Ancillary Mercy

by Ann Leckie

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Five.

  I looked down at myself—mostly naked, except for an impressive assortment of correctives, the blanket, and gloves. Seivarden still draped half over me. “I’d like to have breakfast, first, though, will that be all right with the translator?”

  “It will have to be, sir,” said Five.

  In the event, Translator Zeiat consented to wait until I’d eaten, and Seivarden was off to her own bed. And Five had cleaned me up and made me more presentable. “Fleet Captain,” the Presger translator said, coming into the room, Five standing stiff and disapproving at the doorway. “I’m Presger Translator Zeiat.” She bowed. And then sighed. “I was just getting used to the last fleet captain. I suppose I’ll get used to you.” She frowned. “Eventually.”

  “I’m still Fleet Captain Breq, Translator,” I said.

  Her frown cleared. “I suppose that’s easier to remember. But it’s a little odd, isn’t it? You’re pretty obviously not the same person. Fleet Captain Breq—the previous one, I mean—had two legs. Are you absolutely certain you’re Fleet Captain Breq?”

  “Quite certain, Translator.”

  “All right, then. If you’re sure.” She paused, waiting, perhaps, for me to confess I wasn’t. I said nothing. “So, Fleet Captain. I think it’s probably best to be very frank about this, and I hope you’ll forgive my bluntness. I have, of course, been aware that you are in possession of a weapon designed and manufactured by the Presger. This appears to have been some sort of secret? I’m not certain, actually.”

  “Translator,” I interrupted, before she could continue, “I’m curious. You’ve said several times that you don’t understand about different sorts of humans, but the Presger sold those guns to the Garseddai, specifically for them to use against the Radchaai.”

  “You must be more careful how you say things, Fleet Captain,” Translator Zeiat admonished. “You can muddle things up so badly. The last fleet captain was prone to it, too. It’s true that they don’t understand. At all. Some translators, though, we do. Sort of. I admit our understanding was shakier then than it is now, though, you’d have a point there. But let me see if I can find a way to explain. Imagine… yes, imagine a very small child appears to have her heart set on doing something dangerous. Setting the city she lives in on fire, say. You can be constantly on guard, constantly keeping her out of trouble. Or you can persuade her to put her hand into a very small fire. She might lose a finger or two, or even an arm, and of course it would be quite painful, but that would be the point, wouldn’t it? She’d never do it again. In fact, you’d think she’d be likely to never even go near any fires, ever, not after that. It seemed like the perfect solution, and it did seem to work quite well, at least at first. But it turns out not to have been a permanent fix. We didn’t understand Humans very well at the time. We understand more now, or at least we think we do. Just between you and me”—she looked to one side and then the other, as though wary of being overheard—“Humans are very strange. Sometimes I despair of our managing the situation at all.”

  “What situation would that be, Translator?”

  Her eyes widened, surprise or even shock. “Oh, Fleet Captain, you are a great deal like your predecessor! I really thought you were following things. But it’s not your fault, is it. No, it isn’t really anyone’s fault, it’s just how things are. Consider, Fleet Captain, we have a vested interest in keeping the peace. If there’s no treaty there’s no reason for translators, is there? And while it’s unsettling to consider it too directly, we’re actually fairly closely related to Humans. No, we don’t want even the breath of the thought of the possibility that the treaty might be compromised. Now, your having that gun is one thing. But yesterday someone used that gun. To fire on Human ships. Which of course is exactly what it was meant for, but it was made before the treaty, do you see? And of course, we made that treaty with Humans, but to be completely honest with you, I’m beginning to have some trouble sorting out who’s Human and who isn’t. And on top of that it’s become clear to me that Anaander Mianaai may not actually have been acting for all Humans when she made that agreement. Which is going to be impossible to explain to them, as I’ve already said, and of course we none of us care much what you do among yourselves, but using Presger-made weapons to do it, and so soon after that business with the Rrrrrr? It doesn’t look good. I know that was twenty-five years ago, but you must understand that might as well be five minutes to them. And just as there wasn’t… enthusiasm in all quarters regarding the treaty, there is… some ambivalence over the existence and sale of those guns.”

