So saying, Mazu steps backward—cants into the minefield—and disappears between their unblinking red gazes without a second shout.

  Oh, fuck, right, you're fucked when it comes to the mines, aren't you? You should've put this together all the way back when Gutierrez was arguing about where to hold—but no, too busy feeling sorry for yourself.

  Not the time to second-guess it now, anyway. The radio crackles, and there are last is Venkatesh: "In fine form today, isn't she?"

  "Blame Gutierrez." Dare's wry. "Shouldn't have needled her about You-Know-Who. Speaking of which—"

  "Yes, yes," says Venkatesh, "Holly will talk to her. She's due a check-in with Central. Tracey too."

  "Thanks," says Dare. "Kanagawa, how did you know about Arrowhead?"

  "We simmed it," you say peevishly, "didn't we?"

  "Right," says Dare. "Look—between you and me, better not bring up Aileen, yeah? Good idea you had, just, you know, when Shirley's on the frequency—"

  "What," you say, "I'm supposed to talk in euphemisms?"

  "It's not you," says Venkatesh, "it's Shirley."

  "Yeah," you say. "I fucking get that. What's her deal? No," because you can tell, from the way the radio crackles, that Dare's about to interject, "seriously—if I speak up I'm an idiot who doesn't know what she's talking about, and if I don't, I'm dead weight—and, I know, I'm pathetic and I don't even want to be here, she doesn't know why Chang wants me, and that's all before I even got in the cockpit and opened my mouth. Right?"

  "Emma—we didn't know you were there to hear that," says Dare. "I'm sorry."

  "She would've said it louder if she'd known," you say, "because she wants me off. Am I wrong?" Silence is answer enough. "So," you say, "she wants me off, and because I'm not off, she's going to, what, shoot me down until I leave out of sheer frustration?"

  "Of course not," says Enika. "Emma—"

  "You could've just put me on B-team," you say.

  "Not how it works," says Dare stiffly. "Lau's right anyway; the game's changed. What we did at Arrowhead wouldn't apply now even if we had only the one target. Also, it really isn't just you. She hates at least Gutierrez, too."

  You exhale. Your core's heating up in response to your body, the clenched fists, the racing pulse; you can see it reflected in your HUD, and you wait a moment to let it fall again. "Okay," you say, "Shi is one of the most decorated and studied shields of our time, and a former member of this team, and you're telling me I can't make strategy calls using her name because, what, her ex-partner will get pissed."

  "Emma," Venkatesh says gently, "Aileen Shi died on the same mission that killed your sister."

  This pronunciation lances through you as surely as absent Barracuda's blade—heat and shock and a terrible feeling of being suddenly flung from your body. You say, "No fucking shit. So why does Lau get to call the shots about her loss and I don't?"

  The radio falls silent for a long, terrible moment. Then Dare says, "Kanagawa, I think you've got it backwards," and you say, "I don't think I do," and Venkatesh says, "Please. Emma. Would you want Lau to bring up Rachel?"

  You say, "It's how she fucking introduced herself."

  "Right," says Dare, "and Holly disciplined her for it. Can we please stop arguing and get the fuck in there?"

  "No, wait," says Enika, "if this is important to Emma then it's important to us all. Emma, what would make this better? I could ask the team to just not speak of your sister around you at all."

  Something in her tone brings you back to the woodblock waves. All those years of guilty glances and kid gloves, where nearly nobody dared breathe her name to you, when you couldn't bear to talk about her, when you couldn't bear not to—

  "No," you say vehemently, "fuck no. You're missing the fucking point."

  "Emma," says Enika, "it's alright. I think Rachel would understand."

  Like fuck she knows what Rachel would think! You key the mic—but Dare beats you to the punch: "Fuck," she says, "it's Mazu. Shit. I'm going in."

  Her barriers are already unsheathed, furled along her arms like gloves. As you watch she turns sideways, engines flaring, and slips between the mines with the grace of a bird the size of a skyscraper, which you frankly hadn't imagined before this: Fishhawk is bigger than you are as a shield, and when she moves it looks the way you feel in dreams—slow and fast all at once. (Needles, doesn't it, seeing her pull it off effortlessly, the way you want to and can't: this is why you need me, Emma.)

  "Mazu? Oh, hell," says Venkatesh. "Fishhawk, status? Come in."

