Galactic Empires

by Neil Clarke

  “There’s no indication of derelict kites here,” she added. “Or even kites in use, other than this one.”

  “It’s a starting place, that’s all,” the ghost said.

  “We’re going to have to risk a station eventually. You might not need to eat, but I do.” She had only been able to sneak a few rations out of base. It was tempting to nibble at one now.

  “Perhaps there are stores on the kite.”

  “I can’t help but think this place is a trap.”

  “You have to eat sooner or later,” the ghost said reasonably. “It’s worth a look, and I don’t want to see you go hungry.” At her hesitation, it added, “I’ll stand watch here. I’m only a breath away.”

  This didn’t reassure her as much as it should have, but she was no longer a child in a bunk precisely aligned with the walls, clutching the covers while the ghost told her her people’s stories. She reminded herself of her favorite story, in which a single sentinel kept away the world’s last morning by burning out her eyes, and set out.

  Lisse felt the ghostweight’s pull the farther away she walked, but that was old pain, and easily endured. Lights flicked on to accompany her, diffuse despite her unnaturally sharp shadow, then started illuminating passages ahead of her, guiding her footsteps. She wondered what the kite didn’t want her to see.

  Rations were in an unmarked storage room. She wouldn’t have been certain about the rations, except that they were, if the packaging was to be believed, field category 72: better than what she had eaten on training exercises, but not by much. No surprise, now that she thought about it: from all accounts, the mercenaries had relied on their masters’ production capacity.

  Feeling ridiculous, she grabbed two rations and retraced her steps. The fact that the kite lit her exact path only made her more nervous.

  “Anything new?” she asked the ghost. She tapped the ration. “It’s a pity that you can’t taste poison.”

  The ghost laughed dryly. “If the kite were going to kill you, it wouldn’t be that subtle. Food is food, Lisse.”

  The food was as exactingly mediocre as she had come to expect from military food. At least it was not any worse. She found a receptacle for disposal afterward, then laid out a Scorch tableau, Candle Column to Bone, right to left. Cards rather than jerengjen, because she remembered the scuttling hound-jerengjen with creeping distaste.

  From the moment she left Base 87, one timer had started running down. The devastation of Ishuel’s Bridge had begun another, the important one. She wasn’t gambling her survival; she had already sold it. The question was, how many Imperial bases could she extinguish on her way out? And could she hunt down any of the mercenaries that had been the Imperium’s killing sword?

  Lisse sorted rapidly through possible targets. For instance, Base 226 Mheng, the Petaled Fortress. She would certainly perish in the attempt, but the only way she could better that accomplishment would be to raze the Imperial firstworld, and she wasn’t that ambitious. There was Bridge-point 663 Tsi-Kes, with its celebrated Pallid Sentinels, or Aerie 8 Yeneq, which built the Imperium’s greatest flyers, or—

  She set the cards down, closed her eyes, and pressed her palms against her face. She was no tactician supreme. Would it make much difference if she picked a card at random?

  But of course nothing was truly random in the ghost’s presence.

  She laid out the Candle Column again. “Not 8 Yeneq,” she said. “Let’s start with a softer target. Aerie 586 Chiu.”

  Lisse looked at the ghost: the habit of seeking its approval had not left her. It nodded. “The safest approach is via the Capillary Ashways. It will test your piloting skills.”

  Privately, Lisse thought that the kite would be happy to guide itself. They didn’t dare allow it to, however.

  The Capillaries were among the worst of the ashways. Even starlight moved in unnerving ways when faced with ancient networks of voidcur-rent gates, unmaintained for generations, or vortices whose behavior changed day by day.

  They were fortunate with the first several capillaries. Under other circumstances, Lisse would have gawked at the splendor of lensed galaxies and the jewel-fire of distant clusters. She was starting to manipulate the control interface without hesitating, or flinching as though a wolf’s shadow might cross hers.

  At the ninth—

  “Patrol,” the ghost said, leaning close.

  She nodded jerkily, trying not to show that its proximity pained her. Its mouth crimped in apology.

