Unconquerable Sun

by Elliott, Kate

  Darling brother. I want to puke on her lying face.

  My father turns a smile on my mother, an expression that anyone except my mother can see is grotesquely artificial. I loathe the two of them together: my mother’s endless litany of complaints and his unctuous smoothing down of her ruffled, spiky emotions that do nothing but mirror her back to herself.

  “Dearest Aisa, you must not allow yourself to become perplexed and discomposed by your daughter’s antics. You know how easily you sicken.”

  “It’s far too late for that, Kiran! No one ever has any respect or concern for my nerves. Moira certainly doesn’t.”

  “No, indeed, my love. But let us keep our focus on the goal.” He keeps his face turned toward her, since she never likes to think anyone is getting attention that she deserves, but in switching tones makes clear he’s speaking again to me. “You perceive the necessity of continuing this communication later. Expect me to be in touch.”

  He snaps his fingers. The image collapses into a spark of light.

  I sag forward, catching my weight on my hands.

  Behind me, Zizou says quietly, “Are you all right, Persephone Lee?”

  My skin is beginning to itch from the constant rub of the mask’s cheap synthetic fabric, but I’ll die if I remove this irritation from my face.

  “If the mask is troublesome for you, you could blindfold me instead,” he says, sliding in to sit beside me.

  My heartbeat accelerates as if I’m sprinting. Blindfold me. There’s a thought. He doesn’t touch me, but I feel the heat of him, the way he’s holding himself carefully away from me, respecting my space.

  “If you’re blindfolded you can’t keep watch,” I say.

  “I have enhanced sensory feeds. Your elevated heart rate shames me. You fear me because I tried to harm you.”

  My reaction is a bit more complex than that, but I’m so surprised at his simple, sincere words that I don’t know how to answer. I glance back into the car. Fortunately the others are too busy waking up and making ready to go to pay attention to us.

  “I don’t have any recall of what I did to you. I don’t know why I attacked you, just that everyone says I did. But on the honor of my banner I tell you now, Persephone Lee, I am sorry for it.”

  I grew up with a mother who fakes extreme emotions to coerce people to do her bidding, a father whose cold rationality makes him good company at dinner while his insincerity makes him dangerous the rest of the time, and an aunt who efficiently runs an effective and thus feared security apparatus. We must be kept safe against the Phene menace and their spies and collaborators, like the Gatoi.

  Maybe Zizou is making some convoluted ploy to win my trust and then murder me. But I don’t think so. I think he’s as confused as I am. Also, if I’m being honest, I’d really like to touch him, to see if I can feel the coils of energy beneath his skin.

  “It’s a fair offer,” I say, hoping my suddenly dry mouth doesn’t give away my uncomfortably explicit thoughts. “I don’t want to give up my mask, just in case. I don’t have anything else to bind your eyes with.”

  “I grabbed one of those leather blindfolds before we left that one place with the council elders,” he says.

  “You did?” I’m blushing, and truth to tell, I’m a little aroused thinking about it. Which I pray to all the gods and all the hells that he cannot tell.

  “I thought it might be useful if you and I ever had a chance to talk.”

  “You thought about talking to me?” I’ve turned into a pitiable echo.

  “Doesn’t honor matter to Chaonians? What I did was dishonorable. And not of my own choice, which makes it an assault against my will as well as against you. Do you understand what I am saying? If we can figure out why it happens, maybe we can stop it.”

  “All right,” I say, rising to the challenge because my poor judgment can’t resist, and anyway I do want to figure out what’s going on. “Turn your head.”

  He has in fact tucked a wide leather belt into the sash of the jacket he was given to wear. I venture boldly to slip it out, which means I have to slide my fingers beneath the sash to get ahold of it. His body is all honed muscle. I would swear he smells of silk and magic. He inhales sharply. My fingers are still resting against his torso.

  Then I realize he’s craned his head to look outside and his reaction has nothing to do with me.

  “That!” He points toward the industrial park’s sky-tower, which has just come into view. “I saw it for an instant before the aircar hatch closed. With those three tall cylinders behind it.”

