by Ann Leckie
Seivarden couldn’t see Ekalu’s reaction to this, since Ekalu still sat absolutely motionless. But Ship could see. I could see.
Seivarden said, into Ekalu’s silence, “Also I want to say that I miss you. And what we had. But that’s my own stupid fault.”
Silence, for five seconds, though I thought that at any moment Ekalu might speak, or stand. Or weep. “Also,” said Seivarden, then, “I want to say that you’re an excellent officer. You were thrown into the position with no warning and hardly any official training, and I only wish I’d been as steady and as strong my first weeks as a lieutenant.”
“Well, you were only seventeen at the time,” said Ekalu.
“Lieutenant,” Ship admonished Ekalu, in her ear. “Take the compliment.”
Aloud, Ekalu said, “But thank you.”
“It’s an honor to serve with you,” Seivarden said. “Thank you for taking the time to listen to me.” And she bowed, and left.
Ekalu crossed her arms on the table, put her head down on them. “Oh, Ship,” she said, voice despairing. “Did you tell her to say any of that?”
“I helped a bit with the wording,” Ship replied. “But it wasn’t my idea. She means it.”
“It was the fleet captain’s idea, then.”
“Not actually.”
“She’s so beautiful,” said Ekalu. “And so good in bed. But she’s such a…” Stopped, hearing Etrepa Six’s step in the corridor.
Etrepa Six looked in the door of the decade room, saw her lieutenant with her head down on the table. Put that together with Seivarden’s retreating back, away down the corridor. Came into the decade room and began to make tea.
Not lifting her head, Ekalu said, silently, “If I called her back, would she come?”
“Oh, yes,” said Ship. “But if I were you, I’d let her stew for a while.”
13
Tisarwat came to see me just hours before we exited gate-space, into Athoek system. “Sir,” she said, standing just inside the door to my quarters. “I’m on my way to the airlock.”
“Yes.” I stood. A bit steadier on the prosthetic leg than the day before. “Will you have tea?” Five was off on an errand, but there was tea already made, in the flask on the counter.
“No, sir. I’m not sure there’s time. I just wanted…” I waited. Finally she said, “I don’t know what I wanted. No. Wait. I do. If I don’t come back, will you… that other Tisarwat’s family. You won’t tell them what happened to her, will you?”
The chances of my ever having the chance to say anything at all to Tisarwat’s family was so small as to be almost entirely nonexistent. “Of course not.”
She took a long, relieved breath. “Because they don’t deserve that. I know it sounds stupid. I don’t even know them. Except I know so much about them. I just…”
“It’s not stupid. It’s entirely understandable.”
“Is it?” Her arms at her sides, she closed her gloved hands into fists. Unclosed them. “And if I do come back. If I come back, sir, will you authorize Medic to change my eyes back to a more reasonable color?”
Those foolish lilac eyes, that the previous Tisarwat had bought for herself. “If you like.”
“It’s such a stupid color. And every time I see myself it reminds me of her.” Of that old Tisarwat, I supposed. “They don’t belong to me.”
“They do,” I said. “You were born with them that color.” Her mouth trembled, and tears filled her eyes. I said, “But whatever other color you choose will be yours, too.” That didn’t help her hold back her tears. “One way or another,” I said, “it’ll be all right. Are your meds current?”
“Yes.”
“Your Bos know what they need to do. You know what you need to do. There’s nothing for it now but to do it.”
“I forget you can see all that.” See all her feelings, her reactions, as Ship could. As Ship could show me. “I keep forgetting you can see right inside me, and then when I remember I just…” She trailed off.
“I’m not looking,” I said. “I’ve been trying not to, lately. But I don’t need to look, right now. You’re not the first young lieutenant I’ve met, you know.”
She made a short, breathy hah. “It made so much sense.” She sniffled. “It seemed so obviously the right thing, when I thought of it. And now it seems impossible.”
“That’s how these things go,” I said. “You already know that. Are you sure you don’t want tea?”
“I’m sure,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I’m on my way to the airlock. And I hate having to pee in my vacuum suit.”
I said, sternly, “Straighten up, Lieutenant, and wipe your face.” Without thinking she stood up taller and put her shoulders back. Rubbed her gloved hands on her eyes again. “Seivarden is on her way.”
