“Why did the Phene withdraw?”
“Is this a test?”
“You’re impatient. I understand that. You have a hundred reasons why you should be racing out to the battlefront instead of following the queen-marshal’s orders.”
“I’ve earned a chance to be given a command on the front lines!”
“We obey the queen-marshal, Princess. That’s my duty, and that’s your duty. One day, if you pass the test that is your training for rulership, you’ll be the queen-marshal whose orders people obey. But that day is not today. Now, why did the Phene withdraw?”
It was always a test, wasn’t it? She squared her shoulders, moistened dry lips, and proceeded with her usual dispatch.
“The Phene had to withdraw after the Yele League defeated an Phene imperial fleet at Eel Gulf. The Phene retreat left the Yele League as the big boss in our local area. So I also see how my great-aunt and grandfather and uncles fought constantly to maintain our independence from Yele encroachments. I see how the Yele contracted secret alliances with the Hesjan to make trouble for us. An unexpected Hesjan counterattack is how my uncle Nézhā died in battle at Kanesh.”
“And then?”
“When the queen-marshalate passed from him to my mother, she decided to pursue a more assertive strategy.”
“What strategy is that?”
“Offense, instead of defense. She defeated the Hesjan cartels and forced the Yele League to capitulate at the negotiating table. She increased ship and weapons production throughout the republic. Now she is using our control of Troia to push out via Kanesh and its beacon access into the Hatti region. That way our forces will eventually encircle Karnos.”
She used two fingers and a thumb to open up Karnos System enough to see its twelve planets with their orbital ellipses traced in bold lines.
“Karnos has seven beacons, a wealth of resources, and a large military-age population. With the victory at Na Iri, we now control access to three routes into Karnos. Since two of the other beacons lead to the Gap, that leaves only two more functional ones. Both of them are paths into the heart of the Phene Empire. If we take Karnos—”
She broke off, then said, “When we take Karnos, we will control passage into the empire rather than the Phene controlling our right-of-way.”
He nodded. “Correct. The military that controls the beacon routes will always have an advantage.”
“Except the advantage the Phene have that no one else has.”
“That’s beyond our reach for now.”
She pressed her lips together, eyes narrowing. Surely nothing was beyond reach, not for the one willing to risk all and accept no limits.
The pilots’ chatter from the cockpit drifted over internal comms as the corvette moved into the traffic lanes. Departing COSY, the fleet’s name for Naval Command Orbital Station Yǎnshī, was a slow and reluctant process. The incoming damaged ships needed to disperse to the naval shipyards elsewhere in Molossia System. Everyone had to navigate past a field of massive cargo containers slowly being attached to the Remora freighters that would convey them through the beacon to Troia. From Troia the supplies would be distributed onward via Kanesh to the garrisons and task forces in Maras Shantiya, Kaska, Tarsa, Hatti, and now Na Iri too. Na Iri was her victory. Or at least, partly hers.
Octavian pulled the visual down to center on Na Iri System with its twin stars. “We’ve got a thirty-hour transit to Molossia Prime. Let’s go back over the battle. See what you did right and what you could have done differently, and what was just the hand of fortune giving you a good set of tiles.”
“The queen-marshal would say she laid down those tiles. That without the strength of her hand, none of us would have won at all.”
“You can still lose with a good hand if you don’t play well. But it is true Eirene has built Chaonia to a position of strength after we were bogged down for years fighting in Kanesh.”
“You won your medals at Kanesh.”
His wry smile bore the weight of memory. “Everyone my age and older fought at Kanesh at one point or another. The dead deserve medals more than I do.”
Victory at Na Iri made her feel she had crossed a river and could now ask personal questions previously denied her according to the complex proscriptions of palace courtesy. “What was my uncle Nézhā like? You knew him.”
“I was a marine assigned to the flagship, which isn’t the same as knowing a queen-marshal as his Companions would. But still, he spoke to us all with respect and concern, as we expected. He was a good commander who attacked in the right direction at the wrong time. So. Shall we go over the Na Iri battle?”
She laughed. “You never stop.”
His answering grin revealed a dimple that gave the graying soldier a mischievous air. “Just doing my job, Princess.”
5
A Dispatch from the Enemy
Dear Mom,
There’s not much I can tell you given the content restrictions on personal comms.
As expected our graduating cohort has been split apart and sent off to round out understaffed squadrons. I have to admit I’ve been hoping to be assigned to the Karnos sector so I can fight those upstart Chaonians and their insolent queen-marshal. You’ll probably be happy to hear that instead I’ve been assigned to a backwater station in an undisclosed location. Most likely a typical starting berth on a military cargo ship hauling a pair of lancers to guard against pirates. Lucky me. Quiet and boring. As you can guess I’m not thrilled, but every newly graduated lancer pilot has to work their way up to the big ships no matter how high their scores.
A comms speaker squawked, breaking the writer’s train of thought.
“Apama At Sabao, please report immediately to Declarations and Tariffs.”
Apama stopped typing as the speaker crackled back into silence. She was sitting on a shaded bench in the arrivals courtyard, holding the keyboard steady with her lower hands and typing with her uppers. Rising, she closed the tablet and stowed it in the outer pocket of her kit bag. There was no one else in the courtyard. She’d been the only passenger on the commercial freighter that had landed on this moon.
There were four doors out of the courtyard, one marked with the double helix symbol representing the hegemony of the Phene Empire set above the characters for Declarations and Tariffs. Crossing the open area offered her a view to the sky. Even in daylight it was possible to see the pinkish-red neon-glow aura, shaped like a spiny malevolent starburst, that surrounded the system’s second beacon and rendered it inoperable. The scarily luminous artifact gave this star system its modern name: Hellion Terminus.
The office was slumbering in the afternoon heat with all its windows propped open. Fans gamely stirred up an ice-tinged cooling breeze. Evidently this port was so boring and quiet there wasn’t regular air and space traffic. She repressed a sigh. Still, her instructors had emphasized that hard work and high scores would get you a coveted cruiser berthing as long as you didn’t slack and get comfortable.
Not that she ever really had a chance to get comfortable except when she was inside a lancer. That autonomy was her escape.
The civilian scribe on duty at the waist-high barrier yawned as Apama handed over the thin ceramic chip that held her duty orders. The scribe scanned Apama’s retina, then plugged the chip into a security cube.