Raven Stratagem

by Yoon Ha Lee

  During the first meeting, the general had asked him how he was settling in, to which Brezan made the only possible tactful response. (He did occasionally find his way to tact.) Khiruev had then said, unexpectedly, I hope you help me never to forget that it’s people that we send out to die. She was looking at a casualty list from the recent battle. It wasn’t the sort of confidence you’d expect as a newcomer, but he’d seen the bleakness in the general’s eyes and resolved to do what he could.

  A sane person might be forgiven for not feeling a whole lot of affection for Kel Command at this point, but the fate of Khiruev and his swarm might depend on Brezan’s information, and Kel Command wasn’t why Brezan had become a hawk anyway. Indeed, Kel Command was a great argument for avoiding the Kel. Family wasn’t the reason, despite what Brezan had told Shuos Zehun in academy, although family had something to do with it. No: it was that the hexarchate was a terrible place to live, but it would be an even worse one if no one with a conscience consented to serve it.

  You couldn’t pull the hexarchate apart and exchange it for something better. The fact that the heretics always lost was proof of that. So you had to do the next best thing, the only thing left: serve, and hope that serving honorably made some small difference.

  Now, as the door to the antechamber slid open, Brezan staggered to his feet and prepared to bow. The person standing there was a rattled-looking Kel corporal. “Sir,” Brezan said, saluting instead.

  The corporal opened the cell’s door and shut off the restraints. “Come with me, soldier,” he said.

  Brezan wished he could ask what was going on, but he might as well enjoy blissful ignorance while it lasted, not to mention the odd sensation of being able to move freely. It was a minor miracle that he could walk fast enough to keep up.

  They didn’t have far to go. The corporal brought him to an oversized conference room with a secured terminal, the Kel kind that had a nook of its own in the wall. “I’ll be right outside, soldier,” the corporal said. “Come out when they’re done with you.”

  The light on the terminal indicated that someone wanted to talk, and the subdisplay had a summons with his name on it. Well, he couldn’t get more presentable, so he might as well approach the terminal. He saw his signifier like a dark, broken ghost in the golden metal. “Kel Brezan reporting as ordered,” he said, saluting preemptively. It only occurred to him too late to wonder if he should have changed his uniform into full formal.

  The terminal brightened. “Kel Brezan,” said a woman’s voice, measured, precise. The broad, unsmiling face on the main display belonged to Hexarch Kel Tsoro.

  Brezan had no idea what the hexarch required of him. He doubted she was going to personally order him to get a hot meal and a good night’s rest. “Hexarch,” he said.

  “At ease,” Tsoro said. “Your information on Shuos Jedao has been verified. We have a new assignment for you.”

  Brezan said nothing. According to his augment, seventy-seven days had elapsed since Jedao booted him from the Swanknot swarm. How much bureaucracy had prevented him from getting his warning through earlier, and how much damage had the Immolation Fox done in that time?

  “Assignment” meant he wasn’t being dismissed from Kel service. On the other hand, the list of atrocious assignments filled up whole planets. He tamped down the flare-spark of hope.

  “You seem to be confused on a certain point,” Tsoro added, with an instructor’s dryness, “so let us clarify this for you, because it’s important. You’re a crashhawk, Kel Brezan.”

  He flinched. “Sir—”

  “The test results are clear. Your formation instinct has decayed even from the low levels it displayed when you were in academy. It’s rare but not unheard of. But really, you should have figured it out during your confrontation with Jedao.”

  “I wish to serve, sir,” Brezan said hoarsely. “It’s all I know.”

  “Happily, there are precedents for crashhawks being permitted to remain among the Kel,” Tsoro said. “But you understand, it will be more difficult for you. Your actions will be scrutinized. You will have to choose, over and over, to be loyal. You won’t have formation instinct to guide you, especially when your orders give you pause and the habits of obedience wear thin. We are offering you this opportunity because you risked a great deal to bring us your warning, and because we approve of your conduct.”

