Moonstorm, page 2
After her body had finished its inconvenient rebellion, Hwajin startled, realizing suddenly that she was off-course. Practicing aim was one thing when she did it as a game with her siblings and cousins, another in the midst of an attack. She scrabbled in the bag again for another projectile, found a canteen of water, put it back. Who knew when she’d see a source of water again?
There was the knife she’d snatched from the air and shoved in her belt. She couldn’t give up the last memento she had of Mother Aera, even if she hadn’t earned the right to an adult’s voting knife.
She ended up grabbing a book that she’d packed to pass the time in the shelter. She knew from the texture of the cover and the heft of the book which one it was: a collection of fables about the heroes who’d fought the Imperials and driven them back from the border of the Moonstorm. Absurd as it was, she’d thrilled to the idea of clanners with their more primitive weapons prevailing against the Imperial armies, especially Imperial lancers.
But the stories of night-archers and aether-riders hacking up fleets of Imperial starships and their lancers seemed far away and childish now. Scowling, Hwajin flung the book from her as hard as she could. She hated herself for giving it up so readily, when paper was so scarce on Carnelian. Or, what remained of Carnelian, even if she could scarcely wrap her mind around the enormity of what was happening. She was shocked when tears flooded her eyes again. As she blinked them away, they drifted off like star-jewels of regret.
I don’t care, Hwajin told herself fiercely. All that mattered was reaching the moon-island. She threw a second book. Kept herself from crying more.
At last, the island came within reach. Hwajin grabbed hold of the reeds on the second try, her hands clumsy and numb. The aether was already affecting her coordination. She prayed to the heart-lineages that the reeds wouldn’t break off in her hands, and for once, her luck held. Slowly, carefully, she pulled herself to safety on the hill’s slope.
“Safety” didn’t last long. Hwajin was in the middle of pulling out the shard in her side—another thing she shouldn’t have done, they told her later—when she heard a concussive not-sound, felt the heat of a shock wave crest over her. The island shuddered, and she flattened herself against its surface.
After the shock wave passed, Hwajin looked toward its source. It would have been more sensible to stay huddled so the Imperials wouldn’t spot her—but she was delirious with fear and exhaustion, and curiosity overcame pragmatism.
In the luminous-dark swirls of aether, Hwajin saw a platoon of Imperial lancers for the first time. There were six of them, bipedal humanoid figures that were three stories tall, taller than any buildings the clanners had ever built. They resembled armored warriors from the days of Old Joseon, their cockpits glowing balefully like eyes from peaked helmets atop massive shoulders. Finely polished lamellae plates protected the torsos, and articulations around the all-important joints gave the lancers their mobility. Each lamella was engraved with Imperial symbols of courage and bold fortune. Two were orange and gold, two silver-blue, one green and gold, one a dazzling red and blue. Awestruck, Hwajin registered only that they wielded different weapons depending on their colors, from massive versions of the rifles she’d trained with to rocket launchers and even a bladed polearm that could have sliced a starship in two.
Hwajin stared, too entranced by their martial beauty to be properly terrified, even if they had destroyed her home. Her household had passed around stories about the lancers, some disparaging, some fearful. Nobody had mentioned the sheer imperious glory of their presence. A sick yearning started up in her heart.
I want to pilot one of those.
The lancers propelled themselves through the aether by means of levitator engines mounted on their backs, coming closer and closer to the moon-island where she was huddled. In response to some signal she couldn’t hear, three of them fired cannon, rifle, missiles in unison at a target far in the distance—at other clanners, Hwajin reminded herself. She squinted against the assault of blue light, which blotted out the few nearby moons and their faint glow.
At first she thought they would pass her by. Then the lancer squad approached her island, and fear gripped her heart. She flattened herself against the ground again, hoping against hope that they wouldn’t stomp on her.
The ground vibrated as one of the lancers landed next to her. After a moment, she peered out through her fingers. It was the red-and-blue one.