  “Whoa.” I beckon to Sun. “Princess, Zizou says he saw the sky-tower and three smokestacks when he was being loaded into the aircar that took him to Lee House.”

  Sun studies the sky-tower rising amid refinery smokestacks and factory blocks. By her intent expression, her mind is churning at a million klicks a second. “If you had something you really wanted to hide, you’d hide it amid ordinary activity in the middle of nowhere. Like using an industrial park to hide a secret laboratory studying neural enhancements in banner soldiers that allow the Phene to control their behavior.”

  I remember how my sister died. I think of Ti’s father’s arm. “The idea about Phene compulsion channeled into Gatoi neurosystems is just a theory. The Gatoi can’t be changed. They fight to the death. That’s just who they are.”

  “That’s not who we are.” Zizou’s frown is sharp.

  I’ve offended him, and probably Sun too. I look at her. “They’re weapons the Phene use to fight us. You can’t argue with that.”

  “Of course I can argue with that,” she replies. “Not all banners fight for the Phene, no matter what people say. Each of the eleven banner fleets makes its own decision on whether to hire out soldiers to the empire. Do you think a Royal like my father hasn’t noticed that banner soldiers who fight for the Phene take exponentially higher casualties than ones who’ve hired out at other times and in other conflicts? What if they are fighting to the death because they’re being coerced? For example, in a way that would make Zizou attack you even though he doesn’t want to and has no memory of doing it?”

  Zizou shakes his head. “Our behavior is our own. We are not creatures on a leash.”

  Sun grasps the base of my mask, fingers bunched around the gauze pooling at my neck. “Do you want to see what happens if I pull this off her head?”

  “No!” His flash of anger makes Sun smile with a dangerous edge of triumph.

  In the recesses of the boxcar everyone stops what they’re doing to look toward us. She releases me. “Lee House thinks they discredited me. But they’re the ones who’ve made a mistake.”

  “Wait, Princess.” My breathing finally settles, my distracted mental capacity coming back on line. “You know what’s going on with the facility Zizou described, where he was being held, don’t you?”

  “It’s the most parsimonious explanation and the only reason my father’s adjutant Colonel Evans would have been there as Zizou describes. The queen-marshal agreed to the project with the proviso that my father would leave court as if in disgrace to hide both the project and her cooperation. Now I can guess she also saw the agreement as a means to get him and me out of the way so she could marry Manea Lee without any interference from us.”

  The train picks up speed as we reach the forest’s verge and leave the industrial park’s buildings behind. Sun’s fierce glare is directed back the way we came. I’m strangely grateful she considers me on her side rather than her enemy.

  “But that doesn’t mean she isn’t also genuinely interested in controversial research that could benefit Chaonia.”

  “All of Chaonia wants to defeat the Phene,” I say.

  “Most Chaonians think of the Gatoi as savages whose essential nature can’t be changed, as you yourself just said. They’ll consider the project a shameful waste of funds. Another reason for her to keep the project and her participation secret. So how did Lee House find out?”

  “Not through me! I h
ad no idea—”

  “I know it wasn’t through you,” says Sun impatiently. “I need to find out why my father has stopped sending me an all-safe ping. There must be a way to track down the lab’s location. Persephone, is there a way we can get from the academy to the industrial park without alerting CeDCA command?”

  “Before or after I punch Solomon and break my hand?”

  Her brow wrinkles in annoyed puzzlement.

  “You’ll understand when you meet him. We can wait for the train to be unloaded, sneak back on, and bail out when we pass back this way. That would be easiest, but it’s a twelve-hour turnaround.”

  “Faster options?”

  “Every brigade field has an armory stocked with weapons, equipment, and vehicles for field exercises, four-wheeled Bears, three-wheeled Wolverines, and two-wheeled Foxes. Some are stealth fitted. It’s final exams week, so no one will be out in the field. If we can borrow two Bears without being noticed they might not be missed for a while. But it’s a risk.”