  “Then let me be a Kel, sir,” Brezan said, his heart thumping too rapidly.

  “The assignment, then. This is to be a joint Kel-Andan operation. You will be assigned to Agent Andan Tseya of the silkmoth Beneath the Orchid.”

  An Andan? For that matter, a silkmoth? They were small, swift courier vessels. He’d heard that you could build half a cindermoth for the price of one of the things. “Our objective, sir?” Brezan asked. He hadn’t realized that the Kel were now on friendly terms with the Andan, but he’d been too busy worrying about Jedao and the Hafn to pay attention to faction politics.

  “Agent Tseya is to assassinate Jedao on his command moth,” Tsoro said, and smiled. “You will facilitate this as she directs.”

  Assassinating Jedao as a single target, as opposed to blowing the whole moth up, would take either an Andan or a Shuos for preference, so that much made sense. Still, Brezan felt a stab of revulsion. The Kel had formation instinct, the Rahal had scrying, and the Andan could enthrall you if you were in range, assuming they knew you well enough. There were undoubtedly lots of records on Jedao’s personality structure to help Tseya out. He didn’t imagine that Jedao was long for this world once Tseya made him her pet.

  “Your job, Kel Brezan,” Tsoro was saying, “is to wrest back control of the swarm once the agent is done.”

  There was a problem with this scenario. “Sir,” Brezan said, “wouldn’t we be better off returning the swarm to General Khiruev or whichever senior officer is still alive?” He hoped Khiruev had survived, something he hadn’t permitted himself to contemplate earlier. As for himself, as much as he wished otherwise, he was no strategist. The swarm needed a line officer’s leadership in case the Hafn struck at an inconvenient time.

  “If Jedao has some trick in store and eludes the agent,” Tsoro said, “we need someone to break his hold over the Kel. Khiruev won’t do. She’s already buckled once to Jedao’s authority. We’ve revoked Jedao’s commission, but by now Jedao has had a lot of time to talk to Khiruev, and the ninefox has a history of being extraordinarily persuasive when cornered. No, a general is no good to us. We need to send a high general.”

  It took Brezan a moment to piece together the implications. “I believe you’ve coined a brand-new Kel joke, sir,” he said, too wrung-out and angry to care who he was talking to. “It’s quite unfunny.”

  Tsoro smiled thinly. “Don’t be absurd,” she said. “The Kel never joke. You’d be surprised how hard it is to come up with a new one, besides.”

  For a few muddled seconds, Brezan tried to work out if there was any non-insubordinate way to say that he would rather kill himself with a wooden spoon than join the Kel hivemind. He had always been secure in the knowledge that he’d never succeed to command. Clearly the universe was punishing him for making sensible assumptions about his career.

  Tsoro’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “Don’t worry,” she said, “there would hardly be time to integrate you, and you’d need to be on site with the rest of Kel Command for it. In any case, historically speaking, not all high generals have been part of Kel Command, although Kel Command has always been composed of high generals.” The change in practice had taken place after the establishment of the hivemind.

  “Brevet rank,” Brezan suggested.

  “We prefer to limit the use of brevets because not all Kel respond to them satisfactorily.”

  There went that.

  “You can still decline the mission.”

  He drew a shuddering breath. “I accept, sir.”

  “Good,” Tsoro said. “Consider yourself promoted, High General Brezan. We’ll expedite the paperw
ork. There have been enough delays already. Don’t fail us, and don’t forget to adjust your insignia. Your first stop should be Medical. After that, may we suggest that you use your first order to scare up some real food?”

  Brezan opened his mouth to make a retort. Thankfully, the hexarch saved him from making an ass of himself by cutting the connection.

  It looked like the universe was giving him another chance at Jedao. All he had to do was not fuck it up.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  KHIRUEV WAS HAVING an energetic argument with Colonel Kel Najjad in one of the conference rooms when the ultimatum arrived. They’d been having variations of this argument ever since Najjad joined Khiruev’s staff. At this point, Khiruev would have felt disoriented if they discussed logistics without also sniping at each other about completely irrelevant points of musicology.

