Unconquerable Sun

by Elliott, Kate

  “Very well.”

  So be it. The fight wasn’t over yet.

  More shudders rocked the ship. The air became thick with particulate matter and the stench of fire suppressant. In her peripheral vision Sun noticed damage control and medical personnel entering the command center, but she was too busy clawing through the strategos grid. Its scope had somehow gotten expanded to the entire solar system, but she needed a tactical view. Everything reduced to her against the Phene flagship and its high admiral.

  She pulled the view down. Tight. The fast frigates that had escorted her in drifted, dead in space, their vented hulks further testament to the accuracy of Phene gunnery. Streaks of light raced toward the limping Boukephalas: the incoming missiles. Death swinging for her.

  “All shields to the rear,” said Senior Captain Tan, still in that calm voice.

  Voice shaking, an operator called out, “All hands brace.”

  Another Tulpar heaved into view, accelerating at the limit of human tolerance. Sun’s comms snapped open with a hail on her personal frequency. Captain Angharad Black’s booming voice stabbed into her ear like a peal of thunder.

  “Sun, what the fuck are you doing? Even you can’t take down a behemoth.”

  “What are you doing over here when your flank is meant to be enveloping their line?” Sun demanded.

  “Saving your precious ass,” said Angharad with a laugh.

  The Rakhsh cut between the Boukephalas and the dreadnought, firing as it passed the enemy. What missiles it did not shoot down it absorbed on its shields and hull. A large explosion flared at the front of the enemy flagship.

  Sun said, “Captain, was that their beacon cone? Is it down?”

  “It’s gone, Your Highness.”

  The Rakhsh came back around for a second pass. Both Tulpars were badly wounded but still alive and breathing.

  “Captain, have we launched the last of our ordnance yet?”

  “Not yet, Your Highness.”

  “Then launch it now. The Phene will learn better than to ever invade Chaonia’s territory again.”

  38

  A BRIEF DISPATCH FROM THE BELEAGUERED ENEMY

  Dear Mom,

  All lights went out in the high admiral’s chamber and in the hangar beyond. The hiss of vents ceased. Apama sucked in a shocked breath as her suddenly nerveless fingers lost hold of her tablet. It floated. She began rising, unmoored, and grabbed for her chair’s arms. A bubble of warm liquid popped against her chin, and a second bubble with stronger surface tension rolled across her lips like the promise of a kiss.

  An ominous rumble ground through the deck and bulkheads like the growl of a wounded beast. Comms crackled, and died. As power cycled through emergency reroutes the gravity came back in. Her tablet hit the deck with a smack. She tasted coffee as the bubble smeared against her partly open mouth. Her arms tensed reflexively so she could guide her rear end back into the chair. A personal light popped on, illuminating Admiral Manu’s face creased with a stern expression. He swung the beam around the oval table at which the command staff was seated. High Admiral Ne Styraconyx sat frozen, black coffee splashed over the front of his splendid gold-and-white uniform. As if galvanized by the light, the high admiral slapped the tabletop with an angry oath.

  The lights came back on. A telemetry sphere coalesced over the table. Apama’s personal system was suddenly integrated into the flagship’s reroute and her voice comm overwhelmed by a riot of voices calling out for damage reports and fire control.

  In the telemetry sphere a strange and silent ballet unfolded. A battle cruiser, maybe the same one that had damaged the Strong Bull, had just hammered the flagship with a crippling broadside. It was now shifting vector to turn and run back the way it had come, to the safety of its comrades, but such a maneuver couldn’t be done quickly with a vessel of that size.

  A voice spat as if out of thin air, from the distant bridge. “High Admiral, we’ve taken several serious hits. Damage report incoming—”

  “Destroy that ship, Captain.”

  “Targeting.” That was weapons.

