Unconquerable Sun

by Elliott, Kate

  At 0521, nine minutes before the barracks bell, I wake up. What I remember of my fading dreamscape gives me the same feeling I get at New Year’s when I can eat all the red bean–filled rice balls I can stuff in my mouth: a little sick to my stomach with satisfaction.

  Restricted Line Officer Beacon Engineer.

  This is what I dreamed of and worked for.

  I climb down from the top tier of the triple rack I was assigned on my first day and have slept in for almost five years. Cadet quarters are facing triple racks with three-centimeter-thick foam mattresses to sleep on, curtains for privacy, and lockers to hang our uniforms. Still in my skivvies, I trot down the length of the barracks to the head. I do my business, wash my hands and face, and give a victory five to those of my cohort who, like me, have risen before the bell. The bell clangs just as I return to my rack and pull on my coveralls. Minh hops down from the middle tier and slaps me on the back with her prosthetic hand.

  “Whoo! Whoo!” She shimmies a few dance steps as she snaps out a rhythm with her flesh hand. Ten days after Senior Captain Ray’s announcement we’re still in victory mode.

  In the facing triple, Ikenna and Ay groan like they do every morning, but as they climb out of their berths they’re grinning too. Complaints are just for show now that we’ve gotten prime assignments. The top tier facing mine is empty; that cadet washed out in month two of our first year, and we five have been tight ever since we rescued the poor kid before he strangled in a wire-pit trap in the Thousand Hectare Woods obstacle course.

  They change into their coveralls as I poke the still-closed curtain of the bottom-tier rack.

  “Hey! Solomon Solomon. Cadet Solomon.” I blink to open my net access and check the virtual watch I use to organize my time. “You have twenty-six minutes to rise, shine, and eat before muster and PT.”

  A monstrous bulk shifts ponderously behind the curtain as it makes a low, threatening grumble. “Unhhhn. Leave me alone. I thought we didn’t have to run laps this morning because we’re getting fitted for flight suits.”

  “You wish. Get up.”

  “Rise and shine, Cadet Lǐ,” says the silky voice I once mistook for sincerity. I turn to see Cadet Jade Kim leaning against our lockers with arms crossed and a smug half smile. “I think you want to talk to me and not to that junkyard hatchling.”

  Solomon is out of his bunk and up in Kim’s face so fast I don’t have time to think up a retort.

  “You want to repeat that?” Solomon asks in his softest tone. He’s half a head taller than Cadet Kim and maybe twice as broad across the shoulders, not that Jade Kim isn’t also a well-built specimen of youth, which is how I foolishly leaped into the pit of that relationship in the first place.

  Minh, Ay, and Ikenna step up beside Solomon, Ikenna with arms crossed and barracks light glinting on his weaponized glasses, Ay ostentatiously adjusting her leg brace, which is heavy enough to do damage to soft flesh, and Minh flicking the razor blade on her multi-tool hand in and out to a brisk beat.

  “Nobody insults my family,” Solomon adds without moving. His fist hovers one punch away from the most gorgeous face in the academy.

  I slide between them, careful not to touch Kim’s heat-seekingly attractive body lest the piece of trash think I still harbor lustful thoughts. “Solomon, I don’t care if you break that perfect nose, but I do care if you get disciplined for aggravated battery and lose your posting five days before we ship out.”

  He lowers his fist. “I’m not letting it go, Kim. I’m just saving it. You’ll know when.”

  He grabs his coveralls out of his locker and stalks away toward the showers.

  I nod at the others, and they take the hint and leave the two of us alone.

  “That was charming,” I say to Kim. “Just like always.”

  Kim shrugs it off. Knowing you’re the top-ranking cadet of the entire academy, and that you’ve lived up to your family having given you the auspicious name of Jade, can give a person a certain strut. “I got a fast-track posting to a Tulpar-class cruiser, the very one made famous in the battle at Na Iri because the heir was on board.”

  “The Boukephalas?”

