Forbidden Suns

by D. Nolan Clark

  “The point is,” Lanoe said, “it takes them a long, long time to build these cities. We can blow up all the dreadnoughts we want, shoot down their interceptors. They can just build more. If we target the cities, though, we can hurt them. Bad. Maybe in a way they never recover from.”

  He closed the display. Turned to face Ehta directly. “We have a weapon that can do that. The cruiser. The seventy-five-centimeter coilguns we’ve got were designed specifically to shell cities into submission. Well, that’s what we’re going to do. No more dogfights in deep space.” He glanced over at Candless. “No more running away from their big fancy ships.” He turned to spear Shulkin with a glare. “No more pointless glory seeking. We do this fast. Hit-and-run style. We move in, shell a city, pull back before their defenses can respond. Move to the next city. Until there aren’t any left.”

  None of them spoke. They just stared at him, as if they couldn’t believe what he was saying.

  “To answer your question, Ehta, yes. This is why we didn’t use the guns in the last battle. Because I wanted to conserve ammunition. I knew we were going to need every round we had in our magazines. In fact, we’ll probably need to find some way of fabricating new shells. If Paniet were here, maybe he’d know how we do that. We will find a way, though, regardless of what it takes. Because we aren’t going to stop until every last city they have is smashed to pieces. Until they don’t have a single pylon to stand on.”

  He gave them some time. Let the new plan sink in. Eventually, when he thought they’d had enough time, he said, “All right. You have permission to speak now. Go ahead with the questions. I’m sure you’ve got ’em.”

  There was only one, though. Candless cleared her throat and looked directly into his eyes.

  “Is there a Plan C?” she asked.

  “There is,” Lanoe told her. “But you wouldn’t like it.”

  Candless swiped across her display to dismiss it. The various holograms that had filled her small cabin winked out, leaving her very much alone.

  Except, of course, for Bury.

  The young officer’s body was strapped into her bunk. She’d closed his eyes, gently tugging down on his plastinated eyelids. It made him look a little more peaceful. She’d considered covering his face with a blanket, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. It felt too much like letting him go.

  She had not intended to keep him with her for so long. She’d wanted to give him a proper ceremony and then consign his ashes to space—a traditional pilot’s funeral. She couldn’t let any of that happen, though, not yet.

  Not until one last person came to say goodbye.

  Getting Lanoe to allow Ginger to leave the cruiser—even for this—had taken some work. She’d tried at first to lean on any guilt feelings he might have regarding Bury’s death. It had turned out he didn’t have any.

  Pilots die, sometimes, he’d said. They sign up to fly. They sign up to fight. Sometimes they don’t come back.

  She’d heard that speech before. Plenty of times—back in the worst days of the poly wars, when pilots with only a few days’ training were shipped straight into warzones, funerals had become a standard part of her working week. She had thrown so many handfuls of ash into the void she couldn’t remember them all. Usually there had been a high-ranking officer there, someone to show that the pilot’s sacrifice had not gone completely unnoticed. They always said the same thing.

  Pilots die, sometimes.

  Some of them almost made it sound sincere. The good ones made it sound important, even necessary. Most of the time she didn’t even hear them.

  Lanoe had been so distracted with his planning that he didn’t even look at her as he said the old, old words.

  She’d had to resort to a different tactic to get Ginger special dispensation to view the body, then. Instead of trying to make him feel guilty, she’d appealed to his pragmatic side. If he failed to do this for Ginger, she’d told him, it would destroy the girl’s morale. Which would make it harder for him to use her later.

  Eventually, he’d seen her point.

  A green pearl rotated in the corner of her vision. “Coming in now,” Uhl said. The pilot who had saved her life during the battle had agreed to bring Ginger over to the carrier. She hadn’t known who else to ask to do it. Ehta couldn’t fly. Nobody could seem to find Paniet. She would not have trusted Valk with the job—the AI might have said something to Ginger on the way, something that would traumatize the girl.

