7

Hwa Young shook her head, chiding herself for not anticipating this. Bae was head of the class. It made a perverse sense that she’d also qualify as a pilot candidate.

“Congratulations,” Hwa Young said stiffly, even though she resented having her triumph—such as it was—marred by the continued presence of Bae in her life.

Bae tossed her head. “Like there was ever any doubt.”

Hwa Young’s fingers twitched, but she kept herself from balling her hands into fists. She’d just have to work harder to outcompete Bae—the story of her life.

“I guess we’re never going to see Forsythia City again, huh?” Seong Su said, glancing between Hwa Young and Bae. “The school, that one restaurant with the really tasty naengmyeon noodles…”

Hwa Young shrugged uncomfortably, reminding herself that the other two might have family members or friends they were worried about. For her part, it wasn’t as though she had any sentimental attachment to the place—and she knew that her one friend, Geum, was on the ship with her. If leaving Serpentine was the price she had to pay to be a lancer, so be it.

Bae’s lip curled. “It figures your ambitions are limited to a backwater city, Seong Su.”

Despite her own lack of nostalgia, Hwa Young was shocked by Bae’s heartlessness. “A lot of people were killed,” she fired back at the other girl. An image of their instructor, her neck broken, flashed in her mind’s eye.

Hwa Young expected Bae to sneer. Instead, Bae looked her straight in the eye and said, “The best revenge is to go on the attack—with lancers.”

Maybe we’re not so different after all, Hwa Young thought, too disquieted to make a retort.

“I’m taking the top bunk,” Bae announced. “Now it’s my turn to use the shower.” She swept past them and slammed the hatch behind her.

Eun didn’t make any snide comments about her stink. He did, however, lean back in his chair and purse his lips at Hwa Young. “So that’s the last one for this bunkroom. You three know each other?”

“We’re classmates.” She didn’t feel the need to elaborate further. Then his words sank in. “For this bunkroom? Who else is there?”

“We’ve got twenty candidates,” Eun said. “Scraping the bottom of the barrel if you ask me”—his gaze raked over her—“but desperate times call for desperate measures.”

Hwa Young digested this. She couldn’t help glancing at Seong Su. In what universe was he more suitable to pilot a lancer than she was?

Don’t get cocky. You’re only a candidate, same as him.

“Are there other candidates from our class?” she asked Seong Su.

“Dunno.” He squirmed under her stare. “They separated us early on.”

Since Bae had stuck her with the bottom bunk, Hwa Young sat there and unearthed the flare pistol from underneath the fold of cloth where she’d stashed it, making sure not to point it at anyone.

Eun inhaled sharply. “Where’d you get that?”

“The quartermaster.”

He let out a slow whistle. “You might be good for something if you managed to charm him. Usually he tries to make me go away by shoving paperwork at me. Guess you’re in charge of resupplying us.”

I can’t imagine why, with your winning personality, she thought, but then reconsidered. Eun might be prickly, but at least she always knew where she stood with him. “Where do I stow this? I assume you don’t want me keeping it under my pillow.” Which was where she planned on hiding her knife, but he didn’t need to know that.

Eun waved toward the bunks. “There are lockers under the bunks. You can store whatever you can fit in them. They’re keyed to your badge. Left one’s for the bottom bunk.”

He still sounded grumpy, but at least he had given her the information she needed. By the time Hwa Young had checked the weapon over and stowed it, Bae had emerged from the shower, her shorn hair perfectly combed.

“Bae,” Hwa Young said, since Seong Su had been useless, “do you know what happened to everyone else?” Maybe she’d have further word on Geum.

The other girl sneered at her. “Yeah, thanks for abandoning us dirtside while you swanned up to the Eleventh Fleet in your boyfriend’s sweet ride.”

“That’s not what happened and you know it.”

Eun wrinkled his nose. “Menace Girl is not my girlfriend. I don’t fraternize with earthworms.”

Bae’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you were Geum’s friend, but did you even check on zir? Zie was asking for you when the medics took zir into surgery, you know.”

