Forbidden Suns

by D. Nolan Clark

  He took the knife from its sheath and held it up to the light. Tested its edge by slicing through a tenacious length of quickplastic that was still hovering on an air current.

  Naval uniform regulations required all pilots to carry a dirk during inspections and parades. Technically there was nothing in the regs that said one had to keep the blade razor sharp. Maggs had just always been a stickler for proper dress.

  Candless looked over the fighters in the vehicle bay while she waited for Lanoe to arrive. There had been a dozen of them once. Eleven BR.9s, and Maggs’s personal Z.XIX. Time and war had reduced the ship’s complement considerably. Maggs had taken his sleek machine with him when he defected. In the last battle with Centrocor, Bury and Lanoe had both reduced their fighters to heaps of slag. Both of those ships were useless now except for the spare parts Paniet might cannibalize from them. In that same battle, Valk had flown eight of the remaining ships simultaneously—but only five had made it back.

  Which left six intact BR.9s, one of which—her own—was damaged, but only superficially. Six fighters against the carrier’s complement, and the massed guns of the two destroyers. With odds like those, most admirals of Candless’s experience would have seen no option but to surrender to the enemy.

  Lanoe, of course, was famous for getting out of bad scrapes and winning the day against all odds. The man had fought in six wars and a hundred battles and he was still alive. There had been a time when that was enough for Candless. There had been a time when she would have followed Lanoe through the gates of hell, knowing he would get her back out in one piece. In a way, wasn’t that exactly what she’d done, coming here?

  Yet her faith had been strained. Bury could have been killed—and Lanoe had done nothing to stop it. That had been enough to make her remember a simple fact: Lanoe always got out of a battle intact. Those who flew beside him weren’t always so lucky.

  Now he was going to ask her to fly into the face of certain death once again. She would go, of course. Because it was her duty. Because it was the only way to protect Bury and Ginger.

  She wasn’t going because she believed, though. It wasn’t because of Lanoe’s legend, not anymore.

  He came gliding into the vehicle bay with a large bundle under one arm, wrapped up in a piece of cloth. He stashed it against one wall and kicked over to where she waited. “We’re going to have gravity in a minute. Is everything lashed down?”

  “Of course,” she told him. “Are you questioning my discipline? I run a tight ship.”

  “Never doubted it,” he said. “Any word from Ehta?”

  “On her way, when last I checked,” Candless said. “Are you going to tell me exactly why you called her down here? She can’t fly, and you know it.”

  “Sure,” Lanoe said. “She’s good at other things, though. Don’t worry. I’m not sending you out there alone.”

  “I should think not. In fact—wait.” Why would he even suggest such a thing? Obviously he was going to be flying one of the BR.9s. He’d never been able to resist a chance to get into the cockpit of a fighter before, even after he reached command rank, even after he was theoretically barred from engaging in close combat because he was too valuable to the Navy to risk his life. He’d always ignored that general order and flown point anyway. “Are you telling me—”

  “You’ll have Valk. He’s going to make copies of himself and download them into the other five fighters. So you’ll have plenty of backup.”

  “You’re not coming with us,” she said.

  “I’ll be too busy,” he told her.

  Ehta came in, then, leading five marines in heavy combat armor. She looked a bit ill, a little green in the face. Candless did not care for the marine lieutenant, not in the slightest, but you never wanted to see your compatriots at anything less than their best just before a battle.

  “You … sure about this, boss?” Ehta asked.

  “I’m sure,” Lanoe told her. “Have your people gear up. I checked all of these personally, they’re good.” He pulled the cloth off of the bundle he’d brought with him, revealing a pile of long, wicked-looking particle rifles and handguns. The marines dove on them like pigeons on a bag of bread crumbs.

  “No offense, but I want my people checking their own weapons,” Ehta said. “It’s just good practice, right?”

  “Sure,” Lanoe said. “When we’re ready, start loading up the cutter. And everybody find something to grab—we’re about to get gravity.”

