Y.M. Pang
It was firstlight on Twin Moons Day. A basket of peaches sat on Haruna’s nightstand. I must really be going deaf, she thought, if Chiyo managed to sneak in here without waking me. Haruna turned a peach over in her hand, feeling the fine hairs brush against her skeletal fingers. The peach was red bleeding into white—perfect, no blemishes, contrasting her age-spotted hand. The sender must’ve spent a small fortune; peaches only grew in bluedomes, though they were one of the few Homeworld fruits that grew on Rankyuu at all.
Putting down the peach, Haruna reached for the card on the basket and read: Happy Twin Moons Day. Best, Your great-nephew Arata. Printed, not handwritten. Haruna spent two seconds feeling annoyed before she remembered Arata had never learned handwriting. At least the card was nice, a thick blue weave decorated by miniature origami fans. Would’ve been better, though, if Arata had bothered to see her instead of just sending a basket of overpriced Homeworld fruits.
Haruna’s persona-comm vibrated. She lifted her left wrist, tapped her finger on the large-read button. A green hologram message blinked to life before her.
He lit his comb and turned his mirror upon her, and found his beloved Izanami half-devoured by maggots.
Arago: AT 398-1173-942 / 3 tiviens after lightfall.
There. Then.
Keito
The message she’d been anticipating for fifty-eight years.
Arabic numerals for the coordinates. Kanji and hiragana for the old legend they’d set as their passcode. Haruna wasn’t surprised. She followed the news; she knew the Deepsearch Company’s T99.6 had emerged from Portal 27. The news shuttles had found no trace of Nakada Keito or the other rebels from the Half Year War, but Haruna wasn’t worried. Keito was either coming or dead, and Haruna rarely feared he would be the latter.
Haruna swung her legs off the bed, groped for the cane that was usually propped up against her nightstand. She found it lying on the floor. Chiyo had probably knocked it over while leaving the basket. Back creaking, Haruna bent to grab the cane. Stars, that hurt! There was a reason she’d switched her sleeping pallet for a raised bed.
It took her only a few wobbly steps to reach her bedroom door. Her sister Rena called the room claustrophobic, especially against the overall vastness of Haruna’s manor. But Haruna was comfortable in small spaces. Comfortable in small spaces within vast spaces, more precisely. It came hand in hand with being a wingbot pilot.
When Haruna emerged from the bathroom, Chiyo was waiting for her.
“Commander Haruna,” Chiyo said, “breakfast is ready. Is silvertooth soup okay?”
“Silvertooth soup is fine.” Haruna walked to the dining room, Chiyo trailing behind her. When her attendant showed up that first day—at Rena’s insistence, with Haruna’s grudging agreement, because it would be stupid to die in an accident before receiving Keito’s message—Chiyo had worn a costume from some Homeworld country called England. Haruna had convinced her to discard the museum piece for a more practical set of slacks and zipcoat.
Haruna settled down by the rectangular dining table and ordered the curtains to open. A familiar sight greeted her: a stretch of orange earth, then the Metal Crescent, looming mountainous in the distance. The waterfalls cascading over the Crescent reflected the light of Arago, Rankyuu’s star, almost blinding Haruna. She wondered how those who lived darkside felt: restricted to a view of flowing water every day, able to see the world only through a quivery curtain.
Haruna lifted the bowl of silvertooth soup, inhaled, sipped. Housebird had really outdone itself today. Haruna contemplated what to do with her last day. Her mind drew a blank. She had done everything, said all she needed to say, outlived every other pilot of her generation. Save for Keito, and that only because he’d headed off in a T99.6, travelling at speeds so close to light that time no longer passed for him the way it did for her. He was all that remained for her: his message, his homecoming, and the promise that had spanned seven years of his life and fifty-eight years of hers. Haruna’s only regret was how long it had taken.
