Asala didn't have experience with space command beyond what she'd picked up from other mercenaries or, less reliably, the space pirate shows that people on Khayyam were so fond of. But she did remember a few essentials: the sheer terrifying emptiness of space, and the fact that motion happened in three dimensions. Terrain wasn't a matter of ridges or mountains, but gravity wells and libration points and, in this case, the constant reminder that Gan-De's orbital defenses stood ready to shoot them all down.
“Agent Asala to Station Control,” she said. “Requesting permission for the defense force to launch.” She didn't have a better name for it, had never been good at naming things—that had been Dayo's gift.
At first there was no response, and Asala kept from biting the inside of her mouth in impatience. Surely Station Control had been briefed about the plan? Except she knew from experience that you couldn't count on even simple plans to be conveyed intact, especially under circumstances like these.
Station Control responded. “Commander Asala,” said a woman's harsh voice. Ah yes: They'd given Asala a promotion for appearance's sake. “I've transmitted data on Gan-De's defense patterns and the rescue ships' proposed approach. May the sun watch you and the stars hold you safe.”
In the outer planets they'd stopped praying by the sun as Eratos perished, as more and more people turned to glow for a moment's illusion of warmth. But Asala didn't see any point in quarreling about that with Station Control. “Acknowledged,” Asala said. “Defense force, prepare to launch on my order.”
Asala's racing dart was not outfitted for space command. Niko had helped Camp Ghala jerry-rig an Identification-Friend-or-Foe system to minimize friendly fire, but they had also warned that the system was fragile. Asala had ambivalent feelings about having to rely on Niko, though the Khayyami's ability to wrangle tech was unquestionably solid. The IFF system was also tied in to the ship's sensor system so that she had running updates on—
Shit.
The display showed Camp Ghala and Gan-De's nearest defenses, a great many of the latter in geosynchronous orbit so as to always bare their teeth in the camp's direction. According to the sensors, those orbital platforms had just launched a fleet of drone fighters. The camp's ability to maneuver was limited, at least until it had disassembled itself—which it couldn't do, pragmatically speaking, until Uzochi arrived, and their ships could be retrofitted with the wormhole generators she was bringing.
Which meant it was up to Asala and the defense fleet to protect the camp.
The problem was that the drones were coordinated, using emergent algorithms that caused them to behave like flocks of birds—or swarms of insects. Asala and her pilots were merely human. They didn't have the advantage of a hive mind.
Of course, that meant they didn't have the disadvantages of one either.
Asala toggled the comm to address the entire defense force. “This is Commander Asala”—might as well embrace the unasked-for promotion—“to the Camp Ghala defense fleet.” Shit, was she supposed to give a speech? She'd always hated speeches. Too bad Niko couldn't come up with one for her—she shied away from that thought. “Tell me, how many of you remember the ‘Song of the Woman Who Brought Stars to Her Lover'?”
It was an old song, a beloved one on Hypatia; variants had existed on Eratos and Samos as well. She'd once even seen a Khwarizmian stage interpretation, although it had been distorted beyond recognition. (The original had not included any tusked hunting-cats, let alone ones that talked in verse.) It would have been easier to explain what she wanted of her pilots outright, but she was mindful of Niko's warning that the machine-minds of Gan-De, or their masters, could break the crypto and listen in. She doubted that the drones' AIs were metaphor-savvy enough to interpret a poem from cultures that their programmers despised. The Gandesians themselves, given their hatred of the Outer Planets' denizens, might even be slow to recognize the reference.
Asala held her breath, waiting for someone, anyone, to answer. The drones continued to accelerate toward Camp Ghala.
The silence broke. “C-commander Asala,” a man's voice came over the channel. “This is Pilot Three.” They'd agreed to use numerical designations; we number our dead, Asala couldn't help thinking, and made a warding symbol in case she'd jinxed the man. “If you mean the part where the suitor carries the stars in her hands—”
She'd opened her mouth to snap, That's enough, stop, but she was taken aback when he did so without having to be warned that the enemy was listening. Rather, he hummed the key verses, his voice rough but steady. Asala knew the words that accompanied the music. Dayo had sung them with her, once upon a time.