  “Moira Lee deliberately reminded everyone watching Channel Idol that I’m half savage Gatoi. She forced me to become a fugitive. If the lab hasn’t already been destroyed and if we can find it, we can dig out proof of what Lee House did. I’m betting Moira didn’t get the queen-marshal’s permission to assault the project even though they’re supposedly the tightest of old friends. That will infuriate my mother, and turn her anger from me to Lee House.”

  Trees glide past. The scent of pine grows strong, a scent I’ve come to love in my years at the academy because it smells like freedom. Sun chokes down a sneeze.

  “Persephone, get us to an armory after we track down your friend Solomon.”

  Not my friend anymore, I think with a rush of ill feeling that twists my chest into knots. I can’t get my head around the fact he betrayed me and played me while I poured out all my secrets to him. But this isn’t the time to say that.

  We get the bags sorted and everyone in line to jump off, starting with me and ending with James and Isis, which tells me how much Sun trusts and relies on them.

  We crest a modest ridge to see the academy laid out in the wide valley below. From up here it looks like a huge square grid dropped onto the landscape with the perfect blue circle of Heaven Lake and its attendant Sun and Moon pagodas and sky-tower a jewel at the center. The eastern half of the town is the civilian residential zone and the western half is the academy, with cultivated fields and orchards woven through the grid. With the mechanicals we call night janitors already back in their docking stations, it’s all quiet, the empty walkways and service roads awaiting the flood of movement that is about to start.

  It feels like coming home, a warm sense of rightness in my chest.

  I set my face against obligation and obedience, and in that way my parents are right to chide me. But for all its isolation and restrictions the academy has nurtured me in a way my family never did. I won’t be Lee House’s pawn, not like Resh, the most dutiful of daughters. She will be the hero sung about in songs and remembered in gauzy memorials and fictionalized tales. I’ll tell my own story, in my own way, even if it makes me ungrateful.

  In four minutes and thirty seconds we’ll reach the depot that anchors the northern edge of the grid. I scan the view as the train traces a slow curve toward the long airstrip and the arrivals depot with its sidings and hangars. Twelve gulls are sitting on the tarmac with camouflage tarps pulled over them. An orbit-capable shuttle sits in the open, absorbing sunlight for its batteries.

  The tinny whistle of the regular morning-assembly alert blares. Cadets will be leaving the barracks and headed to muster on one of the brigade fields according to their year. I should be down there right now giving my coveralls one last check to make sure the legs are properly tucked into my boots.

  Zizou says, “What’s that? In the sky?”

  Sun raises a hand to block the glint of the rising sun. “I see it.”

  Four ships are racing down out of the heavens. When I telescope in I get a visual of blocky silhouettes. “Those are merchant freighters.”

  But merchant freighters don’t hurtle planet-ward like attacking warships. They attach themselves to big Remora barges and get hauled through beacons to their next destination. The high-pitched whine builds in volume as the ships close in, the sound underlaid with an odd cycling resonance I’ve never heard before. Or maybe I have heard it, but only in the simulation room.

  Sun snaps, “Alika, what’s that frequency?”

  Alika blinks three times, seeking info. “Chaonian merchant freighters don’t cycle at that frequency. Give me a sec.” He sucks in a shocked breath. “I get a match to Phene gunships.”

  “Those are not Phene gunships,” I object.

  A series of loud pops cracks through the air. The train car shakes. Exclaiming, everyone staggers, bracing on a wall or sitting down hard on sacks. An explosion booms so loud the sound tears through my body. A churning cloud of dust and sparks billows out from the Moon pagoda where a missile has just punched through it.

  26

  In Which the Wily Persephone Is Hyped on Adrenaline

  A memory of that last academy VR session scorches into my mind—the ax falling on my head.

  “This train is a moving target. We should jump off now, before drop troops hit.”

  “Wait!” commands Sun.

  Flames are shooting out from beneath the eaves of the topmost roof of the Moon pagoda. But that’s not what Sun is looking at.

