This time the ship was Mercy of Kalr, and I was well tethered, and not only vacuum-suited but armored. That armor was, in theory, impenetrable, wasn’t so very different from what shielded a Radchaai military ship. Certainly bullets wouldn’t pierce it.
And I was armed with the only weapon that could: I held that Presger gun, that could shoot through anything in the universe. For 1.11 meters, at any rate. And I was not scrambling across the hull, or panicking, or fleeing. But I felt similarly cut off. I knew that inside the ship, everything was secured. Cleared and locked down. Every soldier was at her post. Medic attended to a drugged and unconscious Seivarden. Ekalu sat in Command, waiting. Tisarwat, in her quarters, also waiting. As I waited. Last I’d seen them, Sphene and Translator Zeiat had been in the decade room, where Sphene had been attempting to explain how to play a particular game of counters, but without much success, to some extent because the board and its dozens of glass counters had just been packed away, part of being cleared for action, and partly because Translator Zeiat was Translator Zeiat. I was astonished enough that Sphene had even been speaking to her. Now, I was certain, they both lay safely in their bunks. But I did not reach, did not ask Ship for confirmation of that. I was alone, in a way I had not been for weeks, since having my implants repaired, since taking command of Mercy of Kalr.
We had lost one Kalr, two Amaats, three Etrepas, and a Bo. I had thanked them for their service so far and seen them safely off. Ekalu had gone stiff and stoic on hearing three of her decade were leaving, a sure sign of strong emotion. My guess, knowing her, was that she had felt betrayed. But she hadn’t shown any other sign of it.
I could know for certain. All I had to do was reach. There was nothing else to do right now, except stare at the suffocating not-even-black darkness of gate-space. But I didn’t.
Had Ship thought it would find, in me, what it had lost when it had lost its ancillaries? Perhaps it had discovered that I was a poorer substitute than its human crew, which I knew it was already fond of. What had Ship felt, when those soldiers had left? And should I be surprised at the possibility that Ship had discovered that it didn’t want an ancillary for a captain?
Oh, I knew that Ship cared for me. It couldn’t help caring for any captain, to some degree. But I knew, from when I had been a ship, that there was a difference between a captain you cared for just because she was your captain, and a favorite. And thinking that, alone here, outside the ship, in utter emptiness, I saw that I had relied on Ship’s support and obedience—and, yes, its affection—without ever asking what it wanted. I had presumed much further than any human captain would have, or could have, unthinkingly demanded to be shown the crew’s most intimate moments. I had behaved, in some ways, as though I were in fact a part of Ship, but had also demanded—expected, it seemed—a level of devotion that I had no right to demand or expect, and that likely Ship could not give me. And I hadn’t even realized it until Ship had asked Seivarden to speak for it, and tell me that it liked the idea of being someone who could be a captain, and I had been dismayed to hear it.
I had thought at the time that it was trying to express an affection for Seivarden that, being a ship, it might find difficult to speak about directly. But perhaps it was also saying something to me. Perhaps I hadn’t been much different from Seivarden, looking desperately for someone else to shore myself up with. And maybe Ship had found it didn’t want to be that for me. Or found that it couldn’t. That would be perfectly understandable. Ships, after all, didn’t love other ships.
“Fleet Captain.” Mercy of Kalr’s voice in my ear. “Are you all right?”
I swallowed. “I’m fine, Ship.”
“Are you sure?”
Swallowed again. Took a steadying breath. “Yes.”
“I don’t think you’re telling me the truth, Fleet Captain,” said Mercy of Kalr.
“Can we talk about this later, Ship?” Though of course, there might not be any later. There was every chance there wouldn’t be.
“If you like, Fleet Captain.” Was Ship’s voice the slightest bit disapproving? “One minute to normal space.”
“Thank you, Ship,” I said.