  “The cutter,” Candless said. She looked over at a seventh spacecraft in the vehicle bay. One she hadn’t bothered to count, because it was completely unarmed. A large, crescent-shaped ship covered in dull black cladding.

  Suddenly Candless understood Lanoe’s plan.

  She didn’t care for it one bit.

  The gravity alarm chimed and a yellow light flashed by the vehicle bay’s hatch. Candless reached down, grasped a fairing of one of the BR.9s, and settled gently to the floor. It felt like Valk had engaged the main drives.

  “We’re behind Caina right now, where Centrocor can’t see us,” Lanoe told her. Not that she’d asked why he was risking all their lives by using the ship’s engines again. He turned to his warrant officer. “Ehta, you ready?”

  Ehta picked up the last rifle from the pile, the one none of the other marines had claimed for themselves. It was a massive steadygun, a kind of recoilless rifle designed for use in microgravity conditions. She flipped a catch and slipped the magazine out of the weapon, checked the rounds inside, slammed it back into place.

  “As long as I don’t throw up on the way over, I’m good,” she said.

  Make no move until I give you the signal.

  The message appeared on Maggs’s wrist display without a signature, without any indication of where it had originated—not that he needed any. Even as he looked at the words, they faded and disappeared.

  He glanced over at Bullam—discreetly—and gave her a wink. She did not react. He was unclear what exactly her official job title might be, but he had gotten a very clear sense that skullduggery was at the top of the skills she would list on her résumé. He had every faith in her ability to stay cool until the precisely correct moment.

  The two of them had been summoned to the bridge of the carrier. Rather, Bullam had been summoned. When Shulkin saw Maggs enter, he scowled.

  “Your pet traitor may remain here,” the captain said, “as long as he’s quiet.”

  “I shall be as silent as the proverbial mouse,” Maggs said, and clicked his heels together.

  Shulkin didn’t look amused.

  Shulkin. Shulkin. I know that name’s familiar, Maggsy. Let me try to remember what I know about the beggar, Maggs’s father said inside his head.

  The bridge crew didn’t even look up. They had the harried look of soldiers who’d been down in the trenches too long, that dogged exhausted stare Maggs knew from his brief and infrequent associations with PBMs. Their fatigue was understandable, of course. None of the bridge crew had left the room in more than twenty-four hours, as Shulkin pushed them to find Lanoe.

  “I called you down here,” the captain told Bullam, “because they finally made a mistake. I wouldn’t want you to miss the moment when I defeat Aleister Lanoe.”

  “I’ll be sure to make a note of it for your next performance review,” Bullam said.

  “My IO caught a glimpse of the Hoplite in motion. They were foolish enough to use their main thrusters. Now we have them. You’ll have noticed we’ve been accelerating for a while now. We’re approaching their last known position. Of course, they won’t be there when we arrive. But I know Lanoe well enough to guess his next move. It’s a good one, but if we’re smart we won’t fall into his trap.”

  Maggs couldn’t help but note the change in Shulkin’s manner. Normally the captain was a dead-eyed zombie, cut off from the world around him. The only thing that brought him back to life was combat. Just now the man seemed positively gleeful. Like he might break out in a fit of giggles with no
notice.

  “Batygins,” the captain shouted.

  The holographic images of the twin brothers appeared flanking the main view. Their eyes were almost solid black, because of the dilation of their pupils—clearly they’d partaken of their drug to be ready for the coming battle.

  Maggs checked a subdisplay and saw that the two destroyers were quite close, no more than ten kilometers away. They flanked the carrier, running a little behind. It was a standard formation for a carrier group. Back there they wouldn’t get in the way if the carrier scrambled its fighters, but they were still close enough that they could surge forward to protect it if the need arose.

  “Ready for orders, Captain,” Rhys Batygin said. Or was it Oritt? Maggs had never learned—nor cared enough to learn—to tell the two of them apart.

