Forbidden Suns

by D. Nolan Clark

  The silence spun out for far too long.

  And then it was broken. “I have … new orders,” Candless said. Ehta surprised herself by how relieved she was to hear the ex-teacher’s voice again. “It appears we have been given a reprieve. Please proceed to the coordinates I will attach to this message. We should still move quickly—the enemy’s reinforcements are still en route.”

  “Understood,” Ehta told her. She shook out her hand. She was starting to care about the pain in her fingers. She knew in a second she would care about it a lot. A white pearl appeared in the corner of her vision, her suit telling her that it was ready to administer painkillers. She flicked her eyes across the pearl and felt warmth seep into her veins.

  She closed her eyes and let it wash through her, along with a feeling of immense relief. “Candless,” she said, “one more thing. Just then, when you thought you were about to die—you were going to say something about me. Something nice, it sounded like.”

  “Perhaps,” Candless replied. “But things have changed, haven’t they? That sentiment no longer applies. Please disregard it.”

  She cut the transmission.

  Ehta laughed and threw her arms around Valk’s shoulders. “Big guy,” she said. “We’re going to live!” She kissed him on the opaque black flowglas helmet that was the closest thing he had to a head. “We’re going to live!”

  “Thanks to Lanoe,” Valk said.

  “Right. Lanoe,” she said, her grin fading just a little. One more thing she owed the old bastard.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Get every neddy we have up to the flight deck. We need damage control right now,” Candless said, throwing out orders as fast as she could. There was a great deal of work to do—the battle might be over, but no one was safe yet. “We have some hard flying ahead of us—we can’t afford to have anything up there shake loose in the middle of a maneuver. Get the yeoman to the pilots’ ready room. Check to see if anyone needs medical attention. Have the quartermaster take stock of how many fighters were damaged, and write up a preliminary repairs list, though it’ll have to wait until—”

  “Turn this vessel around,” Shulkin said, his voice a low growl. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the battle is the other way.”

  “Belay that order,” Candless said. She checked her tactical board. The carrier was out of the disk’s atmosphere, and the lasers had stopped firing, but that didn’t mean they were safe yet. Three more dreadnoughts were on their way, one of them having already risen into actual space—it was clear they were going to be chased. “Keep us moving. Get us as far from the disk as you can—I’m hoping they won’t follow us too far, if they think we’re running away.” The pilot nodded once and returned to her console. Had there been a look of actual gratitude on her face? Candless wasn’t used to that. “Captain Shulkin—”

  “Cowardice,” the old man said, grinding the word between his teeth. “If I have to bring every last one of you up on charges, don’t doubt that I will!”

  “Captain,” Candless said, in a voice she reserved for her most recalcitrant students—the ones who failed to turned in their papers on time, for instance, despite having been told the deadline on the first day of class—“my orders come directly from Commander Lanoe. Your superior officer. If you persist in attempting to countermand him, I will have you removed from duty.”

  “Damn you, woman, we have fighting to do here! Turn this vessel around!”

  He started to rise from his seat, one hand moving to a pocket on the front of his suit.

  Candless was ready for this. She’d heard all the stories about Shulkin. Even as he started to pull out his antique pistol—he was notorious for brandishing it at his bridge crew, having actually shot one of his officers once when she failed to respond to an order quickly enough—Candless had her own weapon in her hand. A slim, rather underpowered particle beam sidearm. Underpowered in that it wouldn’t actually shoot through steel plate. It would drill a very neat hole through Shulkin’s cranium, if it came to that.

  “Is this strictly necessary?” she asked, as she leveled her weapon in his direction.

  The navigator, the pilot, the IO all ignored their stations, turning to stare at the two of them. Candless wanted to bark at them to get back to work, but she knew she couldn’t afford to shift her attention, even for an instant, away from the mad captain.

  This was a contest of wills, not arms. If she could get the madman to stand down, this could all be over in a moment and she could get back to work. If he was as mad as she feared … well, she couldn’t back down. She tried to read his face. She could see his lower lip shaking. His eyes were empty pits, however, giving away absolutely nothing. As they stood there, guns pointed at each other, he started to laugh.

