Ancillary Mercy

by Ann Leckie

  “I’ll consider it, Cousin.”

  “Ten seconds,” said Ship, in my ear.

  I leveled my gun. Braced myself. Sphene’s voice said, in my ear, “I’d just like to say, Cousin, that what you’re doing is incredibly stupid. I don’t think you’re stupid, though, so I suspect you’ve entirely lost your mind. It makes me wish I’d gotten to know you better.”

  Light. No ship, but half a dozen mines (and more that I couldn’t see, I felt Mercy of Kalr’s hull vibrate as one went off, proximity-triggered), one of them just meters away from me, tethered as I was to Ship, and before I could really register the fact, a flash, and then brightness and pain. Nothing else, not even Ship’s voice in my ear.

  The pain didn’t lessen, but the flash-blindness faded. I was still tethered, but the tether led to only a scorched hull plate. Nothing more. I didn’t see any mines, only a few pieces of debris. The captain of that fourth ship had been as smart as I’d feared—she’d calculated where we were most likely to come out of gate-space, and dropped enough mines to be sure to do some damage. She’d had no way to guess that I had that Presger gun, she was likely puzzled as to what we were doing, appearing and then disappearing, but she was taking no chances. And of course, out of all the captains, she’d had the most time to think about what we might be doing, and the most time to decide what to do about it.

  Well. It really, truly wasn’t my problem anymore. I had done my best. Ship, and Lieutenant Ekalu, had apparently done exactly as I’d ordered. In another hour—a bit more—those first fourteen bullets should meet the Sword I’d fired them at, though unless I’d had the incredible good fortune to pierce the ship’s heat shield I would never see the results of my shot. Even then I might not see it. I had several hours of air remaining, I ached all over and my left leg and hip hurt terribly. I had put myself in this position, had known it was likely. Still, I didn’t want to die.

  I didn’t appear to have much choice in the matter. Mercy of Kalr was, I hoped, well away. I was well out from the trafficked areas of the system. Not, maybe, beyond where the farthest outstations orbited, but those were on the other side of the sun just now. I still had the gun, and some ammunition. I could use that to push myself in one direction or another, could shove the hull plate away from me to the same effect. But it would be years before I reached anywhere useful that way.

  The only remaining hope was the faint chance that Mercy of Kalr would come back for me. But every passing second—I felt each one bleed away, escaping from present to the unalterable past—every moment that Ship did not appear made it less likely that it ever would.

  Or did it? Surely there would be an instant most likely for Ship to return, if it was going to. I ought to be able to calculate where and when that was.

  I tried to calm my breathing. I should have been able to do that more or less easily, but could not. It was possible my leg was bleeding, possibly quite badly, and I was going into shock.

  Nothing. There was nothing I could do. There had never been anything I could do, it was always going to come down to this. I had avoided it for so long, had come as far as I had through sheer determination, but this moment had always been ahead of me, always waiting. No point in trying to calculate when or whether Ship might come back for me, I couldn’t do it, couldn’t have even if I had been able to think straight, if there had been some other sound in my ears besides my own desperate gasping and the furious pounding of my pulse.

  Shock, from blood loss, I was almost certain. And that might be all right, actually. I’d rather lose consciousness permanently in a minute or two than spend hours waiting to run out of air. Wondering if they would come back for me, when that was stupid, I had ordered Ekalu to see to the safety of the ship and the crew, not mine. I would have to reprimand her if she disregarded that.

  There was nothing to do but think of a song. A short one, a long one, it didn’t matter. It would end when it ended.

  Something slammed into my back, jarring me, jolting my injured left leg, a fresh spike of pain that stunned me for a moment, and then darkness. Which I thought was a side effect of the pain, but then I saw the inside of an airlock, felt gravity take hold, and I ought to have collapsed onto what was now the floor, but someone or something held me up. A voice in my ear said, “Aatr’s tits, is she trying to sing?” Twelve. It was Kalr Twelve’s voice.

