by Joe Vasicek
“Well—I asked first!”
He folded his arms across his broad chest and chuckled humorlessly. “Fair enough,” he said. “Why do you think?”
She opened her mouth to answer, but as realization struck her, a chill shot down her back and her stomach dropped out beneath her. “No,” she whispered. “You can’t—you wouldn’t—”
“Breathe vacuum?” he said, finishing her thought. “No. That would be against her orders.”
“Then why are you here?”
He sighed. “Some people must have solitude in order to think clearly. But for myself, I must have solitude in order to feel. She is gone, and I … I feel nothing.”
Hikaru nodded, the full weight of her guilt bearing down on her. “You’re right,” she said softly. “It’s not—I mean—”
Her body stiffened, and she bowed deeply with her upper body almost parallel to the floor. “I am so sorry,” she said, reverting without thinking to the language of her people. “So sorry,” she repeated in Gaian. “It is my fault that she passed the way that she did—my fault that any of this ever happened. I fear I can never—”
A lopsided grin spread across Roman’s half-cyborg face, and he threw back his head and roared with biting laughter. Hikaru’s cheeks reddened, and in spite of the circumstances she felt her hackles begin to rise.
“Hey!” she said. “What are you laughing at?”
“At you, Princess. You truly do think yourself to be center of universe, no? Your fault—ha! Danica would have thrown you out of airlock in two seconds to save her men.”
He laughed again, making her feel small and insignificant. She clenched her fists, pulling herself up to her full height.
“Oh yeah? Then why did you come after me? Why did you put your lives on the line to save me?”
“Same as for any mission,” said Roman. “For the money.”
She frowned. “The money?”
“But of course.”
“That’s it? You’d risk your lives just for money?”
“Every day,” he said, smirking at her. “What do you expect? We are mercenaries, no? It is in job description.”
“But—but what about your honor?”
He drew in a deep breath and leaned back against the door. “Honor? What about it?”
“Well, if you were truly men of honor, you—” she stopped short. “It wasn’t for me that she died,” she said softly. “It was for you.”
Roman nodded. “And if Hameji had made bargain, she would have sold you in heartbeat to save us.”
“That’s—that’s horrible,” she said, stiffening a little. Even so, the weight of guilt lifted ever so slightly from her shoulders.
“Now, it is my turn,” he said, folding his arms once again. “Why are you here in airlock, Princess?”
She swallowed—from the way he eyed her, he seemed to know the answer already. Even though it made no sense that she should feel ashamed for her decision, she found herself blushing as she tried to avoid his gaze.
“I—I cannot go back to my people,” she said, bowing quickly. “The way I have acted, the shame I have brought on them—”
“Shame? What shame?”
She shifted uneasily on her feet. “I have been so foolish—so stupidly foolish. I ran away for the stupidest reasons—”
“And now you try to run away again.”
“What?” she said, blinking in surprise. “Run away? No!”
“But it is same thing—it is exactly same thing. You think your shame is too much to bear, so you wish to end it, thinking it honor to take your life. It is not honor—it is greatest height of stupidity.”
Hikaru’s jaw dropped in shock. She’d never heard anyone defame the customs of her people like this before.
“Are you shocked by my words? Then I will say it again—it is greatest height of stupidity, and greatest height of selfishness. Among Tajji exiles, we say that to live is greatest act of resistance.”
“It’s—it’s not like that,” she blurted. “A true warrior fights as one already dead—honor is worth more than life.”
“And are you warrior, Princess?”
“No,” she admitted, “but I have to defend my people’s honor.”
“Then go back to them,” he said. “Return to palace and accept your place. If it is shame to run away, then how is it shame to go back?”
She paused. As strange as it sounded, he had a point.
“Do you wish to know Danica’s last words to me?” he asked, clasping his natural hand on her shoulder. “She told me to live.”
Though he only had one eye that could become teary, the sight made her choke up all the same. She wrapped her arms around him and held him close, her face pressed up against his metallic cyborg chest.
“I’m sorry you had to lose her,” she whispered.
He grunted and drew in a sharp breath. “So am I.”
They held each other for a long while in silence. The emotions of the last couple days swelled up in Hikaru’s chest, and her shoulders began to tremble as she quietly sobbed. He rubbed her back with his natural hand, and for the first time since running away, she felt an overwhelming desire to go home.
“Now, Princess,” he said, “promise me that you will stop running. Promise me that you will return.”
“I will,” she said, letting go of him. “Although really, aren’t you just in this for the money?”
He threw back his head and laughed—a warm, jovial laugh, changed from before. “Perhaps,” he said. “After all, it is in job description.”
She smiled. “Then finish the contract and take me home.”
* * * * *
“The Hameji fleets are beginning to disperse, Your Highness. A quarter of their forces have already jumped out of the system.”
“Commander Tanaguchi reports that the damage to the Masamune’s reactor core has led to a dangerous leak, and is ordering an immediate evacuation.”
“Send the Kurefune to recover his crew,” said Katsuichi, leaning back in his command chair. “All other ships, establish a perimeter but do not engage the Hameji unless engaged first.”
