And, as all things do on the original dirt-home of the we, when they decide to move, their three-ringed ships a glimmer of distortion against the stars, they move all together, one murmuration in many directions. And this time, they move to flank their enemy and drive them away before they can even think to arrive at their ultimate precious destination: one swarm of diving, singing ships suddenly alive in the heart of the Seventeenth Legion, who scrambles, too late, all of their Shards to push the we away—
—and another murmuration heads for the jumpgate from where the silent enemy came, in all their vast spearpoint ships, came through this one point only into the parts of the void-home that belong to the we, came some time ago with their little resource-extraction colonies, and came much more recently with firepower and threat and the eternal inquisitive reach that should belong only to sentient persons. That murmuration comes hidden and flowing to the jumpgate, and begins to pass through, one and the other and the other and the other …
Dekakel Onchu wakes to alarms, to a nightmare she’s dreamed often enough that she has to convince herself that it is reaclass="underline" the aliens are coming through the Anhamemat Gate. She moves on instinct and training, on the voice of her imago-line giving her enough space to breathe, to not hyperventilate or panic. She is the Councilor for the Pilots. Her ancestors brought Lsel Station safely to rest. If she has to, she will bring every last one of the Station’s citizens to a new home, even Aknel fucking Amnardbat, who she has still not decided what to do about, except figure out how to make a Councilor not a Councilor anymore, and how to get Darj Tarats to help her do it—
But she doesn’t want to have to find a new Station, dream up all those fragile numbers like the first pilot in her imago-line did, start the world over again. So she scrambles all of the military craft Lsel Station and every other sub-Station in Bardzravand Sector have, and prepares to meet the threat face-to-face.
She is in the hangar bay, watching her pilots climb into their ships, when she spots a tall, cadaverous shape who can only be Darj Tarats. Him, she stops. Him, she asks to justify himself: now, after all this, after what he has done and condemned the Station to suffer—now he is taking a flitter-ship and running away? Alone? How many Councilors are going to betray their duty to Lsel Station today? First Amnardbat—and how she is going to deal with Amnardbat is clearly something that will have to be considered after this conflagration, if there is an after to consider problems in—and now Tarats, abandoning the Station?
And Darj Tarats says to her, “No. I’m not running away. I’m going to get Mahit Dzmare, and we are going to redirect this war.”
Onchu doesn’t know—will never quite know—why she lets him leave. Perhaps she thinks he’ll die trying to get through the Far Gate and none of it will matter. Perhaps she thinks he might manage what he says he’s trying to do—and if he can, she will have less blood to mop up.
The cartograph table in Eleven Laurel’s office is small; it fits on a side table half as long as his desk. He runs it all the time; a sort of background music, a thousand solved military puzzles replaying beside him as he does the work he is required to do. He likes to think it lets him remember his history. His history, his Ministry’s history, his Empire’s history. He’s an old soldier, Eleven Laurel is, and decades gone from a battlefront he personally had to solve. Old soldiers need to keep their teeth, and Eleven Laurel sharpens his on the knotty flesh of centuries’ worth of Teixcalaanli campaigns, played out again in pinpoints of light.
He has it on now; it is playing some battle in a double-star system from two centuries ago, and he isn’t watching it at all except for how the lights shift across his hands.
His Ministry’s history, his Ministry’s successes. How fragile they can turn out to be, in the hands of a yaotlek who would rather be an Emperor, and the reactions of an Emperor who came to her throne in the aftermath of that yaotlek. Eleven Laurel is an old soldier. He thinks of the Shards, tied together with new technology from the Science Ministry, shifted and strange, not quite trustable—more like the Sunlit than his fellow soldiers now, in their worst moments, which are also their undeniable tactical best ones. He thinks of slow poison, and of trust.
Of what he has asked his favorite student to die for, all unknowing, in hopes of preserving his Ministry’s history, his Ministry’s successes. Cutting away what might be susceptible to rot—or the suspicion of rot. Sixteen Moonrise is an acceptable sacrifice if she takes Nine Hibiscus with her and wins a victory for War that will keep War relevant in the new Emperor’s estimation for as long as the conflict continues.
In the Seventeenth Legion: all the Shards together, linked by Shard-sight and biofeedback and the other thing—the Shard trick, they call it, when they’re alone amongst themselves, no superior officers, no nonpilots. The Shard trick, where sometimes it isn’t just proprioception and pain that are shared between each Shard, but instinct—reaction time—and in moments of extremity or beauty, thought.
Not words, exactly. But communication. The ones who like it—and only a small percentage of Shard pilots like the Shard trick—have pushed its limits: recited poetry to one another without ever opening their mouths.
Recited poetry to one another from either side of a jumpgate, and heard. A distorted echo, a vibration in the bones. Something from a sector of space utterly disconnected from this one save for the stitch of the jumpgate, and the vast breathing Shard-sense.
All the Shards together, in the Seventeenth Legion, whether they like the Shard trick or not: dying under the slick dissolving ship-spit of the three-ringed alien enemy, under the flashes of energy-cannon fire. Dying, and it hurts, and there are a very great many of them dying.
A long way away, in the sector of Teixcalaanli space which holds the Jewel of the World, and also the Third Legion cruiser Verdigris Mesa, four Shard pilots on a training exercise return to the hangar bay screaming, weeping; they help each other from their ships, stand braced and linked as if they cannot bear to be alone, and one of them says, thread of sense within their sobbing—truly, it does not matter which one—“We need to speak with the Minister of War. Code Hyacinth. Now.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Two Alternator slipped a thumb-sized shockstick up her left sleeve and a garrote wire up her right, and grinned like a barbarian: all her square white teeth displayed. “How do I look?” she asked. “Think I can pass for a Lsel native?”
“For approximately twenty seconds,” said Nine Foxglove, zipping up her tactical catsuit, “which is all you need, thank starlight. You look absurd. But absurd will work for twenty seconds of fooling that Station’s customs officers while Five Filament and I get into their ductwork.”
Two Alternator wrinkled her nose. “You’re the ex-Information officer, you should be doing the persuasion,” she said. “Especially if you’re going to tell me I’m doing it wrong!”
“I would,” Nine Foxglove said, “but they know my face just a bit too well.”
“You didn’t mention you’d been burned here when I signed on to this job,” said Two Alternator, suspiciously.