I made my sail to save some lives
Between the bands of heaven.
The ghosts from comfort watched me fly
Gave honor to my mission.
In moons of grey and rings of gold
We dreamt of new beginnings.
Now ends have come and ends I make
To save lives now through murder.
–Citizen-Sailor, Qiroeen Nasuthul Rolaad
CE2032/NC687
His older sister is on return from crèche for five days when their mother wakes them both in the dead of night. It’s a memory that sticks still. They shared a room, him and his older sister, because her room had been given over to their grandfather. His sister didn’t need a permanent place anymore – she was at crèche, and after she already had a marriage. So she stayed in his room and he loved it, because it was his sister, and she was home.
Their mother wakes them up by brushing her fingers through their hair. He’s sleeping with his older sister: Tan-ifriid has her arms around him. He’s three years old. She’s twelve.
“My babies,” his mother says. He can still remember the pattern of her phos. His mother always had hers under control, never more than just a gentle rhythm of lights. Calm and gentle as she was. That night, when he opens his eyes, he doesn’t recognize her, not immediately. The feeling – it still twists his chest when he remembers it – it’s his mother’s face, but it’s not her phos. Under her skin, her blue-green blush is frothing and rapid, churning from chin to forehead.
It makes him cry, immediately. He remembers the feeling, how his room went blurry. He can remember the way the greenish light coming through the windows made everything strange. Tan-ifriid said something to their mother, something he doesn’t remember, because he’s sure he never heard it at the time. He remembers only being carried by his sister, their mother still brushing her long fingers through his long hair, whispering wordless nothings.
He can’t stop crying. She looks so strange. It’s making him panic and he doesn’t even know why.
He knows now, of course. Later, when he is older and on crèche and took biology classes, he understood what spooked his younger self so much. Phos is how you communicate with babies, something that can dig into that old, instinctual bits of the brain. The lights bind mother to infant, the patterns match face and voice. They’re your ghost, pressed to the surface, soul-under-skin, the truest expression a saehara can give.
He realized he was crying because his mother was terrified.
Tan-ifriid carried him outside, where the rest of the family was gathering, from the other homes in the household. His father brings up a boat in the canal. Its sodium lamp is harsh and yellow compared to the worldshine. That’s an image that’s burned into his mind. He’s looking over Tan-ifriid’s shoulder. He can feel his mother’s hand on his back. His father has the boat in the canal and Oron’s rings are across all the horizon. Julshyri-kye etches its shape against them, the city’s towers and subsumed mountain eating up and into the dull rainbow bands. The Oron is peeking just above the highest towers, the big bloated world half in shadow.
When he pictures it, he can smell the saltwater and feel the burn in his throat from crying. His nephew painted him a picture from the old house once of that exact view. He still has a scan of it.
It’s the day they have to leave their household. The whole Casuthal clan, moving inland. He never went back to his room in their old home. His father went back with the uncles, supervised by his grandmother, years later to pack up and bring the important things. Photo albums. Documents. Clothes. Mementos.
He’s never been back. His sister, Tan-ifriid, took over the household when their mother died and started to fill it again with children and cousins and life. Much of the rest of the Casuthal family stayed out in the country where they ended up after that night. He went to crèche, he went to apprentice at the Forge, he spent his days working with precision microelectronics and superconductor theory instead of thinking about his family, like he ought to have.
He went to the stars instead.
“You’re going to die up there,” she told him, the last time he saw her. He was sixteen, an idiot, and she had just had her first baby. His first niece. Then she showed him the statue she carved of him and said when it broke, she’d know he’d died and she would have remember to include him in her prayers to their ancestors. He’d said something clubjumping like what his favorite incense was and what kind of snacks he’d prefer. She cuffed him for that, the blade of her hand as sharp as their mother’s. It was a nice kind of nostalgia, rubbing his sore shoulder.
It’s why there is a particular déjà vu when Sidhtrien shakes him awake in his narrow bunk.
He’s pulling on his pants before his feet even drifted to the cold, cold tile floor. Sidhtrien wordlessly passes him the deflated condom of a pressure suit. The other saehara’s phos is going furious, shocking bright ripples across his cheeks and up lines to under his short-cut hair. Just like his mother’s had.
“’Thivu, huh?”
There isn’t much other reason to wake him up like this. There are enough citizen-sailors around the complex that his own particular talents at wiring and crawling around conduits isn’t so in demand.
“You’ve got five minutes, Irosiid. Sorry, kid. Not my fault you’re holed up down here.”
Five minutes. Sidhtrien, after that apology, kicked up the ladder and out of sight. Five minutes. His nephew’s painting of his old home, that’s off the plaster-coated wall with a snap of adhesive. His toolkit’s already policed up, so he tosses that into the air and while it’s still drifting toward the apex of its arc, yanks open his locker. He ignores clothes that are stuffed into webbing pouches, going instead for a handful of harddisks and a knife. Down comes his toolkit and he catches it on his knee, balancing the ten kilo box like it’s nothing. One handed, he flips clasps and pops the top, stuffing the disks, his knife, his nephew’s painting in.
