Chapter Three #

There is something visceral about controlling a ship as vast as a stonefrigate. It takes skill and precision and years of training, but once you have those, you feel almost as if you are God himself, moving a mountain to your whim. Something about the sheer mass of a stonefrigate. I can only imagine the dark horror the Korsians will feel when we blot the stars from their skies.

Of course, they will be told we are coming as friends.

We enter orbit around Kors on the third day. The moon tumbles below me in pure darkness. It is not a true moon because it does not orbit Koriograf, it orbits our weak sun. Koriograf’s gravity has it locked permanently in Koriograf’s shadow. No light ever hits the surface of Kors. I patch through to Brance. 

“Ready to go down?”

“You got the map?”

Outboard drones mapped Kors for us before we got here. I flick to the map on one of my displays, colored in pinks and greens for elevation. The world of Kors is mountainous, with small icy seas. There are volcanoes there too. The whole moon is wreathed in a thick atmosphere of dark clouds and fog.

“I got the map,” I say, without enthusiasm.

“This is going to be dangerous,” says Brance. “So be ready for anything.”

Something’s been worrying me. “Brance, we don’t know much about Korsians, other than they can fight in the dark.”

“We know they have weapons tech,” says Brance.

“That’s what I’m worried about. Hundreds of years alone here. The stories and stuff, you know. What if their weapons are better than ours? What if we can’t just kidnap them?”

“We have surprise,” says Brance. “And we have our own weapons to fight them. We have two full battalions of Porcelain Helmets. Aiforms with them.” He sounds like he’s trying to reassure himself and it’s not helping. I still feel a looming sense of dread as I watch the map scroll past. “And Kira, we’re pressing them. Not kidnapping. They will be pressmen. Well cared for. Not slaves.”

I ignore the latter part of his statement. 

“Helmets and aiforms,” I say. “Trained for daytime fighting.”

“They’ve had extensive night training,” says Brance. “And we brought lights. Talk to your captains. Ask about their weapons. A lot’s going to be up to you, on this one. I don’t think we’ll be landing together.”

We start our descent toward the domain of the potentate Veras. I don’t even know what language they speak, I realize. The Ambassador, Levas, always spoke Porcelain to me. I never asked questions.

Once we have ground intelligence from the outboard drones, I convene a meeting with my war captains. It’s not something I’ve ever done before. I’ve always just been the pilot. Let the captains work out what to do, and relayed any orders to them from the higher-ups. Doing this makes me feel like a leader, like someone noble. But I don’t want this to turn into war or destruction. I don’t want to level any cities. I am afraid of what might happen, and so I choose to confront the captains.

There are eight of them, all strong men, former Porcelain Helmet marines. They look at me with respect I do not feel I deserve.

“Merry Christmas,” says one of them, seeing my scarf. I nod to him. We sit down in a concrete-paneled room around a display table that shows the Korsian forces grouped on the ground. There are large tent-like structures, and blobs that are obviously vehicles. All of it in false color. Radar data, because here the is no light. Only the pure inky black. We see occasional bursts or pinpricks of light from Kors as we orbit, but they are rare. Very rare.

My captains explain their forces to me as aiforms from the galley bring us refreshments. We have equipment meant for operations in extreme darkness. Night vision gear, tanks with infrared sights, gunships with non-optical spotters. All of it is good. I remind them that this am not an assault and we agree on a strategy. We will land and offload our forces. If they have a commander, we will talk to him and make plans. Our forces will encamp behind theirs, pinching the Korsians between them and the stonefrigate. We will spring the trap when the moment is ripe. We will use the powerful lights we have to stun and shock the Korsians. Ideally we will force the Korsians into the stonefrigate. If that doesn’t work, we’ll gradually subdue them with knockout weapons.

It all sounds brutal to me. At least nobody should die, I think. 

I patch back through to Brance and explain my plan.

“That’s—actually a good plan,” he says, sounding surprised.

“Surprised?”

“Kind of,” he admits. “You don’t usually…oh, never mind.”

