28

Hwa Young almost sobbed in relief as she entered her lancer and was embraced by its lights, tranquil and coolly welcoming. I will never be separated from you again, she thought. It wasn’t entirely clear, even to herself, whether she meant Winter’s Axiom or the comrades who were fighting out there without her.

She didn’t dare ask CIC to clear her for launch. Even if the crew wasn’t generally aware of her arrest, CIC—and Admiral Chin—would be. Instead, she called Geum again.

Geum’s face, lit ghoulishly by red lights, appeared. “What now?”

“I need a launch override.”

Geum winced. “You’re right, you waltzing out there without clearance won’t work. Let me—” Zie dropped silent, and the holo fizzed out. Hwa Young thought she’d lost the connection. Then the image came back. “I’ve faked credentials for you, but go fast.”

“Thank you,” Hwa Young said breathlessly. “Later.”

She wondered, with a stab of guilt, how much trouble the bay’s crew would get into for letting her escape. How much trouble Geum would get into, if the admiral caught zir.

Act now. Deal with consequences later.

Hwa Young wasn’t sure whether that was the lancer or her own thought. Was this blurring of identities a normal side effect of the bond? She hoped she’d get to ask Eun one of these days.

The launch rattled her teeth, shook her all the way down to the marrow. Hwa Young didn’t have time to make it smoother. Her injured ankle throbbed. She choked back a macabre laugh. At least she didn’t need to walk on it.

As she emerged from the bay, it took several moments to realize she’d entered a battle. Initially, all she saw was the Moonstorm’s veiled darkness, and sheaves of luminous dust blown this way and that by the aether’s unchancy currents, the pinprick eyes of stars staring through the embrace of night, the ruddy coin of Carnelian some distance below them.

As she acclimated to the cockpit’s shelter and sank deeper into her connection to the lancer, she saw lasers, and the fiery hell-blossoms of missiles exploding, and light reflecting off the hulls of Eleventh Fleet’s ships, the darting daring shapes of the clanner fighters harrying Imperial fighters. Several of the clanner fighters spotted her and peeled off to harass her instead.

Hwa Young mapped a course to the other lancers, who were fighting a tightly coordinated defensive action leading the enemy fighters away from the less maneuverable Maehwa. “Winter to Bastard,” she said, praying the commander would accept her call. A clanner’s call. “Do you read me? I’m here to help.”

“Winter, this is Hellion,” came Eun’s irascible voice. “Get out from under the Maehwa’s shadow so I can swat your mosquitoes.”

“Hold on. I have a better idea.”

The fighters’ guns narrowly missed her.

“Bastard would disapprove,” Eun said tightly, “if I stood by and let you get shot down.”

Hwa Young dodged through the fighters’ ever-varying formations. She almost lost herself in the lace woven by the maneuvers, where a twitch too far in one direction or another would have resulted in a collision. Bae was too far forward to do anything but patch her into the fleet’s recon data. Eun was the only one close enough to help her, especially with his long-range weaponry.

“Bastard, this is Winter. Where’s First Fleet?”

The commander answered her at last. “They’re lurking behind Carnelian’s scan shadow. According to CIC, they’re pummeling the clanner outpost on the far side of the moon. Needless to say, the clanner reinforcements are doing their best to stop First Fleet.”

“Gonna be an interesting fight if Admiral Chin notices Winter out here” was Eun’s cynical comment.

“She’s an admiral,” Bae returned. “With everything flying around the battlefield, she’s not going to notice one more dot on a tactical display full of moving dots.”

The transmission arrived without warning, interrupting whatever Hwa Young might have said in response. She recognized the one-eyed visage of First Fleet’s admiral.

“This is Admiral Hong of First Fleet. As senior commander in this salient, I will be incorporating Eleventh Fleet into my command. We will be eliminating the clanner threat in Carnelian by drawing in their fleet, then destroying this moon and thus denying it as a base to the enemy.”

Hwa Young’s mind went blank as she struggled with the implications. While she’d only encountered one clanner on Carnelian, that clanner was Mother Aera—and, like it or not, this had once been her home. To say nothing of Geum’s parents and the refugees on the secondary Imperial base, and all the marines, and even the cook. Could Admiral Hong really wipe all those people out so callously—all to score points against the clanners?

If Admiral Hong really created a black hole here, First Fleet and Eleventh Fleet could save themselves by staying outside its event horizon—the singularity’s point of no return. But people trapped on Carnelian wouldn’t be able to escape so easily.

