20

I’m dreaming this.

Mother Aera couldn’t be here on Carnelian. Not the Carnelian she’d returned to, where the Imperial occupation was under way. For a crazed moment, Hwa Young saw her heart-mother through doubled vision, a lens of refracted possibilities. Past and present collided, shattered.

And left her physically overextended. Mother Aera, no fool, caught her in a joint lock and forced her to the ground with her arm behind her back. Hwa Young’s attempts to resist only resulted in screaming pain from the elbow all the way up to her shoulder. She desisted, afraid the pressure would break the joint.

“If you think I’m going to—” Hwa Young snarled.

“Hwajin—”

A name she hadn’t heard in six years. She flinched.

“Hwajin! I’m not going to ease up until you give me your word that you’ll hear me out. I’m not here to fight.”

“If you’re going to cut my throat, do it already,” Hwa Young gasped, breathless with pain.

It was the gusty sigh more than anything else that convinced Hwa Young this wasn’t some late-breaking hallucination. Mother Aera had always sighed like that. “And use that knife you’re carrying to do it, too? Don’t be stupid. If I’d wanted you dead, you’d be dead. Moons know you gave me enough opportunities. What were you thinking, driving without an escort?”

Great, now she was being lectured about her lack of security precautions by her former mother, the clanner. She glared impotently at the dirt right in front of her nose, resisted the urge to spit out the grit in her mouth on the grounds that the gesture would be misconstrued.

“Hwajin, I’m here to get you out of this mess. Or—all right. Let’s just talk, okay?”

“Is that what’s passing for diplomacy among the clanners?”

The vibration of Mother Aera’s laughter transmitted itself through her arm, and Hwa Young winced at the fractional increase of pain. “Let’s not mince words, child,” Mother Aera said. “It’s not like the Empress is talking to our envoys anyway. And I’m more concerned with you.” Then, thoughtfully: “Are you a boy these days, or is this a crownworld fashion thing?”

The haircut tangent was so very Mother Aera that Hwa Young, trapped by six-years-dormant habits of obedience, muttered, “Fashion thing.” She thought furiously, then added, “How long—” Couldn’t finish that either.

How long had Mother Aera been tracking her movements? Only since she arrived at Carnelian? Or—a terrifying thought invaded her mind—had Mother Aera followed her through the six long years of her assimilation, never making contact? The possibility made her sick with suppressed fury.

Or, it occurred to her, had she been trying to make contact, and failing to get through?

That gusty sigh again. “If I’d had any way to retrieve you earlier”—great, now her heart-mother was talking about her like a misplaced bolt of fabric—“I would have done it. We thought you’d died in the aether.”

Hwa Young seized on the “we.” “Who else—”

“Only myself,” Mother Aera said quietly, “from our household. There was a clanner ship in the area, scooping up survivors. We barely snuck out without alerting the Imperials.”

Hwa Young’s eyes prickled with unwanted tears. She was shocked to discover that the faces of her siblings, of her uncle and aunts, were indistinct blurs in her memory. I’m done grieving, she told herself fiercely. It didn’t help.

Mother Aera continued talking. “We have—let’s say sources of information. The fact that Eleventh Fleet still has operational lancers after the Battle of Spinel was of great interest to us. I wasn’t expecting one of the pilots to be—” Her voice roughened, snagged on the word. “To be my heart-daughter.”

What could she say? I’m not your daughter anymore? She was no one’s daughter in New Joseon.

“I’m listening,” she said, because she had no other options. Not good ones, anyway. She was stranded halfway between the two Imperial bases and no one expected to see her back for another half hour. “Say what you came to say to me.”

Her heart hurt as though someone had driven a knife through it. She’d promised herself to the Empire. She had comrades. What was she supposed to do with this phantasm from the past she’d amputated?

Mother Aera released her hold. Hwa Young rolled over and rose to her feet, coughing. Just her luck that Mother Aera had grabbed the injured arm.

“You should get medical—”

“Get to the point.”

When she was younger, she’d have gotten scolded for the show of disrespect, but Mother Aera didn’t press her now. “I have something to show you. Come into the car.”

Walking voluntarily into a clanner’s armored car struck Hwa Young as either a terrifically bad idea or some form of treason, but she’d given her word. And never mind the question of whether she needed to keep a promise to a clanner, a point of ethics that her classes had neglected to cover. Hwa Young was starting to think boarding schools didn’t teach you anything useful about life. “Fine.”