  Apama leaned down, picked up the tablet, and slipped it into her sleeve pocket. Everyone in the chamber seemed to begin talking at once, except her, of course. She stared at the shifting lights within the sphere, ships outlined in ghostly shimmers and painted with colors appropriate to their hostile versus friendly status and any information known about their damage and readiness condition. Now that she knew to look for a third flank attack, its angle of entry seemed inevitable. The three Chaonian formations created a funnel around the entire Phene fleet. The forward Chaonian group—the retreaters—had reversed course and now attacked the forward ships of the Phene fleet with a cross fire. The pursuing hit-and-fade group now pressed relentlessly forward to push the trailing Phene ships up into the cross fire created by the other two groups. The third group had just made contact, sealing them in. As Admiral Manu had warned, the Phene fleet had lost cohesion and gotten enveloped. Its vulnerability became obvious as weapons fire poured in from every octant.

  “Salvo released.”

  The high admiral smiled. “We’ve got that Tulpar dead. It’s the Boukephalas. The princess’s ship.”

  A second Tulpar spun furiously into range, burning incredibly hot. This ship raced into the gap between the flagship and the first Tulpar to literally interpose itself between the missiles and the Boukephalas. At the same time it launched a barrage of its own into the heart of Choki’s Beauty.

  A massive hit jarred the behemoth. Apama was flung sideways against the transparent wall that overlooked the hangar. Sprawled out, she stared down onto the flight deck. Hammer One had long since departed, leaving Mace Sixteen behind. Her lancer was lashed down, readied for beacon transit. Apama couldn’t help but bitterly compare herself stuck here with the high command instead of among her comrades where she belonged.

  The lights snapped out again, and again the ventilation failed, to be succeeded by the dull red glow and wheezing bellows of emergency power. Three different alarm systems—bells, bugles, and the emergency klaxon—shrilled together in a cacophony so loud it hurt her ears.

  A hand settled on her shoulder. “Lieutenant? Are you hurt?”

  Of course Admiral Manu hadn’t been taken by surprise. He helped her up.

  High Admiral Ne Styraconyx had fallen back into a chair as if he had himself been mortally wounded. As it was his ship, and his fleet, maybe in every important way he had.

  “Both our beacon and knnu drives are crippled,” he said in an oddly calm voice. “Put out the call to abandon ship. All personnel to deploy to other vessels on emergency standing. I need three volunteers to remain behind with me.”

  “The Tanarctus Fleet is already fighting in Troia System,” said the Rider, who had remained silent until now. “What should I tell my colleagues? How many of your ships will make it through to Troia?”

  A pallor of death recognized and accepted had settled in the high admiral’s face. “Take my courier. It’s fast enough to outrun anything the Chaonians can throw at you. I will do my best to get as many of my ships through. We are all destined for death.”

  The Rider said, “Admiral Manu, come with me. Bring the girl.”

  Apama would have followed regardless; she was too stunned to do anything else. But Manu kept a hand on her forearm like a guiding light, or a shackle, as they made their way out of the chamber and down the ramp’s spiral into the hangar.

  “What is your interest in this young woman?” Manu asked as they hustled into the hangar, where people were abandoning their stations and headed for auxiliary vessels and lifeboats.

  The Rider turned his riding face away from them. Apama looked into the bright eyes and sardonic smile of an ordinary, normal face, the man whose body and brain this was, who had been born an infant with a half-formed face on the back of his skull. Somewhere in the Phene Empire his shocked family had dutifully registered the child with the authorities, and the Rider Council had sent a team
to take the baby and compensate the family for their loss.

  This man’s gaze rested briefly on Apama. The curve of his strong jaw and the slightly hooked shape of his nose had a vague familiarity, but he looked away with disinterest, finding her no more worthy of notice than the bulkheads. It was the Rider who found her interesting, and she didn’t know why. In fact, she really did not want to know why, not now and not ever.

  The courier was cramped with ten passengers strapped into acceleration cushions crammed any which way amid the huge energy generators that gave couriers their speed despite their tiny size. Couriers were the fastest way to get information from one system to another via the beacons, except of course for the Riders. And Riders were only born within the imperial Phene population.

  The courier launched within the cover of escaping lifeboats and jettisoned debris. The two big battle cruisers were circling like sharks, continuing to fire into the dying behemoth, while the bulk of the pursing Chaonian fleet had pushed past the flagship’s death throes to keep pressing the rest of the fleet.

