Юн Ли - Raven Stratagem

“If we still had any Nirai,” Najjad said, “I could torture one of them with the inadequacy of the interface controls. But our beloved general sent them packing, so I’m afraid you’re stuck.”

“I’ll be sure to put it on the list of grievances I have against him,” Khiruev said, “so I can present it to him the next time I’m feeling suicidal.”

Najjad stopped making the terminal have fits, thank goodness. “At least he hasn’t stuck knives in us yet. I’m actually rather—”

The grid said, “Message for General Khiruev from Communications.”

Khiruev checked the headers and hid her surprise. She had a hunch that Communications was trying to tell her something that should properly go first to the ranking officer. There were a number of reasons Communications might choose such a course of action. None of them had pleasant implications. “Clear out, Colonel,” she said. “I’ll get back to you when I can.”

Najjad thumped a salute, gave the interface one last jab to make Khiruev twitch, and left the room.

“Secure the room until I say otherwise,” Khiruev told the mothgrid. “Get me Communications.”

Communications forwarded Khiruev not one but two messages from Kel Command. She saw immediately why Communications had hesitated to bring either to Jedao’s attention directly. It was clear which message was more important, but Khiruev knew the order in which she ought to deal with them.

She requested, and got, a link with Communications. “Make sure Commander Janaia gets these orders,” she said. Janaia was off-shift at the moment, but she knew Janaia slept lightly. “General Khiruev to all units. I am aware that you may have gotten word from Kel Command. All units are to hold formation. Formation breaks will be met with the usual consequences.”

“It’s gone out, sir,” Communications said after a moment.

“Good,” Khiruev said. It wouldn’t buy much time, but with any luck, she could get this sorted out before the swarm began to panic.

She asked the mothgrid where she could find Jedao and flagged the query as urgent. After an unusual stutter, the grid replied that Khiruev should meet Jedao in the latter’s quarters. Strictly speaking, Jedao could choose to be as inaccessible as he pleased. There could be some mundane reason for it. Still, there was nothing to do but show up and trust that the general was willing to talk to her.

Khiruev departed the conference room and headed straight for Jedao’s quarters. The door admitted her. Jedao was standing with his hands folded behind him, contemplating several large paintings projected at various points against the far wall. At a guess, he was trying to figure out how colors harmonized with each other and mostly failing, one of his favorite pastimes.

“Have you heard the news, sir?” Khiruev asked as she entered.

“What news?”

Communications hadn’t wanted to be the messenger. Khiruev couldn’t blame her, although she had taken one hell of a risk routing the messages so Jedao didn’t catch wind. “Two things,” Khiruev said. Time to take a risk herself. “We’ve received an ultimatum from the hexarchs.”

“There must be some reason it went straight to you,” Jedao said, fixing her with an interested stare. He dismissed the paintings with a wave. “Care to enlighten me?”

“May I?” At Jedao’s nod, Khiruev played back the message from the primary terminal. The old familiar chill ran through Khiruev when she saw the Vidona stingray. Jedao’s expression was politely curious. A woman’s affectless voice said, in clear, pure high language, “Shuos Jedao. You are to release the Swanknot swarm to the nearest Kel facility by the twenty-seventh day of the Month of Pyres, and turn yourself over to hexarchate authorities. The Mwennin are in Vidona custody. If you fail to comply, we will annihilate them. In case you need the reminder—”

Her voice went on, giving a summary of who the Mwennin were, their numbers, where they lived. There were an estimated 58,000 of them, concentrated on the world of Bonepyre. The only reason Khiruev had heard of them earlier was that Lieutenant Colonel Brezan had brought that part of Cheris’s profile to her attention. The hexarchate was home to a staggering number of ethnic groups, but the Mwennin were unusual for avoiding faction service and predominantly practicing natural birth, among other cultural quirks. She and Brezan had wondered what had driven Cheris to the Kel. Cheris’s profile had suggested a need to fit into the hexarchate’s broader culture. The assessment had approved of this, but Khiruev bet Cheris had had second thoughts.

“I’m not certain what they’re hoping to accomplish,” Jedao said, his voice revealing little concern. “It’s taken, what, two and a half months for them to come up with this threat? I wonder how much paperwork they had to do first. But then, I’ve never had a high opinion of Vidona proceduralism.”

Khiruev counted to six. The gamble was going badly already. When she could trust her voice not to shake, she said, “Sir, don’t you care at all? They’re about to die because of the body you choose to wear.” Had she misjudged Jedao after all? “There must be something you can—”

In her head she saw Mother Ekesra laying her hands on Kthero’s shoulders, the crinkling corpse-paper, the folded swans. Swanknot.

“I can what, General?” Jedao said coolly. “Let’s find out where Bonepyre is.” He tapped out the query. A map of the hexarchate swirled into focus. The swarm’s location was highlighted in gold. Bonepyre’s location was highlighted in blue. “I trust you studied logistics at some point? Guess what, Bonepyre’s in the Ausser March, on the other fucking side of the hexarchate. That’s one hell of a detour, and we don’t know, because the Kel rather reasonably aren’t talking to me about their operations, if a decent swarm is available nearby to hold the Severed March in our absence. Are you saying that I should give the invaders a free hand here on the behalf of 60,000 people I have no agents in place to help?”

“I was hoping you might devise some plan,” Khiruev snapped. “One of my mothers was a Vidona. Do you know how they carry out purges? I do. She’d come home and talk about it because it was just a job to her. Every little thing was compartmentalized into subtasks, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Rescind the target population’s jobs. Issue them special identification. Refuel the processing facilities. Make sure there were enough bullets or knives or poison canisters or whatever the flavor of the month was. Send out extra patrols to deal with any that try to go terrorist or rouse the rest of the population. If you focused on the little jigsaw pieces, you never had to notice that the whole puzzle added up to people dying.”

“I’m aware of your family history, General,” Jedao said. “I appreciate that your father’s death must have affected you greatly. But you’ve got to stop reacting and start thinking. I don’t have supernatural powers, and neither do you. Neither of us has any pull with the authorities on Bonepyre, and even if someone in this swarm did, it would already be too late for a useful intervention. And where exactly would we evacuate 60,000 people to? Our swarm doesn’t have the capacity to handle that kind of influx.”

“I’m so glad you’re girding yourself with reasons not to try,” Khiruev said. Distantly, she was impressed with herself for losing her temper this badly. What was wrong with her? And more importantly, why had she expected better from a mass murderer?

“Still with the reacting,” Jedao said. “Does it not occur to you that the Vidona could be lying? While 60,000 people is too many to conveniently haul away to an imaginary refuge, by the hexarchate’s standards it’s a trivial number to wipe out. And I imagine you can tell me all about how the Vidona pride themselves on their thoroughness. For all we know, those people are already dead.”