  “That’s right. Top of the line. I’m going straight to the Eighth Fleet in Molossia, ready for the big push into Karnos that we all know is coming. It’s the exact posting I requested.”

  “Of course it is,” I say with a fake smile. “Why should I care since fortunately I’ll be too low class to ever run across you on your fancy ship once we’re out with the fleet?”

  “Because I had to get top-level security clearance even to apply for that posting. Since the communications room is short of bodies due to the war, I was called in last night for an emergency watch at 0300. Which means I saw the most interesting message flash up twenty minutes ago just as I was being released for muster. But instead of being for Persephone Earth-Field Lǐ it was for Persephone Wood-Child Lee. Which is odd, considering the only Wood-Child Lees in the Republic of Chaonia are the Lees of Lee House and its branch lineages.”

  Every nerve in my body blasts into red alert. No one here at the academy knows except Solomon, not even Minh, Ay, and Ikenna.

  Kim smirks. “People at home are not going to believe when I tell them who my girlfriend was.”

  “I was never your girlfriend.”

  “All right then, my—”

  “Shut your mouth!”

  Before I can punch that smug face and get my own charge of aggravated battery, a ping lights up just beyond my right eye. The chime is followed by a steadily expanding halo of orange light. A banner of coruscating words throbs as if on a virtual screen hanging in the air.

  DISCHARGE NOTICE

  Cadet status at Central Defense Cadet Academy for the person enrolled as Persephone Lĭ Alargos has been terminated at the command of the governor of Lee House.

  Report to Senior Captain Ray for final orders and dismissal.

  “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

  Suddenly Solomon is beside me, resting a hand on my shoulder, his voice gentle. All around us cadets hurrying to get ready have stopped to stare.

  “Hey. Perse. Hey.”

  I start sobbing as my hopes and dreams die right there, shot through the lungs and turned to greasy ash. I should have known better than to think my family would let me go.

  * * *

  Solomon and I sit side by side on a bench in CeDCA’s depot. Windows give us a view over the landing strip that runs parallel to the final five thousand meters of the train line that ends at the academy. It’s a pretty view of runway and forest rising beyond, but all I can do is stare at my hands.

  “Don’t go quiet on me, Perse.”

  I laugh shakily because I want to cry again. “Percy used to say that to me. I never told you that, did I? It’s why I trusted you that first time, do you remember?”

  “Which time?” Solomon’s always been a good listener. He can move fast, but he can also sit with the unshakable patience of a rock.

  “When we got assigned as lab partners in first year. It was that stupid reactive titration lab. When I got stuck.”

  He chuckles. “Oh, right. I’d gotten used to you taking the lead, and all of a sudden on that one you shut down. We had a stopwatch on that lab.”

  “Yeah. I was sure I was going to fail and be kicked out. I froze. But you got it done.”

  “It was close, but close doesn’t matter as long as you beat the bell.”

  I punch him on the arm like a victory slug, but my heart isn’t in it.

  He shakes his head. “It’s always bad when you go quiet. It eats you up and burns you out. You’re better off letting it out.”

  “Crying and swearing?”

  “Why not? I go to the gym and punch things. It’s all right to not be able to handle everything.”

  Sagging forward, I press my hands to my face. “What am I going to do? I don’t want to go back. I can’t go back.”

  I think of Minh, Ikenna, and Ay helping me pack my duffel and
walking with me until they were called back for muster. Of Chief Dara, one of our cohort’s instructors, kindly allowing Solomon release from muster in order to accompany me to the depot so I didn’t have to go alone. Because alone is the way I arrived here, on a seat on a train knowing no one, not sure if my gambit would work and my disguise would hold up.

  “I thought I could get away from them by changing my implant and coming here, I really did, but I was just fooling myself.”

  He rests a hand on my shoulder. I appreciate it, I do, but there’s no comfort to be had. Then he stiffens, shades his eyes as his gaze shifts to the sky, and whistles softly.

  “Will you look at that.”