  Apama hated being a passenger, passively observing while dependent on the actions of others. Watching was almost worse than not knowing, but she had nothing to do except watch. She’d been given a stray single seat laced in between bare-bones pipes and tubes. The others were talking among themselves, Manu quizzing the pilots like the only thing that would shut him up would be a javelin through the mouth. She was alone with only a fuzzy, low-resolution sphere to keep her company.

  Acceleration pushed her into the cushion. The pilot was excellent, weaving in and around debris. More ships than she’d realized had been damaged; the Chaonians were aiming for drives, determined to stop as many as possible from reaching Troia. Any ship with an intact knnu drive was powering it up, meaning to flee the debacle that way. They would take months to get home, but they might survive.

  After a thrust that weighted Apama’s lungs, the courier dropped g alongside eleven fleeing Phene light cruisers. The last thing she saw before the emptiness of beacon transit was the flagship going dark section by section as life support and power cut off. An abrupt series of internal explosions lit the ship, a sign of deliberate core overload. It bloomed into an incandescently brief lantern, a short-lived star, as Admiral Ne Styraconyx used its death throes to cover the retreat of his remaining ships.

  39

  What the Wily Persephone Experiences Deep in the Heart of a Black Nothingness That Is Transition

  The transfer from the Lee House Swallow to the royal shuttle at the military base moves smoothly. My cousin the Honorable Marduk Lee gives Tiana a dazzling smile before remembering to greet me. I give the hornet drive to the queen-marshal, who takes it without a word and ignores us. We’re shown to a cramped bank of acceleration couches in the back. There we sit amid adjutants busy organizing a streaming river of intelligence to which we’re not privy.

  I’m suddenly exhausted. As the worst pressure eases when we cross the mesosphere I doze in bursts, dropping in and out of sleep like falling through passageways too heavy to navigate while awake.

  Bells wake me as we land inside the flagship, the Tulpar-class battle cruiser Shadowfax. Flight crew and deck crew go about their work with efficiency and seriousness. Every surface is clean. An ensign is delegated as our escort, a fresh-faced graduate of the royal military academy, the institute I should have attended. We follow at the rear of the queen-marshal’s retinue.

  The ensign shades several glances at me, then says, “My pardon, but you look a lot like the eight-times-worthy hero.”

  “May I live up to her stellar example,” I reply with creditable calm.

  It’s funny because as a CeDCA cadet I’m outranked by the ensign, but my status as Companion to the heir means every officer in the royal flagship has to step carefully around me. That’s not even considering my aunt’s brief discussion of making me heir to the governorship of Lee House, a prospect that congeals in my gut like a venomous stone.

  We’re allowed to follow the queen-marshal to the command center. No one questions Tiana’s presence as my cee-cee, and Solomon in his battle-stained cadet’s uniform gets a pass.

  There’s an observation bank of couches for dignitaries, diplomats, and transferring officers, as a courtesy, set out of the way. I’ve never been on a Tulpar-class ship. To work on its beacon drive would be an honor, not that I’m qualified for such a level of responsibility. Not yet.

  I take in every piece of the gleaming command center: its hexagonal arrangement of consoles surrounding a top-of-the-line strategos dais; flat screens and projection spheres; the hum of activity among well-trained and disciplined people who are ready to fight and know they are the best.

  Compared to the superior and advanced Yele League and the wealthy and powerful Phene Empire, the Republic of Chaonia is a junkyard hatchling trying to make good on a playing field we should never have had the temerity to enter. But we did, and under Queen-Marshal Eirene we have proven ourselves time and again. I may hate the part my family plays and the methods they use, but I can’t deny I’m proud of my sister’s sacrifice, that I’m proud of Chaonia. That’s why I went to CeDCA.

  Now the Yele League resents our success, and the Phene finally understand we are the first serious threat to their hegemony in two hundred years.