That flood of data, that Ship had given me whenever I’d reached for it—Ship’s physical surroundings, the medical status, the emotions of any and all of its crew, their private moments—had been, perversely, both comforting and painful. Likely they were both for Ship as well, having only me to receive them, and not its own ancillaries, not anymore. I had never asked. Not if it wanted to give me that, not if it found my taking it more painful than comforting. I had not reached for that data for more than a day. Nearly two. But, I realized now, while I had better control of when I reached for data and when I didn’t than I’d had weeks ago, it was impossible I’d been able to cut myself off so completely, so suddenly. I was only not seeing and feeling the crew of Mercy of Kalr right now because Mercy of Kalr was not showing it to me. I had never ordered Ship to give me any of that data, I had merely wished for it and there it had been. How much of that had been by Mercy of Kalr’s own choice? Had it shown any of it to me to begin with because it had wanted to, or because I was its captain and it was bound to do as I wished?
Suddenly sunlight, Athoek’s star small and distant. In my vision Mercy of Kalr displayed a ship, some six thousand kilometers off, the bright, sharp shape of a Sword. I braced myself against Mercy of Kalr’s hull and leveled the Presger gun. Numbers bloomed in my vision—times, estimated positions and orbits. I adjusted my aim. Waited precisely two and a quarter seconds, and fired. Adjusted my aim again, just slightly, and fired three more times in quick succession. Fired ten times more, changing my aim just a bit between each shot. It would take those bullets some two hours to reach that Sword. If they did reach it, if it did not alter its course in some unexpected way when it saw us sail into existence, and then, less than a minute later, disappear again.
“Gate-space in five seconds,” said Ship in my ear. And five seconds later, we were out of the universe.
We might have attacked by more conventional means—Mercy of Kalr was armed, though not as heavily as a Sword or even a Justice would be. We might have gated dangerously close to each of Tstur Anaander’s ships, fired a missile or dropped mines and ducked immediately back out of the universe. It was possible—though not certain—that we could have done some serious damage that way.
But Mercy of Kalr was only one ship, and we could only do that damage one ship at a time. The moment Anaander’s other ships knew we had attacked, they would move, making it more difficult to target them. Not impossible, of course. Moving in gate-space had its own rules and Ship could tell us where they’d likely gone. But the same went for us—and then it would be, at best, three against one.
The simplest way to defend ourselves would be to open our own gate, let whatever they fired at us sail into it, and then close the gate behind that, leaving the missile lost forever in gate-space. But Mercy of Kalr couldn’t possibly keep up with everything three Radchaai military ships could throw at us.
And if they decided to fire on Athoek Station, or the planet? Again, we might shield the system from a few such attacks, but we could not deal with all of them.
The bullets in the Presger gun were small, and there wasn’t much 1.11 meters inside a Radchaai military ship that was dangerously vulnerable. But multiple hull breaches could be more than inconvenient, and there was always the remote chance that they would hit something dangerously vulnerable. Pressurized tanks that might explode. The engine—or, really, all I needed to do was breach the engine’s heat shield.
“Thirteen minutes,” said Ship in my ear.
The first one of course had been very simple. We had the advantage of surprise. We would likely still have surprise on our side when we exited gate-space a second time and I fired. But by the time we exited to fire on the third of those four ships, they would be expecting us. They would still not understand what it was we were doing. The bullets I had fired at them were so small that ev
en if any of the ships’ sensors could have seen them—and they could not—they would not register as a danger. Any potential damage to the first Sword I had fired at would still be an hour in the future. From their perspective, we had merely appeared and then, after less than a minute, disappeared. Puzzling, but no reason for immediate action. No reason to suddenly change course.
But wonder they certainly would, and no doubt worry. And it wouldn’t take much to calculate where we were most likely headed next, and just where we were most likely to come out into the universe. And if they didn’t figure that out in time to anticipate our firing on the third ship, there was no question at all that they would be prepared for us when we went after the fourth. Each exit into real space would be more dangerous than the one before. For me in particular, vulnerable on the outside of Mercy of Kalr, despite my armor.
