Impostors

by Scott Westerfeld

“Their trade’s already embargoed, and their citizens can’t travel without permits.” Dr. Leyva leans back, smiling to himself. “It’s almost as if Shreve was expecting to fight this kind of war.”

  “Is there anything we can do to hurt them?” Zura asks.

  More suggestions come, and I glance at Col. He gives me an encouraging nod. But it’s hard, speaking up in front of people who know my real name. Part of me always has to pretend that I’m giving a speech for Rafi.

  Finally there’s a lull in the conversation.

  “Sabotage won’t work,” I say. “No amount of pain will make my father walk away from a conquest.”

  The table is silent for a moment. Hearing the words my father from my lips still makes them uneasy. In all of Victoria’s ragtag army, only the people in this room know what I really am.

  “What about the citizens of Shreve?” Major Sarcos asks me. “Don’t they have a breaking point?”

  “Of course,” I say. “But if they’re broken, how do they stand up against my father?”

  Sarcos doesn’t answer the question. He’s the highest-ranking officer to make it here to the White Mountain. But he seems too cautious and uncertain to command an army.

  “We can’t hurt him by force alone,” I say.

  “Exactly,” comes a voice from the end of the table, and my spine contracts a little.

  It’s Artura Vigil, the head of the Palafoxes’ psych warfare team. She’s the one who recommended taking me as a hostage, who analyzed me and Rafi from afar, who scanned me while I slept.

  She’s like a grown-up version of Srin.

  “We have to cut his support off at the root,” she says. “Prove to his people that he’s a monster.”

  “They know that already!” Teo cries. “He killed my mother, our grandmother. Everyone thinks he raised his own daughter to be a kidnapper—and they don’t care!”

  “They care about Rafia,” I say.

  The table goes quiet. I have their attention again.

  But then Vigil starts talking. “That means they’ll care about you too, Frey. So we tell your story. Show the scans of your body. Let you explain what it was like, watching your sister—”

  “We’ve been over this,” Col interrupts. “Reputational damage doesn’t win wars.”

  Vigil just stares at him, uncomprehending.

  “We can only make this revelation once,” I say. “And what if it doesn’t work? What if the whole world hears my tragic story, and the next day my father’s still in charge?”

  No one has an answer to that.

  This was all much simpler when all I wanted was to hurt him. To make him see me for once. To know that I existed beyond his schemes.

  But hurting my father isn’t enough anymore. We have a city to save.

  I have to destroy him.

  “Well, you all know what I think,” Zura says.

  Col nods, to show he’s not ignoring her, but he doesn’t reply.

  Zura wants to kill my father.

  The problem is, he hasn’t appeared in public since the start of the war. His house, already a fortress, is now protected by the elite of the Shreve military.

  We could raze it to the ground, I suppose. Get close enough to hit it with a hundred plasma guns at once.

  But my sister lives there too.

  If only there was a way to separate them.

  “Rafi’s the key to this,” I say. “She can change things.”

  Teo sighs. “But she’s not in charge.”

  “Not yet.” This idea has been growing clearer in my brain since we arrived at the White Mountain. “But she’s always been more popular than my father. If Shreve had a choice, they’d pick her. That’s different than asking them to surrender to Victoria.”

  Dr. Leyva laughs darkly. “Alas, Shreve isn’t holding an election anytime soon.”

  “Not an election.” It takes me a few seconds to say the rest. “A coup.”

  A scout car takes off outside, heading off to do some recon. The sides of the tent flutter, and for a moment it’s too loud to talk.

  But it gives my words time to sink in—I’m suggesting a revolt against my own father. An end to his rule forever. The others look confused, but for me it’s like a storm is clearing in my head.

  This is the only way to really win. To be safe at last.

  To fix my sister.

  When the sound of the takeoff fades, I go on.

  “Rafi hates my father as much as any of you. Since he shot a missile at me, even more.”

  “You said that in the limo,” Teo says. “But does that mean she wants to replace him?”

