Page 102 of Defiant

“Admiral?” she asked.

“You disagree with the decision,” he said.

He shouldn’t have said that in front of her crew, but they were minutes from engagement. So perhaps he felt he didn’t have time for a private conference. Besides, what did she know? She’d spent her life making bread and stringing beads, not fighting wars, for all her dreams and stories.

“I think that you bear a burden on your shoulders that I don’t want,” Becca said to him. “I’m not going to judge the decisions you make.”

“I’m going against protocol,” he said.

“Jorgen,” Becca said, softening her voice. “There are no protocols anymore. Those were all built for a different era, when we were rats in caves trying to escape predators. There are important ideals in them, but we’ve moved into an entirely new world full of light.Youneed to decide the rules now.”

“Like the man who stopped a war,” he said softly. “In the story you told me.”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, Gran-Gran,” he said, his voice growing more confident. “Let’s go end this.”

“Excellent,” she said, settling back into her seat. “I’m almost ninety, you know. I wasstartingto think I wouldn’t get to tear down any galactic empires in my lifetime, which would have been positivelytragic.”

For an expanded summary of this illustration, go to this page.

35

KIMMALYN

Kimmalyn dove through the battlefield.

Yes, she knew that out here there was no “up,” nor was there a “down.” You couldn’tactuallydive. But a woman had to orient the world as best she could according to the way she saw things. That was a simple truth she knew.

So, she dove. Spinning among the destructor blasts, heart trembling. She had never liked being in the thick of it. In the blasting, zipping, flashing frenzy of the fight, it was difficult to center yourself and find your clarion peace.

You didn’t get to choose what others did. The world could be chaos, and you still needed to find your way through it. That was a simple truth she was being forced to learn.

So, as she chased after the Superiority fighter, she forced her heartbeat to slow. She reached with her thumb and flipped off the battle haptics, which gave feedback in the form of rattling her cockpit and seat when blasts exploded near her or ships moved nearby. Those helped a pilot who had been trained in atmosphere to feel the battle.

Without them, destructor shots flashed across her bow—oneeven striking her shield—and everything remained deathly silent. Only the hum of the engine and the silence of deep space, a vacuum that smothered every voice, whether scream or song of praise.

She twisted as she dove, still on the trail of her opponent. Her wingmate—the kitsen shipSwims Upstream—had fallen behind, unable to move quickly enough to trail this enemy ace. Kimmalyn would get back to them soon, but for now she pushed her ship—and herself.

The ship to the limits of its acceleration.

Herself to the limits of her serenity.

For a split second, she felt as if she were locked in sync with the enemy pilot. When they moved, she moved. Together like dancers.Thatwas the moment of clarion peace. Where all else stilled, and nothing seemed to exist but Kimmalyn and her dancing partner.

She fired a single shot straight through their canopy as they turned, vaporizing them inside their cockpit—leaving the vessel itself flying, mostly intact. Moving at the same speed as it had been at the moment of its pilot’s death.

Happy fluted after the flash of light, though Praline—her newest slug companion—remained silent. The two of them snuggled into their slug box, affixed in its position beside her seat. Kimmalyn breathed out and pulled away, doing standard post-engagement evasives in case someone had been watching the duel and had plans to kill her. Too many pilots, in post-contest numbed relief, found themselves taken by a hawk who had been circling the fight unnoticed.

“An excellent shot, Quirk,” Kauri said on the comm as Kimmalyn twisted about to return to formation. “As always.”

“Thanks,” Kimmalyn said.

“Do you ever feel bad?” the kitsen asked. “About…killing them? I prefer it when we fight drones.”

There were plenty of those in this battle, but they didn’t fly as well, even though piloted remotely by real people. Aces preferred a cockpit, and Kimmalyn often ended up contesting them.

“I figure that they’re doing something terrible,” she said backto Kauri. “Upholding the Superiority. Conquering and oppressing. Even if they don’t realize it, even if they don’t accept what they’re doing is wrong, each action they take stains them. I don’t think of it as killing them so much as…preventing them from digging further into actions that will burden their souls.”

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