  You're only half-listening; at the same time that Fishhawk maneuvers into the mines your gut wrenches, internal alarm, and then the distress signal hits your HUD and washes it in red. There's a new dot on the wireframe, two, both flashing, and you realize those are the targets, and they're closing fast.

  Christ, what did Mazu do to draw them in so quickly? You thought she said they'd run! But—maybe if all they see is the one Titan—

  The sea shivers. Your radio crackles: "Sea Witch," you make out, and, "Halfway down," and something that sounds like "Not getting through to her."

  "Fishhawk," says Venkatesh, "you're breaking up. Can you repeat?"

  "Venky," says Fishhawk, "get your ass over here right now."

  "Acknowledged," says Venkatesh. "Pinging Central."

  Fishhawk starts to say something else; her transmission burbles, pitches into a high shriek, then abruptly cuts off. Meg, you think, but no, on your sonar the water is erupting in turquoise washback: too turbulent for clear broadcasts other than right next to each other, practically in your ear.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  "Tokyo." That's Venkatesh, Sea Witch, on your radio. "Ready to trail point in twenty, confirm."

  You hesitate—long enough that she notices: "Hey," she says. "You alright?"

  "Fine," you lie. "Ready." Fuck, shit—what excuse can you bring up that won't sound like total bullshit? Nothing, probably. You're still running hot, besides, which makes it harder to think. "Sea Witch," you fumble, "requesting vector to point." Could you do it? Would it be possible to force yourself through—here it doesn't matter if you fail, does it? Ah, but you'd tried deep sync earlier and your helm hadn't cooperated, even though it's only sim—

  "Emma," says Venkatesh, "I've already had your helm put you on our private band." And, more gently this time: "Tell me what's going on."

  Embarrassment floods you: it is so obvious that you're not okay, isn't it, that you're rattled from Lau and that whole stupid, unnecessary, dangerous squabble. You say, "They're waiting for us—"

  "Yes," says Enika. "I know. But this is sim, Emma. This is what it's for—fucking around, fucking up." Your cheeks burn, not that she can see, thankfully. "Listen," she says, "I know you're shaken. You can be honest. It's Carol, isn't it?"

  You say, "What?"

  "Well," says Enika, "we all noticed she's gone, obviously. Happens a lot, not uncommon with her. But you brought her up—and it's obvious that Lau's needling left you unhappy, and I don't think it's just because you hate her. You're worried Carol abandoned you."

  Your breath catches in your throat. You go cold, then hot. You say, "No, I'm not."

  "Yes," says Enika, "you are." She pauses long enough for you to recall the pager—the message you left—and then: "Look, don't get too worked up about your sword, okay? It doesn't help. Trust me."

  You say, "What the fuck are you talking about," but she's not done, apparently: "You don't have to agree right now. Just think about it. All right? And," she says, "Shirley doesn't hate you, not really, even if it sounds like she does. She's worried about you, Emma, worried for you. She's been where you are, and she knows it might not end well. That's all." And then, so softly you forget for a moment that she's speaking to you through transmitted acoustic signals across meters of turbulent seawater, penetrating tons of steel hull, instead of right beside you, holding your hand—"I know Carol's Rachel's sword, and I know you think she's all you have left, and that she's the only one who gets your loss. But, look, Emma, we all lost her, too."

  Your mouth opens, closes again. Your throat works. On your HUD flickers a warning: BIOSIGNS DEVIATING FROM ACCEPTED RANGE. ADJUST FEED?

  You say, "Thanks." And: "I'm going in now."

  And you shunt the radio feed into your background processes; you open the lines from your reactor into each of your thrusters, feel the core spool up and thrum, purring, in step with your heart. You know you're violating protocol here, there are messages tugging insistently at the edge of your awareness where you've left the radio feed. You ignore this.

  In your desperation—in the white-hot wake of whatever the hell that was—you have overrun yourself. When you array your thrusters for field entry, you forget to modulate your cooling system to match, and I am not able to help because you will not even now, especially now, let me in—I have tried already, have been trying this whole time, have done battle with your subconscious and tried to soothe it, or smack it, anything to break through your misery and get control. No dice.

  So when you enter the minefield you are moving with all your might, the way you did last time we made it through here; the same song and dance, except I do not even think you are hoping that I will take over this time. I do not think you are thinking at all. And though you are unhappy, though you are hurting, though you are reeling again with feelings you cannot yet name, it is not enough to push you over the edge and lose yourself wholly.