I smile to myself despite my mood. He’s right, I’ve never done anything as far as planning and working with the captains goes. I’ve never been this fully in command for a real operation before. Usually, there is someone above me. But I’ve watched twenty years of war. Fought my way through countless battles. I know what I’m doing, at least a little.

Then I’m pulling the stonefrigate in, shrinking the gap between me and the ground. I don’t like this. I don’t want to do this, I think. The Korsians down there, they don’t deserve this. Outside, there is the inky night of Kors. It looks exactly like space. The stonefrigate moves precisely and delicately under my hands. I open the armored front of the bridge, two layers of ten-foot-thick steel-reinforced concrete and one of titanium that hinge and slide back into long grooves, and look out on the black clouds of Kors. I open the glass panes and let the dark winds of Kors touch my face. 

 I enjoy this. I have not flown in over a year, not since I flew both of our stonefrigates from the Damascene rear base to their stationing at Koriograf. The stonefrigate is nimble in my control, moving delicately, gently. I skim the ground of Kors, black and invisible below me, guided only be my radar readings.

We have arrived.

The stonefrigate reaches a stable position, its lowest point no more than fifty meters from the ground. I let the ion-repulsors calm to a steady hum. The stonefrigate is a mass, silent in the black night, hulking and low.

I lower the stabilizing legs and imagine them unlocking, far below me, unfolding, sliding down like rams to hammer into the ground, stone and earth splashing up like water from the impact. The legs will not hold the weight of the stonefrigate, but they will lessen the load on the engines and allow for the stable disembarking of our forces.  And the subsequent reloading.

I feel a shiver of worry, of uncertainty. I wish I’d been given more instruction on what to do here. It feels like nighttime, looking out all of the various camera views. It is nighttime. It always is, here. I broadcast out on the ground frequencies as the wind of Kors flicks cold bitter air at my face.

“This is Commander Kira Jaunt,” I say, hoping the radio will make my voice sound more confident than it really is. “Does anybody read?”

“We read you, Commander,” comes back almost immediately. “Stand by and I’ll come up to you.”

“My troops are ready to disembark,” I say. “Are we clear to start unloading?” “All clear,” says the voice on the other end. It sounds familiar and I suddenly realize it’s the ambassador, Levas.

“That you, Levas?” I say, accidentally letting my official tone slip. “It’s me, Commander.  You start unloading your men and I’ll come up and explain things.”

“That would be welcome, Ambassador.” “Levas out.”

I give the order to begin unloading. My captains will do a good job. They will make sure to unload inconspicuously and set up camp in the place we chose. I hope there will be no issues with the Korsian forces on the ground. I realize I have a childlike measure of curiosity about the Korsians. What are they like? Do they really bear the legendary vaporblades, wear strange armor, like in the shows? No outsider save Levas has seen a Korsian for several hundred years now. 

I stay and help manage the loading lifts and cargo drones from the control room for nearly an hour, coordinating the unloading operation. Huge slab-lights on the back of the stonefrigate cut an eerie swath of white light out onto the dark surface of Kors. On the drone cameras I can see the Korsian camp, made up of tents and collapsible structures. Our trucks and tanks and soldiers make their way around the camp to set up their own behind it.

The trap is being readied. I feel a sinking within me. The Korsians don’t know what’s coming. They think we’re friends. I could stop this operation now. Tell them all to load back up. Leave for Koriograf.

The unloading is almost entirely complete when I go to meet the ambassador in the same room I spoke to the captains in. 

“Commander Jaunt,” he says, respectfully. He still wears the Christmas tie. “Welcome to our dark little world.”

“We’re nearly done unloading,” I say, seating myself across from him. Between us, the digital table gleams black and hard. 

I take off my helmet and bring a drone feed up on the table. It shows a radar view of our forces steadily setting up camp, neat and ordered. 

“Not sure how Brance is progressing,” I say idly.

“Commander,” says Levas. His voice is suddenly darker, almost more urgent. I meet Levas’ gaze. He was a strong man once, I think. He is old now but hard like stone, almost like one of our aiforms. He stares back at me with a face torn from antiquity. The light-strips on the ceiling flicker briefly as some subsystem pulls power. His eyes catch on my Christmas scarf once, then go back to my face.