He doesn’t own anything else. Sidhtrien said five minutes. Irosiid needed forty seconds.
…
Vanam, tiny moonlet that it was, never had any great importance in the adventurous years of Pact exploration. A bare fraction of the homeworld’s gravity makes it only slightly more pleasant than constant microgravity and the ice-dust composition that accounts for the majority of the lumpen mass leaves it bereft of mineral wealth when compared to the fabulous wealth of the Iyyesian moons.
No, Vanam had been and still is a ‘backwater’ of the system. Ironic that the end comes here. Bitter, too, to have lost all the other moons, all the rest of the grand sweep of the fatherworld’s rings. Driven back and back, back and back again until only a handful of ships survive, patched and battered and thirsty for helium and reactant-mass. Irosiid has been through several of them, working his trade with other engineers and electrical technicians.
Vinnenos is one of the perched vessels he knows exceptionally well. That cruiser docked weeks ago, coming down in the soft sooty snow of the crater. A run-in with a Reach destroyer a million miles away left laser burns down its flanks, peeling back reflective coatings and searing through the thin skin of the refit vessel. Issbrechi-class were made to be freighters – to haul equipment and supplies, people and material between the burgeoning outposts beyond the motherworld. They were never made to fight, for in the days of the Pact, there had only been dreams of peace and exploration.
Now Vinnenos sits with her remaining siblings. He plans to board her, as there have been no commands to the contrary. Everyone is moving and no one is giving orders beyond ‘find an open spot.’ There are no windows in the cramped corridors, but Irosiid has been outside since the Soshan Wing came down. Another seven Issbrechi – the last of the last. All of the hubristically termed ‘Pact Navy’, anchored down with pitons and tension wiring, bows pointed up at the fatherworld’s rings. None of the ships have what could be considered a full crew. Count in the five hundred, give or take a dozen, that have made it to Vanam as other outposts fell, and there will still be room to spare.
He names the ships, he names them all in his head, as he sidles past other bustling saehara. Everyone is in motion. The Reach is coming. Like him, they carry little satchels of belongings. This facility is going to be a glowing hole in the moonlet in little time. There’s nowhere to go now but home.
Vinnenos. Starlight. Domasti and Arbod, Ringrunner and Target Practice. Antetumi and Sokrach. It’s more than he’s seen in one place at a time. Combined them with the last surviving Akanowyre-class ECM frigate – Mind’s Eye – and the three Quao Lys-class tenders and they all mass just about as much as a single Reach Nufengr-class cruiser. A single cruiser. The Lunar Campaigns were always a dream, but a good one. A pretty one, that Irosiid thought he’d die for. Tan-ifriid thought so too, but the irony was that she sat with their ancestors now while he carried a cracked statuette on a thong that never left his neck.
There’s a tremble, slight, but enough to feel through the soles of his feet. Something is taking off. He knows the feeling. It’s a building grumble, low-to-high. Not sharp and immediate, like impacts would be. Wherever the Reach are, they aren’t in range yet, or they don’t have sightlines. Someone is taking off. The rumble continues. Maybe two someones.
…
It’s Vinnenos and Starlight. The former, as Irosiid knows well, is still a mess. Just about the only thing left in good condition is reactor containment. It’s holed through; incapable of pressurization and snaking lines of conduits run through the interior, taped down. Its electricals are a mess. There it goes, along with Starlight of the lately arrived Soshan Wing. He peers up, open mouthed behind his gold-tinted visor. There’s no sound. Vanam, around him, is white and grey and shadows dance. The big thruster bells on the two Issbrechi are just points of light now, but full burn is enough to light up this side of the moonlet. He sends well wishes to both crew. They have to be pulling multiple gs.
The other six Issbrechi are casting off lines and fuel hawsers. Domasti is the most recognizable. Of course it is. Everyone knows Commodore ‘Inghara’s command.
It’s the ship that’s flashed phos at the Reach for years. It’s the ship that ran to the sun and traded shots with an Assursan and lived to tell the tale. It has the red markings of a Kashoross-class destroyer on it; a solo kill. When Irosiid was leaving the motherworld behind, his nieces and nephews liked to recreate that ambush with wooden toys. It was what he assured his sister with. The mettle of the Navy.
He’s looking at it right now. Domasti – ‘Heavenbound’, in classic yawayn. Heavenbound. There’s so much arrogance in that name it almost reeks but the ship and its captain prove the better for it. Imagine flying a warship named Heavenbound through the rings. Sending alien invaders down into death, in the rings. Irosiid was raised Itrinisyi, like most everyone in Julshyri. The name borders sacrilege.
There’s honoring the ghosts and then there’s daring them.
He’s not sure which Domasti is doing or the Commodore ‘Inghara. Maybe both. The rings were proven to be rock and ice and not the glowing river of Heavenly Houses long ago, but it tempts chastisement to be so bold about it.
