Exclusive – The Dragon’s Nine Sons by Chris Roberson (Chapters 1-3)

Books, Excerpt | Jay Tomio | January 30, 2009 at 5:38 am

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Dragon’s Nine Sons

by Chris Roberson

    

Prologue

    

    It was the fifty-second year of the Taikong emperor.

    It was Water-Monkey year.

    It was the twenty-eighth terrestrial year since man first walked on the face of the red planet, Fire Star (though measured in the longer years of Fire Star itself, the count was nearer fifteen).

    It was the year 2052 of the long abandoned Gregorian calendar, now only employed in religious rites in Europa and Vinland.

    It was 4,689 years since the Yellow Emperor, Huangdi, whose reign-name had been Keeper of Bears, had invented the calendar, taught man how to keep track of the seasons, and instituted the Middle Kingdom.

    It was one hundred-forty-seven years since the end of the First Mexic War, when the Dragon Throne clashed with the blood-soaked warriors of the Mexic Dominion.

    It was the twelfth year of the Second Mexic War, and there was no end in sight.

    

Chapter One

    

    On the bridge of the Exhortation, Captain Zhuan Jie gripped the armrests of his seat, and fought to keep from voiding his bowels when the Mexica’s first salvo splashed across the nose of his spacecraft. A low-mass, high-velocity explosive projectile, the shot didn’t have enough momentum to push the Exhortation off course, but its payload was hot enough to pit and crack the ship’s ferroceramic hull. It burned so brightly that Zhuan was forced to squint, the bridge bathed in the blinding white radiance pouring through the forward viewports.

    Over the sound of the ship’s air-circulation system and the rattle and hum of the bridge controls, a groaning could be heard, as the kinetic energy of the impact was distributed through the ship’s hull. The low-frequency squeal of metal on metal reminded Zhuan of nothing so much as the growl of a caged bear, trained but never tamed. A lifetime spent running from the life he never wanted, and still he couldn’t escape the memories.

    “Orders, my captain?” From his station along the bridge’s forward wall, the steersman glanced over his shoulder, teeth gritted, searching for strength.

    Captain Zhuan had been in the Interplanetary Fleet for more than half his life, and fighting the forces of the Mexica for more than half of that, but each combat encounter could for him just as easily have been the first. War in the vacuum of space was most often a question of waiting, of patrolling the dark void in search of an enemy one rarely found. In the more than twelve years of the Second Mexic War the captain had found himself in close combat with a Mexic vessel fewer times than the number of his fingers and toes. But his reactions to even those few experiences had been the same each time—the clenched gut, the cold sweat, the dry tongue thick in the mouth, the gripping hands—stark terror.

    Little more than a boy at the time, Zhuan had enlisted in the fleet, then the emperor’s Treasure Fleet to the red planet Fire Star, in search of a life of adventure, like the flying aces of the Imperial Navy of the Air during the first War Against the Mexica—the Spirits of the Upper Air, the Flying Immortals, the Golden Dragons. He had wanted to escape the life of his parents, spent training dangerous animals for the emperor’s pleasure, the musky stench hanging on them all of their days like a shroud; there had been some irony, then, to the fact that he had first sailed into the black vacuum of space aboard Jade Maiden, the livestock carrier of the Treasure Fleet, her holds divided into stalls full of grunting, shitting beasts—goats, cattle, pigs—the smell always thick in his nostrils. Then, years later, the war had begun, and the emperor had militarized the now Interplanetary Fleet, and Zhuan had reason to curse his younger self for ever seeing anything of romance or beauty in stories of war.

    Zhuan swallowed, and wished he could give the steersman and the rest of the crew the strength and steely resolve he knew they craved. But while he had always been an exemplary captain and sailor, he was a poor soldier at best, and struggled to keep from becoming completely unmanned in combat.

    “Evasive,” he finally responded, flicking a gesture toward the navigator and nodding in the steersman’s direction. Then he turned to the weaponeer, seated between them. “Prepare main batteries to return fire.”

    The crewmen nodded their assent and turned to their duties. A less familiar eye might have mistaken the captain’s momentary pause for a passing bit of indigestion, or a fleeting bout of disorientation as the ship changed position. But these crewmen had served with Zhuan in one capacity or another for some years, through several such encounters, and knew the captain’s reaction for what it was.

    From behind Zhuan’s seat to the right, the communicationist cleared his throat, and the captain looked back over his shoulder in response. The communications officer’s hair was worn in a long Manchurian queue that drifted in the air currents of the bridge’s microgravity like weed floating at the bottom of a slow-moving stream. The tip of the queue barely avoided brushing the shoulder of the engineer, seated beside him.

    “It’s the Pure Harmony again, my captain.” The communicationist cut his eyes from the controls of his station to the captain and back again, uneasily. “Do you respond?”

    Zhuan glanced at the empty seat beside him. If the ship’s minister of rites hadn’t been taken ill with damp wind, the captain would already have been forced to observe protocol and acknowledge the hail long before now. But the Exhortation’s political officer had been confined to quarters by the ship’s physician, leaving Zhuan with more than usual latitude. Still, the inevitable couldn’t be forever delayed.

    Zhuan nodded. “Pipe it in, communicationist.”