  And I was out of the airlock in a corridor, being laid on my back, and my helmet pulled off, the vacuum suit cut away. “I’d be worried if she wasn’t.” Medic. She sounded worried, though.

  “Ekalu,” I said. Or tried to, I was still gasping. “I ordered…”

  “Your very great pardon, sir,” said Lieutenant Ekalu’s voice in my ear as my clothes were cut away, as Medic and Twelve swiftly lay correctives over my skin as soon as it was exposed, “you said if anything happened to you, I was in command and I should do whatever I needed to do, sir.”

  I closed my eyes. The pain had begun to ease, and I thought I was getting control over my breathing as well. “You’re still in command, Lieutenant,” said Medic. I didn’t open my eyes to see what she was doing. “Fleet Captain’s headed for surgery. The leg’s a loss.” Who that last was addressed to I couldn’t tell. I still had my eyes closed, was concentrating on breathing, on the pain going away. I wanted to say they’d probably wasted their efforts, and shouldn’t have come back for me, but couldn’t. “Lie still, Fleet Captain,” Medic said, as though I’d moved, or said something. “Ekalu has everything under control.” And I didn’t remember anything more after that.

  9

  The leg was, indeed, a loss. Medic explained things as I lay propped up on a bed in Medical. Covered with a blanket, but still the lack of a left leg, nearly all the way to the hip, was obvious. “It’ll be some weeks growing back. We’re working on a prosthetic that can get you through the next month or two, but for now it’s going to be crutches, I’m afraid.” She paused, as though expecting me to say something. “That’s the worst of it, Fleet Captain. Really, it is. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  “We didn’t lose anybody. A powerful testament to the importance of safety regulations, and I gather there are a couple of Bos who are fervently hoping you don’t intend to find them and say I told you so to their faces. We did lose some hull plating, and breached in a couple of places, but the safeties all worked like they should have. Kalrs are outside right now making what repairs they can. We’re in gate-space at the moment. Ekalu wanted to be able to consult with you before she did anything drastic.” She hesitated, as though she expected me to say something more. I did not. “Five will bring you tea in a few minutes. You can have something more solid in a few hours.”

  “I don’t want tea,” I said. “Just water.”

  Medic hesitated at that, too. “Right,” she said after a moment. “I’ll let Five know.”

  She left, and I closed my eyes. This injury ought to have been fatal, for an ancillary. If I had still been part of a ship, just one small bit of Justice of Toren, I’d have been disposed of by now. The thought was unaccountably upsetting—if I had still been just one small part of a ship, I wouldn’t have cared about it. And I’d lost far more than a single more or less easily replaceable leg, far more permanently, and lived, continued to function, or at least seemed to for anyone who didn’t look too closely.

  Five came into the room, with water. In a green-glazed handled bowl that I knew was one of a set she’d admired in Xhenang Serit. Had drunk from herself, every day since she’d obtained it, but she had never served me with it. It was her own personal possession. Her face was so severely expressionless that, I realized, she was certainly in the grip of some strong emotion. And I couldn’t see what that was—would not reach, would not ask Ship for it. It made Five seem oddly flat, as though she were only an image I was seeing, not a real person. Five opened a drawer near the bed, pulled out a cloth, and wiped my eyes. Held the bowl of water to my mouth. I sipped.

  Seivarden came th
rough the door, another Kalr behind her. She wore only underwear and gloves, blinked at me placidly. “I’m glad you’re back.” Calm and relaxed. Still drugged, I realized, still recovering from her session with Medic, while I had been outside the ship.

  “Are you supposed to be up?” I asked. Five hadn’t even turned her head when Seivarden spoke, just wiped my eyes again.

  “No,” replied Seivarden, still utterly, unnaturally calm. “Scoot over.”

  “What?” It took me a moment to understand what she’d just said.

  Before I could say more, Five set down the bowl of water and with the help of the other Kalr moved me closer to the right side of the bed, and Seivarden sat on the left side, swung her bare legs up, and tucked them under the blanket. Leaned back, pressed close, one leg in the space where my left leg should have been, shoulder against mine. “There. Now Medic can’t complain.” She closed her eyes. “I want to go to sleep,” she said, apparently to no one.