  That’s what this is all about: the spying, the raid, the surprise counterattack on Aspera System. The Phene and their allies are desperate to disrupt Eirene’s decisive and effective leadership.

  “Incoming courier from Molossia,” says the officer of the watch.

  There’s a moment of silence as Eirene, her Companions, and all top-clearance officers receive whatever message the courier brings.

  From somewhere in the command center a shocked voice says, “Holy shit.”

  The captain of the Shadowfax says, “Your Highness, should we abort the transit? We could be blown open the moment we drop through.”

  “The task force under my command proceeds,” says Eirene. “Make ready to fight.”

  Tiana grasps my hand.

  On my other side Solomon swears under his breath, then whispers, “I hate this. Give me a gun and a battlesuit any day over being stuck here strapped into a seat.”

  I pass him my tonfa. “This converts to a stinger. You’re better under fire than I am, so you take it. In case we’re boarded.”

  “Take all weigh off the ship,” commands the captain.

  The helm cuts acceleration, brakes just the right amount. My body unmoors as gravity loosens its grip.

  Everything goes black. I can’t see myself or anything around me. All I can feel are Ti’s fingers curled against mine.

  No one knows how the Apsaras Convergence built the beacons or how the beacons work. Probably no one will ever know, because the secret died when the convergence collapsed, taking whole sections of the network with it.

  But I fell in love with the beacon network the first time I went through a beacon transition, many years ago. Not everyone sees it, because I’ve asked.

  But I see it.

  I see the ghost of the network deep in the heart of a black nothingness that is transition. Faint traceries like infinitesimal gleaming arteries shimmer in a void. Ships like droplets of water slide along whatever passages beacons create between each other. The seers of Iros like my father say we fall through the beacons no matter which direction we enter; there is no up and down, no forward, no return. But I’m not so sure. Direction and volition always matter. If I could get closer maybe I could see the lost networks that link together the forgotten beacons in the regions now known as the Gap. Maybe I could find the lost, or fabled, homeworld, She Who Bore Them All, where the Apsaras hid their secrets. Maybe I could fix the network and restore its glory and reach.

  But there are dangers in getting too close to the Gap. It’s rumored but never been confirmed that other presences live inside the network, minds that either aren’t human at all or that once were human and were fractured when the inner system co
llapsed and they had nothing to cling to except the insubstantial web that weaves in and out of the physical universe. This branching network has become their skeleton, their scaffolding.

  A cold exhalation touches me, the mouth of the Gap pressed like ice on my lips. It’s trying to breathe into my mind.

  Let me in.

  The universe reappears as we drop into Molossia System. My heartbeat thunders, and I break out into a sweat. Screens leap to life, too dizzying for me to comprehend. An alarm cuts through my confusion.

  “Incoming debris. All hands brace. All hands brace.”

  Tiana stiffens. Solomon swears under his breath.

  The ship jolts as it takes an impact.

  Without a clearance for the queen-marshal’s network all I see are images on a set of screens. Space is a big place, and ships are minuscule. There are so many points of light it’s impossible for me to make sense of them. The command center crew works in a silence as intense as pressure on my skin. Tiana licks her lips nervously.

  Eirene stands on the strategos dais, gesturing in the air as she moves her field of vision to take in the entire solar system. We can’t see what she sees, but a slower visual field feeds across the screens.

  A Phene light cruiser floats dead in space. The vessel is surrounded by a debris field.

  “Absolute devastation of the NCOSP and the munitions depot,” says Marduk Lee, who is seated at a console. Companions are officers of a kind; they are trained to fight as is every Chaonian. “I have reports collating. At least five hundred Phene ships, ten dreadnoughts accompanied by cruisers and fast escorts, transitioned out of the heliosphere running on knnu drives. Have to give them credit for audacity, and the patience to make such a long journey. They took our stations by surprise.”

  “Make for the Troia beacon,” the queen-marshal says in a tone of admirable calm. “We cannot and will not let the Phene invaders drop through into Troia System. I see it: a plan to cripple our shipyards and command centers and then follow it up with a pincer attack via two beacons against our fleets massing in Troia.”