A Desolation Called Peace

by Arkady Martine

  She could imagine it: a black-void tide that swallowed ships and people faster than a person could count the losses. She could imagine it, because she had seen it. With her own eyes and with the eyes of her Shard pilots.

  Why had she let the envoy convince her not to destroy these—things, these things that had eaten worlds and would eat more, these ship-destroying spitting things that had stolen her adjutant and killed her pilots and might kill her career, or just her body—why would she do anything but try to smash the source of that tide, if she could do it?

  “I appreciate your candor, Councilor,” she said, smooth, ice to hide the rage in her throat and chest, the burning engine of it. “In a moment I will send in my chief navigation officer, who will help you pinpoint on our maps the known incursion points. I have one more question for you: does your Station have fast ships? We may need all the help we can get.”

  “You would need to speak to Councilor Onchu of the Pilots to coordinate such a use of our resources, and she has reason to wish to keep them for herself,” said the Councilor, beginning to lean forward, showing interest for the first time. “Councilor Onchu disapproves of even my small effort here with you, when you—in all your great power, O Teixcalaan—should have been enough to keep these monsters from our home. She is a little busy, at this moment.”

  Nine Hibiscus was about to snap at him, tell him that insulting all of Teixcalaan was not about to save his Station—but before she could, her cloudhook covered one of her eyes with green, green and white, Two Foam calling to her from the bridge: Swarm was talking to them again. Talking to them, and asking for her.

  * * *

  Over the static of narrowcast communication from Peloa-2, Twenty Cicada’s voice had the particular edge that Nine Hibiscus remembered from some of their very first deployments together—a rapid, vivid, sudden prolixity that she’d most often heard when he was sleep-deprived, overworked, and absolutely sure of the shape of the universe because he’d seen the pattern of it. At least he wasn’t calling her Mallow. Or my dear—if he ever did that again, she was going to kill him first before anything else had the privilege of breaking her heart.

  He was talking, of course, with Dzmare and Three Seagrass, who had managed to take over the comms console in her absence. Two Foam stood next to them, sharply observant, as if she was waiting for the envoy or the Stationer to commit sufficient treason that she could cut the comm line entirely. Nine Hibiscus had come in on the tail end of a sentence: “—have a fair certainty that I understand not only how they communicate without speaking, Envoy, but also how they communicate faster than we can track—it’s not speech at all, it’s a networked collectivity.”

  “They share minds?” asked Dzmare, right as Three Seagrass said, “They share memory?” at the same moment. She and Dzmare abruptly stared at each other, like they had some deep secret between them.

  Dzmare said, “Minds or memory. If you can tell—”

  “I can’t,” Twenty Cicada said. “Certainly not yet, at least—at the moment we’re still drawing at each other, and they find me and my lack of networked connectivity profoundly disturbing, by the way—and what would memory even be like in a collective network of minds?”

  “Mahit?” asked Three Seagrass, as if she expected Dzmare to know the answer to that entirely philosophical question.

  Nine Hibiscus had more important questions to ask. “Swarm,” she said, as warm as she could make it over the tinny-sounding void of space between them. “I’m sorry I wasn’t available immediately—how did you figure this out?”

  “Yaotlek,” Twenty Cicada said, and he managed to make her title sound like a name, sound like her name, he was that satisfied with himself and that glad to hear from her. “It’s the fungus. That’s how. They give it to their babies, and it—wakes them up, that’s as close as I can tell. They drew me a picture—a small one of them being fed it, and then being connected to all the other ones with these fractal networks. It’s some sort of telepathy drug—or a parasite that’s gone symbiotic—what I wouldn’t give for a team of ixplanatlim and a research institute, do we know anyone on Weight for the Wheel who has a hobby studying parasitic fungi—”

  “… I’ve never asked that question,” Nine Hibiscus found herself saying, wondering if anyone would have a hobby like that deliberately, especially on a Fleet ship, which was determinedly free of fungi whenever possible. “I have no idea. The same fungus that killed that medical cadet, you think it makes them a—hive mind?”