    Already today Zhuan had learned to dread the hiss of the speakers mounted in the ceiling overhead, and the voices that followed. The Exhortation had been returning from a long patrol out on the edge of the red planet Fire Star’s gravity well, a weeks’ long reconnaissance searching for any sign of Mexic Dominion vessels. Having found none—thankfully—the ship had made the long journey back to the main body of the fleet, intending to enter a parking orbit before docking at the Zhurong moonbase for much-needed leave. But then orders came through from the flagship of the Interplanetary Fleet, the Iridescent Cloud, instructing Zhuan’s ship to divert course and join an engagement already in progress. The Exhortation was the nearest ship to the location, and the best equipped to assist.

    It had taken some time to reach the indicated coordinates, and on arrival Zhuan had found a pitched battle already in progress. A trio of Middle Kingdom vessels were in the process of engaging two larger Mexic warships. But while the Middle Kingdom ships outnumbered their enemies, the Mexica’s armaments more than made up the difference. As they approached the battle, Zhuan momentarily refused to respond to the hails of the lead Middle Kingdom vessel, the Pure Harmony, feeling the familiar grip of fear, and while he delayed his response, the Exhortation was hit by a long salvo from the nearest of the Mexic warships, a fiery welcome to the fray.

    “Commander the Exhortation,” came the voice from the speakers, crackling with static.

    “Captain Zhuan Jie receiving. Who calls?”

    “Captain Skidjai of the Pure Harmony, ranking officer of this blockade. Glad you could join us, Exhortation.”

    There was a rough good humor to Skidjai’s words, a camaraderie of men-at-arms that Zhuan often encountered with other ship’s captains but did not, and could not, himself share.

    “Blockade?” Zhuan repeated.

    There was a burst of static, and through the forward viewports Zhuan could see the Pure Harmony painted with bright flashes of red and white as self-propelled explosives fired from the Mexic warships found their marks on her hull. The static faded and was replaced by the sound of imaginative cursing as Captain Skidjai hurled imprecations at the enemy while his weaponeer loosed a few rounds in their direction. Then Skidjai returned his attention to the Exhortation. “So the Iridescent Cloud sent you all this way without a word as to what we’re about?”

    Zhuan shook his head, a meaningless gesture. “Our orders were simply to divert course and join the engagement.”

    Skidjai cursed again, to make even a veteran sailor blush. Zhuan wondered what had become of his minister of rites, to strain protocol to such an extent. “It’s a simple matter, Exhortation. There’s a Mexic launch vessel currently blasting up from the surface, thinking to reach escape velocity and head out into the void. The pair of blood-hungry Mexic bastards you see before you are here to run interference. Our job is to stop them, and to keep that vessel from getting past.”

    Zhuan glanced around the bridge, and saw the crew watching him expectantly, waiting to hear his response. He raised his eyes to the ceiling, fixing his gaze on the speakers, as though the captain of the other vessel lay hidden behind them. “Commander the Pure Harmony, are you aware that this vessel is a shanzhou-class patrol ship?”

    A brief pause followed. “Understood and acknowledged, Exhortation. But you’re the only vessel close enough to join in, so we’ve got to make do.”

    Zhuan bit the inside of his cheek. The shanzhou-class was designed to be low-mass, high-velocity, and maneuverable, and as a result didn’t carry much in the way of armament. Even its defensive capabilities were comparatively slight, especially in contrast with the vicious Mexic warships they were facing.

    “Move into interception position and await further orders. Pure Harmony out.”

    With an audible click the radio connection dropped and a sibilant hiss of static poured from the speakers.

    “They’ve transmitted coordinates, my captain,” the communicationist said from his station.

    Zhuan forced himself to relax, and loosened his grip on his seat’s armrests. His arms drifted up on either side, buoyant in microgravity. He took deep breaths through his nose, the ozone-tang of the ship’s electrics stinging his nostrils, and then breathed out through pursed lips, willing his heartbeat to slow from its racing pulse.

    “Navigator…” The captain began, then paused. The crew looked at him, unblinking, searching for resolve. Zhuan took another deep breath, in through the nostrils and out through pursed lips. “Navigator, receive coordinates from the communicationist and set course. Steersman, enter thrust and directional values. Engineer, retract control rods three-quarters, release the liquid hydrogen into the heating chamber, and iris the aperture for thrust.”

    The crew did as instructed, each to their task, and the Exhortation again shuddered into movement. As the craft’s inertia shifted, Zhuan felt slightly queasy as his insides realigned themselves, the acceleration imparting something almost like gravity that pressed him fractionally back into his seat. Instinctively he checked the straps securing him into place, and then turned his attention to the forward viewports, as the craft changed orientation and the red crescent of Fire Star hoved slowly into view.

    The aerial combat about which Zhuan had read as a boy, thrilling accounts of brave Middle Kingdom aeronauts who piloted their craft in dogfights against the lumbering but no-less-deadly airships of the Mexic Dominion’s elite Eagle Knights, had been fierce and brief contests. Craft met in the skies above Vinland and Khalifah and Fusang, appearing suddenly out of cloud banks and strafing one another with tracer fire, each life and death struggle decided in a matter of moments.