“Catch me the stars in your hands,” the queen of spiders said,
“and you will taste my honey kisses, carry my smile with you like a jewel.”
And Jibrill swallowed her despair like dark wine, and said it would be done;
and in the quiet hours of the night, when the moons formed a diadem, she saw a way.
In the song, Jibrill had brought back a cobweb glittering with dew, which reflected the stars in the last dregs of dawn. And the queen of spiders had accepted the cobweb, crowning herself with it, before setting stubborn, faithful Jibrill another task.
“I don't see what this has to do with anything,” the man went on, sounding querulous.
You can catch anything in its own nature, was the lesson. He would understand when the time came.
“Commander,” said another voice—this one was Pilot Fifteen, the comm interface informed her. “Children's songs and courtship stories are all very well, but how—”
“You're here because you trust me to defend the camp,” Asala said. She didn't leave Fifteen time to argue with the statement. Time was running short. “Well, trust me now. We're going to skim close to the orbital platforms. Every piloting trick you learned running the gauntlet getting supplies to Camp Ghala, now's the time to use them.”
“Roger that,” one of the pilots said, followed by the others.
So far, so good. Everything else would be up to Niko.
• • •
General Cynwrig had seen a lot of war in her lifetime. But she was not experienced in orbital battles, and said so to anyone who asked. This usually occasioned raised eyebrows and murmurs of disbelief, but Cynwrig was being sincere.
A battle implied combat against an enemy force with some modicum of discipline and leadership. A hunt, on the other hand—you could hunt tufted boars and they would fight, but it wasn't a battle. You were gunning down an animal, however cunning, rather than pitting yourself against a thinking foe.
The refugees who continually battered themselves against Gan-De's defenses behaved more like swarms of glitter locusts or flocks of graybirds than thinking human foes. The proof was in the countermeasures that defeated them so readily. As formidable as Gan-De's drones and robotic hunter squads were, they didn't possess true sentience the way humans did. Yet they sufficed to gun down those desperate refugees who attempted, despite every insistence that they weren't welcome, to find succor on Gan-De.
This time, however, was different.
This time Cynwrig faced a true battle in space. Not a hunt. Both battles and hunts might end in slaughters. The difference was how you got there.
Cynwrig had taken to the skies herself in the carrier Thorn, one of the elite Gandesian warships that had a life-support system to accommodate human passengers. The Thorn had point defenses and missile arrays, railguns and mines—it would have been stupid not to—but what made it truly dangerous was the sheer horde of drone ships that it could launch. Drones who knew only the cold imperative of the hunt, and who could carry out maneuvers impossible for human-piloted ships because of the accelerations involved.
Cynwrig herself oversaw operations on the bridge. She sipped a glass of bittersweet cordial, the one luxury she permitted herself in time of war, while Captain Amyntas and the executive officer, sober in the black Gandesian military uniform, discussed deployment patterns. Cynwrig's console
showed her an overview of the battle unfolding before them: clusters of rapidly moving triangles of yellow light representing the drones and their vectors, with the slower, less agile red flecks representing hostiles.
The refugees' forces were putting up a surprisingly good fight. She could already tell what their strategy was, had known it from the moment she saw their launch trajectories. Unsurprisingly, the refugees were trying to hack into the orbital defenses. They hadn't managed it yet, but Cynwrig remembered the incidents on the return trip to Gan-De, and Ekrem's irritating offspring, Niko. Niko might be able to manage the feat, if they'd survived.
“Any luck cracking the refugees' IFF?” Cynwrig asked during a lull in the clipped discussions on the bridge.