“What is it?” I ask him.

“I know why you’re here, Commander.”

My heart sinks. I shouldn’t have come. This is going to be bad. If they know now— 

“I haven’t told anyone,” he continues. “I thought it best I talk to you first.”

The operation, our operation, is scheduled to commence in less than an hour. They are not setting up camp, they are building a military position. They will launch flanking movements on either side of the Korsian camp and then charge through the center of the camp. The Korsians will fight hard, no doubt, but we will win. We will take them back to Koriograf as pressmen, legal slaves captured in war who must earn their freedom.

I don’t know how Levas knows. It doesn’t matter, does it? I swallow and remain silent. “I know about you, too, you know,” says Levas. “I know how it went on Damascene.”

I look back down at the table.

“It was understandable,” says Levas. “It was war.”

“What are you getting at, Levas?” I say. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

He leans over the table. “You’re doing it again,” he says. “These people want nothing to do with you or your conflict. You are weak, Commander Jaunt.”

It stings, somehow, coming from him. I think it’s because if he knows it, if he says it, I know it is real. If he can see this about me, then there is no hope that I am imagining it. He is staring at me. “You know it’s true,” he continues. I can feel myself crumbling. Something inside me bending and breaking.

Levas is intense, imperious, but his voice is calm. “You are being a coward, Jaunt. No mind of your own when it matters.”

I know he’s wrong. I know I think sharp under combat. I’ve won battles, haven’t I? But I also know he’s right.

“What can I do about it?” I say, whispering so I won’t sound like a child. I, a full battalion commander of the Porcelain Helmets, sit withering under the gaze of the old Rithian.

“Just end it,” he says. “You are in command. Order your men to stop. Tell them to stow their weapons. Tell them to leave. Do the right thing, Commander.”

I take a deep breath. I have the power. I can do the right thing. Avoid the guilt. “I’ll call it off,” I say. I feel brave, saying it. Bold, dangerous, but good. 

He is gentle, now, meeting my gaze. “Thank you.”

I call orders into the queue for my captains, ordering them to pack up, stand down, and start re-embarking. We’re going back to Koriograf, I tell them. The mission has been called off. Do not engage the Korsians. Do not attack. I don’t tell them that I called it off, only that orders say so, since I don’t know how far their respect for me will take them. They will be packed up in half an hour, starting to board the stonefrigate again within two.

“It’s done,” I tell Levas. Within me, I feel a peace. I did the right thing. I ended our brutal attack. There will be no fighting on this dark world, no taking of pressmen. At least not because of me. I am breaking rules and regulations. I will be in trouble.

It’s worth it, I tell myself. I did the right thing. My mother was right. She would be proud of me.

“Good,” he says. His voice is strange, almost like he disagrees with me. 

“We’ll be out of here in an hour. Maybe two.”

“That will do,” he says.

“What about Brance?”

“Can you get him to stop?”

Maybe. Probably not. He is stubborn.

Levas watches me calmly as I pick up the radiophone and patch through to Brance. I think Brance can read my mind because as soon as I’m patched through to him he says, “Kira, no.”

“I’m not doing this,” I say. “I’m not. We have no war with them, Brance!”

“We’re not hurting them, Kira—“

“We’re going to make them fight and die for us,” I say. “That’s not hurting them?”

“Without them, we die,” says Brance. “Without them, Koriograf falls.”

“I’ll fight,” I say. “I’ll fight and destroy to defend Koriograf. I won’t fight these people, not for no reason. I can’t let this happen, Brance, and you shouldn’t either.”

Silence, static over the line. 

“I’m starting my attack now, Kira,” he says. “Start yours.” The line goes dead.

Levas is looking at me when I put down the phone, glass clicking against glass.

Something terrible turns inside me. Levas doesn’t say anything and I move to the door. I sense that something’s wrong an instant before I feel Levas’ hand on my shoulder.

Under my feet, the stonefrigate rumbles. I should have stayed in the control room. I should not be here.

