Chapter Four
The stonefrigate heaves into motion under my command. We slide forward, through the dark smoke left by Brance’s stonefrigate. I try not to think about that. It is easy. I am used to pushing dark things from my mind, and piloting calms me. I maneuver the ship easily and skillfully. The dark night side of Koriograf is visible as an empty hole in the star-bitten sky if you know where to look. I know where to look. I am very good at navigation. I will not need the computer to calculate this maneuver. It is simple enough.
Brance. I destroyed Brance. Don’t think about it.
Call the aiforms. Call them now. They can save you.
But what good will that do now? Kill a few Korsians, just so they can kill me?
I realize, with a sudden shock, how afraid I am. I’ve always been afraid. I’ve always managed it. It drives me. But the Korsian vaporblade at my throat sends a new chill through me.
Focus on flying, I tell myself. Set course. Thrust angle. I eyeball the angle but I know it’s exactly right, within a thousandth of a degree. Once’s we’re free of the Korsian atmosphere I flood power to the ion-repulsors and acceleration pushes back on us.
We accelerate smoothly into the ink of space. I don’t look at my Korsian tormentor. “Two days,” I say. “We’ll be there in two days.”
He turns down to look at me. “Get us there now.”
“I can’t—“
“Use your—“ his accent is strong, and I don’t think he knows the word he needs. “Use—Kind.”
My heart sinks. “I have no fuel for that—“
“You have fuel.”
“You don’t understand how it works,” I say, raising my voice. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. It needs—“
“I know what it needs, foolish pilot. Several of your men were wounded in the fighting. Hundreds of them.”
I breathe in sharply. No.
“They are ready. The machines are ready. You will use it.”
“I can’t do that—“
“They are as good as dead. It will be but a mercy to them.” His voice is still hard, still emotionless and empty.
Kindjumping technology is something I’ve always avoided. It’s the one thing I’ve always hated most about the Porcelain Empire, the darkest necessity. I have only used it a few times, and each time I have hated it. It is a guilty thing, utterly without good, and you can feel it. I hate it deeply.
“I—“
The Korsian cuts me off sharply. “You can do it now, or you can do it later, with one hand.” The second vaporblade blurs into life again, and he brings it close to my wrist again.
“Now.”
It is not hard to do it. It is not hard to do anything. I am alone and isolated up here in the cockpit., far from the rest of the ship. It is one of the greatest and most terrible parts of being a pilot. You are a god who does not have to see your actions take effect.
For this too I need no calculation. It is in my mind, and it is clear and simple. I read the instruments on the panel. They are all familiar. The things to do are second nature.
There is a blue switch that turns on the Kindjumping equipment down in the hold. A dial shows that we have no charge right now.
I flip the switch. Down below, the equipment will be fluttering to life. A light blooms to confirm the availability of energy sources. I push that from my mind. It is just technology, I tell myself.
It is so simple, so easy, so painless. I tweak our angle one last time, making sure we only need the one jump. There is nothing stopping me now.
Forgive me, God, I think in my head. But then I take it back. I am not one who can be forgiven. I do not wish to be forgiven, because I do not deserve it.
I throw the throttle and jerk the Kind engines into full activation.
In the hold, beneath the cold lights of Kindjumping arms, hundreds of men perish. Around me there is silence, utter, cold silence. The blue dial jumps, hitting maximum power, then fades back to zero as the stonefrigate slowly drains the Kind. There is a pulse as the jump happens, a strange inner pain that tugs at my insides, a feeling like a wave of deep pain or guilt that passes in a single shuddering heave. Some of the Korsians stumble.
And then there is silence.
A low, faint hum, barely noticeable, fills the silence. I know what it is without looking at the screen. It is the hail of Koriograf.
I feel cold and guilty.
“Twenty minutes or so,“ I say, ”until the ship is cool enough to fly.“ My voice catches, like that of a crying child.
The Korsians talk together in their hushed, whispering language, not paying me even a mote of attention. I am just a tool to them, not a human being.
They were just tools to us, when we came for them. And now I am their tool, and I see their goal. They are coming to Koriograf. I do not know what for, but I know it will be bad. My mother is there.
I feel like I did for most days of the war on Damascene. Cold, guilty, broken, but strangely effective. It is so easy to do things without think. Break and destroy and lay waste and just let it pass.