The cockpit’s glow brightened as it opened and a radiant figure, also wearing red and blue, emerged. To her astonishment, the pilot was a person like herself, except an adult, and taller than any clanner she had met. She’d known intellectually that lancers had pilots, but she had vaguely expected them to be monstrously different from regular people, with antennae or goblin horns or lizard tongues.
Well—the pilot appeared mostly human. One of their eyes glowed red, the other blue. Hwajin was convinced that she had fainted and passed into the realm of dream.
“Hey there,” the pilot said, crouching so as not to tower over her. With exquisite gentleness, they brushed the dirt from Hwajin’s hands and face, then produced a candy out of the air, like a magician’s trick. “You don’t have to be afraid. The Empress keeps all her children safe. You are one of her children now.”
She’s not my Empress, Hwajin almost said. Still, her mouth watered at the fruity smell of the candy. Suddenly she was ravenous, and it took all her self-control to keep from snatching the treat from the pilot.
The pilot grinned conspiratorially, which surprised her. Nothing Hwajin’s family had told her about Imperials had suggested that they might be likable. “Not hungry? More for me, then.”
Nettled, Hwajin sat up, grabbed the candy, and stuffed it into her mouth. The sweet-sour flavor of hawthorn berries exploded against her tongue.
The pilot held out their hand. “This place won’t last much longer. Let’s get you out of here.” Indeed, dirt crumbled from the island, and clumps of reeds drifted off into the aether.
Hwajin wasn’t looking at the pilot. Instead, she gazed up at the glowing cockpit, imagining herself inside one. She wanted her own lancer, wanted the beauty of their flight in formation, those coordinated strikes. Wanted to be the strong one, rather than the victim huddled in the reeds hoping for an unlikely rescue.
She would do anything for that kind of power.
2
Six years later
On the last day of the boarding school’s military readiness class, Hwa Young of the Empire of New Joseon rose half an hour before reveille to clear her mind of nightmares. She did this every morning. If the other students found out that she dreamed about moons flying apart, especially her nemesis, Bae, they’d have questions she didn’t dare answer.
Hwa Young sat cross-legged in the middle of her temporary bunk at the campgrounds outside the city where they trained most weekends. She was supposed to be sinking into her morning meditations right about now, but her mind was elsewhere—namely on what she was going to get her best friend, Geum, for New Year’s.
The New Year’s Festival, which celebrated the Empress’s birthday, was only a couple months away. Everyone would grow a year older. Hwa Young, like her classmates—too much to call them friends, except for Geum—would turn sixteen. Almost old enough to fight as a soldier.
Two more years before she was old enough to apply to be a lancer pilot candidate.
Back on Carnelian, the clanners had counted age differently, by marking individuals’ birthdays. Hwa Young still remembered her own birthday, on the twelfth of Mirrormonth by the clanners’ calendar, although she knew better than to mention it. On her sixteenth birthday, she would have received her knife from the household elders, a ritual she would never undergo now—although she had her own memento, which would have to do.
Instead, in New Joseon, the day was given over to festivities honoring the antler-crowned Empress and her All-Wisdom. Households tuned into recitations of praise poetry and performances of song and dance reenacting how New Joseon’s founder, the first of the Imperial line, had conquered what was now the crownworld and united the first noble houses, which became the trusted, prosperous core worlds. Hwa Young loved the dancers with their tassels and embroidered costumes, the upbeat music with electric zither and fast beats and catchy vocals, and tried not to feel like a traitor because of it. After all, New Joseon was her home now.
It was tradition to exchange gifts on New Year’s, and Hwa Young and Geum had never missed a year of gift exchanges in their six years of friendship. As soon as they returned to Forsythia City, on the peripheral world of Serpentine, where their boarding school was located—where she, unlike her schoolmates who had families in the city, lived as a ward of the state—Hwa Young needed to do some last-minute shopping for Geum. With any luck, she might be able to snag one of the fancy starship models that Geum coveted if the vendors were still offering special deals.