Mother Aera ushered her to the shotgun seat, which was either very trusting or very calculated. Hwa Young buckled herself in without comment. Experimentally, she reached out for the reassuring presence of her lancer in her mind. Either it still wasn’t talking to her or it was too far away. She schooled her face to stillness to hide her dismay.

The vehicle’s dashboard didn’t light up or present Mother Aera with an adaptively personalized interface in the manner of Imperial technology. The controls you got were the controls you got, a factoid about clanner tech Hwa Young had forgotten in her six years away.

Now that the shock of the encounter was ebbing, Hwa Young assessed her surroundings. Mother Aera carried at least two guns and probably more knives. She was the one who’d taught Hwa Young the essentials of firearms and knife fighting, back when.

It didn’t escape Hwa Young’s notice that the armored car only activated in response to Mother Aera’s handprint and a passcode. Mother Aera matter-of-factly covered up her hand as she entered the latter. Geum would have hacked the system; on the other hand, Hwa Young was glad her friend wasn’t trapped here with her. Mother Aera had no reason to treat Geum as anything but another Imperial.

“Where are we going?” Hwa Young asked.

“Not far. I don’t want to be this close to the road in case your friends show up.”

That was what she’d feared, but better to have some freedom of action by keeping her calm in the passenger seat, as opposed to being trussed up like a gimbap seaweed roll and tossed into the trunk.

“Let me guess,” Mother Aera remarked as she drove into the hills, through the drifts of dust and petals—a picturesque scene under other circumstances. “You think I’m going to cut your throat anyway and leave your body as bait for the winged tigers.”

“It had occurred to me, yes.”

“I’m not angry you chose to live among the Imperials.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

This time Mother Aera caught herself before the sigh gusted out. “Only a little farther.” She didn’t specify beyond that, but Hwa Young saw what she meant once she parked the car beneath an outcropping that shielded it from aerial surveillance.

“You’re not going to get much ransom for me.” Hwa Young didn’t know if this was true, but she doubted Admiral Chin would go to extreme measures to win back a green pilot.

She hated the fact that she didn’t know how badly she wanted to be rescued, no matter how much Mother Aera’s survival discomfited her. Another lesson from her traitor heart.

“How do you feel about slideshows, Hwajin?”

Hwa Young suppressed a groan. “You kidnapped me for a slideshow?”

Mother Aera inserted a data crystal into the dashboard. It whirred and clicked obstinately until she banged on it with the heel of her hand. “Sorry, the pollen gets into everything.”

Hwa Young grimaced in understanding. Fortunately, she didn’t have allergies, unlike some of the marines.

The presentation started up with a flicker of static, then a holographic map of the Empire. The latter looked laughably small, presented thus: a confetti-pancake of stars and systems and space stations connected by shipping routes and relay towers, all protected by the Imperial fleets. Hwa Young could have crushed it in her hands if the hologram had possessed any substance.

“You have wonderful intelligence,” Hwa Young said dryly, although she didn’t know how accurate the map was, just to make Mother Aera twitch. Still, the level of detail, especially regarding the core worlds, dismayed her. It could be faked, she told herself uneasily. “I’m proud of your spies.”

“There’s no need to be snide, Hwajin. I haven’t shown you the really classified stuff.”

Hwa Young didn’t respond to the gibe, nor the fact that Mother Aera was using her old clanner name an awful lot. If Mother Aera had come for her five years ago, six years ago, Hwa Young would have wept to hear herself called Hwajin. Begged for a mother’s embrace. Instead, she shook with fury: how dare Mother Aera show up now, years after she’d given herself to the Empress’s service? The years stood between them as surely as palisades.

“They’ll send search parties once they realize I’m missing,” Hwa Young said. She hoped this wasn’t a bluff. “You should make the most of your time.”

Mother Aera’s eyes narrowed, but she turned back to the hologram. “This, as you know, is the Empire of New Joseon,” she said. She made a gesture, and a full third of the Empire glowed red. “These sectors are on the brink of rebelling or joining the Moonstorm.”

She gestured again. The crownworld shone like a white-green star; the core worlds surrounding it glowed golden. “The Empress’s hold over the core worlds, on the other hand, is complete. One could even say tyrannical. And she’s looking to extend that tyrant’s hold not just over the periphery worlds but beyond.”