I turn slowly to face Levas as the ship shudders again. So faint, almost imperceptible.

“Don’t leave here just yet,” says Levas, voice calm but hard. I shrug his hand off, step past him, and grab my helmet off the display table. 

My heart plummets as the video feeds patch in. They are night-vision feeds, patterned gold and black. The Korsian encampment is up in arms, attacking my Porcelain Helmets as they moved back to the stonefrigate in slow cargo vehicles, unprepared, weapons stowed like I ordered. I try to contact my captains. 

They are all dead. 

The Korsians fight through the battalion of Helmets. The battle is a melee of chaos. I do not know what to do. People are dying. My people, mostly.

I do not understand what is happening.

Levas is watching me.

“Tell your men to stop,” I growl. “What is happening? Tell them to stop!”

“They are not my men, Commander Jaunt,” says Levas. “I am theirs.”

Outside, more of my Helmets die in the night. I call up supply numbers in my helmet. There’s ten aiform squads still packed in the hold. My emotion is gone, now, and I am cold and hard again. There can be no half-measures in warfare. I should not have called off the attack, I realize. Not after we were so committed. I have doomed us all.  I override the aiforms’ orders and activate them with simple orders: kill or stun Korsian soldiers. I pull a few aiforms away from the rest and give them different orders. My mind is smooth now, my actions almost automatic. I only make good decisions when I can destroy things.

“You knew we’d come here,” I hiss at Levas. The stonefrigate shudders again as cargo doors hinge open somewhere far below us. “You wanted us to come here.”

Levas nods. “They knew that if you thought Koriograf was in danger, Kors would be your first target.”

So the missive from Satamos must have been faked, somehow. Faked by the Korsians, or Levas. “Why?” I ask. ”Why, and how?“

“You would never trade with us,” says Levas. “Not unless you first annexed us and took what we have. The Korsians are a people of war, Kira, and you are a people of spacecraft.”

“You think you can take my stonefrigate?” I find myself indignant. On my visor, I watch the aiforms flooding out, carefully surrounding the fray, joining in with supporting fire. They’re not great in darkness, but they are better than nothing. They are not enough. They begin to die in ones and twos, wiped from existence by dark, undetectable blurs moving in the darkness.

“The Korsians seek revenge, Commander. They have festered here for angry centuries. With spacecraft, they—we—will be free.”

Porcelain Helmets die. Aiforms die. Korsian men—it is hard to tell. They are fast, lithe, and, over the infrared feed, seemingly made from pure cold darkness. They dart between my men, fearless and fast. My men are scared. Their leaders are dead. They fight for survival, now, nothing else, with half-prepared weapons and no time to reorganize or rearm.

My inaction is killing them. It’s killing me, too.

“Can I leave now?” I say, looking at Levas.

Levas pulls a gun and levels it at my head. It is an old-world thing, black and heavy. It suits him well. “I’ll kill you if I have to,” he says. “I don’t want to. But I do a lot of things I don’t want to.”

“You won’t have to,” I say. My helmet is still on. He must not know that it gives me access to so many controls. I flick my fingers, navigating the controls, considering my options. Plasma-casters. Lasers. All things that would annihilate my men along with the Korsians.

Levas realizes.

“Get your helmet off,” he growls, genuine concern in his voice. I disable it and take it off. I set it on the table. I am not worried about myself surviving this. But I need to fix this, need to make sure that this is not another source of guilt I have to live with.  I suddenly remember Brance.

“Is this happening to Brance too?”

“Unlikely,” says Levas. “He isn’t the kind of man to call off an operation the way you did.”

Because he’s not a fool. Not a coward. Not indecisive.

“Why? Why all of this? What is the point?”

“You will see,” says Levas, and his face is grim. I want to check the camera feeds. I want answers. I want to know what is happening. Guilt is already building in my heart. There is a knock at the door. Levas levels the weapon at me again. “Come in,” he says. The door explodes into shards of airborne concrete. Impact lasers focus in the flying dust before the shrapnel has even settled. Levas slumps sideways, falling on the black sheen of table. 