With that decided, Hwa Young launched into her calming meditation, the one she had done every morning for the past six years. She closed her eyes and built up an image of herself sitting in the cockpit of a lancer, its control panels brightening at her touch. It would be white tinged with silver and blue, the wintry colors that were her favorites. She imagined herself perfectly cradled by its seat, her hands resting on the joysticks that gave her power to make it walk, or fly, or fire its weapons.
Hwa Young tilted her head back, lips curving upward as she envisioned herself in the heat of battle, with laser fire narrowly missing her as she dodged every shot, guiding her lancer toward the enemy. In these meditations, she always fought faceless enemies, usually starfighters that zipped and soared and blew up in satisfying explosions whenever she raked them with her lancer’s weapons. Someday she’d be the Empire’s best lancer pilot, unmatched in combat.
She had gotten only ten minutes into the visualization before she heard a shriek. The visualization evaporated. Oh no, she thought, are we under attack?
No one else in the class would have suspected such a thing. Violent crime was rare in New Joseon, even on the less wealthy periphery worlds like Serpentine. The Empress’s space patrols kept bandits and raiders at bay. Still, Hwa Young hadn’t survived this long without a healthy dose of caution.
Hwa Young grabbed the knife she kept under her pillow, the sole reminder of her heart-mother and her former life as a clanner, then crept to the door of her room to listen.
“You know those are contraband! I’ll have to confiscate them for your own good.”
It was Bae. What did she mean, “contraband”? Hwa Young shoved the knife in a pocket, then sighed and opened the door, reassured it wasn’t a real crisis. She poked her head out into the hallway that ran down the center of the barracks where they’d been staying and saw Bae standing not far away from her.
Bae was the tallest of all the girls, an infuriating half head taller than Hwa Young herself, with what the poets called a willow-tree figure. As if that weren’t enough, she had classically beautiful features in a flawless oval face, porcelain-perfect skin, and large, dark eyes, the kind of elegance that highborn families like Bae’s bred for. The first time Hwa Young had seen her, she’d wished that someone so perfect, with that natural air of command, could be her friend. She’d given up on that quickly enough. And Bae was first in every class—all but one.
The unfairness of Bae’s gilded perfection struck Hwa Young all over again. Bae benefited from the finest tutors that money could buy, thanks to her family’s wealth and connections. Hwa Young came in second every time, studying alone and working hard in her efforts to defeat Bae.
Now, however, something else caught Hwa Young’s attention. Bae’s hair, normally a riverfall of glossy black tresses, was shorn in a bob. She must have gotten one of the other girls to cut her hair. Hwa Young’s hand went involuntarily to her own head, although her hair only went down to midback. Her heart sank.
“You can’t just take them!” protested floppy-haired Seong Su. “That was two months of my allowance!”
Hwa Young’s gaze moved down from Bae’s face to her hands. Bae was holding a handful of cards. Hwa Young tried to get a closer look.
“What are you staring at?” Bae demanded, shifting her glare to Hwa Young. “You’re not his supplier, are you?”
“Are playing cards forbidden now?” Hwa Young shot back.
Bae fanned out the cards toward her, close enough that Hwa Young could get a good look. They were holographic trading cards depicting the elite lancers of First Fleet, which guarded the crownworld where the Empress made her home. One showed the famous red-and-blue unit Paradox, piloted by Ga Ram, captain of the Royal Guard, one of the Empress’s own children.
Hwa Young was transported back to the night when she’d lost her clanner family—and traded it for a new home. Captain Ga Ram and zir squad had found her cowering in the reeds. She’d expected them to shoot her. Instead, the captain zirself had descended from Paradox and raised her from the dirt, smoothed the grit from her hair and hands, offered her a sweet-tart hawthorn candy.
The Empress keeps all her children safe, zie said to her. You are one of her children now.
Hwa Young repeated that promise to herself every night, even now.
Bae was still talking to her, and Hwa Young wrenched her attention back to the present. “These cards contain classified information,” Bae declared. “They were declared contraband.”
