Chapter Text
“So you’re the ace this time?”
“Baby brother, I’m always the ace. You’re the one who flies in my wake.”
Hoseok leaned around the edge of the wing, and smiled at his sister. “Yeah uh huh, okay.”
They had done this routine a thousand times. Checking the ships for final inspections before taking them out on the job. The anxious energy was best spent carefully checking for loose wires, missing fittings, or dodgy programming errors that hadn’t been there before.
But there was more pressure this time.
The last mission had been the start of all the trouble. They had slipped out of an asteroid belt and started heading towards Blueside, the pet name for Azul, home planet of the royal family of the Jung Empire.
The mission had been simple: a surveillance run on the edge of neutral space. They’d spotted a few cargo ships but nothing of note. So when they stumbled upon the Kim Dynasty’s omega-class gunship, parked behind a pair of asteroids, both siblings immediately flagged each other.
They diverted to a space station and talked it out over a hot dinner.
Hoseok was sure they could take it.
Jiwoo had remained… unconvinced.
She walked around the ship to her brother. “So you’re sure. A few quick shots and it’s disabled?”
Hoseok nodded. “If we can nail this on a stealth run, we can finally retake the outer ring and send the infantry home to recover for a few months. Our armada could use the break.”
Jiwoo nodded. “I agree. So… who’s on the run with us? Are we hailing someone else in?”
Hoseok shook his head, and hopped up onto the wing to fiddle with a hinge gone askew.
“Out of all the dumb ideas you’ve had--”
“Now, before you start. This is another stealth job. We can’t do stealth with our usual crew. We go in, we blow it up, and get out before we ping on the radar. We just need to use the ghost drives.”
“Do they actually work yet?”
“I’ve seen them in action. Trust me, they work,” he said.
“I’ll back the play. You’ve started dumber missions that worked.” Jiwoo said. “Give me the license for the ghost drives and let’s get out of here before my common sense catches up.”
~*~
“Callsign: Hope, you are cleared for takeoff.”
“Callsign: Light, you are cleared for takeoff.”
“Roger, command,” Hoseok said, typing a few commands across the panel. “Hope taking off in tandem.”
Jiwoo also signaled to depart, and she waited until they got out of the station’s airspace to hail her brother through the comms.
“Let’s get this over so we can get home, I’m starving,” she said with a laugh. “Turn on the music, and it better be something good.”
“The fact that you think I have a bad song in my ‘Let’s kill this big gun and go home’ playlist is so distressing to me,” Hoseok said, tapping through and finding the best song imaginable, a low-synth bumper that broke goosebumps out under Hoseok’s skin.
Jiwoo gave a small grunt of approval. “Now that’s what I’m talking about,” she said with a nod, and started to let them lift up and off the ground.
The ships they piloted these days were slight, and lean, but not fragile. When they moved, they moved . The siblings had left lots of ships with top-tier agility suites in the dust. The fact they could also smoothly switch from one ship to two was a skill they’d used quite a few times.
Naming the ship Dum Spiro Spero was all too fitting, given that they could be giving a beacon of hope to the Jung empire.
“Warp gate incoming,” Jiwoo said. “Change the tunes.”
Hoseok nodded. He already had a song in mind and queued up.
Jiwoo gave a whoop of joy as they dropped out of regular space travel and into the warp.
The feeling of traveling in the warp was like nothing else. Hoseok felt his spine tingle and he leaned backwards, watching time slow, stars bur, and space etch away into a background of pure white nothingness that was almost blinding. There were a few occasional moments of black, where they were really in-between worlds and finding the nothingness that lay in-between.
Jiwoo was quieter now. She continued to monitor their path, making sure to angle the ship this and that way. It wouldn’t do to crash into an asteroid at this speed; they’d be obliterated in moments. So they were going to have to duck out near a known warp ramp and fly in the slow way towards the gunship.
“So… ah… have you, er, done anything else with that girl since you left home?”
“I.. what? I--I don’t see how that is any of your business.” Hoseok stammered.
Jiwoo laughed out loud. “So no, then.”
“...no.” Hoseok said, leaning back on his seat. He sighed. “There was just nothing there. She was so nice but I didn’t feel anything from her.”
“That was your problem with the guy before, too. Have you maybe considered the problem is you and not them?”
“Gee. could that be it?” he deadpanned. “Do you think perhaps the problem is that i don’t have time for a relationship? Stars above, thank you for helping me, Jiwoo. I’ll fall hopelessly in love with the next person I see.”
“Whoever taught you sarcasm committed a war crime,” Jiwoo said. “Just, when we finish this, and we can stay home for a while, maybe you should try and consider being open with your next relationship.”
Through the window of the ship, Hoseok could see her mime opening up her heart, and gave him a little finger heart, holding it up to the window.
“You’re the worst.”
“I gave you the heart.”
“Yes, I see the heart,” he muttered, and looked back to the navigation panel. “Maybe crashing into an asteroid is better.”
“Don’t be like that. You’ll find someone soon,” Jiwoo said with a laugh.
“I don’t think I want it if it’s going to be like how you are with Jimin. It’s disgusting.”
“Disgusting??” Jiwoo said. “You better be glad you’re over in your cockpit.”
“I just mean… I don’t understand it. I don’t think I could be so touchy feely all the time.”
“Jimin loves with his whole body. He’s a hugger, that’s just what he’s like. A little fluff ball.”
“I’m so glad you finally got to have your cotton candy and eat it too,” Hoseok said. At another set of daggers, he held up a hand. “Really, I’m happy for you. But when are you going to introduce him to the rest of the family?”
“Well, I…”
“Oh… is it your turn for humiliation? This is a much better conversation now.”