The cruiser doesn’t look like much. Like the others of the model line, Domasti has a long, blocky primary hull. Rotary cannons sprout here and there, welded in and jury-rigged long after its launching but no less deadly for it. Sitting thrust-down, the fat toroid of reactor containment caps off the blocky hull, filling the space between the main fuselage and the thick bulb of the cruiser’s engine. Whipple layers, radiation sinks and fiber-woven armoring wrap thick around the reactor, protecting the most precious and delicate of technologies from first the harsh realities of hypervelocity impacts and more lately the danger of maliciously aimed slugs of tungsten.
Someone painted garish and bold taeshun stripes coiling down the back half of Domasti, but they’re slashed and scorched and half covered by freshly unrolled and re-tacked strips of shielding. She has scars, the old ship. The Commodore ‘Inghara used to sail her as Search and Rescue, responding to reactor leaks and battery faults and lifting stuck equipment.
Irosiid realizes he’s gawking. People elbow past him, loping in bounds in the fractional gravity. No one is empty handed, but no one is burdened. With Vinnenos going out to die, he’s on the backfoot. Plans made ten minutes ago upended.
“You!”
He’s been seen.
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Specialty?”
The saehara advancing on him has their visor down like everyone else; keeping out the sun’s hard radiation, but her voice is sharp and clear over proximity comms. Accented, too. Prettily accented – chairiyish, maybe. He smiles, like an idiot, because he has his gold visor down.
“Electrical engineering and maintenance.”
“You good at it?”
It’s a silly question. No one out here is bad at their jobs.
“Decent,” he replies. Tan-ifriid always said humility was more attractive.
“Get on Domasti,” she says, gesturing a gloved finger pointlessly. Everyone knows which ship it is. “Step sprightly, sailor.”
Irosiid taps knuckle to visor, dipping his head. She’s past and shouting at another knot of uncertain sailors, sending them over to Ringrunner. There’s a knot of citizen-sailors at Domasti’s dropped ladder. Aft entry for an Issbrechi is cramped and in higher gs, an annoying climb. The converted freighters were made to land belly-down, to on- and off-load their cargo of soilmovers and tunnelers easier.
Belly-landings took longer to get up and going. No one has done those since the war started. Irosiid jostles a position in line, craning his neck up the hundred-meter length of the cruiser towering over him, the others. Through his pressure suit, he presses against his sister’s totem. Don’t let Heavenbound be a prediction, he asks her. He misses her, but not that much. Not yet.
…
Irosiid is buckling into a couch when bombardment starts. At first, he doesn’t notice the vibrations, muted as they are against the feel of a ship coming online. Domasti is testing vector control and the frame of the ship is lightly shivering as first exhaust clears the main bell. But these new vibrations are irregular, random, higher and lower intensity and he hasn’t spent the last eight years aboard ships without learning to recognize what should and shouldn’t be felt.
He’s in a passenger bay, where scientists and bold colonists once filled the couches as they floated out toward newborn science stations and mines. Now it’s full of saehara in stained and patched and battered pressure suits, wearily going through the motions of belting themselves in. He glances along the rows, seeing most of the couches full. Each row is aligned facing ‘up’. Their backs are to the engines. Vanam’s slight gravity makes this orientation a lot more comfortable than on other moons. A sailor climbs past them, pulling themselves up an integrated ladder one-handed.
“Triple check! Check your neighbors! If they’re loose, you die too!”
The saehara next to him, older than he is, notices the odd shaking of the ship too. In contrast to Irosiid, he stiffens and snaps his head around, phos suddenly flaring bright and uncontrolled across his exposed face and neck. They all have their helmets off, locked down between their feet. They’ll run internal atmosphere if possible, getting as much scrubber time as possible before having to move to bottles.
“Easy up,” Irosiid mutters, leaning to nudge the man with his shoulder. “Put your feet flat on the deck.”
The other saehara looks bewildered, so Irosiid demonstrates, flexing his long arch and forcing his heel down to contact the deck. It’s metal grate, rugged and durable, and like this, he can feel the distant shocks of impacts better. It’s translated up from the regolith to the gear, to the hull of the ship. The couches mute the sensation some.
The other man follows him, adopting the unnatural posture.
“Feel that? It’s distant. They’re hitting the other side of the moon.”
“How do you know that?”
“Arrenglas, two years ago.” He offers his palm. “Irosiid, Specialist: Engineering/Electric.”
“Vailec, Specialist: Rocketry. You were at Arrenglas?”
Vailec is still pale, his phos unsettled. He’s pretty sure Vailec is older than he is, but if he’d never been down in the dust when the Reach came, he can understand the anxiety. Arrenglas – he still thought of himself as ‘Before’ and ‘After’ that moon.
“For all of it. You can tell how far the hits are by how – hard to explain – how rounded it feels.” He raps his knuckles off the shaped plastic and cushion-packed armrest of his couch, in time with one of moonquakes. “Closer and it’s sharper. It’s a smack instead of a boom.”