    Not so the vacuum combat of the Second Mexic War. The fission-engine-propelled craft of the Middle Kingdom and the Mexic Dominion were able to reach speeds that would have been unthinkable a century and a half before, but the distances involved swallowed those velocities whole, hungry for more. Captains could see their enemies’ ships long before they got close enough to inflict any real damage on one another, and by the time they drew near enough that the target could no longer simply move out of the way of any approaching projectile, the encounters could prove all-too-brief. Sometimes, the craft got so close together that their crews learned first hand the destructive potential of inertia when a few tons of steel and ceramic collided at thousands of kilometers per hour.

    The launch vessel blasting up from the surface of Fire Star, in order to break free of the red planet’s gravity, would have been traveling somewhere in excess of five kilometers per second. Whatever its mass, large or small, its momentum by the time it reached low orbit would be considerable. This was a calculation that Zhuan could not help performing, as the steersman nudged the Exhortation into position.

    At a signal from the steersman, the engineer closed the aperture on the thrust chamber, and then fired the attitude rockets on the outer hull to reorient the ship one hundred and eighty degrees. When the nose of the craft was pointed back in the direction it had come, the aperture was opened for a short burst that burned off the remaining acceleration, and as the Exhortation drifted to a relative stop the control rods were reinserted into the reactor.

    “Station keeping, steersman,” Zhuan said.

    “Yes, my captain.” The steersman and the navigator exchanged nervous looks, steadying their hands on their controls.

    The arc of Fire Star filled the viewports, a great red disc before them. Zhuan remembered the first time he’d seen it, a lifetime ago, engineer’s mate on the Jade Maiden. He and the rest of the crew had spent one and a half terrestrial years down on the surface—nearly a full Fire Star year—before the Treasure Fleet returned to Earth. A year spent building habitats, constructing generators and atmosphere farms, falling in and out of love and gradually becoming a man. Then they had left it all behind and returned to Earth. By the time they had reached home, the emperor had rechristened it the Interplanetary Fleet and increased its number from the original ten vessels, only eight of which had managed to return from the red planet, until there were dozens of vessels ferrying colonists to Fire Star and returning with precious ores. Zhuan remained with the fleet, first as an engineer’s mate, then as an engineer, and eventually, when the need for command officers outpaced the ability of the bureaucracy to supply them, he was given a command of his own.

    In the next fifteen years, Zhuan made the trip to and from the red planet again and again, six times in all counting his original voyage with the Treasure Fleet. It was on his sixth voyage that he first heard the news of the Mexic attack on the colonists, and knew that things would never be the same again. In a single day he went from being an honest sailor who ferried hopeful families to a new world out in the void, to being the commander of a ship of war. But while he was perfectly suited for the former, the latter had always seemed like clothing tailored for another man, fitting him badly if at all.

    A smudge appeared on the red disc before them that grew with each passing heartbeat. It was a black speck riding atop a plume of fire.

    “Incoming from Pure Harmony, my captain,” the communicationist announced.

    Zhuan raised a single finger, pointing to the speakers overhead.

    “Exhortation,” came the voice of Captain Skidjai, laced with static. “Do you have visual contact?”

    Zhuan nodded again, pointlessly, and silently cursed himself for the instinct. “Yes, we see it.”

    “Good. Now, I know you’ve not got much in the way of arms on that boat, but I want you to throw everything you’ve got at that thing. We need to stop it, whatever the cost.” Skidjai paused. “Do you hear me, Exhortation? Whatever the cost. Throw anything and everything in that launch vehicle’s path, up to and including your ship’s hull.”

    Zhuan’s fingers tightened on the armrests, and the crew turned to regard him with widened eyes. Suddenly unable to swallow, Zhuan opened his mouth and closed it again, before finally responding. “Sir? Could you repeat, please?”

    “I said put yourself in the launch vehicle’s path if you have to, Exhortation. If that’s the only way to stop it, then that’s what we have to do.”

    Zhuan saw the weaponeer catch the steersman’s eye and mouth, “We?”

    “But sir,” Zhuan began, “the chances of survival after that kind of collision…”

    “I said ram it, Exhortation.” Then, in a slightly gentler voice, Skidjai continued. “Look, I know it sounds risky, but the shanzhou-class is rated for that sort of impact. It’s at the upper limits of tolerance, but it should be survivable. Just break out your pressure gear and, should worst come to worst, you can always abandon ship and drift until a Middle Kingdom vessel is free to come to pick you up. If not Pure Harmony or one of the other two, then a tender from the main fleet.”

    Zhuan licked his dry lips, like dragging dead meat over sandpaper. “What’s in that ship, anyway?”

    A momentary silence. “I don’t know, Exhortation. The orders come down from on high, and command says it’s classified. But they want that thing grounded, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

    ‘We?’ Zhuan was tempted to say to himself.

    “We’ll hold the Mexic warships off your back for as long as we can,” Skidjai said. “They’ll tear through us sooner or later, so we’re counting on you to get this right the first time.”

    So there was the “we” Zhuan had been missing. The other ships in the blockade would be sacrificing themselves, if necessary, to provide Zhuan the opportunity to throw himself into the path of a rocket traveling at five kilometers per second. The impact would, at the very least, cost the launch vessel its inertia and keep it from breaking free of Fire Star’s gravity well. And at worst…?