  I could warn you—I have tried to warn you. But oh, Emma, this is where you'll learn—things are already set into motion by now; the cooling loop is shuddering, cavitating, little bubbles forming and bursting and causing dimples in the piping walls—you feel this as so many little champagne pings deep in your bones, but you are so singlehandedly focused on going that it does not register. Your fingers recess into your palms, your ventplates fold backward and streamline your passage; your heart beats like a drum.

  Halfway into the field the alarm hits you in the gut. COOLING LOOP FAILURE, says your HUD, short and sweet. It startles you. For a heartbeat you reflexively will your engines forward anyway (but you are clumsy, unsure, and the override wouldn't latch even if you tried harder, the way a missing hand won't close) and succeed only in wrenching yourself sideways, off-course.

  Then the backwash of your faltering thrusters strikes the sensor of the mine behind you, and that's when everything goes to shit—for real this time.

  -

  You already have your barriers unlocked, and they go out on instinct and wrap around you when the first mine detonates. These are shock units, meant more to hinder than destroy. The next cluster you are bowled into tears through the membranes of your shields, which, stretched tight, are at capacity already.

  Your radio hisses; you hear something that might be Sea Witch crying out at you—you're too overwhelmed to listen. Besides, the sheer turbulence in the water around you makes a masticated ruin of whatever input it's taking. You can't hear shit.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck, you think, and then you clamp down and force yourself to stop panicking and think: what can you do, where can you go from here? The wireframe judders across the inside of your helmet. Your breath is like thunder in your ears. The sea itself is barraging you, BOOM BOOM BOOM, pinballs you helplessly across the ocean, and then very suddenly everything is still.

  Not still at all, actually; your ears are ringing, and slowly you become aware of the cascade of alarms, aural and visual and internally delivered, and the wash of color across your sonar complements it all: your barriers are in tatters, and also only reason you aren't chum strewn across the sea floor. And your radio—

  "Tokyo," it calls, "Tokyo? Status!"

  You don't answer; you are still reeling. Something is wrong, terribly wrong, a whole swathe of your sonar is tearing itself out of the sea around it, and—

  It hits you broadside and rips you out of your careening trajectory like a hawk intercepting a fly. You are helpless. Your barriers are nil by now; and there are six hundred tons of cleonicerotid barreling into you, locking you in a death spiral headed for the sea floor.

  You fumble for your radio. It's all you have left. "Mayday," you manage in a voice like sandpaper, only long enough to hear the whistle on the other end, noise adapted from the wake tearing along outside. Nobody can hear you. And your peripheral sensors are all red, shrieking in your ears and eyes and gut: the very edges of your chassis are breaking down a little from sheer friction, the sea itself ripping you apart.

  No shield, engines lapsing, target riding you—a big black hulk on your sonar—at nearly sonic speeds, and the tip of Lantau is approaching fast. There is the swell of the shell, impenetrable. You have nothing but your fists.

  Except there is one thing you can try: it pierces you like lightning, and you move before you can think. Along your back you fold in all your Van Atta sensors. Then you turn your sonar outward with all your might and dial up the amplitude to full.

  The thing keens. It loosens its grip—not much, barely enough for you to rally your thrusters and twist. But cleonicerotids are the gods to giant squid; even stunning the damn thing doesn't make up for how many fucking arms it has, and amidst everything you forget it's only a simulation and think, I'm going to die.

  You go limp. Lantau is five hundred meters away, four hundred. Your vision clouds with alarms and black spots alike. The salt of the cradle is not enough to lift you out of it this time.

  "Tokyo," says your radio, "out of the way."

  Can't, you think groggily; you are too heavy, your thrusters too weak. It doesn't matter. For a moment your sonar view seems to split in two. Later, after the fact, you will reflect that this is the wake of Mazu sending a shockwave through your sonic ambients. Now, all you see is the flare of blades, one-two, sun-bright, like Hou Yi shooting down the heavens: then an explosion, not of sound and pressure this time but of viscera, algal white and copious, blooming across your visuals in a thick and spreading effluence.

  The tightness around you relaxes. A moment later it is gone. Your whole body crackles and sighs from the sudden relief, and suddenly your vents can breathe again.

  Well, hey, at least Carol isn't here to see you fuck up this time. Right?