  “I don’t understand, Translator,” I confessed.

  She sighed heavily. “I didn’t think you would. Still, I had to try. Are you absolutely sure you don’t have any oysters here?”

  “I told you before you came aboard that we didn’t, Translator.”

  “Did you?” She seemed genuinely puzzled. “I thought it was that soldier of yours who told me.”

  “Translator, how did you know I had the gun?”

  She blinked in evident surprise. “It was obvious. The previous Fleet Captain Breq had it under her jacket when I met her. I could… no, not hear it exactly. Smell it? No, that’s not right, either. I don’t… I don’t think it’s a mode of perception you’re capable of, actually. Now I think of it.”

  “And if I may ask, Translator, why 1.11 meters?”

  She frowned, obviously puzzled. “Fleet Captain?”

  “The guns. The bullets will go through anything for 1.11 meters and then they stop. Why 1.11 meters? It doesn’t seem like a terribly useful distance.”

  “Well, no,” replied Translator Zeiat, still frowning. “It wasn’t meant to be a useful distance. In fact, the distance wasn’t meant at all. You know, Fleet Captain, you’re doing that thing again, where you say something in a way that sends you off in entirely the wrong direction. No, the bullets aren’t designed to go through anything for 1.11 meters. They’re designed to destroy Radchaai ships. That was what the purchasers required of them. The 1.11 meters is a kind of… accidental side effect sort of thing. And useful in its own way of course. But when you fire at a Radchaai ship you get something very different, I assure you. As we assured the Garseddai, honestly, but they didn’t quite entirely believe us. They’d have done a good deal more damage if they had. Although I doubt things would ultimately have turned out much differently.”

  Hope flared, that I had not allowed myself before now. If those three ships I’d fired at had not changed course, perhaps there was only one left. One, plus Sword of Atagaris. And Mercy of Ilves, at the outstations, but the fact that Mercy of Ilves hadn’t even attempted to involve itself in my battle with Sword of Atagaris suggested it and its captain wanted no trouble and might contrive to find reasons to stay near the outstations for quite some time, if they could manage it. And if the gun was truly that specifically effective, I might put it to better, more efficient use. “Would it be possible for me to buy more bullets from you?”

  Translator Zeiat’s frown only deepened. “From me? I don’t have any, Fleet Captain. From them, though? That’s its own problem. You see, the treaty specified—very much at Anaander Mianaai’s insistence—that no such weapons would ever again be provided to Humans.”

  “So the Geck or the Rrrrrr could buy them?”

  “I suppose they could. Though I can’t imagine why they would want a weapon made to destroy Radchaai ships. Unless the treaty broke down, and then, of course, Humans would have problems a good deal more urgent than a few ship-destroying guns, I can assure you.”

  Well. I still had several magazines left. I was still alive. There was, impossibly, a chance. Slim, but even so a good deal less slim than I’d thought just minutes ago. “What if Athoek wanted to buy medical correctives from you?”

  “We could probably come to some sort of an agreement about correctives,” Translator Zeiat replied. “The sooner the better, I imagine. You do seem to be using them at an alarming rate.”


  “Absolutely not,” said Medic four hours later, when I asked her for crutches. More accurately, I had asked Five for them, and Medic had arrived at my bedside minutes later. “You’ve still got correctives working on your upper body, and your right leg, come to that. You can move your arms, so you may think, Fleet Captain, that you could safely get up, but you’d be mistaken.”

  “I’m not mistaken.”

  “Everything’s going fine,” Medic continued, as though I hadn’t spoken. “We’re safe in gate-space and Lieutenant Ekalu has everything under control. If you insist on meetings, you can have them here. Tomorrow—maybe—you can try a few steps and see how it goes.”

  “Give me the crutches.”

  “No.” At some thought, adrenaline surged and her heart rate increased. “You can shoot me for it if you want, I won’t do it.”