    Zhuan glanced around the bridge. He looked at the steersman, in whose hands their survival would rest, if the two craft came into close contact. Zhuan had only served with one pilot who might have been able to pull off the kind of maneuver that Skidjai had outlined, but Steersman Ang had been arrested the year before and sent off to Baochuan to await sentencing. The current crewmen to occupy Ang’s seat was competent, no question, and his conduct above reproach, but he lacked Ang’s finesse and gentle touch, and Zhuan doubted seriously that he could successfully complete that complicated a maneuver.

    “More coordinates received, my captain,” the communicationist relayed, as the speakers overhead fell to hissing static. The Pure Harmony carried a full complement of computators, who would have been busy calculating the trajectory and velocity of the launch vessel based on observations. Already, before Zhuan even gave the order, the sound of magnetic beads shuttling back and forth over greased metal rods could be heard, as the navigator worked his abacus, plotting out their course.

    “Orders, my captain?” The steersman’s hands rested on the controls, light as an erhu-fiddle player’s on the strings.

    In the viewport the black speck atop the plume of flame grew larger and larger still. Though it was flatly impossible, Zhuan fancied he could hear the sound of its approach, and in his mind it sounded exactly like the growl of a bear.

    The weaponeer sat ready at the fire control station, knowing that there was little the weapons under his hand could do in the circumstances, but eager to try, nonetheless.

    “It’s the Pure Harmony, my captain,” the communicationist reported from behind Zhuan. “They want to know why we’re still at station keeping.”

    Zhuan closed his eyes, for a moment in red-lidded darkness as the light of the approaching vessel glared through the viewport. He thought back to those early voyages, the comforting silence of the long passage in the interplanetary gulf between Earth and Fire Star, and the peaceful solitude of the return voyage, the holds filled with ore, the passenger compartments standing quiet and empty. There had been a kind of serenity in that stillness that Zhuan had come to rely upon, in those years, when his youthful dreams of adventure and glory had been forgot, and he had found his true place in the universe. That was what the war had cost him; it had taken that serenity, and left only this inescapable fear in its place.

    “Navigator.” Zhuan opened his eyes, and cycled a deep breath in through his nostrils and out through his mouth. The crewmen turned to look at him, expectantly. None were eager to rush to their deaths, but they were loyal to the Dragon Throne, and willing to do whatever was asked of them. “Plot a heading away from the engagement. Steersman, get us out of harm’s way.”

    The crew exchanged uneasy glances.

    “Sir?” The steersman was the first to speak, head tilted to one side.

    “You heard me,” Zhuan repeated. “Get us out of here. Back to Zhurong. We’re overdue for leave, as I recall.”

    The crew looked from one to another, unsure how to respond.

    If the minister of rites had been at his post, he’d have removed Zhuan from command on the spot, and appointed another officer to take charge. But the minister was strapped to his bunk in the crew quarters with rheumatic distress, and none of the other bridge officers were rushing forward to take responsibility for deposing the captain, an action that, without the minister’s blessing, would be mutiny. Of course, refusing to follow a superior’s direct order in combat was tantamount to signing one’s own death warrant. Ironic that the very protocol that Zhuan was breaking was the one which was now keeping him in command.

    “Steersman,” Zhuan’s tone was suddenly threatening, his eyes narrowing. “You have your orders, sir.”

    “Yes, my captain,” the steersman reluctantly answered, then turned back to his station.

    As the Mexic launch vessel approached, now no longer a speck but a menacing tower of black, the Exhortation began to move, not toward a collision but away from it.

    “The Pure Harmony is hailing again.” The communicationist sounded harried, defeated. “They’re… they’re not happy.”

    “I can imagine,” Zhuan said with a smile. “Cut the receiver, will you, communicationist?”

    As the nose of the Exhortation swung around, the disc of Fire Star slipped to one side, and the ships of the blockade came into view. To the port side, Zhuan and the others could just see the launch vehicle thundering by atop its fiery plume. To starboard they watched as one of the Middle Kingdom warships suddenly exploded in a gout of flame as the explosive projectiles of the Mexica burst through the hull, the blaze quickly extinguished as the ship’s atmosphere boiled off into the cold vacuum.

    The crew muttered to one another, quietly, their eyes cutting back to Zhuan. The captain hit the buckle that released the straps holding him to the seat, and drifted up and forward.

    “Head us back to Zhurong,” the captain repeated, as he maneuvered toward the hatch at the rear of the bridge that led toward the craft’s main corridor. “Communicationist, I’m leaving you in command.”

    “Sir?” The communication raised his eyebrows, eyes widened with worry. “Where… where will you be?”

    “In my quarters,” Zhuan said, and passed through the hatch. “Awaiting the inevitable.”

    The heated hydrogen propellant, at the rear of the Exhortation, poured through the thrust aperture, pushing the craft along. The vibrations of its rumbling carried through the ship, and as Zhuan paused and laid his hand against the bulkhead, the sound of it was faintly audible, just at the edge of hearing.

    To Zhuan, it sounded just like the growl of a bear who finds his cage door left open wide, and his trainer slumbering unawares just beyond.