  “—that flute concerto by Yeri Chejio,” Najjad was saying as he jabbed the map. The interface couldn’t make up its mind about what Najjad wanted it to do about the jabs. Add a waypoint? Assign the waypoint to Tactical One? Change the color of the marker? Create an inset centered at the site of the jab?

  “Colonel,” Khiruev said, “would you please stop doing that? I’ll even concede that the seven-movement suite is a valid form on the grounds that the early post-Liozh composers can’t be put into proper historical context without it. Just stop doing whatever it is you’re doing.”

  Najjad grinned at her. “I’ll show you the trick if you like, sir.” He had a positive gift for breaking interfaces, or causing the grid to hang. Sometimes Khiruev thought she should loan the man to the Shuos the next time she needed a favor. “It’s all about confusing the—”

  Khiruev looked at Najjad’s latest map and winced. “I don’t want to know how to duplicate the feat. I just want to stop getting a headache every time I try to figure out who in this radius is still talking to us that has the setup to do repairs on this many bannermoths.”

  “If we still had any Nirai,” Najjad said, “I could torture one of them with the inadequacy of the interface controls. But our beloved general sent them packing, so I’m afraid you’re stuck.”

  “I’ll be sure to put it on the list of grievances I have against him,” Khiruev said, “so I can present it to him the next time I’m feeling suicidal.”

  Najjad stopped making the terminal have fits, thank goodness. “At least he hasn’t stuck knives in us yet. I’m actually rather—”

  The grid said, “Message for General Khiruev from Communications.”

  Khiruev checked the headers and hid her surprise. She had a hunch that Communications was trying to tell her something that should properly go first to the ranking officer. There were a number of reasons Communications might choose such a course of action. None of them had pleasant implications. “Clear out, Colonel,” she said. “I’ll get back to you when I can.”

  Najjad thumped a salute, gave the interface one last jab to make Khiruev twitch, and left the room.

  “Secure the room until I say otherwise,” Khiruev told the mothgrid. “Get me Communications.”

  Communications forwarded Khiruev not one but two messages from Kel Command. She saw immediately why Communications had hesitated to bring either to Jedao’s attention directly. It was clear which message was more important, but Khiruev knew the order in which she ought to deal with them.

  She requested, and got, a link with Communications. “Make sure Commander Janaia gets these orders,” she said. Janaia was off-shift at the moment, but she knew Janaia slept lightly. “General Khiruev to all units. I am aware that you may have gotten word from Kel Command. All units are to hold formation. Formation breaks will be met with the usual consequences.”

  “It’s gone out, sir,” Communications said after a moment.

  “Good,” Khiruev said. It wouldn’t buy much time, but with any luck, she could get this sorted out before the swarm began to panic.

  She asked the mothgrid where she could find Jedao and flagged the query as urgent. After an unusual stutter, the grid replied that Khiruev should meet Jedao in the latter’s quarters. Strictly speaking, Jedao could choose to be as inaccessible as he pleased. There could be some mundane reason for it. Still, there was nothing to do but show up and trust that the general was willing to talk to her.

  Khiruev departed the conference room and headed straight for Jedao’s quarters. The door admitted her. Jedao was standing with his hands folded behind him, contemplating several large paintings projected at various points against the far wall. At a guess, he was trying to figure out how colors harmonized with each other and mostly failing, one of his favorite pastimes.

  “Have you heard the news, sir?” Khiruev asked as she entered.

  “What news?”

  Communications hadn’t wanted to be the messenger. Khiruev couldn’t blame her, although she had taken one hell of a risk routing the messages so Jedao didn’t catch wind. “Two things,” Khiruev said. Time to take a risk herself. “We’ve received an ultimatum from the hexarchs.”

  “There must be some reason it went straight to you,” Jedao said, fixing her with an interested stare. He dismissed the paintings with a wave. “Care to enlighten me?”