  “It would have been worse if we’d made it all the way to 586 Chiu without a run-in,” Lisse said. That kind of luck always had a price. If she was unready, best to find out now, while there was a chance of fleeing to prepare for a later strike.

  The patrol consisted of sixteen flyers: eight Lance 82s and eight Scout 73s. She had flown similar Scouts in simulation.

  The flyers did not hesitate. A spread of missiles streaked toward her. Lisse launched antimissile fire.

  It was impossible to tell whether they had gone on the attack because the Imperium and the mercenaries had parted on bad terms, or because the authorities had already learned of what had befallen Rhaion. She was certain couriers had gone out within moments of the devastation of Ishuel’s Bridge.

  As the missiles exploded, Lisse wrenched the kite toward the nearest vortex. The kite was a larger and sturdier craft. It would be better able to survive the voidcurrent stresses. The tapestries dimmed as they approached. She shut off haptics as wind eddied and swirled in the command spindle. It would only get worse.

  One missile barely missed her. She would have to do better. And the vortex was a temporary terrain advantage; she could not lurk there forever.

  The second barrage came. Lisse veered deeper into the current. The stars took on peculiar roseate shapes.

  “They know the kite’s capabilities,” the ghost reminded her. “Use them. If they’re smart, they’ll already have sent a courier burst to local command.”

  The kite suggested jerengjen flyers, harrier class. Lisse conceded its expertise.

  The harriers unfolded as they launched, sleek and savage. They maneuvered remarkably well in the turbulence. But there were only ten of them.

  “If I fire into that, I’ll hit them,” Lisse said. Her reflexes were good, but not that good, and the harriers apparently liked to soar near their targets.

  “You won’t need to fire,” the ghost said.

  She glanced at him, disbelieving. Her hand hovered over the controls, playing through possibilities and finding them wanting. For instance, she wasn’t certain that the firebird (explosives) didn’t entail self-immolation, and she was baffled by the stag.

  The patrol’s pilots were not incapable. They scorched three of the harriers. They probably realized at the same time that Lisse did that the three had been sacrifices. The other seven flensed them silent.

  Lisse edged the kite out of the vortex. She felt an uncomfortable sense of duty to the surviving harriers, but she knew they were one-use, crumpled paper, like all jerengjen. Indeed, they folded themselves flat as she passed them, reducing themselves to battledrift.

  “I can’t see how this is an efficient use of resources,” Lisse told the ghost.

  “It’s an artifact of the mercenaries’ methods,” it said. “It works. Perhaps that’s all that matters.”

  Lisse wanted to ask for details, but her attention was diverted by a crescendo of turbulence. By the time they reached gentler currents, she was too tired to bring it up.

  They altered their approach to 586 Chiu twice, favoring stealth over confrontation. If she wanted to char every patrol in the Imperium by herself, she could live a thousand sleepless years and never be done.

  For six days they lurked near 586 Chiu, developing a sense for local traffic and likely defenses. Terrain would not be much difficulty. Aeries were built near calm, steady currents.

  “It would be easiest if you were willing to take out the associated city,” the ghost said in a neutral voice. Th
ey had been discussing whether making a bombing pass on the aerie posed too much of a risk. Lisse had balked at the fact that 586 Chiu Second City was well within blast radius. The people who had furnished the kite’s armaments seemed to have believed in surfeit. “They’d only have a moment to know what was happening.”

  “No.”

  “Lisse—”

  She looked at it mutely, obdurate, although she hated to disappoint it. It hesitated, but did not press its case further.

  “This, then,” it said in defeat. “Next best odds: aim the voidcurrent disrupter at the manufactory’s core while jerengjen occupy the defenses.” Aeries held the surrounding current constant to facilitate the calibration of newly built flyers. Under ordinary circumstances, the counterbalancing vortex was leashed at the core. If they could disrupt the core, the vortex would tear at its surroundings.

  “That’s what we’ll do, then,” Lisse said. The disrupter had a short range. She did not like the idea of flying in close. But she had objected to the safer alternative.

