“And if I do?”
“Then you do.”
Eight Antidote felt like he should be sick to his stomach, and wasn’t. He wasn’t sure if his stomach was near enough to him to be sick with. Everything was very distant and very frightening. The Minister of War was talking about killing a whole planetary system, and Eleven Laurel was agreeing. And if this was what being in the Fleet was really like, he was sorry for wanting it. Sorry for wanting to dance ships into being in a simulation room. Sorry for wanting to solve all the puzzles of command. Sorry for not thinking about how Shard pilots might scream when their fellow pilots died.
If he cried, he’d be overheard.
So he didn’t.
“… it has to be aboveboard,” Eleven Laurel was saying. “From the Emperor Herself, no Shard trick to get ahead of the process.”
“The Emperor still doesn’t know about the side effects of the proprioception link, then. That’s what you mean, Undersecretary.”
A dry snatch of laughter. “Yes. I assume that is what I mean. I’d prefer to keep as much proprietary knowledge inside War as possible, Minister. In our current diminished state—after what One Lightning attempted—let us not give Her Illuminate Majesty any reasons to send Information or Science in here to take over our decision-making.”
“Sometimes,” said Three Azimuth, with a tiny sigh that made all the hairs on Eight Antidote’s arms stand up, “I understand why Nine Hibiscus prefers Information to you Third Palmers. Even so. Aboveboard, as you recommend. It won’t be a problem; the message is already prepared.”
“I do admire you, Minister. Enormously. My best student is willing to die in executing this plan, if it means we get what we need—”
“Sixteen Moonrise?”
“Yes. Right alongside the yaotlek. Two flagships ought to be sufficient to carve open a space in the enemy lines for the requisite number of shatterbombers to get through, don’t you think?”
Eight Antidote had heard enough. He imagined how many bombs it would take to kill a planetary system, and how many bodies would be on that planet, even if they were all one mind like he thought they were, and he didn’t want it to happen. It wasn’t—just losing some Shard pilots made other Shard pilots cry. What would it be like to lose a whole planet if you felt all the deaths?
They understand death, they just don’t care about it the same way, Dzmare had said.
But that didn’t mean they didn’t care about it at all.
Eight Antidote turned away, back down the hall, and headed into the tunnels. He was going to tell someone his idea. He was. But he was going to tell the Emperor Nineteen Adze, so that she didn’t send that order that Three Azimuth wanted her to send.
“What does Fleet Captain Forty Oxide want?” Nine Hibiscus said, her voice gone very even, very serene. The voice of a person calculating lines of attack. Mahit wasn’t sure she understood the question (what could a Fleet Captain under attack possibly want but for the attack to end with him victorious?), but Two Foam seemed to.
“It’s not an all-ships distress call, yaotlek. It’s a request for information. Have we done anything that would provoke an intensification of the guerilla strikes to direct engagement, do you have more specific instructions—their comms officer Nine Sea-Ice is waiting for our reply on open channel.”
Before Nine Hibiscus could answer, Three Seagrass, her voice low and urgent and just as calm as the yaotlek’s, said, “Before you answer, yaotlek, find out if any of the other legions in your six are under similar attack or have changed position. I suspect this is not an isolated incident.”
Nine Hibiscus looked at her with a weight of evaluation that made Mahit want to sink down under it, crushed by heavy scrutiny, heavier evaluation.
But Three Seagrass didn’t flinch, and Nine Hibiscus, as if satisfied by that lack, said, “Two Foam. Do so. Status, from all captains.”
It didn’t take long. The order must have been a commonplace one—Two Foam reached above her head, her hands dancing in the holograph display of the Fleet, and transmuted incoming messages into a pattern of light, a stylized representation of what each legion in this sector was doing, how they moved, how many of their ships were under attack.
Even Mahit could see that the Twenty-Fourth Legion—Sixteen Moonrise’s legion—had begun a slow, inexorable approach toward the aliens’ planetary system. And that at the same time, or shortly after, the aliens had redoubled their attack on the nearest legion to that system—the Seventeenth. Cause and effect, as plain as sunlight.
“They understand retaliation just fine,” she found herself saying. “Yaotlek. With the greatest of respect. I know I’m not Teixcalaanli, or one of your soldiers, and I know your people are dying, but if this is how the aliens react to the suggestion of approach—think of what they will do if you actually signal an attack.”
“Also,” Three Seagrass added, viciously dry, “I doubt that you ordered Sixteen Moonrise to take her ship in that close. Did you?”
Mahit had never seen any Teixcalaanlitzlim smile like a Stationer who hadn’t lived near or known Stationers, but Nine Hibiscus did it now: bared her teeth, her lips curling back.
<Not a smile,> Yskandr told her. <A threat. A displeasure. A very Teixcalaanli expression, even if it looks like how we’d smile if we wanted someone to know we were going to enjoy hurting them.>
Close enough, Mahit told him.
“How right you are, Envoy,” Nine Hibiscus said, still showing her teeth. “But you have reason to make me mistrust my Fleet Captain, do you not? You two—the spook and her pet?”
“You’re the one who asked for Information’s services,” Three Seagrass said. “Yaotlek. It’s you who commands me, just as you command the Fleet Captain.”
“And how do I know, Envoy, if the attack on the Seventeenth is due to Fleet Captain Sixteen Moonrise’s maneuvers—or something you and Ambassador Dzmare said, down on Peloa-2?”
“You don’t,” said Mahit. “And neither do we.”
Three Seagrass looked at her, flashfire-quick, her mouth twisted into the same amazed-wry expression she’d worn when Mahit had curled her fingers up inside her just so. Which was also the same expression she’d worn when she had watched Mahit turn the performance of barbarism directly against the Minister of Science Ten Pearl, at the very first event they’d ever been to together. That same pleasure, a twisted amazement and joy, a kind of possessive wanting. Mahit couldn’t think about how it made her feel. She didn’t have time to feel anything that strong. That—disarraying of the pattern of the world.
“The Ambassador is right,” Three Seagrass said. “I would not promise you anything I could not guarantee. It may be our fault. It may be the Twenty-Fourth Legion. It may be something else we cannot even imagine—our enemy is otherwise than any alien species I know of.”
Clipped and vicious, Nine Hibiscus said, “For what did I bring you here, then, Envoy? If you cannot make these aliens make sense.”
“For the attempt,” said Three Seagrass.
At which Two Foam, apparently done with philosophy, negotiations, and barbarians all, said, “The Chatoyant Sirocco is still waiting for an answer,” loud enough that Mahit almost flinched.