It could just be a package, he thought—paperwork that he had forgotten?—but old habits died hard.
He entered again and approached the desk, light-footed. The box, made of eye-searing green plastic, stood out against the bland earth tones of the walls and desk. It measured approximately half a meter in all directions. Its nearest face prominently displayed the gold seal that indicated that station security had cleared it. He didn’t trust it for a moment. Spoofing a seal wasn’t that difficult; he’d done it himself.
He inspected the box’s other visible sides without touching it, then spotted a letter pouch affixed to one side and froze. He recognized the handwriting. The address was written in spidery high language, while the name of the recipient—one Garach Jedao Shkan—was written both in high language and his birth tongue, Shparoi, for good measure.
Oh, Mom, Jedao thought. No one else called him by that name anymore, not even the rest of his family. More importantly, how had his mother gotten his forwarding address? He’d just received his transfer orders last week, and he hadn’t written home about it because his mission was classified. He had no idea what his new general wanted him to do; she would tell him tomorrow when he reported in.
Jedao opened the box, which released a puff of cold air. Inside rested a tub labeled KEEP REFRIGERATED in both the high language and Shparoi. The tub itself contained a pale, waxy-looking solid substance. Is this what I think it is?
Time for the letter:
Hello, Jedao!
Congratulations on your promotion. I hope you enjoy your new command moth and that it has a more pronounceable name than the last one.
One: What promotion? Did she know something he didn’t? (Scratch that question. She always knew something he didn’t.) Two: Trust his mother to rate warmoths not by their armaments or the efficacy of their stardrives but by their names. Then again, she’d made no secret of the fact that she’d hoped he’d wind up a musician like his sire. It had not helped when he pointed out that when he attempted to sing in academy, his fellow cadets had threatened to dump grapefruit soup over his head.
Since I expect your eating options will be limited, I have sent you goose fat rendered from the great-great-great-etc.-grand-gosling of your pet goose when you were a child. (She was delicious, by the way.) Let me know if you run out and I’ll send more.
Love,
Mom
So he was right: the tub contained goose fat. Jedao had never figured out why his mother sent food items when her idea of cooking was to gussy up instant noodles with an egg and some chopped green onions. All the cooking Jedao knew, he had learned either from his older brother or, on occasion, those of his mother’s research assistants who took pity on her kids.
What am I supposed to do with this? he wondered. As a cadet, he could have based a prank around it. But as a warmoth commander, he had standards to uphold.
More importantly, how could he compose a suitably filial letter of appreciation without, foxes forbid, encouraging her to escalate? (Baked goods: fine. Goose fat: less fine.) Especially when she wasn’t supposed to know he was here in the first place? Some people’s families sent them care packages of useful things, like liquor, pornography, or really nice cosmetics. Just his luck.
At least the mission gave him an excuse to delay writing back until his location was unclassified, even if she knew it anyway.
JEDAO HAD HEARD a number of rumors about his new commanding officer, Brigadier General Kel Essier. Some of them, like the ones about her junior wife’s lovers, were none of his business. Others, like Essier’s taste in plum wine, weren’t relevant, but could come in handy if he needed to scare up a bribe someday. What had really caught his notice was her service record. She had fewer decorations than anyone else who’d served at her rank for a comparable time.
Either Essier was a political appointee—the Kel military denied the practice, but everyone knew better—or she was sitting on a cache of classified medals. Jedao had a number of those himself. (Did his mother know about those too?) Although Station Muru 5 was a secondary military base, Jedao had his suspicions about any “secondary” base that had a general in residence, even temporarily. That, or Essier was disgraced and Kel Command couldn’t think of anywhere else to dump her.
Jedao had a standard method for dealing with new commanders, which was to research them as if he planned to assassinate them. Needless to say, he never expressed it in those terms to his comrades.
He’d come up with two promising ways to get rid of Essier. First, she collected meditation foci made of staggeringly luxurious materials. One of her officers had let slip that her latest obsession was antique lacquerware. Planting a bomb or toxin in a collector-grade item wouldn’t be risky so much as expensive. He’d spent a couple hours last night brainstorming ways to steal one, just for the hell of it; lucky that he didn’t have to follow through.
The other method took advantage of the poorly planned location of the firing range on this level relative to the general’s office, and involved shooting her through several walls and a door with a high-powered rifle and burrower ammunition. Jedao hated burrower ammunition, not because it didn’t work but because it did. He had a lot of ugly scars on his torso from the times burrowers had almost killed him. That being said, he also believed in using the appropriate tool for the job.
No one had upgraded Muru 5 for the past few decades. Its computer grid ran on outdated hardware, making it easy for him to pull copies of all the maps he pleased. He’d also hacked into the security cameras long enough to check the layout of the general’s office. The setup made him despair of the architects who had designed the wretched thing. On top of that, Essier had set up her desk so a visitor would see it framed beautifully by the doorway, with her chair perfectly centered. Great for impressing visitors, less great for making yourself a difficult target. Then again, attending to Essier’s safety wasn’t his job.
Jedao showed up at Essier’s office seven minutes before the appointed time. “Whiskey?” said her aide.
If only, Jedao thought; he recognized it as one he couldn’t afford. “No, thank you,” he said with the appropriate amount of regret. He didn’t trust special treatment.
“Your loss,” said the aide. After another two minutes, she checked her slate. “Go on in. The general is waiting for you.”
As Jedao had predicted, General Essier sat dead center behind her desk, framed by the doorway and two statuettes on either side of the desk, gilded ashhawks carved from onyx. Essier had dark skin and close-shaven hair, and the height and fine-spun bones of someone who had grown up in low gravity. The black-and-gold Kel uniform suited her. Her gloved hands rested on the desk in perfect symmetry. Jedao bet she looked great in propaganda videos.
Jedao saluted, fist to shoulder. “Commander Shuos Jedao reporting as ordered, sir.”
“Have a seat,” Essier said. He did. “You’re wondering why you don’t have a warmoth assignment yet.”
“The thought had crossed my mind, yes.”
Essier smiled. The smile was like the rest of her: beautiful and calculated and not a little deadly. “I have good news and bad news for you, Commander. The good news is that you’re due a promotion.”