* * *
Two tiviens before lightfall, Haruna sent Chiyo off to Highpoint with a shopping list. Even with the roader and the lift, it would take Chiyo a good three tiviens to reach that lofty section of the Metal Crescent.
Haruna, now alone, took the elevator down to B3. Her index finger left a smudge on the scanpad and the screen blinked to Accepted. It wouldn’t have done so for Chiyo, or even Rena. The elevator doors opened and the lights flicked on. Haruna hobbled down the corridor of rounded metal walls, wondering if she should’ve taken Rena’s suggestion of installing a cart and tracks. Then Haruna could roll down the tunnel like she herself was a launching wingbot.
A quarter-tivien passed by the time she reached the hangar. Three seventy-four-foot wingbots stared down at her. All three had a base plate of golden yellow. All three were edged in orange with scarlet wings.
To the right was her most recent PhoenixWing, updated a few times since her retirement for extra sensitivity and flight agility. In the middle was PhoenixWing 5.22, in which she’d led the clash against the Gelbin System Fleet. The laser holes had been fixed and a new right arm crafted to replace the one hacked off by a Gelbin sword, but it still had the air of something used, something fought over and loved.
Haruna made her way to the leftmost model. PhoenixWing 3.72. The exact wingbot she’d piloted the day Keito rebelled. She looked over it every week, took it on flights at least twice a month. But outside of the necessary services to keep it functional, Haruna made no modifications to it. She hadn’t even bothered replacing the broken metallic feather on its head. No matter. Wingbots were made to fly and fight. Aesthetics served only as a symbol and a warning, and Keito would recognize her by her flight patterns even if she showed up in a GenLine.
Haruna stepped onto the lift that carried her to the wingbot’s head. The cockpit opened and she climbed inside. It was dark and cool and familiar. Haruna leaned back, placed her arms on the armrest. The PhoenixWing whirled into life, scanning her eyes, her fingerprints, her blood by the needle sliding into her forearm. The last she didn’t even feel anymore.
“Identity confirmed,” an androgynous voice said. “You are Inoue Haruna, Commander Emeritus of Rankyuu’s United Wingbot Fleet.”
“Confirm,” Haruna said. Her wingbot recognized her voice, though it had taken a few tweaks to 3.72 after age eroded her vocal cords.
A hologram appeared before her, showing all the wingbot’s functions: Fuel, full. Weapons, ready. Update … well, she’d chosen to ignore that for the best part of six decades now.
Two hologram buttons appeared before her: Armed. Unarmed.
“Armed,” Haruna said.
The hologram blinked away. “Preparing launch,” the disembodied voice said. “Is Commander Haruna ready?”
“Ready.”
The link-helm slid down over her head. The seat folded against her like a cocoon. For a moment she could neither move nor see.
Then she was gazing out of the PhoenixWing’s eyes, standing on metal feet larger than her dining table, staring down at a hangar that seemed small enough to be a prison. Comfortable in small places, Haruna thought with a smile, or rather, comfortable in small spaces within vast spaces. The wingbot slid down Launchpad 1 and the hangar doors opened to reveal an orange lightfall sky. Haruna shot out into the air, above purple kyorin trees and dry earth and her manor lands.
She flexed her left wrist—the wingbot’s left wrist. The barrel of a shotgun emerged from the metal forearm. Perhaps groundwatchers would catch that, if they’d happened to train their scopes on her at that moment. She was violating fleet rules. She’d been allowed to keep her personal wingbot hangar on the promise that she wouldn’t launch the wingbots armed, but they hadn’t actually stripped away the weapons. Haruna had said she wished to keep the weapons for sentimental reasons and Commander Miura had let it go.
If he hadn’t, Haruna could’ve stripped him of his post and installed someone else. She was Inoue Haruna and, retired or not, they listened to her. Sometimes, climbing to the top paid off. No wonder Keito had rebelled over it.