  Real fear, that was. But she knew, I was sure, that I wouldn’t shoot her for such a thing. And doctors had more leeway than other officers, at least in medical matters. Still. “I’ll crawl, then.”

  “You won’t,” said Medic. Voice calm, but her heart was still beating fast, and she was beginning to be angry on top of the fear.

  “Watch me.”

  “I don’t know why you even bother with a doctor,” she said, and walked out, still angry.

  Two minutes later Five came into the room with crutches. I sat all the way up, carefully swiveled so my one leg hung off the side of the bed, and got the crutches under my arms. Slid so that my bare foot was on the floor. Put weight on my leg and nearly collapsed, only the crutches and Kalr Five’s quick support holding me upright. “Sir,” Five whispered, “let me help you back into bed. I’ll get you into your uniform if you like and you can have the lieutenants meet you here.”

  “I’m going to do this.”

  Ship said, in my ear, “No, you aren’t. Medic is right. You need another day or two. And if you fall, you’ll only injure yourself further. And no, you can’t even crawl very far right now.”

  Not very like Ship, that, and I almost said so, but realized that, angry and frustrated as I was, it wouldn’t come out well. Instead I said again, “I’m going to do this.” But I couldn’t even make it to the door.

  10

  I needed to meet with all my lieutenants, but first I met with Tisarwat alone. “Sphene talked to me,” she said, standing at the foot of my bed. No one else was in the room, not even Kalr Five or Seivarden. “What it said didn’t entirely surprise me.”

  No, of course it hadn’t. “Were you going to tell me about this at some point, Lieutenant?”

  “I didn’t know!” Distressed. Embarrassed. Hating herself. “That is, she…” Tisarwat stopped. Obviously upset. “The tyrant had thought about using the Ghost System for a base, and thought about building ships there. She’s even thought a great deal about… sequestering some AI cores to build them around. Just in case. Ultimately she decided it was too risky to work. Too easy for her other side to find and maybe even co-opt. But since it had occurred to her, she knew that it was likely to occur to any other part of her. And that old slave trade, sir, it did suggest possibilities, if you wanted to build ancillary-crewed ships. Which she didn’t, but the other one did. So she kept a watch out. After a while, though, it seemed obvious that the rest of her had come to the conclusion that convenient as it seemed, the Ghost System wasn’t the best place to build ships.”

  “And Sphene’s idea about AI cores hidden in the Undergarden?”

  “Again, sir, it’s a pretty obviously convenient place to hide things. She looked, several times, and found nothing. The other one certainly looked as well. It’s not a very good place at all with the Ychana there, but they weren’t there to begin with. And let’s say that at some point the other one did hide something there—once the Ychana moved in, getting them out was going to be difficult.”

  “So why didn’t she stop that from happening?”

  “Nobody realized until they were fairly well entrenched. At which point, forcing them out would have caused problems with station residents—particularly a lot of the Xhai, sir—and complicated station housing arrangements. At the same time, the fact that people were living there, the fact that her opponent had already searched several times and found nothing—that might mean it was a very good place to hide things. As long as she never made it seem like she cared about what happened there. As long as nobody ever thought to do any work there.”

  As long as station officials opposed any work there. “So that explains Eminence Ifian. But what about the rest? Station Administrator Celar was happy enough to authorize the work, once the necessity of it was pointed out. Security was content to go along with her. Governor Giarod seemed to have no real opinion until Ifian made her stand. If keeping searchers out of the Undergarden was so important, if there is something there, why only the eminence to stand guard?”