Three aiforms are here, fully equipped fighting models, large and hulking, two heads taller than me. They are frightening, lumbering and muscular in the settling dust. So lithe, so quick for their size. 

“Are you hurt, Commander Jaunt?” asks one of them, voice calm and polite. His name is Jared, printed neatly on his shoulder below an impact laser vent. They don’t all have names.

“No,” I say. My voice is shaky. So much has gone wrong.

Levas groans, slumped on the table. His gun is a glob of melted black material, and his arms and legs are limp. The aiforms were incredibly accurate. They melted his gun and broke his arms and legs, all in the same instant that the door broke down. I wonder what advantages the Korsians must have for our side to be losing out there.

“Do you want him taken to the brig?” asks Jared.

“Bring him to the control room with us. I may need information from him.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Is the ship still under attack?” 

“There is heavy fighting outside. It is impossible to determine what is happening. Our searchlights have been disabled.”

We go to the bridge and enter the cockpit, where I reseal the forward armor. One of the aiforms places Levas, unarmed and broken, in an observation chair. He is out of reach of anything important but close enough that I can ask him questions should I need to.

“Can you make him unconscious?” I ask. “Temporarily?”

“Look at me,” says Jared in a somber voice, cupping Levas’ chin in a stony hand. Levas complies, obviously having no choice in the matter.

”Sleep,” says the aiform. Levas slumps in his chair.

“He will awake when you tell him to,” says the aiform. 

I didn’t know they could do that. It’s probably highly illegal. Fighting aiforms are packed with technology outlawed in every other part of the Porcelain Empire. They make me feel like a child, I realize. So much more dangerous than I am, so much less hesitant. I sit in the pilot’s seat and flick through camera feeds. Point defenses on the hull are failing. A mass of men are rushing up the now-open loading ramps. 

“Do you have contact with any of our forces?” I ask one of the aiforms.

“Only the wounded,” it says.

My Helmets are dying out there, dying fast. We thought to make pressmen of the Korsians. It might have worked, had I not so stupidly had my forces make an unarmed, unprotected retreat. I was stupid. I am stupid.

I need a plan now. On the screen, the dark shapes of Korsian men flood the corridors of the ship, securing it in efficient sections. The battle has been lost.

“Hide,” I tell the aiforms. “Two of you, hide in here. One of you stay and guard the door.” So that if anyone gets up here, they have someone to fight and kill. But I don’t say that to the aiform, because it feels wrong.

There is nowhere to hide, so they make a hiding place by forcing ceiling panels out and crawling into the cabling superstructure above. Barely more than seconds pass before Korsian soldiers are rushing down the single corridor to the cockpit. 

They are tall, dark men, dressed in something strange and black and dark, making them look like lightless shapes, shadows that flit down the corridor toward me. They are silent and their faces are masked. The aiform at the door hits three of the men with impact lasers before they come to a stop, but after moments on the ground, they are struggling to their feet again. The aiform battles them, taking down one man with a wrist-blade to the throat and then bringing his blade with a crash to meet a strange blade that a Korsian raises in response. A vaporblade, I think, one of the fabled Korsian weapons. Legendary, down in Koriograf. The blade seems unnatural, like a blurred metallic fog connected to the Korsian man’s hand.

The vaporblade rips through the aiform’s weapon with little more than a sigh and then splits through his head and chest. His sensor array and computing core are destroyed in a clean wave of smooth momentum. He topples, broken, to the floor.

Then the lights go out in the room, and I am left with only the soft glow of my helmet. I hear the susurration of men moving, but it is barely audible. Fear chills me. I do not move. I breathe slowly, hesitantly. I start with surprise when I feel something cold and hard against my neck. It feels sharp. I do not move. I stop breathing.

“You, can you fly this ship?” growls an accented voice.

I take a deep breath. I am good under pressure, I remind myself. I fought against the legions of Damascene. I destroyed cities in a blink.

“Yes,” I say.

“Get us off the ground,” says the man.

“Or?”

