by Paula Guran
“Perhaps,” Mother said, and Thien Bao knew it was a lie. She resolved to be nicer to Second Aunt from now on; and to pray to her ancestors so that Second Aunt would find another husband, and have children to comfort her in her old age.
That night, she dreamt of Second Uncle.
He stood in some shadowy corridor, one hand feverishly sending instructions to the structure’s command nodes—speaking fast and in disjointed words, in a tone that he no doubt wanted to be reassuring. Thien Bao couldn’t make out his face—it was a dark blur against the shaking of the walls; but she felt the impact that collapsed everything, like a spike-punch through reality, strong enough to shatter her bones—and heard the brief burst of static, the silence falling on the coms, as he died.
The dream changed, after that. She was soaring above a green planet, watching two huge attack ships confronting one another. There was no telling who was the rebels and who was the Empire. With the clarity of dreams she knew that one ship was scanning the other for antimatter weapons; and that the other ship, who had none, was preparing pinhead bombs, in the hopes of breaching the hull at its one weak point. Below, on the planet—again, with that strange clarity—people as tiny as ants were evacuating, struggling to fit onto a few aged shuttles that would carry them no further than the minuscule moon above.
They didn’t matter—or, rather, they couldn’t be allowed to matter, not if the mission were to be accomplished. Somehow, in the dream, she knew this; that, even if she had been ordered to save them, she wouldn’t have been capable of it, wouldn’t have made the slightest difference.
She floated closer, unfurling iridescent wings as wide as the trail of a comet; and prepared to unleash her own weapons, to put an end to the fight.
The scene seemed to freeze and blur, disintegrating like a hundred water droplets on a pane of glass—each droplet was a character, one of the old fashioned ones from Old Earth that no one save elite scholars knew how to read—column upon column of incomprehensible words in a red as bright as the vermilion of imperial decrees, scrolling downwards until they filled her entire field of vision—and they, too, faded, until only a few words remained—and though they were still in the old script, she knew in her heart of hearts what they meant, from beginning to end.
Little sister, you are fated to be mine.
Mine.
And then the words were gone, and she woke up, shaking, in the embrace of her own cradle-bed.
There were four mindships, built in the finest workshops of the Empire, in a time when the numbered planets were scattered across dozens of solar systems—when court memorials reached the outer stations, and magistrates were posted in far-flung arms of the galaxy.
Four mindships; one for each cardinal direction, raised by the best scholars to be the pride of the Empire; their claimers of tribute from barbaric, inferior dominions; the showcase of their technological apex, beings of grace and beauty, as terrible to behold as any of the Eight Immortals.
After that, the dreams never stopped. They came irregularly—once a week, once a month—but they always came. In every one of them she was in a different place—above a planet, orbiting a moon, approaching a space station—and every time the war was in her dreams. In every dream she watched ships attack one another; soldiers fighting hand to hand in a desperate defense of a city’s street, their faces featureless, their uniforms in bloody tatters without insignia, impossible to differentiate. She scoured clean the surface of planets, rained war-kites on devastated temple complexes, disabled space domes’ weapons—and woke up, shivering, staring at the imprint of words she shouldn’t have been able to understand.
Mine.
Come to me, little sister. Come to me and put an end to all of this.
And yet; and yet, the war still went on.
By daylight, Mother and Second Aunt spoke in hushed tones of the fall of planets; of the collapse of orbitals; of the progress of rebel forces across the Empire—ever closer to the First Planet and the Purple Forbidden City.
“The Lily Empress will protect us,” Thien Bao said. “Won’t she?”
Mother shook her head, and said nothing. But later, when Thien Bao was playing The Battle for Indigo Mountain, her implants synched with the house’s entertainment center, she heard them—Grandmother, Mother, and Second Aunt, talking quietly among themselves in the kitchen around pork buns and tea. She froze the game into a thin, transparent layer over her field of vision, and crept closer to listen in.
“You should have said something,” Grandmother said.
