by Joe Vasicek
“The second and third waves will graze the surface of the star, using a gravity whip maneuver to accelerate their attack and make a deadly projectile bombardment,” Katsuichi explained. “The magnetic field should hide our numbers until it’s too late.”
“But what about the first wave, Your Highness?” one of his own commanders asked. “Where will you be during all of this?”
“I will be at the head of the first group, leading the attack.” Anything less would be an insult to the promise he’d given his father.
A series of murmurs rose around the table, this time from his own men. “But Your Imperial Highness,” blurted Commander Takahashi, “no one has made a direct assault on the Hameji and succeeded. What should we do if you fall?”
“We must not fall,” Katsuichi said grimly. “And if it is true that no one has yet beaten the Hameji in open combat, then let us be the first!”
Most of the Federation officers frowned or rolled their eyes, but Katsuichi’s men nodded in approval and respect. Colonel Webb rose to his feet.
“It is a daring plan,” he said, “and I see no flaw in it. The Hameji won’t be expecting a direct attack—there’s a chance it might work.”
“But the timing must be perfect,” said Admiral Uematsu. “How do we know that the Federation forces will coordinate with ours?”
“The fifth and sixth wings have agreed to join this operation,” said Colonel Webb, his voice radiating confidence. “They have already been briefed, and have agreed to form the pincer attack. The third fleet will be held in reserve about a light year outside of the system, in case it becomes necessary to call for reinforcements.”
Katsuichi turned to the glass display behind the table and keyed it open. The room became silent as he lifted the heirloom sword from its base and brought it out so that all could see. As he did so, all of the Rigelan commanders reverently rose to their feet.
“This sword represents the spirit of our people,” he said softly, his voice echoing in the silence. “Legend holds that it was fashioned on Earth and taken by our forefathers in their exodus across the stars. For generations, we have kept it as a priceless treasure, a symbol of all that we hold dear.”
He drew the blade from its scabbard, making it ring in the way that only the purest steel could. His men’s eyes widened, and their faces stiffened with resolve.
“Let it be witnessed today that this blade shall not be sheathed until our enemies have been vanquished and our people are safe once again!”
Katsuichi held the blade high over his head, and a resounding cry erupted from all of his men, filling the room and sending chills down his spine. Tears streamed down their faces, and many of them drew their own swords to answer in salute, leaving the men of the Federation utterly bewildered.
Let them gawk, then, Katsuichi thought to himself. This is our hour—this is when we shall redeem our honor.
But even as his blood boiled with anticipation, he could not stop his thoughts from drifting to his sister.
* * * * *
Abaqa stepped briskly through the open doorway and onto the bridge of his brother’s ship, the Conquering Flame. Jahan stood on the raised platform at the center, overseeing his pilot and gunnery commander—both of whom were little older than him.
“Ah, Abie,” he said, turning around and smiling. The two brothers came together and embraced.
“I heard you have a mission for me,” said Abaqa. He glanced out the wide but narrow forward window at the brilliant star-filled vista of deep space.
Jahan’s expression darkened. “I do, but it’s from Gazan, not from me. Frankly, it’s a little high-risk for an inexperienced gunboat pilot. If I were you, I wouldn’t—”
“What’s the mission?”
Jahan sighed and shook his head, but he reached over and switched on the main display screen, just below the forward window. “This is Princess Hikaru of the star known as ‘New Rigel’ among the planetborn.” An image of a gorgeous young woman flashed onto the display, wearing an ornate gown the likes of which Abaqa had never seen. “She is the sister to one of the Federation commanders, a young man by the name of Katsuichi.”
Abaqa nodded. “For a planetborn wench, she’s not too ugly.”
“She’s supposed to be some sort of queen. Our spies tell us that she’s recently gone missing. The palace guard thinks she’s run away to New Vela under a stolen name.” The display flashed again, and a number of documents flashed across the screen, written in a script that Abaqa’s mother hadn’t taught him. “It’s all in the database—if you crack their networks, your AI should be able to hack in and find her.”
“So Gazan wants me to kidnap her?”
“Or assassinate, whichever is easier.”
Abaqa glanced back at the screen, which had reverted to the image of the girl. She stood at the head of a beautiful garden, with a glass ceiling and blue sky overhead. She was leaning forward slightly and smiling at someone outside of the frame, as if they had made a joke and she was struggling to hold back her laughter. From her slender build and the youthful dimples on her cheeks, she couldn’t have been three or four standard planetborn years older than him.
“I’m in,” he said, turning back to Jahan. “How soon can I leave?”
“Hold on, Brother—hear me out. New Vela is a long way from any of our support fleets, and the Federation forces are massing not far from here. The only way to New Vela lies through the rift—an area peppered with Federation forces.”
“I know. My gunboat has dual jump drives—I can handle it.”
Jahan frowned. “Can you, though? Normally, we’d send a triple-platoon of empath soldiers, or a cruiser equipped for a standard hit-and-run mission. The fact that Gazan is only sending you tells me that he’s just looking for a way to get you killed.”
“So?” said Abaqa, his cheeks reddening. “You don’t think I can do it?”