  “Fleet Captain,” said Five. “Medic’s worried about you. You’ve been awake for nearly an hour and you’ve been crying almost the whole time.” She gave me another sip of water. “Medic wants to give you something to help, but she’s afraid to even suggest it to you.” No, that was certainly Ship talking.

  “I don’t need meds,” I said. “I’ve never needed meds.”

  “No, of course you haven’t.” Not a change in Five’s expression. Or her voice.

  “The thing I always liked the least,” I said, finally, after the last of the water, “was when an officer took me for granted. Just assumed that I would be there for her whenever she needed it, whatever it was she needed, and never stopped to even wonder what I might think. Or if I might be thinking anything to begin with.” No reply, from Five. Or Ship. “But that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. I didn’t even begin to realize it until you said you wanted to be someone who could be a captain.” Ship had said that, not Five, but of course Ship was listening. “And I was… I’m sorry I reacted the way I did.”

  “I admit,” said Five—no, said Ship, I was sure, “I was hurt and disappointed when I saw how you felt. But there are two parts to reacting, aren’t there. How you feel, and what you do. And it’s the thing you do that’s the important one, isn’t it? And, Fleet Captain, I owe you an apology. I should have known sending Lieutenant Seivarden to act for me would upset you. But I think I owe you an explanation as well. It’s one thing to ask your Kalrs to give you a hug now and then, but they’re really not up for giving more.” Five, speaking calmly and seriously, still standing by the bed, that green-glazed bowl in her hand. “By now pretty much all of Kalr has figured out that any of them could be in bed with you all day and all night and it would never be the least bit sexual. But they still wouldn’t want to. One of them might have agreed just now, if I’d asked, but they wouldn’t want to do it regularly. Even without sex it seems too intimate, I suppose. Lieutenant Seivarden, on the other hand, is perfectly happy to do it.”

  “You’re very good to me, Ship,” I said, after a moment. “And I know we both feel like… like we’re missing part of ourselves. And it seems like each of us is the piece the other is missing. But it isn’t the same, is it, me being here isn’t like you having ancillaries back. And even if it were, ships want captains they can love. Ships don’t love other ships. They don’t love their ancillaries. And I meant what I said. You should be able to be your own captain, or at least choose her. You’d probably be happier with Seivarden as your captain. Or Ekalu. I could see myself liking Ekalu quite extravagantly, if I were still Justice of Toren.”

  “You’re both being stupid.” Seivarden, who had lain still since her declaration that she wanted to go to sleep. Voice calm, eyes still closed. “It’s a very Breq kind of stupid, and I thought it was just because Breq is Breq but I guess it’s a ship thing.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “It only took me about half a day to figure out what Ship was on about with that wanting to be someone who could be an officer business.”

  “I thought you wanted to go to sleep, Lieutenant,” said Five. As though she wasn’t sure that was actually something she wanted to say, transparently reading words in her vision.

  “Ship,” I said, not certain at this point whom I was talking to, or who was talking to me, “you’ve done everything I’ve asked of you, and I’ve put you and your crew in terrible danger. You should be able to go where you want. You can drop me off somewhere.” I imagined arriving in the Itran Tetrarchy, maybe with Seivarden in tow. My leg would have grown back by the time I got there.

  Imagined leaving Athoek behind. The repairs to the Undergarden unfinished, its residents’ future uncertain. Leaving Queter with no one to help her if she needed it. Uran and Basnaaid on the station, in terrible danger even if I had managed to destroy all three of the warships I had fired at. And what were the chances that I had destroyed even one of them? Very, very low. Almost nonexistent. But those shots, outside the ship, had been my only half-realistic chance, remote as it had been. “You can leave me here and go wherever it is you want to go, Ship.”