  A streak of light slams into the sky-tower just below the Eyrie. The shock of impact rolls over us, rattling the train. We all duck instinctively even though we’re too far away to be hit.

  With a fearful shriek of metal grinding and torquing, the top of the spire lists in a slow-motion bend that makes me hold my breath. Shards of deadly debris rain toward the ground as the metal superstructure screams with a noise that stabs into my ears. Unbelievably it doesn’t break off but jolts to a stop and hangs there crookedly. Pieces of the spire and comms dishes and antenna and probably the tables and couches from the Eyrie shower the ground in an erratic rhythm like a hailstorm.

  The night-duty staff is still up there, if they’ve even survived impact, if they aren’t part of the debris.

  I must only think about what’s right in front of me.

  The train jolts to a halt as another explosive crash rolls over us. Ahead, part of the depot’s roof collapses. Clouds of smoke turn incandescent in a boil of flame.

  “Fuck,” says Isis with a lift of an eyebrow. Wing cheeps as if in response. The rest of us brace ourselves, awaiting Sun’s command.

  The emergency siren engages with a howl. Three of the enemy ships dip down to just above the treetops and speed out of sight westward over the forest. I’m sure they’re headed toward the industrial park. The fourth ship curves in a high arc up into the sky like it’s coming around for another pass on the academy.

  Sun tilts her hand to signal go. I bolt across the train to the other cargo door, slide it open, and jump. Everyone leaps out after me as I sprint for the tree line about forty yards up a slope. Smoke and ash sting our faces, although it’s not as bad for me with my death’s-head mask giving me some protection. James snatches his cap as a gust of acrid air picks it up off his head, and he stuffs it down the front of his jacket. The screeches of tortured metal in the sky-tower reverberate like the cries of a wounded behemoth.

  We race in under the trees and, once there, turn back to take in the carnage. Heat roils up from the burning depot as a hot wind slamming into the trees, causing them to sway and rustle. Sun and Zizou aren’t with us. She’s racing forward along the cars toward the locomotive and its crew car. Four people wearing train-crew gray scramble out and, seeing her, run toward her. She directs them toward the trees. Only when they are headed to safety does she follow in their wake. Zizou brings up the rear, seeming unaware of the shocked glances the train crew are giving him because his hoodie has fallen back to expose his face and its gleaming threads.

/>   “They’re not landing, they’re headed for another target,” says Sun as she trots up. “Change of plans. Perse, I need you to—”

  She breaks off as Zizou whistles an alert.

  Far up in the sky shine two lengthening streaks of light: our alert fighters in ballistic re-entry. The two ships are coming in at such speed I can already distinguish their wings.

  A flash catches my eye, like the sun rising only I’m looking south with smoke in my eyes and ash on my tongue.

  Sun tenses.

  “Fuck me,” I say, spotting an enemy ship spinning back into view above the Chaonian fighters. The hostiles know at what elevation the fighters will have to start braking to get a targeting solution.

  The lead Chaonian fighter shatters into a cascade of debris and flames. Ti covers her face. One of the train crew starts sobbing. The rest of us watch with a choking sense of futility and helplessness.

  The trailing pilot manages to get a lock. Two streaks fly through the air and impact the enemy ship. Fire blossoms from the hull, but although pieces of the hull break off and plummet toward the ground the hostile doesn’t slow. We never even see the return fire.

  The second Chaonian fighter is slammed sideways so hard the momentum of the kill turns into a long, slow, inexorable tumble. Somehow the pilot manages to hold the tumble aloft long enough that the craft doesn’t hit buildings. Instead it disintegrates in a violent flaming furrow across a wheat field, the pilot’s funeral pyre. The enemy ship races away on the same westward path as its brethren, trailing a line of smoke.

  I try to speak, but I’m too numb for words.

  A second set of alarms blares in the drill for battle stations, an alert I can barely distinguish beneath all the other noise. The cadets will scatter to armories and rail gun emplacements.

  James says, “That hit took down communications. I’ve got no global net access.”

  “Mine is dead.” Sun grabs my arm. “There must be a local academy network.”