“Honestly? No.”
Abaqa clenched his fists and snarled. “Then I have to take this mission—if nothing else, to prove to you both that I’m not just a boy.”
“Even the best gunboat pilots have died on missions easier than this. I’m telling you, it’s just not worth it.”
“But these are Gazan’s orders, aren’t they? How can I refuse?”
Jahan looked over his shoulder at the officers on the bridge. They nodded meaningfully and left the room. After the doors had hissed shut, Jahan turned back to him.
“I don’t think he’s too serious about this. If you want another mission, I can tell him that the transmission was garbled, or that the intelligence is too outdated. I’m close enough to him that I could probably talk him down.”
Abaqa glanced back at the image of the girl. It would certainly make Gazan jealous to see him with such a gorgeous slave girl—a concubine taken from planetborn royalty. No matter that she was older than him—once she was his slave, things like that wouldn’t matter.
“I’m not going to back down from this,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “Don’t try to stop me.”
Jahan sighed. “Very well, Brother. Get to your gunboat and I’ll send you the data you’ll need to find her. But don’t say I didn’t try to dissuade you.”
Abaqa nodded and turned to leave. His heart raced as he stepped through the door, his fingers twitching with excitement. Just a little while now, and he’d be out in his gunboat, out among the stars of glory.
Chapter 7
So this is New Vela, Hikaru thought to herself as she stared out the spaceport window at the purplish orb of the seventh planet. It looked so strange to her—so alien. She didn’t know whether it was clouds she was looking at, or a giant purple world-ocean like the one back home.
“Excuse me,” she said, turning to a uniformed woman behind a nearby desk. “Where are the flights down to the surface?”
The woman looked at her funny for a moment. “I’m sorry,” she said. “What did you say?”
“The surface,” said Hikaru, enunciating her words careful
ly in case the attendant didn’t speak fluent Gaian. “How do I get to the surface?”
“There are no flights to the surface,” said the attendant. “No one lives down there—it’s not a habitable world.”
Ah, Hikaru thought to herself, blushing a little. She thanked the woman and walked off quickly, more annoyed than embarrassed.
The people in the spaceport all looked so different from what she was used to. The men kept their hair short, and most of the women were bald—it was all she could do to keep from laughing at the sight. A few, like the attendant back at the desk, wore colorful shawls to cover their heads, but plenty of others seemed to flaunt their baldness, with extravagant tattoos that ran around their ears and down their long, hairless necks. Several people stared at her, probably because she was one of the only women in the place with a full head of hair. Then again, the maid’s outfit might have something to do with it, too, but there wasn’t much that she could do about that—at least, not until she found a proper tailor.
At the main concourse, her eyes wandered until she caught sight of a gathering place of sorts. Inside, people sat around a counter with several drinks in glass bottles sitting on shelves against the wall. That would be a bar, she thought, a place where commoners gather to drink. She walked towards it, bumping into a few shoulders but otherwise making it through all right.
“Hello,” she said to the bartender, taking a seat at the first empty booth. “I’ll take a shot of Tajji Vodka.”
“Tajji Vodka?” he said. “What do I look like, a Hameji general?”
The men around her chuckled, while Hikaru frowned. What was he talking about? All the starship captains on the old adventure holos drank Tajji Vodka—it was the stiffest drink she knew of. But if they weren’t going to give it to her—
“I’ll just, ah, take a beer then.”
“Local or specialty?”
“Uh, local.” I guess.
The bartender filled up a glass mug and set it out in front of her. Before lifting it to her lips, she glanced at the people around her. Several of them were staring at her, just like they had in the terminal. Here, though, it felt a little unnerving.
A holoscreen on the far wall displayed a local news program, with headlines scrolling silently across the bottom. She took a sip of her beer and recoiled at the sharp, bitter taste. So different than the palace—she loved it.
“Hey,” said the man next to her, tapping her on the shoulder. He nearly made her drop her glass, but she recovered quickly.
“Yes?” she said, turning to face him.
“Do I know you?”
She frowned. “I don’t think so.”
“Where are you from? You’re not from around here, are you?”
Her heart started beating a little faster, as she realized that the people around her were starting to take notice.
“I, ah, just came in about an hour ago,” she lied. “Got to catch an inbound transport—just a couple of hours.”
“You look like you’re from New Rigel,” said another man, leaning in. “What do they call the main planet? Shinihon, right?”
“Right,” she said without thinking. The word no sooner escaped her lips than she realized her mistake.
“That’s where!” said the first man. “I swear, you look just like the princess. Doesn’t she?”
“Yeah, she does.”
They know who I am.
Her face paled, and her stomach sank through the floor. She rose to her feet, but the man put a hand on her arm.
“No, don’t be shy. Here, let me buy you a drink.”
“I—I’ve got to go,” she said, shrugging him off. Before he could object, she turned to leave.
“Hey!” shouted the bartender. “I hope you’re going to pay for that!”
Heads were turning now—heads were turning everywhere. She fumbled in her pocket and tossed out a cash datachip behind her, then broke into a run down the nearest terminal.