  The situation could not help but remind Candless of the duel she’d once fought with Bury, her former student. At the very least, in how tedious it all suddenly was.

  She couldn’t help herself. She glanced at the tactical board out of the corner of her eye. The alien dreadnoughts were still right behind them. The carrier was making good headway toward deep space, but her job was far from done.

  “Captain Shulkin,” she said, “I understand that you wish to discuss the balance of power between us, in the absence of Commander Lanoe. However—”

  She shot him in the leg before she finished her sentence.

  “—I simply don’t have the time.”

  Shulkin dropped to the deck, his whole body curling up like a leaf in a fire. He didn’t cry out, nor was there very much blood. He did drop his pistol and clutch at the wound just above his knee. Candless made a mental note and filed it away. As crazy as he might be, Shulkin could still feel physical pain.

  She walked over to him. With a deft kick, she knocked his pistol well out of his reach. He looked up at her with those meaningless eyes, and she felt not an ounce of pity.

  “Someone get him to the sick bay, please,” she said, and went back to her boards. Those dreadnoughts were still on her tail. “The rest of you, back to work. Now.”

  “Three of them,” Valk said. A display popped up in front of Ehta and she saw the dreadnoughts. They weren’t flying in anything like a formation—she supposed ships that big didn’t need to. She could barely make out their silhouettes against the dull red light of the star. She touched a virtual key in one corner of the display for an enhanced false-color view. Infrared, low-light augmentation, and X-ray views superimposed on each other, building up a better image. In the new view she could make out the cagework blisters that stuck out from the dreadnoughts’ edges. She saw what looked like shadows moving around inside—those had to be the jellyfish, she thought. She could see the big weapon pits, lying quiet and cold now, because the cruiser was still well out of their range. She could see their thrusters, burning very hot. Pushing that much metal took a lot of energy—whatever kind of power plants those things used was way beyond the fusion torus on the cruiser. “We’re outrunning them, but very slowly,” Valk told her. “Candless has me pushing our engines to the point they’re burning themselves out. We can maintain this acceleration for maybe sixteen more hours, then … well.”

  “If we have to stand and fight—”

  “It’s an option,” Valk said. “Not a good one. We know your gun crews can take down those dreadnoughts. To get a good shot at them, though, we’ll have to turn sideways so we can hit them with a broadside. That means slowing down.”

  “Which means letting them catch up,” Ehta said. She nodded.

  “Our best bet is to keep moving. Gain as much distance from the disk as we can. Maybe they’ll get bored and stop chasing us.”

  “Or,” Ehta said, because she thought it was more likely, “maybe they’ll run out of fuel.”

  “Maybe.” Valk lifted his arms a little. Let them drop. His version of a shrug. “I don’t much like running away like this.”

  “You want to go back, pick another scrap?” she asked him.

  “Hardly. But it feels wron
g—leaving our people behind.”

  Ehta cursed herself. She’d all but forgotten that one of the destroyers—and Lanoe’s Z.XIX—were unaccounted for. Nobody had seen or heard from them since they dove into the red clouds. “Is there any word from Lanoe?

  “The clouds block my transmissions,” Valk said. “I haven’t gotten so much as telemetry data from him since he went down there. But I’m sure he’s fine. He’s Lanoe, right? It would take more than a battery of lasers to bring him down. I’ll keep trying him.”

  An hour later, though, there was still no word.

  Another hour went by, and another. The dreadnoughts showed no sign of breaking off their pursuit. And still no sign, no signal, from Lanoe.

  Maybe it’s better this way, Ehta thought. Maybe we’re all a lot safer without him here pushing us toward more battles we can’t win. Maybe this is all over.

  She caught herself wishing it was true.

  The man she owed so much, and now she wanted him to be dead—it was just one more reason to loathe herself. As if those were in short supply.