    

Chapter Two

    

    Bannerman Yao Guanzhong sat on a metal bench, his legs in shackles, his hands resting on the table before him. Opposite the bench were two chairs, unusually ornate for so austere a chamber, which to all appearances were actually constructed of carved wood. Not formed plastics with imitation grain, but real sticks of dead vegetable matter worked into shape by knife, plane, and awl. On Fire Star, plants were a prized commodity, carefully cultivated in greenhouses, cherished for their ability to transmute carbon dioxide into breathable oxygen, and no one would have dreamed of chopping down a full-grown tree to make something as frivolous as a wooden chair. This pair must have been shipped from Earth, carefully packed in a cargo hold, a small luxury brought to this barren world.

    The chairs were empty. Yao had been waiting for some time, but he was patient. He knew what was coming to him, and was in no mood to speed its arrival. It was quiet there, in the interrogation chamber in the heart of Fanchuan Garrison, deep in the Tianfei Valley, and Yao closed his eyes, for the moment reveling in the unexpected solace and stillness. Eleven terrestrial years Yao had been on Fire Star, fighting the forces of the Mexic Dominion on land, in the air, and in the vacuum, and silence was as precious a commodity to him as all the plants and trees in all the greenhouses in all of Fire Star. Out on the surface Yao was never without his surface suit, its elastic constriction countering the lower atmospheric pressure of the red planet, his chest encased in a hard-shell carapace, a helmet over his head. And even if sound traveled poorly in the thin Fire Star air, the sounds of Yao’s own body were never far from his ears, the rhythm of his breath and the pounding of his heart rattling around his helmet. And in the vacuum above Fire Star it was even worse, enclosed in a bulky pressure suit, an island of noisy bodily functions, the silence of the void always just beyond his reach.

    Fanchuan Garrison was pressurized, close to Earth-normal, and the circulated air heated to a comfortable temperature. The walls were constructed of a concrete formed from the reddish-orange sands of Fire Star itself, and had a vaguely pinkish tint to them. But they were thick enough to block any noise from passing through, either that from without passing in, or that from within passing out, and it seemed to Yao almost like being struck deaf, as the sound of his own steady breathing was swallowed by the empty space around him. In time, he began to hear a high pitched whine, and for a brief moment worried that it signaled some incoming attack, like the whistle of incoming mortars that he had grown to know so well in his days patrolling the border with the Mexic Dominion in the Vinland province of Tejas. Then Yao forced himself to relax when he remembered that this whine was what silence sounded like, the hum of an empty room. It had been too long since last he heard it.

    The silence was interrupted when the door behind Yao suddenly opened. Shackled to the bench by his ankles, Yao was unable to rise, as long training and protocol impelled him to do, and so he was forced to lift fractionally from the bench, leaning heavily on the table, turning from the waist to see who entered.

    The older man and somewhat younger woman seemed to take no notice of Yao, but rounded the table and seated themselves in the wooden chairs, the man setting down a thick folder on the table before him.

    Yao dipped his head, eyes down, waiting to be addressed.

    The man wore the long dark surcoat and pants of the Eight Banners dress uniform. Yao had such a suit, packed somewhere in his personal belongings, but hadn’t had occasion to wear it in… months? Years, perhaps? But while Yao’s uniform was emblazoned with the image of a bear, insignia of a fifth-rank military officer, this man’s garment bespoke a much more elevated standing. Embroidered across his chest was a qilin in a verdant field, fire bursting from the mythical beast’s flanks, its teeth bared and horns sharpened to points. It was the insignia badge of a first-rank officer, hand-picked by the emperor himself. In all of Fire Star, so far as Yao knew, there was only one officer of that rank currently stationed, the commander of the Eight Banners himself, General Qiao Bi.

    Yao had seen General Qiao only once, from a distance, and then in a surface suit. Some very powerful people must have been annoyed by the questions Yao persisted in asking, to merit a personal audience with the general himself.

    So far, General Qiao had not looked at Yao, but had opened the file on the table before him, reviewing the tightly-printed lines of characters on page after page after page.

    Through the corner of his eye, Yao regarded the woman sitting at the general’s side. Unlike the general, who wore the ornate surcoat of a bannerman, the woman was wearing a plain gray tunic and pants, unmarked and unadorned. If Yao hadn’t known better, he would have taken her for a merchant’s daughter, or a clerk in a shop. But there was no road Yao could imagine that would have led a merchant or a clerk to the hidden heart of Fanchuan Garrison, and a seat beside the general himself. Yao suspected who the woman was, but was reluctant to even voice it in his thoughts, for fear of what it suggested.

    The general continued to review the file. Yao knew this was solely for theatrical effect. The general would have known everything it contained before walking into the room. This was for Yao’s benefit, establishing the balance of authority and power. The message was clear: Yao waited at the general’s pleasure, and the general was far from pleased.

    Finally, the general closed the file again, and folded his hands atop it. Only now did he raise his eyes and look across the table at the bannerman shackled to the bench.

    “Bannerman Yao Guanzhong?” The general voiced it as a question, as though there was any doubt. Yao bobbed his head once, a precise movement, indicating assent. “I am General Qiao Bi.” Again, as if doubt could remain. “And this”—he turned fractionally in his seat and indicated the woman with the smallest of gestures, one finger lifting for the briefest of instants before falling again—“is Agent Wu.” The general paused. “She speaks for the Eastern Depot.”

    Those few words were freighted with considerable meaning, and Yao’s suspicions were confirmed. The woman was an Embroidered Guard, one of the emperor’s secret policemen and intelligence gatherers. Soldiers like Yao spent their entire careers hoping not to come to the attention of an agent of the Eastern Depot.