Vailec shuts his eyes, lips tense, focusing.
“…that so?”
“Trust me. Vanam’s small. They’re hitting the other side; this is just moonquakes coming through.”
The moonlet is two hundred kilometers on its long side, lumpy and too small to round itself out. He isn’t as sure as he made it seem to Vailec, but both Vinnenos and Starlight launched cleanly. If the enemy has an angle over the horizon, both would have been punched shortly after launching. More – all the Issbrechi poke up above the rim of the crater. That is part of why they came down, thrust-first. They are too long to all fit in the crater belly-down.
“Arrenglas, you said?”
It isn’t a memory he wants to sail down. He nods, all he’s willing to offer further, buckling down the last of his straps and cinching tight across his chest.
“Did you-“
“Check your webbing,” Irosiid cuts him off. “We’ll be taking off soon.”
…
They are chasing home. Vanam occupies a slot among the dancing moons on the far periphery of Oron’s endless ring system. The motherworld is running away from them, in a lower and faster band, already one hundred and seventy degrees away on the local plane and swinging farther. If they had fuel to burn, it would be faster to circuit the long way and come toward Iyyestil on a conjunction track. Cancel out the velocity inherited from Vanam and be like Ikkan, the Rogue Moon, sailing retrograde. The deceleration to match Iyyestil’s orbit would be painful but doable.
The Reach doesn’t want the Soshan Wing to get home. They swept in from Vanam’s trail, blocking off the quicker way home. They want it to be a chase, a long chase, after the homeworld that is running away from them all. In the long run, the Reach has the upper hand. Their ships are faster and they have the benefit of gravity manipulation. Their crew don’t have to suffer through suffocating high-g burns. Their crew can walk and sleep and shit and feel only jostles as inertial vectors safely buffer out through tech-sinks. The Commodore ‘Inghara once tried to capture a Reach ship, to haul the secrets of cilayd, of neutronium, back to the home Forges.
The Reach has a standing order to scuttle all ships in danger of boarding.
Vinnenos and Starlight behind them are expanding clouds of vapor and metallic shards. The two ships bought the Soshan Wing time to light engines and escape, at the obvious and expected cost of all souls aboard. Two Issbrechi against a wing of destroyers and a cruiser? Brave, heroic: futile. Irosiid watched tracks right after they launched, as the Soshan Wing was struggling to build up inertia. At long range, the Reach wing fired hunter-killer missiles. Down here, in the colonist bay, there are screens set up, mirroring displays seen by the ship’s command crew. The Commodore likes for everyone to be involved. To understand what is happening. No one should die without knowing why, or how, he is said to believe. It’s surprising sentimentality and Irosiid isn’t sure he wouldn’t prefer for his step from the lands of the living to the ghostbridge to come on him unforeseen.
He can’t take his eyes away from the screens. They show the Soshan Wing, all remaining ships. Six Issbrechi. Three Quao Lys. One Akanowyre. They show the tracks of the coming Reach wing, as best as can be extrapolated. Electronic warfare is hot and screaming, trying to blank their sensors. This is why Vinnenos and Starlight saved them. The hunter-killer missiles, flung out from the Reach ships, would have sprinted out of a morass of radar jamming. Vinnenos painted the missiles, relaying back to Domasti and the ships of the Soshan Wing their vectors. Starlight did her best to provide initial interception fire.
By the time the launch of hunter-killers reach Vanam, most are swatted away.
Irosiid watches the missile tracks blink away, one after another. The bay is tense, breath held. Blink, blink, blink. A dozen missiles left. Less. Domasti judders as the tracks close. When interceptor missiles are deployed, you feel nothing at all. They detach from magnetic rails, engaging full burns once far enough from the ship to not burn holes through fragile skins. When an Issbrechi trembles – that is cannons. The chunky battle-cannons, designed from scratch out here in the moons, rigged onto vessels of peace. Large calibre, magnetic rail, made to use the cheapest, easiest ammunition as could be machined to bring fire and fury to invading Reach warships.
Now, it’s warden-guns. Rotary guns, firing precious chemical-propelled rounds in their thousands. Stitching streams of steel through space, reaching out, reaching: blink, blink go another two tracks. The hunter-killers are close now, they’ll be sprinting-
Irosiid was not raised in a military clan. None of his aunts or uncles served, or his mother or father, or his granddams and sires. He learned quickly after the Reach came. He learned quickly when he left the motherworld behind and held out his hands in service. The terms, the slang, the moment-by-moment of life and death.
The hunter-killer missiles light final burn engines. Four tracks remain. Irosiid holds his breath. This is when they are the fastest, the hardest to hit.
This is when – Domasti vibrates through his couch. Weight from acceleration vanishes – his stomach rises in the sudden microgravity – the ship slams to the side – not a hit, not a hit, that was maneuvering, he knows the feel of reaction bursts – and then weight is back and more, full weight, double, triple. Someone groans, but it’s not Irosiid. He’s been under quintuple thrust before.