“The gall,” Eun breathed. “After asking for Eleventh Fleet’s ‘assistance.’ I don’t think Admiral Chin is going to take kindly to becoming Hong’s lackey.”

“He’s the senior admiral in all of New Joseon,” Commander Ye Jun said somberly. “He can get away with a lot.”

“As such,” Admiral Hong continued via transmission, “all lancer units are to report to the following rendezvous point.” He also gave instructions to the rest of Eleventh Fleet, but Hwa Young had difficulty focusing on him. She was too busy dodging clanner fire.

The one advantage, from Hwa Young’s standpoint, was that the two fleets were sharing their recon information—for now. Which meant she and the other pilots had a clear view of the power source for First Fleet’s secret weapon: the Chollima-class colony ships.

“Oh no,” Hwa Young said involuntarily.

Through Bae’s scan suite and her lancer’s senses, she could see the distorted images of objects and distant moons, too close to the colony ships. It was gravitational lensing—an effect that meant meteors and moons appeared double, and ships and stars showed as distorted caricatures of themselves.

Gravitational lensing was only that noticeable if the gravitation levels were rising to the point of an imminent collapse.

“We’ve got to get the colony ships out of there before they implode,” Commander Ye Jun confirmed. “They have no idea what they’re doing. They’ll be praying to the Empress, generating gravity no matter what the consequences.”

“Can you call Admiral Hong?” Hwa Young asked. “Talk him out of this?”

She lost track of the conversation for a few moments as a fighter darted across her field of view. She fired. It exploded.

“—not directly,” Commander Ye Jun was saying. “But I can make a plea to Admiral Chin.” Several seconds later: “Or not. Her autoresponder says she’s not available, or not available to me. Ten to one she’s exchanging sharp words with Admiral Hong about his usurping her command.”

“Then I’ll make him listen,” Hwa Young said. Before anyone could stop her, she initiated a broadcast in the clear. Anyone would be able to listen in, including the clanners. Especially the clanners. That would get everyone’s attention.

“This is Lancer Pilot Hwajin—” The name hurt like an icicle going through her throat.

“Empress’s underpants, Winter—” Eun.

She ignored him. The one she had to worry about was Bae, because Bae had jamming capability. Would Bae trust her enough to let her complete the transmission?

“You’re really doing this, Winter?” Bae’s voice was quiet, but Hwa Young knew its every nuance, could hear the tension thrumming beneath the surface.

Hwa Young toggled the channel back to pilots-only. “We’ve fought together,” she said, willing Bae to believe in her. “We’re both lancer pilots. Trust me.”

A pause. “Make it count,” Bae snapped. She was not, in fact, jamming Hwa Young’s transmissions.

She’s giving me enough rope to hang myself.

“I am Lancer Pilot Hwajin,” Hwa Young resumed, “heart-daughter of Aera. I have important information for clanner leadership.”

Hwa Young still had access to the information from the gravitational observatory. She transmitted all the data she had about Topaz and its collapse, about Admiral Hong’s weapon, about his plans to destroy Carnelian. How much time did she have to speak before Admiral Hong was no longer distracted by, presumably, his dispute with Admiral Chin?

She could hear the byplay on the pilots’ channel as Commander Ye Jun and Eun argued.

“I know we were supposed to stop Hong, but she’s selling us out to the clanners, Bastard—”

“Have faith.” The commander sounded bored, which Hwa Young recognized as a lie. The more calm zie sounded, the busier zie was calculating zir next move. Everyone’s next move. “The real threat is to Carnelian. We can’t allow Admiral Hong to carry out his plan. There are limits to what I’m willing to condone, even in war.”

Hwa Young realized that the clanner fighters who had been shooting at her had disengaged. Her heart lifted. Maybe they were going to hear her out after all.

The comms chimed. She accepted the calls. Two new faces showed up: a person Hwa Young didn’t recognize, although zie had blunt features, and Mother Aera. The unfamiliar person spoke first. “This is Admiral Mae of the Moonstorm. Speak.”

How much should she spell out? She wanted to make sure the clanners understood the danger. “First Fleet is about to trigger a gravitational collapse with the secret weapon that Mother Aera warned me about. They lured you in so you’d be ensnared. You’ve got to get out of there.”

“It’s very generous of you to warn us,” Admiral Mae said dryly. “What’s in it for you?”

Hwa Young’s hands shook. Then she leaned into the embrace of Winter’s Axiom, and its chilly, reassuring calm descended over her. “You don’t have lancers of your own. I bet you could build them if you could obtain units to reverse-engineer. Take us in and you’ll have those units.”

It was an audacious offer. A treasonous offer. No one in New Joseon would ever trust her again.