Guilt stopped Hwa Young in her tracks. Bae had always, sniperlike, been able to hit bull’s-eye with her remarks. “I asked after Geum,” she said, painfully aware that it sounded like an excuse. “They wouldn’t let me see zir.”

“Hey now.” It was Seong Su, his eyes sympathetic. “Maybe the commander knows something.”

Eun shook his head. “Zie has better things to do than play babysitter with some rando civ—”

The hatch opened. Commander Ye Jun regarded Eun with bemusement. “Which civilian would that be, Hellion?”

It took Hwa Young a moment to recall that Hellion was Eun’s callsign. She seized the opportunity to say, “Commander, I’m concerned about my friend that I mentioned earlier, Geum.” On the off chance it would help—“Zie’s an expert hacker. If that’s something the fleet could use.”

Commander Ye Jun’s gaze sharpened as it moved to her. “First things first, Candidate.”

Eun was already saluting. Seong Su and Bae had followed suit. Flushing, Hwa Young did the same.

“At ease,” Commander Ye Jun said after letting them hold the salutes long enough to make the point. “It’s good that your friends are important to you. You’ll see zir soon enough.”

Hwa Young wanted to see Geum now, but pushing her commanding officer would do no good. She gnawed her lip in frustration, wishing the commander had given her some more definite information.

“I still can’t believe you selected the menace who tried to blow up my lancer,” Eun growled.

“It was a very strong recommendation.” Commander Ye Jun left Eun sputtering and regarded the other three. “Don’t mind him. On the battlefield he will be”—zir smile twisted—“your strong right hand.”

Eun muttered something about what Ye Jun could do with zir right hand.

“Careful, Hellion,” the commander murmured. “If I heard what you said, which of course I didn’t, I’d have to write you up for insubordination. Especially now that I have my pick of candidates to replace you.”

“Baby candidates, sir.”

“I learn fast,” Hwa Young said.

Bae’s mouth opened, but Commander Ye Jun forestalled whatever her rejoinder would have been by saying mildly, “You all do, or you wouldn’t be here.”

“What did you need from us, sir?” Seong Su asked, transparently eager to squash any conflict.

“You’ll be sworn in with the rest of the pilot candidates on New Year’s,” Ye Jun said. “A private ceremony.”

Hwa Young frowned. The newscasts had always shown bright-faced new lancer pilot candidates, heroes, saviors-to-be. They never mentioned what happened to the ones who didn’t make the cut.

She racked her brain, trying to remember whether she’d heard anything about Eleventh Fleet and its lancers specifically. Only that they were known as the Bountiful Fleet. Either the moniker was ironic or circumstances had changed. “Is there a reason for the secrecy, sir?”

“You like asking awkward questions,” zie said with a hint of reproof. “Admiral Chin has her ways.”

“Not like we want to broadcast our diminished numbers to the enemy,” Eun added.

“Back on Serpentine,” Seong Su said, hushed, “I heard the rebels had ways of listening in. Even that there were dissenters in the fleets.”

“If there are, they wouldn’t be able to hide it for long,” Bae said dismissively.

Hwa Young stayed silent.

“Out in the Moonstorm, our gravity isn’t entirely reliable.” Commander Ye Jun sighed, and zir good humor receded to reveal worry. “Eun will train all the candidates. Eun, keep the smart-ass remarks to yourself. You can save them for me.” That last sounded like the most genial of threats.

Eun smiled sourly. “Of course, sir.”

Eun’s prickliness, which bordered on open disrespect, distressed Hwa Young. Despite some of the instructors’ admonishments, she knew it was outward adherence to the forms and courtesies that reinforced Imperial gravity, rather than any thoughts beneath the surface. A lifetime of bowing to her superiors, however, made Hwa Young suspicious of any defiance that wasn’t her own.

Commander Ye Jun laid out the training schedule, which would be interrupted during the journey only for the New Year’s ceremony to celebrate the Empress’s birthday. Hwa Young memorized the schedule without complaint, although zie told them they could access the information through their neural implants as well. Reveille at 0600. Meals together, classes to orient them to shipboard life, hand-to-hand combat training, firearms.