“Or I hit this switch on my vaporblade and your neck disappears.”

Vaporblade. I almost laugh. They’re real after all. At any rate, he has the upper hand. But I can bargain for one thing.

“I’ll need light to see by.” I have a control for the light right here, but I don’t want him knowing that. Anything unexpected could be useful later.

“Stupid,” grunts the man. He must have given a signal of some kind, though, because moments later the lights flick back on. They dim, slowly, until they are only giving off a faint glow.

“Fly,” grunts the man beside me.

I press levers and the ion-repulsors shudder to life. The ship heaves and rumbles. It starts moving upward, steadily. It’s barely noticeable.

“We’re two thousand meters up,” I tell the man after a moment. I toggle the main screen to show a radar view from one of the outboard drones. There’s a vague blip representing the stonefrigate, hanging motionless a significant distance above what is clearly the ground.

Out there, somewhere, is Brance. Brance, I think. He can come, he can save me. If he’s fared as well.

I send a request to patch through to him, and he picks up. Apparently communication isn’t blocked, up here. Both he and I must be above the barrier.

“Kira,” he says, out of breath. ”Couldn’t reach you earlier—“

“What’s wrong?” I say. It probably won’t be long until the Korsian beside me realizes I’m talking to someone.

“They fought hard,” he says. “I had to retreat—“

He’s ok, though. That’s all that matters. He’s not in the same situation as me. “They have a blade to my throat,” I say. “They’re making me do things. Help me—“

“Shut up or die,” says the Korsian man, pressing the blade hard against my neck. I shiver as I imagine him turning it so the edge digs in. He turns and speaks to one of the others in a brief whispering language. 

“You try to contact anyone again, I’ll know,” he says. “And if you do, you’re dead.”

I’m more valuable alive, I reason. I can try to stop the Korsians. Brance might come to my aid now. There is no point in trying to go against the man’s command.

“You know where the other ship, your other ship, is?” asks the Korsian.

I toggle a control. The computer shows the last location of Brance’s stonefrigate. It updates every few seconds, moving an arrow-shaped icon over the radar map of the Korsian surface.

“There,” I say, touching the map. 

“Go there,” says the Korsian. “We will meet up with your friend.”

Apparently we both want the same thing right now. The Korsians will want to board Brance’s ship, but his Helmets will have a shot at winning that battle. Maybe we’ll make it out after all.

I set course for Brance. This all feels like a dream. I don’t feel strange. I am used to sitting in this seat, taking orders. Doing nothing. Making no decisions. I think about my own battalion, dead now. It is my fault. I could have called it off earlier. Could never have landed. It was so clearly a bad idea, and I did it anyway, and then ruined everything, killed everyone, by trying to do the “right” thing. It was all wrong all along, and I’ve only made it worse. 

I hope that some of my men still live, down there, but I don’t dare ask about them. The guilt is a familiar blanket. On the projected views in my visor, stars scroll slowly past.

Brance’s stonefrigate looms on the radar an hour or two later. His ship has been moving toward mine consistently. He’s tried to contact me twice. Both times the Korsian man beside me has forced me to reject contact. I approach his craft slowly. The Korsian man watches the screen intently. We are relatively close to Brance’s craft when he tells me to stop, to stay there. We are halted in a low geostationary orbit around Kors. 

The man whispers something to one of the other men, who turns a large lever on a black contraption strapped to another man’s back. The lights flicker and I worry they’re plunging us into darkness again, but the lights return. Some of the system lights flick off on the control boards, though. They’ve done something, selectively disabled some things. Computers are all disabled.

“Destroy that ship,” says the Korsian simply. He taps the screen.

“What?”

“Destroy it.”

“I—“ I can’t do that. I can’t. There would be guilt, a whole new level of it. It waits to suffocate me. There is familiarity to the feeling. You’ll do it, I tell myself. You always do. I don’t move. I can’t do this to Brance, to all those men.

But then I remember something. The aiforms, I realize. The ones hiding in here with me. They can save me.