  “The very same. It wasn’t Six Rainfall’s fault that he died—I still think he had a massive anaphylactic reaction—and besides, our enemies don’t inject the stuff, they eat it.”

  “An entirely organic way of preserving memory,” said Dzmare, interrupting them in a low, fascinated tone. Nine Hibiscus ignored her. Hadn’t Twenty Cicada just said that it wasn’t memory the aliens shared, but minds?

  “Not sabotage, then, to have that fungus ride along into our ship,” she said. It wasn’t quite a question.

  “Not on purpose, no,” said Twenty Cicada. “But nuance entirely escapes me, Mallow, I’m working in rebuses, and they’re talking—or singing—to one another all inside their enormous fungal hive mind—I have an idea. You won’t like it.”

  Nine Hibiscus wanted to laugh, to hug him, to have him back on their ship. “What is this idea that I won’t like?”

  “I think I am going to eat this fungus,” said her adjutant, her dearest friend, her second-in-command for more than twenty years. “And then I’ll be able to talk to them directly.”

  It was the worst idea Nine Hibiscus had ever heard.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTEEN

  […] military applications seem a logical extension of algorithmic information-sharing processes already in use in law enforcement. While the interface for a pilot is necessarily more limited than what is available to one of the Sunlit (allowing for flexibility in time-of-use instead of relying on always-on algorithms), initial tests of shared proprioception are promising. Given the processing capabilities of Shard interface, Science strongly believes that Shards would be a first wide-deployment location for this new technology […]

  —from “Report on Human-Algorithmic Interfaces: Military Applications,” prepared by the ixplanatl team of Two Kyanite (Principal Investigator), Fifteen Ton, and Sixteen Felt, submitted to and approved by Science Minister Ten Pearl

  * * *

  The statistical chance of imago-integration failure leading to irreversible psychological and/or neurological damage is 0.03%, or three instances in every ten thousand. Heritage and Life Support both consider this level of risk acceptable.

  —from Imago Surgery: What to Expect, pamphlet distributed as part of routine medical evaluation before implantation of an imago-machine

  EIGHT Antidote lost twenty minutes trying to find a Shard berthed somewhere in Nasturtium Terminal. There was nothing that looked like the sliver of tumbling sharp-edged glass that he thought a Shard should be, based on all of the specs he’d seen in the Ministry of War, the shape of glitter-point single-pilot fighters scattered over the black of a cartograph table. Twenty minutes before he remembered that almost all Shards would be inside a larger Fleet ship, hanging in berths.

  He didn’t need a Shard, exactly. He needed a Shard pilot, who would let him into a Shard.

  That was worse, because how was he going to find a pilot—he couldn’t go into a bar, he couldn’t call up the Ministry and ask—and he was losing time every moment. Every minute he stood lost in the chaos of Nasturtium Terminal, Nineteen Adze’s order to commit the Fleet to the total destruction of a whole planet got closer and closer to reaching the yaotlek. His own order was so far behind.

  Eventually he found himself lurking behind the Information mail kiosk again, out of eyeshot of the asekretim, trying to imagine how he could get onto a Fleet ship. Maybe he could enlist? He wasn’t old enough, but he could pretend to be … until someone looked up his genetic print and found out that he was
the imperial heir and returned him to Palace-Earth like a lost kitten. That wouldn’t work. He could maybe—climb into a crate being loaded onto a Fleet ship? Stow away?

  All of his ideas were out of the stupidest episodes of holodramas, the ones he always turned off.

  And then, as if he’d made them up, two Fleet soldiers walked right around the Information kiosk and straight toward him. They were both tall and had long dark hair in military-style tight queues, and the one on the left had, right below the patch on her sleeve with the emblem of the Second Legion—that binary star-system in mutual orbit was one of the easiest to recognize—a metallic triangle, all of its lines curved as if it was in motion. She was a Shard pilot. Right here. It seemed impossible. He needed one, and one appeared—except. Except it was the Shards which took the mail on fastest-courier override through the jumpgate mail-system, when the destination was the Fleet.