“Sir,” she said, “I understand about you and Lieutenant Seivarden. Really I do. But does she have to be such a condescending asshole?”
“Probably not,” I said, as the door opened, and Seivarden came in. “Dismissed, Lieutenant.”
“Sir,” Tisarwat said, and turned to go.
Seivarden grinned at her. “Ready to go, kiddo?”
“Don’t,” said Tisarwat, looking Seivarden full in the eye. “Ever. Call me kiddo. Again.” And strode out of the room.
Seivarden lifted her eyebrows. “Nerves?” Amusement, but with an extra layer of curiosity—Tisarwat’s mission was a secret, nearly all her preparation for it hidden. Not from me or Ship, of course, that would be impossible.
“She doesn’t like being condescended to,” I said. Seivarden blinked, surprised. “And also nerves.”
She grinned again. “Thought so.” Her expression turned serious. “I’m here for the gun.” I didn’t move immediately. “If it wasn’t for the leg, Breq, you’d be the best person to go, and you wouldn’t have to give the gun up to anyone.”
“I’ve already had this conversation. With you. With Ship.” With Medic. I know what will happen, she’d said. Things will get hot and you’ll forget the leg won’t hold up to hard use. Or you’ll remember but not care. And if it had just been me, I’d have gone ahead. But it wasn’t just me anymore. “If you lose the gun, I probably won’t live long enough to forgive you.” I could send Seivarden to Athoek Station with a regular sidearm. But the Presger gun would give her the best chance of killing Anaander, armored or not, guarded by ancillaries or not. If she failed, and lost the gun, if Anaander ended up with it, the results could be disastrous.
Seivarden smiled wryly. “I know.”
I turned, opened the lid of the bench behind me, took out the box that held the gun. Set it on the table and opened it. Seivarden reached out, drew out a fragment of black—gun-shaped—the brown of her glove bleeding into it as soon as it came away from the box. “Be careful with it,” I warned, though this was another conversation we had already had. “Translator Zeiat said it was made to destroy Radchaai ships. The 1.11 meters is just a side effect of that. Be careful how you use it.”
“You don’t have to tell me that,” she said, putting the weapon in her jacket, and taking two magazines out of the box.
“If Sword of Gurat really is docked with Athoek Station, you don’t want to blow its heat shield.” Seivarden’s team was going after that young Anaander Mianaai. We wouldn’t know where the tyrant was until Station (we hoped) told us. I thought it most likely she would either be in the Governor’s Palace or aboard Sword of Gurat.
“I understand.” Seivarden’s voice was patient. “Look, Breq… I’m sorry I’m such a jerk sometimes. I’m sorry the only lieutenant you have left is the one you never liked much.”
“It’s all right,” I lied.
“No it isn’t,” she said. “But it’s how things are.”
There wasn’t really any arguing with that. “Don’t be stupid.”
She smiled. “Will you come talk to us before we go? We’re about to do our last equipment checks and go out on the hull.”
“I’d intended to.” I closed t
he box, left it on the table, and headed out the door. As I walked past Seivarden, she reached for my arm. “I don’t need help walking,” I said.
“It was just you seemed a bit wobbly there.” Apologetic. Following me into the corridor.
“That’s the prosthetic adjusting to new growth.” I never knew when it would do that. Just another reason I couldn’t take it into combat. “Sometimes it goes on for a few minutes.”
But it didn’t trouble me again, and I reached the staging area by the airlock without incident, without even limping slightly. “I won’t take too much of your time,” I said, as Seivarden’s two Amaats, and Tisarwat and her two Bos, rose from what they were doing—checking over seals on their vacuum suits—and turned. “I suppose I ought to make some sort of motivational speech, but I don’t have one for you and besides, you’re busy. Come back safe.” I wanted to say something more, to Tisarwat and her Bos, but with Seivarden and her Amaats listening it would be dangerous to even hint at what they were planning to do. Instead I put a gloved hand on Tisarwat’s shoulder.
“Yes, sir,” she said. No trace of her earlier tears in her voice. “Understood, sir.”
I dropped my hand. Turned to Seivarden and her Amaats. “Yes, sir,” Seivarden said. “We will.”