    So Yao’s quest for answers had brought him beneath the gaze of the supreme commander of the Eight Banners and a representative of the emperor’s secret police? Yao suppressed a sneer. Even if he had known where it would end, he’d have done nothing differently. Bad enough to have been forced to stand by and watch so many innocents killed, needlessly; he could not have left their deaths a mystery.

    “Now,” the general continued, tapping the file under his fingers, “your record is an impressive one, bannerman. Served with distinction for several tours along the border with the Mexic Dominion, before being transferred to Fire Star in the forty-second year of the Taikong emperor. For more than ten years your performance record has been spotless, with numerous commendations from your superiors for service above and beyond. But it would appear that you have been asking a great many questions of late, along quite inappropriate lines.”

    Yao bristled, but years of training kept him from voicing the first response that appeared in his thoughts. “Yes,” he said at length, his voice straining. “I have been asking questions.”

The general nodded, thoughtfully, and pursed his lips. “And yet your file indicates that you were ordered to abandon this inquiry by your superiors on at least two occasions.”

    “Three, actually, my general.”

    The general cocked an eyebrow, and the color started to rise in his cheeks. “Meaning what, precisely?”

    “I was ordered by my superiors on three separate occasions to abandon the inquiry, my general.”

    Yao didn’t intend the answer to be mocking, but it was clear the general took it as such. He fixed Yao with a hard stare. “And on these three occasions, did you fail to comprehend your orders in this regard? Were your superiors unclear in their instructions?”

    Yao shook his head. “There was no confusion, my general.”

    The general regarded Yao for a moment, taking several deep breaths, wearing an expression suggesting a mental state not completely unlike sympathy. Finally, Qiao spoke again, breaking the silence. “The events surrounding the Shachuan Station Massacre were indeed tragic and unfortunate, bannerman.” The general paused, moistening his lips and searching for the precise phrase. “But difficult decisions must be made in wartime, and this is no exception.”

    Yao’s hands tightened to fists on the table’s surface, but he remained still and silent.

    “The attack on Shachuan Station cost many lives,” the general continued, “but in the balance there was considerable gain.” The general sighed, and pushed the file away from him, toward the center of the table’s surface. “And it appears that, due to your insistence on overturning stones that should remain untouched, the Shachuan Station Massacre has claimed yet one more life.”

    Yao had no doubt whose life General Qiao meant. Contravening direct orders, as he had done, was a serious enough offense in its own right. But discovering what Yao had about the truth of the attack, and the orders associated with it, had led him to learn sensitive information several levels above his own security rating, an offense punishable by the severest methods.

    Agent Wu of the Eastern Depot had remained silent throughout the exchange, sitting almost serenely beside the general, unspeaking. But now she leaned forward, interrupting Qiao with a gentle touch on his elbow. When she spoke, her voice sounded gentle and soothing, but Yao could hear steel hidden beneath. Yao remembered what he had heard about the training suffered by anyone inducted into the Embroidered Guard, and tried not to imagine what sort of person walked out at the other end of such an experience.

    “Perhaps,” she said, her voice like petals floating on still waters, hiding sharks circling beneath, “there is an alternative to execution.” She treated Yao to a smile that chilled his blood. “Perhaps there is one final service that Bannerman Yao can perform for the Dragon Throne.”

    The general sat back, his arms folded across his chest, while Agent Wu began to explain. “Tell me, Bannerman Yao. What do you know of Xolotl?”

    

Chapter Three

    

    The cell was small, no more than a few paces to a side, and in the last three days Zhuan Jie had memorized every square centimeter.

    Cut into the western cliff-face of the Great Yu Canyon’s high walls, Baochuan Station had been one of the first settlements on the red planet Fire Star, built atop a thermal vent that supplied the structure with water and power. The station had been abandoned when the more advanced habitats of the Tianfei Valley were constructed, and stood empty for some years, but with the onset of the Second Mexic War nothing was left to waste, and Baochuan was reclaimed and put to other uses.

    A lifetime before, a young Zhuan had helped construct the station, along with the technicians’ corps of the Treasure Fleet, back before there was such a thing as the Interplanetary Fleet, when the Dragon Throne had naively assumed that Fire Star was its for the taking. Then the Mexica had attacked the colonists, more than a dozen terrestrial years ago, and the long conflict that the Middle Kingdom called the Second Mexic War began.

    Zhuan was sure that the Mexica have their own name for the conflict. Presumably something appropriately blood-soaked and brutal. But if they did, he’d never heard it.

    All those years ago, when he had only just met Thien Ziling and was groping toward something called love, not yet fully a man, Zhuan could never have guessed that Baochuan might one day house a military prison, or that he himself would be imprisoned there. But then, at that age, Zhuan would never have guessed that he would spend more than a quarter of his life waging war.

    Zhuan had been taken into custody by the authorities when the Exhortation docked at Zhurong moonbase, clapped in irons, and escorted to a cloud-flyer that carried him down to the planet’s surface, here to Baochuan prison, to await trial. And it was here that Zhuan had waited, the three days since.

    He had little doubt what the verdict would be, and could well imagine what punishment his sentence would carry.

