13

The next day began with a briefing, or what Commander Ye Jun claimed was a briefing. Before she headed to the conference room, Hwa Young stifled the urge to look at her feet and check for telltale floating, given her snooping around after gossip about the commander. She’d already prayed to the Empress this morning, but maybe there was time to sneak in an extra prayer?

On the other hand, Eun, Bae, and Seong Su had already lined up at the bunkroom’s open hatch. Eun looked impatiently at her. “You coming or not?”

The extra prayer would have to take place another time. Sorry, Hwa Young thought in the Empress’s general direction. An extra prayer this evening. And then she was ashamed of herself for attempting to bargain with the Empress of all people, even as an abstract.

Commander Ye Jun awaited them at the conference room, a glass of water in hand and a pitcher before zir, along with something that looked suspiciously like a decorating bag full of pink frosting, complete with a nozzle.

Hwa Young scarcely noticed those, however, due to the candy model of…the fleet? At least, Hwa Young thought it was the fleet. It took up the center of the table and had been constructed from spun sugar whose smell filled the room with nauseating sweetness. She spotted the five active lancers in the vanguard, including an extremely stylized representation of Winter’s Axiom in blue sugar embellished with delicate white frosting and edible (she assumed) silver sprinkles.

We do not look like that, Winter’s Axiom said in her head, with an offended dignity like a cat’s.

Hush, Hwa Young told the lancer, stilling her face so the others wouldn’t detect her startlement. She wasn’t used to her lancer talking to her, especially since it was often taciturn. Were the others being confronted by similar statements? I need to pay attention.

Most interestingly, the candy ships and lancers were all connected to one another by struts of yet more spun sugar, as though the fleet were a single entity. Hwa Young studied the sculpture, trying to determine what parts of it were structural and what parts were, well, eye candy.

Eun cussed under his breath, then said, “I didn’t realize it was arts and crafts day. I left the glue sticks at home.”

Bae side-eyed the whole display. “I…thought we were here for a briefing?”

The commander smiled narrowly. “This is the briefing. We’re using this to simulate our next mission. It’s gimmicky, but people find gimmicks easier to remember.”

“I hate it when you say that,” Eun grumbled. “At least this time you didn’t sculpt the ships out of rice.”

“We don’t have the rice to spare,” Commander Ye Jun said. “Sugar, on the other hand…Everyone, sit down.” Zie sipped sparingly from the glass of water.

They all did, spacing themselves evenly around the table.

“Did you really waste good rice, sir?” Seong Su asked plaintively. “Next time just ask me and I’ll eat it for you.”

Eun cleared his throat before Commander Ye Jun could answer. “Get to the point, sir.”

Commander Ye Jun walked around the table and handed each pilot a printed card and a set of dice. The backs of the cards were blank, and Hwa Young instinctively angled hers so the others couldn’t read it. Bae and Eun did the same. Seong Su, who sat across from her, did not. She bet he forgot to hide his hand when playing card games, too.

“Wouldn’t it be more stable if you laid the ‘fleet’ down on its side?” Bae asked. “It looks like an ersatz rocket the way you have it.”

“Good observation.” Commander Ye Jun’s eyes glinted. “Read your card. It explains the rules of the game, and the roles you’ll play.”

A game? Hwa Young thought in vexation. Why couldn’t we have a regular briefing like normal people?

Nevertheless, she read the card. The first words: You are a clanner.

She froze, unfroze. Took long, unsteady breaths in an attempt to calm herself. It’s just a game. The commander doesn’t know…or did zie?

“Bae, Hwa Young, Eun, Seong Su,” the commander said, “you’re the clanners. You will be working together to destroy the fleet. I’ll play the Imperials.” Zie waved a fifth card, which zie had retained. Zie was careful not to reveal the side facing zir.

The commander began pacing back and forth, back and forth, at the head of the table. “As Eleventh Fleet, my goal is to reach Carnelian and establish a base. As the clanners, your goal is either to prevent Eleventh Fleet from reaching Carnelian, or to stop the establishment of that base.”

Hwa Young froze. Unfroze. A staticky roaring started up in her ears. “Carnelian?” she asked, fighting to keep her voice steady.

Zie misconstrued her question, luckily for her. “You probably haven’t heard of it. It’s a clanner moon that’s been lingering at the edge of the Moonstorm. We razed it six years ago, but there are signs that the clanners have revitalized it…and that it’s the home of their new forward base of operations.”

Hwa Young reread the rules card to cover her reaction. “Probably haven’t heard of it.” She’d never expected to see her old home again, let alone as a lancer pilot pledged to the other side. Was this the Empress’s idea of a cruel joke? Could Carnelian truly be operational again?

