Юн Ли - Raven Stratagem

The terminal brightened. “Kel Brezan,” said a woman’s voice, measured, precise. The broad, unsmiling face on the main display belonged to Hexarch Kel Tsoro.

Brezan had no idea what the hexarch required of him. He doubted she was going to personally order him to get a hot meal and a good night’s rest. “Hexarch,” he said.

“At ease,” Tsoro said. “Your information on Shuos Jedao has been verified. We have a new assignment for you.”

Brezan said nothing. According to his augment, seventy-seven days had elapsed since Jedao booted him from the Swanknot swarm. How much bureaucracy had prevented him from getting his warning through earlier, and how much damage had the Immolation Fox done in that time?

“Assignment” meant he wasn’t being dismissed from Kel service. On the other hand, the list of atrocious assignments filled up whole planets. He tamped down the flare-spark of hope.

“You seem to be confused on a certain point,” Tsoro added, with an instructor’s dryness, “so let us clarify this for you, because it’s important. You’re a crashhawk, Kel Brezan.”

He flinched. “Sir—”

“The test results are clear. Your formation instinct has decayed even from the low levels it displayed when you were in academy. It’s rare but not unheard of. But really, you should have figured it out during your confrontation with Jedao.”

“I wish to serve, sir,” Brezan said hoarsely. “It’s all I know.”

“Happily, there are precedents for crashhawks being permitted to remain among the Kel,” Tsoro said. “But you understand, it will be more difficult for you. Your actions will be scrutinized. You will have to choose, over and over, to be loyal. You won’t have formation instinct to guide you, especially when your orders give you pause and the habits of obedience wear thin. We are offering you this opportunity because you risked a great deal to bring us your warning, and because we approve of your conduct.”

“Then let me be a Kel, sir,” Brezan said, his heart thumping too rapidly.

“The assignment, then. This is to be a joint Kel-Andan operation. You will be assigned to Agent Andan Tseya of the silkmoth Beneath the Orchid .”

An Andan? For that matter, a silkmoth? They were small, swift courier vessels. He’d heard that you could build half a cindermoth for the price of one of the things. “Our objective, sir?” Brezan asked. He hadn’t realized that the Kel were now on friendly terms with the Andan, but he’d been too busy worrying about Jedao and the Hafn to pay attention to faction politics.

“Agent Tseya is to assassinate Jedao on his command moth,” Tsoro said, and smiled. “You will facilitate this as she directs.”

Assassinating Jedao as a single target, as opposed to blowing the whole moth up, would take either an Andan or a Shuos for preference, so that much made sense. Still, Brezan felt a stab of revulsion. The Kel had formation instinct, the Rahal had scrying, and the Andan could enthrall you if you were in range, assuming they knew you well enough. There were undoubtedly lots of records on Jedao’s personality structure to help Tseya out. He didn’t imagine that Jedao was long for this world once Tseya made him her pet.

“Your job, Kel Brezan,” Tsoro was saying, “is to wrest back control of the swarm once the agent is done.”

There was a problem with this scenario. “Sir,” Brezan said, “wouldn’t we be better off returning the swarm to General Khiruev or whichever senior officer is still alive?” He hoped Khiruev had survived, something he hadn’t permitted himself to contemplate earlier. As for himself, as much as he wished otherwise, he was no strategist. The swarm needed a line officer’s leadership in case the Hafn struck at an inconvenient time.

“If Jedao has some trick in store and eludes the agent,” Tsoro said, “we need someone to break his hold over the Kel. Khiruev won’t do. She’s already buckled once to Jedao’s authority. We’ve revoked Jedao’s commission, but by now Jedao has had a lot of time to talk to Khiruev, and the ninefox has a history of being extraordinarily persuasive when cornered. No, a general is no good to us. We need to send a high general.”

It took Brezan a moment to piece together the implications. “I believe you’ve coined a brand-new Kel joke, sir,” he said, too wrung-out and angry to care who he was talking to. “It’s quite unfunny.”

Tsoro smiled thinly. “Don’t be absurd,” she said. “The Kel never joke. You’d be surprised how hard it is to come up with a new one, besides.”

For a few muddled seconds, Brezan tried to work out if there was any non-insubordinate way to say that he would rather kill himself with a wooden spoon than join the Kel hivemind. He had always been secure in the knowledge that he’d never succeed to command. Clearly the universe was punishing him for making sensible assumptions about his career.

Tsoro’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “Don’t worry,” she said, “there would hardly be time to integrate you, and you’d need to be on site with the rest of Kel Command for it. In any case, historically speaking, not all high generals have been part of Kel Command, although Kel Command has always been composed of high generals.” The change in practice had taken place after the establishment of the hivemind.

“Brevet rank,” Brezan suggested.

“We prefer to limit the use of brevets because not all Kel respond to them satisfactorily.”

There went that.

“You can still decline the mission.”

He drew a shuddering breath. “I accept, sir.”

“Good,” Tsoro said. “Consider yourself promoted, High General Brezan. We’ll expedite the paperwork. There have been enough delays already. Don’t fail us, and don’t forget to adjust your insignia. Your first stop should be Medical. After that, may we suggest that you use your first order to scare up some real food?”

Brezan opened his mouth to make a retort. Thankfully, the hexarch saved him from making an ass of himself by cutting the connection.

It looked like the universe was giving him another chance at Jedao. All he had to do was not fuck it up.

KHIRUEV WAS HAVING an energetic argument with Colonel Kel Najjad in one of the conference rooms when the ultimatum arrived. They’d been having variations of this argument ever since Najjad joined Khiruev’s staff. At this point, Khiruev would have felt disoriented if they discussed logistics without also sniping at each other about completely irrelevant points of musicology.

“—that flute concerto by Yeri Chejio,” Najjad was saying as he jabbed the map. The interface couldn’t make up its mind about what Najjad wanted it to do about the jabs. Add a waypoint? Assign the waypoint to Tactical One? Change the color of the marker? Create an inset centered at the site of the jab?

“Colonel,” Khiruev said, “would you please stop doing that? I’ll even concede that the seven-movement suite is a valid form on the grounds that the early post-Liozh composers can’t be put into proper historical context without it. Just stop doing whatever it is you’re doing.”

Najjad grinned at her. “I’ll show you the trick if you like, sir.” He had a positive gift for breaking interfaces, or causing the grid to hang. Sometimes Khiruev thought she should loan the man to the Shuos the next time she needed a favor. “It’s all about confusing the—”

Khiruev looked at Najjad’s latest map and winced. “I don’t want to know how to duplicate the feat. I just want to stop getting a headache every time I try to figure out who in this radius is still talking to us that has the setup to do repairs on this many bannermoths.”