Ancillary Sword

by Ann Leckie

  “Ancillaries can,” I agreed. “As you know from personal experience.”

  “Yes,” she said. Truly abashed now. “But I guess I never thought that an ancillary might actually want it.”

  I let that hang for a moment, for her to think about. Then, “Ancillaries are human bodies, but they’re also part of the ship. What the ancillaries feel, the ship feels. Because they’re the same. Well, different bodies are different. Things taste different or feel different, they don’t always want the same things, but all together, on the average, yes, it’s a thing I attended to, for the bodies that needed it. I don’t like being uncomfortable, no one does. I did what I could to make my ancillaries comfortable.”

  “I guess I never noticed.”

  “You weren’t really supposed to.” Best to get this over with. “In any event, ships don’t generally want partners. They do that sort of thing for themselves. Ships with ancillaries, anyway. So.” I gestured the obviousness of my conclusion, beyond any need to say it explicitly. Didn’t add that ships didn’t yearn for romantic partners, either. For captains, yes. For lieutenants. But not for lovers.

  “Well,” Seivarden said after a moment, “but you don’t have other bodies to do that with, not anymore.” She stopped, struck by a thought. “What must that have been like? With more than one body?”

  I wasn’t going to answer that. “I’m a little surprised you haven’t thought of that before.” But only a little. I knew Seivarden too well to think she’d ever dwelt long on what her ship might think or feel. And she’d never been one of those officers who’d been inconveniently fixated on the idea of ancillaries and sex.

  “So when they take the ancillaries away,” Seivarden said after a few appalled moments, “it must be like having parts of your body cut off. And never replaced.”

  I could have said, Ask Ship. But Ship probably wouldn’t have wanted to answer. “I’m told it’s something like that,” I said. Voice bland.

  “Breq,” Seivarden said, “when I was a lieutenant, before.” A thousand years ago, she meant, when she’d been a lieutenant on Justice of Toren, in my care. “Did I ever pay any attention to anyone but myself?”

  I considered, a moment, the range of truthful answers I could make, some less diplomatic than others, and said, finally, “Occasionally.”

  Unbidden, Mercy of Kalr showed me the soldiers’ mess, where Seivarden’s Amaats were clearing away their own supper. Amaat One said, “It’s orders, citizens. Lieutenant says.”

  A few Amaats groaned. “I’ll have it in my head all night,” one complained to her neighbor.

  In my own quarters, Seivarden said, penitent, “I hope I’m doing better these days.”

  In the mess, Amaat One opened her mouth and sang, tentative, slightly flat, “It all goes around…” The others joined her, unwilling, unenthusiastic. Embarrassed. “… it all goes around. The planet goes around the sun, it all goes around.”

  “Yes,” I said to Seivarden. “A little better.”

  Bo had done a creditable job finishing all their tasks. The entire decade stood lined up in the mess, not a muscle twitching, every collar and cuff ruler-straight, even Lieutenant Tisarwat managing an outward severe impassivity. Inward was another matter—still that buzz of tension, that slightly sick feeling, steady since the morning before, and she hadn’t slept since I’d awakened her yesterday. Her Bos gave off a wave of collective resentment coupled with defiant pride—they had, after all, managed quite a lot in the last day, managed it fairly well, considering. By rights I ought to indicate my satisfaction, they were waiting for me to do that, all of them certain of it, and prepared to feel ill-used if I didn’t.

  They deserved to be proud of themselves. Lieutenant Tisarwat, as things stood now, didn’t deserve them. “Well done, Bo,” I said, and was rewarded with a surge of exhausted pride and relief from every soldier in front of me. “See it stays this way.” Then, sharply, “Lieutenant, with me.” And turned and walked out of the mess to my quarters. Said, silently, to Ship, “Tell Kalr I want privacy.” Not thinking too directly why that was, or I would be angry again. Or angrier. Even the desire to move sent impulses to muscles, tiny movements that Ship could read. That I could read, when Ship showed them to me. In theory no one else on Mercy of Kalr could receive that data the way I could. In theory. But I wouldn’t think about that. I walked into my quarters, door opening without my asking. The Kalr on duty there bowed, left, ducking around Lieutenant Tisarwat where she had stopped just inside the entrance.