  He had made this soldier up, in a way.

  He’d made her come to the kiosk to take his message to the Fleet, and she’d just picked it up.

  Eight Antidote swallowed. Straightened up to his full height, and wished he could be dressed like the imperial heir Eight Antidote, and not the errand runner Eight Antidote. But he didn’t have anything but himself. He intercepted the soldiers on an angle, and stopped directly in front of them, making himself a nuisance that would either be tripped over or paused for.

  “Honorable pilots,” he said, not quite knowing whether honorable was the right respectful honorific, but he was about to demand a favor from them so he figured it would do. “I am the imperial associate His Excellency Eight Antidote, and I would be very grateful if you would allow me access to your ship for a short moment.”

  The two soldiers glanced at each other, and back at him. One of them—not the pilot, her friend—said, “You’re who, kid?”

  Eight Antidote gritted his teeth. “I am Eight Antidote. Heir to the sun-spear throne and the rule of all Teixcalaan. If you’d like, I’m sure your cloudhook will show you holos of me, for a visual comparison. I need access to your ship … Well. Her ship.” He pointed with his chin at the Shard pilot. “I need a Shard.”

  “This is definitely the weirdest thing that’s happened to me since we got drunk on Kumquat at that really horrible bar on Xelka Station,” said the soldier. Eight Antidote really didn’t want to know what Kumquat was, aside from a fruit. Or whether it could be an alcoholic fruit.

  “What do you need a Shard for?” asked the Shard pilot, which was a lot better than anecdotes about getting drunk. Eight Antidote hoped that she’d told her friend about the Shard trick, because otherwise her friend was going to find out right now, in the middle of Inmost Province Spaceport.

  “I know,” he said, “that Shard pilots can feel each other when you’re inside your ships. Feel, and talk maybe. Over impossible distances. Over jumpgates.”

  The pilot’s face had gone statue-still, like a mask. “How did you come by this information?” she said.

  Eight Antidote told the truth. It seemed the most effective method. “From the Minister of War Three Azimuth, in private conference.” Not in private conference with him, but it was close enough.

  “… If you are really that Eight Antidote,” the Shard pilot said, slowly, consideringly—and her friend interrupted her.

  “Four Crocus, I am sure the kid who’s the imperial heir is, like, one indiction old. If that. This guy’s too old.”

  “Look it up,” Eight Antidote said, pleading. If they wouldn’t believe him—if he was stopped now, he was never going to get a chance like this again, and half-done interstellar mail fraud was far worse than successful interstellar mail fraud. “Please. I need this. I’ll order you as the heir to the Teixcalaanli Empire if I have to, honorable pilots, but I don’t want to have to. Please.”

  The pilot Four Crocus did something with her cloudhook, her eyes moving very fast, shuddering in their sockets. Rapid-search.

  “… He looks right,” she said. “And. And you don’t know what it’s been like, Thirteen Muon, in the Shard-sight these past few days. If he wants to see it—if the Minister sent him to see it—I have to get this message out, but I’ll show him a Shard.”

  “It’s on your head,” said Thirteen Muon. “But you know I don’t stop you, I never stop you, we’d never have any fun if I did.”

  “This way, Your Excellency,” said Four Crocus, and Eight Antidote followed her and her fellow soldier back into the maze of Nasturtium Terminal’s ships.

  * * *

  The Shard was smaller than he’d imagined it would be. It wasn’t inside a Fleet ship after all—Four Crocus was on mail-courier duty, some complex sort of punishment or possibly reward that Eight Antidote couldn’t understand from her conversations with Thirteen Muon while they walked, and thus she and her ship were right in the spaceport, not hanging in a Shard-berth inside her usual ship. That ship was the Exultation-class medium cruiser Mad With Horizons of the Second Legion, and it was waiting for her three jumpgate-trips away from the Jewel of the World, and from what it sounded like, she couldn’t wait to get back and was worried about going back at the same time.

