Unconquerable Sun Page 3

  “You recite names and histories, as any citizen can do,” said Eirene. “But what do you see?”

  “After the collapse of the central routes, Chaonia’s three main systems were left in the most direct path between the Phene Empire and the Yele League. Although they weren’t yet an empire and a league back in those days. They grew in power because the changes in the beacon system benefited them more than others.”

  “We have lived at their mercy for generations,” Eirene said, warming to her favorite subject. “Everything the queens-marshal before me have done is to secure Chaonia’s independence. This task is our chief duty, the reason for our existence. Our territories have been fought over and annexed by outsiders for long enough.”

  Sun broke in to forestall a lecture whose content she could quote in her sleep. “Once the Yele League was bound by the treaty you forced on them, you turned your attention to our border with the Phene.”

  “It was the next necessary step.” Where Eirene directed her artificial eye a red laser traced the path of her campaign. “My grandmother retained Troia System when the Phene had to retreat and regroup after their attempts to invade the Yele League failed. Why did she expend so many resources to hold on to Troia?”

  Sun managed not to roll her eyes at the question. She’d learned this lesson when she was seven, but it was exactly like her mother to keep treating her as a child.

  “Because Troia System is a bottleneck. A gateway that can be reasonably well guarded by a strong network of orbital stations and a garrison fleet. Anyone trying to enter Chaonia from the Hatti region or from Karnos has to go through Troia.”

  “Yes. Its defensive value is critical to Chaonia’s security. It’s also a perfect springboard for our fleets. By moving outward into the Hatti region via the Kanesh route we are encircling Karnos one system and one beacon route at a time.”

  “If we didn’t hesitate and instead pushed straight from Troia through our foothold in Aspera System direct to Karnos itself, then—”

  “You’re always getting ahead of yourself. That’s my point. Do you appreciate how long it took Chaonia to get its neck out of the yoke imposed on it when it was annexed by the Phene Empire? How often our ancestors had to bite their tongues when the Yele called us weaklings and collaborators because we didn’t have enough strength to evict the Phene when they first occupied us? How many times our people had to accede to the demands of the Yele League when they began strutting around crowing about how they alone had ever defeated a Phene fleet, and against such odds? Their endless speeches! How the Yele love the sound of their own voices! And let us never forget how my father and brothers died one after the next in battle against Hesjan raiders and their Yele instigators. Leaving me young and untried to continue the fight.”

  “You’ve told me the story more than once.”

  “Yes, so I have. I’ll continue to tell it until you hear me. You’ve grown up with what I’ve built. You’ve never had to slog through the mud, not as I did. I’ve got those cursed arrogant Yele under control, for now. Meanwhile the Phene are a behemoth whose heads are only slowly waking to the prod of our tiny spears upon its ass end. With the defeat at Na Iri they’ll not slumber any longer, nor blame their setbacks on the incompetence of their regional bosses. They’ll come for us, mark my words.”

  “How far do you mean to go against the Phene?”

  “If we take Karnos, we will control a permanent barrier to their aggression.”

  “If?”

  Eirene barked out a curt laugh. “Does when suit you better? Karnos is massively protected because of its valuable placement and superb resources. We need those resources to refill our empty treasury. But its seven beacons make it hard to hold without an overwhelming military presence. That means in order to take Karnos we must first rebuild and refit all our damaged ships while also producing more hulls for the campaign. Production, repair, and inventory must double. Triple! The demands on our citizenry will be extraordinary. Campaigns are won and lost on supply. So your next assignment is to tour the industrial parks and the Fleet and Guard training camps on Molossia and Thesprotis—”

  “What?” Sun jumped to her feet. “What? You’re sending me on a show tour, to be trotted out for local banquets and inspect raw recruits?”

  “Sit down!”

  Sun gripped the edge of the platform.

  “If you don’t sit down, then I’ll know you are unfit for further responsibilities.”

  Shaking, Sun sat hard, bumping the chair to one side.

  “That’s better. Your contribution to the victory at Na Iri burnishes you. Right now, we build. You will do your part, exactly as I command you to do. Do you understand?”

  Keep your temper in check.

  “I understand.”

  Eirene snapped her fingers. The virtual display of stars and lineages vanished.

  “You’re dismissed. There’s a palace corvette waiting to take you to Chaonia Prime. Once there, you’ll gather your Companions and leave for Thesprotis. Imagine how delighted all your hosts will be when the Handsome Alika arrives in town. Zàofù will provide you with the itinerary. It’s already been arranged.”

  As the last word dropped, Eirene blinked on her personal net and turned her attention to a different task. Sun tried to rise but a weight had shocked her legs into immobility. She’d done well; she knew she had. Yet it wasn’t enough for her mother. Maybe nothing would ever be enough.

  As a hatch opened and two Companions strolled in laughing at a joke known only to them, Eirene caught Sun with the laser edge of her gaze.

  “Why are you still here? Go.”

