Jedao froze. The voice had spoken in his head, sardonic, in a timbre like tarnished bells. Who are you?
Who do you think? It sounded impatient this time.
The moth?
Yes.
Wait a second. Moths talk? he demanded. He’d known vaguely that they had biological components. But he’d never followed through with that thought to the idea that moths might be sentient.
And if that was true, did he have any right to be on the moth, giving it orders through its crew?
Pay attention to the hexarch, the Revenant said. We’ll speak later.
I’m going mad already, Jedao thought, chilled. One more thing to conceal.
In the meantime, they’d finished docking. Kujen was watching him, his eyes musing. “I remember the first time I saw a voidmoth properly harnessed,” he said. “So much experimentation, just to get to that point. Some deaths, too. But it worked.”
“‘Harnessed’?” Jedao said.
“Remind me to show you around Engineering sometime,” Kujen said. “You can get a glimpse of the control interface for the harnessing system.”
He understood what Kujen referred to in fragments. Like the station, the voidmoth’s essential heart consisted of living tissue to which manufactured components had been affixed. He’d never before considered that the voidmoth’s living core might need... persuasion to fly. Or how the voidmoth itself might feel about that.
Asking Kujen about the latter was too dangerous. On the other hand, he could try asking the Revenant itself, at a safer time.
Kujen unwebbed and rose. Jedao fumbled for the catch, found it, followed suit. They exited the shuttle into one of the Revenant’s bays. Jedao was dismayed when the Kel present halted what they were doing to salute him. He returned their salutes and waved for them to resume their work.
“Command center next,” Kujen said.
Jedao couldn’t tell whether the hallways reflected Kujen’s decadent tastes or, possibly, Kel tradition. Ashhawks soared everywhere upon silk scrolls, black ink with highlights in gold. If he ever ran short of operating funds, he could sell the decor.
The size of the command center confounded Jedao’s expectations, even having seen the moth’s blueprints. Charts and status displays cast colored light across the faces of the crew. Logistics—Kel Luon—had not yet noticed their entrance. She was comparing two screens as she muttered about pickles.
Commander Talaw bowed to Kujen on behalf of the crew. “Hexarch,” they said. And to Jedao: “Sir.” Their hostility had not dwindled, but at least they were observing the correct forms.
Jedao saluted Talaw, who saluted back. “Time to set out, Commander,” Jedao said, and sat down. Dhanneth had taught him how to pipe others’ displays to his own, which was less intrusive than hovering over their stations. For practice, he checked on Logistics. Sure enough, Luon was double-checking the command moth’s supply of cabbage pickles.
“Move orders, sir?” Talaw said crisply.
Jedao set up the not-formation he desired on his terminal, then passed the diagram to Talaw and the Navigation officer, a narrow-faced lieutenant. “There you go,” he said, carefully pleasant, and waited for the moth commanders’ acknowledgments to come in.
The panel lit with the array of gold lights representing the swarm moths. They were headed to the gas giant in Isteia System by a snaking route, based on Strategy’s assessments of where scan coverage was weak. According to Kujen, a “fascinating” percentage of the original Kel listening posts had blown up in a shoot-out between the Protectorate and the Compact shortly after the hexarchs’ assassinations.
Talaw and Navigation consulted on some matter relating to mothdrive resonances and a region of space known for its calendrical fluctuations. They came to a consensus and relayed the move orders to the rest of the swarm by way of Communications. “Anything further, sir?” Talaw said.
“That should do it for now,” Jedao said.
Jedao and Kujen stayed on for the entire first shift. “Let’s go,” Kujen murmured to Jedao, who had been acclimating himself to every readout he could get his terminal to produce.
Jedao couldn’t say no, so he said to Talaw, “Call me if we run into anything.” Dhanneth, who had kept silent the whole time, fell in to Jedao’s left.
Jedao caught a fleeting expression on Commander Talaw’s face as they watched Dhanneth: anguish. It vanished just as soon as he noticed it. Did I accidentally steal Talaw’s aide? Jedao wondered.
More ashhawks on the walls. Sometimes Jedao thought he glimpsed a fluttering, as of banners, out of the corner of his eye. He followed Kujen in a loop four times. Upon each repetition, the lights grew more and more amber.
“Your quarters,” Kujen said, pointing at the doors they had stopped in front of. He needn’t have said anything. The doors were marked unambiguously with the Deuce of Gears.
“Good,” Jedao said. He thought about asking Kujen for a private word so he could ask about whatever was going on between Talaw and Dhanneth, then reconsidered. He’d have to figure it out himself. “I shan’t take up any more of your time.”
Kujen bowed mockingly to him, too deeply, and left him to it.
THE FIRST THING Jedao did was survey his quarters. They were well-furnished but, thankfully, less extravagant than the ones on the station they’d departed. He’d tested all the furniture to make sure it was bolted in place. While he hadn’t found any obvious bolts, he also hadn’t been able to shift any of the larger items. Good enough.
Jedao spent most of the hour before his first high table pacing in his quarters and reviewing his staffers’ qualifications. Few surprises, except in the sense that everyone was a surprise. He was sure that even if he keeled over dead, they’d carry on and wallop the hostiles.
Then he got to the real mystery: Major Dhanneth. Dhanneth’s profile contained little information. He’d been born Eurikhos Dhanneth, one of four children. In his youth he’d wanted to be an artist, but his parents had Kel ties and had pushed him in that direction. He was divorced; had a single adult child, with whom he had not communicated for a decade.
More vexingly, Dhanneth was old for his rank, at sixty-five years. His profile showed no particular commendations, no particular demerits. Kujen wouldn’t have selected an incompetent, and indeed, Jedao so far had no cause to complain of Dhanneth’s performance. (As if he knew what the hell a good aide was supposed to be like.)
The conclusion Jedao couldn’t help coming to was that Kujen was hiding information from him. Maybe not with bad intent, true. Maybe Dhanneth was secretly an elite assassin-bodyguard. Certainly he had the physique of someone who could wrestle dragons into submission. But why would Kujen need to hide Dhanneth’s credentials from Jedao?
Maybe Dhanneth is supposed to kill me if I become inconvenient, Jedao thought. That sounded more likely. Either way, a puzzle.
One more thing. Jedao nerved himself by taking a deep breath, then asked the grid for any information it had on one Vestenya Ruo.
“No person of that name is on record,” the grid replied.
He was sure he had the name right. “Shuos Academy cadet around 826, high calendar?” He tried to recall other useful details that might help with the search, like Ruo’s family. Nothing.