  “May I?” At Jedao’s nod, Khiruev played back the message from the primary terminal. The old familiar chill ran through Khiruev when she saw the Vidona stingray. Jedao’s expression was politely curious. A woman’s affectless voice said, in clear, pure high language, “Shuos Jedao. You are to release the Swanknot swarm to the nearest Kel facility by the twenty-seventh day of the Month of Pyres, and turn yourself over to hexarchate authorities. The Mwennin are in Vidona custody. If you fail to comply, we will annihilate them. In case you need the reminder—”

  Her voice went on, giving a summary of who the Mwennin were, their numbers, where they lived. There were an estimated 58,000 of them, concentrated on the world of Bonepyre. The only reason Khiruev had heard of them earlier was that Lieutenant Colonel Brezan had brought that part of Cheris’s profile to her attention. The hexarchate was home to a staggering number of ethnic groups, but the Mwennin were unusual for avoiding faction service and predominantly practicing natural birth, among other cultural quirks. She and Brezan had wondered what had driven Cheris to the Kel. Cheris’s profile had suggested a need to fit into the hexarchate’s broader culture. The assessment had approved of this, but Khiruev bet Cheris had had second thoughts.

  “I’m not certain what they’re hoping to accomplish,” Jedao said, his voice revealing little concern. “It’s taken, what, two and a half months for them to come up with this threat? I wonder how much paperwork they had to do first. But then, I’ve never had a high opinion of Vidona proceduralism.”

  Khiruev counted to six. The gamble was going badly already. When she could trust her voice not to shake, she said, “Sir, don’t you care at all? They’re about to die because of the body you choose to wear.” Had she misjudged Jedao after all? “There must be something you can—”

  In her head she saw Mother Ekesra laying her hands on Kthero’s shoulders, the crinkling corpse-paper, the folded swans. Swanknot.

  “I can what, General?” Jedao said coolly. “Let’s find out where Bonepyre is.” He tapped out the query. A map of the hexarchate swirled into focus. The swarm’s location was highlighted in gold. Bonepyre’s location was highlighted in blue. “I trust you studied logistics at some point? Guess what, Bonepyre’s in the Ausser March, on the other fucking side of the hexarchate. That’s one hell of a detour, and we don’t know, because the Kel rather reasonably aren’t talking to me about their operations, if a decent swarm is available nearby to hold the Severed March in our absence. Are you saying that I should give the invaders a free hand here on the behalf of 60,000 people I have no agents in place to help?”

  “I was hoping you might devise some plan,” Khiruev snapped. “One of my mothers was a Vidona. Do you know how they carry out purges? I do. She’d come home and talk about it because it was just a job to her. Every little thin
g was compartmentalized into subtasks, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Rescind the target population’s jobs. Issue them special identification. Refuel the processing facilities. Make sure there were enough bullets or knives or poison canisters or whatever the flavor of the month was. Send out extra patrols to deal with any that try to go terrorist or rouse the rest of the population. If you focused on the little jigsaw pieces, you never had to notice that the whole puzzle added up to people dying.”

  “I’m aware of your family history, General,” Jedao said. “I appreciate that your father’s death must have affected you greatly. But you’ve got to stop reacting and start thinking. I don’t have supernatural powers, and neither do you. Neither of us has any pull with the authorities on Bonepyre, and even if someone in this swarm did, it would already be too late for a useful intervention. And where exactly would we evacuate 60,000 people to? Our swarm doesn’t have the capacity to handle that kind of influx.”

  “I’m so glad you’re girding yourself with reasons not to try,” Khiruev said. Distantly, she was impressed with herself for losing her temper this badly. What was wrong with her? And more importantly, why had she expected better from a mass murderer?

  “Still with the reacting,” Jedao said. “Does it not occur to you that the Vidona could be lying? While 60,000 people is too many to conveniently haul away to an imaginary refuge, by the hexarchate’s standards it’s a trivial number to wipe out. And I imagine you can tell me all about how the Vidona pride themselves on their thoroughness. For all we know, those people are already dead.”