“What do you want me to say?” Mother sounded tired; angry, but the scary kind of anger, the bone-deep one that lasted for days or months. “Everything would be a lie.”
“Then learn to lie,” Second Aunt said, drily. There was the sound of chewing: betel leaf and areca, the only luxury she’d allow herself. “For her sake.”
“You think I haven’t tried? She’s a bright child. She’ll figure it out the moment I open my mouth. Her wealthier schoolmates have all left, and she’s got to realize what a desert the city is becoming. Everyone is leaving.”
“I know,” Second Aunt said. “If we had the money . . . ”
Mother sighed, and got up to pour more tea into her fist-sized cup. There was no money, Thien Bao knew; all of Grandmother’s savings had gone into paying for the watered down food in the markets; for the rice mixed with blackened grit and ashes; for the fish sauce cut with brown coloring, which never tasted right no matter how much lime or sugar Thien Bao added to it.
Mother said, finally, “Money might not matter anymore soon. There’s word at the factories—that Magistrate Viec wants to evacuate.”
Silence; and then Grandmother, in a hushed voice, “They can’t—the rebel fleet is still not in the solar system, is it?”
“No,” Second Aunt said. “But it’s getting closer; and they have mindships. If they wanted to hit us, they could send those as advance scouts. Wouldn’t be enough to take the planet, but it would cost us much.”
“The magistrate said the Lily Empress will send her armies next month, after the end of the rainy season.” Mother’s voice was still uncertain.
“Ha,” Second Aunt said. “Maybe she will, maybe she won’t. But even if she did; do you truly believe that will be enough to save us, little sister? The armies are badly run, and overwhelmed as it is.”
Mother said, at last, “All we need is one victory. One message to tell the rebels that their advance stops here, at the Sixth Planet; that to go further into the Empire will cost them dearly. They’re overstretched, too, it wouldn’t take much to make them stop . . . ” Her voice was pleading.
“They might be overstretched,” Second Aunt said, and there was pity in her voice. “And you’re right. Maybe all it would take is a crushing victory; but we don’t have that within our grasp, and you know it.”
There was silence, then, as heavy as the air before the monsoon. Thien Bao turned back to her game; but it all seemed fake now, the units aligned on the artificial landscape, the battles where no one bled, which you could start, again and again, until you succeeded in the assigned mission—where no one ever felt fear like a fist of ice tightening in their guts; or the emptiness of loss, drawing closer with every passing hour.
In the first days of the war, the mindships were lost; their crews scattered by court decrees, recalled in haste to defend planets that had already fallen; their cradle pods neglected by the alchemists and programmers; their missions assigned irregularly, and then not at all.
One by one, they fell.
Golden Tortoise trying to evade pursuit by a vast rebel fleet, dove into deep spaces with an aged pilot as his only crew; and never re-emerged.
Azure Dragon went silent after the Battle of Huong He, plummeting downwards through the atmosphere in a shower of molten metal, her fragments peppering the burnt earth of the prefecture like so many seeds of grief.
White Unicorn completed the emergency evacuation of the Twelfth Planet, sustaining his
trembling star-drives well past the point of bursting. He landed, shaking, bleeding his guts in machine-oil and torn rivets; and never flew again.
And as for Vermillion Phoenix—the strongest, most capable of all four ships . . . she, too, stopped speaking on the Empire’s coms-channels; but her missions had been too well defined. She had been given leave to wage war on the Empire’s enemies; and in those days when the Empire tore itself apart and brother denounced brother, father slew son and daughter abandoned mother, who could have told who the enemies of the Empire were, anymore?
Vermillion Phoenix went rogue.
It took two months, in the end, for Magistrate Viec to give the evacuation order. By then, the rebel fleet had entered the solar system; and the first and second moons of the Sixth Planet had fallen. The army of the Empress retreated, its ships slowly growing larger in the sky, trailing the sickly green light of ruptured drives. The few soldiers the magistrate could spare oversaw the evacuation, their faces bored—most of their comrades were up above, fighting the last-ditch battle in the heavens.
