Юн Ли - Raven Stratagem

A long pause followed. Brezan was about to repeat the request when the door slid open. He entered, and only then realized that he’d forgotten to mention his new rank.

“Brezan,” Khiruev said, and then, when her gaze was drawn to the wings-and-flame, “sir.” She had been rearranging the endless collection of gadgets on her shelves. Now she faced Brezan properly and saluted.

Brezan noticed neither the gadgets nor the salute. The white streak in Khiruev’s hair had widened, and she looked thin and wan. Brezan bit down a snarl.

Khiruev’s mouth twisted. “If you’re here,” she said, “then Kel Command sent you somehow, and Jedao is gone.” She tried to reach for her sidearm, but her arm locked up, and her hand began to shake.

She’s trying to kill me for ‘Jedao’? Brezan thought incredulously. “Stand down, s—General,” he said. Khiruev froze. Brezan didn’t order her to hand the gun over, which was almost certainly a mistake, but he didn’t want to strip her dignity away entirely. “What the hell happened to you?”

“Please be more specific, sir,” Khiruev said icily.

Well, if she was going to be that way about it—“You look like you’re being poisoned,” Brezan said. “What’s going on?”

“I invoked the Vrae Tala clause on Jedao’s behalf when Kel Command revoked his commission,” Khiruev said.

“He made you do what? ” Brezan demanded. So that was why Khiruev looked ill: because she was. Because she was dying.

“No one made me do anything, sir,” Khiruev said. “I did it voluntarily. Shoot me for it if you like. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

The stabbing despair in Khiruev’s eyes hurt Brezan. “I’m asking the wrong questions,” he said. “ Why did you do it voluntarily?”

Silence.

Great. Brezan was going to have to pull rank on the woman who, by all rights, should have been his commanding officer. “Answer the question, General.”

Khiruev inhaled sharply, then nodded. “Because he was worth serving,” she said. “Because the first thing I tried to do was assassinate him with an improvised device—”

Brezan hid his surprise.

“—and I botched the job. I killed Lyu and Meriki.”

“I’m sorry,” Brezan said. It didn’t seem quite real. Lyu with his slight gambling problem, Meriki with her crowd of children.

Khiruev went on as though Brezan hadn’t spoken. “General Jedao took me aside afterward. He knew I was the culprit. Then he chewed me out for killing the wrong targets, warned me not to fuck up again, and asked for my service. I gave it to him.

“I know what the history lessons say. I know what he did. But in his time in charge of the swarm, he acted more honorably toward the Kel than Kel Command usually does.” Khiruev looked away, then back. Her resistance was unraveling. “I assume you’ve dealt with him. You would hardly be here otherwise. Go ahead and end it, sir.” Her voice softened. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re making it out alive.”

It hit Brezan, then, that Khiruev wanted to die. He was tempted to ask if it was a side-effect of Vrae Tala—there had always been the rumors—but he couldn’t bring himself to do it, especially when he suspected he wouldn’t like the answer. Instead, Brezan said, “What if I told you that we’d been tricked? That you weren’t following Shuos Jedao after all?”

Khiruev fell silent. Then: “You were the one who pointed out that former Captain Cheris didn’t possess those marksmanship skills. Unless she got lucky on short notice. If that’s where you’re going with this line of argument.”

“I don’t know a hell of a lot about how Jedao was resurrected whenever Kel Command wanted to field him,” Brezan said. “Do you?”

“I never had access to that information, sir.”

He could tell that Khiruev was skeptical. “I didn’t come here alone,” he said, which got no reaction. Khiruev would expect as much. “I was backup for an Andan agent.” Her eyes did flicker then. “The Andan couldn’t so much as slow Cheris down.”

“It couldn’t just be Jedao going crazy, or going crazier possessing Cheris?”

“I wasn’t on the moth for the ride,” Brezan said, thinking of how lucid Cheris had sounded. They did say the Shuos trained the knack of resisting enthrallment into some of their operatives, but Tseya hadn’t thought that would be an obstacle. “You tell me. This person you’ve been serving. Was their behavior crazy?”

“Well,” Khiruev said at her driest, “in our existence, honorable behavior is crazy. But I take your point, sir. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”

That took Brezan by surprise. “I don’t follow.”

Khiruev’s mouth crimped. “ Are they dead?”

“No,” Brezan said, and was disturbingly gratified to see a little of the light return to Khiruev’s eyes. “She had me. She’s in her quarters on parole. But she persuaded me that I should judge her actions by the state of the swarm.”

“That’s an interesting move,” Khiruev said, “considering that I have no choice but to follow you. Are you sure she can be trusted?”

There it was, formation instinct taking hold, the switch of loyalty. I didn’t want this for either of us, Brezan wanted to say, although he knew better than to say it. “Maybe she was hoping I would judge her the way you did,” he said.

“You were set free and not killed, sir,” Khiruev said, as if Brezan needed the reminder. “I’m seeing a pattern.”

“I’ve barely looked around the Hierarchy of Feasts ,” Brezan said. “I’d prefer to do it in your company, to reduce the disruption.”

“You have only to give the order, sir.”

Brezan reminded himself not to pick a fight over behavior Khiruev couldn’t help. “Has Cheris given you any indication as to her final objective?”

“I only know that we were to fight the Hafn, which I imagine you’d figured out, and that perhaps there was a greater game,” Khiruev said. “I never received specifics beyond that.”

“Even if you don’t have specifics,” Brezan said, “anything, anything at all—” He didn’t understand when he had started hoping Cheris-as-fox had a plan. “She couldn’t have possibly intended to go to war with the hexarchs with a single swarm, even one of this size.”

“She did say once that I wasn’t looking at the right battlefield,” Khiruev said, “but that could have been misdirection.”

“Do you think she was bluffing?”

“No,” Khiruev said without any hesitation. “I don’t think she was.”

Brezan thought for a moment. “To start with, I want to see the staff and department heads, and Commander Janaia.”

“Sir, you ought to be aware that the commander has been removed from duty. Muris is the acting commander. Should I reinstate Janaia?”

Just when he thought he was getting a handle on the situation. “What happened?”

“She had a breakdown,” Khiruev said, without elaborating.

“I’ll have to review that later,” Brezan said grimly. The status of the swarm had to come first. “Commander Muris, then.”

“As you wish, sir. I’ll set it up.”

Khiruev could no doubt tell how unprepared Brezan was for this turn of events, but she didn’t comment on it. Which she wouldn’t, because that would be insubordinate behavior. Brezan watched in helpless fury as Khiruev sent out the summons, not even sure who he was furious at. Himself, maybe.

They headed to the conference room early on the grounds that it would be best to be the first ones there. Brezan had to keep from flinching at Khiruev’s tread, not because he heard anything wrong, but because he kept expecting to. Khiruev cleared her throat when Brezan automatically took his old seat at the side of the table. Brezan colored and decided to remain standing, while Khiruev slowly sank into a chair next to the head of the table.