Because you started this, she almost said. But this was no time for a playground spat. “Think this through. The tech’s already been deployed. Why run these people down now?”
There was a pause. “We can’t go back with nothing,” he said. We, as in, the people. A semantic washing of his hands.
“No,” Asala agreed, trying to play to his favor. “But how is it going to look back home when word gets out that you fired on civilian refugees in order to take their tech?”
His ship slithered, and his words did the same. “We haven’t fired on anyone except in defense—”
“For fuck’s sake, look around. You’re not giving a campaign speech; you’re trying to take somebody else’s toys because they wouldn't share.” She swung hard to keep on his tail. Her targeting computer trilled as her weapons lost lock. Dammit, but he was good at this.
The president’s voice was impatient. “You're hardly in a position to negotiate. You have sixteen ships with you, by my count, and as much as I don’t want to do this, I—shit.”
The patterns in the sky changed. Drones descended, an angry swarm bent on a single directive: taking out anyone who got too close to the Ghalan ships. Well done, Niko, she thought reflexively, and then felt the sinking of her heart. Ekrem had to know too.
Asala’s thoughts scrambled along with the Khayyami fleet. She’d told Niko their mission hadn’t changed, but what was her mission? What was she actually fighting for here? Every flag on this field wanted the tech for themselves and only themselves, and none of those causes had ever been hers. The Khayyami should have access to this technology too, just as the Gandesians should. The best thing that could happen at this point was if everyone went home with a party favor in their pocket so they might all try again. But not at the cost of killing innocents. Not this death match.
The solution burst forth from her lips. “Defend the refugees,” she said. “They’re not all spaceworthy enough to reach the wormhole. You deny them escape and take the tech at gunpoint, you’re no better than Cynwrig. If Gan-De wins here, these people are all dead. But if the fleet protects those who don’t get out, they might share willingly if you both survive this.” That’d only be good for two sides out of three, she thought, but it was an improvement, at least. “Which story would play better back home?”
Ekrem was quiet for a long time—a few seconds, in reality, but in battle, an eternity. “You’re asking me to engage the Gandesian fighters directly to protect a third party. Not out of our own defense.”
“Yes.”
“They’d read that as a declaration of war.”
Asala looked from one side of her cockpit shield to the other, and took in a cluttered tapestry of mangled ships, limp bodies, blazes of combustion. “This isn’t?”
Another silence. The comms switched off.
Three horribly pregnant seconds ticked by—and then, to Asala’s profound relief, the picture on her monitor shifted.
The Khayyami fleet was standing guard.
• • •
Cynwrig thought of her grandson, the dancer. On one of his visits when he’d been a very little boy—he was still a little boy, would always be a little boy—he’d reported proudly to her that he’d learned all the planets at school, and also some stars. He’d insisted on taking her out to the terrace after dessert, where he’d pointed at the night sky and explained the universe to her as if she were unaware of the concept. She’d listened and mmm’d, in that simultaneously charmed and bored way that went hand in hand with parenting. That’s the Hearth, he’d said, pointing at the boxy constellation. And you can’t see Khayyam right now, but it’s there. He’d been so pleased with himself, so empowered by being able to name the constants of the world.
For what was more constant than your place in the stars?
When she’d put on her uniform before boarding the Thorn, she had thought through, as she always did before battle, what the stakes were that day. Securing the technology, that had been the short-term goal. If she secured the tech, she’d be giving Gan-De a better chance at a brighter future. If they lost, her enemies would have a significant advantage, and she’d have to weather the political shame of the destitute clannies having been one step ahead of the Gandesian military. Those were the parameters, and she’d accepted them, set her mind to them.
Nowhere in those parameters had there been any small print that read also, there’s a slight chance you could lose the planet today. How could there be? It was madness, pure madness. This couldn’t be right.
The same struggle was taking place on the faces of the bridge crew, the contemplation of a disaster the mind was not meant for, the need to process and react to this impossible information now.
