“All right,” Jedao said when no one else was in earshot, “your place or mine?”
His hand wasn’t anywhere near his gun, but then, it hadn’t been when he had fired on Brezan, either.
“I’m certain my quarters will be safe, sir,” Khiruev said, with no particular emphasis on ‘safe.’ When Jedao saw the boxes of dismembered gadgets, he’d have all the evidence he needed. Might as well get it over with.
Khiruev’s quarters were down the hall from Jedao’s. Jedao let her enter first. The door slid shut behind them.
“You weren’t kidding about watches, General,” Jedao said, inspecting the shelves where Khiruev kept her favorite trinkets. “That rose gold one would be nice if you fixed it up, but never mind. You were probably shocky when I called Engineering asking if anyone had recently requisitioned gewgaws. But then, you wouldn’t have needed their help. Engineering subspecialty as a cadet, isn’t that right?”
Khiruev wasn’t sure what she wanted more, a bullet in her head or a cane. Standing up without collapsing was taking all the concentration she could spare. “Come again?” she said.
Jedao eyed her, then brought over a chair. “Sit down, for love of fox and hound. I’d rather not be talking to the floor.”
She sat.
Jedao crossed his arms. “I’m not unaware of the effect that formation instinct is having on you right now, General, but I need you to pay attention to what I’m saying with your actual brain and not the part of your brain that’s going to ‘sir’ me to death. If you’ll pardon the expression.”
Khiruev stared at Jedao’s holstered gun. “I’ve betrayed you, sir,” she rasped. “My death is yours.”
“That’s not the salient point, General.”
Khiruev tried to make sense of the statement. For that matter, Jedao was being awfully conscientious about addressing her by her rank. What was going on?
Jedao’s eyes were very cold. “You fucked up, General. You got two of ours killed. If that’s the standard needler unit, then it holds twelve rounds and we’re lucky it jammed so more people didn’t die.”
Khiruev shook at the contempt in Jedao’s voice.
“I’m not unaware of my reputation. I really did slaughter a Kel army. So I’m not unaware that the Kel have a million reasons to want me dead.
“But I meant it when I said I was going to fight the Hafn.” Jedao’s mouth twisted. “Shooting people is one of the few things I’m good at. It’s the only way I can make amends. And to do that, I need soldiers, not corpses.”
“Sir,” Khiruev whispered, and couldn’t think of what to say after that.
“I used to be a Shuos agent,” Jedao said in a more normal tone of voice, which made Khiruev’s heart freeze. “Didn’t stay at it long before transferring to the Kel, but you’d be surprised how many assassinations you can pull off in eight months if your heptarch insists. There were Kel between me and the drone, including yourself. Given formation instinct, you needed to get me alone. You could have sent the drone after me on the way to the conference room, assuming you had it available then. You were half a step behind me, but you might have been able to submerge formation instinct long enough to keep from tackling me or some damn thing while it went to work. I assume you didn’t build in a weapon with better penetration for lack of appropriate parts. Anyway, it would have had a clear shot at my back. If you’d done this in a semi-competent fashion, you’d have your swarm back and those officers would still be alive.”
Khiruev’s first thought was that of all the things she had expected of this conversation, a critique of her assassination attempt had not been one of them. The second was that she should have known that even a four-hundred-year-old Shuos who had spent his adult life in Kel service would display the Shuos obsession with competence. “That option didn’t occur to me,” Khiruev said simply.
“Obviously.”
“My death is yours, sir.”
Jedao gave her a cockeyed look. “How do you tell the difference between a violin and a Kel?”
She knew the answer to that one. “The Kel burns longer.”
“Listen,” Jedao said, “I’m only good at speaking the language of guns, so maybe I haven’t made myself clear yet. I don’t want your fucking death, General. Killing people is so easy, but it’s usually irreversible. Kel Command clearly thinks you’re good. They’ve been mulling over promoting you someday, if I’m understanding the notations in your profile correctly.”
Khiruev stiffened in spite of herself, but Jedao went on.
“I want your life, General. I want your help fighting the Hafn. But you need to promise me you’re not going to get more people killed through this kind of carelessness. Because if you pull that again, I’m going to show you a damned nasty way of killing someone with a playing card.” Jedao pulled a card out of his sleeve: the Deuce of Gears. His personal emblem.
“You have my service, sir,” Khiruev said, “as long as you require it.”
Jedao smiled brilliantly at her, and Khiruev knew then how completely she’d been defeated.
CHAPTER THREE
WHEN RHEZNY BREZAN was a third-year cadet at Kel Academy Secondary, he learned why Exercise Purple 53 was listed as Purple Paranoia. His class had known that the exercise was coming, although not how bad it would be. A few years back, one class had drawn the one that involved lots of orbital bombardment. The consensus was that no one else would get as lucky so soon. Besides, two years ago, a new commandant had been appointed, and she had a reputation for designing no-win scenarios over breakfast.
The usual instructor was a stocky, graying man who never smiled. Brezan, sitting in the classroom with the other cadets, noticed the gleam in his eyes. Not a good sign. Next to him, Onuen Wei was taking slow, deep breaths, which meant she had noticed, too.
A slim manform entered the room. Brezan recognized the alt, who had worn any number of faces, all of them cheerfully ugly. The sight of their naked hands made Brezan’s stomach knot with revulsion. None of the cadets wore Kel gloves; they’d only earn that right upon graduation. But the newcomer’s unostentatious bearing gave the impression of great experience. The manform wore no faction or rank insignia. They didn’t have to. No one here dared cross them.
The room went dead silent.
“For this exercise,” the instructor said, “I’m handing you over to a guest instructor. Shuos Zehun is on loan to us from the Shuos hexarch.” Zehun was Hexarch Shuos Mikodez’s personal assistant, one of the few Shuos scarier than the hexarch himself. Zehun had switched to this face several months ago; it had been impossible to escape the news. “I expect you to accord Zehun the same respect and obedience you would myself or any Kel superior.” The instructor’s not-smile turned fiendish. “There’s every possibility that they know more ways of dismembering annoying cadets than I do.”
The threat wasn’t necessary. Everyone had heard about how Mikodez had assassinated two of his own cadets on a lark shortly after he rose to power.
“Pleased to meet you all,” Shuos Zehun said. Their voice was quiet but not soft.
The regular instructor nodded to them and walked out, whistling pointedly.
“All right,” Zehun said. “Come with me.”
They filed out after Zehun, walking down a long hall and through several passageways until they reached the variable-layout sections of Citadel 9. From that point on, Brezan concentrated on not looking too closely at the walls, whose angles seemed to be on the verge of shattering apart, or the floor, which put him in mind of great and restless snakes. Brezan’s bunkmate, an engineering candidate, liked to read trashy adventures set in the bowels of the campus. They inevitably involved rogue killer robots, the occasional talking ferret, and plucky cadets who never ran out of ammunition. Brezan had tried some and found them unnaturally compulsive reading. Of course, most of the adventures had happy endings. Nothing involving a Shuos could possibly have a happy ending.