Conservation of Shadows - By Yoon Ha Lee Page 0,113

web of words between worlds. Rachel had known Network duty was tedious, but didn’t mind. Edgar was with her, and around they went, never twice tracing the same path. Their conversations, too, were never twice the same.

Everything had turned awry, but when smoke seared her lungs or she had to put the crew on half-rations again, she remembered. Edgar was all that remained from that quiet time, and when his back was to her as he checked a readout, she gazed fondly at the dark, tousled hair and the steady movements of his hands.

On patrol, through the long hours, Rachel had come to trust his motions, his words, his velvet voice, and the swift thoughts behind them. Even his smile, when smiles often made false promises. But there came dark moments, too.

Once, after watching a convoy of tradeships streak by, Edgar said, “What would happen if all the satellites went out?”

She explored the idea and found it sharp to the touch. “Candles.”

He understood. “Only a matter of time before everything fails. Imagine living in a future when the worlds drop silent one by one.”

Rachel reached out and stroked his hand. “It won’t happen yet,” she said. Not for a long time, and we are here; the Network is here.

He folded her hand in his, and for a moment his mouth was taut, bitter. “War would do that.”

“The exam.” Years ago, and she still remembered the way her hands had shook afterward. What Edgar had said, she never asked. He gave her the same courtesy.

She wondered now if he had foreseen the war and chosen to make himself a part of it, with the quicksilver instinct she treasured. She suspected that his dreams, his visions of other probability-spaces, were clearer than hers, which spoke merely of a battle to be won, everywhere and when. Rachel decided to ask him the next time they were both awake and alone.

In some of her lives, she never had the opportunity.

Black: A Riddle

How long can a war go on if it never begins?

White: The Bloody Queen

The Battle of Seven Spindles. The Battle of Red Lantern. The Siege of Gloria. The Battle of Crescent. 21 stations and 4 battles fought across the swirl of timelines. Rachel counted each one as it happened.

Today, insofar as there were days in q-space, she faced the 45th ship. The Curtana was a hell of red lights and blank, malfunctioning displays; she had never been meant to go this long without a realspace stopover. The crew, too, showed the marks of a long skirmish with their red eyes and blank faces. They saw her as the Hawk, unassailable and remote; she never revealed otherwise to them.

The communications officer, Thanh, glanced up from his post and said, “The Shanghai Star requests cease-fire and withdrawal.” A standard request once, when ships dragged governments into debt and lives were to be safeguarded, not spent. A standard request now, when ships were resources to be cannibalized after they could no longer sustain life.

Rachel did not hesitate. “No.” The sooner attrition took its toll, the sooner they would find an end to this.

Her crew knew her too well to show any surprise. Perhaps, by now, they were beyond it. After a pause, Thanh said, “The captain would like to speak to you.”

“You mean he wants to know why.” For once words came easily to her: she had carried this answer inside her heart since she understood what war meant. “Tell the Shanghai Star that there’s no easy escape. That we can make the trappings of battle as polite as we like, and still people die. That the only kind end is a quick one.”

Rachel heard Edgar approach her from the side and felt his warmth beside her. “They’ll die, you know,” he murmured.

She startled herself by saying, “I’m not infallible.” Battle here, like the duels of old, was fast and fatal. A modification of the stardrive diverted part of the q-wave into a powerful harmonic. If an inverse Fourier breakdown of the enemy ship’s waveform was used to forge the harmonic, and directed toward that waveform, the stardrive became an interrupter. The principle of canceling a wave with its inverse was hardly new, but Edgar had programmed the change to the ship’s control computers before anyone else did. A battle was 90% maneuver and data analysis to screen out noise from other probability-spaces, 10% targeting.

Her attention returned, then, to the lunge-and-parry, circle-and-retreat of battle.

At the end, it was her fifth battle and victory. Only the Curtana