Cynwrig had a flash of her children and her grandchildren at holidays. She remembered the smiles on her friends’ faces over glasses of wine, flush with good-natured argument. She saw the grand arches of the Shenset Library, the colored tiles of the Hundred-Year Promenade, the gardens and plazas where people ate and gossiped and played. All now lost, thanks to nothing more than a cosmic nudge.
The clannies had done this on purpose. They had to have. A final stab at the heart of her world. This was their hatred for Gandesian life made plain. The engineer had no numbers to work with, but Uzochi did. She was a scientist. She would have calculated. She would have known.
A fire set within Cynwrig’s heart. It shot through her veins, scorching muscle and bone. “Engage the Ghalan ships,” she said. She set her shoulders and showed her teeth. “We take them all.”
• • •
Asala braced herself as Red Squad descended. The Khayyami were ready, but it was the remaining Ghalan fighters who responded first. One was blown apart almost immediately; two more retaliated. These sixteen—fifteen, now—were the bravest of their number. They had to know there was no escape for themselves, yet they flew steady. Asala hoped that no matter whose side got the privilege of writing the history of that day, someone would remember her volunteers.
Ekrem, ever the golden boy, flew his ship as if he were a fish and the sky was water. He hit two Gandesians in rapid succession, then took up position beside Asala. She was sure his fighters already had their orders as to who was friendly now, but the symbolism of one squad leader flying alongside another could not be missed. He was nothing if not a politician.
For a moment, though, Asala felt the politics slide away, and instead reveled in fighting alongside a friend. “Thank you,” she said over the comms. “I really didn’t want to kill you.”
“I have no idea how to respond to that,” he said.
They gunned forward in a measured frenzy, two seasoned soldiers weaving helices against the stars, unburdened by dimensions or drag. Their respective fleets did the same in the space around them, amid the lace of drones. Red Squad was every bit as fierce as their reputation suggested, and Ekrem’s skill in flight had found its match at last. He and Asala both spun through a curtain of gunshot, trying to gain the upper hand. Asala maimed one ship, her weapons slicing through its tail. Ekrem took care of the rest, then took out another in its wake. A ship gave chase to Ekrem; he took light damage, but quickly reversed the score. On her monitor, she could see the obliteration of her squad—fourteen, thirteen, ten—but the little parade of civilian ships remained unbroken. It was working. Red Squad was growing thin.
Another Gandesian fighter threw itself at Ekrem, and whoever was its pilot was born for combat. Asala joined the fray, and all three wrestled at high speed. Despite the frenzy, her weapons fired true, and a burst of gunfire tore into the Gandesian craft. Part of the wing was destroyed, but that didn’t matter outside of atmosphere. If you had guns and an engine, you were still in the fight, and though she knew the ship itself wasn’t alive, Asala found herself thinking that she’d only managed to make it mad. It stopped, though, pausing in the chase while its pilot took stock. Its guns fired a scattered burst of defiance.
She made a mistake. Or maybe Ekrem did; it was impossible to say at these
speeds. Someone turned, someone anticipated, someone misjudged—whatever the sequence of events had been, her craft scraped against his. The impact outside was silent, but the air she breathed vibrated with it, a hideous metallic yowl. Alarm klaxons blared. She swore as she was thrown a safe distance away, her adrenaline spiking as she tried to make sense of the web of red lights demanding her attention. Damage to the outer shielding, straight down the main fuselage. No breach, though. She exhaled. No breach.
She did not need to look at her monitor to see what had happened to Ekrem. Her heavy hull had hit his cockpit, rending the more fragile frame inward and splintering the viewshield. A thin mist of oxygen rose up through the fracture, unmistakable in the blackness. She could see him in there. His helmet was on, and he was undoubtedly wearing a pressurized suit. But his craft was lost.
“Ekrem!” she shouted. “Eject.”