The last tracks are gone.
All the icons for the Soshan Wing still shine in the screens, mounted on the walls, tied into the systems that crew and command use.
Vinennos and Starlight bought them this. Vanam is behind them. The Reach chases. The motherworld is running from them. They have a chance.
…
“Anyone in here certified on Issbrechi?”
With four others, Irosiid calls out. None of them can raise fists, since they are still strapped down.
“Electrical?”
“Here,” he replies. No one else does.
“Get up and come with me.” The sailor doing the talking is floating, one hand holding onto the frame of the compartment door. The engines cut a few minutes ago, no word yet on why.
“We’re transferring everyone off the Quao Lys,” she tells him and the rest of the tense passengers. “The Commodore wants to transit the rings.”
There’s mutters now, glances back and forth, as much as the constricting couches allow. Irosiid is undoing his straps, muttering thanks to Vailec next to him as the other saehara gives him a hand. Crossing the rings outside of channels isn’t done except under very, very careful circumstances. Oron’s rings are as thin as a planet’s rings could be expected to be – tens of meters on average, to near to a kilometer where perturbations of the biggest moons ripple them.
More things he’d learned, after joining the fleet.
To cross the rings, you have to match speeds and then ease through under reaction thrust. Even then, you have to expect holes punched in whipple shields and a lot of spot repairs afterward.
It’s been hours under acceleration. They’re howling along the rings. Any collision now will gut a ship from nose to engine bell. On a straight shot, at gravity thrust, you can cross the entirety of Oron’s rings from one side to another in under a day. You can’t go in a straight shot. There’s a planet in the way. They have to loop, extending the time, burning more fuel, fuel that can’t be replaced or topped up. They have to swing wide, following the rings, just as the Reach wanted.
The Reach can do six, seven times the thrust of Pact ships. They cheat with their inertial reflex sinks. If the wing after them wanted to, they could’ve overhauled them an hour out from Vanam. They didn’t. Irosiid doesn’t understand why. They want the Soshan Wing dead, do they not? They want the Commodore ‘Inghara dead and displayed.
The last of his straps come undone and he pushes up, out of his couch. Weightless, he takes a second to stretch, limbs shaking and joints popping. His ribs shift and it feels incredible to be free. The sailor, the one who’s waiting at the hatch, beckons to him.
“With purpose, sailor. Commodore will have us moving in thirty.”
She leads him to operations. It steals his breath. There’s Commodore Ainkruss ‘Inghara, in the flesh. In the pressure suit and flesh, head close to who had to be his Adorai, Sinthen, speaking low. You’re in the company of Chiefs, his sister says to him. Through his own pressure suit, Irosiid presses fingers against the wooden figure of her totem.
Fingers snap under his nose and Irosiid’s phos ripples in embarrassment.
“Under there, sailor. Skip to it.” There’s an unbound tangle of wiring spilling out of a bulkhead – probably jostled loose during maneuvers earlier.
That’s how Irosiid is in operations when the last citizen-sailors are transferred off the tenders. He’s upside down, relative to the ‘deck’, head and arms stuck inside the crawlspace. It’s a real tangle. Issbrechi, back when the Navy was the Citizen’s Void Commandery, had a handsome and comfortable cockpit at the very front of the vessel. That’s where the pilot flew from, where the captain commanded, where operations chiefs managed loading/offloading of supply.
A place like that with all the most sensitive stations and the most mission-critical personnel worked when the greatest peril were micrometeors. To be so exposed, against the missiles and shot of the Reach?
Every Issbrechi’s first refit was rewiring all essential controls down into the guts of the ship. Where it was varied per vessel. Here on Domasti, Irosiid knows it used to be a damage control locker. There’s still brackets for retardant foam and a rack for weld-cutters. It’s why the electrical lines are such a mess. They had to run new lines across half the ship, clipping them down with twist-lock pins. If Irosiid ever met Domasti’s resident engineer, he’d buy him a drink.
He’s still reconnecting jostled loose extension plugs when the woman from before taps on his shoulder, jolting him out of his focus.
“That’s enough,” she tells him and points to acceleration couches that line the rear of operations. “Strap in here, we might need you again.”
They want him to stay. He looks over again. The Commodore ‘Inghara is buckling himself back down. Domasti’s operations are laid out in classic Nokayayn style. The Commodore’s couch is at the farthest back, elevated a little, with Engineering to his left hand, Gunnery to his right. At the fore is Piloting, paired with Navigation facing rearward, so the two are face-to-face. Every couch is a swivel mount, in case of hard maneuvers.
He takes an empty couch, phos alight, feeling empty and full. Tan-ifriid has to be watching him now. He raises his left fist and kisses his forefinger on the joint, glancing heavenward. Watch me, ghosts, he thinks, because I am in the presence of Chiefs.