If she said so, it must be true. Bae always knew about new Imperial declarations before anyone else. Her mother, the advisor to the planetary governor, kept her informed.
“I’m going to have to turn them in to the instructor,” Bae added.
Seong Su took the opportunity to sidle back to his room and shut the door. For her part, Hwa Young regretted her involvement. It was always a mistake to quarrel with Bae. Everyone, including the instructors, took her side. They were afraid of offending her powerful mother.
From her very first day at the boarding school, Hwa Young had made the mistake of challenging Bae’s dominance, by showing her up on a math problem, of all things. Hwa Young had blurted out a correction when Bae had made a rare mistake answering the teacher. As if anyone but the teachers cared about the quadratic equation. Bae had had it in for her ever since.
“By the way, your hair is out of mode,” Bae added with that haughty offhandedness that she had mastered. “You’d better cut it before people start asking questions.”
Today? Hwa Young wanted to ask. She hated the prospect of cutting her hair. She’d resisted doing so during her six years as a ward of the state. Clanner women never cut their hair except in mourning, and she was loath to give up the tradition, or the way her long hair made her look increasingly like her deceased heart-mother, disloyal as the sentiment was. In the past she’d finessed the matter by pinning up her hair. But no one defied the crownworld’s conventions, especially in matters of fashion. And Bae meant business if she’d cut her own.
By this time, Instructor Kim, who slept down the hall, had heard the racket and emerged from her own room. “Bae, Hwa Young,” she said, as stern as ever. “You shouldn’t be quarreling in the hallway.”
She’d cut her hair, too.
“Your hair, Hwa Young,” the instructor added. “Since you’re up early, you can take care of it.”
Hwa Young swallowed her reflexive protest. A good Imperial citizen didn’t contradict authority. She resisted the urge to look at her feet, as though her reluctance would cause her to float off the floor and reveal her rebellious streak. At school they always talked about how New Joseon’s gravity depended on its citizens falling into line and adhering to the traditions and rituals of the Empire. This gravitational center formed the foundation of its large, densely populated worlds and the way they orbited stars in an orderly fashion, as opposed to the much smaller, meandering moons of the clanners.
Besides—the truth she clasped close to her heart—only the best Imperial citizens became lancer pilots.
“Yes, Instructor,” Hwa Young murmured.
It was time to let go of her heritage. It didn’t matter that clanner women wore their hair long, just as clanner men cut theirs short and the nonbinary eijen favored asymmetrical styles. She wasn’t a clanner anymore. If it took cutting her hair to fit in and become a suitable pilot candidate, she would do it.
* * *
Hwa Young had given herself haircuts before, mostly to trim ragged ends, and knew from experience that the results were untidy. Don’t be stubborn, she told herself. She needed help.
She didn’t dare trust the other girls, who spent their time kissing up to Bae. Bae’s best friend, Ha Yoon, would undoubtedly agree to do it only to make the process as torturous as possible. She could ask a boy, but most of them resented her for outperforming them in combat readiness. In their previous training sessions, Hwa Young had risen to the top of their class, beating out the boys who prized their physical prowess—even beating out Bae, for once. Not that it would last once they returned to their regular boarding school classes.
That left her one friend, Geum. With a sigh, Hwa Young gathered up her courage and walked three doors down the left side of the hall to Geum’s room. It’s just a haircut. No big deal.
It didn’t feel like it was no big deal. It felt as though she was about to amputate the biggest thing that made her different from the others with their wealthy families and tutors. Imperial girls usually kept their hair shoulder length. The school uniforms in Imperial blue were supposed to promote unity, and Empress forbid that the students be prevented from showing off their family’s status by wearing fancy jewelry or clothes at the cutting edge of fashion at the after-school dances.
Steeling herself, Hwa Young knocked on Geum’s door: three rapid taps followed by a pause, then three more. Not a particularly secret signal, but people generally didn’t want to be mistaken for either of them, so it did the trick.