Lieutenant Ekalu, extravagantly daring for her, had argued against those third and fourth strikes. If I would not give up the third, she had said finally, she begged me to leave off the fourth. I would not. I had reminded her that this Mianaai was the one who had embraced her angry, vengeful destruction of the Garseddai, the population of an entire system eradicated for the sin of resisting annexation a bit too well. The other part of Anaander—the one other part that we knew of, at any rate—had seemed to regret having done it, and seemed resolved to avoid doing anything similar in the future. But fighting this one was all or nothing. And besides, it was mostly only myself I was risking. I would not give the Presger gun to anyone else, and even if I had been willing to do that, no one on board Mercy of Kalr could shoot as well as I did. And Ekalu was well aware that no help was coming from anywhere else. I had sent to Fleet Captain Uemi to tell her that Tstur Anaander had arrived in force, but we both knew that most likely as soon as Uemi heard that, she would take most of the Hrad fleet to Tstur to take advantage of any weakness there. In any event, we had not received any reply by the time we’d gated away from Athoek Station.
Outside Mercy of Kalr, tethered to its hull, surrounded by absolute, entire nothing, I removed the empty magazine from the gun, clipped it to my tether. Unclipped a full one, slid it into place. Still better than ten minutes to wait. And think.
It seemed that I had not only assumed that I would be a favorite of Ship, but had without even realizing it assumed that part of that would of course be Ship’s willing subservience. Otherwise, why that moment of up and down gone, of dismayed disorientation when it had reminded me that I had said it could be its own captain? As though if it could do that I had lost something? As though something had disappeared that before had made sense out of the world for me? And had that been an unpleasant surprise for Mercy of Kalr, who might reasonably have expected that I, of all people, would understand and support its desire?
I had insisted Seivarden take responsibility for herself, and not depend on me to fix her life, not depend on me to always be there to provide a solidity to her existence that her thousand years in suspension had removed. Perfectly reasonable on my part. I myself had, after all, lost as much—possibly more—and hadn’t fallen apart in the way that she had. But then, I had never anticipated any sort of existence beyond shooting Anaander Mianaai, if I even managed to do that much. I had had no life to live that mattered, only going relentlessly forward until I couldn’t anymore. The question of whether I might need or want anything else had been irrelevant. Except I hadn’t died, as I’d assumed I would, and the question wasn’t irrelevant at all. Pointless, though, yes, because I never could have what I needed or wanted.
“Ten seconds,” said Ship in my ear. I braced myself against the hull. Leveled my gun.
Light. The sun, more distant now. A Justice, five thousand kilometers away. Ship fed me more data, and I fired fourteen deliberate, carefully calculated shots. “Five seconds,” said Ship in my ear.
Darkness. I removed the second empty magazine. In the tally of deaths that made up my history as Justice of Toren, these four ships and their crews were next to nothing. “I wish I knew whether that ship—any of these ships, or any of the people on them—really wanted to be here.” Or maybe I didn’t. Maybe that wouldn’t help at all.
“It’s out of our control,” replied Ship, calmly. “They are warships and soldiers. As we are. The Lord of the Radch has not come here because it serves her larger struggle with herself. She has come here out of anger, specifically to injure you. She will take any available target if you are not directly available to her. If we were to do nothing, the lives of anyone who has been associated with you here would be in danger. Let alone your allies. Horticulturist Basnaaid. Station Administrator Celar. Her daughter Piat. The residents of the Undergarden. The fieldworkers in the mountains, on Athoek itself. Athoek Station.”
True. And that other Anaander, the one who had sent me here, had known herself well enough to guess that her opponent—she herself—would do this. Possibly had sent me here for that very reason. Among others.
“Twenty-three minutes,” said Mercy of Kalr. “And Medic has finished with Lieutenant Seivarden. She says the lieutenant should wake soon, and be more or less clearheaded in an hour or so.”
“Thank you, Ship.”
Twenty-three minutes later we exited to real space. Another Sword. I wondered just what this Anaander had left back at Tstur Palace, to hold it for her. But there was no way I could know the answer to that, and it wasn’t my problem. I fired my fourteen shots—I had a box full of magazines, inside Mercy of Kalr. I could empty one for each of Tstur Anaander’s ships here and still have several for the future. Assuming I had a future.
And back to gate-space. “Twelve minutes,” Ship said to me.