The Commodore doesn’t fit his legend. He’s only as tall as Irosiid. He keeps his hair cropped short and tight, as Irosiid sees before the order is given for everyone to seal helmets. It’s repeated across the intercom, barked out in processed tones through the ship. Something is niggling at Irosiid’s thoughts as he soaks in the sight of the crew, the crew of Domasti prepare.
That’s it. There’s no Router. He doesn’t see one anchored anywhere. Maybe it’s entwined in the ship, but it would’ve probably liaised with him when he was working on the electricals.
No Router. Everyone assumed the Commodore had one, probably one of the higher marks. With the tactics he came up with, the victories on the fly – he had to have a Router. There’s not one Irosiid can see and when the Commodore gives the order to relight the engines: this is when the Router would be speaking.
They’ve done it all on their own. At creche, when he was young – younger, at least – one of his friends had begun to specialize in astrogation. He tried to help her with her projects once and felt like he had a headache for days later.
“Peliati,” ‘Inghara says. “You have the path. Adorai, send the word.”
Adorai Sinthen, who is a handsome woman, speaks and calls to the rest of the Soshan Wing.
“We enter,” she says. “As prepared, Domasti leads.”
Charts refresh on tactical boards fastened to bulkhead walls. There’s the sweep of Oron’s great rings, thick and dense and close enough to touch. Irosiid sees the idea. All three Quao Lys, slow and chunky, shift to the fore of the Soshan Wing. The six Issbrechi – wait, where was the Akanowyre? – form into a chain behind them. Like a pack of tasheun, walking a mountain pass, one after another. The Quao Lys turn sideward, plunging toward the rings. Issbrechi are slender, narrow and long. Quao Lys are fat and wide, and turned sideways…
The Quao Lys will clear the path.
Irosiid swallows hard in his dry throat. They’ll be battering rams. They’ll punch a hole and while it’s open, the Issbrechi can needle through.
“Call the ghosts,” the Commodore says, tone dry but serious.
Irosiid hears a few murmured beseechings. He would touch his sister’s totem, but weight is piling on his chest again. Watch us, Tan-ifriid, he mouths. Watch us, mother, father. On light hands bear us.
The first Quao Lys vanishes the instant it intersects the rings. The icon is there, then gone. Wide eyes watch the screens. Irosiid’s mouth dries and he wills himself not to blink.
The second plunges in after its obliterated sister. The icon winks out too, but it takes a moment longer. The third Quao Lys’ icon tumbles, spinning and spiraling, but it remains. On the other side of the ring. Domasti is next. Irosiid clenches his fists tight on the couch’s arms.
“Prepare for triage,” Adorai Sinthen calls.
Blink and it’s missed. The line of the rings, on display, slides past their icon. Domasti bucks. It rings like a bell. Klaxons suddenly hoot. There is a high-pitched whistle. A black speck of a hole, as thin around as his finger, mars the forward display. There is a matching one at the rear of operations, about a hand’s width above the Commodore’s helmet.
“Punctured,” says Engineering.
“Where?” the Commodore asks. Everyone is so calm. Conversational.
The other Issbrechi of the Wing follow, their icons crossing the line of the ring in sequence behind them.
“Drain atmosphere into tanks. Soshan Wing, reverse thrust.”
It isn’t enough to have leapt through the rings. The track of the Reach wing behind them, creeping closer, remains on the other side. The Commodore gives the order and Irosiid’s mouth hangs open.
They’re going to charge.
…
Iyyestil is a dot of blue and green and tan. He can see it, if only there were windows. The representation on tactical boards is tantalizing.
The Reach wing followed them through the rings, but they did it trusting their fields. Three gunships came apart. The fields of every destroyer were stripped, but their hulls untouched. Fields are reformed, in time, but that was why the Commodore ordered a retrograde charge. When the nine Reach destroyers saw the Soshan Wing again, after clearing the sensor-scattering ring, they saw all six Issbrechi bearing down on them, already launching missiles and filling space with tungsten slugs.
And they had no fields.
Each Kashoross destroyer is half again the size of a Pact Issbrechi. Their guns are bigger, their range greater. They don’t tend to carry many missiles, preferring the more easily resupplied guns to do the trick. Their armor is decent, but their fields are what require a four-to-one ratio for the Pact to hope to have a chance.
Without fields, with a swarm of sprinterdart shipkillers already inbound?
Two Reach destroyers were holed and killed, going dark as high explosives punctured armor and shredded interiors. Clouds of tungsten rounds as long as a saehara’s hand overmatched and degraded destroyer armor. The next clouds made messy constellations across another destroyer.
Then the Soshan Wing was past, dancing close at a thousand kilometers, daring, thumbing their noses.
It’s deserved and Irosiid felt faint, watching it play out. Watching status icons sprout like fungus beside markers for the Reach warships. Like the air in his tank was a lesser mix, because six Issbrechi just killed four destroyers. Three outright and a fourth crippled. There were only five destroyers left – but the cruiser. The cruiser, a fat, ugly Nufengr-class sloped down through the ring as the Soshan Wing whips by and it reached out with its artillery.