  4

  History

  While Octavian made his security check of their assigned cabin on the palace corvette, Sun settled into a seat and opened a virtual three-dimensional model of Molossia System. She spun the solar system, watching its six planets rotate on their axes and revolve around their star, positions shifting relative to each other.

  Five of the planets anchored a beacon. Each beacon was tethered to its planet, caught like a far-flung moon at the farthest limit of the planet’s gravity well. A control node attached to the outermost rim of the beacon’s spiral coil monitored departures and arrivals. The coils of the still-working beacons had a faint and rhythmically pulsing phosphorus glow rather like a pulse. It was a weirdly soothing but also unsettling sight.

  She pushed the view farther out to focus on the triple heart of the republic. The systems of Chaonia, Molossia, and Thesprotis were all scylla systems, each having five beacons although not all were still operable. Most importantly, the three systems all connected to each other, a rare, rich network called a Tinker-Evers-Chance convergence. This interconnectedness had made Chaonia, Molossia, and Thesprotis into natural allies, especially in the long interregnum after the collapse of the Apsaras Convergence. A tendency to trade and ally with each other in the troubled aftermath had caused their once-disparate cultures to meld. Eventually, under the first queen-marshal, the systems united as the Republic of Chaonia.

  When Octavian sat down opposite he studied the three-dimensional map, then opened it farther to show all of the territory under the governance of the republic.

  “What do you see, Princess?” he asked. She wondered if the words were a deliberate echo of her mother and how he could even have known what the queen-marshal had said.

  “I see history.” She traced a path with her right forefinger. “I see Chaonia, Molossia, and Thesprotis, the three core systems of our republic. I see the outlying territories brought in system by system by Queen-Marshal Inanna’s successors. I see how Great-Great-Grandfather Yǔ kept the peace during the period Chaonia was a vassal of the Phene Empire. How Great-Grandmother Metis managed to retain control of Troia System after the Phene withdrew.”

  “Why did the Phene withdraw?”

  “Is this a test?”

  “You’re impatient. I understand that. You have a hundred reasons why you should be racing out to the battlefront instead o
f following the queen-marshal’s orders.”

  “I’ve earned a chance to be given a command on the front lines!”

  “We obey the queen-marshal, Princess. That’s my duty, and that’s your duty. One day, if you pass the test that is your training for rulership, you’ll be the queen-marshal whose orders people obey. But that day is not today. Now, why did the Phene withdraw?”

  It was always a test, wasn’t it? She squared her shoulders, moistened her dry lips, and proceeded with her usual dispatch.

  “The Phene had to withdraw after the Yele League defeated a Phene imperial fleet at Eel Gulf. The Phene retreat left the Yele League as the big boss in our local area. So I also see how my great-aunt and grandfather and uncles fought constantly to maintain our independence from Yele encroachments. I see how the Yele contracted secret alliances with the Hesjan to make trouble for us. An unexpected Hesjan counterattack is how my uncle Nézhā died in battle at Kanesh.”

  “And then?”

  “When the queen-marshalate passed from him to my mother, she decided to pursue a more assertive strategy.”

  “What strategy is that?”

  “Offense, instead of defense. She defeated the Hesjan cartels and forced the Yele League to capitulate at the negotiating table. She increased ship and weapons production throughout the republic. Now she is using our control of Troia to push out via Kanesh and its beacon access into the Hatti region. That way our forces will eventually encircle Karnos.”

  She used two fingers and a thumb to open up Karnos System enough to see its twelve planets with their orbital ellipses traced in bold lines.

  “Karnos has seven beacons, a wealth of resources, and a large military-age population. With the victory at Na Iri, we now control access to three routes into Karnos. Since two of the other beacons lead to the Gap, that leaves only two more functional ones. Both of them are paths into the heart of the Phene Empire. If we take Karnos—”

  She broke off, then said, “When we take Karnos, we will control passage into the empire rather than the Phene controlling our right-of-way.”

  He nodded. “Correct. The military that controls the beacon routes will always have an advantage.”

  “Except the advantage the Phene have that no one else has.”

  “That’s beyond our reach for now.”

  She pressed her lips together, eyes narrowing. Surely nothing was beyond reach, not for the one willing to risk all and accept no limits.

  The pilots’ chatter from the cockpit drifted over internal comms as the corvette moved into the traffic lanes. Departing COSY, the fleet’s name for Naval Command Orbital Station Yǎnshī, was a slow and reluctant process. The incoming damaged ships needed to disperse to the naval shipyards elsewhere in Molossia System. Everyone had to navigate past a field of massive cargo containers slowly being attached to the Remora freighters that would convey them through the beacon to Troia. From Troia the supplies would be distributed onward via Kanesh to the garrisons and task forces in Maras Shantiya, Kaska, Tarsa, Hatti, and now Na Iri too. Na Iri was her victory. Or, at least, partly hers.