“Right,” I said. “I’ll let you get back to what you were doing.” I looked over at Tisarwat and her Bos again. “I have every confidence in all of you.” I turned then, and left them to finish rechecking seals and tether clips.
Ekalu was on watch, in Command. As I entered she stood up from the single seat. “Sir,” she said, “nothing to report.”
Of course not. We were still in gate-space. The view outside the ship showed absolutely nothing, wouldn’t until we gated into Athoek System. “Sit down, Lieutenant,” I said. “I’m not here to take over.” I just hadn’t wanted to sit in my quarters drinking tea. “I’m perfectly fine standing.”
“You are, Fleet Captain,” said Etrepa Four, at a console. “But we’ll all feel better if you sit down. Begging your generous indulgence, sir.” No, not Etrepa Four, who would never have spoken that way to me, who was having a moment of nauseated panic at having done so.
“Honestly, Ship.”
“Honestly, Fleet Captain.” Four was slightly light-headed with relief at my reaction. Still a bit sick. “It’s a while until anything happens, you may as well sit.”
Lieutenant Ekalu took the handhold beside the seat. “I was about to call for tea, sir.”
“I’m perfectly fine standing,” I said, settling into the seat.
“Yes, sir,” said Ekalu. Her face perfectly expressionless.
Two hours later we exited gate-space into Athoek System. Just for the briefest moment, just long enough for Mercy of Kalr to get a look at the traffic around Athoek Station. The suffocatingly flat not-even-black just gone and the real universe there: sudden, solid depth. Light and warmth and everything suddenly real, Athoek Station shining in the sunlight, Athoek itself, shadowed white and blue, and then it was gone, wiped away by the smothering flatness of gate-space. Seivarden and her Amaats, Tisarwat and her Bos, already out on the hull, vacuum-suited, tethered, waiting, started at the brightness, suddenly there, suddenly gone. “Oh,” gasped Amaat Two. Something about that brief flash of reality, that sudden return to uncanny darkness, made her feel as if she couldn’t quite breathe properly. It was a common reaction. “That was…”
“I told you it was weird,” said Seivarden, on the hull beside Two. “Am I really the only person here who’s done this before?” No reply. “Well, besides Fleet Captain, of course. And Ship. They definitely have.”
We had. As Seivarden spoke, Ship was comparing what it had just seen around Athoek Station with what we knew ought to be there, with the various schedules and travel clearances we knew about. Calculating where things would be, some time shortly in the future. “Eleven minutes and three seconds,” said Etrepa Four, behind me in Command. Said Ship, into the ears of the soldiers waiting on the hull. Adrenaline spiked, heart rates shot up in all of them. Seivarden grinned. “I didn’t know I’d missed this,” she said. “It’s awfully quiet, though. Fleet Captain used to sing the whole time.”
“Used to?” asked Amaat Two, and everyone laughed, short and tense. Knowing that they’d be moving soon, and out of reach of Mercy of Kalr, with no knowledge of where or when we might come back for them. Only Tisarwat knew why that was, or how long it might be. She was the one who needed time to work.
“There was a lot more of the fleet captain then,” said Seivarden. “And she had a better voice. Better voices.”
“I like the fleet captain’s voice,” said Bo Three. “I didn’t at first, but I guess I’m used to it.”
“Yeah,” said Tisarwat.
Amaat Four said, “Lieutenant, I hope you don’t expect us to sing for the next ten minutes.”
“Oh, I like that idea,” said Seivarden. Her Amaats, and Tisarwat’s Bos, groaned. “We should have picked one out in advance and rehearsed it. With parts, like Fleet Captain used to do.” She sang, “I was walking, I was walking / When I met my love / I was in the street walking / When I met my true love.” Or tried to. The tune was mostly right, but the words weren’t in Radchaai and it had been decades—subjectively—since she’d heard me sing it. What Seivarden remembered of the words was nonsense.
“Is that one of the fleet captain’s?” asked Tisarwat. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard her sing it.”
“I heard,” ventured Bo Three, “that when they pulled her in, you know, the other day, she was half-dead and still trying to sing.”