I touch the weapon controls and a hum rumbles through the ships. I flick the main screen to a different drone view so that the Korsians can see the glow as the forward quadturrets glow and ripple as the stony plates of the hull fold back to reveal them.

“Fire now,” says the Korsian.

This is exactly the situation I was worried about, the reason I hid the aiforms. Jared and the other one. They can help me now.

“Attack them, Jared.” I say. My voice gets more hurried, panic finally edging in. “Save me! Destroy these men. Jared!”

The Korsians stiffen around me, but there is no response, no action. My plan was to brighten the lights as soon as the aiforms came out, to disorient the Korsians and make it easier for the aiforms to fight. 

But there is nothing, no response.

“Jared, help!” I call.

Still no response. Beside me, the Korsian chuckles. ”I don’t know who you’re calling,“ he says, ”but you’re a fool. Destroy that ship now.“

But I can’t do it. I can’t do it! My hands freeze on the controls. On the screen, attack-pods are separating from Brance’s stonefrigate. He’s coming for me. If only I can hold out a little longer. Stall for time.

The Korsian doesn’t take his blade from my neck as he draws another, shorter blade. It is black and glistening and it hums to life in his hand, becoming a blur. 

“Fire now,” he says simply, “or I’ll cut off your hand.” He holds the blade over my wrist.

He looks a monster, hunched over me, two blades threatening me.

I have no choice. Nothing is working. The aiforms aren’t saving me, whatever the Korsians are doing must be interfering somehow. I am alone.

“Do it NOW!” screams the Korsian in unhinged rage. The pressure on my neck increases.

…even though you 

Are all alone

You’ll stay strong…

I am not strong. I fire.

Raw nuclear sunlight blooms across the viewscreen, so bright that the colors clip out and flatten to blank white on the display. 

I don’t need to aim. We are close enough that it is something I can easily guess. An automatic motion, a reflex, like swatting at a fly.

The white fire leaps from the quadturrets in synchronized pulses, arcing across the short span of atmosphere between our stonefrigates. Stonefrigates are heavily armored ships, but I am unloading our forward plasma-casters at point-blank range. Concrete armor sloughs off Brance’s stonefrigate in a waterfall of lava, obscured in waves by the blinding pulses of white-hot plasma.

Men die like ants. Hundreds, thousands. Aiforms shrivel and melt in neat rows. The reinforced bridge of the ship globs away like a shrinking ember, curling up and melting in the heat and dripping away like a huge hailstone. 

Brance, dead, gone.

I think I’m screaming at myself. Why did I do this? Why am I such a coward? I do not deserve to live, to survive this.

The rippling plasma finally ends. Brance’s stonefrigate belches smoke. Secondary explosions begin, ammunition and fuel ignited by the extreme heat of the blast. The stonefrigate is a burning framework, hanging in the sky. I’ve never seen one so broken before, and it hurts to watch.

Slowly, like a sinking ship, the stonefrigate dies. Ion-repulsors hang on until the end, flaring on backup generators that finally die in blazing explosions of ionized argon and oxygen. Fire ripples like water in the air, buffeting out against our own armor in places. At last the main ion-repulsors fail and Brance’s stonefrigate falls like a mountain and slides from our view. 

I do not send a drone to follow it.

When I finally open my eyes, the Korsian stands still, looking at the screen in awe. “Good,” he finally says. “Now we go to Koriograf.” The blade held to my neck is still there, unyielding. It is starting to hurt.

I turn and look up at him. I know my eyes are red but I make my face hard all the same. He grins down at me. His face is lined and hard and holds no emotion. “Go to Koriograf,” he repeats. “We will come to the dark side of the planet and approach the city flying low, over the surface. We will arrive at Koriograf at nightfall.”

He—or his superiors—have evidently done their research. He knows the capabilities of this craft well. I shudder to think of taking them to Koriograf. I do not know what they have in mind, though, and it is a way to stall.

I slide one of the control levers, but nothing happens.

“Something’s wrong,” I say.

“Still jammed,” he says. He turns to one of the others and issues a soft order. They mess with their equipment for a moment. 

“Try again,” says the man.

This time, it works.