Captain Amyntas shrugged expressively. “Not yet, ma'am. Whatever they're using, it must be new.” She didn't say what they all knew: that the Gandesian authorities on Camp Ghala had infiltrated the refugees' computer systems for intelligence, for back doors, for any advantage that could be scraped together. The only way to defeat truly desperate people, after all, was to outthink them at every turn. Amyntas frowned. “It's a pity that—”
An alert flared red, reflecting in the captain's glasses. She swore. Cynwrig took another sip of her cordial.
Captain Amyntas said, “On my command, launch drone squadrons one through—”
Cynwrig interrupted: “No. Countermand.”
Ordinarily, Cynwrig allowed her subordinates a certain amount of autonomy. There was no point in having a military that couldn't function if its head was cut off. Nevertheless, she hadn't risen to her position because she was reluctant to exercise her authority when it became necessary.
Her people trusted her. Captain Amyntas trusted her; she wouldn't command the flagship otherwise. Amyntas repeated the countermand, then turned to Cynwrig, her chin tipped up, her eyes narrowed in thought.
“Launch the drone squadrons as planned,” Cynwrig said, her voice impassive, “but they will be spearheaded by Lieutenant Hana and Red Squadron.” Cynwrig had often reflected on the irony of the lieutenant's name, which meant “joy.” It certainly hadn't been lost on the lieutenant herself.
The captain blinked in surprise. “As you command.” She was clearly wondering why the reliable, hardy drones were being hampered by the inclusion of a human-piloted squadron. They were a throwback in the Gandesian space forces, which preferred to leave the guidance of the smaller fighter ships to AIs. Cynwrig was no stranger to electronic warfare, however; she'd pushed for the retention of human pilots as a fail-safe for situations just like this, when hackers made the drones less reliable.
Captain Amyntas broadcast the corrected orders. Cynwrig set down her cordial, admiring the way water condensed on the glass and formed distended jewels. Oh, she could have left matters to the drones, but that fucking hacker Niko was too much of a wild card. Cynwrig knew better than to trust luck. Soldiers' luck, as they said on Gan-De, couldn't be trusted.
“Open communications to Lieutenant Hana,” Cynwrig said, and it was done. The lieutenant's face appeared on the screen before her, eyes dark and alert. Beneath her pilot's helmet, her head was shaved, Cynwrig knew. The helmet obscured a great deal of her face, which eerily resembled that of her sister, Asala, down to the subtle marks where she'd had her clannie tattoos removed once she accepted her Gandesian name.
“General,” Hana said. For a soldier, she had an incongruously beautiful voice, made for poetry, but then, she had not originally been a soldier at all. “What is your pleasure?”
“Your wife is receiving the best of care,” Cynwrig said. “All I require is that you honor your oath as a soldier.” She meant it. Half-threat, half-promise, and a kind of honor, in its way—Gan-De's military took good care of both its dependents and any soldiers who chose pregnancy—although her opponents both on the battlefield and off it had never seen it that way.
“Of course, General,” Hana said. “Do you have any particular instructions?” Her eyes flickered; Cynwrig could see the developing battle inscribed in her eyes in traceries of light.
“Take your helmet off for the fight,” Cynwrig said. She smiled, as merciful as a blade newly sharpened. “You don't need it. This is the last battle that matters.”
It wasn't Hana's death she was concerned with. Hana's face was a weapon. Cynwrig intended to use it—against Asala.
Hana reached up. Her hand trembled.
“Fly well,” Cynwrig purred, and cut the connection.
• • •
“Camp Ghala Control to Commander Asala,” said the now-familiar voice. “Uzochi's ship has reached the transfer point.” That much Asala's sensors confirmed. “From here on out it's up to you to keep us covered.”
She'd figure out the situation as it developed. In the meantime, Asala needed to attend to the remnants of her fleet. “Well done, everyone,” she said. “But it's not over.”
Now came the hard part, which sounded absurd only to people who had never gone to war: the waiting. Asala was good at it, thanks to her years of experience as a sniper. That didn't mean that she enjoyed it. But she and the ships under her command were responsible for protecting Camp Ghala until Uzochi's fleet, and rescue, arrived.