  The two bored MPs on security duty step outside their guard booth to get a better look at the aircar dropping in for a smooth landing. Of course my family sent an expensive Swallow-class vessel, with its sleek frame and pretentious exterior detailing in soft purples. It’s humiliating to have their wealth thrown in my face, knowing everyone will be talking about the cadet who lied.

  I don’t know what else to do, so I get up and walk outside. Solomon keeps pace beside me. The MPs don’t even ask us to identify ourselves because by now everyone knows. As we approach, the hatch lowers soundlessly to make a ramp.

  “Peace be upon you, welcome, and please be seated.” The aircar’s machine-bright voice sounds fresh out of a factory. This is not one of my family’s old aircars, whose years of service have given them a sheen of personality.

  “Thank you,” I say politely. “Do you have a designation?”

  “S W 4 11 O W. I am not authorized to share my serial number or registry designation.”

  Definitely straight off the assembly line.

  I tuck my duffel in one of the aircar’s flight lockers. Solomon looks over the embroidered seats, the control panel and display sphere, and the glass-fronted mahogany galley cupboard loaded with food and drink.

  “I’ve never flown in a private car. Or flown at all except for training.”

  “Please allow me to inform you that I am only authorized to take one individual at this time,” says the Swallow.

  He steps back. “When my aunties start talking like that I know I’ve really messed up. Do you get to pilot this, Perse?”

  “It’ll be set on an automated course so I can’t run away again.”

  He retreats down the ramp. I follow, as if one last touch of boots to the ground will give me the strength to get through this. It turns out he wants to whisper in my ear away from instruments in the aircar that might be recording our voices.

  “I know people, Perse. We junkyard hatchlings have ways around that stuff.”

  “Let it go, Solomon. Don’t let Jade Kim be the jerk who rules your life.” He gives me his hundred-kiloton stare so I quickly go on. “Your family gets away with off-grid sidelines only because my family’s not looking for yours.”

  To my surprise, Senior Captain Ray emerges from the depot and hurries toward us. Solomon gives me a hug as cover to slip a thin rectangular object into my left hand. “If you need help, send a message on this. It’s keyed to your retinal signature.”

  “How’d you get my retinal signature?”

  “I set this up so people will think it’s a study aid. It won’t work for anyone but you.” He releases me as the academy commander approaches with a brisk step.

  “What won’t work for anyone else, Cadet Solomon?” the senior captain asks.

  “Giving me a hug to try to get my recipe for malasadas.”

  The commander’s weary gaze lightens as he licks his lips. “You gave Cadet Lǐ the recipe and you won’t give it to my cook?”

  “Cadet Lee needs it more since she’s no longer a cadet,” says Solomon, and Senior Captain Ray remembers who my family are. I wonder if he’s always known or if it came as an ugly surprise and he’s waiting for the ax to fall on his career when Lee House decides to punish him for not figuring it out. With a sigh he taps the back of his hand.

  “Departure time is now.” He seems about to speak a few more words, then changes his mind. It’s never, ever wise to say anything about the family who run the secret police in the Republic of Chaonia.

  I give him a salute, possibly the last salute I’ll ever make.

  He salutes in response, the final piece of respect he can offer. “You were a good cadet, never asked for special treatment or gave anyone any trouble. You kept your eyes on your goal with commendable discipline.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Solomon gives me an encouraging nod. I step into the Swallow, and the door whisks shut on its own, cutting me off.

  “Please allow me to inform you that this vessel is under automated control. In order to depart, you must take a seat.”

  The moment I’m strapped into the pilot’s chair the Swallow shudders to life and rises straight up. I stare out the window as the buildings, the garden and orchard, the training range and gymnasium and pool, and the high-security fence dwindle into the distance. Only when I can no longer see the twin pagodas and sky-tower in the wild landscape do I check to see if my parents or Aunt Moira have left a message. I can’t call up anything current: no communication, no news, no trade reports, no shipping schedules, not even the weather report.

  “Please allow me to inform you that all connections to the global net are restricted. However, I have been given permission to share several of the most popular Channel Idol retrospectives and dramas. Would you like to see the previews?”