Were they truly heading to Carnelian for their first mission?

Hwa Young couldn’t keep her emotions from churning inside her, though she kept her face still as ice. The commander’s words echoed in her mind. Reach Carnelian and establish a base. Such dry, clinical words to express the idea that she would be fighting against her former people. It was like her nightmares had splintered into real life, plunging her into a pit of horror.

With an effort, she forced herself to focus on the card’s text, even as her stomach roiled. By repeating the words to herself, she could distract herself from the news the commander had just delivered. After all, they had a sugar-spun mission at hand.

According to the permitted actions on the card, she could select maneuvers to attack or disable parts of the fleet. Each time she succeeded—that was determined by dice rolls—she could break part of the sculpture. This simulated damage. Parts of the sculpture that fell off were considered destroyed and were no longer available for the commander’s use.

“Sir, why are we playing as the clanners?” Bae demanded. “Shouldn’t we be planning ways to beat the clanners?”

“How do you propose to do that without knowing how to think like a clanner?” Commander Ye Jun countered. “It’s only by stepping into their shoes that you can learn to fight them more effectively.”

Hwa Young tangled herself up trying to figure out what the least suspicious reaction to this statement was and how to implement it. Staring straight ahead like a statue wasn’t it. Nor was fidgeting. She settled for reading the rules yet again, as though engrossed, even though she had already committed them to memory.

“Any other questions?” the commander asked.

Seong Su raised his hand. “Could I have a glass of water, too, sir?”

Bae rolled her eyes, but the commander wordlessly retrieved a glass from one of the cabinets in the back and poured for Seong Su.

The game began. Eun attempted to take charge, but Bae kept arguing with him. Seong Su squirmed every time Bae made a counterproposal to Eun’s plans. For her part, Hwa Young was so distracted by the revelation that they were going to Carnelian coupled with the simple statement on the card—You are a clanner—that it was all she could do to focus on the game and the rattling of dice rolls.

The one time she did successfully destroy a battle cruiser’s engine with a clanner suicide run, her hands shook so badly that she broke off the wrong part of the sculpture. The commander didn’t get to repair that bit, either, because Seong Su had already pounced on it and was nomming happily on the candy, despite the serious side-eye Bae was giving him.

Hwa Young’s stomach turned at the thought of suicide missions, even if she needed to think of the clanners as the enemy. At least none of the others seemed to divine the reason for her nerves.

It turned out that for every move they had, Commander Ye Jun had a counter, which zie narrated at length. Sometimes it involved transferring engineers from one ship to another for emergency repairs. Sometimes it involved fancy maneuvers with monofilament net to slice up intruders, which Hwa Young hadn’t realized the fleet carried. Hwa Young was starting to be vexed by the sheer number of actions zie had access to. Maybe zir card was printed in a smaller font than her own?

In one notable instance, Commander Ye Jun rolled a critical success and blew away an entire clanner fleet with the singularity lance controlled by Winter’s Axiom.

Winter’s Axiom was pleased. We did that.

Whose side are you on? Hwa Young demanded, but the lancer didn’t answer.

And every time Commander Ye Jun pulled out another trick, out came zir decorating bag. The commander’s successes were simulated by shoring up the sculpture with frosting. Zie repaired the spun-sugar sculpture with understated glee, even though the “fleet” increasingly resembled a shambling monster holding court over the table.

Then the commander’s badge beeped. Zir expression went blank. “Excuse me,” zie said. “I have to take this call privately.”

Hwa Young was secretly grateful for the reprieve. The commander had just responded to what they’d thought was a cleverly coordinated, multipronged attack by a devastatingly effective use of chaff particles that confused the sensors. It was hard to stay coordinated when none of your sensors could see the targets.

When the hatch had closed after zir, Bae scowled at Eun. “If we’d followed my plan—”

“If we’d followed your plan,” Eun said with the air of someone who’d heard it all before, “we would have been filleted by the game’s ‘lancer squad.’ I’m telling you, Farseer’s sensor suite at full capability can see things coming from the next system over and—”

While they quarreled, Hwa Young rose and stretched, vertebrae cracking. Just how small is the text on zir card? she wondered. Did zie have yet more nasty tricks in store for them? She walked over to the commander’s seat and picked up zir card.

The blank side stared back at her.

Seong Su noticed. “Whoa, you can’t just—”

Hwa Young turned the card over.

The other side was also blank.

“Hey,” Hwa Young said over Seong Su’s protestations, Eun and Bae’s arguments. “The commander’s cheating. Zie’s just been making up all zir moves, while we’re stuck with what’s printed on our cards.”