Thien Bao stood in the huddle at the spaceport with her family; holding Grandmother’s hand while the old woman engaged in a spirited talk with Second Aunt and Mother, complaining about everything from the wait to the noise of their neighbors.
She watched the army ships through the windows—and the growing shadows of the rebel mindships, creeping closer and closer—and wondered when their own evacuation ships would be ready. Around her, people’s faces were tight, and they kept looking at the screens; at the queue that hadn’t moved; at the impassive faces of the militia.
Ahead was a floating palanquin: an odd sight, since such a thing could only belong to a high official; but those officials would have been able to jump to the front of the queue. Thien Bao tugged at Grandmother’s sleeve. “Grandmother?”
“Yes, child?” Grandmother didn’t even turn.
“Who’s in the palanquin?”
“Oh.” Grandmother’s gaze raked the palanquin from base to top, taking in the black lacquered exterior, embossed with golden birds; and the crane with spread wings atop the arched roof. “Probably Lady Oanh—you wouldn’t remember her, but she and your mother were members of the same poetry club, in the days before she withdrew from public life. Always an eccentric, that woman.” She frowned. “I thought she had a mindship of her own, though—funny seeing her here.”
“Lady Oanh?”
But Grandmother had already turned back to her conversation with Mother and Second Aunt.
Above, the army ships hadn’t moved; but Thien Bao could see the shapes of the rebel mindships more clearly, emerging from the deep spaces just long enough to power weapons. They were going to . . .
She knew it a fraction of a second before it happened—saw the corona of light filling the sky like an aurora above the poles—saw it spread in deathly silence, engulf the largest of the army ships—saw the ship shudder, and crack like an egg shell—the horrible thing was that it still held together, leaking a cloud of darkened fluids that spread across the surface of the sky—that it shuddered, again and again, but did not fall apart, though surely the life support systems had to be gone, with that kind of impact; though everyone onboard had to be dead, or dying, or worse . . .
In the silence that followed, a man screamed, his voice deep and resonant; and the crowd went mad.
Without warning, people pressed themselves closer to the docks; elbowing each other out of the way, sending others sprawling to the floor. Thien Bao found herself crushed against Grandmother, struggling to remain upright against the press—arms pushed against her, separating her from her family, and she was lost amidst unfamiliar faces, pushed and pulled until it was all she could do to stand upright; until it was all she could do to breathe—
The darkness at the edge of her field of vision descended; and the red characters of her dreams scrolled by, resolving themselves into the same, sharp, lapidary message.
Little sister. Call me. Call me, and put an end to this.
She hung in the darkness of space, the ion exhaust of her drives trailing behind her, opening like a vast fan; every part of her sharp, honed to a killing edge—a living weapon, carrying enough firepower to end it all, to make the rebel fleet cinders, to crack them open as they’d cracked open the army ship. All she had to do was call, reach out to the vast, dark part of herself that moved between the stars . . .
Someone grabbed her. Cold hands tightened on her shoulders, and pulled her upwards before she could stifle a scream; and it all went away, the sense of vastness; the red characters and the presence of something other than her in her own mind.
She sat in the darkness; it took her a moment to realize she was inside the palanquin, and that the slightly clearer form in front of her was an old woman.
Lady Oanh.
“Child,” the old woman said. Life-support wires trailed from every end of the palanquin, as though she sat on the center of a spider’s web. The skin of her face, in the dim light, had the pallor and thinness of wet rice paper; and her eyes were two pits of deeper darkness. “Anh’s and Nhu’s daughter, is it not? I was a friend of your mother; in a different lifetime.”
Everything was eerily silent: no noise from outside, no hint of the riot that had started on the docks—of course the palanquin would have the best ambiance systems, but the overall effect—that of hanging in the same bubble of artificially stilled time—made Thien Bao’s skin crawl. “Lady Oanh. Why—?”