• • •
Niko sipped lukewarm tea, painfully aware that it was a luxury here on Camp Ghala, closed their eyes, and tried not to hyperventilate. Breathing too heavily still made their ribs ache, although it wasn't as bad as it had been earlier. Guiltily, they thanked the gods for the efficacy of the nanite shots.
The room where they'd set up stank of sweat and protein powder and the spices the camp's inhabitants added to their food in an attempt to make it palatable or disguise the flavors of provisions that had started to go off. By now Niko had gotten used to the stench. Some of it was their own.
“The general's forces won't expect us to be going toward them,” Asala had explained to Niko when they'd last spoken over the comms. “That's where you come in.”
That was where Niko came in, indeed. All they had to do was hack Gan-De's planetary defenses. No sweat. Anyone could do it in an afternoon.
Niko had just started up a number of toolkits hastily downloaded from more or less reliable sources when someone began pounding on the door. They ignored it and initiated a link with one of the platforms' onboard computers by spoofing the address of a sensor array. It wouldn't give them much access, but any access was better than none at all; Niko could use that to piggyback into other subsystems until they encountered the accesses they needed. They hoped for more time than a handful of minutes, but hell, that was what the toolkits were for, right?
The pounding continued. Niko gritted their teeth. They'd survived interruptions before, given the absurd number of half-siblings they'd grown up with, even if not all of the brood had lived in the same residence at the same time. Ekrem wasn't the only Khayyami who practiced political polyamory by choosing influential bed partners; he just took it to its natural logical conclusion.
The door screeched as someone dragged it open.
Niko scrambled to their feet as a heavyset woman burst into their room. “Excuse me,” they said, hating the way their voice went high and clipped, “you can't be in here. I'm—”
“Haven't you been listening to the bulletins?” the woman said, her voice thick with an accent that even Niko, with their facility with language, had difficulty parsing. “We're evacuating D block.”
No, no, no, no, no. “That's not possible,” Niko said, forcing themself to smile.
Always smile, the agent they'd apprenticed to had said to them over and over. You're your father's child; it ought to come easy. He does it for a reason, after all. As if Niko didn't know from a lifetime of having that same dazzling smile directed at them. It had taken them an embarrassing number of years to realize that Ekrem smiled the same way at strangers as at family. But here Niko was, following the advice as if it could make a difference so far away from Khayyam. People were people everywhere; wasn't that a universal truth?
/> Universal truth couldn't save them from the exigencies of life on a haphazard space station. “Soraya sent me when you weren't responding to the bulletins,” the woman said breathlessly. “I'm supposed to help you get set up elsewhere. My name's Zella and—”
Shit. Niko was going to have to run off batteries while transferring the hardware, a dicey proposition. “Couldn't someone have warned me before I got set up here?” they demanded, even as they put nonessential systems on standby and began packing their equipment to the sound of the woman's life story and how she used to be a computer technician on Hypatia and wasn't it such a shame that they couldn't all go back to dealing with people who couldn't find the power button instead of a life-threatening situation like this and what was the general of Gan-De thinking doing this to upstanding people who just wanted to contribute to society the way anyone did.
Niko's mentor had forced them to assemble and disassemble computers in the freezing dark while playing loud Khwarizmian drum-chants interspersed with agonizing static. I've done this before, Niko told themself. This should be easy. No one was shouting. They had light. It wasn't dark, at least in the literal sense. Niko only had to deal with one woman's babbling.
Yet Niko's hands trembled, and they almost disconnected some of the machines in the wrong order. And every moment mattered to the people who were flying in their rickety starships trying to save Uzochi's fleet and, by extension, Camp Ghala.
“I'll help,” Zella said.
Niko bit their tongue as she helpfully yanked out some of the power cables. They could see where one of the cables' casings had cracked open. “One second,” they said, digging in their utility pouch for a roll of tape. Niko didn't have much chance of saving Asala if they were electrocuted.
The Vela: The Complete Season 1 Page 29