“Yes, your Majesty.”
“Also,” he added, “move the Divine Wind away out of the action. We’re too damaged ourselves to—”
A loud crack like the pop of a firecracker interrupted his thoughts, followed by a sharp pain to his stomach. He looked down and saw blood seeping through the folds of his robe. Time slowed, and for a weirdly disorienting moment, all he could think about was whether this meant he wouldn’t get to see his sister again.
“Master?” said Kenta. His eyes widened, and his lips peeled back in a fearsome expression of shock, horror, and outrage. Behind him, Colonel Webb stood up from his seat, a submachine gun in his hand.
“No—NO!”
In one smooth motion, the old samurai spun on his heel and drew his sword, rushing on the colonel with all the force of a falling meteor. He was too late, however. The bridge rang with the sound of gunfire as the bullets tore right through him. He screamed and swung his sword downward, but the colonel easily sidestepped his blow. He rose up one last valiant time to strike again, but collapsed to the floor in a rapidly growing pool of his own blood.
“Kenta!” Katsuichi screamed. Adrenaline surged through his veins, drowning out the pain, but when he tried to rise to his feet, he felt as if he were trapped under water.
With the dispassionate look of a fishmonger processing his catch, Colonel Webb turned his gun on the crew of the Divine Wind. The bridge soon filled with screaming as horror turned to panic. In such a confined space, however, they didn’t have a chance. As Katsuichi watched on helplessly, the bullets tore through his men, splattering the display screens and instrument panels with blood. The gunnery officer almost made it to the door, but Colonel Webb turned and made quick work of him before finishing off the last of them. When it was over, only the moans of the dying punctuated the terrible silence.
“W-Webb,” said Katsuichi
, trying in vain to pull himself to his feet. “Why?”
The colonel ignored him and stepped over the sprawled out body of the engineering officer to punch a series of commands at his terminal. Alarms began to sound throughout the ship, as flashing-red lights indicated an imminent system failure—probably one of the systems that had been damaged in the fighting.
“Why!” Katsuichi screamed, demanding an answer even as the life slowly spilled out of his body.
“I’m afraid I don’t have time to stay and chat,” said the colonel, as smoothly as if they were discussing a simple matter of propriety. “You see, this ship is about to suffer a catastrophic reactor failure, and I simply cannot afford to be on board when it does.”
“But—but why?”
“Please accept my sincerest apologies for the loss of your men,” he added. “They were unfortunate collateral in a matter that really had nothing to do with them. It’s tragic, how many unnecessary lives are lost in the course of war.”
“You—you bastard!”
The bulkheads shook as something deep within the bowels of the ship ruptured and broke. Smoke began to seep out of the ventilation shaft—sickly-sweet smoke that smelled like rotting flowers.
“For their sakes, however,” said Webb, walking calmly to Katsuichi’s side, “I suppose I owe you at least an explanation. You see, once the rest of the Federation realizes that the Hameji have been defeated, they’ll immortalize us as war heroes and look to us for leadership in the new, post-Hameji era. Seeing as you were the one who led this operation, you had the most to gain—and for the sake of my career, I simply could not allow that.”
The floor shook as another system ruptured somewhere beneath the bridge. A new set of alarms joined the rapidly growing chorus.
“I must thank you, however—and congratulate you on a victory nobly won. And if it’s any consolation, at least you’ll die knowing that you saved your people.”
Katsuichi’s arms began to shake uncontrollably as stars of pain shot across his vision. “You—you—”
“Goodbye, Your Highness. And please understand: None of this is personal.”
With that, Colonel Webb rose calmly to his feet and strode out the door.
“Webb!” Katsuichi shouted, his voice raw and full of pain. “Come back here! Come back and face me, you bastard!”
It was no use, though—the lower half of his body simply wouldn’t move. He tried to drag himself across the floor with his arms, but the pain in his stomach soon became so unbearable that he nearly blacked out.
“Katsuichi-sama!” came a frantic, girlish voice. For a surreal moment, it seemed as if Hikaru had come to help him. Then he looked up, and saw the tear-stained face of his communications officer.
“Y-your Imperial Highness!” she shrieked, her frenzied hysteria made all the worse by her apparent uncertainty how to react. She reached down to help him, then stopped her trembling hands short before pressing them to her cheeks, then reaching down to him again.
“We have to get you out,” she decided. Taking great care, she turned him over on his back. Even so, he groaned in agony as she reached beneath his armpits and started to drag him toward the door.
A distant explosion sent her sprawling backwards, over Kenta’s lifeless body. She cried out and pulled herself up, but Katsuichi felt his grasp on reality slipping. His vision swam before him, and as much as he tried to fight it, he knew he didn’t have much longer before he passed out. In that moment, his father’s voice came to him, as clearly as if the old man were standing right above him.
You must repay this debt of honor, Katsu. You must not let it overshadow us.
The edges of his mouth turned up in a grin, and in spite of the terrible pain, his laughter rose above the blaring of the alarms.
“Y-your Highness?” stammered the communications officer, once again by his side.