  I hear the promise Rafi made the night before I left.

  When I’m in charge, I’ll tell the whole city about you.

  Back then, I thought she was talking about him dying of old age. But Rafi’s virtues have never included patience.

  “Even before this war began,” I say, “she was making plans to take power.”

  “Wanting to overthrow him is one thing,” Zura says. “But making it happen is another.”

  I remember the day of the assassination attempt. When Rafi wanted to keep her scar, and Dr. Orteg went quiet. Because if she played up her injury too much, her popularity might exceed our father’s in a way that was … dangerous.

  “Trust me,” I say. “This is what he’s always feared.”

  Zura shakes her head. “He has the best army in the world. Why should he be afraid of a sixteen-year-old girl?”

  “He’s afraid of everything,” I tell them. “That’s why he made me.”

  None of them knows how to answer that. But for me this is all becoming clearer, down to the right quote from the warrior Sun Tzu.

  “‘When the enemy tries to rest, make them toil. When they want to eat, starve them. When they’re settled, make them move,’” I recite. “We’ll bleed his army in battle, and make sure the embargo keeps Shreve hungry. And when they’re really starting to hurt, Rafi will promise to make it all stop. Our father’s army will never surrender to Victoria, but they might give control to her.”

  Everyone looks at me, not quite believing that my sister can pull this off.

  It’s Artura Vigil who speaks up. “But Rafia hasn’t appeared in public since the day the war started. There’s no chance of getting her away from your father. She can’t declare a coup against him from inside his own house!”

  That’s when I see it—

  “She doesn’t have to declare the revolt herself.” I give them all my best Rafi smile. “That’s what I was born to do.”

  Three weeks later, a power station splays out below us, a million tiny reflectors mirroring the night sky.

  Zura and I are crawling back to the rest of our team, carrying a stolen solar panel. It’s bigger, more rugged than the ones in Teo, the size and weight of a combat boot. Like everything in Shreve, it’s designed to resist an attack. When I grabbed the panel, it rolled into its ceramic shell, hardy enough to survive a bomb blast.

  Luckily, bombing this power station isn’t our plan.

  Col and Dr. Leyva are waiting for us in the dark, invisible in their own sneak suits.

  “This looks easy enough,” Leyva says, taking the solar panel from me.

  He pulls a cutting tool from his kit and starts to work, dismantling the panel. He connects it to his handscreen, which comes alight with schematics and code.

  “I was right—these things pass system updates to each other, like rumors.” Leyva smiles as he taps away.

  “How long will this take?” Col asks. He’s staring at the city.

  Shreve sits on the horizon, its dark skyline dotted with hovercraft on patrol. Only twenty kilometers away, I can make out my father’s tower at the city’s edge. It rises high above the forest, a corona of guardian hovercraft glinting in the moonlight overhead.

  The sight of it makes me twitchy, like a snake in the corner of my vision.

  “A piece of Trojan code is like a good ragout,” Dr. Leyva says. “You can’t r
ush it.”

  Col lowers his field glasses and sighs. “This is why no one ever actually makes your recipes, Doctor. They’re too complicated.”

  “Indeed,” Leyva says. “They only watched for my good looks and charm.”

  Zura peels away the face of her sneak suit to glare at him. She wants this mission done quickly. Farther up the hill, two more Specials await, invisible in their sneak suits.

  With the Victorian army so depleted, Col’s soldiers have accepted him fighting alongside them. But this mission has taken us closer to my father’s city than we’ve dared go before, and everyone is nervous.

  Last night on our way here, our hovercar was hit with a spray of fléchettes from a hidden ground unit. It sounded like thunder and hail. No one was hurt, but it was a reminder that war can become deadly with no warning at all.

  I move next to Col. “Is this the first time you’ve seen Shreve?”

  He lowers the field glasses, still staring at the city. “Yeah. It’s not as evil-looking as I expected. But you can’t see spy dust, I guess.”

  “You can at sunset. It turns the horizon brown and red. Like in the history feeds—the death skies after the last Rusty wars.”