  “Come in, Lieutenant,” I said, voice calm. No edge to it. I was angry, yes, but I was always angry, that was normal. Nothing to give anyone any alarm, who could see it. Lieutenant Tisarwat came farther into the room. “Did you get any sleep at all?” I asked her.

  “Some, sir.” Surprised. She was too tired to think entirely clearly. And still feeling sick and unhappy. Adrenaline levels still higher than normal. Good.

  And not good. Not good at all. Terrible. “Eat much?”

  “I h…” She blinked. Had to think about my question. “I haven’t had much time, sir.” She breathed, a trifle more easily than the moment before. Muscles in her shoulders relaxed, just the tiniest bit.

  Without thinking of what I was doing, I moved as quickly as I possibly could—which was extremely quickly. Grabbed her by the collars of her jacket, shoved her backward, hard, slammed her into the green and purple wall a meter behind her. Pinned her there, bent awkwardly backward over the bench.

  Saw what I had been looking for. Just for an instant. For the smallest moment Lieutenant Tisarwat’s general unhappiness became utter, horrified terror. Adrenaline and cortisol spiked unbelievably. And there, in her head, a brief flash, nearly a ghost, of implants that shouldn’t be there, weren’t there an instant later.

  Ancillary implants.

  Again I slammed her head against the wall. She gave a small cry, and I saw it again, her sickening horror, those implants that no human ought to have threading through her brain, and then gone again. “Let go of Mercy of Kalr or I’ll strangle you right here with my own hands.”

  “You wouldn’t,” she gasped.

  That told me she wasn’t thinking straight. In her right mind, Anaander Mianaai would never have doubted, not for an instant, what I might do. I shifted my grip. She started to slide down the wall, toward the bench, but I grabbed her around the throat and put pressure on her trachea. She caught hold of my wrists, desperate. Unable to breathe. Ten seconds, more or less, to do what I told her to do, or die. “Let go of my ship.” My voice calm. Even.

  The data coming from her flared again, ancillary implants sharp and clear, her own excruciating nausea and terror strong enough almost to make me double over in sympathetic horror. I let go of her, stood straight, and watched her collapse, coughing, gasping, onto the hard, uncushioned bench and then choking, heaving, try to throw up the nothing that was in her stomach.

  “Ship,” I said.

  “She’s canceled all orders,” said Mercy of Kalr, directly into my ear. “I’m sorry, Captain.”

  “You couldn’t help it.” All Radchaai military ships were built with accesses that let Anaander Mianaai control them. Mercy of Kalr was no exception. I was fortunate the ship didn’t have any enthusiasm for following the orders the Lord of the Radch had been giving it, hadn’t made any effort to correct any lapses or small errors. If Ship had truly wanted to help Anaander Mianaai deceive me, it would certainly have succeeded. “Anaander Mianaai, Lord of the Radch,” I said, to the baby lieutenant trembling, heaving, on the bench in front of me. “Did you think that I wouldn’t know?”

  “Always a risk,” she whispered, and wiped her mouth on her sleeve.

  “You’re not used to taking risks you don’t have decades—centuries—to prepare for,” I said. I had dropped all pretense of human expression, spoke in my flat ancillary’s voice. “All the parts of you have been part of you since birth. Probably before. You’ve never been one person and then suddenly had ancillary tech shov
ed into your brain. It isn’t pleasant, is it?”

  “I knew it wasn’t.” She had, now, better control of her breathing, had stopped throwing up. But she spoke in a hoarse whisper.

  “You knew it wasn’t. And you thought you’d have access to meds to keep you going until you got used to it. You could take them right out of Medical yourself and use your accesses to make Mercy of Kalr cover your tracks.”

  “You outmaneuvered me,” she said, still miserable, still looking down at the now-fouled bench. “I admit it.”