  But for now her Shard nestled in Nasturtium Terminal like a splinter of glass stuck in a palm, ready to be caught up in one of the spaceport’s skynets and launched orbitward. It was big enough for one grown person to fit in, if they didn’t move too much. Eight Antidote touched its side. The metal was cool and smooth. He knew that the little ship could orient itself in any direction, on any axis, and the pilot would hang in the center, in her capsule, gravityless and free.

  “Wait with him,” said Four Crocus to Thirteen Muon. “Ten minutes, no more. I need to ask a favor from whoever else is on mail duty—this message is really urgent, and I don’t know how long His Excellency is going to want to experience Shard-sight—so the next ship in line can take it through the jumpgate.”

  Eight Antidote was glad that Four Crocus took her job so seriously. He wished he could do something like—give her a commendation. Maybe he could, when he was Emperor, if she remembered him. That message—his order—needed to leave now. Even if it meant he had to spend an excruciating ten minutes under the supervision of Thirteen Muon, who clearly hadn’t encountered a child since they’d been one themselves, and thought all children were interested mostly in star handball players (Eight Antidote didn’t care) or star musicians that sold out enormous concert venues and made kids scream a lot (Eight Antidote really didn’t care).

  Eventually, out of agonized frustration at waiting, sure that at any moment someone would either set off an incendiary device or come to collect him and throw him back into his rooms in the palace like they were a jail, he asked what Thirteen Muon did in the Second Legion. This seemed to be a relief to both of them: Thirteen Muon was an engineering specialist who spent most of their time working on better ways to repair starship hulls, and Eight Antidote knew absolutely nothing about handheld microthrusters for close navigation in zero gravity, which meant he could actually concentrate without vibrating out of his skin with impatience, because he had to pay attention if he wanted to understand anything Thirteen Muon was saying.

  Even so, when Four Crocus finally came back, he cut Thirteen Muon off directly. “I need to go inside,” he said to her. “I need to be inside Shard-sight, Pilot Four Crocus.” And then, feeling himself blush with frustration at needing to ask for everything, “I need you to show me how.”

  Four Crocus glanced at Thirteen Muon, and then back to him. “Are you sure?” she asked. “It’s a lot easier than you think. It’s a lot worse than you think.”

  “He’s a kid, Four Crocus, even if he actually is who he says he is—you came down to the Jewel of the World on leave and called me up to go get smashed because of what you said happened to you the last time you were in Shard-sight, and you’re going to put a kid through that?” asked Thirteen Muon, and Eight Antidote really, really didn’t have time for some kind of adult argument about whether this would be good for him or not, o
r whatever else their argument was about. He didn’t understand it, and he didn’t want to.

  “Show me,” he repeated. “Now. It’s an order, Pilot.”

  “You’ll need my cloudhook, Your Excellency,” Four Crocus said. “And you’ll need to be inside the Shard—Shard-sight works off of any cloudhook with the programming, but the Shard trick—I can’t believe they’re calling it that, it sounds like we’re doing it on purpose—the Shard trick takes too much processing power for a little thing like a cloudhook. Or a mind. You need the ship.” Her hand was on the hull of her Shard, stroking it like she would stroke a pet that needed to be quieted. “She’s a good ship,” she went on. “My Shard.”

  Very seriously, Eight Antidote said, “I believe you,” because Four Crocus seemed to need to hear it.

  She took a deep breath, like an orator about to begin a poem at court. “All right. Let’s—get this over with. Fuck, but I really hope you’re who you seem to be, because otherwise this is absolutely going to get me kicked out of the Shard corps—”

  Inside, there was hardly space for one person, let alone two. Four Crocus showed him where to sit. Where to put his hands to call up the Shard’s engine and onboard targeting AI without actually triggering a takeoff sequence. And then she settled her cloudhook over his left eye. It was too big, of course—he had to tilt his head to keep it exactly settled—but it worked just like his own. The interface was the same, except overlaid with a hundred commands and programs he’d never seen. Fleet hardware with Fleet programming. It was terrifying. All of this was. But he’d left being scared somewhere outside the Shard, somewhere in the boredom of waiting for Four Crocus to come back. All he had left was being cold. He thought he might be shivering.