Two Foam didn’t seem particularly comfortable standing in her superior officer’s quarters while said superior officer found the other pieces of her uniform and put them back on. Nevertheless, she gamely directed her eyes toward the ceiling and explained. “Sir. We have one of the aliens.”
“What? Alive? Did we capture a ship?”
Two Foam shook her head. “Dead. A Shard from the Seventeenth found it floating in vacuum after one of the … engagements we’ve been having. He lassoed it and brought it back.”
Nine Hibiscus felt shaky with exhilaration; she had to exert effort to keep a visible tremor out of her hands. “Get that soldier a commendation. From Forty Oxide, if you can manage it; it should come from his own Fleet Captain. And—where is it? The alien?”
“In the medical bay,” said Two Foam. “The medtechs are going to autopsy it. But I thought you might want to see it first.”
“Fuck yes I do,” said Nine Hibiscus, and slammed her feet into her boots. “Let’s go.”
Medical was two decks up and in the rear of the ship. They made the fifteen-minute walk in ten, and Nine Hibiscus took a deep, brief pleasure in how Bubbles kept pace with her, a half step behind to her left. It made her feel like something was right in the universe, and she was going to need that to deal with whatever she was about to see. She was trying not to imagine it. Imagination created biases. And besides, all she could think of was a smaller, human-scale version of their three-ringed ships, and that was absurd; they clearly weren’t some kind of hungry ship-species that budded off smaller ships. The Shard pilot wouldn’t have been able to bring one in if they had been.
This was what imagining got her. Absurdities. Comforting absurdities. She suspected what she was going to be looking at would be much worse than anything she could come up with—
But it wasn’t.
Which was awful.
Laid out on the table the medtechs usually used for surgery, which had been stripped of its standard padding and cushions designed to hold a human body in place, pared down to flat metal, was something that looked like an animal. Not even a horrible animal. Just a new one.
They’d stripped it of its clothes, which were a deep red tactical-weight cloth and looked well made—someone would analyze them later, though the fact that it wore clothes at all was significant. But now, now was for the creature itself. Nine Hibiscus stepped close, close enough to see that it would have towered over her by a foot and a half at least when it had been alive and standing. The naked alien had four limbs, like most bipeds. The rear two were thick and short, powerful in the thighs below a long torso; the front two were overlong by human standards, with four-fingered hands that ended in blunt claws. The claws were capped, decoratively, in some kind of bright plastic shot through with silvery wires. Those might be a piloting interface, Nine Hibiscus thought, fascinated, and then kept looking, scanning up the body. The skin was mottled—it could have been trauma, or vacuum-chill, but she thought it was coloration, spots and blotches—and the neck. The neck was wrong.
Too long. Half as long as the torso, a neck for bending and tearing, flexible, muscle-ridged, leading to a head that was all jaw, mouth open in death, a dark tongue hanging over carnivore teeth, jagged and massive. The eyes faced forward, like a human’s eyes, and were sightless, clouded, the left one burst open during whatever dying had happened to it. Predator’s eyes, like a human’s.
The ears were cups set far back on the skull, and faintly furred. Somehow that was the worst thing about it. Those ears were like the ears of the soft almost-cat pets from Kauraan, that purred and bred in the air ducts and annoyed Twenty Cicada. And they were on this thing, this otherwise hairless scavenger thing that was killing her Fleet.
“Is it a mammal?” Nine Hibiscus asked. She knew how to kill mammals. They had fairly standard physiologies. The heart, for example, was in the chest.
“It’s not an insect or a reptile,” said the medtech. “Probably a mammal. A male-sexed one.” He gestured; Nine Hibiscus noted the penile sheath and nodded. “I’ll know more when we open it up.”
“Well, then, open it up,” she said. “Figure out how it works, so we can know how best to stop it from working.”
INTERLUDE
THIS is not the first time this has happened. The place: the depth of Bardzravand Sector, close enough to the Anhamemat Gate that the discontinuity of jumpgate space begins to distort vision. Human eyes—and other eyes, any eyes that function on the old clever model of refraction and reflection, that assembly of light on a retina into image flaring between one neuron and the next—they cannot see what a jumpgate does to space-time. There is an inability to assemble the light into any coherent image. A collapse of meaning.