It all haunts you after, though. The burden is lifted while you are in action, and once you return home, it settles down upon you again, stronger than before.
I look over to the slumped form of Levas. I want to talk to him.
“Wake up, Levas,” I say.
He does.
“Commander Jaunt,” he says, then tries to move his head.
“It hurts,“ he comments, his voice hiding pain.
“Don’t move.”
He looks at me, then, seeing my face, taking in my hollow expression, my red eyes. “We’ve done it, then?”
“Done what?”
“Destroyed Koriograf.”
So that is their goal, I think. We are coming back to destroy Koriograf. My mother is there. People, half a billion people, a thriving city.
No. I have not the strength to resist them. The thought of my foolishness, my weakness, burns me.
“Not yet,“ I say, barely above a whisper. The Korsians pay us no mind.
“Good,“ says Levas.
“I hate you,“ I say. I wish I hadn’t roused him. I don’t know why I did. “You lied, brought us to Kors, and told me to do the right thing so you could just—destroy me.” It galls me that I did exactly what he wanted That he used me.
“It was still the right thing,” says Levas. “And you know that.”
That’s why it hurts so much, maybe.
“I followed my orders,” he continues. “You were weak. You wanted to do the right thing, not the necessary thing. You were right to do it. I simply took advantage of it.”
He persuaded me to do the “right” thing, then used it for his own advantage. So he could do the “necessary” thing.
“You treat me as a tool, Ambassador.”
“We are tools in the hands of others, Commander. Myself as much as you.”
“Tools can hate. I hate—what you call necessity.”
He smiles lightly. ”I suppose so.” His Rithian accent highlights his words. “I call you weak, Commander Jaunt, but I am perhaps weaker. I do not want to see Koriograf fall any more than you do.”
“I’ll do it,” I say. “They’ll make me destroy it. My men are dead. Brance’s men are dead. I have no strength, Levas. I am a coward.”
“You are strong,” he says.
But he is wrong. I tried to be strong, tried to do the right thing, and now I am returning to wipe my home from the face of its world. I am not a good thing. I have never done a good thing. My life is a series of vast and fatal mistakes.
“I cannot,” I say. ”I have no strength.”
He glances about. The Korsians are all engaged in conversation. “Find it, Commander.”
The Korsians finally see that he is awake. Some men come and lift him up. He winces at the pain as his broken limbs move.
“Happy Christmas,” he says as they carry him past me. I barely hear the words. They are the last words I hear him say.
Wind buffets the stonefrigate, which has not been designed to be aerodynamic. It is designed to be a brute, and it is. And now this brute is moving toward Koriograf. My city and the city of my mother. A place of life and happiness. My hands falter on the controls, and the ship slows slightly. I immediately feel the Korsian’s weapon at my face again, and my breath catches.
I can’t do this. I can’t keep doing this. Damascene flashes through my mind, then my battalion dying on Kors less than a day ago, then Brance’s stonefrigate flaring into a maelstrom of debris.
My mother’s song.
When the sky fills
With stone
And the earth shakes
Far below
Even though you
Are all alone
You’ll stay strong,
My light, my own
I’m not strong. All of this, and now I’m coming home to destroy her. I feel the cowardice, the guilt like a dark seed in my chest, growing and shaping me. I hate it.
I can be strong. I can try again. All is lost, but it doesn’t have to be. I pull my mind back into alertness.
There is not much time left. Ahead, lost in the darkness and the hammer of the hail, Koriograf looms. We are nightfall, approaching it.
“City has radar defenses,” I mutter to myself. “Stupid going this high.”
The Korsian beside me leans close.
“What did you say?” His voice is sharp and accented.
“I said you’re stupid to fly in this high,“ I say. “The city has point-defenses. Radar for inbound targets.” Utterly unmanned right now, but he doesn’t know that.
“I know this,” growls the man. “And you expect me to believe that they don’t have radar lower down?”
“They have it,” I say, “but they’ll just assume we’re shipping, if we’re that low. Nobody flies that close to the water. We’ll look—at least initially—like a surface ship. A transport.”
“And why are you telling me this?” growls the Korsian.
“I don’t want to die,” I reply coldly, nodding to his weapon.
“You are so simple,” he says, almost grinning. ”Useless, as a person. Utterly useless. Fly lower, pilot.”