Mother and Second Aunt would be freaking out; they’d always told her not to trust strangers; and here she was in the middle of a riot, stuck with someone who might or might not be a friend—but then why would Lady Oanh bother to kidnap her? She was a scholar, a public figure; or had been, once. Nevertheless . . . Thien Bao reached into her feed, and activated the location loop—she’d sworn to Mother she was a grown up and didn’t need it any longer, and now she was glad Mother hadn’t listened to her.
The old woman smiled, an expression that did not reach into her eyes. “You would prefer to be outside? Trust me, it is much safer here.” A feed blinked in the lower left-hand corner of Thien Bao’s vision, asking for her permission to be displayed. She granted it; and saw outside.
The palanquin floated on its repulsive field, cutting a swathe through the press of people. Thien Bao knew she wouldn’t have lasted a moment out there, that she’d have been mown down as others sought to reach the shuttles before her. But still . . .
Lady Oanh’s voice was quiet, but firm. “You looked set to be trampled by the mob.”
“You didn’t have to—”
“No,” Lady Oanh said. “You’re right. I didn’t.”
How old was she? Thien Bao wondered. How long did it take for skin to become this pale; for eyes to withdraw this deep into the face, as if she stood on the other side of death already? And did all of it, this aging, this putting death at bay, confer any of the wisdom of Thien Bao’s ancestors?
“A riot is no place for freezing,” Lady Oanh said. “Though in someone your age, it can possibly be excused.”
She hadn’t noticed the trance then; or that anything was wrong. Then again, why should she? She was certainly wise with her years, but wisdom was not omniscience. “I’m sorry,” Thien Bao said. But she remembered the sense of vastness; the coiled power within her. If it was real; if it wasn’t dreams; if she could somehow answer . . .
Call me, little sister. Let us put an end to all this.
Thien Bao said, “Grandmother said—you had a mindship—”
Lady Oanh laughed; genuinely amused it seemed. “The Carp that Leapt Over the Stream? It seemed senseless to hoard her services. She’s part of the fleet that will evacuate her. That’s where we’re going, in fact.”
Lady Oanh’s eyes focused on something beyond Thien Bao, and she nodded. “I’ll send a message to notify your kin that I’m helping you onboard a ship. That should alleviate their worries.”
If they didn’t all die first from rebel fire
; if the remaining army ship held—if if if . . .
A gentle rocking, indicating the palanquin was moving forward again—to the waiting ships, to safety—except that there was no safety, not anywhere. Outside, the remaining army ship was trying to contain the rebel mindships; shuddering, its hull pitted and cracked. From time to time, a stray shot would hit the spacesport’s shields, and the entire structure around them would shudder, but it held, it still held.
But for how long?
“I hate them,” Thien Bao said.
“Who? The rebels?” Lady Oanh’s gaze was sharp. “It’s as much the fault of the Court as theirs, child. If the Great Virtue Emperor and the Lily Empress hadn’t been weak, more concerned with poetry than with their armies; if their officials hadn’t encouraged them, repeating that nonsense about adherence to virtue being the only safeguard the Empire needed . . . ”
To hear her, so casually criticizing the Empress—but then Second Aunt and Mother had done the same. “I wish . . . ” Thien Bao sounded childish, she knew; like a toddler denied a threat. “I wish someone were strong enough to stop the rebel armies. To kill them once and for all.”
Lady Oanh’s face did not move, but she shook her head. “Be careful, child.”
How could wanting peace be a bad thing? She understood nothing, that old, pampered woman who didn’t have to fight through the crowd, who didn’t live with fear in her belly, with the litany of the family dead in her mind—
“Killing is easy,” Lady Oanh said. “But that has never stopped the devastation of war.”
“It would be a start,” Thien Bao said, defiantly.
“Perhaps,” Lady Oanh said. She shook her head. “It would take a great show of strength from the Empire to stop them, and this is something we’re incapable of, at the present time. The seeds of our defeat were in place long before the war, I fear; and—”
She never finished her sentence. Thien Bao saw nothing; but something struck the shields, wringing them dry like wet laundry; and going past them, a network of cracks and fissures spreading throughout the pillars of the spaceport and the huge glass windows.