That discontinuity shivers, shudders, spreads. A portion of it sections off, and moves. A ripple thrown into the black, the afterimage of a stone landing in water. The half-caught reflection of a school of fish, glinting once as light glances off their scales, and then—moving together, angling—gone, unseeable.
This is not at all the first time this has happened, and the last time it did—the last time it did, in the aftermath Dekakel Onchu held the hand of her terrified and half-dead pilot and imagined how the shimmering black between stars could resolve into hungry, lamprey-mouth rings. Could devour the entirety of an imago-line before there was any chance of preservation of memory.
The last time, there had been no steady flow of Teixcalaanli military vessels through the Far Gate. Onchu had hoped that, if Darj Tarats was using all of Lsel Station as bait for Teixcalaan, drawing the Empire through and past them into the maws of those ring-ships—she’d hoped at least she wouldn’t have to deal with any more ring-ships eating her pilots.
Hoped, and is now denied even that.
The message comes in bright and hot, a desperate, breathless cry over long-range broadcast: They hide in the jumpgate, they LOOK like the jumpgate, they’re after me, I’m not fast enough—
And Onchu, sitting in the nexus of Pilot’s Command, for her the true heart of Lsel, no matter what Heritage believed about their room-repository of imago-machines—Onchu, sitting there, has to ask her pilot to not come home. To not lead that hungry thing that Tarats thinks could devour an empire back to the fragile shell of Lsel Station. It is the worst thing she’s ever done. When she dies, she will die thinking of it, like a splinter finally reaching her heart after years of worming its way through flesh. Over that long-range broadcast, she says: Go through the jumpgate. If they’re chasing you make them chase you. Dzoh Anjat—her pilot’s name, or that pilot’s imago’s name, in these moments she slips, she has known so many of her people, in all their iterations—I am with you. Lsel is with you. Take them through the jumpgate and hope the Empire is on the other side to catch you. I’ll be listening—
She does not receive an answer aside from a positional ping. A small shift in that discontinuity around the Far Gate. Dzoh Anjat and her pursuer, gone over. Gone entire.
Dekakel Onchu is very good at listening, and she stays by her instruments for hours and hours. She never hears from Dzoh Anjat again.
(Dzoh Anjat, obedient and patriotic, going to her death, but not the death she expected: Teixcalaan is on the other side of the Anhamemat Gate, yes, but Teixcalaan sees the three-ringed maw of one of their enemy’s ships and cares not at all for one small patrol-craft smashed in the conflagration of their energy-cannon fire—cares not at all, and may not have even seen, or noticed, or thought to look. Only to keep themselves safe from what appears, to the member of the Seventeenth Legion who sees that rippling discontinuity materialize, to be a flanking ambush.)
And Dekakel Onchu cannot hear the singing of the we, not at all. Not how the extinguishing of the voices on that ring-ship does not alter the volume of the song, but only its shape. She thinks language, after all.
She thinks language, and finds herself ragged with tears, waiting for voices that will never come to her, not once while she is alive.
CHAPTER
&n
bsp; EIGHT
… despite his three-indiction stay amongst the Ebrekti, Eleven Lathe neglected to provide the Empire’s scientists with much in the way of physiological information. His Dispatches is a work of philosophical and moral exploration, and perhaps a person cannot be expected to provide both a spiritual exegesis of living amongst aliens and an accurate description of their physical habits, development, diet, and morbidities—but the sheer weight of absence in the text of much practical information means that readers of the Dispatches are far more acquainted with Eleven Lathe’s mind than they are with an Ebrekti body—or an Ebrekti anything-at-all. We sent a poet where we ought to have sent a team of ixplanatl researchers.
—introduction to a scholarly commentary on Dispatches from the Numinous Frontier, composed on commission by the ixplanatl Two Catenary, chief of medical ethics at the Twelve Solar-Flare Memorial Teaching Hospital
* * *
>>QUERY/auth:ONCHU(PILOTS)/“re-implantation”
>>There are no records including “re-implantation” in the database. Please refine your search and try again.