I don’t go to the length of telling him he’s right. I just focus on carefully adjusting our speed, dropping down closer to the waves so we skim low over the water, approaching Koriograf proper. We are low enough now to swath a massive wake across the water from the energy of the thrust, but heigh enough to keep water out of the engines. I close my eyes and take a silent breath, trying to see if I can still make out the rattle of hail on the hull somewhere far above me.
Far, far closer. Dangerously low, really. Ion-repulsors aren’t something you want getting water in them. They’re electric and exposed. I shutter them slightly, which will cut our speed but protect the engines more. The Korsian, watching me, nods, understanding. He learns fast. He terrifies me.
All lights have been disabled. The stonefrigate is a hulk, stony and dead, ripping through the air toward Koriograf, hail shattering against the distant hull. There is the low thunder and rattle of the wind drag, rough and horrible, as the ship forges ahead through it. We watch the outboard drone view on the main screen. The ship is majestic the near-darkness, a dark unimaginable something skating low through the hail-heavy air.
I feel a familiar shiver, looking at the size of the stonefrigate, knowing what is coming.
The Korsian prods me in the neck with the butt of his weapon. “Are the weapons ready, pilot?”
I reach to my side and flip up the clear cover over the fire control. A simple stick, the top end peppered with buttons and a large trigger lever. I toggle the forward weapon-bays open. Out in the night, somewhere, the stonefrigate is morphing. Huge concrete-lined doors trundling back along the keel, splashing the wave-tops aside and revealing the quadturrets. The systems are all responsive—which tells me that however the Korsians had disabled or suppressed them earlier, they’re not doing it now.
I click the button on top, letting a surge of electricity flow to the plasma-casters. On the screen, the quadturrets rage, barrel-ends heating red-hot with the energy. Massive electric sparks arc between the turrets and the hull and jump down to the water like lightning. Plasma-casters are deafeningly loud, even when they’re warming up, but from here, deep in the stonefrigate, there is no sound at all. It is like watching a movie on mute.
“Do not fire yet,” commands the Korsian man beside me. “The time draws near, though.”
I nod grimly. I hate the man beside me. I find a cold gladness in me because he will be dead soon. I look up at his face and see the greed and the destruction outlined in his eyes and jawline. I wonder what face I was making when I fired down on Damascene.
I wonder what my face looks like right now, wonder why I am hesitating right now. I am a coward. A guilty fool. All the things Levas told me.
Stop, I tell myself. Do it. For once, do the right thing. There are not a lot of options anymore.
The radar rings gently as Koriograf slides into range. Vast columnar towers as simple outlined blips. The systems are still responsive, which means that the aiforms will be able to hear me. This will be the last chance I am given. It is now or it is never.
“Kill them, please, Jared,” I say, voice strong and grim.
The aiforms fall from the ceiling like avenging spirits, faces deliberately contorted into terrifying expressions, toothless mouths wide. The Korsian beside me, my dark angry guard, is the first to die. With his helmet off, his head was exposed to two simultaneous impact laser hits. The other men start falling in quick succession. The aiforms are fighting in their element. The Korsians are not.
The last two men are left dueling the aiforms with their long vaporblades. An aiform loses both his arms and one leg before he manages to trip his opponent and fall on his head, knocking him out cold. The other aiform fares better, wrestling the last Korsian to turn his vaporblade aside, then opening a gap in his armor and hitting him with a short green burst from a shoulder-mounted impact laser. There is a shuddering boom from the floor as the downed aiform does the same thing to the fallen Korsian beneath him.
“It is done, Commander Jaunt,” says the standing aiform, Jared. “We have suffered only one casualty, and there is regrettably only myself left in an active capacity.”
I resist the urge to thank them. They are only machines. But I am human.
“Thank you,” I say, before commanding him to secure the door.
I work fast, now, as more of Koriograf looms on the radar. I shutter the ion-repulsors, dropping our speed, then dropping the stonefrigate itself. We settle into the water with a low and resounding heave. The stonefrigate floats unsteadily for a moment, then starts, very gradually, to sink downward. The Korsians will not take long to find that I am doing this. To make it more permanent, I put the main ion-repulsors back on low power and open them again, allowing seawater to flood them. It won’t destroy them, not right away, but it will make them difficult to restart for some time. The stonefrigate quakes beneath me as the main engines short out and go dead.