But she couldn’t stand by and let an Imperial admiral destroy an entire moon and its population, either. It didn’t matter if Admiral Hong was acting as the Empress’s will. His plan was too monstrous to be allowed to come to fruition.

Admiral Hong finally caught on. “Admiral Hong to Bastard,” he said in a growl. He must have obtained the callsign from Eleventh Fleet. “You’re harboring a traitor.”

That’s me, Hwa Young thought with a giddy sense of unreality.

“I order you to eliminate her,” Admiral Hong continued.

“I find it interesting,” Admiral Mae said at the same time, “that your heart-daughter is making her offer on an open channel. Does she have a death wish, Commander Aera?”

Inanely, all Hwa Young could think was My heart-mother is a commander?

“You can shoot me down,” Commander Ye Jun was saying to Admiral Hong. “You can shoot down Winter. But Winter is under my protection.”

“I don’t care if you’re one of the Empress’s spawn,” Admiral Hong retorted, with vicious precision, “even you can’t pardon high treason.”

“High treason,” Commander Ye Jun said, “or a change in our diplomatic posture? Because if you carry out this—”

“It’s already begun,” Bae interrupted, quite unlike her; but the situation was unlike any other they’d been in.

Hwa Young’s mouth was dry. She could see it. They all could.

The gravitational lensing effect near the four Chollima-class ships had intensified. Stars and moons, formerly visible as points, now manifested as smeared discs. Light itself created spectral bursts—rainbows, if rainbows heralded ruin.

As Hwa Young watched, several clanner fighters and Imperial fighters, entangled in a dogfight, swerved too close to the gravity well of the Chollima-class ships and were sucked closer, closer, until they collided into the first of them.

“Admiral Hong,” Commander Ye Jun said, “I cannot allow you to condemn an entire moon to destruction. You must order the Chollima-class ships to stand down.”

The admiral’s lip curled in a snarl. “I’m afraid that’s not possible anymore. The collapse has already started.”

A text message appeared from Commander Ye Jun. I’m buying time. DESTROY THE COLONY SHIPS.

Hwa Young hesitated. There were two thousand people on those ships.

But they were two thousand people who were the burgeoning heart of a singularity. And once the singularity formed, it would swallow not only those two thousand, but Carnelian, First Fleet, Eleventh Fleet, and any clanners who hadn’t gotten out of the radius of collapse.

Killing two thousand people was monstrous.

Allowing those two thousand people and everyone else to die was unthinkable.

“We can’t hold this base against the clanners,” Admiral Hong said flatly. “HQ ran the calculations. The only thing left is to deny it to the clanners by demolishing their forward base on Carnelian. The Empress herself gave the order. If that means I give my life in her service, too, so be it.”

“So you agreed to this,” Commander Ye Jun said, equally flatly.

“She’s the Empress. Of course I agreed. But she’s right.”

Dimly, Hwa Young understood that she should have sprung into action when Commander Ye Jun sent the order. But the monstrosity of the act had transfixed her: a planetary population, evacuated and existing under the most stringent of Imperial law, used for the sole purpose of weaponizing gravity.

It wasn’t any different from what she did as a lancer pilot, except in scale. Maybe scale mattered. The difference between a ship, or an intact moon, or a singularity was all the difference in the world.

The difference between a battle and a war; the difference between a murder and a massacre.

“Hellion,” Hwa Young said, “your instructions?” Normally she would have asked Commander Ye Jun, but zie was occupied distracting Admiral Hong from his genocidal strike against Carnelian.

A genocidal strike that, if the admiral was to be believed, the Empress herself had authorized.

I never met you, Hwa Young thought, grieving, but I prayed to you. I believed in you.

“Do it.” Eun’s words came as though dragged out of him. “It’s the only way left.”

A phantom scent of starblooms filled the cockpit. She knew it for her imagination, or some ghost summoned by the lancer itself. There was no way the air filtration systems would have permitted a moment’s perfume.

It didn’t matter. People lived on Carnelian, and had resettled it after rebuilding it. People, clanner or Imperial, who didn’t deserve to die the nowhere death of a singularity’s hunger.

This is the threat. We are the answer to the threat.

“It’s up to us now,” Hwa Young said.

“Understood, Winter.” Bae sounded calm—too calm, Hwa Young understood now. Eun echoed Bae a moment later.

“Hellion to Admiral Mae,” Eun said a moment later in a voice scraped clear of feeling, as they all turned to face down the First Fleet fighters. “We are in position to make an attack run against the colony ships. We request covering fire.”