“Lieutenant Ekalu.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you ready?” If they hadn’t calculated just where and when we’d be when we came out of gate-space this time, there was no help for them. The only real question was whether they’d decided they needed to do something about it, and what that might be.
“As I’ll ever be, sir.”
Right. “If anything happens to me, you will be in command of Mercy of Kalr. Do whatever it is you need to do to ensure the safety of the ship. Don’t worry about me.”
“Yes, sir.”
I didn’t want to hang here thinking for the next ten minutes. “Sphene.”
“Cousin?” Its voice sounded in my ear.
“Thank you for entertaining the translator.”
“My pleasure, Cousin.” A pause. “I’m fairly sure I know what you’re doing, but I’m curious what it is you’re firing at the Usurper’s ships. I don’t expect you to tell me right now, but if you live through this—which, to be honest, Cousin, I don’t like your odds—I’d like to ask you about it.”
“I don’t like my odds, either, Cousin,” I replied. “But I’ve never let it stop me before.”
Silence, for nearly seventeen seconds. And then, “You guessed wrong. My engines are fine. I just can’t make gates anymore.” So Sphene could move, but unless it traveled through the Ghost Gate, it was effectively trapped in that system. “About a hundred and fifty years ago, your cousin the Usurper tried to establish some sort of a base in my home system. But they had all sorts of inexplicable difficulties. Equipment failing unexpectedly or disappearing, sudden depressurizations, that sort of thing. I guess it turned out to be more trouble than it was worth.”
“Things will be as Amaat wills,” I replied.
“To be honest,” continued Sphene, as though I hadn’t said anything, “it looked to me as though she wanted to build a shipyard. Which is really quite stupid, since people from Athoek do occasionally come through the gate and certainly wouldn’t miss something so obvious.”
Indeed. Unless she was quite sure that she could control who did and didn’t come through that gate. I thought of Ime, more than twenty years before, where this same Anaander had overreached herself disastrously, and been discovered. Where she had been stockpiling ancillaries. Had she been intending to build ships at Ime, too, but tha
t news had never gotten out? And of course, she had been stockpiling bodies for use as ancillaries here at Athoek. Just like Ime. “She was buying Samirend transportees, wasn’t she, Cousin? What happened to them?”
“I tried not to damage those,” replied Sphene. “I wanted them for myself. But before I could take any, someone came and fetched them away. And searched very diligently for me, I’m sure because they knew none of their problems could have happened without some help.”
“Ship,” I said, silently, “please ask Lieutenant Tisarwat about this.” And then, aloud, to Sphene, “Thank you for confiding in me, Cousin. May I ask why you chose this particular moment to do so?”
“Anyone who shoots at the Usurper is all right with me.”
“I’d have made my intentions clear sooner had I realized, Cousin,” I said.
“Well, and while Kalr Five was making sure I was safely strapped in, she apologized and asked me to help put the tea set back together. And actually, I thought you already knew about that attempted shipyard, or suspected. There’s no point building ships and bringing in ancillaries if you don’t have the AI cores to build around.” I didn’t know where or how AI cores were manufactured, though I knew some were held in closely guarded storage somewhere. No doubt my ignorance was intended.
No new military ships had been built for several centuries, and weren’t likely to be. If I had thought at all about what would happen to existing, unused cores, I had assumed they would be part of any large new stations. “The one they had,” continued Sphene, “the one they were beginning to build around just before they had to abandon their base, had been brought through the gate from Athoek System. I assumed there were more where that came from, and I assumed you’d had some reason to begin taking the Undergarden apart as soon as you arrived.”
The Undergarden, left neglected for so long, any attempts to change the situation failed—or thwarted. Eminence Ifian sitting on the concourse, determined to stop the Undergarden refit no matter how difficult that might make life for quite a few station residents. An AI core, before construction, was only slightly larger than a suspension pod. Easy enough to conceal inside a wall, or a floor. But why bring an AI core through the gate? Why not bring it on a ship that could make its own way through gate-space? “Sphene,” I said, “please continue this conversation in the very near future with one of my lieutenants, or with Mercy of Kalr.”