  Without waiting for my response a virtual scenario pops up around me, fading into a slow pan of a Chaonian fleet poised in space with a giant orange planet and two blue moons hanging in the background. My breathing tightens as the view slides past a massive beacon and onto an opposing fleet recognizable as an imperial Phene task force by the twin helixes on its dreadnoughts. The audio pops on like a demolition blast targeted to my heart.

  Replay the communications surge from the battle of Aspera Drift. Thrill to the courageous exploits and tactical brilliance of the eight-times-worthy hero Captain the Honorable Ereshkigal Lee. Newly released ops will give you insight into her stunning sacrifice.

  Cursing, I painfully bite my tongue before I mash enough buttons to mute the sound. The previews start flipping through an automatic countdown: the rehash of last year’s Idol Faire; a hugely popular horror-drama from my childhood called Plague of Clones; a commentary on a commentary on the official republic-wide Year Ten history course covering the rise and fall of the Apsaras Convergence; the early episodes of the long-running historical serial Journey to Landfall.

  I shut down the program to blessed nothingness. The windows offer a spectacular view of the rising foothills and the mountains beyond, snow glittering on the highest peaks and the sky threaded with clouds, but it all looks smeared with funeral ashes.

  Probably they’ve been planning this all along, to pull me out right when it will hurt the most. It would be just like them.

  I spin the object Solomon gave me through my fingers, examining it from every angle. It’s a slick black rectangle about the size of a playing card, made of ceramic. In its glossy surface I see the ghost of my face staring back at me like a long-vanished duplicate caught in an unknown prison.

  “Malasadas,” I say.

  A tracery of blue lines chases a tight circle against the surface, then irises to a bigger circle within the card’s luster like a secret gate to a hidden universe. I start laughing as a spinning visual takes shape in the air, projected from the card: Solomon in the cavernous galley with the academy’s chief cook, walking Virgil through the process of frying batches of dough in a pot of hot oil.

  Fine. Let them call me home. Let them do their worst.

  I’m not beaten yet.

  11

  The Gatoi Prisoner

  He wakes up in a cage. Bright lights shine down on him from an overhead so white it is nothing but glare. He shades his eyes with the back of a hand, trying to understand where he is. The compartment is large and rectangular
with gray bulkheads. A secured hatch is just visible from where he lies on his back. A faint drip … drip whispers at his ear like a message trying to flower into life on his comm-link, but he can’t hear the rest of his squad. No comm. No voices. Nothing but that drip.

  What if they’re all dead except him?

  It would be better to be dead than to face the disgrace of being taken prisoner.

  The sting of a mood stabilizer courses through his body, folding up the spurt of agitation until it is confined into a neat mental box. He can still find a way to fight and thus to die with honor. He’s sure of it.

  Pushing at the corners of his mind, he tries to remember what happened.

  His squad was on a routine operation in the outer reaches of Hellion Terminus, boarding a suspected smuggling vessel through a secured airlock. He was midway back along their arrow formation when the captain of the suspect vessel stepped into view holding a clipboard manifest. Nothing odd in that; she was showing it to the squad leader when she’d glanced up and he’d seen her face full-on.

  The memory blurs into a burst of static.

  He touches a forefinger to each eye to reboot his network but it’s not ruptured, just interrupted at the flash. The next thing he remembers is waking up here.

  He trawls a diagnostic through his body. A cut on his right thigh is healing; he can sense the tissues stitching together in the unhurried and confident way his grandmother knits socks. There’s a gel wrap hissing into a second-degree burn on his left hip as it cools the skin. Bruises along his right side feel tender, but no bones are broken. All systems go except for the glitch in his memory. He can’t recall how he got the injuries.

  He eases up, bracing for an attack, but nothing moves.

  The cage is mesh, its strands pulsating in visual bursts that hit his body as a steady hammer: wham wham wham. It’s a suppressor, meant to dull the neurosystem that gives him enhanced strength, agility, and stamina. He already has a headache, and it is only going to get worse.

  His eyes adapt now that a spotlight isn’t shining straight down onto his face.