Her heart sunk at the delay in reply, then further still at the voice that followed. “I can’t,” he said with distant resignation. She’d heard that tone dozens of times before, from soldiers who knew their wounds wouldn’t heal. “The pod’s jammed.”
Fuck. “Okay, sit tight, I’ll keep them off you until we can—”
“Asala,” he said. “My helmet’s cracked.”
She closed her eyes.
He continued, as if searching for understanding. “I hit it on the frame when you—we—it’s not your fault.”
Asala knew what this meant. The damage to his helmet had to be minor, if he was still speaking. But it would grow, and it wouldn’t take long. If he was lucky, it’d happen fast, and he’d die from rapid decompression. Slow decompression, she didn’t want to picture. Otherwise, he’d suffocate before the battle was over. Either way, there was nothing left for him to do but sit and wait. Could be seconds. Could be minutes. He’d be trapped there, helpless, a little more strangled with every moment that slipped by. His voice was calm, but staring down the barrel of you might die in two seconds, or in two minutes, or in ten was a quiet torment she didn’t wish on anyone.
Especially not him.
A proximity warning pulled her eyes back open. The damaged Gandesian craft had steadied itself and was coming in full bore. She locked and fired. The fighter shattered. Whatever spark of victory Asala felt, it was smothered beneath preemptive regret. She knew what the right thing was to do.
“Asala,” Ekrem said again. His voice shook a little now. “Can you tell me why Niko . . . what happened, with them?”
She took a breath. “They think they’re doing the right thing,” she said. “It’s not about you. It was never about you. They love you.”
The comms crackled with static as he took that in. His voice came back, and it, too, cracked. “Please tell them I—”
She locked onto him with her weapons and pulled the trigger. Her guns did their work, freezing whatever bittersweet thought Ekrem had of his family as his last. It was the kindest someone in her profession could be.
• • •
A combat monitor wasn’t a very exciting thing to look at. All you saw was a rendered cube, filled with little round lights of different colors. Niko knew every dot was a person, and that every time one of them winked out, something explosive was happening elsewhere. Something violent and terrible. But all they could see were little dots that moved and sometimes vanished. A bloodless, passionless way to track business that was anything but.
Niko had sat watching the lights ever since they’d gotten the drones back. They knew the Gandesian hackers on the planet below were fighting to undo Niko’s efforts. They could hear it on one of their other monitors, a simple ping every time Niko’s firewall slapped the intruders back. There would be an alarm if there was trouble. There hadn’t been one yet, and so Niko watched the combat monitor, seeing what their hard work had wrought.
The Ghalan Defense Force wasn’t going to last this fight, but they had held on, and would to the end. It was the drones that were giving everyone around them trouble. Red Squad appeared overwhelmed, or at least confused, trying to find a strategy that worked equally well against deadly machines with algorithmic precision and haphazard freedom fighters with no training and nothing to lose. Nobody was going to win this, Niko thought. It would end when it ended.
They watched two particular dots, chased by another. They both had numbers, those dots, and Niko recognized them. They watched in horror as the familiar dots collided, and paused. Niko held their breath. One moment, there were three dots. In a blink, two, the two they knew. Niko breathed easier.
But then one dot fired on the other. “No!” Niko cried, but by the time the word had left their mouth, it was already done. A light, then an absence. Bloodless, passionless.
Niko tried to breathe, but their throat was shut and their tongue was thick. They tried to scream, but their voice was dead. They realized, stupidly, that they were staring at the place on the monitor where Ekrem’s dot had been, waiting for it to turn back on. It was a mistake, an equipment error. A trick Asala was pulling for one of her genius strategic reasons. Their father’s ship was damaged, sure, but it was there. They were working together now. They were on the same side. Asala had no reason to . . . to . . . No. No, Ekrem’s light would come back. He’d come back and tell Niko he was sorry, he was so sorry, he’d fix this, he’d put a bandage on it and make it all right.