  “Ready for orders, Captain,” the other said, almost in synchrony. Almost but not quite. The slight discrepancy set Maggs’s teeth on edge. It was all very well and good to adopt an unsettling mannerism in order to intimidate people. In his estimation, though, one should at least fully commit to the act.

  “I assume,” Shulkin said, “that the two of you have noticed the icy body ten million kilometers from our current location. That’s going to be our target. Lanoe is hiding behind it right now.”

  The navigator stirred in his chair. He brought up a large display to show them all a protocomet scored with the dark holes of deep craters. Maggs thought it looked a spectacularly uninteresting place. Lanoe had never had much of a sense of drama, of course, but if one were going to pick the place where one was likely to die, surely there were better options.

  “Lanoe knows we’ll investigate. He’s set up an ambush—he hopes to lure us into the range of his coilguns, so he can blast us before we even have a chance to strike. I do not intend to let that happen.”

  Shulkin turned to face the twins. “The two of you are going to close in on that rock at full speed. Lanoe is likely to poke his head out once he realizes his plan has failed. You’ll be ready, with guns hot, and you will carve him to pieces. We will provide a screen of fighters to assist and to protect you from his pilots. You may begin your attack now.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Of course, sir,” the Batygins said.

  Shulkin went and sat back down in his chair, strapping himself in. “Pilot. Bring us to zero delta vee.”

  The carrier’s engines cut out, and Maggs had to hurry to grab a handhold on the wall of the bridge before his feet left the floor.

  Bullam glanced over at him as she strapped herself into her own chair. She did not shake her head, or give any indication of what she wanted him to do. She was simply checking in, making sure he knew to be ready.

  Maggs resisted the urge to touch the dagger in its pouch at his hip.

  Shulkin, his father said. Served in the Crisis, of that I’m sure. At Sheol? No, no, it was Jehannum. Right! I remember now. A fair tactician. Bit unhinged, perhaps.

  Maggs allowed himself a bit of an eye roll. That much, he thought, was patently obvious.

  “This is all very exciting,” Bullam said. “Will it be a long battle, do you think?”

  “It will take,” Shulkin replied, “exactly as long as it takes. But the ending is inevitable.”

  Minutes ticked by. On the tactical board the Batygins ate up the distance to the protocomet, their weapons warmed up and ready to fire as soon as an enemy presented itself. None did for rather the longest time.

  More minutes ticked by. Just numbers changing on a display. Maggs considered making the grand move, assassinating Shulkin, just for something to do. He held off, satisfying himself with the notion that, eventually, command of the Hipparchus would be his. Eventually. It will take, he thought to himself, exactly as long as it takes.

  As always, the beginning of the battle came without warning. Just when Maggs was about to fall asleep.

  “Movement near the protocomet,” the IO said. “I register an engine flare.”

  “How many?” Shulkin asked.

  “Just one, sir … No, two now … Four! I’ll put them on the board.”

  “Batygins!” Shulkin bellowed.

  “In position.”

  “In position,” the twins answered.

  “Fire at will!”

  Though Shulkin was not, if I recall correctly, the sharpest knife in the shed, Maggs’s father said inside his skull.

  Chapter Five

  Flak exploded off to Candless’s left, like a firework in space—a fizzing bloom of light that dazzled her as submunitions cooked off in the vacuum. She looked away. You couldn’t worry too much about flak. Either you saw it in time and veered to avoid it, or you didn’t see it and then nothing mattered. She pulled right into a wide banking curve and then switched into a barrel roll as PBW fire came stretching toward her, bright lines drawn against the dark.

  Up ahead one of the destroyers turned its nose toward her, swinging around slowly enough that it was easy to dip under its main cone of fire. She was still well out of range of its biggest guns. The real danger was its missile batteries, but so far it had failed to bring those to bear. Maybe it was saving them for the cruiser.

  “Fighters inbound, looks like a full squadron,” Valk said. One of the Valks.

  Because he was in essence a fantastically complex computer program, Valk could make copies of himself, as many as he wished. Just like copying a data file—he had duplicated his mind and downloaded it into the computers of five BR.9s. They showed up on Candless’s tactical board as yellow dots.