Eun was diverted from declaiming a scathing list of reasons why Bae’s Farseer should never get into melee combat. (Thin armor and its status as the platoon’s warning-and-control system were at the top of the list.) “Did zie really?” Eun came around the table to verify that Commander Ye Jun’s card was, indeed, blank.

This only upset Seong Su further. “Sir, we shouldn’t be doing this.”

“No, if the commander’s cheating, we have the right to know.” Bae nodded to herself. “Check the dice.”

Bae was right. The commander had a special set of dice, unlike any of theirs, that skewed zir chances of rolling successes. For example, the six-sided dice had sixes on three faces.

“We were never going to win,” Hwa Young said, fuming. “Not with the odds stacked against us like this. What exactly was zie trying to tell us? What the hell kind of briefing is this?”

She should have held on to her temper, but the unfairness of the entire exercise had gotten to her. First the news that they were going to Carnelian of all places, and now this. Damned if she was going to put up with this fake “exercise” any longer. Before anyone could stop her, she grabbed the pitcher and dumped its contents over the “fleet.” She took a moment’s vicious satisfaction in Seong Su’s appalled expression and Eun’s muttered “Now you’ve done it.”

“Thanks so much!” Bae snarled. “Because of you, we’re going to be scrubbing toilets for the rest of this journey!”

Hwa Young wasn’t paying attention to the others’ raised voices. Instead, she was studying the sculpture, which was dissolving at an alarming rate. She thought she glimpsed something hidden within the flagship’s translucent engine room. Another card?

This time, when she reached for the sculpture, Bae grabbed her wrist. “Oh no you don’t.”

Hwa Young hissed in indignation. “Look at it! There’s something inside the flagship.”

“Let go of her,” Eun said sternly.

Bae snatched back her hand so quickly Hwa Young was almost offended.

Eun delivered a calculated chop to the sculpture, which caused it to dissolve into fragments. One of them landed on Hwa Young’s cheek, sticky and sharp. Seong Su grabbed another fragment and popped it into his mouth before anyone could stop him. Eun pulled out the hidden item, which was indeed a card. He showed it around.

YOU WIN, it said.

“Come out, sir,” Eun said in a very loud voice. “I assume this was the point of the exercise.”

The hatch swished open. Hwa Young turned to stare at zir, gaping. Even the “call” had been part of the exercise.

“Very good,” Commander Ye Jun said. “You passed.”

Bae’s eyes sparked with anger. “Sir, you could have given us a real briefing instead of this…this…”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned about warfare,” the commander said, calm in the face of Bae’s wrath, “it’s that cheating is the point.”

This silenced Bae.

“The clanners are not going to broadcast their plans—or if they do, it will be to trick us, or to fake us out. The clanners are not going to go easy on you because you’re novices and there’s a learning curve and you haven’t learned to coordinate effectively. The clanners think they’ve destroyed all of Eleventh Fleet’s lancers, but once they realize some of us survived, and once they realize some of us are new, they will exploit that. The clanners are fighting for their survival.”

Hwa Young shivered. For a moment she was a child in the reeds again, a child who had lost her entire family.

The Empress keeps all her children safe. She repeated the words in her mind until her breathing steadied.

“So we snatch every advantage we can, and fight to win,” Hwa Young said, willing herself to sound certain. “But sir, what you said about the mission—was that fake too?”

Commander Ye Jun’s smile was genuine. “No, that part’s real. Eleventh Fleet means to establish a forward base on Carnelian. We don’t know how the clanners restored an entire moon that quickly after we destroyed it six years ago, but we can’t afford to let them control a territory so close to the Imperial border.

“Assuming the moon’s trajectory doesn’t change, we will arrive in a matter of weeks. That’s not a lot of time for training. And the closer we get, the greater the risk of clanner attacks. We may have to scramble to repel ambushes on the way in.

“As for our role,” zie continued, “we will act as a forward patrol. Eleventh Fleet can dodge, but a base can’t. Our job will be to identify incoming threats and eliminate them, especially since we can evade detection more easily than a detachment from the fleet proper. Once the base is fully operational, of course, it will have defenses of its own. But before it’s completely established, it will be vulnerable. That’s where we come in. We have to be a fighting machine—the Empress’s fist—or the clanners will defeat us, and the mission will fail. Understood?”

“Understood, sir,” Hwa Young and Bae said, while Seong Su saluted (sloppily) and Eun nodded.

Commander Ye Jun eyed the table and the soggy, sticky remnants of the sculpture. “In that case, I leave the four of you to clean up this mess. Dismissed.”