Jiwoo sighed, and turned away to look at her own consoles. “I’m sure he’ll love Jimin, it’s just… he’s just…”
“Not a noble.”
“It doesn’t mean he never will be . We’ve done merit-based advancements and I’ve known of half a dozen who have been up for the honor even if none of them have been granted it recently.”
“You should tell him. He might be amenable after we win this campaign for him,” Hoseok said. “Or he’ll kill us both for hiding it from him. But either way it’s probably your best shot.”
Jiwoo looked back at Hoseok, and then out to the void of space. “You know what. I think you’re right. Maybe the asteroid is better.”
~*~
The shift from warp into real-time was harsher, but they still made it successfully. Hoseok flipped their thrusters on and dropped down out of warp-space and into regular speed, just in time to miss an asteroid that had moved too far out of orbit.
A few ships in the area were immediately on alert when they rocketed out of nowhere -- and it didn’t take long before a pair of scout ships pinged on their radar.
“Feisty already,” Jiwoo said. “Turn the ghost drives on.”
Hoseok nodded, getting ready to separate their ships. The vacuum of space muted all sounds--but sometimes they could feel the turbulence happen.
The ghost drives meant little if they were visually spotted.
“Split and rendezvous at the gunship?”
“Sounds good, I’ll take starboard,” he said as the ships fully separated. He rolled away as a blast of energy streaked past what would have been the center of their ship. The hidden wings extended as he danced through the first asteroids, losing line of sight and reactivating the ghost drives.
“Did you lose them?”
“Yeah, I think so -- nothing on radar. No hostiles in sight.” she said.
“Good, head to the target,” Hoseok replied.
He looked over to see Jiwoo flitter down into a tight passageway between a few asteroids that were far too close. Hoseok came in from the starboard side, seeing the rows of energy weapons along the top of the ship.
Jiwoo came flying from port, and he watched her move methodically, sending targeted missiles every few hundred feet, with little popcorn bursts of flame erupting a few seconds afterwards.
Hoseok joined in on his side, dodging an errant blast or two as he emptied his missile rack into the side of the ship, satisfied at seeing the metal rend and rip beneath it.
“Defense systems down,” Jiwoo said. “You’re welcome.”
“You mean you’re welcome for the assist!”
“You were on the blind side -- I did the hard part.”
“Yeah, well--”
They both gasped as a few ships emerged out of the back of the ship, some fleeing and disappearing into the warp. Another started heading straight for where their ships had been, firing blindly into the space between the siblings. Jiwoo pulled up to avoid some of the fire and nearly crashed into another ship.
“Did you get hit?” Hoseok asked, waiting as his backup cannons primed.
“No, it’s just some stupid convey caravan--it clipped one of my wings but I think I’m oaky--no major damage.”
He turned back to see a speedy little lack Stinger-class arching towards them, firing pulses of hot orange light with much more accuracy.
“What is that?”
“Trouble. A beam cannon -- it’ll fuck up your whole wing if you get caught. So try not to get caught,” Hoseok said, quickly putting in some evasive maneuvers.
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” she said. Her ship did a full 180 degree spin around the nose of the ship, daring the gunships to fire their front cannons.
At that close range the firing could be catastrophic, giving Jiwoo the opportunity to blast off two more large cannons before she traveled across the top of the ship.
They both noted the big gun cannons wheeling this way and that, desperate to lock onto the two targets causing all this trouble.
“Ready to end this,” he said, flipping down a few switches and re-aligning with the top of the ship.
If he didn’t hit the gun tanks then they wouldn’t have the ammunition for firepower to try again.
He moved in pace, and heard a tiny bit of … static… passed through the speakers.
“Did you hear that?”
“Not a thing -- a little busy,” she said.
Hoseok shook his head. He had to focus. “Dropping now.”
With a quick prayer to whoever was watching him, the god of fighter pilots, maybe, he deployed the bomb, measuring the trajectory to make sure it landed as intended.
There was a silent moment as he turned away and started to move out of range, hailing for his sister to do the same, a brief moment when he worried whether some hot shot fight would come and blow it up and out of the sky before it even made the mark. But Jiwoo had done her job as intended, and so had he.
The resulting explosion ripped through the space, causing a giant hole to explode in the ship. The sides of it imploded simultaneously, with fire rushing through the fuel lines that cris-crossed the entire vessel.
“Nice work Hope,” Jiwoo said with a smile present in his voice that he could hear through the comms. “You just removed their biggest threat from the board,” she said softly. “This is going to really help. This was a good thing,”
Hoseok listened to her voice, and was surprised about the cadence of it, about how.. Reassuring she sounded. “Light I’m fine… it’s fine.”
He knew what this was now, and as he felt the anxiety creep into his stomach he pulled away, taking a few moments to catch his breath. She was doing that because the last time they had pulled off a maneuver with such a high cost of life he’d nearly been sick all over his cockpit in worry, trying as hard as he could not to think about it now was the best strategy.
He pushed himself towards the skyline, giving a small smile to his sister.
“I really am fine.. Let’s hook back up and clear off any stragglers before we make the jump. I don’t want anyone trying to follow us back into warp space. Clear through them here and then we can make it home.”
“First dinner back is on you.”
“Deal,” despite the fact that food was the furthest thing from his mind right now.
He locked into place with her and they did a final sweep around the ship, taking down two other escape pods that looked like they were trying to stage a small reaction against them. “When are they going to learn?” Jiwoo said softly.
“No idea--ready to hit warp?”
“Yeah let’s head out before they send more fighters after us,” Jiwoo said.
Then she turned their ship around and slammed right into the side of a little black stinger-class ship.
The scream that erupted over the comms would stay with Hoseok for the rest of his life.