Hwa Young bristled at this description of the Empress’s rule. The Empress protected her children. That was the point of the Empire. And besides, Hwa Young couldn’t believe the peripheral worlds were on the brink of rebellion; that had to be a clanner lie.

“We have intel that the Empress has been testing a new weapon,” Mother Aera said soberly. “One capable of destroying whole worlds. We have reason to believe that it’s already been tested on some uninhabited planetoids. Former planetoids, I should say.”

Hwa Young couldn’t tell whether the queasy knot of unease in her stomach came from having her past shoved into her face in the form of her heart-mother, or if it was due to this outlandish claim. “If you expect me to betray the Empire for a rumor—”

Mother Aera grabbed her hands. Shocked by the contact, Hwa Young let her. She remembered the strength of those fingers, identical to her own, which had corrected her grip on a rifle so many years ago.

“It’s more than a rumor.” Mother Aera’s voice hardened. “You think the Empress is only going to use her new weapon on the clanners? She won’t hesitate to turn it on any of her own worlds that challenge her rule.”

“No one would rebel.” Hwa Young hated how sullen her voice sounded. As she spoke, an idea kindled in her brain. Even though Mother Aera had gone to the trouble of concealing the armored car, projection units like this hologram were no good for camouflage, according to Geum, because the flicker always gave away your position. But if you wanted to give away your position to signal for help…

“Can I see the map?” Hwa Young asked. Without waiting for a response, she touched the hologram, zooming in on the peripheral worlds.

“Surely you don’t believe what the Imperial news services tell you,” Mother Aera went on, ignoring Hwa Young’s interruption. “The propaganda? Her forces put down riots on the worlds of Jasper and Olivine. They wiped out an entire city on the latter. There’s nothing left but mice and their shadows.”

Hwa Young pretended to listen while feigning clumsiness in zooming in and out, using the holo to send a signal: four long pulses, two short, four long again. HELP, in the Imperial military code. She hoped Mother Aera hadn’t caught her at it, but if so, Mother Aera was playing it cool.

As she tapped out code, though, Mother Aera’s words seeped in. How could the Empress be vicious or tyrannical when her rule had provided Hwa Young a new home, a friend, comrades? When her prayers to the Empress throughout the six months at the orphanage and the six long years at the boarding school had given her the wish of her dreams, a bond with a lancer?

Still, a worm of doubt gnawed inside Hwa Young’s chest. What if there was an element of truth to Mother Aera’s accusations?

That was something she could deal with later. For now, she had to stall for time, keep Mother Aera talking, until rescue came. If it did.

“I don’t know,” she said, wishing that her hesitation were wholly feigned. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

Mother Aera’s eyes softened. “It must be hard for you. But you belong with your people, not the Imperials. You can come with me. Grow your hair out again like a proper clanner woman.”

Hwa Young stilled.

She could go back with Mother Aera, find out what had become of the other settlers on Carnelian. Carry the perfume of starblooms with her now and forever, instead of being haunted by the Moonstorm’s transfigurations and changeable vistas in her dreams. She’d never again have to worry about being second best because Bae outperformed her.

She could, and it would mean leaving behind Eun, who had trained her despite all his grousing. Geum, who had welcomed her from the beginning. Amiable Seong Su. Even Bae.

It would mean leaving behind her lancer, Winter’s Axiom, and never hearing that arctic voice joined to hers again.

Hwa Young was searching for something more to say, something to distract Mother Aera with, only to be interrupted by a deep rumble.

The steps of a lancer making landfall.

Mother Aera blanched. “Shit, they’ve tracked us!”

That was Hwa Young’s cue. She yanked the data crystal out of its slot, kicked open the door, and dived out, rolling beneath the cover of the outcropping. The crystal might include useful intel; there might be other stray files on it. She wished she’d been able to grab one of Mother Aera’s handguns on the way out, but she’d escaped with the crystal and that was what mattered.

The amber flicker of the shield told her that the lancer belonged to Eun. Running through the hills would be a great way to open herself up to friendly fire. The smart thing to do was to stay put and call for help using her badge. He should be within range.

The clanner car screamed out of hiding and darted into a nearby ravine, which would be perilous for something the size of a lancer to navigate. Hwa Young crouched low and watched it escape.

Hwa Young tapped her badge. “Hellion, this is Winter. Requesting pickup.”

Eun’s exasperated voice responded, “There you are. Stay put. We’re going to have words about your adventures, you and I.”

I bet, Hwa Young thought grimly.