>>QUERY/auth:ONCHU(PILOTS)/“imago repair”
>>237 results found. Display? Refine search?
>>REFINE/auth:ONCHU(PILOTS)/“surgical” OR “post- traumatic”
>> 19 results found. Displaying in alpha order …
—record of queries made to Lsel medical research database by Dekakel Onchu, 92.1.1–19A (Teixcalaanli reckoning)
ON the other side of the last jumpgate between them and the war was the Fleet. Or at least six legions’ worth of the Fleet, and a swath of support ships, darting between the hulking elegance of the larger destroyers and flagships and gunners. The array of them all ate up the visible stars. There weren’t many stars to start with. Mahit knew this sector of space, though she’d never been to it before; it was resource-poor, Teixcalaanli-controlled, and Lsel Station kept a watch on it and did little else.
It was also where Darj Tarats had first noticed the aliens she’d just spent a nauseating six hours listening to, over and over until she was sure she’d dream that sequence of static and metallic squalling in auditory afterimage. This was the sector that had disappeared sufficient numbers of Lsel pilots to make a pattern that first Tarats and then, later, Dekakel Onchu could notice. Notice, take note of, and use. And nevertheless there weren’t enough stars here. No stars, no sky like on the City or any other planet, and only an enormous amount of Teixcalaanli firepower to steer by.
They were very beautiful, all those ships. Mahit’s childhood had been full of breathless horror biopics about what the Fleet could do to a planet (not a Station, never a Station, always a planet, always far away, but it was easy to extrapolate), and equally breathless serial dramas about life on a Teixcalaanli legionary ship, all uniforms and poetry contests off-shift. Fuck, but she’d devoured those like sugar pastilles. She could probably still explain the plots, the convoluted love stories and the politics and multiseason faction-swapping and here she was, and even after all that had happened in the City three months ago, she still felt doubled. Vertiginous and falling. The self that experienced and the self that evaluated, wondered, Is this when I feel real? Is this when I feel like a civilized person?
And the self that sounded like Yskandr, dark and amused: Is this when I forget what being a Stationer feels like? How about now? Now? Are we still Mahit Dzmare?
She had imagined the Fleet, and feared it, and admired it, and seeing it was still a profound discontinuity.
Three Seagrass had no such problems. She had effortlessly infiltrated the affections—or at least the interest—of the Jasmine Throat’s comms officer, and now that they were in hailing range of the Fleet’s flagship-of-flagships, the yaotlek Nine Hibiscus’s very own Weight for the Wheel, she leaned over his shoulder and took control of the transmission.
“This is Special Envoy Three Seagrass aboard the supply ship Jasmine Throat,” she said. “Hailing the flagship Weight for the Wheel—you called for the Information Ministry, I believe?”
There was a long pause, longer than the time it would take for the transmission to cross the sublight distance between the two ships. Mahit imagined that other bridge: Were they surprised? Annoyed? Had they even been warned about the advent of Three Seagrass?
At last, a transmission came back: an arch tenor voice, smooth and completely unaccented, as if whoever was speaking had learned Teixcalaanli from newsfeeds, or was a newsfeed anchor himself. “Welcome to the Tenth Legion, Envoy. This is the ikantlos-prime Twenty Cicada, acting as adjutant for the yaotlek herself—she regrets being occupied at the moment and unable to greet you properly.”
“Formality,” Three Seagrass said smoothly, “is for the imperial court; this is a battlefield. I look forward to speaking with the yaotlek whenever she has time to spare. We’ll be on board shortly, adjutant—we’ll come in with your supplies on the Jasmine Throat’s shuttle.”
“We?” asked that voice, and Mahit thought, Well, so much for this being simple.
“We!” Three Seagrass agreed, enthusiastically. “I’ve brought a consultant linguist. She’s a barbarian, but don’t hold it against her. She’s brilliant.”
And then she cut the connection on the adjutant. On the man who was the second-most powerful person in the entire Tenth Legion. Mahit couldn’t decide if she was horrified, proud, or simply, deliciously, hideously intrigued. She watched Three Seagrass straighten up, flash a wide-eyed Teixcalaanli smile at the comms officer, and crack her spine, leaning back with her hands laced together behind her. Getting ready, Mahit thought. I should, too.