  “You outmaneuvered yourself. You didn’t have a standard set of ancillary implants.” It hadn’t been legal to make ancillaries for nearly a hundred years. Not counting bodies already stocked and waiting in suspension, and those were nearly all on troop carriers. None of which had been anywhere near Omaugh Palace. “You had to alter the equipment you used for yourself. And meddling with a human brain, it’s a delicate thing. It wouldn’t have been a problem if it had been your own, you know that brain front to back, if it was one of your own bodies you’d have had no problems. But it couldn’t be one of your own bodies, that was the whole point, you don’t have any to spare these days, and besides I’d have shoved you out the air lock as soon as we gated if you’d tried it. So it had to be somebody else’s body. But your tech, it’s custom-made for your brain. And you didn’t have time to test anything. You had a week. If that. What, did you grab the child, shove the hardware in her, and throw her onto the docks?” Tisarwat had missed tea with her mother’s cousin, that day, not answered messages. “Even with the right hardware, and a medic who knows what she’s doing, it doesn’t always work. Surely you know that.”

  She knew that. “What are you going to do now?”

  I ignored the question. “You thought you could just order Mercy of Kalr to give me false readings, and Medic as well, to cover up anything that needed covering. You’d still need meds, that was obvious the moment the hardware went in, but you couldn’t pack them because Bo would have found them immediately and I’d have wondered why you needed those particular drugs.” And then, when she couldn’t get them, her misery was so intense that she couldn’t completely hide it—she could only order Ship to make it appear to be much less than it actually was. “But I already knew what lengths you were willing to go to, to achieve your ends, and I had days just lying here in my quarters, recovering from my injuries and imagining what you might try.” And what I might be able to do to circumvent it, undetected. “I never believed you’d give me a ship and let me fly off unsupervised.”

  “You did it without meds. You never used them.”

  I went to the bench that served as my bed, pulled aside the linens, opened the compartment underneath. Inside was that box that human eyes could see but no ship or station could, not unless it had ancillary eyes to look with. I opened the box, pulled out the packet of meds I’d taken from Medical, days before that last conference with Anaander Mianaai on Omaugh Palace. Before I’d met Lieutenant Tisarwat in Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat’s office, or even known she’d existed. “We’re going to Medical.” And silently, to Mercy of Kalr, “Send two Kalrs.”

  Hope flared in Anaander Mianaai, once Lieutenant Tisarwat, triggered by my words, and by the sight of that packet of medicine in my gloved hand, along with an overwhelming wish to be free of her misery. Tears ran from her ridiculously lilac eyes, and she gave a very tiny whimper, quickly suppressed. “How did you stand this?” she asked. “How did you survive it?”

  There was no point in answering. It was an exclamation more than a real question, she didn’t really care about the answer. “Stand up.” The door opened, and two of my Kalrs came in, astonished and dismayed to see Lieutenant Tisarwat battered, collapsed on the bench, bile all down the sleeve of her uniform jacket.

  We walked to Medical, a sad little procession, Tisarwat (not Tisarwat) leaning on one Kalr, followed by the other. Medic stood frozen, watching us enter. Appalled, having seen what was in the lieutenant’s head the moment Ship had stopped interfering with her data, with Medic’s specialized implants. She turned to me to speak. “Wait,” I said to her curtly, and then, once the Kalrs had helped Tisarwat (not Tisarwat) onto a table, sent them away.

  Before Medic could say anything, before Anaander could realize and protest, I triggered the table’s restraints. She was startled but too miserable to realize right away what that meant. “Medic,” I said. “You see that Lieutenant Tisarwat has some unauthorized implants.” Medic was too horrified to speak. “Remove them.”

  “No, don’t!” Anaander Mianaai tried to shout but couldn’t quite, and so it came out sounding half-strangled.

  “Who did this?” asked Medic. I could see she was still trying to make sense out of it.

  “Is that relevant just now?” She knew the answer, if she thought about it. Only one person could have done this. Only one person would have.

  “Medic,” said Tisarwat, who had been trying the restraints but found she couldn’t free herself. Her voice still came out a strangled croak. “I am Anaander Mianaai, Lord of the Radch. Arrest the fleet captain, release me, and give me the medicine I need.”