Ringrunner came apart and then the Soshan Wing was five.
That had been an hour ago. He is still shaking.
Iyyestil is a dot of blue and green and tan, but it is still too far. Tactical boards tell the bitter truth and the Commodore looks grim. They are under two gravities and while the Reach wing behind is chastened and had to reorient after their surprise pass, they are gaining. The cruiser is the farthest back, but the remaining destroyers slowly chew through the remaining distance.
Iyyestil, home, motherworld, is seven hundred thousand kilometers away. The Reach destroyers will be in optimal range in moments. They creep past a hundred thousand kilometers behind. They aren’t firing yet. They’re waiting – one single, decisive volley. That’s what Irosiid thinks. They’ll do it all at once. They’ll blow the Soshan Wing out of the sky right at the threshold of Iyyestil, and won’t that be a symbol. They’re chasing us down like catheil.
We’re almost home. Tan-ifriid, we’re almost home.
“It has been a good try,” the Commodore says, and Irosiid is afraid he spoke his fears aloud. He didn’t – through the corner of his eye, he can see the Commodore has a button pressed beneath his thumb. Other voices reply. Irosiid knows one of them – Captain Uszvhelatt, over on Target Practice. He spent time on her command, a few years back.
“We get to see her, Tskavi,” Uszvhelatt says. Irosiid wonders who that is – until the Commodore replies.
“I can live with dying in the motherworld’s light.”
Tskavi? He knows the Commodore’s full name. Who doesn’t? Ainkruss ‘Inghara Mevass Nokayayn. The man is from Notasychi, his name is nokayayn formation, what is Tskavi –
Tears sting his eyes. Tskavi is the Commodore’s blood name. Irosiid knows nokayayn; they make up at least half of the Pact Navy. He knows their culture almost as well as he knows his native Julshyrii. They never give out blood names, not to any but their closest friends, family.
The Commodore gifted his to his Captains.
“I’d like this noted down,” the Commodore continues. He can’t think of him as anything but his title. If they’re to die, now, Irosiid wants to die alongside the Commodore ‘Inghara. He can’t know his blood name, he hasn’t earned it. He isn’t one of the fearless Captains that flew in the Wing. He’s just here by coincidence. Circumstance. It’s not right.
“I’m giving myself a battlefield demotion. I’m renouncing the rank of Commodore. I am going to give the command to turn Domasti and engage the motherless Reach bastards at our backs. This isn’t a command. I’ve given enough and this is where it led us. I’d rather die fighting than running.”
“Vasryi sh’henom, Tskavi. It doesn’t have to be an order.”
“Target Practice needs to live up to her name!”
“We still have missiles over here on Arbod. I don’t like to waste.”
“Antetumi goes where Domasti goes, Tskavi.”
Irosiid hears the emotion in the Commodore’s voice.
“You honor me, my friends.”
“You’ve honored us, o Commodore,” Adorai Sinthen murmurs. The rest agree. Irosiid wishes he could vanish into his couch. This isn’t his moment. This isn’t anything he should be here for, but he feels a joy all the same. It wars in him; he is intruding on this sworn moment of honor, at the edge of death, but he is being blessed by it. He is among Chiefs, and he will be among Chiefs when he dies.
It’s all he could ever have dreamt of. Tan-ifriid will chide him for it later. She will say: it would have been better, to live and die as a Chief among Saeherid, than to merely die in the shine of their glory, but he’s Irosiid. He is an idiot from Julshyrii. He takes what he can.
Domasti prepares to die. Gunnery calls out ammunition status. It all seems like pantomime. They’re going to die in the first pass.
What a glorious pass it will be.
“Arbod, if you have missiles, launch a fan in our draft. Our deaths might hide them until they are close enough, and maybe a destroyer will be our price.”
“We’ll do it, Commodore.”
“Prepare to disengage thrust and rotate,” Commodore ‘Inghara commands. Irosiid clenches his teeth tight, tasting iron in his mouth. His phos are wild and he can even feel their heat rise in his cheeks. His heart pounds in his chest. His hair, pressed tight under his helmet, twitches and wants to rustle.
“Disengage in five, four, three-”
“Surfacing!”
The word is nonsensical. It means nothing. It means nothing to Irosiid. It means, something, to the Commodore, who barks out a demand in response.
“Show me!”
The tactical board changes. New icons appear. That doesn’t make sense. They had all of local Iyyestil orbit already tracked. You can’t hide easily, not in the openness of the approach up from the plane of the rings. The motherworld arcs above them, separated by a hundred thousand and more kilometers, depending on the day of the week. There are no clouds to hide in, no high-albedo debris to lurk behind.
Where did they come from?
“A surfacing?” Adorai Sinthen spits, like the words are acid. “Here? Now?”