    In his more charitable moments, Zhuan tried to fool himself that it was for the sake of his crew that he refused to ram the Mexic launch vessel, and that it was their lives he’d been saving. But in his darker moments, in the long hours of the night, it was not so easy to lie, even to oneself.

    The cell reminded Zhuan of his berth on the Jade Maiden, the craft that had first carried him from Earth to Fire Star. The light from the element in the cell’s ceiling cast the same weak illumination, and the ever-present smell of the latrine trench in the far corner brought to mind the inescapable stench of dung from the stalls in the cargo hold. If Zhuan closed his eyes, it was almost as if he was back there again, in that cramped hull, still dreaming of adventure and romance, his thoughts not yet beaten into proper shape by reality.

    There was no furniture in the room, just a thin pallet along one wall, a bowl of burnished metal for food, a bamboo flask for water, the latrine-trench cut into the concrete floor, and the heavy steel door.

    Zhuan sat cross-legged on the pallet, his eyes closed, imagining that he was anywhere else but here. Imagining that he was anyone else but Zhuan Jie. He remembered a poem about a man and a butterfly, but could not recall the details. It would not be so bad to be a butterfly, Zhuan thought. A brief life of beauty, free from care, and ended before life went on too long. It sometimes seemed that Zhuan’s life had gone on too long, as much as he was in no hurry to see its end. If he had died as a young man, and never known war, would it have been such a tragedy? Mightn’t he have been happier to die while still a boy? But not before he first ventured into the void. No, not that. Those memories he would not trade for any happiness.

    Zhuan’s wandering reverie was interrupted by the clang of steel on concrete, as the door to his cell slammed open. He opened his eyes, sure that the end had come for him at last. Now it would be sentencing and summary execution for gross dereliction of duty. He hoped that it wouldn’t hurt.

    To his surprise, though, the guards who dragged him from the cell did not usher him to an audience with a disciplinary committee. Instead, he found himself being escorted to the hangar bay, where a military cloud-flyer shuttle waited. There he was trundled onboard, and shackled to the posts of an acceleration chair. There were four others already seated, like him wearing drab prisoners’ tunics and pants. Three were strangers to Zhuan, but one was very familiar indeed.

    Before Zhuan could make eye contact, a pilot vaulted into the cloud-flyer, a list in his hand. He checked the names of the five prisoners—Zhuan, Ang, Cai, Nguyen, and Paik—and once he was satisfied that he had the right men, he signaled to one of the guards. Together the guard and the pilot sealed the hatch, and then moved to the forward end of the cloud-flyer. The pilot began the preflight sequence, while the guard swiveled his chair to keep careful watch on the prisoners, in his hands a pistol, a saber at his side.

    With a building scream, the cloud-flyer taxied out of the hangar, onto the runway set into the canyon floor beyond Baochuan prison. The craft began to accelerate down the runway, forcing the prisoners back into their chairs, while the rear-facing guard leaned forward fractionally, straining against the straps securing him in place. And when it sounded as though the whine of the craft’s engines could grow no higher, no louder, the cloud-flyer lifted off the ground and was airborne.

    Through a port in the side of the craft, Zhuan could see the outline of Baochuan prison as they banked to the south, looking like a series of irregular shadows on the canyon wall. Then the craft righted itself, and all that was visible through the ports on either side was cloudless pink sky.

    Zhuan tried to catch the eye of the prisoner opposite him. He was thinner than he’d been a year before, when last Zhuan had seen him, and for a moment Zhuan supposed that it might have been another man, but when the guard had read off the list of names it’d been confirmed. Ang Xunhuo, one of the finest pilots and most dangerous gamblers Zhuan had ever met, who until late the previous year had been the steersman of the Exhortation. Then Ang had run afoul of the authorities while on leave on Zhunrong, and Zhuan had found himself in need of another steersman.

    But Ang refused to meet Zhuan’s eye. Finally, his curiosity getting the better of him, Zhuan leaned forward. “Steersman Ang. What is this about?”

    Ang turned and regarded him with a sly smile. “Not steersman any longer, my captain…”

    “No talking!” The guard at the front of the cloud-flyer banged the heel of his pistol’s grip against the inside hull of the cloud-flyer, resounding like a drum. “Or else!”

    Ang rolled his eyes, almost comically, in the guard’s direction, and shrugged. Then, holding his hands before his mouth, his wrists manacled together like all the other prisoners, he mimed sewing his lips shut.

    Zhuan didn’t know if the rest of the prisoners were as ignorant as he was about the purpose of this journey—or of what awaited them at its end—but from their expressions he supposed they are just as much in the dark. Ang was no help, either, having turned back to the window with a bemused grin, leaning over as far as possible to watch the reddish-orange ground slide beneath them, far below.

    After the dim illumination of the cell in Baochuan prison, the bright glare of the midday sun through the viewports caused Zhuan’s eyes to water, and he squeezed them shut. The sunlight warmed him, too, helping melt the chill that had set into his bones after three days in the bare concrete cell, and Zhuan felt himself beginning to drowse.

    Drifting on the edge of wakefulness and slumber, Zhuan slipped into a kind of hypnagogic state, in which the distant thrum of the cloud-flyer’s engines became voices, just at the edge of hearing, and he imagined that the other prisoners were talking secretly to one another, thinking that he slept. But the voices that he imagined were indistinct and vague, and though he struggled in his dreamy state to understand what they were saying, their meaning eluded him.