  “Thank you,” she told Uhl. “You’re a good man.”

  “Just following orders, ma’am,” he told her.

  Candless stared at the floor until the knock came at her hatch. She hit the release and saw Uhl floating in the corridor. He scanned her face, but just looked confused by what he saw there. Candless supposed she knew what that meant. He was accustomed to seeing her when she was in her command mode, hard-edged and brittle. When she answered the door, she hadn’t bothered to set her face in the right mask of patrician disdain. He was seeing her as she looked when she was alone with herself. When she was just another human being.

  “Ma’am, she’s—well, she’s here,” Uhl said.

  Candless nodded and leaned out into the corridor. Ginger was pressed up against one wall, holding on to a nylon loop sewn into the padding there.

  She looked … bad.

  Very pale. Deep bags hung from her eyes and her red hair was matted down on one side—she must not have cleaned it in days. She looked up at Candless with eyes that contained no shred of hope or happiness.

  Candless realized with a guilty start that she hadn’t actually gone to see the girl since the last time she’d been on the cruiser, back before Lanoe assigned her to the carrier. Had she really forgotten to check in, to make sure Ginger was okay? She’d been so busy—but that was no excuse.

  “Come in,” she said. “Ginger—come in. He’s here.”

  Ginger nodded and pushed inside the cabin. Candless dismissed Uhl, touching him briefly on the shoulder to indicate her thanks. He seemed more than happy to get away. Candless wondered if Ginger had spoken to him on the ride over. Had she told him anything about what her life had become?

  She closed the hatch behind him. “I’m so sorry,” she told Ginger. “I’m so sorry—I’ve failed both of you. I’ve done such a lousy job of—”

  “Don’t,” Ginger said.

  The girl moved over to the bed, grabbing the rail that ran along its side to keep the occupant from rolling out during maneuvers. She leaned over Bury’s face, her eyes closed, as if she were communing with his spirit.

  No. Not his, Candless realized.

  “Are you—can you talk to the chorister, even now?”

  “It doesn’t stop,” Ginger said. “We’re about ten kilometers away from the cruiser here. Rain-on-Stone’s voice is … a little faint. It’s kind of a relief, but … I know. I know. I’ll be back soon.”

  Candless understood that last part hadn’t been for her.

  Ginger opened her eyes. “She’s worried. Worried I’m leaving her. If I did … it would be the end for her. She would go completely insane. The problem is, we’re so linked at this point—I probably would, too.”

  “I’m—sorry,” Candless said. “We can take you back whenever you—”

  “I need to do this,” Ginger said. “I need to say goodbye.”

  Ginger reached down and caressed the dead boy’s cheek. Candless came over and hovered behind her. She wanted to put her arms around the girl. Hold her close, just as she’d held Bury. She didn’t dare, though, when she didn’t know how Ginger would react.

  For a while they were both silent. Eventually Candless found she couldn’t bear it. “He was a good man,” she said.

  Ginger laughed, though there was little mirth in the sound. “He was an ass,” she said.

  Candless bit her lip. “I suppose that maybe he—”

  “He challenged you to a duel,” Ginger said. “He couldn’t handle anyone insulting him, even if they didn’t mean it. He h
ad so much to prove, and I guess—I guess in the end he did. He proved he was a good pilot. He earned his blue star.”

  “I have it here,” Candless said, touching the cryptab on the front of her suit. There was no physical medal involved, not even a ribbon to tie to the boy’s epaulets. The blue star was a virtual commendation. “I thought maybe you’d like to be present when I gave it to him.”

  Ginger nodded.

  “Okay.” Candless moved in beside her, one hand on the railing. She touched her cryptab again, then reached over and tapped Bury’s. His body shifted minutely under her touch. “Lieutenant Ronal Bury,” she said, then inhaled deeply so she could say it in the correct voice. The voice of an officer. “Lieutenant Ronal Bury,” she said again, “in light of extraordinary service and valor in the dispensation of your duties, and having achieved no less than five confirmed kills in sanctioned battle, the Naval Expeditionary Force has seen fit to confer upon you one of its highest honors. From this day forward, you will be known as an ace. Your name will be recorded in the rolls of the Admiralty and you will be accorded all the rights and privileges due a member of the Order of the Blue Star.”