Sitting in this old, familiar wingbot, she remembered every detail of her last battle with Keito: the pattern of the lights, as Keito expended his battery to fire one last barrage at her. How she’d twisted aside, dry, piercing pain in her throat as she shouted at him. Then Keito’s voice, half-lost in the intermittent static of the dying comm channel: “You… always you … to them, I …” Then the channel cut off.
Perhaps he’d repeat those words tonight and she’d hear them in their entirety. That wouldn’t be too much to hope for.
Haruna flew higher, higher. The waterfalls of the Metal Crescent became a tiny wedding ring beneath her, albeit one with a portion missing. Was there anyone watching below? With her frequent flights, Haruna’s PhoenixWing was a familiar sight in this region. Perhaps some mother would point out the red-and-gold wingbot and say to her child, “See, that’s Inoue Haruna.” The PhoenixWing wasn’t just Haruna’s robotic extension. It was Haruna as the world saw her. Her human body was frail and slow and half-deaf now, but with her mind linked to the wingbot’s senses and body, she was still Inoue Haruna: pilot, commander, hero of Rankyuu. Still capable of one final flight, one last promise to an old friend.
As Haruna reached the upper edges of Rankyuu’s atmosphere, the PhoenixWing angled itself, space supports kicking into life. Sound faded as the atmosphere merged into space. Rankyuu below was mottled green and brown, like the two other inhabited planets in the Arago System.
The Homeworld was blue. That had been one of the first things Keito said to her, as they sat on the fields outside Highpoint Wingbot Academy. His oversized trainee uniform hung off his skinny frame and his face darkened when she asked if it had belonged to an older sibling. “My mother’s friend’s son,” he muttered. But his face lit up when he spoke of the Homeworld. “From space it’s blue,” he said, “like this.” He’d pulled a blue marble from his pocket, held it up so it half-covered Arago.
That marble hadn’t survived the day. At lunchtime some fellow trainees had snatched it from Keito and smashed it.
Haruna punched in the coordinates Keito left her in his message. She steered the wingbot herself though. She couldn’t risk autopilot for even a second, not in current circumstances. The Keito she knew would not attack her without warning, but who knew how much he’d changed after a roundabout journey through a Portal twenty-eight light years away at .996c. She hoped his trip through Portal 27 had been worth it, that he’d finally gotten to see his little blue planet.
Haruna reactivated the shotgun, raised the laser snipers on her wingbot’s shoulders, then drew the sword with the PhoenixWing’s right hand. She brought up the clock on the edge of her vision. It said barely two tiviens after lightfall, but—once again, assuming she still knew Keito—he should already be there waiting for her.
Sure enough, as she drew close to the message’s coordinates, her sensors flared to life. She magnified the image at the corner of her vision.
Keito’s SeaGale. Deep blue body edged in silver, like his little blue marble, his blue Homeworld. A wingbot she hadn’t seen in decades, yet one so familiar its every curve was etched in her memory.
Haruna flew closer, sword tight in her wingbot’s hand. She hesitated a brief moment, then opened a comm channel. Would he answer? Did he have more to say that day, or …
What she feared did not happen. She did not find his channel closed, did not find only the darkness and silence of space. Instead he linked with her and for the first time in almost six decades she heard Keito’s voice.
“Haruna.”
Just that. Her name. Not commander. Not even captain, as she’d been during most of their flights. She’d expected nothing less.
Haruna didn’t hesitate this time. She opened the visual comm, allowed him to see her face beneath her link-helm. Let him see her white hair, her wrinkled skin. Let him see the years; he’d hear it in her voice regardless. They’d both known time would pass differently when they made their promise. To everyone else, Haruna was happy to present herself as the PhoenixWing. But it felt important to let Keito see her human face.
No gasp filtered in through her comm channel. It was as she’d hoped and expected—he cared nothing about her age or appearance, only that she was Haruna.
Haruna cleared her throat and said, “Keito, welcome back to Rankyuu.”