  “And be like Sphene?” said Five. “No captain, hiding from everyone? No, thank you, Fleet Captain. Besides.” Five actually frowned. Took a breath. “I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but Lieutenant Seivarden is right. And you’re right—ships don’t love other ships. I’ve been thinking about it since I met you. You don’t know this, because you were unconscious at the time, but back at Omaugh Palace, weeks ago, the Lord of the Radch tried to assign me a new captain and I told her I didn’t want anyone but you. Which was foolish, because of course she could always force me to accept her choice. There was no point in my protesting, nothing I could say or do would make any difference. But I did it anyway, and she sent me you. And I kept on thinking about it. And maybe it isn’t that ships don’t love other ships. Maybe it’s that ships love people who could be captains. It’s just, no ships have ever been able to be captains before.” Five wiped more tears off my face. “I do like Lieutenant Ekalu. I like her a great deal. And I like Lieutenant Seivarden well enough, but mostly because she loves you.”

  Seivarden was relaxed and motionless beside me, breathing even, eyes still closed. She didn’t respond to that at all. “Seivarden doesn’t love me,” I said. “She’s grateful that I saved her life, and I’m pretty much the only connection she has with everything she’s lost.”

  “That’s not true,” said Seivarden, still placid. “Well, all right, it’s sort of true.”

  “It works both ways,” observed Five. Or Ship, I wasn’t sure. “And you’re not used to being loved. You’re used to people being attached to you. Or being fond of you. Or depending on you. Not loving you, not really. So I think it doesn’t occur to you that it’s something that might actually happen.”

  “Oh,” I said. Seivarden warm and close beside me, though the hard edge of the corrective on my arm was poking into her bare shoulder. Not painfully, certainly not uncomfortably enough to disturb her med-stabilized mood, but I shifted slightly, at first not realizing what I’d just done, that I had known what Seivarden was feeling and moved on account of that. Five frowned at me—an actual reflection of her mood, she was worried, exasperated, embarrassed. Tired—she hadn’t slept much in the last day or so. Ship was feeding me data again, and I’d missed it so much. Out in the corridor Medic was on her way here with meds for me, determined and apprehensive. Kalr Twelve, stepping into a doorway to make way for Medic, was suggesting to Kalr Seven that they find four or five more of their decade-mates to stand outside my room and sing something. The thought of singing by herself was far too mortifying.

  “Sir,” said Five. Really Five, not anyone else, I thought. “Why are you still crying?”

  Helpless to stop myself, I made a small, hiccupping sob. “My leg.” Five was genuinely puzzled. “Why did it have to be the good one? And not the one that hurts me all the time?”

  Before Five could say anything Medic came in, said to me, as though nei
ther Five nor Seivarden was there, “This is to help you relax, Fleet Captain.” Five stepped aside for her as she fixed a tab she held to the back of my neck. “You need as much rest and quiet”—that with the briefest glance at Seivarden, then, though Seivarden wasn’t listening, wasn’t likely to do anything particularly noisy anytime soon—“as you can get before you decide to get up and charge off into things. Which I know you’ll do long before you actually should.” She took the cloth Five still held. Wiped my eyes with it, handed it back to Five. “Get some sleep!” she ordered, and left the room.

  “I don’t want to go to sleep,” I said to Five. “I want tea.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Five, actually, visibly relieved.

  “Definitely a ship thing,” said Seivarden.

  I fell asleep before tea could arrive. Woke hours later to find Seivarden asleep beside me, turned on her side, one arm thrown across my body, her head on my shoulder. Breathing evenly, not long from waking, herself. And Kalr Five coming in the doorway with tea. In the green handled bowl again.

  This time I managed to reach for it. “Thank you, Five,” I said. Took a sip. I felt calm and light—Medic’s doing, I was sure.

  “Sir,” said Five, “Translator Zeiat is asking to see you. Medic would prefer you rest a while longer.” So would Five, it appeared, but she didn’t say so.

  “There’s not much point in refusing the translator anything,” I pointed out. “You remember Dlique.” And how Translator Zeiat’s tiny ship had just appeared near Mercy of Kalr, hours before we gated.