insignia registered. “Lieutenant!”
A retinal scan and her scrip granted her access past a double set of barred gates. The soldier had straightened her uniform and waited beyond the shield and gates, standing with tense expectation.
“Sorry, Lieutenant. Usually nobody is out and about before planet-rise.”
“Do you not have many security concerns down here dirt-side, Technician…?” She checked the insignia. “Ir Bodard.”
“I don’t make a habit of sleeping on duty, believe me. It’s just hmm I have two small children, and they’re both sick right now.”
“That sounds rough. My best friend had a passel of much younger cousins we spent a lot of time babysitting. But still…”
“It won’t happen again, Lieutenant.” The soldier’s bunched shoulders relaxed fractionally. “Anyway it is absolutely dead down here. There’s nothing on this rock to interest pirates. All the action is at the margins of the system.”
“Chasing smugglers?”
“That’s right! And long patrols too, out to neighboring systems.”
“Via knnu drive?”
Ir Bodard brightened as at happy memories. “Weeks and even months out in the Gap sometimes.”
“Ever tangle with Chaonian ships?”
“Out here? No. Military fleets use the beacon routes. We hunt outlaws and brigands along the old knnu transit lines. Long stretches of boredom alleviated by short sharp shocks.”
This was an unexpected development, a wrinkle no one at lancer training had ever bothered to hint at. Apama couldn’t decide whether to be excited about its potential to explore ancient pre-beacon trade arteries or horrified by the idea of months stuck in the belly of a ship.
“What sort of shocks?”
“Hmm. You ever serve on a ship with a contingent of Gatoi auxiliaries?”
“No. I’ve never even seen one in the flesh. Just heard stories.”
The technician indicated the healing scar running from the corner of her left eye to down below the left ear, and the braces wrapped around her upper right elbow
and lower right wrist. “Don’t mess with them. Or even talk to them. They’re touchy about their honor.”
“That looks painful.”
The technician had a cocky grin. “I gave worse than I got.”
“I didn’t know Gatoi could be beaten in a straight-on fight.”
“They can’t. But I didn’t rely on strength and speed. I’m not a technician first class for nothing.”
Apama laughed appreciatively, wanting to ask for details but aware of time passing with her orders still at a dead end.
“So I guess you’re wanting the quarterdeck?” the technician added, watching her closely.
“I am. Thanks.”
She plugged a map overlay into the scrip. A floating screen popped up in front of Apama’s left eye, generated by her imbed, and marked a path.
The post wasn’t large, but command hadn’t stinted on its construction. For example, it had covered walkways to mitigate the blast of the sun, each support post molded to depict one of the mythical beasts of the long-lost Celestial Empire. The eaves and roofs of the walkways and the building entrances were elaborated with curlicues in a joyful floral style that set her at ease. The building that housed the quarterdeck boasted sliding entrance doors framed by an augmented-reality waterfall on each side. Crossing the threshold prickled her face with a cool breeze like crossing through a guild portal.
The main room of the quarterdeck’s service lounge was silent and dim except for a figure seated at the welcome desk, reading a book while snacking on pistachio nuts. When the soldier did not look up, Apama gave a cough.
The soldier startled, spilling half the container of nuts. “Dyusme! What in the saints-forgiven hells are you doing sneaking in like … Oh. Sorry, Lieutenant.” They leaped to their feet and saluted quite unnecessarily.
“I’m reporting in. Here’s my scrip.”
“We don’t get transfers down here.”
“And yet here I am.”
The soldier—a specialist by rank—reluctantly accepted the scrip and slotted it into the security cube with their lower right hand.
“This place seems quiet,” Apama said, just to say something.
“It usually is,” remarked the specialist in a morose tone, gaze flicking toward the doors through which Apama had so untimely entered. “I usually get a lot of studying done. Hoping to make senior specialist this go-round.”
They waited in awkward silence until the specialist frowned, opened a virtual keyboard, and tapped into it. “No orders in our queue for you, Lieutenant.”
“There’s no orders for me?”
“No. Transfers always go straight to the station. This post is for local liaison and cargo routings. Are you sure you’re at the right place?”
She wasn’t sure at all. Nothing made sense to her about the cursory nature of the orders or the way they’d been sprung on her after she’d thought she was headed to a ship squadron like everyone else in her cohort. It had been arbitrary and sudden.
The doors whisked aside. A person hustled in wearing the insignia of a lieutenant senior grade, the swagger of a lancer pilot, and the welcoming smile of a jolly happy soul.
“Ei! You must be Apama At Sabao. Sorry I’m late. Meant to be here before but I got hung up running errands. Saints alive! Have you ever tried to buy malted barley in a slack-jawed town like this one?” He halted in front of Apama and stuck out his lower right hand. “I’m Abigail Ca Konadu, adjutant to strike squadron leader Colonel Ir Charpentier, who you’ll come to know by her call sign, Nails. Sorry I’m late. Oh, wait, I said that already. Come with me, Lieutenant.”
Apama grabbed her kit bag and followed him out. Ca Konadu trotted instead of walked, so Apama trotted alongside, kit bag thumping on her back.
“There’s a gunship waiting for us. You can call me Gail, by the way. Gale Force is my call sign because I talk a lot. Never mind. Here we are.”
They passed into the support zone for a landing pad where a gunship sat in vertical lift position. The mighty rim of the gas giant around which the moon orbited was nudging up over the horizon, an astonishing sight Apama had no leisure to savor.