  She tapped her cryptab again. Anyone who pinged Bury’s cryptab now would see it—the blue star would appear right at the top of his service record.

  Not that anyone ever would see it. As soon as they were done here, Bury would be incinerated along with his suit. A tear pooled in the corner of Candless’s eye.

  Ginger reached over and took her hand.

  She nodded and just tried to breathe.

  “He had family, back on Hel,” Ginger said, very quietly. “He used to talk about his mother. And a sister he couldn’t stand, but I think she was the only person he ever really respected.”

  “Yes,” Candless said. “When we get home, when we get back, I’ll … I’ll visit them. Let them know.”

  “Okay,” Ginger said.

  Together they looked down on the still face, and said goodbye.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Maggs looked up and down the corridor, making sure he wasn’t being followed. Then he slipped inside the necessary and cycled all the toilets, to make enough noise that he wouldn’t be overheard. M. Bullam had assured him that his transmission wouldn’t be intercepted—they were on an encrypted channel—but he wasn’t about to take any chances.

  Not now. Not when they were so close.

  “I have a few more people to speak with, but it’s just about done. That last battle was not a popular one. The remaining pilots are all on our side.”

  Bullam grunted in response. “Fine—just. That’s fine.” Her words were thick, slurred—maybe it was a side effect of the encryption on the line, but it sounded more like he’d just woken her up.

  “Are you … all right?” he asked.

  “Fine. I’m fine. I’ve got a headache, but that doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is we move now, and we move fast. You know what you need to do. I’m going to let you choose the exact timing.”

  “Your faith in me is quite touching,” he told her.

  “It isn’t faith. You know I don’t trust anyone,” she replied. “I just know you well enough now to think you can actually pull this off. Okay. We shouldn’t speak again until we’re ready to finalize.”

  In other words—the moment when the die was cast. When Bullam came forward to take her place in command of the loyal Centrocor contingent. The moment when Maggs was given command of the carrier.

  The moment when Lanoe was dead.

  Now he just had to bring that very special moment to pass.

  The first part of his mission was easy enough to complete. He moved quickly through the carrier, staying away from the bridge and anywhere else his presence might be noticed. He reached the deck where the pilots kept their bunks without incident and knocked discreetly on a certain hatch.

  It opened at once. The woman stared at him with a look that was composed of equal parts hope and apprehension. She pulled him inside the tiny compartment, where they had to sit with their knees up against their chins just to have room. “Cozy,” Maggs said.

  “I got the signal,” the woman replied. She was one of the few surviving pilots of Beta wing, and a loyal Centrocor employee. “It’s time? Really? I didn’t know if this was actually going to happen.”

  She had her gloves off and he saw that her nails were ragged. She’d been chewing on them, he thought, not without a shiver of squeamish disgust.

  “M. Bullam sends her compliments,” he said. “You have everything you need?”

  The woman shrugged. She glanced around the bunk as if she expected to find that someone else had clambered in with them and was listening to their every word.

  “No need for alarm,” Maggs told her. “This room is bugged, oh yes, everywhere on the carrier is—but by us, not the Navy. Centrocor, of course, likes to keep a benevolent eye on its employees. M. Bullam has all the codes for the listening devices, and I promise she’s turned this one off. Now. Tell me what I want to hear.”

  The woman nodded. She couldn’t meet his eye, though. “We thought we would have more time. We were just getting started—”

  “I’m sure you’re more ready than you think,” Maggs said. Clutching to hope.

  She shrugged. “We have some small arms. Mostly pistols, a couple of combat knives. Anything we could smuggle out of stores. And we’re ready to fight. I’ve got twenty people lined up who’ve got good reason to hate the Navy. But there’s a problem. Marines. Their marines—you were here when they boarded us, right?”