“Resolving – one Assursan. Nine more – I don’t know what they are. The recognition library isn’t giving me anything. They’re smaller than we are. Wait – five more. Mid-mass Reach haulers.”
Assursan.
The largest Reach warships ever seen. True battlecruisers. Assursan. The Pact Navy fled from Nufengr light cruisers. Every citizen-sailor had nightmares of an Assursan appearing on the track.
“Belay maneuvering,” the Commodore orders. “How are they here? How?”
“Surfacing events. They dove here.”
“You can’t dive here!” Adorai Sinthen declares, angry, angry at the universe for allowing this. There can’t be a final charge for the Soshan Wing. The Assursan and its wing are two hundred thousand kilometers distant. Within range. Just the battlecruiser can swat all five Issbrechi with a fraction of their armaments.
“Hold on – hold on -”
The universe agrees with Adorai Sinthen. It agrees that, in fact, an Assursan ‘diving’ – which Irosiid now remembered was what the Navy called the form of translight the Reach commanded – to the doorstep of Iyyestil, right before them, is quite wrong. The universe agrees with the handsome Adorai and the universe adds an addendum.
Irosiid watches as new tracks explode onto tactical. Everyone is shouting. The Commodore is shouting. The other Captains are shouting. It’s chaos. The tracks breed until there is a wall of ordinance bearing down on the Soshan Wing. Irosiid doesn’t know what the markers mean – he’s an electrical specialist, heaven’s sake – but he doesn’t need to know the symbol to understand the meaning.
The tracks show icons that denote missiles, that denote predicted trajectories of cannonshot. The tracks are lines, and every single track bypasses the Soshan Wing.
Every single track from the Assursan and its unknown escorts slides uncomfortably close to Domasti and Arbod and Target Practice and Antetumi and Sokrach. None intersect.
They intersect with the Reach wing behind them.
At current ranges, in the hundreds of thousand of kilometers, there are only tens of seconds until impact. A half a minute, at most. Reach ships can be agile, but to Irosiid’s untrained eye, they seem shocked. Stunned. None of their icons sprout new vectors.
Operations falls silent when the first shots, flung out by the accelerator cannons of the Assursan, intersect the first Reach destroyers. One icon flickers, turns grey. Killed.
Another. Swarms of missiles switch into sprint and dart past the Soshan Wing. Someone thinks to bring up external hull cameras. They see points of light streak past, like shooting stars.
Over the span of a minute and a half, the entire Reach wing is erased. The Commodore seems stricken. He hasn’t given any commands. The other Captains are silent. Destroyer after destroyer drops off the plot. Gunships die in panicked maneuvers. The Nufengr, in the rear, runs away. They watch as its icon grows new vectors, indicating full emergency burn in the opposite direction. It’s running.
Irosiid doesn’t know what to think. He isn’t sure he can think. His mind is empty and full, humming with white noise.
“On a standard Reach band,” Adorai Sinthen says, breaking the silence. “I’m – there’s – on a standard Reach band. Open encryption. There’s – they’re transmitting.”
“Aloud, Adorai,” the Commodore says, eerily level in tone.
“It’s looping,” she says, and then another voice, scratchy with interference fills operations. It’s speaking a dialect of the Reach. Irosiid can understand it. To sail in the Navy, you had to learn Kalathivu, the tongue of the invaders. This isn’t quite Kalathivu; there’s an accent to it and phrasing is different. It’s like nachulni is to his native julshyri. A dialect.
“To the five vessels fleeing Reach warships. Come about and make for our squadron. We are not a House of the Reach. We are from a world called Earth, which has suffered under Reach predation as well. We have defeated our attackers and are here to render aid. This is the Battleship Endurance, calling the five vessels of the species native to this world. I repeat: we are here to render aid. Come about and make for our squadron for escort. Message repeats.”
…
CE2048/NC695
“And that was it,” Irosiid admitted, finally reaching for his glass and downing half of it in a few determined gulps.
“You tell it faster every time,” Seegs said with a chuckle, tucking back into his plate of rehydrated steak.
“That’s it?”
Irosiid studied the woman across from him. Seegs – Subodh – he already knew. He was a friendly face on a new assignment and naturally it was Seegs that drew this story out of him. Around the table in the officer’s mess, the rest of the command staff were new. The woman frowning at him: Hulling, Katherine Hulling, his new X.O. His new captain, James Dawson, sat at the head of the time, slight smile on his face and otherwise quiet, letting it all play out. Dawson had a reputation and a good one in the Fleet, but Hulling he didn’t know.
“That’s it,” Irosiid confirmed. “After that, we followed Endurance into Iyyestil’s orbit. The rest is history. No, I didn’t meet the Lord of War or the Lady Sword. I was locked up in debriefings for the next month and I missed the end of the Siege.”
“What are the odds, mm?” Seegs said, like he always did when they played out this dance. “You get a front row ticket to the Intercession because you were a wire monkey.”
“Thank you, Seegs.”