  “Well, sir.” Tisarwat sounded just the least bit pained, felt, I saw, a stinging sense of shame. “She’s not stupid. Not any of her. No part of her was going to leave someplace like the Undergarden—or the Ghost System—unwatched. So there was a good deal of… of maneuvering and covert conflict over appointments to Athoek System. All the while trying to pretend that really, she didn’t care what happened here. They’d both be trying to place strong pieces here, and both trying to undermine or block each other’s choices. The result is, well, what we have. And I’d have told you all this before, sir, except that I was sure—she was sure—that none of it was relevant, that there was nothing here and the maneuvering over Athoek was a distraction. That it still is a distraction from the main business, which she thinks will mostly play itself out in the palaces. You’re here because, well, for one thing, you wouldn’t have agreed to go anywhere else. And for another, like I told you a while ago, she’s very angry with you. It’s possible the other one will be angry enough to come after you, and leave her position weakened somewhere else. Which, considering recent events, does appear to be the case. I’m sure Omaugh is considering a move against Tstur this very moment.”

  “So Fleet Captain Uemi is likely to have lit out for Tstur on receiving our message. And taken the Hrad fleet with her. She won’t have sent us any help.”

  “That seems likely, sir.” She stood, awkwardly silent, at the end of the bed. Wanting to say something to me, afraid to say it. Then, finally, “Sir, we have to go back. Ekalu thinks we shouldn’t. She thinks we should go to the Ghost System and drop off the Sphene ancillary, and maybe Translator Zeiat, and go back to Omaugh, on the theory that there’s nowhere else to go and authorities there will be friendly toward us. Amaat One agrees with her.” Amaat One was acting lieutenant, while Seivarden was in Medical.

  “We have to go back to Athoek,” I agreed. “But before we do, I want to know how things stand there. It’s interesting to me that Station doesn’t seem to have alerted anyone about the Ychana moving into the Undergarden until there wasn’t really anything anyone could do about it. I thought it must have just been petulant. But if there’s something hidden there it can’t talk about, perhaps it was doing something more.”

  “Maybe,” Tisarwat said, considering. “Though, honestly, this station does tend toward petulance.”

  “Can you blame it?”

  “Not really,” she admitted. “So, sir. About going back.” I gestured to her to continue. “There’s an old Athoeki communications relay in the Ghost System, right at the mouth of the gate. They always meant to expand there, but it never seemed to work out.” I wondered, now, how much that had to do with Sphene’s interference. “Sphene says it still works, and all the official news channels come through it. If that’s the case, we ought to be able to use it to talk to Station. If I can… I’m aware of some ways to access official relays. I should be able to make anything we send look like officially approved messages, or routine requests for routine data. Approved messages coming from an official, well-known relay won’t trigger any alarms.”

  “Not even a relay that’s never sent offi
cial messages to Athoek until now?”

  “If they notice that, sir, that will surely raise an alarm. But someone has to notice that. Station will notice immediately, but to anyone else it’ll probably just look like one more authorized incoming message. And maybe it won’t want or be able to answer us, but we can at least try. We can probably get something out of the official news, no matter what. And it’ll give us time to finish repairs, and you time to recover some, sir, begging your indulgence, while we decide what to do, once we have that information.” That last coming out in an anxious rush. Anxious at referring to my injury. At bringing up the topic of what I might decide to do, when there might well be nothing that we could do. “But, sir, Citizen Uran… Uran has a good head on her shoulders, but it… and Citizen Basnaaid…” The strength of her emotions for Citizen Basnaaid rendered her inarticulate for a moment. “Sir, do you remember, back at Omaugh.” A fresh wave of distress and self-hatred. Back at Omaugh she’d still been Anaander Mianaai, and anything she thought I might remember was also Anaander’s memory. “Do you remember, you said that nothing she could do to you now could possibly be worse than what she’d already done? When you came to Omaugh there was nothing left for you to lose. But that isn’t true anymore. I don’t… I don’t really even think it was true when you said it. But it’s less true now.”

  “You mean,” I said, “that the tyrant is sure to use Basnaaid or Uran against me if she can.” Queter had wanted me to take Uran with me back to the station, away from the tea plantations, so that she would be safe. Now, it seemed, Queter was likely safer than Uran.

  “I wish they had come with us.” Still standing straight at the foot of my bed. Struggling hard to keep herself still, her face impassive. “I know we asked them and they said no, but if we’d had enough warning we could have made them come. And then we could just leave and not come back.”