  Bury was stuck on the carrier—he’d come over for the launch of the Screamer, and never had a chance to get back to his post at Valk’s side before the battle started. Now, during the retreat, Captain Candless had forbidden anyone from traveling between the two ships, so he couldn’t get back there if he wanted to. He supposed it hardly mattered. The things Valk had given him to do had been obvious busywork—the AI didn’t need an information officer.

  If he’d been on the cruiser, though, he could have checked on Ginger. He was worried about her. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been screaming, her body racked by seizures. Every time he’d asked someone about her since, he’d been told that she was fine, that he shouldn’t bother her. He supposed that there was a part of him that was happy to leave it at that. Seeing her like that had been—confusing. He didn’t like admitting it to himself, but it had been downright terrifying. The last thing he wanted was to have to see her like that again. Yet he couldn’t help but worry.

  He must have asked after her one too many times, because Captain Candless gave him a new duty. One he didn’t care for at all. It was more busywork—and unpleasant busywork at that. She’d sent him to look in on the pilots, the ones who’d survived the battle, and assess their morale.

  As he entered the ready room, he kept close to the walls. He had no right to be there, he knew. He hadn’t flown in the battle. But he was a pilot, damn it. This was where he ought to be, following an action. He should be sitting with the others, the Centrocor pilots who had come back. The ones who’d survived. Commiserating with them, raising their spirits. It was what pilots did for each other after a catastrophic defeat.

  They sat on padded benches, leaning forward, looking at the floor. Heads in their hands. Every so often one would look up, glance around as if looking for somebody. Somebody who wasn’t coming back.

  They didn’t talk. There was food and water available for them, but none of them touched it. One of them popped a hydration tab in his mouth and swished it around his cheeks, then spat it out on the floor. He looked up, right at Bury, and the Hellion felt a torrent of shame run down his spine, through his arms. It made him feel weak, useless. Eventually the pilot looked away.

  So many empty spaces on the benches. There were no wounded among them—the yeoman had come through a while back and asked, but not a single one of them had raised a hand. Anyone unlucky enough to be hit by one of the Blue-Blue-White’s weapons had died instantly, either incinerated by a plasma ball or cut to pieces by the lasers. The men and women who came back were unscathed—at least physically.

  The air in the ready room was so heavy and oppressive that Bury felt like it would crush him, smash the breath out of his lungs. He wished someone would say something, make a little sense out of what happened. He felt a jolt of relief when he heard footsteps approaching from the corridor. Then he saw who it was, and his face bent in an angry scowl.

  Maggs came up to the edge of the room with a big smile on his face. He leaned on the frame of a hatchway and looked around. Stroked his mustache. “Now, now, chaps, why the long faces?” he asked.

  One or two of the pilots looked up. Glared at the man.

  “I’ll admit,” Maggs said, “that could have gone better. But we’re alive, yes? That ought to be celebrated.” He’d been holding one hand behind his back. Now he brought it out and showed them all a big squeeze bottle of champagne.

  What the hell was the fool thinking? Bury’s arms tensed, as if he would run over at any moment and start pummeling Maggs, just knock him down to the floor and start kicking him, beating him savagely—

  Actually, that sounded like a good idea.

  “No one wants a swig?” Maggs asked, brandishing his bottle. “Really, none of you have ever lost a battle before? It’s hard, it can be damned hard on the old soul, but you have to rise above. We should sing songs, tell tall tales. Come, now. You—have a drink. It’s the good stuff, I swear.”

  He shoved the bottle toward the nearest pilot, a woman with a hexagon tattoo on her cheek, meaning she’d done time in a Centrocor labor colony. She stared at Maggs, not even lifting her hands. The bastard leaned over her, putting one hand on her shoulder. She turned to sneer at the gesture, but she didn’t shove him away.

  “Here,” Maggs said in a gentle tone. “Please. I just want to help.”

  The woman grabbed the bottle and started sucking on it. She didn’t pass it on, just kept swallowing more and more of the champagne. Eventually she belched noisily and threw the bottle on the floor. Saliva dripped from her lower lip as she stared at her hands.