Last of all, after a couple months of this, would be the coveted introduction to the lancers themselves, when some of them would emerge as pilots…and some wouldn’t.

---

The first class, according to the schedule, consisted of an overview on faster-than-light travel and communications. Most of the twenty candidates had arrived early the next morning and were already seated. Hwa Young only recognized a few of them. That made sense. There was no reason they would only have selected candidates from her class, out of all the refugees.

Bae was chatting with Ha Yoon as though they’d never been separated. Her too? Hwa Young thought, trying not to stare—or scowl. Maybe Dr. Jin, with her fixation on good breeding rather than actual aptitude, had approved Ha Yoon.

She was trudging to a seat in the front, preoccupied with thoughts of how to win Eun over, when someone hugged her from behind. She yelped and flailed.

The attacker let go immediately. “Hwa Young! It’s me!”

“Geum?” She whirled, blinking back tears of relief and gratitude as she beheld her friend.

Geum had showed up in the same candidate uniform. Someone had shaved part of zir scalp, which sported a bandage. “Hey there.” Zie grinned brightly. “They shoved some of that regenerative gel into me and gave me painkillers. I’m good as new.”

Hwa Young threw her arms around her friend, and they hugged fiercely, heedless of the other candidates gawking at them. “You’re safe,” Hwa Young whispered over and over. “You’re safe.”

Which was how Eun found them when he entered. He cleared his throat. “Excuse me, no fraternizing. You’re soldiers now, not schoolkids.”

Geum blinked owlishly at him.

Eun shook his head. “Sit down, everyone. Class is starting.”

Eun’s lecture opened with a hair-raising overview on the unreliability of communications in the Moonstorm, where aetheric currents could cause transmissions to go astray. Within New Joseon proper, relay towers ensured the dependability of comms. Staying in contact with Fleet HQ was one of the never-ending problems with operations in clanner space.

Hwa Young spent the entire lecture taking notes on the slate she’d been provided. But no matter how hard she tried to concentrate, her gaze swept over the other candidates.

From her class: herself, Geum, Bae, Ha Yoon, and Seong Su. That made five of them and fifteen unknowns. Was the thin, intense person a threat to her? The elegant girl whose hair was almost as perfect as Bae’s? What criteria would they use to determine who would be elevated to the rank of pilot, and who would be reassigned to another military occupational specialty?

Afterward, Eun led them to a designated training room. “If it were up to me, this would have come first,” he announced, “but I suppose this is soon enough.”

The lockers in the room were numbered. Eun read out numbers and names. Hwa Young found hers, number six. To her displeasure, Bae had number five, and Geum was across the room.

“Open up the lockers. They’ll respond to your fingerprint.”

Inside the locker was a spacesuit. Hwa Young eyed it with trepidation. She couldn’t help but think that if she’d had one on Carnelian, maybe she wouldn’t have had to lie to the Imperials in exchange for their protection. As it stood, she’d never handled one before.

Eun went over how to check the spacesuits and read the oxygen gauges. How to put them on and take them off. Hwa Young watched Bae and Seong Su, even Geum, in between struggling with her suit, which seemed to have a mind of its own. Were they faster at donning the suits? Nimbler at moving in them?

“Not bad,” Eun said grudgingly—to Seong Su. “Usually the big ones are clumsy, but you’re a quick study.”

Seong Su scratched the back of his neck, embarrassed at having been singled out for praise. “One of my parents is an engineer,” he mumbled. “Used to bring suits home, show us how they worked.”

Of course. Something no mere ward of the state would have had an opportunity to practice. Hwa Young swore to redouble her efforts so that no one would be able to tell she was at a disadvantage.

“Hwa Young, Bae,” Eun said. “Let’s see you put them on again.”

As Hwa Young divested herself of the suit so she could comply, she asked, “Where’s the commander?”

Eun grimaced. “An officer’s not going to do the dirty work of teaching Spacer 101, so get that idea out of your head. Besides, zie’s attending a staff meeting with the admiral.”

It didn’t help that Eun was only sporadically good at teaching. He was knowledgeable, but he tended to skip around from step to step rather than going in order, which made his directions difficult to follow. Hwa Young reminded herself that it didn’t matter that she’d have preferred a better teacher. She had to make do with the one she had.