  Aerie 586 Chiu reminded Lisse not of a nest but of a pyre. Flyers and transports were always coming and going, like sparks. The kite swooped in sharp and fast. Falcon-jerengjen raced ahead of them, holding lattice formation for two seconds before scattering toward their chosen marks.

  The aerie’s commanders responded commendably. They knew the kite was by far the greater threat. But Lisse met the first flight they threw at her with missiles keen and terrible. The void lit up in a clamor of brilliant colors.

  The kite screamed when a flyer salvo hit one of its secondary wings. It bucked briefly while the other wings changed their geometry to compensate. Lisse could not help but think that the scream had not sounded like pain. It had sounded like exultation.

  The real test was the gauntlet of Banner 142 artillery emplacements. They were silver-bright and terrible. It seemed wrong that they did not roar like tigers. Lisse bit the inside of her mouth and concentrated on narrowing the parameters for the voidcurrent disrupter. Her hand was a fist on the control panel.

  One tapestry depicted the currents: striations within striations of pale blue against black. Despite its shielding, the core was visible as a knot tangled out of all proportion to its size.

  “Now,” the ghost said, with inhuman timing.

  She didn’t wait to be told twice. She unfisted her hand.

  Unlike the wolf-strike, the disrupter made the kite scream again. It lurched and twisted. Lisse wanted to clap her hands over her ears, but there was more incoming fire, and she was occupied with evasive maneuvers. The kite folded in on itself, minimizing its profile. It dizzied her to view it on the secondary tapestry. For a panicked moment, she thought the kite would close itself around her, press her like petals in a book. Then she remembered to breathe.

  The disrupter was not visible to human sight, but the kite could read its effect on the current. Like lightning, the disrupter’s blast forked and forked again, zigzagging inexorably toward the minute variations in flux that would lead it toward the core.

  She was too busy whipping the kite around to an escape vector to see the moment of convergence between disrupter and core. But she felt the first lashing surge as the vortex spun free of its shielding, expanding into available space. Then she was too busy steadying the kite through the triggered subvortices to pay attention to anything but keeping them alive.

  Only later did she remember how much debris there had been, flung in newly unpredictable ways: wings torn from flyers, struts, bulkheads, even an improbable crate with small reddish fruit tumbling from the hole in its side.

  Later, too, it would trouble her that she had not been able to keep count of the people in the tumult. Most were dead already: sliced slantwise, bone and viscera exposed, trailing banners of blood; others twisted and torn, faces ripped off and cast aside like unwanted masks, fingers uselessly clutching the wrack of chairs, tables, door frames. A fracture in one wall revealed three people in dark green jackets. They turned their faces toward the widening crack, then clasped hands before a subvortex hurled them apart. The last Lisse saw of them was two hands, still clasped together and severed at the wrist.

  Lisse found an escape. Took it.

  She didn’t know until later that she had destroyed 40% of the aerie’s structure. Some people survived. They knew how to rebuild.

  What she never found out was that the disrupter’s effect was sufficiently long-lasting that some of the survivors died of thirst before supplies could safely be brought in.

  In the old days, Lisse’s people took on the ghostweight to comfort the dead and be comforted in return. After a year and a day, the dead unstitched themselves and accepted their rest.

  After Jerengjen Day, Lisse’s people struggled to share the sudden increase in ghostweight, to alleviate the flickering terror of the massacred.

  Lisse’s parents, unlike the others, stitched a ghost onto a child.

  “They saw no choice,” the ghost told her again and again. “You mustn’t blame them.”

  The ghost had listened uncomplainingly to her troubles and taught her how to cry quietly so the teachers wouldn’t hear her. It had soothed her to sleep with her people’s legends and histories, described the gardens and promenades so vividly she imagined she could remember them herself. Some nights were more difficult than others, trying to sleep with that strange, stabbing, heartpulse ache. But blame was not what she felt, not usually.

  The second target was Base 454 Qo, whose elite flyers were painted with elaborate knotwork, green with bronze-tipped thorns. For reasons that Lisse did not try to understand, the jerengjen dismembered the defensive flight but left the painted panels completely intact.

