Юн Ли - Raven Stratagem

Brezan wondered if she meant to elaborate, and wasn’t sure whether he was more worried or relieved when she didn’t. Maybe she wanted a distraction. “You wanted to watch some duels?” he said, eyeing the status indicators. Still nothing useful.

“Yes, let’s pick one at random,” Tseya said, reviving a little.

The grid was happy to select one for them: Jedao, back when he was the commander of a tactical group, against some whippy-looking long-haired Shuos who had taken offense over a point of etiquette that Tseya undoubtedly understood but Brezan sure as hell didn’t. It was strange to examine Jedao in his own body, a lean man whose face was unremarkable until he smiled; but Brezan recognized the way that Jedao-as-Cheris had moved during the takeover of the Swanknot swarm, smile included. It was also bizarre seeing Jedao with the star-and-flame tactical group commander’s insignia rather than a general’s wings. Brezan reminded himself that Kel Command had finally discharged Jedao, anyway.

Jedao and his opponent, Shuos Magrach, were sizing each other up in a way that made them look like siblings. “Magrach was an assassin, so they would have had similar training,” Tseya said when Brezan remarked on it. “There was speculation that she was trying to injure or kill Jedao for reasons of her own.”

Brezan had thought he’d had a handle on the timeline. “I thought this was when people still liked Jedao.”

Tseya shrugged. “That’s complicated. A lot of the Kel who served with him liked him, but others thought he was just lucky and resented how rapidly he got promoted. The Shuos considered him an eccentric. Look at it from their point of view. He was fast-tracked to his heptarch’s own office straight out of academy, brilliant early career as an assassin, does some work with small units and is even more brilliant there. Then, as far as anyone can tell, he lets the military stuff get to his head and he abandons everything to chase after the Kel. Inexplicably, Heptarch Khiaz let him go. Maybe she concluded he was no good to her after all. Imagine how much trouble she could have saved everyone if she’d just sat on him until he settled down.”

The match was underway, best of seven. Brezan could only follow what had happened in the slowed-down replays. He had already known about Jedao’s extraordinary reflexes, but Magrach was just as fast. “I feel inadequate like you wouldn’t believe,” Brezan said.

Tseya kicked his shin. “I don’t think you’d enjoy being an assassin.”

“If I’d had an assassin’s skills, I might have been able to shoot Jedao before he got this far.”

“There’s more to life than being able to shoot your problems,” Tseya said. “We’ll just have to get it right this time around. For a man so good at hitting things, Jedao has a lot of weaknesses. No; I’m more worried about getting within enthrallment range than about Jedao fighting back.”

“I’m not sure this is an attitude conducive to our long-term survival,” Brezan said.

She smiled at him with the side of her mouth. “One of us has to be the optimist.”

The mothgrid interrupted them with a notification: Jedao’s swarm had bannered the Deuce of Gears.

“We’d better get ready,” Tseya said.

Brezan turned off the duel recording, noting in passing that the score was 2-2 and wondering if he was paranoid for thinking Jedao might have engineered it that way. He averted his face. More than anything he yearned to be part of the battle, yearned to fight.

“Brezan,” Tseya said, “Brezan. We’re fighting in our own way.”

Hopeless to explain to her that being a Kel wasn’t about fighting in your own way, as he had done during Exercise Purple 53. It was about fighting the same way as all the other Kel. Of course, as a crashhawk, he was in no position to lecture Tseya about Kel doctrine. Instead, he said, “I will do my duty,” because that was always unobjectionable.

Tseya had an imitation Kel uniform for the operation. He didn’t watch her put it on, couldn’t bear to, but he had to concede that she would stick out on a Kel moth if she wore anything else, especially since Jedao had booted all the seconded personnel. The two of them suited up quietly. Brezan knew that the Andan cared about the aesthetics of even utilitarian objects like suits, but it was different when you had to wear one yourself. Oh well, given how his year was going, tasteful scrollwork was the least of his problems.

Of the two of them, Tseya was the better pilot. Brezan had observed her long enough to know that this wasn’t just a matter of specific familiarity with the silkmoth’s handling characteristics. Fortunately, she was on his side, or anyway more on his side for the moment than against it.

He was tempted to whisper as they made the approach, as if the Kel in the swarm could overhear them across vacuum. Tseya, intent on her task, seemed to feel no such impulse. Her toe was tapping loudly against the side of the terminal.

The agony of waiting didn’t get any better aboard a silkmoth. Brezan was watching the Kel and Hafn swarms on scan and fretting when another Hafn swarm blinked into existence. He had no other word for it, and he didn’t think that many formants, even glitchy foreign formants, could be a malfunction in their scan. “Tseya—”

“I see them,” Tseya said. She wasn’t changing their approach, mainly because the main body of Jedao’s swarm was obdurate in threatening the newcomers. How Jedao had known they would show up there, Brezan had no idea. No one had ever said that Jedao had the ability to get extra information out of scan, but it wasn’t impossible that he knew some tricks.

Brezan had difficulty not staring at the highlighted triangle in the display that represented the Hierarchy of Feasts. We’re going to free you from the Immolation Fox, he thought savagely, trying not to wonder whether General Khiruev had survived. And then I will personally kill Jedao into so many pieces you can’t even burn what’s left.

One of Brezan’s former lovers, a perfumer, had asked what he found so attractive about the violence of his profession. Never mind that as a staffer he didn’t personally see to the violence. Brezan didn’t like admitting it, but there was a certain satisfaction to kicking down obstacles.

Focus, he reminded himself. They weren’t in position yet, and Jedao was still a threat. He glanced at Tseya. Still engrossed in her task. Good.

The battle was unfolding very oddly. He worked out that the Hafn had somehow taken control of fourteen Kel bannermoths. Jedao had caught on before Brezan did and had condensed the grand formation dangerously to release a tactical group to deal with the crashhawk units. Brezan took long, even breaths to deal with the nausea at the thought of the Kel forced to turn traitor again, something they had to be sick of—

No. That wasn’t it. He remembered the shattering devotion in General Khiruev’s eyes, in Commander Janaia’s. Brezan himself only felt horrified because he had no formation instinct to assure him that the world was ticking along as it was supposed to. The Kel hexarch had warned him, but he hadn’t been ready to heed her.

“That detached group, it’s burning up?”

Brezan realized Tseya had addressed him and looked at the tactical display. “Yes,” he said flatly. Which unlucky commander had Jedao sacrificed? Rationally, any commander had to send people to die. But he couldn’t help the way he felt. “That group looks like it’s putting pressure on the units the Hafn are trying to shield.”

“I see,” Tseya said. She was guiding them past the fireworks now.

They had discussed how they wanted to handle this, given that battle would complicate matters. In this case, it would harm the swarm’s chances of survival to remove Jedao during the engagement. If Jedao continued to aim himself at the Hafn, they might as well allow him to complete the battle. Brezan had served under General Khiruev long enough to have faith in the woman’s ability, but they had no guarantee that Khiruev still lived. For his part, Brezan didn’t have the training for the task.