Eun also kept Hwa Young separated from Geum, which couldn’t be a coincidence. It was one hug, she thought resentfully. Surely it wasn’t a bad thing to greet a friend she’d been so worried about. Not like we’re dating. But protesting would only make things worse. Besides, it galled her that Geum didn’t seem to notice the separation at all, chattering enthusiastically to the candidates next to zir about the suits’ special features.

After they practiced putting the suits on and taking them off, and activating the magnets in the boots in case of gravity failure, they learned how to make emergency repairs to suit breaches and activate the first aid systems. “It works better if you have a buddy,” Eun said with the air of someone who knew, “but sometimes you’re shit out of luck.”

“Like if the breach is somewhere you’re not flexible enough to reach,” Bae said before Hwa Young could speak.

“I can see you’re an optimist,” Eun said.

Bae bowed her head, not disagreeing—at least not out loud.

Hwa Young waited until the end of the training session to ask the question that had been bothering her. “How are pilots chosen? Would it make sense to tell us the criteria so we can strive harder?” She hoped he would accept her sincerity.

“Maybe figuring it out is part of the process,” Bae said cuttingly.

“That’s not entirely wrong,” Eun muttered. “The version of the adaptive interface used by the lancers is cutting-edge. Each unit has its own preferences. Even Commander Ye Jun doesn’t decide who’s suitable, although zie makes an educated guess as to promising candidates. The lancers themselves pick their pilots.”

Hwa Young’s heart plummeted. In other words, she could impress Eun and it still wouldn’t matter. The lancer might pick someone else based on some arbitrary standard of its own.

The lancer might glimpse her secret and reject her for not being a true Imperial.

No. I can’t give up.

“Why are there so few pilots anyway?” Hwa Young pressed.

Geum was mouthing No, don’t frantically from the other side of the room, but Hwa Young needed to know. They all did.

Eun’s eyes darted around the room. Then he heaved a sigh and set his own spacesuit back in its locker with the care of someone who knew his life might depend on it in the near future. He leaned against the nearest bulkhead. “You’re gonna find out anyway.”

“Find out what?” one of the other recruits demanded.

Eun huffed, kicking the deck like a frustrated horse, then squared his shoulders. “It’s not just that the lancers pick compatible pilots,” he said harshly. “Whatever you’ve experienced as a link between yourself and, say, a hovercar you’re driving, the bond is that much more intense with a lancer. You move the lancer like a part of yourself—but that means when you take damage, there’s a feedback loop.”

All twenty of the candidates had fallen silent. Hwa Young held herself still, not wanting to miss a word.

“The last battle at Spinel was bad. Real bad.” Eun’s voice came out low and tense and unhappy. “We were still a full company of twelve pilots then. At Spinel, we lost four in the first wave.”

For the first time, Hwa Young looked at Eun as a potential comrade, however grumpy, rather than an obstacle. She hadn’t considered what he’d gone through, the battles he’d endured before she met him. And she’d never apologized for lobbing a shuttle at his lancer, either. Especially if he’d felt the explosion through the neural link.

“You’ve seen Commander Ye Jun’s left arm. The one that doesn’t work anymore.” Eun smiled humorlessly. “Zie used to direct us from a sniper unit. Took a hit to zir lancer defending me. The battle got chaotic fast, and the rest of the company perished—Admiral Chin blames zir for the losses. Because I didn’t dodge the missile fast enough. The technicians repaired the lancer, but it’s no use. Normally they’d outfit zir with a prosthesis…but prostheses won’t work with lancer feedback injuries. Zie can’t move zir own arm or the lancer’s. And zir lancer is relegated to the rear as a command-and-control unit, since it’s no good for combat anymore.”

Hwa Young had barely breathed as Eun was speaking. She doubted the other trainees had, either; it was so quiet in the room, you could hear a pin drop.

Eun looked around at the candidates and seemed satisfied by their dismay. “All right, baby candidates. Get out of my hair. You have one hour of rec time before the next training session.”