  Centrocor’s fighters showed up as blue dots. There were more blue dots than yellow dots.

  “I see them. Burning to intercept,” she called back.

  The destroyer in front of her was moving, accelerating hard toward Caina. It wasn’t paying her as much attention as it should—perhaps it expected its screen of fighters to protect it. Her hand hovered over her weapons panel, her fingers twitching. She could load a disruptor round right now, swing in fast from the destroyer’s blind spot, line up a perfect shot, and let the disruptor tear through the big ship’s bridge …

  But no. She had her orders. She twisted away, burning for deep space, toward the incoming fighters. They weren’t hard to find. Centrocor Yk.64s, twelve of them in a tight formation, a knot of canopies and airfoils and PBWs. They opened fire long before she was in range, perhaps hoping for a lucky shot. Candless spun around in a loose corkscrew, refusing to give them a target. Pouring on speed to close the distance.

  Behind her the destroyer banked around the curve of Caina, hunting for the cruiser. She saw a flash of light along the destroyer’s flank and knew one of the Valks had moved in to harry it, to keep its crew on their toes. Guns all along the front of the destroyer lit up, chewing at empty space where the Valk had been just a moment before.

  She had her own job to do. She nudged her control stick until her nose was pointed right at the middle of the formation of Sixty-Fours, then shoved open her throttle and dove right into them, a cat pouncing on a flock of pigeons.

  The pilots of the Sixty-Fours were ex-Navy, which meant they’d had some training—though not much, from what she saw. They knew enough to scatter—if only to avoid a collision—but while they maneuvered they were too busy to get a lock on her. Candless didn’t have that problem. She picked one of the fighters at random and raked its canopy with PBW fire. Her shots sparked off the fighter’s vector field, failing to do any damage, but the pilot lost his cool and broke away, burning hard to escape her. The others were trying to regroup but she’d already shot past them. She twisted around on her long axis until she was flying backward, and suddenly she could see their vulnerable thrusters.

  She did not hesitate. She blasted the cones right off one fighter, leaving it spinning helplessly in the void. She hit another one from the side, most of her shots shunted off by its vector field but a few striking home, perforating the fairings around its engine shielding.

  The Centrocor pilots started to regroup. They wheeled o
n her, turning in a looser formation. Their main advantage was their numbers, and they were smart enough to know it. Instead of breaking off to engage her one by one, they flanked her on three sides, trying to pin her down and keep her from running away. PBW fire lanced through space all around her and sparks jumped from her canopy as stray shots came close to actually touching her. Their aim would only improve with time, she knew. If she couldn’t escape this snare she was done for.

  “Got you,” a Valk said, screaming in from on high. One of the Sixty-Fours that had her pinned burst into a welter of sparks as the Valk’s PBW fire lit up its vector field. She could see right through the bubble-like canopy, see the pilot lift an arm over his head, as if he were warding off an attacking bird.

  It was all the distraction she needed. Candless pointed herself right at him and punched her main thrusters, launching herself forward. Microseconds before she would have smashed right into him she rolled over on her side, her airfoils just avoiding clipping his undercarriage, and then she was free.

  “It never hurts to say thank you,” the Valk called.

  “I’ve never felt the need to be courteous to a drone,” Candless shot back.

  “I’m not a drone,” the Valk replied, laughing a little, “I’m a—”

  He didn’t get the chance to finish his thought. Three Centrocor fighters were hot on his tail, their weapons blazing away. Candless moved to intercept them but the Valk simply spun around and started firing back. He made no attempt to evade their fire—he simply lined up a shot as if he had all the time in the world and then loosed a devastating salvo right through a bubble canopy, impaling the pilot with a beam of particles.

  The other two pilots were smart enough to veer off, burning to put distance between them and a pilot that cold-blooded.

  Whatever she might think of Valk—and Candless was no great admirer of the AI—she could not say he lacked courage.