  A shiver goes through Col. “I wonder if the sunsets in Victoria have changed yet.”

  “Not yet,” I say. “We still have time.”

  He turns to me. “Is it weird, being this close to home?”

  It takes a moment to answer. I was the one who asked for our team to take this mission, a chance to be near Shreve again.

  No, not the city—Rafi.

  I miss her more every day. And now that I’m close, it only hurts to think how near she is.

  My sister still hasn’t appeared in public. She should be out visiting the troops, or giving speeches in conquered Victoria. But she hasn’t been seen, not even to deny that it was her stealing that warden car in Paz.

  That means she’s not cooperating with my father. There must be open warfare between the two of them inside that tower.

  Col’s still waiting for an answer.

  “I don’t miss Shreve,” I tell him. “I hardly ever went out into the city. And it’s not like I had any friends.”

  He takes my hand, looking sorry for me. He had a real home, of course, even if it’s blown to pieces now. And he still has a whole city that he loves and that loves him back.

  He may have lost his mother, but I was born an orphan.

  “I just want my sister,” I say.

  Once Rafi’s safe, my father’s city can burn to the ground for all I care.

  We’ve been hitting Shreve hard these last weeks. When they collect metal from the conquered ruins, we attack their freighters. When they try to occupy Victoria, we knock their hovercraft down with plasma guns. This leaves the citizens free to fight the spy dust, clearing it house by house with nanos devised by scientists in neutral cities.

  None of this will topple my father, of course. But all of it weakens him for the day when his own daughter declares herself the new leader of Shreve.

  My last speech in Rafi’s voice.

  Leyva utters a soft cry of triumph. “Got it!”

  He unplugs his screen from the solar panel, reaches for his tool kit again.

  “How long to put it back together?” Col asks. “Or is that also a ragout?”

  “More like a boiled egg—anything longer than three minutes is the work of a fool.” Dr. Leyva’s tools move swiftly as he speaks, their metal whispers blending with the night wind.

  Now that we’re about to leave, the seconds seem to drag. I just want to be out of here. Away from the sight of that baleful tower.

  “Got it.” Dr. Leyva sets the solar panel down in the grass. It crawls away, back toward the rest of the colony. “They’ll all be infected by sunrise.”

  Col watches with grim satisfaction.

  “Sir,” Zaru says. “If you please.”

  “She means come on.” I take his arm and pull him up the hill. Our hovercar is parked on the other side. Its damaged camo skin won’t hide it once the sun comes up.

  We meet the other two Specials on the hilltop. They’re carrying plasma guns and have those wary, serious expressions that Victorian soldiers wear whenever Col is on a mission with them.

  “Too bad we can’t stay and watch,” Dr. Leyva says as we descend toward the car. “All those solar panels crawling into Shreve and causing havoc!”

  I laugh. “This is war, Doctor. Go for stealth, not spectacle.”

  “War is spectacle.”

  This hovercar is larger than the one we lost to the jump mines. It carries six, with heavier armor and firepower, larger batteries—only the best for the heir of Victoria. Its underside is peppered with scars from the fléchettes last night. But nothing got through.

  I settle in the backseat between Col and Dr. Leyva. The three Specials sit in front.

  The doors seal around us, vibrations building as the lifting fans spin up.

  Something sounds funny to me.

  I glance at Col, who’s putting on his seat straps. He pauses, frowning, like he hears it too.

  As we lift into the air, the car tips sideways. Zura starts swearing, flipping switches.

  Dr. Leyva’s weight slides into me, squashing us both against Col. The car is sliding down the hill now, our landing skids scraping against grass and rock.

  We’re crashing.

  The skids catch, and we start to roll.

  Suddenly I’m hanging upside down, my straps cutting into my shoulders. Col slides up the wall toward the ceiling—he wasn’t strapped in. He hits with a thump, arms up just in time to protect his head.

  I grab onto him. The car is still rolling, and seconds later we’re right-side up, then upside down again. The world wheels around me, and Col and I cling to each other.