    Zhuan was rousted to full wakefulness when the cloud-flyer landed with a noisy bump. Shaking his head, as though to knock his thoughts back into place, Zhuan looked out the viewport and saw familiar bunkers hulking to the west, which after searching his memories he finally recognized as Fanchuan Garrison, the seat of military command on Fire Star, and home to the commanders of both the Army of the Green Standard and the Eight Banners, and to the admiralty of the Interplanetary Fleet.

    When the cloud-flyer had come to a rest, the hatch was opened from the outside, and a phalanx of Green Standard guardsmen greeted them from the pavement beyond.

    One by one the guard who had ridden herd on them since Baochuan unshackled the prisoners from the acceleration chairs, and they were ushered out onto the pavement. One of the prisoners, a bear of a man whom the guard had identified as Paik Gui Jin, was snoring peacefully when his turn came around, and when shaken roughly awake by the guard seemed stirred to anger. So genial in his slumber, with his rest interrupted Paik seemed like another man entirely, and if not for the chains which still bound his ankles and wrists he might have done considerable injury to the guard. As it was, Paik was knocked to the floor of the cloud-flyer, and then dragged bodily out the hatch by the guards beyond.

    The Green Standard guardsmen took over custody of the prisoners from the cloud-flyer guard, and then escorted the five away from the landing strip, in through a heavily guarded entrance and along labyrinthine corridors and passageways to a long, narrow room buried deep within Fanchuan Garrison. There were three doors in the room, the one through which they’d come, one on the far wall, and one to their left. Along the unbroken wall was a low bench. The five prisoners were ordered to seat themselves on the bench and remain silent, while the guardsmen took up positions on either end, their weapons at the ready.

    One of the guardsmen confirmed their names once more from a list, asking each man to identify himself. Then he took the list through the door opposite the bench, closing it behind him.

    It was difficult to judge the passage of time in the windowless room, but Zhuan figured that it was close to an hour before the guardsman returned. He referred to the list still in his hand, and then called out for the prisoner named Nguyen Trang to step forward.

    Nguyen stood, and kept standing for some time. He was one of the tallest men that Zhuan had ever seen, but not lanky in the slightest. As broad as he was tall, Nguyen was a mountain disguised as a man. But his face resembled that of a child, down to the somewhat childish expressions which flitted across it. It seemed that Nguyen was not one who filtered his thoughts or feelings, but who openly displayed his inner landscape in the contours of his face. He looked like a happy puppy when his name was called, eyes widening with excitement, but then seemed to recall the uncertainty of their position, and that wonder was replaced by naked fear.

    As Nguyen took a step forward toward the doorway, his progress was interrupted. The man sitting beside him, whom the guard had identified as Cai Yingtai, was of average height, but thin and gawky, with large ears and a protruding laryngeal prominence, what the Vinlanders called an “Adam’s apple.” Wearing an expression of unsullied innocence, Cai hooked his foot out, and tripped Nguyen’s first step. The man-mountain stumbled forward, hands out before him, and came crashing down onto the hard floor.

    As Cai began to laugh at his little prank, Nguyen rushed up from the floor, hands as far apart as his manacles will allow, murder in his eyes. He lunged toward the small man still sitting on the bench, a wordless howl of rage on his lips. Only the intervention of the guardsmen on either side, dragging Nguyen off and away, saved Cai from a quick and painful death.

    As Nguyen was escorted, at gunpoint, through the open doorway, Zhuan revised his opinion of the man-mountain. Not only the tallest man Zhuan had ever met, whose child-like face made plain every thought or feeling that passed through him, but also a terrible opponent capable of great violence when roused to anger.

    A good part of an hour passed, and then Nguyen was led back out of the room. Rather than being returned to the bench, he was escorted to the other end of the hall, and ushered through the door opposite that through which they had entered. Then the man named Cai was summoned, and passed through the door also.

    A short while later Cai came back out, and was taken through the door at the end of the hall, and Paik was escorted through. Then Paik came out and Ang went through.

    Zhuan was the last left on the bench, and from this vantage he was able to see each of the prisoners as they were led back out of the doorway and escorted away. Their expressions were maddeningly unreadable. Cai came back from the room beyond with a stricken look on his face, and Nguyen seemed confused, but Paik had just looked bored on his exit. Ang, for his part, looked as though his mind was racing, looking for some way to turn the circumstances to his advantage. Zhuan had seen that look before, when Ang still served on the Exhortation and gambled with the other crew; it was the expression Ang wore when he held a losing hand that he was sure could still be bluffed into a victory.

    Finally, it was Zhuan’s turn. His name was called out by the guardsman at the door. Rising from the bench, Zhuan crossed the room to pass through the door and see what awaited him.

——————————————————————————————————————————
_{Dragon’s Nine Sons was published by Solaris Books in 2008 and the first book in the Celestial Empire series.}

Chris Roberson is a multiple time World Fantasy Award finalist, and a winner of the Sidewise Award for his fiction. His novels include Here There and Everywhere, The Voyage of Night Shining White, and Paragaea: A Planetary Romance. He is also writing a spin-off miniseries to the popular Vertigo title Fables called Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love.

You can visit Roberson at his site

    
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