His laughter sounded a little broken, though perhaps it was only the aging comm systems of both their wingbots. “Always the commander, aren’t you? You think you can welcome me back to Rankyuu though you technically do not rule it anymore.”
His visual comm blinked to life as well. Keito’s face was as familiar as his wingbot. Seven years had added a few lines to his brow, hollowed out his cheeks even further so that he was all lean edges and razor intensity. But he hadn’t changed the cut of his hair and his eyes remained the same: dark as the far reaches of space, narrowed in hatred as they’d been the day he rebelled.
“We do not rule Rankyuu,” Haruna said softly. “We protect it. That is the first rule of being a wingbot pilot. Surely you remember that?”
“Your rules no longer apply to me, Haruna. I left, remember? I left a traitor. Or has it been too long for you?”
“Not long enough, evidently.” Haruna smiled. “Or else I wouldn’t still be here.”
Keito paused for a moment. “Why?” he asked. “Why are you here, when you have everything and I …”
Haruna waited for him to say more, but only silence stretched through the comm channel. Keito’s face was unreadable.
“The same reason I let you go fifty-eight years ago,” Haruna whispered. When his wingbot had hung motionless before her, all power spent. When she could’ve cut him in two with a swing of her sword and rid Rankyuu of its rogue wingbot pilot. But Haruna had just floated there, all comm channels shut off save her dead one with Keito. She’d watched the rescue shuttle arrive, watched the surviving rebels pull Keito from the cockpit and into the shuttle. Instead of firing at them, she’d allowed them to fly off, to throw their lot in with the Deepsearch Company.
She’d left her persona-comm open to receive Keito’s final message: a promise of a rematch, and the old story that would serve as their passcode.
Now Keito scowled at her on the visual comm. “Do you expect me to thank you? You had my life in your hands. That you didn’t kill me doesn’t change a thing.”
“You are here now,” Haruna said. “As am I.”
“I didn’t think you’d come.”
“Surely you know me better than that.”
“Yes. But fifty-eight years is a long time. People—”
“—can change,” they said together.
Their eyes met through the visual comm. The hate bled back into his face and Haruna realized at that moment she would not be able to talk him out of this. Over half a century of healing for her had been a mere seven years for him. She couldn’t even blame him for living in the past. Because she, too, was here.
“Well,” Keito said. “We’ve both waited long enough. Shall we begin?”
“Is that all you wish to say?” Haruna said. “At the end of this—”
“—one of us won’t be able to talk anymore, right?” The SeaGale hefted its sword. “We’ve always spoken best with our wingbots, not our words. Do you expect me to ask you about the bloom season dances you’ve been to, the nieces and nephews you’ve held, the people you’ve loved and lost?”
None, none, and none, Haruna thought. But what she said was, “And you? How did it feel to dive through Portal 27? What of the Homeworld treasures you found? What happened to the other rebels from the Half Year War, those who joined you on the Deepsearch ship?”
“The news shuttle reports will tell you all you need to know,” Keito said. “Just as I learned all I need to about you. Commander Emeritus. Hero of Rankyuu. Vanquisher of the Gelbin System Fleet.” Keito kept his face neutral, but Haruna heard the bitterness dripping from his voice. “What more needs to be said?”
Haruna sighed. “I suppose you’re right.”
The SeaGale circled closer. “Then let us begin,” Keito said. “I hope I have not put you at too much of a disadvantage, elder.”
Haruna laughed. “In the PhoenixWing, there is no disadvantage.”
She couldn’t say who fired the first shot. Neither needed to say a thing. They both knew the exact moment they had agreed upon. The SeaGale pelted a stream of missiles at the PhoenixWing and Haruna dodged, returning fire. The darkness of space lit up with lasers in blue and gold. Their visual comms blinked off, but, as if by consent, they both left the audio of their comm channels on. Haruna heard Keito draw a sharp breath as her shot grazed his wing.