  “You’re getting above yourself, Lieutenant,” I said, and turned again to Medic. “I gave an order, Medic.” Isolated as we were in gate space, my word was law. It didn’t matter what my orders were, no matter how illegal or unjust. A captain might face prosecution for giving some orders—her crew would without fail be executed for disobeying those same commands. It was a central fact of any Radchaai soldier’s life, though it rarely came to an actual demonstration. No one on Mercy of Kalr would have forgotten it. Nyseme Ptem, whose name was mentioned every day on this ship, at my particular instructions, had been a soldier like these, had died because she had refused orders to kill innocent people. No one on board Mercy of Kalr could forget her, or forget why she died. Or that I chose to have her name spoken daily, as though she were one of the dead of my own family, or this ship. That couldn’t possibly be lost on Medic, just now.

  I could see her distress and indecision. Tisarwat was suffering, clearly, and if anything could make Medic truly angry it was suffering she couldn’t help. My order might be interpreted as backing her into a corner with the threat of execution, but it also gave her cover to do what needed doing, and she would see that soon enough.

  “Medic,” croaked Tisarwat, still struggling against the restraints.

  I laid one black-gloved hand across her throat. No pressure, just a reminder. “Medic,” I said. Calmly. “No matter who this is, no matter who she claims to be, this installation was illegal—and thoroughly unjust—from the start. And it’s failed. I’ve seen this before, I’ve been through it myself. It won’t get any better, and she’ll be extremely lucky if it doesn’t get worse. Meds might keep her going for a while, but they won’t fix the problem. There’s only one thing that will fix the problem.” Two things. But in some respects the two were the same, at least as far as this fragment of Anaander Mianaai was concerned.

  Medic balanced on the knife-edge of two equally bad choices, only the smallest chance of helping her patient making a barely perceptible difference between one course and the other. I saw her tip. “I’ve never… Fleet Captain, I don’t have any experience with this.” Trying very hard not to let her voice shake. She’d never dealt with ancillaries before, I was the first she’d ever had in her medical section. Ship had told her what to do, with me.

  And I was hardly typical. “Not many do. Putting them in is routine, but I can’t think of anyone who’s had to take any out. Not anyone who cared about the condition of the body once they were done. But I’m sure you’ll manage. Ship knows what to do.” Ship was saying as much to Medic, at that moment. “And I’ll help.”

  Medic looked at Tisarwat—no, Anaander Mianaai—tied down to the table, no longer struggling with the restraints, eyes closed. Looked, then, at me. “Sedation,” she began.

  “Oh, no. She has to be awake for this. But don’t worry, I choked her pretty badly, a few m
inutes ago. She won’t be able to scream very much.”

  By the time we finished and Tisarwat was unconscious, dosed as heavily as was safe with sedatives, Medic was shaking, not entirely from exhaustion. We’d both missed lunch and supper, and tired and increasingly anxious Bos were passing the entrance to Medical in ones and twos on increasingly flimsy pretexts. Ship refused to tell anyone what was happening.

  “Will she come back?” asked Medic, standing, trembling, as I cleaned instruments and put them away. “Tisarwat, I mean, will she be Tisarwat again?”

  “No.” I closed a box, put it in its drawer. “Tisarwat was dead from the moment they put those implants in.” They. Anaander Mianaai would have done that herself.

  “She’s a child. Seventeen years old! How could anyone…” She trailed off. Shook her head once, still not quite believing even after hours of surgery, of seeing it with her own eyes.

  “I was the same age when it happened to me,” I pointed out. Not I really, but this body, this last one left to me. “A little younger.” I didn’t point out that Medic hadn’t reacted this way to seeing me. That it made a difference when it was a citizen, instead of some uncivilized, conquered enemy.

  She didn’t notice it herself, or else was too overwhelmed just now to react. “Who is she now, then?”

  “Good question.” I put away the last of the instruments. “She’ll have to decide that.”

  “What if you don’t like her decision?” Shrewd, Medic was. I’d rather have her on my side than otherwise.

  “That,” I answered, making a small tossing gesture, as though casting the day’s omens, “will be as Amaat wills. Get some rest. Kalr will bring supper to your quarters. Things will seem better after you’ve eaten and slept.”

  “Really?” she asked. Bitter and challenging.

  “Well, not necessarily,” I admitted. “But it’s easier to deal with things when you’ve had some rest and some breakfast.”