  “I was on the bridge. When it was breached,” Maggs said.

  The woman shook her head. “We can’t stand up to them, not if they come at us hard. They did not mess around.”

  Maggs sighed in feigned contentment. “You see, that’s all right,” he told her. “Because we won’t need to fight them.”

  “What?”

  “I assure you, we won’t have to worry about the marines. In point of fact, they’ll be fighting on our side.”

  Let’s hope for the sake of my potential grandchildren it actually works out that way, Maggs’s father said inside his head.

  “Seriously? I mean … really?”

  “You have my word,” Maggs said. She seemed to take some comfort from that. Maggs was still surprised when people believed the absolute rot he said sometimes. “Surprising, perhaps, but it turns out that even big tough PBMs have no desire to die out here, so far from home. They’ll fight with us.”

  “What’s the next step, then?”

  “You know how this works. When the time comes, your wrist display will flash three times. Then—do your very worst. Your absolute bloodiest worst. And we’ll all come through this together.”

  His paraphrase of Centrocor’s famous motto had an immediate and encouraging effect on the woman. She sat up a little straighter. Her mouth twitched into something that suggested an actual smile.

  “It’s going to happen,” she said. “We’re going to take this ship back.”

  “Yes.”

  “And then—we’re going home,” the woman said, and he would not have been surprised had a single poignant tear dropped from her eye. It didn’t, but it might have.

  “Yes,” he told her. “Home.”

  He left her there shaking with excitement. He had a few more stops to make, other bunks where he repeated the same patter, made the same assurances. When he was done he was forced, however, to acknowledge the much more difficult part of his task. Fulfilling his promises, as it were.

  He needed to get Ehta on their side.

  He needed to convince Caroline Ehta to betray Lanoe. The man she worshipped. The man she would follow through the gates of hell.

  For that, he was going to need to be extraordinarily charming. Otherwise, he was going to have to kill her, which would be a terrible shame.

  Maggs caught a ride over to the cruiser in a troop transport. The vehicle was almost empty. He shared the passenger section with Ginger, th
e bizarre red-haired girl whom Lanoe had turned into … something unsavory. He wasn’t sure he even understood what had been done to her. She did not speak during the voyage, nor did she even look up from her hands. That was fine by him.

  When they arrived he pushed out into the cruiser’s vehicle bay, under the watchful eye of one of Ehta’s marines. He exercised his face muscles, getting ready his absolute best smile. One that suggested innocent friendship, one full of warmth and bonhomie, one that implied Maggs had no ulterior motives at all, that the furthest thing from his mind was any kind of manipulation or deceit.

  This, he felt, was going to be the ultimate test of his skill. The grand performance of his long and varied career as a schemer. He would need every trick in his very thick book, every scrap of inspiration he could find.

  He queried his wrist display and found that Ehta was in her bunk. He hoped he wouldn’t find her sleeping—nobody liked being woken up. If she was awake, though, the setting was perfect. Her bunk would give them privacy so they could speak openly. She would feel comfortable, at ease in her own quarters. Yes, this would do nicely.

  He struck her hatch with a jaunty knock, then lowered his hands and folded them behind his back. Perhaps he should have brought a present, he thought, some small token of his affection for the major of marines. Perhaps—

  “Maggs?”

  Ehta’s voice came from a speaker next to the release of her hatch. A tiny camera was mounted up there as well.

  Maggs looked it squarely in the electronic eye and forced his smile to grow just a little wider, a little more lovable.

  You must look like the cat that got into the cream, Maggsy, his father’s voice said.

  He ignored it.

  “Maggs? What do you … oh, hell. You’re here to check in, aren’t you?”

  “As required by Lanoe’s orders, yes,” Maggs said. The conditions of his reprieve included that he had to make a periodical report of his movements to Ehta—so that she could make sure he didn’t get up to any mischief. “I hope this isn’t a bad time.”