  My stomach lurches. My hair is in my eyes. A loose water bottle bounces around the cabin, along with Dr. Leyva’s tool kit.

  We crash down onto our skids again and start sliding, and Col’s full weight tumbles down on me. We’re wrapped around each other like two terrified littlies.

  The car is still sliding down the hillside. The lifting fans are shrieking, Zura yelling as she tries to shut them down.

  The car’s skids catch on hard rock again, and we roll over once more. This time Col and I are ready, and he stays in my arms.

  The fans spin down at last. As their whine fades, the car settles on a patch of level ground.

  The only problem is, we’re upside down …

  And twenty kilometers from my father’s house.

  “It was the gyroscope,” Zura says.

  She and Dr. Leyva are kneeling on the belly of the upended hovercar, staring down into its guts.

  The rest of us are on the ground, standing in the gouges left by the sliding car. Col has a medwipe shoved into his bloody nose. My left eye is darkening where his elbow hit, and I have the twitchy-making feeling that I will never leave my father’s city behind.

  Everyone else is okay. Even the hovercar is mostly undamaged—except for its delicate, crucial sense of balance.

  “I missed it last night,” Dr. Leyva says. “One of those fléchettes, lodged in the gyro case.”

  “But we flew level on the way here,” Col says.

  Leyva nods. “It wasn’t a direct hit. But every klick we traveled, the flechette was in there vibrating, nudging the gyro out of whack.”

  “This is my fault,” Zura says. “I knew the controls felt wrong.”

  “It’s just bad luck,” Col says, but she doesn’t answer. She’s still angry with herself for lifting off before the Palafox heir was safely strapped into his seat.

  Leyva drops from the hovercar’s belly onto the grass. “It’s just lucky we’re carrying a spare gyroscope. This is the only car in the fleet that has one.”

  I smile at Col. “It’s nice to be the heir.”

  “We need an ally with a factory,” he mutters.

  This is our army’s real problem—after l
ong weeks in the wild, our ships need maintenance. Our hole in the wall can print clothing and equipment, but not serious military hardware.

  This is why the rebels don’t use hovercars. The wild is unkind to complicated machines.

  “I can switch the new one in,” Zura says. “But it’ll take a few hours.”

  “You mean, we’ll still be here after dawn,” Dr. Leyva says.

  Zura nods. “We can’t let the sabotage go ahead, or they’ll come looking for the people who planted that code. You’ll have to save your recipe for another day, Doctor.”

  Leyva sighs, then picks up his tool kit and handscreen.

  “It was too good to be true. Come on, Frey.”

  Dr. Leyva and I climb back to the other side of the hill, then creep down to the edge of the solar colony.

  The sky is already changing color, the stars in the east fading into an inky blue. In the distance, Shreve is lighting up. The factory belt teems with drones and self-driving trucks.

  I bring us to a halt thirty meters from the nearest panels.

  “Wait here. I’ll be back with one in a minute.”

  “It’s too late,” he says.

  I stare at him. “What is?”

  “It would take hours for new code to spread through the whole colony. Once the sun comes up, my sabotage program is going to activate. Shreve will notice something’s wrong, no matter what we do.”

  I stare at him. “Why didn’t you tell Zura that?”

  “I didn’t want her rushing the repair job, like she rushed our takeoff. I’ve already been in one hovercar crash today.” He takes my shoulder. “And you and I will be more useful here. We have a weapon, when Shreve comes looking for who hijacked their power station.”

  He gestures out at the countless panels, their reflectors rippling into position as dawn spills across the sky.

  I shake my head. “You’re going to fight off half the Shreve army with a bunch of solar panels?”

  “No, with the most powerful object in the solar system. Might I borrow your plasma gun?”

  I sigh and hand the weapon over. “Are you being cryptic for dramatic effect, Doctor?”

  “You’re clever enough to figure it out.” He pulls the hydrogen battery off the rifle’s plasma chamber.