“I believe it,” said Seivarden. “I have no trouble imagining that if she thought she was about to die, she’d pick a song for it.” Two seconds of silence. “Remember what I said, about the tether clips. We won’t have much time, when we gate back in.” We didn’t want to be seen, didn’t want anyone on the station—except Station—to suspect that soldiers from Mercy of Kalr might be arriving. We would arrive in Athoek System as close to the station as we could, for the barest instant, not even a second, and then, the moment Seivarden and Tisarwat and their soldiers were clear, we would be gone again. “So as soon as you get the order, unclip and push off, like we practiced. If you miss, if the clip sticks, or anything, don’t try to catch up. Just stay here.” A chorused Yes, sir. “If you push off at the wrong time and don’t end up at the station, Ship probably won’t be able to retrieve you. I’ve seen it happen.”
They had all heard this, over and over during the past few days. “I wonder,” said Bo Three, “if Fleet Captain has a song picked out in advance. You know, so if suddenly she finds herself in danger she doesn’t have to worry about which one it will be.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if she does,” replied Tisarwat.
“Two minutes,” said Ship, who had all this while been counting the time down in their visions.
Seivarden said, “I think she’s got so many songs, they just kind of come out of her on their own.” Silence. Then, “Right, one minute. Take hold of your clips and be ready to move.”
This was, in some ways, the most dangerous moment of the entire endeavor. Even aside from the risk of mistiming the departure and ending up lost and drifting somewhere unthinkably distant from the ship, or any kind of help, there was also the question of whether Ship had correctly calculated its brief exit into the real universe. Anything might be in the spot where we came out of gate-space. That anything could be as small as a sail-pod, or as large as a cargo carrier. Though it was unlikely Ship would have missed a cargo carrier in its calculations, it was still entirely possible. And even a sail-pod would be a danger to the vacuum-suited soldiers outside the protection of Ship’s hull plating. Or there was always the chance that someone might have seen us flash into the system and back out, minutes earlier, and might be waiting for us.
“On the count,” said Seivarden, though of course the numbers were already ticking down in all their visions. “Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Go!”
I felt the moment all six on the hull shoved away.
Light. The six Mercy of Kalr soldiers sailed toward Athoek Station, suddenly meters away, a stretch of vents and conduits no one ever even thought about except Station Maintenance. But Bo Three had fumbled the clip, had pushed away but only pulled her tether taut. She pulled herself back, reached for the clip again. “Freeze!” I shouted at her. Aloud. In that instant Athoek Station disappeared, the rest of the universe, Seivarden and Tisarwat and the others, all gone. We were back in gate-space.
“Bo Three fumbled the clip,” Ship said to the startled Etrepas in Command. “But she’s all right, she’s still here.” We would have no way of knowing if the others had gotten safely to the station. Wouldn’t until next we gated into the system.
At least their equipment had been distributed among the three—Tisarwat and Nine wouldn’t be in any serious difficulties if they didn’t have the things Three was carrying. “It’s all right, Bo,” I said, silently this time. She still had her hand on the tether clip, still hung outside the ship. Mortified. Horrified. Angry at herself and at me. “I’ve fumbled plenty of times myself.” A lie—in two thousand years, as Justice of Toren One Esk I had only ever fumbled a clip twice. “And you wouldn’t have made it. If I’d been in your place I couldn’t have moved fast enough.” Another lie—I was fairly sure I could have. “Come inside, get out of the suit, have some tea.”
“Fleet Captain,” said Bo Three. I had thought it was an acknowledgment, and so, apparently, had Three, but somewhere between syllables it had turned into a protest. “She’s just a kid, sir!”
Tisarwat, she meant. “Nine is with her, Bo. Nine won’t leave her for anything. You know that.” Her adrenaline was high, her heart beating hard, from the moment, from the anticipation of what they’d planned to do on the station. From the sudden, shocking stop at the end of her tether, from my urgent order to freeze. From her own anger at herself for failing to stay with Tisarwat. “It’s all right, Three. Come inside.”
Bo Three closed her eyes. Took two deep breaths. Opened her eyes again and began the move toward the airlock. I returned my attention to Command. To Ekalu, who still stood beside my seat, the handhold tight in her grip. Her face had gone expressionless out of pure habit, a legacy from when she’d been a common soldier on this ship. She was nearly as upset as Bo Three, now pulling herself into the airlock, but Ekalu’s distress couldn’t be for the same reasons. I reached for what she was seeing.