  Octavian pulled the visual down to center on Na Iri System with its twin stars. “We’ve got a thirty-hour transit to Molossia Prime. Let’s go back over the battle. See what you did right and what you could have done differently, and what was just the hand of fortune giving you a good set of tiles.”

  “The queen-marshal would say she laid down those tiles. That without the strength of her hand, none of us would have won at all.”

  “You can still lose with a good hand if you don’t play well. But it is true Eirene has built Chaonia to a position of strength after we were bogged down for years fighting in Kanesh.”

  “You won your medals at Kanesh.”

  His wry smile bore the weight of memory. “Everyone my age and older fought at Kanesh at one point or another. The dead deserve medals more than I do.”

  Victory at Na Iri made her feel she had crossed a river and could now ask personal questions previously denied her according to the complex proscriptions of palace courtesy. “What was my uncle Nézhā like? You knew him.”

  “I was a marine assigned to the flagship, which isn’t the same as knowing a queen-marshal as his Companions would. But still, he spoke to us all with respect and concern, as we expected. He was a good commander who attacked in the right direction at the wrong time. So. Shall we go over the Na Iri battle?”

  She laughed. “You never stop.”

  His answering grin revealed a dimple that gave the graying soldier a mischievous air. “Just doing my job, Princess.”

  5

  A DISPATCH FROM THE ENEMY

  Dear Mom,

  There’s not much I can tell you given the content restrictions on personal comms.

  As expected our graduating cohort has been split apart and sent off to round out understaffed squadrons. I have to admit I’ve been hoping to be assigned to the Karnos sector so I can fight those upstart Chaonians and their insolent queen-marshal. You’ll probably be happy to hear that instead I’ve been assigned to a backwater station in an undisclosed location. Most likely a typical starting berth on a military cargo ship hauling a pair of lancers to guard against pirates. Lucky me. Quiet and boring. As you can guess I’m not thrilled, but every newly graduated lancer pilot has to work their way up to the big ships no matter how high their scores.

  A comms speaker squawked, breaking the writer’s train of thought.

  “Apama At Sabao, please report immediately to Declarations and Tariffs.”

  Apama stopped typing as the speaker crackled back into silence. She was sitting on a shaded bench in the arrivals courtyard, holding the keyboard steady with her lower hands and typing with her uppers. Rising, she closed the tablet and stowed it in the outer pocket of her kit bag. There was no one else in the courtyard. She’d been the only passenger on the commercial freighter that had landed on this moon.

  There were four doors out of the courtyard, one marked with the double-helix symbol representing the hegemony of the Phene Empire set above the characters for Declarations and Tariffs. Crossing the open area offered her a view to the sky. Even in daylight it was possible to see the pinkish-red neon-glow aura, shaped like a spiny malevolent starburst, that surrounded the system’s second beacon and rendered it inoperable. The scarily luminous artifact gave this star system its modern name: Hellion Terminus.

  The office was slumbering in the afternoon heat with all its windows propped open. Fans gamely stirred up an ice-tinged cooling breeze. Evidently this port was so boring and quiet there wasn’t regular air and space traffic. She repressed a sigh. Still, her instructors had emphasized that hard work and high scores would get you a coveted cruiser berthing as long as you didn’t slack and get comfortable.

  Not that she ever really had a chance to get comfortable except when she was inside a lancer. That autonomy was her escape.

  The civilian scribe on duty at the waist-high barrier yawned as Apama handed over the thin ceramic chip that held her duty orders. The scribe scanned Apama’s retina, then plugged the chip into a security cube.

  “First time here?” the scribe asked as they waited for the green light. A pregnant local woman, she spoke in Yele rather than Phenish.

  “It is, thank you.” Apama’s own Yele was good, drilled into her brain via various accelerated programs.

  “It’s always everyone’s first time here, and their last. It’s pretty hush around here, d’y’follow?”

  “I’m sure it’s lovely.”

  As the scribe looked blankly at her, Apama racked her brain for any further compliments to make the anodyne comment sound less condescending. No need to create hostility, especially not when she was alone in unfamiliar territory. It wasn’t that the Karnos sector and places like Hellion Terminus were the enemy. They belonged to the empire, after all. But they weren’t imperial Phene either, not with those spindly two arms and stubby torsos and the impractical ways so many of them wore their hair. These people al
l spoke the common tongue of the hated Yele League as fluently as their local languages while mangling—some said deliberately—the Phenish taught in schools and required for administration.

  She remembered the view from the courtyard where she’d just spent an hour waiting for no obvious reason. “The beacon aura is incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “People say that all the time, but consider what it means for us. We used to be a busy and prosperous cultural hub on the main beacon route between Karnos and Yele.”

  “That was eight hundred years ago.”

  “Long before you Phene got here. We still tell stories about our glory days. Now we’re just the end of the line. You must be from one of the bustling central systems, eh? They say the party never sleeps on the Triple As. Isn’t that how the song goes?”