Then he did something that, when he thought about it later on, saved his life and sure as hell wasn’t in any manual. But he did it anyway.

Penn simultaneously throttled back and deployed his Lucifer’s nose and left landing gear—but not his right. Somewhere deep in his brain was this cockamamie plan: create enough drag to cant his errant ship down but left to break the fighter’s horizontal plane enough to grab air.

Suddenly, he saw the horizon—and, dear God, he had dropped far enough for there to be a horizon—and clouds spread in a foamy cushion. Thirty, forty degrees max… come on, come on, lemme see it… The Lucifer still spun, but more drunkenly now, as if the craft were a top running out of kinetic energy. He kept inching back on power, knowing that, if push came to shove, he could land with one engine. That didn’t happen, though, and in another second, Penn knew he was going to live through this.

“Damn,” said Menace. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Penn was soaked through with sweat. “Power?”

A pause. “Look down. Starboard.”

Penn looked. There, so small and distant Penn was afraid to blink because then the ship would be gone, a tiny speck plummeted, trailing a plume of dense, charcoal-colored smoke. And then Penn supposed there must be a god because, in the next second, as the full horror of what had happened broke against his mind, the clouds swallowed up the speck, and Samantha Will was gone.

He couldn’t think anymore, not now. But much, much later Penn would float an idea: that the Dracs didn’t give two shits about Prefecture I. Dracs took; Dracs destroyed; Dracs conquered. Dracs did not make like no-seeums on a buggy summer’s evening, teasing planetary militias into full-scale screwups. The Dracs were up to something, sure, but it wasn’t about Tsukude, or Prefecture I. But Penn had a little problem: no evidence.

Something else would happen, too. A flight mishap investigatory board would convene. Penn would be cleared of negligence but only after countless repetitions of the disaster captured by a planetary satellite; and each time he saw the replay, something would rip in Penn’s heart.

But that would be then—and this was now and, for now, Penn and Menace turned. And they went home.

4

Conqueror’s Pride, Proserpina

Prefecture III, Republic of the Sphere

20 November 3134

Control.

Blinking away sweat, Antonia Chinn clutched her shinai, steadying the tip on an imaginary line with her opponent’s throat. Yeah, right, control; now if I could only get some… She was so frustrated she wanted to snap her bamboo sword over her knee; maybe use it for kindling. But she wasn’t going to back down, especially in front of the Old Master, Otome Sensei, motionless as a statue at one side of the tatami–matted dojo : a small man in traditional keiko-gi and hakama : black, flowing jacket and split, skirtlike trousers that brushed his ankles. Otome Sensei’s weathered features were relaxed in zanshin, watchful alertness.

Chinn blew out, then pulled in another breath, her nose crinkling at the smell of old, sweat-stained leather from the pad beneath her jaw. Her tenugui, a red headband snugged against her forehead, had soaked through; her keiko-gi clung to her spine; and clammy sweat pooled at the waistband of her hakama.

She wondered if her opponent was fagged out. Doubted it. Her opponent stood three meters away, in a picture-perfect stance: shoulders relaxed, back straight, feet a fist’s width apart, each heel two centimeters off the floor. A pair of unwavering, jet-black eyes glittered with the intensity of two lasers from behind a protective mesh of horizontal wires that formed the frontispiece of a navy blue helmet. To either side of her opponent’s men, her face mask, a thick cowl of protective fabric flared in a design reminiscent of the helmets worn by the ancient samurai. Her opponent was taller by a half meter, but compensated for the difference, angling her shinai at waist level and inscribing an imaginary line that, had it been an arrow, would have whizzed through Chinn’s throat and pinned her to the wall, like a butterfly to cardboard.

Just one lousy hit on target so I don’t look like a complete idiot. It wasn’t as if Chinn hadn’t hit her opponent anywhere. Problem was all her hits had been off-target and illegal. So she had to figure how to trick her opponent into thinking that she meant to attack one place—say, shomen-uchji, a quick cut to the head—but end up striking another. Chinn’s eyes darted to the apex of her opponent’s men, then her left torso, and then back at her shinai. Okay, if she covered ground in a really fast ayumi-ashi, pushing off on the ball of her right foot and springing forward on her left, yeah, she could feint a cut for the head but angle left as soon as her opponent moved to parry and then POW! Left chest cut, just below the ribs.

Chinn sucked in a deep breath, tasted the musk of sandalwood and the salt tang of sweat, pushed it out. “Toh!” She lunged, bare feet slapping wood hard enough to send ripples up her shins. She bounded one step, then two; at the second step, she saw her opponent take a half step back—and stop.

Go, go! Chinn pressed her attack, angling her shinai ninety degrees—and realized, too late, that she’d created an opening by moving the tip of her weapon off center. Her opponent whirred forward in a blur, and then there was a hard smack to the top of Chinn’s head that she felt all the way into her teeth.

The Old Master raised a hand. “Yame!”

“Yeah, stop is right,” Chinn said, disgusted. She let her shinai drop with a clatter then pulled her left kote until the padded glove came free. “I’ve had it.”

Her opponent said nothing. But the Old Master glided over, almost soundlessly, his eyes flashing with disapproval. But when he spoke, his tone was mild. “This is the way of a warrior? To throw a tantrum like a spoiled child?”

The questions, so precise and to the point, made Chinn’s face hot with shame. Yanking off the helmet, she wiped sweat from her forehead to cover her embarrassment. “Maybe it’s not the way of a warrior, Otome Sensei, but there are times when you can practice too much.”

“Perhaps.” The Old Master had very brown eyes, but the orbits were marred with splotches of yellow that reminded Chinn of a broken yolk. “Yes, perhaps practice is the problem.” Then he told Chinn and her opponent precisely what he wanted them to do.

“Fight? Without armor? Without anything?” Chinn gawked, not sure she’d heard right. “You’ve got to be kidding. We can’t just fight …” She wanted to say in the nude but didn’t.

“Oh, of course we can,” said her opponent, shucking her helmet. Katana Tormark’s face was so slick with sweat, her chocolate-brown skin looked oiled. She, too, wore a tenugui saturated with perspiration, and her hair, cut close in wavy locks, glistened and clung to her scalp. Her nimble fingers quickly peeled off her do, and she dropped the body armor onto her helmet. “Don’t you understand, Toni?” she said, unself-consciously high-stepping out of her hakama, then letting the black trousers puddle on the floor with a whisper of fabric against wood.

Chinn swallowed. Katana wore a black loincloth snugged tight over her hips. Her legs were very long, knotted with muscle in calf and thigh, and perfectly shaped. Katana was the most beautiful woman Chinn had ever seen, and it was all she could do to meet Katana’s eyes, keenly aware that her stomach cramped with longing. “Understand what?” she said, her voice suddenly husky, her mouth as dry as sand.