“I’ve repaid the debt, Father,” Katsuichi shouted, his voice wild with glee. “We are not … honor bound to the … Federation any longer!”
“Sir,” said the officer, tears streaming down her cheeks like rain. “Sir, please don’t—”
Katsuichi reached up and grabbed her by the collar. “The sword,” he said, looking her in the eye. “The sword. Where is it?”
“O-over the doorway,” she stammered.
He let her go and collapsed to the floor again. “Bring it to me,” he whispered.
She obeyed his words without hesitation. The ship lurched, but she knelt down seiza-style and held it out carefully to him.
“It’s here, Your Highness,” she said, bowing her head.
“Good,” he said. “Take it … to my sister.”
She looked up at him, her lips quivering like a child who has just lost her father. “But—but sir, your wounds—”
“Leave me,” he commanded, still grinning. “You’ve done … all you can … for me. Take the sword … to Shinihon … and to my sister.”
“Sir!” she cried, bowing her head so low that her forehead was pressed against the bloodstained floor. Another explosion rocked the ship, and the smoke in the room began to grow thick and pungent.
“Go!” he ordered. With a hesitant glance, she rose quickly to her feet and ran out the door, the sword pressed tightly against her bosom.
It’s done, Father, Katsuichi thought to himself as he breathed one last, painful breath. His lips turned up in a grin, and the alarms and explosions suddenly seemed very distant, as if the sound were coming to him through a tunnel. I did what you asked me to. I repaid the debt of honor and saved our people.
The tunnel grew longer and longer, until the noise faded into silence. He closed his eyes and let himself drift into a state of peace, where he no longer had to worry about the burdens of being emperor. And if he listened very carefully, he thought he could hear the voice of his father, calling him home across the starry sea.
Chapter 20
Rina stirred and opened her eyes as the bodies all around her began to shift. Her sleep the past few days had been long and dreamless—which was more comforting than it had been in a long, long time.
“Any news?” grunted one of the soldiers at the head of the crowded shuttle. The place was beginning to stink of sweat and body odor, but after all she’d experienced, that was hardly any concern.
“Good news,” boomed Roman’s voice, not just to the soldier but to everyone else as well. “We have picked up signal. It is Federation battleship, with two Rigelan escorts. We are establishing contact and will soon make rendezvous.”
A hearty cheer erupted in the tightly packed space of the cabin. At once, everyone was hugging each other and talking in warm, excited tones. Though the portholes still showed a dark, sunless landscape, it felt as if dawn had finally broken after an almost unbearable night.
Rina closed her eyes and tried to reach out with her datalink implant. Normally, she would have been able to pick up a signal, and perhaps even infiltrate the network through a back door. Instead, she felt an empty void, like the remnants of muscle memory for an amputated limb. She reached behind her neck and felt for her neural sockets—they were still there, so she could still manage to get in through a hard connection. However, without her datalink implant, she was cut off.
It felt strange to be free of that device. As she reached back into her memories, she couldn’t help but feel a bit melancholy—which was strange, because hardly anything had ever made her sad when the datalink was directing her thoughts. Perhaps, then, it wasn’t that a part of her was missing, so much as a missing part that had finally been returned.
The conversations around her rose in pitch as the engines began to engage. Working quickly, the soldiers tore down their hammocks and stowed them under their seats. Roman went down the aisle, making sure they were all buckled in. He stopped at Rina and looked at her for a moment, as if trying to speak with her through her mind.
“It doesn’t work anymore,” she said.
“I know.”
She glanced down at hi
s stomach. His shirt was unbuttoned, so that she could see a large dressing wrapped around his chest and torso.
“I’m sorry for hurting you,” she said softly. “That wasn’t me.”
He nodded. “And now?”
“And now what?”
“Is it truly you now?”
“I—I think so. It’s been such a long time, though, I don’t really know for sure.”
The shuttle jolted a little as it lifted vertically from the surface of the planet. Roman leaned on one of the bulkheads for support and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
“There is no hurry. You will know soon enough.”
She looked up at him and smiled. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“No problem,” he grunted. “You are one of us, after all.”
After living in self-imposed solitude for so long, few words could have been more comforting.
* * * * *
“Your Imperial Highness,” said the chief Imperial advisor, bowing deeply as Hikaru entered the throne room.
She smiled and returned the bow as gracefully as she could manage in her cumbersome royal kimono. After all that had happened, it felt strange to be back again—and even stranger, knowing that her brother would not be coming back to see her. She’d heard the news only a day before her arrival, and the pain of his loss ate away at her, sometimes making her wish she could scream. Still, now was not the time for that. Later, when she was back in her quarters—when she didn’t have a whole planet to rule.
Perhaps because of that, something about the palace felt different to her. The wide, hardwood floors and perfectly spaced wall panels looked the same as before, but felt somehow more intimidating. Light streamed through the various skylights set evenly across the high ceiling, and the throne itself sat atop an imposing staircase with ornate ivory carvings and ancient woodwork. Two dozen samurai, all dark-skinned and muscular, stood guard with their swords and ceremonial armor. They bowed deeply to her as she ascended to the throne, and her throat constricted in something that felt very much like terror.