Юн Ли - Raven Stratagem

“Sir?” Khiruev said. Cheris had started to smile, very faintly. That couldn’t bode well.

“That was the whole fucking point, wasn’t it?” Brezan said to Cheris. And to Khiruev: “It’s in her fucking profile. It was there all along. She’s a mathematician . I mean phenomenally good, as in the Nirai tried to recruit her and it was her specialty in academy.”

“Yes,” Cheris said. “I won’t deny it was often helpful being Jedao, but I meant it as a distraction. Jedao could do calendrical warfare only so long as he used a computer, or someone else juggled the congruences for him. Anytime he was in play, all people ever thought about was where the next massacre would be, not about mathematical skullduggery. Frankly, Brezan, the calendar reset is going to go off in fifteen days no matter what you do to me.”

If anything, Brezan looked even less reassured. “Splendid,” he said. “You’ve admitted that you’re running around with pieces of a spectacularly bloodthirsty mass murderer inside your head. Now you’re trying to convince me that this new calendar of yours will be an improvement? Because—because as bad as the hexarchate is, as bad as the remembrances are, and the suicide formations, and Kel Command getting crazier with each successive generation—as bad as this all is, I’m not under any illusion that things can’t get worse. Do you have any idea how much chaos there will be if you destroy our technology base?”

“I designed the new calendar to be compatible with most existing exotic technologies,” Cheris said. “Especially communications and the mothdrive.”

Brezan scowled at her. “I’m not a Rahal, and I’m not a Nirai-class mathematician either, but that means the associated social structures have to remain similar. That’s not an improvement.”

“You haven’t seen the theorem I dragged out of the postulates,” Cheris said wearily. “Yes, you’re right. The calendar won’t make all the Vidona disappear. It won’t make people forget about remembrances, or change the minds of people who think ritual torture is entertaining. It won’t make the hexarchs people that I ever want to meet. What it will do is let people choose which exotic effects apply to them. That’s all.”

Khiruev worked through the implications. “Sir,” she said to Brezan, “you have to stop her. If she can do this, she’ll destroy the Kel. Without formation instinct—”

“The Kel existed as an elite before formation instinct was ever conceived,” Cheris said. “I remember it, even. It could be done again, if the Kel decided it was worth doing.”

To Khiruev’s dismay, Brezan was studying Cheris intently. “If you’re lying to me about this, any of this,” he said, “I will never forgive you.”

“ Sir— ” Khiruev protested.

The muscles along Brezan’s jaw convulsed. “Khiruev,” he said, “when she no longer outranked you, when you first had a choice between Kel Command and her, you chose her . You chose Vrae Tala. You saw something in her, in what she was doing. Do you remember what it was?”

It was like trying to look through a lens made of mist. “I am Kel,” Khiruev said. “You are here now, sir. My service is owed to you. I understand that I was in error. I accept whatever consequence you impose.”

Brezan jerked his gaze away. “I could order you to do practically anything,” he said savagely, “and you wouldn’t even see anything wrong with the arrangement.”

“Then I await your orders,” Khiruev said, because it was the most correct response she could think of.

Brezan scrubbed angrily at his eyes, but didn’t say anything to that. “Cheris,” he said, “just how do you propose setting off a calendrical spike? I assume it’s a calendrical spike you have in mind. It’d have to be something big.”

“The Rahal, like everyone else, rely on servitors for maintenance tasks,” Cheris said, “including those for the master clocks.” She let the statement hang there.

“You can’t possibly be talking about having sway over a legion of treacherous disaffected Rahal—” Brezan paled again. His glance swept around the room, at servitor-height. “Servitors? But they’re not—” He swallowed. “Can they be trusted?”

Cheris crossed her arms. “Brezan,” she said, “has a servitor ever offered you harm? Or anyone you know, for that matter?”

After a drawn-out pause, he said, “All right. I’ll concede that. But why? What do they want?”

“They’re individuals,” Cheris said tartly. “I don’t presume to speak for each and every one of them.”

Khiruev thought back to the servitors who had hung around Cheris’s quarters back when she was being Jedao. Khiruev had never thought twice about their presence. Most people gave servitors less thought than the wallpaper. If they had wanted to slaughter humans in their sleep, they could have managed it forever ago. It spoke better of them than the humans.

Brezan hadn’t finished questioning Cheris, however. “That takes care of calendar values,” he said, “but you’re going to have to do something pretty fucking dramatic to mark a full-on calendar reset. What are you going to do, aim some torture beams at all the hexarchs?”

Cheris gave him a look. “No torture,” she said. “But Kel Command has to go.”

Khiruev drew her gun.

“Stand down,” Brezan hissed.

Khiruev holstered her gun, although she didn’t want to. “It’s high treason.”

“This whole thing is high treason,” Brezan said, which didn’t help. “I’m not done talking to her.”

“So you want to see if I can pull it off,” Cheris said to Brezan.

“I am sick of serving something I don’t even believe in,” Brezan said. “What the hell. Fifteen days, you say? I want to know down to the fucking hour, and I want to see the math so someone who is not me can check it over. If nothing happens, if nothing changes, I’ll scorch you dead and drag you back to Kel Command. And then, if they don’t hang up my corpse next to yours, I will spend the rest of this rotted career helping them smash whatever uprising they point me at.”

“And the Andan agent?” Cheris said. “What’s her place?”

“I left her in confinement,” Brezan said. His voice had gone distant. “She claimed to be disgraced, but it’s always possible she was lying to get my guard down.” Brezan colored. Khiruev knew then what their relationship had been. “It may not be safe for anyone, er, human to enter the room with her. We’ll have to find somewhere to let her off at some point.”

“Were you expected to report in?”

“They’d expect to hear from her, not me,” he said. “I’m positive there’s no way to secure her cooperation. As far as I know, she’s loyal. And I—I don’t have any leverage.” His eyes darkened. “Her silkmoth is mated to the Hierarchy of Feasts . I’d better do something about that before we set off for wherever the hell we’re going.”

“I’m certain we’ve driven off the Hafn,” Cheris said. “It’s not impossible they have yet another reserve swarm, but I was looking in on the analysis that Doctrine was doing. The Hafn had a staggering number of those caskets, but they run through them fast. I looked at what we could deduce of their calendar and figured it out. Those people sewn up with birds and flowers—they’re a power source. That’s why the Hafn were able to use their native exotics in high calendar terrain. Fortunately for us, they were running low, and they weren’t able to link up with their logistics swarm.” The one with the mysterious auxiliaries.

“They use people as a power source?” Brezan said in revulsion. He had been shown videos of the caskets during the meeting he had called.