A senior chief gestured impatiently. “Move! Our lift window is closing.”
They pounded up the ramp. Gunships weren’t troop transports, and yet a bewildering number of passengers and crew were crammed on board. Apama got split away from her companion and stuck on a bench between the fragrant sack of malt and a rather handsome young Gatoi auxiliary. Even having only two arms he had a lean, powerful symmetry and grace of form. The striking appeal of his facial features was emphasized by the almost indiscernible pattern gleaming beneath his skin. When he caught her checking him out he blushed and turned toward the Gatoi sitting on his other side. He spoke in a language she could not understand, and the other Gatoi glanced at her and laughed. A moment’s scrutiny of the hold counted eleven of the savage fighters, who were generally assigned out in eleven-person units called an arrow. After what the technician had told her, it seemed rude and also dangerous to try to talk to any of them, much less attempt to examine the fascinating neural patterns all Gatoi had. So she didn’t.
Lieutenant Ca Konadu was strapped in across the hold next to the senior chief, the two chatting up a storm as if they were old acquaintances. For Apama, the sack of malt and the auxiliary were equally silent companions as the gunship launched for its five-hour journey to the orbital station. She popped in earplugs and dozed, thankful to be headed at long last for her final destination.
It therefore came as an unpleasant surprise that instead of being ushered off the docking ring to the station’s quarterdeck to start intake proceedings, she and the sack were hustled to a different dock and onto a utility shuttle. Her companion shifted the heavy sack into the arms of a senior specialist.
“I got everything. We can launch,” Gail announced.
The pilot and copilot turned to give Apama a slow once-over. The pilot drawled, “You’re the whole reason we’ve been sitting on our asses at anchor for three days waiting to leave?”
“I’m transferring in for duty,” she said, glancing at Gail for help.
“We are full up on utility pilots,” remarked the copilot, lips curling, “so I don’t know where you think you’re headed. And you don’t look one bit like a triple-A fast-track heritage seed, do you? In fact, are you a—”
“I said we can go now,” Gail broke in, “and you know who gave me my orders.”
“Nails gave the order, yes, we know. This shell is a lancer pilot?” the pilot asked with a sneering curl of the lips.
“I earned my place through hard work and high scores, just as you did,” Apama said in a coolly neutral tone.
“Nah, his scores weren’t that good, which is why he’s a utility pilot and not a lancer like us, Apama. I can call you Apama, right?” Gail turned his back on the sour-faced pilots and headed for the passenger benches set against a bulkhead away from the cockpit. “Come sit by me. There’ll be a good view out of the porthole.”
They strapped in side by side. The senior specialist stowed the sack in a locker, gave Apama a cursory nod of acknowledgment, and exited into the cargo hold.
A comforting exchange with the station control tower initiated. The shuttle disengaged, withdrew from the station, and slotted into a departure lane. Once clear, the shuttle accelerated around the magnificent curve of the striped gas giant, soon leaving the station and the planet-sized moon behind.
Gail talked the whole time, for which Apama was grateful as it became clear he was flooding the silence on purpose. So it was that Gail was telling a long story in a deliberately comic fashion about how he had crashed his first lancer into a shiverpeak wilderness and spent a month hiking to safety with a broken arm and the lover he had just had a nasty breakup with when Apama saw the fleet.
The ships in their tight ready formation were tucked behind a rare triple confluence of three of the gas giant’s moons. There were hundreds: assault cruisers, light cruisers on the wings, an
d an astounding ten dreadnoughts, the jewels of the fleet.
“What are all these doing here?” she asked, shocked into speech. “There’s nowhere to go from here except into the Gap.”
“We are all destined for death,” said Gail cheerfully.
The pilot hailed one of the dreadnoughts. “Bravo Charlie six seven, this is six seven Unicorn three on your nine two niner four mark eight four six one. Checking in with a full tank of mass and five souls on board.”
“Six seven Unicorn three, copy your contact on my nine two niner four mark eight four six one with five souls and a full tank. We’ve got you cleared for hangar five. You’re clear to kick to tower. Welcome back. You’re the last ones in.”
“The last ones in for what? Why no heavy frigates? Where are we going with this boss fleet?”
“Those are the questions we’re all asking, aren’t they?” Gail replied. “We don’t know.”
It turns out you won’t ever read this letter because we are allowed no mail privileges on this mission. I’m going to keep writing anyway and pretend you’ll read it.
I never expected to end up on a high-level assignment like this so soon out of flight school. If you ask me it’s a bit strange. I asked my sponsor, a nice lieutenant senior grade whose name I can’t share, if the fleet is short of lancer pilots after our recent losses to Chaonia’s military at Na Iri and Tarsa. But he said the Strong Bull has their pick of experienced people. So the mystery of why and how I’m here, and why the fleet waited at anchor for three days until I got here, hasn’t been answered. Yet.
Meanwhile I was shown to my rack, a tiny cabin sleeping four in two stacked bunks, which is the luxurious accommodations junior officers get. My new friend hustled away because he’s adjutant to the lancer squadron commander and has other duties. Now I’m just waiting.
A click and a hiss of air warned Apama that the hatch into the cabin was about to open. She was seated cross-legged on the bottom left rack with her tablet, lowers holding and uppers typing. As the door slid aside she closed the tablet, set it on the mattress, and swung her legs out to stand and face three strangers. They wore gold lieutenant senior grade bars on their flight suits, sleeves studded with combat stars. As they stepped into the cabin the door shut behind them. At once the space felt crowded and intimidating.