She felt … free. Like she was back being herself after too long away. Even after so many years, Keito was still her best opponent, one-on-one. She banked, turned, wheeled around him. His missiles tracked her like they were the latest batch, not outdated tech from her youth.
“I won’t lose to you this time,” he said through the comm channel. Haruna only grunted in reply.
She knew every part of his wingbot, just as he knew every part of hers. But maybe he’d gotten some strange upgrades on the other side of the Portal. Haruna circled warily, firing a stored beam with her shotgun. Keito activated his area shield to block it. He shouldn’t have a lot of those left, assuming his wingbot had only its original power.
“Not bad,” Keito called. “I could almost—almost—see why you became fleet commander.”
Unable to shake off his tracking shots, Haruna was forced to activate her own area shield. The hit on her power bar made her wince. Perhaps she had grown too used to the newer models. “Will you never let it go?” Haruna said. “You still have many years before you. You can continue exploring. You could even ask for a pardon. If you have something from the Homeworld to offer them, they might grant it to you. There are many things more worthwhile than an old grudge with me.”
Keito suddenly dashed closer, swinging his sword. Area shields were no use against blades and Haruna blocked the strike with her wingshield. Cracks spiraled down her armor.
“You misunderstand me,” Keito said. “My grudge is not with you, not entirely. I only …”
He fired off a stream of lasers. Too close to dodge, Haruna activated the area shield again.
“In their eyes it was just you, always you,” Keito said. “I was… nothing. If I could not prove myself better than you, then at least I wished to remain comparable. But you’d grown too far from me, too far to even chase.”
And because of that, you rebelled against the fleet, against your planet, against all our vows as wingbot pilots. “You’re such a child,” Haruna whispered.
She couldn’t see his expression, but his response allowed her to imagine it. He sent a flurry of tracking missiles and Haruna just managed to maneuver out of the way. Her sensors flashed. “Danger: Marubernum.” Haruna narrowed her eyes. The SeaGale’s special ability. Increased speed, agility, senses for a short time. At the cost of a shutdown of projectile operations or strongly decreased battery life. Judging by how much energy they’d both consumed, she guessed it was the former.
Keito probably expected her to fly away from him, try to keep him at a distance where his blade could not reach her. Instead, Haruna met him head on. At close quarters, she’d use her skill in hand-to-hand combat to negate his speed and hopefully anticipate enough to his attacks to avoid the fatal ones. Haruna issued a command to her wingbot. Storage beam. Release on command.
Their swords met. It felt almost like fighting in flesh, in gravity, without armor and cockpits between them. He was deadly fast, still skilled. He shattered her shield in moments and Haruna could only stay on the defensive, bearing his blows. Meanwhile her storage beam charged.
When she blocked his next blow, she realized her mistake. His sword dug into the base of hers—at the weak spot, damaged during their last fight. Keito remembered. And he’d guessed she would repair it but not replace the sword entirely, not for this fight. Her sword shattered and she heard his cry of triumph as he slammed his blade into the head of her wingbot, through the cockpit—
The storage beam hit 100 percent. Haruna fired.
Pain. Pain, as his sword plunged through metal and flight-glass and drove into her torso. Then a flash of light and a scream on her comm channel, cut off. Haruna saw darkness for a moment, then …
Energy blinked around her like lightning, illuminating space. She couldn’t breathe. Pieces of the barely recognizable SeaGale floated before her, its upper half blown away. She couldn’t see Keito. He’d probably been reduced to dust by her beam.
Haruna wished she could cry, but she could do nothing. She was as still and motionless as her wingbot. Keito, my friend. Is this what you wanted? Did I finally manage to fulfill your wish?
She wanted to laugh. What would the fleet think when they found her? Inoue Haruna, hero of Rankyuu, impaled in the cockpit of her outdated PhoenixWing. Dead in a pointless fight for a promise made to a traitor.
Haruna tasted blood, and space, and nothing.