  “You can’t let this defeat destroy you,” Maggs insisted. “You need to find a way to accept what happened. Don’t you see? Commander Lanoe’s war has just begun. There were will be a dozen more battles to come, a dozen more chances to seize glory!”

  Some of the pilots raised their heads when he said that. They looked up at him with terrified eyes. One of the men even started to sob.

  Bury rushed forward, his hands up. He grabbed Maggs by the elbows and shoved him out of the ready room. Maggs made no attempt to resist. Bury slapped the key that closed the hatch, sealing them off from all those faces, from all those frightened pilots.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Bury demanded.

  “Offering a little cheer,” Maggs insisted. He looked baffled. Confused by Bury’s violent reaction. “Only that!”

  Bury knew better than to trust the bastard’s expression—or his words. “You’re up to something,” he insisted. His hands balled into fists. “You’re running some kind of scam, and when I figure it out—”

  “Ahem.” Maggs stood up very straight then. He was a good ten centimeters taller than Bury. He was slender in build, but Bury knew if it came to a fight Maggs would play dirty. “This is about the time I tried to kill you, isn’t it?”

  “What? You—you—”

  It was true. Back when Maggs defected to Centrocor, the two of them had been flying a patrol together. Maggs had attempted to convince Bury to join him in his treason. When Bury refused, Maggs had turned his guns on Bury’s fighter. The only thing that had saved Bury’s life was that Valk had already tampered with Maggs’s ship, installing software that prevented it from firing on a Navy vehicle.

  “You can’t possibly think that has anything to do with—”

  Maggs shrugged. “I can’t possibly think you might hold a grudge? You?”

  The Hellion felt blood rushing to his head, to his face. “You son of a—”

  “Tsk, tsk, young Bury. An officer does not sully his mouth with profanities.” Maggs started to turn on his heel. As if he would just walk away. “Didn’t anyone tell you?” he asked. “We’re all on the same side now. Let’s at least try to pretend that we’re friends.”

  It was just too much. Bury dropped his head and threw himself at Maggs, knocking the bastard sideways into the wall. He tried to punch Maggs in the kidney, but the traito
r twisted away from him and Bury’s fist collided with a life support module on the back of Maggs’s suit. He felt his knuckles shift and spread apart inside his hand. The pain raced through his nervous system like an electric shock, just making him angrier, and he tried to draw back, to get leverage to take another swing.

  But Maggs had already counterattacked, swiveling around and jamming one arm between Bury’s collar ring and his chin. Intense pressure pushed down on Bury’s throat and he gasped for breath.

  “A marine taught me this trick,” Maggs said, “after a very lively evening of cards and bourbon. If I press down a little harder,” he said, and the weight on Bury’s windpipe intensified, “you’ll be unable to breathe at all. You’ll pass out and I will leave you in a disgraceful heap on the floor here. If I press still harder, I can crush your trachea.”

  Bury struggled, trying to break free. It was no use. He couldn’t get a breath, couldn’t get enough oxygen to use his arms, to move at all.

  “Now. I’m going to walk away, and you’re going to go find someone else to be angry at,” Maggs said. “And before you think about running to Mummy Candless and telling her all about mean M. Maggs, let’s think about the fact that you attacked me. In the Navy that’s called conduct unbecoming an officer. Those of us with blue stars know these things.”

  The hold on Bury’s neck released. Black spots swam before his eyes and he dropped to his knees, sucking wildly for air. He tried to jump back up, tried to get up so he could attack Maggs—

  But by the time he could breathe properly again, the bastard was already gone.

  Paniet picked his way up through the flight deck, climbing over the wreckage of cataphract-class fighters that had been sliced in half or melted into shiny blobs of slag. The devastation was incredible, but highly selective—there was a gap in the hull so big he could see a whole patch of sky through it, yet directly next to the hole he saw carrier scouts lined up in their docking berths, their paint still shiny and pristine.