“Consultant linguist, mm? Is that what I am now?” she asked.
Three Seagrass shrugged, one shoulder and one hand in brief motion. “If you’d rather be the Lsel Ambassador to Teixcalaan, I can reintroduce you when we get there.” She brushed Mahit’s wrist with warm fingertips as she passed by, and Mahit followed her easily, thinking of flowers that turned toward sunlight, and less pleasant tropisms—gravity wells, the attraction of insects to rot. “Which reminds me, Mahit—if you want to be the Lsel Ambassador, do you have the authority to negotiate with our screaming aliens on behalf of your Station?”
Yskandr murmured to her.
Oh, fuck it, why not be an ambassador and a diplomat—be useful again, have authority and room to use it and use it for Lsel as well as for Teixcalaan—do something more than escape and be Tarats’s corroding agent. Do something.
The supply shuttle in the Jasmine Throat’s hangar was being loaded with practiced efficiency—grey-metal case after grey-metal case heaved inward by a small assembly line of Teixcalaanlitzlim. Three Seagrass and Mahit joined the line, as if they were cargo themselves, though Mahit doubted they’d be tossed bodily inside.
“Of course I have that authority,” said Mahit. “No one un-Ambassadored me, Three Seagrass, no matter what the Councilor for Heritage implied.”
“She didn’t,” said Three Seagrass, sounding quite interested indeed, and slipped inside the shuttle. Over her shoulder she added, “Imply that.”
Fuck.
Mahit said, “Well, that’s unexpectedly pleasant, all considered,” and didn’t go on any further. She didn’t want to—she couldn’t tell Three Seagrass that she was here to spy on the war for Darj Tarats, in order to escape Aknel Amnardbat’s surgeons. To do worse things for Darj Tarats, if there was an opportunity. She couldn’t. So she got into the shuttle instead, settling amongst the supply crates and strapping herself into some freefall-control webbing. There were similar webbings on all of the walls, the floor, the ceiling. It was an efficient, well-designed ship. It must make a hundred of these short hops in a month—
“Quite,” said Three Seagrass, all edges, interest and wariness and a sort of invitation deferred: We can play, Mahit, even if we don’t play just now, if playing’s what you want.
The shuttle door sealed behind them with a hiss of vacuum, and Mahit shut
her eyes against acceleration.
* * *
It took too long to approach Weight for the Wheel—longer than Mahit expected, given how huge the flagship was. It had seemed very close from the bridge of the Jasmine Throat. Now it was growing larger and larger through the small viewport inside the supply shuttle until it was horizon and sky and ground all at once, a solid wall of ship that seemed to be the entire visible universe. A solid wall of ship with a discontinuity, a maw, black and wide, a hangar bay—and that too was too large and growing larger all the time, gaining color and dimension as the shuttle approached it. A hangar bay which could contain not only this sizeable supply shuttle but hundreds of tiny triangular ships, arrayed in racks awaiting their pilots, and other large vessels besides, and still have room for at least ten shuttles the size of this one—a hangar bay with a ceiling as high as some buildings had been, in Palace-Central down on the City.
They landed with hardly a shudder, and Mahit was on a Teixcalaanli warship for the first time in her life.
The shuttle doors opened immediately, and as Mahit and Three Seagrass released their webbing-harnesses, they were swarmed by enterprising Teixcalaanlitzlim: soldiers in stripped-down and functional uniform, grey and gold coveralls with reinforced patches at the knee, their name glyphs and the insignia of the Tenth Legion on the left shoulder. Swarmed, and ignored in favor of the supply crates. It was like being inside an enormous machine that had absolutely no interest in you, since you weren’t shaped like the sort of object the machine preferred to ingest and spit out again on the other side.
Three Seagrass flashed her a smile, lightning-quick widening of the eyes, the barest hint of white teeth. “Ready?”
“As I’m going to be,” said Mahit, and just as she had once before, stepped off a shuttle and into Teixcalaanli space to see what was waiting for her there.
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