But Ekrem’s light did not come back. Neither did the lights of the Khayyami fleet that strayed too close to the drones. They did not come back, because Niko had done their job.
They’d had no choice, Niko told themself. And Asala must not have either—after all, they’d asked this of her. Niko had asked for this, and, and, and—and something had changed, she’d had a reason, she always had a good reason—no. Why, why, whywhywhy, it didn’t make any—look, see, they thought frantically, forcing their attention to the dots that belonged to the former pieces of Camp Ghala. You helped them. They’re getting out. We saved them. You saved them. Not all of the Ghalan ships had reached the wormhole yet, but some had, and their dots had disappeared too, gone now to someplace better.
Was the same true of their father?
Leave the guilty behind, Asala had said on Gan-De. Niko’s words, echoed back to them.
Niko av Ekrem lay down on the floor. Whatever happened to them now could happen. They no longer cared.
• • •
The clannies had fight; Cynwrig gave them that much. This pack the Thorn was engaged with now—the ones who had thrown the wormhole open—were armed and better prepared than she’d expected. And the degree to which they were armed, that had raised an eyebrow and boiled the blood. She was already making a list of everyone on her intel teams who would be demoted for this—no, not demoted. Imprisoned. This was criminal negligence, letting this kind of firepower sit undetected in orbit above the heads of her citizens. They’d all rot for this.
Imprisoned where? a small voice in her mind asked. A life sentence doesn’t mean much if there’s no planet to build prisons on.
“Target that cruiser,” she roared. “They’re all following that one’s lead.”
She wasn’t going to give the clannies too much credit. Weapons and fight they had, but not like her. She was merely surprised that they had weapons. That was where her praise ended. They were well armed for rabble, that was all. She was the leader of the free people of Gan-De, the liberator, the closed fist of the law. She had the finest ships in the system, the finest artillery. These Ghalans had teeth, but you could say the same of a lapdog.
And what was a lapdog against a lion?
The Thorn rained hell upon its enemies, its railguns relentless. There was a report of damage to the engines. Fine. There was a malfunction in the tertiary firing chamber. Fine. Bruises and scrapes, nothing more. It was nothing compared to the righteous slaughter her warship had brought forth.
“General, the lead ship is contacting us,” the comms officer said.
Cynwrig nodded.
An arrogant voice echoed over the c
omms. “I am Hafiz of the Order of Boreas,” they said. “We are more than these ships. We are on every world and we speak every tongue. You have already lost. You will have no surrender from us.”
“No matter,” Cynwrig said. “I wouldn’t have accepted it anyway.”
She silenced the comms and gave the order. Her fury still squalled, but there was room for satisfaction as she watched the rebel ship consume itself in a flash of ruptured fuel and burning air.
• • •
Somehow, her situation seemed fitting. Soraya was in a worn-down, last-legs shuttle, crammed into the cargo hold with about two dozen more people than this ship should safely carry. She’d been one of the few in Camp Ghala who hadn’t traveled there in such a manner. Appropriate, in a grim sort of way, that that was how she’d had to leave.
She’d been the last one aboard, and between the crowd in front of her and the airlock hatch behind her, she had little room to move. Some morbid part of her noted that if the hull blew, she’d be the first one sucked out. She didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Either way, it was out of her hands now.
Everyone around her was scared and uncomfortable. Of course, they had been in Camp Ghala as well, but it felt different in transit. In camp, the question was when are we leaving? In transit, the question was where are we going? Both queries were perfect anxiety fuel, but personally, she felt the latter was worse. She wondered what would happen to her quarters, her things. Not that she cared about the things, really, except as a matter of sentiment. But that had been her place, her home, for over a decade. Now it was gone, and even if the ship she’d lived on had gotten through, it would never be the same as it was. She didn’t even know the name of the ship, or who it’d belonged to before the camp. She’d known it as a block number, and one little corner of it had belonged to her. From here on out, it would be something yet again changed.
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