I’m such a fool, she thought to herself, heart pounding in her chest. I’ve got to get out of this place.
Overhead, she saw some signs for private shuttlecraft. She followed them down the terminal, to a wide doorway just before a large observation window. People all around her were staring, but fortunately the corridor inside was mostly empty.
A long row of kiosks and airlocks stretched to the other side, where the corridor opened to another terminal. She went up to the nearest kiosk that was still on and hit PURCHASE SHUTTLE. The screen asked for her destination, and she hit the buttons at random, choosing the secondary lunar L6 point. The price flashed onto the screen, almost a hundred thousand credits, but that wasn’t a problem—she jammed another datachip into the kiosk and hit PAY.
A message flashed onto the screen: Please insert passport.
“Come on,” she muttered, fumbling through her pockets. She thought she heard voices out in the terminal.
She took the first passport that came to her hand and jammed it into one of the kiosk slots at random. The screen went blank for a moment or two, and then to her relief the airlock door hissed open. Enjoy your ride, the screen flashed as she hastily recovered her datachips. Moments later, she was inside.
That was a close one, she thought, collapsing on one of the couches that ringed the circular room. Silk drapes hung from the ceiling, while the adjustable windows rose to the top of the domed ceiling, just like a miniature version of one of the island-cities of her homeworld. She lay back on the couch and took a deep breath of the perfumed air.
At the head of the room, a wall screen flashed on, revealing a map of the local sector with its planet and moons. STAND BY FOR LAUNCH, said a message beneath the screen, and the floor trembled ever so slightly as the automated shuttlecraft undocked. Overhead, the view of the station and planet spun, but she hardly felt a thing.
ESTIMATED TIME TO STATION 2L6a: 20.5 HOURS.
“Dammit,” she said aloud, quickly covering her mouth as she caught herself. She glanced around her, then giggled a little as she realized she was alone.
“Go fuck yourself, bitch!” she screamed, just because she could. She opened her mouth to swear again, but fell to the floor in a fit of hysterical giggles. She had no idea where she was or where she was going, or even what she’d do once she got there, but none of that was going to keep her from enjoying her newfound freedom.
* * * * *
Roman pressed his metal prosthetic hand to the access panel on the wall and held it there. It took a second, but the door to the Tajji Flame’s officer mess slid open with a low groan. The sound was not unlike the creaking in his joints when several weeks had passed without a checkup.
He ducked his head as he stepped through the narrow doorway. Corporal Tajjashvili sat alone on the bench at the far side of the room. A line of smoke rose from the cigarette in his hand, the heat signature registering as a ball of dull red light to Roman’s prosthetic eye. He switched to the visible spectrum, and the digital input resolved with his natural sight to give him a more accurate sense of depth perception. Not that it made much of a difference.
The corporal turned his balding head and nodded. “Greetings,” he said in the old Tajji dialect, using a word that roughly translated to “victory.” From the wry smile on the old man’s face, it was clear that the irony wasn’t lost on him.
“Cheers,” Roman answered, walking over to the bench in a few short strides. “Mind if I join you?”
Zura grunted and gestured to his right. “Not at all, friend. Have a seat.”
Roman eased his heavy cyborg body onto the bench. It sank a little under his weight, but that was normal.
“Care for a drink?” said Zura, passing a bottle of vodka across the age-worn metal tabletop. Roman took a glass from the table behind them and filled it halfway. Zura shook his head and, taking the bottle from Roman’s prosthetic hand, filled it up to the brim before pouring himself another.
“Don’t hold back, friend,” he said, lifting his glass. “For old men like us, it’s as
good as medicine.”
“Yeah,” said Roman. “Even with body falling apart, it is always memories that go last.”
“And only the ones you’d rather forget.”
“Indeed.”
Roman threw back his head and emptied his glass. The alcohol burned as it went down his throat, settling in his stomach like liquid fire. Zura tapped his cigarette over the ashtray and refilled their glasses.
“That young lieutenant,” said Zura. “To hear him speak, you would think it was still the glory days of the rebellion.”
“These youngsters are all same,” said Roman. “Self-proclaimed patriots fighting enemy that never acknowledged them for homeland they never knew.”
Zura grunted. “And no memory of the occupation.”
“Exactly.”
“Remember how they used to say that the greatest act of resistance is to live?”
“I remember,” said Roman. “That was after Imperials locked down Kutaisi Dome and turned off air filters to root us out. Women and children were dying in the streets before they distributed any gas masks.”
“They only shipped enough masks for three quarters of the population—I heard that straight from one of the distributors.”
Roman grunted and took another long drink of the vodka. “These youngsters—they think they have spirit, but their will to fight would crumble in face of such things.”
“And you think ours didn’t?”
For all Roman’s pride, Zura’s question gave him pause. “No,” he said. “Not all of us. It was fall of Gaia Nova and collapse of Gaian Empire that sealed the last airlock.”
“Ah,” said Zura, stubbing out his cigarette. “And yet, while the Empire still stood, where were you?”
“I was here, with my men.” I was helping them to live.