I toggle through rows of controls, opening every door, every cargo bay. The stonefrigate is meant for maneuvering in space, which means that it has small ion-repulsors mounted even on the top of the craft, for use in maneuvering. I put them on full throttle, driving us downward, into the water. On the screen, jets of blue light spark upward from the hull of the stonefrigate, glittering in the hail. The stonefrigate begins to sink as water floods the cargo areas, surges through loading bays and corridors, splashes up against sealed airlocks.
Airlocks can’t really be disabled, so I can’t flood the whole ship. I cycle the airlocks anyway so that water fills them. If anyone tries to use an airlock, they’ll be met by a massive rush of seawater.
The stonefrigate begins to sink, gradually at first, then faster and faster as more doors and bays wrench open. A stonefrigate is made from heavy materials, billions of tons of titanium and steel and concrete, designed for spaceflight, not at all for floating on water. The hull creaks under the new and uneven strain. It is not accustomed to the crushing outside pressure of the water.
“They are here, Commander Jaunt,” says Jared from the door. There is a chattering from outside, presumably from one or more vaporblades applied to the door. The door is four feet of concrete. I do not know how long it will take for them to get through. They probably have explosives.
“Thank you,” I say absently as I watch the radar. Koriograf is close now, but our forward progress in nothing less than a crawl. We are a hundred meters down, now. The outboard drones are capable of swimming so they sink with us, showing nothing more than a dark mass moving slowly downward in even darker water.
Fear envelops me as I watch the screen. We were so close to Koriograf. I waited so long before taking action, cut it so close. But I did it. I wish my mother could be here. She would be proud of me, I think. I hope, at least.
I use my helmet radio to reach the Koriograf tower network and call my mother’s number.
It is dead midnight on the cabin clock when she finally comes through.
“Kira, is this really you?” Her voice is alert, only barely tinged with sleep.
“Mother,” I say, and I can’t keep my voice from faltering. “They made me do it. They killed everyone. Made me fly back. We were coming to destroy Koriograf. They were going to kill me.”
“Kira!” she says, alarmed at what I’m saying, then calming, clearly trying to calm me too. “Kira, what are you talking about?”
“I wasn’t going to attack Kors, like I was supposed to,” I say. There are tears now, catching in my voice. “I didn’t do it. I was good. I did the right thing.”
My mother is silent, listening.
“It was a bad idea,” I continue. “I—I tried to do the right thing, but—they destroyed us. Forced me to pilot for them. They brought me back here, so they could destroy Koriograf. I’m—I’m stopping them. Stopping it all. There is not a lot of time.”
“I’m proud of you,” says my mother. She’s calm and collected, like she usually is. Only a slight shake hidden in her voice. “I’m so proud of you, Kira. How are you talking to me?”
“Aiforms—the last aiforms—killed the Korsians threatening me.”
“And you’re free now?”
“No,” I say, slowly. “No, I’m not free.”
The chattering on the locked door increases, strains, and then, with a deep thump, the door explodes with a terrible clatter of debris and dust. Jared leaps into lonely battle, just one machine against a host of angry Korsian soldiers.
“Do something,” says my mother. “Escape. You can get away.”
“I can’t get away,” I say. ”I’m doing the right thing, this time. For real. Not running. Not being a coward anymore.”
There is a moment of silence on the other side.
“I love you, Mother,” I say.
“Oh, Kira,” she says. “Kira, my Kira.”
My mother cries into the phone, the stonefrigate sinks around me, and Jared is skewered by a Korsian’s hissing vaporblade. He falls to the ground with a splash and I realize for the first time that there’s water flooding in. We are sinking. The stonefrigate is too far gone to ever be saved now. Koriograf will not be destroyed today.
You’ll stay strong,
My light, my own
I am good under pressure, in combat. I will not give up, not now. I am alone. I can stay strong. It is something I somehow understand now. I am not paralyzed anymore.
Hail floats in the water. I scoop some into one hand as I grab the unfamiliar vaporblade from the fallen man beside my seat. As soon as I touch it, it seems to come alive, blade fuzzing into a blur. I put the hail in my mouth and feel the taste of Koriograf, of home, of my mother’s world.
The first of the Korsians is upon me now, shouting something in his language, face hidden behind a dark mask.
I swing my blade up to meet his.