Юн Ли - Raven Stratagem

“I look forward to it,” Faian said, polite by rote.

Istradez entered the final override.

People sometimes got the idea that hexarchate space was so densely littered with shadowmoths that you couldn’t pick your nose without one catching you at it. The truth was that space was big and the damn things were too expensive for the Shuos to use so liberally. You had to power down the stealth system to do anything useful with exotic weapons, including the devastating but slow-recharge knife cannon. To add insult to injury, once you powered it down, stealth took ages to come back up. All of which was a long way of saying that the Eyes Unstabbed would get in the necessary first strike, but no one would make it out alive.

Istradez did feel bad for the shadowmoth’s crew, who hadn’t signed on for a suicide mission. However, even he could see the problems with telling them why they were really here. Besides, he was no Kel, but he had volunteered for this. That had to suffice.

While I’m at it, what good will this maneuver do? he had asked after Mikodez agreed. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Jedao’s notorious Patterner 52 in its glass case, but he didn’t dare move his head to gawk at it.

The Shuos will come out three moves ahead, Mikodez said. He had returned to his customary terrifying amusement. Are you telling me you insisted on the assignment without thinking it through?

I still want to do it, Istradez said. But I want something from you.

Mikodez looked at him unsmilingly. It has to be something I can give.

An honest answer, Istradez said. This time for real, not because you’re giving me therapy. Is there anything you care about anymore, are you even human, or is it all games and pranks and stratagems? Not something anyone can use against you. I just—I just need to know.

Istradez’s blood chilled when Mikodez stood up, because he didn’t know if this was going to turn into some contest of poison needles or garrotes or guns, and he wasn’t under any illusions that the self-defense training he’d received would help him. But all Mikodez did was sink to his knees in front of him and reach for his hands. Istradez’s breath stopped in his throat when his brother kissed his palms fiercely.

I do my job, Mikodez said. It’s like I told you before. I’ll even send my fucking brother to die if it’s the best way to do the job— His voice cracked, settled. But don’t ever, ever think it’s because I stopped loving you. I don’t want you to go. It’s not too late—

It was too late a long time ago, Istradez said.

The Eyes Unstabbed slowed toward the Nirai station with its rings and lace of sensor arrays, engines, great whirring mechanisms with hearts that were wheels within wheels. Its commander discovered that the crew had been locked out of the controls and attempted to call Istradez on the emergency backup channel. Istradez, naturally, wasn’t responding.

A few minutes before they would have docked at the station, the Eyes Unstabbed fired its knife cannon, scything the station nearly in two, including the central power core. Moments after that, the self-destruct sequence on the shadowmoth triggered, no safeguards, no countdown, nothing.

In his last seconds, Istradez thought that this was overkill, but it was nice to remind the hexarchate that melodrama wasn’t a trait reserved to the Kel. He was looking distractedly at his palms when the world dissolved in a rush of heat and static.

WHEN THE TIME came to reset the hexarchate’s clocks, forty-eight servitors remained in the Aerie. The Kel hivemind didn’t make a habit of noticing servitors, but they had to give the illusion that some of the complement remained. Not to mention someone had to stay behind to make sure the attack went off as planned.

Servitor sin x 2, one of the forty-eight, had not stayed behind on account of the sabotage. It had no particular expertise in engineering or demolitions and, in fact, ordinarily served in Medical. The other servitors had urged it to evacuate while it had the chance. The Aerie was not immune to the need for supplies. Servitors had been going out in crates, canisters, any available crevice in the moths’ dark holds.

sin x 2had said, They’re our Kel. Someone should be with them at the end, even if they never know or understand. Then the others, realizing it would not be dissuaded, left it alone.

sin x 2wasn’t under any illusions that the hive Kel cared about it except as an instrument for necessary chores, and sometimes unnecessary ones. It knew that the hivemind became less and less sane with each passing year. Nevertheless, it considered itself Kel. Someone from its enclave should honor Kel Command’s passing.

At present, sin x 2was polishing a collection of musical instruments, one of the oddball duties it had taken up because no one else wanted it. High General Aurel had brought some of the instruments with her. In the early years she had come here to practice from time to time. The last time she had come in here had been thirty-one years ago. She had played snatches of a concerto. sin x 2paid special attention to the viols, because they had been her favorites.

Servitor tanh x sent the six-minute warning over the maintenance channel.

sin x 2knew High General Aurel was part of Subcommand Composite Eight right now. It whisked quickly through the corridors so it could reach her. The doors were open, as always. It floated in to where Aurel sat on a minimalist metalglass chair. Her posture was beautiful, and her hands still had some of their strength, but the pale brown eyes saw nothing in the room except, perhaps, the limitations of light and shadow.

One minute and eight seconds later, the Aerie roared into an effusion of fire, of heady vapors, of numbers rolling backwards to the new calendar’s pitiless zero hour.

IMPRESSIVELY, ZEHUN GOT past the door to Mikodez’s primary office without getting themselves killed. Mikodez looked up, at first not recognizing the slim figure, the somber eyes, the long red coat. With their hair pulled back from their face, Zehun almost looked as they had when he had first met them, a quiet person with unquiet ideas about how the Shuos should be run. “Go away,” Mikodez said. His voice sounded as though someone had run over it with a rake.

Zehun’s eyes narrowed and they stepped in. The door closed behind them. “You should have said no to Istradez,” Zehun said.

“First,” Mikodez said, “it didn’t concern you.” Patently untrue: everything he did concerned his assistant. “Second, once Istradez offered to go, I had to accept. What was I going to do for the rest of my life, coddle him while I sent other agents to die? Imagine what that would do to morale. That’s bad management.”

“Your brother , Mikodez.” Zehun started to say something, changed their mind. “You’re allowed to have personal attachments. As a rule, the ones who don’t have any are the ones the rest of us have to assassinate for everybody’s good.”

“I gave up the right to sentimentality when I took the seat,” Mikodez said. “The Shuos are my family now. And please don’t tell me it was a poor trade, or a good trade, or anything. I can’t bear it right now.”

“That’s not why I’m here anyway,” Zehun said, although Mikodez knew better than to assume they wouldn’t bring it up later. “You haven’t been responding to my calls.”