  The third, the fourth, the fifth—she started using Scorch card values to tabulate the reported deaths, however unreliable the figures were in any unencrypted sources. For all its talents, the kite could not pierce military-grade encryption. She spent two days fidgeting over this inconvenience so she wouldn’t have to think about the numbers.

  When she did think about the numbers, she refused to round up. She refused to round down.

  The nightmares started after the sixth, Bridgepoint 977 Ja-Esh. The station commander had kept silence, as she had come to expect. However, a merchant coalition had broken the interdict to plead for mercy in fourteen languages. She hadn’t destroyed the coalition’s outpost. The station had, in reprimand.

  She reminded herself that the merchant would have perished anyway. She had learned to use the firebird to scathing effect. And she was under no illusions that she was only destroying Imperial soldiers and bureaucrats.

  In her dreams she heard their pleas in her birth tongue, which the ghost had taught her. The ghost, for its part, started singing her to sleep, as it had when she was little.

  The numbers marched higher. When they broke ten million, she plunged out of the command spindle and into the room she had claimed for her own. She pounded the wall until her fists bled. Triumph tasted like salt and venom. It wasn’t supposed to be so easy. In the worst dreams, a wolf roved the tapestries, eating shadows—eating souls. And the void with its tinsel of worlds was nothing but one vast shadow.

  Stores began running low after the seventeenth. Lisse and the ghost argued over whether it was worth attempting to resupply through black market traders. Lisse said they didn’t have time to spare, and won. Besides, she had little appetite.

  Intercepted communications suggested that someone was hunting them. Rumors and whispers. They kept Lisse awake when she was so tired she wanted to slam the world shut and hide. The Imperium certainly planned reprisal. Maybe others did, too.

  If anyone else took advantage of the disruption to move against the Imperium for their own reasons, she didn’t hear about it.

  The names of the war-kites, recorded in the Imperium’s administrative language, are varied: Fire Burns the Spider Black. The Siege of the City with Seventeen Faces. Sovereign Geometry. The Glove with Three Fingers.

  The names are not,
strictly speaking, Imperial. Rather, they are plundered from the greatest accomplishments of the cultures that the mercenaries have defeated on the Imperium’s behalf. Fire Burns the Spider Black was a silk tapestry housed in the dark hall of Meu Danh, ancient of years. The Siege of the City with Seventeen Faces was a saga chanted by the historians of Kwaire. Sovereign Geometry discussed the varying nature of parallel lines. And more: plays, statues, games.

  The Imperium’s scholars and artists take great pleasure in reinterpreting these works. Such achievements are meant to be disseminated, they say.

  ·

  They were three days’ flight from the next target, Base 894 Sao, when the shadow winged across all the tapestries. The void was dark, pricked by starfire and the occasional searing burst of particles. The shadow singed everything darker as it soared to intercept them, as single-minded in its purpose as a bullet. For a second she almost thought it was a collage of wrecked flyers and rusty shrapnel.

  The ghost cursed. Lisse startled, but when she looked at it, its face was composed again.

  As Lisse pulled back the displays’ focus to get a better sense of the scale, she thought of snowbirds and stormbirds, winter winds and cutting beaks. “I don’t know what that is,” she said, “but it can’t be natural.” None of the imperial defenses had manifested in such a fashion.

  “It’s not,” the ghost said. “That’s another war-kite.”

  Lisse cleared the control panel. She veered them into a chancy void-current eddy.

  The ghost said, “Wait. You won’t outrun it. As we see its shadow, it sees ours.”

  “How does a kite have a shadow in the void in the first place?” she asked. “And why haven’t we ever seen our own shadow?”

  “Who can see their own soul?” the ghost said. But it would not meet her eyes.

  Lisse would have pressed for more, but the shadow overtook them. It folded itself back like a plumage of knives. She brought the kite about. The control panel suggested possibilities: a two-headed dragon, a falcon, a coiled snake. Next a wolf reared up, but she quickly pulled her hand back.